Can you feel that?

The air fizzing with warmth, the salty sea smell washing over you? Enough to make you want to take off your jacket.

Our guy was marching past rustling viridian trees, pinecones decorating the humid grass, wet from melted snow; lukewarm air splashed his face, bringing him back from the dead.

"Lucas! You're here!"

There she was. As if she knew he’d be coming, standing outside a large cottage-like building with a bright blue roof.

But in his eyes, the world was black and grey—she was the only thing in full, high-definition color.

Fine and fashionable, she was decked out in a rose-red trench coat ending just at her hips. Her boots, a mellow blush pink, were paired with soft, snow-white socks climbing up her bare legs.

"I'm so happy to see you! Welcome to Sandgem!" Dawn’s excitement spilled into a trail of giggles. "Come on, the Professor's waiting for you! He sent me to come fetch you..."

"What...?" Lucas’s face hardened in confusion. What did she mean, ‘he sent me’?

"Come on! Don’t keep us waiting...there’s a lot to be done..." she urged with excited impatience.

Her voice filled his body with...ease. Softer than snow and warmer than sand. And her eyes...goodness, her eyes...

Bright and blue and starry.

"Hi, Dawn..." Lucas smiled, his heart fluttering just a bit. He didn’t expect her to be the first person he saw.

Sandgem.

Sandy gravel crunched under Lucas’s sneakers, a stark contrast to the icy snow from before. All around, children ran up and down the dusty street, laughing and shouting. Houses—more like brick cottages—were scattered around with dark navy roofs.

He’d never seen anything like this before. Now this was a town.

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Lucas found himself being led through a blue door, Dawn’s hand wrapped around his like a sweet bow.

But something was wrong.

Lucas couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that everything was moving too fast—

"WATCH OUT! WATCH OUT! WATCH OUT!"

The pair crashed into the wet grass right outside the door, a sudden forceful shove pushing them back!

"HEY! Can’t you look...LUCAS?!" Barry’s voice banged like a bomb! Yes, that jittery, frilly-haired blonde kid who left a blazing fire behind him whenever he ran. "Wow, uhhh...You’re really slow, man—I got here a billion years ago, and now you owe me a billion...Lucas?"

All the jolting excitement in Barry’s fiery orange eyes died when he took a long, hard look into Lucas’s cold blue eyes. The frigid pain in them seemed to extinguish the embers of vigor in him.

Barry’s legs still buzzed with energy, itching to dash to Jubilife City right now...but there was a problem.

"Barry...something’s wrong with me," Lucas said in a voice void of any warmth.

Dawn, still processing why this rocketing, yellow-haired idiot had just bashed heads with her, now looked worried.

She could feel it.

Could you?

All of a sudden, it felt like she was in a graveyard. Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but something about Lucas’s pale face and haunted eyes made her want to cry.

It almost felt like she was about to...or someone was...or someone had already...

"Lucas!" Barry shook his friend awake with a firm grip on his shoulders. "What happened to you? Why do you look so...dead? Explain!"

Lucas’s heart jolted.

He looked down at his hand. Dawn was still clasping his hand in hers. But now those beautiful eyes he couldn’t get over were rippling with urgency.

"Hey...let’s go inside. You can explain everything in there," Dawn suggested, and Barry nodded in agreement as the trio walked into the lab.

A cool blast of minty air washed over Lucas as he entered a large room full of people dressed in snow-white lab coats, moving around like drones. All of them seemed to be holding clipboards.

Bookshelves and tables full of papers covered in ink crowded the space, and strange machines whirred as clinical aides observed them intently.

"Take a seat..." Dawn’s sweet voice rang in his ears like a precious bell as she guided him to a soft blue sofa.

Barry stood nearby, his feet tapping the shiny granite floor as if he were playing bongos with his shoes, his mind swirling with a whirlwind of thoughts.

"P-Professor!"