"Hello, and welcome to my darkest night.
Hello, and welcome to my longest fight."
-From "Projection" by someone who wishes to remain anonymous

Max trudged up that same hill with his paw clenched into a fist. His mouth ached from holding a snarl for so long, but he clenched his teeth against the pain. Dried tears burned a trail down his cheeks. More sobs continued, but his eyes had run dry at the base of the hill. He stomped out of the clearing and saw Cori sitting by the pond.

This would be their last meeting.

"It's been a long time since I let someone in;
Congratulations, you know my deepest sin."

"Ready?" Max asked with a smile. He felt a touch of pride watching Cori snap into a fighting stance. Their first day, they'd wobbled into several stances until finally settling on a loose approximation of how they'd stood at the start.

Cori looked back with a determined gaze and a silent nod. Max brought his tail in front of him and started watching. Waiting. As well as defending, his tail covered both his paws and half his face, giving as little visual tells as possible. Critically, it left Cori with vanishingly little to read, meaning that, while Max read every little twitch, Cori could only watch and fight their own impatience.

Patience, a struggle they both faced, but Max had slightly more practice against it (in this context, at least). Max usually threw them a bone by initiating but remained stalwart even after a minute, this time. He let a bit of a smile tug at his lips as Cori stayed strong and still, giving no indication the waiting ate at them.

Only grass moved between them; both stood strong against the buffeting wind of the approaching winter. As more and more time passed, it became clearer and clearer Max didn't intend to initiate. Yet, Cori kept a steely gaze through it all, a flash of recognition in their eyes the only tell they gave. They didn't know exactly what to do, but knew they would attack first.

Cori's jaw twitched just enough to spew a concentrated stream of water directly at Max's face, stabbing at his tail for an instant until it flashed into iron as Max sidestepped to see past the attack. The stream shook with Cori as they matched Max's movement step for step, but while Max dodged, Cori approached.

The stream started weakening, so Max rolled under it and lobbed a shock at Cori. The bolt connected and shocked through their muscles long enough for Max to approach and sweep his tail across them right before it flashed back to fur. The attack only grazed Cori, and they leapt forward with wide open jaws to retaliate.

Max tried to dodge back, but couldn't fully get out of the way before they closed around his arm. "Chu!" he swore and let out another thunderbolt with a louder, "Pika!" The grip on his arm loosened, and he jumped back to hide behind his tail once more. The new holes in his arm stung; he didn't need to look down to see the blood leaking out of fresh wounds. He took in deep breaths to regain his composure, yet even in a spar, his instincts clawed for control. His mind understood the difference between a spar and a fight, but his body felt the same exchange of attacks and pain and reacted accordingly.

A twinge of guilt hit his chest as he looked at Cori taking in shaky breaths, clearly trying to steady theirs as well, but not having much luck. Max was trying to hold back his shocks, but even weak electricity hit water-types hard. If it weren't for the steel gaze in their eyes, Max would've asked if they wanted to call it.

Cori pulled his lips into a smirk; unprecedented confidence sent a shiver down his spine. Did they notice a detail he hadn't? For a moment, Max's gaze faltered, and Cori charged. Max flashed his tail into iron, expecting an attack, but the full-speed sprint didn't look like any attack the totodile had used before. It looked like they were just tackling—shit.

The pond bubbled behind him. Max didn't have enough time to dodge anymore. He remembered telling Cori to use the terrain to their advantage more. The echo of his own words played in his head as if to mock him. Cori leapt up and wrapped their arms around him in a death grip to launch both of them into the pond.

Max did this to himself.

"You're standing on the welcome mat,
Oh, why don't you come in?"

The morning's shiver held strong in Pitfall Valley, even as the sun rose to its peak. Max squeezed his scarf and bag tighter as the chilly wind buffeted his fur. While he'd not considered a thunderstone up to this point, someone somewhere had once told him raichu had thicker fur, and that was enough to make him wish for one.

He approached what had to be the one thousandth fork in the path and felt a growl in his throat. None of these paths had any claim over the others. Dungeons molded and melded themselves around the occupants, but he took the path that looked a bit more worn anyway. This was his first proper rescue mission, after all.

