Valerie could smell something burning.
It wasn’t anything pleasant, either. This was the chemical odor of something that should never have been burned. This was melting plastic and metal, with paint added in for extra smoke.
She coughed as she rolled over. “Owwwww…”
“Valerieeeeeee…” someone called.
Valerie dragged herself out of something that was really hot. “Gideonnnnn,” she groaned in reply. Her eyes refused to open, the heat and smoke making her feel even more awful than she already felt.
Slowly, slowly, she dragged herself on her stomach across the grass. The heat faded as she crawled away, replaced by a faint clean smell. Of grass.
Eventually, she paused as her hand encountered a ledge of some sort, panting heavily. Someone else— Gideon, probably— dragged himself up next to her. Her eyes hardly wanted to open, but she managed to force it.
The view through her eyes revealed that she had drawn herself up on some sort of outcropping. A vast forest spread out below, with large puffy clouds occupying the horizon. Her little white hand- wait.
Valerie focused on her hand. It didn’t look like anything she was supposed to remember- it was a little nubby thing, with three points that she could barely call “fingers” at the end of it. She flexed it to make sure that it was hers before she noticed a gray paw repeating similar motions.
Her eyes opened wide now, she turned her head and met the eyes of a Minccino that was the same size as her.
Bird Pokemon nearby were startled from their trees by the shriek. As one of them said later, “When you hear a screech like that, you probably shouldn’t hang around to see what caused it.”
“You- you’re not Gideon,” Valerie said, her back against a tree.
The chinchilla had mimicked her move very closely, backing against a tree a good distance away from her. “And you’re not Valerie,” he replied, his voice shaking.
Valerie didn’t realize how fast she had been breathing until her head began to feel a little light. She willed herself to calm down, think rationally, dammit, and try and face the Pokemon with Gideon’s voice.
“Who are you?” she eventually worked up the courage to ask.
“I’m Gideon,” he said slowly, as if that would convince her. Or himself.
“And I’m Valerie, but since neither of us believe each other, it doesn’t mean anything.” Valerie let out a little hysterical laugh and slumped against the tree. “Okay. Okay okay okay okay. What- how- are we Pokemon, now?”
Gideon slumped against his trunk in a similar manner. “I- I dunno,” he replied faintly. He glanced at the burning, smoking wreckage. “Do you think it had something to do with the plane crash?”
Valerie looked and immediately felt worried. It was very obviously the wreckage of a plane, one of the wings seemingly sheered off from some kind of horrible accident. The tree Valerie was leaning against had been knocked over, the top half lying on the ground. “Do you think we should look for survivors?” she asked.
Gideon nodded. “It, um, might be a little hard like this…”
They explored the wreckage a little. It looked like the plane had been a commercial one of some kind, but everything was thrown everywhere from the impact. Valerie only managed to get through the pilot’s door by dragging a seat over and leaning it against the door so that she could slide it open.
The back of the chair hit the floor with a mild thump, wedging the door open. The smell of chemical smoke was stronger here, causing Valerie to have to hide her face behind an arm. That’s odd, did I always have wings?
“Hey, Valerie!” Gideon called. “If you’re looking for the black box, it’d be in the tail!”
Valerie hadn’t known this, but she wasn’t going to admit that. “I was just seeing if there was anyone else in here!” she called back. “There isn’t.” There had been no bodies. Human or otherwise.
She poked around the room for as long as she could stand before scrambling over the fallen chair and getting clear of the smoke. Her head was beginning to feel light again, but this time it was from a lack of oxygen. She took deep breaths of fresh air before looking around for the tail section.
Gideon was already there, staring up at the bottom of the tail section. It seemed to be the least harmed, but that meant that the bottom was a good five feet off the ground. “Any ideas?” he asked pensively.
Valerie looked around for a rock and found one. “Watch this,” she said confidently. She aimed carefully and threw the rock as hard as she could at the bottom of the airplane’s tail.
It bounced off with a reverberating ting. They stood there for a second before Gideon turned to her, a goofy smile on his face. “How was that supposed to do anything, again?”
“Shut up,” Valerie mumbled, folding her arms and looking at the ground again.
The metal structure groaned above them ominously. Valerie and Gideon quickly found themselves on the opposite sides of a massive waterfall of ｃrashing metal plates as the tail of the airplane fell over, dislodging a bright orange thing.
“I don’t think they’re supposed to do that,” Valerie remarked unnecessarily after the dust had mostly settled.
“You don’t say?” Gideon replied faintly. He noticed the bright orange thing and pounced on it as a cat would pounce on a moving toy. “Aha!”
“What is it?” Valerie asked.
“It’s the black box,” Gideon said. “Hopefully we can, uh, figure out how to read this.”
