A pale dawn glow permeating the interior of her house woke Alti the following morning. She scrunched her face against it and dug herself deeper into her mattress. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she found herself wondering why her mattress was so scratchy and why she couldn't feel her blanket or pillow.
The memory that it wasn't a mattress struck her and she sat straight up, eyes wide. Part of her had been wondering if she had dreamed the whole amnesiac-Pikachu-thing, but she stood up and looked herself over, realizing that nope, she still had a tail, still had yellow paws and yellow fur and Pikachu ears.
"I'm still a Pikachu," she muttered to nobody in particular. "It wasn't a dream. I seriously woke up yesterday as an amnesiac Pikachu, and I still am one." She rubbed her head, trying to make sense of the thoughts clouding her mind. Why was she a Pikachu? There had to be some reason, if she was legitimately a Pikachu and it hadn't been some odd, temporary weirdness.
Moving over to one of the windows, she looked out into the sky. The sun had not yet risen, but a pale blue glow with the mildest touch of pink permeated the sky, and the light was coloring everything a light gray. Behind the building, Alti saw that a dense forest formed the backyard, though she could still see the sky through the trees. A gentle breeze blew by, ruffling Alti's fur and tugging at her ears slightly. Alti noticed that she didn't feel the chill as much as she might expect, and suddenly understood how it felt to have fur that protected her from the chill.
Alti let out a huge yawn. She hadn't exactly had the most restful sleep, she could tell that much, and since she had absolutely no other plans, she just decided to go back to sleep. This time, her exhaustion was more pronounced, and she found it easier to fall back into what ended up being a deep sleep.
Sunlight dancing on Alti's face woke her up later. This time, however, she was feeling far more energetic and refreshed, and she practically jumped up out of bed. This time, she didn't even have to look at herself to know she was still a Pikachu: waking up in the hay had been enough of an indicator that she wasn't in the human world again.
Her energy didn't go anywhere, though. Alti stood in her hay bed, trying to remember what it was that she was supposed to be doing right now.
I came here to sleep at Cannon's request… he said he was going to go register us as a rescue team. Wait, what became of all that? Where's Cannon?
Sunlight filled the building, illuminating every corner, and yet Alti could see no sign of the Squirtle that had helped her out the day before. Confused, Alti made for the door of the building. She didn't exactly know what she was going to do if she didn't see Cannon, but anything was better than standing in the building waiting.
She breathed a sigh of relief, though, when she saw Cannon's shell on the ground on the ground in front of the building. He must have fallen asleep there. She walked toward him and nudged his shell with one foot.
"Mm…?" came a low grumble from inside the shell. Alti smiled and nudged the shell harder, this time causing it to rock slightly.
"What is it?" mumbled the voice. "What do you want?"
"To wake you up," Alti replied, unable to keep a slight laugh out of her voice. "Come on, the sun's up. What are we doing today?"
"What are we…?" the voice replied, sounding confused. "What do y- oh. Oh!"
As soon as he had said that, the shell shook violently and a Squirtle popped out of it. He got to his feet and looked around before spotting Alti.
"I… uh… sorry," Cannon stammered, rubbing the back of his neck with his paw. "I had a bit of a sleepless night last night, and I must have fallen into a deep sleep after all…"
"It's okay," Alti said, waving one paw dismissively. "What were you doing sleeping out here, though?" she asked, crossing her arms.
"Well, when I got back from the Pelipper Post Office last night, you were already asleep," Cannon explained. "I didn't want to intrude in the house, in case you woke up and wondered what had happened."
"It's your house," Alti pointed out. "I don't mind you sleeping in there."
At that statement, Alti thought Cannon looked slightly relieved, but the expression was gone so quickly she couldn't be sure. "Anyway, I got our team registered. Team Hydrospark. They gave me a starter kit, too, which I want to look over with you."
Alti nodded. Cannon turned and headed for the mailbox. "I put it in here for safekeeping," he explained to Alti as he reached in the mailbox and pulled out a small bag. He brought it back over to Alti. The bag was orange, with a bright red strap that Alti assumed allowed a Pokémon to carry it on their shoulder.
"It's a treasure bag," he explained. "Explorers use them to carry items in dungeons. Do you still have those berries that Butterfree gave you?"
"They're back inside," Alti told him, gesturing to the building. "I can go get them, if you want."
