Chapter 6

Quinn flew into the dark, faster than he'd ever flown in his life.

Not that that was saying much; he'd only been able to fly for two days, and still didn't feel like he knew what he was doing. Purpose drove him, a life that would be lost if he could not repair the damage he had done.

One day I'll see the readings, and I'll know what went wrong. If anything failed in that accelerator, it should've been with a whimper. If he'd died alone, that would be one thing—why was he the one that transformed into a Pokémon instead of a corpse?

Quinn wove between branches and trunks, never slowing in his flight. He didn't need to see where he was going exactly, which was good since he couldn't in the dark. The forest itself seemed to want to keep him from crashing into something. One sharp branch in the wrong place, and his flight would end with one little Mythical impaled and dying.

Then he found them. Quinn didn't smell the fire—but he did hear the music.

Not the same kind as before, with notes made from the strange resonance in a moment of impact. This was a ukulele, and a voice, singing in English! He turned sharply toward it, passing out of the trees into a rocky clearing of low grass. There was the bright orange of firelight in the center, and a human figure sitting across from it, singing for a group of Pokémon.

Not just any song, either—something familiar, a song he once heard on the radio when he was much younger.

He wasn't the only one utterly fascinated by it. Her simple song about rain and sunshine captured the attention of another impossible creature, which bobbed along with delight beside the fire. Many other Pokémon lingered nearby, Snivy and Lillipup and a whole herd of Blitzle.

A few of the watching Pokémon noticed him as he approached, moving gently out of his way. Most ignored him, transfixed by what was a fairly pedestrian rendition of a mildly popular song. Her voice was okay, but that instrument wasn't in tune. Every E she played was just slightly flat.

"It's okay, Quinn," came the thought, so subtle he almost mistook it for his own. Except that the voice was the girl's. "We knew you would be coming. Just let me finish this song, and we can talk."

He floated closer, putting the human figure between himself and the other Pokémon here. The creature Yanma had called a "weird fairy" was about twice his size, a pokemon covered in gray fur with a blue head. Freshly-healed wounds surrounded a gemstone set into its head, and more slime and pus wept from a split developing in its tail.

Azelf—albeit a much less healthy one than any of the legends suggested. This poor creature looked like it belonged in a hospital right along with Avery. Those bright yellow eyes no longer watched the young musician, but trailed Quinn all the way to the firelight.

That made him look deliberately away, back at the girl with her instrument. Her clothing was simple, just like the instrument itself—a soft leather dress, albeit without straps or anything covering her arms. No ancient culture dressed like that—but no ancient culture played contemporary rock songs on Alolan instruments that weren't invented yet, either.

Her hair was the only really strange thing about her, though—brilliant pink, long enough that it rolled out behind her and trailed onto the ground. No natural shade, but neither was Avery's green.

While the girl finished her song, Azelf approached him. The Pokémon bobbed gently up and down in the air, eyes unblinking. "Outsider. Farcaster. Inheritor. Are you the one who brought the child?"

He didn't know what that meant, so just shook his head once. "Brought my friend. She's dying. She's as old as me—not a child."

The Pokémon circled around him once, close enough to see the half-healed scars on its head, and the wounds to its tail. "Does it hurt?"

"More than I imagined. It will scar in time. I see that it was worthwhile. There will be beauty again, when the Admiralty fall. We may never conquer the stars again… but maybe that is okay. We have a future."

The young woman finished her song, then rested her instrument there on the rocks. "Sorry, everyone. Quinn's friend needs us now. We can do more tomorrow night."

General dissatisfaction passed through the assembled Pokémon. None of them wanted the little concert to stop. None had ever heard anything like it.

"I feel the drive within you," Azelf said. It stopped beside the girl, hovering just over her shoulder as it watched Quinn. "You fought for knowledge, and for love. My gift is well used."

"Mind if I go with him?" The girl picked something up from beside the circle of rocks—a hard plastic box, covered in dense text he couldn't read.

But he had seen them before—those were often found on the oldest ruins, particularly those built to venerate Mythical Pokémon.

"My gift burns in you too, Lane," Azelf said. "You could not be otherwise."

"I think that's a yes," she said, waving at a gap in the watching Pokémon. "Come on. My teleport will be way more accurate without all these minds around."

Quinn lowered his head to Azelf, voice low. "I have no idea what's going on or what I'm doing here. But if you can—"

"I can!" the girl called—Lane, apparently. "Azelf doesn't cover bioscience! Neither do I, but… I am an expert in struggling kittens. You can come back with us to Spear Pillar when your friend is on her paws again."

The Azelf lingered beside the flames, watching them go. But he wasn't attacking, or sucking away all the will from Quinn. That was a good sign, right?

Lane was leaving him. He turned, wings buzzing as he hurried after her. He floated over wild Pokémon, until he was keeping pace with her again. "Wait a minute, you understood me!"

She giggled, slowing as she neared the treeline. "I would hope so, Quinn. It would be awkward if I couldn't understand Pokémon. How would I talk to my friends?"

