Authors note: This Fic has been written with the permission of Buwaro and Dark Magician Girl Aeris. It is set in the ANI world which they created along with Rizu Komesu. I highly recommend you read the fics "Tales of Flame" and "Anomaly".

I'd also like to thank Shiguya for giving me some great advice taking the time to read over this story.

Disclaimer: Pokemon is owned by 4kids, not me.

Chapter One: Chaos and Pain

It was quiet when I awoke that day. Not that this was anything unusual, as it was always quiet in the darkness outside of time. There is a great expanse beyond time. All you can see in all directions is an unending serene darkness, devoid of all sound. Through this darkness the stream of time drifts.

I had become accustomed to sleeping within the time stream itself; the threads of time encompassing and sheltering me, like a rock in a gentle stream. Or, perhaps, like a reed brushed by a gentle breeze. Suffice to say, I was enclosed by time as I awoke. Gravity, of course, has no effect outside of time, so I was not unduly disturbed to find myself apparently floating on nothing.

As I opened my eyes, I regarded the flow of time around me. Like a giant stream, time lines stretch off in all directions, with a great convergence in the distance like magnificent star. There the polar realities intertwine around each other, forming a massive spiral through which time progresses.

Closest to me was the polar reality I call home. It was the first thing I saw when I first awoke, and it still fascinates me. At first glance it appears to be a thick thread of golden light. Upon closer examination, one sees that it is really millions of tiny motes, all woven together. The motes vibrate, causing the entire thread to pulsate with energy. The vibrations of these motes cause off shoots of colour, sending ripples down the thread. Around each polar reality are thousands of spawned alternate realties, which are really just pale reflections. Each thread seems to pulsate to its own heart beat; the alternate realties echoing the polar ones. You can almost imagine that the time is reverberating to some celestial melody completely beyond our understanding.

Looking at the time stream, one can see a million different possibilities playing out before you; empires rising and falling, wars beginning and ending, civilisations forming and crumbling. Each as likely as the next; yet in the grand scheme of things, most unimportant.

In the end, only the polar realities, or as I had begun calling them 'polarities', matter, for they hold the fabric of time together, and without them the time stream would unravel. Each polarity spawns off hundreds of alternate realities, through which the future is played out.

And not just the future, but every possible future, which is where we Celebi come in. It is our job to guide the polarities towards the most stable future possible. For, unfortunately, the polarities are not the most stable of creations. Inside each polarity exists a delicate balance between order and chaos. Any movement that disrupts this balance can have far reaching consequences. If the harmony is disrupted to a large extent, the polarity itself can become so unstable that it unravels, destroying all the alternate realities it has formed.

Fortunately, this has never happened, but the possibility exists. If it ever happened we would be forced to step in. By my current estimate, there is around 1000 Celebis; one for each of the polarities. We hardly ever meet, for which I'm very grateful. Whenever we hold our centennial meetings, it always ends up with the "elders" telling us how wise they are. Just because my polarity is younger than there's is doesn't mean that they can treat me as if I'm a child. For the most part, we just leave each other alone, which is fine by me.

The very nature of time makes my job so much harder: for how can you guide time when there are so many possibilities that the best one is often impossible to distinguish from the others? Even if you find it, it is often too late to do anything about it; for in one of the great ironies of life, the one place where I'd most need to alter time: the polarities are beyond my power to change. So I must rely on regular forays into alternate realities, and my own judgement to guide my actions. I am cursed by knowing all possibilities, but no certainties.

After examining the time stream around me, and being satisfied with what I saw, I proceeded to re-enter my polarity. I spiralled down into the flow, my body surrounded in energy as I pierced the barrier between times. As I entered the timeline I felt a slight feeling of unease, as if something was not quite right. Almost as if the polarity itself was edgy. I ignored it, passing it off as an effect of the jarring sensation as time re-exerted its control over me.

