CHAPTER 20: A TRIP TO EARTH

Pernautica Mass-Transportative Space Station, Shuttle Bay, August 7th

“Uh, boss, which one was our ship again?” Kori asked as the duo walked through the hangar between the shuttles of various shapes and sizes.

“Oh, the ship we’re looking for is parked in the spot labeled with my name,” Martin answered, pointing to a comically oversized placard labeled with ‘Commander Martin Harlingen.’ Behind it was a spaceship about the length of a large RV, but wider to accommodate the type of engine necessary for space travel, and more aerodynamic. “I’m glad we were cleared to head down to the planet, although Gardy has to stay behind, and that I could convince them to ditch that pointless, outdated intern holophone policy. I guess we caught the chief on a good day. But, before we leave, do you have everything you want to bring?”

Kori rifled through her pocket dimensional bag. “Spacesuit, spare clothes, first aid kit, pokeballs, holophone charger, human-to-pokemon translation device, some in-flight snacks… the part of the world we’re visiting is tropical so we should have sunscreen, sunglasses and plenty of water… a distress signal, just in case… and a camera to make new memories with. Yep, that’s everything!”

With that, the commander pressed a button on a key fob in order to open the door to the ship so they could both board it. The living quarters had a futuristic vibe to them, exactly how one would imagine the inside of a personal spaceship from the distant future to look. As for the dashboard, there were all sorts of high-tech components, between lights, screens, gauges, and other systems for all manner of purposes. It was here that Martin walked over to, and he inserted his key into its slot to start the ship up. With some rumbling, the engine fired up, and Martin began to pilot it, steering it out of the hangar, through the airlock, and into the cold vacuum of outer space.

“Next stop: Earth!” Martin shouted as he activated the boosters, and Kori braced herself as the ship rocketed towards the planet.

---

Moon Continent Explorer’s Guild, West Coast Branch

After over a week of waiting, Ryan finally got a chance to see if the mutual mind reader would actually work. He was a bit disappointed it had taken so long to get a chance, but better late than never.

The first thing he did was to test if his laptop still worked. As his teammates sat off to the side, waiting for their cue, he carefully pressed the power button. To his surprise, the fans started whirring and the screen soon came on as well.

“That’s good to see,” the glaceon said, relieved as he logged in, finding typing the password to be harder albeit still possible with his less dexterous paws. He then pulled the MMR to his side. “Now, to see about this thing… how do I use it…”

He pulled out an instruction manual from a slot in the machine, as well as a connector. He skipped the parts about turning on the device, adjusting the dishes, and getting a signal to find the section he wanted to see.

“Here we are: viewing memories.” He began to read from the manual. “‘To read memories instead of thoughts, flip the switch to memory mode and use the machine the same way you would with thoughts. Once a memory has been scanned, the MMR will save the signal as a video file compatible with whatever device is currently connected to the machine. Memories can be transferred wirelessly or via the included cable.'”

Terry then came over and plugged each end of the included cord into the laptop and MMR. A window opened on Ryan’s laptop that displayed a ‘Macro Cosmos’ logo briefly before going to a blank screen reading ‘Mutual Mind Reader detected. No Output Available’. A red LED activated on the MMR after the power switch had been flipped, indicating that it had properly connected with the other device.

“Step two complete,” Ryan thought aloud before turning to Lena. “That’s your cue, Lena. Go sit in front of the other end. I’ll stay here; according to the manual it won’t work unless there is a mind on each side that can be read.”

After looking about in the settings of the MMR window, he found the command to activate the device’s mind-reading capabilities. He clicked the option to save video to drive, then clicked ‘activate.’

The MMR didn’t visibly do anything, although it did make some whirring and clicking noises, so it was obviously doing something. When it stopped, Ryan noticed that he hadn’t actually seen either memory in his mind. The glaceon instead checked to see if the memories had saved as video files.

The window displayed a message that read ‘successfully saved two memories to C:/users/rwiskell/Videos/MC/MMR’, with a hyperlink that would open the listed folder. After clicking it, he found two mp4 files simply named ‘memory1’ and ‘memory2’. He tried memory1, turned up the volume on his laptop, and invited his teammates to watch it. Not only was it not Lena’s memory, but Ryan’s, it showed exactly the sort of memory, or rather, memories, he was afraid it would: it was a compilation of all the times he called a teacher ‘mom’ or ‘dad’. Once it finished, his face was beat red with embarrassment, although it was barely visible through his fur. Meanwhile, Lena was doubled over in laughter, and Terry was grinning widely as well, covering his mouth to try not to burst out in laughter himself. Ben was less moved, but he had taken an interest at the people in the video.

