[Pokémon] Wings Have We

{1} fate knows where you live​

A young boy sat slumped in his seat, watching the rain continue its attempt to be as loud as it could while crashing against the window. Limp brown hair flopped against the glass, letting gravity take over entirely. His face was set in a thoughtful frown, and though dull blue eyes watched water pound upon glass he never really paid it any mind. He had average height and build, though it was difficult to tell from his current scrunched-up position. Overall, the sort of boy you expect to be cautious and unwilling to try new things. Of course, he was actually something like that, but his thoughts were upon clearly more important things.

Like Pokéballs, for instance.

'Come on, Casey,' the boy silently scolded himself, 'quit thinking about that! It's over! It's going to get found and I never even touched that thing and nobody can possibly link its appearance to me!'

Casey, you see, was a kid with a dilemma. That morning, while waiting for this very bus to arrive to drive him to school, he had found an extremely disturbing object sitting underneath some nearby shrubbery. It was an object about the size of a softball, colored red and white with a black stripe running around the center. Commonly known as a 'Pokéball' or 'Poké Ball', it was a manmade object designed for the capture and control of animals known as Pokémon.

Both Pokémon and the objects that tame them were fully and entirely illegal in the fine land of Calda.

Without getting into specifics, quite a while ago (before he was born, in fact) the local regional government had decided it was better for the region and its human inhabitants if super-powered monsters weren't running around the cities and nearby land. Pokémon and the spherical things that share almost the same name were no longer allowed, and hunts immediately ensued to catch and destroy all remaining wild Pokémon (which, seeing as Calda is an island surrounded entirely by water, is slightly easier than it sounds).

As a matter of fact, the only reason anyone even knew about the Pokémon anymore is because children were having a message constantly drilled into their heads that Pokémon are very dangerous – which usually leads into brief explanations on how dangerous they are. For many people, excluding those who have lived in a different and more Pokémon-friendly region for some part of their lives, this was all they knew. Many also shared the mindset that Pokémon were far too dangerous to be interacted with.

Casey was among them, being a victim of the common juvenile method of determining an opinion: their beliefs were a direct offset of their parents'.

This Pokéball that seemed to have spawned from a bush should have left his memory by now – but despite his brain's pleads to wipe it away, the small object kept nagging at the fringes of his conscious mind.

Thankfully, the bus came to a final, screeching stop just as he concluded this.

Following the stomping masses of kids trailing into the massive building they called a 'school', being surrounded by the familiar buzz of people talking and subsequently being late for class helped to clear his mind of all illegal phenomena. After retrieving all necessary textbooks for the morning, Casey did his best to mask a loud yawn (it didn't work very well) and set off for the ever-important class known as Social Studies.

Slipping in a seat just as the final bell tolled the fanfare of glory for some students and the screech of death for others, a middle-aged man with slick black hair stood up from his previous sitting position. He was wearing a rather formal white shirt and black pants, as well as thick glasses that caught the radiance of the fluorescent strips of lights that shone above him.

"You have five minutes to review your notes," droned The Teacher, otherwise known as Mr. Thomas. He taught in almost every subject in the school for a year or two, and those unfortunate enough to be landed with him for more than one year quickly dubbed him The Teacher according to that criteria. "The tests will be handed out when that time is up."

The usual shuffling of papers ensued as almost everyone whipped out one notebook or another to review one of the briefest chapters in the course: Pokémon Studies. Casey's eyes glazed over the small amount of notes he had been provided with – the reasoning behind this strange topic was something along the lines of 'if you're ever presented with a situation in which Pokémon interaction is required, you must know at least something about them'.

"Time is up. The tests are being passed out now. Please put away any notes, textbooks, and cell phones you may have on your person." His eyes fixed on one girl in the back of the class, who looked up with makeup-caked eyes from her previous position of hunched over a small machine. She gave a petite frown and shoved the object in her purse.

The papers were slowly passed around the room, and once everyone had a test The Teacher said blankly, "Begin."

The first question was, 'Name all types of Pokémon.'

Casey heard a resounding moan echo from some other people. How were they supposed to remember that?

Sighing, Casey tapped the eraser end of his pencil against the desk. 'It's probably a question meant to catch us off-guard,' he thought. 'We barely even skimmed the types...' Finally, he bit his lip and decided that if he was going to screw up the question, he would at least screw it up with an attempt at an answer. The boy began to write.

