Part 7: The Grove

Chapter 54: Intermission (1)

Cruce comes to the Grove with his boy-toy Rinavay since Alli's hurt. Not much story progression here, but there's some character development.

I don't own Pokémon.


Cruce

The Grove

I was standing before a big, dead tree, but everything around me was so very much alive.

Even under a red sky, the grass shined green, and the bark of the gigantic oak was saturated with a deep brown. The area it stood over was no bigger that an a football field, speckled with tents and crudely built structures of aluminum, wood, and steel beams salvaged from the wasteland that came before this hidden landscape. In spite of the unsightly nature of the structures themselves, the large flat clearing retained a level of beauty that the unscathed woodland surrounding it didn't appear to match. It was a lot to take in, so I let my head sink to the patch of dirty grass cradling my red, tiny feet. It was cold and damp – frigid, even. There was a lot more hue to the place than a lot of the jumbled up terrain of Autumnridge had, save a particular area that I'd noticed on the way back with Vay.

I remembered that part of town as clearly as though I was there. It was vast, a field of torn chunks of land glittering green with soggy grass, floating islands speckled and ripped apart, creating a disjointed path up to the sky. I blinked. Why were they like this, I thought. Why was anything like this? Was it because of the Trip zones? I could at least understand those and the transformation infection, but having the land itself get uprooted and thrown into the sky, then hang there like gravity was on holiday – what was that all about?

Well, whatever it was, I was here. I was finally 'home', as Vay had called it once before. He passed me by with a gentle rub on the head using his tentacle thingy. I lifted my head to him. He only walked forward a few feet. He knew the Grove. He just didn't know how to feel about it. I noticed that much out of him, his back low, like he wanted to sit down, but he was too weary. He had done a good job of keeping that backpack hooked onto one of his tendril's spikes. Maybe it was weighing down on him. I mean, it looked pretty awkward to hold with the baseball bat sticking out of it. Maybe I shouldn't have picked that up. Oh well. I held my bell steady and approached him. My shoulders shuddered. For a moment, I was overcome with anxiety. It went pretty sour with the cold air, but knowing how much this guy did for me – it was something I could put in my heart and warm me up.

"This is where everyone's at?" I asked him, coming up to his side. I was tempted to put a paw on his back, just underneath the weight I'd asked him to carry. I had my arm up and ready.

"Yup," he said. He looked at me, then noticed my intentions to, erm, touch him. With not much of an indication, he looked away again. "I... Well, jeez, I don't know if everyone'll like me too much after all the trouble I caused them, but you'll fit in. It's your neighbors after all. You can do your human stuff."

"Human stuff..." I repeated under my breath, landing my left paw on his side and holding it still.

The gesture alone made my cheeks tingle, which felt really weird with my new 'eye-patches' here. It blurred my vision a little – actually made me a watery-eyed. For that, I took another gander at this Grove place. There were other fellas around 'n they noticed us. They were pretty taken with home improvement, 'cept the few who came out of the big opening in the tree straight ahead. I could hear murmurs caught in the breeze. More Fluxes, they remarked, and they did it with disgust.

"A'ight, Cheeks," he prompted me, taking a breath and moving away from my paw, only to return, facing me with his whole body. I looked up to him. He was... so much bigger than me, and in every way. I could feel the shadow he cast over me, and it was warm somehow, comforting, and accompanied by a smile trying too hard to be what it already was. "You have anyone here you can bunk with? I oughta handle my own flim-flam and I ain't sure I want you getting involved, so... Go 'head 'n tell me where I should put this junk down so you can get some rest."

"Uhh, where..." I mumbled, looking around Vay at a couple tents just over a small dip in the clearing, thick reeds, rocks, and some smaller trees having congregated around there. Some of those tents were really off on their own, while a good majority of them were clustered together, and I had to guess that some people just called the tree their home. I looked Vay in the eyes. "I don't know what anyone looks like anymore."

"Hah," he puffed, loud. It stole a funny little snorty laugh out of me. "I can't believe you humies sometimes. Can't even sniff each other out."

"Don't act like you wouldn't have the same problem, alien boy." I remarked.

"I found my way back to you underground when you'd already turned into this little charmer, didn't I?" he reminisced, swinging his thin, leafy tail around and tickling at my nose with its strangely soft, black point.

