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Chapter Text

Three days ago, Dusknoir had played his trump card and completely turned the citizens of the past against Grovyle with one swift half-lie. He had left their little settlement with three of the pokemon Master Dialga had once called legendary a step behind him, met up with his sableye, and put the perfect plan into motion. He would wipe the final remaining children of the Planetary Investigation Team from existence, ensuring the continued existence of himself and Master Dialga.

Now, he was sitting by a campfire, with a sableye dressing the wound on his arm, the lake trio chatting tiredly across from them, and Grovyle, unconscious between them.

Mesprit had made him a bed. She had made the ‘mon who attacked her a bed by the fire so he could stay warm. In Dusknoir’s time, such unearned trust would get you killed. That was obviously evidence that these pokemon needed the future they would get, otherwise they would surely go extinct from utter nativity.

The fire crackled in the dark, sending up a plume of sparks that looked far too much like a human man. Dusknoir could make out features dancing among the flames, and the disappointment reflected in them. His body winced without his permission, and the sableye at his side froze. The conversation across from him fell silent, and the fire quieted once more.

Grovyle, who Uxie claimed would be unconscious for another twenty-four hours at least, sucked in a breath and made an almost pitiful high-pitched noise.

No. Not pitiful. Grovyle was a criminal who had turned his back on the natural order of the world, and Breanna as well. They were idiotic children who thought they had a right to go against the will of Master Dialga, despite all given laws that kept the world functioning. If they had simply lived with their place, then Dusknoir would not be put in this position, struggling with moral quandaries that had no business taking up so much of his conscience thought!  

“How are you feeling?” It took Dusknoir a moment to realize he was being addressed. Right. He had an image to keep up here, which included answering when one of the lake trio spoke to him.

“My injury is fine, thank you for your concern, Mesprit.” He said, and waved off the sableye. The smaller pokemon scurried away, retreating back to where his brothers were stationed at the perimeter. “And how are you faring – ”

“No,” she cut him off, eyes carefully narrowed and focused on his face. “How are you feeling?”

Dusknoir resisted the urge to say ‘enraged.’ “I’m sure you don’t need me to put it into words.” He gestured to Grovyle, “Forgive me if this lacks my typical eloquence, but at least let me bind his wrists. You have barely any idea what he’s capable of. He is a liar and a fraud, and will find some way to turn us against each other if we don’t take precautions now.”

“There’s no need,” Uxie said. He still sounded a bit drained, despite the hours that had passed since he defeated Grovyle. Azelf pressed against his brother’s side and reached an arm around his shoulders. The two leaned against each other, barely staying upright. “That part of him is gone now, and unless I decide he deserves it back, he’s nearly a blank slate. He’s not very old.” The siblings turned to Grovyle, their irritating sympathy keeping their lips pursed. “With how much of his memory my eyes ripped away, the only explanation I have is that he was forced into this life as a child.”

For a split second, Dusknoir could see a disappointed human face in the campfire’s coals. He grabbed a branch from the woodpile and buried the mirage under it.

His carefully formed plan to capture Grovyle had fallen apart in seconds. Grovyle seemed to move at quadruple his normal speed, surprising the sableye with a version of dig that turned the ground under them into a crude pitfall trap. Mesprit had fallen to a sleep seed, and Azelf to a stun seed. Dusknoir himself had been temporally disadvantaged by sheer horrible luck, as there was no otherwise logical explanation for how Grovyle had managed to hit him with an x-eye seed. While Dusknoir wrestled illusions, the sableye struggled to escape a pit, and their plan fell apart, Uxie had faced Grovyle with all he had left.

With every memory of the time gears and anything relating to them ripped from his mind, Grovyle had collapsed, and the plan to capture him had officially been a success.

“That does not excuse what he’s done,” Dusknoir said, and added another log to the fire before another echo of an illusion could form. “Tomorrow, I will return to my time, and he will join me. He will face consequences for his crimes.”

“Crimes that, as far as he knows, he did not commit.” Azelf said.

“That does not mean they never happened.”

“I’m not saying it does,” Azelf said.

Mesprit held up her hands in an irritatingly placating gesture. “What my brother is saying is that we have an opportunity here. This is our chance to understand why someone would resort to stealing the time gears when everyone knows the damage that would cause. We won’t be able to know anything involving them directly, unless Uxie returns his memories, but we can learn a lot from the circumstances around them.”

Dusknoir frowned, absolutely certain that he despised where this was going. “We’re not from this time. I only came here to find him. I understand that you’re raising questions of morality here, but – ”

“You took the time to create a fake backstory for yourself before tracking him down.” Uxie pointed out. “Don’t say there isn’t enough time to help understand why this happened.”

“If we can understand why someone would do this, we can make sure it never happens again.” Mesprit spoke up before Dusknoir could. “You came to our time because you wanted to help people, right? If you were selfish, you could have let Grovyle destroy the world or had someone else sent after him. But you didn’t. What we learn from him could be used to stop even worse outlaws one day.”

If Dusknoir’s façade of being a caring person had been anything but that, he was sure her speech would have been very moving. Instead, he shook his head. “I’ve said all I have to say. I can’t let you do this.” He needed some sort of convincing ruse; some sort of half-truth he could use to support his claims. He didn’t want to risk fighting them just yet. “The longer you are close to him, the more likely it is he will get his memories back. I can’t take that risk. You three must return the time gears to their rightful places, and I must take Grovyle to face judgement.” Before you realize that Master Dialga’s tower is collapsing.

“Is a person really guilty of a crime they don’t recall committing?” Uxie asked.

Dusknoir allowed a bit of his irritation to slip through. “People were still hurt by his actions, whether he’s been rendered unaware of them or not. We have addressed the ethics already. I cannot allow you three to stay near him. You don’t understand what he’s done!”

“Considering how vague you were in your explanations; can you blame us?” Azelf said.

Dusknoir’s heart hammered. The face that appeared in the shadows and firelight looked even more disappointed now. The sadness and sympathy on the three legendries’ faces looked more like suspicion in the dim light. “Do you not trust me?”

“We’re concerned,” Mesprit corrected.

“Some of the comments you made while under the effects of the x-eye seed were worrying,” Azelf added. “We’re primarily curious.”

The face in the firelight seemed to laugh now, mocking Dusknoir for his misplaced confidence. “You could have just asked.”

“I did,” Mesprit said, “you wanted to talk about Grovyle.”

The fire crackled between them, the face fading away when Mesprit threw on another log. “You can call your friends back,” she said, “I’ll take the first watch.”

“Wait.” There had to be some way he could salvage this. “I stand by what I said. You three should not stay near him. However… you do have some points that I had not considered.” He hesitated, partially for effect and partially to decide if this was really the direction he wanted to take their conversation in. “You could ask the guild to lead this investigation. I’m unsure if they’ll agree, after what he did to their younger two members,” Azelf barely winced, but did so all the same. “But this is the safest option.” Not to mention, every member of the guild worshiped the ground he passed over.

There was a moment of contemplation, which turned to nods. “We could say he’s staying with Officer Magnezone to avoid causing a panic,” Uxie suggested. “I trust Wigglytuff enough to know he can keep a secret.”

“That is assuming he agrees,” Dusknoir said.

“He will,” Azelf said, sounding quite sure of himself.

Maybe, but will Breanna? He knew first hand how vindictive that girl could be when she thought herself wronged. Grovyle had nearly killed not only her, but her little friend as well – she would not allow Grovyle to stay. She would send him back to Dusknoir, and the punishment he deserved.

But only because she didn’t remember it, just like Grovyle wouldn’t remember any of them. Neither of them knew anything about Temporal Tower or Master Dialga anymore, or why they had come here in the first place.

Would Grovyle even remember what the sun was? Had Breanna? They had spent so long with their little Planetary Investigation Team obsessing over it, but the past had stolen that knowledge from them.

Half asleep and trying to ignore the lingering illusions, the realization crushed Dusknoir that Grovyle would not remember what he’d done.

He wouldn’t remember Breanna’s leg, or her brother, or her dad. He wouldn’t remember his family – the were from Treeshroud Forest, that would be too close to an association to the time gears. He wouldn’t remember what sides he’d taken. He wouldn’t remember Celebi.

Uxie had taken almost everything from him. He wasn’t Grovyle anymore; he was just an echo of a man with the same face.

The question of morals and ethics was back, weighing down on his closed eye. The illusion he’d been fighting off returned to his mind’s eye, and he saw past the scene now. He saw Breanna and Grovyle, younger and smaller then, peering out at him in frozen horror.

To them, that had never happened. As if the past had been changed, Dusknoir’s mistakes were erased from their timelines.

Ethical conundrums turned to plans. Moral quandaries turned players. Everything he had done wrong in the past no longer mattered, as it had all been wiped away.

He could enjoy the past for as long as it lasted without a care or worry.

The illusions faded away with his guilty conscience, and Dusknoir slept.

Chapter Text

The chairs in Officer Magnezone’s station were stumps that had been cut for Pokémon much smaller than Dusknoir was. Still, he grabbed one, set it down outside the cell Grovyle had been tossed in, and settled down to wait.

The hallway with cells was nothing like the stockade Grovyle and Breanna should be in right now. It lacked the proper atmosphere of crushing dread and was far too bright. When Grovyle awoke, he might still have hope of escape – although, if Uxie was to be believed, it would still be several hours before they had to worry about that. Dusknoir had been unwilling to admit he wasn’t entirely sure how long an hour was, and he refused to take any chances. While the legendary trio went to report their victory to the townsfolk, he did his best to make himself comfortable in his self-imposed guard duty.

He’d never liked guard duty.

When he had first joined Master Dialga’s ranks, there had been an abundance of pointless little rebellions. Irritating as they were, humans were persistent. When time had frozen, they had created ways to grow their crops despite it and continued as if nothing had changed. But survival was never enough for them, and when one man stumbled across ancient information on the Time Gears, the humans had stood with him and decided they had a right to destroy everyone’s lives. They brainwashed the Pokémon who weren’t smart enough to flee their insanity into acting as firepower and set out to end the world.

Dusknoir had leant his strength to Master Dialga as soon as he could. With his team, they had captured so many of the morons who thought history owed them something. Afterwards, they would have to guard them while the execution chambers were being prepared. Dusknoir could still hear so many voices in his ears that echoed faintly and promised that there was a way to save them, to save everyone, if they’d just let me go, please, I can help you.

There was a face in the knots of the wood that made up the prison floor that looked like a concerned human man.

Dusknoir jumped and drove his fist into the image. Shards of ice curled through the gaps in the wood as it splintered. Dusknoir waited several long moments before he pulled his fist back. His breath came in heavy, shallow gasps that shook his whole body.

The x-eye seed should be out of his system by now. He shouldn’t still be seeing false faces everywhere he looked. Dusknoir pulled a sliver from one of his knuckles and turned back to Grovyle’s cell.

He’d shifted in his sleep and had his newly-bound hands pressed against the side of his head. His face was contorted in pain, and his breathing was much more ragged than Dusknoir’s. He looked pitiful.

Dusknoir scowled and turned away. He pulled the remaining slivers from his hand and kept one eye on the crumbled patch of wood. There was no hint of the face he had seen.

He looked up at the sound of familiar footsteps. “Have they finished?”

The sableye gave a short nod and a nervous laugh. “The bird and pink one want to talk to you.”

“The what? ”

Dusknoir nearly wrapped his hand around the sableye’s throat. Instead, he stuffed his anger away and tried to look pleasant as he focused on the small form poking her head around the corner. “Ah, Miss Vulpix. You’re looking well.”

The human-turned-vulpix looked genuinely horrible. Breanna had dark circles around her eyes which stood out despite her short fur. There was still a notch in her right ear from the fight with Grovyle, as well as several bandages across her chest and front legs. One of her tails was still scarred with an electrical burn from the misadventure in Amp Plains.

Breanna frowned. “…Thanks.” She pointed a paw at the sableye. “Was your friend talking about the Guildmaster?”

“I believe so,” Dusknoir said evenly. He held a particularly large wooden shard between two fingers and snapped it in front of the sableye’s face. “You’ll have to excuse him, he was raised in a mystery dungeon. He doesn’t mean to be rude.”

Breanna tipped her head to the side, and the curled tufts of fur atop her head bounced against her ears. “I thought mystery dungeons were caused because time was out of balance – why wouldn’t putting the Time Gears back fix that?”

Dusknoir clenched his fist tighter, and the sableye gave another nervous laugh. “There are some questions even I can not answer. I have theories, but no facts to back them.” He forced a smile, “Perhaps you and your guildmates will find those yourselves, one day.”

Breanna shuffled and focused on her paws. “Maybe,” she said. Her fur fluffed out, and she looked back up. “Uxie took away Grovyle’s memory.”

Oh, Dusknoir recognized that tone. He hated where this was going. “He did, yes.”

She glanced at the sableye and took a long breath in. “So, he’s like me now?”

“That is not a comparison I would make,” Dusknoir said. “You are a good person. He is still a criminal who nearly killed you and your friend.” He put on a look of concern, “How is your partner? Have his injuries healed at all?”

Breanna huffed. “That’s not the point.” She shuffled again, still clearly nervous. “D- Riolu’s fine. He’s fine. We’re both fine.” She looked up and focused on Dusknoir with a hard stare. “I want to talk to Grovyle.”

“No,” Dusknoir said automatically, “absolutely not.”

She growled. It was adorable. “Why not?!”

“Among other reasons, he is still unconscious. It’ll be a few hours still before he wakes.” Dusknoir said, “Beyond that, and please believe me when I say this comes from a place of genuine concern, he nearly killed you. I cannot leave you alone with him in good conscience.” Especially while there was still a chance he remembered her.

She huffed once again, and Breanna padded over to his side. She sat down between him and the sableye, her fur still fluffed out as she looked up at him with familiar eyes. “Then I’m not leaving you alone with him, either.”

Dusknoir broke eye contact and hoped his flinch was subtle enough. The x-eye seed should be out of his system by now. This didn’t make any sense. “If you insist,” he said. The sableye laughed nervously once again.

For several minutes Dusknoir sat stock-still, and a human-turned-Pokémon with a dead man haunting her expression leaned against him. He refused to look her way. He refused to focus on any patch of wood for more than a few seconds. This shouldn’t still be happening.

He didn’t even really know what was happening.

The abrupt end to the sableye’s laugh alongside the approach of hopping footsteps brought an end to the brief peace, and Dusknoir forced away his moment of weakness. He glanced down at the sableye, who was focused on Breanna. She’d pulled away from Dusknoir and turned to watch Grovyle. His breathing was rough again, and he trembled in his sleep. Breanna took a small step closer to the bars.

Dusknoir placed a hand on her shoulders and gently turned her back around.

Chatot, Wigglytuff, a Magneton officer, and finally the lake trio turned the corner to join the group. Dusknoir barely withheld his scowl. Chatot took one look at Breanna and squawked.

“Vulpix!” He said, “Get away from that cell!” He flew over, landed between her and the sableye, and started trying to shoo her away from the bars. “My apologies, Dusknoir, sir. This impudent child was told to stay in her room and rest.”

“It’s quite alright,” Dusknoir said, forcefully casual. Breanna fluffed up her fur and sidestepped away from Chatot. She gave Dusknoir the same hauntingly familiar look she had before as she moved to join the larger group.

“Is it?” Mesprit asked and made a small gesture to draw her brothers’ attention to the damaged part of the floor.

Dusknoir, very slowly, dropped the slivers of wood he was still holding and floated off of his seat. “Of course. She was merely worried, don’t fault the girl for that.” He turned to Wigglytuff, who’d been watching them with an… unreadable expression. “Have you been fully informed of the situation?”

Wigglytuff hummed and skipped over to Dusknoir’s side, slipping in between him and the sableye. Grovyle had calmed down somewhat, and once again looked pitiful. “A bit, but just that much! He hurt my friends, and I want to make sure he won’t do it again.” He turned around and looked down at Breanna. “Did your partner follow you, my dear friendly-friend?”

Breanna’s fluffed up fur fell flat, her ears drooped, and she tucked her tails between her legs. “…Maybe.”

Chatot squawked, offended. “His condition is worse than yours! What were the two of you thinking? Where is he?!”

The floorboards creaked, and two unfortunately familiar faces poked their heads around the corner. Dusknoir couldn’t help but smile; these unobservant fools had walked right past Breanna’s partner and their bidoof guildmate. That could have been an ambush. They could have been killed.

“Riolu!” Chatot squawked and fluttered over to the other heavily bandaged Pokémon. “You were confined to your room for a reason, young man! And Bidoof, they are your juniors! You should have known better! What were you thinking? Go back to the guild, the Guildmaster and I will be having strong words with the three of you when we return!”

Bidoof pulled back. Riolu, who was using him as a crutch, nearly fell on his face. “W-well gee, golly sir,” Bidoof rambled, “I didn’t realize this was so severe. And, ya see, they were mighty worried about the great Dusknoir.”

“Please don’t put yourself in danger on my account,” Dusknoir said.

“A ladder and some stairs are not ‘danger,’” Breanna said.

Azelf raised a hand. “I’d like them to stay if it’s not too much trouble.” He smiled at Riolu, who still had a heavy patch of gauze on the wound on his throat. “We don’t want to do this if it’s too much for you.”

“Do what, dear friends?” Wigglytuff asked, humming again as he rocked on his heels. He was still watching Grovyle. “In the meeting, all you said was that all his memories were gone and he’d be staying in this time for now.”

“Not all his memories are gone,” Uxie said as Breanna opened her mouth. “I could only take away those involving the Time Gears. However, those were most of them.” He glanced at Mesprit and Azelf, who nodded in sync. “From the amount I took from him, and how fresh those memories were, it’s likely he was forced into this life of crime as a child. It’s unfortunate, but curious – I’m sure you understand how strange this mystery is. Why would a child spend years on a quest to paralyse the planet? If someone else set him on this path, then we may have a bigger problem on our hands.”

“Wait,” Breanna said. She turned to Dusknoir with a frown. “Was Grovyle working with anyone?”

A weaker man would have laughed at the irony. Instead, Dusknoir simply shook his head and lied. “Aside from the Pokémon he enlisted to bring him to your time, no. I have associates dealing with her in my own time. She isn’t a threat to any of you.”

The sableye gave yet another nervous chuckle. When he caught sight of Dusknoir’s disapproving frown, he coughed.

“And besides that,” Mesprit spoke up, “we’re now dealing with a young man who has no idea what he nearly did. You can see why we’d have a bit of an issue with just sending him back to the future for trial.”

Now that was something Dusknoir nearly laughed at. The idea of Master Dialga leaving his tower to judge a trial was simply too amusing of an image. The lake trio finished running over the previous night’s argument and let Azelf have the last word.

“Given the circumstances, Dusknoir suggested that your guild lead the investigation into how this happened.” Dusknoir pointedly ignored the shocked expression on Chatot’s face. “And my siblings and I agree. If anyone can uncover this mystery, it would be the Wigglytuff Guild.”

“No,” Chatot said, “absolutely not! We will not put our apprentices at risk like this! He’s already nearly killed two of them, I will not allow the others to be put in this level of danger.”

Wigglytuff hummed louder. “I don’t know… Chatot is right. He hurt a lot of people. But this is really sad.” He frowned and looked at his associate with wide eyes. “I don’t want him to be alone.”

“Guildmaster,” Chatot said, “this is far too dangerous. You can’t agree to this.”

“Don’t we get a say?”

Riolu’s voice was still quiet, hoarse, and raw. He sounded horrible and winced with every few words. Breanna hurried over to his side and pressed up against him.

“Dusk - Riolu,” she winced and continued, louder, as if that would get everyone to ignore her social taboo. “Is right. We’re the ones he hurt. We should get an opinion.”

Wigglytuff clapped. “Yes! You should! What do you think, Team Relic?”

Riolu swallowed and glanced down at Breanna. She replied with a determined nod, and they both turned back to Wigglytuff. He took a long breath in, “If he doesn’t remember being a bad Pokémon, we should help him.”

Dusknoir’s heart hammered and plunged from his chest. “Pardon me?” Something was wrong. Breanna shouldn’t be supporting this.

“We should give him a chance,” Breanna added. “Right now, he’s not a good person or a bad person – but he will be a scared person. He’ll know something’s missing, and he’ll want to find out what it is. We don’t have to tell him he’s a criminal. We can just let him be Grovyle.”

“I – I think you may have misunderstood,” Dusknoir said, and held up a hand. Breanna had total amnesia - she shouldn’t have any attachment to Grovyle. “Just his memories of the Time Gears are gone. He is not entirely amnesiac. He may still be a threat to you all. Honestly, the safest option would be to simply let me take him back to the future.”

Wigglytuff whistled a brief tune. “But we could just let him be Grovyle.” He clapped again, “This sounds exciting! Let’s make him a room!”

“Guildmaster!” Chatot said, “You can’t be serious! Shouldn’t you at least take some time to think about it?”

“Oh, I did!” Wigglytuff replied, “I thought about it lots while everyone was talking, and I decided that Guilds help Pokémon in need. Besides, Team Relic also wants to help. They’ll have something to do when they’re resting at the guild all day besides sentry duty – doesn’t that sound great?”

Chatot opened his beak, gave Wigglytuff a curious look, and then nodded. “Right, then.” He turned to the silent Magneton officer, “Tell the rest of your unit what we’ve decided, please. The Guildmaster and I will go set up a room for him. Vulpix, Riolu, I presume you’ll need some assistance making your way up the stairs?”

“Bidoof can help us,” Breanna said, a bit harsher than necessary as the magneton quietly left the room.

“I’m sure,” Chatot said dully. Wigglytuff raced past him as he began to direct the others out of the hall.

“We should be getting back to our lakes,” Azelf said, “And return the other Time Gears as well.”

Uxie sighed. “I suppose we’ll see each other during the next apocalyptic disaster, then?”

Mesprit threw her arms around the other two’s shoulders. “Well, I’m not ready to give up on family time just yet. There’s a cute little café just outside of town, let’s go get some brunch.” She turned to Dusknoir, “You should join us! They had a sign out front advertising purple gummi juice.”

Dusknoir sat back down and gave the trio a neutral look. “I appreciate the offer. However, I must stay here. Amnesia or not, I can’t simply leave him unguarded.”

The three of them frowned at him. “We’ll bring you one back before we leave, then.” Azelf said, and with one more uncomfortably long look Dusknoir’s way, they left as well.

Dusknoir took a long breath in and counted to twenty-five. He let the breath out. The sableye chuckled uncomfortably and inched away from him.

Dusknoir lunged for his lackey and pulled him close. “Let me be perfectly clear,” he hissed, “not one word of this exchange reaches the ears of your brothers or anyone in our future. As far as any of you are concerned, we are staying due to complications with the dimensional hole. Is this understood?”

The sableye nodded. “Y-yes! Yes, I -”

A low, disappointed voice cut through the sableye’s and drowned out his words. Dusknoir could feel the breath on the back of his neck. “Murderer.”

Dusknoir dropped the sableye and whipped around. He stared down the empty hallway.

“Master Dusknoir?” The sableye asked, “is something wrong?”

Dusknoir waved him off. “Return to your post,” he said.

The sableye backed up and hesitated for several seconds too long before he scurried away.

Dusknoir scowled and put his head in his hands. “This is getting ridiculous,” he groaned and glanced back at Grovyle. He was twitching once again. “What in Dialga’s name did you attack me with?”

“Murderer,” the empty hall whispered again, and Dusknoir shuddered.

“It’s the wind,” he said with a scowl. “It makes horribly irritating noises in this time. I don’t know how I’m supposed to enjoy history with it always whispering like that.” He turned back around. For a breath, there was the image of a human man in front of him, fully dressed in the regalia of Primal Dialga’s army. A dark cloud of shadows wrapped around his lower ribcage, obscuring any injuries. He raised a hand.

Dusknoir dared to blink, and the image was gone.

In the cell behind him, Grovyle gave a high-pitched wheeze that almost sounded like a scream.

.-.

Chatot didn’t need the Guildmaster’s subtle but pointed ear twitch to tell him to stay; he’d planned to do so anyway. Wigglytuff hurried the younger three back up towards the Guild, he stayed by the station. The timing was quite convenient: when they were far enough down the road that they were out of earshot, Uxie and his siblings exited the building. They nodded to Chatot.

“Grovyle had a bag of items on him,” he said, “what happened to it?”

Azelf pulled a smaller, nearly worn-through treasure bag from his own. He held it up to Uxie, who carefully removed the four Time Gears from a side pocket before his brother handed it to Chatot. “Be careful, we haven’t had a chance to check it for traps.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.” He took the bag and gave it a brief examination. There was a pocket on the inside which was clearly supposed to be a secret, a surplus of reviver seeds and other healing items, and several orbs meant to assist monster houses. The truly odd part was how familiar the contents were to those carried by Team Relic. While there were more food-based items, which was common enough when traveling alone, the ratios and sorting were otherwise nearly identical to Team Relic’s treasure bag.

