The town of Desite went far better for Aika than Kiritown did. The people there were mostly ground types who towered above her, but they were still welcoming. Not wishing to repeat her mistakes of before, Aika kept a low profile and didn't ask around for information. But that also meant she wasn't gaining more knowledge to help her on her journey.
She still had plenty of money on her, so she was able to restock on supplies. More food for the trail, and more drinks. After that, it was back on the road again. Aika could only let out another sigh, there was still so much left for her journey, so she just had to keep going forward.
Once again, Aika checked her map. She was now off-course from her original plan because she had planned to move through a forest to reach Barretville, but the presence of a mystery dungeon set her off-course. She figured out another route to reach Evelyn forest. She estimated that it would take her another day to reach that goal.
"Not like it'll be much different. Just more roads in the countryside to walk across," Aika thought to herself.
The fields thankfully weren't blank plains, they had variety to them. There were hills, stones, trees, steam and rivers. The trees weren't close enough together to make it a dense woods, there was space between them. In the spring weather, fruit and berries were beginning to grow. When Aika took time to look around at her present instead of focusing on her goal, she realized it was quite serene. The grass was a bright green, the sky was a beautiful blue with the occasional white cloud, and the leaves made soft sounds as the leaves brushed through them. It was a good day.
For once, Aika actually stopped in place to breathe in the clean air and enjoy her surroundings. She never would've been there to appreciate it if she hadn't set off on the journey in the first place.
But as she stopped to listen, she heard a sound not far away. The sound wasn't like she'd heard before, the best she could compare it to was a "popping" sound, but that wasn't quite it either. She couldn't begin to think of what pokemon might've created it. Her head immediately turned to its direction, she couldn't just back away without having her questions answered.
Aika took a step off the path to walk in its direction. She walked slowly, exercising reasonable caution as she checked around her. There weren't any pokemon in the trees or hiding behind them, so she kept moving forward.
She spotted a pond of clear water. Right beside it, there was a litten that was passed out in a strange sleeping position. Aika knew what a litten was, but she'd never seen one before, not in the last town she'd been in, the one before that, or her hometown. His red and black fur stood out among the bright green grass and leaves. Aika stepped around the stream to get closer, something about him made her want to investigate.
She saw that the litten wasn't dead, his body was still slightly expanding and retracting with each breath he took.
"Hey," Aika said to the litten.
There was no response.
The minccino reached her paw forward and gently rubbed him, trying to get a response. "Are you okay?" she asked.
His muscles reacted to Aika touching him. He let out a grunt and his eyes began to open, groggily looking at Aika.
"Are you okay? You're in an odd position?" Aika asked again.
The litten looked at Aika. "A… talking minccino?" he said.
It took a second for Aika to fully process those words. She took a step back in surprise, continuing to look at him. "Uh, are you okay?" The only thing she could think to do was repeat herself.
The litten was clearly shocked, the surprise moving him from being sleepy to fully awake in a short moment. "How are you so big?!" he tried to stammer backwards, but he tripped over himself, like he didn't know how to control his own body. After the stumble, he looked down at his own paws, and his eyes widened again. "I'm a pokemon?!" he said.
Aika herself was beginning to experience a similar shock. "Are you a human?" she asked him.
"YES!" he shouted. "Why am I a pokemon?!"
"I don't know!" Aika said.
He forced his body to move. First he tried to walk on two legs, but quickly fell over. He crawled his way over to the pond of water, where he looked down at his reflection. As clear as day, he could see a litten staring back at him. "What the heck…" he said.
Both of them fell silent for a moment, the reality of the situation setting in. The litten had a tough time believing his current situation, but AIka had a tough time believing it too. She'd heard of humans turned into pokemon before, she'd been told stories about them from Locke and Tamin. And now one was right there, standing directly in front of her. With how strong his reactions were, she didn't believe for a second that he was faking it.
The minccino looked around again. There was no one else around. There wasn't a single other person to witness this event. No one else for him to speak to.
"What's your name?" Aika asked him.
"D-Dylan," he stuttered out, still in shock. "My name is Dylan."
"I see. My name is Aika," she replied while reaching out a paw. "I'm on my own journey right now, I stopped by once I saw you unconscious. You can come with me if you want. I can show you around."
Dylan didn't have many other options. He was completely new to this world, he hadn't the slightest idea on what he should do or where he should've been going. "Alright," he said.
