Orange devoured Sol's vision. Blindingly bright and hot like a torch cast into her face she recoiled, her foot landing not on the hard, cool alley ground but packed dirt that had been warmed by the sun. The change was startling, not to mention the slight slope the ground took that was enough to trip her. Sol landed hard on her backside.

"What the ever loving hell is going on?" Sol said, blinking up at a darkening sky no longer hidden behind closely pack buildings. When had it gotten so late?

"Sol?" Eevee's voice was small and timid. Unlike Sol he hadn't moved an inch. "Where did everyone go?"

Sol looked around and sure enough, they were alone. Riley, Gardevoir and Ninetails were no where to be found. But down the path a short ways she caught sight of a large well by a crossroads. Sol frowned.

"Looks like we're back where we started," Sol commented.

"Oh. Oh!" Eevee said, a short moment needed to recognize his surroundings. "But we can't be back in Treasure Town! You need help!"

"Didn't you hear? I'm not getting any help from any clan." Sol sighed and got back up to her feet. "I'm going home."

"But what if it happens again? Sol, we live in a cliff!"

A cliff with a great big hole in the wall. Perfect for a quick exit.

"I'll keep my door locked," Sol said stubbornly but insincerely. Their home really wasn't sleep walker friendly. They had the window of certain doom on one end and a maze of endless tunnels on the other.

"We can't just ignore this! We could ask the guild! They'd help us! And Wigglytuff must know something or someone who could help us."

"Maybe," Sol replied, but truthfully, she hated the idea of going to the guild. After what happened between them and Eevee, after purposefully ignoring them all this time, the thought of having to go beg them for help was frustrating

"… We could at least let them know we're back. It's been awhile, and maybe they've heard from Ren and Jak, if they're not back already."

"I don't," Sol began, but Eevee was already walking up the path to where the guild stood.

"Wait!"

"We should see them," he said with a small bit of wariness as though he expected Sol to argue.

She didn't, instead falling in step behind him with a small frown. He was right, Sol couldn't ignore what had happened, but did they really have to do this now? They had just gotten back, presumably teleported, and it had been a very long and stressful day. She vowed to herself that she wouldn't let this drag on for longer than a few minutes. They would just say hey, let them know they were back, possibly ask about Jak and Ren, and then they would leave. Nightmare monster was a topic for another day.

As they got closer to the guild, Sol was surprised to see a sizable crowd of people scattered around in groups and clusters. Even from a distance Sol could tell that something was wrong and the signs became clearer the closer they got. The way some of them huddled together, the slumped shoulders, the eerie quiet. Eevee soon picked up the pace and Sol stayed close beside him.

When they were closer, Sol saw that most of them were gathered around small campfires. How long had they been there? How long did they plan to stay? And still it was so quiet. All these people and not one conversation was going on between any of them.

The majority didn't even look up when Sol and Eevee walked through the camp to get to the guild's gate. The few that did had dark rings under their eyes and seemed to have trouble focusing on them. Were they sick? Did they need help? The guild's gate was wide open, so why didn't they go inside?

"Sol?" Eevee said, hesitating just short of the entrance.

"I'm with you."

Eevee took the lead and stepped inside. He descended the stairs to the next floor with extra care as if they were coated in an unseen layer of ice. Sol stayed right by his side, and when they neared the bottom they both stopped at the same time, confusion and fear gripping them in equal amounts.

The floor of the room was covered in straw without a clear inch to be seen. On the straw, packed nearly shoulder to shoulder, were Pokémon, unmoving and deathly still. Sol's mind instantly jumped to the people outside, how unwell they looked and oh no a plaque was spreading through Treasure Town. All these people had the plaque and this was where they were keeping the dead and oh, gods no they had to get out. Here they would get sick and weak and die and they had to get out but Eevee was moving closer, standing right beside them, and now he would get sick and there was nothing Sol could do but get out-

"They're sleeping?"

