Portals aren't necessarily comfortable, but... compared to the first one, this smooth ride was a first-class flight. The wind caught in my wings as I emerged through the other side. Part of me was giddy at the thought of trying them out. Part of me being all of my Beedrill fanboy brain.
The scenery that met me was so much more natural than the previous stage. I stumbled when I landed, tripping through a grassy hill filled with tree roots. When I looked around, trees and bushes filled my sight, and the sun was overhead. Long strands of grass bent slightly in the soft wind. Honestly, the forest was more jarring than the falling.
When steadying myself, I'd ended up instinctively reaching for the ground to use as an anchor. Bad idea. With my full weight put on my stinger, it sunk through the soft dirt and I fell on my knees.
I grumbled, pulling it out. Some bits of soil clung to it, and when I (again, instinctively) tried to wipe them off, I just ended up banging my two arm stingers together.
"Ooh, what are we clapping for?" Lola asked from behind. "That epic fail?"
I sighed, turning to the newly landed Absol who'd apparently seen the whole thing. "If by fail you mean your slang from 2012, yeah, sure."
I stared her dead in the eye while slow-clapping, the sound like two rocks being repeatedly hit together. Ironically, the motion did get some dirt off my stinger. Lola took the quip in stride and started to bow, or at least execute the best simile she could muster as an Absol.
Wait, aren't those things supposed to have poison in them? I thought, and stopped clapping immediately. If these were viable weapons, I couldn't risk breaking them. I shouldn't even had used them for a high-five earlier.
The rest of the group had reappeared in the meantime, all starry-eyed looking at the trees.
"We're not in Kansas anymore," Chloe whispered, eyes aglitter.
"Are you kidding?" Valérie jumped in. "We are in Kansas; there's no civilization for miles!"
"We don't know that yet," Micheal reassured, his fur still frazzled from the trip. "The cave might've been empty-"
"And what's the painter monkey, then?" Valérie asked.
"This land's beast!" Shouted Lola dramatically.
"...but it was probably a closed system," he continued. "This is an entire forest we can search. We can see the sky here."
And indeed we could. I don't know what it was about being able to see the sky, but it was invigorating, to say the least. Even seeing the clouds moving reassured me.
Didn't know you were such a sap, Kieran. Anyway, I'm pretty sure none of us know any basic survival skills, so that's just fantastic.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (literally in some cases), we headed out of the clearing and into the deep of the forest.
It didn't take us long to find a dearly missed commodity.
"There's a berry bush!" Chloe exclaimed.
Before us stood a shrub with wrinkly, half-moon shaped pink berries growing on every other branch. Despite the wrinkly bit, they still looked delicious. Was it because we were so hungry? I had a terrible feeling that after all of this dimensional caper was over and done, we'd have a hard time not eating random things off the floor.
"Hey, careful, we don't know those!" Micheal called. He started a run toward the others and the bush.
"Gab, Chloe, and I do," I sighed, abruptly blocking his path with a stinger. "They're Persim berries, they won't hurt us."
"Are there no poisonous berries in Pokémon?" He asked skeptically.
"Why would they make any when all you do in-game is feed them to your Pokémon?" I rolled my eyes.
When I glanced at the bush again, half the berries were gone, either being in a neat pile ready for carrying or in Lola's chasm of a mouth. We could probably still keep some Persim berries for cases of confusion, if we could feed it to a Pokémon practically having a seizure. Well, if it worked in the games...
"If anything, they could make all of us more clear-headed," I added.
"So many berries here and no meat... There's no chance of us finding a rotisserie chicken in here, is there?" He smiled, but I wasn't sure if he was joking.
"If we run into a Torchic, maybe. Otherwise, I'm assuming we have to go vegan."
And that turned the mood to pure awkwardness. Some silence passed and my mind scrambled to find something to fill the gaping void.
"Maybe you could've looked up some Pokémon info before this," I grumbled, and immediately recognized my mistake. I turned to Micheal. His little Litleo face looked as annoyed as he could make it.
"Gosh, you're right, I should've stopped all my studying to learn this essential skill."
"Fine" I said. "I'll stop, jeez."
"Yes," he continued, "let me go home and read up all I can on Pokémon, so I can be ready whenever this situation comes up again."
