Pokémon Post Clear

rimly · Apr 1, 2026

Post Clear
The adventure is over. Now comes the hard part.

A Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Character Study

Strong language
Blood and violence
PTSD and dissociative episodes
Medication use, mental health themes
Past trauma and family dysfunction
Gang and criminal activity

An original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon story. The world is saved, the heroes came home, and now it's time to let sleeping dogs lie. But Sugi came back from saving the world to find there's nothing left for her to do, and a growing mystery just won't leave her alone. Meanwhile, the new guildmaster has her hands full with a role half the guild thinks should have gone to someone else, two Mystery Dungeons on her doorstep to manage, and a newcomer who's starting to find out just how much this guild has been held together with duct tape and good intentions.

Hello!! I've actually never posted my writing online before, so this is a bit new to me! Big thanks to @K_S and @Tango who have been helping me by being my beta readers and editors, along with my lovely friends and partner! :D I'd love to hear what you all think, any feedback is welcome!

Ao3 Link!

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 his 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." Honden's voice cut flat across the room. 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.

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 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- Sugi's head leaning back, Enzu's forehead pressed 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 pale pink 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."

The jaw clenched behind her skull. The mawilite clicked against the teeth.

"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?

Flyg0n · Apr 3, 2026

I've seen you around the forums and I am super stoked that you have a fic to post! I was immediately captivated by the idea. It reminded me a tad in concept of Frieren - a story set after a big heroes journey.

Honestly such a great use of a fanfic since it draws on readers knowledge of pmd to instead focus on the aftermath. The details might be different but we probably know a version of the story - two heroes and maybe one who was human save the world. Or well, in this case, probably not a former human it sounds like?

From what I gather here it seems the "original" partner pair was Enzu and Sugi.

The dream sequence at the beginning was really stark! It threw me for a second because I started expecting a traditional start and it read pretty confusingly and disjointed. But then it rapidly became clear something else was going on and by the time she woke up I was like "ah that makes sense". It was cool!

I think it captures the energy of a dream-like state really well, where everything is muddled and both makes perfect sense and none at all.

The close third here really puts me in Sugi's shoes, and I think it was very useful for getting into Sugi's head. The narration was really good and painted a good picture of Sugi's situation.

Also very much 'in media res' way to start as the saying goes. It can be tricky, starting without traditional establishing context, but I did find myself enjoying piecing things together from Sugi's distressed state and using clues to infer characters dynamics with each other. Also it works for this kind of story.

I'll talk a bit about what I as a reader understand is going on based on this first chapter. Hopefully that will help you a bit to see if maybe I missed the mark or a clue.

So it sounds like Sugi is a Mawile who is able to or used to be able to mega evolve. She and Enzu were partners and saved the world from the Entity (dark matter I assume?).

I am thinking Honden is a friend or associate. Jou is his new trainee, a young kid compared to the rest, who sound like they're maybe young adults?

There's a sense of familiarity she has that suggests she knows Honden at least a little. Maybe they've ran missions before or is a friend from the Guild.

Poor Sugi, it sounds like she's really struggling to adapt after the world saving mission. I wonder if anyone is going to want to pair up with her.

I was confused at first by the relative heights of all the characters, especially Enzu to Sugi but I saw the art just recently of Enzu and now it all makes sense hah.

I can tell Sugi and Enzu are really close. I interpret everything as platonic unless convinced otherwise but maybe there's romance I'm oblivious too lol.

Another detail I really like is how you describe Sugi's feelings and how she fells it in her steel and other mentions of her steel typing. It adds lots of flavor to the internal narration.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this story overall. The disassociation felt solidly written, the concept is cool and I liked the glimpses of the characters we get! It made me curious to see more so I can understand what Sugi went through and what else is going on.

Happy posting, looking forward to more sometime!

canisaries · Apr 5, 2026

Hey there! I'm here for Catnip. Was excited to see what kind of writing you had after receiving such wonderful reviews from you, and I'm glad I got matched with you for a great excuse to find out.

rimly said:
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.

If I read this correctly, the pronoun changes from "they" to "he". Is this intentional?

rimly said:
"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.

The punctuation gave me a bit of pause here - I'm used to formatting where a speaker continuing their side of dialogue lacks the ending quote before a row change (underlined here). Otherwise, to me, it looks like the speaker is supposed to be changing.

rimly said:
"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?"

my fucking god! these bitches gay! good for them! good for them.

---

So it seems here that Sugi, a Mawile, was the hero (or one of the heroes) to save the world in a typical PMD fashion, albeit without the human part of the equation. From some kind of Entity? Every time I see the word "entity" it's like my brain lights up. One of my favorite words for real.

And now, after the world has been saved, Sugi's been left with what I'm guessing is PTSD, including having episodes from triggers that have not been identified to us yet. She's also been stuck at her guild, which has been stressing her out because of the lack of things to do. And her Hatterene partner Enzu, who was with her on that adventure, has become the guildmaster, and the two seem to have drifted apart somewhat.

I'm definitely feeling the character study angle already, as the focus is clearly on Sugi's internal issues and how they affect her life so far. I think that's something that's missing from a lot of PMD fanfics I've seen, since as far as I'm familiar with them, those tend to go for the whole massive world-saving plots right from the get-go.

The prose is also heavily tied to Sugi's perception, which can lead to situations where it's hard to visualize what's going on due to the drip-feed of details as Sugi thinks of them. This is likely not really a problem but more of a preference kind of thing. Something I do think may cause issues down the line is the fact that we got introduced to kind of a lot of characters in a short period of time (though not all were named), but it's really wholly dependent on how much the following chapters demand the reader to remember from the first one without recap.

I enjoy that there was a lot of focus on Sugi's jaws, which really sells one on the fact that this is a Mawile, though this would have been hard to avoid doing in general with the whole "I bit someone and their blood is still on my jaws" premise of this chapter. Enzu's hair getting knotted from stress also makes sense.

One last thing, which doesn't really matter but I might as well mention anyway, is that I found the nickname of Zuzu from Sugi to be peculiar. Is the S in Sugi's name read as a Z? I also considered there being some kind of consonant change that occurred in Japanese, but I asked my weeb friends about it and they didn't seem to recognize it as a thing.

Well, that's everything I have for now. I'm not sure if I made it clear, but I did think this was a very good chapter! I hope to read the next chapter when it comes out, operative word being hope because I am so so bad at reading things. Until then, see you around!

Spiteful Murkrow · 2026-04-14T05:51:46+0100

Heya, cutting things a bit close, but dropping in for a review of this story as part of Catnip Circle. I honestly had no real idea of what to expect for this story, other than that it had a nifty cover art and is apparently set after the main character has already done her antics as a PMD hero and come out the other side less satisfied and settled than one would initially assume.

Not fully sure what that’s going to look like, but I’ve been eating good with the reviews you’ve sent my way over the past few months, so I figured that I’d throw some of that love back your way:

Chapter 1

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.

