The library's main towers punctured the sky, or rather, it only appeared that they did since they towered over the rest of the buildings. The architecture was based on ancient human cathedrals combined with the simplicity of a town hall. Piercing spires rose up from the two front corners of the building. They served as the beginning and ending points of the pillars that lined the north wall. Two identical circular windows were bored into the two spires. Their images? Clocks. Another haunting reminder directly in the center of town reminding us of our doomed predicament.

I walked up the steps and into the main door. No adult paid any mind to me; they were all too busy with their hushed, hurried political talk. The Elders and their wannabes milled around in the foyer. Their stark white robes fell across their bodies—and in most cases, across a fat gut—and seemed to meld with the red floor beneath them. The meeting chamber was on the upper floor of the facility, which was connected to the main floor with twin staircases on either side of the foyer.

Due to the large number of people crowded around near the steps, I assumed that their recess was almost over. Soon, they would retreat upstairs again to continue whatever political nonsense they concerned themselves with. That left me with an opening to do my dirty work.

Politics interested me very little. I would usually zone out during town meetings where the Elders' wannabes would update us on what they discussed during their meetings. It always went something like "Crops this, the school that, the wild Pokémon are acting up again, blah blah blah." Attending these meetings was never my choice; my parents always forced me into it, insisting that it was important to be an active member of the community.

As I strode into the library, I couldn't help but cringe at the book that suddenly jabbed into my spine. "Knock it off," I hissed at Treecko. His limbs flailed around in my bag, forcing another book into my back. People were beginning to cast glares at me.

"I can't help it! There's no room in here," Treecko defended. "Are we almost there?"

"Yeah, we're literally in the building as we speak. Be quiet," I commanded. This little guy was already beginning to get on my nerves. Oh please, let this book be all he needs from me.

I did my best to ignore the pain. Standing up as straight as possible, I continued walking toward the front desk, hoping that my façade of normal was good enough to convince the other patrons.

I smiled to myself as I noticed who was the head librarian of this shift. "Hey, Elder Emanuel, how's it going?"

He returned my smile as he rose from his crouched position with a stack of books in hand. The balding elder placed the books down on the desk between us with a thud and a sigh before answering, "Well, politics have become more complicated lately; wild Pokémon are beginning to invade town more often, and the world is still in a state of existing outside of time." He paused a moment, then laughed. "In other words, I am excellent as usual. What about you my fair Sophia?"

I shrugged and put my arms up on the desk, one folded under the other with my chin resting in my hand. "I've been okay. Kids are beating me up less and less in school, so that's a plus. I walk home with fewer bruises which makes my parents more inclined to let me go back."

"Excellent," Emanuel said. He grabbed the book on the top of his pile and opened to its front cover. He placed a stamp with his initials on it, proving he received it back from whoever borrowed it last, then placed it to the side and moved on to repeat the same process with the next book. "I'm assuming you're here to return some..." He paused in the middle of his sentence to look right, then left, then back at me. "...sensitive material." He was kind enough to keep my illegal activities a secret.

I nodded as I slid a regular library book across the table. "Yeah, just here to return another book. Might go pick one up from the dusty non-fiction section too." That was our code for the secret section of books. "See if anything over there catches my eye."

I turned to walk away when Emanuel called me back, "Sophia, please wait a moment." I retraced my last few steps so that I was standing directly in front of him again. My heart pounded, scared he had seen the wiggling backpack as I strode away. I wasn't sure if the man's tolerance would extend to bringing Pokémon into a public place. He leaned down under the desk as I backtracked. His tan head just barely peaked over the top of the surface. He returned to his full height a moment later with a book in his hand. Setting it down, he explained, "I figured it might help with the bullies."

Emanuel slid the book over to me, and I picked it up. "Thanks," I said while looking at the cover. I exhaled, and my heart rate began to slow to normal again. It read: How to Fight Like a Fighting-Type. The small brown sticker on the spine and front indicated that he had pulled it from the non-fiction section. I smiled at him as I slung my bag forward to put the book away.

Treecko raised his hands at me, silently asking, "What are you doing?" I nudged him out of the way with the corner of my new book, then slid it down next to the forbidden book that I had been carrying. I intentionally swung my backpack around my shoulder hard. Treecko squeaked as he connected with my back. "See you later, Elder Emanuel," I said to muffle Treecko's cry. The old man waved his goodbye to me, not suspecting a thing.

