Negrek
Lost but Seeking
This is the story I wrote for Chibi Pika in this year's Yuletide. Happy Yuletide, Chibi!I figured I'd mix in some many worlds/timey-wimey stuff, since a little bird told me you have a fondness for that kind of thing. The length ran away with me a bit, but I hope you enjoy it.
For other readers who might be curious about the prompt I was using, here you go:
[spoil]
Poke-POV. Should include at least one or more of the following: Lucario, Charizard, Tyranitar, Chesnaught, Togekiss, Whimsicott, or any of their pre-evos. Don’t feel compelled to include all of them though. I’d also like to see what other Pokémon you want to include. If you have a Poke-POV story of your own, feel free to cameo OCs from your fic, however, they should not be the main characters.
Prompt:
1. For some reason, a Legendary Pokémon has nowhere/no one to spend the holiday season with. Stumbles upon a group of mortal Pokémon in the middle of their celebration. What happens next??
2. I wanna see how you think Pokémon celebrate the holiday season. Should have as little in common with human celebrations as possible.
3. The more characters, the better. I just wanna read a lot of fun character interactions.
[/spoil]
It's always Christmas somewhen. Or All Hallow's, or Midsummer, or even the Millennium Festival. All times exist simultaneously; pull the moments together, shuffle them in the right way, and you can lay one celebration atop another, look back through the ages at each iteration, each one eternally happening, even the ones that haven't come yet, for some value of haven't come.
Dialga hates it when I do that, but after all it's their job to make sure time runs free and easy through its many-branching channels. It's nothing but headache for them to untangle the streams after I've been at them. But I'm not a guardian, I'm a traveler: my concern is history, and history is all splicing together and considering out of order and bringing distant points together, not following every mundane moment from beginning to end.
What I'm getting at is I don't much believe in holidays. More than anyone I know that no day is unique, and no day is special, and after all I can have any day I want, for exactly as long as I want, whenever it is that I please. I'll show up for celebrations that honor me, of course, it's only polite, but even then I'm only skipping from one to another for as long as I can stand. I celebrate until I grow tired of it, then leave, and another thousand of what you might call years go past before I'm feeling up to it again.
After a while, holidays just get boring, you know? How many variations can you see on the happy family gathering, how many ways can you watch it go wrong, before it stops being interesting? How many times do you think the same scene's played out, with only the tiniest variations, across each and every one of Palkia's innumerable worlds? For those who experience one little molecule-thin trickle of time's infinite stream, one life forever isolated in its own continuity, then sure, I guess they're fun, novel. But for me? Boring.
Except when they aren't.
Let me tell you a story. A personal history, if you like. It begins like this: once upon a time, there was a snowstorm. And in another time, the same snowstorm: a billion billion snowflakes with different shapes, different wind-blown paths, but adding up to the same snowstorm nonetheless. There was a third storm and a fourth, siblings, different and yet the same. And in each of them there was a Traveler.
Let's say for sake of argument that I'm something fiery, two wings, one tail, tiny stubby arms. I know it doesn't make much sense, but go with me on this for a minute. Sometimes you have to trust your storyteller knows what they're doing, don't you?
Anyway, I'm a charizard, and I'm thinking about the solstice, the shortest day of the year. It's a big deal for humans around here, when the days stop shrinking and summer, far-off summer, starts to grow again in their thoughts. And me, the charizard that's me, I'm thinking of fireworks and music, greasy street food and colorful lights. Goldenrod is where you want to be on the solstice, and Violet more or less the opposite: the straight-laced monks don't celebrate, and other people are too afraid of offending them to really go all-out.
On a good day the flight to Goldenrod takes half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. It's not a good day, heavy snowfall smothering most of eastern Johto. There's high winds and low visibility, and only a delibird would enjoy sharing the skies with that much ice. Walking won't be much more fun, but it beats potentially crashing from 600 feet.
More reasonably, I would have stayed home and enjoyed the celebrations there, especially considering that, shortly after leaving, I'm stopped by a sudden frisson of fear. A moment of vertiginous panic freezes me in the street, afraid now of crashing even standing on my own two feet. I probably should have turned back then, not tangled with whatever that was.
But we're talking about the biggest party in the region, on the darkest day of the year. After two months of cold and wet and early sunset, I need this. I need a night out. So I keep going. It's midday, fallen snow glinting where the sun peeks through a gap in the clouds. The wind's subsided, too, although I'm not fool enough to take to the air--I'm sure the very second I did that a gust would up and smash me face-first back into the ground. That's just how these things go.
It's a pleasant walk, with the prospect of an even pleasanter evening at its end. No need to worry about where to stay in Goldenrod--I'll be up all night, enjoying life for as long as possible before the sunrise and the hangover arrive. And then the roads will be clear and I can cram myself into a taxi for the trip back, and that will be that. Another winter solstice come and gone.
There's a moment when I suddenly felt heavy, plodding, somehow too large for my flight-boned frame. I shake my head, snort up a couple of embers from the back of my throat, and the sensation passes.
I really need a break, don't I? Work's literally driving me crazy. Winter is literally driving me crazy. Time for lights and warmth and easy hospitality. I've been trying to do too much, as of late.
Leaving the road is a mistake. Sure, the trees look inviting, the evergreens lovely emerald against the white of new-fallen snow. I won't get lost, with the road running right beside me and the ability to hop into the air and get my bearings if I need. But the snow's deeper in the shadows of the trees, and I have to push through all the hidden brush and obstacles lying just under the snow. Not worth it for the atmosphere.
That's where I end up anyway, crunching and crackling my way along, watching my breath steam off in huge white clouds. The road runs along to my right, keeping me on track, and there are so few people out and about today that I can pretend it's just me with the whole glittering woods to myself. It's great fun until the storm comes down again, with real fury this time, and suddenly it's dark and bracing cold, and I'm using my wings to shield my face against the wind.
And of course, I'm lost.
The road's gone, somehow, and I've got no hope of flying, not with the wind slapping me around fit to blow me into a tree even with my feet still on the ground. I fight through it towards what I think is west, but the snow's nearly up to my knees and coming down furious, so every step is a trial.
It doesn't help, when panic grips me--I wasn't doing so great in the fear department, to be honest, but this is serious panic. I'm breathless and paralyzed, can't even think over the pounding of my heart and the nonsense drone of terror in my head. And then, for no reason, I think: Demons!
A voice behind me says: "The Traveler!"
I turn, sluggish and heavy and fearful. But my mind is my own again, and it's no demon looking back at me, just a natu. He clings precariously to a skeletal old birch, blown crazily by the wind but always keeping his wide, bright eyes on me.
"Hello!" you yell up to him. "I'm lost! Can you tell me how to get to Goldenrod? Or just back to the road?"
"The Traveler!" the natu chirps again. "The Traveler! The Traveler!"
All of a sudden the trees are heavy with round green bodies. Fresh snow tumbles from bending boughs as the flock jostles and crowds onto ever-lower branches, expressions avid, competing to get the best view of me. "The Traveler!" they chirp, hopping back and forth in giddy excitement. "The Traveler! The Traveler!"
