POST-GAME

Episode Retrograde: PMD

I owe this character so much more.

This site gets this bonus part first!

So yeah, the main story is over, but there are a few stories left on the side that'll make the ride into Pandemic smoother. They aren't necessary, but I wanted to expand on a few characters.

I don't own Pokémon.

Retrograde 1

PMD

Jovany

The Grove

Three days had passed since the encounter with that facility's leader. Three days, Rayse might have said, since the beginning of the end of my story. The forest and suburbs were still covered in frost, and the air was still ghastly with mist and snow. The sun overhead stared down on Autumnridge with pity and contempt, envious perhaps. It rolled through the sky like a hardened egg yolk, feeding its warmth drip by drip, and only if you stared long enough to consider it had anything left to give. By then, the hypothermia made you rigid, and you signed the big burning solar eye off for a lost cause.

I once missed the sun. It fed me, in a sense – multiple, even. I took it, drank it. I felt myself smile when it tucked its rays into my scales somehow, pulling all the pieces of me right back together, a conglomerate of parts all working together, never asking why – atoms and bugs. That was all so long ago, a time before a time before a time. I didn't need the sun, and I didn't feel the cold any longer. It was a convenient purgatory to find myself in, and, though it was hardly a place to call home, it was a slither in a direction that I was convinced might have been called 'forward'.

Time, direction, hope – it was all a whirlpool in a crucible of brimstone, and the fragments of people surrounding me jumped and raised their arms and praised it like a burning effigy, for some chance that it could save them. I couldn't be critical of that. They didn't know any better, and it made them eloquent for a warmer, sunnier day. They described it to me: people walking the streets again, businesses opening up, laughter, birds in the sky, smiles, days and nights the way days and nights were meant to be spent.

It was a cracked fantasy, and the enthusiasm slipped right through when the curt silence that followed reminded everybody that it occupied the most space in the universe at the most times. And still, it was deafening. The stars and the sky were mute, but we all looked to them, listening intently. Dregs of comfort. Tear-shining, wanton pit-stops of spurious faith, a furious spate in a moment of contemplation. And it was silent, you know. The rage and the loss and the grief and the hope all earned its way back to silence; but, silence was 'forward'. So, they went. We went. They hoped for a future, I hoped for an ending. We were different, and we walked together – the Grove – in a tiny pebble of a world of somehows and what-nows.

…

A memory

"You will be his guardian angel," the glaceon said. The words mocked me. My insides churned and itched. She said it with the coldest face. "And I will watch you. Should a scratch appear on him, you will be punished."

"I'm not afraid of you," I told her.

"Do not interrupt me," she said, uncaring. "The terms of your punishment will motivate you. I know what scares you. I know your reason for living, and I will change it."

"You're threatening me," I said.

"Ah-huhu, no," she mused. "It is less of a threat and more of a promise. And unlike you, I will keep mine. If you should fail, my sister will run her Gamma through your body, and you will become not a Champion, but a strider."

My mouth opened, but only a meek, troubled noise fell out. The itching inside of me turned stiff and cracked.

"We are not friends," she blew forth with icy breath. "But that may change. What say you? Will you change your own mind and become his friend? Or will you be changed by the Wave, just as Earth?

Why, its irony tickles me! To be the first Earthling changed, and also the last... ah, but assuming you fail. Forgive me, I am assuming. I do that. Ah-huhuhu!"

I was quiet. I watched her. I was furious, but she chilled me from the point of my nose to the tip of my tail's tattered leaf. Between my snout, she laughed and swayed her hips around, turning the other way, walking off. It was of no consequence to her, like it was to me.

Then, I understood. She was a Champion. Her job was to change the person I was, to change my mind as well as my body. Follow her. Love her. She was going to save us. She was just like Vyrosia: an evil creature.

Why did I have hope for her, then?

"You can't do this to me," I yelled back at her. She was still going, vanishing into the velvet, ashy night. I could shout more. I could swear at her. I could even follow her, but I was frozen on the spot.

I had thought it impossible, but she made me feel the cold, and the possibilities flashed in my head. A strider, no different from the ones I killed. A strider, something that could never die. Something that never ended – no, I already had that trait. A strider was something that could never have the same hope a living person could.

I could still do that, at least. I could hope Secany was bluffing.

