Chapter 1 – Hypnopompia

DAY 1

…

“…I heard they found his body just outside of […]. Do you think he actually went inside?”

As his brain slowly, methodically whirrs to life due to some random low buzzing noise in his head, he catches the conversations of those around him.

He doesn’t wonder if they’re talking about himself yet, but he knows he’ll be curious when he’s at least a little more awake. If he’s awake at all.

“I hope not. He might’ve just wandered by on a whim because, y’know, possibly feral? Or he could’ve decided to stay there because he could sense the dungeon’s…”

His groggy mind doesn’t care to process the implications of the conversation, instead startling and stuttering awake at the proclamation that “he’s awake!” followed by erratic feet-shuffling slowly getting farther and farther away.

His mumbling probably set them off – he doesn’t know. Or care.

Eyes still closed, he lets himself stretch out, flipping over onto his stomach in the hay…? Bedding? He’s not quite sure. It does feel a bit fuzzy, though.

A lot of things in his mind are fuzzy right now.

The shuffling comes back again as he yawns, opening his eyes.

As a trio of creatures rush into the room, staring at him with probably the most conflicted expressions he can remember having ever seen – not like he’s awake enough to remember much to begin with – he’s thankful that the room’s brightness isn’t too overwhelming.

“Hey! Uhm…” A female voice starts.

He lazily flicks his gaze to the intruders as the one who’d talked, a blue and white ovular thing, turns to the other two with her.

“…Do either of you know what he is?”

The orange one nods, smile on its face. He doesn’t catch what it says.

He does catch the blue creature’s response, however, as it turns back to him.

“Great! Okay, Quilava, how are you feeling?”

‘…? What’s a ‘Quilava’? …I don’t think that’s what I’m supposed to be…?’

The green one whispers something to the orange one.

‘…That’s not my name either though… why are they calling me that, then?’

The green one speaks up, voice clearly masculine. “I still think he might be a feral.”

The orange one looks down at the green one. “I mean…” She turns back to him. “…Can you speak?”

‘…Oh.’

“Uhm… hi-“

“See!? He isn’t feral!” she exclaims, yelling at the green one, who he assumes is her friend. With the orange and green ones distracted, the blue one steps back in.

“Okay… Quil-… do you have anything you want me to call you?”

“Kai.”

The argument in the background fades away. “Alright! …My name is Zoo the Azumarill! I don’t know if you know what species I am or not, nor do I know if you know what species of pokémon these guys are. Can I ask if you…?”

“In my head, I’ve been referring to you three as ‘blobs of color’.”

The green one snorts. “Ah, nevermind, I think I like ya. Mah name’s Donnie the Nuzleaf. Pleasure.”

Kai blinks sleepily.

“Ooh! My full name is Phenayah, though my friends all call me Fen. I’m a Braixen. Nice to meet you! I’m the leader of Team Reroute! Donnie’s my partner, and we were the ones who found you!”

‘Found…?’

The azumarill continues after the braixen, “About that, would you be able to answer a few questions, or do you want to wait a bit?”

Kai tries to picture in his mind what he’s supposed to look like. “Uh, sure? I guess I can answer some… if I know how to answer them.”

The braixen takes over, keeping her cheery tone. “Do you know anything about where we found you, or why you were there?”

Kai looks at her funny, “…No? I don’t really remember… anything…? A few things maybe?? I’m racking my mind-“

Zoo interrupts him before he can go on too far of a tangent, “Hey- uhm, that might’ve been a bit of a loaded question, so I’ll just go with this instead: What things do you remember? I’ll just go with that, for now. The clear things only. If it’s obscure we can go over it later.”

His answer comes easily, “Name and species.”

“…Anything else? Those aren’t too hard to remember, one being three? Three or so letters, and the other being…”

“Seven.” Fen continues, “Seven letters.”

“Not seven letters.”

“Hm?”

“My species isn’t seven letters long – it’s five. I’m pretty sure? H-U-M-A-N. Yeah, five.”

“The fuck’s a human?” Donnie wonders, earning a light slap from Fen.

Kai shrugs. “I dunno. My mind’s telling me that that’s what I’m supposed to be. Seven letters though – you called me a quilava earlier, right?”

