Pokémon PMD: Below

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, took a while, but I’m here to round out my Reading Rookidee readings by picking up my review series of Below, finally reaching that chapter that you’ve been waiting for me to get to for a while:

Chapter 6

Mark and Layla carry on, the minerals in their torchlight’s reach show a darker indigo hue this far down. The chaotic galaxy of glitter below never lets up no matter how deep they descend. Crystals stop crossing in convenient spots, which cause make the pair to backtrack occasionally. They climb up steep gems, jump across gaps, and balance across long, thin crystals. All these jewels reach out for long distances and sprout from other crystals, with no final base ever in sight.

Okay, so a bit of a nitpick, but IMO, you want to give some sort of reminder to the audience that we’re dealing with Mark and Layla here within the first sentence, since in your original paragraph, it’s a bit ambiguous without peeking back to the prior chapter as to if we’re following them or if we’re following new characters.

Mark even slips off an awkward ledge. Layla catches his arm. His feet kick around over the void.

“Relax. Put your hand over the ledge and swing your leg over,” she says.

… How is Mark not freaking out more obviously or screaming bloody murder right about now? :V

He has to swing his body three times but a leg eventually gets over the crystal. It’s easy to pull himself up after this. When safe, he hugs the crystal, panting.

She gives him a devious smirk. “Careful, Mark. You could have impaled yourself on a crystal below!”

Yeeeeah, it might’ve made sense to take some time to emphasize how much Mark was freaking out in the earlier segment, since for a second, I thought you were going for some sort of “eh, it’s Tuesday for me” moment with him.

Mark: “I really did not need to know that, thanks.”

Mark shakes his head. He gets back onto his feet. His legs wobble.

Layla huffs. “That being said, we’re about ten floors in by now. We should start shouting for Millie. MILLIE!”

Mark: “Layla, why are you just shouting at the top of your lungs in a feral-infested Mystery Dungeon right now?” O_O;
Layla: “Well, how else did you expect Millie was going to hear us?”

There’s no response, only another shriek below.

Mark: “That… doesn’t sound good.”

Layla: “All the more reason to get moving, huh?”

“Further we go,” she says. They reach a wall of small, shiny gems where the crystal sprouts from. It bends around as if it is a wide cylinder. To the side of where they stand is dark grey scaffolding wedged into the glassy spire. Steel beams cross each other to support the weight of the metal plates.

Oh, so it’s a catwalk. And likely anthropogenic to boot. Makes me wonder what on earth this place was back in the day.

She steps onto its surface, her foot making a clanging against the metal as Mark follows her. There is no ladder hanging on the side, so the two climb down the outside of the scaffolding, across the beams. Layla’s comfortably holding her torch in her mouth, but Mark tries to keep it held in his armpit which slows him down. He can’t tell if this or the narrow paths earlier is scarier.

Mark: “... We really need to invest in headlamps sometime, since I’m pretty sure that this is a massive burn hazard for me right now.” >_>;

The scaffolding dangles over the void with no bottom floor. Layla climbs around the corner. “Oh, here!” she says and jumps onto another gem a foot away. Then she jumps to another crystal step. Mark stuffs his torch handle into his maw and makes the leap as well. He catches the first crystal with all four limbs.

Layla: “You know, you sure are taking in all these gems with stride, Mark. I thought you’d go full my precioussss over them since I could’ve sworn Sableye were supposed to have a thing for gems.”
Mark: “Layla, I’m a human trapped in an alien body...” >_>;
Layla: “Still. Not getting affected by Pokémon instincts or anything like that?” ^^;

There are four more of these jewels jutting out of the massive structure, each needing a jump to reach. Layla gracefully traverses them and waits patiently for Mark, who throws his whole body each time and clings tightly. After the last one, they approach four metal beams in a row, wedged into cracks in the crystal. They’re that are spaced narrow enough to walk over.

“You’re really calm for how perilous this all is,” Layla says, stepping onto the first beam, then the second. They bend under her weight. “You just woke up, how do you do this?”

Mark: “... I just am? Like I should probably be a lot more bothered by this, but… I’m not?”

Layla: “Whelp, I’m not complaining here.”

Mark follows, holding onto the crystal wall with his free hand. “I have to stay calm. Panicking causes problems. Plus, I have a feeling I’ve been through more dangerous things.”

[ ]

“Hmm. Well, that’s a good trait. I shouldn’t have brought a newbie to such a dangerous place so early on but whoops, haha. Don’t die.”

This section would work better if you took some time to show off Layla’s expression a bit more. Like is she nonplussed? Weirded out? Giving a beaming grin? I’m assuming it’s door number 1 or 2, but it’s admittedly not clearly stated by the narration.

The final beam creaks when stepped on. After it is a plump crystal which they jump onto. It is a dead-end save for a steel girder extending deep into the starry void away from the crystalline tower. Its end is drilled into the glassy surface.

“Millie!” Layla shouts again. There are vague rumblings below.

“Welp, onwards. Come on.”

She steps onto the beam, stretching her arms out for balance. When her teetering steadies, she walks into the darkness. Mark follows, mirroring her form. They stagger forward until safe ground is out of sight. There is only darkness punctured with a million gleams around them.

IMO, the second paragraph in this block is one that should be broken up. It doesn’t necessarily need to be as much as what I did, but at the very least, I think that “She steps [...]” is different enough from the rest that it ought to be its own deal.

Mark: “... Wait, wasn’t that noise coming from the same direction as that scream from earlier?”

Layla: “I mean, that doesn’t mean it’s from Millie, so…” ^^;

“Millie!” Layla shouts. The same noise is heard again, clearer this time. It is a vaguely female voice.

Layla gets on one knee and yells below her. “Millie! If you can hear me, stay still and hang in there! We’re going to rescue you!”

“Trespasser!” the voice screams.

Mark: “I… don’t think that’s Millie.” o_o;
Layla: “Gee, Sherlock, what tipped you off?” >_>;

[ ]

“Oh no! Hurry Mark,” she says, and quickens.

Mark tries to speed up but he falls behind. The beam below them wobbles, forcing Mark to stay still until steady. A monster screeches behind him and clanging sounds signal its approach. He resumes, biting his lips.

The end of the long beam comes into sight—its other support is tied around a long crystal jutting out from a twisting spire with cable. Small crystals jut out to its side, forming a neat line of steps downwards. Layla is already running down them.

This is another paragraph that I feel would benefit from being broken up. Also, you probably want to take some time to describe Layla recognizing the voice and noticing that something is wrong / reacting accordingly, since as it stands, her sudden “oh no!” falls a little flat and doesn’t fully sell that frantic “oh crap, oh crap” sort of vibe that I think you were going for here.

Mark jumps to the landing and feels the heat of a dragon pulse flying over his head. He looks back - their pursuer is a Noivern who has a foul burn mark stretching across her right face, neck, and shoulders. Only a taff of collar fluff grows on her left shoulder, which has crisped tips. The claws on its wings grip the bar.

“Drop your bags now!” the dragon says.

Mark: “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me…”

Noivern: “Nope. Your bags or your lives, twerps. Choose wisely.” >:|

“Don’t let her reason with you!” Layla shouts.

She growls and shoots another Dragon Pulse at Mark before he even responds. He rolls out of its way and it fractures the spire behind him. He gets back up and chases down the staircase, keeping a hand against the wall to balance. Layla’s torch is far away.

Mark: “We really need to invest in a set of headlamps if we survive this.” >_>;

“Layla, wait!” he shouts.

The dragon roars and the purple glow of dragon energy explodes just below the crystal he’s on. It dislodges and his feet slip. He yells and flails while Layla shouts his name but he catches nothing. He falls.

Mark:

Soaring past still air, his front hits the sloped side of a gem acting as a support to the tower. He slides down the smooth surface and falls into the empty void again. He hits another crystal the size of him, which breaks off. Both him and the debris crash into further crystalline outshoots, snapping them off. Human scaffolding breaks his fall next, the metal slamming his side and roughing up his body. The glittering avalanche above crashes down on the supports. The structure collapses, bringing him down farther with rough bumps while a cacophony of clangs and crashes overwhelms his ears. It ends with a giant boom.

Hmm… something about the sentences in this paragraph feel a bit choppy to me, especially in the second half. It might be worth playing around to see if:

A: This can be two paragraphs
B: Some of the shorter sentences can be merged with one another for instance:

He hits another crystal the size of him, which breaks off. Both him and the debris crash into further crystalline outshoots, snapping them off.

Could’ve just as easily been something like:

He hits another crystal the size of him, which breaks off and flies along with him and crashes into further crystalline outshoots, snapping them off into a growing hail of debris.

- Cue a voice calling out from above -
Layla: “How are you not dead-?!”
Mark: “We already did that joke! A-Agh… my everything…” X_X

He screams until the worst of the flaming agony cools, most of it in his side. Once the shock’s over, he pants and seethes. Blood spits up, splattering onto unseen ground. His limbs fidget to feel if they can move—his back right leg twitching shoots up pain that he winces over. He feels faint.

Mark: “U-Urk… I… did not know that Sableye could bleed. Guess you learn something new every day.”

Around him, the base of colossal crystals is outlined by massive specular reflections. The illusion of orange stars is blacked out by the shapes of chaotic wreckage jutting out in a field in front of Mark. An orange flame burns away from him—it is the torch he dropped. Rods, plates, and sprouting crystals bask in its warmth. To the side, a silhouette exposes uncollapsed scaffolding.

Layla’s voice echoes above. It's unintelligible. There’s the flapping of wings as the outline of a wyvern descends by the torch. “Where are you!?” the Noivern shouts.

Mark: “C-Crap, could this day be going any worse right now?”

And oh, so that’s what that art I keep seeing on your Discord links is.

Mark puts a claw over his mouth, muffling his uneven breathing. They stomp away from him—he can’t be seen in the darkness and the wreckage obfuscates his silhouette.

He remembers when he was in a similar situation, and how he got out of it. It was an Oran Mushroom that healed his pain. He pats his side; the adventure bag still rests there. He reaches to its flap and unlatches it. It clinks.

He freezes in terror, but the dragon continues moving around, overturning metal plates. He reaches inside, agonizingly hearing every ruffle as feels his wares. He realizes he doesn’t know what an Oran mushroom feels like.

This feels like another paragraph that ought to get broken up. Though I’m surprised that Mark hasn’t gotten ratted out yet when Noivern are supposed to have very good hearing and presumably have echolocative abilities. Though I suppose being in a minefield of metal scrap would help for deflecting sound waves a bit.

The Noivern grunts and shuffles back to the torch, picking it up. With the light, she moves around the wreckage of metal and crystal shards with ease. Mark hurries. The mushroom he feels first has the texture and size as what he’s eaten as food. The next mushroom’s feel is unfamiliar. Some Poke rolls out of his bag and clinks on the floor.

A little surprised that the Noivern is so dependent on sight here as a bat. But eh, I suppose this bandit or whoever she is of Alolan stock or something.

Mark:

The dragon turns. “You’re there.” She walks towards him, although her slow pace makes Mark believe she’s bluffing. He pulls out the mushroom and gambles swallowing it. Its effects aren’t immediate, but once the dragon halves the distance, the warmth fades. Strength returns to his muscles and clear vision returns. He rolls onto his feet, making another clang. The dragon laughs and charges. His side is still stiff, but he stretches shadow sneak phantom below.

Layla’s echoey voice hollers above. One of the words resembles “Millie.”

“Mom? Is that you?” a nearby child’s voice says.

Mark:

The dragon stops its charge. Mark holds his breath. She turns around.

“You ambush me with children?” she says and flies to where the voice rang.

Mark: “Crap crap crap! W-Wait, that’s not at all what we were-!”

“No!” Mark shouts. He runs but trips over unseen debris and bangs onto a metal surface. While he scrambles up, he feels a loose rod. He picks it up and carefully runs through the chaotic terrain, avoiding any more tripping. The Noivern’s torch illuminates a young Kangaskhan’s child as she descends.

She picks Millie up by the wrist. “There you are!”

Mark: “This… is a really bad turn of events, isn’t it?” O.O

Millie kicks and punches the air around her. “MOM! HELP ME!”

“Shame on you. Who else is hiding?!” the Noivern says, gripping her wrist hard.

The child starts screaming. “STOP! STOOOOP!”

Mark: “Damn it, of all the times to not have a Slumber Orb or something like that right now.”

Layla yells again, still unintelligible.

Translation:

Layla: “Mark, do something already, dammit!” >_>;

Mark approaches them but trips over another unseen gap in the wreckage. The clang echoes.

The Noivern points the torch in his direction, bringing him in view. The sharp, twisted end of his weapon is exposed.

“Don’t get closer!” she says. She holds Millie up high, dangling her. Mark gets back up and steps closer. She growls and brings the torch next to Millie’s side, who tries to sway away from the open flame. “You will approach me with your hands up, and your bag on the ground.”

Wait, is this Mark’s rod that he picked up? Since it was never established that it had a sharp end earlier on. .-.

Mark: “Th-Threatening a child! This is low even for you!”

Noivern: “Cool story bro, so are you giving me your stuff, or is the kid gonna get it?”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Please don’t hurt me!” Millie says. She sobs.

Mark stops. Diplomacy is tempting, but he remembers Layla telling him not to reason with her. He won’t let naivety trap him again.

“Alright, alright!” Mark says. He holds his arms up but neither the bag nor weapon drops. “I’m approaching you slowly.”

Noivern: “That’s not what I asked for, punk.” >:|

The Noivern points the torch back in his direction. “Stop when I tell you to. And drop your weapon. I’ll make this quick.”

Each step makes the dragon’s low growl stronger. He keeps playing chicken, staring dead in her eyes to distract the shadow crawling across the ground. She eventually howls and turns the flames toward Millie’s side, but the phantasmic claw swipes her wing before she thrusts it. The torch and child are dropped while she screams. Millie yells as she hits the rough floor.

Her other wing holds across the gashes in her membrane. “I’ll kill you all!”

Mark: “... Wait, why did you threaten Millie with a torch anyways when you could’ve just as easily pinned her to the ground and readied a Dragon Pulse or wedged your claws at her throat or something like-?”

Noivern: “Shut up and die already!”

He rushes to her and swings the rod at her knees. There’s a cracking sound and she shrieks, falling onto her side. Mark jumps onto her and bats her head which provokes more pained yells. He keeps swinging until he spots the twisted, sharp end of the steel. He curls both his claws around the shaft and presses the end into her neck. His muscles tense, but he feels the muscle below the end of the rod shift around. Her cries fill his ears. He hesitates.

It's too late. The Noivern’s claw swipes and gouges his side and she smacks him off with a wing attack. Mark soars through the darkness and slams against an upright scaffolding plate. He scrambles on his feet, holding his wound. The Noivern picks up Millie once more, blood dripping where her claws sink in. A sharp shadowy claw rushes across the ground towards her.

She chomps Millie’s hand and pulls away.

Layla: “Mark, I told you not to hesitate!”

Mark: “Look, I wasn’t expecting her to literally carry off a little kid!”

Layla: “Mark, she’s a dragon bat!” >.<

Millie’s scream bores into their ears and rings through the whole cavern. Her hand is gone. Layla above shouts something. Mark furiously charges at the Noivern while the shadow sneak swipes and shreds new tears on her side. She ignores the cuts and cranes her head to swallow. Blood trickles from the corners of her muzzle.

Wait, is the Noivern attempting to eat Millie there? I think that’s the implication, but you might want to both make that clear and turn up the “oh crap”-ness from Mark if so, since this his first experience with a sapient ‘mon trying to eat another in this setting.

Mark picks up the torch she dropped and barges his entire body into her. She lets go of Millie and wobbles. She grabs his neck and lifts him off the ground. His breathing gets tight and he kicks around. Wings flap and he’s carried upward until the bat soars through the darkness.

The back of his head slams the edge of metal scaffolding causing his ears to ring and vision to blur. Another shadow sneak rushes over her wing and swipes at her neck, tearing its skin apart. Blood flows over the shadow claw and down her body while her shrills mix in with the child’s screaming.

She slams his head against the metal again, dizzying him. He retaliates by sinking his torch into her membrane’s wounds. Another shadow sneak reaches for the neck again, creating fresh new gashes. Purple embers trickling from the corners of her maw illuminate them in a sinister purple glow. He gasps for air but the choking claw denies him breath. His lungs hurt.

Another paragraph where IMO you probably want to break things up into parts, though from how brutal this fight is getting, I’ll be legit surprised if somebody isn’t dead by the end of it.

Mark: “Well, this could be going better right now.” X_X

Millie shouts “Please save me! Someone!” between anguished howling.

Mark shuts his eyes and tears well as he knows he can’t save her. He’s at the edge of passing out while the heat of the pooling dragon energy intensifies. But her grip weakens instead and they both fall. Air flies past them and her body cushions the impact against the debris, the heavy boom signaling his victory. He’s left gasping for air until vision returns to him. With his senses returned, he hears a dying child crying. He runs, lurching and holding his cuts until he arrives.

Wait, so about that Noivern…

I mean, I’m assuming she’s just dead from all of that, but it might make sense to give more explicit confirmation like some sort of remark that she’s not moving and Mark can’t feel a pulse.

Also:

Mark: “M-Millie’s dying? N-Nobody said anything about-!”

She holds the hole where her hand used to fit. Her body’s colour is faint save for her blood-soaked arm. She’s struggling to breathe between panicked screams. Mark tunes out everything and dumps his entire bag onto a plate beside her. Bandages fall out last. He puts his torch down.

Well, that got incredibly dark fast. Though considering how badly Mark was getting torn up earlier… I suppose I should be less shocked that a Noivern bite would take off a kid’s hand.

“You need to lie down and hold your arm up. Keep as much pressure on your wrist as you can,” he asks. Millie obliges.

“It hurts. Please help me. I’m going to die,” she says before she is lost to uncontrolled sobs. Her mouth moves to mutter words but she can’t form anymore.

I’m surprised that Millie is able to follow instructions that calmly and coherently and she’s not doing something like shaking or whimpering during all of this. Since… uh, yeah, she’s just gone through something that’s going to scar her for life in multiple ways.

Uh… I mean, with the way things are going this chapter… I’m legit starting to worry that Millie really is gonna die, since I’m not sure how on earth she’s supposed to make it back to Scrap Town like this. With a guy who’s on his first real mission, no less.

Mark’s expression is focused as he wraps a bandage around where her arm meets her shoulder - wrapping the wound itself wouldn’t be effective until the bleeding stops. He glances around and picks up a nearby short, thin steel bar and rests it over the simple wrap. The ends of each bandage tie around each end of the bar. He grips the bar with one hand while the other presses down on top of Millie’s hand covering the wound.

He looks into her eyes. “You are about to feel a lot of pain, but you need to be a big girl for me. This is going to stop the bleeding and save you. 3… 2… 1…” His claw rotates the bar and the bandage around her arm tightens. Mark takes deep breaths while the screams exacerbate worsen.

I’m a little surprised that Mark doesn’t have more commentary over all of this going on. Like if nothing else, you’d think that if Mark noticed he wasn’t fazed by all of this, it’d worry him as to why he’s not being fazed by being next to the bawling child who’s just lost a limb and bleeding everywhere right now. Since it’d imply that he’s seen worse in the past, and enough so that he’s been numbed to an experience that a lot of others would find incredibly disturbing.

Mark: “Oh my god, wh-what did I get myself into?”

“Everything will be ok. You’re safe. We’ll stop the bleeding and return you to your mother. Stay strong! We’ll get you out alive.” He twists a few more times, then places two fingers on the inside of the elbow. There is no pulse. The bleeding slows to a trickle.

Considering how sideways everything has gone already in this chapter. I will believe Millie will survive this when I see her return to Scrap Town and the rest of her walking around in one piece a few days later.

“You’re doing great. We’re going to make it out of here.” Both his hands meet at the end of the arm, keeping the pressure up as blood slows down.

Mark counts to six hundred in his head, adding “one-thousand” for the first hundred numbers. He juggles this while listening to Millie, who speaks between anguished howls.

“It hurts so much. Make it stop. Make it stop!” Her breathing becomes an uneven pant that struggles to take in enough air to scream. Water collects under her red eyes, falling down her wet cheeks.

Mark: “... (How has she not died from shock yet at this rate?)”

Tears form at the edge of Mark’s own eyes. He looks at her again. “Look at me. Breath in… And out…” He breathes along with his instructions to guide Millie.

Millie follows his lead. Her breathing steadies and her body calms. Tears don’t let up but the screams reduce to heavy groans. The blood darkens beneath their palms and only a fresh drop slips under the pressure.

“You’re safe,” Mark says.

Millie: “A-Are you shrink-wrapped?! I’m missing a hand!” >.<
Mark: “... You’re relatively safe?”

New tears break out, streaking down her face. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I don’t deserve any kindness.”

Mark: “Oh god, please tell me I don’t need to play amateur medic and therapist right now.” O_O;

“Millie! You are a strong girl. You did nothing wro-”

“I ran away! Mom has a new child. She’s been acting weird and only pays attention to him so I ran and… and… and… Mom will hate me!” She starts hyperventilating. Her eyes roll.

Wait, to him? Implying this other child isn’t a Kangaskhan?

“Millie!” Mark says. A hand tilts her head to him. Her eyes focus on him. “In… Out… In… Out…”

Mark: “Note to self, never accept another mission dealing with children. And get a nice, stiff drink after all of this to try and forget about as much of everything that happened as I can.”

She takes heavy, wobbly breaths.

“Your mother loves you so much. She misses you more than anything else in the world and wants to see you again. So, you must be strong, so you can see her again and make her happy again. Can you do that for me?”

Mark, can you tempt fate any harder with summoning the reaper right now?

She weakly nods. “Will the pain ever stop?”

“I promise it will stop eventually. We have to wait for the blood to harden, then I’ll put a bandage on it. Then we’ll wait longer, then I can take it off without overwhelming the wound. But you must be brave until then.”

Wait, is that really how field dressing a lost limb in an emergency works? Since I wouldn’t have thought that would work.

She nods and looks away. Her breath is steady between pained groans.

Mark puts the hand back on the wound and continues counting to 600. The blood underneath has become black, squishy but solid, and unsightly. It coagulated. He tilts his head down and tears fall. His grip trembles and a smile stretches across his face.

She’s saved.

Millie: “I’m missing a hand! How on earth is this being saved?!” >.<
Mark: “Look, you’re at least not going to bleed out in five minutes, okay?” >_>;

“What’s wrong?” Millie asks.

“Nothing’s wrong. You’re going to be okay. You can let go now, although you still need to keep your arm held up. I need to treat it. Try not to look at your wrist.”

Cue Millie looking at her wrist and keeling over.

She nods again and does all that. Mark grabs the bandage resting by him and wraps it around the ugly wound, forming two layers. It tints itself in orange.

Mark: “O-Oh thank god, she’s actually following instructions right now.”

“Think you can eat?” he asks. He picks an Oran mushroom up by its stem. He doubts they would have made a difference earlier.

She nods and nibbles the cap. He’s patient as she nibbles more and more until the cap is gone. He throws away the stem which is soiled with blood left on his claws.

Her breathing is now a pant and groans are rare and faint. Mark starts counting to 1200 while a claw stays held down on the bandaged end. The other hand reaches for Millie’s still-existing hand. Time passes as he helps her talk about happier times.

Millie: “Sh-Shouldn’t we be trying to get my hand right now? Th-Those can be surgically reattached, right?”
Mark: “Kid, your hand’s been chewed-up and is probably in a dead Noivern’s stomach right about now. Learn to live with a prosthetic.” >_>;

Layla’s voice rings out. “Millie!?”

“We’re here!” Mark shouts back.

A fiery glow approaches them. Layla comes into view and when she sees the pair, her face widens. “H-Holy fuck!”

IMO, it might make sense to make Layla stammer if she’s meant to be severely taken aback right now.

Layla:

Mark: “Wait, L-Layla? What’s wrong-?” O_O;
- Mark looks down at a still-shuddering Millie minus a hand -
Mark: “... Right, that’s a thing. But, uh… I found Millie, at least?” ^^;

The child’s still breathing heavily. Her arm is caked in dried blood while a puddle of wet blood is pooled between them. Mark’s wounded side, knees, and claws are drenched in red, with spatters of it across his face. A mineral scent is thick in the air. Millie’s head shrinks away from her.

“The Noivern bit off her hand. I didn’t stop her fast enough, but I was able to stop the bleeding.”

[ ]


“How? That’s impossible.”

This would benefit from a paragraph before Layla’s line where she’s full

over all of this at the moment. Like I get that it’s probably what she's feeling right now, but you might as well describe it a bit more.

Mark looks over Millie. “This tourniquet stops the bleeding. I’ll have to unwind it soon though.”

“A tourniquet? What’s that?” Layla gets on one knee and looks into Mark’s eyes. “I don’t know of anybody surviving an amputation before. How do you know how to do this?”

Mark: “I’m… guessing that I saw some stuff when I was a human. Since now that I think about it, it was kinda freaky how I wasn’t all that fazed by a mutilated child bleeding buckets and screaming bloody murder during all of this.”

Layla: “Please tell me that all of that happened after you left the Surface.”

Mark is silent. He just looks at Millie, who is looking over Layla up and down.

“Where’s the Noivern?” Layla asks.

Mark gestures his head towards the Noivern far to his left. “Over there.” She heads off.

Mark: “Layla, she literally fell like 20 meters to the ground and acted as my landing cushion. I’m pretty sure that she’s dead-” ._.;
Layla: “Look, I’ve heard enough stories about not finding the body. I’m going to make sure she’s dead. Especially if she did that to our client!” O_O;

Mark counts to 1200. He grips the tourniquet and unwinds it, cautious not to let too much blood rush in and overwhelm the sealed wound, which is otherwise strong enough to handle some blood flowing again now. Colour gradually returns to the arm. Millie takes sighs of in relief.

“Thank you,” Millie says. “Thank you for everything. Can we see Mom soon?”

“Eventually. That Sneasel will tell us more.”

Mark: “Also, you should probably see a hospital first. Assuming there are any in Scrap Town.”

The tourniquet unwinds entirely and the bandages fall off, revealing a red mark around the arm. They wait for Layla to return, who looks to Mark first. “I can’t feel the Noivern’s pulse. She won’t ever bother us again.”

She looks to Millie next. [ ]

“Hello, Millie! I’m Layla. We’re here to rescue you. We’ll make sure nobody will hurt you!”

Oh, so Mark’s got his first confirmed kill of the story. Though I think that this particular sequence would benefit from showing more of Layla’s actions and the like, e.x. what she’s doing to try and calm Millie down when for all she knows, she’s going to look at the stump where her hand used to be and start to cry again.

Millie: “Yeah, great job there, you two.”

Layla: “... We’ll make sure nobody will hurt you worse?” ^^;

Millie nods and weakly smiles. “When can we see Mom?”

“Well, we’ll have to go to the bottom of this cavern first, as that’s the only way we can get out. Then we’ll go back to Scrap Town and sleep. Tomorrow morning we’ll visit someone who knows where your mother is at and then we’ll head straight to her. So, you won’t see her until tomorrow. Okay?”

Mark: “(Layla, is that wound going to stay uninfected that long?)” O_O;
Layla: “(Look, we don’t have much of a choice right now. Just focus on keeping her calm and not bawling and running around like a beheaded Torchic, alright?)” >_>;

Millie looks down. The smile fades. “Okay.”

Mark: “(She sure is exhibiting a lot of restraint to not look at the stump at where her hand used to be-)”
Layla: “(Ark-May, ix-nay e-thay and-hay alk-tay!)” >.<

Layla gets back up. “Mark, how much time do you need? We ought to get moving before another dungeon Pokemon or Jace arrives. He’ll fight over us for her.”

“I’ll just give her some food then she should be good. I’ll need to carry her. Can you repack my bag?” he asks, before reaching for a food mushroom. He hands it to Millie. “Eat this, you’ll need to regain your strength.”

She takes small bites and sniffs. “Thank you so much for everything.”

“It’s okay. Eat up. You’ll feel better.” He turns to Layla, who is stuffing the strewn goods back into his bag. “We’ll need to stop by some running water on the way back, as soon as we can.”

Millie: “... Shouldn’t you be disinfecting my wound right now?” ._.;
Layla: “Look kid, I’m not a miracle worker here. Just take the food and let’s get going.” >_>;

“Okay. And I’ll carry her, you did enough already.”

Layla: “Uh… speaking of which, you sure you’re going to make the journey back, Mark?”
Mark: “Well, if I can’t, it’s gonna be a really short story, so…” >_>;

Millie eats until the stem remains. She wipes her tears. Mark chucks the garbage.

“She’s ready. Let’s go,” Mark says.

Mark: “(Also, if her mother asks, the Noivern took her hand off before I found her, okay?)” o_o;
Layla: “(Uh… yeah, I’ll back you up there.)” ._.

They gently descend the rest of the way, climbing down stairs built to scaffolding pinned into crystal surfaces, or sloped glassy ground. They no longer precariously balance on narrow ledges. Mark leads, holding both torches while Layla, holding Millie in her arms, trails. She has fallen asleep, resting her head against her arm.

“Hey Mark, sorry I left you behind. I panicked. I’m not used to teamwork stuff like sticking together..”

Mark: “You know, I probably should be more mad about that right now. But I’m a bit more concerned about making it back to town and getting blackout drunk to try and not remember most of the past 24 hours.” >_>;

“It’s okay. I didn’t even think of that. Plus, I made a mistake too. I could have killed the Noivern earlier but my conscience got to me. It’s my fault Millie lost a hand.” He gnashes his teeth. “I thought I was getting better.”

Mark: “And… uh… yeah, let’s keep this between us and not tell anyone else. Least of all Millie’s mother.”

“It took me a while to have guts, don’t feel bad. That being said, next time you fight Pokemon in a Mystery Dungeon, remember they’re not people anymore. Death is mercy for them. Either way, you still saved Millie, so you did amazing. Unbelievable, in fact. How did you know to do all that stuff?”

Mark: “But the Noivern was talking coherently, and-”

Layla: “Mark, she tried to eat a child alive. She was gone enough that she needed to be put out of her misery.” >_>;

“It’s called first aid, but I don’t know why I know it. I lost my memories.”

So Mark was a medic back in the day. And one that’s seen some stuff given that he knew reflexively how to respond to limb loss in the field.

The two are silent from there on out. Floors of scaffolding make way for a long metal staircase reaching into the darkness going down. The far-off colossal crystals around form two walls that narrow. The starry illusion is weaker, like solid rock isn’t far beneath the glassy surfaces.

They step onto brown-grey stone in a wide clearing with tall scaffolding towers pushed lining each side. There’s loot on the floor: mushrooms spring out of the rock in many colours, spores rest, and poke lie around.

Layla walks past all this, reaching the corner of the ravine. Embedded in crystal is a black metal door with a black-screen terminal planted in the ground to the side of it. It has a small, rectangular hole below the screen.

Another paragraph where IMO you should break some stuff up into smaller paragraphs, since you have a lot going on in this one that feels kinda jammed together.

Mark: “... Wait, is that thing functional?” .-.
Layla: “Only one way to find out…”

“I’ll be quick. Hold onto Millie for me,” she says, gently setting Millie on her back. Mark comes up and picks her up, cradling her. Layla reaches the console and drops her bag, digging the flash drive out. “This is it!”

She slides it into the keyhole.

inb4 it does nothing because her USB drive has someone’s family photos or something like that on it and not whatever input the terminal needs.

Alright, onto my final thoughts:

Well that chapter got really brutal really fast, can’t say I was expecting that one. You made a fairly ballsy choice to maim a child character on-screen as a plot device, and I think that it was pulled off decently. I’ll admit it made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but at the same time, I’m not sure if the chapter would’ve worked as well if you’d let Millie off easier. Your setting has been established in the past as being one where things are fairly hard-edged and precarious, and having that crash into the protagonists front and center as a result of their own decision-making is a way of soberly reminding the readers that, and of why Layla wants to get everyone out of their craptacular status quo in the tunnels at the moment.

Tying in with the above, but I thought your chapter had a good sense of tension and unpredictability. Originally I had been writing this review with the intent of doing it in two blocks over two nights. That swiftly went out the window by the midway mark, since you got me invested in seeing how things would turn out, since it genuinely did not feel like it could be taken for granted that everyone would be okay in the end and even now, I’m not fully sure if Team Surface are going to successfully make it back to Scrap Town with their client or not. I also thought you droped in some tantalizing hints about Mark as well, since the chapter heavily implies that he’s seen some stuff in life. Which is probably not a good omen of what the Surface used to be like but I suppose that’s a story for another day and another chapter.

As for criticisms that I have, most of the bones I had to pick could be resolved from additive editing. I noticed there seemed to be a recurring issue of paragraphs that had enough content to be multiple paragraphs lying around, you might want to consider looking those over and seeing if those can be split up at all. I also thought there were a couple moments where I thought more description was needed. Mark and Layla’s reactions and internal thoughts in particular, especially when things were going seriously sideways felt like they were left up to imagination a little too much, which made it hard to get a reading on them and how they were doing at some parts.

As for less “simple fix” criticisms, I kinda felt that some of the characters felt like they “dropped” certain moods a bit too quickly considering their circumstances. Like for example, I was a bit surprised that Millie didn’t need more coaxing and emotional support after getting brought back to Layla by Mark given that the kid just went through an incredibly traumatic event with a lingering wound that probably still hurts that can be seen from a casual turn of her head. It also kinda felt like it left some opportunities to glimpse into the way Team Surface ticks on the table. Like if Layla for instance would be the type to take the idea of seeing a child hurt hard, you’d think that she might be doing things like trying to distract Millie with something like sweets or funny faces, or more cynically, getting her to eat a sleep aid. Similarly, I noticed that Mark mentions that he feels guilty about how his hesitancy with the Noivern cost Millie, but it’s all handled in one paragraph in a single scene. It might have had more oomph if we saw more of that some of that a bit beforehand, such some initial panic at seeing things go south for Millie, flashes of guilt after providing initial treatment, or something like that.

But altogether, I thought that the overall package was put together well, if a bit startling. You mentioned looking forward for a long time as to how I’d feel about this chapter, and I can see why. In many ways, this is the “wake up call” moment for Team Surface in this story, even moreso than Mark’s near-death experience with Bali, in which we see that they’re not going to get cut a break by the universe for being inexperienced, as well as establishing just how bad things can get if they fall short.

I had some mechanical quibbles, but assuming that this chapter was meant to keep readers on the edge of their seat, I think that you accomplished your goals quite well @BestLizard . For a second, I legit thought you were going to kill Millie off, and the chapter definitely sold a “nobody is safe” vibe with brutal efficiency, even if things (somewhat) worked out in the end.

I’ll be looking forward to seeing where this story goes in future chapters, since you’ve thrown the gauntlet down, and now it’s time to see how the characters navigate their treacherous world that is dark and full of terrors on their way back up to brighter skies.

 

[BestLizard]

I just wanted to mention I updated chapter 10. Jace was coming off as uncharacteristically inhumane, so I tried to fix it.

Spoiler: Chapter 10 Spoilers

Jace wants to look after her to make sure she's genuinely safe when they reasoned she can't be returned to Daisy, as opposed to seeing her as an object to satisfy his parenthood dreams.

Originally chapter 10 wasn't even necessary until I realized there was no way Jace was going to get away with the plan he had so I haven't had the time to think the chapter through like every other chapter. The joys of writing, haha, I love it.

If you've been following my story, be excited for chapter 11. I've been waiting to share it ever since I started writing, and it'll finally dip into the bigger picture I've clued. I'm sure it'll make you think about things in a different way :)

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, here for a twofer of polishing off a belated Reading Rookidee target and offsite Review Tag. Said Review Tag had covering at least 10,000 words of story as a requirement, so I took the opportunity to go ahead and dive into the next 3 chapters of your story from where I left off:

Chapter 7

Mark shifts Millie around, getting a comfortable hold on her. Two torches lie at his feet, neither of which illuminate the black structure wedged into the glittering crystal. Layla wiggles the flash-drive key into a terminal standing to the side of the structure’s door, but it resists going in, even as she starts to shake.

… The connector is bent, isn’t it?

“Turn the key upside down,” Mark says.

She does and it slides in with a satisfying click. The screen comes to life, displaying a patternless white background that glows on their face. Black text centers in the middle and a red geometric insignia marks the top right corner. Layla squints at the light which is brighter than their torches.

… How on earth is that display still functional after all these years anyways? .-.

“Hey, Mark, what does it say? Are you sure this isn’t magic?”

Mark: “... Layla, it’s a computer screen.”

Layla: “So… magic, right?”

Mark shuffles closer. He squints at the near-blinding light. “It says, ‘Invalid key file.’”

Yeah, I just knew that the USB drive wasn’t going to display anything of note on it. Since what were the odds after all this time?

“What does that mean?”

“This key doesn’t open this door.”

Mark: “Really, for all we know, that drive literally has someone’s music playlist on it.” >_>;

Layla gnashes her teeth and shakes a fist. Mark takes a step back. After a breathless pause, she kicks the terminal and yanks the key out. “Whatever.”

“We can come back and force it open! Maybe even do it now!”

Layla shakes her head. “That won’t work. I already tried and I couldn’t even scratch it. This is blacksteel; nothing can break it and ghosts can’t phase through it.”

She picks up one of the two torches and heads to the loot she ignored earlier and begins picking it up.

… ‘Blacksteel’, huh? I wonder what on earth that substance is if Ghost-types explicitly can’t phase through it. Since I’m not sure if any such material was ever explicitly depicted in a branch of series canon.

Mark examines the door. Its appearance is smooth, although any blemish wouldn’t be noticeable with how dark it is - the light of the torches doesn’t even reflect off its surface. He rubs his shoulder against the surface, feeling its icy smoothness. It is warm to touch.

It feels a bit oxymoronic to me to say something has “icy smoothness” while being “warm to the touch”. It might have made sense to say something like “glassy” or something like that.

Behind him, his partner grunts as she pulls out mushrooms from the rocky ground. Most are the dull brown coloured of what ones that they eat for meals, while a few are of a familiar blue hue. Coins lying around clink together when she scoops them up. The only item lying around distinct from that isn’t fungi or money is a spore with a pulsing pink glow. Her bag’s brimming when only two food mushrooms remain planted in the ground. She stuffs small crystal chunks into the remaining space.

That spore’s going to wind up causing problems in a bit, I can already tell.

“Does the crystal sell?” Mark asks.

“Nah. You’ll see what it's for later.” She tugs out the last two mushrooms and places one in her mouth where she leaves it hanging from her teeth. For the other, she heads towards Mark and shoves it into his mouth.

Wow, rude. Hopefully there aren’t also poisonous mushrooms down here that are easy to mistake in patterning or coloration.

[ ]

“Mmm-mmm-mff!”

“Oh it's free food, you best stop complaining,” she says, her own mushroom nearly falling out. [ ]

“Mmm-mmm-mmff…”

This section feels like it’d have benefitted from dropping in a bit of body language from Mark’s end to show how he’s reacting both to the initial surprise, and then to Layla’s scolding, since it’s admittedly a bit hard to get a read on him here.

The [exit] is to the side. Many metal bars are lodged into the crystal wall, ascending like a staircase. They extend out of sight. Millie’s not too heavy, but carrying her up so many flights of stairs makes Mark’s arms hurt. During the climb, the dungeon remains a chasm of two parallel walls the entire climb. [No pokemon growling or screeching is heard.]

It’s hard for Mark to believe he fell from a wide crystal spire in the middle of a void. They reach the top eventually, which ends beside the human lift. Two steps onto the even ground, Mark looks back - the stairs are gone.

I’d recommend breaking this paragraph up into two, but there’s also two bits that are a bit more open ended for changes that I think are worth considering.


The first is that you probably want to more explicitly mention where this exit is for, e.x. “exit for the Mystery Dungeon” as a meta reminder to the reader of “right, we’re here”. The sentence about not hearing Pokémon growling or screeching feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the paragraph. I’d recommend either expanding it or merging it with the prior sentence.

Layla kneels and shuffles a map out of her bag. “You said we needed water? There should be a stream nearby.”

“Yeah. Running water, ideally. We need to clean the Millie’s wound so it doesn’t get disinfected.”

[ ]


“Oran mushrooms stop infections…”

[ ]

“Oh. Well, she’ll still need to drink water to recover her blood.”

Another bit where some body language would probably make sense, first from Layla since Mark’s forgotten something that’s “apples are red”-tier knowledge for her and locals of the tunnels, while it might have made sense to also show Mark getting a bit flustered in reply.

“Alright. Plus you need it to wash off too, Mark. Although the colour red looks nice on you!” Layla says with a giggle. She gets up and guides them down the tunnel.

Dried blood technically winds up looking more blackish or brown with time, assuming that’s what Layla’s referring to. Though I’m a little surprised that there’s not more worry about the smell of Millie’s blood attracting unwanted attention, since presumably there are Pokémon that can pick up on it.

It isn't a long walk through the echoey brown-grey tunnels until the silence is broken by intermittent drip-drops. A gurgling sound joins it as the solid earth breaks away to a basin of water swirling at a lethargic pace. A crack beneath the pool drains it out like a clogged kitchen sink, while broken streams flow out the wall. A rich mineral scent lingers in the air.

This is the remains of some sort of reservoir, isn’t it? Since I don’t think that sort of formation particularly often in nature.

He sets Millie down by the small waterfalls and nudges her awake. “Hey, you thirsty?” he asks.

Mark: “... Actually, on second thought, do I really want to do this when I could just keep her sedated with a Sleep Shroom or something like that?”

She stirs and nods with a faint smile. She gets up with wobbly balance and puts her head under its flow, lapping the water. Water runs past her cheeks and flows off her chin as she drinks plenty. They wait patiently. One last big gulp and she wipes her mouth with her arm.

She turns back to Mark and wraps both arms around his waist. Her head buries into her his side and she sniffs. “Thank you so much.”

Another part where IMO the paragraph might work better split up. Though I’m honestly surprised that Layla or Mark didn’t help steady Millie here. Since if she’s used to doing this with both arms normally… yeah, she can’t do that right now.

Millie: “Well, aside from the part where you stalled and cost me a hand, but considering I’d be dead otherwise, I’ll hold my tongue.” >_>;

Mark smiles and wraps his arms around her too, rubbing her back. “You did really well. You were so tough back there. Though we have to clean your wound now though, okay?”

Millie: “D-Don’t I get any anesthesia for this?”

Mark: “Trust me, kid. If we had any, it’d make my life a lot easier.”

Her head bobs up and down into his skin. He separates her, nudges her to the stream, and unwinds the red bandage capping her stump. New skin is healing over the nasty lump of dried blood faster than Mark expects. He holds it to the stream, letting the clean water rush over it. Small black bits run down the current, as well as a slight amount of blood. He asks Layla for a new bandage once it's clean and wraps it around a few times. The bandage stays a sterile white.

Wow that’s fast for recovering. Guess that gives some idea of Pokémon’s healing factor in this setting.

Millie sniffs. “My hand’s not going to come back, right? What will that mean?”

Layla: “That you’ll get to have one of those cool hooks for a hand instead-” :V
Mark: “Layla, I don’t think ‘happy-go-lucky’ is the right tone to be taking right now…” >_>;

Mark’s head tilts down as he deliberates his response. “...You’re right, your hand will not come back. But that doesn’t mean bad things are going to happen.”

[ ]

“It’ll be hard but you’ll adjust to life without a hand, and you’ll find you can still do a lot that you love. And you’ll still have your friends and families there for you.”

Millie slowly shakes her head. A fresh tear drops down her cheek. Mark hugs her, patting her head and rocking her gently. “Everything will be alright,” he says.

This IMO would work a bit better with the dialogue chopped up and showing Mark doing something to reassure Millie a bit here.

Layla:

Mark: “Layla, can you not right now?” >_>;
Layla: “Mark, I get that you’re trying to make the kid feel better. But this is kinda the epitome of a dog-eat-dog world here. You shouldn’t give her unfounded hopes.

Layla grimaces. She distracts herself by dropping her torches and bag, and examines the blood draining down the gentle whirlpool. Once it's washed away, she jumps with a splash and shuffles deeper until she sits down neck-deep. She focuses on scrubbing dried blood off her with her palms.

Wow, I was joking about Layla having a cynical reaction to Mark’s reassurance. But she’s sure giving off those vibes right about now.

The child’s eyes close and she dozes off. Mark gently sets her down.

I… didn’t get the vibe that Millie was tired at all. Her being groggy is something that you probably want to mention a couple times in earlier description.

“Hey! Come join me!” Layla whispers, gesturing with both arms. “Get that blood off you!”

“Oh, sure,” he says.

He approaches the edge of the pool and notices his reflection. Even though the running water distorts the image, it’s the first time he’s seeing himself. It confuses him, not because it’s not what he expects, but because he feels no problem with what he sees.

... Shouldn’t he be having an identity crisis? The body proportions also look off. He’s sure how they’re off, but he’s not concerned about that either. The only thing he doesn’t like seeing is the red coating his body in many spots like a monster.