“Wait, those are humans?” the litten asked. “Those lanky, mostly hairless creatures?”

Ryan nodded sheepishly, still embarrassed by the humiliating memory that the machine had decided to show. “Yep.”

“They look really weird,” he mused.

It was then that Ryan realized that it had been over a month since he had last seen a human in the flesh. He actually did kind of notice where Ben was coming from with that statement. Pretty much all of the pokemon he had seen were covered in something, either fur, scales, feathers, or something less organic like metal, while humans just had their bare skin, so they had to wear clothes to cover themselves.

Wait, metal… Ryan thought. Metang… Mike…

He took a quick look around the room to try to find Mike, but they were nowhere to be found.

“Wait, where’s Mike?” Ryan asked.

Lena shrugged. “I dunno. He was just over there in the corner. Must’ve left while we were watching that hilarious video.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Ryan grumbled, then recomposed himself. “I say we look for them, though. They can’t have gone too far. The memory can wait, it’s already been over a month since we started, what’s a couple more hours at most?”

The others nodded in agreement, and with that, they grabbed their bags and left the room to start looking around Luneria Village for their robotic friend.

---

Luneria Beach, inside Martin’s spaceship, one hour ago

As Martin’s personal spaceship prepared to land on the coarse Lunerian sand, Kori wondered aloud, “What do you think Mike- er, CSP-375 is up to right now?”

The commander shrugged. “Probably just in sleep mode in that ‘Team Seekers’ room, as has been the case for much of the last week.”

Before long, the shuttle had gently landed on the sand; upon touchdown, the door unlocked.

“Earth’s air should be fine to breathe, I would imagine,” Martin said, “so we probably don’t need the spacesuits. Heck, we could open the door now since the doorway has a barrier that keeps the ship’s air from leaking out while still allowing people, pokemon, and objects to pass through.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Kori said, shoving her arms out impatiently. “I want to explore already!”

Martin chuckled lightly as he pressed a button to lower the door, which contained stairs that would allow them to easily get onto the sand. Both equipped their human-to-pokemon translators, which took the form of a headset, grabbed their respective bags, and stepped out of the ship’s protective barrier. They felt fine at first, just as they expected to. But then, Kori started to notice that she felt… off, somehow, and quickly began feeling worse.

“Um, Martin? I… don’t feel so good…” she said weakly before passing out on the sand, falling onto her side.

Martin noticed that he, too, was starting to feel weaker. As he fell on his side into the sand, he could’ve sworn that he saw Kori… shrinking? He couldn’t tell for sure, but that didn’t matter as he himself slipped into a total lack of consciousness.

---

Luneria Village

“Have you seen a metang?” Ryan asked a passerby zangoose. “Floats off of the ground, has the shiny coloration, goes by the name Mike?” Next to him, Lena showed a crudely drawn picture of the automaton labeled ‘Mike’.

The zangoose shook their head, much to the disappointment of Ryan and his teammates.

“Thanks anyways, I guess,” the glaceon sighed as the zangoose walked away. He began looking around for someone else to ask.

“Oh! A shiny metang?” they heard a voice call from across the square. The quartet looked in that direction and saw a togedemaru running towards them. “I’ve seen one!”

Despite the fact that he didn’t look much different from most others of his species, Ryan immediately recognized the togedemaru. “Hey, you’re the togedemaru Ben and I fought in the tournament! Sorry about how I acted there, I was just getting into the competitive spirit. No hard feelings, right?”

“Nah, I get it; happens to the best of us.” The hedgehog stuck out a forepaw. “I don’t think I’ve actually introduced myself. Name’s Jason.”

Ryan took the togedemaru’s paw in a makeshift handshake. “Ryan. But anyways, Jason, you said something about a shiny metang?”

Jason nodded. “I saw it heading toward the beach, repeating something, but-“

“Beach! Got it!” Ben said, tip-tapping in place. “Come on team, let’s go!”

The quartet left Jason in the dust, much to the togedemaru’s dismay.

“Aw, I wanted to get to know them better,” he said sadly.

