I love you guys for supporting this story. The final member of the team has yet to show up, so be looking for him/her.

Also, tell me if you like my style of writing, with the narrative thing. I personally enjoy working with it, as it allows me to have a bit of fun with it.

I mean yes, I found this audio in my mailbox one day and decided to transcribe it. Yeeeeeeeessss, that's exactly what happe-yeah, I'm just making this from memory. :P

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: The Shroud of Darkness

Chapter 07 – Well, That Just Happened.

(A bang is heard, followed by a startled gasp of sorts. Shuffling is heard in the background. A muffled voice calls "I swear I put it here, but…" and the audio becomes incoherent for a moment before snapping back into clarity.)

Ah, here's the recorder. Sorry about that, I dropped it and couldn't find it for a second. Well, that distraction aside, let's continue on…now where were we? Right, the surprise member joining.

I suppose I'll just skip ahead to the next day, where we got another mission. Amanda, our resident Charmander, turned out to be quite the go-getter. I was surprised to see her packed before me and Mido were. Today's assignment would be taking us back towards the Spaghetti Bowl. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly ecstatic about this recent development. We went ahead and set out; a long walk was ahead of us though. Amanda, as I had already suspected, did not have a dull personality in the least. Mido was actually having quite the time talking with Amanda, who seemed to be able to speak in another language. Not fluently, as far as I could tell, but it was still good. I couldn't place it, so I had to ask her what it was. She said it was French, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what a French was.

(The speaker whispers here, saying "Keep this moment in mind, it's one of the few moments where Amanda is actually happy." The speaker then chuckles.)

Anyway, the next day, we're back at the Spaghetti Bowl. Mido and I shared glances of slight unease, remembering the encounter with that Darkling. Amanda ignored us and marched right up to the tunnel entrance.

"This way, right?" she hollered out behind her.

I'll give her credit where it's due, she was very unafraid.

We decided this time it would be better to go in 2 groups, rather than soloing it like we did last time. It would take a little longer, but it would be worth it. Secretly, I was hoping I'd end up with Mido, and I got lucky on that one. Amanda was sort of the newbie of the group, so Ian took her for protective reasons. Since me and Mido were seasoned, he let us go on our own.

The tunnels were just as twisty as before, but I'd gotten a little more used to it, so I was okay-ish. We wandered through them for a while, before, strangely enough, running back into Mido and Amanda. It was in a rather wide part of the tunnels, where the tunnels widened out into large caves. These usually had a few paths branching off them, but here it was just 1 other, excluding the one Mido and I had come from and the one Ian and Amanda came through. It was about then that I heard a strange cry from the remaining tunnel. It sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I did not dwell long on it. The majority of my attention was trained on the figures walking out of the tunnel. There were 4 of them, an Emolga, a Bellossom, Houndour, and a Scrafty. That was strange enough already, but the fact that they didn't seem to be the right color didn't really help. For example, the Bellossom was an odd shade of dark teal.

Also, their eyes were red. Not just the irises, but the whole eye. No white, or even any pupils were there; just a glowing red void.

"Guys," I started, "we might be a tiny bit screwed right now."

"Good gracious, what happened to them?" asked Ian out of nowhere.

That's about when the Scrafty started cackling.

Mido about passed out then.

Amanda, however, was completely unfazed. She simply walked up to the Scrafty, and stared at him. I swear, that girl has no understanding of the word "fear".

"You dare stand up against darkness?" the Scrafty boomed at us.

My mind instantly thought of the kamikaze Zubat from earlier.

"Darkling…" I muttered under my breath.

"Ah, so the gentleman in the back has heard of us, yes?"

Wait, that's actually what they were called? What are the odds?

Amanda simply stared at him and stated, "Look, if you want a fight, stop gloating about how awesome you think you are and actually throw a punch or something."

Mido squeaked.

"Very well, I shall be happy to obli-" the Scrafty began before he got a Mega Punch right in the face. How Amanda knew that, I'd never know, but it certainly got the Scrafty's attention.

Next thing I knew, I was hurtled into battle against the Houndour. Ian was handling the Emolga, while Mido went after the Bellossom. I kicked things off with a Bonemerang, the technique I was unwittingly using during the first Darkling I'd fought. I followed up by grabbing the dog in a choker hold that I'd remembered from Judo. I mustered some strength and jumped up, slamming him to the ground.

