We passed the Old Chateau early the next morning. I didn't mention the growlithes. I'd go back later.

Thomas lightly cleared his throat. "What?" I said.

"I didn't say anyth–"

"Just say what you want to say."

He must've been embarrassed, because he paused before saying, "I was just going to ask what happened last night."

I frowned and looked him in the eye for the first time that day. "You were there."

"At the end. I don't know why you headed off in the first place."

I grimaced. "I was looking for that growlithe pack I mentioned a few days ago. Didn't find them."

"Did you want to look now?"

"Later." Not around him.

"You came back and fixed up a gastly's injuries. I don't remember seeing her before."

"She snuck up behind me. Ended up catching her instead."

"Ohh, I see. No wonder the other two were in such bad shape."

I didn't respond to that. It would have come out too nasty.

"How'd you know to come find me?" I asked instead.

"Marcassin woke me up and led me to you. Disaster pokemon instinct."

"Ah. Right."

We kept on walking.

"You know, you can talk to me," Thomas said suddenly. "It's obvious you have a lot on your mind."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically.

"I'm serious," he said sincerely.

"I'm not in the habit of trusting strangers."

"Apparently you're in the habit of traveling with them," he said under his breath.

I jumped; it was the first snarky thing I'd ever heard him say. "Hey, it was your idea, not mine. And I only agreed because I was trying to pay you back for what happened in Jubilife. So don't you go blaming me for this."

He seemed more startled than I was. "I – okay."

That was the last of our conversation. We left the forest around eleven and got to Eterna City shortly after. Having gone without eating for a bit over 24 hours, we tacitly agreed to get lunch at the Pokemon Center. We ate without once speaking, and he headed to the gym as soon as his pokemon were healed, since their "healing" was more of a checkup than anything. I restocked the supplies I needed while waiting for my pokemon to finish up their session.

"They were in pretty decent shape," the nurse said when she handed the three pokeballs back to me. "You did well with field-healing."

I mumbled a reply and headed upstairs to the showers.

I must have used up a Pastoria-Gym-sized battle pool's worth of water in the shower. The entire time, I was thinking about the call I needed to make, and how to explain to Megan what the hell had happened to me. I kept coming up with ways to begin ("I time-traveled back to September to save the world and save Lucas, because he dies in a few months." "You know how I asked what would happen if I suddenly stopped talking to you? It's because I did, but you don't know it." "So basically in order to save the world, I had to go back in time almost half a year."), but none of them felt right.

Traipsing downstairs in a clean Pokemon Center tank top and shorts (my clothes were all in the wash), I let myself into a vidcall room and slid the glass door shut. Within minutes, Megan was onscreen.

"Hey. Did you get to Eterna all right?"

"Mostly." My mood was still sour. "I had an incident last night. But I was traveling with someone. He got me out."

"Oh, okay. Glad you're all right."

"Yeah." Frankly, I was glad she didn't make a big deal of it.

"How's things?"

"Okay. I caught a gastly last night, but I haven't named her."

"Cool. Did you name your buizel?"

"Yeah. Promise."

She nodded.

"I should…" I trailed off. She was listening. "I should tell you about the thing."

Megan nodded. "Whenever you're ready."

I laughed a little to myself. Would I ever be ready. I stared down at my hands. My thumb found its way to my poketch.

"Everything I'm about to tell you," I said slowly, "is absolutely true. But don't say anything until I'm done."

"All right."

I slowly flipped to the app.

Good luck, Lyn. See you soon.

"I met someone in Jubilife several months ago," I said. "His name is Looker. He's an agent of the International Police, and he's investigating criminal activity from Galactic, Inc. In a few months' time, they'll be known as Team Galactic to the population, and they'll have dropped a bomb in Lake Valor. Which leads to them capturing Azelf, and Mesprit, and Uxie, and then they'll go to Spear Pillar to summon Palkia and Dialga. Their ultimate goal is to create a new world."

