Chapter Text
They were together.
That memory had etched itself into Arven's consciousness ever since the fateful day, left to be replayed again and again as he yearned for a glimpse, a simple peek into a world where he and his mother never parted. A world where they were happy. Perhaps in this world his father, that no-good jerk, could have stayed—but alas, to write him into that perfect world would be to entertain a dream, a wish even, and that somehow made Arven feel far worse.
And so, he was left to watch the same memory, time and time again.
It had been a clear day in early summer, when Arven was a little shy of five-years-old, that Sada had dragged him out of the dark lab and into the fields between the lighthouse and Los Platos, not a word of explanation gracing her lips for the entirety of the mile-long walk. The sunlight warmed the back of Arven's neck as he watched his mother spread out a floral picnic blanket beneath a nearby tree and open a woven basket brimming with food, all while humming a surprisingly cheerful tune.
"Take a seat, honey," Sada said with a gesture. "We're having sandwiches for lunch."
The afternoon went as you would expect—Sada taught Arven how to prepare sandwiches, what sauce went with what toppings, and soon they were digging into their delicious, fresh lunch and having small chats about the Fletchlings flying overhead and the Wooper splashing in a nearby pond. It was all so mundane, yet Arven cherished these few moments with his mother. It made him feel like he had a normal life.
"Rrraufff!"
Arven jumped at the sudden sound, looking wide-eyed at the small, scruffy Pokémon that had appeared beside him. Sada laughed lightly at her son's expression as the creature tried to steal a bite of his sandwich.
"Looks like you've found a friend," she said. "Maschiff aren't native to this area....it must be on a little adventure."
"Mama! He's trying to take my food!"
Sada reached into the basket again, pulling out the leftover half of a bread loaf and a slice of ham. She pieced the tiny sandwich together and offered it to the Maschiff. "Here. I bet you're hungry after all that exploring, huh?"
The Maschiff yanked the sandwich out of her hand and gnawed on it between its paws, ripping the bread to shreds aggressively. When the Pokémon had finished it sighed, seeming appeased, but when Arven reached his hand out to pet it, the dog growled and barred its teeth in a humorous snarl.
Arven broke out into laughter. "You're funny! Wanna play?"
He spent the rest of the day running through the sunlit grassland with the little Maschiff, playing fetch and tag and every other game he could think of, Sada occasionally joining in. They're laughter and the sound of barking echoed through the air, until at last the sky faded to a deep orange and the wind became a chilly breeze.
Arven remembered very little of what happened next, for he had gotten drowsy, but nothing could displace the vivid memory of being carried back home by his mother with his head lying against her shoulder, her familiar scent lulling him into a comfortable sleep. In his tiny hands sat a smooth Pokéball, his new partner settled inside.
He had family.
And then......
They were both taken from him......
"Pizza."
Arven blinked his eyes at Nemona, waking up from his walk down memory lane as if he had taken a nap. Had he fallen asleep? He didn't remember....he hadn't been focusing on the world around him enough to feel the shift.
It had become hard to focus on anything, really, after what went down in that place.
"Arven, listen! We're going to shove as much pizza as possible down Jules' throat, got it?"
"Sorry, I―Huh?! Are they trying to choke?!" Arven spluttered and rubbed his blurry eyes, looking around the room for the culprit.
"I'm trying to set a new world record!" Ah, there they were. The new Champion had perched themselves on the kitchen counter, taking a handful of pizza slices from Penny as she and her Leafeon passed a cardboard box around.
Right. They were in Jules' room. Not the lighthouse. Not that cursed place, either.
"Here, snotface," Penny shoved the box in Arven's lap. Despite the nickname, she had specifically ordered him half an Alolan pizza, which was....oddly caring, given how the other three described it as 'food from the distortion world'. All because it had pineapple and ham.
"I think she means that literally, by the way." Nemona waved a finger in front of her nose.
Arven sniffed, only now realizing how congested he was. Had he been crying? Whatever had happened, Leafeon noticed and brought a tissue in its mouth to him. "Ah...thanks," he gave it a small smile, trying not to grimace at the slobber-soaked end of the tissue.
