Celebi Like Them (19)

It was a long way to the surface; a long way through twisting tunnels, confusing passages and abandoned buildings.

In another life, Quinn would've made that trip up slowly, exploring every inch of the strange facility and learning whatever could be discovered about the ones who lived there. Even if he wasn't an archeologist, he still wanted to know. Basically no one understood the ancient Pokémon, or imagined they had ever lived in civilizations. Here was a relatively recent structure, with much of it intact across the years.

But after his recent vision, Quinn found curiosity didn't come. Even for the still-active computer terminals, more advanced than anything he had ever seen in any university in the world.

Nothing mattered in the face of what he had almost done. I could've changed the future so badly that I didn't exist.

For all he knew, maybe he still had. Time travel wasn't a set of abstract equations anymore. A paradox wasn't an asymptote on a graph. One mistake, and Quinn would fly face-first into the real consequences. Maybe it would erase him, maybe tear a hole in spacetime that swallowed the local group. Or maybe Dialga would fly down and put a stop to his antics before he could hurt anyone else.

I have to be more responsible about this. Consider the consequences every time I jump.

Even Cedrin couldn't cheer him up. The other Celebi had seen as he did; the desolation, and the authority that sent it. But he was younger, and apparently less frightened by the implications. Maybe he just didn't understand it as well.

He was humming by the time they found the surface, and emerged from a melted airlock door.

Quinn wasn't exactly sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't what he found. He floated past the entrance to a landing field marked with pink lines on stone, all the way to the edge of a cliff.

He'd seen stone pillars like this before, while watching westerns about Orre. This was similar, great formations of stone stretching out as far as he could see. Only a thin trickle of water below brought any sign of life.

"This doesn't look like what I remember. I saw jungle out the window when we flew to Starfall."

Cedrin sat down next to him on the cliff edge, little Pokémon legs dangling over the gap. "Course they landed it somewhere nice. Had to put us far away, so if we broke out we couldn't rampage and kill cats."

Quinn said nothing, staring out over the gulf. There weren't many larger creatures here, he didn't see a single Pokémon. But there was grass down there, and a few trees. Not the awful desolation of his vision. It wasn't too late.

Cedrin flopped on his back, spreading his arms and closing his eyes. "The sun is nicer than I remember."

"Guess you weren't Grass type before." Quinn patted his shoulder, then stretched out on the rock too. "Turns out it's pretty nice. Nicer than I would've thought." He closed his eyes, relaxing against the rock.

He hadn't been outside in days, or maybe centuries. He could spend a few minutes to catch his breath.

The next thing Quinn knew, someone was shaking his shoulder. Aria, crouching nearby with her Shaymin in her arms. "Quinn?"

Quinn sat up, then glanced to the side. Cedrin stirred, though still looked sluggish. His skin no longer seemed pale, but flushed with green. He's gonna make it.

Hopefully the same would be true for Aster too. The Shaymin needed more than just a flower, especially after everything she had suffered.

Cedrin proved right in another respect: the others all made their way out too, instead of waiting below the surface. The old hospital might be sheltered from the elements, but that didn't mean it was a comfortable place to wait.

I wouldn't want to stay in a prison either.

"We need to know where to fly," Sable said. He didn't approach so much as appear in the air nearby, his strange body only half visible. "We can't assume the Admiralty is all gone, we need allies. Where do we go?"

Quinn stretched, then stood. The words came a little slowly, his tongue dry. He would have to fly down to that river before they went anywhere.

"That's where it might be tricky." He stretched, extending both wings behind him. "If you could show me a map, I could point you. But saying it's the Unova region won't mean anything to you. Near Aspertia? Because those places don't exist yet."

Vitari wasn't with them on the cliffside. She zipped past through open air, flying so fast she left a trail of ash behind her. But she seemed to be enjoying herself. Aster watched from her mother's arms, obviously envious.

Her mom noticed too, because she ran one gentle hand through her back. "Patience, sweetheart. You'll be flying again soon enough."

"You wish for a map, it is granted." Stella floated over, holding something in her powers before her. She held it in the air in front of him, gesturing. "Tell us where."

He squinted at it for a second. Not a paper map at all, but a tablet computer, with a display as thin and flexible as a sheet of laminated paper. It didn't just respond to touch either, but his intention. When he looked, it zoomed in on one particular region.

The coastlines weren't all what he remembered, and some of the positions were off. But the general shapes were accurate. "This is where I met her. I'm thinking we'll be able to track them from there, or maybe I can jump back and meet her again. If we can get there. If I'm reading this right, it's over a continent away."

He looked between the other members of their group—Cedrin whose wings were only starting to recover, little Manny who couldn't fly at all. Aster who would plummet out of the sky as soon as anything disrupted her Sky Forme. Then him, who had less than a week of flight experience. It was a small miracle he could move at all.

Stella floated the map back. She yawned, stretching tiny arms high overhead. "We won't have to fly. I'll just bring us there."