Chatot dismissed the strangeness and returned his attention to the lake guardians. “The Guildmaster and I wanted to ask you about the great Dusknoir. He seems…” he took a moment and struggled to find the right word. “…unwell.”

“We’ve noticed,” Mesprit said softly. “He was hit with an X-eye seed during the fight, and he’s been having a bad reaction to it. We’re not sure why the effects haven’t worn off by now.”

“He’s still troubled by whatever he hallucinated,” Uxie added. He gave a deep frown as Azelf glanced over his shoulder. “Frightened, even. We’re worried about him. He’s been acting like a different person.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine in time,” Chatot said. He adjusted the strap on Grovyle’s bag so it would fit his smaller form. “However, I’ll pass that along to the Guildmaster. He’ll be able to arrange something so our medical officer can check on him.”

The three relaxed. “Thank you,” Uxie said, “you should talk to that sableye as well. There’s six of them total, and he said they’re associates from his time. They might be able to help identify what’s upsetting him.”

“That’s useful, I appreciate it.” He flapped his wings and slung the bag over a shoulder. “Will you be departing soon? It’s a long way back to your lakes.”

“Unfortunately,” Azelf sighed. “We’ll have to contact the guardians from where the other two were taken, and the sixth one as well. It’s worrying that we haven’t heard anything from any of them.”

“Well, I wish you the best of luck.” Chatot said cordially, “I trust you will keep myself and the Guildmaster updated in case there are any other noteworthy events?”

“Of course!” Mesprit said, “As long as you’re willing to do the same for us. I know it’s a bit of a journey, but I’d be willing to teleport any messenger back to town.”

Her brothers nodded. “I’d do the same since mine’s the farthest out,” Uxie said. “Azelf?”

“Of course!” Azelf said, “and if Dusknoir’s, well, condition worsens we’d appreciate if you sent one sooner rather than later.”

“I give you my word,” Chatot said, and gave his goodbyes. The trio continued towards the crossroads, and he took to the sky and back to the Guild. He passed by the Guildmaster, still helping the injured teammates up the hill, and landed beside the sentry grate. One of the bag’s straps pinched his feathers, and he craned his neck to adjust it. As he did, he caught sight of something.

There was a small patch on Grovyle’s bag, on the same side as the supposedly secret pocket, which was completely worn through. In it, Chatot could see a few bound pieces of parchment. With a significant amount of difficulty, he maneuvered them out and into his wings. They were held together with a few braided strands of a rather plain string, which he barely noticed slip out of his feathers.

The first was a simple, grayscale map. It had the location of every Time Gear and several other dungeons marked – including the Beach Cave. Curious.

The second was what appeared to be a reference sheet between footprint ruins and some sort elaborately curvy language. The third was another reference sheet, this one between what appeared to be the Pokémon Unown and that curvy language once again. Finally, there was the fourth – this was a letter, written in the curvature.

Chatot tapped his foot on the grate and shuffled between the four pieces of paper once again. “Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.” The Guildmaster would love to see this. He went to rewrap the string, which was no longer in his hand, and frowned. He glanced down as a gust ruffled his feathers, picked up the string, and dropped it right down the sentry grate.

Chatot huffed. “Very well then,” he rerolled the parchments and returned them to their pocket. It was a simple piece of string; it wasn’t like one of the worst thieves the continent had ever seen would miss it.

Chapter Text

For Chatot, it had been a particularly frazzling evening. The Guildmaster had reorganized a storage room with a rather small window for Grovyle by throwing all its contents into the hall. Bidoof and Loudred carried out their orders to clear the mess away quickly enough, although Chatot would not be the first one to open the closets they had stuffed everything in. When Officer Magnezone had led the secret transport of the still unconscious Grovyle, Dusknoir had followed. As Grovyle was deposited in his new bed – closer to the Guildmaster’s chamber than any of the apprentice’s, just to be safe – Dusknoir had promptly positioned himself outside the door.

“Dusknoir, Sir,” Chatot had said, “we can have the apprentices take over that position. You don’t need to trouble yourself for us.” His intention had been to send Chimecho to take over, and more importantly, have her make sure the Great Dusknoir was alright.

But Dusknoir had waved him off and refuted any further attempts to convince him that they could help. “I came here to find him, I’ll guard him. It’s no trouble.”

A few minutes later, Dusknoir apparently caught sight of his reflection in one of the lower-level drinking fountains and jumped in fright. No one dared to ask what startled him. He refused to leave his post when dinner was ready as well, despite the fact that Grovyle wasn’t due to wake for another several hours. And Chatot, well, may have reacted by bringing him a plate of leftovers sprinkled with a portion of ground sleep seeds.

He was concerned and had every right to be! Dusknoir would surely be upset when he woke, and Chatot would take the consequences of his actions in stride. He would apologize for his deception, but not for his actions. Dusknoir needed to rest – whatever ailment he was suffering from would not be treated if he ran himself ragged.

Night fell on the guild, and Chatot enlisted Chimecho’s help to move the now fully asleep Dusknoir to the Guildmaster’s bed.

“And remember, this stays between us.” Chatot said, well aware that Chimecho already knew and wouldn’t say a word about Dusknoir’s condition. Nervousness kept him tittering about, though. “Are you certain he has to be awake for you to examine him?”

“Sorry,” she said, and used her psychic to gently set Dusknoir down. “If he’s against it, we could have someone talk with him and I’ll examine him while he’s distracted.”

Chatot hesitated for a second before he sighed. “You have better eyes for this than anyone in the guild. If you think that would be enough for you to help him, then I trust your judgement.” He shrugged off Dusknoir’s bag and did his best not to look at the sleeping form. “You may take your leave and return to your quarters.” He was very aware she would not be doing that; the apprentices would be meeting in Team Relic’s room, where the two would be bombarded with questions about why they had decided to let Grovyle stay.

Chimecho nodded, and with a quiet ring of her bell, she left the room. Chatot watched her leave before he nudged Dusknoir’s bag closer to him. There was something strange about the bag, something that Chatot struggled to put a feather on, but it clicked when he found a worn patch on the right side where a few rolled up pieces of parchment were visible. The bag was the same model as Grovyle’s.

Chatot allowed himself a moment of short, quiet laughter – he’d had such a horrifying feeling, and all it had amounted to was that. How incredibly simplistic. Those bags must be mass produced in the future with that same defect. It was unfortunate that the Great Dusknoir had such a poor quality treasure bag.

With one long look at the pieces of parchment which, really, were none of Chatot’s business and were not something he’d be prying into, Chatot returned to his post outside of Grovyle’s room. The Guildmaster sat to the left of the door, two crochet hooks in his hands and what looked like a half-finished yarn apple in his lap.

“Hiya!” The Guildmaster said, loudly, but clearly trying to be quiet. “How’s Dusknoir? Is he having sweet dreams?”

“I’m sure he is,” Chatot said, and made himself comfortable to the right of the door. “And Grovyle?”

The Guildmaster put down his yarn and stared across the room. “…No,” he said, “he’s still having nightmares. But he’ll be awake soon. He’ll be happier then.”

Chatot glanced back, through the curtain they’d draped over the doorway. The shadows were twisted around Grovyle, and in the dim light almost looked like they were standing over him.

Chatot pulled the curtain open farther as Grovyle shuddered, and the illusion faded.

.-.

There was no vulpix named Breanna in the Wigglytuff Guild. However, there was one who’d introduce herself by her nickname, Breeze.

She hadn’t known that Pokémon go by their species name unless interacting with their family until she was told. She was practically illiterate – everyone around wrote and read in footprint runes, but she didn’t even know the alphabet. When asked where she was from, or why she had made her way to Treasure Town in the first place, all Breeze had to offer was a shrug.

Honestly, it was impressive that no one had figured out her secret yet. Well, they’d figured out about her Dimensional Scream, but her secret of being a ‘human turned Pokémon with amnesia who couldn’t even remember her own real name’ was still safe.

Mostly.

Breeze sat beside her partner, Dusk, with their guildmates crowded into the room with them. They’d been arguing for the past several minutes. Breeze had been reorganizing her treasure bag for most of them and left Dusk to deal with their friends’ questions.

At least Chimecho had taken pity and brought him a chalkboard so he wouldn’t strain his voice anymore.

“But I don’t understand,” Sunflora said, “he’s a bad Pokémon!”

Dusk dipped his paw in chalk dusk and drew several footprints from various normal-types while Breeze triple checked her stash of orans for any orens. She returned them to her bag as Dusk gestured to his writing.

“I guess,” Sunflora hesitated, “but you can’t change nature.”

“We are still worried about you two,” Dugtrio said, “you may be confident in this second chance, but we would hate to see a horrible fate befall you.”

Breeze didn’t look at him (them? She really needed to find a chance to ask what Dugtrio preferred) and instead gently dumped out her orbs. She started to sort them by function, then alphabetically on top of that. Dusk used some grass and water-type footprints this time.

“We will not question your decision further,” Dugtrio said, “but know that you may fall back on us if this fails.”

“WELL, I will!” Loudred announced and was promptly shushed by the rest of the apprentices.

“Oh my gosh, do you want Chatot to come tell us off?” Sunflora said as she whacked him with one of her leaves. “Be quiet for once!”

“Fine!” Loudred said in what could barely be counted as an indoor voice. Breeze heard him stomp towards her, and kept her eyes focused on the orbs. “Vulpix, don’t do anything stupid.”

Breeze pawed categories of orbs a little bit farther apart. “I won’t.”

“I mean it,” Loudred said, “I don’t care if you think he’s cool, you get yourself or any of us killed we’re going to have a problem.”

Breeze licked her lips and didn’t look up at him. “I won’t,” she repeated, “I know what I’m doing.”

“But that’s what we want to know,” Chimecho pointed out, her voice gentle. “What is your plan? We know he won’t remember you, and that you feel bad because of how much he’s missing, but he nearly killed you both. Why are you putting so much faith in him?”

Dusk started to write something down, but Corphish held up a claw to stop him.

“Hey-hey, no offense Riolu,” he said, “but I want to hear what Vulpix has to say about this. She’s been too quiet.”

As an agreement rippled across the guild, Breeze coaxed her orbs back towards her. “Uh,” she swallowed, “well…”

Breeze frowned. Why… why was she doing this? Yes, she felt bad for and identified with Grovyle, but she hadn’t been a bad person. She’d never hurt anyone who hadn’t deserved it, and Grovyle had nearly destroyed the world. He’d tried to kill her, Dusk, Uxie, Mesprit, Azelf – everyone. What if she was looking at this all wrong? What if he still remembered how much he wanted to hurt them, just not the why? What if she was being stupid, and putting so much trust in someone who was just going to hurt the guild?

“Come ON!” Loudred said, yelling right by her ear, “Spit it out!”

There was a muffled squawk before a tremor knocked the apprentices off their feet.

.-.

Dusknoir sat on the edge of a frozen riverbank beside a man dressed in shades of gray. They had a pile of rocks between them and sat in silence as they threw them into the river. The sound of a splash was there, but the water didn’t move as it sucked the rocks down. Dusknoir pulled out a rock, flat and circular with small protrusions around the edge, and handed it off to the human. Immediately after touching it the human gasped and gripped his head. The rock fell from his hand and rolled down the bank, bouncing twice before it finally settled in the shallows. Dusknoir stared at the man, and he stared back with blank, unseeing eyes.

Dusknoir blinked.

He was on a cliff face, a body in front of him and his hands stained a dark red. There was a loud, shrill noise. There had been for the past minute.

He turned around, and the image of a small child with red-brown hair drifted away like smoke. The cliff blurred. The body faded.

He was in a blank but colourful room, and in front of him was an unfortunately familiar shadow form with a wisp of white hair.

“Hello, Hope,” Darkrai said, absolutely smug, “are you having a nice nap?”

“Don’t call me that,” Dusknoir snapped, immediately on guard. “What are you doing here?”

“What, you thought you were the only one who followed those idiots when they fled back in time?” Darkrai said, “I knew you were dense, but I was hoping you weren’t stupid.” He sighed, overtly dramatic as Dusknoir scowled. “Of course that was too much to hope for. Tell me, what was your theory for why the brat doesn’t remember you anymore? The power of friendship between you and your minions?”

“You don’t need to act like a child,” Dusknoir growled, and continued to stare at Darkrai’s smug face. “You… did you do that to her?”

“If it’s any consolation, it was a happy accident. I was aiming for the nuisance your friends have dumped in the other room – I planned on blasting him out of existence, but your little brat saw me and took the hit.”

“She’s not mine,” Dusknoir corrected, “if you did this to her, why don’t you go finish the job?”

“What, and take all your glory? Please,” Darkrai grinned, “besides, I could ask you the same thing. You’ve completed your mission. Why are you still here?”

Dusknoir narrowed his eye and spoke carefully. “There was an issue with creating the Dimensional Hole back.”

“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Darkrai said, faux cheerful and still unbearably smug. He snapped his fingers, and the dream world shifted to hold a frozen Dimensional Hole. “I’ll just set this down right outside, and then you can finish your job.”

No! “That’s not necessary,” Dusknoir said quickly. “Besides, they’re both still far too entwined with the others in this time. I’ll need more time to separate them so I can take them back without severely -”

“If you’re going to make excuses, at least put some effort into them.”

Dusknoir froze. Darkrai suddenly seemed so much bigger than him. “E-excuse me?”

“I own dreams, you idiot. This is my realm.” He was barely the size of Darkrai’s eye now. “I know you don’t want to leave. For all you try and protest you want to stay here and enjoy this time before it’s gone, while still pretending you’re just doing your job. And who could blame you, especially with your history? I wonder what Dialga would think of this after how much faith they put in you. I’m sure they’d be rather cross.”

“Don’t question my loyalties,” Dusknoir shouted back, and struggled to keep himself steady as Darkrai’s laugh shook the dreamscape. “I’m just as loyal to Master Dialga as you are!”

The laugh grew louder. The colours got brighter, more saturated, and began to drip into each other.

“That’s not a very high bar,” Darkrai said. “Still, if you’re oh so convinced of your loyalties, then let me make the task simpler for you.” Dusknoir looked down and saw that his hand wrapped around Chatot’s neck.

“Wait -” he couldn’t shout. His voice wouldn’t get any louder than a whisper. The ground below him started to shake as the shadows morphed into Wigglytuff, and the colours dripped into the background of the Wigglytuff guild. Dusknoir tried to shout again, but no words came out.

“The Dimensional Hole will be atop Mt Bristle when you’re done,” Darkrai’s voice said, echoing from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Don’t take too long. Make sure you don’t need my help again.”

A variety of faceless shadows ran in from down the hall, led by that same little girl with red-brown hair.

Dusknoir jolted, free from the nightmare. Breanna, who’d led the charge of apprentices through the guild’s shaking halls, was a vulpix again.

Dusknoir dropped Chatot and backed up as quickly as he could. The guild stopped shaking as Dusknoir raised his hands, and everyone ran over to help Chatot up. He had tiny flakes of ice in his feathers, and Dusknoir glanced down at his hands in horror. There was no recovery from this. He would be run out – he needed to grab the two he had come for and be done with it. He had no time to waste.

“I’m alright,” Chatot wheezed, and looked over at Dusknoir, halfway across the room. “Dusknoir, sir?” Wigglytuff grabbed Chatot and held him tight as the rest of the guild moved closer. “Are you okay?”

Dusknoir swallowed and glanced down at his hands. He scrambled to find the words, but his tongue was still frozen. He couldn’t think of what to say.

He looked up, at Chatot at first, then past him at Breanna’s horrified look. Then past her, at the green form in the doorway he was supposed to be guarding.

Grovyle met his eyes before he ducked back, and Dusknoir was confident he’d seen the whole thing.

Chapter Text

Dusknoir didn’t look anything like the Guildmaster did when he was asleep. For starters, he’d actually closed his eye, while Wigglytuff had always just stared blankly ahead. He’d also been surrounded by an ominous blacklight aura and moved stiffly compared to the Guildmaster’s ragdoll-limbs. It was easy to tell when he woke up – the aura dropped and Dusknoir jerked back, obviously upset by what he’d nearly done to Chatot.

At least, Breeze hoped so. She really, really hoped the Great Dusknoir hadn’t meant to hurt Chatot like that.

The Guildmaster still trembled and held Chatot tight, only a few seconds away from bawling as Chatot repeated how fine he was.

Breeze grabbed one of her oran berries from her treasure bag and passed it off to Chimecho. Chimecho didn’t need any other instructions, she joined the Guildmaster in fussing over Chatot and began the long, painful process of convincing him to eat it.

Dusknoir spoke, finally, and stared past the group. “He’s awake.”

Breeze felt her partner shove her out of the way just in time to avoid the curtain that fell on her Guildmates. Grovyle tucked and rolled, landing only a pawstep away from Breeze.

“Wait -” she started to say, but Grovyle was faster. He leapt for the wall, and with one solid kick took out the window frame and launched himself out of the guild.

The guild struggled out from the curtain as both Breeze and Dusknoir dove for the window, his hands and her paws side by side as they both leaned halfway out. Grovyle threw the frame away and caught a ledge, swinging himself back up onto solid ground. He looked back up at them, his expression barely outlined in the dim torchlight – wide eyes and a tense posture.

“We’ll handle this!” Dugtrio called, and the ground under Breeze’s paws churned. She leaned further, eyes still on Grovyle as he shook off his claws – and Dugtrio popped out of the wall right in front of him. Grovyle yelped and slapped him.

It wasn’t a move – it was just a slap. Dugtrio was unphased.

“Do not engage!” Chatot squawked, and ruffled Breeze’s fur as he flew overhead. He swooped down, wobbling on still half-frozen wings. This time, Grovyle did use a move – quick attack, it looked like, from how he cleared the distance between him and Chatot in a single bound. With two flaps, Chatot tried to fly back – with the ice still in his wings, weighing him down, he had no chance of succeeding.

Chatot hit a rocky slope and slid. Dugtrio abandoned his post and burrowed through the cliff face to shoot out only a pawstep above the ocean’s waves. He broke Chatot’s fall, but nearly lost his grip. Grovyle landed back on the ledge and sent a shower of pebbles down at them.

Breeze could feel her guildmates crowded behind her as they tried to squeeze past or lift each other up so they could see too. Wigglytuff sobbed, and Breeze could feel the guild shake under her – Grovyle flattened himself against the cliff face to avoid falling off it. A burning growl rose up in her throat, and she turned to Dusknoir as embers lit up her teeth. “Do something! ”

Dusknoir jolted and stared at her for a second before he disappeared. Wigglytuff pushed through the crowd to take his spot. Breeze spun back around as Grovyle yelped and pressed his back against the cliff – Dusknoir had manifested just out of arm’s reach off the cliff’s edge.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Grovyle replied, his weak rasp nearly lost to the wind and waves. He clung to the wall behind him and stared at Dusknoir.

No, wait. Past Dusknoir?

Breeze squinted and leaned farther. There was a shadow floating over the ocean, silhouetted by moonlight. It held out a hand, and a ball of blacklight curled in its palm.

Breeze had a thought, then, about how that blacklight the shadow held looked an awful lot like the one that had surrounded Dusknoir earlier. Then she saw where it was aiming.

She didn’t think again. “Look out! ” Breeze shouted as she flung herself out the window. Her guildmates echoed her by screaming her name, but did nothing that stopped her from smashing into Dusknoir. He was knocked aside as she bounced back – her back hit the cliff face, the sharp stones pierced her fur, and she tumbled forward.

A clawed hand grabbed her back paw and swung her up before she could skid further. Grovyle set her down and opened his mouth to say something.

Then she tackled him, and the shadow ball exploded the ledge they’d been standing on a moment before. Grovyle hit the cliffs, Breeze hit Grovyle, and they flipped. She got a clear view of her guildmates holding Dusk back from throwing himself after her, and everyone on the cliff-face reaching for her.

Dusknoir’s outstretched hands closed around the strap of her Treasure Bag instead of her leg, and Breeze hit the ocean head-first.

.-.

By the time Dusknoir managed to break away from the frantic guild members and reach his underlings’ campsite, they were already packed and ready to leave. Dusknoir would be thankful if he was an idiot and not well aware they would not be ready yet without outside orders.

“You,” he pointed to the closest one, “What are you doing?”

The other five froze as that sableye turned to face Dusknoir. He had a glassy, unfocused look in his gemstone eyes. He was half-asleep. “What you asked us to do, Lord Dusknoir.”

Dusknoir’s heart hammered, and he covered the rising panic with rage. “Humour me. What is it?”

The other sableye backpedaled and abandoned their associate. The traitor in front of Dusknoir frowned, then laughed nervously. “To… search down the girl and Grovyle…? And eliminate them?”

Another sableye piped up. “None of us saw you give him these orders, Lord Dusknoir!”

“As I suspected,” Dusknoir replied, and wrapped a hand around Sableye’s torso. He lifted him and squeezed. “Do you feel this?”

Sableye wheezed, and Dusknoir felt his ribs start to bend under his grasp. He dropped the pokemon and let him land in a heap.

“This is real. Remember it. Don’t be a fool.” He looked up at the others. A few stared at their companion, but none of them were stupid enough to rush over to check on him. “You will search for them, but you will not engage. You will follow the coast until you uncover a marker of them coming ashore, which you will then report to me. Tail them. Do not let them see you. Am I understood?” He towered over the one in front of him, and watched that poor, stupid sableye cough. “Do not let this world turn you soft. Our mission isn’t done yet.”

A rumble of reluctant agreement ran through his underlings. Dusknoir cracked his knuckles, and the reluctance disappeared.

He took his leave, a chesto berry borrowed from Team Relic’s treasure bag clutched in his hand in case Darkrai decided to pay him another visit. Dusknoir cut through the trees to return to the crossroads and gave the path to the beach a long look. The sky over the ocean had started to turn a pale blue. He could hear the waves lapping against the sand, just loud enough to reach his ears. The scent of sea salt mixed with dew-covered leaves blew past on the gentle breeze, pleasantly cool.

There was, yet again, a shadow of a human man right beside him.

Dusknoir pointedly ignored him, and the distant commotion of the guild, as he watched the sun rise.

.-.

For what was unfortunately not the first time in her memory, Breeze woke up covered in sand with a full body ache.

She started gagging before she even tried to force her eyes open, and by the time she had managed to sit up she had a disgustingly large pile of sand that had been in her mouth in front of her.

“Ew,” her throat burned. “Ew, ew -” she fluffed up her fur and immediately winced - her muscles screamed at the extra tension. She flopped back down onto the packed earth floor, which was freezing, and decided she’d just be covered in sand the rest of her life. The little cave she’d ended up in seemed to be more dirt than sand, so maybe she could get some variety. Her Persim Band, by some miracle, wasn’t sand-coated – but it was stuck in one stiff position thanks to a thick layer of sea salt. Great.

The faint sunlight at the end of the cave turned dark, and Breeze forced herself through the pain to sit up again.

“Oh, you’re alive.” Grovyle said. He took a bite of one of the apples he held in his arms. “Sorry I couldn’t give you a better bed, I barely managed to drag you in here before I passed out. You must be hungry. Luckily for you, I found a sitrus.” He started to cross the distance between them. Breeze put all her energy into backing up as fast as she could. Grovyle stopped.

“Where are we?” She fluffed up her fur and growled. The deep ache nearly made her lose her balance.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Grovyle said. He set the sitrus and an apple down and backed up. He took another bite of his own apple and chewed before he spoke. Breeze didn’t move. “We’re in some sort of burrow by a river that meets the ocean. We got swept quite a distance along the coast, and the waves did a number on you.” Breeze still didn’t move. Grovyle rolled his eyes. “If I leave will you eat the berry?”

“Why did you save me?” Breeze asked.

“Why did you save me? ” Grovyle replied.

The two stared at each other for a long moment. Breeze swallowed the urge to point out that she’d been trying to save Dusknoir, not him. Grovyle just frowned at her.

After that long, awkward moment passed, Breeze lowered her gaze. She took a deep breath in and started to inch closer to Grovyle. He doesn’t remember the Time Gears. He doesn’t remember being a bad Pokémon. I wanted to give him a second chance. I’m giving him a second chance.

Within only one bite, the warmth of the sitrus berry had started to soothe her aching everything. She ate the rest in only two more bites. “Thanks,” she said as soon as she finished, “that helped.”

“Don’t mention it,” Grovyle said. He rolled the apple closer to her, and Breeze finished it in a few bites – Grovyle still nursed his own. “…So, Nixie, you got a name?”

Breeze looked up from her apple core. “I’m a vulpix.”