I made my way over to the non-fiction section, which was smaller in size compared to the rest of the library. Many of the books that were once here were deemed either too volatile to society or had become decrepit since no one wanted to read books about the real world. The Elders decided it was best to lock them up underground. Instead, the fantasy and fiction sections were full to the brim with colorful books to keep people's minds off of the impending moment when humanity would die out of this world. We were already so close to the end, losing numbers with each generation. I, on the other hand, wanted to know why. Why are we still here? was one of the questions that drove me to find knowledge.

I slid my hand deep into the bookshelf and into a crevice in the wall. No one paid attention to the non-fiction section, a wall separated it from the rest of the library. However, I still felt the need to hurry in the rare event that someone ended up walking by. My hand grasped for an invisible lever. Finally, my fingers found the rough wood of the well-hidden device, wrapping my fingers around it and pulling. The shelf swung open slightly, allowing enough space for a person to fit through. I squeezed my small frame in, then closed the passageway behind me quickly.

The stairs down were well lit by a colorful variety of torches and candles. My guess was the original builders mustered up whatever light sources they could and put them in, and that was the reason for the mismatched lighting. The stairs curled down for what I guessed was about twenty feet then opened up to a circular room. Tall bookshelves were chalked full of ancient writings. The smell hit me the second I walked in; the stench of the musty, dirty underground room was overwhelming yet comforting to me. This was like my home away from home, and every time that smell hit, it reminded me that I was safe and surrounded by such great writings.

The ash-colored table in the middle creaked slightly when I set my bag on it; its old bones ached with the new weight. The table held strong though, not wavering for a second. I unzipped the bag, saying, "Okay, you can come out now."

Treecko's head popped out, looking around at his new surroundings. He crawled out on all fours, then stretched up to his hind legs after clearing his tail of my bag. "Humph, finally! I thought I would never get out of that jail you put me in. Next time try not to kill me with your belongings." He side-eyed me as he brushed the dust off.

"Next time don't be such a jerk," I retorted. I began to pull the two books out of my bag to return them on their appropriate shelves. "Honestly, at least be a little bit grateful that I didn't actually kill you. Believe me, I wanted to after your rude introduction earlier, but I figured I didn't want to stoop to your level." With the books back in their places, I moved to grab the ladder from the corner of the room.

Treecko leaped onto the ladder as I began to yank it towards the middle of the room. "Don't forget what I said, I will turn you in," he warned. "And based on what I heard of your conversation with Emanuel—Emanuel, right? —it sounds like you really don't belong down here."

Ignoring his threats, I dragged the ladder back to the center of the shelves. "I'm getting your book, finding a new book for me, and then we're getting out of here. What exactly are you looking for?"

He bounded across the top of the shelves to the section of books that I was positioned in front of. "I wouldn't know the exact title, but it would be written in footprint runes. It's about evolution. Is there anything like that here?" He didn't hesitate to crawl up and down the shelves, searching for the title he craved.

I thought over all of the titles I had seen, trying to recall any that were in the ancient Pokémon language. I strode over to the second to the right shelf and began looking through the titles. All of the books in this section were about Pokémon, but they were all written by humans about observations of Pokémon. None seemed to be written by the actual source. "I don't think there is anything like that in here."

"There has to be. You humans, uh, stole it from us at one point. If you don't have it, then it's nowhere and this was all for nothing. This is the last time that I trust Mankey," he huffed. He clung to the shelves with his two back paws with his tail curled under him as an extra support. He flipped through one book, then tossed it to the ground while pulling out the next one.

I glared at him out of the corner of my eye while pulling out a book of my own. "Please have more respect for our treasured history than that," I said as I bent down to pick up the mess he was making. I decided to set them on the table until he was done throwing things like the wild Pokémon he was.

He snorted as he discarded another book. "Only if you humans have more respect for us. Remember, I'm here looking for a stolen book. I only want to return it to our kind." That was a blatant lie, but I wasn't going to question him about it. Treecko was older than I gave him credit for. He probably could've been a few years older than me if I thought of his age in human years; the ratio of Pokémon to human years was not one to one for most species. If he was searching for a book on evolution, it was probably time for him to become whatever stage two was in his chain.

