It was morning.

A pleasant, sunny day beamed in from outside. Yet there was nothing wrong with the house as he thought he might expect. As Pachuku looked down from his basket on high, he couldn’t find anything wrong with the space, yet couldn’t help but wonder, if only for a second, if that wasn’t the case.

“Heyy…”

He knew that voice. It couldn’t be anyone else.

Over on the far bed, the one he’d gotten specifically because he’d wanted to adventure with her; regardless of the empty space it consumed. Of course, there she was, rousing from sleep.

“Hi, hi, good morning!” Pachuku responded in kind. His face beamed as he bounded down. Sure, he always had to look up a ridiculous ways to be able to meet her at some level; he often had to stand on the table so he didn’t have to crane his neck. But that didn’t matter, it never did.

Yet a small question plagued him; why would any of this feel wrong? It felt as if he hadn’t been on the table to look at her in so long. Yet today was any other day, his confusion having been piqued somewhere he couldn’t fathom.

“You ready for yet another session? Today’s mission should be easy! Then we can get right back to making you no longer weak!” she beamed. She always had these fluid dance-like motions as she spoke; only pronounced by her evolved form. Pachuku couldn’t help but be entranced; she always knew to look on the bright side, after all.

“Y-Yeah! T-Then, uh… we can find out what’s going on, yup!” Pachuku nodded along.

Every day they had spent brushing up on Pachuku’s knowledge of Pokemon names, types and moves. He’d been caught behind, but if anything was to help him get stronger at dungeons and not faint immediately, it would be to acquire knowledge he could just flick on a dime, after all. She often took up battling when he couldn’t; the perfect duo.

He couldn’t tell how long it had been as he gazed at her with his eyes, as she responded with a face that darkened the more time passed.

“Anything wrong?” Pachuku asked, to where she shook her head.

“No, no, it’s nothing. Shouldn’t try to get you down, after all, we should both be at our best!”

“You sure? I can listen to anything. I’ll absorb anything, if you let me!”

“Really. I’m just sort of wondering what would be better for today; what would work for you….”

Pachuku didn’t have any particular preference. It was easy to follow whatever she wanted.

“I know you’re okay with anything, but, like, well, even Auntie knows that, and yet there’s still a process to it all, right? That’s all I’m thinking about. Otherwise it’ll go one ear in and out the other!”

“Uh, yeah! That makes sense.”

Then she bounded out the door. It was at a speed almost incomprehensible, an irony for the small, fast Electric-type he fancied himself as.

“H-Hey! I know you’re evolved and so you’re faster and all, b-but… wait for me!”

Pachuku bounded after her as fast as his paws could carry him out the door.

But he only saw… the road outside his home which was blank; empty. The sun shone almost menacingly as the clouds continued to circulate around his house, their dark wisps growing and coagulating.

*Music: Deltarune – THE_HOLY

He couldn’t see her anywhere. That’s odd. How could he miss her, especially when Pachuku was always at least able to see her legs?

He called her name, as he continued to run up the road that curled around to Mindscape. He didn’t hear nor see any speck of her existence. Pachuku began to grow increasingly worried, head swinging from side to side in a panic, looking every which way.

As he approached Mindscape’s entrance, though, it felt as if everything was trying to ground him, keep his electricity from flowing. His movements felt sluggish, which was weird, he’d been so full of energy earlier.

He turned around, only to find two menacing eyes boring into him, the eyes of the one he despised most, the one who had caused him the most strife.

“She’s not here,” the purple beast uttered, who was only somewhat recognisable as a Crobat, flickering in and out as if he were some kind of Orb projection. “You’re not real… You were never real, only mine to seize and control…”

“N-No…” Pachuku stammered, shaking his head so hard he felt it might burst. “N-No… she’s real… I’m real… you’re just… l-lying… to me…”

“Believe me… I wish I could lie to you…” the bat drawled, as literal drool snapped out of his mouth. It dripped onto the ground, and Pachuku found he couldn’t move, eventually wrestling himself free of the strange mounds of dirt tugging at his feet.

He charged up as much electricity he could muster, letting it all out onto the Crobat.

But it was no longer there.

Where Pachuku was he couldn’t be certain. The clouds from the sky flew down and around him, as if to coil and embroil him in its midst.

He found he could move again, so he just resumed running forward. Wherever he went, he surely could find her, right?