As the 'new' path gave way to another fork in the road, however, he looked up to the sky and cried, "Pika!" His voice echoed back at him and made him flinch. Had he really been in here that long? He took deep breaths and monitored his thoughts. His instincts had definitely carved out a distinct presence in his mind, but they didn't threaten to take over. Yet.

He ran a paw along his badge (shiny and new denoting the high honor of achieving "normal" rank). Jake's advice to bounce the moment he felt instincts getting stronger rang in his mind, but he couldn't bring himself to honestly consider it. This morning wouldn't be a waste that easy. Besides, he had a room waiting for him, and he'd covered it with minute details that told him it hadn't shifted while he was out. Sure, some days he felt a lingering suspicion one or all of them were completely off, but that hadn't really bothered him for two whole days!

Despite the assurances of his own mind, Max let out a whimper. The haze of losing himself in a dungeon covered whole months of his memory in a dark miasma that he'd never be able to wash away. This was a rescue mission; he couldn't leave someone to that fate.

"C'mon," Max mumbled. "You're fine. You can do this." He listened carefully to his own words and let out a sigh of relief. Still in control, he was still in control. Despite the assurances, though, he couldn't shake a growing sense of dread in his stomach. He had no idea where this nidoran was, or how long he had before he lost control.

The pit in his stomach set alight as he took the next pointless fork. His stomach tried desperately to drop down and out of his hindpaws; his forepaws went down to hold it but did little to actually help. He looked up and saw the distortion break and corrupt the surroundings further. The well worn path turned overgrown with grass. Instincts chattered louder in his mind and made him stop to breathe.

One floor deeper.

"Fine, fine," Max growled. "I'm fine. I'm in control." He wanted the words to be true, but a growing dread crawling across his spine made it hard to honestly believe. Eyes stabbed their ways into his back and out his lungs—watching, someone was watching. He took shaky looks behind him, but saw no one. "Just instincts." A tear leaked out of his eye; he didn't bother wiping it away.

Two more steps forward, and his badge beeped. He jumped at the sound, looking all around him for the source before his mind caught up with instincts. He looked down to double check, and sure enough it glowed. The nidoran was on this floor.

"Oh wait, I know what's next,
You can't take my sin."

Gravity waited a moment, letting Max and Cori hang in the air as if to give the pikachu a chance to object. He looked through eyes wide with terror at Cori's sadistic grin, begging for mercy that had no time left to be given. Water slapped against his fur. He wanted to scream, but wouldn't dare open his mouth, so he let out a broken whimper instead.

Cori squeezed him tighter as they both splashed into the water. Max clenched every available orifice as shut as he could, squeezing Cori just as hard with all four paws and his tail. Somehow, though, he didn't hinder Cori's swimming in the slightest, and they pulled his head above water before he knew it.

Max gasped in air like he never thought he'd taste it again and tried in vain to squeeze even harder than he could while Cori ran their claws down his back. "It's okay," they cooed. "I've got you." They gave Max a little squeeze of comfort, squishing another whimper out of him. "You're okay." Max shook his head, not relenting the slightest in his grip. Little babbles of pika-speak bubbled out of his mouth, and they got the message.

The silky stones greeted Max's back as Cori pushed him up and out of the water. Max jerked up to sit and scoot backward until his hindpaws could barely reach the stone. Cori watched him curl up from the water with a frown tugging at his mouth, and Max felt a warm kneading in his chest letting him know why. "Pi—," deep breaths, deep breaths, try again. "I-I'm fine," he stammered, the stutter a mix of his fear and the chill sweeping its way over the land. "Nice win." Fear lingered in his eyes while he tried to force a smile.

Cori hopped out of the pond and tottered over to their bag, grabbed a towel, and threw it at Max. The pikachu quickly unfurled his scarf to wrap the towel around it and dry it before himself, even while a shivering cold shook him from his ears down to his pawpads.

"You really love that scarf, don't you?" Cori asked. Max nodded as they rolled some orans his way. "I've heard heirlooms help a lot with dungeon sickness." A new shiver tingled down Max's spine but hid quite well amongst the quakes of cold. "Is that why you always squeeze it when you're scared?"

It wasn't quite dry yet, but it was less wet, so Max took the scarf out and started dabbing the water off him with the towel. "Kinda," he mumbled. He gave an inadvertent glance of uncertainty to Cori, and they flinched.