Upon getting to the beach, they finally found Mike, floating in front of some large, strange vehicle. It scared Ben a bit.

“W-what is that thing?” Ben asked nervously.

“I think it’s some kind of spaceship,” Terry replied, drawing closer to Mike, who seemed to be in a trance.

“We can worry about that in a bit, uncle,” Ryan said, looking at something on the sand nearby. “I think we have a problem on our paws.”

One of the things the glaceon was looking at was a pokemon, except they seemed to be wearing some kind of military uniform, though it was in pretty poor condition. It resembled a big fox, with mostly black fur and some red streaks. Its large mane, which had a turquoise pearl near the tip and which doubled as a tail, had the same colors, which is inverted relative to how the mane would look usually. Big, red claws had burst out of the fingers of their gloves as well as the tips of the boots they had been wearing.

Not far away, there was another pile of clothes, this time more like what a scientist would wear, but whoever had been wearing them was completely buried beneath. Using his maw, Ryan pulled the labcoat out of the way to reveal the head of an unconscious shinx poking out of the undershirt. The only difference was that it had lavender fur, rather than the light blue shinx typically has or even the yellow of its shiny coloration.

I don’t think I’ve seen any pokemon wearing clothes beyond a scarf or apron before. Do they even make clothes? Ryan thought, then shook his head. That’s a question for another time. The zoroark’s outfit is baggy yet totally tattered, while the shinx’s looks way too big on it, so that can only mean one thing.

“You guys,” Ryan said, “I think that these two may be humans.”

Lena poked her head out of the spaceship. “Wait, what?” the sneasel exclaimed, not out of shock but of not clearly hearing what her teammate had said.

Ryan ignored her shock and got Ben. “Can you help me untangle the shinx from those clothes? Once we do, I can carry them to the infirmary, and then we’ll have to have someone stronger get the zoroark.” He sighed. “Felix is going to be completely speechless when he sees this.”

The glaceon used a claw to tear open the neck of the shirt a bit wider in order to more easily pull out the small lavender lion-cub-like pokemon. Ben then placed her on Ryan’s back, and helped tie the scarf around the shinx’s body so it wouldn’t fall off his back, before the ice fox carefully began to trudge through the sand back to the guild, wincing from each step from how hot the sand was.

“Oh yeah,” Ryan called back as he walked off, “check the ship and see if anything there helps Lena remember something about herself!”

“Sure thing!” Ben called back after his teammate, whose pace turned to a careful dash upon reaching the grass, before turning to face the ship again. After grabbing the bag that had been laying next to the shinx for safe keeping, he boarded the odd vehicle. Once inside, he was quickly overwhelmed by the various futuristic devices he saw. Meanwhile, Terry and Lena were looking through a box full of tourist pamphlets about faraway planets.

“Wow, Mars, Io, Kepler… even ones I’ve never heard of!” the pachirisu said. “So this is what humans have been up to? Making tourist destinations out of distant planets?” His expression darkened a bit. “Elon would be rubbing his hands together with dollar signs in his eyes if he knew of this.”

Ben ignored them for now and turned back to the dashboard, which looked way beyond what he knew. And I thought Ryan’s laptop thingy was advanced, he thought. How’ll I help Lena if I don’t even know how to work any of this stuff?

He went up to the dashboard and started pressing random buttons. Whoever piloted the ship had removed the key, so the buttons didn’t actually do anything, much to Ben’s disappointment, since the ship wasn’t actually on. There was, however, one glowing red button underneath a glass case, labeled ‘do not press,’ and Ben felt drawn to it, somehow.

“…I’m gonna press it,” Ben said, reaching to remove the glass case. Terry looked up and over at him.

“Press what?” he asked curiously.

“This glowing red thing over here,” the litten said, tossing the glass case aside after removing it. “It says ‘do not press,’ and everyone knows that that means you have to press it.”

Terry’s eyes went wide. “Ben, don’t. Seriously, please don’t press tha-“

Ben slammed a paw down on the button. “Too late.”

A siren started blaring, and red lights started flashing. “Self-destruct sequence initiated. Please leave the ship in the next fifteen seconds,” a robotic feminine voice called out.

“What have you done?!” Terry shouted as him and Lena stuffed as many pamphlets into their bags as they could cram in before the latter grabbed Ben by his paw to pull him away and out of the ship. They got out of the ship with nine seconds to spare, which they knew because of the countdown. When they got near the zoroark, Ben began pulling him away from the ship as Lena grabbed his bag.