Once again, he resumed calling her name. Where had she gone? Surely being out in a dense fog like this was dangerous, he thought, the terror growing in amidst the veil.

It eventually cleared, and he was somewhere else in Mentage. The mist dissipated, only to reveal some area in Mentage closer to the larger houses. Everything was large and imposing to a small Pachirisu like himself, but tonight there felt intent in the air to shrink him even further.

There in front of him stood a Snivy, familiar only by the glare he bored down onto Pachuku, his gaze direct, and focused.

“S-Sanvu?” Pachuku muttered. He wasn’t sure why his throat suddenly hurt so much, who exactly was this guy, and why did he matter? He just wanted to find her!

“She’s not here anymore…” he answered, direct and firm. His voice was measured much like when Pachuku was awake, as he hardly moved, the only real movement being his eyes as he glanced around the space they stood, the peaceful day having been reduced to a peaceful night, the moon shining on Sanvu’s body almost as if he were a figure in a spotlight.

“N-No!” Pachuku shouted back. “I don’t care what you think, I will find her! You’ll see!”

“You won’t,” Sanvu responded, staring directly at the little squirrel. “Because nobody can trust you anymore.”

“N-Nobody… you know that isn’t true, r-right?” Pachuku’s eyes were watering.

“I can’t. What makes you think she would?”

Pachuku felt no energy to move. It wasn’t even anything particularly exclusive to him; Sanvu continued staring him down, equally unmoving, that blank stare peering into his very soul. Not that Pachuku particularly cared, as he continued to yell out for her name, desperate to find her.

And then she spoke, though he saw no sign of her.

“Why do you want to find me if all you do is drive others away from you?” she taunted, from somewhere Pachuku couldn’t see. He thrust his head around trying to find the noise, but Sanvu was still the only one standing there, in that same spot, with the same face.

“Move. I want to find her.” Pachuku ordered. Sanvu remained in his singular spot, as if he were a statue, were he unable to talk, Pachuku might have just mistaken him for a piece of decor.

“She’s right, you know. All your weakness ever does is drive others away. What will you do then when you have nobody?”

“I mean it! Move!”

He went to ram the Grass-type on all fours; something within him telling him it would be wrong to use electricity on him, despite that he resisted it. But when he thought he’d done it, and Sanvu should’ve been attacked, instead, he found he was no longer in Mentage.

He laid still in some kind of dark void as he picked himself up from his run. His head turned every which way, but all he could see was some kind of barren landscape resembling a desert, draped in purple hues, in the dark of night. That was as much as Pachuku could make out anyway, why would she run this far, he could idly wonder.

“You can’t run forever…” a voice echoed from somewhere. It was loud, booming… and for some reason, it echoed, many times over.

Why did any of this sound familiar, Pachuku had to wonder; a dark space where voices boomed incessantly, all vying for attention with individual interpretations. It all felt mildly familiar to the small Pachirisu, but he couldn’t put that to mind right now.

“Tell me where she is!” he demanded of the voices. His throat felt like it might give out, but anything he did didn’t matter; it was just another show of his own weakness.

“Someday… you have to fight me… you can’t just play chicken forever…” the voices taunted, echoing around the space. Pachuku thought he might collapse from the sheer volume alone, and most things sounded loud to him due to his small stature. Yet these were somehow a tier above that.

When the voices ended, Pachuku decided to get up, but it wasn’t two steps before he buckled again, despite nothing echoing from the horizons.

He felt an odd sensation, it was like his own electricity, but it moved to paralyse him. Except… as an Electric-type, wasn’t he immune to paralysis? Surely this didn’t feel right. What could paralyse an Electric-type?

He went to move, only to find his feet were covered in something that was slowly rendering them useless. Was he, no…

His body was becoming stone, and he found he couldn’t move, anywhere.

Pachuku’s breathing shallowed as all around him; mounds of black sludge creatures surrounded him on all sides, their glares piercing his soul. For some reason, Pachuku’s electricity was out. He tried summoning something, anything, but it all came up blank. His feet were completely covered in stone, and it was moving up his body towards his torso.

He managed a little spark near his tail spikes, but it practically fizzled when it went to hit the Void Shadow, absorbed as if it had merely been a meal and not an attack.

Pachuku would have no hope. No salvation.

And soon the whole world would know… when it rang out of his mouth, his last ditch effort to subdue them with his voice, in a vain attempt to save himself as his body became preserved.

