Chapter 40

Lane had only used her powers of transformation a handful of times. But compared to becoming a human that had never actually existed, copying a model right in front of her was simple. She stared, looking through Dominic as much as at him. She didn't understand much of what she felt, but she didn't have to. She didn't need to understand the principles that made the body work, so long as she copied them exactly.

Her fur crumbled away, her limbs shortened, and her skin softened to pastel green. In a strange way, the transformation made her more human, returning her to the same body plan. Her head expanded, resembling a sprout.

Instead of fighting gravity with her mind, a pair of wings broke her skin, vibrating behind her.

She opened a pair of gigantic eyes, grinning at him. Then she gasped, as a sense entirely unknown to her assaulted her mind. She saw the room, the cavern, the entire planet she knew, but they weren't the only ones. Her antennae lifted up and out, out along an axis of motion "above" the ones she knew.

"You did it." Dominic grabbed her by the shoulder, shaking her bodily.

"Lane, you have no idea how stupid—"

There was another roar from down the hall, joined swiftly by several others. Lane could understand no words—they weren't conscious enough for words. Instead it was all a simple expression of animal fury. Her power had drawn their attention at last.

"Too late now!" Lane squealed, tightening her grip on his arm. "Up, quick!"

The pair of them lit up with greenish energy, flying along the axis her eyes could not see and her mind could not comprehend.

Or it hadn’t. They flew, and suddenly a little of what Dominic had said made sense. A chain of causality stretched away in both directions, branching

and intersecting and annihilating. They flew through blackness on all sides, and the world beneath was a flickering, indistinct mess.

Visibly, they flew through an infinite, starless blackness. The planet below was a blur of green and blue, a ribbon that branched and split a billion billion times into an interconnected web. She could look "down" at that web, and see a single instant in time—as experienced by her entire planet at once.

Her grip on his arm began to slacken. There was light ahead, calling her like a moth to a candle in the dark.

"No," Dominic hissed, tightening his grip on her. "You don't have a clue how much trouble we're both in for this. You're not allowed to time travel!

You're not part of Eternity!"

His words came through clear, even though the world before them was a blur. She turned her eyes back on the world beneath, and away from the distant source of light. "I'm not, you are. I just did this so you wouldn't turn me into goo. It's time to use your powers to win."

He rolled his eyes. "With the trouble he causes, I know someone must've tried this before," he said. "If you want to go back in time, break his neck or something, undo this whole thing… it won't work."

He pointed, along that same “direction” that only her antennae could perceive. A vast silhouette appeared there, a quadruped that resembled the same creature she'd seen in the cavern. One of the unknowable things she'd seen in her dreams. It towerd over them, the size of an average Pokémon center.

"He is always here, somewhen. He will sense hostility towards his past and turn his attention on us. Erase us from existence more thoroughly than any death in Pokémon battle."

"I wasn't thinking of any hostility," she said, realizing it was true. "That's not the plan. Take us all the way back. The very beginning."

Dominic eyed her, expression deadly serious. "Sure hope you know what you're doing, Lane. I kinda thought you were… leaving the others behind. But that doesn't feel like you."

"After how hard I fought to keep you? Hell no I'm not leaving Elisa behind. Or Mewtwo, or Korina. Nobody. Can you take us back that far?"

"I don't know," Dominic admitted. "Travel isn't about knowing a year, it's about the ties that bind us into the flow of causality. We can't go somewhere neither of us touch—that's why they bother recruiting new people in the first

place. Their old members can go all over the old parts of time. But if they don't make new connections, that's where it stops."

That explained what Lane felt—the shimmering segments of space were parts she was connected to. She floated towards one, sticking an antenna through the ribbon. There was her human self, giving a lecture in front of her camera. Another one, earlier—now she was sewing ears onto the first version of her hoodie. They were even less accurate than her last one.

She could follow it back, if she wanted. The death of her mother was there, could she change that? She bottled up the urge to investigate that, at least for now. So many moments with her, then… blackness. Time stretched back, but it was dim to her, unfocused. She saw only blurs. Except…

She tugged Dominic along, for so long that her back arched where her wing-muscles were buried. Except of course that time was meaningless here.

She was still perpetually asking Dominic what to do, or listening to him chide her.

"When are we going?" Dominic asked. "We can't just go backward. I told you—no bond, no travel."

It could've been centuries they flew. It felt like that, though she didn't thirst, didn't hunger, didn't grow bored. She saw an infinite series of interconnected “now,” all disconnected from her, and all out of reach.

Until, at long last, she found a spark. It was so far back that she could not see her present, not even when she looked "ahead" as far as her antennae could reach. "Here," she whispered. "This is it."

Dominic gripped her by the shoulders, forcing her to turn. "Listen to me, Lane. I know how desperate you are. There are stories about the great minds of Eternity trying things like this. Get to know someone in the present to make a bond, then use them to travel to their past. It won't work to fight Dialga. I already told you."

