A Reminiscence

Chapter Eleven

Illusions

()()()

Although the forest was normally quite green and lively, the sun was quite high in the sky at that moment, resulting in a massive amount of shadows in the trees that gave the whole thing a rather foreboding tone.

"Is anybody else somewhat wary to go in there?" I asked, as we all four simply stood in front of the trail leading us to our destination, which was hidden well by the darkness from the trees.

"No," Anne said. "Who knows what the hell we'll find in there?"

"Knowing our luck, something utterly ludicrous," I answered, pulling out the map. "Say, are you sure this is the correct trail? This is a very odd-looking map, after all, and there are a few others in that same—"

"Larch," Jack interrupted, "please stop being a wimp and just go into the goddamn forest. Yeah, it's a little dark, so what?" To demonstrate, he entered briskly, turning back to us and spreading his arms as if to pronounce some impressive "burn", as it were. However, upon hearing a mysterious animalistic noise to his left, he recoiled strongly and made his way back to us.

"So what, indeed," I deadpanned.

"Shut up," Jack spat.

"All right, if anybody is going to go in there first, it'll damn well be me!" Greybeard yelled, running headlong in, screaming. That strange growl occurred again, but he merely pulled out a pistol and shot at it, scaring it off.

"Shut up, will ye?" he muttered, turning to us. "Are you lubbers comin', or what?"

"Uh…yes, right away." We four made our way in, entering deeper and darker into the forest, strange noises all around us. However, a fair number of those noises came from Greybeard, who spent the while simply growling them off, and in quite intimidating a manner as well, more than I would have expected possible of a normal man.

"You seem well practiced at this," I noted, staying as close to him as possible as we made our way in.

"Aye, you have to be in my business if you want to get anywhere," he said, then producing another growl to punctuate it.

"Evidently, you are quite far ahead," I noted.

"This seems like a well-used trail," Anne said. "Why would something this foreboding be so popular?"

"Maybe something is fucking with us," Jack suggested, looking behind him. "Wait a minute, have we been going uphill this entire time?"

All of us turned to look at the path we had just gone down, seeing that, indeed, it was slanted upwards, despite the map I had making no mention of such; the forest should have been completely flat throughout.

"Okay, nice knowing you guys, I'm going back," Jack said, attempting to go back, but Anne grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back.

"Look, if we're doing this, we're doing this together!" she said, trying to hold him in place.

"Do what?" Jack demanded, trying to shake free. "Get eaten by Darkrai or some shit?"

"What be this 'Darkrai'?" Greybeard asked.

"It 'be' a very unpleasant legendary Pokémon," I answered. "Speaking of legendary Pokémon, may we please stop fooling about and get to the damned shrine before something finds us?"

"Hell no!" Jack yelled, finally shaking free. "I'm not going any further when the geography is completely screwed to hell!"

"So you would rather go back down the path alone?" I asked, pointing at the foreboding darkness behind us. Jack looked at it, and promptly ran past us all, soon with us following.

()()()

Regrettably, in our haste, we soon found ourselves quite lost in the confusing forest, and also found the map was of relatively little use here. Eventually, we stopped in a clearing, thankfully finding some sunlight at last, although it was of minimal help.

"All right, what the hell are we looking for?" Jack asked, trying to scout out the area, quickly finding absolutely nothing of interest.

"According to the map, there should be some sort of waterfall near here," I said, trying to find my way around the confusing map. "However, it appears there is no such thing."

"Are you holding that upside-down again?" Anne asked. "Is it the right map, even?"

"I already thought of that, and yes, it is the correct map," I noted. "Someone, or perhaps something, is affecting the forest to prevent us from finding the shrine. But why?"

"I'm going to die out here, aren't I?" Jack wondered aloud, quite panicked.

"Get a hold of yerself, ye pansy!" Greybeard yelled. "I ain't never feared no man or spectre, and I'm not about to!" He turned to the sky, gesticulating wildly. "Ye hear that, Darkrai, or whatever ye are? I ain't afraid of you or any of your little illusions! I've shit scarier things than you!"

