A Deaf Flame's Flicker

by Starry's Light

An incredibly thin munchlax suffering from low self-esteem butts heads with a deaf chimchar whose mouth has yet to be washed of curses, thus forcing their fates to twist and their story to be not alone but together. Now apparently they have to get along or something? And, like, be... friends, and junk? Some lives are about to change: big-time.

6. Where we Should go on Vacation

Me: Ow. I ache.

Ashley: what the fuck is it now

Me: Oh I dunno the last chapter was almost 16k and I had almost no time to write yesterday (for happy reasons though so eh) so I sabotaged a bit of today's for it. YAY NOW I WRITE MORE.

Ashley: geez overworked much

Me: no

Ashley: you're killing yourself

Me: no

Ashley: SUICIIIIIIIIIDEEEE -rings a bell repeatedly-

A Deaf Flame's Flicker

Chapter Six: Where we Should go on Vacation

Already he knew he wanted no part of it. It took a scatter of seconds like pebbles on marble stone for him to count up the small tally and denote: nope, not going here. Even if he had to. Even if he was stuck. Even if the only way to escape was to open his eyes and do something, because right here, right now, doing something wasn't very high on the list of smart ideas. Nope. Smart idea number one was curl up in a ball and cry until sleep. Smart idea next-in-command was to find some way to kill himself because maybe it'd magically send his soul back to the present—the past?—but then Munchie realized that his dear futuristic friend had already told it out clear that they were, like, immortal, in the future—the present—whatever, he was calling it the future. Ashley called it the future, and it was her home. Munchie could deal with it.

He sagged in his ball-like formation. He'd been resting, but now his mind ailed him like some enchanted curse floating around the place had possessed him. Hey, Influence said it was possible. He couldn't trust anything here: no, lie, he'd always trusted Ashley as terrible an idea as it was. He still saw that... she looked upset... and he wished she'd just go and be happier already. Munchie was racking his brains—probably the true reason why such blackened agony paralyzed him in this odd, curled up position and he didn't want to, couldn't think of moving—but nothing so wise had fallen out. Sure, happiness didn't randomly strike like lightning in those green plains up to the Pine Nut Volcano, but—ooooh... bad idea, bringing up notions from home. Munchie's eyes clenched as did his stomach and he thought he would meld into tears again. Somehow, not quite that happened, but he stayed on the ground, lying there, in a ball, wishing he wasn't so miserable. The others had yet to disturb him: Influence, the mildly irritating grovyle; Ashley, his dear chimchar buddy he felt even more excessively self-conscious when without. It was quite obvious to tell which one he preferred over the other. Besides, he'd only just met the grovyle who hadn't gone through all of these rolling rapids of emotions with him, and that stupid grovyle he hardly knew apparently already had claims to Ashley's heart.

Yeah, every soul could hold a multitude of others to be with them and love them. But... he didn't like Influence being there... Munchie's guilt clogged him—again—and he cringed, and he wished Ashley didn't seem so upset-looking with him, and he wanted to cry, but he... couldn't do it. Couldn't... accept... that leafy grovyle.

The first thing Munchie learned about the future was that even those who were born there weren't used to the hollow sounds and colorless looks. And, rather less, him, the poor, lost, miraculously thin munchlax from... the present. The past. The past and the future, both interlocked to a spiral of the present. For now, this was the present. When—no, if—he ever found a way back home again and hopefully with Ashley—he had no good comment on Influence so the grovyle wasn't mentioned—then... that would be the present. But it seemed the world contained a certain couple that always bashed and battered and... entwined. The past and the future. Forever... together. Forever one, but at the same time obsolete. Forever connected. Forever one present or the other. Wow, if Munchie ever fell in love he had to use that and compare he and the other one to being the past and the future. Also, since he, like, had been to both times, he'd be able to be all romantic and stuff. Score some style points and all that.

"Munchie, we should... probably wake up, now. The past—the present—it's got this... setup." He didn't know what kind of a setup that might be wired up, but the memory of Dusknoir captured in the past with his friends and then with that big, evil, white hand on top of Jordan's entire arm like he was going to... no, but he did: take her: it begged to differ. Everyone and everything he knew but Ashley and her stupid mate had to be trapped down there with that creepy wisp guy. He'd... sent them to the future. From worried, hushed whispers shared between the chimchar and the grovyle that seriously of course this expert eavesdropper heard, Dusknoir had locked them into the future... and they needed some sort of portal thing, a rip in this shredded world of sorts by that dusknoir himself, if they wanted a chance of going back home and... saving everything. Munchie wanted to hope that his friends would stop Dusknoir somehow, but he was Ashley's dad and he seemed terrifying and powerful and altogether a no-no square. Plus, they would go for saving Jordan over the time gears, even if the fate of all life as they knew it was at stake: whether or not the truth was sad. He found it kind of sweet. Standing on his feet, Munchie tried to just focus on the pallid chimchar in front of him. "Like... it's sort of parallel momentum. Like—dammit—the future and the past—the present—roam as one and they... connect. However long passes in the future, passes back there. And we're fucking screwed if we dillydally and waste shit loads of time because who the hell knows if anyone else can stop whatever the fuck is going on down there? We... shit: we have to stop it! This is a serious hellhole! We... Munchie, your time, that past, is so fucking beautiful, and no way in hell am I letting my shit land corrupt you."

The chimchar with no color stretched out one of her still-oddly-long hands and snagged his colorless arm, layered like the ocean, in fur. Munchie merely squeaked, because he didn't know what to say. Her... incredible... wanting to help him... startled him somewhere on the inside. He couldn't pinpoint a location, but oh, did the munchlax feel it. A burst of emotion exploded on his inside and he wanted to sob but they had to move onward or... what if Munchie came back from this place and, like, everyone had died already or something terrible like that? What about Jordan? What if Dusknoir did bad stuff to Jordan like he did to all those other girls—like what he did to Ashley's mom? That Darla lady? "A-ah..." A shake of the head. "I trust you... Ashley..." Still monotonous, unlike Ashley's tone with a hint of pep. He didn't speak like her, though. His language wasn't used to being plagued with curses, or anything like that: he had the soft whisper and the protective husk, and he had none of that in this crazy place, and that was that. Munchie's eyes locked with her own grays and then he dodged back and his heart lost itself in the looking of... the future. The world... what was going to happen to his world, and... relatively soon, with freaking Dusknoir the creep lurking about, his strawberry-colored eye probably staring intently at Jordan or something else that was evil and stupid. Because... he was stupid and evil... and everything.

What Munchie saw sent ricocheting shivers rippling down his spine where they layered throughout him and caught themselves, trapped, in his fur, in his heart: he could hardly breathe at the sight of what Ashley and Influence must have seen for all of their lives until that lucky break to the past, where life was colorful, and happier, and different, and... no matter how much her dad denied it: better. But these... what were those things, tying from tree to tree in little catching mitts of silvery death, waiting for something to meander in and... what would it do to them? What if he hit one of those delicate things? It... well, it looked like a snowflake, but Munchie felt pretty darn sure that wasn't a freaking snowflake. They were small and white and from what he'd seen... the landscape in this world... was dyed black. He... he was just... colorless, almost completely black. Influence, of course, was black. Munchie still called him a weirdo because he didn't really like him. And Ashley... Seeing that smudge of spunky orange so dark and colorless like... everyone else, as if she'd traded places with her nonexistent shadow—did she even know what a shadow was?—it broke him, it did. It snapped his heart through and through. He couldn't bear the thought of seeing that little, fiery girl... so dark and empty and hollow. But this... in a sense... was the real Ashley—no. Munchie... Munchie wouldn't allow it. Maybe she hadn't been in the past as long as she'd been in the future, but... Munchie refused to believe she belonged in this hole, not her. No... never her. Ever.