I abandoned helping him in exchange for looking through the grass-type book. It was an encyclopedia of sorts, containing all currently known grass-types. I flipped back to the "T" section and found the entry on "Treecko." It was a poorly drawn sketch that only vaguely represented the little bastard that was throwing books around next to me. The next picture was that of a Pokémon named Grovyle. It looked like an older Treecko for sure, but, much like any evolution, there were many differences.

The picture showed a split tail with two long, sharp leaves. The head and arms also gained foliage. The group of leaves protruding on the arms looked sharp as well; two perfect weapons for fending off predators. However, the leaf on top flopped lazily down to its feet, only acting as a sort of aesthetic. A note on the side of the page read "Head leaf possibly only for attracting mates (i.e. longer and softer leaves were more attractive than shorter and sharper ones)."

"Is that me?" a voice behind me asked. I jumped and spun to face the source of the voice. Treecko stared at the book with wide, shining eyes. He climbed onto my shoulder then craned his head to look at the illustration. "Grovyle," he whispered, "He looks so cool!"

I moved over to the table, keeping my head tilted away from Treecko in order to give him a better perch. I placed the book down, leaving it open to the page with his evolutionary line on it. "Here, knock yourself out while I clean up your mess." Treecko might have acted like a huge jerk, but I couldn't blame him for his thirst for knowledge.

I turned to begin picking up his cluttered pile of books. The stack rose several books high before I walked back over to the shelves to put them in their proper spots. Something struck me as peculiar as I began to place books in their original locations: there was a small slot in the back of the shelf, much like the one etched into wall leading to the secret passageway upstairs.

"Treecko, did you notice this when you were pulling books?" I asked the preoccupied Pokémon.

He turned to look at what I was referring to, turned back to his book, but then did a double take a heartbeat later. "No, no I did not," he finally answered. He leaped onto my shoulder to use it as a push off to jump over to the shelf. "What is it? It looks like it could be a secret—"

"—Like a secret doorway..." I finished for him. "It looks exactly like the one upstairs. I bet there is something behind this shelf." Hesitantly, I put my hand inside the crevice and searched around for a lever. Sure enough, I found it, resting in the exact same spot as the one I was familiar with upstairs. "This is crazy. I have to know what's in here," I said to no one in particular as I pulled the lever towards myself.

The shelf swung forward slightly, revealing another secret space beyond the main forbidden section. Doing what no sane person would do, I didn't hesitate to squeeze myself through the new gap. I felt Treecko pull my hair backward, urging me to rethink what I was doing, but no one could stop me. I had to know what was so secret that they kept it behind, not just one, but two hidden doors.

I took a good look at the room around us. It reminded me of the principal's office at school. The desk was a rich dark wood with a glossy finish. The lighting seemed to reflect off of the red carpet to give the dark-colored shelves a red hue. The white candles all matched and were spaced around the room uniformly. This room was designed to give off a feeling of power.

The only thing that contrasted the blood red room was a single blue orb on a pedestal in the center of the room. As I walked closer to it, the first thing I noticed was its odd shape. The orb was not completely spherical, but rather had many flat surfaces that made up an orb shape. Its surface glowed a cool blue, but the center seemed to shine with a dark orange aura. It made me uneasy to look at for a long time.

Behind the desk was a banner. It was the only other thing in the room with a splash of blue. The mosaic of trimmed pieces of fabric resembled a fan of silver and blue thorns. The sight should have been soothing to the eyes in a room of blood reds and oranges, but even the cooler toned pattern had darker patterns sewn into them. Around the pattern in the middle were five blue gears.

"Hey, Treecko, what's on this banner?" I asked. I thought that since he was a Pokémon, he might know what it was.

Instead, he ignored my question. "Sophia, I get that we're already not supposed to be down here, but I have this feeling that we really shouldn't be in here," Treecko whispered to me.

"What, are you scared now?" I didn't hesitate to poke fun at Treecko. "Relax, all of the Elders are upstairs in a meeting. They won't be free to come down here until afterward. Plus, none of them will come down here immediately, it will take them a little bit." I was convincing myself as well as Treecko. "Also, they probably don't come down here too often," I added, trying to add an extra layer of security to my words. The cobwebs that clung to the corners of the new opening confirmed that suspicion.

"You say that now, but you don't know that for a fact," Treecko responded. "And if we are caught, I'm throwing all of the blame on..."

