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My body felt like it was being twisted in six different ways. I tumbled through the air, vaguely aware that I had fallen out of Phoenix's grip... and then I smacked into something hard.

I rolled downwards and finally came to a stop on a rough dirt floor. My head hurt, more than made sense from just hitting it against something. I had done that plenty of times, and it had never hurt like this...

My vision had been blurry and overwhelmed with brightness, but it finally started to clear. I saw a large shape moving towards me and jerked away, bumping into the wall next to me. That must have been what I had slammed into.

The shape stopped moving... and a few seconds later my vision got clear enough to recognize him. Phoenix.

We weren't in the cave anymore. We were next to a cliff, the wall of which I had bumped into, and it towered upwards to the sky. I couldn't make out the sky to see if it was day or night, but it was bright all around us. It was a strange, empty brightness, one that seemed to be everywhere and yet coming from nowhere. Nothing was actually casting any light - there were no shadows, and no part of the cave was any brighter or dimmer than any other. The area was simply lit. Somehow.

The brightness seemed to dim suddenly, then the tiny blobs of 'emptiness' seemed to congeal all around us. The ones near Phoenix flowed into him, and when they did his color began to change. The darker green spots on his head and body grew brighter, fading to a light green, then a bright blue. The edges of his wings and the fins of his tail became lighter, turning orange, and the tinted lenses over his eyes followed shortly after. It took maybe half a second, and the Flygon had shifted to a completely different look. There was a soft glow around him that grew subtly brighter, then dimmer... but I didn't have any more time to think about that.

The rest of the light flowed towards me.

I scrambled to get out of the way, but they simply followed any movements I made, and grew faster as they got nearer. They all seemed to be completely focused on me - or rather, on my tails.

Just like before they flowed into my tails, but they remained their now orange-yellow color. There was no pain, no heat, no sensation at all - but it was creepy. I tried to bite at the strange blobs and managed to keep a few of them from getting to my tails, but I quickly realized that was just causing them to absorb into my mouth instead.

I tried to think of a new way to keep the strange things away... but just like that, they were all gone. The strange brightness was gone, along with all the tiny blobs. I was standing at the base of a cliff with Phoenix, in what looked to be late at night - though with the cliff obscuring so much of the sky, it could have been early or late in the day too.

I looked upwards again and thought I could make out something dim in the distance. I squinted...

"What is it?" The familiar fluttering of Phoenix's wings began to fill the air - it was a strange sound, caused by the quick, steady beating of one of his wings and the not-quite-constant rhythm of his bad wing, but it was a familiar one. For some reason it made me feel better to hear. "Where are we?"

"I'm not sure... and... I'm not sure. I don't think that's the most important thing right now though." I shook my head and gave up on making out the sky, instead looking back down around us.

"What's more important than that? We have to get back to Sara and the others; they'll need my help if that Pokemon is still there. Our help." He looked guilty as he added me in, but I didn't mind. We all knew Phoenix had an inflated sense of his strength and ability.

We also knew it wasn't as over-exaggerated as many of the gym challengers had believed. Phoenix _was_strong. If Sara and the others were in danger, getting him to them would help.

But...

"Did you see those lights above us when we were fighting? And how Clara and Opal were reacting?" I glanced down at the ground and frowned. The ground near us was just dirt - with the cliff blocking any sunlight, there wasn't anything growing near it. But a bit farther off there were patches of tough looking grass. I squinted at them. What was...

"I was kind of busy." The Flygon followed my gaze to the grass. He just stared at it blankly.

"I think that Pokemon... Sara's phone used the word 'temporal' for it, which is something to do with time. And time had been messed up everywhere, and Opal was saying something was wrong with the moon." I started walking towards the grass, trying to make out what I was seeing in the air around it. "That other Pokemon that showed up - Celebi - said Dialga was dragging us back in time. I think it was right."

I paused to look back at the Flygon, who had stopped floating forward and was instead just staring at me in shock. "I don't think it's as simple as just walking or flying to wherever the others are. It doesn't matter where we are. We need to figure out when."

The Flygon was silent except for the drone of his wings. I started walking back to the closest clump of grass and stopped when I got to it. "Does this look... weird, I guess? Does the grass here look odd?"

