Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky is probably my favourite Pokémon game ever so far. I haven't read any fanfiction for it, nor have I written any, but I figure why not? I want to write a story that incorporates some of the better elements from all over the franchise, and I can leave this here for if I ever feel like continuing it some day.

No promises. I'm a busy person.

Disclaimer: I have no idea who this belongs to, and I don't really care, but it's not me.

XxX

It wasn't too uncommon for me to black out somewhere in the street.

I know, that sounds really bad when I put it like that. Trust me, it's just as bad as you think it may be. Blacking out was usually the best part of my day, to be honest. It was the best excuse I could ever think of to stop caring about absolutely everything around me.

Of course, it's not like I needed a reason, what with being a street urchin ever since my teenage years. Blacking out came in handy whenever I managed to piss off the wrong person. You know the types, the ones who anger easily and know well enough how to throw a punch.

Once you start caring, you stop surviving.

But either way, this time was strange. I couldn't recall exactly why I'd wound up on my back, with the sun beating down on my closed eyelids and a fucking mariachi band playing in my ears. Usually whoever had beaten my shit into oblivion would stay in my mind, which was probably how I'd managed to keep myself alive so long. I knew who to avoid, and if I was feeling particularly confident, I knew exactly who to take revenge on.

Not so much this time. All I could remember was a blinding flash of light, and the throbbing pain of the can I'd just unearthed landing directly on my big toe. That fucking sucked, let me tell you. Both the pain, and the fact that I'd now probably lost that nice, full can of beans to some of the other gutter trash in this shithole of a city.

"What happened!? Are you OK!?"

Oh, no, wait, someone was concerned for me. A girl, by the sounds of it. Pretty damn young too, probably barely old enough to figure out that I wasn't the type of person her parents would her to be around. The light was beginning to seep through my eyelids as I cracked them open, and with no small degree of difficulty, I managed to push myself up slightly.

The ground beneath my hands shifted, and suddenly, the sounds of crashing waves hit my eardrums. It felt kind of like sand, so…was I at the beach? If I was, then it wasn't on my own accord. I hated the beach; far too bright for my liking. My eyes were still fuzzy, but I could have sworn the person looking down at me was a fucking cat.

So I was high, too. That was a plus.

"The fuck am I?" I grunted, trying to blink my eyes back into their sockets. Damn, they stung almost as much as my throat did, and when I went to rub them, I accidentally managed to punch myself in the nose.

Ow. Fuck. What the hell was that doing out there?

"Um…you're on the beach." Apparently, the cat could talk. It sort of looked familiar, like a character from an anime I used to watch as a kid that never really took off. Why my brain decided that it would be the first hallucination I laid eyes upon, I didn't even want to know. "So, you OK, right? You really gave me a fright!"

"You never seen a guy passed out on the beach before?" My nose had stopped stinging, and now, I had taken to staring at my hands. They were different, very blue and paw looking. I was kind of wishing I knew just what I took…last night? This morning? A few minutes ago? Hell if I know, but I was going to stay the fuck away from it from now on. "Holy shit, you're pretty sheltered."

"…No, I haven't." The cat tilted her head to the side, watching as I ran a hand over my nose, down my chest, and over the tail that had sprouted from the general area of my ass. Yeah, it was safe to say that at this point, I was officially confused as all fuck. It all felt so…so real. "My name's Skitty. What's yours?"

"Luke." I had to hand it to this cat, it had balls. Maybe. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but insisting on talking to me whilst I was in this state took some courage. Or maybe it was too stupid to realise that I was off my tits, either or. I could respect that. "Sorry. Last night was kinda wild. I think."

"That's... fine. You seem like an alright Pokémon, anyway." The cat- Skitty smiled sheepishly, looking somewhat embarrassed. How I could identify that, I didn't know, but at this point, I was already beyond questioning things. Apart from whatever the fuck 'Pokémon' meant. Was that a slur? Should I have been offended? "Sorry that I doubted you. More and more Pokémon have been turning aggressive recently, you see. It's been getting kind of dangerous to be out alone…"

Absently, I nodded along to whatever Skitty was telling me, barely listening. Finding out that even my imagination had gang problems didn't really surprise me, but that discovery was forced onto the back-burner as a bat and a… what the fuck was that thing? A ball, a balloon? God damn, I was out of it.

Whatever it was, they were coming at us pretty quickly, and the bat didn't even try to slow down before it slammed into Skitty's back. She came rocketing forward with a pained cry, and I barely stumbled back as I reached out to catch her. Huh, either this body was pretty tough, or Skitty didn't weigh even as much as a feather.

"Oh, pardon me." The ball said, his voice coming out in a croak. Sure, it was pretty funny, watching it talk, but the gas it was constantly spouting can't have been good for the environment. Plus, I didn't like the way it was looking at me, with some sort of smug superiority that just didn't belong on something that looked like that.

Carefully, I pushed Skitty back onto her feet, looking up to watch as the bat and his balloon began to loom over a pretty stone that I could have sworn hadn't been there a second ago. Skitty came whirling around, tears of what I would have assumed to be pain gathering in the corner of her eyes.

