It was weird, going from awkward "friends" then back to good friends in a matter of seconds. One moment he was sure she didn't like him for what he said, the next she is apologising and wanting to express that through actions. He had called Jean over and she had given a digital copy of the contract to Hillarys own hologram, they signed it and she sent her hologram away for the time being while Dean asked for Jean to go back to the apartment. She had grumpily protested but a stern and tired look from Dean was all he needed to shut her up and get her going.

When Jean had left the two absent-mildly caught up on things, ranging from gossip to news to jokes and facts. At one point they even used her computer to look at funny pictures on the internet, he still had little idea how to use a computer himself with the only piece of technology that he can seem properly use being his I-Pod.

Dean felt oddly at peace with her, he didn't feel anything remotely romantic, but more of serenity and happiness with her. He was glad he had someone to talk to and laugh with, he didn't realise that actually talking and spending time with people felt this good. She wasn't giving off any "I want to fuck you" vibes anymore, which was nice, but more of an older woman who spends far too long being serious. They both relaxed and laughed until Dean's fatigue started to kick in, he still wasn't used to waking up at 6 in the afternoon and going to sleep at 6 in the morning.

He tried to call it quits and standing up and leaving, but a few factors stopped him from doing so. The first and foremost being that he was about to collapse at any second and sleep where he landed. The second was that it was now past 6am, although his room was a stone throw away from hers it was still a risky thing to get back to his apartment.

Hillary noticed this a while back, preferring to ignore it in favour of spending more time laughing and smiling, he didn't protest when she offered him her bed, her logic being that she needed to leave soon for training. She had never seen anyone fall asleep as fast as he did; he didn't even fully make it onto the bed before exploring his dreams, only his torso did with his legs dangling off the end of the bed.

She tried to wake him and get him to move upward so he was fully on the bed; problem was that she couldn't wake him. At one point she was sure she almost turned the room into a freezer in a vain attempt to wake him up. It wasn't until she recruited the help of her hologram that she actually got him onto the bed properly. The thought alone that she had an unwakeable male in her bed made lewd thoughts spring into her mind and sent her heart racing. She knew she wouldn't act on those thoughts, not after what had happened over the previous 3 hours.

She sighed heavily, pushing the thoughts away and cleansing her mind, deciding instead of staring at him, to instead make some breakfast and get ready; she had already spent too much time in her apartment this morning as it was. As she left the room she stole one final glance at him before muttering to herself, closing the door and leaving him in peace.

Dean was having "the dream" again. There he was, in the infinite whiteness expanding evermore into the horizon. He looked around, unsure of what to do; somehow it felt different than before. The white seemed brilliant and shinning, pearly even. It was unlike the lack lustre white that was in the last dream, the white that seemed more suited for a polished grey.

Like before he stood there, finding nothing of interest in his immediate surroundings, so he began his endless march through the expansiveness. His body didn't feel tired, it was if the hours prior of training did nothing to him physically, mentally however he was tired. It was a strange feeling he had, being tired in a dream wasn't natural.

Eyes becoming heavy and head lulling more and more to the side after each passing minute he decided to take a nap, lying on his side on the bleak white floor. It wasn't uncomfortable just, odd. He didn't even feel as if he had closed his eyes before he opened them again, only this time he wasn't simply lying on the floor.

It seemed as if ground had grew up around him as he slept, the most noticeable feature being the tree he seemed to be leaning on. Breaking his focus on the tree he swept his gaze across the small circle of grass that surrounded him and his tree, the flowers that bloomed out of the grass caught his attention first, gently blowing in non-existent wind. He looked up from the grass and was partially surprised to find that the patch of circular grass was surrounded by stone pillars. The pillars roughly resembled a shape of an eclipse, just if someone stretched it a bit and cut it in half. Just below the tip of the pillars was a hole carved straight through them, they seemed to be emitting some sort of light from them, although it wasn't needed in the well lit environment.

Looking around once again he tried to find things that he may have missed, with the only thing worth of note being that the tree was an apple tree, with some nice looking apples ready for harvest. Shrugging he stood up and stretched, it felt good and as if he hadn't done it for a very long time, as if the tree didn't spontaneity appear.

"You'd be right about that. I can tell you that the tree grew on its own, I just don't know how." A voice that sounded awfully familiar said from the other side of the tree. Curiosity getting the better of him he made his way around the tree, half surprised and half expectant at who was previously talking to him.

"Hey Dean, long time no see." Arceus said to him in her human form with a cheerful smile while sitting on a swing with something being awfully off about her. She looked, younger perhaps, it didn't all click at once but she seemed almost childlike in stature and looks.

She frowned at him before continuing to talk to him, "That's no way to think about a lady. For your information I have always looked this young, you just... never got to see me from this angle." she finished rather horridly, realising she didn't actually have a good excuse.

