HOME | DD

Description
”Just try to stop me!”

This work also comes with a short story. It contains major spoilers for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky and mild spoilers for Blue Rescue Team, along with all related games. Proceed at your own risk!

The story is designed to stand alone, so no familiarity with any of my other fiction is required!

However, it is long, so feel free to skip it if you would like. There are some notes after the final tilde.

Background music:

I recommend listening to these two beautiful songs by the excellent 17th century composer Henry Purcell. These are sung beautifully by soprano Nancy Argenta, accompanied by Nicholas Robinson, Richard Boothby, Nigel North and John Toll:

The Plaint: O let me weep

O Solitude!

~

The fire crackled softly, throwing light onto the walls of the cavern. The pattern of the flames was almost mesmerising. They played and interwove in an intricate dance. Holes of darkness would creep through the light. And, every so often, a piece of ash would break off the tinder, breaking apart in a spray of sparks. Otherwise, the cave was perfectly silent.

Grovyle held his hands towards the fire. The air was fantastically cold. He had hoped that it would be warmer deeper inside the cave, but that was only slightly true. Fragments of ice glittered on the edges of his vision, and his breath formed delicate wisps of vapour in front of him. But the spot would do. The cave was mostly dry, and it showed no sign of habitation. He could rest here safe in the knowledge that he would not be discovered. And he could could prepare himself for the morning’s task.

Azelf.

Slowly, he felt his muscles began to relax. The last thing he wanted to do was rest. There was so much at stake, so much to do. And dedicating himself to every task at hand meant that he didn’t need to think about what was happening to him. He could escape from the horrible grief that clawed at him, and from the terrible tiredness that threatened to eat away at him if he stopped. But he had forced himself to stop. He needed sleep, and to be as well rested as possible before he tried to take the Time Gear.

As he watched the flames, he felt the tiredness come over him. The last few days had been extremely difficult, and there had been almost no time to stop. Ever since he had escaped Dusknoir, he had been on the move. He had to stay a step ahead, he had to outwit him whatever the cost. He had escaped to the past, but even then he had been forced to keep moving. He had to collect the Time Gears and return them to Temporal Tower. And he had to do it as soon as possible. Before anything else went wrong.

A muscle in his right leg briefly spasmed. He shifted position.

It had been a hard day. He had woken before dawn, having come to his decision during the night. He couldn’t stay in Sharpedo Bluff any longer. It was ... too difficult. And the team would work faster if they separated. He was by far the strongest Pokémon of the three, so it made sense for him to recover the Time Gears. He doubted that Luke or the Meowth would be able to tackle even one of the Lake Guardians, let alone all three.

He had tersely let the two Pokémon know of his decision, and to tell them what they needed to do. And then he had left as quickly as he could. It had felt good to be on the move again, to be away from the team. For a while, he could pretend that he had never found Luke. That, somewhere out there, his partner was working on the same task that he was, and that he might at any moment come across him again. That he might reach one of the lakes to see a human standing there, smiling cheerfully, a Time Gear in his hands.

...

The blue light of the tunnel. Acceptance of his fate. Dusknoir grinning, victorious.

And the idiotic Pikachu butting in.

“Well, this is Luke right here!”

Disbelief. And yet I know it to be true. All my hope gone in an instant. Defeat.

...

He wouldn’t see Luke, of course. He was still a Pikachu, still back at Treasure Town. But the fake hope gave him the strength to keep going.

The journey had been far longer than his previous trips. Dusknoir had been thorough in spreading news about him. Word of the villainous Grovyle seemed to be everywhere. He could no longer travel on the roads for fear of being accosted. He didn’t fear attack; he was far stronger than almost any Pokémon he would encounter. But he couldn’t risk the delay. And he needed to travel unnoticed. If Dusknoir returned, as he surely would, he couldn’t let the Pokémon have any information about his whereabouts. If he kept unseen, there was hope that Dusknoir wouldn’t be able to prevent him from collecting the Time Gears.

It was much slower and significantly harder travelling off the roads. He was unfamiliar with the terrain, and often had to make long detours to cross a river or avoid an unexpected chasm. Worse, he had to be always on the lookout for the entrances to Mystery Dungeons. The last thing he needed would be to find himself trapped in location that turned back on itself, unable to make any progress. He had learned that the hard way on his first journey, and had since managed to learn to faintly detect the very slight twisting of space around the dungeon entrances. But it was hard, and he wasn’t always successful. Even today, there had been near misses. Thankfully, though, most of the route was forested. He travelled high among the trees where he could, knowing that he would be a less visible target to any Pokémon that might be in the area. But still progress was slow, and the hours of forging through dense woodland only to double back past a previously unseen obstacle were tiring, both mentally and physically.

And he knew that, at the end of the journey, he would have to face the Lake Guardians. He knew the three legendaries would have placed much better guards on the Time Gears after his first successful thefts.

His first target was a lake deep in the heart of a mountain. He could have made his way to the lake through the standard entrance off the road, but he didn’t trust it to be unguarded. He couldn’t underestimate the Lake Guardians again. Instead, he made for the same entrance he had used in his first journey. It had been a stroke of luck that he had detected the second entrance that first time. A crevasse had opened up the mountain side, forced open by the pressure of the ice.

But the entrance was high up the mountain and the climb was no easier the second time around. The light had begun to fail even as he was approaching the entrance. He desperately wanted to push onwards, to make his way to the Time Gear. But he knew that wasn’t wise. He would never forgive himself if he let tiredness cloud his judgement or, in his weakened state, if he allowed the Time Gear to slip away from him yet again. So he had stopped in a small cave a little lower down. The cave was deep enough that it afforded shelter from the wind and snow, and it was only a short distance from his goal. He had forced himself to rest, so that he could recover.

And so that he could plan.

He knew that he had to face Azelf first. The Pokémon had outwitted him not once, but twice. The wall of ice had caught him off-guard the first time. The other guardians had been trivial, and it was with a cold satisfaction that he dispatched them quickly. He had gone to Azelf expecting another easy victory. That was foolish, and he had paid the price. When it was on the verge of defeat, Azelf had frozen the surface on the lake that contained the Time Gear, sealing it away from him. He had been furious. The final Time Gear was in his grasp – and the stupid Pokémon was only putting more barriers in the way.

He should have spent his energy on getting to the Gear, of course. Looking back on the event, he could easily have tunnelled through the ice and teleported away as soon as he had located it. But his desperation had blinded him to easier choices. All he knew was that Azelf was preventing him from reaching his goal, and that Azelf would also be able to take the down the barrier. He had started to try and force the Pokémon to give him access.

And then, to make matters worse, a rescue team had appeared. A foolish young team at that, determined to place yet another barrier in his way. Another obstacle for him to overcome. He had had to deal with them ...

...

Frustration. Desperation. The ice burning my feet.

“Just try to stop me!”

A single swipe. The foolish upstarts thrown aside. The Meowth barely standing. Its Pikachu crumpled on the ground.

...

The memory was intense. He could feel the rage coursing through him, his satisfaction that the Pikachu was incapacitated. He remembered the sober knowledge that he might have to seriously wound the two Pokémon to get at the Time Gear. And Luke, his precious Luke, lying half-dead in front of him. With wounds caused by his own hand.

What have I become?

The guilt was a constant presence that gnawed at him. But there was too much wrong, and he had cried too many tears. There was nothing to be gained from brooding on the event. He accepted what he had done, even if he desperately wished that he had behaved differently. He hadn’t known Luke’s identity at the time. And he had needed the Time Gears. If he had collected them then, instead of being delayed, he might have been able to outwit Dusknoir and stop the Paralysis before any more harm was done.

And I might never have seen Luke again.

He kept the image of the Pikachu in his mind. It looked almost pitiful to him, a small, weak and ragged thing. He had seen it work with the Meowth it travelled with. Its attacks did little damage and were mostly ineffective. It was absentminded and hurt easily. The Meowth, on the other hand, was hardy and strong, albeit it lacking in self-confidence. The Pikachu relied heavily on the Meowth to pull it through difficult situations.

