Chapter 1: The Man and the Boy
The rush was surrounding, engulfing. It pushed and pulled as if it were the breath of the Earth. The water cradled the boy, soothing him.
The water...water...water is an essential part of human survival. For as long as either have existed, civilizations have built their foundations on rivers and coastlines, tying their fates together. Even in the distant lands of the western frontier, desert-trotters with brimmed hats, roped lassos, and bold horses would survive on canteens and waterholes. So, when defenseless water sources are ravaged by pollutants caused by ignorance, overuse, and abuse, it's only natural that next to go is—
CRASH!
The boy was slammed in the side as a wrathful wave overcame him. He was flung forward, smacking the ground chest-first, then back-first, then whatever-this-appendage-is-first. Bitter salt water filled his odd-feeling throat, prompting the boy to cough himself awake. He fumbled the best he could onto his rear. He sunk a little into the...sand beneath.
He looked down at the darkened surface below him. He was on the shoreline of a beach… That explained why he had uncovered some old philosophizing about water, of all things, from the back of his brain. But why had he been napping this close to the shore? He figured he was smart enough to avoid rip currents.
On that subject, why was he on a beach in the first place?
The boy found some way to get to his feet, fighting past this strange feeling that must've come from ingesting that salt water. A whirl around gave him a contradictory image. The glistening horizon didn't show any signs of boats or vehicles that you'd usually expect around a populated beach, and the way the land bended didn't let him see anything but forest and shrubbery. But the beach behind him was strewn with bags, boxes, cans, shards of plastic, loose paper prints with unfamiliar logos on them… It was kind of a mess, if the boy wanted to be honest. Was he near civilization or not? Either way, the lack of anyone in sight was a bad sign.
He gave another look to the ocean that had so rudely awoken him after all of that serenading with the gentle noise of the tide. The water shone an undoubtedly bright blue, tipped with the white crests of waves, with a transparency that gave the surface clarity. It looked like something straight out of a magazine for those fancy cruise ships. So did that mean he was on an island in the Bahamas? No, that didn't seem right. The line of evenly spaced trees behind him had much more of an inland look than a coastal look, lacking any kind of palm trees or coconuts and how do I know all this?
He took a step away from the shoreline and turned inwards. What class was he drawing all this information from? Was it a biology class? No… Maybe a grade school fact? But he couldn't piece together the exact moment or person he got it from. The boy was staring at a list of names with nothing to attach to them.
What...did he remember?
My name is Joey Johdaile
Okay… What else?
I am sixteen years old
Good. What was he doing before he woke up?
…
What town does he live in? What school does he go to? What are the names of his friends?
…
Where were his parents?
…
Who were his parents?
…
…Well, ain't that a problem.
Joey began heaving as his nerves set in. He was alone, an amnesiac, stranded on a beach with no society, and what the heck was wrong with his face? He thought it was just dizziness at first, but this was something else entirely. The puffing of his mouth was so far away from his eyes, and the air in his nose felt like it was moving...sideways? And what was that when he tried crossing his eyes? It was way too long to be a nose...and blue. Joey pulled his palms into view. His hands, if that's what you'd call such thick, nubby things, were that same light shade of blue. He fidgeted his fingers together. They moved similarly enough to how he supposed they should feel, but his fingers still felt decidedly off, as if he was—
Wait.
Joey slowly opened his mouth. The thing in his crossed peripheral raised.
That's not a mouth. That's a...maw. A crocodilian maw!
Now Joey was on a whole new level of dread. On top of all those other problems, he couldn't even call himself human! That was the last factor Joey needed to get moving. He had to find somebody else, find society, get his memories back, and figure out what exactly he was right now.
Grumble…
…And he needed to do it fast, if he didn't want to resort to hunting.
Joey turned to hustle through large stalks of grass as he approached the forest. There was an incline behind the first layer of trees. If he could just get a vantage point…
But before he could get any closer, Joey's large foot kicked what looked like a green cowboy hat with a white knitted brim. Unlike the garbage around him, the hat was only on the surface of the beach. Curious, Joey picked it up. There was a note written on the inside, taped to the top. Joey moved it around his maw and held the inside to his eyes.
Don't forget.
JJ and MW
He couldn't help but scoff. Don't forget… A little late for that. Regardless, the hat was surely his, if "JJ" was any indication. He threaded the hat's string below the front of his maw and fitted it on. The protection from the sun's heat was comforting.
With that out of the way, Joey departed from the beach. He trudged up a hill and quickly realized he had gotten himself into a much tougher climb than he had anticipated. Not helping were his much shorter-feeling knees, which could only hold so much footing at this tight of an angle. However, sure enough Joey found his way to the top — but the boon of the climb quickly revealed itself as something entirely different.
The boy-turned-crocodilian gawked as soon as he spotted it. Lying before him was...another animal! Whatever it was seemed just as unrecognizable as himself. The shorter brown creature might have been reptilian, but there was no way to tell beyond that white mask of its — aside from a nasty, exposing crack on its right side. Joey strafed around the unconscious creature, studying it. A steady breath proved its survival, and, upon closer inspection of the fancy-looking tie around its neck and a gold ring around its...thumb, its sentience. Next to its body was some kind of long, slender club with two nubs at one end, covered in the same material as the mask. Joey began to realize those substances were bones. What was this fellow doing carrying around bones?
Joey eyed to the left and right warily. Nobody else in sight… Regardless of whether the animal was dangerous or not, he didn't have much else of an option. He had to try shaking him awake. He put his hands on the creature, and…
Shaking. He was shaking. Something was on top of him. He was going to die. He was going to get eaten. Fight. Fight fight fight—
"Get off!" the man yelled at the deadly blue beast atop him. He hurriedly reached for the nearest object he could grab and flung it at the creature.