Ah yes, she’s a Mega Mawile at the moment. I see that we’re opening straight into the thick of the action considering the sorts of times and places where one Mega Evolves in PMD games.

- 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.

So… just how ragged is Mawile at the moment right now? Or is being Mega Evolved helping to keep that at bay a bit?

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.

Oh yeah, that certainly sounds positive™ there. Though the prose for this entire opening sequence has been really strong up to this point. It does a great job at selling the atmosphere of everything that’s going on.

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.

Just filing that one away. Even if based on the summary, I kinda expect it to be a one-scene wonder.

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 -

I would keep the capitalization of ‘Entity’ consistent and split off the dialogue from the following description given how long it is. Though the Entity can bleed, huh? I wonder what on earth it is then, since I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting that from a more Eldritch-vibing enemy there.

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.

Whelp, Mega Evolution’s over. Though how has Sugi not keeled over just yet?

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.

Um… did she bite some hapless guild random in the background during all of that earlier, or…?

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.

Oh, so she has PTSD from that whole battle with the Entity, huh? Though that does feel like a bit of an underexplored angle, since considering the average endgame sequence in a PMD game, you’d think that at least one protagonist or partner would have to deal with:

So color me interested in seeing where this winds up going.

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.

Sugi: “Um… I didn’t bite her in the middle of that… whatever the hell that was earlier, did I?”

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.

Enzu: “Have you considered that you might have just bitten yourself by accident, Sugi?” >_>;

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.

Um… do I want to know how badly that thing reeks if Honden literally never takes the thing 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'.

Yeah, I knew that Sugi wound up biting someone around her. Though just how often does this happen on this team given Honden’s complete lack of reaction there?

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.

Oh, so Honden’s not much of a talker, huh? Duly noted there.

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.

Sugi: “Uh… s-sorry? I really don’t know what on earth came over me back there!”

"- 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.

I take it that that’s the name of the Magby on the cover art further up.

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.

Yeah, I figured.

Jou: “Uh… is it too late to go and join a different team at this rate?”

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."

Ah yes, what a lovely and supportive team we’ve got here. /s

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.

Honden: “Gee, I wonder why, Sugi…” >_>;
Sugi: “H-Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be the quiet type right now?!” O_O;

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?

Say “the Dungeon made me do it”? I mean, Mystery Dungeons making Pokémon lose their minds aren’t exactly rare in this fandom, so…

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-?

Honden: “You literally were screeching incoherently about me being a monster.”

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.

Well, scratch that about being in a Mystery Dungeon there. Sugi’s day is just getting better and better right now.

I do kinda wonder if there should’ve been a bit more attention given to the surroundings filling in from Sugi’s perspective and the “... Oh, we’re at the guild. Where I just did all of this in front of a crowded room.

” sinking in should’ve been shown off more.

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.

https://c.tenor.com/odyVsZbC-OYAAAAC/tenor.gif/img]

Honden: “You’re feeling indignant? I’m the one bleeding here!” >_>;
Jou: “Yeah, and you just tried to bite me in half for no good reason!” [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/916590061942894602.webp?size=24

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.

I kinda feel like Sugi’s sinking “oh crap” realization should get a bit more buildup than what is presently there. I’m of two minds of whether it works better as a standalone paragraph or attached to the second one in this block.

Ohh joyous. The baker would know by sundown. The innkeeper by dinner. CREST by the end of the week if she was lucky.

So CREST is the PRO/HAPPI equivalent of this setting, duly noted.

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.

Narrator: “He is not fine.”

Honden: “Look, I’m on the cover art. I’m not dying off in the Prologue of this story.” >_>;

[ ]

"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."

Jou:

Sugi: “I-I mean, if it’s any consolation, this is surprising me too right now.”

"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.

Oh, so ‘Jou’ is a clipping of his full name. Duly noted.

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?"

I kinda feel like there should be a bit more of Sugi’s thought process here, especially if she’s freaking out and trying to come to terms with what on earth just happened and what sort of headaches she’s going to have to put up with after the dust settles.

Sugi: “Do we really have to do this in public, Enzu?”

"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."

Just how often does this croc wind up getting torn up if him getting these puncture wounds is basically “another day ending in ‘y’” for him? .-.

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?"

Enzu: “And probably discussing a few things about the future of your team…” >_>;

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.

Sugi: “... You know what, I think that I’m fine with the newbie bailing with an attitude like that, thanks.” >_>;

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.

I think that it’d probably make sense to show off a bit more of Sugi’s reaction and thought process as she goes after Honden given that she’s almost certainly a bit emotionally rattled right now, but it’s kinda glossed-over at the moment.

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 -"

Sugi: “Um… you were able to pick up on how I legitimately thought I was throwing down with the Entity, right?” ^^;

"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.

Oh, so she has a nickname for Sugi. Duly noted there. I can already tell that there’s a history between these two, since I was surprised that an out-and-out Guildmaster would feature on the story’s cover art.

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.

Um… said bodies are just out for the day doing errands… right?

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.

That actually makes me wonder if very hot summers and very cold winters are uncomfortable experiences for Steel-types by virtue of the metallic parts of their body conducting heat to/away from the more organic parts of them.

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.

Sugi, I’m pretty sure that this is a sign to take a break from doing Guild jobs for a while and going out to try and find a therapist, just saying.

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.

Wait, wait, wait. Sugi managed to bite someone with her head jaws… while they were chained up? I certainly didn’t see that coming.

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.

Oh. Oh. Okay, that certainly makes the mention of ‘silver chains’ while still managing to mess up Honden make a lot more sense now.

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.

So… uh… how is she going to convince him to go back onto the team anyways? Since from the cover art, I highly doubt the story’s just going to allow him to turn and bail. ^^;

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.

Oh, so Sugi’s starting to tear up at the moment? Unless I’m reading the “eyes were stinging” part in an unintended fashion there.

"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.

Okay, yeah, these two have history with each other, I can already tell. I kinda wonder if once upon a time they used to be peers but wound up going their separate ways before the whole spiel with the Entity back in the day.

"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?"

Maybe it’s just me being biased as a more visual-skewing author, but I kinda feel like these two sections here would work a bit better with some brief extensions getting into some combination of Sugi’s head and/or Enzu’s reaction to the back-and-forth that’s happening here.

"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."

Some more spots where I feel like it’d be worth getting into Sugi’s head a bit more, especially since it’s an opportunity to tip your hand as an author a bit as to her backstory and why she’s like this more to your audience.

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."

Oh, so Sugi really was the last ‘mon standing who had to save the day. Duly noted, even if clearly this left quite the mark on her mentally.

"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: “Enzu, I get that you were trying to be reassuring, but that really, really didn’t help with those worries that something has just been fundamentally wrong with me ever since the whole thing with the Entity happened.”

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.

These two used to be intimate with each other, didn’t they? Since boy that felt really, really close for a pair that are just strictly platonic with each other.

