*Music: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – Twilight Town
Eventually, it was time to enter the abyss of the dream world again. He had to shake himself out of his stupor; the landing wasn’t quite so rough in the prior nights.
Back into the world without definition, Sanvu idly wondered how much he would be sent here, as he began to regain some sense of lucidity.
“Hello? Anybody there?” Sanvu yelled out. No response.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed above him some kind of lanky, flaky structure. It looked like the silhouette of a tree, its various arms poking and prodding the sky. Sanvu even when looking up as far as he could was unable to see the extent of its height.
He looked about himself instead, noting that the cliff was still nearby, and made to yell again when a voice rang out all around him, as if omniscient.
“The space…”
This echoed further before the voices decided to elaborate.
“…of no space….”
Sanvu wasn’t sure what that meant. But the various intonations suggested the voices weren’t really talking to him, if they ever had been.
“What does that mean, the space of no space?” Sanvu murmured. He wasn’t sure where he got this lucidity from, in these dreams, but he was going to try and hang onto it.
“The space… of dreams…”
This reverberated about, and Sanvu still couldn’t be sure if they were speaking to him, given the distance seemed to change with each iteration of the echo that permeated the space. He still tried to listen in, trying to discern if he could count them to discern how many there were.
“space… for… darkness…”
Before he could process the reverberations of that last one, he was once again ejected from the void, back to an awaiting squirrel, eager to hear the details.
~~
Didra wandered in on them as they checked the screen again.
“Oh, am I interrupting anything?”
“No, just checking the missions on here,” Pachuku excused, petting the orb near the screen that they’d been using.
“We’ve been getting fewer missions to put on there, so I’ll have to ask that you come see me more often. I can explain as to why.”
Both were attentive, but pensive. They wore scowls on their faces so much it was beginning to become tired for Didra, so she never bothered questioning it.
“As you probably know, Mentage Town is trapped in a ring of dungeons. Given sufficient knowledge of the outside, one can use an appropriate warp at the end of a dungeon to proceed to the other side, like with escort missions. But since the dungeons have been changing, we could continue to be furtherly trapped, and I’m particularly worried about that. It would mean we would be stuck to just investigating locally.”
‘About time,’ Sanvu thought.
“So your mission today is to go to the Mystical Woods. There’s expected to be a teleporter there that leads to a nearby village of some kind. I suspect that it’s Amnesiac energy keeping us in for a purpose I cannot fathom, perhaps related to what we’ve recently discovered. So I’d like you to get to the end and see if there is any. I believe I had heard from a source that energy there was slowly bubbling for one reason or another. The floor count has also increased from what you’ve probably seen of it before.”
Both shared a knowing look. Last time they were there, they weren’t alone.
“Oh, and this is just for you two…”
She kneeled over, and softened her voice.
“I’ve been looking into what you’ve said about the Treaders not being around. I’ve found no record of them in my notes, despite looking for them.”
Both stared in stunned silence, though their faces didn’t budge.
“I assure you I’ve done no hiding of any sort, but I don’t think they were even here. I’m sorry to get your hopes up, but I can’t find any trace of such a team being here. I suggest you further look into this on your own time.”
She then got up and wandered off. It was what either of them expected she would say, but there was nothing any one of them could do to point out to her what was obviously wrong.
So it was time to start the mission.
*Music: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky – Deep Star Cave
Upon setting foot in the dungeon, some things were apparent compared to prior. The cliffs and the trees atop the cliffs were the same, but everything had a pinkish hue to it. The rocks embedded in the walls were still mostly white, some off-pink, but everything that would be green like the grass, or leaves took on a rosy tint, as if the area itself had inverted.
The bubbles they had seen on the 8th floor were also everywhere, apparent from even the first floor. They still showed images bathed in silhouette, but instead of some kind of town, they were shapes not recognised by either of the heroes, in that same blue hue as before.
“So… everyone’s forgetting about them. Do you think this is related to Amnesiac stuff?” Sanvu postured, waving about.
“Why wouldn’t it be? That’s what I’m worried about. Something happened to them, but there isn’t anything we can do, and nothing we say gets through.”
They proceeded through the rooms that were noticeably smaller than before. Each of the room shapes were the same, but the absence of space made it all the more clear how weak the apparitions still were. It wasn’t lost on them that their last trek through here had been with those very same individuals that everyone was seemingly brushing past like paper in the wind.