"What was that for!?" She demanded, her ears pressed against her head. The anger faded almost immediately as her eyes landed on the stone, her mouth dropping open. The bat laughed, his voice screech and just plain unpleasant, sweeping one wing against the ground and scooping the stone up.

"Can't figure it out?" He taunted, juggling the stone between his wings. OK, so I could tell at this point that he was a dick, but that was pretty damn impressive. No fingers or grip, and being able to throw the stone around without a care in the world? I doubt I would have been able to do that. "We wanted to mess with ya! This is yours, isn't it?"

"That's…!" Skitty's voice was filled with anguish, and the frown I had been wearing since I woke up deepened. She couldn't have been much more than a child, and these guys were just gonna rob her? Sure, they hadn't come out and said it, but I'd been in enough situations on both sides to know what was going on.

"Sorry, kiddo, we'll take that!" Fucking called it. The stone had already disappeared into some sort of satchel that the ball was wearing, which I had somehow missed up until this point. To be fair, I was doing my best to not look at its disgusting face.

"You know, for hallucinations, you're both assholes."

Why did I choose that moment to interject? I dunno, maybe it was because I just didn't know when to shut up. My throat still felt like it'd just lost a fight against a cheese grater, but not even that would stop me from using it. It'd gotten my ass beaten more times than I cared to remember, but that was hardly worth caring about.

"Whoa-ho-ho! You talk pretty big! I don't see any hallucinations!" Great, the ball was in denial. Then again, he wasn't looking at the bat, and I don't think he would have been able to see his own body, given where his eyes were in relation to it. He was looking at me, though, and I looked a fucking sight right now, lemme tell you. I had a tail and everything.

All of a sudden, they were both zooming past us, towards a gaping hole in the cliff that I didn't even realise I was standing next to. Wow, I really need to work on my situational awareness.

"If you want it back, come and get it!" The bat called over its… did it have a shoulder? Eh, I don't fucking care. I was too busy checking to make sure his grating voice hadn't caused my eardrums to burst.

"That…that was my personal treasure. It means everything to me…" From beside me, Skitty sniffed, her own tail coming forth to rub away her tears. I wouldn't have done that if I were her, there was no good way for her to have known where that tail had been. Without warning, she turned to me, her eyes somehow still closed. How did she know where I was? Could she smell me?

"Please, you have to help me get it back!"

"I don't have to do shit," was on the tip of my tongue, but even as my mouth opened to fire it off, I stopped myself. I was still convinced that none of this shit was real, no matter how it felt, but if my head was concocting this, what would the consequences of not going along with it be?

I was probably already somewhere in the ball park of insane, so there wasn't really any danger on that front. You know, relatively speaking. But still, the slight, tiny possibility of this being real entered my mind, bringing along with it the realisation that, if this crazy shit somehow wasn't just my imagination, I would be turning down helping someone who I just watched be abused and mugged. Not just someone, either; at this point I was utterly convinced that Skitty couldn't have been any more than a young teenager.

Was this what epiphanies felt like? If so, they fucking sucked.

"Eh, why not?" With that, I tottered off towards the cave, this body far more nimble than what I was used to. Sure, it was kinda odd, but I think I preferred this one over the starved and perpetually sickly human husk that I'd probably left behind. Fuck, now I was hoping this was real, because damn if it wasn't better in almost every way that I could see. "Let's go."

XxX

Oh yeah, this was the fucking life.

Skitty hadn't been fucking around when she said the other Pokémon (who I was just referring to as people, it was easier) had been getting pissy as of late. Of course, I hadn't exactly known any of them beforehand, but I think I liked them better now.

For one, they didn't screw around. This was their territory, and they made it very clear to us that they didn't appreciate intruders. We were jumped almost as soon as we'd stepped into the surprisingly well-lit cave, a snail charging at us with speed no snail had any right to go at.

The thing had jumped at me, yeah, fucking JUMPED at me, slinging the mud covering its body every which way as it came at me. My response had been to spin around, enjoying the fuck out my new body as I effortlessly slammed my foot into the side of the thing's noggin. The thing had toppled away, and from there, Skitty had slammed into it with the force of a freight train, and I had almost choked on my own God damn tongue as it carved a new crater into the wall with its own body.

If I had known that we were going to be fighting, I would have chalked Skitty up to being too scared to even look at something wrong. Instead, she was as fierce as a fucking tiger, effortlessly keeping up with me as we systematically demolished absolutely everything that tried to start something. I was having the time of my life as everything gave me a reason to beat the shit of it, and that enjoyment only increased after Skitty yelled for me to start using my Moves when a particularly large group of Corsola and Shellder literally burst out the fucking shadows beside us.

Before I could ask her what the Hell she was on about, something in my head clicked, and all of a sudden I just…knew. I've gotta tell you, I don't know how I ever lived without Quick Attack before.

Everything was a blur as I sprinted through the crowds, lashing out with punches, kicks and Bites. For all of their aggressiveness, nothing that came forth to attack us was all that powerful, and it didn't take us long to get through the entirety of the cave.

