Another morning, another dawn by the apple tree. The clouds were white enough to blind, and a chilly breeze passed outside and leaked a little through cracks in the trunk. Thankfully, the ground was dry inside the hollow.
My shoulders were sore. Occasionally it happened due to having to sleep on my stomach to avoid damaging my wings. Having huge unwieldy spears for arms didn't help. The exercise of doing lazy windmills with my arms had become morning routine.
Only one other person was awake.
Micheal.
He had an Oran berry in front of him, but it hadn't been touched. He stared with half-lidded eyes at the door. My instinct was to snap my fingers to get his attention, but obviously, that wasn't possible at the moment. I put my arm back down and cleared my throat.
"Anything going on out there?"
His shoulders tensed, but relaxed just as quick. "No, I'm just spaced out."
I let the silence linger. Usually, that made people talk, right? It was a solid minute of waiting on my part. The awkwardness got me before him, anyway. I was just about to fill the conversation myself, but right when I opened my mouth, he spoke.
"We should've had someone on lookout," Micheal said.
Victory.
"I guess you're right," I nodded. I sat down next to him. "That one level with the Umbreon, it kind of came out of nowhere, didn't it?"
"In the jungle. When we didn't even know it was out." He tried to smooth down a cowlick on his forehead with a paw.
It was odd how a single event could happen and so easily split your life into before and after. Being turned into a Pokémon barely felt like anything after what had happened a few days back. It was a long time ago that we hadn't known. Silence draped over us again. Another conversation ender, and we were back at square one. The next thing Micheal said was without warning, not one breath in or clearing of his throat.
"We're walking on bodies," he said with the most volume I'd heard that morning. "It's not fair for us to keep going like this if that's what it takes, right?"
I didn't have an answer to that. Except the obvious. "Those bodies aren't dead. They're violent," I said quietly.
He shook his head. "What if they have to defeat us to go home? If they see us as the undead monsters?"
"We saw him die!" I snapped. Blood hurt under my skin, boiling my throat.
Instead of focusing on me, my outburst made Micheal's head swivel toward the rest of the group. I glanced that way as well. I hadn't thought I'd been speaking so loud. Over the shoulder, my wings blurred my field of vision the slightest bit. In the sleep pile, I could only discern one open pair of eyeballs. Valérie lifted herself up almost mechanically, not stretching or yawning. Only when she sat down between us was when I noticed her eyes still adjusting to the light.
"We couldn't do anything. I think that's the part that messed us up," Valérie said, completely monotone.
With that, no more words were exchanged. Thanks, Val. Yeah, it wasn't her fault, but whatever. Before I knew it, the rest of the team was awake, and people began to eat before deciding what to do today. I chewed on a Rawst berry and tried my hardest not to zone out. It did alleviate the supreme awkwardness a little. A little.
"I'm up for a walk," Micheal suggested. "We need to explore more and cover some ground."
"Pick up the pace, people," I mocked under my breath. I didn't expect him to hear, much less answer.
"You have a catchphrase too, you know," Micheal said.
"What? No, I don't!"
"Whatever you say," he sighed.
What the hell was he talking about? What words did I apparently constantly say?
Ugh, fantastic.
At least his mood seemed better. Maybe I'd been wrong to push it this morning. I didn't consider the earlier conversation a fight, but it didn't make me feel good either.
"I'll come too. I gotta mark the new routes."
And with that, hopefully the tension would break.
"Any reason you're falling behind?" I asked Chloe. I didn't mean it to be passive-aggressive, but I think it came out that way. Chloe was usually leagues ahead of us but she'd flown in from behind a bunch of times. Unless she was speaking with Lola, that had me worried.
"Gab asked," Chloe answered. She pecked at the ground, planting seeds with a free talon. Were we going to be monitoring all of those or what? I knew I wasn't making that trek every day. Lola packed some dirt on top of the dirt holes. Well, at the pace we were going, might as well wait for seeds to grow.
Micheal's everything was morose today. Half-lidded eyes, tail unmoving safe for a few flicks here and there, shoulders tense, all depressing details. If anything, our talk earlier opened some doors, but only by a sliver. I hung out next to him on the trail since he was speaking to us, and I wasn't about to leave that first conversation fruitless.
The first move was blunt, but relieved the pressure.
"I, um—" he started. "I killed someone."
It should've made me more tense, but just moved the dread around. I couldn't hear anyone else breathe, just the wind.
"Someone we knew, I mean," he said, then quickly added: "While knowing it, anyway."
"I almost did," I said. He looked at me with shock and confusion. "When Valérie got poisoned, remember?"
