Coward.

The word echoes through Soul's head with every step he takes away from Shibusen, away from Shinigami's Guild. How much time had he wasted, hanging around the place? Skittering around behind and to the sides of the building like a stray looking for scraps to be thrown out for him, around and around, again and again. How much nerve had he had to scrounge up just to take those final steps towards the door, only to be held back by his own nerves going into overdrive?

How long had he stood there, staring blankly at that unlocked door and hearing the muffled chatter from inside? So warm, so happy...He could be that happy, too, if he just...

Coward.

His right paw had moved without his really thinking about it, just inches from the doorknob. But something inside him had been grabbed and held fast by an iron hand, locking him in place. His heart and head had pounded dizzyingly, and his whole body had suddenly been drowned in heat, even after dark in the dead of winter. Paralyzed, trembling from ear-tips to toes, he hadn't been able to move no matter how badly he wanted to. For a moment there, he had forgotten how to even breathe.

Coward.

In the end, his nerve had broken. He'd broken, and he'd spun around and bolted away as fast as his legs would carry him. Nearly tripped down the stairs, too, in his hurry. And wasn't that just the story of his life? Turning tail and running away, as soon as there was something that he just couldn't face. No. No, that wasn't true; everything he ran away from he could face head on, if only he weren't such a -

Coward.

Yeah. That.

The wind cuts right through Soul's thin fur, and it's getting harder by the minute to walk through the wet, thickly piling snow. He hisses through clenched teeth: it will be a miracle if he manages to make a decent fire in all this.

He certainly doesn't want to think back and replay the hours, much less the deciding moment, over and over and over. But as he trudges back through the narrow, winding pathways into the mountains, that seems to be what his stupid traitor brain is determined to do anyway.

As it rewinds and goes again, rewinds and goes again, and again...Is it his imagination, or did he hear the sound of a door unlatching and opening behind him? He had run away so hard and fast, he had surely left paw prints in the loose, flat earth in front of the guild proper. Claw marks, at the very least. Suppose they stayed there untouched all night. What would they think, Shinigami and the rest, when they opened the door in the morning and saw them? If they did. At best, they would think it was nothing of too much importance, and they wouldn't be too far off. At worst, they would deride him as just another dirty scavenger.

Wouldn't be the first time he'd heard that, in any case. Even since before he'd left his pack. Whatever, then. Shibusen was never the place for him anyway, he had no idea what the hell he'd been thinking. No pack. No guild. No place for a failure like him, and no need of one either.

No one wants you, no one needs you around, you c -

"Whoah!"

His first thought, as pain shoots through the instep of his foot and he trips headlong over something big and solid and hidden under all the snow, is that he's missed a step and hit some kind of heavy rock.

Soul lands face-first in a drift, and pushes himself up immediately, spitting out a mouthful of snow. He shakes out his smarting foot, and his lip curls into a snarl. He turns around to see what he had knocked into, heat and frustration surging in his blood...Which cools the instant his eyes fix on the thing in the path: decidedly not a rock.

It's...It's a Pokémon, he thinks dazedly, his eyes going wide.

He hasn't thought that there was anyone but him hermiting it up on Mount Silver. But here someone is, right there in front of him: a Togetic, half-buried under the snow. Their white surface has already turned pale Pidgey's-egg blue from the cold, and they're shivering like crazy. What in the world are they doing out here, in weather as terrible as this?

(Never mind that he himself was doing the exact same thing, and had done that same thing plenty of times before.)

For a good minute, Soul just stands and stares, this time in shock rather than fear. Then reality smacks him in the back of the head: what's he doing, just staring? Here in front of him is another Pokémon in serious need of some help. And it's not like anyone else is going to happen upon them before...Well. They're lucky they lasted as long as they did, all alone out here.

He supposes there isn't any way around it. If he doesn't help this Togetic out, who will?

Heaving a deep and weary sigh, Soul crosses the short distance between them, and reaches down carefully to pick up the Togetic out of the snow. He's careful, as he lifts them up, to avoid pricking or scratching the sensitive skin with his claws; Arceus knows he's gotten complaints about those before. He settles the Togetic's long neck over one shoulder, trying to let their head rest comfortably there instead of dangling. Shelter from the falling snow, and all that. He hefts their long legs up in his arms, and sets off.

