Pokémon Into the Moon (PMD Cosmic Horror)

[BestLizard]

Lunar astronaut Lucario is far away from disaster when the moon tears open and the world around him is consumed with anomalies. Not happy leaving the world without answers, he travels inside the now-hollow moon where discovers many things.

CW: Horror, math

Acknowledgments: Zero (main beta reader), S'mores (original title), GumPlum, DaGamestar (beta reading some chapters)

---

1: The End​

My university offered math history classes once. At first I was bothered that it existed - why would it help me with math or science? I thought it must have existed solely to please people’s egos while wasting them of their time and money. But it sounded like an easy way to pick up elective credits, and university was hard enough as it is. I took it and ended up learning more about math and science than any other course.

Throughout many lectures describing how math and science were developed to solve problems, the lessons on Descartes stuck out to me - a Malamar from Grass Continent’s renewal era. He developed important ideas like the cartesian coordinates - plotting x and y on a graph - but his most important contribution was the statement “I think, therefore I am”. I’ve heard the statement before but I didn’t understand why this was important to math until my professor illustrated to me that the problem isn’t so much that we do exist, but everything else may not. Our senses are limited and prone to error. We can’t even tell the difference between dream and reality. Math, and therefore science, were tools made to predict things based on what few things we can be sure of. We can not see atoms just as much as we can’t see Arceus, but we know about the former because we can measure them.

Unfortunately, we can’t measure what makes someone a person. Nor can we quantify love on a scale or describe life as numbers, so these things don’t exist in the mind of science. In a way, it's because it's true. Atoms moving around by chained chemical reactions is what causes a heartbeat to raise, we just have poor rules to then call that love. I don’t actually believe everything is like this, but this draconic mindset has helped me solve many problems in math or life. A lot of obstacles turn out to only exist because we assume they’re real.

But science believes itself may be wrong. It’s ultimately just a bunch of rules we guess reality follows. Yet even if everything else may or may not exist, our minds still, because we use them. It’s a small comfort to know, although I don’t think everything else is going to exist much longer.

I am dragging a raft with a clean, silvery rope. My space suit isn’t flexible enough to let me heave it over my shoulder, or tuck it under my arm, so I swing it in wide arcs. My feet struggle to dig into the thin layer of white sand beneath, finding little friction before I’m bounced into the air. It’s exhausting moving like this. My breath is heavy and fogs up the visor. I hear my heavy heartbeat and nothing else in this void world. Darkness is above and a vast wasteland of moon dust mirrors it below.

A spark of radio static interrupts my focus. “Hey. Take a break.”

I look to my side. A Kommo-o co-engineer, now survival buddy, has let go of his rope and rests his hands on his knees. His space suit is bulkier than mine, looking like a plump Tyrunt with how he hunches over. His snout extends into his long yellow-tinted helmet and his eye glances aside to me. A thick glove presses his chest. “Seriously. We shouldn’t ignore exhaustion. Let’s take a five-minute break.”

I look ahead. Our lander out of here is there. It’s a tin can of orange and grey metal, beams and struts around its legs bare. We were lucky nobody bothered to put it away and it hasn’t collapsed with age.

I want to finish this final stretch, but he’s right. I let go and bend over to get some air into my lungs as well. My hand wipes the front of my helmet instinctively - I wish I can wipe the sweat dripping down my fur.

I peek out our stock. The raft we carried still has its goods strapped down. Spare oxygen tanks, tools, scrap parts, a computer, stockades of rations, batteries, and smaller stuff I’ve forgotten about. That’s good. Trailing behind it is a long, messy line etched in the sand.

The horizon beyond looks worse though. Fragments of the moon still hang in the sky, massive islands that refuse to fall. Bases of other guilds still lie on them, hanging upside down. Dark holes puncture between them. Glowing pink fluid collects at the bottom of these holes and seeps out, like tears.

I press my chest’s communication button. “That shimmering stuff. Is more falling down from before?”

He looks up. His head shakes. “I’m not thinking about it.”

I don’t stop thinking about it. I watch heaps of it drip out onto the moon. The biggest hole on the largest fragment had a thin, steady stream spilling out, filling up a pool in a distant crater.

Our break takes longer than five minutes. We shouldn’t be pushing the luck we had that we were far away from when the moon cracked open. When we arrived back at our base, nobody was there. There were only black holes around and puddles of pink ooze that trail away. All the spacecraft there had those uncanny blemishes and wouldn’t work as if essential components stopped existing. Radios did work, but no one picked up. We still don’t know what’s going on.

My friend stretches as far as his suit allows him. “Okay, Lucario. Time to move again.” He clumsily picks up the plastic rope with his bulky claw glove. He makes funny bunny hops heaving it forward. I join him.

I look back once more. Far, far away, a trail of the shimmering pink fluid zigzags toward our direction. I think Kommo-o saw it too.

We both know we were going to die. We’re pretending otherwise.

(Art by Holiday605)​

 

[BestLizard]

2: Sight and Sound​

The raft lies askew in its final resting spot. Opened canisters are strewn while straps loll off the side, dirtied in the moondust. I’m under the craft familiarizing myself with the structure and damage beneath while Kommo-o finishes moving our essentials inside the lander. My flashlight’s pale cone drags over bulky supports and cluttered wiring made from a time fallen behind. Scratches dig in by the joints, bangs dent many bars, and scorch marks paint the fine silver in ugly black and browns. All signs of use and love, but nothing that’s broken. Not on the outside. All time has done to the machine since it last flew was fade its colours.

Kommo-o comes down the ladder jutting out the side of a landing leg. The shadow of his large figure looms to my side. “How’s it looking? Will it work?”

I’m caught ducking underneath a beam. Bending my free arm to hit the comms button is unwieldy. “Yes. It must have been abandoned for being at the end of its life cycle, nothing here would have been worth recycling then. It’ll be safe.”

His form bends forward. “What about the structure?”

I shine the light his way. He’s examining one of the uglier beams, which looks like it’d crack under firm pressure. But that’s just looks. “Nothing wrong.”

He buzzes in his channel again just to chuckle. I smirk too, but add more. “It resting here may have pushed it past some margins of error, but, y’know…” safer than a car drive. “It’ll be stiff and unbalanced, though. All fixable.”

The figure bounces away. “Anything you’ll need me to do?”

I look around the center. Barren of sensors, much like the rest of the frame. Definitely built in a time blindly romantic about electronic solutions. “We’ll need its computers going. Most gauges are digital-only”

My partner hobbles back. He’s already got a tablet in one claw outstretched to me, a laptop held under the other.

---

Getting the electronics live took time. Kommo-o said many aspects, such as data formats and communication protocols, are archaic. The manual he had to reference was in a language he’s rusty at and slowing him further were his mittened claws being too large for the footprint-labeled keyboard. Each key is pressed with the tip of a fist-clenched pen. But this is his expertise, and he’s faster than me.

The spinning loading dial on my tablet finally fades out for a UI to light up instead. Columns of numbers in a robotic font scroll past the bottom, while a dropdown list at the top stretches with a red-to-green gradient. Digital buttons stylized as realistic levers and switches with unconvincing lighting stud the side.

The theatrics makes me want to vomit but the program underneath is the same used for the last half-century, even if a few hundred versions behind. I know it better than Moncrosoft Guild Footnotes.

“I got it from here, thank you,” I say.

“Yup. I’ll work us out getting back to Earth,” Kommo-o says.

---

Pokemon have dreamed of walking the moon for millennia and many would trade all they have in life for just ten minutes of where I’m at. I’d take those offers, even if the world wasn’t ending. The minutes blur into hours as I press a button, wait, get a number, press more buttons, get more numbers, and again, and again, and again. They’re each tweaked until they show green and not a single digit starts out already complete. A lot of the problems were due to lubricant. Although we brought more than enough, siphoning droplets out is lengthy, especially because we can’t add too much. This numbers game had to be done multiple times for each leg, and the controls around the thruster had even more monotonous adjustments. And nothing’s to say of the pain of multiple controls affecting overlapping numbers. I keep my mind from dying by looking at the moon shards periodically. Each time, there’s more black and less white. More of the trickling shimmer has morphed into steady streams of soft rosy colours. It’s beautiful.

I remember I’m not alone. I press my chest. “How’s it coming along?”

“I can’t find a way back to Earth from here. There’s a nearby station above us we’re going to instead.”

I shuffle out from underneath to look up at him. He’s curled up with his neck and head bent under the ceiling, side pressed against our supplies, and tail clenched between his legs.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

He doesn’t notice I’m looking at him. He couldn’t have heard me move, after all. “There’s no way to measure where we are in relation to Earth. The satellites this used for that don’t exist anymore. Like-” his eyes flick to the black sky above. He searches, even though there are only faint stars above. “-probably discontinued before all this happen. But I know where we are in relation to this space station. It’s faster to go there and connect to new satellites.”

I grimace and rub the back of my helmet, despite being unable to feel my paw. The larger Pokemon finally notices me. “It’ll also take an hour and a half for these calculations to complete. The lander’s just slow with data. The way it's encrypted, the way it's compressed, all with no bandwidth. It’s-”

He must see my unhappy face, as he wistfully turns his head away. I stand and stare longer but I get back underneath eventually. I work at a lazier speed, knowing I’ll finish before him. He radios me again not much later. “Hey, we’ll get back to Earth. It’ll take time but we have it. And we’re bound to hear from someone else waiting up there.”

I let a breath out through my nostrils but I don’t reply otherwise. My turn to avoid thinking about things.

Instead, I think of the dreadful silence I chose. There’s only my breath and heartbeat to listen to. I pretend to hear clacks of switches pressing and whirring mechanical machines as I play with the software, but that toy hardly entertains me. Especially with this new number taking seconds between each tick.