Phoenix hovered closer and leaned down to look at it. "No? It just looks like grass."

I stared at it again. It did look like grass, but there was a strange... it wasn't a glow, exactly, but it did seem to kind of shimmer around the plant. It was an odd not-color like the earlier brightness had been, but it lacked the same empty quality. It seemed to brighten and dim as I watched, an unusual slow pulsing that changed its rhythm just as I was starting to predict its pattern. I brought one of my paws up to touch it, noticing as I did that my paw had a similar glow around it...

The strangeness surrounding the plant seemed to writhe around the grass as if it was in pain and trying to get away. I froze and leaned away from it, trying to understand what had just happened... and the not-glow flowed back around the plant, returning to normal.

"What is it? It's just grass, right?" Phoenix leaned closer and started to sniff the grass. I saw the glow that had formed around him when his color changed suddenly shimmer...

The strangeness writhed again as he got near, growing even more chaotic as it seemed to congeal on the side of the plant as far away from Phoenix as possible. He didn't seem to notice it, though, and kept getting closer...

"STOP!!!"

Phoenix jerked backwards at the sudden shout, and the glow around the grass went back to normal. I looked away from the grass and towards the noise to find the Celebi floating in the air above the grass.

I brightened in excitement. Celebi had seemed to know what was happening before; maybe it could help us now. "Celebi! What happened? Can you bring us to the others?"

The floating Pokemon frowned and looked from Phoenix to me. The blue eyes were blank and confused, and held no recognition in them. "Others...? I don't know what happened, but you're in danger here. I can get you out of here and bring you somewhere safe and we can try and fix this, but it will take a bit - will you trust me?"

I felt Phoenix looking to me for an answer, and I took another look around. I had no idea where we were, or how to get back to where we had been. But the Celebi seemed to have answers, and we really needed answers. I looked back to the floating onion and nodded.

...and just like that, we were somewhere else.

It was suddenly cooler. The night sky was visible, sprinkled with stars and with a small crescent of a moon. Grass was all around us along with a few trees, and a bit in the distance I could make out a rock wall sloping gently upwards. Glancing around revealed the wall surrounded us completely, with a few tunnel entrances in it, and a small stream flowed nearby us.

The Celebi floated above us and seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. "Okay. Okay, good, good, you're safe for now. I need to go for a bit but somebody will be here in two days; they'll explain everything to you then. Everything, I promise. Stay here until then, okay? You're in danger if you leave."

Phoenix was still looking around but jerked at that. "No, we need to get back to Sara; she'll need help!" He frowned and stared hard at the Celebi. "Are you threatening us?"

"No, just trying to explain the situation you're in. It's not me you have to worry about, it's yourselves." The Celebi shook its head. "You can't help her, not yet - she probably doesn't need your help yet either, you have time. Trust me, please."

The Flygon started to speak up again, but I shook my head at him. "I think the Celebi is right. Two days - you'll tell us what's going on then?"

The expression of relief returned to the Celebi, and it nodded. "Two days."

"Okay. We'll wait here until then."

The Celebi sagged in the air in relief... then it vanished.

I looked back down at the grass beneath us. That strangeness surrounded the grass here, too, but it didn't surge away in the places the grass touched Phoenix or myself. That seemed important, even though I didn't understand exactly why - there was some new instinct telling me that this was the way things were supposed to be, and that things were horribly wrong when that strangeness reacted to us.

I took another look around, then back up at the sky. "Okay. Okay, I guess... now we wait for a bit."

The next two days passed quickly. I expected Phoenix to put up more of an argument, or to suggest we go do something just for the sake of doing something, but... for the most part we just slept. When we had time to think about it we found we were both very hungry, so we ate one of the berries growing on the trees. After that we found we were tired so we slept... and then when we woke we were hungry again. We ate another berry, then grew tired again.

We learned later that the berries had that effect at first. It was important for new arrivals to be calm. Nothing happened in those two days anyways.

But finally I woke and saw a new Pokemon sitting on one of the branches of the berry trees. "Hello. Good morning. I haven't seen a Vulpix here before. Have we met?"