“Yeah?”

He lifts a hand – ‘paw’, his mind corrects itself instantly, though he does catch the error – in front of his face. Tilting his head, he waves it at them, “Apparently this is supposed to be a hand and not a paw? I think? I accidentally called it a ‘hand’ in my head, and I don’t even know what a hand’s supposed to look like…? Can’t say I know what a human looks like either…”

“Memory loss is obvious… Okay. Only one more question for you before I’ll letcha decide where ya want to go; does your head hurt any?”

“Where… I don’t have a headache, no. Head is kinda buzzing a bit, but nothing painful. What do you mean ‘where I want to go’?”

The azumarill leans against the room’s wall, “Well, you could either stay in here in the medical bay for a while, or you could talk with a few others that are in situations somewhat like yours. Less so in the memory loss-type thing and more so just with having nowhere else to go. I’m assuming you don’t have anywhere to go with the… y’know…”

“Yeah. …” Kai shakes his head. “Sure. I’m fine meeting with a few new peo-… some others.”

She eyes him curiously, though Kai doesn’t pick up why. “By the way, I’m surprised you’re reacting to this as calmly as you are. In the one other case we had, the ‘mon attacked everyone around them ‘till they calmed down. You’re…”

Kai looks away for a moment, putting some weight on a foreleg, “I’m just… taking it all as it comes, I guess.”

Zoo frowns in thought for a moment, before smiling back. “Nice. …Wanna start to walk there?”

“What about us!?” Fen wails. Kai flinches back slightly and Donnie grabs one of her paws. “Fen, you know we should think about getting back to our guild soon, right? We were falling somewhat behind on our guild tasks.”

“But this is important-!”

“Yes, it is. Luckily for us, if the eastern guild finds out something about ’em, they’ll report it right back to our guild, and they’ll give us credit. Right, Zoo?”

The azumarill beams, “Of course! I’d feel bad if we didn’t!”

‘Wait a minute…’ Kai looks between Team Reroute and the azumarill in confusion. “You guys aren’t working with Zoo?”

Donnie chuckles. “Not directly. She’s probably a bit higher up than us too, since we’re still in the guild’s trainin’ program.”

“…I have a lot of questions, and I’m not sure I’m quite ready to have them all answered right now.”

“Well, ya’ve got plenty o’ time ta get ‘em answered. Honestly, I’d say ask the ‘mons in the daycare area you’re heading to. They’ve been in something similar to you, so they’d probably be more willin’ to explain things to ya. He’s goin’ ta the daycare area, right?”

“Yup!”

“Then yeah, ask ‘round. You’re bound to get some good info from ‘em. If not, just ask Zoo or some other guild member. As long as they aren’t busy, they’d probably be happy to explain stuff to ya.”

Kai nods.

Zoo lifts an arm in something of a wave, Team Reroute doing the same in turn. Kai doesn’t follow suit, staring at the duo neutrally. “See you guys later, and give our team a shoutout, ay?”

The azumarill laughs. “Of course. Ya don’t need to remind me more than once, y’know.”

“It’s so that you remember! Maybe we could get a few bonuses from the R&D guild too? Regardless, hope ya stay well, Kai!”

“Mhm. You guys too.”

The braixen and nuzleaf leave with a grin and smirk on their respective faces as Zoo and Kai watch.

When they’re out of sight, the azumarill yawns quietly from his side, stretching and turning to him.

“So! Now that that’s done, are ya ready to meet the-… I guess we could call it a daycare area, though we don’t really have an official name for it. There’s only five ‘mons there, all of which are in their mid-teens. Should probably come up with an official name for it, but that’s not that important anyway- are ya ready to go? No point in waiting now, unless you want to ask me anything?”

“…I can’t really think of anything.”

“Great! Let’s head over then.”

Kai fully rises into a quadruped stance, and the azumarill leads him out of the room. 

---

The walk is short and quiet. Nothing really catches Kai’s attention, though a few of the creatures scattered around the place eye him curiously. The layout of the place is pretty much the same regardless of where he looks; walls made of dirt, the occasional window held together by two perpendicular sticks, and a hay seat or two, plus a few rooms. Looking in those rooms prompts the discovery of a few tables, but they aren’t really anything to write home about either.