The first bird, the one who raised the alarm, sidles out along his branch, too far, to where it's so thin it snaps beneath his weight and sends him tumbling to the snow.
Now, here's where it gets complicated, so listen well. Because at the same time I'm standing there, staring in wonder at the natu hopping and chirping in a halo around me, I am also in another forest, identical in every way save that the footprints behind me are three-toed and round and the scene is lit by strobing blue.
I shake off the last of the strange warm feeling, the momentary illusion of wings, and my anger rises again, barely cresting the sick feeling of panic and betrayal. "Stay back!" I yell. "Last warning. Stay out of my way, or I'll make you move!" The aura sphere between my paws hums and sparkles, but its tingling thrumming is nothing like the odd burning sensation that distracted me a moment before.
"The Traveler! The Traveler!" the natu coo from their trees, eyes gleaming in the aura sphere's light.
"Come with us, Traveler," chirps one. "Come celebrate!"
"Do you think I don't know what you are?" I roar. "Demons! You'll not tempt me from the path!" I release the aura sphere, and natu scatter in all directions. The aura sphere swerves sideways and knocks one bird out of the air, sends him tumbling to the snow.
But at the same time I'm there, brimming with righteous anger, I'm also standing solidly against the storm, my armor grown heavy under a layer of fresh-fallen snow. The sharp sent of evergreen fills my nostrils, spiky boughs filling my arms, and I can smell another lovely pine so close by, the sap rising in its trunk. It would be perfect to take a branch from, but unfortunately the tree is full of natu. So are the ones flanking it, and as I shake off a strange moment of desperate rage, they fill my ears with constant excited yammering.
"Come with us!" they chorus. "Come with us, Traveler! Come celebrate!"
I turn and turn and see only more natu-laden trees, birds packing their branches and staring down with an avidity too much like hunger. Here and there scuffles breaks out over the best spots, and here one natu loses and is shoved from the branch entirely, claws clutching uselessly at the air. Without thinking I shift my burden to one arm and reach out with the other, catch him before he can hit the ground. I tuck him up under my arm, a squirming feathery ball of warmth.
"What's this, now?" I ask. "What's this we're supposed to be celebrating?"
"The Traveler!" the natu chirp in their eerie overlapping voices. "The Traveler! The Traveler arrives!"
I sigh. The pine tree beckons, so close, so unfortunately full of natu. "Well, I can see you're very excited, but I'm afraid I can't stay. I have to get these boughs back home. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
"No!" one natu cries. "No, you must come! The Traveler must come with us!"
That sets the lot of them off again, and I set my jaw and tighten my grip on the greenwood as the air fills with more choruses of, "The Traveler!" The boughs are for sweeping away last year's sins, but I entertain thoughts of sweeping all the natu away with it, too.
"You lot could learn a thing or two about how to give an invitation," I say to the natu under my arm.
"It's important," he says, somewhat muffled. "Please come!"
I rumble a growl, watching the natu hop and yell around me in creepily synchronized distress. "Just how long will this take?" I ask reluctantly.
In another story another me, flaming tail and wings tucked in tight against the wind, suddenly perks up. "Did you say there would be food?"
And another, still me but a lucario this time, bares teeth and draws energy for another attack. "Never!" I howl. "Never, I'll never go with you!" The aura sphere explodes against the side of a tree, scattering chips of bark and sending natu tumbling. "Come on, all of you!" I yell with vicious abandon. "All of you!" The blood hammers loud in my ears.
The natu finally turn silent. They settle dark and watchful on their respective boughs, and I summon another aura sphere between my paws,
But then one natu's eyes glow, and another and another, until a full glowing ring forms in the trees overhead. I loose the aura sphere, but my legs are starting to shake, a horrible pressure building behind my eyes. I growl and charge, not even thinking of what I'll do when I reach the natu, but don't go more than four steps before darkness snatches me and pulls me down into unfeeling.
And there's something else, too. Because in another time, not so far from this one, the natu gather and mill in the trees, huddle together and gossip against the wind, make forays out in ones and twos to search the forest. What they find is nothing, no Traveler at all.
But back to the charizard--me and also not. Because I'm looking in at her, aren't I, staying always out of sight? This is what I do. I observe, I catalogue, I evaluate. I see moments as scenes and weave them together into narrative. From raw time, history. But now, right now, I'm the charizard, too.
I know. But we're getting to it, I promise.
I'm the charizard and I'm watching the bowl in front of me fill with tea. It's a stone bowl, carved out of the same rock I'm sitting on, which has been shaped into a kind of long, low bench. There are more bowls dotted around the room, some up high, some sprouting right out of the floor. They're made for different kinds of pokémon, I suppose, and all different sizes. Currently most of the bowls have at least one natu perched on the rim, the birds shuffling back and forth in excitement, leaning far out to watch the liquid rise up from below.
It must have been humans who built this place, this room, because it's not a cave, shaped from the square blocks humans build with. And even if natu could somehow carve bowls like these, they couldn't have rigged up whatever ingenious mechanism that, behind the scenes, fills the bowls all up with tea with the pull of a lever. What this place is and how it got filled up with natu, I have no idea. I can't even think about it right now.
Goldenrod. I have to get to Goldenrod before the night's out.
"So," I say, as casually as I can. "What's this whole traveler thing supposed to be about? What do I have to do? Do we just, uh, kind of get together and have dinner, and then I can get going?"
I can't fault the tea--it looks lovely after dragging my tail-flame through that storm, and I stick my snout right in. It's scalding-hot and perfect. I can't pretend I'd rather be outside, swatting away snowflakes. But still. I can't stay.
"Tonight is the longest night," intones a new voice, reedy but deeper than any of the natu's. It's an old xatu over in one corner--I'd thought for sure he was asleep. But his golden eyes are open now, and scrutinizing me. "What do you know of other worlds?"
"Umm, nothing? What other worlds?"
The xatu sweeps one wing out in a broad arc. "All lives contain choices. What to eat for dinner, which road to choose. Whether to sleep or stay up another hour. Imagine that, when you make a choice, you do not leave the other possibility behind. There is one of you that chooses one way, and another who picks the other. Two lives, two stories. Once identical, now slightly different. These are our many worlds: one for each different set of circumstances, a billion billion billion of them, each as true as any other."
"Okay, I guess I've heard of things like that before," I say. "So tonight you're celebrating... other worlds?"
"Other times. Other stories. There are a billion billion of me, and a billion billion of you, each of us individual and yet the same. We live our lives a hair's breadth from each other, never touching, unaware. Except for one night. The longest night of the year."
I'm momentarily distracted by a sharp, piney scent, like somebody's broken a fir branch under my nose. Did I accidentally trample a sapling or something on my way over here? I try to twist surreptitiously, sniff myself without being noticed. Did I get sap on me somehow? Ugh, who wants to get caught smelling like a plant? How embarrassing.
The xatu hasn't noticed anything amiss. "In the deep of night, the walls between realities thin. Timelines lying side by side brush against each other. And on this night, the night of deepest dark, the walls between worlds are thinner yet. Times blur and merge, if only for a little while."
(I should interject here and say that Dialga would consider all of this nonsense. Time's threads are separate entities, whole and solid and self-contained. They may wrap around one another, knot and tangle outrageously, but merge? Hardly.)
