A/N: General trigger warning, this chapter gets dark and might be unpleasant to read.

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TIME AND—

Time is an ever-expanding tree.

Not literally. There's a boundless blue light below my feet extending in every direction, but the eye-catching structures are the enormous pillars or trunks or towers that divided again and again, as far as the eye could see. This wasn't like Mesprit's mindscape. My body here was very real in a way that the other just wasn't, even if we ignore the fact that I can't hear out of my left ear and that my clothes aren't just a projection. I feel very alive in a way I just didn't in their mind. The way cold air fills my lungs and how my skin tingles. The subtle bits of pain throbbing in my legs from having walked for so many hours without rest. When I try to move, I realize I can. Slowly, at first. It takes a few seconds to realize I'm also walking on one of the pillars I can see in the distance. When I reach the edge, I realize I can peer down and see more branches below me, some having separated from mine. It's difficult to describe the scale of this place. I feel like what an atom must look like to the entire universe. So infinitely small that I might as well not even exist, and yet I do. I'm real. I can breathe, feel and think.

So I do think.

Why am I so calm about this? Maybe it's acceptance of everything being lost settling in. Maybe I'm too tired to panic or scream or beg Dialga to get me out of here. It's not like it would listen, anyway. I'd seen the deity for a fraction of a second, and in that moment I understood that there are forces at play here beyond my influencing. It had felt like a lifetime. When I blink, I can still see the imprint of Dialga in my mind. It doesn't have a body— or wait, it does— but it's also just so much more than that that trying to understand what I'd been looking at would just have me running in circles. There was a shape to it, but not really, and it had filled my entire gaze.

So here I stand, at the edge of what I assumed was the tip of a branch. The others looked similar to mine, swarming this entire world (which did not mean much, considering that I felt like if I could hover in the sky and tried to walk to another one, I would die of old age before I even got halfway there). Looking beyond the edge of my spire, I notice subtle shifts and movements that make me realize that everything here is moving. Moving up. Some pillars are above me, some are below, and some are at the same height or at least look to be, but all of them are moving up toward… well, it's not like there's anything particular about where we're going. Up? Could it even be described as up? We're all going somewhere, growing the branches, but up looks exactly like down.

I think I'm starting to understand.

I'm looking at timelines. They're infinite, and nothing can travel in between them except for Dialga, I assume. Or maybe it can just look at them, given that it's not supposed to go out into the world. The assumption settles into my stomach and makes my heart beat so fast that I think I'm going to have a heart attack. There's the panic, I think with clenched teeth. The sheer scale had been difficult to understand before, but now? It was utterly incomprehensible. There's many, and there's infinity. You can't fathom that, you just can't. I take a few steps back and trip on my butt. There are no tears, but there's a little terrified groan that jumps out of my mouth.

I want out of here. People aren't meant to look at this. They aren't meant to see the scaffolding onto which the universe has been built. Part of me just wants to roll up onto a ball, lay down and wait until the end of everything. It's not like I can do anything about this. I have my Pokeballs with me, but I don't want to subject Sweetheart or Buddy to this horrifying reality. And what would I do with them anyway? Everything is out of reach, and I'm out of my timeline— at the edge of everything. The boundary between my reality's time and everything else. I assume that Dialga's roar, if you could even call it that, had sent me here.

I look back toward the center of the tower I'm on. It probably goes further than I'd be able to travel, and I doubt I'd just be able to… what, reenter? How? The entire surface is just a smooth, metallic blue, or at least it feels and sounds like metal when walking on or touching it.

So.

What now?

I could breathe, somehow, and though gravity felt a smidge stronger than on Earth, I could walk around fine even if I was ascending at Arceus knows what speed. Or again, maybe we weren't going up, but…

Argh, I'm just going in circles.

Now that I understood these were timelines, the edge seemed terrifying to me and I didn't want to even look below me, lest I fall off and get lost in-between… time? I sigh and lay down, feeling the cold metal against the skin of my arms. There's nothing I can do but wait.

It's difficult to keep track of time, here, ironically enough. I can't tell how many hours pass, but I feel like I should be getting tired, growing hungry or wanting to go to the bathroom, but I don't. I feel perfectly fine, if a little cold. It's a different kind of cold than I'm used to. It's got nothing to do with temperature. It's just difficult to feel warm when you realize how small everything is. How even your entire universe is but a tiny fraction of infinity.

Hell, that's not even how math works. You can't even put infinity into a fraction.

When I turn to look beyond my platform again, I see some of the branches split off over and over, including mine at some point. It's somewhat turbulent, and I feel the floor shake beneath me when it does, but it's nowhere as violent as I believed a split in a timeline would be. I also notice that a few of the branches I'd noticed aren't there anymore. I see one collapse and die right in front of me— figuratively speaking. The distance, again, is further than is even describable. When I witness it, it is not an instantenous thing. It is a slow crumple that I can't hear, but it lasts nearly an hour (or at least I think so) before the entire branch has disappeared into nothingness as if it had never existed. More have begun since then, and a great die-off begins.

Then, it sinks.

I am witnessing the ending of worlds.

Uxie had warned Mira about this. That they could glimpse other timelines, peer into the future somehow, and see that in some universes, Cyrus wins and destroys everything.

Billions dead.

How does one even reconcile such loss? The number's so big that it doesn't even feel real. I try to imagine it in my head, but I just can't. I can't even feel sad about it. Maybe I'm misinterpreting this, somehow. Most of these die-offs are happening in timelines ahead of mine, so my stomach ties itself into knots and I lay down again until it passes. Ignoring these few mass tragedies is the best way I have of staying mentally sound. It's like when you watch a movie or read a book that says so many people died, but at that point, the number's just a number. A statistic.

Everything changes when another scream ripples across Time. This one, I see emerges from one of the collapsing timelines ahead of us, and the metallic tower shrinks as it starts rebuilding itself.

Somehow, even with these astronomical distances, I hear the sound instantly. I clasp the sides of my head, but that doesn't stop me from hearing that same roar. Calling it a roar almost feels diminutive. It's a sound that could maybe, maybe have been described as such, but it is also the unending march of time, paving over everything without a single look back. Gears forever in lock and step, turning onto eternity. It's the past, set in stone without any option to correct actions taken beforehand. How can Dialga's roar originate from all the way over there if it's in my world? Can it be in multiple places at the same time? I can see the sound stretch across unimaginable distances despite Dialga not being here itself. It's a vibration that spreads, spreads and spreads faster than anything I could imagine across distances that were so large they were stupid until—

Impact.

No. Not impact, but close to it. Three lines close to mine nearly graze each other, having moved back close together. We're all close enough now that I could realistically walk there over the course of days if I could fly, but they're all getting closer and I'm not sure if this proximity is even meant to be outside of timelines dividing—

My vision shatters into four, and I gain three more perspectives.

—

Let's take a step back, for a moment, and think back to Grace Pastel's journey. Full of highs, lows, and everything in between. Love, pain, agony, friendship, learning, growth, loss, trauma, fun— many words can be used and still be accurate. Change is what one could consider the most important denominator. After all, the sands of time change all, no matter how small the events in your life. She's not that same girl who would stay locked in her room all afternoon, watch battles and browse the forums. Innocent, clear of any scars, both mental and physical, with a Togepi egg she kept warm with a hug while she slept. We can look on and on, at every little change every action could have caused. For example, Grace refuses to go see her mother that day— her journey's delayed by a year, but she goes onto one anyway, and life and necessity will have it that Lucas, Dawn and Barry become Shards instead of her and her friends. Knowledge, Emotion and Willpower, respectively. Grace refuses to travel with Cecilia and her group in Eterna Forest— she and Denzel find another group to make it through, but Cecilia runs away in Eterna City because Louis grows to be too suffocating, Abel captures her, and she lives that entire year a puppet while Amy Saunier joins her group to monitor her. Not only that, but Grace goes to Hearthome right away, too early for her to cross paths with a prickly Turtonator, and she comes out of that cave with a Rolycoly and without a Larvitar.

On, and on, and on. There truly is no end to it. Time is, after all, infinite.

But,

There is a moment in time that we can observe. Arguably, the defining moment in Grace Pastel's life, the one that pushed her to become who she is now that could have gone a few different ways. It is, in retrospect, obvious. It is not the moment where Grace chooses to help Cecilia, nor is it the moment where she chooses to go on a journey. It is not her encounter and extended hand with Turtonator, or her fall into Mount Coronet to save the girl that she loves.

That moment,

It's Solaceon.

So again, I say:

Let's take a step back.

—

Sunshine incinerates Harry Rodriguez's Pelipper by blowing a Dragon Pulse inside of its mouth, and the teenager collapses to his knees with a disbelieving sob. The battle keeps going for a few seconds; Princess keeps her barrier up and launches tiny spikes of Ancient Power, Honey fires off Thunderbolts at the raging Crobat, who weaves in and out as it looks for an opening. Torterra was already a smoking husk on the ground, and Sunsine clashes with Crawdaunt. Weavile stands next to Harry as a bodyguard, et cetera et cetera.

You know this already. The fight isn't what's interesting here, it's what happens after that matters.

Harry Rodriguez is close to his Pokemon. Grace does not know this, but seeing Pelipper die this way had nearly broken him, back then.

Here, he breaks. Even through Shiftry's darkness, tears flow down his eyes and he gets on his knees with a horrifying scream that will stay with this Grace Pastel her entire life. It is one thing, for her to fight a man who she believes is evil incarnate and not just a misguided, slightly older teenager who the darkness is affecting just as much as her, and seeing him cry like this snaps her out of Shiftry's spell as well.

Then, she realizes what she's done.

She's caused the death of someone. Possibly two Pokemon, if that Torterra's dead. Grace breaks down and starts crying as well.

The battle is over, by now, and aside from Sunshine and Weavile who desire more bloodshed, every Pokemon has stopped and is wondering what to do.

"It doesn't have to be like this," Grace sobs. "We don't have to fight."

Harry Rodriguez hesitates. She can see him consider it in his eye when they flicker at Pelipper, then at her, then at every member of his team. Then he nods as he tricks Weavile and Crawdaunt and recalls them before they can attack him for stabbing their family in the back. It and Crawdaunt are not his Pokemon, they're the Hunters. Sunshine, too, has to be recalled. He sees red, and to him, any member of Team Galactic deserves no pity.

"I'll take you to the Hunters."

In that moment, everything changes, even if Grace Pastel doesn't exactly know it yet. It is, as was said, the defining moment in her life. It teaches her compassion, it teaches her that the people she hates can be saved, it teaches her the importance of conversation, and it teaches her that no one is a lost cause.

Most of all, it gives her a distaste for killing that she will never be able to shake off.

Harry Rodriguez takes her to the Hunters' mansion. As they travel through the dark, she asks him questions about why he joined Team Galactic. She learns about his struggles. He's a street rat from Jubilife who wanted to provide for his family by being a trainer, and they provided him with a Turtwig to raise, give him money and even help him with transportation. Good genes are something that can be beaten with hard work, but it's hard to deny the boost it gives a trainer. She learns that he's a person. He's just as much of a Craig Goodwill fan as Denzel is, and he has some of his merch. She learns that despite everything, he loves battling just as much as she does and by the time they make it to the mansion, they feel like acquaintances and are wondering the same thing.

