EPIC DREAM: The Last of Peach Creek
Chapter 2: Much Edsplanation
"Double Dee?" Oliver's mom repeated, "I don't remember ever hearing a Helioptile ever saying anything other than its own name."
Edd still lay on a small cot, breathing deeply. Still remembering what had happened in the little vision that brought back his memories of Peach Creek, he sprang up suddenly and began to chatter wildly.
"Master Oliver! I am not who you think! I am not from this world at all!"
In the excitement, Edd forgot that he couldn't speak to humans at all. All they were hearing were a whole lot of variations on "Helioptile".
"What's he saying?" Oliver asked.
No one could tell, but Waldo suddenly remembered something and ran out the door.
Edd, meanwhile, sprang off the cot and ran around looking for something.
"What are you talking about, Dub?" Buddy asked, "What are you looking for?"
"I only thought I was Dub. Looking at various features on that hat brought back my memories of who I really am!" Edd explained.
"Are you crazy? What are you talking about?" Buddy asked.
"I know it sounds absurd!" Edd said, "I need a pencil and paper."
"Why?"
"To explain to the humans!"
Buddy still thought that who he thought was just a normal Helioptile was plumb crazy, but he listened to his friend and grabbed a pen off the front desk with his tongue anyway.
Edd ran over to a magazine desk and ripped one of those envelopes out of it.
"What are they doing?" A bystander asked.
Edd took the pen off of Buddy's tongue and started quickly writing down everything he knew about himself thus far.
Oliver and the others looked to see what he was writing. When Edd finished, Oliver took the envelope and read it out loud.
"'I am Edd, a human from the world Peach Creek, which disappeared under mysterious circumstances.' What?"
Edd ripped a page from another magazine and continued writing. Oliver looked on.
"'I do not know how I got here, or why I couldn't remember this before, but I would like to find out how to get back home and go back to my normal form.'" Oliver read, "Say what now?"
"Helio!" Edd said.
Oliver was very confused, to say the least.
"Ok, this is weird," he said, "Maybe this is a dream! Any second now, all of the Legendary Birds will crash through that those doors and perform the Macarena, and I'll know I'm dreaming!"
Bang!
Everyone turned, only to see Waldo clumsily running in with the strange device he and Oliver had built earlier.
"I worked on the Dream Reader for the rest of the afternoon and I'm pretty sure it works. Now, not only can you see people's dreams, you can read their minds, too! Let's see what your little buddy's trying to say!" Waldo said, breathlessly.
Oliver quickly put it on and looked at Edd.
"Can you understand me?" Oliver asked the Helioptile.
"Yes, very well, actually! Your friend did very well!" Edd answered. Oliver recognized the high voice from yesterday when they examined Edd's/Dub's dream.
"Ok, what's the deal with all of this?" Oliver asked, "What's with you thinking you're a human?"
"I found a hat among the clothes your mother brought home, and found that it was my own. I suddenly regained all of my memories from when I lived at my home of Peach Creek, which had apparently been locked away via some sort of amnesia-inducing process. I lived like a normal Helioptile for the past several days until I found my hat. Now the biggest question is, what are we to do now?"
Oliver didn't answer. He stood there silently for a few moments before shaking his head, throwing off the Dream Reader, and storming out the door.
"Oliver?" Mom said, following him.
Edd felt very unhappy to see the boy who had been caring for him not believe him at all. He walked back to the cot and curled up.
Oliver went and sat down on a bench running the past several events of the night though his head. What was going on? This just didn't happen! It only happened in books that he saw at the library.
Mom came and sat down beside him. "Honey, what's wrong?"
"This is crazy!" Oliver explained to his mom what he deciphered from Edd's writing and rambling.
Mom was confused, too. "I haven't heard of Pokémon going insane before. I don't know what to tell you."
Oliver didn't want to go back into the Pokémon center, so his mother went back in to retrieve their Pokémon. She thanked everyone for their help and they went back home.
Oliver got back into bed but couldn't sleep at all. He kept looking over to the Helioptile he thought he knew well. Was Dub, or Edd if that's what he wanted to be called, insane or telling the truth? Oliver debated what he should do about this. He wondered if he should release him. But no, he couldn't. Eventually someone else would have to deal with him, and, of course, there was the fact that he was a Helioptile, a Pokémon Oliver had always wanted to catch.
