"Ethan?" I ask.

In the distant Safari Zone, a chorus of Kricketot pipe up, their voices high and whimpering. I creep forwards in the grass, heading towards the edge of town. There, in a grove of trees, stands Ethan. His neck is still angled straight upwards, as if to bring the stars down with one defiant glare, and I half believe he can do it. In fact, he shines with sleek health.

This isn't the same Ethan I left.

He turns, massive head angling around to face me and his eyes are no longer those of the Ethan I knew. In fact, they don't look human at all. They are those of the King of the Seas, with larger irises so dark that they're hard to distinguish from the pupils.

Unsure if I should be thrilled or terrified, I trace the contours of his body down to his left arm, which is perfect. There are no jutting bones or sagging skin, no evidence of the human trying to break through the flesh. On his left hand, which is splayed outwards, sits a shadowed figure.

At first I think, by some impossible miracle, that it's Lyra or the old Ethan himself, broken free through time to space to return to me.

The wind picks up around us and the trees shift, moonbeams running their slim fingers through the clearing and casting pale light on the crimson coat of Red. He gets to his feet slowly, unflinchingly, and stretches out his arms, holding his hands together and cracking every joint. "Oh, Ashley." he laughs. "Lovely night, isn't it?"

"What did you do to him?" I ask. My accelerating heartbeat has picked up into a dead sprint. With trembling fingers, I throw out my whole team in a defensive arc, still screaming,"What did you do?"

Red looks up at me through the gaps in my Pokemon's barricade. His steely gaze holds me there as a smile creeps across his face. "I fixed him."

I scream in agony, fearing the worst, and the team tears forwards. A storm of petals and fire burst into being, missing Red, who only needs to snap to appear thirty feet off, unharmed. Ten tries to hold him in a psychic grasp and Red sends out his own Pokemon, an Espeon who matches wits with Ten for a second before both break their connection. Red withdraws his Espeon and sends out a Blastoise, clearing Minerva's fire and Hycanith's bone before either can hit him.

"Reach out for him." Ten says before stretching out his wings to go after Red's Blastoise.

I do. I sense Ethan's bond, just where it was before- in fact, it hasn't been damaged at all. It is him. I almost collapse with relief on the spot but that turns to a torrent of pain as Ethan's guilt and panic overwhelms me.

I never told him who we were fighting against. I never told him who we were fighting against.

It only takes ten or so minutes of me, operating on my own, to make a terrible mistake. Arceus, I'm hopeless without them.

Red laughs, "See, he's there. I wouldn't erase your dear friend from the timeline- no, Ashley, I keep my promises, as you should know by now. I fixed him up and he fixed something for me. I scratch your back, you scratch mine, everything's good. Amiright?"

"What did you do?" I repeat, voice hoarse with pain that isn't even mine. Celebi's power flashes at my fingertips. "I won't ask again, Red."

"You should be asking him what he did." Red points to Ethan. Then, as if the Lugia isn't even there, he distractedly traces a screen in the air with his finger, which flickers to life.

What happened? I ask Ethan.

Ethan doesn't respond in words, as his confusion over being duped has taken any potential room for reasoning and thrown it out the window, but a string of images shoot through my mind at a speed that makes my head pound. Through the images I catch Red standing by Ethan in the moonlight, talking about a way to restore his mind and body best he could, but all the while his eyes are on something else. I recognize the interface from two years ago, when my life as I knew it and the world itself both ended forever, and even through the pain I clench my fist.

Red's opening the game code- trying to make his way in through the security that guards the likes of full access.

Red had been guessing at the likes of a way in for years. All he needed was a live breech- a flaw in the security- and Ethan was never in any condition to defend himself.

All I needed to do was step out of the way.

He has full control over the game files now. He can do a hell of a lot more than erasing us off the map. He knows I know this, too. I can see at in his eyes as I look back up, the connection easing from me. "I've been waiting for this forever."

Ten makes his move, soaring back from the Blastoise and lunging at Red with talons extended. With a furious screech and nine past lives of fury he swoops down and Red snaps and appears ten feet to the left, just out of his way. He casts a bored look over the group of us.

