Sorry this took so long folks! My finals feel like forever ago, but I spent most of the time after Chapter 2 studying for chemistry (which i passed!! woo), so I hit a roadblock writing this chapter, trying to get back in the swing of things.
Anyways, I'm appreciating the reviews I'm getting so far, especially the ones telling me about my spelling mistakes (Never trust Google Doc's autocorrect!). I really liked Dream's comments about last chapter's length, and I worked hard to make this one not too short!
And now, without further ado:
3.
DREAMSAYER / DELIRIOUSABSOL / BAY
The first thing that Dream hears when he regains consciousness, is a loud growling noise, like some sort of dog. It’s not very close, but not far away either. Like a few paces, perhaps.
He’s lying on something hard, cheek pressing against something rough, almost like a road or walkway of sorts. Which is funny, because he remembers clearly falling into his warm, soft bed after writing for a bit and tiring himself out. Did he suddenly start sleepwalking, and went straight to sleep after wandering onto a road? Groggily, he opens his eyes and sits up, blinking his eyes rapidly.
He’s kneeling on some stretch of pavement in the middle of the night, in between two large buildings. The disgustingly sweet smells of trash and piss waft through the air, and Dream wrinkles his nose and groans in disgust. The urge to get away from the smell almost sends him away, but he stops at the sight of three human-like figures nearby, and what looks like a dog with horns between the three. Wait…? Horns…? It’s probably just the dark playing tricks on his eyes.
He hears a voice, gruff, low, and angry, address one of the figures:
“...Listen, smartass. You could either give us the cash, or you could be broiled alive by Cerberus over here. Which do you choose?”
Dream swallows painfully, fighting the very tempting urge to bail out of there immediately, and leave a Dream-shaped pile of dust where he once laid. There’s no way that this isn’t a mugging or some sort of crime, and to his best knowledge, he doesn’t have any cash on him. So he’ll probably get ‘broiled alive’. However, if he just gets up and runs, the mugger could use ‘Cerberus’ against him.
Speaking of which… what was ‘Cerberus’? Some sort of gun? A flamethrower? Dream has to stifle a laugh at the thought of some dude lugging around a bulky flamethrower, one with a name, to mug people with. The dog between them seems likely, but ‘broiled alive’ rings in his mind. A dog burning someone alive? That only happens in video games!
Shaking those thoughts off, Dream focuses on the situation at hand. Slowly and somewhat silently, he crawls away, looking back. Behind him, there’s a section of the street visible, people walking past in a blur, and cars blasting their horns. If he can just get over there…
“Hey! You over there!”
Dream freezes, squinting at the figures, one of them turns towards him, but he cannot make out his face. The dog, ‘Cerberus’ he assumes, walks forward, sniffing at the ground.
He tries his best to make himself smaller.
“The **** you doing, man?”
“I-I…” he stutters, before taking a deep breath in. “I’m lost. I must’ve… went from my…”
Dream trails off when one of the assailants walks over to him, and he suddenly feels a jolt of fear. Not just terror, just the primal revulsion that practically screams ‘this isn’t right, this isn’t how humans look’ in his mind, sending a jolt of fear down his spine.
The… thing in front of him is around the same height of a normal human, but its face is much shorter, much rounder. He can’t see it’s mouth, it’s green ‘hair’ in the way, curving around it’s impossibly thin neck. It’s body is slim and feminine, but a large, red object pokes through its chest.
It’s a pokemon.
A real one.
Suddenly, ‘broiled alive’ doesn’t sound like a joke.
The pokemon, a gardevoir to be specific, glares at him with bright red eyes, before it turns to the other figure. It crosses its arms in annoyance, before speaking telepathically to its owner:
He doesn’t seem to be a threat.
“How can you tell?”
I don’t think he has a pokemon.
“You ‘think’?” the man exclaims, and Dream swears he hears him thump his foot down. “What do you mean you ‘think’?”
Can’t tell. Doesn’t look he has a pokeball on him, so it seems like he wouldn't have a pokemon either.
“So? The **** are you standing around for, then?”
The gardevoir turns its head to face the other figure. From what Dream can see of him, he’s stiff with anger. He feels his stomach drop as he inches away slowly, trying to be as subtle as possible.
