Chapter 28/Prologue 2: Lost in Time

Then he was gone.

I gasped for air and tried to reach for my fallen pokeball, but had lost 
control of my arms. Blood was still gushing out of me and all I could do was 
fight to keep my eyes open. I looked up and at last, I was able to appreciate 
the true grace and beauty of my location and of the moon.

The moon.

The moon.

A bird came down from the moon.

I coughed uncontrollably and my body shook.

The bird landed in the clearing, it was enormous, its huge body easily 
filling up the space. It gazed pensively down at me and gave a single quiet 
'kaw'. The sound conveyed something like grieving, lamenting.

I wasn't your time.

That's what the bird said. It didn't open its long beak or anything but I 
could understand it regardless.

I'm sorry.

Not your time.

I was near death. My breathing now dangerously thin. My eyes scraping against 
their sockets to look at the bird.

Don't worry.

Your friends.

Will help you. Your friends will.

The bird wasn't making any sense. I couldn't even understand it anymore. In 
fact, I couldn't understand anything at all. My eyes rolled unconsciously 
towards the moon, high in the sky and stopped there. My breathing ceased, I 
was dead.

Fire fanned out from the bird's beak. It bathed everything in bright searing 
red and orange. Instead of burning, the plants responded vibrantly, they 
suddenly turned verdant green as burning fire flooded into them.

But I was a little different. I was already dead. The bird's fire flooded 
into my body but my soul had already departed that shell. The fire 
encompassed my departed soul and formed a new body for it. One that suited my 
true nature more easily.

The bird took off into the dark sky. Into that starry night. Toward that 
moon.

The moon.

The great bird was disappointed. It couldn't transform me into Entei yet. I 
wouldn't know until later, but I would need my friends for that. Friendship 
is one hell of a thing after all.

Giovanni never realized it but that power he was so into finding was dearly 
connected deeply to that term - 'friendship'. Of course he would probably 
scoff at that thought, but nonetheless: it is, and always will be.

Yes, I needed my friends. They needed me too. And we didn't even know it. Was 
it fate that we complemented each other so easily? Was it fate that all three 
of us were chosen by that bird to become its dogs? What is fate? Can it be 
changed the same way we changed time? Were we fated to change time? Or was 
that change of time fated to occur?

500 years in the future, Celebi would gather us (now as beasts, we had since 
died as humans and been reborn) and bring us to the past so we could battle 
Mewtwo. Or rather so we could distract Mewtwo while our alternate past selves 
travelled to the night I died and altered the time line.

Isn't that strange? Why couldn't Celebi directly take us to that night, why 
did we have to fight Mewtwo while our past selves saved me?

How did Celebi even know? It's a time-traveller, so is it doing it even now? 
Going back into time and guiding us into the past so that this moment can 
remain the way it is now?

I don't know the answer, to any of those questions, but it probably relates 
back to fate. The moment was just structured like that.

I was running through fields, forests, caves, deserts, mountains, and 
sometimes even through towns and over oceans. It felt great to run, and I was 
amazingly fast. I covered mile after mile and I wasn't alone either. I had 
two great friends who always ran with me. I couldn't get a good look at them 
but one was characterized by yellow and the other by blue. Together, the of 
us friends visited many lands, made many friends, and became legends.