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."

Another spot where I feel that it makes sense to get into Sugi’s head a bit more, especially if there’s a part of her that really, really doesn’t want to see her dad. Since that way you can at least hint at it a bit more to the audience.

"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."

I mean, she’s probably not completely wrong, but really, I’ll take the under on your apparent daddy issues not making all of this worse, Sugi.

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.

Oh, so her jaws were chained up earlier. And she still managed to bite Honden with them. Lovely.

"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."

Whelp, it’s officially confirmed that these two used to be on a team with each other. Yeah, I kinda figured there from the way that Enzu was being really, really chummy with someone who on paper was just another member of the guild.

"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 would recommend at minimum splitting up Sugi’s paragraph, since it feels like you’ve got a lot going on in it to the point where it’d probably benefit from being rendered as multiple paragraphs.

"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."

Another spot where I’d recommend showing off a bit more of Sugi’s inner thoughts or reaction as a character there.

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.

Ditto here, especially if Sugi’s coping / getting a bit desperate at the moment about needing to get that sense of validation she used to have. Though just saying, exactly none of this sounds like a healthy way of dealing with your personal problems there, Sugi.

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."

Oh, so Enzu got nice and messed up during that battle with the Entity back in the day, huh? Since if almost invisible scars are messing Sugi up this much emotionally, that implies that once upon a time, they were much, much less invisible and that Sugi’s still blaming herself for it.

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."

Though I’m not holding my breath on either Ley or Essa working out since we’ve seen everyone on the cover art up to this point, and those two weren’t on it.

"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.

Hrm… I’m of two minds about this part since on the one hand, I kinda feel like there’s room to get into your characters’ heads a bit more, but the current attenuated delivery also does a decent job at selling the sense that Sugi is in a rush here.

"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?"

See, I knew that their relationship with each other wasn’t just platonic. Though nice to see that out-and-out confirmed, since that’s certainly a different character dynamic than the normal guild in a PMD story has.

"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.

Sugi, I’m pretty sure that you’re more likely to make things a lot, lot worse at this rate since everything about your reaction to everything that happened with the Entity and needing to fill that Hero-shaped void in your heart up to this point has practically screamed ‘deeply unhealthy response and a disaster waiting to happen’.

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?

Aaaaaaand she jinxed herself.

Well, that was quite the ride for a first chapter. I like how you basically took the “what now?” phase that every PMD game winds up having once the player just flatly runs out of stuff to do and used it as a story premise, with your particular flavor of it doing a pretty good job at standing out from the crowd. Like yes, Sugi is an accomplished once-hero who’d tick all the boxes to be a player character aside from not being human, but she’s also a traumatized wreck whose life is spiraling to the point where she’s struggling just to consistently stay on a team at her guild, she’s plagued with personal problems that she keeps bottling up, and keeps chasing bygone glories in the hopes of being able to turn around. “Hero on hard times” a tack that I don’t really see broached from stories in the PMD fandom, and you did a good job at breathing it to life. The other characters we’ve seen so far up to this point were also fun to watch, even if Enzu got the lion’s share of attention and characterization given how she’s effectively a living tie to Sugi’s past, and a foil in the sense that she (at least outwardly) has managed to keep things together even while drifting apart. The prose was generally quite well-done, especially around the opening to the chapter, since I knew about four paragraphs in that I was going to have fun with this story.

I don’t have too much criticism to throw at this story’s way, with the stuff I do have basically being different flavors of “I’d have liked to see more”. I felt that there were some moments in the chapter where you wound up leaving things on the table for getting into Sugi’s head a bit more for her thought process, which both would’ve been an opportunity to better show off the way she thinks and ticks to the audience, while also acting as a means to delve into her past and issues a bit harder. There were also a couple spots where I didn’t quite see eye to eye with the paragraph formatting, but I understand that there’s some degree of ‘eye of the beholder’ to that one as a writer, so I can’t really fault you if you opt to dismiss them.

Though this is some good stuff, @rimly . I’m admittedly a bit stretched-thin right now to really go making commitments for regularly following another story, but your story definitely has a lot of promise, and I’ll be looking forward to coming back sometime down the road to see where you wind up taking it.

aer · 2026-04-15T08:04:03+0100

This reply uses italics instead of quotemarks because I read the AO3 version, sorry! I went through a few times so the line-by-lines might be out of order.

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.

:? Through a bond?

A palm pressed flat between her shoulder blades, and the dungeon split apart into a thousand glittering shards.

Nice description.

It seems like she was dreaming of being a mega mawile, and having a nightmare of biting someone. And oh, Honden! She bit the krokorok in her sleepwalking dreams. This all feels very dreamy, like each thing that's happening is coming off the previous one, where it flows into each other but you can't predict what's going to happen next.

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.

... huh, nice! Magby are so cool.

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.

Jou seems really surprised. Two-headed sounds like an insult in the vein of two-faced here.

You have a gap

A.. gap?

Oh, a gap between the teeth?

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.

Alas lol. Let's actually look at every individual single person who saw. Oh no.

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!

Oh noooo (warranted).

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.

It's more like she had a trauma flashback than a dream, maybe? Jou is reacting like she wasn't asleep.

"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.

Sucks for Honden and all but that is a gorgeous alligator bite (... on... the... alligator...), mm, yes.

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.

Poor Sugi :( :(. I think the focus on slow description leading up to this moment works really well here; it's not overwhelming and feels really like a calm situation around a uncalm character.

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.

I'm struggling a little understanding what's going on here. Are there chains around her jaw because they chained her after she bit someone, or was she wearing them? This seems like the first mention of them, and they're not in the front cover picture.

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.

Lovely paragraph, emotion, and mawile are so pretty.

"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.

The intensity is really high here - tense questions with tense answers.

"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.

I think this could use another dialogue tag here, because Enzu talks twice in a row.

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.

It's interesting how the jaw's described here, like it's an entirely separate entity from Sugi.

"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..."

It sounds like their relationships changed a lot when they stopped being explorers together, where Enzu's grew and Sugi's stayed at home with her Pappy. And they love each other! And Enzu wants to talk to Sugi's dad about her. Or really, Enzu wants Sugi to get treated by her dad, who's a doctor, probably. Sugi is noooot happy about that, probably as one more thing on the embarrasment congo but also maybe something deeper.

The Entity's - the only one holding this together and you come here to stop me- at the beginning made me think about how much this guild has been held together with duct tape and good intentions in the summary - I wonder how they'll be connected, if at all. Even Entities hate having to run things...

And to circle back to the beginning of this review, oh yeah mega evolution requires having a strong bond. I wonder if that was with Enzu. Mega mawile are said to have "an extremely vicious disposition" which seems to fit bitey!Sugi, especially since she seems to be dissociating away after and not having any memory of what happened, and Sugi does noooot seem to have a vicious disposition at her natural state.

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.

