In which we all get to know Adam a bit better. Won't that be nice?

Adam was a self-proclaimed enigma, and proud.

People didn't know him, and nobody particularly wanted to either. He had made friends with the other rejects in his school by default, and he loved them all like family …

… It was just that he had never quite gotten over the loss of Joe, his best friend since preschool. They had even been born in the same hospital, only a day apart. It was almost every day that he thought about him. They had spent most moments of their life together, right up until the last one. Adam had been there in the hospital during his birth, and had been metres away during his death.

He was innocent. Far more innocent than the other members of his group. Even Elliot, the only one who attended church, had a darker soul than he, and Elliot had dedicated his life to helping people; whether it was his six younger brothers and pregnant mother, or everyone in the future who would attend his practice. Elliot wanted to be a doctor. A much nobler profession than Adam could ever take up.

Adam wasn't innocent in that way; the kind way, nor was he innocent in a remarkably stupid way, despite what people seemed to think. He was innocent in that he didn't want the things that his friends wanted. Fred, his newly adopted best friend since Joe's death, was only interested – interest was a very, very strong word in Fred's case – in sex. Matthew too. Saxen was 'perplexed by the darkness within his own soul', as Elliot had put it.

Kitty, the only girl in the group, wanted many things. Material things, and also deeper things. She wanted balance, stability; to be understood, to be protected. Right now all she wanted was Scott, and the pain in her eyes was unbearable.

What he wanted, as it stands, was a peanut butter sandwich.

"Come on," he said cheerily to his pokemon as he left the room, holding the door open as his Budew and Oddish raced each other down the corridor, his Scyther following dejectedly behind. The thing was a freaking killing machine, Adam noted, with his razor-sharp scythes and speed that made him drool. He felt a little sorry for him that his team-mates had the mental – and battling – capacity of two spoons.

They left the hotel alone, walking through the darkness. Adam registered with some confusion that it was night. Also that it was raining heavily, and he had forgotten to wear shoes again.

His two Grass types danced gleefully through the rain, but Slasher gritted his teeth and shielded himself with his scythes. The café was still open, luckily, and he sat down in his favourite seat with a view of the sea. His Oddish and Budew shook themselves off by his bare feet and then, pausing, ran out again to play more. Slasher swiped the droplets off his partially waterproof skin with his forearms and, glaring at something, sat down on the fake leather bench beside his trainer.

"Are you ready to order?" the waitress asked, smiling at him with recognition.

"Peanut butter sandwich," he said brightly, and she winked, disappearing back to the bar. He turned to look at the window. The sea was grey, churning and swelling.

"Horrible weather, isn't it?" the owner of the café said, wiping a table off near to Adam.

He didn't look over. "I like rain," he said quietly.

"They say there's a storm approaching," the man said wisely, scratching his beard.

Adam looked over to him, and smiled widely. "I like storms too."

"Here you go, sweetie," the waitress said, gliding over and plopping the plate in front of him. He didn't register it for a while, but then smiled up at her in thanks. "40AD, hun."

Adam pressed his Nav up to her device. She paused, shook it, then tried again with a deep frown.

"You don't have enough money," she said.

"What? Oh … I'm sorry." Adam flushed scarlet. "Maybe I can go find someone to battle really quickly."

"We shut in an hour," the manager said, looking at him sternly. Adam went from crimson to grey.

"I'm really sorry," he said again. "Come on, Slasher." His Scyther looked up at him, eyes wide. The bug pokemon was a warrior by blood, and he would finally get to battle.

Adam ran out into the rain, so thick now that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. His bare feet made thick 'plop' sounds with every step.

"Is anyone out there a trainer?" he yelled, his voice almost lost in the downpour. "Hello?" he cried. "Anyone? I need a battle!"

A figure appeared, walking closer to him. He squinted through the rain, his hair matted to his forehead.

"I'll give you a battle," the boy said softly. Adam could barely hear him, but his heart swelled in excitement.

"Thanks!" he cried. "I'm using my Scyther."

"Nice," the boy said, taking a step forwards. "I only ever use Poison types, myself."

"Oh, I generally stick to Bug and Grass," Adam said loudly. The rain crashed around him so violently that it was starting to hurt his head with its ferocious and ice-cold pounding.

