#i know that being really knowledgeable is kinda like dusknoir's thing but i can have a little dusknoir backstory ok | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nelvana · 4 years

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In which the tower of time is explored

First [ARC 1]: In which the human is transformed First [ARC 2]: In which a present is prepared Next: In which the god of time is met Previous: In which the land between time is explored

“They’re expecting us…?” Alex repeated, his brows creasing at Ceebee’s comment.

“I didn’t do anything to activate this. It had to be someone else, and based on how we’ve gotten this far, it was probably manually activated,” Ceebee explained quietly, “right?”

Giratina, speaking from the rock still being held by Edgar even after all this time, let out a hum of confirmation, but did not divulge into the subject further.

Alex sighed, “I suppose that I shouldn’t be too surprised. Even if our arrival didn’t come in some sort of time vision, Dialga must know by now that if anyone was going to step up to handle this, it would be us.”

Dusknoir sat up, “they may have been expecting my… return here, as well,” he added.

Frowning, Alex turned away, staring out into the now clouded horizon. His gaze followed some of the floating islands as they slowly moved like on a fixed axis around the Temporal Tower. The Rainbow Stoneship continued its journey at a steady pace, navigating around any stones in its path as if it had always been a natural part of its path.

Dusknoir slouched slightly as the conversation died at his words, idly tracing the markings on their cruise. A few eyes continued to watch each other, but soon everyone had glanced off to either watch their surroundings or their ride.

Carefully padding towards the edge of the Rainbow Stoneship, Nelvana crouched at the back of the platform, studying the rainbow trailing behind it with wide eyes. The glow of the colors bothered her eyes slightly, but at the same time she never wished to look away. Hesitantly, she reached a hand down, waggling her fingers through the arc. It didn’t feel like anything, and unlike natural light, it did not bend around her hand, giving the fur no illusion of extra color. Regardless, the act of touching a rainbow at all brought a smile to her face, and she only moved her hand back to sit on her lap due to her concern for safety.

“Now this is really cool,” Damien gasped.

Nelvana glanced up at the gengar, only mildly surprised by how silently he had wandered up beside her. He leaned down to poke the rainbow as well, but leaned back much sooner than Nelvana had, sitting down and leaning back with his hands palm down behind him for support.

“Well, I can knock ‘touching a rainbow’ off the bucket list,” he joked.

“Touching a rainbow was on your bucket list?” Nelvana chuckled, smirking back at him.

“Not really, unless you ask, like, maybe eight-year-old me,” Damien responded, “I’m more surprised that you know what a bucket list is,” he commented.

“Oh, yeah, bucket lists were kinda common, for humans at least,” Nelvana replied, wrapping her arms around her knees to pull them up to her chest and rest her chin onto. “I can’t remember if I ever had one. I guess the knowledge that I would either succeed my one goal and disappear, or die trying, kind of discourages the idea.”

“Or encourages it,” Damien pointed out, though the casualness at how Nelvana spoke of such a dark fact got him the frown momentarily. “I never really had one either. Maybe we should all work on one when we get back. It’ll keep us occupied, at least.”

Nelvana snorted, “add it to the ‘we’ll do it when we get back list’.”

Shuffling up in between the pair, Keahi ruffled up zir feathers and leaned up against zir partner, smiling and looking out at the rainbow trail behind them as well.

“I can see why Alex was pretty excited for this. This looks amazing!” Keahi commented.

“It really does,” Nelvana agreed, and then paused. “Has he or Ceebee come back over to get a look at this?”

“Dunno about Ceebee, but Alex is still busy brooding over there.” Damien leaned his head back to peer at the grovyle sitting on the other end of the platform. “Here, you two can keep sitting here together, I’ll go check up on those two. Maybe see how Edgar’s holding up afterwards… seemed a bit shaken up by some of those monster houses.”

“Oh yeah, I asked Edgar about that, but he said he was fine… maybe you’ll get some better comfort out of him, he’s always been pretty close to you,” Keahi responded, “thanks Damien!”

Nodding a farewell to the pair, Damien stood up and walked off towards Alex. Both Nelvana and Keahi watched him head over to the grovyle, but then turned back to watch the colorful trail being left behind their ride. Keahi snuggled closer to zir partner, who shifted her position so she could wrap an arm around the torchic.

“Is it just like you thought it’d be?” Keahi asked, turning to look up at Nelvana. “Just the Rainbow Stoneship and all, I mean,” zie added, before sighing. “Wow, it’s been a long day. Can’t see where the sun is from here though, wonder what time it is.”

“This area must be locked into daytime. I have no idea what time it really is anymore,” Nelvana responded, “but… yeah, kinda how I imagined it. Kind of different. I guess the people here and the circumstances really make the difference though. I don’t think the Rainbow Stoneship itself has really changed.”

Keahi let out a hum, “that’s true,” zie agreed, closing zir eyes as zie leaned zir head to fit in the crook of Nelvana’s neck.

“Am I interrupting something?” Alex joked, going to sit beside the two without waiting for an answer.

Keahi flinched in surprise, lifting back up zir head, but not making an effort to move away from Nelvana otherwise. Nelvana blinked over at the grovyle, before chuckling and shaking her head, not moving much either.