"Whoa, Munchie! Holy fuck!" That tone... It was Influence. He'd gone almost to complete monotone but for the spike of a curse. "Look at your surprised little face! Mm... I guess you'd be older than us, since you're from the past—haaaah, Ashley, we found us a grandpa!" Just like that all that Munchie was crumbled apart and he wanted to cry. He was sorry... just stop... Please don't... don't... do that to him... He-h-he really liked Ashley... and he really... didn't like Influence... the way that grovyle looked at him and looked at Ashley and acted so clueless... and how... He... Munchie... He felt this boiling pit in his heart; he didn't like how... how perfect that grass monster had come for Ashley. He... Munchie didn't like that. She... he felt like she could... have someone else... and she'd like them a lot more than Influence, but they still shared kisses and hugs and it sickened him. Munchie was this confused pit of agony but it sickened him. He didn't like Influence, and he really liked Ashley, but they really liked each other, a bit too much, and that was that. He... he couldn't really do something about it. Who was he kidding? Munchie wasn't a murderer. Munchie didn't like to think of ending a life. He wasn't all too good at battling, either. He hardly knew if he could even remember his moves: honestly, the pokemon in Treasure Town, even the guild, hardly used them. Well, the guild did for exploration junk, but just in those scary moments everyone was about to die—

With sudden ferocity, a bright something fwoooooshed into the hollow darkness, cutting it straight open. Nothing happened. This place was a brittle, vast wasteland with nothing. Munchie began to hear odd, drawling cries, but Ashley cut them off again with a quick, snide: "Stop your bitching; Munchie is Munchie, dammit!" It registered quickly: Ashley had stood up for him. She'd... argued for him and her hand, tight around his wrist, flung angrily into the air, waving about with authority. So... she might have been a little correct when she said she wasn't nice. Her teeth gritted, though the whites couldn't shine here.

"Ooookay then," casually grumbled the grovyle back. He whipped the long leaf from his head back in shape. Munchie quietly realized he probably didn't know what leaves or other plant matters were. "Well anyways, I may as well actually explain this little pit of shit." And... the monotonous Influence turned. His arms outstretched to try and accompany the world they were about to embark in. "This is the future, the future of a place with no name, it's so dreary and forgotten." A snort. His eyes rolled. "Thaaaaaank fuck we're going to repair it. So... try to keep on the path at all times and you'll probably live." Munchie was liking this guy less and less the more he talked in that dull, listless tone. Sure, he had to, sure, Munchie did too, but the words that fell out were sharpened and their edges cut deep wounds. Munchie... didn't... like... him... "Avoid anything exceptionally black and you should be okay. We use the sky to help and find our way, since the debris up there has become a map for us like those... things... you weirdos in the past have." Normal maps. With leaves and green markings and smiley faces by Mystic scattered in one room, tacked altogether and beautifully perfect in its own wonderful way. Oh, how he highly disliked Influence. "As well, avoid the spinark webs because they can reduce you to much trapped pain and agony and there's no way in hell we could save you then." Ashley grumbled a few things, Influence grumbled back, and Munchie didn't do much but blink awkwardly and stare gratefully at the hand fastened to his wrist. "Well, if we did, we'd be losing time. A waste of time. Aaanyways, we should prolly just head off, now." Head off where? "We should flock off onto the path and try to talk to our families, visit them... and then we should escape." Munchie didn't voice the fact that he had no family. Well... he did: thus Munchie came into existence. But once they saw the metabolism error he was dropped off and he was found to be a disease. And thus he was.

Having nothing better to do and the darkness practically clouding in, coating them with disease and filth and black, Munchie and his dear friend Ashley and new stupid buddy Influence took this trail the grovyle's long, slender hand had stuck out like a freaky twig and pointed to for everyone to take note of and see and use. It happened to be a slightly lighter gray than the blacks swirling among it. This, he noted, was a prettier-looking world, when taken from a glance, than the horrors established upon the Waterfall Cave as it was all one gray and this happened to be black, mixed in with a heftily dark gray line of a trail and others of the sort that varied in color... a little bit. Just a slight mix-up here and there he didn't find that important. Ignoring the fact that those dark, heartless colors would suck out his lukewarm warmth and its cackling winds were practically all one could hear: no, he preferred having his favorite ever Mystery Dungeon being turned into a poor, frozen castle of lost grays. The sandy throne would be left without, and he would rather it that than this futuristic horror: though leaving the throne without... it'd make the past go down the same trail as the future. And that trail splayed out before him.

Strange, animistic cries surged: hollow, icy, vain. Garbled until no sense could be made of, sticking out oddly as the branches in bushes, pointing every which way, crying out, pleading, needing, losing: unable to fulfill, out came the harrowing, screeching horrors of vocal cords. Munchie did not want to stick around and find out what kind of creep did that sort of sound. "C-can we just go already?" he mumbled. Tried to mumble. As soft as his voice should have been, it came out as a string of numb, monotonous nothing. Even his stutter at the beginning sounded pretty drab, empty. But it wasn't empty, emotions that should have been scraped up his throat with his whisper had been left behind; thus leaving the colors of the world that should have been in the future lodged in his throat. It didn't escape. There was no escape. He found this easier to understand now, and felt as if the blues of his sadness would never go unclogged.

Then he worried; Munchie hardly noticed as the just-as-colorless chimchar gently tugged at his arm and her stupid mate led the way, himself tottering but following unevenly. Munchie worried because the last time something like this happened, he'd snapped and lost it and couldn't stop sobbing—did they sob like that in the future?—and yelling at Ashley, and the longer he stuck with her, the less and less he wanted to yell, but the more and more he knew it would build up and they would butt heads again. He didn't want to; he had to. And he hated it with a smoldering passion that lit up like a nuclear wave: brighter than Ashley's fiery orbs he missed so dearly much: he hoped that wasn't creepy. Well, he did miss her eyes, and he couldn't do anything about it. Thinking of his dear chimchar friend's orbs, Munchie calmly accepted the fact that he had no idea what Influence's orbs were; no, no wait, they were gold. Munchie wished he hadn't been able to recall, but it appeared life had another saying in the matter. Stupid life. Stupid life, birthing Ashley in this dark future. Stupid life, making her stuck with someone like Influence she thought she deserved but he felt she didn't. Stupid life, making him want to cry out in vain at its name and almost spit just as much as the chimchar beside him. Stupid life. Stupid life.

