Moving to a new region was stressful for all the wrong reasons.

Settling in and finding a job wouldn't be a problem; Dream was only moving to Sinnoh to work at Professor Rowan's lab, after all. Dream had arranged for most of his belongings to be moved into his house weeks before, so there was no need to worry about getting swallowed by all the furniture he needed to move. On top of that, he only had one pokemon with him.

It just so happened that that pokemon was a nervous wreck.

"Yamask," Dream whispered. He scratched the space between its eyes where he knew it liked to be scratched, but it did nothing to alleviate the worries of the pokemon in his arms as they waited outside for the last of their furniture to be moved in.

Their house was tucked in the corner of Sandgem town, where they were covered on two sides by nothing but trees. There were only two windows, one on the front of the house and the other on the back wall. It should, by all means, have been the least stress-inducing house for Yamask to reside in, but he supposed he should've known that moving to any unfamiliar place would stress it out.

"You're gonna be okay," Dream said, careful to keep his tone soft. "I'm here, alright? You don't need to worry about anything."

A few minutes later, a group of workers walked out of the house with their pokemon in tow. They exchanged a farewell with Dream before boarding their van and driving out of the town.

"See? It wasn't that bad, was it?" Dream said.

Yamask craned its head to glare at Dream.

"... Yeah, sorry, that was kind of a stupid thing to say. Let's check out our new house."

It was only then that Yamask relaxed in its trainer's hold and allowed itself to be taken inside the house.

*

The view of Lake Verity was a stunning beauty. The look on Professor Rowan's face when Dream showed up thirty minutes late to his first day on the job was the opposite.

"Sorry," Dream managed to wheeze out when he finally broke into the clearing with Yamask hot on his trail. His head was fuzzy. In place of his thoughts, there was only TV static. He had only just regained his sense of direction after stumbling around Route 201.

"You're late," Rowan said. There was a signature frown on his lips that sent Dream's fight-or-flight reaction screaming. "Why?"

"Uh... Yamask used Haze on me when I tried to get dressed. I know it sounds hard to believe, but—"

"No, your Yamask's reaction is quite telling."

Dream turned back around to Yamask, who hid its eyes behind its... hands? Ears? Dream never figured out which human body part those appendages were analogous to.

Rowan continued. "Still, the solution is to plan better for next time. Will this happen again?"

"No."

"Excellent. Now, let us get to work." He picked up a briefcase from the ground, and their work at Lake Verity began.

*

After five hours of nonstop discussion on pokemon evolution, Dream's head was ready to explode.

"We've collected enough data here," Professor Rowan said, flipping through pages and pages of academic essays. "But something appears to be different than it was before..."

Dream looked out at the lake.

There was no discernible difference from that morning to now. The same waves splashed on the shore with the strength of an underleveled Magikarp, Starlys chirped in the distance, Bidoofs poked their heads out of the tall grass, tilting their heads in curiosity but never managing to work up the courage to approach them outside of it.

Still, a pit of dread burrowed in his stomach when he gazed out into the vastness of the lake. It couldn't be that he was afraid of open bodies of water; he had grown up in Humilau City, after all. There was no fear of a wild pokemon attacking them out of nowhere either.

But if not that, then what was it?

The light blue, almost transparent color of the water darkened to a deep sky blue. The dark green colors of the wild grass was next, then the ground, then the trees around them until everything blended together into the same shade of blue.

Kyuuun...

"Dream, we're leaving."

Then everything snapped back to the way it was before.

Dream blinked away the fog at the edges of his vision.

Blue. Why was everything blue? And what was with that pokemon cry at the end?

"Dream."

Dream whipped his head around to see Professor Rowan and Yamask staring at him with varying levels of concern in their expressions. "Oh, sorry. I just thought I saw something."

Professor Rowan turned away while Yamask's worried gaze lingered on him.

"There is one thing I can say. There are many rare kinds of Pokémon in Sinnoh. The region should serve us very well in regard to our studies." With that, Professor Rowan picked up his briefcase and walked towards the path back to Route 201.

Dream followed, the shade of blue slowly drifting out of his head.

*

He saw... two glowing yellow eyes. A red oval was at the center. The background... that shade of blue that surrounded him at the lake.

"Who are you?" Dream shouted into the void of blue.

The same pokemon cry rang out in the empty space.

Then he woke up.

*

"And that's why I woke up sweating."

Yamask tilted its head, confused and worried.

Dream had decided to take Rowan's advice and prepare ahead for Yamask to try preventing him from leaving the house, but none of its moves ever came. Instead, he had an extra hour in the morning to brew tea, sit down, and relax with Yamask before it was time to head to work. And of course, given who Yamask was as a pokemon, it decided the best use of its time was worrying over Dream.

"Don't worry about me, okay?" Dream said. He smoothed out the clothes he was preparing to change into on the coffee table.

Dreams were weird. His head was killing him yesterday. There was no logical explanation for what he had experienced, but dreams and hallucinations didn't require one.

There was a burning sensation where he was certain Yamask was eyeing him.

"Don't worry about me," Dream said. He stretched his arms above his head and yawned. "Let's just go to work early."

Yamask didn't look convinced but followed him as he walked out the door.

*

The dreams didn't stop.

Every night, it was the same dream: two glowing yellow eyes, a red oval, shade of blue behind them. And without fail, as soon as a pokemon began crying, Dream woke up, sweating and shivering.

And of course, Yamask was always hovering over him, making large, red eyes the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning. It was awfully reminiscent of the phase in their relationship where Yamask would surprise him by trying to shove his face into its mask. He never did find out if Yamask knew what the consequences of that would be, but he did know he did not want to relive that time period and thus swatted Yamask away every time.