As if to rub it in, once I turned my head, one of my eyes caught a glimpse of a feeble white thing sitting in the tent that I had claimed. Its shining, golden eyes pierced the darkness, round and lifeless. There was no meaning behind them, no drive. They looked forward. They only did forward. They only hunted, and this particular one did just that. Striders wanted the life from their prey, and had no reason to take it. Disgusting creatures. Disgusting, poaching, sleepless, hope-eating things.

I was its angel, as told by a cold devil. Don't let harm come its way. It poached, and it earned your protection, Jovany.

…

Presently

"There's lots of shreds of fabric," said the bellossom. She seemed nervous when speaking to me. Her eyes only darted away from me when she went to grab the objects in question. Otherwise, her attention was glued to me, and she never smiled. She picked up a sloppy, torn red cloth in both small, stubby hands. "How is this? This would go good with your, um,"—she paused to look at me—"eyes."

I didn't mutter a thing. The red cloth was fuzzy and dirty. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. Blood and filth, I thought. That was what it looked like to me. But it didn't matter. Maybe to a Champion, it mattered. Blood and filth equivocated to Flux, but I had no rapidash in this race.

I took the fabric. It was enough for myself and that fake, golden-eyed espurr who stalked me around everywhere now.

"That's fine, thanks," I told her, the cloth draped over a spike at the end of one of my jagged, monochrome vines. It looked like I had sliced through somebody's clothing, and the dregs followed me.

I offered no payment. No such thing was needed, not now. Any economy right this second was an unneeded obstacle, but still I felt guilt. She must have worked hard to get even a piece of old, torn up cloth. The only payment I could give her was a quiet promise that it was going to mean something, do something, go somewhere. Maybe the next best payment was an apology, but I housed nothing of the sort.

I left the Grove's tree.

…

It was sundown. I had a little bit of light to work with. I had the red, gnarled fabric in one vine – my white vine. With the thorns of its other, darker variant, I made a few cuts. It was sloppy, but with my vines always available, I needed a use for them. I needed to distract them from the idea of maiming. Mind you, the idea was always there, and it always took the shape of a white espurr that sat, cross-legged, in my tent and watched me do everything: breath, sleep, talk to myself. Maybe he was just a good listener. That, at least, was the best of thoughts I could muster for him. Maybe other than a pronoun that wasn't 'it'.

In my craft, I left some leverage for the cloth to be tied. It didn't look like I could make much out of this, but the intention was to wear it around my own neck. With no mirror, I had to salvage whatever style was left in me. Vines brought the ragged rag around my neck, and it was warm. It had a history, a reason for being here. It felt fluffy, fleecy. It smelled of metal.

With starved dexterity, I fashioned some poor excuse for a knot at the back of my neck, and the fabric became a bandanna, a torn triangle draping over my collar quills – still a triangle, still trying its best, its constituents and all, despite the flavor of the flaked rust, the dust, and the scent of guts.

Those scents – that mutt of a smell – turned my attention to him. Eyes wide, yet blind of meaning. They bothered me, like an insistent little sibling. I had some cloth left. With a heave of my tail, I pushed myself to my small feet and walked to him. His head aimed toward me, followed my every movement. I hung one vine between his eyes, and there draped the most torn, messiest, most likely piece of garbage from a thorn. Loose threads, brown spots, smell of sewage.

I went behind him. I was careful. The cloth was long, and it wrapped around his head in a narrow strip. I didn't want to damage him with an undue prod of my thorn. I was slow, methodical. Any mistake, Secany would have found me. She would have changed me. I saw it happening. I saw it in the future – some future.

When I was done, I imagined the espurr saw only red and darkness. The cloth was a blindfold for him. I knew it made no difference. He followed me in spite of his sight. Striders didn't need their eyes.

But why are they always that color? That gold? What's the point in giving their eyes any color when they can't even afford to see in black and white anyway?

Disgusting, useless, contemptible, stupid creatures.

…

It was night and I was told to stay inside. I was told not to leave at this time, not just because of the cold, but because of the ravaging zombie-types that marauded the streets. They were like striders, in a way. They were hungry, but not stupid. They knew what they wanted and felt something for it. I could kill them the very same way.

I wondered, though: Striders and zombies, or Fluxes as they might have been called. Nothing was immune from Flux. Nothing could avoid it. If you thought you were better, you were wrong. If you felt any emotion at all, you were viable. Too much emotion, and the Flux started prying at you, finding chinks in the armor, slowly pouring in. But what of striders? Their emotions weren't real. Their emotions were simulated. Could a person be made out of the parts of those wholes?