"Jeez...You're sure heavy, aren't you?" he grumbles under his breath. He wonders why, exactly, had he decided to set up temporary shop on the crags of Mount Silver? Giving a strange Pokémon an impromptu piggyback ride, up the steep slope, in the middle of a pitch-black blizzard, is not exactly his ideal way to spend a night.

Under the shrieking of the wind, he hears right next to his ear a soft noise, something like a whimper. Something like relief, he thinks. As if to confirm the thought, the soft, short arms start to cling tighter to his shoulders. He turns narrowed eyes to the Togetic's face: still unconscious, and maybe it's just his imagination, but it seems like they're already starting to look better.

He lets out another sigh, as he slogs through the ice and snow. "Yeah, all right. Don't worry, you're going to be fine. Hang tight, I'll get us both warm soon."

~0~

It takes her a moment to fully register what it is. But it's the scent of burning wood that first catches Maka's attention, tugging her out of...Wow. This feels like the deepest sleep she's ever had.

The only things that have come close are the swelling pull of heavy anesthetic, and the deep exhaustion that permeates her whole body after a long day of training or work. She feels the all-over ache, all right, and there's still a vague sense in her body of being pulled down, in -

Wait just a minute.

In the half-second before her eyes fly open, she realizes that this is not her body. She feels smaller and denser, her head an entirely different shape, something soft and velvety covered suddenly thin skin, which must be why she had felt it so bitingly cold before, and - !

"Hey!"

Her arm knocks into something metallic as she catapults upward, sending it crashing to the ground. Something flies off her: a blanket, she recognizes fleetingly. She means to get up, she really does. Even though her body is so jarringly unfamiliar, it apparently can still send the same fear signals through her system as a normal human body, though there is some tiny part of her that wonders at how her flight reflex seems to be urging her to actually take to the air. But she can only get to a sitting position before the burning ache in her muscles sends her back down again. It's soft, she realizes for the first time. A nest of what looks like two or three field blankets, rough on her skin but still wide and thick, and creating a pocket of warmth around her that she has just punctured.

"Hey, take it easy! You're going to knock into the fire if you keep on flailing around like that. And I'll be really honest here, I don't have any Burn Heals or berries or anything, so I wouldn't know what else to do other than throw some snow on it, so you'd be kind of screwed."

Well, if nothing else, this voice of this boy sounds perfectly normal, and when she automatically retorts, she's relieved to find that hers does too.

"I wasn't going to - "

But that voice stops cold when she turns her newly ellipsoidal head around on its spindly neck, and sees that there was no boy speaking to her at all.

It's...a Sneasel?

It's much skinnier than she is used to seeing (it can't be wild, if they're in this shaky but not at all badly constructed tent, but what kind of Trainer would let their Pokemon's ribs show?!), the bluish-black coat dusty and unkempt, even the trademark claws are scratched and the feathers are...Well, unusual colorings like that are nothing wrong in and of themselves, but they look to be too much on the brittle side. But shockingly, the signs of poor health aren't even what shocks her the most to see.

Those eyes are wide and shocked, but they still glow bright as the flames burning between them, and there is a look in them that she has never seen in any other Pokemon. Before she can say anything, the sharp-toothed mouth moves again, and that same uncertain, low-in-the-throat voice comes out:

"Uh. Well, you don't seem too used to moving around, and you were just frozen anyway. You wanna be careful, especially around here. Speaking of which, how did you end up alone on the mountain, anyway? I've been squatting here for weeks and I never saw any other Pokemon anywhere near here."

"But I'm not a Pokemon!" Maka blurts out. "I...I'm a human!"

The Sneasel looks at her like she's grown three heads (which, to be perfectly honest, wouldn't really surprise her at this point), and actually backs up a little bit.

"Did you...Sorry, but did you hit your head on a rock, too? I mean, I checked to see if you were actually hurt bad and didn't see anything, but it already looks like a smashed egg, so I wasn't sure if that was how it was supposed to look..."

