Dustin

(duss-tin)

AGE: 16

SPECIES: Shinx

PRONOUNS: He/Him

ABILITY: Guts

NATURE: Timid

CHARACTERISTIC: Somewhat vain

OCCUPATION: Explorer (Team Saviour)

TW: brief mentions of unreality

My partner from Explorers of Sky! Dustin is a Pokémon with big dreams and aspirations. He wants to put his mark on the map by having grand adventures, exploring uncharted territories, and discovering lucrative treasures. There's just one teensy, tiny problem: he's very afraid. Of practically everything. He has severe anxiety and is afraid of his own shadow.

Coming from the Luxray tribe in Amp Plains, Dustin had been like this for as long as he could remember. Yet despite this, his dreams of becoming a great adventurer trumped those fears, so he left home with the support of his family and friends to join the famous Wigglytuff's Guild to train. On his way to Treasure Town, where the guild was based, he discovered a small rock with a strange emblem on it. Who knows what secrets this rock could be hiding? It was very peculiar, after all! So he decided to take it with him and dubbed the weird rock as his Relic Fragment.

Actually trying to apprentice at the guild was another beast entirely. He has to go in there? And talk with complete strangers???? No thanks, he'd try again some other time, so he left without making it past the front gate. This had been a common occurrence for a while, so while he was waiting for the day he was brave enough, he had taken up residency inside the mouth of Sharpedo Bluff.

Disheartened by his lack of courage, he headed down to Treasure Town's beach, as the view of the horizon always calmed him down, but while looking around the beach he noticed an unconscious Pokémon laying in the sand!

Asta was an unusual little Eevee. Beyond being partially evolved into a Sylveon and having a nasty set of scars on her thigh, she also claimed to have lost her memories and was actually a human! And despite those ridiculous claims, Dustin couldn't help but instantly believe them. After helping him deal with some bullies that had stolen his Relic Fragment, he felt like he could really be what he'd always wanted to be with Asta around: brave, so he requested that they form a team and join the guild together, to which it agreed, and thus Team Saviour was born!

Working for the guild was an interesting experience. Asta had the natural spirit of a hero and was excited to be able to help out Pokémon in need. Dustin, on the other paw... wasn't that. Not just because of his cowardice, but because he was selfish. He had only wanted the glory of being an adventurer, and didn't care about those on the request board that needed help. Meanwhile, Asta seemed to thrive off being able to help others, and it brought a smile to everybody's faces, and Dustin felt envious of it. Of her natural niceness, of her social skills, and of her courage. Saving Azurill from Drowzee had been the cold, hard trigger for this realization. His hesitancy to save Azurill wasn't just from Drowzee seeming like a nice Pokémon, but because he just wanted to get back to guild work. Dustin had felt disgusted by how he had been acting, especially because it had put a young child in danger, and felt awful for brushing Asta's concerns off the way he did, so from that point on he vowed to do better: not just as an explorer, but as a friend. Asta wasn't someone to be envied, but someone to aspire to be like.

At some point, their training took them back to Amp Plains, and despite the danger of the mission, he was excited to see his friends and family again. However, upon arriving at the end of the dungeon, there was no trace of the Luxray tribe, and rather the Manectric tribe was there instead! Manectric attacked the duo, fearful over their territory being trespassed on, and after a heated battle that ended in the great Dusknoir saving them from Manectric's final attack, Dustin asked what had happened to his tribe, to which Manectric responded that there was no Luxray tribe. In fact, there had never been a Luxray tribe. This shocked Dustin to his very core, and he angrily accused Manectric of lying, but Dusknoir, who Dustin revered for his wisdom, confirmed what Manectric had said. Dustin was confused. He was shaken, he was scared, and he was alone. They had to be making some sick joke, right? There's no way he could make up his own history like that! Where were his family? His friends? What about all the memories he had growing up? Were... were they real? 

Dustin wasn't actually alone, though, not any more. He had Asta now, and she managed to calm him down. With a clearer head, Dustin began to question what had happened. What was real, and what was fake? He wanted to look into the matter as soon as possible, but he had no time to dwell on this as, after a brief talk with Dusknoir about Asta's situation, the news came out that the thief that had been stealing Time Gears around the continent had been identified as Grovyle, and the hunt for him began.

After Dusknoir's revelation that he was a Pokémon sent from the future to capture Grovyle, who was stealing Time Gears to cause time to stop, they aided him in capturing the thief, and the two went back to the future, but not before Dusknoir grabbed him and Asta and took them to the future too! They had been set up to be discarded alongside Grovyle, which confused Dustin greatly. They hadn't done anything wrong! But after some assistance in escaping from Grovyle in an uneasy truce, Team Saviour made their way through the dark and dreary future to try and find a way home, but hope was dwindling for Dustin. Were they doomed to live in this bleak world? Why were they even here? What was wrong with Dusknoir? Why was the future still like this when they had recovered the Time Gears from Grovyle? There were so many questions and Dustin just wanted to give up, but not before his beacon of hope that had been by his side since the beginning gave him some encouragement. It was here, in a moment of vulnerability, where Dustin confessed that he had feelings of selfishness and envy towards Asta, but that those were quickly stomped out, and he realized that he wanted to be just like her, and that he owed her for his newfound bravery and for being his best friend. Asta, though, refuted this, saying that he didn't owe her anything. It appreciated him being there for it when it was alone, and that she just wanted Dustin for who he was. This sparked something in Dustin, a feeling deep down towards Asta that he had sensed since watching the lights at Fogbound Lake with her during a guild expedition. He loved it, but he couldn't say that at that point, not while they were still in this doomed future, so he vowed to once they were safe, and they didn't have the apocalypse to worry about. He at least owed it that honesty.

While travelling with Grovyle and getting aid from a Pokémon called Celebi in order to travel back in time, they were nearly caught by not only Dusknoir and his Sableye minions, but their master, Dialga, too. It was there that Dusknoir revealed everybody's truths: that he was abiding by Dialga's will to keep the planet's paralysis on track, and he wanted to eliminate any threats, that Grovyle was merely collecting Time Gears in order to stop Dialga's domain, Temporal Tower, from collapsing and thus stopping the planet's paralysis, and that Asta was also from the future, and that it was Grovyle's friend and partner in their mission. Dusknoir didn't say much about Dustin, aside from that he posed the biggest threat if his "real memories" were to return. Despite Grovyle's hope for escaping now going, Dustin remained strong, because he had Asta there, and by a stroke of luck they managed to return to the past to renew Grovyle's mission.

•I know I just wrote a metric fuckton about Dustin, but I don't think I can say any more, as his deal with his false memories is actually a heavy spoiler for Ties That Bind. Just know that he finds out the truth from Dialga after Dialga regains their senses.

•He gains the scars on his chest from Dusknoir's failed execution, just like Asta does.

•He uses an energy scarf to keep hold of his Relic Fragment in a pouch around his neck. After travelling to Hidden Land, he doesn't have the Relic Fragment any more, so he just wears the scarf normally from then on.

•He's autistic, with a special interest in exploring! This helps greatly once Wigglytuff and Chatot retire, as they select him to be the new guild master, with Asta being his right hand. As of TTB's time period, they're both much older but are still happily running the guild!