(A/N: forgot to upload yesterday, lol, sorry.)
"And you're rushing headlong, you've got a new goal
And you're rushing headlong, out of control
And you think you're so strong
But there ain't no stopping
And there's nothing you can do about it"
—"Headlong" from Innuendo by Queen
"Look, I just think it's immature," Max explained to Dark Matter. "It's all just dumb stereotypes. No one really identifies with them. It's just a way to blame bad behavior on unrelated biology." He glanced up at the speck to gauge its reaction but didn't get any encouraging signs.
"Did it not upset you when she called you a guy?" Dark Matter asked flatly.
"No," Max said, suddenly looking around his room to find… something. While he failed to look for a way to hide his flushed cheeks, Dark Matter floated in front of him and over to a cluster of various fragrant bottles sat around a brush. Gifts Neb had helped him pick out yesterday. Max knew the implication before he turned to face the speck. "Well, who doesn't want to look nice?"
Dark Matter floated whimsically away from the bottles and returned to his side. Max snatched up the brush and started turning the bottles around to see their labels, finally finding the writing "Mornings with Brush, just a little," and grabbing it.
"How did you sleep?" it asked.
Max let out a sigh of relief. It was actually moving on. He still didn't want to talk about the night before, though, so he shrugged and answered, "Fine."
The air around Dark Matter shifted somewhat, and Max felt it lightly scrutinizing him. "Really?" it hummed. "Your soul perished for an hour," it said as if remarking on the relative yellowness of Max's fur.
"I DIED?!" Max shouted, hopping up with both paws clutching the bottle and brush.
"It was merely a spiritual death," Dark Matter explained, taken aback by the reaction. Of course, Max's panic didn't dissipate in the slightest. "Besides, it was temporary. Your body was fine, so I assumed you would return."
"I died and you sat there hoping for the best?!" Max screamed, completely unaware of the slip to pika-speak. Dark Matter flinched away, but Max didn't see it. His paws had dropped the bottle and brush to hold his head. "P-pi… Chu pi ka chu…." His head slowly shook side to side, reliving the end of the dream turned nightmare. The firmament of malice surrounding him, eyes he couldn't see excavating his sins from his soul.
Dark Matter smacked into his forehead. "Max? What's wrong?" it asked, dashing to smack his head again, but Max intercepted it with his paw.
"Pi-chuka—," he stopped himself. Dark matter could understand his pika-speak, but he hated slipping into it. "Nightmare. I had a nightmare." A shiver trembled through him, from the back of his neck to the tip of his tail. He squeezed his paws around the brush and started to run it over his fur, if only to keep himself busy. "It started with a voice, just like last time, but then it got…."
He rushed to grab the bottle and tipped a drop into the brush. "Last time?" Dark Matter asked.
As much as he wanted to forget it all, he couldn't stop thinking about the vision. "When I first got here, there was this voice," he mumbled. "It told me… I don't know, prophecy shit. 'Save the Tree' or whatever." The brush ran slick through his fur, the bristles dragging along his skin with the lightest skritches soothing him along the way. "It felt the same, started the same, but then," he paused to take a breath, focusing on the feeling of the brush running through his fur, "the voice got mad."
Dark Matter floated silently, and Max continued brushing his fur. The speck bobbed a bit from side to side, but didn't move much more than a quarter of a foot in each direction. Adding another dollop, Max started brushing his head-fur and tilted his head to bring it down. To see if he could, he tried pulling it into a little bit of a peak above his face, vaguely remembering bangs.
"Is it perhaps my presence?" Dark Matter mumbled.
"No," Max rushed out. "No, it was just mad at me." He turned his head back up (his head-fur somewhat staying in place) and looked directly at Dark Matter. "If it was, I don't care." He got up and walked over to the speck.
"But was your mission not to destroy me?" It argued.
"My mission was to save the Tree of Life," Max said. "We thought that meant killing you, but we were wrong." If he could hug the speck, he would. As it stood, he could only stand close to it. He'd been around Dark Matter in its diminutive form enough to tell it was staring at him, the brighter red trained on him like an eye's iris.
"Moments ago, your emotional turmoil pushed you into feral speech," it said. "You should not suffer that for my sake."