Why had they tried to kill each other again?

It's not over, though. There are two people guarding the mansion, Reggie and Lane Hunter, the tour guides who had shown Grace around when she had gone to visit.

Of course, Harry and she make quick work of their Pokemon and tie them up using Angel's vines. With their combined forces, the battle isn't particularly close, even if their Pokemon are tired. The death match they'd shared had been enough for them to understand each others' capabilities, and they work rather well together.

You know what happens next. The conversation with Roland, his suicide, and Cynthia dealing with Shiftry. Harry Rodriguez gets arrested, but Grace makes sure to accentuate that he helped and will cooperate, so he deserves leniency. When Shiftry dies, and his void recedes, Grace experiences the guilt of killing at full force. She vomits over the wooden floorboards, Cynthia's shoes and her own legs.

"The first time is always the hardest," Cynthia tells her.

The first time? There would be no second time!

She had meant it when she had said it, but this time, it's real. Physical in a way that will define the rest of her life. Grace Pastel wipes the tears off her face and grinds her teeth, furious at the Champion for even suggesting what she had.

She vows never to kill again.

—

It all starts with that single vow, you see? This is still the same Grace— vengeful, prioritizing her friends and family above all else, her worse characteristics amplified by Princess' ambient energy, but a fairy is also stubborn and takes vows very seriously. She has seen how even the darkened hearts of men can be brought back under the sunlight, or at least she thinks she has, and that changes…

Well, it doesn't exactly change her outlook on life. This is somewhat similar to what Grace was like near the start of the year, willing to help those who harm and threaten her, but this part of her grows, grows and grows until it swallows her whole. When she sees her friends, terribly angry at the Hunters for having warped Justin, she feels a disconnect because while she's also angry, she wants to forgive so terribly, yet she's scared of calling them out and being alienated.

Alienated.

She understands, now. She needs to travel alone for a while.

—

When a certain Hatterene tracks her down in a certain forest and introduces herself, Grace Pastel is excited, at first. She wants to learn more about herself and what makes her tick. She wants to know the shape of herself, and for a little bit, she finds that. Unfortunately, The Keeper is a strange Pokemon whose morals or lessons she does not mesh with at all. Killing or harming someone who offends, instead of offering them a kind, guiding hand is anathema to who Grace wants to be, but she still appreciates the lessons imparted onto her and learns first-hand about the pleas of wild Pokemon. She never learns the fairy's name, and when she gets to Veilstone, she does so alone, quietly crossing the gate.

It's there, that she puts her new outlook on life in practice. She spends much time working odd jobs for free to help both people and wild Pokemon, which starts building up her reputation as a good Samaritan. A group of Machop wants to travel through Veilstone to relocate to route 210 due to there being so much human activity on 214. Yet, they are too weak to go around the city and off-route, so they have no choice. Grace Pastel asks Hatterene first to see if she would be willing to accept these new individuals into her territory, but does so immediately after the Keeper gives her permission. A seven-year-old child wants to catch her first Pokemon because she has no friends at school. That one, she brings to route 211 and over the course of a few days, she connects with a Seedot that she finally catches. A baby Stunky has lost her mother, who was caught by a passing trainer, so Grace takes her to the Rangers to try to track this person down in hopes of making them release the older Stunky.

That one, she fails.

But at least she tries, and she vows to check on Stunky every day until she leaves Veilstone, opting to train her to evade trainer capture.

Poketch loves this, and it fits what they want her to be, but she does it because it's fulfilling.

When she starts studying Veilstone's Gym, she sees the pain in Maylene's eyes, and again, her friends complain about the Gym Leader instead of noticing what she does. She's closer to speaking out, this time, but fear of going against the grain keeps her quiet. Instead, she takes matters into her own hands and signs up for the Gym before any plans have been made, because Maylene is this close to having a breakdown and no one is noticing or if they are, they aren't helping.

She loses that Gym Battle, and she knows Poketch are going to blow up her phone, but that's okay. A battle is a battle. She can always try again, and she's gotten good experience from it anyway. It makes actually speaking to her weird, though, because a Challenger doesn't usually speak to the Gym Leader after a loss aside from the 8th badge. They're supposed to figure out what went wrong on their own, at least in Sinnoh, so the crowd gasps and murmurs when Grace runs over to Maylene before she can go and take her short break.

"I see your pain," Grace says. "I want to help you before it's too late."

When it works, and Maylene starts tearing up at the fact that someone cares, Grace smiles and offers her a hug.

A friendship is formed.

Not everything goes perfectly, at the beginning. There are two main issues. First, Maylene is very stubborn and headstrong. Their first meeting takes place after her shift that day, and she still isn't convinced she has to take a break, nor does she accept therapy. Second, Cecilia grows prickly about this, and Grace understands. The public hug has the internet rumor mill spinning, but even beyond that, seeing someone you love do exactly what she did at the start of your very own relationship— reaching out to someone in need with more kindness than they'd ever been afforded— it was obvious that she was going to grow jealous. This is compounded by Cecilia's first-ever loss to Lauren Goodwill, and her fraying mental health has her lose her Gym Battle to Maylene, which again, makes everything worse.

It's a tough act to balance. Grace doesn't really know how to fix this and make everyone happy, especially when she still wants to help Maylene. At first, she opts for a meeting between the two girls, and Cecilia vehemently refuses at first until she grows so worried that she instead asks to sit in every single meeting between the two girls in case something was going on.

What she finds instead when she finally accepts and steps into Maylene's minimalist room, is Grace listening to Maylene vent and offering the best advice she can. There is no flirting, no unnecessary physical contact, and no signs that Grace has fallen out of love with her.

"Sorry, you must have been worried ever since I asked to travel alone," Grace says. "I didn't handle this well, I'll make it up to you."

All is forgiven, in that moment, but better communication is still in order. The two girls go on a date, and despite spending more time than necessary in Veilstone, they both end up getting their Gym Badge. Maylene invites them to a party to celebrate both their victory and the break she finally decides to take. Candice comes, but Grace also meets Gardenia for the first time, and she can barely articulate any words all night, with how out of her depth she feels. Meeting her idol like this is a dream come true, and she spends hours asking for advice until Gardenia decides to take her under her wing. The next day, she reconnects with her mother and grandmother and finally buries the hatchet between them.

It's all so perfect.

But their responsibilities are the same, and when Cynthia calls them to meet her and explains that they were somehow chosen, everything changes.

—

Grace Pastel is in Sunyshore, now. She's spent her time in the city mostly mediating disputes between clubs, but it's probably in this city that she's the happiest. She carries with her the weight of the world, yet it's Sunyshore that allows her to be a teenager for a few, precious weeks. She goes on dates, hangs out with her friends, celebrates her birthday, and Gardenia even takes a few days off to train her before her fight with Volkner, all while convincing him to let Electabuzz evolve into an Electivire if she wins, though she tells her that he was going to do it anyway and just didn't like to look like he was giving something away for free. Hell, even Maylene joins them, since she's finally on break for one month and she enjoys the group's company.

It's also in Sunyshore, that Sunshine tells her about Kamaile's life and death, after Grace narrowly beats Volkner. They cry together for a long while, nearly ten minutes, but there is a path that forms when the dragon asks her to kill Saturn.

She wants to say yes. She knows it would be easy to just make him an exception, and while it's difficult because she quite literally feels Sunshine's pain, she can't accept this. Grace tries to promise him they will send Saturn to jail, that he will pay for his actions, and that a lifetime spent atoning in prison would be better than a death he might not have cared about anyway.

That refusal forms an irreparable rift between them. Sunshine refuses to battle for her again and gives her the cold shoulder at every opportunity. Not only that, but he refuses to meet Mudsdale in Pastoria because he feels like he has failed him. Grace sobs, because she finally understands now that being kind to everyone will cost her. Yet, she doesn't change her mind for a single reason.

A vow is not a vow if it is just swept under the rug when it is inconvenient.

The remaining time spent in Sunyshore is more somber than she would have liked, but there are still obligations. She has a photo shoot for Poketch, an interview to talk about how much she's helped people in Veilstone and in Sunyshore, and how she's gotten close to so many Gym Leaders. Both Princess and Honey evolve, and she even gets a promotion, but it all rings somewhat empty.

She needs time to think on her own again, so she leaves Sunyshore alone on Princess' back after they learn how to fly and she gets her license.

—

The wrist of her dominant hand gets broken when she rests off-route. The Carnivine that did it is angry and full of pain, but they manage to defeat it with Sunshine's help, because although the dragon doesn't want to help Grace with sport, he still doesn't want her to die. When Grace hears of Carnivine's plea, she finds herself feeling like she had with Maylene. This was someone in need of help, and help was the only thing she's ever wanted to give, so she promises Carnivine that she will find her son, a Leafeon who had been kidnapped by someone who sounds dangerously like Abel. When her ACE Trainer Ariel lands next her after the battle and apologizes for not intervening sooner, Grace finds it in her heart to forgive her with some difficulty. If she had intervened, Carnivine never would have told her about her plea, and was her dream not to help people all over the world?

She promises Carnivine that she'll get Leafeon back.

While Solaceon is where everything changed for Grace, Pastoria is where everything comes to a head. Sunshine's lack of cooperation means that her hopes of winning her Gym Battle are near zero, even if she somehow catches a seventh Pokemon. There's no way she can hope to work as well with them as she can with the Pokemon she's known for months, and that's if their strength is up to par. When Melody learns about Sunshine being uncooperative, she's forced to report to Poketch, and Grace is demoted to a normal sponsee while Aubri takes over as Craig's successor. It's embarrassing and she gets a bit of egg on her face, but she doesn't really care for it, or much for badges at the moment, really. There's too much on her mind for her to be playing around. That doesn't mean she'll stop training or fall behind her friends, but it does mean that she has more free time than the others to investigate.

She tells her friends about Leafeon, and using her connections with Maylene, Candice, Gardenia and Volkner, Grace manages to get the attention of Crasher Wake without a battle, and a criminal like Abel being involved in the poacher issue catapults it to international news territory instead of a local issue as it had been before. Like Mira, she disagrees with telling Denzel about the possible end of the world, but Cecilia and Chase make a good case that keeping her closest friend in the dark would be risking their relationship when he inevitably did find out, so she's finally convinced. As usual, Grace decides to help anyone she can in the city, and finds herself volunteering for the UPAN, where she learns about Ethan and his stolen Tirtouga. She speaks to more and more victims of this poaching and vows to all of them to do something about it.

"Let me take all of your pain," she would say. "Tell me everything that troubles you, and I'll try my best to help."

She had shouldered all these burdens, so it was her job to deal with it personally. It is not until Maeve gets attacked and hurt by a poacher that they figure out where their base of operations is held. A philanthropist billionaire called Edward Backlot had been the culprit all along, something no one would have expected, with his reputation. Crasher Wake and Fantina join the ACE Trainers and League Trainers to participate in the raid which was kept top-secret in order not to let Backlot escape. It is confusing, it is sickening, it is horrifying, but she manages to keep her vow and doesn't kill anyone, be that Pokemon, humans or hostages.

Her friends?