"Woah!" The hat-wearing pokémon, which he recognized as a totodile past his panic, stumbled backwards.
The man took the opportunity to run. He stood — and he fell. He stood again, walked — tripped. His vision felt oddly clouded by...a snout? A helmet? What was that? No time to get an answer. He had to keep moving!
"Where in Sam Hill are you going?!" the totodile exclaimed behind him.
"Away from y—oh, shit!" The man's feet slipped out from under him as the ground suddenly dropped away. He rolled and tumbled down the inclination, bouncing and bounding — straight into the bark of a tree.
"Mister!" the youthful, thinly-accented voice of the totodile exclaimed as the man's hip struck the tree. Before he knew it, the totodile's shadow was overtop of his aching body. "Sorry about that. Are you okay?"
"Does it look like it…?!" The man groaned. A blue hand came close to his eyes. Defeated, the man slowly outstretched his own and seized it. The totodile pulled him to his feet, giving him a moment to get accustomed to this off-kilter feeling.
"That was a nasty fall," he remarked. "You ain't got any reason to be scared of me, you know. I was just trying to wake you up."
"S-sure…" the man said, eyeing his maw loaded with sharp teeth.
"Mister, I need you to answer some questions. But before that…" The totodile stepped away from the man and picked up something — presumably what he had thrown off the hill before joining it himself. "Here you go. This is yours, right?"
"What is that?" He looked down at the object. It was a—
a—
"Nope!" The man stumbled away from the slender, one-ended bone club. "That is not mine. Not in a million years."
"But it was right next to you," the totodile said. "And it's bone, like your mask."
"Mask?" The man finally realized that he was no longer the man — he was the cubone. He rubbed his hands around his mask. He found a crack where his scaly skin was exposed...on the right side of the skull. "What kind of sick joke is this? Cubone. Of course I'm a cubone…"
"Hah?" The totodile cocked his head. "You're gonna have to explain what you're talking about, mister."
The man ignored the totodile, too busy absorbing the irony of his new species. Now everything was coming back to him. His project, his motives, his goal… His goal! The man whirled around. "Hey, are you D.E?!"
"Uh, I reckon I'm not," the totodile quickly replied, slightly backing away from the man's spastic excitement.
"Damnit," the man said, leaning towards the totodile to swipe the club that, regardless of his feelings, he supposed belonged to him now. "I'll just store this in… Wait. Crap. Where…?!" The cubone looked around frantically, but couldn't see it. He rushed away from the totodile.
"Hey, wait! You gotta slow down for a moment!" he exclaimed.
"In a minute! Just let me find my…" The man searched around shrubs and trees alike. Where on Earth was his backpack?
"Mister, please! Stop!" the totodile exclaimed, this time grabbing Mathew's attention. "Do you know where we are? I woke up on the beach over yonder as this weird crocodile-man and I—"
"Beats me. I just got here myself," the man replied, raising his mitten-like hands out of the bush he was pulling apart and putting them into a half-shrug. He shook his head before returning to the search. "Real funny, D.E. You really got me," he muttered. "Coulda been dropped into a building or a city or something, but nope! Forest."
"Who is this D.E. fella you keep yammering on about?" the totodile asked, mild desperation fading into curiosity.
"Just the guy who sent me the blueprints to get here. Wherever 'here' is…" The man's head swiveled, but all there was to see were trees and bushes, and hills with more trees and bushes.
The totodile frowned. "Oh, no. I reckon that means you're just as lost as me."
"Lost… Lost?!" the cubone exclaimed, the realization setting in. He put a hand to his skull mask. "Shit. Shit! I am lost! As if my life wasn't glorious enough! What am I supposed to do about that?!"
"Hey, you gotta stay with me!" The totodile's remark didn't make the man flinch any less when he grabbed his arm. The man held still, listening to him. "I'm scared too, but if we freak out, we're gonna get about as far as a mule on a marathon. I bet we can get ourselves un-lost if we team up."
"Right…" the cubone heaved, drawing his arm away from the totodile's.
"First thing's first." The totodile rubbed his hands together in determination. "What're we looking for here?"
"My backpack. Brown, leather, has half a dozen pockets…"
"Got it. One backpack, coming up!"
The two of them got to work, spreading out to cover as much ground as possible.
"So, what's a fella like you in need of a backpack for, anyway?" the totodile asked as they searched.
The cubone rose from checking underneath a shrub to answer that question. "Well, the alternative was to carry all of my projects by hand."
"Projects?"
"Building projects," he clarified with his back to the totodile. "I'm a bit of a robotics engineer?"
"Really? That's buck-wild!" he exclaimed in awe.
"Yeah, kinda." He nodded, intended more for himself than for his companion. "Name's Mathew, by the way. Mathew Walker."
"Nice name. I reckon mine's Joey."
"Reckon? What, so you don't know?" Mathew asked.
"Kinda? I know a couple things, like my name, my age, why water is important, and stuff like that. But when it comes to what I remem…" Joey paused. "Uh, mister?"
Mathew whirled around. "Did you find it?"
"You might want to look up."
"Up?" The cubone raised his snout to the sky and… "What the hell?! Why is it in a tree?"
Sure enough, there was his backpack, around a dozen feet over their heads. It laid precariously atop a short branch at the far edge of the sycamore tree. He couldn't help but notice it seemed much bigger, even at a distance.
"Things just keep getting weirder, don't they?" Joey said.
"There's no way I miscalculated hard enough to end up in the sky." Mathew glanced at the clouds, then back at the totodile. "You didn't happen to see me fall, did you?"
