"I don't think I need to tell you that things are very wrong right now."

Blizz and Fanita sat across from each other on the final floor of Wildrush Cavern. Thankfully, this level was just an empty clearing, a warp tile, and a crate of golden exploration badges in the corner— no raging wind that threatened to kick them out.

"No yeah, when I got up this morning I thought I was a part of Team Spark. Had all these memories that I was a feral before they came and beat me up. I completely forgot about being human."

"Interesting... I didn't quite go through the same experience. Do you recall what happened in the immediate aftermath of the battle against Absol?"

"I fell from the sky, Ride tried to save me, but then there was this yellow glow, and a voice… wait, did a voice speak to you or was that just me?"

Fanita nodded. "Yes, they thanked me for what we did, and said they would send me home. Then, once I could see again, I was back at my old hideout in Brazil."

Listening to Fanita speak started to bring memories back for Blizz.

"Yeah, I sorta had the same thing happen. I woke up on a mountain, then…" Blizz suddenly tensed up. "Oh shit, did I cause this?"

Fanita cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

"When I woke up, this other voice spoke to me. Wasn't the dude from when we were being kicked out of Varin, it was something else. He asked if I wanted to be sent back and make things right, I just had to accept his deal."

Blizz looked over himself, and the bag at his side. It seemed in his evolution, the Team Spark badge was replaced with a badge for Team Apex.

"And what was this deal?" Fanita leaned in, which only moderately unnerved Blizz.

"I don't really know, he just said I had to accept. Was all this-" He made a vague gesture around him. "What he was talking about?"

"...Well, I certainly didn't receive any offer like that, nor did I find my memories altered. Perhaps because you 'accepted', you were the only one who had their memories altered?"

"No, I..." Thinking about his previous encounter with the Jangmo-o who he knew was Kibo hurt a lot more now. "I talked to Kibo earlier, neither of us recognized each other. And I haven't seen anyone else from Team Apex."

"...I suppose that makes more sense, given the news story."

"What news story?"

Fanita dug through her bag, pulling out the front page of a newspaper.

Royal Wedding in Gremis Keep: Prince of Gremis and Duke of Ingen set to marry in three days.

Accompanying the bold headline was a picture of two shiny Pokemon walking together, an Umbreon and a Flareon. The majority of the article was talking about what it meant for royalty from two different continents to marry, with a smaller subsection mentioning how this is the first same-sex royal wedding in centuries.

Blizz just found himself staring at the paper for a solid minute, trying to process what he was reading. Eventually, he managed to regain enough of his senses to concisely summarize his thoughts.

"What the fuck."

"I had a similar reaction when I first found out," Fanita admitted. "Can I ask, where did you run into Kibo?"

"At the Varin police station, he was working the job he had when Prince, Rune, and I first met him."

"...Then I might have an idea on what's happening. You believed yourself to be on a normal exploration team, Kibo is working for the police, the Prince and the Duke most likely believe themselves to be royalty within this world. My guess is that all of us have been given a lifestyle and set of memories that adhere with what we wanted to do."

"...But like, Kibo loved being on Apex," Blizz countered. "He literally quit the police to join us. No way he'd rather be working there than being on an exploration team with the rest of us."

He could see Rune or the Prince not being as enthused, but there wasn't a chance in hell Kibo felt that way.

"Which leads me to my other point," Fanita continued. "It's what we would want to do if we didn't know each other. You said that you and Kibo didn't recognize each other, and you had no idea who I was until I forced you to remember."

"...Okay, but you evolved. Which, by the way, what the hell's up with that?"

"I found myself waking up as a human at my old hideout in Brazil, but within minutes I passed out. When I awoke again, I was back to a Misdreavus, so I made it my first goal to find a Dusk Stone."

Blizz gave her a blank stare. "...You did that before trying to find any of us- wait, how come you're the only one who remembered?"

Fanita focused on the latter question, not particularly enthused at the prospect of answering the former.

"I don't know for certain, but I think it is related to how I continued being a thief after meeting you and the other humans. If there was no difference between what I did before meeting other humans and after, whatever caused this either didn't think it needed to or simply couldn't change my memories."

Fanita let out a soft laugh as she spoke. Even against a threat capable of manipulating the fabric of reality itself, she still managed to pull one over them.

"...Fucking hell." Blizz fidgeted with the Team Apex badge in his hand. Despite looking and weighing almost identical to the Team Spark badge, this one just felt right. It was only a day and a half since he last had it, but having it in his grasp filled a gap in him that he didn't even know he had.