Max took a deep breath in to calm himself—Dark Matter needed the help more than him. "You don't know that it's your fault," he said. "And even if it is, I don't see another option." He flashed a smile up at it. "We're in this together, all right?" It paused its bobbing, but didn't offer a rebuttal, so Max took that as a good sign and went back to brushing through the last of his fur. Thanks to whatever morning serum Neb had given him, it had few to no tangles to give him trouble, so he finished without a hitch.
"All right," he said, hopping up to stretch. "I should head out. They're probably waiting for me." He'd promised Cori they'd have their first mission today. Not expecting any extreme hurdles, he gave little more than a glance inside his bag and tossed it over his shoulder. A few orans, two cheri berries, and an apple. The rest he could find in the dungeon. "Let's go."
Dark Matter meandered behind him, taking its sweet time meeting him at the door. For a moment, it seemed reluctant to go, but it dissipated into Max's subconscious before he could ask. Tabling that oddity for later, Max headed out to meet Cori.
"He used to be a man with a stick in his hand
She used to be a woman with a hot dog stand"
"Cori," Max half-chuckled, half-sighed. Once he turned the last corner to the Pelipper Post, he saw a veritable mountain of bags piled on top of a magically still standing totodile. He hadn't even known to bring a bag on his first mission, yet it seemed Cori had the opposite problem. Rushing to meet them before they could try to walk over, he got to them faster than they could turn towards him… which wasn't very fast, but hey, it prevented catastrophe.
"Hello, Max," Neb said from behind the tree Cori had been facing moments ago.
"Pika!" Max swore and jumped back. "Neb! You scared me!" His heart beat too fast for him to notice he had fallen into pika-speak.
Neb didn't tell him, either. Instead, she watched him as he yelled at her with an amused smile. "Your fur looks lovely! I can already tell you brushed it like I showed you," she said.
"P-pi, c-ch-chu—ka chu," Max thanked as all his bluster turned to fluster. Had he learned ember? Why were his cheeks so hot? He shook his head and tried to rub the blush out of his cheeks, then turned to Cori. "Pika ka chu?"
Cori gave him a worried smile instead of answering. "Max?" they mumbled. "You're, uh. Not… y'know."
"Ka?" Max asked, finally hearing himself. The burning in his cheeks returned alongside a gaping pit in his stomach. Even after weeks, the consequences of blacking out in a dungeon still had their claws on him. He used to be able to tell he'd slipped, at least. "Ssss-s. Sorry." He looked down and away, but even still felt Neb's eyes on him.
"It's all right," Neb said. "It took you a lot longer than a few weeks to remember how to talk last time." It felt too serious to brush off like she was, but he looked up to see her with that familiar, amused smirk.
He felt the temptation to explain the full context of his concerns, but shoved them down his throat and scurried over to the job board. He whispered to himself just to make sure he had his speech under control, then shouted, "S-so, quite a few jobs." At least he could manage this information without a hitch. Forming a proper team with Cori had technically lowered his rank back to provisional, but teams could take on multiple jobs at once. It was half a demotion, half a promotion.
The board was organized pretty well, at least, with each rank in its own section, and each location marked with a relevant pin. Without too much thought, he picked the easiest seeming dungeon, Thunderwave Cave, and grabbed all the jobs for that location. Somewhere between ten and twenty, that seemed like a manageable enough scavenger hunt. Had to stay kind of easy for Cori's first mission, after all.
Although, looking back, he could tell Cori didn't have a single bit of room in even one of their pockets. "How much of that is essential?" Max asked.
"Huh?" Cori jerked up, claws tapping against each other. "W-well, I wanted to make sure we were prepared."
The backpack towered over them—three times their height at least. "Cori," Max chuckled. "You'll exhaust yourself before we make it through the first floor with all that."
Cori crossed their arms and huffed. "C'mon, it's not that heavy," they mumbled. As a powerful demonstration of this, they took a confident step forward, but the mountain on their shoulders lagged a good half-step behind. By the time they started their second, it had caught up to their speed with a vengeance and started overtaking them. The peak drooped further and further forward, making the incoming disaster nigh inevitable.