Joey raised an eyelid as if it were a brow. "I reckon I'd have found you screaming like a banshee instead of sleeping like a baby if you did."
"Fair enough." Mathew returned his attention to the tree holding his backpack hostage. "You know, I don't think I've ever climbed a tree before. Seemed hard enough as a human, much less as a cubone." He looked down at himself. "Now I have more leg strength than I do arm strength. What am I going to do with that?"
"No problem, mister!" The totodile gave a confident smile. "I'll help you get that backpack down."
"What, can you climb trees with those stubby arms of yours?" Mathew asked.
"Well… Hm." Joey hummed and hawed for a moment until something came to him. "Oh yeah, I sure can! Gators can climb trees, and I'm about as close to a gator as a fly to a bus stop next to a lightpost."
Mathew stared at his accomplice dumbfoundedly. "Gators can what?"
"It's more of them throwing themselves at the tree and scuttling up as high as they can, but, yeah." Joey looked away from him. "Sure wish I knew where I learned all that from."
"Well, remind me not to fight an alligator near a tree…" he muttered. In the meantime, his mind was drifting off, trying to find some way to coordinate with the climbing crocodile. Mathew gave a sweeping view around the area for inspiration. The forest around them was a delicate balance between hilly plain and woods. With the trees as far apart as they were, the sun exposed every fallen stick, branch, and pebble sitting in the short grass… "I've got a plan!" he told the totodile. "While you climb, I'll assemble some bush leaves and sticks and stuff and make a bit of a cushion. That way you can just shove it off and not carry the heavy thing all the way back down."
"I reckon that'd be much better for me!" Joey said. "I'm already gonna be tired enough just scaling the tree."
"Yeah, something tells me I'll have to share some of my emergency lunch with you."
The totodile gasped. "You have an emergency lunch?!"
"Mm-hmm," Mathew said. "I packed it basically for this exact situation."
The totodile looked up at the top of the tree determinedly. "All the more reason to climb, then!"
"Hell yeah! Work that backpack bone!"
Joey glared at him with a blank expression. His smile and optimism were gone.
The cubone snickered. "Ah, sorry. It's been a while since I've talked to much of anyone. I need to stretch out my own pun muscles." He gave the totodile a devilish grin. "Or rather, my puncles."
"...I'm just going to go get the backpack now."
"You do that." Mathew turned his attention to his new task, letting Joey find his way up the tree. A number of bushes dotted the area, nestled next to the spread-out trees. He approached what looked like the smallest among them. As his hands brushed one of the branches, he couldn't help but notice how much less sensitive his new scales were compared to human skin. It was like his whole body was callused.
Mathew squatted down and grasped his hands around the base of the bush. He took two deep breaths to ready himself — prying a plant this large out of the ground was going to require a lot of effort. One, two, threeeee—
"Ack!" Mathew had to keep himself from losing his balance from pulling back so hard. Once he was steady, he stared in wonder at the unearthed plant. The bush was almost as large as his whole body, and yet it had come out as easily as weeds used to back when he had to pluck them from yards. He had even pulled more of the roots cleanly out of the ground than he had anticipated. Was this bush really that weak?
Mathew shook his head. It didn't matter. What mattered was that this was the base of his pile.
As he walked close to the shadow his backpack cast, he passed by Joey, leaping at the tree in search of a foothold to climb. As the cubone moved to his second, he finally grabbed on to the lowest branch. After seeing him make it to the second without falling, the cubone focused on his own efforts. Every bush he plucked after the first was larger and even harder to manage, asking for his full attention.
After another minute or so, Mathew chucked his twelfth bush into the pile. He took a step back, sweeping his eyes up and down to make sure the pile would suffice. He had set the pile up so that the backpack would land in flora whether Joey dropped it to the left or right. Mathew was satisfied with the setup, and even if he wasn't, he was too tired to pick up any more. "Hey Joey! The pile's do—"
"Screeeeeeeeeeee!"
Immediately, the cubone put his hands to the sides of head as a shrill squawking overtook his eardrums.
"Woah, nelly! Watch where you're swinging those wings of yours, mister!" he heard Joey exclaim in panic. What the hell was going on up there?
When the cubone looked up, he spotted the totodile, only a few more branches short of the backpack. He was talking to a pair of birds, one of whom was right up in his face. The other was settled in what looked like a nest. Both of them were white with blue highlights on their wings and tail feathers, with orange bills tipped by black.
Mathew was intimately familiar with the species — they were a huge nuisance in the beach areas of the McDonald's crossover. Wingull.
"What do you think I was aiming for, a trubbish?" one spoke with his shrill voice. "You should be the one watching it!"
"Yeah!" a second, similarly voiced wingull added. "This is our tree, so buzz off! Screeeeeeeee!"
"Hey, I can get off your tree faster than a hedgehog singing the blues if you just give me a second!" Joey said. "I'm only up here to get my friend's emergency lunch."
"Stop yammering with that maw of yours!" the wingull close up to him said. "We already know you're going to use it to eat us!"
"Wha — that ain't what I meant! There's a lunch inside that backpack on the branch over there!"
The wingull in the nest glanced at the backpack. "That is also ours! Screeeeeeeee!"
Mathew couldn't let that statement slide. He picked up the bone club he had laid aside. "Hell no!" he shouted before whacking the tree. A chunk of bark chipped off, and the leaves rustled loudly. "You can't just claim something that fell out of the sky is yours because it landed on your tree!"
One of the wingull looked down upon him. "Fell? Fell? Screeeeeeeeee!"
"It was a gift and you can't have it!" the other said. "So can it, bonehead!"