I shake my head and look back out to the evolving horizon. One of the smaller islands has a tiny speck of untouched white at its corner. The void encroaches on it, dimming it until it's darker than the space behind it. It's all so far away.

He interrupts me once more. His tone is cozier. “Hey, you know it’s going to be cramped in here as we go up?”

I flick my eyes up. Surprised and confused, I listen close.

“Like, we’ll be right up against each other, you know.”

The frown melts. My brow presses in, unsure to be annoyed or interested. “Go on.”

“Think you’ll be comfortable all huddled up against me?”

I smile. “I think it’d be nice. I can hold on tight.” I look in his direction, despite the metal shell between us.

“Yeah. We keep that going even when we reach the station. Get to know each other better.”

My smile grows. “Plenty of time to be together, with no one to interrupt us.”

“Yeah…” He says, energy descending across the single word.

The corner of my mouth stretches back as I realize what I’m saying. My head eases back down to the screen, where the number stays still. The silence comes back, even emptier now. I can’t stand it for long. “Hey, sorry, I, uh, didn’t…”

“It's okay,” he says. “I’m glad I have you.”

“Me too. Thank you.”

The time doesn’t feel so blurry now. I even forget about the silence. All I think of is Kommo-o now.

---

The hole on the largest rock stretches its edge to the top and bottom, making a gaping maw. Huge globs of liquid pool at the bottom, growing until its weight teeters it over the side. They float down all at once and shoot up hazy pink mist when it impacts. The sedated tempo makes it reminiscent of lava lamps.

I watch all this sitting at the top of the onboarding ladder. Occasionally, I’ll scroll through the program to check each number. I hope one will unfix itself, but as is the only possible outcome, they stay steady. Then look back up. My partner’s stuck crossing his arms while text whizzes by the monitor, too fast to mean anything. Data’s being fed to the space station, so there’s nothing he can do but wait a few more minutes. Then we’re done.

I want to talk to him, and I think of many things to say, but I’m lacking courage. I don’t even know why. All I want to do is pass time until he can move things forward again. So I pay attention to my senses to get there faster. The curl of my toes, the suit against my fur, a faint sterile smell mingling with my ordour. A faint buzzing is in my ears and when I tune into the aura around me, a powerful flame kindles behind me, and soft breeze flows in front of me.

I look down we came. Where we were thirty minutes before arriving, the odd zigzagging ooze slops around.

I drift my hand to the button. “That liquid, have you noticed it?”

“Yeah, I’ve kept an eye on it. It won’t reach us before we go.”

We don’t have options anyways. The shimmering fluid fills the dips in the sand, whether they’re footprints or small craters. It doesn’t flow into each other, instead it rises out of the moon like groundwater. I wait.

I was right to forget about it. When it closes only a sixth of the remaining distance, Kommo-o buzzes in to say we’re three-quarters way done. Yet, the aura I sense is now a gentle gale. Even if it's middling, sensing such strength that distance away would make it the most powerful entity I’ve ever met. The ringing in my ears has also grown and evolved. Cries of different Pokemon, young and old, whisper into my ears. It bothers me. Sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum. “Do you hear any screaming?” I ask.

There’s a long pause. A baby Vulpix cries in this time. It travels around my ears like a lost baby. “Yes,” he says. A delay later, “don’t worry about it. We’re gone soon.”

“Hmm.” I place my mitten under my helmet, to the side, and lean my head. The lonely pleas of the fox whittle away to whimpers as the next puddle fills. Even if we’re safe, doing nothing isn’t sitting right with me. I think through the safety meetings I’ve had over my career, then everything I was taught about problem-solving, but I do not know what the hazard or problem is. I think of strategy next. A buried notion resurfaces, about how you always take chances to safely gain more information.

I climb down the ladder. My buddy doesn’t react. Trash of many shapes rest on the raft: excess operation fluids and chemicals, empty ration boxes, spent oxygen tanks, cases for electronics, undeeded wire, and more. I pick up a toolbox whose contents we merged with one that’s currently on the craft. My digits flex around the handle comfortably. My arm arcs and I chuck it into the air.

My plan is to put something between it and us so if we have a fatal delay or it pulls a speedy surprise, I can examine what it does to the case. The information will give us a small advantage before we die. I threw too late, though: the pitch is low and will only land a lecture hall’s length away. Five minutes away in these terrible suits.

It inches to the peak and hovers there before easing the other way with the gentleness of a feather. I pick up the laptop case to throw it as a frisbee. It zooms off to my right. My muzzle bunches up and I heave an empty gas cell with both arms into the air. It flies so high that I don’t think it's coming back down.

I can make out individuals in the screaming. Some are wailing while others are between laughter and terror. They come in all directions, even above and below me, and the aura has grown to match Kommo-o’s. I’m about to throw a bulky ration box over my shoulder before noticing the toolbox has approached the ground faster than I thought. Its corner floats down like an angel from heaven. It leans in close, and smooches the sand.

Shrieking cacophony shreds my ears. I hold my helmet in both arms and shake but the piercing choir doesn’t fall out of my head. I force my eyes open and look where the case touches. A purple-pink pool swells there, thin channels branching out into the dust.

A voice rises above the others. “Lucario, what did you do!?”

The shrills join into an unholy unison. The pain makes my feet stumble. I clench my teeth and throw my head back up, I have done this for a reason. The distant zag stays far separated from the muck in front of us that ripples onto now-blemished sand. The submerged toolbox rises out, dry and unbound by gravity. Darkness grows at its corner and crawls across its face.

“Lucario!? What’s happening!?”

Throughout all this, the aura does not shrink or grow. It has already arrived.

 

[BestLizard]

3: Escape

(Art by Shanna (BestGirlDucky))​

“Lucario! Please just tell me, what did you do?”

Kommo-o’s voice is a post for my mind to cling to in the raging storm of yelling. The shrills make a chant-like beat, gasping for breath together, all of them wearing out their voices. The toolbox frozen above the ground turns into a void cut into reality. The edge of the pink pool inches closer. So does the gusting aura.

“Lucario! Tell me you're safe!”

I blink. I feel my body again. My glove frantically pats the front of my suit until I find the comms button. “I threw a toolbox in the way. Figured we could see what it does when it approached it. I- I didn’t expect this!”

The fluid fills out small craters in the path. I realize it isn’t pouring forward so much as welling new shimmer out of the ground in front of it. The approach is messy and chaotic. Sometimes it fills out the left or the right more, unlike the aura - that gale takes a straight approach to us.

“There’s an aura here too, I thought it was further away before,” I say. “I don’t think the fluid is it, but either way, something’s here. It already arrived!”

My legs are frozen. Pain flickers through my head with each beat of my heart. Those voices pant between hollers.

“Just fight it!” Kommo-o shouts. Fear is in his voice.

He’s right. It has an aura, so it must be living and therefore can be defeated. I shake my arms loose as I try to remember how to fight - I haven’t used a move in years. My father’s teachings come to me in floating, hazy memories. Ki… Lifeforce… Being…

I bend my knees and tuck my elbows into a fighting stance. I put my palms close together and create a ball of aura. The clunky suit makes my technique slow and clumsy when I shoot it forward. A flickering orb the size of a tennis ball spits through the air. It coasts into and through the menacing aura. The voices don’t even care an attack passed through “it”.

I rush another one. A puny marble waves through the air, hitting nothing. I take a deep breath and hold my arms above myself to surge a larger aura sphere. I look for what targets I have as I sustain it. The black case still hangs unmoving above the surface. I throw it forward and the full charge flies into it. It touches it and disappears without an explosion like it was swallowed.

The entity continued its advance. It crossed a third of the distance. More Pokemon joined the legion in my head with it.

“The fluid, Lucario!” Kommo-o shouts.

I take a deep breath to regain my warrior senses and I power up one more attack to full size. I examine the ground, looking for where its “feet” should be once it's fired. I launch it and grin for the seconds it travels. The ball plunges into the liquid with a splash.

The screeches erupt to their loudest. All of them gasp desperately for air between straining their voice with the clamour of their agony. I’m pushed to my knees and I bang my palms against the side of my helmet, wanting to dig my paws into my ears. Dying to the vacuum around would be less painful. I scream with them.

In my peripheral vision, a geyser of pink explodes, its mist escaping orbit. The pool stretches wide and fast, flooding the ground I attacked. Its rim ends before the raft. The surface ebbs and flows, creating small waves that breach onto further ground.

My vision is blurry. My voice strains as I keep screaming. But eventually, the cacophony recedes to loud moaning and sobbing, leaving my ears with a heavy ring and blood dripping out. I gasp to get air back in me.

The aura has not stopped advancing.

I hit my comms button. “You okay?!”

Kommo-o buzzes in. He’s breathing heavily. “Arceus, That hurt!”

“What should we do?”

“We need to… We need to not panic.” He trails off, still recovering breath. “How close is it?”

I tune into the aura. It's a heavy bellow, the wind would knock me off my feet if it was real. “It’s halfway,” I say. The growing fluid approaches the raft.

He buzzes in a few times, each time with no words. It's only after a long pause he says, “Is there anything we can do to stall it? Shit, what about putting to sleep? Do you know hypnosis? Sleep powder?”

The darkened toolbox is still defying gravity after all this. “Throw some of our excess in the cockpit in front of it. It might distract it!” I reach down and pick up a spent tank off the raft.

“Throw it where?”

He can’t see it. “Other side of the raft!”

Myself able to sense it, I throw further than that, aiming for a few steps ahead of it. The tank’s bulky shape spins wildly despite its calm descent. I already have another object in my arms when it sinks into the liquid. The yelling in my ear picks up. New puddles surge around the entity, encroaching a wider radius.

The merit of my idea reveals itself. The aura stops moving and the tank lifts up out of the mire. It fades to black.

