(CW: Evelyn's... depressed? I think she's having a panic attack early on although I'm not 100% sure that's what this is)

Pokemon team reference page: sta dot sh/029dyg3lihmz

Trying not to panic, I panicked.

I collapsed into the dust of the trainer's box, going from hyperventilating to suppressing the things that were making me panic, and then remembering time had fucking stopped and hyperventilating again.

Oh no Arceus oh no it got worse oh no oh no oh no

Every time my fumbling mind nearly regained its grasp, another thought tore it from me and sent me spinning worse than before. All the motion in the world existed only in my head – all else stood still. Ten (zero) minutes of this went by. Time didn't resume.

Time itself hadn't truly stopped – just me. I wasn't anchored to a stable perception of time, so now I'd come loose entirely and washed up on some kind of time island. A time shipwreck.

Right now it felt like a time whirlpool because of how I was spiraling –

What if this is it? What if I'm trapped here forever? Why haven't I found an anchor already?

What's going to happen? Will I age in this moment and die? Who's going to defeat Galactic – oh fucking shit who's going to protect Lucas? What if he dies because I'm trapped in time? And then we're both dead and Galactic wins anyways? What was the point of any of this then? Why bother with time travel in the first place? Why bother with hoping?

What am I going to do? Even after Lucas died I had my pokemon team. I can't reach them. I can't reach Megan and Tricia even though I want to. Oh Arceus I'm going to be so lonely. I can't reach Thomas. Looker. Lucas. Oh Arceus my mom and dad. Megan, Tricia, Trust, Prom, Coeur, Faith, Def, Hope – all out of reach. So many of them were so near and they were all out of reach.

I had another, separate breakdown over all the people I was going to miss.

What'll happen out there? Will Thomas keep going? Will Azelf pick someone new? Who? Will they be able to beat Galactic?

But I guess I never knew the answers to those in the first place.

It took time (it took no time), but worst of the storm passed. The winds in my head began dying down. The knot in my stomach remained and my spirits were low, but the chaos had started to settle. I started to look around.

Lucas was frozen looking in my direction. Concern betrayed itself in his otherwise cool expression. So he did care – as much as he was trying not to. I felt a little better despite myself. Thomas's mouth was open like he was saying something to Lucas, but the moment I was in had caught him mid-blink, so I had no idea where he was looking.

Dawn's hand was among the pokeballs on her belt. Her face revealed nervous confidence – no battle is won til the end, but we all knew how this one was going to end.

I reached out telepathically to Def to check if my pokemon were there, but got no response. I already knew they don't travel through unanchored time with me.

At some point, I figured there was no point to shipwrecking myself in space as well as time. I stood up and brushed the dust from my legs, then started to walk around.

I went to Lucas and Thomas first. I raised a hand to touch Lucas, but reconsidered and nudged Thomas instead. He moved, but only as far as I pushed him. He didn't fall backward despite his center of balance being unsupported by his body. It was a weird combination of physics and the lack thereof.

I studied the expression on Lucas's face. How meaningful was the concern in his brow, how beautiful the flicker of warmth in his eyes. There was hope, despite everything, in my chest – hope that lifted my heart back towards its original cavity. At the same time, not knowing how to act on this hope and bring Lucas back to me tugged my heart back down.

I sat on the bench next to him. For now I just wanted to be near him – although the stoppage of time meant I couldn't feel him next to me. I didn't know the feeling of his presence was dependent on that, but it made sense.

"I miss you," I said. He didn't hear.

This isn't something I admitted openly, but in hindsight part of me – a small part, and very much a buried part – thought I needed to move on. It thought that he was irreparably distant and that I understood too little of why he was like this. The rest of me, of course, was stubbornly holding on. Just because he didn't remember doesn't mean it didn't happen – and if we were close the first time, we could get there again.

Wait, I realized suddenly, so I still am stubborn.

I sat there for a few minutes (zero minutes) and then got up. I'd been hoping for a shift, but if I couldn't feel his presence, then there was no point.

I wandered, checking out a few other battles. It was kinda cool getting to see the pokemon and their attacks in midair, energy appearing out of nothing and materializing into ice, fire, psychic waves. A physicist would have gotten a kick out of it.

