Postgame

A lie lived uncaught in Treasure Town. It spread its roots among the noise and motion of a busy burrow, the distractions and the great bother of juicy drinks and juicier gossip. No one had the eyes to eye it while the world was ending. 

Then, a collective sigh of relief finally blew through the quaint town–the Time Gears grinded atop Dialga’s tower, and the terrors of yesterday belonged, altogether, in an unfractured past. And this lie unwedged itself, and, in the fashion of a lie allowed to rot in the dirt, its bloom soured the conceit of the now-peaceful home that nurtured it. 

A pupil, swirling in a downward spiral, darted about the burrow. It found the accusatory faces of lookalikes impersonating longtime friends, an angry mob of betrayed, narrowed eyes… here was the moment her lie’s pleas to flourish became impossible to ignore. An ugly transformation. It writhed free, chilling their bones long before she even had the chance to speak.  

“I…” 

The Spinda took in a deep breath. 

“It’s true. I don’t actually use the ingredients you give me in your smoothies.” 

The Wigglytuff Exploration Guild exploded into a rampage. Chairs screeched back. Traitorous drinks rattled on a jostled table. At Spinda’s Cafe, everyone partook in a new flavor: sweet deceit with a dash of bitter betrayal. 

Her secret exposed, Spindle could only watch as the explorers yapped and barked and hissed at her. She saw the childlike hurt in their eyes and–no way to help it–spilled right into a laughing fit. Mania, perhaps: the dizzy bear was always destined to stumble into her own house of cards. Having it happen drove her mad with relief.  

“Alright, alright, pipe down!” Spindle had to dizzily tip over an unoccupied chair, her laugh careening into wheezing territory. “Okay, okay.” She bought herself time with more platitudes. “Give me a small moment to explain!” A small-sized, six-ounce moment. 

“I took pride in my drinks,” a Chatot said. He inspected his feathers in order to hide his deeply-set frown. “I thought, my goodness! I have a principled understanding of smoothie mixology. Dear Spindle told me so. Oh! But perhaps you only lied to the others?” He asked hopefully. “Tell me I’m different.” 

The laughter exploded away from wheezing, right back into excited squeaks. “You’re the worst,” Spinda gasped. “I’m sorry, Musey. You tried to mix an apple with a rock.”

“It was a gravelyrock! A, a hard candy, I know it. I… licked it.” 

The other explorers cut their murmuring to look at him. 

“We have all done it,” he muttered at the silent crowd.

Spindle sighed. “No, my feathered pal, that wasn’t gravelyrock. Even if it was, do you know what hard candy would do to my blender?” 

“Hrm… then why didn’t you return it?” He shot back. “You robbed me!”

“You explorers expect me to mix together stuff you found on the ground! I do put a little in. Just in case you bit into them on the way back and are expecting notes of it…” 

“What do you do with the stuff?” Ranty asked. The Bidoof shrugged his shoulders and cowered at the coming answer. 

“I sell it all to the Kecleon Brothers, who sell it back to you. Before y’all complain, it’s called the economy.” 

Paws, petals, pincers and hands shot up into the air. For those with forelegs set squarely on the ground, they rolled their eyes up to join everyone else’s histrionics. A sloppy chorus of protests poured out right after. 

“I can’t believe it!” Ranty cried. “No way! The economy is sick!” 

Musey folded a wing over his head. “I drafted your lease personally. I let your lies billow into our humble courtyard. In fact… the incidents began around the time you renovated…”

Spindle put a paw to her chest and staggered back. “You’re accusing me of starting the time crisis. Because of smoothies.” 

Ranty jumped up and down. “Ooh! Maybe Dialga stopped by, right? And they were like, Spindle, I need to drink the time gears every one thousand years. Thou must blend them yummy for my tummy.” 

“What?” The Spinda wheezed. “What?!” 

“And you were like, right away, oh great Dialga. Then, fwoop!” He slid his paws across the floor. “You fenced those suckers to the brothers, who, uh… sold them off to the highest bidders! The lake folk. They looked loaded. Then you closed down for a bit and waited for things to blow over. And Dialga got a banana smoothie.” 

She pouted at him. “Your theory’s more off-kilter than me.” 

Ranty giggled. “It holds water. Vent, it all lines up, right?” 

She was only half listening. It was the moon festival today. There was one day in the year where the full moon felt unnaturally close to Treasure Town, drawn in by as-of-yet mysterious forces. Someone, someday, decided it was enough of an occasion to form a yearly tradition around. And from then on, the Pokemon of Treasure Town celebrated a slightly bigger rock in the sky once a year. 