"Bonehead! Bonehead!" they both cried, cackling to themselves.
The cubone clenched his teeth. These selfish bullies really believed they could just claim his backpack? His emergency lunch? His side project?
…His scrapbook?
He felt his grip around the club — his club — twitch.
"Listen here you little shits!" he yelled. "If you don't give me my stuff back, I will come up there, pluck every feather out of your sorry asses, and sell them back to you at an inflated price!"
"Screeee, screeee! Those are some fighting words for a bonehead!" one wingull said.
He pointed the blunt end of the club at him. "You haven't seen the first goddamn thing this bone could do to—"
"Stoooop!" All of a sudden, all eyes were on the totodile. "I ain't looking for a fight. I'll...I'll go on down." The cubone watched in disbelief as Joey climbed down the tree, branch by branch. The wingull watched, heckling him all the way down.
"What the hell, man?" Mathew asked when the totodile touched the ground. "We probably could've taken them."
"On empty stomachs, and when the only thing to protect us is that club of yours?" Joey reminded him. "There ain't a chance on Earth we win."
"We aren't even on Earth," Mathew mumbled, "but whatever. What do you propose we do to get it down instead?"
Joey took a second to answer. "I dunno. I thought maybe we could call a timeout so I could start getting the gears turning? And we could get to know each other better, too."
A break? When his backpack was still not in good hands? But Joey did have a point. Maybe some time to cool down and evaluate their strategy was in order. "Fair enough." Mathew began a slow walk revolving around the tree, letting Joey follow. "So, what was all that about your memory before?" he asked, improvising a subject.
"It's really pick-and-choose about what I get to know about myself," Joey explained. "It's frustrating. I dunno if what I do remember says anything about who I was on Earth, or if it's just useless trivia."
"Ouch, Joey. I wish I could trade places with you."
"You shouldn't. It's about as fun as a sabertooth tiger tearing you a new one."
Mathew couldn't keep himself from laughing at that. "Those comparisons of yours keep getting more ridiculous, Joey."
"No more ridiculous than those puncles of yours!"
"Ha! True." He smiled to himself. "Man, now you've gotten me thinking of better times. I used to have an old friend that was a lot like you. The worst part was that there were two of them! He had a son who was just like—"
Waaaaaait a minute. Mathew stopped walking. This is too perfect of a coincidence. "So, uh," Mathew fumbled, trying not to jump the gun. "This is going to sound like a dumb question but… Can I see your hat for a second?"
Joey nodded. "I don't see why not." He slipped the green hat off and handed it to him. Mathew turned it over, and much to his surprise, there it was.
Oh my god, it's the note. Mathew's distant nostalgia transformed into disturbing familiarity. When he pictured a more immature version of this totodile's voice, he couldn't envision anybody else. There was no way it wasn't him.
Joey gave Mathew a worried glance. "…Why are you staring at it like that, pardner?"
"Joey," Mathew said firmly as he put the hat back on his head, "is your last name Johdaile?"
Joey recoiled from Mathew in surprise, fumbling with the string as he fit it on himself again. "How did you know that?!"
Mathew couldn't do anything but gape, totally awestruck.
Something about the way Mathew eyed Joey turned his shock into a bright-eyed eagerness. "Wait. You know me? From when I was human?!" he excitedly asked.
"Hell yeah I do! Like I could ever forget you!" Mathew exclaimed. "Well, I guess I did kinda forget, but only because it's been about a year!" Suddenly, the cubone was flashed back to the last place he had seen Joey and had a horrible realization. "Shit, I just realized, Greg and Catherine aren't here." He began pacing around. "If they got a visit from that light, too, I could totally believe they'd come here. But that should mean that I'd have seen them by now. And the fact that they aren't here, but Joey is here, but Joey doesn't have his mem—" Mathew's heart sunk. "Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh—"
"Mathew!"
The cubone flinched at the shout. Once more, his introspection had led him to disregard Joey's existence for a moment.
"Greg and Catherine are my dad and mom, ain't they?" Joey asked. "I've gotta know. What're they like? How did they make me...me?"
Mathew took a breath, readying to explain, but...his throat halted as if it was clogged. Instead, his mind spoke to him. Do you realize what would happen if you answered his question? he asked himself. He'd get curious and ask for more and more. And then you'll have to tell him about that, and about that, and about...that.
This was going to suck.
"I don't think I can tell you that."
"What?" Joey said. "How come?"
"…Have you ever ripped off a bandage really slowly?"
The totodile looked at Mathew as if he was a dunce. "If I have, I ain't remembering that anytime soon."
"Ah, shit, right…" Mathew sighed. "It's like this, Joey. There is a very good reason that I can't tell you anything. I just can't tell you that reason."
Joey's expression became skeptical. "If you can't tell me how you know me, and you ain't able to tell me the reason why you can't tell me, then how do I know you really know me?"
"Joey, would I lie to you?!" Mathew asked desperately.
"I've known you for about five minutes or so, and you've been acting crazier than a killer cat almost the whole time. I don't really have a reason to think you wouldn't lie to me."
"I-I know you and I can prove it!" he exclaimed. "I knew your last name before you even said it! How do you explain that?"
"I dunno, maybe I mumbled it when I introduced myself earlier," Joey countered. "I was barely thinking about what I said, looking for your stuff and all."
"Ugh!" Mathew put his free hand against his skull mask in frustration. "This is hard for me too, you know? I really want to tell you. I really do. You're a good person and you don't deserve this."
"You ain't the one who doesn't know who he is here!" Joey said. "You've got the memories. If I really didn't do anything bad, and you reckon we're friends, then you should tell me who I am!"
