Chapter 153

Author Note:

I did not have internet access until an hour and a half ago, and I'm not using my usual computer. I also haven't eaten today, so a bunch of my plans have been thrown off. Still, it's done. Mostly.

This is the first of two chapters being released today. The next chapter will be out in a few hours.

Additionally, cliffhanger warning. There's a reason there's a second chapter coming out so soon.

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Sam was still behind that fallen tree, but he could only describe his presence as if he had taken a half-step to the left through reality. The world was black and white around him. Nothing moved, but he could see, so he immediately threw out any of his preconceptions about physics given the current frozen time. The sun might have been shining, but there was no visible movement. There was no breeze, no slight wave to the grass, and all forms of life lacked their usual signs of vitality.

Also, there was a conspicuous lack of pressure held in his arms.

“Misdreavus?” he asked.

She was gone. So was the Iron-Masked Marauder. Gengar was no longer behind him, and he wasn't in Sam's shadow, either.

“You—!”

Celebi didn't even blink at Sam when he tore his head up to send it a glare. The Legendary Pokémon was hardly paying attention to him, only staring at the motionless scene taking place in the clearing.

“Follow.”

The Legendary Pokémon then flew off ahead, and Sam had no choice but to grit his teeth and bear it. It had already promised him that it would help Misdreavus, and something deep in his gut told him that a promise from a Legendary Pokémon meant something—even if Celebi was just a ‘mystical’ or whatever Richard kept trying to call it.

Celebi ended up hovering above the dead center of the area, drifting around where Ash and the rest faced off against the Iron-Masked Marauder. Sam followed, and the trio of boys remained perfectly still even as Celebi poked them. An identical yet moderately injured Celebi floated behind their heads. It, too, was perfectly still, but Sam somehow got the sense that it was merely playing along.

“Friends!” Celebi said cheerfully.

“Sure. But you only like them because they saved you. You only bonded over, what, last night? Sorry I wasn’t there. See, I got separated because I went to fight off the Iron-Masked Marauder on everyone's behalf.”

He glared at it. Celebi stuck out its tongue.

“Sour!” it called him.

He felt his eye twitch.

Looking at the motionless group before him, Sam couldn't say he knew Ash or even Sammy that well. He had talked to them a few times, but he’d either been focused on Celebi, dealing with his thoughts, or trying to get a handle on Richard.

His grandfather.

He found himself stopping in front of the familiar young boy's face. Richard knelt on the ground, frozen in time, his body half-covered in dirt and ash. Splinters from the trees had caught onto his pant legs—he’d likely taken a few falls—but he glared at the Marauder with a truly defiant expression on his face despite all of that.

Now that I’m looking, I'm surprised no one saw the resemblance. I can see a few parts of his face that look like my mom’s, and I bet there are others that look like mine.

Redi would have noticed.

His team members would have noticed.

But none of them were here right now.

Sam sighed, standing back up, and he sent a glance to Celebi, who had paused in front of Ash.

“Special,” it said.

“So what did you want to show me, exactly? I figure you didn’t pull me away from everyone just to show these three off.”

Celebi blinked, pulling away from Ash, and then it smirked and flew over to the Iron-Masked Marauder. Though he and his Tyranitar were utterly frozen, Sam still gave them a wide berth. As he moved around them, reality changed to adjust to what he saw.

As if walking to the other side of a flat painting, a shape folded into existence above and behind the Iron-Masked Marauder. Purple fur caught his eye, and Sam realized he was looking at a Gengar—his Gengar.

Gengar’s hands gripped the Marauder’s head.

“Possession,” Sam mumbled, identifying the effect. “I always knew Ghost Types could do that, but I never thought... It’s nasty.”

He shivered.

“Needed help!” Celebi said cheerfully. “Story continues!”

Celebi smiled at Gengar with a firm nod, but Sam just sent the Legendary Pokémon a flat look.

Its lack of comprehensive answers was annoying him, and it saw his unsatisfied expression and replied with a huff.

“No fun.”

“Hey, I’m not the one separated from his friends and then told one of them would be subjected to decades of solitude.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Oh, wait! I am.”

Celebi stuck out its chin at him, but Sam didn't look away, challenging it to prove him wrong. He didn't back down, and the Legendary Pokémon eventually slumped in the air.

“Sorry. Needed to.”

“Then tell me—why was all of this necessary? Why drag me away from my team? And why did you need Gengar to possess him? We already won, but twice now, you said the story had to continue. Why, and what story? What's even the point?!”

Realizing he had started to yell, Sam breathed out to calm himself down. The perfect stillness of the world around him was putting him on edge. It was unnatural in a way that even Ghost Types couldn’t match.