"Hey! It looks just fine, I'm not -"

Maka pauses as the words fully register with her. For the first time, she stops and looks down at her own body. It's creamy white and incredibly smooth, like a living, breathing china figurine, with an impossibly soft coat of down from her neck to her...leg stalks, she supposes. Her arms and legs are not much more than stubs, and there's blue and red triangle patterns on her round belly: a Togetic body, she remembers the name. She experimentally tries to wiggle the little wings she feels poking out of her back, but they don't seem very mobile. She had always wondered, before, how Pokemon like this managed to stay up in the air, without the huge and powerful wings of most Flying types.

Well, she could still hear the blizzard's distant howl outside, so she couldn't try anything out now. But she supposes she can find out later.

The Sneasel is still staring at her, waiting for her to finish. When she looks up and makes eye contact instead, it talks to her as if to something wounded and apt to bite: "So yeah...I've never seen a human before and I don't know anyone who has, but you look a lot more like a Pokemon than a human to me. Are you really hurt that bad, then?"

Maka considers the question. Other than the lingering ache in her...bones? Cartilage? She can't remember what it is Togetic are made of, but whatever it is it doesn't seem to be in too much pain. The blankets and fire have definitely helped, she feels. All that really seems to be wrong is this...This emptiness in her mind, this black void where her memories should be. It gives her the feeling that she used to have a human body: that is, she has the memory of moving and inhabiting it that is just vague and hazy enough that it gives her a chill that's nothing to do with the cold.

"No, I don't think so..." Something else hits her. "Are you the one who helped me?"

The Sneasel abruptly looks down at the flat earth, shuffling its long-clawed feet and refusing to meet her gaze. It mumbles softly, barely moving its mouth, so she has to strain to hear: "Well, yeah...I told you, no one else is around here, so I...You know..."

Maka smiles. "Thank you. However I ended up here, you really helped me out!"

Pokemon like Sneasel don't blush, but she recognizes the twitching of the feathers as being basically the same thing. "Yeah, sure...Don't mention it."

"No, really, I owe you one, S - " He starts oddly at that, and she realizes with an embarrassed jerk in her stomach that if this is a place with no humans, where Pokemon can speak, then...It probably isn't somewhere she can just call Pokemon by their species names. "Sorry...What's your name?"

"Soul. Just Soul."

Definitely not, then. And she should drop the whole 'it' thing too, while she's at it. "And you're a boy?"

Soul startles at that, looking back up at her and rubbing his long head feather indignantly. "Uh, yeah, pretty sure I am. And...you're a girl? I guess?"

"Yeah. My name is Maka." She can remember that, at least. "Where are we?"

"Mount Silver. Right by Shibusen. Sound familiar at all?"

Maka blinks.

"All right, that's a no, then. Do you know where you are from?"

Maka racks her brain for a moment, for a place, a name, a face, anything. But it all comes up blank. She would be lying if she said that the sinking realization that she was flying completely blind didn't make her stomach clench.

"That's a no, too, I'm afraid." She pauses. "I...I'm not sure what to do from here, then. Do you...know of anyone who could help me? Not that you haven't been an amazing help already!"

Soul's ears twitch. "Well...I guess the only one who might be able to help you is Shinigami. He's the Gengar who runs the Guild down in town."

"What do Guilds do?"

"A bunch of stuff, I guess. You train under the Guildmaster to help people and become an explorer, and if you do good then you can graduate and...do whatever it is you want to do with your new skills," Soul explains, scratching the back of his neck. "Apparently it's supposed to be really hard, especially in a first-class Guild like Shibusen. But I always thought explorers were pretty cool, so..."

"Are you part of it?"

"What?! No, I - !" His scratching picks up speed. "I mean, not that I wouldn't want to, I wanted to, but I..." Soul trails off, into a heavy sigh. Suddenly he can't seem to meet Maka's eyes. "I couldn't."

Maka gets the idea that this is a sensitive spot she ought not to press on. But still, this is the only lead she has, so she can't waste any time in taking it. "Well, I'm going to go see what I can find out, even if I have to join this Guild thing to do it. Do you want to come with me?"

Soul flinches. "I...No, I said I can't."

"...Do you mind if I ask why not?"

"I don't mind, it's just..."Soul can't meet her eyes. "They don't need cowards in their ranks, that's all."

"You're no coward."

"You don't know that."