Nemona opened her mouth to say something, but at that same moment there came a yell from the kitchen. "Wook Mehmo-a I- doin ith!"
Arven peeked around her to see Jules shoveling three pizza slices into their mouth with vigor. Penny stood nearby, snickering and recording the stunt on her phone. And of course, Nemona being Nemona, encouraged them even further. "Great job! You're so close to claiming the record!"
Chaos. Absolute chaos.
He....should've stopped them, right? Done something about it? It would have served as a distraction, plus he'd rather his friend not choke to death. And yet, he couldn't stop thinking about that day. His mind lingered on the memory as if he were at a museum, standing before a delicately crafted painting of him and his mother, one with history and hidden depth only he could see. Behind every brushstroke, was another layer of trauma.
Arven's hand gravitated towards his pants' pocket, grabbing the Pokéball within it and rubbing his fingers over the worn, scratched surface. Even now, after everything they went through with the Titans, gazing at the ball made his chest and throat tighten. His partner may have been healed, but his own wounds from the experience were still fresh.
"At least...." he whispered to himself more than the Pokéball. "I have you again."
He stood up from his place on Jules' bed and slipped out the door, pretending to miss the concerned glance that Nemona gave him.
✩ ✦ ✩ ✦ ✩
Arven had been outside the school for exactly fifteen minutes when someone tackled him to the ground. "Arven! There you are!"
The hot cobblestones burned the palms of his hands and he yelped an exclamation, before rolling over as quickly as he could and coming face-to-face with Jules. "W-What?! Couldn't you just like....tap my shoulder or something?!"
Jules shrugged, their chin-length hair bobbing with the motion. "Why did you run off all of a sudden? I had almost set the new record, but then Nemona said you left without a word and...."
"We have something for you," Nemona jogged up to them and offered a hand to Arven, who took it gratefully. "Hey Penny, come show him!"
All eyes turned to Penny as she slowed to a stop in front of Arven, heaving and gasping for air. "Sheesh, you guys move too fast....." Once she caught her breath, she reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out a strange little device unlike anything Arven had ever seen, and promptly thrust it in his face. It was rectangular in shape, with a metal surface that caught the sun brilliantly. At the center was a glowing, blinking red light.
"....Okay....What is this?"
"A device I found back at the crater," Penny answered plainly, as if it had been obvious.
Arven felt a shiver crawl up his spine.
Since Penny didn't seem motivated to explain anything, Nemona spoke up. "We've been examining it―I mean, Penny has, I have no idea how stuff like that works, but I've helped her out whenever I can―and we think it might have something to do with....."
Nemona fell quiet, tripping over her words, and Jules finished in a whisper, "....your mom."
Oh.
If mentioning that place had brought a chill to Arven, this was a kick to his stomach. He had avoided the topic of his mother as much as possible, and now that he was confronted with it, he wanted to run. To hide, to do absolutely anything that would distract him, and take that thought away.
Why did it hurt so much? To talk about her? As if she ever cared about him...
But that one memory lingered, that one time in his life when he felt like he had a family....
Nemona suddenly patted him on the back, shaking him awake and out of his near daydream, and only a few seconds later did it dawn on him that it had happened again. She gave him a warm smile, and something in the back of his mind wondered if she had done it on purpose. "We were thinking.....and it might not be true, but―what if she's stlll out there?"
Arven's head swayed.
"I..." he took a deep breath, trying to seem as calm as he could. It wasn't normal to act panicked every time she was brought up, right? ....Was it? "I don't think so, Nemona. You heard what that AI said...." he shook his head, so they couldn't notice the tears that were forming in his eyes. "....she's dead."
"The light," Penny pointed at the blinking device in her hand. "From what I deciphered, there's two connected devices. One to carry, one to let someone―like an AI―know that something went wrong. Like a SOS signal."
"The red light means that someone triggered it," Nemona added, standing on the heels of her feet and then her toes and back again―an excited dance of sorts. "And we uh....might have gone back to the crater? And looked all around her lab, and all the checkpoints and stuff."