It seemed so strange at first to think that this could possibly be Luke at all. Luke was such a strong, powerful member of the team, first as a Pokémon and then as a human. He had always had a head for good strategy, and was able to easily take down Pokémon that others would have been to afraid to approach. And Luke had guided him, helped him every step of the way. He had helped set up their own rescue team, guided him when he had had doubts about his own ability. And he had defied Gardevoir, returning as a human even after she had tried to take him away. Luke was brilliant.

He was desperately worried. He wasn’t sure how Luke had been transformed back into a Pokémon, but his nature now was entirely different. He was clearly having great difficulty adjusting to his new body, so much so that he was much weaker than he ought to be. And the combination of his weakness and his lack of memory was taking its toll on his mind. Even out of battle, the Pokémon was strangely silent. It seemed to be spending a lot of time deep in thought. The Meowth drove events, planned and tried to solve the problems the team was faced with. The Pikachu brooded.

He wanted desperately to talk to him. He had tried to do so already. But it had become clear that, in spite of some of the memories that were already starting to bleed through, Luke remembered nothing whatsoever of him. Of all the things Luke could have remembered, he was forgotten. All of their time together, everything they had shared, all of it had been wiped away in an instant. Back in Luke’s presence, he had been more lonely than he had been without him. For he was reminded every time he saw the Pikachu about the damage that had been done to him, and how entirely helpless he was to do anything to aid him.

He missed Luke terribly.

When he had arrived at the cave, as he habitually did, he looked through his team bag and found a small bundle of cloth. It was once a bright fuchsia, but had now dulled with age to a ruddy pink. He had unwrapped it gingerly and delicately arrayed its contents next to him. He made great care to ensure that none of the shards were lost. The pieces were sharp, and he had cut himself on the edges several times previously.

The Orb was now his only link to the past.

Back across the sea, his own rescue team was working hard to prepare the continent for the effects of the Paralysis should he and Luke fail. Among them was a Latias, Laura, a fantastic Pokémon. She was one of the cleverest beings he had ever met, although she was prone to intense rage and a limited view of the consequences of her actions. He hoped the team was dealing with her well. The Latias had made many interesting devices and equipment for the team. This included many different varieties of Orb with diverse abilities. One of the first Orbs she had made had been a gift to him. The Latias had seen how distressed he was when Gardevoir took Luke away, and how overjoyed he had been when he had returned as a human. So she had made him a way to store his happy memories in something tangible.

She had called it a Memory Orb. When he touched it, he could write anything he could remember into its structure or replay any memory that was already imprinted. It was ... not so much a recording of events, of sights and sounds, but something somewhat better. It recorded the user’s state of mind during the events they remembered, how they perceived what was going on and what they thought at the time. All of this was present when the event was relived through the Orb, but the user remained detached, able to feel its old reaction to events while being able to respond to the memory in their current state simultaneously.

He had kept the Orb with him ever since, and recorded many memories in it. They were frequently of Luke, and of the many wonderful events they had shared. The Orb had a vast capacity for storage. It was a wonderful reminder of everything he and Luke and gone through, and of the great things they were capable of. Back then, it had been an almost sentimental, though very important, possession. Now, though, when he needed it most, it was almost entirely useless.

When Celebi had sent him and Luke back into the past for the first time, something had interrupted the process. He had felt a strong and jarring distortion, and the two Pokémon had been thrown apart. Luke had, apparently, been washed up on the beach in Treasure Town. He, on the other hand, had found himself several meters aloft above a forest canopy. He had reacted almost immediately to the situation and grasped at foliage as he fell. He had managed to stop his fall, but he wasn’t fast enough to also save his team bag. It had fallen from him during those first few seconds, and it was too far away for him to reach by the time he had taken hold of the tree. The bag had fallen many tens of meters before he lost it in the forest undergrowth.

After some significant searching, he had managed to find it again. The vast majority of the contents were damaged beyond repair, including most of his supplies. At least his team badge had survived the fall mostly undamaged. He had been thankful then that most of the more delicate items had been in Luke’s bag. However, that bag was lost even now, so many of Laura’s devices had still not been recovered. One of the casualties of that fall had been the Memory Orb. It had born the brunt of the impact and shattered almost in two. One half was mostly in tact, but the rest was a bundle of loose fragments. He had tried to recover as many of the fragments as he could, but he felt sure that some of them were still lost amongst the plants on that faraway forest floor.

He had discovered quickly that the Orb stored each memory not at small individual locations inside itself, but instead spread the information throughout its entire structure. With the device shattered, almost all of the memory information had been disrupted. Most of the memories had either been entirely destroyed or so damaged that it was almost impossible to make any coherent sense of them. A precious few memories had survived in pieces, separated by bursts of static. And very few of those memories were events of any significance.

But it was the only real reminder he had. His team bag was like any other. Lucario were common here, so his team badge held no significance. Besides the Orb, he would look like any other member of one of the exploration teams in this continent. And, with Luke damaged, he was the only one left who had the knowledge needed to stop the Paralysis. If he failed, for whatever reason, he felt certain that Luke wouldn’t be able to stop the destruction of Temporal Tower. Events would proceed to their inevitable end just as if he and Luke had not interfered. The Tower would collapse. Wigglytuff’s Guild would fail. And the Paralysis would spread over the planet, eventually engulfing his own home.

It would be easier if there was someone he could talk to, someone who knew the things that he knew, who had seen the things that he had seen. But he was the only one who remembered the desolate time in the ruins at the heart of Paralysis, searching for its source and trying unsuccessfully to pit himself against Dialga. He was the only one who remembered Rangers. And being with Luke only reminded him of all that he had lost.

He felt a desperate stab of loneliness.

He wished that he and Luke and come to a ... different decision about the Pokémon the human had taken with him. When he had returned as a human, Luke had arrived with several Pokémon, stored in unusual human devices which he referred to as Poké Balls. The Pokémon were strong and capable, and were of species that were poorly represented in the rescue team. When he and Luke had left for the source of the Paralysis, Luke had taken all but one of his Pokémon with him. He had left Chansey behind to help the remainder of the team deal with any casualties that might arise from the slow spread of the region of halted time. The remaining Pokémon had been a real aid in traversing the ruined continent. And they had been great company.

He especially missed Luke’s Tyranitar. The Pokémon was always in high spirits, even when things seemed bleak. He without fail managed to lift the spirits of the team and constantly reminded them of the difficult challenges that they had faced and defeated previously. Even in the darkness around Temporal Tower, he had refused to be gloomy. He imagined that, if the Pokémon were here now, he would laugh at his own silly brooding and start telling stories of the things he had faced with Luke in the human world.

But there were no stories any more. There was no-one left to talk to. The Tyranitar was gone, along with all of Luke’s Pokémon.

He had tried for weeks to fix the Orb, but without any success. He had tried reassembling it, but the information needed the fragments to not just be touching, but to be bound together. No adhesive he could construct allowed the various parts of the Orb to connect in the right way. And he lacked the necessary knowledge to allow the rock making up the Orb to grow and knit itself back together. He noticed, with some chagrin, that that was something Luke’s Tyranitar would have been able to do with ease.

He had tried everything he could think of. But his work only made things worse. Pieces broke off the brittle parts of the Orb, destroying even more information. He had decided, during his first trip to collect the Time Gears, that any further work would be dangerous. There was no way he could fix the Orb himself, and he trusted no other Pokémon with the information it contained. He hadn’t even shown the Orb to Luke. It would only confuse matters now. But he kept it with him for the memories it contained, and in the slim hope that, somehow, he might think of some method he could use to make it whole again.

He moved his head and stared at the Orb. The silence in the cave was almost deafening, giving form to the intense loneliness he felt. If he could only find a way to mend the Orb, perhaps the encouragement the memories within it would offer him would give him the strength to come up with a new strategy against Azelf.

He paused, then reached out and carefully took the base of the part of the Orb that was still mostly in tact.

And he connected with it. There was a strange feeling of being disembodied, of floating in a timeless, formless space. He thought for a moment, and then directed the Orb to show him a memory entirely at random. The first few events yielded only static, and visions of worlds as if through the surface of a pond. And then he found a memory that was largely undamaged.

He felt the past reach out to engulf him ...

...