He tried walking forward, but his movements were strange as he constantly shifted his center of gravity all over the place. He accidentally stepped on his tail with his back-left foot, which caused him to inadvertently let out a yelp and jump away. He then looked at his own tail and tried moving it around without touching it, his face continued to look confused and scared.
"This is the real deal. There is no way he is faking this," Aika thought.
He continued moving forward. He was able to move, but he had to put focus into every movement and couldn't do so automatically.
"There's a road not far from here that I stepped off of, let's get back to that. We can talk on the way," Aika smiled at him.
"Th-thanks?" he was still so confused.
Aika nodded and continued leading him back to the road. He was starting to get the hang of walking, but it was still entirely unnatural; like a baby taking their first steps. It looked pathetic, but Aika kept herself from making any comments.
As they went back to the road, Aika thought to herself. "My father has a reputation for being the legendary 'human slayer', and now here's a human in the flesh right in front of me," she hid a smile. "I could continue his legacy myself, make it a perfect father-daughter duo of human slayers. But not here. No one would ever believe me if I don't bring him somewhere with witnesses."
They returned to the dirt road. Aika pointed in the direction she was already going, and Dylan began walking that way too. The two of them walked side-by-side.
"I still don't understand what's going on," Dylan complained. "Why am I a pokemon?"
"I'm afraid that's just as much of a mystery to me as it is to you."
"And why are you a pokemon?" Dylan asked.
She was taken aback. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Do you see yourself? You're a minccino."
"Everyone is a pokemon," Aika replied.
"Wh-..." he needed a moment to process that. "Are there no humans here? Like, in this world?" He looked around himself. The only thing familiar was the species of trees and plants, nothing of the land gave him any recollection.
"Well, there are humans in this world, but they… look like you do right now," Aika had to explain. "Not litten specifically, but they have the bodies of pokemon."
"Really?" he asked.
"Yeah. You aren't the first human to end up in this world," she said. "Hell if I know how you end up here."
"And you aren't human?"
"I'm a true pokemon," Aika said.
"Like, you came from an egg?"
"Yeah?"
Dylan looked perturbed at that answer, just as Aika got confused. "What does that mean? How do humans work?"
"Well… okay going back a second. You know about other humans in this world?" Dylan asked.
"I mean, I've heard about 'em. But I've never met them," Aika said. "You're a first for me too."
"I see…" he looked to the ground, disappointed. Aika gave him a moment of quiet as they kept walking.
He was hoping to find someone like him, someone who could answer his thousand questions. But that wouldn't happen yet. Aika was the only person he had at that moment, and she was still effectively a stranger to him.
"Where are we going?" Dylan asked.
"Right now, I'm heading towards a place called Evelyn Forest."
"Why are you going there?" he asked.
"I'm actually trying to find my biological father," Aika felt there wasn't any threat of admitting it. "He doesn't live there, but his half-sister does. I'm hoping to ask her for more information so I can find him."
"I see… I hope you find him, then," Dylan said.
"Thank you."
"Where are we right now?"
"Umm… I don't remember what this area specifically is called, but we're in a place called the Stone Continent."
"How many continents are there?"
"Seven," Aika said. "Air, Grass, Mist, Water, Sand, Mystery, and Stone."
His head was still spinning around, trying to grasp the vastness of this new world he had suddenly found himself in.
After he'd asked so many questions, Aika realized now was probably a good time for her to ask a question of her own. "What was the last thing you remember before ending up here?"
"Umm… I just went to sleep in my bed, and then I woke up here," he answered.
"It's a bit past noon right now. Did you sleep in?"
"I mean, I might've woken up before ending up here? It's hazy right now," he said.
"Do you have amnesia?"
"No, I definitely don't," he said.
"I see," Aika said.
The minccino continued looking at the confused litten as they walked forward. "He's disoriented right now. He can hardly walk properly, I doubt he could use any moves," Aika thought. "I shouldn't forget about Eno or all the other people that Armin killed. I have the chance to make sure that doesn't happen again."
"It's past noon you said?" Dylan asked.
"I don't have the exact time, but I'd guess it's somewhere around two or three PM."
"Wow… I'm not sure when was the last time I've eaten," Dylan said.
"Here, I have some food on me," Aika said.
She stopped in place and began rummaging through her bag, Dylan stopped in place as well. Aika had an oran berry that she had already broken into slices, so she grabbed one slice and brought it towards the litten. "Here, you can eat this," she said.
"Oh! Thank you so much!"