Eventually these thoughts died down, and Oliver managed to go to sleep.
…
The next morning came. Oliver woke up wanting to believe that everything had all just been a dream, but he knew it hadn't. He barely touched his breakfast, and avoided making eye contact with Edd. His mom could see how stressed Oliver was as well, so the two of them went out for the day and left Edd home alone with Buddy. Mom took Tuffy and Ducky with them.
"So are you serious about this whole thing?" Buddy asked, "Because I still think you're crazy, and now your own trainer thinks you're crazy, too."
Edd had been upset when Oliver walked out on him last night, and he knew for a fact that Oliver didn't believe him at all.
"I don't know what else to do!" Edd sighed, "I'm probably never going to find out what happened to my home or my friends from Peach Creek, and I'll be stuck as a reptile forever."
"Do you even know of anyone else who could help you?" Buddy asked.
"I feel like I do, but I don't." Edd said despondently, sitting down.
"Well, I'm gonna go watch some TV," Buddy said, waddling to the living room, "feel free to join me if you feel like it!"
Edd had no idea what to do next, so he went and joined Buddy.
Buddy grabbed the remote with his tongue and switched on the tube. "I wonder if Dexter's Laboratory is on." He muttered.
Edd's ears twitched. He looked at the television.
"Coming up next: Dexter's Lab!" The announcer on the television said.
"Great!" Buddy said, "I love this show!"
"Dexter's Lab?" Edd thought, "Do I know someone named Dexter?"
The screen showed a tall blonde haired girl running into a room and entering a chute via a rug. Edd thought the girl looked vaguely familiar.
Then the girl entered a lab and passed by a short, stumpy red-haired boy.
"That must the titular character of the show…" Edd thought…then it hit him.
He remembered seeing that same exact face several times, like when green muck threatened to overtake his and other worlds, during an incident with that big nosed kid and some lucky pants, and when various people conspired to trap people in their subconsciousnesses…okay, maybe he was misremembering, but he definitely remembered seeing this boy's face various places, and this world was apparently one of the ones where Dexter was a fictional character in a TV show.
"I know him!" Edd cried.
"Seriously?" Buddy said with a chuckle, "first you say you're from another world, and now you claim to know a character on TV! What next?"
Edd ran over to the computer desk, climbed up, and opened up the internet browser.
"You're going to use the computer, that's not what I was thinking of at all," Buddy muttered.
Edd opened up the search engine and put: "DexLabs" in the search bar. Upon hitting enter, the first result was Dexter's website.
"Okay, this is getting even weirder than it already was," Buddy said, "Dexter is real and has his own place in the computer thing?"
Edd didn't answer and clicked the "Contact" button. He quickly composed an email to the boy genius.
"Help! I'm a creature in the world of Pokémon and I am uncertain of where my home is! Help! Eddward S."
"I'm just going to go back and watch TV," Buddy said, turning and waddling back to the living room, as Edd sent the email.
Only about a minute had passed before an email notification rang from the computer. Buddy ran back over to see an actual response from Dexter.
"I have heard you and will find you as soon as I can. Expect me within the next four hours and I'll explain everything…It's not very pleasant news."
Dexter-Boy Genius."
…
About two hours later there was a knock on the door. Buddy opened it, and there the little boy genius was along with DeeDee. They looked different from their appearance on the TV and Dexter's website.
"Ewwww!" DeeDee cried, "Look at his tongue! It's gross!"
"Girl, don't make me use it!" Buddy yelled, but of course all the duo could hear was "Licki! Lick Lick!"
"DeeDee, please," said Dexter. He put on something that looked like a hearing aid, both in DeeDee's and his own ears. "Now I can understand you. Where might your owner be?"
"He went out," Buddy answered.
Before Dexter could say anything else, Edd came running in from another room.
"Oooooh!" DeeDee yelled, running over to Edd and scooping him up, "Dexter, isn't he cute?"
"Please unhand me!" Edd protested, "This manages to bring back some frankly rather unpleasant memories."
"DeeDee!" Dexter yelled, then regained his composure and said calmly: "My…dear seester, here is some Pokecash, go and get yourself some ice cream or something."
"Okay!" DeeDee then danced off towards downtown.