"This should be easy then," the boy said. "Go, Lamia."

Adam squinted, taking more steps forward, desperately trying to see his opponent's face. The silhouette hadn't shifted, and his voice was distorted by the monsoon they were trapped in.

"Go, Slasher."

Through the torrent he could make out a Seviper, which was baring its teeth at the Scyther. Slasher readied his battle stance, chest rising and falling with anticipation. Adam didn't battle all that much, which explained his lack of money.

"Leer to start off with," Adam said, though it sounded more like a suggestion than a command.

"Lamia, Poison Tail," the boy said, still not raising his voice above the crashing rain.

The battlers were invisible as they danced around each other, rain bouncing off them to create a strange, holy, glowing effect around their glowering faces and bared teeth.

"Uh," Adam said, not really sure what was happening, "False Swipe."

"Counter with Glare," the boy said quickly.

Assuming Slasher was paralysed, Adam put his hand over his eyes to try to peer into the battle, but they were too far away at this point.

"Hey, since we can't really see, shall we just make this a one-on-one?" Adam said, hoping Slasher could win this.

"Fine by me," the boy said.

"Cool. Quick Attack," Adam ordered blindly. He wondered if his Scyther was even obeying him.

"Screech," the boy said. While it wasn't exactly confidence in his voice, the deadpan resembled Fred, but a little cockier. "Then Crunch."

"Uh, Pursuit," Adam said, fully aware that he was just naming his pokemon's attacks one by one. There was a pause, the rain increased so that it was becoming really quite painful to be in it. Especially barefoot and effectively blinded. "Shall we, like, check on them?" he yelled to the other boy.

"Yeah I think so," he said back, raising his voice. But at that point the rain cleared up a little, so the yelling wasn't necessary. Adam ran to his Scyther, who was out cold. But so was the boy's Seviper.

"How do we know who fainted first?" Adam laughed. "I think we're gonna have to battle again." He took out a Potion and sprayed Slasher gently with it. The Scyther pushed himself to his feet, panting. "Hey, I'm Adam. What's your-"

He looked over at the other boy who was staring at him through the rain, mouth hanging open.

"-name," Adam barely managed to get out, before he fainted.

"He's coming round, look." Lights. Where had they come from? And where was the rain? "Are you alright, honey?"

He was vaguely aware that he was now wearing shoes. He blinked a few times, his vision still blurry, and waggled his feet. They slowly came into focus, and the rest of the room followed.

He was in the hospital, the same one as Matthew and Scott, he guessed. He sat up a little and blinked a bit more, rubbing his eyes.

"You passed out in the middle of the storm," the nurse said kindly. She had a big nose. He looked at her hazily. "Luckily your friend brought you down and we managed to ward off hypothermia and other nasty things on time. Next time you go out during a monsoon, wear shoes!" She smiled and fluffed out his pillow for him.

"My … friend?" he asked, feeling vomit rising at the back of his throat. "W-where is he? I need t-to see him." Tears pricked at his eyes. Was he going mad? Or had it been an illusion? "Can hypothermia cause h-hallucinations?" he asked.

"It's been known to," she said, bustling about a bit more. "Did you see something weird?"

"I saw a dead boy," Adam mumbled, and leaned back into his pillow.

Sleep took him before he had a chance to think.

When he woke up, there was a Matthew at the end of his bed.

"Hey, dude," he said, his voice unrecognisable due to the bandages stuck to his face. He seemed unusually cheery for someone with a smashed nose.

"Hey, man," he said blearily. "I'm not really sure what happened to me."

"You look like crap," Matthew said helpfully. "I heard the nurse say something about an Adam to a doctor, and I thought it just might be you. You alright?"

"I dunno," he admitted. "I either have hypothermia, am mad, or there is something very, very weird going on."

"Well I have to get back to my bed before I miss my Codeine. Just wanted to check you were alright." Matt flicked him on the nose and walked off, leaving Adam completely alone. He shivered.

"Uh, so …" a horribly familiar voice broke his thoughts and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"You're not real," he muttered. "You are not real."

"Look at me, Adam."

"No."

"Why not?"

Adam felt like he was going to cry. "Leave me alone."

"Do you remember who I am?"

"Shut up," he whispered.