Her friends kill. She sees it with her own two eyes, even. It's one thing to hear about it like she did with Chase talks about not having enough money to feed his team and having them kill the wildlife, or Cecilia at the end of the Darkest Day, and it's another to see a Zweilous blow someone's arm apart with a Dragon Pulse. She knows it was self-defense, she knows it is incredibly obtuse to expect them to be as perfect as she wants them to be, but she can't help herself. Pokemon are freed, the Game Corner is shut down, and Leafeon is found to be alive and well, but at the end of the day, she finds Cecilia to talk to her with her eyes downcast and says this:

"We can't be together anymore."

—

Ah, that wasn't expected, was it? One could think that this was a perfect timeline, one where every mistake had been paved over with virtue, forgiveness and kindness. It's certainly what our Grace thought before this moment, even if she'd seen the cracks form from that Grace's actions and her growing more and more demanding from her friends.

Here's the truth about virtue.

It is strict. Believing that all can be saved does not mean being friends with murderers and crooks. Of course, to Grace, this wasn't an easy choice. It breaks her heart, to end a relationship with someone she still loves, but she can't fathom dating a killer. Being friends with one was already stretching the limits of what she was willing to do, which was why she had been growing more estranged from Chase these past few weeks after hearing him speak of killing like it was breathing, but dating was something else entirely. That isn't the only relationship broken in the aftermath of the raid on Backlot's mansion. When Chase tells her what Mira's done to evolve her Gengar, she winces.

There is room for forgiveness in her heart, but there is no more room for that friendship. To torture for hours? That's too far for her. Cecilia is the first to leave Pastoria, followed by Chase who says he'll attempt to mend her broken heart. Mira's just gone one day, and no one has any idea of where she went, but the League tells them she went to see Fantina. Denzel's nascent relationship with Emilia and Pauline is broken, maybe beyond repair, and Maeve acts like a different person after her stay in the hospital.

The group is broken, and she's the one who caused that rift.

The tears don't stop. They just don't. Part of Grace believes that she'll always be crying on the inside from now on, but after she delivers Leafeon back to Carnivine and leaves flying atop Princess, she wipes her eyes and flies toward Lake Verity. With her, she carries a new Pokemon and her seventh. A Galarian Ponyta she had rescued from Backlot's mansion and bonded with as her seventh. She was a scared, skittish, and abused little thing that had looked to her for guidance as a fellow sister. Full of scars on her legs, scared of sudden movements, scared of humans, scared of glass and metal— scared of so much, yet so brave all the same.

She names her Shiver.

Here, as she touches the skies and looks at the countless stars above her, Grace strips herself of the last remaining doubts and impurities that had marred her thoughts reforges herself into someone else, and becomes The Virtuous.

—

Becoming someone who embodies virtue…

Well, it's difficult.

Grace sees many flaws in many people. She could see someone, have a single conversation with them, and see the darkness lurking behind their eyes. Even more so, now that she's met Mesprit and that she saw the world with her gift more often than not. In a way, seeing how much everyone was just drifting across the river that was life as best they could, from the ninety-year-old woman feeding the flock of Starly in a park, to the thirteen-year-old bully who had been kicking a newborn Rattata in a dark alley of Jubilife— they were all people. There's a word for this that she's discovered recently: sonder. The feeling of realization that every passerby on the street has a life just as complex and complicated as yours, for better or for worse. That everyone is the main character of their own story.

But she has nothing but time until Team Galactic makes their next move. She travels Sinnoh, listening and collecting each story until she can 'solve' it with her help. An unsolved tale would leave an irritated feeling underneath her skin, like an itch she couldn't scratch. She uses the time to train Ponyta and makes her open up to meeting new people, little by little. The psychic is still mentally fragile, yet she's been exposed to nothing but abuse her entire life, and meeting kind people all over the region has her realize that there's more to humans but pain and misery. Maylene, Justin, Gardenia, Candice and Denzel are the friends she remains the closest to, and Cecilia hasn't spoken to her since they broke up. Her final stop before the bombs is at the Lost Tower, where she has a conversation with Mathilda in an attempt to learn about Honey's parents and the Dusk, and she's let out after a few hours of being trapped.

What was the point of fighting when things could be solved with words?

The bombs go off one day after that, while she's in Solaceon visiting the remains of the Daycare and trying to learn more about the remainder of the Hunters. Being taken to a bunker with all of the others is awkward, but finally, in the hour of the highest importance, bonds are forged anew and they put their differences aside. Apologies are extended, hugs are shared and friendships are rebuilt. When Mesprit is captured, they're instantly Teleported to Lake Verity and is assigned Maylene as a bodyguard. They fail to recapture the guardians and are taken to Mount Coronet.

Six badges in hand, seven Pokemon with her, and now satisfied with who she had become, Grace Pastel begins her ascent up Coronet. A few of her ACEs are left behind, but Lou, Maxwell, Ariel and a few others remain with her and start following her instructions to the letter once she shows that she can navigate this mountain far better than they can. On the fifth layer, they're ambushed by Saturn and his grunts, but Grace Pastel creates a plan that has them save the majority of their lives.

It doesn't come easy, and the twenty deaths she's caused will haunt her for years to come, yet she cannot break down. Virtue does not cry when it fails, it tries to do better. When she's talking to Lou about the logistics of keeping so many people warm at the same time, the ACE desperately tries to convince her otherwise while her colleagues are off gathering them and Saturn around their fire types, who are still conscious. It is while gathering up the grunts, that Sunshine, wounded and ragged from his fight tells her that he thinks he's ready to see his old friends Mudsdale and Lurantis.

Permanently.

She had expected this. Since Sunyshore, they had never been the closest, and attempts to reconnect had all failed, but it hurts all the same. She accepts his request and thanks him for helping her this entire year regardless.

Besides her, a boy who must have been thirteen at most shivers and tries to crawl away from her. He's bleeding from his forehead, his eyes are cloudy and his teeth chatter, not out of cold, but fear. She sees it, seeping through his skin. The boy is so young, yet he believes that his place in the New World has been lost now that he's failed to stop her.

Grace crouches next to a grunt and outstretches a hand, and he replies by grabbing a rock and slashing at her face with it.

Kindness, virtue and trust cost her her right eye. Ponyta freezes next to her and evolves out of fear of losing a loved one while Lou restrains the grunt. Just as she's about to snap the boy's neck, Grace holds out a hand, bloodied from cradling her face, and yells.

"Do not kill him."

She hasn't been that angry… ever. She's surprised that a lot of that is directed at Lou rather than the grunt, but the girl is spared and her eye is bandaged. Maylene cries when she sees her a few minutes later, berating Lou for not having intervened faster, but Grace knows that the ACE has reached her limit after Teleporting so many times during the fight.

It's then that Grace notices the sparks of pink coming to life around her skin.

It's love. Passionate, deep and possibly Maylene's first time feeling this.

Grace looks at her and barely hides her pity.

She ignores it and continues her way up to Spear Pillar, but she will let Maylene down easy when everything is over. The Virtuous has found that relationships would only disappoint her, given how flawed everyone was compared to what she would demand. It's impossible for her to fall in love any longer, or at least not with anyone who isn't like her.

You know what happens next, though it's a little different here. It's Cecilia, Pauline, Emilia and Chase who deal with Mars and Denzel and Mira who deal with Jupiter, this time around. Both Mars and Jupiter manage to escape to Spear Pillar, but they're out of Pokemon and can't stop the group when they're all united and at the summit. Cynthia's still chanting, staring at the water, and the might of everyone has been brought to God's Throne to defeat Cyrus. All of the Commanders are captured and spared.

Yet it doesn't matter anyway. It's Grace, who fails to free Mesprit, this time, while Mira, Chase and Cecilia free their respective Guardians.

Dialga crawls out of the sky and screams—

—

So you see, now, how one tiny alteration and time can snowball and completely alter what a person is or represents. This is one example of many, but as chance will have it, there are only two more Grace can peer at due to Dialga's scream.

Let us look back to Solaceon again and get on with the next perspective.

Remember, there is no perfection in time.

—

Grace Pastel stands above Harry Rodriguez, her foot against the man's open wound on his leg, and she snarls so harshly that spit lands on his face. All of his Pokemon lie dead behind her, each in a delipidated state. Even Weavile's neck has been crushed under the weight of Angel's vines, and Crobat has been electrocuted beyond recognition.

Sweetheart is dead. Weavile had slashed open the baby Larvitar and cut her insides apart. All that remains is a fleshy, bleeding corpse that Grace cannot bear to look at, and she knows that once the darkness disappears, she'll broken inside and out by her daughter's death. Just over a week ago, Sweetheart had called her mom for the first time, and now she was gone.

She's won, but at what cost?

"What should I do with you?" she asks, flashing her teeth. He begs and wails, but she presses down on his wounded leg until his words turn into a horrible scream that is music to her ears and that she'll relish her entire life.

She doesn't tell the worm beneath her feet what he could have done to beat her. Instead, Grace tells him that if the information he tells her is useful, she'll leave him alive. Of course, she finds reasons to torture him regardless. Sometimes, she pretends she knows what he's saying isn't the truth, and others, she just stomps down on the hole in his leg because he takes too long to answer. The pleasure she feels is new and fresh, but most of all, she wants to give Harry Rodriguez the pain he deserves.

When he's done talking, he asks her if she can take her foot off his leg.

She smiles and watches the hope drain from his face.

"No, I don't think I will."

Harry Rodriguez is slow-cooked by Sunshine. His death is a slow, agonizing thing that she finds appropriate for her daughter's killer. Grace makes her way to the Hunters' mansion afterward. She kills Reggie and Lane in battle, kills Roland Hunter before he can even speak to her, and has her Pokemon try to break through to Shiftry's chambers. At this point even Honey is seeing red. His baby sister was taken away from him, and any self-doubts about violence had might have had, he has now shed. Had the dark type not been cowardly, she would have died right then and there. Grace wants so badly to kill Shiftry and wipe the Hunter family off the map. She thinks that if she inflicts enough pain on the people who hurt her, it won't hurt as badly when the darkness goes down.

Harry, Reggie, Lane, their Pokemon and Roland are all she gets before Cynthia and Aaron get there and deal with Shiftry. It's almost disappointingly quick. One stab of an aura-infused bone, and the old dark type crumbles. Grace clenches a fist as the darkness slowly bleeds away, thinking that he should have suffered more than this for taking her baby away from her.

The emotions hit her like a truck, and for nearly a week, she is inconsolable. The belt on her hip feels light without Sweetheart there when she goes outside, and the world is dark and dreary as if Shiftry never even left. Yet it is not a deep depression which takes a hold of her. It is imagination. Part of her wants to go out of the Center at night to hunt for some of the Hunters remaining on their property, but she doesn't. She can't.

Right?

No, she can't. That would be an actual crime and not self-defense like the last few murders. Still, it doesn't mean she can't daydream about it. Grace spends nearly a week looking at the warm ceiling light of her room in the Pokemon Center, thinking about all the ways she could hurt. Most of it is spent with her Pokemon so they can collectively grieve together, and she grows distant with her friends. They look at her and say sorry, but they can't understand, can they? None of them have lost anyone, and none of them are talking about helping her eventually get her revenge. They think she's done enough already. That it's been settled. That the debt had been repaid.

That is, she thinks, fucking laughable.

