CHAPTER 1498: THE PRECOGNITIVE DREAM OF ABSOL

That day, Yuga received a call from his master. His master told him about his own experience, and Yuga hadn’t expected his master to have gone through something so similar to what he himself experienced. So he speculated, "Looks like something happened to Celebi."

From the other end of the call, his master’s voice came: "That’s what I think too. The only question is—which Celebi is in trouble?"

While his master was still speaking with Yuga over the phone, he suddenly saw the Celebi statue in the shrine beginning to glow. Accompanied by a soft hum, a Celebi emerged from rippling waves of light and appeared right in front of him.

"Celebi!" his master exclaimed in surprise.

Over the phone, Yuga asked in confusion, "What’s wrong? What about Celebi?"

His master was only surprised for a moment. When he saw Celebi staring at the phone in his hand, he continued, "Celebi has come to me. You should come to the shrine."

Yuga wasn’t too surprised. The Celebi that appeared in the shrine must have come on behalf of the one in trouble. After all, their lineage could be considered Celebi’s emissaries—if something happened to Celebi, of course it would come to them for help.

"Alright, I’ll head over now."

Yuga hung up and immediately began to prepare for departure. The shrine was located near Mauville City, not too far from Verdanturf Town.

Just as he was about to find Doudou to bring back the Pokémon from the Battle Tower, he happened to see Nana walking toward him.

"Yuga, I encountered something strange today. I don’t know if it was just my imagination."

Yuga’s heart stirred. "What happened?"

So Nana told Yuga about hearing a mysterious call. Yuga thought to himself: Just as I suspected.

"That probably wasn’t your imagination. It seems that something really did happen to Celebi. My master and I experienced the same thing. I was just about to head to my master’s place to deal with it."

"I’ll come too," Nana quickly said.

"Alright." Yuga agreed without hesitation.

After Doudou brought the Pokémon back from the Battle Tower, Yuga then found out that Florges had experienced the same phenomenon as well.

Realizing the severity of the situation, Yuga immediately mounted Dragonite and flew toward Mauville City at the fastest speed possible.

By the time he reached the shrine, night had completely fallen, but his master and Celebi were still waiting for him.

Upon seeing Celebi, Yuga confirmed what he had suspected—it had come seeking help. Unfortunately, even Celebi didn’t know exactly what had happened to the other Celebi, or where it was now.

However, there was one thing they were sure of: the one in trouble was the Forest Guardian of the Sinnoh region. Unfortunately, just knowing that didn’t help much at all.

Yuga had come to the shrine in such a rush that he hadn’t even eaten dinner. So his master personally cooked a meal for him.

Since the shrine was usually unoccupied, all the ingredients came from what the Shiftry and others who guarded the shrine had foraged from the wild. As a result, the dinner his master prepared was quite simple.

Still, his master was an excellent cook and was able to fully bring out the natural flavors of the ingredients. Yuga found the taste to be refreshing and unique, and he ate with great satisfaction.

That night, the two of them and Celebi discussed the situation but came to no real conclusion, so they stayed the night at the shrine. Celebi did not leave either.

Late that night, Yuga lay in bed, slowly drifting off to sleep, unaware that the pointed horn on the Absol lying beside him was emitting a faint blue glow.

In his sleep, Yuga seemed to hear a strange sound. His consciousness drifted farther and farther away from his body. When he opened his eyes again, he was startled to find that he had become a Celebi—trapped inside a transparent glass chamber.

He felt dazed and tried to flap the wings on his back, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t fly.

Very soon, he realized that although his consciousness was now inside Celebi’s body, he could not control its actions—Celebi was still acting on its own will.

In short, he was now experiencing everything from Celebi’s point of view as a passive observer. While he couldn’t control Celebi’s body, all of its sensations—touch, hearing, and sight—were fully shared with him.

Yuga endured the dizziness and began to observe his surroundings. He found himself in a room filled with blinding white light. The room was packed with all sorts of instruments—some of which he had seen before at Mewtwo’s place, but most of them he didn’t recognize at all.

Aside from that, the room was full of people in white lab coats walking back and forth. What surprised him even more was that on those white coats, he saw a familiar symbol—"R."

Team Rocket!

Yuga finally understood—Celebi had been captured by Team Rocket.

Celebi was frantically banging on the transparent glass dome it was trapped in, but whatever material the dome was made of, not only was it incredibly strong, it was also suppressing Celebi’s power.

At that moment, Yuga suddenly heard some noise coming from nearby. Then, he saw the door to the room open and a group of people in black uniforms walked in. Leading them was none other than the boss of Team Rocket—Giovanni.

The group of black uniforms were flanking two people. One of them was also wearing a white lab coat, but Yuga didn’t recognize him. The other was a woman in ordinary clothes—someone Yuga remembered all too well.

Amina!

But wasn’t Amina supposed to be in the custody of the League?

Actually, Yuga was feeling extremely unwell at the moment. Even though he retained a degree of awareness, his head was spinning, and his thoughts were slow and foggy. He couldn’t piece things together clearly.

For instance, even though he now knew that Team Rocket had captured a Celebi, he couldn’t recall what had happened earlier in the day, nor could he connect the two events together.