'Normal, Fire, Water, Grass, Flying, Steel, Dark, Dragon, Ice, Rock, Ground, Psychic, Bug, Fighting, Poison'. He was fairly sure that was correct.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Casey moved to the next question.

-

"I don't believe it. I just don't believe it."

Somewhere in a vast stretch of white, there stood a large and imposing-looking wooden desk sitting on what seemed to be air, but was in fact a floor the same color as the surrounding area: white. All of it was fully and entirely white. Upon this imposing wooden desk was a computer (quite blatantly labeled 'Dea Procol Machina' in black marker ink) with an oversized keyboard and a giant monitor, with smaller monitors springing off at various points to create the sort of thing you would expect a French boy genius to have in his dorm room while he converses with his friends who are all running around in cyberspace, slaying monsters.

Of course, there was no French boy genius sitting at the computer. For one thing, there is no France. Ha ha, what could have ever put such an absurd thought in your mind? No, there was something much more impressive than a boy genius from a surely made-up land called 'France'.

There was the highly brilliant, attractive, intimidating, and very fearsome Giratina the most wonderful and incredibly skilled ringleader of the best Alternate Universe ever crea-

Oh, forget it.

Sitting at the Dea Procol Machina in a large swivel chair was I, Giratina The Celestial Librarian Of Arceus' Archives and The High Goddess of Never-Turn-Back The Interdimensional Bus Terminal (or Giratina for short).

If you have ever seen me before in my two more often-used forms, which you probably haven't, I look like some sort of cross between those two. My body is long and gray, with the only thing breaking the serene gray-ness being a black-and-red stripe that goes down the lower part of the body, Gyarados-style. Upon my head is a strangely shaped golden head ornament that looks almost exactly like the one in my Earth Fo- oh, wait, you silly mortals have never seen it before. Well, it's very hard to describe, but on the forehead of my black, muzzled face lies a golden sideways-crescent dealie, and to the side of that two large gold horns that twist oh so slightly, and to the side of THAT, sticking straight out, is two thicker golden horns that don't twist at all and make my head look like a, how you say, 'football'. Oh yes, and I have no arms. Instead, I have black wings that have transformed themselves into three-clawed hands.

What? You're wondering why you've never heard of this awe-inspiring third form in your feeble studies of Legendaries?

Well, because only four human beings have ever seen it. One of them isn't allowed to leave this place and is no longer human at all, one of them probably forgot about me entirely, one of them is smart enough to know bringing me – and therefore this form – up in conversation would be a VERY bad idea, and one would probably rather not think about me ever again as long as he lives.

So that's why you puny mortals have never seen it.

In any case, I was monumentally peeved.

"What's wrong with you?" asked a slightly high-pitched voice from behind me. From somewhere else in the vast whiteness of Never-Turn-Back appeared the first person I spoke of – the one who is no longer mortal, and therefore no longer human. By now, he's more of a… biologically advanced Aipom… assuming humans evolved from Pokémon in a different way than normal… thing.

Well, in any case, he looked human and his name was Zero. Dressed up in a baggy yellow suit with matching boots and gloves, one half of his white hair fell over yellow eyes that were now staring at me, intent to know what irritated me and possibly send the person responsible some flowers in gratitude.

This was my used-to-be-human assistant, Zero, rescued from a glacier after he tried to kill me and was subsequently 'forcibly nominated' to assist me in all of my Legendary duties as Head Librarian and Goddess.

My eyes quickly glanced over to him, but they soon shut in irritation. "I go through all the trouble to put that Pokéball exactly where he was supposed to see it… and worse, convinced Palkia to make him see it…he was supposed to… oh, when I get my claws on that pink fate-weaver I'm going to…" I gritted my teeth, as the fate that I intended to lay upon Palkia should probably not be revealed lest he suddenly disappear from his post one day.

"What's gone wrong this time?" Zero asked again, this time slightly irritated (presumably from my lack of response).

"Well…" I said, wishing Zero could keep his mouth shut so I didn't need to repeat the tragedy, "…I went to the trouble of doing something extremely difficult and doing something else hugely, incredibly, mountainously difficult. And then someone goes it and WRECKS IT ALL! PALKIA, I AM GOING TO—"

At that point a deafeningly loud moaning drowned out exactly what I was going to do to Palkia, courtesy of some Pokémon racing in levitating buses over our heads. I felt tempted to tell them off for misuse of equipment, but couldn't be bothered. Instead, I banged my wing-fist on the computer monitor, and quickly made it levitate into the air once the giant machine threatened to fall over.

