Not much to say before it starts. Review and let me know what you think i guess. Thanks to everyone who reads, this fic got much bigger than i thought it would this early, and i want to try and retain that momentum. Heres chapter 6

Caught in the Crossfire

'Its been another week in this world'

'My name is Ian, and I was a human, who somehow ended up in the mystery dungeon world' for the past 14 days I've either been travelling with my partner, Ava, or doing missions in frosted village. I'm on my tenth days of missions now. Most days, we just scout out new dungeons, or routes along the region. Not much else has happened, and as much as I'm content… I miss home. I'm having a harder time remembering it than I should, considering its only been 2 weeks. Maybe it has something to do with my transformation. Thank god I have this journal.'

'Oop, I gotta go. We're leaving for a joint mission today with another team. Ian, October 2nd, 2021.'

The journal closed, and Ian found himself outside mere moments later in front of Neo and Nova.

"So you guys know what you're doing today?" Nova said to Ian and Ava.

"Sure do. Partnering with another team for a mission. What team, though?" Ava said.

"You'll be with Team Crossfire today." Neo said, before…

"We have to work with them?" A voice behind Ian said

"Yep. you have to work with "them". Don't start a fight, you 4. If you guys fail the mission, all 4 of you fail. You wanna pass? Get along." Nova explained, eying Edison while he did so.

"Lets just get this over with, we can go back to normal tomorrow." Ian quietly said.

"What was that?" Neo shot a look at Ian

"Nothing."

"Good."

"You already have the location marked on your maps. A dungeon nearby called "frosted glacier." it's on the north front of the mountain. Mostly low level ice types. Worst case scenario, you come across a few Sneasel while you're there. Now get. You don't have all day!" Nova explained, before shooing them off.

The 4 of them ran off, towards the west face of the mountain, where a trail was situated.

"So the frosted glacier is along here?" Ian said, early into their walk.

"Yeah, didn't you read the map this morning? We made sure to. Jeez." Edison scoffed.

"Well excuuuse me princess for not being Mr. Cartographer." Ian retorted sarcastically. 'Its nice no one here will get that reference, hehehe…'

"What did you call me?" Edison said

"Oh nothing."

"Thought so."

As they walked, the two groups bickered, but stuck together for the most part. Team Crossfire was usually leading, but Supernova sometimes lead, particularly when the trail walked along the top of steep slopes or cliffs.

After a while though, they seemed to come across a large sheet of ice originating from higher up on the mountain. The ice sheet had a large hole in it, and seemed to be hollow on the inside.

"Is this it?" Ava asked, as they stopped about 50 feet from the hole in the massive sheet of ice.

"Seems like it. You two going in first?" Kelvin asked. He seemed antsy to get going.

"Sure, if you want we can go first I guess." Ian responded, packing up his bag as he started off towards the glacier.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Ava questioned

"How bad of an idea could it be? Neo and Nova thought we could do it. We easily can. They didn't see the ruins coming the other day, and we were fine."

"Barely!"

"You too love-birds getting in a fight?" Edison taunted.

"Fuck off eddy" Ian responded.

Ava shot Edison a glare, before she followed Ian into the glacier, Edison and Kelvin snickering all the while.

As they walked into the hole in the ice, a feeling washed over the 4 of them. It was the same one every dungeon gave upon entry, and everyone shuddered.

"Ooh, still don't like entering these things." Ian remarked/

"You scared? Come on." Kelvin taunted, as he and Edison continued on into the dungeon.

"Shut up." Ian tried to retort, while he and Ava followed team Crossfire.

The inside of the dungeon was odd. It was like a large cave made of ice, but the floor was a mixture of mud and ice. Every step was either cold, wet, or both. The ceiling was a thin sheet of ice that let enough light in to see, but not enough to discern any features. The walls of the dungeon were all crystal clear ice reflecting the 4 of them.

