The next day was pretty uneventful for the majority of the morning. For Kevin, at least. It helped that Lana preferred to keep everyone but Mist in their Pokéballs. Maybe he would have to retract his thoughts on favouritism. Even if it meant agreeing with Kari, he had to admit that being stuck in the dark all the time sucked.

When Lana finally let them out, it was almost noon. Looming in front of them was, from the looks of it, a forest. A forest by the water. And though it was exponentially colder than he'd have liked, it really reminded Kevin of home.

His home wasn't exactly the typical kind you'd find a fire type in. He knew that it wasn't exactly the kind of place that normal wild Pokémon of his kind would even consider. But he grew up in Petalburg Woods, and that made it the best place on Earth, whether it deserved that title or not.

He sighed inwardly. He'd get home; he had to. Eventually. Somehow. As soon as he found out where he was.

He noticed Kari staring at him from behind and decided to actually try and figure something out. "So, where's this?" he asked casually.

"Read the sign, dumbass," snorted Kari. He glared at her.

"For your information, I would if I could," he retorted without realizing. He grimaced. Damn it.

She blinked, slowly walking in front of him. "Interesting. You're illiterate?" She was staring at him again, as if she was trying to examine him. Seriously creepy, really. Borderline diabolical, in his opinion, given the fact that even her scarred eye was also staring at him like it could still see. For a split second he wondered what happened to her, and then his thoughts happened to speak for themselves.

"If you're wondering why I look the way I do, I told you already, I don't want to talk about it. What I would like to talk about is why you never learned how to read," Double damn it. What was with him and reacting before he had a chance to think? Even when he didn't say anything…

Styler chirruped and hopped over to Kevin's side. "Oh, I get it! You're a Naturalist, right? I've heard about those!"

"I— What? The heck's a Naturalist?" Kevin questioned, turning to the tiny bird.

"It figures you wouldn't know, seeing as you don't read," mused Kari.

"Um, Kari, please stop that," said Lana in a weak gesture of mediation. She looked over to Kevin, looking a tad uncomfortable. "A Naturalist is a Pokémon who prefers the way it was before… Um, before the rights thing and everything, you know? They're the ones who didn't like other Pokémon learning how to talk and stuff. Some actively protest anything to do with humans."

Whoa. Jackpot. It wasn't necessarily what he was looking for, but damn, that was helpful. He had some things figured out for certain: The place was called Sinnoh, things were normal for an indefinite time before the "rights thing" happened, and Kari knew something about it. Well, that wasn't certain, but he had a hunch.

He smiled. All right, he could make this work to his advantage. Sure, he was going to have to be less than honest, but at this rate, getting back to Hoenn would be a piece of cake. And he quite liked cake.

"Ah, right. Well, it's not like I regret learning to talk at all. It's actually been pretty handy over here. I just never bothered to learn to read. Too much work, you catch my drift?" Lana nodded, somewhat relieved. He guessed that having a Naturalist on your Pokémon team wasn't a good thing, what with the anti-human mentality. Though, he wondered how many Pokémon were Naturalists without outwardly saying so. The chances of catching an entirely pro-human team seemed pretty slim. He put his hands behind his head. "Now where are we?"

Kari made a disgruntled noise and replied, "Eterna Forest," while glowering at the sign. He snickered.

She turned back to him, glaring.

"Well, it's not like the sign did anything to you," he found himself saying. He couldn't help it, it was too easy. Could she not find anything to be happy about, other than frazzling him?

The group continued all together through the forest, but Kevin didn't pay much attention to it. Kari was trying to get behind him, and although he had no idea what sort of prank she could possibly pull off without any hands, he wasn't going to risk it. Unfortunately, he had to draw himself so far back that he nearly lost sight of the group before Kari decided that she also didn't want to get lost.

As they both ran up to the others, Kevin hung back once again. Noticing this, Kari made an amused sound. She raised an eyebrow before starting to speak to him.

"Hey, Chump," she said.

"It's Slick," Kevin replied. The new nickname had a nice air to it, or at least he thought so.

"I don't care. Neither is your real name, anyway. You can drop the façade." Her smile crept up her face rather creepily, and as redundant as the thought was, Kevin snorted.

"Façade? Are you ever going to make any sense?" He frowned.

"It starts with a K," she replied.

He froze.

"What?"

"Hm. So I was right after all. It all adds up, and yet at the same time, it doesn't," she mused to herself. "Nevertheless, at least you've finally had the sense to call someone. I'd still like to know why you decided to pull a disappearing act, though."

Kevin suddenly noticed that his heart was beating at an unnatural rate. "L-look. I don't know who the hell you think you are, or who the hell you think I am, but…" he trailed off, not sure where exactly he was attempting to go with this. "If this is your idea of a sick joke, stop it. I'm not the guy you're looking for!"

"Would you just listen to me for a minute? It's not me that's looking for you!" Her reptilian voice managed to sound a little less shiver inducing, at any rate.

"So somebody else is trying to find me for Arceus knows what reason, and hired you and the guy who captured me to track me down?" he guessed, hardly caring. "Oh joy, now I'm really going nuts."

The unpleasant conversation was cut short by Lana, who was yelling at them to hurry up. Seizing the opportunity to get as far away from Kari as he possibly could, he sprinted over.

Kari rolled her eyes and leisurely strolled up behind him. "Look, kid. I know we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but I think it would be beneficial to both of us if we became friends."

Looking at her incredulously, Kevin scoffed. "Friends? I'm sorry, but I don't think that's possible."

"If we worked together I'm sure we could help each other!" Kari pleaded. He raised an eyebrow.

"Right. Teamwork. How could you help me get out of this crazy place?" He almost laughed.

"I…" For some reason, she began to tear up. Kevin stared at her blankly until she began sobbing, then decided to move closer to the rest of the team instead. Whatever her problems were, Kevin didn't want any part of them.

Apparently, everyone else's desire to make some actual progress was moot compared to Lana's desire to rest her feet near the end of the forest. Hey, it was her fault she wore flip flops on a journey across an entire country. After some teasing from Styler, she agreed to buy some real shoes once they got into the city.

Kari had eventually calmed down, but she kept stealing glances at Kevin, the reason for which he had no idea. The few glances he returned merely furthered his suspicion of her, because she was totally in her own world over there, muttering to herself. Kevin frowned. He tried his best to look inconspicuous while at the same time attempting to listen to her.

"He's never coming back."

Well, that was ominous. She paused for a minute, frowning, and then muttered again. "And he's not a ghost. That's stupid."

Kevin blinked. It sure sounded like she was talking about him, but he was clearly breathing. Then again… she did seem to know about him somehow. But he was definitely not a ghost. He would think he'd know if he was.

He chuckled. This was ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous. But it was obviously in the same universe as he remembered, considering his mom was still at home.

He thought back. It was kind of hard to tell on the fuzzy cell phone screen, him being near sighted and all, but he kind of thought his mother had looked different. Nothing drastic like evolution or anything, just overly tired. But still. Everything was odd.

If only directly asking was a plausible option. Now he understood why nobody in stories ever did the logical thing. The logical thing was way too emotionally stressful. The team was full of strangers, and they were certainly not people he was happy to share his innermost secrets with. He was much more comfortable weeding out information indirectly than asking everybody why they were all so weird. It was like trying to beat a foe from far away, with Ember instead of Scratch.

…Damn. He'd always preferred physical attacks.