Yet he felt relatively secure in the notion that perchance Ashley wanted similar for him. She... didn't want him to be at her home. Her hand only seemed to tighten around his wrist until it swiveled and outright took his hand, and she kept glancing back at him worriedly. Even in this forsaken future land, he could see the pain in there. Ashley was fretting about him... and she truly didn't want him anywhere near this place. Yet... here he was, and she seemed to curse life just a much as him though he did it without those words she grew so attached to. Ashley's hand squeezed his sometimes; he squeezed back. He couldn't help but notice how... depressed she looked there. As a talented eavesdropper—he'd stopped feeling bad about it some time ago, which might have seemed sad but whatever, he was done—Munchie could practically feel the pain leaping off of her heart and succumbing to the darkness outside, to those creepy spinark webs rustling with their strange, silvery studs that mocked him as they went on.

Influence continued to be just in front of them, his long, limp leaf fluttering from his head nearly whipping Munchie, but not quite coming close. The thin munchlax had never seen such a thing, this leaf, this gray: leaf. Leaves weren't gray, even on the brink of—and at—death. In some cooler areas, they could be a flame of colors, reds and yellows and oranges and the occasional brown, autumnal and similar to Ashley, pretty, and in the coolest they were thin icicles of blue, but never gray. Never that same dankness that couldn't be restored unless this point in the past connected to this point of the future—the present now—was recovered before Dusknoir did bad things to both Jordan and the gem-like gears and they were both screwed, to put it charitably. His face crawled with the need to flush, but it never did. He was still just as drab and dark as the others: but then again, as Munchie thought of it, he realized he and Ashley were sharing color schemes, and for some dumb reason that made him smile.

Ashley let off a sparky giggle beside him. "Why the hell are you smiling? We're about to meet my ass family that sure I love but you don't even know them and dammit I never wanted you to have to meet them: what the hell is there to smile about? Sheesh, fuck it! Spill, boy, spill!" And he couldn't help but giggle back in that rough, painfully monotonous shrill. It was bad but it was a giggle, and that had to mean something when the future kept breathing down one's neck. Sure, Munchie despised this place with a new passion and wished he could take Ashley away from it, but still...

"We're sharing color schemes."

"Fuck?"

"We're both the same shade of this color. I've never been the exact same color as you. It's... a little nice."

"Dude, you're sharing the fucking scheme with everyone." Glancing back, her voice lowered and she added, "incluuuuding Influence."

"Yeah, but I'm sharing it with you, and that's all that I care."

"Stop being so fucking sweet! We're all gonna die here!" But even still, it was obvious Ashley had a light joke riddled in there, so Munchie giggled softly again—regrettably sounding like a dying orphan—and they went on. Because Influence questioned nothing for some reason, he felt all the safer in this side of the universe turned worse with his chimchar buddy and not a soul else. Munchie found himself much rather comforted with her by his side instead of any other pokemon that it could be. Yes, he did love his other friends and found an awkward feeling crudely labeled pride which choked in his gut about exactly that, how he felt over them, but still... even neglecting the fact that she was the entire reason he'd become to where he is now in the first place: she was Ashley. Nobody else was Ashley. Therefore, nobody else was just like her; therefore, there was nobody else who could make him smile like he did with her. And he felt happy with her, this ease he didn't quite find through another. Sure, they had the occasional fiery and a little scary spat, but those were... not as often and so far between he'd forget about them by the sheer liking he found in that chimchar with the bob of hair and the knot in the back of longer tendrils he just sort of hadaweirdurgetoreachoutandstroke. Not that he did. He didn't touch them. But still. They looked nice, even when dull and dark and thick and colorless. Munchie should stop thinking about hair or the next thing he knows he'll be pecked by Chindu for accidentally going too close to Spirit and making himself look like a gay and a fool, both of which he didn't want to look like. Munchie felt... pretty sure... he liked girls. He couldn't be completely certain—look at Chindu—but at least at the moment, he felt pretty sure he liked girls.

Any girls in particular? He couldn't really answer that because there was nobody out there for him and it didn't concern him all that much, but—he suddenly began to feel a tugging notion on his mind, but answering his thoughtful girls' question was more important so Munchie ignored it and on he went. Right: it never concerned him that he had nobody, but just... saying he might actually have someone, they'd most likely be a female. He was just freaking saying. If... Munchie liked anyone... he couldn't see himself being gay like Chindu and Spirit. It didn't feel like something he'd naturally do; hey, if they were in love and they were happy, whatever, but Munchie had no plans of loving dudes, especially if the dude was anything like Influence. Oh how he highly disliked Influence. Munchie squeezed Ashley's hand and this time she squeezed back, and he felt this sudden, cool rush of thankfulness that he had her with him. Maybe... he wouldn't have even ended up in the future, had this smudge of colorless primate never run into him and found the guild herself, done everything herself until her father forced her back here and all she could do was escape again. But he'd rather be stuck in this cold, freaky dimension with her by his side than to be where he'd gone prior... being alone and relying on a sunset to keep him happy. A sunset... of all things. No... no friends, no anyone, no... nothing, until then, until her, and here he was with Ashley.

Oh how he liked Ashley. Ironic, since one would assume the love of her life would be a someone Munchie had to like as well, since this girl that meant special things to him liked him, but Munchie simply couldn't stand Influence. He couldn't, he just couldn't. That was... that was it. As much as he adored this fiery—should be fiery—primate, the bipedal to the front with leaves and plant matter melding him as one was someone he despised. His snide remarks, his casual rudeness: at least Ashley tried. He just... completely accepted this world, like her dad did, and rued it but also didn't mind it at the same time. Ashley, she wanted change, but he doubted Influence cared. Maybe he was only doing this in the first place to make her happy. Munchie couldn't really tell with that guy, which scared him a little but mostly just... that stupid guy irritated him. He wanted to take Ashley and keep her far away from him but he couldn't and they were in love and it wasn't going to happen.

The tugging on his head ensued, but Munchie shook himself and seemed to find comfort on the colorless hairs on his head again. Oddly, like the grains of sand in the frozen Waterfall Cave, they didn't feel like separate bits, alive and moving, as they should have, but all a simple decoration stuck together. Like the entire world was a stage and nothing was apart, everything stuck as one, and the only thing to be moved were the feet against the ground as they went on. More agonizing yowls pierced the empty air of no feeling and Munchie's ears shriveled in his head. He didn't reach out to cover them because... he actually wanted, wanted, to feel Ashley's hand on his. He wasn't trying to avoid the attention this time around, and he smiled to himself about that as well. Those voices, though... wh-what were they? "Ashley..?" he hesitantly asked. Had to know, as worried as he was. All eavesdroppers were curious about the world, hence eavesdropping, hence he had to know what those sounds just outside of his field of sight could be the source of. What happened to those poor fellows? Is there... anything that...

Ashley's eyes caught his; she must have read his features, not his lips, because she didn't see him ask, now that he thought of it. But the chimchar saw his eyes glazed over, his head turned back, his lips poised as if the question lay directly on there. "Munchie... you don't want to know." Her own blank eyes glistened as his looked back and found hers, and he could feel it roiling off of her again, her sorrow in this world he had to see of hers. "They want to end their lives, but they can't. The furthest they succeed happens in eons of pain... and when they end, they're shells of... nothing. They're wisps of monsters that follow Dad blindly, and I fucking hate this place and I just wish you didn't have to see it!" Her pain over him—over him—continued to blindly strike him and send tears in his eyes, but would they ever manage to come out? Could he cry in this wretched place?