"Now then," Dexter said, "I am assumink you are Eddward?"
"Yes," Edd said, "At least I used to be...you said you would have some answers, so do you?"
Dexter then started his explanation.
"Well, all I really know is that your world and two others were destroyed under very mysterious circumstances about a fortnight ago."
"What other two worlds were they?" Edd asked.
"One world was one upon which a girl I know named Penny Proud lived on, and the other was the one my good friend Lazlo lived on. Anyway, with help from some of my colleagues, we retrieved all the people and important information from yours and the other two worlds that we could and converted them into computer data so we could rescue you and everyone else. That Jimmy Neutron person, the triangle-headed boy and his step-brother and I and some others had made this plan so we could hopefully bring back any worlds that wound up destroyed, but something went horribly wrong."
"What happened?" asked Buddy.
"Sabotage from an unknown source. In the middle of the night after we backed everyone up, someone broke into my lab and attempted to erase all of the data containing you and everyone else. I did not see who it was, but I just managed to prevent all of you from being deleted before too much damage was done, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a problem. Apparently, upon hearing me coming, the fiend decided to release all data upon the wrong worlds, and block their memories from going with them, giving them whole new identities. I'm assuming that's what happened, because that's how it was when I found the database.
"I didn't have enough time to cancel the action, unfortunately. I had no choice but to let it go on. I was so distraught that I couldn't think of what to do next, so I decided to just let it go. The plan to save the three worlds had failed.
"But, then I got your email! Realizink that the people who had been forcefully removed may still have their memories somewhere, this gave me hope. So I came here straightaway and am now talking to you."
"So what do we do?" Edd asked.
"I should get back to my labor-a-tory and go ahead and get to the next part of my plan and find clues." Dexter thought.
"But do you know where everyone you lost went to?" Buddy asked.
"I didn't pay attention," Dexter admitted, "They could be anywhere! They could be here, they could be across the Multi-Universe…heck, you might even be one of them!"
"But I've been around longer than you say all of this started," Buddy protested, "Is there a way to even find them?"
"Yes, but I would have to go back to my labor-a-tory," Dexter said.
"Then we'll go back to your laboratory!" said Edd.
"Hold up, man," said Buddy, "what'll Oliver do when he finds us gone? He'll flip."
"After what happened last night, I doubt he would even care that I left," Edd replied with a sigh.
"What are you talking about?" Dexter asked.
Double Dee filled Dexter in about the events of yesterday that lead up to his memory coming back, and how Oliver reacted to them.
"Other than Ed and Eddy, he was the closest I had to a real friend," Edd sighed.
"I think we should still tell him," Buddy said.
"Where is he?" Dexter asked.
"He and his mom went out to do something and they aren't going to be back for a while, I think," said Edd, "I don't think they left Viridian City, however."
"Well, I shall go find him," said Dexter, "if he's unwilling to come, then so be it."
Dexter then got up and left, then turned to Buddy and Edd. "You are coming, right?"
Edd and Buddy thought about it.
"Well, it would prove that you would know what you're talking about, so maybe we should," said Edd.
"Well, come on!" said Dexter, "there's no time to waste!"
…
A bit later, the three of them were searching for Oliver and his mom in the town.
"Does Oliver have a place he likes to hang out?" Dexter asked.
"There isn't a whole lot in this town," said Buddy, "It shouldn't take us very long to find them…hold it, there's Oliver right now!"
Oliver was sitting by himself by a nearby pond.
"Oliver!" Edd called.
Oliver heard a "Helio" and turned around.
"Buddy, Dub, I told you to stay at the house," Oliver said, getting up. Then he noticed Dexter. "Who are you?"
"I am Dexter, boy genius, and I need to ask you somethink," Dexter introduced himself.
"Wait a minute," Oliver said, "That Dexter? I…I don't…"
"Yes, THAT Dexter," said Dexter, "You may have seen me on the television, not to be confused with that OTHER Dexter."
Without another word, Oliver got up and started running towards the Pokemart.
"Wait! Come back!" Dexter protested, "It's important!"
Oliver groaned and turned back toward them. "I don't want to hear anything you want to say! I'm in a bad mood right now!"
"Well, if you just have one minute…" Dexter said, "What I am going to tell you is very important!"
