You ok?

Phase 1: 13,778/13,778

“This is clearly all a dream.” That’s what Mark thought when he woke up.

Between appearing in the middle of nowhere, holding a bone for some reason, and apparently looking like… Actually, he didn’t even know what kind of animal he was supposed to be, the bone helmet he couldn’t take off didn’t help to find out.

He’d been walking around this weird forest for hours, and he found not a single form of life aside from plants. If this really was a dream, it was a very boring one.

It didn’t take him long until he noticed the hunger catch up to him. At first it started as a mild stomach rumble, but it quickly turned into a feeling of sickness coming from inside him.

He was tired, really tired, so without having any ideas on what to do, he sat on the grass beside a tree and stared at nothing until his body gave up and fell unconscious.

It wasn’t until some hours later that a voice woke him up. “Hey, you okay?”

Mark groggily opened his eyes to find a blue turtle looking at him. Even with the species difference, Mark could tell this turtle was concerned, he was probably not looking too good.

“Can you hear me?” Mark didn’t respond but weakly nodded. He really just wanted to go back to sleep to get out of this dream. “You’re really not looking fine, what happened to you?”

Mark, again, didn’t answer. He felt dizzy and wanted to rest. “Hey, Rose! Come look at this!” Another figure entered the scene, it was a dog, definitely, but orange and with black stripes around its body.

“What did you fi- oh. Oh, damn.” The dog got closer to Mark, inspecting him. He saw himself on the reflection of a river before. He didn’t see any bruises or injuries, so why were they that worried about him? Granted, Mark didn’t know what his species was supposed to look like, if said species was common at all to begin with.

“Can you walk?” The turtle extended a paw to Mark. He was very weak, but tried to stand up nonetheless. It was a bad idea. He ended up falling forwards against the turtle, knocking them both down. “Okay, I think that answers that… Rose, stop laughing and see if we have an Escape Orb or something, will ya?”

Mark heard some shuffling around until he got enveloped in a white light. He couldn’t take it anymore and fainted.

“C’mon, bud… I know you’re tired, but you gotta eat something.”

Mark heard the voice, but only groaned as a response. It wasn’t until his immense hunger showed up in the form of a grumble that he forced himself to open his eyes.

The same dog, in front of him, handing him what looked like a blue circle. Mark didn’t want to engage with this situation, but it started looking more and more like this wasn’t really a dream.

With hesitation, he grabbed the ball and ate it in one gulp. It was fruit, that much was obvious, but he couldn’t really decipher what kind of fruit it was, he only knew that it was good, and it was food, so he wouldn’t complain.

“Can you talk?”

“Y-yeah, I can…” Mark didn’t know how to feel, it was very easy to pin this on being a dream, but the sensations that he was having were telling him something different. “Are you… Rose?”

“Oh, you remembered my name! Yep, I’m Rose, and my teammate is Simon. You know, the one that was with me when we found you.”

Simon, okay, he’d need to remember, but so far so good. The only issue really was…

“W-where am I? And what am I, for that matter?”

Rose’s optimism faded away in an instant, being replaced by a concerned frown. “You’re… you’re a Cubone. Why?”

“A Cu-bone? What the hell is that name?”

Her frown was even more noticeable than before. She wasn’t concerned anymore but suspicious.

“Let’s start from the beginning, okay? Who are you?”

“I’m Mark, I don’t know what’s happened to me, I have no idea where I am.” Mark was trembling, his hunger wasn’t his priority now. Any doubt that he might have had about if this was a dream was shattered. At this point he was just scared, he wanted to go home, back at…

And that’s when he noticed he didn’t remember absolutely anything about his past life as a human. His instincts kept telling him that this was wrong, but he couldn’t imagine what was supposedly right.

Either Rose was good at reading emotions, or Mark was as open as a book, because Rose immediately noticed what was wrong.

“Do you have amnesia?”

Mark nodded. He didn’t know if any human stuff would even make sense to her, so he stayed quiet about that part.

Her expression softened a bit. Not much, but a bit nonetheless. “Okay, um… Let’s wait until Simon returns from the guild and we will have a talk, okay? For now, feel free to grab as many berries as you want, you seemed very pale when we found you.”

She left the basket of berries next to the bed Mark was in, and left before he could answer or retort.

Right, that’s another thing, where was he even? Looking at his surroundings, all he could see was a pretty decent home. This was certainly the room of one of those two. Whose? He couldn’t tell.

He tried to stand up but his dizziness quickly returned. Might as well help himself to another berry, not like he could do much else.

‘Just what the hell did I get into?’