Without a moment's thought, Max held the missions in his mouth to free up his arms and rushed forward. Cori looked at him with confusion until the shadow of their bag blocked out the sun. They threw their arms to the side to grab the air for balance, but it slipped out of their grasp. Max tried to brace himself low and put a paw on each of their shoulders, but already felt the weight shoving his paws along the dirt they dug into.
His claws dug in, trying to step forward against the avalanche as its weight bore down on them both. A light purple glow enveloped the bag right before it tipped the rest of the way over, and that held the weight just enough for Max's pushing to right Cori's balance.
Max slapped the papers to his chest so he could gasp in breath. "See what," he panted, "I mean?" Cori had dropped down to sit, nodding while breathing to recover, so Max turned to look at Neb. "Nice catch with the psychic." She nodded and waved a paw as a purple aura unhooked the backpack's layers and flopped them down around Cori.
While Max went to the bag on their left, Cori sat curled up between them. "I'm sorry," they mumbled. "I can't do this."
"Why not?" Max asked, still looking through the bag. Tools, sticks… rocks? Well, he remembered his partner grabbing rocks that were good for throwing.
"I already screwed it up!" Cori said, throwing their arms around at the disassembled backpack. "I—," Max tossed a rock at their nose. "HEY!" Cori yelled, wrapping their paws around their assaulted nostrils. "What was that for?!"
"Chill out," Max said with a wave of his paw. "This is our first mission. I didn't even bring a bag to my first." He set the tool bag aside, figuring they wouldn't need it, and put a paw to the back of his neck. "Or go to the bathroom." The memory made him cringe for a moment.
"But—!"
"Shush," Max chuckled, finally turning to rest a paw on their shoulder. "It's a learning process. You'll be fine. Right Neb?"
She looked up from the bag opposite him and shrugged. "You're the expert, here," she said. When Max nodded to her bag with a raised brow, she shook her head.
Cori looked at both of them, then at the ground between their hindpaws. "W-well, all right," they murmured.
"Great!" Max cheered, clapping them on the back. "You decide what you want to keep in that bag," he pointed at the remaining part of the backpack they were still wearing, "And I'll go turn these in." When he flashed the fan of fliers, though, Neb telepathically yanked over half of them out of his hands. "Hey!" He tried to grab at them, but they flew out of his grasp and towards the board.
"Take it easy for now," Neb said. Max tried to glare at her, but she matched and outdid his own intensity. "You're still recovering from a Blackout." His growing snarl turned to a whimper. "I'm not letting you jump into the deep end until we know you can still float." Pins jabbing the missions back into the board punctuated her command. "Besides, it's Cori's first time."
At the mention of their name, Cori leapt out of their position between them with a yelp. They wanted no part in this debate.
Max took a deep breath, eyes still on the missions she yanked out of his paws, and swallowed his pride. "Okay, you're right," he said. The mere thought of his blackout chilled his bones. As much as he never wanted to, he needed to remember that was a risk for him. "Thanks."
Neb relaxed and smiled. "You're usually more stubborn than that," she said.
"Don't push it," Max snapped back with a smirk. As she chuckled, he looked over to see Cori peeking out from behind a tree. Of course, they immediately shrank away from his gaze, which made Max chuckle more. "It's okay, sweety," he called out with a lilt. "We're sorry for fighting."
"C'mon!" Cori grumbled, stepping out from behind the tree. "I'm not your—a kid."
Max left the slip alone and smiled at them. "I'll turn these in to Pelipper. Then, we can go," he said, though he glanced down at the chunk of fliers. Still a good amount… was he pushing himself too far? He still slipped his speech constantly. What would Cori do if he went feral in there? Would their badges recognize his warped mind enough to teleport him out? Or would he…
A gentle, furry paw draped over his shoulder while he stared at the missions. "Just be careful, and you'll be fine," Neb told him. Before he could argue, she floated a familiar looking bracelet to him. "Mandy wants to see you again some time." The bracelet had already stunned him into silence, so the invitation muzzled him. When he held out his paw to catch it, she pulled it onto his left wrist.
"You've come back from worse," she whispered into his ear. "You're not alone. You never will be again."
Her tail began to wrap around his in comfort, but he jerked it away. "I-sorry, just," he mumbled, trying desperately to think up an explanation. When he couldn't, though, he shrugged it off. "Sorry." Neb nuzzled him, and he could only respond with a hug. Waves of emotion crashed through him. They caught right on the edge, but he couldn't bring himself to let them boil over. He'd done enough crying already, needed to get over himself.