---

~~

It was late at night, so much so that the inside of the tree was almost as invisible as the void, were it not for the moon’s light streaming in through the windows.

It wasn’t a pleasant waking; Pachuku was practically slammed out of bead through sheer momentum, tumbling down with the entire basket. His head stung for a few moments, absorbing the force of the blow as he tumbled down the wall, but he could get over it. He was weak; after all, that was just one of many of his bad points, he figured.

As Pachuku managed to regain consciousness, he went to move about, hoping he hadn’t woken-oh.

Sanvu wasn’t here.

Then the rest of the day’s events flew back into his head. Right, Sanvu had left him alone, because… just like in the dream, he couldn’t trust him anymore.

So he’d left him alone… to be safe.

Pachuku could only begin to tear up before realising it. He’d dreamt! In goodness knows how long, he had no capacity to remember any of his dreams, and yet, there he’d gone and had one. About…

Oh. About her.

But more than that, his scattered thoughts could only reveal one thing. Sanvu had been ridiculously reckless in the mission to Elevated Forest… and the missions after that… because as Crobat had said, it was his memories that were manipulating the world.

Yet Sanvu, in all his kindness… had left Pachuku with the one thing he knew Pachuku desired most; his safety.

“…You want a teammate who’ll solve this crisis your way?” his words echoed in Pachuku’s head, the events of the dream merging with the events in the waking world.

“Then go find one. It was so easy for you last time; surely it’ll be easy enough this time.”

Pachuku wracked his aching head. He attempted to feel around for an Oran, since his head throbbed in response, as he managed to find one, his thoughts racing. What had Sanvu wanted, besides being reckless? To find his memories, sure, but what else…

“Hardly my fault you didn’t tell me how you really felt.”

“Do you want to quit?”

Pachuku finally managed to click the pieces together, almost choking on the Oran, luckily managing to catch himself in time.

Sanvu had wanted to know exactly why Pachuku had been so antsy… so afraid. Just like when he would listen to Sanvu’s dreams, or when he listened to her plights when she hadn’t evolved for so long.

It hit Pachuku that he hadn’t even remembered her existence in so long. He hadn’t told Sanvu purely because he didn’t know why he was afraid. He’d just thought Sanvu was being reckless, and hadn’t known why, and had always had to shake out the feeling so then he could continue along to follow his buddy.

But it was like remembering something long forgotten, as he chewed that berry, the more he thought about that dream, and what it related to. The things he’d forgotten.

It all made so much sense… and he hadn’t been able to tell Sanvu any of it.

He’d squandered his second chance.

It came in small bursts. He couldn’t afford to be loud this time of night; surely his fall would’ve alerted everybody if he wasn’t the only house in goodness knows where. So all he could do was hiccup as it all came out, dripping at his feet.

“H-He…. cared…. about me…” he sobbed, the softness of his voice enough to surprise even himself.

He had to tell him. He remembered that Crobat said that supposedly, everyone was being manipulated. But he didn’t want to believe that. At least not fully.

Could Crobat manipulate all that? Dreams were hardly something they were capable of, and while he couldn’t be certain if Dark Matter had been watching, he hardly figured he was worth a target. It was like Sanvu said; he was the centrepiece of this whole thing, why not target him, instead?

He dashed out the door. He almost stopped himself; he couldn’t be sure he would even find Sanvu, but surely he wouldn’t have gotten far.

Even if the team was over… he had to know. If only so then he could do a better job than the pathetic weak Electric-type that he was.

---

Pachuku ran outside. Bounding on his paws, the night sky was clear in contrast to the dream. Yet he tried his hardest to remain quiet; only whispering the Snivy’s name every so often as opposed to crying out.

It took him around buildings, in a town so empty and devoid of anything it looked like a perfect hangout for Ghost-types who loved the dark.

It took him a couple of minutes, until he eventually saw the moon illuminating a figure, sitting over a hillside, looking directly at it. The figure appeared to be sitting down. He almost didn’t recognise it, until he saw the unmistakable point of a Snivy’s snout.

*Music: Super Mario 3D World – Footlight Lane

It took the Grass-type mere seconds to look in Pachuku’s direction, as the squirrel moved to sit closer. He didn’t say a word, his frown doing much of the talking that he otherwise would’ve said, the moonlight illuminating his face in a manner similar to the earlier dream Pachuku had.