By the end of the week, and after Cynthia teaches Princess to restrain her ambient energy, they decide to bury Sweetheart's Pokeball next to the river running southeast of the city and then loop back up north, leaving her friends with a text message saying that she needs to travel alone and think about things— both about who she is and what she'll be doing from now on.

She still cries herself to sleep every night and hears Sweetheart call for her out of habit.

The road will be hard and long.

—

Sweetheart's death was the turning point, but what truly cements Grace into what she'd become is meeting the Keeper of the Sacred Woods. It happens after she'd fed a group of Pokemon taking refuge from the rain under an overhang. It's difficult for her to show kindness, but in her heart of hearts, she believes that Pokemon are simpler creatures than people. Yes, they can plan to harm, but it is the wickedness of Pokemon wielded by humans, who had taken her daughter away, not the wild. When Grace tells her about what has happened to her, Hatterene finally understands. She shares her values about making people pay, about retribution that no one should be able to get away from. A full day together, and she introduces herself to her as Bellatrix and allows her companion Nightstalker to reveal himself.

I will train you, sister, Bellatrix says. A few weeks with me, and I will teach your daughter all of the basics. After a pause, she crawls closer and smiles with teeth that shouldn't be able to fit in her mouth. Should you desire me to, I can also turn you into a fully-fledged sister.

Grace closes her eyes. "That second option, I'll have to think about."

Very well, the fae says, slightly disappointed. But trust me,

Bellatrix imbues her with these words:

A fairy always comes to collect.

She would be back at the Hunters' through hell or high water and finish what she had started.

She spends an entire month with Bellatrix, and by the time she exits, she does so with an army of Pokemon at her back and a new member of her family. A Hattena born of Bella's belief, still barely a few days old. Her mother had named her Theodora, and she was her parting gift to Grace, along with having… altered her slightly. Not enough to make her mindset incompatible with human society, but enough to know that she would never truly fit in again. The Rangers who stop her at Veilstone's gate, Grace indirectly threatens with the might of all the wild Pokemon at her back if they wouldn't let her pass. The situation is frozen for nearly ten minutes until Maylene Suzuki shows up and forces Grace to realize that her plight is untenable.

For that, she never forgives her.

Grace is arrested, of course— how couldn't she be? Her friends are all worried for her and wonder why she's been away for so long, Poketch quietly pushes her onto the side and Melody signals that they're ready to drop her for good, but Grace doesn't really care. It's revenge that consumes her very being. A desire bubbling right beneath her skin to put all who had wronged her in the dirt no matter how little the slight had been. Maylene, the Hunters, those Rangers, the police; had she not been so weak, she would have had them pay their debt back in full.

Of course, she begins studying Maylene as soon as she's out of jail, which is somehow barely a few days, and she sees weakness. Overworked, insecure, almost to the point of breaking, as if the world itself had presented this opportunity to her. Of course, people say that she's an annoying Gym Leader because she shuts down the ways of fighting she doesn't like, which she'd heard her friends complain about but that's not why Grace cares. She cares because Maylene got her arrested.

Theodora takes well to the team, though they're all extremely overprotective after Sweetheart's death. Sunshine tells her stories of an older sister she would never meet, Honey plays with her by throwing her up in the air or pretending he can't see her during hide and seek, Princess is that stingy but loving older sister that she trains with the most, Angel is the goofy uncle who's nothing but fun and Buddy is the strict grandfather who puts his shoe down when needed.

It hurts seeing them without Sweetheart here. A fairy never forgets.

She spends days training exactly to counter Maylene's tactics and nights watching videos of her battles. She rehearses lines she thinks will work the best and fights the battle over and over in her mind. This is all she does over the course of two weeks, and she's the last one of her friends to go against Maylene. Five-on-five with two switches.

It is a massacre.

Grace holds nothing back. There's no Poketch to be beholden to any longer, and she doesn't care about how the public will perceive her. Not anymore. Every Pokemon's pain is prolonged to hurt her, she responds to Maylene's outbursts with nothing but smiles and silence at first, but when the Gym Leader insults her first as she has planned, Grace begins trading barbs as well. She can tell that each one hurts Maylene so badly that the Gym Leader battles worse and worse until she ends up using aura as a desperate attempt to pull back.

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As a finishing blow, she brings up how her father never would have insulted a challenger.

The score is 2-5 in Grace's favor by the end.

The entire internet is against her. She was too obvious with the way she prolonged fights to optimize her opponents' screams and pain. She had not expected it to be this one-sided against her, instead thinking that opinions would be more mixed, and what she's done has the opposite effect of what she'd wanted. It's not as if the entire trainer community starts supporting Maylene all at once, but there's a shift in the conversation that had obviously stemmed from her actions.

Again, Grace doesn't really care about what random people online say about her, not anymore. Nothing will ever be as painful as losing a loved one.

Losing loved ones.

That is where this path leads her, not because they die, but because they cannot recognize her anymore. It's Denzel, who's the first to call her out for her treatment of the Gym Leader, and then Cecilia follows through, along with Emilia, Mira, and even Pauline. Chase is the only one who remains in the fairy's camp, not because he supports her actions but because he doesn't care and thinks Maylene has it easy anyway and is too soft.

The walk to the Pokemon Center is filled with arguments. "You need to put out a statement apologizing," Denzel says. "I know you're hurt, but this isn't who you are," Cecilia says. "What's the point in taking all of your frustration on this random girl?" Pauline says. "I'm sorry this is the only way you have to deal with your pain," Louis says. "You're fucking crazy," Mira says, followed by a dozen protests about tact like Grace isn't standing right there— on, and on, and on until Grace lashes out a few streets away from their destination.

"What do you know about me?" she rages. "None of you know anything! None of you have ever lost anyone, so you can't understand. I see you all, from your fucking high horses. The way you've looked at me since Sweetheart died. You and your stupid intervention!" Finally. Finally, she can let it out. She's ruining things with them, but she feels good doing it. "I don't want your pity. I want—"

I want to hurt those who hurt me.

But she can't hold herself together.

Tears take hold of her before, and the group gathers around her with a warm hug.

—

That's nice, isn't it? In another world, perhaps, a world where she hadn't lost as much, this could have been the start of a healthier outlook on life. Bridges would have been permanently burned, of course. There was simply no way to rebuild the relationship with Maylene this time, and any hopes Grace might have had of getting to know Gym Leaders would have gone up in flames. At least, however, her current friends would remain.

This is not that world.

But you suspected this already, didn't you? It would, after all, look too similar to yours.

Sunyshore is spent with Grace feeling nothing but dread. Her friends walk on eggshells around her as if to not trigger her into flying into a rage again, and their relationship never feels the same as it had before Solaceon had taken everything from her. It is only Denzel and Cecilia, who are her rocks. The ones willing to look at her like a friend and who she thinks aren't talking about her behind her back. She sees the way everyone else looks at her while they think she isn't looking. Their heavy, judging gazes. They're all against her, they just have the guts to let her know. She's sure of it!

But when she tells Denzel about it, he keeps saying that she's just paranoid.

Grace tries her best to believe him, but she's starting to doubt even his words. Instead, she throws herself into planning for her fight with Volkner, thinking that a good old-fashioned Gym Battle will do her some good. She wishes she had the money to evolve Princess or the knowledge to get an Electivire, but it looks like she's going to have to do without those for the fight. While she plans, Denzel spends less and less time with her because of his tutelage under Craig, while Cecilia finds herself roped into training with Jasmine because Denzel recommended her.

If they'd known how bad the situation had really been, how strongly the pressure had been building up, they most likely would have made more time for her, but children will be children, even those who had gone through hell and back, and Grace was very good at pretending everything was okay and letting everything fester inside of her.

But it is not in Sunyshore, that things come to a head. The fight against Volkner is a nail-biter, only won through sheer dedication from Sunshine, and the fire type carries her across the finish line. Volkner doesn't bother hiding his contempt for Grace when he hands her his badge, and Grace can't help but meet his glare with one of her own. Never relent, never surrender, always escalate, because otherwise she would be weak, and weak girls are the ones who always get hurt.

For a moment, it looks like he's going to say something, yet he doesn't and just tells her to get out of his sight. She smirks and does so with her badge, TM, and money.

Her friends all perform better than her at the Gym Battle, which makes her a little miffed, but that's nothing compared to being summoned by Cynthia before having the world dropped on her head. She's special, the Champion tells her. Chosen by the Lake Guardians, whether that be through sheer luck or something else the League doesn't understand quite yet. So are Chase, Cecilia, and Denzel. The latter of which takes the longest to adapt to the news, but Grace is quite literally shining.

When Cynthia gives them favors in exchange for their service to the League, she asks for three things. A funny notion, to ask for more than a Champion has allocated to you, but she knows her position now. She's needed, and that means she has leverage. First, she asks to evolve her Electabuzz. Second, she asks for more money than that pittance they call the LTIP salary or a Shiny Stone directly and third—

Third, she asks to train under Cynthia for a week.

Oh, she does have a teacher like her friends do, just one that can only help her train Theodora and Princess, but her other teammates need just as much help. Cynthia works her jaw, mulls it over for nearly ten seconds, and Grace can tell the Champion doesn't like it. It's why she's put the 'one-week' time limit, to offer the pact in a way that would be easier to swallow.

In the end, the Champion accepts every offer, and Grace can barely contain her glee as she shakes from excitement. There are stipulations to this deal. The training would have to be secret and off-route, and the seven days would have to be spread out due to how busy Cynthia was.

The Shiny Stone and getting Honey to evolve? That one was something she could do before the hour was over.

"You know, I wanted Volkner to tell you about the evolution in the first place, but even knowing Team Galactic's plan, he wouldn't do it," Cynthia says, her black coat swaying back and forth with every step. "What you did to Maylene left quite a bad taste in every Gym Leader's mouth."

"What do they say about me?" Grace asks.

The Champion leads her to an elevator under the Sunyshore Gym, full of uncomfortable metal. She carries Theodora in her arms to build up her tolerance to the ore while Honey walks lock-in-step behind her with a serious look etched on his visage. He wasn't one for smiles, not after Sweetheart died. Whereas he would have been excited to evolve before, all he wants is more power to protect his family.

"They lament the fact that they have to rely on someone as unstable as you to save us." Cynthia shrugs as the elevator starts to go down.

"And what do you think?" Grace asks.

"That's up for you to decide, Grace."

The two evolutions go smoothly, and she leaves Sunyshore soon after with Denzel, Cecilia and Chase en route for Lake Valor.

—

When Cynthia leads her off-route for their fifth training session, Grace thinks nothing of it. This is routine to her, now. Theodora's evolved into a Hattrem, Honey's growing used to his new body and Princess is learning a lot from Cynthia's own Togekiss. While Grace's Pokemon don't come anywhere close to keeping up with Cynthia and they can't train by battling due to the fact that Cynthia's team has forgotten how to hold back to the point that wouldn't just kill her Pokemon, advice and experience from veteran Pokemon would go a long way.

It is when she leaves, that the entire situation changes.

Still exhausted from their training, Grace and her team get attacked by a Carnivine that brings the weight of millions of blades of grass on top of them. The fight is short and brutal, just as she's learned she likes, but her Pokemon are too tired to win and Carnivine grabs Grace by the throat and squeezes until Ariel descends on her Dragonite and knocks the grass type away with a Body Slam.

