"Squirtle, Squirtle!! (We're back already! Put everything else aside! Look over here! I was just telling you something was going on here!!)"
Squirtle didn't care about missing the registration deadline. As far as he was concerned, humans held all sorts of strange events every year. If they missed this year, there was always next year, and plenty of people competed several years in a row.
But back in the ancient era, he had noticed something crawling into their luggage bag. Before he could draw anyone's attention to it, that mysterious power of time and space had sent them back.
While Lü Ming spoke with the search-and-rescue team and Xin Mu studied the registration form, Squirtle opened the suitcase and discovered something wriggling inside the bag of food Xin Mu had packed for his Pokémon.
When Squirtle opened the bag, the food inside was already gone. All that remained was a puddle of unidentified liquid, with something resembling a snail sucking it up.
Squirtle touched the liquid and even felt a burning sensation. It appeared to be some kind of corrosive solution.
Only the backpack's corrosion-resistant fabric had kept the liquid from spilling over the rest of the luggage. The snail in the slime seemed to sense Squirtle's presence and crawled onto his arm.
But this wasn't a show of affection. Squirtle's Aura told him that this thing seemed intent on dissolving him and then eating him!
After shaking it off with all his might, Squirtle grabbed Xin Mu's trouser leg and dragged him over to inspect the situation.
"Sliggoo?"
Seeing its purple body, the four little feelers on its head, and the green spots on its face, Xin Mu was already certain of this Pokémon's identity. It was a Sliggoo-or, more precisely, an ancient form Sliggoo.
The biggest difference between