"I… I… Look." Mathew pointed above him. "You see that backpack up there? It's not just my food and projects in there. I brought this scrapbook with me full of pictures of happy memories, and you're in it. If I show you once we get it down, will that make you believe me?"
"I reckon it will!" Joey stomped his feet and proceeded to toss himself at the tree. This time, he grasped a branch on his first try.
Mathew realized what Joey was doing. "Wait," he said, putting a lid on his frustration the best he could. "Where are you going? I thought we were going to strategize first."
"Too late for that now!" he snapped. "That was before you told me something about myself was in there. If you ain't gonna tell me who I am, I'll go fetch it myself!" he leapt to another branch. He was scaling the tree much faster than before.
"Well if you're going to do that, can you at least take your time getting up there? You're gonna hurt yourself," Mathew told him. Joey didn't stop. "Joey? Joey!" No response. "And what are you going to do about the wingull—"
"They're just birds, ain't they?!" he yelled. "They're just gonna peck me! I'll get pecked a hundred times if it means—"
Splash.
It wasn't a peck.
A ball of water, like a water balloon without the balloon part, was shot down straight at Joey, bursting on contact. With a cry of pain, he was knocked away from the tree.
"JOEY!"
He hit the ground right on his back. Mathew could hear the sharp gasp of breath when Joey's maw opened wide.
Laughter erupted from above as they descended down. "Screeeee! You two just can't listen, can you?"
"Maybe if we give you more, you'll figure it out!" The birds circled around Joey, relentlessly tormenting his breathless body like he was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
"You assholes!" Mathew ran over and grabbed Joey's body, trying desperately to block the totodile from the wingull. One of them fired another splash grenade directly at Mathew's back. Its splatter landed everywhere but on Joey. Mathew howled in pain. It felt like his scales were being burnt and shredded by a furious acid. Joey's mouth gaped open, but he was at a loss for air. His eyes expressed something between horrified and apologetic.
Another water pulse struck him. He didn't scream as loudly this time. Mathew's knees trembled from the agony, the water rolling down his back and dripping onto the ground, but he kept standing. He had to keep standing. He couldn't afford to fall, not when Joey was like this.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of them preparing a third. He was aiming at Joey's other side, the one Mathew wasn't protecting. He threw himself forward in a dive, nearly smashing the snout of his mask into the dirt. Direct hit, this time closer to his hip. That was almost enough to make him pass out. At the very least, he couldn't stand anymore.
Three things happened then in rapid succession. First, Mathew heard behind him a fierce gasp. Joey was reanimating. Next, something sizzled through the air, and one of the wingull yelped. Mathew picked up the scent of what could only be that wingull's burnt feathers. Then, past his flickering vision, he saw something reach out for his hand. Joey again? No, that wasn't him. This hand was darker. Sleeker. Fluffier?
It wasn't a hand at all. It was a wing.
Mathew, with what little might he had left, grasped the wing. The wing pulled — man, this bird had a logic-defyingly strong grip — and brought him up. Another wing reached around and held him steady, his knees still about to give way. The cubone looked to his side and was met with a pair of red eyes. It wasn't a species he recognized. Its coat of feathers was a dark blue, almost navy, highlighted with red on the insides of the wings and the tips of its broom-like tail. Its chest was coated in white, and atop its head was a large, hat-like thing. A raven, maybe?
"C-Can you stand…?" she asked him. Her expression was anticipative. She already knew the answer.
"Hell no."
She reached around his chest and moved the things from one wing to the other. Mathew looked down at them. A pair of blue spheres with spotty textures. Oran Berries. "Eat one of these," she told him. "And g-give one to your friend."
"Hey, can I get some help?!" Another voice. That must've been whoever singed that wingull. He heard him grunt, probably dodging something. "I'm biting off more than I can chew here!"
"These wingull have a double weakness against your attacks. It's kind of sad that you have to bite less." There was a third voice now. This one was different, though. It sounded flat with only slight inflections giving way to any kind of emotion. It was automated and fake...the voice of a robot.
"I-I'm on it!" Right after Mathew chomped down on one of the berries, the raven let him go. It took mere seconds for the cubone to feel rejuvenated, and only a few seconds more for his back to no longer feel in pain. He finally got a look at the other person who had come to their rescue. To his surprise, it wasn't a fire type, but an electric type whose attacks had fried one of the bullies. It was a pikachu, and at that, one wearing odd apparel. He had a pair of brown goggles wrapped around his forehead on top of a pink bandana with a pattern of flowers. It was certainly a...striking look, that's for sure. Whomever the third voice was, Mathew didn't see them.
Mathew flexed his right hand and remembered the berry. The totodile was still recovering from the fall. He hurriedly slid the berry into Joey's maw, making sure to help him chew it. Joey groaned and rolled onto his side before pulling himself up.
"Screeeee! This isn't your fight, nerd!" one of the wingull berated the pikachu.
"Okay, first, I don't have to ask questions to know you guys probably started this fight!" he said. "Second, how did you know I was a ner—wah!" The pikachu was swept up by a hard gust, mustered by the other wingull standing behind him, that launched him into the air. The wingull kept him there, flinging him around in his little hurricane like a plastic bag on the wind. "Whoooa, whoa, whoa-whoa!"
"Bahahahahaha! Serves you right!" the chastising wingull said, chuckling at the pikachu's misfortune.
"Gah!" A gust of wind, loose from the wingull's torrent, blasted Mathew. He stumbled backwards and bumped into Joey.
"Mathew!" Joey caught his fall. "Are you okay?" Any lasting grudge from their previous banter seemed to have been put aside.
