It all happened so quickly, Jake had been right. Was he ever wrong? It wasn't likely. It was missing - it was gone. She sat by herself in the meeting room and thought about the desperate phone call she had received that morning. "Bonnie! Chamenos! Here! Gone!" She had told Max to slow down, she couldn't understand what he was saying. He did and heart-brokenly repeated his words, in full sentences, this time. And Bonnie learnt that Chamenos wasn't with him, that he had looked all around but it was still nowhere to be found. She put the phone down. She cried. Jake was right. Was he ever wrong?

This meant one thing - Nova had Chamemos, and it was a mere matter of hours before her wicked plan would spring into action. The same plan that Bonnie had known all along, agreed to all the same. The same plan that just got worse with each passing day. The same plan that was now being put to use as she sat there all alone, none of her Pokémon out of their Pokéballs, wallowing in her own self-pity.

She thought about Max and his way with words that he just seemed to have, those moments she had spent with him. Sometimes he would have candy-close coloured cheeks and look down at the ground. He was her best friend. Well, him and Jake, who was now at the sundial, being referred to as Alabaster. The entire team was there. But not her.

She was at the base, lonely in a meeting room. Max. Max was in Kalos, if only he had flown back to Hoenn. Or to Sinnoh, or Johto, or Unova like they had discussed when they first met in the ruins. Anywhere but there. Now he wouldn't be able to escape this fate, just like everyone else. Nobody would have a free-will anymore, not even Max, who had a beautiful mind. One of his own. No longer so.

Then there was the other boy. The one who she hadn't seen in so long. The one who she may have not even recognised if she had seen him at that very moment. Clemont. Her older brother. The boy who had presumably been looking after her very first Pokémon, one that wasn't a grass or ghost type, Dedenne. The boy she had travelled the region with in her most innocent days.

"Clemont," she whispered to herself and herself alone, "I'm sorry." She wiped the tears from her eyes with her blazer sleeve, "I should have been better. Smarter. Just like you. Then I wouldn't be here. And I could have saved you."

But something snapped in her head. "Bonnie, what if it's not too late?" She could hear Max say.

She didn't think it possible. Not at all. What could she, a seventeen-year-old girl, do to stop this organised chaos from occurring? The entire region, apart from Team Lumière, were dropping the ground as fast as the tear-drops were dropping down her pale face. This was the immense power the tiny creature, Chamemos. The one that had been written about in The Anistar Chronicle. The one who has appeared to hopeful eighteen-year-old Max after she had left him in ruins. Maybe there was something special about him, after all.

When the people of Kalos awoke, their minds wouldn't be their own, and who knew what Nova and the team were planning to do with an entire region of slaves to the brain.

She stood up, called out Pumpkaboo and Skiddo. She didn't need to do it for Rotom, he did that himself. She smirked, cheering up slightly. Chamenos couldn't control pokémon, after all. So she wasn't as alone as she had initially thought she was.

"Skiddo!" She commanded after she was outside of the base. "This is gonna be hard in a pencil skirt, but can I ride on your back? We have somewhere to be, and fast!"

The Pokémon cried out in agreement.

"Good boy!" She clambered onto its back. "Don't get left behind, you two!" She directed to Rotom and Pumpkaboo. They followed her, levitating, as she and Skiddo charged onto the routes outside of town. "To Lumiose City!" If this was it, if the people she had initially been rooting for, the people she worked for were going to win, there was something she had to do. Before it was too late.

After what wasn't long at all but felt like it, she was there. She climbed off of Skiddo. "Thank-you so much." She patted its head before returning it and the rest of her pokémon to her pokéballs. She looked at the people around her, half asleep, half wide awake and gawking at the unconscious bodies before them.

"Maybe, I've done it. Maybe, just maybe. Please. Oh, please." She looked up at the sky and ran, still remembering exactly where to go. "Please."

Lumiose Tower. Her brother. He was here. She swallowed the knot in her throat and all of her pride. If Clemont was soon going to be nothing more than a piece of Nova's puzzle, she needed to see him again. Maybe he could help. Maybe he wouldn't hate her and he would figure something out. He was smarter than she could ever be. "It's not too late, it can't be."

She dashed into the biggest known Pokémon gym in the world. She took the elevator to the top floor. "Faster, faster, hurry!" Talking to herself had become a habit at this point. Bonnie, or Blossom, or whoever she was at this point, was too pumped up to care, though. The elevator was too slow. Every moment was vital. He could fall asleep at any moment.

She just wanted to see her brother, as he was supposed to be, one last time.

The doors opened.

It was too late.

She fell to the floor next to her older brother's sleeping body, too crushed to notice the other body asleep not far away from him. But this was Clemont. Weak, powerless, looking the exact same as he did the day she left. She was worse than Team Rocket, worse than Team Flare, she was a part of Team Lumière, which meant she had let this happen to her own brother.

This was all her fault.

She cried harder than she had ever done before. She shook him by the shoulders. "Clemont! Big brother! It's Bonnie! I need you, please wake up! Before it's too late! Don't let this happen! Please!" It was no use, he was only going to wake up in two days, with the rest of the people in the region. And when he did, he wouldn't Clemont anymore. She had missed her last chance to see her brother. This was it. Game over.

She screamed into her hands but was interrupted by a small, "Den-den."

"W-what was that?"

"Den-den-dedenne." It was Dedenne, her childhood Pokémon. It sprang into her arms.

"Dedenne, it's you! It's really you! I've missed you so much!" Dedenne nuzzled her neck.

But it leapt away from her, squeaking frantically.

"What is it, Dedenne?"

"Max!" Max was asleep, on the floor. "What are you doing here?" She touched his face. "Oh I'm an idiot - of course, you can't hear me, but still..." Dedenne clawed at the green-haired eighteen-year-old's pocket, "Huh? Dedenne? You want me to look in his pocket. "I'm sorry, Max, first I ruin your life and then I loot your pockets, I really am a terrible person." All she found was his phone, which was an obvious invasion of his privacy, anyway. Then it hit her. "He's from Hoenn! It would be no use me calling for help, I only know people from Kalos. But Max-" she unlocked his phone and opened up his recent calls.

The most recent one was to 'Beautiful' with a heart next to it. She looked at him, fast asleep. He looked boyish and angelic, carefree. "You really did like me that way." She tried something. Clemont used to read her fairy tales and love's true kiss could cure any ill. Hesitantly, willing to try anything to wake him up, she kissed him. No luck. She should have known. She also should have saved her first kiss for a more meaningful moment, one when her brother wasn't asleep in the same room. "Nevermind." She laced the fingers of one hand with his. He stirred and her heart shook. He was still him, and whilst his reason for being here was unknown, at least she got one kiss before the inevitable happened. "Why ever you came here, thank-you." She had gotten to see Dedenne and the two men who meant the most to her.

The next one under was just 'Sis'. His sister, May. That was it! There was still hope! All of her anxiety pouring out of her, she pressed the 'call' button. It picked up. "Max?"

"N-no. I'm Bonnie and I really need your help, or your little brother might never see you again."