I shuddered again as he tickled. I let him do it, though, 'till I built up enough dignity to step back and push his tail away, a grin crossing my face. I didn't even think about what he said. I just paid attention to how he looked at me.

"Okay..." I droned to him, vision getting a teensy bit fuzzy again. "Maybe. I dunno. This doesn't fix my problem!"

"And I guess you want me to fix it for you?" he offered.

"N'aw, you already brought me here, candy cane." I said. His tail returned to my face, though stroking over my right cheek this time, avoiding the sensitive patch. Favorably, too. I didn't stop it this time. It was a better tickle – a soothing one.

"If anyone here is a candy cane, it's you," he came back. "C'mon, you want me to solve all your problems. Out with it."

"Eheh... yes..." I caved in. I didn't really feel all that bad about it. What was I supposed to do from here? Figure it all out on my own? I was sure I could, but I had here one of the guys supposedly responsible for tweaking my homeland up in the first place, and he was offering to sand down the thorns.

"Then you gotta deal with mine after all," he remarked, tail going still. "And you might not find it very nice."

"It's okay. I'm more willing to help you than I am to help myself right now." I admitted. For his sake, I hoped he could see my blush, but for everyone else, I hoped that it was invisible.

"In that case, should I leave you alone for five minutes, then come back when you're not dumb anymore?" he mused.

I frowned. I could feel the fuzziness of my blush wearing thin, and with the way Vay's sly little smirk turned to wide-eyed regret, my heart found success.

"Now wait, I'm just pullin' your curly tails," he said, taking his front paw and putting it next to my feet. "Don't give me that face."

He was laughing now. We've been really milking this wooey, lovey-dovey talk. I thought it was really fun. I liked to think of us together as being a couple and cracking jokes about how circumstantial it was. It was weird and awesome, even if it felt a little like I didn't know what I was doing with this guy.

"I love it when you do that," I chirped to him, smirking. "Do you do that with everybody?"

"Do what now? Call 'em dumb? Some people take it more seriously than others." said Vay, lifting his head away from me.

"Yeah, like that skywisp who decked you." I reminded him.

"Pbtth," he spat. "I gotta be careful around her. She's actually a humie who bites worse than she barks. And she's with Rayse."

There's that thing with 'humies' again...

"Hey, not to lecture you or anything, but uh, you gotta try and underestimate humans a little less," I advised him. His bright orange eyes darted down and his expression shifted, smile fading. I stepped closer and touched his side, rubbing back and forth as gently as I could. His tail set down onto the grass, then flicked a couple times while I pet his warm fur. "You Champions are transforming us by the masses, and that puts us closer to your level. Pokémon and all that. Um... y'know, we humans aren't all totally helpless like I am. Not saying it'll happen, but... I just don't wanna see your ass get kicked."

"If my ass is gonna get kicked by anybody, it'll BE one of us Champions," he sighed, heading forward with no warning. "This way, Cheeks. Stay close and look cute so people think we're half-decent."

"Oh. Y-yeah, sure, okay." I said, dusting my furry skirt off for no reason other than to give myself the illusion it made me look better. I joined him. We walked to the tree's entrance.

What a gigantic role-reversal. I was never the one told to look cute. It was always that girly sugar ball of a cousin next to me. After all this time, I didn't have a mirror to check myself out, but I was willing to bet that I wasn't ready no matter how long I could see my small hands and feet and no matter how long I'd used them to get around. I wasn't put into this world to be cute. I was put here to protect cute things. Nothing said I couldn't do both, but my confidence had all but been torn apart like wet toilet paper, and that wasn't cute.

At least Vay taught me a few things about being a Pokémon on the way here.

Stepping into the slight change in lighting, I heard the chime of a bell unlike my own.

"Dingaling," somebody young and full of pep exclaimed. I found her sitting on a large wooden desk, white and red and rodent-like, much like yours truly. "We got guests!"

Wow, she was even tinier than me. If she was not sitting right at the edge of the desk, I might not've been able to see anything but her tall dangly rabbit ears. Still, something about seeing a little critter so much like myself sat nice and cozy in my heart. She didn't seem Fluxed up though. That was for the better. For worse, she was pretty absorbed with the silver desktop bell in her stubby arms, dinging it over and over until part of me wanted to battle her with my own bell.

"Yeees, Ericka, we see that! Why did you have to give her that bell?" somebody else said.

