A/N: Yeah, another chapter. Including three different PoV's this time around, one of which I should've done far earlier. ... Why are you still here? Read on.
***********************************Hall of Origin***********************************
I pulled myself away from the timestream; nothing had changed. No matter what path this occurrence took, it led to nothing but ruin for our world. Arceus Himself charged me with looking for any way to disrupt this event... I had even agreed, reluctantly, to work alongside my sister in order to accomplish this. And neither she nor myself were making any progress. In all likelihood - which I say with complete certainty - there was in fact nothing that could be done.
"Lord Dialga, your counterpart requests an audience." I had known that Darkrai would arrive soon - though why she had chosen him as our... messenger, I will never know.
"I have made it clear that should she have anything of importance to say, she may enter... for the time being." I was getting tired of repeating myself - and knew I would do so many times again. But memory was more my area... my sister dealt more with action. When I saw that Darkrai was still floating nearby, I sighed. "Request granted. Palkia may enter."
As I said the words, a tear appeared in the 'air' of my... you would call it a dimension, but that is not precisely correct. More accurately, it was a visual form of Time itself - a multicolored ribbon winding endlessly through a constantly-changing room. With a flash, the tear vanished, to be replaced by the rather bulky, hunched form of my Spatial counterpart. "What do you want, Palkia?"
My sister was... unusually animated on this visit. I could almost believe I saw a glint of hope. For the first time in recent memory, she told me something that was actually important. "I may have found something. Something we can use." I didn't ask her to clarify - she would do that for me. "I've been looking in only our world all this time. It had never occurred to me to look for another world entirely separate from our own."
Then again, perhaps she wouldn't clarify. "Palkia. Get to the point." I was not irritated - I had long since gotten used to her... rambling - but for the first time, I had a limited amount of time to work on something. "What did you find?"
Perhaps I should have known what she would say; perhaps my assumption that we would fail colored my judgment of what to look for. Whatever the cause of my oversight, the response that she gave me was surprising. "A lifeline, brother... in a Human."
It took me a long moment to register what she had said. A human? Save for the one chosen by Arceus so long ago, no human had ever been of any true importance, nor should be for eons to come. "How do you know this? You alone could not determine such a thing."
Instead of responding, she gestured at the my link to the timestream with one arm. "Look for yourself. Look for something where - or when, perhaps - it doesn't belong." She was being... strangely intelligent. Perhaps it was because of how severe the situation truly was.
Without a word, I 'stepped' back into the stream; again I saw all possible outcomes, all ending in a variety of ruined worlds. But I did as suggested - searched for something that was out of place, or out of time. It took... the duration I searched was meaningless; even I could not track it. It did not matter - I found it. A single, thin trail that stood out from the others. It was unfinished, still winding away from the present... but it shone silver among the tangle of black failures - it was a possibility.
When I retreated from the stream, Palkia stood silently, waiting for me to speak. There were many things I should do now - alert Arceus, ensure that this possibility became the reality... but I had to be sure. "I will watch this. Inform Lord Arceus that we may have a solution... but I promise nothing."
***********************************Pokémon World***********************************
It's been weird, not having Aurora around; everything seems washed out. I've never failed my team before - and they've never failed me. Kairi keeps telling me that none of the others blame me for it; that I tried my best, and that was enough... but my best wasn't enough. And now, on top of that, the region was coming apart at the seams.
Since Mount Coronet got hit by those... rifts, everything has fallen apart. The weather is unpredictable; one minute it's the biggest storm on record, the next the skies are clear. There are rumors of Pokémon just... leaving their trainers, vanishing into the wild. And, more worrying, there's talk that the Golems - Regirock, Registeel, and Regice - are active again... and that raised a lot of questions. More directly affecting us, the... damage to Mount Coronet made the quick route to Sandgem impassable.
"David... we need to go. Now." I looked up from my seat in the Solaceon Pokémon Center - my team had needed a rest, and we were passing by anyway. Apparently they were done and ready to go, judging by the fact that Kairi was floating their Pokéballs into my hands. I gave her a questioning look, but clipped the containers to my belt and stood up.
I almost asked what the problem was; but through the window, almost out of sight on top of the Solaceon Ruins, there was a white furred Pokémon standing still, looking right at the Center. It was an Absol - and they were known to arrive just before a catastrophe. I took only a second to put it together before striding up to the desk. I tapped on it, hard, to get the nurse's attention. Pointing at the window, I said, "Look out there."
Looking almost like she was just humoring me, she walked over to the window and looked out. When she didn't see what I was talking about, I pointed directly at it. I saw her expression start to change, and said, "Get everyone out." Without another word, or waiting for a response, I motioned for Kairi to follow me and walked through the sliding doors.
As I was walking down the road, I heard the doors slide open again. I could hear the nurse knocking on the door of one of the few houses in the small town... but I could also hear a familiar crackling sound. Turning around, I saw where it was coming from - another one of those rifts was appearing, this time inside the Ruins. When I looked, the Absol was nowhere to be seen... hopefully it made it out.
I waited near the edge of the small town, to make sure everybody was going to make it. It took only a few minutes to get the people out of their houses and ready to go - but it also only took that long for the Ruins to be almost completely swallowed up by the still-growing rift. The nurse was talking to the small group of people, explaining where they were going to go, as far as I could tell. She noticed me still waiting, and gave me a brief nod - she was grateful; I didn't need to hear it to know.
