The sun had set by the time the call was finished and the moon had begun to rise. The pot of water was inches lower and the Wattson Battery was drained. Along Lake Victory campfires could be seen and the distant sounds of laughter and pokemon echoed. Teenagers on their own for the first time came together. Lifelong friends had already been made in the few short days since the start of the season. Some were a bit more than friends. Pokemon had been caught and training had begun. It was their normal average Journey. A rite of passage for many in this world and a chance to be a career trainer to be powerful, wealthy, famous and a whole host of other adjectives. To some it was something much more important, it was a chance to find themselves and figure out just who they actually were.

I didn’t want to fuck up this world.

Yet, sometimes the bad guys won.

There was no taking back what I had just done.

I had told a possibly multiple region spanning cult about a world ending threat. It felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It was one of the possible world ending threats, there were still a few of those to go around. There were five to six years until the next possible worldender with X and Y. That would take place at the same time Black and White 2 did if I didn’t change things even more. I’d have to look up Serena and Callum to be sure of the timing. Though creeping on ten year olds online sounded like a good way to end up on a list.

Nailing down the timeline and the other threats were issues for later. I had just dropped one hell of a rock into a still lake. The ripples would spread further and further out of my control changing the timeline. It was a relief. Canon was now mostly fucked at least for the Sinnoh games. That would spread. I was no longer hellbent on preserving as much of the original timeline as possible. All it had taken was fighting a Rival and remembering a possible world ending crisis that was already in motion.

Maybe I was stubborn or maybe I was just scared of making things worse.

It was freeing, after taking such a step I could start to take others. There were only so many crises spread out over the next dozen years or so. Unless new ones started popping up like weeds I’d be able to have a normal journey. I couldn’t just hide myself away in the woods scared of making things worse when I could try to make things better instead.

Though, I did just tell a cult how to remake the world by chaining two pokemon that controlled time and space…

It would be fine right?

Right?

Nothing could possibly go wrong…

Eh…they were rather unlikely to end the world. They worshiped Ho-ho, a life-giving phoenix. Maybe I was being a bit harsh calling them a cult. They were one but the word itself was loaded with negative connotations to the point that it lost all of its actual meaning to most people. Language determines your reality. Lonnie had called them a cult so I had viewed them as such with all the baggage that carried. Shrine maidens might be a better way to frame them. Or maybe I was just trying to make myself feel better after the info I just gave them.

Eevee obsessed shrine maidens or not the amount of power they had over me was very uncomfortable. My supplies and my identity were all tied to them and they could cut it off. In such a relationship it’s hard to trust the other party. I’d have to see how they handled this entire situation before I even started to trust them. However, their self interest could be trusted to spur them to act in some way.

The stakes were very high as the Sinnoh games dealt with some more esoteric concepts. Lonnie had gotten much much deeper into the theology of the pokemon world than I ever did but I knew the Plates. They were introduced in the Sinnoh games and dealt with the creation story. There had been endless theories about the items. Maybe they were tools created by an ancient civilization and the shards you found were just destroyed ones. Maybe they were sealed and defeated primordial giants that Arceus fought at the creation of the universe, something like Eternatus or whatever the hell was sleeping under Area Zero. Or they were shards of the cosmic egg from which Arceus hatched in the beginning… It all began with an egg didn’t it?

The plates bore inscriptions about the creation and development of the pokemon universe. One that was currently very damn important was ‘Two make matter and three make spirit, shaping the world.’ This world I was standing on wouldn’t even exist without Dialga and Palkia, the two. Without the three, the lake guardians… Things would not be pretty. Harming or even interacting with the pokemon could cause you to lose what they symbolized according to the myths. Knowledge, emotion, and willpower the pokemon symbolized mind, body, and spirit. A kind of trinity of consciousness. Together with Matter they had shaped this world, it could be shaped again.

Cyrus wanted to create a world without spirit. He saw the spirit as incomplete as it suffered and struggled to survive in this world. He was going to create a world where he would be incapable of ever suffering. Existence without emotion, without knowledge of even your name, without the drive to ever act. Existence and nothing else.

Cyrus was trying to reach Nirvana.

He was being a huge dick about it.

The cult had to act. If they didn’t I’d have to find some other way of possibly tipping the scales. Maybe reach out to champions? Though that might leave me in a league facility with a whole lotta psychics pumping me for every shred of information I have. Reach out to Dawn and Lucas? Hell while I’m at it just reach out to other protagonists?

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I could see the conversation now. After a long dangerous hike up to Mount Silver. ‘Hey, Red the world might end and I need your help.’ ‘…. …. ….’ ‘Great, good talk buddy’. There was May and Brendan but they should be all the way in Hoenn. Maybe hunt down the mystery protag from Let’s Go? They should be rather close if they’ve stuck with Kanto and Johto; they should also be pretty damn strong. As for the protagonists here in Johto they were only a day or two away from me and had Team Rocket to deal with. I was still unsure how much I should actually interfere with the Johto story.

The other option I had was to just get strong enough to handle it all myself.

I chuckled.

Yeah right. I’m not the hero. I’m a week into my journey. Still with my knowledge I could get strong enough to maybe help. None of that was going to happen if I hid or kept putting things off. Which brought me to the other thing I had been putting off.

I held out a pokeball and with a press of a button Dunsparce took form in front of me. Their eyes were closed and they seemed to be slightly recovered from the battle this morning.

“Dun.” The tone seemed to carry annoyance and surprise.

Callie looked on from the entrance to my tent. The moon above matched the moon on her head.

