The Incident
New
rimly
mini-blitz in a bottle
- Location
- a pocket dimension
- Pronouns
- They/She
Post Clear
The adventure is over. Now comes the hard part.
A Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Character Study
Genre: Character Study | Drama | Mystery | Slice of Life
Rating: Teen
POV: Rotating close third person (Sugi, Enzu, Honden, Jou)
Setting: Original PMD world | Original characters | No humans | Post-crisis
Status: Ongoing
- Strong language
- Blood and violence
- PTSD and dissociative episodes
- Medication use, mental health themes
- Past trauma and family dysfunction
- Gang and criminal activity
The Incident
I have shown you quite plainly what is happening and you just will not SEE!
The voice was inside her skull. Pressure throbbed behind her eyes, her teeth, the back of her head. Like a migraine without pain, pulsing in time with her heartbeat around the edges of her vision.
She was bigger than she should be. No Mawile was meant to carry this much steel for as long as she had. But she'd carried this weight before- through a bond and the Mawilite humming hot on its chain. She could feel the doubled jaws on either side of her head, two sets of steel teeth where there should be one. Each one heavy enough to drag her neck sideways, thrashing independent of each other, independent of her. Her arms were thicker, flared at the wrists, her stance wider, her whole body braced back against what she'd become.
- the only one holding this together and you come here to stop me-
The dungeon core was in pieces. She could feel the crumbly remnants between her teeth, caught in the grooves of the steel. The air was thick and electric, sticking in the back of her throat like phlegm. It was done, but her job wasn't completed yet. She kept trudging onwards.
The stone walls had threads of light streaking through fractures like veins. It was decaying, turning into rubble as she walked. A slab of the ceiling folded like wet paper origami until it tore off entirely and hit the ground. But the impact was muffled and wrong, the stone underneath too blue, too deep. Where the wall had fractured open she could see corridors that bent sideways, passages folded over each other like a puzzle. The ground was bowing under her weight and splitting with every step, solid rock behaving rubbery and marshy and slippery and crumbly and-
Something moved in the collapse. A dark shape pulled itself through the rubble where the far wall had been, fast, heading for the fractures where the light was coming in.
She knew this place. She'd come here to end this, if it got out then all of this was for nothing, everyone who'd come in here, everything they'd risked. Her doubled jaws opened wide.
She had to stop the Entity.
One foot in front of the other as the dungeon folded in around both of them. Wait, both? Where was... no, she couldn't stop. She was closing the distance- she was the only one left who could stop it now. But that wasn't right, was it? But no, the walls continued to cave in and the floor was breaking apart, and she couldn't let it escape, everyone was counting on her. They needed her. She could see it- it was so close she could almost make it out. She had to -
-YOU are the monster here!
"It's your fault, you monster!" Sugi's own voice ripped from her throat with a snarl as her jaw snapped forwards and grabbed onto the entity. The tang of iron flooded her jaw and the impact shuddered through the steel and up into her skull, and she bit down harder, and the shape was between her teeth and she was not letting go -
A palm pressed flat between her shoulder blades, and the dungeon split apart into a thousand glittering shards.
And then she felt weightless. Her body was the wrong size. Too small, too light, the doubled jaws gone. She flinched seeing the collapsing stone and the light bursting through it but on the second look it was only the afternoon sun falling through a shaft in stone. A light well.
She recognized this one.
Sugi blinked and the walls were straight. Carved stone. Wooden tables. The basin with water catching the sun. Real things in a real room. She was standing in the middle of a room with one set of teeth behind her skull. Not two.
But... there was still something metallic in her mouth. She squinted, not able to tell which mouth.
She was in the guild's common room. When did it become afternoon? She'd been lying down on the niche reading one of Pappy's old field guides and she'd closed her eyes for just a second and now she was standing here and her mouth tasted like iron and- had she been talking? Had she said something? The words were gone but her throat was raw like she'd been shouting.
She stood very still and waited for the panic to hit.
But... it didn't. Her heart was doing something fast in her chest but her head was- steady. Smooth. The panic was somewhere underneath, pressed flat, the edges of it dulled down to almost nothing.
She was shaking. Or- no. That wasn't her. Something was still pressed against her back, warm through her jacket, between her shoulder blades. It was trembling.
A Hatterene's palm. Enzu's.
Enzu was holding her down.