"Okay, so something strange is going to happen," I say, chesnaught now, my evergreen boughs piled neatly against the wall behind me. The cup the natu gave me for scooping up the tea is comically small, easily held between thumb and forefinger. "What does that have to do with me? With the whole idea of this 'Traveler?'"
This set off a wave of, "The Traveler! The Traveler!" from the natu, albeit a more muted one than what they'd serenaded me with back in the forest. They're distracted by the refreshment, taking eager sips of tea, tipping their bodies all the way back to swallow. They probably felt the cold worse than I, since they're hardly more than feathery fluff.
"There is always a Traveler," the xatu says.
"Okay," I say when he doesn't elaborate. "What makes you think it's me?"
He looks at me with unfathomable eyes. It's so hard to tell expressions on bird pokémon. "Have you been feeling strange recently?" he asks.
While those two of me are enjoying their tea, another is recently awakened, with a splitting headache that's done nothing to soothe her temper. Neither has the psychic barrier standing between her and the exit to the cave, behind which the natu hide. It protects the xatu, too, who sits maddeningly serene while I pepper the barrier with energy blasts.
"Let me go!" I roar. "I need to find my trainer! She's lost. She needs me! I have to find her!"
"The only thing you'll find out there is frostbite," the xatu says. "Stay. Rest. Wait out the storm. This opportunity arises only once in a lifetime."
"Ha! Wait out Darkest Night? The night we must face temptation? You're exactly what the stories warn of, pretender!" I lunge at the birds, sending a few of the more nervous natu scattering, and slam into the barrier with as much force as I can. Kicks and punches crack off the wall of psychic energy while the remaining natu struggle to keep it in place, the glow of power in their eyes flickering.
"Elder, don't provoke her!" one natu says in a highly audible whisper.
"I don't know your stories," the xatu says calmly. "Why don't you tell me one of them?"
"No!" I snarl. "I need to find my trainer!" And I throw myself forward again, or start to. But another of those curious flashes comes over me, and suddenly I'm too large for my body, nursing what feels like a burned tongue with something small and delicate held in one hand.
I come back to myself standing slumped and awkward, and I'm probably lucky I didn't end up on the floor. I'm trapped here, alone, on this most dangerous of days, and on top of everything I'm apparently going mad. I think of my trainer. She must be out searching for me, calling my name into the shearing wind, and I throw another bracing punch at the wall, even though I know it's pointless. I can't give up, never--not on her.
There's one more reality, of course, and it remains empty, the natu's party attended by none besides themselves.
"But Elder! There has to be a Traveler, doesn't there?" one natu asks desperately. The bowls of tea are full, the cakes out on their silver trays--pilfered human things as well, though far less ancient than the room itself. None of the birds seem terribly interested, though, picking listlessly at one thing or the other, taking uninspired, thoughtless sips of tea.
"How will we get to meet the others?" another pipes up. "How will we get to ask our questions?"
"There is always a Traveler," the xatu says, as serene as any of his other incarnations. "Come, eat, drink. Make the Traveler feel welcome!"
The natu huddle down obediently, but pass brief exasperated glances between each other. They're no doubt used to their elder's opaque statements and frustratingly calm demeanor, but they can't be much comfort to natu who see their holiday ruined. It's no fun playing host to a guest who never showed.
(I'm there, of course, and watching. But they can't see me standing here, waiting outside of time.)
But in at least one of these stories, I'm enjoying myself more than I care to admit. "These are actually really good," I say around a mouthful of cake. "Thank you!" The natu holding the tray in her beak fluffs with obvious pleasure. I feel a faint twinge of regret as I take the last proffered pastry. There are more, of course, on other trays, but they're all being attacked by natu, who squabble especially over the seeds decorating their tops. The xatu has a couple of his own, but he's shown no interest in them. Perhaps he might be persuaded to share.
Or--no. They're delicious, for sure, but I have somewhere else to be. Weird mystic time ritual or not, I need to be on my way. "So, this is great and all, but when's it supposed to happen, this whole, uh, time convergence thing?"
"Not long before midnight. You can feel it drawing closer, can't you?"
If he means that creepy feeling of not properly being here, of being too large, or too small, for my body, those quick flashes of things that aren't actually happening, then sure, I feel it. I don't think that's a sign that there's actually some weird temporal event coming on, though, but rather a sign that I need to get away from all these psychics who are clearly messing with my head. Or--no. I hadn't thought about it, but surely they wouldn't put anything weird in the food? But all these old pokémon rituals involve drugs one way or another, don't they? This is why you don't accept dinner invitations from creepy strangers.
Suddenly the urge to get to Goldenrod is irresistible. I surge to my feet, and then, forgetting the potential for serious hallucinogens disguised by a delicious fruity taste, cram the rest of the last cake in my mouth.
"I have to get to Goldenrod," I say, trying to ignore the pitiful peeping of the natu, who mill around underfoot, begging plaintively for me to stay. Outside the wind howls worse than ever, and now it's full dark, and the cold feels even colder after I've been sitting awhile in the warmth. I can't let myself think of the long road ahead. Instead I think of fireworks, and of music drifting through the streets, the smells of all the street foods mingling--and the taste of them of course.
I'm feeling almost cheerful despite coming dangerously close to stepping on a natu when I fall clear out of my body. I am a lucario, I have always been a lucario, ever since I was a riolu, the same riolu that on hatching looked up into the face of the human that would be her trainer.
The same human that looks at me now, eye to eye now that I'm fully grown, and says, "I've been thinking, Lucario. Do you really want me to be your trainer?"
And then I'm a charizard again, listing against the wall, groaning, claws digging thin furrows across stone. The natu bounce around in even more agitation than before, which completely fails to help.
"It's dangerous to go out by yourself, this close to the convergence," the xatu says. "What if you started to merge in the middle of that snowstorm? Stay. Please. We will help you. This is an incredible opportunity. How many go through life never knowing of their fellow-travelers, and of those who do, how many ever get to speak with them?"
"I didn't ask for an incredible opportunity!" I roar, and despite my best efforts it comes out petulant and laced with fire. "I wanted to have a good time at a party! Can't you pick somebody else for your stupid traveler thing?"
"We do not choose," the xatu says. "We merely wait. We know the Traveler will come. And when they do, we are there to help them."
"I don't buy that," Chesnaught-me says, and she too is standing now, clutching at her head. "You were the ones who showed up and started in on all that 'Traveler' nonsense. You picked me, and now you're giving me hallucinations. Maybe you're not even doing it on purpose. Maybe it's some side effect of whatever ritual you think you have to do for this whole weird holiday. It doesn't matter. I don't buy any of this."
"We do not choose," the xatu says, and it's the lucario who answers him, in another time entirely.
"I'm sure," I growl. My aura spheres and desperate blows have both been spent, but I bristle even now, aura sensors standing straight out and vibrating as I try to sieve through conflicting waves of sensory information that come on ever faster. "You saw me at my lowest and didn't think me a perfect target. You didn't consider my weakness an opportunity. It's pure chance that I ended up here. It all makes so much sense!"