Oliver sighed and slowly walked back towards them.
Dexter explained everything he had told Edd and Buddy over the course of that minute.
"So, what you're saying is that everything Dub…or Edd, was saying last night is true, and that there really are multiple worlds, including your own? (Because, quite honestly, I thought you were just a character on a TV show.)"
"Yes! Where were you during the Epic Dream?" Dexter asked.
"The what?"
"Never mind. I need you to come with me to my labor-a-tory so I don't feel like I'm kidnapping your pets. Are you willing to go?" Dexter asked.
Oliver was quiet for a moment. "This…this is just really unbelievable."
"If I were in your shoes, I probably wouldn't believe it either!" Dexter said, "Oh, and by the way…"
Dexter tossed Oliver another one of the hearing aid-like objects. "If you stick it in your ear, any voice waves that an animal or Pokémon emits will be translated into a language you understand."
"Say what?"
"You can hear what animals say! Put it in your ear!"
Oliver slowly stuck it in his ear and turned to Buddy.
"Say something, Buddy."
"Uhh, the rain on the plain falls mainly in Maine…wait, that's not how it goes…can you hear that, Oliver?"
Wide eyed, Oliver slowly nodded. "This is like an even better version of the invention Waldo made!" he thought.
"Well, we should be going about now!" Dexter said.
"I'd better tell my mom what's going on," Oliver said, "and then I'll be right here!"
Oliver ran to the Pokemart to tell his mother about what had happened.
…
Soon, Oliver, Dexter, Edd, and Buddy were at Kanto's airport. It seemed more crowded than usual, people were running around catching flights to Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, and any other regions there might be.
"We'll be going this way," Dexter said, pointing to a somewhat easy to miss hallway. A sign above it read: "Interdimensional Flights".
The four of them turned down this hallway and got some tickets for a place called: "Townsville", where Dexter lived.
Edd and Buddy, unfortunately, had to be returned to their Pokeballs, since animals and Pokémon weren't allowed in the cabins.
Eventually, though, Dexter and Oliver were in the waiting rooms waiting for their flight, the next of which was in half an hour.
Oliver looked around. Unlike out in the main part of the airport, there were all sorts of unusual people in this airport. Many of them looked a lot how normal residents of the Pokémon world typically did, but it was obvious they weren't from around here. Some were rather unusual looking Pokémon. Oliver noticed a skinnier than usual Combusken with a larger than usual Miltank for example.
Oliver looked at the chair beside him and saw a tan-skinned boy about his age. In the chair beside this kid there was what appeared to be a misshapen looking teenager.
The boy noticed Oliver. "Hey, dude! Where are you headed?"
"Uhh, the same as him," Oliver said, pointing to Dexter, "Townsville."
"Hey, Dexter! My man!" The boy gestured towards Dexter.
"Hello, Sanjay," said Dexter, "I don't have time to talk. We are in a big hurry!"
"Ok, dude!"
Oliver noticed that the other figure was looking at him. There was something about him that rubbed Oliver the wrong way.
An announcement came on over the intercom that a flight to a town Oliver hadn't heard of was boarding.
"That's our flight!" Sanjay said to his friend, "Check ya dudes later!"
Sanjay and his friend hurried off to their boarding area. As Oliver watched them, he suddenly noticed the end of a Serpirior's tail sticking out of the bottom of the trench coat the other person was wearing.
Sometime later, the announcement of the flight to Townsville came on over the speakers.
"Well, here we go!" Oliver said.
They joined several others and walked down the hallway.
Oliver was very nervous. Oh no, he wasn't afraid of flying. He had been on several flights to Kalos to see his grandparents, after all. He had just never left his own world before.
Oliver sat down in a seat by a window and looked out. It hit him again that he was leaving his own world behind.
Finding it difficult to take this all in, Oliver sighed and closed his eyes. Before he even knew it, he was asleep.
"Interdimensional Flight #21414 now leaving for the City of Townsville. Please turn all cell phones and PokeNavs during the duration of the flight. Please relax and enjoy the flight…"
END CHAPTER 2 (In case you're wondering what happened to DeeDee, don't worry, we'll eventually find out…otherwise, I don't really know what else to say other than stay tuned, R&R if you feel like it, I don't own anything, etc. etc….)