She often found herself taken in by the Moon, having spent much time with it on her lonely bluff. 

Her head caressed a Croconaw’s side, imagining his smooth blue hide as the Moon’s surface. Her nuzzle sent her traveling, past his shoulder, up to his neck. A purr started and died in her throat. The Luxray stood mightier than anyone else at the small gathering, a sheer force even when completely relaxed. The jagged hackles on her back tingled, her emotions turning to static, and she fought against the hunch in her heavy shoulders. 

“I’m not listening all that much,” the Luxray admitted in a whisper. “I’m tired, Ranty.”

The guild went into a respectful silence. Ranty bowed his head. “Aw. The full festival hasn’t even started yet.”

“I’ll be there. I want to squeeze out every little moment,” she explained. “Before I have to close my eyes again, I want to know you’re with me, Sole.” 

The Croconaw she leaned on chuckled. “I get it. I do, Vest. You can’t stay latched onto me forever, though. Eventually we’ll need to be in two separate places at once. Or I’ll need to go to the bathroom.” 

“False on the first, and that’s fine on the second. Sole… you’re never leaving my sight.” 

“Yikes. I was only gone a few months, eh? This is why I need to work on my goodbyes. I was thinking… to orient myself, I’d like to do a bit of solo traveling. Only for a week or two. Do you think that’d be okay, Vest?”

She turned away from his hide to meet his eyes. “Where are you thinking of going?”

He balked. “I, I don’t know. I want the wind to pick my course.” 

Several guild-members exchanged awkward looks. 

Musey broke the silence. “Saves the world, is out sick for half a year, and then immediately requests a–no offense intended–lame vacation. Well, at least we’ve confirmed he’s himself… say, Vest, are you heading out?”

The Luxray found herself by the door. Her mate, her Sole, stared at her from across the gulf that separated their table from the outside world. 

“Can I please just go off on my own for a bit?” He begged. “There’s an entire festival out there. I’m not going to… you know.” 

Disappear on her again.

They were walking back from the ends of the world. By the time they arrived at the lift, he was gone forever. In the present, she stared into an impossibility’s eyes, and tried to convince herself that this was real. 

“Come with me to the Bluff,” the Luxray begged back. “Just one more trip together.”  

---

Sharpedo Bluff. More of a refuge than a home. The unnatural rock formation, sculptured in a forgotten time, had been home to Vest since she was a pup. She knew it within and without. But it wasn’t its shady corners and bristly grass that made it familiar. That was left to the scant Pokemon she had shared it with. 

Above the Sharpedo’s nose hung the moon, as large as its festival promised. It was a similar night to this one when she and the once-Totodile met. 

Sole was with her now, walking at her side with a deeply set frown on his maw. They continued towards the Bluff’s ledge, gazing out over the choppy waters of the ocean. 

“Vest,” he mumbled, “I need time alone. I’m really sorry. I…” he fought to put some mirth in his voice. “I know you want to be all about me. But… the good thing about forever after is that a break doesn’t mean much.” 

She scooted a pebble off the edge. “You’re right. You are my favorite subject. Even tonight, when the moon’s trying its hardest, I’m only a lunatic for you. I think the big old thing’s only looking for attention, anyhow.”

Sole broke out into an honest chuckle. “Hush! It might be listening.”   

They watched the moon, wondering which pores were the ears. Their feet shuffled, and the gap between them closed. Just before they sidled, Vest stopped. Her face grew suddenly serious at the thought of touching him. 

Sole’s hand fumbled after her, as if searching in the dark, and he whispered, as if the moon truly was eavesdropping. 

“Vest, I feel you have something to tell me.”  

But the moon didn’t have ears. If anything, its craters resembled the eye sockets of a skull that abandoned its flesh… cavities dotting a slate of lifeless pale-white bone. The moon was a dead thing. It stole the light from someplace else to make itself known. 

“…You never sought attention,” Vest whispered. “I remember–I had to convince you to look at me when I found you on the beach.” 

“You were blocking my sun,” Sole joked. 

She stood up and stepped away from the Bluff’s edge. “I had you billed as the strong and silent type straightaway. You spoke, what, twenty words total before agreeing to dive into a dungeon for my sake? How did I manage to convince you to chase after some rock? My entire life changed because of some weird beachgoer with bad priorities.”  