I had never seen the Pokemon before - none of the gym challengers had ever had one, and I hadn't ever run into one like it before I met Sara, either. It reminded me a little of the Celebi, but only in the most general sense - it was about the same size and had the same rough shape, but that was it. Its body was covered entirely in what looked like soft, light-blue fur, except for its head. It had a yellow 'mask' of a face that rose above its head in a small dome, and a red jewel rested in the center of its forehead. That gem reminded me of Clara's, though it was much larger - and like Clara it had two tails dangling under the branch it sat on, though unlike Clara's they seemed to be completely separate, like mine were, instead of being tips that branched off a single tail. There was another red gem at the end of each tail, too, and they seemed to gleam in unison regardless of the lighting. It was surrounded by that strange glow... but everything else still was, too, so I wasn't sure if that was part of it or not.

The Pokemon was looking directly at me as I stood up from my nap, but its eyes were firmly closed.

I was quite sure I had never seen the Pokemon before in my life.

"No. I'm Sinori. Celebi brought us here - are you the Pokemon it told us about? We..." I glanced to the side, and only then noticed Phoenix was still asleep. "We don't know what's going on, and Celebi said somebody here would have answers."

The Pokemon smiled down at me from the tree branch. "Yes. I have lots of answers. My name is Uxie." He turned his head towards Phoenix, but didn't look at him - his eyes stayed firmly shut. "Have you been here long?"

"Um... two days. Did Celebi tell you anything?"

"No. It would have been dangerous for you if it had."

I sighed. "That's what Celebi said, that we were in danger! But nobody's told us what is going on; what is this danger? Why are we here, what's happened to us?"

Uxie was quiet for a second, then curled one of his tails around the other. "If you are here, it is because something has brought you back in time. Into your own past. That is dangerous. This place was created to minimize that danger."

I blinked up at him. I had pieced together that Dialga had moved us through time, but... "Why is that dangerous? Dialga was attacking us; why would it need to try and hurt us if bringing us into the past was dange..." I frowned. Had Dialga actually tried to hurt us? It had just defended itself from Phoenix and Constella, and then tried to keep us from leaving, hadn't it? Did it do enough just by bringing us into the past?

What did that mean for Opal?

"Dialga? That's interesting. Usually problems like this come from a clumsy Celebi, or a weak point in time. I doubt Dialga was seriously trying to attack you, though."

I remembered the massive Pokemon's attacks. They had seemed serious enough to me. "Why is that?"

"You still exist." Uxie spoke the words with utter calmness - it wasn't a boast or sarcasm, just a simple fact it was reciting. "If Dialga had wanted to destroy you, it would have. Something else must have happened. That can happen too - if there is too large of a problem with time, it can cause him to... I suppose the closest description would be 'go insane'. He's tied into time itself, so problems with it cause problems with him. It is more likely that happened. But no matter how you got here, you _are_here, now, and that's the problem."

I glared up at the berry tree and gave an exasperated flick of my tails. "But why? Why are we in danger?"

"Hmm." Uxie let out a thoughtful hum, then tilted its head downwards to the branch it was sitting on. "How best to explain it... Let's pretend reality as we know it is this tree. There are the roots under the ground that you can't see, but they're important to the tree. There is the bark of the tree itself; that's something you can see, and touch, and smell, and lick if you wanted to. And then underneath that, running from the roots to every part of the tree, there are tiny little paths that you can't see. Water, food, everything the tree needs from the ground - there's a sort of stream that runs from the roots up to any point on this tree."

Uxie lifted one of its hands and pointed towards the branch above it. "Pretend the outside of the tree is 'space'. It's everything around you right now, everything you can see, or touch, or lick. The physical world as it is right now." A piece of the branch began glowing the same shade of red as Uxie's jewels, highlighting a small ring of it. "Before you were pulled back in time, you were there. The world as you knew it was that part of the tree, and you were that part of the branch. Normally a branch of a tree can grow and do whatever it likes without causing any problems - it grows outwards, away from where it came from. It can curve and twist. It can grow sharp pine needles that poke and hurt other branches, or grow berries, or leaves, or flowers. It can do whatever it wants, because nothing it does will affect the path behind it - no matter where it goes or what it does, there will always be an unbroken stream from the roots to it."