"Look, I'm confused. Like, I have no idea what's going on."

Adam opened his eyes and faced the other boy. Their eyes locked, and both of them teetered a little.

"You're dead," both of them said in unison, then, "What do you mean I'm dead?"

They both stayed in complete silence for a moment.

"Joe," Adam said hoarsely. "It's really you."

"It really is," Joe said with a shrug.

His best friend looked pretty much exactly how he would have, nine years older. His sandy hair was a little longer, pushed back hastily and staying up due to its wetness. His freckles had faded, but were still the most prominent on his nose.

"You got tall," Adam said, voice cracking. Joe had been short and just a little bit overweight. Now he was at least three inches taller than himself, and skinnier, verging on gangly.

The other boy's eyes glittered briefly, and he swallowed. "And you stayed about the same height." They both laughed, the tears that hadn't fallen yet apparent in their voices.

"How are you still alive?" Adam asked, shaking his head slowly.

Then it hit him, and he was a little embarrassed about this, because he was sure it would have taken any one of his friends about half the time it had taken him. They were in a parallel universe; an alternate dimension. Here, Joe had never died. In the pokemon world there were no cheetahs or leopards or lions or panthers or whatever they had been that tore him to shreds. So even if they had gone on that safari, even if they had gone off the bus, Joe had survived it.

"More importantly, how are you still alive?" Joe said with a frown. "You're the one that died."

"What happened to me?" Adam asked, realising – also a little too slowly – that this meant there had been a pokemon world version of him. What would he have been like if he had been raised in the pokemon world?

"You don't remember?"

"To me, it never happened," he said, then noticing the confusion in his eyes, "I'll try to explain later."

"Uh," Joe said, frowning with the memory. "Well to make a very long story short, you drowned just off the coast of Hoenn."

"Hoenn is real?" Adam asked, sitting up a little straighter, ears going pink with excitement. Joe looked confused, and a little frightened.

"I think you owe me more of an explanation than I do you," he said. "Why on earth do you think it was me who died?" He shook his head hard. "More importantly, how the hell did you survive? And not tell me? And …" His breathing was becoming laboured, and rubbed his face with sweating hands.

"Yeah, I … I don't really know how I can explain it," Adam said, scratching his head. "Maybe one of the others can." He brightened up at the sight of Matthew coming back around the corner.

"Hey, apparently I've already had my Codeine for the day," he said, looking grumpy. "You don't have any painkillers do you?"

Adam silently pointed to Joe, who was looking at Matthew and as pale as chalk.

With barely any hesitation, Matthew swung his fist and it buried itself in Joe's stomach. As Joe choked, bent double, and Adam yelled out, Matthew rammed his elbow into the back of his head. Joe fell unconscious to the floor, and Matt, panting, backed away.

"We have to get out of here," he said. "Someone's playing with us." He was shaking.

"I guess it was better than my reaction," Adam shrugged. "Matt, listen. It really is Joe. He never died in this world." He paused, looking at the boy on the floor. "I did."

"What?" Matthew asked, still staring in terror at Joe's body.

"This is like an alternate dimension. We knew that, right? But it never crossed our minds that there would be an alternate us."

"You mean there's … there's … an anti-Matt in this world?"

Adam smiled. "Yeah, I guess. Don't you want to meet him?"

Matthew shook his head. "What if he's a dick?"

There was a long silence.

"W hy don't you goget help for him?" Adam said, gesturing at Joe.

"So we did go on that safari," Adam repeated, a wrinkle on his nose that always appeared when he was trying hard to understand something. "And we did leave the bus … and we were still attacked, but … but what?"

"But we had our pokemon on us," Joe said. "When the Ursaring was about to kill us, your Scizor and my Weezing knocked it out together."

"Us?" Adam repeated softly. "So I didn't abandon you?"

"No," Joe said, looking confused. "Why would you have done that?"

Tears formed in Adam's eyes but he blinked them back. "I don't know."

"Let's get to the important thing here," Matthew interrupted. "So what's the other version of me like?"

"Other version," Joe said, shaking his head. "This is all far too weird for me."

"You'll get used to it," Adam said.

"I guess. Uh, you?" He looked at Matthew for a while, then shrugged. "You were kinda the same, I guess. You didn't have that thing on your face though."