And Enzu was shaking against her back, her blue cloth jacket doing nothing to dampen the tremors. Was she panicking that much? Sugi reflexively wanted to turn around and take the hair in her hands and smooth it out... But she couldn't turn around because there was a room full of people and the copper taste on her teeth wasn't just a dream and she still didn't know what was happening.
Whap.
The noise caught her attention, gathering her wandering mind quickly. A Krokorok tail smacked against the ground. She followed it upwards, and three steps to her right and a full foot above her, Honden stood in that dark brown trench coat he never took off.
There was one clawed hand clamped over his shoulder- why? Why was...
There was blood seeping between his fingers and soaking into the coat. She started, words pushing up through her chest, but all that came out was a numb 'oh'.
He didn't seem to be hurting despite the blood. She looked at his eyes and got what he always gave in return- not a single hint of what was going on in his mind. She wasn't sure if he'd give any hint about what he was thinking even if he lost a limb at this rate.
The fabric of his coat was torn in a half-circle pattern. Her jaw. She craned her head to the side and her eyes flickered to confirm the evidence. There it was - a stain of red on her maw's teeth, bright against the steel. Flecks of blood splatter dotted the mega stone chain that she normally held tightly clamped between those teeth. The mawilite dangled innocently.
The steel in her body went cold, from her skull to her fingertips. She couldn't linger on the sight of the blood, Honden's blood, so she quickly looked forward, back to Honden who had started speaking but she only noticed now.
"- already handled, Guildmaster." He was looking past her, at Enzu.
Behind her, the palm eased off her back. Her legs nearly buckled. Everything it had been pushing down surged back in- the nausea and the heat in her face from shouting 'monster' at someone she'd just bitten and underneath all of it, quieter, the gap pulling at her like a loose tooth she couldn't stop pushing with her tongue. Enzu floated around her, the whole mass of hair swinging wide as she turned. The bowtie at her collar was crooked and her ponytail half-loose. The ornaments on the hat brim were slowly lowering back without psychic energy holding them up.
"She tried to bite Jou, I had to step in." Honden explained casually.
Jou. Sugi's eyes darted across the room to catch where the newbie was at. The tall Magby was against the far wall, his red feathery hair making him stick out, the mane's sharp points drawing her eye down to his yellow beak clamped shut, clawed hands pressed flat against the wall behind him. Embers leaked from the corners of his beak.
He caught her gaze, and the embers sparked and flashed as he snapped. "You wanna go? Then lets fuckin' go, you two-headed fuck! Don't try and sneak attack me, asshole."
He thought she'd attacked him? He was rearing for a fight, his chin was up and the volume was right and the heat was real but he'd backed himself into the stone, the spike on his back pressed flat against it.
She'd scared him.
Oh no. She'd bitten Honden and called him a monster and terrified a kid and- ah- oh no. Oh no nono- What happened? Was this happening? She literally had had nightmares about this, it was like they had been perfectly ripped out and transplanted into reality.
Okay... okayokayokay, stop. Read the room. What do you have? You have a gap, you have a Krokorok bleeding from your teeth and giving a report. You have a kid you've never talked to who thinks you tried to kill him. You have Enzu behind you shaking. This is a bad setup. Figure out the moves. What's in play?
Sugi tried to glance around, tried to see. Maybe it was just the four of them? Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked? Maybe it was an accident-?
It was too much to hope that it was just them, Sugi spotted the audience quickly. Tranquill at the front desk, feathers fluffed, doing a heroic job of pretending to read his ledger and avoiding her gaze.
There was a Hawlucha standing by the task board. She didn't quite know their name yet, but she managed to catch the corner of his gaze as he snuck a glance- and then he had the audacity to give a shrug and go back to his business like this had nothing to do with him. She didn't know whether to feel relieved or indignant.
The Cutiefly though, also by the mission board, was staring directly at her. All four inches of him hovering there with those thick golden glasses and a bright red bowtie bigger than his head, gawking.
Oh no, Wix, please... Sugi's eye contact with the little bug made him flinch a whole foot upwards. Glasses akimbo, he bolted for the corridor. Two tiny arms struggling to re-right them on his face as he banked- and he was gone.
Ohh joyous. The baker would know by sundown. The innkeeper by dinner. CREST by the end of the week if she was lucky.
Well! Maybe she could get Jou to melt her down into scrap metal. He looked like he wanted to and she would have been fully on board with it!
"I'm sorry." The words scraped on the way up Sugi's throat as she landed back on the larger pokemon, "Honden- I'm sorry. I don't... are you okay? How bad- "
"I'm fine." He hunched back over slightly to hide his height, the trench coat bunching at his shoulders.