A desperate wave of fighting energy ripples out to fizz and disperse against the barrier. I'm tired, after all, alone in the face of all the natu's psychic efforts. It doesn't help that I'm dragged down into some other life again when the xatu repeats, "We do not choose."
In another reality, the natu turn and look at one another, nervous, not sure who he's talking to. Even here, in a room that rings with absence, the natu are starting to feel it. They aren't blurring into pokémon of entirely different species, but now and again they'll blink and find themselves turned just a hair too far to the left or right, or catch a thought that doesn't feel quite theirs. They've been told what to expect, they're far more excited than afraid. But even so, it is strange.
Back in the charizard's reality, I've given up on arguing and rested my head against the wall. The real pressure against my skull makes it a little less confusing to feel my claws clutching at my head, when after all my arms are far too short to do that.
"Who are you?" I growl when I find myself fretting over how much the evergreen I've collected will dry out if it's left on the floor while I'm preoccupied by some cosmic event.
"I could ask you the same thing," I say as the teeth-gritted chesnaught, pressed so close to the wall that my spines dig mortar out from between the bricks.
In another timeline I, the lucario, am also slumped against the wall, at the extreme opposite end of the room from the natu and their barrier.
They can't see each other, those three aspects of me, but I, watching from without, am struck by how they've all made their way to the same spot in the room, how even the angles of their limbs are eerily similar, despite their different anatomies. Time always echoes itself. The three of them blur, edges beginning to run as their timelines draw closer together. Intriguing--and impossible. It ought to be impossible.
Inside the tangle of converging timelines, I, the charizard, try to tamp down the rising panic of my other selves, deny my own fear in annoyance at their antics. For all her apparent stoicism, it's the chesnaught who's bawling loudest, filling my head with worry for her children. Perhaps it's just because the lucario's exhausted, though; her worry still runs through everything, a constant enervating undercurrent.
"Could the two of you shut up for a second?" I say aloud to no one, one claw swiping at the wall, as if to drag me back to my feet. It misses completely. The lucario and chesnaught mirror the motion unconsciously. Charizard and chesnaught are surrounded by tutting, muttering natu who try to nudge them to more comfortable positions, fan them with their stubby wings, bring water and food that the disoriented pokémon don't even notice. In the lucario's story, on the other hand, the birds remain clustered far away, unwilling to leave the safety of their shield. The inconsistency grates, producing a discordant hum not heard but felt. Several of the natu grow dizzy, feeling like they're seesawing between one place and another.
The effect is worse for the Travelers themselves--ourselves. We will always be discordant, four different people who happened to reach the same point, the same role our stories. The universe tries to smooth this over, to blend us into one, pressing us against each other in a horribly intimate way.
The charizard sees the world briefly in leylines of glowing aura, feels heavy, weighed down by armor she doesn't have and memories, regrets that don't belong to her. She shudders and gasps as though drowning, dragged under by the weight of her other lives.
It's as Chesnaught that I feel like I've grown wings. I close my eyes (but they remain open, in two other realities, open and dutifully reporting back) and try not to think about it, but it's a part of me now: memories of spinning and rolling through the air with a delight that horrifies my steadfastly ground-bound, afraid-of-heights self. I'm filled up with the same blighting fire that wakes visceral fear in the heart of any grass-type.
As lucario I try to fight, always to fight. I try to meditate, to clear my mind, to move enough to take on a proper meditative pose. I pray for guidance, for something to show me a way through this darkest night, but prayer can't banish thoughts of long and lonely nights working in Violet Gym, fire and wind at my command, or of children that both are and aren't my own. I struggle once again to right myself, but the other two of me refuse to move.
(And still there is that empty timeline, where the natu cluster not around a convalescent Traveler but a conspicuous empty space.)
"I thought this was supposed to be some once-in-a-lifetime experience," the chesnaught growls. "Mostly it just feels like the worst headache I've ever had."
"The convergence is not complete. We await another Traveler," the xatu says in every reality, speaking directly into my minds. He hangs like a vision before our mental eyes even as his physical body remains perfectly still on its dais, eyes closed.
"Oh, great. That guy's here, too?" the charizard part of myself asks.
"What, there's someone else I'm going to have to tell to get out of my head?" the chesnaught groans. "Can't we sort this mess out first?"
"Not without the last Traveler. They will bring the timelines into full alignment. When the merge is complete, you will be able to speak to one another properly. Not for long, but even so. And after that, you all will travel apart again, and you can go your separate ways."
"Sounds great. How long are we supposed to be waiting for this mysterious other traveler to show up, then? Because I personally would appreciate it if they hurried it up."
"That is up to them," the xatu says in his most mysterious, unhelpful voice. "Or, I should say, up to you."
Then he looks at me. Not any of the mes already there who're bellyaching about nausea and disorientation while their universes try to overlap and ruck up uncomfortably around the imperfect fit. The xatu looks at me, the me watching from the outside, and that's another thing that shouldn't even be possible.
I admit it: I run. I feel his eyes on me, finding me in the one place I should be safe, and I flee into another time entirely, one far-distant and familiar. It's an old favorite from a long, long ways back, far before there were either humans or pokémon to cause trouble. Mostly there's forest stretching on and on across new-forged land, with the occasional slippery sea-thing making an illicit run up onto shore, reveling, maybe, in its transgression. This time is vast and empty and peaceful and excellent for stop to think things through.
Xatu can see beyond their own time. They're well-known for it, though it doesn't give them the wisdom they often claim. Occasionally they happen to see me, whether I've manifested within a timeline or am in transit between them. But these are only glimpses, and they happen by chance. This xatu turned and looked at me, and it was not brief, and it was no accident.
It rattled me. I sit and think a while, then head off, resolved not to return to that unsettling little pocket of time. All realities, all times in their infinite permutations are open to me: it's not like I'm going to run out of other places to go. And if I ever do want to go back there, I can simply jump back to the exact moment I left. The problem can wait--will wait, indefinitely, and spending a little while to consider my options can't hurt.
So I wander, scouring all time for its stories, weaving history out of fact. For how long? The irony is that time's caretakers are themselves timeless. It was long enough to weave centuries out of small, stolen moments, places where I popped into existence, watching, evaluating. But I busying myself about my usual work my mind keeps going back to that cold winter night, the night that shouldn't be possible.
Of course, there's no way I could stay away forever. I fight it. I distract myself. But I wind up where anyone could have predicted I would from the start: right back in that moment where the xatu looked at me. The threads of time are twisting, beginning to converge, but they're snagged on a ragged hole in one of them. The other three Travelers, pokémon who by chance had wandered through a certain snowy wood, are left reeling and incomplete.
Enough waiting and watching from outside time. The only way to fix is to go in myself and let what happens happen.
Diving in is as easy as stepping through an open doorway, but after come all those inconvenient facts of life: a heart to start beating, a brain to house millennia of experiences, lungs to draw in air. My vision goes inside-out as my awareness of glittering, filamentous timelines recedes and mortal sights roar to the fore in painful color and clarity.
It's worse here, where the timelines strain to align, to fit me into the shape of the mortal lives that mirror mine. I can hear the time-threads with my new, actual ears, twanging and buzzing with tension as they strain against each other. There's a second where I get the impression of around two dozen shocked natu who might think they're hallucinating my sudden appearance, and then I deal with the noise, yanking the timelines into place myself.
