They landed in a hallway-like structure, the long and arduous climb beginning to weigh on the two small travellers. It beared similarity to the place they found Peko at, but with much less light and it resembled more of a narrow cave than anything open, in accordance with the rest of the dungeon’s appearance of a stony cave.

“The badges…!”

Pachuku hissed that part as they began to glow, signalling there being somebody nearby.

They could only go forward, to what appeared to look like a nest of some kind. Many sticks littered the floor, others woven with twigs together. Above them was a small hole, opening to what looked like the sky visible beyond, clouds and all, the cool air blowing in.

“This must be how she flies in. Pretty off place to choose though, huh?” Pachuku scoffed.

“Does this mean it lives here?” Sanvu speculated.

“KYAAAAAA!”

The two of them backed up as they were thrown off by the presence of that which had swooped in front, landing in its bed of debris. It lowered something that was squirming into the pile, and they caught a glimpse of yellow.

“That must be her!” Pachuku cried, recognizing the colour almost immediately. “Piki!”

The creature turned around, its wings batted high as the fog that loomed around it dimmed to reveal a bird-like creature, with various grey and brown feathers. As it spoke, it had a distinctly shrill, high pitched voice.

“What are you two doing here?! Go away and leave us in peace!”

“Who’re you?” Sanvu commanded. His eyes were darting between what little he could see of the squirming yellow lump that was below its feet and the bird that towered above him.

“It’s an Unfezant,” Pachuku hissed, “Definitely Flying-type.”

“I will not have you scaring my child! I want you out, gone!”

“Your… child?” Sanvu echoed. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t normally confused, but this was particularly mind-boggling to wrap his head around. He didn’t get too far into those thoughts when Pachuku interjected.

“Don’t listen to her! Unfezant can’t mother a Pichu!” Pachuku hissed, as Sanvu stood attentively, slowly preparing himself like in the dungeon. “She must’ve gone nuts. We need to save that Pichu; that was the mission.”

Sanvu nodded Pachuku’s way as their foe crept closer. He was willing to agree for now… even if she could’ve adopted it, it was very clearly a kidnapping; with the way the Pichu squirmed in a way he couldn’t entirely make out.

“If you insist on scaring my child… I will have you out myself!”

*Music: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – Hooktail Battle

She zooms right at Sanvu as Pachuku bats her away with a Quick Attack to the face, which only knocks her back a little ways before she darts right for the small Grass-type again.

He jumps to the right as she swings past, only to receive another side-bash from a quick-footed Pachuku that sends her flying into the wall beside them to their left. The Grass-type then thinks to run right at her, body poised for a Tackle right as she’s down. It hits, knocking her down further, as she gets up, trembling but otherwise fine.

She launches herself into the air, as she sees the Grass-type darting in for another hit. Her wings begin beating extremely fast, producing a barrel of wind that launches Sanvu into the air, and unceremoniously swings him into the wall behind him, the energy of the blast battering his body as he hits the wall hard.

“No!” Pachuku is heard shouting, as Sanvu lands weakly on the floor of the wall he hit on his side. He’s in too much physical pain to respond, but can still otherwise prop himself up on his arms. The Flying-type begins whipping up more wind, aimed now at Pachuku, as he darts barely out of the way, receiving mere scratches of the wind’s influence.

Sanvu weakly watches Pachuku, trying to come to terms with what that wind even was, as the small Electric-type nimbly jumps around, and then launches a jolt of charge once he’s perfectly behind the bird, which brings her down to the ground. She appears to be almost down, but can still otherwise stand.

Sanvu weakly peruses his bag, finding one of the Oran Berries Pachuku said were good for healing, which he takes. Almost immediately, the burning sensation of the wind across his body was almost nullified. He gets up, though still a little shaky, and shouts, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?! We’re here to rescue that child, whether you like it or not!”

Pachuku darted out of the way to his right of another swoop by the crazed bird as she responded, shouting in a shrill voice, “My child doesn’t need rescuing from anyone other than myself! And you are scaring her!”