"I-I'm here for you, too!" Cori said, pulling Max back from the brink of tears. They were a totodile of perfect timing.
"Thanks," Max chuckled. He pulled away from Neb and gave Cori a pat on the head. "I'll be right back. Then, Team Hazard is off!" Max didn't know if he'd ever seen them as happy as they were when he said their new team's name.
"Now you got soup in the laundry bag
Now you've got strings, you're gonna lose your rag"
"THUNDERWAVE CAVE?!" Cori screamed, more angry than Max had ever seen them.
Max flinched back and shielded himself with his tail on instinct. He couldn't figure out what had them so worked up about this. Was it cold hindpaws? They'd seemed happy all the way there, excited even. Maybe they had some sort of hang up about the place from childhood or something that he just didn't know about. Whatever their reason, though, their rage (and all those sharp, predatory teeth lining their mouth) sustained his cowering, so he hesitantly answered, "Yes?"
Cori stared at him, utterly bewildered, as if the reason for their outburst was obvious. In fact, once Max thought about it for even a second, it was. "Oh," he mumbled.
Typing. Right. He hadn't thought about Cori's type-weakness for even a microsecond. A vague memory of letting his partner pick the missions floated in the back of his mind, but he didn't have time to dwell on it.
Max felt a pang of guilt, but couldn't think of what to say. Instead, he let the words flow from the heart: "C'mon, you're overreacting," he blurted. The words registered in his ears far too late to stop. Right as he bit his tongue to prepare an apology, a bolt of electricity engulfed Cori.
While uncontrollable jitters of shock jerked through their muscles, Cori trained a vicious glare right through Max's head. Even as they fell, their rage filled eyes followed him. Max spun to face the direction of the attack and saw a voltorb rolling toward them. Not a big deal. Not a big deal at all. At least, that is, until it started glowing. Max had his tail up to block the attack, but the voltorb kept glowing brighter. And brighter. Until it was almost pure white.
"Shit!" Max swore, throwing his body over Cori's. Their entangled bodies rolled once—just enough time for Max to wrap his tail around them—when the explosion sent them flying. Even with his tail switched to iron, the tumbling and scraping against the dirt and whatever lay within it stung as it took turns scratching into his tail, his arms, and his back. Even still, he only tried to clutch Cori tighter as their momentum slowed to a gradual stop. He held tight for a moment to make sure they'd really stopped, and then hopped up to dig into his bag.
His paws raced for an oran and a cheri while he made sure not to look even close to Cori's eyes. Sparks bounced down his cheeks as he felt Cori's glare even without looking. When he had the berries, though, he had no choice but to look at the maw he shoved them into.
Except, Cori wasn't glaring at him. Their violent rage had died and left a sorrowful ghost behind. In fact, they avoided Max's gaze. When he pressed the berries against their lips, they parted their maw barely enough to chomp them down.
"Y-you all right?" Max asked as they chewed the berries down to mush and swallowed. They either didn't hear him, or didn't care to react. "Look, I'm sorry. I forgot, well, y'know." He looked away, one arm in the other while more sparks of embarrassment bounced from his cheeks.
Cori sat up, but kept their eyes on the ground. "Sorry," they mumbled. They slipped their bag off and started digging through it. "I'll just let you do this." When they pulled their paw out, it held their badge.
"What—Cori!" Max said, leaping to snatch the badge out of their claws. "This was my fault!" Cori didn't try to take the badge back. "Look, this was my mistake. I didn't think about you."
"You shouldn't have to," they mumbled.
Cori's complete lack of retaliation pulled Max out of himself. They just rolled over, ready to take the blame and die. "Cori," Max whispered, gently leaning in to rest a paw on their shoulder. "Of course I should. We're a team." He tries to give a supportive smile, but Cori isn't looking. "We're in this together, all right?"
"But—"
"No buts!" Max declared and extended a paw. "Let's just get through this, all right? I promise it'll be better than you think."
The promise didn't show much on their expression at first, but the frustration and shame steadily decreased just enough for them to look up and meet his gaze. "Okay," Cori mumbled. Not too much conviction, but they grabbed Max's paw, so he counted it as a win.