"Ah huh, and I suppose I look the same too." Dean sarcastically said, looking down at himself, confirming that she was the only one who appeared to have changed, he just looked cleaner then before his nap.

"So..." Dean started before the awkward silence kicked in, "why are we here exactly?" he asked as he looked around, his focus being drawn to the worn swing she was idly swinging on.

She smiled a toothy grin, looking genuinely happy about the situation, "I have no idea!" she said far too enthusiastically for Dean's liking. "Here I was, minding my own business when I decide to see what my favourite champ is doing. Start the usual poke around then whoosh, here I am."

It took Dean a couple moments to register what she said, "You were minding your own business while poking around in my head? You really need to learn the definition of privacy." At this point he probably had no secrets that she didn't know of, not that he had many to even start off with in the first place.

She kept her toothy grin the entire time he spoke, her childish demeanour shining through like a flood light now that she actually looked like a child. She didn't say anything in retaliation, instead she opted to start swinging on the swing, gradually becoming faster and higher. Dean watched her while leaning thoughtlessly on the tree, he felt relaxed but uneasy, surely all this wasn't just a random thing?

Before Arceus got out of hand with her own entertainment Dean decided to ask her a couple questions, "So how do we get out of here exactly?" She didn't seem interested in him or his questions so he gave up on that route and thought for himself, "Don't tell me I have to wake up for this to end?"

The swing suddenly came to an abrupt stop, grabbing his attention to it and the mischievous child sitting on it, "So far that's all I've come up with!" she told him before bolting off the swing and up the tree. Here HHHDean was thinking she was energetic before when she wasn't a child.

Dean watched as she wrought havoc and terror onto the apple tree, shaking different branches making them release their fruity goods. After a good portion was down on the ground she dropped out of the tree and onto the ground, already starting on the apples before she even left the tree.

Dean pushed away from the tree, bending down and picking up one of the fallen apples, after inspecting it he took a bite of it and felt his worries melt away. He sat down at the base of the tree once again, basking in the non-existent sun and wind, listening to the soft rustle of the grass and the quiet munches coming from the child sitting at his feet.

There was meant to be a meeting today regarding the start of missions and such, a few champions more experienced than the others had already left, but the majority were still roaming the halls. So it was confusing when all the champions were told to come to the meeting room, and not have Arceus show up. After half an hour of waiting they were told through their holograms that they had the next 3 hours free and to come tomorrow at the same time.

Most of them shrugged it off, not dwelling on the matter to much. Some thought it might have something to do with the late night training that she was doing with Dean; it may have finally caught up with her.

"Hey Hillary, do you want to go to the lake and relax? We have 3 hours to kill." A small grass type asked. Hillary stood there for a moment, obviously thinking about the offer, she eventually decided against it, opting instead for going back to her apartment and entertaining her guest, who was probably still asleep.

She arrived back at the apartment, opening the door and being greeted by the sound of something frying on the stove. Curiosity driving her forward she found Dean manning the stove, wearing his filthy shorts and an apron which read "I would say kiss the chef, but you may turn into a charming prince". As she got closer she realised that he was whistling some tune, she didn't know what it was though.

Leaning on the counter top behind him she piped up out of interest, "What are you cooking? Because I had no idea I even had meat in the fridge or rice in the pantry."

If Dean was holding the frying pan then it would have gone across the room, instead the spatula that he was holding was used as a fly swat, just aimed at Hillarys face. She didn't know why he jumped, he didn't know why he jumped, and neither knew what was going on from that point forward.

Hillary was trying not to scream in agonizing pain; the spatula was a metal one as well, and one that was just on the frying pan, so it wasn't exactly cold either. She was sure she was bleeding somewhere on her face although she couldn't tell, her entire face hurt so everything may as well be bleeding.

Dean just flailed his hands around like a fish, his mind sluggishly working out what is best to do in this scenario. Water, ice, maybe even nothing? He had no idea what to do in these situations, everything was happening so fast.

"Med-kit, bathroom." Hillary managed to splutter out to him before opening her mouth and letting loose a silent scream. Dean didn't need any more prompting then that, and raced to the bathroom and found a medical kit behind the mirror. Racing back out he opened it up and started to tend to her wounds.

They both ate their teriyaki beef and rice in silence, both being a little burnt due to neither remembering to turn it off. As it turned out berries are great, they instantly healed Hillary's burn, and she wasn't bleeding so that made things easier. Apparently berries like that don't work as well on humans, nobody really knew why.

"Why did you even react like that anyway? This isn't even your own home." Hillary asked between mouthfuls of food.

"I honestly have no idea. I didn't even hear the door open or close, I didn't even know you were there until you spoke." he answered, still unsure himself why he did, "I guess I was off in my own little world and you spooked me."