"So 'Palkia' did something bad, then," said Zero dryly.

"Oh yes," I said. "You've never met my relatives, have you, Zero?"

"I didn't know you had relatives, Gi- um, Goddess."

"Oh, just stop trying to call me 'Goddess', you're going to look stupid when you mess up."

"Fine."

"And yes, I have relatives. I have a lot of relatives. They're… strange, and I don't think you'll be able to swallow all of their personalities and even existences at once."

"So will you introduce them one at a time or something?"

"I'm hoping you never have to see them…" I said distantly, and then let my mind fly off in various directions. "There must be some way to get the Mewforsaken Pokéball to him!" I slumped my head in my claw-hands, making sure not to skewer something with the multitude of pointy things sticking off of it. "Think, Giratina, think…"

"Why don't you just go down there and give it to him?"

"I can't do that! I'd be noticed immediately!"

"What if you went at night?"

"Can't do that either! There's still too big a risk of someone seeing me!"

"There is not. Just cloak yourself in shadow or something."

"Cloak- I can't do that!"

"You could a few years ago in Sinnoh…"

"Th- that never happened! You have no proof I ever did that! I erased it from the Archives and from the memories of the mortal masses! And I don't trust your judgment, because I'm the only other person here! Though… it's not a bad idea…"

"See? I was right. There IS a way to do it."

"Be quiet, you. I need to think. Go frolic in the Reverse World or something."

-

That night, Casey was having sleeping difficulties.

It wasn't like him, really; usually he was lying awake for a few minutes before conking out and awakening the next morning, refreshed and ready to take the world head-on. And tonight… tonight was something different. The shadows squirmed and moved ever so slightly with the shifting of other shadows outside, an action that Casey was accustomed to by now. And… it still wasn't helping the boy's cause.

And then there was a 'thunk' at his window.

Now, thunks at his window were not unheard of; there was occasionally some nut or branch or something that had decided to deviate from the tree or other place of origin in favor of toppling to the ground, occasionally making contact with his glass in the meantime. For this reason, Casey ignored it and turned around in his bed.

And then there was another thunk. And another.

The boy frowned, but didn't move.

And another thunk. And another one. They simply did not stop.

Deciding that he could never fall asleep with this constant bombardment of his only source of moonlight, Casey grudgingly got up and opened the window. Sticking his head out irritably, the eleven-year-old looked around the yard below searching for the origin of the thunking. There were dents on the glass, and that much told him that it was somehow forceful enough to toss hard objects at such a height. This meant it was probably another person.

Though, the only thing that showed from the darkness below was a black blob shaped like a sort of six-footed dinosaur, with two arms it was using to presumably toss rocks with. The creature apparently didn't notice he had opened the window, despite turning what looked to be its head up to gaze at him. Without any time to do anything but blink, Casey could only watch as another object went soaring…

…and came in direct contact with his forehead before landing on the carpeted floor with a light 'thump'.

When he ran back to the window to check for the dinosaur-shadow, it had disappeared.

Casey was sufficiently creeped out by now. What was this snake doing outside his house, of all places? It couldn't have been a trick of his mind, because that thing definitely looked like it was throwing rocks… and one of those rocks was now lying on the ground under his feet. He reached down to retrieve the rock, and found to his surprise that it did not feel at all what a rock was supposed to feel like. Suddenly suspicious and a little bit scared, Casey held the object up to the light.

And promptly dropped it again.

"I… I don't…" he spluttered under his breath. Finally, he closed his eyes and attempted to compose himself. Failing that, Casey braced his mind for looking at the Pokéball one more time. Unfortunately, it was still there and was not a trick of his imagination.

The boy gulped. Reaching out one shaky hand for the object, he took it as if it were an explosive device. Slowly walking back to his bed with the red-and-white ball in hand, Casey turned the object slightly. "This is bad…" he breathed. "Really bad… but what can I…" Casey didn't know what that snake had against him to want to get him arrested; as a matter of fact, he knew only one thing.

He wanted nothing to do with this Pokéball.

Gulping again and trying not to think about the consequences of what he was about to do, Casey unceremoniously dropped the Pokéball behind his bed and fell asleep, ignorant of the red glow that was being sprawled on the wall behind him.
​

Casey was woken at about one in the morning by a noise.

