June 18th, First Year
"Every available ranger and scout! To the center! I repeat, every available ranger and scout! To the center!"
Rain poured into the hollow, ripping at the canopies and towing away thick mud and uprooted plants. Water thundered beneath the thick wooden bridges of the Diamond Clan Settlement, tearing at the mud-stained posts buried deep in the ground. Massive soot-black clouds eddied overhead, burying the mountains in their fog as they reached lower and lower to the mirelands.
"Where's my son?" came a distorted cry, nearly obscured by the wind. "My son- he's missing! Please, somebody help!"
Jaku immediately ripped herself out of the tent, wincing as the cold downpour beat at her exposed face and arms. A summer typhoon? She raced along the wooden docks keeping the village out of the massive flash flood, her boots skittering on the planks as she turned one way and then another. She would talk with Ingo later; her clan would have to come first.
Seemed it was only bad news that awaited her once she arrived at the village center. Something had happened up in the mountains and now a child had gone missing. Adaman and his deputy did not say anything else as they sorted through the influx of scared villagers; his sour and confused expression was enough to send Jaku into the forests on her lone mission.
Waves of sludgy, black water thundered down the slopes and swept with them trees, rocks, and even stray pokémon. Jaku did not look at the mangled drowned corpses caught in the turbulent waves as she followed the torrent south, keeping well away from the growing rivers and especially from the bogs.
Thick mud squelched under her boots. She was apprehensive. Just how did a kid managed to go missing, completely unnoticed in this weather? This late at night with this much floodwater? The kid, whoever it was, was almost guaranteed to die. Nobody could swim in a flashflood with zero visibility.
Ghost broke free of his pokéball, twining its tail around her arm to guide her as it led the way over the wet terrain, its nose to the ground. She could barely make out the slight golden glow of its eyes as it led her through the twisted mangrove woods into the open swamp.
A vice-like grip clamped down onto her shoulder. "Not so fast!"
"Huh?" Jaku immediately bristled at the man before ripping his hands off of her shoulder. "You! Don't you have anything better to do than bother me?" She hurried to put distance between herself and that vile man. "Get lost!"
Akanti looked unimpressed, holding up a hand as a familiar Lickilicky approached. "You're supposed to have a partner, you know," he drawled, roughly grabbing at her shoulder again to keep her in place. Jaku dodged.
"I'd sooner get caught in the flood. Why don't you make yourself useful and stop stalking me, asshole. Aren't you supposed to have a partner yourself?"
"You're my partner, genius."
Jaku snorted but her face remained impassive and cold. "Like hell I am. I may have to hold my tongue around other people, but you are no friend of mine. You stay away from me." She turned and began following Ghost west, scowling as Akanti's heavy footsteps trailed after her.
"It was just a prank. I was messing around-"
"Oh, so do you strangle and beat the shit out of every new ranger-to-be that you work with? But no. I suppose you were just 'messing around', am I right? What's next? Are you gonna 'playfully drown' the next to-be in the river? Gonna toss the next rookie in a gorge for funsies? Where the fuck do you draw the line you-"
"Listen to me."
"Don't you dare interrupt me!" Jaku hissed back. "I don't want nor need your help. I don't trust you and I certainly don't want you following me in this weather. As a matter of fact," Jaku growled, plucking a pokéball from her waist, "I think I might call on my bodyguards." She flicked open the release mechanism and out came Lilith.
She towered over Akanti like a behemoth, her sharp teeth glinting in the flashes of forking lightning. Steam poured from the beast's fur coat and with one warning snarl, it snapped at the man forcing him to take a few steps back.
"One move and I'll toss you in a ditch. Lilith, keep him away for me, will you?"
She followed Ghost further down the slope, making sure that Akanti was keeping his distance as she inspected the dark woods for any signs of a child. She saw nothing. She'd soon come to a stop at a flooded river, Lilith scooping her up onto her back as a stray wave ricocheted off the bank and completely ripped a tree from the mud. She shivered at the sucking sounds the roots made.
"Get back over here!" Akanti called. His eyes darted upstream before he took a few hurried steps back.
Jaku followed his lead, retreating as a new wave of debris slammed into the river and thundered over the hill, taking more and more trees with it. She grimaced as the man drew closer, and edged away. "Cool it with the commands, dickhead. You're not Adaman. If you want someone to order around, go play with the children in your spare time."