Matthew raised his eyebrows. "This is temporary, you goof. I have a broken nose."

"Oh, right." Joe reddened dramatically, and Adam smiled, remembering how his friend used to turn the colour of beetroot at the slightest provocation. "How did you break your nose?"

"Meh," Matthew replied helpfully, scowling. "Tell me about myself. Where do I live?"

"You … you don't really live anymore," Joe said slowly.

"I died too?" he demanded. "What the hell killed me?"

"The sea," Joe replied simply.

"Always hated the fucking sea," Matthew muttered.

"Did we die in the same accident?" Adam asked. Joe nodded. "Why didn't you die?"

He reddened once again, just as he had started to return to his normal colour. "I wasn't invited."

"Why didn't we invite you?" Adam asked, appalled.

"Kitty never liked me. Did she like me in your world?"

Adam chewed his lip. Not as far as he could remember. "Of course she did," he replied. "And why does it matter?"

"Ok, I'll give you a slightly longer version of your death, I guess," Joe said. "I don't know much about it, except that she won a cruise from Kanto to Hoenn and back, but you never got to the back bit. You all drowned." He scratched his head, trying to remember the whole story as he knew it. "She won enough tickets to invite me but she didn't. She brought this boy that she barely even knew instead."

"Was his name Scott?" Adam asked brightly, ignoring the looks on the other two boys' faces.

"Yes!" Joe cried. "You know him then?"

"Yeah," he said happily, then his face fell. "But I don't think we should talk about him right now."

"Fine," Joe said, not even looking interested. "Well as soon as I learned you all died I didn't mind that I hadn't been invited much." He laughed. Matthew's brow twitched.

"We … we all died?" he repeated. "Me, Adam, Elliot, Saxen, Kitty, Charlie, Fred and Scott?" He counted them on his fingers as he went.

"Yep, all of you." Joe shuddered. "This has been the most painful last two years of my life. I was just starting to get over it, when …" He gestured at the two of them and laughed.

"Do you want to travel with us?" Adam asked suddenly.

"Well, I dunno … you're not really my friends. I mean, I don't know you." He pointed at Matthew. "You could never hurt a fly."

Matthew snorted, and he and Adam burst into deafening laughter. Joe waited patiently for them to stop.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. You said violence was for Neanderthals who couldn't express their emotions through words," Joe recalled.

Matthew started to laugh again, but then winced at some sort of facial pain.

"What do you think was different about your life that changed you?" Adam asked. "Maybe having pokemon?"

"I have pokemon now and I'm still violent," Matthew pointed out.

"What was I like?" Adam asked.

"You were pretty much the same. Talked a lot more, and you swore a lot more, though."

"Oh, I don't really swear at all," Adam said with a frown. "Pokemon made me swear?"

"The fact that there are pokemon in this world isn't the only difference," Matthew said.

"Do you want to meet the others? They'd be so excited to see you," Adam pressed.

"I doubt it," Joe said bitterly. "I mean, towards the end you were the only person in our group who really liked me."

"Why, what did you do to us?" Matthew asked, looking suspicious.

"Nothing," Joe said. But even Adam picked up on the fact that he replied just a little too quickly. When he looked at the bedsheets, Adam and Matthew exchanged a quick look. "But what harm could it do?"

"Depends on whether their reactions are like mine or like Matt's," Adam said and laughed. Joe paled, and laughed too. Matt's mouth curled up into a wonky smile, and he stood up.

"I'm gonna get in trouble if I stay out of my bed for too long," he said. "See you later," he said to Adam, and then, as if he'd already forgotten, turned to Joe as well and nodded.

"Bye," they said to him.

"So tell me more about us in this world," Adam said excitedly. "It's cool we're all still friends."

Joe laughed and nodded. "Seems like not even parallel dimensions can keep us apart."

"And that Kitty and Scott are still together."

Joe looked confused, and shook his head. "Kitty and Scott weren't going out," he said. "No, they were just friends. Actually, I'm pretty sure Scott was gay."

"Scott's not gay."

"Well my one was," Joe said, "and Kitty was with Matthew."

Adam's eyes widened. "Joe," he said carefully, and his friend looked at him. "Whatever you do … do not tell anyone else that information."

