CHAPTER 21: DOUBLE AWAKENING

Dreamscape

Commander Martin opened his eyes with a start. He noticed that he seemed to be in some kind of void, yet, to his confusion, he could tell there was solid ground beneath him. He pinched the inside of his upper arm, and when he felt no pain, concluded that it was just a weird dream. When he looked to his left, he saw a young woman with a labcoat and lavender hair about ten feet away, sitting up but still.

“Kori?” the commander called out. “Is that you?”

She turned her head in his direction. “Commander?”

They drew closer to each other and shook hands.

“Um, commander… do you have any idea what’s going on?” Kori asked, looking around the inky black space.

He shrugged. “I’ve seen a lot in my time as an IEF commander, but never anything like this… shared dreamscape we’re in.”

Kori’s face fell. “Oh… that’s a letdown.”

“Perhaps I can help?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Martin swiveled around, reaching for his holster and pulling out a laser blaster, gripping it in both hands as if he were about to get into a standoff.

“Who said that?” he called out. “Show yourself!”

It was then that a floating pink cat appeared in front of them. Martin’s face twisted in curiosity.

“Mew?” he asked, slowly lowering his pistol. “I thought mews were extinct, if they ever existed at all.” He facepalmed. “Wait a minute, this is just a dream! You’re probably just a product of my imagination.”

Mew rolled her eyes. “Yes, this is a dream. However, I am very much real. Well, sort of. What you’re seeing of me right now is just a projection. I’m not actually in your dream. I can hear what you say to me, and you can hear me, obviously, but I’m not actually here.”

Kori tilted her head to the side. “Then where are you?”

“I can’t say. It’s, like, a strange realm that exists between this universe and many others.”

“Okay, but what about us?” the intern asked. “What happened to us? We came out of our spaceship, then we passed out and… that’s all I remember before I woke up here.”

Martin nodded in agreement as he put his weapon away. He decided not to say anything about what he thought he saw relating to Kori, as it may have just been his imagination.

Mew giggled. “You’ll find out when you wake up. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise!” Mew said, acting as if she knew something they didn’t which, in her defense, she did.

The intern grumbled. She was never a fan of surprises. In her experience, surprises usually tended to result in extra work for her to do.

The floating kitten clapped her paws together. “So, you two have any more questions?”

“Yes, actually,” Martin began. “Why are you even bothering coming to our dream? Isn’t the life of a legendary full of work to do?”

Mew shrugged. “Not at the moment; the Council of Legends doesn’t reconvene until next month, and since the planet’s in a state of peace right now, why not mess around with the mortals?” She tilted her head. “Any other burning questions?”

Both humans shook their heads. The mew smiled.

“In that case, I believe it’s time for you two to wake up!” She aimed each of her paws at the two people and began charging a hyper beam. Kori started to panic, frantically looking about for cover.

“Don’t worry,” the mew said, “this is just a dream, so it won’t hurt you!”

“Wait, wait!” Martin said, his arms raised defensively. “Could you please wake us in a less… violent way?”

Mew decharged her dual hyper beams, sighing with disappointment. “Fine,” she muttered, snapping the digits of her paw and causing all three to slowly vanish from the dreamscape.

---

Moon Continent Explorer’s Guild, West Coast Branch, Infirmary

“Never thought I’d end up back here not as a patient,” Terry said as he entered the infirmary.

“Same, same,” Ryan agreed as the quartet of pokemon came up to the unconscious two, each rested in a separate bed lying on top of the covers. He noticed that the zoroark was still in its tattered outfit, which he found odd.

Why wouldn’t they even try to remove them when they’re pretty much unwearable? Not to mention, a pokemon wearing clothes around here would look pretty out of place, the glaceon mused. Come to think of it, why wasn’t I drowning in a pile of my own clothes when I woke up here? That makes no sense to me…

He carefully stood up on his hind legs, placing his forepaws on the side of the bed to get a look at the zoroark. Outfit aside, he seemed to be perfectly healthy, so, to him, the only possible cause for them being unconscious was a transformation, as he believed to be the case.

It’s too bad they’re still out cold, he thought. If they were up, maybe I could learn something…

He sighed before backing off from the bed, walking over to the other one where the shinx was rested, and leaping into a desk chair that was situated between the two beds.

I’m also curious about this shinx, he thought. It has lavender fur, which is very strange to me. I’m not sure if that’s actually supposed to be possible. Maybe in this world it is?