"Will you stop arguing with me? I'm trying to help you!" Akanti retorted back.
"I don't want your help."
"I don't care." Seemingly at his wit's end, he quickly seized Jaku's arm and pulled her higher still until they were back in a clump of mangrove trees. He spun her around so they were now face-to-face, his eyes glimmering with annoyance and anger as clear as day. "In case you've forgotten, you work in a clan. You may think you're something special because you've got pokémon doing your bidding-"
"Excuse me-"
"You're excused!" Akanti snarled, silencing her effectively. "You're acting like a child! Just because you're some gift from Almighty Sinnoh doesn't mean you can disregard Adaman's orders and behave like some bastard kid."
"I'm not disregarding Adaman's orders," Jaku breathed angrily.
"So Adaman said that we had to go in pairs. That wasn't a suggestion. We're both already far from the settlement. I don't give a single fuck if you don't like me, but we're partners in this now. So either you work with me, or we're both going back to camp."
"How about this? You can follow me around like the useless piece of shit that you are while I get my work done since you want to stick your nose in my business with your holier-than-thou attitude-"
"I should've really strangled you in the woods."
"Why didn't you then, coward?" Jaku snarked back. There was a pause between the both of them. "I haven't seen anything yet. Have you?"
"Not a peep," Akanti muttered. He fixed her with an icy stare. "I'd wager taking a look across the river. I don't think any of the other groups can make it over this flood. Except for us, of course."
"Oh ho. Don't get a big head, now. And how do you suppose we cross without getting swept off our feet, huh?"
Akanti smirked. "Watch and learn." He stepped up to the river, holding the edge of his poncho down as he summoned his pokémon forward with a finger. "Lichi, use Bulldoze!"
The pokémon gave a quick cry and reared back, stomping its feet into the muddy turf. The earth shook and trembled underfoot. The floodwater lurched, cresting violently into the sky as the river bottom gave way completely. It had now become a gorge of sorts.
"How's that?" Akanti smirked at her.
"Don't push it."
Jaku didn't know how to feel anything optimistic about Akanti. She hated him. Just the fact that the man had been talking about her to Warden Ingo made her feel nauseous. On one hand, just the way he'd acted toward her during her trial made her never want to step foot near the deranged lunatic again. He would put on a nice, pleasant face for the whole clan but the moment it was just the two of them alone, he dropped it like a rotten piece of meat.
Akanti was many things when it came to him following her around and mocking her whenever he had the chance to. In her opinion, he was selfish, impulsive, aggressive, and if she were being honest, a bit of a masochist. She'd had nightmares of him strangling her with that crazed grin. That was after the celebration, and she was thankful that Talaos had apparently "told him off" for his behavior the morning after.
Apparently, he wasn't all that well liked in the clan. Can't imagine why. Pokémon wielders were rare, but they certainly weren't looked up to by any means. She'd heard that Akanti had apparently done something so vile and vicious, that he'd driven his brother away with his actions. Another reason for Jaku to dump him whenever she had the chance.
Unfortunately, due to their similarity in having pokémon, Jaku was now given tasks that involved being near or working with Akanti on any given day and the man seemed to adore irritating her at his earliest convenience. Poking fun at her choice in pokémon, pranking her by stealing her items, or sometimes scaring her by appearing before her without warning in the night. She had tried to appeal to the deputy to 'please stop pairing me up with that jackass', but did they listen? Of course not.
Now that Lickilicky had created a bridge out of the earth, the two rangers were off, Ghost having begrudgingly allowed the ranger to ride him so that the man didn't get left in the dust by Jaku taking the lead.
As they rode on, Jaku began to feel incredibly nauseous. Her hands began to tingle, and her limbs weighed her down much more than they had in the previous moment. She felt as though her head had suddenly been stuffed with cotton as her vision began to wink out.
"..."
"...io…?"
"S….. Not…. W…"
"UNDERGROUND, MY CHAMPION. WHAT YOU SEEK LIES BENEATH YOUR FEET."
The cotton cleared and a burst of white-hot pain lanced along the back of her head and through her jaw. Jaku gave a stifled groan of pain as she clutched at her temples, noticing that she was now lying up against a tree and covered with mud. Her limbs felt stiff, and she was cold all over.