“Oh,” Grovyle narrowed his eyes at her, “are you? Is a nixie your evolution?”

“No? That’s a ninetales.” She hadn’t forgotten basic pokemon names when she’d lost her memories. “What’s a nixie?”

Grovyle frowned at Breeze for several long moments before he shook his head and rubbed one of his temples with two claws. “Never mind. I’m… what’s your name?”

Breeze hesitated. “Uh,” she pawed the ground and scraped back a line of dirt. Dusk would know if it was appropriate to answer that question. But Dusk wasn’t here, and Breeze was alone. Type advantage or not, she was alone. “Good question. My best friend calls me Breeze. What about you?”

Grovyle’s frown deepened. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “If you can walk, we-”

“No, no,” Breeze cut in, and tried to fix Grovyle with a serious look. “You don’t get to ask me your name and not offer yours.”

He shook his head. “It’s not important, I shouldn’t have asked. As I was saying -”

“Do you not remember?”

There was a beat of heavy silence between them. Breeze did her best not to wilt under Grovyle’s huge-eyed stare.

“I do,” Grovyle said, unconvincingly. “But if I’m here then I don’t deserve it.” He pointed over his shoulder, “That shadow might find us again if we stay. We should keep moving.”

Breeze narrowed her eyes. Grovyle pointedly did not look at her. “Why?” She settled on at last, “What will happen if it catches us?”

“I don’t know,” Grovyle said. “It’ll probably try and kill me again. You too, given that you helped me. The safest option is to keep moving.”

“Why? So it can track you?” Breeze sat down and crossed her front paws over top of each other. “So you have to keep running? So you have to jump out more windows and off more cliffs?”

“You pushed me,” Grovyle grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah. You know that’s not my point.” She waved a paw, “I also told you not to jump out the window. Do you have any idea why I didn’t want you to throw yourself into the ocean?” Grovyle gave her a particularly grumpy glare. This time, Breeze ignored it. “We were at the Wigglytuff Guild. Everyone at the guild helps Pokemon who are in danger. We protect ones who are running from something. Everyone there is strong, especially the Guildmaster.”

“Was that the one choking the bird or the one doing the choking?” Grovyle said, deadpan.

“Neither, actually. Dusknoir was sleepwalking and didn’t mean to hurt Chatot.” He didn’t look any more convinced. Breeze shuffled, suddenly sheepish. “I’m sure if we go back, and you just talk to them, you’ll see what I mean. It’s safer than running. Okay? That’s why we brought you back there in the first place.”

Instead of looking at Breeze, Grovyle focused on the apple. For several tense breaths, the only sound was a snap as he twisted off the stem.

“You knew I was having memory issues,” Grovyle said. “Is it wrong to assume you know why?”

Breeze nearly choked on her own anxious gulp. “Kinda? I – I didn’t bring you back. Dusknoir did. He – you should ask him what happened to you.”

Grovyle kept eye contact as he took a slow bite of his apple. “But you know. Why won’t you tell me?”

How are you this calm? It took a whole mystery dungeon for me to stop panicking when I lost my memory. Is not what Breeze said, as tempted as she was. Instead, she shrugged. “I don’t know enough to help you. I just -” didn’t want to abandon you, wanted to give you a second chance, felt my gut churn at the thought of letting Dusknoir take you back to the future and I don’t know why, “- want to know what you remember? We all do. Dusknoir told us you’d have memory problems.”

For several moments longer, Grovyle stared at her, chewing slowly. “Did he find anyone else with me? Any other treeckos? Or grovyles? Sceptiles, even?”

There was a sinking, sad feeling in Breeze’s gut. “No,” she said, and caught the tiniest flinch from Grovyle. “You were alone, as far as I know. Dusknoir would know more.” He said you had a friend in the future.

In the silence that followed, Grovyle finally finished his apple – including the core, seeds and all. “Well,” he said, “as I was trying to say before, we should go. Staying here won’t do us any good, especially with that shadow on our tail. If you can walk, we should leave.”

“Back to the guild?” Breeze asked, hopefully.

“If that’s where this Dusknoir is, then sure.” Grovyle shrugged and offered a hand to help Breeze up. She pretended not to see it. “But I’m not sticking around.”

“Alright,” Breeze said. And stood up on her unsteady legs as Grovyle pulled his hand back. She offered him a smile. He just looked confused. “Then let’s go.”

Grovyle nodded and made his way to the entrance. He waited for Breeze to stumble over to him before continuing out of their riverbank cave at a much slower pace. They stayed side by side as they stumbled up the dry riverbed.

Although the two barely looked at each other (aside from courtesy checks to be sure the other was still beside them), they both kept their eyes to the sky as the sun rose higher and higher past the dawn.

Chapter Text

Azelf was anxious. He had every right to be, of course, after what he’d heard from his siblings’ telepathy.

“I’ve finished at Limestone Cavern,” Uxie had said, “Ditto was trapped when time froze. I put the time gear back, but nothing’s changed yet. I don’t know how long it’ll be until everything’s back to normal.”

“Nobody was at Treeshroud Forest,” Mesprit had said, “There were hardly any ferals, and there was no one at the end. I’m worried. I don’t know if she left of her own accord or not. I hope she’ll be back when time starts working here again.”

As worried as he was about Ditto, it was the state of Treeshroud Forest that had him particularly wound up. And so, unfortunately, Azelf found himself teleporting off the central island he lived on to its smaller, much more volcanic neighbour. He struggled his way through Dark Crater to reach the lesser-known sixth time gear.

In the heart of an almost-active volcano, Azelf didn’t have much of a chance to admire the time gear held aloft by a quartet of obsidian spikes. He was here on business. So he raised his head and called out to the time gear’s guardian.

“Darkrai! Are you here?”

The room got the slightest bit darker.

“Unfortunately,” came a voice from behind him, and Azelf turned to see the dark-type lurking in the shadows behind him.

Azelf did not jump; he frowned and ignored Darkrai’s thirst for drama. “Is everything okay?”

“Last I checked, we weren’t supposed to leave our gears.” Darkrai snapped, “Don’t tell me you actually sealed yours in crystal?”

“That was a rumour,” Azelf said calmly. “We used it to draw the thief out. It worked, everything can go back to normal now.”

Darkrai scoffed. “Too bad. You should have sent him my way.” He gestured to his own time gear inches above its lake of magma. “I’d love to watch a grass type try to get his hands on that.”

A rather large bubble of molten rock burst right under the gear and sent a ripple across the lake.

“Right.” Azelf said, barely paying attention to Darkrai’s faux querulousness. If he wanted to be needlessly dramatic, who was Azelf to stop him? “You’ve heard Cresselia’s gear was taken?”

“I found the wanted poster in a bottle and read all about it. I’m sure she’s been insufferable about it.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Darkrai was silent for several long seconds.

“How long has she been missing?” He asked, his tone much more careful now.

“We don’t know,” Azelf admitted. “There was no trace of her when Mesprit returned her gear. Do you have any idea where she could be?”

Darkrai frowned. “No. Have you checked with Dialga?”

“You know it’s not that easy.” Azelf sighed, “We’ll keep a lookout for her. In the meantime, the threat may be gone, but be careful, okay?”

At first, Azelf thought he’d misread Darkrai’s look, but no. The other pokemon sneered at him.

“You too,” Darkrai said, and the cave lit up once more.

In a handful of seconds, Azelf noticed a few things.

Darkrai was no longer in front of him, nor was he behind him. Darkrai was gone – as was the time gear. There was a hole torn through time and space right beside it, which disappeared the second Azelf saw it. An overwhelming stillness had surrounded him. A wave of electric grayscale raced across the lake towards him.

Azelf didn’t have a chance to call for his siblings. He didn’t have a chance to run. All Azelf could do was scream as the wave hit him full-force.

A bubble of magma sat in the middle of the lake, under where the time gear had been, frozen half-popped.

.-.

Chatot, currently, had two Pokemon under house arrest in Team Relic’s room.

Riolu had decided to try repeatedly to throw himself out the same window his partner had leapt from, as if that would miraculously reunite them in anything but the afterlife. As soon as the first lights hit, Corphish had gathered a team of water types to do the unfortunate deed of searching for the two. They had come back empty-handed, and Dugtrio just so happened to realize that the currents at that time last night could have carried them right across the bay towards the mystery dungeon known as Brine Cave.

Experiencing that dungeon wasn’t something Chatot would wish on his worst enemy. But Riolu had been determined to go reunite with his partner, so inevitably Chatot had made the executive decision that there was no chance the boy would be leaving the guild. Especially with the still significant possibility that Vulpix, as a fire type, hadn’t survived her fall.

The other Pokemon was Dusknoir, who was much more understanding. He didn’t have any explanation for what had happened and seemed genuinely shocked when they only asked him to stay in the guild until they knew more about it. Chatot would deal with whatever implications there were with that situation when he had a moment to think. For now, the Guild was closed to outsiders, the other apprentices had left up the coast in search of anything, and the Guildmaster had gone to scour Brine Cave just in case. Chatot, as the head of intelligence, had stayed behind to dig through files.

Well, officially he had been asked to stay behind and rest. His injuries weren’t nearly that severe, however, and Chatot saw no reason why he couldn’t be productive.

Vulpix had seen something before she jumped and had done so to push Dusknoir out of the way. When she’d saved Grovyle as well, the ledge they’d been standing on had been attacked. Those were the facts. Someone had tried to assault and kill the Pokemon from the future, and Vulpix had been an unfortunate extra casualty. The question was why?

So Chatot found himself buried in hundreds of mission reports and wanted posters as he tried to figure out what he was missing when it came to Grovyle and the Great Dusknoir.

.-.

For a grass type, Grovyle had horrible sun tolerance. Breeze would be annoyed and embarrassed, but her’s wasn’t much better – though, she was a fire type, she didn’t need the sun. It was just a nice and pretty bonus that could sometimes make her fire type moves stronger. Most grass types, on the other hand, would probably waste away and die without the sun.

Apparently, Grovyle was an exception to a rule that really shouldn’t have any of those. And Breeze was not a fan of that at all.

Most of the plants beside the dried riverbed they’d been traveling along were withered and dead. As soon as they’d found a patch of shade, Grovyle had requested they stop for a rest. Breeze had tried to sit beside him, she really had! She was tired too, and he’d been so nice throughout the whole trip so far. He’d given her every healing item they’d come across – which, admittedly, was only an oran berry and a couple heal seeds – and had double-triple checked to make sure she wasn’t having any issues with their pace. He hadn’t been anything like the Pokemon who’d nearly killed her and Dusk.

Unfortunately, vouching for someone’s second chance and actually giving it to them weren’t the same thing. As much as she tried to ignore it, Grovyle still terrified her. Every time she looked at his leaf blades, all she could think was how he’d easily he’d thrown her and Dusk aside every time they’d tried to fight. She’d been knocked out before he’d struck her partner’s neck, but Breeze could picture it anyway – she had been just outside the door when he’d told Chimecho all about it, because he’d thought she was worried enough about him without having to learn details about how Dusk had nearly gotten his throat slit while trying to revive her.

So while Grovyle called for a break in their journey to rest, Breeze lasted all of one minute waiting beside him before she’d anxiously made an excuse and wandered off to ‘scout ahead.’

Breeze kept her head down as she followed the cracked, dry dirt further inland. Her tails dragged behind her and knocked bits of sand into her footprints. The wind from earlier had died down and left the smell of the ocean replaced by the scent of dust.

It wasn’t fair to Grovyle for her to be acting like this. Breeze knew that. He barely had any idea what was going on, but he’d still tried to help her. She should at least be able to return the favour instead of wandering off to who-knows-where because she was scared for no reason!

Breeze felt her eyes sting and started trying to blink away tears as she took another step forward – and automatically stumbled back as her eyes and nose burned. Several steps back, for the first time, Breeze looked up and really took in where she was.

She was on the edge of a sandstorm, frozen in place mid-air. The wind didn’t blow. The sky was dark – the only light came from back the way Breeze had come. It reflected off each floating sand particle and speckled the ground in front of her with tiny silver sparkles. A trickle of motionless water ran to her left, through weeds and mud that were still fresh – but frozen. A lone magikarp was stuck mid-air, barely above the water, frozen in a desperate last jump to freedom.

Everything was frozen.

Breeze practically threw herself back into the sunlight, back into the dust-scented wind, back onto the dry and cracked ground. She could feel her body tremble as she stood on the edge of the frozen time and she nearly collapsed.

That was why the riverbed was dry. That was why the plants had been dead, and the sun was so intense. This river had probably come from the same spring Mesprit’s lake did. It was at the edge of Northern Desert and Quicksand Cave. Time was still destroyed here, thanks to Grovyle.

Breeze dropped to the ground and rubbed her face with a paw. What was she thinking? Dusknoir was right. Chatot was right. Everyone was right. This was stupid. Just because he didn’t remember it didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Grovyle had been trying to destroy the world! She couldn’t just ignore that. She couldn’t get distracted by the fact that he was nice now, when he had no idea who she was or what was going on. If he ever got his memories back he’d start again, and he’d attack everyone again, and everyone would be hurt because she’d been an idiot.

There was a shadow cast over her. Breeze froze, waiting for Grovyle to speak – and then she realized that the shadow was nowhere near his body shape. The scent sunk in past the dust a moment later.

“Cha-haw-haw, what’s this?”

Breeze felt her breath catch in her throat. Very slowly, she turned – and Team Skull towered over her.

Breeze swore.

“Well isn’t this a surprise,” Skuntank said. He took a step forward, and Breeze braced herself. “Boys, it looks like we’ve run into a friend.”

“I’m not your friend, you rotten jerk.” She snapped and let a fire spin build up in her throat. “Leave me alone.”

“Why? Who’s going to make me?” Skuntank replied. “You’re all alone, brat. We watched you walk here.”

“All the more reason to leave me alone,” Breeze growled. “What are you even doing here? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, “Come on Vulpix, help an old friend out.”

Breeze steadied her paws and spat the fire spin right in Skuntank’s awful face before she ducked under him and ran back the way she’d came.

“ Agh, boys -” Breeze was already out of earshot.

Her pounding paws dredged up more dust as she fled back the way she’d came. But she saw the shadow over her before she saw Grovyle’s rest stop.

Breeze tucked and rolled, darting to the side as Zubat swooped down where she had been only a second before. The stink hit her before Koffing did – but they both hit her hard. Breeze flipped and tumbled, her leg catching on a dying root and sending her right on her face. She felt a paw press down on her back.

“No Guildmaster, no cowardly Riolu, no one coming to help you.” Skuntank said and leaned in as Breeze squirmed. “So why don’t we have that conversation now?”

“Get off.”

“No.”

“Why does this matter to you?!” She tried to push herself up – Skuntank pushed down harder, and Breeze didn’t manage to stifle a pained gasp when his claws dug into her still fresh scabs.

“Because we’ve heard the stories your Guild’s been putting out,” he said, “And how they’d offer up a juicy reward to bring you back. So what was so important that you had to leave your Guild last night, huh? ”

“I didn’t run away, you idiot! ” Breeze squirmed again – if she could just flip over, she could roar, and that would get them all far enough away from her that she could run again. “And if you try to ransom me back to them, you’re not going to like what the Great Dusknoir does to you.”

Skuntank laughed again, and his cronies joined in. “Why would an explorer like Dusknoir still care about a weakling like you?”

“He’s already saved me from you once, you think he won’t do it again?” She snapped, “Back off, or you’ll have to deal with him.”

“That implies he knows where you are,” Skuntank leaned in, “if we shoot enough supersonics your way, no one will believe anything you say. And you’ll talk then, too – so why don’t you make this easier for yourself?” One of his claws hooked under her persim band, “Tell us why you’re here.”

Zubat cleared his throat. “Uh, boss?”

Skuntank huffed. “What?”

“We’ve got company.”

Breeze had a brief, hopeful second where she was sure Dusknoir or the Guildmaster or Dusk or someone was here before Grovyle sprung out of the ground in front of her and clocked Skuntank square in the jaw.

Breeze scrambled out of his grip the second she could, ducking behind Grovyle when he landed. “What are you doing?!” She whispered, “They’re poison types, you’re a grass type, are you insane?! ”

“Get ready to run,” He whispered back.

Skuntank recovered from the blow, with Koffing at his side and Zubat ducked behind them. Breeze had a terrifying sense of familiarity as she shuffled a few steps back.

Except, Team Skull didn’t immediately attack. They stared. “G-Groyvle?!” Zubat choked out.

“How do you know?” Breeze snapped back, “You don’t even have eyes!”

“You’re running around with the Time Gear thief?” Skuntank stared at her as he shuffled back. Breeze shot a panicked glance at Grovyle, who just looked confused.

“Y- no?” She said.

“The what thief?” Grovyle said.

Skuntank still looked shocked – and then his expression dropped. He chortled, and his cronies joined in. “I’ll bet you’re worth a pretty penny.”

There was no chance for Breeze to spit back any flames – barely a chance for Grovyle to grab her and pull her down – before Koffing and Skuntank spat their noxious gas combo at them.

The pressure in Breeze’s nose turned from stench to sand, and Grovyle’s dig dropped them in a small, crooked hole.

Breeze coughed and wheezed, hacking up a few tiny flames. They smouldered and died in the sand, and their smoke hung heavy in the air. In the flicker of dim light, she saw the purple tinge around Grovyle’s nose and lips – and that he wasn’t moving, either.

“No,” she choked out, “no, no, come on.” She crawled forwards and nudged him with a shaking paw. “Why would you do that? You – you’re a grass type, they had every advantage against you, why –” The smoldering bile she choked up this time had a purple tinge. “Why didn’t you hide behind me? You could’ve run. You could have saved yourself. You – you could have…”

Breeze’s breath shook. She thought then, about Grovyle asking why did you save me? She thought of all the healing items he’d passed her way. He could have let her drown. He could have abandoned her when she was unconscious – he hadn’t wanted to stay, but he had. He could have let her suffer and kept the berries for himself. He didn’t know anything - he could have looked after himself.

But he’d chosen to look after her instead.

A familiar sense of helplessness clawed at Breeze’s heart and she didn’t like that at all.

“Help!” she choked out. Team Skull didn’t matter – she could talk to them, not fight, and they’d take her home. It was better than letting Grovyle die. It was better than doing nothing when he’d been trying so hard for her. “Please – please! HELP!”

Breeze choked up another poisoned fireball, and for a split second, she saw something floating on Grovyle’s other side. She couldn’t make out the colours or details, but there was something there.

“Help,” Breeze said again, “please.”

There was a heavy moment of silence. Breeze flattened herself down and coughed on the smoke from her own fires.

“Alright,” a feminine voice said, and the tunnel lit up.

.-.

Dusknoir sat in the corner of a room, a book in his hands and a panicked Riolu pacing around him. He’d toned out every word the boy had said. Genuinely, he didn’t care. He, unfortunately, knew better than anyone how resilient Breanna and Grovyle could be.

Besides, Darkrai wouldn’t have bothered to target his sableye if the two were actually dead. And as far as prisons went, he’d certainly had far worse. If something came up, it would be no issue to escape before the situation turned serious.

A sudden silence struck him as odd, and Dusknoir looked up to see what had finally silenced the Riolu in front of him.

The answer, apparently, was a Dimensional Hole floating in the middle of the room.

Dusknoir mentally cursed, slowly rising and inching towards the door. “Riolu,” he said, “you need to go get Chatot.”

“Do you know what that is?” The boy asked, his voice raw.

“Yes,” Dusknoir said, and floated forwards, ready to grab and throw the Riolu the second anything changed. “For now, go - ”

The dimensional hole tossed out two prone forms and a significant amount of sand.

Riolu lunged for them at the same time Dusknoir tried to snatch him. Riolu’s arms wrapped tight around a badly poisoned Breanna. He pulled her away from Grovyle – fainted and unstable, worse off than Breanna was – and nearly sobbed onto her shoulder.

Breanna held him back, tearing up as well. She looked up at Dusknoir. “Get help,” she croaked.

Dusknoir stared at her as he backed out of the room and didn’t say the thought that stuck out in his mind – he hated the familiarity of this.

Chapter Text

Vulpix was fine. A few treatments of peacha berries and heal seeds, with a heal bell thrown in for good measure and a Peacha Scarf Team Relic just so happened to own to ward off any lingering effects were all more than enough. She and Riolu had been sent back to their room with sleep seeds to rest and recover.

Grovyle was a more complicated situation. Chimecho had seen to him, but currently, there wasn’t much to do but let him rest. The poison was only the first of his problems. The second most severe was the fact he seemed to be heavily sunburnt – which was particularly confusing, given that he was a grass type and had only been exposed to the sun for approximately six hours. There were also multiple older injuries – sprains and breaks that were months old, scabs and scars that varied from years to weeks, some of which were infected.

Chatot had sat through an hour of Chimecho lecturing him for not alerting her to this last night, unable to get in a word about how he’d assumed any of the other Pokémon had done so already. Dusknoir, especially, had ample opportunity to examine Grovyle and tell anyone that his various scars were more serious than they’d anticipated.

So, once again, Chatot was incredibly stressed. To make matters worse, Dusknoir had wandered off soon after Vulpix and Grovyle’s miraculous return. Apparently, he’d said something about sending out notice to his associates that they’d returned. That had been several hours ago and thinking about it was another stress Chatot did not need.

Aside from Chimecho, the only other Pokémon who’d returned from their search were Croagunk, Diglett, and Dugtrio. Chatot had arranged for a Pelipper to track the others’ badges and deliver them the news, but that would take time. He wasn’t exactly fond of the delay, but without any other options, it was the best he could do.

This time, Chatot took up guard duty in the same room as Grovyle. Chimecho had been with him, but she’d left several minutes earlier to check in on Team Relic. As an extra precaution, they’d decided that this time Grovyle would stay tied up and watched until he was able to be reasoned with. No one wanted a repeat of last night.

The sun had only just set, and in the torch-lit room Chatot had spread out several mission reports from Teams who had explored the frozen remnants of the time gears’ dungeons. Chatot had made note of a few key similarities between each of them; each location fit the description Dusknoir had provided of a paralyzed planet. Even if it rose elsewhere, the sun would not shine on these patches of land. The wind wouldn’t blow, items suspended in air when time froze would be immovable, and the Pokémon unfortunate enough to be caught in the destruction would be frozen in place. For the first few days, the mystery dungeon around them would be removed – after that, however, it would reactivate and be filled with ferals who were at least twice as strong as they had been originally. Something about the frozen time appeared to energize them.

Aside from that, there was no clear answer for who or what could be assaulting the Pokémon who had come from the future. There were no clear answers as to what had happened last night. It was irritating.

Chatot sighed and reached back to preen a few feathers. This entire situation was more stress than it was worth. Genuinely, he regretted not standing his ground and refusing this more firmly. Perhaps there was still time to opt out of it; Vulpix wouldn’t have told Grovyle much about anything, even if he had asked – the girl liked her secrets. If she didn’t, she surely would have told Chatot, as the guild’s head of intelligence, about her ability to see the future and past. He could have helped her uncover information about her Dimensional Scream.

Of course, there was no point in doing so now; Dusknoir had that more than handled.

As if summoned by the passing thought, the curtain that had been rehung across the doorway shifted and Dusknoir entered with two drinks in his large hands.

“Ah, hello.” He said, “I apologize. Am I… intruding?”

“Not at all,” Chatot said, and swiftly recollected his mission reports. “I was wondering where you had gone.”

“I apologize. I needed the air, and to pass the message along that the two had been found – I should have made what I was doing clearer to you.” Dusknoir set down one of his cups and placed a straw in it as he spoke. “It’s a chesto berry based smoothie. I believe we both could use the energy.”

Chatot nodded and took the smoothie. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”

“And once again, I really must apologize for what happened last night –”

Chatot tried not to choke on the sip he’d taken – how could something that was practically liquid taste so dry? “No, no,” he said quickly and cleared his throat. “You’ve apologized enough. I believe you. You don’t need to continue to feel so guilty!” I’m more concerned about you, and why you were targeted, Chatot did not say, as tempting as it was. Dusknoir appeared to be wrought with enough doubt as it was.

“Still,” he said, “I –”

Grovyle groaned.

The two of them snapped to silence and turned to him. Slowly, Grovyle began to twitch. Then, he groaned once more and cracked open an eye.

And then he nearly dislocated his shoulders trying to fling himself across the room with his hands bound to a stake in the floor.

“Careful!” Chatot said, “You’re injured enough as is, there’s no need to hurt yourself more.”

Grovyle, who’d pulled back as far as he could from the two of them, started to prepare a leaf blade.

“That’s no way to act to Pokémon trying to help you.” Dusknoir said pointedly.

Grovyle narrowed his eyes. “Where’s Breeze?”