She flew up and somersaulted, making yet another beeline for Sanvu, where she proceeded to use Gust another time, the gales of wind causing significant damage once again to the Snivy, though while it was still painful with the way it brushed his skin, threatening to tear it, he could still barely stand. Pachuku darts in front as she makes another dive, beating her as he ran underneath her before she swooped too low, this time zapping her with yet another Discharge. Sanvu almost collapses, though less from his injury and more from wincing at the blast of light that emanated from the electricity jolting barely a metre or so in front of his face.

Electric volts dart across her wings, and she almost looks down for the count, but she gets up, furious, every movement causing a tremble in her shaky limbs. Pachuku zips away again, barely phased by her earlier attempts and slams into her left side, knocking her almost into the wall to their right, as she gets up and Gusts him too, knocking him back a fair bit, but not causing as much damage due to his typing.

Pachuku notices Sanvu barely standing, “Have another one, I’ve got this!” he encourages Sanvu, before he once again runs around as she attempts to follow the small Electric-type while he runs circles, sometimes breaking his arcs to slam into her once more. His rough trajectory was an arc that spanned counter-clockwise around the bird, with each arc interrupted with a small tackle that essentially drew half-circles as Pachuku racked up the damage.

Eventually, she sends more wind at him, and then she moves at a blinding speed through the air, slamming Pachuku with the same blasting speed he usually demonstrates. This sends him back a bit, back towards Sanvu, and she begins whittling him down, as he sometimes uses his own Quick Attack to jump out of the way, only sometimes managing to avoid her hits as she narrows him down.

Sanvu meanwhile, watches the display for as much as possible. He hasn’t had the other berry yet, for now he begins to ponder things while he’s been relatively left alone while Pachuku is off distracting the bird.

‘Is this… really something I can do…?’

He was trying to shake those thoughts, given he knew he had a life to go back to, but his current condition was making it really hard to stay focused, with the pain that whittled at his body.

‘I don’t want to be so… useless… down here… while Pachuku takes her on alone… but what can I do…?’

Another loud thud sounded as she landed in the wall far and away from him, quickly recovering to launch right back at Pachuku, who was noticeably worse for wear, though otherwise still mostly up and kicking, and his speed carried his pattering steps back to Sanvu’s position.

“Sanvu, are you still okay?! You should have another Oran-“

Only to quickly turn around and attempt to slam her again as she tried hitting his behind, but he’d been a bit slow and ended up in the wall himself, slowly scrambling up as the bird walked, looming over her victims as if the two were about to be the victim of a something a lot worse than a mere scolding from a mother to her children.

Sanvu picked himself up, lashing with a vine that was otherwise caught by the bird in one of her talons, but that was quickly interrupted by a slam and jolt from the nearby squirrel who’d just recovered, snatching himself an Oran that had tumbled out of Sanvu’s bag. They hadn’t really needed to use their items throughout the dungeon, so only one remained, which had been from Pachuku’s supplies earlier. “Use that last one!” he called back, Sanvu only somewhat understanding, though he began connecting the dots once he felt a lot better again. As he was connecting those dots, though, he had another idea that might only just work, assuming he could still withstand the potential that his plan might work.

Pachuku slammed into her again, and let loose another Discharge, once again bringing her down as the electricity jumped across her feathers. She sent the glowers of anger their way, her eyes practically lit with flame as she attempts to fly, attempting to dive-bomb Sanvu one last time.

But while she’d been busy with Pachuku, Sanvu had found something else in the bag, and she then felt the very uncomfortable sensation of being hit with a small object. It slammed against her skull, causing intense dizziness.

Sanvu smirked as he’d hoped that from his position on the ground that the rock would work, as Pachuku let loose another Discharge, finally putting the bird on the ground just in front of them, out for good. A few twitches later, and she wasn’t moving. After a while of affirming she was down, the two started making moves to the small yellow rat.

~~

---

“I hate to knock her out, but…” Sanvu panted.

“No, something…. was wrong there. She… needed… that,” Pachuku responded in kind, equally as fatigued. The two followed their glowing badges to the nest, where the Pichu looked to be wrapped in some kind of strange rope-like binding, that they quickly helped Piki pull out of. As they’d gotten closer, they felt that trademark buzz of an Amnesiac, though it was much smaller than it had been with the Pikachu from the prior day.