"Now of course, that begs the question of what we should do. Did anyone on Team Spark think it was odd you were now on their team?"

Blizz shook his head. "Not at all, they even hit me with the 'we're a team, you can talk to us' stuff."

"Then whoever is orchestrating this is capable of manipulating others, not just the ten of us."

"...But who was it? And why the hell would they do this anyways?"

Fanita just shrugged. "Hard to say. It could be Absol, or it could be someone else entirely."

"So we're back to knowing literally nothing about who we're dealing with."

"More or less."

"…Fuck." Blizz slumped down, looking up to the sky above them. "What do we even do then?"

"Well, we have a few choices," Fanita began. "We could try to find the others and snap them out of it, or just begin investigating the cause straight away."

Blizz thought about it for a moment, before shaking his head. "We should probably go try to snap the others out of it first. Or at least Kibo, since we know he's literally right there in Nova Town."

"I can agree to that."

With their plans made, the two got up and made their way to the warp tile. Before they left though, Blizz picked up one of the gold badges from the crate. Just because he wasn't actually on Team Spark didn't mean he was gonna screw over their rank up exam.

The the first thing Blizz heard when he reappeared in front of the dungeon was a shout coming from Chimchar.

"There's the outlaws! Get them!"

This was quickly followed by the woosh of flames that managed to singe some of his scales.

"Hey guys what the fuck."

Chimchar and Shinx stood across from the former humans, both of them in battle stances.

"...Are you certain you were on Team Spark in this reality?" Fanita asked, taking care to only let a small amount of sarcasm bleed into her voice.

"I swear I was-

"We're gonna arrest you!" Shinx shouted, though a squeak in her voice made it much less threatening than she would have liked.

Fanita didn't seem particularly concerned with the explorer's threats, pulling out a different sheet of paper from her bag.

"Guys, I get that I evolved, but you really don't recognize me? It's Blizz- err, Treecko, I guess."

"We know exactly who you are, Grovyle!" Chimchar tried to use Flamethrower, but failed miserably as Blizz easily stepped out of the way.

"I think I see the issue," Fanita reported, as she floated the document towards Blizz.

He spared it a glance as he jumped out of the path of a Thundershock. It was a wanted poster, calling for the arrest of a "Team Vindicate." The mugshots shown were a picture of himself as a Grovyle, and Fanita as a Mismagius.

"What the hell?"

Chimchar barreled towards Fanita in a Flame Wheel, but the thief easily stopped him in his tracks with Psychic. "Earlier today, it was a wanted poster for a Misdreavus. Something has changed."

"Well I mean-" Blizz shot a weak Leafage at Shinx, not wanting to hurt his sorta-teammate in spite of how determined they were to arrest them. "When did that happen?"

"It would have had to happen between you entering the dungeon and us coming out," Fanita responded, as she tossed Chimchar away from them.

"...The fucking sky. I thought I was just seeing that..."

Fanita thought back to their earlier conversation, before nodding. "I thought that was a part of the dungeon-"

"No like, that same exact thing happened when I accepted the voice's deal back on Earth. The sky looked all cracked for a moment, then..." Despite having his memories of being on Team Apex and waking up on the mountain back, he still struggled to remember what happened between accepting the deal and waking up with Team Spark.

"I guess it really is your fault then," Fanita teased, launching a spiral of psychic energy towards Shinx. The Confuse Ray connected, causing Shinx to begin firing Thundershocks in every direction except where Blizz and Fanita were.

"...Let's get back to town and see if we can snap Kibo out of it," Blizz proposed. "Or try to find anyone else."

"While I am all for these types of schemes, did you already forget your circumstances? Currently, you're an S Rank outlaw, just like me." There was almost a giddiness behind Fanita's usual haunting tone.

While they spoke, Chimchar's footsteps grew progressively louder. Blizz and Fanita decided to start walking away, not really wanting to continue the fight against their pseudo-guildmates.

"Fuck, you're right... Getting into the police station is gonna be hell then... We can't even go into town."

"Such a tragedy." Fanita's voice was laced with sarcasm. "I cannot ever imagine being in a scenario where, because you have been labeled as a thief, you are forced to navigate carefully and subtly through a city to avoid being noticed. What a terrible fate."

"Okay, then what do you say we do?"

"I think reaching Kibo is out of the question for now," Fanita responded. "However, I do have a theory on where Leaf may be."

Behind them on the road, the two could hear Chimchar yell out. "Where did they go?!"

Fanita had to suppress a chuckle as she kept floating onwards.

