Author's note: OMG OMG OMG! I've had this fic for a while, but never wanted to post it. xD After some editing, I guess it kinda got interesting (to me xD), and now I'm gonna work hard on this! This is a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 fic (PMD2), featuring what happens after you defeat Darkrai. I haven't played Explorers of Sky, but I think it has an epilogue of what happened. I started and developed the plot of this story BEFORE (WAY BEFORE) Explorers of Sky was introduced, so anything that's similar is NOT MY FAULT xD Also, the fic skips the part with Team Raider and Manaphy coming back xD (So it never happened).

Shield's POV

"Uh."

Letting my orange paws stretch back, I grunted as I took a seat at the front of Sharpedo Bluff's edge. I gazed out towards the dark blue sky and the calm motionless sea. It was nighttime. The whole sky itself looked like a massive blanket, with stars in huge numbers, each twinkling as bright as a Pokemon evolving. It was gorgeous! The moonlight reflecting off the water was a sight to behold. I saw a few Chinchou in the water, barely illuminating the surface with their lights. The whole scenery was almost as beautiful as the beach when I met-

"Hey, Shield, am I interrupting anything?" Spirit walked up suddenly, breaking my train of thought.

"No, Spirit, I'm just reminiscing about the old times." Spirit, is a Pokemon with a dominant blue colour, with blue fins, head, and small….tail thing. His face was that of a bird's, and white there replaced the usual blue. Yup, the average Piplup. I watched him plop down on the ground beside me, copying by pushing his fins back to support himself, and gazed into the breathtaking scenery. I turned my head back. The most beautiful part of the whole day is the night. While we stare out at the seemingly endless sky and sea, the moon illuminates everything besides us due to the sharpedo-shaped head, creating a nice, complete feeling…..HEY! WE'RE BOTH BOYS! DON'T GET THE WRONG IDEA! But through our first adventure to retrieve his relic fragment at beach cave, to regular guild duties, and even saving the world 2 times, we had quite the adventure.

Anyways, it was two months after we had defeated Darkrai. Treasure town's publicity had improved quite a bit from the fact we had defeated the legendary Dialga.. The Kecleon brother's were granted a quite large sum of money due to this which they used to upgrade their shop. It could now hold as many as 30 items on sale at once. Electivire had recruited his nephew, Elekid, to work with him at the link shop. He's not very good at linking our moves yet, but I'm sure he'll get better in time. Electivire also mentioned something that caught my attention: the forbidden TM's. I didn't ask about it further that time; he had eager customers in line. But the most important news recently was Sunflora had said she spotted a "pink small flying" pokemon at treeshroud forest 2 days ago that she'd never seen before. The guild, knowing Sunflora's old home was treeshroud forest and she knew this place well, decided to investigate. I immediately stopped them, saying that I would do it for them; I have a pretty good idea who this "pink small flying" pokemon is. And if I'm right, we might be able to somehow see Grovyle again…

"Hello? Shield? Earth to Shield?" Spirit waved his fin in front of my face, while balancing on the other.

"Huh? What? Oh, sorry Spirit. I guess I kind of zoned out back there." I shook my head, showing I was paying attention again.

He lowered his head. "You're thinking about Grovyle, aren't you?" He knew I was preoccupied with thoughts of my other dimensional friend. "Don't worry, we'll see him soon enough."

"How can you be sure? He was erased from existence, remember?" I tilted my head to the side.

" Well, you were too, but you still came back."

" Well…that was different-

" Don't worry about it. We'll go explore treeshroud forest first thing tomorrow, alright?"

"Promise?"

"…Promise."

I told him a quick goodnight and went over to the back of the cave structure to get Pokefloss. I scratched the thread-like material onto my claws, each point receiving some of the Pokefloss. I started to cleanse my sharp teeth by rubbing the material. 'If I'm going to use a lot of fire-breath-based moves tomorrow, I better clean out my teeth so I'm in top condition!'

The procedures over, I walked over to my stack of hay. I fluffed it up, and laid down on it. "We'll find him tomorrow for sure."

I looked over to the other stack of hay, and Spirit was asleep.

"We're surrounded!"

We were on 11F, Treeshroud forest. Me, Spirit, and Grovyle were outnumbered 3 to 15 in a monster house, and all around us Ninetales, Alakazam, and Vespiquen were closing in. Some Ninetales were almost drooling with savagery, and the Vespiquen looked like they were gonna tear us into bits. Knowing we weren't going to get out without a fight, I prepared a flamethrower as subtly as I could while Spirit did the same with his bubblebeam. Behind us, we could hear Grovyle digging into the ground.

"Yahhh!!"

The Pokemon lunged at us, and I released a stunning amount of Flamethrower. Most of the Vespiquen fainted, but all the Ninetales were charged up with my attack. I quickly jumped out of harm's way from their combined fire blast, and Spirit let loose with bubblebeam on the other side. Needless to say, with all that power Spirit built up, the Ninetales all collapsed.

"Look out!" Spirit yelled. A lone Vespiquen with a strange scarf around its neck had gotten up and charged a power gem at me. I froze in place, paralyzed with fear, for I knew I could not dodge it. A blue blur whipped in front of me, and I could see Spirit taking the hit for me. "Spirit.." I breathed.

"Just get to the Vespiquen and knock it out!" He exclaimed, full of pain.

