(A/N: Hello, sorry for the wait. I was homeless for a while and it was a lot harder to spare the effort to upload. I'm struggling with my health after that, but I have a place. I'll upload at least weekly, now. Times might be inconsistent, though.
Thanks for reading. If anyone's still around, it'd be nice to hear from you. I get a not insignificant number of straight up hate reviews, and it's nice to get those that are less meanspirited. Thank you.)
"So I got a little older
I got everything I thought I'd need
I got a little wiser
But I'm not everything I thought I'd be"
—"Hazy" from What Could Go Wrong by Red Vox
Max reeled back, took a breath, and threw herself forward as fast as she could around the spring; a light jog. She alternated hind and forepaws like she did when walking, trying to make the motion as fast as she could without tripping over herself. It at least matched her pace running upright, but that wasn't really the boost she'd hoped for when asking Neb's help.
Goon watched her with an appraising eye, clawing at his chin with nods of wisdom. "Yep," he said, waving her down to stop once she'd made it halfway to the other side. "That's pretty bad."
"Thanks for the insight, dick," Max growled. She rolled her eyes and sat back, about the only movement she found easier from this position. "I don't get it." No dirt had accumulated on her forepaws, but she still felt the need to brush them off on her legs. "What am I doing wrong?"
"You're not running," Goon said. That felt like an insult, but Max was too frustrated to take it that way. "You're walking fast." She looked up at him with her head tilted, one ear raised. As far as she knew, running was just walking fast. Wasn't it? As if hearing the question in her thoughts, Goon shook his head. "It's supposed to look more like jumping," he said, dropping to all fours. "Watch."
Max was too mesmerized by watching all four feet of him go flawlessly quadrupedal. He was practically human-sized, but it didn't look like a person on all fours. Before she'd gotten used to seeing him in that pose, he shot off his hindpaws and made it over to her in a flash.
He came over so fast that she pulled up her tail to block an impact that never came. He stopped on a dime a few feet away. She peeked around her tail to see him perched up on his hindlegs, his forepaws between them for support and balance. It was exactly how Neb had showed her to sit. "Get a good look?" Goon asked. Before she answered, he was already turning to the side. "Here."
His forepaws crawled forward, allowing his hindlegs to extend. He made it look so easy. "Pull them up," he explained, hopping his hindpaws almost up between his forepaws. "Then push." The demonstration became a bit harder for her to pay attention to as Max found herself examining the musculature and movements under his fur.
"That make—you're kidding," Goon mumbled. The tone in his voice shocked Max out of herself, and she realized what she'd been doing. Her cheeks sparked before she could play innocent, making him chuckle. "Good to know I still have a pulse."
Max had to wonder why she was learning to run instead of Dig. She imagined burying herself alive would have innumerable uses. This served as a great example.
"So, right, um," Max stammered. She wobbled forward to match Goon's posture, only stumbling a personal best of two times. "You pull up." She prepared for a painful stretch and hopped them halfway up to her forepaws. Surprisingly, it didn't feel much like a stretch at all. It felt perfectly natural.
Because of course it did.
Right as she launched herself, Goon shouted, "Wait!" An instant later, his claws were holding her up by the nape of her neck. The snatch hurt, putting way more force on her nape then it was probably supposed to feel, but she didn't mind the light sting. Him holding her like that made it so the only direction she could really look was right in front of her: the spring.
A good yard of stone sat between her and the water. Her little test jump probably wouldn't have even made it to the water, but it still left her terrified. She tried to hold herself together, though. When Goon started gently lowering her, she squeaked, "Thank you."
The motion stopped. Goon's grip tightened. His paws, her saving grace, suddenly trapped her. She tried to turn and see him, but the grip on her neck made it impossible. Her heart started to race as she started to involuntarily squirm. "G-Goon?" she stammered, too panicked to notice. Only Goon's claws digging tighter into her skin registered in her mind. She felt utterly helpless, impossibly small.
She knew it was Goon, but it didn't matter. She was trapped. She needed to escape. A bolt shot from her cheeks as she thrashed into his wrist with an iron tail. Her paws didn't hit the ground before she felt him bearing down on her—the somewhat goofy sight of him on all fours becoming terrifying as she tried hopelessly to outrun him.