The lake doesn’t stop growing, though. The end of the raft dips into it. I chuck the next item. Above my head, a huge box drifts over - Kommo-o’s own lobbing. It lands short of the raft, bringing reinvigorated screaming that is not only loud, but right next to my ears.

A spring wells around my boots.

The ground under my feet softens, throwing my balance off. I drop the canister I just picked up, splashing fluid onto my legs. Another bundle of supplies passes over my head.

“Get out of there Lucario! The raft’s already in the way!” Kommo-o shouts. The alarm in his voice is palpable.

My feet sink further into the shimmer. The sand has become mud. The liquid rises up past my foot. I cautiously move my legs back, tensing all the muscles in them. The liquid is expanding behind me faster than I can waddle backward. My foot shifts with every step finding purchase in the murkiness, avoiding falling over at all costs. I do this until my back hits the lander’s onboarding ladder. The fluid’s up to my shins.

It’s a lagoon now. The ridges of craters jutting out are rare to spot. The raft and its remaining junk drift away in some unseen current. Spots geyser and rupture, especially where each of Kommo-o’s volleys lands. The unseen entity picks up each item in its path, consuming it into nothingness but buying us seconds.

I crawl up the ladder. I shake the fluid off my legs on the way up but they’re already stained pink and purple. The lander’s weight shifts as one side sinks. My friend’s eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open. He slides out the easiest box to reach, not caring to check what it is. I duck as he throws it without spotting me.

I fumble for my button. My other paw feels pain as I grip the top rung too hard. “How much more time?”

He leans into the console. “Seconds.” He throws a different tank past me.

The wind behind me is now a hurricane. I fear I’ll be swept off my perch. And underneath the ever-closer thralls, there’s a rhythm of low-pitch voices whispering. They chant words without meaning, sung with elation and duty. They drive the beat of the damned’s yelling, conducting its eulogy. My mouth moves with the words.

He throws a canister of water past me and reaches a hand out after. “In, now!” he shouts. I scramble up the last rung and lunge into the cockpit. He catches me and pulls me in while the other drags the hatch down. I dig my head against him and squeeze my arms around what I can hold of him. He holds me tight; no time to strap me in. The chanting and screaming voices enter my ears. Blood flows down my cheeks.

The storm’s done its meal. The raft and every item hovers like marionettes hung by threads, all robbed of colour. The aura moves close. I feel the maelstrom lash against my skin.

Warmth floods around my leg. Shimmering fluid is rising inside our cockpit. We tuck our legs up but there’s not enough room. It reaches our boots as the lander rumbles to life, building up its energy.

I close my eyes and I huddle my body. I don’t want this to be the end. Please stop this. Everything is shaking. I cry. Get me out of here. Get me out of here. Get me out of here.

My weight shifts around. My soul begs this isn’t ascending to heaven. I don’t open my eyes. Even when the howling stops, and I can’t feel the wind, I’m not ready for the truth. I sob harder.

I hold Kommo-o as hard as I can. He’s all I have.

I stay this way for a long time, until I lose all sensation of weight. I’m shaking. My breath is uneven and tears squeeze out of my eyes.

A hand brushes the back of my suit. It does it a few times, slowly. I let it ease me. The shaking of the lander smooths out. I suck in deep breaths and my muscles unwind.

I finally brave opening my eyes. Pink-and-purple droplets float around us. I look up. My partner’s looking back down to me. His eyes are wet and sparkling droplets float away from his eyes. More flush out when he sees my pupils.

His mouth moves. He didn’t press his comms button, but I know what he’s saying. “We’re safe.”

 

[BestLizard]

4: Drifting in a Tin Can
​

We drift towards safety through the unending black canvas of space for hours. I keep hugging Kommo-o, resting my head against his chest the best my helmet will allow me. A thousand tiny drops of pink and purple float around us, forming a microcosm of twinkling stars. They haven’t caused any harm to us, although it isn’t good for the internal systems.

I’m not worried about making it there. The fluid gave the lander extra weight differing from what we inputted, but this lander is designed for unpredictability. It adjusted its propulsion to keep the software happy. Kommo-o made sure of that.

The structure is holding, too. The lander did look weak and worn, but that is an illusion of our eyes. I went in and measured everything, adjusted its values, and therefore I knew it will work. It didn’t matter what it looked like - science showed us the truth.

A white octagonal plate floats into view outside the hatch’s window. Straight metal branches stretch out with blue glassy leaves facing the sun lining their sides. A robot arm folds out and spreads its clamp, ready to catch us. The lander propels air in front of us to adjust our speed. A half-hour later, we lurch forward as the arm grabs us and pulls us in.

This station is meant to send and receive deliveries from the Earth and the Moon: a staging station. Normally, the hatch of an orbiter will fit into an onboarding terminal, but the lander isn’t meant for that, so we’re pulled in as cargo. The outside arm passes us off to an interior arm which holds us in place.

I can only see the interior airlock through the hatch, but I know the airlock behind us is closing. Air should be filling in. International standards require all airlocks to take at most an hour to guarantee filling a room with oxygen, so we wait. Kommo-o brings out his tablet, connects to the station’s network, downloads info and interfaces, and busies himself sifting through data and applications. I rub his side.

A lot of time passes. He looks at me. “Alright, says oxygen filled the room now. I couldn’t contact anyone here, so I guess everybody here ditched to earth. Uh, let’s not get any of this liquid inside. Let’s take off our suits before going in.”

I nod. We’re supposed to bring the lander further inside and tie it down, but it’s the apocalypse. Kommo-o opens the hatch. Droplets drift out. He pulls himself out and jumps to the ceiling. I follow him. We crawl along the ceiling using handlebars until we’re a decent distance away from our hatch. We start getting out of suits.

We had to modify our bodies for this path of life. The spikes of my chest and hands have been grounded down to shiny, shallow domes, but they’re minute to Kommo-o’s body modifications. His claws are ground down to stubby caps and the edge of every scale is sanded down. The “braids” of the back of his head are cut off and the end of his tail, where the largest scales would be, is chopped off. A metal bar is embedded into the tip to make up the difference in weight.

A trail of caked blood runs down our cheeks, too, from our last encounter.

We take care not to touch the soiled spots on our suits. Each piece we take off is tossed towards the back. They make a bonk against the back wall minutes later. Kommo-o’s legs and tail take so long to take out that some shimmer nearly reaches the interior lock, but we’re out in time. The door opens, we crawl along the ceiling, and pass through the lock.

The room inside is far wider than the cargo terminal. Towering boxes and complicated machinery are strapped down with thick black cables. There are many other large airlocks on the floor, walls, and ceiling, all different destinations for sending and receiving cargo. Hatches dot the floor above us, which lead to living and operational spaces.

I pull myself to the airlock controls and close it. There’s shuddering and then silence. The shimmer is sealed away.

Kommo-o’s large claw shakes my shoulder till I look at him. He’s smiling. “I’m going to try and get in contact with whoever I can and see what’s here. Look over this fluid for me, okay? Who knows what else it can do.”

I nod. He gives my shoulder another pat and looks up. He kicks off the ground and shoots to one of the holes loading deeper in. I pull myself to the small window in the middle of the lock and watch. The droplets sparkle in mid-air as they very slowly spread out. The suits we threw away spin around and travel in random directions. There’s a small beep from the console warning me I haven’t unloaded our “cargo” from inside but I ignore this for hours.

Kommo-o eventually comes back. “There’s plenty of supplies, easily more than enough a month. Plenty of oxygen too, but we’ll need to keep air locked out of the cargo bay. There’s a day or two’s wait before we can consider going back to Earth since we’re on the dark side and most of the satellites around aren’t responding. Also, uh… those pieces of the moon are actually affecting our orbit, but it won’t drift us of course. It doesn’t look like we’ll collide with any of them either.

“I’ve set up an open communication for nearby stations to pick up but no one has yet. I also can’t get much data beyond what this station a very few other satellites can give us. That’s all.”

I nod and grimace. I look back into the window, but his hand rubs one of my shoulders again.

“Hey, I’ll take over,” he says. “You go take a short break. Take the tablet, maybe someone will pick up.”

I look to the floors above and think about it. No. I reach my arms around Kommo-o’s sides. “I’d rather be with you.”

One of his arms wraps around my back. His eyes linger on mine. “Okay.”

We stay together like this. Kommo-o lets the tablet float in front of him and holds the nearby handlebar, stopping us from drifting away. We say nothing, both of us just apprehensively looking through the window. The droplets have formed polka dots against the walls. My eyes slip away after a while as I instead focus on his warmth. I hear his heartbeat when I rest my head against him.

This lasts a while. It feels like eternity. But he eventually yawns and checks the time on the tablet that nearly drifted out of reach. “We need to think about sleep. We should take turns watching it.”

“Hey,” I say. I tilt my head up and rest my chin against his front. He has to crane his head far down to look back at me. “We shouldn’t bother. If it will attack, what are we gonna do anyways?”

“I-” he looks at me. His face hangs with a grimace. “Are you sure? I-it was a mistake I wasn’t cautious enough. We should do what you did, about finding ‘information.’”

“Hmmm,” I say with a frown. I shrug. “It hasn’t done anything. There’s also no aura. But if it did do something, wouldn’t we just be dead? It’s not like we can escape.”

His claw strokes my back for a bit. He looks away.

I take a deep breath. “Hey, back on the moon, you said we can keep holding each other when we arrived.”

He grunts.

I swing my arms over his shoulders and pull myself up until our heads are more level. “If there’s really a chance we might not have a lot of time left and we can’t do anything about it, then I’d rather spend this time with you.”

He looks back, his narrowed eyes peering into my own. His jaw is shut but the corner of his mouth twitches.