"There's no security guards anywhere," Jules chimed in. "I go there every week to train my Pokémon. I'm pretty sure the school only tells us not to go there because they can't afford to be sued if some kid took like, their Lechonk or something and they got demolished."
"Sketchy security practices aside," Nemona continued. "We looked everywhere, and couldn't find the other device. So our working theory is―"
"That when your mom...." Penny paused for a second, as if choosing her words carefully. "Got hurt....she fled through the time machine."
"And when she did, she signaled to AI Sada," Jules' turn to speak, since everyone kept interrupting each other in their excitement. "But the thing is, we found this device buried in documents in one of the checkpoints. So the AI probably never saw it."
"And that means," Nemona gave Arven a big grin. "She might still be alive, somewhere!"
Arven felt his heart stop.
All of those years resenting his mother, wishing for a more normal, kinder family, only to find out that she had been dead the whole time......and now he was being told she was alive?! His head ached like it could break in half at any moment.
"That's.....ridiculous," he muttered as nonchalantly as he could manage, but something had already seeped into the back of his mind and heart―a flickering of hope.
Maybe.....they could start over. Maybe he could finally have that family he yearned for as a little kid. Maybe he could picnic with her again.....
After all, no one really wants to lose their mother, right?
"It's worth a shot," Jules reached into their pocket and pulled out a strikingly familiar Pokéball, but froze with their hand midair and glanced at Arven for any sign of readiness. "....So? Wanna join us?"
Against his best judgement, Arven sighed and nodded, only remembering seconds too late that he would have to go back to that place. Before he could even consider taking his words back, Jules had thrown the Pokéball into the air and out of the blue light came a dog-like growl and the fiery scales of Koraidon. Arven instinctively flinched at the sight of the creature, and all at once, he was crammed onto its back with his three friends. Jules let out a command and whooped like a miltank wrangler as Koraidon leapt forward, sprouted its wings and took to the sky.
✩ ✦ ✩ ✦ ✩
Arven concluded that no matter how many times he rode on the back of that prehistoric beast, he would never find soothing how the thing bounced up and down in the air as if it were an illegal rollercoaster with no safety mandates, the wind tearing at his face like the sharp end of cutlery, and only Jules' tiny torso to cling onto for dear life.
Penny seemed to think similarly, a sea-sick look plastered on her face, but Jules and Nemona jumped off the dino-cycle with ease and skipped on forward to the metal entrance of the lab. The doors creaked open at their presence, and Arven's heart thumped in his neck. Something about that dark hallway felt like nightmare fuel―and considering the dreams he had growing up, it was―but....he could do this, right? He had visited this awful, cursed site before and lived.
Hello darkness, my old friend, he thought bitterly as he followed his friends into the metal tunnel. Koraidon purred behind them and sat down at the front of the gate, feathery head whipping back and forth at the crystal-walled expanse.
"Good boy!" Jules called back at Koraidon, causing it to wag its long tail like a dog. "You stay there and keep watch for any paradox Pokémon! See you in a bit, I think, I don't know how time travel works...."
It didn't take long to find the elevator and ride it to the time machine. It took a much larger chunk of time to figure out how in the world they were supposed to work it, though.
"Hey look, a control panel!" Nemona finally exclaimed after lots of searching, tapping at a hidden door on the wall nearest the elevator. "C'mere Penny, give it a try!"
"Why am I the one in charge of figuring it out?"
"Because you're the one who hacked and robbed the League?" Jules gestured outward, making a face. "Now get to it, Sherlock!"
Penny groaned dramatically but walked over to the panel, eyeing over the various flashing buttons and screens. She tapped the screen on like a phone and started scrolling through various scrambled bits of text. "Okay, good news, it looks like the time machine keeps a log of every time period and location it's traveled to. Which means we don't have to guess on where your mom is, we just have to input the second to last one used―since the latest one would lead us to AI Sada, not the real one."
"Is there....bad news?" Nemona asked.
"Not really, everything seems to be really straight forward."
"Oh," Jules peeked past Penny, as if looking for confirmation. "That's....surprisingly easy."