The branch began to bend downwards. I had seen enough examples of psychic moves to understand what was happening - Uxie was bending it with its mind. The branch bent more and more, until I was almost certain it was going to break... but it managed to meet the trunk of the tree before that happened, coming to meet the point right beneath where the branch grew out of the trunk. The red ring moved along the branch, then stopped right where the branch met the trunk. "But now, you are here. And that's the problem. That stream that runs from the roots to the branches; pretend that is time. We all exist because time flows to the moment we currently exist in. But for you, because you're in the past, time has to flow past you to get to you. It has to get past this point on the tree and continue along the branch to get to where you are now. And the problem is that the branch can no longer grow like it had before - if it grows the wrong way it can damage the tree and cut off the flow to it from the roots."

The Uxie tilted its head back towards me, and I felt a sudden burning intensity in the shut eyes. "You are in danger now because you can change what happened in your own past. You can prevent something that had to happen to lead to this moment you now experience. And if you do that..." The end of the branch pushed into the bark of the trunk, right beneath where it grew from, and dug a small furrow right beneath the start of the branch. The entire branch wobbled once...

I watched quietly as the branch fell from the tree, past the Uxie and the other branches. It landed on the ground with a quiet thump, and it lay there.

It was no longer a part of the tree.

No longer part of reality.

"That's why you were brought here. This is a place Celebi and a few others have made for Pokemon like yourself. Displaced, out of your time. We make sure to keep this place isolated from the outside world, so nothing you do here can have any impact on the outside world. You cannot step on a blade of grass and kill a plant that some Pokemon important to your past needed to eat - a stomach ache averted or caused, a little less time before needing to eat something else and thus allowing the food that would be eaten to be available for something else. Time is intricate and flows from events in ways it would take lifetimes to understand. Even something as simple as a conversation could change your past - if Celebi knew you had encountered Dialga, it could change something Celebi would do later. And the time you spend talking to Celebi? That may be taking Celebi away from something it had done in your past. A conversation with another Pokemon. A meal eaten. Any number of tiny things."

"If one of those things was important to how you got here, now, and you change it..." Uxie motioned to the branch lying on the ground.

Uxie went quiet after that. I think he knew I needed a moment to think. He pulled a berry from the branch he was sitting on and munched on it slowly.

I stared up at the sky and tried to think. Phoenix woke up after a bit and started asking Uxie questions too, but they were repeats of what I had asked so I didn't pay much attention. Phoenix took a bit longer to understand the situation, but he did eventually, even if he didn't want to accept it. He asked Uxie how we could have conversations with it if we were in such danger, which led to a rather interesting explanation from Uxie about how it came here once every ten days no matter what, and how it was able to look at the reflection of its own eyes before leaving and seal away any memory of what happened here until it returned. That finally explained why the strange Pokemon kept its eyes shut, at least, but I just listened to the conversation numbly and watched Phoenix. Watched him keep looking off towards the wall around the field that was our new home. Saw the longing in his eyes to zip out past them and go find Sara. Or find Dialga and beat his face in. Anything.

Dialga had destroyed him.

It was impossible. How could anyone live like this? I could clearly see the full length of the small valley I was in. Was this it now? Would this be all Phoenix could exist with? If a step outside ran the risk of erasing him from reality... how long would it take before it drove Phoenix insane? Before he needed to see something else, before he needed to find some way to help Sara? Before he stepped outside anyways, and erased himself?

How long before I did, too?

Wait.

How long did we actually need?

I glanced back towards Uxie when Phoenix paused between questions. "How long do we need to be here? Um... if the danger is in messing with things before... before they lead up to 'now', then... when we get past that point, can we leave again?"

The Uxie looked up from the berry with a smile. "Correct. The closer you get to that point, the harder it will be for you to interfere with something too much. And once you're past it, you'll be safe again."

"Then... how long do we have to wait? We've waited two days already; is it going to be much longer?"

