CHAPTER 12: QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Chapter 12: Questions Answered

Moon Continent Explorer’s Guild, West Coast Branch

After the incident involving the shiny beldum, it was time for Team Seekers’ official promotion to bronze rank, with which they received new badges made from bronze, rather than the tin ones provided to new, normal rank explorers. Normally, this sort of situation would call for a celebration, and there was sort of one; not really a big party, but there was cake. That evening, though, after the sun had set, Ryan climbed and sat down on the windowsill by the newly repaired window in the team’s room, staring out over the moonlit environment outside to look at the stars. Thanks to the nonexistent light pollution, he was able to see many galaxies and nebulae, and it was gorgeous to someone from a place where even the big dipper was barely visible on the best of nights. He sighed with longing, which Lena had her attention drawn to. She got up from her own restless attempt at sleeping and looked out the window besides him.

“…something wrong? Normally, you would be fast asleep right now,” Lena began quietly to not wake up their teammates.

Not turning his head in her direction, he replied, “You know how that beldum sounded to you like they are someone important?”

“Yeah?”

“The way you said that… makes me think of someone myself… someone very important to me… three of them, actually.”

It took the sneasel a few seconds to realize what Ryan meant by that. “Oh, you mean your family?”

Ryan sighed again. “Yeah, they’re exactly who I mean. I miss them…”

---

Near Seattle, Washington, 8 years ago

“Make sure to be good for your uncle Terry while we’re gone,” a man with messy blond hair said as he tried to flatten it down last minute. Jack and his wife, Angela, who had a pink bow in her long brown hair, were Ryan’s parents, and they were headed out on a date. Their plan was to pick up their only son in the morning. “You have everything? Clothes for tomorrow, your 3DS, and… there’s probably something I’m forgetting, but hopefully you have that as well!”

A boy, standing about four-foot-ten, with brown hair, a blue hooded sweatshirt, and a backpack filled with the aforementioned items his father had listed, stepped out of the car. He was excited to see his only other living relative. “Yeah, don’t worry about me, mom ‘n’ dad, I’ll be fine!” he said, smiling. “Just make sure to have a good night out. Don’t let me ruin it for you!”

Just then, Terry practically burst out of the house, a patch of his rapidly thinning hair burnt away from an unknown caustic substance. “I’m here, I’m here!” he said. “Gotta see the lovebirds off, ya know!” He pointed a finger gun at the married couple.

“Terry!” Ryan cheered as the man who perpetually wore a labcoat and jeans ran over to the car parked in the street. Terry ignored his nephew for a moment and focused on his brother, relative to whom the uncle was ten years older.

“Oh, sister of mine,” Terry said playfully, “and her wonderful husband, make sure you two don’t go dyin’ on us!”

“We’ll try!” Jack winked back. Angela was in a less playful mood.

“Well, I certainly hope we don’t. What would Ryan think?”

“Ah,” Terry scoffed, covering Ryan’s ears, “don’t put that nonsense in his head! You two’ll be fine! You’re just headed to some fancy-schmancy restaurant in downtown!” He waved them off. “Now go and live your best lives!”

“Sure can do!” Jack answered, giving a thumbs up before rolling up the window and driving away.

“They have nothing to worry about,” Terry said under his breath before turning to Ryan. “Well, it’s still early in the evening. Whaddaya say we go order some pizza and play some Mario Kart?”

“Yeah!” Ryan cheered again as the two entered the craftsman-styled house.

Jack is the type of driver who goes well above the speed limit as long as there are no police officers around. So, he sped down I-5 at just under 80 miles an hour, hitting minimal traffic going into the city, although the northbound lanes were jam-packed with rush hour traffic. Before long they were pulling off at exit 165A. As they approached the traffic light at James and 6th, going considerably slower than they were on the highway, the area around them started to look an awful lot brighter.

“Augh, that light!” Jack complained, shielding his eyes.

“I know, right? There’s no way it should be this bright out right now!” Angela responded.