“Nah, we were just talking about the Rainbow Stoneship here,” Nelvana told him.

“Hm, yeah… quite the view, huh?” Alex replied, “Damien insisted that I should come back here to look at the rainbow, and he was definitely right that moving back over here would be worth it. I had only been waiting to see if anyone else would rather get situated here first; I’ve already seen this,” he explained.

“Yeah, I mean, may be yo- our second time, but who knows when we’ll get the chance to look at this again?” Nelvana responded.

“At least this ride is pretty long, so we can take it all in,” Keahi added, “makes for a nice break too. I was just saying to Nel, that it must be getting pretty late now.”

Alex turned back to glance over at Temporal Tower, steadily growing closer, “I was hoping we could make it through the tower before resting; we don’t really want to hang around at the base of that thing.”

“Do you think it will be any better at the top?” Nelvana asked.

“Had better be. A good night’s rest is the least we deserve once we get all the way up to Dialga,” Alex sighed.

The trip lasted at least ten minutes, the Rainbow Stoneship not being the fastest method of travel, but finally they had arrived at the base of Temporal Tower. They stopped by another rocky island, the cliff of such a platform rough and jagged. Though this base seemed small, the structure built on it stood tall into the swirling clouds above them all. The outside walls were deep blue, with a lighter metal forming patterns around the tower, likely adding extra support to such a massive building. Their only entrance to Temporal Tower were huge, double doors right ahead of where they landed.

Silent from the awe of such a building, the group one by one carefully stepped off the Rainbow Stoneship, which depowered once they had all gotten off, remaining in place beside the rocks in case of their return.

“Woah… so this is Temporal Tower,” Keahi murmured, “this feels… different than looking up Sky Tower, in a way. I can’t quite explain it.”

“This is an actual dungeon?” Edgar suggested.

Keahi laughed, “maybe.”

“That, and this certainly has… a much more powerful aura to it,” Tsuki added, “Sky Tower may have been Rayquaza’s home, but Temporal Tower is an extension of Dialga’s power. You can feel it.”

“Yeah… that’s probably it,” Keahi murmured.

Sizing up the next step in their quest, the group fell into another comfortable silence. Keahi turned away from studying the tower though to look over zir teammates, and extra allies. Despite the turmoils of the day, no one appeared tired enough to have to call it quits yet. Zie couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief; zie didn’t want anyone getting too exhausted to complete this next dungeon mid-war, including zirself.

“Same number of floors, same safe floor spot, and same dangers as Hidden Land,” Alex stated, crossing his arms as he stared up the tower. “Big difference is that here, the main type is psychic, with some steel, poison, and ghost pokemon lingering here and there as well.”

“Mainly psychic pokemon? Good thing we have three ghost-types here!” Keahi commented.

“With two of us as mainly support,” Damien pointed out.

“You were doing really well with your thunderbolt attack! You can give yourself a bit more credit,” Keahi insisted.

“Still… we should be back to the usual dungeon pace. Plenty of different pokemon, not all fully evolved,” Alex continued, “doesn’t mean that this will be easy though.”

“Will this all be similar as to when you were last here, though?” Tsuki questioned, “Temporal Tower was broken when you had travelled through here; now it is fully functioning.”

“Giratina? Do you know?” Edgar asked, shaking the rock slightly in his grasp.

“What Temporal Tower is like typically… unfortunately, my experience out here specifically is not much. What Alex has been saying so far has been correct, and stays… fairly the same between the two timelines. You may find less variation of pokemon here, as less have attempted to enter but got trapped in this timeline than the other, but that should be the largest change,” Giratina responded, “if anything is this world manages to stay strong throughout destruction… it’s mystery dungeons.”

“How mysterious,” Damien joked.

Alex sighed, shaking his head, “well, no sense in dilly-dallying; we’re almost to Dialga now.”

Small nods of agreement. Taking a couple steps towards Temporal Tower automatically summoned the doors to open wide in front of them. Despite any mild surprise, they were forced to simply chalk it up to Dialga expecting them, like Ceebee had said before. Now without any troubles due to habitude from doing this a couple times before, the group formed their line, and entered Temporal Tower.

Perfectly cut stone floors, and metallic walls with a mild blue hue filled their surroundings indoors. This simplistic design to the dungeon gave it something closer to the appearance of an actual, ordinary building than any dungeon before this one, which only served to create an eerie feeling. The way the ceiling constantly stretched out high above them, and how each hallway exiting a room had its own doorway made everything almost as if they were walking through a strange mansion than the ruined and overgrowth mystery dungeons they were all accustomed to.

“Hey… does anyone else hear that?” Damien asked quietly, eyes flitting around their current room.

“Hear what?” Edgar responded.

“That… ticking noise, like a clock,” Damien told him.

Everyone paused momentarily to listen more, though some, already hearing it at the same time Damien did, were already nodding back to him, but respected the current silence and everyone else wishing to listen and didn’t say anything. Faintly was the sound Damien had described; ticking, just like an old hand clock. The ticking, while almost sounding distant, was still clear as if it were in their current room, despite the source clearly not being here, if there was a solid source at all.

They waited for nearly half a minute, listening to the tick, tock, at every second, before someone spoke up.