I covered the espurr's eyes with dirty, red cloth. I could only wish the meaning of it wasn't lost on myself, as I left my tent, and he followed. It was dark, but my eyes adjusted, even through the undergrowth – this world's weak, crumbling, frosted thorns.

There were moments in the dark where I imagined his face again. He was always behind me, and when I turned back, I pretended that he was there, and that this cavernous undergrowth was a mystery dungeon, always shifting, always changing, full of feral, useless, idiot-things. Lu was never one of them. Always loyal. Always burning a hole into the back of my head with his red eyes, like mine. He was no coward, he was just too polite. Too conscious.

He wore a scarf, too, but only during work. It was tidy. At his best, he even made a tie trinket out of it – something you might have found on business suits here on Earth.

I dreamed of Lu a lot, when I could sleep. Sleep was rare, because striders always chased me in the Paradox. They let you catch a wink, then you tumbled your way through a nightmare, then you were being chased. I tried to sleep here on Earth, but the nightmares pulled me awake with something – some reaction that I hadn't been so sure I could ever do again: create tears. My face was so cold when I woke up.

In those cushioned, tented sleeps, the dreams fed me visions of Lu, but his eyes were not red like a riolu's should have been. They were yellow, and his fur was white and black, and he was chasing me with a murderous emptiness. Not following, not loyal – I was prey.

He wore that role so poorly, but before I truly considered Secany, he was the only thing that convinced me to feel again. Even just the memory of him.

And now, Secany. Now, Earth. Now, the espurr.

Where I was once too hollow to find my own end and let it take me –

where I was once too muddied with sloth to meet fate –

where I was once too sad to kill myself –

I was now too angry to die.

…

From the moment I left the woodland, I heard hoarse screams scorch the darkening sky. Some were sandpaper-voices, others were siren calls, and I was not sure which allured me more. The residents of the Grove went out to forage for food sometimes. I wanted to help them, I really did. I didn't need food, because of Gamma, maybe, so It didn't matter to me. I wanted to... explore, too. I wanted to garner experience again.

There were zombie-types everywhere. They littered the streets, or what was left of streets. Broken asphalt and fallen buildings. Holes full of frozen water. Holes full of frozen guts, where they slept, fed, screamed. When they saw me, they swarmed me, and their eyes were like red hot pokers that burnt holes through misty night.

They were fast. They could bound over me, strike me with blades made of bone and cartilage, shoot me from afar with beams of acid blood, even try and speak strange symbols and thoughts into me that were cosmic in origin, whisper of a depth deeper than the center of the center of a planet. Molten metallic was their scent, their intention, and so I welcomed their feast.

With every attempt at my head or my heart, my snout and tongue twitched violently. I felt the wind cut me, rush by me, before I even knew I was attacking. Every attack that any Flux made was a screech, and my body reacted almost on its own, a machine. Something that used to be a ground-type Pokémon towered over me and spat bile, but its tall, stalk-legs were cut out from underneath it and it crashed into the gravel, and soon found the point of one of my vines through its soft skull.

Something that used to be a fighting-type Pokémon charged me, wildly flailing its limbs, sharper than they were ever intended for. I met it with force, took its head in one vine, its neck in another, and the two became separate in the blink of an eye. Fluxes were unblinking, so I gathered not a moment was missed on this one. I tossed its head away. I felt steam and liquid pouring over me.

Another was attacking, a former Hypereal creature. In a flicker-flash, I was behind it, and then it was stuck to me, impaled. Two points, white and black, through its chest – I didn't even know what the thing was, but it bled, and when I ripped it in half, that foreign blood splattered over my face.

Some of the things were encompassing the espurr and I felt my snout point in their direction. I could see the outcomes before they happened, dimensions screaming at me from every angle. The espurr could have been decapitated, eaten, torn to more shreds than his red blindfold was made from. Luckily, I met the outcome that involved razor sharp leaves darting through each of the Fluxes like bullets, some ripping limbs away, some popping their eyes, fluid spilling, bursting into the air like geysers.