Uxie hesitated. "I... am not sure. There's something different about you that I don't understand. Usually... there's a kind of energy with time travel. The further back in time you go, the more of that energy you will have around you. I can tell when Celebi or another Pokemon moves through time by that 'aura', and can get an idea of how 'far' it went by how strong it is. But you..." The Uxie's head tilted from me to Phoenix. "You have an incredible amount of that energy inside you. And he has practically none at all - if I didn't know you had both come from the same point I would say it was already safe for him. He looks perfectly normal, like he hasn't been pulled through time at all. But if he came from the same time as you then I know that's not true, and he's still at just as much risk." Uxie's head tilted back towards me... and then behind me. "I've heard that the tails of a Vulpix are special, and that mystical energy will build up and be stored in them. Ninetales can use that energy to do things - curses, blessings, things like that. But I think your tails have taken in all the energy that would have been left on your friend. And more than that, too; I think I've only ever seen one Pokemon with as much energy as you have right now, and it was _thousands_of years away from its own time. It still is, actually."

I thought back to the strange blobs of not-light that I had seen. That must have been what that was - the energy of time? Or... at least, the energy of whatever had pulled us back through time. If it was stuck in my tails...

I twisted in place to glance back and look at them.

The strange glow that I had seen around everything else flared into impossible brightness as I twisted and brought my tails into view. I couldn't even see my tails through it - I could see a bit of orange-yellow fur along my back, but then everything was washed out in odd light. It felt like staring up at the sun right after Constella used Sunny Day.

I looked quickly away. My eyes were blurry and filled with spots just from the quick glimpse.

"Can you see it?" Uxie's voice sounded excited for the first time. "That's new - I've only known Celebi and a few Pokemon like myself to be able to see it. It's very strong around you; did it hurt your eyes?" The Pokemon's voice was suddenly closer.

"I... ow..." I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the spots to clear. The odd headache I had felt after the fight with Dialga had faded after the first nap, but it was suddenly back, and felt just as strong. "There's a weird glow around everything... or there has been ever since the fight with Dialga. Is that what it is?"

"That's _very_interesting... with all that energy in you, it must have altered you. Usually it just makes a Pokemon 'shiny' - it's the different color you have now, though there are a few things that can do that - but if you can see it... you said Celebi brought you here, right?"

The headache passed as the spots began to fade. I felt safe opening my eyes again and slowly did so. "Yes, two days ago."

"What were you doing before Celebi showed up?" Uxie was right beside me. His eyes were still tightly closed, but he looked excited - his tails curved up behind him in a perky 'u' shape, and they swayed back and forth with barely contained energy.

I tried to think back to two days ago. "We had just gotten away from Dialga - Celebi had opened a way out for us, and we had gotten out. I saw some grass with the glow around it, and Phoenix was about to touch it, and then Celebi showed up." I lowered my ears in thought, trying to remember. "But... it didn't seem to recognize us."

"It might not have been the same Celebi. If you came from too far in the future, it might have been a descendant of this one. Or it might just not have happened to that Celebi yet. Your past might be its future - so again, it's best not to say anything if you do see it again, since you might change something important; a bunch of us gather here every five years, and I seal our memories after so it should be okay to talk to it then, but you shouldn't if you run into it any other time." The Uxie shook its head, as if realizing it was rambling, and faced back towards me with a growing excitement. "But the grass - you saw the energy around it? Did something happen to it?"

I couldn't imagine Uxie looking any more excited, even if it had been bouncing up and down like Opal and I did when Sara said the word 'treat'. I tried not to smile and thought back instead. It had, hadn't it? "Yes... the brightness was trying to get away from him; it all moved to the other side of the grass."

"You can_see it!" Uxie _did jump then, and it looked back towards Phoenix. "Celebi was drawn to you because you were about to break something important to your past - it felt the same thing you did, and it came to stop it. But if you saw it too, then you can avoid it! You're sensitive to time - you're seeing ripples of it, and you can see things that could disrupt it. You might even be able to control it, like Celebi can!"

"Control it?" I stared at Uxie... then blinked. "Can Celebi control time? Can it get us back to where we came from?"