“That’s weird, I don’t remember that being here when we were here last, but you’re right, there’s definitely a ticking here,” Alex commented, “think it’s because time is flowing?”

Ceebee nodded slowly, “that was going to be my guess. It must help symbolize the time passing in real time. A tick for every second.”

“Oh, yeah, that would make sense…” Damien murmured, “with everything being time based here.”

Continuing onwards, their first dungeon spawn encounter of Temporal Tower was the psychic-type solrock; just as foretold, and something almost all in the group had seen before. Nelvana dealt with it with a couple swift bonemerang attacks, and they continued onwards without terribly much difficulty.

In fact, the more the continued exploring the dungeon, the more they found that many of the spawn here were not only familiar, but easy to defeat. These foes were certainly stronger than any previous of their kind any of the group had found in dungeons, but still shared weaknesses, and that knowledge helped deal with any of their opponents before they had the chance to become much of a problem.

No, it wasn’t the spawn themselves that were the main problem of this dungeon, as they quickly became aware of. The true challenge began when a grovyle leapt from another hallway in front of the group. Nelvana jumped, startled, but her surprise and confusion only grew as she identified the scars of this grovyle as being the same that Alex had. There were fewer than what Alex currently had, but the scar that stretched across his muzzle was unmistakeable.

“Wha…”

The grovyle ignored the group, even as they looked in their direction, the golden eyes seemed to look past all the pokemon crowded by another hallway. Instead, the grovyle turned back towards something or someone. Their mouth opened as if they were speaking, but no sound came out. In response to their silent words, someone else hurried out from the hallway; a human.

“Is that…” Keahi trailed off, tearing zir own gaze from what was happening in front of them to glance up at zir partner.

“That’s me,” Nelvana confirmed, her voice scarcely a gasp.

The… duplicates of Alex and Nelvana paused in the middle of the room momentarily, talking to each other without any sound. Strung over the grovyle’s shoulder was even the same bag he had now, slightly less worn than currently, but inside the satchel a slight blue glow emitted; a time gear.

Just as soon as the pair entered, they left. Hurrying off to the other end of the room as if in a hurry and fading away from sight before they hit the wall.

“They’re illusions,” Nelvana whispered, letting go of the breath she had been holding.

“Illusions…” Keahi murmured, “you didn’t say there were illusions here,” zie said, glancing back to the back of the group.

“I didn’t know there were any either,” Alex replied, voice sounding far away despite having entered the room with everyone else at the tail end of the illusion display.

“Is this… the normal for here, then?” Tsuki asked, cautiously padding towards where the illusions had disappeared, sniffing the floor and finding nothing unusual.

“It is,” Giratina answered, “I apologize, I had not realized before… But yes, these illusions are us seeing pieces of time.”

“Why weren’t there any when any of you went through here?” Damien questioned.

“Time was frozen then. It must not have been able to… display anything from other times,” Ceebee told him, “it must be that when it flows normally, visions of other times leak in.”

“That must explain why the spawn was not up to the same caliber as Hidden Land; the dungeon’s energy is seeping more into these illusions than typical dungeon tricks,” Dusknoir added, gesturing with one hand vaguely as he spoke.

“Why was there no sound from it though?” Edgar asked, “I didn’t hear anything from it, at least, but it looked like… it looked like, uh, they were speaking.”

“Could be for a number of reasons. I have not seen these illusions before, so it could be normal for Temporal Tower to only display the sights and not the sounds from these points in time it chooses to create as illusions,” Giratina responded, “or it could simply be from the fact that that was an illusion from the dead timeline. Illusions specifically from that timeline must be more challenging to grab.”

“I am surprised we saw an illusion from that timeline at all,” Tsuki admitted, padding back over to her vague place in the lineup; the group now closer to a huddle in the room together than a line. “It must still be slightly connected to then; dungeons tend to latch onto more disastrous energies, I’ve found,” she added.

“That must be it then,” Keahi murmured, “are we all okay to keep going, then…?”

Alex shook his head, exhaling, “yeah, yeah… we’re going to have to get used to that soon anyway.”

“Nel?” Keahi stepped up beside zir partner, who was still silently staring towards where the illusion first appeared, as if expecting it to return.

“I… Yeah, let’s get going,” she replied quietly, continuing onwards in more of a daze, almost stumbling over her own feet after the first step, but catching herself and moving forwards as if that had never happened at all.

They ran into another illusion on every floor.

The next illusion they found was another from the dead timeline, and another with Alex and Nelvana. The group almost didn’t see this illusion, and almost didn’t want to. In the corner of a room they barely peeked into at first, was an illusion, showing the pair sitting together, Nelvana wrapping bandages around Alex’s right leg. It was a simple vision, and unlike the other, did seem to loop, and never disappeared, even as Nelvana paused to stare at it for a long time before coming back to her senses and moving on, skipping the room.

On the third and the fourth floor were more illusions from the dead timeline, one with a horde of sableye running through the hallway and startling everyone enough to move aside despite the fact that the army wasn’t actually there, and one with a trio of pokemon, an audino, a mamoswine, and a porygon, that no one in this group recognized personally, but this trio were quickly surrounded by sableye in the illusion, disappearing before the inevitable could be displayed.

