Pokémon Timeslip

[Tango]

Hey there, Nekodatta!

I'm glad I get the chance to delve more into Timeslip!

Chapter 2: Stranger​

Stranger? Hmm! But Sada and Turo have already met. I wonder what this is referring to?

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

When Turo first gives her something that he pulled out from that shiny mantle he is wearing, Sada can't help but get excited. Trading between other communities is nothing new, but it's always... The usual stuff. Furs, obsidian and other rocks and gems that they can't get here, like tooth and scales from creatures that don't live in this area.

Oh this is cool! We get to see things from Sada's POV now that we saw it from Turo's!

Seeing the romance develop from both sides adds a whole extra layer of dimension to it!

Sometimes food. This was new; she had never seen such garments, especially not so perfectly made. She thought that she wasn't half bad at sewing clothes, but when she tried to examine that cloth, she couldn't find a single seam or hole where the needle went through. Whoever did that must have been incredible in their art.

Yeah, to her, being able to sew clothes like that is probably borderline godlike.

And... And the feeling! It was so smooth to the touch and so different from the pelts she was used to working with: the creature it came from must have had some incredible fur.

She thinks it came from a creature! I'm enjoying this aspect of it immensely.

She had tried to ask him where he came from, but it didn't look like he had understood her question. She is so focused on examining that new material that it takes her a moment to notice that the man is running away.

So, one thing I have noticed is tense shifts from Sada. "had tried to ask him" "She is so focused". I believe these are a features rather than errors, so I won't point it out again, but if this is not intentional and you would like help spotting these to fix, just let me know.

« Wait!» she calls after him, but loses some precious seconds in grabbing her belongings: writing tool in one hand, the sheets of ... stuff in the other,

Yes, one must not forget the STUFF! (I like the idea of people from the past trying to make sense of modern tech and items. Really fun concept!)

she has to fumble around a moment before managing to grab her spear and start running. He is already far off into the trees, hidden from view, but the rustling of his clothes and the crunch of leaves under his shoes is still clearly audible... And then it stops, suddenly.

She catches up to where he was, and finds him just.... gone. Vanished without a trace. She checks the trail of footprints he left behind: the shoes he was wearing were also weird. Heavy and smooth, they almost looked like they were a single piece with his purple clothes. They honestly didn't look very comfortable: how does he take them off? Do they come off.... All in one go, all or nothing?

Yep, you either get him totally clothed or with none at all!

But they do leave some nice, clear imprints in the ground... Which again, doesn't really sound that safe if you want to avoid predators, but makes it more convenient for her, so she is not going to complain.

But the footprints don't tell her much: they also just vanish suddenly.

How? Is he a really good climber? She raises her eyes and starts checking the tree branches over her head.

I can't fault her logic here. It's really the only sane conclusion!

Did he... Climb them and start jumping from tree to tree? Did he step in his own footprints backwards to throw her off and then went another way?

I love her imagination here! You really did well at considering her perspective!

She keeps looking around for a bit, but can't find any other clue about what happened. Someone else would have been suspicious, troubled.... Maybe even scared.

Sada just tilts her head to the side.

"... interesting"

Well, Turo, it looks like she is interested in you now. Man, if only all guys could time travel back to the ancient past to pick up girls. The lucky jerkwad!

She gathers her things -properly this time -,

Savage, she is not! Most refined, in fact!

and starts to make her way back. She is quite a bit away from her settlement; they've set up tents and plan to stay there for a couple more full moons,

Such a nice detail here to see her measure time in terms of moons instead of months!

until the snow starts to fall more often and the herds of Steady Glaciers - the great wooly beasts with icy breath - will move further north.

Wow this reminds me of...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgJqy2JZ-vM&t=13s

If she walks briskly, she will have to spend only one night alone before meeting up with the rest of her group; men usually are the ones who go out hunting, but it's not unusual for women who are not taking care of children to also explore and scout ahead.

A nod to how things were long ago. Props for some historical accuracy!

Finding new possible food sources, exploring trails and of course monitoring the creatures to make sure that nothing dangerous got too close to the settlement... There was always something to do, and no hands to spare. She personally enjoys exploring much more than being stuck paying attention to a bunch of kids, even if it was more dangerous. It gave her time to think, especially when it lead to strange experiences like that of today.

She is so adventurous! 🙃

That man... Just where had he gone off to?

Turo: meets a woman on an accidental random blind date and bails.
Sada: can't stop thinking about Turo.

Turo = gigachad.

When the sun disappears and night comes,

"disappears"? Hmmm wouldn't it look more like 'hiding' to her? Thinking of the sun as alive wouldn't be a stretch, I think. And if it's hiding, maybe the moon chases it away? So:

'When the moon finishes chasing the sun away, she opts to stop for the night;'

I don't know, I think something like that would make it even cooler. What do you think?

she opts to stop for the night; she's been following the river backwards the whole time, but cautiously decides that it's better to not stay too near the water. Night creatures could possibly come to drink, and she would be too easy of a target.

Always looking at it from a survival perspective. Very fitting!

She enters the thick of the trees again until she finds a nice spot to camp. With her back against the great trunk of a pine tree, she clears the area around the roots, gathers some rocks from the river and places them in a circle to light a fire.

So they do have fire. Good to know.

Still a bit damp, the rocks will prevent it spreading too much, and the little spiky leaves and branches will make for good fuel. From a little leather pouch tied to her hip, she pulls out some berries she has picked up along the way.

She's got a good variety gathered; they are perfect to eat while walking, and in a pinch, some of them can even be used against creatures. She has been carefully observing which kind creatures like to eat and which they don't, and the effect they seem to have on them. Satisfied, she quickly eats a dinner of some of the hardest berries cooked on the fire

Ooo maybe you should add in some sounds like the crackling of the fire or something? I'm not sure if it translates well into her POV, but I can hear crackling even without you describing it.

and then goes back to her most pressing concern: examining Turo's gifts, obviously.

Yeah, those gifts are like nothing she has ever seen.

They were also both from some never seen material - honestly, did that guy have anything she had ever seen before, except for his being a person?-.

I feel like 'anything' really wants to be italics. Just saying...

Yeah, that's a pretty good observation. Only him being a person was something familiar.

The pieces that he showed her how to paint on were both incredibly thin and light as feathers, and bound together with what she could only guess was some sort of tree bark. That sure was a smart way to make sure they didn't fall off... It was also both pretty flexible and fragile at the same time; it crinkled easily, leaving marks, and it also tore at the slightest pull.

Having her describe a book in such terms is pretty neat. It's like we get to vicariously discover things all over again through her eyes.

That saddened her a bit: she didn't want to waste it... She stared at the little corner she had accidentally ripped off, way too small to draw on and, after a moment of consideration, cautiously licked it. It.... Tasted a bit like leaves. Less bitter, and much more dry. Was it a kind of leaf? Sada stares at the pine needles that she was keeping in a little pile near her for the fire for a second.

Licking it! Yeah, why not? Who can honestly say they have never licked a sheet of paper as a kid? (Ok maybe lots of people, don't judge me)

... She was not going to start tasting every single leaf to find which one this sheets were made of, even if a part of her kinda wanted to.

🤣

This was great! Funniest line in the fic so far!

Too risky. Better to just ask Turo when she saw him again.

Still... If it was a leaf... She threw the little piece in her hands in the fire and watched it burn almost incredibly fast, blackening and turning to ash in a split second. She nodded to herself, happy to have her little idea confirmed; with how dry it was, no wonder it burned so quickly.

Well, I bet it was a little less dry after she licked it...

And maybe like anything else from Turo it had come from some unknown creature: there were quite a lot of plant ones, even if most of them didn't seem to like the cold. That was fine by her: the plant creatures were dangerous, with bright flowers that could shoot seeds and colored dust that could put a person to sleep, make them sick, or even immobilize them completely, leaving them in the worst state she could fathom, fully conscious but completely helpless.

I like how she describes mon as creatures. And yeah, they sound pretty terrifying.

A chill that had nothing to do with the cold crawled along her back, and she made sure to check the branches overhead. Some of those creatures could even hang from trees, but if there is one thing they seemed to hate more than the cold, it was fire.

Yep. Good shout-out to type advantage.

She should be safe here. Still... If some group of people was really out there using leaves from some creatures just to make little sheets to draw on... They must have been pretty gutsy to try and do something like that.

Turo: hands her a book
Sada: now thinks of Turo as some brave legendary-status man for having the guts to steal the leaves(paper) from the clutches of the vile plant-creature-god.

She distracts herself by examining the writing utensil next. This one is more familiar apart from the material, pretty much a tube filled with some tincture. The fact that it was still liquid and hadn't already dried though, that was remarkable. You could carry it around and there was no need to continuously mix ash or dirt with water. Maybe it was also an ability of some kind? She would keep an eye out for creatures that showed some power of the sort...

Love the way she compared and described it!

I'm having a hard time finding things I don't like.

She keeps doodling on the leaves for quite some time into the night, unable to sleep, mind racing from one thought to another.

Yeah, that WOULD be the kind of thing to keep someone up at night!

---

« Um, mother?»

The next day, after reaching the settlement, she first approaches her mom, who's busy mending some clothes with a needle made out of bone and some leather strips. Her mother is getting quite old; her hair has streaks of white peeking out, her hands are getting wrinkled, but her mind is as sharp as ever and most importantly, as the current oldest person in the settlement, she has experience.

Oh, that makes sense! Ask an elder about it!

« What is it, dear?» she asks, without pausing in her work, bone hook sliding in and out of the fur in her hands at incredible speed. She ponders how to best describe what she wants to ask.

« Do you know of some tribe that has some.... Weird clothes? I've met this man one night ago, and he was... Strange. Didn't speak our language, so I was wondering where he was from, and he got away before I could ask.» Now she pauses in her work, quietly lifting her head and waiting for her to continue.

« He had purple clothes that looked almost like they were clinging to his skin, and I couldn't see any fur on them... They looked more like they were made from some incredibly tiny scales. »

« Were they warm clothes?»

Sada almost gasps, immediately recognizing what her mother was pointing at.

« No, they didn't look very warm... He also had this... shiny mantle to cover him, but it didn't look like it would do much... Have you seen people like him? Are they from the south?» she asks, hopeful.

Her mother thinks for a moment.

« Can't say I have... Purple and white, you said? And "shiny"?» she sounds confused.

Honestly, she feels the same. That mantle seems useless to her no matter how you looked at it, if not straight up dangerous. Way too bright to help in hiding yourself in the underbrush, and it flapped around making a lot of noise while moving.

Turo: dresses like an idiot
Sada: Needs to help him get some better clothes

« I had never seen such a pure white. It was like fresh snow. »

« That seems horrible for hiding, unless he is actually from the far north... »

« But he would die from the cold even with the sun out in those clothes, so he can't be from up there.» Sada objects.

That's so cool seeing her try to figure out the function of the clothes!

Her mother nods, and slowly resumes her sewing.

« Then he must be from the south, where it's much warmer. Far over the mountains... We traded for a bit with a group that came from over there... Didn't have some "shiny mantle", but I remember clothes made of scales, smooth and really hard to the touch. »

That could be it! But if he is from the south... Something else does not add up now, she realizes after a second.

« There's also... another thing that is weird about him. » she ponders aloud.

This one was a bit more subtle, it had been nagging at her from the moment she had first seen him. Just this incredibly subtle feeling of wrongness that had lasted for a second looking at him, before being replaced by excitement.

« He is too.... Clean.» Her mother looks up at her again, now giving her daughter her full attention.

Sada: just describing what she saw
Mother: is now convinced her daughter fell hard in love at first sight

Sada tries to put into words what she has noticed.

« His clothes are almost impossibly well done, but it's not just that... He is incredibly pale, like someone who hasn't seen the sun... Ever, and his face, his hair and beard, his hands, they were just so...»

She stops, frustrated because she has no idea how to describe it.

« So... Tidy. No scars, no cuts, not a single injury that I could see. Not even a bruise! And he had no weapons with him... nothing.»

Yeah, that's pretty darn weird from her perspective.

Traveling (apparently) alone, with no weapons, no signs of tear or use in his garments or on his body, with clothes that were just begging to get him eaten by some creature... It was more than strange. It was impossible.

She does such a good job of highlighting just how crazy it is! Bravo!

« Pale, weird clothes, no marks on his body, disappears... He is starting to sound more like a spirit than a man to me.» his mother smiles shaking her head.

Sada looks at her for a second, almost disappointed. A spirit...? Some long lost ancestor of them that supposedly appears to give you advice, like in the stories told around the fire?

That would be.... so boring if that was the case. Also he didn't exactly give her advice, in fact it had been the opposite: some lousy ancestor that he was if he didn't even have some great wisdom to impart.

Turo: Has unlocked the achievement: 'Lousy Ancestor'

« No! He is a real person, I just know it...and I will find out what's going on with him. » she announces, determined.

My goodness, Sada. You have NO idea just how hard it would be for you to find him. Without the aid of some legendary time travel Pokemon, I don't think it's even possible for you to find him! Heck, if he doesn't have a record that helps him find the time and location he was in when he met you, TURO might not be able to find you either!

---

First thing to do, of course, is meeting him again, which is easier said than done. She has no idea where he went off to so the only thing she can do is go back to the point of their first meeting, hoping to catch him there again. For a couple of days, nothing new happens, and Sada grows increasingly frustrated. How is it possible for someone like that man to just... Leave no traces of his passage behind? Not even traces of a camp, places where he could have spent the night? She starts to keep track of every place she checks on the leaves Turo gave her, sketching a crude drawing of the area; after a moment of consideration, a couple of crude symbols get added to mark places where she knows certain creatures have established their territories.

Oh, is she in the process of inventing the first ever MAP?!

If so, that MIGHT be able to catch his attention if he is tasked with going back and fixing his time pollution!

A little flame to mark the place where the pack of black fire breathing creatures usually hunts.

One stylized feather to mark the nest of one of those aggressive flying ones, and a long fang to mark an area where the rivers drops in a short waterfall, infested with Brutal Fangs.

Those places in particular should be safe to exclude from her search... Surely no one is going to just walk through places that are clearly inhabited and dangerous?

Sada gets proven wrong not even half a day later; she had just finished gathering some more berries for lunch, when a sudden loud roar from the waterfall echoes through the air.

Oh, this is nifty! Is Turo back?

She jumps to her feet, spear in hand, and listens cautiously: is it a struggle between two Brutal Fangs? Fighting for territory? Food? Those things are vicious, she has seen them (carefully, from a distance) simply fly into a rage and attack each other at random while peacefully swimming next to each other just a moment before. She waits for a second roar to echo, or for the telling sound of snapping teeth and wild thrashing.

What she hears instead is a muffled, panicked and obviously human scream. For a long second, she can't even move, dumbfounded.

... He didn't... no one can be that oblivious to their surroundings, can they?

Turo: has gained the achievement "Even Lousier Ancestor"

Sada starts sprinting towards the river at full speed; bursting out of the trees, the nearby waterfall comes into view, and at its base, near the edge of the water and with his back to her, Turo seems to have fallen backwards and is desperately scrambling to his feet. The Brutal Fang, it's vivid red scales glistening from the water it just jumped out from, opens its mouth full of teeth and barrels towards the man, who manages to avoid it at the last second by rolling to the side, causing the creature to crash head first into the gravel on the riverbank, avoiding him by an inch. Not missing a beat and evidently not caring about being on dry land, the red and gold fish thrashes violently against the ground until it rights itself, it's eyes never losing sight of its target. Who, by the way, seems too busy being paralyzed by fear to actually do something useful like, oh I don't know, run for his life. Sada's incredulity turns first to worry and then rage.

"Lousiest Ancestor of All Time Seriously how did he live long enough to have kids no wonder he has no useful advice"

She didn't spend the last three days camping here just to watch him get eaten by a stupid fish!

The creature jumps again, and she readies her spear.

« Get down!» she screams, hoping that the urgency in her tone will get the message across.

He catches sight of her at hearing her voice and hurls himself to the side, the spear passing right over him and hitting the Brutal Fang straight in the forehead.

Turo: Is impressed with her fierce defense of him
Sada: Might be smacking him very hard very soon

Admittedly, it doesn't do much, but it kills its momentum and makes it crash back into the shallow water. Before it can regain its wits, Sada pulls out a yellow berry from her pouch and throws it at the creature, stunning it for a moment.

Evidently deciding that they weren't worth the trouble, the creature lets out a last echoing bellow and then sinks back down into the river with a great splash, disappearing from sight and splashing them both.

Sada isn't fooled, though: they are not the kind of creatures that call for backup, but it could still change its mind and lunge at them again. She recovers her spear as quickly as she can and whirls around towards Turo.

I assume these are mon from the past that are probably featured in the games, but it doesn't really matter. The reason I say that is because the way you are describing them gives me pretty much everything I need to know about them. Very nice!

Other than being drenched from head to toe, he appears unarmed, his purple clothes curiously glistening like the water was smoothly sliding off them instead of getting soaked. First thing he does is check his wrist, strangely; she pulls closer to see if he did get injured after all, but he seems to notice her intentions and slips his hand into one of the folds of his mantle, hiding it from sight.

She pouts a bit, disappointed: he's obviously hiding something from her, and that just makes her want to know what it is even more.

I'm so glad this is a romance fic. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things develop!

Then she realizes what just happened.

« What. Were. You. Doing?» she asks, punctuating every word with a tap of her spear, stomping towards him.

Seriously, what was he thinking? Didn't they have Brutal Fangs were he was from? But even if he had never seen one before, how could you simply stroll near something that obviously had creatures nearby? With how strong they were, you had to assume that every creature you met was aggressive! Well... Almost every creature, there were some more docile ones admittedly, but... Brutal Fangs were obviously not docile. There was a reason they had given them that name after all.

If she had gotten there a moment later, he would have been lunch.

He looks at her spear somewhat alarmed, obviously not understanding her, his eyes flitting between her and the pointed stone tip. She sighs and lowers the weapon, even if just to reassure him that she has no real ill will.

Yeah, men aren't very good at being anchient men where Turo came from. Best be prepaired for a little role reversal, Sada.

« Let's get warmed up.» she offers him her free hand and he takes it after a long moment of hesitation, still keeping the other hidden.

His hand is warm, bigger than hers, but strangely soft and smooth, with long, slender fingers. She can't help but stare at them for a moment, puzzled.

That really looks like the hand of someone who hasn't worked a day in his life. They are children's hands, it's unnatural.

Nice way to describe the hand and the thought process behind it is great!

They go back to the camp she had set up in the past three days; she sits him down on a log and points at the ashes left from last night's fire.

« "Fire"» she then points to the ground, glaring at him like she would with a hyperactive child that won't stay still.

Sorry Turo. You are in timeout now. Best behave!

« Stay here. Don't move. I'm going to get some more food.» she huffs, moving away.

She pointedly stares at him for a couple more seconds, almost expecting him to pull another magical disappearing act as soon as she looks away, but he just lowers his head and scoffs, looking almost... Embarrassed.Seems like he got the message.

She is going to gather some more berries, trusting him to start the fire in the meantime. They can keep working on their vocabulary after she comes back.

Oh, Sada, I'm not sure I would trust him to start the fire, but I guess if he has a future weapon with him he MIGHT be able to. Without something like that or a lighter? No chance at all. He is the worst ancestor, after all.

« Sada....» his voice reaches her at the edge of the camp and the woman stops, looking over her shoulder.

« Thank you » The words are unfamiliar, but the gratitude and relief in them are palpable.

He suddenly looks so... Vulnerable and lost, sitting on that log with his strange clothes and eyes that still have that trace of fear in them.

.... A complete mystery.

Just who is that man?

She simply nods, and disappears into the trees.

Closing Thoughts:
Ugh! What IS it about this fic that turns me into a gushing fanboy? I'm going to have to try harder to find concrit to offer. At least I was able to offer ONE thing!

Seeing Sada's perspective was so interesting! I'm really curious to see where things go from here.

 

[Tango]

Hey Nekodatta! I'm here for review of chapter 3!

Before jumping in, I came back up here to mention that In my line by line, I questioned things quite a lot for the technology of the future. I think I went a bit wild with my imagination. Feel free to take those with a grain of salt or ignore them. I also don't know how much of the future world is cannon to the games vs your interpretation.

Spoiler: Author notes

I'm aware of there being some problems with tenses flipping around in the first 2-3 chapters, I was still figuring out my writing stile... and in Sada's POV chapters, it was at least partly intentional to try and give her narration a more "grounded in reality" feel. Not sure if it worked. I do plan to fix it all little by little. Also please tell me if this formatting is hard to read and ends up being too "wall of text" like. I've had nobody bring it up for now but I've read that a lot of people find it hard to read so if necessary I will add more paragraph breaks!

Ah, so that's what was going on.

Spoiler: Porygon 568 fanart by Flyg0n, thank you so much!!

568!? Woah! It looks like they modeled it after Zapdos. I guess it's an electric type, then?

Chapter 3: Future Looks Good​

Hmm. If the future looks good, why did Turo go back to the past again?

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Travelling back (or technically forward?)

Traveling*

in time to the place he had come from was much more disorienting that Turo expected. Maybe it was because, when he had stepped into the time machine a couple of hours before, he had had the time to prepare mentally. There was a whole procedure to follow while setting up the time machine in preparation for a jump; other than being necessary to avoid messing something up (which he still had done... Somehow), it helped people concentrate. Prepare. Even relax, if necessary.

Sounds like some scary tech.

Getting back using the time anchor was much more sudden, and he stumbled while getting out of the time machine, his mind still half convinced that he was walking on damp leaves and uneven terrain instead of the perfectly pristine and smooth tiles of the Time Travel Department Laboratory.

« Time anchor ID 9537 has returned from space-time coordinates 48°51′12″ N, 2°20′55″ E, timestamp in seconds 441504000000-»

« Just save those coordinates to my ID before you get a stroke trying to pronounce that.» Turo interrupted the smooth artificial voice that had spoken from the time machine while he headed for the door.

Ah, and that is how he got back there!

There was a moment of silence, then something behind his back moved suddenly; Turo stopped when the sleek, round figure of a Porygon 568 zipped around him and stopped him from exiting the room, floating at eye level with the human.

It still had the basic shape of a duck; why the very first Porygon had been designed with that shape in mind was a bit of a mystery: maybe because it had been simpler to code and render, or the dude responsible just really liked duck Pokémon, but it had become a bit of a tradition of all subsequent updates during the years to try and make it as outlandish and ridiculous as possible but still keep it recognizable as a duck.

That's both interesting and funny!

But with such a high number, I was imagining it to be something far more... Like, what do you think a Windows 568 would do in our world? It would probably have some kind of built-in AI supercomputer capable calculating PI to like a googleplex of digets or something in a second and that wouldn't even come close to it's full potential.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic...

They already have time travel tech...

I don't think it's a stretch to say that a Porygon 568 could tap into the omni-net to overwrite itself and all reality with cyberspace into whatever it wanted. Since it has access to time travel, this reality warping would extend to all of time as well. All other mon would obsolete in power and ability, but other Pokemon could still be friends to humans, kept as pets, or in a zoo or something. So the final evolution of Pokemon? It's Porygon when given this many substantial upgrades.

But hey, it's just a theory...

A MON THEORY.

(gotta catch one Porygon 568™)

I guess my headcannon for this will be that people from the future KNEW they could make Porygon get way too out of hand so they are always extremely careful not to go too far with updates. This also gave them considerably more time to focus on the most important aspect: finding new ways to keep it looking like a duck.

If there was one thing that scientist and computer nerds loved, it was running gags; Turo knew, because he was also one of them.

This version in particular was made to look bright yellow with spiky, needle like feathers where his "wings" were supposed to be, and ended up looking more like a cross between a Psyduck and the legendary Zapdos... A little, puffy, dopey and kinda adorable Zapdos.

The Porygon clicked its beak, quickly scanning him up and down.

« Time-displaced object detected. To bring external objects outside of the time machine room, registration of object is required.» it spoke again.

Turo blinked, surprised; it was his first time doing the procedure, and even if he knew that the Pokémon was supposed to say that - it was its job to act as a sort of defensive mechanism for the time machine and anything that got in and out of it, after all - , it still took him a moment to get what it was referring to.

« Oh, this...? Just a little... Souvenir.» he answered, fishing in his lab pocket for the necklace that Sada gave him. It.... Looked even more surreal now in his time, the little leather string with organic fangs and feathers attached. He quietly wondered from what Pokémon they had come from, with that bright red and blue color.

He held it in front of the Porygon, who quickly scanned it.

« Object is not considered a safety or sanitary hazard. Permission granted to bring it outside of time machine room. Welcome back, Dr. Romero Turo. Hope you had a safe trip.» the Pokemon beeped before moving away from the door and going back to the main frame of the time machine, disappearing inside the transparent cylindrical structure that acted as it's control panel.

Cool procedures. Makes sense they would have them.

Turo watched the Porygon go, then stared at the necklace. So that meant he could... Keep it? It would have gathered quite a bit of attention on him... But just depositing it in some box in the laboratory for innocuous random objects brought from the past to be catalogued and eventually donated to some museum, like standard procedure dictated, didn't sit right with him. Sada had given it to him after all, and the girl's excited smile flashed in his mind while he stared at the little pendant.

Aww, he's going to keep it.

He ended up tying the leather string around his neck and slipping it under the collar of his bodysuit. It felt a bit strange, having something that was different from the smooth texture of his suit touching his bare skin, but not exactly uncomfortable.

He exited the room still in a bit of a daze; that wasn't exactly surprising even if the trip had been to only fifteen years ago like planned. "Time sickness" was apparently a thing: the human body -or living things in general - didn't react well to passing through time. It had taken quite a bit of studies and experiments to make the trip safe; some lives had tragically been lost in the first test trials: people not landing when and where expected, or coming back with amnesia.

Now, it was mostly just an inconvenience, and some of his more experienced colleagues assured him that he would grew used to it.

So, I guess they haven't learned to master time travel yet.

No one had traveled that far back though... That reminded him.

He had to write a report about his trip, right?

The corridors of the Time Travel Department Laboratory (or TTDL for short) were currently deserted, which made sense, since it was late night. Turo had been forced to use the time machine in the night time slot, since all other slots during the day had already been reserved for other -and more important - trips than his simple test run. No one wanted the night shift if possible; it gave you the worst time jet-lag ever.

Soft lights blinked on a couple of steps ahead of him while he traversed the corridor and quietly switched off as soon as he had passed, leaving only the quiet hum of machinery.

At the end of the corridor, he thumbed the button to call the elevator.

They still use buttons? No brain microchip implant to just think the elevator up? Then again, imagination tends to go farther with technology than the reality of technology in the future does.

He always found it somewhat amusing how, in a society that was completely converted to holographic controls, haptic feedback or single gestures for... Pretty much anything, some fringe areas of technology had stubbornly remained unchanged for centuries.

They had tried to use touch screens, or holographs, or even voice commands, of course, but people didn't like it.

Ah, thank you! Either you thought to add this in yourself or other reviewers must have prompted this bit as an edit.

They would press the screen and then do it again, just to make sure that the command had been acknowledged.

Voice commands had been a disaster with people getting in and out giving conflicting commands.

In this case, a physical button to press was still the best.

At the end of the day, it turned out, people just really liked to mash the shit out of buttons.

Indeed, but please tell me they at least made the button to close the elevator door actually work. That button never works to make it close faster...

Like, does Turo have to awkwardly stand there for 5 seconds waiting for the elevator door to decide to close despite his repeated attempts to make it close faster by hitting the useless close door button?

I swear that button was only put there to make people feel better like giving a 4 year old a game controller and letting them pretend they are playing a video game while the one actually playing is you or you are just watching a video of it or something...

After getting out at the ground floor, he quietly walked across the great hall of the university. Something small and quick scurried away at his feet, and Turo absent mindedly side stepped the little Steelccino that were busy cleaning the floor, ignoring the indignant screeching of the chinchilla Pokémon at seeing him leave even just a speck of dust from his boots. One of them tried to jump on his lab coat, swiping at him with his brushy tail - the only part of its body that still looked identical to the Mincinno it had evolved from long ago, chattering angrily. The man had to almost physically push the little critter away, sneering.

« Come on, it's not like I did it on purpose. You expect me to go back millennia and not trek around some dirt? Shoo » Turo complained, exhausted. The Pokémon obviously didn't care, their shiny, red led-like eyes fixing him with a death glare before getting back to work.

I'm surprised they didn't have a decontamination chamber and medical scanner for Turo instead.

They were employed by the university of Mesagoza as natural cleaners at night, which was perfect, as long as you weren't part of the TTDL. His colleagues hated the little critters and the critters hated them right back, in an eternal cycle of mutual annoyance.

These are pretty amusing, though and they do help tie Pokemon into the future world more.

He welcomed the sight of the teleporters near the entrance: scanning his ID he stepped into one, a smooth circular platform made of what looked like light purple glass, and recited his home address.

That wouldn't have been the most secure option in broad daylight -you wouldn't want to announce where you lived to everyone after all -, but screw it, he was tired and there was no one around anyway. The platform briefly lit up, almost seemed to hesitate for a second, calculating the closest teleporter to the given address, then zapped him away.

Teleporting had become ubiquitous some couple centuries ago - of course, a simpler version had been in use since much, much earlier, with Psychic Pokémon ferrying people to and from important places since ancient history. Developing a technology that didn't require the constant use of Pokemon and could be accessible to everyone had taken a bit more time, but it was now part of everyday life.

I like the idea of future tech already being old. You and I think alike in this regard!

It had, for all intents and purposes, completely eliminated commuting and traffic.

Imagine having to spend multiple hours a day just getting to work! And then getting back home! That sounded exhausting, how did people put up with that in the past?

Ooo! And some social commentary too! I do dip my toes into that a little sometimes.

The teleporter left him a bit away from his apartment complex; obviously only the richest people could afford a personal teleporter that would deposit them literally on their doorstep, but Turo didn't mind walking the little distance he had to. It was still infinitely better than the alternative.

By this point the idea of commuting is a history thing. No one taking a car thinks how 'at least they don't have to use a horse and needing to feed it and take it to the vet'. I think it would be more believable if he accepted that he would likely never have a personal teleporter and would 'make do' with having to walk some from the teleportation point since that's what normal people in his time have to 'deal' with.

The front door of his apartment unlocked as soon as he got near enough, and with a tired sigh, Turo closed the door.

Wait, the door doesn't automatically open and close for him? Also, wouldn't it just not open for other people therefore making the idea of a 'lock' something that is very outdated?

He was home. Between all the preparations for the time jump, setting up the time machine and his studies, he hadn't set foot outside of the laboratory for the past three days. Of those three days, he technically had been "really" gone only for a couple of hours, but... It felt like so much more. His mind was still kind of processing what had happened.

Two hours he had spent simply sitting on that river side, talking with someone that was now less than dust. How did she spend the rest of her life? How long had she even lived?

It wouldn't do him any good to dwell on those thoughts so much; if he wanted to keep working in that field of research, he had to get used to it.

She occupies his thoughts. Understandably. Probably was the most unique experience of his life, so far and it wasn't even a bad one (except when he angered the brutal fang which I get the feeling this POV went back in time to when he just got back from his first trip, so I don't think he met the brutal fang yet)

Two blue lights blinked at him from his small living room, accompanied by a low « Gwaaaoohhh » and the quiet clicking of metallic paws on the floor.

Turo smiled, hugging the Miraidon that welcomed him back and stroking it's neck.

« Hey buddy, how are you doing? » he caressed the smooth light grey scales, examining them carefully.

« Is your Hadron Engine still acting up?»

Hadron, like the collider. Not sure if that was cannon or if it was something you added. Neat either way.

The was a slight pause, then the Miraidon's throat lit up, briefly pulsating with blue energy, an electric buzz filling the room. It had almost managed to form a complete wheel shape before it sneezed, snapping back to its low power form.

It growled sadly and pawed at the floor, looking almost ashamed.

« Don't worry about it, you just need to rest. We'll go riding as soon as you're doing better... And I can get a day off. » Turo added.

Miraidon had been with him since he was a kid, still living with his parents in Medali.

The apartment where he lived was a bit small for him, but the Pokemon could generally come and leave freely, wandering the city; still, in the past few days he hadn't been feeling too well, and had spent them mostly curled up on the sofa. With Turo himself not having exactly stepped outside the laboratory for days (except for the little trip through time), he was looking forward to taking that little road trip. Just cruising through the highway at high speed, wind hitting his face, nothing but a seemingly infinite road in front of him to let Miraidon speed up as much as he wanted. Maybe they could even practice gliding again. That sounded nice. With a last pat on the Pokémon's head, he headed to the bathroom for a shower before going to bed.

A regular shower? Not like a sonic shower that uses sound-waves instead of water or a light beam scanner that burns away all the contaminants and uppermost layer of skin?

---

« So how did your test run go? »

Turo raised his eyes from the screen that floated in front of him, stopped mid sentence in his report, and made a quick "stop" gesture by lifting the index and middle finger of his right hand. The writing program that was tracking his lip movements to write down his report recognized the gesture and dutifully stopped, then started to automatically check spelling and punctuation while waiting for the prompt to start again.

Why would this thing need processing time to check spelling and punctuation? It should have the processing power to do it instantly for all of it. And he has to actually speak to use it instead of it just converting his thoughts to text?

Waiting for an answer in front of him with a mug of coffee in one hand and a bemused smile was Gervaso Ortega, his senior by a year and accomplished time traveler.

I see they still drink coffee. Does the mug keep it hot?

So what's this guy want?

Turo hesitated for a moment, then stood up.

« Depends... Theoretically, incredibly well. Technically... I must have messed something up.»

The other man gestured for him to follow him out of the little office he got assigned and into a break room, or as people in the TTDL called it, the "sanity room".

Constantly kept at a comfortable temperature and humidity, the holographic walls continually projected calming images of natural landscapes and relaxing sounds.

Ok, I like this bit of technology. This part is cool.

« Oh... It's a rainy forest today? Nice, relaxing.» Gervaso commented, sitting down.

Turo almost wanted to point out that it was only relaxing because they weren't actually getting wet, but he wasn't going to complain. A nice forest with some rain was a much better scenario than some.... Alternatives they had had in the past.

« Remember that girl that was researching pirates and forced the room to simulate a creaking ship at sea for "immersion" for three months?» he answered, sitting down in front of him and ordering a coffee of his own. The other man grinned.

« Oh man, Sea Shanty Girl! Wonder what she is doing now... If I never have to listen to "Randy Dandy-Oh" again, it will still be too soon.»

Nice detail.

Turo laughed, but his colleague seemed pretty curious about his trip, prompting him again.

He was... Actually a bit nervous about revealing what had happened.

« The trip was fine. No excessive time sickness, no allergic reaction to the pre-jump shots... Weather was fine so I didn't even have to recharge my time-anchor manually...» he hesitated.

« I may have.... Overshot the landing on the time coordinate a bit.»

That made Gervaso, who had been nodding along, pause, intrigued.

« Really? By how much?»

« .... Some 14'000 years?»

No big deal. Year is just a number.

There was a slight incredulous pause, then the other man exploded into laughter, hurriedly putting the mug of coffee down on the table.

« Are you serious? The new guy does his first time jump and ends up where no one managed to ever go before? You are either going to become the best time traveler I've ever seen, or the worst.»

Yeah, that's what he had figured would happen.

He took a sip of coffee, only for Gervaso to almost slap it out of him by patting his shoulder.

« ... I'm going to get grounded, aren't I?»

« Oh, you are so grounded while they figure out how you did it. »

---

Cool, so once he is done being grounded, he can travel back 14,000 years ago again!

He does end up "grounded" in the end, banned from using the time machine for a month.

Tense slip. 'does' should be 'did'.

The coordinates he had used on the other hand are still safely associated to his ID; as soon as one month passed, he could, theoretically, travel there again.

His original project had actually been traveling to the future - not too far away. The future direction was much more risky by definition, since you obviously had absolutely no data on where you would end up.

Oh, good point!

Most time travelers who chose the future wouldn't jump more than a couple of years; tiny incremental steps, and reports on what they knew were kept secret with the highest level of security (except for spoilers about when the new season or movie of a series would come out and how much it sucked, because of course people wanted to know about that way more than possibly horrible news).

And that had always fascinated him terribly; it was pretty much a leap of faith into the unknown.

... Maybe a bit too ambitious for his first project; maybe he could... Travel to the distant past for a bit after all? It was... Really, it was so far away that it was almost as unknown as the future.

The happy smile that Sada had made while they had tried to talk only encouraged his decision.

Yep, he wants to see her more than he is curious about the future. Not bad at all!

While he can't time travel, what he can do, man of science that he is, is spend his time doing some research.

'can't' should be 'couldn't'

'can' should be 'could'

'is' should be 'was'

Ok nevermind. There are too many tense slips for me to care to point them out anymore. I only started pointing them out again here because I thought they were supposed to be unique to Sada's POV. I'm sure you could find these pretty easily just by looking over it and editing, so I'll leave you to it unless you specifically want me to point them out. The tense slips don't even really bother me that much. I can ignore them pretty easily.

He pours over every anthropological book about the Upper Paleolithic he can find, digs up documentaries and even some fiction.

There is.... Frustratingly little. Makes sense since there literally wasn't even written language at that point, so not much got passed down through the ages. The timescale is also something that makes his head hurt on more than one occasion.

« "First evidence of Pokémon domestication like Growlithe and Mareep could have occurred between 15'000 and 10'000 years before common age"... Sure, that is just.... An error margin of 5000 years, no biggie. » he sighs, flicking away the screen he was reading with a swipe of his finger.

It was going to be a long month.

---

Yeah, I think it's believable it would be hard to research that even with archeology having had centuries to make progress.

Exactly one month after his first jump, he walks back into the time machine room. He slips the time anchor to his wrist, checking that it is attached securely.

Waiting for him are Porygon 568 and a woman wearing medical scrubs and holding a syringe.

« Time anchor ID 9537 ready for departure as soon as medical checks complete. Update destination coordinates?» Porygon 568 speaks up.

« Yes, add... 316800 seconds to the timestamp» it wouldn't do to appear again literally at the same moment he had left.

Measuring by seconds? Hmm... that's kind of annoying because now you are making me do math...

Ok, so it's 88 hours later. Since the math worked to a perfect whole number, obviously he meant 88 hours so why not just have him say 88 hours? Even if you say Porygon takes commands only in seconds, that's an odd restriction to have and it's obviously capable of converting seconds to hours and vice versa with how advanced it is.

« Acknowledged.»

The woman quickly approaches him and slips the needle of the syringe into his left shoulder, the clear liquid inside entering his body. Turo grimaces for a second; something else he will have to get used to... Those "shots" as they were called were the only thing protecting his body from getting teared apart in the time machine. It was... A bit unsettling to think about actually. How did they work? No idea, he was no doctor. (… Well he technically was, but not that kind of doctor)

He pulls the sleeve of the bodysuit back up to cover his shoulder, slips back his lab coat, and steps into the time machine.

---

I guess they still have regular shots in that time. Not really sure how else they would go about it, so that's fine. Neat concept that they are needed to make time travel happen.

Oh, but I guess that means it would be hard to bring Sada with him to the future. I suppose to do it he would need to bring a shot to the past and inject her with it before bringing her back with him. I assume that will be something that happens at some point, so that should be interesting to see.

This time he can tell that it worked before even opening his eyes. It's been a month for him, but not even a week has passed here: the same cold air, the leaves getting rustled by the wind, the stream rushing by his side. He start following the river, listening for some tell tale sounds of human activity. Steps, rustling of leaves, some smoke signal for a fire maybe... If Sada had been working by the river last time, she probably lived nearby.

The time differential is really interesting. It's like entering a virtual world or a dream or something. Kind of gives me vibes from the movie, 'Avatar'.

A shape in the water catches his attention: red with a big yellow dorsal fin and whiskers, it takes him a moment to recognize the silhouette of a Magikarp...

Whaaaaaaaaaat!

Hello, brutal fang!

Ok this was pretty cool. I enjoyed that.

It's a pretty big one, but that is nothing unusual. Lots of Pokémon were just bigger in ancient times, or one particular individual simply grew a lot more. He notices the Magikarp stop dead in the water and slightly turn in his direction. Turo pays the Pokémon no mind: they are so common even in his time that seeing one is nothing unusual, so he just keeps walking in the shallow water.

That is, until it suddenly charges at him.

This makes so much more sense now how he got into trouble here!

He lets out a panicked yelp when the Magikarp is suddenly right by his side, teeth snapping and missing his arm only because he stumbles backwards and falls on his back.

It's the angriest looking Magikarp he's ever seen, and... Teeth? Magikarp don't have teeth! They barely have functioning muscles!

The shock stops him from moving for a couple of seconds; is it some prehistoric form of Magikarp? The one that was supposedly stronger than the current one?

This is way more than a "a bit stronger", this one looked ready to bite his face clean off. Did it even need to evolve into Gyarados?

He tries to get up to his feet, hands slipping on the stones that make up the riverbed, but the creature is much faster than him. It jumps out from the water and he desperately rolls to the side. He can feel the teeth snapping close to his head before the creature flies past him and crashes outside of the water.

And it still doesn't stop.

Pretty horrifying! I feel like 'still' wants to be itallics, though.

It's furiously thrashing on its side, kicking up water and gravel until it manages to turn itself right up, and the sight of it is so surreal that he can't help but stare, frozen in place, when everything suddenly clicks in his mind.

It's... It's using Splash.

