Chapter 28

Avery sat up on the rocky floor ahead of him, licking out a little patch of dust on her foreleg. Despite the animal activity, she never looked away from him for more than a second, her mind spinning.

But it wasn't her fault he hadn't thought about what they would actually do here. She wasn't jumping forward and backward, but spent a whole second childhood growing up and mastering the abilities of her new body. How was she supposed to know that the mission wouldn't even be given to her for another four decades?

"You want me to… just go back to what I was doing?" She tilted her head to the side. Pain slipped through her thoughts, breaking the otherwise perfect discipline of her mental conditioning. Or maybe she just wasn't trying as hard to keep her thoughts disciplined. "Knowing you're out here? Go back to pretending that my best friend is dead."

She sniffed, and wiped the moisture away from her face with her foreleg. "Aine was right. No male would ever be interested in me. Sending me back for longer than we were even alive before—" She started to turn away.

"I'm not doing that." Quinn gripped her firmly in his levitation, twisting her back around. It wouldn't work if she was fighting him, but Avery didn't do that. She just stared back, her breathing ragged.

No male would be interested in her? What strange life had she been living since they got separated?

"I'm a time traveler now, Avery. I don't think I can take you back to when we came from—but I can travel. We could leave right here, and I could bring you back for your shift. I'm not very good at flying long distances… but I can do years." He didn't know what would happen if he brought her forward, even with the intention of bringing her back. Would history remember that she had gone missing?

Quinn's mastery of time was a quantum effect in itself: most convincing when he wasn't observing it.

"Better if we go backwards than forwards." He floated off the ground, carrying her with him. The mew could've resisted at any point of course, but she didn't, flying along with him. She never looked away. "What if you didn't have to go on a secret mission right away? What would you rather do instead? I'd suggest a cruise to Alola, but…" He gestured out at the jungle, far below. "Don't think they finished building the resort."

The mew flew with him, her tail trailing below her and her body stretching in the air. Once she'd been an awkward, useless ball of fluff, but now—now she was something else. Cute. "It wasn't always this way. When they were still just terraforming, and no cat realized that some mew would fall in love with their new forms and not want to change back. They lived all over the world, raising their little families and running the terraforming equipment.

"There were a few centuries back there, after most of the world was finished, before mew started getting stuck. My grandma talked about it sometimes, how nice it was. How unified all the cats were, all doing the same thing. They thought it would last forever."

Traveling back was what put them in this position to begin with. But if they were just planning to live in some bucolic paradise, what harm would it cause. "We might have to fight a war when we come back," he thought. "We might have to die so the future we came from can even exist."

He touched his forehead to hers, and showed her. Not the vision from Dialga, since that contained a view into the strange not-place outside of time. Avery didn't need to be confused.

But she would understand the desolate planet just fine, the lifeless trees, and crater where all those who fought the Admiralty had made their home.

"If we run away to somewhere better, we still have to come back. I have to stop that, I think I caused it." Quinn winced as he sent that last thought. He hadn't really intended to share that much of his guilt. But telepathy did not lend itself to such precise control.

She brushed against him again, circling him like a cat. He would miss her scent if he never got to be around her again. Sharp, clean, a little fruit in her fur. Like the human she'd been before. "I'll help you. I would even go back and hide for years and years and years if you wanted. The whole world is more important than us. Even if it means we can't be happy."

Quinn's body tensed, his tiny hands squeezing into smaller fists. "Do you wanna go now? I might need you to keep your mind in contact while we do it, so I can see the year I'm looking for. Even if it's based on stories, there should be enough of a connection to use."

She floated in front of him. Avery started to nod, then froze abruptly, pain replaced by sudden excitement. "Can we go tomorrow? Tomorrow at the same time, say… near the beach, instead of up here where it stinks? I'm getting a headache from shielding us both from hydrogen sulfide."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I need to do some research first." She bobbed away from him through the air, back the way she'd come. "I promise it will help. Maybe you'll even be a better time traveler after this trip." She hesitated, then vanished, reappearing right next to him. She brushed her face against his, making a low, purring sound. "Thanks for coming back for me. I knew you would, but… if you hadn't…"

"Of course, I—" She vanished, her weight suddenly gone from beside him. And apparently she had been shielding them, because his breath felt suddenly heavy in his lungs, foul and rotten.

Quinn floated down from the mountain, avoiding a direct view of the observatory like he always had. Even so, he tried to watch what was happening from across the way. If something blew up or melted or an army of ships swooped in, he needed to be ready to respond.

Nothing like that happened, though. If the cats were doing something to her in there, he didn't sense any of her terror. Only a faint sense of satisfaction, lingering on his body from their contact.

She's even prettier now than when she was human.

He made good use of his time to prepare. It was enough time to fly back to the cave, and speak through the crystal to the one inside.

It took almost ten minutes of projecting his thoughts to finally rouse Stella. Her voice was different than the last time, much more confident. Maybe she just didn't want to be disturbed. "What is it?"

He told her about his intentions—the mismatch of years, and what Avery wanted to do.

