After being asleep for a while, I felt Cole nudge me. “Oma! Oma! Wake up! You have to see this!” his excitement almost made me jump. I tried not to roll off the bed until I noticed we had stopped. I quickly clamber to my paws, trying not to hurt myself, I then jump off looking around, not seeing anything, until I wandered to where Scar stood, waiting. I looked at it, to me it was the best thing I had seen since my journey began. A village, of Pokemon! And all of them were standing there, staring creepily.

            A Furret quickly appeared and acted curious, quickly walking around each of us, examining us, as if not seeing what the others saw in us before quickly proclaiming to the Pokemon ahead that “It’s them!” All three of us were both confused and happy at the sight, but happy more than anything, and they were too, coming up to greet us. We did not have any time to adjust until a voice bellowed through the crowd to silence them. We did not see the origin of the voice, but that instant, a forked pink tail move its way through the crowd. All I could focus on was the tail, slowly meandering through the crowd toward us, every once in a while being lost among the figures. The figure attached to the tail eventually made her appearance, a strange Espeon with a yellow jewel on her head.

            The Espeon spoke, “On behalf of the citizens of Ring Rock, I humbly welcome you to our little town.” She then bows and the crowd cheers before she silences them again, “Please, follow me to my home and I will answer any questions you may have.”

            We followed her being very silent. The houses we passed were huge for any Pokemon village I had heard of! They were all made of wood, and they all had roofs similar to the human settlements. The ground had some soft, flat, nice-looking rocks that made the place look even nicer, with what appeared to be a giant campfire in the middle, made of some very nice white logs that must have taken 2 or 3 Pokemon to lift, or maybe they had some spare psychics? The house we were headed to was not as tall as the others were, but it allowed us to fit in it despite that. When we entered, there were several little patches of bedding laid out on the floor, and an Umbreon with red rings on him, or at least… I thought it was a “him,” it was hard to tell.

            “Wake up, they are here.” The Umbreon bolted up as if expecting a fight, just to calm down and act embarrassed as it flattened its fur. We sit down as she indicates with her tail, “I’m sorry about them, they get excited when new Pokemon come, and when I told them that new Pokemon were coming, and they got excited. So then, how may I help you?”

            We were silent; the Umbreon looked concerned before dropping its head in shame. “Sis, did you forget to tell them your name again? Plus, you have not even introduced me to them.”

            “Oh, I did, thank you, my name is Rachel, and that is my sister Mary.”

            “Mary? I thought that was a…” The rest of Coles sentence was muffled by Scars paw, as he quickly realizes what he is about to say.

            “Pleased to meet you” she fills the space with a cautioning growl aimed at Cole.

            “Anyway,” Scar continued, “I’m Scar, that’s…”

            “We know what your names are. We’ve been waiting for you.” She says in a very normal voice, as if she has said this a thousand times over.

            Scar sighs, “I’ve heard that from you psychics a hundred times now, the first time it was cool, this time it’s just old.”

            “Well then, had I known that, I would have saved my normal ‘I had a psychic vision about you’ greeting,” She says, kind of relieved.

            “Where are we?” Scar asks.

            Rachel takes a second to clear her throat, “We are at Ring Rock. A village founded around our namesake, a rock shaped like a ring, but this rock is not natural, you see it was made by a Pokemon, of whom we consider our founder.”

            “Now, what is with the houses here resembling human homes?”

            “They were made as a way to show we are changing, and becoming smarter. The better the homes, the smarter a community.” Rachel says with a little bit of excitement in her voice.

            I interrupt by saying “When you saw us coming, do you know why it chose us to show you?”

            Mary replies, “I don’t know, it rarely shows us strange or special Pokemon, so this may just be a usual sight, and we don’t see anything special about you.”

            Cole interrupts me back. “Now, here’s an even better question, why is it Mary answered when you are the psychic and why did she say ‘us’.”