...managed it! The hardest part of the phrase was over, and he had been able to sing it as well as he could ever remember. He felt a brief smile come over his face. But there still much to think about. That had been by far the hardest part of the song for him technically, but there was much more to come that was still very difficult.

He tried not to let the pleasure distract him. He focused all of his attention on everything that Luke had told him. There was much to think about. He kept his posture straight and open. He made sure that his breathing was deep and unhurried. He was careful to ensure that his words were clear and undistorted. And, through all of this, he tried to make sure that he remembered the music, its words and phrases.

His brow furrowed in concentration.

Luke was half-lying on the stone paving within the team base, watching him intently. It was ...

... hard to read him – he still wasn’t used to Luke’s human form. Beside him sat an instrument the two of them had made. It was small, fashioned from wood in the shape like a large half-seed with a long arm extending from it. Strings stretched down the arm over a hole in the centre of the main bulk which resonated when the strings were plucked.

A difficult run of fast notes took over his attention. He performed it flawlessly.

He had been practising this song by himself for days. Ever since Luke had heard about Sebastian’s attempts to teach him music when the human was still absent from Pokémon Square, Luke had been desperate to teach him. He was an accomplished singer, apparently one who had performed quite a number of times in his old life on the human continent. He loved music, and he was pleased that his partner had been starting to learn of his own accord.

It had been very hard at first. He was extremely unsure of himself. He had never used his singing voice in any kind of serious way, and he felt certain that there was no hope of him ever producing something he would be happy with. But Luke had kept encouraging him, insisting that his voice was a diamond, albeit it rough and unpolished. But he could take it and, with work, polish it and make it beautiful.

He was amazed at what he had achieved in a short time. He was very happy with how his voice was developing, and Luke was starting to teach him some of the more difficult human songs. Luke had promised to accompany him in a recital when he felt he was ready. And he knew most of Pokémon Square would attend to hear him. He was making good progress, and he felt sure that he would be able to perform in public very soon.

Luke had closed his eyes in thought.

He reached the last few phrases of the song. He lingered slightly on the mournful phrases as Luke had told him, drawing out the dissonance and sadness in the lines. He held the final note, watching Luke the entire time, and then gently let the note go.

Luke kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, and then opened them. The human smiled warmly at him, and then applauded softly. Luke stood slowly, and approached him.

“The was really wonderful, Stan. You’ve done so well to prepare that song. It’s one of the hardest I know. You’re doing wonderfully, as I knew you would!”

Luke stopped in front of him, then gently placed one hand on his shoulder. The other rested lightly on the back of his neck, on the right side. Luke looked him in the eye, and tenderly used the hard to tilt his partner's head forward and slightly to the left.

“Don’t forget to remember the location of your head. You’re still tilting it a little to the right. It’s easier to breathe if you have a single, straight channel from your mouth to your lungs. And it’s best to avoid habits that cause your body to tense now rather than later. It’s much harder to unlearn bad habits than it is to learn good ones!”

Luke kept his hands where there were for a few seconds, then stepped back.

His hopes felt dashed. He had done the very best he could, the best he had ever managed, and Luke still managed to find a fault. There was so much to remember. He couldn’t hope to live up to the amazing example of his partner.

Luke must have seen the sadness in his eyes, for he reacted immediately.

“Don’t think for a moment that I am not impressed. That was one of the most accomplished performances of that song I have ever heard. And your posture is so much better now that you are thinking about it! I know you will get it perfect soon! You are so very close to getting everything perfect! You are definitely ready to perform this song if you would like to.”

Luke put a hand back on his partner's shoulder.

“But there is still one more thing I want to talk to you about. It’s something I haven’t mentioned before, because it is something that is only relevant now.”

Luke gestured, and the two team members sat on the bedding area. The stones felt cold to the touch, likely because of the proximity of the water that swirled around its base. Luke adored the team base, even in his human form, and frequently swam in the waters the surrounded it. He was thankful that the base had been built on a large scale so that few modifications had needed to be made to allow a human to live there.

Luke looked at him intently.

“Your technique is now almost flawless. Better than mine, in fact!”

Luke laughed, the happy sound ringing off the stone walls of the base. He found himself smiling.

“But there is one thing now that you must always remember. Keep working on your technique in everything you do, for it is easy to forget. But never, ever lose sight of this.

“Everything you perform is music.

“With the best technique in the world, you could only impress listeners. You can’t move them. To do that, you need to put your very soul into the music. You have to embody the song, use your own emotions to convey the mood the song is trying to express. You have to believe what you are singing about. Or else it is only a series of notes. It isn’t an act of communication.”

“But there is so much to think about ...”

“Then think less! Focus for now on the music, on the emotion. I will guide you if I think your technique is suffering. And it might. But I need you to find your emotional connection to the music. You had that in the very beginning! It is not uncommon for singers to lose the insight that they are performing music. It can become work so very easily, and the impressive technique and skill gets in the way.”

Luke looked far away for a second.

“Let me show you what I mean.”

Luke smiled at him, then opened his mouth and took a breath. He started the first phrase of the song. And the music ech–

*Static*

“– about what he is saying. He has just lost –”

*Static*

“–you see?”

Luke looked at him questioningly.

“I ... will try.”

Luke smiled.

“And you will do brilliantly! I know it! Tell you what ...”

Luke picked up the instrument.

“Let me play along with you. It is easier to lose yourself to the emotion where you can hear the full colour of the song.”

Luke played a chord and held it, repeating the notes to give the chord the appearance of being static. The bright, crisp notes of the instrument filled the team base. He was filled with an intense sadness. He thought of what Luke had told him, trying to place himself in the position of the weeping, hopeless lover. It was difficult.

He thought back, back to the time when Luke had been gone. He picked an old memory of the intense despair he had felt at the time. And then he sang.

And the whole base resonated with the sadness.

Luke smiled, ecstatic, thrilled at the emotion that was quickly being put into the music. And still he sang, losing himself in the bleakness of the words and–

*Static*

“–one of the most wond–”

*Static*

–then Luke hugged him, warmly. The human held on to him for a long time.

“I’m so proud of you. You’re doing so brilliantly. Next time, I’ll write out some duets. I’d love for us to sing together, and for others to hear us. You are a wonderful singer, Stan.”

And he warmly hugged the human back.

...

The silence of the cave was almost tangible. He felt trapped, drowning under the depths of an ocean. In front of him, the fire crackled softly. He was staring at the Orb, his limbs locked motionless.

Why did the Orb show me this?

He hadn’t seen that memory since he had recorded it all those years ago. He had ... forgotten so much already. The concert had never happened, although he and Luke and sung together, both in Pokémon Square and on their journey to Temporal Tower. Before the two of them could perform, Xatu had detected the Paralysis in the movements of the sun. And then all of their efforts had gone into finding its source, and determining the strategy for dealing with it. There hadn’t been time for ... other things.

It had been so long since he had last sung.

He looked at the Orb. He desperately wanted to go into its depths again, to search through the past. It had been ... wonderful to see Luke again, the real Luke. And there was more of him in there, more memories that he could search through.

But the Orb had only increased his loneliness, not diminished it. He felt a keener sense of loss having seen his partner at his height, and he could not help but think about him trapped in the body of a Pikachu, slowly losing his mind.

The silence of the cave smothered him.

He was struck with a sudden desire to return, to travel back to Treasure Town and talk to Luke again. He could show him the Orb, convince him that the two of them had once travelled together! Somewhere, deep inside, there must be some hint of memory. Luke must remember him, and he only needed to draw out the memory. Then things could be as they were before. Perhaps they could sing together again ...

But he couldn’t. Not only because of the Time Gears, but because he knew he couldn’t face Luke in his current state. It felt good to be alone. He craved the silence that the cave brought to him. It was beautiful, simple and easy to understand. His life was hard, but he had a single, clear goal. He didn’t have to worry about what would happen after the Time Gears were returned, because actually achieving that goal was so unlikely. He expected to fail.

Ever since he had lost Luke through the accident with Celebi, he had sought out solitude wherever he could find it. He didn’t want to spend time with others. It only reminded him of what he had lost. It was ... a lot of effort to keep up interactions with other Pokémon. It all felt so fake, almost meaningless. When he was alone, he was free to express his sorrow. It felt ... somehow right.