"There we go," he grunted as he pulled them up. "Look." He let go of their paw and used all the willpower he could muster to maintain eye contact… but then it felt awkward so he looked down at their paws. "I really am sorry. You deserve a better first mission."
"Sorry," Cori said.
Max tilted his head. "Wh-why?" he asked, the faintest hint of a chuckle invading his bewilderment. "Cori, don't be." He rested a paw on their shoulder and pulled them into a hug. "C'mon, partner." Hoping the hug reinvigorated them at least somewhat, he pat their back and pulled away.
It seemed to have that very effect, too. A light grin spread along Cori's lips as their clawtips danced along each other. "Partner," they echoed. "I'm really in a-the expedition society."
Max saw a phantom flash from Cori, and suddenly his old partner replaced them. He had the same posture, same expression, same tone, same everything. He looked up at Max with confusion. Max flinched back when the charmander reached out a paw.
"Max?" Cori asked. As quickly as he had appeared, his old partner left. "Max? It's okay," they cooed, switching to a soft, non-threatening tone. "I'm not gonna hurt you." They raised their paws up in surrender.
Max shook his head and slapped his paw over his face. "I'm not," he started saying, paying close attention to his voice. Yep, normal speech. "Feral. I'm fine." The sight felt fresh in his mind, even as a hallucination. It felt like more than a memory.
"What happened?" Cori asked.
That, Max didn't want to answer at all, so he marched deeper into the dungeon and said, "C'mon, let's go. Keep an eye out for a weird looking hat and a nanab." Probably not convincing in the slightest, but at least it got them to stop pursuing the question.
All they needed to find were five items. It'd be a piece of cake.
"You're gettin' in a fight
Then it ain't so groovy when you're screaming in the night
Let me outta this cheap B movie"
It was not a piece of cake. The levels of this dungeon sprawled far longer than Max expected, making the search for the inconspicuous items beyond frustrating. On top of that, since they almost exclusively encountered electric types, Cori had to stay back while Max worked at half capacity. This fun romp of a scavenger hunt had become a slog.
Max launched a shock at the third rattata he'd seen in all five floors and narrowly sidestepped the elekid trying to bash his head in. Before it could pull its fist out of the ground, he leapt back at it and tried to smash his tail over its head. It had enough force to knock it back, but he realized he hadn't managed to make it a proper iron tail. It was just a weak slam.
The elekid took advantage of his confusion and dashed into him with a harsh kick in the chest, sending Max flying. The world spun around him until he smacked into the dirt, leaving only his head spinning. He tried to ignore the vertigo and got back up before the elekid could hit him again and jumped to the side just in case.
A fist hit where he'd landed, so he was glad he'd jumped away. Without a reliable iron tail, he dashed forward faster than he could and launched himself up to bite, scratch, slap and smack the pokémon. Luckily, the weak illusion dissipated after the quick attack.
"Are you all right?" Cori asked, rushing out from behind a tree.
"Yes," Max grunted behind clenched teeth. They offered him an oran, and he snatched it up out of their paw. He hadn't taken too much damage, but he didn't want to deal with the lingering pain in his chest. Cori kneaded their paws together while they looked at the ground around them. It wasn't hard for Max to tell they weren't feeling the best. "What's wrong?"
"Huh?" they asked, flinching a bit. Max just watched, waiting for them to answer. They did offer some resistance by maintaining silence for a bit, but they eventually cracked. "Why am I here?"
Max bit his lip. "Look, I'm sorry," he said. "Like I said, I picked a shit dungeon for your first." If he didn't know any better, he'd grill them for rubbing it in his face, but… well, he didn't usually know better, but Cori seemed too down for it to really be worth it. "You're doing fine. I screwed this up, so I'm fixing it." He tapped his chest to feel if any swelling had persisted despite the oran. It felt sort of sore, but even that felt temporary.
As usual, Cori still seemed upset when they said, "Well, all right." They headed off, and Max followed behind.
When he caught up, he clapped a paw over their shoulder. "Trust me," he said. "I'll need you sooner than you'd expect."