Unable to register that there was some sort of mysterious noise-maker in his bedroom (and thinking the noise was his alarm clock) thanks to his half-awake state, Casey merely performed the standard morning ritual: moan, grumble, flail his arm around near where the bedside table was, search by touch for the black box known as an alarm clock, and hope his poked the part that made it shut up.

And then he heard giggling.

"Whoz'sere?" he grumbled, seemingly unable to speak clearly.

"Me, silly," replied a high, childish voice.

Now, Casey didn't expect a reply; when he got one, it took him by surprise and successfully woke the kid up. He straightened in his bed, and kept his eyes firmly clamped shut. "And who is 'me'?"

"You're you…" said the voice. "And I'm me!"

"Who's speaking?" he asked, becoming annoyed with the carefree way this person was taking his (very serious) conversation about waking him up.

"You were, but now I am…"

Casey sighed irritably and opened his eyes, mentally bracing himself for whatever horrors surely laid in the room beyond. All seemed normal except for a strange red glow coming from somewhere above him.

When Casey lay on his back, a large orange-and-blue mass that was giving off a bright red glow was beaming back at him.

The orange things were what looked to be metal half-circles, with two smaller ones cut into the front. Both of the half-spheres were identical, but one was turned upside down and attached so that they looked like eyes. Visible from inside the sphere was a blue orb of energy. It seemed to be what was keeping the two orange parts together, and looked a lot like irises in the 'eyes'. All together, it looked like the face of a Duskull, except it was a sphere of its own accord, and it glowed red.

The Duskull-thing had a mouth. It was opened ever so slightly, and from that point – almost as if it were coming out of its mouth – came a glowing red stream of jagged red energy, which then widened out and turned into a very canine-looking head.

The orange thing was staring at Casey blankly, mouth open, but the dog head had its mouth open and was lolling around a red plasma-tongue. It seemed to be the one speaking.

The Caldan boy was about an inch away from screaming very, very loudly. He nearly did that before trying to halt the impulse with a shut mouth (the result was a strange guttural noise that sort of hurt his throat). When Casey had compiled himself enough to speak somewhere close to properly – and had pushed the creature a few feet backwards in the process – he spat out a few words.

"Who… what… are you?"

"I'm Rotom!" chirped the dog head. Casey took it to mean both the glowing appendage and the orange-and-blue ball, since the latter seemed to be preoccupied with keeping the former visible.

"Rotom…" Casey breathed. It sounded familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place a finger on it…

"Oh JEEZ!" To heck with keeping quiet – this was a Pokémon talking to him. But Pokémon weren't supposed to talk, were they? And they weren't supposed to appear out of thin air either.

Unless…

The force of the matter hit Casey like a freight train. No way! How did it not occur to me that the Pokéball might not be empty? What do I do with it? Do I get the Pokéball and try to make it go back in? That's what happens, right?

Casey peered down the dark, small crack formed between the bed and the wall. He couldn't make out much in the lack of sufficient lighting, and a graze of the perimeter with his fingers resulted only in a small cut on his finger. But that wasn't the most important matter at hand – there was a bigger problem going on.

Like where the way he was supposed to hide that thing went.

"But… that thing you were in… Pokéball, that's it… where did it go?"

"It's right in front of you!" sang Rotom.

Casey looked down at himself and all around the immediate vicinity, but there was no sight of the red and white sphere.

"No, really!" it laughed. "The Pokéball is right in front of you!" The dog head then commenced to curl in close to the 'body' before springing back out, saying, "Grr, I am a big ferocious Mightyena! I have come out of my Pokéball to tear you to shreds! Grr!"

It took a few seconds for Casey to understand this (mostly because he had no idea what a Mightyena was), but once he did the rest soon followed. "So…" he said, face paling considerably. "So you just…"

"One of the things that make Rotoms a cut above other Ghost Pokémon!" said Rotom proudly. "We're able to possess some other electronic equipment and turn into a new form! This one spawned the second head, and guess what I took over! Guess!"

"You…" Casey spluttered. "…can you get out of it?"

Rotom faltered. "Well…" it hesitated, "…um… that's the thing. I tried and… no."

"No?"

"No. I really can't come out. I tried before, because it's really weird having my energy in a form that looks like a Mightyena and I didn't like it, but I think maybe the Pokéball thinks I'm in it and out of it at the same time."

"In and out of it at… so you can't come out because it won't let you de-possess it. Have you tried entering the Pokéball entirely? They… Pokéballs can do that, right? They're for storing Pokémon?"