Munchie stared back out. Even though he didn't like him, Influence knew the way, and he led them on confidently. Being able to hear Ashley's blunt remarks kept him watching over his mate and the boy she wanted to keep safe and uncorrupted in this corrupted land he seemed enough to enjoy, and thus, they found their way fine. Munchie still felt the tugging, and mentally smirked at himself for how similar it had been to the yellow he'd seen in his vision when he saw that pichu: the yellow, as he called her, as she wouldn't cough up a name quite yet. Not yet. Funny, how similar this had come to the yellow. Was she, perchance... with them? Munchie didn't quite think so, but her and his elbows had just about been overlapping when Dusknoir first showed, and he knew she could easily disappear, so he wasn't sure whether she had or not and did end up there with him, with Ashley, with Influence. Would Ashley have been... so protective over her, as well? He didn't know. Munchie knew either way he wouldn't mind: he didn't need special treatment. Just seeing this side of her personality warmed him.

At some point, one of Munchie's angular ears had bubbled up too high on his head and suddenly the tips of his toes were all that held him on the ground; he'd nigh become suspended in the air, and his breath hitched and eyes widened and Munchie wanted to flail his arms but Ashley's stare iced him more than anything else could. He missed the flaming colors that he should have seen flickering, but it was just gray, a gray that mixed with everything else on her entire body and would portrait nothing. No colors lashed out, just the gray. And though he liked sharing this with her, he much-rather preferred the natural beauty she should have been exalted in. He wanted to let her know how pretty he found her, but still that ring of shyness descended upon him; then Munchie shook himself to recall that his ear was magically floating and he wanted to freak out but the eyes still iced him. Ashley placed her fingers to her lips—be quiet—and slowly, gently, reassuringly, searched with her fingers through his fur until the bones of his legs could be felt, pinched by her hands, and she scrambled upon them. Climbing up his body like a ladder in Spirit Bright. Ashley carefully maneuvered in her upward climbing, only hitting bones and flesh and using it to lightly, softly scale, until suddenly her face was level with his, and she raised a long hand and pointed a finger up, and then Munchie saw the spectacle just above them.

The webs. One of them had, of course, caught the very tip of his ear. And thus Munchie had been stuck to the sky and no matter how much flouncing and pushing and flailing he did, he could not escape, only risk going further stuck. Ashley again, her hands clinging tightly and secure to his shoulder—a feeling he liked—placed her fingers to her mouth to let him understand that no matter what happened, please stay quiet, and she slightly loosened up her maw and out flew a... a spark. It had no color, no feel, no nothing, but her fiery self—and slightly calloused fingers, he now noticed—gently lifted a hand to catch it, and she held her small arm up high, and she scrabbled directly on top of Munchie's head—whose ear still wouldn't move even with this chimchar scampering all about him—and dropped it on that very same ear. Munchie didn't feel the burn, but apparently the web did, and his angular, scruffy protrusion slid out with nothing so much as a pop. A slide, a yank, a fall on his bum, and he still refused to speak. Ashley landed rather delicately beside him, hands out and feet stable, then snagged one of Munchie's hands and ran off after her already-dispersed mate, Munchie hurdling close behind.

"We're going to visit our families," she hissed to him, "for what may as well be the last fucking time. We'll be okay, we all will, but dammit, since we're in the area, I need to see my mom. And my step-mom." She had a mom and a step-mom. "Yeah, after Dad turned out to be a you-know-what, Mom went lesbian and found out she liked girls a damn lot more than she liked guys. I think you'll like Victini, though." Her step-mom was a legend. "Well... now that everything's gone to hell, it really doesn't matter who you are. Thus Victini and Darla are like really fucking close. And since I'm a girl, we're a relatively fucking close family. I think they won't mind you, since you're you and hey if Ashley loves any friends then her mom fucking better since we work like that." She loved him like a friend. That feeling of joy sprung up in there... Yeah, he loved everyone in the guild and they loved him but this was the first time... Ashley had specifically said something. The tugging on his head worsened for some reason. "You'll also be able to meet Rock, who's Influence's mom, who's terrible at names but fucking amazing Darla made her choose one. Victini's never had a name and she insists she'll never want one. Just because... I don't fucking know. She feels special when she'd in a house full of pokemon with no names and no matter how much we diddly-damn insist we get nothing from her. Stupid-ass legends."

Quietly, gently, her steaming words flying past—dull words without the sting her mate so desired to continue pecking with—Ashley's hand steered Munchie's, thus leading to his entire self, continuous on the white-glowing trail of a softer black that seemed to welcome him into this hateful world and apologize that it was so terrible. He smiled to himself at that. An apologizing walkway leading him onward. He wondered if Ashley and Influence thought much of it, but they'd probably been through it a lot of their lives and didn't notice much any more. As her long fingers tugged him and those colorless orbs kept looking back at him, watching over him, being kinder to him than anyone else ever had, Munchie decided that no matter what happened, he wanted to stay near Ashley on the road of life. He lucked out to have her be the first true friend he ever made, he really lucked out, and he wanted—practically needed—to hang onto her. Letting go was something that could not happen for him whatsoever. He simply couldn't. Munchie didn't want to consider her leaving his side, and it seemed like the chimchar didn't want to go either. But still... there was that sadness, like a film, over the edges, haunting her, bleeding into her that Munchie could feel inside of him, that out of anything else in the world, she hadn't wanted it to come to this. To let him see this part of her life.

And still... he didn't mind. At first, yeah, he wanted to pee himself and curl up in a ball and die there, but now that he's gone through some of it and gotten slightly used to the screeches—Ashley felt him flinch every time, but that wasn't very important—he just saw what Ashley used to see all the time, and also identified that she couldn't hear anything. The others, her family, had to explain it to her, what it must feel like to have to hear that forevermore, and Ashley, they must have called, lucky, because of her differences. She was deaf, so she couldn't hear the screams; she had visions somehow, so she could see occasional colors and show others, and hear as well through them; she was still a chimchar, even though her dad was Dusknoir and the world was crumbling apart; she had spirit. And she... she had spirit. She wasn't gay, but oh, did she have spirit inside of her. A bright, flickering spirit it seemed Ashley didn't even notice inside of her. Well, Munchie did. If he ever worked up the courage, he needed to remember these things he's thought of her and let her know how amazing she was. Because... she was. She was like this star in a black night sky, the flaming one Munchie couldn't keep his eyes off of, and it warmed him in his heart, too. The darkness in her home was frightening, but it... it leveled off with her.

Thoughts of the wigglytuff and his guild stuck in Munchie's mind, so when he looked over and actually began recognizing where this trail was headed, that's right, he wanted to pee himself again. Ashley could feel the burst of panic and excitement and the sliver of fear trickling through him, possibly jolting back at her, and she smirked slightly. "Yeah, I recognized it too, the first time. What a fucking coincidence my family—uh, since I'm Influence's mate his family is technically mine, too, all that shit—lives in Spirit's... old... guild. Their home. And still my home—and yours, holy shit." Their home, his mind echoed softly, trying to cling to her words. Their home. "Just... we stay on the map room floor. The one below is fucking terrifying, and the scary part is I... I recognize things I saw in there." Things? "M-Munchie, you don't want to know. Terrible things. Things... of things that should be happy, that we both know. It was surprising when I saw the bottom floor... and there wasn't those things on the walls but the actual beings with their things connected to them, and I recognized this and realized that they were their... things. But I didn't see any of yours. Because... you were destined for some other fate in this fucked version of the world. When you came to our fucked future and... whatever the hell happened back there, I haven't seen anything like what could have happened to you, and frankly... I don't want to. I like seeing you happy and alive better."