Should 'embossment' be 'embarrassment' here?

It also strikes me that the mega stone in the cover picture isn't black and yellow like a mawilite, but looks maybe like a pidgeotite? Hm...

rimly · 2026-04-15T22:19:50+0100

Flyg0n said:
I've seen you around the forums and I am super stoked that you have a fic to post! I was immediately captivated by the idea. It reminded me a tad in concept of Frieren - a story set after a big heroes journey.

ahh thank you!! and yeah the Frieren comparison is really apt honestly, its one of those stories that gave me the confidence to go okay what if the interesting part isnt the world saving but what happens to the people after. like... the adventure is done. now you gotta live with it. thats the hard part.

Flyg0n said:
Honestly such a great use of a fanfic since it draws on readers knowledge of pmd to instead focus on the aftermath. The details might be different but we probably know a version of the story - two heroes and maybe one who was human save the world. Or well, in this case, probably not a former human it sounds like?

youre right on the money there! no former human in this one. everyone is just... pokemon, living their lives, and two of them happened to get swept up in a crisis. the pmd framework is doing a lot of heavy lifting cus i can lean on readers going oh i know roughly what the big adventure was and then just... skip to the part i actually want to write about. which is the aftermath and all the messy stuff that comes with it.

Flyg0n said:
The dream sequence at the beginning was really stark! It threw me for a second because I started expecting a traditional start and it read pretty confusingly and disjointed. But then it rapidly became clear something else was going on and by the time she woke up I was like "ah that makes sense". It was cool!

I think it captures the energy of a dream-like state really well, where everything is muddled and both makes perfect sense and none at all.

god okay good im so glad it landed that way. the disorientation is the POINT but i was genuinely nervous about opening on it cus theres that risk of reader puts the fic down before they realize whats happening."the dream logic breaking apart - where the dungeon is folding in on itself and the physics are wrong and she cant quite remember who else was supposed to be there - thats exactly the vibe i was going for. its not a memory. its a nightmare made of memories. glad it read that way! it actually took quite a few revisions, i have to thank K_S and Tango, and my partner too who helped me fix it up!

Flyg0n said:
From what I gather here it seems the "original" partner pair was Enzu and Sugi.

yep!! thats the core duo. theyre the ones who went through it all together.

Flyg0n said:
I'll talk a bit about what I as a reader understand is going on based on this first chapter. Hopefully that will help you a bit to see if maybe I missed the mark or a clue.

So it sounds like Sugi is a Mawile who is able to or used to be able to mega evolve. She and Enzu were partners and saved the world from the Entity (dark matter I assume?).

I am thinking Honden is a friend or associate. Jou is his new trainee, a young kid compared to the rest, who sound like they're maybe young adults?

There's a sense of familiarity she has that suggests she knows Honden at least a little. Maybe they've ran missions before or is a friend from the Guild.

okay so this is really really helpful to hear! youre basically nailing the setup. :) youve got a good read on the group dynamic already!

Flyg0n said:
Poor Sugi, it sounds like she's really struggling to adapt after the world saving mission. I wonder if anyone is going to want to pair up with her.

;c; yeah shes having a time. thats kinda the whole question of the story honestly - what happens when the hero is done being the hero but hasnt figured out how to be anything else yet.

Flyg0n said:
I was confused at first by the relative heights of all the characters, especially Enzu to Sugi but I saw the art just recently of Enzu and now it all makes sense hah.

LOL yeah the height thing catches people off guard! Hatterene is like 6'11, and Mawile is 2 feet tall so the scale between them is. very funny. and then most of that Hatterene height is just hair and hat, the actual body underneath is tiny. so when the prose describes Enzu's small white hands and how little she is without the hair doing its job - thats literal lmao.

Flyg0n said:
I can tell Sugi and Enzu are really close. I interpret everything as platonic unless convinced otherwise but maybe there's romance I'm oblivious too lol.

haha well... i'll just say keep reading :3

Flyg0n said:
Another detail I really like is how you describe Sugi's feelings and how she fells it in her steel and other mentions of her steel typing. It adds lots of flavor to the internal narration.

this is one of my favorite things to write honestly!! the steel typing being woven into how she experiences emotions is really important to me. when she goes cold its literal, when she feels something in her maw its physical. it helps sell that this is a Mawile experiencing things, not a human in a Mawile costume yknow?

Flyg0n said:
Anyway, I really enjoyed this story overall. The disassociation felt solidly written, the concept is cool and I liked the glimpses of the characters we get! It made me curious to see more so I can understand what Sugi went through and what else is going on.

Happy posting, looking forward to more sometime!

thank you so much for this review!! it genuinely means a lot, especially hearing that the character work and the concept are landing. theres SO much more to dig into with all four of them. i hope you enjoy whats coming next :D

canisaries said:
Hey there! I'm here for Catnip. Was excited to see what kind of writing you had after receiving such wonderful reviews from you, and I'm glad I got matched with you for a great excuse to find out.

ahh thank you!! thats such a nice thing to hear honestly, i hope you enjoy it! your stories as well are a lot of fun! and very exciting to read!!

canisaries said:
If I read this correctly, the pronoun changes from "they" to "he". Is this intentional?

good catch! yeah this is the Hawlucha bit - it was supposed to be consistent and i just missed it. fixed now, thanks for flagging it!

canisaries said:
The punctuation gave me a bit of pause here - I'm used to formatting where a speaker continuing their side of dialogue lacks the ending quote before a row change (underlined here). Otherwise, to me, it looks like the speaker is supposed to be changing.

yeah youre right on this one, the "You dont bite people" line is still Enzu speaking and the paragraph break makes it look like a speaker swap. thats a fix i need to make - either drop the end quote on the previous line or add a dialogue tag. thank you for catching that, someone else flagged it too so its definitely not just a you thing!

canisaries said:
my fucking god! these bitches gay! good for them! good for them.

LMAOO. yeah. yeah they are :D

canisaries said:
So it seems here that Sugi, a Mawile, was the hero (or one of the heroes) to save the world in a typical PMD fashion, albeit without the human part of the equation. From some kind of Entity? Every time I see the word "entity" it's like my brain lights up. One of my favorite words for real.

right!! no human element in this one, just pokemon. and "Entity" is doing a lot of work as a word here cus its deliberately vague for now - Sugi doesnt want to think too hard about what it actually was and the narration reflects that. its her avoidance baked into the prose. glad the word choice is hitting!

canisaries said:
And now, after the world has been saved, Sugi's been left with what I'm guessing is PTSD, including having episodes from triggers that have not been identified to us yet. She's also been stuck at her guild, which has been stressing her out because of the lack of things to do. And her Hatterene partner Enzu, who was with her on that adventure, has become the guildmaster, and the two seem to have drifted apart somewhat.