"Bet this is a constant too, isn't it, Ten? You never manage to protect her. In fact, you might as well not be doing shit. Legendary's emissary. What an absolute joke." Red says, withdrawing a Lapras who counters Ten's next attack midflight.

Ten's eyes glow pink as he tries to hurl the Lapras around with Psychic, but the girth of it must be too much because no matter what he does the thing isn't going to budge an inch. My other teammates, save Ethan, get the message and start assisting, but Lapras's Water-typing is too effective a shield for Minerva's Fire Blast to do anything and it's Ice-typing is the same counter in reverse for Reginae. The two of them are unrelenting, spewing all their energy again and again, but they might as well be attacking an immovable rock.

Behind the shield of his team members, Red opens a void in the air. A blue screen flares to life, rife with data. I feel the air tense and sharpen around us, as if it too knows that what's taking place here is a firm violation of its integrity. "New interface. Nice."As the battle surges on, Red continues, "These are all really weirdly labelled. Okay, I don't even want to know what's in that folder... here we go."

I don't wait for him to make the selection. I summon Celebi's power into a long, sharp blade, similar to what I used that night at the Lake of Rage. I have no clue if I can use this as a projectile, but hey, we're about to find out. I hurl it hard as I can and miss Red by inches as he dodges out of the way, with the screen swivelling around as he does. His Espeon catches his gaze and its eyes glow blue, lifting me straight up in the air.

"I won't tolerate interruptions, Ashley." Red says, his voice much lower than anything I've heard before out of him.

I struggle against the Espeon's grip but it's like trying to wriggle out of a Spinarak's nest made out of spun steel. I can feel the psychic energy around me, the unnatural compression of the air formed into a vice grip, and it strikes me for the first time in months that I could die here.

The sudden stroke of fear is burst as a shadow hurtles through the air. The Espeon falters, swaying to the side with a dramatic turn of the head. Fang, snout kneaded tightly as it was as the day he watched Pisces get sliced open, is clinging onto the Espeon's neck. The vulpine Pokemon whines with pain, delicate legs flailing to get him off, and to my surprise I can't make out a word it's saying. It reminds me of watching Pokemon on television- I could never for the life of me figure out why they were saying their own names or making animal noises when the ones in the wood were calling to me, just beyond the house.

My childhood. Ethan.

My mind flashes back to his dark hair, the blissful naivete traced in his smile, the scent of Marrill and pancakes and river water...

Focus focus focus! Arceus, damnit, what's wrong with me?

"Fang. You got this?" I say, brushing myself off.

He looks up from the Espeon, which lies limp on the ground. He bends to its neck and whispers, "See, Red? That's for Dill and Miki's mom. Don't fuck with eeveelutions ever again, and don't pretend your half-bald rat has anything on us." He looks back to me, feigning a smile. "I've got it under control."

Red doesn't even look at his Pokemon. We're still struggling to hold one of his Pokemon for ever three of us, and Ethan is paralyzed with fear, but Red's focus lies squarely on the hellish blue square cut out of the fabric of the universe itself. His screen flashes with light as he navigates the interface like he was born for it. I grimace, summoning another sword of energy, and Celebi's power flickers out around me. I sense the subtle vibration of my golden bonds as silver swings out around us- a thousand timelines, a thousand movements made and not made, a million tiny choices and billions of possibilities. We are infinite, extending in all directions, and yet there's nothing at all that points me to an answer. There's no world where Red appears to Ethan today where we've already worked things out, at least nothing I can see. The probability of this ending well is so small that finding it would be like finding a fleck of gold on a mile-long beach.

Guess we're doing this the manual way.

I throw the sword, but Red clicks his fingers again and appears right behind me. I spin around, aiming for a melee attack, but with a shrug and a smile he appears back by Ethan's other arm. This time, Minerva notices first and aims a single blistering fireball at his heart, but the bolt hits Ethan instead. Red appears at the edge of the battlefield, close to the trees, and safely back behind his Pokemon again. His three starters border him, a defensive shield, and a wave of energy sweeps the battlefield. Trees grow squat and impossible, our own forms grow simplistic and sharper, and the world itself cycles through modes of existence. I feel a compression in my chest and press further into Celebi. As I lean forwards into my full power, the world snaps back into its original pristine quality, and my Pokemons' eyes flare with golden flame.