He trailed off. I turned my head to look at him, but he was already gone from my shoulder. He had fallen down to the floor so that he could run over to a bookshelf. He climbed up to the top shelf and pulled a book out to examine it. I tried to read the front cover, only to discover that I couldn't as it was written in a different language.

"Footprint runes," Treecko whispered. He began flipping through pages as fast as an electric-type.

"This is the book," he said as he held it up for me to see. "I can't believe it, it's actually here. This is exactly what I was looking for."

I moved back out of the second secret room, telling Treecko what I was doing as I went, "I'm grabbing my backpack so that we can take that book with us. Grab anything else interesting that you want."

I picked up my backpack, then proceeded to look for a book that interested me and would potentially interest Treecko. I found precisely the book I needed—A Collection of Maps of the Explored Area—and shoved it into my bag. I planned to stick with Treecko for a while to learn as much as I could about the Pokémon of this world and also to make sure he didn't snitch.

This would be a revolutionary discovery, I thought to myself as I flipped through the maps. And, it would make for one hell of an adventure.

I decided to also take the book on grass-types. I decided I would add notes as I went, correcting any false information. The possibilities were endless now that Treecko found the book he needed. So many discoveries could happen, and I needed so many books to accompany my learning. I only settled for one more with the title The Evolution of Pokémon in the After. It compiled all the knowledge of how Pokémon evolved in the After and how the stagnant flow of time affected their growth. It was a very thin book.

Then, as I was zipping up my backpack, I heard the worst possible noise: the door at the top of the staircase opening. My heart pounded through my chest and my eyes widened. No, it can't be, no one ever comes down here during meetings, I thought. But my worst fears became a reality when I heard voices accompanying the sound of feet at the top of the steps. I was frozen in place, unable to move as the voices grew louder.

My mouth felt dry as I looked at the bottom of the steps. Shadows moved down the steps in front of their owners. I had to act fast in order to avoid getting caught. My only option was to dive into the second secret room and lock the door behind me. It was risky as I had no idea how the door's locking mechanism worked, but if there was a way in, there had to be a way out. Right?

I didn't take the time to debate the risks of my idea and instead threw myself into the other room. I leaned all of my weight into the shelf to slide it back into place. Treecko looked up from his book to see what crazy thing I was doing. His eyes grew huge as he watched the door click shut.

"What in Dialga's name do you think you're doing?" he shouted. He jumped from the shelf to the front of my shirt. I felt his tiny paws grab my cheeks and shake my face, "Why would you do that, we don't know if—"

I grabbed his mouth and held it shut. Then, I pointed to the room we had just come from. With the other hand, I let go of his mouth and held up one finger to my lips; the universal symbol for "Shut the fuck up." Muted voices floated through the wall and into the room where Treecko and I now sat in complete silence. I couldn't comprehend them through the thick bookcase. The Pokémon's eyes widened, and he gasped slightly. He flickered his gaze from the shelf, to me, and back to the shelf.

Finally, he leaned over to my ear and whispered, "I thought you said no one would come down here?"

I hissed back, "No one does. This is the first time I've ever heard another person come down here."

Ignoring our dire situation, I grabbed Treecko's book off the shelf and placed it in my bag with the others. Then for the first time, I looked really hard at the surroundings. My eyes flickered from the orb, to the banner, back to the orb and away again; it was still difficult for my eyes to linger on it for too long.

"Do you feel air?" Treecko asked into my ear.

"What?"

"Do you feel an air flow anywhere? Because I do." He paused for a moment before continuing, "You get what that means, right?"

I thought for a moment, then shook my head. "No, tell me."

Treecko groaned as he gave up the answer, "Oh my Dialga, you would not survive as a Pokémon. There is a potential escape route in this room."

I sighed with relief. "Oh, thank goodness, we're saved."

Treecko pointed to the banner that hung behind the desk. "See that? It's moving slightly. I bet there's a secret passageway behind that flag."

"What is that on the banner?" I asked Treecko again, using a more commanding tone.

"I'll explain it later, but first let's get out of here," Treecko responded. His voice cracked slightly as he spoke with what sounded almost like fear. "Just know that it's very bad."

The situation went from bad to worse when I heard the voices draw closer. People bid farewell as the door into the room swung open slightly. The voices faded back up the steps as the door opened all the way. I didn't stick around to meet the newcomer, and instead, I whisked myself away into the hole behind the banner.