It was a warm summer day like any other in Kalos…

The Fletchling fluttered from branch to branch with happy chirps, clicking their beaks to attract the Wurmple that huddled below… The Litleo rushed through the underbrush, nipping at one another’s heels and crying out with excitement with glee at the merry chase…

...and Emily could not have been more content…

She stared off into the forest, watching the Pokemon play as her ethereal tassels nimbly pressed a needle to the fabric spread on her lap… and across the bottom half of her very pregnant middle…

Through her flesh, spectral as it was, you could just about make out the familiar ovoid shape of a Pokemon egg. It wriggled about so eagerly that its mother knew for certain that it was going to be born soon…

She sighed and shifted herself a little uncomfortably in the mild shade she was sat under. She was still a Ghost after all, though one with an unusually sunny personality, and a love for warm, soft days like this…

Emily sighed, lifting the blanket she was finishing… It was a pretty, pale shade… One of her best works for certain, but she wanted nothing less than perfect for her little one…

“I can’t wait until I am able to wrap you in this, my little one…” she cooed softly, and then waddled inside, setting it gently in the beautiful crib her mate had already built for her…

She settled her tassel on her cheek, and was just about to lose herself in maternal thoughts once more… when suddenly…

A flash filled the room, as if lightning had struck. Emily flinched instinctively, but after waiting for the crash of thunder for almost a minute, she blinked and returned outside, her eyes drawn upwards past her hat brim and into the skies…

A beam of light was firing upwards into the atmosphere… She focused, and realized that it was two… A red one, and a blue one…?

She watched it with dumbfounded curiosity, as it rose higher and higher above. It even obscured the midday sun, shadowing her with its crackling energy… She raised a tassel to squint in confusion, her other protectively laid across her midsection…

Though it was far… Emily could see that the beams had ‘slowed’… But because it was so far, she couldn’t tell that it wasn’t slowing…

It had turned around… And was rushing back towards the planet…

Emily was left frozen and shocked as the things grew bigger… Bigger… And once more briefly obscured the sun… but this time…

It was with the second flash of their impact…

Emily winced, and once her eyes had cleared, she looked up again and saw a wave of energy…

A shockwave, she realized, almost casually… And then she thought no more.

In her dreams, half real images of her life flashed before her… Of meeting her dear, ghostly Marowak, of consummating, of feeling her middle begin to swell…

Her egg… Her baby. Her baby…!

“HAH!”

Emily sat up suddenly with a sharp gasp and held her chest, then grit her fangs hard as a sting of agony writhed inside her. Her very core radiated with heat, and she fell to her side in the dust to curl up tightly…

She panted gently for a few long moments, as her body slowly relaxed. The ache went from blindingly painful to gently throbbing, to dull and only stinging when she focused too hard on it… though at the moment, it was hard to think of anything else…

She finally pushed herself to a sit, and then looked up at the trees. They still grew vibrant and fresh, and in fact they looked to be teeming even more than they had been. In the distance, she heard the distressed squawk of a Honchkrow struggling with its eggs...

She turned her head and realized that on her other side, it was the opposite; the trees were bowed and their leaves had been stripped. Below, there was already a covering spread across the floor of the forest… A rotten carpet of decaying leaves that must have been there for months in the swirling dust… Nothing in that sparse and deathly place seemed to be making any noise…

Finally, Emily looked down, realizing she was sitting on the dividing line. Under one of her splayed legs was grass, and the other, dust… But she was immediately distracted by the fact that her dress had turned a pale off white… Bleached by whatever the waves had done to her already Ghostly body… But more importantly, her belly was still there… She hugged her tassels tightly around it and sighed heavily in relief...

She pushed herself shakily to a stand and turned to see her hut had sagged and most everything inside had been tossed around madly. She stumbled forward, looking at her sleeve-like arms. She recognized this fabric… It had been in the blanket…

She stumbled back and turned around, peering about for any assistance… Or even any explanation of all this… Instead, she just pulled the waifish, ghostly fabric a bit tighter around herself and did the only thing she could understand to do… She began to walk into town…

Emily traversed the blighted landscape, feeling tears gather in her eyes as she observed the chaos of all that had occurred… When she walked through the forest, it was through knee high grass and past trees that had grown layers of bark over fresh layers of bark, and whose canopies were so stretched and choking that it was nearly dark at midday under them. Given her condition, she couldn’t help but notice every Pokemon about her, no matter if they were rushing somewhere like her or trying to pick up the pieces of their destroyed homes, were gravid… So heavily swollen that it was unmistakable…

When she had to travel through the dead part of the forest, it was so much more eerily calm. It was like a forest fire had raged through and left nothing in its wake; not even scorch marks or charred bones. Everything had simply been reduced to dust...She was forced to walk through it, stopping to lean occasionally against a bare tree to focus on her breathing.

She massaged her middle, which had gone from sharing the dull ache of the rest of her body to being particularly sore. She hoped beyond hope that her baby was still okay…

“...hold on, little one…” Emily said softly… “We’ll find someone… We’ll find your papa. And then everything will…”

She couldn’t force herself to finish it, with so many doubts. Especially not when having to pass through a place that reminded her only of the dead…

She squinted in the sun as she emerged onto the crest of a half-bald hill and gasped as she peered down at the sleepy town of Geosenge… or what remained of it.

It was a crater… And unlike the perfect segregation of the two blast lines that she had been caught in, this place was a patchy, piebald mess of grass and dust. A swirl of green here could be abruptly cut off by a stretch of barren waste, only for a field of flowers to start as if they’d been growing all over all along…

“Arceus and his creation, what happened…” breathed Emily, who held her aching tummy a little tighter. She tried to hold back her tears, lest they flow like waterfalls. She made her way carefully down the hill, which was easier said than done with her tummy. It felt so oddly heavy… But maybe the shock was just wearing off, and she was just being reminded of the weight…

“Hello…?” she called out. She cupped her tassels near her mouth to amplify it, and called again…

“HELLO!?”

But if anyone heard her, they ignored her. Likely they were too busy panicking or rushing to find their own loved ones… If they had survived.

Emily’s stomach turned and she held her mouth to avoid throwing up. It wasn’t a thought that had really crossed her minds before this; what if he had been caught by the deathly wave? What if he had been one of the piles of dust she waded through?!

She doubled over and heaved loudly…

“N… No…” she rasped to herself, wiping her chin and teeth, and flicking the resultant fluid quickly off her precious fabric… “No. He is… He is still out there somewhere. He’ll find me, or… Or I’ll find him!”