It was during this time that Ian noticed small irregularities between the different Eevee. His and Ava's coats were longer and less groomed, Ava's tail was slightly shorter, Edison's fur was a lighter shade, etc. small things like these were noticed, but not commented on by the former human as they travelled through the cold dungeon.

Eventually, the group reached a small open room, with a hallway at the other end, and there was a Beartic in the middle of the room, doing something with an Ursaring corpse.

"Eugh… lets try and sneak by…" Ian remarked. As if on cue, however, the Beartic stopped feasting and turned to face the 4 foxes that were looking at it. It growled lowly.

"Oh come on! You think you can take the 4 of us?!" Edison yelled

"What are you doing?!" Ava yelled at him, before momentarily the Beartic roared, and some icicles crashed down from the ceiling.

"Shit!" Ian yelled, as the 4 of them dodged the icicles. Ian and Edison went left, while Ava and Kelvin went right.

The Beartic roared again, causing more icicles to crash down on the Eevees. 3 nearly landed on Ava and Kelvin, but missed. On the other side however…

"AGH!" an icicle had gotten a good 3 centimeters into kelvins back leg, and it began to bleed. In response, Ian shot a shadow ball at the Beartic, which only seemed to anger it more. It raised its arms up to smash down on Ian, but before it could do so, another Eevee latched itself onto the Beartics back.

"THIS IS FOR EDISON!" Kelvin yelled, as he dug his teeth into the Beartics back. It didn't do much other than draw a little bit of blood. The Beartic yelled, and swung around to grab the Bevee off its back.

Ava hadn't sat there and just watched. When Kelvin went berserk on the Beartic, she tried firing off a shadow ball at its face. Ian had also scrambled out of the way, and ran around to its back, and jumped up to headbutt it in the back of the head. When it connected, Ian fell back, dazed.

"Son of a bitch… don't… do that… again." he said, as he sat there on the ground, rubbing his head with his front paws trying to get rid of the pain. The Beartic had ignored Ian's headbutt, and managed to pull off kelvin. Kelvin was thrown at Edison, who had been sitting there trying to stop the bleeding from the icicle as much as possible, when Kelvin landed on him. The two began to bicker, while Ian was sitting there, dazed.

Ava was the last one left, but surprisingly, the Beartic didn't focus on her, instead on the injured Edison and Kelvin, who had been sitting there arguing about something, when the Beartic roared again, dropping more icicles on the pair of Eevee. They were too busy to notice, until another icicle pierced Kelvin's back leg, prompting a scream.

Ava had had enough, and launched herself at the small wound caused earlier by kelvin, and tore into it, widening it by a lot. It must have hit an artery in the Beartics neck, because not 2 seconds later, the Beartic fell over, dead on the ground, Ava growling angrily at it.

Ian had seemed to have shaken off the confusion, and he got up, and got a good eyeful of what had happened. Ava sitting there on the Beartic, which had died from a neck wound, and Edison and Kelvin sitting there on a pile on the ground a few feet away, covered in blood and broken shards of ice.

"What the hell happened?!" he said, before getting up and meeting Ava at where Team Crossfire had been.

"After your dumb ass tried to headbutt an ice type, we got FUCKING icicles stuck in our legs! They've melted, but still! You didn't even help us!" Edison yelled at Ian

"Didn't help?! Ava killed that thing! How isn't that helping?!" Ian retorted

"Look, guys. Its dead. Please just calm down." Ava said, trying to subdue everyone. "The dungeon might be getting to you if you're going to yell like that."

"Still! We're fucking bleeding and cant walk, and what are you doing?!" Kelvin yelled.

"Look, we'll get you out of here, obviously!" Ian said. "Here, can you at least use your other three legs?"

Edison tried to stand, and found it very hard. "Yes, but I sure as shit cant walk doing this." Kelvin had done the same, and winced.