Sole followed her movements. “You’re strong, Vest. You didn’t need a… need me–” he tried to cut her off, give her a quick embrace. It would be much more romantic if they did it at the end of the bluff, close enough to the lip that they could both crane their necks and see the dark sea below. 

But Vest dug her paws deep into the earth, braked her movement forward and dove around to his side. 

He frowned. “You would have figured it all out eventually.” 

An accusation crept into her voice. “That first day as explorers… I felt I opened you up when you grimaced at those little hay bales in the guild. These don’t look comfortable in the slightest. Seven whole words, I thought. I wished every night afterward, even on the worst: I wished our adventure together wouldn’t be as stunted as your… endearing little grunts.”

“You should have prayed for a cake. I was never going to abandon you.” 

Thunder and pain cracked in Vest’s eyes. 

“R-Right,” she stammered, “I know. You’re back when everyone said it was impossible. W-When…” Vest sat down, chest stuttering like her words. “When Dialga themself claimed you could not be brought back to me. Yet, hooray. Hooray, Sole, because you beat the odds! A few days before our favorite holiday, too! Guess Ranty stopped by the old wishing lake again, because it’s a miracle!” 

The cold faded away.

Sole looked over his shoulder. There were many places for someone to hide from his sight. Within the shrubs, or behind the countless decorations, or even inside the bluff itself. Invisible shadows, waiting for the moment Vest’s voice became a bit too panicked. 

“I think you forgot about something,” she growled. “No worries, because I also forgot. I joined the Exploration Guild to be an explorer. And with you gone, what do you think inspired me to wake up and say our motto every morning? Did you think I’d not travel to other continents, find things? Because the adventure’s longer and so are your grunts–but the longer they both become, the more it shows how fake everything was from the start.”

Sole’s tone dropped flat. “You found something.” 

Hers reared, more a snarl than language. “I sure did, Sole. I know Dark Matter brought you here.” A hint of doubt marred her. She pressed on, a needless question invading her thoughts. “And I know this would be the second time… right?”

A year and a half tore through Sole. A symphony of noise, a Koffing’s breathless cackle, bleating beneath a grate, geysers exploding, sand shifting, a worried couple’s fire crackling; a splash of colors, a Shinx’s trembly blue coat, two frightened children, a roaring waterfall, the distorted world, a Grovyle’s smile, that Shinx’s smile… bubbles floating over the sea. 

He breathed in deep and stretched. It all rolled off of his back, a long-dragged weight finally voided in his soul. 

“Guess my biggest mistake was making your dreams come true.” He shrugged. “Can you just go back by the cliff so I can shove you off?” 

“No–”

Vest was seated and yet she tripped. It couldn’t have been her. It was the world spinning suddenly on its axis, trying to slide her off into the moon. She scrabbled for purchase, fully sure Sole had sold the very floor beneath her feet. 

A paw stopped. It had gone rigid with determination. Another paused, and soon enough, she found her heart had properly broken. Felt like some crap from one of her poems she wrote for Sole: I envy the moon sometimes, for it is without needing to be. It felt disgustingly good for all her anguish to fizzle into numbness. The raging in her head mellowed: she was in the present again, both her dread and hope for the future dashed.

She reaffirmed her footing, breath catching in the warming air. Her lungs deflated in stuttering, painful puffs, and she could only twist the wheezing into a bitter laugh. 

“You asshole. The fall wouldn’t even kill me.” 

“It would buy me an escape from this conversation.” The Croconaw scoffed. “What makes you think I even need you dead? Or that I, you know, care?” 

“Right. Out comes the edgy talk. This is what a kid thinks a villainous reveal is like.” Another fit of giggles hit her. The effort of turning these wheezes into anything but a whimper was tearing apart her throat. 

He tilted his head. “This is how Dusknoir did it. I’m a liar. I betrayed you.” 

“Moron. Why? What idiotic plot could you possibly be mixed up with? You saved the world!” She breathed those words again after saying them, you saved me. A million pleas like it fought to use her windless body.  

“Wrong. I brought it back to the necessary preconditions for my master. Dark Matter found this future most suitable for itself.” 

“You sound,” she gasped. The laughter redoubled, forcing her to grate screams past her spasming throat. “You sound like a total lunatic! Ha!” 

Sole put on a faltering smile. “It’s mean comments like those which made me consider chucking you into the sea.” 

“Yeah? So I can take a spill like you totally did?” 

“Guess that’s the screwy part,” Sole said, crossing his arms. “That human’s remains are scattered across some rocks somewhere in the other timeline.”