It was utterly eerie to be stood at the edge of the crater like this… From one direction, utter silence… From the other…? Shouts… And laboured screams…

“O-Oh dear…” she muttered, as she continued on… She realized suddenly that the laden Pokemon of the forest must have been producing their eggs. Whatever energy made the trees produce to the point where their branches drooped with fruit didn’t just affect plants…

“Life… And Death. Oh dear… The looming sky shadow and the striding forest stag. Were they perhaps fighting…?”

Emily flinched and glanced down. She blinked a few times in silent surprise… Were the seams on her belly’s fabric-like exterior… always so… tight?

“I look nearly threadbare… Hm. No, it couldn’t have been them fighting. There would have been far more commotion… This is someone doing something foolish. Harnessing their power, without understanding…!”

She nodded sagely to herself as if this was a gigantic, world-ending revelation. Given the state of the world around her, she was at least half right…

She travelled in the direction of the Life touched lands, unwilling to linger too long in the dusty, ominous, and silent wastes that portent only Death. She had plenty of energy in the form of fruit, and the streams of water ran sweeter than ever… But her problems very clearly weren’t over. 

She couldn’t deny it much longer… Her belly was…

*RIP*

“AH?!”

She looked down, breathing hard and pushing her sleeved hand against a tree to keep herself steady as the other cupped her middle. It could barely do so any more… and… 

“...i-is that my… My skin?”

Blue as a throttled corpse. As she watched, a few more seams popped one by one… Her belly pressed tighter and tighter against the exterior of her dress…

“O-Ow… ow. Okay… Okay…”

She breathed, like she’d been taught to. That’s what this must be, right? Like every other Pokemon she’d crossed or spotted in the distance, she had been blasted by Life energy… And was about to have her baby! Or perhaps the shock of it all had just triggered contractions… After all, even before all this had happened, she was very much about to drop her egg…

“I just need to find some place safe… And someone to h-help… There’s no way I can… get this out on my o-own…”

It was too big. Strange, she couldn’t remember if it felt that way before or if this was a new and terrible affliction that was beginning to bud inside her… But she had a lingering fear that it was the latter. She pulled herself along as her baby became more and more insistent by the moment… Her seams continued to pop, and she tutted softly in frustration at the damage to her dress. Luckily, she had a small sewing kit she kept within her dress’s inner pocket. It was still there… And after the little one was born, she could repair it… She’d want to look presentable for when she found her husband…

But that was after. Now, the baby was sat heavier on her hips than she remembered it ever being… Cradled in the bowl of her pelvis like a pumpkin against a funnel… She was painfully aware of the size was in comparison to her… And yet, it seemed to continue to stretch her tummy outwards, bigger by the moment and getting faster… 

“T… This will have to do…” she hissed, as she ducked into the hollow of an immense tree. She wasn’t sure if it was this huge before the explosion of Life, but now it almost resembled a cave of its own…

“No one… here?” Emily whined softly. She had assumed that she would bump into a fellow Pokemon who could help her by now, and yet she remained alone… And her belly had just lurched too heavy for her to waddle anywhere else…

“But… But I…” she breathed a bit faster as she fell hard to a sit, kicking up a few leaves and a cloud of sweet smelling dust… She settled her legs apart and…

“There’s… no way…! I could never birth something this big… It HAS grown!”

Emily shuddered in terror as her middle tightened worse. Her body was almost lazily demanding she evict the overgrown tenant, but her hips were telling her very firmly that she was unable. It would be like trying to fit a bowling ball through a garden hose…

“No, no no no…! I just n-need to find someone to h-he… HHAAAH!”

She flinched hard and arched in pain as her stomach lurched again. By now it was so huge on her front that she was being pressed hard into the ground below, and even still she could feel her thighs being shoved wide by its continued, accelerating growth…

“W… What do I d-do… What do I do… What do I do?!”

She squealed, as she reached up and touched her middle nervously. As it stretched wider and wider, she squealed again at the sound of more seams popping… And the painful elastic creeeeeeeak of her rapidly discolouring skin…

She gripped her thighs, spread wide, and pushed with all her might. Her hips nudged very gently apart, and then snapped back together, thumping the narrow end of the egg against her ribs. She gasped and gagged as the breath got knocked from her, and began to sob softly…

“No… No… NO! NO!!!”

But then she couldn’t speak any more… Her belly bulged ominously and gave a painful groan. Emily felt fluid began to seep from her lower lips, and from the corner of her mouth… Her blood…

She set her jaw, tears streaming as she arched…

And still… And STILL… The belly grew… Her seams ripped… Her belly gave an agonizing, drawn out gurgle… And then… With a hoarse, strained howl of pain… 

SPLUT…

Finally, her belly’s flesh gave. The tiniest rupture was all it took to burst her middle violently, and send her fluids splashing across the ground and walls. Her egg fell from her body with a thump, and left her unable to even gasp for breath as she stared in horror at what had happened…

“N… Nnn… No… My… My b… my L…”

And then… For the second time, her thoughts ceased, and her vision was overcome by darkness…

In restless dreams, Emily ran through the halls of an opulent house. She stumbled between rooms that were destroyed, and rooms that were immaculate… She was desperately searching for something, but couldn’t find it…

No… Not something… Someone. She was trying to find…

“HA! M-MY BABY!?”

She sat up and then gasped, and gurgled in pain… She jerked her gaze down, and was grateful that though it was dark, her Ghostly eyes still saw clear as day…

She had laid there as nothing but a torn pile of offal for hours… Her eyes blank and her body half destroyed. And as the moon crept above the horizon, her eyes slowly brightened with life, and she sat up to realize she was still ‘dead’… And yet…

Her body was torn, but her womb had grown itself back into a tender little pouch, surrounded by dried ichor. She flinched and touched the ragged edges of the wound…

“OH! Ow… OW!… Hah…”

Pain… Naught but pain… And yet…

“H… How do I live… How did I survive…”

She shuddered and, after a moment, reached into her dress shakily to extract her sewing kit…

She picked up a nearby bit of bark to put it between her teeth and bite down. She threaded a needle carefully, and then with some hesitation, pressed it against the tattered skin over the softly pulsing inner chamber…

“MMMMPH… Mmmmm…”

She flinched in agonizing pain as she carefully pushed the needle through her flesh, and then tugged it back up. Her breaths came ragged and trembling as she tugged and knit, trying to ignore the sting that seemed to permeate her entire form with each little jab…

Finally, she wove the threads… She bit the end off and then held it taught…

“Okay… okay… Three… Two…”

She rocked there for a moment before yanking hard…

“HAAH!”