But he couldn’t help thinking about what he had seen in the Orb.

“Everything you perform is music.”

He had a sudden flash of insight, and saw what he might look like to someone else standing in the cave. A Grovyle, weak and shivering by a feeble fire, eyes haggard and haunted, desperately clinging onto the broken remains of an old heirloom. His eyes wide and obsessively fixed on the precious object.

He saw that he had become fixated with the past, almost obsessed with the Orb and its link to what he had lost. Solitude was helpful, but it was also dangerous. The scene was old, and familiar ...

...

Dark and cold. A deep, musty smell. And the Latias, shivering and covered with dirt.

“Go away!”

Leaping aside. And behind me an intense heat. Brilliant light. And thunder.

...

He moved, and his muscles sent shocks of complaint to his brain. Gently, he set the Orb down on the scarf.

He had lost himself in his ability. It was true that he was more capable than more or less anyone he met here, and it was true that he was the only one who could realistically stop the Paralysis. But he had let the goal blind him to what he was doing. To how he was acting. The greatest battling, the greatest strategy in the world would mean nothing if he compromised his principles.

And it would mean nothing if he let himself be caught up forever in the past. He couldn’t change what had happened to him one iota, and brooding on it, past learning from his mistakes, would do him no good. But he had the power to change the future. He could make things right again. He could rectify what he had done.

He could stop the Paralysis. He could save Luke. And he could save himself. But only if he set himself free of the past.

He wrapped up the Orb fragments into a little forlorn ball.

In the morning, he would try to speak to Azelf, to explain the situation to him. He didn’t need to fight the legendary, nor trick him. He felt certain that he could reason with him, explain to him that –

The Orb!

Of course!

He could record his memories of Dusknoir into its structure! He felt sure that the memories would be recorded properly if the fragment he used was large enough and stayed in one piece. He could show Azelf everything that Dusknoir had done, how the Pokémon had tricked the Lake Guardians and the Pokémon in Treasure Town, how it had tried to kill him, Luke and the Meowth – Alex – in the future, how the Pokémon had ruthlessly hunted him and Luke in order to ensure that time remained frozen.

And Azelf would have to believe then.

He felt his heart lift slightly. Things weren’t so bad after all. And, as had so often happened, Luke had managed to inspire him to do good after all.

I have to trust that I will get him back. I have to!

He sat, watching the fire once more. The silence of the cave hadn’t changed, but it took on a more refreshing tone. The cold was less oppressive, now, and carried with it a crisp lightness. He felt sure that he would be able to recover the Time Gears. And then he could work on mending his relationship with Luke. Luke must be suffering too, suffering terribly, and the two of them didn’t need to suffer alone.

He must stop this brooding. It wasn’t healthy. It was best that he sleep and recover his strength for the tasks of the next few days.

But there was something he needed to do first. He closed his eyes, and brought the image of Luke into his mind, the image of the human watching him intently, wishing him the very best he could muster. He took a breath and, without thinking, sang.

“O, o let me – o, o let me, let me weep ...”

It was beautiful and, better, full of emotion. The song flung itself around him, filling the space with sound. He lost himself in the song.

But he was deep inside the cave. Outside, the cold silence of the mountainside was undisturbed. And the Paralysis continued its slow march outwards from Temporal Tower.

~

I’ve wanted to write another story featuring Grovyle for quite a while. I came up with the idea for this piece in early December, when I made the preliminary sketches and plans, but I’ve been waiting for a suitable period of time to sit down and flesh it out since then. Once I start a work, I like being able to spend as much time as I can in sessions ideally on successive evenings. I find that this helps me to achieve a unanimity of emotion and concept over the course of creating the piece. I found a suitable period of time at the beginning of February, and I am very pleased that I have managed to complete this work in what is still a relatively busy period! And, since deciding to start, I have had several evenings in which I have unexpectedly been unable to work due to the sudden appearance of extra rehearsals, lab visitors from other institutions and so on. It has been difficult, but I am happy that I managed to meet my deadline!

I am very pleased to be writing for Grovyle again. He was the first character that appeared in my fiction, and I very much enjoy writing for him. There is so much to explore in regards to his reactions to the events surrounding the Time Gears, and his responses to Luke and Dusknoir. I have had several stories planned, some of which are as old as my first work, but I have never been able to muster up the courage to write them, especially as some of the plans feature quite complicated artwork. So I am happy that I managed to find inspiration here.

I completed the artwork much faster than I was expecting. The things I learnt when making Fidelity have helped out enormously. In particular, the ability to create complicated shaded regions very quickly by using a combination of clones and cutting allows me to shade at a much faster rate. That also gives me more time to focus on the effects I am producing. I have tried to produce slightly stronger contrasts in my shading in this work. When looking back on earlier pictures, I find that the shading is a little weaker than I was aiming for. I also had to learn a little more about colour, and especially about saturation, in order to make the fire work as I wanted. Initially, the fire was very bright and contrasted very strongly will the dull colours in the rest of the work. It took a little testing in order to get the colours as I wanted them.

On the subject of the fire, I appreciate the ring of stones probably isn’t very necessary! The floor of the cave is unlikely to catch fire, after all, especially given how cold the place is. However, I liked the idea and look of a fire surrounded by stones. I was advised to ring fires with stones at every occasion when I was younger, even when it seems unnecessary, just to be on the safe side. Grovyle did it to give himself something to do while he was preparing to rest. He wanted to put off sitting down and being lost to his thoughts as long as he could.

I should also mention that I used a few real objects to help me envision some of the shapes in this work. The bag is based on a bag I own that is really very similar to the general look of a team bag, both in size and colour. The scarf is also modelled on a (short) scarf that I own, and I thought about the shading of the Orb by putting a round ball from my dryer, which is about the same size as I imagine Wonder Orbs to be, onto the scarf and seeing how it cast shadows.

I had originally planned to draw this picture from an entirely different angle. I thought about drawing Grovyle from the back, with the fire almost hidden in front of him and the cave entrance looking out onto the snowy mountain forming a large portion of the picture. However, I decided that I really didn’t want to hide Grovyle’s expression. The way he is looking, and his confidence and determination even in the face of an incredibly difficult series of events, was something I really wanted to try and convey. In addition, Grovyle would be unlikely to set up camp in such a shallow cave. He would try to find a location where he would be unseen from the mountainside. And I am since very happy with drawing this piece from the side!

The story itself was a little difficult to write, partly because of its structure. It consists of a single character doing essentially very little. I had to be very careful to make sure that Grovyle’s thoughts were both consistent and had a logical flow to them whilst still covering everything I wanted to write about. I had to juggle sections around quite a few times before I got the effects that I wanted. It was also a little difficult to make it clear exactly who I was referring to at any one point – Grovyle wouldn’t naturally refer to himself by name in his train of thought, so I needed to come up with ways where it would be clear who was doing what at any point. I also hope the section involving the Memory Orb is clear, and that who is speaking throughout comes across. Its introduction is intentionally set to be a contrast to the rest of the work, hopefully highlighting Grovyle’s current loneliness.

I only remembered the two Purcell songs whilst well into making the artwork. I had originally intended Donna Summer’s song ‘The Power of One ’ from the credits of the film of the same name to be the theme of this piece because of its link to memory and references to courage. ‘Courage’ was this work's original name. However, I was suddenly reminded of the song ‘O Solitude!’ when at work. I worked very hard on that song several years ago, and I love singing it. The ending is tough to pull off! It fit the idea I had for this piece perfectly, along with the Plaint from the same disk. The songs, especially the Plaint, came to define the story very closely. Had I not being thinking of these songs, the memory from the Orb would probably not have involved song.

Grovyle was modelled on Ash’s Grovyle from the Pokémon anime episodes ‘Island Time’, ‘Vanity Affair’ and ‘Wheel of Frontier’. The fire was modelled on the fire from the episode ‘Island of the Giant Pokémon‘. The stones were broadly modelled on rocks from the episode ‘Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon’. The textures on the walls and floor were modelled on textures from the episode ‘Island Time’. The scarf is modelled on one of my own, as is the bag. The Orb is modelled on a spherical part of my dryer.