Is that how the move developed? Is that what it originally was for? To chase prey even on dry land?

Mind blown. Really cool feature!

« Get down!» Sada's voice suddenly rings out from behind him and he just throws himself to the side, then stares as the woman literally chases the damn thing away with nothing but a spear and... What even was that? It looked like some kind of berry...

Anyway, she just saved his life.

You know, just because we saw this from Sada's perspective doesn't really take any away from seeing the same events again from Turo's perspective. Maybe I should do this with my own fic? It's kind of inspiring. I change POV sometimes, but I never go over the same scene except for in Book Three that I am working on.

He finally gets up to his feet; the bodysuit he's wearing makes sure that most of his body is still dry, but the same can't be said for his hair, hands, lab coat and-

"Shit, the time-anchor"

With a quick surge of panic he checks the device on his wrist; it should be pretty damn resistant to any kind of damage, even Pokemon moves, and really be much more durable than the person who is wearing it, but he feels pretty justified in his panic when the little device is literally the only thing keeping him tethered to his own time.

Makes sense to me.

It thankfully doesn't even look wet. He notices Sada staring at his wrist and quickly hides his hand in his lab coat pocket, pointedly ignoring her little sad pout.

Ugh, I don't want him to ignore her sad pout. It's adorable!

He jumps a bit when she storms up to him, brandishing her spear.

What... What did he do? Did he accidentally end up somewhere he wasn't meant to? Was that Magikarp some kind of holy creature and she's pissed because she had to attack it to save him?

Is he going to end up stabbed in the chest after all?

He doesn't understand, but she just sighs and offers him her hand.

He takes it after a second.

All right... Looks like he has avoided "death by spear" for the moment.

---

🤣

He's been sitting on that log for a couple of minutes now; he has tried to thank Sada for saving him, and now the girl has disappeared into the woods again. He nervously looks around, jumping at every sound. He doesn't even have Pokémon with him to protect him: even if he could get the permission to bring Miraidon with him, just pulling out a Poké Ball and using it would be... Incredibly risky. It's considered one of the most pivotal inventions of all of human history, almost at the same level of.... The wheel, or writing. Who knows what the effect of just accidentally showing someone the idea much earlier than supposed to could do to history.

A valid caution.

Not to mention that Miraidon would look even more out of place than he does.

His eyes land on something that Sada has left behind, and he recognizes it as the notebook he has given her.

Seeing it covered in marks he scoots closer and picks it up, intrigued.

He flips it open and is left staring at the page, speechless.

He was expecting some random doodles. Maybe stick figures like the ones in cave paintings.

These are notes. A drawing that is unmistakably a map is drawn on the page, with the position of the river, the woods and what must be other peculiar spots all marked with symbols. He flips behind a couple pages, and there's stylized drawings of mushrooms, leaves, plants, even Pokemon, all marked with one or more accompanying symbols.

On one of the first pages, he notices that a corner of the page seems torn up. Another corner has been dipped in water, ink all smeared.

She hasn't just been using it, she's been experimenting with it, trying out different things with this new unfamiliar material.

His heart starts pounding with excitement: this is incredible... she is incredible-

I like this a lot. Man I'm glad to be reading a romance fic!

« TURO!»

He jumps like a kid caught stealing cookies from the jar right before dinner.

Sada is back, her leather pouch overflowing with what looks like random roots, plants and berries, and is staring at him with a mix of exasperation and disappointment.

She sets down her bag and mutters something under her breath, then points at the circle of stones she had set up and repeats the word she had taught him before. Was it... Something like ash? Or "fire", or.... Oh. OH.

.... She had asked him to start the fire, didn't she?

Yes, Turo, she did.

He flushes with embarrassment while she keeps possibly berating him -he doesn't blame her, he deserves that-, all while skewering some mushrooms on a couple of sticks.

« S-sorry...»

Well, even if he had understood her, he had no idea how to actually start a fire.

Ah, ha! Called it! He doesn't know how to start one. Why would he given where he is from?

He tries to excuse himself by pointing at the fire and shaking his head. She stops and looks at him quizzically, seemingly pondering something. Probably how someone lacking survival skills like him is still alive.

Huh, this statement seems to show that he understands her POV better than I would have expected. A lucky guess, perhaps?

She sits down near him, and grabs two pieces of wood from a pile near the log they've been using as a makeshift bench. The first one is flat, and looks like a little groove has been carved in it. The second one has an angled head, almost like a plow.

She slots the plow inside the groove and starts moving it up and down quickly, keeping it an an angle, then stops and offers him the two pieces of wood.

Oh. She.... She really wants him to do it himself, doesn't she?

He start mimicking what she had just showed him, and in not even a minute his arms already start protesting about the effort they are definitely not used to performing.

But he keeps it up, pushing through the pain, and... It does seem like it's working, smoke coming out from the friction of the movement. He had seen it done in movies, but never in real life. He honestly didn't think that a spark would come out so quickly, but suddenly there it is, a little pile of charcoal friction burned into the groove with an even tinier spark smoldering inside. Sada is quick to get a dried leaf near it, causing it to start burning, and transfers it into the campfire to start it proper.

Turo is left sitting there, with a huge, dumb grin slowly spreading on his face.

Sada laughs at his expression, but he doesn't mind.

He just made fire!! With his own two hands!! That's AWESOME!

---

This bit is great!

He had tried to refuse the food, feeling pretty bad in taking it when he had it so readily available at home, but the girl had just stared at him with a glare that... Well... Honestly had reminded him a bit of his mom when he was little and she was waiting for him to finish eating his vegetables.

There was no saying "no" to a glare like that.

Neko, you need to stop this from making me smile so much. My face is going to start to hurting! 😅

While they are eating some roasted mushrooms and roots, Sada excitedly shows him the notebook. She pinches one blank page between two fingers and looks up at him with those bright, clear eyes.

« What is it?»

Reminded of the first little "game" they had played, it doesn't take him much to guess what she just asked.

« "Paper"»

« "Paper"... » she repeats, looking back down at it. She looks conflicted, and he can almost see the thousand questions that she wants to ask, and doesn't know how. She gathers some leaves that they have been using as kindle and presses one on the page, before looking up at him again. She struggles a moment, silently mouthing a question, then speaks up again.

« Is.... "Paper"... Leaves?»

He looks at her, shocked.

Technically, no, but it's still cellulose, and she got scarily close to the right answer.

This is pretty cool seing her try to figure stuff out!

How did she even figure that out?

« No, it's... um .. "Wood"» he stammers out after a moment, pointing to the log they've been sitting on.

She stares at him for a moment, then nods, grabs her pen, and jots down another little mark on the page, a lil drawing of a tree.

... She's taking notes.

Many, many years later, Turo would look back at this scene and recognize it as the exact moment he first fell in love with her.

Awwwww!!!

Closing thoughts:
Ok so, I know I got a bit hypercritical of the future world in my line by line, but I still thought a lot of it was very interesting and it did not bore me in the slightest to read it. Instead it just got me imagining furture tech. But I have to say my favorite parts of this was once he got back together with Sada again. I love seeing those two interact. Seeing them learn to communicate has been a treat too. I'm really curious how you wrote such a big fic with this though! Right now it seems like it could be wrapped up in another 30,000 words potentially. I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve and I'm glad the fic has some decent length to it.

 

[Tango]

And now I am here for Chapter 4!

Anyway, back to Sada's point of view!

Sada, Turo. I like em both and I like that you switch between them too!

Chapter 4​

Huh, I think you forgot to add the chapter title here. You did it for the others so it's super weird that this wasn't already caught and fixed. Anyway, chapter title is "A Matter of Trust"(I looked at the threadmark for it)

Trust, huh? So something big is about to happen here. I get the feeling it will be Sada needing to trust Turo, or maybe it will be a bit of both? Should be interesting either way.

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

The more she looked at Turo, the more the man just completely baffled her.

At first she thought that he just hadn't understood her, but... He couldn't even light a fire!

Maybe his tribe didn't use it? If he really came from the south, maybe they didn't need it for warmth, that much was obvious... But what about food? Did they eat everything raw? That didn't seem plausible.... And he hadn't looked unfamiliar with cooked food.

It was almost like... He had been born in the body of an adult and had none of the skill and experience that came with it. Which was impossible, unless... he had lived a very secluded life until now, someone else doing everything for him...

It's so cool to see her try to reason through this! So much fun to read!

She had one theory about what he was, that could explain at least some of his... More strange qualities. And no, it was not "he's a spirit".

She had no way to confirm it though, not yet. She first needed to be able to talk with him better.

Hmm! That's pretty interesting. I wonder what her theory is?

So the strange writing material was called paper! And it wasn't leaves, but wood... Somehow. She examined the paper with this new information, trying to think of a way to ask Turo how it was made. Wood could be pretty flexible, so maybe by cutting it in really thin sheets...? But then how did it become so soft...? How did they make every piece so perfectly even?

So many questions, she had no idea where to start.

I know it seems so mundane, but its so enjoyable watching her try to piece things together.

But maybe... She could try and confirm where he was from.

She flips the "paper" back to the map of the area she's been drawing these last day and points first to Turo.

« You» she then draws an imaginary circle around the page, then offers the pen to the man.

« Where... Did you come from...?» she asks, pointing at various spots on the map.

He stares at the page for a couple seconds, leaving her to wonder if he got what she was trying to say. But more than perplexed, he looks... Conflicted.

Does he not want to tell her?

Maybe he doesn't even know?

He slowly takes the writing stick from her hand and presses it, staring at the page. She notices that he holds it differently than her, daintily propped between two fingers, and then he hesitantly, slowly, draws a little "X" shape at the bottom right of the page.

Sada tries to mask her enthusiasm. He is from the south!

Hmm. If Turo was trying to be truthful he could turn the map upside down, flip it over, and then put an 'X' there. But I think he is still masking where he came from, so it's understandable.

Still, Sada is probably going to be sad if she learns that he misled her.

« I knew it!» she whispers, ignoring his confused blink. All right, next question... She gestures for the writing stick again, and on a blank page, draws three simple human shapes. Sada circles one and points at Turo.

« You» she then mimics walking with two fingers like he had done a couple of days ago.

« Alone? Or with people? "People"» she repeats, drawing a circle around all the stick figures together and hoping it was understandable. Learning words from stuff you could physically point at was easy. Most abstract concepts, less so, but they could try using drawings as symbols to represent them. As long as they were understandable...

At her side, she hears Turo shuffle uncomfortably for a moment, clothes crinkling slightly, before pointing to the single circled figure.

She looks up at him again - and that impossibly neatly trimmed beard looks even more weird up close, unnatural -, but he interrupts her before she can voice her next question.

« "Is"... You... "Alone"?» he stammers a bit, his accent all wrong and weird and... Outsider-ish. But the fact that he is trying at all and that he actually picked up words that she's been using is strangely... Endearing. She's not the only one that has some questions, it seems.

So cute watching them learn to communicate!

« No. My people are, umm... Here.» she draws another "X" similar to his in another corner of the map, north east to their current position. Sada waits a couple seconds, observing his reaction. He looks... Pensive.

« Do you want to...?» no, too complicated.

« You... Come... With me?» she asks after a moment, pointing first in his direction, then to the little stick figures and finally on the position of her settlement on the map.

It takes a couple of seconds, but then his eyes go wide and he starts vehemently shaking his head, looking suddenly nervous.

« Oh no, absolutely not-» he mumbles.

Sada frowns a bit.

Yeah, he can't risk polluting the timeline. It's stretching things as it is already.

... She doesn't understand. Surely staying with a group of strangers is still safer than living alone? Maybe he misunderstood her?

His reaction is making her theory a lot more likely though.

« All right... » disappointed, she goes back to the first sheets of paper, and starts pointing out the various plants and mushrooms, just trying to get out as much vocabulary that could be useful as possible. It's slow going, but when they arrive to the sketches she has made of various creatures, he seems to suddenly perk up. He gestures for the writing stick and points to the first sketch, one of the big birds of prey with grey and red feathers... Not like her drawing can show it, since she had access only to one color.

« It's a Fire Wing...» they were dangerous while they were hunting or if you happened to get near their nests, but she liked to look out for their fallen feathers; they were soft and incredibly warm, great to wear during the colder season by sewing them inside clothes, or as accessories. Turo nods, just the hint of a smile on his lips.

« "Talonflame"»

Is that what it was called in his language...?

Then, to her surprise, he starts sketching a Fire Wing of his own alongside hers, with a great amount of details.

A couple of strokes to draw the head, the curved beak with a sharp point and even sharper eyes... he is good at it, the picture so similar to the real thing it's like one of the creatures had been quietly sitting between them all this time, posing for reference.

But of course, there isn't one; he must be going from memory, not unlike her when she takes notes after some sightings.

But to be able to draw it so perfectly... He must have seen so many of them! And from really close, no less...

Sada finds herself almost transfixed by the smooth movements of his hand while it flits along the page, expertly filling in the drawing. The way he moves, even how he was holding the writing stick, not a single blemish on his fingers ... It's obvious he is much more used to doing this than... Lighting a fire, or holding a weapon, or ... really any kind of manual activity.

She is drawn in by him. I'm feeling a ton of excitement bubbling up at seeing this romance build from the ground up. So good!

Also, it's cool that he can draw well. That way he has some impressive things too and isn't just oddly lame.

Someone else must have done them for him all this time before now, giving him the opportunity to get that good at something not immediately useful for survival like drawing.

And there is only one role she can think of that would allow for that kind of privilege, if it was even possible.

Oh, does she think he is a ruler or a tribe or something?

Turo finishes his drawing, absentmindedly flipping the writing stick between two fingers before giving it back to her, then starts listing off the various body parts in his language. They are not immediately useful as words between them (how many times is something like "talon" going to come up in a conversation?), but she still listens attentively. They are useful to her, and he seems... Weirdly knowledgeable about these creatures.

« Fire Wings umm... "Move"... No...» he lifts his arms and moves them a couple of times up and down, and she has to stop herself from giggling: the white cape loudly flapping along makes him look ridiculous.

« Fly...?» she offers, only half successful in stopping a laugh from escaping her.

He blushes a bit -which is weirdly adorable - and keeps talking.

Blushing, laughing. This is some seriously good stuff.

« Y-yes... they "Fly" with... Fire... Umm...» there's obviously something else he wants to add, but can't explain. He sighs and palms his face.

« Of course they do, dumbass... How do I explain "fireproof"...?» he mutters to himself, lowering his hand to rub at his chin.

Sada stares at him for a moment, pointedly avoiding her eyes after noticing that she had been gazing at him just a bit too hard.

« "Dumbass"...?» she repeats, picking out one of the words from his muttering at random, and only because it sounded funny.

Turo freezes, a flash of horror on his face that quickly gets replaced by a stuttering, incredulous laugh that he tries and fails to contain.

« Wha...? No! Nononono, don'tusethatword, of all the things to pick up» he manages to get out, shaking his head but still being mostly incomprehensible.

And when he returns, the word will have a new mysterious and ancient origin! The oldest swearword in human history!

Sada just stares at him, perplexed - and just a touch amused at his reaction -

« Turo, what is "dumbass"?»

His laugh only gets louder, and he can't do much except keep shaking his head, tears in his eyes.

It takes him a good couple of minutes to calm down.

... Now she really wants to know what that word means.

---

After a couple more hours, when they've exhausted speaking (or as close as they could get to speaking) about every creature in her paper sheets - or her "notebook", as Turo had called it-, the man stands up and Sada knows, before he even looks to the south, that he is going to leave.

She frowns, trying to think of a way to get him to stay; knowing him alone, in the dark, in a place unfamiliar to him... It worries her. She can't help but picture another Brutal Fang jumping out of the water to drag him away, or another hundred ways he could end up dead.

Awww she is feeling protective of him!

That he isn't is still baffling.

Maybe he knows of some special way to avoid creatures attacking him...? Not that it worked before.

Turo seems to hesitate for a moment, then gestures for the notebook.

She gives it to him, and he flips it to the first blank page. He draws a circle with some lines coming out of it.

« Sun»

All right...? He already told her how to say it in his language though...

He looks up and searches the sky for a moment before quickly drawing another half circle.

« Moon»

He circles both of them together, then looks up at her for a long moment.

« "Day"»

Sada looks at the drawing; a sun and a moon together form... What?

He thinks for a moment, then draws another line, this time with only half of a sun over it. An arrow pointing away from it, and a moon after that... Oh! She almost jumps a little when it hits her.

He's drawing day and night! She nods enthusiastically and he smiles, then proceeds to draw another couple of sun and moon symbols, each with arrows leading from one to the next.

« I'll come.... Here... in "three days".» he enunciates slowly circling the last couple of symbols, before giving her the notebook.

It's a sequence of days and nights... He's telling her when they can see each other again. If the first symbol is today, and there is another after that, and a couple more after than one...

I love watching them piece things together.

Ok I think maybe I'm gushing a bit too much. I keep repeating myself on things too. I hope it doesn't make my reviews obnoxious...

He starts to slowly back away, cautiously, and Sada looks back down to the notebook, conflicted. A part of her really wants to tail him, to discover where he's going. What he is obviously hiding from her. Why he looks so reluctant at the idea of meeting other people.

But... He did just promise to come see her again.

She doesn't want to break that trust right away.

« Three days.» she nods, and to give him proof of her good intentions, sits back down on the log.

He looks a bit more relieved at that, and turns around quickening his pace.

She looks at him until he completely disappears from view amidst the trees, then closes her eyes and holds still, straining her ears.

His footsteps are still audible for the time it takes her heart to beat thirty times- then they're gone.

---

Her beating heart, huh? I think maybe she is starting to feel attracted to him.

« So you've met with that strange man again? » Chalo asked, her dark raven hair clinking as the little wooden beads that decorated it rattled against each other.

Ooo nice detail with the beads.

« Yes, I've actually got a theory about him now.» Sada answers, carefully following the other woman along the trail they've been walking along for a couple of hours.

She had gone back to the settlement after Turo had left: no reason to spend those three days just lazing around.

The trail was just the faintest line visible among the grassy field that extended all around them. The grass grew pretty high, tall enough to hide both a person walking upright, or most creatures. That made this area relatively dangerous: creatures couldn't see you coming, but you also had no idea of what could suddenly jump out at you. Unless they left traces, like the one they were following. Grass flattened by a great number of creatures stepping on it, walking in an orderly line. A herd, and Sada was pretty sure she knew what kind of herd it was. That was the whole reason that Chalo had dragged her along after all: she was the only other one in their group both curious and crazy enough to go along with her ideas.

« You do? Let's hear it. I still think that your mother is right and he is a spirit... But not an ancestor. A creature spirit, the ones that come out at night and can disappear in smoke.»

Sada lets out a sigh, crouching briefly to examine a patch of grass that looked like it had been burned.

« He is not a creature. First of all, he talks. »

« Yeah, but not our language, right? What if it's a creature using you to learn how to speak?»

« ... That's way more ridiculous than him simply being an outsider.» Sada rolls her eyes, and Chalo simply shrugs.

« ... But it's more interesting. Anyway, your theory? » she asks again, cautiously parting the grass growing on both sides of the trail to check their surroundings.

Sada follows her a couple of steps behind, swiftly stepping on Chalo's footprints to reduce noise to a minimum.

« He's the shaman of his tribe. The lore-keeper... He knows so much stuff about creatures, and can draw one perfectly! He looks like he has barely travelled before now; maybe he ... Really just didn't, because his role in the group has always been to create medicine, or... Teach the children about stuff, not hunt or explore.»

Chalo hums briefly, not convinced.

« Shamans get their role when they are are old, though. And Narjik still knows how to use a spear, not like this Terg guy-»

« Turo. And maybe in their tribe it's different, and it gets appointed at birth. » she explains enthusiastically.

« It would also explain his weird clothes. They're not for traveling, they are his shaman clothes. »

Honestly, it's a pretty good theory based on the information available to her!

« All right... » Chalo stops and turns around suddenly, forcing the girl to stop walking.

« If he's so important for his tribe... What's he doing here? Alone?» she asks in a triumphant tone, but Sada just crosses her arms over her chest. What, did she think she hadn't thought of that?

« I've asked. He didn't look happy at the idea of meeting other people. I think he's been... Driven out. Forced to get away from them.»

Chalo goes from looking smug to slightly worried.

« So you think he's some... Outcast? Doesn't that mean he did something bad if they banished him?»

Yeah, that... That was the part of her theory she couldn't quite explain. You had to do something pretty awful to get thrown out of your tribe and left to die in the wilderness. At least, that's what she had been told; it's not like it had ever happened in her lifetime.

Sada shakes her head.

« I'm sure there's another explanation. He... Does not look like the kind of person that could hurt someone else. He was shaking completely terrified when I first approached, didn't even try to grab my spear. » she just can't reconcile the image of the weird awkward man that blushed while fumbling for his words with that of someone that had... Killed a fellow tribesmen, or something even worse.

Banished is as good a theory as any. Really cool getting to see Sada's thought process and theories!

There was just no way.

« Yeah, the explanation is "He's a spirit creature", just admit it!»

She laughs at Chalo's eagerness to see her theory get proven true.

« You would love if he was, didn't you? Like in that old story... »

Their little discussion gets interrupted when they arrive at their destination. The trail opens up in a little clearing, where the herd of creatures they've been following is hanging around, sleeping or grazing by nipping at the grass.

Their fur is blue, but most of the body is covered by white, soft wool. Occasionally, two of the creatures would accidentally brush on each other, sending little sparks flying with a sound similar to a crackling fire, but much sharper.

Ah, Mareep!

In the whole herd, just two creatures were different, and obviously the leaders of the group, being slightly bigger, with pink fur and strangely less wool on their bodies.

Probably a male and his bond mate.

Watching how the creatures changed while growing up had always fascinated Sada terribly. Why didn't humans change like that? It wasn't fair.

« Which one were you thinking about?» she asks in a whisper while scanning the herd with her eyes. Chalo quietly points at one of the smallest creatures, close to the edge of the clearing.

« I've kept an eye on them. They're not aggressive, they prefer to flee rather than fight. And this one's even calmer than the rest. He will be perfect. »

Sada nods approvingly, then rummages in her pouch.

« You saw them eat the pink berries, right?»

« Yeah »

They creep closer to the creature by skirting around the meadow, keeping hidden in the tall grass.

Sada throws one berry near the... What even is it's name?

« What do you call them?» she whispers, observing it trot near the berry and start sniffing it.

« Is that important right now? I haven't decided!» Chalo hisses back, then holds her breath, staring at the creature with anticipation.

It starts to eat the berry, and Sada throws another one to goad it into coming a bit closer.

Well it's important for her, how is she supposed to take notes about them otherwise?

They look pretty cute, but she's not sure about what they can do... Their target has just started munching on the second berry. It's so close now that she could hold a hand out and pet it, and really doesn't look like it cares much about them.

Now the tricky part; she winces a moment, hoping for the best and that Chalo had gotten the right idea about these creatures.

She pulls another object out of the bag, a bright red root firmly wrapped in leaves, and after making sure that it's tightly balled up, throws it in the middle of the clearing. It makes a loud popping sound, scaring - and thankfully not enraging - the rest of the herd into taking off running.

The only one left is the smaller creature that is still eating his berry, and is only now placidly turning around to check out what the noise was.

It seems to realize it's been left on its own, and lets out a "meeeh".

Chalo practically shoves another berry under it's mouth to distract it.

They are trying to domesticate it, it seems.

« Heeeere, you want the tasty berry? Yes? Sure you do» she waves the fruit around taking a couple of steps backwards... And the creature seems to think about it for a moment. It looks back to where it's herd was. Then to the berry in the girl's hand.

And actually starts to follow her, trotting along.

« Holy spirits, it worked!» Chalo grins and hugs her, and Sada can't help but get excited herself.

This... This is huge. If they can get it back to the settlement, they can use it's wool without having to scrounge up little pieces by what they found laying around, or by actively hunting them.

If they could get another of the opposite sex, maybe they could even start an herd of their own!

There's just one last thing to decide.

« ... What do we call it?»

---

In the end, they name the creatures Spark Tail, after noticing its tail lighting up. Well, Chalo actually wanted to call them "Fluffyhead", but Sada had refused.

« You can call this one Fluffyhead, but I'm not going to refer to this things with such a silly name»

« But look at how fluffy it is! And why? Are you afraid Terg will laugh at you? He won't even know what it means.»

« It's Turo, and.... That's not it.» she grumbles, watching the Spark Tail chew on some grass right outside her tent.

It's just that she wanted it to sound... Proper. She keeps staring at the creature that, admittedly, was pretty fluffy - just not enough to deserve naming it after that singular characteristic. How silly would that be?

As long as it had food, it really didn't seem to mind being apart from his herd, or being surrounded by humans. They hadn't even needed to build some enclosure for him, just made sure to keep it away from furs and other things that could catch fire brushing against the sparks that came out of his wool.

What a simple, peaceful life it was leading.

The kids already loved it, and Narjik was trying to figure out a way to trim it's wool without getting hurt. She would love to help with it -it was something new to do, a new problem to solve-, but she had to get going if she wanted to reach the meeting point with Turo in time.

---

We've just witnessed a peice of Pokemon history! Perhaps the very first instance of a tamed Pokemon!

She arrives at the camp at sunset, and to her surprise, finds it already set up. The fire is crackling, not strongly admittedly, but there is a certain skill in feeding a fire and keeping it going that the man obviously seemed to lack, so the fact that he managed to get it started at all after apparently having it done only once before was impressive. Turo himself is sitting cross-legged near the fire in his usual clothes, a second notebook and writing stick of his own propped up on his knee, intent on drawing or writing something on the page.

Something looks off about him(or... More than usual), and it takes her a moment to consciously realize what it is.

It's only been three days. His facial hair should not be that long.

Ooo!! That's one killer observation on her part!

She blinks, trying to decide if it's just her mind playing tricks on her and she's misremembering how long it was tree days ago, or if it's just another weird thing to add to the growing list of strange things about Turo.

Probably the latter, she decides with an almost resigned shrug.

Turo looks up at her approach, just a twinge of fear crossing his expression before he relaxes, recognizing her. He raises his free hand and waves it in midair.

« "Hi" »

Sada timidly repeats the gesture and word, not quite sure what to make of it. A greeting? Or some kind of ritual?

Maybe a way to show that he was unarmed, like during their first meeting?

It seems to be the right thing to do in any case, because he smiles and gets up, closing his notebook and slipping it into his robes before she can so much as catch a glimpse of it - to her disappointment, she kind of wanted to know what he was drawing.

« You... walk... With me?» he mimes the by now usual gesture, surprising her again.

Walk? Right now with the sun setting?

Sada nods and stops just a moment to better tie the spear slung over her back, then grabs a piece of wood from the fire to use as a torch. She glances at him while they walk away from the camp; he's got both hands hidden in his mantle, head moving left and right while he seems to be scanning the trees looking for something.

« What...?» she starts to ask, and he turns back to look at her with a small smile.

« Fire Wing feathers. »

It takes a moment to recognize what "feathers" meant, before she remembers his portrait of the creature. Why is he so interested in them now? Unless...

« Are you.... Cold?» she mimes some shivering, and after a moment of hesitation, he quietly nods, looking a bit frustrated.

Sada grimaces, mentally berating herself. Of course he must be cold, not being used to living in this area. She starts to actively look for the feathers, while the obvious question of "how didn't he freeze to death the night before our meeting " keeps nagging at her.

Maybe he had something else from a creature with the power of fire with him these days, and it has now lost it's effect. She shuffles a bit closer to him, raising the torch, and he gives her a little smile noticing the gesture.

They find some feathers, but they are obviously not the ones they are looking for: much bigger, mostly white with a blue purple base. It's not the first feathers of that kind that she sees around here, but she still hasn't been able to spot the creature they belong to.

Turo also seems intrigued by them, getting down on one knee to pick one up. His free hand goes to his neck, where his strangely smooth purple clothes start.

They seem to cling so tightly to Turo's body that, when he hooks one finger around the fabric and pulls it down slightly, it almost looks like he's pulling away a weird layer of purple skin.

It looks creepy enough to distract her for a moment from what he is actually doing, namely pulling out an object hanging from his neck that was obviously hidden under his clothes.

Sada lets out a little gasp and points at it.

« My necklace!»

He nods, looking a bit embarrassed, then holds up the necklace still looped around his neck in one hand and the feather in the other. Some of the smaller feathers used in the necklace have the exact same shade of blue.

Sada gets a bit closer, keeping the torch at arm's length.

They could be from the same creature... And as far as she can remember, there are no flying creatures around with bright blue feathers.

« What is it?» Turo asks, probably his way of asking what creature it came from.

Sada shakes her head.

« I don't know.»

He looks disappointed, and slips the feather he has found in his mantle, and the necklace back under his clothes.

They keep looking for a while, but the sun having set completely in the meantime forces them to stop. Wandering around in the dark is way too dangerous; the torch is now their only source of light, complete darkness pressing against them all around otherwise.

Actually, not really the only source: Turo's purple clothes seem to glow slightly in the dark.

She stares at them for a second while he notices and ties his mantle closed, slightly embarrassed. Those have to be the most useless and backwards clothes she's ever seen.

Yeah, Sada believes that Turo knows how useless those clothes are. That's why he is so embarrassed about them! Good thing he has Sada with him. She will know how to keep him safe and warm!

Noticing that Turo seems to glance around nervously, she grabs his hand and guides him by walking ahead.

Or at least tries to, because his hand almost seems to squirm away from the contact, and then he suddenly stops. She turns around, only to find him with his head held high, eyes fixed to the night sky.

And an expression of almost child-like wonder on his face.

She raises her eyes to the sky as well. The moon has almost completely disappeared that night, leaving only the myriad tiny lights in the sky to shine. She's always wondered what they are; some are bigger, some smaller, some look like they are twinkling, like really small distant fires, high up in the sky.

Who's lighting those fires? Some creature, flying up in the sky at night? Maybe other people, living really, really far away?

Turo is looking at the sky like someone who is seeing it for the first time in his life; he resumes walking, slowly, but keeps glancing up, and barely avoids stumbling to the ground a couple of times, smiling all the while.

It's both adorable and heartbreaking at the same time; where they... really keeping him secluded somewhere his whole life?

Maybe he wasn't banished from his tribe. Maybe he escaped.

This is so endearing how she feels sorry for him not realizing where he is actually from!

Maybe he's terrified of meeting other people because he's afraid of getting locked up again.

Her theory only sounds more plausible when they get back to the camp, and she insists on giving him some of her pelts to sleep in.

He looks incredibly nervous as they settle down on opposites sides of the fire.

She can hear him turn around, unable to sleep, long into the night, until she herself finally falls asleep.

He's gone come morning, but there is a piece of paper torn from his notebook left near her when she wakes up, with two day and night symbols drawn on it.

I love how both of them get excited to meet each other again. I guess Turo gives some time in between meetings to make sure Sada has time to return to her tribe. Courteous of him! Meanwhile, he can take as much time as he needs in his time before returning. It makes their meetings incredibly convenient!

Closing thoughts:
Honestly, I can see why you put so much time and effort into this fic. The premise is extremely stong and the execution of it in all the ways that really matter is spot on. And for anyone who enjoys romance, Pokemon, and scifi, it's amazing. Makes it so easy to review!

 

[Nekodatta]

These replies are... incredibly late, but let's get to them little by little!

Spoiler: Spiteful Murkrow

Oh, so Turo doesn’t eat sushi regularly back in his time, huh?

This actually gets expanded upon later, but nope, he's actually a strict vegan and only eats synthetic/artificial meat substitutes.

I’m pretty sure that the Not!TVA would explicitly forbid Turo from doing this, but… he’s in love, and love makes people do stupid things. So it’s worth a shot there.

"He's in love and it makes him do stupid things" honestly could sum up all of part 1 of this fic.

I take it that that means that Pokémon in this setting don’t have animesque Pokémon speech given how Sada’s getting weirded out by ‘Talon’ getting repeated so many times.

I'm not a big fan of the anime speech, so they usually vocalize like their closest animal relative. If they don't have one I have fun trying to picture what they would sound like.

A “couple of minutes” feels really long for the context of a conversation, even a minute is decently long in terms of returning to a topic of conversation.

Good point, I will change that

Well, a bit more than a day. Though I wonder if these sequences where Turo and Sada are teaching each other their languages is based off actual practices involving first contact with people groups, since this feels like it was very thought-out for how it’d work.

I went mostly with what felt reasonable for two people that don't speak the other's language to do to pick things up as fast as possible, so I'm glad that it feels thought out! Less focus on grammar rules and just a lot of pointing to stuff and miming to teach the absolute core vocabulary.

Wait, so did he just straight-up blip out back to the future there? Or was that the time for him to get out of audible range?

I definitely meant to point out how strange it is that his steps cut off so suddenly, so yeah, he walked away a fair bit, expecting to be out of range, and then blipped out.
Sada's just got pretty good hearing.

I went and did a text search to make sure that I wasn’t tripping, but this is the first time ever in this story that “Chalo” is being mentioned at all. It might have made sense to take some time to describe her and where and when we are right now.

Definitely too sudden... maybe I can work in a quick mention of her in the previous Sada chapter.

I was going to go “wait, Pokémon can do that?” when I remembered that even in the games, we occasionally see the likes of an odd Zoroark managing to pick up human speech. Wonder if there’s any around where Sada’s tribe lives.

I meant it more to imply that from Sada's tribe's point of view, Pokémon are mysterious magical creatures that can pretty much do anything, why not also talk. They probably have stories about ghost types conjuring illusions of people and making them talk.

Actually, that makes me wonder, how common is purple dye in this setting? Since in IRL Earth, Sada’s theory of Turo being a shaman or ruler figure would be seen as quite reasonable for her neck of the woods since purple was not an easy or cheap color to make dye of for most of history.

I actually didn't think of that, let's pretend it was intentional lol
But with how wildly different Pokémon are from animals, it was probably different colours that became the "rich people dye" in their history.

Oh hey, I remember this from PLA. Not sure if it was a conscious callback or not, but it was nice to see.

It was! Sada and her tribe making use of berries and other tools against wild Pokémon was half PLA reference, half Monster Hunter.

Oh, so they have a ‘Latin’ in their setting. I wonder if that’s meant to be Imperial Paldean, or if they have a proper “Rome” analogue.

I've always headcanoned there being a lot more real world region counterparts in the Pokémon world. We know Poke China exists thanks to the Treasures of Ruin, I like to think that Poké Italy also exist.
And I hope that if they ever make it, the shape is just Italy's boot-shaped peninsula turned upside down or something dumb like that, because it would be hilarious.

Wait, they can do that canonically outside the difference between Ultimate and Low-Power mode? Or is that an invention for this story?

Made that up to compensate Miraidon being a bit more, eh... robotic and less emotive than Koraidon in its animations.

actually have to wonder, do these future sequences draw inspiration from Minority Report at all? Since I swear that these personalized ads and news articles are very reminiscent of some scenes in the movie.

Never watched it/read it, but it just feels like a natural evolution of how personalised and in-your-face online advertisement is today.

Turo's future at least still allows you to skip them, so it's a bit less cyberpunk dystopia than what our internet seems to be heading towards.

Ah yes, breaking out Ultimate Mode. I’m honestly surprised that Turo can actually ride him like this without getting badly zapped from all the electricity flying around.

That's what the cool motorbike rider gear is for.

I was going to contest this, but I suppose Turo does look on the lankier side in his official concept art. It’s a neat contrast since I honestly didn’t think of differences in musculature between the two Professors prior to this being pointed out here, which even the official art seems to play up.

As much as I love all the Gigachad Turo memes, from the official art he's always looked quite slim to me,and *this* AU version of him plays it up even more for background reasons revealed later that go beyond "being a computer nerd that spends 80% of his waking hours sitting"

I assume that ‘sciaman’ there was meant to be ‘shaman’. Though I have to wonder if you’re Italian, since ‘sciaman’ was one letter off from ‘sciamano’, which is ‘shaman’ in that language

Spot on, ahah

I… read that underlined bit as “Sada finds herself drenched in sweat and something else”, which I presume wasn’t the intent. Consider phrasing the underlined more along the lines of “Something else has changed in the air.”

Oh, uh.... definitely not the intent. Will definitely change that!

 

[Tango]

So here it's chapter 5 (I'm still proud of that dumb title lol)!
After some debating I've decided to simply keep posting the story here exactly as it is in the original, errors and all, only adjusting the formatting a bit for legibility. (And maybe fixing some glaring typos if I happen to catch them)

Chapter 5: Fast & FuTurious​

So here I am for review of chapter 5!

I love fun chapter titles like this. I do those with my fic too sometimes.

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Report on Time travel jump n. 2 of Dr. Romero Turo, time-anchor ID 9537.


Coordinates of successful jump: 48°51′12″ N, 2°20′55″ E (current time position: Lumiose City)


Weather conditions: Clear, temperatures recorded by suit sensors average 15°C. Measurements coherent with estimated data about Last Glacial Period. Body suit encountered no difficulties in maintaining body temperature to comfortable levels.


Number of hours spent time-displaced: 5 hours and 12 minutes


Shortly after landing, encountered a Pokémon that seems to be an ancestor of the common modern Magikarp. The Pokémon, temporarily dubbed "Proto-Magikarp",

AHEM! I believe the phrase this future tech is looking for is brutal fang!

showed a predatory instinct and aggressiveness completely absent in its modern counterpart. It's anatomy also showed a clear adaptation to hunting prey; strong musculature for swimming even against the current and developed teeth for ripping flesh, more similar in size and form to the ones seen in Pokemon like Basculin or Carvanha (possible common ancestor?).

Most interesting was it's behaviour after accidentally beaching itself in an attempt to assault me. It thrashed violently to right itself until it could attack again, in a movement extremely similar to the currently useless move "Splash" that Magikarp still uses today. I believe this to be the original use of the technique, and that possibly most Pokémon that are -or were- using the move known as Splash could actually have originally developed different uses for it, until changes in physiology and environment changed the move into its current iteration.

I'm glad the narrative still harps on that, because it was so interesting!

Made contact again with a native"

And there the report stopped, the cursor blinking on the monitor patiently waiting for Turo to continue. And it would have to wait quite a bit more, because the screen had been sitting untouched for the best part of two hours now, his owner seemingly much more interested in slowly spinning the leather chair (fake leather, of course. Were would you even get true leather these days?) he was currently slouched into round and round, both arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling of his office. Contrary to the fancy ceiling of the sanity room, this one didn't have much in terms of decoration - just the standard "regulate the artificial lights automatically to simulate sunlight".

At the moment, the light was dark orange, reflecting the sunset that was currently visible in real time right outside the window. Just a couple minutes more, and the last rays of sunlight would completely disappear behind the tall buildings of Mesagoza. In ancient times, the city had been built similar to an old fortress, with the Pokémon Academy built on the top of a hill towering over every other building, looking down on the city. Nowadays, the Pokemon Academy (and the University for more modern studies that had been built near it a couple centuries ago) was neither at the highest point nor the tallest building in the city anymore.

He felt conflicted about reporting his meetings with Sada. On one hand, he kind of had to do it; on the other, having to write about it in such cold and technical terms, like it was nothing more than an experiment to report on, felt.... Wrong.

There was also the issue of other people taking interest in his project; now that he had proven that it was possible, nothing was stopping someone else going in the exact same time and place. It was extremely improbable; there was a sort of "code of honor" between researchers of the TTLD: no interfering with other people's project, unless you were actively collaborating in a joint activity.

The possibility was there though, and the idea of an entourage of scientists arriving near Sada's people to study them like in some safari, even if carefully from afar while staying hidden instead of making active contact, was... It made him feel guilty.

He shouldn't have felt that way:

Studying and observing history was what they did, after all. That was the whole point of their job.

They travelled

traveled

to the past as silent observers to confirm historical moments, to witness them first hand with a neutral perspective. Sometimes it was to confirm scientific theories, or to preserve artifacts that would have been lost to time otherwise. They did it to make sure not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and cautiously monitored the future to better prepare for it in the present.

It was right there in their motto, written in clear letters at the entrance of the Time Travel Laboratory Department, and again right on the time machine, something to be reminded of every time you stepped into it.

Ex tempore, scientia.

Ex scientia, sapientia.

"From time, knowledge. From knowledge, wisdom"

The irony of using a long dead language to write it in hadn't been lost on him. Whoever had come up with that had to have a nice sense of humour.

humor

So he shouldn't feel guilty in reporting all that had happened... But a part of him still did.

So far, it seems like a realistic reaction on Turo's part. Both Turo and Sada are interesting on their own and even better together.

The scientific advancements and culture of Turo's time is very interesting, but the perspective Sada has on trying to make sense of things is also a treat.

Turo stopped the chair so that it was facing the screen again. With a sigh, he gestured to the screen to resume writing and continued to silently dictate his report, mouthing the words while opening another screen on his left with a flick of his finger to check some data his suit had recorded.

Info about his vitals, measurements about the environment gathered automatically while regulating said vitals... Audio transcripts of the entire conversation.

He slipped an earpiece in and started to play the audio back from the very beginning.

He had to be as accurate as possible.

---

Miraidon leaped excitedly out of the door, the pixelated compound pupils cycling through an array of colours

Ah, I was going to say colors, but I don't think you are spelling things in American English, so I guess I'll stop pointing these out. Can't remember if I noticed that in a previous review, but I'm noticing now.

outside of the usual cyan.

« Gyaa-»

« I know, I know, just let me... Lock the door...» Turo had barely finished scanning his ID through the door when the Pokémon, growing impatient, started to gently headbutt his shoulder, nipping at his arm.