She arched, her eyes filling with more tears as her belly’s seams were pulled together… She made a few more careful adjustments, and then sat up fully…

She realized, with a start, that her belly hadn’t settled back to its normal size… Not even what she’d expect after having her ba-…

“OH! My…”

She turned, ignoring the stretching pain of the stitches as she saw her egg, and relaxed in relief… She reached out and picked it up, wrapping it in her blanket as tight and safe as she could… before glancing down…

“...that’s… That’s… Concerning. It almost feels like I… Like I still have one… in there? Growing…”

She tenderly touched her middle, and indeed found resistance where she expected softness. It was firm… And doubtless, contained something terrible…! Like an egg of one of the monsters who had caused this disaster in the first place…!

“...Ah… W-Well, if it ends up being that… T-Then… I will have to take care of it and raise it right…!” 

She stood on shaky legs, trying to ignore the bloody patch she had left as she walked to the entrance and peered out. Her shoulders drooped a little as she saw that none of the chaos had righted itself during her ‘nap’… Things seemed almost worse in the gloom…

“...S-Someone… Someone out there must be able to help me… Someone…”

Emily sighed wearily and walked from the hollow, hesitating for a moment and glancing up at the large tree that had hosted her child’s birth. She held her egg a little closer, and then turned to walk into the night, following the light of the full moon…

She had hoped to find someone quickly… She didn’t ever presume herself to be the adventuring type… And yet, an adventure she had to waddle on, as her belly indeed started swelling and the egg in her arms weighed just as heavy as before… 

But in the end, she did indeed find someone to help… Even if they had to traverse Hell to find her...

Earlier

Above Kalos, the violent swirl of energies collided with a flash…

The explosion was visible over half of the planet, recorded by scientists and scholars who couldn’t have known the shattering consequences of what they wrote in their logs with mere excited curiosity…

Their imaginations filled with wonder at what must be ground zero of such a clash of fundamental forces, and what was occurring there… A once in a lifetime opportunity to unlock mysteries of the cosmos! 

But any Pokemon who was there, who was ‘lucky’ enough to survive, would have looked at those scatterbrained academics with hateful sorrow in their eyes… 

Nox would have done more than just glare… And she had such good reason to…

“Leave it… There’s no time…”

The Gardevoir spun and saw her Gallade mate at the entrance of their den. He pointed his bladed arm out into the world, and the Gardevoir hesitatingly took a few steps forward, clutching the sleepy, confused Kirlia in her arms, as the most precious thing in her world…

Behind, the gathered food was left scattered as the two graceful Psychic types fled from their home. Amongst the hastily cobbled supplies that they hadn’t even had time to take was the Kirlia’s favourite doll, hand made by her mother and given to her after she had been born…

The berries rotted and withered suddenly… The doll yellowed, slumped… And its head fell to its lap with a soft ‘puff’…

The screams that rang throughout the forest were unnatural and horrific. The panic of a fire would have produced mere terror… But whatever stretched across the lands now invoked hoarse, chillingly short screams of agony and torment…
The corona of twin colours above descended… The forces twisted and writhed against one another, shining their colours down on separate regions of the forest… The beautiful green paradise was sliced in twain, with one half suffering the terrible torment of death, while the other suffered from an abundance of life...

...and yet, the screams from that side of the forest were no less tormented, nor less horrific…

“Faster. We can’t afford to fall behind…”

The Gallade’s words came in gasped breaths, his heart pounding hard enough to hurt. His mate was just behind him, clutching their daughter’s head to her chest to try and obscure the vision of what was going on… But the Kirlia was unable to stop herself from catching glimpses anyway...

She watched in horror as a Houndoom took a couple steps, and then collapsed suddenly as a clean, dessicated skeleton. The look of fear on their face had remained until the very last bit of their flesh dissolved away…

A Wigglytuff watched a gathering of Jigglypuff friends sag, slump, and then deflate into nothing but piles of rubbery offal. Her wide eyes filled with tears when she felt her own body began to soften…

“Mama…” whimpered the Kirlia, voice weak with fear. The Gardevoir responded by covering her daughter’s head with her broad hand…

“Don’t look, baby…” the female whispered, her own eyes darting around to search for safety, and having horrific images forever burned into her memory for doing so...

Behind, though the washing tide of energy was swift and almost invisible, the growing radius of doom was obvious; the vegetation was rotting and turning to brittle, dusty husks… And the decay was on the heels of the fleeing family, like a shadow pursuing on a steed of howling screams…

“Here.” the Gallade said, as he pointed to a cave. Its entrance was turned away from the epicentre of whatever monstrous chaos was causing this tragedy, and it was deep enough…

If this place wasn’t safe, no where would be.

The Gardevoir quickly moved up and placed the Kirlia within the entrance of the cave. She was about to take her hand and move deeper with her, when she heard a cry…

She spun, and gasped as she saw her mate had been caught by a half rotted Ursaring. The twisted beast was pulling at the noble swordsman with a fury born of madness and pain, its skin nearly fallen off of its body entirely, exposing the decaying muscle and bone underneath. Even so, it moved with vicious hate, nothing within but a desire to punish ANYTHING for the agony it felt... 

“No… No!” the Gardevoir said, taking a few steps back out into the forest…

“Mama… Wait…!” The Kirlia whimpered, though she was too scared to leave the shelter of the cave’s shadows… She could see her papa was struggling with the bulky beast; even his sharp blades cutting swathes off messy, crumbling flesh from the brute wasn’t enough to stop their assault…

“Stay back, love…” The Gardevoir cried, though she didn’t look back. She moved forward to help her mate... “You’ll be safe in-...”

There was a flash that blinded all of them. The Gardevoir, Gallade, Kirlia, and even the Ursaring jerked their gaze to the explosion that had touched down on the horizon…

With barely enough time to cry out for her mother and father, the Kirlia saw the wave hit… She saw the silhouette of her parents fade into dust, and then she was flung across the cave and slammed against one of its walls with such force that her vision briefly doubled…

...and then faded all together...
Elsewhere…

There were those who were ‘fortunate’ enough to be caught in the explosion of vitality, who were still living whether they wanted it or not…

There were those unfortunate enough to be like the Kirlia and her family, caught in a wave of pure necrotic power, and snuffed like a candle in a hurricane…

And then there were a few innocent, unlucky Pokemon who lived where the rush of Life and Death energies combined… And whether you were a Pokemon trapped in Life or sentenced to Death, those in between had a fate that was unenviable…

A colony of Breloom had celebrated a happy mating season in some corner of these woods, where the soil was more fallow and the trees covered in moss. But the flash in the sky had excited all of their senses at once, and brought one conclusion;

Run. Flee! The eggs must be safe!!!

