See the shifting forms. Hear the expectant hum. Feel the all-encompassing roar of the cosmos.

Something is stirring on the surface below—not within the tapestry of landscapes, but not quite apart from them, either.

'...'

'look'

'a new being walks our world'

The voice is high and plaintive, almost whining. It is a voice that is used to not speaking at all. Not today. What it has found excites it.

'show me let me see'

'who is it following'

'does it want to help us'

'over here it saw me'

The voice multiplies and multiplies and suddenly it is all over the shimmering surface, innumerable mouths calling out with a single voice. Compounding on itself like a chorus of cicadas.

'no one to watch over it'

'warn her warn her'

'poor thing'

'can't let it interfere'

'won't talk to us'

'before it all goes to ruin'

'make it one of ours'

'make it LISTEN!'

'listen!' 'listen!' 'listen!' The voice repeats that final word between itselves, its playful chatter creating its own echo.

"No."

A second voice emerges, silencing the chorus.

The new speaker is not much louder than the others, yet its voice commands a certain authority. It tells of the inexorable rumble of the glacier, but also the rasp of the dying land beneath.

"This one will not be yours at the determined hour. He is drawn by true nature. He cannot help it."

Swadloon didn't like him—that much was obvious. It wasn't that they were ever openly aggressive. In fact, they never so much as hissed in his direction. Their contempt revealed itself in other ways: a deepening frown, a twitch of the antennae, an increase in their pace when he got too close.

Noibat didn't take it personally. Nobody liked being followed by a stranger.

He was still trying to piece together how he'd gotten into this situation. It should have been the end for him when the violet flames exploded in his face, but apparently Charmander could make even an attack like that nonlethal. He remembered the tremor in his wings as he'd lifted himself out of the sand. He was fine, it was the rest of the world that was on crooked. What was he supposed to be doing? Following the Woobat? Noibat shook his head hard. He was going to go back there and beg for food. He was stuck on the ground. The fight was over.

So Noibat limped back into the firelight, ears buzzing, only to find that there were two Swadloons and Charmanders there. How could he make them understand what he wanted? All of the fear and desperation of his months in the desert welled up inside him, yet when he opened his mouth he was puzzled to find that there were no words behind the feeling. Noibat collapsed into a dead faint.

Some time later, he woke up on his feet. What was he doing? He was walking. Where was he walking?

The scrublands were gone. It was morning, and there were mountains at his back—his vantage point from the foothills gave him a panoramic view of the desert below him, the contour of its rosy dunes just being picked out by the rising sun. There wasn't a plateau in sight.

Noibat jumped. He was so taken in by the scenery that he hadn't noticed the Charmander looking back at him.

Between the two travelling Pokémon, it seemed like it was Charmander's job to keep an eye on their stalker. They were always checking over their shoulder to make sure he wasn't up to anything. In contrast, Swadloon did their best to look at him as little as possible, instead reserving their energy for hissing at Charmander. Charmander kept their back (and flaming tail) to their companion while they ranted, but even then Noibat would catch them sneaking glances at him. Especially then.

"Hss, sss!"

"Grrrr."

"Hss-s-s!"

"Graar…"

Listening to the two of them argue wasn't very enlightening; it was hard to believe they even understood each other. Still, Noibat didn't need to speak their language to know what Swadloon was trying to get rid of him. As for what Charmander was thinking… he just hoped they weren't too eager for another fight.

"Hssst!" Swadloon flapped their cloak in frustration. Before he knew what was happening, the Bug-type was shuffling over to him in a huff. They stopped a couple yards away, gently placed one of their spiky fruits on the ground, then backed off, eyeing him suspiciously.

Noibat sniffed the fruit. The complex mix of bitterness and spice was even more overwhelming up close. He tore into the husk and devoured the whole fruit in three bites.

Swadloon furrowed their brow at this savage display, but they didn't turn away from it. Actually, they stared at Noibat for a couple more seconds than they usually would have, as though they were taking stock of him. The arguments died down and eventually stopped. Though Charmander took over feeding Noibat for the rest of the trip.

They spent their first night together in a sandstone crater. Noibat sat just close enough to the others so that they could see he was still there and watched them share a meal in silence. Swadloon conked out almost immediately, but Charmander was determined to keep watch. They leaned on their bag and stared at him, idly sweeping their tail across the ground. Their eyes glinted as the fire flickered back and forth. Noibat rolled over and hid under his blanket. It should have been hard to resist sleep after everything he'd gone through, but fortunately he had plenty of stress to keep him awake. Eventually, the firelight dimmed as Charmander began to snore.