I started making my way to Vespiquen, to use my new technique. Right before I made it, though, Grovyle popped out of the ground and quickly slammed the bee Pokemon to knock out the Vespiquen.

"Showoff." I scoffed at my other-dimensional friend.

I remembered then what condition Spirit was in. We rushed to his side, Grovyle ignoring my comment, and gave him and oran berry. Most wild pokemon dared not wander close; they may be stupid, but even they knew if a monster house couldn't defeat us, they probably couldn't either, even if Spirit was injured.

I woke up with a gasp, and quickly shut my mouth; I didn't want to wake up my partner. Unfortunately, that was too late, and Spirit asked me what was wrong.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep. I just had a nightmare," was my response. He nodded, looking back a few times, then went back to sleep.

'I'm not sure if we're ready to go back to treeshroud forest yet, I thought to myself. Sure; we defeated Primal Dialga, but we had 20 reviver seeds! This time, we have only 2 for our journey. Even the Kecleon brothers wouldn't loan us that many.' That was my last thought before I drifted off to sleep, letting darkness overtake me.

"Mornin', Shield!" Spirit's cheerful attitude was a good sign, but I was still worried about our trip. Besides, shouldn't he feel SOME fear going back to the place that almost killed him?

"Hey. Let's get ready." I spoke quickly, knowing I needed to build up strength on the way, and talking wasn't going to get me anywhere near concentrated.

"Let's go to the daily routines."

Kangaskhan storage

The closest facility to our home was the Kangaskhan storage. The brown-coloured store was owned by a Kangaskhan, hence the name of the facility, with a Kangaskhan-like face on the top of the brown hut. All the stores were the same; each had the face of the store owner on the store front. "Hello, dears, how are you today?"

"Notime! We'redroppingoffanapple, andtheTMVacuumcut." I rushed my sentence, running out of breath fast, due to my anticipation.

Spirit glared at me. "Shield's just a little edgy today. So how's your little one?"

The Parent Pokemon responded cheerfully. "He's doing well! How about you two take a look?" She looked down to her pouch. "Come out, Garura!"

"Wedon'thavetimesorry!" I waved my paw goodbye, and used that paw to grab Spirit's fin dragging him without stopping.

Duskull bank

"DroppingoffallourPokeplease"

Kecleon store

We walked (I ran) up to two chameleon-shaped Pokemon (at least that's what I think they called them in the real world) with stripes running haphazardly along their bodies.

"Hey kids! What can I do for ya?" The Kecleon colored green asked us with a croaky voice. His name was Kec.

Spirit fumed. "If it weren't for us KIDS, you wouldn't be alive today! Whaddaya have in stock?" The typical Spirit. He never likes it when someone calls him young. He's always trying to show how much he's grown since he met me.

After careful (but quick) negotiations, we managed to buy a reviver seed and 2 oran berries.

"Whaaa….they didn't buy from meeee….." The purple colored Kecleon, Leo, sulked…

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"Now we can go." My partner told me sighing from my quick behaviour. The travel to treeshroud forest was quick; one visit to the Chimecho assembly allowed us to teleport right to the entrance. "Hmm…" The fact the overall entrance was the same; bright green with all sorts of trees, while Celebi might be wandering in there, was unnerving.

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Treeshroud forest, 15F. We had come this far easily, thanks to our intense training and orbs for monster houses. I couldn't, however, shake off the feeling that we were being followed somehow. We were in a narrow path, and there was no possible way to keep with us without being burnt or blasted with water. We then rounded the corner, and luckily found the stairs. "Let's go, Shield!" Spirit spoke up enthusiastically. "We're close! We might find-"

A sudden gust of wind stopped Spirit's sentence, and both of us ducked. I felt someone put two insect-like hands around my neck and pull me up. A glow formed in front of those hands, threatening to kill me. The same Vespiquen with the scarf! I could tell, by craning my neck over to peer at the queen bee.

Spirit regained composure, only to look up in shock. He hastily spoke. "Hold on! I'll just-

"Don't do anything! If you do, I'll slice this little guy's neck in half!" The queen bee smiled maliciously, and my still peering head saw TEETH snapping up and down from Pokemon's mouth.

I could tell that she was serious, and I told Spirit to stop.

"Well WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?" The penguin held his head in anger, confused of what to do.

Spirit's POV

Great. Just great. Here I am, unable to do anything while my best friend's life is being threatened by a crazed Vespiquen.

DAMN! 'I need to rescue Shield somehow!'

THUMP My head throbbed. "You want to save him?"

'What's going on?'

THUMP It throbbed again. "I can help."

'Uh oh. This can't be good. But I need help!'

THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTTHUMP

"AAUGH!" A large light enveloped my body, and everything suddenly turned black.

Shield's POV

I gasped, only to be shut up by my captor. Something weird is happening to Spirit!

He looks like he's having a seizure, writhing around with uncontrolled spasms. But no… there's something off. His feather colour is changing from blue to black rapidly, like he's-

BOOM!!!!! A large explosion filled the air, and I closed my eyes.

"Huh?" My captor and I spoke the same word.

Standing there was no Spirit, but a piplup with black feathers instead of blue. And those eyes. Gazing into them, they were pure red, without any trace of Spirit. What had happened to him? And what's going to happen to me?

"Die."

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Okay, I know the fight scenes was short...ish (and I think bad) xD, but it'll get better. I'm trying to improve in that category right now.