The strange, bipedal mushroom creatures rushed about the clearing that marked their nest. Some herded their Shroomish charges deeper into the woods, and some dedicated themselves to gathering those that had yet to hatch from the colony’s gathered brood…

In haste, one such egg was jostled, and rolled away from the others unseen. It lazily wobbled along, meandering in its path until it settled in a ditch nearby. At any other time, such a mistake would have been quickly noticed and the egg would have been retrieved…

...but in their panic, the colony couldn’t afford precise counts. The brood seemed right at a glance. No time to waste on making sure…

The missing egg was forgotten. Abandoned, as the others were gathered up and carried swiftly away…

It didn’t take long after for the explosion to dominate the horizon, and its energies to blast over the forest… The Kirlia was left parentless, more than one parent was left without their child… And the egg sat there, washed in strange energies and glowing ominously...
The Kirlia’s still and silent form laid limp within the shadows of the cave…

Any other time, she might have been mistaken for a corpse… But the fact that her body was intact, that her chest rose and fell subtly, put her leagues ahead of the piles of dust that now carpeted the landscape…

Naught but ashen white trees, dry and devoid of life... They were like splintered bones jutting from the dusty remains of the forest, and all who had once lived within…

The girl’s stirred... and then she gasped, shrieking in pain as she clutched at her head…

It throbbed so hard that she felt her eyes pushing against the back of her eyelids… She would have vomited, but her stomach was damningly empty. Her eyes rimmed with discoloured tears they could barely force from the swollen ducts… Everything hurt, and it was a struggle to think...

She stood, her small dress tattered, while her fingers were discoloured and numb. She stumbled to the entrance of the cave and peered out to see the desert of ash that was, only moments ago in her mind, a home…

Gone… All of it gone in an instant… She looked around, her eyes dulling with shock as she saw it all…

“...Mama… Papa…!” she called, her voice tremulous and hoarse. Despite the confusion, the image of a Gardevoir and Gallade fading into dust played on repeat in her tormented mind...

“MAMA!” she screamed, and it wasn’t clear if she was calling out in some desperation that her memories were false… or if she was merely crying out in agony for what she had lost…

She collapsed to her hands and knees… After a few minutes of silence broken only by the ragged wind, and her own shaky breathing… She threw a tantrum... A desperate, writhing, screaming display of panic, horror, and wrath…

Gone…

All of it gone, in an instant...
The sun above glowered at the forest, like a furious cyclopean eye…

Its harsh rays stung any who remained in this realm of death and pain…

The Kirlia’s cries soon faded, whether because she calmed or because her throat became too bloody and raw to continue. Certainly, the agony she felt inside hadn’t disappeared…

It never would.

She pushed herself up slowly… She was covered in soot now, and she trembled upon realizing it was likely not simply dust, but…

...her very parents dessicated forms could be scattered over her pretty white dress...

She grit her teeth and set her jaw. Silently, she held herself and stumbled into the wilderness, her tired gaze turning this way and that… She had no recollection of this part of the forest… And more than that, she wouldn’t have recognized it even if she had… So she wandered, aimlessly… Her heart pounding, her limbs aching, her head still sore enough to make focusing on things difficult… She wandered…

She tried to ignore the origins of the dusty mounds that she occasionally had to sift aside to walk through narrow, bramble choked paths. The lack of foliage meant that the harsh glare from above started to sting her body with its heat. She pressed on regardless, seeking somewhere she could be safe… The alternative, of course, was simply to lie down and wait for what the wave of doom should have done to her in the first place.

The Kirlia wasn’t ready to give up yet. Despite everything, she still had some spark of determination to go on… Or… Was it that all she’d suffered had cracked her young mind, and now she was a listless husk… A zombie, struggling forward in a grim world that, as far as she knew, was entirely destroyed…

“...n-no… No, it’s not the whole world…” she muttered to herself… She crested a hill and squinted painfully into the distance. Past the endless plains of ash and silence, she could spy something…

Green… Fresh, verdant, healthy green… 
“There…” she gasped gently, and began to head towards it… She wasn’t sure how long it would take her to get there… But what other choice did she have at this point…? She marched on...

She couldn’t have known, through her blurred vision and addled mind, that the green she saw in the distance was so far away… A mere swath of colour that promised salvation, if she could cross the land of misery to get there…

Her feet fell in addled, but determined paces… She didn’t run, and she retained her energy. She tried her best not to stop, except when exhaustion forced her to. She was frustratedly aware of a dry tongue settled uncomfortably in her mouth, and a snarling belly below that. Whether she found her parents or not, she knew she must at least find someone to help. Even a kindly human would be better than surviving such a fate, only to succumb to starvation soon after...

After a time of aimless walking, the sun sank below the horizon. She was forced to nestle into the crook of a dead tree’s roots, and sleep in the cold alone… She would be forced to do so many more times, as she tried to cross this cursed place. The first night was hopeful. The next was sullen. And after that, she wasn’t sure why she was going on…

There was no longer anything here but death. It was a ragged wasteland of dusty agony, and nothing more. The Kirlia felt an unnatural dread, even when her own panicked instincts had died down enough that she no longer wanted to scream every time the shadow of a Flying Pokemon flitted across her. The only word to describe the frigid aura of this defiled land was…

...wrong. Perhaps… Corrupt.

She was jostled awake one day by her fearful instincts. A soft grunting and grumbling nearby made her empty stomach twist into fearful knots… She curled tighter against the back of the small dirt den she had found to hide in, and peered through the entrance…

A heavy foot landed with a tremor, and blocked the light... The Kirlia recognized it as a Donphan hoof. They rarely came down from the mountains, but her father had pointed a herd of them migrating one day… She remembered the joy she had felt on seeing a new Pokemon… And now that joy was twisted utterly into horror…

Like the Ursaring who had caught her parents outside what might have saved them, this hulking brute was half rotten. It dragged its splintered tusks through the ash, as if it could unearth a fresh root in this dying place. It was merely playing its old instincts on loop…

The Kirlia remained as still as possible. She had seen the feral rage that these death-touched monstrosities had within them… Indeed, after a few long and tense minutes, the Donphan suddenly turned, screamed a distorted cry of furious anguish, and then curled up and dashed away. It sent itself rolling through the treeline, causing the brittle remains to collapse in its wake, as it pursued some glimpse its destroyed mind had directed it to kill…

Hesitantly, the girl poked her head from the entrance… She winced as she saw the bloody path left by the Donphan, and emerged while stepping around it carefully…

She set out again… But her footsteps were a bit quicker, and her eyes darted around a bit more frequently… She knew that if she came across a stronger Pokemon now, when she was so weakened by shock and starvation, she would not survive…

But what else could she expect? This was no longer a forest… It was a graveyard. A dark oblivion that could no longer sustain her…

She found herself grasping at thorny bushes and searching desperately… Days without food nor water was beginning to take its toll on her, and her body had gone from merely aching to actively shutting itself down, unable to go on without fuel…

The thorns pierced her delicate flesh. She didn’t care… She shoved them aside, as best she could, and searched…

“Haah…!”