Uxie hesitated and took a slow breath. "Not... like that. Celebi can move back and forth through time, and sometimes it can take a person or even a place with it, but... there's a limit to how much any one Celebi can move around, and if your history needed it to do it for something else..." Uxie waved towards the branch from earlier. "But there are other things!" The excitement grew again. "Like speeding up or slowing down time, or stopping it, things like that. That could be very useful - if you can do that, you might even be able to leave here safely. You'll be able to keep from causing the problems that would prevent your existence."

_That_got my attention. If I could keep Phoenix safe so he could leave, then maybe things wouldn't be so bad. Maybe we could survive long enough to get back to where we needed to be.

I had another thought. Maybe we could even find a way to change things - something subtle enough that it wouldn't break the 'branch' we were on.

And then I had an even darker thought.

If things got too bad for Phoenix... maybe it would be worth erasing the branch we were on, if it meant it was avoided. If the branch broke at just the right point... trees regrow. A snip right before Dialga sent us back in time, and then the 'branch' could grow in a new way. It wouldn't be me... I was already past that point, and so was Phoenix... but... it would be some form of me. Some form of Phoenix. And Opal, and Clara, and Constella, and Sonata. And Sara.

Their life would be able to go on, even if something happened to us. I would have to look into that possibility - carefully.

I looked back up at the Uxie and hoped he wasn't aware of what I had just considered. I was pretty sure he was a psychic type, and that was a danger with them. "Can you show me how to do those things? How to affect time?"

Uxie shot into the air and did a loop, looking thrilled. "I'd love to! I haven't been able to do that since... oh, it's been ages; the Celebi all just teach themselves now. Come with me, come with me! There's an area here that we can use for practice."

The Uxie started floating towards one of the tunnels cut into the wall. I glanced back to Phoenix, but he just gave a confused shrug. I hopped after and caught up to the Uxie and followed him towards the wall and into the tunnel.

"...a lot of it comes down to familiarity. You have to know_the thing you're manipulating. It might be a good idea to have your Flygon friend make an hourglass out of things here, because those are _great to practice with. Sand is easy to learn about, since it's predictable and feels the same and behaves the same. You can slow down or speed up time for it once you get an idea of how sand behaves. What it 'wants' to do; you hold it and it tries to slip from your paw. Gets wet and turns to mud. Once you understand that, you can... um... hrm, how to explain it."

The Uxie ducked into the tunnel entrance and kept floating along. The inside was lit by a strange blue light that came from somewhere out of sight beyond a few bends.

"Have you ever thrown a berry back and forth? Have somebody throw it, and then you catch it and throw it ba... oh, you probably can't throw very well. But do you understand that? Imagine time is like a whole bunch of berries rolling down a hill; there's thousands of them and they're all rolling down at the same rate. That's the flow of time for most things; if you don't do anything, the berries keep rolling downhill at the same rate as all the other berries. But if you understand the thing you're affecting, then you can pick up that berry and toss it around. You can throw it to somebody further down the hill - it still has to go down the hill, and it gets to the same place on the hill as all the other berries, but as far as it's concerned it gets there a loooot faster than the other berries. That's really easy to do, and probably the first thing you'll learn."

We turned another bend in the tunnel and the blue light grew brighter, though I still couldn't make it out. I only paid a little attention to the Uxie's words - I was pretty sure he was going to have to repeat all this several times before I understood what he was talking about.

"That's important, too; it takes two to stretch time like that - though the same Pokemon can be both of them. If you want to push something along faster, you can throw it right now... but then when it's time for it to 'land', when it's time to slow back down and roll down the hill at the same rate as all the other berries, somebody has to catch it and do that part. Slow it down, just like you sped it up. But that can be you, too; you can speed it up now and then come back and slow it down later. Toss it and catch it; just as long as somebody catches it. Part of manipulating time is reaching to the Pokemon on the other side and working it out with them - getting the feel for how slowly or quickly time will pass, and for how long it will last to the outside world. It might be me an hour from now, or yourself, or... hey, what's wrong?"

I stood in complete shock and stared at the source of the blue light as I came around the turn.

The tunnel opened up into a small room. There were a few berries scattered around it, and what looked to be an extremely slow waterfall of sand on one side - though the sand was actually traveling up, not down - but at the far wall, surrounded by a clear crystal rock of some kind, was an Umbreon.