It was on the fifth floor that they finally spotted a vision from the past, an incineroar and a salamence, both sporting rescue team badges, cautiously walked together, tired from assumedly having walked for much, much longer than this illusion would show, yet their eyes narrowed with determination and focus. Suddenly, the pair reared up at an unseen enemy, Salamence blasting it with a powerful beam shot out from their mouth, surely defeating whoever their opponent was in a single hit. The illusion disappeared soon after, but not before Incineroar gave Salamence a small pat on the back as a silent compliment.

“That was a rescue team…” Nelvana murmured, “have you heard of them, Keahi? An incineroar and a salamence?” she asked, glancing back at her partner.

Keahi nodded, “yeah… I think that was Team Endeavor!”

“The diamond rank team?” Damien interrupted for clarification.

Again, Keahi nodded, glancing back at the gengar momentarily before going back to facing forwards, staring past Nelvana and out to where the illusion had been.

“That wasn’t all of them though. There are four members. Er, well, at least four from the last time anyone heard from them….” zie continued, “the team has been missing for a long time now… it’s a mystery as to what happened to them, but Drapion keeps them as the diamond rank team anyway, so they must be okay.”

“Perhaps if we see more visions of them from here, we might be able to figure out where they went,” Tsuki suggested.

“Maybe…” Keahi replied, “I kinda hope so; that would be nice, huh? It would be really cool to actually meet them, and it would be great to have some confirmation on what they have been up to.”

“They looked tired,” Nelvana commented quietly, “I hope they made it out of wherever they were, at least out of what we just saw there, alright.”

The next few floors continued similarly, but nothing got easier. To say that other dungeons got easier as they progress as well would be untrue, however, in most dungeons, getting used to the pokemon that showed up and picking out signs of traps or monster houses granted some more ease for exploration. Here with the time illusions… no one could get used to that. How could they? How does one get used to seeing visions of other times, including the timeline of the darkest future, whenever one least expects it?

And unfortunately, simply because this dungeon had an extra trick, didn’t mean that it laid off on other, more typical, dangers. There were times the group would pause to watch one of the illusions, and wind up getting attacked from behind from one of the spawn.

On a couple floors, they ended up finding a monster house in the same room as one of the illusions. In those cases, it could be challenging to discern which pokemon they were seeing were really there or not.

The traps, while few here, still would crop up here and there to throw everyone off. Traps could never be perfectly predicted, dungeons always hid them too well for that, but sometimes the more experienced one could take a moment and pick out spots where not to step. Any chance of those predictions being successful were thrown off as well, with sometimes everyone feeling too caught up in everything else to remember that traps were, in fact, still a problem.

Fortunately, for the most part, the few traps they ended up stepping on were mostly harmless. Nelvana stepped on a slumber trap in a hallway, but the effects were temporary and she woke up again after a couple minutes. The spin trap and the slow traps that Keahi and Damien accidentally stepped on turned out to be ways to lighten the mood more than anything else, with those two making jokes out of their temporary situations while they waited for the effects to wear off. Plus, if they had to, there were still heal seeds packed just in case to handle those sorts of effects from traps.

On the tenth floor though, they ran into a more inconveniencing trap, paired with an illusion.

The illusion itself appeared in a large room, a couple moments after everyone had entered. A portal swirled and glowed from the back wall, and the figures of Alex and Nelvana could be seen in front of it, almost entering, but not quite. Nelvana was slouched over so low that Alex standing beside her appeared taller than her, despite the full group now knowing that as a human she was about twice his height.

He turned back, calling out across the swarm of sableye, out to Ceebee, fluttering weakly not far from the portal as well, arms outstretched in front of her and antennae twitching with the telltale sign that she was focusing her abilities. Alex yelled again, the desperation stretching across his face despite the illusion bringing no sound to his voice. Ceebee glanced back, calling something out to him in return. He screamed at her, evidently not liking whatever she had said, but as another sableye lunged at him and Nelvana, just barely missing, he swallowed his pride and guided Nelvana into the portal with him, it closing behind them, them and a sableye leaping in last second, as a couple in the group watching this all managed to glimpse, and leaving Ceebee behind.

Continuing still as one of the longer lasting illusions, they could see the image of Dusknoir roar in fury. While Ceebee was putting up a good fight against the numerous sableye with her fairy-type move, she was inevitably knocked out by a powerful shadow punch attack, Dusknoir shaking with rage as he pulled off the attack. The illusion faded soon afterwards, with the image of Ceebee slumping to the ground, defeated.

“So that’s…” Keahi was the first to speak afterwards, zir voice quiet and hesitant. “…that’s why Ceebee wasn’t with you guys at first when you traveled back in time.”

Ceebee nodded somberly, “with one of the time gears broken, it was important that I managed the portal. It would have been risky for me to get in there with them in the moment,” she explained, “we were already cutting things close.”

“That makes sense…” Keahi murmured, “but Nel, you looked really hurt there. What happened before what we saw to-“

Keahi was cut off suddenly at the familiar sound of a click somewhere in the room. Everyone managed to look over in time to see Dusknoir, having moved to the side slightly during the illusion to watch better, now had a warp tile below him. And just before anyone could say anything, the trap activated properly, and Dusknoir disappeared.