Your last paragraph IMO can be cut up into at least 2 others. I went for 3 in my suggestion.

Mark: “... How is all of this just this normal for me right now?” .-.

He falls despondent to the floor, looking down at both his blood-painted claws.

“What’s wrong?” Layla asks.

“I took someone’s life. I mean, I saved Millie because of it. But…”

Layla: “Mark, that Noivern was basically a zombie. Don’t get so hung up about it.”

Mark: “A living zombie, Layla.”
Layla: “Well, yeah. But still. There was no helping that bat.”

He feels sick to his stomach and his ears ring. Layla walks out of the pool and grabs his hands.

“Oh, just join the cute attractive lady for a bath,” she says.

She drags him into the current where the water rushes over his skin in a comforting manner. She plants him down right by the spot she was sitting before. Both her arms wrap around his side and her head leans against the side of his body.

I kinda feel as if Layla’s line of dialogue responding to Mark is a little too disconnected from the whole “what’s wrong?” back and forth from earlier. It might have made sense to acknowledge it a little more firmly with something like “don’t worry about that” worked in or something like that.

Mark: “U-Um… L-Layla?” O///O;

“Are you teasing me again? Like that whole ‘boyfriend army’ thing?” he asks, breath getting tighter from the closeness. “This isn’t a great time for that.”

Layla: “Boy aren’t you just Mr. Sunshine right now?”

Mark: “Layla, I had to treat a child who lost a hand like an hour ago.” >.<

Her tone lacks its normal sass. “I just want to hold someone, if that’s okay. It makes me feel better, and it's been a while since I was able to.”

She sighs, putting more weight against him.

“My heart wouldn’t stop pounding after you fell away, and it didn’t stop seeing the mess of you and Millie, she says. “You looked like the stuff I see in nightmares. I was so scared.”

Layla… has seen some things in life, hasn’t she? Since the fact that she sees bloodied and mangled Pokémon in her nightmares is a pretty strong hint that she’s also seen it in life as well.

He hesitantly reaches his arms around Layla. She’s so warm and soft. “Y-you can hold me.”

Layla smiles. They’re like this for a while. His arms relax after a while when his body realizes holding a girl won’t kill him. He looks away and thinks over everything that’s happened in just three days.

Eventually, Layla speaks again. “By the way, if it means anything, I don’t feel great killing either. It does get easier the more you do it, you know. It just feels normal like eating or fighting,” she explains. “I do try to leave Dungeon Pokemon fainted if I can. Non-dungeon Pokemon though? Well…”

She’s silent for a moment. [ ]

“...the guilt does ease up after a while, okay? Especially when you think about how you still have your own life,” Layla insists. “But, you saved someone, Mark. Focus on that! Like, not only you defended her, that human magic you did on her arm is fantastic, nobody in the underground can do that! It’s truly amazing! Be proud!”

So the implication is that Layla kills non-Dungeon Pokémon more regularly than Dungeon Pokémon? I mean, I get that it’s a harsh world, but I admittedly wasn’t expecting that one.

Though this feels like another particularly dense block in need of division, with a bit of expansion around the “She’s silent for a moment” part to try and give a vibe for how Layla’s feeling here, since I kinda get the sense that she’s supposed to come off as guilty or bugged by past experiences that are coming to mind here, but it’s not really described a whole lot.

Mark sheepishly nods his head. There’s a pause before he speaks again. “Hey, Layla, is there anything unusual about my body?”

“Yeah! You’re an incredibly tall Sableye.”

“Huh?”

… Wasn’t expecting that one. But how tall are we talking here-?

“You’re as tall as I am! It’s super cute. You’re the tallest Sableye in the underground, probably. You’re kind of lanky because of it too, but that makes you even better boyfriend material.”

“Uh, thanks.”

- Casually pulls up dex heights in Bulbapedia -

… Wow, that really is tall for a Sableye there. I wonder if that’s an artifact of Mark originally having been a human and being “fitted” to his new body, or if that’s something else in play.

“Heh, you’re welcome. But, let’s actually get you cleaned up, okay?”

They part. Mark scrubs off any remaining blood the current didn’t already take away. It's difficult without a sponge or soap. He splashes his head into the water a few times and rubs his face, unsure of if any spots are missed. Once his body is decidedly purple again, they step out, shake themselves free of water, and pack up. Mark picks up Millie once more while Layla holds the torches. They head to Scrap Town together.

The three have a long, well-earned rest when they arrive home.

Something about that last paragraph feels really rushed there. It might have made sense to mention in passing what happened after making it back to Scrap Town, since it kinda feels almost as if they just forgot about Millie after getting back and went home to flop over in bed.

I do think it works as an ending line for this scene, just missing a few steps to “get there”.

Mark sees a purple-and-blue void shifting around, never making form. Two unclear voices reverberate in the distance: Mark’s own voice and a feminine voice. Time passes, and they become discernible…

Ah yes, the questionnaire sequence, let’s see where it’s going this time.

“A hand extends out of a toilet! What do you do?” she says.

“What? What kind of question is that?”

Disembodied Voice: “... Did you seriously never play Majora’s Mask in your life before?”

Mark: “No, and why on earth would anyone ever have something like that in a game?”

“I told you, we didn’t have a lot of time to write these! We’re nearly at the end though. Would you scream and run, close the lid without a word, or shake hands with it?”

For reference, the correct answer is “give it toilet paper”.

“Is it disembodied, or is there a full giant monster in there? Can I help it if the former? You can stuff disembodied hands into ice bags and have them reattached later. Well, if you’re fast enough.”

Disembodied Voice: “That wasn’t the question…”

Mark: “Look, I don’t like questions without full contexts, okay? They’re usually setups to traps.” >_>;

Mark feels his right wrist being tapped.

“Mark, please stick to the options, it's hard to improvise…” she says.

Their voices drift further away and everything becomes black.

I’m guessing that that was the voice’s vibe check on Mark to see if he’d be squeamish to icky situations? Since I’m kinda getting the sense that this placement wasn’t incidental given that Mark just went through an experience an episode that left him covered in gore.

A smooth claw prods Mark’s cheek until his eyes blink open. Layla stands above him with that same smirk of hers.

“Hey, wake up!” she whispers. “We’ll get Millie out to her mother today! Then we’ll dig up those graves for clues next! Isn’t that exciting?”

… Oh, so they just straight-up took Millie back to their base? I… wouldn’t have expected that given the condition she made it back to Scrap Town in.

He’s lying on the rough ground and his back feels sore. He rolls his head to see Millie’s tail hanging over the cushion he normally sleeps in. “What time is it?” he asks.

Mark: “Also, shouldn’t she be off at a hospital right now?” ._.;
Layla: “Bold of you to assume a town of outlaws would have one.”

“Waking up time, of course!” she says, prodding him twice as hard. “Come on!”

“Okay, okay,” he says, weakly swatting her claw away.

He gets onto his feet and stretches long and hard, thankful she’s giving him time to do a morning routine this time. Layla busies herself organizing her bag. Once blood is pumping well throughout his body, he approaches Millie and nudges her shoulder. She blinks.

“Good morning. Are you feeling any better?” he asks.

Millie: “... Mister, are you serious right now?”

Mark: “Look, I realize that being in agony from losing a limb and shock from blood loss is kinda a low bar to cross, but you are feeling better, right?” ^^;

Millie takes a bit of time to come to. She tries to sit up using both hands but winces when she presses down on the wound. She collapses back down, grabs it, and whimpers.

Shouldn’t that be both ‘arms’ since Millie only has one hand at the moment?

“Careful!” Mark says.

She rubs the bandage stub. “It still hurts.”

Millie: “I kept asking you for anesthesia but noooo...” >_>;
Mark: “Sorry, it’s just… not that common of an item for dungeoneers to have, really.” ._.;

Mark forces himself to keep a smile. He offers his left hand. “Do you want to get some food?”

After a few more rubs, she reaches with the stub. Her face shows some defeat as she swaps to the correct arm. Mark pulls her out of bed and gets her steady on the ground. Layla throws the bag over the Sableye’s shoulder and the three head to Myla’s cafe.

Oh, so Millie lost her dominant hand. That’s… gonna give her some problems later in life, since I’m not sure how on earth she’s supposed to do anything for a living like that with this setting’s tech level.

The three eat a hearty breakfast of mushrooms and drink bowls of water around a table in the corner of the warm, fire-lit cafe. Layla had placed a special order to make the child Millie’s meal big and tasty and Myla obliged, for a fee.

Millie’s slice of mushroom is wide and she tears bites off it eagerly. It's a struggle to hold it with her hand missing, as she drops it many times and winces when she puts too much pressure against the clean bandage. Yet, she devours it with such a smile that it’s hard to believe she was traumatized just yesterday. Mark eats at a simple pace while Layla doesn’t touch her food, leaning on the table with a palm on her cheek and watching the child. Millie coughs on a bite.

Well, at least Millie worked up an appetite from all of that. Though I’m starting to wonder if Layla had something happen to a sibling or someone she knew as a child from the way that she’s looking at Millie, since… yeah, I can see her watching Millie like that.

“Hey, be careful! Don’t choke on your food!” Layla says, but Millie ignores her and keeps consuming as soon as her coughing fit passes. Mark chuckles.

Mark: “Kids, what can you do about ‘em?”

After more time, Mark yawns. Curiosity grows in his mind once more. He looks around for unfamiliar faces or trinkets, but the Cafe is empty - it’s past when mercenaries would be prepping for the day. There’s just Myla staring at nothing in particular while a Duskull wipes the counter with a rag. A Quaxly and a Monferno do walk through the entrance just when Mark lifts a bowl up for another sip. They approach Myla.

Ah yes, the first Gen IX ‘mon in the story. Wonder if this guy is going to be important or just a random.

“What do you know about a missing Gallade named Aquila and a Machamp named Sonny?” The Monferno asks.

… Okay, chalk that up to ‘important’, though I can already tell that things are going to go really sideways really, really fast here.

Mark: “Wait, a Gallade named ‘Aquila’? As in ‘eagle’?”

Layla: “Meh, you run into weirder names down here. But something about those species sounds familiar for some reason…”

Mark looks back to Layla and freezes. Layla’s lax attitude melts when she notices Mark’s body language. Millie keeps tearing new bites off the mushroom’s stem.

“Listen,” Mark whispers.

She tilts her head, angling her ear towards the counter.

“I only answer when paid,” Myla says. “500 for a pair of pokemon.”

That… sounds like it’d be a serious liability for Team Surface if Myla’s willing to give information about anyone she knows for a price.

The Monferno growls and sticks a hand into his bag to dig out the poke. Coins clatter across the counter, where she the Mismagius sweeps them up and phases them directly into her body.

It might be worth reminding the reader that Myla is a Mismagius at some point, since admittedly I had to go back in peek here since I was doing a double-take as to how Myla could phase stuff into her body.

“Both of them belong to Lucia’s guild. They were seen around the farms above and adjoining tunnels, but they have never entered Scrap Town. They kept their distance from others,” Myla explains. “Seems like they had a mission and Lucia either didn’t want to disturb peace here any further, or it was meant to stay quiet. Either way, I’ve heard nothing about them in three days. There has never been a job posting here referring to them,” she says.

The Monferno bangs a fist over the counter. “Hey! That barely helps us! If you don’t know where they are, give back the poke!”

Mark: “Um… Layla? I think that that’s a sign for us to take our breakfasts and move on right about now.”

The corners of Myla’s grin turn down.

“Hey! I told you what I know and don’t know, and the latter's just as valuable. They’re definitely not here nor do and they don’t have any connections around this place, so searching here would be a waste of your time,” she snaps. “They’re probably dead in the Lower Tunnels or far away here. Now get lost if you’re going to harass me.”

This… is going to end with someone lying dead on the floor, isn’t it?

The Monferno shakes his fist and growls. The Quaxly puts a wing on the Monferno, waits for her partner’s impulse to subside, and jumps onto a taller stool. A bag of jingling coins lands on the counter, pulled right from her bag.

“Do you know of a Pokemon who claims to read Human Script, or claims to be human themselves?”

-Mark chokes on his mushroom in the background, as everyone turns and stares at him-
Mark: “D-Don’t mind me, I was just having breakfast here!”

Myla opens the bag and counts the coins. Mark shuffles his stool partway out, ready to dash but Layla’s claw grabs his forearm. She looks firmly into his eyes. Mark gets the hint and stops.

“I know nothing about such a Pokemon. Is this an individual, or are you looking for any crazy pokemon?”

“Just an individual.”

I kinda wonder if this would’ve worked better showing off Mark’s internal thought process a bit more and him realizing that he’s in danger before he tries to nope out. Since something about this feels like it cut to the chase a little too quickly.

Mark: “(Layla, why are we here right now?!)”

Layla: “(Because if we get up and bolt, you’ll give yourself away in a heartbeat?)” >_>;

“Well, they wouldn’t have passed by Scrap Town. I can keep an eye out for them, there’s enough money to pay for that,” Myla insisted. “But would said Pokemon easily ‘reveal’ they’re are human, or that they can read Human Script?”

The Quaxly laughs. “I doubt they’d be tight-lipped. You’d already know about them if they’re around, but… Yeah, I’ll take you up on that offer. And please, forgive my companion. He’s new outside the city.”

They both turn and head out of the cafe. The bird has a smug smile on his beak and waves a wing, while the monkey folds his arms and refuses to look back.

Mark: “(Oh my god, that was way too close.)”

Mark gives a sigh of relief, placing his claw on his forehead.

Layla giggles. “You’re wanted by more than me, Mark~” she says.

Mark: “Layla, this isn’t helping right now.” >.<

Mark nods and glances at Myla. Her body faces directly at him. Their eyes lock. [ ]

“You all done?” Layla asks Millie.

“Mmm-hmm!” Millie says. “When do I see my mother?”

There’s no acknowledgement at all here that Layla is turning attention to Millie at all here, which makes things feel a bit weird since the paragraph before her line of dialogue makes her read very focused on Mark, so it’s a bit jarring to see the change of focus.

“We’ll work on that right now. Come on, Mark!”

“Huh? Oh,” Mark says, breaking his trance with Myla. They get up and walk to the counter, Layla holding Millie’s hand.

Myla’s still staring coldly at Mark. “Come with me to the back. Noir, stay out here until I’m out,” she says.

The other ghost nods. She guides them to the end of the bar and around a corner. Millie shifts behind Layla’s leg and her smile fades. Her grip on her thigh hardens. There’s a door leading to the backroom. The ghost phases through it, leaving Layla to open it with a creak.

Oh, so Myla does know about Mark’s true nature. … Not that he was exactly being subtle about it in prior chapters.

Cool air hits them in the face. The fitting of the wood planks is tighter and both crates and blocks of ice sit around the perimeter. Myla is across the room, gesturing them inwards. Mark hugs himself for warmth while Millie shivers as they approach her.

Many opened crates they pass reveal stockpiles of mushrooms, while fewer hold various adventurer items and poke bags sitting in them. When they’re in front of the large ghost, a prisoner Froggadier is seen tucked behind some crates in the back corner. He lays on his side, wrapped up tightly with rope, blindfolded, gagged, and his ears are stuffed with some unrecognizable material.

Another paragraph that feels like it ought to get broken up a bit here.

Mark: “... I’m sorry, why is there a Pokémon just tied up in your backroom here?!”

“Don’t mind him,” Myla says, gesturing her head to the captive. He struggles against his bindings and muffles into his gag. The child buries her face into Layla in response. “I’m just holding him until an adventurer picks him up for a mission. He won’t hear us. More importantly, can you read Human Script, Mark?”

Ah yes, scar Millie even more for life than what yesterday would’ve done. Fantastic job there, you two.

Layla steps in front of him, holding a claw on her hip. “No he doesn’t!”

“Yes, he does. I heard you admit it to Andy,” Myla says.

Layla: “Mark, you dense mother-” >.<
Mark: “Layla, there’s a kid here! And I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be open about that!” O_O;

Layla looks back to Mark. Her face hangs. “Why would you be so careless?!”

Oh hey, I actually called Layla’s reaction, if a bit less profane. :V

“I was still new to the Underground! I haven’t even been awake for 24 hours yet!” Mark says.

“24 hours?” Layla says. One of her brows rises.

One of Myla’s ribbon-arms rubs her chin mockingly. “Yes, what is an hour, Mark?”

Mark: “You know, 60 minutes? 1/24th of a day?”
- Everyone stares blankly at Mark -
Mark: “Wait, how do you not have a conception of an hour?!” O_O;

Mark’s mouth hangs open. He takes a few steps back. “Layla, she knows! We should run!”

“It’s okay Mark,” Layla says. Her arms fold. “She already kept our secret safe. Although Myla, why did you do that? You never make exceptions.”

That’s what I’d like to know, too. Since I was fully expecting Myla to just rat Mark out in the room considering the overall tone of Scrap Town.

“I’m interested in the surface as well,” Myla says. Mark struggles to get a read on her expression - it's locked into the same, unchanging grin she always has. “If we actually reach it, I won’t have to sell information to get by.”

“Annnnnd?” Layla says.

Layla: “Since, really Myla. Do you expect me to believe that’s the only reason why you didn’t sell Mark out?”

Myla looks at her, brows scrunching up in confusion. Mark looks between the two women as the answer hangs in mystery. Eventually, Layla taps her sternum.

“...Because you like me?” she says.

Myla rolls her eyes toward Mark. He nervously chuckles and shrugs his shoulders.

Mark: “I’ll just take that as a ‘no’.” ._.;

Layla leans an elbow on Mark’s head, which makes his head sink into his shoulders. Her tone is sarcastic. “I know you couldn’t stand to watch your crush be carried off by Lucia’s people~”

Layla: “... Wait, why are they allowed to just come prowling through our town anyways when they pick off our locals on a regular basis?”

Myla: “In this business, you have to make some compromises to get by.”

Myla rubs her forehead. “Ugh, I broke up with you already. Plus, they’re not looking for you anyways.”

“Broke up cause there wasn’t enough of me in your life, yeah? ‘Oh Layla, how can we spend time together if you’re always adventuring.’ So yeah, I’m not wrong that you want me,” Layla responds, imitating her low voice.

Wow, Layla really has gotten around romantically. Didn’t peg her as once having a thing for Myla.

Myla sinks her forehead into both ribbon-hands. Her wide smile still doesn’t falter. Mark starts suspecting she doesn’t have any other expression.

“Layla,” Myla starts.

“Well guess what! If we do find the surface, I’ll have more time to be with you, so will you be my girlfriend again when we do? We can have fun like old times!” She tugs Mark in and holds him very close against her body. He tenses again and his cheeks glow pink. The attention is awkward enough without being in front of a stranger. “Although you’ll have to share with Mark!”

Oh lordy, Layla’s trying to build a harem in live-time. ^^:

Myla opens her mouth to say something, but stops. She rubs her chin and tilts her head slightly

“Okay, you know what? If you will be an actual girlfriend and not a stranger days away from me once we’re on the surface, then sure, why not. You’re still cute.”

[ ]

“This is all besides the point though: I’ve sold out girlfriends before and I’ll do it to you too if someone paid enough,” the Mismagius said. “Nono, I’m covering you cause I want to find the surface, and you have an actual clue now. But you’ll have to do some jobs for me in return, okay?”

Another bit where you have a really long block of dialogue. Though Myla’s casual admission that she’s sold out romantic lovers in the past for money is… worrisome for the places she’ll wind up later in this story.

“Oh ho, okay. What is it?” Layla asks. Her claws scritch the top of Mark’s head.

“L- Layla?” Mark says, confused about what he is doing in this situation and why he likes this so much.

Mark: “There’s… going to be a horrible catch to this, isn’t there?”
Millie: “Look, can I just leave the room with the scary ghost lady and the tied-up frog now? I thought you two were taking me back to mom!”

Myla floats over to Layla. Layla cranes her head up. Millie whimpers.

“I’ll come to you when I have something I need you to do. Okay? For now, I have nothing” Myla says.

Layla gets on her toes to smooch Myla’s chin. “Got it, love.”

Since, yeah, this just screams “you’re going to regret this in like 3 chapters”.

“Heh,” She says, rubbing the spot where Layla’s lips touched her. “I’ll also tell you anything I know that may help you. Not that there is much for me to share”

[ ]

“You both probably already know Lucia’s curious about humans too. She knows there’s a human-turned-Pokemon out there.” She floats away from Layla’s face and heads towards the wall. “Yet she doesn’t know it’s a male Sableye. Curious, curious…”

Same deal about breaking up a long stretch of dialogue with some interleaving description here. Especially since it’s an opportunity to help sell any intended vibes for Myla.

Millie tugs Layla’s lag. “Can we go?”

Mark: “... Layla, why did we bring her along for this again?” ._.;
Layla: “Because we need to babysit her, and in my defense, I didn’t know that Myla was keeping… uh… company back here.”

Myla stops and turns to the small Kanghaskhan. Layla twists her leg to show more of her, but the child keeps shuffling around to keep herself out of Myla’s sight.

”Hey, one of the missions was to find a girl named Millie. We have her here. Where do we find her mother?” Layla says.

Millie: “Can you not bring this up in front of the creepy ghost lady right now?!”

Layla:

“In the Undergrowth Settlement. A Frosslass named Cascade will guide you to her. They use they/them pronouns, by the way. Anyways, I’ve kept people waiting too long. Later.” Myla says.

She floats backward, staring at them all as she phases through the wall as a shortcut. Mark blinks a few times in surprise but Layla’s spirits stay high. She grabs both Millie’s and Mark’s claws.

I’m… honestly surprised that the conception of “pronouns” has lingered on this long in Below’s society when they have very alien-to-human ideas of timekeeping. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be too phased if this setting has flatly genderless Pokémon like in the mainline games.

“It’s a long walk, but you’ll be able to see her tonight, Millie! We’re heading to see her right now!”

Millie smiles. “Really?”

Layla smiles. “Yes, really!”

Mark smiles.

- Cue the Frogadier flailing with muffled shouts in the background -
Millie: “Great, so… uh… can we leave the creepy freezer right now?” ^^;
Mark: “(Actually, how on earth has that guy’s body not gone into torpor yet anyways?)” .-.

Layla starts walking towards the door, bringing the two along with her. “By the way. Isn’t Myla so cute, Mark? You’re into her too, yeah?”

“What? She’s kind of creepy…”

Mark: “Layla, she has a Pokémon bound and gagged in her cold storage right now.”

Layla: “Yes, and? Doesn’t mean you can’t find her cute.” :V

“No way! I know deep down you like her too, how can anyone resist that smile? We’ll all love each other together!” she says, tugging on his arm in a playful manner.

The Frogadier slumps onto his side, but his muffled call for help is silenced further when the door swings shut behind the group. Poor froggy.

Millie: “...”

Layla: “Don’t worry, froggy’s a bad guy. Probably. Maybe. But let’s worry about getting you home to your mother right now. ^^;

Though will be uploading each chapter's section of this review into its own post, since I don't feel like wrestling with image embeds right now.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Chapter 8

The tunnel zigzags endlessly. Mark wishes he knew how many hours pass just turning around and walking up endless inclines. When he asks, Layla only mentions they’ll be there “eventually.”

Mark:

Layla: “

Also, asking repeatedly isn’t going to make us get there faster.”

The tunnel provides distraction for Mark, at least. The ceiling has a smooth, wide arc, with no rocky spikes jutting out from above or below. Grooves line the walls, unnaturally straight and shallow save for where the rock has crumbled.

But it's the colours that mesmerize the ghost most: a chalky white mineral swirls through the grey granite like a milky whirlpool frozen in its face. The pattern only gets more intricate the more turns they take. Mark loses himself in the kaleidoscope around him, forgetting about where he is and the passing of time.

This used to be some sort of transport tunnel, didn’t it? Since the construction sounds very “road tunnel” in description minus the material swirling through the granite. That one I haven’t figured out.

“Hey!” Layla shouts. “Millie, stop! Come back!”

Mark snaps back to reality. His partner is far ahead of him and is running towards him, chasing Millie. The child falls and screams. Mark runs to her, although by the time he halves the distance, Layla’s already kneeling down and rubbing her shoulder.

“Take it easy. What’s wrong?” she asks.

The young Kangaskhan squirms out of her light grasp and flees again. She holds her bandaged wrist. “She hates me!”

That… is a terrible omen for what Millie’s mom is going to be like, really.

Layla: “Wh-Wha-? But I never-” ._.
Millie: “I’m not talking about you, genius!” >.<

Mark intercepts her with a hug. She struggles to get out of his grip but gives up quickly.

“I hit Darold! Then I ran away and I lost my hand,” she sniffs. “I broke the rules because I’m a bad person. She’ll hate me so much! This is what I deserve!” She sniffs.

IMO, this works better with the speech tag wedged in the middle. And… yeah, between Millie’s description here and the title… I’m really starting to think that something’s wrong with her mother, since this doesn’t seem like normal child behavior at all. .-.

Layla catches up once more and her claw pats her head in a comforting motion. “Millie,” she says, before looking at Mark with a face of loss and confusion.

Mark takes a deep breath. “Millie, Your mother wants nothing more than to see you. She’s sacrificing a lot to see you again. If she hated you, she wouldn’t have asked us to save you.”

That’s… a bold assumption to be making there, Mark. Since parents who value their children but ultimately don’t love them aren’t that rare in reality or fiction.

Millie shakes her head defiantly. “Pokemon who hit others are bad…”

“Uhh,” Mark winces an eye as he considers his words carefully. Layla looks between the two and rubs a claw to her forehead.

“You made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Your mother made mistakes. I’ve made them too. So she will forgive you because although you did something bad, she knows you want to do good. It’s okay to be human in the end.” Mark blinks a lot, realizing what he said. “To be… To be…”

Mark: “... I just said that ‘human’ part out loud, didn’t I?”

Layla: “Er… yeah, you kinda did, Mark.” -_-;

The message works anyways. Millie’s breathing eases and she weakly nods. Layla lets out a held breath and taps the child’s shoulder. “And she’s waiting for you. You don’t want to make her wait either, do you?”

Why am I getting the sneaking suspicion that these two are going to wind up deeply regretting bringing Millie back to her mother in short order? Like on one level, I don’t have proof of it, but something about Millie’s reaction to her mother and the overall “grayness” of the story gives me that vibe.

Also, again. The chapter title.

Millie slips out of his arms and grabs Layla’s claw with a weak grip. She keeps her head down and stays silent, busying herself by prodding her arm and belly with her stumpy limb. The Sneasel grimaces but begins strolling along at a gentle pace.

Mark looks at the swirling compositions on the floor instead of the ceiling. He welcomes its captivation.

Layla: “... Mark, not that the floor patterns aren’t pretty, but you should pay attention to your surroundings so you don’t run into a post or something like that.”

Vines grow across the ceiling later into the trek. They’re scrawny and pale, easy to confuse with roots. They grow in size and complexity the deeper they delve until the ceiling is hidden beneath a labyrinth of purple and whites. The thicker growths sprout leaves while stray vines hang down. The air is heavy with the scent of salt, like the ocean breeze.

… How on earth are those things able to photosynthesize down here? Is there artificial lighting somewhere overhead?

Though salt air, huh? Didn’t realize that the tunnels were so close to the ocean. Assuming that that is an ocean there.

Layla veers them off the middle of the path. To the side, a hole half the tunnel’s height opens up into a deep cavity. Their headroom is littered with long undergrowth coated in tickling leaves while fallen grey vegetation crunches beneath their feet. Haphazardly arranged cloth tents pop up further in. Spectral vines wrap around the peaks while they glow in the warmth of torchlight inside and out. The faint shadows of weary pokemon are seen inside.

Wait, so are all those plants just dead there? How long have those even been around such that they haven’t all rotted away?

The sound of rushing water is heard in the distance. They head towards it and enter a circular clearing of pebbles. A waterfall drops from the ceiling in the middle and streams weave out between the stones underfoot. Tall torches planted in the ground decorate the perimeter, their flames waving wildly. Flat-top rocks lie around, offering spots to rest upon. Orange and pink lights play around in the mist flowing around his legs. The beauty calms Mark, despite an eerie apprehension. It is like he is watching a beautiful ghost lie in a garden.

This feels like one of those scenes that would be really neat to see visualized at some point, since that sounds a lot more colorful than the prior environments we’ve seen thus far in this story. It’s like a more muted Uraya from Xenoblade 2.

There is a ghost here. A Froslass sits on the far side and blends into the ethereal scene. A rich blue neckerchief is tied around their neck and they talk to a Pichu with bloodied bandages wrapped around the nick of an ear.

Mark: “...”

Layla: “What? Kids getting hurt in these tunnels isn’t that rare, just saying.”

Layla moves past this clearing, back into the alleys. Mark looks back, confused. “Hey Layla, where are we going exactly?”

“I have absolutely no idea!” she says, chuckling. “We’re bound to find a Froslass eventually. Keep your eyes open for one, Millie!”

Mark: “Layla, we just passed one.” >.<
Layla: “Really? Then why didn’t you say something about it?” :?

“Uh, I think I spotted them back there-”

“Oh! Ok! Nevermind Millie, we’ve found them!” she says, whipping around and nearly throwing Millie off her balance.

Eh, close enough vibe-wise, really. :V

Though I have to wonder how much of Layla’s apparent scatterbrained-ness is legitimate and how much of it is an act or coping mechanism. Since there’s been some points where she’s come off as really haunted about things that happened in her past.

They go back to the fountain and approach them. The Pichu spots the group and scurries off. The ghost turns around to face what scared the rodent off. “Is everything alright? Do you need something?”

“Are you Cascade?” Layla asks. “We rescued a child named Millie, they’re supposed to guide her back to her mother.”

Millie peaks from the back of Layla’s leg and her eyes open wide. She pushes Layla aside and jumps into them with a hug, burying her head into their body. “Cascade!”

Layla:

“Millie! Are you okay?”

She shuffles her arm to show Cascade the bandaged stump. Their expression drops into dreadful shock. “Oh, Millie! You poor thing!”

They hug her head tight, gently patting the top. “What happened?”

“There was, There was- Uh, um-”

Mark: “...”

Layla: “Mark, if you’re worried about the impression you’re going to give off once Cascade learns about Millie’s hand getting eaten, maybe you should speak up before Millie gives an opinionated version of events?” >_>;

Mark steps past Layla. “She was near the bottom of Clear Crystal Chasm. A Noivern got to her and-” he takes a deep breath “-ate her hand. I was able to rescue her from the Noivern and stop the bleeding.” He rubs the back of his neck, remembering the hesitation that lost her hand.

Mark: “(Let’s… just not talk about that right now in front of the nice Froslass, shall we?)” ^^;

Millie digs her head into Cascade’s ethereal cloak. It pushes in like a plush doll. The ghost’s other hand reaches around to stroke her back. “My dear. You’re safe here. You’re-”

The child interrupts them. “And… And then… This Sableye here, he saved me. He killed the monster and- and- he wrapped something around my arm. It hurted a lot. The pain felt like it lasted forever.”

Mark: “...”

Cascade: “...”

Mark: “L-Look, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this!” O.O

Cascade’s eyes glance up to Mark. Their body language tightens to a vicious suspicion.

“I applied a tourniquet! It hurts, but it stopped the blood loss!” he says, holding both his hands up. “She would have bled to death.”

“They saved me!” Millie says.

Mark: “Millie, why did you wait so long to bring that part up again?” >_>;
Millie: “I mean, it did hurt. You’re just lucky that I didn’t bring up you managing to get that Noivern to notice where I was and get my hand eaten in the first place.” >.<
Cascade: “You did what?!”
Mark: “Nothing! Nothing at all! We were just talking about my saving Millie’s life here!”

They take a deep breath and their glare melts away. “Alright. I guess you want to see your mother now?”

Millie looks up at their face. “Y-yeah. I miss her.”

“Ok. Let’s go.” They float away from the hug and reach for her stumped wrist before correcting themselves. They squeeze the hand tight and float to a wide main path nearby.

Mark: “Um… Layla? Maybe it’d be for the best if we left and just had someone mail us our reward.”
Layla: “... Why would we want to do that again?”

Mark: “Because there’s a nonzero chance that Millie’s mother is going to murder us out of existence for not bringing all of her daughter back?” ._.
- Beat moment -
Layla: “Meh, what are the odds of that? You worry too much, Mark.”

Mark follows. Layla taps his shoulder. He forgot she’s there. [ ]

“Hey, you’re much better at handling this than me.”

“Huh?” Mark says. She chuckles instead of elaborating and takes his wrist to lead him once more. They trail but Cascade stops and turns around.

IMO, you probably want to drop in some body language for Layla here, since it’s a bit hard to get a good read on what her mood is supposed to be at the moment.

Mark: “Layla, on what planet am I better at handling this than you? I literally have less than a week’s worth of memories right now!”

“Please wait by the fountain. I’ll come back with the money once she’s safe but other than that, her mother’s in hiding. I’m sorry, but please don’t follow us,” they say.

Wait, in hiding? But from whom? .-.

“Hey, we’re here to make sure she’s safe all the way until she’s returned,” Layla says.

Cascade sighs. They rub their forehead, thinking. “Alright. Follow me for now.”

Mark glances at Layla with a quizzically raised eyebrow. She looks back at him. “What? Haven’t you learned the hard way not to trust people yet?”

Layla: “Since, you know. I was kinda expecting you’d have learned that after Bali almost got you killed and never paid you afterwards.”

“You sure though?”

She shrugs back and moves on. Further back, tents grow denser and the ground is trampled. Shadows of huddling Pokemon project through their warm surfaces. Mark bumps into the side of a Mawile, who glances with indifference before moving on. Very few Pokemon are around on the streets, each solemn or tense with anxiety. Different from the rugged faces of Scrap Town, although they share the same amount of scars.

… Totally not an ominous sign of something being seriously wrong here at all!

At the back where the ceiling descends into a wall, a two-floor facility building built into the rock stands over Mark as an opposing fortress. Cracks branch and coil beneath whirling vines like dusty cobwebs. Large squares puncture its cold surface with the glass removed long ago. Fire-lit ceilings can be soon through them. A plaque hangs by its doorless entrance, letters obscured by violet petals.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-LLbh4NW0


Mark: “Is the dreary music really needed right now?” >_>;
Layla: “I mean, considering how the Pokémon we’re running into have all been acting like someone just died… could do worse, really.”

Cascade stops at the threshold and turns around. [ ]

“Wait here with Millie,” they say. “I’ll ask her mother if she’s willing to come out to meet you and risk exposing herself to a stranger. She may not understand your skepticism of me, but…”

They shake their head. [ ]

“Well, let’s hope we can keep this simple. Millie, wait with them and do not run off, okay?”

While there’s probably a few earlier sequences that could’ve also been expanded a bit with body language or reactions, this one in particular seems like it’d particularly benefit, since it’s a bit hard to pick up on the intended vibe from the different characters here.

The child nods. She waddles over to Layla’s leg and rubs her own forearm as the ice ghost turns around and floats into the darkness of the tunnel.

“You really sure she shouldn’t be trusted?” Mark asks.

Layla: “Mark, again. This isn’t a place where you can reflexively trust others. My ex-girlfriend openly admitted to selling out prior lovers for money last chapter.”

Mark: “... Have you considered getting better romantic interests?” ^^;

Layla leans an elbow on his shoulder. “No, but the job’s not done until we’re paid, so I’m just doing the job correctly.” She glances his way and leans further in, whispering the next sentence.

“Plus, they’re a part of Lucia’s guild, and you already met the other guild. Anyways, forget about it. What does that say?” She nudges his shoulder in a playful manner while looking at the plaque.

Oh joy, so these two just waltzed into picking sides in that background turf war, didn’t they? ^^;

He walks up and brushes aside the silky vines. “It says, ‘James Allen Botanical Research Hall.’”

Mark: “... Wait, why am I doing this in public right now?!”

Layla: “Relax, we’re not being watched. Probably. Maybe.”

“Okay! What’s that?”

“James Allen’s a name. Some buildings are named after other humans to honour them,” Mark explains. “And this building would have been used to study plants.”

He tugs at one of the vine’s leaves. It pulls off with little force.

“It's possible they were studying these plants and the mushrooms that grow here. What do you think? Does that sound significant to you?”

Layla: “Nope! It’s all human to me!” ^^;
Mark: “Look, the fact that there’s honest-to-goodness plants down here that aren’t dead (I think) surely is a sign that something is up with this place.” ._.;

Layla shrugs. “Well, they didn’t leave anything inside. Believe me, I searched this place three times over. That being said, why would anyone be studying ghost vi-”

Ghost whats, now?

“Mom!” Millie shouts.

There’s a fast stomping sound from inside the building. Millie sprints into the building, almost tripping the threshold. A Kangaskhan runs towards her, with Cascade flying behind her.

“Milie!” the mother shouts.

Mark: “(Please don’t notice her hand, please don’t notice her hand…)”

The daughter jumps into her arms and they embrace. Tears pour down the large Kanghaskan’s cheeks and she chokes up. “My sweetheart! I missed you so much. My baby, my dear sweet baby, I was worried I’d never see you again!”

“Mom! I’m sorry”

“My baby, it’s okay. I love you.”

Oh, so Millie’s mother really is a loving and caring type. Maybe. But at least she passes the initial smell test.

Layla rolls their eyes. “Hey, let’s go give them privacy,” she says, pulling Mark away. Cascade floats outside as well after overhearing her suggestion. The three line up beneath a paneless window. Crying and heartfelt promises emanate from inside as they stand around.

… Wait, how did Millie’s mom not notice that she’s out a hand right away? Unless if Cascade told her in advance, you’d think she’d freak out more about it, but that was never really acknowledged either.

“Hey, thanks for saving her,” Cascade says. “I didn’t think anyone would take the mission, what with the pay it had. I didn’t think I’d see Millie again.”

-Beat moment-
Mark: “... Just how little pay did we go through all of that for again?” >_>;

“We’re happy to save her,” Mark says, “Although we happened to already have a reason to go to the chasm.”

Layla elbows him. “Mmm we’re trying to ‘make the world a better place,’ along the way to our goal. It’s this guy’s idea here. Plus, there was also Quilava looking for her, so someone else would have found her anyways.”

Finding != rescuing though, Layla. Especially since I can’t say I’ve seen enough of Jace to know for sure whether or not he’d just ghost a ‘mon in need if the pay wasn’t good.

“‘The world a better place?’” Cascade murmurs. “Hey, that’s the aim of the City’s Guild. I know you’re a criminal, but I can look into-”

Layla folds her arms and looks away. “Don’t bother.”

Layla’s… gotten burned by this guild before in the past, hasn’t she?

Mark: “(... I’m sorry, why are we just being allowed to roam freely here if we’re perceived as criminals in these parts?)” .-.
Layla: “(... We’re allies of convenience right now?)”

Mark looks between the two. The crying of the reunited family mellows.

“Why are you here anyways?” Layla asks again after a while.

“Merka’s actions have been creating refugees. Some have gathered here and we’re trying to move them to Canal City safely.” Their eyes glance at Layla. “I’m not here to hunt outlaws.”

Cascade literally just called Layla a criminal 15 seconds ago, though. That doesn’t sound like a party who’s safe to trust for an Outlaw, just saying.

Layla grunts.

Cascade turns their body to her. “Why? What are you afraid of? So much so you turn down-”

“-That’s not why-”

“What was your crime? Murder?”

Layla: “... I plead the Fifth.”
Cascade: “We don’t have that in this setting, but I’ll just take that as a ‘yes’ there.” [absus]

Layla snarls. “And you haven’t killed?”

They give a firm glare. “You know what happens to outlaws.”

… Wait, what is the distinction between a ‘criminal’ and an ‘Outlaw’ in this setting, if any? Also boy is Cascade going out of their way to give off a vibe that coming here and trusting them was a mistake.

Mark finds a muted vine arching out from the ground. He picks at it with his foot, attention hyper-focused on it.

“Well, I’m not here to judge," they say. “Although there’s something important to say. If you really do care about her daughter Millie, please don’t tell anybody the her mother is here. Merka’s hunting her. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to see what happens if he finds her and I’m sure you won’t either.”

Merka’s… going to find out that she’s here in the imminent future, isn’t he?

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t plan on telling anyone,” Layla says.

Mark nods as well. The ruffling of the vegetation he prods is loud in the silence. He starts tugging it out between his foot. It resists his pull well. He can feel how deep it is rooted…

Fresh stomps alert all three. The mother leans out with Millie bundled warmly in her pouch. Both their eyes and cheeks are wet. She digs a hand into her pouch, Millie giggling as it brushed by. “Hey, I’ll pay you now. Thank you so much for everything.”

Mark: “... I’m sorry, why are you not doing this through something like a post box if you’re supposed to be in hiding again?” .-.
Millie’s Mom: “... What’s a post box again?” ^^;
Mark: “Right, that would explain a lot.” -_-;

“Hey, you’ll have enough left over for Millie?” Layla says. “There was food in the Dungeon, we’ll be fine-”

“I can’t ever owe you enough, in my life.” The mother pulls out a bag of coins. “Thank you for everything. Here, please take it. We’ll get by! I’ll make sure of it!”

I’m… not convinced that they’re going to get by given how meager this entire world is. Especially given that she’s now got medical expenses for Millie to take care of.

Layla pops off the wall and swipes the bag. She smiles. “Hey, thank you.”

Cascade floats up to herself. She has taken out a small clinking pouch herself. “Hey, I’m thankful too. I’m serious. Here’s another 60 poke.”

Mark: “... That’s a lot, right?”
Layla: “No, not really. That’s like a day’s worth of food expenses.” ^^;

“Alright, alright.” She swipes it as well and stuff both into her adventure. “Anyways, I’m not much of a sappy person, so I guess we best head off now. Mark, let’s go!”

Mark breaks out of his trance. “Huh?”

I… wasn’t aware that Mark was in a trance, since he’s been noticing this entire conversation thus far and he didn’t seem like he was obviously out of attention. ^^;

“You’re Mark?!?” the mother says.

Mark nods and she jogs up to hug him. The arms crush his ghostly form, but he doesn’t resist. He pats her wides with stretched arms.

“Millie told me all about you! You’re a miracle!” she says. “You saved her despite her losing a hand! That’s incredible!”

Mark: “... I don’t want to know how hospitals get by down here, do I?”

Layla: “I mean, we know how to cauterize wounds at least? Really, I’m still not fully sure how you knew how to do that back there.” ^^;

Mark keeps patting the sides, too smushed to return words. Layla watches with a hand on her hip and a smug grin. Eventually Cascade tugs on the mother’s shoulder.

“Alright, you still have to prepare for tomorrow, you best get on that now.”

… I just realized, but does Millie’s mom actually have a proper name? Since if she does, it might have made some of this sequence a bit more organic to read since a couple parts got a little awkward with Cascade not addressing Millie’s mother by name.

… Unless that’s a deliberate measure to protect her from Merka, but that wasn’t ever explicitly stated.

The mother breaks the hug. “Alright! Sorry I can’t fully express my gratitude, you two.”

“It’s all good,” Layla says, turning around and dragging Mark away before he can suck back all his lost breath. “Just keep her safe and don’t forget the names Layla and Mark, of Team Surface!”

This… is going to come back to bite them, isn’t it?

“We won’t! Thank you for everything!” the mother and daughter say in unison. Both wave.

Layla waves the back of her hand. “Yup, later!”

They get further away as they move deeper into an alleyway. Mark, still facing the family as he’s pulled, sheepishly waves. When he moves through the tents again, the trio head into the building.

“Come along, Darold” the mother says. A Pokemon disguised in the corridor’s darkness shifts around and follows the larger Pokemon.

Oh, time to see who this ‘Darold’ Millie was talking about was.

“Hey, you gonna keep staring at them? Come on, you’re going to trip again like this,” Layla says.

Mark: “Oh come on, don’t you wanna see who this ‘Darold’ is-?”
Layla:

Mark turns. “Who was it you killed that made you an outlaw?”

“Oh that? Pfft, I actually did nothing that made me an outlaw. A group of awful people chased me and Andy out of Canal City, and you’re assumed to be a criminal if you don’t live in their cities. I’ve only started killing after that happened.”

“Oh.”

… Lovely system there, really. /s

[ ]

“Actually, remember when I said people burned down our home because we didn’t kill them first? They were the ones that chased us out,” Layla explains. “We’re outlaws because of them, although Andy gets a pass because the guild likes his map.”

[ ]

“I don’t care though, Canal City isn’t for me and I’m glad I’m not there anymore,” the Sneasel harrumphs. “Anyways, let’s go home and rest! We’re digging those graves up tomorrow!”

This feels like another bit where taking a moment to go slow and show off some combination of Layla and Mark’s reactions to all of this would help give this moment a bit more punch. Ditto splitting Layla’s dialogue since it functionally feels like she’s got two lines there, but there’s no pause in between them.

It’s gentler going down the slopes. Layla ends up talking a lot about her stories exploring Mystery Dungeons. The trek home doesn’t feel like a long time.

Surprised there’s no curiosity from Mark at all about anything he’s learned there. Though it might also be nice to get an anecdote or something thrown in about exploring Mystery Dungeons here, both as a flavor thing, and a potential tool for foreshadowing things to come in the story.