Pachuku began to recall much more of the events from earlier that day, as the similarity in the events hit him hard. “H-Hey…” he managed to squeak out, “C-couldn’t… sleep…”

He still said nothing. Pachuku shook his head; it was all too eerily similar as he shivered. “I-I’m… sorry… for… accusing your humanity. I… don’t know what came over me, a-and… I know you probably don’t wanna resolve the t-team but… I… wanted… to… at least tell you… somewhat, at least to help you…”

Pachuku trailed off for a second. Would Sanvu even want to know? Sanvu was still staring at him, unmoving, his gaze boring into the squirrel. He didn’t say anything yet still, Pachuku soon found it in him to continue.

“I finally… dreamt. I hadn’t had any dreams up til now, but… I finally dreamt and it… just… it made a lot more sense. You were there and… it just…”

His eyes began to water, as Sanvu stared him down still.

“It just… upsets me… that I lost you… you know? So… I just… I dunno how useful it’d be but…”

Sanvu soon sighed, his gaze turning back to the moon. He looked equally weary from what Pachuku could make out; for as much as the moon illuminated his front, it didn’t look quite natural, as if it were somehow too bright and too dark at the same time. It was uncanny, as he shivered, next to Sanvu. Eventually, he spoke.

“Do you know why I’m here?” he said after a minute. Pachuku looked at him in silence, as he continued. “I know there’s no way to prove it, and all, but, the moon looks the same in this world as it did in my old world.”

Pachuku looked between the moon and Sanvu, unsure by what he meant. “You mean… your old world? You… remember it?”

Sanvu sighed, shaking his own head in response. “That’s the point, I don’t, not fully. I’m aware that to you, suggesting I’m anything other than… this… is ludicrous.” he moved his arm as if to insinuate his Snivy body. “I’m aware you wouldn’t believe me.”

“B-but…”

“To you, I must be lying, when I suggest that the moon… and the stars… resemble what they look like on my world…” he looked down, as if unsure of that statement somehow, but couldn’t quite voice exactly what it is that feeling was. Confusion? It was snuffed out almost as quick, so he merely ignored it. “Remember when you found me, and you believed I was an Amnesiac? You had no way of proving that, either, despite that I can’t even remember what my own family looks like, what my own life looked like.”

Pachuku was now on the receiving end, opting to not say a word.

“But yet, in every conversation we’ve had since… that didn’t matter. You listened without a care for anything I’d said, whether it was dreams or my humanity or Dark Matter, you were never eager to stop… until recently, when you just wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”

Pachuku could only frown as he continued.

“I don’t need you to believe me. Everything I said might as well be lies to you, but I have had every intention of at least sharing the whole of my truth with you, regardless of it actually being true or not. All I’m asking is that you do the same. I have no way of proving whether anything you say is real, you could just be Crobat’s puppet, for all I know, and it could all be a ruse.”

“Y-You don’t… believe that, do you? That he’s… that Dark Matter’s… manipulating everything?”

“How much I do… it’s not something you can quantify, is it?”

Pachuku looked down as he sighed, some tears escaping his eyes as he spoke, the sniffles obvious enough that Sanvu could hear. The Grass-type spoke up again. “But just… tell me. From the heart. I’m just sick and tired of all the hiding… all the lying… you hated it so much when everyone else was shifty that you didn’t think others wouldn’t think the same way?”

Pachuku continued to snivel, eventually managing to blubber it out. “F-Fine… even if it’s all over… I couldn’t live knowing I was too weak to even h-help tell you.”

~~

---

*Music: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – Excess Express at Dusk

“It was because… you reminded me of Keelee.

She was a Kirlia… an evolved Pokemon, a bit taller than you… actually a lot taller. Think Didra, but, like, a fair bit smaller. Didra would’ve also evolved from a Kirlia… and from a Ralts into that too, at some point.

She was Didra’s niece, yeah, niece, and she… she used to be my partner. She’s who that huge bed was for.

As I’ve told you before… I was not all that powerful. Sure, I can pick up items faster and more reliably than any other member in Mindscape, but Pachirisu… we’re not strong Pokemon. It doesn’t take much to knock us out, so she’d always perk me up, cause she never cared.

She figured she’d help teach me everything… moves, types, items, you name it. She was always so bright… she kept telling me that if I knew enough, it wouldn’t matter if I got knocked out, because she’d always continue on to finish the mission.