After Adam was released, the first thing he did was follow Joe to the beach, still talking about the differences between their worlds. Apparently the other him had a fantastic Scizor that had drowned with him, and he was also, incidentally, a blackbelt in judo. His parents were still together, and he didn't have a little sister. He couldn't wait to get home and tell her that she really was the reason they'd split.

"So basically, my life was just … better," he said dimly.

"Yeah, Kanto life is cool," Joe said with a smirk. "But I had to leave it when you guys all died. I got as far as I could with the money I had, and I ended up here."

"Small world," Adam said, and they both laughed. A lot. "So we all lived in Kanto?"

"Yeah, we lived in Celadon," he said. "But your girlfriend lived in Veridian, so you weren't there a whole lot towards the end."

Adam didn't like the way he referred to his parallel death as the end, even though that wasn't technically what he meant. "Wait, girlfriend? What was she like?"

"Fat," Joe replied dully. Adam looked shocked. "I wouldn't have told the other you that – it feels so good to be honest." He laughed. "She was called Millie, and her parents bred Scyther. It was how you met."

"So that's how I don't know her," Adam said to himself.

"You two loved each other too much … it was kinda gross. She bawled through your entire funeral. They had to remove her." He rolled his eyes.

"I've never had a girlfriend," Adam said softly. Joe heard him, and burst out laughing.

"Had the other me ever had one?"

"Well no, you died when you were eight, remember?"

"Oh yeah," Joe said. "I can forgive myself that."

"Where are you taking me?" he asked, after they had walked down the shore for quite a way. Joe responded by pulling off his shirt and trousers, and stood grinning wonkily in his underwear. Adam blinked at him.

"Um, I'm not sure I …"

"We need to swim the rest of the way, doofus," Joe said, rolling his eyes some more. "Don't flatter yourself."

"Oh, ok," Adam said, and pulled off his own clothes, standing in front of his scrawny friend and feeling a little puffy in comparison.

"The other you was a lot more … muscly," Joe said, eying him up before leaping into the sea.

"The other you was a lot more tactful," Adam muttered.

"Hurry up!"

"I'm dragging my blubber as fast as I can," he said, too quiet to be heard, and jumped in too, gasping in horror as the icy coldness enveloped him. It was still drizzling, and the ocean was rough and the colour of steel. He sucked in a breath before being pulled under, then rose to the top again, panting and thrashing.

"Over here!" Joe yelled, doing the backstroke effortlessly over the violent waves.

"I'm … I'm trying," he gasped, and then hacked as cold seawater filled his mouth. He did the doggy paddle after his friend, feeling horribly self-conscious about the fact that he was probably not as good a swimmer as his other self. "Wait f-" Again water filled his mouth and he was sucked under for longer this time. When he emerged, Joe was nowhere to be seen. He coughed and choked, looking around desperately.

"Oi, fatso," the familiar voice laughed, strangely distorted through the seawater in his ears. He turned to see Joe standing on a ledge in the cliff face, at the entrance of a cave. "Come on."

"Ok," Adam wheezed, and managed miraculously to swim the rest of the way without drowning. He pulled himself up onto the ledge as well, shivering like mad. He wondered if he should bother bringing up that he had only just been discharged from the hospital for possible hypothermia.

Joe turned and disappeared into the cave. "Echo!" he yelled, and his voice bounced around the cavern walls. Zubat exploded out of the cave suddenly, making Adam scream and Joe laugh.

"What … what are we going to?"

"You'll see." He started to walk quicker, water sliding off his defined and freckled back. Adam followed, panting hard but trying not to show it.

"Can you give me a clue or something?" he asked.

"It's something the other you would have found awesome, and ever since I discovered it it's hurt me that I couldn't show it to you," Joe said, face set like stone.

"Oh," Adam said. "Ok."

"Here." Joe stopped suddenly and started to scale a rockier part of the wall. Adam swallowed as he watched his friend effortlessly climb up the rock and onto a higher ledge. "Hurry. We need light to see it, and the sun'll go down soon."

"Ok," Adam said again, and, blushing madly, tried to climb up the rock the way the other boy had done.