            “You see, it was a defect with our evolutions.” Mary replied. “When we evolved we became counterparts to each other, but the problem was, I kept getting these strange dreams that came true whenever I was around Rachel. I quickly realized that Rachel is unable to see her own premonitions, so she just acts like a receiver, while I act like a translator able to see these premonitions as if they were my own. Everybody believed that it was Rachel whenever we would tell people, but when we said it was me who saw the dream, people laughed and acted as if it was a lie. We feel we can trust you with the information because all of you are different, and we have been planning this introduction for a while. We were just hoping that it would not be this quick. Now, please, if anyone asks, it was Rachel who told you that we will talk.”

            “Alright, thank you for answering me, just one more question. Do you have any vacant housing? If so, would it bother you to have three more residents?”

            “I had a feeling you would ask.” Rachel walks out of the house beckoning with her tail, and Mary stretching and returning to her sleep. We eventually end up at a normal-sized house made with three rooms and a big open area for meeting. Most of the house was empty for new items and food to be added to it, but other than that it was quite nice. It was also quite cool despite the outside being very hot. “This is the one we have for you, you don’t need to worry too much for food for the next few weeks, our gatherers can perfectly handle catching some extra food for a while, if it works out well we may even allow you to not worry at all about it. There is one thing you will need to know about though, we do not permit Pokemon out at night, it is too dangerous, we also believe it would be best if you helped around the town in some way, maybe even teaching how you got human items out of one of their camps.” She says the last part as a Pokemon quickly brings the cart we left and leaves it right outside, darting off before we could thank it.

We thank Rachel and set up our home, we decide to put Scar in a separate room and us in the same room for now, just because we left the third one at the cave in our hurry, but we are certain we can find more of those. What bothered me was the way Rachel said the stuff about the settlement. It was almost as if she did not know… But I decided not to think on it too much, there was more for us to focus on.

We spent the day doing what we did best, laying around talking. We continued to do that until the night had fallen, when we decided to lay down and sleep.

The next morning Scar said he needed to go do some stuff with the construction that was going on in the neighboring areas. He had been gone for a while when Mary appeared at our house, who had been very happily trotting around, almost the exact opposite of her sister who was calmly wandering around helping workers. “Good morning you two, how are you?”

“Good, you seem cheerful today,” Cole replied.

Mary went into an attack stance suddenly and growled at us, causing us to jump, “Is there something wrong with that?” She takes a second to calm down before speaking again, “Sorry, I have these mood swings occasionally. It’s embarrassing. Anyway, I was going to tell you something Oma, but I forgot.”

“It’s okay,” I reply, “If you can’t remember, it-“

“I remember now!” Mary interrupts with a yell, startling us again, “Omega, you need to follow me.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, before following her as she dashes off, I try to follow with Cole trailing closely behind. Mary seemed to be very fast, making it hard to keep up, but luckily, it was not that far, or else we may have lost her. We eventually reach a white home, making me wonder what this was made for. As we walk in, Mary whispers to the Pokemon outside of the room reserved for someone. The Pokemon she is talking to then nods and lets us in. I walk in first, nervously until I see a white paw, eventually seeing thick white fur on the chest and some white things on the side of the Pokemon. Once I see the head with a horn on the side of it, I knew exactly what Pokemon it was! It was an Absol, and I knew this Absol! “Rune!” I yell running up to the Absol nuzzling his cheek.

“Omega? Is that you? I never thought I’d see you again, especially like that. What happened to your fur?” He asks, happy to see me, very confused, but the smile on his face was unmistakable, he knew it was me.

“I don’t know, all I know is I’m so happy to see you, I thought you were dead! I thought I was the only one to survive!”

Cole acts confused, “Oma, you know him?”

“Oh, I almost forgot, Cole, this is Rune. Rune was basically my father, and my best friend before I met you.  Rune, that’s Cole. Cole and his older brother Scar have been taking care of me since we lost track of each other.”

Scar walks in, “So this is who you thought was dead? I wouldn’t blame you, he looks like he was injured badly.” He points to the white things on the side of Rune, “Apparently the nurse calls those bandages, they keep his wounds from bleeding too much.”
            I look at them to notice they have absorbed a lot of blood. Cole looks at him, “Scar, I thought you were busy.”

“Rachel had told me to come over here, and that Mary had brought you two over here.”

I stared at the “bandages” wondering if he would be okay. “Don’t worry Omega, the nurse said my wounds are healing. I will be able to get up and walking around with you in only a few weeks.”