They continued to eat in silence, both thinking about different things. Dean was the first to finish, standing up and walking over to the sink with his plate, washing it thoroughly before putting it on the drying rack.

"Why are you back anyway?" Dean absentmindedly asked, looking for a way to start conversation, "Don't you normally train or do something during this time?"

Hillary nodded while finishing up her dish, letting the knife and fork clatter onto the plate before she spoke, "Well normally, yes, but today we were scheduled to have a meeting; Arceus didn't show up so it was cancelled. Some people thought her exhaustion finally caught up to her others don't care enough to put much thought into it."

Dean scratched his chin, mumbling something to himself as she spoke, "Also I don't have training until 3pm anyway, as with almost all champions. We train for about 3 hours, sometimes it's sparing sometimes it's a survival technique or maybe a new move. It's exhausting though and the extra training only makes it worse, we used to train for 3 days a week, now we train all 5 weekdays." As she finished she sighed and rested her elbow on the bench and rested her head on her hand, even thinking about training was exhausting.

Dean wasn't listening too much of what she said, he was more or less wondering why Arceus didn't show up. Maybe she was exhausted; maybe it had something to do with the weird dream. He didn't know enough to say for certain but he felt it was the latter. While he was thinking this over his brain slowly processed the words she said, eventually picking out the words 'We train for about 3 hours'.

"Wait, you only train for 3 hours?" He said a bit too loud for either of their likings, "Even the newbie's?" He added after a moment of thought, although much quieter.

"Yea we only train for 3 hours, as for the newbie's I think they train for an hour longer for about a week after being chosen, after that they train with the main group.

Doing some quick calculations in his head he figured out how long he trained for each night, about 9 hours. He didn't say anything about to her and decided to keep the information to himself, there wasn't much point being envious of her, or make her feel bad.

"Why do you ask?" She cursorily asked after a few moments of waiting for him to say something.

"Don't worry about it; anyway, are you ready for the mission?" He asked to break away from the topic.

"You're asking already? It's only been, what, 6 hours? Probably not even that, even then I've been out most of the day." She pointed out to him.

"Sorry, didn't think that one through." He scratched the back of his head; he had run out of things to talk about.

"So," Hillary started, "are you excited about being able to train with us soon?" The question threw him off, what did she mean? "Judging by the confused look plastered to your face I'm assuming you don't know why you can, do you? Well the champions are coming out of heat soon, as in about a day or two. That's why I haven't pounced on you yet, although..." She trailed off, leaving the rest for him to figure out, also just to tease him.

He instantly became relieved at the information and flustered at what she implied. He scratched the back of his neck, a habit by now no less. "Yea, um, that's great news. I had better get going though, need to get back to sleep." He quickly said his goodbye's and left the apartment to go to his own, not too worried about other champions.

She sighed to herself as he left, "I just had to tease him didn't I? This is why I can't have nice things." She said to herself, "Although I have plenty of time to annoy and tease him on the mission, so I have that going for me which is nice." She smiled as she walked away from the door, getting something to drink and deciding to settle down for the next hour until training.

When Dean got back Jean told him he had no training tonight or tomorrow. He had those two days free, but on the third day he resumed normal training with all the other champions. So for two days he could do whatever he wanted and needed to get back into a normal sleeping pattern, joy.

Dean was actually out of the pocket dimension and was currently strolling around one of the major cities. He had no idea what it was called but he couldn't really care, he was instructed by Jean on how to use the magical portal device and he managed to wound up here. He had no idea how to get back but he would figure that out when he got there.

He was strolling down the main street at roughly 7 pm at night with Jean in tow. She had somehow changed her appearance to look more human like, as in she changed her colours so that she looked human and not a blue hologram. He had no idea that she could even do that, apparently neither did she but as soon as she stepped through the portal she looked human.

Dean had managed to scrape together about two thousand Pokéyen, mostly gotten from Hillary as he had about five hundred lying around. It sounded like a lot but he knew it wasn't, he could probably rent a room for the night for that much, but he didn't really see the reason to, it was more or less for food and drinks.

As they enjoyed the sights with it being Deans first time in this city and Jeans first time ever outside the halls. As they strolled down the lane, pointing at trainers Pokémon and wild ones, gawping at different things until they came across a nifty looking coffee shop that was almost full. They decided to stop and have something to drink, or well for Dean to have something to drink, Jean couldn't exactly do that.

As they sat down after ordering they talked about the sights they saw, with the main attraction being a tower in the middle of the city, at least as twice as tall as the surrounding buildings. Apparently it was still open and you could book a ride to the top for the low price of 500 Pokéyen, it was actually cheap and that was surprising enough.

The waiter came to the table and dropped off Dean's hot chocolate he ordered and boy, did it taste nice. He hadn't had one for a long time to say the least. Jean was interested in how it tasted and so got Dean to describe it as best he could to her, she found herself wanted one even though she couldn't actually taste in the first place.