The blackness outside time was replaced with daylight as I found myself in the Ilex forest, hovering above the shrine the humans built for me. Humans... Those misguided creatures who think that they're the masters of the world. So smug and assure in their ignorance...

They look to me as the "Guardian of the Forest", which is true, in a way. The silly creatures even built me a shrine, thinking that they could entreat my aid in their petty disputes. As if I'd ever be concerned with their problems; I have enough on my plate as it is thank you very much.

As I was passing through the forest, I heard, simultaneously, two distinct sounds. The first was a voice ringing challengingly through my mind. The voice called out "Where am I?" a phrase which left me feeling shaken as it echoed through my mind. Along with the voice, I heard the sound of something cracking, almost like the sound of an egg breaking. The combined sound left me with a profound sense of wrongness, as if something within me cried out at what was happening.

As I struggled to understand what I was hearing, I was struck with a realisation: The passage of time, which was usually so clear to me, seemed to have paused; as if the very world itself was taking a hushed breath.

I suddenly realised what was wrong. I was witnessing an event that I had no knowledge about. In every alternate reality I had visited, what was now happening had never occurred. I felt unease rising within me. Had I missed something? Why was time different? What had changed? How?

I realised that I was now in a future that I had no knowledge about. The thought terrified me. I was, for the first time in my life, in the unknown.

As questions rose in my mind I turned around where I was going to go I'm not sure. I had a vague notion of heading back to my shrine to check a few things. Perhaps, I could even consult one of the other members of my species about what I had heard. I began to retrace my steps.

Suddenly the world seemed to flicker around me, and I felt the ground rise up to meet me. Pain like I had never felt before wracked though my entire being. Gasping for breath I tried to force myself to catch my fall, while my body convulsed as every nerve cried out. It felt as if my body was being torn apart from all directions. My muscles refused to answer, and I crashed face first into the ground.

Then, as quickly as it came, the pain left.

Panting, I staggered up, looking wildly around me as I blinked tears from my eyes. The forest appeared no different, but I sensed the passage of time as a jarring, stumbling dash forwards, as if time itself were a wounded beast on its last breath. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong. If I had felt uneasy before, I was now on the verge of panic.

With that thought I forced my self outside of the time stream. I saw once again the flow of time, but now something was terribly wrong. Where once a vibrant flow had existed there was now a dead and decaying core. Approaching the middle was a whirling mass of darkness consuming everything in its path.

I watched as the flow of time churned, and timelines fizzled out. Alternative timelines snapped, sending off offshoots of golden light in all directions. The very flow of time seemed on the verge of unravelling. I heard, for the first time, a hideous wailing, as if a great wind had somehow formed outside of time, even though there is nothing that could cause it. The sound was slowly building, as if approaching some unholy climax. Panicking, I threw myself towards the cataclysm, even as I called out to the rest of my brethren.

What awaited me there was even worse than even I could have dreamed. In the time stream I saw figures, with more approaching from every side. We were converging on the centre of the time stream, as the Celebi's who were already there were desperately trying to hold back the steadily approaching flood of darkness. Throwing myself into the fray, I joined my power with the rest of my species in an attempt to divert, or even stop the collapse of time.

I was surrounded by my brothers as we bent time around us, a glowing wall of light forming in front of us, as we weaved our powers together. The 'air' was full of the crackling sound of energy as it lanced across from us to the wall. We had arranged ourselves in small groups of seven periodically across the area we were trying to protect. Each group was channelling their energies into a thick strand that would then flow into the barrier. The Celebi's in my group had a grim look of determination on their faces; we all knew what the price of failure would be.

The wall grew in size and intensity as we fed our power into it, spreading out to form a giant dam, or dyke, across the time stream. Brighter and brighter it grew, until it was painful to even look at; its surface pulsating with energy as we threw our energy into it. I felt myself begin to calm as I bent the energy within me to the task at hand. I now knew what needed to be done, and I would do it.

Then suddenly, the chaos reached us.