As his onslaught of questions came to an end, Celebi looked at him, and it seemed to truly do so rather than just sending him a glance as if to brag about a prank. Its large eyes briefly wavered. From its wobbling expression, Sam could tell there was a genuine guilt there, and he almost felt bad for his testiness.

Almost.

“Story is... time,” Celebi said in its halting, child-like voice. “Time is always story. First story was... Not good. Did not like first story's end.”

Sam went quiet.

“My grandfather mentioned that,” he said in almost a whisper. “Richard, I mean. So then, based on what he told me, all of that happened? And all of this was set up because you know that you would... die?”

“Not happened. Never happen,” Celebi said cheerfully. “And now live! Through trick! Story changed—can wiggle! Will be big show!”

It spiraled upwards into the air, lifting an arm at its peak. It flexed as if to brag, using a hand to pat at a muscle that wasn't really there.

“So all of this...” Sam started. “It’s just been a big show? You threw us through time and forced Misdreavus to suffer just because you didn't want to die?”

Celebi opened its mouth as if it wanted to continue to brag, but then Sam’s words seemed to hit it all at once. Its expression fell again, and it slumped a foot in the air.

“Sorry.”

Sam could understand why it had done this. That didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

As he stood there, basically stewing, Celebi flew down to rub its cheek against his face, trying to get him to cheer up. He waved it away, not wanting to be comforted. At this point, he just wanted these problems to end.

“But why me?” Sam asked quietly. “Why all of this? Wait, and why my grandfather? He said... he said he was from another world. Did you make that happen, too?”

Celebi cocked its head to the side, staring at Sam and observing his reaction.

“Wanted to,” it said.

“You or him?”

“Him.”

“Did he know?”

“No.”

“So then you were the one to bring him?”

“Yes. No. Yes! Someone else fell. Sneaky! Grab when not looking. Brought here instead.”

Celebi gained a cheeky smile, proud as if it had pulled off the heist of the lifetime. Sam had to take a moment, falling back to sit on the splinter-covered ground.

Thankfully, since the world was frozen, the destroyed terrain didn't stab into him or his clothing. He still pressed down on it, but there was no effect. Neither he nor the world seemed able to interact with one another while outside normal time.

Slowly, Sam breathed in.

Then, he breathed out just as slow-paed.

“So the New Pokédex—”

“Spoilers!”

“And Misdreavus—”

A wince.

“Will you at least tell me how this all ends?”

As he asked that, Celebi regained its smile and offered Sam its hand.

“More! Show you.”

He stared at that offered limb before breathing out once more.

Screw it.

Upon grabbing it, he was then whisked far, far up into the sky. The world regained its colors, and he witnessed a flurry of movement below.

Ash beat the Marauder. Somehow, his Pikachu managed to defeat that Tyranitar—in a suitably dramatic fashion, of course.

Gengar fled from the clearing without anyone noticing, and Sam watched another Celebi appear to whisk him away from the woods.

In the clearing itself, things did not progress well. Sammy collapsed, exhausted to the point of injury, and the Celebi from before inspected him even as Richard screamed.

When Celebi—the one Sam was with—mentioned a show, Sam did not expect one like this. The one in the clearing seemed to come to a decision, and he could only watch the entire world rewind.

Fallen trees pulled themselves back up. Splintered wood merged with where it had come from originally. Leaves re-attached to where they had fallen off, and a dirty brown returned to be replaced by the forest’s vibrant green.

But it came at a cost. The injured Celebi had no more energy left. It looked withered. Ancient.

When Ash picked it up, it looked as if it was about to crumble in his arms.

Through the forest, the wild Pokémon returned, and they took one look at their exhausted group and began to lead everyone away. Richard carried Sammy. Ash carried Celebi. Both still-conscious boys had serious yet mournful expressions on their faces.

Sam tried to ask a question, but he found his voice didn’t work. In an instant, reality flashed, and he was back at the lake. Its crystal-clear water stretched out below, and both boys placed who they were carrying it below.

Sammy healed. Something about the water allowed him to regain his energy, though Sam couldn’t see what due to a dense fog. It wasn’t the same for Celebi, however. It stayed just as withered as it was before.

“Why?” Sam asked.

He was surprised to hear his voice.

“Now,” came Celebi’s reply.

The show it had mentioned was not what had happened before. Motes of light floated up into the sky, and the clouds seemed to open up. Celebi of all kinds began to flood out, and the withered body rose, just for its eyes to creak open for one last smile.

Of course, this “story” had to have its happy ending, and light surrounded the withered Celebi, and then it was as good as new. Celebrations began below it!

But Sam has his suspicions. The light show was simply too much.

Celebi began to bring him back down into the forest, and he caught the briefest sight of a tearful goodbye taking place. Sammy and Richard were being sent back home, but Richard was looking around for someone who wasn’t there.