“You’re not human. You’re not even…” Vest raked the ground. She wanted her claw-tips to snag. She wanted the pain of yanking them out, any sensation to distract herself from this. “Daté thinks you’re his lifelong friend.” It was impossible to consider the Grovyle’s feelings past uttering his name. 

Sole nodded. “It was the perfect opportunity to assume an identity. If it sounds too convenient, you ought to know my master, Dark Matter, sows, and us servants act as her needles. Its process is too exacting to be adequately understood by simple creatures like you.” 

At some point, mockery had tinted his voice. His long snout was twisted into a goofy, familiar grin. It was the same smile he had when she first taught him how–they needed ones that went for miles, after all. The stupid expression became an inside joke, whipped out whenever he’d successfully pulled her leg. But, maybe, it was the only time anyone coached him on what a real smile looked like. 

Her broken heart revived itself with fear. “You don’t even believe what you’re saying! Our thing’s probably a lie, then. Is it?”  

He tried to join her chuckling with his own. “Vest, why would I need to fake–”

“STOP LAUGHING!” 

Lightning broke from the sky and struck her electrified body. A conduit formed between her and the thunderous forces of the earth. The moon’s glow drowned in the blinding blue light. Her mind unraveled itself into one long string of violent suggestions. This wasn’t a move. It was a rupture.

Vest screamed because the thunder riddled her very pulse and yet it still felt quieter than the confused rage within her. Her voice came apart. The consistent wail careened into a mournful rattle that was finally lost in the storm. 

And yet she still heard Sole laughing at her, in her head. The only option remaining was to send all this furor at him. To render him nonexistent.

…The electric energy dissipated unused into the ground. Her every fur stood on end–her natural tufts organized and sifted down slowly, while the rest remained disheveled. The lightning lingered in her eyes, leaving them with a yellow glow that cast light into the dark. 

The bridge of her snout stung with congestion. It forced her to breathe with her mouth, barely able to work her lungs between the sobs. This was burying her alive. 

“Stop laughing at me,” Vest begged. A child’s whine stole the strength from her voice. “I don’t understand. This isn’t fair.”

“…We were real,” Sole promised. “And, yes, it’s at least partially true that I hail from a lost future. I was born long after the replacement of the gears. Long enough for this world to become lost again on its own–as it’s wont to do.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care. Shut up.” 

“Please, listen. My present, your other future, it… it was, will be, complicated and vindictive. Like you couldn’t imagine. Then, something called Dark Matter woke up and swept through the Continents. A couple Pokemon barely managed to restore the balance… and as I sat around and watched all the celebrations… I realized their success made me furious.” 

“Shut up. Y-You love parties.” 

“Everyone who hurt me, everyone who never gave two shits about me, they got to live on because of one shining example of goodness. Good so far away, its warmth never so much as kissed my hide. Joy is a blanket with holes. My mistress is all-encompassing. I love parties I’m invited to, Vest.”

“Please… stop.” 

“I discovered the traces of my master and it put me to work. In this time period, the resistance to it will be minimal and splintered. The Expedition Society was far too worldly compared to our guild.”

“Our guild?” She spat. 

He ducked his head. “Listen. Less technology here, too, no gadgets, no emera. All I must do is go to Revelation Mountain and kick off the main event. Then my long work’s finally over.”

“If I didn’t know about all of this,” she said, “were you really going to just hit a button and end the world?” 

Sole sighed. “To be honest… I woke up on the beach again not really expecting to succeed.”

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose into the dirt. “You’re glad I won. Good, I’m glad too. Quit it.”

“I’m not laughing,” he said.

“No. Quit this Dark Matter thing.”

“If you read into its nature, you already know my service is ever-binding. I choose how to go about its tasks, yet its will is what ultimately steers me. There’s only one way I may be free.”

Vest looked away. The latent electricity in her fur crackled for action, barely cognizant of who it was desperate to touch. She brushed a paw against the ground, spreading the grain of a neglected trail. After Sole’s disappearance, this place had become a haunt of sorts. Anyone who tried to visit found themselves wallowing in an alien energy. Not bad, simply not theirs. Most never managed to put down a picnic blanket before packing up and returning to town instead. 

They all likely sensed, somehow, the future purpose this bluff would serve. A quiet place to intimately sacrifice a loved one. A graveyard with a single planned plot. 