Oh. Of all the reactions Chatot had expected when Grovyle awoke, that question hadn’t ranked as high as perhaps it should have. He knew Breeze was Vulpix’s true name of course, she’d revealed it while registering for the Guild. The fact that in their short time together she had decided to tell Grovyle it – and that his first reaction was to use it when she was not present – spoke volumes about the kind of impression their brief adventure had left on each other.

Dusknoir appeared to be almost more put off by the question. “I’m sorry?” He asked, his voice a bit strained.

“Vulpix. Scars on her chest and second-left tail, fast eater, slow walker, the one who saved me from you. ” Grovyle spat and glared up at Dusknoir. “Where is she?”

“Oh!” Chatot cut in, “Don’t worry, Vulpix is quite alright. She’s resting in her own room at the moment – her injuries weren’t quite as severe as yours.”

“What do you mean she saved you from me?” Dusknoir asked, a tad harsher than was necessary.

Grovyle narrowed his eyes and very pointedly rattled his bound hands.

“That is a safety precaution,” Dusknoir said, “You nearly killed her and yourself with your stunt last night. You do understand why no one wanted a repeat of that, yes?”

Chatot whistled a brief tune, trying to ease the tension – and failing, as Grovyle and Dusknoir continued to glare at each other. “If you don’t intend on doing that again,” he glanced at the still-ready leaf blade, “or attacking anyone I’m sure we could arrange for them to be loosened.”

“I’d rather be untied.” Grovyle said, “And I want to see Vulpix. Those brutes had her pinned and acted like they knew her.”

“You can see her when she wakes,” Dusknoir said, “there’s no point in disturbing her more.”

“Can you tell us anything about them?” Chatot asked, “Attacking a near-defenseless Pokémon like that is a C-rank crime at least. Perhaps A-rank if they were aware she was part of the guild.”

Grovyle scoffed. “They certainly knew her. Some sort of poison types, and one had wings so he was probably flying – beyond that, you’re asking the wrong man for information on Pokémon types.”

Chatot nodded. It was something, at least – his attempt to ask Vulpix earlier had only earned him a ‘they attacked me’ and blubbering about how Grovyle had tried to save her by, apparently, drowning her in sand. He could get more information once she was awake and calm.

“I imagine your current situation would make recalling facts like that particularly difficult.” Dusknoir pointed out, a bit too casually.

Again, Grovyle glared at him. Chatot stifled a sigh. “She said you’d know about that. Why? What did you do?”

Dusknoir placed a hand on his chest and sounded much more like himself. “I assisted you, there’s no reason to accuse me. I should introduce myself – I am Dusknoir, an explorer. Recently, I had enlisted the help of a few other Pokémon to catch an outlaw. Whilst we were prepping our trap, we came across you – you were acting rather erratic, and it was quite alarming. One of my associates happened to be a Pokémon capable of examining the minds of others, and he realized that your mind seemed scrambled he attempted to help you. The action rendered you unconscious, so we brought you back to the Wigglytuff Guild – one of the most prestigious Guilds on the planet. You were unconscious for perhaps two days before you woke up and flung yourself out that window.”

Chatot blinked. That was odd – Dusknoir had sounded the most like himself while he was telling a lie.

Grovyle didn’t seem to catch any oddities in the story, instead he just frowned. “Who was your friend?”

“He goes by Uxie.”

“And where was this?”

“Near the entrance to a mystery dungeon called Crystal Cave.”

Grovyle finally, finally, let his leaf blade disappear. “I’ve never heard of that place.” He sat down, his legs crossed and posture slouched. “…Was I alone? Was anyone with me?”

“You were alone,” Dusknoir said. His tone turned a bit gentler, but he held a hand behind his back – it crunched his empty cup in an iron grip. “Why? Should someone have been with you?”

For a long second, Grovyle was silent. Then he sighed, and said, “The last thing I can remember clearly was when I was a treecko. I was with two other treeckos; my older sister and another from our group. We were supposed to be collecting food in a dungeon.” He clenched his fists around the rope holding him in place. “I triggered a warp trap and was separated from them.”

“And what were their names?” Dusknoir asked.

“My sister’s Rose. The – the other we brought along with us was Vine.”

“And your name?”

Grovyle gave Dusknoir a sad, annoyed, but pointed look. “No. If I’m here, if I actually abandoned them and went and evolved in a dungeon like an idiot I don’t deserve it.”

Chatot fluttered. “Well, there’s no need to go that far! That’s quite the serious decision you’re making without much information!” Granted, he doubted this sister would be fond of someone who’d tried to destroy the world even if they were family – but still! The act of abandoning your name was not something to be taken lightly!

Grovyle huffed, and Dusknoir powered on. “Is there anything else about that event you remember?”

After a second of thought, Grovyle shrugged. “After I triggered the trap, I hid in some bushes and eavesdropped on some pale-faced things. They had a lot of gray scarves and stuff on them, or something. I don’t know.” He slouched more, “After that, I was trapped in something. Some sort of cage, I think. I don’t know. After that I have no idea.”

“Alright,” Dusknoir said casually, “Do you remember what dungeon this was?”

“…No. All I can remember is it was a forest.”

“Very well,” Dusknoir said. “Do you have any other clear memories after that?”

Grovyle shrugged. “Not really.” He held up his wrists, “Can you untie me now?”

“No,” Dusknoir said before Chatot had a chance to. “What other fragments do you remember?”

“I don’t know!” Grovyle snapped, “Why does that matter? It doesn’t help me now. Why don’t you focus on trying to figure out what that shadow thing was?”

Dusknoir pressed on. “Never mind that-”

“What shadow thing?” Chatot interrupted, well finished with being talked over. “Could you elaborate?”

Grovyle glanced at him, then back at the evidently frustrated Dusknoir. “Sure,” he said, and turned to Chatot. “There was a shadow thing over the water. It aimed at us,” he pointed a claw at Dusknoir, “and when Vulpix pushed him out of the way before it could actually kill us with a shadow ball. She saved me, and that thing’s probably going to come after her now. Is she tied up too?”

“How do you know it’ll come after her?” Chatot asked, “Do you know anything else about it?”

“No idea,” Grovyle replied. “It’s just a feeling.”

Chatot frowned. As it was, he had some significant doubts that Grovyle had only lost memories relating to the time gears. But if he was to put that aside, and go simply with the stated facts, then that ‘feeling’ could be all that was left of someone else who was a part of the scheme to steal the time gears. Could that shadow be a co-conspirator, perhaps? Could they be the source of whatever was affecting Dusknoir as well?

“A feeling isn’t exactly helpful,” Dusknoir said. “If we could get back on topic, what else do you remember? Anything at all could be helpful.”

Grovyle barely glanced his way. “Helpful to who? You or me?”

For the first time in the conversation, Dusknoir sounded absolutely, fully genuine. “The both of us, honestly. I would never have brought you here if I didn’t want to help you.”

Grovyle raised an eyebrow ridge and huffed. He slowly shuffled back to facing Dusknoir. “Not a lot. Names that have feelings attached to them, mostly. Stuff like Spark, Aurora, and Breanna.” Dusknoir’s hidden hand twitched. “I guess Nixie? I’d thought that was a type of Pokémon, but Vulpix corrected me, so apparently I know a ninetales or vulpix named Nixie. I know someone named Sweetie, and Luxi, too, I guess – is that a type of Pokémon?” He continued when he was met with blank stares. “I figured Sweetie wouldn’t be, but I needed to check Luxi. Aside from that… a rockslide, I think?” He scrunched up his face and looked thoughtful. “There’s something about holding a hand during a rockslide. Oh, and someone named Hope. I don’t know anything about Hope other than the fact that I didn’t like him.”

Chatot mentally sorted that information into the appropriate categories – the Guildmaster would want to hear it once he returned, after all. “Can you remember any other details about the ones you named?”

“No idea,” Grovyle replied. “Everything is foggy. Can I please get my wrists untied now?”

With the jingle of a bell, Chimecho shoved the curtain aside and announced her return. “Oh! You’re awake.” She floated over, “I hope these two haven’t been bothering you too badly.”

“We were just asking him some simple questions,” Dusknoir said.

At the same time, Grovyle said, “They absolutely were,” and tried to lean away from her touch.

“This is Chimecho, the Guild medic,” Chatot said, “she’s been tending to yours and Vulpix’s injuries.”

Grovyle relaxed a bit. Dusknoir did the exact opposite. “How is she?” Grovyle asked, “They had her pinned when I got there, she looked rough.”

“Compared to you, she’s perfectly fine.” Chimecho replied. “She’s resting in her own room. Tell me, does this hurt?” she ran her chime over one of his burns. Grovyle sucked in a breath and leaned away.

“I suppose I should leave you with your patient,” Dusknoir said, already backing towards the door.

“Don’t go far,” Chimecho said, her voice holding an impressive air of authority. “I need to talk to you about a few things once I’m done checking in here.”

Dusknoir frowned. “Of course, if you say so.”

Chatot snuck out behind him. If Chimecho had needed his help to examine Dusknoir, she would have made that clearer.

He faintly heard Grovyle ask if Chimecho could untie his wrists before the Guildmaster’s door closed behind him and muffled any sounds from the rest of the Guild entirely. On the other side, Chatot sighed and stretched out his wings – a few muscles were still sore, but it was nothing he hadn’t dealt with before. In all, he’d expected that conversation to go significantly worse than it had.

.-.

“Azelf, how’d talking to Darkrai go?”

.

.

.

“…Azelf?”

.-.

Breeze woke before dawn.

She was sprawled out in her straw bed, one paw outstretched towards Dusk, who’d done the same. Clasped between their paws was their treasure bag’s snapped strap – which would probably need to be reorganized, again. Breeze pulled her paw back and slowly sat up. She barely hurt anymore. Chimecho was right; she did feel a lot better after a full night’s sleep.

She was starving, though. Oh well. That could wait.

Breeze crept almost silently over to the window and attempted to balance on her hind legs. She could just barely see the reflection of the sky changing colour. Loudred would be proud of how early she’d gotten up.

Breeze dropped back to all fours a bit too heavily, and she winced at the groan that sparked from her partner. She looked back, and he’d already started to sit up, blinking blearily.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” Dusk coughed.

“You still sound a lot like death,” Breeze teased, and made her way back over to sit beside him. He leaned into her fur, and she leaned into his. “Do you think we’re good enough explorers that we’re allowed to get a new treasure bag yet? I want a waterproof one.”

“Probably not,” Dusk replied. His voice was still raw – he rubbed his scarred throat. “Three days of sentry duty and cleaning stuff doesn’t really boost our rankings.”

“Great.” She pawed at the broken strap of her treasure bag. Apparently it hadn’t fared well when Dusknoir accidentally ripped it off her. “Do you think we could convince Chatot to sign off on a new one anyway?”

Dusk peered at the tear and nudged her paws away from it. “Don’t break it more. I think Croagunk could fix it if we ask.”

“…So, that’s a firm no on the waterproof treasure bag then?”

“I actually don’t think they make those.”

Breeze huffed. Her partner nudged her with his elbow. “My creativity is being stifled. I’m going to write an angry letter to your grandpa.”

Dusk’s laugh turned to another cough. Breeze reached over and smacked his back. “Ow. That doesn’t help.” He leaned away from her, stumbling and nearly falling back into his bed. “But yeah, do it. Write a letter to the exploration team federation that no one will be able to read.”

Breeze stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s not my fault you guys write with feet. ”

“For someone who likes sentry duty so much, you don’t have room to judge.”

For a moment, they stared at each other – and then they were snickering, leaning back against each other.

“I missed this,” Dusk said.

“I was gone for a day,” Breeze said, “But I missed this, too.”

“…I actually meant that everything’s been so serious recently, with Grovyle and everything -”

“Oh. Oh yeah totally -”

“- so we haven’t had much time to joke or do stuff that wasn’t world-saving important -”

“- no, no, I get it -”

“- but that was traumatic too!” He frowned at her, cutting off Breeze’s quick agreement. “I thought you died. Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know!” She replied. “I saw this shadow-thing about to attack Dusknoir and Grovyle and I just quit thinking. I probably could’ve shouted at them or something and it would’ve worked but I didn’t. And I don’t know why.”

Dusk hummed and rubbed his throat, clearing it before he continued. “You didn’t see anything though, did you? No future visions or anything?”

“No. It was just a feeling. I don’t know why I reacted like that.”

Dusk hummed again and wiped some straw off his fur. He stood and offered a paw to help her up. “I’m going to go make an oran tea with honey. Do you want some?”

Breeze took it and tried to keep her balance when her shaking legs left her swaying. “Maybe a peacha. Thanks.”

Her partner hesitated and let her take the lead. “Are you going to tell Chatot it was Team Skull?”

She scoffed. “He wouldn’t believe me. It’d be like the perfect apple thing all over again.” She chewed on her lip, “I might tell Dusknoir, though. If he’s feeling better.”

“Chatot had us both stuck in this room,” Dusk said, “He seemed okay then. A bit upset, but all he really did was sit and read until you showed up. He said he didn’t know what was up with his shadow-aura thing when he hurt Chatot, either.”

“I think Grovyle knew what it was,” Breeze said. She tried to walk quieter as she passed by the other bedrooms – it was pointless, apparently. They were both empty. That was weird – I thought Diglett and Dugtrio were back? Where are they sleeping?

“Hey, Breeze? You can’t just say that and not explain.”

“Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about where Diglett and Dugtrio sleep.” She hesitated before entering the hall – there was a light on in Grovyle’s room and another, fainter one on in the Guildmaster’s room. Croagunk was sleeping in front of his swap caldron. “Um,” she lowered her voice as they got closer to Croagunk, “I mean knew – I don’t think he knows anymore, but he did. Especially with the one that attacked us. They might be the same. I don’t know, it’s just,” she sighed, “he said it would come after us.”

“Want me to write to my grandpa?” Dusk asked, pulling ahead as they reached the kitchen. Breeze lit the fireplace as he grabbed the kettle. “I can see if he knows anything about it.”

“I mean, kinda?” Breeze said and backed up to grab a couple berries from the larder. “I don’t know, though. I know we joke about it a lot but I don’t really want to bother him.”

Breeze had never met Dusk’s grandfather, but apparently he was a retired famous explorer. Now, he led the Exploration Team Federation – the organization that every guild, from Wigglytuff’s to the ones on faraway islands, reported back to. They controlled the team ranks and set the prerequisites for a job’s letter classification. Dusk himself was from across the ocean and had come to Treasure Town because Wigglytuff’s guild was the best there was. He still wrote letters to his family all the time, and he’d said that his family adored Breeze and couldn’t wait to meet her one day.

That didn’t mean that Breeze believed it. That didn’t mean that she was comfortable turning to these Pokémon she didn’t know with every problem. Dusk didn’t even talk about his family with their guildmates – if they were such a good resource, why wouldn’t he share them? Unless there was some sort of secret, like they actually hated Breeze and her partner was just a very good liar.

When she turned around, Dusk had crossed his arms. “If someone’s trying to hurt us, and we ask for help, we’re not bothering him. We’re making sure we don’t die.”

“We don’t know we’re going to get killed.”

“It blasted you off a cliff.”

Breeze scrunched up her face and didn’t look at her partner as she dropped each teabag into a mug. They waited for the water to boil in silence. Dusk made Breeze’s tea first and left it to steep as he grabbed some honey.

“So,” he said, and coughed again to clear his throat. “Grovyle. How was he? Did you guys get along?”

“We got really close to Mesprit’s lake,” Breeze muttered, and tried to take a sip of her tea. It tasted like hot leaf water. Why had she wanted to drink this? “Everything’s still frozen there. There was a magikarp that had been swimming down the river and trying to get out. They didn’t make it. But Grovyle was nice to me, he kept trying to look out for me, and he saved me from Team Skull even though I told him they had the type advantage. I don’t know.” She looked up at her partner and chewed on her lip. “What if I’m wrong? He hurt everyone – he was going to destroy the world! Maybe we should have listened to Dusknoir. Maybe everyone else was right.”

Dusk didn’t look her way as he stirred some honey into his tea. “I don’t think so.” He took a long sip. “And I don’t think you think so. Not really. I think that you wanted to help someone, and so did I, but everyone started giving us grief and Grovyle panicked, so now you’re nervous.” He set his mug down and tugged the Power Band he had wrapped around his right wrist. “I’m nervous, too. That scared me. And I want to blame Grovyle, because he was there and he’s easy, but it wasn’t his fault, was it?”

“No,” Breeze said, “he was scared. And so are we.”

“Yeah. We are.” Dusk untied his Power Band and swapped it to his right wrist. “He’s not a bad Pokémon right now. If he was, he wouldn’t have helped you. Whatever’s going on, right now, he’s not the biggest threat.”

“Just because he’s unnerving doesn’t mean it’s his fault. Not right now. Right now, he’s just… Grovyle.” She smiled and went to take another sip of her hot leaf water. “Ew. This is so gross.”

Dusk scooped out some more honey and dropped it in her mug. “I know! Try this, it helps.”

Breeze took another sip. He was right; it was a lot better.

.-.

Dusknoir was not a fool, and he would not be played for one.

Chimecho’s questions as to why he hadn’t alerted her to Grovyle’s ‘extensive’ injuries were a farce. Please, those were barely more than normal in their time. Grovyle had fared better than many, too – even better than Breanna. He’d had nearly unlimited access to human concoctions to cure all his poor scrapes and bruises. What she didn’t say was more than enough. He’d caught how she’d looked him over, how she eyed the imperfections in his ghostly flesh and mentally compared them to Grovyle’s. She would have theories, and those theories would spread – and they would do exactly what Darkrai had hoped they would.

However.

Dusknoir had played Darkrai’s game before. He’d played through the taunts, the ruses, the deception, and the nightmares – and he’d won before.

He would do it again.

Grovyle did not know enough to incriminate him. True, he knew a fraction of the name Dusknoir had abandoned years ago, but that could not be traced back to him. He knew the names of humans and their sidekicks – but Aurora was dead, gone the same way her father had, and Spark’s little Planetary Investigation Team had been dealt with before Dusknoir had even received his order to pursue the two traitors. Breanna didn’t even know her own name – what good would Grovyle remembering just that do?

Dusknoir floated outside of the Guild and took small bites from the lightly roasted Chesto in his hand. He could see the sun rise, could see the dawn light stain the clouds pink, could see the fragments of sunlight that made their way through the morning fog. A cold wind blew in, light and damp. The sea’s salty smell drifted with it, and he could hear waves lap against the cliff face in the distance.

It was the same as yesterday. It was better than yesterday. It was what he deserved.

These Pokémon had nothing on him. Darkrai had no trick he could pull that would gain him any sway. Dusknoir had no reason to run. Not yet.

The nightmare of a human man beside him sat cross-legged on the ground beside him, palms down in the dew covered grass – he raised his hands and snapped them into finger guns. “Eyy, there we go, use that old determination.” The illusion replied to Dusknoir’s thoughts. “Isn’t that better than being Hope-less? ”

Dusknoir didn’t look his way. Didn’t acknowledge the horrible pun with a groan he might have once given, or a banter back. There was no point in communicating with this trick, it would wear off soon enough. It was just his own memories, twisted and given shape. But there was no point in talking to a dead man.

.-.

Chimecho opened the door, and Chatot turned to her. He kept his papers spread – if this meeting was short, there was no point in putting his research off to the side. “Well?”

“Have you slept at all?” Chimecho asked.

“Have you?” Chatot replied, and there was a tense silence between them.

“…Grovyle is fine.” She said at last. “He’s upset and confused. He doesn’t try to attack Pokémon who are explaining things to him. I didn’t untie him. I don’t trust him.”

“Understandable,” Chatot said.

“Dusknoir worries me,” she continued, “he seems paranoid. He still has the marks by his eyes that suggest an x-eye seed is still in his system. It was my understanding he was only hit with one – he shouldn’t still be affected by it. There has to be something else, but at the moment, he’s too paranoid to talk about it.”

“Do you know what we should do about it?”

Chimecho hesitated. “That shadow Grovyle keeps talking about… I think I’ve heard of it.”

Chatot fluttered and stood up straighter. “You have? Please, what do you know?”

Chimecho glanced back at the door and lowered herself down so that she could sit across from him. She shifted a few of the mission reports in front of her and glanced them over.

“There is a chimchar from the volcanic region to the north,” she said. “He’s come into town before for a week or two, when he can convince a sea-fairing Pokémon to give him a ride. He was here only a few days ago, I ran into him at the café after we learned Grovyle had been captured. He’s kind. He talked about this dungeon near where he’s from, Dark Crater, that everyone always avoids. He said there’s a shadow that always lurks near it, and anyone who tries to sleep near the dungeon suffers from nightmares and sleepwalking. Allegedly, a magmar tried to chase it off once and was blasted into the ocean with a shadow ball. He was telling me that now that the world’s done ending, we should send someone to investigate.”

Chatot hummed a tune. “I’ll dig up any mission reports we have on that area. Thank you, Chimecho.”

“You’re welcome,” she said softly, and floated back up. “As the guild medic, I suggest you sleep.”

Chatot smiled at her. “As the guild’s second in command, I recommend you do as well.” He returned to his mission statements and began to gather them up. “Let me know when Team Relic is awake. I need to talk to Vulpix.”

“Only if I have to wake you.” Chimecho replied and took her leave.

Dark Crater, Chatot thought, and retreated to a hidden chest in left side of the room. He’d stored Grovyle’s treasure bag inside, and the papers that had come with it. It was simple enough to find the map.

There was a mark over every location of each known time gear. There was another coloured one at Beach Cave, in Eastern Forest, near a new dungeon known as Serenity River, and atop Mt Bristle.

There were two others, one on the volcanic region and another in the middle of the ocean. Those marks were the same as the ones that marked the time gears.

Chatot replaced the map and gave the other sheets a long look. The letter written in an unknown language practically called his name.

No. He’d wait until the Guildmaster was home. Wigglytuff would know what to do about all this, he always did. All Chatot had to do was wait.

.-.

Limestone Cavern was already frozen. Its guardian hadn’t managed to escape the first time – there were no wards, no defenders, nothing to keep that time gear safe other than a handful of false hope.

Nothing changed when it disappeared. The dungeon continued on as normal, but the gear was gone all the same.

She’d miscalculated, and she was too late again.

Chapter Text

On the back of a friendly-friend named Slowking, Wigglytuff had gone far out to sea. He’d had a Feeling, with a capital F, that something was very, very, very wrong.

And he was almost right; something was actually very, very, very, very, very wrong. 

The northern volcanic isle was frozen. Choppy waves were stuck as they raced away from the island, and the ones from farther out lapped against them like land. They’d nearly circled the island. They couldn’t get close; friendly-friend Slowking couldn’t swim through the water that was stiff like land but still sucked him down. Wigglytuff had held his breath and stuck his head underwater, but he’d seen too many scared faces trapped in time and not enough of a way through. He didn’t want to look again. He wasn’t going to look again, because that was just being a meanie to himself.

There wasn’t much farther they could go; Slowking had swam all around as close as he could get, and they’d had to float for a few hours so he could regain his energy. That would have been fun if it was a nice place with lots of treasure instead of a sad place where everyone was stuck. They’d have to go home soon and tell everyone that something had gone wrong.

Wigglytuff sat up straighter as he saw a light that wasn’t from the rising sun, because the sun wouldn’t rise over the island anymore. This was a fire-light.

They’d seen fires from faraway on this island before. They weren’t like that fire-light, that moved back and forth and looked alive like firelight should. They’d looked like pictures that someone had slurped all the colour out of.

Slowking took them closer, and Wigglytuff could see now. There was a Pokémon there, stuck just outside of the frozen time. He clung to a long slab of charcoal, that was washed away a bit more with every wave. Half of it was still frozen in time, half sunk under a wave – the half he was on was not.

The soaked chimchar looked up at Wigglytuff, and he shivered in the pitifully slow-rising dawn. His tail fire died out.

“Help,” he begged. He cried. His home was broken and all his friends were stuck. He could cry all he wanted.

“We’ll take you home,” Wigglytuff cheered, because it was better to be happy and hopeful when others were scared and sad.

“Hold on, sonny,” Slowking said in his old-old-old man voice. “We’ll getcha out of there.”

Chimchar nodded and clung to his raft with a tight squeeze. He whispered and muttered to himself as they came closer, but Wigglytuff didn’t listen because it was rude to eavesdrop on someone who was traumatized.

“That was supposed to be safe,” he babbled louder though, so it was hard not to listen. “It was supposed to be safe and free, and it was better and… oh, all those people… ”

“What happened here?” Wigglytuff asked in his Serious Voice, with capital letters for emphasis. Slowking reached Chimchar, and Wigglytuff held him out of the water. He was very wet. He had been in the water for a very long time.