Mark sees a purple-and-blue void, shifting and moving, and never making form. There are two voices speaking in the distance; Mark’s own voice, and a feminine voice. They become discernible…

Alright, let’s see where the past questionnaire goes this time.

“What kind of books do you enjoy reading?” The feminine voice asks. “There’s a lot of options this time: romance, action, mystery, horror, fantasy, sci-fi-” the voice unusually emphasizes the next option “-military, comedy, historical, or non-fiction?”

“Murder mystery.”

“Really now?”

Disembodied Voice: “... Since I’m pretty sure I didn’t offer that as a choice.” .-.
Mark: “You offered ‘mystery’ and it’s a subgenre of it. Close enough.”

“Yeah! They make for great food for thought. I find I use a lot of brain power just thinking about all the clues and I love trying to predict any twists and reveals. Although I find the best ones also make you think about the world as well.”

“How so?”

Because it’s not uncommon at all for murder mysteries to function as social commentaries? ^^;

“Well, it hits when the person you don’t expect ends up being the preparator? Like, sometimes they are people you end up trusting, or even liking. Makes you think that anybody can be bad though, even the person you least expect.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling well.”

Their voices drift further away. Everything becomes black.

Well now, I definitely wasn’t expecting that from the Disembodied Voice. I wonder if we’re going to wind up meeting them over the course of the story, since definitely feels like something that someone who lives in the tunnels would say given the present state of affairs there.

Mark stirs. Each time he wakes up, he forgets how dark this world is. Even his starry dreams are vibrant and luminous compared to the paltry fire in the middle, whose glow barely reaches the patched-together bag he sleeps on. Layla’s not up - it must be too early in the morning.

Four nights in a row. He contemplates why this is, but he slips back to dreamland before he remembers any theories.

… Actually, how on earth do Pokémon down here preserve their circadian rhythms if they’re of species not adapted for subterranean life anyways? Feels like something that might be worth exploring sometime.

Mark wakes up how he’s supposed to: being dragged out of bed. The morning routine flies by and before he knows it, he’s led out of Myla’s Cafe, swallowing the final bite of breakfast.

“Hey, are you not worried about disrespecting the dead?”

Mark: “... Doing what now?” ._.;

“What do you mean, ‘disrespect the dead?’ Bullshit! You respect the living Mark, not the dead! How would digging up a corpse be disrespectful anyways? Oh, hey Leon!” They approach his stall. His eye roams over the two as Layla leans over the counter. “Sweetie, getting a lot of customers? Is that shovel and pickaxe available for rent?”

“Yeah,” he says. “You know the rate.”

Well that’s definitely a difference in culture there.

Layla: “Also, the dead are kinda a convenient source of protein, so it doesn’t make sense to get too hung up on resp-”

Mark: “Okay, I get it already.”

She winks and digs coins out of her bag. Leon’s piercing eye trains onto Mark and he looks away with a shiver. He watches other Pokemon instead. Obnoxious arguing comes from the board’s crowd. Others nip their breakfasts around the plaza, peering at everyone. A group of pokemon with a few fire-types walk in, looking around. A Quilava with an earring leads it.

Layla: “Oh hey, it’s Jace! Didn’t know he was an Outlaw, too!” ^^
Mark: “Really? Since I’m not all that surprised given how you two casually had a death match with each other the first time you two met.”

Two loud clunks are made on the counter. “Here you go. Return them by the end of the day. Please.”

Layla drags both tools off, which smack against the ground. “Got it babe. Anyways, Mark. I want to break stuff so I’ll use the pickaxe, so you’ll get the shovel. Got it? Mark? Hey, what’s wrong?” She looks in his direction.

I can already see Leon’s death glare over the counter from Layla’s rough handling of his merchandise.

Jace’s eyes lock onto his. He points their way, shouts, and he and his team run towards them. Layla drops their tools to run the opposite way, yanking Mark along. They hear the smack of Leon’s facepalm behind as they swerve through decrepit alleys. They push aside snarling pokemon, dodge haphazard rebar, jump over jagged sheets, and duck under an arced beam. The clamour behind them never lets up.

… Jace and his team have a mission to pick up Mark and take him back to their employer, don’t they?

They reach the end of town where padded earth lies between the last row of huts and the edge of the mushroom forest. A Combusken jumps from the roof behind them and lands in front, blocking their path. Layla keeps charging forward, pointing the sharp end of her torch to stab him, but he kicks her in the head before she plunges.

They both tumble over. She holds her cheek where nasty bruises grow and screams. He scrambles up but before he’s steady, an arm warps under his shoulder and arm and holds him. He struggles to no effect for another Pokemon hooks his other arm and keeps him held up with his front exposed. Jace and a Salazzle do the same for Layla, who resists far longer than he does.

… Wait, how is Layla managing that when that means that she’s also pointing the fiery end of her torch at herself? ^^;

He glances at his captors - a Fraxure and an Audino. He looks back at the Combusken with a forced snarl that fails to hide his fear. “What do you want?”

“Where’s Daisy?” the Combusken asks. Mark looks over to Layla for a hint on how to respond. No answer; she keeps pulling against their hold.

Mark: “W-Who now? A-And couldn’t you have done this without the manhandling here?” O_O;
Combusken: “You mean monhandling.”
Mark: “Whatever!” >.<

The Salazzle pounds her gut to keep her still. She spits blood out. “We don’t know a Daisy. Let us go.”

“What have you done with Millie then?” Jace asks. “Where is she?”

Oh boy, they’re after Millie’s mom, aren’t they?

“What’s it to you?” She tries to bite his shoulder, but it’s out of reach.

The Combusken steps in front of Mark and kneels. He yanks his chin towards him.

“Please!” Mark says. “We don’t know what’s going on! We delivered Millie back to her mother! We don’t know a Daisy!”

Salazzle: “Kid, are you really dense enough to not put two and two together right now? If we’re asking you where Daisy is and where Millie is, just how do you think those two relate to each other, huh?” >:|
Mark: “... (Oh. Oh crap.) Th-They’re close friends with each other?”

Embers drip from the corner of his beak. “Daisy is Millie’s mother. Now, tell us where she is, or I’ll cook your throat.”

Mark: “... Layla, how is nobody bothered by this happening right now?!”

Layla: “One, we’re in a back alley. Two… this… is kinda just Tuesday for us in Scrap Town.”

“Stop, stop!” Jace says to his allies. “There’s probably a misunderstanding. Layla, Mark - Daisy kidnapped Merka’s son. We were trying to rescue Millie and use her to get Darold back,” he insists. “But you must have done a mission posted by them, unaware of all this. So, you’ll just tell us where she is, okay? We don’t want to hurt you know-”

Oh, so that’s who Darold is. Though I kinda wonder if it’d have made sense to have shown Jace wincing or growing uncomfortable from Layla and Mark’s treatment up to this point, since his turn here is kinda abrupt and not really telegraphed.

Layla stomps on Jace’s foot. He yells and loosens his grip enough for Layla to break free and tackle the Salazzle onto the ground. She furiously gashes her, only to be met with another kick from the Combusken. She reels on the ground, hugging her side.

“Layla! We need to stay calm!” Mark shouts.

Layla: “I’m sorry, in case you haven’t noticed, but I’m the one with the 4x Fighting weakness here!” >.<
Mark: “Look, at least try okay! Since fighting in a blind panic’s going to get us really dead really, really fast!”

The fighting-type kicks her once more, forcing her onto her back. He slams a foot onto her neck, making her choke. She desperately scratches his leg but he ignores the blood trickling down. “Where is Daisy?”

“Mark! They’ll kill Daisy! Millie will have no one to look out for her,” she says with strained breath.

[ ]

It might make sense to have Mark reflect on Layla’s comment a bit more. Since considering how Millie is permanently maimed right now, her not having a strong guardian to look out for her could very, very easily turn into a death sentence.

Mark: “... Wait, can’t we just give them a random location to work with and then-”
Combusken: “Bold of you to assume we’re not bringing you along to make sure you’re not steering us wrong, kid. If you value your lives, you’ll speak up. Fast.”

“What?” Mark says. He looks at Jace. “Is this true?”

Jace looks Mark in the eyes with a firm expression.

He doesn’t answer.

Mark: “Oh my god, it really is true, isn’t it?”

Jace: “Come on, Mark. She’s a kidnapper. She knew what she was getting into, so what’s a bit of frontier justice?”
Mark: “Jace, Millie’s probably going to die without her mother to care for her!”

- Jace turns away uneasily -
Jace: “... (Yeah… I know.)”

The Salazzle walks up next to the Combusken, looking down at Layla and sliding a whip of fire from her wrist. The Combusken presses down on Layla’s throat. “Where is she?!” he shouts.

And moving right along into Chapter 9:

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Chapter 9

Layla chokes under the Combusken’s pressing talons. Her face turns red like the blood dripping down the claw marks on his leg. Mark shakes his shoulders to get the his two captors off him but their hold tightens. The Salazzle cracks her fiery whip, the tip gracing inches away from her face. She gasps for air.

Probably makes sense to remind the readers that this is a fiery whip and not a literal held object at the moment.

“The Undergrowth Settlement!” Mark shouts. The attackers turn their heads. Layla sucks in a deep breath.

“Undergrowth Settlement?” the Combusken says.

“Lucia’s Guild is there or something,” Mark says. “They said something about ‘refugees.’ I don’t know much more, but we delivered Millie to her mother there”

Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Though I kinda wonder if you should’ve shown the cogs in Mark’s head turn a bit more for him rationalizing to throw Daisy under the bus here, since this feels a bit lacking in buildup and like we don’t get a sense of the “oh god, Layla’s gonna die if I don’t do something”-ness going through his head.

Layla: “M-Mark?! What the hell?!”

Mark: “Layla, we’re gonna die if we don’t tell them something, okay?!”

Each enemy looks at Jace. He nods. ”It sounds good.”

They let go of Mark and flee into the forest. He crumbles onto his knees. Layla rubs her throat and scrambles up, dashing after them. Mark dives into her, pinning her to the ground and fighting her struggle.

“They’re getting away! We must stop them!”

“Layla! Stay calm!” he shouts. Layla goes still and widens her eyes, chilled by his ferocity. He gulps. “We… We can’t get ourselves killed over Daisy’s wrongdoing. We can’t find the surface if we’re dead.”

Mark: “Layla, seriously! Did you not see us just get hopelessly overpowered there?!”
Layla: “Mark, Millie is going to die if they get to Daisy!”

Mark: “... W-We don’t know tha-”

Layla: “You literally said that last chapter!” >.<
Mark: “Not canonically!”

She pounds the earth and glares into the forest. “I know you’re right!” She beats the earth again. “But we just returned Millie! And now her mother is going to die! Gah.”

… To say nothing about Millie since she’s missing a limb as a child right now.

He feels her body reluctantly relax and eases his hold. She stands up. “Is there really nothing we can do? Please Mark, you know how to think of stuff.”

Oh, so Layla does have certain Pokémon who she’s just flatly uncomfortable hurting. I have to wonder if this is informed by some sort of past event since… yeah, Layla definitely let her composure and normal cynical hardenedness slip here.

[ ]

“Well, which way is it to the Undergrowth Settlement?” Mark asks.

Layla points to the town past Mark. “That way. Why?”

[ ]


“Well, if we run now, we’ll be ahead of them. We can warn Daisy and have her return Darold.”

She grasps his arm.

Though this is another one of those moments where taking a bit of time to show off Mark and Layla’s body language or internal thought process would help a lot for setting the mood, since they’re basically in that “throw anything against the wall and see if it sticks” phase of trying to come up with a rescue plan for Daisy and Millie.

Mark and Layla They cut through town, Layla ramming aside any Pokemon in her way. as Mark struggles to keep his legs up with her manic speed. Every time he falls Falling behind keeps getting , he is met with a yank from Layla. They burst out on the other side of town and slip into the mushroom forest. Mark stubs his foot, failing to jump over rocks and roots. The forest blurs by and they exit out onto the slow inclines of the connecting tunnel.

Mark: “Layla, are we sure we’re not overlooking anything right now-?” ._.;
Layla: “Not now, Mark!” >_>;

“Is Jace going to run this hard? Should we not pace ourselves more?” he asks.

“I think he’s meeting up with teammates. I’m worried they’ll have fast Pokemon.”

Mark: “Wait, who’s ‘fast Pokémon’ in a network of tunnels, anyways?”
Layla: “Pokémon that can dig a shortcut unlike us.” >_>;
Mark: “... Right. Should’ve expected that.” ._.

They say nothing more as the marathon stretches on. They pass many turns yet vines don’t come into sight. Pain swells in his Mark’s legs, then his sides. The beating pounding of his heart overtakes the sound of their echoed stomps. The twisting patterns of black and white warp around his vision as his head becomes light and pained tears swell under his eyes. He keeps forcing his legs to move even as they scream.

He collapses. The rock floor feels so comfortable.

Mark: “... Ow.”

“Mark!” Layla shouts. She jogs up onto him and collapses onto her knees. She tugs his shoulders. “We’re only a third way there!”

Mark: “Layla, just saying, if we’re planning on not dying to the first hostile run-in we come across, I need to not be half-dead for it.” X_X

His head hangs when he’s lifted off the ground. He speaks between heavy gasps. “This body’s not fit enough. Just go ahead.”

“We’re going together! I’ll carry you!”

Mark: “Wait, but aren’t I literally the same size as you?”

Layla: “Yes, I know that, but we really can’t sit and wait here right now!” O.O

“You’ll be much slower! Just warn Daisy on your own!”

Layla pulls him onto his knees. [ ]

“I need you!”

Mark looks at her. “What?”

I detect a blip on my ship detector right about now. Though IMO, it might make sense to expand the “Layla pulls him onto his knees” moment a bit.

They stare at each other. Layla stutters but can’t make words. She lays him down instead and sits cross-legged.

“What are you doing, Layla?” he asks.

He rolls onto his back to see her but he’s distracted by the twisting patterns above constricting his throat. [ ]

“I don’t want to leave you alone to meet whoever Merka’s sending. I didn’t think this out very well. Forgot you only ‘woke up’ days ago.”

Would suggest expanding the bit about Mark rolling onto his back to also include some body language or the like for Layla to get a feel for her present state of mind right now, since it’s a little hazy as to if she’s meant to be panicking here or if this is a more sober / somber moment.

He closes his eyes. The shapes don’t stop invading him. “I can work something out with them. Say I tried to stop you. But please, Millie deserves a mother. Do this for her.”

She pulls him into a hug “I’m sorry.”

He sighs. He’s confused but the despair in her voice is too prominent. She can’t be alone. “Alright. Let’s try walking together. Maybe they don’t have a fast team.”

… Wait, who is saying the underlined anyways? Is that Layla or Mark? Since it’s admittedly a bit hard for me to tell. I’m assuming it’s Layla, buuuut…

“Well, it’s too late anyways.”

He opens his eyes. Down the tunnel behind them is a faint fire approaching fast. It outlines a Quilava.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” Layla shouts.

Layla: “And, uh… y-you are alone right now and not at the head of your buddies, right?”

He Jace comes into view and stands on his hind legs. “I had a bad feeling so I chased your torch until I knew where you were going. Would have caught up earlier but you two sure were desperate.”

His quills flare up. [ ]

“Now, how about you? What are you doing?” His quills flare up. he demands. “You trying to keep Darold away from his father?”

I would divide Jace’s dialogue and have him flare up aggressively before he goes down the line of questioning, since it feels more logical that his “What are you doing here? Are you trying to keep Darold from going home?” would be in a shared emotional state with each other since Jace is trying to get a read for Layla and Mark’s motivations, and ready to make things really toasty for them if he doesn’t like what he hears.

Layla stands up. “No. I’m not cool with the kidnapping, but I won’t let Millie lose her mother again. She’s innocent in all this.”

Jace:

Mark: “Uh… yeah, unless if you know something that we don’t, Layla, you kinda walked right into that one.” -_-;

He snarls. “Daisy’s a criminal! Scum like her should have thought twice about having children.”

Mark: “Jace, could you have said that in any less of a sympathetic manner?”

Jace: “Look, I’m sorry, but having a kid doesn’t mean you magically get to skate for snatching someone else’s! Someone else can take care of her!”

[ ]

“I don’t care. We’re saving her and getting Darold back without your intervention. Merka’s gonna have to beat you up instead!”

He gets on all fours, tensing up to charge. “Fine, let her steal children whenever she wants. I’ll just stop you right here.”

This probably would’ve worked better to show how Layla and Mark process Jace’s charge there. Especially if Layla has a reflexive reaction to Jace’s claim given that “criminal” amounts to “everyone who gets yeeted out of a town with no others to accept them”.

Mark: “... Layla, just how many kidnappings has Daisy done again?”

Layla: “Look, I’ve literally known her for like 30 minutes, how well do you expect me to know? The point is that we’re not letting Millie get run over by a bunch of unreasonable assholes!” >_>;
Jace: “Hrmph, should’ve known you were trouble from when we first met!” >:(

“Bring it on then.” She readies her claws.

The two stare at each other. Mark rolls over onto his knees. The shadow he projects wavers.

Mark: “Are we seriously getting into another death match with Jace again?”

Layla: “Yes, though we could use some music right about now.”

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2PyK7HT350


Layla: “Much better. Now let’s kick that furry worm’s ass!”

“...’Team Surface.’” Jace says. His flames disappear into smoke. “Were you serious about finding the surface?”

Mark + Layla:

Jace: “... And you’re getting yourselves mixed up with kidnappers if you’re serious why?”

Mark: “In our defense, we literally just found this out when you and your buddies ambushed us and were about to murder us in that alley.”

The shadow sneak evaporates. Mark squints at the fire type.

“Shut up,” Layla says.

[ ]

“You found a key, haven’t you? I know where it goes.”

Could use some body language from Jace in this part. Though how on earth does Jace know that they found a key, much less where on earth it’s meant to be used? .-.

She digs her heels in and growls. “Shut up!”

[ ]


“I’ll go with you,” the fire-type says. “I’ll make sure Darold is returned myself and you can have Daisy run off since you care so much. But in return, you let me join Team Surface.”

[ ]


“Fuck you.”

More bits that would benefit from body language from all three parties involved here.

Mark: “Layla, I’d just like to remind you that if he does join us, that it means we have one less Pokémon from his crew to potentially fight.”
Layla: “Oh yeah, like he’s not just going to stab us in the back at the first moment it makes sense for him!”

“Layla,” Mark mutters between heavy breaths. “Listen to him.”

“Why? Why could he possibly want to join us?!?”

Jace: “Because I want out of this depressing craphole like you and half the rest of the tunnels do as well? Is that really so hard to believe?”

Layla: “No, what is hard to believe is that you’re remotely trustworthy right now! You and your buddies were about to lynch us back in town!”

“I want to find the surface as well!”

He steps forward cautiously. His arms flail with vivid body language. [ ]

“Now please. Refuse, I knock you out and wait for Merka to arrive,” the Quilava says. “Who knows what he’ll do when he finds you!”

[ ]

“But let me do this? I know my way around him. If you let me join you, I’ll get him off your back,” Jace insists. “I’ll tell him you tried to save Darold yourself but failed to stop Daisy from fleeing. He’ll believe me saying that.”

[ ]

“But you got to answer now, because Merka travels fast and his whole team is quadruped Pokemon running this way. What will it be?” He points to Mark. “I’ll even carry him for you.”

This part feels like it should be slowed down quite a bit and given a good amount of extra description. Like let’s see what some of that “vivid body language” is in more concrete terms. Also, Jace’s entire block of dialogue is effectively 3 separate paragraphs, as demonstrated above. It probably makes sense to show Layla and Mark reacting a bit more in between the different parts.

Layla grits her teeth.

Layla: “You know you have us over a barrel, don’t you?!”

Jace: “Look, buddy. Do you want an extra set of paws to help you find the surface, or do you want to have a life expectancy of like five minutes once Merka comes across your passed-out bodies?”

“Take it, Layla.” He Mark gets the strength to stand with a teeter. “For Millie. Darold too.”

Layla turns her back to them. “If Millie is still with Daisy by the end of the day, I’ll let you join. Now, go!”

[ ]

Should make the “he” there explicit that that’s Mark and not Jace. And it might make sense to show the new expanded gang run off here.

Mark buckles around on Jace’s back. It feels unnatural - he can feel each of the Quillava’s muscles tense beneath him. Layla matches Jace’s pace with incredible endurance. The cavern mouth of the settlement approaches and they rush into it. Layla leads them to the fountain.

Jace bucks Mark off and dunks his head into the cool water, lapping it up. She joins and both gulp loudly. The new behaviour is unsettling to Mark. He gets up and looks in all directions hoping to catch Daisy or Cascade just out and about. There’s only smatterings of orange in the distance; less tents are lit. No Pokemon roam around. The only company Mark has is the deathly vines reaching down to drag him into the afterlife.

This paragraph looks big enough that you probably want to break it up. Though I’m honestly kinda surprised that Jace has the endurance to carry Mark on his back like that all the way out here, since Mark’s officially the size of a Sneasel, and Sneasel are almost as large as Quilava body-wise.

- Meanwhile in the background -

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-LLbh4NW0


Mark: “Okay, seriously, can we not with the creepy Xenoblade music right now? I’m pretty sure that this story pulls more from Metro anyways!” >_>;

“Okay, where is she?” Jace asks.

“There’s human ruins at the back of the cave. We delivered Millie to her there. Keep your eyes out for a Froslass with a blue neckerchief, they seem connected to Daisy. Follow me.” She leads.

Mark: “Oh yeah, this is totally going to end well and not get us mobbed by angry Pokémon in like 30 seconds.”

“Why is nobody around? Is this normal?” Mark asks.

Jace sounds resentful. “We beat the morning curfew.”

… This place really is run by Regulator-tier law enforcement, isn’t it?

Mark: “The what now?” ._.

“Not even that,” Layla says. “This town’s morning is much later than Scrap Town’s morning. Nobody’s even awake yet.”

Mark: “... I’m sorry, how do you all have different mornings down here?”

Layla: “Well what did you expect us to standardize things around?”
Mark: “The sun-?
- Cue beat moment as Layla and Jace stare at Mark blankly -
Mark: “... Right, you don’t have that down here.” ._.;

Does every town have a different ‘morning?’ Mark wonders. He ignores the thought to stay alert in the agonizingly long time it takes to reach the end of town.

Jace: “Mark, we literally just said that-”
Mark: “Look, it wasn’t canon, alright?” >_>;

The imposing facility and flickering flames within its windows beat back the darkness. Through the entrance, their feet clack on the narrow, grey corridors. Sparse chipped tiles lie around the cracked concrete beneath. Ceiling panels are knocked out above, leaving a thin grid that projects distorted shadows into the dark depths behind them.

Mark: “Boy this place could not be less inviting if it tried right now.” ._.;
Layla: “Well, we could find a dead boy around the corner, I’m pretty sure that would make it less inviting.”

The building has two wings. They go left and peek through the first door. There are many cushions, but only three curling Pokemon upon them. One of them stirs to at the intrusion. No Daisy. The next room is similar, but with larger Pokemon who are restless. One panics and holds a hand to their chest, while the others dreadfully stare off into the distance. The third room has both small and large Pokemon.

Mark: “I… don’t think I want to find out what’s going to happen to that one Pokémon who’s panicking, really.”

Layla: “Probably not, no. But let’s hurry along.”

“Hey! We’re looking for a Kanghsaskhan named Daisy!” Jace shouts. The sleeping pokemon stir with cranky faces. One bares her fangs seeing the outsiders.

Jace steps in and gestures for them to speak. “Tell me where Daisy is, or there will be trouble!”

Mark: “Oh my god.”

Layla: “(Clearly Merka didn’t teach his underlings smarts if Jace is just going off picking ‘3 v an entire building’ fights.)” >.<

Layla elbows him in the ribs. He steps aside, rubbing where he’s hit.

“Daisy’s in danger,” Layla says. “Merka’s coming to execute her. That’s the ‘trouble’ this idiot meant. We need to save her!”

Whelp, time to see how much of a disaster this all turns out to be, since I’m not convinced that Jace did the party any favors there.

They shake their heads. A Litleo speaks. “Well, I don’t care. We don’t know each other so best of luck to you.” She curls up to sleep again with an annoyed face.

inb4 Merka just rolls up and sets the whole building on fire and kills anyone who comes out, since this just screams “won’t end well in the near future”.

Layla rubs her forehead. “Fine! We’ll split up. Mark, go upstairs. Jace, finish the rooms on this floor. I’ll go the other way or something. Now go!”

She runs off to the opposite side of the building. Jace reaches a hand to stop her but misses. Mark scurries to the side stairs.

Mark: “Wait, why are we doing this when if anything goes wrong, we’re fighting solo-?!” O_O;
Layla: “Because we just need to warn Daisy and Millie and get out. Now hurry it up, Mark!”

The steps are cold underfoot. It complements the dismal shades of grey. The steps are tall enough that he has to jump up to each one, each landing creates a new lingering clap. He curses how time is being wasted just finding her.

He climbs up the final step. Twigs of vines sneak over the ceiling, twisting in and out of the panel grid and obscuring the layer of pooling smoke. The cracks in the walls and floor are deep here.

Mark: “... Wait, ‘smoke’? As in something was broken or burned here recently?” ._.;

He explores more rooms. A few are empty and most Pokemon he finds still sleeping. Of the awake ones, one is staring out the window with a claw tucked under her chin. Another is a bony Jolteon wrapped around her Eevee young. When he reaches the central stairway marking the midway point, he spots Layla’s torch coming out of the far-end stairwell.

Mark: “Wow, this town is somehow more of a dive than Scrap Town.” ._.
Layla: “(Might’ve been a bit premature ragging on that background music, since it honestly feels pretty fitting for a place that feels as dead as here.)”

The next room has a Brionne and a Zangoose whispering to each other. They notice Mark and give concerned looks instead of hostile glares.

“Hey, do you know where Daisy is?” Mark asks. “The Kangaskhan? It’s an emergency!”

Layla: “... Mark, you do realize that she’s in hiding, right? Shouldn’t we be trying to reassure them that we’re not going to do her any harm or something like that?” -_-;

They both look at each other and back. The Brionne shrugs.

Mark walks in. “What about Cascade?”

“Cascade? In the shelter at the entrance of town,” the Zangoose says. “They’re leaving with the refugees tomorrow. Why? Is ‘Daisy’ a terrorist?”

Well, that escalated quickly. Though that makes me wonder what on earth ‘terrorists’ are in this setting.

“Thank you!” Mark rushes towards Layla. “I know where Cascade is!”

“Where!?”

Mark repeats the info. [ ]

“Okay. Jace is downstairs!” she says.

IMO, it probably makes sense to expand the description paragraph to show a bit more of Layla’s reaction there.

Mark:

He’s grabbed and rushed down the central staircase. The Zangoose follows them. On the bottom floor, Jace’s blaze stands out. It illuminates a Skorupi peeking their head out.

… Totally not an ominous sign at all that they’re being followed right now. ^^;

“Jace! The other side of town!” Layla says. “There’s a large shelter with a Froslass named Cascade. They’ll know where she is!”

“That far?! We’re running out of time!” he shouts back. The commotion brings more Pokemon to their entrances, expressions ranging from annoyed to afraid.

“Hey! Is everything okay?” the Zangoose behind them says.

Probably not, but I’m not sure if Team Surface are fully cognizant of how not-okay things are at the moment.

“No, they aren’t!” Layla says. She rushes out and down the stairs. Jace runs afterward.

They run across town with the Zangoose and a Skorupi following. The agonizing sprint feels even longer going back but they reach the cavern’s mouth entrance eventually. A larger tent is erected near its edge. Growth whirls around its peak. They burst through the entrance flap.

Jace: “... How is there just no security right now for this place?” .-.
Layla: “Look, bring it up with Cascade after we get Daisy and Millie out of here!” >.<

A faltering lantern hanging from a wire reveals how packed the inside is. Stacked bags push against the walls and between them, Fifteen sleeping Pokemon lie crammed together on the floor. It’s too dark to recognize them.

Jace’s quills blare to life. The waking pokemon hold their arms in front of them to block the light. “Cascade?!? You there?!?”

“Cascade! We need you now! There’s trouble! Daisy kidnapped Merka’s son!” Layla follows up.

Cascade already knows that Daisy kidnapped Darold, doesn’t she?

The groggy crowd murmurs in confusion. One of them shouts “get out of here!” However, Cascade rises in the back. Their eyes are heavy. “What’s wrong?”

“Again, Daisy kidnapped Merka’s son, and now he’s coming to kill her!” Layla says. The murmuring stops. “We’re here to warn her! They’ll be here any moment!”

“And we’re here to get Darold back, too,” Jace adds.

I am not convinced that it was a good idea for you three to say that out loud, but I guess we’ll see where this goes. ^^:

“Okay. Outside, now.” Cascade says. They float through the tent. The group heads back out. The Zangooze and Skorupi are joined by a Delibird to stare at them. Mark glimpses movement in the darkness behind them. Cascade waves them into a smaller tent close by.

A curtain bisects the inside. A Simipour sleeps with a young Panpour in her arms on one side. On the other side, Daisy sits on the floor, anxiously staring at the ground. Millie sleeps in her pouch and a restless Gible prods a pebble on the floor. The air is muggy. When Darold sees the intruders, he yelps and runs behind Daisy. She turns her head to the group, expression unchanged. “What’s wrong?”

Oh, so that’s Darold there. Uh… yeah, considering what that implies about his dad, it’s probably a good idea to get Daisy really, really far away from this town before he rolls up and torches it.

“Daisy, you need to give Darold to us. He isn’t your son.” Cascade says. “Then you’ll have to flee to the city with Millie. Merka’s coming here for you. We’ll meet up with you later once the expedition arrives. We’ll talk about this crime later.”

She’s shocked. She grabs Darold’s wrist. The child pulls but the hold is tight. “I’m not giving him back.”

Jace: “Lady, you’re going to die if you don’t play ball here. Seriously, what do you expect to gain from this right now?”

Cascade furrows their brow. Jace steps forward, pushing them aside. “I work with Merka. If you return Darold now, I will not impede your escape. But if you won’t, I’ll kill you right here.”

Mark: “Um, Jace, you might not want to say that so-” O_O;
Jace: “Easy, Mark. I know what I’m doing here.”

Daisy tenses her whole body, which makes Darold whine. Her voice shakes. “Then he dies too.” The Panpour on the other side of the partition is awake now, whimpering. His mother cradles his head.

Layla: “Um. Cascade? If you happen to have a Stun Seed on you right now, using it would probably be really helpful-”

Jace snarls and flares, drenching everything in a sea of orange. “That is not your son! Give him back!”

Daisy gets up. “You know what Merka has done to me!?!” Darold struggles harder.

This… is going to wind up getting like a dozen bystanders killed in like 2 minutes, isn’t it?

The Panpour cries loudly. His mother turns him away from the clamour. She looks just as afraid.

Layla steps in front of Jace. Her tone is more empathetic.

“Please, Daisy, please! What will happen to your daughter if she loses her mother again?!” Layla begs. “We wasted a lot of time finding you! They may even be here now! You have to-”

“You sold us out, criminals!” Daisy shrills.

Layla: “You’re not really one to talk right now, just saying-”

Mark: “Um. Layla, I think she’s about to try and kill us.” O.O

Millie, now awake, buries into Daisy’s pouch. The other mother tears up and shuffles backward.

“We’re here to save you!” Layla shouts back. “There’s nothing else we can do! Please, return Darold now and run!”

Cascade’s voice is stern. “Daisy, give him back now.”

… Wait, where has Cascade been all this time anyways? Since you’d think that they’d be getting really unnerved by the turn in Daisy’s attitude here and her just casually threatening to kill a child that all this time Cascade thought was rightfully under her care.

“And stop hurting him!” Jace adds.

“No! I will have justice for my town!” Daisy shouts. Tears well in Darold’s eyes as he tugs with his other hand.

I’m surprised that the rest of the tent occupants aren’t hurriedly noping out right now, since this just screams “gonna end with ‘mons getting hurt or worse”

Mark looks outside, worried about the guild arriving. The crowd has grown, keeping careful distance and watching with apprehension and morbid curiosity. They block his view.

[Daisy speaks lividly.]

“He has came into my town, killed every city guild member, and ran the families who depend on you out of town it!” she snarled.“He won’t see his son until I get my home back!”

She points to Cascade. “Don’t you care about your fallen teammates, Cascade? Don’t you want Merka to suffer?”

You probably want to show off more of that anger from Daisy’s end. Though it kinda took me a while to realize that Merka has literally wronged this entire settlement. It might make sense to hint at it earlier and stronger in Daisy and Cascade’s dialogue, since I’m just putting two and two together.

Also, that is a terrible omen for how this place is going to fare by the end of this chapter.

Mark: “Oh my god, Jace. Seriously, what the hell are you doing working for a guy like that?!”

Jace: “Look, I was tight on options, okay?!” >_>;

“Mom, please stop!” Millie begs.

The monkey family scurries out of the tent. Layla walks up to her and pushes the dull edge of her claw against her sternum. “He’s gonna kill you!”

Daisy laughs and smacks her claw. “Get out of my way!”

Layla, I think you should be a bit more worried about what’s going to happen once Merka gets here, since I’m not convinced that it’s just Daisy would would get killed off here.

Jace approaches her. Cascade floats between him and Daisy but he lunges through their ghostly body. She tumbles into the wall and the tent collapses. The crowd gasps and inches forward. Layla crawls out from underneath while the cloth rocks and rumbles as Jace and Daisy fight. Cascade unhelpfully tries to grab them and begs them to stop. Darold and Millie can be heard screaming. Layla crawls backward in fear.

Mark: “Okay, I’ll admit it. Bringing Jace onto the team was a bad idea.”

Layla: “You’re just realizing this now?!” >.<

Mark looks back one more time. There’s a parting in the crowd wide enough that he can look to the main tunnel. Deep within, a mass of flames approaches.

Mark: “... Oh crap.”

“They’re coming up now!” Mark shouts.

The crowd looks to where Mark looks. Murmurs spread. More Pokemon peek out of the tents. Some villagers flee, while others step forward to the entrance with an aggressive stance.

I’ll take the under on us seeing any of them alive after five minutes.

Daisy scurries out of the wreckage before Jace crawls out with a limp. She runs into the tunnel’s darkness without a torch, the heavy crunching of fallen leaves following her.

“Daisy! No! Come back!” Cascade shouts.

… Wait, does she still have Millie and Darold or-?

“Merka!” Jace hollers. “That’s her! She has Darold!”

Layla: “I told you that Jace was bad news, but noooo...” >.<

A charge beam shoots from the gang of four-legged mon. The flash blinds and its thunder shakes the ground. Daisy shrieks and crumbles onto the ground. A Garchomp twice the height of everyone leads a charge toward the helpless mother and onlookers rush to intercept them.

Pandemonium. A horrific mash of shouting and screaming rings from all directions. Most pull guild members off of Daisy. A few brawl. Flames shoot into the air, lightning cackles and flash, and many colourful Pokemon moves fly around. Alarmed words of “Mystery Dungeon” grow prominent.

… Wait, there’s a Mystery Dungeon right there? Or is there one descending on the town right now? .-.

“Stop! Everyone, stop! We have him,” Merka shouts. The shuffling dwindles. Cascade hovers near the chaos and waves their arms. “Break it up!”

The mobs divide. They throw insults and taunts at each other. Daisy’s dug out and propped up. She’s bruised all over with a swollen, black eye, and bleeding lightly from scratches. Her head drifts in a dizzy manner.

Millie isn’t in her pouch.

… Oh, that is not a good sign there.

Cascade and Merka motion to quiet their respective crowds down. Once silent, Cascade faces Merka. “I represent the refugees of this town and currently serve as the liaison for the settlement.”

The calm allows Mark to examine Merka’s guild. A Salazzle and Mareep are familiar among them. Jace is there too, holding onto Darold as he cries into his body. All other Pokemon are four-legged. Many wore piercings in many different spots.

Mark: “... Wait, how on earth do you all even apply those without opposable thumbs anyways?” ^^;
Salazzle: “Those of us who have ‘em apply them. It’s good business, really.”

Merka’s voice is growly. “We are not here to disturb your peace. I am only here to take custody of Daisy, who has kidnapped my son. Please, turn her over.”

He pulls in a lot of presence being more than twice the height of every other Pokemon. The area beneath his dead eyes is dark and sunken. Dull piercings line the back edges of his fins along his tail end. He holds Millie across his chest, who struggles and cries.

I… am not convinced that these villagers have much of a choice since I’m pretty sure that Merka and his goons are just gonna sack this place if they get refused. .-.

Jace: “U-Um… boss? Do we really need to get the kid involved like-?”
Merka: “Shut up, Quilava. I’m busy here.”

“The City Guild has not been made aware of Daisy’s actions until just recently,” Cascade says. “We do not condone them. However, she is under the purview of the City Guild, who will decide punitive action. Your son has been returned; we have no further obligations to uphold.”

A disgusting, lecherous threat is shouted at the mother. The town shouts expletives back. Daisy’s head glazes around, disoriented. “Where’s my baby…?” she mutters.

… Millie got crushed by a heavy object or something like that, didn’t she?

Merka points to Cascade. “The crime has been committed in our land. We have the right to enforce our laws. So don’t you dare harbour a criminal! We’re in charge of our lands!” His guild hollers affirmations behind him.

I mean, it might be how it works here since society in the tunnels seems very “might makes right”, but this is why extradition treaties exist in reality.

“My baby? Where’s my baby? Millie?” Daisy’s senses come back enough to see Millie. She shakes against her hold but the cautious mon around her keeps her steady. “My baby! Give me my baby back!” she shouts.

“Merka,” Cascade says. “Millie has done no wrong in any of this.”

(bold+italic on “my son”)
“Millie doesn’t deserve a degenerate! Daisy has no right to raise any child!” Merka shouts. His guild cheers and the town jeers back. Merka takes a step forward. “And she has taken my son! My greatest love! She has forsaken her life! Give her to us now!”

You’ve got some lingering markup in your chapter at the moment that you probably want to get rid of. I mean, at least he’s showing sufficient restraint to not just summarily drop Daisy right her and call it a day? I was honestly expecting that of Merka and his crew, especially once Daisy started getting into the sorts of things that they did.

Layla grabs Mark’s hand. Her grip trembles. Mark squeezes tight.

Both groups argue with each other:

“Millie is Lucia’s family!”

“Millie deserves a real mother!”

“It’s a shame Daisy gave birth at all!”

“Darold should die along with Merka!”

The rage swells and they inch toward each other.

You probably want to “explode” the randos’ dialogue and make it more “shout”-y, though I can already tell things are about to go really sideways really fast.

Cascade flies to the center and holds both arms out. Their voice struggles to make it over the cacophony. ”There is no need to fight! Back down!”

Both sides decide otherwise. Guild members vividly describe the pain they’ll inflict Daisy. The town decries the depravity of Merka and the guild. Claws protrude, flames blare, and sparks emit fly.

Mark: “Um… Layla, I think that it’s probably a good idea to get going-?”

Layla lets go of Mark and runs into the dark town crying. He reaches out to her. He wants to chase her. He feels the urge to help her. But he must stay calm.

“My baby! Please don’t leave me, my baby!” Daisy shouts.

“Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!” The guild chants.

I’m honestly surprised that Merka hasn’t just flatly gone “your life, or your kid’s” to Daisy to get her to submit and play ball. Though he’s kinda surprised me in general with how he’s at least making a token attempt at diplomacy here.

Cascade glares. “Lucia won’t forgive this!”

Pebbles lob across the divide. The space around Cascade shrinks. Mark can smell the blood already.

Bloodshed…

“A Mystery Dungeon!” Mark yells at the top of his lungs. “Won’t one form!?!” He repeats the message many times, each barely drowned by the clamour. It falls on their ears - soon they echo the warning until everyone’s alarmed.

I… admittedly had to look back to Chapter 2 since the whole “bloodshed” and “Mystery Dungeons” thing was a bit of a “wait, huh?” moment. You probably want to add more explicit reminders both here and earlier on in this sequence where Mark remembers Layla’s warning of ‘When enough violent pokemon gather in one place, a Mystery Dungeon forms.’

Though that does make me wonder how Mark is cognizant of the threshold of when there’s “too many” violent Pokémon all gathered in one place. Since he wasn’t given any grounding anecdotes that he can compare the present situation to and realize “oh crap, this is really dangerous”

Merka holds an arm out to get them to stop. “Stop! Back away! We’ll make a Mystery Dungeon!” He shuffles backward, guiding his guild away. He glances at Mark briefly as he does.

Cascade turns to the town. “Please calm down, everyone! Violence won’t help!”

They shift back to the distance they were before and both leaders wait for everyone to shut up. Only Daisy’s begging remains.

Cascade faces Merka. They straight into his eyes. “Merka, we can just walk away from this. Keep Millie and Darold and we’ll keep Daisy. She will still face consequences from our guild.”

Mark: “Just saying, Jace, if you have any cards up your sleeve, now would be a time to play them since Layla was dead serious about not letting you join if Daisy and Millie couldn’t be together.” >_>;
Jace: “Look, in case if you haven’t noticed, but that’s gonna be a bit hard to manage right now!” >.<

“No!” Daisy yells. “Don’t take away my baby!”

Cascade snaps their body to her.

“Daisy! You have betrayed the trust of the guild! You have betrayed me!” the Froslass seethes. “We supported you and took care of you and in turn you’ve endangered our entire town over your twisted sense of revenge! But I am here to protect this town and I will do just that!”

… I can see why Layla took off crying. Since… yeah, kinda hard to see how things are going to turn around here for her outset goal at this point.

“No!” Daisy yells. She throws the full weight of her body into her struggle but more town members join in restraining her. They look at her with new, suspicious gazes. Tears pour down her cheeks.

“Please give my baby back! I can’t lose her again! Millie, I love you!”

“Mom!” Millie responds, reaching out with her missing hand. “Please don’t go!” She kicks Merka to no avail.

Merka grimaces. “We’ll accept.”

Daisy screams.

Jace: “Oh, well there goes my hopes of being on the team anytime soon.”

Mark: “Jace, read the damn room already!” >.<

The Salazzle turns to him. “What? Merka?”

Others murmur. Merka speaks up strongly. “I’m not putting any of you into a Mystery Dungeon over this. No, we will have our chance eventually. We’ll wait for then it.” He glares into at the sobbing, pleading Daisy. They walk out of earshot.

Mark is alone. He takes a deep breath and brushes under his crystal eye - he’s shed tears. He scoffs and turns around with Millie.

Daisy shrieks, knowing she just saw her daughter for the last time. “No, Millie! I will always love you! Every single day until I die! Don’t forget me!”

“I love you mom! I’m sorry for everything I’ve done! I don’t want to go! I’m scared!”

Mark: “... You got what you wanted, Jace. Congratulations.”
Jace: “L-Look, I just wanted justice to be served, alright? A-And I put in an honest effort to help, okay? You’re not seriously gonna kick me from the team because-”

Mark: “... Not my call there. Though I’m not holding my breath on Layla coming around on you.”

Merka’s arm shifts to hold the wiggling child closer. “Someone, give her a sleep spore.”

Daisy’s eyes are red, cheeks drenched with cheers tears. She hyperventilates and mutters “My baby, my baby, my baby…” until she runs out of breath. Some villages leave her behind with bitter faces while others stay and stop her from falling over. They pat and console her.

Cascade hovers away. “Back in your tent when you’re ready, or we’ll leave without you.”

Jace: “I-I mean on the positive side, Millie will have better guardians now?”

Mark: “Jace, seriously. Just stop. Go with your buddies and just forget we ever met.” >_>;

The guild, along with Jace, walks into the tunnel. Merka speaks to Darold.

“Everything is alright now, dear. You’re with me now. It’s safe. No one will hurt you,” the Garchomp coos. “No, no, you’re not in trouble, I promise you. Now let’s go get you to your mother, okay? She misses you.” They disappear into the darkness.

Wow, so every mission that Team Surface has done so far has wound up blowing up in their faces to some extent. That’s… an impressive batting average there.

The quiet is striking now. There’s only the panting of Daisy and the sympathetic Pokemon’s calming words. There’s a minuscule snap above and a short, withering vine falls beside him. He can’t tell if it's grey or purple with it so close to his torch. He picks it up.

He still needs to find Layla.

Mark: “... Boy am I not looking forward to this right now.” ._.

He sets it by a tent away from where feet may trample it. He journeys to the human ruins by walking along where the cavern walls meet the ground. Densely twisted mushroom trees swell here, each a faded beige. The ghostly vegetation hangs off their caps like waterfalls. He hears a girl sobbing behind a cluster after a while. He crawls between the stems. “Layla?”

Mark: “L-Look, I know this wasn’t what we wanted, but we genuinely tried, and-”

Layla’s curled up between two roots, limbs quivering and panting. Her head’s buried into her knees. “I need to get out of here.” She whispers.

He approaches.

“I need to get out of here!” she shouts.