Munchie wondered if his corpse sat in the future somewhere, in this screwed version of reality... Or... in this world... did he stay—with Ashley—when... no, wait... that made no sense. If the past had fallen to rubble, the question was where his corpse would have been. Munchie thought for a moment: would he have made it to the guild with Ashley and thus his corpse would be littered in that guild, or would they find it stuck somewhere in a Mystery Dungeon, like he never made it out—protecting a time gear? If... if it was none of those, and he was still that lonely munchlax with nobody... then his future self would be here... somewhere... lost in the pain of nothing, with no one, maybe a shell of himself. Munchie felt like he would have made it to the guild with Ashley still... maybe... or was it connected? He... maybe he would have made it? Munchie thought long and hard on that topic as it gnawed at him, as Ashley continued calmly leading him up the trail, this new one on the apologetic path of the future from the behind of Treasure Town, this one of white, easily going straight up the hill and landing them where a bedraggled heap of felt sat atop. Dried... red... stuck to it, and rubbed off of it, and stayed there, broken, stained, cheap, ugly, dead. It was red. It was a color. Ashley must have... s-seen it... He knew what the dried red was. He didn't know anything of the whereabouts of his corpse, but he recognized the dried red. He wished he didn't. Ashley squeezed his hand, he squeezed back, and they slowly made their way down the rickety old ladder. It, if nothing else, continued standing.

There they found themselves on a mat. The mat happened to be made of old leaves built up to be what... what the map walls were, but now in tumbling tatters on the floor, a mat. No grass below, might as well use a mat. He saw too many creations and compounds of creatures sitting around, these groups of plant-matter made quadruples stumbling about the place, enough to make the gang of time gears and one more. Munchie was an eavesdropper, but he recalled nothing on the names of these child twerps. They were all, like, twins, like the time gears, and they were treekos, he saw. Green like the time gears, but one more than them. An overworked creature with wide, baggy eyes and a tall but sagging stance watched them tiredly, with a happy but sleepy smile. She must have been alive for a time. Even without the coloring, Munchie recognized her, and she had to be Influence's mom as well. Rock had been her name, because she was bad at names or something and that was what it became. Rock the sceptile, right. Those pokemon were supposed to be of stealth and work, but this one... seemed more of a softhearted caregiver. He... liked it.

"SHIT! IT'S MY FUCKING MOMMA AND STEPPIE!"

"GAWSH YOU BUM I DON'T LIKE NAMES!"

"HOLY FUCK IT'S MY DAUGHTER WHAT THE DAMN." Ashley... and her mom and step-mom, it seemed, had reunited there and then, their fiery appearances with no color bounding them together. Munchie stood with his back to the ladder like an idiot as he watched the pair of families embrace their kid or the kid's mate, looking uncomfortably close to one another, like they'd been through a lot and didn't want to talk about it like at all. His fur itched from his position, and he stared a lot, but it seemed from here, with the dark on the walls and the no color and the shadows, he could hide. Everyone could be all cheery or whatever, but he could cling to the wall, feel terrible, and hide. He... felt terrible... because suddenly he didn't want to introduce himself to anyone. They were all... happy to be together, and with Influence tacked into the scene, Munchie wanted nothing from it. He was shy and a little upset and wishing for a family he didn't have when a sudden, soft-furred foot maybe smacked into his skull and he slid to the side and fell through the other hole, through the other ladder, with a bonk! his head had been whacked.

Munchie slowly raised himself, staring up the dark hole with the ladder and deliberating to go up it again in a bit. Something... something had caught his eye, and he wanted to get a closer look at this room. It surely appeared to be that bottom part of the guild, only with excessively blackened grasses that had died out and spaces of dirt, simple dirt, he knew the crew wouldn't let happen if they could have. But what caught him first was the walls. They appeared fuzzy. Like something... like hair... was on it. And he looked further and saw things holding up the—the hair, on the walls, like goop: it had to be more... more dried red. Very dried red, by the look of the place. Then it dawned on him, and Munchie realized he couldn't see the turquoise but he knew what that was. Bits of scalp sat below the long, should-be turquoise stands of hair, and other parts forcibly ripped off of the girl had been scattered, most glued to the ceiling and walls by her own dried red. Munchie felt tears in his eyes, cold, wet ones that trembled as they fell, and his heart shook as it beat and it wanted to escape, and so did he. But he couldn't tear himself away. He felt under a mesmerizing spell to see this, to see her, again, even though it wasn't her, and his feet moved on their own to walk toward the hair on the other side of the wall when something went sqquuuuwuurrrrccchhh beneath a hesitant toe.

The dirt wasn't dirt. It had a black shading like it, like it should have been brown, but it wasn't dirt. Munchie could see the buck tooth sticking out from the ground and his stomach clenched and churned and his heart lost itself again and he wanted to go home. He couldn't even whisper the name and the tears kept choking him but they wouldn't come out and fogged up his vision. His head turned up to try and clear them and he could see gem-like studs glued up there in gloppy messes. And he recognized those gem-like eyes that were gray but he knew, and those fingers... and the toes... and the long sheaths of skin that slightly resembled an emerald at one point in time. Munchie's head slowly turned, and he saw something caught in the holy door that had once contained Spirit's and Chindu's room.

Guess what it was, his brain whispered softly, guess, guess, guess. Those cloudy orbs stared back at him through the head, the head lying there, still with flesh on it and ears and everything but splattered in goop that he didn't want to see but he did and Munchie began to sink knowing he was going to see the others soon and that they were dying... they were losing... they were... they... When he felt the fluffy paw on his shoulder, he knew Mystic was covered in mold, and her corpse against the wall had brushed against him. Munchie softly cried to himself, though nothing would come out, and it sat inside of him, horridly stopped up. A voice came, too, a voice he didn't recognize. It was monotonous like anyone's but it paused, too, and sounded like it would have been soft, like Munchie's, had it the chance. "Greetings.." His head snapped aside.

It was her. She... she had come with them. The yellow. "G-greetings..." he stammered back. Munchie wanted to weep, not talk. He wanted to crumble, not... this. He had seen these pokemon of his and where were they—where? They had... they had died. And they may not have died yet but this was what would happen to them if the future stayed screwed and the time gears... weren't stopped. Which thus meant... the guild of Spirit Bright would fall, as would everything else, because it... it seemed to have something wrong with it, per se. Everyone had died. Dusknoir had won in the past—which caused the screwed future. He had won and stopped them from being able to do anything. He... stopped... them. But—but—they were okay now. Munchie still didn't want to do anything.

The girl, though, she apparently did. Her paw came out and took Munchie's hand and she slowly drew out her head and placed it closer to his layered fingers, softly kissing the back of it. Oh. She had manners. That for some reason caught his attention as she gently dropped it and nodded to him. Munchie stood to his full height and attempted to nod back to her but his head was sore and his furs ached and his tooth, yes, his tooth, burst in agony at him. Probably because of what he'd seen. "My name is Jalendalynne," she told him softly. Softly, even though they couldn't hear, he felt it would have been soft. "Juh... lend... all... lynne..." She pronounced it for him, too, since it was proper and long.