For other readers who might be curious about the prompt I was using, here you go:
[spoil]
Poke-POV. Should include at least one or more of the following: Lucario, Charizard, Tyranitar, Chesnaught, Togekiss, Whimsicott, or any of their pre-evos. Don’t feel compelled to include all of them though. I’d also like to see what other Pokémon you want to include. If you have a Poke-POV story of your own, feel free to cameo OCs from your fic, however, they should not be the main characters.
Prompt:
1. For some reason, a Legendary Pokémon has nowhere/no one to spend the holiday season with. Stumbles upon a group of mortal Pokémon in the middle of their celebration. What happens next??
2. I wanna see how you think Pokémon celebrate the holiday season. Should have as little in common with human celebrations as possible.
3. The more characters, the better. I just wanna read a lot of fun character interactions.
[/spoil]
Fourfold
It's always Christmas somewhen. Or All Hallow's, or Midsummer, or even the Millennium Festival. All times exist simultaneously; pull the moments together, shuffle them in the right way, and you can lay one celebration atop another, look back through the ages at each iteration, each one eternally happening, even the ones that haven't come yet, for some value of haven't come.
Dialga hates it when I do that, but after all it's their job to make sure time runs free and easy through its many-branching channels. It's nothing but headache for them to untangle the streams after I've been at them. But I'm not a guardian, I'm a traveler: my concern is history, and history is all splicing together and considering out of order and bringing distant points together, not following every mundane moment from beginning to end.
What I'm getting at is I don't much believe in holidays. More than anyone I know that no day is unique, and no day is special, and after all I can have any day I want, for exactly as long as I want, whenever it is that I please. I'll show up for celebrations that honor me, of course, it's only polite, but even then I'm only skipping from one to another for as long as I can stand. I celebrate until I grow tired of it, then leave, and another thousand of what you might call years go past before I'm feeling up to it again.
After a while, holidays just get boring, you know? How many variations can you see on the happy family gathering, how many ways can you watch it go wrong, before it stops being interesting? How many times do you think the same scene's played out, with only the tiniest variations, across each and every one of Palkia's innumerable worlds? For those who experience one little molecule-thin trickle of time's infinite stream, one life forever isolated in its own continuity, then sure, I guess they're fun, novel. But for me? Boring.
Except when they aren't.
Let me tell you a story. A personal history, if you like. It begins like this: once upon a time, there was a snowstorm. And in another time, the same snowstorm: a billion billion snowflakes with different shapes, different wind-blown paths, but adding up to the same snowstorm nonetheless. There was a third storm and a fourth, siblings, different and yet the same. And in each of them there was a Traveler.
Let's say for sake of argument that I'm something fiery, two wings, one tail, tiny stubby arms. I know it doesn't make much sense, but go with me on this for a minute. Sometimes you have to trust your storyteller knows what they're doing, don't you?
Anyway, I'm a charizard, and I'm thinking about the solstice, the shortest day of the year. It's a big deal for humans around here, when the days stop shrinking and summer, far-off summer, starts to grow again in their thoughts. And me, the charizard that's me, I'm thinking of fireworks and music, greasy street food and colorful lights. Goldenrod is where you want to be on the solstice, and Violet more or less the opposite: the straight-laced monks don't celebrate, and other people are too afraid of offending them to really go all-out.
On a good day the flight to Goldenrod takes half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. It's not a good day, heavy snowfall smothering most of eastern Johto. There's high winds and low visibility, and only a delibird would enjoy sharing the skies with that much ice. Walking won't be much more fun, but it beats potentially crashing from 600 feet.
More reasonably, I would have stayed home and enjoyed the celebrations there, especially considering that, shortly after leaving, I'm stopped by a sudden frisson of fear. A moment of vertiginous panic freezes me in the street, afraid now of crashing even standing on my own two feet. I probably should have turned back then, not tangled with whatever that was.
But we're talking about the biggest party in the region, on the darkest day of the year. After two months of cold and wet and early sunset, I need this. I need a night out. So I keep going. It's midday, fallen snow glinting where the sun peeks through a gap in the clouds. The wind's subsided, too, although I'm not fool enough to take to the air--I'm sure the very second I did that a gust would up and smash me face-first back into the ground. That's just how these things go.
It's a pleasant walk, with the prospect of an even pleasanter evening at its end. No need to worry about where to stay in Goldenrod--I'll be up all night, enjoying life for as long as possible before the sunrise and the hangover arrive. And then the roads will be clear and I can cram myself into a taxi for the trip back, and that will be that. Another winter solstice come and gone.
There's a moment when I suddenly felt heavy, plodding, somehow too large for my flight-boned frame. I shake my head, snort up a couple of embers from the back of my throat, and the sensation passes.
I really need a break, don't I? Work's literally driving me crazy. Winter is literally driving me crazy. Time for lights and warmth and easy hospitality. I've been trying to do too much, as of late.
Leaving the road is a mistake. Sure, the trees look inviting, the evergreens lovely emerald against the white of new-fallen snow. I won't get lost, with the road running right beside me and the ability to hop into the air and get my bearings if I need. But the snow's deeper in the shadows of the trees, and I have to push through all the hidden brush and obstacles lying just under the snow. Not worth it for the atmosphere.
That's where I end up anyway, crunching and crackling my way along, watching my breath steam off in huge white clouds. The road runs along to my right, keeping me on track, and there are so few people out and about today that I can pretend it's just me with the whole glittering woods to myself. It's great fun until the storm comes down again, with real fury this time, and suddenly it's dark and bracing cold, and I'm using my wings to shield my face against the wind.
And of course, I'm lost.
The road's gone, somehow, and I've got no hope of flying, not with the wind slapping me around fit to blow me into a tree even with my feet still on the ground. I fight through it towards what I think is west, but the snow's nearly up to my knees and coming down furious, so every step is a trial.
It doesn't help, when panic grips me--I wasn't doing so great in the fear department, to be honest, but this is serious panic. I'm breathless and paralyzed, can't even think over the pounding of my heart and the nonsense drone of terror in my head. And then, for no reason, I think: Demons!
A voice behind me says: "The Traveler!"
I turn, sluggish and heavy and fearful. But my mind is my own again, and it's no demon looking back at me, just a natu. He clings precariously to a skeletal old birch, blown crazily by the wind but always keeping his wide, bright eyes on me.
"Hello!" you yell up to him. "I'm lost! Can you tell me how to get to Goldenrod? Or just back to the road?"
"The Traveler!" the natu chirps again. "The Traveler! The Traveler!"
All of a sudden the trees are heavy with round green bodies. Fresh snow tumbles from bending boughs as the flock jostles and crowds onto ever-lower branches, expressions avid, competing to get the best view of me. "The Traveler!" they chirp, hopping back and forth in giddy excitement. "The Traveler! The Traveler!"
The first bird, the one who raised the alarm, sidles out along his branch, too far, to where it's so thin it snaps beneath his weight and sends him tumbling to the snow.