I stroke his cheek. “What about you?”

He thinks for a few more moments. He reaches his muzzle in and kisses my lips.

I wrap my arms around his neck and press my maw against his own muzzle. Our eyes close. He lets go of the bar so he can coil both arms around me. We hold each other tight, our heads tilting and turning to keep our make-out deep. We feel the other’s warmth, our legs brush against each other, his scales clink like chimes. We spin around in weightlessness like this. I want nothing else but this.

His mouth parts from mine. “Hey, we should still get ready to rest,” he says. I rest my chin on his shoulder and close my eyes. He carries me away.

“I love you,” I say.

I’m happy. At peace. Whatever may come next, I’m ready to brave it.

 

[BestLizard]

5: Knowledge Through the Senses​

(Art by Holiday605)​

I’m running through drab, olive hallways narrow enough to touch my shoulders. Not a single door or window decorates the walls around me and the dull bulbs above hardly provide the light I need. I bump into walls and corners I never knew about, but still make it in time to the familiar class I’ve never seen before.

The teacher’s writing on a whiteboard, yammering about mathematicians with Italian names I swore he made up. There’s not a lot of space inside: it’s wide enough for two columns of desks and the space between them. Pink barrels are stacked tall in the corners, some of which are in the way of the board. I sneak into a back chair and give a sigh of relief as I flip my notebook open.

He talks about David Hilbert, a mathematician who championed the modern era of math that set theory brought about. He’s well summed up by his famous mantra - “We must know - we will,” believing that everything true can be proven, the world is free of contradictions, and that it can be decided if a problem can be solved. He worked effortlessly on these fronts, confronting contemporaries who believed what was taught for millennia is the only true way forward.

This idyllic declaration is one of tragedy, however. Not much later after he claimed “we will know”, one of his own pupils proved that there are true statements that can not be proven they are true, and we still have yet to prove or disprove math - and therefore the world - being free of contradictions. Math has also been proven undecidable.

Still, he etched “we must know - we will know” onto his grave. To this day, scientists work to discover and explain the mysteries still remaining.

I write all of this down, capturing every detail. Once I look back up, I realize everyone has left, including the teacher. I leave the classroom trying to find them, but it leads me to a grand journey across an ocean, a volcano, and a desert, where I encounter friends old and new. It ends with a calm night sleeping in a dark cave, next to a statue of some Pokemon with a hanging, broken jaw.

---

I blink awake. Where’s the cave entrance? Wait, no, shouldn’t I be in space? I think back through my memories.

“We must know - we will know.” I wasn’t taught that in school. How do I know that?

My consciousness returns and I’m more aware of my surroundings. I remember now, I’m sleeping within Kommo-o’s arms. To stop us both from drifting away, we’re both strapped to a wall in a room miraculously large enough for the both of us.

I carefully roll over and snake up through the straps so I can face his head. He’s so gentle sleeping and lightly snoring. I rub the side of his face with a smile. All I want is to be here and watch him till he wakes up, but we still have to survive the end.

I wiggle out of the straps and tighten them so they fit him with me gone. It’s awkward with how cramped our room is - only two feet between me and our opposing wall, where our tablet rests on velcro felt. Blinking bars in one corner of the screen show that it’s still broadcasting and fat zero in the other corner shows nothing was received. I grimace and leave a kiss on his jaw before I pull myself into the hallway.

Machines and wires are embedded in every wall, floor, and ceiling - they’d be wasting precious space otherwise. It’s a claustrophobic maze to move around, although a very small one. Eventually I find the space equivalent of a washroom. I dampen a towel and scrub myself down. It’s the only way to clean yourself up here.

Fur wet and matted down the best I can without a “down”, I wander around until I find rows of bins with sealed food bags inside. My paw hovers over all the options before pulling out Oran puree and rehydrating it. I float over to a tiny window on the floor with my meal in hand. It’s the only window I believe this station has. Outside is the moon.

Wide stretches of darkness scar its once porcelain surface and lakes of shimmering fluid rest in craters and low points. All these blemishes concentrate where the moon split open. From up here, it looks like a cracked egg with pieces of its shell drifting away, with waterfalls of pink and purple pouring down them.

Inside the crevice, rainbow colours quiver around. An entrance to a Mystery Dungeon, and likely the largest entrance ever witnessed.

I suck on the straw and watch the big rock turn around. Even in its illness, its splendor captures my imagination, and I only have so much time to cherish it.

The space food’s loud as I squeeze out its last drops. I gulp the rest down and there’s a sense of emptiness that follows. What do I do now?

My eyes widen.

The shimmer!

I leave my empty bag spinning around as I pull myself forward with handles bolted onto the surfaces. I swing around corners, hop through a ceiling, and scramble my way until I approach the hatch to the cargo bay. Before I open it, I check through its small window. There is no monster waiting on the other side.

The hatch swings open and I plunge in. This floor’s just how it was left: large machines buckled down and nothing else. The airlock we came through shows no damage and there’s no aura emanating behind it. My heart beats anyways as I launch towards it, hoping spending the night with Kommo-o wasn’t a mistake. I plant my face on the view window…

Our Lander’s still held in place by a mechanical arm and our space suits huddle in a corner. Shimmer has painted a vibrant mosaic of swirls on the walls and floors overnight, but there’s no damage. The only sign of danger is the terminal’s sporadic beeping urging me to bring the cargo inside.

I sigh and let go, letting myself float back. I should feel relief, but it’s not there. Instead, a dark pit inside my stomach gnaws me.

This fluid is only a by-product of what’s going on.

I rub the back of my neck. I think I regret learning this, as all I know now is I still know nothing.

Regret…

We pretended there was no threat right until a few minutes before lift-off. Was that wrong? A bit more caution and we wouldn’t have had such a messy escape, and we only could because I tried to learn more about the aura. Hell, I even felt stupidly over-precautious when I threw that first canister, until it showed us how close a danger actually was.

Yet, why would we have been afraid? We couldn’t see any threat that was close to us. It pretty much didn’t exist for us, until it attacked. In a way, we didn’t act wrong either.

I hold my arms around my waist. I really shouldn’t be thinking of should-haves.

I just want to be with my boyfriend.

My legs scramble to kick off the floor I nearly drifted too far away from. I go back through the hatch and crawl back to where we slept. He’s still sleeping. I cuddle up next to him and rest my head on his chest that rises and falls with his soft breaths. All my worries melt away here, the only place I need to be. I close my eyes.

The tablet across from us beeps. “Incoming communication” splashes across the screen.

 

[BestLizard]

6: What's Gone​

I tear the tablet off the velcro holding it and rush my digit onto the green pick-up icon. Tap tap tap tap. A spinning loading icon pops in the middle of the screen and I pray to Arceus it connects. A few beeps emit and it turns black. The words “WCSEG ‘Gentle Cloud’ (XSG O2442-1) / T#741425 / ISOX-155523-4 1.5.253.222:999 PUBLIC” stretch across the screen.

I hold the tablet close to my face. “Hello?”

“Hello!” a woman’s soft voice replies.

My eyes roll up and I throw my head back. Finally!

“This is Vulpix. Space Station Gentle Cloud of the Wind Continent Space Exploration Guild. Which space station is this?”

I look back at the screen. “Oh, uh, we’re not the principle crew, I’ll have to dig out the station designator. Actually, one moment - there’s one more with me I should get involved.”

“Yes, absolutely. We need as many people as we can.”

“Okay.” I push the tablet back into its velcro and turn around. Both my paws shake the big guy’s head around. “Hey!”

He stirs and mumbles. I jerk his head around even hard. “Hey! Kommo-o! Wake up!”

He clumsily wraps an arm around me. “Mmm, cutie, I know you want me…”

My cheeks go bright red knowing what Vulpix just heard. I pull his cheek. “We have a call!”

“Uh? What?” he says and absent-mindedly bats my arm away. His eyes blink until they’re open before his head drifts around. “What’s going on?”

“A call!” I shout. I grab his chin and force him to look at the tablet.

“Hello? Is everything alright?” she asks.

Kommo-o squints. He pulls the tablet close to his eyes and reads. “Oh! Oh, a call! I’m sorry, I just woke up. Are you nearby?”

“Yes!” she repeats her station’s name. “Who would you two be and which station?”

“I’m Kommo-o, information specialist,” he says while getting out of his straps. I back out of the room and hold myself against the doorframe as he recites the station designation from memory. “And the person with me is Lucario, engineer.”

I lean my head in. “We fled from the surface of the moon. Most of our guild got caught in whatever happened. We’ve been struggling to connect to many satellites. The station we’re on also been abandoned.”

“You were on the surface?” She asks. “What’s been going on there? We haven’t been able to reach any ground bases.”

Kommo-o stretches an arm out while stifling a yawn. “We were out doing light surveying when the moon broke. When we returned to our base, there were puddles of pinkish-purple fluid and splotches of black everywhere. No one else was there and the spacecraft didn’t work anymore. We walked to an abandoned lander and when we were just about to take off, we encountered, er, something.”

He turns the tablet towards me and looks at me. I get his cue. “Some sort of entity approached us. It had an aura like it was alive but neither of us could see it. Things put in its path would rise up, become black, and wouldn’t fall down. It also made a lot of noise, despite being in a vacuum. It nearly got us.”

“That’s, wow.” Her voice trails off. “Do you think it has anything to do with the moon cracking?”

“Likely,” I say. “The same kind of fluid draining from the debris also welled around ‘it’. I’m not sure what that fluid is but I think it’s safe.”

An eyebrow of Kommo-o rises, that’s news to him.

“Hmm,” she says. “Do you think it has anything to do with Earth?”

We looked at each other. I nudge my head to suggest my partner talks, but he shakes his head.

“Guys?” she says.