"Oh, how pleasant," I muttered, trying to look around, before I noticed something most disturbing indeed. "Uh…guys?"

"What?" Greybeard turned to me, eyes widening. "What in the…"

"Oh, now what?" Jack asked, looking at the anomaly. "Oh, fuck me."

In the center of the clearing had appeared a very large rocky outcropping, with water running down in front of an impressive cave opening, presumably from some unseen spring beneath it. However, the exact workings of it were of less interest to us than the question of how it got there and what it even was.

"Oh no, a lovely waterfall," Greybeard said in a quite mocking sort of voice. "I'm so scared of it! Oh, look at how lovely it is! Ain't it the most terrifying thing ye've ever laid eyes on?"

"Considering it just materialized out of thin air, it might be," I said, walking towards it.

"Have you lost your mind?" Anne yelled. "Don't go closer to it! It'll probably melt you or something!"

I paid her no heed, mesmerized by the lovely stream of water. I stopped just short of it, Jack soon joining me.

"It's…kind of nice, actually," he said. "Kind of takes your mind off the whole 'nightmare forest' thing for a moment, at least."

"Indeed," I stammered, not really paying attention, rapt by the entrance before me.

"It's…it's not so bad, I guess," Anne decided, she and Greybeard moving up at last.

We stared at it for some time, completely ignorant of everything else around us, before Jack made the first move, disappearing into the cave. Anne soon followed, as did Greybeard, leaving me alone staring at it.

"Well, no scientist ever accomplished anything just looking at things," I reasoned, walking into it…

()()()

…And coming out inside some sort of conference room, completely empty. I was currently sitting at the head of a very long mahogany table, a projector above the center displaying some very odd diagrams on the wall.

"What on Earth?" I wondered aloud, looking around. Finding nobody else, I got up from my seat and attempted to decipher what the projector was displaying, but it was a complete mystery to me; none of the symbols were even close to anything resembling normal Latin ones, and they were pointing at what looked to be circuit schematics as reinterpreted by MC Escher.

"What trickery is this?" I asked. The door into the room opened behind me, and I turned around, seeing some sort of valet standing in shadow.

"Mr. Larch?" he said. "You're on soon. Do you have your notes for the presentation?"

"Presentation?" I looked around, and saw that at the spot I was sitting was a manila folder, labeled with those same nonsensical symbols as before.

"Uh…yes, I have them right here, I think…" I rifled through the folder for a bit, desperately trying to figure out what its content was. Soon, I found a very familiar picture indeed: my translator, and below it one of those blow-up dissection pictures, displaying several parts which did not actually exist.

"What the hell is going on?" I muttered, looking back up. "Say, kind fellow, where exactly are we right now? I have been rather out of it these past few days, and I feel a bit confused.

"Well, you're in Unova!" he said cheerfully. "Black City Conference Center, in fact! You're about to deliver your explanation on your translator device!"

"Am I?" I said, questions raging in a great tempest within my head. Surely that was still quite a ways off? How did I get here, anyway? I set those aside, however, and followed the valet out into the hall, which was also in shadow despite the large windows lining it. I looked outside and noticed an impressive layer of clouds blocking out the sky, sending the entire city into absolute darkness.

"This is very odd," I noted, trying to look outside and follow the valet at the same time.

"It's quite the storm," the valet answered, still hidden to my eyes by those damned shadows. "We haven't had anything like it…ever, I think."

"Remarkable."

"Anyway, this is the place," the valet said finally, opening up a massive door leading into a great stage. Even in the hall, I could see that the crowd was absurdly enormous, in fact, much larger than the building ought to have allowed. I looked at this all for quite a bit, disturbed at just how odd everything was acting.

"Aren't you going on?" the valet asked, snapping me out of my daze.

"What? Oh, yes, of course, excuse me." I pushed past him, and awkwardly walked onto the stage, taking my place behind the podium. While I adjusted the microphone, I took note of the audience before me, soon noticing some very familiar faces, including Jack, Professor Oak, Greybeard, Anne, and Ralph, somehow standing out among the sea of people around them.