The hoard of Red things that once surrounded me thinned second by second, either at the command of my attacks or at their own newly unearthed fear. Their sustained existence to feed would have needed to depend upon something like fear while I was here. As my legs, tail, and vines moved, they began to ache in the cold, but the hot blood thawed them back out. The cold reminded me of her, the glaceon. The steaming blood broke me free of the icy chains she had me bound up in. It was a nepenthe, killing these creatures. It felt cathartic, empowering, deliciously ruthless and raw. I once killed without feeling, but now, I was angry, and I needed to kill what could take that anger and turn it against me.

Little by little, they made mad haste, scuttling and scampering and doing whatever their limbs allowed them to do to get away from me. I never recalled zombie-types giving up so easily. Maybe it was something I said in my flurry, a look I gave them. Still, they surrounded me – their constituent parts, anyway, pulsating, writhing, steaming. I wore them on the tip of my leaves, my tail, even my nose. The smell was unfathomable. Rust and dust and guts and pus. Strings of blood and hot ooze stuck to me, soon to be icicle-memories of what they once were. For now, I bathed in a thawing heat.

And then, the voices started. Not the ones from the sky – the universe telling me what direction to move in as to fight the Fluxes, but instead the ones from the people who hoped I could be their friend.

"Jovany," came a crisp, diamond voice. "Pray, I thought I pronounced it oh so clearly and slowly for thine mind of mire and muk: Once night falls, you do not leave the Grove."

Diancie glistened even in the dark. The tip of her pink, gemstone rapier shined even brighter as it pointed to me.

"Blasted fool!" came her voice – the icy one. "Are you so dense?! Are you so brazen?! You were to protect Angel, not put him in a front row seating of harm's way!"

"You found me," I told them, no reason why. I saw them from one eye, and the field of view was narrow, but it was enough to tell how far away they were in the dying light of the night. They were approaching behind the espurr, coming to save him, coming to reprimand me. What they didn't know was that I enjoyed the espurr being here. I enjoyed the danger, and him being in it.

"You're gonna get yourself killed!" a zombie-type said. One of those 'thinker' zombie-types. His name was Bryan and he used to be a buizel, but he was nothing more than a blob with a magic stick now. And that stick was glued to one of his dripping paws.

With him, a lopunny. Bright fur. He wielded a gun – something from Hypera. It caught my attention, and not because I was looking down its barrel, but because of the way it seemed to glow with familiarity, like a person in an old photograph: 'Oh, I remember him'.

"The shrieks were Arceus-forsaken – Oh, why, they were awful," Diancie said. "And you now, covered in grime, are the culprit of such howls of blood-riot. We followed them here."

"Jovany," Secany spoke up, a matter-of-fact sourness tainting her lips. "Don't underestimate the amount of eyes I have on you. Listen, I know you can take care of yourself. I know your strength, but-"

"You don't get it," I cut her short. She pursed her lips and reeled back.

"You dare interrupt me?! Be still your tongue-"

"No. Stop. Shut up, Champion," I commanded. She went stony and quiet. "Look at it. The thing you forced me to protect."

I took a moment. Diancie was too infuriated to oblige, but Secany and Bryan both lowered their eyes to the espurr.

"It's not hurt. No scratch," I said. "Nothing touched it. Nothing could. It was difficult. I enjoyed the challenge."

"You cannot speak to Secany that way!" clamored Diancie.

"No no, Di, it can't be helped," said the glaceon. "He is just a lost little servine. Hush hush, small child, we have come to bring you back to where you belong."

"I'm fine, thanks," I said, and turned away.

"Ah-!" the sapient Flux barked. "You stop now! You can't kill anymore! Those Fluxes are still people!"

I was about to walk, and I knew the espurr would have followed, but those words made me drag my tail.

"You're part-Flux, too. I see it in your eyes," the buizel-shaped zombie said.

So I gave him my eyes. I could have smiled a long, contented, bored smile, but that was an expression. No, that was not for me. That was how the Red dug its claws into you, if not through your eye-sockets first.

A little bit, maybe.

Flux helps some things. More attack power.

Easier to get the kill.

You can't do that...

These were people once.

We're trying to find a way to help them.

They're already dead.

They're like striders.

You can't bring either of those things back to life.

Suddenly, cutting our silence in twain, a screech and a glare of light overcame me. It was not from the Flux, nor Diancie, nor Secany. It was green, and it lit up the world. It was hot. I saw it happen slowly, a verdant light passed me by, a bolt. It skated over my nose and burned. I didn't flinch, and the narrow beam crashed into rubble nearby. It blew up jade plumes of dust, even lighting the area aflame. The shot was meant to kill. I was flattered.