“A-Actually,” I say, “we haven’t been able to get in contact with the Earth.”

There’s a bit of silence. When she finally speaks, her voice is somber. “Do you not know what happened to the Earth?”

My eyes flick to Kommo-o’s. His own are wide open and the worry beneath them is clear. I don’t stop looking at them as I speak. “What happened to Earth?”

“It’s gone,” she says. “I and others were able to confirm it visually. It isn’t there nor any of its satellites. There still seems to be its gravity which is especially weird, but other than that…” She never finishes that sentence.

We both look down. I rub my hand against the doorframe.

Quite a bit of time passes. I’ve forgotten we are on a call until she resumes. “Hey, we can contact you again in a while if you need time to process. Mars is still there, so I and a few others are planning to go there. We can send you supplies or you can even join our station.”

“We’ll take some time. This is terrible news,” Kommo-o says.

“It’s been rough on all of us,” she says. “I wish I could tell you more.”

“It’s okay,” Kommo-o says. His claw hovers over the hang-up button. “Thank you. We can call again in two hours. I’ll at least have breakfast in me.”

“We’re not leaving for three days. Take the time you need. We have plenty of excess food, air, and water.”

“Alright. Thank you,” he says.

“Thank you too. I wish I could tell you more about the Moon” I add.

He taps the red circle and places the tablet onto the velcro all nice and aligned before pulling me right into him. I hug him and look up. He looks down; he’s tearing up. “It’s just you and me.”

I rest my cheek against him and sniff. His claw strokes my back. “We’ll figure something out. I promise,” I say.

 

[BestLizard]

7: Knowledge Through Reason
​

We held each other for a long time. Losing Earth stung, but I was already used to a life not seeing my friends or family with how far away I always am. That wasn’t the same for Kommo-o. I listened to him talk about his regrets, unresolved business, and how much he misses the people he knows. Him saying “If I had just one more chance to see them,” really stuck out to me. I assured him the best I can and in turn he said many times how grateful he has me at the least. It was nice.

I felt terrible I have been using him for comfort.

That pity party yesterday was eventually cut short by our responsibilities. The station needed maintenance and its life supports checked out, our bodies need exercise, and so much more regardless of how far our hearts sunk. The work ended up being an appreciated distraction. The world felt normal again in these moments.

It’s now been a whole day since that phone call. I float in front of the window facing the moon with my legs crossed and my body turning around as I sip my breakfast. All of the moon’s ghostly pearlescent glow is gone. Now it is black with pink and purple oceans churning like galaxies far away. Shimmer pours into them from the debris like ornate garden fountains.

Below where the debris broke away from the moon, the rainbow sheet of the Mystery Dungeon wavers.

“We must know.”

“We will know.”

I dreamed about Hilbert’s proclamation again yesterday night. Do I want to find answers? I place my hand on the glass’s frame and bring my nose close. The alluring colours are taunting me.

What was that entity? What is the pink liquid? Why is everything turning black?

Why is this happening to us?

Soft smacks of someone crawling along the walls approach me. “Heeey beautiful,” Kommo-o says with playfully stretched-out words. He’s upside-down. “You’re looking great, you know?”

I smile. He knows how to keep spirits up despite how he’s likely feeling inside. “Hey, Kommo-o, come in,” I say.

He crawls in, adjusting his orientation and putting his muzzle against the thick pane. “What do you see?”

I point towards the crevice. “The crevice, where the moon shattered. You see that? The Mystery Dungeon?”

He nods. “Mmm. Yeah, I’ve noticed it before. That has to be the largest entrance that ever existed.”

I lean my head in, looking out with him. “Do you think there are answers inside?”

Kommo-o rubs his chin. “It’s often that legendary Pokemon make their home at the end of a Mystery Dungeon, but that may not be the case here. That thing that chased us certainly wasn’t a Pokemon. Beyond that, I can’t see why there’d be answers.”

I rub the back of my neck. “Mmm.”

“But all this started happening once those pieces burst out. Whatever’s causing this could be inside. Why?” His eyes lid and his smile stretches into a coy smirk. “You thinking about going in?”

I turn my head away. “Well, um…” I don’t know what to say next.

“Hey, just tell me what you’re thinking. I’m here for you.” He strokes my arm.

I take a deep breath. “I can’t shake this feeling that I won’t be happy living on Mars without at least trying to learn more. Why this all happened to us, y’know. It’s on my mind.”

“There could be more screaming things in there. We could just die going in.”

“Yeah...” I shuffle into him.

His arms sling across my shoulders and his hand rubs my far arm. “But if we make it to the end, the dungeon will put us back on this station. That’s what other space explorers have told me. And if that happens, then anything we may have learned may help stop something like this from happening on Mars. I think we should give it some time to think about it. If we go tomorrow morning, we’ll still have time to leave for Mars when we come back. So let’s not make any decisions until then. We’ll know more if we want to do this then.”

I put my paw over his claw. “You don’t have to come with me.”

His head leans in to nuzzle my cheek. “You know I’m going with you wherever you go.”

My head shakes. “No, you shouldn’t be dragged into this.”

He grabs my shoulders and turns me around so he can show me his comforting smile. His nose is pressed against mine. “I’ll be with you till the end, Lucario. I love you.”

“Really? I-” My mouth trembles trying to find follow-up words. It’s harder to look at that smile melt away than I thought. The concern in his eyes pierces my soul. I have to look away.

“Lucario?” he asks. The frown is deep.

It’ll only get more painful unless I do this now. “I mean, I haven’t disliked the time we had. I really liked it. But we’ve only really known each other for a few days. I know nothing about you. W-we’re strangers, really.”

“Lucario,” he says.

I close my eyes, afraid of seeing more pain in him. “I’ve been thinking and I’m just worried if I’m using your love as a way to escape. After all, the facts don’t make sense to say we’re in love.”

“Lucario?”

“But, I don’t want this to make you die for me. That’s not right. I really don’t know if I’m actually in love with you or not.”

“Lucario.” His voice is calm, but I’m afraid it’s masking anger.

My hands clench. “I’m so sorry. I also don’t want to hurt you either. But in the end, reason says we shouldn't be in love. How can it happen this fast after all? Did we really just go from being strangers to willing to die for each other?”

He cups my muzzle with both his palms and makes me look up at him. He has a serene smile on his relaxed face, nothing like what I expected. He looks into my eyes. “What does your heart say?”

My heart beats harder as I look into his eyes. There is so much compassion behind those red irises. It’s hard to pick apart my thoughts from my feelings but there’s something deep down I can’t explain yet can’t deny. I put my hands on his arms. “I love you.”

He draws me in closer for a hug. He rubs the back of my head as he speaks. “And I love you. I always wanted to get to know you, in fact. You’re calm and collected demeanor was always something I admired, even if we haven’t talked much before.”

My arms wrap around him and I rest my head against his front. It’s comforting but I feel bad about everything I said. I can’t smile.

He continues. “And all I really wanted to do in life was find someone to love and live for. Make them happy. I have lost everything but in the end, I have you. These last few days have been worth being alive for. Even if things went quickly, you complete my life. Besides,” he guides my chin up to look at him one more time. “I don’t think it’s that bad if we’re indulging a bit to cope. Don’t you think?” His eyes are half-lidded.

I sigh and a faint smile returns to me. “Alright. I’m sorry I said all that.”

He rubs the base of my ears. “It’s okay. Your honesty means you trust me. I appreciate that.”

I pull myself up so I can peck his lips and caress his cheek. He kisses me in turn. “let’s be together till the end, no matter what happens. Okay?”

My head nods and I impatiently plant my mouth on his. We get carried away making out. My heart beats hard throughout it.

I’m invincible inside his arms. I can go into the moon as long as I have him.

(Art by Wendi)​

 

[BestLizard]

8: Into the Moon​

Thundering sounds of crashing waves interrupt my focus. The black water of a vast ocean ahead of me swarms over the marble-white sand of this endless beach. All of this is under a brilliant golden sky, the brightness so overwhelming I can only see the shadows of a Pokemon and their blackboard in front of me.

The oncoming tide tickles my ankles. I lift my feet out of the water.

“Lucario!” the stranger says.

“Yes, sorry!” I look back to the notes on my desk. He continues his lecture in a low and distant voice and I write down notes for the class, even though I don’t understand my own alien writing.

I’m not processing what’s being taught to me though. Instead, words repeat in my head like a chant. “We must know. We will know.”

The professor’s speech gradually picks up speed. I cram down what he says in every line of my notebook, even filling out the margins before I turn the page.

Black waters crash down the angelic beach once more, seeping up to my hips. It nudges my chair, but I do not let myself get distracted. I need this credit to graduate.

The ocean tries to take me again and again. My chair budges farther from where it stood each time. To help my focus, I mutter my thoughts out loud. “I must know. I will know. I must know. I will know.” I reach a zen state matching my pencil to every rushed, stuttery word my professor announces.

It’s not until it splashes my neck that my concentration breaks. The sea has taken everything. There is no more beach. No more professor. The words I’m hearing comes from nowhere.

I tread and look up in a panic. A fierce ring of fire scorches the sky.

---

“We must know. We will know,” I mutter. Yet another dream I had with those words drifting through me.

I’m staring out the window. The black corruption festering on the moon makes it impossible to distinguish its shape or form against the void behind it save for oceans of shimmer whirling on its surface. All wonder and holiness have long forsaken this celestial body.

Wedged within its bitter darkness, a sheet of rainbows wavers. Its glow is ethereal, in defiance to the moon’s corpse. I lean my head forward, pressing my snout against the pane and getting what little closer look I can. Those dancing colours taunt me.

Smacks of a large dragon crawling to this room are behind me. “Hey love,” he says with a muted tone. “Have you decided yet?”