It was very odd looking. It looked like a platform with an orange box on one side and a cylinder on the other, the cylinder reading “FLIGHT RECORDER DO NOT OPEN” in bold lettering. It was a bit large for a Minccino’s build, but he was able to carry it easily enough.
“That’s very obviously an orange box,” Valerie said, unimpressed.
Gideon shrugged. “I’m not the one who named it.” He looked back at the wreckage and bit his lip. “Come on, let’s get going before something explodes.”
Valerie hadn’t thought of this. “Where do we even go?” she objected, even as she glanced at the smoking wreckage nervously. “I haven’t really noticed any towns…”
Gideon’s annoying, goofy smile that Valerie knew too well returned to his face. “It’s simple, really. We just walk until we find civilization, and then, uh, pray they know how to get us back to normal, human form. Simple!”
Valerie rolled her eyes. “There’s a thousand and one different problems with that and I’m not even going to start listing them.”
“No complaints, then,” Gideon replied. He turned around and begun to march into the trees surrounding them.
“Wh- hey! Get back here!” Valerie chased after him. “This is a stupid idea!”
“Too late, can’t hear you,” Gideon teased. “If we walk for long enough, we’ll bump into something eventually.”
Valerie glared at him disapprovingly. “If we don’t breathe for long enough, we’ll pass out onto the ground eventually.”
Gideon sighed. “Look, I know you’re worried, but I’m more scared of staying in one spot for too long.”
“Why, because we’d get help?” Valerie didn’t mean to make her words sound as bitter as they came out.
“Valerie,” the Minccino said slowly. “Think about what would happen if a bunch of people showed up and didn’t understand us.”
She opened her mouth for a retort and then closed it again, looked at the grass unhappily. “I know, but…”
They walked in silence for a while. Gideon shifted his grip on the unwieldy box until he had to set it down, panting a little. “Okay- okay, I need a break.”
Valerie obligingly stopped. “Want me to carry it?”
Gideon shook his head. “It’s fine. Just large and awkward.”
“Reminds me of someone I know,” Valerie replied with a smirk.
Gideon just waved her off. “That doesn’t apply anymore and you know it.”
“Okay then, mister Minccino.”
“Sure thing, miss Emolga.”
They sat there in silence for another minute or so before Gideon slid off of the black— or rather, orange— box and hefted it over his shoulder. “Should probably keep going.”
Valerie nodded in agreement. “I’m not too keen on being mauled.”
The forest was very still, despite the sun being overhead. It made Valerie feel a little nervous, as if something was waiting for them to make a mistake of some sort.
Gideon had let his eyes wander, as he was prone to. It helped him relax a little and avoid thinking about what kind of situation they were in. After a while, his eyes drifted up to the sky, the sight of which caused him to freeze in place.
The sky was different.
From one end of the sky to the other, it was a gradient of greens to blues to oranges that ended at the horizon. It was a beautiful sight, but it was unnatural.
Very unnatural.
Valerie had noticed his sudden stop and also looked to the breathtakingly strange sky. They didn’t say anything until Gideon loudly cleared his throat. “So! Um! That’s new!”
Valerie laughed nervously, the sound belying her sheer bewilderment and terror. “You don’t say! I- I don’t remember it looking like that!”
Gideon opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it again, confusion filling his face. “I-“ He tried again and failed.
Valerie looked at him. “What’s up?”
“Can you remember anything at all?” Gideon asked.
The question, seemingly so simple, brought with it a lot of implications that Valerie didn’t want to think about. She tried to grasp at any memories— of her past, of what she looked like, of anything— and failed. “…No,” she admitted in a very small voice.
Gideon set the black box down again. “That makes two of us, then…”
“Then how do I know your name?!” Valerie burst out. “How do I know my own name?! How do I know that we’re supposed to be human!?”
Gideon grabbed the tip of his long, fluffy tail and began fidgeting with it like one might fidget with a lock of hair. “Exact same questions.”
Valerie collapsed to the ground, suddenly feeling lost and miserable. “What even happened…? Where even are we…?”
Gideon sat down next to her and draped a comforting arm around her. “Hey, it could always be worse.”
“How!?” Valerie yelled. “Death?!”
He laughed a little sheepishly. “Um, well, that’s what my mind jumped to…”
Despite her overwhelming doubts, she let out a choked laugh. “Don’t make jokes right now, Gideon.”
“Sorry.” He patted her back gently. “This probably isn’t the best place to be having existential crisises, though.”
Valerie inhaled, shuddering a little. “…Yeah. Probably not a good idea.” She pushed herself up off of the ground and wiped her teary eyes. “Sorry, Sid.”
“It’s fine, Val.” Gideon picked up the black box again. “Ugh, I hope that we can get this thing fixed soon.”