“Where did he go?” Edgar blurted out in alarm, “if we step there too, will we go to the same place…?”

“No, we won’t. Warp tiles always take you somewhere random in the dungeon; no one should step on that,” Tsuki warned.

Ceebee sighed, “I’ll go looking, I can already sense him from here. You all can keep exploring, we’ll catch up later, just don’t go to the next floor.”

Taking the mobile scarf to make the trip quicker, Ceebee bid small goodbyes to everyone before flying through one of the walls to search for the missing Dusknoir.

Traveling through walls was, of course, still disorienting, but her own practice using this item in Murky Cave helped her stomach feel better about it all. She found though, that akin to the rest of the most building-like structure for this dungeon, that the walls were thinner and always seemed to offer more rooms behind them, unlike many other dungeons which truly felt like tunnels more than anything else. This meant she had more walls to travel through, but each wall took less time to pass through.

Eventually, she located Dusknoir in a small room. He had run into another illusion, and Ceebee found him watching it, frozen in place. She couldn’t see his expression, or much of the illusion itself due to her coming in behind Dusknoir. However, what she could see was the images of two septile laying on the ground in front of him, blood pooling over unseen grass. They were dead. Unable to help herself, Ceebee tried peering around Dusknoir, and met the gaze of his duplicate, a younger version of Dusknoir, with bloody hands and no remorse in his eye.

The illusion faded, and sensing the extra presence in the room now, Dusknoir spun around, eye wide, to face Ceebee. For a few moments, neither of them said a thing. They only stared at each other in silence.

“Come on,” Ceebee finally muttered, “the others are waiting; they might have even found the stairs by now.”

Wordlessly nodding, Dusknoir followed Ceebee out of the room, and continued remaining quiet as they made their way back to the rest of the group. By the time they had returned, the others had managed to find the stairs to the next floor, and after forming their lineup again, they moved on up the steps.

Proceeding past the eleventh floor afterwards finally brought them to the safe floor, where they could rest. Though there was the lingering thought of if illusions could reach them here as well, when nothing happened for the first few minutes, the group slowly began to relax again. For once, this floor became an opportunity for them to discuss what they had previously seen more, rather than focusing on specifically checking on supplies and whatnot.

Nelvana sat against a wall with Keahi beside her, leaning up against the cubone for comfort again, while Alex chatted with the both of them, starting out mostly speaking about the illusions from the dead timeline, but eventually curiosity brought them to talk about Team Endeavor again; fascinated by the mystery surrounding the elite team. Looking for more clarification otherwise, Ceebee talked with the rest of the group, explaining to them about what she knew.

Dusknoir, for the beginning of their break, separated himself from everyone else to lean on the wall across from where Nelvana, Keahi, and Alex were gathered. He said nothing and did not move, at least not until moments after Alex got up to check on the others with Ceebee.

Cautiously, Dusknoir floated over to the pair still sitting against the wall, letting himself drift lower to the ground as to not appear as large, at least slightly. Despite his efforts, Nelvana still stiffened as she realized he was approaching, though she remained frozen in place, allowing him to reach a comfortable conversation distance from the two. Sensing Nelvana’s returning unease, Keahi leaned closer, bumping zir forehead on zir partner’s shoulder for a moment before turning zir head to face Dusknoir again.

“Hello, Dusknoir,” Keahi greeted after a few moments passed where Dusknoir still said nothing despite his closeness. “Did you need something?”

“I had been hoping to speak with Nelvana briefly, if that would be possible,” Dusknoir requested.

Keahi glanced at Nelvana, who, after a pause, hesitantly gave zim a small nod.

“Okay,” Keahi replied, without moving.

Dusknoir waited for a moment, but when he realized that the torchic would not be moving, he simply let out a sigh before continuing with what he wanted to say anyway; he didn’t want to have to force Keahi to leave, it was clear why they were refusing already to do so.

“I wanted to tell you this, since I do not know that the other two will give me a moment to listen, so I do thank you for giving me a moment despite everything,” he began, “in my time here in this timeline with you all, I have come to realize my faults, and that I was wrong in what I did before. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” he told her, “I know that you may not believe me, or that this does not fix what I did to you and your friends, but I do not know when I might get another chance to apologize. Though I regret my actions before when I worked under Dialga, they still brought me back here, and I wish to repay them, so my plans of staying with then after this have not changed. However, if there is something I can do to make anything better for you… please let me know. And if you could, let… let Grovyle and Celebi know that I am sorry too.”

Nelvana stared at Dusknoir, unsure of what to say. This was completely unexpected to her, and if she didn’t trust her ability to read others so well, she would have thought that he was completely lying. Though, knowing that he was telling the truth only made it harder to wrap her head around.

“Okay,” she finally croaked, unsure of what else to say in this moment.

Dusknoir’s gaze softened, “okay. Thank you for listening, despite everything. Again, I’m sorry.”

With that, unwilling to bother Nelvana any longer, Dusknoir turned away and floated back to where he stood before. Nelvana watched him leave, her throat dry and heart still pounding. She didn’t understand.

“You alright?” Keahi asked, sitting up more to properly rest zir own forehead against Nelvana’s.

