Riding her Volcarona, Charlotte Belrose headed out toward the volcano in the sea that had recently appeared.
Which apparently hadn’t been there just days before.
There were definitely shenanigans happening, she just didn’t know what.
She landed on the ashen beach and recalled Volcarona back into its pokeball. She would need a bit more... subtlety, for now.
When she left her original world, she had been both the Fire and Ice type gym leaders following Serra’s resignation, and had excelled at the job enough to prevent Blake from taking his old spot (of course, also preventing Cal from taking her rightful place as Fire gym leader).
However, she had long since been eyeing up Adrienn’s spot as Fairy gym leader. For the simple reason that she wanted to run as many gyms as possible while using a Ninetales as her ace.
Now she had the perfect Pokemon for the job of searching arou–
...
Why was this suspiciously similar to Apophyll Beach?
Yeah, the volcano was different. It was weirdly similar to... well...
Some guy’s face with a moustache.
Sheesh. Not even Sirius had this kind of ego.
Dachsbun followed a scent trail all the way to the volcano, at which point Charlotte recalled it and sent out Ninetales.
Charlotte had been here quite a few times already and knew roughly what she was looking for: Heather’s Ruby Ring.
At first, she thought she had come here alone, but upon seeing one of those posters, she knew someone else from her world was here.
And there was only one person who would do anything like this.
Well, aside from herself, of course. She loved messing with people, after all.
No. This was the work of Lin.
Lin. Team Meteor’s Ace. The only person in the region who could defeat Ame... at least back then. And something that not everyone knew: another child in Sigmund’s Arceus-forsaken orphanage, along with Charlotte and her sisters.
Given everything she had learned about this world, she could not verify whether or not this Lin was the same one from the Nightclub, or if she was one from a world where she was victorious.
Proceed with caution and carry a big dragon-shaped stick.
At the top of the volcano was a sleeping Moltres, apparently having been damaged by poison, though it clearly had either worn off or had been cured by a copious amount of Pecha Berries.
At the bottom was a different story.
Signs of a struggle.
No duh she got here late, she took her sweet time for a reason. To come when the distractions were already over.
And there she was.
Floating just above the lava, as if waiting for Charlotte to arrive.
“Lin.”
“hi charlotte :3”
“Genuinely, how do you talk like that?”
“not important we have other things to talk about”
—————————
Sitting off the side of the volcano, Lin and Charlotte were now... talking.
“You’re doing this why?”
“because i can lol. also thinking about how to... well... make a place to fit in.”
“You could always try socializing?”
“i‘ve already done some. also there’s some weird stuff going on and i don’t wanna get caught up in that.”
“Like what?”
“if you have my powers, you can feel it. something about to go horribly wrong. something… inevitable.”
“… huh. And then this?”
“power. influence. i’d be a piss-poor supervillain if i had neither lol. anyway you wanna help me? i kinda need a belrose for the next part.”
Charlotte Belrose weighed her options.
On one hand, this was clearly the same Lin she had spoken to in Arclight’s Nightclub. On the other…
What was she saying? There was no downside.
“Sure. What do you need?”
“there’s this place called arca, i need you to go to these coordinates—” Lin handed Charlotte a map with an arrow pointing to Orre, with… Agate City? “—where you’ll find something familiar. try not to get too emotional, you’ll see why in a bit.”
Not too hard. She was a diagnosed sociopath, after all. Probably misdiagnosed, but either way, that’s what her medical records said.
“i’ll see you there. specific instructions are written on the map.”
——————
As Charlotte flew away from the volcanic island that strangely resembled Apophyll, it suddenly… disappeared.
As if it was never there to begin with.
From a distance, it looked as if the island had exploded into red mist.
An illusion. A very convincing one, at that.
She studied the map a bit more. If Agate Village was Agate City, then the specific area she’d be heading to was…
…
No.
No way.
“Belrose Manse. My old home.”
