Chapter 24

They followed Dominic’s scent as best they could through the ruins of Starfall. They passed more than one of the oversized machines that Lane had been afraid of, and she slowed to look between them. She couldn't shake the fear that her friend had fallen into one of the complex mechanical devices and been squashed to paste.

But they found no corpses squished into the ruins, or any sign that Dominic had suffered critical injuries.

"I've never even been this far," Lane said, after they'd been flying for several minutes. Here the damage to the exterior hull was more severe—there were great gaps in the metal, with dirt and rock and bits of debris obstructing some passages.

At least she knew why the mew had never taken their starship and flown away: it didn't seem like it would ever hold an atmosphere again.

"I don't like this," Elisa said, as they reached an empty elevator shaft. The doors hung limply, occasionally sparking as they got close. The space beyond was empty, a shaft leading into the gloom where no lights shone. "This seems crazy for Dominic. Wanting to escape is fine, but…"

"He should've waited for us." Lane nudged at the elevator door with one paw, and only squeezed inside when she was sure it wasn't going to slam down and squish them.

She flew down, following Dominic's scent past a dozen floors before she finally found another open elevator shaft, and the collapsed ruins of the car.

Why would you go so far away on your first trip? What if you got lost?

For that matter, what if they did? Would enough of Starfall's systems be working that she could get back to the top deck?

"Wish he had a phone," Elisa muttered, raising a paw for Lane to wait.

She touched down on the ground, taking a few unsteady steps and gripping at her chest with both paws. Like she was trying hard to resist the urge to be sick.

She's not built for flying around like I am. This is hard on her. "We could call him and tell him how much of an idiot he was to go so deep. Did he really think the radio was down here?"

Here the ceilings were higher than on the top deck, though still not tall enough for a human. Still, larger Pokémon might've fit here, with a roof that was about four feet tall.

Several sections of wall were bowed inward, covered with black, pillowy rock. Many machines had been completely consumed by it. Strange clear pipes had shattered, before being hastily blocked-off with rough metal sheets.

I bet half the materials used in here aren't even known to science if they've lasted this long. How advanced were these Pokémon, anyway?

More than anything else, it made Lane want to meet the ones who had sent this ship. Maybe she would be brave enough to ask Korina about it when she got back.

"Do you smell that?" Elisa asked, nudging her in the side with one paw.

"It's like…"

"Burning," Lane finished for her. She gestured, yanking Elisa up into the air beside her and zooming off towards it. Like burning hair, or… something even worse.

Oh no.

She didn't have much of a maze to navigate down here. The passages were wide and tall, with only a few diversions to either side, many of which were collapsed. The direction of the burning smell and Dominic’s scent were the same. But of course they would be.

The ceiling opened ahead of them, so tall that Lane couldn’t even see the top. She dropped down to the floor, settling beside Elisa as she stared up at what used all that space.

It was massive in the truest sense, a weight so great that she practically felt her paws picking up off the ground. Light glowed from all sides of the incredible room, which was remarkably free of the damage that had filled the rest of the vessel.

A sphere of bright blue surrounded something in the middle. Sweltering heat filled the room, and strange coils above and below the void pulsed a steady yellow white.

"What in Arceus's name is that?" Elisa asked, voice awed. "Why'd they build such a fancy cage to hold nothing?"

Lane didn't have an answer—but soon the question became academic.

The room was ringed with decks along all its faces, though of course only the bottom was accessible without flight. Near the base of the object was an oversized control panel, one even more complex than what she'd seen on the bridge.

Dominic's insect body was collapsed over one of the cushions, with faint smoke rising from him. Oh no.

Lane floated towards him, and the sphere reacted. Arcs of white lightning lashed out from the edge of the sphere, cracking and striking the deck. A glowing red patch appeared for a few seconds, before fading.

Lane stopped, staring across the distance in horror. "What the hell were you thinking, Dominic? This isn't a radio!"

She couldn't cross beneath the sphere without the wrath of its contents raining down on her. But that wasn't the same kind of deterrent it might've been a few weeks earlier.

Lane stuck out a paw to stop Elisa, concentrating on Dominic’s fallen body. He lifted up into the air, dragged back towards them. There were no further lightning strikes, though maybe that was because Dominic had already been hit.

The burned smell got worse the closer he got, and by the time Lane settled him down in front of them her eyes had started to water. The bug wasn't just burned—the lightning hadn't just stopped his heart. This was much worse.

Dominic's body had turned transparent where it was struck, with whole sections of his torso missing and exposing the strange organs beneath. That would have been terrible enough by itself, if he wasn't still moving.