Merely humming back in response for now, Nelvana leaned back to Keahi’s touch, letting herself breath for a few moments. She let her shaky hands find the comfort of brushing through her partner’s warm feathers, listening vaguely to the background noise of the others still wrapped up in their own conversation.

“Do… Do you believe him?” Keahi asked hesitantly, curiosity already eating away at zim after what had just happened.

“I don’t know,” Nelvana whispered, denial at the truth of the answer twisting her thoughts and leaving her with uncertainty in her words instead.

Keahi didn’t say anything else, not trusting zir own knowledge of the situation to make any sort of assumptions. To zim, Dusknoir sounded sincere, but there was always the option of him being a good liar. Admittedly zie still hadn’t spent enough time around him to pick out which was most likely.

“We should keep going,” Nelvana announced quietly, leaning away from her partner and immediately missing the warm touch.

Without waiting for a proper answer, Nelvana shakily stood up again and moved towards the exit of the safe room. Keahi sighed, but got up to follow after only a moment’s pause. Gathering the attention of everyone else, the group quickly collected themselves and headed out to tackle the next half of the dungeon.

Though by now they considered skipping by any illusions that they came across, the possibility of valuable information was far too important to pass up, despite the extra time it took to watch the images came appeared in various rooms, despite how emotionally draining it could be to view something from one’s own past so openly displayed.

This was, at least, fortunately the only major delays they would have throughout the dungeon. The latter half of Temporal Tower introduced more pokemon for them to battle against, but there were only a couple new encounters of which none of them had seen in any dungeons before, but even those ones were the evolved forms of pokemon that they had just seen in the earlier half of this dungeon, and often the same sorts of battle strategies could be used on them as had been used before. Their largest difficulty with the spawn came with the salamence that would appear, which were mistaken from the illusions of Salamence of Team Endeavor a couple times, catching them off guard.

After a few hours after entering the dungeon, surely getting late into the night in the outside world, they stepped up to the final floor. Alex announcing this achievement was met with tired cheers, all thankful to finally be so close to their goal after all this time. They quieted down after this for a few moments, until Damien spoke up again.

“You know… and I’d hate to jinx myself here, especially so close to finishing… but we haven’t seen any illusions from my past,” Damien commented.

“That is an interesting point, actually,” Tsuki replied, licking her whiskers idly. “The illusions we have been seeing do not seem to range that far into the past, or into the future aside from the dead timeline; at least from what we can assume.”

“Does the Temporal Tower have a range of time that it can create illusions from?” Edgar asked.

“I am not certain about that, but it would make sense,” Giratina answered, “this is a dungeon, but it is distantly affected by Dialga themself. It is possible that they may force the dungeon to create… more relevant illusions.”

“I would have been interested in seeing some illusions from that far in the past though,” Nelvana admitted quietly, “your time sounds incredibly fascinating from what you’ve told us, Damien.”

Damien shrugged his shoulders, glancing over at the walls, “nah, nothing really that special… a couple big events happened that I can recall, but honestly nothing as exciting as these mystery dungeons and stuff.”

“I’m sure there would be something interesting to see!” Ceebee chimed in, “you lived centuries before any of us! Well, except for Giratina, that is.”

Giratina chuckled, “Damien is not giving his own time enough credit. The humans then did some incredibly interesting things. You’d get some group of them attempting to summon one of the legendaries every decade or so.”

“Really?” Alex responded, “and you call that not interesting, Damien,” he teased.

“We’re literally about to talk to a legendary right now! We’re currently talking with a legendary and a mythical!” Damien pointed out.

“How do you summon a legendary though? Aren’t there just places to find them?” Keahi asked, “we’ve walked to most legendaries we’ve talked to, and there weren’t even mystery dungeons back then.”

“That’s exactly it though. The legendaries would often have to hide themselves in more… creative locations without mystery dungeons being available to guard themselves. Those that could hide in pocket dimensions often would, and many others would sleep deep underground,” Giratina explained.

“Oh. I guess that makes sense,” Keahi murmured, “you know, we haven’t seen many humans from these illusions either. How many humans were in the dead timeline?”

Alex clicked his tongue, “not nearly as many humans as pokemon, but their numbers were steadily growing over the years. Because they needed good weapons to handle themselves in battle though, it wasn’t often you’d see them exiting the safety of their communities. That’s probably why we haven’t seen many illusions of them. The illusions we’ve seen from the dead timeline that haven’t been of us have been of other traveling pokemon; the humans couldn’t afford to travel as much as pokemon, and pokemon travellers were even few and far in between.”

Keahi nodded, though any previous response was interrupted as zie peered into the next room they were entering, “oh hey, the stairs! Good job, Nel!”

“Finally,” Damien groaned, “my feet are killing me, and if I see one more damn il-“

The image of an enormous pokemon appeared in front of the stairs. The tall quadruped stood on pointed, golden hooves, and it was coated in a smooth white pelt with a grey underside. A golden cross-like wheel was attached to its body with green jewels on each point that matched their eyes. Their long neck was covered in a flowing mane, which reached up to their head and flowed out back from it, appearing similarly to their long tail.