Her hindpaws shot her forward, and the world, fear, predator around her all vanished before her forelegs caught her.
"They know I fucked up
You hear me? We've both fucked up
It's all fucked up
You here with me?"
A blurry sky sat above Max, her eyes struggling to make even the colors out. She hurt everywhere, but only a bit. She couldn't quite pinpoint a particularly bad injury, only the general sensation that she wasn't feeling great. It didn't hurt past the point she could bear, though, mostly feeling like remnants of healed wounds. Her eyes adjusted just a bit more, and she realized the sky wasn't hard to make out because of her eyes.
Sky blue filtered through an iridescent pool of gleaming distortion. Between her and the sky sat the corrupting border of a Mystery Dungeon.
Her breath hadn't hitched once before she felt her fear prying her away from the world around her. She shot a paw to where the strap of her bag usually sat, but it came up empty. She didn't have her bag. She didn't have her badge.
Terror tore into her thoughts. She didn't know how she got there, but something was chasing her—trying to catch her—and she needed to run. She brought her paw to her bracelet and gripped it as hard as she could. It hurt her paw as much as her wrist but kept her grounded. Her screeching instincts demanded she move, so she tried to appease them by hopping up and walking in whatever direction she faced.
It wasn't fast enough. Her instincts needed to hurry, but she needed to shut them out more. "Control," she whispered, plead. "I'm in control." Even with her eyes screwed shut, she felt the whole of the room around her. She didn't bother trying to pull her awareness in.
Her back strained and twitched against her movement. It conformed to her movements with a delay, a separation between her muscles and her. The way she'd always walked felt unnatural, like writing with her left paw. Her tail only corrected her balance reluctantly, as if not aware she wanted to stay upright.
Max tried to fight against herself, but it was pointless. Every step felt wrong, inefficient, slow. She needed to run for her life, and this wasn't cutting it. She needed to stay in control, but staying upright took too much mental acuity—acuity she needed to keep herself in control. Her forepaws hit the ground and started moving on their own.
The gait she'd expected didn't come. Instead, her hindpaws came up to launch her forward, and her forepaws caught her. She worried about her ribs, but her legs barely grazed them as they came up to repeat the motion.
Trees, grass, any sight around whizzed past her. She'd never gone this fast in her life unless she was riding a flying type. It was incredible; it terrified her.
She had never moved like this, but it felt perfectly natural. It felt more natural than how she'd walked all her life. A monster's claws had wrapped around her mind, wresting it out of her control. It took what she knew and twisted it, mutilated it into something she couldn't recognize. She tried to take control back, but the signal wouldn't go through. Her body became incompatible with her thoughts.
The world around her grew dark, but not distant. Instead of pulling her from herself, her terror filled her and coursed right back through her mind. Light lost its sheen as grass lost its green, the world around her decaying into something obscene as a feedback loop of terror crushed her heart.
Wrong, it was all wrong. She was wrong, the forest was wrong, the world turned beneath her paws too fast for her to keep up. She wished she could have a break from her instincts. Terror tore through her mind, too loud for her to do anything but scream, the air itself collapsing at the sound of her voice. A cacophony of silence imploded as her own horror rebelled against the fabric of the world around her.
It released just enough energy that she managed to feel the world around her again. She'd stopped running, lungs almost collapsing from exhaustion as she tried to catch her breath. She looked down and saw oozing tendrils of darkness digging into the ground below her.
Familiar, violet smoke evaporated from them and dissipated into the air. She tried to yank a paw from their grasp, and it moved without impediment. The tendrils released their grip: not from her, but from the earth.
They flicked out of the ground and writhed back into her with an aura of that violently violet smoke. She pulled her other paw up to the same result. The lag between her mind and her body vanished as she pulled herself upright again, staring at her paws. This smoke surrounding them, she recognized it. It wasn't nearly as thick, but she knew exactly where she'd seen it before.
Any doubt in her mind vanished when she whispered, "Wh-what?" Just like Eleos' voice, hers had become incompatible with the matter that carried it. The air she exhaled existed only by the effect it carried to the matter around it.