And that’s what we’d do. Yeah, we even worked in Mindscape together. Since she was evolved, she always had much more strength for anything, and if ever she encountered a Pokemon she was weak against, it would be my turn to help out with the upsides. Sure, our weaknesses didn’t really overlap or anything, but I was friends with her a while… a long while, and we rescued so many Amnesiacs.

But one time… she and I were assigned a mission… I can’t recall the place and I hate it, but it was some dungeon where I was going to have a hard time. She never wanted me to feel terrible, we’d listen to each other… much like you said… like what we did.

But… then she went off the path we were supposed to go, and I didn’t want to get her hurt, despite that I was going to be hurt more, and she just… wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t even think it was in our mission to go any particularly further than we ever expected to, that day.

So we fought… and she ran off. I waited, cause normally, if we ever had a hitch like this, she’d typically come back and we’d just wander back. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, either; we were friends long enough for that to be normal.

I… don’t know what happened, but she never came back. I didn’t go after her cause I wanted to report back to Didra, and I was expecting the worst when I did.

You know, she probably wanted me to save her niece and all, since we were such good friends and all, I expected to be removed from my position for that alone. It just made sense.

But she didn’t say that at all when I got back. She was so confused; it was like Keelee had never existed. She wasn’t angry at me for not saving her, she was angry that I flaunted the rules, joined by myself and all, in Mindscape, which just baffled me. She’s her aunt, how the heck would she not know who Keelee is?

I pleaded and pleaded, but eventually… that’s when she gave me that stipulation: find an Amnesiac so I could rejoin. That’s when I found you…

But see… for a long time… I forgot about Keelee too. I didn’t even remember that I’d been in Mindscape before, just that I wanted to join it. I was still sad and furious that I hadn’t gone back for her, but that didn’t resurface… until I saw Oshee coming back alone, you remember that right?

Yeah, well that was me. I came back alone, just like she did. I forgot my teammate, just like she did, not immediately, but after a period of time. I forgot all about my membership, and when it all came back to me a few days ago…

I couldn’t just… lose you too. Not after this whole thing had been… a second chance, basically.

You wanted to know why I was scared… legit, I couldn’t tell you. Not because I didn’t want to, I couldn’t. I hate myself for it. I don’t know if what Crobat says is right, but… I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I just wanted us to… you know… be careful… so that we didn’t end up like her… like any of the others.”

~~

---

*Music: Super Mario 3D World – Footlight Lane

When Pachuku finished, he looked at his sitting paws, his eyes too dry for tears. Eventually, he mustered the courage to peer up at Sanvu, whose expression was unreadable in this light, but he thought he could see the frown shrink, at least a little bit.

“Thank you,” he breathed, a relief after the many ticking hours he’d spent waiting. “You’ve no idea how much that means to me.”

“Yet… I can’t prove any of it happened?”

“Doesn’t matter. You can’t believe that I was human, after all,” the Pachirisu thought he saw a smirk, but before he spoke, Sanvu resumed, “What matters is that you meant the truth, regardless of whether it’s actually true.”

Pachuku could only sit, the relief blowing through his body like a breeze that should’ve been present on this night. As he stared ahead, he saw more of that fog, and Sanvu followed his gaze.

“I’m not ungrateful for your protection, regardless of whether you helped her or not. But… and don’t try to resist, I don’t think it’s something you could hold onto anymore. That.” he motioned with only his nose and eyes towards the fog, “That’s proof that regardless of my humanity or not, this involves me. I have to be involved, regardless if Dark Matter’s actually behind this world, regardless of any of it is true, I’m involved and I have been since the moment I woke up here.”

“How do you know it’s you though?”

“Because of what you just told me.”

Pachuku furrowed his brows, his eyes wet from all the crying.

“It’s like you said, you forgot Keelee when she disappeared, but it wasn’t instantaneous. But everyone else forgot about her. Eventually, you did too.”

“Uh… huh?”

“Who hasn’t forgotten any of the members who disappeared with not even a single mention from anybody else?”

Pachuku still found it hard to follow, his ears twitching.

“Roin, Ritza, Tenab, Derjie, and those other guys… Swensie, and… the spiky one, his name was, like, Zero?”

“Sero, I think,” Pachuku corrected.

“Right, but as I’ve told you, I’ve never forgotten any of them, not once. I certainly didn’t know everything about them, but I remember what they looked like, what they did. Yet not even signs in town can keep track of civilians, let alone individual houses.”

He leaned forward a little, his eyes moving directly on Pachuku. “Even you…” he trailed off… as his eyes widened, in silence, as Pachuku moved to respond.

