Valerie waved goodbye to Ninetails and Keo as they left, but Gideon had something else on his mind.
He shifted his grip on the flight recorder, glancing at the robot that walked alongside them as he did. It was looking around at the various plants like it had never seen them before, and maybe it hadn’t.
“So, uh…” Gideon couldn’t really think of any conversation topics. “Do you have, like, a map?”
Dexter shook his head sadly. “I am afraid not. My inner GPS hasn’t been updated with the surrounding topology. I am attempting to do so manually, but…”
“Slow?” Valerie guessed.
Dexter looked a little embarrassed. “Um, I keep getting distracted. I was not expecting the world to be so… green.”
“Have you seen the sky yet?” Gideon asked, a hint of his goofy grin returning.
Dexter looked up and immediately stopped in place. “That- that is incredible! How…?”
“Something called the Singularity,” Valerie said. “We’re, uh, not sure what it means yet. I’m vaguely hoping that we can find a library or something.”
“Do you think they’ll want us to pay to get into the city?” Gideon worried. “We don’t really have… money.”
“Maybe we’ll find some?” Valerie said. But her voice wasn’t certain at all.
As they walked, their surroundings changed. They seemed to be walking into a wood, the trees around them a pale shade of blue. Gideon blinked as he realized even the bark was somewhat blue.
“Are all plants this- blue?” Dexter asked, as confused as Gideon was beginning to feel.
Valerie shook her head. “No, plants are usually green…”
They hesitated in front of a really dark looking patch in the woods. The light from the morning sun didn’t seem to pierce it at all, and it gave Gideon the creeps.
“Are there no other ways forward?” Dexter asked nervously.
Valerie peered into the trees around them. “Doesn’t look like it,” she replied with trepidation. “It extends like a wall.”
Gideon sighed. “Might as well get it over with. Dunno why a patch of shade is scaring me so badly.”
He walked into the shade and was completely hidden from view, with Dexter following hesitantly. Valerie was about to step through herself when she heard someone calling.
“Wait! Wa-a-ait! Wa-a-a-a-a-ait!”
She froze and turned to see Keo sprinting after them, a bag bumping at his side. “Where’s- where’s the other one?” he panted.
“Um…” Valerie pointed into the shadows. “Just through this shady patch, but…”
Keo slammed a paw into the ground. “Dammit! We gotta go after them!”
Before Valerie could even ask about what was going on, he sprinted through the shade, disappearing. Valerie hesitated for just a moment before taking a deep breath and stepping through the shade.
Her surroundings changed instantly. Where there had once been a semblance of a path, there was only a straight line of trees, like a hallway. The trees were even bluer, somehow, and it was still.
Completely and utterly still.
Valerie shivered before running down the hallway in an attempt to catch up with Keo. She found him not that far down the hall, gasping for breath on the floor. “You alright, Keo?” she asked with concern.
“Just- a bit- winded,” Keo replied with each breath. “Haven’t- run- that fast- in a while…”
“Why did you run?” Valerie asked. “Is this place dangerous?”
“Very,” Keo said, beginning to recover. “Mystery dungeon.”
Valerie shook her head. “That- doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“It wouldn’t, would it.” Keo took a deep breath and stood up. “Okay. So. Mystery dungeons are sucky places that change every time you go through them. The Pokemon that live in them are really territorial, but that’s not why they’re dangerous. I don’t think Anomaly activity is that bad right now, but…” He glanced at her. “We should still probably find your fiancé. Before things get bad.”
The usage of the term caught her a little off guard, but she nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.”
They looked around the halls, with Valerie growing more nervous the longer they went without finding Gideon. Surely this place wasn’t that big…
They stepped into a large clearing of some sort. If the paths they had been exploring were “hallways”, then Valerie was inclined to call this a “room”. It was even square shaped, oddly enough. Gideon and Dexter were in the middle of the room, seemingly debating which path to take. “We should go down the left path,” Gideon was saying. “We need to follow one wall, and that’ll get us out of here.”
“With all due respect, that sounds like a great way to get even more lost than we already are,” Dexter argued patiently. “Turning left repeatedly is a good way to start going in circles.”
“I actually think you should’ve turned right at the last junction,” said Keo dryly, catching their attention. “Both of those probably lead to dead ends, this dungeon is notorious for them.”
