The world ended on a Sunday morning outside Slateport City.
The air was cool. The sun was rising. Everything was as everything was supposed to be, utterly and completely normal.
(Up until it wasn't.)
Agent 000 did what many agents did on such a morning. He drank.
He sat on the couch, the ceiling's cracks and water stains burning themselves into the backs of his eyelids, dirty spiderwebs spun with each blink, all while he drank himself stupid - drank himself numb.
He checked the clock.
5:50 a.m.
"Arceus, kill me."
The empty room didn't hear and didn't care.
Black out curtains covered the window. Because the sun sucked.
(So did hangovers, but he hadn't gotten there yet.)
His rude awakening had absolutely nothing to do with a mile-a-minute heartbeat and creatures that shouldn't exist.
Nothing whatsoever, he told himself, sliding the curtains open. Buildings and buildings and gray greeted him. Distant windows shone bright. Grid lines covered the sky like an infinite, luminous fishing net floating in calm waters.
Grid lines?
000 rubbed his eyes and squinted, and squinted, and squinted some more for good measure.
Yep. Still there.
Still glowing.
Everything was swimmy - the stand up too fast, low iron, vision titling kind of swim.
Razor thin beams of light crisscrossed like jet after jet had taken off, contrails all overlapping and sinking inwards.
The sky wasn't falling.
It was crumpling.
"Welp," 000 said, confident that the world would continue ending whether he watched it or not. "We're screwed."
He stepped over a sleeping Absol. The floor was cold, even through his socks. A half-eaten bowl of ramen wiggled sadly from atop a scuffed, black dresser, remaining half-eaten as 000 walked past.
And banged his fist on the wall.
"Hey, 100KR, world's ending!"
He reared back, pounding against chipping paint and thin plywood one last time for good measure. The door flew open.
Looker stood there, brown hair poofed and lopsided. He had shaving cream on his face and a whirring toothbrush in hand.
"The world is doing what now?"
"Ending." 000 rolled his eyes. "Again."
He jabbed a thumb at the window, and the window and all of glassware kind across the city block decided to rattle. The half-eaten ramen performed a two number song and dance at a frequency no one could see nor hear.
Somewhere, teacups shattered. A mess made of sparkling knife-shards meaninglessly arranged itself on a varnished floor.
No teacups shattered in 000's apartment room because he didn't own teacups, but that was neither here nor there.
The window trying to shake out of its wooden pane was much more both of those.
The giant hole in the sky, a dark, impossible wound that shimmered along its broken edges, was much more right outside and oh no. The hole grew, or maybe shrank, but most importantly, it lit up with a thousand tiny suns that all combined into one big (and pink) sun before blinding Looker and 000.
They blinked away spots.
The spots lingered anyways because being a spot was lonely work. But being a spot required ceasing existence. So. Oh well.
The spots left and took along the giant hole in the sky.
A patch of smooth, cloudy gray stretched over the vanished impossible, saying, "Yes, of course I've been here the whole time. I didn't leave for a coffee break. How dare you!"
A slowly sinking half moon and a slowly waking sun hung on either side of the clouds. Between them hung a pinhole of darkness.
Wobble, wobble, wobble went the wiggling of terrible airborne jelly.
It hurt to look at.
Well, it hurt 000.
Like the depthless ink bleeding through the sky reached out and placed a headache pounding in his temples.
(Sleep exhaustion also enjoyed placing headaches, but that clearly wasn't important.)
The tiny, impossible darkness fell.
Down, down, down, hurtling towards distant treetops that meant nothing but smudges of green.
"Should we be doing something in the regards to that," Looker asked, but he'd put the electric toothbrush back in his mouth and sounded drugged.
"I'm not tellin' ya how to spend your day, but," 000 flopped down on the couch with his beer, "it's the weekend, and we're off duty."
"Very right. Have a good morning, Zeroes."
"Screw you, too."
Looker slammed the door and went right back to his own apartment.
To do Looker things. As Looker often did.
(000 assumed.)
Honestly, though, he thought, nursing his beer. Who cares?
In the woods, there was a thing.
Oftentimes, that just so happened to be the case with the woods. They liked to have leaf litter, all browns and wilting yellows blanketing rich, tightly packed dirt, trees, bushes, and little bright-petaled flowers reaching for the sun, a Beautifly flitting overhead, Furret peeking their sleek, mischievous faces out from winding burrows. You know. Woods things.
The gray morning prodded at the canopy of leaves and intertwined branches but was too tired to get far, filtering down as a glittering speckles. The thing on the ground stayed very pink and on the ground.
A flock of Murkrow circled above, unseen.
Their caws, loud and breathy like the rattling of a pneumatic paper bag, cut through the forest.
Because of course. Murkrow were always loud. Everyone complaining to the landlord, eviction notice loud.
But the landlord of the woods, the trees themselves, didn't believe in eviction notices. They believed in soil, sunshine, rain, and rustling leaves.
The trees rustled their yellowing leaves.
The Murkrow screamed.
The thing on the ground remained pink and on the ground because she was a very unconscious young woman.
Nature at its finest invaded the ears of two agents who honestly shouldn't have been there.
Looker trudged through foliage, scraggly branches and vines trying to hug him and never let go. And maybe steal his trench coat, the thick, knee length thing with too many pockets it was. Or maybe just murder him for wearing it.
Plants were pretty judgmental. All, "If I'm not planted in exactly the right type of soil, with exactly the right amount of sunlight, I will literally. Die."
Weeds were far more easygoing. And tangling themselves around 000's ankles.
"Are we sure this is where the wormhole appeared?"
"According to HQ." 000 sidestepped a ring of mushrooms. "Yes."