“But… I didn’t forget them either. I forgot Keelee but… not all of them.”

“Right… because it’s my fault.”

“How?”

“You’ve never left my side from the moment you met me. We’ve always stuck together, we lived together, we’ve always been in the same place. Nobody else… nobody else has remembered a thing… except vague insistences that something existed…”

“So… what does that mean?”

“It’s exactly as Crobat said. I’m doing something to this place. Not just my memories, but… whatever this is,” he gestured towards his body, drawing some kind of line down his green body.

“So I can’t afford to play it safe. Because I don’t think I’m hurting this place… I’m healing it.”

“Healing?”

“You didn’t remember Keelee before now, did you? You told me yourself, all that head shaking… you were remembering her, weren’t you, but you just didn’t know it. That has to be it.”

“N-No, you’re right! I don’t know why b-but… I haven’t, no; I haven’t been forgetting anything weird around you, now that I think about it…”

“And then it’s as you mentioned, you dreamt, finally, when I wasn’t with you, anymore. When you said before this that nothing you dreamt ever retained itself.”

“Oh… oh… no….” Pachuku came to the same realisation, his face adorned with terror.

“You see? I don’t have the option to just sit idly by. I don’t even know who I was… where I lived, any of that stuff, because it’s all decorating this space. I kinda have a bit of a personal stake in this, if you couldn’t tell.”

“Oh…”

They sat in silence for a second as Pachuku realised: his only clarity was with the only Pokemon that could realistically be human. His literal history and connections were tied to the almost literal air freshener that was Sanvu’s being, the breathable air in the suffocating void of lost and dying memories.

“Look, I didn’t entirely mean it, either,” Sanvu admitted after a while. “I don’t want to break the team. I don’t know why but… I want to protect you too. I admit, I was a bit reckless in our recent missions but… it was just like you said, I want to get to the bottom of this. Didra sure won’t let us if we just follow her every letter. You even said it yourself you don’t trust her anymore.”

“Y-Yeah but…”

“I know, and that’s why I want to work undercover. There’s no way we can know if she’s not also being manipulated like everything else is. If there’s a chance, I want to actually get to the bottom of this. It’s my life they’re draping over this and all the members we lost; I have the right to know what they’re doing to it and them.”

Pachuku sighed softly as he continued. “If you want to help, why not fight alongside me? Instead of just… playing it safe… why not do it together? I’ll… try… to keep what you said in mind so that we can try and stay alive as long as possible. But… we just… can’t afford to keep skirting the line like this.”

Pachuku contemplated for the moment. “So… you want to continue along?”

“I have to. If you want to continue our team, I’ll try to keep you in mind if we encounter something that’s a bit too ridiculous. But… we have to at least try if we want to get back at Crobat.”

“You… weren’t going to give up?”

“What, you kidding? No, I was just telling him off so we’d get the Dedenne back. You actually think I could actually give up after this?” he moved his arm to gesture towards the fog again. “Please, in your dreams, more like.”

That got Pachuku to laugh, though he attempted to stifle it if only to stay somewhat quiet. “So, we just, work on Didra’s missions, don’t tell her anything, but keep figuring this out for ourselves?”

Sanvu smirked as if to give the affirmative. He wasn’t entirely sure Pachuku could see, but the little squirrel could indeed. “Cause she’d lose it all. Unless I act as a radiator for everybody, I don’t quite think it’d heal her as much as I’d like, anyways.”

“Th-Then… sure. I don’t know what much I can do, cause, well, I’m still just a weak Pokemon, but… I-I’ll try to help you too.”

Sanvu smiled as Pachuku said it, looking once again at the fog.

“…You’re not weak. Weak would be something else, not you,” he pointed out.

“I hope you’re not insinuating you’re weak, cause you’ve gotten pretty good at this whole Snivy thing, y’know, for a human.”

“I’m not quite sure what I meant anyway, but, it’s not you; a ‘weak’ Pokemon… that’s somebody else.”

They continued to share quips like this for most of the rest of the hour as the moon continued gleaming, before they decided to turn themselves in back home.

However, they were not the only witnesses that night to the reunion of the friendship. It could only be one whose attention wouldn’t waver in the face of any information provided to them.

Or, rather, wouldn’t forget anything in a moment’s notice, the ever looming eyes watching over the town as nobody batted an eye while still in the realms of unremembered dreams.

~~