Vulpix could probably sympathize. These two could be good friends!

“It – it froze, ” he choked, “I don’t understand.” He clung to Wigglytuff, which was fair. Hugs were good! “You caught the thief. You have the thief. I don’t – all those people… ”

He was wound up, and that was fair too! Wigglytuff would be too. As it was, he really wanted to YOOM-TAH and break up that bad, bad island that had hurt innocent Pokémon. But now, he needed to go home.

He needed to get Chimchar warm and safe, and he didn’t want Slowking to have to look at that island anymore. He didn’t deserve it.

It wasn’t fair.

.-.

The next day was slow. Breeze and Dusk were supposed to spend it resting. They’d skipped morning cheers, and Chatot had come to ask her around noon to explain what had happened. So Breeze had explained the shadow, but when it came to Team Skull, just said they’d pinned her and she hadn’t gotten a good look. Chatot didn’t like it, but he didn’t call her a liar, so it didn’t matter.

She didn’t go see Grovyle. Chimecho mentioned that he was asking about her, and then nothing came of it. She heard him talking while she and Dusk waited for dinner in the main hall, but Breeze had decided to stay silent. All Grovyle was doing was asking Chatot to untie him, anyway.

She didn’t like that he was still tied up, but there wasn’t really anything Breeze could do about it.

Dugtrio asked if she’d liked the ocean, and when Breeze said she hadn’t, he left in a huff to repair the broken window. The others were nicer – they kept asking if she needed anything and left her alone when Breeze said she didn’t.

Sunflora and Loudred came back just before dinner. Sunflora shouted a few “Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re okay!” and gave Breeze a tight hug. Loudred punched her shoulder and called her a dummy. Corphish came back just after sunset and told Breeze her water privileges were revoked. Then he passed out in his bed.

Bidoof didn’t come back. Sunflora’s reaction to that had been to sigh, gather Diglett and Croagunk, and set out to find him. She didn’t want to wait until the morning, apparently.

Dusknoir had left the guild. He was in town, somewhere, probably, but Breeze never got a chance to ask someone who would know. And Wigglytuff was still off… somewhere.

The guild had never been so disorganized.

The next day, apparently, it was time to get back into a schedule. Loudred woke Team Relic up as he always did – by manifesting in their room and screaming.

“UP AND AT ‘EM, IT’S MORNING!”

Breeze threw a pawful of hay at him. It drifted unsatisfyingly to the ground just on the other side of Dusk. Her partner just groaned and tried to cover his ears.

“Why?” Dusk groaned, “we’re not even going to do anything today!”

“You’ve rested ENOUGH!” Loudred announced, loud enough that all of Treasure Town could probably hear. “Time to get to WORK!” He fled down the hall before Breeze could throw anything harder at him.

“What’s the point?” She snapped and shoved the iron thorn she’d grabbed back in her bag. “Chatot’s not going to let us do anything again today. We’re going to have to do paperwork and cleaning. ”

“Maybe we’ll get to do sentry duty,” Dusk said, still half asleep. He rolled over, his back to Breeze as he muttered, “you like sentry duty.”

“I like going outside more,” Breeze replied. She shoved her partner out of his bed and stepped around him as he sat up. “I’m ready when you are.”

“I’m ready now,” Dusk replied as he stretched. He still had hay stuck in his fur. Breeze snickered and reached out to knock the few bits she could see away.

They did make it out for morning cheers, after a few minutes. Even though the Guildmaster wasn’t there, and Sunflora’s party wasn’t back yet, Chatot still had them run through the chant.

“And three!” They all finished together, “smiles go for miles!”

From the once-closet by the Guildmaster’s room, Grovyle shouted, “Are you starting a cult out there?”

The apprentices fell silent. They glanced at each other. Eventually, Chatot chirped and pointedly ignored him. “Alright Pokémon! Time to get to work!”

The ‘Hooray’ they replied with wasn’t very enthusiastic or convincing, but without the Guildmaster here it didn’t need to be.

“You two,” Chatot said as the other apprentices cleared. Breeze swallowed a huff and Dusk only got a little bit tense and annoyed.

“We’re stuck in here again, aren’t we?” Breeze asked.

Chatot ignored her tone. “We’ll have you on sentry duty today.”

Dusk sighed and turned Breeze around. “Can we take some easy missions tomorrow?” He asked, “I feel fine now! We’re both fine!”

“We’ll see,” Chatot said vaguely, and flew over to Grovyle’s room.

Loudred was waiting for them by the sentry post. Breeze dropped her treasure bag off beside him and made her way down the sentry post without a word. It only took a few minutes before they were in position below the grate, and Breeze finally allowed herself to grin.

In a mystery dungeon, where everything was always changing, it was hard enough to keep yourself from getting lost. Even the best explorers would find themselves crossing their own path every now and then or come through a pathway that was only visible on one side and find they’d been thrown back to the start. That was normal, and most explorers hated it. Breeze, on the other hand, loved it.

She loved entering a dungeon and watching the dungeon repair the tracks of the other explorers and ferals. She adored when she could catch a hint of a footprint in the dungeon floor and figure it out before the dungeon took it away – what type it was, what direction it was going, how fast it was moving, and if she was lucky, what Pokémon it was. That was always the most rewarding on rescue or outlaw hunting missions. She’d even impressed Chatot a couple of times with how fast her team had completed a job when she’d found some really convenient footprints.

At some point before she’d lost her memory, Breeze had gotten really good at tracking Pokémon by their footprints. So when all she had to do was sit below a Pokémon while they put their foot on the grate, guessing visitors was a piece of cake.

“Pokémon detect–”

“Eevee.”

“Oh. The Pokémon is Eevee! The Pokémon is Eevee!”

“She’s got a Squirtle with her. I can see the tail. Wasn’t there a D-rank Squirtle on the outlaw board last week?”

“…I’ll tell Loudred.”

It hadn’t ended up being the same Squirtle, but Breeze had identified them so quickly they hadn’t had time to run. And that was great! She loved being on top of the outlaws like this, that all they had to do to get caught was step where she could see them, and she didn’t even have to see them fully to identify them. It was perfectly fine, she liked sentry duty, it was fun enough.

But it wasn’t exciting like exploring was. Especially right now, after yesterday’s abrupt end to the drama, not many Pokémon wanted to visit the guild.

Breeze was bored. And she really didn’t do well with being bored.

She paced back and forth on the tiny sentry platform, circling her partner. Dusk, after an hour of nothing, had resorted to building a tower out of fallen blades of grass and had to lean protectively over it every time Breeze passed him.

“This is dumb. This is boring and dumb. Can we come out? Loudred!” She stopped at the edge of the platform and leaned down. “Can we be done? It’s dark and boring in here!”

“Light a fire!” Loudred called back, unhelpful as ever. “The day’s not over yet, Rookies!”

Breeze grumbled as she stepped back from the edge. “I’ll light you on fire.”

“Please don’t light any fires,” Dusk said, and blocked his grass tower with his paws when Breeze flopped down beside him.

“Why not?” Breeze asked and rolled onto her back. It hurt a bit – but there was no way she was risking that getting back to Chatot in case he kept her cooped up for longer. She rolled over again and poked her muzzle through Dusk’s arms. A few blades of grass brushed against her nose. “You already built me a fire pit!”

“No!” Dusk said and gently shoved her away from it. He leaned over his grass tower. “This is my very own mystery dungeon.”

Breeze grinned as she sat up, brushing grass from her fur. “What are you calling it? Tinder Tower?”

Dusk stuck his tongue out at her. Breeze stuck her’s out right back. She took a pawstep forward.

And the dizziness hit.

“I’m actually calling it Hay -ven,” Dusk said. He looked over at her, grinning, as Breeze winced when the second wave hit her. The grin fell. “Are you having a –”

.

It was a vision.

Dark room. Three pale-faced things draped in grey fabrics. Around a charcoal-coloured table. The flame in the lanterns didn’t move. Two pale-faced things were tiny, so much smaller than the third. They all had faded string in their hands.

The smallest one held up her string. It was braided – loosely, sloppily. “Daddy, look!”

The largest looked up. “Excellent! Hope, come look at Breanna’s braid!”

From the shadows behind the largest, a Pokémon appeared – a dusclops. Dusknoir?

“Well,” it was Dusknoir. Younger and unevolved, but it was his voice. “It’s certainly better that your father’s.”

.

The dimensional scream ended and Breeze shook her head. She looked around the sentry outpost, and at her partner. He was on his feet and watching her in concern.

“Sorry.” She said and looked at the ground. “Aw, you stepped on Tinder Tower.”

“Hay-ven,” Dusk corrected.

“I’m not acknowledging that.”

“Are you okay?” Dusk pressed, “Did you see something again? Or hear something? What gave you a vision?”

“I don’t know,” Breeze muttered. She pawed at the grass below them. “I think I saw something from Dusknoir’s past? I don’t know.”

“Your scream showed you stuff about Dusknoir?” Dusk repeated, whisper-screaming. “What was it? What’d you see?”

“I don’t know, ” Breeze repeated. She shoved a bunch of grass to the side. Nothing. “There were these things, all one species, I think? I don’t really know. They were messing with string. Two of them might’ve been kids. One held up her string like ‘look what I did, Dad!’ and he said it was nice, and then called for someone named Hope to look at it – then Dusknoir appeared. But he was a dusclops, so it had to be the past. And he said it was better than her dad’s.” She frowned. “He called her Breanna. The dad.” Does that mean something?

“I think you learned Dusknoir’s name,” Dusk said, and shoved a tiny handful of grass aside. “If it was him, I mean.”

“It was. I know it, that was Dusknoir’s voice. ” Breeze swiped some more grass away, “I know none of this triggered it. Probably. Maybe. I don’t think so. Why would he be carrying a handful of grass around with him?”

“Maybe it was a rock. Or some dirt.” He swiped another tiny handful away. “Or some garbage, like -” he pulled up a faded, frayed string. “This?”

“That was it!” Breeze bounded over and yanked the string from his hand. “That was – wait.” The colours were wrong, too bright to match what Breeze had seen. And the braid was too loose, with one string nearly snapped. “Maybe not? It looked different.”

“We can keep looking, if you want.” Dusk said, “but why would a string give you a scream that tells you Dusknoir’s name? That’s a major invasion of privacy. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“I’ll be sure to tell my magic powers that you’re disappointed in them.” She held the string up to the sunlight. “It looks like it’s about to fall apart.”

“We could ask him later?” Dusk suggested and leaned over the string as well. “I can hold onto it for now.”

Breeze hesitated for a second before she handed it over. “Sounds good. Thanks.”

There was a thump above them – they both looked up.

“Oh!” Dusk said, “Pokémon detected –”

“Bidoof.”

“Oh. Oh! It’s Bidoof!”

Bidoof gasped. “Oh golly, is that you two down there? You’re okay, Vulpix?”

“I’m fine!” Breeze called back, “Did Sunflora’s party find you?”

“…Sunflora’s lookin’ for me?”

“Yeah, hold on -” Breeze darted to the platform’s edge. “Loudred! Bidoof’s back, let him in!”

“I HEARD you!” Loudred shouted back. “But you’re STILL on sentry duty!”

Breeze groaned and flopped onto her side.

“Well, gee,” Bidoof blubbered, “I am mighty glad you’re okay. I thought… I thought…” he continued to cry while Loudred hauled him inside.

“So Sunflora, Diglett, and Croagunk are still gone,” Dusk said, “and so’s the Guildmaster. Wow.”

“We’re missing so many Pokémon,” Breeze said, and turned to her partner with a frown. “…If that shadow thing comes back there’s not a lot keeping us safe.” I told Grovyle he’d be safe here.

“I know,” Dusk said quietly, and pulled his power band tighter.

.-.

In a time that both once was and had not yet been (and hopefully never would be), a human father had decided to teach his children a simple braiding technique. It had many uses, such as if you threw a braided rope down to catch someone who had slipped off a cliff, it was approximately 66% less likely to snap after a feral Pokémon’s attack and send your friend plummeting to their death while you stood there, horrified.

In its smaller scale it was also, as his daughter had said, good for friendship bracelets. He was sure her one friend would agree.

His son was seven. His daughter was four. Only one was actually his and his wife’s, not that it mattered. They were both just excited to have a chance to spend time with him.

“Daddy, look!” His daughter beamed. She held up her braid – a bit sloppy, but not bad for a child.

“Excellent!” He replied, “Hope, come look at Breanna’s braid!”

His partner sat in the corner of the room. What had happened had hit him hard, and he could only put on a brave face for the kids for so long. Hope had never been a good liar, especially under pressure. Still, he rose at the call and crossed the room to examine the braid.

“Well,” Hope said, “it’s certainly better than your father’s.”

Said father threw a hand over his chest and gasped dramatically. He watched his daughter’s face light up. “I’m the best at braiding.” She declared.

“No, I am, ” her brother declared, and held up his own braid. It was significantly better, but by no means was the seven-year-old boy ‘the best’ at anything.

“My, my,” Hope said with a thoughtful hum. “That is rather excellent.”

His son puffed out his chest. “I’m going to offer it to Dialga, then.”

The father’s smile became strained. Hope’s didn’t falter – of course, he didn’t have a mouth. “I’m sure Dialga will appreciate it. Hope and I will bring it when our shift starts, ‘kay?”

“I want to offer it myself, ” he said, and clenched it in a fist. “I want to work for them just like you and Auntie!”

“Me too!” His daughter said. Always a follower, that one.

“Then ask your mother.” He kept his voice stern.

The boy pouted. The girl frowned. There was a beat.

“When’s mom coming home?” His daughter asked, and he was silent for a breath. Hope placed a comforting hand on his back.

“Soon, I promise.” He’d crossed his toes. “Alright, if you’ve both mastered braiding, then I want to show you a false knot. If done properly, this will come undone as soon as you pull it…”

Chapter Text

Chatot caught Team Relic after morning cheers. “You two –”

“Can we please take some jobs?” Breeze cut in, “We won’t go far! Just Beach Cave, or –”

Chatot puffed out. “Do not interrupt me.” Breeze dipped her head and shied back. “As I was saying, you two will be taking over monitoring Grovyle for the foreseeable future. You will spend the day with him, bring him his dinner,” he lowered his voice a tad, “and if he reveals anything pertinent to his crimes or concerning in any way, you will report it to me immediately.”

“Alright,” Dusk said quickly, “Can we, uh, go to town and restock our treasure bag first? We had to eat most of our berries because they were about to go bad, so we need to restock.”

Chatot huffed. “You have half an hour.” He turned and fluttered off to Grovyle’s room.

“We need to restock? ” Breeze repeated, almost offended. Like she’d ever let their treasure bag run low on anything that was necessary. “He definitely saw through that.”

“Hey, I got us half an hour! Let’s stop wasting it.” He shoved her towards the ladders.

For the first time in far too long, Breeze stepped out of the guild with her partner at her side. The pleasant smell of the ocean drifted past as the wind parted her fur, with the slightest tinge of morning dew at the end. She squinted against the sunlight and tried to judge the time.

“Seven-thirty,” Dusk said.

She poked him. “Stop helping. I would’ve gotten it!”

“Not before you went blind. You have to look at the shadows.”

The path down towards Treasure Town was significantly easier than it would be to head back to the guild, but they took their time anyway. Of course, Treasure Town was as lively as ever. Duskull greeted them and handed over their collection of Poke, Vigoroth cut them off to excitedly talk about a traveling smeargle who was painting explorers for a very affordable price, a persian asked if they’d like to donate to starting a local library – which Dusk did, so Breeze reluctantly forked over a small donation –, and the Kecleon brothers were more that happy to see the pair of them reach the shop.

“How many reviver seeds do you have in stock?” Breeze asked.

Green laughed. “For you, my dear Vulpix, four – and we’ll throw in a sleep seed, free of charge!”

“Sold!”

“Any berries?” Dusk asked. “We told Chatot that’s what we were coming to get.”

“Ah, I’m afraid not!” Purple replied, “We had an excellent stock of chestos earlier, but the Great Dusknoir cleared us out as soon as we opened! I imagine we’ll have plenty tomorrow morning, if you’re early enough!”

Breeze placed a paw protectively over the pouch that held their money. Dusk smiled at the two kecleons. “We’ll see, Chatot might keep us in the guild all day tomorrow.”

“A true tragedy!” Green said, “you two should be out exploring!”

“Believe me,” Breeze said, “as soon as we can convince Chatot to let us leave for more than a few minutes, we will be.”

According to Dusk, they made it back to the crossroads with just enough time to get up the stairs before their half hour was up.

Breeze perked up, “So what I’m hearing is we have enough time to check the beach for bottles.”

“That’s – that’s not what I said, though.”

“Come on,” she pressed up against him, “think about how much secret treasure we could find if we get a good one. Chatot has to let us go back to exploring eventually, we’re fine. ”

Really, Dusk didn’t need any more convincing than that. “Okay,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder. “But we have to be fast. I don’t want to make him mad.”

“What’s he going to do, force us to go without dinner again?”

“Yes. And I don’t want him to yell at us.”

“That’s fair.”

There was a bottle on the beach, right by the rock Breeze had woken up against after her first adventure being lost at sea. She took the lead and dove for it, snatching away as a particularly large wave ran over the rocks. She turned to Dusk with soggy paws and passed it over. He placed the bottle in the crook of his arm and pulled out the cork with his teeth. Breeze peered over his shoulder as her partner read out the footprint ruins on the old paper.

I hid treasure in the mountain’s tallest bristle!

“I hate when they make us guess the dungeon,” Breeze said.

“It’s probably Mt Bristle,” Dusk said, and rolled the paper back up. “So… it’s either the same nonexistent treasure Drowzee tried to make Azurill grab, or someone else put treasure there.”

Breeze made a face. “What a dumb place to hide treasure. Come on,” she opened the Treasure Bag and put the bottle inside. The knotted strap dug uncomfortably into her shoulder. “I guess we have to go back now.”

“I guess.” Dusk pulled a face and looked around the beach. “We should make some time to come see the krabby come blow bubbles towards the sunset. I haven’t seen it since we joined the guild, and I used to watch them all the time.” He frowned, focused on the path back up to the guild. “Is that one of the sableye who works with Dusknoir?”

Breeze turned – it was, probably. There weren’t any other sableye anywhere near Treasure Town. The sableye limped across the path, one set of claws resting near his neck and a leg that looked swollen even from a distance.

“Hey!” She called and Sableye froze. Breeze led the way over, already fishing an oran berry out of her broken treasure bag. “Here. You look awful – what happened?”

Sableye didn’t take the berry. He stared at her.

“Was it that shadow thing?” Dusk asked.

The Sableye didn’t quite flinch, but he did move back a fraction.

“Do you want us to escort you to Dusknoir?” Breeze offered, “You’ll have to tell us where he is, but there’s safety in numbers. Or we could go make a report at the guild, if you want! You don’t have to be scared.”

Sableye was not comforted. He shook his head. “N-no,” he said. The movement made him flinch, and Breeze could see bruises around his neck. “Goodbye.” He limp-ran into the bushes.

“…So that was shady,” Dusk said.

“He had choke marks.”

“And a broken leg. I saw.” He took the lead. “We should tell Chatot.”

Breeze didn’t move. She stayed rooted to the ground, her eyes on the bush. “We should tell Dusknoir. ”

Dusk bit his lip and shook his head. “We’re out of time, Breeze. We can tell Chatot. He’ll tell Dusknoir. I really don’t want to get yelled at.”

Breeze bit her lip. She swallowed and it's better to get yelled at then to let someone be hurt and sighed instead. “Okay,” she said.

.-.

“Mesprit, have you been in contact with Azelf?”

.

.

.

“Mesprit?”

“Oh! Sorry, I was busy – there was an incident at the guild, and some of the apprentices came to ask if I’d seen their friend. That Vulpix and Grovyle ended up falling into the sea.”

“Are they alright?”

“Strangely, yeah. They’re back at the guild. The three I met wanted to know if I’d seen another, a bidoof. I teleported them back to town after we talked – I thought I’d save them the trip.”

“Hm. Have you heard from Azelf?”

“Not since he left to tell Darkrai about Cresselia, no. I can check on him, but…”

“But what?”

“According to the three I talked to, apparently some sort of shadow attacked Grovyle and knocked him into the ocean. Vulpix went down with him when she tried to warn him. I’m worried.”

“Ah. You think that when Azelf told Darkrai about Cresselia he went after Grovyle in vengeance?”

“They are a pair. I would have panicked if something happened to you or Azelf and I didn’t know why.”

“I can check Dark Crater and see if he’s willing to talk about it. Do you mind checking Azelf’s lake?”

“Not at all. I’ll let you know what I find. Love you, Uxie.”

“Sure.”

“Aw, come on! Say it back!”

“You know how I feel about you. We’re siblings.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it!”

.

.

“We’ll talk later, Mesprit.”

.-.

Breeze and Dusk stood outside Grovyle’s room. They’d made a report to Chatot, and he’d said he’d look into it, but their duties for the day hadn’t changed.

“We did agree to this,” Dusk whispered.

Breeze shrugged.

“We could… fake an injury or something if you really want to get out of it. Briefly fall out a window again, if you want, but Dugtrio might yell at us instead.”

“It’s not that,” she muttered back, “it’s just… awkward. The last time I interacted with him he saved me from Team Skull right after I got stuck thinking about how I was wrong and that he’s definitely evil. Do you think he’ll be mad?”

“I think he’s still tied up and can’t reach us if we run,” Dusk said.

“True.” They pushed the curtain-door aside.

Grovyle sat in a corner, where he’d bunched up his bed. His wrists were tied, but even between them there was a significant amount of slack. Chatot had clearly readjusted it so it was tied to the back wall, and Grovyle had just enough space to reach out and touch the curtain if he was determined. He hadn’t used any of it. There was a pile of books beside him and one on his lap. He idly flipped the pages, not paying them any attention, and not actually reading any of it. He still had bandages stained with an Oran berry poultice wrapped around much of his body.

Dusk raised a hand. It was stiff, and he barely got his wave higher than his face. “H-” his voice got caught in his throat and he took a step back, the paw he’d tried to wave now resting on the scar on his throat.

Grovyle looked up. His frown turned to shock – then back to a frown. “Hello,” he said, curtly.

“Hi,” Breeze said back. She pressed up against her partner. “Chatot told us our job today was to watch over you. So… need anything?”

“No,” Grovyle said, “not unless you’re going to untie me. No one here has been helpful – you said they would be.”

Breeze backed up a fraction. “I thought they would. Sorry.”

“All they have done is tie me up and throw me in here. That thing could come back at any second and I’m stuck here. You’re not sorry.” He huffed and dropped the book he’d been flipping through off with the rest – it was some sort of encyclopedia, written fully in footprint runes. “If you were sorry you’d untie me.”

“…Yeah,” Breeze swallowed, and glanced at Dusk. He still stared at Grovyle, stuck as he tried not to show his fear. “I guess so. But I needed to thank you – you saved my life, before, so… thanks.”

“And you didn’t tell your boss who attacked you.” Grovyle replied. Breeze bit her lip. “You lied and said you didn’t see them. I know you did, and I know they knew you. They sounded like they knew me, too.” He sat up a little straighter and stared at her. “They called me a thief. They said some nonsense and then they called me a thief. Why?”

“Wait,” Breeze said, “you don’t know what kind of thief they called you?”

Grovyle pulled a face, annoyed and ashamed. “I didn’t hear, no. My ears were ringing. But you did.”

Breeze swallowed and felt Dusk grab a fistful of her fur. “…Actually,” she said, “I didn’t. I was just going to agree with them, so you’d seem more threatening, but they’re criminals too so I decided against it.”

Grovyle stared at her for a long, long moment where Breeze was sure he’d call out her lie. He didn’t. “What kind of criminals?”

“They robbed me when we first met and tried to kill us or get us kicked out a few times.” Dusk said, “They’re bullies.”

There was a second of silence where Grovyle stared at Dusk, and Dusk looked as if he never wanted to speak again. “And you are…?”

“This is my best friend, Riolu,” Breeze said. “We have an exploration team together called Team Relic, ‘cause our first mission was getting back this cool rock he calls his relic fragment.”

Grovyle nodded. “And why does he look like he’s about to keel over?”

Breeze glanced at her partner, who had the slightest tremble in his arms. She would feel his cold, clammy paws through her fur. “Anxiety?” she said carefully, and Dusk managed a tiny nod. “New people make him nervous.” Especially after everything you did. That doesn’t matter. Because you’re here now, and you don’t remember hurting anyone.

“Oh.” Grovyle’s harsh tone disappeared. He looked at Dusk and raised his tied wrists. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said, “even if I was mad at you, I can’t actually do anything.” He picked the book he’d been reading back up. “Do either of you like books about feet?”