Now, here's where it gets complicated, so listen well. Because at the same time I'm standing there, staring in wonder at the natu hopping and chirping in a halo around me, I am also in another forest, identical in every way save that the footprints behind me are three-toed and round and the scene is lit by strobing blue.
I shake off the last of the strange warm feeling, the momentary illusion of wings, and my anger rises again, barely cresting the sick feeling of panic and betrayal. "Stay back!" I yell. "Last warning. Stay out of my way, or I'll make you move!" The aura sphere between my paws hums and sparkles, but its tingling thrumming is nothing like the odd burning sensation that distracted me a moment before.
"The Traveler! The Traveler!" the natu coo from their trees, eyes gleaming in the aura sphere's light.
"Come with us, Traveler," chirps one. "Come celebrate!"
"Do you think I don't know what you are?" I roar. "Demons! You'll not tempt me from the path!" I release the aura sphere, and natu scatter in all directions. The aura sphere swerves sideways and knocks one bird out of the air, sends him tumbling to the snow.
But at the same time I'm there, brimming with righteous anger, I'm also standing solidly against the storm, my armor grown heavy under a layer of fresh-fallen snow. The sharp sent of evergreen fills my nostrils, spiky boughs filling my arms, and I can smell another lovely pine so close by, the sap rising in its trunk. It would be perfect to take a branch from, but unfortunately the tree is full of natu. So are the ones flanking it, and as I shake off a strange moment of desperate rage, they fill my ears with constant excited yammering.
"Come with us!" they chorus. "Come with us, Traveler! Come celebrate!"
I turn and turn and see only more natu-laden trees, birds packing their branches and staring down with an avidity too much like hunger. Here and there scuffles breaks out over the best spots, and here one natu loses and is shoved from the branch entirely, claws clutching uselessly at the air. Without thinking I shift my burden to one arm and reach out with the other, catch him before he can hit the ground. I tuck him up under my arm, a squirming feathery ball of warmth.
"What's this, now?" I ask. "What's this we're supposed to be celebrating?"
"The Traveler!" the natu chirp in their eerie overlapping voices. "The Traveler! The Traveler arrives!"
I sigh. The pine tree beckons, so close, so unfortunately full of natu. "Well, I can see you're very excited, but I'm afraid I can't stay. I have to get these boughs back home. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
"No!" one natu cries. "No, you must come! The Traveler must come with us!"
That sets the lot of them off again, and I set my jaw and tighten my grip on the greenwood as the air fills with more choruses of, "The Traveler!" The boughs are for sweeping away last year's sins, but I entertain thoughts of sweeping all the natu away with it, too.
"You lot could learn a thing or two about how to give an invitation," I say to the natu under my arm.
"It's important," he says, somewhat muffled. "Please come!"
I rumble a growl, watching the natu hop and yell around me in creepily synchronized distress. "Just how long will this take?" I ask reluctantly.
In another story another me, flaming tail and wings tucked in tight against the wind, suddenly perks up. "Did you say there would be food?"
And another, still me but a lucario this time, bares teeth and draws energy for another attack. "Never!" I howl. "Never, I'll never go with you!" The aura sphere explodes against the side of a tree, scattering chips of bark and sending natu tumbling. "Come on, all of you!" I yell with vicious abandon. "All of you!" The blood hammers loud in my ears.
The natu finally turn silent. They settle dark and watchful on their respective boughs, and I summon another aura sphere between my paws,
But then one natu's eyes glow, and another and another, until a full glowing ring forms in the trees overhead. I loose the aura sphere, but my legs are starting to shake, a horrible pressure building behind my eyes. I growl and charge, not even thinking of what I'll do when I reach the natu, but don't go more than four steps before darkness snatches me and pulls me down into unfeeling.
And there's something else, too. Because in another time, not so far from this one, the natu gather and mill in the trees, huddle together and gossip against the wind, make forays out in ones and twos to search the forest. What they find is nothing, no Traveler at all.
But back to the charizard--me and also not. Because I'm looking in at her, aren't I, staying always out of sight? This is what I do. I observe, I catalogue, I evaluate. I see moments as scenes and weave them together into narrative. From raw time, history. But now, right now, I'm the charizard, too.
I know. But we're getting to it, I promise.
I'm the charizard and I'm watching the bowl in front of me fill with tea. It's a stone bowl, carved out of the same rock I'm sitting on, which has been shaped into a kind of long, low bench. There are more bowls dotted around the room, some up high, some sprouting right out of the floor. They're made for different kinds of pokémon, I suppose, and all different sizes. Currently most of the bowls have at least one natu perched on the rim, the birds shuffling back and forth in excitement, leaning far out to watch the liquid rise up from below.
It must have been humans who built this place, this room, because it's not a cave, shaped from the square blocks humans build with. And even if natu could somehow carve bowls like these, they couldn't have rigged up whatever ingenious mechanism that, behind the scenes, fills the bowls all up with tea with the pull of a lever. What this place is and how it got filled up with natu, I have no idea. I can't even think about it right now.
Goldenrod. I have to get to Goldenrod before the night's out.
"So," I say, as casually as I can. "What's this whole traveler thing supposed to be about? What do I have to do? Do we just, uh, kind of get together and have dinner, and then I can get going?"
I can't fault the tea--it looks lovely after dragging my tail-flame through that storm, and I stick my snout right in. It's scalding-hot and perfect. I can't pretend I'd rather be outside, swatting away snowflakes. But still. I can't stay.
"Tonight is the longest night," intones a new voice, reedy but deeper than any of the natu's. It's an old xatu over in one corner--I'd thought for sure he was asleep. But his golden eyes are open now, and scrutinizing me. "What do you know of other worlds?"
"Umm, nothing? What other worlds?"
The xatu sweeps one wing out in a broad arc. "All lives contain choices. What to eat for dinner, which road to choose. Whether to sleep or stay up another hour. Imagine that, when you make a choice, you do not leave the other possibility behind. There is one of you that chooses one way, and another who picks the other. Two lives, two stories. Once identical, now slightly different. These are our many worlds: one for each different set of circumstances, a billion billion billion of them, each as true as any other."
"Okay, I guess I've heard of things like that before," I say. "So tonight you're celebrating... other worlds?"
"Other times. Other stories. There are a billion billion of me, and a billion billion of you, each of us individual and yet the same. We live our lives a hair's breadth from each other, never touching, unaware. Except for one night. The longest night of the year."
I'm momentarily distracted by a sharp, piney scent, like somebody's broken a fir branch under my nose. Did I accidentally trample a sapling or something on my way over here? I try to twist surreptitiously, sniff myself without being noticed. Did I get sap on me somehow? Ugh, who wants to get caught smelling like a plant? How embarrassing.
The xatu hasn't noticed anything amiss. "In the deep of night, the walls between realities thin. Timelines lying side by side brush against each other. And on this night, the night of deepest dark, the walls between worlds are thinner yet. Times blur and merge, if only for a little while."
(I should interject here and say that Dialga would consider all of this nonsense. Time's threads are separate entities, whole and solid and self-contained. They may wrap around one another, knot and tangle outrageously, but merge? Hardly.)