Sole turned to the moonlit bluff and grimaced. “You ought to know I will be compelled to fight back. I’d rather you not try to handle this personally and get hurt. Bring our guildmates here. Also… let’s talk more. You need to feel ready, to have the conviction to strike–”

“You’re a straight up moron.” 

The sound of bubbles returned in his head. 

He tensed. That was it, the response he feared most, more than the anguish and lightning. Compared to this, he yearned to clash with his love, fang and claw. “Vest, love…”

“Duh, I’ll just take a five day vacation with her, then ask her to kill me. Is that what you were thinking?” 

It was his turn to feel the world shift beneath his feet. “I’m going to end the world. If I’m alive, my outsmarting you goes from a chance to an inevitability. The world will inevitably end.”

“A rock won’t walk regardless of if you give it five minutes or five years. I’m not too worried.” 

“I’m not that stupid. Be reasonable, I’m begging you.” 

He shuddered. The game was up the moment she brought him here. The seconds dragged on, both of them staring at the other, waiting for the next step in this sordid process. A painful cord drew taut, and the Croconaw felt an otherworldly desire to aggress. His claws flexed.

He had thought about this. If she didn’t have the willpower to make the first move, he’d need to force her to act. 

She finally asked something. 

“Glad we cleared all this up. Are you ready to head back to the party?” 

The Luxray walked forward with a renewed, rehearsed relaxation. She brushed her head against his neck and sighed. 

“I want to play some of the games,” she whispered.  

Sole stared at her passing. He put his claws against his leg and pressed, till each point was on the cusp of earning blood. 

“You’re too stubborn,” he muttered. “Just one more night on the town, then.”

---

The Moon Festival itself was a tradition, but the night’s excursions changed from year to year. It was like a worn-down pallet that had carried all kinds of objects at some point in its long history: the box was familiar, but the contents never were. 

With danger behind them, the folks of Treasure Town sought to be more industrious than ever before. Several businesses had taken Vest’s time in the last few months. They asked questions about human traditions, about the kinds of games Sole might have brought up before disappearing. After the Moon Festival two years ago, Sole spoke for a couple minutes about how it all stacked up to human celebrations. She stretched those precious minutes into hours of answers. 

The results were all over the place, but the focal point landed on games. 

There was a heavy emphasis on glowing in the dark, the usual street lamps accompanied by rows and rows of simple torches. Children had gathered up in the courtyard, gawking at Ranty. The poor Bidoof scrambled back and forth with a lit stick, sending paper balloons into the air.   

“Wow!” Sole exclaimed. “Sky lanterns.” 

“It took us a long time to figure out how these are meant to work,” Sole said. “Oh. It just occurred to me: everyone thinks this is a human-like celebration. But you were just making shit up, I suppose.”

“It is human-like,” the Croconaw replied. 

“Huh?”

He lowered his voice and sidled in close. “In the future, the boundary between the human world and this one has thinned a bit. Is this based on what I told you?”

“…Yeah.”

“Then, it’s based on stuff I’ve read and heard in the past… future. I tried hard to avoid lying to you, whenever and however I could.”

She gave him a bitter smile. “I’m glad. I was hoping this would make you happy.”  

In the midst of the festivities, they had come snout to snout, almost embracing. A voice broke them apart.

“Hey, hey! Heroes, come on up! Come on up! See what we brothers’ve cooked up.” 

The Kecleon Brothers had retrofitted their store into a gallery. Rows of small logs stood upright on their emptied back counter, poorly illuminated by a single standing torch. It was almost difficult to pick them out from the gloom. Knowing how much the brothers loved their leverage, the lack of light was all too intentional. 

Vest snaked her way past a gaggle of Pokemon and put a paw on the front counter. “What’s this, Lucre?” She already knew, but asked the Kecleon for Sole’s sake. 

The shopkeep leaned against the front desk and threw up a ball. The luminescent pale-yellow paint, half-dried, slicked off onto the wood. He winced. 

“Oof. Uh, game’s real, real simple!” Lucre declared. “You get three moons, and you have to aim at the logs behind me. Knock down two logs, you get a prize.” 

Sole snorted. “Is the prize our smoothie ingredients?” He asked. 

Torkel gasped and turned to his brother, Lustre. The two hurriedly talked to each other under their breaths. The name Spindle came up several times, and never in a polite tone.  

“I don’t care what’s in my smoothies!” Vest yowled. “Gimme the moons. Moons. Gimme moons, now. They’re so pretty.” 

Lucre put the half-dried ball and two others before her. “Paint’s a new thing made a few towns over. Here you go!” 