yeah this is a really solid read of the situation! the PTSD angle is definitely in play. and the drifting apart thing is interesting because theyre still SO close physically and emotionally - but their roles have completely diverged. Enzu is running things now and Sugi is sitting in a corner with old puzzle books. thats not a partnership anymore even if they still love each other, its an imbalance. and that tension is really really fun :)

canisaries said:
I'm definitely feeling the character study angle already, as the focus is clearly on Sugi's internal issues and how they affect her life so far. I think that's something that's missing from a lot of PMD fanfics I've seen, since as far as I'm familiar with them, those tend to go for the whole massive world-saving plots right from the get-go.

thats exactly the niche i wanted to fill honestly. theres SO many good pmd fics about the adventure itself but i kept thinking... what happens after? when the world is saved but you still have to wake up every morning and figure out who you are without a mission? thats the part that interested me. glad its coming through!

canisaries said:
The prose is also heavily tied to Sugi's perception, which can lead to situations where it's hard to visualize what's going on due to the drip-feed of details as Sugi thinks of them. This is likely not really a problem but more of a preference kind of thing.

yeah thats very much a deliberate choice! the close third person perspective is tight enough that you only know whats happening as Sugi registers it. it means the reader is sometimes a beat behind the reality of whats going on - like you dont know shes bitten someone until SHE realizes it. i know its not for everyone but its the core of what im going for with the POV style. each character's chapters will feel different because of how they each perceive. :3 im really excited to mess around with the differences between them!

canisaries said:
Something I do think may cause issues down the line is the fact that we got introduced to kind of a lot of characters in a short period of time (though not all were named), but it's really wholly dependent on how much the following chapters demand the reader to remember from the first one without recap.

thats a fair concern! chapter 1 does throw a lot of names at you. the good news is the story zooms in pretty quickly - chapter 2 keeps the focus tight and the characters who matter most get more time to breathe. the background guild members (Tranquill, Hawlucha, Cutiefly, etc) are more like set dressing for now, kinda like texture of the guild itself, you dont need to track them closely yet. when they actually matter, i let them have scenes and flesh themselves out more to become more then just 'oh this is a stand in for different reactions of the guild itself or generic background character 2.0'

canisaries said:
I enjoy that there was a lot of focus on Sugi's jaws, which really sells one on the fact that this is a Mawile, though this would have been hard to avoid doing in general with the whole "I bit someone and their blood is still on my jaws" premise of this chapter. Enzu's hair getting knotted from stress also makes sense.

haha yeah the jaw gets a LOT of screen time this chapter for obvious reasons. but its also just... such a core part of being a Mawile? the jaw has its own sensory input, it can feel things independently, it holds the mawilite. and Enzu's hair is the same deal - the hair IS the Hatterene for most intents and purposes, its where the psychic power lives and its constantly reacting to her emotional state. i love writing both of them because the species traits arent cosmetic, they change how these characters experience everything!! :3

canisaries said:
One last thing, which doesn't really matter but I might as well mention anyway, is that I found the nickname of Zuzu from Sugi to be peculiar. Is the S in Sugi's name read as a Z? I also considered there being some kind of consonant change that occurred in Japanese, but I asked my weeb friends about it and they didn't seem to recognize it as a thing.

LOL at asking the weeb friends. so the nickname is just an Enzu thing - its how she softened the name for herself. En-ZU and SU kinda sounds like Zu-gi, the ZU sound is what connects them. its their shared syllable. not a linguistic rule, just a personal thing between the two of them!

canisaries said:
Well, that's everything I have for now. I'm not sure if I made it clear, but I did think this was a very good chapter! I hope to read the next chapter when it comes out, operative word being hope because I am so so bad at reading things. Until then, see you around!

you made it very clear and i appreciate it so much!! the specific catches on formatting are exactly the kind of thing i need, those are going into the fix pile. and no pressure on reading pace, the whole point is just to have fun and thats all i care about!! thank you for the review!! :D

Spiteful Murkrow said:
I honestly had no real idea of what to expect for this story, other than that it had a nifty cover art and is apparently set after the main character has already done her antics as a PMD hero and come out the other side less satisfied and settled than one would initially assume.

glad the cover art is doing its job lol, i put a lot of love into getting that right. and yeah less satisfied and settled than you'd expect is kinda the whole point of the fic so im glad that comes through even from the summary!

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Though the Entity can bleed, huh? I wonder what on earth it is then, since I'll admit that I wasn't expecting that from a more Eldritch-vibing enemy there.

so just to clarify - the iron/blood taste is having a fun thing where the dream and reality are overlapping there. in the dream shes biting the Entity, but in real life shes biting Honden, so when she wakes up and sees the stain on her maw its like "oh. oh no." as for what the Entity actually is... well >:3

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Oh, so she has PTSD from that whole battle with the Entity, huh? Though that does feel like a bit of an underexplored angle, since considering the average endgame sequence in a PMD game, you'd think that at least one protagonist or partner would have to deal with [traumatized gif]

RIGHT?? thats exactly what got me started on this whole thing. like you play through explorers or rescue team and the endgame is honestly harrowing, your character goes through some deeply messed up stuff, and then the postgame is just... "okay go do more missions i guess!" and i kept thinking someone should write the version where the hero comes out of that and is NOT fine. like at ALL. so here we are lol

Spiteful Murkrow said:
I do kinda wonder if there should've been a bit more attention given to the surroundings filling in from Sugi's perspective and the "... Oh, we're at the guild. Where I just did all of this in front of a crowded room" sinking in should've been shown off more.

so this is a fair note! the thing is Sugi's panic IS the way she catalogs the room - she doesnt stop and go "oh god im at the guild," she just starts scanning for who saw it, cus thats how she deals with stuff. Tranquill pretending to read, the Hawlucha shrugging, Wix bolting. thats her going "oh crap" but through her eyes instead of her thoughts, if that makes sense? but i get that it can feel fast if youre expecting it to land as one beat instead of being spread across the whole sequence!

Spiteful Murkrow said:
These two used to be intimate with each other, didn't they? Since boy that felt really, really close for a pair that are just strictly platonic with each other.

:) some people clock it immediately and some people go hmm could be platonic and both reactions are honestly pretty fun to watch

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Though I'm not holding my breath on either Ley or Essa working out since we've seen everyone on the cover art up to this point, and those two weren't on it.

haha! i cant believe theres spoilers in my cover art! smh... i should have put a spoiler tag over it.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
I felt that there were some moments in the chapter where you wound up leaving things on the table for getting into Sugi's head a bit more for her thought process, which both would've been an opportunity to better show off the way she thinks and ticks to the audience, while also acting as a means to delve into her past and issues a bit harder.

this is probably the most useful note in the whole review so thank you for hammering on it. i think youre right that theres a couple spots where the prose could let a moment sit for one more beat before moving on - not more thinking, but more... air? like the image is doing its job and then the next thing starts before it gets to land. im gonna try and add that more into the next chapter, kind more whats going on in her head IS there in how she looks at things but yeah a few spots could breathe more. ive actually already gone back and tweaked a couple of them based on this!