"Okay, so something strange is going to happen," I say, chesnaught now, my evergreen boughs piled neatly against the wall behind me. The cup the natu gave me for scooping up the tea is comically small, easily held between thumb and forefinger. "What does that have to do with me? With the whole idea of this 'Traveler?'"
This set off a wave of, "The Traveler! The Traveler!" from the natu, albeit a more muted one than what they'd serenaded me with back in the forest. They're distracted by the refreshment, taking eager sips of tea, tipping their bodies all the way back to swallow. They probably felt the cold worse than I, since they're hardly more than feathery fluff.
"There is always a Traveler," the xatu says.
"Okay," I say when he doesn't elaborate. "What makes you think it's me?"
He looks at me with unfathomable eyes. It's so hard to tell expressions on bird pokémon. "Have you been feeling strange recently?" he asks.
While those two of me are enjoying their tea, another is recently awakened, with a splitting headache that's done nothing to soothe her temper. Neither has the psychic barrier standing between her and the exit to the cave, behind which the natu hide. It protects the xatu, too, who sits maddeningly serene while I pepper the barrier with energy blasts.
"Let me go!" I roar. "I need to find my trainer! She's lost. She needs me! I have to find her!"
"The only thing you'll find out there is frostbite," the xatu says. "Stay. Rest. Wait out the storm. This opportunity arises only once in a lifetime."
"Ha! Wait out Darkest Night? The night we must face temptation? You're exactly what the stories warn of, pretender!" I lunge at the birds, sending a few of the more nervous natu scattering, and slam into the barrier with as much force as I can. Kicks and punches crack off the wall of psychic energy while the remaining natu struggle to keep it in place, the glow of power in their eyes flickering.
"Elder, don't provoke her!" one natu says in a highly audible whisper.
"I don't know your stories," the xatu says calmly. "Why don't you tell me one of them?"
"No!" I snarl. "I need to find my trainer!" And I throw myself forward again, or start to. But another of those curious flashes comes over me, and suddenly I'm too large for my body, nursing what feels like a burned tongue with something small and delicate held in one hand.
I come back to myself standing slumped and awkward, and I'm probably lucky I didn't end up on the floor. I'm trapped here, alone, on this most dangerous of days, and on top of everything I'm apparently going mad. I think of my trainer. She must be out searching for me, calling my name into the shearing wind, and I throw another bracing punch at the wall, even though I know it's pointless. I can't give up, never--not on her.
There's one more reality, of course, and it remains empty, the natu's party attended by none besides themselves.
"But Elder! There has to be a Traveler, doesn't there?" one natu asks desperately. The bowls of tea are full, the cakes out on their silver trays--pilfered human things as well, though far less ancient than the room itself. None of the birds seem terribly interested, though, picking listlessly at one thing or the other, taking uninspired, thoughtless sips of tea.
"How will we get to meet the others?" another pipes up. "How will we get to ask our questions?"
"There is always a Traveler," the xatu says, as serene as any of his other incarnations. "Come, eat, drink. Make the Traveler feel welcome!"
The natu huddle down obediently, but pass brief exasperated glances between each other. They're no doubt used to their elder's opaque statements and frustratingly calm demeanor, but they can't be much comfort to natu who see their holiday ruined. It's no fun playing host to a guest who never showed.
(I'm there, of course, and watching. But they can't see me standing here, waiting outside of time.)
But in at least one of these stories, I'm enjoying myself more than I care to admit. "These are actually really good," I say around a mouthful of cake. "Thank you!" The natu holding the tray in her beak fluffs with obvious pleasure. I feel a faint twinge of regret as I take the last proffered pastry. There are more, of course, on other trays, but they're all being attacked by natu, who squabble especially over the seeds decorating their tops. The xatu has a couple of his own, but he's shown no interest in them. Perhaps he might be persuaded to share.
Or--no. They're delicious, for sure, but I have somewhere else to be. Weird mystic time ritual or not, I need to be on my way. "So, this is great and all, but when's it supposed to happen, this whole, uh, time convergence thing?"
"Not long before midnight. You can feel it drawing closer, can't you?"
If he means that creepy feeling of not properly being here, of being too large, or too small, for my body, those quick flashes of things that aren't actually happening, then sure, I feel it. I don't think that's a sign that there's actually some weird temporal event coming on, though, but rather a sign that I need to get away from all these psychics who are clearly messing with my head. Or--no. I hadn't thought about it, but surely they wouldn't put anything weird in the food? But all these old pokémon rituals involve drugs one way or another, don't they? This is why you don't accept dinner invitations from creepy strangers.
Suddenly the urge to get to Goldenrod is irresistible. I surge to my feet, and then, forgetting the potential for serious hallucinogens disguised by a delicious fruity taste, cram the rest of the last cake in my mouth.
"I have to get to Goldenrod," I say, trying to ignore the pitiful peeping of the natu, who mill around underfoot, begging plaintively for me to stay. Outside the wind howls worse than ever, and now it's full dark, and the cold feels even colder after I've been sitting awhile in the warmth. I can't let myself think of the long road ahead. Instead I think of fireworks, and of music drifting through the streets, the smells of all the street foods mingling--and the taste of them of course.
I'm feeling almost cheerful despite coming dangerously close to stepping on a natu when I fall clear out of my body. I am a lucario, I have always been a lucario, ever since I was a riolu, the same riolu that on hatching looked up into the face of the human that would be her trainer.
The same human that looks at me now, eye to eye now that I'm fully grown, and says, "I've been thinking, Lucario. Do you really want me to be your trainer?"
And then I'm a charizard again, listing against the wall, groaning, claws digging thin furrows across stone. The natu bounce around in even more agitation than before, which completely fails to help.
"It's dangerous to go out by yourself, this close to the convergence," the xatu says. "What if you started to merge in the middle of that snowstorm? Stay. Please. We will help you. This is an incredible opportunity. How many go through life never knowing of their fellow-travelers, and of those who do, how many ever get to speak with them?"
"I didn't ask for an incredible opportunity!" I roar, and despite my best efforts it comes out petulant and laced with fire. "I wanted to have a good time at a party! Can't you pick somebody else for your stupid traveler thing?"
"We do not choose," the xatu says. "We merely wait. We know the Traveler will come. And when they do, we are there to help them."
"I don't buy that," Chesnaught-me says, and she too is standing now, clutching at her head. "You were the ones who showed up and started in on all that 'Traveler' nonsense. You picked me, and now you're giving me hallucinations. Maybe you're not even doing it on purpose. Maybe it's some side effect of whatever ritual you think you have to do for this whole weird holiday. It doesn't matter. I don't buy any of this."
"We do not choose," the xatu says, and it's the lucario who answers him, in another time entirely.
"I'm sure," I growl. My aura spheres and desperate blows have both been spent, but I bristle even now, aura sensors standing straight out and vibrating as I try to sieve through conflicting waves of sensory information that come on ever faster. "You saw me at my lowest and didn't think me a perfect target. You didn't consider my weakness an opportunity. It's pure chance that I ended up here. It all makes so much sense!"
A desperate wave of fighting energy ripples out to fizz and disperse against the barrier. I'm tired, after all, alone in the face of all the natu's psychic efforts. It doesn't help that I'm dragged down into some other life again when the xatu repeats, "We do not choose."
