Love in the Time of Tribulations

Chapter 20: A Difference

And so Sun and Moon begins. I hope you all enjoyed that first episode. In any case, with the games coming out stateside tomorrow, I still hope you'll find the chance to carve out some time to read and review this story! I also hope you enjoy those games! For now, however, let's read Chapter 20!

Chapter 20

A Difference

"I started out as a very simple man interested in the legends and ruins of the world. It was a hobby, though I'm sure that story sounds all too familiar to you, doesn't it, Jack?" Michael's hand pulled back as he reached forward and began lightly pressing buttons with his other hand. Seeing that, Ash ran towards the man, only to be stopped by a sudden Dragon Pulse that struck the ground in front of him, leaving it smoking.

"Of course it does," Jack answered. Ash tossed a look to his father, who was briefly looking at Latias before returning to gaze at Michael, himself having finished pressing buttons, ending on a large green one. Michael turned to them with a tiny grin that was growing larger. "You and I both know we came to know each other and bonded over our similar pasts...or what I thought were similar pasts."

"What does any of this have to do with anything?" Ash asked angrily. Lights within the cables were pulsing with a sudden, red, angry glow and the Weapon, now a pearlescent crystal rose slightly through the air. "Greninja, use Water Shuriken on the Weapon! Noivern, Boomburst!"

"Gren!" Greninja cried, clasping at his side and sending the rotating water blades at the large bloom that was erected. Noivern, too, sent bursts of sound at it. Michael and Hydreigon made no move to stop them as the attacks reached near the surface and bounced off it harmlessly.

"What...?" Ash gasped out, surprised that they'd done nothing.

"Then I met a woman who embodied every single part of her name on the Rhyhorn Racing track. We married and had a beautiful daughter, Serena. I'd imagine that was the moment the course of my life and this world's Michael veered terribly off course," Michael explained, pulling the key out of the console and tucking the now repaired key into his pocket. "See, before I had met Grace, I found these old broken fragments detailing something. I had no idea at the time, but it was like an obsession that overtook me. Shortly after Serena was born, I left to find the truth of it. I did keep in contact with Grace, however. Letters every once in a while, but it was enough to know about Serena.

"And that was when I found it, nestled deep in a cave called Turnback Cave in Sinnoh," he continued again. Ash shifted his feet, wanting to attack the man and his Hydreigon right away, but the look on Jack's face precluded this, as if he wanted to know the truth. "Perhaps it was by chance, the unstable air causing a cave in that pointed me towards it while your world's Michael was spared from that. What I found, however, was a portal, formed by a tear in the dimensions. I had no idea what was behind it but I had a burning desire to know the truth, so I entered...and came out in Turnback Cave, in this world."

"So what? That has nothing-" Ash said, but his words died when Michael held up a hand, like he was commanding Ash to let him keep talking.

"Imagine my surprise to find a world that was almost similar to my own down to the blades of grass or the breeze that rustled my hair. I thought I had discovered the secret for the ages and a great new possibility seemed to come to me. What if those broken fragments weren't broken in this world? Turned out, they were whole. And that's when everything became all too clear."

"The connection between the worlds," Jack said simply. "And the world's history."

"Yes. I learned of all those little connections and how one by one each world would be destroyed...because of this one. Because of AZ's foolishness three thousand years ago that caused the world to break. That's the only reason that the portals formed, after all. That's the only reason we were so linked. Learning the truth at the time, though, I couldn't believe it."