Though no one in the group had seen this pokemon in person before, a few pieced together their appearance to one of the images they had seen carved into the walls of the Old Ruins to go along with the story of creation.

This was Arceus.

The god of all gods gazed across the group, almost as if they were more than just an illusion. And for a moment, everyone was caught up in the silent and peaceful awe at being able to look back at such a powerful being that even some legendaries would not have seen in centuries.

Suddenly, something struck Arceus in the side. They roared in pain, and even though there was no sound to the illusion like all the illusions were silent, the feeling of what the sound would have been seemed to strike right into one’s heart. Arceus, like a tall and powerful tower, slowly toppled over, and unlike all other illusions, they did not merely fade away as the vision ended. Instead their image seemed to peel away and disintegrate, the individual pieces finally disappearing into the air.

The horror at what had been witnessed gripped the group into silence.

Tsuki moved first, as her eyes lidded shut and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious. Not before brushing against Damien during her fall though; who screamed at the sudden touch, jumping up in shock before immediately slapping his hands over his mouth as his voice echoed in the room.

Fortunately for Damien’s dignity at least, attention was drawn to their fainted friend before anyone could be bothered to focus on his shriek. And fortunately for everyone’s worries, Tsuki woke up and began shakily rising back to her feet just as quickly as she had fallen.

“Are you okay?” Keahi was the first to ask, though the question was surely on most minds, and zie shuffled around Damien to stand in front of the absol as she pulled herself up into a crouch.

“I…” Tsuki breathed heavily, her eyes still not focusing properly. “I don’t know,” she admitted quietly, “what was that? What could have harmed Arceus like that?” she questioned instead, staring blankly out towards where the illusion once was.

“What did you see?” Giratina asked worriedly, unable to have been able to see the illusion.

“Arceus. They were hurt by… something, and it looked bad; only one hit too and it almost looked to defeat them on its own,” Ceebee told them, “do you know what could have damaged them so much?”

Giratina paused, “I… I’m not sure. A legendary or mythical at least. Mortals can fight us legendaries and even win, as you’ve proven, but to beat Arceus in one hit… I’m not sure if I would have ever been capable of doing something like that even.”

All questioning faded out for another moment as everyone considered this answer. Even Giratina sounded nervous as they responded to Ceebee; the idea of something that posed such a threat scaring even a legendary that existed on another dimension didn’t inspire any confidence in anyone either.

“I think… for now at least, the more important question is… did this happen in the past or the future?” Alex pointed out.

His question brought heads that previously looked either towards Tsuki or the rock that Giratina spoke from now turned to the grovyle.

“That’s a good point… Is this a threat that’s already here, or can we prevent it from happening…” Nelvana murmured.

Dusknoir’s gaze hardened, “we need to speak with Dialga. Now.”

Never had anyone in this group found had themselves agreeing with Dusknoir more than they had now.

First [ARC 1]: In which the human is transformed First [ARC 2]: In which a present is prepared Next: In which the god of time is met Previous: In which the land between time is explored

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toukaisbetterthanyou · 7 years

Text

Touken/Tousaki Headcanons in Pokémon au

Sorry if people aren’t familiar with Pokémon but hopefully it’s still understandable!

(1) this au goes back to kuroneki era and both kaneki and touka are young Pokémon trainers

(2) Although kaneki takes very good care of his Pokémon team, they’re all pretty weak and and don’t often participate in battles against other trainers. His mother basically raised him to be a caregiver, not a fighter, and so kaneki can’t defend himself when older kids pick on him for easy wins.

(3) *side hc of kaneki’s beginner team: vulpix, dratini, treecko, and magikarp

(4) Touka on the other hand is one of the toughest trainers in their age group. She hardly loses a battle, and even though she has a reputation of pushing her Pokémon to their max, they stick with her because they’ve been together for a long time and trust her.

(5) *side hc of touka’s beginner team: absol, maril, quilava

(6) Touka is also known for helping weaker trainers when their opponents have an unfair advantage (i.e. hinami and yoriko), and so it doesn’t take long till touka crosses path with kaneki.

(7) Team rocket members try to steal a rare Pokémon that kaneki has (dratini), and he works with touka to win a battle against them that lets him keep his dratini.

(8) Kaneki realizes then that he’ll have to develop some battling skills if he wants to protect his team, and so he begs touka to let him join her on her journey and teach him how to become a better trianer.

(9) Touka refuses. She’s a lone wolf and bringing him along will slow her down and probably get him into problems he shouldn’t be a part of.

(10) Later on though, one of touka’s Pokémon becomes ill and luckily kaneki finds her (honestly he had been following her) and he helps her cure it.

(11) Touka then allows kaneki to accompany her and promises to teach him to battle as long as he attends to her Pokémon when they need it.

(12) At first, touka is tough on kaneki because that’s how she learned to be a trainer, but she eventually softens as she sees how gentle he is with Pokémon and maybe even attracted but would never admit it.

(13) Kaneki also learns about touka’s caring personality when he sees her strong bond with her Pokémon and how much she motivates them to be their best.

(14) Also, kaneki’s vulpix has a crush on touka’s absol

(15) They both become inspired by one another: Kaneki picks up books about battling and Pokémon types to become stronger while Touka takes interest on medical books that kaneki recommends to her. Eventually, this starts touka’s curiosity on Pokémon biology and it’s origin.