Breeze perked up. “Oh, is it a tracking guide? Show me!”

Grovyle raised an eyebrow ridge and tossed it gently towards them. It skid across the floor and came to a halt only a few steps away from Breeze. She opened it up, and Dusk peered over her shoulder.

“…This is a book on gardening.” Dusk said quietly, and Breeze moved to the side so he had a better view. Dusk flipped a few pages, frowning. “It’s just talking about soil parameters for increased apple quality. Why’d you say it was a book on tracking?”

“I didn’t,” Grovyle pointed out, “I said it was a book about feet.” He gestured to the others beside him, “They’re all books filled with feet. Frankly, it’s disturbing.”

“They’re footprint runes,” Breeze pointed out.

“They’re drawings of feet.”

Dusk looked up. “You can’t read footprint runes?”

Grovyle said nothing. He made a face and stared at the books beside him.

“How can you not read them?” Breeze asked, “Dusk said every Pokémon could! You’re a Pokémon, you’re not -” she stopped, “Did you… used to be a human?”

“A what?” Grovyle asked, eyebrow ridge raised once more.

“He might not remember,” Dusk whispered.

“I heard that.” Grovyle snapped, “It’s great to know I’m the topic of your gossip. If you’re going to be talking about me behind my back, the least you could do is untie me and let me go.”

Dusk swallowed and looked down.

“That’s not our choice to make,” Breeze said, and made a valiant effort to keep her voice gentle. “That’s the Guildmaster’s and Dusknoir’s.”

Grovyle huffed. “You always have a choice,” he said, “now, you’re choosing to be a coward. I haven’t done anything to deserve this.” He narrowed his eyes, “Have I?”

Breeze swallowed and looked down. Dusk looked over his shoulder, at the doorway behind him.

Grovyle’s voice wavered. “What did I do?”

They didn’t say anything.

“Did I hurt someone?” Grovyle asked.

More silence. More uncomfortable, awkward shuffling.

“Did I hurt you?”

Breeze looked up. Grovyle stared at her. He was scared – it was written all over his face.

It was almost like Crystal Cave all over again - but no, not at all. She and Dusk had the power now. Grovyle just wanted answers. Like she’d just wanted answers when she woke up on the beach. But he actually knew people who had those answers – would she have reacted any differently? If she was the one tied up… she’d probably be screaming at them, actually, and demanding they tell her anything .

But Grovyle, for the most part, was calm. Scared, but calm.

I’d want to know the truth.

She looked into his eyes and opened her mouth.

The guild’s alarm knocked her off her feet.

The floor shook with the Guildmaster’s wails, and Grovyle was on his feet with leaf blades at the ready. There wasn’t time to focus on him – Dusk pulled Breeze up and out the doorway, where all the other apprentices had gathered. Sunflora’s party had returned and scrambled down the ladder. Chatot tried to soothe the Guildmaster, who was sobbing almost hard enough to make the floor shake. Chimecho floated over the still form of a chimchar. A slowking sat behind them, clearly exhausted. Croagunk offered him an apple, and Dugtrio offered him a towel.

Bidoof had taken sentry duty today, and they found him and Loudred side by side at the edge of the commotion.

“What happened?” Dusk asked.

Bidoof swallowed. Loudred was silent.

“Helpful,” Breeze snapped.

“We dunno,” Bidoof admitted, “but it’s got the Guildmaster in such a tizzy -”

“This is not a tizzy,” Breeze cut in, “this is a full-blown meltdown. What happened? ”

Chatot had finally managed to calm the Guildmaster down enough that the others could think over his sobs. Chimecho called Corphish over – had anyone left for explorations today? – and the two, carefully, began to try and move Chimchar.

“I know, I know,” Chatot soothed, and gently patted the Guildmaster with a wing. “I can’t help unless I know what happened. Would you like to write it down? Would that help?” Wigglytuff shook his head. “Alright. We can wait until you’re ready.”

Slowking cleared his throat. “I believe… if I‘m not mistaken, what happened was a time gear was stolen.” Silence. Dead silence. “That young lad there is the only one who made it out, and he passed out from the shock when we made landfall –”

“What do you MEAN a time gear was stolen?!” Loudred snapped, and just like that, the silence was gone.

“From where?” Dusk asked, “We know where all of them are!”

“We put them back!” Breeze added.

“Oh my gosh!” Sunflora screamed over them, “Was it Azelf’s?! Is Azelf okay? Oh my gosh, we were just at Mesprit’s, does she know - ”

“Hey hey! We have the thief!” Corphish cut in, nearly dropping the unconscious Chimchar. “So who’s the one who -”

“Dusknoir said he had a partner.” Chimecho added quickly, “but he said that partner was still in the -”

“SILENCE!”

Everyone shut up. Chatot stood there, feathers fluffed, breathing heavily. “Do not forget ,” he gave a sharp gesture to his left, “that there are others who can hear us.”

Silently, simultaneously, the apprentices looked over at the curtain between them and Grovyle. Breeze could see his feet under it – he’d gotten as close to the commotion as he could.

“Get back to your posts,” Chatot ordered, and turned to Chimecho. With a nod, she was excused from the order, and continued to pull Chimchar down the hall. “We will debrief at dinner. Until then, keep this between us. Do not cause panic.” He turned to Slowking, “if you’d mind giving me a hand, Sir, I have some questions for you.”

“’Course,” Slowking said, “just give me a bit to get my land legs back.” Croagunk offered a hand to help him up. Slowly, they began to help the Guildmaster to his room.

“Chatot, wait!” Dusk called and pulled Breeze behind him. Chatot turned to them. “There has to be something we can do.”

“We should tell Dusknoir,” Breeze added, “we can go find him, it won’t take more than an hour –”

“No.” Chatot said. He gestured to Grovyle’s room. “You have your job. Now, more than ever, it is important that you follow your orders and ease your guildmates’ fears.”

“You know what else is important?” Breeze growled, “Telling Dusknoir that something is wrong! If the time gears are going missing again, that’s his time they’re breaking – that can’t be good for him! We need to tell him!”

“That’s enough!” Chatot snapped, “I have tolerated more than enough of your backtalk, Vulpix. I have more important things to focus on than your poor attitude. Do not forget, you are the one who wanted Grovyle here – if you don’t trust him enough to watch him, then we can arrange to send him elsewhere. Until then,” he gave a sharp gesture to Grovyle’s room, and slammed the door between them.

Team Relic stood there, twitching, as their guildmates tried to get back to work around them. Breeze dug her paws into the ground. “How…?” How do we face Grovyle? How do we tell him what happened? How do we go in there and lie when he’ll know we are? How can Chatot be such a jerk about this, does he not understand what he’s making us do?

Dusk placed a shaking paw on her back and led her over to Grovyle’s room. They stopped at the wall beside the doorway, and he turned her around.

They completed their guard duty for the day by sitting nearly silent outside of Grovyle’s room.

Chapter Text

Chimchar’s most severe injury was the shock he had suffered. The fear and adrenaline of what had happened had left him drained, and he had passed out as soon as he realized he was safe. The Guildmaster, as empathetic as ever, had tried to bundle away his negative emotions so he wasn’t creating unnecessary stress for the others. Chatot respected that.

Of course, as soon as he returned to the guild, a safe place, the Guildmaster’s walls had fallen and left him inconsolable for quite a few hours. By the time Wigglytuff had calmed down enough that he could hold a conversation without the risk of property damage once more, Chimchar had woken up and after some gentle prodding, was finally able to tell them what had happened.

“I’m from just outside of Dark Crater,” he said, “I’ve lived there for a few years. It’s nice. I mean, it’s weird if you get too close – you have to sleep far away from the dungeon entrance, or someone uses a terrifyingly intense version of the move nightmare on you, you know? There was a bit where it stopped, we thought, but this magmar I knew tried to do it a few months ago and he got… really messed up.” Chimchar pulled a face. Chatot, Wigglytuff, Slowking, and Chimecho all sat across from him. They waited patiently. Chimchar continued to be silent.

“I’m sorry,” Chatot said at last, “but what does this have to do with what happened to the island?”

“Right. Yeah. That.” Chimchar swallowed and stared at the ground. “I was here a few days ago. In town. I got a ride in with a Seaking who was going to be heading this way, and I heard about what was going on with the time gears. I was spreading the rumour, too. I wanted Grovyle caught. I don’t want the future to be paralyzed.” He pointed to Chimecho, “I talked to you, I think, right before I went home. And then I did and everything was fine.”

“What changed?” Chimecho asked, gently.

“I don’t know.” Chimchar said quietly. “I was preparing my dinner when everything just felt really, really wrong. Everyone nearby felt it too. I saw a bunch of talonflame fly off, and I just kind of panicked. I grabbed a piece of charcoal and threw it into the water. I was going to use it as a boat, I guess? I don’t know. I thought Giant Volcano was finally going to blow.” He laughed, awkward and uncomfortable. “That would’ve been nice. But instead this wave of – of – darkness, I guess? Launched out from Dark Crater. Everyone started to try and run for the water, but…” he trailed off, and stared at the ground again.

“They didn’t make it.” Chatot finished, simply.

“No,” Chimchar shook his head. “No one I saw did. I tried to paddle my log, and I got lucky with a rip tide, but it was too fast. So many people got stuck and I just – I don’t know how I survived. I don’t know how I managed to get away fast enough when so many water types couldn’t. I don’t know what made it stop before it could reach me.” He stared at his hands, “I don’t know why I survived.”

Chimecho floated over and began to rub small, soft circles on Chimchar’s back. “The important thing is that you did,” she said, “and I’m glad.”

Chatot nodded. “We are all glad you survived, Chimchar.” He retreated to the chest at the edge of the Guildmaster’s quarters.

“Patrick,” Chimchar whispered, “I know that’s not a thing here but – but I really don’t want to be just Chimchar right now. Please, just – my name’s Patrick.”

Chatot frowned. An odd request, and an odd name – but after everything the boy had been through, he wasn’t about to be the one to refuse him this. “Very well then, Patrick.” He pulled Grovyle’s map from the chest and returned to the group. “Guildmaster, you’re skilled with cartography. Do you know what dungeons are marked here?”

Wigglytuff hummed as he took the map. He turned it upside down, then looked at the back. “There’s a lot of them! But they’ve marked all the lakes with these dots, and then the ocean, and do you know which dungeon this is, Patrick?”

Patrick looked up. He swallowed. “Yeah. That’s Dark Crater. I – you guys caught Grovyle, didn’t you? Or Dusknoir did. The great Dusknoir. What happened? If there – why would there be a time gear there? Who would take it?”

“That is the question we’re trying to answer,” Chatot said. “The Guildmaster and I have much to discuss. Chimecho, I believe Loudred took over your duties regarding dinner –”

“I smelt the smoke,” Chimecho interrupted, “I know he did.”

“Yes, we all did. Regardless,” Chatot continued, “If you would be willing to inform your fellow apprentices about what we’ve learned and send Sunflora to retrieve Dusknoir so that the Guildmaster and I can fill him in, we would appreciate it.”

“Of course,” Chimecho said, and began to guide Patrick out of the room. She rang her bell and closed the door behind her.

Chatot took a long, deep, calming breath in. The Guildmaster turned to Slowking.

“Thank you for your help, friend! I’m sorry that it was such a bad trip.”

“Lad, I’ve been on plenty worse.” He leaned over to look at the map, “That ocean dot is in a glacier, as far as I know. Old sea-farrier stories call it the Surrounded Sea – but it’s been frozen over for ages now.”

“Has it?” Chatot flew over and perched beside Wigglytuff so he could see the map as well. “Do you know any more about it?”

“’Friad not,” Slowking admitted, “But I’ve heard tell that currents from across the ocean converge near there. I’ve never put much thought into them, ya see.” He frowned, “is there a time gear there as well?”

“It has the same marks as the other time gear locations,” Chatot said, “it’s not an unreasonable assumption.”

“What do the other dungeons mean?” Wigglytuff asked and held the map particularly close to his face. “We sent a team to Eastern Forest, and they only found forest! Lots of Pokémon go to Beach Cave every day, and they don’t find anything weird!”

Chatot hesitated a moment. “We could, perhaps, send Team Relic.”

The Guildmaster frowned and then shook his head. “Nope! They have a job here they need to do. And they’re still hurt, they should stay and rest.” He turned to Slowking and rolled up the map. “Would you like me to walk you out, friendly-friend?”

Slowking opened his mouth – then he glanced at Chatot. “I can find my own way.” He said instead, “We can speak more once the dawn rises, laddie. Give that boy my best.” He left in a hurry.

Chatot, to his credit, waited until the door was closed. “Team Relic is our best asset. Vulpix is capable of seeing the future – she could find out what is happening for us!”

“Does it work like that?” Wigglytuff asked, confused. “I thought she couldn’t control it.”

“She won’t get better if she doesn’t use it, ” Chatot argued. “We could hand her this map and see what she sees. We could send her to each of these locations -”

“And make her an easy target?” Wigglytuff interrupted. “I don’t want to do that to her. I don’t want to put anymore friendly friends in harm's way when we don’t know what could hurt them.”

“We won’t learn more if we keep them here,” Chatot replied. “We could send Sunflora or Corphish with Team Relic to investigate.”

“Orrr,” Wigglytuff said, “We could just send Sunflora and Corphish, and Team Relic can stay here and make sure nothing comes after Grovyle again!”

“Guildmaster,” Chatot said, kind but stern, “if Team Relic is not given a mission outside the guild soon they will sneak out. And that will be more dangerous, because we won’t know where they are.”

Wigglytuff made a face and whined. “Why do meanies have to break the world?” He covered his eyes with his hands. “Why do I have to be a meanie too, so they don’t hurt more Pokémon? I don’t want to be a meanie, Chatot!”

Chatot sighed and reached over to gently brush some feathers over Wigglytuff’s shoulder. “I know. Neither do I.”

.-.

Dusknoir had started to view his time in the past as a well-deserved vacation. Today, he’d spent several hours in the hot springs, conversing with the various other Pokémon there. He’d had a relaxing, interesting day, free from any appearances of the hallucination that still haunted him.

Clearly, Grovyle had not just hit him with an x-eye seed. Dusknoir wouldn’t be surprised if it had been some sort of human-created item Grovyle had been dragging around with him specifically in case they had to fight.

But that aside, he’d had a good day. He did not want to have to play pretend with the guild apprentice that came to ruin it.

“Ah, Sunflora,” he said as she entered his and the sableye’s camp uninvited, “What brings you—” he caught sight of her look. “What’s the matter?”

Sunflora kept her voice low. “A time gear was stolen from Dark Crater.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“The Guildmaster wants to talk to you,” she continued. She’d rehearsed her speech, clearly, but Dusknoir could still see her shiver.

“Of course.” Dusknoir said and finished his chesto tea. He set the mug down on a stump and followed her back to the Guild.

The main room was empty when he reached the Guild. He could hear Breanna and her friend ridiculing one of their guildmates for his messy eating habits in the mess hall. Their happiness was clearly an act. Grovyle was also unguarded, again.

Despicable.

Dusknoir entered Wigglytuff’s chambers and greeted him and Chatot with a simple nod. That was as much time as he was willing to waste on ‘pleasantries.’ “Sunflora told me about the stolen time gear. How did this happen? I thought we secured them all.”

Chatot looked up from what appeared to be a map. It was poor quality and heavily worn. “As did we.”

Wigglytuff took his hand and began to dance around Dusknoir as he recounted his trip to the volcanic region. The Chimchar he’d saved caught Dusknoir a bit off guard – but of course, the reaction he had was practically nonexistent compared to the reveal of a ‘shadow that caused nightmares’ which had haunted the area. They finished the explanation by showing him a colour coded map. He recognized the locations marked on it automatically – he was half the reason they knew there was anything noteworthy there. He had a similar map in his own bag that didn’t get quite as specific, as well.

They’d marked the location of every time gear in one colour, and every probable location their undirected time travel could throw them in another. With no small amount of convincing, Chatot handed over the map for a closer inspection.

Dusknoir’s smile was forced. He waved a thumb over the dot on Serenity River and expended the slightest amount of energy reserved for his ice punch in making it colder.

The invisible ink popped up automatically, written in human cursive. Ideal spot. Day hike to base.

Dusknoir’s stomach dropped.

“Ohh?” Wigglytuff sung, as he twirled up behind Dusknoir with no warning at all. “Did you do it? Did you crack the code? What’s it say, what’s it say?”

Dusknoir didn’t reply right away. He let the writing fade. He couldn’t recall – could Pokémon of this time read human languages? It was getting steadily harder to focus on the conversation at hand.

“I’m not sure,” he said at last. That was a strain. He had to focus – breathe.

“Is something the matter?” Chatot asked. He wasn’t unkind about it, but Dusknoir was certain that as it stood the flying type would see through any lies he’d try to provide.

“I just recognized that handwriting.” He said at last. The weight in his stomach twisted deeper, and desperately tried to claw its way up and out of his mouth. How could he not recognize the handwriting? He’d stood side by side with the boy’s parents as they tried to teach their children to read and write. The D in Day was stylized, with lines along the curved side to represent the sun. He’d been the first one to write it like that, and at the time, the four year old boy had been so excited to copy his work. 

He’d had no idea that Dusknoir had stolen the silly little doodle from his birth mother.

Chatot fluttered. “Well? Out with it, then! If Grovyle has an active partner in crime—”

“This wasn’t his partner.” Dusknoir interjected. No, that role was Breanna’s, and she’d worn it like an asinine badge of honour. “This boy is—” he hadn’t seen the rockslide. He’d just seen the blood, and Breanna, weeks later, down one leg and filled with so much more rage. He’d never actually seen Nolan, had he assumed…? No. He couldn’t have. They had tortured the stragglers that hadn’t escaped to the past, one of them would have cracked and revealed their secret operative. They had to have. They were children!

“This boy is what?” Wigglytuff pressed.

“—Dead.” Dusknoir finished. He had to be. “And human. This is one of their languages, and the most common in the area the boy was from.”

“Oh,” Wigglytuff said. He deflated a bit. “Aw, that’s a sad secret! Do you want a hug?”

Dusknoir backpedaled. “Uh – no. Not at all,” He had to regain his composure. “I apologize. It just caught me off guard.” Perhaps it was Breanna’s handwriting, and she was copying her brother to honour him. The girl had done stranger things – but, of course, her handwriting had never been anywhere as neat as Nolan’s was. “But no, I know he was not part of this. Grovyle is the reason this boy, Nolan, is no longer with us. I don’t have an explanation for why his handwriting would have been copied like this.”

“Ah,” Chatot cleared his throat. “I am sorry to hear them. Would you mind revealing the writing once more, though? I’d like to copy it.”

Dusknoir did mind. However, it wasn’t as if Chatot could read it. He had no reason in their heads to disagree. The urge was still there, however.

“Of course,” Dusknoir said, and laid the map on the ground. Again, he cooled it. Each dot had a note next to it. The ones near the landing spaces were simple sentences listing how long it would take to get to the base, aside from a you’re not human you’re Ditto near Beach Cave. Of course, their base was labeled as such. The time gears had a short blurb about the guardian and the puzzle – the Underground Lake was labeled with Mesprit, being of emotion. Rash. Jump in quicksand. Treeshroud Forest’s label designated it as guarded, psychic type. Small group = shorter dungeon. There were similar labels for Fogbound Lake and the Limestone Cavern.

On the other hand, Dark Crater was just labeled the idiot zone. The Surrounded Sea was designated wet and wild. And Crystal Lake’s label was… longer.

Remember the crystals, Breeze. All light blue. Azelf might be reasonable, so don’t yell at him – talk while Grovyle grabs the gear. Fill him in and get him out. Keep your escape orbs in hand, and I’d say make sure Grovyle has one, but we know he will. Be ready to distract if talking doesn’t work.

If I’m not here, make this the last stop. Know how the others work before you try for this one. Azelf will have a plan to stop you. Be careful. Love you, sis. See you on the other side.

Dusknoir practically choked on the denial he desperately tried to cling to.

Chatot dutifully wrote down the notes, and a few of his own in footprint runes. “Invisible ink is supposed to appear when exposed to heat. It’s strange that this is the opposite.”

“It’s common in my time.” Dusknoir said. “I don’t suppose you’d mind if I took this with me and examined it further?”

Wigglytuff hummed. A bad sign. “You can come here and look if you want to, but it might get wet if you take it outside! Or it might scare Pokémon!”

Damn. “Of course. I’ll likely return tomorrow then; I’d like to take the night to brainstorm with my associates. I wasn't aware there were more than five time gears.” He pointed to the Surrounded Sea, “what do we know about this location?”

“It’s icy!” Wigglytuff said, “It’s been blocked off for ten thousand years! ” He waved his hands, spookily.

“Allegedly, currents from all over the ocean converge there,” Chatot added “but the Guildmaster is right. It’s been inaccessible ages; all that exists of it are vague stories. We’re still trying to find more specific information pertaining to it.”

Dusknoir nodded. “Whoever made this map would not have included it if they didn’t believe it was a viable option.” That said, the label suggested they hadn’t exactly spent ages looking into it. “I’ll see what I can find on that as well.”

Chatot nodded. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let the Guildmaster or myself assist you?”

“Unfortunately, no. I don’t want to risk causing a paradox and damaging your time.” Hah, hundreds of comedians frozen in time and here he was making jokes. “But I’ll do everything I can to catch this other thief, I promise you that.”

He took his leave with that and returned to the main room. Dusknoir could still feel the frustration and grief desperately trying to claw its way up his throat. It wasn’t made any better by a shout of his name.

Dusknoir turned to see the wrong sibling running towards him. Breanna stopped far too close. Her partner and the other Guild apprentices, along with Chimchar, trailed a short distance behind her. “Have you heard? Did Chatot and the Guildmaster tell you?”

“Speak slower, I can still see food in your mouth, and I have no desire for you to choke.” Dusknoir chided. Breanna pulled back and swallowed her meal. “Yes, I’ve heard. Sunflora retrieved me initially, and I’ve just finished learning the details.”

“Did you know one of your Sableye was beaten half to death?” She asked.

Dusknoir mentally vowed to finish the job. “I did. He returned from his own exploration severely injured, and we’ve done our best to treat him.”

That seemed to satisfy Breanna and her partner, who had crept up beside her as well. “Oh. Good.” She sighed, “thanks. What hurt him?”

“Typical dungeon danger, you understand.” Dusknoir said easily. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I must—”

“Do you know who took the time gear?” Diglett asked.

“Hey hey! Did you know there was one there?” Corphish asked.

“How could he NOT?” Loudred shouted, “He’s from the FUTURE!”

Dusknoir could feel a headache building. “Please—”

“Oh golly, what if we’ve broken his future?” Bidoof fretted.

“We have NOT!” Loudred announced, and Breanna nodded, as if she wasn’t trying to destroy the future.

“He wouldn’t be here if we had, I think.” Chimecho said.

“How would you break the future?” Chimchar asked, “We’re not Grovyle.”

Dusknoir massaged the side of his head. “Everyone, calm —”

There was a shout from behind him. “Hey! I can hear you, you know!” Grovyle shouted, and the other Pokémon went dead silent. “You know, if you’re going to imprison me, you could at least be quiet! ”

“Who is that?” Chimchar asked.

All of the other Pokémon looked away, and no one replied.

Chimchar’s voice cracked. “Why do you have someone in your closet? ”

“Excellent question!” Grovyle chimed in, “Why am I in your closet? Does anyone want to actually tell me?”

Chimchar stared at the curtain, lips pulled back in a grimace and blinking repeatedly as he tried to meet the eyes of anyone who would explain the current situation to him. He found none. He took a step away from the crowd, towards the curtain that blocked Grovyle from view.

Wigglytuff’s office door opened. “Everyone, calm down,” Chatot sighed, “we won’t fix anything by shouting at each other.”

“You have a person in your closet,” Chimchar said.

“It’s not a closet anymore!” Wigglytuff announced, and Dusknoir did not groan, although the urge was certainly there.

“That’s not his point,” Breanna spoke up, and Chimchar pointed to her, nodding.

“Would you like to tell him, then?” Chatot asked.

Breanna and Riolu looked at each other, then at the ground. Chimchar’s face fell.

“This is a complicated situation,” Dusknoir said, and lowered his voice as he gestured for Chimchar to join him closer to the mess hall. Chimchar didn’t even hesitate. “Within that room is a Pokémon with amnesia, who was once a horrible thief. As he doesn’t remember what he’s done, and the items he stole were returned, the decision was made—” his eye flickered over to Breanna, who shied back, “—to allow him to stay here until we know more about why he would do something like what he did. As it currently stands, he is not aware he was a bad Pokémon – for now, we’d like to keep it that way.”

It was enough of the truth. No one protested his explanation, although some of the guild apprentices – Loudred, Dugtrio, Sunflora – seemed a bit annoyed.