"Sorry," they rushed to say with their arms up. "If you don't want to talk about—,"

"That's not it," Max interrupted. He wrapped the damp scarf around his neck and got to fluffing his fur drier. "It's touchy, yeah, but it's fine." The fresh holes in his arm stung when he tried to reach the towel behind him, so he quickly scarfed down one of the orans Cori gave him. As it healed, his paw went to grab his scarf; his eyes followed it to the same location. A familiar cold warmth arrived on the back of his neck, but remained passive. "Have you heard of Dark Matter?"

Cori tilted their head and said, "Well, yeah?" They let out a chuckle, and Max had to smile as well. "It was kinda a big deal." The implication of bringing Dark Matter up hit them, snapping any humor out of their expression.

Max nodded, looking down at the tail of the scarf in his paw. "Do you know what it did to pokémon?" he asked. Cori nodded, and an icy chill of their fear began sinking into Max's fur. "Yeah." Max brought his arm up to lick the blood away while the wounds sealed themselves. "Getting stoned isn't as fun as you'd expect."

A repressed giggle broke the tense air, but Cori quickly covered their mouth and spat out a quick, "Sorry!"

This time, Max laughed. "I made the joke, dude," he chuckled.

"W-well, yeah, but—,"

"No buts," Max said, and Cori reluctantly obliged. Max looked back down at his scarf and felt his smile drift away. His eyes didn't move, but his gaze began looking elsewhere as memories floated around him. "It felt like every part of me withered and died while everyone I knew faded out of existence. Their faces all watched in apathy while my soul starved itself." He stood up and shook as much more of the water out of his fur as he could.

"That's where this comes in," Max said, tapping his scarf. "According to legend," that I lived, "it's a manifestation of the love and friendship that getting petrified robs from you." He sat back down and looked at his upturned paws. "It's a physical reminder that, in your darkest moments, in your worst days, people are still out there to love you."

"I can see in your eyes
Exactly what's in mine."

That lingering sense of someone watching him wouldn't leave. Max kept glancing over his shoulder every few steps, even though he never once saw more than wind rustling the underbrush. "C'mon, c'mon," he mumbled, mostly to check if he could still talk. "You're okay. You're fine." He clutched the scarf around his neck and looked at the badge.

The emblem wasn't shining anymore; the light had faded. "Dammit," Max shouted. The nidoran must have wandered deeper. An urge to run forward, to hurry, dash deeper to find the kid grabbed him by the chest, and it took all his strength to resist. "Stay calm." He walked over to the nearest tree and slumped against it, closing his eyes to focus on his breath. "You're in control."

Deep breath in. He looked at his badge to check again, light still gone. Long breath out. "Just hold on." He ran a paw along his scarf. Instincts were becoming more and more of a threat. Going another floor deep wouldn't be easy for him. He stood up, brushing the dirt off his fur; he wasn't done yet.

A light rustle above the trees made him look up in time for a hard bone to slam its way down and around his neck. Two arms wrapped around it to hold it tight, slapping two paws around his cheeks. He tried to shake out of the hold but couldn't get any leverage. When he tried to blast whatever was holding him with a shock, the electricity flashed through the paws on his cheeks and uselessly into the ground. "Grounded!" the creature said.

Realization crashed over Max; he'd recognize that voice anywhere. "Sam?!" he shouted. He tilted his head back just enough to her eye through a skull's eye socket.

"Hi!" Sam cheered, as if she didn't have him in a choke-hold. "Did you get smaller?" Max tried to shake her off again, but didn't even move her. She'd finally outgrown him.

"You can't accept me,
So your eyes turn blind."

"I'm sorry," Cori mumbled, making Max chuckle.

"For telling Dark Matter to turn me to stone?" Max pseudo-accused.

The sarcasm didn't go all the way through. "Wh-what?" Cori sputtered out in a panic. "No!" The fire of their panic smoldered into rage as Max burst out laughing. They crossed their arms and looked away. "Why would you even pretend to accuse me of something like that?"

Their anger smoldered in his stomach, but Max couldn't stop his laughter. "Because," he chuckled out. "You'd happily take responsibility for the apocalypse if you had the opportunity." A rebuttal flashed in Cori's eyes, so Max preempted it by saying, "You accepted the accusation pretty quick even though it's basically impossible." Their eyes mourned the dead rebuttal in their throat. "Nobody knows where Dark Matter came from for sure."