Turo laughed softly and let himself be pushed along, exiting their apartment complex and walking into the streets of the megalopolis. It was a nice Saturday morning and the street buzzed with activity;his wasn't the only Miraidon present, the dragon Pokémon zipping around roads that, with traffic by now virtually nonexistent for short distances, had been adapted to better use for them and other, still popular vehicles like Rotom bikes.

A bunch of kids was sitting on benches in a small plaza, excitedly talking about the latest e-sport tournament in some vr game or other.

Should be 'A bunch of kids were' not 'was'.

He dismissed an ad that started playing on the wall-sized display of a building as soon as he got near, more focused on the news snippets that were playing on the screen next to it.

Celebrity gossip. The colony on Mars was still stuck in the middle of a global dust storm. Stark mountain in Sinnoh had been erupting for five days straight. The Hassel Art Gallery was holding an art exhibition with pieces from the 24rd

24rd? Should be 24th.

But I like how you use things from all around him to give us more insight into what his time is like. Pretty cool!

century (recovered by the TTLD, by the way).

A comet that would pass near Earth was closely being monitored, with some people swearing that it was going to be Jirachi's Millennium Comet (spoiler alert: it wasn't, it's orbit was completely mapped and it came near Earth every 300 years or so. That didn't stop people from romanticism about it).

He turned to Miraidon while finishing to put on a pair of gloves; his riding clothes were slightly different from his usual body suit, more similar to mountain biking gear. Still sleek and pretty form fitting with a dark purple color(he just... Liked the color), it sported elbow and knee pads in woven borophene to absorb impacts, with the same sturdy but flexible material covering his chest and shoulders, and shoes with magnetic soles to better cling to Miraidon's back while riding. The last piece of equipment was a full face helmet in a solid black color.

« Gyaaaa-»

Turo could almost feel the dragon next to him raring to go, a static charge building up on his scales while it crouched low on all fours to let him mount on his back.

He patted the Pokémon's neck while jumping on with practiced ease, gripping the two spikes that grew from his front legs and acted as natural handlebars.

« All right, let's go!»

The Pokémon let out a piercing shriek and jumped forward, leaping a couple of times on all four legs, still in low power mode, before releasing the electricity it had been storing mid leap to generate two bright energy rings from its throat and tail, changing smoothly into his drive mode before it even touched the ground again.

I'm getting some TRON vibes from this or something. Neat!

Turo lowered himself on the Pokémon's back while it sped up along the road, briefly racing with another Miraidon -the rider waving at them- before doing a sharp turn to get on the main road. There the dragon accellerated again, his rings glowing brightly while more electricity and power coursed through them, a roar growing increasingly louder not from the Pokémon's throat but from the jet-like vents from his legs.

Turo loved that feeling; the perfectly aerodynamic shape making him feel every air current, the electricity crackling on his skin and passing over him harmlessly, the fact that he could feel the dragon's power pushing him faster and faster... there was no other Pokémon that made riding it feel as viscerally satisfying as his Miraidon did.

A Rotom bike would never feel this good.

It was something in their very DNA, humans and Miraidon's ancestors Cyclizar had developed an almost symbiotic relationship since ancient times. It just felt right for the both of them, and the fact that they had been together since he was little more than a toddler and the Pokémon barely out of the egg had only made their bond even deeper. His mother always joked that Turo had almost learned to ride Miraidon before learning to walk, and certainly before learning to crawl.

Miraidon, the horse of the future!

He tapped the Pokémon's right spike and gently pressed his left leg against the Pokémon's side, Miraidon reading his body language and turning to the right into another road, towards the city's southern gate... Which was actually a bit of a misnomer. It was more correct to say that it was the city's historical southern gate and border.... By now, "Mesagoza" had expanded to become a megalopolis that included Los Platos and another half a dozen cities in South Paldea, almost reaching Cabo Poco on the coast.

As cities tend to do! Nice detail.

Turo waited until they were officially out of the city's center before speaking to the Pokemon again. Technically, what he wanted to do wasn't exactly allowed. He needed a lot of open space and a nice, long road just to be safe.

« C'mon buddy, I know you can go much faster!»

Miraidon snorted and shook his head, turning it's head enough to glare at him with just one eye, the pupil flickering on and off in annoyance.

« Gyaa...»

Turo just grinned, the helmet masking his expression while he kept teasing the dragon. That was the reaction he was expecting, really. Mostly because it was kinda risky to do. For him, not for Miraidon. But it was also going to be awesome if it worked.

« Don't tell me you're scared to try that-»

« Gwaooooh!»

That seemed to do it, the Pokémon roaring indignantly before slowing down slightly, energy rings shrinking in size.

Turo braced himself, leaning completely forward on the dragon's back, his helmet almost touching the creature's smooth neck.

Oh man this is about to go FAST!

The crackling of electricity kept rising all around him, Miraidon concentrating on revving up his Hadron Engine to the fullest before rearing up on his hind legs with a screeching, metallic roar. Yellow and purple-blue energy surged through the dragon's throat, tail and antennae while it started to push itself off the ground on pure electromagnetic power alone, first just levitating and then propelling itself higher and higher.

Turo laughed while the road they had been following grew smaller and smaller, Miraidon soaring through the sky in his ultimate form at exhilarating speed.

So in between the previous paragraph and the part where the road was growing smaller, I feel like it was missing a lot of speed build up. Like maybe he experienced G-forces from it or the wind blasted over him or he had to hold on white-knuckled or risk flying off or something. By the time it mentions soaring with exhilarating speed, it kind of felt after the fact and greatly hurt the impact of the scene.

Also, the road growing smaller doesn't indicate how fast the road is getting smaller.

I do love the way the vast majority of it is worded but would hit much harder if there was something else to describe the transition form normal speed to crazy high speed.

Levitating and propelling does describe what is happening, but does almost nothing to indicate how fast Miraidon was going compared to before. Miraidon moving from levitating to something faster, doesn't seem to say much because I imagine levitating to be a very slow movement. Even just swapping the word propelling to something like blasting. "first just levetating and then blasting itself higher and higher." Blast would really convey break-neck speed. But I'd recommend that to my other suggestions. So maybe like this:

first just levetating before pausing a moment to hover. Suddenly Miraidon blasted itself straight into the sky!

Not even the dynamic sound dampeners on his helmet were able to totally quell the roar of the wind crashing over him. His grip was firm as he kept tight against Miraidon to prevent from flying off.

Turo laughed while the road they had been following grew smaller and smaller, Miraidon soaring among the clouds in his ultimate form at exhilarating speed.

Anyway, I hope that helps. Feel free to use that example if you want!

The wind was so strong that it kept him pushed flat on the dragon's back, and made it impossible to hear any sound apart from its howl. To communicate with the dragon, he would have to rely on touch alone, or simply trust it's judgement.

Ah, so you DID do something kind of like what I was suggesting. You just implemented it a little bit too late for the impact payoff of the scene.

Regardless of all my harping on this, him riding Miraidon is quite an objectively cool scene. Reminds me of Falkor from The Never Ending Story!

They passed Los Platos in the span of fifteen minutes instead of the hour of driving it would have taken them travelling along the highway and kept going south, flying over other districts and towns. He could already see the ocean, high up as they were, the water glittering under the sun and a welcome change of scenery from the constant grey, pure white and bright artificial lights of the city.

He pressed both legs against Miraidon's sides and leaned slightly to the left, noticing something on the coast that had caught his attention. The dragon growled in acknowledgement and started to tip forward towards the ground, dropping both altitude and speed while it slowly circled around the spot he had pointed to. Turo slowly straightened his back when the lower speed allowed it, sitting upright on the Pokémon's back and observing the building that laid under them, coming closer and closer.

It looked like an old lighthouse, the very top having broken off and fallen to the ground long ago, crashing through the roof of what looked like a small house built right next to it. And by old, he meant old, the place still looking like it had been built with classic bricks and mortar.

That had to make it at least a thousand years old, if not much more.

Ah the lighthouse seems to have a significance to the games. I'm not really sure what the cannon significance is for the most part, but it has my attention.

He directed Miraidon to land on the elevated platform that was still standing, then cautiously dismounted the dragon, almost expecting the entire building to crumble under his feet at the slightest touch. It didn't.

He took off his helmet and turned toward the edge of the platform, where a railing had probably allowed people to enjoy the view without risking falling off in the past, but had completely rusted away in the meantime. Being so close to the sea probably had not helped.

The ladder (not an elevator? Shit that made it even older than he first thought) that had allowed the caretakers or visitors to climb up had met a similar fate, leaving nothing but a gaping hole and a long drop to the ground.

I love fun things like pointing out ordinary things by todays standards that are uselessly antiquated by future standards!

He stared at the sea for a while; it was strange to think that the ocean was probably the only part of the current view that he could enjoy similarly to people that had stood here in the past, the only scenery that hadn't changed at all, and hopefully never would.

It was... strangely comforting.

I see. Sounds like he has a sentimental affection for the past or perhaps a certain curious acquintence from the long past!

« Let's keep going, I want to reach Artazon by noon » he declared after another couple minutes, turning back towards Miraidon. The dragon just stared at him, then hissed softly and briefly flicked his antennae, spreading his gliding membrane open.

The message was pretty clear: no flying in ultimate mode this time.

Turo just rolled his eyes, climbing back on the Pokémon's back.

« Yeah, yeah... All right mom, we'll do it the boring and careful way...»

At least they still have moms in the future instead of everyone being grown in artificial wombs managed by the population branch of the government.

There was another hiss by the lizard dragon and the gliding membrane opened up again before he was finished putting on his helmet, hitting him square on the nose.

---

« Your nose looks pretty red, is it alright?»

« Shut up, it's fine.»

The sanity room today was a beautiful recreation of the first floor of the Sprout Tower of Violet city. An hologram in the center of the room simulated the famous central pillar of the building, swaying in place, while the sound of creaking floorboards, soft chants and prayers from the monks (personally recorded by current director and head researcher of the TTDL) filled the room. Someone had gone the extra mile and even lighted some incense. Bellsprouts were sadly missing though. It was the kind of atmosphere that made everyone present subconsciously talk in whispers, at least until Ortega snickered while stealing a chair from the next table and sitting down near him.

The sanity room is pretty cool. Almost like a Star Trek holodeck!

« Was it something in the Paleolithic era? »

Turo glared at his colleague, then sniffled. His nose still hurt.

« No... Why would it be? Isn't that what the pre time-jump shots are for? Avoiding getting killed by millennia old bacteria and a dozen other things? » he answered. Ortega just shrugged.

« I don't know. Maybe you had gotten punched in the face by some caveman.»

« No, nothing like that.» he quickly tried to change the subject, not wanting to admit to getting whacked in the face.

Whacked in the face? Saaaada. What did you doooo?

« How is your project going? What was it again...?»

Ortega was a bit of a weird case in the department, always seeming to swap between one project or another instead of focusing on one thing at a time; Turo could never quite remember what the guy was working on at the moment.

« "Confirming historical moments that drastically changed human society in the last couple centuries"» Ortega recited.

« Which is just a fancy way of saying "I dick around dressed in historically accurate clothes"»

These future people don't pull any punches with each other!

another voice piped up from the table where Ortega had just stolen furniture from. A woman with ferociously red hair sat down opposite from Turo, offering a handshake.

« Melany Vega, pleased to meet you»

He took it, trying not to smile at Ortega looking annoyed.

« Hey, dressing for the part is important! Especially in most recent centuries. In ancient times, you can land anywhere and just say "Ooooh, me come from far away land!" and people will believe you because it's not like they knew better. That doesn't fly in modern times. People will know something's up if you show up in impossible clothes. Not to mention getting caught on camera. And the internet. »

« W-wait... Wouldn't it still be better to at least try and... Look like you fit in? Should I...? » Turo asked, eyes widening.

Both fellow time travellers looked at him for a moment.

« You're "Paleolithic era" guy, right? » Vega asked.

Turo has obtained a new title: "Paleolithic era guy"! Unfortunately, it is quite a BIT more syllables than "Turo" so using that when refer to him would take more dedication that I am wiling to dish out. Amusing though it may have been...

... Is that what people were calling him?

« Yours is a special case. You go so far back that it doesn't matter. Even if someone noticed your weird clothes, at most it would become a bit of a strange story and then get lost to time... Unless you did something so memorable that it becomes a legend passed down for all of human history, but in that case, we would have bigger problems on our hands.

A very good point about the amount of care one should take in different eras!

And we wouldn't even know where to start in making replicas of clothes that pass as historically accurate for you, because we know so little about it. Do it wrong, and it's even worse. » Vega answered after a moment. Ortega nodded.

« Yeah, best you could do for historical accuracy was showing up naked... And I don't recommend that.»

« ... You sound like you speak from experience.» Turo muttered after a moment.

Ortega just smiled, refusing to elaborate.

I don't know if this is a terminator reference or if it's just a stand alone amusing thing, but amusement is really all it needs!

Turo could only sigh at his senior, then turned back towards the redhead.

« If I may ask, what are you working on...?»

« "Gathering photographic evidence of legendary Pokemon's sightings in different eras"»

Turo's mouth hanged open for a moment.

« You chase legendaries? »

Arceus, that must have looked badass on your resume.

Vega nods.

Ok that's probably the coolest job ever!

« It's way less epic than what it sounds like. 90% of "legendary Pokémon" sightings in history are people that had one too many drinks and mistook a Pangoro for an Urshifu or something stupid like that. » she explains.

One can only imagine how frequent the disappointment is for her lol...

« You did get that really cool picture of the battle between Groudon and Kyogre in Sootopolis City though. The one from uuuuh... 2005 was it?» Ortega points out.

« Those two are always going at it, it's nothing special! My grandma's got a picture from their last battle some 50 years ago that looks basically the same! » Vega rants, looking annoyed.

Yeah, I guess those two really aren't that hard to find. The weather is a dead give away...

« The only way you can tell the picture is genuinely from 2005 it's because Steven Stone and those two eco terrorist idiots are chillin' in the background!»

The two men both laugh, then to his dismay Ortega manages to bring the conversation back to his nose.

« Anyway, what I wanted to say before we got sidetracked was... I would wait a couple more days before jumping back, if I were you. Get that nose back to normal. The less excuses you have to make and keep track of, the better. That's why I don't like visiting the same time more than a couple of times. Too much effort. » he shrugged again.

It was surprisingly solid advice, and Turo nodded, grimacing a bit. He had hoped to jump back exactly three days later for both him and Sada to try and keep the two timelines as coherent as possible- if nothing else, for his own sanity, because the second jump being an entire month for him and barely a week for her had already been confusing enough, but it looked like things rarely would be that easy to keep track of.

Still, as long as the disparity was only going to be a couple more days here and there, he could do it...

---

When he had gone back (and his nose gone back to normal) to Sada's camp he had expected to find her already there, but the place looked abandoned. No pelts or furs to mark a spot where she could have been sleeping, and even someone as clueless as him could see that the fire hadn't been used in days. She probably had gone back to her group for a couple of days.

He decides to light the fire himself while waiting for her to arrive, then sets himself down on the ground. He's brought a second notebook with him - it's not like he can bring anything more advanced than pen and paper to take notes in. Dropping some paper and a pen in the wrong century? No problem, it will decompose in no time and the most someone can do is doodling on it. Dropping an entire tablet?

Way more risky if someone else finds it.

Valid points.

The only exception is his suit, but even then, half of its function only really work when he goes back to his time. Sure, it's recording every single heart beat of his, or changes in body or external temperature, or fluctuations in hormones and stress levels, but he can't access the data here, and the suit itself literally only works for the one who wears it, keyed to their DNA.

He starts to jot down some observations about what has happened until now and what he wants to check today. Sada had showed him a drawing of what was unmistakably a Talonflame, and hadn't commented on it when he had drawn one himself: that could only mean that in this time Talonflame was already the same as the one he knew from documentaries and pictures. No weird changes like that Proto - Magikarp.

Makes sense. Alligators are virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs or something like that.

It made a certain amount of sense. Even in his time, not all Pokemon had slowly changed until they were basically recognised as different species like Miraidon and Cyclizar.

Some had simply gone extinct, not being able to adapt. Some (not many, admittedly, with the great majority of them being legendaries and mythicals that were so powerful they didn't need to change) hadn't felt the need to change further, like Magikarp.

He wanted to observe a Talonflame of this time if possible... But he was mostly interested in their feathers.

They were pretty famous for being completely fireproof: people had used them for creating fire- resistant clothes since ancient times, and he wanted to know if Sada knew about that property, but had had no idea how to ask her about it.

Easiest thing would be to just find some feathers and show her.

Wow Turo, you might think that is harmless, but consider this: She didn't know and now she does. She shares this knowledge with her tribe. They share it with other tribes. Suddenly everyone is very protected against fire making fire types far easier to hunt and survive against. Fire types grow stronger over centuries as a result to compensate. This makes grass and bug types dwindle and maybe even go extinct. With grass and bugs gone, flying types have less food. Perhaps flying types dwindle or go extinct as well. Maybe that isn't a realisic way things would play out. Just saying. Cause and effect over a long long time can have big implications if the cause creates an effect that keeps getting bigger.

---

They had found some feathers, but not the ones he was interested in, and in the meantime, Turo's been forced to pretend that they are looking for them because he's cold.

Oh! This goes back to explain from Turo's perspective part of what we already saw from Sada's eyes!

He's not, the bodysuit is more than capable of keeping his body at a perfectly comfortable average temperature of 37°C at any time. But he knows that they surely don't look like warm clothes, and saying that he is fine would just look weird - and the last thing he needs is looking even weirder than he already does.

Still, the feather they have found is pretty big - big enough that the Pokemon it comes from must have an impressive wing span -, and Sada herself doesn't seem to know much about it. He slips the feather into his pocket, with half an idea of having the guys from the science department at Uvanja Academy run some DNA tests on it to try and identify what Pokémon it is.

The forest has gotten darker and darker as soon as the sun had gone down. Turo shouldn't be surprised, it's obvious that it would become dark, but... He had no idea it would be this dark. A total, impenetrable, pitch black darkness that looked ready to swallow them as soon as the fire on the little torch Sada was carrying fizzled out. Anything could be hiding out there.

I'm glad you mentioned this. Walking in the woods in total darkness is terrifying. If you've never tried it before, you should do it. A lanturn lights things up reasonably, but try just having a flashlight. In person, that simple thing of walking in the woods on a narrow trail with a flashlight becomes extremely scary! Imagine, there could be an animal with rabies lurking nearby and you wouldn't even know! Maybe a snake is hiding ready to bite you from just off the path? Maybe you are about to walk into a giant spiderweb with a huge spider IN it!

And yet, even though you gave this some recognition, I still don't feel it's enough. Its like watching a rollar coaster vs being on one. They look so slow and reasonable form a distance but oh boy when you are ON one its TOTALLY different than you might imagine!

I think most people with only a flashlight would only get about 50 feet into a trail before turning back. Heck, I bet a large number would turn back after 25. Some might not even step onto the trail at all!

He's suddenly incredibly aware of how spoiled living with artificial light always available has made him. True darkness simply does not exist anymore in his time... Except maybe the bottom of the ocean or something. Places were humans have no business living in any case.

Anywhere else, there is always a street lamp, or a display or a monitor that's on 24/7, or his Rotom Phone. His own clothes have stripes with a slight bioluminescence built into them.

His eyes simply are not used to not having even just a bit of light. And speaking of his clothes, Sada is staring at them, and it occurs to him that maybe wearing something that literally shouts where you are to any nocturnal Pokémon in the vicinity wasn't exactly the best of ideas. The fire could be put out, or brandished as a weapon in an emergency. His bodysuit... Not so much. He buttons up his lab coat (which is only slightly more stealthy due to his color, or lack thereof) to hide it completely.

She takes his hand, which he doesn't mind. It's starting to become a constant, her dragging him along and leading the way,

Aww! So cute!

but this time he finds himself frozen to the spot when he almost casually lifts his head to glance at the night sky.

He's never seen this many stars in real life.

Too much light pollution in the city, making the night sky look like a foggy black sheet with only the moon and the brighest

brightest

stars managing to shine through.

Of course he's seen pictures, and documentaries, and those stupidly big photographs done with the latest telescopes with a resolution of a bajillion pixels where you could zoom in for a good while before getting tired and closing the tab. He's even gone to a planetarium a couple of times, but even that time, as cool as it had been, it still had only been a really good 3D picture projected on a (really big) screen.

There was no sense of depth on a picture or a screen. No way to reproduce the slight vertigo he was feeling in this moment, with the sky so impossibly open and vast over his head and everywhere he looked, just more and more stars.

Not a single silhouette of a building to cover it. No blinking lights from planes or satellites or space stations.

He kinda wants to keep staring at the sky for a while, but Sada keeps dragging him along and he can't do much else but follow her.

Still, he's pretty sure that he's got another stupid smile on his face that's impossible to stop.

Yeah, that would really be something. I don't think most people have really ever SEEN the stars before. Not really.

---

He stands corrected: the smile melts off his face when they arrive back to camp and it becomes increasingly obvious that Sada expects him to spend the night with her.

Well, yeah! She doesn't want you to get hunted and eaten by wild mon, dude!

Not with her, thank Arceus,

but still to sleep at the camp until morning (and giving him some blankets made of what looks like thick Mamoswine fur while she is at it, because he's cold, of course).

From her point of view, it makes perfect sense.

From his point of view, it means he can't leave.

Oops!

Not without going poof right in front of her, and that is, of course, bad.

"Rule number 1 of the time traveller manual" levels of bad. Don't get seen appearing or disappearing.

He needs to get a good distance away from her to avoid having the flash of light that accompanies his jumps alert her - or the entire forest for that matter -, but that is just not possible at the moment.

Oh! A flash would make that rather awkward!

Turo's got the distinct impression that the woman is keeping an eye on him even while she is completely draped in blankets herself, ready to bolt and tackle him to the ground if he so much as tries to look like he wants to walk away and get his dumb ass eaten in the forest the instant he steps out of the circle of light, warmth and protection offered by the fire.

I'm surprised he doesn't remark at it being even just the tinyest bit endearing.

He finally gets an opportunity to slip away almost at dawn, when he is sure that she is fast asleep, but not before slowly and carefully leaving a message with the next date when they can meet up near her. Only two days.

I bet he slept for a long time after he got home that time!

---

It ends up being four on his time, because the time machine is completely booked in the following days, even in the night. That's also something that was starting to mess with him, having to come and go in the middle of the night, but it had surprisingly worked out this time. Spending an entire night in the past too nervous to sleep, then finally coming back at the crack of dawn and it still being like 3 AM felt amazing and had basically made his tired brain go "yesss, free sleepy time!" when he had come home and crashed asleep on the bed.

The next day, after finishing his report - he can already hear the jokes about "spending the night there"-,

Don't worry, Turo. I imagine at some point the jokes will become accurate!

he submits a request for having some analysis performed on the feather he's brought back. He also makes them analyze the necklace. The answer arrives just a couple of hours later, mostly because there isn't too much to say.

Yes, DNA from the necklace and the feathers were a perfect match, so it is the same Pokémon.

No, they've got no idea what it is.

"You want us to try and look for the closest genetic relative? That's going to take a bit more"

"Sure, go ahead"

He had made sure to get the necklace back from them, though. By now it was starting to feel weird to not have it around his neck.

Awww!

Turo stepped into the time machine, and immediately scowled when the first thing to greet him in the past is rain hitting him in the face. Great, he would have to charge his time-anchor manually this time if it didn't let up soon.

There had to be a better way to do this, he thought as he made his way towards the camp, boots squelching through the mud. Can't Porygon 568 check the weather for him before he jumps? An umbrella would have been weird, but he would have brought at least a jacket.

This time Sada is already waiting for him, even if it takes him a moment to recognize her; she's wearing what looks like a primitive grey cape with a hood to protect her from the rain, and a larger than usual bag slung on her back. She's definitely more prepared than him. Sada must be thinking something similar, because she just looks at him - hair plastered on his face, lab coat getting soaked, probably a tired dead look in his eyes- and shakes her head with half a smile.

« Come with me.»

By now her hand grasping his wrist and pulling him along is becoming a familiar sight; Sada hurries him along in the opposite direction they've been going two nights ago, walking increasingly uphill. After a couple of minutes his legs are already burning with pain from the effort; at least the time-anchor's getting charged. Sada, who is also carrying way more clothes and luggage than him, is barely breathing any faster than normal.

Yep! Makes complete sense. Sada likely walks a ton every day for everything!

... was he horribly out of shape, or were people just built differently back then?

... both??

He slipped on the mud a couple of times and she grabs his arm with both hands to stop him from falling back down the hill, then mercifully stopped for a moment.

« Here » she offers him her spear to use as a makeshift walking stick, and he takes it after a second, feeling absolutely ridiculous. This thing was heavy: a good two meters long, the stone tip masterfully crafted to a sharp point and kept in place by fibers wrapped to make rope. And they used to throw these things.

I love the detail about how heavy it is! Kind of like picking up an actual sword. It is WAAAAAY heavier than it looks!

His month spent reading up on Stone Age life has taught him one thing: the only reason humans had not only not gone exctinct by sharing the planet with Pokémon but had risen as the dominant species was thanks to their ability to just throw stuff really, really well. Almost everything else had come from that. Early hominids had literally evolved to throw stuff as efficiently as possible; hell, even the Pokéball, which they had based their entire society on after it's invention, had been developed to be thrown.

Ok I love this bit of explanation here. That's pretty darn cool!

They could have made it so it had to be rolled. Or punched. Or simply pointed against the objective, but nah, they had decided "let's throw that, watch me nail that Bidoof on the head from 30 meters" (or at least, that's how he had always imagined the first practical demostration of the Pokéball to have gone down).

And that was just... wild to him. Even as heavy as it is, the spear helps quite a bit in keeping him upright while walking.

« Where... are we... going?» he heaved after a while. Sada turned around for a moment, looking at him a bit worried, then pointed at something that rested at the very top of the hill. He squinted through the rain; the green and brown of the forest disappeared towards a massive crag. Near its base, a rock overhang created a natural space shielded from the rain.

With a sigh of relief, Turo forces himself to climb the last couple hundred meters until they reach the entrance of the cave.

He fumbles for his time-anchor while sitting down on the ground and clicks a button to take note of the current coordinates; no way was he going to climb that hill again if he could avoid it.

Ooo! Smart!

Meanwhile, Sada just looks like she did nothing more than have a nice leasurely stroll. She pulls down her hood and sits down near him with a smile.

« Hi.» he smiled a bit in response; they have both picked up words from the other, he usually more words from her than the opposite,

missing a word between "usually" and "more". Missing word is "used"

so hearing her speak something in his language is still kind of strange.

I'm surprised he didn't have to catch it breath after all that.

Turo takes off his lab coat to leave it to dry, and can't help but notice that Sada is staring at it. With an amused chuckle, he remembers how fascinated by it she seemed to be on their first meeting and offers it to the woman, who stared at him wide-eyed for a moment before taking it with both hands and examining it.

« What creature is it?» she wondered.

« It's not... here. » he answered slowly after a moment. Better just to tell her that it came from some Pokémon that lived incredibly far away.

« Where my, umm... people are.» he added, remembering the word after a short moment.

Technically the truth. She pouted, evidently disappointed, then gives him back the lab coat and goes for her bag. He's actually been curious about that: it's held shut with strips of leather, and is probably full of everything she needs to set up camp somewhere. There's blankets rolled up, her smaller leather pouch where she seems to gather berries and other perishables, and of course, the notebook, hidden inside one of the blankets... to protect it from the rain, probably. He smiled almost proudly - of course she would be careful like that.

Well, yeah! She treasures that notebook because of how fascinating it is and perhaps also because it came from you!

Sada took the notebook out and flipped it open; he shuffled a bit closer, ready for another language lesson, but the page is completely empty. She actually looks a bit embarassed all of a sudden.

« I, umm.... » she pointed to her own cape and hood, then to his bodysuit.

« "Clothes" »

Turo nodded, not sure where she was going with this.

Sada started to rummage in her bag again; usually he is the one to embarass himself in front of her, so seeing her mutter something under her breath while avoiding his gaze is... the only word he can find is "precious".

It's adorable.

Darn straight it is, Turo!

« Turo's clothes, um... cold. So I... make clothes... my people clothes... » she showed him what she had taken out of the bag: a big bundle of cloth of various sizes and color, the furs obviously coming from different Pokémon. And in her other hand, what's obviously a needle made out of bone.

She wants to... oh man.

Looks like he's getting those "historically accurate clothes" after all.

That she is offering to put all that effort into making him clothes as a way to help him stay warm is THE cutest thing!

Closing thoughts:
Another great chapter! It's so enjoyable both seeing things from both of their perspectives and watching them become closer. You put so much imagination and thought into this and it continues to be a well-written pleasure to read. I'm certainly looking forward to the next chapter and its so great to know there are so many more chapters to enjoy!

 

[Nekodatta]

So this chapter comes out at a very important moment: almost exactly three years ago was when I first started writing this fic. Almost three
years later, it's grown in something that let me get back into writing, meet a lot of new people, and generally has constantly been at my side
for three long years, and probably will be for quite a bit more. To celebrate this, I wanted to do a little giveaway where everyone can take
part where I will gift a shiny Litleo and a shiny Murkrow to two random readers.
I would have loved to gift the shiny Koraidon from the distribution they did a couple months back, but it has never been distributed in my
country so I shiny hunted two other Pokémon that I felt were representative of the fic. To participate, simply let me know your username in any way through DM, comment, or just write an email to nekohakase00@gmail.com so I have a way to contact the winners.
The winners will be picked randomly by using websites like wheelofnames or random.org at the start of the new year.

Chapter 44: Growing, part II​

When the wheels of the airplane touched on Paldean ground again, Turo found himself releasing a small sigh of relief. After three long days, they were back home. He tried to mask his impatience as they went through the usual steps of getting off the plane and getting their luggage back. He checked the time on his phone, and nodded to himself; they were perfectly on time.

« MAMA! PAPA!»

He couldn't help his eyes widening when he saw Arven tear himself from Clavell and run across the airport. Sada immediately dumped her luggage on the ground and threw her arms wide to hug him, laughing, as Clavell followed close by.

Turo swallowed a lump in his throat, his chest tight. He had still felt horrible leaving Arven crying like that, and when the kid let go of Sada to hug him and bury his face in his jacket, he had to blink away a couple of tears.

« See.... it was just a couple of days. » he said, stroking the kid's hair.

Arven nodded wordlessly, and he smiled.

« Will there be another conference?» he asked, and Turo furrowed his eyebrows. Was he... worried they would have to depart again?

« No, there isn't going to be one for... » he caught Clavell furrowing his eyebrows at him and subtly shaking his head, and hesitated, perplexed. What did Clavell want to say?

« ... for a lot of time. » he smiled softly, giving another quick glance to his phone watch.

Good. Perfect time.

He knelt in front of Arven, smiling.

« Arven. Do you want to see the present Mom and Dad brought you?» he asked. The kid's eyes widened, and he looked at him and Sada before nodding cautiously, looking a bit unsure.

« All right! Time for Dad to do his magic.» he threw a glance towards Sada, who smiled and rolled her eyes. Clavell looked a bit perplexed as he took out his phone from his jacket and with a completely unnecessary flourish of his hand, sent a quick message to a number he had saved before leaving Alola.

Just a couple of coordinates. It was oddly nostalgic to input them on the small device, not unlike he would have done on his time-anchor so many times in the past.

A couple of moments later, a blue pinprick of light appeared on his left, hovering in midair. The pinprick kept glowing and increased in size, the blue glow disappearing as it revealed the shape of a young woman in her thirties and a Starmie.

« I have to say.... this has to be the most random delivery I've ever had to do. I usually get called for emergencies » she said with a bright smile as soon as her Pokémon finished Teleporting the two of them. The Starmie stood unnmoving by her side, completely stoic... or maybe Turo simply couldn't read its expression.

She was holding a small paper bag, slightly crumpled and, judging by the delicious smell coming from it, still perfectly warm.

« I've got.... two piping hot malasadas for Arven here! Who's Arven?» she asked.

Arven seemed reluctant to answer, until Sada encouraged him with a little smile. He raised his hand, watching the Pokémon with big eyes.

« Me...?» he answered.

He took the bag with some hesitation and opened it up. His eyes widened as he took one of the pastries out.

« Those are pastries typical of Alola, we wanted you to try them but taking them with us on the plane would have taken too long... » Turo explained as he watched the kid bite into the sugary treat.

Clavell's jaw went slack as he looked at him.

« You... called an Instant Courier for this...?» he said, incredulous.

The woman simply laughed.

« Oh, I don't mind!»

Of course she didn't, he had to give her a big fat tip to convince her to prepare that Teleport on such a short notice. A Pokémon needed to be able to visualise the area it wanted to reach extremely clearly, after all, so that usually required having already visited the place one wanted to teleport to. If that wasn't possible, you had to literally scout ahead first so that the Pokémon could learn it first. And for extremely long distances like these, you needed to also plan intermediary jumps... it was honestly a pretty fascinating little system they had put in place, as rudimentary as it was.

It only made him miss his teleporters were you mumbled your destination and they would zip you there even more.

At least he had gotten some short distance ones working in Area Zero...

Clavell was still shaking his head incredulously.

« I wasn't aware that Starmie could learn Teleport...»

« There's a couple move tutors back in Kanto that specialize in it. Well, I'll be going then. Some guy from Johto asked for my services later this day... oooh, this is going to mess up my sleep schedule -»

Turo gave her a sympathetic smile - oh, he knew what she was talking about-, and the four of them watched the Starmie start glowing and disappear with its trainer again.

« That has to be a fun job...» Sada commented , tilting her head sideways.

« Believe me, it's not. » he mumbled before turning his attention back to Arven, who looked busy enjoying the malasadas.

« Do you like them?» he asked.

At the kid's small nod, he smiled and exchanged another glance with Sada. He couldn't wait go give him their actual present for him... He touched the empty Poké Ball that sat in his lab pocket, turning the small capsule around in his hand.

He couldn't wait to see his reaction...

« Actually.... Arven, before we get into the taxi, could you finish the malasada alone? I need to talk with your Mom and Dad for a moment. »

Turo frowned in confusion at Clavell's words; Sada was doing the same as the older man gestured for them to follow him. He quickly let Ampere out.

« Stay with Arven for a moment, okay?» he whispered.

Sada left her Piloswine, and Clavell his Houndoom.

« Ampy! Narji! » the kid called out, petting each of them with one hand full of cream. Ampere buzzed as one of its magnets got smeared.

Turo had to smile a moment as he looked at the kid sitting on a bench, surrounded by the three watchful Pokémon on all sides. He felt safe leaving him with them.

Clavell waited until they had sat down at a café to speak, and Turo was suddenly reminded of the way the man had questioned them when he had first found them in Area Zero. The way he was looking at them like he had been presented with something incomprehensible was eerily similar.

« I'll get straight to the point. What are you doing in Area Zero?» he whispered. Maybe he had wanted his tone to sound menacing, but the effect was a bit ruined by the cup of tea with a cute Cottonee decoration he was holding.

« What... do you mean...? The usual things, looking for-»

« Arven heard you talk about "time travel". » Clavell cuf him off, and Turo froze, trying to think back on all the times they had talked about it. It had been mostly in Area Zero, or... maybe there had been a couple of times when they were both in the lighthouse lab. Had Arven been eavesdropping?

« We... we experienced a shift in time while we were in the Underdepths.» Turo explained in a hushed whisper. His eyes started to shine as he recalled that moment. « We met two Pokémon from our times that had to have been transported here, and then we met Heath!»

« The author of the books?» Clavell muttered, momentarily caught off guard.

« In the flesh! It's really possible, Sebastian. We've found the source of the power that causes these shifts... and brought us here, most probably.» Sada added with a enthusiastic nod. « We just want to... see if we can build a machine that can repeat that shift. That's all.» she added after a moment.

Maybe she was thinking back about how angry Clavell had gotten when they had discussed the possibility that Olim could be Sada after travelling to the past, and didn't want to get into the same argument again.

Clavell seemed to look at both of them with an expression that was a mix between awe and exasperation.

In the end, he shook his head with a sigh and leaned forward, his eyebrows furrowed in worry.

« We can discuss the implications of that later. But I'm worried about Arven. He... he obviously didn't understand what you were talking about, but he thought that you were leaving him. »

Turo's enthusiasm deflated at the researcher's words. At his side, Sada's shoulders similarly slumped forward, and she stopped sipping at her coffee.

« W.... is that why he was so scared?» she whispered.

« He got scared when he heard that you were "travelling" abroad. He's barely five. You don't know how kids are going to interpret what they hear when adults talk. »

Turo lowered his eyes, feeing guilty. He had no idea that Arven had been keeping this all to himself.

« We'll be more careful speaking of work around him.» he said, before giving an amazed laugh.

« .... He's really growing up so fast, isn't he?» he said with a smile. He quietly wondered if his parents had felt the same when looking at him. He turned his eyes towards the figure of the kid, who was sharing his last malasada with Sada's Piloswine and Clavell's Houndoom as Magneton watched. Arven looked sadly towards the electric type, before suddenly jumping up and sprinting towards him, immediately followed by Houndoom. Piloswine, slower on the uptake, was lumbering behind.

« DADDY!» he said, skidding to a stop in front of him. «I wanna give Ampy some malasada, but I don't know how... I'm sad that he can't try it...» he mumbled.

Turo looked to the Magneton. They bopped up and down, waving their magnets.

« I'm... I'm sure Ampy doesn't mind...» he answered after a moment.

« Can I get a battery?» Arven asked. Turo blinked, caught by surprise by the sudden question.

« Um... sure...» he said, pulling one out from his lab pocket.

He watched as Arven ran back again. Piloswine, who had just caught up to him, huffed and lumbered after him again. There the kid smeared a bit of cream on one end of the battery and offered it to the Electric type.

« Here Ampy, try this!» he beamed.

Turo had to hide a smile; kid logic. To their credit, Ampere seemed to humour the kid, draining the battery and buzzing happily.

He touched the Poké Ball sitting in his pocket again, and exchanged a brief glance with Sada. She seemed to understand him immediately, because she nodded and got up, leaving some money on the table.

« Right. Let's go home. » she said.

Right. The lighthouse. He didn't want to show Arven his first Poke Ball while sitting at an airport café. He met Clavell's eyes, and stealthily showed him the Poké Ball by taking it out of his pocket for just a moment, then glanced at Arven again. Clavell understood immediately, his eyes glowing with excitement.

« Oh, I always love watching this moment... can I assist?» he asked in a whisper, and Turo gave the man a warm smile.

« Of course.» he said, before they walked out to take a taxi.

---

The short flight home seemed almost longer than the one they just had from Alola to Paldea. Sada had been even tempted to offer to fly on Ötzi. With the help of Clavell's Gyarados, they could have gotten everyone to the lighthouse on a single trip.

But Clavell had protested to the idea, so they had called their trusty pilot to carry them from the airport to the lighthouse. On the way, she sent a couple of messages to Raifort and Jacq.

"Arven is going to catch his first Pokémon. Do you want to come?"

The answers arrived not even a minute later.

"I'll be right there!!!"

"Of course I will!"

As soon as they had landed, they were in fact greeted by the two researchers waiting in front of the laboratory.

Arven looked happy to see them, but he also seemed a bit confused.

« Umm... why is everyone here? » he asked.

« Well, we wanted to see what kind of-» Jacq started to say, only to be immediately shut down by Raifort stepping on his foot. He cringed in pain but didn't say anything else, turning to throw her a betrayed look.

« We were thinking of having a picnic all together, remember?» she asked Arven, and watched as the kid's eyes lit up.

« Oh!! Yes!! A picnic!! Let's do it! I'll grab the basket!» he yelled, throwing his arms up.

Sada smiled; he looked so happy just with that... she wondered what his reaction would be in a moment.

She exchanged a final glance with Turo, who nodded and stepped forward. She could barely conceal her excitement herself as she watched him kneel in front of Arven again. His usual scowl and furrowed eyebrows were gone; he was radiant,not able to keep a smile off his face as he put one hand on Arven's shoulder. Clavell, Raifort and Jacq were holding their breath.

She could understand why in this time, this moment had become a sort of ritual. It was something that could change a child's life forever. Their very first Poké Ball, an empty one that held infinite possibilities inside it.

« Before we start the picnic, there's something really important I want you to have, Arven. » Turo said slowly, and Sada wondered if his parents had used the same words before giving him Miraidon.

With a rustle of clothes, he took the empty Poké Ball out of his pocket and pressed it in the kid's hand.

It took Arven a long moment to recognise that it wasn't simply the Poké Ball of one of his parent's Pokémon. This one was empty.

His eyes widened and he looked up at the both of them.

« ... this is mine?» he asked.

They nodded in unison, holding their breath as what it meant registered to the kid.

« I can catch a Pokémon? And then I can keep him?» he blurted out, so fast that the words had barely time to leave his lips.

« Yes. You'll have to take care of-urgh» Turo said, but whatever else he had probably reharsed a hundred of times in his head during the flight back went unsaid, because Arven had jumped up to hug him, hanging with both hands around the man's neck and squeezing his breath out of him.

« Thank you!! Thank you!!! I will take care of him!! I will teach him to be the best Pokémon ever!!» Arven was saying, and Sada moved to save her husband from her kid's overenthusiastic eagerness.