"Just put your …" Joe said, the irritation in his voice apparent. "Put your leg up. Like … no, not like that." He sighed, and thrust out his arm. "Come on." Adam grabbed onto him and clambered up onto the higher level of the cave, breathing deeply and bright red with embarrassment and exertion.

"Is it far?" he asked timidly. He never remembered there being an obvious leader and follower to this extent when they had been children. Joe looked at him with something that vaguely resembled disappointment, and his heart fell into his feet.

"No," he said simply. "Not far."

After a good five minute power walk they had reached a dead end. Joe navigated carefully around something that Adam couldn't see, using the wall for support, and stood at the other side, about six yards away.

"Don't move," he said. "Wait."

Adam obeyed, trying to see through the darkness in the cave, but it was impossible. He could barely see Joe with the tiny amounts of light creeping through gaps in the rock. Then light flooded in, as Joe pulled the rocks out of the wall. He grinned, and Adam looked at the floor.

A tar pit, or a volcano, or something. The rock ridged up in a circle, and in the middle of the crater was a sizeable amount of thick, black goo. Adam stared at it.

"What … is it?" he asked, hoping this wasn't a stupid question.

There was a pause as Joe looked at it proudly. "It's Morbidark's bed," he said. "It's where he slept if he ever visited this part of Aerei."

"Oh," Adam said, feeling a little disappointed after all the build-up. "I don't mean to sound stupid or anything but … so?"

"So?" Joe repeated, and then took a deep breath, shaking his head. "You're standing in the very place that Death itself chose worthy to tread. Your feet are literally in the same place that his would have been at some point. You're breathing the same air; seeing the same sights … as Death has. Don't you find that cool?"

"What's with the goo?" Adam replied.

"That's the thing; I don't know what it is." He looked up, grinning, hands on hips. His face fell when he saw Adam's confusion. "Sorry," he said after a moment. "I … I guess I thought you'd be more like him."

Adam blinked a couple of times.

He wasn't the same person. This wasn't the Joe he knew, and he wasn't the Adam that Joe knew. They were strangers, brought together by faint memories of different worlds.

"It is cool," he admitted. "But I don't think I get it quite as much as … as he would have."

"Alright," Joe said. "And as for the goo, that's partly why I wanted to show him this so badly." He knelt down to look at it more closely. "He was braver than me. He would have known what to do; whether or not he could touch it." Adam noted the sudden usage of the word him instead of you.

"I'm brave," Adam mumbled.

"What?" Joe asked, looking up.

"Nothing," he said, and knelt down on the other side of the crater. For some reason, and he would never exactly know why, he thrust his hand deep into the goop, and felt around. It went up to his shoulder, and still there was more to go. He removed his arm and sniffed it. The goo smelled like nothing, and as soon as he pulled back, it slipped off, leaving no trace, and pooled in the crater again.

"Weird!" Joe yelled, and then laughed. He scooped some out, keeping it in the palm of his hand. It immediately slid through his fingers and back into the crater. He laughed louder, almost wooping by now, the noise echoing through the cave. He scooped some up again, this time squeezing his fingers together as hard as he could. It still managed to seep through, and slid back into the pit.

"Whoah," Adam said. And soon they were lifting it, chucking it, doing whatever they could think of. It always managed to slip away, back into the pit, leaving no trace. No stain, no wetness, no scent.

"What is it?" Joe whispered, staring at it.

"I dunno," Adam said with a shrug. "But it's gross, and it's dark out now. We should go."

"Yeah, it'll be easier to get out now, the tide will be out."

Adam was secretly immensely relieved.

But when they reached the ledge that they had climbed up inside the cave, they were greeted with water instead of dry cave floor.

"No," Joe said, shaking his head. "No, the tide should be out. And the ocean never comes up this high. The cave hasn't ever flooded." He leapt in the water, leaving Adam standing, confused, on the upper level.

Joe emerged a couple of seconds later, and pulled himself up. "It's no use, it's completely flooded." He shivered. "The storm started. We'll have to wait it out in here."

"The town is flooded?" Adam asked, brow furrowing.

"I dunno," Joe shrugged. "Come on, let's find a place to sleep."

Adam remained standing, staring at the water as his old friend walked past him, a warped memory; it was like they'd never been apart, but at the same time, never ever been together.

"Yeah," he said, after a while. "Ok, Joe."