Description
”Just try to stop me!”

This work also comes with a short story. It contains major spoilers for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky and mild spoilers for Blue Rescue Team, along with all related games. Proceed at your own risk!

The story is designed to stand alone, so no familiarity with any of my other fiction is required!

However, it is long, so feel free to skip it if you would like. There are some notes after the final tilde.

Background music:

I recommend listening to these two beautiful songs by the excellent 17th century composer Henry Purcell. These are sung beautifully by soprano Nancy Argenta, accompanied by Nicholas Robinson, Richard Boothby, Nigel North and John Toll:

The Plaint: O let me weep

O Solitude!

~

The fire crackled softly, throwing light onto the walls of the cavern. The pattern of the flames was almost mesmerising. They played and interwove in an intricate dance. Holes of darkness would creep through the light. And, every so often, a piece of ash would break off the tinder, breaking apart in a spray of sparks. Otherwise, the cave was perfectly silent.

Grovyle held his hands towards the fire. The air was fantastically cold. He had hoped that it would be warmer deeper inside the cave, but that was only slightly true. Fragments of ice glittered on the edges of his vision, and his breath formed delicate wisps of vapour in front of him. But the spot would do. The cave was mostly dry, and it showed no sign of habitation. He could rest here safe in the knowledge that he would not be discovered. And he could could prepare himself for the morning’s task.

Azelf.

Slowly, he felt his muscles began to relax. The last thing he wanted to do was rest. There was so much at stake, so much to do. And dedicating himself to every task at hand meant that he didn’t need to think about what was happening to him. He could escape from the horrible grief that clawed at him, and from the terrible tiredness that threatened to eat away at him if he stopped. But he had forced himself to stop. He needed sleep, and to be as well rested as possible before he tried to take the Time Gear.

As he watched the flames, he felt the tiredness come over him. The last few days had been extremely difficult, and there had been almost no time to stop. Ever since he had escaped Dusknoir, he had been on the move. He had to stay a step ahead, he had to outwit him whatever the cost. He had escaped to the past, but even then he had been forced to keep moving. He had to collect the Time Gears and return them to Temporal Tower. And he had to do it as soon as possible. Before anything else went wrong.

A muscle in his right leg briefly spasmed. He shifted position.

It had been a hard day. He had woken before dawn, having come to his decision during the night. He couldn’t stay in Sharpedo Bluff any longer. It was ... too difficult. And the team would work faster if they separated. He was by far the strongest Pokémon of the three, so it made sense for him to recover the Time Gears. He doubted that Luke or the Meowth would be able to tackle even one of the Lake Guardians, let alone all three.

He had tersely let the two Pokémon know of his decision, and to tell them what they needed to do. And then he had left as quickly as he could. It had felt good to be on the move again, to be away from the team. For a while, he could pretend that he had never found Luke. That, somewhere out there, his partner was working on the same task that he was, and that he might at any moment come across him again. That he might reach one of the lakes to see a human standing there, smiling cheerfully, a Time Gear in his hands.

...

The blue light of the tunnel. Acceptance of his fate. Dusknoir grinning, victorious.

And the idiotic Pikachu butting in.

“Well, this is Luke right here!”

Disbelief. And yet I know it to be true. All my hope gone in an instant. Defeat.

...

He wouldn’t see Luke, of course. He was still a Pikachu, still back at Treasure Town. But the fake hope gave him the strength to keep going.

The journey had been far longer than his previous trips. Dusknoir had been thorough in spreading news about him. Word of the villainous Grovyle seemed to be everywhere. He could no longer travel on the roads for fear of being accosted. He didn’t fear attack; he was far stronger than almost any Pokémon he would encounter. But he couldn’t risk the delay. And he needed to travel unnoticed. If Dusknoir returned, as he surely would, he couldn’t let the Pokémon have any information about his whereabouts. If he kept unseen, there was hope that Dusknoir wouldn’t be able to prevent him from collecting the Time Gears.

It was much slower and significantly harder travelling off the roads. He was unfamiliar with the terrain, and often had to make long detours to cross a river or avoid an unexpected chasm. Worse, he had to be always on the lookout for the entrances to Mystery Dungeons. The last thing he needed would be to find himself trapped in location that turned back on itself, unable to make any progress. He had learned that the hard way on his first journey, and had since managed to learn to faintly detect the very slight twisting of space around the dungeon entrances. But it was hard, and he wasn’t always successful. Even today, there had been near misses. Thankfully, though, most of the route was forested. He travelled high among the trees where he could, knowing that he would be a less visible target to any Pokémon that might be in the area. But still progress was slow, and the hours of forging through dense woodland only to double back past a previously unseen obstacle were tiring, both mentally and physically.

And he knew that, at the end of the journey, he would have to face the Lake Guardians. He knew the three legendaries would have placed much better guards on the Time Gears after his first successful thefts.

His first target was a lake deep in the heart of a mountain. He could have made his way to the lake through the standard entrance off the road, but he didn’t trust it to be unguarded. He couldn’t underestimate the Lake Guardians again. Instead, he made for the same entrance he had used in his first journey. It had been a stroke of luck that he had detected the second entrance that first time. A crevasse had opened up the mountain side, forced open by the pressure of the ice.

But the entrance was high up the mountain and the climb was no easier the second time around. The light had begun to fail even as he was approaching the entrance. He desperately wanted to push onwards, to make his way to the Time Gear. But he knew that wasn’t wise. He would never forgive himself if he let tiredness cloud his judgement or, in his weakened state, if he allowed the Time Gear to slip away from him yet again. So he had stopped in a small cave a little lower down. The cave was deep enough that it afforded shelter from the wind and snow, and it was only a short distance from his goal. He had forced himself to rest, so that he could recover.

And so that he could plan.

He knew that he had to face Azelf first. The Pokémon had outwitted him not once, but twice. The wall of ice had caught him off-guard the first time. The other guardians had been trivial, and it was with a cold satisfaction that he dispatched them quickly. He had gone to Azelf expecting another easy victory. That was foolish, and he had paid the price. When it was on the verge of defeat, Azelf had frozen the surface on the lake that contained the Time Gear, sealing it away from him. He had been furious. The final Time Gear was in his grasp – and the stupid Pokémon was only putting more barriers in the way.

He should have spent his energy on getting to the Gear, of course. Looking back on the event, he could easily have tunnelled through the ice and teleported away as soon as he had located it. But his desperation had blinded him to easier choices. All he knew was that Azelf was preventing him from reaching his goal, and that Azelf would also be able to take the down the barrier. He had started to try and force the Pokémon to give him access.

And then, to make matters worse, a rescue team had appeared. A foolish young team at that, determined to place yet another barrier in his way. Another obstacle for him to overcome. He had had to deal with them ...

...

Frustration. Desperation. The ice burning my feet.

“Just try to stop me!”

A single swipe. The foolish upstarts thrown aside. The Meowth barely standing. Its Pikachu crumpled on the ground.

...

The memory was intense. He could feel the rage coursing through him, his satisfaction that the Pikachu was incapacitated. He remembered the sober knowledge that he might have to seriously wound the two Pokémon to get at the Time Gear. And Luke, his precious Luke, lying half-dead in front of him. With wounds caused by his own hand.

What have I become?

The guilt was a constant presence that gnawed at him. But there was too much wrong, and he had cried too many tears. There was nothing to be gained from brooding on the event. He accepted what he had done, even if he desperately wished that he had behaved differently. He hadn’t known Luke’s identity at the time. And he had needed the Time Gears. If he had collected them then, instead of being delayed, he might have been able to outwit Dusknoir and stop the Paralysis before any more harm was done.

And I might never have seen Luke again.

He kept the image of the Pikachu in his mind. It looked almost pitiful to him, a small, weak and ragged thing. He had seen it work with the Meowth it travelled with. Its attacks did little damage and were mostly ineffective. It was absentminded and hurt easily. The Meowth, on the other hand, was hardy and strong, albeit it lacking in self-confidence. The Pikachu relied heavily on the Meowth to pull it through difficult situations.