She traced her paw over the spots in her fur the tendrils had retracted into and didn't feel a trace. She only felt fur. The smoke started to fade, too, and with it, terror's claws digging into her heart. As its influence left her, she felt weak. Her paws ached of exhaustion. She wanted to rest, but her instincts had already picked up their assault again.
Heading forward, she couldn't take her eyes off her forepaws. Only one kind of creature she knew of had tendrils like that. A void shadow.
"D-did I…?" she mumbled, biting her lip when she heard the slip. She tried to put what Eleos told her about void shadows out of her mind, but the image wouldn't leave her. At best, she could tear her eyes up to look around instead while Eleos' words played in her head.
The ground rumbled beneath her paws. Its subtle shake turned to tremors turned to quakes in a second—right underneath her. She leapt away right before the earth beneath her ripped open. Her tail flicked between her and the attacker in an attempt to protect her. A fin glowing red clipped it before she could flash it to iron and flung her back.
Max spun once in the air before managing to right herself, keeping herself facing the pokémon—and freezing when she saw it. All four of her paws dug into the grass as she landed, skidding backward. A beast of a blue dragon towered over her, a dorsal fin on its back with another on each arm.
A garchomp. Her ribs ached remembering the last one she tried to fight, and her heart slamming into her chest didn't help. It landed, slamming into the ground to shake the earth with a roar that flattened Max's ears against her head. Even from thirty feet away, it towered over her. She felt her heart stop when it glared down at her with soulless black eyes. Did hers look any different?
The garchomp lunged for her, clearing half the distance in one bound, diving into the ground instead of landing. She could feel it as clearly as she saw it above ground thanks to her awareness. Its precise location didn't matter much, though. She only needed to know which direction to run.
She hopped up to her hindlegs and booked it. Every step, she felt the quakes in the Earth beneath her grow stronger. Awareness already told her how close it was, the grounds quivering only serving as a reminder. She tried to pick up the pace, but it wasn't enough. She was too slow to escape. She hadn't made it halfway to the room's exit before she could feel Garchomp surfacing.
She dove to the side before the earth tore open beneath her. Garchomp swung its fins around like a drill as it breached the ground, barely missing her tail. The closer call, having it clip her tail, had been a blessing in disguise. Instead of thirty feet, she was less than a yard away this time.
Alone. She was the only one here, frozen in fear to the point she couldn't even hide behind her tail. She was trapped alone in a dungeon she didn't know again. She tried to feel for the energy she'd channeled earlier, but it abandoned her.
"Ask me, being an idiot's a gift. Think I would've made it this far if I focused on typing?"
In one step, garchomp was right above her.
"You'll figure it out, hero-chu. Hell, I might have to borrow that tail trick of yours to get out of a hold someday."
Garchomp swung its arm down, fin bursting with purple energy; Max flashed her tail to iron. Right before the fin collided, she spun around and whipped her tail around to subtly redirect it away from her. Its attack went barely wide and knocked it off balance. She reached out with her awareness to feel which leg held its weight and used her momentum to keep spinning, hooking her tail around the leg in the air as she did.
She reeled back as garchomp fell backward and leapt right before it hit the ground. It bounced off the ground under the force of its own weight and right into her tail as she smashed it down into its chest with a resounding crack.
Max didn't bother wasting her time wondering what happened before booking it away. The garchomp was dazed, but it wasn't fading away. It was already starting to get back up, and the distance she'd put a hopelessly insufficient amount of distance behind her. She needed more speed. At risk of whatever started taking over her mind earlier, she dropped to all fours.
Only to realize she had no idea how she'd done it. The instincts that had wrested control from her left, and so did the muscle memory to really run. When she gathered her memories enough to pull her hindlegs up, it felt awkward, new, even though she could remember doing it earlier.
The garchomp roared behind her and started its pursuit again. She flung herself forward. If she wanted to get away, she needed to force her way through. It started into a rhythm for her, catch, adjust, jump, catch, adjust, jump. While still slower than she'd managed before, it vastly outpaced running upright.
It wasn't fast enough.
Slowly but surely, the garchomp drew closer. She managed to make some improvements, streamlining the movements a bit, but each one had diminishing returns. As well as the roars of the garchmop, she had instincts jabbering at her in her ear, making it harder and harder for her to hold on to the world around her. With every step, she felt more and more fear for her life.