"Right, he's probably still working at Leavanny's," Blizz realized.

"Exactly. I think finding him will be just a bit easier than reaching Kibo, at least for now."

"...We still can't go through Nova Town though," Blizz pointed out.

"Don't you worry, you'll just hide in one of my old hideouts, and I'll deal with that."

While yeah, Leaf was probably closest to Fanita and if anyone could get through to him it would be her, the idea of just sitting back and letting her fix everything felt wrong. But as it stood, he didn't really have any experience in being a wanted outlaw and navigating a city, whereas that was one of Fanita's specialties.

"Alright, fine."

They managed to get back to the outskirts of Nova Town without running into Chimchar and Shinx. Still, Blizz felt sorta bad for saying he'd do the gold rank up exam for them, only to have his entire worldview shift and basically leave them behind. So, he made sure to leave the golden badge on the road where it would be very obvious.

After hiking along the perimeter, Fanita brought Blizz to a small cave south of the town, blocked by a boulder which she moved out of the way with Psychic. The two restocked on supplies and lingered around for a few hours until sundown, where Blizz attempted to drift off to sleep while Fanita went back into the city.

It was her second night excursion in a row, but a brief raid of the Spinda Cafe's coffee selection would make that slightly less of an issue. She did make sure to leave some payment though, those days were officially behind her.

She floated through the empty streets, still taking care to stay out of the main roads. She worked her way up through alleyways and random buildings that she was pretty sure were empty until she reached Leavanny's clothing store.

Of course, the expensive accessories laid out weren't of particular interest to her. Instead, she phased through the hatch behind the counter, popping out on the hidden lab underneath the clothing store. There, a Piplup wearing bright green glasses was hard at work, while his boss was fast asleep on a cot in the corner.

"Ahem." Fanita cleared her throat, trying to get Leaf's attention without waking up Leavanny. This didn't quite work though, with Leaf being too engrossed in his current project to realize someone was speaking to him.

In response, Fanita took a slightly more drastic approach. A blue aura surrounded Leaf's glasses as they were lifted off of him. The Piplup reached out for them, not realizing anything was wrong until they were floating a couple feet in the air.

He turned around, and jumped back as he finally noticed the intruder.

"Who-Who're you?"

"Oh, just an old friend." Fanita was walking a tightrope here— on one hand, this Leaf didn't recognize her. If she was a little too unsettling or intimidating, he would run away or go wake up Leavanny. On the other hand, that type of unsettling confidence is who Fanita is. For her to suppress it completely would make it harder for Leaf to recognize her.

Currently, it looked like Fanita was leaning a bit too much on the creepy side. Leaf stepped back slightly, moving closer to Leavanny. "Wha-what do you want?"

"I just wanted a friendly conversation," Fanita replied, drifting over to the table Leaf was just working at. She recognized smaller assemblies within the design, but the rest of it was foreign to her— a large metal tube with a shaft running down the middle. "I'm guessing this is your current project?"

"Y-y-yeah..." Leaf was still too scared to give a real response. Fanita supposed she should be thankful though, given that the fear was also why he wasn't turning around and waking up Leavanny.

Fanita lifted up the device with a psychic, holding one of the joints over her head. "I think I remember some of these bolts, you showed me them before. They're double threaded, right? You'll have to remind me why you used those instead of the normal right-handed ones."

Leaf's fear started to morph into cautious confusion. "I... well, once this is powered the central shaft will rotate very fast so it can't be directly exposed, but maintenance needs to be feasible regardless of what direction it's turning..."

As Leaf continued to drone on, his fear started morphing into enthusiasm. Sure, he had no idea who this random Mismagius was, but she seemed legitimately interested in the project. Not to mention something about this entire exchange felt oddly familiar...

"Basically, the main reason is because it can be oriented either way on the transmission shaft, so to be able to pull it apart, it needs to be able to be unscrewed either direction."

"Hmm... And where did you learn all of this?"

Leaf cocked his head. "...What do you mean?"

"Isn't this technology very advanced for Varin? I would think you learned it somewhere else. Earth, perhaps?"

That sentence caused Leaf's eyes to widen. "I... Fanita-"

Leaf's sentence got cut off halfway through. To Fanita, reality seemed to become a blur for a brief moment. When things were visible once again, Leaf was standing back in the same terrified position he was in before.

"I don't know who you are!" he shouted, loud enough to rouse Leavanny from her sleep. "You need to leave, now!"