Her limbs constrict tighter as her crying deepens. Mark rushes forward and wraps his arms around her. She struggles to speak between uneven gasps.

“I need to escape, no matter what I do! The fighting, the stealing, the killing, it never stops! I hate it! I hate all of it! I hate Merka! I hate Lucia! I- I hate myself!”

Oh, so Layla really has been putting up a front the entire time.

I do wonder what about this scenario in particular finally was enough to break her, since her normal irreverent black comedy self has kinda been progressively crashing ever since the moment where she heard that Millie was in danger of losing Daisy. It’s almost as if it hits uncomfortably close to home for her.

She wails. Mark rubs her back. “I just want to get away and I try and try so hard but it always hurts me in the end. It hurts so much! I can’t take it anymore! I need to go! But-But-” She chokes and barely gets her final words out. “I’m going to die here!”

She loses it. Her body shrinks as tightly as she can and tears flow freely. Her bawling is loud and her gasps desperate. He begins rocking her body. He blinks to stop his own tears, but they fall anyway.

“Hey, Layla…” She sniffs and turns herself away from him. He moves in front of her and jostles her shoulders so she’d see him. Her face is drenched and full of red.

Mark: “Um… Layla?” ._.
Layla:

Mark: “Okay, that’s not happening since otherwise it’s going to be a really short story. But L-Layla, l-listen to me!”

“Layla, The surface!” he says. “We can find the surface. The beauty there is unending. The sky is a rich blue and fields of grass stretch forever and as you walk along it, the cool breeze wraps around you like a gentle blanket. And there will be nobody to hurt us there. We can do this. I promise we will!”

… The surface is an irradiated hellscape right now, isn’t it?

She sniffs again. A hand worms its way to rub her running nose. Her voice is faint. “I don’t deserve that.”

(Italics on final “this”)
His hands reach for her shoulders. “You saved me, Layla. You don’t like this fighting. I know you’re different from the others here. I know you don’t deserve this.”

More lingering markup that you should remove there.

Layla: “Great, so just leave me alone to die here.”

Mark: “... I meant that you don’t deserve to live in this dog-eat-dog world here, but now that you mention it, I guess the phrasing was a bit ambiguous.” ._.;

Her crying resumes, but now she wraps her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”

Mark returns the hug. “It’s okay. You did nothing wr-”

Mark: “... Okay, you’ve done a lot of things wrong, but you were put in impossible situations! Look, Layla, the point is that you deserve better than this!” O_O;
- Mark looks away -
Mark: “... Even if you don’t think you do.”

[ ]

“W-We’ll find the surface together, Mark. No one will stop me. We’ll bring Millie. And Myla. And Andy. And more. And then we can all be happy together.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

This would be more impactful if you showed off Layla’s emotional state and made her dialogue more waver-y, since I would assume that she’s still pretty distraught at the moment here.

He rocks her gently as she dries out her tears. She sniffs a few times, and her claw rubs his back. “There’s food up there, yeah?

“Yeah. And they all taste better than the mushrooms.”

“What are they is it like?”

Mark spends a long time talking about food. He talks about rich, sweet fruits that grow on trees, and of the vegetables plucked from the ground. Of millions of grain stalks swaying in the wind, which humans pluck to make bread and pasta with. He talks about nuts, seeds, and herbs too. Tea and juice. Fried food. Baked food. Boiled food. Salads. Sauces. Seasoning. Spices.

… Giving me some midnight munchies right about now, really.

“And we can share it all…” she says.

“Yeah. There’s more than enough.”

Bruh, I literally just came off a Xenoblade 2 run like a month ago. I know better than to blindly trust rumors of a place of paradise and escape from the ills of your world in a story. Since the reality behind them has really good odds of turning out to be bitterly disappointing.

His stomach growls. It's not an easy topic after all the running.

“Hey,” Layla says, leaning back to softly smile at him. “Let’s get you home. Get you a mushroom. We’ll have to stick with those for a little longer.”

He grows a faint smile. “Sure.”

This is at once sad and touching. Though I see you’re definitely going hard at getting these two into a shippable state at some point.

Layla stands up and leads once more, clenching his hand like she might drop it. Still emotionally drained, her stride is slow, but it's a pleasant walk anyways. She babbles about when she was younger, when she had friends and parents. Her mother taught her to be smart and resourceful, but it was her father who told her to love others, and that she is the best. The speech is directionless but he listens to every word. He forgets about the swirling patterns around him.

They turn around one more corner. A blaze lights up.

Layla: “Oh my god, seriously? What now from that damn stoat?” >.<

Jace steps forward, holding a sleeping Millie in his arms.

“Hey. ‘If Millie is still with Daisy by the end of the day, then I may join,’ right? That’s the promise? I’m here to give her back.”

I… honestly wasn’t expecting that, though I suppose I should’ve known better than to expect you to write Jace out of the story so quickly given the amount of buildup you gave him. While it might’ve worked better with a few more subtle hints from Jace’s behavior earlier, congratulations this was a pleasant surprise to end an otherwise crushing chapter on.

Alright, onto the recap, it won’t be quite as granular this time since I’m covering more content in one go, but in general I thought that these three chapters largely shared their strengths and weaknesses with each other:

Alright, starting with the strong suits. But I liked the characterization that was going on in these chapters, lots of subtle hints here and there about the way that characters worked, while it wasn’t “in your face” to the point of undercutting the surprise of moments like seeing Layla pour out her soul in Chapter 9 or Jace showing his true colors as a character. The worldbuilding was also promising. We get our first glimpse at plants and (maybe) the sea, and hints of the sorts of things that used to go on here in the tunnels back when humans were around. For a world as cramped and small as one that’s literally shoveled into a tunnel system, you’ve got some tantalizing hints that it’s a bit bigger and more varied than one might initially expect.

I also thought that you got a lot of good mileage from portraying a morally gray and rough-and-tumble setting. It reflects both in the little things like the meeting with Myla where she’s just casually got a ‘mon bound and gagged in a corner, as well as the big moments like the shocking note that Chapter 8 ends on and the climax of Chapter 9. Like I know that I’ve facetiously called this story “Metro 2033 but with Pokémon” elsewhere, but honestly it kinda fits. You built a vibe of a world where you can't take it for granted that you can trust anyone, and you’re thus far using it really well. Which makes the moments when characters show that they are genuine all along all the more impactful.

As for the weaker suits, you have some errors here and there with punctuation and verb tenses. I also saw 2 occasions offhand in Chapter 9 where you had notes from editing that survived into your final draft. I also thought that a general weakness was that a number of parts of these three chapters felt that they were a bit light on description, which led to some points where things felt really accelerated, and others where it was a bit hard to get a read on things as a result. The light description also undercut a few moments by not lingering on them and showing off character reactions / more explicit implications. One of the main standout examples I can think of that is the moment in Chapter 8 where Layla plead with Mark not to out Daisy to Merka’s goons, which is a moment that would’ve carried a lot more punch if the enormity of what would happen if Daisy gets killed off got touched on a bit more, since it also influences her gradual loss of composure in the chapter immediately following it.

Though even if I had some bones to pick with it, I thought that the three chapters were a fun little arc collectively, and I still wasn’t expecting all the twists and turns of Chapter 9 to play out the way that they did. So good job @BestLizard , and I’ll be back for more of this story at some time in the future, since that was quite the note to leave things off on.

 

[BestLizard]

You're not the only person to call it "Metro 2033 with Pokemon". Someone else who is a fan of this story brings it up often too, to the point they even streamed the game yesterday because of how this fic reminded them of that game. I never actually played the games much though, I was surprised watching the stream and going "wow, Below really is like Metro!"

Shin Megami Tensei IV is actually the larger influence here. All of Tokyo is under a massive cavern. Demons run the streets though, so humans actually need to live in subterranean metro infrastructure under the cave. On top of that, there are law and chaos forces going around trying to claim dominance and the game does "grey vs. grey" incredibly well - many NPCs have varied opinions about which ones are better and most suck up that there need to be necessary evils. It's mostly the faction conflict influencing my story. In fact, Lucia and Merka are named after the final bosses of the law and chaos endings, respectively - Lucifer and Merkabah.

Thanks for the review! I'll definitely clamp down on expressing more body language. After some soul-searching, I still think staying light on internal thought process is the right call in the name of "show, don't tell," but I'm probably not being imaginative enough by not showing anything other than dialogue when people speak. I'll try to focus harder on that in chapter 12, and I'm getting a book this Christmas that should help me write body language.

I'm so glad you didn't expect the twists and turns of chapter 9, it means I must be good at plot twists. Cause boy, it's gonna mean big things for chapter 11 and 12 which have the even larger plot twists ;^)

 

[OrionTheAbsol]

Sorry for the delay.

So, the premise is something I’m generally comfortable with: people (or Pokémon in this case) trapped underground while desiring to live on the surface world. You may have heard comparisons to ‘Metro 2033’ and ‘Shin Megami Tensei IV.’ I’m also citing ‘Undertale’ and ‘Lunacid.’ Plenty of ways to generate conflict in a dark, miserable, colorless, claustrophobic place with limited resources.

So far, worldbuilding’s pretty interesting. With no plant life, the Underground is forced to cultivate mushrooms that possess similar effects to the Pokémon franchise’s berries and PMD’s seeds. Water is an especially precious resource. Many Pokémon needed torches and bioluminescence to get around. Sunlight is nowhere to be found. And there are some man-made structures, which raises some questions about what this place really is.

Prose is rough early on (repetitive sentence structures, redundant phrases, ‘he does this, he does that’), but I certainly see some improvement in later chapters (especially from Chapter 6). I see a lot of work into making this chapter and the following ones better paced.

Chapter 2 is what I consider to be one of the more problematic chapters. I don’t like how Mark immediately sided with Layla without any buildup. As a followup to his hesitation at the end of chapter 1, I would add in some narration for him, mulling over his options on who to side with. And in the end, he would determine that Layla is the most trustworthy person he has. I found the battle scene hard to follow (adding in epithets between four combatants, finding which pronoun matches who during the action). Layla takes the news of Mark being a human a little too well, not even so much as a flinch. And when we’re introduced to “the Underground,” it’s told in descriptive exposition, which weakens its mystique; it would be better if this information is dialogue instead and we see what goes through Mark’s head as he’s told this information.

I did mention Chapter 4 in Discord. While I do see its purpose in bringing up some much needed exposition, it felt odd that Mark took Bali’s request, only to fail. Then this job was hardly brought up again, and Bali’s fate remained unknown.

Chapters 6 and 9 are the main highlights for me. What ends up happening to Millie and Daisy is intense and gut-wrenching. I’m even more impressed that you had a tourniquet process of all things involved. That’s not something you typically come across in a fanfic.

Layla’s a fun character. She’s a refreshing mix of silly, unhinged and adventurous in a setting where most people aren’t as jolly. It’s also nice to see her reactions as a Pokémon who is not familiar with human customs (her reaction to the graveyard). I’m particularly interested in how her future interactions with Jace will play out.

I’m not particularly fond of Mark as a character. Making him into a Sableye is an interesting choice, and I’m genuinely wondering how this new form will help him later on. But from what I understand, he’s meant to be like the typical PMD protagonist; an amnesiac human-turned-Pokémon who’s adjusting to his current situation while aiding his newfound partner (who usually doubles as a plot vehicle). The problem is that he’s too passive of a character; consequently, he lacks a defined personality and feels more like a tagalong to Layla. Even without his memories, I feel like he has potential to be a stronger character. Maybe a bit more snark. Maybe a bit more seriousness to further contrast Layla’s more lighthearted personality.

I believe you once mentioned to me that the City Guild and the People’s Guild are the usual law/chaos SMT factions. I’m interested in seeing how this plays out. What beliefs they follow and what motives they carry. They already seem content in ostracizing others rather than working together to find a way up to the surface.

This is a solid read. Good luck moving forward!

 

[BestLizard]

Chapter 11
Memories Lost to the Void
​

They walk for a long while since Jace agreed to the new condition to raise Millie until she can be reunited with Daisy on the surface. It's been silent since Layla needed time to flush out complicated emotions. She squeezes Mark’s hand tightly throughout. He doesn’t hesitate to squeeze back, feeling how shaken she is underneath.

Once they’re past the monochrome mineral veins and return to drab brown corridors, her claw shifts to his forearm. A smile worms its back onto her face. A little later, she leans forward to look past Mark’s side - Mark’s between him and Layla, likely on purpose.

“Alright, Jace! You ready to hear the rules?” she asks.

Jace nestles the still-sleeping Millie between both arms. She’s been turning more, the sleep spore losing its effect. He scoots forward so he can look back at Layla. “Yes!”

“Great! First: we don’t do any killing unless absolutely necessary. Emphasis on the ‘absolute’. If you think they’ll kill you later, just put up with it.”

“What?” he says. Concern spreads across his face.

Her elbow bumps Mark’s side. “I know! But this guy wouldn’t join otherwise, and he’s important. But I don’t know Jace, having morals sounds kinda fun, don’t you think? If not badass? You know what I mean?”

“What about Lucia’s people?”

“Uh…” her eyes shift to Mark’s.

His brow furrows. “No.”

“‘No,’” she says, imitating Mark’s annoyed expression. “Well there you go. Sorry, love!”

Jace’s face grows worried. In a quiet voice directed at Mark, he asks “Are you sure? You do know what they do, right Mark?”

“Ugh,” Mark mutters.

“I do!” Layla says. “I want them to die too but this guy doesn’t allow it, okay? On the flip side, we haven’t killed any of your guys since he joined, okay? Pretty fair!”

He growls but his eyes shift as he considers. “If you’ve been sparing our guys then fine. Although please don’t suggest we’re equal to Lucia’s guild again, okay?”

Layla carelessly nods. “Mm-hmm!”

There’s a bit of awkward silence but eventually Jace’s scowl disappears. “What about dungeon Pokemon, though?”

Layla glances at her partner again. He places a hand on his chin. He still remembers the Noivern’s throat wiggle as he pressed the broken shaft against it. “Let’s... try not to.”

She looks to the new member once more. “‘Let’s try not to!’ works for you?”

Jace shrugs. “Eh.”

“Okay! That’s settled. So then, this is how operations will go!” Layla continues. She straightens her back just a bit but still tries to past Mark. “If all three of us focus on the same mission all the time, we won’t earn enough to keep up with costs, so I’ll have you do missions while I and Mark do our’s together, and once he’s good enough, all three of us will earn independently. Once we stockpiled enough, we’ll explore any place that interests us, or any leads we have. That good?”

Jace nods. “Mmm-hmm!”

“And of course, for the short term, we’ll search around where we got the key while you deliver, uh, ‘home.’ If we find something, we’ll tell you.”

“Yup.”

“How long will that take?” she asks.

“Hmm…” he thinks about this. “It’ll take us about two days to get home, but I’ll probably need some time to help her adjust to her new home. So, hm…”

“Just find us in Myla’s Cafe when you’re ready, okay?” She lurches forward. Mark leans back clumsily to let her see past him. His partner smirks wide. “One last requirement. You gotta introduce me to the Salazzle someday!”

Both men turn their heads to her.

“What?” she says, looking between the two. She’s cute! Or are they a guy, I thought their pheromones were working on me?!?”

“Transwoman. So yeah their phermones would be working on you.”

“Aah,” Layla says.

And I guess that’s why I didn’t notice the pheromones. Mark thinks.

“What’s her name?” she continues.

“She’s Raquel. And she’s already dating a Lopunny who can get kinda jealous. At least to strangers…”

Layls’s grin grows wider and her eyes widen with a hopeful gleam. “No way! Introduce me to them both?”

The newcomer laughs. “Your rules. Don’t get too hopeful about anything, though.”

Wait, does this mean male Salazzle exist? Mark realizes. He blinks and looks to the two. What are they talking about?

She giggles. The rest of the walk is in much higher spirits, a relief from the roller coaster today has been. Layla ends up asking more about Jace’s boyfriend. Another Quilava, in fact. She asks about how long they’ve been together, how and they get along - she seems curious about the other one who’ll take care of Millie. The questions end up getting more invasive though, if not risque. Jace either doesn’t notice or is actually boldly enjoying answering her. The conversation keeps devolving and Mark ends up blushing lots and hanging his head as the two enthusiastically talk and laugh about their favourite activities.

“Hey, this too much for you?” Layla asks, just noticing her partner. “We can stop if that’ll make you feel better. Or, if you’re nervous about joining in, just start with saying what’s your favourite-”

Jace stops walking, falling behind the pack. “Eh, this is where we part ways, so fun time’s over anyways.”

A smaller exit is to the side, barely taller than Jace.

Layla salutes him off. “Alright, Jace. Hopefully this team thing can work out. Whenever you come back, just wait around Myla’s Cafe in the mornings and try to catch us. It’s in the middle of Scrap Town.”

“Y-yeah. Looking forward to meeting you” Mark says.

He waves and scoots into the tunnel. “Will do!”

“And make sure to treat Millie well!” Layla shouts.

“Yup!”

The glow of his fire diminishes as he disappears. Layla’s lazily waves to him, sighs, and leans against Mark’s shoulder.

Mark shifts his shoulder, giving her more room. “What’s wrong?”

“I’d still rather she’s back with Daisy. I’m still not sure if this is really the right choice.”

She starts moving again. The merry demeanor she built up is gone, heads and shoulders now hanging.

Mark takes time to carefully select his words. “It's not wrong we’re choosing our own safety in the end of the day. But more importantly, we can’t forget we’re not abandoning them. This will all be resolved once we find the surface, where they can hide from Merka. We just got to keep our focus on that.”

Her expression doesn’t change. “Yeah. I’m just worried about how long that’ll take.”

“And I’m sure she’ll find happiness with Jace and Drake. She won’t be alone.”

“Yeah...” She takes a deep breath and puts her chin up. She deliberately swings her and his arm in a wide arc as she walks. More time later, she turns her head back and asks another question. “Hey Mark, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”

“Mmm?”

“How do you do it?”

His brow rises. “Do what?”

“Everything!” She tilts her head down, thinking of examples. “When that Flygon and other Pokemon were on my ass, you didn’t have to fight for me! You didn’t have to, I don’t think I would have. A-and you took on that Monkey mission! What was that? Andy told me about that. Like thank goodness he’s a good judge of character but you really weren’t worried about how suspicious he was? And the whole Millie’s hand thing! How!?! How Mark, she lost your hand! A whole fountain of blood and you just fixed it? You were even relaxed when I found you! And then. And then. Today! How were you able to just watch Merka take Millie today? How do you do it? I need to know!” Her breath is light after the rambling.

“What?” Mark tilts his head. “Is it not that normal?”

She lets go of him and holds her head in both arms. “What do you mean, ‘not normal!’ Do you not fear death or something?!?”

He frowns. “N-not really?”

“Aaagh!” Her head cranes downwards and her claws interlock over it.

She stays this way for a while. Mark ends up looking at his torch-carrying hand. He tenses it and watches the muscles flex beneath his skin. It eases him, if only a little.

After she calms down, she says “Mark?”

His eyes stay focused on his backhand as he digs through his memories. There’s none. There’s his name, he was a young adult, a tall human, male, supposedly decent at school. What about his occupation? Shouldn’t he know that too?

“Mark?” she asks once more, more concerned. “I’m sorry about the outburst. I’m envious, especially after everything today. Really, that wasn’t fair.”

He strains his hand. “I don’t know who I am. Or why I am this way. What my past was. What I did. Why I do the things I do. Nothing. And I don’t know what is right or wrong or weird or expected l because I have nothing to compare. I thought I was trying to be a good person by not trying to hurt others but maybe I’m just weak. I-”

“No!” Layla says.

“I have no way of knowing. And maybe the surface isn’t that different from here. I forgot what it's like living there.” His knuckles turn pale.

Layla puts her claw on his shoulder and nudges it. “I don’t think anybody here actually wants to kill! I do it cause I don’t want to die. I wish I was more like you.”

Mark draws out a long breath. His hand eases. “Thanks. I don’t really know how I’m not so afraid. But I guess when things get stressful, I keep my breathing steady, and acknowledge that panicking will make things worse.”

Her claws keep rubbing his shoulder. She’s listening intently, eyes locked on him.

He looks back. “That being said, there is one feeling I can’t shake.”

“What is it?”

“I think I’ve witnessed worse, and that’s what makes it easier to stay relaxed. Like, everything so far isn’t to be afraid, compared to what is actually out there. Like, it’s a relief. Healing Millie’s hand was rote. Normal. A pushover.”

“Mark…”

“But I do worry what could be much worse than everything I’ve seen so far.”

She’s silent, rubbing his shoulder gently. Mark stretches his fingers in and out. There is something soothing about his hand, the more he looks at it. He stays focused on it until the cave mouth widens up. The faux stars of Scrap Town peak between the circular caps of treeshrooms like a million candles inside a chasm. He looks up to these instead of his hand. They already make him feel like he’s at home.

“Well hey,” Layla says once more, looking at the stars with him. “Hopefully something where you woke up can help with your memories.”

“Yeah. And hopefully it’ll help us find the surface.”

She tugs his arm and gives up a warm smile. “Let’s get some rest, okay?”

---

All of Layla’s emotional exhaustion has turned into physical exhaustion and she sleeps before he even says good night. Mark can’t drift away, however. Anxiety bubbles up in his stomach. What is right, and what could be more terrifying than the Noivern. His imagination is beat on this, even after what must be hours.

Sleep silently has its way eventually. A purple-and-blue void shifts around and never makes form. Two voices speak in the distance. His own, and one that feels like a friend.

“The sky is gray and the rain is heavy. Do you stick to the plans you already have, or call them off? Do you avoid going outside if at all?”

“I’d just grab an umbrella. You can’t help the rain,” his own voice responds. “If I had no umbrella, I still wouldn’t be bothered walking in the rain.

There’s the sound of a pen scratching against paper. Mark continues. “In fact, I find I enjoy sitting on the balcony a bit when it rains. I enjoy it, in a sentimental way”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It's a weird feeling. It was raining when we buried my father. I can’t help but to think of him when it rains. Not of just the burial itself, but also the times he was still around.”

“Oh Mark…”

“It's not a bad thing! Life’s complicated. We feel sad from time to time but I don’t think it's bad that we feel sad once in a while. I think it's even healthy to feel sad here and there. Feeling is what makes us human, and so I end up appreciating that I’m still alive, and that all the people I saved must still be grateful too, even though we’ll still die one day.”

“Wow. That’s, really deep.”

“Thanks. But don’t worry about it, professor. Plus, I also end up thinking about all the good times I had with my father anyways, so the feeling is more bittersweet. He’s who inspired me to join the military, you know?”

“Mmm.”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “How many more questions do we have?”

“We’re halfway done. Do you want to take a break?”

“Yeah, sure. Thank you.”

The voices become hazy and echoey as the void fades away. He briefly hears the discombobulated voice of a third person.

Everything turns dark.

---

Layla pulls Mark out of bed with excited vigour and she rushes them through the morning routine. It’s all a blur to Mark as he’s detached from reality while he combs his mind for any professor he may remember. Nothing comes, so he goes through a list of every name he knows while they head to the cafe and eat breakfast. Even his partner is tuned out, despite excitedly speculating all the dark human magic waiting for them to discover. He nods along to be polite - she herself is too lost to notice Mark’s lack of presence.

He reaches all names starting with N once they’re jogging into the tunnels but he gives up. Not one of them feels reminiscent of a professor’s name and he’s getting lost forgetting names and going back too often. Plus, he’s actually awake now. Should he tell Layla about the professor? What stops him is he still doesn’t know if they’re real.

He ends up forgetting about the whole topic as they get further into the caves. He carries both torches while Layla leads with the map held in front of her. The tunnels are more varied than before: they go through a huge slanted floor with fields of stalagmites coming from the ground, tight tunnels barely wider than them but so tall their torch don’t reach the top, and tunnels with a mess of interweaving streams spewing out of the walls and ceilings.

No Pokemon are seen or heard the entire journey. Even mushrooms are found only between long stretches, and each had a stunted size and emits a nauseating ordour. No need to ask if they could eat them. The only life to find here is their footsteps echoing behind them.

Layla angles the map. “Hey, this is weird.”

“Hmm, what?”

She stops and rotates both her head and the map the other way. The corner she looks at is more intricate than a spider’s web. “This map is wrong.”

“Huh?” he says. “Are we lost?”

“No, we can backtrack. We are heading for an uncharted place and nobody has a reason to go this far deep. I think Andy just got lazy making this.” She chuckles.

They retrace their steps. Layla walks up and down a few adjacent tunnels to make sure they’re lined up with the map once again. She picks a new path that should be more complete, but they still need to walk back as they walk off the map. This happens more the farther in they get, and each mistake makes her slower with caution.

She plants her face in the map once they meet the 100th crossroads. “I can’t find an uncharted place!”

“Well, you were able to find me the first time.”

Her head jerks the other way. “By accident! I was running away, trying to get lost!” She stretches the map to flatten it so more light can reach it. She stares at it a bit more. “The fact it's up a cliff complicates everything. Heck, I don’t even know if we’re at the right level! These tunnels pass above and below each other!”

Mark leans in and pretends to know where to look. “So, what do we do?”

“Eh. We’ll just have to keep going. It took Lucia days to find you after all and so it might be that way for us as well.” She rolls the map back up and stuffs it under her arm. “Still, I’ll just use my gut. ‘Where would I go if I was running for my life’, y’know? Plus, I know for sure I went past here when I was running from them.” She grabs her own torch from Mark and leads once more, looking up just as often as she does around.

“It does make me wonder how that one Mystery Dungeon we found was formed. How did so many Pokemon find themselves so far in?” she adds. He has no answers.

The two become absorbed in exploring the lifeless caves.

---

Much more time passes. Likely half the day, Mark reasons. He would worry about being lost if it weren’t for Layla humming like she’s strolling in a garden. She only checks the map periodically, and less so the deeper in they are.

“Hey. This place looks familiar,” she says. She holds her torch up high and cranes her head upwards. “I made a lot of distance between myself and them so I was thinking, ‘hey, I’d get away if I climb up. They wouldn’t look that way.’”

Her pace is slow and she scans the ceiling. It rolls upward in a graceful curve. “I was staring up here desperately. I noticed it curled here….” She steps near the wall. A lot of small rocks jut out, forming natural footholds. “And I climbed up here.”

She finally stuffs her map into her bag and runs a claw over various ridges. “So Mark, guess you’ll have to learn how to climb right here. Think you’re ready?”

He looks up. The darkness hiding the top makes it look ginormous. “Did we not bring rope?”

“We’re not bitches! I told you this!” She says, chuckling. “Plus, there will be times you don’t have rope and need to climb anyways. So, figure it out now!” She fastens her bag tight around her. “It's not that hard, seriously. You were able to climb down and climbing up is just that in reverse. Believe in yourself!”

She crams her torch into her maw and ascends the wall. Mark does the same with his own torch and mimics Layla’s movements. It isn’t that hard - his claws dig into the surface, adding a lot more grip than he expected. He isn’t heavy either and ends up climbing with the same ease he would a ladder. The corners of his lips tug up: he is a cave monster! Could he scramble over the ceiling?

It’s a short sensation though as the first lip comes quickly. He hoists himself over, Layla lending a claw to help. An uncomfortable smell comes their way, something like rot but not that pungent. “Alright, we head over to the Gallade.”

They travel the short walk that leads to him. He still lies in a dried, red puddle. His skin is washed of colour and deflated, yet not grossly disfigured. It’s not even that ghastly. With how little life grows down here, there must not be enough bacteria to decompose corpses properly.

Layla kicks the warrior’s side. “Take this!”

“Layla!”

“He’s probably the one who wrapped you up in rope!” Kick. “Come on, join the fun!” Kick. “Lucia scum!” She giggles.

He facepalms and shakes his head. He shrugs her off by walking to the cliff the Psychic-type supposedly fell from and getting a head start.

“Hey wait!” she shouts, and she’s up beside him in no time, torch in her mouth once more. “Wah are you ooin ii-e-he-e-ee ooo-in i-ouh ee?”

“Wah?!?”

But she just laughs and rushes up to the top. “Pfft,” and another smile grows on his face, before seeing if she can beat her. He can’t catch up however and ends up dragging himself over the top alone. The massacre reveals itself.

He double-takes, shocked by how visceral their fight was. A Reuniculus and a Magmar lie in the middle while a Machamp rests against a wall. The dirt around them is vibrant red in a wide radius. Streaks stain down the sides from wide gashes and ugly scorch on their body. He angles his head away before he looks inside their injuries.

Crimson snakes up to the fighting type, who must have dragged herself there knowing she was dying. With no blood inside her but bacteria not doing their job, her skin is an eerie, pearly white. Its head is gone.

“Wait,” Layla says. She carefully approaches the corpse. “She wasn’t missing her head last time.”

He follows closely behind her. Grim as it is, it is the violence Mark has come to expect. The folded piece of paper lying on her chest wasn’t, though.

“Was there a note there either?” he asks.

“Nope.” She picks it up by the corner and gently shakes to unfold it. “Uh, Mark, can you read it?”

She faces it to him. It’s English, written in blood. Mark reads it aloud. “‘Anthropy lives. We know you’re human. Turn back and give now, Mark.’”

Dread enters him for the first time since he was bound in rope. He tenses and points his torch to the darkness around him, worried if he’s been followed. Layla gets the idea too, going on guard and taking a few steps back to the middle of the tunnel.

His shoulders drop when nobody jumps out at them. Of course not. Despite that, he can’t help to realize an assailant could be standing right there a few feet outside where his flame’s light washes into black, and he’d have no way to know.

It’s been that way the entire time.

“You haven’t told anybody you’re human, have you?” Layla asks, still alert to her surroundings.

“Only Andy. Although it was in the cafe. I think only Myla picked on us, everybody else looked very distracted. Don’t worry, Andy told me not to say anything after that slip-up.”

She sighs. “Do you remember who was in the cafe that day?” She relaxes and turns back to him. A stalker would have pounced by now.

“I think there were a couple of monkeys?” He scratches the back of his head. “No, I think that was a different day. Uh… A very sad Machoke. I also remember someone coming in to order from Myla too. Maybe one more? If I saw them again, I’d probably remember.”

She shrugs and holds the note in front of her. “Well, whoever knows also knows how to write English.” Her eyes narrow. “None of this makes sense, the more I think about it.”

“Yeah, they didn’t just give the letter to us directly.” He leans over her shoulder to read the note again. The letters didn’t look written by finger or brush. Some of the writing has dripped to the bottom edge and coloured it.

“What does Anthropy even mean?” she asks.

“It sounds like ‘anthropology’, maybe it has something to do with history, or humans?”

“Mmm.” She folds it up and slips it into her pouch. “More importantly, do they have a way to know if we continue down the tunnel?”

Neither can answer. Mark can’t imagine cameras working with every human ruin being as defunct as they are. Of course, the perpetrator could also just be there with them, outside of view.

Or is this a scare tactic? Maybe even an intended helpful warning about danger ahead?

Layla reaches for his arm. He instinctively holds it up for her. “I think we should risk it. I don’t want something dumb like this to be what stops us from finding the surface.”

“Yeah.”

She playfully tugs his arm. “One more problem though, Mark. Left or right?”

“Left!”

They go.

---

Mark’s unnerved. He’s far more aware of the darkness, which traps them in all directions. It’s easy to imagine a Pokemon jumping out with a screech. Death and danger are their own things, but the note’s prodded at a fear more primal within him. Darkness. Being watched. The unknown.

It’s not enough to stop him though. A part of him even sees this as a little thrill. Either way, he stays alert and sticks behind his more relaxed partner.

The tunnel is spacious and the ceiling has become an unnatural perfect arc. Every surface is smooth and wavy, different from the rugged rock he’s only seen so far. The brown rock fades to grey the deeper in.

After a while, black boxes are pinned to the apex of the tunnel. They’re barely visible against the ceiling far above them. Wires run from each one. Long clear tubes sitting within them reflect their torchlight.

“Hey! Would that alert us to this ‘Anthropy’ person?” Layla asks.

“I don’t think so. They look like they’d be lights. The filaments probably ran out long ago.”

“Filaments? Something to worry about?”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so, although we should stick to the side in case glass has fallen out.”

The walk still goes on. The path is taking a subtle curve. The ancient lights repeat themselves, teasing them that there's something to find. One of them has even fallen off - it’s easy to see it is made of the same uncanny blacksteel the ruins of Clear Crystal Chasm have. It looks like a void is trimmed out of the ground, its true shape impossible to tell.

Not much farther, they come to what must be their destination. A long structure sits in the middle of the tunnel, very out-of-place. Much like the lights, it too is a perfect black, no matter how close their torches get to it. He feels like he could just walk into it and end up in an infinite nothing. A black hole made material.

“Am I seeing this right?” Mark asks.

“Yeah. It’s blacksteel again, probably an even darker type than the Chasm ruins. Be careful not to walk into it - look at where it meets the ground,” she says.

Her casualty assures him the illusionary tear in reality is normal. Even more garishly, a grey screen and blue thumb drive port floats suspended in the air. He walks up to it. Looking at its side reveals its terminal separate from the building. It just blended in with is so well.

“I’ll do the honours.” Layla deftly plucks the key from her bag and places it in front of the slot. “No going back.”

She pushes it in. Nothing happens until she remembers to turn it upside-down, and then there’s a click. The screen flares up, hurting their eyes with its brightness. Mark squints to read it. He briefly catches the words “accepted.”

Total white engulfs all. The back of his eyes scorch with fierce pain. He screams and drops to the floor in agony, his partner joining him. Burying his face in his arms barely stops the light from sneaking in. Tears roll down his face.

“What is this?!?” Layla shouts desperately. “I can’t see! Where are you?”

“Close your eyes!” he shouts back. “Try to follow my voice!”

A claw grabs his leg. “It’s me! Now what?!?”

It’s hard to think. The blinding light disorients his sense of direction even as the pain recedes. Red, green, and purple dots dance across his vision, making unrecognizable forms. He opens his eye up the smallest bit he can. He needs to close it immediately as overwhelming agony floods back in, but not before seeing the still pitch-black building with a blinding hole in the middle of it.

Layla’s arms wrap around him and she buries her head into the side. “I’m scared, Mark. Answer me!”

“We have to wait. It’s all we can do.”

Wait they do. Darkness returns to the back of his eyelids. He peeks once more - It's still intense but not so overwhelming he needs to close them again. He slowly works to open his eye wider and wider, blinking plenty. His clinging partner and the bumps of the rock around him come back to view as it becomes obvious the light is coming from inside the building. Turning away from it helps plenty. The tunnel is visible all the way up until it bends out of view, save for the absurdly black light cases. How can blacksteel be that dark?

Layla’s eyes are adjusting too. She lets go and stands up with a wobble. “What magic is this?”

“Not magic. Our eyes are just too used to the darkness,” Mark says. There’s a sense of relief if not stupidity coming to this realization. The tunnel darkens more and its clear the light behind them is becoming more tolerable, although it’s still too bright to look at directly. That doesn’t stop Layla from turning to it and wincing. “I’m going in!”

“Layla!”

She has her way, walking in with an arm across her eyes. He scurries up and teeters inside too, squinting at the ground to abate the pain. The footsteps of her partner move away from him. He hears a ringing bwong followed by “Ah! I walked into something!”

Below, he makes out gridded white tiles. They’re clean save for dirty footprints of a Machamp and Gallade. A chemically clean smell drifts by him as his eyes adjust the rest of the way. He hears Layla scratch her claws on something like glass.

“No, I’m sorry Mark. This is magic. I don’t care what you say!”

Mark blinks more. The grid lines stay in view as afterimages even as he looks around. His torch is no longer a torch - the end of it smoulders no brighter than a lit cigarette. He braves looking around.

Layla stumbles around, too impatient to ease her eyes. She runs into a tall, wide tube, making another bwong. “Ugh, what is this?” she says. 24 of these vials line the two sides of the hallway in front of him, each with a handle. Naked humans stand in every second vat, submerged in clear pink liquid and held up by black bars under their shoulders. The other half have their doors swung wide open.

Mark's face opens in disbelief. “What?”

“Mark, say something to me! What is this?” she asks. She knocks against the glass. “What are these Pokemon?”

“Humans,” he says. Not entirely though, as he looks at the more. Some have animalistic ears and patches of vibrantly coloured fur. The one in front of Layla has an Absol’s horn hanging across her face.

“They’re so big!” Layla says, staring up at the woman. “How much food must they eat?”

Mark dazes out. He hazily glazes over each tube as his legs move him down the aisle. Each pair of vats is labeled with a name: The first is “Joseph”, the second “Carmichael”. He gulps.

A pool of the pink liquid lies among broken glass at the foot of a shattered vat at the very end of the line. His heart sinks. He keeps reading.

“Lulu.” “Marshel.” “Ameilia”.

He approaches the cylinder preceding the broken one. The human in it is the tallest of them all, hair inches below the cap. There are no Pokemon features but scars run over his rugged body in long lines. His right flank is disfigured. And the end of his right arm has a stump where a hand should be.

Tears well up in his eyes. His arms start shaking. He knows who this is.

“Mark?” Layla says softly. He hears her approach behind him. “Who is that?”

She shakes his head and he holds his forehead. His voice is pale. “It’s me. I turned into a Sableye here.”

Her expression is blank as she nods. She looks up his vat and gets close enough that her nose nearly touches. A hand rests on it. “Wow.” She does nothing else.

But Mark knows nothing about the man in front of him. This being a body is just a fact and he forgets what it's like to be him. His body teeters as his brain dizzies itself figuring out what to despair over if it doesn’t know what to miss. Was a human body even pleasant? Was there a family he loved?

He covers his mouth. The last thought made him sick - he can’t even cry over the parents he lost without his memories of them He looks at the other vat to get away from it.

The bars that hold other human bodies are here too, although much closer to the ground, where his shoulders would have been. Some of the pink liquid collects at the bottom where the glass’s cracks don’t reach.

Her partner knocks on the glass featuring his body to no avail. He ignores it and gets closer, splashing the fluid with his foot. He cranes his head up. There are no other features except for a gadget hanging on its roof. It’s a truncated pyramid with wires feeding into it. A red flow emanates from the bottom side. Tiny stars flow upwards behind it, into a purple-and-blue void that shifts and moves but never makes form.

He’s seen this void before.

Not just in the dreams he’s been having.

That’s right…

His clothes were heavy and stuffy that day. Sweat soaked his face and his lungs hurt. He was running. Soldiers fled with him through an ocean of ecstatic ghosts. Explosions went off around them. There was rubble. Untripped landmines. Bullet casings. Dirt. Blood. Humans. Pokemon. Corpses. Limbs. The scent of death. Crying. Laughing. Screaming. And screaming. And screaming. He screamed too. He screamed loud. The void was behind them.

 

[Inkedust]

Here for Smeargle. Have a gremlin who's having a hard time being a gremlin:

 

[Navar]

I’ve heard good things about this fic, and the synopsis did catch my attention, so here’s my attempt at giving a review about my thoughts on this story.

Chapter 1
For an introductory chapter, it’s quite fast-paced, at least in my opinion. I don’t have any problems with it, though. Allows you to move things forward from settling Mark into his new body to running through the dungeon, to being surrounded by the ones that Layla stole(and killed!) from. As far as I’m concerned, it worked for me.

There’s a reason for that. It’s like there’s no time to waste asking questions and etcetera, so it’s like me, the reader, am thrown into Mark’s place, because I don’t have access to any answers, much like him. Because of this, I think the prose works there.

As for Mark, he’s… well, there’s not much I know in terms of personality. He seems to be going with the flow, but that’s probably more due to everything happening too fast for him to properly react to the scenario and what’s happening. The other option was to stay and (presumably) die. It’s not like he has better options.

Not to mention they might be dealing with a gang of bandits or something like that, if Layla is telling the truth about them not being good people. Maybe she’s lying, but I wanna believe she’s telling the truth. It’d be interesting if she wasn’t, though.

Overall, for your introduction, it was fine enough. There’s really not that many details for me to comment on, just enough for me to get a hang of what the story’s all about. Of course, the premise is catchy enough that I am still excited to see what’s in store in the future, especially with the setup of having to deal with the Flygon.

Chapter 2

Well, a lot more digestible, I think. With the bandits taken care of, the duo has some time to relax and Mark finally gets to ask the question. I'm a little curious on why Layla accepted him being a human so easily, there's probably a reason for it, though it did get my attention for a moment. And there's some nice bit of lore with her being surprised that he's from the surface, but considering the synopsis and the story's name, yeah, it makes sense to me. Also liked that there's an explanation for the dungeons! Don't see it that often.

This world is also quite violent if there's a bloodbath that easily. Or... I dunno, something powerful attacked them. Back to Mark; him sparing the hunters was a good move of him, even if not the smartest one. Guess he's a good boy, huh? Layla does know more so he could learn a thing or two from her, which is nice. And seeing how different the human and Pokémon cultures are, or just underground Pokémon, if they don't know what stars are. It kinda reminds me of Gurren Lagann a little, which is great because I love that anime! It didn't really use the premise of people underground that much, so seeing it being used here is neat.

And, hm, the fact there's ruins and human language makes me think they're extinct or long gone by this point. And since there's no quiz or something similar, I can't say for certain why Mark is a Sableye now. There's already a good sense of mystery in only two chapters, which is another plus to me. And Layla sounds way too excited for her own good, lol. Still, this was a nice chapter to read, and I am enjoying the story.

Chapter 3

A run of the mill chapter. I'm getting used to the prose, so there's little for me to comment on; the choice of using present tense is, well, it works here. I'm not going to complain about it, it's just unusual to me, but it works in your favor, I believe. And this is a common chapter, setting up an expedition for the next one. Again, nothing wrong here, just a comment on it, that's all. But honestly, Layla is fun! She's always so excited even about the small things, like English. Mark also seems to accept things very easily, despite being new at the dungeon thing. Again, it's not like he has that many choices now, he needs to do what he can, not necessarily what he wants. I do think this is a somewhat slow start, but I'm sure the fic will pick up speed the longer it goes on for.

There's something fishy about that Aipom's job for them. Something's amiss, I think. Or it could be nothing. All I know is that this a setup too(or at least I think it is) for the expedition. Maybe it's the hunters? I dunno, that idea seems kinda like it goes nowhere.

Gonna focus on the prose again for a moment, it does seem to slow down a little bit here(at least for me), so I'm able to digest the chapter's contents better. To me, it's an improvement! You're getting better at it, and the story's still good. There's just the expeditions to look forward to, or the hope of solving some mysteries, like who was responsible for Mark becoming a Sableye. That's still too early to tell, but I don't really know. Still, this was a fun chapter to read. Good job there! You got a good fic here.

Chapter 4

Hm, the expedition ended up shorther than I expected, and with more injuries, too. Of course, I didn't expect Mark to know how to fight so early in the story, but I also didn't think he'd get knocked out so easily, oh well. He'll have to learn how to do it sooner or later, I'm afraid. With Layle, I'm sure she can teach him a thing or two. Probably. If she's not busy with...

Well, Layla continues to be a good character, showing off her reason for saving Mark again, and oh god she's a huge flirt. I didn't really expect it, and I don't know what to think of it, but... well, uh, yeah. These two work well with one another, I gotta say. Mark still feels like he has no clue what's going on(which he doesn't, so it's fair) and Layla is the excitable tease of a partner. And bisexual, apparently? I did hear this fic was gay so I shouldn't be too surprised that was a thing. I don't mind it!

I'm still enjoying it a lot! The stakes are well grounded and there's not that much tension for now, just the air of mystery around Mark's entire predicament, and around the whole underground thing. Still very far away from figuring both of them out, from the looks of it. I think the hijinks that happen with Mark and Layla are good enough for me to still be invested in reading, but I also wonder when there'll be plot... unless this is a slice of life fic? Honestly, I really don't know.

Ah, and the prose is improving again! I really think present tense works well, especially when the scene is from Mark's point of view, so good job on that. I'm liking the story a lot so far.

Chapter 5

Ah, cool. The first scene(in itallics) has quiz vibes, so there's something to look forward to, him becoming a Sableye isn't just something random. That was one of my theories, but seems like I was wrong, haha.

As for Layla, she's excited about going to the dungeon. Mark is also excited, despite the fact she told him they could die. These two seem to share a single braincell, I love it. And saving a child for a fisrt mission? Sounds fun enough, though I can't tell if Layla just wants the rewards from it, or if she does wanna save the kid.

Uuh, okay, so the dead are used as food. That's not something I want to think about, so I'm not going to. But it is nice to hear more about the world, and the story of this crystal cave. Who'd have thought there's so much fighting? There's probably very few resources, so people are just struggling to get them, that's my thought on the matter. It also seems that this really is a post-human world, if there's elevators and cranes. Points for me for being right! It's kinda funny, Mark knows it despite not having his memories. I guess the "quiz" made sure he had some concepts in mind.

This chapter also introduces a Quilava to the cast! I dunno if main character, side or supporting, but I'm already a fan of him. Of course there'd be someone else wanting to finish this mission, and if he's a dashing explorer, it's probably just for the reward. Though if the reward is that small, it might be for the sake of rescuing a lost child. Regardless, I wanna see how he'll interact with the duo, because it seems as if they'll be butting heads for a while, if this Quilava is gonna be a main character.

