The next morning, George woke up with a sore throat. Say one thing for Blitzer, say that he has unhealthy interests in worlds he’ll never see. He got George to exhaust the little mythology he knew about, which turned into a long talk about the deities of Eravate, Blitzer wasn’t exactly the best at explaining things, either. Something something lustrous, something something temporal, something sea then earth, then a bunch of rambling about guardians. Not much of it survived the trip from Blitzer to George intact. The talk of an ‘Arceus’ was the lone thing George could remember by that morning, if only because of the amount of times that name had been thrown around.

In the end, there was always tomorrow for hearing more. Maybe he’d learn better when the pressure of making the delivery wasn’t pinching him in the back of the head. Indeed, they had promised to be up early to go back into Greenwood Forest, the Mystery Dungeon near town, where the flute piece they had found earlier was supposed to be handed off.

Breakfast went by without much care. Nero and Nera’s temper had calmed, it seemed, and they didn’t appear to suspect a thing the two had planned. As such, they had no issue making their way out the door and into the waiting arms of the sunlight. It was a beautiful day outside; the flowers were blooming and spreading their pollen, the stream was ripe with activity, and those of nature were wearing their best smiles: Even the Eldegoss lady which Blitzer had a sour run in with when he was introducing George to Greenfield for the first time. A perfect day for exploring, in short; George and Blitzer smiled with their neighbours.

It was a short walk out of the town and back to the clearing before the Mystery Dungeon proper. This time, George didn’t feel so nervous over the prospect of heading inside. Even with the flute piece nestled in between the folds of his scarf, he was ready; the Pokemon that lived in Greenfield Forest couldn’t have changed in these past few weeks. Unfortunately, Blitzer’s odd walk hadn’t disappeared - neither had the headache, if the occasional rub over his scalp was anything to go by. Sure, he still pressed on, and if they could manage the slopes of Azure Hills or a dirty band of thieves, surely the bugs of Greenfield Forest wouldn’t be an issue, but it didn’t sit right.

Upon reaching the small clearing at the entrance of the dungeon, Blitzer stretched his arms; a yawn freed itself out of his throat, unburned by the shifting feet underneath. “Aaaah, here we are again! You know George, I’ve kind of been missing this dungeon. You remember that clearing, don’t you?”

George gave a tepid nod. “It’s hard to forget a view like that. But what is there to miss other than that? It’s just a dark forest.”

Blitzer swished his tail through a breeze. “It’s not just a forest! I’ve spent so many days exploring this place, and I can’t get enough of it! This forest inspired me to become an explorer, you know.”

George folded his arms over his scalchop. “Yeah, yeah, I understand you.” ‘Though I’m still not sure if exploring is even a profession.’ “You’ve got a few years of exploring on me, remember?”

Blitzer’s head bobbed up and down. “Oh yes, you’ll see what I mean eventually. I promise!” he shouted. With puffy cheeks, George wandered over to the wooden sign at the mouth of the forest. It had a slight purplish tint he didn’t remember seeing before.

“So, about that view, do you think that’s where the stump is?” the Oshawott said, fiddling his fingers around the paper in his hand. Blitzer threw his hands over his head.

“Yup, a hundred percent! The center’s the only part of the dungeon that stays the same. Whoever wants the flute so badly will be lost for hours looking for it if we don’t leave it there! And I know that central meadow’s the place in the message, I remember seeing the stump of an old tree very well. No chance of it being someplace else!”

George took his time to review the note. The details were sparse - too sparse, as a matter of fact. All it told of was a flat surface somewhere in Greenwood Forest. Hein’s description from yesterday had given them more to work with, and after seeing him lay a dark spell on a patron, whether a word that came out of that ghost’s mouth was trustworthy was up for debate. Blitzer seemed steadfast about where to go, however, and they weren’t spoiled for choice here. Either the center, or standing out here listening to the leaves brush up against each other.

“Well, might as well give it a try. I mean, it’s only Greenfield Forest.”

Blitzer winked at the former human. “Darn straight! We’ve got this, alright. Even if we have to stay a little longer, what difference does a few more bugs make?” he said with a contagious chuckle, which George caught right after.

“Not a whole lot, that’s for sure.”

“So then, are we all prepared?” Blitzer asked, smoothing his scarf. George shook his head.

“Let’s check again, I’d rather not go in there and find out we’re missing something.”

The Charmander nodded back. “Sure thing. Let’s see here, scarves?”

“Check.”

“Food?”

“Breakfast was enough.”

“Medicine?”

“Hard to come by, and dinky little bug poison is no big deal.”

“Flute?”

“Definitely,” George said, peeling back a fold of his scarf to reveal the flute piece nestled inside. ‘I’m gonna be glad to be able to sleep without having to rest my head on top of this stupid thing again.’

With a sway of his tail and a bouncy few steps, Blitzer made his way over to the entrance. “Then we should be all ready.”

