Aishitemasu [愛してます] (A Gladion x Reader Story)

Chapter 21

See, I told you I had an explanation...
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        "Gladion, you aren't supposed to be in here. Mother will worry you again," Lillie said from the open lab door.

           "She should know that I'd come back here today of all days. I'm not leaving any time soon. If she really wants me to say out, then she'd clean the room out," Gladion muttered.

          "You know you'd never let her do that. Are you going to visit the alter later on today?" Lillie spoke.

           "Of course I am. I always do," Gladion said to which Lillie nodded and left him in solitude. It had been a whole year since Gladion had found out about (y/n)'s disappearance and he hadn't been in her lab since that day until now.

       He'd kept his promise to his mother to stop searching but he'd always waited for her return, going to visit the alter of the moon with Lunala to see if she would ever show up.

        At the moment, he was looking over some pictures that he'd gathered over the years. (Y/n) really hadn't changed as much as he'd thought she did but she most certainly had some new interests that he hadn't known about.

        She was very much interested in ultraspace travel and unlocking the extent of any psychic pokémon's psychic abilities. She loved pokémon so much that she wanted to know everything about them.

         In one of her videos, he'd heard her mention wanting to become a pokémon professor that specialized in researching psychic pokémon and their connection to ultraspace since Lunala, Solgaleo, and Necrozma were all psychic type pokémon. Gladion had even gone to try to communicate with Neroza but the pokémon only spoke to (y/n) according to others.

       Gladion set the photos aside and wiped away the few tears that he hadn't noticed were there until just then. He stood up from (y/n)'s chair and left (y/n)'s lab. He'd be going to visit the alter of the moon a bit early.

         As he made his way to Aether's main floor, alarms in the building began to go off. This didn't happen often and for a moment, Gladion wondered if Moon had actually come back like she'd said. He didn't worry though. He had no doubt that Lunala and Solgaleo would be able to handle it this time since they'd both been training with Sun.

       Despite that, he still had to make sure that the threat wasn't too much of a problem in case it wasn't actually Moon. To his dismay, Gladion found the disruption to be Neroza. The psychic type pokémon had escaped and was headed away from the island. How Neroza had gotten past the specialized contained facilities' security was a mystery but it had been done.

        "Gladion, Neroza is heading to the alter of the moon!" Lillie said as she ran up to him.

       "What? How do you know that?" Gladion asked. They had to almost shout in order to hear each other over the noise of the alarms and commotion.

          "Neroza told me so but through telepathy. Neroza found (y/n) but needs Lunala or Solgaleo's power to be able to get to where she is in ultraspace!" Lillie said.

         "How was Neroza able to tell you all of that? You just left from where I was!" Gladion said in slight disbelief.

        "I told you, telepathy, now let's go before we miss it!" Lillie said as she took hold of Gladion's arm and pulled him along towards the exit. He followed after her and was quite surprised when Solgaleo showed up in front of them after traveling through an ultra wormhole.

          Lillie didn't hesitate to climb onto Solgaleo's back and she waited for Gladion to do the same, which he did. Solgaleo opened another ultra wormhole that led straight to the alter of the moon where Lunala and Sun were waiting.