I was still inside my head, mostly. Thinking about my stubbornness towards Lucas made me reconsider Azelf. Maybe I am stubborn enough to help still? Maybe this was just a downswing? In that case, what causes these downswings in willpower?

Oh. Oh no.

I was getting farther from the battlefield I'd started at – not that it seemed to matter, given that time showed no signs of resuming.

The answer wasn't that simple, was it? Overcome the depression I was newly and loosely diagnosed with, and I could be Azelf's partner? How does one even do that?

Unless Azelf actually chose me to help me instead of the other way around… which could make sense. Looker had been desperate for knowledge, and ever since meeting Uxie, he'd had gut feelings about places and people that led us to answers. Thomas was partnered with Mesprit, and the more I saw of him, the more I knew how much of a mess his emotions were. Maybe Azelf knew how to help me with this.

I breathed. There was still a weight sitting atop my chest that slowed the movements of my limbs, but at least the franticity of the storm was gone.

One of the battlefields I passed was between two trainers I'd fought before. One was Ashley de Leon; I wasn't sure who the other was, but I think her name also started with an A. Her ninetales was a foot away from quick attacking Ashley's ampharos, who was loaded with a thunderpunch. How would this end? Who knew.

I passed the last few battlefields and reached a patch of trees on the edge of town. They were one of the few types of trees I could identify: gingkoes. Goldfish colored, fan-shaped leaves fluttering motionlessly down from the branches. They hovered midflight. I plucked a leaf from its spot and moved it to another location; it drifted and then settled into the still air. I swept my arm through a bunch of midair leaves; they moved as though I'd swept them along a bench. I grinned. I don't know why this was so funny to me.

I looked up at the gold leaves above my head. The sun filtered through them in a frozen shadowplay. Komorebi, I thought, remembering the Oblivian word for light falling through leaves. I'd heard it once in a short film.

I plucked a leaf from the air and took it with me. Its tan veins fanned out like ridges on a seashell, as fine as the teeth on a comb. I held it up to the sky; its edges glowed faintly, although the middle of the leaf was too brown for translucence anymore.

I didn't know what I was doing, but my instincts seemed to have some idea, so I followed them.

Walking through the grove a ways, I breathed deeply. It was warm but definitively autumn still, smelling of must and dust.

Further into the grove, the gingkoes were shielded from the wind and shedding fewer leaves. Brown and yellow leaves blanketed the grove's floor, rather than hanging suspended in the air. I stopped at a spot free of trees and turned slowly in a circle.

Leaves and gold and tan seemed to have taken over the grove, emanating upwards as if they were giving off steam. I felt rooted in the world, gazing at the colors around me. Something about them was reassuring. I breathed in the gold light; it seeped into my chest, revitalizing the heavy stone inside it into something with function and feeling.

Above me, the leaves began to fall.

My alarm went off at eight, and I rolled over to turn it off.

I lay there for a moment, trying to adjust. I knew I'd just jumped back to the morning – double checking my poketch for the date confirmed this. This time, though, I was able to sit up and kick my legs over the side of the bed. I think in my chest somewhere, my heart was still heavy over something or nothing. But I felt comparatively lighter and immensely happier.

"Thomas?"

The bunk above me shifted. "What?" he said sleepily.

"I think I found my anchor."

Since we didn't have to rush to get me ready, Thomas and I were able to get breakfast in the Pokemon Center cafeteria. I told him all that had happened to me.

"You think the anchor is in space?" he said.

I nodded. "I've been struggling to find time anchors because time is in motion, so it's kind of like trying to anchor yourself to river water. But space is more stable – especially since Palkia isn't mad at me."

"But how does that put you back in time?"

"Maybe time and space are intertwined enough that anchoring myself in one results in the other as well." I thought about it more. "Or maybe it's that I didn't anchor myself in space so much as the world in general. I just had to get out of my head."

He nodded slowly. "Well, I'm glad you're okay. I'd have missed you."

I smiled. "I'd have missed you too."

We made it to the matchup selections before Lucas and Dawn this time. "So, how will the matchups pan out?" Thomas asked me.

"You and Lucas both get prelim battles, and all of us except Lucas make it to the third round, where Dawn and I…" I trailed off and shook my head. "But it won't be the same this time."

"But there's no new factors affecting the matchups, right?"