"I didn't mean to. I swear I didn't- it just -" Her hands were doing something stupid in front of her, reaching toward his shoulder and pulling back. She couldn't touch the person she'd just bitten, obviously. "I can take you to my father, he can look at it properly, he's just down in town-"
"Sugi, breathe for me, okay." Enzu spoke aloud, shifting her focus from Sugi to the other two, "We can work this out, okay? You just got a little... startled." Enzu looked at the room. At Jou. "It's not her fault. She would never mean to hurt anyone."
"Oh fuckin' right." Jou's hands hadn't unclenched. "Just got a little startled? She tried to take my fuckin' head off!"
"Jooin." Jou narrowed his gaze and huffed.
Enzu took a breath. "Okay... yes. It looks bad right now, but everyone's emotions are running too high to talk properly."
Her stomach twisted. Yeah, also they were in public, in front of everyone. Sugi gripped at the fabric over her stomach. Enzu glanced over at her.
"Honden." Enzu turned to him. "Can you show me how bad the bite is?"
"You're not a medic, Guildmaster." He lifted his hand from his shoulder, "But if you insist." and the blood was worse underneath- ten glorious teeth marks, sharp and pointy mapped across his skin where Sugi's maw had clearly been staking its claim.
Honden put his hand back. Covered the bite. "It's fine. I'll handle it myself."
Enzu's gaze lingered on Honden a few moments longer than it needed to, brows pulling tight.
"I want to talk to all of you all in a few hours in my chambers." Enzu looked at each of them once for good measure. "I think we all need a moment to... clean ourselves up. Eat some food. Perhaps?"
Honden was already moving. He was halfway to the lower corridor before Sugi could process it. "Jou, let's go wrap up your orientation."
"I don't need a fuckin' babysitter!" Jou shoved off the wall, embers bright at the corners of his beak. "But yeah! I'm fine too, thanks for asking, Boss." He was past Honden before the larger ground type could say anything, shoulder angled to give Sugi's jaw the widest berth the corridor allowed, and the embers coming out of his beak were gone by the time he cleared the doorway.
Honden straightened out his trench coat, turning instead to aim for the downstairs.
"Wait- Honden, please." Her hands were out again. "I can help. Let me do something. I can at least -"
"You heard her." He looked at Sugi for the first time. "It wasn't your fault."
She swallowed her tongue. Honden turned and headed for the lower corridor without another word.
Her hands were still up. She didn't know when she'd raised them but they were just- out there, hanging in the air where his shoulder had been, and she pulled them back against her chest and held them there.
Enzu sighed as soon as both of them left, drawing Sugi's attention. The hair hung limp against her back, stiff and knotted where it had been pressed against Sugi's spine.
"Enzu, I'm so sorry." The words bubbled out of her chest, spilling onto the floor, like if she stopped talking she was going to have to sit with what she'd done. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean- you know I would never- I don't even know what happened,- you're the guildmaster, you shouldn't have to deal with- I mean I know you can feel how sorry I am but I need to say it -"
"Zuzu." Enzu's small white hand found Sugi's wrist, brushing up the hem of her sleeve, wrapping around the steel where her black arm met yellow skin. "Come here. Let's go upstairs." Calm pressed into her gut, heavy and not hers.
She let Enzu pull her. Past the basin, past the blood on the floor, the three drips were already browning on the stone. They headed to the narrow stairway that climbed the back side of the guild, where steps hugged the mountain's ridge. Sugi climbed while Enzu floated beside her, the ornaments on the hat brim clinking softly and her hair rustling as they grazed the steps.
The upper corridor was dim and too quiet. Afternoon light came through the south windows and caught the open doors, the empty beds beyond them. She could hear her own steel feet echoing off the stone. The hallway felt like a ruin compared to her memory. There used to be too many bodies to walk a straight line.
Enzu's door was at the far end, away from the windows and the noise. The small glow of psychic power pushed the heavy hardwood open. Stone walls and the door seal cut the sound and the light when the door closed behind them.
"Sit." Enzu pointed at the sleeping niche and Sugi sat, hands in her lap, trying to keep herself from shaking any worse than she already was. The mats were warm from the afternoon heat the stone had absorbed. The cusp of spring was getting its hands off the land, which was the only blessing she'd gotten today. Before she could say another apology, Enzu's back was to her and she drifted across the room to the water basin.
