I DO NOT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM OWN POKéMON, NOR DO I CLAIM TO BE ASSOCIATED IN ANY WAY TO THE PEOPLE WHO CREATED IT. ALL ORIGINAL CHARACTERS WERE CREATED BY (AND THEREFORE ARE) MINE. PLEASE DON'T BORROW/TAKE/USE/ETC. THESE CHARACTERS WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS DISCLAIMER APPLIES TO ANY AND ALL CHAPTERS POSTED IN THIS FANFICTION.

"A-…are…you okay?"

It hurts just to move….

"Let's hu…hurry…okay?"

I…I can't feel my feet anymore….

"… …C-can you…imagine…wha-…what the g-guild…will sssay?"

"Yeah…when y—when we get back…they'll be glad."

"Yeah! I—aaah! T-t-t-tremors!"

…Tremors? I can't…I can't feel it…!

"…I-it's o-…o-….It's over. Are things…still…settling d-down?"

If I keep going…maybe I can put it off….

"…It's…sunset…right now….Like the…day we met. Rrr…remember?"

"Yeah…I remember. Our Beach Cave trip?"

"That…started…everything."

"Like joining the guild. Which led to that mission at Drenched Bluff. Chatot hated us for that."

"…We met…Azu and his…brother…around then…too."

"Don't forget Drowzee."

"I…wish I…could!"

Is that…?

…Yes. This is it.

I can't move anymore.

My role is ending.

But my dearest friend always liked stories, listening to them and telling them, so I can imagine this is one she will share. And for the people who will hear it, this is the way it will begin: two friends remembering the times they shared together.

A/N:

Hi everyone! If you're reading this, I'm sure you know what you're getting yourself into, so I'm not going to point out the obvious fact that you are reading a fanfiction based on the plot of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky-never mind, I just did, didn't I? Anyway, now that that's out there, note that I've taken some creative liberties with the plot. No really major ones (such as Guildmaster Wigglytuff becoming fifty feet tall and taking over the world and, OMG, forget about the original focus, let's go stop him!), but expect some twists and turns to what you're familiar with.

Before I go on with my traditional opening-chapter rant, here's my warning to you all: I'm a sloooow writer. I do my best, but I get stuck on the dungeon-traversing chapters and it takes me FOR-EV-ER to finish them. In addition to that, I'm in college and one of only two people in my household who drive, which translates to "I have no life." Because of that, I have a whole arsenal of chapters written up already. They are my "in-reserve" chapters so that I can have some extra time to work on other chapters. I feel bad for withholding all this, but if I posted them all now there'd be a lot of pressure for me to get the next up in a timely fashion and I do not write well under pressure, especially if it were a dungeon chapter I was writing. Please be patient and I will be forever grateful.

Okay, part 2 of the opening chapter-rant: the way I label my chapters might seem weird to you. Basically, I label them according to the "chapters" in PMD2. Of course, being me, my chapters are too long to fit in one submission unless I wanted to bombard you with thirty pages' worth of writing in one go. Yeah...figured that's not a good idea. So instead, they're divided into sub-chapters: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc. This and the next chapter are Chapter 0 because, well, it's not quite a prologue but it's not part of Chapter 1 either. Just wanted to inform you of that.

Last but not least, for this fanfiction, I decided that I was going to write a random fact about the characters/the writing of this story, mostly because of my chapter system; there's one fact per chapter, so it helps me keep track of how many I've written. I can't say all of them will be interesting, because I haven't thought of many yet, but I enjoy reading random facts (even the boring ones) and I figure there must be some other random person out there who does also.

Soooo, Random Fact #1: The heroes featured in this story are based on my PMD: Darkness game. What a shocker, right? However, I briefly considered making the main character of this story a Chamander, based on my team in the first PMD game. It seemed to suit the main character's inner personality more. But then I realized that how this character acts on the outside is also important, which led to me sticking with my original choice of the PMD2 team.

Okay, so, onwards to Chapter 0.2!