Chilly air turned to ice around her. The running exerted enough energy that she didn't shiver, but she would've if she'd taken even a slightly less strenuous pace. The cold didn't start at her extremities, either, instead going right for her chest and spreading out from there. It terrified her further and made her even colder.
The garchomp dove beneath the earth again, barreling towards her twice as fast. She tried to dive out of the way, but it was way too early. The garchomp switched its angle underneath and shot right for her.
It breached the ground beneath her right as she leapt up to slice into its skull with her tail. The blow smashed it to the ground beneath her again while she used the momentum to kick off and keep running. If not for feeling continuously winded, she might've taken a breath of relief.
Max felt it getting up slower this time. With another good exchange behind her, she felt the fear fading, taking the freezing chill with it. She started to recognize the feelings, but she didn't have time to think about it.
The Dungeon was a twisted corruption of a forest path. Trees surrounded streams of dirt that expanded and bloomed into deserts devoid of the life contained in the grass around them. The trees themselves split and grew into each other and themselves, signs of age chipping at their weakest branches. With this much decay, she feared which floor she'd woken up in, how deep it would go.
This time, the garchomp didn't outpace her by quite so large a margin. It still gained on her, but clearly had new fatigue to contend against. She tried to hone in on it while her awareness pelted her with every twisted tree's spreading spots of death. After banking a left, she didn't have time to notice the distortion to a next floor until she'd run through.
Her body thrashed against the influence of her mind, stomach twisting as instincts consumed her. All around her, trees had more branches broken and rotting than not. Even the few branches holding on barely managed, leaves more a memory of what their purpose used to be.
This didn't feel like one floor. It felt like ten. She tried to right her balance and found she already had. That only disoriented her further. Her motions hadn't completely disconnected from her yet, so she tried to take hold of what she still could. As her paws ran in her adopted awkward gait, she tried to synchronize with them. If she could just reestablish the link between her mind and her body, she'd make it through.
The garchomp hadn't any such trouble adjusting to the next floor. Once it's claws hit the ground, it raced for her. She knew she couldn't keep up with it, especially not anymore.
Right as the thought crossed her mind, she spun around to prepare to throw herself at it. Watching intently, she prepared an iron tail and leapt forward once she saw it turn the corner she'd just come from. She spun around to slam her tail into it and felt a fin smash into her hip, flinging her to the ground.
The force slammed her into the dirt and launched her about as high as she'd jumped. Gravity started overcoming her momentum until the garchomp chased her back into the air with a cyclone of blows. The first hit contained the brunt of the force, the rest only enough to keep her heading up. For a ground type, it sure knew how to fly.
One final swing snapped her out of the shock of the flurry by smashing her to the ground. Miraculously, she crashed through a branch before the ground. Dead wood cracked, jabbed and scratched into her, but it slowed her descent.
It made it marginally easier for Max to recover, but still left the garchomp with the advantage. It didn't need to recover from its landing. Max tumbled across the ground a few feet while the garchomp landed upright, stomping its paws into the ground. She tried to get up when its stomps started quaking the ground beneath her. It sabotaged what precious little balance she had and barreled right for her.
She was too terrified to think, instincts too loud to let her disagree. The garchomp made it a yard away before she got up, fin blazing violet with draconic energy as it swung for her. She dashed forward three steps before leaping alongside its fin to smash another iron tail into its chin.
Her attack landed, but she didn't avoid the blow, either. The garchomp managed to alter its arc enough to slice at her before her attack knocked it back. Both of them flung back, the garchomp skidding along the dirt while Max rolled. She just needed one second to breathe, but she was already trying to get up again. She needed to reposition, reorient, and think up some kind of strategy, she knew that.
Her head refused to cooperate with her. Every thought had to struggle through the filter of every cell in her body demanding she fight it, fight it, fight it. A cacophony of single-minded need left her mind anemic and exhausted.
It already took so much of her willpower to resist the ever growing distance between herself and her surroundings. Even now, she could feel the fear and the pain fading away as instincts smothered her consciousness to death. She had too much to fight to think for more than a few words.
