Espir was still recovering. He could have pretended that everything was alright, but the encounter he had just been through could've gone in the completely different direction very quickly. If not for Alexis' bravery and the team's sheer luck with Pokémon typing, he would like be on his way to Team Cosmic HQ for some overly aggressive testing by now.
He wanted to look over the different items he had picked up from the fallen grunt but Alexis had spotted him taking the items so he had to give them over to her, otherwise the fuss might raise even more alarms than he'd already set off.
Other than the stolen Pokéballs, he had also found a few folded pieces of ripped paper. The way the paper had been ripped looked like the pages had been torn from a book, but Alexis wanted to have a look at them before he could see. She likely wanted clues to see what these guys had been trying to do, but Espir wanted to see if it had anything to do with what they had been planning in the last world he had been a part of. The Team Cosmic in that one had destroyed everything, or tainted it, at least. If there were any signs that they were attempting the same here, Espir had a duty to stop them. Not least because he wanted to live too, but to help protect the others in this world.
Espir and Alexis waited until a small ambulance arrived from the city, to take the grunt over to seek medical attention. Espir and Alexis both rode in the ambulance to get back to the city faster.
"Will he be okay?" Alexis asked one of the medics.
"He's a little banged up, perhaps with a concussion and a sprained knee, but nothing that won't heal in time," the medic reassured Alexis, "it will make for a sturdy lesson, I hope."
"Too right," Alexis said, agreeing.
Espir didn't really understand why Alexis cared about the well-being of this random grunt, especially considering he was just as happy kidnapping Pokémon and having her mauled as the other grunts had been. He was just less fortunate in the escaping part of the job.
Espir could feel a familiar presence, like needles up his back, as he walked back from the Pokécenter to Alexis' home. They had left the grunt there to be healed up and then apprehended by the local authorities, after having Starly and Letos healed up, too. Espir looked around but he couldn't see anything hinting at something watching him- which only made him more suspicious. Knowing his luck, it was likely Mew, but he really didn't have the energy to be dealing with such a chaotic force of nature. Every time she appeared, something wrong seemed to happen.
The sun was close to rising by the time Alexis and Espir walked through the family home's front door. Alexis decided to sneak up to her room, in order to not disturb her mother who was likely deep asleep after such a late night. After all the action, even though Alexis looked as exhausted as anyone, she also appeared wide-awake. She didn't seem awake in a pleasant form, but more of a result of adrenaline not entirely leaving her body yet. Alexis stayed sitting up in her bed as Espir lay on the floor.
"You can lie on my bed, if you like," Alexis offered, looking down at Espir, "there's room for someone your size."
Espir hesitantly took the offer, lying down in the same position as he had on the floor, but on top of Alexis' duvet cover.
Even with everything that had been going on, Espir had a few different questions running around in his mind. Yet again, he wasn't sure how to depict them without being able to communicate effectively with Alexis. He sat up, now with a better vantage point from the bed, and looked around the bedroom. Over on the desk, he spotted what he was searching for. A pen and a small stack of notebooks.
He hopped off of the bed, disturbing Alexis to the point of having her sit up also. He didn't feel good keeping Alexis up, but she didn't appear to be able to sleep at any time soon. He climbed up onto the desk itself and picked up the different tools he needed. He really hoped that this idea was going to work as it was the last thing he could even think of before giving up entirely on the whole communication aspect of this partnership.
"What are you doing?" Alexis asked, "we need to get a little rest at least. We've been up all night."
Espir waved her questions away with a hand before holding up the paper and pen. He hopped back down and rushed over to the bed again so that he could get to attempting to draw what he needed to draw. But what to draw?
How could he express such complicated questions and thoughts in such a simple way for her to understand? It's not like he really had the ability to write out words, with the small fingers he had. Basic pictures would have to do, as anything else would just look like scribbles.
Hoping against hope that this would work, Espir climbed back up onto the bed and laid out the paper on the cover between he and Alexis. He would see just how good she was at figuring things out now.
Espir pointed with the pen, at himself, then at Alexis then at the paper. He then tried to make a charade impression of someone talking.
"I think I get it," Alexis said slowly, "what would you like to talk about?"
Espir held up a hand and then draw a couple of simple pictures. A chair followed by a question mark.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Alexis asked.
Espir pointed at the sheet, then at Alexis and finally in the vague direction of where the kitchen and dining room would be downstairs. He saw the recognition spark in Alexis' eyes.
"I understand you have questions, but I'd rather not talk about it. Not right now," Alexis said, shaking her head.