“You were brought back?” Sam asked once they touched back down onto the forest’s floor.

Celebi seemed to sense Sam’s suspicions, and it shook its head to deny his question.

“Then, what happened?”

“Was me. Future me. Swapped twice. Wanted to see friends one last time.”

Above the trees, the light of all the Celebi swirled together as each one began to return home. However, Sam had a realization. Despite all of the individual differences, the Celebi were not unique. They were less a species and more variations of a single Pokémon. There was no such thing as a “Celebi.” There was only one “Celebi.”

“You swapped yourself out twice,” Sam realized. “Once to replace your injured self with your oldest self, and then once more to fake yourself being brought back.”

“Yes.”

“This was the moment your plan was for. You needed to give yourself enough wiggle room to pull off that replacement.”

“Yes!”

Sam looked up at Celebi, truly looked up at Celebi. Instead of glaring at it in hatred, he did his best to gather as much understanding as he could. It existed outside time, and it could influence time. It could see the potential of the future and then adjust accordingly.

Though there were limitations to that, he could also tell that it could make sure certain Pokémon and people meet.

“One last question. And please, just give me the answer,” he said tiredly. “Misdreavus. Why would you do that to her?”

“Planned it. Saw you. Thought you could be friends.”

“As a payment?” Sam said, his voice increasing in volume. “So you saw some lonely Pokémon, and you thought you could pay me back for all of this by putting her on my team?”

“No. Yes. No. She—”

“You had Misdreavus suffer for years!” Sam yelled. “She wandered Ilex Forest for decades! And... Ah. Even now, you’re manipulating things. There was a reason she wasn't there when you pulled me out of time, huh?”

Celebi seemed unable to look Sam in the eyes. He could tell it had wanted to brag, but now, his words wouldn’t let it.

He had promised Misdreavus he would help, and he had made sure Celebi did the same.

“Help. Her,” Sam said. “You promised.”

“Can’t. Story continues. Time doesn't change.”

“...So this is how it ends. That’s how this was always supposed to happen, huh? You get what you want. You put Misdreavus on my team. Since we’re fine in the future, your conscience is cleared. It doesn’t matter that Misdreavus’s reward is to be alone for years!”

He shut his eyes when he realized his voice was cracking, but then he opened them to stare. Unrelenting, he waited for Celebi to act. It refused to look at him, but he refused for this to be the end.

“No. That isn’t going to happen,” Sam said, his voice low. “If you send me back—if you send me back without doing anything for Misdreavus? I’ll fight you. For every year you make her suffer, I’ll make your home suffer ten times over. I promise you. Unless you help her, I will burn the Ilex Forest to the ground.”

His gaze was even, and he did his best to not crack. Celebi finally looked up at him, its eyes went wide, and it held its shaky stare. He tried to put everything into making sure it believed him. Honestly, he only half believed him, himself.

“You... do that?” it asked. It then stared off into the distance. “You actually do that!”

“I do?” Sam blinked at it. “Yeah! I mean, of course I do! I told you I promised, didn’t I?”

Despite his threat, Celebi didn’t back away. Despite the apparent fact that he could do something like that in the future, Celebi clutched its stomach and started to laugh. Leaning back, it almost looked like it was struggling to breathe from laughing so hard.

“You!” it managed to squeak out through its giggles. “Follow through! Mean it! Would destroy Celebi’s home!”

“Of course,” Sam said, crossing his arms to feign as much confidence as he could. “Anything for my team.”

With that statement, the Legendary Pokémon wiped its eyes.

“Okay. Will help. For a good friend.”

“Just like that?”

“Yup!” It smiled. “Have wiggle room. Can use.”

Celebi brought up its arms, and the world suddenly changed around Sam. Seasons flashed by, and the trees grew and shifted. He found himself back where Celebi had first brought him away, where he had first woken up in the forest, but it wasn’t him coming to this time around.

Instead, in the same spot he had first pulled himself off the ground, Misdreavus rose into the air. She blinked rapidly to get her bearings and looked around.

Her expression fell when she realized no one was with her. Sam was only a few feet away, but Celebi had done something to ensure he wouldn’t be seen.

He opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped when he saw something fluttering to the ground.

“You’re cruel,” he said to Celebi.

“Am not!”

He sent it a look as Misdreavus slowly brought up Sammy’s sketch of her and Sam laughing.

Using her telekinesis to store it in her hair, she then took off, determined to find where Sam had gone. Her last memory had to be of using Shadow Ball to take out the Iron-Masked Marauder. She likely felt Sam pick up her, but past that, she would have been nothing.