Chapter 6

Well, good to know Mark realizes he can't afford to panic when put in a life or death situation. Props for him for also realizing he's (probably) been through worse. Some remnants of his memories as a human, maybe? I also like the lampshade during this situation of Layla asking him how he manages to stay so calm, it was interesting, heh.

And the dungeon seems to be a threat too, with a Noivern attacking. If she was burned, then it was probably the Quilava from the previous chapter, which means he's deeper down the dungeon. Probably. Very likely, if I'm gonna be honest. They're bound to meet him(this review is live so I'm typing my thoughts as I read the story).

(Also that's a very nice drawing, good job with that!)

Hm, Mark is a bit of a weakling, isn't he? Getting hurt enough that he's bloodied, I mean. He doesn't have that much fight in him, so he uses his words and reasoning instead, which I find to be a nice way of showing strength(strength that isn't just "spam damaging move and win", I mean), so I should say kudos to you, it was real nice to read.

The scene where Mark both rescues the child, confronts the Noivern and tries to comfort said child is wonderfully written! Mark has a way with it, and as someone that struggles with panic attacks, it hit me like a truck. It was really well-written, and I managed to feel the emotions you intended me to.

Still a good chapter, I think. The story keeps on getting better the more I read it! I can see why I've heard so much of it, it's really well done. It's simple, but in a good way. I'm a big fan of what you have here.

Chapter 7

Hm, I'm not sure there's enough time for Mark to let it sink in that he killed someone. But it's good to see he still feels bad about it(as he should, I think). It's also interesting that there's lasting consequences, since Millie lost her hand. That's sad, actually. I didn't really expect something like this happening, much less to a child, but huh, I'm surprised. Sad about it, yes, but surprised. Maybe even pleasantly surprised. On the bright side, Layla could help him, since she's more experienced with this. And of course she takes the opportunity to flirt with him. Though seems there's nothing that unusual about him, other than being tall? Also, something about Layla being excited about digging graves rubs me off the wrong way. I guess I'm not used to the setting just yet, at... seven chapters. Well, I'm still having fun reading it, so it's alright.

As for the second half of the chapter, it's still nice. First, huh, they don't know about hours? Makes sense, I guess. Secondly, Myla being Layla's ex caught me off guard, but then Layla comes and asks if she'll date her again, which is also... funny. A little sad since it seems they ended things off on the wrong terms, but still, a bit funny. And hey, she didn't sell them! That's surprising, I was expecting it, and considering Mark's now wanted by the people of Scrap Town, I wonder how long it'll take until they find out about him. Seems like a good source of conflict later on. The best thing is that it all(seemingly) ends well, with Millie headed to see her mom. Still no signs of Quilava, though. I wonder if he's gonna be more of a rival instead of joining them. So far, I'm not sure.

Chapter 8

I feel really bad for Millie. She hit her brother, ran away from home, lost her hand... it feels a little too much, and it's sad that she doesn't think her own mother wants to see her. And yes, Mark and Layla are right, if her mom didn't want to see her, she wouldn't have sent a mission. But still, I don't blame her for not believing it, she's just a kid, she doesn't know any better. At least Mark was there to help her realize her mother does indeed want to see her. It's a nice moment of characterization for him.

Hm, I wonder how common wounds are in this setting, considering Millie's mom was surprised to see her daughter alive despite losing a hand. Maybe it's not the wound itself, but the way to treat it? Yeah, that sounds about right. Still good to see they're all okay and safe, and that Millie is happy. It was a nice little expedition.

Oh, I don't think I've mentioned it but I really like how there's some flashbacks of Mark talking to the voice giving him the quiz. It doesn't really intrude in the flow of the chapter for me, and as far as flashback sequences go, this type works really well.

Still find it neat that there's such a different culture that Layla doesn't really care about disrespecting the dead. It's a very wide gap in my opinion, so there's obviously gonna be some adjustment on Mark's part, and maybe even Layla's part. Whatever the case, it's an interesting thing to write, so kudos to you.

Anyway, the plot thickens, apparently. Poor Millie is having a terrible week all around. There's definitely tension right at the end of the chapter. I'm hoping that everything will turn out well for all of them.

Chapter 9

Layla shows a different side to her hotheadedness. She wants to help, but it'd be reckless and with no guarantee that they'd be able to save Daisy. It's just a little bit but I loved it too. Mark being the voice of reason to warn her comes off as good writing too; based on their previous scenes over the fic, it's expected that he'd do it. Again, it's a nice contrast, with Layla being impulsive and (way too) excited, while Mark is the more level-headed of the two. It's good because, as demonstrated, Mark can stop her before she does something really bad.

Even if Daisy is a criminal, Millie is innocent in all of this, she needs her mom, that much is certain. And it's sweet that Layla seems to depend on Mark a lot, though I wonder how far she depends on him. It's cute that she does, but there's a limit to it. However, it's still very cute to see, I love these too!

Anyway, for something I've been looking forward to... Quilava's back! And seems he's on the verge of joining the team, which is cool. To top it off, he's even going to help them solve everything, how nice of him.

Things on the underground, though, are getting out of hand really fast. I feel like there's no real right answer to this. Daisy did something wrong, but she also deserves to have her daughter. It's a nice display of gray morality, which I always find appealing to read.

Still seems like there's a lot to do to solve the issue, with the (very high) threat of a dungeon popping in, the tension and stakes are very high. I like this a lot. I can't wait to see how this resolves! Overall, a wonderful chapter.

Chapter 10

Awwww, the first scene was so adorable! Jace is a sweetheart, and I'm hoping him and his boyfriend can raise Millie. This was very, very sweet. I like him, he's nice! And yeah, the alternative is way worse, Daisy is gonna suffer some real punishment, and Millie would be left alone... so yeah, I think this was the right call, even if there was a lie involved. It's for her sake, so I think it's alright anyway. Still hoping for the best, though I was a little confused if this scene was a flashback or not, but after reading it again, I understand the pacing.

Honestly this chapter was very, very good. It's just the three of them talking and deciding what they should do. There's this side of Layla that wants to stay alive and not risk herself for Millie, but like the previous one, it's Mark that talks her out of it, and that's great. They're close, after so many chapters, so it makes sense to me that it happened again. More importantly, that Mark convinces her to (at least for now) trust Jace. Still like him a lot, haha. There's a lot of gray areas in this chapter and the previous one, which I quite like. It's also a different type of recruitment process, taking the time to build trust and all that. Jace doesn't immediately join them, and has to take some convincing to allow Layla to accept him. This is really nice! Building up to it makes the entire thing worth it. Though there isn't that much action, I really liked the interactions in this chapter, and it was full of them. There's still improvement, I think it's getting better with each chapter I read, so there's that. Congrats, this story is really good and easy to read.

Chapter 11

And I arrived at the last chapter. I dunno but it seems Mark has some influence on Layla, if he convinced her to not kill anyone. Not so much on Jayce, though. Still, it was nice.

And I guess that’s why I didn’t notice the pheromones. Mark thinks.

By the way, I think this is an error? It's not written in italic.

I think this one is good too, the prose is good, the interactions are good... everything seems to work well here. Jace, being the newest one, doesn't have the same degree of influence from Mark, so he's still very much wanting to go for the kill. It's interesting because both him and Layla don't seem to think too much of it, as if killing is just the natural state of this world. It takes someone like Mark to snap them out of the mentality(less so Jace), which I found neat, I like it when the main character rubs off on them, so they change too.

The fights are pretty quick too, and unlike the first chapter, I'm more used to the fast-paced action that this fic has. On a different subject; I think it's impressive only two people(three with Layla) know that Mark's human, you'd think someone would be suspicious

Hm, this chapter's main takeaway from me is the revelation of the humans, and that Mark remembers things. This changes the plot a lot. Mostly because they look like experiments, some sort of lab rats from scientists? At least from how it was described. Not to mention the fact Mark saw himself there. It's... a big twist, I'll give it that. Very impressive, why are there two of him? There's a lot of questions I'm asking myself, and I love it. I love all the mystery, and I love getting answers, even if they only give me more questions. Good job.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Ah yes, Below, it’s been a while since I crossed paths with you. Though I suppose I did need to get back into things in short order since last chapter was quite the rollercoaster. Now seems as good a time as any to do so, so let’s just right to it:

Chapter 10

Spoiler: Line by Line

The gang trudges down the winding, black-and-white tunnel lit by the light of the fire-types' flames. Most walk silently, robbed of the ecstasy of domination. The chatter of the remaining guild members is loud and blissful as a rescued family is still a joyous victory. Tales of dungeon expeditions, gossip of neighbours, and speculation of future fights bounce off the walls. Merka leads the crowd, holding a dozing Darold close to his chest.

Millie:

Merka: “Seriously, somebody hit her with a Sleep Seed already, she’s bringing down the mood.” >_>;

Jace walks next to him. His heart pounds and his mind blazes through the different options he has and the hundreds of theoretical outcomes down the line. He veers off away from Merka often, being lost so deep in thought.

Oh, so this is set before the events of the last scene of Chapter 9, huh?

Merka looks at him. "Hey. There's something on your mind. Still worried about the initiative you took? Again, you're not in trouble." His face is dull and hanging. Jace can't ever tell what emotion he has beneath it. His mind always assumes disappointment.

Jace: “You know, it’d be easier to tell what you were thinking if you smiled from time to time, boss.”
- Merka smiles and reveals a mouth full of saw-like teeth -
Jace: “Okay, never mind. I’m fine not seeing you smile!”

Jace rubs his arm. "It's not that. I'm not sure how to say it."

"What does your heart say?"

An itch runs up his arm now. He scratches it but it won't go away.

Jace: “I… uh… am not sure if I really know what it-”

"I want to raise Millie!" Jace blurts.

- Cue pindrop moment as everyone turns to face Jace -
Jace: “Er, well… you asked?”

The larger Pokemon subtly raises an eyebrow. Jace responds louder and faster than needed. "My boyfriend and I always wanted to raise a child! Now that we're both Quilavas, we can handle more than enough missions to raise one! I want to adopt her right now and surprise him!"

Can’t tell if this is legit or Jace blowing hot air. Though you’ve got my attention primed for there potentially being a second fire stoat in this story. Since if Jace does have a boyfriend that he just cut loose in order to go after the Surface…

Merka takes a moment to think. His unchanging look only makes Jace assume the worst, that never comes. "I believe you two can be fine parents, but this shouldn't be rushed. Make the decision with your partner. At the least, I don't want you missing the celebration because you were bringing her home."

I guess that’s confirmation that Jace really does have a BF given that Merka and the bystanders didn’t find any of this strange to hear.

… Or else Merka doesn’t know his grunts all that well. That’s a possibility too.

Jace nods his head. His mouth is so dry. He debates accepting before making up his mind. "We've waited so long to raise a child! This is our chance! Let Millie wake up to a proper, loving family. Merka, I know this is an unusual request, and I'm aware my boyfriend doesn't have input, but I'm sure he'd want this. Do it for me and Drake! And for her! Please!"

A Quilava named ‘Drake’ huh? An Uncharted reference there? Even if I’m kinda kekking a bit at the idea of a stoat with a name that semantically means ‘dragon’. Wonder if that implies anything about his parentage.

The dragon grumbles, shaking his head. "No."

Wait, but if Merka is fundamentally okay with the idea of Jace and Drake raising Millie, why doesn’t he just counteroffer “you can show it off at the party”? Since from Merka’s perspective, it’ll be a happy time celebrating Darold’s return, so if Jace genuinely wants to surprise Millie, wouldn’t that also be a good chance to surprise her.

Jace puts his hands together. "We'll do our best to raise her day! Teach her everything you teach us I promise! There won't be a chance to surprise him like this again!"

Merka: “Look, putting my misgivings about your springing a kid on your boyfriend aside, why aren’t you just proposing to surprise Drake at the party again?”

Jace: “Erm… well…” ^^;

[ ]

"You can't start raising a child-"

"We've been ready for the last quarter-generation!"

Everyone is stopping and staring at these two right now, aren’t they? Though in general, I think that it makes sense to drop in some extra description, since it’s a bit hard to get a read of how Merka, much less the others from his guild are reacting to all of this right now, since you’d think that everyone would start to be getting weirded out a bit by Jace’s behavior and insistence here.

The dragon sighs. "You sure you can even carry her all the way back safely?"

[ ]

"Yes!"

[ ]

"And you sure this isn't something that can't wait?"

"Absolutely!"

Same deal here, but with body language from Jace and Merka here to sell the sense of tension, especially if Jace is having to fight to not visibly sweat bullets in front of Merka right now.

Merka grunts. He tilts his head to think about everything. "Okay, Jace. I'm not sure what the rush is all about, but I'll trust you. You've been very dependable. But please don't mess it up: raise her as well as you say you will."

I kinda wonder if there should be an example given in passing about how Jace has been dependable. e.x. pointing out his involvement in helping to nab Millie or something. I dunno, maybe I’m overthinking things.

Adrenaline floods Jace and a grin breaks through. "Yes, yes! I'll raise her the best I can! I'll run ahead right now!"

He scurries around to the other side of him and swoops Millie off before the Mareep sees him. He's off into the tunnel, only faintly making out the Mareep's confused shouting. Merka's lost, trying to follow what just happened.

Merka’s going to smell a rat before this scene’s over, isn’t he?

He swings around many corners and runs far away from the deception he committed. He prays for a side path and eventually a large dug-out hole appears in the tunnel wall. He runs in and quells his quills, covering him and the child in darkness.

Nothing to do now except sit and wait. His heart pounds his chest until the clamour of the crowd reaches his ears. Warm lights filter into the distance entrance. Warped figures shift across the hole. It dies down into darkness once more, and then silence follows.

Jace: “... Merka didn’t happen to bring anyone who’s got a keen sense of smell, did he? Since boy is this going to get awkward fast if he did.” ^^;

He lets out a held breath and collapses onto his back. His arms shake and his head screams about all the different ways it will go wrong.

Millie, who he put sitting up on his leg, falls back onto him. The quills blaze once more and Jace sits back up, propping the child up and looking at her. It was the best lie he could think of, but there's truth it was true that he and his boyfriend want a child and had been preparing for one. This wouldn't have been the best way to introduce a child to the family, but he starts imagining the alternatives...

The work camps, rows of people labouring away, or so he was told. For sure, her mother would be placed there, after all the trouble she'd given the guild, as well as her poverty. She'd see a life of starving every day, barely getting by. He's risking so much to give her a worse life.

Ah yes, Merka and the guild just casually murdering their audience sympathy within the span of two paragraphs given that they use prisoners for something that’s effectively slave labor. Not that I’d expect a faction that vibes after MegaTen Law factions but with Chaos aesthetics to not have something of that ilk going on.

I do wonder if this should’ve probably been built up more, since I admittedly didn’t get a vibe of Jace being disquieted about some of the things Merka’s Guild got up to from earlier chapters. Like even something as simple as showing him attempting to brush things off uncomfortably after Layla bringing up something more sordid about his faction would’ve gone a long way towards hinting at that.

He hugs her close. "I'm so sorry," he mutters. "I'll do everything to find the surface, no matter how difficult it will be." That was his promise to his love.

Who has exactly zero awareness that you’re doing any of this and would probably call you a gigantic idiot for attempting to go behind Merka’s back like this before even making it back home where you could cook up a stronger alibi.

Vines arc in and out of the ceiling sporadically. Most of these faux roots are bare, their leaves now lying on the floor grey and shriveled like a colour-bleached wasteland. Jace stands across from Mark and Layla, holding Millie. Layla's grasp on Mark's hand leaves indents on his skin. It hurts.

Oh, so we’re back in the present day, huh? I kinda wonder if there should’ve been more framing for the scene that flashed back to the past such as a teeny spot before where Mark and Layla demand an explanation for why Jace has Millie with him, and then a teeny spot afterwards where it’s “anyway, let’s move on” to snap back to the present.

"Hey, 'if Millie is still with Daisy by the end of the day, then I may join,' right? That's the promise? I'm here to give her back," Jace says. His face is tough.

Layla: “...”

Jace: “Look, I realize that traumatizing the kid and her mom wasn’t an ideal outcome, but we had a deal, okay?” ._.;

Layla's voice is drained and her glare loose. "Yeah…"

Jace glances between the two. "Well. Here she is."

Layla: “I just… Jace, how on earth do you expect us to trust you after all of that?” >_>;
Jace: “Well, remembering that I’m taking a great personal risk and probably going to get turned into a rug if I get caught doing this would help.” ^^;

She shakes her head and shifts her body away from him. "Mark. Just, just take over. I can't do this anymore."

Mark: “... So do you want me to shoot him down, or…?”
Layla: “I don’t know, okay? Just do something, since I can’t deal with this right now!” >_>;

He slips his hand out to pat her shoulder. "Okay" He looks at the stranger. "So, how did you get Millie back? Is Merka going be coming after us?"

Yeah, that would be another advantage of framing the past sequence around a question like this, since that way it’d feel more “integrated” into the plot’s flow.

"No. He believes Millie is gonna be with my boyfriend near the Magma Cavern entrances. So we have time. We're safe."

Six words spoken seconds from disaster.

"Time?" Layla mutters. She looks back at him. "Until Merka comes to kill all three of us?"

Jace: “Uh… well… m-maybe?” ^^;

Jace hurriedly shakes his head "No! I was the one who lied, Once he finds out, he'll only blame me! I-I know how he works, so I can, uh, make it work. Convince us to get a second chance, especially since you were deceived too. Yeah?”

[ ]

“P-plus, if we find the surface, it won't matter! Not that it matters, you made a promise! This is what you agreed to!"

I would break up Jace’s line and drop in some body language from him or something.

Layla: “Jace, Merka’s more likely to turn you into a rug than let something like that slide!”

Jace: “... Yeah, that’s why I’m hoping that I know Merka a bit better than you, since… uh… that’d be pretty accurate if he didn’t trust me before this.”

"You know I can just beat the shit out of you and take her back!" she shouts.

Mark: “Oh my god. Layla, I thought that you wanted me to-” >.<
Layla: “Nuh-uh, ash-for-brains doesn’t just get to swoop back in after all of that like he’s some hero!”

"I swear! Once Merka finds out-"

She runs to him. Jace turns and braces. "You can trust me-"

Jace: “Again, I’m taking a big personal risk here-!” O_O;

Layla tackles him to the ground and furiously swipes his face, tears in her eyes. Jace huddles Millie close to him as he screams.

Oh, so Millie’s going to wake up and start crying in about five seconds again.

Mark tackles Layla. They roll a few times until he pins Layla down by her shoulders. She swipes her claws at him but they phase through his head like it doesn't exist. She realizes what she's doing and freezes her claw right above his cheek.

"Layla! What are you doing?!"

Layla: “Is everybody shrink-wrapped?! He let Merka take Millie in the first place!”

Jace: “Ow! I brought her back afterwards!”

"It's all his fault!" She cranes her head at Jace and points at him. Blood runs down his neck and cheeks as he fumbles around his bag. "But here he is with Millie! Let's take her back ourselves without Merka on our backs! He's just going to scapegoat us anyways!"

She rolls her shoulders to face him more, but Mark keeps her pinned. "I know what you're like! I'm going to end your pathetic-"

Jace: “But I-I really did-”

"Layla!" Tears collect under Mark's eyes. "You promised we won't kill anyone!"

Layla grits her teeth and glares deep into Mark's eyes. She puts her claws on his shoulders. Mark anticipates more unhinged anger but instead, her fury melts away and she pushes him off. "I did. Just… Just go. Do your thing. I'm sorry"

Mark: “... Also, what on earth did you give Millie anyways such that she didn’t wake up from all of that?” ^^;
Jace: “You’d… need to ask Merka that one, really. (Also, do you have one of those Oran mushrooms? I think I’m bleeding right now.)” ^^;

Mark backs away, taking a heavy sigh as he buries his forehead in his hands. Her partner stays lying on her back, staring at the ceiling with a cold grimace. The Quilava fumbles with an Oran Mushroom - blood's rolling down his front and sides and has gotten into his eyes. Millie rests on the floor beside him.

I was joking about the Oran mushroom comment-

Jace: “Yeah, yeah, real funny. Now shut up.” >_>;

"I-I-I promise! Me and my boyfriend always wanted to go to the surface! I won't scapegoat you or anything! I'm not your enemy!" He tears off the mushroom and chokes, swallowing it too fast.

Mark takes a few more deep breaths and sits down. "We are going to do nothing and cool down for five minutes."

Jace: “... Wait, nothing nothing? Since I was actually kinda hoping that we’d move along to someplace where it’d be a bit harder to be spotted.”

Jace gulps another bite down. "Minutes?"

"Yeah. I'm going to count to 300. Okay?"

Jace: “But wait, what’s a ‘minute’?”
Mark: “You know, ‘sixty seconds’? It’s five times as much as that?”
- Cue blank looks from Jace and Layla -
Mark: “... Look, I’m going to count numbers followed by ‘Mississippi’. When I get to ‘Three hundred Mississippi’, it’ll have been five minutes, okay?” -_-;
Layla: “What’s a ‘Mississippi’-?”
Mark: “Look, will you two just let me start counting now!” >.<

Jace nods. Mark begins to mouth each number. In this time, Jace brushes the blood off himself. It spreads around his coat, giving his fur the illusion of rust. Once he's clean, he picks up Millie and lets her rest against his side. Layla doesn't move at all.

298… 299… 300, Mark mutters. "Okay. Let's roll things back. Jace, do you really want to join us?"

Jace: “... Yes? Do you really think I’d have gone behind Merka’s back and walked off with his prize hostage at risk of ruining years of trust if I didn’t?”

Mark: “Okay, better question: why are you doing this, Jace?”

"Yes! Me and my boyfriend promised each other we’d find it one day. The blue ceiling, the burning torch in the sky, the endless fields of food. We joined the Pokemon's Guild to-"

None of that is still around, is it? Since this setup just screams “the Surface is going to be bitterly disappointing relative to expectations”.

"Hold on, Jace. I do believe you want to see the Surface, but why do you want to work with us in particular?"

Jace: “Because you know how to get there, and thus are my best chance at actually having my dream come true?”

Jace rubs his neck. "Well. I don't believe I'm going to find it on my own, and nobody else believes it can be found, so I think we should work together. Plus, you have the key! You do, right?"

"Yeah, we do."

Jace: “See, proving my point already.”

"Mark!" Layla shouts. "Don't give him info! His idiocy's already getting us killed!"

Shouldn’t that be ‘Your idiocy’ if this is meant to be directed at Mark in a “Don’t just tell him that! He’ll just steal it and run off!” capacity?

Mark reaches an arm out her way to assuage her. "Layla, let me handle it!" She gnashes her teeth but doesn't do anything more.

Mark: “... Can we go back to the time when you two were trying to kill each other but still had that teasing and bantering mood between you?” ^^;
Layla: “...”

Mark: “... Right, I suppose we’ve got some bridges to mend first.” ._.

He sucks air between his teeth. This is difficult enough. "Yes, we have the key. How do you know?"

"Well, there's no way some City leech had the money to support such a reward, who knows how much poke she burned just trying to kidnap Darold. Why would someone take such a crappy mission in a faraway dungeon? Unless they were really there to check out the door, because they found a key."

Waaaaaait, I’m not sure if I follow Jace’s train of thought since he’s talking about Daisy, but I could’ve sworn that Mark picked up the key off of a third party from that dead Gallade. It might have made sense to give a bit of a reminder to the readers as to how the two link to each other, especially since I’m not sure if it was ever explicitly mentioned how Jace came to know about that.

Mark nods. "Okay. And why do you think you know where it goes?"

"We follow Lucia's movements closely. Some of her guild's recent actions have involved the key, and we believe we know what she knows about it. Whatever it should unlocks should help us find the surface."

Mark: “... You realize that all of this is completely based off conjecture, right?”

Jace: “Look, to the best that Merka or anyone in the Guild knows, they’re doing this over the key. And it’s supposed to look just like the one you’re holding right now.”

"Okay. Now, you lied to Merka to get Millie to us. What exactly did you tell Merka?"

"That I and my boyfriend would raise Millie. In fact, he shouldn't find out, it's not like he'll barge into our home. But, if he does find out, I can convince him not to punish us. Or not too much, at least. I'm sure!"

Layla:

Jace: “I… could’ve used a bit more support there, really.”

"How?"

[ ]
"Well, you see, we're a big guild, yeah? So, he'll listen to me, uh, he'll give me a shot, y'know? So we just gotta tell him, that, that, well, we're still here for me,” Jace explained. “That yeah, I did do something a bit selfish. But that he still trusts us, and deserves forgiveness, and a second chance you know?”

[ ]

“P-plus, you guys aren't to blame, it's my idea! But he'll probably not do anything to you because of me. Y'know?"

I would recommend chopping up Jace’s dialogue and dropping in some body language. Though it’s fascinating that Jace’s true colors are significantly less “smooth operator” than he initially seemed and more “nervous and flustered”. I suppose it’s not just Layla that keeps up a front down in the tunnels in order to get by.

"Jace, I don't believe it'll work out that way." It's uneasy saying these words. "He was very vindictive about punishing Daisy."

Unclear who’s saying this and if it’s Mark or Layla.

"No! He's," Jace shuffles. "My friend. He must believe me."

Layla: “Jace, friends stop being friends after you double-cross them.”

Jace: “I-It’s not a double cross! B-Besides! Merka would want to see the Surface, too! If we find that, he’ll totally get off my back!”

Mark makes a deep sigh. He looks to the child, sleeping deeply against his side. Certainly, they'll be screwed following through on this. "Layla, I think we should risk this anyways, for Millie."

"No, we can't. Merka will kill us when he finds out. That's it. There's no hope."

Jace: “... Is she always such a pill like this?” :|
Mark: “She’s… been in a bit of a mood since you stood back and let Merka drag Millie off kicking and screaming earlier. (Also, how is she still sleeping through all of this?)” -_-;

"So?"

"What? I'm not dying over one child!" she shouts. "I'm sorry! I really want her to have a family! But we can't throw our lives away this easily!"

Mark: “Layla, just what do you think would’ve happened if we got caught by Merka trying to run off with Millie before he caught up with her and Daisy?”

Layla: “Yes, that’s the point, Mark!”

"May I ask something?" Jace says. "Why do you care so much about reuniting her with Daisy? She's a kidnapper! Lucia's guild will send her straight to the farms or work camp. They'll starve for the rest of their lives while working every day! I don't think that's How is her being thrust into that what's best for her?!"

Went out on a bit of a limb, but made some suggestion here for where I think you meant to take Jace’s dialogue but in clearer terms.

[ ] She shrugs. "I can't stand the thought of Millie being alone."

I would expand Layla’s body language there.

"She doesn't have to be!" Jace says. He puts a paw over his heart. "Me and my boyfriend are willing to look after her! We'll make sure she's safe, fed, do our best to give her a real home. Well, mostly my boyfriend cause I'll be out and about, but I'll pitch in whenever I'm around."

Layla: “Oi, were you bringing Millie back to us or not, you stupid weasel?!”

Nobody speaks for an uncomfortably long moment. Jace's ears flatten and he looks between them. "S-so what now? I'm not joining you? I just go home now with Millie? What about the key?"

Layla rolls onto her other side, facing the fire-type. "Well, we can't return her no matter what any of us wants now. You messed that up, thank you. But if you care about the surface so much, just give us the info regardless!"

Mark: “Uh, Layla. Considering how Millie’s probably going to die if we drag her along for our journey, we really should find someone to watch over her.” ^^;

Jace's shoulders droop. "I want to help you find the surface. Let me help you! I mean that!"

But the Sneasel's quiet. Mark stares with a somber expression.

Mark: “You… didn’t plan any of this out before you took off from Merka, did you, Jace?”

Jace: “Er… no, not really. It was kinda a spur of the moment thing.” ^^;

The fire-type sighs. "Alright. I'll tell you what I know." He moves Millie onto his leg and looks at her. A small smile grows on his face, deep down a little happy with the outcome. "And I'll bring her to my home to be taken care of."

Aw. No stoat party member. :<

Layla props herself up. "Well, spit it out!"

"Okay, okay! Lucia's been interested in learning about the surface about two or three eggbirths ago, although we don't know why. And she somehow came across a human key. This is what As far as we can tell, she does believes: that it leads to a human.”

[ ]

“We've also figured she believes the key belongs to a door somewhere in the Lower Tunnels, as she's been sent a Gallade and Machamp to scout those areas.

Would recommend breaking things up here for Jace’s dialogue and dropping in some reaction from Mark and/or Layla in between.

Mark: “Which I’m pretty sure we ran into after I woke up, but go on…”

"Here's the thing: we've sent a Magmar and Reuniculus to intercept them, and neither they nor the Gallade and the Machamp have been spotted since. They probably knocked themselves out while in uncharted tunnels.

Mark: “... Yes, ‘knocked out’, let’s go with that.”

"But, you found them, right? You must have looted it off a Gallade or Machamp! Well, the door's still out in the lower tunnels, probably untouched!"

Layla bobs her head as she listens to this. Her expression is deep in revelation. Mark figures it out too.

The key led to him.

Mark: “... Oh boy, that’s not a good omen for the folks we’re going to run into.”

"So there," Jace says, dejected. "You absolutely sure there's nothing I can do to join? We could do so much together."

Layla closes her eyes and takes her time thinking. Her face is grim.

Layla:

"Hey, Layla." Mark kneels by her. "Remember when the Flygon said you couldn't be trusted?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I could have left you. I didn't need to fight for you. It would have made my life easier. But I did anyways, because I know I can trust someone who put themselves in danger for someone else. He's doing the same with Millie. Do you think you're willing to trust him like I did for you?"

Layla: “Oh my god, Mark are you seriously using this against me?”

Mark:

"I was going to kill him." Two claws clumsily grab his arm. Blood rolls down their edge. "Don't you regret trusting me?"

Mark looks at her claws, then two her face. He rubs the back of her hand. "No. Not ever since we formed the team."

Jace: “So, I’m on the team then?” ^^;

She closes her eyes and nods. Her voice is soft. "Okay, Jace. I'll give you a shot, but you must do this instead: reunite Millie with her mother once we find the surface."

I would suggest rephrasing this final line a bit kinda like so:

She closes her eyes and nods. Her voice is soft. "Okay, Jace. I'll give you a shot, but on one condition.”

[ Some body language with Jace looking up puzzledly or whatever ]

“Once we find the surface, you’re going to help reunite Millie with her mother."

But there’s other ways of slicing this if that isn’t quite to your fancy.

Though I suppose that this is the point where it makes sense to hit up the summary before curtain call. All-in-all, I thought it was a pretty good chapter since it looks like we’re putting together a fuller team in earnest, though there were a couple of issues that I felt held things back a bit.

IMO, the main strength of this chapter was its characterization, since it did a lot for helping us find out more about who Jace is as a person and who he really is behind the front that he puts up to the outside world, even if I suspect he’s going to wind up bitterly disappointed with his “friendship” with Merka at some point down the road. It was also nice to Layla having to come to terms with putting herself out there and taking a risk with trusting others, ditto Mark’s role in leaning on past experiences with his team for helping that moment happen. Looks like he’s growing into that ‘team leader’ role pretty quickly, which is nice to see as Mark growing past his initial “fish out of water getting drug along” phase.

As for weaknesses, the main one that stands out to me is that I kinda think that the flashback sequence involving Jace cutting and running from Merka could’ve been framed a bit better, since I didn’t recall Chapter 9 really teeing up a “how did you even get here?” moment that would’ve logically led into a “open with flashback” moment like you did here. There were also some spots that needed more description, especially in the conversation between Jace, Layla, and Mark, since it got a bit hard at times to get a feel for how their moods were at various points, which wouldn’t have been the case with a bit more body language or internal thoughts slung around.

It took a while, but I’m glad to be getting back into this story @BestLizard . Hope the feedback helped, since even if I had some criticisms, I thought it was pretty touching, and I’m looking forward to seeing Jace taking his place on Team Surface… even if I have no idea how on earth Millie’s going to go along with those three while still staying in one piece.

But I suppose that will be a story for another day. Till next time, and best of luck with Review Blitz. ^^

 

[bluesidra]

For Blitz purposes: Number of Reviews per chapter!

Ch2 onwards are eligible for Blitz 22/23 week3 bonus!

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, it was a bit of a marathon, but I got in a review of Below in time for Review Event after all. Since hey, I had fun with the story for the first 10 chapters, so it sounded like as good a reason as any to polish off that last straggler and get current.

Chapter 11

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

They walk for a long while since after Jace agrees to the new condition to raise Millie until she can be reunited with Daisy on the surface. It's been silent since Layla needed time to flush out complicated emotions. She squeezes Mark’s hand tightly throughout. He doesn’t hesitate to squeeze back, feeling how shaken she is underneath.

Wait, how is Mark not bleeding from being grabbed tightly considering that Sneasel have claws? ^^;

Also, something about the first sentence feels inconsistent for verb tense. IMO you should either have it all in present tense if it’s all ongoing events, or else all in past tense if it’s meant to be “this happened and now we’re onto current events”.

Once they’re past the monochrome mineral veins and return to drab brown corridors, her claw shifts to his forearm. A smile worms its way back onto her face. A little later, she leans forward to look past Mark’s side - Mark’s between him and Layla, likely on purpose.

“Alright, Jace! You ready to hear the rules?” she asks.

Jace: “Th-There are rules?”

Layla: “Yes? Do you really think that you can just go and knife us in the back and that there wouldn’t be consequences from it?”

Jace nestles the still-sleeping Millie between both arms. She’s been turning more, the sleep spore losing its effect. He scoots forward so he can look back at Layla. “Yes!”

I’m surprised that Jace can balance this sort of relative weight this well on his forearms while walking long distance given that Quilava are facultative bipeds, but eh. Your story, your rules.

“Great! First: we don’t do any killing unless absolutely necessary. Emphasis on the ‘absolute’. If you think they’ll kill you later, just put up with it.”

“What?” he says. Concern spreads across his face.

Jace: “Layla, have you seen the neighborhood around here? Just how on earth is that policy not going to come and bite us in the ass?!”

Layla: “It was Mark’s idea, really. Trust me, if it was up to me, you wouldn’t be standing here over that stunt you pulled with Millie earlier.”

Her elbow bumps Mark’s side. “I know! But this guy wouldn’t join otherwise, and he’s important. But I don’t know Jace, having morals sounds kinda fun, don’t you think? If not badass? You know what I mean?”

Jace: “Sounds more like you need to get your head checked.”

Mark: “Look, this is a hard precondition for you to come along with us to find the Surface, so are you in or no?” >_>;

“What about Lucia’s people?”

“Uh…” her eyes shift to Mark’s.

Layla: “Yes- er… actually, Mark, do they count? Since they’re kinda assholes anyways and it would make recruiting Jace a bit easier…”

His brow furrows. “No.”

“‘No,’” she says, imitating Mark’s annoyed expression. “Well there you go. Sorry, love!”

I think that it might make sense to rephrase Jace’s line about “Lucia’s people” to be more explicit about “we can kill them, right?” since at first I interpreted his line more along the lines of “Even Lucia’s people?” and it made Mark’s answer read a bit unexpectedly.

Jace’s face grows worried. In a quiet voice directed at Mark, he asks “Are you sure? You do know what they do, right Mark?”

“Ugh,” Mark mutters.

Mark: “I don’t even want to know, do I-?”

“I do!” Layla says. “I want them to die too but this guy doesn’t allow it, okay? On the flip side, we haven’t killed any of your guys since he joined, okay? Pretty fair!”

Jace: “‘Since he joined’?”

Layla: “Yeah, well, you know how life down here is, but that’s all water under the bridge, isn’t it?”

He growls but his eyes shift as he considers. “If you’ve been sparing our guys then fine. Although please don’t suggest we’re equal to Lucia’s guild again, okay?”

Narrator: “They’re equal to Lucia’s guild, especially in a story that takes as much thematic influence from MegaTen as this one.”

Layla: “Would you rather I suggest that they’re just better than you-?”
Jace: “Look, love. If you’re expecting this partnership to work out, you’d better get in the habit of watching your tongue!”

Layla carelessly nods. “Mm-hmm!”

There’s a bit of awkward silence but eventually Jace’s scowl disappears. “What about dungeon Pokemon, though?”

Mark: “...”

Layla: “Oh come on, Mark. Surely they can count as an exception. They’re not even in their right minds anymore!” >_>;

Layla glances at her partner again. He places a hand on his chin. He still remembers the Noivern’s throat wiggling as he pressed the broken shaft against it. “Let’s... try not to.”

Easier said than done, though I suppose the easiest way to avoid going down the slippery slope is just to try and avoid getting anywhere close to it to begin with.

She looks to the new member once more. “‘Let’s try not to!’ works for you?”

Jace shrugs. “Eh.”

Jace: “Look, I’m just saying, if one of those Dungeon Pokémon goes for my throat, I’m putting it down by any means necessary.” >_>;
Layla: “I mean, I would assume ‘let’s try not to’ would focus more on just avoiding them?” ^^;

“Okay! That’s settled. So then, this is how operations will go!” Layla continues. She straightens her back just a bit but still tries to past Mark. “If all three of us focus on the same mission all the time, we won’t earn enough to keep up with costs, so I’ll have you do missions while I and Mark do ours together, and once he’s good enough, all three of us will earn independently.”

[ ]

“Once we stockpiled enough, we’ll explore any place that interests us, or any leads we have. That good?”

[ ]


Jace nods. “Mmm-hmm!”

I would suggest breaking the first paragraph up, and it might make sense to show a bit more of Jace and Mark’s combined reactions here, since it’s admittedly a bit hard to pick up on intended undertones for how they’re meant to see this. For instance, are Mark and Jace meant to vibe as enthusiastic? Or hesitant? Since while I assume it’s the former, the dialogue leaves some room for interpretation either way.

“And of course, for the short term, we’ll search around where we got the key while you deliver Millie, uh, ‘home.’ If we find something, we’ll tell you.”

“Yup.”

I think that you’re missing a ‘Millie’ there in that first paragraph.

[ ]

“How long will that take?” she asks.

“Hmm…” he thinks about this. “It’ll take us about two days to get home, but I’ll probably need some time to help her adjust to her new home. So, hm…”

Would suggest adding some reaction from some combination of Layla and Mark here, especially the latter since Mark has kinda faded into the background over the past 10-ish paragraphs, and it’d probably make sense to show off how he’s reacting to Layla’s ideas / suggestions here.

“Just find us in Myla’s Cafe when you’re ready, okay?” She lurches forward. Mark leans back clumsily to let her see past him. His partner smirks wide. “One last requirement. You gotta introduce me to the Salazzle someday!”

Both men turn their heads to her.

Oh, so Layla’s looking for a new GF, huh? Since that was quite the additional stipulation to throw in at the last moment there. :V

“What?” she says, looking between the two. She’s cute! Or are they a guy, I thought their pheromones were working on me?!?”

Wait, male Salazzle exist in this setting too? Or was the ‘Salazzle’ meant to be ‘Salandit’?

“Transwoman. So yeah their phermones would be working on you.”

“Aah,” Layla says.

… Wait, how does that work with a Salazzle, anyways? Meaning that said Salazzle transitioned as a Salandit to become a Salazzle? Or that there is no gender barrier to evolution for Salandit in this setting?

And I guess that’s why I didn’t notice the pheromones. Mark thinks.

Wait, but wouldn’t pheremones not necessarily be discernible outside of their species? Though I actually don’t recall this ever being mentioned in that moment where those Pokémon from Merka’s band ambushed Team Surface. It might merit slipping in a passing mention of Mark or Layla finding it strange such that Layla and Mark put two and two together about her background here.

“What’s her name?” she continues.

“She’s Raquel. And she’s already dating a Lopunny who can get kinda jealous. At least to strangers…”

Layla: “Meh, I can take her.”

Mark: “Layla, stay focused on the task at hand. Please!” O_O;

Layls’s grin grows wider and her eyes widen with a hopeful gleam. “No way! Introduce me to them both?”

Especially since Jace already explicitly warned that the Lopunny was a jealous personality. Not exactly the sort you want to have a three-way relationship with.

The newcomer laughs. “Your rules. Don’t get too hopeful about anything, though.”

[ ] Wait, does this mean male Salazzle exist? Mark realizes. He blinks and looks to the two. What are they talking about?

Oh, so it’s not me that noticed that. Though it might make sense to emphasize Mark having a belated / dawning realization there that something sounded off. Wonder what that implies about what Mark knew Pokémon as on the Surface and if they were living creatures or cartoon animals to him.

She giggles. The rest of the walk is in much higher spirits, a relief from the roller coaster today has been. Layla ends up asking more about Jace’s boyfriend. Another Quilava, in fact. She asks about how long they’ve been together, how and they get along - she seems curious about the other one who’ll take care of Millie.

The questions end up getting more invasive though, if not risque. Jace either doesn’t notice or is actually boldly enjoying answering her. The conversation keeps devolving and Mark ends up blushing lots and hanging his head as the two enthusiastically talk and laugh about their favourite activities.

Would suggest breaking this paragraph up into two since it’s a bit on the long-winded side and you seem to have two separate ideas encapsulated in it.

“Hey, this too much for you?” Layla asks, just noticing her partner. “We can stop if that’ll make you feel better. Or, if you’re nervous about joining in, just start with saying what’s your favourite-”

Jace stops walking, falling behind the pack. “Eh, this is where we part ways, so fun time’s over anyways.”

Mark: “Huh? Already? And how do you even-?”

A smaller exit is to the side, barely taller than Jace.

On his hindlegs or on all fours? :V

Layla salutes him off. “Alright, Jace. Hopefully this team thing can work out. Whenever you come back, just wait around Myla’s Cafe in the mornings and try to catch us. It’s in the middle of Scrap Town.”

“Y-yeah. Looking forward to meeting you” Mark says.

He Jace waves and scoots into the tunnel. “Will do!”

inb4 something about this doesn’t end well. Since if Merka notices Jace being absent longer than expected…

That said, I kinda wonder if there ought to have been a bit more depicted of the various characters’ moods and reactions here, since it doesn’t feel like there’s much dealing with the present arrangement everyone’s in sinking in on these three, especially with Mark.

“And make sure to treat Millie well!” Layla shouts.

“Yup!”

Layla, I don’t think it’s Jace and his treatment of Millie that you need to be worried about there… ^^;

The glow of his fire diminishes as he disappears. Layla’s lazily waves to him, sighs, and leans against Mark’s shoulder.

Mark: “Wait, how are you managing this when you’re supposed to be-”
Layla: “You’re freakishly large for a Sableye, remember?”
Mark: “... Oh right, huh. That’s a thing.”

Mark shifts his shoulder, giving her more room. “What’s wrong?”

Layla: “Well, to start with, I’m still crabby about what happened with Millie earlier and not fully convinced you made the right call bringing Jace along onto the team…” >_>;
Mark: “... Still? Layla, I thought you let that go last chapter!” .-.

“I’d still rather she’s back with Daisy. I’m still not sure if this is really the right choice.”

Yup, I knew it. Though I wouldn’t exactly blame Layla for second-guessing Mark here either given how well their attempt at a rescue mission for Millie played out a few chapters ago.

She starts moving again. The merry demeanor she built up is gone, heads and shoulders now hanging.

I mean, I knew that Layla was the type to put up a facade from prior chapters, though it’s still a bit disconcerting to see just how smoothly she can go between “acting” and her true feelings. As if she’s had to do this for a while and it’s become well-practiced for her.

Mark takes time to carefully select his words. “It's not wrong that we’re choosing our own safety in at the end of the day,” he insists. “But more importantly, we can’t forget we’re not abandoning them. This will all be resolved once we find the surface, where they can hide from Merka. We’ve just got to keep our focus on that.”

Would suggest a couple of tweaks here, including adding a speech tag for Mark. And I frankly will be surprised if this actually comes to pass as intended instead of blowing up in some fashion down the road.

Her expression doesn’t change. “Yeah. I’m just worried about how long that’ll take.”

Forever and a day? Layla, you worry too much. Things will be fine for Millie and Daisy… Probably. Maybe.

“And I’m sure she’ll find happiness with Jace and Drake. She won’t be alone.”

Cue many nights ahead of Millie bawling her lungs out about wanting to be with her real mother. Since for all her faults, Daisy genuinely loved Millie and there didn’t seem to be anything hinting in the opposite direction beyond Millie being terrified that Daisy would hate her for being disobedient.

“Yeah...” She takes a deep breath and puts her chin up. She deliberately swings her and his arm in a wide arc as she walks. More time later, she turns her head back and asks another question. “Hey Mark, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”

“Mmm?”

Mark: “This isn’t going to be about you not liking the ‘let’s not kill’ rule, is it?”

Layla: “No, I’m actually pretty okay with that one. There was something else on my mind, really.”

“How do you do it?”

His brow rises. “Do what?”

“Everything!” She tilts her head down, thinking of examples. “When that Flygon and other Pokemon were on my ass, you didn’t have to fight for me! You didn’t have to, I don’t think I would have.”