"A-ah..." he just stammered like an idiot back, "I'm... uh... I'm Munchie."

She nodded. "I didn't know your name... until now... actually." With a spark of actual smartness, the idiot munchlax recalled that this was the girl who had helped him earlier, and followed him around a lot. The yellow, he'd called her, because he knew of nothing else. Currently, the tall pichu smiled at him, her shyness obvious by how her paws absently fiddled with the thick scarf strung about her neck. "I am from... a kindly family... in a forest of fogs." She was... like Mystic. She came from the Dungeons. "When I... saw you. And you... looked... very lonely. And I... wanted to follow you. Heh..." Because of his loneliness he'd attracted this cute girl. Wow. If only all the guys knew that. "Munchie... I happened to notice... your friends... and how they were in... bad positions. And I knew... how to fix it. So I... waited in the clogged town... for you... so that I could help... you... and..." Her head ducked. He was sure if they could blush, their cheeks would be matching. "And so... I did. I didn't... know any other pokemon... but relatives... until I met you." Just like... how he felt toward Ashley. But no relatives, they all hated him.

Jalendalynne raised her should-be sunny head. Not even her stripes of black had been spared by the screwed future. "Like you... I don't... see any sign of... where I could have died." Both of them, huh. He nodded slowly, offering her to go on. "I know this... is a little random... but I wanted to ask... U-um..." As her head shivered beneath her shoulders and she struggled with her question, Munchie's guilt nigh attempted to swallow him until he recalled Ashley and it burned to determination. Whatever this odd, mannerly girl wanted to ask, he'd like to help her. "C-could we... be...

"...f-friends..?"

She wanted to be friends with him. She... she wanted... to be friends with him. Munchie had never in his entire, despicable life, gotten a request from anyone that wanted to, like, actually... befriend him. Kindly ask him. To hang out with him like that. Ashley and the guild—they all came kind of random and in weird circumstances that called for it. What Jalendalynne did, didn't have to be done, and yet here she was. "O-of course." Yeah, he liked that. Opening up, taking her time, those orbs that should have been cloudy with slight hints of other colors unscrewed their tight lock and seemed to widen at the response of yes. She seemed kind of similar like him, in a way. That was... cool... like, really cool. Way cool. So cool... he didn't even expect it, but it happened. Her face lit up with one little smile and Jalendalynne reached out as if to hug him, but thought differently, shaking her head. "You don't... like being touched." She even knew that. Dear arceus, this girl was cool. She had a stable basis on him, and Munchie would figure out how she was, but right now in the least she seemed like one of those entities to be pretty mellow, cool with anything.

Either way this girl was seriously cool. "I'm... sorry about startling you." That was her, both times, even. He... saw it made sense, but hadn't really thought about it until them. "U-um... this room... kind of... creeps me out... C-can we go back... upstairs..?"

He obliged. Munchie felt a sudden relief as he turned the room where his friends had been turned to scraps behind and, securing his hand with the pichu's, making it safer as they went, they climbed up that rickety ladder and were confronted by no looks whatsoever. The others were just finishing up nodding on and off with family, and whence they were done being all sappy, Ashley caught sight of Munchie, who stood awkwardly next to Jalendalynne, and nodded a little, but then her sadness seemed to plunge through again and with a mumble, she spat at the wall, waved her fiery family and leafy family goodbye, and took off up the other ladder. Influence mumbled a few things and went up after her. Then Munchie, again assisting the cute, dainty girl. Ashley hadn't looked, like... jealous... or something... had she? How did he know? He didn't know what jealousy was—he didn't know what jealousy was! What the heck? Why even question it? What did he even think he knew, because apparently he didn't know it. Munchie felt righteous in that way as he continued to assist the perhaps weaker but freaking cute with-her-willowy-build friend of his, and their heads popped up and Munchie tried to look at that barren, blown-over tent as little as possible. Though she'd only seen it perhaps once, Jalendalynne looked away as well, her bent pichu ears flapping with each sway. He liked how she moved, and how each one specifically looked different. Even the ways she would shake or nod her head provoked change. She moved like the lively world that should have been around her, but wasn't, because he and she were in the future. Jalendalynne was better off in the past, too, with nature framing her.

Ashley and Influence moved on ahead, walking together, seemingly indifferent in a few specific ways, and Jalendalynne and Munchie bounded behind, seeming to have way more fun than whatever was with that stony silence up ahead. Maybe the chimchar and that stupid grovyle liked having their time together be spent without words. The more the poor, thin, scruffy boy thought of it, the more guilt he felt and the more truth he found, since Ashley of course was deaf and it might be easier on her to not always have to talk. She must have hated him for all the time they'd engage in what he'd hoped to be lively conversation. Did Ashley... happen to be... upset with him? Ugh, it felt like something died inside of Munchie from the thought and the pains. He was getting all nervous about that girl again. And though he enjoyed speaking softly with the pichu to his side and liked all of her insightful comments, he stared out at the gloom surrounding him and felt as if it might swallow him up. Again with the fear, again with the worry, again with the wanting to sob and run away and curl up and die. Jalendalynne was a small enjoyable creature, but Ashley seemed more suited to whipping Munchie into shape when it came to details of the sorts like fear and not feeling good and having no motivation. She inspired him, set a fire in his soul, and that warmed him and kept him going. Munchie couldn't understand truly, but he saw a difference.

Anyways, since he was still alone but for the pichu who accompanied him, his heart rate continued to spike and he stared out into the dark wilderness with spiny trees and the cries of whispering, woozy pain through the silence of a world that desired life. Noise. Color. Feel. Taste. Smell, yes, even smell, even when you walk in somewhere and the stench was rancid: they desired that as well. Anything for life, for true living, true needs that Ashley, unlike her dad, found herself craving for: because she had a spirit in her that wanted to keep going, not peter out. She wanted hopes and dreams, not crumbling failures. And they went on through the forest of blackened trees that may have once produced fog and Munchie recognized to one side, far out, a mansion—to put the thing charitably, as its size blew him away—built into the landscape of trees. Must have never seen it with all of the fogs in this place prior. But that had to be around the area and the how Jalendalynne met him in the first place and began shadowing. But now she had proven to be a true pokemon, and he and she felt relaxed; well, no, Munchie did not feel relaxed, he felt as if he was in pain and it was tearing him apart. He wanted to be with Ashley, even though he couldn't, as she stood there with her freaking mate he so terribly despised.

