Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

Date: Approximately Two Years Prior to Present Setting

Time. The continuous progression of events in succession past to present to future. Supposedly irreversible.

Tick. Tock.

Time. The embodiment of the human obsession with order. A construct for holding back the dark, chaotic madness that was the alternative.

Tick. Tock.

Time. Realm of Dialga, its guardian, protector and ruler.

Tick. Tock.

Time. Tool. Ally. Foe.

Tick. Tock.

Time. His tool. His Ally. And, at times, but rarely, his foe.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock. Chime. Chime. Chime.

He snapped out of his reverie as the ornate clock on his mantelpiece began to chime for the hour. Gears whirled and other intricate clockwork parts moved to display a small, wooden Pidove, which moved its mouth to cry in time with the chiming. Its efforts would have produced sound had the mechanism required for such a feat not degraded several years ago. He'd been meaning to fix it for nearly as long, but, somehow, had simply never found the time.

He slowly, gently pushed himself out of the plush chair he'd fallen into several hours ago, exhausted after days of being alert. It wasn't that his work had been strenuous, mind. Sleep rarely came easy to him, nor did he enjoy it. Sleep meant dreams. Or, more accurately, sleep meant nightmares. A recurring nightmare, of a world doomed without his existence, plagued him.

He simultaneously marvelled at and mocked such a cliché. He reviled such weakness and dismissed it as an inevitable, if unfortunate, part of his psyche. An existence like this, secluded and away from the rest of the world, had its drawbacks, for sure.

But it also had its advantages. And in those he found strength. The strength to continue his duty.

He ambled over to the window, past the fireplace that crackled with a fury diminished since he had begun to rest earlier, and stared for a time out into the outside world. Normally, the view would be obscured by an everpresent storm of snow, ice, hail and slush. Few Pokémon would even be capable of surviving here, yet alone thriving, and it was little surprise that none currently made their homes, as he did, in this part of the world. In all the time he had spent on this mountain, he had yet to see another being approach the cabin from the outside. As far as he was aware, and he was very aware of such things, he lived further north than anyone else did in the world.

He preferred it this way. It allowed him to work in peace.

But now, however, the situation was different. The blizzard had diminished to little more than a few snowflakes glittering down from the clouds above. The harsh winds that would regularly direct them had abated. The sun was shining through the clouds. He opened the window, shivering briefly at the sudden drop in temperature, until the warmth from the sun reached him and invigorated him, bathing him in its luminous glow, until once more they retreated behind the clouds, and the winds picked up in speed and intensity once again, to begin another extended blizzard. He closed the window and turned away.

It would be only half-false to say that moments like those were what he lived for.

His body ached as he moved again, and he took another moment – what loss was a few seconds in a day of thousands? – to recall his exhaustion. He truly was old, now – into his 80th year - and each time he noted that fact, he experienced worry, dread and grim acceptance all over again. Time and Time again.

He pondered his options briefly, considering the lure of sustenance or perhaps even of sleep, no matter the cost of the latter, but one more glance at the still ticking clock set his mind straight. He discarded those thoughts of weakness. Such necessary, such human concerns could wait until later. It was time to attend to his duty once again.

It was time to play the game.

Who was he?

Well, that was the question. He wasn't entirely sure it was worth dignifying with a response – and so chose not to regularly dwell on an answer to it – but, he had to admit, it was a very good question.

But if an answer, however simple, would be required for this very good question, he had several responses of note. Not that anyone would ever have the chance to ask. Perish the thought. Hypothetically, then...

He could answer with a physical description. Male, aging and decaying, almost completely bald. His unusual, outer clothes almost seemed to hang off him at times, not as though they did not seem to belong, but instead did not seem entirely necessary to mark him out. Uninspiring hazel eyes rounded off the attributes of a man who, by appearance alone, would be unremarkable in the extreme. But physical attributes can be monumentally misleading, as, in youthful folly, he had discovered long ago. A response solely of physical or material attributes would be an inadequate answer to such an important question. They would suggest a state of being decrepit that would not describe him at all.

He could answer with a name. Not his true name, mind, for the sheer number of titles and descriptions he had held, in jest or attempted seriousness, however briefly, bordered on the obscene. Names are more ephemeral than most realise; they can be changed, granted all too freely at birth, stolen and discarded again as quick as a flash. The stock people often place in a name as an indication of identity, he sometimes mused, approaches the foolish. If he had to be described by a title, he would offer only one; Gamesmaster. He delighted at the arrogance of such a choice, masking as it did his true influence and understanding under the assumption that he treated his actions as merely a game. It would make his enemies underestimate him by assuming that he would underestimate them. Not that his enemies, if they could even be called that, would ever even become aware of his existence in the first place.

If that would still be inadequate, he could finish with an attempt at describing his duty – his purpose – his game. This attempt would sicken him as much as it would probably provide the most acceptable answer to the question. His influence, his role in the grand scheme of things, he knew, amounted to far more than anything that could be described in a medium as fleeting as the spoken word. Language would not grant the proper gravitas that his efforts so richly deserved.

He reached the other side of his living room and opened the door, making his way to the grand hall of the building and shutting the door carefully behind him. He shook briefly from the draughtiness of the hall, once again trying, and failing, to remember why he had decided upon its construction as the room of his work when a smaller section of his abode would have probably sufficed. Unlike the smaller living room, the hall was large in height and width, but constructed from much the same materials and with much the same standard of decoration. Three doors led out of the hall, including the one he had entered, with one leading upstairs and the other leading to the kitchen space. The walls – for the most part – were similarly Spartan, and only three pieces of interior design were of particular design. Least striking was a fireplace that mirrored the positioning of the one in the living room, providing the same warmth that he so dearly cherished to the hall.