The light soon completely overwhelmed the two, and before they knew it, they felt nothing, and when the light faded from the car, it was completely empty as it suddenly veered to the left.

---

Terry rarely watches TV news, as he prefers to read it, either in the newspaper or on his phone, rather than watch it. However, as he served himself some of the newly-delivered pizza, he had a sudden desire to put the news on today. While Ryan got his own pizza, Terry turned on the TV and flipped to the local news, and was shocked when the shot he came upon was a helicopter shot of an intersection near I-5.

“…and in other news tonight, Seattle’s most dangerous intersection claims two more lives today as a vehicle, identified as a black 2011 Honda Civic, smashed into the support beam of I-5 near the intersection of 6th Avenue and James Street,” a reporter said. “The vehicle tag is identified as being under the joint ownership of one Angela Wiskell and her husband, Jack. Curiously, no bodies were found, but both have been presumed dead. At least one eyewitness claimed to see a glowing light envelop the car briefly, but without anyone else watching at that time, and due to a current lack of security camera footage, whether this is actually true is up in the air. The story will be updated as more information comes to light.”

At this, Terry dropped his plate on the floor, staining the carpet with pizza sauce. He fell to his knees, barely able to hold himself together. How am I going to tell Ryan this? Terry thought to himself. It’s not even like I can just… not tell him. Even if I don’t, he’ll find out on his own. He sighed. Guess I’ll have to give it to him straight.

“R-Ryan!” Terry called out to the kitchen as he rewinded to the beginning of the story, where the boy was currently gorging himself on a third slice of pizza.

“Just a minute!” an oblivious Ryan called back between bites.

“It’s very important, and very bad!”

The boy slowly swallowed his current bite. What could be so important right now? He thought as he left his half-eaten slice on the counter. What he heard when Terry replayed the news brief said it all. Ryan started to shake his head.

“N-no… that can’t be true… they must’ve survived!” Ryan said, panicking. “M-maybe they left the scene b-before anyone could-“

“But the newspeople said-“

“I don’t care what they said!” Ryan yelled, tears streaming down his face. “I know they’re still alive out there, I can feel it! They just have to be!” He sniffled. “They can’t be gone…”

As Terry wiped away Ryan’s tears, trying very hard to not show his own anguish, he said, “Look, it’s hard to lose someone you love. Heck, I had to go through this myself when your grandma and grandpa died. But, you just gotta accept that… they’re gone.”

Ryan sniffled again, still on the verge of tears. “…o-okay…”

Terry gave Ryan a bear hug, partially to calm his nephew, and partially to try to calm himself down.

---

Moon Continent Explorer’s Guild, West Coast Branch, Present Day

“After the funeral,” Ryan said as he stared down as his paws, “Terry was my only living adult relative- presumably at least, and definitely the only one in the area- so I ended up moving in with him. I mean, there was also my older sister Evelyn but she was still in her sophomore year of college at the time; last I heard she’s working for some military contractor on the other side of the country but that’s besides the point. By now, I’ve… mostly… accepted that my parents were gone. Yet, I still have this gut feeling.” He looked out the window at the stars again. “This feeling that… my mom and dad may still be out there somewhere… maybe on Earth, maybe even here in this world, or in another universe entirely.” The eevee shook his head. “But I could be wrong. I mean, a gut feeling isn’t nearly enough to go off of. If there’s no concrete evidence- and that bright light that that one eyewitness saw hardly counts- then I have no way of knowing for sure.” He turned to the sneasel sitting next to him. “Thanks for hearing me out, Lena. You’re a great friend.”

She shrugged. “It’s no problem, really. But, hey! Maybe, at some point on our travels, we’ll run into your parents someplace! I may have no clue what pokemon they may be, or if they’re even here, but me helping to try to seek them out is the least I can do to repay you for trying to help me recover my memory!”

A grin appeared on Ryan’s muzzle as he put a forepaw behind Lena’s back as the two stared out at the stars once again. Just then, Terry, who had been secretly listening the whole time, spoke up.