"I told you too," she said, pointing down. "I'm not here to fight him."

Then she let go. Dominic screamed, grasping for her—but she was too fast. She flew straight down, confident and purposeful.

A great deal happened as she passed through into the linear world below. The cost of her travel hit her like a physical blow, making her lose her transformation in a blur of pink fur and twisted tail. She squealed, trying to right herself—but entirely in vain, as she crashed into a desk. Huge sheets of

paper went everywhere, absorbing some of the impact. But still she slid, bouncing and rolling until she finally came to an uneasy stop.

She looked up, taking in her surroundings, though she was in too much of a daze to get away.

She was in a laboratory, there was no other way to describe it. She recognized none of the instruments, and the diagrams pinned to the walls or flickering on screens were equally befuddling.

Though the place was big, it wasn't nearly as big as she'd come to expect.

The ceiling was high, but only to permit several stacked levels of workspace.

Only in the hallways was it totally open. The floors and walls were covered with their own sections of laboratory, defying gravity.

It's like Starfall, she thought. The mew didn't always hide in their ship!

A shape moved in the gloom, stomping towards her. The floor shook as it closed on her, rounding a corner in the levels. She was far too weak to get away.

It was Dialga. The shape was unmistakable to her, the same quadrupedal outline she had seen when passing between the threads. But even thinking about that space above space made her head hurt.

There were some differences, too. The creature's bluish body was reinforced with silvery armor, with little crystals glowing at important points.

It dug physically into his flesh, and some dried blood still seeped out from within.

His body was bruised and bloody, pupils wide with pain at the center of those tiny eyes. They fixed on her.

She'd almost missed the most obvious change. Dialga was several times her height, it was true—but the one existing in her present should've been bigger than this whole lab. Mewtwo would've been as tall as this one.

"I thought the Admiralty had… disowned this project," he said. Not a roar that shook rock from a cave and crushed it to powder—more like a frightened teenager. The words themselves were meaningless to her, but his thoughts were clear enough. "You're too late, as you can see. The process has begun. I am… It is working. I will save us, even if I have to fight the Admiralty with every footstep. Dishonor me, disown me, cast me out. You will survive because of me, that's all I care about."

No hostility, not the fury she had felt from him so far in her own future.

He shifted, concealing his bloody wounds, hiding the clumps of fur on the ground below them. He couldn't even meet her eyes.

Lane lifted off the desk, shaking free of the sheets. "I can tell you're lying," she said. She lifted into the air, meeting his eyes. It took concentration at first—she expected to have wings, even if she didn't. "You do care."

He smashed one hoof into the floor. Strange metal splintered into shards at his touch, leaving wisps of blue flame burning there. "Whose messenger are you? I don't need to be told again of my banishment. I'm preparing my… I'm packing. I will be gone before sunrise. You should get away, before you're corrupted by my bond with the primordial forces, or… whatever they're claiming."

She floated along behind him, as close as she had done with mewtwo.

Close enough for him to crush against the wall without much effort, if he wanted. But this creature had plenty of ways to kill her, if it wanted to.

"I don't care what the Admiralty says. I don't think you're unclean. I think you're clever."

He stopped, blinked tears from his eyes. "Y-you… you what?" His eyes focused on her, looking her over more carefully now. He seemed confused by the Bandanna, showing no sign of recognition. "You aren't even wearing a family ring on your tail. Are you an outcast too? If you're here to gloat that there are others more unfortunate than yourself…"

"No." She landed on his shoulder, glaring up at him. "I'm not even from now. I guess that means I'm kinda here to… thank you." She tilted her head to the side, considering. "I don't really understand what happened all this time ago, but I know you saved me. My whole world can only exist because you helped make it."

The gemstones in Dialga's armor lit up suddenly. Her body glowed, lifting off his shoulder. But instead of blasting her to pieces, he deposited her gently on a nearby shelf. "You're telling the truth," he said, settling onto his haunches.

His eyes unfocused, looking “up” in that direction that she had understood once, but now could not. "You came so far! The planet you come from… must be a very different place."

He glanced towards a distant doorway, very much like the ship doors on the Starfall. Except this one was far larger, big enough to accommodate a

creature his size. "Admiralty doesn't rule us in the future? They don't destroy my research?"

She shook her head. "I don't know exactly how it happens. But there's no more Admiralty. When I come from, this world is long gone. But you're there. A little… a lot bigger than you are right now."

He chuckled. "Radical life extension was one of the possible side-effects." He looked down on her, this time without shame. "What's your name, kitten?"

"Lane," she answered, grinning up at him. "I know, it's weird. You don't have to—"

He raised a leg, silencing her. "You don't need to justify it. I can't imagine what path names will take at such a distance in time. But I wonder… before you return, would you speak to my friends? We have quite the task ahead of us. Seeing a little proof there's a point to our mission… we could use some hope right now."

She grinned in response, landing back on his shoulder. "Sure! Sounds great!"