Something pretty awesome had happened on the way, when one of my paws had flashed a second before the punch landed on a Shellos' stupid looking face. At first, I'd been confused as a penguin in Madagascar, but after a while I figured out that I'd just learned a new move. I'd been content with just calling it the 'Fuck You Fist', but something in my head had said that I was stupid, and Force Palm was obviously a way cooler name.

I didn't agree, but then I reminded myself that I was already high, and getting into an argument with a voice in my head on top of that wasn't something I was too interested in. Force Palm would have to do. Along with Counter, which I still hadn't found a use for yet, that brought the number of my available moves up to six.

I was idly throwing a stick that I'd accidentally torn from a Corsola's head a couple of minutes back, courtesy of a Force Palm, when something ahead caught my eye. Automatically, my pupils lit up with a Foresight, Skitty's following along a second later. After a moment, she gulped nervously, and I couldn't resist the urge to roll my eyes.

"Uh…h-hey!" She called out, her voice cracking near the end. I hung my head and rubbed at my temple with my Corsola piece, not even bothering with caution as Koffing and Zubat (as their species were apparently called, I really couldn't fucking care less) turned around to face us. She had been able to keep up with me in our merry jaunt of destruction through the cave (and I really, really loved causing destruction), but these two morons still made her anxious? Talk about bipolar.

"Heh-heh-heh, if it isn't our old friend." Zubat nudged Koffing with his wing, his fangs on full display with his grin. "The big chicken!"

At that point, I groaned. Loudly. What was this, elementary school?

"Give me… give me back what you stole from me!" I wasn't exactly sure what Skitty was going for, but 'two seconds away from pissing myself' wasn't the best tone to take when trying to intimidate someone into doing what you wanted them to do. Maybe that was her plan, and it was a bluff? "That's my personal treasure! It means everything to me!"

Nobody seemed to notice as I tilted my head back up. Koffing and Zubat were too busy exchanging evil grins, and Skitty was biting her lip, probably wondering if her words would have any effect. She would have to work on that; if more and more bad and aggressive Pokémon really were showing up, then talking to them wouldn't do shit all. It hadn't done anything for what we had to face on our way here, and they were pitifully weak.

"Treasure, you say?" Zubat licked his fangs, which actually sent a shiver down my spine. What? It looked fucking creepy! "So this thing is really valuable, h-"

It was at that point that I stopped listening.

I already knew where all of this was going. I'd seen it done heaps of times before, and all the situations were exactly like this one. Skitty had been given her chance to absolve this on her own, and if that didn't work, fine. Words had been useless on the streets, and 'unfair' was one such word.

So, my turn.

I'd gotten fairly good at Quick Attack on our way through the cave, and I gave zero warning before launching myself into one, sprinting from across the cavern to behind Zubat in about a quarter of a second and swinging my piece of Corsola for a home fucking run. He hadn't even seen me coming, too busy chuckling along with his bulbous buddy about how funny it was to take rocks from people.

Dumbasses. Letting their guards down, even after we'd come in after them. Had they not had to face the same hordes of Pokémon? Did they somehow not know what we'd blasted our way through, more or less uninjured?

Zubat bounced across to the wall, his wings bent at strange angles and his body covered in scraped from the numerous stones littering the sandy ground. I didn't bother stopping to watch the progress of my actions, pushing myself into another Quick Attack and belting it towards the wall.

This was one of the best things I'd discovered about that move. I didn't slow down as the wall came rushing forwards to meet me, no, I jumped towards it, landing feet first and carrying my momentum upwards. As I transitioned from the wall to the ceiling, what had become the ground beneath my feet shook slightly, letting me infer enough to guess that Zubat's impromptu flight had just ended.

Fine by me. Koffing had turned around, staring at the prone form of his friend on the opposite side of the room. I pushed myself from the roof, sending myself towards his unguarded back like a cobalt missile from the outer regions of violent damnation.

People always told me that I got kind of poetic before I bashed some fucker's brains in. Coincidentally, if Koffing did have a brain, I'd probably just bashed it in. My certified combat stick came down upon him with as much force as my body could generate, which was probably somewhere around a metric fuckton.

He went about two meters into the sand, and he would probably be staying there for a while. I sent a smug smile over my shoulder towards Skitty, who hadn't moved from her spot, before launching into yet another Quick Attack and making my way over to Zubat.

Look, Quick Attack was pretty fucking useful, alright? Why shouldn't I use it as much as I wanted, I didn't see any speed limit signs.

Zubat was groaning as I rocked up, the lump he'd grown from my strike looking like a second head. Koffing's satchel lay beside him, and I reached out to snoop through it, my hand stalling before it could touch it.

Come to think of it…

Shrugging, I picked the satchel up, inspecting it briefly before swinging it onto my shoulder. It was remarkably clean, considering where it had been until recently, but more importantly, it was now mine.

Zipping the pocket that felt the hardest open, I pulled out Skitty's treasure, glancing at the design with mild interest. It was kind of pretty, in a rock sort of way. It also wasn't nearly as heavy as I figured it would be, and I was still lifting it up and down with a raised eyebrow as I made my way over to Skitty.

"So what now?" I inquired, passing her the stone and letting out a small smirk at her slack jawed expression.