More days passed after we got our first bonfire, and after a couple more nights, what else was there to say? Other than a few new berries tasted and moves learned, we started to fall in some kind of weird routine. As much a routine as being a Pokémon could allow, you know. Nothing changed much since the last portal, so why did we bother? Maybe if we kept our attention occupied, we wouldn't wonder how our families were doing. Was that it? I didn't know.

It was early morning, early enough that the sun wasn't up yet. Chloe had nudged me awake a few minutes ago, relieving Gab and herself from their shift. At this point, I didn't feel like we needed those anyway. There'd been no trace of any Pokémon other than us in this forest. Actually, forget Pokémon; no regular animals or bugs had shown up. The only living beings were us and the plants. We hadn't even found new notes or another dummy. We were running out of directions to go and look.

We'd kept the camp at PowerPoint Point— what we'd jokingly started to call that one dirt spot with the bonfire. We'd taken to stopping the fire as soon as morning came, so it was out by the time I was woken up. I looked around and noticed that Micheal had already gotten up and left. Maybe Chloe had come to him first.

I walked closer to the berry pile, now set past the unlit fire pit and on the grass. Close to them was Gab, still awake and working under the dim light of the few stars left. She was doing something with leaves. I didn't know if it was some sort of camping game, so I got closer. As I did, it looked more and more like something actually intricate. She'd taken down a full frond from the Persim bush and was making patterns with the leaves, the cave notes neatly put aside. It took a second for Gab to notice me next to her, and she jumped, startled.

"Good morning," she mumbled.

"What are you doing?" I asked, pointing a stinger at her handiwork.

"Oh, this?" Gab replied, before lifting it up. "I learned how to braid palm leaves in seventh grade. Persim leaves are long and sturdy enough for them to be a substitute."

"... I think I skipped that class."

"Oh, um, it wasn't at school," she said. "It was at church. My mom ran my catechesis group while I was the age for it, so I pretty much had to attend."

"Ah."

"Yeah, the woes of growing up Catholic," she laughed.

She only got a confused stare back from me, and she started awkwardly fidgeting with her hands, before grabbing the leaves again. This all happened in a few seconds. Was she expecting a laugh or something?

"So, uh, yeah. I know how to do it, and now I'm using it to make a backpack for the notes."

"And food, I hope?"

"... oh, yeah, food too," She said, cracking a smile a few moments after. "It's a lot less time-consuming to make it Emolga-size than human-size, am I right?"

She glanced at me with a hopeful look, and I let out a small, forced laugh. Man, did her jokes ever land? Or make sense? I felt bad for thinking it, but she had a hard time with delivery. She was kind of a tough person to be around.

"Yeah. Right. Well, your shift is done. You can go to sleep if you want."

She nodded at that and picked up her frond, heading back toward the sleeping spot. I glanced at the Persim berry pile and jabbed at one with a stinger, reasoning that if I was a Poison type it wouldn't matter if the berry was affected. It didn't taste any different than usual. I ate a couple more, walked to a spot next to a tree, and sat down.

This was my first morning shift; Micheal and I had always ended up getting the first one. I could've guessed it was the last shift even if I didn't know it in advance; the sky was definitely starting to gain a lighter blue tint. Also, thanks to Chloe's star trick, I noticed that we were close to the right time for dawn. The sun was rising somewhere past the forest, lessening the chill somewhat.

One more day here. Will you do anything that doesn't go straight to the trash?

I wasn't one to mull over things, or at least I told myself that. I blamed it on the fact that I now had so much time to think outside of school and video games. Whether I liked them or not, they were a distraction.

There was a haze passing through the forest, the culprit for putting dew on the grass. Humidity clung in the air all around, but came with the inherent cold of mornings. It wasn't unpleasant— just different than I was used to. I hadn't been up this early in months.

I glanced over at Micheal. He'd ended up sitting on a dry spot next to a nearby tree, his black fur gaining a sheen under the sun's pale yellow light. He seemed to be zoned out, staring at the first few sunbeams that filtered through the canopy. He eventually caught my own tired gaze and walked the couple meters between us.