She was rushing in for another attack the moment she thought about how to attack next. Her paws carried her to the garchomp, and it had already reeled back to prepare for the next exchange. It had the advantage.
If they clashed again, it had the advantage. It was six times her height and who knew how much heavier. Pure strength could only end with her losing the fight. Her cheeks started to charge on their own while she skid to a halt, throat growling, "Piiikaaaaa," to prepare a roar. The garchomp launched itself forward, and she leapt into the air, screaming, "CHUUU!"
Her charge connected to the sky and left her weightless in the air as the conduit between the charges of the dirt and the clouds. The blast cracked the sky with her roar. The garchomp smashed into her with another cyclone of blows, entirely unfazed by the attack.
Even under the best circumstances, she didn't have the strongest grasp on typing. She could at least remember when electricity was worthless normally. Every blow in this flurry dazed her further, making it almost impossible to remember her mistake without completely losing herself to her instincts. Shocking for defense was too deeply ingrained in her to just ignore.
She squirmed and wrestled out of the hits just enough to pull out another blast of electricity. It entirely missed the garchomp this time. When the charge released, though, it knocked her back and up enough to break out of the attack.
This time, she started falling even deeper within the rotten trees. Without the constant hits disorienting her, she managed to hide guard herself from the worst of the branches with her tail. The switch to iron gave her just enough stability to keep from tumbling uncontrollably toward the ground. She made a nice landing back first onto an exposed root. All the while, she felt overwhelming terror.
She didn't stand a chance. This garchomp didn't have the same strength as the one that made quick work of her ribs, but it still had more than she did. The only attacks she'd come out on top with took planning that she didn't have the mental faculties to prepare. She could only manage to throw herself back at it again and again, attacking as mindlessly as it did. The thought made her whimper.
Every minute, the world felt further away. The garchomp's soulless, black eyes haunted her; did hers look any different at this point?
Her ear twitched. Paws padded against the ground to the East at a breakneck pace. The garchomp was to the North. Another pokémon was on its way. She wanted to dive further into the trees, but they already twisted in on each other so much she could barely move.
She could barely move.
She tried to scurry up the nearest tree, but the rotting bark peeled away at her touch and left her sliding back down. Before she slammed back into the root, she managed to kick off the tree. She hopped over the roots she could while the garchomp ran right to her. Whatever other pokémon was on its way, it wasn't going to get there before the garchomp.
Only the fear of entrapment kept her from scurrying back into the trees while the garchomp came closer, closer, closer with every second. By the time her paws made it out of the grass, it towered over her with a blazing fin ready to strike.
Her tail barely intercepted the blow in time, and it hadn't switched to iron. It blocked the blow, the force sending her rolling through the dirt. For as many times as he'd hit her, she didn't have too many injuries, but she'd run out of fight. With another pokémon on its way, she felt hopeless. She felt like prey. Every step quaked as she backed up against the tree behind her.
The garchomp eclipsed her vision despite being several yards away. It was approaching, leaving all the rest of the world around it to fade into nothing. She barely managed a squeak of horror as she felt her fear, pain, exhaustion slip out of her grasp. She didn't have a hold to grasp or any hope to hold onto. This was her end, and she wouldn't even be there for it. Her body curled up in terror for her as instincts took over.
Right above her, a distant smack cracked against scales before she completely lost herself. The other pokémon had made it. It seemed like little relief, but her terror lessened so much that she could feel it so deep within her instincts. She peeked her eyes open and saw the hope she'd needed.
White and red fur sliced claws through the garchomp with ease. A zangoose. Goon.
Max finally had just enough to claw her way back in control. Part of her wanted to run from him, but between him and the garchomp, it was an easy choice. She was still exhausted, so she tried to rest while she could. Most of her energy went to managing her instincts, but that was a lot easier to do when she didn't have a dragon to fell. Goon seemed to have the garchomp under control.
Max's ear twitched. Her eyes shot to the entrance opposite her. A scruffy ball of white fur had fists over its head. The mankey had its eyes on Goon. Once it started running over, she hopped up and rushed over to intercept it. She still didn't have her gait figured out, but she actually managed to outpace it.