It seemed so strange at first to think that this could possibly be Luke at all. Luke was such a strong, powerful member of the team, first as a Pokémon and then as a human. He had always had a head for good strategy, and was able to easily take down Pokémon that others would have been to afraid to approach. And Luke had guided him, helped him every step of the way. He had helped set up their own rescue team, guided him when he had had doubts about his own ability. And he had defied Gardevoir, returning as a human even after she had tried to take him away. Luke was brilliant.

He was desperately worried. He wasn’t sure how Luke had been transformed back into a Pokémon, but his nature now was entirely different. He was clearly having great difficulty adjusting to his new body, so much so that he was much weaker than he ought to be. And the combination of his weakness and his lack of memory was taking its toll on his mind. Even out of battle, the Pokémon was strangely silent. It seemed to be spending a lot of time deep in thought. The Meowth drove events, planned and tried to solve the problems the team was faced with. The Pikachu brooded.

He wanted desperately to talk to him. He had tried to do so already. But it had become clear that, in spite of some of the memories that were already starting to bleed through, Luke remembered nothing whatsoever of him. Of all the things Luke could have remembered, he was forgotten. All of their time together, everything they had shared, all of it had been wiped away in an instant. Back in Luke’s presence, he had been more lonely than he had been without him. For he was reminded every time he saw the Pikachu about the damage that had been done to him, and how entirely helpless he was to do anything to aid him.

He missed Luke terribly.

When he had arrived at the cave, as he habitually did, he looked through his team bag and found a small bundle of cloth. It was once a bright fuchsia, but had now dulled with age to a ruddy pink. He had unwrapped it gingerly and delicately arrayed its contents next to him. He made great care to ensure that none of the shards were lost. The pieces were sharp, and he had cut himself on the edges several times previously.

The Orb was now his only link to the past.

Back across the sea, his own rescue team was working hard to prepare the continent for the effects of the Paralysis should he and Luke fail. Among them was a Latias, Laura, a fantastic Pokémon. She was one of the cleverest beings he had ever met, although she was prone to intense rage and a limited view of the consequences of her actions. He hoped the team was dealing with her well. The Latias had made many interesting devices and equipment for the team. This included many different varieties of Orb with diverse abilities. One of the first Orbs she had made had been a gift to him. The Latias had seen how distressed he was when Gardevoir took Luke away, and how overjoyed he had been when he had returned as a human. So she had made him a way to store his happy memories in something tangible.

She had called it a Memory Orb. When he touched it, he could write anything he could remember into its structure or replay any memory that was already imprinted. It was ... not so much a recording of events, of sights and sounds, but something somewhat better. It recorded the user’s state of mind during the events they remembered, how they perceived what was going on and what they thought at the time. All of this was present when the event was relived through the Orb, but the user remained detached, able to feel its old reaction to events while being able to respond to the memory in their current state simultaneously.

He had kept the Orb with him ever since, and recorded many memories in it. They were frequently of Luke, and of the many wonderful events they had shared. The Orb had a vast capacity for storage. It was a wonderful reminder of everything he and Luke and gone through, and of the great things they were capable of. Back then, it had been an almost sentimental, though very important, possession. Now, though, when he needed it most, it was almost entirely useless.

When Celebi had sent him and Luke back into the past for the first time, something had interrupted the process. He had felt a strong and jarring distortion, and the two Pokémon had been thrown apart. Luke had, apparently, been washed up on the beach in Treasure Town. He, on the other hand, had found himself several meters aloft above a forest canopy. He had reacted almost immediately to the situation and grasped at foliage as he fell. He had managed to stop his fall, but he wasn’t fast enough to also save his team bag. It had fallen from him during those first few seconds, and it was too far away for him to reach by the time he had taken hold of the tree. The bag had fallen many tens of meters before he lost it in the forest undergrowth.

After some significant searching, he had managed to find it again. The vast majority of the contents were damaged beyond repair, including most of his supplies. At least his team badge had survived the fall mostly undamaged. He had been thankful then that most of the more delicate items had been in Luke’s bag. However, that bag was lost even now, so many of Laura’s devices had still not been recovered. One of the casualties of that fall had been the Memory Orb. It had born the brunt of the impact and shattered almost in two. One half was mostly in tact, but the rest was a bundle of loose fragments. He had tried to recover as many of the fragments as he could, but he felt sure that some of them were still lost amongst the plants on that faraway forest floor.

He had discovered quickly that the Orb stored each memory not at small individual locations inside itself, but instead spread the information throughout its entire structure. With the device shattered, almost all of the memory information had been disrupted. Most of the memories had either been entirely destroyed or so damaged that it was almost impossible to make any coherent sense of them. A precious few memories had survived in pieces, separated by bursts of static. And very few of those memories were events of any significance.

But it was the only real reminder he had. His team bag was like any other. Lucario were common here, so his team badge held no significance. Besides the Orb, he would look like any other member of one of the exploration teams in this continent. And, with Luke damaged, he was the only one left who had the knowledge needed to stop the Paralysis. If he failed, for whatever reason, he felt certain that Luke wouldn’t be able to stop the destruction of Temporal Tower. Events would proceed to their inevitable end just as if he and Luke had not interfered. The Tower would collapse. Wigglytuff’s Guild would fail. And the Paralysis would spread over the planet, eventually engulfing his own home.

It would be easier if there was someone he could talk to, someone who knew the things that he knew, who had seen the things that he had seen. But he was the only one who remembered the desolate time in the ruins at the heart of Paralysis, searching for its source and trying unsuccessfully to pit himself against Dialga. He was the only one who remembered Rangers. And being with Luke only reminded him of all that he had lost.

He felt a desperate stab of loneliness.

He wished that he and Luke and come to a ... different decision about the Pokémon the human had taken with him. When he had returned as a human, Luke had arrived with several Pokémon, stored in unusual human devices which he referred to as Poké Balls. The Pokémon were strong and capable, and were of species that were poorly represented in the rescue team. When he and Luke had left for the source of the Paralysis, Luke had taken all but one of his Pokémon with him. He had left Chansey behind to help the remainder of the team deal with any casualties that might arise from the slow spread of the region of halted time. The remaining Pokémon had been a real aid in traversing the ruined continent. And they had been great company.

He especially missed Luke’s Tyranitar. The Pokémon was always in high spirits, even when things seemed bleak. He without fail managed to lift the spirits of the team and constantly reminded them of the difficult challenges that they had faced and defeated previously. Even in the darkness around Temporal Tower, he had refused to be gloomy. He imagined that, if the Pokémon were here now, he would laugh at his own silly brooding and start telling stories of the things he had faced with Luke in the human world.

But there were no stories any more. There was no-one left to talk to. The Tyranitar was gone, along with all of Luke’s Pokémon.

He had tried for weeks to fix the Orb, but without any success. He had tried reassembling it, but the information needed the fragments to not just be touching, but to be bound together. No adhesive he could construct allowed the various parts of the Orb to connect in the right way. And he lacked the necessary knowledge to allow the rock making up the Orb to grow and knit itself back together. He noticed, with some chagrin, that that was something Luke’s Tyranitar would have been able to do with ease.

He had tried everything he could think of. But his work only made things worse. Pieces broke off the brittle parts of the Orb, destroying even more information. He had decided, during his first trip to collect the Time Gears, that any further work would be dangerous. There was no way he could fix the Orb himself, and he trusted no other Pokémon with the information it contained. He hadn’t even shown the Orb to Luke. It would only confuse matters now. But he kept it with him for the memories it contained, and in the slim hope that, somehow, he might think of some method he could use to make it whole again.

He moved his head and stared at the Orb. The silence in the cave was almost deafening, giving form to the intense loneliness he felt. If he could only find a way to mend the Orb, perhaps the encouragement the memories within it would offer him would give him the strength to come up with a new strategy against Azelf.

He paused, then reached out and carefully took the base of the part of the Orb that was still mostly in tact.

And he connected with it. There was a strange feeling of being disembodied, of floating in a timeless, formless space. He thought for a moment, and then directed the Orb to show him a memory entirely at random. The first few events yielded only static, and visions of worlds as if through the surface of a pond. And then he found a memory that was largely undamaged.

He felt the past reach out to engulf him ...

...