« Well, you need to decide what you want to catch first! »

That seemed to be what everyone, her included, was waiting for: what would Arven choose?

A Fletchling? Maybe a Lechonk? A Fidough?

They all watched as Arven walked down the path that led to the beach, eagerly watching every Pokémon they happened to cross by. It was strange; she was used to seeing wild Pokémon everywhere now, especially around the lighthouse, to the point of recognising some of the Pokémon that lived around here. The small flock of Fletchling lead by a single, really big Fletchinder. The Hoppip and Skiploom that would drift by carried by the sea breeze, chattering. The group of Azurill and Marill with some Azumarill that lived in the pond near Los Platos. But now, it was like she was looking at each of them for the first time again; each one made her pause slightly and glance towards Arven, thinking: would this be the one?

Interestingly, she noticed that the Pokémon themselves also seemed to have noticed Arven; usually, they would simply fly or run by, or stepped just a bit closer if they were hoping for a challenge against her or Turo's Pokémon. But now they were also quietly staring at Arven, studying him.

They probably saw enough kids doing their first few catches before enrolling at the academy to recognize a new trainer. She still found it incredibly fascinating, this subtle relationship that people had built with wild Pokémon.

A Rookidee flapped down from a tree branch and landed in front of the kid, chirping. The two seemed to stare at each other for a moment, and she saw Turo's eyes lit up and knew that he was wondering if his first Pokémon would be a flying type like Miguel.

Arven cocked his head sideways, thinking.

After a moment, the Rookidee took off again, and Arven shook his head.

« ... You didn't like that one?» Sada asked, curious.

« It was... too serious. » Arven mumbled, kicking a pebble, and Sada nodded.

Somehow, she also couldn't picture Arven with a big and fierce Corviknight by his side.

Other Pokémon approached Arven; an Azurill, a Tarantoula, a Scatterbug, but every time, something seemed to let Arven turn away from them, or the Pokémon themselves scampered off shortly after.

« What do you want your first Pokémon to be like?» she asked after a while. Maybe putting it into words would help the kid realize what kind of Pokémon he was looking for.

Arven seemed unsure.

« Just... a friend. I don't want a Pokémon that wants to battle all the time. » he said after a moment.

« Maybe we can stop for a bit and you can think about it while we eat?» she proposed.

They set up a table on a couple of picnic benches nearby, not too far from the beach where she had first told Turo that she was pregnant. That seemed so long ago now...

Arven excitedly started to arrange the sandwich ingredients with the help of everyone.

« No, Auntie Raifort, don't put the olive oil there!» he said as Raifort had just gotten the bottle out of the picnic basket.

« That's where Daddy sits, and Dad can't have olive oil because he is "all-er-gic"» he nodded, proud to have remembered the word.

« I'm not going to die if I just look at it, Arven...» Turo said, but there was a proud glint in his eyes as he sat down and started to prepare his own sandwich.

« Well... maybe you can try to think about a specific type of Pokémon you want?» Jacq proposed. « Grass or normal types are generally easy to raise-» he added.

As they ate, she noticed that some wild Pokémon were eyeing the food on the table, but all of their own Pokémon eating their share were making sure that they kept a wide berth.

« I dunno.... » Arven just looked more confused at Jacq's proposal.

« Don't worry about it, Arven. Just find a Pokémon that you like and that likes you.» she tried to reassure the kid. He was barely five, there was no need to complicate things more than they should.

As they kept eating, she noticed that Arven was looking at some of the wild Pokémon. Sada turned to follow his eyes; there was a pack of Maschiff and a couple Mabostiff that were circling around their table. One Mabostiff barked aggressively towards Kim, who roared in return. Most of the pack backed off, but to her surprise, one little Maschiff ran forward instead. It weaved around Kim, past the Pyroar and right underneath the legs of Jacq's Arcanine, before diving right underneath the table. There it started to growl, barking furiously at every Pokémon that approached.

Using the pack as a diversion and the picnic table as cover so the bigger Pokémon couldn't get to him without destroying the entire thing?

Sada had to admit the little guy had both guts and smarts.

Everyone had gotten up and backed away from the table; Arven was staring at the Pokémon poking out from underneath the brightly red colored tablecloth.

After a moment, the Pokémon poked its snout out, and started to sniff the picnic basket lying on the grass.

« Ehi! Back off!» Turo send out his Porygon, who was small enough to duck under the table. « C'mon, just send it away with a Thundershock.» he grumbled.

Arven had been crouching with his head tilted sideways to stare at the Pokémon under the table, but at Turo's command jumped back up again.

« No!! Don't hurt him!!»

He ran forward and Keylogger hastily called off the attack with an alarmed beep.

The kid crouched to be at eye level with the Pokémon, who was pawing at the picnic basket with a scowl, not quite managing to get it open.

« You want food? Here!» Arven opened the latch and retrieved some ham and berries, offering them to the Pokémon.

It growled, and Sada tried to step forward in case it looked like it was going to attack.

Clavell's hand on her shoulder stopped her; she turned towards the man, who was watching Arven intently.

« You can have it!» Arven left the food on the grass, next to the basket. The Mashiff stared at it, then at the boy, then growled again, trying, if Sada had to guess, to look as intimidating as possible.

Maybe it didn't want to look like he was simply accepting the food. Maybe the Pokémon wanted to show his pack that it had earned that food somehow.

Arven however simply giggled.

« Your face looks so funny!»

The Maschiff barked again, its face now contorned in an angry scowl, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on the kid, who simply kept laughing. She had to admit, that stubborn tough guy act the Pokémon seemed to want to put up was adorable.

The more Arven laughed, the more the Maschiff barked and jumped around the kid, trying and failing to intimidate him.

After a while, it was left panting heavily, completely exhausted, and settled down on the grass with a disgruntled "ruff". It eyed the ham and grabbed one slice.

Its tail started to wag ever so slightly, and Arven laughed, before pausing.

The kid slowly got the Poke Ball out of his pocket. The Maschiff stopped eating and stared at it.

After a moment, Sada noticed that the rest of the pack was watching intently, almost like they had already realised what was happening. The Mabostiff leader gave a single bark, and the Maschiff raised its head. It got up and wagged its tail, then barked back.

With that signal, the pack dispersed, some of the other Maschiff and Mabostiff giving one last farewell bark as they ran away.

Arven looked at the Poke' Ball, then the wild Pokémon who had sat down in front of him.

« So, um... you want to stay with me?» he asked.

The Maskiff barked.

Arven looked at the Poke' Ball again.

« So... you know how this works?» he asked.

The Maskiff barked again, tail wagging.

Sada felt a wave of heat wash over her, and turned around slightly; Kim had silently padded over to her and was watching the scene with wide eyes.

With that wide eyed expression, she suddenly looked so similar to the tiny Litleo she had been years ago, and Sada found herself having to blink back tears, remembering that moment.

« You're also thinking about that moment, are you?» she whispered, not taking her eyes off the scene.

The Pyroar purred loudly and pushed her snout over her hands.

Arven looked back towards where all the adults had been standing in rapt silence, eyes gleaming.

« I'm going to throw the ball now!» he announced.

Suddenly panicking, Sada started to check her pockets for her phone.

She had to record this!

« Don't worry, Keylogger is recording everything-» Turo mumbled by her side, one hand in his lab pocket, looking completely relaxed.

Keylogger beeped in alarm.

« Error. Out of memory.»

Turo's eyes flew wide and he cursed, similarly starting to look for his phone.

« Ok, got it!» she brandished her old phone and set it to record.

Arven backed up a couple of spaces, then took a big breath and squared his shoulders. He raised one hand over his head, then closed one eye to carefully take aim. He was holding the Poke' Ball upside down, with the red part pointing towards the ground, but Sada decided not to tell him.

If she wasn't busy concentrating to keep her hands from shaking and the camera steady, she would have found the whole picture adorable.

Arven threw the Poke Ball, and the red and white sphere arced through the air. For a moment, it looked like it would sail right over the Pokémon's head, and botching his first throw would have crushed the kid's spirit.

But then she saw Maschiff watching the ball intently, and the Pokémon leapt forward and jumped, intercepting the Poké Ball with the tip of its nose at the highest point of the arc.

It captured the wild Pokémon and fell back on the grass, shaking one, two, three times.

And then it stopped.

For some long moments, nobody moved. Sada was suddenly acutely aware of how much time it had been since she had last caught a Pokémon. Or at least.... The last time she had caught a Pokémon without it feeling like just a task to check off a list, something routine she had to do for research before releasing it back into Area Zero, like those Stellar type Pokémon back in the Underdepths.

And for people like Clavell, Raifort and Jacq, who had been born and raised into this culture, it had probably been even longer. All three were watching with bated breath: Clavell wasn't even pretending to hide his damp eyes, removing his glasses to dap at them with a handkerchief. Raifort had her arms crossed, nodding sternly as she tried to look unconcerned, while Jacq was already muttering things under his breath.

« A Maschiff. Interesting choice. Doesn't evolve too early, they will grow up together...»

As for Turo... he was looking at Arven with a proud smile, only slightly tinged with a hint of sadness.

As for Arven itself, by the way he calmly retrieved the Poké Ball and raised it in the air with a big smile, maybe it hadn't quite hit yet how monumental that moment he had just experienced was.

« I caught it!» he turned around, eyes wide gleaming with pride, and ran towards his parents.

« Mama! Papa! Look, look! I caught it!! » the kid was so excited he could barely keep still, holding the Poke' Ball tightly in both hands trembling with excitement.

« Good job!» she realised she had been still recording and hastily put her phone away to free her hands. Having to hold the device the whole time was so cumbersome, she wished they could just.... float in midair right next to her like Turo's interfaces back in his time did.

She hugged Arven, the kid squirming to avoid the Poke' Ball not getting squished between the two of them.

« I'm so proud of you! »

She turned her head when she saw Turo approaching. The man knelt in front of Arven, ruffling his hair.

« Now you'll be responsible for him; teach him well what it means to live with us so he will get along with everyone else, okay?» he said, and the kid nodded, serious.

« I will!»

He pressed the button on the sphere to release the newly caught Maschiff, who immediately shook his head, looking a bit confused.

« Kim, why don't you welcome him in the family?» she turned towards the Pyroar, who simply purred and approached the Pokémon. The newly caught Pokémon flattened his ears, possibly expecting a battle, but Arven put one hand on his back.

« Don't be afraid! This is Kim, she's Mom first Pokémon!» he announced, making the Pyroar puff her chest out with pride.

« She's really strong now but before I was born she was a tiny little Pokémon just like you!» Arven knelt to whisper something in the Pokémon's ear, still perfectly audible to everyone around.

« Mom told me she got chased on a tree by Maushold when she first met her!»

Sada laughed when the Pyroar huffed and pointedly looked away, her mane crackling with small fiery sparks of indignation at being reminded of that moment.

« Can he come inside?» Arven asked.

« Of course he can , if you teach him to behave-» Turo answered.

« Even on the bed?»

She saw Turo hesitate, trying to hide a smile.

« Let's not get ahead of ourselves now...» he said, looking stern. Keylogger beeped, and he turned to address his Pokémon.

« ... yes, what is it?»

Arven looked a bit down.

« Oh, ok...» he said dejectedly.

Sada smiled and knelt beside the kid.

« .... I think Maschiff can still get on the bed.» she whispered. Arven furrowed his eyebrows, looking so similar to his father when he did it.

« But Dad said no...»

« And Mom says "Just don't get caught."» she replied with a wink, watching the kid brighten up.

By the little smile Turo had suppressed at the question, he had probably been thinking back to when he would sneak Miraidon in his bed when he was little.

« Let's go back to our picnic, okay?»

As they sat back down, she looked as Arven turned to carefully explain everything to Maschiff.

« These are the condiments we put on the bread first, you can try a bit of everything and see what you like-»

The Pokémon sat vigil, looking a bit confused at everything that the small kid was showing him, but still listening eagerly, and she suddenly realised that maybe this was something Arven had been missing all this time: someone small like him, a peer he could explain things to and share new discoveries with.

He was usually surrounded by either adults or grown up Pokémon that had already lived with humans for years; sometimes he played with other kids when they brought him to Los Platos or Mesagoza, but they didn't have any real neighbours near the lighthouse. There were a couple of houses for sale in Dosilla, but they had all been empty.

So he was always surrounded by people that were teaching or explaining things to him, but he had never been in the position of being the one to explain things until now.

She smiled, looking at the Maschiff as Arven talked. There was a moment where the kid started laughing, and Maschiff also gave a wide toothy grin, closing its eyes as it barked enthusiastically. Sada grabbed her phone and hastily snapped a picture, capturing that little moment.

This one would get framed for sure.

 

[Tango]

Chapter 6: Exchange​

Alright I'm back again!

Based on the chapter title, I'm thinking this may be a gift exchange of some sort between Sada and Turo!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Sada was pretty proud of her idea, but explaining it to Turo proved more difficult than she thought. Still, he seems to get it after a moment, and his reaction is to shake his head and try to refuse. She had been expecting this; from food to her offer to join her settlement, he seems pretty adamant in refusing any kind of help.

Was he really that fearful and wary of other people?

This time though, she is not going to budge. He needs those clothes, the ones he is wearing now are completely useless at best and dangerous at worst, and he obviously seems unable to make some himself. Which makes sense, if he's never even hunted before.

Yay another Sada chapter!

That's so cute how she is putting her foot down to help him. 🥰

Sada starts to unravel some thread from her bag, together with some leather strip with little signs cut on it that she is going to use to take measurements - her personal invention.

That's such a cool detail to add! Also, I'd say that Sada invents even more things than Turo.

When she lifts her head and turns back towards Turo, measurement tape in hand, she finds him staring at her with a slightly confused look on his face that gives her pause.

... What? He's never done this before? That's impossible, how would he even get his current clothes to fit so perfectly otherwise? It's like there wasn't a single inch of wasted material on those robes...

I love this. It's a subtle way of her checking him!

And now that she's thinking about it, this is the first time she's seen him without his mantle on and can actually get a good look at the clothes without the fluttering white cape covering most of it.

A really good look, which makes her realize two things. One, they are... incredibly tight,

That's right Sada, get a good look. You like what you see?

even all around his shoulders and arms; it makes her feel both amazed and kind of jealous of the sewing abilities of whoever created them. The mysterious material probably helps, normal fur from the creatures that live here just doesn't stick like that. If it did, it would make it impossible for someone wearing them to move.

Two, he is pretty lean, to the point of having barely any muscle on him... no wonder he was having so much difficulty simply walking before.

I want to take a moment to mention how much I enjoy you dragging out the scientific advancements barrier between these two. It's just so utterly captivating watching these two adapt, learn, and grow closer slowly.

Sada approaches him and gestures for him to stand up, which he does after a moment.

She first slips the strip of leather around his neck, to get an idea of how large the hole for the head should have to be and grumbles when he stiffens up and tries to back away.

Hmm I wonder why he did that? I'm already smiling as I anticipate the next chapter being from his POV so I can find out!

« Just a moment -» she takes a quick note on the notebook - an idea she had just the other day. Her mother taught her how to sew and she takes pride in being quite good at it, getting clothes to fit as much as possible and using the cloth she had available in an efficient way. Which is exactly why she is so determined in getting them right: she doesn't want them to look shabby compared to his current ones.

Aww, she is taking great care in making them the best she can! 🥰

Next she measures his shoulders and chest, and in the meantime, can't help but keep studying the purple clo... no, it's definitely not cloth. It's also not tiny scales like she had originally thought. It really looks like some kind of...shed skin that he somehow wrapped around himself without tearing it, all in one piece. Which is kinda impressive, but also a bit gross. Also what kind of creature would give you a single piece that big?

That is hilarious how she thinks of it as gross!

"What even is this thing... why make it glow?" she wonders silently, almost absent mindedly prodding the part of his suit that had been glowing the other night,right between his ribs, completely absorbed in her work to the point that she doesn't notice his increasing discomfort until his breath brushes against her hair for a moment.

I wonder if she is tickling him?

Only then does Sada finally lift her gaze from the little leather strip still wrapped around his chest to find herself eye to eye with him, and realizes that they have never been this close to each other.

Oh my! It's kind of like if he were wearing a tie and she yanked on it to bring his face close to hers! Badump!

They have walked together, they've sat side by side passing the notebook between them, but she's never actually gotten this close to him.

The thought that her curiosity had also gotten the better of her and she had kind of prodded him all over without really thinking about it finally hits her, along with the realization that judging by how he had flinched before, he hadn't exactly appreciated it.

Turo's expression at the moment is evenly divided between slight embarassment and... something she can't quite point out at first. Frustration, she realizes after a moment.

That makes her suddenly release the leather strip, letting it fall to the ground, and take a step back. Was he... angry at her? Sada bites her lip and turns around, feeling suddendly guilty. Right. This had been stupid. He had sayed no at first, and she should just have listened to him, even if she didn't understand his reasoning. But... she had just wanted to help...

Freaking ADORABLE!

Sada gets pulled back all of a sudden; she turns around, surprised, to find that Turo has

grabbed her by the wrist with one hand, and picked up the measurement tape with the other.

« No, you... make clothes.» he nods after a moment, giving her a smile. Just a small one, the corners of his mouth barely twitching upwards, but his eyes light up in the subtle way that only a genuine smile can do. He isn't forcing one just to be polite.

Awww! 🥰

He wasn't one for big smiles, she had noticed, apart from that one time he had exploded into a complete laughing fit for... some reason that she still didn't quite get. And when he had smiled with wonder at the stars, it hadn't been directed at her like it was now. Which makes his smile now look even more... Genuine. Special.

Neko, I'm definitely paying close attention to how you are weaving this friendship and eventually relationship between these two. Reading this should help improve my own writing. I'm having a hard time imagining how you would make all this better!

« Just... » he points to himself and starts to wrap the tape around his chest again. « ... let me do it.»

She returns the smile after a moment of indecision -what was that frustration just now, then?-, much wider, before approaching him again.

With her explaining how to do it and occasionally keeping one end of the tape, they manage to get all the measurements done quite quickly. She happily looks at all the notes she's taken, then starts rummaging around the pile of furs to select the pieces she will have to cut and sew together.

In the meantime, Turo sits back down - looking quite relieved for the whole thing to be over- and takes a little piece of cloth from the pile, turning it around in his hands.

« You make...» a slight pause where he looks around, before pointing at the spear left near them and miming using it to stab something. « ... this?»

She just looks at him perplexed. Is he asking if they got the fur themselves? Well... yes? How else would get them?

Hunting makes him squeamish, I think!

« Yes. My people hunted them. "Hunt"» she repeats and mimes stabbing something back at him, and he winches a bit and looks uncomfortable, looking back at the fur in his hands. It was mostly yellow, with just two brown stripes almost at the center, and belonged to one of the furry rodents that would sometimes sneak into their camp to steal food. Nobody liked them, so they didn't even bother giving them a name other than "the pests" and they were pretty much attacked on sight.

She be hunting the Chews, man!!

His reaction still puzzled her; it was obvious that he didn't hunt personally, but... of course he must have known that people did it for him back in his tribe? He couldn't have been that sheltered, didn't he? But then why would he look so uncomfortable at the idea?

The only thing she can think of to explain it is that maybe, back in his place, the fuzzy yellow creatures were actually seen differently...?

That's not a bad guess at all, Sada!

« Your... Turo's people not hunt them...?» she tries to ask, and after a couple moments of thinking, he just chuckles a bit and shakes his head.

All right. Weird.

🤣

Sada looks back down on the piece of Steady Glacier pelt she's working with, trying to bore some holes in it with a sharp stone she took out of her bag, where the needle will then go through.

« Why? » she asks after a moment, looking back at him. That's a bit of a difficult question though, and she doesn't expect him to understand her. It frustrates her, how slowly they are progressing. With stuff you can point at or mime, physical actions, they are getting by and learning words quickly, sure... the drawings are also helping for stuff you don't always have around. Some little things she also picked up by context, if he says something incomprehensible but is obviously referring to something they both know.

It's a tricky process for sure but it's so cool watching these two learn to communicate with each other. It's a thing I don't see very often in many forms of media.

But other things... she wants to asks him why he had looked frustrated right now, if it wasn't for the clothes. Where he disappears every time (and especially how). How his life was before, if he had really never seen the stars or barely walked around, to the point of being completely out of breath after a stroll. Why he had left his group.

Was he on the run? Were they looking for him?

Many questions. And it makes sense for her to wonder about all of them!

As she expected, Turo just shakes his head, then throws the little pelt back in the pile and sits back down, arms resting on his knees. Now that she thinks about it... she steals a glance to his right wrist. There. There's a thing on his arm that he's always fiddling with, she has noticed. It's usually covered by the white mantle, so now it's her first time getting a good look at it. It looks like some bracelet, made of strange parts attached together perfectly, like most of his stuff.

« What is it? » she asks, pausing briefly to point at it. He automatically tries to hide his hand away, before realizing that he is not wearing the mantle.

« My people... make it. » Turo still seems to try to cover it up by putting his other hand over it, even if subconsciously. It must be important to him. A memento?

But it always looks like he does something with it, because she has caught him slipping his other hand into the sleeve to touch it a couple of times.

Was it some kind of... ritual? Like how some hunters would paint their faces and cover themselves with furs of the creatures they wanted to hunt, to summon their spirit for good luck?

Probably the best guess she could make with the information available. I'm glad Sada is naturally inquisitive and intelligent. It prevents her perspective from being frustrating to watch and makes it really enjoyable!

« Why...?» she asks again, before realizing with a frustrated sigh that that the question

You had word repeated instead of 'the' fixed it above for you to implement.

would not bring her any answers. She had to word it differently. She puts the fur down and thinks quietly for a couple of long moments, biting her lip.

« Sada... um, "I" » she stresses the word and points to herself for good measure, trusting him to realize that she is still referring to herself.

« I am... "hunter". I "hunt". » Sada tries to emphasize the difference between the two words and mimes some quick spear attacks for good measure.

« Turo... "you"...?»

Ooo! This should be interesting! (Though... if I'm being honest, this entire chapter has been interesting so far...)

Turo's been completely silent the whole time, just listening and quietly staring at her, dark brown eyes completely inscrutable. It makes her heart start beating faster and feel suddenly nervous, the way that his face shows absolutely no emotion right now. Just what is he thinking...?

He breaks eye contact to stare at the ground for a second, giving another one of his almost invisible half-smiles.

« "I" am... no "hunter".» he chuckles after a moment shaking his head and her heart skips a beat, because his accent had been almost perfect this time, and this is probably the most coherently sound exchange they've ever had without having to stumble or mime their way through half the words, as basic as it was. He got it. He understood her!

"We can do this"

You left punctuation off the end of this line.

It's great to see their communication improve!

« What... are you?» she asks after a moment. She just wants... a word, even if in his language. They can start with that. Just... something to define him with, that lets her know that he actually has some kind of... role, or position in his tribe, to draw parallels from.

Turo hesitates a second, his left hand briefly scratching at his chin while he seems to ponder something. He lowers his hand and raises in eyes to meet hers again.

« I am... a scientist.»

« "Scient....ist."»

That... was that his word for sciaman? What other roles could there be in the tribe?

His next words completely shatter her bubbling excitement, throwing her into complete confusion.

« You are... a scientist.»

... what? She is no shaman. She literally just told him that her position is that of huntress. Has he completely misunderstood her after all?

« No, I...»

« Yes, you are.» he leans closer towards the notebook that's been laying between them and flips back to the first page, points to the notes she's taken, the drawings, the little tests with the torn paper and the smudged ink where she had got it wet and realized for the first time that it would be better to keep the paper away from the rain.

« This. All this... make you a scientist.» there is an... intensity in his voice that she's never heard before. He is utterly convinced.

Such a cool moment!

She doesn't quite understand what he means, but he believes in it fully.

So, for him, is it more like... a title...? For what?

« And that is... beautiful.» Turo whispers something to himself, something she can't understand yet. She will not be able to for quite some time.

Hmm! I wonder if she will remember this for later when she learns what he meant later? I'm not sure.

---

Turo had left at sunset, walking back down the hill until he had disappeared through the trees, promising to come back after five nights at this same spot. As always, she had to suppress the urge to just sneak after him, choosing to keep working on his clothes. It would take a couple of days before she's finished with them, especially because she still has to provide for herself in the meantime - better to keep her berry bag untouched for the actual trip back to the settlement.

It happens right when Sada is out hunting; she's been looking for eggs to steal this time, and the fastest way to do it was to find a Slither Grip. Long and completely purple, she had noticed them wrapped all around tree branches to sneak over an unsupervised nest and swallow the eggs whole while the parents were away. Stalk one of them, scare it away while it's busy eating the first egg, and you had free access to all others. Easy.

That's actually pretty clever! I love the thought you put into Sada's perspective.

She crouched low behind a bush, spear slung over her shoulder, staring at the purple and yellow creature that was making it's way up the tree, gripping the branches with two short claws near the upper part of it's body, when a low thud fills the air. Wings flapping, pretty big ones. Sada stares at the tree tops for a moment, worried; she can't see what kind of eggs they are, but if that is the sound of one the parents coming back to the nest, it would be better to retreat, fast. A shadow passes over the ground for a moment, and the creature seems to pass right over them; she manages to catch just to quickest glimpse of something red, and big, before it's gone, wings flapping heavily to keep it afloat. Is it going to land near here...?

The Slither Grip had also paused briefly, it's tail making a slight rattling noise, before deciding that the food right in front of it's nose was evidently more important. It opens it's jaw wide and gobbles up the first egg, and Sada stands up.

If she wants to act, she has to do it now. She throws a rock she has carefully prepared before at the creature, nailing it on the head. The Slither Grip is still busy swallowing and can't do much else than angrily rattle it's tail at her. Another rock chucked right on it's nose makes it finally decide that the rest of the eggs are not worth the possible injuries of getting repeatedly pelted with rocks, and it slithers away much like the name implies, rattling all the way down the tree. As soon as it's gone, she quickly climbs the tree herself and carefully makes her way to the nest by crawling along the branch, legs and arms wrapped around it. The remaining three eggs are a bit smaller than what she would have liked, but better than nothing. She really carefully puts the eggs inside her bag and starts making her way back down the tree, satisfied. If only finding something to eat would be so easy every day...

I just realized something. If Sada is about to die from something, Turo in her future would come to meet her to find her missing. Turo could then travel back in time to when he left her and maybe follow her to figure out what happened to her and then step in to save her! Granted, it might be hard for him to follow her without her noticing as she has keen senses. It also might be hard for him to keep up with her, but if he brought some technology or a mon along, I think he could make it work. Really makes me wonder if this might be a thing that happens? I've been very impressed with the plot points and directions in the fic so far.

Sada freezes when she hears something moving right under the tree, in the direction of where the Slither Grip had disappeared. There is a threatening rattle - definitely the purple creature, then a growl from something else that she's never heard before.

She quickly finishes climbing back from the tree and grabs her spear, conflicted.

On one hand, caution tells her to get away while she can. On the other hand, her curiosity makes her want to at least see what the misterious creature is.

Her curiosity wins.

Sada prowls through the underbrush, until she manages to catch a glimpse from the creature. It's definitely the one that flew overhead just before, and she finds herself staring at it in complete amazement. It's beautiful. Much bigger than the Slither Grip that it is currently staring down, it is standing upright on two strong legs covered in red scales like most of it's body, except for part of it's tail and throat that are completely black, and a white underbelly. A magnificent crest of big colorful feathers runs all along it's back and head, and she immediately recognizes them as the same ones she had used for Turo's necklace.

The creature stares at the Slither Grip for another long moment, then pounches with unexpected speed, grabbing the purple creature in it's maw. The Slither Grip's struggle is cut short when it bites down on it and shakes it's head violently, then tips it's head back to swallow it. It licks it's lips, then lowers it's gaze... and stares straight at her, the dark pupils on bright orange eyes narrowing in catching sight of her.

It's throat seems to expand suddenly and another growl, much louder than the one it had done just before, reverberates through the air.

This seems quite dangerous! But Sada is also a skilled hunter... I have no idea what will happen!

Along with something else; Sada finds herself drenched in sweat, and not just from nervousness. The air has suddenly gotten much hotter around the creature while it squares her up.

She tightens her grip on the spear, heart hammering in her chest while she considers her chances; honestly? They weren't good. No way is she defeating this thing with a single spear. It's gotten way too close to her and is way too fast. No, the only way she is getting away from it is by distracting it. Make herself not worth the effort.

She slowly, slowly slips her free hand into the bag and gets one of the eggs out. The creature tilts it's head to it's side and hisses, but does not attack.

She crouches and deposits the egg onto the ground, then takes some steps back.

It's looking at the egg, then back at her.

It goes on four legs to sniff at it, tongue darting in and out for a moment, then snatches it up and swallows it. It licks it's lips again, then looks back at her, still on four legs.

Sada gets the second egg out, and the creature waits until she takes another step back before eating that too. It's eyeing her bag now, sniffing the air.

She scowls for a moment, then gets the last egg out.

« This was supposed to be mine...» she mutters while it happily devours the last egg, before looking back at her. It growls softly and suddenly spreads it's wings, flapping them with enough force to send her sprawling to the ground and taking off into the skies. Sada is left staring at the spot where the creature had disappeared, where a couple of white and blue feathers were fluttering to the ground.

It hadn't attacked her. It easily could have, but it didn't.

Against all better judgement, she decides to leave some food for it out every day in the same spot.

Oh snap! She be TAMING it!

---

For once, I want to point out that these simple breaks between scenes are very well implemented.

Sada can't wait for Turo to come back, and those five day and nights seem to pass excruciatingly slow. She wants to show him his new clothes, which she has completed in the meantime, and proudly announce that she's discovered what the strange creature is, since he also had looked interested in it. She can't wait to see his reaction to both things.

So cute!

The food she is leaving where she met the creature disappears every day; it could be any other nearby creature eating it, but Sada has been finding more and more traces of the red creature around the forest. More feathers of the same color and lenght, even some scales, and she even caught it flying high in the sky a couple of times. It definitely looked like it lived around here.

She tries to draw it as better as she can in the notebook, and takes some notes about it. Really strong and bulky, definitely one of the strongest predators in the area. Could fly with the feathers on it's head, and enlarge a part of it's throat. It looked like a meat eater, but she had tried to leave some berries and roots and those had disappeared too. If no other creature had been the one to eat them, then it probably ate everything... but had showed no interest in eating her. Why?

People were an easy meal for most creatures, and she had been pretty much defenseless. It had looked way more interested in her bag... or the eggs, more probably. Maybe it just had been full.

At midday of the fifth day, she notices Turo come out of the trees and make his way toward the cave, not without stopping to catch his breath. Guy probably couldn't run to save his life. She is way too excited to wait for him to arrive and sprints towards the man.

« Turo! Your necklace! I've found the creature! It's so beautiful and strong and it can fly and- » he probably can't understand even half of what she is saying, but she doesn't care, she just grabs his hand with both of hers and pulls him along.

With how reserved he normally is, Sada is a refreshing ball of enthusiasm!

She's pretty much dragging him up towards the cave, and she can't help but laugh at his absolutely confounded expression, both eyebrows knitted while he is trying to puzzle out what she is saying based on the words he knows.

« Look here!» she grabs the notebook and shows him the drawing she's done, pointing to the big crest of feathers she's drawn on the head, then to one of those same feathers she has found in these past days. He gets it immediately, his eyes starting to shine while he examines the page.

Turo sits down, takes his own notebook out, and starts to copy her drawing.

She squeezes close to him to observe him work; like the first time, he is quick to get the basic shapes down, and starts drawing little lines and symbols she can't understand near it, pausing every now and then to check his work.

I'm surprised Turo isn't slowing down in distraction by this beautiful woman squeezed up against him. I think he already finds her attractive, but if he didn't before, stuff like this probably would help him make up his mind.

He points to one of the symbols she has drawn on the page.

« This... what is it?»

Oh, that was the one she had drawn to note that it seemed to like eggs. It was just a small circle, but with no context, no wonder that he had no idea what it meant.

... how could she explain it?

« Umm... "eggs". »

No reaction from him, because of course he has never heard the word before.

« Umm... wait.» she flips back to the drawing of the Fire Wing, and draws a little nest with three eggs in it. That should be self-explanatory... as long as he isn't so clueless that he's never seen eggs before.

« This creature... » she flips back to the drawing of the red beast.

« "Eats eggs".» she mimes putting something in her mouth and he seems to get it, nodding and writing down something on his page, more lines and symbols. She tilts her head at his notes, curious. It doesn't look like he is drawing anything in particular, at least nothing that she can recognize, they are more like... squiggly lines that mean something to him.

She is witnessing writing!

Weird. What if he forgets what one line means? How can he make sense of it?

She kind of wants to ask, but is not sure how. Also, she has something else to show him. Excited, she gets his new clothes out of her bigger travelling back and scoots back to his side.

« Your clothes! » she announces with a big smile. Turo raises his head from the notebook and his eye go wide. They are done mostly in Steady Glacier fur - which of course means that they are perfect against the cold, warm and cozy.

Reminds me a bit of Monster Hunter.

Light brown in color, there's three pieces. One garment to drape over the head, with a hood lined with thick purple fur - she's pretty proud of that little detail, to call back to his own clothes. A pair of long pants, and she even had some fur left for some boots. Not so different from what she is wearing, apart from material and color. He takes them slowly and stares at them in complete silence. It's actually making her a bit nervous: what if he does not like them?

Turo stands up, looking a bit lost. He takes off his mantle, then hesitates, before slowly putting the hood over his own clothes. She had expected him to take them off completely -she's still wondering about how he actually does that-... but he probably just doesn't feel comfortable without them. That's fine with her, as long as he isn't cold anymore.

When Turo finished putting on the rest of the clothes, though, she finds herself simply staring at him, surprised. Now that he's dressed exactly like any other man of her tribe, he suddenly looks completely different, much more... normal. He's still as pale as death, but the hair and beard look a lot less unnerving without the weird clothes making them stand out even more. He looks... good, she realizes with a little surprise.

... and then he slips the shiny mantle back on, and she finds herself laughing at how strange it looks. She kind of likes that about him, though.

Operation clothes complete!

Closing thoughts:
My goodness. What a chapter! None of it was bad and the majority of it was thoroughly enjoyable! You seem to know pretty much exactly how to maximize the value of your fics premise. I look forward to the next chapter!

 

[Tango]

Chapter 7: Daisy Bell Blues​

Alright, back for another review!

I have absolutely no idea what the chapter title references or what it is supposed to mean. My only clue is 'Blues' which makes me think this one will be sad. I'm guessing something is going to separate Turo from Sada in this chapter and that it will be sad. Let's find out!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

« Time anchor ID 9537 has returned from space-time coordinates 48°51′12″ N, 2°20′55″ E. Welcome back, Dr. Romero Turo. Hope you had a safe trip.» the by now familiar voice of Porygon 568 welcomed him back to his time as he stepped out of the time machine, the Pokémon briefly zipping around him for a quick scan. There it stopped for a second and clacked its beak, puffing up its virtual feathers.

« Analysis of body language, pupil dilation and breathing pattern indicate heightened emotional state. Is medical assistance required?» it asked, causing Turo to blink and actually look at the Pokémon, caught by surprise. First time it had said anything else outside of the ordinary procedure.

« What...? No, everything's fine. » he answered, before stopping by the door to look at the Porygon with a touch of amusement.

« Were you worried about me? Do you also ask the others how they are doing? »

Porygon 568 paused for a moment, then puffed up its feathers again with a little spark of electricity surrounding it, eyes flashing yellow.

« ... it is in my interest to ensure that users of the time-machine remain in peak physical and psychological condition. That is all.» it answered, then turned around and decompiled itself into code, disappearing inside the console of the time machine with a last beep that somehow managed to sound annoyed.

A Porygon with an attitude!

Now alone, Turo made his way towards the teleporters. It was almost dawn; he still had to use the night slots for his jumps, and that was starting to mess up his day and night cycle.

Thing is, Porygon 568 hadn't been wrong. His last visit with Sada had been... something. He hadn't expected her to offer to make clothes for him... and especially not to pull out a measurement tape (were they already used? Or had she literally come up with the idea herself?) and insist on taking his measurements right then and there.

Her approach had been very... hands-on, so to speak. He wasn't used to it; it wasn't exactly necessary to measure for clothes anymore, or even try them on before buying for that matter. They were either one-size-fits-all, automatically adapting to your body shape or, in the very rare occasion where you actually wanted something custom made, you just got a couple of pictures taken from different perspectives and the tailoring software would just automatically calculate everything.

Great little detail here!

Turo hadn't expected her to get so close to him, completely ignoring his personal space when she had gotten distracted by examining his suit from up close.

The way her eyes had started to gleam while she pondered the problem in front of her, so lost in her own little world of questions and hypotheses to not even notice what she was doing, it just...

She was just so bright. And that had... frustrated him terribly. Almost angered him.

It wasn't fair. There she was, one of who knows how many people with brilliant minds and the potential to change history... born in the completely wrong era.

Too early. Way too early.

It wasn't fair, he thought again while entering his apartment.

Sada had that spark in her, that drive to never stop asking questions, to want to understand the world around her, even when she barely had any tools at her disposal, even while lacking the words to articulate those questions.

It wasn't fair... how much the thought of her being both so close, yet so impossibly far away hurt him.

I love to see him thinking about her like this!

He almost angrily got out of his clothes and stepped into the shower, welcoming the cold water hitting him. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the shower glass, taking deep breaths.

What was he even trying to accomplish, here? Sure, he had his nice little project going. But that's exactly what it was: a project. A job. Something that had to produce results with a definite deadline. His deadline still wasn't set in stone - he had the little advantage of being the "new guy that still has to get used to the job", so they were a bit more lenient in expecting actual results from him. Honestly, just that one initial successful jump, even if accidental, would already look good on his CV and, worst case, would even pass as the only "actual" result of his research.

Once his project had ended, he would have to choose a new objective. Even if he decided to specialize in that time period, like some of his colleagues did - Ortega seemed to prefer contemporary history, only going to the last 500 years or so - ... there were literally centuries to explore. Entire continents in different time periods to examine. He couldn't just keep visiting that exact same spot in time.

So that meant that his visits to Sada had a hard time limit. A finite number.

And he had absolutely no idea what to do once that number would reach zero.

That is quite the problem. Especially with the feelings he soon will be unable to deny for her.

Well. Either you take her to the future with you (though I doubt that would be allowed), you stay in the past (which might work but you would be greatly dependent on her), or both of you go to a time period that neither of you are completely familiar with.

But you will have to do it soon. I don't trust Porygon. It seems like a rat that will tattle to his superiors the moment it suspects Turo going off the rails. 😒

Turo flinched and opened his eyes when he realized that the water had turned from cold to scalding in the meantime, getting quickly out of the shower.

« ... what am I even supposed to write in that stupid report right now? » he asked nobody in particular once he had gotten into bed, pinching the base of his nose.

Miraidon just growled and nuzzled his other hand, not sure how to comfort him. He patted the empty space by his side on the bed and the Pokemon jumped up on it, curling up in a semicircle all around him. The dragon's hide was smooth and hard, its metallic shine reflecting the first rays of sunshine that were coming in from the window. He darkened the window with a wave of his hand, then settled down against Miraidon after propping a pillow against the Pokemon. Not exactly the most comfortable surface to sleep against, but he had never minded it much.

Hand wave activated window darkening. Cool!

He could feel the low hum of electricity that coursed through the dragon change in intensity while it slowly drifted asleep. That sound had been a constant companion to him since his childhood; by now it was synonymous with... Warmth, safety and affection. Lulled by that barely audible droning sound, Turo slowly let himself fall asleep.

---

To his dismay, he got woken up after what seemed to him an instant later by an incoming call. After a couple of failed gestures he managed to flick a screen open in front of his face without standing up from his bed, picking up the call in voice only mode. He glanced at the corner of the screen to read the time. 7:34 AM. He had barely slept for two hours.

« What... ?»

« There's a problem with the time machine. All jumps are cancelled.»

Oh what the freaking CRAP!

That woke him up quick. Turo sat upright, the screen automatically moving to follow his head, Miraidon blinking awake right behind him.

« Has there been... an accident? » he swallowed, suddenly feeling anxious. Who's turn was it to use the time machine this morning...?

Vega...? No, she had gone yesterday, her next trip was scheduled for next Monday...

Everyone in his field of work knew the horror stories of what could happen if there were problems during a jump. The reports of the very first test jumps - those that had ended badly- were mandatory reading.

"Mismatch" was the cold, technical term for most problems that could happen during a jump.

Oh heck! If that is ANYTHING like the mismatch from Steins Gate, it means someone got mother-flipping JELLYFIED!

In theory, his own first jump had been a mismatch, but he had been lucky that it had only involved a slight offset on the time coordinate, all things considered.

People had been lost to space. Literal space, because the time machine had shot them at a point in time where the planet had been in a different position around the sun. Or inside the ground. Or right in the middle of a natural disaster.

Or they had simply... disappeared in time, in whatever direction. How far off had they ended up, either in the past or future? No idea. The time machine hadn't been able to print the number, leaving that part of the report eerily blank.

Both possibilities were terrifying just to think about.

After that, in the following decades, they had learned really fucking quick to write software that would calculate and check those coordinates, and then other software that would check that software, and implemented countermeasures, error handling, routine maintenance... but accidents could still happen. The possibility was never zero: people just didn't want to think about it.

He held his breath, expecting some horrifying news.