"Uh…yes, hello everybody, and thank you very much for coming to my presentation." I awkwardly adjusted my cuff, sweat starting to pour down my face. I opened the folder, desperately looking for anything to help me deliver it, but I found nothing of any help at all, just more of those damned symbols.

"Shit," I muttered under my breath, looking back up and trying my best to seem confident. I am convinced it likely failed, but I tried to improvise despite this, hoping to pull at least something off.

"For years," I began, "scientists the world over have attempted to translate human speech to Pokémon speech. However, certain, uh, obstacles have always prevented such a concept from becoming the reality, for example, the, uh, the fact that Pokémon speech is an extremely complex tonal language, such that one sound could potentially carry hundreds of different meanings depending on volume, inflection, erm, intonation…" The crowd looked entirely disinterested as I rambled on, desperately trying to come up with something that sounded good. Sweat began pouring once again, and I looked behind me to find a projector on a wheelbase that I had not seen before, and quickly walked over to it, trying to continue the speech while I deciphered it.

"Because of this incredibly complex language, nobody has ever been able to create a proper translator…oh, piss," I muttered as something inside the projector cracked. "Uh, slight technical difficulty, pay no mind…anyway, proper translator, yes. With the assistance of Rembrandt, my Smeargle, who has been beside me for a good…" I trailed off as I noticed Rembrandt sitting right beside Jack, who looked very perturbed about something. "…Twenty years…and from this bond, I was able to understand what he was saying, and thus develop a working sort of translation…"

"I'm the one who did that, dumbass!" Jack yelled, standing up from his seat.

"What the hell?!" I cried. "Have you gone insane? Sit back down! I was the one who first translated the speech!"

"Yeah, nice try, Larch, but Rembrandt's mine now, and he's the one who helped me figure it out! We're way closer than he ever was with you!"

I sputtered, shocked at this absurd implication. "What are you saying? This is my presentation, I am the one who invented the translator!" I reached into my pocket in an attempt to fish it out, but found it horrifyingly empty. I looked towards Jack, who held up the translator, smiling very unpleasantly.

"Looking for this?" he asked. Some of the crowd began booing, including Ralph and Anne. "He's just trying to copy me because he can't do shit all himself! He hasn't done anything that I can't do!"

"Liar!" I yelled. "I devised the translator! Stop this nonsense at once or I will contact the police!"

"I'm sure the police will love to talk to my lawyers about your blatant copyright infringement!" On cue, a group of tall, bony men in well-pressed suits stood up, forming a perfect legal blockade around him.

"Your lawyers will accomplish nothing!" I shouted. "It was my invention! You are the one who has infringed! I doubt you even know how it works!"

"Oh, and I'm sure you can read those fancy little notes of yours perfectly?" Jack asked, sounding quite assured in his victory.

"Well, of course I can!" I opened the folder, but found that all the nonsense symbols and ludicrous diagrams, every last piece of unintelligible nonsense, had disappeared, leaving only blank sheets.

"What is the meaning of this?" I wondered, looking back up. "Uh…slight technical difficulty, again, please excuse me for a moment…"

The crowd immediately started booing me, unconvinced by my pathetic attempt at cover. Several of them stood up and began throwing whatever they could find at me; shoes, hats, and all number of other things. Luckily, their aim was quite terrible, or I might have been quite badly injured by the onslaught.

"Calm down, all of you!" I demanded, but they paid no heed, continuing to boo me even louder, and throw even more objects, including several varieties of fruit they should not have even had. I realized the situation was deteriorating rapidly and growing completely beyond my control, and that unless somebody came in to mend the entire mess, I would probably get strung up. Thus, I was quite thankful when a group of policemen, headed by Officer Monroe somehow, barged in, quickly forcing everybody else into silence. They ran up to the stage, looking me straight in the eye.

"Oh, thank God, officers!" I cried. "Perhaps you can bring some order to this whole—"

"Shut up, thief!" Monroe demanded, pointing his handgun up at me. I raised my arms, dropping the folder to the ground, sending blank sheets flying everywhere.

"Thief? What on earth are you talking about, officer?"