She yanked out a small, under-ripe berry from the centre of the bush. She held it up, the tiny thing glistening with her blood… But she pushed it eagerly into her mouth all the same…

“...EUGH! UURRK!”

It should have been expected… She stumbled a few steps and felt her stomach cramp as if a knife had plunged into it. She fell to her knees and heaved until her body was forced to produce a gush of burning bile…

She fell to her side in the dust and sobbed…

She must have laid there for hours. She was in the open, and her body was signalling its inevitable end…

She was waiting to die.

The moon rose, and then the sun followed it… As the harsh glare of the rays bathed across her delicate, burnt skin… She pushed herself up slowly… 

She lifted her head, and looked around… Her eyes widened as she realized it was not a dream she had been hearing all through the night… Even past the screaming pain, and the despair, she realized what the sound was…

“...water…?”

Her voice was thin, and barely a whisper for how dry her throat was. She stood and stumbled along, only just still able to see, and each throb of a heartbeat stark against her ribs was a painful reminder of how little she had left to give…

But she forced herself to climb across a hill… When she reached its crest, she froze upon what she saw…

A stream, indeed… A thin runoff that was new. All other water in this blighted place was stagnant. She hadn’t even bothered trying it, even when she was desperate. She could tell it would be tantamount to poisoning herself…

But this water flowed clear… Or, clearer at least… The weather had perhaps turned warmer and invited snow from the nearby mountain…

Did it matter? She ran towards it… Or, rather, ‘ran’, her weak limbs awkwardly loping until she could collapse next to the flow of something that had hounded her every thought since she had first set out…

Cool… Clean… She could taste dust and ash in it, but it was still potable… She cupped her shaking hands and took sip after sip… And when she was strong enough for that not to suffice any longer, she gingerly pushed herself to her knees and leaned to place her face in the stream and drink directly…

Her body had been on fire… Now, it was quelled, if only a bit. The cold made her stomach clench, and indeed she had to pull herself aside more than once to vomit the water she’d only just drank straight back into the mud…

It didn’t matter. She drank until her mind was clearer… Until she could see and feel once more, without the odious blanket of muddled confusion…

She had slipped from the shadow of death, just barely…

The Kirlia remained there for a long time. She spent the morning and afternoon there… She took in as much as she could… And as she did, it became damningly clear that it would not be enough. The water revitalized her, but it would be the hunger that killed her. Her body was dangerously low on energy…

To have just this amount of hope… To die next to this stream, without a parched throat. That was her mercy…

She knelt there through the night, and added her tears to the flowing water…
When the sun rose once more, it illuminated the haunted glare that had fixed itself on her face…

She pushed herself to a stand once again… She found it was difficult in the extreme just to find balance, but she forced herself to do so… She willed her body forward, reluctantly leaving behind the water and continuing into the realm of the dead…

Just a bit further… Just another day or so of dodging the lumbering shadows and the buzz of the carrion creatures who had begun to congregate… Just another few steps…

“...M… mama… papa… I… I c… can’t…” she whispered, unable to push herself to speak any louder… Her eyelids were heavy… But she knew if she laid down, she’d never wake up again…

One foot in front of the other… No longer did she know where she was going… Her head was too heavy to do anything but hang forward, and force her to watch her stumbling steps…

She watched as her ankle twisted, and her knee bent… She blinked stupidly, as her face hit the ground…

Get up… Get up…!

...She laid there, still… Her eyes slowly closed…

...Wait a moment…

...there was something familiar against her face… Something wonderful…

Cool, lush grass… As soft as the water had been…

She’d made it… For all it was worth, she had made it…

She forced her eye open to try and see, but everything was a blur. A shadow moved over her…

Ah. This was it. Something to put her out of her misery… The thing extended its arms towards her… And…
...Picked her up, with utmost care and love…

“...mama…?” she breathed, as she was carried away under beautiful autumnal canopies, and her mind faded into a gentle dream…

The forest wasteland bent and broke… The verdant counterpart just across the seam grew and choked…

Sitting sheltered from the elements, nestled in a patch of moss that had escaped the wave of Death narrowly as well, the egg of the Breloom wobbled and shifted. Whatever was within was excitable, and full of Life…

From over the crest of a hill, a Mightyena emerged… Or what might have once been a Mightyena. The snarling, half skeletal form was desperate for anything to eat. It didn’t even know if it was still alive, but it had an acid in its middle that demanded it shovel in anything that was warm and raw…

Its milky eyes locked on the egg, and it snapped its split jaws eagerly. It could hear the shell breaking… It had happened upon a gift, it seemed… A perfect meal for its starving, slavering jaws to close around…

The egg cracked, and then fell apart in shards entirely. From its sticky interior tumbled… not the expected Shroomish, but a Breloom… And one whose deep purple colouration was a marked difference from the healthy green it usually was…

The Mightyena idly tilted its head, but its mind couldn’t be bothered with trivialities like colour. It was mildly disappointed that a plant, of all things, had come out of the egg… but a meal was a meal. A mushroom was near as good as any other succulent newborn…

It bounded forward and landed in front of the miniature Breloom, who confusedly flopped flat on her back and stared with innocent eyes at the monster who had welcomed her to life. The hound snarled and snapped…

...but the mushroom just giggled at the display, and her tiny arms clapped eagerly… Something vile as this should illicit only fear, but the confused predator instead seemed to only entertain the newborn…

No matter. Confused or unaware, the thing would find the meaning of fear soon enough…
The Mightyena bristled… Then it lunged forward, aiming for the throat with its jagged teeth…

The Breloom’s instincts activated… A Fighting energy surged through her, and she swung a foot up with enough power to drive it through the hound’s jaw and out of the top of its skull…

The Mightyena’s expression was one of dull surprise, as the Breloom curiously shook her foot a couple times, and then extended her short arms to grip the Mightyena stuck on her…

...tightly... 