“Valerie!” Gideon set the flight recorder down and ran to her. “I thought we’d lost you in this- maze!”
“Well, you kind of did,” Valerie said, but she was smiling regardless as he hugged her. “But we’re back now.”
Keo let out a loud, disgusted groan. “When you’re done being sappy, I’ll be waiting for you at the junction.”
Gideon glared at him as he left. “I’m going to kick him.”
Valerie was also a little annoyed, but she expressed it in a sigh. “Don’t, Sid.”
They met Keo at the previous junction, where they proceeded to keep going straight. Gideon was still stubbornly refusing to let Valerie help carry the flight recorder, something she was beginning to be vaguely miffed about. “I know it’s not that heavy, but you should at least let me help.”
“It’s not heavy,” Gideon said dismissively. “I can take breaks, it’s not that bad.”
Keo, who was in the lead, stopped. Ahead was more trees, basically creating walls that ended in a dead end. “Oh.”
“Should’ve turned left at the last junction,” Gideon said dryly.
Keo glared at him and stomp a paw petulantly. “Shut up! It’s my first time going through one of these!”
Dexter took the lead back to the room. As they walked, Gideon asked, “Hey, how come you’re with us, anyway? Isn’t your mom worried?”
“She knows I’m coming with you,” Keo said simply.
Valerie eyed him. “You’re coming with us.”
“Yes,” he replied, a hint of smugness around his mouth. “I even prepared for a long trip. Treasure Bag, a few things to keep us alive, the works.”
Gideon worked his jaw before sighing. “Sure.” He turned to look at Keo. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you, though. This place is dangerous. Probably this entire journey is, too.”
Keo scoffed. “Like you know anything at all. Even a dead person knows more than you.”
Valerie walked up next to Gideon, who looked completely done with Keo. “Look, he’s just trying to get under your skin. Just try to ignore him.”
“Bit hard to,” Gideon growled. “I know you see something in him, but I cannot for the life of me tell what it is.”
They made it to the room again, Dexter looking over his shoulder at them. “Which way do we go?”
“Considering we went right at the last junction, we should go left here,” Valerie said.
After seeing no further complaints, Dexter shrugged a little and continued ahead, leading the group down the forest hallway. It wound around and around and around, making Gideon wonder if all mystery dungeons were this annoying before Dexter stopped, more trees barring the path ahead.
“Dead end,” he announced unnecessarily.
“Should’ve turned right at the last junction,” Keo said, a faint mocking tone to his voice. No one responded, even as they had to follow him back through the corridor.
Gideon was tired. His arms hurt from carrying the flight recorder for so long, his legs hurt from walking down endless corridors, his patience was tired from Keo’s constant mockery, and his soul was tired, strained by the absolute silence of their surroundings. It was like a library. All it needed was the books and the constant librarians telling them to be quiet.
Almost as soon as he finished thinking the thought, their surroundings fliｃkered and became something else entirely. Gideon caught glimpses of bookshelves that towered as tall as the trees and red carpet on wooden flooring before it went back to normal.
Keo’s breathing grew faster. “We need to start running.”
No one questioned this. They followed Keo through the mystery dungeon, down more and more halls that seemed to be only dead ends. After one particularly promising hallway ended up as a dead end, Keo yelled in wordless frustration and slammed his paw into the tree in front of him.
The mystery dungeon, seemingly taking offense to this, flickered away, replaced by the towering bookshelves again. And the trees didn’t return.
Keo backed away from the bookshelves, somehow going pale beneath his white fur. “That’s not good. Ohhh, that’s really not good.”
Dexter, looking around curiously, pulled a book off of a nearby shelf and flipped it open. The glimpse Valerie caught of it revealed that it was complete and utter gibberisｈ, as if someone had sat a monkey in front of a typewriter and told it to write an entire novel. Dexter’s holographic face grew more confused as he flipped through more pages of gibberish before he closed the book and put it back. “That was not a good book.”
“Of course it wouldn’t be,” Keo snapped nervously. “Okay, we need to get out of here. Look for walls that look fuzzy.”
Keo was content to let Dexter lead, nervously checking his bag. Valerie was more unnerved by his behavior than the actual place itself.
Ａt first.