Though time passed, Sam didn’t experience it. He only saw Misdreavus tear through the woods, weaving between and through the trees. She checked the stream, she checked her home, and she headed south.

But there was nothing. There weren’t even footsteps from where Sam had walked.

“Was this really...”

He let his voice trail off when he saw Misdreavus yawn.

Ghost Types didn’t need to sleep. They could, but it tended to be closer to a form of torpor. But here, without anything else to do, Misdreavus found a small nook to settle into, and then she closed her eyes and went still.

Something popped into existence above her. Another Celebi, the same one yet separate, came into being right there. It looked directly to where Sam and Celebi were standing and winked. The Celebi next to Sam waved.

Drifting downward, the Celebi tapped Misdreavus’s head, and the world changed around her. Seasons passed. Years came and went by. Misdreavus woke up, not yet in Sam’s time, but a significant amount of time had passed.

“Need first moment. Critical. Rest? Like dream.”

Misdreavus would wander, a dazed look to her expression. There was a loneliness to her expression, but she wasn’t fully there.

And, after a while of searching, she would float down for a rest, and then a Celebi would appear. With a tap to her head, that condition would be maintained, and then another several years would skip past her.

“How long?” Sam said.

“Months,” Celebi answered.

Not decades, Sam realized.

“So did she experience this? Does she remember this?”

“As much as dream in morning.”

The feelings were there. Hints of an experience were there. But what she actually went through? Not as extreme.

It was better, yet Sam still couldn’t be happy about it.

Still, Celebi let him stay as he was. Though she could not see him, he made sure to stay with Misdreavus for every second of her search.

“I’m still not happy about this,” Sam said. “I don't appreciate how you still subjected Misdreavus to all this time on her own.”

Celebi didn't blink.

“But at least... Thank you for minimizing it.”

“No choice. Must have search. Otherwise, how meet?”

Eventually, the time came. One day, when unconsciously wandering through the woods, another Celebi appeared behind Misdreavus’s head. With one last tap, the Celebi broke Misdreavus out of her dream-like state, and it made a noise to have her immediately snap around.

The Celebi vanished, but she was facing the right direction. It let her hear a noise.

Voices.

Misdreavus rushed off, eager to meet Sam, and fluttering out of her hair was that same sketch.

Sam walked over to pick it up.

“And then, we met, and all of this starts. She gets to join my team and actually be happy.  But then she also makes sure I’m sent back to make her want that in the first place,” he said. “So then which of us—”

“Me,” Celebi said.

“Of course,” he said sarcastically. “Can’t have a paradox when you exist outside time.”

Sam stared at the sketch of him and Misdreavus laughing on the forest floor. It seemed so long ago at this point, even though, from his perspective, it was only two days away.

Putting it back into his pocket, he looked up at Celebi. It was time for this all to reach its end.

“So what’s next? You bring me back to my team? I hope you aren't going to have Gengar wander.”

“Will be in shadow! But payment, first.”

“Payment? This didn’t count?”

It shook its head.

“Not payment for you. Payment for him.”

Sam froze. He went utterly still when Celebi moved to the side. Behind it, another one of those archways stood there. IT had always been behind it. Was always behind it.

But this time, he couldn’t see the forest through to its other side. Instead, he saw a hallway, sterile and white, stretching out toward a door.

A sound entered his ears. It was one that haunted his nightmares.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

It was slow. Consistent. Medical.

“No,” Sam whispered. “Not like this.”

But he willingly walked through it anyway.

He remembered this hallway. He’d never been able to forget it. He wasn’t in Ilex. He wasn’t in Johto. This wasn’t even Dewford, but Petalburg. After all, Petalburg had the most advanced facilities they could reach in time.

People in white uniforms walked past him as he moved down the hall. Their pace had been reduced to an unnatural slow. They didn’t even look at him. He didn’t look back. His gaze was locked on the door at the end of the hall.

A label with a familiar name was plastered to its front, and a boy and his Cyndaquil slept in a chair to its side. He knew what they were waiting for. They wanted to hear the good news that they would never come.

Hand gripping the cold, metal handle, Sam wasn’t sure how long he stood there. He knew he couldn’t wait forever, he braced himself and opened the door to enter a room full of whirring, unfeeling machines.

A pair of eyes opened up when the door creaked.

A man in a bed smiled.

A voice Sam had not heard in years spoke up.

“Samuel,” it greeted.

Only one word left Sam’s mouth in reply.

“Grandpa.”

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Author Note:

Celebi's dialogue is meant to be in italics to represent its telepathic-like effect, but Patreon no longer carries over italics when I copy-paste. I would need to go through and manually re-do all of that, but I'd rather work on the next chapter instead.

Pokémon included in this chapter:
Celebi
Cyndaquil
Tyranitar

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