"Good, you're finally awake." Akanti reappeared from behind a tree, his scowl much deeper than before. "If you weren't feeling well before you left, you should've just stayed behind!" he complained. "Nearly fell into a bog on the way here."
"How long was I out for?" she croaked.
"Ten minutes," Akanti growled. "Ten minutes wasted. I can't believe you actually fainted! Now I've got two casualties to deal with. See? This is why I chased after you! Sometimes, you act like the world's biggest idiot! It's a wonder you haven't died yet."
"And it's a wonder I haven't had Ghost paralyze you and leave you in the river to drown." Jaku got to her feet and shook off the mud from her tunic, still feeling dizzy from her brief episode of dissociation. She took a step forward toward Akanti, stilling as her foot met solid ground. She took another step. No mud.
The bog and the surrounding woods were dry. Jaku knew enough about the mirelands to know that it was seldom ever dry. It was nigh impossible since they were in a typhoon.
And there was that odd distortion in time again. Seemed like they had walked right into it. The rain wasn't falling into the bog despite the heavy downpour, flickers of colorful light interlacing with the grass and tree roots. Everything was brighter. Clearer. Sharper. The earth was cracked and dusty as if there had been a drought instead.
Jaku's eyes caught on a new item almost immediately. There was a small shoe on the edge of the distortion. "Underground," Jaku heard herself speak, her voice coming out garbled and wrong. "They're underground."
"Underground? What are you talking about?" Akanti turned to scowl at her and then frowned, his eyes wide as he silently approached. "What's that thing around your neck?"
"What?"
Akanti, far too close for comfort, had snatched up the pendant and was now staring at the glowing red engravings. He turned it this way and that before eventually dragging his eyes away from it to stare her down directly. "Where did you find this?" he asked.
"By the lake," Jaku groaned, reaching to snatch it back. A new headache was starting to throb at the back of her head. "Underground. I think this kid may be underground. Maybe a sinkhole of some kind?"
"Now you're just making things up."
"No, look."
Akanti followed her line of sight and pulled her hastily over to the middle of the time distortion. Almost immediately, the temperature around the area skyrocketed. Even Jaku was uncomfortable as the two found their way toward the dropped shoe.
"There aren't any tracks here," he muttered. "Do you see any broken branches around? Any bits of exposed sod?"
"No. Not a thing." She carefully observed the crack in the earth where the shoe was found and immediately recoiled. Her headache had grown to an unbearable pain and she found herself unknowingly pulling Akanti away from the abandoned object. "Hey-"
With a resounding crack, the earth lurched under her feet and the distortion seemed to grow bigger. The strange object around Jaku's neck glowed until she could no longer see and-
Silence. Nothing but an endless white void before her. She turned around. Before her was herself. Not alive though. Her skin shriveled and black, she could just barely see what looked to be her headscarf poking out of a deep pit of snow. Her own corpse had its back turned to her, looking out at an expanse of snow-covered mountains in the middle of nowhere. Jaku took a step back.
"THIS IS YOUR FUTURE." The voice took up all the space in her head, and yet she couldn't keep it out by covering her ears or closing her eyes. "THIS IS YOUR ONLY ENDING. YOUR RESOLUTION WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON THIS OUTCOME."
The carcass disappeared only to be replaced with the visage of a temple atop a snow-covered mountain. The voice began to speak into her head once more.
"YOU WILL BRING FORTH MY MECHANISMS OF TIME TO THE TEMPLE OF THE DIVINE. MORE WILL COME TO YOU AS YOU DO AS I ASK."
Uncountable images and memories poured through her head, forcing her to her knees. A pen on a table. Two broken claws in her hands. Her own hands dripping with blood and bits of skin. White pillars reaching into the sky. A figure moving through a snowdrift. A pokémon standing atop a canyon ledge smiling at her. A bunch of metallic items in a bag. Broken glasses. Barren mountains under a blue sky. Lightning striking a log. A poorly bound book. Pictures out on display. A paper attached to a wooden pole. Uneaten cake.
