Pokemon Max: Final Showdown

Ch: 41 Part 2 Opening

Ch. 41 Part 2 Opening

I knew it was coming. Recently, they had been struggling to come out, but I knew I had one coming now. After landing a few more punches, I couldn't help myself.

"You know, you guys have a pretty crappy job, I must say. You do random science stuff, get your asses kicked by us about every Tuesday, and then probably don't even get any good time to play Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever it is you nerds do. I mean seriously, what profits do you guys get? I bet people make more money selling hot dogs in the street or something like-"

"Todd, SHUT UP!" Adrian yelled at me. His anger at my personality had resurfaced more in the past few months, and he wasn't exactly hiding it.

"Oh come on, they love it!" I called back. I pointed to a guy I had just hit in the crotch. "You like my jokes, right?" He groaned.

I punched him in the face. "Trust me, on the inside, he's laughing his head off." 

It had been almost four months since the day we stopped a Christmas apocalypse (don't ask). Since then, we had really been getting things down. I smiled as I watched the rest of my team. Joey, who had made a few...errors in judgement recently, seemed totally at home when fighting. He performed a flip kick, and, using his Hitmontop balance and speed, continued with a rapid spinning kick while upside down. Taylor had certainly gotten used to things since she had found out she was one of us, too. She cloaked her hands in flames, and began taking down robots with Combusken punches. Nelly had gotten even faster, and with it came a little extra power too. Adrian, well, at least he wasn't killing anyone. Yet.

And Harper. Harper, well, she...didn't seem to be getting stronger. She refused to accept outside help or to talk about it (Prinplup side of her personality, there). In fact, she had almost become more distant than Adrian. I was worried about her.

"Man, what am I gonna do..." I muttered to myself.

"Well, you could try-" Without looking, I connected a wicked punch to the face of the guy behind me. He fell silent and dropped like a rock.

I heard a beeping on my comm system. I heard Doc's voice in my ear.

"Todd, is everything going alright? Todd?"

I snapped myself out of my self induced trance and spoke into the comm. "Yeah. Sorry, a little distracted."

"Alright. I need you to clear things up there and get back as soon as you can. There's something I need your help with."

"No problem. We'll be back as soon as we can."

After actually finishing up business, we quickly went back. When I asked her what was up, she was busy looking at a computer screen. She turned to us. She didn't look happy.

"Is...there a problem?" I asked after a moment.

"Well, I have just been studying the border between the worlds, and found that our world is in the midst of a paradox. A time paradox, to be specific." I winced just a little. I hoped this wasn't getting at what I thought it was.

"You see, I found strange traces of a time travel force at Celebi's location. Not unusual, until I found out that residual traces of it were all over town. I then did some more investigation. I found traces across a vast area of Florida. I put two and two together and determined these were all coming from places Todd has been to recently." She looked me head on. "Perhaps there's something you'd like to tell us, Todd?"

"Uh, bad sandwich?"

"Todd..."

"Okay, okay..." I sighed. "I may have gone back in time to change something. I thought it would be better off that way! But when I came back, everything was wrong, people were dying, and I found Doc and got her to help me find Celebi and go back. I stopped myself from changing things, and I went back home and everything was fine, really."

There was silence.

"Todd, this is SERIOUS! You recklessly went back in time and CHANGED REALITY! You could have trapped yourself in a timeline where you could NEVER get things back to normal!"

Joey suddenly cleared his throat.

"I...I think he might have." He said slowly.

Gee, thanks man.

"I...I was at that banquet. I...I was in the bathroom when everything happened. As I was coming out of a stall, I saw two people in the bathroom talking. I stopped and tried to listen. I didn't hear anything, but I did see that when they were done talking, weird portal things opened behind them, and they walked in and disappeared."

I was starting to realize that there was actually some problems.

"I was really distracted by all that, and I only just noticed that the gas was getting in. I tried to get out in time, and I thought I did, I guess I just...didn't."

I hung my head. "Oh boy."

"Todd. Can I speak to you for a minute?" Doc asked.

She pulled me into another room.

"Todd, this is very serious. What you did pulled that child into this...this insanity that we live in. I know you tried to keep things from getting worse, but you shouldn't have done it in the first place. What did you even want to do on that night?"

I sighed, and explained everything to her, leaving out the part about us being dead in that timeline.

She was silent for a moment, then replied, "Todd, it's amazing that you would try to do that for her. But sometimes things are the way they were meant to be."

"I know. But I-"

Suddenly, a loud alarm sounded. Doc's face quickly became serious.

"So, I guess that's not the microwave." I commented as she rushed out.