"I appreciate the gesture," I said, serene, finding the lopunny in the darkness, who brandished the laser-spitting weapon. Only then did I notice how near that shot was to the espurr. It must have grazed the furs on the top of his head.

"Kieran, are you mad?!" Secany blared. "You don't understand the power you wield! Put Susano'o back!"

"Aahhh..." the lopunny seemed to moan. His eyes didn't read like a murderer's. He himself had no intention to kill me. I was confused. "Aaaaahhh...!"

"Kieran's in pain!" the buizel-thing said.

The lopunny's firing arm was shaking, and his eyes were clouding over with emptiness. The barrel of the weapon began to glow again. It was going to fire. I imagined he wasn't going to miss a second time, and so I snapped ahead, the cold air snapping back. I found the espurr strider in my grasp, vines cradling him high above my head. I couldn't take any chances!

Secany seized the blank-faced lopunny – we had that much in common. When she did, his weapon sprayed another lance of green, but it found no target as close by as before, instead veering off into the night with a bright emerald glow chasing the bolt, until crashing into perhaps one of the great islands in the sky, rock and dirt painted lime with the impact.

Now, both Secany and Bryan were holding my attempted assailant down. The floating sutures around his own Hypereal weapon were binding the barrel and handle of the other weapon, while Secany was keeping his arms at bay. Diancie came forth, to me.

"Jovany! Cease your grip!" she told me, pointing to the espurr above me. "You're wounding Angel! Bugger it all, just look up!"

Before I could do that, Secany's head turned to me. She was already snarling, and her quills whipped at the air. In her eyes, there was deathly intention, a wildfire dressed as a snowflake.

A white sap fell upon my snout. I recognized it anywhere: strider blood. It was so unlike the blood I was drenched in. It smelled of numbers and flashing lights. It smelled of seizure and sleepless breath. It was warm, but it did not thaw me like the blood of any living or undead thing.

I looked up. The thorns on my vines were cutting through his sides. I was not cradling him at all. I was stabbing him in multiple spots – hip, thigh, torso. The cuts were deep enough for his matter to drizzle and leak over me. He was trying to kick his legs – the only part of him that could work.

Then, I felt it again. A rancor approached me, a bullet almost as quick as the shots fired before. She tackled into me with the force of a Pokémon five times her size. The espurr's weight left my tendrils and I was hurdled through the air. I flipped my tail up in an attempt to roll as I landed – I stuck it for the most part, making a wheel of my body, and I would have been able to stand back up had Secany not already been on me again. My back was against the freezing, bloodstained ground, and she was over me, fire and cruelty in her devilish, purple eyes.

I couldn't stand or roll away. She had frozen me. Pain shot through my tail and the tips of my leaves. Then, all became scorching hot, as a white-hot blade formed out of thin air in her mouth. I swallowed spit. Then, my vines were frozen.

I don't want to hurt you...

More spit. My tiny, leafy hands were up in front of me, waving some kind of 'no no no stop' plead like she paid any attention to them.

I can call you evil. I can be angry at you.

She lifted her head back a ways, and I knew a torturous flare was to follow suit. And it did. The right side of me exploded with pain. I sucked in a breath of air so so hot that it burned my tongue, and the quick breath became a silent cry for help.

I know how horrible you have been.

Then, to my left. Furious pain, the very same. I was thrashing now, and my tail could move again, broken free of her icy cage. I shut my eyes and bit down hard. The molten sting was thousandfold. I reeled up a little bit, but promptly thumped back onto the ground and rolled into a puddle of fresh, dewy gore that I assumed to be my own. And it was. Opening my eyes again, no longer buffeted with embers and blinding lights, there they were: my vines; only, I couldn't move them. They were separate from me, still writhing on their own, bleeding clear sap. I gagged. Those had never been cut before. I had never imagined they could be. They were too strong. But they weren't on me anymore. Just stubs of black and white, cut so close to my neck that it was nigh surgical.

Above me, Secany stood with her back turned, her fiery blade dissipating into a wind of embers, red and lavender. She turned her head – just her head, and though her weapon was gone, the flames still seemed to dance in her eyes. She looked down at me, a dead-set warrior.

And still, I would never hurt you. I can't...

"You," she started. "Are disgusting."