Cori looked away with a bashful grin, and suddenly hopped up in excitement. "There it is!" they cheered. Max followed their pointing and saw maybe the gaudiest handkerchief he'd ever seen—a neon green and pink that threatened to burn his retinas.
"Told you!" Max chuckled. He tried to pat them on the back when they dashed over to grab it. Instead, he watched and crossed his arms with a satisfied smirk. "Proven right, once again," he mumbled to himself, having been proven right for the first time in his life.
"Mine!" something shouted from his right. He looked over at it and suddenly had a face full of fur.
"G-get! Off!" he shouted. He shot off a thunderbolt on instinct, but the monster on his face didn't seem to care about it that much. When it shot weak shocks of its own into his face, he knew why. It took prying with both paws, but he eventually managed to loosen its grip enough to throw it off by grabbing it by the ears. The blue ears and little blue bar it had for a tail told him all he needed to know. Minun.
Before he had a chance to follow up with another attack, two more little monsters leapt at his sides, a plusle and another minun. He tried to swat at them, but they got too invested in biting him to care about his slaps. "C'mon!" he groaned. "Shit!" The little rats had their teeth digging past his fur and into his skin. He threw an elbow into the plusle on his right and knocked it off just in time for the first minun to tackle him from the front.
"Cori!" he shouted. This had to be the most embarrassing fight he could remember. He looked over to see their mouth agape with a distraught expression for just a moment before a new plusle and minun dropped down in the way.
The two little rats bounced up against each other, hopping from hindpaw to hindpaw while grinding their patches against each other in some kind of scarily threatening cheer routine. Max tried to kick at the minun scratching at his chest, but couldn't reach it at all. "Stupid—hngg—worthless, stubby things," he groaned.
"Plus!"
"Min!"
The two cheerleaders off to the side started chanting in turn. When Max looked over, they were tumbling towards his face like an electrified wheel off a semi-truck. He tried to throw an iron tail into the ground to at least launch himself somewhere, but he still didn't have the energy. The rats gnawing at his skin didn't exactly give him much of a chance at getting off a quick attack, either.
Out of options, he at least hoped a thunder would disrupt them. He quickly drew out as much of a charge he could manage, not letting the shocks of his attackers destabilize it, and launched it into the sky with a roaring, "Pikaa!" The bolt connected to the sky and came crashing back down to smash into all of them. The impact at least dazed his attackers enough for him to wriggle out of the way of the incoming wheel of death. He couldn't get his balance enough to run, so he had to roll away, scraping his wounds along the dirt, but getting at least closer to safety.
Two of the plusle faded away, but the rest of them looked reinvigorated. His shock probably ended up recharging them. They got up before he finished rolling up to his knees. Any one of them he knew he could take no problem, but with the constant assault of all of them, he couldn't get a single hit in.
The dancing pair started towards him again. He pushed up to his hindpaws, but wavered when the motion stretched against the holes in his skin. The plusle leapt into the air and landed onto the waiting minun who reeled back to launch its friend at Max when a stream of water smacked both of them over.
"Thanks!" Max shouted alongside a sigh of relief. He wanted to scream at Cori for not doing anything sooner, but bit his tongue.
"You okay?!" Cori asked. They stayed put, keeping a decent distance from the pack of plusle and minun.
"We've got more pressing concerns!" Max yelled back. He launched towards the dazed pair and smacked his teeth and claws through their illusory forms until they'd fully dissipated. He turned around to check on the rest to see Cori focusing their stream on one minun while another minun and plusle dashed for them. They must have taken one out already, or maybe Max hadn't kept good count. Either way, he needed to keep the pair from getting to them.
He pulled as much energy as he had left into his legs to sprint forward with a quick attack while the two attackers got right in shocking range of Cori. They'd already linked arms and charged their attack, but Max had only made it halfway there. When their blast fired off, Cori spun to the side just in time for little more than tingles to graze them.
"Yes!" Max cheered, then slammed into the two remaining attackers with the full force of his sprint. They wriggled against his hold while they all tumbled together. He couldn't pull off any real attacks at this point, so he just pulled a fist back and tried to pummel them into dust. By some miracle, it worked. They clawed and bit at him some more, but he beat them before they beat him.