No.

Opal!

His rings had turned from their yellow shade to a blue color, and he looked much, much older than I remembered... but... it was him!

I felt a sudden relief. I wasn't alone. This wasn't all on me, it wasn't just me and Phoenix; I didn't have to figure this out all on my own. I hadn't even realized how much that weight had been building on me, how much the pressure of keeping myself and Phoenix safe and getting us back to the right moment in time had started to sink in... but Opal was here too. That's right, wasn't it? He had left after us - and time had been going in reverse when we were fighting Dialga. Since he had left after we did, it meant he had gotten here sometime before we did. He would have had time to figure out what was going on, maybe even already had a plan! Though... why wasn't he moving? And why was that strange glow so brilliant around him?

"Oh... do you know him?" The sudden sadness in Uxie's voice was like freezing water on my sudden hopes. No. No, don't...

"He's been here a very long time. A Celebi came with him and got to know him enough to affect time for him, but... it couldn't do anything else to help him. That Celebi grew old and eventually died; it was so far away it wasn't strong enough to get back home. This Umbreon has been here ever since... for as long as I can remember. That Celebi stretched time for him - found somebody to catch him on the other end, somebody closer to the time he came from - and he's been kept safe here ever since. I've tried catching him myself a few times, but I don't know him well enough to be able to. Whoever Celebi connected with... that moment hasn't happened yet. There's probably only been a few seconds that have passed as far as that Umbreon knows, but..."

Uxie looked back at Phoenix, but I didn't need to hear it. Phoenix couldn't see the strange glow around Opal. Couldn't see how bright it was, couldn't know what it meant... but I could piece it together. I closed my eyes and sank slowly to the ground, already knowing what Uxie was going to say. It was obvious from that strange brightness radiating beneath the blue light of his rings. Almost as bright as my own tails had seemed when I looked at them. The same brightness Uxie claimed he had only ever seen once, caused by traveling so far back in time.

"Wherever this Umbreon came from is still thousands of years in the future."

The older form of Sinori closed her eyes.

The _much_older form of Sinori.

The younger Vulpix drooped her ears and tails, but she didn't interrupt. The Froslass floated nearby just as silent as ever. She had already heard that story... but it never got any easier to hear.

Finally the ancient Ninetales began speaking once more. "It took a while, but I learned how to do it. Do this." One of her tails curved upwards to give a halfhearted wave towards the wisps. "Stretch time, condense it. Stop it. Pause the instant between moments like I've done now, and stretch it out for hours. Or take hours, days, months, years, even longer, and make them all pass by in seconds. Eons to instants. Instants to eons." She opened her eyes to look sadly at the empty body of the blue-green Flygon. "It took a while with Phoenix. At first I could just compress a few hours into a second for him, and it would take me a week or two to recover enough to alter time for him again. But I got better, and soon he was skipping past time right beside Opal. Flygons don't live long enough, you see. He would have been dead long, long ago if I hadn't." She closed her eyes again, and the slowly flickering wisp sputtered suddenly, as if running out of fuel, before catching again and growing steady.

"Sometimes I would venture out, being careful not to cause any problems, but that sounds so much easier than it actually was. As little as a mention of me could change things - somebody changing their day to try and get a glimpse of me, or to avoid places they thought I might go. With so much time... even a tiny ripple could cause drastic changes a hundred years later. And back then I didn't understand enough to manage the changes. It was only safe to come out when there were disasters - something sudden and complete enough to destroy any witness of my existence without even the chance to mention me to anyone else. Like when I met Phoenix's father. That... was hard. So for the most part I lived in that valley, away from the rest of the world. A day or two slowing Phoenix back down into the normal flow of time and recovering from that effort, then pushing him ahead again. Him and Opal unmoving in that cave for decades. Centuries. Uxie would sometimes come by and teach me things, or the Celebi, but... they always forgot me after. They had to. As soon as they stepped out of the valley, anything I had done for them was gone as completely as if it had never happened. They would remember me the next time they came back - Uxie would unseal their memories, and they would remember everything once more - but... nothing I said or did made any difference to them outside of that. They couldn't come back and tell me what was going on in the outside world, or how things had changed for them, or even just to say hello."

