The Phantom Guild

Heyo, figured I’d finally make a proper pinned post! Mainly doing this bit of restructuring for the sake of mobile users since Tumblr still hasn’t enabled Pages on mobile and they make using the phone browser a hassle.

Anyway, this is an ask blog taking place ~350 years after the other Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, where time and space are coming undone through a series of simultaneous events. This time, there isn’t just a hero and their partner, but a bunch of Pokémon working to find the root cause of all of the chaos across the world, and put a stop to it.

Event Ask Hints / Ask Call

Chapters:

Chapter 1: Darkness ~ Acacia

Chapter 2: Gemini Pt.I ~ Cherry (Paused!)

Chapter 3: Nil ~ ???

Links:

Some info about the world

Brief character summaries + tags

Rules / Ask Hints / Toyhouse

Destiny turned to look at Shaymes, picking up her blindfold. Though she decides not to put it back on just yet, so instead she just wraps it around her neck like a second scarf. A small smile appears on her face as she reaches up to touch the crown of flowers she'd been given.

"Thanks Shaymes. I feel like it definitely helped. I'd definitely like to visit from time to time, should fate allow me. So long as Acacia doesn't take notice of me in particular, the timeline shouldn't be derailed. It has been a timeline or two since I last visited. I've kind of missed their Shaymin Sherbet and Café au Shay."

She briefly paused, realizing that she never really specified how long any single loop was for her. "For a bit of reference, that's about 850 years, more or less anyway."

Destiny took a breath, grass softly rustling beneath her paws as she approached the trio of lights, scarf blowing in the wind behind her. She gently smiled up at them, reaching into a small bag she'd brought with her.

She set down a simple clay bowl, lining the inside with different kinds of berries, species that were exceedingly rare, and each with a different combination of flavors. Beside the bowl, she set down a thermos filled with fresh water, the cap slightly loosened to more easily remove with paws.

"Hello there," she greeted. "I don't know if you've met my counterpart in this timeline, but I'm sure you'll recognize her if she shows up. I don't really have any big questions or requests. I just wanted to offer you something for the heck of it."

"Call it atonement if you desire." She said, taking out her book and, with practiced precision, opening it to the page that described Acacia's greatest sin... her greatest sin. One that helped set the countdown to her world's destruction in motion, a cataclysm she and Cin had spent countless millennia working to prevent at least one timeline from falling victim to. It's clear that she's turned to this page a great many times.

"So many worlds. Each time changing a small part of the timeline. Guiding a hero differently, perhaps making them a different Pokémon when they arrive in our world..."

Destiny flipped through the pages of the book. So many different timelines, with minimal changes in the eventual outcome that she was working hard to prevent: absolute annihilation of her universe. But this timeline, it was the most unique one.

Two new players in Echo, Acacia's mirror counterpart, and Nameless, the first Monarch Experiment, were already setting this outcome down a radically different chain of events. And in that chain of events, she found a glimmer of hope...

"So many things are different in this timeline, I can't even begin to guess what might happen..." She said softly, reaching the end of the book, blank pages staring up at her, waiting to be filled with what's to come.

She set the book down on the grass beside her. "And you know what? After so long... So many times watching the same events play out over and over..." She reached up towards her blindfold, tentatively rubbing the fabric that had covered her eyes. The Shaymin wrapped her paw around the end, beginning to tug it away. Her eyes opened slowly, revealing a piercing blue color that gently glowed. She blinked a few times, her eyesight readjusting to the light around her.

"I'm beginning to think... Perhaps this timeline... It can be the one where things turn out alright..."

"This could be the one where everyone's sacrifices to get me and Cin here weren't in vain..." She paused again, thinking of the other sole survivor's gambit to buy her enough time to open her first gate, so long ago ... and who inevitably burnt her life away to give her the chance to make a better outcome. "Mint's especially..."

To her, every collective sacrifice all of her friends made across the multitude of different outcomes she and Cin had created, all of it led to one goal: a world that could continue to live. That's the only thing she wished for right now, even if such a world didn't have a place for her. She smiled up at the Magi.

"Thanks for listening to me rant about all that. I think it's helped me get some of my thoughts in order."

"Plus, I've just gotta say that you look really nice!" She briefly paused, blinking as she looked to the others, which to her were just balls of light. "... Even though I can only really see one of you."

"Hm?" She mumbled, finally noticing the Pokémon that had approached her.

Destiny's ear twitched as she registered the marshadow's voice. She tentatively took one of the sweets from his outstretched hand, attempting to force a smile, at least for this one's peace of mind. "Thanks. I was just thinking about..." She paused, the words failing her on how to shorten it down. "... my making up for my greatest mistake."

"It's fine," she said, trying to shield herself. "Getting the chain of events to prevent my world's destruction isn't anyone else's responsibility but mine and Cin's."

"I mean, I'm the one that helped light the match leading up to everything back in the Limestone Caverns, and I haven't even been able to fix it after all these millennia. So it'd be pretty pathetic if I couldn't even make it up to everyone in my timeline for that."

