Douglas hit the water with a resounding smack, and barely had a moment to draw in half of a breath before that Skarmory slammed on top of him, causing him to draw in water, not precious air up into his lungs.

He watched the Stupid Girl and her flailing Skarmory above him- steel and flying were no good at all in the water- with a detached amusement before a tendril of foggy panic touched his mind.

"TRAIN-ER. TRAIN-ER, WE ARE DY-ING."

Beyheem…We are?

"TRAIN-ER. WE NEED AIR."

I know. But I want to stay here and rest for a while. I never get to rest at all up there.

"TRAIN-ER. YOU MUST REM-EM-BER WHY WE ARE HERE."

And then, like Beheeyem had flicked a switch, it all came flooding into his head at once. Douglas promptly expelled the last bubbles of air that he had left in a panic, and began to thrash around.

He couldn't die. Not yet, he wasn't done yet. He still had more work to do, that was the whole reason for all of this, that was why he had brought that Stupid Girl here, to be ready right on time.

I won't die, he snarled to himself. You Stupid Girl, you won't make me die, not when I'm so close-

Douglas reached a surface of the water, dragging Beheeyem, the Stupid Girl and her Skarmory with him. He took a huge, wonderful gulp of air, his hands still clawing forward like they couldn't stop trying to swim out of the water-

And promptly fell forward? Backward? Head-over-heels? Into more water, this time a waterfall.

He kept tumbling over and over, with the only bizarre thought in his mind that now he finally knew what it was like to be in a washing machine. He cracked his head on a frantically wailing Skarmory, and then blacked out.

. . .

Douglas came to all at once, with a gasp of air and hands that grabbed tightly onto sweet solid land, thank Arceus. Douglas took a few seconds longer to open his eyes, half convinced that the moment he did he would find himself falling through the water again. When he'd finally worked up the nerve, Stupid Girl and her Skarmory were staring at him.

Stupid Stupid Girl and her Skarmory.

Wow, even in his head, that sounded lame.

She'd started babbling the moment that she knew that he was fully awake, her voice cheerful and upbeat despite the anxious look in her eyes. "You've been out for-for quite a while, I think. I'm not- not exactly sure, you see, my watch sort of broke in the water, but I'm guessing that it's been something like twenty minutes…But, like I said, I don't exactly know-"

"Shut up, would you?," He snapped "Where are we, anyway? Did we get out of the lake?"

She stopped her panicked gabbing, and Douglas could almost feel her retreating back into her mind, throwing up metaphorical barriers and drawing curtains that said: Nobody Home.

"Well?" He hissed. "Well? My vision is a bit impaired, and all that I can see is that it's dark out and quiet. Now stop being a dullard, AND TELL ME WH-"

"I don't know where we are, Douglas."

Her voice, completely flat and lacking in anything, gave him pause. It also gave him a tiny but bright and desperate surge of hope. Could it be, could it possibly be, could he have possibly finally done it-

Douglas stood up as fast as he could, ignoring the pain in his head and the sudden change of vertigo; and began desperately concentrating on getting his vision clear, dammit, he had to see, he had to know- There was an incline just there, if he went to it then he would have a much better vantage point-

And all of a sudden, there it all was.

. . .

It was nothing like he had pictured it. It was everything like he had pictured it.

He was completely and utterly terrified. He was in complete awe.

He wanted to stare at it forever. He wanted to turn away, hide his eyes, and never open them again.

He wanted to go home. He wanted to stay here for the rest of his life.

Douglas fainted.

. . .

When he woke up again, Douglas came up with several facts: One, that he was in the right place. Two, Stupid Girl and her Skarmory were here with him, so all had gone according to plan. And Three, that when people said that they hurt in places that they never knew that they had were not exaggerating.

Douglas dragged himself up the rise to get another look, ignoring the Stupid Girls attempt to help and the Skarmory's attempts to hold him down.

When he got another good vantage point, he took another look around, this time focusing on the features of the terrain: Terracotta soil lying on top of ink-black islands of rock that were defying gravity. OK, he thought. So gravity doesn't apply here. I can deal with that. There was no vegetation of any kind that he could see, but water was in abundance; it poured from the.. ceiling? Easily enough, but it…just kept going through the air, never stopping, going down to-

Douglas looked down, saw what was there- or more accurately, he corrected dazedly, what wasn't there.

Douglas fainted again.

. . .

The third time he woke up, his legs were being sat on by the girl, and her Skarmory had pinned his arms. His loud and varied vocabulary of curses had no visible effect on them, but when he made a comment about her mother, the girl hit him over the head with her backpack. He lost consciousness again, but this time due to being knocked out, rather than his brain being unable to comprehend what it was seeing.

. . .

The fourth time he woke up, Douglas was finally calm. He noticed that the Girl, while watching him warily, was no longer making any moves to restrain him. Douglas continued to stare at her steadily, and then dredged up the reserves of his strength to say: "Thank you."

The Girl nodded once, and relaxed slightly. "Are you going to faint again?"

Douglas shook his head. He had entered a zen-like state of calm, and was not the slightest bit bothered by her words, which earlier would have caused him to insult her. "No…I think not."

The Girl nodded again. "Do you know where we are?"

Douglas sat up. "Yes and No."

The Girl stared at him with a blank look on her face, and as she did, Douglas noticed that her Skarmory- and Beheeyem, for that matter- were gone.

"Your Beheeyem's been gone since you fainted that first time, and Mimi went off after that last time to try and follow the- the waterfall back up, to see if we could get out of here that way."

Alarm ran through Douglas. Could that be done?" Can it do it?"
The girl began to rock back and forth, in a way that Douglas knew was completely unconscious. She was too afraid to notice. She raised her head up too look him straight in the eye for the first time since he'd met her. "I don't know. I don't know anything. I don't know this place, I don't know why or how we got here, I don't know how we can see fairly clearly when there is clearly no sun or light anywhere. I don't know why gravity stopped working- I looked too, you know, and I didn't faint!"

While giving her tirade, the Girl's voice had steadily risen in volume as she had steadily risen off of the ground.

"I DON'T KNOW HOW ANY-" She gave a helpless, all-encompassing wave of her hands to the surrounding area. "-ANY OF THIS CAN BE ANY SORT OF HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE!"

She stopped shouting with a gulping noise, like she was battling to hold back a sob, drew herself up to her full height and rooted him to the spot with a ferocious, if watery, stare. "But you know. I remember: on that ridge, that ridge that YOU LEAD US TO! You were trying to get here, to get us to this- this PLACE!

"And I've been thinking; and I can do that, you know! I've been thinking that for some reason you needed me here too. Or someone like me, anyway. So- start talking. Or-" Her Skarmory wheeled in from above, and shook her head. The Girl froze for a split second, a petrified look on her face- and then the next second it was gone, replaced by dogged determination.

"Or, better yet: talk while we walk."

Douglas's train of thought was in shambles. He stared at her from the ground with a sense of dawning wonderment and a sickening lurch of his stomach. "You aren't stupid at all, are you?" He rasped. "You…You really do think."

The Girl- Kim, her name was Kim! Gave a nod. "No. I'm not."

As the Girl- No, Kim- turned around to start walking, Douglas felt sick. She wasn't stupid, not even a bit.

Douglas began to follow behind her, going silent, not from exhaustion, but from panic and desperate mental calculation. He stared at her back: she looked normal from that angle, medium- length straight brown hair and a baseball cap.

His entire plan had depended on his partner being someone that he could out-think. But this Kim wasn't stupid.

This was going to be a lot harder than he'd thought.