The disembodied voice continued to speak directly into her mind, turning her own thoughts into garbage noise and feeding her information she did not want to know. The one voice turned to many, all shouting, each louder than the last until-
Jaku woke up with a burning sensation in her throat and tears trailing down her cheeks. It was beyond dim wherever she was, but rain poured into the small opening above her and soaked into her clothes. Akanti groaned not far off, Jaku only being able to see his arm sticking out from a pile of rubble. She struggled to free herself of the clumps of roots and earth that stuck to her, hurrying over to Akanti.
"Akanti? Akanti, are you okay?"
The ranger grimaced, trying to poke his head out from the roots of a sunken tree. "Nothing crushed here, though I am sore." With a few well-timed tugs, Jaku was able to pull Akanti out until they were both standing at the floor of the sinkhole.
"When I said underground, this was not what I meant."
"No. But you did spot the shoe," Akanti murmured. And true to what the voice had told her, she soon spotted the owner.
She'd been right. Akanti gagged, forcing himself away from the sight as he vomited behind the sink pile. At this point, Jaku had seen too much to be really affected by the dead child a few paces away. She just sighed and looked away.
It'd been Hassun, that curious boy that had pelted her with questions when she'd first arrived. He lay twisted and broken on the floor of the exposed cave, one of his shoes missing.
"We need to get him back to the surface," Akanti began, gently approaching the corpse. "Give him a proper burial."
"I don't have any flying-types and neither do you." Jaku stared at the small hole in the ceiling where they had fallen through. "Too steep to climb out as well. Any idea whether this cave slopes downward or not?"
"Downwards. Let's hope this cave doesn't start flooding because it's our only way out." Akanti scooped up Hassun's corpse, grimacing, before plodding forward into the cave. He didn't spare her a passing glance. Jaku quietly let out Dusk to light the way.
The caves seemed to switch around everytime they stumbled into a new one. There were no tight squeezes or sudden drops, but Jaku kept noticing with increasing anxiety that parts of the cave walls and ceilings were starting to give out and collapse.
The sound of floodwater cascading through the tunnels was all that they could hear over the quiet rumbling of Dusk's flame. But despite their tenacity to keep going, it wasn't long before Akanti came to a sudden stop. Jaku collided directly with his back and then found herself realizing why he'd stopped.
They had been in this cave before. She recognized the long fang-like stalactites that hung from the ceiling, the only difference being that a huge part of the cave wall had collapsed.
"This doesn't make sense," Akanti grumbled, taking out a small map. "We fell near Gapejaw Bog. And if we're back in this cavern, which is right in the middle, then we should've come out near the Scarlet Bog."
"Akanti, are there any marked caves on that map of yours?" Jaku knew the answer the moment he looked back at her with a mixture of fear, anger, and bewilderment. "What're the odds? Only two ways of getting out of here then."
"Wait by the sinkhole we fell through," Akanti recounted, though the crinkle of his nose told her that he wasn't exactly all too fond of the idea of waiting on a hope.
"Or, we make an exit."
"Through where? We don't know if we're under a river or not." Akanti then gave her a faint smile. "But it won't necessarily matter if we create a hole in the ceiling. Lichi knows Bulldoze so we can definitely collapse the ceiling. But we have no idea of just how much rock and stone is above us."
"But Lilith here knows Protect," Jaku offered. "We collapse the ceiling in and use Protect to keep us from getting swept away. From there, we can call upon your Lickilicky-"
"Lichi," Akanti interrupted her.
"'Lichi'," Jaku mocked the name. "Does Lichi know any other ground moves besides Bulldoze?"
"Apart from Screech, no."
Lilith reappeared from her ball and began nosing her hand, leading her over to the cave wall. When the large pokémon was sure that Jaku was watching, it began using its long claws to pry through the wall, cutting through stone as though it were nothing.
"Dig! Lilith knows Dig!"
"Excellent! But let's not overstrain it too much. How about this? Neither of us know the way back to the other cave. Lichi collapses the ceiling using Bulldoze, Lilith uses Protect, and then we use the rubble from the cave-in to get as high as we can before your pokémon digs us out. Sound like a plan?"
"Absolutely. Lilith, is that something you can do?" The dog pokémon gave a loud bark as an approval.