Behind him, the zoroark sat up, although they had not opened their eyes yet. Ryan gripped the nightstand with a forepaw and spun himself around.

“Hey, they’re coming to!” Ben observed from the foot of the bed, frantically waving his paw in greetings. “Hey there! Nice to meet you! My name is Ben! What’s yours?”

The zoroark groaned as they propped themselves up. “What’s… going on? Where am I? And who is talking?”

He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. It looked like they were in some kind of hospital room, except it looked far more rudimentary than what he was used to, with few signs of modern (to him) technology in sight. Also not in sight were any signs of humans; he was in a room surrounded by only pokemon.

“Is this… another dream?” he thought aloud. He looked down at himself, at his hands, finding that what he thought were hands were actually paws. “Okay, that settles it, this is definitely another dream, no doubt.” Some more investigation of himself, and he found that he was a zoroark. “At least my brain has good taste in pokemon to turn me into in my dreams.”

The things the zoroark was saying greatly perplexed the pokemon that were in the room with him.

“Dream?” Ryan asked, tilting his head.

“The pokemon are talking, too. I guess I am a pokemon in this dream though, so it makes sense I’d understand them.”

The glaceon turned to his teammates, a confused expression on his face. “Well, he’s definitely a former human, alright. A regular pokemon wouldn’t be trying to play this off as a dream.”

“Seconded,” Terry agreed. “I did that too, remember?”

“Yeah.” Ryan turned back to the zoroark. “Uh, hate to break it to you, zoroark, but this is not a dream. This is all real.”

The zoroark chuckled. “Oh, don’t be silly. Humans, like I, Martin Harlingen, turning into pokemon is just a myth. In fact, I don’t know why I’m dreaming about this right now…”

“Well, Martin, we found you on the beach, next to a spaceship, which I can only assume was yours?”

The black fox could think of nothing to say in this moment in response. Ryan hummed.

“Oh, I know a way to show you that this isn’t a dream. Come closer.”

The zoroark leaned in his face towards the ice fox, who then slapped his muzzle with a quick motion of his forepaw.

“Owch!” Martin yelped, rubbing his snout. That was when the realization hit him. “Wait… y-you can’t feel pain in a d-dream…” he said, starting to do something he had not done in a long time: show fear. He stared down at his paws again. “T-that can only mean… I really am…”

“Ho boy,” Ryan huffed, before calling out to the others. “Cover your ears, everybody!”

The quartet did as he said. But nothing happened. The zoroark just continued to stare down in utter shock.

“…but… how?” he wondered. “This shouldn’t be possible… how would this have even happened?”

Ryan simply shrugged. “That is an excellent question. As a former human myself I would love to figure out how this happened to me… and you.”

Martin held out his paws. “Whoa, hold on, you used to be a human, too?”

The glaceon tilted his head. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Wait a minute… you’re that eevee I saw through the eyes of CSP-375! You said you’re from another world I think!” the zoroark realized. “Where’s Lena?”

“Right here,” the sneasel said, raising a claw. “But how do you know my name?”

“Lena, it’s me, your father,” he insisted.

The sneasel crossed her arms. “And why should I believe you?”

Martin facepalmed. “Oh, right, amnesia…” He rubbed a claw on his chin. “Hmm… how do I put this?”

Ben’s face lit up. “Oh! Be right back!” He quickly left the room.

Silence resounded for a moment before Ryan spoke up again.

“So, you… what’s your name?”

“Commander Martin Harlingen from the Interstellar Exploration Federation,” he announced, “but I’m not really one for formalities, so you can just call me Martin.”

Lena gasped, but didn’t say anything. She decided she wouldn’t say anything about this until later.

“Okay. Martin, do you happen to know that shinx over there on the other bed?” Ryan pointed a forepaw towards the feline pokemon in question.

Before Martin could answer, the shinx let out a big yawn.

“Ohhh!” she said, euphorically. “I don’t think I’ve felt this well-rested in years! I’d forgotten how it felt to not feel tired when waking up!”

“I was going to say I think that’s my intern, Kori,” Martin answered, “but that voice tells me it’s definitely her.”

“Martin?” Kori asked, looking around. “Where are you? I hear you talking, but I only see a bunch of pokemon and medical equipment that was outdated over a thousand years ago!”