Yeah that is pretty horrifying. Getting lost in time is even worse than instant death since lost probably equates to eventual death anyway.

« Fortunately, no. Porygon 568 must have felt that something was wrong and cancelled the time jump at the very last moment. It's been acting up strangely ever since though. You are our expert in Artificial Pokémon Programming, so...»

Turo let out a sigh of relief; at least nobody had ended up hurt or worse. Still, those were bad news. Porygon 568 pretty much was the time machine; without him, executing a time jump would be too risky.

« I'm coming. Give me twenty minutes.» he answered.

Eighteen minutes after the call, the time necessary for a quick shower to wake him up completely, get dressed, run to the nearest teleporter and notably not eat anything, he entered the time machine room. He wasn't alone. One of the nurses from the nearby Uvanja academy had evidently been called to examine the... well, "Pokémon" part of Porygon 568, its physical body so to speak.

« What's wrong with him?» he asked, kneeling to get a better look at the Pokémon. For once, it wasn't floating at eye level with a human, but actually touching the ground, "wings" pressed close to it's body and eyes closed. Every couple of seconds it would spasm almost violently and shake its head, its eyes would snap open for a brief moment and, for lack of a better term, glitch out in a series of random symbols.

It was a pretty pitiful sight. He patted the Pokémon on the head a couple of times, trying to comfort it.

« Physically, nothing... he didn't get injured in any way.» the nurse seemed perplexed.

« But if you directly ask him what is wrong... Porygon 568, status report.»

« SEGMENTATION FAULT CANNOT ACCESS MEMORY AT ADDRESS 0x2fffff » it screeched suddenly. Both humans flinched at the Pokémon's sudden voice change.

... uh, maybe he could look into that too, there really was no reason for it to blast errors in that tone of voice.

Seriously, it just sounded needlessly creepy.

Huh. I wonder what's going on with Porygon? 🤔

« Whatever it is that caused this, it must be some error in his code.» the nurse added. Turo nodded, opening up a terminal by his side while he considered how to approach the problem.

« All right, I'll see what I can find... you keep monitoring his physical state. Porygon 568, activate debug mode, authorized by administration key 04860. » he spoke enunciating the necessary credentials. Someone messing with a Porygon's code, especially a Porygon that was handling something as delicate as a time machine, was, of course, bad, so he was one of the few people in the department to have the necessary keys to directly access the Pokémon's data.

« Access g-granted » it answered after a moment, shuddering. Even its voice was slightly distorted. Turo furrowed his eyebrows, thinking. What had happened?

« Show me the stack trace for the last hour...» he asked, and a list of executed commands and subroutines started streaming over his terminal.

He went from kneeling to sitting cross legged on the floor to hunched over the screen when he realized that this was probably going to take a while.

Nice way of describing how he goes about troubleshooting.

---

It took him ten days of almost non-stop work to isolate the issue with Porygon 568, and he still had no idea of what happened in the actual time machine. Best he could do at the moment was setting up some more error handling procedures so that, if something similar happens again, at least it won't directly affect Porygon 568 so much.

In the meantime, the entire department was pretty much anxiously breathing down on his neck while twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the green light to resume their respective projects, and it is pissing him off quite a bit -

I think you tense-slipped here. Should it 'projects, and it was'

it's not like he was keeping everything on hold for fun, he also wanted to resume his time jumps as soon as possible.

« So how long will it take you to fix this?» Ortega asked after poking his head in Turo's office for the third time that morning, coffee in hand.

« Not my words, by the way. The director's. » the other man added after a moment when Turo glared at him, offering him the mug of coffee as a gesture of peace. Turo, grateful, took a sip before realizing that it was boiling hot and hurriedly putting it down, huffing.

« Argh... I'm not "fixing" anything, I'm just making sure that at least Porygon doesn't literally... crash again. » he said, as soon as his mouth stopped burning.

Ortega sat down in front of him, watching Turo type away at the screen in midair, more serious than usual.

« So you don't know what happened in the time machine?»

Turo shook his head, not turning away from the console that was floating in front of his face.

« Could have been anything. The settings weren't any different from any other jump we've done, so it shouldn't be anything on our part. Porygon 568 says that he sensed something right before deciding to cancel the jump. »

« "Something"? Didn't he have anything more specific? »

Turo shook his head again.

« But... Porygon's pretty much an AI. They don't do vague, and he still can't tell what happened?» Ortega added. Only then did Turo stop and flick the screen in front of his face to the side to look at his colleague.

« No... and that's what worries me. We like to think that we know so much about time travel, that everything is perfectly safe, that we can treat it the same as stepping in any teleporter to go shopping, or a trip to the Moon... then stuff like this happens and we realize that we still don't know shit about how it actually works. It frustrates me.» he answered after a moment, reclining back in his chair and taking another cautious sip of coffee.

Makes sense. For them, this is the frontier of science.

Ortega thinks for a couple of long seconds, then sighs.

« If you are sure that there was no error on our side, then there is nothing else we can do. There will never be a completely fool-proof system-»

« I can sure try-» Turo mumbled under his breath.

« - and you would fail miserably. You said that we can't treat it the same as a teleporter or the Moon... but even those are not perfect. A teleporter could disintegrate you at the atomic level. You could die in space. Or you could wake up one morning, slip in the shower and break your neck. What's the difference? » he shrugs, and Turo just quietly stares at the man for a couple of long seconds.

Ortega's always had this... flippant, devil-may-care attitude toward his job - or life in general, it looked like. His projects were always short and to the point. Never visiting the same point in time more than a couple of times, if he could help it. From what he had read of his reports, never interacted much with the natives of the time period he visited.

He slipped in, perfectly camouflaged in his "historically accurate clothes", witnessed history, and came back. He couldn't imagine doing the same thing.

Treating it like just... just a normal job.

Well, Ortega has obviously never fell in love with a native before.

« I... I don't understand you sometimes. You and the others in the department. Are you really not scared of a mismatch...?» he asked, exasperated. They looked more worried about their projects running late than... you know, not getting torn to pieces or worse in the time machine because of a stupid error in the code.

Was it because he was still relatively new, at least in the role of "active" time traveller...?

« Of course I'm scared... but I've made peace with the fact that if it happens, I mean... there's probably still worse ways to go. And you have to admit that "Got shot at the end of time and witnessed the heat death of the universe" would sound awesome as an epitaph.» Ortega laughed.

... ok, yeah, he had to admit that it sounded kind of cool.

Maybe. Or maybe you get there after the heat death... Presumably there is an infinite span of time after that point. Therefore the most likely place you go in a time error will be after the heat death of the universe or before it was even crated to begin with. In fact, given the infinite span of time, I would say there is far greater than a 99% chance of that happening. Those people who got lost? They all wound up there, floating in a cold lifeless space. Dead before they even realized what happened. Granted, that is probably a bit more dark than you were going for, but that doesn't stop it from being hauntingly captivating... 💀

----

In the end, it took almost a month for things to go back to normal: they had slowly started doing time jumps again, nervously monitoring the first couple of runs. They had also reduced the number of times the time machine could be booted up each day: for all they knew, maybe it was under too much stress.

Thank goodness Turo can still travel to the point that he needs to in order to meet up with Sada again!

That meant that he had inevitably also built up some more time discrepancy with Sada; he had promised to come back to that cliff, like... five days later...?

Was it five or six?

Turo had to replay the last conversation he had recorded just to be sure; he mentally thanked the fact that he had spoken the words out loud as a pure coincidence. Had he simply written it down in her notebook like he had done that night under the stars, he would have been screwed and would have had to guess.

Good point.

He steps into the time machine room, where the usual Porygon 568 and the nurse for the medical check-ups are waiting for him.

Tense slips.

He exchanged a brief nod with the artificial Pokémon, who was busy calculating the coordinates.

« Update coordinates for the jump?» it asked while the nurse is slipping the needle into his shoulder. Turo barely noticed it anymore, and checked that the time-anchor is strapped securely to his wrist, before clicking a couple of buttons on the device.

« Yes, set these spacial coordinates as the new landing zone for this time, just move it some... 200 meters south, and add... let's do 4 days and 12 hours to the last time coordinate.» he answered after thinking for a moment. As much as he wanted to, appearing exactly by the cliff would be too risky.

He steps into the time machine with a newfound nervousness and keeps an eye on Porygon 568 while it boots up, almost expecting it to start suddenly glitching out, time and space distorting all around him before sending him who knows where.

Thankfully, nothing feels out of the ordinary and he takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, and a moment later opens them up again in the distant past. He is not quite at the top of the hill they had climbed last time, still hidden by the trees - good, that's exactly what he had wanted.

He had barely started to make his way uphill when he hears Sada's voice call out to him.

I bet Turo inwardly jumped for joy hearing her voice again! 🥰

Turo looked up just to see her pretty much sprint towards him at full force.

He can't help a little smile in seeing her; he had missed her in that entire month spent mostly staring at computer code and error messages, sometimes finding himself distracted by wondering about what she was doing in that moment... before brutally reminding himself of the fact that the answer was nothing, because she's dead in the present, she has been dead for centuries you idiot-

With time travel, dead is relative.

But she is alive here, and he just wants to forget about everything for a couple of hours and enjoy the time he can spend with her.

His smile turned to confusion when she launched in some excited explanation and he realized that he's one month out of practice with her language, and oh arceus those are a lot of words, coming really fast-

lol

He managed to catch that it's something about the necklace, but after that, he is completely lost and just lets himself get pulled along. His confusion must show pretty clearly on his face because Sada laughs at him, tugging at his hand. She's so obviously excited about something that it just warms his heart.

Impossible not to be carried along by her excitement.

When Sada shows him the notebook and he gets what she was talking about, he can't help but get a bit excited himself. The DNA analysis had come back during that month, and it had showed the closest still living relative of the mysterious Pokémon as... Miraidon, strangely enough. So he had expected something similar to a Cyclizar, but this drawing... this looked like something else entirely, and not just because of the feathers.

An ancestor of Miraidon from the distant past that no one had ever heard about; this was huge.

He had to take some notes about it.

He started to copy her drawing, trying to reproduce the sketch as closely as possible, and added some notes all around, stuff he wants to check better later. Four limbs, not dissimilar to Miraidon, but with feathers covering his body... what functions did those feathers have? They were big, but didn't look strong enough to make him fly... then again, Cyclizar couldn't fly too... maybe it was something that came only after the transition into Miraidon...?

Sada had also taken some notes with her little pictograph drawings, and he puzzled over them for a couple of seconds. Without knowing what Sada's intention behind each pictograph was, it was pretty much impossible for him to guess at their meaning. There was the drawing of a flame... which could mean anything from the color of the scales to the fact that it could actually breath fire for all that he knew. That was the problem with ideographic scripts; really only the author knew what he or she meant to say with each symbol.

He gives up trying to decipher them and asks about one of them.

Tense slip. Uh... ok there are too many tense slips for me to try to point them out, so I'm just going to ignore them going forward. I honestly don't care about them that much anyway and they aren't that hard to ignore...

She says something incomprehensible that could be anything, then shows him something on the page about the Talonflame.

Oh right, the Talonflame-- he had forgotten all about that.

... he really needed to start jotting down a lot more stuff about what happened during his jumps, especially little things like these that weren't important enough to end up in the official reports.

Sada drew a little nest with... oh, of course. Eggs...?

So the Proto-Miraidon (he needs to find a better name) ate... eggs?

That's a strange diet. Miraidon has never showed much interest in those... a lot must have changed. He writes it down, then a sudden thought hits him: wait... how would she even know this? She must have seen it from quite close... but like he had personally experienced, Pokémon were absolutely vicious in this time.

... just what exactly had she been doing in these five days?

Something dangerous, most probably.

Turo is so focused on the two notebooks that he doesn't really notice Sada getting something else out of her bag until she literally shoved it in front of him with an enormous smile on her face.

His...?

Oh wait. The clothes. Of course.

He had expected a cape with a hood to be fair, similar to what she had worn in the rain, but she had really... sewed him an entire set of clothes, it looked like.

For him.

Awwwww... so adorable. 🥰

... it makes him feel so guilty - all that work, and actually he doesn't even need them - that he initially just stared at them in stunned silence, before slowly taking them and standing up.

He should... put them on, at the very least. Turo took off his lab coat and hesitated for some long moments. He... really does not want to take off his bodysuit, so he compromises by slipping the primitive jacket, trousers and finally the boots right over it.

They fit him perfectly... and they are strangely heavy, at least for someone like him who's used to wearing form-fitting, ultra light fabric that was designed to make moving as easy as possible. He isn't used to stuff... pushing down on him like that. The thick Mamoswine fur (he is almost sure it is Mamoswine fur, by the color and just how long it was) also added a lot of volume, another thing he isn't really familiar with. It is... weird, to move his arm or his leg and feel so much stuff all around it. And of course, they are incredibly warm, because that had been the whole point of them after all.

Turo quietly stroked the fur of one of the sleeves.

... this must have taken so much work.

So many precious resources; those Mamoswine pelts... it wasn't like in his time, where all fabric was synthetic and manufactured. Someone had risked their life to hunt these- maybe even Sada herself.

And it was going to get completely wasted on him, and he feels terrible for it. But... she had done it because she wanted to, it's not like he had forced her to do it - quite the contrary, actually-, so...

Turo put the lab coat back on, automatically - he feels almost naked without it - and Sada laughing again snaps him out of his thoughts. He looks down at himself, and realizes why, blushing slightly.

He looks... yeah, completely ridiculous.

Still, her laugh gave him an idea. A silly, little, stupid thing, but now that he's thought of it, he just had to do it. He took the lab coat off again, slinked close to Sada while she was still cackling -showing just the slightest hint of those little fangs -, and wrapped it over her shoulders like a cape. It caught her by surprise, one hand going to her shoulder to touch the smooth white fabric, eyes widening in confusion and half a "what...?" on her lips.

« There. Now we can both look stupid.» he smirked.

Perfect!

Even if she didn't understand his words, she definitely understood his tone; smiling she put it on properly, or at least tried to. It was just too big for her, reaching down almost to her ankles and with her hands disappearing inside the too long sleeves.

It should look ridiculous - and it does, a bit, they've pretty much swapped clothes right now -, but then Sada laughed again and spinned around, apparently just to watch the lab coat flap around her, which she seemed to find pretty amusing. The pure, unbrindled joy in her voice just made his chest hurt.

... he could listen to that laugh for hours and never get tired of it.

Yeah, he is totally in love with her now whether he knows it or not!

He wanted to listen to it for hours, he realized after a second with a pained smile.

Sada had started to play around with the lab coat buttons, fascinated by the material.

« This rock... from your people?» she asked.

« Yes. » He just said.

He knew that she seemed to hate his vague answers - yep, there it was, that little half sad, half annoyed pout -, but he couldn't exactly tell her that it was made from nano-carbon when she didn't even knew about metals yet.

One, it wouldn't mean anything to her, two, it would lead to more questions, so it was better to just let her think that it was some strange rock only found where he was from, far, far away... which was pretty much the truth, in very, very broad terms.

The girl hesitated; she wants to ask him something, and he already had a good idea of what it could be about. It's not the first time she tries to ask him about "his people", and he knows that he is pushing his luck every time he refuses to answer, but he has no other choice. He just shook his head silently before she could even ask him anything and her face fell a bit.

... and now he feels even worse; she has spent who knows how much time sewing those clothes for him and he can't even give her anything in return. At least, not anything... that would leave some trace in the past.

But... there is one thing he can give her. Turo slowly sat back down and picked up his notebook, gesturing for her to sit down near him. Sada complied after a moment, and as expected, started to glance curiously at what he was doing. Turo just smiled and flipped to a new page, then started writing a couple of letters, putting in the effort of making them bigger and more legible instead of his usual hurried handwriting.

Most people in his time had horrible handwriting; you really only wrote stuff manually only when you were actually learning how to write in school, and in some rare jobs like his where you couldn't always summon a screen to type on.

He left quite some space blank on the page, then offered Sada the notebook and pen and pointed to the first symbol, tracing the line on the page with one finger.

« This is an "S".»

Turo saw the confusion in her eyes and after a moment of hesitation gently took her hand. He wrapped his fingers around hers, taking a couple of seconds to help her rearrange them so the pen would sit more comfortably in her hand, in a better position to write. It took him a couple more moments to get it right - he was left-handed, she wasn't-, but he managed to help her copy the first letter of what he had written a couple of times.

Then he pointed to the second letter with his right hand.

« "A".»

Turo watched her expression more than the page as they continued; she was smart, he had no doubt she would quickly catch on to what they were doing, what the strange lines he was having her trace represented. At first, she just looked even more confused, her hand almost hanging limp while he guided her. Then it happens: following him her eyes wandered over the last letter he had written, a second "A" right after the "D", and her entire face just lit up while her eyes darted between the two "A", connecting the dots and recognizing that simple, elementary but incredibly important idea that led to one of humanity's greatest invention.

Same symbol equals same sound.

A writing system that didn't represent general ideas but sounds, where everything that you could ever think of was represented with the same set of symbols.

« This is... this is...» she almost stabs him with the pen with how excited she is, how strongly she is clutching his hand, but Turo couldn't care less.

That spark of wonder in her eyes is the purest thing he has ever seen. It just pains him so much, to think of her in this era. How many great things she is going to miss, simply because she had been born at the wrong moment. He just... he just wants to show her everything, to laugh with her, to discover stuff and get excited about them together, to tell her about his dream of seeing the distant future, so far off for the both of them, and --

But he can't. So this will have to do.

« Yes... ? » he encouraged her, slowly.

« My "name"! It's me» she breaths out, still exhilarated by her realization.

Turo simply smiled, while she wriggled her hand out from his grip to start writing her name again and again, alone this time. Not even a second later, her head snapped up again, looking at him.

« Turo! What is "T"? Show me!» she pretty much pushed the notebook on his lap again, and he is more than happy to spend the next couple of hours quietly showing her how to write the rest of the alphabet.

That was so cute watching him teach her to write!

----

« Time anchor ID 9537 has returned from space-time coordinates 48°51′12″ N, 2°20′55″ E. Welcome ba-» Porygon 568 suddendly got quiet as soon as Turo stepped out of the time machine. The man just sighed, knowing exactly what had gotten the Pokémon to freeze. He took off his lab coat - he had gotten it back from Sada before coming back to his time -, and waited for the Pokémon to continue.

«... many time displaced objects detected.» it said after a moment. If only because he had literally spent a month debugging it and talking with the Pokémon to test every new procedure he had implemented, Turo was almost sure that there was a trace of surprise in it's voice now. It zipped all around him, scanning the new clothes that Sada had made, before stopping to hover at eye level with him.

« Objects are not considered a safety or sanitary hazard. Permission granted to bring them outside of time machine room. Welcome back, Dr. Romero Turo. Hope you had a safe trip. » it beeped. He gave the Pokémon a couple of affectionate pats on the head while heading for the door; it was admittedly a bit weird, knowing that it now had parts of code that he himself had written in it. Not enough to warrant releasing a new Upgrade and version number, it was more like a little patch, but still... weird.

Turo hesitated on the doorway. Unlike pretty much all his previous time jumps, it was only the early afternoon this time.

Which meant the TTLD would be full of people.

Which meant...

« Oh. my. Arceus.»

He sighed again when he caught sight of Vega coming out of the sanity room - and why did it sound like there was ukulele music coming out of it today? -, the redhead staring slack-jawed at his clothes.

... he should have changed before jumping back, even at the risk of getting his face bitten off by that Proto- Miraidon that was lurking around or whatever while he was busy stripping down.

It would have almost been better than this.

« Guys... guys you have to see this - where's Ortega? » she quickly leaned back in the break room wildly gesticulating to everyone else inside, before approaching him to better examine his clothes, quickly followed by other people poking their heads out from the sanity room or their respective offices at the commotion.

« Oh my Arceus... how did you even get these? » she touched one of the pelts on his shoulder.

« The... native girl I've met... made them for me. She thought I was cold.» he mumbled after a moment, prompting a little "aww" from the woman.

Yyyyyep. This is gonna be embarrassing for him!

« ... wow. I mean. This is real fur.» she added after a moment, caught between amusement and just a touch of horrified awe.

« ... I know.»

« Real Pokémon died to make this.»

« ... I know.»

There's a moment of silence, Vega evidently struggling to decide if she should express her next thought out loud. Turo started to make his way towards the elevators, hoping to catch one before she could. He didn't make it in time.

« ... so how many Rattata do you think it took to make that?» she added pointing at the purple fur lining his hood, snickering.

« I don't want to think about it.» he straight up punched the button to call the elevator, only to be met with a ping and the doors already opening up... to the figure of Ortega, who took a single look at him and started howling with laughter.

They are never going to let him live this down, are they?

« Look at Ötzi the Iceman over here!»

« That was Neolithic, you're off by almost 10'000 years.» he grumbled, stepping inside the elevator.

It takes a moment for Ortega to stop laughing and catch his breath.

« Oh man... you know that now you will have to wear them here before every jump, right? Which means...» he asked, refusing to step out of the elevator.

Turo paused for a second. He... hadn't thought about that, actually.

"Which means..?"

Ortega just patted his shoulder a couple of times.

« ... eh, good luck. » he said, before finally stepping outside and leaving him free to leave.

"Good luck for what?"

He doesn't quite understand what his senior meant with those words, until he had to cross the University Hall at night a couple of days after that exchange with his new "historically accurate clothes" on, and the damn Steelcino literally all jump at him en masse, screeching while trying to "clean him up".

He can start considering himself a real time-traveller by how much he is starting to hate the stupid critters.

Curious what Ortega meant.

Closing thoughts:
Another solid chapter. Interesting how each Turo chapter provides more insight into the time of the future. I loved reading about how he missed Sada and looked forward to spending more time with her. The clothes swapping and him teaching her to write was adorable.

 

[Goolix]

I need you to know that I workshopped a story about a woman living on a space station from present day + 250 years and a naval officer man from present day - 250 years being suddenly time-travel-thrown to the present day and forced to live together in present day Los Angeles (and falling in love) so I’m so down for this premise. Of course, the distance between Sada and Turo is… much bigger than that but we'll see if love can cross any boundaries.

There's a lot to like in these first three chapters! Sada and Turo are understandably very confused about each other's world. It's not just culture shock; they're not really fundamentally able to grasp how the other lives. Turo has advantage in that he can at least read about the Upper Paleolithic period, but he has no instinct or lived experience of it. And poor Sada is experiencing future materials engineering that defy any textile knowledge of their time. Like, even in 1670, the idea of a shirt with no hem or cut is considered an impossible task:

For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme [hem], quoth he - via Wikipedia

While humans are and always have been curious, Sada comes across as exceptionally curious. In first contact narratives and ethnographies I've read, I don't think I've seen cases of the non-industrialized people just reaching out to the stranger. It's not to say they are not interested in the foreign technology - they usually are! But she seems very forthcoming and motivated to understand. I was touched when she went to her mom to ask for more information on what people Turo must belong to and her mom, obviously answering to the best of her ability, suggests it must be something from the south. Not a bad guess for what they know! Because Turo's behavior makes no sense to her. Why is he wearing such attention-grabbing clothes? How is he so clean? Does not he not care about getting attacked by monsters?

Turo, in turn, isn't condescending, but he's open to trying to understand her. He does his best but he has his own cultural conditioning that says "person thumping with spear is violent" despite Sada clearly having saved him.

Many, many years later, Turo would look back at this scene and recognize it as the exact moment he first fell in love with her.

AAAAAAA that's too adorable

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I don't know anything about the S/V plot since I'm just kind of winging it through the world, but I'm glad that we don't need to know what happens to enjoy. I'm gonna be honest, I had no clue who these people were going in and I was wondering what I had missed.

 

[Tango]

If this chapter's title sounds weird, it's because it was inspired by the song from the soundtrack of the movie "Your Name". It also means "Past-past-past life" so... it kinda fit I guess.

Chapter 8: Zenzenzense​

I'm finally back!

I have no idea what it references, but I appreciate the commentary. In that case, I shall refrain from my usual analysis of the chapter title.

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Sada keeps drawing - or "writing", as Turo had called it - the symbols that Turo had taught her, still quite in disbelief at how they worked even hours after the fact, when he had finished showing her the last symbol. It was just... Such a brilliant and simple idea, she still wasn't sure why the thought had never occurred to her before.

She didn't have to come up with a drawing for everything she wanted to take notes off anymore!

Off should be 'of'.

She could just think about it and she now had a way to represent every single thing that came to her mind. And the best thing was, someone else that knew the symbols could understand it without having to ask her about what it meant!

She had to teach everyone at the settlement! Nerjik would love it, and the children... even if she didn't have enough paper for everyone, they could use charcoal and practice on rocks, or even just on the ground with sticks... anything would work.

It opened up so many possibilities!

With all these things she is learning, her responsibilities may shift significantly towards teaching!

« Did you... make all these?» she asked Turo after he had finished teaching her.

You still had to remember what each symbol sounded like, but it was still much easier as a system than the one she had been using. You just needed a bit of practice. Now she was just doodling - "writing" - random words in all the pages she had already taken notes in, marking all of her little symbols with the actual words they represented, making them much more accurate. It did have the disadvantage of taking up more space though... maybe she could use a mix of the two methods of taking notes? Drawings for quick immediate notes - on her map, especially- words for anything else...?

... she would have to think about it.

Always a pleasure to see the ways she considers the possibilities of things.

« ... no. My parents "showed" me.» Turo answered after a moment with a little smile, and Sada blushed slightly. Um... no wonder he had picked up that word, she must have repeated it quite a lot of times in her excitement in that couple of hours.

Cute.

He was quite fast at learning new words from her, she had noticed. If she used a single word that he had never heard but the rest of the sentence made sense, he would often pick it up just from context. Same usually went with her regarding his language, and... oh! Of course! Now she could just write down what some words in his language meant if she was afraid of forgetting it!

This was incredible.

Welcome to advanced communication!

Like right now, when one word he had said had stuck out to her.

« "Parents"...?» she asked, flipping to an empty page and carefully trying to write down each symbol that made up the word.

« Oh, um...» Turo thought for a moment « "Parents" are... the people that.... make you? » he explains after some hesitation.

She stares at him. She had understood him, probably, there weren't many other things she could think of when talking about "making" a person, but he must have thought that she didn't, because he starts to think of another way to explain it.

And fails spectacularly at it, getting more and more embarassed. He points at himself, then at her.

It's hilarious how he didn't just draw stick figures and then a little stick figure in between them and pointed to it saying child and pointing to the others and saying parents! Instead he turns it into this massively awkward thing!

« It's... ah... you know... when a "man" and a "woman"...» now he's raising both hands, and starts... gesticulating wildly, vaguely miming two persons... well, it's either that or they are violently murdering each other and she had actually misunderstood what "parents" is supposed to mean. She has her doubts about that though.

« ... make a...»

Sada just keeps staring at him, trying to suppress a grin from spreading on her face.

It's... incredible how weird Turo could get sometimes. In a good way. For every basic thing he had never seen or couldn't do, it seemed like he knew ten more that she could have never dreamed of... but at the same time, he missed others.

Yeah, Turo is bound to leave an impression so unique that she would never meet another like him even if she traveled her entire world and met every one in it!

It was almost like his mind was so busy racing to the thousand of things he did know that he completely failed to see what was right under his eyes sometimes. Like right now, where the solution to his problem was so incredibly simple.

Sada giggled and started drawing again on the empty page. Two stick figures, with a smaller figure between them. She points to the bigger stick figures, then to the word she had written at the top of the page.

Turo stops his embarassed sputtering and just stares quietly at the page for a long moment.

Ahh so it was a plot point!

«... yes. » he nods in a small voice, eyes kind of unfocused in a wide, disbelieving look. Probably wondering how he hadn't thought of just doing that; looks like even with writing the drawings are still going to be useful for a while after all. In any case, if his parents had taught him to "write"... was it something that was passed down from father to child? Part of his role as a sciaman... or a "scien-tist", as he had called himself.

« Are your parents scien-tist ? » she asks, and he turns slightly toward her, raising a single eyebrow with a confused frown.

« No...? » he seems puzzled, like he is trying to figure out how she got to that conclusion. Well, now she is confused too. This would be so much easier if only he was a bit more willing to talk about his people in general, but... everytime she tries to mention them or even steer the conversation in that direction, he clamps up completely. Or gives her single word answers that don't really tell her much. Had it been anyone else, she would have been suspicious of him by now, but Turo didn't seem interested in approaching the settlement in any way. Chalo's theory that he was using her to learn their language also didn't look that possible to her: she was doing the same with his, after all.

Yes, there are quite a bit of mysteries remaining for Sada to learn about Turo. It's so enjoyable getting to see how each one unfolds!

---

When Turo stands up to get away as usual, it takes her a second to realize that she is still wearing his cape and she hurries to take it off and give it back to him. It had been fun to wear, so light that she hadn't even noticed it, and the half bags sewn on the front on both sides were pretty useful. She could easily do the same with some of her clothes...

I love how this fic forces you to look at every normal thing in a way that is forced to recognize their benefits vs them not existing. It doesn't feel like many fics out there do that. Take pockets for example. The concept of pockets is part of the enjoyment?! Mind blown!

Turo rips a page out of his notebook, and instead of the usual symbols for day and night that they have been using until now, writes down a couple of words to accompany them.

She takes the piece of paper and reads them aloud: the meaning is obvious even with just the sun and moon drawings, but she is determined to show him that she's going to memorize these symbols perfectly.

« Fo- f-o-ur d-da-y-s... h-e-r-e.» she looks at him for confirmation after she is done, and he gives her a sharp nod.

Four days, though... that is no good. She has already been away from her settlement for more than five days. It wasn't uncommon for people to spend days away from the settlement - especially if they were out hunting, that took time - so no one would worry for a couple of days of absence, but... she really needed to get back before they started to wonder if she had been eaten by something after all. Besides, she kind of wanted to go back and tell everyone what she had learned. And about that red creature.

So she shakes her head and scribbles over the words Turo has written, crossing them out, then adds some more sun and moon symbols.

« Ten days... and...» she hesitates a moment, uncertain. If she could slowly get him to agree to meet her in a place that was... more convenient for her, maybe...?

Where to start, though? They had a couple of common meeting points that she could use by now: the river where they had first met, the little camp she had set up in the woods, this one up the cliff... maybe she could point out a landmark to use as their meeting point.

« ... here? » she takes out her map and points to a place just east to the river where they had first met.

« There are a lot of big rocks here, really tall... and I can start a fire as a signal.» she offers. The smoke would be visible from miles away even if he couldn't find the exact spot she meant. Turo doesn't look particularly convinced about her idea, but he nods slowly after a moment.

Now she is able to negotiate when he comes back!

« Ten days. » he repeats, before turning around to start making his way towards the forest. She watches him slowly get away until he disappears under the cover of the trees - she blinks and suddenly gets up, not sure of what she had seen.

Had there been... a flash of light right there at that moment?

Hmm that might spark her curiosity for later... I wonder if she plans to follow him or learn more next time? If she had a buddy trail him she could learn more.

---

« Come oooooon Fluffyhead, moooove--» Chalo tried to coax the Spark Tail into following her, but for once the creature was being stubborn, preferring to chew calmly on some grass while refusing to budge an inch. Chalo had a rope made of leather in her hand, which was tied to a collar they had put around the creature's neck. Not that it would do much to keep it tied up: if it really wanted to escape, it could just burn the rope with the sparks generated by it's wool.

Yeah, herding Pokemon is a bit harder than animals. ..

« Pleaaaase, just show Sada what you showed me yesterday... » Chalo sighed and sat back down near the fire that was burning at the center of the camp, the beads in her dark hair clinking.

Sada had gone back to the settlement right after Turo had left, and had immediately taken it upon herself to teach the writing symbols to everyone. Her mother had listened politely at first, but hadn't looked that interested in actually learning them.

« I'm too old to move around much anymore, it's not like I will ever need to send a message to someone. Whatever I want to say, I can just say to anyone here. » had been her reasoning.

« But... you could write down anything you wanted. And people could read your words... days, moons and seasons later, learning from them. You could write everything you know about sewing!» Sada had protested, but her mother had just shook her head.

« That's not something that you can teach just with words and symbols. Same with hunting. You can tell someone the best spot to strike a Steady Glacier with a spear, but it won't stop someone from dying if he has never practiced doing it. »

That... was true, there were things that you simply couldn't teach, but she had still been a little disappointed in her reaction.

An interesting acknowledgement of the limitations of what writing can accomplish.

Luckily, other people had looked more interested. The kids - four in total in the whole settlement at the moment, the only ones that had survived until they learned to walk upright and talk - had been begging her to show her how to write all their names. Narjik, the old shaman, had been incredibly eager to learn just like she had tought. That wasn't surprising, the man had gathered an incredibly vast knowledge of all the local herbs and their various effects in his life, and he knew all of their old stories and legends. He had been looking for a successor, someone to teach everything he knew before he passed on into the next life; this way, his knowledge could be left behind and taught to someone - many people - even after he was gone. He seemed to find comfort in the idea.

That is one incredible thing about writing. It can outlive you.

Sada herself had learned a lot from him, but she could never take his place as the next shaman... even if Turo seemed to think the opposite.

Oh wow, maybe Sada will take his place as Shaman? She is way more qualified than she realizes.

She was currently tracing some of the symbols on a flat rock near the fire, using a stick of wood that had been left to harden in the ashes the night before and some ash. When she had covered the whole thing in symbols, she would wipe the ash from the rock to start again. Right beside her, to her left, Narjik was observing intently and slowly writing down every symbol she explained. He wore clothes not unlike those of everyone else, with different layers of furs to protect agains

Against

the cold, but the markings painted all over his face, neck and arms in black tint, even with the latter not being visible at the moment, showed his status to everyone else in the group. His hair that was turning almost completely grey was styled in an elaborate long braid that went way past his broad shoulders.

Because the past is so different from the present or future in the mon world or our own, it's always neat to see how you describe things. It's about more than just clothes/physical appearance, it's about a whole culture and time.

Chalo, on the other hand, looked much more interested in talking about the guy himself that

than

whatever he had taught her.

Both Turo and his ideas are revolutionary. I can't blame them for pure interest in one, the other, or both.

« Sooo... You've spent quite some time with this Terg guy now.» she chuckled, giving up on getting Fluffyhead to listen to her and picking up a stick of her own to copy her.

« Not... really. He always leaves as soon as it gets dark. Comes and goes every couple of days. » Sada doesn't even bother correcting her on the name anymore - mostly because she is pretty sure she is doing it on purpose at this point.

Chalo is the original troll.

« Wait, what? » Chalo said turning to look at her, surprised. « I thought you were spending night and day with this guy by no- Fluffyhead nooo » she wailed when the fluffy creature decided to approach her after all and flop down right over the rock she was writing on, ash sticking all over it's puffy wool.

Fluffyhead is great!

It looked at the humans, sniffed the ground and let out a "Mareeeep". Chalo started to absentmindedly pet it, trying to get the ash off.

« I was also under the impression that you were visiting his... camp, or group. » Narjik spoke up, eyes fixed on the "j" he had scribbled with ash. There wasn't enough space on the rock to write his name completely, so he wiped it and started again, smaller this time.

« No, I... I don't know where he lives.»

« Just follow him?» Chalo proposed, before there was a zap and she let out a little yelp, shaking her hand and glaring at the creature.

« Don't burn me, I'm trying to clean you up!»

« ...eep » it lowered it's head and bumped it's nose into her hand, nuzzling it.

I love Fluffyhead's antics.

« I don't think he did it on purpose.» Sada offered petting the creature, trying to steer the conversation away from Turo. Unfortunately, the shaman sitting by her other side hadn't been distracted as much as the other girl had.

« You don't want to follow him.» he stated, calmly. It wasn't a question, and Sada nodded reluctantly after a long moment.

« I know he is hiding something, something he absolutely doesn't want me to see, and of course I want to know what it is... but I'm afraid that if I follow him and he realizes it, he will... just run off elsewhere and never show up here again.»

She thought back to the flash of light between the trees that she had only been able to see because she was looking down on the forest from the top of the hill. It had been over in an instant. If she had blinked at the wrong moment, she would have missed it. It was just a nagging suspicion, but she was pretty sure that Turo had caused it, somehow. The flash of light, and his first strange disappearance that had left no footprints anywhere on the ground, or the way his boots and clothes seemed able to just suddenly... stop making any sound everytime he walked away from her, after a while. Maybe it wasn't exactly that - it would be weird considering how much noise they seemed to make at any other time -, and they didn't make any sound because he literally disappeared.

There were creatures that could... "jump" between the air, disappear from one spot and reappear in another, she had seen them a couple of times. Was Turo... able to do the same? Then why didn't he do it when he had been attacked by that Brutal Fang?

It made no sense.

Anyway, that wasn't important right now.

« And I... don't want that. » the confession came out at a whisper, almost covered by the crackle of the fire. Sada had seen him just a couple of times, but... there was just so much she wanted to talk about and discover and explore with him, the more she learned his language and he learned hers.

And... she wasn't sure how to explain it, but something about Turo struck her as... so lonely. Or... pained. Maybe it was just because he had told her that he had come here alone.

She's got a lot of empathy for him. 🥰

There were moments where she had caught him deep in thought, eyebrows deeply furrowed and one hand half stroking his chin, and then suddenly when she said something or called out to him that carefully constructed expression would slip away for a moment, revealing a sad half-smile that he would immediately try to hide again.

Every time she watched him turn around and walk away, she was a bit afraid that he would never come back again, that he had found another place to stay at. Or that he had decided to go back to his tribe after all. Wherever it was.

Ooo! Yeah that would certainly build some anxiousness!

And so every time she saw that fluttering white mantle appear through the trees, her heart had started to skip a beat. It was always a bit of a surprise, since they never decided on the time of the day to meet at.

« Oooh, so that's what this is all about after all.» Chalo grinned with a knowing smile while she finished cleaning up Fluffyhead's pelt.

« You've never actually described him, apart from "pale and weird looking". What is he like? ... phisically, I mean. » she asked while Narjik went back to focusing on his symbols, not interested.

Sada blushed slightly; no, that's not what it was about at all, she was just curious about him... or was she?

« He is... quite tall. Dark brown hair and eyes...» she started to answer. Her mind though was elsewhere.

She thought back to that moment when she had been inches away from his face, or when he had guided her hand with his, pressing slightly into her side to inch just a bit closer; how he would blush in that adorably awkward way when he was caught by surprise, before trying to compose himself. How he stumbled and tripped over himself while walking with her, but was a bit too prideful and stubborn to just ask her to wait to catch his breath.

Or how he looked proud when she understood a new word that he had just used, or explained something in her notes to him.

Sada is falling for him too. I think it took a bit longer for her than it did for him, but they've had some great experiences the whole time that both have immensely enjoyed.

« ... and scrawny.» she added after a moment, causing Chalo to frown a moment. She was petting Fluffyhead again, apparently not minding the possibility of getting hit by another spark. (Then again, he was so fluffy and soft that she could understand her perfectly)

« So not my type then. Then again, I'm still convinced that he is a creature in disguise- AH!» the girl screamed, pointing to the Spark Tail, whose tail was... doing as it's namesake implied and glowing slightly. After a moment, Fluffyhead's whole body glowed yellow and it released a great arc of pure yellow-white light that hit the ground a dozen meters ahead, charring it black. A great, booming zap made everyone jump and the kids start crying.

« See? THAT! He did that yesterday! Now if only I could figure out how to make him do it on PURPOSE, he could help me when I go out hunting! » Chalo yelled pointing excitedly to the creature and then to Sada.

She carefully observed the creature, whose tail had stopped glowing. So the more it glowed, the more powerful the spark it could create? What had made it glow so much? She thought back to what had just happened. The only difference had been...

« ... what were you doing when he did it yesterday?» she asked, trying to confirm her idea first.

« I had just fed him and was... petting... him... » the dark haired girl's eyes widened slightly. Chalo started to rub her hand all over Fluffyhead's wool, getting zapped a couple of times. Just like she had thought, the creature's tail started to glow again.

They are unlocking the power!!!

« Yesss, look at this! » Chalo started to jump up and down, excited, then tried to get Fluffyhead to shoot another stream of yellow light in the same direction.

« Maybe... you could use a word?» Sada offered after a moment. A simple command. They used various call outs to warn each other about what a certain creature was doing when out hunting, and she had seen various creatures do the same. And Fluffyhead had showed that, while not exactly bright, it was capable of paying attention to what humans were saying. It had learned really quick which words meant "food" directed at him, at least. Maybe it could also learn that doing a certain thing meant praise and pets.

« Right.» Chalo pointed dramatically towards a tree. « Fluffyhead, KILL THAT!»

... Sada was thinking about something a bit more subtle, but... as long as it worked.

---

After spending a couple of days at the settlement, she decided to go back to the cliff to check out the red creature. She had decided to name it "Winged King"; the winged part was obvious, and the King part had come from the fact that it seemed to be the strongest creature in the whole area. What had happened with Chalo and Fluffyhead had given her an idea; she had spent the next two days with Narjik, having him teach her how to carve a simple flute out of wood.

Ooo is Sada going to tame the Winged King?! It reminds me of avatar when the big dragon thing gets tamed!

She stepped into the place where she had been leaving food for the creature in the past days; the nest had disappeared completely, with the creatures that had lived in it probably deciding to move somewhere else now that a predator like Winged King was prowling around.

