Ding…

In a remote corner of the plumbing district, a bizarre sight happened, not that anyone saw it per se. A pale blue orb formed mid-air, hovering about a meter of the ground as it flickered in and out of existence.

It started pulsating lightly as the energy began to fade away, the orb growing more and more transparent with each pulse, the time jump was failing and was aiming to try again at another point in time. Suddenly the energy spiralled in on itself, solidifying, growing darker in colour as it formed into an icosahedron rather than a smooth circle.

It then pulsed, just once, in a dark navy blue wave of energy, a faint roar echoing out as it pulsed.

A moment after a single pokemon tumbled out, trying to land on her feet Celeste tripped, her left foot twisting slightly, sending her off balance and left her tumbling into a suspiciously full pile of garbage bags.

Once Celeste had landed successfully in the set point of time, the portal having completed its mission dispersed its remaining energy, fading away leaving no evidence it had even existed.

Cel groaned as she tried to extract herself from the pile of trash she had fallen into, slipping on discarded berry skins that were rotting and slimy. Lucky for me its a food pile, probably for a Muk or Garbodor judging by the size, shouldn't stick around though, they don't like other pokemon messing around in their food, she thought to herself having extracted herself successfully out of the pile, brushing off the worse of the rubbish.

Once satisfied she had got the worst of it all off, she started to float into the air, changing back into her natural form, her human body and clothes dissolving into a moat of white light. The dimensional technology stored the clothes into a cleaning module in her backpack, washing, drying and then readying the fabric for a moments notice, should she require to return to human form.

The ditto bodysuit instead flowed back into the bracelet attachment all pokemon have somewhere on their body. It was the storage area for the ditto suit while it was not in use; it acted similar to mega stones in a way. She did have an emergency set of clothes in her ditto bracelet if needed, but the backpack allowed for more range of clothing and washing.

Hoopla tech is always so handy; she thought to herself, now no taller than a meter, she reached around grabbing her backpack off her back. She paused momentarily after noticing the USB stick she still had held in one hand, one small problem of time jumping was that it could take your mind some time to catch up after jumping. The memories started to return, one by one, a steady trickle that started from the beginning.

Memories of her first-ever time jump slipped back into her head, that particular jump had landed her in the middle of a massive celebration festival for the new year. She wasn't expecting to find the city immediately after jumping, so it came to be a surprise seeing the celebrations.

A new memory slipped in, nudging that memory out of the way, showing her the first time she met Vaal, drinking at a water type bar in the plumbing district. Then she remembered meeting a Quagsire called Bunker and the rest of the Rangers, how they had chased her down and interrogated her, a legendary suddenly appearing in the city wasn't exactly welcome it seemed. They were shocked to discover that the city didn't exist in any history books, as if it had vanished from the records of history itself. In retrospect, that should have been the first warning that something wasn't right. They let her go after they were sure she was just a tourist, not a spy or anything of that calibre.

She had broken into a smile as she remembered her adventures around the city, having fun at the amusement park, watching plays, going for drunken activities with Vaal. She giggled, before laughing, tears forming in the corner of her eyes, tears of joy at the memory of Vaal's awkward first meeting of the parents with his new girlfriend in tow.

That was the end of the pleasant memories as the memories of war being declared burst forward. The city was breaking down due to civil war, the other cities sieging the walls, the legendaries breaking the siege, destroying the city sector by sector, killing anyone they got in their way. The tears had now turned to ones of sorrow, her face dropping as the bad memories hit hard, she broke down, sobbing into her backpack as she clenched it against her, floating above the ground. The shock and realisation of her situation were hitting her at that moment.

Her friends were counting on her, but where were they now? When she needed them most, they were entirely out of reach. She started to consider if it would be worth jumping back and dragging Vaal back with her, she needed someone there for her right now.

She had a mission, something important, but the importance of it all was digging into her. The knowledge that she had failed once was a significant factor in that, the guilt of failing the people she had fallen in love with, the city she tried to save.