“I don’t mean to interject or anything, but-“

At that, Ryan yelped, jumping a bit and bumping into the window.

“Don’t just sneak up on us like that,” Ryan hissed, trying not to wake Ben.

The pachirisu reached a paw behind his head. “My bad. But Ryan, there’s something very important that I forgot to tell you before, related to the story you just shared.”

The eevee tilted his head to the side. “Oh?”

“After the funeral, I tried to accept that they were gone. Yet, I, too, had this burning feeling inside. I had a feeling that I should try using my Interdimensional Person Locator to see if Jack and Angela could have been in another dimension. So, I typed in their names.

“To my surprise, it actually did pick up a signal!”

Ryan perked up at this. “Wait, really?”

“An Interdimensional Person Locator?” Lena asked, confused. “Huh.”

“Don’t interrupt my story. Anyways, yeah, so the good news was that they were still alive.” Ryan fistpumped at that because a proper cheer would’ve been too loud. “The bad news is that the IPL couldn’t pinpoint a precise location in the multiverse, and it produced around three thousand results for possible universes they could be in.”

“Wow, that’s a lot,” Lena marveled. “There’s really that many other universes?”

Ryan’s ears drooped at this. “Really shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

Terry raised a paw. “But there’s more. That first scan? I conducted it five years ago. As I worked on building that interdimensional portal, I also worked on narrowing down the list of possible universes by finetuning the IPL. By the day before I activated the gateway, over two weeks ago now, I had narrowed it down to a baker’s dozen: thirteen possible universes where Jack and Angela could be located, a reasonable amount to check over the summer. The best part is that, not only is this universe one of the candidates, it’s also where the signal resonated the strongest… although I intended to check this one last due to the risk of us being turned into pokemon.”

Ryan chuckled, staring at the pink pads of his right forepaw. “Well, that concern certainly aged well. But why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“Because,” Terry answered, “if you had known my true intentions, you would have focused too much on finding them to enjoy the adventures we would be going on, the places we would be exploring, the things we would be discovering.”

Ryan shrugged. “Fair enough I guess.”

Lena, though, was grabbing her head. “Wow,” she said, “Ryan’s parents are dead, but also not, and now you two are interdimensional travelers?” She shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you- I mean, stranger things have happened- it’s just that this is a lot of information to take in.” A broad smile appeared on the sneasel’s face as she turned back to Ryan. “But my offer still stands, especially now that we know that there’s a good chance that they may actually be here!”

“And I still accept your offer,” Ryan replied, before turning back to the pachirisu. “Terry, do you want to stargaze with us?”

“Certainly,” the pachirisu said as he climbed onto the windowsill between the other two former humans as they looked out at the stars into the wee hours of the night.

---

Dreamscape

After some time, Ryan finally curled up on his bed and drifted off into a dream. It wasn’t a normal dream setting though. All he could see was a black void, yet he could also see himself as he stood there. He sat up, finding that, in this dream at least, he was a human again, right down to the outfit he had on before the accident.

“Huh,” Ryan said, then noticing that his voice echoed around him. He looked around, still seeing nothing. “What… is this place?”

He stood up with a slight bit of difficulty, as it had been some weeks since he had stood on two legs instead of all fours. With trepidation, he walked forward, his footsteps echoing much like his voice did.

“Hello?” he called out. “Am I alone in here?”

In the distance, he saw an eevee. It was wearing a silver scarf, identical to the one Ryan had.

“Are you… me?” the human said, kneeling down closer to its level. The eevee nodded back.

He reached out to pet… himself? But then seemingly out of nowhere, the small, brown fox began to glow and change shape. Ryan recoiled a bit in fear, worried that this might be a sign. He covered his eyes, but when the light faded, there was no eevee, no evolution, not even a silver scarf on the floor. It had disappeared without a trace.

“…well, that was weird,” the young man remarked.