We realize it together:

we're too late.

Running interim.nds...

The words sear through my mind, attached to no voice, and burn on the screen as Red emerges triumphant from his cluster of Pokemon.

Approximate time to complete: two minutes.

This is it, thinks Minerva. We're all going to die.

It echoes through our seven of our minds, although I can sense the word going on across a thousand timelines, a thousand teams, and a thousand timelines. There are infinite connotations for the word, so many ways we process the chasm of ending.

I imagine my internal sky of stars swelling with light.

No. Not now.

Someone in the team is shaking like a leaf and I don't know which one of our bodies is trembling. Maybe we all are. Maybe it's just me. Who's more scared, someone seeing the new and unnatural end of their world as they know it or someone who already knows the hell about to unfold?

The end does not come for us.

"Okay, two hours... two years..." Red says, his voice the first thing to fill the new silence. "Well. This is anticlimactic. Why are these loading bars so inaccurate, anyhow? Who programs this shit?"

"Who did that?" I ask. "Did we do that?!"

"I think it's... a faulty operating system...?" Ten squints. "Bloody hell."

"Who cares? Let's not stick around to find out!" Minerva yells, voice high with panic. Mouth full of fire, she aggresses the Venusaur, stopping just a few feet in front of it and spewing the largest blast of flame I've ever seen her muster. The Venusaur, unflinching, takes the entire hit to the face and with a rueful glance hurls a blob of ugly sludge from its flower. Minerva lets out a high yelp and falls to her paws, at first into an uneasy bow before her tails go limp and her whole body slumps to the ground.

I run to her side, cowering beneath the three titanic Pokemon Red still has available. Red laughs, "Level 100. Being in charge of the observable universe has its perks. Thanks for that, Ethan. Once I open this rift in the space-time continuum, I'll send you a postcard from the other side." Red flashes finger guns at Ethan and my desire to wring his neck only grows. With a dismissive frown, he checks the interface. "Looks like the program's settled around two months. Huh. You know what? I can live with two months. I'm pretty sure that's about how much time you had anyways, right?"

Half that. thinks Reginae. We're so dead.

We're so dead, echoes across my mind as Celebi's power and all the doorways closes around me. I finally understand what Ethan meant by shutting a thousand eyes. When I'm just standing in one timeline, in three dimensions instead of four, I feel blind.

"You can't do this," I say. "Wherever you open that doorway, the legendaries will see it. The authorities will. Someone. It's not just me this time. I'm not alone and I'm not a twelve year old anymore."

"It's an interim portal, granting access out of this universe and into any others. You know, like the one Celebi opened for you and the one one of those other pesky legendaries keeps opening for that waste of space?" Red sounds offended as he points an accusing finger at Ten. "Obviously. As for where I'm putting it, all I need to do is play to the programming. Where's the one place that's almost impossible to get to? Right where I started. All you have to do is follow yours, Ashley. Try anything smart and hey, I'll know. You want to play one last game?"

"I'm done with your games." I hiss.

"Not yet you're not." Red replies. "Two months." He raises his hand skyward and the interface follows it. The moon above casts strange lights across his face and with another snap, he and his Pokemon are back.

The clearing, unaltered, lies before us, just as we left it. No signs of the battle remain anywhere, and the night air is cold in my lungs.

"I don't want to die yet," Fang says. I hear the echo of an Eevee- two Eevees- in the back of my mind. I'm fighting for two pasts here. Two worlds. No, knowing the timelines well as I do, I'm fighting for thousands, and I don't go down easy.

This comes to no comfort to the team, all of whom are lost to me in their own panicked turmoil.

We finish our grieving in shocked silence.

(A/N: With luck, I'll be updating every day from now until the end.

That is to say... welcome to the endgame.)