"I think I'm a pretty good judge of character. You said you wanted to go, and..."

She looks over at the tent flap, listens to the rage of the storm outside. Somehow, the idea of what will come in the morning, when she has to leave this little pocket of warmth and safety to venture out into this huge, unfamiliar world, in this completely alien body...It makes her body freeze and her stomach clench even worse than the idea of braving the blizzard again.

"If I'm really being honest here, I don't think I want to go by myself."

Silence hangs in the tent for a moment, broken only by the crackling fire. Soul slumps down, takes the lone blanket he's lying on, and rolls himself into a Sneasel burrito. "I'll show you where it is in the morning."

Maka opens her mouth, then closes it again. She's exhausted too, after all; whatever happens, can happen when it's not pitch black and freezing out. She nestles herself back into her blanket nest. "All right. Good night, Soul."

At first, there's no answer. She closes her eyes, tries to find out what kind of a position is comfortable in this new body. Then, so soft she almost doesn't hear it -

"G'night. Maka."

Maka smiles as she falls back to sleep.

~0~

"Do...Do we r-really have to do this tonight?" The little Mawile shakes from head to toe as they pick their way through the snow. It's wet and heavy and piling up bigger than their whole body, and they're surprised that they're managing to talk as clearly as they are. "I-I-It's so cold, a-and I'm - "

They're cut off by the bony shoulder of the Mightyena stalking up behind them and roughly pushing their head. With his ragged but thick black and silver coat, soaked through with the falling snowflakes, he isn't cold in the slightest.

"Ow, Ragnarok - !"

Ragnarok growls, "Quit your yapping, Crona. No point in wasting time if we're going to get all these done."

Crona whimpers in the back of their throat, but trudges along at Ragnarok's back paws. He growls deeper as he digs their way through the snow, aided immensely by Crona's enormous second set of jaws biting hunks of it away and throwing it to the side. Deeper and deeper they go, until they hit the entrance of the cavern buried at the base of the mountain. Ragnarok grins with every tooth in his long muzzle.

"Here we go."

He lopes down the low-cut stone passageway, as if homing in on an injured Stantler. Crona sprints as fast as they can to keep up with him, but with their much shorter legs, it's no use.

"W-Wait for me! You, you're too fast!"

"Keep up, you're just too slow, pipsqueak!"

The darkness seems to press in on Crona, come right for their lungs, and they can't help it if they start breathing a little faster than is probably normal. The only thing they have to guide them through all the twists and turns is the rapid clicking of Ragnarok's claws. He seems to know where he's going, he always remembers their mother's instructions better than they do. Soon enough, the faint light at the end of the tunnel, the beacon that's supposed to guide them to their goal, comes into their sight.

Ragnarok yips and runs faster, and Crona lets out a yelp in spite of themself, struggling to keep up. The light grows brighter as they go, until finally Ragnarok is bounding up over a flat, smooth ledge and sauntering into the heart of the maze, while Crona has to leap to grab the edge, legs rapidly kicking at the air before they haul themself over.

They suddenly find that they have to squint: the room is bright, too bright, with the aura of the Kishin Seal in the center. But they can't make out the shape of the object itself: it's blocked by the very angry-looking Ditto expanding in front of it.

"I was warned you would come," it says, in its voice like a punctured balloon. "You've already broken two of the Kishin seals...I won't let you have your way!"

Ragnarok lets out his big, booming laugh. His face scrunches up with the force of it, bringing the X-shaped scar between his eyes into sharp relief. "Thanks for the credit, but did you really think that this is some petty shit, that'll end if we die? Not that you'll live to see what we mean, though!"

"R-Ragnarok, don't give it away..." Crona mutters. They shrink back, even as they reflexively reach out with their soul, connecting with their brother's and letting it take over them. "Let's just do it, and go home..."

Ragnarok begins to visibly drool, as his fangs start to shine the way they do before a Crunch. "Don't think I'll save any for you," he snarls. The Ditto is transforming, into something big Pokemon with its own fangs and claws, but it's too slow. And it's not strong, not like they are.

So when Ragnarok charges, barking and roaring and eyes blazing red murder, Crona knows even before the first blood is drawn that the Seal's guardian doesn't stand a chance.