That move would soon become my favorite move, FYI.

He retaliated by firing some weird energy at me, which hit me dead on. He followed through with a Beat Up. I managed to kick him off me, and slammed my head into his. I'd hit him hard enough that it made him flinch, leaving me room to-

BAM!

A rock came out of nowhere and nailed him on the back of the head. That was enough to knock the Darkling clean out of him, which promptly met his end at the end of my bone.

I'd like to say that I could've finished the rest of them off on my own, but that weird beam he fired at me really took it out of me. The rock was also a bit of a mystery, but I could think on that one later. I surveyed the rest of the battle, picking out whom to help next. Amanda was my first priority, but as soon as I saw her fighting, I figured if anyone needed help over there, it was that poor Scrafty. Currently, Amanda was clinging onto him, jaws locked onto his neck. Mido seemed to be holding his own as well…or he did, then I saw the Bellossom do some funky something and he fell over paralyzed. I charged towards the two without second thought.

The Bellossom, as luck would have it, was fairly weak, but she relied a lot on making you weaker. Thankfully, a Headbutt and Judo throw later, she was out. My arm was asleep afterwards however. How the Bellossom had hit only my arm with Sleep Powder, I don't know. The Darkling fled before I could even get a chance to dispatch it, however. I knelt down next to Mido, who was completely out. I was wondering how I was going to take care of Mido when suddenly the Houndour came out of nowhere, eyes no longer glowing, and tackled the Scrafty.

"Jonas, snap outta it, man! What got into ya?"

Amanda and the Houndour had a brief argument on who was going to sensitize him once more, which left the Houndour at the losing end of that one. He moved on to helping Ian, which thankfully left me with the opportunity to find some berries in my pack.

After attending to Mido, I was about to rejoin the fray when I saw that the last Darkling begging for mercy from Amanda.

"I promise I won't hur-"

Nope, Amanda sent a fist flying through his head, which made him disappear.

Breathing heavily, Ian limped over to the Houndour and thanked him for saving him.

"Hey, ain't nothing, mate! Just tryin' to help my friends."

Boy, this guy had a good accent. Made my accent look dumb, all it does is make the word mountain sound different.

After recovery, we talked a bit and discovered that the call we had had already been taken care of. Jonas (the Scrafty) and co. had already helped the Whismur that we were supposed to help.

Amanda wasn't too happy about this.

"You mean that we came out all this way for freaking nothing?"

"Not quite, ya see we were possessed by the Darks and we needed help too, miss," replied the Houndour.

After saying our goodbyes, we left for home. The walk home wasn't happy, because Amanda wasn't happy. That's about the maddest I've seen her, to be honest. For example, we walked past a Pachirisu that got in her way, and she pounded on him. I swear, the poor squirrel walked away about half a foot shorter.

At noon on the next day, we got back. Amanda simply stated that she would be heading to bed, asked for objections, waited not even a second, then went off to the cots upstairs.

I, on the other hand, went to the hospital to check on the Piplup I'd found all that time ago. I was glad when I saw her awake. She had a weird look on her face, like she didn't understand something.

"Oh…hello…who are you?" she asked in a small voice.

"I'm Jacob, me and a few other guys I work with found you washed up in a waterfall in a bad state. We brought you here, to the hospital so you could get better."

"…what's a hospital?"

1.8 k words? I can live with that.

Alright, I hope you guys enjoyed, and for those wondering, yes the insert spoiler here. Well, I have nothing else I really want to talk about here, so onto Reviwerrrrrrr's Coooooorner!

pokemonkatia168757: I love this story. This is amazing. Also, that charmander is hilarious. :-)

Well, thanks! I'll admit this now, Amanda was originally a lot angrier when this story was in my head. I'm surprised by just how mellow I made her. Also it feels a bit early to be picking favorites, as we still have 2 more characters to introduce. Though, if you ask me, my personal favorites are Jacob and the character that hasn't been introduced yet. And don't worry, he'll be here in about two chapters. You'll have met him by the end of this week, I'm sure!

Oh, and if people want to ask the characters questions, feel free to ask them. I might make another story where your questions are answered by them, or I might just put their responses down by the Reviewer's Corner.

Well, that's about all I have to say. So you folks have a lovely insert time of day here, and I'll see you tomorrow! :)

- JacobDaGun