...managed it! The hardest part of the phrase was over, and he had been able to sing it as well as he could ever remember. He felt a brief smile come over his face. But there still much to think about. That had been by far the hardest part of the song for him technically, but there was much more to come that was still very difficult.

He tried not to let the pleasure distract him. He focused all of his attention on everything that Luke had told him. There was much to think about. He kept his posture straight and open. He made sure that his breathing was deep and unhurried. He was careful to ensure that his words were clear and undistorted. And, through all of this, he tried to make sure that he remembered the music, its words and phrases.

His brow furrowed in concentration.

Luke was half-lying on the stone paving within the team base, watching him intently. It was ...

... hard to read him – he still wasn’t used to Luke’s human form. Beside him sat an instrument the two of them had made. It was small, fashioned from wood in the shape like a large half-seed with a long arm extending from it. Strings stretched down the arm over a hole in the centre of the main bulk which resonated when the strings were plucked.

A difficult run of fast notes took over his attention. He performed it flawlessly.

He had been practising this song by himself for days. Ever since Luke had heard about Sebastian’s attempts to teach him music when the human was still absent from Pokémon Square, Luke had been desperate to teach him. He was an accomplished singer, apparently one who had performed quite a number of times in his old life on the human continent. He loved music, and he was pleased that his partner had been starting to learn of his own accord.

It had been very hard at first. He was extremely unsure of himself. He had never used his singing voice in any kind of serious way, and he felt certain that there was no hope of him ever producing something he would be happy with. But Luke had kept encouraging him, insisting that his voice was a diamond, albeit it rough and unpolished. But he could take it and, with work, polish it and make it beautiful.

He was amazed at what he had achieved in a short time. He was very happy with how his voice was developing, and Luke was starting to teach him some of the more difficult human songs. Luke had promised to accompany him in a recital when he felt he was ready. And he knew most of Pokémon Square would attend to hear him. He was making good progress, and he felt sure that he would be able to perform in public very soon.

Luke had closed his eyes in thought.

He reached the last few phrases of the song. He lingered slightly on the mournful phrases as Luke had told him, drawing out the dissonance and sadness in the lines. He held the final note, watching Luke the entire time, and then gently let the note go.

Luke kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, and then opened them. The human smiled warmly at him, and then applauded softly. Luke stood slowly, and approached him.

“The was really wonderful, Stan. You’ve done so well to prepare that song. It’s one of the hardest I know. You’re doing wonderfully, as I knew you would!”

Luke stopped in front of him, then gently placed one hand on his shoulder. The other rested lightly on the back of his neck, on the right side. Luke looked him in the eye, and tenderly used the hard to tilt his partner's head forward and slightly to the left.

“Don’t forget to remember the location of your head. You’re still tilting it a little to the right. It’s easier to breathe if you have a single, straight channel from your mouth to your lungs. And it’s best to avoid habits that cause your body to tense now rather than later. It’s much harder to unlearn bad habits than it is to learn good ones!”

Luke kept his hands where there were for a few seconds, then stepped back.

His hopes felt dashed. He had done the very best he could, the best he had ever managed, and Luke still managed to find a fault. There was so much to remember. He couldn’t hope to live up to the amazing example of his partner.

Luke must have seen the sadness in his eyes, for he reacted immediately.

“Don’t think for a moment that I am not impressed. That was one of the most accomplished performances of that song I have ever heard. And your posture is so much better now that you are thinking about it! I know you will get it perfect soon! You are so very close to getting everything perfect! You are definitely ready to perform this song if you would like to.”

Luke put a hand back on his partner's shoulder.

“But there is still one more thing I want to talk to you about. It’s something I haven’t mentioned before, because it is something that is only relevant now.”

Luke gestured, and the two team members sat on the bedding area. The stones felt cold to the touch, likely because of the proximity of the water that swirled around its base. Luke adored the team base, even in his human form, and frequently swam in the waters the surrounded it. He was thankful that the base had been built on a large scale so that few modifications had needed to be made to allow a human to live there.

Luke looked at him intently.

“Your technique is now almost flawless. Better than mine, in fact!”

Luke laughed, the happy sound ringing off the stone walls of the base. He found himself smiling.

“But there is one thing now that you must always remember. Keep working on your technique in everything you do, for it is easy to forget. But never, ever lose sight of this.

“Everything you perform is music.

“With the best technique in the world, you could only impress listeners. You can’t move them. To do that, you need to put your very soul into the music. You have to embody the song, use your own emotions to convey the mood the song is trying to express. You have to believe what you are singing about. Or else it is only a series of notes. It isn’t an act of communication.”

“But there is so much to think about ...”

“Then think less! Focus for now on the music, on the emotion. I will guide you if I think your technique is suffering. And it might. But I need you to find your emotional connection to the music. You had that in the very beginning! It is not uncommon for singers to lose the insight that they are performing music. It can become work so very easily, and the impressive technique and skill gets in the way.”

Luke looked far away for a second.

“Let me show you what I mean.”

Luke smiled at him, then opened his mouth and took a breath. He started the first phrase of the song. And the music ech–

*Static*

“– about what he is saying. He has just lost –”

*Static*

“–you see?”

Luke looked at him questioningly.

“I ... will try.”

Luke smiled.

“And you will do brilliantly! I know it! Tell you what ...”

Luke picked up the instrument.

“Let me play along with you. It is easier to lose yourself to the emotion where you can hear the full colour of the song.”

Luke played a chord and held it, repeating the notes to give the chord the appearance of being static. The bright, crisp notes of the instrument filled the team base. He was filled with an intense sadness. He thought of what Luke had told him, trying to place himself in the position of the weeping, hopeless lover. It was difficult.

He thought back, back to the time when Luke had been gone. He picked an old memory of the intense despair he had felt at the time. And then he sang.

And the whole base resonated with the sadness.

Luke smiled, ecstatic, thrilled at the emotion that was quickly being put into the music. And still he sang, losing himself in the bleakness of the words and–

*Static*

“–one of the most wond–”

*Static*

–then Luke hugged him, warmly. The human held on to him for a long time.

“I’m so proud of you. You’re doing so brilliantly. Next time, I’ll write out some duets. I’d love for us to sing together, and for others to hear us. You are a wonderful singer, Stan.”

And he warmly hugged the human back.

...

The silence of the cave was almost tangible. He felt trapped, drowning under the depths of an ocean. In front of him, the fire crackled softly. He was staring at the Orb, his limbs locked motionless.

Why did the Orb show me this?

He hadn’t seen that memory since he had recorded it all those years ago. He had ... forgotten so much already. The concert had never happened, although he and Luke and sung together, both in Pokémon Square and on their journey to Temporal Tower. Before the two of them could perform, Xatu had detected the Paralysis in the movements of the sun. And then all of their efforts had gone into finding its source, and determining the strategy for dealing with it. There hadn’t been time for ... other things.

It had been so long since he had last sung.

He looked at the Orb. He desperately wanted to go into its depths again, to search through the past. It had been ... wonderful to see Luke again, the real Luke. And there was more of him in there, more memories that he could search through.

But the Orb had only increased his loneliness, not diminished it. He felt a keener sense of loss having seen his partner at his height, and he could not help but think about him trapped in the body of a Pikachu, slowly losing his mind.

The silence of the cave smothered him.

He was struck with a sudden desire to return, to travel back to Treasure Town and talk to Luke again. He could show him the Orb, convince him that the two of them had once travelled together! Somewhere, deep inside, there must be some hint of memory. Luke must remember him, and he only needed to draw out the memory. Then things could be as they were before. Perhaps they could sing together again ...

But he couldn’t. Not only because of the Time Gears, but because he knew he couldn’t face Luke in his current state. It felt good to be alone. He craved the silence that the cave brought to him. It was beautiful, simple and easy to understand. His life was hard, but he had a single, clear goal. He didn’t have to worry about what would happen after the Time Gears were returned, because actually achieving that goal was so unlikely. He expected to fail.

Ever since he had lost Luke through the accident with Celebi, he had sought out solitude wherever he could find it. He didn’t want to spend time with others. It only reminded him of what he had lost. It was ... a lot of effort to keep up interactions with other Pokémon. It all felt so fake, almost meaningless. When he was alone, he was free to express his sorrow. It felt ... somehow right.