She didn't wait for his response, continuing past the watching wild Pokémon until she reached the treeline. She had to wave some of them away, whispering promises about how she would be back the next night. Quinn followed not far behind, ignoring the many dirty looks. Would these animals hold a grudge?

"I didn't even tell you anything, and you knew about Avery." Though maybe she didn't know everything. She had used some words that didn't quite fit. His best friend didn't have any paws.

"Because you told me. Or because you will tell me. You're the Celebi, how does it work?" She smiled at him, apparently waiting for an argument.

But Quinn had none. The mechanics of time travel, the retrocausality and closed timelike curves and tachyons could all go jump off a bridge if that was what it took for Avery to be healthy.

"I don't mean to sound… rude," he began.

"But you don't think a substandard cover of Clearwater is going to help your girlfriend. Don't worry, that's not the plan." She held the little box up in one hand, turning the writing towards him. "Grabbed this from the Spear Pillar a month ago. Been keeping it with me ever since, so it would be here when you showed up. Now here you are."

He looked between her and the box, then back at the clearing full of Pokémon. Azelf was still there near the edge of the firelight, bright yellow eyes watching Quinn in his every movement. If he flew all the way back to Avery, those eyes might still be trailing him, watching through forest and mountain and river alike.

"Avery isn't my girlfriend, but she is the most important person in the whole world to me…" He floated a little closer to her, eyes wide. "You're out here with legends and you didn't even blink. Didn't try to catch me or pray. What are you doing here?"

Her resolve faltered, and tears appeared near the edge of that young face. She wilted, sliding down the trunk of the nearby tree and into a sitting position. "Same thing as you, Quinn. Only… it's my mom I'm saving. And maybe the future of every Firstborn after me. I don't care if we ever recapture the old glory of the empire or not—but Korina doesn't deserve to die because she picked me for her daughter."

Quinn listened, trying and failing to assemble meaning from that pronouncement. He couldn't—but he could feel passion behind those words. She could send more than thoughts into his mind. He saw—memories. A vast cave, far below the ocean, where Pokémon of horrifying power kept a tiny pink prisoner. He saw an explosion in the jungle, and felt the crushing guilt that came with it. Whatever was destroyed mattered dearly to her, and she blamed herself for the loss.

Lane wasn't here to play a poorly-assembled anachronism, she had come to pay a debt.

"You told me we wouldn't have much time," she continued. Lane took the box in her lap, then clicked open the latch. Her fingers were too big for it, but that didn't seem to be a problem—she didn't use them.

Energy glowed from around it, and the lid sprang open, revealing its simple contents.

There were two medical syringes inside, metal cylinders covered in more of that unreadable writing. They didn't end with anything sharp, instead a flat surface that was somehow metallic and soft at the same time. "I think you see in ultraviolet, so… this needle is A, this one is B. Bigger one first, then smaller one. A goes over the heart, and B into the brain-stem. You must use both, or she dies. As close together as possible."

She clicked the box closed again, then held it towards him. "Did you catch that?"

"I almost had my Ph.D. in theoretical physics. Would've, if it hadn't… turned me into this. Do you know anything about people turning into Pokémon?"

Lane laughed, so loud and energetically that a few of the Pokémon in the clearing turned back to stare. She laughed so long that she had to hold herself up using the tree, and tug the loose dress back over her shoulder.

"A few things," she finally said. "But I don't know if I'm the best person to tell you any of it. All things considered, I've been a pretty shitty Pokémon so far. A whole species might die because of me."

“You don’t look like a pokemon.” The words were out before he even realized what he was saying.

She smiled. “Look, yeah. Feel… more and more every day. My mom wouldn’t be happy that I’m looking like this. But there aren’t as many humans in this time. It’s easier if there’s someone around to help them feel comfortable.”

For a few seconds there was silence between them. He looked her over, searching for any sign of the disguise she might be using. If this was a Pokemon, shouldn’t he be able to tell?

He saw nothing, or at least nothing obvious. "My best friend might die because of me," he said instead. "She will die, unless these injections can treat weird ARS from a particle accelerator that no one ever built before."

"They can." Lane held her arm a little further, expectant. "Take it. You need to be holding these when I send you, or this whole trip was for nothing."

He reached for the box with both stubby arms. As he did, he realized what should've been obvious. That box hadn't been made for a human to use, but it was the perfect size for a Pokémon. It might've even been made for him.

"Will I make it back to her in time?" he asked. The box took all his strength to hold, and even then he sagged in the air, straining under the weight. "Not sure if I can… make it the whole way with—"

The girl was gone. Quinn blinked, spinning in place as the weight of the box bore him down. The smoke was gone, there was no fire or crowd of watching Pokémon.

Little ice crystals flaked off his back, tumbling away from his body in the breeze his wings made as he flew.

Then he heard it—the river! There was water running here, and the pressure of familiar minds against his own! Sirius and Baast were nearby, along with—someone else, suffering on the listless edge of consciousness. Avery! She's alive!

Strength flooded back into Quinn, and he levitated sharply upward again. His best friend wasn't going to die out here because his stupid fairy wings couldn't lift a little more weight.

It was time to save a life.