“We found him outside of the city one day limping not knowing where he was,” Mary walks in explaining in a kind of sad mellow voice, strangely not what I expected from her. “He had no clue how he got here, or what these wounds were from. But the fact that they took a month or two to heal concern me.” She coughs slightly returning to her cheerful self, “So why don’t we leave Omega and Rune to catch up on their stuff, and while we do, why don’t we see what you two know and can do!” she says trotting off leading the others out.

“How did you survive? I thought for sure it killed you!” I say worried.

“I suddenly saw a bright light and I appeared here. But that is a story for later. How did you survive?”

I told him everything I know. I even told him how I think I may have survived purely out of luck. Anyway, we eventually decide to leave that alone, and I let him rest and recover, leaving to be greeted by a lone Rachel, who seems to have nothing to do and decided to wave me over to follow her. I followed her back to the room to find only Cole and Mary there.

We sit down again, “Well then, now that you two are here, I’d like to ask you two something. We know that you two are special,” She says in a very intrigued way. “Have either of you seen or been around anything that may be different from others? Or had any experience with ghost types?”

Cole tilts his head in confusion, which surprised me a little, but only a little. I guess I didn’t think that he would be the person to live a normal life, but with his cheerfulness I kinda guessed if something had happened, he would not have been the one to have experienced anything like that. However, at that same moment I feel my body push away from them in fear. “Omega, is there something you want to share?”

“I saw it… The Red Dawn.” I reply.

Neither seemed shocked, yet Mary seemed a little scared by the sound of her voice. “I knew something was wrong with your fur, but I never thought that it would be awake!”

“Um… what is the Red Dawn?” Cole asks.

All of us looked were shocked, but Rachel decides to explain. “The Red Dawn is a bird by the name of Yveltal, but most Pokemon don’t like the name because of the way it sounds to them, and they believe the name itself will bring evil, so instead they named it ‘The Red Dawn’ based on it’s red feathers. The bird has been connoted with death many times, especially because it’s abilities have much to do with the cycle of life, specifically, death. I honestly think there is nothing we can do. But if it is real, then we have no choice but to sleep together tonight. Also, if you lived, then we may be safe. Just may be.”

Cole seemed scared and a little shocked, but then he said something out of the normal “But, what about me? Why did you call me here?”

Rachel sighs, “We can tell by your eyes that something is different about you. We don’t know what, but with Omega’s fur, I would not be surprised if it is related to Xerneas, the Pokemon of life. Oh well, we will continue this later. I have things I need to do, and I promised Scar we would only have you for a little while and the night, if you two are willing to do so. Are you two?

We look at each other, then back at them and nod. The Espeon looks and smiles at us “alright, then we will see you later today.”

We walked home and had a wonderful day together, sharing a big meal with Scar before Rachel and Mary come and meet with us. We are lead back to their home, where we soon find beds in a room adjacent to the one we were used to seeing. It had several beds and a glowing rock in the center. “We have found that this gem has helped us get into the minds of Pokemon who sleep near it with us. All we ask you to do is sleep, and Mary and I will enter your minds. It won’t be that hard.”

“What if I’m not tired?” Cole says as though he is actually having trouble sleeping.

Rachel places her tail on his head, “Then I can help with that.” Cole begins to close his eyes, slowly leaning back and sleeping.

“However,” Mary says softly, “Hypnosis won’t work on you. The only way Rachel is getting into your head is through this crystal and me. Dark types are immune to direct psychic abilities, we have learned that because of me being used as a translator we can bypass this, but it is difficult. With this, and the gem, we are able to bypass it completely very easily.”

Rachel continues after her sister, “Even other psychics who have slept with us have a hard time entering Mary’s mind with the gem.” She pauses for a yawn and a stretch. “Anyway, enough explaining, it is about time we get to sleeping.”

I lay down, closing my eyes, slowly drifting off into a slumber, but one I am completely conscious in. I eventually see that I am surrounded by Cole, Rachel, and Mary in a wide open room. But there was more in the room than just us. I felt a presence I had felt before, and another I had never felt… yet it felt familiar.