Cori simmered in their defeat. "Or where it went," they mumbled.

I heard it's thinking of vacationing in the tropics.

"If it hadn't been for Dark Matt-er," Max hummed to himself before shaking his head. Didn't quite work.

"What?" Cori asked.

Max looked back up at them and said, "You assume everything's your fault, basically."

Cori crumpled a bit, and Max started regretting his words. He was just about to apologize when they mumbled, "Well, yeah." Max bit his tongue and let that sit in the air. "I'm just used to taking the blame." Their back straightened just a bit as if lifting a weight off their shoulders. "When people get mad at me, I don't know. It feels like… what'd you say? 'Everything unique to you died'?"

The quote made Max balk a bit, but he bit his tongue. "I can just see all their faces," Cori continued. "Looking down at me for how much I've failed them all. It's like—,"

"Tell me, will you pity me, or will you be my friend?
Tell me, am I just another cause to defend?"

"Pi-Pika!" Max shouted, trying to pull Sam's arms off.

Sam giggled at that and almost started the 'spell' when another voice interrupted to ask, "You sure you got him?" The voice registered in Max's head before he looked to see Drake slowly approaching. Max panicked, tried even harder to get free, and even shot more involuntary electricity uselessly through her arms.

"Yep!" Sam cheered.

"Good," Lily said as she twirled out from behind the fraxure. Max oscillated between bewilderment, terror, and a bit of anger, and it all coalesced into a snarl. "How've you been, Max?"

"Pi!" he screamed. His embarrassment lasted barely a moment before he had an idea. "Chuu pi kachu! Ka pi chu pi?" Maybe he could convince them he'd gone feral again.

"Nice try, little 'mon," Lily said with a smirk. "We heard you talking to yourself earlier." Somehow, that information relieved him more than angered him.

Max let out a little sigh of relief that he wasn't losing his mind. Taking another look back at Sam, he finally stopped his futile struggles. "Ka-u-er, why are you here?" he asked. Instincts begged him to keep fighting, but he shoved them down.

"I missed you," Sam said. That warmed Max's heart a bit.

"And to help you," Drake said, squashing the warmth Sam had just kindled. Still, Max tried to keep calm, for once hoping he'd get a chance to reconcile. "With how you left, you were clearly a mess." Drake wasn't doing him any favors.

Luckily, Lily was, and she went up to smack Drake's forehead. "He means we were worried about you," she said, floating back down. She smiled up at Drake when he shot her a glare, then looked back at Max with pity that boiled his blood. "So, are you gonna come with us, or do we have to drag you there?"

Panic shot Max's ears and tail (that he just realized Sam had failed to trap against his back) up. "W-wait!" he begged. "I'm not here for fun!" He nodded his head towards the badge on his bag as best he could. "I'm on a rescue mission."

Smirks of amusement dragged across Lily and Drake's lips. "I'm sure someone else can save the precious little scarf or whatever from the dungeon," Drake chided.

Max narrowed his eyes. "He's a nidoran, and he's only one floor down," he snarled. "At least, he was before you jumped me." He tried his best to keep his anger in check. Surely if anyone knew the urgency of this, they would.

"And what if we let you go one floor deeper?" Lily asked with condescension that cut the air out of Max's lungs. "Is he gonna be there? Or will you say you need one more floor?" Max watched in horror as she shook her head, clicking her tongue. "No, we're going now."

"Chu!" Max shouted. "N-no! I'm not gonna leave a kid in a dungeon!" No ounce of his urgency transferred to the other two, and he realized with a sinking in his stomach that they didn't believe him. "You think I'm lying?!" He started trying to yank his arms out of Sam's grip again. "Please," he begged. "Give me a meeting place! A time limit!"

"Oh I see you've taken one
Cautionary step in"

"I failed them," Cori said. His voice grew less and less steady with every word, and cracks continued to break out that they couldn't stop. "If I can't help them, I don't know." They shrugged in defeat. "Maybe no one else will." Cori hadn't acknowledged the cold once up to this point, yet a shiver shook down their spine. "I can't let that happen."