Just then, another light appeared, and when it faded, floating right in front of where he stood was a pink, psychic kitten. Ryan tilted his head curiously.

“…Mew?”

“The one and only!” she said cheerfully. “Well, the only one in this universe, anyways.”

“Huh. Never thought I’d see a real mew,” Ryan said with interest. “But, uh… can I ask you some questions?”

“Okay, shoot.”

“First, how are you in my dream?”

“Simple, dream eater. Don’t worry, I’m not actually eating your dream, though. It’s just the easiest way to enter someone’s dreams.”

“Okay, next question. Why am I a human in my dream when my physical form is that of an eevee?”

“Oh, I’m not an expert at dream stuff,” Mew said, “but I think its because this is the form you think of yourself in. You still consider yourself human, so you will remain one in your dreams.”

“What if I start considering myself both human and eevee?”

“As I said, I’m no dream expert; I have no idea what would happen. My guess is that your ‘dream form’ would be, like, a human-eevee hybrid of some kind.”

Ryan shuddered when he imagined how that might look. He thought of another question. “How am I in the pokemon world? Why am I in the pokemon world? Is there some kind of disaster I was called to stop or something?”

“When you and that Terry guy activated that portal…” Mew paused to figure out how to word this sentence in a way that sounded truthful without revealing too much. In other words, she chose to spin a lie. “…Arceus and I were watching you. The llama saw that something was wrong with the portal but before either of us could do anything, it exploded, causing you both to end up in the pokemon world.” The kitten took a deep breath. “That’s all I can tell you.” There was more to the story, but she wasn’t ready to tell yet.

“So, basically,” she finished, “you two are in this world by accident.”

Ryan sighed. “Well, that’s a bit worrisome. Did something like that happen to my parents? If it helps, their names were- or are- Jack and Angela, and they disappeared five years ago, nearly to the day.”

“Yes, I do remember Arceus accidentally ‘yoinking’ a couple out of a ‘car’ in a place called ‘Seattle’. Does that sound familiar?”

“Yes!” Ryan shouted. “That’s them! So they are in this world! Do you know what pokemon they were turned into?”

“That, I don’t remember,” Mew said apologetically, “but, if your pokemon form is that of an eevee then it’s likely that at least one, if not both, are evolutions of eevee, or ‘eeveelutions’ as some call them.”

“Good to know. Only two questions left from me. Why did I see myself evolving just now?”

The kitten hummed in thought. “I think… deep down, you secretly do want to evolve, but are afraid to do it because you don’t really want to commit to it. That, or you can’t decide and are passing it off as not wanting to evolve. You also claim that you don’t want to draw attention to yourself to deflect from the real reason, being what I just said.” She shrugged. “But what do I know? I’m a psychic, not a psychologist. Now, what was that last question?”

Ryan took a deep breath. “How… can I get back to my own world?”

Mew winced. “Ooh… I’m afraid I can’t answer that one.”

Ryan crossed his arms. “And why not?”

Mew looked at its wrist. “Oh, would you look at the time!”

“Don’t dodge the question,” the human said sternly. “Answer me! Besides, you aren’t even wearing a watch!”

Mew snapped the digits of it’s paw. “It’s time for you to wake up now!”

Both the floating psycat and the human gradually vanished, leaving the dreamscape completely empty.

---

Upon waking, Ryan found himself as an eevee in his bed once again. As he got down on the floor and started his morning stretches, he pondered the answers he had gotten from the mew, especially the obvious attempts to hide something towards the end… but what?

Now that I think about it, maybe I am just indecisive about what evolution I want… he thought. I still don’t feel comfortable saying so, though. If it happens, it happens. They don’t need to know the real reason, not that they’d even believe me if I told them I saw the real mew in my dream…

After he finished stretching, he headed down on his own to breakfast, getting to the routine he had settled into for the last two weeks and would likely continue for weeks, if not months, to come. As him and his team continued working on advancing beyond bronze rank, and despite not seeing Mew again in his dreams for the time being, he continued to think about the things she had told him.