There might have been small Pokemon watching from safe perches, if any would dare be foolish enough to linger in the forest. If they were, they would be the only witnesses to the raw violence that the newborn visited upon its would be predator. The hound screamed and howled as it was taken to pieces… And in the end, the Breloom was sitting among its remains, licking the blood curiously off of her claws and peering around, seemingly uncaring about the crimson hue she’d added to the lurid purple of her exterior…

Her reaction instead was to once more giggle… And in time, she even pushed herself to a stand and toddled off into the splintered treeline, eager to see what else might lunge at her from the shadows and play with her...
The Kirlia’s eyes opened, slowly and tiredly…

Her dreams had been of her infancy… Of clinging to her mother’s safety, of being fed sweet milk whenever her hunger nibbled at her… Of a time where everything was safe… It was not so long ago…

But now she was forced back into the present… She lifted her head weakly… then she realized what a feat of strength this was for a body that, by all accounts, should have been dead…

She sat up fully, and a gasp rattled her weak throat. Then, all her body began to awake and inform her of the situation…

Her stomach reported it was still damningly empty, but it was no longer trying to digest itself. Her tongue was heavy and sticky, but she was not parched. Her eyes were bleary, yet her focus was far sharper than it had been since even the start of her journey…

Her gaze settled on a bowl of berries, and a pail of water that was sitting right in front of her…

She didn’t hesitate. She snapped her hands out, grabbed a berry from the bowl, and sunk her teeth in…

The juices were almost too sweet. It made her teeth tingle, after so long… But she pushed such sensations aside for the sheer joy of being able to feel something wholesome drop into her stomach once more…

She ignored the mess as she devoured the veritable banquet left for her. The pail was guzzled down after almost too eagerly. She felt her body harshly warning her that it would reject it all if she didn’t slow down, and though it pained her to do so, she reluctantly set the half empty pail aside and slumped back onto the cushion she had been placed on…

Her chest rose and fell… Her heartbeat was still painful, but it was subsiding as her body gratefully took what it had been lacking for so long. Her concave midsection was now gently distended, and she would doubtless have a stomach ache for days… But that was preferable to starvation.

She had made it. She was alive… She looked around silently...
She was in the lush forest once more. In fact, it was so overbearingly green and choked with growth that the clearing that she was in might as well have been a cave made of leaves and branches. She was huddled on a knit cushion, in front of a small fire pit…

Obviously, someone had found her… And not a moment too soon, either…

She set her head back down and stared into the flames… She felt like she wanted to cry again, as the weight of it all settled onto her… But her eyes remained dull, and the tears merely burned at the edges… She had sobbed herself dry more than once as she travelled… She could no longer dwell on it, or she would begin to doubt why she ever put so much effort into survival in the first place…

Eventually, the bushes rattled and parted. From them emerged a pale Mismagius, with an egg slung against her chest, and a rather beautiful stitch pattern down the front of her chubby midsection…

“...Ohh! Good… You’re awake… I was so worried that I was too late…”

The Kirlia sat up, though she remained with her knees against her chest in obvious wariness. Ghost types were frightening, after all… Although, after what she’d been through, the girl was less inclined to be fearful of someone who had obviously tried so hard to keep her from dying…

“Who are you…?” The Kirlia asked, her voice very soft and gentle… Partially from shyness, and partially because she was yet weak with her ordeal. The Mismagius perked and moved to set down a basket of berries and other supplies, before kneeling down in front of her…

“My name is Emily, dear… I found you nearby, and… You…”

Her worlds trailed off. The Kirlia glanced away and smiled gently, despite herself. She began to laugh, confusing the Ghost type…

“...I… If I had stopped, or… Or given up… At any moment… I would have… Been…”

Emily lifted her tassels…

“Ah, ahhh… Don’t let your mind go down that road...”
The Kirlia looked up at her, and finished her sentence…

“...I would have ended up like my parents…”

There was no silence in these woods. But for a few moments, in that little clearing, the constant chatter of birds and creatures in the undergrowth seemed to fade away… Emily’s gaze slowly became a sorrowful one, and the Kirlia’s deadened expression in response only seemed to make it worse…

“...I’m sorry… I don’t know what happened… I don’t know why any of this happened… But… I…”

The Kirlia blinked, as she realized the Mismagius’s eyes held a similar tinge of her despair… She had gone through loss as well… They were not rescuer and hopeless victim. They were both alone in the wake of this nightmare…

“...A-Ah…” Emily muttered, quickly reaching up to wipe away the tears that came to her eyes… The Kirlia blinked softly once more and settled back, glancing away…

“Sa-Say…” the Ghost type sniffled… “I’m… I’m looking for my mate… He wasn’t at home when this… all… happened… And I know he must be out there somewhere, eh?”

The Kirlia looked back up at her with a frown… But Emily’s gaze softened, and she glanced down at the egg with a weak smile…

“He has to be. He has to meet his baby… So, we can’t give up that hope. I’ve got to keep looking… Keep trying… For his sake.”

She reached up to her chest and cradled the egg tenderly… The Kirlia hugged her knees… Then she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away…

Emily moved over, and held the girl to her chest. They shared their grief for a time, as the forest moved around them uncaring, like a river around a stone…
They camped there for a few more days. There was fresh water and fruit abundant, and predators didn’t seem near as eager to make trouble in these lively lands. The Kirlia recovered, and eventually it came to pass that the Ghost was filling in her fire pit, and securing her travelling pack’s straps once more…

“Come with me, then…?” Emily finally offered, officially. The Kirlia smiled gently and nodded, having only been waiting for her to ask…

===

The two roved the centre of the destruction, riding the seam to avoid being overtaken by the abundant life, but never straying too far into the desert of decay and violence. They moved ever in one direction, following the sun, to try and find the edge of this place… To escape somewhere not afflicted by either of these terrible fates…

“We are close.” Emily said, as she walked around a bend in a path… “The trees are less dense here, and they begin to grow uniformly around us instead of only to one side…”

“I see it. But where are we going to emerge?”

“Mmm, I’ve never been out this far…” Emily muttered, and then glanced around… “I suppose there will be civilization nearby either way. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t run into someone who could help us far before then.”

“I thought the same thing. But wouldn’t rescue have come by now, if that were true?”

“Ahh, you say you thought the same thing, but you managed to find me eh?”

“…”

The Kirlia wasn’t sure whether to be reassured by that, or despair at the idea of being one of the only two Pokemon left in the world. She was interrupted in her thoughts by a screech from nearby…
“Oh?!” Emily gasped, turning and looking in the direction of the ashen trees and sagging wheatgrass… “T-That sounded like a young girl…!”

“Likely…” The Kirlia muttered… “Probably someone else meeting a bad end…”

“W-We… Have to go see if we can help…”

The Kirlia’s eyes went wide. She stared incredulously as Emily began to move through the trees and towards the dead lands…

“Are you insane…? You’re going to get us killed by an Ursaring, o-or…”

She hesitated on that border, trembling at the idea of travelling back to where the sun burned above, without shade to soothe… But as the Ghost continued to move forward, the Kirlia faced being alone again, and that was a far more hellish fate for certain…

She quickly ran to catch up. Emily squinted and glanced around, until another shriek rang out… Closer…

“They’re not far… In fact, they’re…”

She pushed aside a fallen tangle of branches and vines, before gasping in surprise. The Kirlia nearly bumped into her, but ran around to her side to see…

An immense Arcanine, its fur shaggy and matted, its eyes dull and its jaw hanging open stupidly… Was it some fresh corpse cruelly forced on in the dead half of the forest, or some life-drunk beast from the verdant half?