"I tried that too. But there's no way I can, because a Pokéball has to touch a Pokémon to catch or return it."

"Oh…" Casey had not known this. The 'Rotom' was becoming something of a problem, and he could think of only one way to rid himself of it.

"I have an idea," he said tentatively.

"What? What?" asked Rotom, voice getting higher in pitch from his excitement.

"You have to… well…" Casey hesitated for a second, and pointed at the window.

Rotom was devastated. "Why? Why can't I stay with you?" asked the little Pokémon, the blue energy core in the center of his body getting wider from fright.

Casey gulped. It wasn't going to be easy to explain to this Rotom – who seemed to have the mental capabilities of a six-year-old – that he was an illegal specimen that needed to be disposed of at all costs.

"Umm… the short of it is, you're sort of illegal here."

Rotom gave out a little gasp, but didn't respond for a while.

"But… but you're going to help me, right?" it said after a few minutes, staring at Casey with an enormous glowing core that somehow managed to make it look cute. "You're going to… change it, right? Aren't you?"

Under different circumstances (such as not being stuck with three other people currently sleeping and unknowing about the fugitive he was hiding in his room), Casey would have laughed out loud at this thing's stupidity. But alas, he couldn't, so he boy merely settled for staring at him.

"Change them?" he asked. "Change them? I can't do that. Either you get out of here and never come back or we find some way to hide you."

-

Thump.

Thump.

Scream.

Repeat.

Casey had been aware since square one that Rotom was a bad idea, and he had originally tried to hide it somewhere in his room until he could decide how to dump the small electric Pokémon without being tracked down again (and there was still the matter of that dragon). However, it was evident after roughly an hour that stashing a hyperactive Pokémon in one's drawers and expecting it to lie still was not going to settle well. And once Casey had simply returned to bed, promising Rotom that it could sleep with him (providing it stayed under the covers at all times and didn't move), he had figured that he had the rest of the weekend to mull over it – at least he had until his mother woke him, demanding for the boy to go pick some things up for her.

Cut to Saturday morning, about eleven AM. Casey was now running as quickly as he possibly could in an attempt to get as far away from the highly-unpleasant-looking group of cops trailing behind him as he could.

All could be blamed upon Rotom.

Because that thing felt the need to possess its own Pokéball, and is apparently incapable of getting itself back out, Casey had to hide him somewhere at all times. And because Rotom doesn't quite understand how vital it is that he keep still, by the end of the day his hiding place is either physically or metaphorically up in smoke.

Among the 'physical' category was Casey's backpack.

So when a nearby policeman happened to notice that his book bag was on fire, he ran over to Casey and demanded to know what was inside. When the boy refused to show him, the cop simply pulled it off his body and practically ripped it open… to come face to face with Beast, Rotom's talking dog head's new name.

Well, Beast gave the policeman a toothy grin as the latter dropped the backpack in surprise. Rotom wormed out of it before the bag hit the ground, however, and much to Casey's dismay he began hovering around the boy's head, giggling madly. Not having enough time to even moan loudly before the policeman began calling up all of his blue-suited pals to catch the 'troublemaker', he grabbed Rotom's solid form and ran.

And here we find our little protagonist, running and cursing all of the nameless creatures that wander on and above the Earth (particularly that dragon) for bestowing him with such a hyperactive, childish, and defiant little Rotom that he couldn't get rid of. Meanwhile, Beast dangled from Rotom's body like a pendulum, his exact position equivalent to the position of Rotom's mouth at the time.

Within minutes, one man had multiplied to two, then four. Casey's eyes flickered backwards to get a decent idea of how far away he was, but he quickly returned his focus to the road – just in time to hop over a trash can that had fallen down at some point in time prior to the chase.

He was dragged to the side with great force before his feet even touched the ground. Rotom squirmed his way out of Casey's lightened grip before the latter fell to the ground, unconscious.

-

"Shut up," said a deep female voice. "He's moving."

"Well of course he's moving," said another voice, this one more masculine and high-pitched. "If he had died here, I would have had it in my records, now wouldn't I?"

"Hey! Don't talk about those! What if he heard you?"

"Well then he'd-"

The voices faded. I descended into sleep again.

-

Once Casey was quite sure he was going to remain conscious, he opened his eyes. However, the boy quickly shut them again. The dragon-thing was returning (though she had a different body shape, the spiky head-dress was the same), and she had brought along a buddy just as scary and imposing as she was.