“Probably because that’s all there is in this room,” Lena deadpanned.

“The sneasel just talked! And I don’t have my pokemon-to-human translator right now, so I must be losing my mind!” she said nervously. “Martin, if this is your idea of an elaborate prank, then it failed. It’s not funny.“

The sneasel rolled her eyes. “If you don’t like this, maybe you shouldn’t look down at yourself.”

This confused Kori. “What do you mean?”

Lena shrugged. “Exactly what I say. Though maybe you should, since… the thing I’m referring to… is something that wouldn’t be easy to avoid.”

As Kori held up a hand and instead saw a lavender paw, her heart sank. She then looked behind her and saw that, not only was she covered in black and lavender fur all over, she also had a tail that ended in what looked like a yellow, four-pointed star.

“Please don’t tell me this is real,” she said, her breathing starting to get heavier and more labored.

“Okay,” Lena said, “I’ll show you instead.” She pinched Kori, hard enough for it to hurt but not enough to draw blood.

“Ow!” Kori yelped. Then, her face blanched, and she shouted in anguish at the realization that this was not a dream and that she really had turned into a shinx. Tears streamed down her face, crying out as she shuddered with fear.

“Why?” she wailed. “Why me? Why now? Of all the things to happen during my internship, why this? How could I have possibly prepared myself for this?” Kori bawled into her paws. “My life is over! I’m probably stuck like this, I don’t even know where Martin is, or where I am, or… or… what are my parents going to think?” Her eyes went wide. “Wait, my parents! They won’t recognize me as their daughter!”

She gave up trying to speak her feelings and just yowled with anguish. As she continued to cry, curled tightly into a ball, Ryan, who was also beginning to tear up at the sight of someone else crying, hopped onto her bed next to her and patted her on the shoulder to comfort her, murmuring sweet reassurances to the unwillingly former human. Terry rolled his eyes.

“What a crybaby,” he said.

“Terry!” Ryan and Lena shouted in unison.

Just then, Ben came back, Ryan’s laptop stored in his bag. “I’m baaack!” He saw the shinx, her crying starting to wind down. Ryan was resting behind her, curling his fluffy two-shades-of-blue tail around her body, gently ruffling the slightly thicker fur on her head, and generally trying anything he could think of to provide comfort. The litten sat and hung his head. “Oh… is this a bad time? We can show Zoroark this later if-“

“Nah, Ryan’s taking care of her, but we’re free,” Lena said, taking a seat on the bed next to the zoroark that claimed to be her father. “Besides, I’m tired of waiting. Show the video already!”

Terry took out and opened the laptop, placed it on the bed in front of the dark types, and started the video labeled ‘memory2-dot-mp4’.

---

Lena’s Personal Spaceship, Lena Harlingen’s POV

Bag in hand, I boarded my personal spaceship. My dad didn’t approve of me heading out, but it’s my first mission, and I’m super excited for it. Today, I’m heading down to Earth to go exploring. I’m too excited to check if anything’s wrong with the ship. The thing was recently custom-built just for me, though, so surely nothing could go wrong, right?

I start up the ship’s engine, set down my bag on the passenger seat, and prepare to take off. Soon, I’m in outer space, preparing to enter the atmosphere of the earth. When I entered the atmosphere, I found that it was dark out, since I had left in the middle of the night when my dad was still asleep.

I found a small clearing within a tropical forest to land the ship in. Fortunately, it’s one of those ships that can hover on the spot and doesn’t really require a runway or anything like that. I don my spacesuit, unsure of if the air is actually breathable or not. It most likely is, given the presence of plant life, but you can never be too careful when exploring planets that you’ve never been to. I pulled out a compass to check which way is north, and end up walking west through the forest instead, illuminating my surroundings with a LED beacon that flips up from my helmet.

Soon, I reach a beach, with about ten meters of sand separating me from the ocean. To my left there is a cave with mist covering the front, and to my right, a bluff jutting out into the ocean, with a lighthouse constructed on top. Since I hadn’t encountered anything hostile, only a couple of murkrow overhead, I decided to test the atmosphere. Unfortunately, I had left my air testing equipment back at the ship, but I assumed from the presence of murkrow that the air was probably fine. So, I removed my helmet. A hiss sounded as the air depressurized around me, revealing a brown face, and long, black hair with red streaks much like my father’s.