It didn’t matter. It was slamming and pawing at a thick, hollow tree. Inside, the screams rang out… A pitiful, terrified scream of a child in danger…

Emily wasted no time. She charged forward and blasted the Arcanine back with a wave of Psychic energy. Then she turned quickly to the hollow and peered inside…

A tiny Breloom… A strange creature with the features of a newborn on an evolved shape that shouldn’t have them… Emily stared with mild confusion for a moment before she set the thoughts aside quickly and reached down to pick up the girl…
“Shh, shh, it’s okay, I…”

“F-Fire… Fire…!”

“Of course, to a mushroom like you, fire would be very scary…”

“FIRE!” screamed the mushroom again. Emily’s suddenly realized, and she spun around…

“...drat…” she swallowed softly, as the Arcanine rose and glowered down at her. Its molten drool hissed on the dry grass below…

It jerked its head forward to snap at them both… Suddenly, it yelped and stumbled aside. The Kirlia stood firm nearby, albeit with her knees knocking, as she conjured a simple Psybeam and blasted the beast again…

Emily conjured her own Shadow Ball and flung it. Both girls could feel that such a strain wasn’t good for their systems, though for different reasons entirely…

Yet through the Kirlia’s exhaustion… Through the oddly familiar sickness tingling within the Ghost… They shared the same determined glare, unwilling to ignore the infant in Emily’s arm that begged for protection...

The great hound stumbled back and its breath flared. It burst a gout of flame at them, and they were forced to dodge aside…

“C-Careful not to lead him too deeply into the living half of the forest… He’ll destroy it all, for sure…!”

The Kirlia barely heard her, stumbling backwards in terror as the huge dog loped forward and nipped at her. Emily rushed without thinking, and that put the mushroom a bit too close. The screech of fear that rang out was loud enough to nearly split all of their skulls… But it gave the perfect opportunity for Emily, once the hound had been stunned…

Her gaze hardened and she flicked her free arm, producing a needle. She spun it once and jabbed it into her cloth-like flesh…

A spectral nail appeared above the Arcanine’s head… Aimed… And then…

KATUNK…
The Arcanine’s gaze went blank… It lifted its head, and an expression of sheer dread came over it…

It turned and wandered quickly away into the woods…

Emily breathed out hard and removed the needle gingerly from her skin. She stored it safely, and then turned to see the Kirlia, who was laid on the ground as still as a doll with a face somehow paler than the white it had started with…

“A-Are you okay…?” Emily asked, shakily…

“...what did you do…?” the Kirlia answered, in a dull voice born of adrenal shock…

Emily opened her mouth to answer, but in the distance, an agonized howl of pain rang out and sent a flock of birds shuddering into the air…

“...W-We’d best move away… I don’t know if that curse will kill it, but… It’ll be distracted for awhile. O-Or it will be maddened into a rampage. Um… Ehe. No time to think about that… Let’s go…”

The Kirlia nodded and stood, almost robotically. Emily checked the baby in her arm, but they were curled tight and refused to uncurl. Still, they seemed to be okay…

She breathed a sigh of relief, and ushered the Kirlia forward, back towards the seam between the realms…

They were both nervous that the hound would come bounding up behind them at any moment and sear them into ash to join the rest of the dead Pokemon carpeting half of the forest. But, they slowly relaxed when it became apparent that they were alone once more…

...they kept walking. Just to be sure.
By the time the sun settled on the horizon, and they had made camp once more, the Breloom was uncurled and curiously looking around at the world again, seemingly unphased by the terror she had gone through. Emily had set her on a stump while she made the fire and prepared a few berries…

“If I grind them up into mush, I think she’ll take them. I did the same when you were barely conscious, to make sure you had something in your system…”

The Mismagius sliced the berries idly, watching the creature sit there on the stump and simply stare back. Her eyes were obscured by her fuzzy mushroom cap, but she still had an enthusiastic grin on…

“She… Seems eager to learn. She really is newborn, huh?” the Kirlia asked, sitting nearby and watching the little thing nibble one of its claws. Emily chuckled and nodded softly, glancing down at the egg slung on her front. It was always there… She wouldn’t allow it to be anywhere else, for even a second…

...despite how worryingly cold its shell felt…

“I could tell. She’s nothing but a little baby, freshly hatched I’d say…”

“...mm. Guess her mama and papa are lost too, huh?” The Kirlia said, her voice nearly too soft to hear...

Emily paused in her cutting for just a moment, then continued…

“So it seems…”

She fell silent after that, and for a time the only noises were the crackle of the fire and the gentle babble of the oblivious mushroom child… The Kirlia stared into the fire in the quiet… and then, she moved forward to sit on her knees in front of the Breloom. 

The happy little thing swayed there, following her movements despite the obstruction around her eyes. She gave a delighted coo as the Kirlia came near, and the young girl smiled at the sound…

“...what do we call her?”
“...mmm, well, I guess we’d have to name her… Something mushroom themed, eh?”

“...like, Mushy or… R… Rooma?”

Emily grinned, and contained her chuckling…

“No dear… Mushrooms have proper names you known. Like Morel. Or Amanita.”

The Breloom stuck her tongue out poutingly…

“...oh I see.” The Kirlia answered, with a tone of genuine fascination… “So like, Spora or Mycee?”

The Mismagius turned and carried over a bowl of berries for the Kirlia, and a small mug of berry slurry for the newborn. Both girls devoured theirs eagerly, and Emily watched silently with a pleased maternal glow…

“Mmm… Perhaps something very obscure… Agate or… Cremini.”

“Cremy!”

The Kirlia and the Mismagius both looked down at the Breloom, whose face was a mess of light red berry juice…

“K… Kemmy… Creminy!” she giggled eagerly, her feet tapping on the ground as she did. Emily clutched her tassels and settled her cheek against them…

“Ouh… adorable…! I don’t think it can be anything but that…”

She picked up the mushroom and carefully dabbed her face clean, before hugging her firmly…

“Welcome to our growing little troupe, Creminy…!”

“Mmmah.” the infant chuckled, as she squirmed until she was set down to run around on the grass like a miniature drunk…
The Kirlia watched her silently, then looked up at Emily… Their gazes met, and that shared sorrow gleamed in the depths of their eyes once more… But…

They’d lost too much… Perhaps they could find something as well, to balance all that had happened…

“...Emily?”

“Hm? Yes dear?”

“We have to keep Creminy safe…”

Emily smiled and settled to a sit on the stump, watching the mushroom play. The Kirlia sat in the grass next to her, doing the same…

“We do indeed… And each other, little one…”

“...because we’re all we’ve got?”