Goon didn't so much as glance behind him while the garchomp swung fin after blazing fin for him. He was a free hit for the Mankey, but he probably couldn't look away from the garchomp if he noticed. Max felt her cheeks sparking on their own. This time, she didn't mind.
"Piiikaaa," she growled between huffs of breath. Her charge flowed and swelled enough that she heard it crackling all around her. Before the mankey had made it within a yard of Goon, she leapt up and slammed into it, a bunch of fur muffling her roaring, "Chuuuu!" while she found herself digging her teeth into it. Another bolt of lightning crashed down from the sky while the Mankey fell to the ground.
Max hadn't really bitten pokémon before, but it came quite naturally to her. She dug her jaws into as much of its flesh as she could, wailing on the mankey with her claws while her teeth held her in place. Pretty quickly, the mankey threw a hook into the side of her head and knocked her off.
It took a few rolls before she managed to get up on her paws, shaking her head clear. She looked up and shared a glance with Goon. He looked confused, but he'd managed to take control of his fight again and quickly turned back to that.
Even as she turned to face the mankey, the same fear haunted Max. What had Goon seen in her eyes?
The mankey shot over to her with fists at the ready. She leapt up to slam an iron tail into its chest once it dove to kick her. When her tail made contact, she felt it falter and bend. At best, she could manage one more iron tail. That didn't change her tactic, though, since she'd already started running over to tackle it again.
It had no trouble staying upright this time, even as she shot shock after shock into it. Her shocks didn't have much potency left, either. Exhaustion was catching up to her. The mankey started to swing a fist for her, but she managed to jump off in time.
Shortly after, Goon rushed into it with a furious storm of swipes, quickly leaving the illusion to dissolve in the air. "C'mon," he said, turning to her while a paw dug into his bag. When his eyes met hers, he faltered. She froze. She could feel him searching her eyes for exactly what she feared she'd lost. The horror, though, wasn't there. He squinted in concentration, tilting his head.
"You're…," he mumbled, slowly starting to nod. "You're still in there, aren't you?" Rather than answer with a nod or an attempt to speak, Max opted to throw herself around his neck to give him a tight hug. Just to be sure the message came across, though, she started vigorously nodding into his shoulder.
He let out several awkward grunts and false starts before patting her head with the fluidity of granite. It took until his badge started flashing for him to manage saying, "There… there?"
"(Sounds like the notes you played were wrong
And you should give up before too long)
But if I pretend to believe
That I'm good enough to"
Cori held their head in their paws, horror in their eyes visible in glimpses between their fingers. "No," they stated. "You definitely shouldn't have chased her. She probably could've held together if she didn't have someone trying to catch her."
"Well, yeah," Goon mumbled. He looked awkwardly to the side."Probably." Despite being significantly shorter and younger, Cori looked like a teacher scolding a very young student.
The amusing scene served as a nice distraction for Max. She had the perfect view curled up in Goon's lap. His fur gave her wonderful warmth, leaving her bundled up, comfy, cozy, and utterly humiliated. She'd managed to hold on in the Dungeon, but she remained very rattled. Instincts had quieted down, but remained fairly loud if she was even slightly worried.
That made the added security of Goon holding her almost required. Regardless, she tried to hold onto her pride and absolutely not give into the temptation to rub her head into him. Her instincts wanted attention, not her.
When Goon's paw met her head of its own volition, though, she was utterly powerless to resist. "Piiiiiiiikaaaa," she sighed, pressing her head into Goon's touch. She twisted around to guide his paw to the precise spots that needed attention the most, all the while contentment spread a smile across her lips and dropped the lids of her eyes halfway. It seemed to release some of Goon's tension, too.
"Y'know, it's actually kinda cute," Goon said, Max only dimly aware of his words. With two more light taps and a rough head rub, Goon dropped his paw back over her. The slight disappointment didn't last once Max realized what happened.
Max threw her paws over her face and tried to nuzzle her face into cover. It worked double duty, hiding her face and shielding Goon from the many, many stray sparks. She kept her arms over her eyes as she tilted her head up to whimper, "Please don't do that," before poking her muzzle back down into cover.
"Hey, uh, look," Goon mumbled. The bit of tension he'd relieved petting her crept back up on him. "I'm—it's, y'know. Yesterday, it was just, y'know, new and stuff. It doesn't bother me, all right?" He was completely missing the point, but that didn't stop him from going on. "Now that I know you're still in there, it's not all that scary."
