Ash's Story (Part 5: Modern Sinnoh)

Chapter 75: Reverse Side

The portal did not feel like falling. It felt like the world had forgotten which direction falling belonged to. One moment Spear Pillar shook beneath my shoes, and the next I was floating through darkness with Pikachu pressed against my chest and Lillie's hand locked around mine.

Then the ground arrived sideways.

I landed on a stone platform that hung in empty space. The sky, if it could be called a sky, folded above and below us at the same time. Water flowed upward along distant walls. Rocks drifted without falling. Paths twisted into places that my eyes could see but my feet did not understand.

Lillie steadied herself beside me and looked into the impossible distance. "I never thought we would come here again."

"Yeah," I said, turning toward Dia. "Last time, we came because someone trapped Gina here and did not let her return to our world."

Dia shivered so badly that Palmer had to touch his shoulder. "I said I was sorry."

Palmer looked pale too. "This place remembers things I wish it would forget."

Cynthia stood near the edge of the platform, her coat moving even though there was no wind. "This place has no ordinary Pokémon presence. Time is not flowing, and space is not stable. A world where rules are broken. One might call it the Distortion World."

Dawn hugged Piplup close. "How are we supposed to walk through a place that does not know what walking means?"

Piplup's meaning came small but stubborn. "We walk anyway, because Dawn is holding me."

Mom looked at every floating path before looking back at me. Her face was calm, but I knew that calm was work. "Then we stay close."

Cynthia pointed toward a slab drifting below us. "We need to find Giratina. If this world remains joined to Spear Pillar, the distortion may spread through Sinnoh."

A dark stone shifted when we stepped on it, carrying us to a lower platform without crossing the space between. Dawn looked back at where we had been, now somehow above and behind us.

"Maybe because we entered near Mt. Coronet, the layout is different from last time," Dawn said. "Instead of going up, we are going down."

Mom nodded slowly. "Cynthia, what do you know about Giratina?"

Cynthia's eyes followed a waterfall that poured into the air and disappeared. "The legend of Giratina has been forgotten except by a few. It speaks of a world on the reverse side of ours. Why this world exists, and why Giratina lives here alone, remains unclear."

I glanced at Mom. "Should we tell her the full truth? Cynthia is part of Team Alpha."

Mom shook her head gently. "Cynthia prefers to discover truth by standing in front of it. Let her reach it with her own eyes."

Cynthia turned as if she had heard enough to know we were holding something back, but she did not press. "For now, answers matter less than direction. We split only when the path forces us to, and we call out before stepping onto anything that moves."

The first moving path dropped beneath us before anyone could answer. Probopass came out when the stone began cracking under the pressure of two different gravity pulls. Its little Nosepass units spun around it, trying to read magnetic lines that did not behave like lines at all.

"Probopass, can you stabilize it?" I called.

Probopass lowered itself against the slab. The stone trembled, then pulsed with golden-brown energy from below.

Probopass's meaning came deep and patient. "Earth still has memory, even when the world turns it upside down."

"Use Earth Power!" I called.