Catching pokemon could be a touchy subject back in my old world even though it was a core part of the franchise. People’s perceptions of it varied greatly. In the end I think it came down to what media they had primarily consumed. To some they viewed it almost as slavery if the pokemon wasn’t ‘willing’ to be caught however they actually defined that. I could only assume that most were used to the anime where complex backstories and character development could be done for the members of the team. Pair that with greater intelligence than elsewhere in the franchise and it made them more into people than pokemon. But even in the anime, seeing a pokemon and immediately trying to catch it was a thing. How ‘willing’ were those captures?

It was kind of hard not to pick up some of the whole thing. Forcing pokemon into pokeballs and making them fight was the game. There I go again with language... The games themselves had explored the issues in the Unova games. In the end it wasn’t black or white but rather grey. It kind of all boiled down to how you treated pokemon. Don’t be a dick and things would work out.

I knelt down and readied a potion. “Hey there Dunsparce. I’m Gray. It’s nice to meet you. Though I think we might have met a few times already.”

“Du?” Their head raised slightly.

Maybe I had over thought this entire thing. I had a lot on my mind lately. I couldn’t keep getting lost in my head. I needed to act. “I’m your trainer, let's get you healed up.”

Dunsparce tilted their head and followed me as I approached but remained where they were. When I got close the drill started spinning and a low hum could be heard. I paused and the humming faded as the drill stopped. Their eyes were still closed. With how wide the eyes were it was hard to tell exactly what Dunsparce was looking at. I tilted my hand holding the potion bottle and the humming resumed.

“It’s a potion. It heals pokemon.” I explained.

“Parce.”

I held back a frown. I couldn’t really read anything from the tone they had answered in. I wasn’t even sure how smart a dunsparce was. Callie was a very smart bear. How smart was a very smart snake? A freshly caught Dunsparce wouldn’t have known what a potion was anyway.

“Teddi.” Callie now stood next to me. In one paw she held out a half eaten oran berry.

“Dun.”

A few more words were exchanged between the two before she tossed the berry in front of Dunsparce. They happily dug into it. I slowly moved forward with the potion in clear sight. I was met with a faint humming of the drill that wasn’t as loud as before.

Maybe I needed to handle this like an annoyed cat. The tail told you just about everything you needed to know. A series of slow visible movements as I brought the bottle forward and the drill was barely moving. A few sprays of the potion and Dunsparce seemed to relax and let out what sounded like a relieved “Spaaaaaa…”

I smiled, “There now isn’t that better? Well let’s try and get to know each other. In the words of a great man are you…”

A tug on my jacket sleeve interrupted me. I turned to Callie. She pointed at the berry and then at herself followed by a “Ursa”.

“Huh?”

She repeated the motion.

“You want another berry don’t you?” I asked.

I got a nod in reply.

“Du du!” Dunsparce joined in, having finished the berry.

“Gon.”

Mal nearly made me jump in surprise. He floated down to join the others now looking up at me. Met with the sight of my three pokemon all staring up at me I had one question.

Was I a berry dispenser or a trainer?

----------------------------------------

"Are you really sure of this?” The voice shook with barely restrained anger and denial. “He’s a friend. We had tea together with my grandmother just the other day.”

“To the best of our knowledge he is the man behind Team Galactic. We have some people looking into it to verify but preliminary reports seem to indicate there is a connection. Our primary source however is rather unusual. According to the source Cyrus will attempt to remake the world. He intends to bind pokemon named Dialga and Palkia with an item called the Red Chain. The forging of it requires the lake guardians of Sinnoh.” Kuni held back a wince, the other woman’s anger was rarely seen but was nearly draconic when released. The friendship with the man complicated things but their ‘sister’ to the north could be relied upon to do what was right.

It was a risk passing on knowledge from Gray without further verification. She would have rather waited but if Grey was correct then the world might cease to exist in any meaningful form if Team Galactic was successful. Just the possibility of such a threat was enough to make the sharing of such information necessary. If Gray casually carried such knowledge with him what other secrets must he hold?

Several moments passed in silence, before the other woman spoke eerily calm. “Your source used those names?”

“They did. From the descriptions given of this Dialga and Palkia it seems they are or were the ‘Almighty Sinnoh’ of the Diamond and Pearl clans. He claimed the lake guardians were needed for ‘three beings were born to bind time and space’. He mentioned it was ‘Mind over Matter’.”

“Your source is very well read. Scholar or philosopher?”

Kuni held back a sigh of relief. The other woman’s calm nature had returned. “From another dimension with future knowledge.”

There wasn’t much reason to hide anything from her. She had proven herself time and time again. In an odd twist of fate she would stop Cyrus from committing a similar act that her ancestor had attempted. The sins of that ancestor had long since been washed away. Her family might not even remember that such an act had been attempted but her own had rather long memories. The events in Hoenn, reports of the Mad King of Truth and Ideals wandering again, Team Rocket and Galactic, this generation certainly promised to be an interesting one.

“Huh... That is a new one. Does he know of a pokemon named Arceus?”

“The extent of his knowledge is unknown and he has been a bit reluctant to share.” That was something that would need to change. “We still have some connections with the Clans. They could be called upon to aid you should you need it.”

The connections had never been that great, nothing like the clans' ties to the Seafolk and Draconids. But still ties had been made and could be called upon. They had weathered the ages better than most.

“I can handle my region, besides I have a megastone I’m now very eager to try out.” The other woman’s voice dripped with the promise of violence. “I’d be interested in talking with your source.”

Kuni frowned, from what she had seen in the reports Gray was rather skittish. “Perhaps in the future. They are currently traveling… On to other matters, you still have an egg to give out if I’m not mistaken. I doubt you’re going to keep this one.”

“Rowan has suggested a few trainers, the Berlitz heir seems promising…”