[ ]

“A-and you took on that Monkey mission! What was that? Andy told me about that. Like thank goodness he’s a good judge of character but you really weren’t worried about how suspicious he was?” she asks. “And the whole Millie’s hand thing! How!?! How Mark, she lost your hand! A whole fountain of blood and you just fixed it? You were even relaxed when I found you! And then. And then—”

[ ]

“Today! How were you able to just watch Merka take Millie today? How do you do it? I need to know!” Her breath is light after the rambling.

IMO, your last paragraph here with Layla speaking needs to be more than one paragraph. I suggested 3 with 2 bits of description interleaving, but there’s probably room for you to play around with things here a bit to get a balance that isn’t too “wall-of-text”-y.

“What?” Mark tilts his head. “Is it not that normal?”

Mark: “I mean, judging from your reaction, I’m guessing it’s not, but… it’s not like it’s unheard of down here, right?”

She lets go of him and holds her head in both arms. “What do you mean, ‘not normal!’ Do you not fear death or something?!?”

Obviously not, since Mark has been putting himself in danger since the moment he woke up for reasons not immediately related to his own self-advancement.

He frowns. “N-not really?”

I kinda wonder if there’s a story behind that one as well. Since with how unfazed Mark was when being there to witness gory and disturbing scenes… you’d think that it might have some implications for what sort of person he was before getting whisked down to the tunnels and transformed.

“Aaagh!” Her head cranes downwards and her claws interlock over it.

She stays this way for a while. Mark ends up looking at his torch-carrying hand. He tenses it and watches the muscles flex beneath his skin. It eases him, if only a little.

I wouldn’t have pegged Layla as being the type to have a strong fear of death, but thinking back to her reaction in the incident with the Flygon and how she’s apparently a master at keeping a poker face… yeah, I suppose I can see it in retrospect.

After she calms down, she says “Mark?”

His eyes stay focused on his backhand as he digs through his memories. There’s none. There’s his name, he was a young adult, a tall human, male, supposedly decent at school. What about his occupation? Shouldn’t he know that too?

That’s technically not ‘none’ there given that Mark can recall details such as him being young, tall, academic, and named ‘Mark’. It might be more accurate to say either ‘barely anything’ or else ‘nothing that he didn’t already know after coming to’ or something like that.

“Mark?” she asks once more, more concerned. “I’m sorry about the outburst. I’m envious, especially after everything today. Really, that wasn’t fair.”

You might want to consider breaking up Layla’s line into two paragraph and turning the speech tag into a more involved bit of description if this is supposed to be a more heartfelt moment between her and Mark. Basically stopping and letting things linger a bit for effect.

He strains his hand. “I don’t know who I am. Or why I am this way. What my past was. What I did. Why I do the things I do. Nothing.”

[ ]

“And I don’t know what is right or wrong or weird or expected l because I have nothing to compare to,” he says. “I thought I was trying to be a good person by not trying to hurt others but maybe I’m just weak. I-”

I would suggest dividing up Mark’s dialogue here into two pieces and dropping some sort of body language or reaction between the two before he continues on, since this is a lot of dialogue to be saying in a straight shot without so much as stopping to take a moment to breathe.

“No!” Layla says.

[ ]


“I have no way of knowing. And maybe the surface isn’t that different from here. I forgot what it's like living there.” His knuckles turn pale.

This probably makes sense to take a moment to linger on Layla and Mark’s shared reaction here, since it feels as if there should be more of a pause between them speaking these two lines, but it doesn’t come through by virtue of the fact that they come back to back with nothing in the way of narration to “pause” things for the readers.

Layla puts her claw on his shoulder and nudges it. “I don’t think anybody here actually wants to kill! I do it ‘cause I don’t want to die.”

[ ]

“I wish I was more like you.”

This is another line where chopping it up into chunks and lingering for emphasis is something to consider, since it feels a little strange for Layla to say “I do it (be)cause I don’t want to die” and then just move straight onto “I wish I was more like you.”

Ironically enough, if you move “I wish I was more like you” to be the first sentence, then it reads naturally coming out in one breath. Dunno why that is, but it’s something that struck me if you definitely want to keep things in a one-line formation.

Mark draws out a long breath. His hand eases. “Thanks. I don’t really know how I’m not so afraid. But I guess when things get stressful, I keep my breathing steady, and acknowledge that panicking will make things worse.”

… I actually hadn’t ever considered it, but is Mark’s fearlessness natural? Or is it something that has been given to him? Since we know that he met with some manner of disembodied voice in a vein similar to the PMD games. Given that that helped make him into a Sableye to begin with…

Her claws keep rubbing his shoulder. She’s listening intently, eyes locked on him.

He looks back. “That being said, there is one feeling I can’t shake.”

“What is it?”

That she wuvs you? I mean, for all of Layla’s protests that she’s open with her relationships, she does seem to have some initial sparks hinting towards the start of something deeper between her and Mark.

“I think I’ve witnessed worse, and that’s what makes it easier to stay relaxed. Like, everything so far isn’t to be afraid, compared to what is actually out there. Like, it’s a relief. Healing Millie’s hand was rote. Normal. A pushover.”

Which is a wonderful omen for what the Surface is presently like right now, truly. Doesn’t exactly sound like some sort of paradise where you can run away from all your troubles there.

“Mark…”

“But I do worry about what could be much worse than everything I’ve seen so far.”

I’m not fully sure what you mean by the “what” there, but my assumption was that Mark was worried about one day running into something that would genuinely shock and disturb him and how bad it could get. It might make sense to rephrase this a bit such that the intended meaning is a bit clearer.

She’s silent, rubbing his shoulder gently. Mark stretches his fingers in and out. There is something soothing about his hand, the more he looks at it. He stays focused on it until the cave mouth widens up. The faux stars of Scrap Town peek between the circular caps of treeshrooms like a million candles inside a chasm. He looks up to these instead of his hand. They already make him feel like he’s at home.

Oh, back home already, huh? Though it might make sense to give some passing mentions that these two are talking as they are walking, since for a moment, I thought that they had just stayed and lingered at the spot where they parted ways from Jace.

“Well hey,” Layla says once more, looking at the stars with him. “Hopefully something where you woke up can help with your memories.”

“Yeah. And hopefully it’ll help us find the surface.”

Not fully convinced that Mark wants to have his memories back given that it’s been strongly implied that he’s seen some serious stuff before becoming a Sableye, but…

She tugs his arm and gives up a warm smile. “Let’s get some rest, okay?”

I kinda get the feeling that this was supposed to be delivered as they either made it to Scrap Town’s outskirts or else to their doorstep or something like that. Since I get the feeling that this wasn’t meant to be said in the middle of the boonies, but the lack of any explicit mention of their surroundings winds up giving off that vibe.

… Or that could be the intent after all, but either way, it probably makes sense to be a bit more explicit about where this is being said.

All of Layla’s emotional exhaustion has turned into physical exhaustion and she sleeps before he even says good night. Mark can’t drift away, however. Anxiety bubbles up in his stomach. What is right? And what could be more terrifying than the Noivern? His imagination is beat on this, even after what must be hours.

Would suggest making the “What is right [...]” part into a series of questions there.

Sleep silently has its way eventually. A purple-and-blue void shifts around and never makes form. Two voices speak in the distance. His own, and one that feels like a friend.

Oh, so we’re getting to meet the disembodied voice that recruited Mark in live-time, huh?

“The sky is gray and the rain is heavy. Do you stick to the plans you already have, or call them off? Do you avoid going outside if at all?”

“I’d just grab an umbrella. You can’t help the rain,” his own voice responds. “If I had no umbrella, I still wouldn’t be bothered walking in the rain.

Actually, wait. So were all of the other moments in this vein moments in the present day where Mark was sleeping or flashbacks? At first I assumed it was the latter, but…

There’s the sound of a pen scratching against paper. Mark continues. “In fact, I find I enjoy sitting on the balcony a bit when it rains. I enjoy it, in a sentimental way”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It's a weird feeling. It was raining when we buried my father. I can’t help but to think of him when it rains. Not of just the burial itself, but also the times he was still around.”

Boy, this guy really did see some stuff before his memories got wiped. Though I’m just realizing now that it’s entirely possible that this “disembodied voice” is really just latent memories of going to a therapist. Since I can see that bit about “the sound of a pen scratching against paper” there. If that’s indeed what things are, it’s a really clever way of working in the PMD personality quiz in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone else do before.

“Oh Mark…”

“It's not a bad thing! Life’s complicated. We feel sad from time to time but I don’t think it's bad that we feel sad once in a while. I think it's even healthy to feel sad here and there. Feeling is what makes us human, and so I end up appreciating that I’m still alive, and that all the people I saved must still be grateful too, even though we’ll still die one day.”

Mark’s line of dialogue feels a bit long-winded again. Consider thinking of an excuse to insert a pause of some sort and divide up his response to this voice into two pieces.

“Wow. That’s, really deep.”

“Thanks. But don’t worry about it, professor. Plus, I also end up thinking about all the good times I had with my father anyways, so the feeling is more bittersweet. He’s who inspired me to join the military, you know?”

Boy does that explain a lot about Mark’s character quirks we’ve seen from him earlier. Even if it makes me wonder how on earth he went from that to a Sableye stranded in an abandoned tunnel network.

“Mmm.”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “How many more questions do we have?”

“We’re halfway done. Do you want to take a break?”

“Yeah, sure. Thank you.”

Yeah, this is totally a memory of a therapy session. I can already tell. Though it makes me wonder in that case if the last few questions we see in this story are going to be wildly off-spec from what is more conventional for a PMD personality quiz.

The voices become hazy and echoey as the void fades away. He briefly hears the discombobulated voice of a third person.

Everything turns dark.

OwO

What’s this?

Though yeah, feeling pretty good about my prediction from earlier, even if I wonder who on earth this third party is, since it’s unlikely they’d be mentioned if it weren’t going to become important.

Layla pulls Mark out of bed with excited vigour and she rushes them through the morning routine. It’s all a blur to Mark as he’s detached from reality while he combs his mind for any professor he may remember. Nothing comes, so he goes through a list of every name he knows while they head to the cafe and eat breakfast. Even his partner is tuned out, despite excitedly speculating all the dark human magic waiting for them to discover. He nods along to be polite - she herself is too lost to notice Mark’s lack of presence.

Layla: “Mark, did you not sleep well or something? Since I’d have thought you’d have gotten on my case more for going on about that whole uman-hay thing in ublic-pay like that.”

He reaches all names starting with N once they’re jogging into the tunnels but he gives up. Not one of them feels reminiscent of a professor’s name and he’s getting lost forgetting names and going back too often. Plus, he’s actually awake now. Should he tell Layla about the professor? What stops him is he still doesn’t know if they’re real.

… Wait, that was a professor from his memories there? I didn’t get that vibe, but I suppose that it wouldn’t be too out of place for one to conduct an interview like that after class or something.

He ends up forgetting about the whole topic as they get further into the caves. He carries both torches while Layla leads with the map held in front of her. The tunnels are more varied than before: they go through a huge slanted floor with fields of stalagmites coming from the ground through tight tunnels barely wider than them but so tall their torch don’t reach the top, and tunnels with a mess of interweaving streams spewing out of the walls and ceilings.

Small suggestion for a rephrasing there. I’m not fully satisfied with it since something about the sentence feels long enough that it might make sense to consider rendering it as two smaller ones.

No Pokemon are seen or heard the entire journey. Even mushrooms are found only between long stretches, and each has a stunted size and emits a nauseating odour. No need to ask if they could eat them. The only life to find here is their footsteps echoing behind them.

Totally a good sign about the neighborhood you two are entering right now. /s

Layla angles the map. “Hey, this is weird.”

“Hmm, what?”

She stops and rotates both her head and the map the other way. The corner she looks at is more intricate than a spider’s web. “This map is wrong.”

Mark: “Wait, what? Wrong how, Layla?”

“Huh?” he says. “Are we lost?”

“No, we can backtrack. We are heading for an uncharted place and nobody has a reason to go this far deep. I think Andy just got lazy making this.” She chuckles.

I can already tell that this is going to wind up being a disaster. Since it’d be easier to count the times in fiction where one gets lost in an unknown and hazardous place without some sort of nasty beastie or other surprise coming into play within about 30 seconds.

They retrace their steps. Layla walks up and down a few adjacent tunnels to make sure they’re lined up with the map once again. She picks a new path that should be more complete, but they still need to walk back as they walk off the map. This happens more the farther in they get, and each mistake makes her slower with caution.

She plants her face in the map once they meet the 100th crossroads. “I can’t find an uncharted place!”

Mark: “Layla, I thought you said we were heading to an uncharted place.”

Layla: “Well, uh… congrats? We’re here? Kinda?” ^^;

“Well, you were able to find me the first time.”

Her head jerks the other way. “By accident! I was running away, trying to get lost!” She stretches the map to flatten it so more light can reach it. She stares at it a bit more. “The fact it's up a cliff complicates everything. Heck, I don’t even know if we’re at the right level! These tunnels pass above and below each other!”

Actually, wait. What do the different levels of the tunnels look like on Andy’s map anyways? Is it effectively several separate maps that each share like a quarter of the overall map or something like that? Since you’d think that even just two layers overlapped over each other on a map would get difficult to interpret in short order.

Mark leans in and pretends to know where to look. “So, what do we do?”

“Eh. We’ll just have to keep going. It took Lucia days to find you after all and so it might be that way for us as well.”

She rolls the map back up and stuffs it under her arm.

“Still, I’ll just use my gut. ‘Where would I go if I was running for my life’, y’know? Plus, I know for sure I went past here when I was running from them.” She grabs her own torch from Mark and leads once more, looking up just as often as she does around.

IMO, this paragraph works better cut up into pieces. Though yeah, feeling really good about my prediction that this is going to end terribly, since Layla’s suggestion sounds like a fast way to get lost and never found again by an outside party.

“It does make me wonder how that one Mystery Dungeon we found was formed. How did so many Pokemon find themselves so far in?” she adds. He has no answers.

The two become absorbed in exploring the lifeless caves.

Mark: “I’m… just going to not think too hard about what on earth brought all those Pokémon out here and what happened to them given that Mystery Dungeons form from too much bloodshed and violence happening all in one place.

Much more time passes. Likely half the day, Mark reasons. He would worry about being lost if it weren’t for Layla humming like she’s strolling in a garden. She only checks the map periodically, and less so the deeper in they are.

Sure is a good thing that this setting apparently doesn’t have the hunger mechanic from the canon games, otherwise these two would be a lot more miserable at the moment.

“Hey. This place looks familiar,” she says. She holds her torch up high and cranes her head upwards. “I made a lot of distance between myself and them so I was thinking, ‘hey, I’d get away if I climb up. They wouldn’t look that way.’”

Wait what about the place looks familiar? Since I’m not really sure what Layla is seeing her that’s tipping her off that she might have seen this place before. It might make sense to highlight a specific feature for Layla to focus on or something.

Her pace is slow and she scans the ceiling. It rolls upward in a graceful curve. “I was staring up here desperately. I noticed it curled here….” She steps near the wall. A lot of small rocks jut out, forming natural footholds. “And I climbed up here.”

I presume that this happened offscreen before she ran across Mark? Since I actually don’t remember this place from the first two chapters popping up… unless it’s that hill thing that the two saw while going down those mushroom caps.

She finally stuffs her map into her bag and runs a claw over various ridges. “So Mark, guess you’ll have to learn how to climb right here. Think you’re ready?”

Wait, has Mark seriously gone this entire time without climbing up some sort of surface in the caves? Since I could’ve sworn that he did. Unless if the point was that he’d need to learn how to climb rocks right here.

He looks up. The darkness hiding the top makes it look ginormous. “Did we not bring rope?”

“We’re not bitches! I told you this!” She says, chuckling. “Plus, there will be times you don’t have rope and need to climb anyways. So, figure it out now!” She fastens her bag tight around her. “It's not that hard, seriously. You were able to climb down and climbing up is just that in reverse. Believe in yourself!”

Though I’m guessing “something something, Sneasel claws that are naturally adapted to climbing well”.

She crams her torch into her maw and ascends the wall. Mark does the same with his own torch and mimics Layla’s movements. It isn’t that hard - his claws dig into the surface, adding a lot more grip than he expected. He isn’t heavy either and ends up climbing with the same ease he would a ladder. The corners of his lips tug up: he is a cave monster! Could he scramble over the ceiling?

I suppose that that would be a benefit to being a Sableye, yes. Since being a little cave gremlin does help a lot for fulfilling a gem-based diet.

It’s a short sensation though as the first lip comes quickly. He hoists himself over, Layla lending a claw to help. An uncomfortable smell comes their way, something like rot but not that pungent. “Alright, we head over to the Gallade.”

Mark: “Ugh, what a stench. Not looking forward to seeing what he looks like after about a week to decompose in this cave.”

They travel the short walk that leads to him. He still lies in a dried, red puddle. His skin is washed of colour and deflated, yet not grossly disfigured. It’s not even that ghastly. With how little life grows down here, there must not be enough bacteria to decompose corpses properly.

Oh, so bodies left behind in some parts of the tunnels just mummify/become fossilized, huh? Wonder if we’ll also come across any bodies that have moved further along in that direction.

Layla kicks the warrior’s side. “Take this!”

And Layla just displaying the tunnel’s standard degree of respect due to the dead there.

“Layla!”

Layla: “What? It’s not like I could eat what’s left of him with how gross his body is now-”

Mark: “Okay, different topic, please!” [squirpuke]

“He’s probably the one who wrapped you up in rope!” Kick. “Come on, join the fun!” Kick. “Lucia scum!” She giggles.

Mark: “Layla! We agreed that we wouldn’t-!” >_>;
Layla: “Gallade’s already dead, remember? Beside, the team rules didn’t say anything about not messing around with bodies.”

Mark: “We… clearly need to add a few more of them after we’re done here.” >.<

He facepalms and shakes his head. He shrugs her off by walking to the cliff the Psychic-type supposedly fell from and getting a head start.

“Hey wait!” she shouts, and she’s up beside him in no time, torch in her mouth once more. “Wah are you ooin ii-e-he-e-ee ooo-in i-ouh ee?”

“Wah?!?”

Mark: “Layla, take the torch out of your mouth and speak again. Slowly.” .-.

But she just laughs and rushes up to the top. “Pfft,” and another smile grows on his face, before seeing if she can beat her. He can’t catch up however and ends up dragging himself over the top alone. The massacre reveals itself.

He double-takes, shocked by how visceral their fight was. A Reuniculus and a Magmar lie in the middle while a Machamp rests against a wall. The dirt around them is vibrant red in a wide radius. Streaks stain down the sides from wide gashes and ugly scorch on their bodies. He angles his head away before he looks inside their injuries.

Whelp, that officially confirms that whatever Mark saw in the military it was officially worse than half-a-dozen Pokémon tearing each other apart and lying in a bloody puddle.

Crimson snakes up to the fighting type, who must have dragged herself there knowing she was dying. With no blood inside her but bacteria not doing their job, her skin is an eerie, pearly white. Its head is gone.

Mark: “I feel as if I should be freaking out like crazy right now, but somehow I’m… not, really.”
Layla: “Isn’t that a good thing? For a second, I thought you were gonna get all squeamish like you do over how we get meat down here.” ^^;

“Wait,” Layla says. She carefully approaches the corpse. “She wasn’t missing her head last time.”

Mark:

“Layla, I don’t think that we’re alone right now.”

He follows closely behind her. Grim as it is, it is the violence Mark has come to expect. The folded piece of paper lying on her chest wasn’t, though.

“Was there a note there either?” he asks.

Mark: “Okay, we’re definitely not alone right now!”

“Nope.” She picks it up by the corner and gently shakes to unfold it. “Uh, Mark, can you read it?”

Oh, so it’s a letter written in human script, huh?

She faces it to him. It’s English, written in blood. Mark reads it aloud. “‘Anthropy lives. We know you’re human. Turn back and give now, Mark.’”

“Anthropy”, huh? As in something pertaining or relating to humans? What on earth was that? Some sort of military experiment that got Mark stuck down here like this?

Dread enters him for the first time since he was bound in rope. He tenses and points his torch to the darkness around him, worried if he’s been followed. Layla gets the idea too, going on guard and taking a few steps back to the middle of the tunnel.

I kinda wonder if there should’ve been a bit more attention given to how weird this all is. Since the writer both knows Mark and knows how to communicate with him. Wouldn’t that get Mark asking questions about how that’s possible when he’s run into exactly nobody down here in the tunnels who can read human writing?

His shoulders drop when nobody jumps out at them. Of course not. Despite that, he can’t help to realize an assailant could be standing right there a few feet outside where his flame’s light washes into black, and he’d have no way to know.

It’s been that way the entire time.

Well that’s some prime paranoia fuel there if I ever heard it. Though no sound or scent associated with the would-be stalker there? Since if Mark is being tracked right now, the stalker is either a of a handful of very specific species that would have a low profile while stalking like Gengar or else they’re a professional that’s very good at covering their tracks.

“You haven’t told anybody you’re human, have you?” Layla asks, still alert to her surroundings.

“Only Andy. Although it was in the cafe. I think only Myla picked on us, everybody else looked very distracted. Don’t worry, Andy told me not to say anything after that slip-up.”

Layla: “Mark, that cafe was completely packed when you were there! Literally any one of the bystanders could’ve overheard you and passed it on later!”

Mark: “Gee, thanks for reminding me.”

She sighs. “Do you remember who was in the cafe that day?” She relaxes and turns back to him. A stalker would have pounced by now.

You know what they say about assuming, Layla…

“I think there were a couple of monkeys?” He scratches the back of his head. “No, I think that was a different day. Uh… A very sad Machoke. I also remember someone coming in to order from Myla too. Maybe one more? If I saw them again, I’d probably remember.”

That’s a relative of the beheaded Machamp that’s lying on the floor right now, isn’t it? But yeah, again. There were a lot of vectors for word to potentially get around regarding Mark’s human-ness.

She shrugs and holds the note in front of her. “Well, whoever knows also knows how to write English.” Her eyes narrow. “None of this makes sense, the more I think about it.”

I’m honestly half-convinced that it’s going to turn out that the writer of the note is another human. Since it would explain so much about how it was composed and the mention of an ‘Anthropy’.

“Yeah, they didn’t just give the letter to us directly.” He leans over her shoulder to read the note again. The letters didn’t look written by finger or brush. Some of the writing had dripped to the bottom edge and coloured it.

Sooo… by some sort of pen / pencil / stylus, then? Otherwise, I’m not sure at what the “not by finger or brush” is meant to be getting at here.

[ ]

“What does Anthropy even mean?” she asks.

“It sounds like ‘anthropology’, maybe it has something to do with history, or humans?”

Probably would have more of an effect to show these two slowing down a bit and pondering their findings a bit more. But I see that the significance of ‘Anthropy’ is indeed getting explicitly mentioned in this story.

“Mmm.” She folds it up and slips it into her pouch. “More importantly, do they have a way to know if we continue down the tunnel?”

Unless if you made a point of masking your scent before coming over here… yeah, honestly. There’s no shortage of ways to track two Pokémon moving along just from Pokémon senses alone.

Neither can answer. Mark can’t imagine cameras working with every human ruin being as defunct as they are. Of course, the perpetrator could also just be there with them, outside of view.

Mark: “Oh, so we are being stalked just outside of view after all, huh?” ._.;
Layla: “Mark, we don’t know that, okay?” >_>;

Or is this a scare tactic? Maybe even an intended helpful warning about danger ahead?

No, you’re legitimately in danger right now, Mark, and should probably get far, far away from where you presently are.

Layla reaches for his arm. He instinctively holds it up for her. “I think we should risk it. I don’t want something dumb like this to be what stops us from finding the surface.”

[ ]


“Yeah.”

Would suggest having Mark give more of a reaction and internal rationalization to blowing off the warning message here.

She playfully tugs his arm. “One more problem though, Mark. Left or right?”

Somebody has her priorities in order there. o<o

“Left!”

They go.

Whelp, there is exactly no way that this is going to end well for Mark and Layla. Which I suppose is all the more reason to keep on reading to see what sort of glorious trainwreck these two get themselves into.

Mark’s unnerved. He’s far more aware of the darkness, which traps them in all directions. It’s easy to imagine a Pokemon jumping out with a screech. Death and danger are their own things, but the note’s prodded at a fear more primal within him. Darkness. Being watched. The unknown.

Huh, so Mark does have something he’s scared of. I wonder what the backstory is behind these particular fears since I can’t imagine that these came from a vacuum.

It’s not enough to stop him though. A part of him even sees this as a little thrill. Either way, he stays alert and sticks behind his more relaxed partner.

Which is exactly why things are going to go seriously pear-shaped in all of about two minutes. I can already tell.

The tunnel is spacious and the ceiling has become an unnatural perfect arc. Every surface is smooth and wavy, different from the rugged rock he’s only seen so far. The brown rock fades to grey the deeper in.

Oh, so a concrete or else blasted and smoothed-out tunnel, huh? Wonder what these two are coming across, since at the minimum, they’ve stumbled across some sort of access path.

After a while, black boxes are pinned to the apex of the tunnel. They’re barely visible against the ceiling far above them. Wires run from each one. Long clear tubes sitting within them reflect their torchlight.

“Hey! Would that alert us to this ‘Anthropy’ person?” Layla asks.

Mark: “I mean, I don’t think so? Even if there were cameras in those things, I can’t imagine they work right now.”

“I don’t think so. They look like they’d be lights. The filaments probably ran out long ago.”

“Filaments? Something to worry about?”

Mark: “No, since A: They’re broken. B: If they weren’t, they’d just produced light.”
Layla: “Ohhh… (Still kinda weirds me out about how you just know all of this about ancient ruins.)”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so, although we should stick to the side in case glass has fallen out.”

The walk still goes on. The path is taking a subtle curve. The ancient lights repeat themselves, teasing them that there's something to find. One of them has even fallen off - it’s easy to see it is made of the same uncanny blacksteel the ruins of Clear Crystal Chasm have. It looks like a void is trimmed out of the ground, its true shape impossible to tell.

Ah yes, consciously comparing it to the place where Millie got her hand eaten. This is only a positive sign for how safe the place they came across is.

Not much farther, they come to what must be their destination. A long structure sits in the middle of the tunnel, very out-of-place. Much like the lights, it too is a perfect black, no matter how close their torches get to it. He feels like he could just walk into it and end up in an infinite nothing. A black hole made material.

“Am I seeing this right?” Mark asks.

I mean 99+% light-absorbing black paints do exist, Mark. You sure that you’re just not seeing something painted that color?

“Yeah. It’s blacksteel again, probably an even darker type than the Chasm ruins. Be careful not to walk into it - look at where it meets the ground,” she says.

“Blacksteel”, huh? I have to wonder what on earth that is, since it’s clearly not just steel with a paint job given that it stays black after scratching. At the same time, I can’t think of any IRL alloys that would produce this sort of color profile.

Her casualty assures him the illusionary tear in reality is normal. Even more garishly, a grey screen and blue thumb drive port floats suspended in the air. He walks up to it. Looking at its side reveals its terminal separate from the building. It just blended in with it so well.

Mark: “One of these days, you need to explain to me how these Mystery Dungeon things work in more detail, since I don’t think I’ll ever get used to stuff like this.” .-.

“I’ll do the honours.” Layla deftly plucks the key from her bag and places it in front of the slot. “No going back.”

inb4 it fails to read again.

She pushes it in. Nothing happens until she remembers to turn it upside-down, and then there’s a click. The screen flares up, hurting their eyes with its brightness. Mark squints to read it. He briefly catches the words “accepted.”

Well, I guess that’s one way to tell that Jace can be trusted in the future. Though what on earth does this do-?

Total white engulfs all. The back of his eyes scorch with fierce pain. He screams and drops to the floor in agony, his partner joining him. Burying his face in his arms barely stops the light from sneaking in. Tears roll down his face.

… Well then. A promising start already for these two.

“What is this?!?” Layla shouts desperately. “I can’t see! Where are you?”

“Close your eyes!” he shouts back. “Try to follow my voice!”

Layla: “Mark, what on earth did that key do?!”

Mark: “Something bad, obviously! Just stick close to me!”

A claw grabs his leg. “It’s me! Now what?!?”

It’s hard to think. The blinding light disorients his sense of direction even as the pain recedes. Red, green, and purple dots dance across his vision, making unrecognizable forms. He opens his eye up the smallest bit he can. He needs to close it immediately as overwhelming agony floods back in, but not before seeing the still pitch-black building with a blinding hole in the middle of it.

inb4 this just permanently damaged the vision of these two for the rest of the story. Since with light so strong as to be described as agonizing... yeah.

Layla’s arms wrap around him and she buries her head into the side. “I’m scared, Mark. Answer me!”

“We have to wait. It’s all we can do.”

Not even trying to find a wall to face and hide from the light, huh? I’m pretty sure that this is going to seriously backfire, but let’s see where this goes.

Wait they do. Darkness returns to the back of his eyelids. He peeks once more - It's still intense but not so overwhelming he needs to close them again. He slowly works to open his eye wider and wider, blinking plenty. His clinging partner and the bumps of the rock around him come back to view as it becomes obvious the light is coming from inside the building. Turning away from it helps plenty. The tunnel is visible all the way up until it bends out of view, save for the absurdly black light cases. How can blacksteel be that dark?

Layla: “Okay, I vote we turn the other way from that freaky light thingy and go home.”

Mark: “But Layla! For all we know there’s an exit down that tunnel!”

Layla’s eyes are adjusting too. She lets go and stands up with a wobble. “What magic is this?”

“Not magic. Our eyes are just too used to the darkness,” Mark says.

There’s a sense of relief if not stupidity coming to this realization. The tunnel darkens more and it's clear the light behind them is becoming more tolerable, although it’s still too bright to look at directly. That doesn’t stop Layla from turning to it and wincing.

“I’m going in!”

“Layla!”

Would suggest breaking the bits of dialogue and the description up from each other from the middle paragraph, especially since the initial and ending bits of dialogue are by different speakers.

She has her way, walking in with an arm across her eyes. He scurries up and teeters inside too, squinting at the ground to abate the pain. The footsteps of her partner move away from him. He hears a ringing bwong followed by “Ah! I walked into something!”

Mark: “Huh? What do you mean ‘something’, Layla? Just what do you-?”

Below, he makes out gridded white tiles. They’re clean save for dirty footprints of a Machamp and Gallade. A chemically clean smell drifts by him as his eyes adjust the rest of the way. He hears Layla scratch her claws on something like glass.

“No, I’m sorry Mark. This is magic. I don’t care what you say!”

Mark: “No, no. This is technology. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen things like these before when I was human-”
Layla: “Well, your “technology” is clearly magic, so same difference, really.” :|

Mark blinks more. The grid lines stay in view as afterimages even as he looks around. His torch is no longer a torch - the end of it smoulders no brighter than a lit cigarette. He braves looking around.

Layla stumbles around, too impatient to ease her eyes. She runs into a tall, wide tube, making another bwong. “Ugh, what is this?” she says. 24 of these vials line the two sides of the hallway in front of him, each with a handle. Naked humans stand in every second vat, submerged in clear pink liquid and held up by black bars under their shoulders. The other half have their doors swung wide open.

Well that went places quickly. Though I see that my guess that the letter was written by another human of some sort might’ve been onto something.

Mark's face opens in disbelief. “What?”

“Mark, say something to me! What is this?” she asks. She knocks against the glass. “What are these Pokemon?”

Mark: “Layla. Those are humans.”

“Humans,” he says. Not entirely though, as he looks at the more. Some have animalistic ears and patches of vibrantly coloured fur. The one in front of Layla has an Absol’s horn hanging across her face.

Oh, so they’re Pokémorphs. I take it that humans have to be converted over to Pokémon through a process in this setting? Since if Mark is a human and he’s biologically a Sableye now, and these humans in the vats are mishmashes at various stages of completeness…

“They’re so big!” Layla says, staring up at the woman. “How much food must they eat?”

Mark dazes out. He hazily glazes over each tube as his legs move him down the aisle. Each pair of vats is labeled with a name: The first is “Joseph”, the second “Carmichael”. He gulps.

Wait, so how long have these humans in these test tubes just been floating around there anyways?

A pool of the pink liquid lies among broken glass at the foot of a shattered vat at the very end of the line. His heart sinks. He keeps reading.

Wait, is that Mark’s tube there? Or someone else’s? Since we know that the expedition from Lucia’s forces managed to successfully extract Mark out of this place before violently dying off, but…

“Lulu.” “Marshel.” “Ameilia”.

He approaches the cylinder preceding the broken one. The human in it is the tallest of them all, hair inches below the cap. There are no Pokemon features but scars run over his rugged body in long lines. His right flank is disfigured. And the end of his right arm has a stump where a hand should be.

Tears well up in his eyes. His arms start shaking. He knows who this is.

These are all humans that Mark knows from his military days or something like that, aren’t they?

“Mark?” Layla says softly. He hears her approach behind him. “Who is that?”

She shakes his head and he holds his forehead. His voice is pale. “It’s me. I turned into a Sableye here.”

Wait, the disfigured body is Mark’s and not the missing one from the broken vat? Was there a brain upload or something at some stage of experimentation?

Her expression is blank as she nods. She looks up his vat and gets close enough that her nose nearly touches. A hand rests on it. “Wow.” She does nothing else.

But Mark knows nothing about the man in front of him. This being a body is just a fact and he forgets what it's like to be him. His body teeters as his brain dizzies itself figuring out what to despair over if it doesn’t know what to miss. Was a human body even pleasant? Was there a family he loved?

Mark: “... Is my body even alive anymore?”

He covers his mouth. The last thought made him sick - he can’t even cry over the parents he lost without his memories of them. He looks at the other vat to get away from it.

The bars that hold other human bodies are here too, although much closer to the ground, where his shoulders would have been. Some of the pink liquid collects at the bottom where the glass’s cracks don’t reach.

Oh, nevermind. The broken vat is indeed Mark’s. Though I wonder if that means that the other humans in the vats are dead or else if we’ll see more humans from Anthropy strutting around later in the story.

Her partner knocks on the glass featuring his body to no avail. He ignores it and gets closer, splashing the fluid with his foot. He cranes his head up. There are no other features except for a gadget hanging on its roof. It’s a truncated pyramid with wires feeding into it. A red flow emanates from the bottom side. Tiny stars flow upwards behind it, into a purple-and-blue void that shifts and moves but never makes form.

He’s seen this void before.

Oh, so that’s where the whole disembodied voice sequences happened.

Not just in the dreams he’s been having.

That’s right…

His clothes were heavy and stuffy that day. Sweat soaked his face and his lungs hurt. He was running. Soldiers fled with him through an ocean of ecstatic ghosts. Explosions went off around them. There was rubble. Untripped landmines. Bullet casings. Dirt. Blood. Humans. Pokemon. Corpses. Limbs. The scent of death. Crying. Laughing. Screaming. And screaming. And screaming. He screamed too. He screamed loud. The void was behind them.

Mark: “I really, really did not need to remember this, thanks.”

Well, that chapter certainly caught me off-guard. Didn’t think that we’d get the (partial) answers to how Mark came here this soon in the story, but hey, I’m not complaining. Especially since it’s a very different direction from how most other stories in the PMD fandom handle the presence of humans in them. Well done, since this is definitely rocketing Below a decent ways up there on the list of memorable twists and/or gimmicks I’ve seen in a PMD story. The character exploration was also nice, especially since this time, we get to see what Mark is afraid of, and after seeing it… yeah, perhaps ignorance was truly bliss for him. So congrats on that there.

As for critiques, the line-by-line has the full writeup of things, but I noticed that you had a couple wording slip-ups here and there. It probably makes sense to do a stepthrough of the chapter at some point to smooth those out. Beyond that, I think there’s only one significant structural issue that I can see with the chapter, which is that it’s barebones on description in some parts to the point where it becomes hard to get a feel for the surrounding setting or else the mood and what’s going through the heads of the characters. The ‘bones’ of what you have in this chapter are solid, it’s just that they could use a bit more “meat” on them description-wise to soak into the world of the tunnels.

But altogether, I thought that things were well-done @BestLizard . I know that you’ve been struggling a bit with the chapter that’s set to come after this one, but for what it’s worth, I think that your story’s come along quite well already, and whenever you do bump this story, I’ll be keeping an eye on it, since you left things off on quite the cliffhanger there.

Hope the feedback was helpful, and happy writing!

 

[BestLizard]

Chapter 12
What Should Stay Forgotten​

I need to stay calm.

Mark ran away from a crimson glow bathing the backs of camouflage-clad soldiers and crumbling concrete buildings lining the street. They stamped over debris and fallen comrades while shouting and screaming. Pokemon joined them: Houndoom and other four-legged creatures outpaced them while the smaller Pokemon like Audinos fell behind. A torrent of ghost Pokemon with wide smiles ran the opposite way, phasing through anybody running into them.

The hue intensified as it caught up to them. The cries of soldiers cut out one by one. Mark dared glance back. A maelstrom of blue and purple mist crashed and churned beneath where ground once was. Stars swarmed around in the misty void, all fenced by the red glow at its circumference. Bodies dead or alive caught in its expansion fell out of the world. The ghosts dove into it with laughter and tears running down their faces.

There’s a bang and an explosion threw him into the air. Mark’s ears rang so hard he could not hear his own screaming as he crashed into the gravel. The wall of the void still advanced. He dug his fingers ahead of him and dragged forward with all his strength. Agony coursed through him, especially in the leg that was closest to the blast. Warm blood dripped down his thigh, his hands, even his eyes. Bodies lay around him and new ghosts pulled themselves out from the skins of the newly deceased. They looked to the void and eagerness grew across their faces.

Mark closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, tuned out all the pain and focused on this final moment of peace. But his end doesn’t come. The red circumference staked itself just beyond his foot. A formidable barrier holding in the misty ocean beyond, the stars shifting around like a million lilies in a pond. Waves of ghosts still ran past them all to dive off the cliff, forming a beautiful waterfall of spirits. Their deranged laughter lingered even once they fell out of sight.

I need to stay calm.

He shuffled away, putting safe distance between himself and the cosmic sea. He rubbed his forehead - blood trickled from cuts above his brow. He examined his body - red circles soaked his leg, but no shrapnel pierced his body.

His hearing gradually returned, picking up howls of pain among the cacophony of the cheerful ghosts. A man lay with his arms wrapped around his leg. His foot was blown off and blood flowed into a growing puddle beneath the hideous wound.

Mark got on his knees and shuffled up to his side, ignoring the pain flowing through his leg. The amputee rocks himself and clumsily gasps for air between breaths. “Save me! Please save me!”

He tossed a first aid kit off himself and popped it open. A plastic tourniquet is pulled out. Mark kept a collected expression as he wrapped it swiftly around his thigh. The bulk of the soldier’s leg made it an awkward fit. “This will hurt,” Mark said and wound the windlass. The soldier’s face bunched up and horrid screams left his mouth. His back arcs yet he fights hard to restrain himself. Tears well in his eyes.

“This pain will end eventually,” Mark said. |Just keep holding on. You will survive this, I promise”. The windlass tightened as far as it could. Blood has slowed to a trickle at the end of his limb and Mark felt no pulse when he checked. “The bleeding is stopped. Your wound will clod and then we will release this. And you’ll get to an emergency camp as soon as we can. This pain will pass.”

The soldier’s tears ran down his cheeks, glistening them. His eyes are red and his breathing is sporadic. But he nods to Mark.

Mark exaggerated carefully paced inhales and exhales while looking into his eyes. The soldier mirrored him. It brought him away from hyperventilation and lessened pained cries. The odd ghost whizzing over or through them distracted him, but Mark tapped his attention back to him before he stared at the looming void too long.

A few meters away, a soldier barely crawling with a uniform coloured more red than green collapsed. The soldier craned his head up. “Oh my god, Jacob?”

Jacob didn’t move.

I need to stay calm.

“Jacob? Is that you?! Say something!” the soldier asks again. He lurched his shoulders to get a better look.

Mark patted him. “Hey! Focus here!” Despite his own words, he couldn’t tear himself away from watching the fallen soldier alongside the other. A Banette’s arm reached out of the chest and patted around until it clutched the uniform. The rest of its phantasmal form pulled itself out of the body. It peered at its newly made arms.

“Jacob! Are you with me?” The soldier wiggled around to get closer, ignoring that it caused a new volley a anguished shouts.

Mark pinned him down and nudged him until he looked back. “We have to focus on getting you out. You can make it. There are people waiting for you. You can survive!”

The words only worked for seconds. He glanced back. Mark couldn’t hold himself back from looking too.

The ghost stood on its old body. It faced itself toward the void.

The soldier’s breathing became uneven again. “Don’t leave us! I need you!”

“Jacob!” Mark shouted. “We have a mission!”

It dashed and dove beyond the red barrier, joining the others tumbling away below.

“Jacob! No!” The amputee screams. His whole body buckled. Mark threw his body on top of him to hold him down, but he fought.

“Stop!” Mark shouted.

I need to stay calm.

The soldier twisted and jerked. Mark dug his boots into the gravel to keep pressure on him, ignoring the pain igniting inside his leg. Blood seeped into his eyes, stinging them and mixing with his tears. The soldier's agonized shrills reached a hellish pitch. “Let me die!” He shook and batted his arms at Mark. “Please let me die!” The breath between his screams became faint.

I NEED TO STAY CALM.

---

Mark’s back bangs against a tube. His legs continue scrambling as if he could push through the solid wall. Arms wrap around his head and tears roll down his face.

“Mark?” Layla says. Both sets of claws cover her mouth.

“Get away from me!” he shouts, holding a palm out against her while sliding his body in between two tubes.

She runs up and grips his shoulders. “Mark!” She shakes him until he looks at her. “Mark! Look at me! What’s wrong?”

His head darts around. His body jerks to throw her but she holds tight. Eventually, his eyes lock on to her’s and the tension dissolves. He’s left panting heavily and clamping his arms around her forearms.

“Mark!” Layla says, mouth hanging low.. “Just tell me what happened!”

His lips quiver. He forces air back into his lungs. “Layla. Why do you keep talking about humans using dark magic?”

“W-what? Uh, t-the legends. It’s in a lot of them. They supposedly used all sorts of dark, ‘evil’ magic, stuff that is forbidden. It led to them dying out or something, or so it says in these legends. Why? Are we in danger? What’s going on Mark? Please, just tell me!”

 

[BestLizard]

I’ll be uploading in smaller chapters from here on out. After writing a bit of Into the Moon, I realized short chapters are significantly more encouraging for me, especially considering I got burned out writing chapter 11. I’m not writing less - I’ll just divide the content up into smaller chapters.

By the way, there’s now new art for chapter 9! Check it out! https://forums.thousandroads.net/index.php?threads/pmd-below.1119/post-62006

 

[BestLizard]

Chapter 13
What Should Not Be Forgotten
​

Mark buries his head into his arms. He shakenly sucks in air. Layla jerks his shoulders around. “Mark! Please answer me! What’s wrong?”

He curls up harder. “Nothing! Nothing’s wrong! We’re not in any danger, I’m sorry. I just had a memory. There’s a lot I’ve forgotten.”

She lowers onto her knees and reaches her claws to his head, easing him to look up at her. Her eyes open wide with concern. “Are you okay? What did you see?”

He looks at her face. His heavy breathing calms down and his muscles relax. “Alright.” His legs cross and his hands settle in his lap as he speaks. “I must have been in the military on the surface. A medic, likely. We were in a war zone with crumbling buildings and everything - stuff I’m not sure you’d understand unless I draw it out. Everyone - humans and some Pokemon - was running away from some sort of 'dark void’, stuff that looked like what’s at the top of my tube. People who fell behind ‘fell’ into this dark magic, like it was a hole or something. And there were ghost Pokemon too. A lot of them, probably thousands. They ran the other way, trying to jump into the void, and most of them were smiling and laughing. Someone stepped on a landmine, and-” He gulps and winces as gory images flash his mind.

Layla rubs his shoulder, trying to comfort him. “Landmine?”

He sways his head, not at her question but at the terrifying experience that happened after “it’s a device you step on, and it blows up. I was caught in it but I didn’t take too much damage, but other soldiers passed away or were grievously harmed. I think some of them may have been my friends, but I can’t remember that. One soldier in particular…”

The soldier’s pleading words are in his mind. It makes him put a claw on his face and rock his head. He spits his words out. “I had to give a tourniquet to him, just like to Millie. He was begging for death. Other soldiers were dying around us. The void was meters away from us.”

He lurches forward and shakes his head as if the thoughts would be tossed out of his mind. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Layla pulls him into a hug. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here.”

“Millie. Everything about Millie was so calm and controlled compared to this. No threats. No complications. Everything about the underground just feels like it's been so calm compared to all this. I guess I’ve really been through worse? Like the underground is ideal? Normal!? Maybe? It’s all stuff I’m now realizing I feel prepared for. What’s wrong with me, Layla?”

Her hand strokes and pats his back. “You’re okay. That makes sense. I used to be more afraid of everything until I had to get out of bad situations myself, now things just feel normal cause I survived worse. Here- were able to see the surface, though? That didn’t look destroyed or anything, right?”