She quietly left some berries, strips of dried meat, and even one egg for it, then brought the flute to her lips and played a single, long note. She waited for a couple of seconds, then did it again; nothing moved all around, the forest almost unnaturally quiet. By experience, she knew that was usually a sign that something big and powerfull was scaring anything else away. Which meant that Winged King was somewhere around here. Sada quietly left, repeating the same little ritual for the next couple of days, always at the same time of the day.

Ooo! She is going to train it to know when food is being put out!

She wanted to see if Winged King was smart enough to associate the sound of the flute with her and the one who had left it food.

The fourth day, it was already waiting for her by the tree, calmy sitting on it's hind legs.

Sada froze, her heart beating wild; this wasn't like approaching something like Fluffyhead. Sure, every creature was deadly to humans, but Fluffyhead didn't have it in it's nature to attack something if not to defend itself. It was meek and shy, while Winged King was most definitely the opposite.

Yeah that would be a very dangerous situation!

But if it wanted to hurt her, it would have done so already. She kept repeating herself that while she approached it, playing a single note on the flute - it perked up at that, it definitely had learned what it meant. She gave it everything that was left in her smaller bag. It sniffed the air and got up, letting out a little "gyaaa" while it got closer. Sada reached her hand out, arm trembling slightly, only to pull it back when it growled.

All right, all right... she got the message. Little steps.

She managed to get closer while it was eating by approaching it from the side. While it was still focused on eating, she reached her hand out again.

Hesitated.

Gave a silent prayer to her ancestors, and then touched the red scales on it's neck.

For a moment, it didn't react; still busy stuffing it's face. Or, more probably, it just didn't care because it had no reason to fear her. What could she even do? If she was quick, she could get maybe one good stab of her spear in before getting absolutely torn apart. After that single moment, it turned one of it's bright orange eyes towards her, followed a second later by the rest of the head turning towards her. She quickly moved her hand away, taking a step back, but it followed her hand with it's eyes and sniffed it slowly. Sada froze again, hand half-raised, unsure on what to do. Move? Step back? Approach it again?

Winged King seemed to decide for her, closing its eyes and quietly pushing against her hand with its head for a brief moment, before backing up and getting back to eating.

She is left staring at it in quiet awe.

That's such a nerve-wracking and awesome scene!

---

Another couple of days later, and Sada realized that her plan with the flute had worked maybe a little too well, because now Winged King comes crashing through the forest every time she plays the flute, as long as it's close enough to hear it.

And "crashing through the forest" was literal: she had been playing the flute quietly to herself one night and the creature had pretty much dropped out of the sky in front of her a couple of minutes later, scaring her half to death.

It loves food!

« You can't just show up every time and eat all my food.» she sighed quietly, watching it sniff around the entire camp, then look at her expectantly.

With her notebook out she was busy furiously adjusting her drawing of the creature, now that it was actually staying relatively still in front of her.

After realizing that there was no food for him (her? She had no idea how to check), Winged King walked up to her and layed down behind her, starting to snore loudly after a while. It didn't budge in the slightest even when she cautiously pressed her hand against its scales, admiring them up close.

With a satisfied smile, she went back to taking notes, quietly wondering what Turo's reaction would be to this the next time they met. Just a couple of days more.

She is going to have quite the surprise!

Closing thoughts:
Very glad to dive back into this fic again. These Sada chapters are always amazing and this one was no exception. I'm looking forward to reviewing several more chapters as soon as week 2 gets started for blitz!

 

[Chibi Pika]

Hullo there! Well, I think this fic is on just about everyone's reading list at this point, heh. Been telling myself I'd check it out for ages, and now that I've finally got the chance, lets go for it!

I really appreciate that we're just diving straight in with Turo appearing in the past, no setup, no preamble showing the process of getting approved to use the time machine or whatever, just diving straight in. Of course, now that I've read further I know that we do get to see those details in Chapter 3, and it's good to see em there! But I've become such a big proponent of being efficient with fic openers and leading with stuff happening and this is a prime example of that. We get just enough details to keep us grounded--time anchor, references to the lab Turo came from and the state of the world in the future, and so on--right before diving into the fabled meeting.

Alright, I expect you've already been told this a morbillion times but yeah, they're immediately charming. They're both just so out of their depth here, Turo in a strange time where nothing is familiar and Sada faced suddenly with this deeply strange man, it's fun having them both faced with jarring unfamiliarity and having to figure out how to navigate it and developing awkward attempts at communication and both just being so fascinated by the other. I also really like the emphasis on Sada's curiosity, both as a long-time fan of "people have always been people" -type moments, but more than a statement about prehistoric humans in general, the fact that she herself has the mind of a would-be scientist, and that's on full display from the very beginning.

Switching to Sada POV! Not surprised that we get to see both of their POV since they're dual protagonists, but I was still like "oh!" when starting Ch2. It's especially fun because the world that was so unfamiliar in the previous chapter is suddenly normal and typical for her, and we get to navigate it through her eyes. I really like the detail that there'd been a bunch of little details that felt uncanny and off about Turo like him being unnaturally clean and unblemished, because that's something we don't think about that much, but would be just as weird as more obviously 'future-y' things. Also, I enjoy the fact that her mother is the oldest and most experienced person in the settlement because yeah, that makes sense for that era! Also, her thinking Turo might've been a spirit, because yeah, a lot of the stuff Sada was describing sure didn't sound human. But nah, Sada's convinced he's human and wants to understand him, that's another sign of her scientific mind imo.

And hey, Turo's back at the end, I guess getting banned for a month wasn't all that bad! Side note, but I enjoy the paradox-style names for common Pokemon that we get from Sada POV, Brutal Fangs is a great one.

I need you to know that I spent that entire encounter from envisioning Turo getting attacked by Gyarados, you see. (Yes, I know it was described as red, Gyarados can be red. ) And then in Chapter 3 when we switch back to Turo and I realized it was actually prehistoric Magikarp that got the moniker of 'Brutal Fang'... well, I laughed pretty hard at myself because of just how perfectly that fits.

Nice to get a brief little look at the world of the future, plus I'm always a sucker for nonchronological storytelling. The setting feels nicely mundane from Turo's POV (because of course it's all normal for him), except where things aren't so mundane like the shiny new time travel tech with all its rules and methods like checking items post-jump and getting shots pre-jump. I like the detail of him diving into paleolithic research during his month-long time out lol. Also... he already has a Miraidon! I'm wondering if they're just as common and ordinary in the future as Cyclizar are in the present.

Aand back to where we left off in Ch2. Man, the firestarting scene was charming, I love Turo's excitement at actually doing it himself for the first time after seeing it in various media. And the bit with them actually managing to work within the language barrier, Sada managing to ask what the paper was, and Turo being so taken with how close her hypothesis was. What a great ending line.

Really glad I got to check this out, hoping I can return before blitz is over!

 

[Flyg0n]

Spoiler: 37

Well, "played" was a tall word: at the moment he was mostly picking up some shapes she had carved out of wood and painted and threw them as hard as he could, giggling as he watched Ötzi dutifully totter over and bring them back.

This is so cute oh my gosh eeee. Just the mental image of the little Golet playing with baby Arven.

But you probably won't fit inside the house anymore after you do...» she added, and the golem whistled again as it lowered its head, dejected.

This always makes me sad oh no… especially know he will eventually evolve. Clearly you gotta make the house bigger

The PokeNav started buzzing again, but they both ignored it, the device forgotten on the carpet.

Awwwww

Miguel and Ampere both seemed to find the baby's difficulties in learning to walk delightful. The Murkrow would play with the kid by hopping left and right on the carpet, barely out of reach, encouraging him to chase after him at a slow pace.

I love how the Pokémon are getting in on things too. Murkrow is a good uncle.

Turo smiled nostalgically at that; Mirai would do the exact same thing with him as they bounced, almost weightless, back on the Moon, nipping at his arm to pull him along or wrapping his long, almost snake like body around his waist as he floated in midair, acting like some strange floating device that would keep him upright.

🙁 Man poor Turo. I get sad being away from my cat for a weekend I can’t imagine how this would feel

wailing even after Mon and Dad had come running.

Mom and dad? Or is this using mon to reference Miraidon?

There were special courses divided by age for people who had lived part or most of their life on the Moon's reduced gravity, so he had learned together with kids of his own age. But consciously figuring out what normally was done so early in a kid's life...

I love the thought that went into this and all the little details of how living on the moon would be different from earth.

On the Moon, you weighted so much less. Falling didn't feel so scary; it was slow, controlled, and gradual. Not here.

This is such a neat thought and observation! Man it must be so interesting and different to grow up like that.

Arven let go of the couch with both hands and took one wobbling step forward. Then another. And another.
Turo swallowed a lump in his throat, watching the baby's eyes look eagerly at him, arms outstretched and hands held high.
Then he tripped, but by now Turo had staggered forward on his knees, ready to catch the toddler. He was surprised, finding himself blinking back tears as he held the baby in his arms.

I’m not crying you’re crying 😭. they’re all so precious man, makes me even sadder to think that things are gonna get rocky in the future.

All right, Bacon.» maybe he really deserved a better name after all, she thought, but pushed that thought aside for the moment.

No absolutely not, Bacon is an absolutely perfect name. Splendid.

With a name like "Steady Glacier", you already know that they were probably pretty big and slow, and they could control ice. There. Easy!

She’s got a point though… I propose all Pokémon henceforth be named for what they do. Lucario can be called ”gamefreaks favoriteboy”.

Kim had to keep her mouth open for many of her attacks, and there were ways to take advantage of that.

Oooo this was some really cool strategy, and very clever. I love simple details like this in battle it’s something I want to remember to utilize more myself.

coffee", that he had taught him

This is really funny to me because in Pokémon Sleep they somewhat recently added Murkrow and the primary ingredient it finds is coffee beans

Turo frowned for a long moment. He didn't doubt Miguel's strength, but... if he didn't have a team strong enough to keep him safe in Area Zero and he didn't get permission to enter it...

Awww man. It’s gotta be hard being a Pokémon sometimes if you don’t want to evolve…

Blueberry Academy, in Unima.»

Is Unima the name for Unova in another language? At least that’s what I’m assuming or it’s a typo

Why did you just agree to that? We-»


« We don't have the luxury to say "no", Sada. Our research, this very house, our Pokémon , everything... without someone willing to fund us, we've got nothing. We are nothing, here.

Oof. Such a mundane yet frustrating kind of problem, getting boxed into working on projects you don’t want.

Weeks passed between their research, new projects starting, training their Pokémon, Gym battles, and amidst all that, Turo could see Arven grow bigger and bigger. He seemed to learn new words everyday, surprising him when he suddenly blurted out something he had never heard him say before, wondering when exactly he had learned it.

good summarization

Happy birthday, Arven.» he whispered, holding him close.

Aauuuggghhhh so precious….

Spoiler: 38

He stared at his name, feeling a strange mixture of pride and... bafflement while looking at it. That was his name, printed on a magazine that would be read all over the world.


Who knew how many other people had that same exact name across all of history... but...


He distinctly remembered asking his parents why they had picked that name for him. His mother laughed; "Your father picked it, from some famous Paldean scientist long ago with his same surname he read about in a book. He thought Romero sounded nice next to Turo"

He couldn't... he couldn't have picked it... because of him? Would he end up be mentioned in a book thousands of years later...?


Was he named after himself?

yaayyyy I was so happy reading aabout this and so glad he achieved one small goal. Also the idea that he might be named after himself is just too funny. A self completing loop... if he'd never gotten this published his parents never would have named him Turo maybe.

The wind caressed his face as he moved one hand to look for Sada's; he found hers and wrapped his fingers around hers, holding tight. A moment later, he felt her squeeze his hand back later and smiled.
This was Paradise.
He slowly opened his eyes again, finding himself looking at the full moon, barely visible in the blue sky. The smile dimmed the tiniest bit, and he swallowed heavily.

Stooopp you're making my heart hurt.

"Your request for access to a Porygon for research purposes has been approved. Please use the following credentials to download the source code of the latest stable build-"

I really love this worldbuilding take on pokemon at large, its very cool. The idea of downloading Porygon via getting approval is actually really cool. Also make me wonder if there's black market Porygon's you can download, hah.

"Four moves limit"... wait, what?» he scrolled back up, squinting at the screen.


The heck was a four move limit...?
It took him a long moment to realize it what it meant.
It could only use four techniques at maximum at any given time.
No more.
With most of the disk space occupied by the OS, there wasn't literally enough memory for more.
That was... kind of adorably crude.

I love this ahahaha. As a staunch support of move limits myself I am obligated to really dig this and this is a aprticularly fun way to reference it, even if its not a think for other pokemon in-universe. Time to jailbreak Porygon perhaps.

while the Magneton -yes, he had confirmed with Jacq that it had actually evolved into Magneton now

This is actually super neat. I love seeing how people handle weird edge cases and its pretty neat that with a mon like Magneton it can actually be hard to tell when its technically evolved. I guess the threshold is probably got something to do with when they properly link/share brainwaves or smth.

« With all respect to the guy, I'm not calling you "Bill"... this is more complicated than I thought... »

Bill Gates

Quite tall, she had a mane of long, black hair - even longer than hers, actually -, with some golden and blue stripes running along it. Her eyes were of a similar dark blue color, with a bit of gold at the very center of the iris, all around the pupil. It gave her quite a striking look, like there was a warm glow deep in her eyes.
At a first glance, she looked like she was more or less the same age as her or Raifort, yet she carried herself with a security that reminded her of her own mother. She emanated the kind of aura that only people with authority and experience given by reaching a certain age or position possessed.

Infinitely more swag than the games give her already hah.

They were an Elite Four because they also showed incredible talent in other fields in addition to Pokémon battling.

I really like the idea of each region having their own flavor of Elite Four and Paldea prioritizing trainers who are both capable as trainers and talented in other fields. Lowkey wanna steal that.

Sada answered without hesitation.


« ... Larry.»


They wouldn't have invited the guy to their wedding otherwise. And the restaurant where he held his battles had quickly become a favourite of hers...

Nah she so right tho fr. Also I like that this is apparently common and they get this a lot. Larry is the best even if he thinks of himself as normal.

In the end, they hadn't quite managed to win; three Pokémon against five consecutive battles had been a bit too much to handle. But then again... wild Pokémon didn't fight like trained ones.
A wild Pokémon would try to flee, or prioritize not getting hurt as much as possible instead of fighting to complete exhaustion like a trained Pokémon that could quickly recover in a Pokémon Center could. Or at least, that was what Sada had told him, and since Geeta had still approved their request in the end, Turo supposed she was right.

Yeaaahhhh hah I was gonna say there's no way they'd be able to battle the whole E4 with like three pokemon and win. I do appreciate this distinction between how wild and trained mon fight though, its pretty cool. Makes sense too, its a sensible way to have them approve Sada and Turo

But you're not really suggesting that my cousins had descendants that would end looking that similar to me thousands and thousands of years later? » she said.

Nobody tell her about Legends Arceus and those descendants lmao

« So you're just going to leave your husband and son to spend a couple years in the past?»


Clavell's snarl made Turo's smile melt from his face. He stopped and furrowed his eyebrows, turning towards Clavell to find him staring at both of them with his arms crossed. Behind his round glasses, his blue eyes peered at them, making him uncomfortable.

Oohohoh spicy. I like how mad Clavell gets at them during these moments.

I'm really enjoying this build up toward finally properly descending to Area Zero bottom. We've finally gotten access and approval to enter Area Zero and start the descent but man its got so far to go too, and they have to keep up with their research for Raifort and Blueberry academy too. And Arven is just a wee baby... I see danger on the horizon of how this desire may end up compromising them.

Clavell has a real point here, he seems to be the one thinking very strongly about the thing they don't quite want to face. What are they going to do even if they succeed? Can either of you go to the others time permanently? And furthermore I suspect Clavell is feeling some kind of way about them being so desperate to return home... and leave him and everyone behind. All the friends they've made here. Clavell would miss them :(

Spoiler: Chapter 39

Sada raised one hand and rang the door to Clavell's apartment, her other hand holding Arven's little one tight. He was now two and a half years old, and right in the middle of what she had heard called the "terrible twos" in terms of development.

Oooo timeskip!!! He's gotta be so big. Two year old Arven sounds so cute

« "Berry juice"...» he said, in Sada's mothertongue. Clavell blinked.

« Not sure I understood that...» he commented, and Sada smiled, leaning forward and locking eyes with Arven.

« Remember what Mommy told you, Arvie? With people who are not Mommy and Daddy, you have to use Daddy's words. » she said.

I know that it may be... silly, to have him learn a language that will be spoken only by us three, but... it's the only way I have to keep it alive... just a little bit more. If I don't speak it with anyone, I will soon start to forget the words.» she said lowering her voice to a whisper, and Clavell's expression softened.

Man this just makes me so sad to think about. Poor Sada, her language is long gone and this is her only way to preserve it... I hope Arven learns more of it to keep it alive.

I did sort of wonder is eventually Sada can just tell people she's super into ancient languages and use that as an excuse for why? Like how some people study Latin or Greek but nobody assumes they're a time traveller. Maybe she could even teach more people or teach a class at the academy to reawaken the language!

He didn't even fear heights; he used to fly much faster and further high up with Mirai. But he... he trusted Mirai in a way he could never do with these vehicles.

Yeah I dont blame you dude. I would much rather fly with Mirai then these birds hah

before, to Turo's amazement, lighting himself a cigarette.

He gaped. What... ?

« D-don't spread cigarette ash in the Great Crater!» he said, jumping forward to stop the man only to get a glare in response. The Squawkabilly squad cawed loudly and Turo backed off.

lol Taxi Man is so rude and unaware

« But... do you really not see that this place is completely different? The shimmer in the air? The mystery of what's at the bottom? The crystallized trees...?» he asked.

I feel Turo here heh, when you're trying to explain to someone the wonder of something and why its so cool but they don't get it

« I mean, every place's got some random shining crystals or whatever with weird stuff going on, so Area Zero don't look that different to me, I guess?» the pilot shrugged, unconcerned.

Hah, it is true, pokemon loovess its shiny power up crystals. Everything is a powerup crystal. You get a crystal and you get a crystal and you-!

You ever seen one? Stuff looks ridiculous.»

He's right about this though they look whack and ridiculous.

It was strangely familiar, even if he couldn't quite pinpoint where he had heard it... then his eyes landed on a Pawmi that was approaching them, and his eyes widened in recognition.

« Pipsqueak!» he smiled, gesturing for Miguel to not shoot a Confuse Ray in its direction.

Awwww so cute. He should catch this!!

The Porygon beeped in acknowledgement again. Maybe it was Turo's imagination or him projecting a bit on the little artificial bird, but the beep had sounded happier than usual.

Uh. Maybe it actually liked to read non digital documents? Maybe it found it stimulating instead of simply parsing the data from a file.

He would have to keep an eye on it showing more signs of liking random things.

we love to see it, I enjoy that Porygon can apparnetly develop its own tastes.

Sada whirled around at Turo's voice, expecting him to be pointing at some Pokémon, but instead found him staring at a metal plate in the ground. Her eyes widened.

The Infamous Plate!!

« But this slab... is made from a material from the future that won't exist for at least another couple millennia. It's what we used to build space stations and all the stuff on the Moon and Mars. »

This is far more explanation than the game ever gave us lol. But it is amystery and paradox..

« But that makes no sense. If nothing before your time can even scratch these things, and you're saying these symbols were inscribed centuries or millennia ago...» she said.

What if a Paradox pokemon itself made the marks maybe? Like Iron Treads, perhaps.

Sada nodded, nocking another arrow in her bow and turning to fire a Dark Ball straight into another Garganacle's chest.

This would be SUCH a cool gameplay mechanic

while Ampere hit the third with a quick Gyro Ball.

I wont lie for a half a second I was like "Magneton threw a pokeball at it? What kind of pokeball is a Gyro Ball?" then i remembered

« Exactly. It would be madness. If every Litleo changed to the same type, it wouldn't be that different from a regional form, and the ecosystem would simply find a new balance after a bit. If every Litleo in Area Zero always Terastalized to Flying types, they would probably slowly occupy the same ecological niche that Corviknight or Altaria do right now. But Terastalization is unique to each Pokémon, so... »

Oooo I like this explanation a lot, especially with how Terastalization works here! That makes a lot of sense, plus wild pokemon cant drop a terastalization the way she can return Kim to her pokeball. (Ugh I love Sada so much)

A pause.

« ... How do we even get there?»

I gotta say I'm wondering the same thing. If only they both had past and future versions of powerful flygin dragons to ferry them down
(I sure wish this was the solution but I don't know how or when Mirai and Winged King will return)

I really enjoy the judicious use of timeskips here. Makes everything feel like a long process that requires great effort, and no small affair or feat. Also though it skips a lot of repetitive bits and allows readers to dive into the meat and gives an excuse for Arven to get steadily older as they make progress.

Although the closer I get the more and more nervous I get because they eventually will have to make a decision. Setting up stable time travel down here seems vanishingly unlikely. ooouuu my heart. Either way now you leave someone behind... And yet its kind of poetic too, thats kind of how life goes, one way or another. Maybe you move to a new country or city and you can't always see your loved ones as much.

Who knows, maybe they will actually make a private way to be able to travel back and forth in time? Maybe people who know Turo will come find him....

 

[CuteBunnyGirl]

Here for the Blitz!

In Area Zero, and really most of his life lately, Turo had solved the problem of not being able to fall asleep by simply exhausting himself until he collapsed.
Now, with nothing to do, he tossed and turned on the couch-improvised-bed Clavell had given them. He hadn't heard the man come back yet, but that wasn't the reason he couldn't sleep. It was the fact that everything felt familiar yet wrong. The lights outside the window, the noise of the city... those were similar enough to trick him into thinking he was actually home, which made the one detail that was noticeably missing sting even more painfully; he knew perfectly well what it was, and it pained him just to think about... the familiar, reassuring form of Miraidon sleeping right next to him, his long tail curled up around his body.


Without him, everything was just too quiet. He couldn't handle it. With a frustrated grunt, he got up and, resisting the instinctive urge to wave his hand to summon some light, stumbled towards the wall in the almost completely dark living room.


Dumb primitive technology... every time he found himself unable to do the simplest thing he felt like he was being slapped in the face by the reality of the situation he was in. Sure, not being able to turn on some light with a gesture wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things, he could live without it... didn't mean he had to like it.
Turo headed towards the tv, fumbling for the remote controller until he managed to find it and push the right button.

So, we seem to be starting off with Turo’s POV. I like the descriptions of Turo’s emotions regarding how he’s stuck in a more primitive time. His frustration at the lack of technology is shown quite well.

2 October 2005.

Is there a reason why you chose this date specifically?

His theories about the two just kept getting wilder: "Just" Sada had been... I don't know, raised by Lycanroc or something, and Turo had found her and they had ended up in Paldea together...?


Who knows, maybe the poor girl had been kidnapped by some criminal organization in Kalos and Turo had helped her escape... it would explain her lack of people skills, at least.
And... it would also somewhat explain the fact that she had apparently been more than capable of hunting Pokémon with a bow and arrows to survive.


But it wasn't only the woman that was strange; Turo had done his share of weird things himself during that lunch. From thinking that they still had Pokémon Centers to the way he seemed to look at every little thing with a mix of sadness and frustration. He also seemed to have a weird tic with his arm, because Clavell had noticed him make little gestures with his left hand, just to look crestfallen immediately after.


And that weird accent he had never heard before was driving him crazy.


He had even considered the idea that they were actually really smart Zoroark just messing with him, just briefly, but no optical illusion could be that good.

I enjoy Clavell’s silly ideas about who Sada and Turo could possibly be, and the fact we know who they are but Clavell doesn’t know.

« What is the "Academy"?» Sada asked, sounding confused. Turo whispered something in her ear, and her eyes widened, a little smile coming to her face.

I wonder what Turo whispers to Sada…

Getting out of them was... like resigning themselves to the fact that this wasn't temporary. Another step in getting away from their respective lives forever. They had both put some special care in folding them after getting something else to wear from Clavell, she had noticed. Turo had also stealthily removed the broken time anchor from his wrist, slipping it into the pocket of the black pants he had put on instead. On top of those, he had worn something that was apparently called a "shirt" with a square motive.

The scene where Sada and Turo change into new clothes works decently, though I think there should be some more description of what the clothes look like. I wish the clothes were described more, such as their color.

The famed Mesagoza staircases, in all its 150 plus steps glory.
He had climbed it just a couple of times in his life, before giving up on it and using a teleporter ever since.
Except that there weren't any around now.


« Are we ... going to climb that...?» He asked, feeling the blood drain from his face a little at the prospect.

It’s quite funny seeing how Turo just isn’t used to physical exercise

« Look Turo! It's all paper!» She whispered, in awe, grabbing his arm.
---
Turo stared at the wooden shelves that lined three whole floors of the academy, holding hundreds and hundreds of books.


« It's all paper...» He quietly despaired, in complete disbelief, looking around in search of even a single digital screen.

I love the contrast between Sada and Turo’s reactions in this scene.

Right. They were dressed in completely "normal" clothes now, of course no one would stare. Turo hated them, from the rigid pants to the rough (to him, at least) flannel checkered shirt in red and white he had borrowed from Clavell.

Oh, now the clothes are described a bit more. I take back my earlier comment.

« ... anyway, I have an idea for helping you settle here. You could enroll here at the Academy.» Clavell waited a moment to study their reactions, before continuing.


« It would help you both with the language, and you could stay here in the dormitory so you wouldn't have to worry about rent for now. Once you graduate, you will have something to show to people asking for some official documents about you. »


Going to school... again? Here?

The idea of Sada and Turo going to school makes me wonder how the young students would react to studying alongside two adults.

« Yes, at least one Pokémon is necessary to follow most courses. Our Academy has always prided itself in helping develop the bond between human and Pokemon along with their minds-»

Now I’m thinking of what starter pokemon they will choose. Or perhaps something else.

« Well... I remember hearing that they actually needed some help in the kitchen. Or with cleaning. We've had an influx of more students than usual these past couple of years...» Clavell commented.

Sada and Turo working in the kitchen and doing cleaning work… I’m imagining them making sandwiches like the ones enjoyed by Koraidon and Miraidon in the games.

Overall, it was a nice chapter, I liked how it shows the two’s struggles with the new time period they are stuck in. I enjoy the concept of Sada and Turo studying at the academy, it slightly reminds me of one of my own fics. I also have a feeling Koraidon and Miraidon might return later on, though that probably won’t happen yet.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, popping in to work my way a little further down my list of people I was hoping to review this year. I figured that with Week 2 on its way out that now was as good a time as any to get my foot back in the door for Timeslip, so let’s see how things are going with Turo and Sada this time around:

Chapter 11

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

The last trip had been... simply "eventful" would have been an understatement. To think that Sada had managed not only to see but to actually tame "Winged King", that ancient form of Cyclizar... and Miraidon, by extension.

She never ceased to amaze him with what she managed to accomplish even with the incredibly limited resources she had available. But that had now left him in a bit of a conundrum; should he mention Winged King in his report? Turo was honestly afraid that doing so would only get him tasked with capturing it and bringing it back for research purposes; he threw a little glance at the Master Balls currently sitting on his desk, all still perfectly empty.

He... didn't like having them with him. They were in a sense a way for him to protect himself out there in the distant past, but they had made every second of that trip when he had felt their weight pressing against his side a nerve-wracking experience, terrified at having them discovered... which had nearly happened, and had cost him at least part of Sada's trust.

He had never actually seen her angry at him before today, but what had hurt the most had been the... silent disappointment and resignation in her eyes.

Oh, so that explains the Master Balls that Sada rocks in the games in spite of her being from the distant past. It actually feels surprisingly appropriate as an explanation because of course going into the distant future, the trend for Pokéballs would be towards stuff that is presently super expensive in the present day being cheap and disposable.

Though I kinda feel like this opening paragraph is kinda idea-dense and would work better formatted in 3 or 4 smaller paragraphs. I left a suggestion for what a 4-paragraph suggestion might look like here.

He shook his head and focused back on the report he had been writing -or at least trying to write - for the past... couple of hours? Maybe...?

Almost answering his silent question, a screen opened by his side, Porygon 568's figure materializing from it. It floated over until it blocked his view of the screen he was currently writing on.

Boy is Turo fortunate that Neuralinks are apparently still niche technology in the far future, since you’d think he’d be kinda boned right now if his thoughts were being actively recorded or something like that.

« Dr. Romero Turo, after your trip you have been in your office for the next 4 hours, 29 minutes and 19 seconds... adding them to the hours you have spent time-displaced, and records of your activity in this facility before the trip...I estimate you have been awake for a consecutive 36 hours, 15 minutes and 7 seconds...rounding down.» it beeped.

… How is Turo able to maintain coherent thoughts in these conditions anyways? Since the last time I did something like this, I was just completely dead at the end of the period. ^^;

[ ]

« Immediate execution of "sleep" is advised to maintain your body in optimal operating conditions.»

« I've got coffee, I don't need to sleep.» he gestured to the thermos lying on one corner of the desk,swiftly moving the screen away from behind Porygon to where he could see it again with a flick of his wrist. The Pokémon turned toward the thermos, eyes glowing yellow for a moment.

Small typo in this section, though I kinda feel like Turo should get in a bit of a small reaction before the Porygon continues on. I’ll admit that I did a bit of a double-take at him and his Porygon having the same speech pattern, but I suppose it makes sense given that Porygon’s message is intelligible to Turo right now.

« ... temperature scans indicate that thermos has been empty for two hours.» it simply said.

Uh, was it? He hadn't noticed. Turo ignored the Pokémon and resumed writing - or trying to-. [ ]

« ... your report is not so urgent as to warrant such a degree of restless activity. Your erratic behavior since you've returned from your trip suggests an altered emotional state. In layman's terms... something is troubling you.»

I feel like Porygon here should be a bit more proactive in cutting Turo off here, such as floating in front of him or nudging him or something.

This time he actually turned to glare at the little AI, eyes tingling after staring at a screen in the dark for hours.

« You've been spying on me...?»

Turo. It’s essentially an AI assistant in your Internet-of-Things-on-steroids hell. I’m not sure if I can stop spying on you even if it wanted to.

« "Spying" implies a desire to extract information out of someone without being discovered, often to obtain an advantage over that same individual or group. That was not my intent.»

It fluffed up its wing feathers, offended, as much as something made of lines of code could, before turning its head to look at him with the jittering,rapid head movements that was so typical of the many real life avian Pokémon it was partially modeled after -many by now extinct or replaced by other species they had evolved into. Turo idly wondered for a moment which programmer during the centuries had decided to devote precious time and effort programming that little feature in, because it was as impressively realistic as completely useless, since it had no real purpose... except, maybe, making the Porygon appear a little bit more life-like. Giving it a little more character... a little bit more of an identity. Someone more poetic than him would have said that it gave the AI a bit more soul.

Would suggest hacking this paragraph up into two. Also, you mixed up some “its”es with “it’s”es here. It’s a bit of a common flub even even for Anglophones, but a fast sanity check would that “it’s” can be cleanly replaced with “it is” or “it has”, while “its” would refer to something along the lines of “belongs to it”.

Though that makes me wonder if it’s possible to clone “modern” Pokémon in Turo’s time via similar methods as fossil revival.

And for some reason, it's that little detail that made him turn around toward the AI and actually give it his full attention instead of treating it like an annoying pop-up like he had until now.

What had gotten into him? ... that wasn't like him.

You’re sleep-deprived and worried about grenading your relationship with your neolithic girlfriend? That sure sounds like it’d mess with your sense of normalcy there.

He flicked away the screen with his barely written report on it and sank back in his fake-leather chair with an exhausted sigh, shutting his eyes closed, both hands pressed to his temples.

«... sorry. I know I've been up here making excuses to avoid going home and... actually reflect on some things.»

« That is not healthy.»

Turo: “Yes, I know that right now. You don’t need to remind me!” >_>;

He opened his eyes again and smiled weakly at the Porygon, patting it on the head a couple of times. It seemed to enjoy it -and again, he wondered why something that had been devised to spend more time in cyberspace than in the actual physical world had even been programmed with that feature. From a purely logical point of view, it made little sense. Devoting even a little part of its processing capabilities to define and react to something as simple as touch when it wasn't strictly necessary, or wasting even just a little part of its memory to store such trivial information like "Spots he likes and dislikes to be petted on" was a drain on resources that could be better spent on executing its task more efficiently.

I kinda feel like this overlaps with the whole “fluffing feathers” moment a bit thematically, even if I’m admittedly blanking on what to suggest for differentiating things a bit more.

... but someone still had programmed that in. And, maybe more importantly, every single update after that, every single person that had touched its code had decided to keep that feature instead of removing it. Leaving it in. Maybe even adding to it, perfecting it.

Hey man, you should see how long it takes for features to get deprecated in computer languages. I’m not shocked at all that the “petting routine” got introduced hundreds of years ago and just never got axed all this time.

And the picture that single, insignificant detail painted of humanity was maybe the fundamental reason he was so fascinated with AI, Artificial Pokémon Programming... and the future as a whole. There was just so much... potential in it.

I was going to say “wait, doesn’t Miraidon count?” but then I remembered that this story explicitly took the angle that they evolved from Cyclizar and aren’t created replacements for them.

« ... you are worried after about me. Humans drink and smoke from the instant we have figured out how to do so. We aren't exactly known for always making healthy decisions.» he answered. Porygon 568 seemed to mull over that for a moment.

« ... I believe I am not equipped to deal with your altered state in an efficient manner. I have taken the liberty of contacting Dr. Gervaso Ortega.»

Turo: “What? No! I never asked for thi-!”

[ ]
« Wait... what?» the Pokémon didn't look any different, but of course, one on the thousand little processes it had running in the background at all times was probably busy calling Ortega this instant.

« You don't need to-»

Yeah, I figured that Turo would react like this. Even if I kinda wonder if it’d have been worth showing more of Turo’s initial alarm here before he speaks up. I’ll probably decline to explicitly point out every moment where I feel it might be worth expanding things, so if you see brackets like the above further on, that’s what I’m getting at.

« ... he said he will come here immediately and is already on his way.»

What? But wasn't it... He glanced at the clock projected on the opposite wall, confused. He had lost all sense of time. [ ]

« But it's way past three in the morning, what is he even doing...»

« He will be here in two minutes, he said. He was already awake. "Out drinking" were his exact words.»

Oh boy, sleep deprivation meeting questionable sobriety. What on earth could possibly go wrong with this mix?

... of course he was, probably partying it up somewhere in one of those locales that only opened after midnight. That guy had more social energy to burn in a night that he could muster up in a whole week. Turo sighed and resigned himself to wait for his colleague.

What on earth does the nightlife scene look like in Turo’s far future anyways?

He didn't have to wait long, Ortega had probably walked to the nearest teleporter the instant he had closed the call.

Turo still had to stare at seeing him enter the office looking... so normal. [ ]

« ... uh. Don't think I've ever seen you in clothes that are not a bodysuit and labcoat or some couple centuries out of fashion.»

« I could say the same of you. And I like wearing stuff that's centuries out of fashion. It looked much better. Did you know that my ancestors used to own the biggest apparel company in Paldea? Of course, it's long gone now, but we've still got some stuff and old designs at home, on some old physical storage devices. » he said, sitting down backwards on a chair he had grabbed and propping his elbows up on the backrest.

Oh, so that’s why Ortega is so fabulous in SV. Though I kinda wonder if it’d have been worth showing off a bit more explicitly what Ortega is wearing here, since I admittedly could not get a solid read on how to imagine the way he looks at the moment.

Uh... no, he actually had no idea. Must have been quite some time ago if he had never even heard of the "Ortega" brand.

« ... is that why you are so into past fashion?» he couldn't help but ask. Ortega shrugged.

« Part of it, yeah. But enough about me-» the man squinted and looked between Turo and Porygon 568, some of his dark, curly hair falling over his eyes as he leaned a bit forward.

« What's going on here? Porygon said you're not feeling well... and frankly, you look terrible.»

Turo: “Well, I’ve apparently been up for 36 hours without sleep, so I’m sure that’s not helping there.” ^^;
Ortega: “And why have you been up without sleep for that long again?”

Turo grimaced, not knowing how to best answer the question.

« During my last jump, I've... been to the village of the native girl I've been meeting with.»

Ortega arched an eyebrow at that, but just nodded for him to continue. [ ]

« On one hand, it was amazing... I've got so much data, made some sketches... they use moss to insulate the tents, Pokémon bones and materials, but... there's this four kids.» he decided to omit everything that had to do with the writing lessons and Winged King for now. At the moment, it wasn't important.

Might be worth showing off a bit more of some combination of Turo’s reactions or thought process in this section here. And yeah, I can already tell that Turo’s going to regret bringing this up in like two minutes.

« Four kids... out of the whole settlement that looked like what... some hundred people? I can't stop... thinking about them. » he whispered, head held low.

« History books and documentaries never really mention them, do they? It's always just... wars, and kings, and important discoveries.

But it's like... it hit me right then that they are kids like any other... they just want to play, and have fun, and learn new things, and their life is just so-»

« Was. »

Ortega: “Turo, please tell me that you didn’t do anything stupid like try to introduce things from our present day back into neolithic times. It was explained to you why not interfering with the past and its development is so important, right?”

It took him a second to even register Ortega's blunt interjection, at which point Turo stopped and raised his head to look at the man.

« What... ? »

[ ]

« You mean to say that their life was horrible, or unfair, or desperate, or whatever it is you were going to say. It's in the past, Turo. It's already happened. There's no use despairing over it.» he explained, looking unusually serious.

Ah yes, I can smell the blunt and uncomfortable lecture about “don’t mess with the past, Turo” inbound in 3… 2…

[ ]

« How... can you just say that? » Turo asked, still a bit surprised by Ortega's tone. « That's... »

« "Cold"? Yes it is. But it's also what keeps you sane in this job. Listen, at the start, you were new here, so I was a bit... hesitant to tell you. You are making the same mistake that a lot of newbies do during their first time-jumps.»

Ortega took a deep breath.

I kinda feel like there should be a bit more dwelling on some combination of Turo and Ortega’s moods in this sequence here, since I get the vibe this is supposed to get a bit heavy and emotional while right now, the dialogue is fairly disembodied here.

« You are getting attached to the people you meet in the past. You can't do that. You have to stop thinking of them as... I don't know, people you just met somewhere and who you can be friends with. They're not. They can't be. »

Which, you know, Turo has only been casually violating for like half a dozen chapters at this point. I’m just curious how much longer this can go on before the Not!TVA steps in and starts getting involved.

Every word of Ortega hit him like a punch in the stomach, because they were true. Completely, absolutely true.

[ ]
« Every time you meet someone, you have to think of them as complete strangers that you're never going to see again... Otherwise, it's going to destroy you. What are you going to do once your project is done and you have to completely change eras? Change places?» he asked. and

Turo could only stare at the other man, wide eyed, heart now hammering in his chest. That thought, especially the idea of not being able to see Sada again... Of just having to disappear and never come back, leaving her wondering what had happened... It had already been tormenting him for a while, but he’d always tried to push those thoughts away and not think about them.

I kinda feel like this moment where Turo’s just staring at Ortega and having the horrible realization kicks in would be more effective if separated out from Ortega’s dialogue since it allows each part to stand out a bit more.

« I...» he started, with no idea how to continue, but Ortega wasn't done.

[ ]

« You are going to keep thinking about them. The temptation to sneak a little jump here and there between other projects to go see them will keep you up at night. It will drive you crazy, it will hurt even when you do see them because you can't build a relationship with a couple of hours here and there. You'll be living on borrowed time... eh-» he chuckled darkly.

Oh, so Ortega did this at some point in the past and it burned him, huh?

[ ]

« ... Literally. You’d simply be delaying the moment where you will have to actually say goodbye... And leave them in the past for good.»

A deep silence fell between the two. Turo sat, shocked, thinking about what he had just heard.

Ortega: “... Turo, why are you looking like that? You have do know that I’m completely right here, yes?”

« ... That's why all your projects are so short. That's why you almost never go back more than a certain point in time.» he said in the end.

The other time traveler just nodded, then looked to Porygon 568 with a sardonic smile.

« Sneaky bastard... That's why you called me of all people, didn't you?»

Turo: “(Note to self, stop letting Porygon 568 hang around me after coming back from the past from now on.)” >_>;

The Pokemon simply tilted its head without answering, and Ortega just shook his head.

« He was... » he stopped after a moment, brows furrowed. « ... Never mind. Point is: I had to disappear from his life before it completely tore me apart. You want to know the first thing I did after seeing him for the last time and coming back to the present?»

Oh, so I was right about Ortega having had something going on with someone in the past that he had to cut off before.

Turo had half an idea, but he simply waited for the other man to continue.

« Looked him up online. Anything I could find. Articles, biographies... There's even some old pictures, from the first couple of centuries of the Internet... He had a good life. Successful. A family. Three kids. He could have never done that with me, seeing me for a couple of hours at a time. That gave me ... Closure, I guess. I know that's not really an option for you due to how far back you go, but... » Ortega took a final deep breath before looking back at Turo.

« We observe, Turo. Nothing more. The sooner you get used to it, the less it will hurt. »

Oh yeah, that’s going to stop him. /s

He Turo nodded quietly. It was easier said than done, but... Knowing that he wasn't the only one that had struggled with similar problems helped a bit.

« It's just... So strange to think about. You go in the past, and they are right there, it's easy to forget that they're already... Long gone once you come back here..» he struggled to articulate it.

Your first ‘he’ here is a bit ambiguous. I would recommend just flatly being ‘Turo’ there.