"Here, each of you lean on one of us." Ava said. Team crossfire each leaned up against one of the members of team Supernova, and the 4 of them slowly walked out of the room.

About an hour later, they had gotten out of the dungeon without any more Pokémon jumping out on them. Team Crossfire had to continue leaning on the other two Eevee, and now that everyone was out, they all took a break.

"You know, once we get back, you guys will have to get those checked out. If you don't clean them, you might get an infection or something." Ian said, examining Edison's leg.

"Yeah of course idiot! There's a healer there! And the fuck do you mean by infection?" Edison yelled, confusedly.

"I, uh"

"C'mon guys, lets just go." Ava interrupted, as she let Kelvin lean on her. Ian did the same with Edison, and the 4 continued on their way back to Frosted Village.

It was only the middle of the afternoon when the 4 Eevee got back to the village. They had had a lot of trouble walking, and as the afternoon sun beat down on the mountain, they entered through the east gate of the village.

"You know, where's the hospital or medics room here?" Ian asked, scanning the area.

"Look, just check with Neo and Nova you morons!" Edison yelled as he did his best not to fall over.

Ava set Kelvin to lean against Ian as well, before she ran ahead to the main building, and disappeared into it.

"So what did you mean by "infection"?" Edison asked, looking down at his cut open leg.

"You know, when a wound gets dirty and stuff, bacteria get into it and make the injury worse if you don't clean it?" Ian said.

"What?"

"Ugh, nevermind. Just keep the wound from getting full of dirt and stuff and you should be fine. It missed most of your major muscles too." He said examining the leg.

As they waited for Ava to return with the Eon siblings, Ian looked around the village. There were a few vendors aside from Saul and Tenpepper around, including of course Sylveon who ran storage, and some more. One of the only Leafeon up here was sitting in a stall, a book on the counter. He seemed to be running a berry stand.

'I should check out the berry stand later. Heh, maybe I could even make a smoothie.' Ian thought as he looked around. Behind the leaders house, there was of course the route that went up to the peak and the hot springs, which were about halfway between the peak and the village. You could barely make out the peak from here, it looked like a small little circular platform, with a guardrail around half of it.

"Hey you two. Have you guys been up to the peak before?" Ian asked the 2, who were now, literally, licking their wounds.

"No. I think you need clearance from Neo and Nova to go up there. Safety or something." Kelvin confirmed.

"Ah."

The door to the main building swung open, and out came Ava as well as the 2 eon siblings. They made their way over.

"The hell happened here?" Nova asked, looking over Team Crossfire.

"We found a Beartic, and it used an icicle crash on them. It… wasn't great." Ava explained.

"I'm assuming you can heal them?" Ian asked Neo.

"Yes. we can. We have a resident Sylveon healer. We'll take them from here. Thank you two for bringing them here. That was quite noble of you." Neo said calmly, before lifting up the 2 injured Eevee, and bringing them to one of the buildings. Nova stayed behind.

"So why did you bring them back?" he asked.

"Well-"

"It was Ian's idea." Ava interrupted.

"Well, I didn't want to just leave them there. They were hurt, and would have died if we didn't take them with us." Ian explained.

"Good on you! It's hard for us quads to do first aid and stuff like that." Nova said

"That, and I knew we had to hurry, otherwise they would have gotten an infection, and it would have been much worse." Ian said, not really thinking.

Nova was silent for a moment, before he spoke. "Yes, that would have been bad. I must go, I have business to attend to, after all." He said, relatively quickly, before walking back to the town leader's hut.

"Well, all's well that ends well, right?" Ian said.

"I guess so." Ava said, looking around. "So what now then? We did our mission for the day, and its only… lets say… 4 pm? We have a few hours to kill."

"I don't know… you wanna just go back to the cabin? Sorry, I've always been more of an indoor person." Ian suggested.

"Sure!" the two of them walked back to the cabin.