"Yeah, but…" Mathew focused on the in-flight pikachu for a moment more. The raven was strafing around the treacherous winds, looking for some kind of opening. It seemed like a fight was brewing. "Joey, we should get some cover."
"I reckon that'd be a good idea, yeah." The two of them were already backing away. They slipped behind a bush and watched from afar.
"Y-You let go of him!" The raven charged at the grounded wingull, wings outspread.
"Maybe I will!" The wingull stopped channeling wind and dropped into a readied stance. The pikachu yelled as he tumbled to the ground in a roll.
Soon enough, she was upon the bully, opening with a right wing slash. The wingull leapt to the side and responded in kind. An onslaught of swinging began, as if their wings were pairs of blades. With his aggressive approach and larger wingspan, the bully looked imposing, but only the occasional forward thrust actually hit the raven. In spite of charging in first, she spent most of her time playing defense. She narrowly sidestepped out of the way of blows and ducked beneath his sideways swings. When he committed too much to an attack, she moved in to strike, but never overextended herself, only hurting as much as she needed it to hurt.
The pikachu, meanwhile, was having an entirely different kind of fight. He kept to a stance while his wingull soared around him, trying to pop off a watery attack. When an electric shock surged from him, the wingull would speed up and leave it in the dust. With the advantage Mathew's protector had over the adversary, the fight would be over in just a hit or two, but he certainly wasn't making it easy.
Mathew watched the two of them in awe. The raven's blend of ruthless efficiency with a degree of gentility and the pikachu's ability to rebound from falling so quickly showed an undeniable degree of skill.
…How often did these two fight?
Using those long wings of his, the grounded wingull put some space between himself and the raven. Mathew could hear him pant, already tired out by the intense pace of their fight. It was then that the pikachu glanced away from the wingull speeding around him. Before the flying wingull could cry out, he launched a bolt towards the raven's fight. The wingull yelped and froze up, unprepared for an intervention. A swift shove to the ground by the raven only assured his defeat. With a quick lean back, she brought down her beak like a hammer to a nail. The bonked wingull splayed out, unconscious.
The other wingull wailed. "Don't you dare touch him! Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" With a burst of wind, he launched himself straight towards the raven. But that speed didn't get him far — the pikachu shot him down with a ball of electricity. The wingull tumbled to the ground, too weak to move.
"I really don't know what this pair of bumbling idiots expected to happen." Here came that robotic voice again - this time, Mathew could see who it was. A green spherical object, with a wheel at its bottom, a single arcade-like claw at its side, and a red ball of an antenna at its top rolled up next to the collapsed wingull. Its bluish glass frame, which seemed to substitute for a face, reflected the eyes of the weak bird. "You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I am always astounded by the stupidity of dungeon pokémon."
"Hey, it's not like they can help it much!" the pikachu said. "The mystery dungeon messed them up."
"They still h-hurt people," the raven reminded him. "That's why...we still have to fight them."
All the while, Mathew watched the wingull once in flight reaching out for his fellow bully before going down himself. Karmic justice. He couldn't help but smile.
"Hey!" Joey shouted at their group of saviors. They turned their attention to the two of them, only now stepping away from the bush. "Is it safe for us to come out now?"
"Oh, for sure!" the pikachu said. "It's all under control now. You're safe!" When Mathew and Joey emerged fully from the bush, he and the raven approached welcomingly. He outstretched a hand towards Mathew first. "I'm Jermy. You must be Mathew, right?"
"Yeah, that's me." The cubone shook hands with the pikachu. "Nice to meet you, Jeremy."
"It's Jermy."
Mathew snickered a bit. After his laughter came a cutting silence. "…Oh, you're serious. Uh, sorry?"
Joey stepped in to break the awkward tension. "Thanks for helping us, y'all."
Jermy broke off from the handshake to give one to Joey. "And you have to be Joey! Don't worry about us. We're pros at handling goons like these rascals!" he boasted.
"I w-wouldn't say we're all that great, but...we did get the job done." The raven offered her wing for Mathew and Joey to shake just the same as Jermy. Unlike Jermy, she kept the exchanges brief and silent. "M-My name's Demurke. It's nice to meet you both."
"So…" Mathew clicked his tongue. How does one respectfully ask for the name of their species? Is it a casual question, or are people just supposed to look that up themselves? He decided to try a subtle press. "Jermy the pikachu, and Demurke the…"
Demurke seemed to catch his drift. "No need to worry about asking," she said. "I'm a murkrow! The dye makes me a l-little hard to figure it out, I know."
Murkrow. A crow? "So you're not a raven," he thought aloud. "You're like, the level below a raven."
"Yep! No ravens here."
"You thought she was a raven?" Joey said. "That's silly."
The small robot rolled up to Joey. "Unfortunately, some people have better things to do than identify bird species. I don't believe Jermy could've told you if she was a raven or a crow if her name didn't give it away."
"Hey, cut me some slack!" Jermy said. "I would've gotten it if I had three guesses. Or maybe five."
Joey ignored Jermy's defense. "How do you know the difference, then?" he asked him.
"First, I have an intelligence higher than the airheads I'm surrounded by," the robot said. "Second, I have access to countless encyclopedias and databases that explain these concepts."
"Databases? Does that mean you're a robot?"
There was a pause, as if Joey just asked the dumbest question possible. "It means I'm the president. No, of course I'm not a pokémon."
"I made him a couple years ago," Jermy explained. "His name is—"
"I can introduce myself," he interrupted. "I am the Observational Recreation Buddy, abbreviated ORB, version 4.8, capable of performing functions including identification verification, data and social analysis, combat assistance…"
"Man, that's really cool!" Mathew said. "I used to—"
"Combat success probability checks, informational storage, pokémon combat matchup comparisons…"
"Um…" Demurke tried to say. "I think th-they understa—"
"Pokémon romantic matchup comparisons…"
"Yeah, that's enough," Jermy interrupted.