I recoiled with a rather feminine squeak, surprised at him actually waking up again. My body was long and gray, with red-and-black stripes in a horizontal pattern running down the center. The face was black with large red eyes, and upon my head was a complex gold headpiece with six horns in total. Huge, broad paws (actually shape-shifting wings, but whatever) , black as ink and tipped with blood-red claws, jutted out from my back.

Standing a bit farther away was my 'accomplice', a pink and-white dragon thing that stood on two legs, had wings that looked like a Skarmory's. Wings that looked like they were ripped off a Skarmory and spray-painted white before being stuck on his back. There was also pearls embedded in his shoulders, and what looked like a silver Mohawk running down his spine.

"Howdy," said I. "My name is Giratina. This guy over here is Palkia, Rotom's just fine, and I'm really hoping you're not unconscious because… well…" I trailed off. "Well? Are you conscious?"

(Before you ask, 'I' was Giratina the Celestial Librarian of Arceus' Archives, High Goddess/Conductor Lady of Never-Turn-Back the Interdimensional Bus Terminal (or just Giratina for short). If that wasn't a clear enough description, I'm the person (Pokémon?) who chronicles everything everyone does and writes it down on a Word document, which is then processed into book form and added to the Archives. I put the best ones here for the heck of it.)

"Yes," said Casey, sounding quite scared.

"Hey, now," I tried to reassure him. "We're not going to kill you or anything like that."

"So… why are you here, then? And how do you talk? Do all Pokémon all of a sudden talk now…?"

I blinked for a second, thoroughly confused by his barrage of questions. Finally, I sorted the answers into some sort of order and responded. "No, not all Pokémon talk. Palkia and I are speaking in the Unown Dialect, which is very similar to your own language. As for why we're here, well… there's some stuff we need to explain."

"Well, yeah, there's some stuff you need to explain! Like..."

"Um, guys, we should really get this over with soon, we're not all supposed to be here." A small, almost whiny voice chimed from in the dark. Out floated Celebi, the small Forest Spirit who was apprentice to Dialga the Time God. She also had a head shaped like an onion with antennae.

"I have permission," I said to Celebi, "and if it helps with the prophecy then Arceus should have no problem with it and will be very happy that we're all here to smooth it out! And yeah, we sort of are all supposed to be here, because we're needed for different things."

Celebi pouted and sat down on a trash can.

"Now then..." said I. "I believe Palkia has something to say to you?"

Eager as Casey was to learn what Palkia wanted to tell him, the natural instinct to get the heck out of that place took over. He tried to scoot backwards towards the exit, but I noticed and blocked the escape with my wings.

"Fate Knows Where You Live," I said sagely. "You, of all people, should know that."

"Yeah, well Fate isn't exactly here right now, is it?" Casey snorted.

Palkia cleared his throat loudly.

"Oh."

"Now, I know you must be scared out of your wits, and it probably won't help telling you that the police probably have you on file by now," said I. "Hey, they're just trying to keep Pokemon away from defenseless pedestrians. Can't blame 'em. Anyway, you happen to have a very lovely little Path. And the first thing to realize to follow this path is…" I paused, presumably for dramatic effect. "You don't need this place anymore."

"My… path?"

"Another word for 'fate', or 'life's direction' or whatever you call it these days," said Palkia from the corner.

"Oh."

"Right," I said, trying to get this back on track. "You would be better off out of this region… and out of that skin."

"Out of my SKIN?" Casey practically screamed.

"Shh, shh!" I said, waving one arm to silence him. "How are you supposed to move on in life if you're stuck in the appearance of a law-breaking kid? You'd never be able to get off this island region, and especially not with Rotom along!" I gestured to Rotom, who was on the floor and sleeping soundly with Beast curled protectively around him. It might have been kind of cute in a different circumstance.

"What makes you think I'd go off this pla-"

"Would you rather be on the run for the rest of your life? Stuck like that?" I asked. "Or would you rather start fresh under an entirely new persona, in an entirely different region, with nothing anyone can hold against you?"

"Second option," Casey mumbled. "But…"

"See my point?" I smirked. "So we've got to change almost everything about you. The only thing you can keep is your first name."

"Why?" he asked. "Why do you want me at all? Why do you have to change me? Why am I even here? And don't give me any of your 'fate' garbage, eith-"

"If you don't help us," said Celebi weakly, "then a horrible fate will befall all Pokémon…"

"I don't care about your horrible fate!"