It was standing in front of her, wholly pristine, no flames, no explosions, no destroyed buildings. There was a vast disparity between her last memories of the city she had seen. It was all adding up, little things like missing drinks with Vaal, the home-cooked meals that his mother cooked for them, the stories the rangers had, the sun sets, the people of the city, everything. A tidal wave of despair, loss and anguish washed over her.

Even if she succeeded, everyone and everything she knew would no longer exist. But she could still save them, in a way, by making sure they never had to die in the first place, but that was a difficult thing to happen, the legendaries were going to use the Shiny incident as a reason to destroy the city. That had already occurred over 30 years further back, and she had no idea when it all started, so she couldn't stop it FROM starting.

Even if she did jump back before it began anyway, who would believe her that such a thing was happening or would ever happen, also if she could jump back close enough to the starting point anyway, she still didn't know when she was.

That thought broke her out of her sorrow, albeit briefly anyway. She would have to deal with it all later, but right now, she had things to do.

First of, where and WHEN did she end up landing, legendaries live much longer lives undoubtedly. Still, she didn't want to wait for any longer than ten years before the events she needed to change first started happening, not when she could simply try another time jump anyway. She suspected she would need to anyway, having concentration broken just before the end of the time jump probably meant she had been thrown off target quite a bit.

Her first-ever time jump was aiming for about 400 to 410 years into the past from her current point in time. That was were the earliest recorded talk and rumours of Prosperity city began to circulate, after a hundred years it had become an established legend, pokemon would often talk about legends of the great city, filled with riches many pokemon became explorers. They would search for the lost riches and proof the city had existed in the first place.

Over the next 200 years, very little of the city was discovered; supposedly, it had been found at one point in time, but it only turned out to be a hoax. A ploy to raise more interest in the legend, to make money from it selling relics and art salvaged from a city of legend and myth.

Celeste had grown up hearing the stories and started to wonder what the city was actually like, and what it would be like to be the one to discover it. The Stories and rumours of Prosperity fueled a desire to explore in the young pokemon. Something that was further encouraged by her parents, her father was an adventurer himself, so was delighted when he heard his daughter wanted to become an explorer when she grew up.

So, fueled by her curiosity and desired to find the lost city, Celeste gathered her supplies, her backpack and a couple of high tech items to make her travel easier. Against the advice of her parents, she performed a solo time jump back in history in search of fame and discovery.

Time jumping was typically the last resort when it came to time travel as multiple time jumping would lead to a condition known as chronological displacement. This was where the body and mind would be split apart across time itself, typically leading to instant death as the mind could not survive without a body and a body without a working mind? It was a vegetable.

So unless she had to, she wouldn't be doing any more time jumps unless she needed too.

Hardening her resolve, she tilted her head upwards, looking towards the sky. The sky was bright blue with a large amount of cloud cover. It wasn't enough to rain but still blocked out some of the suns rays. Looking back down at her now tear-stained backpack she opened it up and searched through it looking for her camo suit. This tight bodysuit used the same method as Kecleon's to vanish; the outfit would actively match the surroundings, turning the wearer invisible.

The only problem with the suit is that it was highly advanced for the period of history meaning if damaged, it couldn't be repaired for another 200 plus years, so using it for combat or any situation that would lead to a fight was a no go.

However, she did have other disguises ready for when she needed to buy supplies, but they would have come out later.

Grabbing hold of a small black cylinder, she pulled it out of her backpack and placed it against the bracelet; the bracelet scanned the cylinder before opening a miniature slot, just big enough to set the cylinder into.

Setting the cylinder into the slot, the bracelet shone brightly as a black material spread out over her body, covering her from head to toe. Once it covered her whole body, it turned transparent, rendering her invisible with the added benefit of preventing her scent from emanating from her body, an advantage when trying to watch in secret, a lot of pokemon had a perfect sense of smell.

Floating up with wings outstretched out she climbed steadily up above the walls of the buildings, after about 15 seconds she broke free of the concrete towers into the clear fresh air of the morning. She continued to float up for another 50 feet before plateauing to look around.