Looking around, this was a pretty gnarly amount of space for the inside of a tree. I mean, a hollow tree acting as, like, a community hub of sorts? I'unno. I just got here. I was still getting used to the lighting indoors, and it was comfy enough. There were cardboard boxes stacked ceiling-high at the opposite end of the tree, a ramp leading up to another whole floor, which I had to lean to one side to make sure there actually WAS another floor up there. Check; there was! They had some furniture around, some bulletin boards set up, a nice red carpet over the center of the space on some raised ground. They had a generator with a few appliances hooked up to it and some small Pokémon hovering around it, operating the thing via some... means – I didn't really get what they were doing to it. Mostly looked like they were figuring out how to get it to work. Generator wasn't making noise, so no progress there. It was messy in here, but it was a decent lounge – like, a place full of comforts that people sorted together, brought back, and made work, even though they were all just 'mons now, some of them huge, some small, and all of them bursting with color.

The dinging stopped. Thank God for that.

"Oh my WORD," somebody, uhm, English said. I knew nobody from the U.K. In Autumnridge, so unless they were putting on an accent, they weren't from here. She came up to us, both small gray hands on her cheeks, her pink diamond eyes wide. "Is that YOU, Vay?!"

"Atti?" I asked before I even made the connection. It was her, though. Same girl I bumped into after I woke up, still dressed in her flowy pink gown, big jewel hiding underneath it, sparkly ribbons and all trickling from her. She was still the same refractive light show as before, except she was bigger than me now. I had to look up at her, and from down here, she looked as stunned as she was stunning.

We were gathered around the center of the room. Vay and I were by one another, and just about everyone else was huddled up as far away as they could get while still giving the inflection that they wanted to group up and share some manner of story time with the Champion sitting next to me. I recognized some of these people. The floating green and white girl with a single bandage wrapped diagonally around her head, covering an eye – Paige was here, right beside that creamy orange kid with the butt-wings. Caden was his name. All the rest, well... I knew them as well as I knew myself at the moment; I had no sense of recognition for it.

As for Atti, something was different about her. She actually behaved differently than the girl I'd met before, who I remembered hating the Grove, hating being called a girl, and had less 'parental' qualities than she was putting on display right now.

"I DO hope that you're prepared to explain yourself," she raised her voice to Vay, hands on her big hips. The way she flew forward at us made it look like all the folks behind her were just gathering 'round to watch some drama. "Because I know a handful of Pokémon who are dying to find out what happened to their BROTHER!"

I bit my bottom lip with my buckteeth. Vay wasn't talking back or being his normal rude self, even though that was what I braced myself for.

"And what of YOU, Flux?" she asked. She geared it toward me. I felt my ears raise when I heard her drilling her scolding tone into them. "Why do you wear that bell like it's your own? Have you any clue where it comes from, or do you just pick up any old trinket and wear it? Mm? Oh, right – forgive me. You're Flux. You stumble from one place to another with no aim. Of course you have no respect for these things."

"Di, I'm right here," Vay groaned. "I'm the one who put that thing on him. Don't be yellin' at Cruce."

"Cruce?!" a portion of the crowd all expressed in unison, uproarious.

I brought up one paw and cautiously waved back at the many sets of eyes trying to figure me out. I wasn't that weird. I was one of them! Plus Flux. Bonus, though! Not really. I was still a freak.

"Ooooh, then it makes sense that you have my bat stickin' out of your backpack," Paige spoke up. As gutsy as I remembered her being, she swerved up to Vay and put both puny white hands on the hilt, then pulled the giant object out like it didn't weigh more than her. She looked at it blankly, then blinked. "Wait, no it doesn't. I gave this to Alli."

Alli?

"Paige, I ran into your sister..." Vay started.

"What?! What were you doing – no, never mind that part. Is she okay?!" she clamored.

"No, nowhere near it," Vay said. "She's fully Flux, like how I used to be, and she's under the control of that research facility underground."

"Ugh..." Paige breathed out.

"But I still want to help her. I need more of us Champions backin' me up before I got a chance of doin' her justice." he explained.

"Uh, EXCUSE me, Vay, this is NOT about you being the hero. You know just as well that many Pokémon cannot recover from Flux. You got lucky. You happen to be Gamma. Don't spread misinformation and give these poor people false hopes." said the former Atti. Former, because the kid that used to be in there was out-shined by this new 'gem'.

