Celebi Like Them (20)

"I know what would do this," said a voice, from not far away. Quinn turned to look, staring through the broken trees and dead branches. A shadow lingered in the trees, floating at about his head level. Not alive, though not dead. Sable, eyes smoldering. "I remember the discussion, before my family and I became... what we are."

Quinn floated closer, approaching the ghost. There was something fitting about the shadowy Pokémon in this place of death. Yet despite the name and nature of the ghost, he showed no hostility. Of course he wouldn't. That fearful instinct served no purpose.

"What?"

"There was some discussion about restarting the terraforming process," he said. "Many of us transformed so we could work the land and water of this planet. Yet we did not return again when the task was done. Or worse, we remained changed long enough to have offspring while in these inferior forms. We filled the world with too much inferior life. If we had failed the first time, it could be sterilized and begun again, without undoing what had been accomplished. A poison that would not linger too long. Destroy whatever was befouling their planet, then rebuild with fresh seedlings. Some lucky plants may have endured, not germinated until the toxin was gone. The microbiology would be largely unharmed, welcoming them back to the soil. It could have been something like this."

"This wasn't what I wanted," Cedrin whispered. He followed Quinn up into the air, apparently on his own power. His wings were beating, anyway. "We made those things grow down in the hospital, and I felt—what it would be like, to be in a real forest. Like turning into a monster might have some redeeming qualities. Not this."

If this is what happened, I shouldn't exist, Quinn thought. The time I came from didn't happen. Avery either. He should vanish, like the characters in one of those silly movies about time travel. Maybe slow enough for one last dramatic guitar solo. Unless I can still find a way to stop this.

"Maybe we got the wrong spot," Aria called up after them. She was now holding two small Pokémon in her arms: the dozing Manny, and Stella, newly curled-up after the teleport. "We were guessing with the map. So we guessed wrong. When she's had a chance to rest, Stella can bring us somewhere else."

"No she can't!" called another voice, directly into their minds. Vitari sent her thoughts deliberately far, evidently through a telepathy meant to be overheard. "I think I found the 'rebels.’ Over here!"

Sable vanished from the shadowy trees in front of him. But Quinn had no way of doing that, and probably wouldn't have even if he could. Cedrin flew closer to him, antennae sagging. "I thought Dialga stopped you," he whispered, so quiet that none of the others would hear. Probably.

Quinn still didn't know how strong Mythicals actually were. "Why is the future so awful? We didn't fight."

Maybe we had already gone too far, Quinn thought. But he didn't say as much. Instead, he eased them down from the trees, following the direction of Vitari's thoughts.

Strange that he could know a direction so easily, though no information had been conveyed about one. He floated away from their landing spot, and the gathering of the other “patients.”

He took over for Cedrin while he was at it, easing the Celebi's levitation. If he still needed a little extra help to stay in the air, he would try to provide it.

It took longer than he expected. Half an hour of flight through that former jungle, surrounded by dead trees covered with a thin skin of lichen.

He recognized the camp before he got that close, from the crater. It stretched deep into the dirt, a round, blackened place scorched and melted on its surface. Even by night, it reflected shiny black glass up at the sky, glittering.

It was a very deep hole, nearly a hundred meters down at the deepest point.

That was where Vitari floated, down in the crater on a strangely flat platform suspended over the rubble. Several little green boxes surrounded a metal spire, covered with a faint green layer of oxidation.

"Arceus no." Cedrin landed, turning his back on the place. "They actually did it. Bombed it from the sky."

If they were willing to use bioweapons to poison the Pokémon, why wouldn't they blow up a few?

"Maybe in this timeline they did." Quinn patted his shoulder, then took off again. "We'll stop them. Or we will have stopped them? Whatever the right time-travel word for that is."

He took off, but the other Celebi didn't follow, instead pawing weakly at the lifeless soil beside the trees. He didn't want to see the crater, or go anywhere near it.

Quinn flew to the bottom alone. He found it wasn't empty, but two others were already waiting. Vitari hovered near the metal monument, bobbing up and down in front of the cast metal.

Dead plants filled the regular square boxes on either side, rotten so long they left only a few gnarled stems as clues that once something had been growing there. "What does it say?"

The Mew computers spoke into his mind, making the meaning of every button and word clear. This metal couldn't do the same, leaving the ancient writing obscure to him. He had always been more interested in Celebi, and they had no such historical writing systems to their name.