The whole day we had to think about it has passed. During that time we inventoried our supplies, performed maintenance on the station inside and out, and sorted out the plan for the rest of our lives with Vuplix. There will be one habitat on Mars growing oran and apple trees. We’d be nearly starving to death while working 14-hour work days every day for the rest of our lives, but we’ll survive. Numbers don’t lie.

Do I risk that? My head knows I should go to Mars. It’s even angry that I’m considering the other option. But my heart…

“We must know what’s going on,” I say. My paw squeezes the edge of the window. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life in ignorance, not without at least trying. I wouldn’t be happy living with a regret like that.”

He rubs my sides. “Are you sure? You can back out of this.”

“We’re scientists.” I turn around. I can feel my conviction through my tense, stoic expression. “Let’s die knowing the secrets of our universe.”

He gives a single, deep nod and brushes his nose against mine. “We’ll get out of there. As long as I’m there, I promise you, we will live.”

I’m not convinced but I smile anyway. I really want to convince him he doesn’t have to come, but I’m not courageous enough. I need him.

“I’ll go tell Vulpix about this,” he continues. “That we might be a little late to arrive on Mars or not be there at all. You go get the lander ready, ok?”

I nod. “Yes.”

---

The pink-splotched suit presses into me as I pull down my glove and look out to the lander in the cargo bay. It’s all tuned up, with data already stored in it by Kommo-o. It won’t be coming back. At least we have other landers for Mars.

There’s only putting on our helmets left.

It’s funny. My mind has accepted it will go into the moon and has even convinced itself this is the right decision - but my heart is getting second thoughts. It’s beating hard. I’m scared.

Kommo-o reaches out and rubs my shoulder. He’s only got his helmet left to put on too. “Hey, you ready?”

I take a deep breath through my nostrils. “Yes.”

There’s still a sense of worry in his glistening eyes, but his soft smile still holds strong. He reaches out and grabs my other shoulder to turn me to him. Our eyes lock. His eyes are so sweet like beautiful red cherries. We both lean in and press our lips together. He grabs the back of my head to pull me in closer. Our heads tilt. We make this last many long minutes, for it could be our last.

I don’t want this to end, but he parts his maw from mine. He grabs the helmet drifting next to him and holds it above his head. “Let’s kick ass together.”

“Yeah.” I grab and hold my own helm above me. We slide them onto our heads together without breaking our stare. We press a button on our chests and a hissing sound rings out as our suits pressurize. The air around my head is even more tense. Once it’s silent again, he holds a claw out for me and I hold it.

He guides me into the airlock. Every surface inside including our spacecraft is still vandalized in swirling violet hues. Kommo-o heads up the ladder fixed to its leg and pulls the hatch open. I forgot how small the cockpit is: when he slips inside and sits, he needs to slouch. There are only inches between his head and the ceiling. I crawl in after and get snug on his lap. My legs are crammed between him and the console in front.

One of his arms holds me across my waist. The other pulls the hatch down, sealing us in with a clunk before he drags our restraints across each other. I huddle back, getting comfortable against his big form.

He flicks a few switches in front of me and taps virtual ones on the screen. Creaking metal noises joins the sound of depressurizing air. Waiting for this invasive noise to pass is agonizing but we’re eventually left in silence inside a vacuum.

The outer lock makes heavy rattling sounds as it folds away. A few more minutes later and the outside arm picks us up with a jerk and we’re brought out with a smooth pull. Through the window, the white light of our safe station gives way to the desolate coldness of space. No, not space - the moon: a rushing river comes in view as we turn parallel to its surface.

Kommo-o holds me tighter in his arm. The other worms between us so it can push his comms button. “I love you.”

I squeeze my comms button in. “I love you too.”

The tiniest lurch signals that we’re set free. Our lander’s small thrusters push against our orbit and gravity starts pulling us in. Rivers and oceans sweep by the view of our hatch until the mystic glow of the dungeon comes in view. The lander rights itself as it approaches.

We plummet into the rainbow veil. A white glow envelops our bodies as they become immaterial. We’re transported elsewhere, outside of space. I feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing, and I feel my soul part way with my being to be planted back in elsewhere.

I’m brought back with a plunging noise. A flood of pink and purple is outside: we’re sinking into a sea of shimmer. Pillars of bubbles fly as our craft tilts and turns with its uneven currents.

Something is wrong. My restraint is too loose. I can’t see his arms or legs past my own. I twist my body the best I can - there’s only an empty seat beneath me.

I press my comms button. “Kommo-o?”

I wait a minute. No response.

“Kommo-o?”

The whole lander shudders with a heavy clang, almost throwing me off. It has hit the bottom of this sea.

I jam my mitt into the comm button. Radios still work in mystery dungeons. He should be hearing me! “Kommo-o? The lander just hit the first floor. I’m still inside. Are you okay? Where are you?”

A few seconds pass. There’s a transmission beep. Crackling static along with distorted mumblings and clanging metal noises streams through the radio. Soon I hear whining Pokemon, not from the radio but directly in my ear. There’s the aura of a soft breeze nearby.

 

[BestLizard]

Author's Notes: I added new art to chapters 1, 3, 5, and 7! I recommend going back and checking them, all the artists did amazing!

---

9: Mystery Dungeon​

I grasp the hatch’s emergency latch and tear it back until it cracks open. Having unlocked the door, I push my arms against it. All the pressure of the shimmer pressing back means it doesn’t budge.

I bend my knees and shove with my entire body. Purple starts seeping around the edge exit as the clanking grows louder, warped by all the shimmer between us.

I swear and yell to redouble my efforts. The door pushes back against the ocean millimeter by millimeter. More liquid pours through the narrow gap, pooling up to my feet.

“Aaaaa!” A surge of strength washes over me as I give everything into a heave. The gap creaks open wider and shimmer sprays through. I hold this position in agony, my body trembling as the shimmer rises to my knees. The aura’s stronger too, like I’m trapped in a cadaverous whirlpool.

Pain shoots through my arms and legs but slowly the sea drains up to my chest. Immense bubbles gush out while the pressure equalizes. and the resistance of the hatch eases enough for me to swing the rest of the way. The rest of the air pours out as I’m submerged entirely in shimmer.

I jump out and land on mucky ground on all fours. The clanging is loud enough to reverberate around unseen surfaces. I scramble upright and run in the opposite direction of it, hoping it hasn’t seen me yet.

The thick sea slows me down. I need to dig through it to propel myself and I can see very little into the shifting pink-and-purple pool past my visor. A rocky grey wall springs into view after a few long steps, causing me to wince. I follow it to the entrance of a corridor which I waddle into. I pray to Arceus I’ll outpace what’s behind me, for the booming clangs are getting louder.

Stones jutting from the narrow sides scrape my shoulders. It’s much darker too, the liquid turning a dim, chilly purple. I can hardly see my glove feeling down the wall past it.

It opens up to another room after a few more steps. It’s terrifying to step back into unknown emptiness with how little I can see but I trudge on until I can no longer see the walls, ceilings, or the ground below me. Just the visor in front of my face.

I accidentally kick something. There’s… Something at my feet. I can barely make out its shape. It has a bulky, rubble-like base with a smooth dome growing from it. A small branch grows out between the rocks and the dome. It ends with three finger-like twigs, swaying around as if it hopes to grasp something. It twists towards me.

An unholy sound of groaning metal crossed with a low guttural howl booms behind me, dampened and warped by all the shimmer. It snaps me out of my trance and makes me wade forward once more.

I dread that there may be no end to the liquid, that I’ve walked out of the dungeon into a true ocean. But before the fear can sink in, a wall comes into view out of nowhere. I grab and sidle down it, finding the next corridor immediately.

The pull of the aura and the ferocity of the clangs have weakened, meaning distance is getting created between us. I let out a big breath and calm washes over me as my mind realizes it’s not in immediate danger. I can finally process my senses. I smell my sweat, feel the stuffiness of my suit, and see more clearly the details of the walls and floors. They’re flat surfaces with round, oval stones jutting out. They’re muted grey with a texture of plastic and have many shallow dips, like it’s made from a model moon.

My ears and aura sense even notice something I haven’t before. There’s a soft choir of crying voices belonging to a growing, gusting aura behind the pursuer, much like the one from our encounter on the moon’s surface. I growl under my breath, thankful I’m at least moving away from both.

A wall slams into my visor. I wince and step back, patting my helmet. I scan the surface of my visor for any cracks - none thankfully - before I feel around to study the wall that hit me. I have reached a corner, and the only way forward is right. I take it and hope this damn shimmer disappears next floor.

The next floor. How am I going to find the stairs like this?

Even if the rooms are brighter than the hallways, I can barely see the ground around my feet. I’d be spending hours on this floor, tormented by those booming strikes and the light, pained crying in my ear.

I take deep breaths. Keep calm, one at a time. As long I’m outpacing-

I catch myself before I hit another wall, but I still flinch and fumble from the surprise. I’m at another corner. I take another deep breath, steady myself, and reach out to see which path I must take now.

It leads right.

Two rights in a row, 180 degrees. I’ll be heading toward the second aura.

I freeze up and my breath becomes uneven. I grasp my rising chest, holding it down as I swallow down panic. “I’m not trapped yet, I’m not trapped yet, I’m not trapped yet,” I tell myself between heavy breaths. The focused noises of the metal beast suggest it’s turned the first corner and the other aura is far away. I take in as much air as I can through my nostrils and release it with a sigh. I get my legs to move again.

I focus hard, tracking the two aura’s locations in my head while my arm reaches out to feel any walls before they collide with me. All the concentration makes me understand what being in darkness really means. I’m realizing there could be something in front of me and I wouldn’t even know it until too late. All I can do is hope that I only run into walls and the next path is a left turn.