Looking around, she could see the vast concrete jungle with large grey towers that were spewing out large plums of pure white smoke, no, steam.

"Plumbing district, then, on the border between them and the power district..." Cel spoke lifelessly, eyes dull without their natural shine. She had to duck down as a Pelipper courier flew directly at her, being invisible had flaws after all. However, the Pelipper had come past at the perfect time.

Okay, that takes care of where, now when I am I, she thought as she accelerated towards the Pelipper, the pokemon in question wore a cap on his head and a brown handbag wrapped around his belly. A bag on his back likely contained post and parcels. Cel was more interested in the handbag, or rather the newspapers that were inside of it.

Using psychic she pulled out a single newspaper roll, grabbing it before darting back down into the covers of the buildings to find somewhere to read it in peace. The Pelipper just flew on, headphones in his ears he was in a world of his own.

Cel perched down on the street level. She ducked behind some bins before unrolling the newspaper, looking at the date and the headlines.

29th of September 6757

Times of Prosperity

Flame triad cause widespread destruction in Ice triad territory!

The Ice triad is on the back foot in a territory dispute with the Fire triad attacking key businesses and strongholds relating to the Ice triad. Glacier passage has been closed off by police due to excessive amounts of damage done to the surrounding roads and buildings. Damage done is suspected to be caused by illegal use of a lava plume move, police are investigating. They are looking for eyewitnesses trying to find the identity of the pokemon that used the move—more details on page 4.

In other news, city mayor Castellon Silverwing is retiring in the following week, with his public elected successor Dumont Everstone will take office later this week. The general population hope that he can bring a level of stability over the triads—more details on page 10.

Miss Bela Nightgale has released a new trailer for her latest film…

Oh, it looks like I snagged a triad paper, Ciel noted in her mind as her eyes skimmed over the various images, words and adverstisements. Something on the paper was nagging her in the back of her mind like she had missed something important.

"Look, it's a floating paper!" Cel was interrupted from reading the newspaper, a natural form Piplup was pointing towards Cel with one flipper and pulling her parent, a natural form Empoleon that had a rather fed up look on its face. Cel couldn't tell the pokemon's gender in natural form and didn't want to assume it.

The Empoleon followed the child's flipper and saw the paper, and it was indeed floating mid-air, in his eyes. Cel needed to make a distraction to get away so decided to use psychic to move the paper.

Focusing on the paper, she willed it to float towards the Piplup, the paper complied, dancing up and down towards the now mystified Piplup. The Empoleon, now having worked out it was probably just a psychic pokemon playing a trick, chuckling he allowed his son to stare wide-eyed in wonder as the paper move closer and closer to him.

A small smile returned to Cel's face, while she was saddened over everything that had happened, seeing the childlike wonder in the kid's eyes couldn't help but raise her spirits, even if it was only a little. With a twist of her hand, she willed the paper into a miniature Piplup, taking the sheets of the paper apart before folding them all together into a Piplup, much flatter than the original, but still a Piplup.

The small pokemon gingerly took it in his flippers, eyes sparkling with wonder and joy. The father looked down with a happy grin. He knew that his kid was over the moon; whoever did this had made his day. Turning back up he looked down the alleyway before bowing his head in thanks for the trick before guiding the young pokemon off home, his new trophy in tow.

"Papa, can I learn to do that?" the Piplup looked up with hope towards his father, that made the Empoleon flinch, he knew full well that would technically be impossible. A Piplup learning a psychic move wouldn't be possible, but he wasn't going to let that stop his kid from dreaming. So he decided a little white lie wouldn't hurt.

"Of course you can, but it will take a lot of practice and work on your end okay?"

"Okay!" the Piplup looked back to the little newspaper model, dreaming that one day he could do such a magical thing.

Cel didn't hear any of this; however, she had long since floated off to find somewhere else to disguise herself. After 10 minutes she found somewhere suitable and activated a unique feature of her ditto suit, something that wouldn't be readily available for the next 200 years.

A Celebi had entered the alleyway, but a female Xatu in human form existed shortly after however.