Megan looked a little overloaded, so I paused to let her take in the information I'd just thrown at her. I continued, "The reason I know this is because I'm involved in investigating them – well, more fighting them than investigating. So are Lucas and Dawn. Or they were, anyways… I should get them back in this, actually. But anyways, when the bomb went off at Lake Valor, we all happened to be in the same place. Professor Rowan sent me to Lake Verity, and I beat Mars – she's the, uh…" I tried to think of how to explain her. "They call themselves Administrators, or admins. Then I went to Valor, to join Lucas. But…"

This was the hard part. My shoulders and arms were starting to tremble. "… Galactic had created a device called the Red Chain, which controls pokemon. They… Saturn, another admin, activated it just before I arrived. So Lucas and I went into the cave on Valor's island to fight him."

I swallowed and tried to stop shaking. "Saturn was controlling Azelf with the Red Chain. Azelf attacked and Lucas and I started fighting him, but then Azelf took a hold of Lucas and–" shaking violently "–k-killed him."

I closed my eyes and tried to repress the quaking, breathing shakily but deeply, growing steadier. When I was calm enough, I opened my eyes. Megan hadn't interrupted me during all that, even when I was silent. Her gaze was still steady through the camera. I went on,

"I flew to Acuity after that, to help Dawn. She'd just lost, and Jupiter and I fought and ended in a tie. But Jupiter's team had gotten Uxie, and Galactic managed to get Mesprit too, and Jupiter pushed Dawn off a cliff and broke her leg. I cut off contact with just about everyone – you, Tricia, my parents. I didn't want to face all the sympathy.

"Looker figured out where Galactic was heading: Spear Pillar, on Mount Coronet. The legendary temple. The IP isn't allowed pokemon, so he sent me in. He gave me an app on my poketch, in case things went terribly wrong. It was developed by the IP. It's a time-travel app."

Realization spread across Megan's face – she finally saw where all this was going. "So things went badly, and I used the app. It sent me back to September, the morning of trainer selection. Somehow Dawn took my piplup, and I ended up with Lucas's chimchar. A lot's been different this time around. I never had a buizel or gastly. There was a shinx and a growlithe I still haven't caught. And the guy I traveled with in Eterna is new. So. Yeah."

I waited for Megan, but realized there was no way she'd believe it. I mean, okay, there was, but for real. I sounded nuts.

"So… time travel?" she said, solidifying my suspicion.

"Yeah." My stomach sank a bit.

"Okay."

"What?" Stomach flying right back up.

"You wouldn't lie about something like that," she said. "I mean, that's a ton to make up, if you had. But you're also not a liar."

It wasn't relief flooding me so much as guilt, for doubting her capacity to believe. "Thanks."

"So… Crap, that's a lot. You… all that?"

"Don't start with the sympathy now," I warned, hearing her tone.

"Okay. But all that…" Megan thought about it, then said, "You could've just told us not to be all sorry for you. We could've helped anyway."

"You wouldn't have–"

"No," she cut in, "I realize you went through a whole lot of trauma in a short period of time, but you can trust us not to worsen it. We'd do what you needed us to do."

The word "trust" resonated in my mind. If I could trust a monferno I'd known for a week and two days…

"I'm sorry."

Megan shook her head. "Just talk to us next time. If ever. Hopefully that won't happen again. But you know, if you're down or anything. Talk to us."

I smiled a little. "Yeah. I will."

We kept talking, and I explained all that happened a little further. It must have been an hour or two before we hung up. I felt so much better.

Promise and my new gastly trained together in the afternoon. She'd just about perfected the mean look plus confusion/sleep attack style, but her defense and evasion needed work. I taught her to evade the spinning trick I'd used on her the night before. It took her a while, but she caught on eventually.

"By the way," I said at the end of training, "Do you have a name?"

She nodded.

"What is it?"

"Faith!" she piped up. I hadn't heard her speak before, besides the giggling; her voice was a toddler's.

"Nice to meet you. Did I introduce myself? I'm Evelyn." We'd have shaken hands if her body wasn't poison.

I let out Trust to train a little, but since my only other pokemon were a water type and a ghost type, it didn't last long. We did general fitness for an hour, doing pushups and running through the short wooded path behind the Pokemon Center a few times and whatnot. Then we took the rest of the day off.

I took another shower (a quick one) and changed back into my own clean clothes. While my pokemon explored the play structure by the bike shop (the shop was empty – Galactic had already kidnapped the owner and his cleffa) I took a walk around the city.