I took a deep breath, found that I was right about the air being breathable, but before I could start writing the message to take back when I finished my mission, I started to feel funny. I fell to my knees as the funny feeling began to turn to one of pain, and that pain quickly spread throughout my body. It kept getting worse and worse, and my mind started to get foggy…

---

The memory, narrated in an AI-generated version of Lena’s voice, cut off as the video went black.

“Wait, hold on…” Martin said. “How do you have a functioning laptop but not modern medical equipment?”

Ben looked at him funny. “Seriously? You and that shinx over there turned from humans into pokemon, we just saw one of Lena’s memories, and that’s what you’re worried about?”

“The laptop is mine,” Ryan said. “It was brought over with me from my own world.” He carefully maneuvered himself from behind the sniffling shinx, her paws and the bedsheet still damp from the tears, and gently hopped down from the bed.

“Anyways,” the glaceon added, “could you play it again really quick?”

He replayed the video, and sighed with relief once it had ended.

“So, there’s another spaceship, huh?” he thought aloud. “That’s a relief.”

“…what do you mean ‘that’s a relief’, huh?” the zoroark asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ryan’s ears fell apologetically. “I, er… have some bad news… about what I can only guess is, or was, your ship.”

“Was?!” Martin cried in alarm.

Ben winced. “Yeah, it was my fault… I saw a button and… and it was glowing red… it was labeled ‘do not press’… and I miiiiight have pressed it and caused your ship to self-destruct.”

The zoroark’s maw hung open in shock as Lena facepalmed.

“You what?” he shouted.

The litten smiled weakly. “I-I mean at least we still have the other-“

“That was a very expensive vehicle! I had to pay hundreds of thousands of credits to get that ship. Plus, we don’t even know the exact location of the other ship, so until we find it, Kori and I are stranded on this planet in unfamiliar bodies!” He rested his face in his paws. “At least if this transformation had happened on the Pernautica we might be able to seek medical help.”

The zoroark groaned into his paws, while Ben just scratched his head, less upset by his yelling and more perplexed by what he said. “What’s a pernautica?”

Martin sighed and ignored the litten. “At least we found my daughter. She may be an amnesiac, but she’s still alive. And, I’m still alive, as is Kori. Cold comfort, but given everything else going on right now, I’ll take whatever victories I can get.”

Next to him, tears began welling up in Kori’s eyes again. “I just wanna go home!” she cried, once again starting to bawl her eyes out. Ryan immediately rushed to her side to begin comforting her once more.

“Seriously, how did such a crybaby end up as an intern to this ‘IEF’ organization?” Terry deadpanned.

“Terry!” his teammates shouted angrily.

The pachirisu shrugged. “What? We were all thinking it!”

“No we weren’t,” Ryan asserted, “that was you and you alone.”

Lena sighed. “If we’re done with this discussion, then… ask me if that memory helped me remember anything.”

Ryan nodded, more than happy to take the out. “Okay… did that memory help you remember anything?”

“Yes it did!” she said jubilantly. “I now remember…” She started to count on her claws. “…what I looked like as a human, my full name- Lena Harlingen- and how I ended up here!” She smiled. “I bet thinking more about those things will allow me to remember even more, too!”

“Well, that’s great!” Ryan said, then turned his attention towards the shinx he had been comforting. She was now hiccupping from all of the crying she had been doing. “And don’t worry, we’ll investigate the cause of our transformations and find a way to reverse it.” Or at least, I hope this is reversible, the glaceon thought. She doesn’t deserve to suffer like this.

He hopped back down from the bed. “I say we go out and celebrate the progress we’ve made, and leave Martin and Kori alone for now,” Ryan said, motioning for his teammates to leave the room before turning tail himself. “Have a nice evening!” he called back.

Lena was the last one to leave. “Oh, Martin?”

“Mm?” Martin hummed.

She waved at the zoroark. “See you later… dad.”

---

Dreamscape

That evening, Ryan finally wound up in the dreamscape again when he went to sleep full up on various baked goods from his parents’ bakery.

“Oh, man, I knew they were good at baking, but this is some next level cookie goodness!” he said, willing a bundle of Jack’s chocolate chip cookies into existence. He then noticed that his hand was covered in fur of the same shade of blue as the ‘socks’ on glaceon’s paws.