"Nor do you care about all of the Pokémon, the creatures that make up the vast majority of this world's population…" I sighed. "What a terrible mindset for a young human to have…"

"With all the Pokémon gone, this place would be a lot better off, now wouldn't it?" Casey snapped. He was being forcefully ejected from his comfort zone, and Casey planned on flailing to the end…

"Oh, so now he thinks everything in the world will just proceed as normal if I was dead, too," said Palkia sarcastically. "And he thinks that time would still flow correctly, and that the waters of the Earth would remain clean enough to live off of, and that the very fibers that make the Universe itself would all surely stay in their rightful positions and even remain intact… Yes, you can go ahead and leave now. Celebi, Giratina, let's go start designing our graves or something."

…until that happened.

Palkia began to flap his wings, as if he were going to fly away right then and there. He actually got a few feet off the ground before Casey's instinct kicked in.

"Wait!" Casey yelled. "Fine! I'll do it!"

"Good!" I chirped. "It's not like you had any choice anyway, so accepting the inevitable makes everything run so much smoother! Now, we're going to have to knock you out again…"

"Why?"

"I was just getting to that."

"Oh," said Palkia flatly, "do you want to be awake to experience the thrilling sensation of your body going through complete, speeded-up metamorphosis and, even more so, changes to it that shouldn't ever be experienced by a human being? Trust me, I've had to change shape before, and it isn't pretty."

Casey sighed, defeated, as I slowly progressed towards him with my wing-hands spread wide.

"Oh, you're up," said Celebi. "I must say, you look much more interesting now."

It hadn't taken long for the plan to be executed, and we finally got to sit back and admire the fruit of our many labors. 'The fruit of our many labors' was referencing, in this case, a person who looked nothing like he did yesterday. Naturally, the first thing Casey did when he woke up was look downward – but my wings were in the way to block his view.

"Palkia wants to unveil it for you," I explained before he had time to complain (as he was probably going to do).

"I do," said Palkia, "and I must say it looks better than I thought it would." He turned back to his work, which was currently in the process of making obnoxiously loud whooshing sounds. Shards of light flew in every direction, illuminating the silhouette of Palkia (for he was blocking the view between us and the work) quite well.

"Watch in awe," I instructed Casey. "You probably won't see this again."

He didn't need to be told.

"Done!" sang Palkia happily a few seconds later. "Are you ready?"

"Go ahead," I said to Palkia. He moved out of the way, and I whipped my arms away from Casey – and wisely relocated them to his mouth. The muffled scream still rang loud and clear in my ears, but at least it was soft enough to keep all of the nearby residents of Calda City (these humans can be SO original…) asleep and ignorant of approximately a million illegal things happening in their beloved safe-haven.

In Casey's defense, though, it was a pretty drastic change.

The first, and most noticeable, difference was that he was quite a lot taller. This was thanks to Celebi, who used her time-travel-tweaking abilities to simply age Casey while she traveled forward into the future and retain that age when they made the return trip. This provided the effect – well, not the effect, because it actually happened – of kicking his age up from eleven to fourteen.

"What in the…" Casey spluttered after I had cautiously removed my wing from his mouth. He didn't say anything more, and seemed to reflect upon the fact that his voice was deeper than he was used to. "This is going to take getting used to…" He shook his head slowly, and noticed as he did so the flops of hair that dangled in front of his face. They were crimson in color, and his entire hairstyle looked rather like mine. It was a multi-spiked masterpiece that I had convinced the Unown (otherwise known as the Gravity Gods and watchers of the Ancientpowers, the things which gave Legendaries their otherworldly skills) to lift – no pun intended – it from their standard rules of gravitational logic. Two of the spikes were limp and dangled on either side of his face, while the ones behind it weren't so much 'spikes' as 'thick cone-shaped wads of hair'. Two more stuck out at an upwards angle, and finally one spike poked out the back.

It was strange, I tell you. Palkia was entirely to blame, not me, so you can go and complain to the shrines of him if you want to.

In any case, his hair was really odd. The eyes had changed color too – what was once a rather dreary blue color had turned stormy gray. His face had grown narrower (probably an after-effect of Celebi's 'artificial' aging process), which made the funky hair all the more noticeable. His outfit was a purple one-piece rubbersuit similar to the one that hyperactive Kanto Champion… ah… Lance. Yes. His rubbersuit was similar to that of Lance, down even to the boots (which pushed up the legs of the suit, and were black with red stripes and soles). The only exception was that Casey's was roughly the shade of a Sableye. He was also wearing blue gloves, which basically limited the amount of exposed skin to his face and part of his neck.