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Like yes, Sugi is an accomplished once-hero who'd tick all the boxes to be a player character aside from not being human, but she's also a traumatized wreck whose life is spiraling to the point where she's struggling just to consistently stay on a team at her guild, she's plagued with personal problems that she keeps bottling up, and keeps chasing bygone glories in the hopes of being able to turn around. "Hero on hard times" a tack that I don't really see broached from stories in the PMD fandom, and you did a good job at breathing it to life.

;c; okay this paragraph made my day. it really is such a good way to put it and yeah thats the whole thing. she ticks every box for the player character and thats exactly whats eating her alive - she knows how to be The Hero and has no idea how to be anything else. and everyones moved on except her. theres a lot more of that kind of mess to come honestly, its not just a Sugi problem.

thank you so much for this review!! the line by line reactions cracked me up (the running bit about Honden being on the cover art so hes fine killed me lol) and the pacing notes are the kind of stuff i can actually use. i know youre stretched thin so no pressure at all on coming back but if you do theres a LOT more to dig into :D but also, zero pressure at all! :D thank you!

aer said:
:? Through a bond?

so in this world mega evolution still needs a bond between two pokemon - the Mawilite alone isnt enough, theres another pokemon holding the other end of it. the dream is pulling from her mega evolution memories, when she was carrying all that extra steel. who that bond was with... i think the chapter makes it pretty clear lol

aer said:
It seems like she was dreaming of being a mega mawile, and having a nightmare of biting someone. And oh, Honden! She bit the krokorok in her sleepwalking dreams. This all feels very dreamy, like each thing that's happening is coming off the previous one, where it flows into each other but you can't predict what's going to happen next.

yesss! i am really glad that reads the way i intended :D it is really fun.

aer said:
Jou seems really surprised. Two-headed sounds like an insult in the vein of two-faced here.

Jou picks the species-specific insults and runs with them lol. two-headed for a Mawile works on exactly the level youre catching

aer said:
A.. gap?

Oh, a gap between the teeth?

oh wait so the gap isnt a physical thing! its a gap in her memory. shes doing the "okay what do i know" panic assessment and the first thing she catalogs is: theres a hole where her memory should be. "you have a gap, you have a Krokorok bleeding" - shes listing the situation like a puzzle. hmm maybe i could say a gap in her memory instead.

aer said:
It's more like she had a trauma flashback than a dream, maybe? Jou is reacting like she wasn't asleep.

this is a really good observation actually! :D there's quite a bit to it, but im really glad youre picking up on these things :)

aer said:
I think the focus on slow description leading up to this moment works really well here; it's not overwhelming and feels really like a calm situation around a uncalm character.

;c; yessss, hearing it lands is really good to hear

aer said:
I'm struggling a little understanding what's going on here. Are there chains around her jaw because they chained her after she bit someone, or was she wearing them? This seems like the first mention of them, and they're not in the front cover picture.

oh no okay so the chains arent restraints! theyre how the Mawilite is attached to her jaw. theres a silver chain threaded through the maw's teeth that holds the mega stone in place - its part of her everyday look, she keeps the stone clamped inside the back jaw. so when Enzu is "unwinding the chains" shes removing the mega stone setup so she can get in there and clean the teeth properly. like taking off jewelry before cleaning, not unlocking someone. i should probably make that read smoother tho, youre not the first person to get confused there and thats on me lol

aer said:
I think this could use another dialogue tag here, because Enzu talks twice in a row.

yeah youre right! someone else caught this too. the paragraph break makes it look like a speaker switch when its still Enzu. should be fixed!

aer said:
It's interesting how the jaw's described here, like it's an entirely separate entity from Sugi.

writing the relationship between Sugi and the maw is honestly one of my favorite parts of the whole fic

aer said:
It sounds like their relationships changed a lot when they stopped being explorers together, where Enzu's grew and Sugi's stayed at home with her Pappy. And they love each other! And Enzu wants to talk to Sugi's dad about her. Or really, Enzu wants Sugi to get treated by her dad, who's a doctor, probably.

youre reading this so well!!! :D i gotta say im so happy you're picking all these things up!

aer said:
The Entity's - the only one holding this together and you come here to stop me- at the beginning made me think about how much this guild has been held together with duct tape and good intentions in the summary - I wonder how they'll be connected, if at all.

youre pulling threads and i love it >:3

aer said:
And to circle back to the beginning of this review, oh yeah mega evolution requires having a strong bond. I wonder if that was with Enzu. Mega mawile are said to have "an extremely vicious disposition" which seems to fit bitey!Sugi, especially since she seems to be dissociating away after and not having any memory of what happened, and Sugi does noooot seem to have a vicious disposition at her natural state.

oh i love that youre pulling in the pokedex entry! the mega mawile vicious disposition next to a character who is fundamentally gentle and just bit someones shoulder open... the gap between who she is and what the steel can do is something i think about a lot when writing her

aer said:
Should 'embossment' be 'embarrassment' here?

oh this one is actually intentional!! it started as a misspelling, but i realized what embossing meant and i kept it! so Sugi is a steel type and her skin has metal properties. when shes REALLY embarrassed - not just regular blushing but the kind where shes mortified - her steel-type skin physically raises into embossed patterns. its involuntary, she cant hide it, and it literally holds the color on her face longer than a normal blush would. so "embossment holding the red on her cheeks" is the steel doing its thing. :3

aer said:
It also strikes me that the mega stone in the cover picture isn't black and yellow like a mawilite, but looks maybe like a pidgeotite? Hm...

ahh no thats just lighting, it is a mawilite!

thank you for this review!! you caught a lot of stuff that reads differently on a reread, especially the gap question and the chains thing which i clearly need to make clearer lol. hope you enjoy whats coming :D

rimly · 2026-04-15T22:20:27+0100

Thanks to K_S, Tango, Bii, Ever, Danny, and my partner for the beta reads. I appreciate you all!

Ao3 Link

Chapter 2: Team Assignment

The drops of blood on the stone floor were already brown and crusted over by the time she got back to it.

Sugi was on her knees with a wet cloth, sleeves shoved past her elbows, scrubbing at what had been Honden's blood an hour ago. The common room was empty. Across the room, Malt's quill scratched against his ledger in a rhythm too steady to be real.

Afternoon sun beamed through the skylight and illuminated the wet stone where she was working. Every time she wrung the cloth out the water in the basin went a little more pink and she could taste it all over again. Enzu had cleaned the maw but it was impossible not to sense it still on its tongue, the sickening copper and tang of salt mixing. No matter how much she scrubbed and scrubbed, it wouldn't get rid of feeling.

The stone had come clean in a few swipes honestly. But, she kept scrubbing because stopping meant standing up and standing up meant walking over to Ley or Essa right now- and she just... needed to think about it. What could she say to convince them to take her on? There had to be some magical turn of a phrase that could convince them. It wasn't as if she was useless in a fight, she had probably more dungeon experience here than everyone else, but...