Immediately, all of Fanita's confidence faltered. She was certain she managed to get through to him, what just happened?

She was so lost in thought, she failed to notice the Fell Stinger until it sent her flying back into the wall of the lab.

"Get out right now before I get the police here." Leavanny's voice was cold, as she stepped in front of Leaf.

Fighting through the pain, Fanita shot Leaf one last desperate glance. She silently begged for any hint of recognition in the Piplup's eyes, some cue that the conversation they had mere seconds ago had any impact at all.

She found nothing.

Dejected, she phased back into the wall, floating out and away from the shop. But as she aimlessly drifted out of town, a thought occurred to her. Leaf had recognized her before something happened, there was no doubt about that. What if whatever changed his perspective also changed Blizz's?

Immediately, she picked up the pace. She was not about to let the only other person she had left disappear too. She raced through the empty streets, no longer taking care to avoid routes where there may be bystanders walking about. She even soared past the police station, too concerned to worry about anyone taking note of her.

At last, she reached the hideout on the outskirts of town. To her immense relief, she could hear a familiar voice faintly singing a song inside.

"I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane..."

She rushed in to see Blizz idly tossing an apple up and down from his bed. Though as soon as he saw Fanita arrive, he caught the apple and set it to the side.

"Did you find Leaf?"

Fanita slowly shook her head. It was a bit easier to regain her composure now that she knew at least Blizz was safe. She would also be damned if she let Blizz see her as panicked as she was a few moments ago.

"Partly. I did find him and managed to explain things to him. I know he remembered, he got my name, then the environment got… distorted. When I could see again, he didn't remember anything that just happened."

"Fuck that was like, 20 minutes ago? Saw the same thing here, thought it was just a headache or something."

Fanita nodded. "Then the effect spans a considerable distance."

"...What happened though? Why would he remember then just suddenly not?"

Fanita floated a Sitrus Berry from a nearby cupboard towards her. "I suspect it's the same effect that caused Chimchar and Shinx to suddenly think we were both outlaws."

"But like, why didn't it work on me then? Why would they make Leaf forget again but not me?"

"I... do not know," Fanita admitted. "Something is wrong with reality, and as it stands we're the only ones who know."

A silence descended over the hideout as the full weight of the realization set in. Not only did they have no idea where the majority of the other humans were, there was the possibility that they wouldn't even be allowed to remember what happened.

Blizz had been able to rely on the Prince, Rune, and Kibo since the start. Mira, the Duke, Ride, and Angel definitely helped them out later. Even Leaf was fun to be around. For all of them to suddenly be yanked away… it left him feeling hollow. His support system, the friends he'd come to rely on— they were all gone. It was just him and Fanita, branded as outlaws and forced to hide away.

"We can't let it stay like this." Blizz jumped up to his feet, walking over to where his bag was lying. "We need to do something."

"If you have any suggestions, I will gladly take them."

Blizz removed his wonder map from his bag. Thankfully, despite all the other things that were going horrendously wrong, his bag was just as he remembered it, Wonder Map included.

"We have no idea what the deal will be with the other humans. But…" He traced a finger down the map, along a road leading south of Nova Town. It came to a stop when he reached a dungeon marker.

Burning Rapids

"We met Zar at Burning Rapids," he stated. "If we go there again, we might be able to find her."

Fanita raised an eyebrow. "And what happens if Zar forgot everything as well?"

"She's a really nice legendary Pokemon. If she does remember, then she can tell us anything. If she doesn't, we can ask her to talk to the other legendaries. Plus, remember all the stuff she was talking about before we went to fight Absol? What are the odds this has something to do with that?"

"That seems to be a lot of assuming," Fanita commented, flying alongside Blizz to study the map. "Let's start with the first of them. Why do you believe we could even find Zar at Burning Rapids?"

"You, me, Leaf, and Kibo all were doing the things we were before we met anyone else. When we first met Zar, she was at the end of Burning Rapids. We have to at least check there."

Fanita locked eyes with her own reflection within Blizz's goggles. Usually it was pretty easy to get a read on Blizz's emotions, but in moments like this, those goggles made the process far more difficult than it should be.

So without seeing his expression, Fanita nodded. "Very well, we'll leave early tomorrow so we can avoid the exploration teams."

A grin crossed Blizz's face. "Let's fucking go."

Blizz got very little sleep that night. Even as Fanita drifted off to whatever ghost types do when they're trying to sleep, his eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling of the cave.

Him and Fanita were against a world actively reshaping itself to fuck them over as much as possible. If Zar turned out to be a dead end, they'd have nothing. No leads, no clue as to what's going on, just praying that answers fall into their laps.