Seems pointless attacking some kid who got lost.
“Do I look like I ****ing care?? Are you getting soft or something, Daria?”
I’m not getting ****ing soft! Jesus-
The gardevoir turns to face Dream, but at this point, he’s long gone. He’s sprinting up the alleyway as fast as he can, not bothering to look back. If he just gets onto the sidewalk and puts enough distance between them, he’ll be able to get away without burning alive.
The fact that pokemon were suddenly real, that he was probably in the pokemon universe actually, was terrifying to Dream. Pokemon were powerful creatures that could warp elements to their own desires, lift cars above their heads, and crush the spines of unsuspecting humans. Who could say that a pokemon wouldn’t try to do that to him? People in the real world, the one with animals, die because of large exotic animals all the time, and now they had superpowers, and anyone could control them to boot! He needs to stay away...
Thankfully, when Dream nearly keels over from exhaustion, bending over to stop his head from throbbing with pain, he can’t see them. He’s safe, for now. But, he’s also stuck in what appears to be a large city with no idea of how he got there, or where to go next for that matter.
So, he just follows the crowd of people going about their daily business, their chatter becoming white noise instead of actual words. Maybe, if he follows them, he’ll end up somewhere where it’s warm. Even though he’s wearing a heavy green coat, a blue scarf, gloves, and thick trousers, the nighttime cold still bites at him, and he craves something warm. Like hot chocolate or tea or a big pot of soup, something like that.
As he’s walking down another block, hopelessly lost, Dream spots a tiny little purple bunny-like animal, a male nidoran, shivering by the side of a storefront. He stops in his tracks, and looks back at the little thing. It notices him, turns to him with big, pleading, doe eyes, and crawls closer to him. The nidoran hunches low to the ground, trying desperately to keep warm against the harsh winter winds blowing everyone else around. Silently, and with a hand over his chin, Dream weighs his options.
He could leave it alone, ultimately to most likely freeze to death. Pokemon, even at this size, were dangerous. The nidoran could potentially poison him if he tries to pick it up, if the pokedex entries in the game were to be correct, and he’d die a horrible and painful death because of it. Dream shudders softly at the thought.
However, he could also keep it with him. If pokemon were destructive and extremely powerful, like in the games, wouldn’t he want one to fight for him? To protect him? It seems like a rational choice, and to be honest, Dream feels pretty bad about leaving the defenseless animal to freeze to death.
So, Dream goes with the latter choice. He slowly approaches the nidoran, kneeling down to make himself as unthreatening as possible. The rabbit pokemon practically runs into his arms, snuggling into the warmth of his jacket. Dream smiles softly as he stands up, unravels his scarf, and wraps it around the shivering pokemon so he can keep warm. The nidoran makes a soft squeaking noise as Dream starts his aimless wandering again.
As he reaches the end of the street, he spots a somewhat small, yellow, seed-like creature poking it’s head out from the mouth of a nearby alleyway. It looks over at Dream with big, black eyes, and a frown on it’s face, before it hops away. Dream turns from the crowd and follows the small thing, curious about it. If it does attack him, well, he has a pokemon to fight it with, even though it’s currently shivering in his arms.
The alleyway is narrow and winding, concrete walls caging the three in. Posters for a pokemon tournament three years too late and graffiti tags line them, but Dream doesn’t dwell on them too much. He’s busy chasing the hopping pokemon, which is surprisingly fast, several paces ahead. It’s a little humiliating to be slower than a seed of all things, so he speeds up a little, jogging at this point.
He’s about to reach the seed at the other end of the alley when he hears a voice, and stops in his tracks.
“Summer! What are you doing?”
A woman, dark hair obscured by a hood with cat ears, wearing a dark coat over a hoodie, peeks out from the corner. She looks at Dream with wide eyes, and inches back a little. Summer turns towards its owner, then back to him.
“Who...Who are you?” she asks, and Dream swallows.
“I… uh… I’m Dream,” he responds, itching at his wrist. The nidoran continues to shiver in his arms. “I’m kinda lost...”
The woman squints at him, examining him closely.
“Did you… Are you from… the real world?” she asks, and Dream gapes at her.