Gasping for air, he barely managed to hold himself up with his forepaws long enough to look around, checking the coast was clear, then collapsing to the dungeon floor. His wounds stung when they met dirt, but he didn't have the energy to roll over.
"Max?" Cori asked. They dashed over in a panic and fell to their knees in front of Max. "Y-you—hello? Are you there?! Are you okay?!" Max thrust a limp thumbs up in front of them, and Cori let out a sigh of relief. "Thank Mew!" They sat back and started digging through their pack for as many orans as they could find—which became too many after the third, but they kept dropping them in front of Max anyway.
Tempting as they were, Max had to consider letting himself faint here since they'd already finished the mission, and he knew Cori could carry him. Unfortunately, out of fear they were losing him, Cori pulled his mouth open and shoved an oran down the pikachu's throat. Max tried to bite the invading limb, but only squished the berry between his teeth.
So, with a reluctant sigh, he started chewing the healing berry. "Fncks," he thanked, squirting juice and berry bits out of his mouth. It only took a little bit of time after swallowing it to build up the energy he needed to roll over onto his back. "You okay?" He grabbed another and scarfed it down.
"Are you?!" Cori asked. "Y-you got—fell over and—are you okay?!"
Max shoved another oran into his mouth and said, "I ashked you firtht."
Cori started wringing their paws. "Y-yeah," they mumbled. "I'm fine."
"Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing?" Max sighed.
"W-well," they said. "Look at you! You got all beat up and stuff, and—!" Max looked up at them when they stopped, and they looked away. On top of their voice dripping with guilt, their eyes were drowning in it.
Max tossed a couple more orans down his gullet (more than he strictly needed, but they didn't have any more floors to save them for) and sat up. "And you saved me from fainting," he said. As supportive as he wanted to be, though, he couldn't help adding, "I mean, you could've jumped in sooner, but." He shook his head. Not the time. "Live and learn, y'know?"
"I'm sorry," Cori said.
Yeah, he should've held that criticism back. "You're focusing too much on the mistake and ignoring the fact you took out a good few dungeon ferals that had a type advantage against you," he said. "You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for."
Cori looked up at him as if to confirm, so he beamed a smile and tossed a thumb-up their way. While their mood didn't flip to happy, their frustration seemed to lose a bit of its grip. "Thanks," they said.
"Any time, partner," Max said, trying his best to ignore the knife in his chest from using that word after so long. The wince came through, but he shook it off before Cori saw it. He dropped his paw to his bag and flipped it open. Memories of doing the same tens, hundreds of times before all ached in the back of his head. He tried to ignore them and count all the items off their list, though, remembering he didn't have time to catch his breath. Even in shallow dungeons, his instincts could start taking hold if he stayed too long.
No matter how hard he tried to ignore them, though, the memories hung over—pounding through—his head. He had to throw his bag off and walk away, one paw rubbing his worsening headache. "Max? What's wrong?" Cori asked.
"Just a headache," Max said, waving them off. They didn't need to know the specifics. Even without the bag, though, he kept getting flashes of his past burning through his retinas. Trinkets, carvings, clothes, all the pointless little items someone had lost that he barely even noticed at the time hit him as if he had every single one in his paw at once.
Distraction. He needed to distract himself. Clawing his way out of the pit of memory, he tried to focus on at least some more recent memories. "What a dungeon, though," he mumbled. "I've never seen that many pokémon in a five floor before." Getting mauled by rodents usurped the memories of holding various curios, and he could almost hear the curl of a monkey's (mankey's?) paw.
At least the headache faded a bit.
"This isn't supposed to happen?" Cori asked.
Max shook his head and said, "I'm used to seeing maybe two a floor. A few more as you get deeper, but not this much more." In actuality, he couldn't call on precise memories to compare, but his gut instinct seemed to have a grasp on memories out of his reach.
He made sure not to think about it too much, though, since his headache had finally faded to manageable levels. He let out a sigh of relief and looked around at the standard fare mystery dungeon and noticed a distortion too twisted to make out more than colors. "What?" he balked.
Taking just one step closer twisted his stomach into knots. All the fur on his back stood on end. "Max?" Cori shouted, making Max jump.
"Dude!" he called back, but bit his tongue. It's not like they knew. "Sorry, there's just a…." He couldn't think of what to call it. It seemed like a barrier to another floor, but he hadn't seen one this obvious before. Wasn't this the dungeon's deepest floor? "Which floor are we on?"