They were about to finish and pay when the ground shook and an extremely loud explosion was heard, the next thing they heard was the sound of police cars blaring through the main street, obviously racing to the scene.

Some people were screaming most people were running away from the explosions, and for good reasons to. Dean and Jean stepped outside of the shop, Dean turning her off and receiving some horrified looks from passerby's but no one stopped to ask. He made his way onto the road and started to run toward where the police were headed, breaking away from the sidewalk due to people swamping it, running the other direction.

He ran down the street, nobody bothering to stop or stare at him, after only a minute he was all alone save for the odd police car that rushed down the opposite side of the street. He wasn't puffed or exhausted, only worried that someone had died. He skidded to a halt as he rounded a corner, quickly pulling himself back around the corner as to not be seen by either police or criminals.

The police didn't seem to be much of a threat to the criminals though, because as Dean peered around the corner and studied the situation he found most of the police on the ground, either dead or dying. He looked around and couldn't see the criminals who did this, only the burning building on the other side of the road; he just hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.

As he stepped out from behind the corner to possibly help the police, his suspicion were confirmed, the burning building was a Pokémon centre, entirely possible with many people being inside due to the time of day.

"Ah, a heroic trainer has come to save the day, how pathetic." A classy male voice said from inside the burning building, although the sound surrounded him as if it was also being said from multiple directions. "Hand over your Pokémon and you may live, probably." As he said that a tall man with a cane stepped out of the burning building, he was taller than Dean and was wearing a white suit with no burn marks on it. He also had red hair and was trailed by some grunts holding guns and Pokéballs.

"Hmm, you don't seem to be a trainer, you have no Pokéballs to speak of, that's not to say you don't have balls for showing up kid, I'll give you that, but you'll soon wish that you didn't." He dejectedly said to Dean before turning to the grunts, "Kill him and loot him, do not make me wait." With that the man waved and fell back behind his grunts, some had Pokéballs some didn't, it looked to be a group of about 8, not including the strange man.

The grunts aimed at Dean, although didn't fire right away. Dean felt power surge within him and summoned his gauntlets out of thin air, both forming right on his arms. This time however they were longer, reaching up to and covering his shoulders, they had gotten longer somehow.

The grunts started to fire, confusion and fear being the main factor, some pulled out Pokéballs and released the Pokémon inside, ordering them to kill Dean. Dean bull-rushed at the grunts, feeling light on his feet, dodging bullets before they were even fired. He got a sick sense of satisfaction when he felled the first grunt; he was sick, and overwhelmingly sadistic about it. This is what he trained for; to keep order and protect those who can't protect themselves; this is why he became a champion.

Hey, I'm back! Well, I never left but I have holidays coming up, which means I can work on a chapter (and do some touch ups on the last ones). As of current the first 4 chapters have been reworked, much to my delight. For older readers its nothing game changing, the story remains the same, just some TLC and purging the story of any inappropriate things that would get an M (Some things still do I guess, just hoping nobody picks them up.)

One thing I would really like to apologise for is people who came here from the "Romance" tag, when I first made the story I knew what I wanted. I wanted to follow the other champion's stories, the more I wrote the more I came to realise that I didn't want to write "those" kind of things. It wasn't as if I wasn't comfortable with it, just that it wasn't my style I guess.

To please as many people as I could I broke from what I felt was good and wrote some scenes in which I should not have, mainly being M rated scenes and ideas. I do love a good joke, don't get me wrong. I'm not afraid to make fun of penises or make obscure jokes, it's what I love, but for example, the "heat" season was more or less ripped straight from the other stories. In truth I never wanted to write it, I felt it broke away from the main points of the story I was trying to get across and all it conveyed was easy sex, etc.

I will also be putting this story on hold for an indefinite amount of time. As I said before I don't exactly enjoy the story, because of that I'll probably re-write the entire thing before continuing. I want to add things, take things out, etc. Heck it might be a long time before I update again, maybe random updates but that's it. For this I am sorry, but I would like to work on my novel and not this story, its brought me far but I can only go so far on this site. I hope you all understand, and if you want to ask questions or such feel free to contact me through PM. (I'm not calling the site bad, just not where I can advance further)

That's not to say I won't upload other stories, most are probably going to be short one shots or something that interests me. If another Author wishes to collaborate with me or someone wants a short story (like 3k words) then shoot me a PM, I'll see what I can do. I don't want to write smut though so I'm sorry on that front, I don't even think anyone will read all this so I'm not sure if this offer will be heard.

*Heavily sighs* I'm sorry for the really lengthy A/N but I did want to get it off my chest, as for the story I won't be changing the previous chapters too much, if I ever re-write the entire thing then sure, but not now.

Goodbye, for now.