A few hours later, the two had been in the cabin. Ian had taken to sorting out and tidying up, while Ava struggled to start a fire. The cold storage had long since been sorted out, with the meats and other food inside being sorted by type, and the room given more of an area to walk. Ian had a hard time moving it, however. It had given him good practice at how to move stuff around without hands. He would mostly use his mouth, or nudge heavier stuff around.

Outside the cold storage, Ian had taken the one bookshelf, and put a bit of his stuff on it. His journal now sat on the bottom shelf, nestled between an atlas of the world he had found himself in, and a book on how to identify berries.

"Hey, how's the bookshelf looking?" Ava called, having finally lit a fire without Ian's help.

"Good! Its got our stuff sorted out by whos it is, and another section with general stuff. There's even a fourth section for the few stories I found on here." Ian said. "Too bad I cant read them."

Ava stifled a small laugh. "You not being able to read footprint runes is hilarious, honestly. I guess it hammers home your humanity!"

Ian blushed a little bit. "Not human anymore, am i?"

"Guess not."

Suddenly, a sound rang through their heads. "To everyone in frosted village, please come to the square. There is an announcement to be made."

"Guess we should go, eh?" Ian said, a touch of Canadian accent poking its way through.

"Yep." Ava stepped outside, followed by Ian. The square around the fountain had a lot of Eevee, and Eeveelutions around it, with neo, nova, and a patched up Edison and Kelvin standing there.

"We'd like to make an announcement everyone!" Nova said, with authority. "We called this meeting today to bring attention to an event, from one of the junior teams missions. Can we call team Supernova up to the fountain please?"

Ian glanced over to Ava, only to see she was already walking up. He followed, and stood by her at the front, his face getting slightly hot.

"Everyone, team supernova has done something heroic today! During a joint mission with team Crossfire, Edison and Kelvin had been badly injured, but these two Eevee went out of their way to save their.. How should I say this… rivals! It reminds us of the human heroes of the past! A selfless and heroic thing to do!" Nova said with authority. Neo had one eye on Ian in the back though.

"Speaking of humans, we all know why they aren't to be allowed here, correct?"

No one said anything

"As much as they have been heroes, they have also brought disaster upon this world! Me and Neo have suffered through the Bittercold, and to a lesser extent, the Dark Matter crisis, which were brought on by humans!"

Ian tensed slightly, but it wasn't noticeable.

"Therefore, we just wanted to show everyone these newcomers bravery, and remind everyone about our policy on humans! You are all dismissed." Nova and Neo walked back to the leaders hut, while everyone else dismissed themselves

"Huh."

"What?" ava asked.

"That was… actually, we should discuss this at the cabin."

"...yeeeaaah…" the two of them walked back to the cabin, and stepped inside.

"Whoookay… this isn't… great…" Ian said, letting out a held breath. "Guess they don't like humans here. Thank god I didn't tell them earlier.

"Yeah, from now on we'll keep it under wraps, and if disaster comes to frosted village, well… we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

"Yep. I think i need some time to think." Ian said, grabbing his journal off the shelf, and plopping down at the table in the corner.

"Day… 9? Of being a Pokémon. Well, other than a joint mission with team crossfire, we learned frosted village isn't a fan of humans. I'm pretty worried about it. Ava seems to be too. I'm gonna start hiding this journal so no one finds out about me. I guess that's all that really happened today.
Ian, October… 2nd? I'm losing track of time already…"

He closed the book yet again, and walked over to the bed, and laid down next to Ava

"Goodnight, "human"" she said, a small smile on her muzzle

"Night Ava."

The two fell asleep, but Ian couldn't help but be worried. What would happen if he was found? He hoped he didn't have to learn.

Well… uh… no excuse really. Sorry this took over a month to get out. Im a terrible procrastinator. This should be going up at the same time as a special episode. Im gonna have 3 or 4 of these go up. The "b" plot if you will. Anyways, i guess at this rate, i'll see yall in a month again. :/