"Good God, I get it, I messed up." I crossed my arms, stingers grating against each other. Since when did his sarcasm get such bite?
Probably since he got the fangs to match.
Speaking of fangs, Micheal had already padded over to the rest of the group to join in the feast. I made my way there right after him.
The area was littered with leaves and tiny honeycombs, which had probably fallen from the hives in the branches. There were few of them, not to mention they were regular-sized, so I didn't harp on that detail too much. I was too busy focusing on my long-awaited dinner.
I climbed down the hill, avoiding tree roots and finding the odd foothold. My legs were small, but well able to carry my weight and balance fine. It was probably easier to get used to walking as a Beedrill after forgetting I could for a while.
The Persim berries looked better up close, and a sheen from dew made them all the more appetizing. Still wary of my stingers, I simply bit one off a branch and went from there.
Now, I don't like to exaggerate, but that thing tasted out of this world. Well, I guess literally as well, in this case. It was just the right amount of each flavour, and that crunch as I bit into it was satisfying as all heck. It was then I knew that I would single-handedly eat all existing Persim berries and bring the species to extinction.
"Woah, careful champ," Lola chuckled. "You're drooling."
"M-hm," I absentmindedly answered, before shaking my head and finishing the berry. "Whoops."
"Yeah, whoops."
"Let me freak out. These are amazing."
"Meh, I liked the other ones better," she sighed, cocking her head to the side.
I didn't want to think about the Oran berries I completely missed out on, so I ignored the Absol and turned my attention to everyone else. They looked done with the food, which prompted a new group discussion.
"All right, what's the plan now?" Valérie said, standing up and putting her hands on her hips.
"We should scout the area," Gab said. The Emolga immediately put her head back down after the group looked to her for more.
"After all that walking? And the boss battle?" Lola whined.
"We're not calling it a boss battle," Valérie shot in.
"I do agree with Gab," Micheal said. "We should learn what we can about where we are. Caves and forests are both places we shouldn't be in, or at the very least not unsupervised."
"Teacher's pet," Lola grinned.
The Litleo rolled his eyes and continued. "We can look after ourselves. I know that. But we can't go home without looking around the area, and that goes without saying."
"Well, the sun's setting soon," Chloe piped up.
Sure enough, the clouds overhead had started to turn a bright pink.
Leave it to the cloud bird to notice the clouds.
"Okay, that settles it, then!" Micheal said. "We've got a short amount of daytime left, so might as well go around the hill to see if there is anything of note here!"
He left his half-eaten berry on the spot and started walking past the bush. It hadn't even been a second before he practically yelled at us.
"Come on, guys, I'm starting to feel like the only one who has family back home. Let's go."
This took a while.
By the end of the day, we'd ended up with a rough mental map of the area within a 100-meter radius. And by a rough mental map, I mean that we just realized that it was only trees. Maybe the others took in more landmarks than I did. We did take note of nearby berry bushes. Most weren't Persim, actually. We'd have a wide variety of choice for our next meal, to which Lola, Chloe, and I were ecstatic about. With the sky darkening, leaving its red, purple, and coppery orange, I knew our next meal would be breakfast.
When the sun went down, the stars went up. As is custom, I guess. The sky had turned an inky blue, but the moon hadn't shown up yet. Gab hadn't started up her Flash either, so it was unsettlingly dark. I'd only seen that kind of dark once, and not even in the cave. I'd gone camping with my family when my brother and I were really young. While there, the lack of light pollution really brought out the stars, but threw away the rest of the forest. Even when we'd overused flashlights and bonfire lumber before turning our heads up to the sky, there was no trace of that light as soon as it had gone out. Dark is nature at its most immovable, so it also makes you feel small.
Well, mosquitoes are also nature, and boy was I glad that there were none to see here as opposed to that tent from ten years ago. I guessed I was the bug here. We hadn't seen any other animals close by, actually.
We ended our trek at the top of the hill. It was one of the only places where the trees let out; a wide, open space. It almost felt like I could finally breathe, even though the trees were technically the ones responsible for the oxygen. I sat down with the rest of the group on top of the hill, looking up and listening to the sound of the wind through the trees.
"Is that the Big Dipper?" Micheal asked, puzzled.
When I looked around, sure, I found it. I never was an astronomy guy, but even the Big Dipper was easy for me to locate.