They make it to the so-called ‘daycare area’ within a minute. Immediately, he spots two of what are probably some of the residents of the room.

Made even more obvious when the one that looks vaguely like Fen with a smaller body and darker colors jumps all over him.

“HEY! ARE YOU NEW HERE? AREWEGETTINGSOMEONEELSETOJOIN-ACK!“

The other creature behind her, some blue thing with small spikes on its paws, grabs the braixen-lookalike’s tail, prompting a loud yelp.

“Arida. Calm.”

“But he’s a fire-type too~!”

“And if you jump all over him like that, you’ll scare him away. I’ve tried hammering that into your head, but I guess it’s just never stuck.”

“But I just got exciteddd, you can’t blame me for that, right?”

“Yes, I can.”

He turns to Kai, bowing. “Apologies. Arida’s half-feral, and I’m the one responsible for training her currently. Teaching her social norms, beating the bad behavior out of her, etc. You get the jist. Now, My name is Paws the Riolu. What can I call you?”

‘…What?’

“Uhm… Kai. Nice to meet you, I guess…?”

He nods, still grabbing onto Arida’s tail, before dragging her off. “There were a few things I was still planning on doing with my litten friend, so I’ll let the two of you…”

The riolu stops after taking a good half-dozen steps, glaring at Kai with something akin to suspicion. After an uncomfortably long pause, however, he turns back around and continues on as normal. Kai stares at Paws’s retreating body, dead-eyed. 

As the riolu-litten duo gets further away, going into what is probably their room, Zoo grimaces. “…That was… an introduction, certainly. Not what I was planning necessarily, but… yeah. You want to talk with the others here?”

Kai just shrugs. “Rather you lead the interactions at this point.”

“…Okayyyyy… I suppose we could probably talk to…” She slowly walks forward. 

In a moment, she’s standing just inside the room in a way that Kai can’t see around her. “Hey you two, we might have someone new joining you soon. Wanna meet him?”

Immediately, a female voice responds “Who?”

That prompts the azumarill to quickly step out of the way, and out of the room. 

Kai notices that neither of their attentions are on him, though. At least, not directly.

The purple creature with black hair covering its eyes is facing towards where the azumarill left, while the white goo creature next to her is eyeing the purple creature in concern. Said goo creature quickly catches his gaze though. It opens its mouth to say something, but the purple creature beats them to it.

“Is this a prank or something?”

The goo creature turns back to the (what Kai assumes to be female based on the voice) purple creature, expression now confused. “What?”

“I can’t sense anyone else.”

The goo creature turns back to Kai, who just shrugs. They slowly turn back to the purple creature. “…Well, there is somebody here.”

“Won’t believe it ‘till I can hear ‘em. Whatever thing is here, speak. I want to know you exist.”

Kai looks back to the goo creature, mouthing ‘blind?’ with a tilt of his head. The goo creature doesn’t get the memo, so he just sighs.  

“Okay. Uh, hi-?”

“-Why can’t I sense you.” She immediately blurts out, tone accusing. 

Kai flinches back, “I-I don’t know… I woke up with no memories earlier, but-”

“-Hmm. …That’s interesting.” She whispers something to the goo creature, who sneaks a look at Kai.

The purple creature turns to face him again herself. “Can you come back tomorrow? I need to think a few things over.”

“Uhh…” He looks to the goo creature for clarification. They just stare at him blankly.

“Okay, I’ll go. …”

Frowning, he leaves their room. He quickly catches Zoo’s eye.

“That was really quick. How’d the chat go?”

Kai looks down. “Uhm… I don’t know…? The purple creature told me to-“

“Ah, I’ll tell ya their names and species when ya finish explaining.”

“…Alright. Uh, the purple one told me to-… that she apparently couldn’t sense me, before telling me to leave. The white creature just seemed generally confused the whole time.”

Her eyes narrow in thought. “Can’t sense you… That’s… weird… Anything else?”

“The purple creature also said that they’d apparently call for me tomorrow when they’ve gotten time to ‘think about it’.”