Noibat stood up once he was sure the coast was clear. Charmander slept sitting upright with one arm stretched over their bag. Swadloon had their red-and-white circlet pulled low over their eyes. The bag of fruit was still on their back—they would be the easier target. Noibat crept over and opened the bag without making a sound…

Back at his sleeping spot, he ate his prize in small bites, trying to savor the taste this time. He had some thinking to do.

Noibat had to admit that he'd gotten carried away when he first saw Charmander and Swadloon. It had seemed like such a perfect solution at the time: one last battle between him and freedom. Well, it had worked somehow—he was out of the scrublands! (And I wasn't even awake when it happened. Maybe I really do sleepwalk.) Now that he was outside, though, he was going to have to start sorting through all the problems that he'd shoved into the vague future of "after I escape". Like what he was actually supposed to do after he escaped.

No matter how he looked at it, he felt like his best bet was to follow Charmander and Swadloon back to wherever they came from. Could he travel faster on his own? Sure. Was there a risk that Charmander would attack him again? Maybe. But he kept coming back to the fact that Charmander and Swadloon were way too well-supplied for wild Pokémon. They had to have gotten those bags from humans. There was a good chance that they could lead him back to civilization.

Civilization: that was something he'd thought about a lot when he was alone in his cave. He missed houses and heaters and beds that weren't made of leaves. He would never take running water for granted again. More than that, he missed people. He needed to find his way back to them.

Noibat wasn't naïve. He knew that interacting with humans as he was now could end with him trapped in a Pokéball, yet it was hard to imagine how he was going to restore his body and memory without some serious help. Maybe people transform into Pokémon all the time here—he was pretty sure that had happened at least once in the games. Or he might be stuck like this forever. That thought depressed him, but even then he would be happier among humans than in the wilderness. Maggie and Unfezant might be waiting for him, too, the Pidove flock would be right at home in an environment of skyscrapers and city parks…

…I'm getting ahead of myself again. For now, I just need to follow these Pokémon, and everything else will sort itself out.

And if that didn't work, he could always steal as much fruit as he could carry and slip away into the night. After he got out of this desert, of course.

Dink. Noibat woke up to a tap on the forehead. It was morning, and Charmander was tossing pebbles at him. Both of the others were up and ready with their bags. Right. They probably weren't on the same sleep schedule.

The unlikely trio arranged themselves like this: Charmander took the lead, Swadloon followed a few steps behind… and Noibat shadowed the others at a cautious twenty feet. He would have flown if there had been anything to take off from. Charmander and Swadloon were content to leave him alone except to share food and water. Okay, maybe Swadloon would've been fine if he went hungry, but it was still weird how quickly they'd accepted him as their travelling companion. It was probably more proof that Charmander and Swadloon were trained Pokémon. Still, Noibat didn't lower his defenses. He slept on the edge of the firelight and watched with jealousy as the others snuggled up to their bags of fruit.

On the third day, they came across a roughly pyramidal pile of stones that was half-buried in the sand. Charmander seemed excited to see it—they clambered to the top and surveyed the landscape, then clambered back down and set off in a new direction.

It was a mild day by Noibat's standards, the season and altitude conspiring so that the desert was neither too hot nor too cold. When he focused on the wind and the up and down rhythm of the dunes, it was a bit like flying.

Shunk. Noibat lurched forward, the soft sand engulfing him up to his midwing. The ground was slipping away beneath his feet! He scrambled up the rushing slope before it could pull him past the point of no return.

Back on solid ground, Swadloon was looking more cross than usual. "Graar?" Charmander growled with a frankly insulting grin as they wiped the sand from their scales. Swadloon's frown gained an extra crease. Noibat was inclined to agree.

A sinkhole had opened at the base of the dune they'd been walking along. The hole was about four feet wide and deep enough that he couldn't see the bottom. The most violent part of the collapse was over but gravity continued its work, sending streams of sand hissing into the void below.

It wasn't alone. There were sinkholes everywhere: in front of them, behind them, siphoning the dunes like the funnel of an hourglass—he couldn't have walked by all of them without noticing.

Noibat didn't like it. This felt like the same brand of weirdness as the scrublands. He fell in line right behind Swadloon (earning him an annoyed antenna twitch) and let Charmander do their thing.