Well, it turned out Munchie could eavesdrop well and Jalendalynne could read others well, and those pichu orbs caught up with him and she nodded her head slightly, thinking. Then, "Hey... would you feel safer... my friend... if... I could bring you... and that girl... closer..?" They already were pretty tight as friends, actually, Jalendalynne, but then he recalled how far up and with stupid, stupid Influence the grovyle she had been, and yeah, Munchie wanted to be with her, and yeah, her presence comforted him, and yeah, he was starting to sound a mite incredibly pathetic in his head. But, well, Munchie did wish he could stay by Ashley's side and hang... hang onto her hand, nobody else's, just hers. He wanted to see her eyes light up, even if they couldn't that well in this cursed, colorless world where she of all people didn't belong to, and if there was any way he could have switched their lives and been the one in the future, hers allowing to be from the past, he would do it like right then. Even if it meant he'd be gay with Influence. He didn't want anything to do with Influence unless it improved Ashley's state of happiness. But he would, if that was what he had to do. He sure as heck hoped that wasn't, though. Munchie suddenly surprised himself by realizing that he wasn't hungry even though they'd been in the future for however long and his last meal were those hasty coconuts: Ashley's, he couldn't tell. Maybe the last time they all had had apples in the mess hall together. How he missed his friends... but he'd take temporary separation over Jordan's hair being stuck to the walls by her own innards. No let's not think back to that.

That tugging Munchie hadn't felt for some time returned as the pichu dispersed from his view and must have looked back or something. He could always tell when that girl had her eyes on him, creepy as it felt or sounded. And he did find it slightly weird, but he also didn't mind. This disease-like munchlax the color of nothing for now liked the weird. The weird made up his list of friends. A jab in the back of his skull reminded him to move onward faster, so Munchie did go, and he nearly collapsed into a certain smudge of a chimchar's back as he went on and his head whipped back, angular ears awkwardly fluttering, and he saw something he didn't like. Wisps, they were, countless stacks of them, running and swarming and a few on the ground had sticks of sharpened wood which meant one of those must have severed him good in his head. Jalendalynne, unlike the what looked to be paling Ashley and her taller, slimmer mate, had bright orbs and her head nodded profusely. Then with a flick of her wrist, she turned herself and nabbed Influence's accidentally offered hand, pouring them to one side as Munchie recognized that the trail had split off, and Ashley grumbled a few words about Inf and she and Munchie stumbled off to the other side of the tree thicket, her hands and feet reluctantly crunching over the whitened ground for some time—Munchie thought he heard crunching, used to it after his entire life, but he actually didn't—before she even noticed that someone had followed her. Before that time, the munchlax simply relaxed in seeing that body, the same color as his, move on, and recognizing how she always ran with her hands and feet on the ground because of those bent and shorter legs, and how much faster she could go with them. He simply liked seeing her. That was all there was to it. Then with a snap, Ashley's face turned back as if searching for someone and no one could have disguised for her the bright stare that accompanied it.

"Munchie! What... what the fuck! How long have you been here! It's fucking nice to see you, damn straight!" R-really? "Oh, holy shit, I dunno what the hell is wrong with me but I've missed you, alright! I crazy fucking missed you!" R-r-really? "Wow! That's so..." She glanced around then, furtively, blinking to herself, and pushed her body against his in a sadly lukewarm hug because they couldn't feel the warmth from one another, but hey, he could feel her, and that was nice. He... Munchie actually liked hugging Ashley now. He found this burst of warmth in his heart, at least, at this discovery he found so kindly and so amazing to him. This... sudden joy he found in hugging her burst in his face, a bloom of red that of course nobody could see but he could surely feel it, and Ashley couldn't feel it but maybe she felt that same bloom of red—wait no she didn't. No, she was Ashley. Plus, she had other pokemon who probably made her happier than he did, so why should he act so... happy about it..? Why did she have to get so bright..? She... She didn't deserve this place! She acted so sad because of him being here but he deserved to be in her place, if anything... she couldn't possibly deserve to be here... She didn't deserve to be stuck with him...

They walked anyways. It was what they had to do to go on and save everyone. Ashley had this casual stroll to her step and her hand was on Munchie's hand but he couldn't believe it and tried to swallow down emotions that failed to make it out because they were trapped. Munchie needed a way to let out his emotions in places where he was trapped... He... he would screech and run with his limbs flinging wildly when scared and smile and try to hug and fail when happy, and when he was upset, he needed to cry, but he couldn't cry, and he was stuck and he just felt emotions, cool, hard, boiling emotions inside of him, mixing together in the wrong parts and setting him off, startling his heart. Ashley didn't deserve this but she acted so casual, so happy—it upset him to see her swanky style, so used to this hole that she shouldn't be in. He didn't like it when she felt at home in these places, because she didn't deserve that scum. But she acted like she was scum when she wasn't and it tore his heart right open.

Pretty soon, as one would think, his movements began to lag, another ocean emptying into him. Sand stiffened in his arms and he sloshed about in this pain as it trampled him further. Munchie's emotions would swallow him whole, and when he couldn't escape, there was nothing else to do but fall apart and release and why did Ashley have to... to... Munchie didn't know. His head ached and he wanted to smile for some reason but he didn't know why, didn't think he had a reason, and oh, did his head ache. A throbbing joint seemed messed up with it, jolting and jolting over and over inside of him, driving him wildly mentally, but on the outside, he continued to slow, until he had nearly stopped, his pace so uneven, so painfully stilted with his head hung and feet slapping the earth, appearing as if something had weakened inside of him. Pathetic munchlax, he recalled quietly. The pathetic, skinny munchlax that shouldn't have existed because all munchlaxes were large and round with their potbellies that he didn't freaking have.

"Munchie..." She turned. He knew she would. She always did. "What the hell? What the fuck! What are you doing!" To the point, a little brisk, a little blurred, hotly smudging with him. "Come on!" Her louder tone stirred up in him and set him aflame as his eyes took in the smudge of a chimchar, and guilt fell through, and other emotions he didn't want to keep in flushed out and he randomly sunk to the ground, heart stuck and mind reeling, nothing fitting together. "The shit!" she cried at him, but he couldn't move. Her yelling reacted somewhere in him, his eyes glazed over the ground. The yelling, the bogged-down emotions. Something was wrong with him, just like last time.

Unfortunately, Munchie didn't recall a last time. He just felt a thunderstorm over an ocean, and the waters were crackling and so was he. It was something about that chimchar... her loud tone, how jubilant she acted when she shouldn't be so... so... "A-Ashley..!" A snap. "Ashley!" He'd snapped again. The surging emotions pooled through and fear gave way to anger, to suffering, to thick, hot, rancid distress, and his eyes lit upon the colorless girl, just as colorless as him. Munchie sat, unable to move, but his heart began to race again, and he could feel the turmoil rushing through him and it ached somewhere, and it hit something. Fingers clenching the ground, he cried, "You just curse and act so happy and get along with everyone!" He didn't ask about himself. He didn't matter. He was a messenger to the hurricane as it collided inside of him. "You don't... you don't belong here!"

She didn't belong in this dump. Ashley quietly understood, but a moment later all quietness had been evacuated. "Hell like that! I do! This is my fucking home, Munchie!"

He stared at the ground through clumps of his hands gripping at it, trying to hang onto something, to... to... Something ached and he winced softly, but it didn't come out like a wince. Flames spouted from his lips with his words. "But you don't! These souls are nothing like you! But you get so upset when I'm here: when I belong here! You belong in the past with the brightness and light! I... no! NO! Stop... stop acting like I'm so great!" He'd hit it, and he felt it jar him. There we go, he thought blindly. There they went.

"Dammit, you are." He shook his head. "You are! You're way too fucking kind to everyone!" Shook it again. "I'm the damn scum! I'm the shit that picks the fights! I'm the yeller, the screamer, the bitch who keeps bitching and I deserve the other scum around here!"