The gale entity’s screams have become as loud and vicious as the clanks. I sweep my arm through the water after each step, hoping to catch something. It finds another end.

“Please.” I reach to the left. There’s a surface of smooth, rocky outcrops.

My arms shake. “No. Please, no.”

I duck to check for a possible crawlspace only to discover denser outcrops. I check the other direction - empty shimmer. I’m not stuck in a dead end, but I’d be walking towards the other entity.

The first beast is about to turn the last corner I passed. Its consuming aura pulls with just as much ferocity as the wind aura’s tempest-like force, pulling my sense in different directions. Sweating pouring off my brow, I trudge towards the oncoming storm. I swear it hollers pleasured pains of vindication. Does it know where I am?

My heart batters my chest and my legs move harder, but no amount of effort makes the thick shimmer easier to move through. Every step feels like forever. Hell, is the corridor getting longer?

But I break into brighter waters eventually. Too bright: the pink has become a shade hotter. The distance between me and my pursuers has closed quickly. The screaming pierces my eardrums like needles.

Something dark manifests before me. I yelp and clutch my chest. It’s the same object I kicked, now hovering in the middle of the sea. It’s all blackened with its twig-arm frozen and its “fingers” twisted and spread out wide.

I tread around it. The gale entity’s going to enter this room at any moment. I stretch my arm out hoping to find another escape. My outreached arms brushes against the far wall a few moments later. I follow it as the sweeping storm seeps into the room. “Please!” I pat down it and gasp as my paw slips through shimmer. A fourth exit.

I barrel down it as fast my legs will allow. Tears form in my eyes. The aura behind me feels like it’ll rip my soul out like in a hurricane. But I’ll get away. I’m going to live.

I crash into an end. I stumble back and flail my arms while a horrid mix of terror and confusion dizzies my head. Before me is an eerily pristine surface with bulbous edges where it meets the other walls. There’s not a gap anywhere. There’s no escape.

My stomach’s in knots. The aura’s only meters behind me and its chanting beats away at my eardrums while the thundering of pounding iron joins it and shakes the ground. I bang my fist against the wall to no avail. Tears roll down my cheeks like the blood now trickling from my ears.

I collapse onto my knees.

I’m sorry Kommo-o. I failed.

The darkness constricts me. I close my eyes and embrace my end, finally understanding the joy in the tormented voices. Relief is coming. I’ll become one of them, safe and protected in some place I will belong. I chant along with elation, ready for my soul to be plucked like a kite in a hurricane. I’m crying tears of euphoria.

The crashing of the metallic beast will be the last thing I hear. Its aura is an all-devouring black hole this closeup, trying to pry my soul out of my body. It explodes wider in an instant as a flurry of heavy clangs shakes the moon.

It has rushed towards us.

A harsh groan of buckling metal wails out.

The voices shriek their highest pitch yet.

Bodies stretch and pop underneath a mechanical maelstrom of creaking and tearing and metal screeching against metal.

I dig my gloves into the wall. I’m shuddering and hyperventilating.

Bones snap. Guts burst. The wind aura’s screams yell out, pant for air, and die out one by one. The aura dwindles away with every blow, tear, and crush, being consumed by the void until nothing remains but pounding iron and squelching pulp.

A low droning roar joins a cacophony of bending metal and shakes me to my core. I cling onto my soul against the leviathan black-hole aura.

I need Kommo-o.

 

[BestLizard]

10: Calling Out​

My ears ring fiercely from all the previous noise, my muscles are tense as rocks, and I’m barely breathing. I’m at the edge of the magnificent aura, its overwhelming void stretches my soul away from me, even if it’s all in my mind. Its final, earth-shaking clangs move away from me.

My brain shuts down. It’s going away?

I’m frozen struggling to process a modicum of this. I sharply inhale realizing I’m not even breathing. It’s really just walking away from me? What does that mean? What’s happening? What was all that just? Did it not see me or something? Am I really alive?

What should I do now?

I don’t believe I’m actually alive, despite what the aura drifting away means otherwise. One thought does anchor me back to reality, though. Just do anything! I peel myself off the wall and stand back up on my feet. My dizziness makes me wobble, I steady myself with a paw on my helmet as I waddle back out of the dead end and into the room.

The shimmer’s become a deeper red than before, it may not even be the same substance anymore. I inch towards where the gale entity last was, moving with my toes first lest I bump into something. They do find something - an edge.

I duck down to find a crater. I study it while I let the metal beast travel farther away from me. The ground within it is coarse and ravaged while cracks grow out around its circumference. Lying at the bottom is a mass of tar-like blubber, slices of it strewn around the wreckage. Pink bubbles float out from deep gashes in it. I wonder if this is the true form of the gale entity, or at least the true form in a mutilated state, although I hesitate to believe anything given how otherworldly everything is.

The booms are quiet and distant now. The only way forward is back to the lander, so I walk around the corpse and move on. Just before I enter the corridor, a cracking sound comes from the direction of the object. I contemplate checking it out but decide I don’t need any more surprises.

Back in the room we landed in, the shimmer’s a bit clearer and lighter than before. I walk to where the lander is to confirm a suspicion. It’s been devoured. In its place, a large mass of black floats, tilted and shuddering. Where I last seen Kommo-o.

What happened to him? He’d be consumed if he was on the lander, but he wasn’t. He just disappeared.

It makes no sense. Pokemon stay together when they enter Mystery Dungeons together, we’ve known this for millennia. What could have happened to him?

Still, I have a way to contact him. I press my comms button. “Kommo-o! Where are you? Are you okay?”

There’s silence followed by the incoming communication beep playing. Rich static streams through the radio with its volume moving up and down in waves, an interference pattern I’ve never heard before. A machine whirrs within the feed, although it also sounds like mumbled nonsense. I can’t tell. It warps in pitch randomly.

“Kommo-o? Is that you?”

The static grows louder. My mind must be playing tricks, it’s clearly industrial racket yet I can’t shake the feeling I’m being warned. It’s getting louder. The line starts cutting out intermittently before an abrupt scream ends the feed.

A bestial, mechanical roar rings through. Its aura is approaching me once more.

I gulp and head off in a new direction. My finger hovers above my comms button as I think what I should say next and when. But a few steps later, my foot misses the ground. My heart skips a beat and I throw my arms around for balance - I have stomped on the first step of a staircase leading down. In the room we landed in. What a joke.

Still, I can’t return to this floor once I’m down. It’s my last chance to find Kommo-o if he’s still here. I jam my finger into the button. “Kommo-o! Please! The stairs are in the room with the lander. Please tell me where you are!”

The static responds without delay this time. The distortions in it are intense and sudden. The mechanical clamour returns as a stuttery rant. A softer, higher-pitched sound grows beneath it as if the “voice” is splitting into two.

“Kommo-o?!?” I shout into the radio.

The sea sharply darkens to a deep shade of crimson. A new aura of wind joins behind the oncoming metal beast, and behind that, an aura of thundering clouds. Something cracks behind me. The darkened lander has come closer to me. It vibrates violently, periodically twisting to new angles in a blink of an eye.

My finger’s shaking against the button, ready to press down, but beneath the cacophony of the static and garbled machinery, I hear a voice. Its deep, bass tone is unfamiliar yet it’s unmistakably a Pokemon speaking.

“Stop calling.”

The lander thrashes in jerky movements. Faint auras surround me in all directions, even above and below. The shimmer darkens with each second and the clanging of the metal beast is just beyond this room. I still hold my finger on the button, wanting to push.

I walk down the stairs, leaving it all behind.

 

[BestLizard]

11: Deeper In​

I carefully waddle down each ledge of the stairway because of my thick suit. The shimmer gets darker and heavier until the auras above me disappear instantly. I must have transitioned to the next floor - and those entities really must be Pokemon by the logic of this Mystery Dungeon.

The stairs end abruptly. I scream and flail my arms as I fall into empty shimmer, failing to swim back up. I eventually land on rocky ground with a muted thud. My glove holds the front of my chest and I pant until my heartbeat steadies. What the hell? It was like the last 10 steps were never built.

I’m fully on the next floor, either way. There are new auras: another gale aura and one exactly like the crackling thunder aura from the last floor. They’re both far away.

I take a deep breath and relax a bit while I get my bearings, although it’s still too dark to see around me. The only thing new about this floor is a light sloshing sound. I tap my fingers against my leg deciding if I should try calling Kommo-o again but I decide it’ll be safer to find the stairs first.

I trudge through the dungeon once again, away from the looming auras. There are twists and turns and passages that loop back on themselves - a complete mess as always. My arm stays outstretched to avoid walking into many walls.

After a while, I come across a room where the liquid has a gentle pull. I follow the flow towards a set of stairs that it drains into. I let out a low sigh. The lack of danger is underwhelming.

I look down to my comms button once more. The deep voice’s warning repeats in my mind, and I’m about to move on before I imagine Kommo-o. What if he’s looking for me, worried, scared? Or what if he’s running away from something? I press. “Kommo-o? Do you hear me?”

Static cackling in waves follows along with industrial yammering before a scream cuts it off. The shimmer turns redder and the few auras around me head towards me. It occurs to me they can probably sense radio waves.

But I don’t risk finding out anything more and head downstairs. It ends abruptly as well which catches me off guard once more, but I land on the next floor.

New auras appear once again. I head out, deeper into the Mystery Dungeon.

---

I descend many floors. The surface above lowers and the sloshing gets louder after every set of stairs. Little danger has been finding me - my aura is very dependable at staying away from them.

Especially since they rarely head in my direction either, except for when I use my radio at the head of each new stairway. The shimmer grows dark red when I do and the mechanical nonsense responding sounds more pained each time. But it always resets once I cross below. And thankfully, it’s not hard to find the stairs anymore. The rooms they’re in have an increasingly stronger draining force that pulls me towards it.