"You cut my vines off..." I thought I told her, but only raspy, pathetic noise dripped itself out of my mouth. I couldn't even move. The pain quaked through me – my heart and skull and spine.

"That you would even wear that scarf, 'explorer'," she scoffed at me, and then she turned her head and walked away. "Now then, is Angel okay? Bryan, keep an eye on Kieran. Di, I would like you to help me with Jovany."

"I was just trying to protect him," like you said, I heard myself say, but it was still too quiet and broken. There was one more wet, sloppy splash near my head, the last breath of life leaving my white vine. Meekly, my leafy hands reached for the bandanna around my neck. Soft and fleecy. It kept me warm. It reminded me of home.

Things were fading fast. The cold. The heat. The Crossblade's metal. I was due a faint, all because she was stronger. More experience than me. I kept my hands on my fleecy red fabric and squeezed as best as I could. I curled my tail in, and squeezed. I held onto everything, just squeezing, imprisoning the life I had. I kept it inside, never letting go.

I saw the espurr come over to me, still bleeding, very much like myself. He looked down at my body, blinded, yet still somehow knowing where my head was – where my face was. Then, he sat down next to me.

No, don't worry, I wanted to say. I'm not going to die.

I'm too angry...

…

…

…

I couldn't believe it, but I was sleeping. It was a painful, bloody sleep, but there was dream mixed into it, and the dream convinced me that I was actually asleep. And this time, it seemed okay. I didn't have to run. I sat and I talked, my cozy, temporary reality unfurled around me as I remembered what a good dream was like. A sunny, quaint space, leaves and vines draping the hardened dirt walls. A round, cross-barred window, looking out to a sunny seaside. Then all the pain drifted off to sea.

This room...

"Jo," somebody said, and the voice startled me, because it was Lu's. I looked and saw the young riolu entering from a wide hallway. He had a edge-torn, beige-stained map in his big blue paws, eyes dancing over the details. "I have bad news. It looks like still we're on our own here."

Despite the message, when he looked up from the map, he was smiling, like he invited the possibility of a challenge. His face was the purest beacon, with a mask of black fur surrounding those wide, earnest red eyes. The scarf, too. I was excited to see him wearing it just like me.

"I tried talking to Chatot and the Guildmaster, buuuut," he grinned. "I think they're getting real tired of hearing the same old story. 'There's no helping it now! Focus on your work, squaawk!' Ahahaha!"

He was so hopelessly happy. His impression of Chatot was even spot-on, even in his accent (something that can be compared to English accents on Earth). Only then did my subconscious dig out any memory of that name: 'Chatot'. It had been so long since I heard it. When I tried to speak, it was just like before: nothing left my lips.

"Are you worried?" he asked with a bend of his neck. "Don't let it get to you! We'll chip away at it, little by little."

He came closer, passed me by, and set the map down on a bed of straw, hay, and cloth. He and I shared the room, and his 'half', I guess, of it was so much nicer. He did up his bed with materials that he had found or bought, pushed it up against the wall, and even had a wooden box in which to drop off his belongings. All I had was a bunch of sticks and hay fashioned into a round, messy... well, 'bed' was still the correct word, but that was being generous.

"Hmm, but with no leads," he continued. "This really is our own big mission, isn't it?"

"I already told you..." I heard my voice. "Stop talking to the others about it."

He was confused. From the tone of my voice, I sounded irritated, but the me that I was now, 'surveying' the dream, was nonchalant. I could relate more to the expression that Lu donned. In that moment, he did nothing wrong. In that moment, I was angry, just as I remembered being before.

That night, we got into our first big fight.

It was all verbal, of course. I never laid a vine or hand on him (I was still a snivy, so my arms were a little longer back then). I couldn't hurt Lu. Quite literally, I could never dream of it – even in the short nightmares in which his strider hunted me. This dream turned to meaningless colors and shapes quickly after I spoke to him.

I was a quiet person, especially around Lu. I only talked when my input was crucial. Mostly, I listened to him, because I was a human-turned Pokémon in a world different to my own, and his problems were more tangible. My problems were arguably imaginary. What was I going to do? Whine to all the guild kids – and most of them were just kids – about my personal cosmic mishap? They could believe in me, and that was about it. It was a cutesy sentiment. I shrugged it off, always.