Second was the wide table which took up most of the hall, constructed of the finest wood he was able to have shipped from the Eterna and Viridian forests. He used it for two purposes of relevant importance; eating, and, more importantly, playing the game.

Third, and most obvious, was the magnificent stained glass window at the far end of the hall. It caught the eye as soon as one entered; even in darkness, what little light reflected off the moon seemed to gravitate to it, and its illumination in that rarity of full sunlight was a wondrous sight to behold. The mural it carried depicted a compilation some of the legends that made up the mythos of the regions of the world. The Creation by Arceus; The Legend of the Guardian of the Seas, Lugia; The moving of the continents by Regigigas, and many more. He hoped his actions behind the scenes might someday help carve his own legends amongst the few he might trust, given time. If not, he would be content to remain entirely unseen. The shadows only aided his work.

Out of all the time, cost and simply basic effort he had put into having his abode located so far from civilisation, the mural was the second most expensive "investment" in the room.

The most expensive was the ornate piece of equipment resting on the table. It resembled an enlarged gameboard.

Indeed, from afar it was hardly different from a standard board, with tiles and gamepieces, but appearances can truly be deceiving. For one striking notion about his board, albeit not perhaps entirely unusual, was that each piece was a different colour. All of the colours of the rainbow were strewn across the board, joined by various shades and hues of blues, reds, yellows, greens, pinks and so many more. At present counting, he had found space for over one hundred small chunks of plastic to fill the space, and suspected that the number would only continue to grow until he died. Sometimes, he wondered if he would ever run out of space.

The tiles, too, were not actually laid out in an ordered pattern, as in games played on a chequered board. They formed grid squares for a map, or rather the map of the world in as great as detail as could be displayed. Holographic projectors built into the wood could display more information in the air above the board about whichever place he happened to be analysing, fed on the most recent data by computer link to the civilised world.

Furthermore, to see the pieces as mere plastic also misunderstood their complexity. On a technical level, each contained a sophisticated microchip which allowed them to interface with the board that they moved over. Data streamed constantly from these pieces and, again, the actual living world, to the holographic display, enhancing the array of knowledge that he could call upon.

But the pieces were more than just that.

Each was assigned to something or someone in the actual world. Sometimes an organisation as a whole. Sometimes, when relevant, a single person. The former outnumbered the latter, but both could be found in respectable numbers on the board. Some could be called "heroes". Some could be called "villains". Some were neither. Some were human. Some were Pokémon.

Here, this electric blue one represented Team Plasma of Unova. He was proudest of the depth of his manoeuvres into the court of Ghetsis, their effective leader. Team Plasma's role would come to fruition soon.

There, those opposing aquamarine and carmine pieces represented Teams Magma and Aqua of Hoenn. Defeated, thwarted, diminished in terms of usefulness, perhaps even redeemed. But even the most hapless forces could, and would, be put to use somewhere. Somehow.

Some pieces wore other colours to symbolise their common importance by the titles and responsibilities they shared. The pieces representing the Champions of the regions each bore a gold crown. Even they, though, were mere pawns in this game. All could be expendable if necessity required it.

Some were simply unclassifiable, and it was those that he treasured the most.

The list could go on, and on, and on. The scope of his control was, he would happily admit to no-one, breathtaking. His manipulations were so subtle as to cause his pawns to be entirely unaware of them – unless, of course, he wanted one pawn to blame another for such a gambit. An offhand recommendation to an ambitious secretary to be relayed to their superiors here, a careful bribe through a chain of corrupt commissioners there, even inspiring an investigation into such actions of corruption for an ironic twist. None of these would be beyond the scope of his power at this table, on this board, and truly only scratched the surface of what he could do.

At this table, on this board, he controlled the world.

And yet no-one could, or perhaps would, ever know it.

He slid down into the chair at the end of the table, feeling the creak of years of existence in his bones as he did so. A wave of his hands brought the computer back to life, as he had left it from his last session. He surveyed the section of the board he had been working on previously, centred primarily around the region of Unova – of its Champion and of Team Plasma. Within two years' time, his plan for the area would have reached its zenith, and Plasma would control the region.

Two years remaining for this part of the plan represented the very end of such an operation. Time was on his side in that respect, as it very often was. The only true exception to this was in terms of his own existence. He was perfectly healthy, and lived an excellent with his mind intact, but doubted he would live more than another twenty years, at best. In that respect, time was not on his side.

Of course, Plasma could, alternatively, be defeated and forced to retreat and lie low. Manipulating the Unovan Champion was a tricky endeavour, more so than any other Champion, for suspicion was part of their nature, and had caused the swift diversion of some of his action in the past. If a spanner could be thrown in the works, it would likely be through their efforts. Or maybe even some unknown crusading hero would emerge from the woodwork to save the day. Rats scurrying to defend their homes from forces that they do not understand.

But that was the true glory, the true wonder of his actions. Not the scale of his manipulations. Not what he intended to achieve.

No. It was the simple fact that however the game played out, however much each individual piece acted, "knowingly" or not, against his control, he could never lose.

All outcomes lead to success, because he had arranged them as such, over so many long years, after so much effort.

He couldn't lose, because he had already won.

He smiled as he took hold of a piece once more, as he would continue to do so for as long as he would still live.

It was, ultimately, all just a matter of time.

"The things I once imagined would be my greatest achievements were only the first steps toward a future I can only begin to fathom."
—Jace Beleren