Espir shrugged and continued his attempts to talk to Alexis for the first time ever. It was only a half measure, but that was better than no measure at all.
Espir considered what else he needed to talk to Alexis about, that he was able to somehow depict with childlike drawings. He didn't have the control of his fingers in the same way as he had had when he was a human.
He wanted to ask for the papers the grunt had, or for the strange rock that the grunt from Oreburgh had, but he didn't know how to depict it in drawings. Not in ones that were easy enough to understand. The frustration began to build and Espir did what he could to not snap the pen he was holding, but he did throw the papers off of the bed to let off a little steam.
"Oh my," Alexis said and Espir turned to look at her to see why she was reacting so shocked to such a minor offence- then he saw it too.
As if out of nowhere, the air was being pulled apart above Alexis' bed. Both Espir and Alexis slunk down as far as they could on the bed to stay away from the opening, but they also couldn't deny what they were seeing through the opening.
It was like looking in a strange funhouse mirror. They were both looking up through the opening and, as if looking at a reflection, they could see themselves looking back- also lying on Alexis' bed. Things were different, though. Espir- still a Marshadow- was colored a deep red, with blue highlights. Alexis and her bedroom also looked different, through the rift. She had streaks of dyed hair through a shorter haircut overall. Her bed had a different bedspread on it and the room itself looked to be decorated entirely differently.
They all shared the same expression, however, which was abject confusion- with a touch of fear from the two Alexises.
Just as Espir leaned up to reach for the rift, to see how it felt, Alexis moved to hold him back- and their counterparts did exactly the same on their end, as if mirrored. Suddenly, the rift snapped back shut.
Alexis held her hands to her mouth and appeared to try and steady her breathing. Espir could feel the waves of fear pulsing off of her. He might have been desensitized to the strangeness of the portals, but he didn't think it was anything to get too scared about- especially now that it had disappeared. Alexis, however, knew differently.
...
...
...
Alexis felt like she could drop dead and somehow still end up with more energy than she had at that point in the night, or morning, when she was opening her home's front door.
She needed sleep and while she didn't want to get off to a slow start for the following day, she had to get at least something, so she decided to go to bed before she attempted to do anything else.
Then the whole encounter with the rift and seeing herself on the opposite end of it happened and she knew she couldn't go to sleep. The rift was a sign, perhaps a warning, for her not to go to sleep. That's how she saw it at least. She didn't know what they meant, or why this specific one appeared when it did, but she had been dreaming about them for a while.
Well, dreaming is putting it lightly, as she had been having near consistent, nightmares every night for a good few weeks now. She didn't understand why, but they had to mean something. Now, after a stressful day and night, the object of her nightmares showed up in the middle of her bedroom.
She would've thought she was going crazy if not for Espir's reaction, too. It was a shame because she actually respected the little guy's ingenuity with drawing for communication. She had wanted to see what else he might try, even if the first topic was something she wasn't comfortable discussing, yet. Now, she would rather avoid those kinds of conversations altogether. She didn't know what caused the rift, but they were communicating right before it happened, so she didn't want to replicate anything that might cause another one to show up- one is violent as the ones in her dreams.
Whether she wanted to or not, Alexis was too exhausted to stay awake for much longer and- gradually- her fretting turned to sleeping as Espir watched on.
...
...
...
Espir could still feel the presence. It hadn't left since he had first felt it earlier that night. As he, too, struggled to get to sleep, he looked around the room for the source of whatever was watching him.
"Are you there?" he asked, "Mew? No point hanging in the shadows, trust me, I'd know."
There was a few moments of silence before the feeling faded, leaving Espir to wonder if he had even felt it in the first place or if it was purely his imagination.
Espir still couldn't get to sleep, especially now that the sun was up and the light was splintering through the curtains towards where he was trying to sleep. Alexis was deep in her own sleep, so Espir decided it was a good time to try and pinch back the papers that Alexis had taken. He crept off of the bed and over to where she kept her bag, just lying on the floor beside a chest of drawers.
Espir began to rifle through the bag to try and find the papers that he remembered Alexis putting away into it. He couldn't find them. He definitely remembered her placing them in her bag and he couldn't recall a moment where she took them back out, so they had to be in there somewhere.
"Are you looking for these?"
Espir whipped around to see Mew floating in the center of the room, holding the scraps of paper.
"You really do suck at not interfering, don't you?" Espir snapped, "let me guess, you have some sort of crazy plan that will most likely get everyone but you in danger, but you think it'll be fun so you're going to go ahead with it anyway?"