I turned back to the road, making my way away from Solaceon, Kairi walking alongside me. "Do you think that... whatever this is, will stop?"
I didn't look at her - she already knew what I would say. But after a moment, I said it anyway; what everybody was thinking about it. "I don't know." Whether it could be stopped, or not... I would do what I could to make sure we had a chance.
***********************************Real World***********************************
"Wake up..." I heard... something, over the wind. But I was awake - I was playing with my mother right now, just outside of the forest. "Wake up, little one. You are not safe." That voice was like mother's - but that didn't make sense... I was playing with her now, and she wasn't talking. 'Mother... wait... no no no NO!' Right in front of me, she started... falling to pieces, like she was being cut up... I felt something splash against me-
"WAKE UP."
I jolted awake, panting like I'd been running for too long. It was dark, and I was wet, and everything was rumbling around me. 'Where am I?' Then I realized I felt... weird. Like I was lighter than normal, and everything was moving slower. I tried standing up - I had to lean on... something, it was flat and cold and hard. Blinking a few times, the darkness seemed to fade out - everything was washed out, but I could see!
It looked like I was in... a big box. The sides were all the same cold, hard... stuff, and it felt like the ground was too. There were lots of smaller boxes; some of them were on their side, but they were all closed. 'Where does this one open?' I started shakily walking around the sides of my big box, looking for... something. Then one side opened, and I had to shut my eyes - it got really bright, and it hurt to look at.
"Hey, it's awake!" Someone was talking - I didn't know the voice.
"That thing's still alive? It looked done for." That was a different one. Were they talking about me?
"Maybe it was - but it looks pretty young... or maybe whatever it is just stay that small." What? Don't they know an Eevee when they see one? I did what I could to stand still for a moment, and tried to speak.
"Where..." I had to stop - my throat hurt too much. Why did my throat hurt?
"Did you hear that? It said something!" Did they understand what I said? Maybe they could help me!
"Yeah, Keith - 'Eve'. Probably just making something out of what's just an animal sound." Animal? I didn't know what that meant... but they couldn't understand me. I slumped to the ground, almost missing what they said next.
"You know what I think it is?"
"No, don't even. It's not a damn Eevee! They aren't real."
Not real? But I was right here, of course I was real! I jumped back to my paws, standing and looking at them - my eyes could handle the light now, sort of. They were tall - very tall, almost as tall as the box. It almost made me a little scared, but I didn't show it. They only stood on two, weirdly long legs, and had equally long arms - and no paws, or even fur, except on their heads.
The one on the left - a little taller than the other - looked down at me. When it talked, I could tell it was the first voice. "Hey, calm down - we're not going to hurt you, alright?" I liked this one; he seemed nice.
"Are you serious, man? It's a... I don't know what it is, but it can't understand you!" The second, shorter one, though... I didn't like him.
"He'll hurt you."
I don't know why, but I was angry - that shorter one, he wanted me gone. The taller one was nice, he wanted to talk; he wouldn't hurt me. But the other one would - I knew that he would. The tall one - was he 'Keith'? I think he was... - he backed away, looking not-quite-scared; I barely noticed, I was glaring at the short one, the one who didn't like me.
"Justin, I think you're ticking it off. Quite being a skeptic for just a minute, alright?" Keith knew - he understood. I didn't know what a skeptic was, but whatever it was I didn't like it.
The shorter one, who he called Justin - what weird names... - sighed, I think. "Yeah, fine; go ahead and talk to the... whatever it is."
Keith - the nice one - moved towards me, carefully; I wanted to back up, but I didn't think he'd hurt me. He got down on a knee, closer to my level. "Can you understand me?" I nodded quickly - did he really think I was that dumb? No, he was just making sure. He kept asking me questions; simple ones, that I could answer with just a 'yes' or 'no'. I did what I could, even though I didn't understand all the words.
After a while, he stopped asking questions. He flipped his little writing pad shut, and left. Just as I heard him start talking to the other one, I started feeling... really tired. 'But I just woke up... I don't want to sleep.' Before I realized it, I was curled up in the back of the big cold box.
"Just sleep." "You can wake when it's time."
That time, I knew what those voices were - they were like my parents. They sounded a little... strange, but I decided that's what they would be. And they always knew best... I could stand to get a little more rest.
***********************************?************** *********************
"Sir, everything is proceeding as planned." The nervous tone told me all I needed to know - this was a new recruit, and he knew his place; far below me, like all the others.
I didn't bother looking up - a lowly grunt didn't deserve it. I did give a brief nod of approval, however. He was silent for a moment, as if he expected me to actually say something to him. Then again, he was new. He didn't know how things worked. "Unless you have something to report... get out."
That cleared everything up quickly. The grunt left immediately, letting the door slide shut behind him. Again, the only light in the room was the glow of several screens; all showing the progress of the two worlds. I smiled, something that some might have found unsettling. "Soon, everything will be like it once was..." Glancing at one of the screens, I smiled even wider. "And you, Giratina... I could not do it without you."
The legendary ruler of the Reverse World, cast there forever by Arceus himself, lay tired and defeated; bound by a glowing red chain, the near-god was imprisoned in his own world.