“Gah!” he shouted, dropping the pack of cookies on the nonexistent floor. He then pushed a sleeve of his hoodie up and found that there was a sort of ‘fade’ from the fur on his hand to his normal skin about halfway to his elbow. The ears were back, and he now had a bushy, icy blue tail with a darker blue tip as well. He willed a handheld mirror into existence in his hand, and found that at least his face and hair, ears aside, were still the same.

“Ngh, the dream form transformation’s making progress,” Ryan worried. “This is not good.” He tried to will himself back into a normal human, but the best he could do was to get rid of the blue on his hands; the tail and ears didn’t go away.

“Yeah, very much not a good sign…”

Just then, Mew appeared in front of him.

“Ah, Mew!” Ryan said. “So glad to see you. So, about-“

“Let me guess, it’s about getting home?” she deadpanned.

Ryan shook his head. “Actually, not this time. I wanted to ask you about why the now-five of us former humans were turned into pokemon? Also, why did I not have my clothes when Martin and Kori had theirs?”

“Oh…” Mew said. “That, I can answer. When the accident with the portal happened, you and Terry ended up in Ultra Space, just floating there, unmoving, between universes. I then formed the bodies of two pokemon and transferred your consciousnesses into them, and left your old bodies in there. I also made sure to condense the contents of both your bags into one since the science guy did not bring that much stuff. After all that, I dropped you two into the world that your physical form is currently in.” Mew shrugged. “How the pachirisu ended up so far from where you did, I’m not sure. I only had limited control over that.

“As for your spacefaring friends-” Mew began to continue before Ryan interrupted.

“I wouldn’t consider Martin and Kori friends quite yet,” the human-glaceon hybrid said. “We just met today.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Mew said. “You seemed to be more than happy to get… intimate… with Kori…”

“Hey!” Ryan shouted, his face turning hot. “I was just comforting her on the horrible day she was having, okay?”

“Sheesh, okay, killjoy,” Mew complained. “As I was saying, I can’t say exactly what caused the transformation of Martin and Kori, but I can point you towards somewhere you could find an answer.”

Mew pulled out a can labeled ‘wormhole-in-a-can; view only; cannot transmit matter.’ She opened it and out came a viewhole that looked out upon an abandoned laboratory in the middle of a badlands, near the edge of a canyon.

“Way back when, this laboratory was used by human scientists for various research projects, especially highly experimental and dangerous ones. Your answer for Martin, Kori, and Lena’s transformations can be found here, in this structure west of Miobach City, which itself is east of the Lairondack Mountains.”

After closing the wormhole and putting it back in the can, Mew asked, “Now, is there anything else you want to know?”

“Why does Lena have amnesia, when Martin, Kori, Terry and I all don’t? We all transformed from humans into pokemon, what makes Lena’s situation different?”

The mew shrugged. “I guess amnesia is a rare side-effect of transformation? Rest assured, I had nothing to do with it. I mean, I can wipe memories, but I haven’t done that in a long time, not since the whole giant meteor situation, at least.”

“Why can’t I will my dream self entirely into a human anymore?”

“Remember, the more you acknowledge yourself as a glaceon, the less human you become on the inside. I don’t mean like DNA and stuff, I mean mentally.”

Ryan nodded understandingly; he would have been upset at this before, but he found himself caring less and less as time went on. He shook that out of his head for now as he prepared something else to say.

“You know,” he said, “a few days ago, my parents, who I finally reunited with, said… some things that got me thinking, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that back home, I only really have my big sister to go back to, and I haven’t even really been in contact with her anyways. I was wondering what you have to say on the subject.”

“Only this,” the psychic kitten began, “I think that you have a lot more going for you here than you did at home, and that you’d be doing yourself a disservice by going back to your old life. That said, I’m not going to force you into anything, either; that has to come from what you think you should do.”

Ryan hummed in thought. “You make a very good point… however, I do think that I still want to find a way home; even if I decide to stay, my uncle will probably still want to go back. So, how could we get home?” he asked. “You know, you can’t dodge that question forever, as much as you may want to.”

Mew shook her head. “Yes, actually, I can dodge the question forever. Remember, I can choose to not be in your dream anymore.”

Ryan facepalmed. “Och, that’s right! I forgot!”

Mew waved goodbye. “Well, I should get going. Have some pleasant dreams tonight, Ryan!”

With that, Mew disappeared from sight, leaving Ryan alone in the dreamscape to dream the pleasant dreams that she told him to.