"What… is…" Dominic sat up, wings opening halfway before the edges turned brown and curled slightly inward towards his back. His legs twitched and spasmed, without enough coordination to go anywhere.

"What were you thinking?" Elisa whispered, reaching one paw towards him, then pulling it back. "This is so beyond us, Dominic! Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"Don't you hear it? The echoes… talking to yourself. Calling."

Lane's ears perked, though there was no absence of sound in the huge space. Machines hummed and roared, accompanied by the steady background

thrum of whatever was inside that sphere. The most densely packed nothing she'd never seen.

No voices, though.

"What are we supposed to do, Lane?" Elisa asked, voice lifting almost an entire octave in her panic. Her paws glowed blue, but of course there was nothing she could do. Healing moves existed, but neither of them had ever learned one.

"I don't know!" she called, spinning around once in the air above Dominic. Her eyes scanned the room around them—maybe this was all the same kind of trap Korina had used when her friends appeared? She would fly in at the last second to save them, and use this as a harsh lesson about the dangers of Starfall.

Lane couldn't see her in the gloom, or feel stray emotions from her drifting through. If Korina was anywhere close, she was hiding well.

"The loop… the loop is…" Dominic whispered. Strange blue goo escaped his lips, smelling even worse than the burned stench. "Closed."

He collapsed, body going limp. Bug limbs tightened, curling up in front of him. For several seconds, all they could do was stare, utterly dumbfounded.

"He shouldn't have been…" Elisa wrapped her paws around Lane's shoulders, tears streaming off her face. Pokémon could cry, apparently. "Why?

How could Dominic be so stupid?"

Lane opened his mouth to answer—then froze. Where the space above Dominic's body had been empty seconds before, a shape seemed to slip through from somewhere beyond, leaving a faintly glowing afterimage.

She had seen this creature before, in a dream. And in Elisa's jackets and stuffed toys since they'd first met half a decade ago. Somehow those models and toys and costumes just didn't feel as present as the one she'd dreamed about. Its eyes were blue and piercing, looking through her more than at her.

"Complete," it said. "Itinerant influence: maximized." It hovered on a pair of transparent wings, before settling down in front of Dominic's body.

Green lightning struck the ground behind it, apparently mere inches away.

Either it didn't notice, or it didn't care.

"You're Celebi!" Elisa shouted, her voice still stretched with confused grief. "H-how… how are you… did you come here to save him? You're going to… take us back in time, or…"

It looked up at her, eyes narrowing slightly. "Prevent? No, outcome inevitable. Unrestrained singularity… displaced. Desired."

The air above Dominic fuzzed again, and several more shapes appeared, leaving a flat ghost of where the last one had passed hanging open in the air.

Lane floated backward, though she couldn't get too far without leaving Elisa to her fate. She couldn't bring herself to do that, no matter how frightened she felt.

"Are you here to help our friend?" she asked. Not that different from Elisa's question, though less specific. "You're too late. I think he… might be dead already."

"Death is relative to the point of observation," said another of the strange creatures. The… legendary Pokémon. I'm seeing another impossibility, so soon after the first one. More importantly, this one seemed better at forming complete sentences. The Celebi weren't easy to tell apart—all three were plantlike fairies, about Korina's size. They were bipedal, with sprout-like heads and huge blue eyes.

The one who spoke had only one antenna, the other ending in a crudely severed limb weeping yellowy sap. "Maybe from this view Dominic is dead.

From another, he has only just been born."

The three fairies reached down, taking hold of Dominic's body with their stubby hands. They lifted together, and Lane gasped.

They didn't lift a corpse off the ground, though for a second she thought nothing had changed. Then her eyes focused, and she realized what she'd been seeing. Dominic's Pokémon body wasn't all that different from these creatures, really. Where they were plants, he was a bug, but the same basic shape applied.

But the body they lifted wasn't a dead moth, or even a live one. It was sprout-green, with huge eyes and shriveled pale skin. A plant about to rot, or maybe a seedling that had just burst from its protective shell.

Dominic gasped, one huge blue eye fluttering open.

"Wait!" Elisa surged forward towards them, all fear apparently forgotten. She reached out for the nearest of the plant-fairies—and passed through empty air.

The smell of burned flesh and bug-blood was replaced with the ozone of a recent lightning strike, and the pleasant tickle of a freshly watered greenhouse. Dominic was gone too.

Lane dropped out of the air, mind spinning with what she'd just seen.

"How is this…" She curled up one paw into a fist, or the closest she could to it.

"First there was me. Now not even two weeks later, and…"

"He died," Elisa finished for her. "He died, then woke up a Celebi. How is that possible?" Then, a little quieter, so quiet that it took all of Lane's animal hearing to make out the words, "It should've been me."