"You said this was our day off, but no. Of course it is not." Brambles snagged Looker's trench coat, and he wrenched away. Fabric tore. Brown fluttered like a flag against thorns.
He thumbed the tear's ragged edge, frowning.
When he looked up, 000 was gone.
Shadows writhed in his place, thick and dark over exposed tree roots.
"Yes. There is no way that's creepy. Thank you so much, Zeroes."
Wings fluttered. Spindly branches dipped beneath claws.
Three Murkrow sat side-by-side, wingtips brushing, heads crooked and beaks parted, each one an identical bird shaped puddle of ink staining everything.
Looker twitched his fingers at red eyes and darkness.
Something laughed, or a good-as-dead someone breathed his or her final breath, cold, stiff fingers clinging to an oak tree.
"EeeeeeeEEeeE!" A wheezing shriek slipped over branches, over Looker's skin. It rang inside his head. A chill burrowed into his spine, up and down his limbs, leaving goosebumps.
The Murkrow clamped their beaks shut, feet shuffling. Red eyes nothing but pinpricks, wings and feathers splayed wide.
Looker ran faster than he ever did, even on his morning runs.
(At least he wouldn't have to do that when he got back home.)
Over roots, slipping on moss.
Duck. Weave. Run.
Deeper and deeper into the woods with each step, cold metal knocking his hip bone. Trees passed in brown-green blurs, thinning out into a clearing.
A clearing with flowers that didn't move. No wind, just hot, Hoenn air slowly devouring souls. Pinks and purples and yellows stretched towards sunlight, frozen.
A clearing with 000, black hair cropped as close as ever and red eyes narrowed at the stained ground. He stood just as unmoving as the flowers, the first time in years Looker had seen him stand up straight.
But the rapidly approaching bushes were a little more important.
Looker jumped and hit the ground running. Ran chest first into 000's outstretched arm.
He stopped, panting there with a hand on 000 for support.
Something very pink, very human, lay tangled with twigs and leaves.
"What even is that?"
"Shut up, KR. I think she's dead."
A Sylveon sat by her side, tail and ears erect, growling.
The woman continued doing non-corpse things: bleeding and breathing shallowly. Ferns dripped bright and slick, grass a soggy red. A tattered white coat barely rose and fell over a torn chest.
"Welp. Never mind." 000 said flatly. Slyveon lunged at his shin, fang gnashing, dodged in one swift step aside. "Infirmary?"
Looker turned his head, swallowing hard. "Yes, that would be the...proper course of action."
"Stay back and take care of the beast, will ya?"
"I-" Something cold and slimy brushed his shoulders, leaving a trail in its wake.
"Suppose I will," died on his tongue, back gone ramrod straight, a smile tight on his face that screamed anything but. (Mostly, he wanted to scream).
"It'll be fine, rookie." 000 said, never looking back.
But the thing was invisible. Cold, slimy, and invisible.
(The three best traits to put on a dating profile.)
000 crouched down and picked her up bridal style, knees and back stiff, but by Arceus if he didn't get her off the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Her black hair, soaked in something, lay plastered to her pale face - the kind of pale that was gray, that was lacking, that was by all means dying.
He left. Left as quickly as he could despite the weight in his arms.
Left Looker standing there in the clearing, not alone.
Never alone.
Not as long as the gun sat cold against his hip.
Not as long as something slithered and screamed.
Bright lights.
Oh Arceus, they shone in her eyes, fluorescent and blurry, seen in face-scrunching flashes as she blinked, blinked, blinked, eyelashes sticking together.
The hard bed dug into her back, thin sheets stretched taut over springs.
Something stuck in her arm. Pricked in a vein, wrapped in gauze.
Something too tight wrapped around her waist, digging into soft flesh.
She pressed a hand to her stomach, still squinting, still blurry, and her fingers came away wet. And red.
"Oh. External bleeding. Fun."
Someone gasped, soft, polite, a little bit strangled, like words caught in a garbage disposal.
"Miss?"
"Me?" She said. Mumbled. Her tongue was a big wad of cotton, dry and heavy.
"Yes, you."
"Yeah. That sounds...right," she said, letting her head loll back on the pillow.
"Do you know where you are?"
"Hospital, hopefully. I'm ow."
"When's your date of birth?"
She sank a little deeper into the pillow, eyes barely cracked open, and did her best attempt at a shrug.
"Name?"
"Dunno."
The nurse was a guy. Probably a nurse, anyways. Maybe so, maybe not. Younger than her - had to be, what with letting her lay here bleeding. Unexperienced. Not a medical professional yet, not like her and all her years of working. Her...how many years? Wherever it had been that she'd worked? Who knew?
Everything was fuzzy, soft around the edges, as feathery as the pillow, as cold and foreign as the sheets.
Especially the Pokémon by the nurse's side, an Audino. But fluffier. Paler pink. Ears perked up, an even pinker cat's-eye marble hidden in the fluff at its throat.
"What's that?"
The nurse tilted his head, eyebrows scrunched.
She tilted her head, too, her whole face scrunched, trying to see through the fuzziness, see more than the faintest peak of blue scrubs and fluffy, fluffy pink.
"The pink thingy looks weird."
"This is an Audino. A Mega-Audino." He put a hand on the Mega-Audino's head as it cooed and pawed at his fingers. "She helps heal serious injuries."
"What's a 'Mega?'"
"Oh."
Mega-Audino blinked, pale eyes wide, and then ran a paw across the woman's forehead - such fuzzy, little paws against such hot, clammy skin. It turned back to the nurse, ears drooping.
"At least that's consistent," he said, tapping a pen against his clipboard.
"What is?" Her throat had never been this dry before. (Probably?) Swallowing burned.
"You're going to feel a little pinch, okay?"
The world went black.