“Flying-types make nests for their children but… not nearly as haphazard, and in a cave of all places?” Pachuku questioned, gesturing around by looking with his head, waving his paw around as if to insinuate the cave itself. “Sounds like inexperience in parenthood to me.”

“So Pokemon don’t adopt one another here?” Sanvu wondered.

“Not like that. If any Flying-type were to be doing any ‘adopting’ it certainly wouldn’t be in this condition,” Pachuku figured.

“Hmm, it is a rather… strange place for a bird, I do agree,” Sanvu mentioned. “Anyway, we’d better get her out of here.”

“Th-thank you…” The meek voice of the Pichu piped up, the eyes of which were looking quite tearful. “I h-hope she didn’t hurt you… too much…”

“Your brother’s gonna be happy to see you back,” Sanvu responded, but this made the Pichu confused, tilting her head in response.

“My… brother? I have a brother?”

“Sanvu, she’s Amnesiac,” Pachuku quickly interjected. “She probably won’t remember him until she’s back.”

“Might as well send her good wishes on her way,” Sanvu shrugged. He reached for his badge in preparation for sending her back, when thunderous footsteps could be heard behind them.

Pachuku however had jumped right behind Sanvu and once again let loose another Discharge on top of him aimed at their assailant, who became a bright flash of colours after being hit with the last of what she could take, before she gets up, her eyes no longer taking on the leer they had taken before.

“Where am I?”

Were the only words spoken from her before she sent strange, almost fearful looks at the three smaller Pokemon in front of her, all extremely tired and not returning anything but glares, as she leapt up, flying up out of the hole in the ceiling and leaving them be. As she did, something flew out, drifting to the ground below.

“What was that?” Sanvu breathed. Pachuku was panting hard.

“Hey… can you hand me one of those Leppas? Red… berries… totally out… of energy…”

Sanvu reached in and grabbed the last of these red berries that they’d slowly used throughout the dungeon. Pachuku seemed to perk right back up after consuming the small apple-like berry.

“Alright, let’s send her back now.” Pachuku said. Sanvu did as he was told, but after the Pichu was sent back and their badges returned to normal, he walked forward, instead of preparing to leave.

On the floor in front of him was a sheet of paper almost as big as he was, adorned in pastel green and pink colours, with fancy writing on it in a language he recognised. On it was an illegible, blurred scribble, near text that read “Return of the Stars” in a very fancy writing.

“What’s that?” Pachuku asked, cocking his head.

Sanvu came to the conclusion that this must have been important to him, because deep-seated unpleasant feelings were welling within him upon holding the piece of paper. He couldn’t quite place these feelings or what they meant, but he knew there was a familiar feeling of contempt mixed in his garbled thoughts.

“This… I recognise this somehow. The writing… it’s from my world,” Sanvu slowly uttered. Pachuku wandered closer, looking at it with narrowed eyes. “That there… it says ‘Return of the Stars,’” Sanvu pointed out.

Pachuku squinted, but then jumped back in shock. “That’s… I couldn’t recognise it at first but…” He turned to Sanvu, excitedly. “It’s Unown! The language!”

“Unown…?” Sanvu looked up at Pachuku, briefly snapped out of the page.

“Pokemon writing comes in many forms, footprints, words and what have you. Unown is a type of Pokemon, and there’s a lot of varieties of them, apparently, it’s told in legend that they resemble the shapes of a distant language nobody knew about,” He turned back towards the paper with the writing on it. “Not many Pokemon know Unown as a language, since it’s old and decrepit, but I’ve heard humans have been rumoured to know about it. Most know it vaguely enough though, if they’ve seen it before, which I have.”

“Well this is definitely legible, well, except for that scribble that got lost in translation. But how do you know about it?”

“I’ve… uhh… seen it sometimes in books. That’s also where you’d usually find, like, myths and whatnot, like those about humans in particular.”

“So that’d explain why you weren’t confused about humans in general, I guess.”

“Yeah, but if this is familiar to you, maybe we should take it back?” Pachuku suggested. “If you know about this writing, perhaps it could lead to more about your past.”

“I was going to ask, but thank you anyways.” Sanvu then attempted to fold it, its size being a bit unwieldy for simply carrying like any other parchment. They eventually managed to fold it up enough to put inside the bag.