On one paw, it was somewhat nice to know their shared glance in the dungeon had done so much for him. On the other, he really didn't get it. She nosed her muzzle out of its burrow again to say, "Thanks, but that's not why I don't want you to do it." Message delivered, she burrowed back into hiding.
"You're really not beating the cute allegations doing that, y'know," Cori said. Perhaps it would help to remind them that they were well within her shocking range.
"Okay!" Max growled, forcing herself to uncurl and sit normally. On her way, Goon lightly tapped her twice to gently let her know she'd slipped. It was a nice gesture that made her want to bite off the offending claw. She scurried out of his lap and immediately had to contend with unwilling instincts. With more time and energy, she could probably shut them out. For now, though, it was easier to sit against Goon's side.
"Okay," she tried again. It sounded right, but she had to glance at Cori to be sure. They gave her a nod, still very pleased that they'd gotten her so riled up. She pushed it out of her mind and tried to pull together some authority. Leaning up against Goon made it hard, but it was leagues better than laying in his lap. "Let's go back over the plan."
"Plan?" Cori mumbled, tilting their head. After a second, they remembered, and their eyes popped open before scrunching up in mild confusion. "I mean, there's not really… much to go over, is there?" They looked up to Goon, then back at Max. "I've organized everything so I can pack before you two get there. After that, we pack up and go." They shrugged. "What's there to go over?"
"Well, those are the basics," Max said. She looked away, trying to hide a shake of her head. They were a lot more optimistic than her. She wanted to believe in their family, but she had no reason to based on what she'd heard. "I just want to prepare for contingencies, all right?" A strong feeling in her gut told her to prepare for the worst.
"You haven't told anyone, right?" she asked.
"Well, no," Cori said, sharing another glance with Goon. Max trusted he was backing her up.
"Good," Max said with a nod. Goon's paw started floating to her head, so she shot a glare up at him. He corrected course and pat her side instead. Sense safe, she went on. "Once we're there, we'll pack up all your stuff, starting with the essentials. It should take enough time that, by the time your family gets back, it'll be too far along to stop. When they get there, we'll be right behind you."
Cori shrank down a little as she explained what she had about five times already. Their paws played over each other while they took a deep breath. "I just wish I didn't have to lie," they said.
"Hey, it's not-" Max started, but Goon silenced her with an emphatic side-pat. Before the gesture could annoy her, he lightly ran his claws down her back. Max grit her teeth, trying to hold on, but once he started swiveling his claws side to side on the way down, it was over. He didn't have the precision of Ithos, but the extra size and strength perfectly walked the line between scratches and scritches.
With Max thoroughly neutralized, Goon looked at Cori and asked, "If you told them, do you think they'd understand?" His claw dragged up and down Max's back a few times to get her nice and relaxed before bringing his other paw in to wrangle her back into his lap.
All the while, he watched Cori languish in uncertainty. Goon already seemed a bit more tense broaching the topic at all. "It's your call, all right?" Goon said. Max almost managed to break out of her trance when he started doubling up in his ministrations. With both paws petting at her (one on her back, the other at her head), a bit of the nervous tension seemed to leave him.
"Family's important. Max doesn't really get that," he continued. Cori glanced at her, seeming to remember the last time the topic came to a head. "It's probably hard for her, but still. You still have yours."
"Are they gonna be mad?" Cori asked.
Goon tensed up again before flipping Max over to switch to rubbing her belly and scratching her chin. "Yeah," he sighed. "Probably." His tail flicked behind him a few times, slowing the more he pet Max. "But family usually loves each other. Even more often, they just suck at showing it." He gave an amused smile, then shifted his attention down to Max.
"This won't be easy for you," he said. "Moving out never is."
Max started pulling out of pleasure's prison. It felt so comforting, so nice to have his claws dancing beneath her fur, but she couldn't let him do this. She could hold on. She raised her paw to push his away—only for him to shift course and scratch around where her arm had been, leaving her to squeak out a dazed, "Chaaaaa!"