“...Are you?”
“Yeah,” The woman says, stepping forward somewhat. Summer hops to the side. “I’m guessing that you are, too.”
Dream nods, and is about to say something before another girl, short and with dark hair as well, walks over to them.
“Who’s this, Del?” the woman asks with wide eyes, and a gray, humanoid pokemon walks beside her, chest up high and looking very smug. A timburr, his mind exclaims.
“He’s like us,” Del grins to the other woman, who looks at her with a quizzical look. “Another one from the real world!” The other woman looks over at him with a sympathetic glance, and gestures to him to come forward.
The alleyway opens up to a small, rundown cobblestone square. The two women have set up a makeshift bonfire burning in the center, surrounded by broken down benches with black paint peeling off, revealing metal. A door to one of the surrounding buildings is open, and when Dream peeks in, he sees a rotting, empty apartment building with two bright red sleeping bags in it. He swears he sees some sort of bug crawl up the patchy walls very slowly, maybe a large cockroach of some kind?
“So,” Del says, slapping a hand on Dream’s shoulder. She points to the circle of benches. “How about we talk about our predicament over there?”
“Sure.” Dream nods, walking over and setting the nidoran down by the fire, before sitting down.
About ten minutes later, the three of them have all shared their stories between sips of chicken noodle soup.
Del woke up in this universe two days earlier, in a cargo box on a train. The only thing that she was given was a backpack with cans of soup, a pot, and three rolled up sleeping bags. When the train stopped, she sneaked off and ended up in the city of ‘Etobicoke’. She found Summer in an old abandoned greenhouse by the square, and later settled down here.
The other woman, Bay, found herself in a subway station only yesterday, sprawled across one of the metal benches with Drake, her timburr, tugging at her shirt. She was kicked out of the station and thrown on the street, where she wandered until she got forced into a battle with some kid with a meowth around where they were now, mostly beacause Drake wanted to show off his strength to his trainer. Del had spotted the two fighting, and ended up having to break it up. After the fight, Bay had told her that she had nowhere to stay, and Del had inferred the rest, and let her stay with her.
“So,” Del says, her fingers tapping against her chin. “None of us remember anything about how we got here, right?”
Bay and Dream nod. He looks down to see the nidoran curled up by the fire, no longer shivering. A smile grows on his face.
“...So, we don’t have answers,” she says glumly, crossing her arms. “We don’t know why we’re here. In the pokemon world.”
“Well,” Dream hypothesizes, stretching his arms in front of the fire. “I doubt we’re here without, like, a purpose.”
“But what is our purpose?” Del asks, looking over at him with wide eyes.
“Maybe… we need to solve a mystery or something…?”
“A mystery?” Del laughs, and Summer looks up at her, blinking it’s beady eyes. She attempts to reach down and pet it, but it hops away. “Like a murder or something?”
“Maybe, a grand heist or something.” Bay chimes in, Drake resting by his owner’s side, resting his arms on the piece of lumber above his head.
“No,” he shakes his head, staring intently into the fire. “I think it would be more than that… Something bigger, perhaps.”
“But, how could we know? Other than that bag you got… we don’t really have much to go on, do we?”
“Well, you never know,” Del laughs, resting her head against the bench. “I just hope we get the answers we need, soon.”
As if on cue, they jump at the sound of a somewhat loud noise of something landing on the hard ground, sort of like a ‘flump’. The humans and their pokemon scramble up, and search around the little square for whatever it was. The nidoran finds it first, sniffing at a large, black duffel bag close by one of the walls. Dream walks over to it, and finds that it has three large tags on it’s handles. The tags have each of their names, written in thick, black marker. Del zips the bag open, and finds that it’s full of what appears to travel brochures for ‘Lake Frontenac’. A white slip of paper sticks out between two of these brochures.
Dream pulls the both of them out, and is met with messages written in the same thick marker, reading:
“YOUR JOURNEY BEGINS”
“THE LAKE IS KEY”
After Dream squints at these notes, hoping for a deeper meaning by staring hard at them, he passes them around to Bay and Del. There is a moment of awkward silence between them, as they let the information (or the lack of it) sink in, before Del speaks:
“That’s not what I meant by answers!”