He sighed. "Yeah, but— but you didn't—"
"It was my poison! The only difference was that we had a solution." The reality of that incident took over me again. Yeah, it was a stroke of luck that Valérie had recovered in the first place.
"You blame yourself for that?" Lola asked. "That was my bad, though."
"Hasn't Valérie said she took responsibility for that like a bajillion times?" Chloe added. Okay, way to make my point about the stupid blame game.
Micheal took over again. "But it wasn't Mr. Henry's fault that—"
"If someone didn't do something, we would've died. Straight up," Chloe said, her words casual to make up for that serious tone.
"Can I feel bad about this?" Micheal snapped. "Please."
No one was sure what to do after that. Micheal mumbled an apology and padded forwards. When I'd finally thought we were going somewhere, it got quiet again. There was no rushing grief for anyone, but—
… Yeah, no buts. Not many answers for that.
Maybe it didn't even have a solution. But when my first cat King Kong had died, my mom and dad basically told my brother and I to suck it up and go to school. Of course, they didn't say it like that and made sure we were okay about everything, but wasn't it kind of the same? It felt so terrible to say it, but life goes on. That's what we were told day in and day out! Nothing to do except talk to whoever's sitting next to you in class to distract yourself, and hope you didn't have hours of math homework to do in the evening. It wasn't fair. I missed King Kong. I missed Mr. Henry. We weren't allowed to move on because there was always so much stuff to do.
Micheal was my friend. Friends shouldn't feel anything you can't fix.
And yet somehow, we lifted a little off our shoulders by looking a little further. I squinted to make sure what I saw really was what I thought.
There was an arrow on the hedge, applied thickly with dark ink. It was so shiny that it almost looked freshly painted. My jaw was frozen open.
"The notes guy made it," Micheal breathed out.
We didn't rush out to get to the boss battle, but clearly, we had a lead. Why no one got up and ran through the hedge maze at the news, I had no clue.
Something was in the air after news broke that the notes guy left something behind. Not really eagerness, but something more solemn with a tinge of hope, if that makes sense. Either way, it felt a lot easier to make small talk while we broke for mealtime. Apparently, there was still work to be done around the tree, like that trumped the urgency. Come on, people. Were we afraid of being let down again?
"And it just keeps going over and under?" Valérie asked. She was braiding fronds next to Gab, making yet another fresh leaf backpack.
"Yeah," Gab nodded. The Emolga herself was working on something that looked a lot more complex, using chunks of tree bark and lots of little wooden pegs to make the bark stand upright in an almost cylindrical fashion. She carved out grooves in the pegs every so often so they'd interlock and hold the structure together.
At some point, I just got too curious and piped up after finishing a Persim berry. "Okay, just what are you making?"
"Hopefully a water bottle," she said. "I'm praying it stays watertight enough."
"Praying to the Dark Trap. Got it," Lola added. No one laughed.
"With the Ten Commandments and everything, I'm surprised I haven't made a Hamilton joke yet," Gab sighed.
"You make jokes?" I blurted out. The Emolga shot me a glare to rival Valérie's. She'd learned well.
Valérie let down her crafting project. "I'm watering the plants."
Hey, wouldn't we need water for that? However much the sky was overcast, there hadn't been any rain since we'd gotten here.
Splash.
Hm. Hidden Power. Yeah, that'll work. Valérie lowered her arm, only to immediately raise it again to wipe her brow.
"Gardening's done!" She announced, but she went right back to work next to Gab. Hell of a break.
With Micheal and Chloe coming over beside the tree, our group was completed. Idle chitter-chatter masked the anticipation some more. I knew we were avoiding the topic of fighting again. Besides, everyone had drowned themselves in made-up responsibilities.
"So. What do you think the boss will be?" I brought up.
"I dunno," Micheal shrugged. "Are we even ready to get to a new place yet?"
"We can't predict what type of dungeon is coming next, right?" Valérie sighed, crossing her arms behind her head and leaning on the apple tree.
She was right, I had to admit. I should've been the one to know or spot the pattern, but I hadn't played the Mystery Dungeon spinoffs, ironically. Even if there was any actual truth to that theory, there was no basic template or key type of dungeon—
Wait. Type.
"Oh my God, of course!" I exclaimed, to the startled jumps of everyone else. I resisted the urge to face-palm and got up.
"Kieran, what is it?" Micheal asked. His stance had straightened up.
"It's all about types!" I threw my stingers in the air and continued. "You're part Fire type, Lola's pure Dark, and... this dungeon is a Grass type! Look at all those annoying, annoying hedges! All the other dungeons have been themed so far, and they've all been different."
Gab's face lit up. "There's one for every type," she realized, a smile creeping up on her face.
"The first dungeon was a Normal type, then." Chloe guessed. "'Cause of the Smeargle."