A statement but his voice turned up at the end, making it sound like a question. It wasn't enough to break completely through to Sol, who was convinced she was looking at a room full of corpses. They were far too still to be anything but dead. She wanted to flee, but the tight grip of her horror stopped that thought from becoming a command to her limbs. She was rooted to the spot.

And then one of them started screaming. Sol flinched back, foot hitting the step behind her and she once again tripped onto her backside. Eevee also jumped back, ears flat against his head. The scream was coming from a Pokémon in the back left of the room, separated from them by rows of unmoving sleepers. The most unnerving part of it all was that even while they were screaming, they still didn't move at all, not so much as a twitch. The scream lasted for about six seconds, not long enough for them to shake off their shock and react, and then it abruptly ended. Sol waited for something to happen next, for them to jump up, move, shamble towards them like zombies in a horror story. None of that happened and the silence resumed.

"I don't want to be here."

It came out sounding like a whimper. The dead didn't scream and the living didn't lay that still. Was it possible they were really alive? The thought of getting closer to check didn't even cross Sol's mind. She needed to get out of here.

"They could need help!" Eevee exclaimed. He didn't share Sol's fear and carefully stepped over the rows of Pokémon to reach the one who had screamed.

They all looked dead. Beyond any help they could give.

Rows and rows of bodies, empty, nothing left. Whatever made them people was gone.

"They're all sleeping, but I can't wake them up…"

Sol couldn't even bring herself to get back up to her feet. All of this was just too…

A sound like a slow shuffling came from somewhere below Sol. It wasn't loud, but in the otherwise complete silence it was easy to pick up. Sol tensed, but still made no move to get up or try to look for its source. It was getting closer, tired, dragging feet laboriously climbing the staircase to the former job posting room.

"Eevee…" Sol whispered. She still hadn't moved so much as an inch but felt the need to warn her team mate that someone was approaching.

"Why won't they wake up?" Eevee said, not looking back towards the stairs. He was too focused on the Pokémon on the floor.

"Eevee?!"

This time it wasn't Sol. Eevee jumped around and Sol finally mustered the effort to turn her head to see who had been trudging up the stairs. Sunflora, looking thin, exhausted and more wrung out than even the people huddled outside, blinked in confusion at Team Wanderers founders' sudden appearance. Her expression then turned, her lips trembled, and tears began to fell from her eyes.

…

"Like, there wasn't anything else that we could do," Sunflora explained, her usual bright enthusiasm noticeably absent, drained away by the last few weeks hardships.

She explained how Pokemon would fall asleep and not wake up, no matter what happened around them. How it had been two days since she had last risked sleeping, how she had woken without a problem. A lot of people didn't. Of the guild, only her and Chimecho were still up and moving, if not very quickly. They tried to help any way they could, but there wasn't much to do other than stand around and watch, try to put off sleeping and make sure the sleepers didn't starve.

Sol was listening intently though she wasn't looking at her. Nor at the rows of Pokémon on the bottom floor of the guild, half on cots before they had run out and had to improvise. She kept her eyes on her feet and desperately hoped none of them started screaming. They had been told that they used to thrash about in the throes of their nightmares until Drowzee came. He hadn't been able to wake them, be he had made it so that they wouldn't accidently hurt themselves. While practical, the deathly stillness had to be much more unnerving.

"So you brought a criminal here?!" Eevee exclaimed. He was taking the news of Drowzee's presence much worse than Sol had.

"He's an expert on dreams! That's, like, what Drowzee are known for!"

"But he hasn't woken them up! He can't help, so get rid of him!"

"We can't really throw him out. Not without putting Jak and Ren in danger…"

"What?!" Eevee's eyes widened and his anger was over shadowed by his concern. "They're here? And they're trapped in a nightmare too?"

Sol looked up at that and saw Sunflora's guilty expression.

"Yes, but… They didn't just fall asleep. Drowzee sent them into Azurill's nightmare. We thought that since he was the first he was, like, the key to it all."