Despite that the individual rooms were smaller, the floors in general were huge, with many curving hallways that sprawled in and around themselves. On a better day, they might’ve even appreciated the artistry of the dungeon itself, since it really did sell the “Mystical” name with its new hues and additions, the glimmer of everything being particularly stunning.
The dungeon apparitions, if they even appeared at all, were the same, including their state of being pitiful enough to defeat by practically breathing on them. Neither of them had to expend much more energy taking out an apparition, though they couldn’t tell if it was just latent apathy stirring within each of them, or how far they’d come since their first time through here.
Once they’d reached the 10th floor, a new feature began to make itself known on the canvas of the dungeon.
“What is that?!” Sanvu faltered, upon seeing it on a far wall. Pachuku upon getting his bearings followed his gaze. Large smears of what looked to be some kind of white paste were slathered in parallel lines all across the dungeon walls. They looked wet; one was dripping onto a band that sat in the corner of the squarish room.
“Dungeon gunk, I’d guess,” Pachuku grumbled, picking it up carefully. “Yeah, it’s just… wet… stuff.”
“Looks gross.”
“It’ll probably clear when we get out of this place. But yeah, sometimes the dungeon just… makes icky abominations like this,” he turned it over, inspecting, “It’s just an ordinary Persim Band. We can attempt putting it on outside the dungeon.”
“What’s it do?”
“Prevents confusion. Real useful to have, that can get nasty, fast. If I got confused, I might attack you on accident.”
There wasn’t anything to argue at that point. The white smears reminded Sanvu of a really big stick of glue or milk, though it appeared to look more viscous, despite looking as if it were painted on.
So on and on they went, taking a stroll, finding the stairs, defeating one of the lowly Flabebe or Chingling or whatever other apparition came their way. Once in a while, Sanvu’s vines would accidentally touch the ick, and he’d often have to shake it off, in which he was grateful it luckily didn’t stay attached for long, since it was a very unpleasant wet sensation to feel. Pachuku didn’t have this problem as much; he was pretty much solely using his electricity.
The closer they got, the patchier the smears became, seeming to dot the walls almost completely randomly. Some remained smears, others didn’t. There were sometimes parallel lines, and sometimes just a single line. There seemed no end to the random strokes of this stuff in the dungeon.
The very next floor, Pachuku began to rub his cheeks more often, despite that nothing had changed in particular about the dungeon.
“You okay?” Sanvu worried he was getting sick from all the stress, although he didn’t particularly know how that would show. Or that being in or near that stuff was affecting him somehow in a way he didn’t understand. Sanvu certainly wasn’t feeling anything obvious himself, even after having shaken it off his vines more than once throughout the dungeon.
“Huh? Why? I mean, besides the usual-“
“No, like, you keep rubbing your cheeks. Is… something happening to you?”
Pachuku gave him a look of bewilderment, before finishing up with his other paw. “No, there’s just, like, some kind of feeling I’m getting that I’ve just gotta rub out. I’m fine.”
“Oh.”
“They say when your body starts experiencing changes that’s when you can expect to mold it into a new move. I’m waiting for one move change in particular that I’m really anxious for.”
“What’s that?”
“Electro Ball. It’s a move that involves putting electricity into a condensed ball and then shooting it at the target before they can react. Discharge is fine and all, but it’s not great if someone tries to use it to zap me right back or something, that wouldn’t be great, and to charge up that much power when it’s not… useless like it is now… it’s kinda slow. So it’d make me way quicker. Good to shoot at a distance too, I think.”
“How do you know when you experience these ‘changes,’ should I expect any?” Sanvu edged his head in insinuation.
“Yeah, definitely, but I don’t know what it’d be like for you. I think I’m about to learn Nuzzle, soon, which involves my cheeks, so that might be what’s happening to me. That’s decent too; instant paralysis instead of hoping for Discharge to make its mark, but it’s not what I’m particularly after yet. It’ll take time.”
Sanvu silently mulled that. “What moves could I expect to learn?”
“Besides Vine Whip? I think they might be all leaf or plant-like. Don’t take my word for it, but I think you might want to pay attention to your tail. Apparently your energy comes from there or something, but that’s a guess.”
Sanvu nodded, stealing a glance at it before continuing on. Pachuku’s cheeks made little noise as he continued to rub every so often. Sanvu worried he’d hurt his face, but Pachuku would reassure him that electricity is generated using them, so a little more tension wouldn’t particularly hurt.
“So what does it look like when you’re sick?” Sanvu asked at some point.