"I think you got rid of it." A sickly sweet voice from above.

Sugi nearly jumped out of her skin. A purple tail swept past the edge of her vision, ceramic beads clicking against the stone. The Liepard had come down the stairway from the upper level sideways, filling the corridor with her long body, head tilted. Her nose twitched toward the cloth in Sugi's hands.

"L-Ley!" Sugi called out, nearly stumbling over herself to stand up. The rag was in her hands and her steel bones felt cold under her skin. She moved it to her left hand. Sugi looked at the rag, looked at Ley, looked at the floor like maybe she could just set it down casually but then it would be obvious there was blood-- and the rag was right there dripping from her fist and Ley was right there watching and she panicked and-

Sugi shoved it behind her back and into her jaw.

"Ha- sorry." The laugh was too high, too fast. The copper didn't go away and the filthy wet rag mixed into an exciting new cocktail of nastiness. "You scared me. I was just- there was a- I was cleaning up." She swallowed- and tried to control the gag reflex in her throat. "You're up early."

"Hm, well. Early to bed, early to rise as they say. Shame I don't do either." The tail beads clicked as the large cat swished her tail, and Ley gave the same smile as always.

Sugi felt a forced laugh bubble from her chest, and escape. "Ha-A! Yeah! I know the feeling! Ha! Ha!" Sugi wanted to be melted down into a lovely metal nail to be hammered into the ground from the pensive expression Ley was giving her.

"Well, keep yourself clean, hm?" and Ley was already taking a few steps away to go about her day.

Sugi's throat closed up- wait- no- she was leaving-

"ActuALLY-" Sugi's voice cracked, and she found herself stepping in front of her fellow guildmate. If she didn't do this now it never would happen- and she made herself keep talking. "Enzu said I should talk to you about- so I was thinking, maybe, about your team? Like, joining? For missions?" Sugi cleared her throat. "I know the timing is... um! Strange, but I need something to do, Ley. So! Why not have me join your team. Eh?"

Ley's head stayed tilted. The smile hadn't moved, but Sugi could swear she saw Ley's eyes narrow just a hair. Ley absolutely detested her. She had to.

"Oh, hon." Ley gave the prettiest chuckle, the back of her paw coming to her muzzle politely to hide it. "You know we're the same rank, right? You could run your own team if you wanted to. You don't need to be on mine."

Sugi opened her mouth to protest, but as she looked at Ley, the air fell out from her lungs because she wasn't... wrong. Was she?

"Sure!" The voice was going up and she couldn't stop it. "Yeah, no, you're right. I wasn't thinking about it that way. Makes more sense for me to- yeah. Thanks, Ley."

Did that sound desperate? That definitely sounded desperate. Ley was going to tell the whole guild that Sugi came to her on her knees and begged for a team spot an hour after biting Honden. Maybe she should just go bite everyone in the guild and save them the trouble of deciding whether to avoid her!

Sugi turned and walked. Quickly. The jaw still had the cloth clamped in its teeth and she could taste the dirty wet fabric against the steel. Good jaw. Less than an hour ago it bit a guild member and now it was hiding the evidence. Teamwork!

Sugi had to pass the Tranquil's front entrance desk on the way to the kitchen. Malt's quill was moving in his talon when she approached and it kept moving as she went by, his eyes fixed on the ledger like she wasn't there. He hadn't looked up once since she'd started scrubbing. That was either kindness or something worse and she didn't have the bandwidth to figure out which.

Sugi wanted to be ground up into shavings and left in a bucket to rust, but instead she grit her teeth, both sets sounding like the horrid low hum of metal on metal.

Ugh, she needed to get rid of this cloth. The kitchen was around the bend so she could rinse the cloth in the basin and get rid of all the physical evidence of her crimes against the guild.

Sugi ducked under the ceiling racks at the entrance, dried herbs brushing the top of her jaw as she passed. It was certainly warm in here. It seemed the stove in the back wall hadn't gone cold yet, the charcoal burned down to soft grey ash that still had heat in it. Someone had been cooking and hadn't cleaned up, which was either Malt being uncharacteristically lazy or-

And then, standing in the kitchen - the second worst person to see.

Jou was on his toes by the kamado oven, reaching for the hooks where Malt kept his pots. His fingertips were about three inches short. The hooks were hung at Tranquill height- and Jou, quite frankly, wasn't a Tranquill. But she could see he'd already pulled down a cutting board and a good knife and set them on the low prep surface, and there was a stone mortar next to them with something half-ground inside that smelled sharp and green. A bundle of dried chilis from the ceiling rack had been untied and sorted by size on the counter. He'd been in here a while. This must have been where he wandered off to.

Was he supposed to be the new chef for the guild? Or an assistant perhaps? Sugi knew Malt needed one but...

Jou hadn't seen her yet. She could just leave. She could just turn around and walk back out and let him figure out his own pot situation and that would be the smart move- the last time she'd been within ten feet of this kid he'd offered to fight her and she'd apparently nearly taken off his head. Sugi gulped, but that was her fatal mistake. She tasted a swallow-full of rag water and gagged involuntarily.

Her maw helpfully opened and the rag dropped out of it. It landed on the floor with a wet slap.

Jou spun off the stove. The mortar's pestle was in his hand like a weapon before he'd finished turning, heat pushing off him hard enough that she felt it prickle against her steel from across the kitchen. His eyes found her, found the jaw, found the door behind her.

"Hey! I'm just -" She kicked the rag toward the wash basin with her foot. Smooth. Very smooth. "Dropping something off."

He didn't move. She didn't move.

... Okay. Come on girl. Sugi stepped forwards first and Jou squared up. The pestle hit the prep surface as he drew his fists up, ready to throw down.

"Alright. Yeah! Let's take this outside then, huh? Come on!" He didn't throw any punches though, even as she got within arm's length.

Her jaw reached up. Jou flinched. Sugi flinched at his flinching. The jaw continued to slowly crane up further. Well past the height her arms could reach, the stem flexed to let the tip of the maw reach a pot dangling from a hook. There was a gentle tink and she lifted it off with her teeth.

Sugi set the pot on the prep surface next to him. Teeth clicked against the rim and she pulled back.

Jou blinked, but his fists kept by his face. Sugi gave a meek smile in return, along with a chuckle. "Um. Maybe another time." Sugi motioned towards the pot with a hand. "Malt usually handles meals." She was already regretting saying more, wasn't this conversation over? "If you're hungry. He's- I think he's probably at the front desk still but he'd -"

"I know how a fuckin' kitchen works." Jou grabbed the pot off the prep surface like she'd somehow steal it. "I don't need the tour, like I told Hon." He was already setting it on the oven, adjusting the grate with one hand, checking the draw on the charcoal with the other.