Lustre stretched. “Have fun! As for me, I need to go… grab something real quick.” He darted off into the dark. 

Vest almost grabbed the ball before spotting the glistening paint. “Um, I don’t think I can pick this up. Or is this stuff not toxic? Does it taste like lemon custard?” 

“Absolutely not,” Lucre said. “Sorry. Kids keep stealing the moons–the geopebbles. Our inventory loss shall be severe this full moon…” 

Sole picked up the ball, squinting at the transfer of paint from the rock to his claw. “Yuck. Let me win a prize for my cutie.” 

She feigned an awestruck gasp and bowed, ducking out of his way. 

Lucre, however, looked to the Luxray for help. His breath caught in his chest. “Um… Vest, he has a weapon–”

“It’s all fine.” 

He brightened up immediately, tail uncoiling with excitement, and rushed to adjust the logs. 

“How many here know about me?” Sole whispered to her. 

Vest frowned. “Everyone here knows you. You’re actually a hero around these parts.” 

“Smartass.”

“I’m not telling you that. It would be a bad choice.”

“It’s not to connive, Vest, I just want to know in advance who–” he ducked down. His eyes glistened with tears. “Who’s going to give me a look like yours.” 

“The guild all knows, and you didn’t notice this whole week. Relax. Play some clearly rigged carnival games.” 

He sucked in a breath and drew up to full height, eyes set on the logs. “Rigged. Of course it’s rigged.” The Croconaw paced up and down the counter, seeking the right shadow in the back to strike. Without so much as a twitch, he broke right into a fierce throw. The geopebble streaked towards a log. 

The wood gained sentience in the last moments of its life, attempting to slide out of the way. The rock clipped its side and burst it into splinters. 

“Ow!” Someone behind the logs cried. 

Sole tilted his head. “Ow? Hey, Lucre, these aren’t Sudowoodo, right? I’m not a murderer?” 

“If they were Sudowoodo,” Lucre answered. He jogged in place, looking quite nervous. “they would be the slowest, dumbest, least profitable Sudowoodo ever. Dumb as a log! Ha-ha. By the way, a rule is that you have to, um, declare where you’re aiming, pal.”

“The one on the left,” Sole said. He snatched up another rock and readied his next throw before the shopkeep could even blink–or duck, for that matter.

But even though this throw had more speed than the last, the log was ready for it. It skidded out of the way, letting the moon slam into the shop’s back wall. Moonlight flooded into the brand new hole.  

Vest giggled. “If you don’t win this prize, you don’t love me.” 

“Oh. Okay. Stake our relationship on it. That’s a normal thing to say, Vest.” 

Lustre ducked down and pulled a shiny object from a cabinet. “Here, my good friend. This is a gift for her, but maybe passing it from my claws to yours first will save your relationship.” 

He took a silver medallion from Lustre. It resembled their explorer badges. Yet, as if in an alternate history, the pearly center had been replaced with a mold of the brothers’ storefront. 

“Has she caught you up?” Lustre asked.

“That she needs two jobs to make ends meet?” Sole asked. Vest rolled her eyes and leaned in to marvel at the gift. 

“It’s to commemorate her rise to the top! The way she’s been going, she’ll be more than famous here. Or for saving the world… her notoriety’s spreading to every corner. I heard the organization’s scrambling to make up new ranks just for her to hold! We thought…” he blushed, scritching his cheek with a claw. “It would be good to have one that reminds her of home, once hers start looking too different.” 

Vest clenched her teeth. She formed a smile. “Th… Thanks.” 

Sole glanced at her. A discomfort started in his chest again. 

He planted both claws on the counter and let his chest swell with air. A creek’s burbling started in his throat.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, “I need to earn her a prize myself…” 

Lustre reappeared from the darkness, the log he saved in his claws, scales turning green again. The chameleon swung his arms up and down. “No more throws for you, hey! You’re disqualified, and you’re paying for the wall!” He shouted. His eyes popped open; he realized the more emergent problem. “Don’t you dare, don’t you freakin’ dare–”

Sole hosed them down. Logs, Kecleon, decorations, caught in an unceasing deluge. The shopkeepers yowled, still fighting–in spite of everything–to make sure none of the logs fell over. 

But that wasn’t the Croconaw’s goal. He snapped his jaw shut, water streaming in rivulets from his jowls. He snatched up the last moon and showed it off to Vest. 

“I have our prize.” 