I wanted a goal that we could see. Lu's goals were simple, and just the right amount of ambitious. I saw them. I saw an end, and I wanted to meet it, for both of us. That wasn't to say I took advantage of him to satiate my conscience. Hardly that. I ended up feeling a plethora of wonderful things for him: honor, love, even envy at points. I would have taken a bullet seed for him any day (which was for the best anyway, given my type). Still, Lu's chivalry was poisonous at its worst. He wanted to help everybody, and could hardly help himself.

And, with the memories hopping from relay to relay, it was kinda funny to think that the wash-up 'fake' snivy was the only reason he mustered the courage to sign up for the explorer's guild. Somebody so brave and full of initiative, and he still didn't know what to do with it, if not for somebody other than him, and with issues that crossed dimensions.

At some point, the dream's colors and shapes took the form of a calming conversation, several voices talking in turn – never over each other. They marked the path for the pain I remembered having before slipping into my most welcome sleep.

I was waking up...

…

…

…

I mustered so much strength just to avoid gasping in shock. The pain I awakened to was a conflagration. My tail may have twitched as a response, but nobody noticed, which was good because I wanted to eavesdrop on what they had to say. Secany was here, and with one of my eyes just hardly open, 'here' was the Grove's hollow tree, maybe the top level. It was lit dimly, only in one part of the room of cobbled-together things – rations, equipment I couldn't name, materials for building.

"So," the glaceon said quickly, and for a moment I thought she knew I was awake. "This is an issue."

"It appears that way," another woman said. That Hypereal serpent – Fausti was her name. I couldn't see where she was without turning my head, so I just listened. "Look, I don't know who this child is. Winston doesn't know who this child is. If somebody does know, it's Kaiser, or Nasce."

A bit of silence, dotted with somebody's knackering with the supplies. Thuds and clicks. A sigh.

"And obviously," Secany said. "Travis."

"Yes," Fausti confirmed. "Nasce probably spoke to him. Why that could ever incite Travis to act this way is the mystery."

"Do we know it for sure?" asked a boy, that Flux buizel again. Couldn't see him either. "It was Travis for sure, right? Not Kieran?"

"You saw the look in his eyes, dear," said Secany. "And yes, I am duly aware that you are not so used to your friend's 'lopunny' eyes, ah-huhu. But you are a Flux, and you know eyes."

"I..." he babbled. "B-but I don't know Travis. Not like I thought I did."

"Nobody does," Fausti said. "His heart turns on and off whenever it wants, and he becomes a different person each time, and bears no empathy for anyone. He is, for lack of a better term, an artificial sociopath."

"And that artificial sociopath is the new Symbi Susano'o?" came Kieran's voice. I was so surprised to hear him that my eyes shot open, but again, nobody noticed. "And... that's my 'gun'?"

"Yes..." another sigh, this one from Fausti. "Emelina – excuse me – 'Emiterasu' must have thought you were the best candidate. I am still not sure when Travis passed away, but I assume it has something to do with Nasce in her craze."

"Kieran," Secany said. "Did Travis communicate anything to you about Jovany?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did you hear him speak? Did you share his feelings?" she asked.

"I-I'm not..." he stopped, his voice feeble. "Not so sure what he was feeling. I think I felt it, but it was like nothing ever. It wasn't like he hated Jovany."

"Travis is an ocean trench deeper than hatred," said Fausti. "I wouldn't imagine a boy like Kieran would be able to describe that kind of thing."

"I can tell you what I know about Jovany, though," he said, and everyone in the room, myself included, perked up in some way. They must have. I didn't know Kieran. How could he know me?

"Do tell," Secany prompted him.

"He's an urban myth," Kieran began. "A lot of people in Autumnridge talk about Jovany like that. 'The kid who went missing'. There's a lot of 'missing persons' cases in Autumnridge, but Jovany's is the only one that stuck. I don't know why. But yeah, even Bryan can tell you that much."

"It's true!" the Flux exclaimed. "Missing Jovany! No one knows where he went!"

What...?

But I'm not actually from Autumnridge. I just know of it.

I think I lived here once. But I'm not from here.

"There's more," Kieran continued, as if he heard my thoughts. "But... why mystery dungeon?"

"Excuse me?" Secany asked. I quietly seconded it.

"Why 'Mystery Dungeon'?" he asked again, but the meaning was the same – that is to say, I didn't get it. "Something swallowed the world into a child's messed up cognition of Pokémon. Right? I wrote a comic book like this once! The hero goes into video game worlds, but they're all... weird and perverse, so he has to correct them. Only, here, the whole... 'Mystery Dungeon' came to Earth."