“Hmm. For now I’ll leave that alone, but I am curious myself. I’ll talk to her a bit later about it.

“Regardless, The so-called ‘purple creature’ you… attempted to talk to, is Myzi the Deino. She’s blind, but very strong-willed and usually can walk around the guild just fine. Her partner is Sumac the Goomy. She’s relatively shy, but has Myzi’s back pretty much. Those two have been together for a very long time though – probably since only a bit after hatching. They rarely keep things from one another, even if they do keep things from me or the guild… If she finds you interesting though, that’s… probably a good sign.”

‘Hatching…? Keeping things from-‘

“Now… I don’t know if the last ‘mon here would actually want to meet you 1-on-1 quite yet, even though the two of you are… actually, you’re both in a somewhat similar situation, both of you having experienced memory loss. Then again, his was when he was like 8, and you’re likely over the age of 16, considering how you’ve evolved already…

“Anyways, yeah. He’s a bitclosed off, so I won’t set you up with him right away. Now that we’ve kinda talked to everyone here, whaddya want to do? Explore the guild? …Well, there isn’t much to do here otherwise. So, would you like to explore the guild, or do you want to do something else?”

‘…Already a lot, but like… I dunno.’

Kai sniffs, shrugging. “I’m fine to tour around a bit, I guess.”

“Alright! While we walk, want me to tell you about the guild as a whole? Mystery Dungeons? Could even talk about […]-“

‘…Didn’t I hear that buzzing when I woke up?’

“Uh…” Kai interrupts her before she can say anything else, “What did you say?”

“… I said we could talk about the dungeon we found you outside of, […]?”

The buzzing in his head gets louder, to the point where it gets annoying. 

“I didn’t… Let’s just do a smaller tour. I think I’m gonna go to sleep early today. My head’s starting to hurt.”

“What about {…]-“

“Can we please talk about something else?” He hisses, head pounding. She narrows her eyes, concerned, but decides not to push it.

“Okayyyyy… Wanna just get some food before ya call it a day, at least? You haven’t eaten or drank anything since you’ve woken up, after all.”

“Sure.”

‘…What the fuck was that?’

As they slowly march to wherever food might be located, Kai growls to himself. Zoo eyes him and he quickly stops, but he can’t get it out of his head.

‘Why is my brain… censoring something? How is my brain censoring something? It’s just a random name I think, so it shouldn’t be something bad…?’

‘…Then again, it’s not like it matters really.’

He leans his head back for a moment, letting out a quiet yet deep breath of exasperation. 

‘FFuucckk… what is this dream? It’s interesting, but frighteningly realistic considering how lucid I feel… I think. Besides, well, all the creatures around here. Not like I’m gonna give any effort in understanding what my mind’s trying to tell me with this. Would’ve thought there’d at least be more action in my dreams though…’

He scratches the back of his head with a paw, smirking to himself.

‘God, I’m gonna be exhausted when I wake up in the morning.’

As they walk by a few others, he quickly drops his smirk, straightening back up. 

Within moments though, a big green creature strolls by, stopping when they see him.

“Hey, Zoo! I see that the quilava woke up!”

The creature turns to Kai, “What’s your name? I’m Zywie the Meganium – this guild’s guildmaster!”

“Kai, nice to meet you too.”

She nods, beaming. “I was actually looking for you to make sure you were doing alright. I don’t have too much time though, so I’ll have to get going pretty soon here. Has the guild been treating you well so far?”

Kai shrugs. “Hasn’t really had a chance not to treat me well.”

“That’s good. Now, If ya need anything, feel free to ask for me! I might not be able to personally help ya, but I can easily get something arranged for you. Hopefully you weren’t over-interrogated?”

He shrugs again. “Nah, it’s fine.”

She nods. “Alright, good! I’ll be on my way then. See you two around!”

Zoo nods respectfully back and Kai gives her a small wave.

Turning back to Kai, the azumarill sticks her tongue out, “One less thing I’ll need to explain. I’ll leave those explanations for tomorrow though. Food time, after all!”