“Why are you bringing it with us, anyway?” Valerie asked. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing we should just haul around.”
“It might have a clue as to what happened to us,” Gideon said lightly as he began to walk aimlessly through the forest again. Valerie made a silent “O” as she followed.
They didn’t have to walk far to get to the edge of the wood. A large plain spread out below them, with a road curving around the various lumps that could barely be called hills. A few copses dotted the landscape here and there, but there were almost no visible landmarks.
Almost.
Two stｏnes stood upright, lying not too far away from where they were standing.
“Those look like graves,” Valerie said hesitatingly.
They walked down the hill they were standing on. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked.
“We might as well,” Gideon replied. “Might give us a hiｎt as to where we are…”
He trailed off as they approached the stones. They were graves, alright. A simple indent was carved into the edge of the stone, marking a pronounced curve. But what made their blood run cold wasn’t the graves.
It was what waｓ written on them.
Gideon set the black box on the ground, staring. “What…?”
Valerie walked up to one of the graves in a daze. “Victoria Valerie Coumans, aged ｔwenty-six…” Her tiny fingers traced the engraved letters, which looked like they had been there for a long time.
Gideon repeated very similar motions. “Gideon Dexter; ａged twenty-seven, he will be missed…” He used his tail to wipe away dirt that might’ve possibly been causing the letters to look different from what they really were. They didn’t change, no matter how much he rubbed at them. Valerie’s hand moved down to the dates of birth and death, but she froze.
Instead of ｎumbers that she could read, it was a shifting, squiggly mass. Sometimes a squiggle would seem to form into a number, only for the other squiggles to consume it again, repeating the process. She put her hand over the stone and felt it moving unnaturally, almost like flesh. She pulled away her hand like she had been burnｔ by fire. “What in the…?”
“That’ｓ not normal,” Gideon observed grimly from his own tombstone. He studied the rock very closely before standing up and shaking his head. “This isn’t real. It can’t be right.”
Valerie’s head snapped towards him. “What?”
“We’re not dead,” Gideon explained. “At least, I don’t think I am. If we had died, I don’t think these graves would be- doing that.” He traced her face solemnly. “But there’s something else at play here, because we’re not dead.”
“Gideon!” Valerie sobbed, flinging herself at him in a hug. He stumbled back from the sudden rush, but Valerie didn’t care. “We’re- we’re not dead, you’re not dead, I’m alive, you’re alive, we’re fine, we’re-“
Gideon awkwardly patted her back. “Yes, we’re alive,” he said gently. “This place is just messing with us.”
Tears were still in Valerie’s eyes as she pushed herself away and scanned Gideon’s face. The man whom she loved was still there, beneath those large eyes that watched her with compassion. She wanted to hug him again, but she restrained herself. “Do you really think so?”
Gideon nodded. “I mean, you’re right here. Hard to believe you’re dead if you’re right here.”
She hugged him again anyway, but this one was much shorter. “You’re wonderful, Sid.”
“…Um, am I interrupting something?”
The new voice caused the both of them to jump. A white-colored Vulpix was standing there, looking at them as if they were being weird. As Valerie thought about it, she realized that, yes, standing and hugging someone while standing over a grave was pretty weird. She hastily pushed Gideon away and folded her hands in front of herself. “Um, hi! No, you’re fine.”
The Vulpix glanced at the graves and then back at the two of them. “Uh huh. What are you doing all the way out here? Visiting someone?”
The question was a little rhetorical, but Gideon cocked his head. “Um, we’re a bit lost, actually. Where are we?”
The Vulpix stared blankly at them for a moment. “This is the Twin Graves. Not that far from home, actually.” He peered around them at the constantly changing dates on the graves. “Were these Pokemon important to you, or…?”
“Maybe a little?” Valerie’s voice came out in a bit of a squeak. How did you tell someone that you’re the person the grave belongs to?
“Uh huh.” The Vulpix seemed unconvinced. “Say, if you’re lost, want to come by my mother’s house for a while? There’s been a lot more lost Pokemon lately, disoriented or something. She can tell you a lot more about where we are.”
This sounded exactly like what they needed. Valerie nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, that would be wonderful!”
Gideon was slightly more wary. “Uh huh. What’s your name?”
“Keo,” the Vulpix replied. “Yours?”
“I’m Valerie,” she said, “and this is Gideon.” She gestured to him, even as he looked a little uncomfortable.
Keo glanced at the graves again. “Did you- steal the names?”
“Yes,” Gideon lied quickly. “They’re good names, and we liked them a lot.” He tried to ignore Valerie’s stern look.
The Vulpix shrugged. “Not like they’re gonna crawl out of the ground and ask for them back. Come on, follow me.” He began walking away, and, after a moment, Valerie and Gideon followed him through the grassy plain.