"I'm dying," Mew said, with the same positive lilt she put on everything.
"No, you aren't, you're immortal."
"Well, I guess I'm not dying yet," Mew corrected herself, "but I do finally have a deadline."
"So what?" Espir scoffed, "you keep screwing up, maybe it's time."
"That's what he said."
"Who?"
"It doesn't matter," Mew said, dropping the papers to the ground, where Espir quickly snatched them up to avoid Mew taking them again. "What matters is fixing all of this."
"Clearly," Espir said sarcastically, "so why haven't you?"
"I don't know how," Mew said, "and it is only getting worse."
"So, if you aren't here to help," Espir said, "why are you here?"
"Hope," Mew shrugged, "stalling the inevitable. I don't think I know anymore."
"Well, that's certainly reassuring," Espir said, "brilliant, in fact."
"I might be a little tied up with responsibilities right now," Mew said, "but I still command some respect."
"Why? Nobody knows you exist apart from a few of us, and it seems that we only know you do when you screw up."
Espir watched Mew carefully, ready in case she decided to lash out at him for speaking his mind.
"And another thing," Espir continued, "I'm stuck in this form unable to talk to Alexis. How? How do I figure out how to do that?"
"In time," Mew said, "you might."
"Might? Might?" Espir scoffed, nodding, his frustration leading to him raising his voice, which appeared to disturb Alexis' sleep. Espir watched her to make sure she was still asleep, before turning back to continue the argument with Mew. Mew was gone. She had taken the opportunity to vanish when Espir wasn't looking.
"Jerk," Espir muttered, looking down at the papers he now possessed, "now let's see what those grunts were up to, and why that pink jackass was interested in it too."
Espir laid down the pieces of paper on the ground and then sat down in front of them, spreading them out so that he could better read them.
The pages looked like they had been ripped out of a very, very old book. Much of the writing was faded, handwritten and there were simple diagrams and sketches drawn throughout.
The first thing that Espir saw, however, was an old depiction of what could only possibly be Mew. While the drawing was still a rough sketch, Espir couldn't think of any being that would so accurately match what was being portrayed.
Espir squinted at the faded writing and tried to see what was written about the being.
Of legend and likely myth, this slight Pokémon appears, seemingly at random, as an omen or a blessing. While little is known, one thing is clear. This is a Pokémon of immense power and- if you do happen across it- run. Run and pray.
Espir wasn't surprised in the slightest but he was a little annoyed that the best depiction of Mew in his reality was as a cute Pokémon in a videogame franchise. If he had known to be less trusting, he certainly would have been. Instead, he was now stuck here, as the entire of existence gradually went about grinding itself down to nothing.
He had been hoping for something a little more substantive in these pages, considering they were important enough to steal out of a book, instead of taking the entire book. Important enough for grunts to take. He continued looking over the pages, hoping something else, something more relevant to his struggles popped out at him, instead of more hearsay about mythical beings. Perhaps, something that could outline a way for him to get back home and see his family again?
That's when he saw it. He had looked over it a couple times without spotting it, due to the faded ink. Focusing his eyesight on it now, it was unmistakable. A diagram of a Marshadow. He looked beneath it, for any text similar to the description of Mew. He found it and, struggling to read the near invisible ink, he made out the words:
Harbinger of the End. Ghost before Ghosts. Nightmare that precedes the Terror. The Shadow that sparks the end of Light Itself. Marshadow, a being believed to be in touch with the souls of those around it, can tap into the emotions and dreams of those nearby. Where this Pokémon walks, curses are sure to follow.
Espir looked down at the paper, speechless. That wasn't the most flattering depiction. So far, he thought he had been doing a good enough job of keeping people and Pokémon close to him safe. Then again, if this turned out to be some sort of mystical prophecy, it was simply him getting blamed for Mew's screw up, as he had arrived right around the time Mew's issue blossomed into a universe-wide disaster.
If Espir had to guess, considering what the Team Cosmic plan was previously, he would have to say that they were trying to catch him in order for him to bring about some sort of controlled chaos for them to rule over. Like they attempted and failed in the previous world, but with him instead of those old, ancient Pokémon.
He was suddenly a lot gladder that Alexis had been as brave as she had, otherwise it wasn't just his own life on the line, but potentially this whole planet's. Just like last time. Espir shook his head thinking about the horrors of that previous world and collected up the papers to put away.
He would let Alexis sleep as long as she wanted and he would be there to repay her kindness as many times over as he could. Lying back down on her bed, he tried to get to sleep, too.