"What about Alli and Kat?" Caden piped up. "Those two turned into Fluxes, but they were okay!"

"I don't know much about Kat, but I should say Alli is... eeeeh, special," the diamond Pokémon searched for an excuse. "Even if she's not a Champion or a Symbi."

"Symbi...!" I thought aloud. That was another thing of Topher's. Crossblades, Symbis – why were they all part of this?

"Alright, what about the Flux standing right in front of you, Di? What about Cruce here?" Vay said, just serving to brighten the spotlight that was already blinding me.

"Humph... I suppose he does seem... functional." 'Di', stirred, crossing her arms and closing her eyes about halfway, watching me from up above like she was superior. 'Guess she might've been.

"Cruce is SUCH a cute Pokémon though! LOOK AT HIM; OOOOOH I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT ONE!" the Pokémon colored like myself hopped in place. A blue variant of the same one standing next to her put its paw over the top of her head to stop her from jumping. She let out a long whine.

"Urm, s-sorry," he apologized for her. "I'm Derrick, and she's Ericka – sh-she uhm, likes things that are... you know – like her. Special!"

"HEY!" Ericka screeched, pushing her forehead into Derrick's cheek.

"Please stop doing this to me..." Derrick requested, not even shifting in stance – he just stood there lazily and let Ericka push him.

Same Derrick from Davidson's class, I hope.

"You go to Metedia, don't you?" I asked him.

He opened his mouth, but...

"Weeeee go to Metedia!" said the red, female version of him, moving her face in front of his. "We're both Ericka!"

"No," Derrick pushed her head down, revealing his. "We're both DERRICK."

"NOOO, we're both ERICKA!"

"We started as Derrick!"

"Then we BECAME Erickas!"

"You literally made up that name when-..."

Derrick didn't finish the though. The two were touching noses at this point and Ericka was the only one smiling when she'd realized Derrick ran out of things to say. He just gave up and pushed her out of the way. She yelped, fell over, and he stepped over her. I laughed, because these two were amazing and I wanted to be a part of it. Before I could say anything, though, Vay actually spoke over me.

"Derrick 'n Ericka. I never told you this, but we transformed together." Vay chuckled.

"Uhh...?" hummed the little blue one. The little red one was laying in front of her sibling, eyes on Vay.

"I found this out about myself underground. I'm Danithan – or, at least, I used to be." he revealed – no big deal for me, since he'd let me know on our trip back home.

This got a blush out of me 'specially surrounded by so many folks. It was 'cause, well I... I had some naughty feelings for him. DANITHAN, of all people. Despite being put on the spot and made to look like poorly behaved kids by this 'Di' girl, I smiled to myself, accepting the weirdness and wearing it like a badge. He and his confused accent were great and everyone should have agreed.

Actually, no – no one else agree. He's mine.

Man I'm tired.

"Huh?!" Ericka gasped. "You're Danny B?! But Danny B was a quilava!"

"It's okay. I know what happened," Caden said, wings pattering right next to the two bunny things (he was kind of a bunny thing of his own). "He's not the same person anymore. He was taken over, just like Atti was."

"I... Yeah. I don't suppose Victini is around. You're not like him." said Vay.

"Nope. Still Caden," the boy shook his head. "But all of the Champions have called me Victini now. Some people call me VC. I like VC. You can call me that if you want, but not Victini please."

"Daaang, after all this time worrying about Danithan, too." Derrick commented.

"I knooow, and Laura and Mariposa and Joel and John. Everyone's gone..." Ericka pouted. She was laying on her back, limbs all hugged as close to her chest as she could get them.

Hearing that didn't speak volumes to what Vay once told me. He said that all of my neighbors were probably going to be here, but the only ones I recognized were the Pokémon I'd already met, plus Derrick and his 'addition'. A few other quiet onlookers were around. I wished one of them would speak up. Maybe I was making them nervous by watching them too hard.

"The whole Stand? What about Mr. Davidson?" Vay asked. So weird – he was actually worried about humans he knew before changing?

What about Zatch? Vay doesn't want Jirachi to be Zatch, but she's part of him. Maybe...

Maybe that's something Vay's gotta try and come to terms with. Zatch, Zack, Vince – they're nowhere to be seen, and they were his best friends.

"Mr. Davidson's up on the top floor," Paige answered. "Once Diancie's done screaming at you, you should go see him."