Grace heaves on the ground and grabs at her neck. It is bleeding. Countless cuts and bruises line the skin; so much so that she spits out blood when she finds her breath and voice again.

Yet Grace doesn't berate the ACE Trainer for letting her reach the brink of death. She does so for allowing her Pokemon to be hurt to such an extent. She gets flashes of Weavile tearing apart Sweetheart and it takes a magnanimous effort to chase away the tears that come with her anger. When she speaks again, her voice is coarse like sandpaper.

It never goes back to normal.

Just when Ariel asks Grace to get on Dragonite so she can be taken to a Pokemon Center, Carnivine whispers something, and with her voice, the grass shakes as one.

My son, she mourns.

Loss.

Grace knows how that feels.

—

Remember that pressure that was mentioned earlier, that build-up of urges Grace had so harshly buried so she could regain a semblance of her waning friendships?

Well, it has to come out at some point. She's just so angry all the time with nowhere to release those emotions. Again, while Solaceon put her on this path, Pastoria is where she will truly become something else.

After a five-day stay at the hospital, Grace sets up her challenge with Crasher Wake right away while she gets her friends up to speed with Carnivine's plea. Once they hear Abel might be involved, they're all on board, but Grace is slightly miffed that they're wondering why she would want to help a Pokemon who had nearly broken her neck by almost strangling her to death and permanently scarred her throat and voice. She'll even have to wear a neck brace for months.

They don't understand that at this point, it's less about helping and more about extinguishing any scumbag who thought they could take away peoples' loved ones for profit without the consequences of their actions coming back to bite them.

As fate will have it, their investigation takes longer this time.

This has been said a few times, but let's take another step back in the timeline. As luck— or misfortune, depending on your interpretation of these events— would have it, Denzel was a great friend. Nearly the best Grace could have asked for in this situation, really. He was far more understanding than a teenager ought to be, wasn't selfish, and always took on the pain and burdens of his friends if he could. Back in Solaceon, before Grace even killed Harry Rodriguez, it was Mira Compton who was the most adamant about investigating the Hunter family, and Grace can't help but put some of the blame on her for Sweetheart's death.

This is nonsensical. Grace was for investigating just as much as Mira was, though slightly more reserved due to the risks, but the death of a Pokemon can bring irrational thoughts to the forefront of a person's mind. This means that when Uxie has to decide which child to give his gift to, he passes Mira over and picks Denzel, blessing him with a Shard of Knowledge. The Shards being able to work together is of utmost importance, and the Godling can peer into a few futures to see that the friction between Grace and Mira would doom the world.

So,

Mira isn't the Shard of Knowledge, Abel never gets caught by her in Veilstone, yet Clarence is still eventually freed by League Forces after a few days and it forces him to flee down south. He's hired by Edward Backlot, and the situation is similar to what could be observed in the other timelines.

Yet since Mira isn't the Shard of Knowledge and isn't separated from her, Maeve is never driven enough to make a new friend and she doesn't get attacked by Zoey Miranda in the Safari Zone.

This means that the investigation lags behind. Even as Grace unleashes the most violent fighting style contemporary Sinnoh has ever seen onto Wake to release some anger and Theodora debuts in her first Gym Battle, they come up empty. Her Moonblast is dim and small, yet it represents her disgust at the world that had broken her trainer so and repulses anything it approaches instead of pulling in like Bellatrix's while it blasts them with Fairy Winds strong enough to be mistaken for Hurricanes.

The training with Cynthia means that the battle goes handily in Grace's favor, and Palafin is left a sack of broken bones by the end of it.

As fate will have it, Theodora is the Pokemon that was wounded the least, and she's out of the Pokemon Center before everyone else. While Grace is wandering around a park with her and singing songs while the fae sits on her head and acts as her hat, a dark-haired man, his Hypno and his Xatu appear in front of them.

Abel.

Hattrem are exceedingly rare in Sinnoh. Bellatrix is possibly the only wild one of that evolutionary line, and even then, trainers with the Pokemon are few and far between. Abel, who has not had to deal with the group through Mira capturing him for a few minutes, believes Grace to be a trainer he can just steal from to make his boss happy enough to take him back to Unova now that Clarence has been sent back.

The park has a few people, but none who can fight a professional thief for hire. Grace only has Hattrem with her, and her friends are nowhere nearby.

It goes by so quickly.

She's pushed back by the Xatu's weakened Confusion while Hypno grabs Theodora with the same move and brings her to them. Lou appears beside her with a Solrock and Lunatone while Ariel and Maxwell make themselves known, but Abel is an expert thief. In terms of brute strength, he would have lost, but Teleportation and the manipulation of the strings that make the world are about finesse. In less than three seconds, his psychics win the struggle and he vanishes with Theodora.

Her daughter is gone. Again.

This can't be happening.

This can't be happening.

This can't be happening.

And yet it was. As if the world itself, in a cruel twist of fate was taunting her, she had lost another daughter. The child Bellatrix, her friend, teacher and the person she considers her mother figure, had entrusted onto her.

And so,

While people around her are all making her way to her to help her up, calling the police or the Rangers, or fleeing out of fear that they would be next; while the worthless ACE Trainers who had once again failed her crowd around her, Grace curls up into a ball and rocks back and forth as she laughs.

The dam cracks and shatters.

She is broken.

—

Abel leaves traces of himself leading back to the poacher's hideout.

The ACEs notice this very quickly, and it's almost as if he leaves a psychic signature leading to Edward Backlot's mansion on purpose. It takes them a few days to track it down, and by now the rest of Grace's team is back from the Pokemon Center, each one as broken as she is, yet they don't cry.

Tears are for the weak who mourn before retribution has been achieved.

She watches Edward Backlot's bodyguards from the sky like bugs and an excited shiver runs down her spine when Lou gives the signal to attack and they bear down on these pathetic things like an enormous boot.

Grace holds nothing back. Each Pokemon or poacher she kills makes her fingers tingle, each scream she hears brings a smile to her lips, each person begging for their life, she pretends to spare just before having one of her Pokemon kill them. This fight, it makes her feel more alive than she ever has, and she unleashes all of the anger built up over the last few weeks into these murders. Her enemies are burned, fried, torn apart, dissected, imploded, cut to shreds; and when they die, she orders her Pokemon to make it as slow as physically possible without endangering themselves. There are a few times when she might have caused the deaths of a few hostages, but it's all in the name of justice, is it not? She leaves a trail of blood and guts in the hallways of the mansion, yet it's not this fodder that she wants.

It's Edward Backlot and Abel.

She finds the latter first, and engages in battle with him with Cecilia after he sacrifices his Hypno and Xatu to Teleport their worthless ACEs away. The fight is such a high for her that she laughs when Jellicent explodes his Zoroark from the inside right as she's about to claw her in the neck and explodes the dark type all over her face and clothes. Seeing the tides turn, Machamp tries to convince Abel to run away, but Electivire electrocutes the man's hand before he can release his Kecleon and he falls to the ground as he convulses and foams at the mouth.

Cecilia and Grace's Pokemon deals with Machamp, and it's Electivire that lands the final blow. A Cross Chop to the back of the fighting type's neck breaks it and renders him dead.

Needless to say, there's an axe in Grace's bag.

"Go up ahead, I'll have Angel tie him up and take him outside," Grace says, omitting the full truth. "We don't want his Malamar or his Klefki to pull some bullshit."

Cecilia hesitates. "Are you sure? It'd be best if we don't separate—"

"Just. Listen. To. Me," Grace says with a smile and a tilt of her head. Her raspy voice is still not something she's used to. "I'll be fine." Her fingers are itching to kill. Literally itching. She fears that if Cecilia doesn't leave in the next minute she'll start hacking at Abel with her right there. "Trust me."

Cecilia sighs. "If you're certain."

Relief floods her veins when Cecilia leaves, and Angel drags Abel into an adjacent room while Grace follows. She's almost surprised at how clean it is. When she looks at her hands covered in blood and chunks of flesh and the pristine ground, it's as if she doesn't belong in this world. Every step she takes leaves bloodied prints onto the wooden floor.

She doesn't kill Abel. Not yet.

She has to wait for him to get back to normal first. Honey had held back his Thundershock enough to just stun the Unovan, and he was getting his wits back, slowly but surely. It takes two minutes for him to move from groans to slurred words, and Grace decides she's had enough and she can't wait any longer. She lazily slimes at Abel and drags a finger from his forehead, the side of his face, and then his chin.

"Is Theodora in this mansion?"

Abel groans. "Theo— the Hattrem?"

Grace raises her axe, and he flinches. "Wait, wait wait! She is! Backlot's just keeping her in a cage where he keeps all of his other Pokemon— I can show you if you don't swing. Please."

Grace laughs.

There it is.

At the heart of every Man was fear, and she reveled in it almost as if she could smell it.

"Okay," Grace sighs and lowers her weapon. "Tell me where it is."

Abel untenses and allows himself to relax a tiny bit.

Cruelty is the point, so that is the moment she strikes.

She hurts, and she finds pleasure in it. She hurts and it makes her feel empowered. She hurts them all first so they can't hurt her in return. She cackles over his gurgling screams and keeps cutting, cutting and cutting until Abel is more flesh than skin, until his body is covered in lacerations and blood soaks every inch of her axe and clothes. It is here, covered in blood and viscera, that Grace Pastel sheds the last of her humanity and becomes The Beast.

When she realizes what she's done, it is too late. The body is too mangled to even pretend like she hadn't had her way with it. She contemplates hiding it, but knows it's not going to work. She is, after all, incapable of lying at all, so she has Angel grab the multiple parts of his body and brings him outside. Some of it, he has to scoop up.

Oh well, she thinks. It's not like any of this matters any longer.

With her new awakening comes a freedom that makes her feel like she has wings. People might look at her in horror when her Tangrowth lays the body in the yard? Who cares? Her friends are going to abandon her? It's not like they were even real in the first place. Cecilia is going to break up with her?

That…

That one, she cares about. Her and Denzel, really, but if they won't accept her for who she is, then she feels better ripping off the band-aid before they can lead her on any longer.

Unfortunately, Backlot is under League custody when she finds the man. He's willingly surrendered and revealed his house of horrors. Rows upon rows of Pokemon who look malnourished, beaten and terrified beyond compare. She passes by a Galarian Ponyta before her eyes settle on the enclosure Theodora is kept in. The fairy jumps up and down next to the glass until the viewing windows are opened and Grace grasps her into a tight hug.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I will never let you down like this again."

Did you kill those who harmed us? Hattrem speaks into her mind.

"Yes."

The sun sets outside, just as it sets on her life.

—

The night following the raid is… peculiar.

In all of the confusion of dealing with the wounded, both in Backlot's camp and the hostages, it takes a few hours for people to even notice Abel, and the body is too… disturbed for them to know it's him for little longer. Of course, Grace is already gone when they do, having flown off to tell Carnivine the bad news that Leafeon had died in the fighting rings of the VIP room in the Game Corner. They'd been too late. With her, Grace carries Backlot's closest associates to deliver to her. There is no need to go into detail about what is done to them. Some fates are too cruel to be described by words.