We were thrown backwards as the chaos collided with the shield we had created, cracks splintering off in all directions as chaos and order met in the centre. The crackling of energy was replaced with an unearthly keening as the chaos tried to force its way through the shield. A roiling ball of chaos formed at the point where the two forces had collided, sending out grey tendrils in all directions. A miasmatic cloud that began to destroy everything it touched.

The shield we had formed had been designed to stop the flood of darkness, and so was no match for the highly concentrated beams of energy that the chaos was throwing off. The beams pierced it as if it were not even there.

Horrified, I watched as a Celebi was hit by a beam of grey energy, the beam piercing his chest and continuing on through his body and out behind him. His screams reached my ears as the energy inside him began to tear him apart. Even more, I felt the pain of his death as if I was the one being torn apart, a blow that would have sent me to my knees if I weren't outside of time. As it was, I lost control of my flight, and had to right myself.

Worse still, was when a polarity was engulfed in the chaos. We all stared as one of us suddenly disintegrated before our eyes. His eyes: a mixture of shock and pain as his body melted beneath him.

The barrier began to buckle and give in sections as the darkness warred with it. We were putting everything we had into it, but our losses were beginning to take there toll. I could see patches of the wall begin to fade in intensity.

We all threw everything that was in ourselves at the wall. A massive pulse of energy leapt from our groups towards the centre of the wall. That spot suddenly flared in intensity, becoming a 100 times brighter than before. The collision of energy sent a ripple down the wall, bending it as it passed through. I suddenly realised my error, but it was far too late.

As the wall bent, the cracks grew deeper and broader, as the stress of the power coursing through it grew. I shouted at the Celebi's around me to stop, but they didn't hear me, being caught up in their efforts.

Then, as I knew it must, the barrier suddenly shattered. We had failed.

The darkness leapt forward as a wave, as the cloud of grey exploded, showering us with a deadly rain. The last remnants of the wall imploded; the shockwave sending us careening backwards.

As I regained control of my flight, the panic that had been threatening me overwhelmed me. I flew off in terror, making a desperate attempt to escape the catastrophe. I was dodging in and out of timelines, trying to evade the chaos around me.

As I flew I caught glimpses of what was happening around me. Celebi's were dying all around me, some being ripped apart by ether the darkness, or the remnants of our futile attempt at stopping the chaos. Others were in various stages of dissolution, as their polarities were being systematically annihilated. All of them had the same look of hopeless pleading on there faces, and it tore my heart, because all I could do was stare in horror.

I saw a small shield form around a small cluster of polarities, as a half a dozen Celebi's repeated our failed attempt from earlier. For a few seconds it seemed as if the attempt was going to work, as the darkness began to flow around the shield, like a flood around a dam, but eventually, the dam burst, and they too were engulfed in the chaos.

As I attempted to outrun what was happening around me, I finally exerted control over the terror within me. A thought stopped me dead in my tracks: My polarity! Horrified, I Spun around to see the cloud of darkness approaching the region of time in which my polarity resides. I desperately flew towards it, in the hopes I could somehow change its fate.

I flew through the middle of the time stream, dodging snapping time lines and bolts of grey energy. I had no plan, no course of action; all I knew was that if I failed I too would be destroyed. Faster and faster I flew, events around me becoming a blur. All I could focus on was my polarity ahead of me.

As I finally began to approach my polarity, I felt something slam hard into my back. It was like being hit by a fully grown Wailord. The collision sent me spinning through the 'air'.

I caught a glimpse of my polarity being engulfed by the cloud as the pain hit me. I felt pain coursing through my body as if my nerves had all caught on fire. It was pain unlike anything else I had ever encountered, dwarfing the pain of earlier; like comparing a broken arm to a small cut.

I found myself screaming, as my body reacted on its own to the pain I was in. I couldn't tell up from down anymore. I was falling, falling, and pain was everywhere. My mind was on fire, darkness overtaking my vision. I knew I was going to die, but I was beyond caring. The Pain was beyond endurance, my body being consumed by it. Pain to-