She howled with laughter, already backpedaling away from the game. “Don’t steal from Kecleon,” she intoned. A basic rule for any explorer worth their salt. The diamond rank ignored her own advice and snatched the moon away from him, darting back into the crowd. 

He followed, bellowing with laughter, as the brothers attempted to pry themselves from the soggy floor. 

They absconded all the way out to the city’s outskirts, chasing one another along the dirt trail. She ducked and bobbed around him, tail lashing with glee. He tried his best to keep up with an awkward saunter, until finally falling into an awkward four-legged gallop. 

Their rush took them to the outskirts of town, to a copse just off the path. She fought for breath between her panting and laughing. 

“You’re insane,” she said. 

He tried to keep up the laughing. He really did. As his run came to a stop, though, the momentum of the moment died. Sole forced himself to focus on her, and not the open route ahead. Everything in him pointed to the peak of that damned mountain. 

“You reacted oddly to their gift.” 

She nodded. “It’s… I will admit, the brothers know. But they don’t know everything. Only the guild really does.” 

“What is everything? What else is there?!”  

Vest’s face scrunched up, the way it always did as she prepared to do something quick and painless. 

“Tomorrow, we’re leaving for the Hidden Lands. Once Dialga takes the key away from us, we’ll both be stuck there. It’s… our forever home.” 

He was taking her down with him. 

Since Sole woke up on the beach this second time, an urge to scream had been building within him. It was here. His throat finally seized at the horror of it all. 

He was only conscious of this struggle for a few agonizing moments. The yell became too great to ignore, the lump in his throat rising like bile.  

Everything went black. 

---

It was the deepest part of night. Sole awoke groggily. Even when he opened his eyes, the despair that clutched at his heart also clawed at his eyes. He was blind. Lost. Blinking, he reached out with a scrabbling claw and found fur.

“Where…”

“Still outside town. You fainted.”

“Vest? I see.”

“Yup. Are you feeling better–”

“Can I ask a question? Are you out of your fucking mind? It’s a disease I chose to have. Even if I get better, you’ll never be able to believe me.”

“Sole.”

“You need to stop this. You need to live your life.”

“I am. Too bad.”

“No. Please… no. Don’t make this my fault…”   

“You need to try your hardest to listen, okay? I’ve… prepared a whole spiel just for this. Rehearsed it in my head this past week.”

“This is delusional. We’re walking around, playing carnival games when…”

“Please.”

“Okay. Okay, Vest. But this is… I can’t do this. I can barely keep it together. I hardly know where I am.”

“…”

“I’m ready.”

“…Do you know why I wanted to be an explorer so much?”

“Hrm. Because you had a rock you really like.”

“At least make an honest effort. I don’t care about some stupid rock.”

“That’s character development, at least.” 

“You’re awful. I care about how strong I’ve grown. I spent so much time trying to figure everything out. It was like, effortful everything. Effortful walking.”

“Thinking so hard you can barely see where you’re going?”

“Yup.”

“I did that so much during our journey. Sorry.” 

“Quit apologizing. I know personally that it can’t be helped.”

“Still. Sorry.”

“No still, no sorry. No matter what I was doing, half of me was fighting to untangle this… clump of wet hair inside of me. I was camped out in the Sahra desert. It was colder than a Cubchoo’s sneeze. My bolts’d be frozen solid the moment they left me. There was no one else sentient around for miles, only black, and the silhouette of the ground, a bit darker than black. I was down to eating these dried cactus fruits I scrounged, and I happened to look at the basket of crappy fruit jerky… and… I shivered. The clump had gone and unraveled itself.” 

“I’m an explorer because I’m afraid of a certain place.” 

“A place? Home? The lost future?” 

“The world inside of my own head. Where I am when I am nowhere special. When there’s nothing else going on, when no one else sees me, and the real world leaves my grasp, and I’m left… left… exploring who I am. It’s like visiting the desert at night–or the Moon. No one else will ever reach you. That’s what it feels like.”

“I get it. But for me, that’s the safe place.” 

“It’s objectively a very safe place.” 

“I went there on purpose. When things got loud or painful… I went exploring. Every trip, I came back angrier. I couldn’t find anything inside of me except for the very feelings that led me there.”

“And that’s what scared me. Walking in the streets, outside the guild, at the beach, I found I was on the Moon over and over and over and–” 

“Shh. It’s okay. Take a breath.” 

“No one looked at me. I couldn’t figure out how to make them look at me. I felt, I felt myself slowly hating everything. I was hate. Y-You saved me from that. You really did. Because I was losing. And it makes me fucking wish with everything in me that I could have stopped you from losing, too.”