"How's it going?" He asked, lying down on the grass next to me. He shivered at his side's contact with the morning dew, but looked fine otherwise.

"Could be better," I sighed.

Silence settled in, as per usual with the two of us. Whenever I would go over and talk to him during class, or the rare lunch occasion, I'd had plenty to talk about. Now, however, I'd run out of things to say. Somehow. We'd turned into Pokémon and swapped universes, but it still felt more fun to make jokes about a bad substitute teacher back home.

"It's nice out," he finally said.

"Yeah. Reminds me of camping," I acquiesced. "You half-expect a deer to pop out any second."

"Would we have to fight it, you think?" He joked.

I chuckled. "Depends. If it has flowers growing on its horns, I guess?"

"What about that rainbow one that was on the covers a while back?" He stretched, and I started to hear movement behind us. My antennae twitched at the sudden sound.

"Xerneas?" I asked. "That's a legendary, dude. It would kill us."

I turned around after that, willing to give my instincts a chance. A familiar Swablu was hopping about closer to us. Her blue feathers were sticking out on one side, as if she'd been lying down.

"I thought your shift was over," I told her.

"I don't think I can sleep when it's so bright out," Chloe sighed. "Mind if I join you?"

"No problem," Micheal said.

And so Chloe sat between us. She shook herself out, fluffing up her feathers in the brisk weather.

I winced, thinking back to the night of my... outburst. That was half a week ago. Time had flown deceptively fast while in here, and a rut had settled in. I was unfortunately not one to call out the status quo.

However, Micheal apparently hated awkward silence and us not moving forward with a passion. He looked at me, then to Chloe, then back to me. He motioned to her with his head and coughed when I didn't get the hint. I answered his odd behaviour with a shrug and a confused look. I didn't understand what he was getting at, and Chloe had been spacing out for a while.

"Wow, the sky's looking good," he blurted out.

Really? Now, that, I couldn't ignore. Micheal shot an earnest smile my way, which I returned with an automatic eye roll. I had to admit, he had a way of superseding condescension with an impression of honestly wanting to help.

It was enough to make me resign myself to asking for help.

I sighed. "Hey Chloe, can you show me how to fly?"

Chloe couldn't hide her smile. She turned to Micheal. "Are you good for the rest of the shift?"

"Yeah," he nodded, laying down on the grass. "If there's any trouble, Valérie's over there. She can go yell at it."

"Okay! Come on, there's a clearing over there that's a great spot for takeoff."

She'd said that as she took off herself, leaving me to wonder if she was deliberately babying me or not. I sighed and ran after her, wings hanging behind me. Hopefully, they wouldn't just be ornaments by the next hour.

By the next hour? Ha. At the rate we were going, I'd be lucky to take off by Valentine's Day. If I'd even stay here for that long.

We were, as Chloe had announced, on a hill with few trees in our way at the bottom. The idea had been that I could get a longer running start to help with liftoff. I'd been patient enough with Chloe's quasi-lecture about air currents, flight patterns, and just how sore a bad landing could make you. All of that didn't matter if my dumb wings didn't want to work.

The conversation had devolved from somewhat constructive to downright desperate, as Chloe tried to find a solution and I lay down on the grass, having completely given up.

"My wings are where my arms used to be, so I bet it's easier," The Swablu said. If she still had said arms, she'd have brought her fist in front of her mouth in thought. "I knew how to move them from memory. We have to figure out where the muscles are, and then focus on them."

"Focus on them? Just focus on them?"

"Kieran—"

"I tried focusing on my wings, and it didn't work!" I groaned, sitting up and crossing my stingers.

Later, I'd realize Chloe's patience and be extremely grateful for it. This angel didn't even sigh or roll her eyes as she continued. "Kieran. When you want to move your arm, you're actually using your shoulder, pecs and back muscles. That combination working together makes it possible for your arm to move in all the directions it can. Then, to bend your elbow, you're using the muscles in your upper arm."

I ignored the fact that Beedrill had twig-like arms that could miraculously stab people without the need for muscle mass. "What are you getting at?"