"I thought you might want to come with us," he eventually sent, about ten minutes later. He had to go slowly, so he could constantly confirm that the Pokémon he spoke with was still awake. She had already started drifting more than once. "You could have more time away from the war if you came with us. And we could really use your help navigating. No way she's as good at teleporting as you are."

The Pokémon responded with surprising alertness, despite remaining securely tucked inside the crystal. "Go back to the moment we arrived. Bring that me instead, right after I started sleeping."

Quinn could've argued the point, of course. But Stella was already going back to sleep. No argument, didn't even stay alert long enough to talk about it.

Maybe she was afraid of what might be waiting for him on the beach the next day. Any delay meant another chance for Avery to tell others. If she were still loyal to the cats, she could have dozens of them flying over Alola, searching for him.

Quinn slept uneasily that night, hidden away in the dark corner of a cave. But the Pokémon he asked to keep watch for him never interrupted his rest. When morning came, he floated his way down to the beach with his antennae alert, just in case. Even if his path forward would end with gruesome death, he would be able to avoid it.

No attack came, not during his flight back to the biggest island, and his brief search for Avery amid the white sand.

She wasn't the only Pokémon out in the morning. Dozens of other creatures played there, splashing in the water or enjoying the island's abundant fruit. A small crowd of them gathered to watch her, or lay on the sand near her, apparently copying her.

She wasn't wearing the uniform anymore, just a towel around her waist. She held a tiny tablet in her arms, made from a single thin piece of glass. The cat looked up as he flew closer, her tail uncurling from her body. "You made it. Wondered if maybe you traveled to a different time and lost track."

"Didn't travel," he said, landing beside her. His vision of the future showed him only what he expected; what she was about to say, how she would fly over to him and greet him, her excitement over some realization she'd had during the day before.

Quinn let it play out without interruption, or any sign that he saw events before they happened. It would be quite rude to interrupt her like that. "Are you ready to go?"

She lifted from the towel, and sand clinging to her body abruptly fell away. "It wasn't about taking a day of leave. Though I do think that will make it easier to come back here, when I… when we decide that I have to."

She floated over, brushing past him just above the sand. "I had a conversation with Sinnoh about it. I hope you don't mind. But we decided to trust it—"

Decided was a bit generous. He had wanted the message passed along, and he thought the trio would consider it. But that wasn't the same as actually revealing their intention to the ship's AI.

Too late to take it back now. Quinn lifted his antennae back up, straining to look further forward than before. Bombardment, hidden troops? I hope it doesn't understand how my powers work.

"What did it tell you?"

"About the path that leads someone to become the way they are," she said. "The Admirals weren't born wanting to sterilize the planet. They became that way, one mistake and one disaster and one bad decision at a time. If there was someone who could stop those things from happening, someone who could travel…"

She leaned forward, levitating the tablet up towards them. "I wanted to spend time with you before the cats realize what I'm doing and kill me. But that was so… stupid."

Another voice spoke from the tablet a few seconds into the future. It didn't threaten or demand, so when he heard it in the present, he didn't react with fear or try to flee. "Time is a lever, Celebi. A vessel altered one degree along its course will enter the same orbit if the change is made near the destination. But at its point of departure, it would navigate to a different star completely, or none at all."

Quinn looked between them, staring at the tablet and through it to the machine that inhabited a starship. "You want me to use this power? What if I change too much? If I was your enemy, I could use this leverage to attack you, or destroy the city."

The machine answered before Avery could. "This very moment, our interaction: it must occur, or your decision to go back cannot be made. You were protected by those other prisoners you liberated from the isolation hospital. If no hospital existed, or if they did not suffer—you could not be here. It is true, this power is immensely dangerous. Yet if we do not use it, I fear my creators are surely doomed."

Quinn floated closer, fascinated. His first real lesson in time travel, and it came from something not that different from a Pokédex, operated by the AI that ran the Admiralty's civilization.

"I don't know if it works like that," he said. "I saw one future where your cats won and killed everyone. I shouldn't be born if that was the future. But I'm still here, and so's Avery."

The answer took longer to come this time. But Sinnoh did answer. "I cannot explain this. The universe self-governs to prevent its destruction through paradox. We have only once created a being capable of overpowering this protection. That same being is partly the reason your ancestors were hunted to extinction."

One being. The computer made only sound, yet somehow Quinn's mind conjured the image he needed anyway. Dialga, towering over him at impossible size and power in that unreal place. A being outside of time, yet somehow acting to prevent it. It showed me, then sent me back.

"Everything we need is in the computer," Avery thought to him. "Along with a message we can send to the old version of Sinnoh any time we want. So we can get its help navigating the Mew computers. So they don't know we're invaders from another time."

"Or to tell its past self to capture us and kill us then, so we can't change anything."

Avery shook her head forcefully. Her long tail smacked into the sand, scattering it beneath her. "I don't think so. Sinnoh could've stopped me a long time ago. I might still be in kindergarten if it wasn't for its help. If you can't trust the ship, trust me."

She floated right over to him, hovering inches away from his face. Huge blue eyes, so deep he could stare into them and never look away.

"Okay," he eventually said. "Let's go."

It wasn't the plan the rebellion first chose for him. But that didn't make it any less important. Maybe they didn't have to go to war at all.