Pachuku smirked, “I don’t get sick that much but that’d be if I were being callous and I piled up too much electricity without expelling it or I have too little,” he explained, “There’s like, a sweet spot.”
Sanvu nodded, as he continued, “But it mostly just results in fatigue at most. Same would probably happen if you got too little sunlight. But that’s just… typical stuff. I don’t know why someone wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe if they wanted to stay away from society?”
“Even recluses gotta take care of themselves. Everybody knows that.”
“I didn’t know how though.”
“Well now you do! You should thank me.”
“Is it really that necessary?” Sanvu didn’t particularly fancy the idea of constantly staying outside, but couldn’t quite place why.
“It’s not ridiculous,” Pachuku blurted, his head aiming away, “Just don’t literally sit in a cave for forever, or something. I hate society, but even I know better than that. Right?”
“I guess that makes more sense,” Sanvu settled.
This continued until they reached the 12th floor, where they found the stairs.
~~
Music: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) – Shock!
Upon entering the room at the end, they were greeted with a stone plate with a blue glowing wall. The forest was still pink everywhere.
The white smears stopped at a certain point, where it bulged out of the walls like giant bubbles out of the walls. These bulges looked solid, almost like stone, or clay, but not quite, almost as if it were a solidified liquid.
The badges, while not glowing too brightly, were indeed glowing at least somewhat consistently.
“Well, Amnesiac energy is indeed here,” Pachuku said, looking at Sanvu’s badge. He was doing the same with Pachuku’s, noticing the glow on his. The glow wasn’t too light, but it was indeed a solid consistent one. They both walked around, their steps echoing around. There was little noise save for the humming of the bubbles, reverberating with that same pressure they usually felt when there was a lot of that energy about of a Pokemon; despite that there was nobody here.
“So did we ever find out what town they were showing us, and if we could go there?”
“Wherever it was, they’re not showing us that now,” Pachuku hypothesised, “I don’t know what’s in those things now.”
He was looking at one; it was showing some indescribable blue blob with odd flaps that looked like ears. Some flaps down the bottom resembled a dress, but it was too blobby to make any sort of connection from it. Pachuku’s nose scrunched. Whatever the images were, they kept changing between various blobby shapes, indiscernable from one another.
They went closer to the stone plate, and the energy appeared to feel the same. It felt as if the air itself were vibrating. They were about to leave, given there was nothing else to see, when Pachuku noticed something on the wall they were approaching.
There was a small scratch of some kind. The white ick was slowly bubbling inside of it, and it appeared to be dribbling out.
“You fine with standing so close, there?” Sanvu was clutching his head, the buzz appearing to get to him.
“It’s like the dungeon’s trying… to cover something up. There’s a scratch here, and the stuff’s just… leaking out.”
He jumped back, as it continued to leak more and more. Sanvu watched; the plate near the door had some kind of marking on it that also vanished.
“Is the dungeon… changing?”
“No, looks more like it’s covering something up. Maybe…” Pachuku looked at Sanvu worriedly, “Roin and Ritza were here a while ago, weren’t they, when we were together they were…”
Some of the patches seemed to patch up the parts of the dungeon they’d seen with equivalent matter, as if a wound had been healed. The chunks in the walls sometimes faded, revealing a clean, polished shiny new wall in the spots where the ick would vanish.
“Didn’t they say something about having to come to the same dungeon repeatedly?” Pachuku wondered, “Maybe… the world’s covering them up somehow, like how the dungeon closed off. That would explain all this… covering up of stuff, and the… reforming, going on.”
“Didra couldn’t seem to remember them either… and they seem to have been erased from her records…” Sanvu pointed out. He noticed that same shininess that they saw on the rock entrance to Stony Enclose in the patches that he could see all around them, as they partially revealed themselves from the goop that crawled this place.
“The places they’ve been… it’s like the world’s trying to ‘heal’ them, look,” he pointed at the wall Pachuku had turned around from, and indeed, it looked as if it was a brand spanking new wall, or at least, a portion of it, as if it had been newly minted from the dungeon’s own power.
“They didn’t just vanish in a collapsed dungeon… they vanished from this world…” Pachuku concluded; his voice breathy. “Stony Enclose looked exactly the same, yesterday, and that’s where we last knew where they were!”
Sanvu couldn’t help but feel angry. But he wasn’t angry at Didra, at least not as much as before. If the world itself was conspiring to take them out of history itself… then that couldn’t be good for this whole Amnesiac business.