"Yeah?" I answered. "How could you not know that one for sure?"
"No, I mean..." he started, shaking his head, "why is it here? Do they have a Big Dipper in the Pokémon world, or are we on Earth all of a sudden?"
"I don't know, Micheal, are we human right now?" I retorted.
"Come on, man," he sighed. "I don't know this stuff."
With everyone on top of the hill, most of us were sitting down. It wasn't really any use to keep going in the dark, even with Lola's self-proclaimed 'super-vision'.
"What does everyone say about hitting the hay?" Micheal asked. "Yay or nay?"
"Yay!" Lola practically shouted. She collapsed on the grass soon after.
A couple of "yay"s later, the rest of us joined Lola. Valérie set the berry pile near a tree where they wouldn't roll down the hill, Gab laid herself on top of the notes so they wouldn't be carried away by wind, and Chloe made herself cozy between the two of them. I just laid down on my stomach some meters away from all this, so my wings wouldn't get rolled on or broken. Also... I wasn't one to cuddle.
We were all ready to go under when Micheal's head rose up again. "Wait, should we sleep in shifts?"
At that, everyone's eyes slammed open, especially Chloe. For someone so excited about the forest earlier, she actually looked afraid now.
"You know, in case something like that Smeargle shows up again."
I didn't need Micheal trying to shepherd us like he was some teacher. The concern was real, but so was the condescension. Probably.
"Ugh, wasn't there something about needing to find that thing in the last possible spot?" Lola groaned.
"We'd hear it coming, right?" Valérie said, sitting up.
"Well, should we take any chances?" Micheal asked.
That set us straight. Even though we'd won against the Smeargle, that victory was purely luck-based. There was no telling what could happen if we were cornered like that again.
"Yay or nay?"
There was a resounding chorus of agreements, save for Lola, who buried her face in the grass with a groan. We ignored her.
"So, we're thinking two people at a time, maybe three hours a shift?" Micheal suggested.
"Wait, how will we know what time to switch?" Valérie asked.
"Oh, that's easy," Chloe said. I guess she didn't feel the need to explain herself, and she simply pointed upward with her wing. A couple seconds passed before anyone said anything.
"What? Do you expect us to call on you?" I said. "We're not in class."
She jumped. "Oh, no, not that! I was pointing to the stars. If we can see Ursa Major here I'm sure we can find the North Star."
"Ursa Major?"
"The Big Dipper," Micheal said. He'd said it plainly enough, but sent a smug smile my way when he'd finished, as if to say: 'now, who doesn't know their stars?'
Chloe nodded. "There are two stars in the Big Dipper that you can connect with the brightest star in the Little Dipper as a single line. That bright star—the North Star— doesn't move in the night sky, but the rest do. They move in a circle around it."
Valérie was taken aback. "Wait, so it's like a built-in sky clock?"
"Yeah?"
"Holy crap, that's cool."
Chloe blushed from under her blue feathers. "It is! There are a few more steps to it, though."
As she laid those out, it was also decided that Micheal and I would get the first shift, Lola and Valérie the second, and Gab and Chloe the third and last. At this point, it didn't feel as much a measure of protection, but some overnight camp activity. When had we become this casual about the whole Pokémon situation?
The others settled in, and Micheal and I sat and stared at the stars.
Three hours. That was a little less than three class periods. For three hours, we had to sit still a few meters away from the camp, listening to the wind in the trees and grass. Either that or whisper away a conversation, hoping we wouldn't wake someone up. It got old fast.
I spent a long time watching stars, the coniferous trees, their roots, looking up at the stars again only to be disappointed when they hadn't moved, and then the fronds from the Persim bush. It was a continuous cycle, boring me out of my mind until I found it again and stared into the void.
It was probably what having a job felt like.
Twenty minutes passed since our last conversation attempt before Micheal stretched and turned to me.
"It's weird how normal this is starting to feel."
"Speak for yourself", I laughed. "We've gone through two portals in the last three days and I have wings now."
He shook his head. "Don't get me wrong. It's still weird. What I meant, though, was that it's definitely calmed down since... the first landing."
"We're calling it that now?"
"Well, what else?"