“Oh. Okay, I guess that makes sense?” He sounded more confused than anything, but in a second Chimchar had shaken it off and held out an excited hand towards Dusknoir. “Thank you for explaining! It’s an honour to meet you in person, Dusknoir, Sir! My name’s Patrick!”

Dusknoir’s proper smile twitched. “Ah. It is nice to meet you as well.” He accepted the handshake – his hand was as large as Chimchar’s arm. “I really must be going now. I’ll be in contact soon, once I have more information.”

He finally managed to leave with that, by some miracle. Dusknoir retreated from the guild and tried to enjoy the evening walk back to his base.

It was difficult with the echo of human footsteps that followed him, despite the fact there was nothing there.

.-.

Mesprit was, as far as she and her brothers were concerned, the middle sibling. Azelf was the youngest, and Uxie the eldest. There was no real proof to their theory – although they didn’t think there had to be. They all liked their role in their pointless family dynamic, and they had each decided they would act the part.

Azelf was her little brother. Of course, Mesprit was protective of him. So when she found his lake, clearly untouched for the past few days, she was naturally concerned, and she did what any good older sister would do – hid behind a crystal and waited for him to come home so she could scare him.

A night had passed before her concern became significantly more serious.

“Uxie,” She said, “Azelf isn’t here. Have you found him?”

Her older brother didn’t reply.

“Azelf,” she tried, “Where are you? I’m worried.”

He didn’t answer her either, but at least she had expected that.

There was only so long she could wait – Mesprit had a time gear to guard after all, even if time still hadn’t repaired itself at her lake. She carved a note for Azelf into a crystal and went home.

In the Underground Lake, the sands did not shift. The waves did not lap at the beaches of the lake. No currents stirred the water, and any Pokémon who had not been in the mystery dungeon were frozen, still as a Kangaskhan Statue.

That hadn’t changed – Mesprit hadn’t thought it would. She’d hoped, sure, but there was only so much faith she could put on that.

Mesprit ran her hands over the frozen waves and tried to make a dent in the water. It didn’t want to move – she pushed harder. Nothing. She called upon a future sight – when several minutes passed and the attack didn’t land, she had no choice but to admit an attack with future in the name wouldn’t work in the broken time.

With a sigh, Mesprit turned her gaze out over the rest of the lake. Something had been bothering her beyond her missing siblings, but she couldn’t place it. Something was wrong, clearly, but what?

She looked up and found her obvious answer.

The time gear was missing.

.-.

Uxie was petrified in Dark Crater.

There were seeds that could do this, or orbs, but he had no idea which one it was. He hadn’t seen. Now, there would be nothing he could do until something touched him. But time was frozen in Dark Crater now, and beside him, Azelf was too. He hadn’t had a chance to do any more than realize what state his brother was in before he’d been trapped, too. He hadn’t had time to even try and survey the situation before there was a wall of dark-type energy around him, not close enough to break the petrification, but close enough to block out everything else.

When you were the personification of knowledge, there were few things that you could not piece together. And when you were the being of willpower, there were few things that could break your determination to succeed. And yet, there they both were. Two more time gear guardians trapped, with no logical way out and no explanation as to why .

All Uxie could do was hold on to an illogical hope that the others would be okay – that his sister would be okay – as he tried to piece together what in Arceus’ name had happened.

.-.

There was a world far away yet right beside you, hidden in pocket between the yesterday that never was and the tomorrow that would never come. In the center of this world, levitating above it, was a tower.

What had started as a few cracked columns had spread upwards in a spiderweb of decay. Deep navy and silver bricks blew away in the wind; sometimes as a fine dust, worn away by the ages, and other times as tumbling clumps of suddenly unfired clay, as soft as the moment it was removed from the riverbed. Windows cracked into glass shards and blew away in grains of sand.

 A low, long groan echoed throughout the island, as the being on top of it desperately seized the moment of lucidity they found themself in.

Dialga pushed themself to their feet, their legs shaking from over exertion. They surveyed the damage – the ledge they’d been on was pockmarked with ages of footsteps that had never happened and had not been there the last time Dialga could clearly recall. In fact, the cement had not yet set.

Dialga scoffed and turned once more, the groan turning to a growl. “Arceus,” they said, “are you just going to let this happen? ”

There was no reply.

Dialga had not expected one.

That did not stop the rage that burned in their throat, or the roar that tore from it. The brief flicker of regret as more stonework and cement, new and old, aged itself to dust was not enough to stop them. It was not enough to pull them out of their fury.

In a volcanic cavern ages away, four bright blue gears desperately began to flicker.

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, there was time. The seasons changed. The planet spun. Day and night switched between each other, with dawn and dusk in between. Waves lapped at a shoreline, forging sandy beaches with worn down particles of rock. Wind blew and shook the leaves of the trees it passed through.

It was beautiful.

It was chaotic. Disorderly.

Master Dialga had fixed it. Saved it. He’d brought order to the world that couldn’t have survived without it. And the way he was repaid for it – monsters, who wanted to kill everyone, because they thought the world was ugly.

At age twelve, a boy named Nolan knew that better than anyone. He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He hadn’t been since he was ten, and those monsters had taken his father from him. Now, he had his own bed in Master Dialga’s base of operations.

It was sparse – there was a cot with one thin blanket, a trunk at the end of it, and a few hangers beside it. The room was lit with cracked luminous orbs, some far too bright and others barely flickering. There were two other teenagers who lived there, a pair of siblings named Andrea and Seth. Seth had said that the other beds would be occupied soon, so he had to take the only free one. It was right by the doorway, and a bit colder than the others, but that was fine! It was just like his dad used to say: “You have to make sacrifices if you want to do the right thing.”

Nolan had asked Seth if his dad had ever used any of these beds. Seth hadn’t known – he and Andrea weren’t part of Master Dialga’s ranks yet when Nolan’s dad had been. It was fair; Seth was only three years older than him, and Andrea was a year younger. They didn’t let little kids join Master Dialga’s army, it wasn’t safe!

Besides, his dad had been super important. Him and Hope. They’d probably had their own room for the nights they had to stay over – and it was probably awesome. It was probably heated, with a super-cool buffet in it with real meat – and a shower, too! And the light was probably firelight instead of orbs, and the walls were probably wood, and there’d be a picture of him, Mom, and Breanna on the wall –

Nolan wrapped his blanket tighter around himself. He was still cold, but it was comforting – like a weird, light hug. Like Hope would’ve given him, if he was covered in mud and Hope didn’t really want to touch him.

Oh, what am I doing? Nolan buried his face in his hands. His mom was going to be worried sick – all he’d left was a note saying that he was following Dad, she probably thought he’d died! And Breanna was going to be even more of a mess. Nolan had just left the both of them alone.

He could almost see his Dad’s disappointed frown, and hear Hope scolding him. “You could have jeopardized the mission entirely! We could have been killed, and for what? You thought you saw her? You ran right into her trap. You should be thankful we bothered to assist you. Next time, I will not let anyone save you. Am I understood?”

Wait. Nolan sat up, the blanket falling from his shoulders. I can hear Hope.

Nolan practically fell off the cot and launched himself out of the doorway. He heard the dim echo of Seth shouting after him – he didn’t care. He could hear Hope.

Nolan turned a corner to a row of arched doorways, and a gathering of Pokémon in the middle – a sableye, a chandelure, and a dusknoir. He bit his tongue.

“Hope?” He called.

The dusknoir glanced his way.

That was as much convincing as Nolan needed. “Hope!” He shouted, and practically flung himself at the now much larger Pokémon. Hope caught him but didn’t return the hug. “You’re – you’re alive?” He pulled back, “And you don’t have legs anymore?”

The chandelure scowled. “Lord Dusknoir, what is this? ”

Hope waved her off. His voice was cold, angry - terrifying. “I will handle it, if you handle him. ”

The sableye cowered. The chandelure didn’t look convinced. “I’ll wait for you.” She began to shove the sableye down the hall. Hope waited until they’d turned a corner.

“Nolan,” Hope’s voice was quiet and concerned. He sounded like himself, and Nolan desperately wanted to hug him again. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Nolan shot back. “You died.”

Hope ran a hand down his face. “I’ve evolved, we’re both aware you know exactly what that is—”

“I know!” Nolan hissed, “I’m not stupid, I’ve read books. I know what a dusknoir is.” He’d never actually seen one in person, and it was weird to see Hope as one, but he still knew what it was. “Mom said – she said they got you both. You and Dad.” Hope’s expression didn’t change. Nolan clenched his fists. “Where were you? Have you just – have you just been here this whole time?!”

“Don’t shout,” Hope chided. He still sounded worried, and he kept glancing over Nolan’s shoulder. “What did your mother tell you?”

“Nothing,” Nolan said. He looked back too – there was no one. “Just… that there’d been an accident at work, and you guys were…” He trailed off. He didn’t want to think about it. “But you’re not.” But Dad is.

“I’m not.” Hope repeated, and he sighed. He placed a gentle hand on Nolan’s shoulder and led him over to the wall. They both sat down against it – Hope towered over him now. He always had, technically, but not like this. “What did Breanna say?”

Nolan frowned. “Nothing? Nothing important, at least.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Nolan hesitated. “That it was your fault. That’s it.”

There was a long pause, and then Hope’s face fell. “I’m sorry she feels that way. I never wanted to put her in harm’s way – but that...” He trailed off, “What do you know of the Planetary Investigation Team?”

“Not – wait,” Nolan scowled, “Those aren’t those crazy people Aunt Melody was a part of, were they? They wouldn’t leave us alone after Dad died. Mom was ready to get a mob with pitchforks and torches before they just randomly stopped bothering us.”

“Of course,” Hope said. “Yes, they are the same. Or were, they’ve been dealt with after what they did to your father.” Something seemed wrong with Hope’s voice, and after so long Nolan almost couldn’t place it. “They thought your sister would be the key to one of their asinine plans – your father went on ahead, and I retreated back to Master Dialga for backup. I was too late to help him, unfortunately.” Hope looked away, down the dim hall. “If Breanna wants to hate me, then so be it. I did what I had to do.”

“Oh.” Nolan placed a hand on Hope’s shoulder – it was a difficult reach. I’m not stupid, he wanted to say, I know you’re lying.

He didn’t, though. He could ignore it; Hope was family, and he’d been alone. If he didn’t want to tell Nolan the full truth – probably that he hadn’t been too late, and that he’d tried, but it hadn’t been enough to save his partner – then Nolan could deal with it. He wasn’t a little kid, not like Breanna.

“Now,” Hope said, his voice stern once again, “what are you doing here?”

Nolan beamed. “What do you think? I’m going to save the world, just like you and Dad!”

Hope’s expression twitched. “And what does your mother think of this?”

“She’s fine,” Nolan lied. Hope stared at him. “…She doesn’t know. I left her a vague note.”

Hope sighed. “I’d expect that kind of behaviour from your sister, not you. I’m disappointed, Nolan.”

“Bold claims from the ‘mon who faked his death by omission.”

Hope was silent for a second. And then he chuckled and floated back up. “I have missed you all,” he said, “but your mother thought it’d be better if I kept my distance. It’s been nice to see you again.”

Nolan’s face fell, and he scrambled to his feet. “You… sound like you’re leaving.”

“I have a job to do.” Hope said, “I’ll see you when I can, Nolan, but that is not now. Master Dialga has high standards – and I expect you to live up to them. Understood, young man?”

Nolan nodded. It wasn’t forever. They both worked for Master Dialga now, and he could be a hero just like Hope and his Dad. “I love you, Hope.”

“Here, it’s Lord Dusknoir.” Hope corrected. But he lowered his voice and mussed Nolan’s hair anyway. “But I love you, too.”

The conversation ended there. Pokémon were weird about goodbyes, Nolan had learned. They almost never actually said it. It was strange. All Nolan could do was watch Hope leave for a moment before a pair of rough hands grabbed him by his shoulders.

Seth spun him around. “What in Dialga’s name were you doing?!” He hissed, “That is Lord Dusknoir, newbie. You don’t just talk to Lord Dusknoir!” He narrowed his eyes, “He wasn’t even speaking English. What kind of freak stuff were you doing?”

Nolan shoved the older boy back. “Not that it’s any of your business, ” he snapped, “but his name is Hope and he’s family.”

Seth scowled. “He’s a Pokémon.” His sister poked her head around the corner and watched them in concern. “Listen up. I don’t care who you think you were before – now you’re just one of us, a face in a crowd. Lord Dusknoir doesn’t care about anyone but Master Dialga, and if you pester him like that again, he won’t bother to humour you. He will kill you. Got it, kid?”

Nolan rolled his eyes and shoved past Seth. “Whatever,” he said, “you don’t know him like I do.”

.-.

There was something about a lack of genuine sleep that made the sunrise even more beautiful.

Unfortunately, Dusknoir had a job to do. He didn’t have time for trivial things. After a night of planning and running through the possibilities, he had gathered the sableye.

“Your task, for the time being, is to gather information.” He said, “I need you to research and track down any reports of humans where there shouldn’t be.” A sableye opened their mouth, “Any. I don’t care if they’re on this island or not. Along with that, I want you to find any information on a Luxio who appears out of place. I don’t care about the why, I just want her found.” If he was still dealing with humans, then they must have been smart enough to avoid detection when Dusknoir had first started his search for Breanna. If he wasn’t, and he had another case of amnesiac humans-turned-Pokémon… Luxio was still a good first stop. An amnesiac was very impressionable, and Luxio would have had to take the lead in their place.

That same sableye opened their mouth again. “Which humans are we dealing with?”

Dusknoir scowled. The sableye wilted. “The most likely possibility is that Aurora Frost and Andrea Demi escaped our radar.” He said at last, and he caught the glances the sableye gave each other. “If you find them, and they are human, gather each other and strike to kill. I will deal with the Luxio.”

“Why wouldn’t we take them back to the stockade?” Another Sableye asked. Dusknoir glared at them. They looked down at the grass and didn’t press for an answer.

“If you would feel more comfortable, you may tie them up in this time before you kill them.” Dusknoir said. “The other possible human is Nolan.”

None of the Sableye looked at him.

“Do not try and attack him if you find him,” Dusknoir said. “Report back to me immediately. Follow him but keep your distance. He will kill you if you get too close.” That last bit was common sense, honestly. Nolan had excelled at fighting a crowd of smaller enemies. Most Pokémon struggled with that, and Nolan was a human teenager. In any other situation, Dusknoir would be extremely proud. Part of him still wanted to be.

Instead, all he could manage was a desperate trace of hopeful denial. He’d accepted Breanna’s path. He could deal with it. But Nolan was different. It could be any other human, any other Pokémon, as long as it wasn’t him.

.-.

The guild forwent their morning cheers the next day. Patrick had spent the night in the Guildmaster’s quarters, and while no one had gotten more than a few hours worth of sleep, everyone was up at the crack of dawn to start planning.

This time, however, they were on the guild’s first floor, between the notice boards, so Grovyle wouldn’t be able to overhear them. Chatot had a suspicion that at this point it wouldn’t do much good, but it was better than continuing to give him information. Dusknoir met them once the sun was above the horizon – about 6:45 – and the briefing began.

“What I am about to say to you does not leave this room, am I understood?” Dusknoir said. The apprentices nodded. “I am going to tell you something that could cause a panic, worse than anything experienced before. The world can know about the theft – it is important that they do, so we can be prepared. But the true perpetrators can not leave this room.” More nods. Patrick looked around in confusion.

“Why?” He asked. He held up his hands a second later, “N-not that I don’t trust you, Dusknoir, sir! It’s just – I thought we were a big help in catching Grovyle with the rumours?” He paused. “Us – us people outside of the, uh, Guild, I mean.”

“That is true,” Dusknoir said gently. “But this is different. We are not trying to lure them anywhere – besides that, there is only one possible culprit who would be able to understand us.” He paused, and Chatot watched Wigglytuff frown. “In my time, Grovyle did not act alone. As far as I had been made aware, all of his associates had either perished or been neutralized. With the recent development, I now see the error in that assumption.”

Chatot caught the sympathetic look Wigglytuff gave Dusknoir. He didn’t show one as well: he didn’t want Dusknoir to think he was being mocked. After the struggle he’d had dealing with the reveal of that human boy’s handwriting on Grovyle’s map, the fact that he was able to push past that in the name of protecting time was very admirable.

Dusknoir continued, “The first possible suspect, and the one you are most likely to see, is a Luxio. For those of you who are not aware, this is the evolved form of a shinx. I have prepared some sketches of her, if you would like a visual refresher on her species.” He passed a small bundle of papers to Loudred, the closest Pokémon to him. Loudred pulled a face and passed them on.

“But I don’t get it,” Patrick spoke up again, “why can’t we tell everyone about her? You told everyone about Grovyle.”

“Hey hey,” Corphish whispered, “let him finish!”

“No, no,” Dusknoir said, “it’s alright. Chimchar has a point. You are free to spread the word of Luxio as a highly wanted outlaw but be clear that she is not to be approached: it is her companions that make this warning necessary.” Again, he paused. “Luxio would have come to your time with two humans.”

Several faces stared back at him.

“TWO?!” Loudred and Vulpix shouted in sync. Chatot nearly joined them.

“There’s humans?! ” Patrick said, a bit too excited. “Like, real humans?!”

“Oh my gosh!” Sunflora gasped, “They’ve been here this whole time? Oh my gosh!”

“Dad,” Diglett asked, “have you ever seen a human before?”

“We have not,” Dugtrio said, “we thought it would be better to not engage with them.”

“You were right,” Croagunk said, which did absolutely nothing to calm anyone down.

“You know humans?” Vulpix asked.

Croagunk chuckled. “I’ve met a few. They’re awful creatures with no respect.”

“Oh,” Vulpix said softly. Riolu put a paw on her shoulder.

“No, they’re not!” Patrick snapped, “Just because you met a few bad ones doesn’t mean all humans suck!”

“Everyone, please, ” Dusknoir spoke up, his hands raised as he pleaded. “We don’t have the time for this discussion right now. You can talk about humans later – for now, let me finish.”

Several sheepish faces turned back to Dusknoir. Chatot took the lead. “My apologies, Dusknoir, Sir.” He said, “I’m sure they’ll be more respectful throughout the rest of your announcement.”

A few of the apprentices gave him poorly-hidden sour looks. Patrick gave Croagunk one last glare. Croagunk was unphased.

“Thank you,” Dusknoir said. “These two humans are named Andrea Demi and Aurora Frost. They are both young women with pale skin, and neither are capable of understanding our language. You will be able to recognize Aurora by her slender frame and cropped blonde hair. In addition, she is the one Luxio will report back to. Be wary of that.” He paused. “Andrea will be more difficult to spot. Not only is she trained in avoiding detection and will have likely changed her appearance since the last time I saw her, but she also possesses the Dimensional Scream.”

All of the apprentices turned to Vulpix. Patrick, clearly confused, did as well.

“What’s the Dimensional Scream?” He asked.

“It’s an ability Vulpix has,” Riolu explained. “We used it to track down Grovyle before. It allows her to see or hear something from the past or future when she touches something related to it. It doesn’t always work, though.” He put a paw on his chin and gave Vulpix a curious look.

“What?” Patrick looked around, “This has to be a joke. That’s something psychic types should be able to do! You’re not a psychic type, you’re a Vulpix. At least with humans it could make sense, with you it’s just stupid.”

Vulpix chewed on her lip and said nothing.

“I think we should be thankful,” Chimecho said. “This means we have an edge over those humans. We can understand them – they can’t understand us.”

“Oh!” Bidoof said, “Should I go get my crystal?”

“If you could, please do.” Dusknoir said, “It may prove useful again.”

Bidoof nodded and ran down the ladder.

“Last time I got two screams from something they were right after each other.” Vulpix said, “I don’t know if this will work.”

“With the interference of more people from the future, time is in flux.” Dusknoir said patiently, “There is a chance you could have another. It would be in our best interest to cover all of our bases.”

“This is so dumb,” Patrick grumbled. Riolu and Vulpix took a few side steps away from him. “This is the dumbest plan ever.”

Dusknoir clearly frowned. “Do you have another idea? I’m sure we’re all open to suggestions.”

Patrick’s eyes widened and he looked around the room. “I – I’m sorry.” He said quickly, “I didn’t mean to be rude, especially not to you – I mean, you’re the great Dusknoir! You obviously know what you’re talking about. Even if it’s… kind of weird…”

Thankfully, the awkward situation was saved when Bidoof returned with his crystal. He set it down in front of Vulpix, breathing heavily.

“Sorry,” he said, “I forgot where I hid it!”

“That’s okay,” Vulpix said quietly, clearly nervous as she looked around the room. She swallowed. Everyone watched her. “O-okay,” she placed a paw on it, “here we go.”

There was a long, awkward moment of silence.

“Anything?” Riolu asked.

Vulpix pulled her paw back. “No.” She looked up at Dusknoir, “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Dusknoir said.

“Golly, it’s not like you can force it.” Bidoof added, “maybe we can try again later!” Vulpix gave him a small smile.

Chatot took his cue, and stepped forwards. “With that all said and done,” he said, “our first step needs to be covering our bases. We need to check on the other Time Gears. Guildmaster,” he looked back at Wigglytuff, and waited for the thankfully awake Pokémon to hand him a list. “Thank you. We have five locations we need to check. Thankfully, we do have allies. The Guildmaster has contacted some friends to check out Limestone Cavern. Dusknoir, sir,” He looked back, “Would you and your associates be willing to check in with Uxie at Fogbound Lake?”

Dusknoir blinked in surprise. “Er – of course. I’ll set out as soon as we’re done.”

Chatot nodded. “Thank you. If you need it, we can provide a teleport there and back – as well as assistance solving the puzzle, if necessary.” He cleared his throat, “Sunflora and Loudred, your assignment is Treeshroud Forest.” The two nodded to each other. Good. “Corphish, Dugtrio, and Bidoof, your assignment is the Underground Lake. Croagunk and Chimecho, yours’ is Crystal Cave. Diglet,” he paused, “you’ve been assigned your regular job of sentry duty. Do your best to keep the Guild functional while your fellow apprentices are gone. If you need assistance, Team Relic will also be here on guard duty.”

Vulpix and Riolu groaned. Diglett focused on the ground. “Oh,” he said, “okay. I’ll do my best.”

Patrick raised a hand. “Um,” he said, “am I doing anything?”

“Of course,” Chatot replied, “you’ll be helping the Guildmaster and I with research.”

“It’ll be really cool!” Wigglytuff said and bounced on the spot. “We’re going to look through old mission reports, but it’ll be like a game! Chatot knows how to make it fun!”

Patrick looked incredibly uncomfortable, though Chatot couldn’t place why. Searching through records wasn’t actually that entertaining, sure, but that warranted annoyance more so than borderline fear.

“O-okay,” Patrick said, “I’ll do my best.”

“Very good,” Chatot said. “Alright then Pokémon, time to get to work!”

“Hooray!” The apprentices cheered. They split off into each of their groups, including Vulpix and Riolu, who leaned closer to each other and began to whisper conspiratorially. Chatot hesitated only a moment before he left the group to head to the lower floor.

Dusknoir hadn’t mentioned the human from last night, only these new women. That was… disappointing, but for now, Chatot would not press it. He had something much more relevant to attend to.

Chatot pushed the curtain aside and stepped into Grovyle’s room. Grovyle was awake, of course, and halfway through building a wall out of the books he’d been given. He greeted Chatot with an annoyed huff.

“Hello,” Chatot said, “I wanted to ask you something.”

Grovyle scoffed, ignored him, and continued to build his tower.

“A few days ago, you mentioned that you knew someone named Aurora,” Chatot continued, unperturbed. “What can you tell me about her?”

“What can you tell me about why I’m tied up here?” Grovyle replied.

Ah. Chatot didn’t even bother to pretend to be surprised at the question. “We’ve already told you everything we know.”

Grovyle stared at him, utterly unconvinced. “Fine then.” He said, “then so have I.”

“I’m offering you a chance to help yourself,” Chatot replied. He didn’t have the energy to pretend to be upset by this – he hadn’t expected a useful answer. “This ‘Aurora’ is dangerous. What you share about her could save many lives.”

Again, Grovyle scoffed. “Sure.”

He didn’t seem defensive, just annoyed. Still, Chatot needed to cover his bases. “You disagree?” He asked.

Grovyle rolled his eyes and stretched, rolling his shoulders back as he held his bound hands over his head. The rope shone oddly in the dim light. “How about this,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I think I know, if— ” He paused, dropped his arms, and locked eyes with Chatot. “—you prove to me you’ve told my family where I am.”

Chatot’s feathers stood on end. “Pardon me?”