“This would make sense with the way everyone’s acting… but what do we say? If they’re being forced to not remember… wouldn’t telling them be pointless?” Sanvu asked. He squinted with a single eye, since the pressure in the air was growing.
“She just wanted to know if Amnesiac energy is here… which it is. We should at least tell her that, figure out the rest later,” Pachuku concurred; as he moved closer to Sanvu, paw on his badge. “Let’s get out of here before there’s too much stuff and we forget it all.”
Sanvu nodded silently in agreement, the two warping back, another successful mission complete, for both their sake’s and the world’s.
~~
Upon explaining to Didra their findings, her face frowned in an exasperated manner.
“Of course. It’s to be expected that the Amnesiac energy is closing in. I’ll have to look further into it. This’ll probably mean the flyers will be barricaded from Mentage for a while…” she scorned, her narrow eyes looking away from both of them for a moment. “Thank you for verifying that for me. I’m going to have to make contacts to ensure we can still escape this looming disaster. You’re dismissed, that’s all you have to do for today. Your reward is with Notey.”
The bird was loyal as ever, fetching them their monetary reward without fail. Upon leaving, Pachuku decided he’d show him around town, which actually had Sanvu raise an eyebrow.
“Why, what for?”
“I never did it cause we were so busy with…” Pachuku waved a paw at the building they were leaving behind, “…all that.”
They went back along the long road leading to the various huts of different sizes. The tall hut was still there, with a new engraving in the wood that spelt “Maluw” in odd letters.
“Looks like he managed to find a place, at least,” Pachuku grumbled, reading the sign. They continued along the stony pathway, as it curved and weaved into various structures.
Surrounding the lower cliffs were various trees that gave the appearance of an enclosed park. The more they walked, the more what they had seen beat down on Sanvu himself.
They were trapped in some kind of space where the Pokemon were going crazy. Pachuku had probably gone crazy being here all by himself for so long. So when everything looked so peaceful out here, it was difficult to believe any of them could be so strange, especially just out of the blue like he had seen thus far.
Eventually, they passed a large domed wooden house, one that resembled a tree with its white wood and simplistic structure, with 3 names out the front. Ones they recognised.
Oshee, Swensie, and Sero; written in the usual markings that Sanvu could read properly when given enough focus.
“So this is where they live, huh?” he remarked.
Up on the top, on some kind of rung, the Swoobat noticed them passing, and waved with a wing. They waved back, putting on the appearance of being nonchalant about it all.
But inside, it ate away at Sanvu just how much of this was truly what it was. He could feel even his own facade, and the discomfort it elicited, given that something was keeping his memory from him, idly wondering if everybody, in some way, was feeling the urge to just pretend as if nothing was wrong.
Was Pachuku, in some way, bottling something up, perhaps, even unintentionally?
He glanced at Pachuku, who was mouthing off about some material the houses were made of and how it was meant to be long-lasting, or something, but he was only somewhat listening as he distracted himself with his own head. It was as if everything was a specific way, but he couldn’t be sure what it was, and for some reason, this bothered him.
Eventually, Pachuku noticed that something was eating at him, looking up at him with concern, staring at him with big eyes. “Too much?”
The two then headed home. Sanvu also noticed how his home was away from everybody else’s, being the only one on its path, with barely any others nearby. Had this one ‘appeared’ too, and Pachuku had just taken hold because it was convenient, but he wouldn’t say as much?
He truly couldn’t be sure of anything anymore, and he wasn’t sure Pachuku was, either.
Music: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) – Bowser’s Stolen Castle
He had voiced these concerns to Pachuku, who listened intently, once they were safely inside their home, Sanvu sitting on his bed, Pachuku at the small table in the other room. Eventually, he responded.
“Yeah, that suspicion about everyone just being… off is kinda why I wanted to look into it my way. Cause you’ve seen it… nobody makes any sense,” Pachuku acknowledged, shaking his head.
“But… if something’s… not just killing them, but erasing them from existence…” Sanvu shuddered, trembling. “Why’re we not allowed to bring it up, to the others?”
“It’s not that we can’t, we’ve tried,” Pachuku pointed out, “but they tell us we can’t, because of the barrier that surrounds the dungeons. That’s if we even got past the dungeons.”
The squirrel leaned forwards, “I’ve thought about running away, but that’s kinda moot because of that barrier. Everybody says it’s impossible to cross, and if it’s closing in…”
“But what… is it made of?” Sanvu postulated; arms crossed. “Shouldn’t we take that chance, given our situation?”