After an agreement to head home, they both sent each other back to Mindscape HQ.

---

They received their reward in the same way as the last mission before clocking out. Both were very tired, and there was little time for staying out in the dark, so both were back at Pachuku’s home.

Sanvu had given the slip some passing looks, but had otherwise not really budged from his position on the bed. It didn’t seem like he was going to be able to recall much about it, or if anything from its presence meant anything to him at any point. But he was too distracted to pay it any mind. Eventually, his worries crept onto his face enough for Pachuku to notice.

“You okay? You’ve been looking real down since we got back, I don’t get it. We saved another Amnesiac! We should be thrilled to have done such good work in only two days,” Pachuku threw his paws up as if he was cheering, but this didn’t faze Sanvu.

“We got through the dungeon okay but…” Sanvu hung his head lower as he said, slowly and lowering in volume with each word, “I… was useless… against the bird.” He turned away from Pachuku, attempting to hide his face. “You… dealing with it alone… that wasn’t what I should’ve done… right?”

Pachuku had been listening intently, watching Sanvu’s movements, and then laughed.

“You can’t help being vulnerable to your type weaknesses. You think I’m gonna hold that against you or something? We all have our moments. We still did it in the end.”

Sanvu didn’t exactly perk up, his position unwavering. “Still… I don’t like feeling as useless as I did.”

Pachuku smiled despite Sanvu’s unchanging demeanor, “Nothing that can’t be helped with a bit of training. But if you want my advice…” Pachuku bounded over to their bag that Sanvu had just strewn to the side upon walking in. “For when you have a type disadvantage like that, using these items really helps. And so it really helps to know what they do. You already figured that the Geo Pebble would work, and that’s only one example!” Pachuku pointed out, which had Sanvu slightly more attentive, his eyes a bit more curious instead of depressed. “It really helps when you can’t really battle, when acting as a supporter for, like, Leppas or Orans, for the ones that can; one can cover for the other.”

Pachuku reached in and fished out the spiky blue berry from earlier that they hadn’t used. “Like this, there’d mostly be a chance that throwing her this could’ve made her dizzy, if she didn’t like dry food. That’d mean she’d miss her attacks more. “

Sanvu glanced down before glancing back up without responding. He looked a bit more thoughtful, eyes staring directly at his friend.

“I’ve picked up a lot of items before, so I’m probably the ‘mon to explain how most of this stuff works. If we were facing a Ground-type, I’d be just as useless, and you’d be in my position back there, for the most part. I’d be using items to help you.”

“So… what do we have to do?”

“We should try to get a general overview of the types that’re in an area so we get an idea of who’s supporting who. It won’t always be clear cut, but even if nothing else, we at least know who’s generally gonna be supporting who.”

“And this’ll mean both of us will be helping the other?”

“Yeah! So no more ‘feeling useless’ because of a type disadvantage! There’s always ways to get better!”

And so, for the next long while, Pachuku was pretty much explaining the items to Sanvu for the night. Though while his intentions seemed innocent enough, Sanvu still couldn’t help but feel like there was something Pachuku wasn’t entirely willing to divulge, with the way he sometimes shifted as he spoke. Of course, amidst learning what items did what, there was little time for settling on these thoughts, but Sanvu was still somewhat bothered, though he didn’t say any of this to Pachuku, and often just explained that he was ‘absorbing the information’ if Pachuku noticed the lingering worries on his face. It all culminated when they both decided to sleep for the night.

Because while it had been the second day and they’d made enough progress that Sanvu had found something that elicited familiarity with his past, Sanvu had still ultimately felt like he’d been strung along. Pachuku’s attitude in the prior mission had also caught his attention, where Pachuku had been willing to push him into the dungeon to see what things were like, and had been otherwise lackadaisical; this mission had been something quite to the contrary, where Pachuku had been very hands-on and focused, until the end. Even when he’d been stuffing items into the bag, he always hadn’t been very far away, as if being close to Sanvu was something he needed, despite that both of them were new to this dungeon thing.

‘Maybe I’m just tired..?’ Sanvu wondered. He was beginning to feel the licks of drowsiness under his eyeballs.

And so he drifted off, his suspicions evaporating with his spirit.