"You don't deserve scum like Influence. You're better than them. All of them." He'd gone softer, quieter, then shouted, "I want to take your place!"

He could hear her footprints thumping closer. Hard, hard, stomp, stomp, stomping. Closer to him. "You're the sweetest, most innocent pokemon I've ever met—and YOU WANT TO TAKE MY FUCKING PLACE? THIS IS THE SHIT; I WANT TO PROTECT YOU FROM THIS SHIT!"

"What if I..." Munchie sucked in a breath and used a word in a sentence he'd never used before. "What if I've been the sh-sh-shit this entire time?"

And she was silent. She didn't say a word, didn't move a muscle. Ashley had lost herself in a world off on her own where nobody else could come to. And she was... so quiet, about it. Like she'd turned off. She didn't speak, merely stood there. She... he couldn't even tell what might have been going on in the chimchar's mind. His instincts failed where they were used best, and Ashley was all but completely silent. He could scarcely hear her breath funnel through her, hardly could tell if a foot flaked to the side just a turn, and she didn't do anything. Then came the whisper: "Munchie, you're the greatest soul I've ever met." A pause; a gulp in her throat. She wasn't... crying—? "Let me protect you from these bitches. You mean so damn much to me and I don't like it when they're around you. I told Influence to fuck off, and he will. And maybe we don't understand love like you guys in the past do, because I don't see it. I don't, and I can't. But I know I want to protect you from this mess of my life. I am scum, whether you like it or not. I'm from this hellhole. Maybe you're from the past, but even pokemon there are bitches, and I don't want you to be stuck there."

"A-Ashley..." he squeaked, and she stopped abruptly. "I just... want you happy. You... you look so sad when I'm here with you... and it makes me feel like everyone else must be so much better—they have to... have to be. They have to make you happy."

"But they're not. I get so fucking excited when you're around, Munchie. But... I don't like it when you say I'm better than you. I'll fight it off because I'm not and there's no way I could be. I have enough evidence to supply all of your comebacks." For the time being, Munchie silenced himself and didn't object to it. He enjoyed listening to the chimchar and he wanted to hear her out. It began to dawn on him how little he actually thought he knew of her... and how much more he could relate. How... how little a self-esteem they both shared. And... how ashamed she was of her life, and how much she desperately wanted to change the present, so that the future could be rewritten and they didn't have to be so messed up. Ashley didn't see her spirit, and apparently, Munchie didn't either. The difference was that she preferred to hide it and stuff it with her hate for the future, for where she came from. "I'm happy when you're around me."

A pause. Then, "Ashley, I didn't realize we had so much in common."

A glitzy smile bedazzled her lips. "Everyone has something in common, if you know where to look. But some pokemon have more in common than others." A wink. And then she paused. And he ended it.

"I'm sorry for getting upset with you... M-my emotions always get so tangled up and then it's out and... ugh..."

"Don't try to be so happy all the time. It's fucking stressful. Plus, I still like you. A hell of a lot more than you'd think."

He chuckled quietly. "Same here."

Then another voice broke in. "You guys gonna have babies now or what?" Who was that. His face burst into what should have been red but wasn't as something cold dove straight for Munchie. He could feel it, the icy slide down his bones and muscles: no, he should have, but a swerve cut off and Munchie lost his footing, sliding into the dirt as something above him went ssshhhhuulkk and something else lopped off and made a squishing noise as it hit the dirt. Still colorless, but Munchie could see what looked like a stream running out of the thing that lopped off and squished. He knew it wasn't a stream of water, though, and then Munchie looked away. Ashley's battle cry fell short as she slammed into him and Munchie took her figure in his arms, apologized profusely for letting this happen to her, and rumbled off with the chimchar carefully bundled up to him. He could feel something leaking, sticky, wet, and it stuck to his hand where her ear met; wait... Munchie squinted closer to Ashley's wet, sticky side of her head and decided: what ear? There was no ear on one side of her face. Staring bleakly at that, stomach queasily rippling, he stroked some of her hairs so that they covered the spot. Yeah, she was deaf, and it didn't matter, but now his stomach hurt.

All he could do was lumber on with his heart slapping against him like it hated him, and Munchie sure as heck felt like something was in there. Something was behind all that anger and remorse and guilt. And the thing was, he felt as if it'd been buried deep down, but... the covering was nearly completely blown off, and the munchlax was that much closer to finding it, feeling it, figuring out what had gone wrong inside of him and where things stopped connecting. He could feel it.

Voices sounded from behind. The sheer number of them that had been following prior, still following, now closer, so shady, so dark: they must have been the sableye. "Shit, they're nearing the portal! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!" They were also not the brightest. Soon enough the entire horde of darkness was screaming that same f-word over and over again until it rumbled around in Munchie's mind and he couldn't shake it out. Ashley mumbled something about how much she hated her half-brothers and sisters. He awkwardly nodded to that and continued loping his step and could see light. A great, swooning light, shredding through the sky and parts of the earth, humungous, lurking closer, calling out to him and the chimchar he held so tightly in his arms. Color began brilliantly shining its way down, and Munchie slowly realized just how much of the red, the not dried red, had dribbled over his dusky blue fur. Yes, slices of color returned, and his cry rumbled in his throat and that was soft with the husk—the husk—and he wanted to cry from this great accomplishment. Geez, why did Dusknoir appoint his way-too-many children onto the job of watching the portal if they were so bad at it? Oh, because he was a good dad. Right. Ashley was better.

As Munchie waddled up past cracks and flung himself over the light-induced bits streaming upon him, a green face lurched up to him. "Where the hell have you been?" came that scratchy tone Munchie was waiting for. "We've been waiting, dumbass! Come on!" Without looking back, Influence shoved his long, dark leaf over his shoulder and limply leaped into the great light. Beside him had been the sunny yellow pichu with her black stripes, who smiled sweetly at Munchie and popped through as well. A flurry of thoughts cascaded upon him as he stared at the chimchar of fiery colors in his arms. He saw a few things in that moment, just looking at the... red-splattered sight of her and knowing those orbs that she had neatly closed while she slumbered, unconscious. He felt happy to have met such a pokemon like Ashley, and that he had a lot of strange feelings building up in him because of her. He wanted to be by her side a lot, and she did too, and he was starting to understand that now. And they... they were kind of similar. Okay—more than kind of similar. They both had struggled with their families as well and he just wanted to hug her at times. And... be with her and hang out with her.

Munchie gained a string of realization as he stared at the chimchar in his arms.

All of those jokes he'd made awkwardly, and he didn't even realize...

I didn't realize we had so much in common.
But some pokemon have more in common than others.
Plus, I still like you. A hell of a lot more than you'd think.
Same here.

...Munchie...

Munchie was...

Me: yaaaaayyy wonder what that could mean

Munchie: o/o

Ashley: -has mouth taped shut because she's not allowed to react-

Jordan: -bursts out of nowhere- PLEASE HELP ME

Dusknoir: HWAAAHH HWAHWAHAHAAHHAHHHHHHHH

Jordan: GWAAHH

Munchie: AAAAHHH

Ashley: -fiercely claws at the tape on her mouth-