I shrugged. Both ends of the portals we'd been through so far had involved jarringly making contact with the ground. The last one was way smoother, so I at least remembered a small gap of air between it and the grass. So yeah. It was a landing.
"When it was just the two of us, somehow it didn't click that there was a way out," he continued. "But when more people showed up, especially after Chloe-"
"Valérie and Chloe barging in reassured you?"
He laughed. "Yeah, I guess? I don't know why, but it felt right. We did need Valérie for you, after all."
"Oh, yeah, we absolutely needed her to throw me like dead weight."
"... yep, that one was rough."
Silence settled back in, and I wondered if this conversation had met its unfortunate end like all the others. The Litleo wasn't finished, though.
"No offence to you, but I'm glad it's not just the two of us," he sighed.
I thought back to Chloe somehow knowing how to make the sky into a clock, and glanced up. "I'm more glad that we've got some people who know Pokémon, but yeah, same. Wait. Where was that star when we started?"
He squinted and got closer to me to see where I pointed my stinger. "Huh. I think we're done."
We woke up Lola and Valérie, and I went to sleep, my limp wings over me serving as the world's thinnest (and worst) blanket.
When I woke up, it was past sunrise. Chloe and Gab were on watch, apparently choosing to sit near the stream and throw pebbles in rather than waking everyone else up. My getting up didn't elicit any reaction, which... worried me, since they were on watch, but what I wanted to do would work better if I went alone anyway. With a quick wave and shout, I informed them I was going to take a walk, and I was off.
I'd had a flying dream, which was shockingly normal compared to being stuck in a forest in a Beedrill's body. It was about to get even more standard if I managed to learn to fly for real.
I closed my eyes, trying to put together every piece of focus I could get. I felt my two sets of wings jutting out of my back, catching a small breeze as it passed through them. I willed them to spread out.
And nothing happened.
I tried again, and again they didn't open. I groaned, deciding to sit down. I must've sat on one of my wings wrong, because I felt a tug and a twitch as they repositioned themselves. I stood up again, and tried once more. Nothing. So these things only decided to work when I didn't want them to? That was just fantastic.
I resigned to walking back. No use trying out something that didn't want to work. Not until breakfast, at least. Needless to say, I made my way back to camp slightly irritated.
I started to walk up the hill, on top of which I saw that everyone was now awake and taking their share of the berries. They'd have better not have taken all the Chople berries. I had no idea what they were supposed to be, but they looked good. I greeted my classmates with what I'd hoped was a relaxed tone, but I seriously needed some of those berries right now.
Micheal turned his head toward me, and I noticed his tail not dragging on the ground as it had for the past few days. He nudged a Chople berry— thank God— in my direction with his paw and smiled at me.
As I started eating, I was the slightest bit disappointed. This one was fairly bland, with a pit in the middle. I was expecting something sweeter, but—
Then the spicy taste kicked in. Without any will from my part, I spat out the half-chewed remains on the grass and had a coughing fit. Poor Micheal looked at the many Chople pits he'd finished off, probably wondering if he'd given me a bad one. I chocked it up to Fire types getting a stupid advantage with spicy food. I snatched a Persim berry out of the pile and let its miraculous taste extinguish the fire on my taste buds. I sighed in complete relief and relaxation, and my gaze went straight to the clouds.
A belch from Lola brought me out of my fruit-induced trance, and she let out her own contented sigh.
"Done after half the pile, huh?" Valérie muttered.
"Shut up and eat one of those mango things," Lola said.
"Blech, no. Fruits either have a peel you can eat or they aren't meant to be eaten at all."
Valérie kind of had a way of having opinions on anything. Most didn't matter, but hell if she cared.
"You don't even like bananas?" Chloe asked, distraught.
"Ew," the Meditite shuddered, reaching for another Oran berry and partaking in it.
I snickered. "You better be ready if Kasib berries have a peel, though. You can't handle many Ghost hits, and you'll have a bad time if you need—"
Valérie shoved her hand in front of my mouth to tell me to stop talking. After a few seconds, she swallowed her bite and retreated her hand. "If you're going to keep lecturing us about things we don't know, you might as well explain them first, nerd."
At that, Micheal's eyes lit up. He looked to Gab, Chloe and I.
I sighed. "What? What do you want?"
"I want you three to make a Pokémon lecture!"