He rolled over to look at the sleeping Mismagius. It was both shocking and not a surprise at all that Fanita was the first to snap out of it. While she only stopped being a direct obstacle to the other humans relatively recently, she also had this air about her that said she was in charge of every situation she found herself in. So while he would kill to have the Prince's force of presence, Kibo's unending optimism, or Rune's quiet collectedness back, Fanita was one of the best teammates he could have to work through this.

Cracks of light seeping through the entrance of the cave broke his train of thought. He climbed up to his feet and stuck his head through the boulder, where he could see the sun rising up over the mountains to their east.

"Fanita, you ready?"

The Mismgius began to stir. She floated various different supplies from the hideout's storage into her bag, before using a Psychic to roll the boulder out of the way. "We have a Mew to find, do we not?"

"Hell yeah we do."

He didn't know Fanita nearly as well as the Prince. She didn't have the calm presence that Rune brought, or the sheer force of dependability that Kibo had.

But she is Fanita, the legendary thief who's presence practically screamed she was in charge of every situation she was in. Even when he was losing his mind back with Absol, she tried to bring him back to his senses with… some success. So despite everything, Blizz trusted her.

Burning Rapids was not a particularly fun dungeon, Blizz remembered that much. It was normal in the way mystery dungeons always shifted their layouts, but the perpetually humid atmosphere, jets of boiling water shooting out with no warning, and having to jump over rivers that burned just standing near them was just as difficult to deal with now as it was back then.

Of course, this time around he wasn't going after a bogus rescue mission, he was searching for a friend. The determination that he used to charge through the dungeon was even enough to suppress the tiny voice in the back of his head that had the audacity to suggest Zar may not remember them.

Each floor blended into the last. Even Fanita's occasional commentary didn't stand out much, with the Grovyle too focused on moving onward. 20 floors passed by like they were nothing, save for a few burn marks on Blizz's scales or bits of Fanita's cloak dripping with water.

But before they descended the final staircase, Blizz held out an arm. "Last time we had to fight like, four legendaries. You good with that?"

Fanita just laughed. "Ah, four legendaries. How terrifying, certainly our experience with Zygarde or Yveltal will not aid us at all."

Fanita's sarcasm lifted Blizz's mood a little as he prepared a Leaf Blade. With grass type energy streaming off of both arms, he began the descent.

Like last time, he found himself in a large stone chamber. Unlike last time, rather than having four statues, there were four unconscious legendary Pokemon, and a shiny Treecko sitting atop the largest, her back to the stairwell.

Blizz canceled the Leaf Blade immediately, running towards the Treecko. The fact that she was still using the Treecko disguise gave him hope— Zar might have actually remembered.

He jumped up on top of the unconscious Regigigas, sitting next to the Treecko. Fanita floated around the side, positioning herself within the two's peripheral vision.

Blizz reached out a hand to the Treecko, gently resting on her shoulder. "...Zar?"

At last the Treecko reacted to the newcomers, turning to face Blizz with a hollow expression.

For a moment, panic set in. Did Zar not remember after all? Maybe she became a husk? She mentioned that was possible at Breach Mountain.

Those doubts would soon be cast aside as she leaped towards Blizz in a hug, tackling him off the Regigigas. The two fell to the ground with a dull thud, but the moderate pain of the impact was nothing compared to the relief both felt.

"Blizz! You remember!"

The Grovyle reciprocated the hug as he nodded. "Yeah, Fanita managed to snap me out of it... Fuck, I can't tell you how great it is to have you here."

Watching the exchange, Fanita let out a sigh of relief. She was worried that the same thing that happened to Leaf would occur here, and that the entire dungeon expedition would be for nothing. But as far as she could tell, that wasn't happening yet.

The two grass types remained like that for a minute, before Fanita cleared her throat. "Ahem. Not to disrupt your reunion, but we do have business to attend to here."

Blizz broke off the hug, taking a step back. "Right... Do you have any idea what the hell has been happening? I woke up thinking I was part of Team Spark, Leaf and Kibo don't recognize us, and we got sent back to the human world for a bit?"

Zar sighed. "I... know bits and pieces. There's no reason for me to hide anything now."

Blizz and Fanita both stared expectedly at Zar. She Transformed herself into a shiny Grovyle so she could at least be at eye level with the others.

"…Have the two of you ever heard of Celebi?"

A/N: Ch 40: Bat Out of Hell - 11/26/22