She couldn't cry. She couldn't, but she couldn't believe how in a few months time she'd ruined her reputation here again. She had worked so hard and... and...
Her palms reached up to grasp at her face, wanting to scream.
Water dripped behind her, and Enzu came back with a wet cloth.
"Turn around, and take off your jacket."
Sugi turned. She shrugged off the blue jacket and set it on the niche so Enzu could get to the jaw without fighting it. She felt Enzu's smaller white hands on the jaw, one on each side of the steel, careful because she knew Sugi could feel it. Enzu twirled her hands around long silver chains, unwinding and sliding them off the large black jaw. The metal clinked in the silent room as Enzu stepped back with the bundle in her arms, folded neatly with practice.
The Mawilite stone swung free in the chain links, and Enzu floated it into Sugi's hand quietly. Sugi curled her fingers around it without thinking.
It was still warm. Had she tried to mega evolve? She turned it over between her fingers while Enzu worked, rubbing her thumb across the smooth surface, a strand of dark grey hair with its maroon streak falling across her plum eyes. She didn't want to think about what would have happened- maybe she really would have taken off Jou's head.
The image of it tried to flash in her mind's eye- and she squeezed her actual eyes shut.
Enzu went to work cleaning Honden's blood off her jaw's teeth, working into the grooves of the maroon underside where the color faded into grey. Each tooth registered the cloth- pressure, warmth, the careful way Enzu worked around the edges- and her eyes were stinging. Sitting further down like this, Enzu's hair curled around her, pooling between Sugi's feet as she could feel her own emotions melt.
"Your hair looks awful," Sugi commented, staring down at the way it had knotted itself because of her. One of her clawed hands ran through a section on her shoulder.
"Thanks." Enzu chuckled. Sugi opened her mouth a bit, her cheeks turning a bit red, realizing that she hadn't exactly completed her thought.
"D-do you want me to brush it...?" Sugi offered, and Enzu paused. Then, she could hear the jingling of Enzu shaking her head.
"No. I know it's a mess, but it's fine, I promise." Enzu didn't stop. Working on the left side now, the curve where the jaw met the base of Sugi's skull, her fingers gentle against the join. "It always looks awful after an intervention."
"I'm sorry- I don't -"
Enzu tightened her grip on the jaw. "Zuzu, you know how I feel about those apologies." Sugi shut her mouth quickly, embossment holding the red on her cheeks even worse now.
"What happened?"
"I don't know." That was true. She could give her that much. "I don't- Honden said I got startled? Maybe... I think the kid- Jou- I think maybe he said something or did something and I just... reacted." She swallowed. "I thought I was back there... just for a second." Sugi tried to focus on anything but the faint trembling in her own hands. "What did it feel like? On your end. When you were... holding me down."
Enzu's hands slowed on the steel. Not stopping, but the rhythm changed- careful, like she was choosing where to press.
"It was like... the dungeon." The jaw tightened behind Sugi's skull. "When you were deep in and I had to reach for you. You were... further down than you should have been." Her thumb traced the groove of a tooth. "I thought maybe it was just- residual. From the crisis. You carried a lot there, Zuzu."
"You don't bite people." Enzu then brushed Sugi's shoulder, wrapping around her. Holding her. Sugi leaned against it.
"... I did, though."
"In all the time I've known you, through the whole crisis, you would never do that."
Sugi couldn't find her voice to answer. Instead she felt herself sinking into her seat, leaning back against Enzu quietly, her hand reaching up as she brushed her clawed fingers through Enzu's hair, trying to untangle some of the mess that was there.
Enzu's forehead pressed against the back of Sugi's head, just above where the jaw met skull. She stayed there. Breathing against Sugi's hair. The hair had gone completely still against her shoulder. They sat like that. The maw was warm from both of them- Enzu's hands on it, Enzu's forehead above it.
Enzu lifted her head. Took a breath. Came around and sat next to Sugi on the niche. Up close, with the hair pulled aside, Sugi could see her actual face- the white skin, the narrow black eyes with their strange white pupils, the pink markings below them that always looked like she'd been crying even when she hadn't. She was so small without the hair doing its job.
Enzu took in a deep breath. "I want you to see your father."
Sugi's hands went tight on her knees.
"Getting startled and biting people- Zuzu, that's not good." Enzu's hand found her hand where it was on her knee and pressed. "If there's anyone who can help with that, he can."