“The surface? Yeah. Buildings were falling apart but I think there were still trees in the distance. So the world’s probably not dead if that’s what you’re worried about, although I don’t know how many places would be under this ‘dark magic’ though.”

Her head nods to every word. She slides away from the hug to show him an encouraging smile. “Well, the surface is real at least, and out there to find. That’s a reassurance, don’t you think?” After one more pat to his back, she stands up to offer a hand. “Think you’ll be good to keep searching this place? There might still be clues. It’d probably get your mind off whatever you say.”

He shakes his head. “I still need a breather.” In and out, his breath steadies to normalcy and he moves his thoughts elsewhere, thinking over what Layla’s said so far. “Actually, I have a question, I just realized something. Why haven’t you told me any of that?”

“Any of what?” Her head tilts.

“The legends about the dark magic?”

The back of her foot taps. She props an arm up against the vat as she speaks. “I didn’t actually believe that the dark magic was what destroyed the humans. Everybody fears these tales to some degree but it’s mostly a City Guild thing, you know? They’d teach them to the young and talk about how if human artifacts didn’t kill you, the guild would. And these tales got passed all the way down to people in the Pokemon Guild and Scrap Town, who still fear they may be dangerous. But why would humans destroy themselves with their own magic? It didn’t make sense, so I thought there was no point telling you about bullshit, although I guess there may be some truth to those legends now. Either way, you said you remembered facts, right? I thought you’d know something about their ‘dark magic’ if it existed!”

Mark taps his chin. He definitely can’t remember the cosmic void beyond what he’s seen in his dreams. But that energy should still have a name. That’d be a fact! Not just that, but the person who interviews him in the dreams - shouldn’t he have known her name since waking up? “I guess there are facts I forgot about too. I must have never thought of it cause I wouldn’t have known what I don’t know. I probably- no, definitely jumped to conclusions too fast.” He scratches the top of his head.

She sighs and brief silence follows. Her claw’s offered once more. “Hey, let’s fix that. We’ll find out what you forgot.”

Mark grabs her forearm and gets hoisted onto his feet. “Yeah. Plus, I’m pretty sure there’s some purpose why I’m down here. I want to find out what it was.”

They both look around. A row of square bins lies on the wall opposite the entrance, blending in with the wall. “There,” Layla says.

They’re clean and glossy, with only finger- and paw-prints faintly visible once they approach them. Each of their lids have depressed handles in their center. A few strands of fur dirty the floor around them.

Mark taps the lid of a central bin. Layla goes to the far left one to bang a fist into the top.

“Layla!” he shouts and scrambles towards her. The corner splits and it caves in, exposing how cheap the plastic is. Mark pulls the lid off. Lying inside are grey shiny wrappers and a lot of empty space.

The wrappers make crinkling sounds as Layla prods them. “What are those?”

He swipes one and turns it around and a few crumbs fall out. The inside is matte. No text is on either side. “Food.”

Her eyes widen. “What?!” She swipes a wrapper and throws it into her mouth.

“No! Not like that!” Mark grabs her arm but she’s already chewing away, a cheek pushing out.

Her cheeks are popped out on one side. “Mmm?”

“The grey stuff is what wrapped the food! It isn’t the food itself!”

A lump goes down her throat. “I don’t understand.”

He takes a deep breath and rubs his brow. He didn’t need this, the warzone flashback was enough stress. “Okay. I’ll rephrase. These aren’t food. They would have wrapped the food you’d actually eat, but all of it’s already eaten.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Oh! Okay!” She cocks her head and smirks from the corner of her mouth. “I’ve eaten weirder stuff though. I’ll be fine.”

Weirder than human artifacts you know nothing about? “Let’s just check the other bins. Don’t eat stuff unless I say it’s safe. Actually, don’t touch stuff either.”

“Got it.”

They go down the row of bins and pop each lid. There are twelve, one for each human-turned-Pokemon that would have come out of an empty vat. Each one had wrappers save for the last three, and some bins had water bottles which Layla thankfully didn’t eat. The two before Mark’s are completely empty, which made Layla look disappointed. But they’re on the final one, the one meant for Mark.

No wrappers, but a whole stash of water, and tucked in the back are two yellowed pages of paper. English stretches across their faces.

“There! Right there!” Layla points at it even as Mark takes it out. Their left edges are rough like it was torn out of a book. The paper otherwise has few creases and only a bit of a bend as damage.

Mark reads it aloud.

“Mark,

“It’s me, Mathew. I’m sorry, I needed to destroy the journal we used to pass information between us. We’re at risk of someone named Lucia discovering too much, so I’m taking extra precautions. I really do not want a repeat of what happened with Regidrago down here. Still, here’s what you need to know.

“Anthropy really fucked it up. They controlled the information so well that they’ve forgotten about us, while managing to gaslight everyone into thinking the info is more dangerous than it is. As a result, they prosecuted anyone sharing information not approved by Anthropy. It’s been a massive headache over the centuries. Most of us have tried to go to them and talk about the surface and ended up being chased down or worse. Not that it matters, we haven’t really ever met the conditions to return to the surface.

“I say ‘approved by Anthropy;’ Anthropy has ended up becoming something called the City Guild. I don’t know if they were overthrown by a group that kept a lot of their same values and goals minus some religious aspects or they just ended up changing names, but Anthropy is no more. No one recognizes the name.

“There’s also another guild, the Pokemon Guild. Stealing food’s been a problem in the last 550 years and throughout two-thirds of that time span, the City Guild just exiled thieves and any other criminals to below the cliffs. Those exiles formed towns that grew their own food and eventually the City Guild and their allies gave up being nice guys and tried to take their food once they ran out of their own. The Pokemon Guild was formed to oppose them, and even take some of their own farms from them. The Pokemon Guild is more recent - I think they formed in the last 100 years or so?

“Either way, the previous leader of the City Guild as of this writing was overthrown before I woke up. Lucia is the current leader and from what I was able to gather, she believes the old guild was too passive with addressing the Pokemon Guild. She’s been aggressively countering the Pokemon Guild and she plans to go to war with them. She’s also more brutal at punishing criminals than the build in the past. And she’s very popular, despite all that. We’ve gone full circle.

“Here’s the very problematic thing about her. Despite defying the whole point of Anthropy - and I guess the City Guild - she’s looking into human ruins, hoping to find a weapon to use against the Pokemon Guild. ‘Breaking tradition and fighting unquestioned superstition to secure their future,’ or something. She’s been sending out parties to comb tunnels and is trying to decipher the Latin alphabet. I’m afraid she’ll discover me or this place with how thorough she is. I buried the original journal.

“It’s actually a bit twisted. The Underground’s been so good at forgetting everything that they forgot what the real danger actually was. If they knew a bit more they would stop, although I guess the plan worked for centuries.

“That being said, all this guild conflict nonsense may be a blessing in disguise. If they go to war and one of them wins, we might have the best chance we ever had to go to the surface. It’s fucked up but we don’t have any other option. In a way, of fucking course this would. Fuck all this. Knowing the truth really hurts at this point.

“Either way, I’m going to take it easy and hide, hoping they will take the other out. Maybe you won’t have to wake up at all! If you do though, try to find me, I’m sure I can help you even though I’ll be 70 years old. I haven’t ever used my real name but I have left a clue inside the Pokemon Guild. I figured if Lucia topples Merka - the Pokemon Guild’s current leader - before you wake up, then I would actually want her to find me, y’know?

“Anyways, a few more things you need to know. There is incredibly little food. John also stole our rations so fuck him. Total scum. Get food sorted asap.

“And be careful of the substation. Criminals from both guilds ended up settling there, and it's now called Scrap Town. There are truly some of the most violent Pokemon out there living in the place. Just avoid it.

“Between The City Guild and Pokemon Guild, I recommend joining the latter. They’re just closer, that’s all.

“Also, Mystery Dungeons are a thing. They’re formed when enough Pokemon fight each together in a close enough space. It’s like, 7 fighting at once in the space of a room? The layouts change each time you enter them and they’re filled with violent and irrational Pokemon - Pokemon who aren’t considered real people. Money and food can show up inside but nobody knows why. Well, it’s not hard to imagine, huh? Being put underground sure wasn’t bad enough.

“There’s a few Mystery Dungeons you should know about. Crystal Chasm Cavern is one of them. The ruins inside are already known to Lucia, which is why I’m okay mentioning it. Primordial Road is also a Mystery Dungeon. I know that sounds alarming but it weirdly kinda means nothing. Nobody knows it exists. Must have been made very early on. Either way, Lucia would need to search far and wide. She’ll never find it in her lifetime.

“There’s one more but I can’t say it: Lucia must not even know it has significance. That should be a big enough clue for you to figure it out, especially if you ask Pokemon what Mystery Dungeons are out there.

“Lastly, people don’t write with English letters anymore - which they call ‘Human Script.’ Pokemon write with ‘Footpaw Script.’ The letters are arrangements of shapes - the shapes can be anything, but their meaning is formed by their placement and orientation. Other than that, it’s still English. You should be able to decipher it. Sadly it means Lucia won’t take long to decipher it either.

“That’s all you need to know. Here we are, 600 years later, assuming Lucia doesn’t find you. Best of luck, Mark. And destroy this journal when you’re done.

“Though if it’s truly impossible and hopeless, just end it all. It’d be mercy for us. Although deep down I know you’re the kind of person who couldn’t do that…

“And Lucia. If you’re reading this, please stop what you’re doing. The truth’s complicated but the warnings your guild used to teach did actually have an element of truth to them. Continue down this path and everyone will die. Try to make peace with the Pokemon Guild however you can and find the surface that way. It’s the only way your city will find happiness.”

Layla’s awkwardly leaning her chin over Mark’s shoulder. “Well? What else?”

“That’s it,” Mark says. He turns the pages around - there’s a rough map behind one of them which also has a list of Mystery Dungeons and their locations. Primordial Road isn’t listed.

“Well, do you remember anything more?” she asks, leaning her even head closer to the paper and making Mark lean away.

“No. Nothing. But I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to forget anything.” He looks inside the bin, but there are no more clues.

Layla taps his shoulder. “Hey, we still discovered a lot. I always thought it was suspicious how much the City Guild cared about information about the surface, back when I was still living there. Before Lucia.”

“Wait, what?”

She pushes her palms out and shakes them. “Y-yeah! I know! But I’m not like them! I was young. We got kicked out.”

He waves both his hands. “No. ‘Before Lucia?’”

“Yeah. She took over a little under a generation ago. Why?”

Concern grows across Mark’s face. “The way this letter was worded makes me believe there were 50 years between each human waking up. Lucia would be really old if 50 years really did pass since Mathew wrote this. They must have awoken me early.”

“‘50 years?’ Well, eh...” She cranes her head down and thinks for a few moments. “They were looking for you, so it's not surprising they found you.” Her claw waves dismissively. “Either way, we definitely need to figure out more of your memories, and we need to learn more about what we discovered today. Myla and Andy may know something about this ‘Anthropy’ and ‘Primordial Road’ stuff, and possibly about this other human too.”

He nods. “Yeah, we still need to know more. There may still be clues here though.” He looks around. The lab’s clean and empty beyond the tall tubes and their instruments around them. However, there’s a faint outline of a door in the corner beside the bins. A subtle depression reveals a handle. Mark heads to it.

“Wait, I got this!” Layla says, running past him. She kicks it.

“Hey!”

It buckles without opening. An acidic order leaks out. Her foot pounds it again, leaving a scratch in the surface.

“Let me try it!” Mark says, brushing her aside. He grabs the hollow handle and slides it aside.

It’s darker, emptier, and much smaller inside. Right across the door is a broom, dustpan, mop handle, and a trashcan. Plastic-wrapped wet pads for the mop rest around the ground by it. Mark walks to the can - dirty, used pads inside create the foul smell.

“Hey Mark, you’re missing something!”

“Huh?” He turns around. There’s a contraption like what’s at the top of Mark’s tube, but much larger. The red light rimming it is harsh and cosmic hues swirl in a grand ocean of cosmic hues beyond the glow. Cables thick and thin spew out of the base and snake up the walls into gaping ceiling panels above. Screams whisper in Mark’s ears as he looks at it: he’s unsure if it’s a latent power of the energy or trauma planted in his subconscious.

“What’s this?” Layla asks. She walks up to it.

“Wait, you’re not going to kick it!” Mark says.

She has a leg up. “What?”

Mark sighs. “Use the end of the mop. Th-the pole, that is. And please stop touching and eating things you don’t know about.”

Still holding her leg up, she rubs her chin and considers this for far longer than she should. “Yeah, you’re right. I just get too excited sometimes. I keep forgetting this dark magic.” Her foot comes down and she picks up the pole. The top end is guided over to the flat top of the contraption, and with Mark giving a little nod, she taps it. Even though it looks like you can dive into the cosmic sea within, the pole clinks on an invisible surface.

“Should I tap it harder? Try to break it maybe?” Layla asks, tone calm this time.

“Nah. It could be dangerous and it wouldn’t help us get closer to the surface, so no point risking it. Plus, it’s probably powering the base.”

“Power?” She looks back at him.

His finger points at the twisting cables and traces them into the ceiling. “Yeah, the lights here and likely the vats need power - energy - to work. Energy like attacks electrical Pokemon can make. This is probably providing that power, nothing else here seems to be providing that source.”

There are more clinks as Layla taps different sides of the machine. “So, this really is dark magic.”

Mark wants to refute it, but is he even sure that’s wrong? What he saw on the battlefield didn’t look natural. “Honestly, it could be.”

She nods. “Great.” Then she moves over to the can and peers into it. She pokes the end of the pole inside. “What about this?”

“Huh? Oh, mop pads. You attach them to the end of this handle and you can clean the floor with it. Once you’re done, you throw the pad away.”

“Wow, human dark magic is amazing.” She tries to lift one up with the handle. “Safe to pick these up?”

“They’re dirty. Plus, those aren’t clues. They’re used for cleaning.”

“Boo.” The pole jerks around, like she’s seeing how squishy or durable the pads are. “By the way, what are those thick Ekans things coming out of that dark magic altar?”

He quickly figures out she’s referring to the cables and obliges. She asks more questions, and it evolves into a long q-and-a where Layla asks about the plastic broom, the vats outside, the key terminal, the key, lights, plastic, and a lot of questions about rations. They end up touring the lab more as she branches off into more topics, which Mark happily answers. Abyssal seas aside, there is a lot about humans that really is extraordinary.

Eventually, her curiosity’s exhausted. “Alright, let’s go. We’ll let Jace burn that human script thingy.” She leaves the lab, turns around to get one last look inside, and beckons Mark out.

“Okay. I’m going to lock this .” He says and steps out to the terminal. The blacksteel is unusual - so much light floods out yet the terminal is a perfect shade of black. He puts the key in after remembering to put it upside-down. There’s a quick mechanical chirr and everything becomes pitch black.

Layla’s feet prattle around. “Wait Mark, what’s going on?”

Mark waves his arm around, feeling the weight of the torch. He reasons where the end of it should be and squints hard. There’s a pathetic ember of dark crimson at the tip. “Our eyes are adjusted to the light. Now we’d have to wait for them to adjust to the dark.”

“What? Like if you were to leave the magma caverns? Bullshit.” Her footsteps wander around until they get closer to Mark. She bumps into him and they both fall over.

“Ow. Hey!” he says. Her weight’s right above him.

“Sorry there. I couldn’t see you! Hey, let’s stay like this.”

“Huh?” He looks around, but can’t see her. “Yeah. Sure.”

She crosses her arms over his chest. He imagines her head’s resting on top.

“Hey Mark, I’m on top of you,” she says in a singsong voice.

“Yup,” he mutters, still not seeing her. Shouldn’t Sableye have night vision?

An epiphany hits him. He probably has had night vision the entire time - the caves have just been that dark the entire time. If it weren’t for the torches, these caves probably have zero light, and night vision still needs that to see. These torches probably aren’t that bright either, given the seemingly infinite longevity they have.

This is advanced darkness.

“Hey Mark, how flustered are you right?”

“Huh?”

Her claw prods his cheek. “You get all blushy and stuttery whenever I get close to you. Now the underground’s most gorgeous lady is right on top of you and you’re all calm?”

“I can’t see the beautiful girl on me… Plus I thought you did this sort of affection for emotional support.”

There’s silence before Layla rolls into sitting on top of his belly. “Eh, not all the time. Sometimes I just want a cute guy to go ‘Oh my god a pretty girl aaaa.’”

He chuckles nervously and pokes her side. “W-well, you are the most beautiful girl in the Underground.”

“You know it, Mark.”

“It’s true!”

They laugh, the long hallways echoing it.

“Although please get off me, this is hurting a bit,” Mark says, patting her side.

“Aww.” She gets off.

“I’m sorry!”

There is more prattling as Layla walks in circles. Eventually, Mark’s own body comes into sight, and many moments later, his teammate. The curved walls of the tunnel follow. He stands up and holds his arm out for Layla to take.

It's a long walk and both were silent in thought. Smiles stayed on their faces the whole walk home. Finally, success.

 

[BestLizard]

Chapter 14
Learning and Discovery​

Clouds of deep purple and blue shift and overlap but never form. A sea of stars drifts among them in tranquil peace. Two voices speak in the distance: Mark’s own, and a feminine voice, who sounds like an old friend.

“A Sableye,” she says. “You’re okay with being a Sableye? If you have any doubts, speak up. Finding the right body for you is most important.”

“The more I think about it, the more I feel it's the choice meant for me, even if it’s not a practical Pokemon.”

“It’s okay if it isn’t practical. You shouldn’t need to fight anyways.”

“Sableye, then.”

“Alright. And there’s still a few days before we transfer you and feel free to change your mind in that time, but we’ll go ahead and prepare a Sableye body for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything for you. You’re the one sacrificing a lot. It’s the least we can do.”

“I’m just doing what’s right. I wouldn’t be happy otherwise. That being said, is it okay if it’s a bit taller than a regular Sableye?”

The two continue to speak, but the voices become reverberated and faint. Soon, it’s silent, and the sea of stars turns dark.

---

Clink, clank, clunk. Layla’s hopping down the labyrinth of crossbeams holding the scrap hut’s upper layers. “Hey, Mark!” she says, landing next to his bed. “It’s time to wake up!”

Mark’s not in his bed.

She looks around confused. “Mark?”

“Yes?” he asks. He’s by the entrance, stretching his arms over his head. His torch and adventure bag are already on him.

She leans in and raises an eyebrow. “You’re already up?”

“We got to figure out more about what we learned.” He stretches his arms forward instead of above. “I’m just really eager. Plus, I’m hungry.”

Both her eyebrows rise.

He furrows in confusion. “What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing, nothing! I’m just too used to dragging you out of bed. It’s more fun that way.”

“Oh, uh.” He shakes his limbs to round out the stretch, then lifts a free arm to her. “You can still drag me to Myla’s cafe.”

She leaps to him and clasps his wrist. A giggle escapes. “You still know how to be a good partner.”

“Hey, I like it.” He smirks.

She wiggles her eyebrows before dragging him all the way to the cafe.

---

A scene’s brewing inside. Pokemon circle around a single table and loud voices shout over each other. Some push each other while jeers and profanity slip by. Myla’s leaning over the bar and watching, hand-ribbons holding her cheeks while her head pleasantly bobs side-to-side. Her eyes flick to Team Surface for a brief moment.

“Heeeeeey Myla,” Layla says. She hops onto a stool and leans over the counter, smirking at her with claw-in-cheek. Mark settles for watching the commotion, tapping his chin.

“A fight’s about to begin,” Myla says. “Come on, let’s watch it together.”

“Hmmm maybe, but we need info again. And we got plenty to share with you!” Her eyebrow perks to tempt the ghost, although Myla’s too distracted to notice.

“Hey, if they fight, won’t it make a Mystery Dungeon?” Mark asks. His eyes flick between the crowd and two girls at the bar.

“Nah,” they say in unison. Myla follows up, “Most will peel off and form a line once fists start flying. Only two to four will actually fight at once. And if things get bad anyways, Mamon here will stop them.”

A Duskull wiping down a bowl to their side grunts. He’s hovering lower than the counter.

“Still,” Mark crosses his arms. “We shouldn’t let them start, right?”

“Hey Layla,” Myla says. “Think Penelope’s finally going to die?”

Mark smacks his forehead.

“Mmmm,” Layla twists her head to stare at the crowd. Her tongue wiggles around in her mouth as she thinks. “You really should hear what we have to say. We discovered a lot about, y’know. The major stuff. The big, juicy steak of stuff. The stuff that drips. Mmmm good stuff.”

Their eyes meet. Layla’s brows waggle. “Come on, what do you want more?”

“Fine. Mamon, cheer on Phil, make sure he kills the bitch,” she says before her body floats backwards without breaking her leaning pose. The servant grunts in response and continues scrubbing the bowl while she passes through the wall.

Mark rolls his eyes to the two and steps towards the crowd with his arms waving. “Hey, break it up, everyone! No need for figh- aaah!” Layla pulls him by the ear, all the way around the corner and through the rustic door in spite of his flailing.

Cool musty air still lingers here. The boxes are stacked in cacophonous arrangements, some open and others closed. The biggest difference to the room was no more prisoner in the corner. Instead, splotches of blood drip down the wall. Mark seethes at it, but Layla barely notices it.

Myla’s waiting in the middle. Layla hops onto a box nearby and lays on her side, claw in her cheek. Mark stands by her and fidgets his claws.

“Alright, what’s the update?” Myla asks.

“It’s a long story.” Layla’s eyes roll to emphasize the word “long”. “We, uh, um, where to start…” She looks at Mark.

“You must know how there were two Lucia guildmembers searching for something in the lower tunnels, right? A Gallade and a Machamp?” Mark says.

“Yup,” Myla says. “They’ve been missing for a few days. What about them?”

Mark taps his heel as he recalls all the info. “They were aware that there was a human out somewhere in the lower tunnels. A human who turned into a Pokemon, although didn’t actually know which species… I was. The Gallade we found was supposed to find me and the key he had was supposed to open a lab where I was frozen in time by ‘black magic.’ They did actually find me, but on the way back, came across one of Merka’s team and they took each other out. Then Layla found me.

“We went back there, and found the lab I came from. We found a journal…”

Mark went on to explain the last series of events in thorough detail. Jace, the laboratory tubes, his memories of the past, Anthropy and the corpse, everything in the journal, even his dreams. Mark’s hands got more animated the further into the story he went. Myla’s grin, for the first time Mark ever witnessed, turned into a muted, prospecting grimace. Layla interjects a few times, but only to exaggerate how mysterious the human’s dark magic is.

“We were wondering if you may know anything that could help,” Mark says. “Especially about ‘Anthropy.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Myla closes her eyes and shakes her head. “No, actually. Although this is the kind of group I would have heard about, especially if it used to be the City Guild itself. Eh,” her ribbon reaches around to scratch the back of her head. “The fact I haven’t heard about them is pretty significant. They’re either not very powerful or they’re very recent, and they wouldn’t be connected to the City Guild cause then Lucia wouldn’t need to have asked where you are. Either way, sounds like you could learn more if you go straight after them.”

“What?” Mark asks.

“Think about it,” Myla says. “A single scary note. There are more effective ways of threatening people.” She gestures her head towards the blood. “Either they don’t believe they’re strong enough to confront you, or they’re not serious about this.”

Layla speaks up. “We have no leads though!”

Mark shakes his head.“No, that’s not true. I mentioned I was a human aloud to Andy. Anybody who was in the cafe on that day could be Anthropy. I might be able to remember who was there.” He rubs his chin a bit more before looking at Layla. “It wouldn’t be Andy, right?”

“No! He pretty much raised me!” She frowns with brows furrowed in offense. “Took care of me after my father died and later my mother. He was always teaching me about being nice to others and not killing others for the longest time. It couldn’t possibly be him. Besides, he supports me finding the surface, even if he doesn’t like it.”

“Hey, I just wanted to make sure, it is a relief to hear it.”

“Hey,” Myla gets the two’s attention. “It’s more likely this 11th human spilled the beans, or there’s a source of information both of them are using. Either way, the guild is hiding secrets about the surface, so there’s another path to pursue.”

Both Mark and Layla look down to ponder this.

Myla continues. “And on top of that, if answers are buried in the past, then exploring Upside-Downtown may also help as well. Their legends run back the furthest.”

Layla sighs. “That’s on the other side of the Underground.”

She shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know,” she says wistfully. “But that’s the end of everything I can share, I don’t have much to say. Upside-Downtown, Anthropy, the 11th human, and prying from Lucia’s Guild directly - these are where I’d try to find more answers. I can look into getting a high-ranking Lucia guildmember kidnapped, but it’s unlikely to happen and you’d owe me big if I do.”

“Yeah.” Layla rubs the back of her neck and sheepishly looks to the side as she ponders. “Thank you, this helps a lot.”

Mark nods to Myla. “The 11th human’s hiding in Merka’s Guild. That sounds like the most reliable path at the moment.”

Layla shakes her head. “The guild’s dangerous. Upside-Downtown makes a little sense but… Are you sure it’ll have anything useful? It’s such a long trek.”

Myla nods. “It might not have anything. I mostly pointed it out cause there’s little risk involved. Anyways,” she turns around. “I want to see who died.”

“Wait!” Layla says, free hand reaching out. She exaggerates her lounging pose. Her voice becomes smoother. “You know, we’re all alone together again. Just like old times.”

Mark points to himself. “What about me?”

“Well, and Mark. S-still! We can spend some time together before you head back. Get to know each other more like those days.” Her grin widens.

Myla turns around. She says nothing.

“Just one kiss! Come on! Right here,” she says tapping her lips.

“Is this the best time?” Mark asks.

“Mark! It’s always the right time for love! Plus, you definitely want to see girls make out. You’re already blushing.”

“What?” he says. He rubs his cheek. It’s warm! “Uh, uh, um- Uhh,”

The large ghost floats over her and pushes a ribbon into her forehead. “When you’re on the surface. But I’m sorry. I want to but nothing’s gonna work if you’ll never be around. And I kinda care about how I feel.”

“We have time now!” Layla says, grin growing more smug.

Myla’s ribbon caresses her chin. “Find the surface,” she whispers. “Then we’ll have all the time we need.” After that, she floats away backwards, tauntingly waving her goodbye.

Just before she phases through, Layla speaks up. “I’m sorry I can’t be around as often as you want, I wish I could.”

Myla stops before going through the wall. “You make love so complicated.”

“I love you,” Layla says with a stern expression.

“Just find the surface.” She phases through.

Mark twiddles his thumbs. The musty air and its chilly bite are strong in this silence. “Is everything alright?”

A longing sigh is let out as she looks at the spot Myla passed through. “I just wish things could be different.” She drums her fingers against her legs before looking at Mark properly. “Also, I didn’t uh, make you uncomfortable or anything, have I? With the whole ‘you can watch’? Or even my behaviour in general? I’m a bit guilty about that.”

“No, no you didn’t. I’m just not used to uh… Girls.”

She shifts and swings a leg over the other. Her foot taps while the smirk she had with Myla comes back. “That’s fine. You’re cuter when you’re flustered anyways.”

“Th-thanks.” He rubs the back of his neck.

A brow quirks and her eyes lid. “Want to kiss me?”

(Art by Bograbbit)​

Mark fumbles a lot of sounds without any word actually coming out. His heart pounds against his chest.

It makes the girl giggle. “Just right here.” Her claws tap her lips. “Mwah, you know? Be my boyfriend.”

He takes a deep breath and walks forward. He grips the edge of the box, leans in, and pecks his lips. His cheeks turn completely red.

“What?” Layla’s eyes light up in surprise.

Mark tenses and gulps. “D-did I do it wrong?”

She giggles and pinches his cheek to stretch it wide out. “I liked it. It was good. I just didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“Well, the prettiest girl in the underground is asking for a kiss. Of course I had to take it. Ah!” Layla stretches his cheeks even further.

“That’s the correct response. And call me pretty more. I really like that.”

“Eheh… But, uh,” his tone becomes concerned, “does this mean we are dating or something?”

His cheek snaps as she lets go. “Do you want to?”

“I- No, actually. Like, I don’t know. Not yet, you know? Uh,” He looks away. She’s still a murderous stranger by the end of the day.

“Hey, hey, I do like you, but it’s okay if you don’t want to date me. I’m actually glad you cleared that up.” She grabs his chin and turns his head towards her. “But hey, just know it’s okay if we kiss just because it’s fun. I don’t mind that and don’t feel bad about it.”

He looks into her eyes for a bit but ends up looking away again. “It-It’s tempting, but I’m not sure if it's right. T-that was just a kiss, uh, um, uh, I’m worried about going fast.”

She gently squeezes his shoulder. “Hey. Follow your heart. We don’t need to do anything.”

Mark let out a sigh of relief. “Alright. And I’m sorry. I’m not used to being attracted to girls and I just really don’t want to be hasty, especially since everything has been a lot of whiplash. I’ve only been here five or six days.”

Her comforting smile diminishes a bit, although she still consoles him by rubbing his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I guess I am being a lot for you. I can stop teasing if it’ll help. I might not be the best at that though. I’m not the best with self-control.”

“No, that’s-” he pushes his foot around and takes a deep breath. He tries her advice and pays attention to what his heart says. “That’s fine. I enjoy it, actually even if it makes me a nervous wreck.” He looks up again. “It’s just something fun, yeah?”

“Yes. I enjoy making you a nervous wreck. And if you ever want to turn something down or ask me to stop, I’ll do that, okay? But I’ll keep teasing you for now, and I haven’t even done my biggest teasing yet.” She winks.

“Yeah, thanks. I’m figuring out a lot of things fast. Heh.” He smirks and gulps one last time before looking at her again. He can’t pull away from looking at her eyes and infectious smirk. How beautiful he finds her. “Still, can we try kissing just… One more time?”

She bursts out laughing and she swings herself upright. “Yes, yes we can.” Her claws cusp his shoulders to inch him closer. Mark’s chest thumps, his breath gets light, and their mouths finally press together. The two soon lean into each other, wrapping their arms around each other. She caresses the back of his head while Mark closes his eyes and savours this moment with her.

After a good while, she parts from him with a smug, satisfied grin. “You liked that?”

“Heh. Eheh. Hehehe.” Mark loses giggling. It makes her chuckle in turn. She toys with his ear fin a bit until he settles down, but that moment never comes.

“Alright, alright. We do have to do more missions, unfortunately. I know, I know.” She slips off the box. “Think you’ll be ready soon?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. You’re the best. Heh.”

She chuckles and gives him a quick hug before grabbing his forearm. “I am. By the way, what changed? You’re different today.”

“What? I, uh,” he takes a few breaths to collect his thoughts. “I think it’s learning that there’s a purpose to me being down here and everything. Like, I feel a need to move, now that I have a direction to go. I don’t quite feel the same anymore.”

“Well, keep it up, it’s good for you,” she says with a wink, before moving them out of the cold, bloody room. Mark never stops giggling as Layla drags him across the cafe, and her gleeful smile never leaves.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya. I decided to chip away at my target list of stories to read tonight a bit, and figured that it was as good a time as any to come back to this story.

Chapter 12

Spoiler

I need to stay calm.

Mark, that’s exactly the sort of thing where when you say it, it usually makes you less calm.

Mark ran away from a crimson glow bathing the backs of camouflage-clad soldiers and crumbling concrete buildings lining the street. They stamped over debris and fallen comrades while shouting and screaming. Pokemon joined them: Houndoom and other four-legged creatures outpaced them while the smaller Pokemon like Audinos fell behind. A torrent of ghost Pokemon with wide smiles ran the opposite way, phasing through anybody running into them.

I assume that this is some sort of flashback given the title, but… yeah. I have to wonder if Mark genuinely forgot all of this, or if these memories were deliberately suppressed.

The hue intensified as it caught up to them. The cries of soldiers cut out one by one. Mark dared glance back. A maelstrom of blue and purple mist crashed and churned beneath where ground once was. Stars swarmed around in the misty void, all fenced by the red glow at its circumference. Bodies dead or alive caught in its expansion fell out of the world. The ghosts dove into it with laughter and tears running down their faces.

Oh hey, it’s like the sequence from Spiderverse 2 where Miguel O’Hara is watching the playback of his adoptive universe imploding. Just with more Ghost-types in the mix.

There was a bang and an explosion threw him into the air. Mark’s ears rang so hard he could not hear his own screaming as he crashed into the gravel. The wall of the void still advanced. He dug his fingers ahead of him and dragged forward with all his strength. Agony coursed through him, especially in the leg that was closest to the blast. Warm blood dripped down his thigh, his hands, even his eyes. Bodies lay around him and new ghosts pulled themselves out from the skins of the newly deceased. They looked to the void and eagerness grew across their faces.

Oh, so Ghostmons in this setting are literally departed spirits, or at least they can be. I wonder if they specifically have to human spirits, given that we haven’t seen any Pokémon spawn a Ghostmon in such a fashion before.

Mark closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, tuned out all the pain and focused on this final moment of peace. But his end doesn’t come. The red circumference staked itself just beyond his foot. A formidable barrier holding in the misty ocean beyond, the stars shifting around like a million lilies in a pond. Waves of ghosts still ran past them all to dive off the cliff, forming a beautiful waterfall of spirits. Their deranged laughter lingered even once they fell out of sight.

Ghostmon:

Mark: “I should probably be more disturbed by this right now, but damn, talk about a view to go out to.”

I need to stay calm.

He shuffled away, putting safe distance between himself and the cosmic sea. He rubbed his forehead - blood trickled from cuts above his brow. He examined his body - red circles soaked his leg, but no shrapnel pierced his body.

Wait, shrapnel? Implying that that weird barrier thingy was created by some sort of bomb? Just what on earth would do that?

His hearing gradually returned, picking up howls of pain among the cacophony of the cheerful ghosts. A man lay with his arms wrapped around his leg. His foot was blown off and blood flowed into a growing puddle beneath the hideous wound.

Mark got on his knees and shuffled up to his side, ignoring the pain flowing through his leg. The amputee rocks himself and clumsily gasps for air between breaths. “Save me! Please save me!”

Though I see that this is why Mark was so nonchalant about treating Millie after she lost her hand.

He tossed a first aid kit off himself and popped it open. A plastic tourniquet is pulled out. Mark kept a collected expression as he wrapped it swiftly around his thigh. The bulk of the soldier’s leg made it an awkward fit.

“This will hurt,” Mark said and wound the windlass. The soldier’s face bunched up and horrid screams left his mouth. His back arcs yet he fights hard to restrain himself. Tears well in his eyes.

>Mark being calm and collected even in this situation

This… wasn’t the first amputee he treated even back then, was it?

“This pain will end eventually,” Mark said. Just keep holding on. You will survive this, I promise”.

The windlass tightened as far as it could. Blood has slowed to a trickle at the end of his limb and Mark felt no pulse when he checked.

“The bleeding is stopped. Your wound will clot and then we will release this. And you’ll get to an emergency camp as soon as we can. This pain will pass.”

Amputee: “I’m sorry, but I’m missing a leg right now!” >.<
Mark: “... I’ll help you over? I did say ‘you’ll get to an emergency camp as soon as we can’ there.”

The soldier’s tears ran down his cheeks, glistening them. His eyes are red and his breathing is sporadic. But he nods to Mark.

Mark exaggerated carefully paced inhales and exhales while looking into his eyes. The soldier mirrored him. It brought him away from hyperventilation and lessened pained cries. The odd ghost whizzing over or through them distracted him, but Mark tapped his attention back to him before he stared at the looming void too long.

Whelp, so much for this amputee surviving. SInce I can already tell that isn’t a positive sign for his life expectancy.

A few meters away, a soldier barely crawling with a uniform coloured more red than green collapsed. The soldier craned his head up. “Oh my god, Jacob?”

Jacob didn’t move. [ ]

I need to stay calm.

Wait, how effective is Mark being at keeping himself calm here? Like if he’s starting to waver, it might make sense to throw in some undertones of him panicking or feeling revulsion or something like that.

“Jacob? Is that you?! Say something!” the soldier asks again. He lurched his shoulders to get a better look.

Mark patted him. “Hey! Focus here!”

Despite his own words, he couldn’t tear himself away from watching the fallen soldier alongside the other. A Banette’s arm reached out of the chest and patted around until it clutched the uniform. The rest of its phantasmal form pulled itself out of the body. It peered at its newly made arms.

… Wait a minute. I just realized that this is implying that Mark died later on in this sequence. Since all of these corpses are spawning Ghost-types and Sableye itself is a Ghost-type…

“Jacob! Are you with me?” The soldier wiggled around to get closer, ignoring that it caused a new volley of anguished shouts.

Mark pinned him down and nudged him until he looked back. “We have to focus on getting you out. You can make it. There are people waiting for you. You can survive!”

Especially since I’m pretty sure that you’re not going to survive this chapter, Mark.

The words only worked for seconds. He glanced back. Mark couldn’t hold himself back from looking too.

The ghost stood on its old body. It faced itself toward the void.

The soldier’s breathing became uneven again. [ ]

“Don’t leave us! I need you!”

“Jacob!” Mark shouted. “We have a mission!”

It might make sense to also explain what Mark’s reaction here is as well. Like is he also starting to become tense and freak out?

Jacob:

It dashed and dove beyond the red barrier, joining the others tumbling away below.

“Jacob! No!” The amputee screams. His whole body buckled. Mark threw his body on top of him to hold him down, but he fought.

“Stop!” Mark shouted.

Yeah, this will end well™, I can already tell.

I need to stay calm.

The soldier twisted and jerked. Mark dug his boots into the gravel to keep pressure on him, ignoring the pain igniting inside his leg. Blood seeped into his eyes, stinging them and mixing with his tears. The soldier's agonized shrills reached a hellish pitch.

“Let me die!” He shook and batted his arms at Mark. “Please let me die!” The breath between his screams became faint.

Wait, is that Mark’s breaths? Or the amputee’s? Since it’s a bit ambiguous from the text.

I NEED TO STAY CALM.

Okay, so I gather that Mark was kinda progressively failing at staying calm there, but I wonder if it could’ve delivered more effectively by throwing in little bits of description here and there showing off Mark’s sensations and inner thoughts as he increasingly loses his battle to keep his cool.

Mark’s back bangs against a tube. His legs continue scrambling as if he could push through the solid wall. Arms wrap around his head and tears roll down his face.

“Mark?” Layla says. Both sets of claws cover her mouth.

“Get away from me!” he shouts, holding a palm out against her while sliding his body in between two tubes.

Yeah, Mark totally died back there. Even if I have no idea what on earth the red void thingy or whatever that was was.

She runs up and grips his shoulders. “Mark!” She shakes him until he looks at her. “Mark! Look at me! What’s wrong?”

His head darts around. His body jerks to throw her but she holds tight. Eventually, his eyes lock on to her’s and the tension dissolves. He’s left panting heavily and clamping his arms around her forearms.

“Mark!” Layla says, mouth hanging low.. “Just tell me what happened!”

Mark: “Layla, I… I think that I died.”

His lips quiver. He forces air back into his lungs. “Layla. Why do you keep talking about humans using dark magic?”

“W-what? Uh, t-the legends. It’s in a lot of them. They supposedly used all sorts of dark, ‘evil’ magic, stuff that is forbidden. It led to them dying out or something, or so it says in these legends. Why? Are we in danger? What’s going on Mark? Please, just tell me!”

Oh, so that’s what was going on in that sequence. I wouldn’t have expected “dark magic” from the “ruins of the future” aesthetic, but I suppose that we’ll find out just exactly what on earth that was later on. Since I get the feeling that it also is responsible for the Mystery Dungeonization of this world.

Well, that was a surprisingly short chapter, so let’s just go ahead and plow on to the next one:

Chapter 13

Spoiler

Mark buries his head into his arms. He shakily sucks in air. Layla jerks his shoulders around. “Mark! Please answer me! What’s wrong?”

He curls up harder. “Nothing! Nothing’s wrong! We’re not in any danger, I’m sorry. I just had a memory. There’s a lot I’ve forgotten.”

Look, at a bare minimum, the ‘nothing’s wrong’ there is a blatant lie, Mark.

She lowers onto her knees and reaches her claws to his head, easing him to look up at her. Her eyes open wide with concern. “Are you okay? What did you see?”

He looks at her face. His heavy breathing calms down and his muscles relax. “Alright. I saw myself. The way I used to be.”

His legs cross and his hands settle in his lap as he speaks. “I must have been in the military on the surface. A medic, likely. We were in a war zone with crumbling buildings and everything - stuff I’m not sure you’d understand unless I draw it out. Everyone - humans and some Pokemon - was running away from some sort of 'dark void’, stuff that looked like what’s at the top of my tube.”

[ ]

“People who fell behind ‘fell’ into this dark magic, like it was a hole or something. And there were ghost Pokemon too. A lot of them, probably thousands. They ran the other way, trying to jump into the void, and most of them were smiling and laughing. Someone stepped on a landmine, and-” He gulps and winces as gory images flash his mind.

This one paragraph is long enough that it probably makes sense to hack it up into pieces. It probably also makes sense to make Mark give a more direct answer to Layla’s question that she raises.

Layla rubs his shoulder, trying to comfort him. “Landmine?”

He sways his head, not at her question but at the terrifying experience that happened after “it’s a device you step on, and it blows up. I was caught in it but I didn’t take too much damage, but other soldiers passed away or were grievously harmed. I think some of them may have been my friends, but I can’t remember that. One soldier in particular…”

Oh. We’re going to wind up running into Jacob and/or whoever the amputee was later on in this story, aren’t we? Though why on earth was there a landmine to begin with? Were they trying to run away from the equivalent of Area 51 or something? .-.

The soldier’s pleading words are in his mind. It makes him put a claw on his face and rock his head. He spits his words out. “I had to give a tourniquet to him, just like to Millie. He was begging for death. Other soldiers were dying around us. The void was meters away from us.”

He lurches forward and shakes his head as if the thoughts would be tossed out of his mind. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Layla pulls him into a hug. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here.”

This is at once really

and

. Though given what we saw of that void they were fleeing… is there even anything left of the surface?

“Millie. Everything about Millie was so calm and controlled compared to this. No threats. No complications. Everything about the underground just feels like it's been so calm compared to all this.”

[ ]

“I guess I’ve really been through worse? Almost like the underground is ideal? Normal!? Maybe? It’s all stuff I’m now realizing I feel prepared for. What’s wrong with me, Layla?”

Mark’s line here probably works broken up with some sort of pause for him to metaphorically catch his breath or something like that.

Layla: “Wait, but you did get out of there safely in the end, right? Maybe other humans did, too?”
Mark: “That… I’m not sure about. Since I very distinctly remember that other humans were creating Ghost-type Pokémon as they died.”

Layla: “Well that doesn’t mean any-”
- Layla looks at Mark and pauses -
Layla: “... Oh. So that’s why you said that you might have died.” ._.;

Her hand strokes and pats his back. “You’re okay. That makes sense. I used to be more afraid of everything until I had to get out of bad situations myself, now things just feel normal cause I survived worse. Here- were you able to see the surface, though? That It didn’t look destroyed or anything, right?”

“The surface? Yeah. Buildings were falling apart but I think there were still trees in the distance. So the world’s probably not dead if that’s what you’re worried about, although I don’t know how many places would be under this ‘dark magic’ though.”

It was actually never described what was off in the distance in Chapter 12, so that’s probably a detail that would be worth patching in at some point, especially if it’s going to be used as a tool to hint at what the surface is like in the present day.

Her head nods to every word. She slides away from the hug to show him an encouraging smile.

“Well, the surface is real at least, and out there to find. That’s a reassurance, don’t you think?” After one more pat to his back, she stands up to offer a hand. “Think you’ll be good to keep searching this place? There might still be clues. It’d probably get your mind off whatever you say.”

Mark:

He shakes his head. “I still need a breather.” In and out, his breath steadies to normalcy and he moves his thoughts elsewhere, thinking over what Layla’s said told him so far.

“Actually, I have a question, I just realized something. Why haven’t you told me any of that?”

“Any of what?” Her head tilts.

“The legends about the dark magic?”

I mean, now that Mark brings it up, that does seem curious given how she basically treated finding out that Mark was human almost as if she’d stumbled across a messiah of some sort.

The back of her foot taps. She props an arm up against the vat as she speaks.

“I didn’t actually believe that the humans were really destroyed by the dark magic was what destroyed the humans. Everybody fears those tales to some degree but it’s mostly a City Guild thing, you know?” she explained. “They’d teach them to the young and talk about how if human artifacts didn’t kill you, the guild would. And these tales got passed all the way down to people in the Pokemon Guild and Scrap Town, who still fear they may be dangerous.”

[ ]

“But why would humans destroy themselves with their own magic? It didn’t make sense, so I thought there was no point telling you about bullshit,” she said, before quietly trailing off. “... Although I guess from what you remembered, there may be some truth to those legends now. Either way, you said you remembered facts things that happened, right? I thought you’d know something about their ‘dark magic’ if it existed!”