In another reality, the natu turn and look at one another, nervous, not sure who he's talking to. Even here, in a room that rings with absence, the natu are starting to feel it. They aren't blurring into pokémon of entirely different species, but now and again they'll blink and find themselves turned just a hair too far to the left or right, or catch a thought that doesn't feel quite theirs. They've been told what to expect, they're far more excited than afraid. But even so, it is strange.
Back in the charizard's reality, I've given up on arguing and rested my head against the wall. The real pressure against my skull makes it a little less confusing to feel my claws clutching at my head, when after all my arms are far too short to do that.
"Who are you?" I growl when I find myself fretting over how much the evergreen I've collected will dry out if it's left on the floor while I'm preoccupied by some cosmic event.
"I could ask you the same thing," I say as the teeth-gritted chesnaught, pressed so close to the wall that my spines dig mortar out from between the bricks.
In another timeline I, the lucario, am also slumped against the wall, at the extreme opposite end of the room from the natu and their barrier.
They can't see each other, those three aspects of me, but I, watching from without, am struck by how they've all made their way to the same spot in the room, how even the angles of their limbs are eerily similar, despite their different anatomies. Time always echoes itself. The three of them blur, edges beginning to run as their timelines draw closer together. Intriguing--and impossible. It ought to be impossible.
Inside the tangle of converging timelines, I, the charizard, try to tamp down the rising panic of my other selves, deny my own fear in annoyance at their antics. For all her apparent stoicism, it's the chesnaught who's bawling loudest, filling my head with worry for her children. Perhaps it's just because the lucario's exhausted, though; her worry still runs through everything, a constant enervating undercurrent.
"Could the two of you shut up for a second?" I say aloud to no one, one claw swiping at the wall, as if to drag me back to my feet. It misses completely. The lucario and chesnaught mirror the motion unconsciously. Charizard and chesnaught are surrounded by tutting, muttering natu who try to nudge them to more comfortable positions, fan them with their stubby wings, bring water and food that the disoriented pokémon don't even notice. In the lucario's story, on the other hand, the birds remain clustered far away, unwilling to leave the safety of their shield. The inconsistency grates, producing a discordant hum not heard but felt. Several of the natu grow dizzy, feeling like they're seesawing between one place and another.
The effect is worse for the Travelers themselves--ourselves. We will always be discordant, four different people who happened to reach the same point, the same role our stories. The universe tries to smooth this over, to blend us into one, pressing us against each other in a horribly intimate way.
The charizard sees the world briefly in leylines of glowing aura, feels heavy, weighed down by armor she doesn't have and memories, regrets that don't belong to her. She shudders and gasps as though drowning, dragged under by the weight of her other lives.
It's as Chesnaught that I feel like I've grown wings. I close my eyes (but they remain open, in two other realities, open and dutifully reporting back) and try not to think about it, but it's a part of me now: memories of spinning and rolling through the air with a delight that horrifies my steadfastly ground-bound, afraid-of-heights self. I'm filled up with the same blighting fire that wakes visceral fear in the heart of any grass-type.
As lucario I try to fight, always to fight. I try to meditate, to clear my mind, to move enough to take on a proper meditative pose. I pray for guidance, for something to show me a way through this darkest night, but prayer can't banish thoughts of long and lonely nights working in Violet Gym, fire and wind at my command, or of children that both are and aren't my own. I struggle once again to right myself, but the other two of me refuse to move.
(And still there is that empty timeline, where the natu cluster not around a convalescent Traveler but a conspicuous empty space.)
"I thought this was supposed to be some once-in-a-lifetime experience," the chesnaught growls. "Mostly it just feels like the worst headache I've ever had."
"The convergence is not complete. We await another Traveler," the xatu says in every reality, speaking directly into my minds. He hangs like a vision before our mental eyes even as his physical body remains perfectly still on its dais, eyes closed.
"Oh, great. That guy's here, too?" the charizard part of myself asks.
"What, there's someone else I'm going to have to tell to get out of my head?" the chesnaught groans. "Can't we sort this mess out first?"
"Not without the last Traveler. They will bring the timelines into full alignment. When the merge is complete, you will be able to speak to one another properly. Not for long, but even so. And after that, you all will travel apart again, and you can go your separate ways."
"Sounds great. How long are we supposed to be waiting for this mysterious other traveler to show up, then? Because I personally would appreciate it if they hurried it up."
"That is up to them," the xatu says in his most mysterious, unhelpful voice. "Or, I should say, up to you."
Then he looks at me. Not any of the mes already there who're bellyaching about nausea and disorientation while their universes try to overlap and ruck up uncomfortably around the imperfect fit. The xatu looks at me, the me watching from the outside, and that's another thing that shouldn't even be possible.
I admit it: I run. I feel his eyes on me, finding me in the one place I should be safe, and I flee into another time entirely, one far-distant and familiar. It's an old favorite from a long, long ways back, far before there were either humans or pokémon to cause trouble. Mostly there's forest stretching on and on across new-forged land, with the occasional slippery sea-thing making an illicit run up onto shore, reveling, maybe, in its transgression. This time is vast and empty and peaceful and excellent for stop to think things through.
Xatu can see beyond their own time. They're well-known for it, though it doesn't give them the wisdom they often claim. Occasionally they happen to see me, whether I've manifested within a timeline or am in transit between them. But these are only glimpses, and they happen by chance. This xatu turned and looked at me, and it was not brief, and it was no accident.
It rattled me. I sit and think a while, then head off, resolved not to return to that unsettling little pocket of time. All realities, all times in their infinite permutations are open to me: it's not like I'm going to run out of other places to go. And if I ever do want to go back there, I can simply jump back to the exact moment I left. The problem can wait--will wait, indefinitely, and spending a little while to consider my options can't hurt.
So I wander, scouring all time for its stories, weaving history out of fact. For how long? The irony is that time's caretakers are themselves timeless. It was long enough to weave centuries out of small, stolen moments, places where I popped into existence, watching, evaluating. But I busying myself about my usual work my mind keeps going back to that cold winter night, the night that shouldn't be possible.
Of course, there's no way I could stay away forever. I fight it. I distract myself. But I wind up where anyone could have predicted I would from the start: right back in that moment where the xatu looked at me. The threads of time are twisting, beginning to converge, but they're snagged on a ragged hole in one of them. The other three Travelers, pokémon who by chance had wandered through a certain snowy wood, are left reeling and incomplete.
Enough waiting and watching from outside time. The only way to fix is to go in myself and let what happens happen.
Diving in is as easy as stepping through an open doorway, but after come all those inconvenient facts of life: a heart to start beating, a brain to house millennia of experiences, lungs to draw in air. My vision goes inside-out as my awareness of glittering, filamentous timelines recedes and mortal sights roar to the fore in painful color and clarity.
It's worse here, where the timelines strain to align, to fit me into the shape of the mortal lives that mirror mine. I can hear the time-threads with my new, actual ears, twanging and buzzing with tension as they strain against each other. There's a second where I get the impression of around two dozen shocked natu who might think they're hallucinating my sudden appearance, and then I deal with the noise, yanking the timelines into place myself.