"When you lift your arm, you don't focus on your wrist. So for your wings, you start with where they connect."

She hopped on my back stinger quicker than I could stop her, and I suddenly felt the soft tip of her wing pressing against the spot right between my shoulder blades. "Try around here."

This was stupid. I would've figured something like that out right when I'd tried. I flexed whatever muscle was at both sides of where Chloe was pointing and—

A twitch.

"Holy crap," I said.

Chloe let out a gleeful laugh. "They moved! They moved!"

I barely registered what Chloe said after that. I only saw her bring her wings up and bringing herself above the trees at the bottom of the hill. There was nothing left to do but accept the invitation to follow her. I ran, leaving a quarter of the hill to myself as liftoff room, jumped, and willed my wings to start beating.

I was not prepared for how flight would feel.

It blew my mind. I ascended fast, taking care to avoid branches above me. It wasn't weightlessness, it was also super-speed that let you go on the X, Y and Z axes. I'd somehow never thought of just how fast something as mundane as a seagull was. Flight was just that fast in and of itself.

A wall of wind hit me as soon as I was above the tree line. I steadied myself and rode through the air currents, the soft buzz of my wings audible when the winds let down a little. I now flew with complete freedom in the direction we were supposed to head toward. Glee wasn't even a good enough word for what I felt. I laughed and laughed, Chloe doing the same above me. I always thought Icarus was stupid for wanting to reach the sun, but now I completely understood him. As high as my wings would allow was also how high I wanted to go.

I spotted some landmarks along the way.

"You see that stump there?" I shouted to Chloe.

"Yeah?" She answered, in a voice I knew was straining but was barely above the wind.

"That's the tree Valérie tore down," I yelled back.

Indeed, there it was! I was surprised to see it so clearly. Chloe had Swablu eyes to help, but I hadn't even considered that Beedrill would have great long-distance eyesight as well, since I'd only seen enclosed areas so far.

Chloe and I had gone so fast it was insane. Sure, it took effort, and I knew my back would be sore the next day, but we'd covered in two minutes the walk Valérie and I had done in an hour. We flew past the tree, going farther than what the entire group had seen before.

As fun and exhilarating as it was, I started to get an eerie feeling of dread building up within me. It was like looking at a bad drawing of someone and not seeing what was off, but knowing something was. I couldn't explain it. At least, I couldn't until I noticed where the trees ended.

They just stopped, and so did the land. Way up in the sky, it was obvious the horizon line wasn't there. Somewhere along the forest, everything stopped and all that remained was an endless void. I only saw that happen to our left, but I had a feeling that if we maneuvered closer to the center of the forest, we'd see it from all sides. Wherever we were, it was a finite level.

I'd stopped moving to hover in place. It didn't take long for Chloe to approach me, but she still had to fly circles around me to stay in the air. I guess there was a hidden advantage to Beedrill flight.

"You see that too, right?" She asked. The wind was still screeching in my antennae, but not nearly as loud as before.

"That out-of-bounds glitch waiting to happen? Yeah, I do. We should check it out—"

A hum made itself known. It started as a ringing noise, but grew in volume until it became close to unbearable. I had to land now. Poor Chloe looked the same as I felt when I opened my eyes. The sound had mutated into more than that; I was starting to see a vivid picture in my mind's eye.

I remember making contact with a branch and gripping it tightly, but not much else. My wings stopped beating, jutting straight out in a tense position. My eyes were closed, but I saw something clear as day. An orange dog padded over to the end of the world and hesitantly put a claw against it. The wall almost looked made of crystal, with transparent planes that stopped anything from entering. I only recognized the dog as a Growlithe when it started to dematerialize. It just got broken down to its essential pixels and got sucked into the out of bounds area, leaving no trace behind. That was creepy enough, but the noises it made... it was scared to death. The second the Growlithe buzzed out of existence, it left me with the scenery it left behind— a thick jungle with dark green leaves and purple puddles.

"Okay, we won't go!" I yelled.