The wind swept through Max's fur, yet he didn't feel the chill go any deeper. The heat of Cori's anxiety warmed him like a burning bridge. "Who takes care of you?" Max asked. Cori didn't acknowledge the question with more than a glance up, but Max didn't let them off that easy.

Cori stewed in the burn of silence. A few glances up begged Max to say more, but he sat back waiting. "I don't know," they finally grumbled. "Myself?"

Max smiled at them with soft comfort. "Is that fair?" he asked.

"You say it's 'cause you care for me?
No. You're guilt ridden."

"Okay!" Drake said, but his expression hadn't changed at all. "We'll meet here, and your time limit is up." Max clenched his teeth; his lip curled up into a snarl. "Either you walk out with us, or we drag you out." He walked over and knelt inches from Max's face. "Those are your only options."

Anger boiled a tear out of Max's eye. "What's there to save?" he spat. "You know who lit that fire, right?" A knife of guilt stabbed into his gut bringing this up, but he had to get them to leave him.

Drake snorted. "The flash fire that couldn't have caught the building if it had all night?" Drake chuckled. Max tried to hide his relief that he'd made a harmless fire like he'd intended.

"Mandy!" he shouted, desperation creeping back into his eyes. "You can't—,"

"She's fine," Lily cut in. Max looked back at her confident, certain smirk (though Drake's tusk still took up half his vision). "But if she wasn't, fine, and that fire had done any damage," she splayed her arms out, "should we really let the danger to society you pretend to be go free?" He felt the flame in him dim.

"Go ahead, I know the drill, I've
Done this all before."

Cori shrugged and said, "It works."

"Does it?" Max asked. He hopped up and walked over to sit next to them. "Does it feel like it's working?" Cori collapsed in on themself a bit more as Max wrapped an arm over their shoulders. The combined warmth of both of them stopped the cold surrounding them.

Tears started pooling in Cori's eyes. They blinked them down their cheeks and shook their head.

Max squeezed them tighter. Sobs and whimpers started shaking through Cori, and Max pulled them tighter with every one until they finally broke down and wrapped both their arms around him. Tears of his own started streaming down Max's cheeks.

They sat together in shared pain, trauma and shame as tears flowed around and into a new little pond of their own. They held each other tight, falling apart to keep the other together again and again as the pain ran its course. Like bandages, they held each other to protect the wounds while they healed.

As their sobs died down, Cori squeezed Max tighter and looked up. Max met their teary gaze with his own. "Do you really trust me?" Cori asked.

Max smiled down at them. "With all my heart," he answered.

"Be sure, on your way out,
To lock the door."

"Wouldn't be very safe for Neb's new little pen-pal," Drake said. Max looked back to him with increasing defeat mixed with confusion. "You've met them, right?" A stab of ice froze his heart. "The totodile? Cari? Cori?" The world around him froze. A sense of betrayal ripped out of his stomach. Every bit of his vision turned red.

A beam of white pierced through his rage. Max looked down to see the badge blinking bright once more—he was back on this floor! He tensed his tail into iron to stab it into the ground behind Sam and used that leverage to shake his arms free, but kept one paw holding hers tight.

Sam's size turned against her as Max rolled forward to launch her into Drake who caught her, but stumbled back from the force of the throw. Lily rushed forward to stop him, but got blasted by a paralyzing thunder wave instead. Max swept her to Drake and Sam while the move locked up her nerves.

"You don't decide how my problems get solved!" Max shouted. He carefully yanked the badge off his bag and slapped the button down. "I do!" Drake did his best to catch Lily without dropping Sam. The badge flashed once. Twice. He threw it at the haxorus and watched it hit him right before the third flash teleported them all away.

"I know you'll desert me
Just like everyone else."

"Cori?" Max asked. Cori blinked up, waiting for him to finish. "I love you."

Cori recoiled in surprise but not enough to break the hug. Max held them tight and watched their shock turn into a wide, teary-eyed smile. "I love you, too," Cori said, fresh sobs breaking through their voice.

"I wait anticipating
When this friendship will melt."

"Max?" Cori asked with a smile that twisted into concern when they saw Max's expression. "Are you all right?" When they started walking over to Max, he crackled his cheeks in warning.

"I don't know," Max spat. "Why don't you ask Neb?"