So they perched along the wall, Akanti positioning himself in front of Jaku so he could "see better" as the wielders waited patiently. With a nod, Lichi began cracking apart the walls of the cave, tossing a boulder to strike the ceiling. A blood-curdling crack rippled through the quiet cave. Next came the foreboding warning of rushing water.
The ceiling collapsed in a wall of loose dirt, ripped-apart trees, and muddy water and to their relief, it flowed deeper into the cave and away from them. Lilith hoisted the two wielders and the corpse onto her back and worked her way up the pile of sludge and debris until they were halfway out of the hole.
"Jaku. Look at that."
"Hmm?"
"We just barely missed it."
Beyond the reach of the floodwaters and stalactites, a reddish mass hung back in the shadows, a pair of milky-white eyes focused on them. Then came five pairs of eyes. The creature scuttled forward, a mess of atrophied legs and eyes, the mushrooms atop their back covered with mold. Parasects. About a dozen of them all tangled together in a horrific mess as it struggled to find them.
"Lilith, put some haste in getting us out of here."
June 19th, First Year
They returned to camp past sunrise and held a vigil for Hassun. Adaman said nothing to them when they returned, and the ranger leaders did not come looking for them for the rest of the day. Neither had been injured too badly but neither had said anything to each other upon returning. Jaku was glad to be rid of the man.
She sat idle in her tent, listening to the rain dribble onto the tent's tarp. Dusk and Peanut were cuddled up by her sides under the blanket, soundly asleep as they usually were. Ingo had departed for the highlands hours before she had arrived. Seemed Emmet would have to find his own way to his supposed brother without her help.
She fiddled with her necklace, tracking the strange grooves in the stone before pausing. There was a back to it now. She flipped it over in her hands. Where the pendant was once symmetrical was a new stone backing painted a shiny black color.
"LISTEN WELL, MY CHAMPION," came a booming voice, seeming to shake the tent and the floorboards around her. It was without pain this time. "TO ACCOMPLISH MY BIDDING, I MUST AFFORD TO YOU A SLIGHT BOON OF MY POWER. YOUR ACTIONS WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR OUTCOME, BUT IT IS PRUDENT THAT YOU LEARN TO WIELD THIS POWER. YOU WILL NEED IT FOR THE CHALLENGES TO COME."
"Challenges?"
Jaku gripped the hard edge of her necklace and stared at the tent ceiling. It was hard. To have a thing talking to her in her head. It wasn't a god, she was sure of that… because gods didn't exist. This was probably just a dark or ghost-type pokémon playing with her. She wouldn't believe the existence of a god-like figure ever.
"SILENCE YOUR THOUGHTS. I CAN HEAR THEM AND THEY ARE NOISY. YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME."
"And what if I don't want to?" Jaku spoke aloud. "What are you going to do about it?"
"YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY WILL, HUMAN. YOU WILL LEARN TO USE MY BOON. IT WILL SERVE YOU WELL IN THE TIMES TO COME. TURN THE DIAL BACK."
"Back?" Jaku echoed. Her own curiosity was getting the best of her. She slipped her finger into a pit between the pendant and solid backing. "What? You want me to turn it back? The pendent?" She mused aloud.
"WIND BACK TIME," the voice in her head responded curtly. "YOU DID NOT WANT HIM TO DIE. DO AS I SAY AND YOU MIGHT PREVENT HIS DEMISE."
Jaku stilled. She took a deep breath. She had to be hallucinating. Something was just fucking with her, right? She bit back her doubts about the task, quickly taking the pendant in her fingers before winding the pendant back. A loud clicking began to thump in her ears as time began to move backwards.
Daylight faded, replaced with the sounds of the storm as what sounded like a horrible sloshing noise retreated back up the hill outside of her tent. She raced outside. The clouds twisted and fixed themselves back into their terrifying forms, wavering back over the horizon toward the sea where they had originated from.
Her fellow clansmen whirled around her, retracing their steps as the sun began to poke back out from the clouds. Before she knew it, it was morning. That very same morning. She blinked. Something had just bumped into her.
"Oops! Sorry, Jaku!" called a shrill voice. "Hey, wait up! I can't tie my laces!"
Jaku watched with rapt horror as little Hassun whipped past her, his muddy face drawn in a smile as he regrouped with the other children. She'd gone back through time.