Disregarding its Galactic Headquarters, Eterna City is probably the safest city in Sinnoh. Lowest crime rates, closest communities, and everyone's just happy that they live among so many flowers. I guess. I explored the gardens outside the gym, strolled past the Palkia statue in the town square, and walked through the residential area. The city was like one giant garden, with each neighbor specializing in flowers, bushes, trees of all kinds, shaping their individual styles.

Around five, I entered the marketplace. Eterna was one of those cities with an old-style, informal market rather than solid stores. They had those too, but they were in the downtown area.

The marketplace's wares ranged from fresh produce to small furniture, a cross between a farmers' market and a craft fair. I wandered the stands of bell peppers and wind chimes, looking at the odds and ends on sale.

A flash of purple caught my eye. I locked in on a woman in black speaking to an artist with a gold ring in his ear, who was stationed at the edge of the market. Precious stones lay scattered across the table, but what interested me was the woman's hair, which was in two purple-magenta ponytails. One high, one low. Too few people wore their hair in such a dumb fashion for this to be anyone else.

The woman turned briefly, confirming her identity. The artist led Jupiter into a building behind his stand. There were plenty of windows in that wall.

I scanned the stands. Paintings, shoes, pokemon food, wooden figurines, ukuleles, fishing rods. I quickly purchased a collapsible fishing pole and walked behind the stands. Ducking my head, I fumbled with the buckle on my poketch. Once it was detached, I set it to the voice record app, wrapped fishing line around it and tied a knot, and gently raised the end of the fishing pole.

The voice record app has an annoying habit of flashing a green light whenever it picks up on noise above, say, a typical marketplace setting. I held the end up to several windows in turn, waiting for the light to go off. A second-story window in the middle of the complex gave me what I was looking for. The light came in little bursts and pauses. I held the end of the rod just below the windowsill, watching the light closely. A minute and a half later, it stopped flashing. I collapsed the fishing rod, untangled my poketch, and put both in their proper places, the fishing rod in my bag and the poketch on my wrist.

Jupiter and the stone seller emerged from the doorway a moment later. The seller returned to his stand; Jupiter walked off in the general direction of the HQ.

I hurried to the bike shop to pick up my pokemon, then returned with them to the Pokemon Center. In my room, I played back the recording.

Static for a minute or two. The voices faded in as I found the window.

"… around Veilstone."

"Veilstone? We don't even need to go through you, then."

"Sure, sure," said the seller, "Except I've got information, too."

Jupiter's end was silent. "What sort of information?" she asked at last.

"About the process to make the Chain."

"We've got a fine process waiting to happen."

"Right, but you would cut the formation of the Chain down by months, with what I've got."

"Tell me now. We'll work out payment if your end is worthwhile."

A chair creaked. "Have you heard of the Adamant and Lustrous Orbs?"

"Heard of them. They were deemed useless in our research."

"Not so," said the seller. "The orbs, of course, are of Dialga and Palkia. The presence of the legends is supposed to facilitate the formation of the Red Chain. But you're going artificially rather than naturally, and going Chain first, pokemon later–"

"–the orbs would work in the place of the pokemon themselves," Jupiter finished for him.

"Precisely. Not as fast as the real deal. But a great deal faster than otherwise."

Chair legs scraping against the floor. "If this proves to be true, consider yourself paid."

"Sure, sure."

Silence. Then the sounds of me frantically disassembling my makeshift spy gear.

The orbs. I don't remember them being important last time. But maybe we just didn't realize it…

I dialed Looker on my poketch. Promise and Trust were listening; they had been paying attention since I played the recording. Looker picked up the call.

"What is it?"

"Info. How safe is this call?"

"Not very. Wait for me."

"Where are you."

"Classified."

"Come on, give me a clue."

"I'll be there by tomorrow afternoon. Business."

"Right. See you then."

"See you."

Thumbing the end call button, I looked around the room, wondering what to do.

I gave my pokemon a lesson on type advantages, but as Promise seemed to know these already and Faith couldn't focus, I more or less just gave Trust a short crash course and, promising to return to the topic later, took a game of checkers out of the closet. Trust and I played, Promise giving suggestions and Faith periodically disappearing and jumping out of the checkerboard to scare the crap out of us.