Turo: “I… did not need to think about that right now, thanks.”

« I know. Blame human psychology. We're really not made to wrap our heads around time travel... Or maybe it's just too early, who knows. » Ortega answered.

And then he jumped up, clapped his hands loud enough to make both him and Porygon flinch, and grinned, back to his usual self.

« Enough gloomy thoughts. You need to take a little break from all this... Get out, get a little change of scenery. Change of perspective, it'll do you well.»

[ ]
«And I know exactly what you need.»

To go drifting your lizard to ancient EDM music? /s

Turo slowly got up, just to stumble dangerously and have to lean against the desk to support himself. Ortega coughed.

« .... Maybe get some sleep and something to eat, first.»

Well, yeah. That feels a bit more immediately necessary there. ^^;

« A trip to the... future?» Moreau wondered, eyes passing between both.

[ ]

« Just a little joint collaboration of a single trip. A test run. We do all test runs in the past by default, but I think we should start doing them also in the future. So that every new time traveler in the department is aware of certain... things to pay attention to in both, err... "directions".»

Ortega smoothly answered, gesturing to the screen with a little proposal he had written up that floated between them. Standing completely still by his side, Turo could hardly contain his excitement. The future. He was actually going to... see it. It was incredibly hard to get clearance for it, especially for someone like him that didn't even have a single completed published paper related to time travel to his name yet. And now they were actually discussing it. He barely dared to breathe, for fear of ruining the moment.

I kinda feel like we need a bit more introductory description to remind “oh yeah, we’re in Moreau’s office”. Also, I kinda feel like the dialogue and description portions of this section should be split off into their own parts from each other.

He felt somewhat like being a kid again, during the parent-teacher meetings at school. Moreau was still looking rather pensive.

« ... sure. Let's see how it goes. But-» he added.

« As the one with most experience traveling to the future, I'm tagging along.»

… I feel like this should make me a lot more worried about what the future holds given that A: Turo winds up bailing entirely for the past, B: Moreau is insisting on babysitting these two, as if he doesn’t trust how they’ll handle whatever they come across there.

Oh. That was, umm... unexpected. Turo observed the current director -and possibly one of the most expert time travelers currently alive - of the TTDL walk to his desk and get a time-anchor out of it, slipping it on his wrist.

« Mostly because I want to make sure that you » icy blue eyes went to glare at Ortega.

« Don't mess around with whatever we're going to find, and so that you» now it was his turn to get glared at, and Turo flinched. W-what...?

The director smirked.

« ... don't manage to somehow land us 20'000 years in the future or something else equally ludicrous. »

Ooooookay, yeah, that is a terrible sign for what the future holds in the setting, since I could see the way that he was talking with Ortega there.

Ortega laughed while Turo blushed in embarrassment, managing a quiet "Y-yes" in response.

He... he was never going to live that one down, was he?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14

They stepped into the time machine together, synchronizing their respective time anchors to the same coordinates. After the usual injection that would protect him during the trip, Turo shuffled to the side, waiting for Porygon 568 to finish calculating the coordinates.

He felt a little pang of guilt in thinking back about the promise he had made to Sada, to come back "tomorrow, at dawn"… for him, that "tomorrow" could be days or even months from now, and still only one night would have passed for her. It made no sense.

He shouldn't feel guilty, that was simply how things worked... But it still somehow felt like he was deceiving her.

Such is life time travelling. Though I kinda wonder if Sada would ever notice that things might be strangely weird about Turo between appearances. For instance if he shaved inconsistently in between trips back to see Sada.

Turo shook his head, focusing on watching Ortega and Moreau getting ready. Thinking about where he was about to go.

Mesagoza, just shy of 30 years from now... It was almost nothing compared to the hundred or thousands of years that even he had jumped back in time, but still... It was the future. His first real step into it.

inb4 it’s a smoking crater when they find it.

The time machine whirred to life around them, and with a twinge of nervousness Turo closed his eyes when he felt the familiar sound of time and space starting to move all around him. Because yes, apparently, it had a sound. Even quite a specific one, like nothing he had ever heard before. Physicists were still puzzled about it.

One moment later, he opened his eyes back again, to the familiar sounds of the megalopolis of Mesagoza all around them - snippets of videos of news programs and ads, music, the low buzzing sound made by Miraidon and Rotom bikes crossing the streets or gliding overhead, some of them even simply scaling the great shining skyscrapers were railings and platforms had been built to let the Ride Pokemons rest.

Well, that was better than I was expecting. Even if I’m a little surprised at how little things have changed in 30 years since the present day.

They were standing in a little back alley, away from people. At first he looked around, instinctively paranoid that someone had seen them appear... Then, with a little jolt, he realized that even if someone did, it wouldn't matter. Of course people would simply recognize them as time travelers.

He couldn't help a little grin from spreading on his face at that realization; it was ... liberating in a sense, not having to worry about hiding literally everything about himself. They started to walk around, with Turo trying to catch any detail that could be different from the present.

« So, what do you think? » Ortega asked after a while.

« Well...»

Turo: “I mean, it doesn’t look all that different from the present day, so…”

The city honestly looked pretty much the same, at least at a first glance. Something, he had to admit, that left him a bit disappointed. But then again... it was only 30 years from now, he couldn't exactly expect many differences.

« ... I think it's not really... future enough for me.» he confessed after a moment.

He would come to see these times by himself, after all... and that thought made him suddenly stop in the middle of the street, one Miraidon growling at him while the Pokémon and her rider had to suddenly brake and swerve around him.

I’m surprised the Miraidon didn’t just jump over him there considering how well the one in the game manages.

Ortega just laughed. [ ]

« "Not future enough" for you? Oh, you're impossible... you want to look at the little details to notice what's changed. » he said, but Turo wasn't listening, too distracted by what he had just realized.

« What about... future us? Are we not at risk of meeting them...?»

30 years from now... he would be in his sixties. Probably still here in Mesagoza somewhere, if he didn't decide to move to another city. He couldn't begin to imagine what his life would look like by then. Was he still at the TTDL? ... would he still think of Sada after all that time, or just look back at his first research project as a silly little thing that he had used to worry too much about?

They’re going to look up the equivalent of a phonebook and realize that Turo’s not here 30 years into the future, aren’t they?

Moreau didn't look fazed.

« I wouldn't worry. They would remember everything from this day after all: what we have done, where we've been... and probably decide to stay out of our way. »

... right. That... made sense.

That’s a bold assumption to make given that people have a way of having their memories blur and distort with time, just syaing.

« And even if they didn't, that whole "never meet your future or past selves or it creates a time paradox" is a bunch of bullshit.» Ortega added, earning himself a glare from their superior.

« Not exactly... »

[ ]

« All right, we don't know if it does if you do stupid stuff like kill yourself, but if both parts are careful about it, there's no risk... right, sir?»

Turo stared at the two other time travelers. Wait, were they... talking from experience...? Moreau heaved a deep sigh, closing his eyes with the solemn expression of someone that had just been forced to remember some deeply unpleasant memory.

Yeah, they’re talking from experience, I can already tell.

«... yes. You proved it in quite an unique way, Ortega. That was a paper that I never thought I would have to peer-review.»

[ ]

« It was around six months before you joined the TTLD. » Ortega explained, evidently seeing his confusion at their little exchange. « See, I decided to do this little experiment-»

« We are not talking about it. The research paper is there if he wants to read it... as much as I wish it wasn't.» Moreau added, before gesturing for both men to stop.

I feel like it is probably worth having Turo react to this revelation from Moreau and Ortega here, since he’s learning quite a bit in live-time right now.

« But since we are talking about it, I want to check something... » the man made the familiar gesture to summon a screen in midair, which opened in front of his face. Moreau quirked an eyebrow, and seemed to relax slightly.

« Well... good to know that I'm still alive in 30 years time.» he dismissed it quickly without looking at it.

… Oh, so they are going to find out that Turo has just fallen off the face of the planet here.

It took Turo a moment to realize what the man meant. Right, of course... if your ID was technically always the same, and you were able to access it... right now, he would be logging into his 30-years-in-the-future-account, which would hold... pretty much everything. Phone calls. Emails. Pictures. And since the IDs were deleted a certain time after a person's passing to respect their privacy and not leave their data potentially exposed, you could, technically, use the fact to know what Moreau had just figured out…

I’m surprised that that would work considering how much social media platforms change in popularity even within the span of a decade. I assume this must’ve be an artifact of some sort of RealID law that was passed centuries ago.

The thought creeped him out quite a bit. See, stuff like this is why he much preferred to think about the far future, not the one he could actually reach just by the passage of time... he resumed walking after the two other time travelers, continuing to look around. Now that Ortega had mentioned it, he was starting to notice little differences that did make it clear that he really was walking in a different city from the one he had woken up in that morning. Ads were showing celebrities he had never seen and promoting products he had never heard about. He caught a news segment that mentioned colonizing Jupiter's many moons, and he trembled with excitement - they had already reached Jupiter? What about the Mars colony?

Small punctuation error here. Though I see that we are seeing little signs of forward progress after all.

He gestured for a screen to have the little news snippet replay privately, hoping to catch some more details: that's what trips to the future were for, right...? Gathering information...

Nothing happened.

With a scowl, Turo tried again. Nothing.

His heart literally skipped a beat. [ ]

« G-guys... » he said in a shaky voice. Both men turned to look at him with a questioning look.

« ... my ID is not working.»

I think that it is probably worth more explicitly showing off how Turo’s connecting the dots of “wait, I don’t exist 30 years into the future” here.

They both visibly paled while Turo tried not to panic.

His heart started hammering in his chest with so much force he could distinctly hear its pulse in his ears, accompanied by a high pitched whooshing sound.

He suddenly couldn't breathe; his suit automatically registered the anomaly, and responded by stretching ever so slightly around the chest area to allow him more breathing room. Normally, a prompt to contact the nearest hospital would have opened right under his hand, ready to be pressed. Nothing appeared.

I’d say that if it was any consolation that you’re not dead, but… uh… yeah, you weren’t exactly old-looking at the time that you made your AI assistant in Paldea.

That meant... but that wasn't possible. He couldn't be dead in this time, he would have barely been in his early sixties! Moreau was older now than he would be in 30 years!

It couldn't be!

“Dead”, “stuck in the past”. Tomato, to-mah-to.

« I'm... I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.» Ortega said, while his face betrayed a slight panic into obviously trying to come up with one.

« You're... you're the computer genius here. I bet you will set up something to protect your account from being accessed from future and past... well, "you" » he offered after a moment.

I mean, you could always try to search for an obituary online to get formal proof one way or another, just saying.

The terror that had been gripping him diminished just the slightest at his colleague's words. He looked to Ortega while slowly resuming to breath again, almost desperately wanting to believe him.

You have a couple typos in this paragraph. I smoothed them over here.

« It... » he started tentatively. « ... it does sound like something I would do. » he added, subconsciously knitting his brow while he started to, almost automatically, think of possible ways to implement the very thing such a protection.

Ditto here plus a small phrasing tweak that I would suggest.

It... yes, it made sense. Especially if there were things his past self wasn't supposed to see, he *would* take precautions to make sure they couldn't be accessed.

« I'm sure that's what's going on, don't worry.» Ortega clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder.

Or, you could try and see if you can turn up an obituary for Turo to get a definitive answer, but I’m not sure if he’s mentally ready to do that right here an now.

« ... maybe this very incident is what inspires you to do it. You hadn't thought about it before, didn't you?» Moreau added, causing Turo to sputter in disbelief.

« But that would... that would mean... »

[ ]

« ... yes. Your very first time loop.» a slight grin appeared on the older man's face.

« Congratulations.»

[ ]

« You're growing so fast-»

Ortega pretended to wipe some tears while they resumed walking. Turo followed after a moment, the disbelief quickly replaced by uncertainty; he frowned, then quickly assumed a more neutral expression while he followed after the other two. He didn't want to worry them, but he couldn't stop thinking that... if the ID not being accessible was really his own doing...

He would have done it differently.

A little alert, maybe. "You are trying to access information you are not meant to see", something on that line... not simply nothing and give himself the worst scare of his life.

Oh, so he is going to talk himself into trying to find his obituary in the future, isn’t he?

... then again, you could argue that he already would have gotten the scare by that point and so decided not to worry about it too much...

A time loop... was it really?

Though we’ll get there in the story when we get there, which from the chapter listing, is only about 6-ish chapters away.

[ ] At first, he thought that it was simply an impression of his, his paranoia and unease making him see things, but by the third person that he found stealing glances at him he was starting to be sure of it.

« I think... people are staring at me.» he said. For the second time, they both turned to look at him. Ortega looked around, then shrugged.

« I mean... you are walking around in a labcoat in the middle of the street. You really like to bring that thing places where it shouldn't be.»

I kinda feel like there should be a bit more acknowledgement of where Turo and the gang are at the moment. For instance, are they still loitering around the same spot in Mesagoza? Or have they moved on to another spot in it?

Turo blushed. All right, it was a bit unusual, but... some scientists did it all the time. Some Pokémon Professors did field work with a labcoat! He liked the stupid thing, all right? Even had the buttons customized and all...

Just as he was about to answer, his eyes caught something that completely made him forget everything about what he was about to say. And frankly, forget most of everything that was going on, his mind going into complete tunnel vision (and quite a bit of fanboyish nerdgasm, but he would die before admitting it out loud) at what he had just seen.

« What is that?» he couldn't help but ask, pointing to the other side of the street. There, sitting at a little café and enjoying some ice cream, was a girl that could be at most fifteen.

Ortega: “... It’s a café? I dunno, is there something that’s supposed to be special about it, or…?”

That wasn't the reason for his reaction (and would have been quite offensive if it was).

Not, the reason was the green, quadrupedal Pokémon sitting calmly by her side that was busy licking his own ice cream in a little glass on the table. It had a sleek, elegant figure, the red pixellated eyes that characterized most modern Pokémon, and a bit of a flat head.

Is that Iron Leaves there? Those are just common enough for random kiddos to train 30 years into the future?

He sprinted to the other side of the street, his lab coat flapping loudly behind him. He had to see it! Possibly pet it, and... and if his damn ID actually worked, he could have asked to inspect its basic source code, but he could at least ask some questions…

Made a couple tweaks here to both fix a typo and to make Turo’s lingo sounds a bit more programmer-ese.

« Oh no » he barely heard Ortega sigh behind him. « ... new Artificial Pokemon, of course the Artificial Pokémon Programmer nerd goes crazy over it.»

Turo paid him no mind, panting while he reached the teenage girl (he was officially and definitely out of shape), and pointing shakily to the Pokémon with one hand while he regained his breath.

« Pardon my intrusion, but... what is that Pokémon called?» he managed.

The girl looked at him like he had just asked what a Miraidon was. [ ]

« ... Iron Leaves. » she answered after a moment, staring at him wide eyed.

Well that was a fast confirmation. I was going to wonder how on earth this was ever approved for public release, but then I remembered that in Turo’s “present day”, base 670 anoles are as widely distributed as Vespas.

« Iron... Leaves...? » he repeated.

Not the... most imaginative name he had to admit, but most Artificial Pokémon didn't have one to be fair. Most people just gave them nicknames anyway.

And Turo’s nickname for his Miraidon is…?

He turned to look at the Pokémon, who had stopped to eat and was looking at him with impassible, regal eyes. It exuded an aura of calm, calculated grace, sitting serenely there next to what had to be its owner. It was quite small, or at least smaller than the original it was based on (or in this case, supposedly based on), like most Artificial Pokémon.

« Sorry if I ask, but... is it really based on one of the Swords of Justice...? »

They had really made an Artificial Pokémon of a legendary...? How did they even manage it? To create an artificial version of a Pokémon required to know as much as possible about... well, everything.

Biology. Behavior. Diet. Intelligence. Habitat. As much information as you could think of had to be programmed in... if you wanted it to become as similar to the original as possible, at least. If you wanted it to become... a real Pokémon, its own species, and not only a fancy manufactured robot.

I kinda feel like Turo’s mental ramble here works better as two smaller paragraphs. Though that actually makes me wonder if there’s some sort of timeloop with Paldea where a Miraidon accidentally got dumped into Ancient Paldea, became immortalized as the “Iron Serpent”, and recursively influenced Miraidon’s creators when trying to make their synth Cyclizar for “we oughta give it some attributes of that cool mythological dragon”.

« ... and they are so common that anyone can get their hands on one?»

The girl still looked quite surprised.

« Y... yes? I got Aramis for my tenth birthday... »

My guy, you’re one to talk when your own buddy Pokémon has a higher base stat total by 80 points. >:V

So they had been around for at least... five or six years...? But they had to have been developed before, at least ten years, then some years to see if everything had gone well and they started to become common enough that the general population could get one... so that meant that their invention was still some... ten, fifteen years in the future...?

[ ]

« Can I... can I examine it just a momen-»

Kinda feel like Turo’s thought process is missing a step where he internally has his:

moment here.

« Sorry, but I'm afraid I will have to interrupt you.» the cold voice of Louis Moreau sounded out right behind him and Turo flinched. He had... completely forgotten about them, honestly.

Moreau flashed a little badge he had taken out of his coat, which Turo recognized after a moment as the TTDL badge used to identify them outside of the University, while on their trips.

His own sat unused in his office, mostly because it was going to be completely useless in Paleolithic Kalos anyway, and at worst just another thing he could accidentally lose in the wrong era. But if you jumped to an era that already had time travel... yeah, he could see its use.

« We are time travelers on a short trip. Better pay attention to what you say, miss.»

In her defense, she’s like ten, Louis. Just how much do you expect her to be able to coherently communicate how her Iron Leaves would work internally?

The girl gasped, excited.

« Omygee, you are time travelers?! It's my first time meeting one! » she said, before the grin that had spread on her face slowly disappeared. And then, and this time there was no doubt about it, she stared straight at him.

« But, umm... aren't you-»

[ ]

« Not another word.»

Moreau shot forward, raising his voice to cover whatever the girl was going to say and slamming one hand on the table. The ice cream glasses rattled loudly and the Iron Leaves let out a low growl, raising up on four legs. Powerful actuators hissed while the Pokémon took aim at Moreau, sword-like blades jutting out from its side, ready to jump in defense of its partner and cut the man down.

Wait, are there actual legal reprecussions from doing no-nos for interacting with time travellers in this setting? If so, it might be worth bringing up at least in passing at some point during this whole exchange.

« Aramis no, calm down, it's okay-»

« We've already seen and heard things we weren't supposed to. We're leaving right now.»

There was no arguing with the director's words, and Turo hastily went for his own time-anchor, pressing it right as the Iron Leaves roared at them.

Another reason he liked the future. Here, where everything continually used the same energy source as the time machine, the time anchor recharged pretty much instantly.

Thank Arceus.

Wait, wait, wait. When was this ever mentioned or communicated again? Since this feels like a pretty big worldbuilding detail there.

<><><>

Porygon 568 welcomed them back with his usual phrase, but none of the three men said a word until they were out of the time machine room and into the sanity room - today a traditional ancient Hisuian zen garden, with Chimeco chimes tinkling softly every couple minutes to a simulated wind.

I feel like this is enough of a jump in place and (literal) time that it’s worth dropping in a hard scene break here.

[ ]

« ... that girl knew me.» Turo said after everyone had sat down.

And so did other people over the street. He replayed her words in his mind.

Wait, wait, wait. What is making Turo realize this again? Since admittedly, I didn’t realize that that was the significance of everyone turning and staring at Turo earlier. If so, it probably makes sense to frame this more as “wait, that girl recognized me” and then connect the dots as to “wait, that’s why everyone was staring at me one the street, wasn’t it?”

Aren't you... what? What was she about to say?

Not to mention her expression when she had seen him. He had thought it was simple surprise at his dumb - from her point of view - question, but..

Ortega dismissed his concerns with a lazy wave of his hand.

I feel that it probably makes sense to explicitly reiterate that the girl stopped smiling after seeing Turo and maybe have him start to fret internally about what that could mean there.

« ... maybe you're famous in the future. End up developing the next cool big thing and everyone knows you like everyone knows Wells today. But at least it means that you can't be dead, right? » he proposed.

« So much for a simple test run» Moreau looked at him, exhausted.

Um… considering the girl’s reaction wasn’t exactly the sort of reaction one would have for being famous for positive reasons, that sounds like some really wishful thinking there, Ortega.

[ ]

« My first couple jumps to the future I found out, at the most, that my favorite character in a popular tv series would die in the last season. You are there for five minutes and meet an Artificial Version of a Legendary Pokémon... We'll all have to sign NDAs for this.» the man pinched the bridge of his nose.

« I know, isn't it great?» Ortega laughed.

[ ]

« I swear he has some superpower. Everything time related Turo touches ends in chaos in the best way. The best worst time traveler I've ever seen!»

Turo sighed and scratched at his neck with one hand, embarrassed. [ ]

I feel like this sequence in general would benefit from more insight into how the characters are feeling and what Turo’s thought process in his head is at the moment.

When he managed to schedule his own jump, more than two weeks had passed in the end. He had pretended not to notice both Ortega and Porygon 568 keeping watch over him; dragging him into the break room one more time a day, keeping him occupied with discussing other projects, other times, even tagging along with other jumps... Porygon, he was pretty sure, had even completely made up some error codes just to have him take a look at them... which had honestly impressed him. Didn't think the little AI would be capable of it.

Oh no, Turo’s time period has self-generating AI slop.

He knew what they were trying to do, and in a way, he appreciated it, but that still didn't make his current project any easier.

He appeared, as promised, at the dawn of the next day he had left, in the same patch of tall grass. Figuring that Sada would be waiting for him at her village, he started to make his way towards it. The Master Balls were again sitting in his left pocket, and he kept his hand on one of them while he looked around, wondering what to do with them.

Should he... look for some wild Pokémon while alone? It would be dangerous if he got surrounded... but still less dangerous than someone seeing him use a Master Ball. Maybe he could play it safe, wait for his time-anchor to recharge, and go look for some wild Pokémon only once it was full... worst case, he could escape anything by jumping back to his own time.

Or... he looked around. This was a trail supposedly used by wild Pokémon.

Would recommend making some tweaks along the lines of the above for wording and paragraph formatting.

Could he make a trap...? Leave a Master Ball, invisible, with some bait in some place he was sure not to forget and check on it before he jumped back? That could work... as long as he didn't lose it. Somewhere. Invisible. With a Pokémon trapped inside. For who knows how long.

Which sounds like an absolutely terrible idea considering how easy it is to lose Pokéballs to the brush canonically, just saying.

... maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all.

Yeah, see? I told you it wasn’t a great idea, bro.

« Hey.»

Turo jumped a little when Sada suddenly seemed to appear out of thin air at his side, and he realized that she must have been hiding in the tall grass.

He smiled warmly at her, only for the smile to slowly disappear when she didn't reciprocate. He hastily thought back to their last meeting. Right, she... she had looked quite disappointed when he had mentioned having to leave. Of course she would still be angry. He noticed the spear slung over one shoulder and her usual leather satchel tied at her waist. She offered him a similar bag, only empty, and he took it after a moment of hesitation.

Turo: “Um… you’re not upset from the way that I had to leave yesterday, are you?” .-.

« Umm... thanks-»

« Let's go. We gather food today.»

She turns around and starts walking, and he is left staring at her for a moment, stunned.

He didn't expect such a cold treatment... was she really that angry?

I’d tell you to just go and ask her, but considering how you’ve been learning her language for all of about 2 weeks, I suppose it’s entirely possible that Turo wouldn’t know how to ask her just yet.

After a moment, he slips the hand he had automatically taken out of his pocket expecting her to take it back in the lab coat's pockets. The only thing his fingers touch is the cold and smooth surface of one of the Master Balls.

Turo, what are you doing right now?

He slung the bag over his shoulder and started to move after her, head low.

They walked in silence for a good half hour, Sada turning around to watch him every couple of minutes. No, not watching. She was staring. Analyzing.

Turo: “Um… why are you looking at me like that?” ._.;

One hand on the flute she seemed to always carry with her now, the one she had used to summon Winged King. He looked around, wondering if the Pokémon was nearby. Probably had to be.

They finally arrived near a little group of trees, and Turo realized they were all berry plants. He could recognize the most common ones; orange, pecha, chesto... and that was it. The others looked wildly different from what they grew in their greenhouses.

Oh, so there’s also Berry species that have gone extinct in Turo’s time. I wonder if these would be all the Gen 3 berries that got retconned out of existence from Gen 4 and onward.

He quietly wondered if, like rice and other grains, he was looking at what some berries used to look like before they had been "domesticated" by humans.

... had they figured out planting berries yet? Or did she just know that there was always something to eat available here? Maybe he could bring a couple back-

I’ll take the under on that given that Sada’s tribe very heavily vibed as being hunter-gatherers from what we saw of them in past chapters.

« Put them all in here.» Sada gestured to his empty bag and he was pulled out of his wandering thoughts. With some hesitation, he started to pull some chesto and orange berries from the plant, mostly because he was sure at least those were edible. He could feel Sada's eyes on him as she slowly approached him and started to fill her own bag.

Orange or Oran berries? Since there’s adifference between the two in a Pokémon setting.

She finally looked away from him and he relaxed slightly. With the corner of his eyes, he noticed her biting her lip with one of her sharp little canines. She seemed to always do it when she was nervous.

« ... I saw you. »

Turo: “Wait, what do you mean by ‘you saw me’?” ^^;

At first, Turo didn't understand what she meant. He turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised in a questioning look.

« You... vanished. Like a ... like a creature. I saw the light. » and then she mimed pressing something on her wrist with her other hand, and he stared at her in complete horror.

She saw him. She saw him disappear.

Turo:

« You-»

His first reaction was to hold out one hand towards her. Sada was much faster than him; she raised her own hand over her head, and one moment later, the tip of her spear was pressing against his neck. He was forced to raise his head, looking down at her at an awkward angle, but he can still feel the stone point pressing right against his Adam's apple.

« What are you? »

Couple small verb tense errors here. And yeah, looks like the cat’s out of the bag there, Turo.

He froze completely, only managing to raise both arms in a placating gesture that mirrored their very first meeting. What... what was he supposed to say? One wrong answer, and he'd be dead. And Sada, she was still looking at him with eyes full of anger, and disappointment, and hurt.

Make sure to keep your verb tenses consistent as to if you’re using present verb tense or past verb tense for stuff that just happened. In this case, I assumed that you were going to use the latter for your narration.

« I... I'm a person... » he desperately tried to explain, to think of an excuse, just to choke slightly on his breath when the spear pressed just a bit harder, drawing blood. He suppressed a cough, eyes wide and terrified. She was seriously ready to stab him.

I think that’s a sign that you need to re-evaluate who you pick as love interests, Turo. Though if Sada and Turo have a falling out later on like they’re implied to in the SV backstory, I can already tell that it’s going to get wild given that Sada’s already drawing blood over finding that Turo lied to her.

« Lies! It's a lie... I've trusted you, and you... » he doesn't understand her words, but her tone is more than enough.

It ...hurts to hear her so angry at him.

But... maybe it's for the best. If he manages to get away, to run... he can... just leave, and never come back. It would hurt, but at least it wouldn't hurt her.

I kinda wonder if it’d have been worth having Sada level some accusations as to what Turo was really after from her tribe. Since Sada has caught Turo lying about who he is. So in her local context, what is she afraid Turo actually is? Is she worried that he has malign intentions towards her or her tribe?

It would be the best outcome for both of them.

Don't get attached. Just like Ortega said.

Lol. Lmao. Good luck with that one, buddy.

He stared silently at Sada. Her fierce expression, her eyes. Those bright eyes he loved so much, now full of tears of frustration. She wanted to be proven wrong. To not treat him with fear and suspicion.

Yeah, see above. Especially if that’s your baseline assumption from reading Sada’s expression right now.

Don't get attached.

« I... »

Don't get attached.

... how could he? It was already far too late for that. He could never leave with the thought that she hated him. And, truth was... he was getting tired of it.

He didn't want to keep up this farce. The half answers. Avoiding questions. She deserved better than this.

Turo: “I’m… not sure how I’m going to explain this to you thinking that I’m crazy, but…” .-.

And really... it was just her. Just one girl, one bright, wonderful, amazing girl... what difference could it make? So far away in time?

Turo closed his eyes.

« I have... a power. » he opened them up again, to look at Sada who had been staring at him silently. For once, he didn't mumble his answer, didn't look away avoiding her gaze.

I can already tell that Turo’s going to be having a lot of fun with the Not!TVA in a couple of chapters, since he’s just going and breaking all the cardinal rules of time travelling in his setting right now.

The spear didn't move, still pointed at his neck.

But Sada had noticed his change in tone. Her eyes had changed; there was that little spark in them again. Curiosity.

« A "power"... is it a "scientist" power? »

If it wasn't for the spear at his neck, he would have laughed.

... almost too smart for her own good.

I mean, you could laugh anyways, but that would likely leave a nasty nick on your throat, so… yeah, don’t do that, Turo.

« ... yes. I... jump here. Using this power. » the spear wavered while she bit her lip again, thinking this time.

« Where do you go when you leave? » she asked after a moment.

Ah. That... that was the big question.

"Far away" wouldn't cut it this time. [ ] How could he even explain...?

« Home. » he said « To my people. I can't stay here.»

I feel like it might have been worth showing off a bit more of Turo’s thought process in this section playing out. e.x. Him weighing how Sada is clearly very skeptical of him and he literally has zero margin for error to get out of this without blindly trusting that Sada loves him too much to give him an amateur tracheotomy with that spear.

« Why... why not? »

Because if he spent too much time time-displaced, the effect of the injection that protected him during the trip would vanish and he would be truly stuck. He could theoretically jump back anyway with the time-anchor, sure... he simply wouldn't survive the trip.

Right. That’s a thing. I forgot about that. I do wonder if it’d have been worth playing up more in earlier chapters, for instance if there was a point where Turo was cutting it close for his injection wearing off and almost got stranded once already.

There was a reason why they had to do the injection almost every time they stepped into the time machine, after all. Each shot only lasted a couple days’ time, at maximum. And since you usually went way more than a couple of days between one trip and the other...

Another problem that you didn't have jumping to the future. You could simply explain that you needed a shot, over there.

I feel like the underlined should’ve actually been shown or at least mentioned in passing in the sequence where Turo does go to the future earlier in this chapter, since this is kinda ‘informed attribute’ at the moment, and I originally thought he was only in the future for the equivalent of like an hour before Moreau cut things short.

But that is something that he has no idea how to explain. Not technically, at least.

But he can convey the reason why.

« Because... you and I... » he slowly raised one hand, to try and grab the spear and move it away from his neck. She let him do it without much resistance, and he could finally step forward and close the gap between them.

« We live in... completely different... worlds.»

Now she's confused. He doesn't blame her.

Sada: “How… does that even work?”

Turo: “Trust me, even if I was fluent in your language, I don’t know where to begin for explaining it right now.” ._.;

He... has no idea how to talk about it. They... never really talked about "time", except for the most basic things. Day. Night. Moons. Seasons.

In her "world", what else did you need?

He caressed her hair, gently, moving one strand of hair behind her ear and away from her face.

With the limited vocabulary he had, how could he make her understand? He thought for a couple of long seconds.

« I am... I am from your... tomorrow . » he whispered in the end.

Sada: “... Then wouldn’t I just need to wait a day to get to see you and your people-?”

Turo: “Let me correct myself. I’m from your tomorrow—many, many times over. So many times that you’ll unironically die of old age if you try to wait for it to come.”

« ... tomorrow...?» she stared, not comprehending at first. Then her eyes slowly, slowly became wider and wider, and she suddenly raised her free hand to his face and cupped his cheek with her palm. She stroked his beard with her thumb, slowly, almost methodically, and for a moment he was too busy just melting into her touch, leaning into it, to pay much attention to anything else.

Sada: “For reference, we call that the ‘future’. ‘Fu-ture’...”
Turo: “Yes, I… realize that I don’t sound particularly eloquent in your language right now. We have that word too, yes.” >_>;

But he noticed the little spark of recognition in her eyes, of understanding, and something in her mind must have just clicked, because the anger and suspicion and frustration finally dissipate, leaving space to that bright, excited, wonderful smile.

« How many... tomorrow? » she asked in a whisper. He can feel her shaking slightly against him. Fear? Excitement? Both? « One... one moon?»

Turo: “Uh… more like 168,000, give or take a few hundred moons.”

Sada: “What?! How does that even work?!”

He smiled a little.

« Many.»

Her eyes just go wider and flitted all over him, almost like she could read the answer on him somewhere.

« ... one season?»

His smile got a bit wider.

« Many, many seasons.»

I feel like it probably makes sense to elaborate on how Turo’s getting excited to see Sada’s inner scientist kick in in live-time, since I’ll admit that I was initially expecting him to be a lot more sober and less excited given that he has the whole “you need to break things off with Sada” lingering in his mind from earlier in the chapter.

Sada pouted, evidently annoyed at his amused expression, which just made him want to laugh even more.

He was finally being truthful and it was like an enormous weight had been lifted from his chest.

It was way too late to not "get attached"... but at the very least, in the precious time he has with her, he can finally be completely honest with her, and really make the most out of it.

Wow. Love really does make you do crazy things.

A couple of things from this chapter:
1) In case it wasn't clear, why yes, I love talking about AIs.
2) Ortega: Got that Turo? Don't get attached
Turo: Yes
Ortega: It only hurts more in the end.
Turo: Makes sense...
Ortega: So what do we do?
Turo: Hopelessly fall in love and angst about it, gotcha.

I had a giggle at this chapter summary. It’s definitely quite apt.

Alright, and I’ll be leaving things off here for now. I take it that this is the big Rubicon moment in the story where Turo just throws caution to the wind to chase after his love for Sada. It’s a pretty decent one if so even if the shoe hasn’t fully dropped for Turo getting stuck in time, since the way Turo is forced to grapple with his feelings for Sada and his duty as a researcher was done quite well and was quite endearing to see play out. I liked the time travelling into the future sequence that was in this chapter. It felt both like a clever way of handling the DLC coming out since there was fresh content actively dribbling out for Gen 9 at the time you posted things and it added some fun foreshadowing that things are going to get lit for Turo in the not-too-distant future. Since, uh, yeah, I can see how he just apparently doesn’t exist anymore 30 years into his future, and I already know what that’s pointing at.

On the more critical end, I noticed that you had some assorted typos and verb tense errors throughout the chapter. I also saw some spots where I felt that you had overly long and unwieldy paragraphs, especially ones where you had dialogue and long descriptive paragraphs stapled to each other or descriptive paragraphs with multiple “ideas” in them. There were also multiple points where you seemed to pass up opportunities to get more into the characters’ heads and explore their reactions and thought processes, especially in sequences that were otherwise very heavy on dialogue but light on framing context. Lastly, I felt that some of the details brought up in the story felt like they were very “informed attribute” in nature, such as the things that Turo learns about time travelling into the future that aren’t really contextualized for how or when he picked those up. Adding a bit more context behind things likely would’ve helped that a bit.

But all-in-all, I thought that this was a pretty fun chapter to come back to Timeslip with, @Nekodatta . There’s admittedly a strong chance that I won’t be able to make it back to Timeslip again before Review Blitz ends, but I hope the feedback was helpful, and I’ll be looking forward to when I cross paths with this story in the future.

 

[Tango]

Chapter 9: Starman​

It's been a crazy blitz! Under normal conditions, I would have returned to your fic far sooner. But now that I got the obligatory one-shot out of the way, I'm hoping to focus on getting through your fic at a reasonable pace!
Starman? Hmm. Not sure what to expect based on the title. I wonder if it will make sense at the end?

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

« Anyone want some Poké Puffs?»

Everyone turned to look at Ortega, who had just half poked his head into the sanity room. That day the weather had decided to be absolutely terrible: one of Paldea's infamous flash storms had hit most of the southern part of the region, and the view outside the windows in most offices of the TTDL had been of a rather depressing grey mixed with the constant drumming of raindrops on glass for a couple of days by now. By the third day, everyone who was not away on a time jump had spontaneusly gathered in the sanity room; it was cozy, warm, they kept each other company, and it was nice to look at something that wasn't rain for a bit.

Seems like a good place to gather!

Turo had pretty much claimed a little corner of the room that had a comfortable couch and a table to hold a drink as his own, his figure veritably obscured by a wall of screens and monitors he had opened up all around him, each showing a different article, website, or obscure book he had been digging up. They all shared the same topic: Cyclizar and what changes in the environment had sparked his evolution (in the classical sense, not Pokémon-evolution sense) into Miraidon.

Ooo! Nice to see it distinguished and the future certainly would help him find out some interesting tidbits!

His latest report about Sada's discovery (because it was hers, like he had made sure to point out in the report)

Aww!

of what was probably a Paleolithic era ancestor to both had sparked quite a bit of interest, and so he had spent the last couple of days reading up about Cyclizar and Miraidon. He only had the copy of Sada's drawing to go by, but even only with that there were some details about the Proto-Miraidon that were... puzzling. Like the antennae on the top of their head they both seemed to share: Sada's drawing had given a lot of emphasis on them, while Cyclizar seemed to lack them completely. It was weird, from an evolutionary perspective, for something to lose a certain trait and then acquire it again.

Hmm! That is a bit weird!

He was so absorbed in his reading that he had barely noticed the question, but the same couldn't be said for everyone else.

« Which Poké Puffs are we speaking of?» came the question from Vega, who had a monitor of her own open and was busy shifting through blurry pictures she had tried to take of the legendary beasts trio. She stopped to contemplate one in particular, which would have captured a perfect and gorgeous image of Suicune running over the waves... only for some guy in a frilly cape to have accidentally photobombed the shot, causing the Pokémon to go out of focus and be nothing more than a blurry splotch of blue in the background. She deleted the picture, irritated.

« ... this dude was everywhere while I chased Suicune, I swear-»

Oh! I know that guy!

Ortega entered the room proper and rolled his eyes, stealing a chair - as usual- and sitting down.

« The ones from before they changed the recipe and made them smaller, obviously. I need to jump to Lumiose City in year 4679 anyway this afternoon, may as well grab some while I'm there.»

That at least made the redhead perk up a bit.

« Oh hell yeah, get me a deluxe box of Supreme Spring ones then.»

Being able to order food from any relatively modern time?! Wow!

« Of course you go straight for the most expensive option...» the man muttered while taking notes. More orders started to come from the others in the room.

Wait, how are they going to buy these? Do they have antique money they plan to bring back to purchase it?? 🤔

« I want a box of frosted mocha flavored-» that was Satoshi, the researcher from Kanto that had joined the TTLD just last month.

« One medium box of Mint flavored for me.» someone whose voice he didn't quite catch.

MINT?? Of all the flavors for all places of all time... and this person picks MINT??! The only way you get a worse flavor than mint is if you resort to every flavor beans! Mint is for breath mints and toothpaste. It is the worst legitimate flavor and I will die on that hill. No wonder the one who asked is a no-name!

(If you like mint, that's fine. You do you.)

« - oh, and also a box of Sweet Fancy ones, you know those with the cute little chocolate squares on top?» that was Vega again.

« You really plan to eat them all?»

« ... I would like a box of frosted orange flavored. » Turo finally raised his hand over the wall of screens, making Ortega jump a little.

There you go! Frosted orange. Now THAT is a flavor!

« Didn't even see you there... and I thought you hated orange flavored stuff?» he asked, trying to peek over the monitors. Turo flicked them away and accidentally into each other, causing a short buzz of static when the holographic projections collided to fill the room.

« They are not for me. Miraidon loved them when we were little, and he got all sad when they stopped producing that flavor. » and when Miraidon got sad, he had his own special way of looking at him with those cute pixellated puppy eyes, and damn if it didn't make him feel terrible about whatever it was that had caused them, even if it was something outside of his control.

As one who has had pets, I know that look all to well!

You would think it wouldn't be possible for a Pokémon whose eyes were literal pixels to look so heartbroken, and you would be wrong.

« I'm sure he will be happy to taste them again.» having finished his explanation, he buried himself in the screens again, going back to his reading and mentally tuning out Ortega and Vega that had started to bicker about the prices of Poké Puffs in 4679 and how much money she had to give him taking inflation into account.

Ah, so the money aspect is being addressed after all!

---

Later that evening, after Ortega had come back carrying a small mountain of pastries, Turo walked back into his apartment with the small box of Poké Puffs tucked under his arm. Miraidon ran up to the door to welcome him back as always, and the Pokémon's pupils got wide when it seemed to smell what he was carrying. With an excited growl, the dragon got up on his hind legs and put his front paws on the man's shoulder, wagging his tail.

Such a good lil puppy. Oh yes you are! Oh yes you are~!

Turo just laughed, trying to avoid getting pushed to the floor. Sure, Miraidon wasn't actively weighing down on him - or he would have been sent sprawling already -, but when he got so excited it was a bit difficult for him to control his strength.

« Calm down, calm down! Get off me, you're way too heavy to do that now... you're not a puppy anymore.»

Nevertheless he took a moment to stroke the Pokémon's neck and just rest his forehead against the smooth scales. Miraidon almost purred and nuzzled him with his head, then backed up to give him space, eyes notably never leaving the little box he was carrying.

Like a cat and a dog all rolled into one!

Turo smiled and opened the box, offering one of the Poké Puffs to the Pokémon.

« Just one for now, I can't have you gobbling them all up in one go... »

He personally wasn't a fan of the smell of oranges that would no doubt permeate the kitchen in the following days, but he could endure it if it would make Miraidon that happy.