"I am not so sure I follow," Secany said, squinting at the other. "I understand that Pokémon is a 'game world' to humans."

"Yep, same as Mystery Dungeon. I played a few of the games," Kieran said, and I felt sick to my stomach in split-seconds. A game? What game? When? Where? He carried on. "Even the one no one likes."

Focus, I wanted to say.

"I had this feeling in the back of my head that it could be that..." he kept talking. "'Talking Pokémon' was the first giveaway. I mean, I don't know how the logistics of it work, because humans aren't supposed to be able to understand Pokémon, right? But this is all still a child's cognition of what the 'Mystery Dungeon' world is, so that child played the games, too, and came up with their own ideas.

The other giveaway was humans turning into Pokémon. That's a thing in Mystery Dungeon, at least for the main character. And that's exactly what happened to Jovany.

He's the main character, isn't he? He's the human who got turned into a Pokémon and sent away to that world. He went missing from our world, because he went there."

"But didn't Pokémon only become 'real' after the meteorites fell?" Bryan asked.

"According to Drew, Molly, and Travis," Fausti added. "No. Nasce, a Pokémon, was real, and years before the Wave's meteorites."

"He is the human..." Secany said, lagging behind in the conversation. The stupefied tone of her voice was a good proxy for me, something to live vicariously through. "But there are so many humans who know Pokémon! Why has this never come up before?"

"Probably because a lot of people just assumed, 'Oh, it's Pokémon' without thinking 'which game'." Kieran said. "And with Hypera mixed in, I guess it was too complicated for people to care anymore. I think people can keep up with Pokémon, even if it's from a game they don't know. It's still ingrained in our pop-culture. But Hypera? That's OC stuff. That belongs to somebody alone, not a whole society."

"You're well-spoken on this subject, aren't you?" Fausti commended him.

"I wrote a paper on it once!" he chimed. "It got a B minus."

"Well it might just be the most important B minus this world has ever known!" Fausti exclaimed.

Focusssss, I clenched my jaw.

"When he wakes up, I want to talk with him," Kieran suggested. Yes, I thought! But no, all the same. To have every action and consequence, tear and toil, reduced to 'Yeah it's from a video game' put hesitation in a place deep inside of me where it could never leave. I thought I had seen everything, from here to the Paradox; but now this truly begged the question:

Where does the Paradox stop?

"Oh Great Ancients, no!" Fausti contested. "If Travis is that violent with Jovany, we can't let you two interact unsupervised!"

"Then I'll have Knell with me. Maybe we can get Patty and Emi, too," Kieran added.

"I-I... suppose that would work. Orochi, Amaterasu, and Susano'o, yes..." the Hypereal yielded.

"I will take part as well," Secany said. "This is a missing link, you see. Molly's diary mentions nothing about Jovany, and that we suddenly have a human's lead on his origins? I will take that opportunity."

A lead. It's just like Lu.

But now, my end seems... nearer, than ever before. Now, it's almost tangible, and I think I can do something about it.

I just wish it could've been with you, Lu. If I do meet that end, it's going to be for you and me.

A resurgence of feeling. A purpose. Something other than 'go'. Something other than 'forward'. Now, there was backward. Take a few steps back, Jovany. You hadn't seen everything yet.

I lost my vines tonight. Secany cut them clean off of me. They kept me safe in the Paradox, but now I was going to have to make do without them. My power regressed, but it was okay. I was returning to something. Human, maybe. I had forgotten what being human meant.

I think the espurr – I think Angel forgot it, too. But he was programmed to, at least after a while. I could kill him and remind him, maybe, but I really didn't want to be turned into a strider by Rayse. Instead, I found some little fleeting moment – a 'flicker-flash' – of empathy for him. He waited so long to have his little sister returned to life, returned to 'being', but it cost him everything, and so he went backwards. His mind, his 'feelings' – they all went retrograde.

When I finally opened my eyes to full, everybody was gone; but Angel was right there again, sitting on a blanket, looking at a crumpled up, amputated servine with the biggest, roundest golden gaze. The scarf was now around his neck.

That's right, I thought peacefully. Follow me, Angel.

We are different, and yet we'll walk together, into the 'mystery dungeon' pandemic.