"I was alone."

"Year, after year, after year... I evolved at some point. No fire stone, like trainers use. One day I was a Vulpix, the next I woke up a Ninetales. A thousand years old, if the legends are right. 'A Vulpix that has lived for a thousand years...'"

"But a Ninetales can still live for another thousand years after she evolves. And one with the energy of time in them like I have..."

The younger Sinori closed her eyes and lowered her head. "How long?"

The Ninetales smiled, a sad expression. "I don't know. There were no calendars back then - or at least, none I could get to. But... some time after I evolved, I became aware of another Vulpix who was born, and then evolved naturally into a Ninetales. Then I became aware of another Vulpix that was born after that Ninetales evolved, and who grew into a Ninetales too. Then one more after that. At least four thousand years, perhaps five, from the day I met Uxie until this very moment."

Silence fell for again. The flickering wisp sputtered again... then faded, joining the other seven wisps in giving off a dim, wan light. The older Ninetales saw that and turned to the final wisp still bright in the otherwise dark cave.

"I found Clara and Constella when they finally came out of the fight with Dialga... and they joined Opal and Phoenix in the cave. And more time passed, until I learned enough about manipulating time to change things. Those were the options that I had realized so long ago - wait and do nothing, let you be sent back in time just like I was, and pick life back up after like nothing had ever happened... or change things enough that it wouldn't happen to you."

"I eventually decided I wouldn't let that happen to you. Even if..."

The Ninetales glanced slowly back at the Froslass. "But I couldn't just abandon my friends to be erased, either. At some point I learned from Uxie that a ghost could catch spirits from a doomed reality, merge them back together with their counterparts, so long as they were both there in that same moment. So when she was driven from here, after Sara and John defeated her, I found the Froslass. At first I thought I could just get her help after, but I learned where she was chased away from, and realized what it had meant. There are places that are 'weak' to time, places that have guardians. Like the cliff I arrived at, which Celebi guarded. Or the bottom of a particular lake that a Dragonair guards. Those were the places we landed when we escaped Dialga, and this is one of them. Froslass lives here to guard this place, and she keeps it safe, to keep things from being lost in time. Weak spots mean that can happen. It's also why Dialga came here; it's easier for him to arrive at a weak place in time. So I came back to this place with her, and we prepared for the day you would come here and fight Dia-"

"No, no, you can't just..." The Froslass shook her head and interrupted the Ninetales. "You can't just skip over everything."

The Ninetales looked annoyed. "Why not?" She glanced towards the sleeping Ledian. "Constella did, and you didn't have any problem there. You heard her story; she didn't even talk about how their life was different. Her whole story took place before I showed up."

"Yes, but... errr... how to put this... she... wasn't very concerned with the details; her spirits were resonating just from hearing herself talk." The Froslass motioned towards the Vulpix with one arm. "You aren't like that; you're more complicated."

The Ninetales narrowed her eyes a little. "Wait... are you calling Constella 'simple'...?"

The Froslass threw up her arms. "Can we please focus? What you're doing isn't going to work, Sinori. You both have to understand each other, have to know each other. You can't just say you lived a long time alone; she has to _understand_it. You can't just skip to the end. You have to tell her what got you there."

The Ninetales glanced around at the floating wisps, then back at the one still burning brightly. "There isn't much more time. I can't stretch this instant much longer. And... what would I say? How do I explain what that was like? How could I possibly tell her in a few moments what thousands of years of life is like?"

"You have_to." The Froslass looked towards the other five empty Pokemon, then gestured towards the five sleeping Pokemon besides them. "Or else I _can't save you."

The Ninetales stared back at the Froslass with wide, empty eyes. The Froslass had the strange thought that the ancient Pokemon was suddenly angry, suddenly frustrated, and suddenly about to say something in sheer determination... but a wall seemed to hold in place somewhere inside the ancient Ninetales, and it passed just as quickly as she saw it. It was gone, and now the Ninetales stared back at her with a simple sad calmness. "Hmm. Well... I suppose this story might help. It's about making a wish..."