"You'll just..." He winced. "Right, Mythical Pokémon. You all have godly powers I don't understand. I think I'm already going native. Thought you were all just people..."

"You're weird," Aster said, in a tiny, feeble voice. "Fairy is weird. What is he talking about, Mom?"

"I... don't know," the Meloetta said. "I think he is trying to be humble. He's downplaying the threat presented by a Pokémon with willful control of causality."

"Oh." The Shaymin curled up tighter against her chest, apparently satisfied by that answer.

"A sympathetic teleport is no easy feat," Sable said. "If it would be safer for us to use conventional means, we can. Time is not our greatest enemy anymore."

"Perhaps it still is." The Jirachi bobbed up and down, attention fixed on her map. "The Admiralty abandoned their treatment facility. We do not know how well they understand our means of escape. Perhaps they were watching for us, and will send marines to dispatch us."

"Couldn't they leave traps?" Cedrin asked. "Quinn and I didn't run into anything. We had a straight shot all the way up. Not even capturing devices."

Stella shrugged. "Still. A teleport would be harder for them to follow. I can bring us there in a single moment, if you can provide me somewhere safe to rest when the task is done."

"Of course," Aria said. "We only made it this far by extending trust. If Quinn could bring us away from our prison, you can too."

Cedrin nodded his agreement. "I'd rather go quicker. Flying is... hard. I've never crossed the world without a ship before."

"Vitari!" Quinn yelled, waving in her direction. The Pokémon was still zipping around overhead, so far away that she might not overhear easily. Maybe she would sense his intention. "We're getting out of here!"

One moment she was a little speck in the sky, and the next she was there, close enough to feel her warmth through his skin. She remained above the ground, as many of these mythicals did. Including Quinn, more and more. Gravity was much more trouble than it was worth.

"I always liked deserts. But I guess... lots of you are Grass. You'd prefer somewhere with more moisture."

"We would prefer somewhere the Admiralty would not know to look," Sable said. "Stella has offered to expedite our travel. There is nothing compelling us to remain together beyond this moment. It may be prudent nevertheless."

She held up both paws, eyeing Quinn. Her next words came as thoughts, almost a whisper. But Quinn heard her perfectly clear anyway. "The rest of you didn't see Quinn's mind the way I did. I have no idea where his power comes from. The mind in there is smaller than a kitten. If I don’t stay with you, he might not be able to use his powers again."

Of course he could hear—but whether she actually intended that, or his powers were stronger than she guessed, Quinn didn't really care.

"I never lied about what I was," he sent, deliberately using telepathy even though he didn't have to. "I told you, I'm from the future. I was doing research into time travel, and I ended up becoming… a bigger part of that research than I intended. I'm not a powerful Mythical Pokémon like the rest of you. If you don't want my help, just say so. I should be looking for my friend anyway."

Cedrin snatched his hand and held on tight. "No one said you had to leave. Please don't."

Sable nodded. "We had all our combined knowledge and psychic power, and remained trapped. Then you wake, save our daughter, and set us free." His eyes brightened, the flames within briefly overpowering the shadowy substance of his form. "I am sure Vitari would agree. There is more to the value of a cat than their psychic mastery or the training they completed."

Vitari rolled her eyes. "Yeah, obviously. I wasn't suggesting..." She stuck her tongue out at Quinn. "Just wanted everyone to know."

"If you are looking for someone, we may be able to help you too," Aria said. "After what you've done today, it would be... an honor to help, in whatever way we can."

"I have calculated the transit vector," Stella said, interrupting them all. "Gather close, and brace yourselves. I am somewhat out of practice since my mutation."

The Pokémon lifted suddenly off the ground, her soft cloak rippling in an unseen breeze. That thin line down her chest split open, revealing a gigantic eye radiant with blue light. It seemed to look right through him, then across the planet towards parts unknown.

"Brace? Like h—" he began. But he got no answer.

Terrible cold blasted against him, frost condensing on his limbs and his skin turning suddenly brittle and pained. There was no space, no dimension, not even air to breathe. Only cold and darkness on all sides.

They landed in the dirt, in what should've been a jungle. Though Quinn wasn't good enough to recognize specific trees, he still felt as though this was somewhere familiar.

Where once the trees had towered as large as buildings, now there were no leaves to block the stars. A thin layer of lichen covered every surface, clinging stubbornly to the corpses of various growing things.

No new life sprang up to replace the old—only faint patches of green remained, where a little moss survived in the cleft of a rock somewhere.

"It shouldn't look like this." Quinn stumbled forward through the dirt, then took off. He lifted higher, scanning between the corpses of numberless trees. Many of these hadn't even fallen, they had died in place, then remained like ghastly sentinels. The lifeless jungle continued as far as he could see in all directions, no matter how high he flew.

Avery won't be here. Nothing could live here.

He dropped back to ground level, defeated. "It wasn't like this," he whispered, remembering that terrible vision. "We stopped it!"