(16) *Side hc: along their journey they would meet other TG characters and some of them join them for a certain period of time until they reach their destination.

(17) It’s all going pretty well until kaneki and touka come across really strong team rocket members (ayato and yamori)

(18) *side hc: I definitely see ayato owning a charizard at this stage

(19) They get beaten up badly, but are impressed with kaneki’s team and steal his Pokémon. In the mess of it, they accidentally take kaneki too when he tries to save his team, leaving behind touka and her heavily burned Pokémon.

(20) So kaneki ends up at team rockets base and witnesses his Pokémon team go through excruciating torture as team rocket pumps them up to become stronger. Kaneki goes through intense stress because of his strong bond with his Pokémon and becomes shironeki as in the aogiri arc.

(21) While touka recovers her Pokémon, she gathers strong trainers she and kaneki met along the way to help her save kaneki and his Pokémon.

(22) After this arc is over and they’re finally together again, kaneki decides to disband from touka and form his own gang to become stronger. Just like canon, he doesn’t want touka to be tangled in this mess and have her Pokémon become injured again, and he feels like she’s gained enough knowledge to care for her team if they ever become sick again. Touka is furious but kaneki doesn’t budge and reminds her of her dream and how she shouldn’t through it away.

Timeskip to tousaki now!

(23) Kaneki has the sesame pudding hair (but he didn’t lose his memory) and uses sasaki haise as his “celebrity name” because he is now the Pokémon champion!

(24) *side hc of sasaki’s team: gyarados (can megaevolve), ninetails, sceptile (can megaevolve), dragonite, dusknoir

(25) *extra Pokémon in his pc that he sometimes uses: tyranitar, scolipede, nidoking, steelix, pidgeot, and hydreigon

(26) *side hc that urie, mutsuki, saiko, and shirazu are the elite four and their specialties are poison, grass, fairy, and flying (holy crap I can go on with this side hc but we’re focusing on touken/tousaki now)

(27) Meanwhile, Touka is an assistant training to be a professor because it became her dream to become one when she learned more about biology.

(28) side hc of touka’s team: absol (can megaevolve), lopunny, azumarill, and typhlosion

(29) Sasaki comes back to his old town where he and touka grew up because he wants to patch things up with her.

(30) News spread fast that the champion is in town, but Touka doesn’t hear about it because she’s busy doing research in her laboratory.

(31) Even though sasaki wants to find touka solo, the elite four tags along (kinda annoyingly) and he has no other choice but to bring them along with him to her lab.

(32) Sasaki arrives and surprises touka but she accidentally ruins her experiment from the shock - kaneki is back after not contacting her for 3 years and the elite four are there too

(33) But too soon, the shock turns into anger. First touka gets mad that he made her mess up her research, then about how he never contacted her after he left, and then the elite four being present when they have no business being there.

(34) Sasaki tries to explain to touka that he ran into a lot of trouble with people at the beginning and then he became really busy when he earned the champion title since he had to run the Pokémon league champion and attend interviews/events.

(35) *meanwhile, saiko, urie, and shirazu are entertaining themselves with the Pokémon at the lab while mutsuki listens on the argument between sasaki and touka

(36) Things calm down a bit though when sasaki’s ninetails and touka’s absol have a happy reunion as oppose to their trainers. Sometimes a Pokémon’s actions are reflective of their trainers’ feelings and so they remain silent and watch them interact and play.

(37) “You know… I thought about you a lot,” sasaki says

(38) Touka sighs and admits that she’s seen all of his televised battles and knew that sasaki was kaneki the first time she saw him

(39) Sasaki starts asking questions about her research and that’s when touka gets excited and goes on about what she’s been studying

(41) Mutsuki sees the way that they look at each other and freaks out, so he sets out his venusaur to poison the little Pokémon in touka’s lab and calls her over

(41) “Ummm… Kirishima-san, I think one of the Pokémon has sprayed poison powder and has gotten all of your subjects sick,” acting all innocent

(42) Touka is quick to attend them and sasaki helps too, but decides he should probably come back another day so that he doesn’t continue to screw up touka’s research

(43) She insists that he stays longer though and playfully asks him to battle her, one on one, which gets most of the elite four’s approval.

(44) Touka knows she’s gonna lose anyways, but she just wants to see for herself how much he and his Pokémon have approved and show off her absol’s ability to megaevolve (he gets two wings)

(45) They battle and touka is very impressed as sasaki proves his title as Pokémon champion in their region.

(46) Honestly, I didn’t think much of what happens afterwards haha but that sasaki starts sending his Pokémon to touka to deliver love letters/poems that he writes. Touka always gives them treats as a thank you and sends them back to him with a card of her kiss stain and a little present for one of his Pokémon

Now that I’ve stopped here, I feel like I should’ve been more creative with this but oh well. It’s an au I’ve had for awhile and now I finally decided to share it :) Thanks for creating this blog for touken fans!

mod K:

Oh my god, as one pokemon nerd to another, i just want to say thank you! Thank you for sharing these awesome headcanons!!!

#headcanons #submissions #asks #touken #these were lovely #submission

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