Arven furrowed his eyebrows. "Almost too easy. Are you sure we're not forgetting something important?"
Penny shrugged, which didn't instill any more confidence in him. "We'll know once we get there, I guess."
"That's a terrible plan."
Penny shrugged again, raising her hands into the air to show how little she cared, and grabbed a Pokéball from her hoodie pocket. "Come out, Sylveon."
Blue light sparked and faded, and the pastel Pokémon that now stood made a happy trill at her Trainer.
"When I give a signal, I need you to press this red button, okay?"
Sylveon agreed with a nod, and the group tramped carefully to the giant mechanism in the back of the room. There was a plastic crinkling noise, and Arven turned to see Jules taking a slice of cheese pizza out of a sandwich bag. "Jules. Are you seriously eating pizza while entering a time machine?"
"Wha- abou- ift," Jules mumbled through a mouthful of cheese, and Arven decided to drop it before they choked, since doing dangerous things with pizza seemed to be one of Jules' favorite pastimes.
Once everyone had centered themselves on the platform, Jules was several bites into a savory pizza heaven, and Arven felt like his chest would combust from how hard his heart pounded in fear, Penny gave a wave to her Pokémon. The Sylveon trilled again, like a casual goodbye, and pressed the button with her extended ribbon.
The room lit up, the discoball-like walls glowing a bright white flecked with green and blue and all other colors you could imagine and began a frenzied swirl. The machine overhead spun to life, widening and buzzing with a sound like a car engine revving. The arms of the machine branched out, revealing an even brighter light, and just as Arven blinked, everything went blank.
✩ ✦ ✩ ✦ ✩
When Arven opened his eyes again, it was very clear that they were not in Paldea.
He had landed on his back on a grassy knoll, with a brilliant view of the endless sky above him. It was so clear and blue and wide, dotted with puffs of cotton-like clouds. The air had a refreshing chill to it, a stark contrast from the sticky summer weather in Paldea.
He raised his head a little to look around. Nemona and Penny already stood a few feet away from him, but if the loud snoring coming from behind him was any indication, Jules must have still been passed out.
Arven pushed himself up off the ground, and winced at the sharp pain in his shoulder. Did the time machine drop them?! It definitely felt like it.
A voice cut into his pained thoughts. "Oh, Arven! You're awake! C'mon, look at this!" Nemona grabbed his arms and pulled him up so forcefully he almost toppled into her, and gestured beyond them.
"Wha-" Arven's words fell flat as his jaw dropped at the sight before him.
The early morning sunlight glinted across the most beautiful scenery he had ever seen. Grass-covered hills rolled over each other, stretching outwards and transforming into thick evergreen forests and mountainous terrain. And at the very center of the horizon, a mountain larger than any in Paldea, maybe even the whole world, stood tall and regal. It gave off a menacing but awe-inspiring aura, like it were the king of the land.
And Pokémon. Pokémon of all sizes roamed the great environment, from Bidoof waddling threw the grass with their goofy smiles to buizel splashing in a nearby lake to something large and feathery, about the size and shape of a Braviary, soaring over the entire scape idly.
It took a while for Arven to at last choke out, "Where are we?"
"No clue!" Nemona said far too cheerfully.
"I think it might be Sinnoh," Penny whispered, her mouth and eyes as gaping as Arven's own. "But totally different. Since Sada liked prehistoric times so much, maybe this is prehistoric Sinnoh?"
Arven frowned, looking back at the familiar Bidoofs minding their bidoof-y business. "I don't think so. All of the Pokémon she brought back were like, feral and completely different from the modern ones. A lot of these don't look that different...."
"It must be some other time, then?" Nemona wondered, and Arven could see the eagerness in her eyes as she marveled at all of the Pokémon―she was itching to battle them all. "Maybe we can check what year it is on that little screen when we head home!"
"Waaaait....." Something was piecing itself together in Arven's head, and he didn't like how it was turning out. "Do we have a way to get back home?"
Penny turned to stare at him for a long second, then smacked a palm to her head so loudly it seemed to startle even the Bidoof. "Frick."