They entered a room which seemed to be a reception area. A large desk sat in the middle of the room, with a Gothitelle behind it. It was facing away from them, so Valerie didn’t notice anything wrong with it. But Keo frantically whispered, “Don’t talk! Don’t make noise!”
The other three Pokemon cast a nervous glance back at him. He was staring at the Gothitelle and shaking with terror, the first emotion that Valerie had seen from him that wasn’t condescending in some way. Something was deeply wrong.
They quietly made their way over to another hall, trying not to make any ｎoise. But Gideon, tired from having to carry extra weight and the running from earlier, clumsily tripped over a stack of ill-placed books.
They fell to the ground with a rustling of pages and a thumping noise. The Gothitelle whirled around, and they all understood why Keo was terrified.
There was no face.
It walked around the desk towards the source of the noise. They all scrambled to get away from it as it bent over the books and meticulously re-stacked them, distracted for the time being. Without a word, they all ran into the hallway they had been trying to get to.
Alas, this place was worse. Valerie looked around in horror at the various children’s drawings, which had been horribly distorted. The walls here were painted white, and the bookshelves only climbed halfway up the wall instead of towering into the roofless expanse above them.
Ｇideon was also looking around in horror. “What kind of messed up kids were these?” he asked in a murmur. The drawing he was looking at was a smiling Pikachu, but the smile went up past its cheeks and curled around almost its entire face. Valerie quickly looked away and followed Dexter, who was making his way towards the end of the hall of twisted pictures.
Keo was staring at the floor. Valerie didn’t blame him and almost wished that she could do the same, but she had to follow Dexter around various books left lying around on the floor. She tried looking around again, but immediately noticed a faceless Cleffa “reading” a book and focused on Dexter again. Thｉs place was wrong.
Dexter wasn’t faring much better. Every Pokemon ought to have a face. It was a part of their biology. But these ones didn’t, and yet were still doing regular activities, such as reading or doing jobs. He had to suppress several warnings about his surroundings, all of them saying that the details around them were twisted and wrong. His movements were ever-so-slightly erratic, betraying his terror at their surroundings. They were following him. He mustn’t let them see.
He froze. Just in front of another doorway was a faceless Shinx that seemed to be reading a book. Directly in the middle of the doorway.
Gideon walked forward, his arms shaking a little as he held out the flight recorder iｎ front of him. He raised the instrument over the Shinx’s head, hesitated for just a moment, and brought the metal down on its head with surprising force.
The faceless thing crumpled like a piece of paper, shuddering and going limp. Dexter stared in horror at the most likely dead thing as Gideon stumbled away, clutching the metal instrument to his chest. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Valerie with her hands to her mouth and Keo not quite hiding behind her. Dexter returned his attention to the body in the doorway in time to see it… disintegratinｇ?
They all watched as it turned to dust particulates before even those shriveled up and disappeared, nothing remaining of the body. They all stared at the door before Dexter shakily stepped over the book of gibberish that had been being read until a moment ago. Just a moment ago.
This room was yet more towering bookshelves, this time in a circular fashion. Gideon wasn’t sure whether or not to feel relieved or even more horrified that they hadn’t found a way out yet. Ladders stretched up to platforms that curved around the bookshelves, allowing access to the higher shelves without need for climbing the shelves themselves.
Keo let out a little gasp as his eyes scanned the room. “The topmost shelf!” he whispered frantically. “Up there!”
Dexter and Keo scrambled up the ladders easily enough, but Gideon had trouble. He tried to climb a ladder without his hands and nearly fell off, just managing to catch himself by falling against the ladder. It slid away from the platform threateningly, as if it was daring him to do that again.
“Hand me the thing,” Valerie hissed from the top of the ladder. She was watching the door nervously, seemingly hearing something she didn’t like.
Gideon, in any other circumstances, would’ve continued up the ladder anyway. But something told him that this was going to need teamwork, and he wasn’t keen on dying yet. He carefully handed the instrument up to her and scrambled up the rest of the ladder, which bent beneath his weight.
They tag teamed the black box up the other three ladders, the two of them getting more and more nervous for seemingly no reason. They were just climbing ladders. There was nothing wrong. There was nothing wrong.
Gideon had just finished climbing the last ladder, fatigue in all his limbs, as he turned around and saw the Gothitelle looking up at them from the ground floor.