"Here union was achieved with all life on this planet on –1,190,451. In the destruction of all rebel elements, the Firstborn honor the wisdom of the Admiralty. Let all who fly in moonlight honor their authority." Sable read quietly, his voice somber and head down. "So much for your peaceful future, Quinn. The planet was scoured. Great things and small ones alike."

"I think... I think this was my fault." He landed on a stone bench, sized more or less appropriately for his body. Which probably meant the Mew had designed it for themselves. Lucky to be about the same size. "This wasn't what the future looked like before. I changed it."

"By saving our lives?" Vitari floated back down, turning on him. "Are you implying that saving us made this happen? Because that's the only change I'm aware of. Perhaps my understanding of temporal mechanics is not as expert as yours, but..."

She floated inches away, radiating scorching heat. Was she trying to threaten him? As though he could just go and reverse what he'd already done.

"Yes, but no." His head sagged into tiny hands. There was no threat this fire type could make that he hadn't already endured. "You didn't see it. But when I was traveling with you, someone stopped me. Showed me... I guess my own time?" He gestured past her at the blasted crater, and the lifeless jungle beyond. "What follows from this, I think. After thousands and thousands more years. Everything dead."

"They did this," Vitari snapped. She floated away from him, smacking her foreleg into the monument. "They signed it in blood. This was their slaughter, not ours. And not yours."

"True. But what if you were the ones meant to stop it?" He glanced up at the monument, its boasts embossed in metal that he could not read.

"You can't survive here," Sable thought. He appeared beside Quinn on the bench, glowing eyes staring out at the distant jungle. "The air is thin. Anything you grow with your powers will wither. There will be no flowers, no fruit, and no prey. If there are any cats still living, they would probably kill us. We can't go to them either."

They were already willing to massacre rebels once, Quinn thought. "We can't survive now." Quinn floated into the air, drifting towards the monument. He floated beside it, gesturing at the date embossed into its metal surface. "We know when they attacked."

He looked away from where Cedrin still waited on the ridge. From that distance, he probably wouldn't be able to overhear. He spoke anyway. "I thought I could bring you all forward to a better time, and I was wrong. I can't bring you all into a life that no one has to work for. If we want to live in that future, we have to make it exist, together."

"Make it exist," Vitari repeated, following him into the air. She bobbed along just behind him, surprisingly energetic for the escape they had made. Victini recovered her power so fast! But the longer he spent in the sun, the healthier Quinn was feeling too. Shame about the whole world being poisoned. "You say it like we can just decide. That's not how this works. The Admiralty are invincible. They're male. Some of them even remember the Imperium. They were born under the light of the First Star. They have powers we can't imagine. They don't send destroyers to bomb a place from orbit because they have to, they use destroyers because they're easy. If we stopped their ships, they would fly in themselves."

Sable nodded, his thoughts calm and calculating. "Their powers are vast. Yet they are also finite. Otherwise, they wouldn't fear degenerate mutations like us. They would know we were pale imitations of the Firstborn, and be content that our lesser forms exist. But they feared us enough to lock us away, to be willing to watch our families die and patients tortured to death by failed treatments."

"We have to go back." Quinn pointed at the metal again. "Before this happened. With our help, the rebellion could win. The Admirals might have attacks stronger than anyone else in the world, but they can't travel through time. We can."

Vitari took his arm with hers, turning him to face her. "You're asking us to fight a war? A few frightened children, one couple of warped cats, and a few mutants. There's no chance of victory, no chance we float away."

He shrugged. "You say that. But I'm living proof that you did. In my future, you aren't 'degenerate mutations'. You're Mythical Pokémon. The titles you told me were names for your deformity are whispered in reverence and respect. This could be why." He pointed up the hill, and the bleak, lifeless wasteland that had consumed the jungle in all directions. "The Admiralty want to purify the world. Someone has to stop them."

Vitari released him, throwing up her forelegs in defeat. "Don't really have much choice at this point, do we? Can't survive here. No food, thin air. Probably poisoned water too."

"Most of us did not choose our mutations either," Sable said. "My child did not. Neither Cedrin, nor my mate. Not Stella. I do not know about Manny. Even Quinn here was a product of circumstance. The Admiralty did not choose to be the last survivors of the Empire, fleeing beyond the light of our home. We see how they chose. What will we do with the opportunity?"

"I wanted this," Vitari said. She landed on the bench, ears folding backward. "I knew there would be a price to pay. I never imagined it would make me into a rebel. I guess... if that's our lives, then Arceus have mercy on anyone in our way, because I won't."