Just know that Abel's fate was gentle, in comparison.

Grace watches Carnivine 'mourn' with a tired, yet satisfied smile on her face, and by the end of it, the remains of these men and women are fed to the plants below.

"You know," Grace starts. "I'm sorry I couldn't get the man himself. He doesn't deserve to spend the rest of his life in jail. He deserves what these people got."

Carnivine hisses, her roots shaking in anger.

"I know," she agrees. "I know it's not enough. It's never enough, is it?"

The plant-like Pokemon levitates just a little higher, but stays quiet.

"I had a daughter, once," Grace blurts out. "A little Larvitar I adopted after she'd lost her mother in Mount Coronet to a Rhyperior." She sees the Carnivine's eyes and mouth widen. "I know how your loss feels, and how it'll continue to feel. Every day, I ask myself what she would have been like, had she been with me? How she would have changed, adapted, learned to read, to swim, to speak a little quieter…" She lets out a sad laugh. "And it never gets easier." Grace's shoulders slump. "It just doesn't. You just learn to live with that gaping feeling, like a hole in your heart you can never get rid of no matter how many people you kill."

The Beast outstretches a hand.

"But in that moment, when retribution fills your very being, it makes you feel like you're doing right by the people you lost. Come with me, Carnivine. You'll find like-minded people in my family, people who have felt loss just as you have," she declares as the wind sweeps past her. "And believe me, there are people in this world who must be rooted out before they take away anyone else from the people who love them. Help me."

Carnivine hesitates.

But Grace already knows her answer.

A pact is formed.

—

The next month is both important and unimportant.

First is the meeting with Mesprit. Grace makes a beeline for Verity as soon as Carnivine joins her team, and the Lake Guardian gushes over how they absolutely love what Grace has been doing. The Beast, for one, enjoys the God's company and finds solace in another entity liking her for who she is, but it is when Mesprit offers her her new powers that the situation suddenly changes.

The power to influence all she wanted through emotion.

Mesprit offers her to use it on her friends to get them back in a sing-song tone reminding Grace of a Primarina affecting sailors through their voice. Denzel would be immune, of course, but Chase and Cecilia are half a shard while the others are just people. She hesitates, really hesitates. The thought of getting everyone back and making them into proper friends is alluring, but in the end, she refuses. "It wouldn't be real," she says. "And the League might throw a fit anyway."

Already, she suspects that the ACEs following her might turn on her the moment Team Galactic is dealt with. After Pastoria, the League probably considered her too volatile to be left alive, and she was already in the process of planning her escape into Johto. The Conference didn't matter to her, not anymore, though she still wanted to test her mettle against Byron, if only to see if she was sharp enough to cut through his defenses. Battles for sport were a little childlike and boring compared to the real thing, and she was worse at it, but it would still be a valuable experience.

Once her meeting with Mesprit is done, she has to ask the League for a test subject, something which they vehemently refuse. Grace spends most of the time she has left traveling the region, often staying with Bellatrix to rest in between trips to cities like Veilstone, Solaceon or Hearthome. The Keeper, Mesprit and Nightstalker are the Beast's only friends who remain, and with them, she finally feels free. No longer does she have to pretend to be someone else, or a person they can project their pity onto. Grace hasn't spoken to any of her old friends since Pastoria, and she plans on keeping it that way until Galactic strikes.

One night, a member of the Hunter family disappears in Solaceon in the middle of the night. Then another, and another— one every night until the Beast could alter someone any way she wanted within a few hours at most. She knows the ACEs see her do this, but again, she has leverage until Team Galactic is dealt with, and that means the law can be bent.

Or broken, in this case.

The rest of the story… are the unimportant bits. I could tell you that Grace Pastel and her team grow into feral recluses who lash out at anything or anyone who looks at them wrong. I could tell you that she beat Byron by the skin of her teeth and obtained her eighth badge, that she goes to the Iron Islands and clashes with a man named Riley right after they both deal with Team Galactic grunts holed up there in search of some kind of Legendary due to him wanting to spare their lives and her wanting to kill them.

The battle is close, but she loses and escapes, which is all the more frustrating because she was trying to kill him and he was not. Just like Maylene, he's a damn aura-user, and a deep disdain grows for them within her.

But that doesn't really matter. She's already changed. Nothing else will move the needle in the other direction, by now. Something could have, before Grace had been burned over and over, but it was too late, now.

The bombs go off.

Grace isn't even taken to see the other Shards. It is ironic, how Denzel was chosen because of fears of friction in the group, yet here it is regardless— although they're at least able to work together. Had Mira been the Shard of Knowledge, The Beast would have thrown the whole world under the bus in order not to work with her.

When she finally sees everyone again at Lake Valor after Mesprit is captured, they can barely look at her in the face. Denzel looks sorry for her, but can't say anything. Chase eyes her with suspicion that comes with the territory of Grace exuding the aura of a Beast who had already figured out fifty ways to kill them as soon as she had stepped into the room, and not a human being, and while Cecilia says "I don't recognize you anymore," few words are exchanged between the two. When Grace peers at her emotions, she realizes that she's hurting, and she nearly scoffs.

They're the ones that abandoned her. None of them even tried contacting her after Pastoria, and she'd left because she saw the shape of them, now. Backstabbers, the lot of them. They pretend to care when what they really want is never to see her again. She was certain that if Louis, Justin, Mira and the others had known the world was ending and had been brought here, they'd be feeling the same way, too.

Eight badges in hand, seven Pokemon with her and now exceedingly happy with who she had become, Grace Pastel begins her ascent up Mount Coronet. All of Grace's ACEs disappear the moment she gets deep into the first layer. They were useless this entire time to her, and so she had sent them away. She makes her way up through violence and killing, because it has never failed her. Saturn and his ambush, she makes quick work of. She's a trained killer, by now. This is nothing she hasn't brainstormed with her family before, and when Saturn dies, he does so slowly, burning underneath Sunshine's foot.

Alone, she reaches Spear Pillar. She kills Charon as soon as she sees him, and realizes she's the first of the Shards to make it here. Mars shows herself, blocking the path between her and Cyrus, yet her Pokemon are hurt. Only Clefable, Ninetales and Wigglytuff remain.

Grace laughs when they battle.

This girl is, after all, the closest thing the Beast has ever had to a peer. Through battle, they understand each other, and when Mars thanks Grace for being her friend as she dies, Grace nods and hugs her.

We're reaching the end, now.

The death of these Commanders has the Shards get here in the next five minutes, and they make their way to Cyrus and Cynthia. Grace easily frees Mesprit while Chase and Cecilia manage to snag Azelf, but it is Denzel who fails to get Uxie back from Team Galactic's clutches. He carries with him too much regret at failing to save his friend, and it makes him unsure of himself.

Dialga crawls out of the sky and screams—

—

The Beast and the Virtuous. Two polar opposites borne from the result of a single battle, its effects having butterflied until the two Graces had turned into people who would despise one another. Our Grace, you could say, is the bridge between these two. The one who could understand the actions of both, even if she would disagree with nearly every single one both of these girls took after a certain point.

So, I hear you ask.

What else is left?

It is true that these three strike a good balance, but one must not get lost in the significance of stories and symbolism. Look back to Solaceon once more, and remember that there is a third possible result that could have turned Grace Pastel into someone else entirely.

For the last time, let us take a step back for a shorter story.

—

Grace Pastel kneels over Harry Rodriguez with tears, snot and spit streaming down her face. Technically, this can be qualified as a victory. Harry is injured and incapable of walking, while all of his Pokemon are dead and Weavile is safely tucked in its Pokeball. The truth of the matter is, this is no victory. Both Princess and Sweetheart are dead, having been killed by Crobat and Weavile respectively. Grace Pastel claws at the darkness in the floor, unable to control the emotions that break through Shiftry's dulling, and she lets out a long, uninterrupted scream that goes on until her throat bleeds and her voice is gone.

Before the darkness even goes down, her emotions break through the filter and she feels the full scale of her loss. Two children, gone forever. One whose neck had been torn apart by Crobat's venomous bite, and the other whose scales and flesh had been ripped to shreds. How can she recover after this— how can she live on after this?

The answer is that she cannot.

She lies on the ground and watches the darkened skies, her body devoid of energy to take her revenge or to go look for Shiftry in the Hunters' mansion. Her Pokemon mourn with her, standing like silent vigils over her body as her protectors. Some, like Honey and Angel, cry until their bodies run out of tears. Sunshine's gaze is downcast, but the pain in his eyes is a familiar thing. Buddy's eyes have shrunk to the size of tiny little dots and he makes himself small, dripping water on the ground like a sieve.

The transformation is quick, this time. It is here, surrounded by a feeling of loss so thick Grace Pastel could choke on it, that she is broken and never rebuilt, turning herself into The Anguished.

She doesn't know how much time passes, but at some point the darkness recedes, and she is out of tears to give. She has been wrung out and discarded; chewed out by the cruelty of the world and spit out, and she somehow has to pick up the pieces. It is another ten minutes or so until a League Trainer finds her and takes her and her Pokemon back to the Pokemon Center, where she lays catatonic for the next Arceus knows how many days. It hurts too much for words, too much to speak, too much to eat, shower, walk, or care about anything else. Her friends stay with her, yet she doesn't reciprocate when they try to talk to her. The world is just so dreary and grey, and she's simply out of love or care to give to these people.

On the tenth day, she speaks for the first time. On the thirteenth, she stops soiling herself and walks to the bathroom. On the fifteenth, she eats solid food, on the twentieth, she goes out of her room— she appears to progress to the outside, but inside, she is still shattered into a million pieces and no one is enough to build her back together. One month after the death of her two daughters, Grace abandons the Circuit, deciding to go back to Jubilife to stay with her father, and she breaks up with Cecilia. The fewer people she has to love, the fewer opportunities there are for her to be hurt. Her friends don't abandon the League Circuit for her, and how could they? They still have goals and aspirations of their own, but even then, they promise to visit as soon as they can.

What Grace wants is for time to pass in a blur, and for a while, it does. Wake up, eat, lay in bed, eat again and go to sleep at night. She has no energy for anything. Her father tries to get her to therapy, but she doesn't want to get out of bed. Her Pokemon go out to train on their own during the day, unwilling to get rusty should the need to protect Grace or each other arise again, yet she's not a part of that, and she doesn't want to be.

Unfortunately, the League comes knocking soon enough. Cynthia herself comes to visit her, just as she had after her experience with Mars in Floaroma, and drones on and on about a mental barrier too complex to be possible and the fact that she's chosen by a Legendary of some sort.

Chosen.

The words prickle at her ears. If she's so fucking special, then why had her ego, pride and obsession with revenge caused the death of her family? Every night, she cried herself to sleep imagining Princess' soft fur in her arms, or Sweetheart's silly antics. Sweetheart had called her mom for the first time barely a week before her death, and Grace had dragged her to her death because of fantasies of retribution.

"I don't want anything to do with this," Grace tells the Champion. Her voice is soft and quiet, as if she's scared of the word lashing out at her if she's too loud and it notices that she still exists. "Find… find someone else."

"I'm afraid I can't." A heavy breath escapes Cynthia's nose. "This is confidential," she says, knitting her hands together. "But I fear that the fate of the world rests on your shoulders. Yours, Cecilia, Chase and Mira's."