Left, right, right, right… Charmander led Swadloon and Noibat on a looping path around the thousand identical sinkholes. As far as he could tell they were navigating by a little glass orb that they held in their claws. They checked that thing religiously, and followed it religiously, too, even when it steered them into an obvious dead end. There was this one place where the dunes fell screaming down a bottomless ravine in a mysteriously stable sandfall. You could hear it from a mile away. Charmander waltzed right up to the edge where the sand started to flow, checked their orb, and only then did they turn around. Noibat was really starting to regret trusting these Pokémon to know where they were going.

It's cool that you can train them to navigate on their own like this, but the Galvantula with their nets and knives were honestly way more impressive.

Noibat's ears pricked up. Something was burrowing under the desert.

"Puuuuuu!" A Sandile erupted from a nearby sinkhole in a shower of sand, legs windmilling in the air. Whack! Charmander knocked the wild Pokémon aside with a swipe of their claws. The Sandile crashed down on its back and was still.

Noibat froze mid stride. Swadloon's antennae stood on end. The battle was over before either of them could react.

The Sandile lay motionless, legs stiff, its pink belly pointing to the sky. Was it even alive? Morbidly curious, Noibat crept over to get a closer look at the third new Pokémon he'd seen this week. He could hear a shallow breath in the crocodile's chest. They were only playing dead. It was a pretty neat trick: not only was the Sandile proving that it wasn't a threat, but by keeping still they were letting themselves be pulled back into the safety of the sinkhole. The Sandile tensed imperceptibly as Noibat padded closer and closer.

"Wraaag!"

He looked up. Charmander was waving a fruit around like it was a grenade covered in superglue.

The Sandile saw their opening—they flipped over and dove into the sinkhole, kicking sand in Noibat's face as they went. Why did they always have to go for the eyes?!

Noibat waded up the dune to find Charmander wearing the same evil grin that stretched from fang to fang. He snatched the spiky fruit out of their claws and retreated behind Swadloon. Although he wasn't happy that a Pokémon thought they could bribe him with treats, he wasn't dumb enough to actually reject the free food.

Noibat chewed on the fruit's husk as they continued their wild goose chase across the dunes.

Did Charmander think I was going to hurt the poor Sandile? Maybe I would have if they'd lived in the scrublands.

The three of them must have developed a reputation because for the next few hours the Sandile skittered across their path but didn't attack.

TrrrrMMMmmmm…

The world was drowned out by wavering colors and an electric hum. Noibat blinked the stars out of his eyes. The sinkholes had flashed out of existence as suddenly as they'd appeared.

After four days of walking, the desert began to give way to prairie. It wasn't the most inviting place in the world. The dirt road was cold and damp even when it wasn't covered in mud, which Charmander tried to leap over and Swadloon just soldiered through. Usually there was nothing to look at except winter-bleached grass or the occasional copse of trees. Noibat was eating it up anyway, he was so starved for nature. Then there were the farms: gray fields with naked vines clinging to their trellises or dry stalks broken up and left to mulch. They were beautiful too, but Noibat really loved them for what they represented. There were farms! And did he mention there was a road?! The only thing he wanted now was to see an actual farmer. Literally any human and he would've abandoned Charmander and Swadloon without a second thought.

The hours stretched on and the fields stayed empty. At this point he was jumping at every rustle in the grass like it was a trainer on their way to capture him. Noibat was nervous, but he wasn't worried yet. People probably had better things to do than stand around in empty fields. Besides, it looked like they were finally getting somewhere. The road was becoming more substantial as the crops were replaced with intricate patterns of pink and yellow flowers that must have been planted just to look pretty. Buildings sprang up from the meadow: quaint little cottages at first with wells and stone silos, then some truly baffling structures with missing walls and upside-down roofs. None of it looked modern. And why were the buildings so inconsistent in size?

The revelation hit him somewhere in that uncertain region where the countryside ends and the city begins. Pokémon were wandering home for the evening, relaxed and chatting. They weren't worrying about food or shelter like a wild animal might—they had warm dinners to look forward to, maybe some treats they'd bought from the outlying farms. Why should they hurry? It was their day off. They wore scarves and shawls, carried packs, rode wagons. Besides a few concerned looks, the homebound Pokémon ignored the Noibat who was having a crisis in the middle of the road. Everyone was headed to the same place.

The city was a toybox dumped out on the horizon, a skyline not just out of his own time, but of all of human history. This was a city of Pokémon!