"The third one. That was Dark," Valérie continued. "That's why it was night all the time and the main threat was everything getting even darker."
"And that's what determines the boss we fight at the end!" I answered. "The forest with the bug hive? We fought a Butterfree. The water one? That was a Tentacruel. The next one has to be some kind of Grass type."
"We can strategize," Micheal said, hope etching into his voice. Real hope.
"And... if there's been one level per type..." Valérie smiled.
"You're saying we have to go through all the types, and we should be through?" Micheal asked, getting up and padding toward me. "That's... great! If your theory's right, we have a countdown! We have a clear goal! This is so much better than before! How many left?"
I put up my stinger to say, but stopped, demoralized by the answer I'd realized. I lowered my arm in disappointment.
"There are eighteen types," I sighed.
There was a bit of counting as everyone listed every dungeon we'd been in, and we were apparently at... number eight. We'd been here for over a month, turned into Pokémon, and cut off from all contact with the outside world, and we were at number eight. What little contact we got was hostile and— yeah. Only hostile contact, in the end.
Micheal looked like it was hard to stay strong, considering the right thing to say. "... We're past the first third," he tested.
Micheal, we went over this like a week ago. Come on. We can deal with bad things being bad.
"One more and we're halfway there!" Chloe chirped, raising her wings.
"Chloe, no," sighed Gab. She looked tired.
"Chloe, yes," Lola growled.
We all stared, mouths agape. Lola was the one to deny a more depressing mood? She was a contrarian no matter what. She kept on staring Gab in the eye, then sat up as the latter turned away.
"This is going to take a while to unpack, right?" The Absol said. "And it's going to take us a while to get out. Might as well do what we can with a smile, because God knows it won't help not to."
After a moment of deathly silence, she sat down, looking at Chloe.
"There's been a lot of grief, but we're the ones who survived," she told her.
"We're almost there!" Gab yelled, to our startled jumps. Man, the Emolga was just one ongoing shriek wrapped in a trench coat of whispers. "We're faster now, and better at fighting, and— a-and we can finish this!"
She pumped her fist up and held it there, looking at us expectantly. It was such a small movement but it might as well have caused ripples in the air.
"You guys want to head out?" I proposed. We'd rested long enough, and this energy was what we'd waited for.
Just you wait for us, notes guy.
The twists and turns in the hedge maze had not been complicated. The volcanic tunnels were worse. It was harder in the volcano to mark the ones we'd already been to, what with pebbles being surprisingly hard to come by in the lava rock. Here, the now pitiful wilted leaves were almost blindingly pale next to their live counterparts.
There wasn't a lot of talking on the walk to what we hoped was the boss room. Mostly, people were busy repeating the plan to themselves. It wasn't super complicated, especially since we didn't know for sure what we were fighting. It was just basic positions, type advantages, and some whittled stakes we were bringing as extra projectiles. The air was heavy with anticipation, but I didn't feel the need for conversation. Maybe we were all in sync? Like we were all getting along? What a concept to think about.
At one point, I'd considered Valérie and I to mesh the least well together out of all the group. That was slightly self-centred of me. Even back then, Lola got under her skin far more than I could dream to. Their early night shifts were the stuff of nightmares... that is, if you could even get a wink's worth of sleep during all that arguing and subsequent shushing from the group. But now, even those two seemed to get along just fine. I racked my brain for who would make the worst matchup, and I couldn't figure it out. Maybe Gab and I?
All this train of thought led me to was the idea that maybe we were starting to get along, or, that we had started to a while ago and now actively depended on it.
If only we could've added someone else to the mix...
It always came down to that, didn't it? To be fair, how could it ever not come down to that? There wasn't an answer to that question anymore. Someone was gone and all we could do was to keep walking. Keep walking through the guilt and fear, and try to keep yourself believing you'll make it out. Because if you don't, death would be the guiltiest feeling of all.
If no one else wanted to fight, I'd have to do it. But Micheal, Chloe, and Gab would also have type advantages here! No one was weak here! We should have been celebrating. Finally, a lucky break! And yet… newfound fear was inescapable.
Valérie cleared her throat. "There's one thing I can't wrap my head around. If bosses die in dungeons that aren't their type, do they just disappear?"
"I think they might just spawn in another level," I replied.
Silence.
I looked to Micheal. With him being a Fire and Normal type, if he ever got turned into a boss battle, we wouldn't see him again. I didn't know if that was better or worse. I shivered. No, it would be horrendous either way. He would die.
No one here would die, said a quiet part of my mind. I barely heard it as the rest of my brain tried to quell the stress. It was more like a new subconscious directive rather than a thought.
No one else dies.