“My sister’s name is Rose,” Grovyle continued, still watching Chatot. “We’re twins, but she’s older than me, so I’d imagine is a Grovyle too. My brother’s name is Aster. He’s younger – he’d still be a Treecko, he’s too frail to evolve. If you can find them and prove that you told them I’m here, then I’ll talk. Otherwise,” he scowled, “if you’re going to tie me up and try to force your half-formed stories about why upon me, the least you can do is leave me alone.”

“…Right.” Chatot forced his feathers flat. That had, inevitably, been as much of a dead end as he’d expected it to be. He gave Grovyle a nod and swept the curtains aside.

He nearly walked face-first into Vulpix.

Both of them stumbled back and stepped to the side to avoid each other.

“Sorry!” Riolu quickly apologized, despite the fact he’d played no part in that. He shooed Vulpix to a spot right beside the curtain, outside of Grovyle’s room.

Chatot frowned. “I believe you can put a bit more effort into guard duty than that.”

Vulpix huffed and Riolu looked away. “What do you want us to do?” Vulpix asked. “I’m not going to go in there and lie to him about everything.”

“You know,” Grovyle called, “you could come in here and tell me the truth.”

Vulpix and Riolu awkwardly pulled closer together, their eyes focused on the ground and their shuffling paws.

Chatot sighed. “Just be attentive and make sure he gets his meals,” he said, and retreated to the Guildmaster’s room.

.-.

Grovyle was alone.

He was not unguarded, though. He could hear the voices muffled through the wall, the roof, and knew those two ‘guards’ were still on the other side of his curtain doorway. Still, he slipped his wrists out of the ropes they’d tried to bind him in. He had a few hours before anyone would bother to come in, there was no point in playing along.

He’d have his chance soon. If these Pokémon weren’t going to tell him anything, then he had no reason to stay. He’d have better luck finding out what had happened to his memories on his own.

Chapter Text

Dusknoir felt like a fool.

He was no stranger to solo missions; no agent of Master Dialga’s was. Still, he had more important tasks to attend to than traveling through far away dungeons and solving pointlessly irritating puzzles just to check.

Honestly, Uxie’s Groudon illusion would have eliminated Luxio on the spot – and no human was foolish enough to attempt to fight a legendary head on and live. Besides, the women were scouts. They couldn’t win any fight. All the members of the Planetary Investigation Team who could were either dead or imprisoned in Master Dialga’s stockades.

And Nolan was not one of them. He was simply dead.

Time was still frozen around Steam Cave, which was perfectly fine. It meant the future was still solid, and that none of these idiot children had destroyed the timeline yet. Dusknoir made it to the end of the dungeon with no trouble at all.

He floated onto the plateau. No one came to greet him.

“Uxie?” He called, politely as he could. “It’s –”

A ball of light appeared before him, and Dusknoir couldn’t stop the defensive stance he stepped into when he saw pink. It wasn’t Celebi, of course, and Dusknoir felt foolish for even assuming that.

Mesprit floated before him. “He’s not here,” she said.

“Right.” Dusknoir looked past her – the Time Gear was still there. Good. “Why are you here, if I might ask?”

“Azelf’s is guarded,” She said shortly, and backed up. She kept her eyes on him. “Mine’s gone. Like my brothers. They went to Dark Crater and now they won’t respond.”

Dusknoir kept his distance. “The Time Gear from there was stolen. Why did none of you mention it?”

“The danger was over,” Mesprit snapped, “We were fine until Azelf went to tell Darkrai that Cresselia was gone. Now everything’s wrong and my brothers are gone. ”

“That sounds awful,” Dusknoir replied. “Who’s Cresselia?”

“Treeshroud’s Forest’s guardian,” Mesprit said, “We don’t know where she is. Ditto’s frozen too, so we can’t ask them. Everyone’s frozen or gone. It’s just me.”

“It isn’t,” Dusknoir said in an attempt to be soothing. It fell flat, and Mesprit glared at him.

“Fine. You try and get in contact with the Manaphy guarding the Surrounded Sea gear. You try and see if anyone’s alive there.” Mesprit’s aura flared, then abruptly cut out.

“The Guild is working on it,” Dusknoir said. Mesprit didn’t move. “They want to grant you protection. Mesprit?” She still didn’t move. Dusknoir sighed.

“Sloppy, dense, and exhausted.” Darkrai spoke up from behind him. Dusknoir spun around and pinched himself. He was still awake. He still had control. Still, it was hard to suppress the shiver when Darkrai grinned at him. “You’re not doing too well, Hope. What happened to the Great Dusknoir?”

“What are you doing here?” Dusknoir snapped.

Darkrai put a hand over his chest. “We’re on the same side, there’s no need to be rude.” He flew past Dusknoir and examined Mesprit. “Isn’t it fascinating how quickly stress can break down a natural resistance?” He pulled Mesprit’s face towards him. “I’ll have to bring this one back with me. It’ll be fun to have the full set.”

Dusknoir scowled. He flew over and pried Darkrai’s wrist off Mesprit. “Don’t touch her like that,” he said. Darkrai gave him a faux pout. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

“So demanding, ” Darkrai said, but he backed away from Mesprit. “You haven’t been doing your job, you know.”

“Don’t pretend you care,” Dusknoir snapped back. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Dialga will be disappointed.” Darkrai replied. “I’m trying to look out for you, Hope, the least you could do is make it a bit less annoying to do.”

“Don’t call me that,” Dusknoir growled. “That’s not my name anymore.”

“Sure.” Darkrai waved him off. He floated over to the lake. “Have you killed Grovyle yet?”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re still on the same page.” Darkrai said, “What about the idiot human? Has she broken her neck on anything yet? I heard the ocean didn’t kill either of them, which is incredibly annoying.”

“Why did you have to attack them?” Dusknoir asked. A dark aura flared around Mesprit, and Dusknoir put several lengths of distance between them.

“Everyone in this time is so annoying, ” Darkrai said, which wasn’t an answer. “You try and kill someone and you can say it was an accident and that you don’t know what happened and they just let you back into their house like nothing happened.” He looked back, “Meanwhile, in your time, they at least have the decency to kick you out. These ones pretend to be your friend.” He turned his gaze back to the Time Gear. “I gave you an out, Hope. You had your chance to cut your losses and run back to Dialga. I was being nice. But if you’re going to keep playing pretend in the past then someone has to make sure the future remains unchanged.”

“What does that—” Darkrai snatched the Time Gear out from over the lake. “You’re the one stealing the Time Gears?!”

“You sound surprised,” Darkrai said. “Haven’t you ever seen someone do their job before?”

“This isn’t your job,” Dusknoir snapped, approaching Darkrai. “They’re getting suspicious. Darkrai, hand them over, and I’ll cover this up for you.”

“Oh, right,” Darkrai said, “of course, let me just pull the other three from the pockets I don’t have.” He stared at Dusknoir. “Do you actually think I just run around with them on me? I’m not a two-bit thief your pet explorers can hunt down. I’m not Grovyle.”

“Darkrai,” Dusknoir said again, his voice strained, “please. Everything was fine before you interfered.”

“Was it? Was it really?” Darkrai rolled his eyes, and with barely a wave of his hand, tore open a Dimensional Hole. “I don’t care about arguing with Dialga’s pet anymore. Mesprit, maul him for me.” He dove in the portal without another word.

Dusknoir didn’t have a chance to do any more than groan before Mesprit’s swift hit him in the back. The attack did no damage, and Dusknoir turned to catch Mesprit when she lunged for him.

“This is asinine, ” he grumbled, and chucked her towards the frozen lake. Mesprit hit it and skid. The aura flared again as Mesprit forced herself up.

“Murderer,” a voice from somewhere said.

“I’m not going to kill her! ” Dusknoir shouted back. He slapped his own arm and felt the pain – he was still awake. Darkrai had no control over him. “I’m not going to take part in this.”

He smashed an escape orb on the ground when Mesprit lunged for him again.

.-.

Crystal Cave still had its gear, but no guardian.

No where else had either.

Granted, Dusknoir wasn’t back yet – neither was Team AWD, the ‘friends’ the Guildmaster had apparently sent to check on the last gear – but everyone got the message loud and clear. The world was in danger again. These humans worked faster than Grovyle ever had. They had no time to waste.

Team Relic and the other guild apprentices sat in the boys’ room in a crowded circle. In front of Breeze, they’d placed a branch from Treeshroud Forest, a rock from the Underground Lake, and another crystal from Crystal Lake. She could feel their stares on her as she gingerly placed a paw on the crystal.

Nothing.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” she said, and pushed it away. She placed her paw on the rock next.

“MAYBE you’re touching it wrong,” Loudred said, and was immediately shushed by Sunflora.

“How would she touch it right?” Diglett asked, and Dugtrio shot Loudred a glare.

Breeze groaned and kicked the rock away. “Stupid powers, why can’t they work when I need them to?” She slapped the branch. It snapped in half, and Breeze sucked in a breath as a thorn pierced her paw.

Dusk knelt down and took her paw. “We’ll keep trying,” he said, and pulled the thorn out. “It has to work eventually. Did anyone grab any items while they were out?”

There was some awkward shuffling. Sunflora and Loudred suddenly stopped looking at the others. All of the other apprentices stared at them.

“Oh, gosh, okay,” Sunflora said, and looked at Loudred as well. He huffed and reached back into his treasure bag.

“You’re GOING to give these back,” he said, and dropped five seeds in front of Breeze. Her eyes went wide.

“I’ll give you all the Poke I have on me right now if I can keep these,” she said, pointing at the reviver seeds.

“NO.” Loudred said.

“No, no,” Sunflora added, “those our ours. You don’t need anymore!”

“I have more than enough money,” Breeze said, “It’s a good deal, and you can always buy more—”

“No,” Sunflora said, firmer now. “We fought a monster house to get those. They belong to me and Loudred.”

“Uh,” Dusk raised a paw to draw attention, and then gently scooped one up. “I think this one’s actually a reviser seed. See, it has the split that looks like an S.” He held it over to Breeze. She couldn’t see the S, but then again, she wasn’t very good at identifying lookalike items.

Maybe this was his plan to get her one. Her partner was just that cool.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, and poked it. Nothing. Breeze pulled a face and started to pick up the other reviver seeds, well aware of her guildmates watching her.

There was nothing again. Just a whole bunch of nothing.

“This is stupid,” she said, and Loudred gathered the seeds back up. He left the possible reviser seed with Dusk, who passed it awkwardly from hand to hand. “What use is this power if it won’t even work when we need it to?”

“Maybe that’s because it’s not real.”

Thankfully, Breeze wasn’t the only one clearly annoyed by that sudden interruption. She and her guildmates turned to the door, where Patrick the chimchar stood, a bundle of papers tucked under one of his arms.

“HEY! Don’t be RUDE!” Loudred snapped, “She’s trying her BEST!”

“I know you’re stressed too,” Chimecho said, her voice gentle among the glares the other apprentices sent Patrick’s way, “but you don’t have to say things like that to Vulpix. Just because you haven’t seen it happen to her doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

Patrick shrugged. “Whatever.” He didn’t make eye contact with Breeze again. He shoved a handful of papers towards Bidoof – the closest Pokémon to the door. “Chatot got wanted posters printed of the Luxio. I don’t know where the best places to put them are.” He turned and left without another word.

Chimecho sighed. “Sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to apologize for his actions,” Dugtrio said, “it is his own responsibility not to take his stress out on our friends.” He smiled at Breeze. She shrugged. “Do not let him get to you.”

“Golly, we believe in you!” Bidoof said and placed a stack of the luxio’s wanted posters in front of her. Breeze slapped it.

Nothing.

“This isn’t working,” Breeze huffed, and shoved them to Dusk. He took one and passed it on. “Nothing’s working.”

“…Maybe it’s because that human also has it,” Diglett spoke up, “Maybe she’s done something to stop your visions.”

The apprentices exchanged a few worried looks, and Dusk grabbed a fistful of Breeze’s fur to steady himself.

For once, Croagunk’s laugh sounded less smug and more nervous. “Humans can’t do that.”

“Yeah!” Corphish agreed too quickly, and the rest of the apprentices followed suit. Breeze kept her head down, and Dusk kept his paw in her fur.

You don’t know that, is not what Breeze said, because it wouldn’t help. None of us know anything about humans. Nobody here does.

.-.

It was dark out – his escape would be covered. This ‘guild’ was silent, and the last time that bird had come in to try and pry more information out of him Grovyle had pretended to be asleep. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that Chatot would actually make any effort to contact his siblings. The sooner he got out and away, the better.

Carefully, Grovyle adjusted the binding around his wrists until they fell slack. He stood up, sidestepped the tower of books he’d built, and –

– bumped into it, sending the books scattering across the floor and out his stupid curtain door.

Grovyle groaned. Of course. Of course! He couldn’t have one good thing! Just one! He had to ruin his escape attempt by being clumsy in his ridiculous evolved body! Why hadn’t he stayed a Treecko? Rose probably had, she was smart enough not to go and evolve in a dungeon and lose all her memories, or anger some evil shadow, or have to deal with a stupid ball of fire in the sky –

A small light yellow hand slipped a couple of the books back under his curtain. “Uh,” a voice – not one of his guards – said. “You dropped these.”

Grovyle huffed. “Thanks,” he said, reluctantly, and slipped his wrists back into the loose ropes.

The hand pulled back. There was a pause, but no footsteps. Why are you still here? “Are you okay?”

Grovyle laughed. Then he realized the voice had been serious. “…I’ve been better. You?”

“Stressed. Better than you, though.” Another pause. “I’m, uh, Patrick. Or Chimchar, I guess, but I prefer Patrick.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m…” Patrick. Chimchar. Hadn’t that been the one who’d shown up and freaked out at the other Pokémon when he’d learned that Grovyle was trapped here? He’d been placated by Dusknoir almost automatically, but…

“Do you not remember?” Patrick asked, and Grovyle abruptly realized he hadn’t answered the question. “I could, uh, give you a nickname or something if you want one. Is that a thing here?” He sounded confused. “It’s a thing where I’m from.”

“Oh.” This was weird. Patrick still hadn’t come in, and Grovyle wasn’t sure if him doing so would be more or less weird. “Why are you being nice to me?”

There was a pause. “I mean,” another pause, complete with awkward shuffling. “Look, you’re just some dude with amnesia who stole some stuff, right? That’s what everyone said. I promise I’m more of a garbage person than you are. Just… do you want a nickname or not?”

That was… okay. Grovyle didn’t really know what to say to that. “Sure,” he settled on, still confused. He moved away from the bed and made an effort to keep his wrists in their bindings as he sat closer to the door. It’d be easier to just snap and try to shoo this Chimchar off so he could go back to trying to escape – but what good would that do? For the first time since he’d pulled Vulpix out of the ocean someone actually wanted to talk to him. “What have you got?”

“…Snatch.”

“Absolutely awful.”

“Snitch.”

“Oh, am I going to get stitches?”

Patrick snickered. Grovyle smiled and tried to ignore the fact that he only had a fragment of an idea what his joke had meant.

“Thank you,” Grovyle said, “I was proud of that.”

“I’m sorry that all my ideas involve crime,” Patrick said, clearly not at all sorry. “In my defense, crime is fun.”

That… was a very weird thing to say. “I wouldn’t know,” Grovyle said, “considering that I can’t remember ever committing a crime and all.”

“That was a joke,” Patrick replied. “The worst I’ve ever done is steal a few berries and stuff from a Kecleon shop in a dungeon. I’m not going out and murdering people or something.”

“Sounds a lot like something a murderer would say,” Grovyle said, any trace of uneasiness perfectly disguised.

“Listen.” He sounded defensive, but still joking – was that a good sign? “If I’ve done anything like that, it’s manslaughter because I didn’t mean to. That’s how the law works. I’ve read books.”

“I haven’t,” Grovyle said, latching onto the first subject-change he thought of. “I’ve just been using them to build a tower.”

Patrick laughed. “Fair. Books suck. My little brother was a massive book nerd, you could give that kid an encyclopedia and he’d be psyched. I had to be a good older brother and read his nerd stuff to him, otherwise I never would’ve touched the stuff.”

“You… never would have touched books.” Grovyle would have loved to read the books he’d been provided, if they hadn’t been written in nonsensical patterns of feet. This entire conversation was steadily getting more odd. “That’s a very long nickname.”

“You’re so picky,” Patrick said, verbally waving him off. “Yeesh, fine. Uh… do you want a person name?”

Grovyle blinked. “What?”

“Like – I don’t know, my little brother was named Samuel. My mom was named Beatrice. Something like that?”

“I… guess?” Why was this Pokémon still talking to him? “What have you got?”

“Hm. Good question… Denver?”

“No.”

“Fair. Mike? Or Michael?”

“Still a pretty firm no.”

“I’m going to have to go back to random words. What about Riley?”

Grovyle’s ‘no’ got caught in his throat.

Riley.

He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath in. His head pounded – Riley.

A huge form, in shades of grey and black. “Riley, what did you see?”

A woman, human, with knives and dark fabric. “We have a job to do, Riley. For once, leave it.”

Blond human. Angry eyes. “You can’t just bring whoever you damn well please into a secret meeting, Riley!”

Human. Brown hair. Kind eyes. Hands holding back his pound. “Hey! Hey, you don’t have to be scared. My name’s Riley. I got you out, I’m here to help.”

“I’m here to help.”

“̶̥̔Ȉ̶ͅ’̸͚̉m̸̤͑ ̸̜͝h̸̟̔e̵̘̕ř̴͚e̵̻͂ ̷̮͆t̵̞͠ö̷̹́ ̶̼̾h̶̝̿e̷̩̾l̷̠̆p̷̫͆.̸̝̍”̸̤̍

“̵͍̾̽̈̏́͊̉̚I̷̪̝̦͘’̶͓̳̭̱̠̥̪͑͝m̶̧͚̣̼͖̌͗͠͝ ̶̡̣̣̣̣̫̘̺̌͂̈́͊͋̑͘h̵̪͍͍͎͊̽͐̉͌ȩ̶̞̥̣̼̅͛͘ŗ̸͔̩̰̻͕̣̟̮͠ẻ̷̦̻̂̑̇͜ ̸̲̳̪̗̌̾̃͌͐͂̾͋͠t̷̢̹̭̠͖͉̱̘̐͋̈̿͆͜͝͝o̷͉̟̠̙̭̺̲̔͗͆͋̒͝ ̸̢̰̯̯̪̣̞͈͎̔͋̈͒h̴̳̣͗͆͊̾̔̒͝͝͝e̸̡̟̠̺̞̭̗̒̈͋̌̎̿͜͝ͅl̷͍̭̳̦̗̘͕͂́̊̓̓̂p̷͖͚̫̲͇̿͆͗̅.̶̹̥͎͇̳͆̓̄̃͝”̴̢̧̢͔̹̮͎̥͑̀̇͜͝

“̷̧̧̢̡̫̥̦͚̞̦͉̬͈͔̫̪̮̻͉̰̖̣̗̭͈̭͖̙̰̖͇̗̼͖̙̭͎̏̅̑̈́̂̓͗͛̊̎̐̐̇̓̍̎̂̀̋̌̇̇͋̀̆̈́͂̈̈́͑̒̇̋̎͑̕͝ͅḮ̴̢̧̢̛̞̮̜̰͙̫͖̺͉͙̜̟̝̺̰͍̲̗͐̈͒͐͌͒̍͐̉͐̎̋̓̋̇̅͒̈́̂͐́̈́̈́͋̈́̐̓̍̍̒͛̚̕̕͝͝͝ͅ’̸̨̨̞̼̰̳̤̙̗̦̣͕̭̺̠̗͓̖͙̺̂̋̈́̔̍̈́̊̏̑̍͋͆͒̈́̿̕̕̚͠͠ͅm̷̢̖͈̝̜͔̬̪̹̺̦͎̖̙̫̹͈̟͓̘̔͊͌̋̑͒̉̋̄̑͂̌̔̄̋́̈́̅̈͘͠͠ ̸̛͕̯͓͕̺͈̘̬̆̅̾̓͗̊̊̈́̉̌͊̍͛͌̅͂̆̐̆͒̃͒͛̈́̐̀̑̀̐̈́͋̇̋̅͘͘͘̕͠͠͝ḩ̵̛̥̮̭͔̘͇͚̙̝̭̩̩̍͗̋̋͛͗̊͌̂̑̇̄̋̌̔̿̏̈́̏̑͐̓̂͐̑̏̆̏̐͌͋́̆̚̕̚͜͜͠͠͝e̵̡̨͈̼̞̺͔͔̝̻̯̬̹͚̭͔͖̝̗͈̗̩̮̜̰̰̼̻̼͎̙̥̳̎̓͠ͅͅr̷̡̢̢̢̛̛̹̘̘̫̜͎̥͙̝͉̦̯̰̭̲̖̱̬̮̜̤̣̩̞̰̥͉͚̭̻͕̭̟̖̱̦̋̏̌̉͂̃̿̑̾̐̀̌͆̊͗͗̈́̂̓̌̌͗̀̈́̃̌̅͂̃̌͂͛̾̕̚̚͘͝͝͠ͅͅͅę̷̢̡̡̯̖̬̼̬͇̻̣͖͇̩̼̞̗̮̟̜̠͔̣͇̼͕̲̐͐͑̓̈̈́̅͊͛̈͆̓̔̎̾͝͠͠ ̷̢̭̳̫̤̻̙̥͉͇̜͉͚̳̩̝̥͔̻͍̭̮͕̯̞̲͚̺̘̖͎̥̞̦̊͂̈̎̈́͆͛̃͌͘͘͜͝͝͠͝͠ͅt̸̛̝̗͓̗̩̥̮̣̝͍̜͒͋̔͌͒̀͌̐̓͂̿̍̒̆̉̂̍̌̈́̾̊͂̈́͂̀̈́͘ỏ̸̳̥̗̭͚̼̮͑͑̈͗̍̅̌̿̾͐͆͋̋̉͛̉̉̐͂̂̀̒̐͊̌̽͌̅̇͑͋̓̋̄̓̚͜͝͝ ̶̧̲̜̪̠̜̪̲̲̟̲͓͇̲͙̰̺͎̥͍̻͕͔̪̩̣̣͚͆̓̎̈̀͛̒̔͗̋̈̿̏̎̆̈́͛͐̓̈̿͑̅̄̔͐͘͜͝͝h̴̢̛̛̰̘̺̫̼̭̠͓̙̖̤̯̲̞̮͕͓͍̖̫̹̼̓̄̀͛͆̆͌̾́̐̾̾͐̋̀̈́̀͋͌͌̑̌̆̂̒̿͊͐̒̍̉̒̕̕̚͠͝ͅḙ̷̡̡̨̨̢̨̧̡̜͙̗͎̦̤̦͖̝̣̝̝̗̘̮̠͉̠͈̱͙̮̞͙̼̬̩͖̫̬̲̦͆͋͗̑̄͜͝ḷ̵̡̧͚̫̞̳͚͔̮̒͗́̊̒̂̎͊̈͌̊̿͘͝͝ṗ̴̧̧̧̛̺̗̟̬̯̱̮͚͈͍̮̹͈̰̫͙̱̼̤̬͙̼̦͈͉͖͎̫͕̞̘̠͓͎̜̘͗̒̔̑͌̓̓̏̉̃̔͂͂̿̆̋̂͌̂̍͜͜͠ͅͅͅ.̸̧̨̛͕̟̳̭̫͇̭̖͓̭͇͇̮̻̖͙̘̻͍̳͈͓͚̰̺͕͛̉̌͒̆͒̂͌̂̋̐͜͜͝͠”̴̛̤͕̲̙̟̘͉̱̰̤̅̋̄͐̒̅̈́͒͋̎̅̐̌̈̆̽̈́̑͐͒̌͌̇̈́̓̈́̈́́̉͘͝͝͝

.

.

.

Little girl. Human. Knees up to her chest, tears on her cheeks. Treecko held her hand as they hid. On the other side of the rock, Riley said, “You’re not a murderer, Hope.”

Grovyle jerked, his breath coming out in a half-scream before he smashed his head into the wall. “Ow!” He bent forwards, claws gripping his head. What was that? What was any of that?!

“Oh, jeez,” Patrick said, still there, “uh. Is that a yes for Ri-”

“No,” Grovyle wheezed, “don’t – don’t call me that.” He dug his claws deeper into his head. The distorted echo was still there. “Don’t say it.”

“O-oh.” Patrick gulped. “Are you okay? I can go get someone –”

“I don’t know, ” Grovyle groaned. “I don’t know.”

“I’m – I’m going to get Chatot,” Patrick said, already moving away. “Wait here.”

Grovyle held his head tighter and tightened to binding on her wrists with his teeth.

His head hurt.

But he certainly wasn’t telling Chatot what had happened.