Yamask huffed and slammed itself into his shoulder.

"I know, I know," Dream sighed. He sat up, his head still reeling from the dream. The warmth he knew he should be feeling under his blankets wasn't present. He turned to look at Yamask. "You want some lemonade? I know you like bitter stuff, but..."

Yamask's concerned gaze sharpened into a glare. It huffed again and waited at the door.

"If you wanted to go outside, you could've just said so," Dream said with an eye roll. He stood up from bed and yawned before throwing the door open.

Yamask shot out like a bullet. It seemed anxious to do... something. Hopefully it wouldn't get itself into trouble.

He couldn't worry about it now. He had work in an hour, and Yamask had a good record of making its way back to him.

Dream shook the last remnants of blue from his head and started his day.

*

Being greeted in the lab by an especially stern-looking Professor Rowan and Yamask beside him was always a treat.

"Dream," Rowan said, "your Yamask has informed me of something peculiar."

Dream's gaze drifted to Yamask, who hid its eyes behind its hands. "I can imagine what that would be. Sorry for bothering you. Come here, Yamask."

Yamask darted to his side but still wouldn't look at him.

"That's actually not the case," Rowan said. His lips curved up the slightest bit into a ghost of a smile. "Could you recall what you've seen to me? Yamask here has already told me, but I'd like to hear it from you myself."

Dream described what he had seen, starting with the shade of blue at Lake Verity to the frequency of the dreams he'd been having.

Professor Rowan nodded along to everything. When Dream stopped, he spoke again after a pause. "I see. I have a theory on what you could've been seeing. Follow me."

Dream followed Professor Rowan into an area filled with bookshelves. A long table was placed in the room but missing of any pages or pencils he would normally expect on them. Yamask leapt onto the table and watched from a foot away.

"Look at this map." Professor Rowan handed him a thin book with a blue bookmark inserted in one of its pages.

Well, Dream wasn't one to protest something like that. He opened the book to where the bookmark had been inserted, only to see a geographical map of the Sinnoh region with unreadable notes scrawled in black pen all over it.

"You're familiar with Lake Verity. Did you notice there's two more lakes in the Sinnoh region?"

Now he did. He nodded accordingly.

"In the three lakes of Sinnoh, there are said to be mirage pokemon: Mesprit, the bringer of emotion; Azelf, the bringer of willpower; and Uxie, the bringer of knowledge. Legends say that if any of the three lake guardians were to be harmed, the world would be disrupted."

"In what way?"

"We aren't sure yet. And we don't want to find out."

Then it clicked.

"Are you saying there's a possibility that..." Dream didn't want to finish his sentence.

It seemed Professor Rowan understood anyway. "Yes. And I believe you're one of the trainers that the lake guardians have reached out to."

The lake guardians...

"One of?" Dream repeated.

"I have contact with professors from around the world. There are only two other trainers that have reported having similar visions. Their professors informed me that they had arrived in Sinnoh two weeks prior to today to check up on the lakes." Professor Rowan took the book back and slid it into its correct spot on the bookcase. "I'd like to ask you to check up on the lakes as well. There's said to be a cave somewhere in the lake, and I think going there would provide some insight as to how the lake guardians are faring."

"I mean," Dream said, "I can just go to Lake Verity right now."

"And how do you plan to get across the water?"

Dream fell silent.

"You're a creative person, Dream. I'm certain you can devise a strategy to investigate the lakes."

"Hang on a second," Dream said, "I just got here. If I go, don't you have to find a new assistant?"

Professor Rowan paused, then nodded. "That would cause some trouble, yes. Stay here." He walked out of the bookshelf room.

Dream exchanged a glance with Yamask. Yamask stared back, its expression blank.

He didn't even have a water type pokemon, and he was certain Yamask couldn't carry him across the water. And how much of a time limit did they have on this anyway? Were they doomed in a couple days, or...

Professor Rowan stepped back into the room with a red device in hand. There was something heavy about the expression on his face, as stern as it was. Dream felt he was in the presence of something big, something important.

"My name, as you know, is Rowan. I study pokemon. First of all, I want to know exactly what kinds of pokemon live in the Sinnoh region. To do so, it is necessary to collect data using the Pokedex." He held out the red device. "I want to entrust you with this Pokedex. While you're on your journey, will you use it to record data on all the pokemon in Sinnoh for me?"

Dream studied the device. He had heard of such machines before, but he had never had experience working with it. "Will it really record every pokemon I encounter automatically?"

"Yes. Catching the pokemon would yield more data, but it's only necessary to see the pokemon."

"Then..." Dream turned to Yamask.

They've both grown. Much more than Dream had anticipated, but they've grown.

"It's been a long time since we've been on an adventure, hasn't it?" Dream asked.

Yamask made a sound of agreement before nudging Dream closer to the pokedex.

"I'm glad we agree." Dream took the Pokedex. "I'll accept it."

"Hm! Good answer," Professor Rowan said. Then something shifted, and the ice in his expression melted. "I've lived for sixty long years. Even now, I get a thrill when I'm with a pokemon."

There was only truth in that. Even after being with Yamask for ten years, there was no telling what it would do next. That unpredictability, he had to admit, was thrilling.

"Now, you should know there are countless pokemon in the world. That means there are just as many thrills waiting for you."

During his studies in a lab, he was always told to not develop any attachments to the pokemon they were studying lest they be studied at a different location or released in the wild. Now that he was free to form any attachments he wanted, what kind of pokemon would he become friends with?

"Now go! Dream, your grand adventure begins now!"

And that was the start of Dream's journey.

Yet here he was now, standing at the path leading into Route 202, Yamask at his side.

Dream turned to Yamask, and Yamask stared back, the same question in their heads.

What do we do now?