And then it was quiet. I opened my eyes to find our forest back in full. The sun, now near its zenith, filtered through the canopy to the undergrowth some twenty feet below me. Chloe was perched on a tree right next to me. I finally let go of my branch, sitting up as best I could. The branch wobbled with my movement, but I was fine with any sensation that brought me back to the here and now.

"The hell was that?" Was all I could say.

"That poor Growlithe..." Chloe said, trembling. "I don't know."

"I guess something's telling us not to go out of bounds," I continued. "Message received!"

There was no sign that anything heard us. No new breeze, no other vision, no... voice. Call me silly and hopeful, but it would've been reassuring to know that the thing that put us here at least understood us. As of then, I just didn't know.

We flew down to the grass. I fudged the landing and fell on my knees. My attempts to get back up were fruitless. It felt heavy to be on the ground again. I resigned myself to trying again when I'd caught my breath.

"What's that, though?" Chloe asked, breaking the silence.

"So it's contacting you—"

"No! Gosh, no," Chloe answered. "I meant that."

I looked away from the ground to face the trees in the direction Chloe was pointing to with her wing. Past the trees, there looked to be a clearing. And just past that was...

"A giant hive?" I asked.

Chloe nodded. Sure enough, that's what it looked like. We'd seen smaller ones up in the trees, but this one was nearly the size of an average human adult. To be more specific, it resembled a paper wasp's nest; even from where I stood, I could recognize the rough texture I'd seen on some nature documentary.

I took a step forward, but Chloe fluttered and landed just in front of me.

"What if we're not supposed to?" She asked.

I put my sarcasm to use, hoping something would hear me and then tell me if I was being an idiot. "Boy, I sure want to head to that hive and possibly fight a monster! Anything wrong with that?"

Chloe tensed next to me. No vision or sign came forward. She sighed in relief and I shrugged, but internally, I was groaning. Again, communicating would've been nice, but there was no answer. Maybe whatever had sent the vision had stopped listening... or it wanted us to keep going forward. I chose the latter. If we wanted to press on, though, we'd need reinforcements.

I came back to the satisfying sight of Valérie getting hit in the back of the head by a stray Ember. The pile of sticks a few meters away— the initial target— had remained untouched, but dark burn marks covered the surrounding ground. Micheal's aim was clearly not improving, but I felt fine with it for now.

"Ow!" The Meditite shouted. "Watch it! That could've gone in my eye!"

"I'm so sorry!" He exclaimed.

I landed, making sure to hover in place before stopping my wings and dropping the last couple feet between the ground and I. Thankfully, I stayed upright for that one.

"Grab some Oran berries, you'll be fine," I told Valérie. "Get a Rawst too."

"Why?" She groaned.

"It's the one for burns," Chloe added, landing next to me.

She sighed and threw her hands up. "Yeah, makes sense."

"Nice landing, by the way," Chloe whispered to me, nudging my leg with her wing.

As Valérie made her way to Lola and Gab, asking which berries even were Rawst, Chloe and I gave our report. Didn't have much of a choice; Micheal barrelled over to us.

"So you learned to fly—"

"Micheal, we found something," I interrupted, with more intensity than I'd intended.

He looked taken aback. "...What was it? A portal?"

"No," Chloe replied. "We think it might lead to one, though."

I elaborated. "It's this giant hive we found. It's gotta have a boss in it."

"If the monster dungeon theory's correct," Chloe quickly added.

Micheal looked from side to side, then back to us. "Got it. We'll get everyone together and gather supplies."

"Supplies? How?" I asked.

All he answered with was a flick of his tail as he walked toward the rest of our group.

Past the fireplace and near the berry pile, Valérie sat, putting berries into something I hadn't seen in a while: a container. Lo and behold, the frond backpack was actually done! I saw a glimpse of the notes at the bottom and briefly hoped that the berries wouldn't stain them. Gab was only now finishing up the straps, and once they were tight and sturdy enough, she put the braided bag on her back and lifted it.

That was some perfect timing.

"Let's pick up the pace, people," Micheal declared, the Litleo leading the charge.

Lola, who'd been laying down next to the backpack station, lifted her head and begrudgingly followed at the back of the group.