Ugh, now I'm curious what flavors he does like!

But that's adorable that he will put up with a smell he doesn't like to make Miraidon happy. If he treats even his dog that well, Sada is in for quite the experience!

A ringing sound resonated through the apartment; with equal parts annoyance and anxiety, he opened a screen and took the call, watching Miraidon devour the Poké Puffs in two big bites.

The anxiety dimmed a bit when the caller was not the TTLD as he had feared. Just a bit, though.

« ... mom? I just got back from work. No, I didn't time travel today, next jump is in two weeks time...»

Turo stopped at the voice of his mother on the other side of the line, then groaned.

« ... No, that doesn't mean I've got nothing to do until then, I do other things in the meantime, I've already told you... And no, I don't want to go to the Moon for some overpriced lunch on Sunday-»

Aw... his mother cares about him though. Not everyone has people who reach out to spend time with them. But yeah, I do expect Turo stays pretty busy.

It was crowded and way too turisty - mostly all people born on Mars that got all stupidly sentimental about being on "the" Moon - and it was too far for teleporters to reach, which meant that you actually had to sit down on a shuttle and suffer through three hours of horrible movies and screaming toddlers.

I love how some of it is a pain! Future world problems, it seems.

The reduced gravity was really only interesting for the first couple of times, after which it got old pretty fast, and it's not like they didn't have simulators for it on Earth anyway.

Much cheaper. Faster. Less martians that accidentally elbowed you in the face to take a selfie with a view of the Earth in the background.

Love it. It's like space Paris or something.

« Can't we at least do it somewhere else? » he sat down on the couch and tried to at least change the location to meet up, to no avail.

A couple of minutes later he closed the call with a defeated sigh and turned to look at Miraidon, lifting one hand to rub the Pokémon's snout that still had some cream from the Poké Puffs stuck to it.

« Sorry buddy, looks like Mom had other plans for us this weekend. We'll go riding next week, I promise. Somewhere sunny.»

« Gwaoooh.»

« You're still coming with me though. If we have to suffer, we suffer together.»

«... gwaoh.»

---

In the end, the trip had thankfully been not too bad; no screaming toddlers this time, and he had managed to just sleep for most of it. The shuttle docked at the Moon base around 11 AM and Turo mentally prepared himself for the weird sensation of suddenly feeling much, much lighter.

It wasn't complete zero gravity, but it still felt pretty much... "floaty" was the only way he could describe it.

The Moon base was a series of interconnected structures, each built at different points in history for different purposes. Completely isolated and self sufficient with an artificial atmosphere, they were pretty much little cities of their own, and the Moon as a whole was considered it's own region not unlike any other.

Just a bit more deadly if you stepped "outside" without a pressurized space suit.

Man... we probably could have had a moon base by now but who knows when that will happen.

Still, that's yet another cool thing to include in the future world. Wow I bet Sada would lose her mind if Turo brought her to the moon. Actually, that should be how he proposes: 'giving the moon' to her. 🥰

Would be the biggest flex in all of human history. Even though he doesn't technically own the moon, he could say that he is giving it to her and bringing her there would make it seem legit. Then when she goes back to the past she can think of him every time she sees the moon. Holy cow. I think I've just came up with the most romantic idea ever. You might want to write that into the fic. I won't complain if you do! You can even claim it as your idea if you want!

Turo took the first bouncy step outside the shuttle, where artificial gravity was kept the same as on Earth, and almost went flying - literally-, landing five meters over where he would have landed if he had still been on Earth. The momentum was enough to send him skipping another couple of times and had him resort to windmilling both arms furiously just to finally stop. He glanced around; a couple of teenagers passed by, giggling at him while shaking their head.

So fun!

See? This is why he hated the Moon. It was so weird, the micro-gravity always left him disoriented and nauseous, and he usually had to leave just as he got the hang of it, because screw spending the "night" there. Complete zero gravity was better than this.

At least he had the comfort of knowing that absolutely everyone looked stupid walking on the Moon, practically Lopunny-hopping everywhere. The only way to make that look cool was the ancient footage of those first astronauts, and only because of the historical importance of it.

I love how opinionated he is on everything about it!

Miraidon skidded to a stop next to him in a much more dignified way, having simply tucked his legs in, adopted his Drive form and easily floated after him on his energy rings. Turo glared at the Pokémon.

« That's cheating.»

« Gyaa~» the lizard dragon managed to look pretty smug at that.

« ... just let me ride.» he grumbled, mounting the dragon Pokémon and directing him to their destination.

---

His parents were already waiting for him inside the restaurant. Turo dismounted Miraidon, checked that Pokémon were actually allowed inside, then entered the place. It wasn't the most luxurious place, the really expensive ones served real meat and fish instead of lab grown protein steaks. It was something of a status symbol and nothing more, to be able to say that you could afford it, and there supposedly wasn't really any difference in taste or nutritional value... not like he had ever been able to check if that was true. Or any particular desire to do so, actually.

lab grown at this point makes sense. But I wonder if there are regular animals or if the real meat comes from Pokemon?

It was still a restaurant on one of the most touristy spots on the Moon, and so like everything else it was overpriced as hell.

Yeah, I'd expect it would be... 😅

He found the table they were sitting at and managed to half slide, half float his way through without bumping into other people, grabbing his chair and sitting down on it with a defeated sigh. The only good thing about micro-gravity is that stuff at least would still stay down and actually stay on the ground once it stopped moving.

« I can't believe you had your first date here, of all places.» was his way of greeting his parents. That was the whole reason they kept coming back to this place.

At 54, Leandro Turo looked pretty much what his son imagined he himself would look like in some... twenty-five years give or take, just with darker hair than his father. Those had definitely come from his mother's side, who was the perfect image of the stereotypical Paldean woman; dark hair and eyes, long eyelashes and olive complexion, Carmen Ramos de Turo simply smiled and shook her head.

« It was quite romantic, actually, an- you brought... Miraidon?» she asked in seeing the Pokémon approach their table, looking a bit nervous in trying to not accidentally hit something or someone with his long tail.

« Why wouldn't I? He's family. » Turo answered, while the Pokémon happily licked both.

« ... good to see you, anyway.» he added after a moment, with a bit more warmth in his voice than usual. Even if he despised the place they had chosen to meet up, he was glad to see them again.

Aww. I bet eventually he is going to take Sada to meet them. That would be the point in introducing us to his parents here, no?

They exchanged pleasantries and ordered their food while catching up on what they had been doing the last couple of months.

« So... time traveling. Never would have thought to see it in my lifetime... It still sounds weird, telling everyone that my son time travels as his day job- no Mirai, down.» his father said while cutting his steak, only to be interrupted by Miraidon cautiously sniffing the plate. The Pokémon whined and sat down, head hung low. The sad puppy eyes had stopped working with his parents decades ago.

I love how you weave the Miraidon interactions into their conversation. I did a similar thing with Sir Pounce in the story chapter of my fic.

« ... it's still almost as weird for me to talk about it with someone else. » Turo answered after a moment while he sneaked a piece of meat to the dragon under the table. It was like... talking about his job with someone outside of the TTDL, someone that knew nothing about how it worked, what they did, what it felt like... it was like two completely separated parts of his life were suddenly being forced to meet. The whole thing made him a bit uncomfortable.

« Still, you were always talking about the future during your studies, I'm surprised you are actually traveling to the past now that you could actually go there.»

His mother's remark make him frown for a short moment, Sada's face flashing by in his mind.

Yeah... Sada's smile is worth more than the wonders of the future. Dang this fic brings out the romantic in me!

« It's... ah, better to start with the past. The future is more... complicated.» he managed to come up with an excuse, which was also technically the truth. Just... not what his primary reason had been in choosing his destination.

He spotted Miraidon circling the table behind his parents, scooting closer on all fours while staying low to the ground, tail swishing behind him, and recognized the Pokémon's classic "I'm about to try and steal something while you're distracted" stance. He kept his expression carefully neutral, trying not to laugh.

« Makes sense. So many things you could mess up with knowledge from the future.» his father nods, while his mother still looks a bit unconvinced.

« But... isn't the past even more dangerous? You could end up influencing something and completely change the present.» there's just the slightest hint of concern in her voice, and Turo is not sure if she is concerned about something happening to him, or about the fact that her son could accidentally time paradox them all out of existence.

He would be a bit offended about her lack of faith in him, but.... honestly, after somehow shooting himself to the Stone Age?

She had a point.

Well, yeah! Duh, Turo! Butterfly effect has much more time to gain traction in the ancient world.

« That is one theory about how time works, yes. That's why we have so many rules in place, just to be cautious. We don't even know if time paradoxes are actually possible, because... well... nobody wants to be the one that finds out. Truth is... there's been cases here and there that point to something different going on. » he started to explain, playing with his salad with a fork.

Ooohh???

« Have you ever heard about the first successful time jump?» he asked after a moment.

They both nodded.

« Of course. It was all over the news, it was a historical moment. »

« Thirty-two years ago, Jules I. Wells was the first man to successfully jump back in time by 43 minutes and come back. »

« Yes, but... that's not everything he did.» the complete report was something that he had only read after starting his work in the TTDL.

« That morning, on his way to perform the first ever time jump with a functioning time-anchor, Wells went to his usual favourite bar to have breakfast. There he discovered that the croissants he always used to order were all sold out. So, for his first test jump, he decided on something completely innocuous: go back in time just enough to get that croissant.» there was a slight pause while he watched his parents reactions.

« ... I'm sure you can figure out where this is going.»

« ... oh. » they both said after a moment.

« It was him, wasn't it?» his father asked, still blissfully unaware of the lizard right behind him that had his eyes fixed on the half steak still on his plate.

Oh if it works like that then it means there is some kind of determinism thing about it. Everyone who ever used the time machine are considered to have always been there instead of having entered there new. That also means it's impossible to meet yourself by traveling back in time unless you already have.

Also, I find it odd he is going going to let his father's food get snatched. Is he hoping it will put a damper on their willingness to meet him on the moon for meals again later?

« Exactly. He himself had been the one to get the last croissant, and he never would have had the idea to jump back if it hadn't already happened. The cashier confirmed that he had seen him enter two times that morning and found it strange how he had asked for another croissant after the first, but didn't say anything about it. It's a stable time loop. There's probably a lot more of them just dotted around history... but you have no way of knowing if what you do in the past will result in one until... it does. Or even worse, if it is possible to accidentally break a loop... nobody knows for now, and really nobody wants to be the one to accidentally find out. »

And that is why they just tried to observe things.

Let me guess, when they are going to try to do something that would break a time loop or cause a paradox, that is when the leap fails. Wouldn't surprise me if it was some kind of law of nature Arceus or Celebi set up or something.

And probably why everyone in the TTDL ended up a bit... strange, now that he thought about it. Maybe the job simply attracted a certain kind of person.

His father frowned slightly.

« That sounds... stressful, I wouldn't be able to... MIRAI, NO-»

Turo grinned while he watched what was left of his father's steak get snatched up by Miraidon and the Pokémon scamper out of the restaurant with his prize.

This WAS amusing but I'm still not sure why he was ok allowing it!

---

A couple of days later, the current director and head researcher of the TTDL, Louis Moreau, entered his office.

« Dr. Turo, may I disturb you for a moment?»

« Y- yes! »

Turo furiously dismissed the half a dozen screens he had opened and stood up almost at attention; he had been here for more than a couple of months by now, but he still felt like an absolute newbie compared to the man in front of him.

I mean... a couple months really isn't that long...

The man was a legend, practically one of the founding fathers of their entire field of research: in his sixties by now, he had worked closely with Wells himself by helping develop the time-anchor that everyone still used.

He, on the other hand... well, he probably wouldn't shake off the "Paleolithic era guy" nickname for the rest of his career. The man who had accidentally stumbled into the Stone Age, when he actually dreamed to see the future.

... it almost sounded like some bad joke.

Huh... I wonder if the "past" is actually the far future? Like something bad happened and wiped out humanity to the point where things had to start over and Pokemon traditionally evolved to be way different than they were in Turo's time? I guess that can't be the case since the time machine is able to tell what direction the time travel went in, but I just thought that was an interesting theory.

« I've been reading your last couple of reports about your project... » the man starts, opening a screen of his own at eye level with a flick of his wrist and pulling up the various documents.

That doesn't sound good... I mean, MAYBE it's good, but I get the feeling it isn't...

Turo's heart simply drops in his stomach, and for a short moment he feels his legs tremble, threatening to just drop him to the ground, or at most back in his chair.

That's it. They must be cutting him off. Now he will tell him to find something more productive.

Oh, well if he is going to be worried, then that just means the opposite will happen. I feel better already!

His first immediate thought isn't for his job and his research; it's for Sada that would probably wait for him while sending smoke signals into the sky, day after day, wondering when he would come... he had promised to see her again, after all-

Aww...!

But he couldn't let his shock be visible in front of the director, he wasn't going to panic.

« Is there... is there something wrong with them?» he managed to choke out after a moment, voice kept at a carefully controlled, almost robotic monotone.

Moreau looked away from his screen to him with a look of slight surprise.

« Pardon? Oh no, absolutely nothing wrong with them! I understand that things are going pretty slowly in that time period, but there's nothing we can do about that, not with so little information about it that we can use...» he scrolled from one report to another, and Turo resumed breathing normally. He hadn't even noticed that he had been holding his breath.

So he wasn't... they weren't going to...?

« Me and some researchers at Uvanja Academy have been wondering about these "ancestor" Pokémon you've been mentioning in a couple of reports. » the man suddenly closed the monitor and stared straight at him, causing Turo to unconsciously freeze. Those piercing, icy blue eyes would have made anyone squirm.

« ... do you think you could catch some specimens to bring back? » he asked, clasping both hands behind his back and regarding him carefully.

It took Turo a couple of seconds to register what he had said.

« ... c-catch...? »

Like... like with a Pokémon battle, like in the VR games...?

« We will give you Master Balls to use, of course. Should be the most discrete way of doing it. »

Yeah, I guess Master Balls would be common at this point for sure!

Oh... of course. Master Balls. Those were a thing. Made sense.

Didn't make it any easier for his head to stop spinning at the whole idea, still caught between relief that they weren't cutting him off and complete shock.

« Is... is it safe to bring them along...? » he asked. Moreau just waved his hand.

« History isn't going to change because a single prehistoric Magikarp went missing 14'000 years ago. Wouldn't be the first time we extract exctint wild Pokémon from the past and try to reintroduce them in the present. Or at least study why they disappeared.»

Makes sense. Plus, it just leaves more resources for the other mon that would have been competing to thrive. Nature has a way of bouncing back.

Tudo swallowed.

Misspelled Turo

« ... what if someone sees me? »

« Well... it's your responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. Like everything else with our jobs. »

Yes. Right. He had to be cautious. He had to do this.

... somehow.

Oh no! Does this mean Turo is going to steal Sada's domesticated dragon thing from her? 🥺

---

The usual flash of light announced his arrival in the past, this time in a completely unfamiliar place. He had studied modern maps the day before and tried to approximate coordinates for the area Sada had pointed at, then Porygon 568 had done the rest, automatically tweaking them to make sure he didn't appear halfway inside a tree, or a rock, or the ground... or above the ground, for that matter.

Always good things to avoid!

In his time, the spot he had chosen was a quaint little café in the middle of Lumiose City. In Sada's time... he could still see the usual river in the distance, this time from the opposite side, but the forest looked less thick here, leaving space for great fields of tall grass. Here and there, boulders and small clusters of trees dotted the landscape, but it was still much more open that what he was used to. And that made him nervous; he felt defenseless while he started to walk following what looked like a small trail that countless Pokémon (or people, for all he knew) had cut through the grass by walking.

He was wearing the clothes Sada had made for him, but since they didn't have any pockets, he had been forced to still bring the lab coat with him. In the left-side pocket, his hand was gripping one of the six Master Balls they had given to him.

... there really was no reason to give him exactly six, it's not like there was a Box system set up in the Paleolitic, it had just been "tradition".

Makes sense.

"You should feel honored", Moreau had joked.

"Only Pokémon Professors and really special individuals get clearance for using them."

Turo just hoped that he didn't accidentally lose some by chucking them in the water. Or off a cliff. His aim was horrible, but he probably could use them as a last ditch defense mechanism. Tap something that was about to murderize his face like with that Proto Magikarp,

Ah yes, the Brutal Fang. I'm sorry, but I'm going to mention it again here how completely awesome the idea for that way. Seriously.

and it would get caught. Problem was, that implied getting close. And doing it alone, if he didn't want to risk Sada seeing him.

He nervously glanced all around to make sure he was alone, then took his hand out of his pocket and stared at the Master Ball. Those had also received some design changes during the centuries: it was completely white with a red line all around the perimeter, but how they worked was pretty much the same. You couldn't improve perfection, after all. Just one little functionality had been added in the last couple of decades, specifically for time-traveling.

One little button press on the side, and the whole Master Ball turned invisible. Turo shifted his grip around it for a moment, trying to get used to the feeling of touching something that he couldn't see, then switched the cloaking device off and slipped the Ball back into his pocket.

Ah, that's clever. It also implies he should be able to use a cloaking device on himself. In fact, why aren't cloaking devices standard personnel gear for time travelers? Is it only good for non-living matter? And what about the mon contained inside? Can it cloak while it has a mon in it?

He wasn't sure which option would be worse. Sada seeing him pull out another impossibly smooth and round "stone" that imprisoned Pokémon inside it, or him apparently making a Pokémon disappear into thin air by simply touching them.

But, well... he was in no rush. Sada always seemed to choose places that were relatively safe from Pokémon; apart from their encounter with that Magikarp (which, to be fair, had been his fault), they hadn't encountered anything else. He wasn't exactly eager to go running off alone into the tall grass, so he would take his time with this task.

Yes, the ever-present TALL GRASS! Some things never change.

And speaking of Sada... he tried to look around, scanning the horizon for the smoke signals she had mentioned. It was early morning, so maybe she hadn't set up the fire yet...?

Turning east, he actually saw more than one. Three little smoke columns rose far, far into the distance, and it took him a moment to realize that they probably belonged to none other than Sada's settlement. She had pointed east on the map when explaining where she lived, after all, and he had serious doubt about there being that many villages within walking distance of each other. There simply weren't enough people.

It was... weird to think about. There lived her whole world; her family, her friends, probably everything and everyone she had ever known. All in this little corner of the world near what would become one of the biggest metropolis on the planet millennia later, burying every trace of their existence under grass and stone and roads and labyrinthine sewers and finally concrete.

It's a lot to think about, for sure. Good to see this gets explored in his thoughts. You always do a great job at helping these characters feel real.

With a small frown, he turns his back to the smoke trails and walks away.

---

Turo didn't have to walk for long before he recognized the exact spot that Sada must have chosen. Those were some really big rocks, and really tall... they were more like giant slabs of stone, laying sideways in a triangular formation and creating three big slopes that made for a great vantage point. And right on top of one of them, there was Sada, sitting down with her back to him. Probably busy starting the campfire.

He smiled and started walking a bit faster, rustling the grass all around him.

« Hey!»

That made her jump around, in a way that wasn't too different from their first meeting. That time she had grabbed the spear and pointed it at him in a second; now she had immediately recognized his voice and waved at him with both arms.

Awww!! 🥰

She looked... excited. Well, Sada always looked excited about something, but this time she was even more excited than usual. Maybe she had discovered something else about the Proto-Miraidon?

« Turo!! Ah... come here! Quick!»

Nevermind, that wasn't just excited, she was euforic. There's something new about her appearance, and he noticed what looked like a wooden tube hanging from her waist. What was that?

It didn't look too different from one of those blowguns that people would use to hunt.

Sada doesn't run up to him this time, but she looked so impatient that he forced himself to speed up a little.

« Sit here! » she pretty much forced him to sit by the fire, still grinning all the while. He expected her to grab her notebook to show him something, but Sada took a couple of step backwards and grasped the object at her waist.

Ah he is going to summon the beastie!

When she brings it to her mouth he finally recognized it as a crude flute carved out of wood, and is left just more perplexed.

She wanted to play him something...?

« Watch. »

That is... nice, but he didn't think it would justify such a level of excitement...

Three long, piercing notes come out of the instrument, much stronger and clearer than he was expecting, giving him an involuntary jolt. He sits straighter now, waiting for Sada to keep playing, but she had already lowered the flute and was looking at the horizon.

There's a long moment of slightly awkward silence, only the tall grass rustling around them.

... wait, that was it?

That's hilarious!

« Umm...» he tried to get up, only for a deafening roar to suddenly fill the air all around them. It's strong enough to force Turo to cover his ears and squeeze his eyes shut, and unlike anything he's ever heard.

When he opened his eyes up again, squinting and with his ears still filled with a slight ringing noise, it's just in time to catch the sight of an enormous figure climbing the rock formation and rising up right behind Sada. Who is still turned towards him, hasn't noticed anything, doesn't even have her spear, why doesn't she even have her spear-

They say that when faced with mortal danger, people evolved to respond to it with either one of two fundamental actions: fight or flight.

In retrospect, Turo kind of wants to say that he fearlessly threw himself towards her to protect her, clutching the Master Ball as the only weapon he had and staring down the enormous scaled creature.

Sadly, Turo was firmly in the group of people that developed a third alternative to the fight or flight response. The one called "freeze in panic and do nothing".

Honestly, it's understandable. I really don't blame him and he really isn't used to danger like this.

To his credit, he did at least jump up and tried to grab Sada's arm to yank her towards him, away from the figure, but to his surprise - and confused terror-, she actually moves away from him, towards the towering scaly lizard-like beast, that...

That is not... attacking... her. In fact, it's actually letting her pet it, lowering its head and letting out a suspiciously familiar sounding purr.

Ooo! I love how you worked in the purr earlier and came full circle back around to it here! Neat!

It's... it's the Proto- Miraidon. The bipedal stance had thrown him off, since Miraidon either walked on all fours or simply floated, but it's undeniably the same creature of Sada's drawings.

His legs fail him and Turo slumped to the ground, still trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

Sada turned towards him, one hand still petting the Pokémon, looking so proud of herself.

Sada is so adorable! 🥰

« Ah... ahahah-» he couldn't help letting out a short, incredulous laugh.

Why wouldn't she be proud? People in her time were still barely figuring out how to approach Growlithes without getting barked at and here she was, taming an honest-to-Arceus dragon. What could you even say to that?

He slowly got up and took some hesitant steps towards the two, observing the Pokémon. It was much bigger than Miraidon and bulkier, pure raw muscle strenght compared to his counterpart's sleek and somewhat slithering figure.

« The name is Winged King.» Sada proudly announced by his side, making him pause and turn to look at her.

« Winged... ?» was it because of the feathers? Sure, they were pretty big, but didn't look able to make him fly, and surely didn't look like wings to him. As for the second word, he had never heard it before.

Ah, I guess the italics is to represent a word from her language that Turo doesn't understand yet?

... he really needed to give it a scientific name, even if just for the reports. Let's see, if Miraidon had been named after the Johtonese word for "future" when they had realized that Cyclizar would pretty much become a completely different Pokémon, then... something related to the past...?

He would have to think about it. For now, "Winged King" would work fine.

Meanwhile, Sada has been talking softly to the Pokémon, getting it to lay back down on all fours. And then, right as he was thinking that there was no way that she could top "convinced a Dragon Pokémon that's barely had contacts with humans to not kill me" in a single day, she mounted it.

Well... okay, she actually took a little running start and then jumped on its back, hanging on the feathered crest -ouch- before managing to seat herself on the Pokémon's broad back- Winged King growling a bit and shaking his head, scattering a couple of white and blue feathers all around.

Her technique definitely needed some work, he thought suppressing a smirk; but considering that she was, maybe, one of the first humans ever to do it? Nailed it.

So cool! I'm surprize he wasn't transfixed on the grace and athletic ability of her leap, especially considering the feelings he is forming for her.

He was still pretty amazed that the Pokémon seemed okay with it; it kept shaking its head and pawing at the ground, but when the girl didn't show any signs of letting go or jumping off, patting it's neck a couple of times and whispering something that he didn't quite understand, it just huffed and then started to move its head left and right, in a series of small, jittering motions that he recognized with some amazement.

That was exactly what Miraidon did when he tried to pretend that something wasn't bothering him, feigning indifference. How many little details like that had remained unchanged, from one species to another?

Sada broke him out of his amazed trance by patting the space left behind her on the Pokémon's back.

« Come! »

For once, Turo didn't hesitate.

Beautiful girl you're in love with asks you to come over there? Yeah, you're definitely going!

He walked to Winged King's side, boosted himself up by pushing against the Pokémon's back legs with one boot, and swung his leg over its back to seat himself right behind the girl, lab coat swishing around behind him - and pointedly reminding him of the Master Balls tucked deep in its pocket-.

Only when she turned to look at him strangely, one hand still half raised like she had been ready to help him up, did he realize what he had done.

Umm... shit.

He was so used to mounting Miraidon that his body had pretty much moved on autopilot. Should he have pretended to struggle a bit?

Well, it was too late now anyway.

Sada regarded him in silence for some excruciatingly long seconds, those bright, brilliant eyes narrowing and quickly scanning him up and down. Looking for some other detail she must have missed, some explanation, they stopped on his hands, his face, his legs. Turo pointedly held her gaze, feigning innocence.

«... let's go?» he offered, trying to keep his voice neutral.

I can't wait to see Sada's POV on this.

After another long moment, she just shook her head, exasperated, and turned back around to give a command to Winged King in her usual chipper fashion.

She must have noticed something and simply decided to not speak up about it.

Winged King growled and started to walk, walking down the natural ramp of the rock formation it had climbed just before. Sada held on to the spikes on the Pokémon's front legs, another detail that it already had in common with its descendants that amazed him, while Turo managed to kind of hang on by just tightening his grip around the Pokemon's sides with his legs, staying upright.

It wasn't that different from Miraidon, really... just a bit more rigid scales and feathers instead of smooth, metallic plates.

And then it started to sprint, and he had to immediately eat his words.

He let out a little yelp of surprise at the sudden speed boost and had to scramble for some purchase, grabbing onto Sada from behind by looping his arms around her stomach, which made her jolt and gasp in surprise.

YES!! 🥰

Winged King was speeding up, cutting a path through the tall grass, and his only thought at the moment was pretty much "Nope, it's not similar to Miraidon at all".

Miraidon's movements were... smooth, lithe and elegant, his paws not even touching the ground while he zipped forward like a bolt of lightning blitzing through the sky. But most importantly, his old partner's movement felt... controlled. Perfectly adapted and calibrated to ride with him, reading his slightest change in body language, thanks to millennia over millennia of evolution alongside humans.

Winged King's movements made it clear that he was accomodating no one but himself; he could feel the pure power behind every one of the Pokémon's strides, every kick of its legs. There was no reassuring buzz of electricity filling the air, just the sound of it's powerful claws tearing at the ground, its whole body moving up and down.

Winged King felt like riding a force of nature; you didn't control it, you just held on for the ride and hoped to not get thrown off.

Nice comparison here between the two!

But Sada, somehow, was managing it, leaning down to pat the Pokémon's neck and pointing in whatever direction she wanted it to go, in a series of signals she had to have developed herself.

The Pokémon seemed to take them more as suggestions than real orders, but still, it was listening to her.

And then, after another one's of Sada's commands, the Pokémon jumped up, climbed a tree to its highest point, then jumped off it and took off.

« IT FLIES?! » he couldn't help the scream that escaped him as they rose into the air, partially covered by Sada's ecstatic laughter.

Oh man, this is great!

How was it even flying? Those antennae even if extended couldn't be the only thing it was using to keep itself in the air, it didn't make any sense! Even Miraidon had to use his jet boosters to keep rising in altitude, and he floated magnetically.

Was it part flying type? Was it generating wind currents to fly??

The Pokémon flew in circles over the tree tops before slowly circling back down to the ground. It landed roughly, almost sending both humans directly pitching forward, and shook his head before growling.

Yeah, that's pretty cool how he has no idea how it flys and has to speculate.

Sada was the first to jump down, and she got something out of her bag that the Pokémon was quick to gobble up in a single bite.

Turo got down a bit more slowly, still in a bit of a daze over the fact that it just flew.

Sada regarded him with a radiant smile, the little moment of tension between them from before already forgotten - or at least, that's what he hoped.

Ooo a radiant smile! 🥰

« Did you see?! We were flying! » she breathed out.

« Yes... »

His enthusiasm must have evidently not matched hers in intensity, because she grabbed both his hands with hers, jumping up and down.

« FLYING Turo, like birds! I can... we can... move so much faster. We can explore so much more now!»

She has a point. That is not just interesting, that is revolutionary. She might even be the first human to have ever flown!

she was talking much more excitedly now, much faster, and he missed some bits and pieces, but he still understood enough for her words to tug at his heartstrings. Of course... of course that would be the first thing she would think of...

« We can... go to your people ? » she added after a moment, looking up at him. Hopefull. Excited. Beautiful.

Yeah!!! 🥰

His breath caught in his chest.

Turo forced himself to slowly extricate his hands from hers. He lowered his eyes to the ground, he didn't want to see that excitement slowly disappear from her eyes, the light in them die and get replaced with disappointment. He slipped both hands into the lab coat's pockets, as if to hide them from her. Out of sight, out of reach.

« My people are... far, far away. »

He unconsciously gripped one of the Master Balls in his left pocket.

« We... can't go. »

He knows that answer like these must frustrate her so much, because how can't you simply not go somewhere, but how could he even start to explain to her how impossibly far away he actually lives from her?

Dang, I wonder how she is going to take this? 😬

He simply can't, that's it.

Sada went silent, for the first time since he's met her looking somewhat angry at him.

But mostly disappointed.

Ugh, that would be the WORST!

Turo sighed, looking around, anywhere that was not her. His eyes happened to land east again. Towards her village. Her people.

« I... » he said slowly, hesitantly.

It would be risky. He would have to be careful. But... really, if she could never meet his, getting to know her people was the least he could do. He could... document who they were. Who they had been. So that at least some trace that they had existed would be left behind. That was what his whole job was for after all, right?

« Can I... come... to your people? »

He watched her eyes widen in surprise.

« R... really? »

Nice save, Turo.

He nodded, and was rewarded by the biggest smile he had ever seen on her, her whole face practically glowing - and then she jumped up and hugged him, throwing her arms around his neck, and he is left petrified with a mix of fear and excitement and oh her hair is so soft and tickling his neck and he has no idea what to do should he hug her back and not stand there like an idiot should he kiss her fuckhereallywantsto-

YEAAAAHHH!!!

Thankfully Sada let go only a couple of seconds later -even if they felt like an eternity to him- and gently took his hand, or at least his arm.

« Let's go!»

... wait. Wait a moment.

She gently tugged him along, already starting to explain something, and he is left stumbling behind her.

... he didn't mean right now.

Uh... oopsies!

Closing thoughts:
Oh man Neko. It's getting good! ITS GETTING GOOOOOOD! I'm looking forward to the next chapter!! As for the chapter title for this, I guess it is based on Turo going to the moon. Anyway, I'll be back soon for the next chapter!

 

[Flyg0n]

Spoiler: 40

he was preparing a small sandwich for himself at the table near the small kitchen.

I think two uses of small here feels awkward. Probably can drop one, or find another description for one. I might drop the sandwhich one myself

« Can I ask you something?» he said.

« You just did.» Dad's tone was dry, but his lips barely moved upwards as he said it.

Turo stop tormenting your son with your dry sarcasm adorable

grown-ups didn't get scared, right?

No of course not Arven! Not ever! Yay

« Oh.... oh. That.» Dad covered his face

It took me a second hah, but then I realized what he was actually scared of lol

« ... you actually noticed that? Well done.» he said, and Arven felt his chest burst with pride. It always made him so happy when Mom and Dad praised him. Because if everyone said that they were super smart, then if they praised him that meant he was also super smart, right?

Awwww <3. Arven is so precious

Terapagrapes

dying at this. I like that the first word that he can think to combine it with is food

Key-Key

ohmg he calls them Key Key??? Thats so precious

They were just curious! So the Pokémon shared their berries with the tribe, and the tribe never attacked them again as thanks for their help, and this way they survived the harsh winter. And this is why to this day, Snover are still curious about humans and will gather to look at us up in the mountains. »

I love this story, its so sweet and cute.

Mom did that sometimes: she would look at you but not really, like she was looking at something really, really far away. Dad did it too, but not as much as Mom. He usually got that same look when looking at the sky at night.

At last we can resume our work on the Tera Project!
We'll move our research to the Zero Lab this month.
The strong influence of the crystals makes our experiments much more unstable."

she said as an answer to his questioning glare.

I think glare feels weird here? 'Glare' tends to come across to me as harsh. I'd personally opt for 'look'.

The Hadron energy coursing through it sounded so much like Mirai, it broke his heart.

And my heart ☹️

Fortunately, he had a very quick way to know for sure what the opponent's type was right now.

He addressed the Porygon.

« Use Conversion.»

This is such a cool and clever tactic

but those that had come from the Iron Thornd glittered in a rainbow of colours.

typo here- Also this must be... terastalization? This display of it is super cool

Instead, he realised after a moment that the light was coming from Sada's Pokémon. The Golett grew until it towered over both Pokémon, almost scraping the ceiling with its head

OOOOOOOO

« Strong treasure!»

😭

... Had Miguel really wanted to evolve? Or had both Pokémon felt pushed to do it?

Auuuggghhhh. I swear I feel like a commented on this ages ago. but. my heart

He exchanged a glance with Sada, pointing once to Miguel, the Sandy Shocks, then to her. He twirled his left index finger in the air, tracing a circle.

She stared at him for a moment, before understanding and letting out a small grin.

I love when characters can communicate without words in just a few gestures!

but then went back to demanding pets, shuffling closer.

he just wants pets,,, aw. Poor Miguel.

« You were always strong. » he whispered, pulling the Honchkrow close.

« ... Thank you. You really helped.»

STOP MY HEART CANT TAKE THIS

Now it was barely crackling, the golem's great shoulders slumped forward. Slowly, like it was extremely scared of every small step it took (and they probably were), the Pokémon sat down.

Man this is. so good and sad all at once. Lovely mix of bittersweet.

« What if-» Sada said. « It's not actually changing? What if those Pokémon simply have a different Tera type? A type... that holds all types inside it?»

Sada is so freakin brilliant. she's on top of it.

I still don't quite understand what the connection between Terastalization and.... "Time warping" is. It's just such a... random set of powers for a Pokémon to have, no matter how powerful.»

Yeah I don't think the Game Freak writers knew either, dont worry about it Sada.

This chapter starts with adorableness then took my heart out of my chest and played basketball with it. Some big progression here with finally reaching the underdepths and discovering Stellar tera-type. Also we get our first proper Arven POV and it is precious. I want to squish his little cheeks. The prose really captured the 5 yr old energy well imo. Not too smart but not a babbling idiot, I love it.

I did catch myself feeling if the Arven bit could have potentially been its own chapter? It does stand on its own pretty strong. It would be short but it could work. Food for thought I suppose.

Onto the main bit, man, I am a huge sucker for crisis evos and I loved these. I actually don't think I've ever seen a crisis evo feel so... bittersweet? It's really interesting and also inspired an idea for me. Having them be established as not wanting to evolve but then needing to to protect their trainers made it very heart wrenching.

I'm glad though that there's a flicker of hopeas well, with ways they can find new happiness in their evolutions. Miguel will really be able to do a lot more in battle, and Otzi will get his rooftop garden.

Also we're seeing more and more hints of elements from canon with the journals, which is nerve wracking and exciting and very . Can't wait to see how those elements come into play.

Spoiler: 41

He was not wearing his "lab-coot"

dying. lab coot. I love it.

But that's... ages! Older than you, Dad!»

as every kid knows, adults are ancient

« I'm... Not even forty... »

Sorry Turo, 40 is the new 70

« Well, I would wish for Jirachi to be my friend, or that they don't have to sleep so much!» he said.

Awww Arven is such a good and precious bean

« Maybe to see home again?»

Dad said it in a really low voice as Mom nodded, and Arven looked between the two of them, somewhat confused.

« But... we are at home.

« It's just... I'm scared. The future scares me now...because I know it, and I'm in it. So... it can't change. I'm sure it can't. »

I'm scared too 🫥

I can't blame poor Turo here, its a mind numbing thought

She felt a pull and air rushed around her as she felt herself fall backwards. She braced herself with one arm, but instead of the cold, dry stone she had been standing on, she suddenly felt her hand plunge into water. She righted herself and rose back up, blinking and meeting Turo's similarly confused gaze. He was holding one hand to his chest, eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration.

oh boy things are a happenin

« ... Heath?» she asked once she found her voice again.

the man the myth the legend has appeared...

« .... why not make two books?»

Oh boy. Our first sort of paradox loop here... giving Heath the idea to write two books...

« What if we... find a way to point this energy waves where we want, or to amplify it... it's still Tera energy in the end, right? What if we could...» she was almost afraid to say it out loud, as if putting it into words would make that very possibility disappear in front of her eyes.

« What if we could use it to... connect this place to our times. To home.» what if instead of the lake that smelled of sulfur she could have Terapagos send her to her village. Not to leave permanently! Just... for a little bit. Just a little visit.

Oh but I feel this so much I wish this could be true for them. I want it to be. It sucks not being able to go home at all.

Sada, on the other hand, felt light as a feather, as if she was floating.

« We could tell Arven everything. We could make a place here where the best parts of all different time periods could co-exist-»

A Paradise., perhaps,

« ... I want to not always feel like we are lying to Arven.»

It would truly be a Paradise

uh oh

« We'll bring some Pokémon from our times here. Two very special Pokémon that we know exactly where they are.»

YES PLEASE tho. I've been waiting for these guys to come back into the fic, I hope its soon!

a bit pitifull

I think pitiful has one 'L'

Oh man this chapter gets more Arven and more spice. I am really enjoying this increased Arven POV bits. The Jirachi comet is very sweet and tender moment, and also works great as a segue into the next bit, as Sada reflects on what she would wish for. Its also a lovely tender bonding moment between them. I like how perceptive Arven is even at his young age, as kids tends to be. He doesn't know everything but he can recognize that there's more to his mom and dad than they sometimes say. I'm sure that'll only intensify as he gets older.

Then we get another glimpse of some terapagos time travel shenanigans and creating loops. I'm super excited to see where exactly this leads, especially the time travel bits. The games were... doing their own thing lol, but there's so much more depth and exploration in this fic that I'm very excited.

Also I like the underlying dread and suspense. The danger and allure of what they want to do. For me this is far more compelling than even the games, because they have a very good reason to want to go back. I liked the bits of tension from Turo and the elation and unease we see from Sada. And the hints towards the what if's - if this one encounter had gone a little worse, a little different, then Arven would be an orphan.

I do find myself wondering how Clavell and like, Larry and Jacq are doing. Unless I missed it as I read they're not mentioned in the text at all? I know Sada and Turo are working on their projects but I think a sentence or two mentioning stuff with them would be neat. I think the last time we saw Clavell was when Arven was 2, at the start of chapter 39?

Not a critically huge problem though, there's plenty to focus on here!

Spoiler: 42

Chapter 42: Somewhere not here​

????, ???? Era​

Oohohoho I remember this a bit, this is gonna be good.

As they tentatively walked back down the mountains they had suddenly found themselves on, Chalo gripped her bow tight.

hesitantly might work more effectively here? Also yay for Chalo POV! I'm glad that characters from different times are still coming back to play parts.

where do you thing they are from?»

*think

I didn't knew there

*know

Chalo shook her head: she couldn't get distracted.





She forced herself to look away from all the people busy talking, laughing and eating to approach the boy again. Now... How could she ask him that she was looking for someone?

I think maybe the spacing here got too wide? Unless maybe that was on purpose.

Also maybe 'tell' reads smoother?

local legend of the Loyal Tree!»

three

The wrestling champion from Unima

Is this... Unova..? Ah Okay i googled it, it is heh.

« The misterious

*Mysterious

The two opponents- which she was going to call

Personally I'd replace 'was going to call' with 'decided to call' but thats up to you

« Would you... like to...»


« Marry into your tribe? Oh, absolutely not.»


He looked absolutely crestfallen, and she quickly added.


« Because you're obviously marrying into mine.»

AWWW YAY

Professor Sada, from Paldea! Did... did Chalo know her?

NOOOOO YOU JUST MISSED HER NOOOO

Man I feel like all my commentary ended up being nitpicking tiny errors, sorry! I swear I really liked this chapter hah.

I attribute that to getting especially wrapped up in the new POV though. Going to Kitakami is such a cool and fitting idea aaahhhh. Love that there was a little Carmine and Kieran cameo and then an entire cool ceremonial fight. The new POV was done super well. A good balance between making details clear to the audience while showing how Chalo and Ruato don't know this new place.

The fight was quite good, I found it quite clear in the actions described. I could follow the flow and the moves used and it made sense. Also its pretty funny that they just got roped into this lol. Did the people who were supposed to be in the demonstration get sick that day or something lol?

Also I saw you were worried about trying to make Chalo feel different from Sada and I think that comes through pretty well! Chalo isn't really asking all kinds of questions or trying to figure anything out, she feels a lot more go with the flow mixed with staying on the mission. I'm sure if Sada were here she'd be trying to analyze everything, try all the foods and see all the new pokemon, heh.

Speaking of Sada, noooo they just missed her. I wonder if this "ghost story" will get passed around at all and make its way back to Sada hah.