Cori jogged over to Max carrying his bag as well as their own. "Fifth, right?" Cori said.
Max hummed in affirmation and looked back at the distortion. Taking another step towards it, Max felt that same churning in his gut. The day hadn't had much wind up to this point, but the complete lack of a breeze felt off. "You feel that?" Max asked, taking another step forward.
"N-no?" Cori said, though they hadn't yet taken a step closer. Max waved them forward with a paw a few times before they reluctantly followed behind. They looked hesitant but didn't seem to react to any feeling like the one rotting in his gut. "I don't like this."
Max nodded. "Me neither." He needed to go back, use their badges and teleport out. This wasn't safe. He inched towards it. Someone else probably knew better, or could at least do more to look into it. He took another step closer. Maybe they could even come back tomorrow and make a beeline to this so he didn't have to worry about being in a dungeon so long. Another step closer.
"Max?" Cori asked. They had reluctantly followed about three steps behind. Every little bit closer to this distortion made his skin crawl, but Max couldn't help it. It called out to him. He vaguely remembered some story about people finding holes in a mountain shaped just like them.
That twisting in his stomach that told him this was dangerous compelled him to follow it. He recognized this feeling from dreams, from faded impressions of lost memories. A voice calling out to him. Another few steps closer and he could reach out and touch it with his paw. It pushed back the slightest bit at first, but clung to his paw when he tried to pull it back. "Shit!" he shouted.
"Max!" Cori yelled, barreling at him to come help. Max tried to yank his paw away from the distortion, but it kept creeping along his paw, up his arm, like water that covered his fur rather than soaking it. Cori grabbed him and tried to help pull him out, but the further they stepped away, the harder it pulled back.
It overtook the full length of his arm with no sign of even slowing down. Max tried to pull it out with his other paw, but it got stuck in the fractal, too. He wanted to tell Cori to let him go, but they stumbled just enough to send them both flying through the distortion.
Max felt his mind retch as they shot through. All the panic and worries of the day overtook him in wordless jabber that he could barely comprehend. It felt like he'd just fallen twenty—forty floors deeper all at once. He could barely hear himself think, and all he could make out was worthless babble. His paws went to his head as if they could help him put it back on straight.
The fear siphoned off just enough to give him an edge. He started to breathe again, and let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Dark Matter," he said. It didn't respond, but he felt it give its version of a nod. He pushed himself up to one paw and looked around.
Desolation. Every tree withered to looming firewood hanging over dust and dead grass. Any scant signs of life seemed to barely hold on. One tree looked like it had fruit on its branches that refused to fall despite having blackened and burst open. The air felt noxious to breathe.
Instincts begged him to run—anywhere, in any direction, to do anything but stay put. He couldn't find a reason not to for a moment.
"Max?" Cori asked.
Max leapt away, firing off a shock and holding his tail up in defense before he could see them. Even when he did, he couldn't force his guard down. "S-sorry," he said. The shock hadn't hit them, luckily. He felt the need to try again.
A dark purple speck flew over to Cori. Max registered it as Dark Matter when it got out of range. "He is not completely feral, but he is close," Dark Matter explained. "His instincts have taken control of his actions, but not his mind, though resisting their physical hold over him has left him vulnerable to mental takeover."
"Chu," Max swore. Frustratingly, it was right. His own actions felt more and more distant, as did those of his friends. He could hear Cori talking back, but couldn't make out their words. The conversation evaded him, though it sounded somewhat panicked. A light enveloped Cori, and they were suddenly gone. He felt a stab of abandonment.
They are safe. You will be, too. Can you hear me?
Dark Matter had returned and started siphoning off his worries again. The world around still felt distant to Max, but he could at least feel himself more clearly.
Your bag is where they were.
As his vision cleared, he managed to see the brown blob it was talking about. He nodded in understanding and started plodding over to it. Step by step, he managed to inch closer and closer despite the instincts begging him to flee. He felt the bag in his paws before he realized he'd made it. A badge found its way into his grip. As if moving on its own, he clicked the center of it with one paw while the other held tight to his bag.
A few beeps, a flash of light, and he was gone.