“We sure should be-”

George’s ears perked up. Something shifted in the branches above; he poked his head up. Nothing but leaves rustling against one another, doing their best to shield the damp grass from the warmth of the sun. Despite this, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were being watched.

“George?” Blitzer poked him on the shoulder. “You okay there?”

The Oshawott shook his head and flattened his ears. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, somewhat disappointed in himself. He’d known Blitzer for too long to doubt his word. That Charmander was one hundred percent confident in both of their abilities, which left George wondering what his own reservations were for. Leftover paranoia from yesterday, or some strange Pokemon instinct he didn’t understand. That’s what he wrote it off as, whether it was true or not.

“Come, let’s go.”

* * *

“Huff, huff, did you manage to find them, Vli?”

“Sort of. They went into the Mystery Dungeon before I could see much, though.”

“But, please tell me, you didn’t see things wrong, right? Gareda will have our heads if we screw this up.”

“Luffy, I know what I saw. That’s got to be the piece of the Azure Flute that Oshawott had in his scarf, I’m a hundred percent sure.”

“Why would they be carrying it into the woods?”

“I don’t know, maybe they’re… oh no, they’re probably going to hand it off to the Alliance in there. Crap, and we can’t just go in there after ‘em, either.”

“Wh-wh-what?! What are we going to tell Gareda? I… She’ll, she’ll never forgive me…us.”

“Calm yourself, Luffy. We’re the only ones who’ve been seeing things, right? We can say whatever we like. Just omit the details that’ll make her want to kill us, and then we’ll be golden.”

“But I don’t want to lie to her. It’s not right.”

“I don’t like it either. We don’t have a choice in this. Just do as I tell you, okay? We’ll get her to direct her rage at this town, we’ve got some dirt on that ghost in the café too, don’t we.”

* * *

A wind stirred through the forest as George and Blitzer began making their way to the central meadow. The woods seemed strangely tranquill this time around. Whereas bugs would ordinarily be leering in from the branches overhead, waiting for unfortunate travellers to descend upon, today they weren’t anywhere to be seen, heard, or smelled. Aside from wet grass and bark, and a few plants that reeked of earth, George’s nose was empty. He thumbed it repeatedly, but no dice.

“Looks like the bugs all went on vacation.”

“What’s a vacation?”

George smacked himself on the forehead. ‘Here we go again.’ “A break from work. Or school.”

Blitzer spun his head around. “Break? Wait, do humans not get breaks from work?”

“No,” George muttered, “what I’m saying is that we usually do our thing all week long, and occasionally we get a break from it. A week or two, something like that. I’m still young, so I was lucky enough to also get six weeks back to back in the summers-”

“Whaaat?” Blitzer jumped around, almost setting a bush on fire with a careless sway of his tail. “You mean that you never get real time off from having to work? Only in the summer?” the Charmander stumbled backwards, brushing his brow with an arm as he spun back to face the path ahead. “And I thought we had it difficult.”

The former human pressed his tongue into a cheek. “It’s not that bad, really.” ‘Not when the alternative is being kicked around by others.’

“Oh no,” the Charmander chirped on further. “We still don’t know how you managed to come to our world, but you made the right decision, I’m telling you! I’d be miserable being cooped up all day in school.”

To this, George had but a single, drawn out sigh to give. ‘Me too.’

Blitzer continued to stumble on forwards, humming to himself while paying little attention to the bounce in his steps. His tail now bounced with the rest of his body, which seemed to be effective at keeping him from keeling over flat on his face, silly as it may look. Effective enough to keep him focused on what was in front, at least. He hummed along to the peaceful crackling of his tail flame and the crunching of the gravel underneath both of their feet.

“Hm, it is very quiet here today though, you’re right. Haha, I guess they are all ‘on vacation’!” Blitzer stretched his arms. “Where’d they all go?”

Behind him, George shrugged with his shoulders. “That’s what I’m wondering,” he said as he stepped on a branch.

“Well, I know I’m not complaining. Makes this a little easier, don’t you agree?”

“Of course.” George breathed in deep. ‘Surely there must be some Pokemon around here. Why would they just have disappeared like that?’

The solemn woods continued onwards. They made their way through thin, bendy trails, over the remnants of long fallen trees and their dull mushrooms, past a stream here and there, stopping to skip a pebble over the water every now and then. Small clearings, thorny paths, the woods weren’t anything like the times they’d been here in the few weeks prior. The ‘Mystery Dungeon effect’ is what Blitzer called it. The inexplicable shuffling, merging, and twisting of the space. It had no clear boundary; you simply ‘felt’ like you were in one. But wouldn’t it be easy to get lost in this no man’s land? Every turn was simple, yet confusing. You wouldn’t know if you were getting out or going deeper. You’re all alone. Lost. Feral Pokemon might be lurking nearby. There’d be no one to save you from them if you couldn’t handle them. George swallowed his saliva as he passed yet another turn through scorched thorns. The presence of that sign at the entrance made a lot more sense now.