Every stairs ends before they reach the floor. I jump off and flail around each one. It makes my teeth grit, I’m worried I might land wrong, or that one of these won’t have ground to land on.

Obnoxious stairs aside, one thing that stands out in this journey are many strange objects that lie in the occasional room. They’re all roughly the same size of the twig-arm thing from the first floor, but their shapes are wildly varied. One has many yellow ball-tipped spikes fanning from a center, another is a blocky wave with a rainbow pattern that reminds me of 3D equations. Many more I find myself lacking the words to describe them, other than they’re all nothing I’ve seen before. Rarely, they’re darkened and consumed.

Somewhere between the seventh and twelfth floor - I lost count - the fluid has lowered to my neck. The ceiling is made of a blood-red mineral with many crevices snaking throughout. A muted beat plays, and with it, shimmer sputters out from the cracks while a small current surges around me. This beat, the gushing above, and the current surge rapidly get stronger across the next few floors.

So much stronger that I now hold onto many pink-tinted outcrops jutting from the wall. The beat trembles my feet and splashes the liquid onto my body.

Not even the entities around resist the current surges. Their aura is tugged and tossed with each boom, save for a gale and black hole aura off in the distance. If the latter’s making clanging noises, then the turbulent water drowns it out.

The difficult current makes progress tedious, as I crawl along the wall to stop myself falling over. The routes here are long and the monsters walk into inconvenient spots more than once. It takes me almost thirty minutes to find the stairway out.

Once I do though, it’s a grand sight. The room is the largest I’ve encountered so far, with width greater than a campus library and a ceiling taller than a cathedral. The pink churns and sweeps into a maelstrom sinking the entire floor’s shimmer. Every thundering boom shoots a small geyser out as too much fluid crams down the set of stairs. I squeeze the wall to stop its pull from sweeping me off my feet.

It’s just like that black hole aura. I chuckle at the macabre observation.

But before I let go, I look around the room. To my surprise, I’m not alone.

On the wall opposite the stairs, a bulbous gray mass of flesh stands in front of a wall. Stretching out from a long, oval mass are bony arms twice its length. Rigid fingers digging into the stone wall where a small shimmer spring spurts out. Beady eyes near the back of its body drift around.

No aura emanates from it.

Its eye finally gazes over me and its body locks up for a breathless moment before it jerks its whole body to face towards me. Its two-jointed leg stretches out from beneath it, extending further than the reach of its arms. It steps towards me in quick, stiff motions, unimpeded by the incredible force of the gushing liquid.

I let go and the whirlpool takes me. It spins me rapidly once I approach the middle while the forces push in and squeeze around my body until I’m plunged beneath the surface. I’m sucked through to the next floor, where the pounding rocks me to my heart. Whatever’s causing it, I’m about to meet it.

 

[BestLizard]

12: Infinity and Nothing​

Infinity is a poorly understood math principle, in my opinion. The most simple interpretation of it is “endless,” and there’s a lot of truth to this interpretation, but the notion is messy. There are both an infinite amount of whole numbers, and there is an infinite amount of decimal numbers between zero and one. Yet, there are more numbers between zero and one than there are whole numbers - or at least a “greater amount”. They’re uncountably and countably infinite respectively - you’ll always know the next whole number, but what’s the first decimal number after 0?

Yet how can an infinite be “greater” when they’re all endless? Well, instead of “endless”, I think about infinity as “arbitrarily large”. The set of whole numbers is arbitrarily large, but the amount of decimal numbers is arbitrarily larger.

And what I witness above me is arbitrarily large.

A legion of alien monsters, like the one last floor, tower above me in an endless black sky. Their legs stretch out impossible distances in a perfect march towards the missing horizon. Their bony feet, larger than a continent, quake the ground and surge the shimmer with every step.

They extend so far, it’s as if I’m in a hall of mirrors. Their formation bends further down, best explained by light taking time to reach me.

Light from where, though? I have not seen any shadows since I plunged into the Mystery Dungeon. Perhaps the dungeon plays with light as it does with space? Either way, I count the discrepancy in seconds between the one above me and the furthest one I can still make out. Its march is three seconds behind. I crunch the numbers in my head: more than three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and there’s still more behind it.

I keep my head craned up high as I drift over to a corridor. It takes a splash right behind me that stops my enchantment. The grey alien from the last floor has fallen. Its sinewy limbs flail and kick up the water as it tries to grab onto something. Its unwieldy body makes it impossible, yet it never stops even as bubbles gurgle up from the pink.

I hurry up, pulling myself along the wall using the stone outcrops to keep balance. If that thing can follow me through floors, I can’t assume I can escape danger by going to a new floor anymore. I also can’t assume my aura will pick up every danger.

My heart sinks once I realize there are no auras on this floor, no matter how hard I attune my senses. How soon will it be before I run into one of those alien things around a corner? I shudder.

Yet, I navigate a couple more rooms and I don’t encounter anything. Navigating is the real danger instead. I fight a constant war to stay upright in the gushing liquid and all the walls are slick from shimmer oozing from cracks. I’m forced to be cautious and uncover each room one by one.

A surprise finds me in the next room. A large mash-up of voided machinery suspends in the middle of the room above the liquid. Dark wires droop from it while beams jut out at strange angles.

I can learn something from these voids I've been seeing. Learn what though? I grit my teeth and rack my brain about experiments to try. Touching it is an awful idea, but shooting it? I reach out and with shaky concentration and clumsy technique, a sphere spits out from my glove. It wobbles as it flies to its target and disappears without the splash it should have.

What about splashing shimmer on it? I let go of the wall and wade until I’m close. I dig my paws into the shimmer and toss some of it as high as I can. Drops land on the machine and drip down its contours, with no moisture sticking to the object.

Unsure what to make of it, I trudge back to the wall. I grab a pointy outcrop that dislodges as soon as weight is put on it, spewing forth a stream of shimmer. I fall forward, hug the wall, and scramble until I get a grip again. I take a long, deep breath.

The dislodged rock brushes my legs as it drifts. I pick it up. It might be long enough to reach the floating void.

I trudge back to the ominous object after I relax myself. I stretch my arm out with the rock in hand, quivering trying to fight the surging shimmer for balance. The dark surface makes depth perception difficult and although the tip looks like it's burying inside the mass, there’s no pushback.

I get on my toes to reach a bit more. But I slip and I flail my arms around as I yelp. Thankfully, I manage to stay upright.

After exhaling to get my heartbeat back to normal, I twist the outcrop around. The end that touched it is sliced off, leaving an impossibly smooth surface. Nothing else about the stone stands out.

One last idea comes to mind. I toss the rest of the rock into the void. It doesn’t bounce off, wedge itself in, or shatter. It disappears.

Any matter that isn’t shimmer must disappear when it touches these voids, I theorize. Or even energy, like my aura sphere. Could this have something to do with Earth’s disappearance?

Or Kommo-o’s disappearance…?

I grab my helmet and shake the thought out of my mind, but it only grows to speculate how Kommo-o may have touched this stuff. Shut up, I tell myself before focusing on getting back to the wall and moving down a corridor. Kommo-o couldn’t have touched it on the way down, that’s nonsense. He has to be safe, looking for me somewhere in this dungeon.

I have to find him. He needs me.

The intrusive thoughts recede after a few rooms, replaced with speculation on what the shimmer is. Nothing I come up with makes sense.

Eventually, after much pondering and wandering, I find the final room. Fluid whirls and drains into what must be the stairs. It’s only a few steps away from the hallway exit, where I stand.

I glance back up at the marching titans one last time. The trickery of Palkia making this possible within the Moon is not only impressive, but there’s something beautiful about it too. The immaculate uniformity of their march, their unblemished skin, and even the thumping of their steps soothes me in its own way.

Looking up at them brings me back to when I was young. I would stare at the moon, my maw wide open in awe of its grandness above. The memory brings me back to Earth. The scents of rich mountain woods where I grew up are around. I remember the pull of gravity on me. My mother grabs my shoulder to ease me out of my trance.

It’s been so long since I saw her. I try to remember her face.

I can’t.

I look down at my scattered reflection in the waves. Once I was done university, I didn’t have time for friends or family due to all the studying, training, and work I did for space. My mother supported me at first but when she noticed me drifting away as time passed, she tried urging me to find a related line of work. Something that would let me still be with her. Said she didn’t want to lose me.

But I ended up cutting her out of my life instead so the guilt would bother me less. I couldn’t let it get in the way of joining the stars and discovering truths beyond Earth. I would have time for her again when I’m back, after all. At least, that was supposed to be the plan.

I look deep into my reflection. The person looking back at me ventured through where no Pokemon has gone before or even imagined. He broke ground, learning new knowledge just minutes ago. All my life has been for where I am now.

I would not have changed anything.

Besides, I have someone new to be with now, I just need to find him again. I reach for my comms button but a buzz interrupts me. No static or weird noises pass through my radio, just a deep, expressionless voice. The same one that talked to me last time. “Don’t. It’s trying to find you.”

I gawk. It wasn’t Kommo-o, who was that? How did it know what I was doing? I twist my body around to find who is watching me but the room is empty. There aren’t even other hallways nearby.

I turn to the only place remaining. A twisted statue as tall as me blocks the way out. Its shape narrows in the middle and curves outward on both ends. Many cracks weave through it, not making any discernable shape yet I can’t help but see the face of a Pokemon I’ve never seen. One with a broken, gaping jaw hanging down to the ground. It stares into me with empty yet shifting eyes.

“Don’t look away. Walk backward into the stairs. Now,” the voice over the radio says.

I do that, keeping my eyes on the twisting, malicious face. The current catches me and I drift down the stairs, plunging into to the next floor.