"And what happened?" Sol asked, her tone turning dark.

"They didn't succeed. Drowzee lost contact and can't talk to them, they're not waking up on their own and if Drowzee pulls them out by force, it could hurt all three of them. He has to stay to keep the connection going."

"Where are they?" Sol hissed.

"They're in your old room. We thought it'd be best if they were somewhere out of the way."

Sol was leaving before she finished the sentence. Eevee was right behind her, looking angry and determined.

"We can't leave them in there," he said.

"No way in hell," Sol agreed.

"How could they trust a criminal? What if he trapped them in there on purpose?"

A possibility, but Sol had a feeling that wasn't the case. However, arguing wasn't something she felt up to and she didn't really think it mattered right then.

"Then we give him another ass kicking."

Eevee hummed in agreement. He was far from being a violent person, but when it came to criminals… Well, the last time they and Drowzee had met made clear how Eevee felt about them.

"Drowzee," Sol announced when they entered the room. Drowzee jumped at their sudden arrival then flinched when he recognized Eevee. His eyes flickered nervously between the two explorers and Sol noticed how exhausted he looked as well, the same as Sunflora and the Pokémon waiting outside the guild.

Azurill, Ren and Jak lay on the floor of them room. They weren't moving. Dead still. Gods, Sol knew these people, knew them well and this was even worse than seeing all those people upstairs and-

Don't look.

Sol forced herself to keep her focus on Drowzee. She could still see them out of the corner of her eye and while it made her feel ill, she had to ignore them for now. Looking at them, thinking about what was going on, it made her feel so much worse than simply pretending they weren't laying right there.

"Do you really think that sending people into Azurill's dream is the way to fix this?"

Straight to business. Focus. Don't look. Eevee was standing silently next to her and Sol could easily tell how tense he was.

"I…," Drowzee didn't expect the team that apprehended him to suddenly appear and was clearly unnerved on top of the exhaustion and stress he already felt. "I thought, it made sense to… I still think-"

"I'll take that as a yes. You sent them in, but they failed whatever they needed to do."

Eevee visibly twitched. Sol just wanted this done with as quick as possible so she didn't have to think about it anymore. There wasn't any time to beat around the bush.

"I wouldn't say they failed, they could just need more time-"

"So another yes. Final question. If we went in after them and take care of whatever's going on in there, can you get all four of us back out?"

There was a moment of silence while Drowzee's tired mind attempted to process what was said. His eyes widened.

"You can't go in Azurill's dream!"

"Why the hell not? I'm sure trusting you not to stab us in the back the moment we're unconscious is a lot more effort on our part than sending us in will be on yours."

"No, but, four people is a lot to shove into a kid's head!"

This made Sol pause. She hadn't even considered that that could be a problem.

"We have to help him somehow," Eevee spoke up. "No one is waking up on their own."

So my laptop finally bit the dust in the middle of writing this chapter. Had to buy a new one but the keys are just slightly farther apart than I'm used to and it's really messing up my typing speed. I keep making typos... Second term schedule is busier than last term, but I always seem to write more when there's more pressing things I should be taking care of...

Wow, Sol, you really need to pull yourself together.

Ralmon: Still very much alive and things are kicking off!

Calvarygirl15: I did have an idea planned out for Sol in the clan, but as I was trying to write it out it wasn't making all that much sense in the story and I felt things were dragging on and the main plot needed to kick off. But who knows? Maybe the clans will pop again later :)

Mister L: Eevee is the fluffiest of fluff balls. Riley and his rather quick evolution was really fun to write. I'm used to writing characters like Sol and Jak so having someone who's as petrified of conflict as Riley was just so different from what I'm used to.

Himulia007: It's funny you mention Gengar because in the first concept I had, he saw Gardevoir freak out upon seeing Sol and immediately assumed Sol was threatening her. But when I changed the setting to a hospital, it didn't make sense anymore so Gengar got cut out. Shit is definitely going down in Treasure Town.