"Not yet," Cannon told her, waving one paw dismissively. "Let's finish looking at the stuff from the starter kit." He opened the bag – it had a hook that allowed a top flap of fabric to hook onto the bag itself, keeping it closed – and pulled out a tiny egg-shaped badge with a pin on the back.
"A rescue team badge," he told Alti, noting the confused look on her face. "Signifies that we're a bona fide, registered rescue team." He took it and pinned it to the fabric on the outside of the bag before reaching back in. A banner that said "Team Hydrospark – Normal Rank" was the next object he pulled out.
"What does Normal Rank mean?" Alti asked, looking at the banner.
"Basically, there's different rankings for rescue teams," Cannon told her. He rooted through the bag, and then grabbed a pawful of nails and a hammer out of the bag. He went back to the building, and climbed onto the windowsill so he could affix the banner to the building. "Hold the other end up, will you?" Alti quickly moved over and grabbed the other end of the banner while Cannon hammered the banner into the building. "Every rescue team starts out at the Normal Rank. It shows that you're a pretty new rescue team, probably not very high-leveled, and certainly not very experienced. As your rank goes up, you get access to more jobs – since some Pokémon stipulate in their rescue requests that the team rescuing them be a certain rank or above – and more Pokémon will come to you personally with rescue requests, since they know you're a better rescue team if you're a higher rank. Pelipper Post Office will paint your badge with the new rescue rank color and give you replacement banners every time you move up a rank."
"How do you move up a rank?" Alti asked. Cannon had finished hammering in the banner on his side, so she moved out of the way while Cannon held up the banner on her side and began hammering it as well.
"Every job is also ranked according to apparent difficulty," Cannon said. "It's some sort of mathematical equation relating to the distance the dungeon is from your base, the depth in the dungeon where the rescue needs to be performed, the average level of Pokémon living there, and maybe some other factors. I don't know. I'm not a math wizard. That sort of thing is left up to the Porygon that processes requests at the Pelipper Post Office. But point is, registering a successful rescue with the Pelipper Post Office gets a number of points based on the apparent difficulty of the mission added to your file, and once it hits a certain number, your rescue rank goes up."
"I see," Alti said, feeling slightly overwhelmed. She would never have thought that a Pokémon world free of humans would be so complex! That'll be something to take back with me, she thought (shying away from the possibility that she wouldn't be going back to the human world). The knowledge that this world is something completely outside any human's expectations.
"There we go," Cannon said. He jumped down from the windowsill and admired his handiwork for a brief second before turning back to Alti. "The hammer came from the post office," he told her. "I should probably take it back there."
Before he could move though, a strange rushing sound assaulted Alti's ears. She looked around for the source of it before noticing that Cannon was looking at the sky, and following his gaze, they saw a Pelipper flying over toward their base. Alti's eyes widened when it slowed its momentum near their mailbox and landed on top of it.
"Team Hydrospark, I assume?" it asked, its voice sounded slightly muffled.
"Yes, that'd be us," Cannon answered. Alti was too dumbstruck to respond.
"Mail for ya," the Pelipper said, and without waiting for anything else it leaned over and dropped some mail in through the slot on the mailbox – or so Alti assumed. Immediately, it took off and continued flying in the direction of the Tiny Woods.
"I wonder if that's a rescue request?" Cannon mused aloud. "I'd be surprised if it was. Rescue teams almost never get specific requests so quickly." He didn't appear to be moving toward the mailbox, though, so Alti decided to check it out herself. Inside the mailbox was a small, unsealed envelope. Opening it, a scrawled note greeted Alti. Like with Pokémon speech, she found that to her surprise she could read the note as well, even though it didn't seem to be written in whatever language it was she'd read as a human. Turning, she read it to Cannon.
"'My name is Stun,'" she began. "'I'm a Magnemite living in Thunderwave Cave. Recently, there was an incident where an abnormally strong magnetic wave passed through the dungeon. It stuck together my friends, Scrap and BZZ.' Buzz? Bizz? Just a noise that approximates that? I have no idea how to pronounce that." Cannon had to stifle a snort as Alti shrugged. "That is a weird name. Whatever. Continuing. 'I can't get them un-stuck myself, owing to my lack of fingers and the fact that my own magnetic force would probably stick me to them. A rescue would be much appreciated.' Okay, but that doesn't explain why they know about us." She looked up at Cannon, who looked thoughtful.
"Actually, I think the assistant I registered with at the post office said that they'll deliver you a non-specific rescue request after registering just to help you get into the swing of things," Cannon told her. "This is just the one we happened to get."