“No one knows. And if it’s made of Amnesiac energy, and that’s what the others ran into, I’m not so sure it’d be the right option for us to go and vanish, especially if that runs the risk of everyone forgetting about us, too…”
“That reminds me… why’re both of us immune to this? Or at least, why am I?” Sanvu wondered.
“Immune to what?” Pachuku tilted his head. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“If everyone is actually losing memory of the Treaders, we haven’t lost a minute of it,” Sanvu pointed out, patting his head. “I still remember almost everything about them. It was barely a couple of days ago when we were talking with them. Roin looked like a pig; and Ritza some kind of bird.”
“Spoink and Spritzee, yeah. You’re right, and I haven’t forgotten either.”
“Right, so why us? What makes us special?”
“Beats me,” Pachuku shrugged, face narrowed, “I’ve wondered that myself, for all this time, what makes me special enough to notice. I’ve just been grateful to notice at all,” he shrugged.
“I wonder if my humanity plays a part in it somehow…” Sanvu speculated, before Pachuku shook his head.
“Can’t be. I was noticing this stuff well before I met you, and it’s… kinda why I live like this,” he started, before shivering. “But somehow, we appear to be immune to it, this, weird jump in reason everyone has. Or maybe, it’s just taking longer for us to forget.”
“Not to mention, Oshee reacted when I brought the dreams up. Whenever we bring the Treaders up, they do the same. Could they be affected somehow by something we’re not seeing?”
“It’s a miracle society somehow still operates despite this… weird stuff going on…” Pachuku groaned, slumping, “Thing is, we know what’s happening, but we don’t know the why, and we could run in circles all day about what that could be. With nobody to help either… there’s nothing to do.”
“So… we just… give up?”
“No, not like that,” Pachuku stated, “Unless you fancy sitting around doing nothing, what could we do?”
“We could just… look into stuff about this ‘barrier’ and see if it exists, or it’s worth crossing.”
“Or wait for a dream to tell you, maybe? Let’s talk about that, actually,” Pachuku clapped his paws together.
“I mean, yeah, that’s true, but are they that useful?”
“Today’s, yours said something about dreams and darkness. It’s something.”
“It said, ‘space of dreams’, then ‘space for darkness.’ Not sure what that really means.”
“Darkness put in the place of dreams? Maybe that explains why I can’t remember mine, or that I’ve heard nobody mention them,” Pachuku rambled, pacing about, until eventually…
“So first… your dreams mentioned Yveltal… then Beheeyem, with the whole dark spirits thing… then discontentment, then darkness in the place of dreams…”
“Yeah, when you put it together like that, maybe they’re explaining something to me.”
“Yeah, demoralisation, which, I guess is how we feel? It’s certainly how both of us are with everyone else,” Pachuku motioned with a paw outside, gesturing to society.
“I… guess? But what does this do? What should we do?”
“Maybe we should look into the status of those two Pokemon, or at least be on the eye out for information on them,” Pachuku suggested, features focused, “I don’t know much about them, honestly, but if they’re relevant to this whole thing, we might have to find out, somehow, how they’re related.”
“I suppose it hinges on if Didra will let us figure that out or not,” Sanvu guessed, which had Pachuku shrink a little.
“Yeah, she did say to see her for future missions, too. I wonder if she wants to keep an eye on us for some reason.”
“Wonder what she’s caught onto that we haven’t,” Sanvu wondered.
“I still think we’re ahead of her. But as to why we haven’t been forgetting them… maybe we’re just lucky, at least, until if we ever find out.”
Sanvu laid down, as the Electric-type continued, “I mean; if we are being affected, maybe it’s not as obvious as the others? I mean, you still can’t remember your past, but you don’t have any Amnesiac energy. And who knows what I can’t remember if I lost anything, which, I don’t think I have, but how would I know if I did?”
“For now, let’s go with, “we most likely aren’t” given we haven’t forgotten anybody recently yet.”
“Yeah, okay, sure, for now,” Pachuku conceded.
That night, Sanvu continued to wonder why it was that he continued to remember the others, but still made basically no progress on bits of his past, despite those same clues still eliciting some manner of familiarity to him.
‘Maybe we aren’t immune,’ Sanvu thought, as he curled up that night, about to drift, ‘Maybe we’re just the best for last…?’
He wasn’t about to get an answer to that question for a long time to come.
~~
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