“Hm, until we are returned to our loved ones… We will make sure that each one of us is safe and happy. No matter what…”

The Kirlia nodded softly, and then settled to a sit once again. She watched Creminy toddle in circles before flopping over, laughing the while as if she was having the time of her life…

“...Nox.”

“She’s quite clearly already picked a name, dear…” Emily said, apologetically. The Kirlia shook her head gently…

“...my name.”

“...Oh? Your parents… named you Nox?”

The Kirlia laid herself gently against Emily. The Ghost was cool, instead of the expectant warmth of any other creature. But it was pleasant… Like a soft, chilly bedsheet at the end of a hot, hard day...
“...It’s what I want to be named from now on… I… I don’t…”

There was a stretch of silence. Even Creminy seemed to be listening intently, recognizing at least that there was something to listen to…

“...I don’t remember my name…” The Kirlia whispered, and covered her eyes… She trembled hard there against Emily, as it all flashed in her mind…

The terrible Ursaring… The last glance her parents had given her… That she had woken up not to the soft, beautiful life she’d always had… But to every miserable agony she could imagine…

The blood… The pain…

“...Nox…” Emily’s soft, whispered voice came… And the Kirlia gasped and jerked her head up to meet the gentle gaze that could only come from one so maternal as her saviour…

“You are not there anymore… You’ve woken up from the nightmare. We are going to be okay… Even if the world is ending as we speak…? We have each other… No matter what…”

The Kirlia sniffled softly and dragged her arm across her eyes…

“N… No matter… What…” she said, softly. And Creminy perked eagerly…

“Nomanna wak!”

Nox smiled… Then broke into sad laughter… It brightened slowly into genuine laughter… The relief she felt in that moment filled her once more with the drive to live, where before it had been so cruelly put to death…

Creminy laughed with her. Emily chuckled softly as well, and held the two younger Pokemon tightly to herself in a loving embrace…
“...thank you, Emily…” Nox said, after she had finally managed to calm down. Tears still dripped down her face… But she was smiling… She truly did feel…

...Safe, once more...

The Mismagius was about to answer, when her head suddenly turned to look at a rustling patch of foliage…

“...HRRAGG!”

A Machamp suddenly stumbled into their campsite. It was bulkier than usual, and it was frothing with a barbaric battle rage. Its eyes locked on Emily and Nox, before it charged forward so quickly that neither girl had any time to react…

...But Creminy did.

She looked up and braced her legs in a sharp stance… The Machamp closed the distance within a few seconds, and in any other moment, his victim would have been left a bloody pulp before they even realized what was going on...

Instead, an unsavoury-sounding impact CRACKED through the night, echoing for a few moments after… Before the stunned Machamp felt itself being firmly grasped by little more than thin vines…

It howled in confusion and fear as it was send tumbling end over end into the night sky, destined to become the bloody smear it had been so eager to create...

“...yaaaaaaaaaaay!” Creminy giggled as she watched the silhouette of the huge fighting type disappear. Emily and the Kirlia slowly turned their heads towards one another…

“...Well, I think it’s safe to say… we’ve made a good pact! Wouldn’t you agree, Nox?”

Creminy toddled up to the Kirlia, and slumped against her happily. The young Psychic put her arms gently around the mushroom and hugged her…

A smile crept across her face, and she nodded firmly...

She had lost everything, and it felt as if her life had ended…

But death and life are a natural cycle… And everything that suffers death is granted a glorious rebirth…

Nox would never forget how bloody and violent hers had been…

...and she would never forget her promise to her family.

Half a decade after the devastating explosion that had ripped Kalos near literally in half, the hut that Emily had shared with her husband still stood. There, at the dividing line between life and death, the building was overgrown and covered in dust and grime… None saw any reason to go near the thing any more…

Except for the one who owned it in the first place…

“Look at this mess…” Emily muttered sadly, as she ducked under the creaking, collapsed doorway and into her former home. Her eyes welled with emotion as she looked around, and memories came flooding back like a tidal wave…

“Did you expect it to be in order?” Nox asked, as she entered as well. The tall Gardevoir’s lidded gaze glanced back and forth over what, to her, was merely an old hut that should have fallen down a long time ago…

“No… Yes. Maybe. Well, it isn’t… And it doesn’t look like anything survived…”

Emily crossed her arms and settled them softly on her heavily swollen middle. Nox glanced over at her, seeing how immensely upset the sights were making her ‘sister’…

The Gardevoir hummed and stepped forward, using her Psychic to gently sweep aside a bit of debris, searching for anything at all to help her sister. She didn’t want this trip to have been for nothing…

“...Well well dear. Look at this…”

She pulled it gently forward, out from under a fallen bit of roof, and into the centre of the room. Emily turned to look, and her eyes widened in shock…

“T… The crib… That my husband made for me… It… It’s still intact…”

“Mm, and it looks as if it hasn’t even been touched. I suppose by some miracle, it was well protected…”

Emily set her tassels on the side of it and stared down into the empty pram… Her eyes slowly filled with tears once more… Nox’s expression grew a little sorrowful as well, and it was doubtless Emily knew what her sister was thinking…
“...Emily, dear… What would you have named them?”

The Ghost type pushed her sleeve to her eye and sniffled weakly… It took her a moment to get her breathing under control, before she looked up at Nox with a small, sad smile…

“...If that egg had hatched… I would have called them… Lua.”

“Lua…” Nox said, with a reassuring smile… “It is a wonderful name…”

Emily nodded, and Nox stood and stepped aside, a bit awkwardly. She wasn’t sure what could ever make things better for a girl who had lost so much, so quickly… Even if Emily had done it for her so long ago...

“...Ah, I know.” The Gardevoir sighed... “We can take this with us. It certainly won’t go to waste, will it?”

Emily looked up and gave a wide smile that almost swept away the sadness in her eyes…

“Thank you… Nox… I would like that… So very much…”

Without another word, Nox nodded and pressed her hands together. She concentrated and spread them once more, and a portal appeared under the crib…

It sunk into the swirling vortex, and Nox stood, waiting…

“Ready to go, then? We have much yet to do today…”

“Of… of course. Give me a moment…”

Nox nodded and then stepped forward, disappearing into the portal as well. Emily looked around the room one last time, and then crouched upon spying a hint of white amongst the dusty debris…

She pulled it up, and started trembling…

The blanket she had made so long ago… Tattered, worn, part of it missing… And yet…

“...I… I would have loved you with all my heart, little Lua… She held it tight to her chest as the tears finally rolled down her cheeks. She sniffled softly, and without letting it go or looking up, she walked through the portal as well, and left the empty hut behind once again...