Alti nodded. "Okay, makes sense. Anyway, Thunderwave Cave? Do you know where that is?"
"Actually, yeah," Cannon told her, bringing one paw to his chin and narrowing his eyes. "It actually takes a few hours to get up there," he said thoughtfully. "If we'd like to get up there, we should probably leave soon."
That wasn't quite the answer Alti had expected. "Wait, it – it actually takes time to get there? I thought all the dungeons would be close by. Like Tiny Woods was!"
Cannon snorted. "Are you kidding? The Stonelands are huge. We're on the western coast, so dungeons like Frosty Forest and Solar Cave take a good couple of days to get to. Fortunately, Thunderwave Cave is only a few hours out. It's one of the closer dungeons."
Alti blinked, slightly taken aback. She hadn't expected the Pokémon world to be so spacious, or the inhabitants to view multi-hour treks as such a normal part of life. She couldn't remember what the human world had been like, but it hadn't quite been that expansive with so little population, she remembered that much.
"Why are we the ones taking the job, then?" she asked, tilting her head to one side in confusion. "Is Pokémon Square really the closest town – or whatever you call it – to this cave?"
"No," Cannon said, very matter-of-factly. "Nortown is much closer. However, there's a lot of Pokémon in need of rescues all over the Stonelands, and not enough rescue teams in any one town to help the tons of Pokémon that need it. Rescue requests get copied and sent to all the post offices all over the Stonelands, no matter how far away there."
Rather than alleviate Alti's confusion, this just served to confuse her more. "But… doesn't that mean there's a chance that this request has already been taken by someone in Nortown?"
"Yup," Cannon replied, nodding. "But if it's been taken, that's okay. We'll be near Nortown anyway and we can just pick up a rescue request from their post office and get something done before the day's out."
The Squirtle's factual answer still didn't help Alti any. Maybe it was because she'd grown up in a completely different world – even if she couldn't remember anything about it – but she found herself thinking, There's got to be a more efficient way of distributing rescue requests than this.
"Shall we?" Cannon asked, turning away and grabbing the treasure bag from where he'd dropped it on the ground. "It's not a far trek," he said, making Alti wonder what kind of dungeon he would consider a far trek, "and I know it's not a very big cave, either. These supplies from Butterfree and the Oran Berry we found yesterday should be all we need. The way there winds through some small woods, so finding food along the way isn't a problem." Alti couldn't help but wonder, Do Pokémon in this world usually fly by the seat of their pants like this? Well, I guess they don't have the luxury of quick transport the same way the human world does.
"Wait, do you know how to get there?" Alti asked suddenly. She had realized that she had no idea what this region looked like, and so trying to wander around until they found Thunderwave Cave would be nothing short of impossible, if she were in charge.
"There's a map in here," Cannon told her, rooting around in the treasure bag and pulling out a slightly rumpled scroll. He opened it and motioned for Alti to come look at it, which she did. He pointed to a small red circle that looked like it was on the coast of the giant landmass. "See this red dot? That's us."
"Pokémon Square, you mean?" Alti replied. "In that case, I suppose we have to go north, and –"
"No, I mean it's literally us," Cannon interrupted. "These maps were created and enchanted by the Psychic Coalition of the Stonelands. The red dot moves around the region in accordance with the holder's movements."
For Alti, that sounded outright ridiculous. If the Stonelands Pokémon had made such brilliant technological innovations, why hadn't the human world quite figured out how to emulate these perfectly? She found herself reflecting that she thought certain maps in the human world had a similar quality, but not through the use of the powers of Psychic Pokémon, or indeed Pokémon at all. Something about this whole situation was just plain weird to her.
"I'm assuming you don't have anything like that in the human world, then?" Cannon asked with a smirk, noticing Alti's short silence.
"It's just different," Alti said. "Foreign to me. Everything here is."
"You'll get used to it in time," Cannon said. Alti was slightly annoyed at how willing he was to brush it off, but she didn't say anything else. She didn't really want to get into an argument with him, not when he was so generously providing her with a place to stay and something to do while she was in this unfamiliar world indefinitely. Cannon didn't notice her silence this time, and just said, "Let's get going. It is going to take some time to get there and back."
"All right," Alti said, shrugging. She followed Cannon as he headed past the mailbox and away from Pokémon Square and the newly-named Hydrospark rescue base.