"I don'- it's not-" She couldn't push the words out, and if it wasn't for Enzu she'd have apologized again. But... "Can we just- not yet? I don't think it's- I think the problem is something else."
Enzu watched her. The cleaning cloth moved. Enzu folded it so the pink side was hidden and floated it over to the shelf. She took the Mawilite from Sugi's hand quietly, drifting it away, and Sugi's fingers didn't want to let go, she'd been turning it over and over without realizing, but once she realized what Enzu was doing she let go. Enzu then hooked the chain back onto the jaw. Sugi tasted iron and stone as the jaw closed around it.
"I'm cooped up- that has to be it." She was talking too fast but if she slowed down she was going to lose the thread. "Enzu, we spent years out there... And then we came here and you took over the guild and... it hasn't been the same."
"We're still a team, you and I," Enzu pointed out. "I've just been... busy trying to get used to it all."
"We're not, though." She hadn't meant to say it that bluntly, she winced as she felt Enzu's hair twitch against her body. "You're the guildmaster. You have meetings and you manage people and you come back to the room with your hair in knots every night. That's your job now. And I just- I'm in Pappy's corner. With his puzzles." A bitter smile pulled at the corner of her lips, "I remember back when we were traveling the world together, going after the Entity, dungeon diving and saving pokemon and doing some real good. But..."
Enzu's hair pulled tight against her back. The ornaments clinked. "But it's gone."
"I'm..." she had to refrain from apologizing again, "- not saying that I miss the Entity! Or that you're um- not doing enough- because you are! You're doing so much." She flinched, regretting her words immediately "I'm saying- I need something to do with my hands. I need to be out there. I need missions, a team, something."
"I know."
"- and then something like this happens and I can't even -"
"I know." Enzu sighed. "I kept thinking you and I just needed to settle in. That it just needed time and... it could go back to the way things were."
Sugi felt her shoulder slump slightly. Her gaze went forwards, as she leaned back with a frown. Enzu pulled back slightly- And Sugi froze.
"But Zuzu- you just bit someone." Enzu looked at her. The pink markings below her eyes were darker than usual, or maybe that was the light. "And you want me to send you into dungeon work?"
"I want to be useful. I want to have something to do besides sit here and think about what's wrong with me. A-And..." Sugi tried to focus on the warmth between them. The hair shifted against the niche, and she heard Enzu's breath escape in a sigh.
Sugi turned herself around to face Enzu, and she reached upwards, one of her hands holding onto her partner's cheek. Sugi knit her brow as Enzu watched her. Sugi lowered her gaze, and ran a clawed finger against the set of almost invisible scars on Enzu's shoulder.
"... I want to make this right. If I can."
Enzu reached up to hold Sugi's palm. Her eyes shut, brow furrowing as she pressed her lips together.
"... Fine. Fine. If we can figure out a team for you, sure." Enzu let go of Sugi's hand, "Talk to Ley, or Essa. Either of them. They're both running small right now. If one of them says yes, I'll make it work."
"Okay." Too fast. She could hear herself overcorrecting. "Okay, yeah. I'll go talk to them. Thank you." She paused. "Do you think they'd- I mean, after what just happened. Would anyone even want -"
"I don't know," Enzu said honestly. "But you should probably ask them before they find out."
"Okay! Okay- I promise, I feel this in my maw this is right!" Sugi went to stand up-
Enzu caught her wrist, keeping her there. Sugi felt Enzu's chin settle on the top of her shoulder, holding her close. Pressing into her.
"I love you," Enzu murmured, and Sugi felt it in the steel before she felt it anywhere else. She leaned back into her.
"I love you too." She pulled back just enough to see Enzu's face. "We'll talk tonight. Okay? All of us about um... what you want to talk about. Probably... what to do about me, right? Hah?"
"Probably, I'll figure it out. But ... I haven't thought that far." Enzu chuckled with a smaller smile, "Go."
Sugi squirmed her way out of Enzu's grip and took her leave. The heavy door closed behind her.
The jacket went back on in the corridor. The collar sat wrong against the jaw- it always did when Sugi rushed it, and she always rushed it. A quick tug to straighten it. Now, she just needed to make this right.
One of them had to say yes. The pitch was there, somewhere under the shaking hands and the hum of nerves in her chest. Her fingers ran over her face, pushing the maroon streak out of her eyes, tugging at the collar that was already sitting wrong again.
Okay, Sugi. How hard could this be?
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