Casey was evidently too shocked to speak. He slowly slid his eyes downward to stare into his palms, while Palkia and I (after sharing a glance) took the moment into our own hands.

"Do you like it?" we chorused.

Silence. Then…

"N… NO!"

I dove for his mouth a third time, but it was too late.

"Okay, nice job breaking the secrecy, hero. We've gotta speed this up," I sighed in Casey's direction before turning to Palkia. "The object, Palkia, if you will."

"Certainly." Palkia held out his arms once again, and in another small flash of light there laid a small square of red-and-gray striped fabric in his hands. I prodded the cloth tentatively, to make sure it wasn't still hot or prone to falling apart due to the fact it was composed almost entirely of converted air molecules, and after it proved safe I picked it up and presented it to Casey.

"Tie it around your neck, making sure the rock tied in there is near your mouth."

"Why?"

"Because that particular rock is not just any old rock. It happens to be a chip off of the Rock Megaphone, my personal instrument of choice…"

"A megaphone isn't an instrument!"

"Um, yeah, it is. It makes noises. Heck, we're playing instruments right now, just by talking. Anyway, by being tied into that particular bandanna it makes said bandanna indestructible. When you need to talk to me, duck your head down and hold Rotom in your lap or something. Speak into the Megaphone and, if you're quiet enough, it'll look like you're speaking to Rotom."

"Ah, I see…" he said absentmindedly, fumbling with the bandanna.

Celebi perked up at that point, scared. "Um, guys," she said meekly, "there are people coming."

"Noroi!" I hissed. Palkia and Celebi looked at me, startled. "Gah, stop looking at me like that and go back to Oort! They're coming, you know!" Celebi nodded and disappeared in another flash of dim light, but Palkia hung around.

I turned back to Casey, who had gotten to his feet by now. "You need to get off of this island," I said.

"To where?"

"Go head to the nearest airport, and find a young man with funny white hair waiting around in front of the entrance. Talk to him, and he should give you the ticket and directions on where to go. Now hide Rotom and scoot!" I pointed to the edge of the alleyway (not that anyone could see in the dim moonlight) and the voices became more obvious.

"But…" he began.

"If you have questions, just speak into the Megaphone Rock," I said, as the light began to envelop me as well. "See ya."

And I disappeared.

"Wonderful," he mumbled as I left.

Palkia spread his wings to leave too, but before he did turned his head to face Casey with quite a serious expression on his face. "Fate knows where you live, kid," he said. "Try to evade it, and sooner or later it's going to come chasing after you and hunt you down. And it's not always going to be as forgiving as Giratina trying to get you to face the facts." The light soon enveloped him too.

"Trust me on this one."

-

I reappeared in Never-Turn-Back quite weary.

Not feeling like wandering around to find the Dea Procol Machina today, I simply teleported there. You see, those – and only those – who have been touched by the Ancientpower-G (brought to you by the Unown G, of course) may warp almost anything in Never-Turn-Back to their will. Basically, two creatures out of the entirety of them could do almost anything in here.

The other creature who could do almost anything in here was Zero, but since he's rather new to the concept his abilities are more limited than mine…

…Oh, look. Here he comes now.

"'Funny white hair'?" was the first thing he said. I knew that was going to come back and bite me.

"Well, there's really no other way to describe it…" I started, shifting my red-eyed gaze of doom in Zero's direction. He got my hint and dropped the subject.

"Right. Well, I suppose I'm supposed to go give that kid the ticket?"

"Well, I'm not, and the bus drivers are…" I paused to wave at a nearby Primape, who was eating Chestnuts on the job— "pretty much illegal, so you're the only one left. Go give it to him. Here." I conjured some 'dollars' (the currency used in Calda), which then fell into his hands.

"But the time limit…"

"…doesn't apply when I give you a mission. You've still got your hour of roaming."

Grumbling about something involving laziness and glaciers, Zero disappeared.



He appeared in front of me a few hours later.

"I delivered them," Zero said flatly. "Happy now?"

"Quite. Thank you, Zero."

"Hmm." He turned on his heel and stalked away, probably itching to get to the Reverse World or something. I watched him for a few seconds, afraid he was going to trip or something skulking like that.

…And if he tripped, he would, um, be on my case about how dangerous Never-Turn-Back was. Yes. That was it. No end to the complaining on that one.