He wasted no time. He threw the flight recorder through the wall, which rippled like water as it sailed cleanly through. Valerie took one look at the ground floor and dived through herself, taking no chances. Dexter and Keo had already left ages ago.
The last thing Gideon saw of that library was the Gothitelle just beginning to float off of the floor after him.
He hit the grass in a roll and ran blindly until he tripped over something.
“Good grief, man,” Keo said, his voice shaking. “We’re safe here, you don’t have to keep running.”
Gideon slowly pushed himself up and looked around. It was much, much later in the day than he thought it would’ve been, and the other two Pokemon were leaning against the flight recorder, exhausted. Keo’s ears were droopy, and the “liquid” in Dexter’s ruff was almost uncomfortably pale, his face missing the holographic eyes that Gideon had gotten mostly used to.
Gideon just laid back down on the grass. “…What happened?”
Keo sat down, as worn out as the rest of them. “That was an Anomaly. They happen in mystery dungeons sometimes. Happen outside mystery dungeons sometimes. Weird, creepy, stupid places full of freaks that want to catch you to turn you into one of them.”
Gideon’s blood ran cold. All that time, if they had made a mistake, they would’ve…
Valerie took a shuddery breath. “If- if I had known that beforehand, I don’t think I would’ve gone through it.”
“The robot might’ve been safe,” Keo said consideringly after a moment. “But I don’t think anyone’s taken a cyborg through an Anomaly before. No one wants to go through them, so not much is really known about them.”
Dexter stood up and shook himself, like he was trying to get rid of water. His holographic eyes were back, but they had a strained look to them, somehow. He looked around at their impromptu camp and made his way over towards Gideon, who had shut his eyes against the vivid sky. “Um, hello, Gideon.”
“Hi,” said Gideon tersely. He cracked his eyes open to squint at him before pushing himself up on his elbows. “Need something?”
Dexter shuffled in place. “I have- been reviewing the footage of what just happened.” He was sure all of that footage would be burnt into the back of his RAM as long as he lived. “Why did you…?”
Gideon stopped looking at him and instead stared through him. “I… don’t know. I wanted to get out of there. Badly.”
Valerie wrapped her wings around herself and shivered. “I- I know we wouldn’t have been able to get out any other way, but… it just felt cruel.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Keo said tiredly. “Those things are shells. There’s nothing left but their appearance. And their hearing. And their intense desire to get you.” Any sarcasm he might’ve wielded had been drained away by the experience.
Valerie buried her face in her arms. Gideon watched her for a moment before sitting down next to her. “You alright?”
“No,” she said miserably. “Nothing was normal in there. Why was there a library? Why did none of them have faces? Why do I still feel so scared…?”
Gideon put a comforting arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. She leaned into his hug, shaking a little. “I thought it wouldn’t be this awful,” she continued with a sob. “What happened, Gideon? What happened?”
Gideon didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer those kinds of questions. He sat there in silence as Valerie cried a little, working her feelings out. Gideon didn’t feel miserable or shocked, just kind of numb. He was fully aware that he was going to have a similar breakdown eventually, but he couldn’t. Not while Valerie was like this.
She calmed down after a few minutes, snuggling against him. “At least I have you with me,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Gideon nuzzled her face, feeling a faint tingle of electricity. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, either.”
“It is not here, Azazel.”
The Mienshao looked up sharply. “It has to be.”
The Iron Leaves that accompanied him shook its metallic head. “It is not here, Azazel,” it said in the exact same intonation. “No signs of it are detected.”
Azazel feverishly dug through a pile of wet metal, the aftermath of a very recent rainstorm. “I saw it. I saw this plane go down. I thought I might get answers. Where did it go!?”
“Possibility: it was taken shortly after the crash,” Iron Leaves said. The voice had almost no inflection, and it preferred it that way.
Azazel stood silently, looking at the wreckage of what had once been the tail of an airplane. “It couldn’t be those two again. I buried them. I made sure of it. With my own two hands.”
“Possibility: scavengers. Black City is not far.”
He exhaled slowly. “I doubt they would only take the black box. The entire rest of the plane is untouched.”
Iron Leaves watched silently as Azazel closed his eyes in thought. When he opened them again, they held the almost imperceptible glint of rage that Iron Leaves had come to admire.
“We will find that box.”