"Fine, be that way," ORB replied. The sassy energy radiating from Jermy's creation only cemented the strange presentation Mathew felt he was giving him. "I will now perform standard scans." A light behind ORB's front made the robot spring to life. "Activating aural camera… Analyzing unrecognized aural signals…"
"Aural signals?" Joey asked. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, this is just so he knows who you are," Jermy explained.
"Will you two shut up and let me perform my scans?" ORB asked. Joey was stunned into silence. "Cleaning up… Analysis complete. Species identified: cubone, totodile. Both entities are of Earthen origin. Files for M. Walker and J. Johdaile have been created."
Johdaile… "Right. That reminds me…" Mathew looked up. The backpack was still up there, taunting them.
"I-Is that your stuff?" Demurke asked. "How did it get up there…?"
"We ain't sure, either," Joey said. "I was trying to fetch it back so that Mathew and I could split some lunch and...other things. That's why those seagulls wanted to beat us up."
"That s-sounds about right." Demurke spread out her wings. "I'll go get it for you." A light wind coursed beneath the wings, and with a jump, she took flight. With concise, simple wingbeats, she quickly made it to the backpack's level. She glanced down to gander at Mathew's pile, fortunately undisturbed by the previous fight, before shoving it off the branch. It tumbled down and landed safely in the pile.
"There we go!" he exclaimed. He studied it for a moment, checking for any notable damage, and found none. Gleefully, he unzipped the largest flap. "First thing's first…" He dug through the backpack until he grasped something rectangular. He pulled it out, and there it was: the scrapbook. Still baby blue and still missing a photo for the plastic cover sleeve, but certainly a bit bigger in the cubone's hands than before. "Let's see here." He quickly flipped through the pages. "Not there, not there — a-ha!" There was the photo he was looking for. It was of two boys at a birthday party. One of them was wearing a green cowboy hat. Mathew turned the book around and pointed it towards Joey, his hand on the subject of interest. "You see this?"
Joey looked at the photo intensely. "Yeah. My hat…"
"Yep! That's you! Clear, definitive proof. Does that make you feel any better?"
Joey paused before giving a crooked nod. "I reckon it does a little."
"Wonderful. Okay! With all that out of the way..." Mathew shoved the scrapbook back into the backpack, rummaged around, and… "Lunch!" He pulled out a large brown paper bag triumphantly.
"Yaaay!" Demurke exclaimed. She seemed more relieved at the two's evident resolution than enthused at their meal. Mathew could relate.
Jermy, on the other hand, was much more eager. "Show us the grub, Mathew!"
"Heeeeere's a chicken leg!" The cubone pulled out a large, baseball bat-shaped hunk of meat. "Going to the hungriest of them all…" He offered it to Joey.
"Delicious!" The totodile reached out and took the fried thing — first with two hands because Mathew gave it to him backwards, then with one when he flipped it around to something better resembling a handle. He immediately took a massive bite out of it.
"And I'll just…" Mathew pulled out a plastic baggie. "Take this sandwich."
Jermy leaned towards him in anticipation. "Aaaaaand…?"
"D-Didn't Mathew explain that he split the meal with Joey?" Demurke said. "I thought that m-meant it was just for…"
"Aww, man!" Jermy pouted. "That's a shame."
"You already had breakfast this morning," ORB reminded him. "For that matter, you have already overclocked your daily diet twice in the past week."
"Yeah, but I worked up a sweat electrocuting those wingull!"
"Well, Jermy, for working so hard, you can have a water bottle. Same for you, Demurke." Mathew pulled two out of his backpack and tossed one to each. Finally, he sat down next to Joey, who had demolished half of the black meat already, and munched into the half of the sandwich pulled out of the baggie. Relief! The gooey goodness of peanut butter coated the tops, bottoms, and middles of his mouth. He didn't care that his hands were covered in it, too — the small meal made his elongated mouth and throat so much easier to get used to.
"Um…" Demurke was staring at him. Mathew froze, leaving the sandwich half removed, slowly sliding back down into the baggie as they slipped down his peanut butter-coated fingers. "Did you...put p-peanut butter on both sides of the bread?"
"Donmmm fucmmmg judmmmge!" Mathew exclaimed. He set the sandwich aside, reached into his paper bag and pulled out a third bottle of water. It took a second to comfortably slip it under his mask, but it was worth it to clear the substance from his mouth. "Look, I have a lot of peanut butter and I don't want to waste it. Anyways, what about you two? What's your stories? Where do you put the peanut butter on your sandwich?"
"The two of us are members of the Scientific Activity and Engagement Society!" Jermy said.
"…The what?" Joey asked. He was already almost finished with the leg.
"Common name: SEAS," ORB elaborated. "We're here to prepare you for recruitment into the organization's focal initiatives."
"Oh! So this must be the 'thing in return' that ball of light mentioned I needed to do," Mathew said.
"You'd be correct," Jermy said. "Usually they only send out one guy to help new recruits, but since you're kind of a special case, Mathew, I'm here to be your cool guide!"
"Oh, really?" Mathew bit into his sandwich again, then washed it out. "What makes me so damn special?"
"It's because you have… Um… Hmm." Jermy pondered for a moment.
"Jermy, you can just say I'm normal. No big deal. I won't tell your boss or whoever you didn't treat me like a saint."
"It's not that! It's—"
"What Jermy is trying to say with the articulation of a middle schooler cruising through English class with a D," ORB said, "is that your large breadth of study in the field of computer engineering will eventually land you a job very close to the top positions in the science division. That is unusual compared to the average SEAS recruit. David has taken a noticeable interest in you."