“Hurry!” Terry shouted behind him, a short distance ahead of the others, as the ship finished its countdown.

“Five…” the ship’s AI voice counted down over a loudspeaker, “four… three… two… one…”

---

Moon Continent Explorer’s Guild, West Coast Branch

“…so yeah, that’s pretty much the whole story,” Ryan explained as Felix set down the unconscious lavender shinx onto a bed in the otherwise empty infirmary. “None of us are strong, or large, enough to carry the zoroark though, so that’s why I came to get-“

Suddenly, those two, and Erin, who was also in the room, heard a loud explosion that rattled the windows, startling the trio of pokemon, while the shinx remained unconscious despite it.

“What was that?” the she-meowstic shouted, clearly scared.

Ryan sighed. “Don’t tell me they did what I think they did,” the glaceon muttered before dashing out the door, with Felix and Erin in tow.

---

Luneria Beach, a few minutes later

Ben finally stood up again after ducking down immediately before the explosion. His ears were still ringing from it despite that he should have been a safe distance away from it. Lena and Terry, too, slowly stood back up, turning back to see the ship, or what remained of it. Smoke billowed from what used to be a spaceship, with bits of metal and plastic nearly reaching where the four pokemon had been despite being out of the explosion radius. The litten’s ears lowered.

“Sorry about ruining yet another chance at potentially helping you remember your past…” Ben said.

Lena was ticked off. “I’m less worried about that and more worried about the fact that you almost got us killed!” she shouted.

Ben lowered his head, ashamed of his mistake. It was at this time that Ryan, Felix and Erin arrived on the scene.

“We heard an explosion, what happened?” Erin asked, then turned to Felix. “Get the zoroark to the infirmary, I’ll handle this.”

As the guildmaster carried the unconscious tricky fox to the infirmary, Terry prepared to answer.

“I’m just gonna tell it to you straight…” the pachirisu inhaled. “Ben did it.”

“What?!” Ben said, offended at the callout.

“Elaboration, please,” the she-meowstic said, crossing her arms.

“I’m assuming Ryan told you there was a spaceship and explained what a spaceship is?”

Erin nodded. “Yes.”

“Good, that saves me a lot of explanation. Anyways, he had the three of us investigate the ship to see if there was anything that would help Lena remember her past. Then, Ben found a button labeled ‘do not press’ and decided to press it. The ship then began a countdown, and after we got out, it exploded. Long story short, Ben activated a self-destruct mechanism.”

Ryan turned to a teary-eyed Ben, irritated. “Ben! You can’t just go pressing random buttons! You could’ve gotten yourselves, and the zoroark, killed! Speaking of, they’re probably stranded here now!” He shook his head in disbelief. “What have you done?”

“I’m sorry!” Ben cried. “I just couldn’t help myself, and I’m sorry!” The litten curled into a ball and laid down on the sand.

Erin sighed. “Well, since nobody is dead or harmed, you clearly didn’t intend to anyways, and there are no guild regulations on exploding a spaceship, you won’t be receiving a punishment. Even if there were, I think the guilt of nearly getting yourself, your friends, and what may be yet another human-turned-pokemon killed is more than enough.” She turned to Ryan. “By the way, how are you so sure that the purple shinx and the zoroark are former humans?”

Ryan shrugged. “Just a gut feeling. Maybe we can ask them when they wake up. And I do mean when, because I felt their pulses and they’re definitely still alive and uninjured, just unconscious, probably from the transformation process.” He sighed. “I would know.”

Erin hummed in thought. “I see.” She turned back to Ben. “And Ben, please get up now. I already told you, you’re not in trouble!”

Ben stood up slowly, still sniffling. “Yeah.”

Ryan put a forepaw on Ben’s shoulder. “Look, I’m not mad at you, I’m mad about what you did. We’re still friends, we always will be, and an accident like this won’t change that. So, if that’s what you’re worried about, you don’t need to worry.”

After Ben took some deep breaths, the litten smiled. “Thanks.”

Ryan nodded. “Now come on, Mike has already headed back to the guild, even before the explosion occurred. Funnily enough, I passed them on the way here. We should go, too. The smoke can’t be good for us, and I’d like to see if the two new arrivals have come to yet.”

With that, the five pokemon began to make their way back to the guild.