The fate of the world?

Give me a break, she thinks. This world isn't worth saving at all. There are people she cares about in it— her father, her Pokemon, and the love for her friends still linger within her like candlelight, but the world itself has done nothing but burn them. Sunshine had lost his first trainer through circumstances she didn't yet know, Honey had been abandoned by his parents, Buddy's mother had lashed out and tried to kill him upon evolving, Angel lived in a forest with nothing but death and misery fought for his life every single day, Cecilia's father wants to manipulate her into marrying Louis, and that's just scratching the surface of how ugly everything is.

On and on, everywhere you look, you can see the anguish that this world causes people to experience.

But maybe that's the point. To wield a singular blade against a force so large it might as well be incomprehensible, to scream and berate the world for hurting them and to fight against the darkness that lurks in every corner so the people she cares about who still remain can at least live on.

"Better an ugly world than a dead one…" she finally agrees.

—

Of course, she still doesn't go get badges, nor does she restart her journey. This Grace isn't about that. The Anguished is about putting one foot ahead of the other to keep steady; about keeping her head above the water so she doesn't drown. Badges and the Circuit is a thing of the past for her. Remains of a childish desire she had before everything had been ripped away from her.

But I did promise this one would be shorter, didn't I? And for good reason. There isn't much to this Grace's life, and it diverts entirely from the past two. For one, she's trained exclusively by her ACE Trainers in secret off-route near Jubilife, and sometimes, Cynthia. While she does text her old friends occasionally and keeps track of what they're up to, it's not until they start getting their flying licenses that she sees them again. She finally gets closure with Cecilia and they properly talk things about, opting to remain friends even if they're no longer dating. While we could go in-depth about how her conditions altered the relationships between her friends— we could get lost in the weeds of every timeline, should we want to, like how Abel successfully escapes to Unova using Backlot's private plane by masquerading Zoroark as himself and how the real one ends up being found tied up near Pastoria's League office with a long list and proof of his crimes— but this is about her, not them.

The rest of the year passes by in a blur. Honey is given the resources to evolve, and Cynthia's lessons get less and less frequent. Near the end, Sunshine finally tells her about Kamaile's life and death, and again, she is reminded of how cold-blooded life truly is. She is hesitant to promise him to get his revenge, as he is, due to the fact that this very mindset had gotten both Princess and Sweetheart killed, but she says that if they cross paths, if it comes to a fight, and if they win the battle, Saturn will not be spared. To her father, she reveals the nature of Cynthia's visit and tells that the world might end, with the League's permission, and he becomes her rock. One of the main reasons she still has to living, including her family, but also her biggest source of support.

When she feels ready, she's taken to Lake Verity to see Mesprit, who berates her and keeps telling her about how they regret their choice and that she might be worse than Denzel. She's too tired to deal with their bullshit, so she just smiles, nods along, and becomes a Shard. Grace opts to practice on the prisoner the League offers, then three more until she has a good grasp of how to use her powers, and although the deadline is rapidly approaching, she's too scared of loss to catch another Pokemon beyond the four she currently has, and again, when the bombs go off, she's first taken to a bunker with the others, followed by Valor when Mesprit is taken by Mars.

Four badges in hand, four Pokemon with her and just wanting to get this shit over with, Grace Pastel begins her ascent up Mount Coronet. Having spent half a year connecting with her ACE Trainers and having become some sort of a daughter-figure to them (even though they would never admit this), she manages to carry all of them to the top by making a grunt they had encountered loyal to her and only to her. They do not meet Saturn on the way up, but Jupiter, who claims she is interested in Grace's mindset after having lost so much.

They make quick work of her and the grunts she had gathered to take them down.

She's the last to make it to Spear Pillar, and when she does, Mars is revealed to already be dead, having lost a fight to Denzel, Cecilia and Chase. Saturn carries with him his full team at the summit, but the combined might of the Shards and the ACEs is enough to destroy him. Yet when Sunshine looks at him, squirming on the ground and preparing to die, he just walks past him without enacting his revenge.

Like her, he's just so tired.

Once more, they make it to Cyrus and Cynthia, and again it is Grace who fails to free Mesprit. The uppity God has always despised her, and she struggles to even want to bother to interact with the damn thing.

And so, I leave you with this:

Dialga crawls out of the sky and screams—

—

When I come to, I realize that there should be a word to describe pain a degree above migraine. My vision slowly melds into one again, and it's as if someone has driven an ice pick directly into my skull. The visions I witnessed were instantaneous, yet I remember everything I've seen. Different timelines— different me's that I was only allowed to witness on accident due to Dialga's scream. They'd had such tragic events in their lives that for a moment, I think I'm going to cry, but I can't bring myself to do so beyond a few tears. The fact that Sweetheart, Princess or both are dead doesn't feel real. It's like waking up after a nightmare. Crawling on the metallic floor, I push myself upright and blink to get my eyesight back to normal, but it's as if everything I've seen has been burned into my retinas. It takes a good while to parse through the blurriness of it all, but some time later, I manage to make out the three other pillars near me. I hear a groan—

I hear a groan?

That hadn't come from me. The sudden realization that I'm not alone 'sobers' me up and I realize that there are people lying on their respective spires.

They are me, and I am them.

One already stands, a continuous brand-like scar around her neck and clenches at her forehead. The other has a bandaged eye and is slowly getting back up on her feet, while the last just lays there, unmoving, though I can still see her chest rising and lowering with every breath. I recognize them very well.

The Beast is the first to speak. "Well." Her abnormal voice reminds me of Aubri's. She allows a short pause, and a haughty smirk reaches her lips. "Isn't this something?" Even though her tone is playful, it's impossible to mistake the darkness in her eyes, or her fingers twitching around her Pokeballs by reflex.

For a second, I'm too stunned to even comprehend how unlikely and mind-bending this all is. I try to think of the probabilities or to make sense of somehow being present amidst other Grace Pastels, but I quickly realize that this is an exercise in futility. There's no point trying to comprehend what's going on when a person was never meant to be here in the first place.

The Virtuous' one exposed eye blinks, and she glances at all of us one by one while The Anguished finally sits up with a heavy sigh, as if she's done with everything. Tears stream down her eyes, and she hugs her knees.

The Beast rolls her eyes. "Come on, Anguished. The first thing you do after witnessing this mind-fuckery is cry?"

Anguished. So they had learned of these names too? What was mine?

"Shut up," the crying girl says, quiet but not. "Three times, I've had to see what my daughters would have been like if they were alive. Three times." An estranged, pained moan ripples across her throat. "You don't understand how that feels."

The Beast's— or maybe just Beast's— eyes darken. "Don't act like I've had it good. I lost Sweetheart too, but instead of being a baby about it—"

"Can we all stop and figure out what the hell is happening?" I tried.

Beast laughs mockingly and puts her hands on her hips. "Oh, give me a break, Repentant. Virtuous, I never had any hope with after I saw her fraternizing with fucking Harry Rodriguez—"

The one-eyed girl scoffs. "Excuse me?"

"—But you?" She points an angry finger in my direction. If we'd been on the same platform, I'm sure she would have jabbed me with it. "You went soft. You know life isn't sunshine and rainbows like this girl over here," she nudges her head toward Virtuous, "but you're too much of a scaredy cat to take matters into your own hands. If I was you, I would have cut Saturn apart myself. Hell, you don't even use your gift that much! Even Virtuous isn't that stupid. What's the point of getting this power if you don't use it to protect the people you care about?"

"First of all, I want nothing to do with you, Beast," I answer with a half snarl. When she sees how angry I get, she stands just a little taller. "You're the furthest person I'd ever take advice from. At least Virtuous—"

"Don't lump me in with you, murderer," Virtuous laughs as she crosses her arms. "You two are cut of the same cloth. One is just a little more selective with her sins than the other."

That knocks the wind out of my sails. For a short moment, I struggle to articulate what I want to say. "Aren't you all about… forgiveness and understanding?"

She shrugs. "Exactly, and seeing myself capable of ever murdering as easily as I breathe makes me sick, because I understand it, and I see the shape of you. The quicker I get out of here, the quicker I can pretend that this never happened."

"Hey, 'the shape of you' is my thing," Beast growls.

Virtuous shakes her head. "Think again, wretch."

Anguished sniffles and lays back down on her platform. "Ugh. Just listening to this is tiring me out."

We all turn toward her. Beast sits down and lets her feet dangle off her timeline with an apologetic look, Virtuous scratches her arm uncomfortably and I bite the inside of my lip.

"Sorry," we all apologize in unison.

Virtuous isn't a surprise, but I'm astonished Beast even knows what that word means. I'm pretty sure I haven't actually heard her say it in all of the memories I'd seen.

The girl touches her scarred neck. "So. Dialga, huh. Think we're waiting for the world to end?"

"It depends. I have no idea how it'll react when only Mesprit is under Cyrus' control," Virtuous says. "Though I guess it's different for all of you. Uxie for you," she looks at Beast, "And Azelf for you," then at me.

"I'd like to say that everyone coming to an understanding would get us out of here," I say, sitting cross-legged. "But this is way above any of our paygrades. I've been in here for who knows how long already and nothing's happened other than timelines collapsing and Dialga saving some with a scream that caused all of this. I'm confused about why it's doing what it is. If it remains slightly under Cyrus' control, why would it start saving other timelines? And if it's not, well, does that mean we're just stuck here?"

"Arceus, you really do speak as much as it showed us," Anguished laments. "Who cares, anyway? It's out of our control."

Beast snickers at the verbal jab. "Oh, I like her! And she's right. Sometimes, you just have to let the cards fall where they may."

"I'd love it if you adopted that outlook on your actual life," Virtuous says. Her hands, I notice, are clenching nervously at the side of her clothes, as if seeing all of us makes her viscerally uncomfortable. "But I'm afraid you're correct."

"Look at that, Beast and Virtuous agreeing! Woo!" the mass murderer hollers, pumping a fist in the air. "Oh yeah, by the way, Beast? Really? There was nothing else for me? Titles and Names are important."

"We know that," I say.

"Um, no, you don't given that you screwed your opportunity with Bella," Beast complains. "You changed her so much, by the way. She's like a completely different person with you."

"I had no idea her name even was Bellatrix," Virtuous says under her breath.

My jaw clenches. "She's better, yes. And just because I didn't fuck up my entire mind doesn't mean I'm not a sister."

"Half-sister," she rectifies. Her fingers touch the ground below her. "And that's not what I meant and you know it."

"I like my name. The Virtuous," Grace boasts. "It encompasses me very well."

"Who even came up with these anyway?" Anguished asks, still lying against the ground.

"Ourselves, I think?" I look around to see if they'd protest, but no one does.

"I mean, we are the same person—" Beast grins when she sees Virtuous' nose wrinkle. "So we'd associate the same names to each other, I guess, except we didn't hear our own."

"Anguished… I might have picked Martyr, if I could," Anguished sighs.