"David?" Mathew said. It didn't take long to register. D. "His last name wouldn't happen to start with an E, would it?"
"Yup, Emmons!" Jermy said. "He's one of my bosses."
"Erm…" Joey spoke up, having set the clean bone aside. "Where does that put me? I ain't any kind of a scientist, as far as I know."
"Th-That's what I'm here for!" Demurke told him. "I'm from SEAS' business division, which m-means I'm gonna help both of you get a-accustomed to...lower level jobs."
"I reckon that's more for me than for Mathew."
"Most likely…" she said. "A-Actually, I won't be around too much, s-since I have a part-time job I have to attend to from time to time. B-but if you ever have questions, I'm a-always happy to answer them!"
"Well, thanks for that," Mathew said simply as he finished the last of his sandwich.
"O-Oh, and about your second question? I-I'm pretty sure both of us put the peanut butter in the m-middle like normal people," Demurke teased.
"You heathen!" he exclaimed, spittle from his swig of water flinging from his mouth. She chuckled at his exaggerated response.
"Wait," Joey said. "If y'all are the ones handling this whole thing, does that mean you know where my parents are?"
"...You mean your parents aren't here?" The humor in Demurke's tone drained out, leaving worry.
Joey stood up. "They ain't. That's why Mathew and I were bickering in the first place."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that… I w-wouldn't know where they are."
Joey frowned. "Rats…" Mathew noticed Jermy turn towards him, only to shake his head and return to checking up on his creation.
"Hey, how about this? Whenever I g-get some time freed up, I'll go and ask around to see if a-anybody's seen them," Demurke said. "If they c-came to Solceus, then there's n-no way we can't find them."
"...Okay," he mumbled.
"Anyhow!" Jermy cut in. "Before we do anything serious, we're going to run you through this menial job called the Pick-it Up Club. They clean trash from mystery dungeons!"
"SEAS wants us to clean trash?" Mathew said, a mixture of surprise and excitement touching his tongue as his head raised back up. "That's nothing!"
"Yeah! It'll be easy. I've got some employees of theirs waiting on us—" Jermy suddenly jumped the tracks of his train of thought. "Oh! I almost forgot! I wanted to show you guys something!" Jermy turned in the direction of an incline in the forest and started making his way forward. ORB wheeled next to him, snapping twigs and leaves with his wheel.
"Oh!" Demurke said. "Is this the view of—"
"Don't spoil it for them! I—" Jermy fumbled. "I want it to be a surprise. Mind the exposed root, by the way."
Mathew and Joey climbed to their feet, leaving their belongings behind for the moment, and followed Jermy and ORB with Demurke. The walk was slow, as the group was still tuckered out from fighting the wingull. It only became slower as the hill became steeper. Mathew almost asked to turn back, but when they reached the top, that thought eroded.
When the cubone had first discovered that he was venturing to a world of pokémon, he had imagined quiet villages with cute little huts and sparse populations. Mathew couldn't have been more wrong. Directly below him were some of those smaller hut-type homes, standing atop ridges carved into the side of a cliff — but below that was a whole 'nother world. Bright neon signs, busy dirt-trodden streets, two-story buildings crafted out of brick and sheetrock with steel roofs which gleaned the light of the sun towards his eyes…to his left, a pair of small docks populated with ships of many sizes enclosing a beautiful strip of beach...and to his right, scaling from the center of the cliff that surrounded everything down to the core of the town, were the wires of a gondola lift.
"That's one purty town," Joey remarked.
"Yeah…" Mathew couldn't bring any meaningful commentary — the only adjective he had to describe the view was 'beautiful.'
"Right?!" Jermy exclaimed. "I knew getting your blind reactions out of the way was a great idea!" The pikachu smiled. "Welcome to Kalmwa'er!"
"And before you say a word, there is no emphasis on the T," ORB said. "I repeat: there is no emphasis on the T."
"It really is a b-beautiful place, isn't it…?" Demurke said. "A-And this is just the beginning."
Mathew kept his eyes on Kalmwa'er. If this was the preliminary location, he could only imagine how incredible the paradise that awaited after he fulfilled his obligations would look. Frankly, he was about ready to stop here — this town seemed flawless already.
…Well, now that he said that… There was one thing that stuck out to him.
At the town's front, bordering its beach, was a large, tall pillar of a building, painted with a pale color resembling a shade of skin. It easily towered over the rest of the town — at five or six stories, it was almost equal in height to the cliffs. There was a sign plastered upon it that read Kalmwa'er Resort: Your NEW home for all things Kalmwa'er! Clearly it was some kind of hotel, which made sense — who wouldn't want to cash in on that tourist housing fund? — but something about the building gave him an odd feeling. He wanted to say it was just because it was so tall, but it felt like there was another reason, like somehow this business had missed some kind of memo.
Joey had taken notice of the small skyscraper, too. "Jermy, what's that building over there?" The totodile asked.
"Oh, that's where we're going, Kalmwa'er Resort," Jermy explained. "The Pick-it Up Club's run by the owner, one of our associates."
"Why is it so…" Mathew asked almost absentmindedly.
"The idiots who put that sign up forgot that a beach town needs a lot of neon," ORB pointed out.
"Oh! That's it!" Mathew almost mask-palmed at the realization. How hadn't he realized that before? "It must look really ugly at night." Quickly the strange thought faded away. It was just a sign. There was nothing to worry about! All that was in the way of paradise was a paradise in itself.
This was going to be great. Mathew could feel it.
And since when had his feelings ever led him astray?