Layla’s line feels like it should really be broken up from its sheer length. And probably throwing in some reactions here and there. Like is she still chipped all the way through? Sober emotionally? Getting increasingly unnerved as she realizes that the uncomfortable legends she dismissed might actually be the real deal? Take some time to show off how she’s ticking a bit.

Mark taps his chin. He definitely can’t remember the cosmic void beyond what he’s seen in his dreams. But that energy should still have a name. That’d be a fact! Not just that, but the person who interviews him in the dreams - shouldn’t he have known her name since waking up?

“I guess there are facts I forgot about too. I must have never thought of it cause I wouldn’t have known what I don’t know. I probably- no, definitely jumped to conclusions too fast.” He scratches the top of his head.

Translation: “Lol, you’re not getting to the bottom of this story’s mystery that fast, buddy.”

She sighs and brief silence follows. Her claw’s offered once more. “Hey, let’s fix that. We’ll find out what you forgot.”

Mark grabs her forearm and gets hoisted onto his feet. “Yeah. Plus, I’m pretty sure there’s some purpose why I’m down here. I want to find out what it was.”

You died and did a swan dive into the void like Jacob, and wound up here in some sort of purgatory? Since that kinda feels like that’s where things are going at this rate.

They both look around. A row of square bins lies on the wall opposite the entrance, blending in with the wall. “There,” Layla says.

They’re clean and glossy, with only finger- and paw-prints faintly visible once they approach them. Each of their lids have depressed handles in their center. A few strands of fur dirty the floor around them.

So someone else has been here before, huh? Since I can see the mentions of the strands of fur lying around.

Mark taps the lid of a central bin. Layla goes to the far left one to bang a fist into the top.

“Layla!” he shouts and scrambles towards her. The corner splits and it caves in, exposing how cheap the plastic is. Mark pulls the lid off. Lying inside are grey shiny wrappers and a lot of empty space.

I mean, that’s not necessarily the plastic being cheap, just saying. Plastics get brittle as they age, and it’s been how many centuries since humanity blipped off the face of the planet again?

The wrappers make crinkling sounds as Layla prods them. “What are those?”

He swipes one and turns it around and a few crumbs fall out. The inside is matte. No text is on either side. “Food.”

Her eyes widen. “What?!” She swipes a wrapper and throws it into her mouth.

Snerk. Yeah, Mark should’ve elaborated on that a bit more there. o<o

“No! Not like that!” Mark grabs her arm but she’s already chewing away, a cheek pushing out.

Her cheeks are popped out on one side. “Mmm?”

“The grey stuff is what wrapped the food! It isn’t the food itself!”

A lump goes down her throat. “I don’t understand.”

Mark: “Oh that can’t possibly be healthy for you.” ._.
Layla: “Meh, I’ve had worse. Kinda sweet-tasting, actually. If really, really dusty.”

He takes a deep breath and rubs his brow. He didn’t need this, the warzone flashback was enough stress.

“Okay. I’ll rephrase. These aren’t food. They would have wrapped the food you’d actually eat, but all of it’s already eaten.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Oh! Okay!” She cocks her head and smirks from the corner of her mouth. “I’ve eaten weirder stuff though. I’ll be fine.”

I was joking about the response that Layla would’ve given earlier. Even if I suppose I should be less surprised given that she’s grown up in a very food-poor environment.

Weirder than human artifacts you know nothing about? “Let’s just check the other bins. Don’t eat stuff unless I say it’s safe. Actually, don’t touch stuff either.”

“Got it.”

She’s totally going to go and touch stuff later on, I can already tell.

They go down the row of bins and pop each lid. There are twelve, one for each human-turned-Pokemon that would have come out of an empty vat. Each one had wrappers save for the last three, and some bins had water bottles which Layla thankfully didn’t eat. The two before Mark’s are completely empty, which made Layla look disappointed. But they’re on the final one, the one meant for Mark.

Oh, so there’s potentially two other humans-turned-Pokémon floating around out there in the tunnels. Noted.

No wrappers, but a whole stash of water, and tucked in the back are two yellowed pages of paper. English stretches across their faces.

“There! Right there!” Layla points at it even as Mark takes it out. Their left edges are rough like it was torn out of a book. The paper otherwise has few creases and only a bit of a bend as damage.

How on earth has this thing not fallen apart in Mark’s hands while handling it from its sheer age? .-.

Mark reads it aloud.

“Mark,​

​

“It’s me, Mathew. I’m sorry, I needed to destroy the journal we used to pass information between us. We’re at risk of someone named Lucia discovering too much, so I’m taking extra precautions. I really do not want a repeat of what happened with Regidrago down here. Still, here’s what you need to know.​

I would recommend using indent blocks with [ INDENT ] {your text here} [ /INDENT ] minus the spaces and the placeholder text to set the letter’s text apart from the rest of the surrounding context. That way, you can also get away with not formatting it as spoken lines of dialogue.

Though Regidrago, huh? Didn’t expect that we’d be getting Legendaries involved so quickly, though duly noted.

“Anthropy really fucked it up. They controlled the information so well that they’ve forgotten about us, while managing to gaslight everyone into thinking the info is more dangerous than it is. As a result, they prosecuted anyone sharing information not approved by Anthropy. It’s been a massive headache over the centuries. Most of us have tried to go to them and talk about the surface and ended up being chased down or worse. Not that it matters, we haven’t really ever met the conditions to return to the surface.​

Totally a good omen for what that journey to try and get to the surface is going to be like for Mark and the rest of the gang.

“I say ‘approved by Anthropy;’ Anthropy has ended up becoming something called the City Guild. I don’t know if they were overthrown by a group that kept a lot of their same values and goals minus some religious aspects or they just ended up changing names, but Anthropy is no more. No one recognizes the name.​

Ah yes, our favorite Law™ faction. Next thing, you’ll tell me that Pokémon in their faction have a tendency to have psychotic breaks after being exposed to manga literature that’s at odds with the official story they’ve been giving.

“There’s also another guild, the Pokemon Guild. Stealing food’s been a problem in the last 550 years and throughout two-thirds of that time span, the City Guild just exiled thieves and any other criminals to below the cliffs. Those exiles formed towns that grew their own food and eventually the City Guild and their allies gave up being nice guys and tried to take their food once they ran out of their own. The Pokemon Guild was formed to oppose them, and even take some of their own farms from them. The Pokemon Guild is more recent - I think they formed in the last 100 years or so?​

Wait, is that Jace’s original crew there? Since this sure feels a lot like them aside from the “Guild” moniker.

“Either way, the previous leader of the City Guild as of this writing was overthrown before I woke up. Lucia is the current leader and from what I was able to gather, she believes the old guild was too passive with addressing the Pokemon Guild. She’s been aggressively countering the Pokemon Guild and she plans to go to war with them. She’s also more brutal at punishing criminals than the Guild in the past. And she’s very popular, despite all that. We’ve gone full circle.​

​

“Here’s the very problematic thing about her. Despite defying the whole point of Anthropy - and I guess the City Guild - she’s looking into human ruins, hoping to find a weapon to use against the Pokemon Guild. ‘Breaking tradition and fighting unquestioned superstition to secure their future,’ or something. She’s been sending out parties to comb tunnels and is trying to decipher the Latin alphabet. I’m afraid she’ll discover me or this place with how thorough she is. I buried the original journal.​

Or worse yet, that she’ll rediscover whatever it was that caused the Red Void. Since if Lucia’s in search of forbidden knowledge… is she really going to keep anything that she comes across off-limits if it will work for her?

Though considering how long this expository sequence is, I wonder if Layla should be getting in reactions anywhere at all, or else if the letter should be broken across multiple fragments or something. Since this backstory is rapidly getting to be a lot to take in.

“It’s actually a bit twisted. The Underground’s been so good at forgetting everything that they forgot what the real danger actually was. If they knew a bit more they would stop, although I guess the plan worked for centuries.​

I mean, it helps that some parts of it literally drive Pokémon insane. I wouldn’t be surprised if others subtly ate away at memory retention.

“That being said, all this guild conflict nonsense may be a blessing in disguise. If they go to war and one of them wins, we might have the best chance we ever had to go to the surface. It’s fucked up but we don’t have any other option. In a way, of fucking course this would. Fuck all this. Knowing the truth really hurts at this point.​

This dude never played a MegaTen game, I can tell. Since there’s a whopping one game that I can think of where it’s potentially worth it to not tell both Law and Chaos to sod off and try and find your own solution without them. Even then, that ending wasn’t exactly great to live through if you weren’t the protagonist.

“Either way, I’m going to take it easy and hide, hoping they will take the other out. Maybe you won’t have to wake up at all! If you do though, try to find me, I’m sure I can help you even though I’ll be 70 years old. I haven’t ever used my real name but I have left a clue inside the Pokemon Guild. I figured if Lucia topples Merka - the Pokemon Guild’s current leader - before you wake up, then I would actually want her to find me, y’know?​

Yeah, I knew it. I actually don’t remember whether or not they were explicitly mentioned as the ‘Pokémon Guild’ or not in prior chapters.

Though the fact that Mathew would root for Law over Chaos in a story that draws influence off of MegaTen and SMT4 specifically sounds like as good an argument as any to just discard his opinion. Since as messed up as Chaos endings can get in MegaTen, they’re almost always lesser evils compared to the Law ones.

“Anyways, a few more things you need to know. There is incredibly little food. John also stole our rations so fuck him. Total scum. Get food sorted asap.​

​

“And be careful of the substation. Criminals from both guilds ended up settling there, and it's now called Scrap Town. There are truly some of the most violent Pokemon out there living in the place. Just avoid it.​

Oh, so Scrap Town is our Neutral faction in this story, huh? Since they are the odd duck out from the City and Pokémon Guild’s Law vs. Chaos dynamic, so…

Mark: “...”

Layla: “Oh come on, it’s not that bad of a place to live in.”

“Between The City Guild and Pokemon Guild, I recommend joining the latter. They’re just closer, that’s all.​

Well, maybe I should take back that remark about discarding Mathew’s opinion there.

“Also, Mystery Dungeons are a thing. They’re formed when enough Pokemon fight each together in a close enough space. It’s like, 7 fighting at once in the space of a room? The layouts change each time you enter them and they’re filled with violent and irrational Pokemon - Pokemon who aren’t considered real people. Money and food can show up inside but nobody knows why. Well, it’s not hard to imagine, huh? Being put underground sure wasn’t bad enough.​

Yeah, that’s totally related to the Void™ that Mark saw in his flashback, I can already tell.

“There’s a few Mystery Dungeons you should know about. Crystal Chasm Cavern is one of them. The ruins inside are already known to Lucia, which is why I’m okay mentioning it. Primordial Road is also a Mystery Dungeon. I know that sounds alarming but it weirdly kinda means nothing. Nobody knows it exists. Must have been made very early on. Either way, Lucia would need to search far and wide. She’ll never find it in her lifetime.​

​

​

“There’s one more but I can’t say it: Lucia must not even know it has significance. That should be a big enough clue for you to figure it out, especially if you ask Pokemon what Mystery Dungeons are out there.​

Or Lucia could just stalk the protagonists and let them do the hard work for her. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a villain pull that gambit successfully in a narrative.

“Lastly, people don’t write with English letters anymore - which they call ‘Human Script.’ Pokemon write with ‘Footpaw Script.’ The letters are arrangements of shapes - the shapes can be anything, but their meaning is formed by their placement and orientation. Other than that, it’s still English. You should be able to decipher it. Sadly it means Lucia won’t take long to decipher it either.​

Oh, so Footpaw Script is still an alphabet, huh? I suppose that that’s handy since even having to adapt to something as minorly different in structure as an abjad would be a huge trip for Mark to deal with.

“That’s all you need to know. Here we are, 600 years later, assuming Lucia doesn’t find you. Best of luck, Mark. And destroy this journal when you’re done.​

>600 years

Geez, this place is old. So that means that we’re at least in the 2600s based off that one tombstone that popped up earlier in the story.

“Though if it’s truly impossible and hopeless, just end it all. It’d be mercy for us. Although deep down I know you’re the kind of person who couldn’t do that…​

Oh, so there’s a Perpetual Reactor analogue lying around somewhere down here too, huh? Jolly.

“And Lucia. If you’re reading this, please stop what you’re doing. The truth’s complicated but the warnings your guild used to teach did actually have an element of truth to them. Continue down this path and everyone will die. Try to make peace with the Pokemon Guild however you can and find the surface that way. It’s the only way your city will find happiness.”​

Ah yes, she’ll totally listen to that warning and not just blow it off, I’m sure. /s

Layla’s awkwardly leaned her chin over Mark’s shoulder. “Well? What else?”

“That’s it,” Mark says. He turns the pages around - there’s a rough map behind one of them which also has a list of Mystery Dungeons and their locations. Primordial Road isn’t listed.

I mean, with a name like that, is it going to be filled with dinomons or something? ^^:

“Well, do you remember anything more?” she asks, leaning her even head closer to the paper and making Mark lean away.

“No. Nothing. But I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to forget anything.” He looks inside the bin, but there are no more clues.

Mark: “... Which is really, really unfortunate, since I’m pretty sure that I’ve forgotten a lot.”

Layla taps his shoulder. “Hey, we still discovered a lot. I always thought it was suspicious how much the City Guild cared about information about the surface, back when I was still living there. Before Lucia.”

“Wait, what?”

She pushes her palms out and shakes them. “Y-yeah! I know! But I’m not like them! I was young. We got kicked out.”

Wait, didn’t Layla already share this detail of her backstory minus the ‘before Lucia’ part? Maybe it’d make sense to have her explicitly remind that to mark.

He waves both his hands. “No. ‘Before Lucia?’”

“Yeah. She took over a little under a generation ago. Why?”

>a little under a generation ago

Wait, just how long are generations in the Underground, since I didn’t peg Layla as being up there in age at all. .-.

Concern grows across Mark’s face. “The way this letter was worded makes me believe there were 50 years between each human waking up. Lucia would be really old if 50 years really did pass since Mathew wrote this. They must have awoken me early.”

Oh, so somebody broke Mark out of his vat and then there was a scuffle over him that resulted in everyone dying, huh? Since that would certainly explain why he woke up in a room full of bloodied corpses.

“‘50 years?’ Well, eh...” She cranes her head down and thinks for a few moments. “They were looking for you, so it's not surprising they found you.”

Her claw waves dismissively. “Either way, we definitely need to figure out more of your memories, and we need to learn more about what we discovered today. Myla and Andy may know something about this ‘Anthropy’ and ‘Primordial Road’ stuff, and possibly about this other human too.”

… Or you could tip Merka off to information he doesn’t know about and trigger a conflict spiral between his guild and Lucia’s. Just saying.

He nods. “Yeah, we still need to know more. There may still be clues here though.” He looks around. The lab’s clean and empty beyond the tall tubes and their instruments around them. However, there’s a faint outline of a door in the corner beside the bins. A subtle depression reveals a handle. Mark heads to it.

“Wait, I got this!” Layla says, running past him. She kicks it.

“Hey!”

It buckles without opening. An acidic order leaks out. Her foot pounds it again, leaving a scratch in the surface.

Well, that’s totally a positive sign there. ^^;

“Let me try it!” Mark says, brushing her aside. He grabs the hollow handle and slides it aside.

It’s darker, emptier, and much smaller inside. Right across the door is a broom, dustpan, mop handle, and a trashcan. Plastic-wrapped wet pads for the mop rest around the ground by it. Mark walks to the can - dirty, used pads inside create the foul smell.

Mark: “Blaugh… I could’ve done without coming here, thanks.”

“Hey Mark, you’re missing something!”

“Huh?” He turns around. There’s a contraption like what’s at the top of Mark’s tube, but much larger. The red light rimming it is harsh and cosmic hues swirl in a grand ocean of cosmic hues beyond the glow. Cables thick and thin spew out of the base and snake up the walls into gaping ceiling panels above. Screams whisper in Mark’s ears as he looks at it: he’s unsure if it’s a latent power of the energy or trauma planted in his subconscious.

Oh boy, that’s ominous there.

“What’s this?” Layla asks. She walks up to it.

“Wait, you’re not going to kick it!” Mark says.

She has a leg up. “What?”

Mark sighs. “Use the end of the mop. Th-the pole, that is. And please stop touching and eating things you don’t know about.”

Mark: “Seriously, Layla. How on earth have you not died in the Underground just poking and kicking at everything you don’t immediately recognize?” >_>;

Still holding her leg up, she rubs her chin and considers this for far longer than she should. “Yeah, you’re right. I just get too excited sometimes. I keep forgetting this dark magic.” Her foot comes down and she picks up the pole. The top end is guided over to the flat top of the contraption, and with Mark giving a little nod, she taps it. Even though it looks like you can dive into the cosmic sea within, the pole clinks on an invisible surface.

“Should I tap it harder? Try to break it maybe?” Layla asks, tone calm this time.

“Nah. It could be dangerous and it wouldn’t help us get closer to the surface, so no point risking it. Plus, it’s probably powering the base.”

… Oh, so the world ended because of a pursuit of an alternative power source, huh? Since if this small Red Void here is powering the base…

“Power?” She looks back at him.

His finger points at the twisting cables and traces them into the ceiling. “Yeah, the lights here and likely the vats need power - energy - to work. Energy like attacks electrical Pokemon can make. This is probably providing that power, nothing else here seems to be providing that source.”

[ ] There are more clinks as Layla taps different sides of the machine. “So, this really is dark magic.”

It might make sense to play up Layla’s reaction a bit more. e.x. if she’s getting a bit

about there really being “dark magic” after all.

Mark wants to refute it, but is he even sure that’s wrong? What he saw on the battlefield didn’t look natural. “Honestly, it could be.”

She nods. “Great.” Then she moves over to the can and peers into it. She pokes the end of the pole inside. “What about this?”

“Huh? Oh, mop pads. You attach them to the end of this handle and you can clean the floor with it. Once you’re done, you throw the pad away.”

Wait, how on earth have they just had those stored for 550+ years without decaying into dust?

“Wow, human dark magic is amazing.” She tries to lift one up with the handle. “Safe to pick these up?”

“They’re dirty. Plus, those aren’t clues. They’re used for cleaning.”

Layla: “I mean, they could always have a clue stuck in them?” ^^;
Mark: “Yeah, I’m not holding my breath on that one. Seriously, just leave them alone, Layla.” >_>;

“Boo.” The pole jerks around, like she’s seeing how squishy or durable the pads are. “By the way, what are those thick Ekans things coming out of that dark magic altar?”

Those are power cables, aren’t they?

He quickly figures out she’s referring to the cables and obliges. She asks more questions, and it evolves into a long q-and-a where Layla asks about the plastic broom, the vats outside, the key terminal, the key, lights, plastic, and a lot of questions about rations. They end up touring the lab more as she branches off into more topics, which Mark happily answers. Abyssal seas aside, there is a lot about humans that really is extraordinary.

Wait, ‘abyssal seas’? I’m not sure if I follow what Mark’s getting at there.

Eventually, her curiosity’s exhausted. “Alright, let’s go. We’ll let Jace burn that human script thingy.” She leaves the lab, turns around to get one last look inside, and beckons Mark out.

That… seems like a bad idea for if you ever wanted to reference Mathew’s letter in the future in the event that you were growing rusty on details.

“Okay. I’m going to lock this .” He says and steps out to the terminal. The blacksteel is unusual - so much light floods out yet the terminal is a perfect shade of black. He puts the key in after remembering to put it upside-down. There’s a quick mechanical chirr and everything becomes pitch black.

Layla’s feet prattle around. “Wait Mark, what’s going on?”

Oh, that USB key is actually going to come in handy now, isn’t it?

Mark waves his arm around, feeling the weight of the torch. He reasons where the end of it should be and squints hard. There’s a pathetic ember of dark crimson at the tip.

“Our eyes are adjusted to the light. Now we’d have to wait for them to adjust to the dark.”

“What? Like if you were to leave the magma caverns? Bullshit.” Her footsteps wander around until they get closer to Mark. She bumps into him and they both fall over.

“Ow. Hey!” he says. Her weight’s right above him.

Layla: “... Shut up, this doesn’t prove anything.” >_>;

“Sorry there. I couldn’t see you! Hey, let’s stay like this.”

“Huh?” He looks around, but can’t see her. “Yeah. Sure.”

She crosses her arms over his chest. He imagines her head’s resting on top.

“Hey Mark, I’m on top of you,” she says in a singsong voice.

Ah yes, back to ship teasing, I see. :V

“Yup,” he mutters, still not seeing her. Shouldn’t Sableye have night vision?

You’d think that given that in nature they live in literal caves, buuuuut…

An epiphany hits him. He probably has had night vision the entire time - the caves have just been that dark the entire time. If it weren’t for the torches, these caves probably have zero light, and night vision still needs that to see. These torches probably aren’t that bright either, given the seemingly infinite longevity they have.

This is advanced darkness.

I snerked.

“Hey Mark, how flustered are you right?”

“Huh?”

Her claw prods his cheek. “You get all blushy and stuttery whenever I get close to you. Now the underground’s most gorgeous lady is right on top of you and you’re all calm?”

I mean, it helps that he’s got video games a computer terminal to compete for attention. ^^;

“I can’t see the beautiful girl on me… Plus I thought you did this sort of affection for emotional support.”

There’s silence before Layla rolls into sitting on top of his belly. “Eh, not all the time. Sometimes I just want a cute guy to go ‘Oh my god a pretty girl aaaa.’”

As lulzy as this is, it makes me wonder if Layla had issues with being ignored when she was younger, since she sure is hungry for attention right now.

He chuckles nervously and pokes her side. “W-well, you are the most beautiful girl in the Underground.”

“You know it, Mark.”

“It’s true!”

I can hear the ship horns already. o<o

They laugh, the long hallways echoing it.

“Although please get off me, this is hurting a bit,” Mark says, patting her side.

“Aww.” She gets off.

“I’m sorry!”

Layla: “So… I can get back on?”

Mark: “Later, okay?” >_>;

There is more prattling as Layla walks in circles. Eventually, Mark’s own body comes into sight, and many moments later, his teammate. The curved walls of the tunnel follow. He stands up and holds his arm out for Layla to take.

It's a long walk and both were silent in thought. Smiles stayed on their faces the whole walk home. Finally, success.

Mark: “Yup, as long as Mathew’s letter stays in my mind, we’re all going to be a-OK.”
Layla: “Wait, but Mark, haven’t you already forgotten about almost everything in your life once already?”

Mark: “... It’s highly unlikely that it’d happen a second time?” ^^;

Alright, and made it to the end. I’ll admit, that certainly surprised me as a follow-up to Chapter 11, even if Chapter 12’s short enough that I wonder if it could’ve just been a part of Chapter 13 without missing a beat. Perhaps it’d be a bit different if it were expanded a bit more. But on the whole, these two chapters did a pretty good job at helping us learn a bit about the state of the world and how we got here, while opening up new mysteries like what on earth the Ghost-magnet void of doom was and teeing things up for the future for conflict involving the opposing guilds of the Underground. Also, the character moments, those were cute and nice additions, too.

That said, I did notice some noticeable flaws with these two chapters. Like there’s the fact that some parts could be described a bit more, but I won’t go into that too much since I’ve made that criticism quite a bit in my readthrough. The big structural issue that I see is how Chapter 13 has a looooooooong exposition dump that takes up like a third of the chapter, which while it’s all neat stuff and stuff we’d have to learn eventually, makes me wonder if it should’ve been broken up a bit in delivery, whether it’s through multiple letters/sources lying around, interspersing with commentary from Layla and Mark, or even outsourcing parts of the exposition to Layla herself (e.x. the backstory between the City and Pokémon Guilds). Since in its present format, it’s a pretty hard break from the rest of the story and drags on a bit.

Though hey, even if I had a few bones to pick, I still quite enjoyed this readthrough @BestLizard . And I’ll be looking forward to catching up with the rest of Below sometime later on this Review Blitz. ^^

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, I was going around looking for fics where I had some loose ends dangling to come back to for this final day, and realized that I was one chapter off from getting caught up again with Below. Sounds like as good a reason as any to finish getting current with it, so let’s just jump right in:

Chapter 14

Spoiler

Clouds of deep purple and blue shift and overlap but never form. A sea of stars drifts among them in tranquil peace. Two voices speak in the distance: Mark’s own, and a feminine voice, who sounds like an old friend.

“A Sableye,” she says. “You’re okay with being a Sableye? If you have any doubts, speak up. Finding the right body for you is most important.”

Huh. Mark’s sure regaining his memories a lot sooner than I thought he would in this story. It feels like there’s just been a cascade since he remembered the Red Void of Death a couple chapters ago.

“The more I think about it, the more I feel it's the choice meant for me, even if it’s not a practical Pokemon.”

“It’s okay if it isn’t practical. You shouldn’t need to fight anyways.”

“Sableye, then.”

[ ]

“Alright. And there’s still a few days before we transfer you and feel free to change your mind in that time, but we’ll go ahead and prepare a Sableye body for you.”

“Thank you.”

I get that this is Mark’s memories and that there’s a good chance that he can’t remember anything other than the voices from this exchange, but I do wonder whether or not it’d still have made sense to still break up these sections of dialogue with paragraphs focusing on what Mark remembers of his mood or internal thought process back whenever he was making these decisions.

“Anything for you. You’re the one sacrificing a lot. It’s the least we can do.”

“I’m just doing what’s right. I wouldn’t be happy otherwise. That being said, is it okay if it’s a bit taller than a regular Sableye?”

Oh, so that’s why he and Lena are directly comparable in size to each other. I honestly should’ve seen that one coming.

The two continue to speak, but the voices become reverberated and faint. Soon, it’s silent, and the sea of stars turns dark.

Mark: “Wait! Wait! I wasn’t done yet-!”

Clink, clank, clunk. Layla’s hopping down the labyrinth of crossbeams holding the scrap hut’s upper layers. “Hey, Mark!” she says, landing next to his bed. “It’s time to wake up!”

Oh, back in Scrap Town already, huh? I do wonder if there should’ve been a bit more narration emphasizing “oh, it’s a day later and we’re back home” or something like that, but eh. Maybe that comes up later.

Mark’s not in his bed.

She looks around confused. “Mark?”

“Yes?” he asks. He’s by the entrance, stretching his arms over his head. His torch and adventure bag are already on him.

She leans in and raises an eyebrow. “You’re already up?”

Layla: “Wait, since when were you a morning person?”

“We got to figure out more about what we learned.” He stretches his arms forward instead of above. “I’m just really eager. Plus, I’m hungry.”

Both her eyebrows rise.

He furrows his back in confusion. “What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing, nothing! I’m just too used to dragging you out of bed. It’s more fun that way.”

Ah yes, never change, Layla.

“Oh, uh.” He shakes his limbs to round out the stretch, then lifts a free arm to her. “You can still drag me to Myla’s cafe.”

She leaps to him and clasps his wrist. A giggle escapes. “You still know how to be a good partner.”

“Hey, I like it.” He smirks.

She wiggles her eyebrows before dragging him all the way to the cafe.

Ah yes, more ship teasing between these two. Don’t deny it, either. >:V

A scene’s brewing inside. Pokemon circle around a single table and loud voices shout over each other. Some push each other while jeers and profanities slip by. Myla’s leaning over the bar and watching, hand-ribbons holding her cheeks while her head pleasantly bobs side-to-side. Her eyes flick to Team Surface for a brief moment.

Mark: “Actually, in retrospect, I’m not really sure why I was so eager to come here when this place apparently keeps tied-up Pokémon in its cold storage, but…” ^^;

“Heeeeeey Myla,” Layla says. She hops onto a stool and leans over the counter, smirking at her with claw-in-cheek. Mark settles for watching the commotion, tapping his chin.

“A fight’s about to begin,” Myla says. “Come on, let’s watch it together.”

Mark: “I’m sorry, you’re really just okay with this right now?”

“Hmmm maybe, but we need info again. And we got plenty to share with you!” Her eyebrow perks to tempt the ghost, although Myla’s too distracted to notice.

“Hey, if they fight, won’t it make a Mystery Dungeon?” Mark asks. His eyes flick between the crowd and two girls at the bar.

“Nah,” they say in unison. Myla follows up, “Most will peel off and form a line once fists start flying. Only two to four will actually fight at once. And if things get bad anyways, Mamon here will stop them.”

Huh, so there’s an entire set of mores in the Underground that’s built around “accommodating violence, but without making Mystery Dungeons”. I wonder if that means that a lot of wars in this setting are settled by combat between champions.

A Duskull wiping down a bowl to their side grunts. He’s hovering lower than the counter.

“Still,” Mark crosses his arms. “We shouldn’t let them start, right?”

[ ]
“Hey Layla,” Myla says. “Think Penelope’s finally going to die?”

Mark smacks his forehead.

I think that you’re missing some sort of paragraph to function as a transition for Myla speaking up, since her line and the change of mood and tone it represents read really abruptly for some reason.

“Mmmm, [ ]” Layla twists her head to stare at the crowd. Her tongue wiggles around in her mouth as she thinks. “You really should hear what we have to say. We discovered a lot about, y’know. The major stuff. The big, juicy steak of stuff. The stuff that drips. Mmmm good stuff.”

Their eyes meet. Layla’s brows waggle. “Come on, what do you want more?”

I think that Layla should acknowledge Myla’s question a bit more before re-routing the conversation. Something as simple as “dunno really, but I’ve got other stuff on my mind” would potentially do the trick.

[ ]

“Fine. Mamon, cheer on Phil, make sure he kills the bitch,” she says before her body floats backwards without breaking her leaning pose. The servant grunts in response and continues scrubbing the bowl while she passes through the wall.

Another spot which feels like it’d benefit from some added description.

Mark rolls his eyes to the two and steps towards the crowd with his arms waving.

“Hey, break it up, everyone! No need for figh- aaah!”

Layla pulls him by the ear, all the way around the corner and through the rustic door in spite of his flailing.

Layla: “Mark, focus on our problems here!” >_>;

Cool musty air still lingers here. The boxes are stacked in cacophonous arrangements, some open and others closed. The biggest difference to the room was no more prisoner in the corner. Instead, splotches of blood drip down the wall. Mark seethes at it, but Layla barely notices it.

Mark: “I… don’t even want to know, do I?”

Myla: “If you have to ask the question, then you absolutely don’t. Besides. I thought that you two had something to tell me.”

Myla’s waiting in the middle. Layla hops onto a box nearby and lays on her side, claw in her cheek. Mark stands by her and fidgets his claws.

“Alright, what’s the update?” Myla asks.

“It’s a long story.” Layla’s eyes roll to emphasize the word “long”. “We, uh, um, where to start…” She looks at Mark.

IMO, Layla’s “long” there would also work better with italics or something to further emphasize it in the text.

“You must know how there were two Lucia guildmembers searching for something in the lower tunnels, right? A Gallade and a Machamp?” Mark says.

“Yup,” Myla says. “They’ve been missing for a few days. What about them?”

Mark taps his heel as he recalls all the info. “They were aware that there was a human out somewhere in the lower tunnels. A human who turned into a Pokemon, although didn’t actually know which species… I was.”

[ ]

“The Gallade we found was supposed to find me and the key he had was supposed to open a lab where I was frozen in time by ‘black magic.’ They did actually find me, but on the way back, came across one of Merka’s team and they took each other out. Then Layla found me.

IMO, Mark’s paragraph here where he’s expositioning is long enough that it probably makes sense to break it into two and take a moment to show off Layla and Myla’s reaction to what he had to say about the first half before moving on.

“We went back there, and found the lab I came from. We found a journal…”

Mark went on to explain the last series of events in thorough detail. Jace, the laboratory tubes, his memories of the past, Anthropy and the corpse, everything in the journal, even his dreams. Mark’s hands got more animated the further into the story he went. Myla’s grin, for the first time Mark ever witnessed, turned into a muted, prospecting grimace. Layla interjects a few times, but only to exaggerate how mysterious the human’s dark magic is.

Not sure that it was the smartest thing in the world to go and just explain this in the backroom of a crowded café, but I suppose the cat’s out of the bag now, and from Myla’s expression, she probably doesn’t have ulterior motives for this information? ^^;

“We were wondering if you may know anything that could help,” Mark says. “Especially about ‘Anthropy.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Myla closes her eyes and shakes her head. “No, actually. Although this is the kind of group I would have heard about, especially if it used to be the City Guild itself. Eh,”

Her ribbon reaches around to scratch the back of her head. [ ]

“The fact I haven’t heard about them is pretty significant. They’re either not very powerful or they’re very recent, and they wouldn’t be connected to the City Guild cause then Lucia wouldn’t need to have asked where you are. Either way, sounds like you could learn more if you go straight after them.”

“What?” Mark asks.

Another paragraph that IMO works better hacked up into parts with the middle bit of description expanded a bit. Also:

Mark: “I’m sorry, but why the hell would we want to do that?”

“Think about it,” Myla says. “A single scary note. There are more effective ways of threatening people.” She gestures her head towards the blood. “Either they don’t believe they’re strong enough to confront you, or they’re not serious about this.”

Mark: “I… really could’ve done without being reminded of that, really.”
Myla: “Meh he was a terrible Pokémon who had what was coming to him, so don’t feel too bad about it.”

Layla speaks up. “We have no leads though!”

Mark shakes his head. “No, that’s not true. I mentioned I was a human aloud to Andy. Anybody who was in the cafe on that day could be from Anthropy. I might be able to remember who was there.” He rubs his chin a bit more before looking at Layla. “It wouldn’t be Andy, right?”

“No! He pretty much raised me!” She frowns with brows furrowed in offense. “Took care of me after my father died and later my mother. He was always teaching me about being nice to others and not killing others for the longest time. It couldn’t possibly be him. Besides, he supports me finding the Surface, even if he doesn’t like it.”

Mark: “I mean, it has been a while since that journal was written. Are you sure he’s not from Anthropy but just had a change of hear-?”

Layla: “Mark. Andy’s. Not. From. Anthropy. Okay?”

“Hey, I just wanted to make sure, it is a relief to hear it.”

“Hey,” Myla gets the two’s attention. “It’s more likely this 11th human spilled the beans, or there’s a source of information both of them are using. Either way, the guild is hiding secrets about the surface, so there’s another path to pursue.”

inb4 they already found a way up to it and it’s an unlivable craphole.

Both Mark and Layla look down to ponder this.

Myla continues. “And on top of that, if answers are buried in the past, then exploring Upside-Downtown may also help as well. Their legends run back the furthest.”

Oh, well that name’s new.

[ ]

Layla sighs. “That’s on the other side of the Underground.”

I kinda wonder if this would’ve worked a bit better showing Mark reacting a bit more to the new place name that was dropped and wondering about what it is or something like that. Since it feels like this place is going to be important in the plot, so it might make sense to play it up a bit.

She shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know,” she says wistfully. “But that’s the end of everything I can share, I don’t have much to say. Upside-Downtown, Anthropy, the 11th human, and prying from Lucia’s Guild directly - these are where I’d try to find more answers. I can look into getting a high-ranking Lucia guildmember kidnapped, but it’s unlikely to happen and you’d owe me big if I do.”

I see that that letter from Mark’s predecessor at the lab wasn’t far off for warning about Scrap Town given how casually Myla brings up kidnapping others.

“Yeah.” Layla rubs the back of her neck and sheepishly looks to the side as she ponders. “Thank you, this helps a lot.”

Mark nods to Myla. “The 11th human’s hiding in Merka’s Guild. That sounds like the most reliable path at the moment.”

Like I know that the letter Mark found flatly suggested siding with the Pokémon Guild, but this would probably explain a thing or two about why they’re in intractable conflict with the City Guild. Especially if the City Guild knows that the 11th human is somewhere in Merka’s ranks.

Layla shakes her head. “The guild’s dangerous. Upside-Downtown makes a little sense but… Are you sure it’ll have anything useful? It’s such a long trek.”

Myla nods. “It might not have anything. I mostly pointed it out cause there’s little risk involved. Anyways,” she turns around. “I want to see who died.”

Mark: “Um… yeah, is there a back exit to this place? Since I could really go without seeing a corpse in the middle of the café-”

[ ]

“Wait!” Layla says, free hand reaching out. She exaggerates her lounging pose. Her voice becomes smoother. “You know, we’re all alone together again. Just like old times.”

IMO, this would be a good spot to bring up Myla getting up and starting to leave in description or something like that.

Mark points to himself. “What about me?”

Layla: “I mean, there’s no reason you can’t be involved, too. Since I love all you guys-!” ^.^
Mark: “Oi, I thought that we were going to stick to MegaTen references in these reviews…” >_>;

“Well, and Mark. S-still! We can spend some time together before you head back. Get to know each other more like those days.” Her grin widens.

Myla turns around. She says nothing.

“Just one kiss! Come on! Right here,” she says tapping her lips.

“Is this the best time?” Mark asks.

Mark: “Since I’d really, really like to put some distance between myself and the bloodstains on the wall right now.” >_>;

“Mark! It’s always the right time for love! Plus, you definitely want to see girls make out. You’re already blushing.”

“What?” he says. He rubs his cheek. It’s warm! “Uh, uh, um- Uhh.”

Layla: “You can go ahead and admit that I’m right.”

The large ghost floats over her and pushes a ribbon into her forehead. “When you’re on the surface. But I’m sorry. I want to but nothing’s gonna work if you’ll never be around. And I kinda care about how I feel.”

“We have time now!” Layla says, grin growing more smug.

Myla’s ribbon caresses her chin. “Find the surface,” she whispers. “Then we’ll have all the time we need.” After that, she floats away backwards, tauntingly waving her goodbye.

Layla: “Bah, why do you have to be such a killjoy, Myla? We were literally right there!”
Mark: “Look, shouldn’t we be following the lead that she gave us to try and find that 11th human right now?” ^///^

Just before she phases through, Layla speaks up. “I’m sorry I can’t be around as often as you want, I wish I could.”

Myla stops before going through the wall. “You make love so complicated.”

“I love you,” Layla says with a stern expression.

“Just find the surface.” She phases through.

Layla: “Good gods, Myla read a room already! I’m trying to have a moment here!” >.<

Mark twiddles his thumbs. The musty air and its chilly bite are strong in this silence. “Is everything alright?”

A longing sigh is let out as she looks at the spot Myla passed through. “I just wish things could be different.”

She drums her fingers against her legs before looking at Mark properly.

“Also, I didn’t uh, make you uncomfortable or anything, have I? With the whole ‘you can watch’? Or even my behaviour in general? I’m a bit guilty about that.”

Mark: “Not any more than usual?” ^^;
Layla: “Thanks… I guess. Not sure if that was a good thing or not.”

“No, no you didn’t. I’m just not used to uh… Girls.”

She shifts and swings a leg over the other. Her foot taps while the smirk she had with Myla comes back. “That’s fine. You’re cuter when you’re flustered anyways.”

Yeah, I had a feeling with how much of a lulzy troll Layla has been this entire story.

“Th-thanks.” He rubs the back of his neck.

A brow quirks and her eyes lid. “Want to kiss me?”

Oh, so you got art of specifically this moment, huh? :V

Mark fumbles a lot of sounds without any word actually coming out. His heart pounds against his chest.

Mark: “Wait, I have a heart as a Ghost-type?” O///O

It makes the girl giggle. “Just right here.” Her claws tap her lips. “Mwah, you know? Be my boyfriend.”

He takes a deep breath and walks forward. He grips the edge of the box, leans in, and pecks his lips. His cheeks turn completely red.

Whelp, looks like this ship is well on its way out of port at this rate.

“What?” Layla’s eyes light up in surprise.

Mark tenses and gulps. “D-did I do it wrong?”

She giggles and pinches his cheek to stretch it wide out. “I liked it. It was good. I just didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

Layla: “So… when should I expect you to get to second base-?” ^^;
Mark: “Layla!” >.<
Layla: “What? Just saying, I am the kinda ‘mon that doesn’t like beating around the bush.”

Mark: “I just- How do you even have baseball metaphors in this place?!” >_>;

“Well, the prettiest girl in the underground is asking for a kiss. Of course I had to take it. Ah!” Layla stretches his cheeks even further.

“That’s the correct response. And call me pretty more. I really like that.”

“Eheh… But, uh,” his tone becomes concerned, “does this mean we are dating or something?”

Well, you are now. o<o

His cheek snaps as she lets go. “Do you want to?”

“I- No, actually. Like, I don’t know. Not yet, you know? Uh,” He looks away. She’s still a murderous stranger by the end of the day.

I… honestly did not get that vibe from Mark about Layla in past chapters at all. If you’re not going to backport more queasiness about him regarding Layla earlier on into the story, it might make sense to tone down the phrasing a bit. Even if it’s something along the lines of “She’s still a stranger with blood on her claws at the end of the day.”

[ ]

“Hey, hey, I do like you, but it’s okay if you don’t want to date me. I’m actually glad you cleared that up.” She grabs his chin and turns his head towards her. “But hey, just know it’s okay if we kiss just because it’s fun. I don’t mind that and don’t feel bad about it.”

He looks into her eyes for a bit but ends up looking away again. “It-It’s tempting, but I’m not sure if it's right. T-that was just a kiss, uh, um, uh, I’m worried about going fast.”

So, Mark will be staying firmly on first base for the foreseeable future with Layla. Even if I’m not convinced that these two won’t eventually be growing closer to each other.

She gently squeezes his shoulder. “Hey. Follow your heart. We don’t need to do anything.”

Mark let out a sigh of relief. “Alright. And I’m sorry. I’m not used to being attracted to girls and I just really don’t want to be hasty, especially since everything has been a lot of whiplash. I’ve only been here five or six days.”

Everything up to this point has fit in the span of six days?

I honestly could’ve sworn that it was longer, since there really has been a lot happening in this story up to this point.

Her comforting smile diminishes a bit, although she still consoles him by rubbing his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I guess I am being a lot for you. I can stop teasing if it’ll help. I might not be the best at that though. I’m not the best with self-control.”

Understatement of the century there.

“No, that’s-” he pushes his foot around and takes a deep breath. He tries her advice and pays attention to what his heart says. “That’s fine. I enjoy it, actually even if it makes me a nervous wreck.” He looks up again. “It’s just something fun, yeah?”

“Yes. I enjoy making you a nervous wreck. And if you ever want to turn something down or ask me to stop, I’ll do that, okay? But I’ll keep teasing you for now, and I haven’t even done my biggest teasing yet.” She winks.

You really are shameless, you know that, Layla? >:V

“Yeah, thanks. I’m figuring out a lot of things fast. Heh.” He smirks and gulps one last time before looking at her again. He can’t pull away from looking at her eyes and infectious smirk. How beautiful he finds her. “Still, can we try kissing just… One more time?”

Yeah, I knew you weren’t going to let that ship between them go so easily. :P

She bursts out laughing and she swings herself upright. “Yes, yes we can.”

Her claws cusp his shoulders to inch him closer. Mark’s chest thumps, his breath gets light, and their mouths finally press together. The two soon lean into each other, wrapping their arms around each other. She caresses the back of his head while Mark closes his eyes and savours this moment with her.

After a good while, she parts from him with a smug, satisfied grin. “You liked that?”

“Heh. Eheh. Hehehe.” Mark loses himself giggling. It makes her chuckle in turn. She toys with his ear fin a bit until he settles down, but that moment never comes.

Layla: “I’ll just go and take that as a ‘yes’ from you.”

“Alright, alright. We do have to do more missions, unfortunately. I know, I know.” She slips off the box. “Think you’ll be ready soon?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. You’re the best. Heh.”

She chuckles and gives him a quick hug before grabbing his forearm. “I am. By the way, what changed? You’re different today.”

Wait, you mean aside from Mark being more open than normal about his feelings about you? Since I’m not sure if I follow here.

“What? I, uh,” he takes a few breaths to collect his thoughts. “I think it’s learning that there’s a purpose to me being down here and everything. Like, I feel a need to move, now that I have a direction to go. I don’t quite feel the same anymore.”

“Well, keep it up, it’s good for you,” she says with a wink, before moving them out of the cold, bloody room. Mark never stops giggling as Layla drags him across the cafe, and her gleeful smile never leaves.

Layla: “(Prooooobably a good thing that he didn’t see the fresh corpse lying on the café floor on our way out, but hey! All’s well that ends well!)” ^^;

Alright, finally caught up with this thing, and I take it that this is basically a bridge chapter where one arc closes with the process of finding out a bit about Mark’s backstory, while another one begins with Mark and Layla setting their sights towards acting on the leads they got to try and find a way to the surface and get sucked into the obvious Law vs. Chaos conflict roiling the Underground. Well, that and you were setting up a ship between Layla and Mark, but that’s obviously been a long time coming, and it was definitely fun to see that play out more openly.

As for criticisms, my main point of contention is that I think that you had a decent amount of room to drop in a bit more description and depiction of different moments, particularly involving characters, their moods and inner thoughts, and their reactions. Without it, it was a bit hard to get a read at some points, and other sequences read a bit abrupt to me, which using description to force pauses between dialogue can be really handy for.

But altogether, I had a good time @BestLizard . And I’ll be looking forward to seeing where you take this story in the coming year. ^^