But he couldn’t help thinking about what he had seen in the Orb.

“Everything you perform is music.”

He had a sudden flash of insight, and saw what he might look like to someone else standing in the cave. A Grovyle, weak and shivering by a feeble fire, eyes haggard and haunted, desperately clinging onto the broken remains of an old heirloom. His eyes wide and obsessively fixed on the precious object.

He saw that he had become fixated with the past, almost obsessed with the Orb and its link to what he had lost. Solitude was helpful, but it was also dangerous. The scene was old, and familiar ...

...

Dark and cold. A deep, musty smell. And the Latias, shivering and covered with dirt.

“Go away!”

Leaping aside. And behind me an intense heat. Brilliant light. And thunder.

...

He moved, and his muscles sent shocks of complaint to his brain. Gently, he set the Orb down on the scarf.

He had lost himself in his ability. It was true that he was more capable than more or less anyone he met here, and it was true that he was the only one who could realistically stop the Paralysis. But he had let the goal blind him to what he was doing. To how he was acting. The greatest battling, the greatest strategy in the world would mean nothing if he compromised his principles.

And it would mean nothing if he let himself be caught up forever in the past. He couldn’t change what had happened to him one iota, and brooding on it, past learning from his mistakes, would do him no good. But he had the power to change the future. He could make things right again. He could rectify what he had done.

He could stop the Paralysis. He could save Luke. And he could save himself. But only if he set himself free of the past.

He wrapped up the Orb fragments into a little forlorn ball.

In the morning, he would try to speak to Azelf, to explain the situation to him. He didn’t need to fight the legendary, nor trick him. He felt certain that he could reason with him, explain to him that –

The Orb!

Of course!

He could record his memories of Dusknoir into its structure! He felt sure that the memories would be recorded properly if the fragment he used was large enough and stayed in one piece. He could show Azelf everything that Dusknoir had done, how the Pokémon had tricked the Lake Guardians and the Pokémon in Treasure Town, how it had tried to kill him, Luke and the Meowth – Alex – in the future, how the Pokémon had ruthlessly hunted him and Luke in order to ensure that time remained frozen.

And Azelf would have to believe then.

He felt his heart lift slightly. Things weren’t so bad after all. And, as had so often happened, Luke had managed to inspire him to do good after all.

I have to trust that I will get him back. I have to!

He sat, watching the fire once more. The silence of the cave hadn’t changed, but it took on a more refreshing tone. The cold was less oppressive, now, and carried with it a crisp lightness. He felt sure that he would be able to recover the Time Gears. And then he could work on mending his relationship with Luke. Luke must be suffering too, suffering terribly, and the two of them didn’t need to suffer alone.

He must stop this brooding. It wasn’t healthy. It was best that he sleep and recover his strength for the tasks of the next few days.

But there was something he needed to do first. He closed his eyes, and brought the image of Luke into his mind, the image of the human watching him intently, wishing him the very best he could muster. He took a breath and, without thinking, sang.

“O, o let me – o, o let me, let me weep ...”

It was beautiful and, better, full of emotion. The song flung itself around him, filling the space with sound. He lost himself in the song.

But he was deep inside the cave. Outside, the cold silence of the mountainside was undisturbed. And the Paralysis continued its slow march outwards from Temporal Tower.

~

I’ve wanted to write another story featuring Grovyle for quite a while. I came up with the idea for this piece in early December, when I made the preliminary sketches and plans, but I’ve been waiting for a suitable period of time to sit down and flesh it out since then. Once I start a work, I like being able to spend as much time as I can in sessions ideally on successive evenings. I find that this helps me to achieve a unanimity of emotion and concept over the course of creating the piece. I found a suitable period of time at the beginning of February, and I am very pleased that I have managed to complete this work in what is still a relatively busy period! And, since deciding to start, I have had several evenings in which I have unexpectedly been unable to work due to the sudden appearance of extra rehearsals, lab visitors from other institutions and so on. It has been difficult, but I am happy that I managed to meet my deadline!

I am very pleased to be writing for Grovyle again. He was the first character that appeared in my fiction, and I very much enjoy writing for him. There is so much to explore in regards to his reactions to the events surrounding the Time Gears, and his responses to Luke and Dusknoir. I have had several stories planned, some of which are as old as my first work, but I have never been able to muster up the courage to write them, especially as some of the plans feature quite complicated artwork. So I am happy that I managed to find inspiration here.

I completed the artwork much faster than I was expecting. The things I learnt when making Fidelity have helped out enormously. In particular, the ability to create complicated shaded regions very quickly by using a combination of clones and cutting allows me to shade at a much faster rate. That also gives me more time to focus on the effects I am producing. I have tried to produce slightly stronger contrasts in my shading in this work. When looking back on earlier pictures, I find that the shading is a little weaker than I was aiming for. I also had to learn a little more about colour, and especially about saturation, in order to make the fire work as I wanted. Initially, the fire was very bright and contrasted very strongly will the dull colours in the rest of the work. It took a little testing in order to get the colours as I wanted them.

On the subject of the fire, I appreciate the ring of stones probably isn’t very necessary! The floor of the cave is unlikely to catch fire, after all, especially given how cold the place is. However, I liked the idea and look of a fire surrounded by stones. I was advised to ring fires with stones at every occasion when I was younger, even when it seems unnecessary, just to be on the safe side. Grovyle did it to give himself something to do while he was preparing to rest. He wanted to put off sitting down and being lost to his thoughts as long as he could.

I should also mention that I used a few real objects to help me envision some of the shapes in this work. The bag is based on a bag I own that is really very similar to the general look of a team bag, both in size and colour. The scarf is also modelled on a (short) scarf that I own, and I thought about the shading of the Orb by putting a round ball from my dryer, which is about the same size as I imagine Wonder Orbs to be, onto the scarf and seeing how it cast shadows.

I had originally planned to draw this picture from an entirely different angle. I thought about drawing Grovyle from the back, with the fire almost hidden in front of him and the cave entrance looking out onto the snowy mountain forming a large portion of the picture. However, I decided that I really didn’t want to hide Grovyle’s expression. The way he is looking, and his confidence and determination even in the face of an incredibly difficult series of events, was something I really wanted to try and convey. In addition, Grovyle would be unlikely to set up camp in such a shallow cave. He would try to find a location where he would be unseen from the mountainside. And I am since very happy with drawing this piece from the side!

The story itself was a little difficult to write, partly because of its structure. It consists of a single character doing essentially very little. I had to be very careful to make sure that Grovyle’s thoughts were both consistent and had a logical flow to them whilst still covering everything I wanted to write about. I had to juggle sections around quite a few times before I got the effects that I wanted. It was also a little difficult to make it clear exactly who I was referring to at any one point – Grovyle wouldn’t naturally refer to himself by name in his train of thought, so I needed to come up with ways where it would be clear who was doing what at any point. I also hope the section involving the Memory Orb is clear, and that who is speaking throughout comes across. Its introduction is intentionally set to be a contrast to the rest of the work, hopefully highlighting Grovyle’s current loneliness.

I only remembered the two Purcell songs whilst well into making the artwork. I had originally intended Donna Summer’s song ‘The Power of One ’ from the credits of the film of the same name to be the theme of this piece because of its link to memory and references to courage. ‘Courage’ was this work's original name. However, I was suddenly reminded of the song ‘O Solitude!’ when at work. I worked very hard on that song several years ago, and I love singing it. The ending is tough to pull off! It fit the idea I had for this piece perfectly, along with the Plaint from the same disk. The songs, especially the Plaint, came to define the story very closely. Had I not being thinking of these songs, the memory from the Orb would probably not have involved song.

Grovyle was modelled on Ash’s Grovyle from the Pokémon anime episodes ‘Island Time’, ‘Vanity Affair’ and ‘Wheel of Frontier’. The fire was modelled on the fire from the episode ‘Island of the Giant Pokémon‘. The stones were broadly modelled on rocks from the episode ‘Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon’. The textures on the walls and floor were modelled on textures from the episode ‘Island Time’. The scarf is modelled on one of my own, as is the bag. The Orb is modelled on a spherical part of my dryer.