"Look at this!" he yelled back, pulling one of the sheets out of the air and pointing at me. Naturally, I saw nothing, but he evidently saw nothing but incriminating evidence against me. "One-hundred percent copied from Mr. LeBoure's patent!"

"This is absurd! That is nothing more than a blank sheet of paper!"

"Playing stupid won't get you anywhere, stretch. Now, come with us peacefully and there won't be any problems at all." The cops inched ever closer to me, and I stole a quick glance at Jack and his cronies, who all seemed quite pleased with this turn of events.

"All right, all right, here I come…" I said, moving towards the edge of the stage, the police tracking my every move. Just as I reached the stairs leading down into the seats, I broke into a run, bursting through the door and back into the hallway. The valet attempted to stop me, but I had absolutely none of it, running past him and along the corridor. I quickly noticed the storm outside had gotten worse, rain pouring down as if it were a monsoon and lightning striking all over the place.

"Bloody hell, this is utterly mental," I muttered under my hastening breath, trying desperately to keep a grip among the absurd goings-on around me. Soon, I entered the front reception area, which was wholly devoid of people, a strange thing indeed considering all that should have been going on today. I paid little attention to it, though, as I heard the police coming behind me, and dashed for the exit, running out into the darkened streets, only to find something even stranger: a number of police cars, lights flashing, surrounded by men pointing very large assault rifles in my general direction.

"Oh, what in the hell is this, now?" I wondered.

"Freeze!" one of the men commanded. "You're under arrest!"

"All of this for a simple copyright dispute?" I asked, leading to them pointing their weapons even closer.

"He's resisting arrest!" that same man yelled. "Shoot him!"

"What?" I was barely able to run away before they began a volley of lead death in what was probably meant to be my general direction, but not a single bullet managed to land its mark, somehow. As I ran away from the cops, who were now entering back into their cars to chase after me, I silently thanked every single major and minor deity I could recall at the moment, ducking into a fortuitous alley and hiding myself well behind some bags of trash. Soon, the wail of sirens pierced my ears as they passed me, but none of them noticed me in that alley, and it seemed I was safe for now.

"Bloody hell," I said, getting up and dusting myself off. "What in the hell was all that about?"

"I could ask you the same thing!" Anne said, coming up behind me. I jumped quite high, and then turned to face her, quite cross.

"What are you doing here?!" I demanded. "Were you not just in the convention center?"

"Convention center?" she asked, wholly lost. "I wasn't anywhere near there."

"Nonsense! I saw you quite clearly when I attempted to deliver my presentation on the translator, before you started booing me when Jack claimed he had invented it!"

"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about!" Anne countered. "I was at one of those Pokémon Beauty Contest things, and I was about to win off of Dante, when Greybeard said I cheated somehow and the security chased me out! I'm thankful I even managed to make it here, much less hide!"

"Greybeard accused you of cheating, while still being at my presentation?" I wondered. "Something funny is going on here…"

"I'll fucking say!" Jack yelled, opening a door in the wall next to me and walking out, very steamed indeed. "I was about to win Trainer of the Year when this jackass," he yelled, pointing to me, "said I didn't 'legitimately' catch Latias, whatever the hell that means, and the police started throwing tear gas all over the place for some reason!"

"Curiouser and curiouser!" I said. "The last I saw of you, you were claiming copyright fraud at my translator presentation at the convention center!"

"Bullshit!" Jack cried. "I wasn't anywhere near there! I've been in the back of this dive-ass Laundromat for, like, ten minutes now!"

"What be the meaning of all o' this?" Greybeard shouted from above us. We looked up to see he was climbing down a fire escape, and seemed to be quite tired.

"I say, are you all right?" I asked.

"No, I ain't all right!" he shouted back down, quickly coming the rest of the way down and looking Anne straight in the eye. "I've been getting chased by those damned soldiers for the last fifteen minutes after you ratted me out!"

"Wait, weren't you at the beauty pageant?"

"Beauty pageant?" Greybeard said mockingly. "What be that?"

Anne thought for a moment, and realized Greybeard indeed would have no reason to know about or go to such an event, releasing her momentary indignance and replacing it instead with confusion.