"Honestly," 'Diancie' sighed. "I just can't find purpose in it. What am I scolding you for? Being Fluxed? I can't be asked to waste my breath with it. Not in public, anyway."

"Uh-huh, thanks Di," Vay scoffed. "Then y'all don't mind if we take our chat somewhere private?"

"Don't look at us." said Paige. She shrugged.

"We—hey, me?! I'm a person! Hi, me," I cut in, gesturing with my paws to my torso. "What're we doing? Can I sleep yet?"

The more I thought and fussed about it, the more I wanted... to yawn... My lips parted and I inhaled noisily, exhaled squeakily, covering my mouth about halfway through the familiar feeling, muscles relaxing – I could fall over right here. Something came over me, stroking me between the ears. Then, the same thing yanked me into its owner. My bell rang. I was pressed against a surface of coarse white fur. I tucked my paws somewhere into the surface, shoved my shoulders toward it, and leaned like a baby. Vay put his head over mine and continued brushing my back with what I ventured being one of his paws. He still stood up holding all his weight, my own, and all the stuff of a stranger's. I closed my eyes and pretended I wasn't in public.

His strokes felt so great. He combed through my fur with his claws on occasion, trickling down my skin, as I listened to the vibrations in this throat while he spoke over me, for me.

I'm so useless.

"None of you owe me nothin', but could Cruce here get somewhere to rest up? He 'n I've been hikin' a long time." Vay rumbled.

"Ech, yeah it looks like you two could get a room." Paige said. I pushed my face into Vay a little harder, 'till everything was just dark. I heard a tiny yelp of resistance come from his throat.

"H-he's just... horny, when he's tired." Vay stuttered.

"Brilliant," Diancie laughed, taking a moment to compose herself with a few quick giggles. "Now you've put me in a good mood."

"That's good for both of us," Vay mused. "Alright. Cheeks, be back in a hot minute."

After Vay let me free, which I contested with a few sleepy moans, he left me with all my unfamiliar neighbors and this backpack of mysteries. Derrick called a tall, bird-esque Pokémon down to help me out. The guy stood on two legs, had this red feathery jumpsuit thing going on, and the craziest white hair I'd seen. When I learned that this was my English teacher, I clapped my tiny paws together in a moment of glee. Maybe I was losing my mind, but the idea that anybody and everybody was a candidate for transformation was funner than before, now that I had friendly people around me that weren't all Fluxes and maniacs.

I followed Davidson up a couple floors. We stopped off at the third, which was more of an eyesore than its predecessors. It had the carpet in the middle of the room like the two before it, but there was so much more unorganized junk sitting everywhere, some of it in use at this moment, most shoved into a corner to collect dust until somebody knew what to do with it. This was, 'course, going off of assumptions.

"Here we are." Davidson cued me, taking the torn backpack by one of its straps and putting it on a glass coffee table occupying the very center of the big, round room. He hesitated, holding the strap in his three-fingered hands, then set it on the rug instead. I smiled at him. Guy was thinking of me and my short stature!

Er, well... It wasn't my stuff, so I shouldn't have been too bothered if it was out of reach.

"It sure ain't five stars, huh?" he chuckled, looking around at the piles of boxes, electronic equipment, miscellaneous parts, and even fully sized, upstanding lockers.

"It's okay...!" I said. I was so tired...

"I'll get you a blanket and a pillow," he offered, walking off to one of the lockers, fingers meticulously turning the dial one way, then another, then another, the soft sound of little bumps clicking over other little bumps, scratchy friction, tumbler and bolt reacting to metal reacting to other metal. "You can have a little nap before Young gets back. He'll want to talk with you."

"Young...?" I yawned, eyes shutting, ears folding back. The next time I opened my eyes, they were watery, the sting of the yawn still pulsing through my neck.

"He's our big boss for the time being," he described. Sounds scary, I thought. A clank came from the locker, metal parts separating. Davidson pulled the rusty metal slab from the thing, a few fluffy puffs sagging out the moment he opened it. He took one, then reached high and took something else white and fuzzy, and closed the locker. I rubbed my eyes, but I could still kind of see what he was doing. He carried the two soft objects over to me. "He's outside right now, but I'll go let him know you're here and resting."

"Oh. Okay." I mumbled. I didn't care, but I didn't want to say that to him. He was doing all this nice stuff for me.