The night air descended towards the dewpoint. Fresh drops christened themselves on the grass far enough from the heat of their bodies. Their chests rose and fell, now aware of the sweet-smelling mist on the breeze. 

“But as we’re both now very aware, that’s not how time works. The way we’ve met is etched in stone. Forever.”

She shifted her snout away from the stars. The moonlight transformed the pasture into a featureless expanse, broken apart by only the fading lights of Treasure Town. Her gaze focused on a tree, her anchor. It was a special moment. Behind that tree was a guild-member, ready to subdue Sole if he tried to run. 

It persevered, this special moment. 

“I love you, Vest.”

“I love you too, Sole.”

“…Hm.”

“What?”

“You’re teasing me. I can tell by the way you just said my name.” 

“How dare you. We’re having a deep, heavy moment–”

“Don’t pull that card. Come on.”

“Ha! It’s such a weird habit. You do it all the time. Hey, Vest. Did you see that, Vest? Like, is there someone else out here with us?”

“I mean, there literally is someone watching us, from over that way. Judging by the scent… Ranty. The whole world’s at stake every moment I’m alive, and he’s hiding like I’m about to count to ten.” 

“Oh. Sure we wouldn’t want Ranty to think you meant him–”

“Hey, Ranty, or whoever owns that foul odor behind that tree! Just wanted to emphasize: I wasn’t saying I love you to you! I love my mate, Vest. Vest the Luxray, diamond-ranked explorer. Vest. The tough kitty.” 

“Don’t let him get to you. I love you, Ranty!”

“You probably can’t see it from there, Ranty, but she just shook her head at me!” 

“What?!” 

“She just whispered to me, Ranty, I’m only saying that so he won’t bawl like a lil’ puppy.” 

“No! Ranty, my heart, you know it shall always have room for you.”

The Bidoof poked his head around the tree. “When you were gone, Vest and I were in a dungeon,” he yelled, “and there was a monster party. And she just teleported away and left me in the middle of it!”

“No, no, no, beloved, I thought it would teleport both of us.”

“Come on, Vest. The truth will set you free.”

“I thought it had a solid thirty-five percent chance of teleporting both of us.”

“You should feel disgusted with yourself.” 

The Luxray laughed. The Croconaw laughed. Their warden, the Bidoof, laughed. 

“Come on, Sole. I’m far from pure, Sole.”

“Ugh.”

“I haven’t finished saying what I found out while I explored on my own. Finding out about the place, the moon, that was only the first thing. The second thing is… it’s my resolve. My real answer, not the endless dungeons or the nonstop seething. There was something Marowak said to me, once: enjoy your youth. At a certain point, you stop growing up for free. And this solution, I’ve been saving up for it every day, bit by bit, since the day we met. In the desert, I finally bought it, this… overwhelming maturity, as if I had left my den for the first time. Traveling alone was so much easier after, it was as if I could never get lost again. I was finally ready to face the pain of your return… in the end, what I bought amount to five words.”

“…Please tell me.” 

“We can be alone together.”

“…”

“The Moon, the Hidden Lands, it doesn’t matter anymore. When I’m with you, I don’t mind everything else fading away into the background. I don’t feel like I’m disappearing. It’s more like I am finally fitting in. I belong with you: everywhere, in every moment, we share a home together.”

“I’ve ripped apart the life you could have had. This all amounts to a compromise.” 

“When we fixed the gears, we escaped not just a bad fate, you know? We escaped all of fate. We gave up knowing what will happen in exchange for whatever moments we could scrounge. Heroes or not, life can dole its shittiest deals out to anyone.”

“We got screwed over.” 

“Alone or together, things can happen at any time, and I choose to be together. There’s no need to question if another way would be better. No matter the despair, we will see our lives through. Honestly, past the pain… I won’t lie, I’m not worried in the slightest about us.”

“…”

“Hey…”

“Hm?”

Sole gently laid a claw on her shoulder, pulling her back. She rolled, meeting his eyes. This was the last time they would share this patch of grass together. It occurred to both of them, then, that their trip to the bluff was the last time. The smoothies at Spindle’s were the last ones. They had one last scam run on them by the brothers. Last laughs in the guild, last… 

Looking into each other’s eyes, though, they saw only new wonders. And that was everlasting.

“Thank you for saving the world again,” he whispered. “You’re incredible.” 

She nuzzled his nose. “We’ll save the world every day we’re together.”