"Okay," Jack began, "so we each tried to screw each other over, except not really because we were busy getting screwed over ourselves. What the hell is going on?"

We thought for a bit, considering all the options.

"I think I know what is going on," I finally said. "The irrational behavior from everybody, the fleeting accomplishments, all of us being in two different places at the same time…this is nothing more than some bizarre hallucination brought on by whatever was in that cave!"

"Bravo, Larch!" an impossibly smooth voice said from…somewhere. We all four huddled together as the world seemed to dissolve around us, leaving only the dark walls of a cave…and a very interesting Pokémon indeed.

"A Zoroark!" I cried, as we all turned to face him.

"Ooh, you're just on top of figuring things out today, aren't you?" he cooed, smiling wickedly.

"Enough of these nonsensical riddles, damn you!" I cried. "I want to know exactly what the hell is going on, and I want to know now before I shove that ridiculous ponytail down your throat!"

"Holy shit, Larch, when did you grow a pair?" Jack asked, impressed.

"Easy, easy!" the Zoroark insisted, holding up his hands. "Allow me to explain what's going on. First of all, yes, I can speak English; I find it a useful skill when I need people to give me what I want."

"But wait, Zoroark are native to Unova," I noted. "Why are you in Johto, of all places?"

"I was getting to that," he said, annoyed. "I came here because some weird shit's been going on in Unova recently, and I had to get the hell out of Dodge before I got involved."

"Well, nice try," I said. "We have a time-travelling pirate and an insane composer involved with us."

"I'd still call that an improvement, to be honest."

"Over what?" Jack asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Zoroark said, crossing his arms.

Jack crossed his arms as well. "Trust me, I think we'd be willing to believe almost anything you told us."

"Hm…I could tell you were going to Unova from the lingering dream waves."

"The lingering what?" I asked. The Zoroark merely ignored me and continued.

"I'll let you figure out all the stuff that's going on there yourselves, I have no idea how to even start with it. On a different note entirely, I, uh…lose control of my powers when I'm sleeping, and I just woke up when you figured out what was going on." He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, looking away from us and trying to smile. "Sorry about that."

"Lose control, indeed!" I said. "The entire forest has been acting incredibly strange."

"Ooh. Yeah, I'll fix that."

"Look, anyway, where might we find the Celebi shrine?" I asked, trying to move on from the current line of conversation.

"Oh, the green thingy?" the Zoroark quickly lightened up, knowing exactly what we were talking about.

"Yes!" we all cried at once.

"Oh, it's about a hundred yards straight out from the cave," he said, helpfully pointing in the proper direction.

"Thank you, sir," I said, immediately starting my way out. Anne, however, had other ideas.

"I'm gonna stay here, actually," she said, eliciting several shocked looks from us.

"Why are you gonna do that?" Zoroark asked, clearly lost.

"Simple," Anne answered. "I want to make you a deal to come with me."

"A trainer, eh?" he asked. "Trust me, plenty of people better than you have tried before. I'm a hard sell."

"And I'm a hard bargainer," Anne responded. "In fact, I'll bet you that we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement by the time those three get back."

"A challenge, now, is it?" Zoroark laughed. "Finally! Somebody who's actually interesting. I'm liking you more and more by the second…maybe I will go with you, if you do manage to convince me, that is."

"Agreed." They shook hands, and began discussing their terms, while the rest of us made haste out of it.

"I never thought my life would get this bizarre," Greybeard commented once we were out of that damned cave.

"You and I are in the same boat, then, as it were," I said.

"Oh, that was bad," Jack said, grimacing.

"Come now, Jack, a bit of wordplay never hurt anybody," I responded, smiling quite broadly. "Now, then, we should make our way to that shrine before anything else stupid happens. Ho!"

I ran forward, quite excited about the whole business, as we were about to make one of the most important discoveries in history. My compatriots, however, were somewhat less enthusiastic, as they barely managed to stay behind me. However, nothing could change the fact that all three of us were making remarkable progress towards our next goal, and all the unique challenges that would come with it.