The pillow he brought over was fleecy and lavender. It smelled like somebody else's house. Everything smelled like somebody else's house, but I could only make just about as much sense of all of it as my body was telling me to lay down, shut up, and forget I had problems. I ran a paw over the puffy pillow. I liked it. It felt all soft and squishy, like me.

Davidson, looking at me with the blanket's ends pinched between his fingers, waiting until I was looking back at him. Then, he smiled and simply let the thing go over my face, the whole room going warm with my breath, thousands of tiny lights pouring through the porous surface folding around my form.

"Perfect." he said. I agreed. I could've fallen asleep like this.

I sat back, leaned up against something – it must've been the backpack. Still had the blanket over me. In this cold weather, my breaths collecting under the soft material was warming me back up as quickly as cuddling up with Vay would've done. Pretty sure I would've rather had that other option over this though.

"I'll be right back, alright? Hey, don't suffocate under there." he told me.

Swiftly, I reached up and threw the blanket over my own head, showing my tired, smiling face to him, and mostly showing him I had full control over my breath. I would'a told him I'd been in way worse situations concerning breath, but... too tired.

Davidson left me up here alone, the oaken, lived-in scent my only company. Well, no. This backpack had a few things to keep me occupied. Nestled up against the fleecy pillow and bundled tight with the blanket over my shoulders, I looked at it, the object punctured and ripped all the way through. It still functioned, o'course. A cut down the back and front wasn't going to stop it from holding things. Not much, anyway.

Seconds from thumping over and forgetting why I was interested in the backpack, I fought my own Z's back, using my tails to help scoot me and my tiny butt forward. I wrapped my legs halfway 'round the backpack, 'cause that was as far as they could go. I used my feet to drag it a little closer, let the blanket drop into my belly region, and instead hugged around the backpack, tilting it my way, looking for a zipper for the large pouch. Both were all the way down on the left. I used both paws to pull one over the top, and the big mouthy backpack opened up in front of me.

"Mmmkay..." I moaned to myself. "I opened you before, but... never got a good look."

That was a lie. I knew that Al's prized jacket was in here, proving he was a tried 'n true 'Metedia Matador' over all of us. I put Pat's locket in here with Emelina's hair clip thingy. Circle stuff.

It had a Maximilius family photo. I dug around for it. It was at the bottom, along with something else. These paws could only pick one of those things up. I went for the photo. Enough fidgeting got it out and around Al's jacket.

I sat back and looked at it, holding it up. I had a nice view of my white, furry arms while I looked at my lightly sepia-tinted human face in the picture. I remember that moment. Tophs on one side of me, Molly Dolly on the other, and they ambushed me – they squished me, and all I could do was pretend like I had it all under control. I 'smiled' for the camera. Mom and Pops were standing behind all us bratty kids, making sure we didn't go overboard, damage equipment, make a scene. God, this was so long ago, and looking at it knowing I was... what I was now – it just...

I was too tired to feel anything for this. I put it in my lap and rustled around in the backpack for the hard object I felt earlier. It was roughly the same shape, but smaller, and once I got it out, it brightened up, icons flaring to life on a rectangular screen. This was...

Isn't this Nick's phone?

First thing I noticed about it was the unread text message. Carefully keeping it steady in one paw, I swiped the screen with the other and checked the message feed. On his 'most recent' list, he had Kieran, then Al.

"Kieran...?" I mouthed. I poked into the conversation.

The latest message read, "I'm stuck at Delta Meadow".

The next bubble up read, "Hey, this is Al. Are you okay?"

Al, I thought. Al...

I took a moment, kept looking at the screen 'till it went black. Then, I looked at my family photo resting against my belly – just the back of it.

I needed to check more. I navigated to messages that Al had sent. Nick had responded to the most recent one. The diction didn't look quite like Nick's normal text-talk. He always put a silly emote face in and texted with proper capitalization and punctuation. This was bland; it had none of that.

"yes please darling use that cute skywisp tail of yours" said the text. Kind of kinky out of context, I thought.

The message was more proper. My eyes glazed over it for a while, before finally making the connection and absorbing the words in front of my face.

They read, "Hey, my tail can totally charge my phone up haha. Does yours need more battery?"

'My tail can totally charge'...

I looked back at my tails. I didn't see how it was possible.

But this was a skywisp that they were talking about.

'That' skywisp.

"Alli..." I gasped. "Alli... Al?"

...

To Be Continued...