Destiny took a moment to process what was in front of her. She'd seen hybrids before, and in fact, she'd grew up alongside one in her village, but she'd never seen one like this before. Shaking herself out of her brief reverie, she took a cookie from the edge of the plate.

She knew from experience that many events across the timeline were immutable no matter how or what she tried. One of those was her great mistake that, even now, continues to ripple across the universe. Letting out an exasperated sigh, she just ditches the straw and straight up chugs the whole thing, setting the glass back down afterwards, no matter how tempting it was to just slam it. Didn't need to go breaking anything else.

She could perhaps use a conversation to get these feelings out, or some general cheering up.

"Well, I mostly look like this thanks to harnessing the Aspect of Time. Fully awakening it, any of the aspects really, comes with some pretty unique abilities, and I've had nothing but time to learn to control it."

She breathed out, her body becoming enshrouded in cobalt light that brightened to being almost entirely white. Purple cracks appeared across her body before, like shattering glass, her form exploded off of her. Purple and red mist briefly surrounded her, slightly staining the temporal energy as it all dispersed.

"This is what I look like when I'm not in my Awakened Form. It's a bit more plain than you'd think looking at me in my other form, isn't it?"

When the lights and dark aura settled, you'd certainly be forgiven for mistaking Destiny for most other Shaymin. The only thing that set her apart, accessories aside, was the color of her hedge, slightly dulled with age, the bits of hedge on her legs, and the fact that her flower lacked any leaves.

"And on the topic of my world..." Her smile faded as she thought back on it, and her hundreds of attempts to avert complete disaster, as well as how everything started. "...Let's just say that there aren't a lot of Pokémon left in general after the Hollow returned. It's currently in the middle of an apocalypse, in a way."

Artwork from Yesterday's big lore ask because I personally like how they turned out.

There's quite a bit more info about the Aspects, but I'll leave that for after the event. Destiny's said all she's able to right now.

"Well, the story starts off pretty similar to the Champions of old... Not that there's much older than me in my universe by now. Anyway, like the Champions, they were brought from the human world. They took the form of a Mew with a split tail. There are records of a partner, similar to all but one of the humans brought to my world, but nobody can remember them."

Destiny sat on the sand, crossing her forelegs in front of herself as she recalled what she'd been told, as well as what she'd witnessed herself once or twice when she overshot her destination during her time loop travels.

"During their journey to prepare for the ultimate confrontation, my world's deities gave them fragments of their own power, pooling it into them, as well as their hope." Destiny drew a circle in the ground, with lines going through as she listed off the aspects. "Willpower, Knowledge, Emotion, Time, Space, Life, Decay, Dreams, Nightmares... And above the rest, in the league of its own and requiring the others: Creation." As she listed the final one, she drew a smaller circle in the center.

"Without the other Aspects, Creation supposedly has no power to draw from. They were... shall we say, liberal, in their use of these powers. But even with these gifts, it wasn't enough to win the fight."

"In the end, they could not defeat the Hollow, so instead they made one last gambit..."

"Forcing out all Aspects except Creation and scattering them among mortals in an attempt to keep it permanently out of reach of the Hollow Pokémon..." She slashed at her drawing several times, leaving only the circle representing creation behind. "And in their place, trapping the Hollow inside of their body, before using their dwindling power of Creation to form a seal around themself."

"A seal that they hoped, and believed, would last forever."

She rubbed at one of her ears, feeling it twitch slightly. "Of course, it didn't. The seal keeps it from regaining its true power. That thing breaks before we're ready, and another timeline falls to the cataclysm."

"But I've got a good feeling about this one. Call it a gut feeling, but Echo and the Porygon didn't exist as they do now in previous timelines. Anyway, sorry for yapping your ears off."

So how did this one get it?

"I met someone from your 'verse," he stated, "they told me that books were rare. How is it that you came upon this one?"

"Well, this book is actually one that you've likely already seen, during one of Aster's rare instances of leaving the village." Destiny began. "It's both true that this is the same book as his, and false."

"As for how I came into possession of it, that's simple. I'm the one who wrote it and gave it to Aster. Or at least I will have gone back in time to give it to him after a previous attempt. The mechanics of all this are migraine-inducing, but I'll try to keep it as simple as I can."

"I retrieve the book in the future after an incident involving Gracia Village and Hollow Pokémon forces everyone to evacuate. Then I take the book, go back in time to chronicle the events of the timeline that just took place, then give the updated copy to Aster in the distant past, thus creating another new timeline."

Destiny opened the book to the first page, slightly shuffling her blindfold to reveal a sliver of glowing cobalt. The page had one thing written on it: 'Aster, Do not retrieve during The Fall'. "Of course, I made sure to specifically instruct Aster to leave the book behind during the attack. And for the most part, unless absolutely necessary, I don't interfere with the timeline of my own universe while I get everything in this book. That'd just create another new timeline, separate from the one I'm trying to write down, and that'd be a completely separate headache."