"Boss Giovanni!"

"Boss Giovanni!"

...

When they saw Giovanni enter, all the scientists in white coats stopped what they were doing and greeted him with great respect.

Giovanni nodded and turned to the nearest white coat and asked, "How’s Celebi doing?"

The man replied, "Everything’s normal."

Giovanni turned around and looked at the white coat who was being flanked by black uniforms and said, "Professor Pedro, this is our Team Rocket laboratory. What do you think? Quite impressive, isn’t it?"

The man, addressed as Professor Pedro, just gave a cold snort and didn’t reply.

To say that Professor Pedro and Amina were being "escorted" by black uniforms would be an understatement. They were being guarded.

Giovanni didn’t get angry at Pedro’s rudeness. Instead, he turned and smiled at one of the black-uniformed members. "Alex, try to talk some sense into your teacher."

"Yes, Mr. Giovanni," the one called Alex replied respectfully.

Professor Pedro glared fiercely at Alex, but Alex remained unmoved. He walked up to Professor Pedro and whispered, "Teacher, one day you’ll understand the greatness of Mr. Giovanni."

Upon hearing that, Professor Pedro was so infuriated that he felt short of breath, pointing at Alex, too angry to speak.

He truly regretted it—he must have been blind to have chosen this person to inherit his knowledge.

Alex was Professor Pedro’s final and most valued disciple. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought that this student would one day personally deliver him into the hands of criminals.

Thinking of this, Professor Pedro felt his head spinning and could barely stay standing.

Seeing this, Alex hurried forward with concern, wanting to support Professor Pedro—but was abruptly shoved aside by Amina.

"Stay away from the professor. Don’t act so fake."

Alex paused for a moment and then silently stepped back.

Only then did Amina support the professor, asking with a face full of concern, "Professor, are you all right?"

Professor Pedro calmed his emotions a bit, shook his head, and said, "I’m fine."

Yuga watched as Giovanni walked toward him, his heart extremely tense. Giovanni had heard the argument between Alex and Professor Pedro, but only turned his head to glance at them and didn’t interfere.

The conflict between teacher and student was best left for them to resolve on their own. As long as Alex could ultimately persuade Professor Pedro to join Team Rocket’s lab, that would be enough.

Giovanni walked up to the glass dome, looking down at the Celebi inside. Yuga’s scalp tingled under his gaze, but Giovanni didn’t notice anything unusual.

"Boss Giovanni, should we begin?" a man in a white lab coat came over and asked.

"Go ahead," Giovanni nodded.

Yuga had been wondering what they were going to do when he saw that white-coated man move the glass dome containing Celebi onto a machine. After he flipped a switch, Yuga could feel Celebi’s power being drained, followed by an intense surge of pain.

Sharing senses with Celebi, Yuga felt as if he were being skinned and dismembered.

Hearing Celebi’s anguished cry, Professor Pedro became agitated and tried to rush forward, but he was blocked by the black-uniformed guards.

Yuga didn’t know how much time had passed—it felt endlessly long. When the pain finally faded, he felt that his (Celebi’s) body was drenched in sweat.

In his daze, he heard Giovanni talking to someone.

"How was it?"

"Very smooth..."

...

His consciousness was beginning to detach from Celebi’s body when suddenly he heard two place names: Kalos and Camphrier Town.

"Ahhh!!"

Yuga screamed and jolted awake, sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat. Absol also awoke, the glow on its horn vanishing instantly—unnoticed by anyone.

"Florges~"

Yuga, what’s wrong?

At that moment, Madam Hua Jie and the other Pokémon had also woken up, gathering around the bed.

Yuga wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, "It’s nothing, just a nightmare!"

But though he said that, Yuga knew this was definitely not just any ordinary dream.

"Rojez~" Here, have a glass of water.

Madam Hua Jie turned on the light and gently poured Yuga a glass of water.

Yuga took the glass, drank it in one go, then sat on the bed in a daze. Everyone stayed by his side in quiet company.

At that moment, Yuga’s mind had resumed normal functioning. He suspected that the dream might be connected to the Celebi that had run into trouble—in other words, what he experienced in the dream might be exactly what that Celebi was experiencing at the moment.

And the reason Celebi was in trouble—was entirely due to Team Rocket’s interference.

However, what Yuga didn’t know was that he had actually guessed wrong. The reason he had that dream was not because he was experiencing what Celebi was currently going through—but rather what Celebi was about to go through.

In fact, it was Absol’s unique gift of premonition that was at work behind the scenes.

Which meant that what Yuga saw in the dream was not Celebi’s current situation, but what would soon happen to it.

Even Absol itself didn’t realize that its special ability had unintentionally been activated. It had been triggered purely out of its heartfelt desire to share Yuga’s burdens.

The next day, Yuga told his master about the events in his dream and decided to take a trip to Camphrier Town.

No matter why Team Rocket had mentioned that place in the dream, it wouldn’t hurt to check it out—especially since they still didn’t know where exactly Celebi had been taken.

Just then, Wallace called Yuga and told him everything that had happened in Crown City. Only then did Yuga understand why Amina had appeared in his dream—because she really was with Team Rocket now.