---

The cafeteria isn’t overwhelming, mainly consisting of basic bench-like tables with stumps for seats. Near the back is multiple piles of what appear to be different fruits. Kai doesn’t care about how impractical this method of storage might be, instead recognizing one of the piles as having apples and taking one for himself. Zoo takes two pink fruits before guiding them to a table.

They eat in relative silence. Every so often Zoo looks like she wants to say something, but usually closes her mouth before any words come out. When the two finish, she asks if the food helped with his headache, to which he nods.

“Now that we’ve ate, I’m guessing you want to turn in for the day?”

Kai quickly nods, wincing.

“Alright. I’ll lead ya there, then I’ll leave ya alone. Cool?”

Kai nods again, slower.

“Alright. Let’s go then.”

She leads the two of them back into the medical bay, and back to Kai’s bed. With a short wave, she leaves him alone with his thoughts. He quickly settles down.

‘…I would consider this an interesting dream, though it’s also kinda freaky how real all of this feels. I would say something like ‘I haven’t had a dream this lucid ever’, but I can’t remember enough to know if I’ve even had a dream before. Then again, maybe this is just how lucid dreaming works? Dream logic kind of applies to the fact that I can remember some things and can’t remember others, like how I can apparently remember what a lucid dream even is, though I can’t put a name to a species, nor do I even know what I looked like before all this. It’s all so freaky. Though this has been interesting, as I said earlier, I’m kinda glad that it’ll end soon. Pretty sure that’s how dreams work.’

‘…It’s nice to have a slower-paced dream, at least. If I actually manage to remember anything from this dream, I’ll probably write a few things down about it definitely. …Then again, nothing really even happened. I just got interrogated, talked to a few random people, ate an apple, and ended up here.’

‘…Waking up does sound good right about now. The best way to trigger that is, I’ll assume, going to sleep.’

So, he does that. Or he tries, at least. He adjusts himself as much as he can to make sure not too many of the strands are poking him, and starts counting. He doesn’t know what he’s counting, but something tells him it’s a somewhat good method of putting himself to sleep.

Within 20 minutes, it works, and he’s fast asleep.

---

Kai blinks awake.

He slowly rises from the… hay-made bed. His brain chugs to life, thoughts whirring. ‘Fuck.’

He quickly shoots his gaze out the glassless window, noting the sun to be all but out, and then down to his… still paws.

‘Guess I haven’t woken up yet. Though, this is still a dream probably.’

‘…This is a dream. Right?’

He shakes his head to try and clear the thought from his head. He can’t get rid of it, though. Shaking harder just brings the headache back up.

‘What if it’s not? I don’t think dreams are supposed to last this long.’

He stops shaking his head, and the beginnings of tears form.

‘Shut up.’

His body begins to shudder.

‘What if I’m just in a coma? Or, even worse, what if this is fucking real?’

His eyes widen, and he immediately starts shaking his head harder.

‘Nope. Nope. This is still a dream. This is still a dream. ThisisstilladreamthisisstilladreamthisisstilladreamTHISISSTILLAFUCKINGDREAMRIGHT!?’

Tears freely falling, he holds his head and crashes down onto the hay bale of a bed, curling up into as tight of a ball as his body lets him.

‘I just want my memories back, and to wake up… where I belong. In my reality. Not here, in a place I don’t think I’ll ever get familiar with…’

He desperately shuts his eyes.

‘Maybe… I can just keep trying to sleep. It’ll eventually work, right? I’ll eventually wake up, right?’

But he can’t fall asleep. No matter how hard he tries to force himself, all he manages is more stress, more shaking, and more crying.

Slowly, though, he lets himself take deep, calming breaths.

‘…It’s not worth it to freak out right now. If this does happen to be a more… permanent… situation, I guess I’ll just have to make the most of it. This world doesn’t necessarily seem terrible. A little dirty and disorganized, maybe, but not bad.’

‘And that’s only if I wake up here. If I wake up back in my bed, like what’s supposed to happen, then I’ll have nothing to worry about – just real life.’

‘…Yeah. I have nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine.’

‘…Right?’

Though the lingering doubt settles and roots itself in his mind, he manages to fall asleep again, a small frown adorning his face.