He sat on his back two paws while he grabbed it with his front two. He stood up-right as he did his best to eat it, clearly struggling with having paws instead of hands. He hadn't quite tasted anything like it before, but he still found it good. He gobbled up the whole slice.
"Thanks for that!" Dylan said.
"It's no big deal. Although I don't have a terribly large amount of food on me, I wasn't planning on having another to travel with," Aika said.
"Well I appreciate it," Dylan got back on four legs to walk forward again.
"Right," Aika began walking again. "That will make him trust me more. It's a small cost if this all works out. I might not even need Yuki at all if I attract Hunter's attention with him."
"Are all pokemon like you?" Dylan asked.
"What do you mean?" Aika asked.
"Like… smart, talking… kind," he said.
"Well, not all of them. There are the dungeon pokemon and your usual criminals," Aika said.
"Dungeon pokemon?" Dylan asked.
"Right, you wouldn't know about those," Aika said.
Aika and Dylan continued to walk and talk down the road together. Dylan asked all sorts of different questions about the world, from the types of pokemon to the society, and even the names of different plants and berries. Aika responded by only giving him surface-level information, enough to not seem mysterious but not allowing him to understand the world too much.
Dylan was getting a hang of walking on-all fours, but it was still awkward with so many unnecessary small movements. He made many comments on how strange it was for him, as well as commenting on how weird it felt to suddenly have a tail which he could move.
AIka was the only one who had a bag on her, and she reluctantly shared some of her water and food with him. She told herself it was something she'd only need to do for a bit, then she could ditch him.
Eventually, it became nighttime. The next town was still a little ways away, so they were forced to camp out. Aika didn't have a tent with her, so they had to settle with sleeping under the shade of large trees with makeshift pillows. But even as the sky became dark and full of stars, neither of them could sleep easily. Dylan was in a foreign world whose rules he didn't know and in an unfamiliar body, and Aika couldn't rest easily knowing that a human was so closeby. Instead of getting to sleep quickly, both of them wasted so much time just staring up at the night sky.
"...It's silent," Dylan commented.
"Yeah, no one else is around," Aika responded.
"No. I mean, it's truly silent," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, where I lived, there was always some sound in the background. I guess to me, 'silent' just meant the sounds were quiet enough and consistent enough that you could ignore them. But not here, it is truly silent. There are absolutely no sounds whatsoever. I can even hear my own heartbeat if I focus on it"
"That's not too unusual for a night with no wind," she said, paying extra attention to how her and Dylan's voices were the only things to be heard.
"Maybe not unusual for you. But for me, it stands out," Dylan said.
"I see… say, where did you grow up? How was it like?" Aika asked.
"I come from a place called Unova City," Dylan answered. "It's pretty big, and pretty cramped to be frank. But what I mean was, there was always some noise in the background. Cars driving by in the distance, the hum of electric lights, water moving through a pipe, or the wind like you mentioned. Even in the dead of night it was never totally silent, like right here is."
"What are cars?" Aika asked. The question came out naturally, pure reflex.
"They're big machines, completely mechanical. People drive them around to get from place to place. It's a lot faster than just walking," he said.
"I see," Aika said.
"I think my world is a lot more technologically advanced than this one. Although I haven't seen much of this one yet," Dylan said.
"I think what you're describing is more advanced," Aika said.
"Yeah."
"Did you spend your whole life in 'Unova City' before coming here?"
"Mostly. My family did take a few trips out of the city, usually for a few days at a time."
"Your family?"
"Yeah, my mom and my dad," he said. "Hang on, didn't you mention that you were looking for your biological father?"
"Yeah, that's my goal," Aika said.
"Who is he?"
"Well…" Aika thought for a moment about what she was willing to say. "His name is 'Han'. He's a great pokemon, a really good explorer." She didn't want him asking around and discovering that Hunter was the 'human slayer' by someone else, so she gave a fake name.
"What species is he?"
"He's a zoroark."
"That sounds like it'll be pretty hard to find them. I wish you the best of luck,"
"Thank you."
The conversation died down again, allowing the true silence to return.
Aika thought more about the human he was right next to. She imagined what it'd be like to grow up where "silence" was just a constant hum instead. After all the talking she had done with him that day, she found that a certain feeling was actually growing within her: empathy. Even with her reminding herself of Armin and Eno, she couldn't stop the feelings from coming.
"I could just make sure he gets captured somewhere so he can't kill anyone. I don't need to actually kill him," Aika thought to herself.
They closed their eyes, and they eventually fell asleep.
End of chapter 10.