For a good while, we talk about names. Speaking to oneself isn't as easy as a person would think. There's just so much friction, and we can't go two entire minutes without one of us jumping at the other's throat. I hate the way Beast literally thinks she's always correct, even when she demonstrably isn't, and how she takes no responsibility for the horrifying things she's done. I hate how the longer this goes on, the more Virtuous starts staring at me with pity instead of disgust, as if she feels sorry for me. As if she can just sweep all of my efforts to become a better person under the rug because it doesn't fit her definition of good. If there's one thing I agree with the others on, it's that she's had it too good to understand what everyone's been through.

None of her Pokemon are dead, her friendships aren't perfect, but they exist, and Justin's alive. Hell, she broke up with Cecilia for no reason!

And Anguished…

Well, no one can hate Anguished. Not even Beast pokes much fun at her despite being almost unable to stop herself when she senses weakness. She speaks the least, but when she does, we're all drawn into what she says like we've been hypnotized and seized by her depression.

The girls are curious and ask when their transformations took place. When Beast hears it's when she mangled Abel's corpse, she purses her lips and seems satisfied with herself. Virtuous, she calls soft for being broken by the mere strings of her friendships snapping because of her impossible standards, but the one-eyed Grace just huffs and says Beast doesn't deserve a response. Anguish just chuckles dryly and mutters an 'of course' under her breath.

"What about me?" I finally ask. "Though I can probably guess."

Virtuous wraps her palm around one of her Pokeballs. "The fight with that Melmetal, right after Lou dies." Right, that had been what I'd thought. My path hadn't been perfect since then, but I'd tried to improve things. "I'm surprised you still went with that childish idea of a Claydol and passed up on Shiver."

Beast cackles and throws her head back. "Fight is generous. Repentant talked that thing to death until it joined her."

"We made a pact."

"Pacts are forged through blood and pain," she shrugs. "Can't believe you got Lou ki—" I flinch, and she clears her throat. "I'm just saying, it'd be nice to get rid of her. It'd certainly make running away easier, if we get out of here."

"Arceus, how pathetic is it that you're so scared of getting hurt that you've put yourself into this corner," Virtuous scolds. "If the League wants you dead, you'll die. Period."

Anguished grunts. "It'd be funny if Garchomp just sliced your head off the moment you get back. It's what I'd do. At least I wouldn't have to hear you talk like you own the world; let me tell you, that's very obnoxious."

Beast places her hand on her chest in faux-betrayal. "I can't believe you'd say that to me!" Then, she returns to normal. "Please. Give me a break."

Virtue clips the ball back on her belt, having confirmed that the Pokemon release button doesn't work. "Don't listen to her, Anguished. Both of these girls aren't who you should be associating with."

"I don't like that you're telling me what to do."

"Take it as a piece of advice, then. You're the closest to—"

"Consider, maybe, that I don't want to be you." Her voice is louder than it's ever been, and Virtuous deflates. "I just want to get this over with so I can head back home with Dad."

"He'll just hold you back, you know?" Beast follows by raving about how squeamish Dad is, and that has us all ganging up on her until she explodes in anger. "I don't want to hear anything from the people who still talk with Mom!"

I protest, "Mom is—"

A… shake that spreads throughout the world interrupts my scathing rebuttal.

Anguished speaks up, "Look, we can stand here all day fighting and berate each other's choices, or we can realize that nothing anyone says here will change the minds of any of us. Our paths are too set in stone anyway." She finally sits up and looks at us in the eye. "Have you finally realized that this place has been starting to shake? I don't think the time dimension or whatever it is is supposed to have tremors like this."

"Well, what do you know," Beast huffs.

"It's not like we can do anything about it," I grumble.

Anguished facepalms and rubs her forehead. "This place is filled with idiots."

"I mean, Repentant's right—"

My head swings toward Beast. "Don't associate me with you."

Almost as if on cue, she begins to mock me. "Wah, wah, wah." Beast rubs her eyes and pretends to cry. "Look at me, I'm Repentant! An attention hog who cries about everything despite having it the second easiest out of all of us, wah— oh, I know that look. That one hurt."

"Fuck you."

"I'm not the one who started it. Every moment in here, you people have judged me. Even you." Beast glares at Anguished. "Even though I've tried being understanding because you people are me."

"You forgot how to be understanding long ago, you poor, miserable little girl," Virtuous solemnly says. "But Anguished's right."

"Okay, pirate," Beast says. Then, she doubles over and laughs at her own joke. "Sorry, sorry. Um, go ahead, Anguished."

"Do you think whatever happened here affected the population at large?" she worryingly asks, rasping her knuckles against the timeline below her. It was difficult to remember that what we were standing on was billions of years of history. "What if everyone's gotten a vision like us in our worlds?"

"Depends on how this place works, I guess. It'd be meaningless to try to understand it," I answer, nervously running a hand through my hair. "If I had to guess, only the people on Spear Pillar are seeing this. Maybe not Cyrus, since he has a guardian with him, but I wouldn't be surprised if Cecilia was seeing a similar scene…" When I realize that they're all staring at me, I look around in confusion and shake my head. "What?"

"Legendaries, you're so in love and happy that it's fucking disgusting," Anguished says. "But I guess you're right."

Right. All of these people had broken up with Cece for one reason or another. Our relationship feels so special to me, but I suppose it falls apart more times than not, and figuring that out makes my heart squeeze unpleasantly.

"It'd be cool for me if the League had to deal with all of that confusion so I can slip through the cracks," Beast hums, kicking her feet over the edge. Then, she pauses. "You know, that reminds me of that Garchomp cutting my head off thing. What the hell was Cynthia even doing back there?"

"In every timeline—" Another shake sent a shiver down my spine. It had been accompanied by a noise, this time. "You girls hear that?"

Virtuous nods. "Feels like a story coming to an end."

"You going all in on this story thing despite not being family or even friends with Bella feels like cultural appropriation," Beast says. She cranes her neck and the smirk is wiped off her face when she sees… what we all see.

Darkness, spreading across Time. It's a velvet cloak of a starless night, accompanied by a strange whistling sound whose pitch I seem to forget every time I even stopped paying attention. Red light pulsated like veins across the shadows, which were spreading instantly, yet were not. It was impossible to properly explain, like I could see it in both the future and the past. Nothing else here had behaved this way, even when it hadn't belonged.

"Huh," Anguished nonchalantly speaks up. Her voice feels distorted. "I guess this is it."

"What do you mean, this is it?" I ask.

"The world's ending."

"There's no— only Dialga was summoned!" I protest, fists clenching.

"Okay, smarty-pants. You'd think that the literal architect of time would be enough to end the world regardless without Palkia to fuck up space," Anguished says. "It's better to have no expectations anyway. That way nothing can disappoint you."

Legendaries, she's just like Cecilia.

"Can't be disappointed if you're dead…" Beast sighs.

"I can't believe we spent all of our time fighting," Virtuous follows up with a heavy sigh of her own. "You'd think that meeting yourself would be more exciting than this. Instead, it's just… disappointing."

"Ditto," Beast agrees.

Virtuous rolls her eye. "For your information, you're actually just 90% of the reason why. Repentant, it was eye-opening meeting you. Anguished, I hope you get the help that you need—"

There's another scream that I want to forget, and we all clench our heads in unison. The shadows, which both are here and aren't, envelop everything and spread like a cancer everywhere, and there's another roar I recognize— Dialga's. The cold, passing of time meets the boundless shadow and the two entities meet across the endless space.

What happens next is…

Weird. I don't exactly understand what I'm seeing.

I hesitate to describe it as a fight. There are no discernable moves or energy beams thrown around. The conflict is not one of claws or fangs, of two Pokemon aiming to target bodies, or even blasts of concentrated energy, but rather an unfathomable clash of two forces beyond anything I'd ever seen, and I want to understand that. It's just that these look like two endless tides crashing against each other. The constant push and pull of two concepts swirling around one another like a never-ending dance.

Despite the… center of the fight—

No, it couldn't be described as a center. It didn't have a center.

Despite the main point where the impacts were happening being unfathomably far away, each blow, if we could call them that, had effects on me that were not painful, but deeply uncomfortable. With one, my vision shatters and I see the past. Memories of my mother cradling me in her arms, of my first day at school, the day when I got Princess' egg, again and again. With another, my body twists until it should be spaghettified, but it returns to normal soon afterward and there's no pain at all, or maybe I just forget it entirely, just like what the second entity sounds like. I struggle to understand the point of the 'fight', too. I have no idea what this second thing is or how it got here, but if Dialga was fixing timelines, I'm inclined to root for Time and not whatever this darkness was.

I don't know how long I'm transfixed on this tug of war, but the next time I look around, all of my counterparts are gone. Their timelines have returned to their proper location, as has mine, and they're too far for me to even see them. It'd be like trying to notice a microbe on the moon, which fit because those weren't supposed to be on there. I don't exactly know what lesson to take from this besides the fact that I'm proud of the path I took, but—

Ah, I see it now. The shadows are pushing back against the… it's not a color, exactly. More like Time given form, if that makes any sense.

It doesn't, really. There's no real shape or substance to it, and I can't describe what I'm looking at, but it's losing ever so slightly. I'm both surprised and relieved that this is having no effect on the timelines around us. I can't exactly be sure, but I feel like a great deal of care is being put to avoid irreparable damage, or I at least want to believe it.

Unfortunately, I don't even know what it is, so I'm left hoping for the best.

Eventually, Time is not defeated, for one cannot drive out a concept, but it is contained, and shadows swallow me whole.

—

When I open my eyes—

When I opened my eyes, I was back on Spear Pillar and Dialga was gone. It seemed like everyone but Cyrus and Cynthia had just come to. The Champion's breaths were strained, she was soaked in sweat and her skin was pale, but she'd been in the midst of talking as soon as I'd come to. I couldn't hear what she was saying, or what anyone else was saying for one obvious reason.

The sky had ripped apart like fragile cloth, like a massive wound in the sky above Coronet that must have been visible from nearly the entire region. Instead of blood seeping out of the tear in reality, it was continuous shadows pulsating with red light that warped everything they touched, just as I'd witnessed where I'd just been. Light itself bent around the darkness as if I was looking directly into a black hole. I raised a hand at the rift and saw my hand twist and contort due to my eyes being unable to properly process the information they were getting. It was just so loud, too. A continuous scream-tear-shattering thing that I was glad I only had one functioning ear to hear. A massive worm-like thing crawled out of the rift in the sky, and for a moment, I felt like a fish looking at a hand plunge into a lake I'd lived in my entire life without seeing a human before this moment, realizing that there was an entire other world right outside my reach. Even Spear Pillar deformed slightly at the thing's presence. Next to me, Maylene had collapsed on her knees and was crying. Mira and I were simply frozen in place, as if not moving would spare our lives, while Cecilia was staring directly into the abyss.

Cyrus' eyes were wide, as if he had no idea what he was looking at, and for what I assumed was the first time, he was emotive. The surprise on his face couldn't have been more obvious than this.

Wings the size of a city swallowed us whole, and everything went quiet.

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A/N: Three things! First, for those who care, Shiver/Galarian Rapidash's Moonblast has a fear-inducing effect that makes its opponent freeze up or flee. Second, though I've wanted to write something like this since chapter one after seeing something very similar done with Practical Guide to Evil, this chapter was very experimental, as you can tell, and I tried toying with a different kind of narration. Third, Grace's interpretation of the Time dimension and Dialga's and Giratina's actions are only mildly correct or sometimes flatly wrong.