"Yeah, it's an RNG. But when I was battling Dawn, there were two times where Prom used water pulse – before and after a backward skip – and her electabuzz didn't get confused the second time. I think things that are up to chance don't stay the same."

"Weird."

Dawn and Lucas arrived then. I noted that they entered together – but of course they did, they were rooming together.

"Hi," I said when they approached us.

"Hey!" said Dawn. Lucas nodded a greeting without making eye contact.

"Ready for today?" I asked them.

"Heck yeah," Dawn said, grinning. Lucas didn't answer.

I was not giving up on him.

"Lucas, how about you?" I prompted him.

He made eye contact with me and my heart stopped. Lucas nodded with a smile on his face before looking away. I hadn't had time to see if his eyes were smiling, too, but it was progress already.

We could do this.

The 1- through 4-badge matchups shuffled and displayed themselves. "Here we go," said Thomas soon after, pointing at the screen overhead.

The four of us, along with the other 5- through 8-badge trainers in the room, watched in anticipation as the digital cards with our faces on them shuffled. The photos fluttered into the bracket. I scanned for my face – as expected, I wasn't matched with the same person. Satisfied, I searched for the others.

"See you in the final sixteen," Dawn teased, nudging me.

Startled, I looked and found her on the board, poised to meet me in the third round. And Thomas and Lucas were both in the prelims again.

What?

In the next hour, I found myself on a bench sitting next to Dawn once again, watching Lucas and Thomas go through their prelims. They'd switched fields this time around. I still couldn't figure out how things could be different but still line up so specifically.

"So we're finally in the same division as Thomas," said Dawn. "This'll be interesting."

I remembered this conversation. "Yeah," I said. "But he already had five badges in Johto when he got here. He should be ahead of us."

"Oh! I didn't know that."

"Yeah."

Esther, Thomas's ampharos, dodged an ice claw from the sneasel they were battling. Lucas's riolu kicked the legs of a combusken out from under him.

I realized I had a second chance at this conversation – one where I could have answers, instead of questions.

"How do you feel about Lucas?"

I didn't realize I'd said it until it was done. Dawn looked surprised – and a little nervous.

"What– what do you mean?"

"Do you like him?" I asked. She hesitated. "You know what I mean," I said.

Dawn inhaled. "Yes," she said.

I leaned back. There it was.

"What about you?" she asked.

A flash of cold shot through me. "I– Lucas?"

"No," she said. "Thomas."

My muscles relaxed. "Oh! Nah."

"Really?"

"Yeah…? Why did you think…?"

"I guess cause you're together all the time, and you travel together."

I shook my head. "That kind of just happened. We were heading to the same places at the same times – and I think there was a factor of us needing each other at the same time."

"You two work well together." Dawn paused and shrugged. "At least, as far as I can tell."

I grinned. "I just give him a lot of shit and he puts up with it."

She giggled. "Cute."

"To be fair, I also…" What had I said last time? "I bully him into doing things he wouldn't do otherwise, like getting gym badges, and he gets me out of bad situations."

"Bad situations?"

"Galactic, usually."

"Oh." A look of remorse washed over her face.

I was taken aback. "What's this face about?"

She bit her lip. "Lucas helped me when Galactic attacked me in Veilstone. He was there for me afterward too, but when I pushed him away… that's when they got him. And I wasn't there for him."

I didn't know she felt this way. "He was fine in the end," I said. "You can't blame yourself for that. Your pokemon had literally just died. It wasn't your fault."

I think I understood, though. Because when you love someone and something bad happens to them, you can't help but wonder if you could have stopped it somehow. You think about all the ways you could have spared them the pain – or in my case, saved his life – and blame yourself regardless of reason.

Dawn shrugged as if trying to convince herself she didn't care. "It's in the past now."

We watched the battles a little longer. Lucas's houndoom defeated the probopass he was up against, ending the match.

"I guess it was mostly a vibes thing, come to think of it," said Dawn.

"What was?"

"Me thinking you and Thomas… that you'd work well together. You vibe together," she said, standing up.

She went to meet Lucas, leaving me wondering, for the first time, if she was on to something.

Ya yeet ya – yagurl made it through another chapter! The first half took a while to get right. Summer is upon us so watch out world, here comes some actual publishing of Chance chapters.