"But again, family's important," Goon said. He looked up from Max, getting Cori to do the same. He looked into their eyes with soft certainty. "They'll understand that, too." With a warm, awkward smile, he turned back down to Max.
Cori scratched behind their head, glancing at the two of them. They'd seen her enjoy petting, though not quite to this degree before. Their eyes weren't really on the two of them, though. That was just the sight they landed on in thought. Goon's message played in their head while they processed it until eventually, they started to replace their worry with a soft smile. "Thanks," they said.
Goon nodded, keeping most of his attention between Max and the grass directly to his left. "Yeah, well, y'know," he mumbled. "We'll be there if you need it." He almost flinched at his own words. "But, uh, probably Max would be. You know her better, so I'm sure she'd help more if you need to talk."
"All right," Cori chuckled. "I get it." Goon let out a sigh of relief, and they shook their head in amusement. "Well, do I get going?" They hopped up before they had an answer.
"Probably for the best," Goon said with a nod. "Once I stop doing this, she's going to shock me until I'm dead." His claws grazed barely out from under her ears—painfully close to the very last place she needed scratched.
"Right," Cori hummed. They looked at him with a knowing grin so thick that it almost got him to look up from her. "I'm sure that's why you're doing it."
"Shut it, or I'll throw her at you when I'm done," Goon said with a smirk of his own.
Cori looked him over a moment, gauging whether or not they wanted to tempt fate, but ultimately shook their head. "All right, fine. Good luck," they said. They started walking away, but their eyes lingered on Max. Seeing her so deep in this was worrying, to say the least. "What Dungeon did she run into?"
Goon shrugged, flipping Max over to get back to scratching her back. "Don't really know the area that well," he said. "It wasn't very far East, though." He glanced up and to the side, squinting at the sky to conjure up more of an answer. "At most, like a kilometer."
"What?" Cori mumbled. "That—are you sure?" Goon looked down to tilt his head at them, but they had turned to rub their head in thought. "I didn't know there was a dungeon in that area." They looked intently in thought for a while, trying to think up an answer they didn't have. After a bit, they shrugged. "I guess I'm not usually on the East side?"
Dismissing it with a shake of their head, they waved at Goon and said, "Well, see you soon." They glanced at him before looking at the ground, paws knotting over each other. Plenty of reservations remained, but they took a breath to steel themself and headed off.
Goon waved after them, one brow raised in thought as they did. He kept subtle watch on them until they made it out of earshot. After, he whispered, "I've heard rumors Dungeons getting worse again." His ministrations slowed over time to give Max a gradual awakening. He seemed calm as he did, likely having made peace with his fate. "Old ones expanding, and new ones showing up whole cloth."
As the pets and scratches waned, an unbidden whine forced its way out of Max. She didn't bother to cover her sparking cheeks, though. Goon deserved some level of retaliation after that, though with how thorough he was, she had trouble mustering up a more cathartic retribution.
"Yeah, I've seen some myself," she said. "Apparently, it's due to some disturbances in the Mist Continent." According to Jake, at least.
She certainly didn't trust him, but he seemed to have the Rescue Society behind him. A baffling feat, she discovered, after looking into his history, but he could've changed in the centuries since Team Meanies. That, or everyone who knew better died. Oddly enough, she felt fairly familiar with his life's story when she looked it up. It felt like reviewing instead of learning, but she chalked it up to her interests as a human.
"That where you two are headed?" Goon asked.
"Four," Max corrected. Realization jabbed at her heart and made her wince, then whimpered, "Three." For now, though. It was only temporary. A paw came to her back to assist in the self-comfort, so she gently slapped it away with her tail. "You want a broken paw?"
"Well, you haven't killed me yet," Goon said, shaking the pain out of his paw. "Something tells me you don't really mind." With a self-satisfied smirk, he let his paw rest on her back, ready and primed to go again. Max wasn't sure if he was tempting her or testing her, but it was pretty effective at both. The spaces he'd barely missed on her head earlier practically ached in neglect, ears twitching in need.
Goon's smile grew as she let out a deep, long sigh. "Just get between my ears, and we'll call it even," she grumbled, already ready for the derision. Be it a 'told you so' or simple teasing, she could almost hear it already.
So, it was nice to feel him fulfill the request in silence.