Fortunately for the two of them, Greenwood Forest wasn’t the worst of it. A grand shimmer of light appeared uphill in the distance. “There it is, George!” Blitzer exclaimed as he took off with a burst of speed, his wobbling having calmed for the moment, “it’s the center!”

“How do you know that?”

“Come on! I’ve been here like a thousand times, of course I know it!”

Following the burning tail uphill, George was surprised, then relieved to find out that Blitzer had been right. The meadow and all its colourful, petalrich flowers were in full bloom, glistering in the sunlight. Once again the nudge to go frolicking in the fields was overwhelming, and George couldn’t help but skip through the flowers a little, bugs and grass Pokemon be damned. It was a bright, sunny day; in that moment, everything seemed alright, and all worries he had melted away as if they were ice.

While George skipped around and sent petals flying without a care in the world, Blitzer was watching from afar, snickering behind his back. “You just couldn’t resist, could you?”

Now halfway across the field, George stopped in a crowd of goldenrods, tail and scarf swinging in the pollen-filled breeze. “Hey, we’re here now, might as well enjoy it, right?”

Blitzer nodded right back. “True! I’ve done it too many times to count myself! But remember what we’re here for this time! I know where the stump is.”

George tilted his head. “Huh. I thought I remembered that much, but I can’t find it in all these flowers.”

“Just follow me, George, I’ve got a nose for these things!” ‘He does? With a face that flat?’

Blitzer pushed his way through the flowers, motioning for George to follow. He was paying extra care to keep his tail pitched up: The last thing either of them wanted was for a fire to start, and aside from George, who was going to be able to put it out? The sight would be gone, just like that. A few steps into the meadow, at a spot where a streak of rad was interrupted by a patch of purple, even pitching the tail didn’t sit right - Blitzer grabbed it and held it up to his head, in a way that wouldn’t be pleasant upon human skin.

Somewhere in the back of the meadow, the stump stood on a slightly raised bed. The flowers grew right up to its roots, their stature and aroma masking the wood from being seen at a distance. It seemed lonely, kept away from its kind by the floral invaders, and also from the sight of others.

“Here we are. You still have the flute, right?”

“Yeah,” George said under his breath, ears going flat as he ran a hand over the wooden surface. When he reached into the folds of his scarf to do as had been asked, he hesitated. The pattern in the stump was something questionable; spikes ran from the bark up to a streak of alternating dark and light in the middle.. A field trip had taught him that the pattern was supposed to consist of rings; As the tree grew in age, so did the rings. Yet this wasn’t that.

A pair of fingers tapped the back of the Oshawott’s neck. His muscles tensed in an instant. “George? Are you going to put it down, or what?”

“S-sorry,” George said.

“Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just, I dunno. I was thinking of going to the woods back home all of a sudden. We did something similar.”

“Oh yeah, makes sense.” Blitzer replied. George sighed, and put the flute piece down on the stump. Back home, he’d been glad to get rid of it. All the times it had disrupted his sleep made him want to miss it like a rotten tooth. Now out in the middle of the woods, however, he struggled letting go. He thought of home, the room he shared with Blitzer. Or rather, Blitzer’s room, that just so happened to be the room he was staying in as well. And not even that, he thought of the foster’s home. The bed that wasn’t his, whether sheet or straw. The toys that weren’t his, whether plastic or wooden. In a way, the flute they found was something that was truly ‘his’. Something to call his own. Yet here he was, getting rid of it. More than that, he felt worried. A fear that something would happen if he left the flute here, instead of just taking it back home.

In the end though, a promise is a promise. George put the flute down, and turned away. “That was that, I guess…”

“It sure was. Pretty easy, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Blitzer put his arm around George’s back as they walked away from the stump. “We’ve sure gotten stronger, haven’t we, George? This forest was still pretty intimidating the first time we went in, and now it’s a joke!” he chirped to a surge of crackles. “Once my parents are all calmed down, we can look for something bigger. Broader! So much to see out there, I barely even know where to start!”

While Blitzer rambled on for a while longer about the same dreams he’d been sharing for over a month now, George’s lips were sealed. Something didn’t feel right. No, a lot didn’t feel right. Not one bit. He could feel it. He could taste it. A bitter sensation spread through his body, gradually intensifying with each step they took. Skin shivered. Hairs rustled. Muscles tensed. His spine flared up as if it had been clamped down upon. By the time they were back at the mouth of the clearing, it had strengthened past the point where it could be brushed aside. His mind raced. He had to say something.

“Blitzer…?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t feel so good.”

“Huh? Did you catch something in the field just now? We haven’t even run into anything yet.”

George’s stomach twisted into a knot. It wasn’t mere sickness. What he felt was a presence. The kind of presence one never wanted to feel nearby. He peered over his shoulder, and gasped at what he saw.

“N-no, I didn’t catch anything, but we’re about to be catched ourselves!!”