"Hon...? O-oh! Honden! Hah!" Sugi chuckled. Jou responded with a scowl. Sugi tried not to flinch. "D-did Enzu put you on a team yet? I know she was working on -"

"No." His hand came down on the pot's rim hard enough that the metal rang against the clay. "Nobody put me on shit. And nobody's gonna."

That made two of them. She didn't say that. So, she could swallow words sometimes. But she said the next worst thing, "I can ask her about it, if you want. I could-"

"I'm not gonna be here long." Jou was looking at the cutting board now, not at her. His hand picked up the mortar pestle and went back to grinding like she'd already left. "It's probation. Who gives a fuck."

Sugi's teeth clenched. Probation. She'd bitten at a kid on probation. If Enzu had reacted differently, if the guild had pushed for consequences for him instead of her-

"I'm sorry." Sugi looked at him, eyes softening. "About earlier. That shouldn't have happened to you."

The grinding stopped. He looked at her sideways, the pestle still in his fist. "Yeah. You're fucking right it shouldn't have." He went back to grinding. "So don't let it happen again, or I'll burn that jaw of yours off."

Sugi's smile twisted into a grimace. Right, okay. No more of that! She picked up the rag from the floor with her hand, wrung it out in the basin, set it on the edge with the stain turned down. She backed out of the kitchen before either of her mouths could make things worse.

Sugi rubbed her face, taking in a breath. Not completely horrible. Not good either.

The corridor was cooler than the kitchen had been. She stood in it with nowhere to go. She didn't have blood to clean, or something else to hide so... egh... only one thing she could do.

Talk to Essa. That was the only move, because Ley had just crossed herself off. It was easy to see there was no Essa upstairs, no Essa in the common room, with even the briefest of glances. But, that left only a few more spots where she could be if she wasn't on a mission with her team right now. Which that could either be a blessing or a curse, she didn't want to decide which was which right now.

The stairway at the back of the common room went down into the ridge of the mountain and the temperature steadily dropped. She never really liked coming down here- most didn't. The passage narrowed as she descended, the ceiling lowering, the carved walls rougher than the main level, claw-marks in the stone left raw and unfinished. Oil lamps in stone brackets threw long shadows all over the place. It reminded her of how ghost types would find it funny to slink behind pokemon, right before they tried to take a bite out of them.

Her steel prickled cold against her wrists and she found herself rubbing them as she traveled down. She didn't want to pay attention to the way the light danced, her gaze fixated on the steps ahead of her. She didn't want to think about it. So, she wasn't thinking about it. But, she was thinking about she wasn't thinking about it. Which, was more than a little frustrating if she was honest. Since she was fine, and she was safe. Sugi knew she was safe.

She hated how no matter how much she told herself, her gut was twisting into knots and her head felt like it was lighter than air.

There wasn't time for this. The anticipation was always worse. It always was. Sugi just had to believe it with her whole self. It would be fine. She would be fine. It was going to be fine.

The downstairs was really only one hallway with a few rooms, along with a back exit out of the guild. It was quicker to get to the Mire from the back entrance than go all the way around, so she had to bet that either Essa might be prepping to leave or returning soon.

But when Sugi reached the bottom of the steps, the first door in the hallway was open, and the candle was lit. The long, flickering shadow of someone familiar in a chair stretched into the hallway. The worst person to see right now.

Honden.

The trench coat was draped over the back of his chair, the holes in the shoulder visible even from the doorway. It felt scandalous seeing him like this, and she could feel her eyes practically bulging out of her head. Sugi stepped forwards to glance inside and there it was - white bandaging against dark scales, standing out like she'd painted a target on him. Honden was hunched over his desk, quill moving across a ledger without pause. The room was all his - charts and records crammed onto every shelf, pinned above the desk, stacked in the corners. She'd bet even Pappy hadn't read everything on those shelves. Well. Maybe he had. He was pretty old.

His back was to her though, which was probably the only reason he hadn't said anything.

Sugi froze in place like a deerling in front of an incoming Carkol. She should go in. Apologize properly, not the scrambled version she'd given him in front of everyone.

"Sugi." He didn't even look up, his quill still moving neatly across the parchment.

Oh. He'd clocked her just hovering in his doorway. Somehow. Great!

"H-ey!" Sugi's voice cracked, and she tried to play it cool, leaning herself in the doorway instead of bolting. "I just- I wanted to say I'm sorry. Again. Properly. Without all the-" She waved her hand at nothing. "I mean- at least now your coat matches? Because it's got- the holes-" She was losing it before she'd found it. "Haaaaah-" Her breath escaped her with a mock wheeze of air.

Honden's pen stopped. His head turned, just enough for the third membrane of his eye to catch the lamplight, the reflection making his eye glow.

Nothing. Not a flicker.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. That was-" Sugi's hand was still in the air from waving at nothing- like she was in some sort of half wave now. She put it down, feeling a deep shame rising on her face. "I'm really sorry, Honden."

"We'll talk about it tonight. The Guildmaster and I will figure out what your punishment looks like."

Sugi stared. He looked at her. The membrane didn't blink. Membranes didn't blink. That was the whole problem.

"Are you done?" Honden turned back to the ledger. "I'm busy."

What came out of her was supposed to be "sorry" but it was a mix of a squeak and a breath and maybe the urge to bash her head against a wall. Sugi was halfway down the passage before she remembered that oh yes, breathing was indeed a thing she needed to do. Her heart was thudding so hard against her chest she could hear her ribs ringing. She was so fixated on that, she completely missed a flicker of a shadow in front of her.

Sugi's shoulder caught the edge of a box and the whole thing went sideways. Suddenly there were jars that hit the ground and rolled. Bandage rolls unspooled in white ribbons across the passage.

Sugi stumbled, catching herself on the wall before she faceplanted into it. She turned, her mouth already open when-

"Oh- oh no, Tesni is so sorry, Tesni wasn't looking -" A Snubbull was there, and Sugi registered for a moment that it wasn't a random floating box she'd struck in the middle of the hallway. It was a box being carried by a whole pokemon that she had so rudely shoved herself into. Sugi flinched, feeling her hands rise to her chest, grabbing at the edges of her coat's collar.

And then the Snubbull dropped to her knees and started grabbing at the rolling jars, her stubby pink hands moving fast. "Tesni was just bringing these up to- oh, they're everywhere -"

Sugi blinked- oh. Wait. They weren't pissed-?

"No, that was me, I'm sorry -" Sugi practically threw herself onto the ground and was picking up bandage rolls. The jaw helped, scooping up a jar that had rolled against the wall. Her shoulders were still hunched from the whole Honden thing - she just couldn't stop, could she? Sugi set some of the medical stuff back in the box. "I wasn't watching where I was going. Are you okay?"

"Tesni is fine! Tesni is fine." Tesni looked up at her and Sugi saw the face- the bulldog underbite, the flat nose, the jowls along with a very cute yellow ribbon wrapped around her right ear. The eyes behind all of that were wide and warm and a little bit panicked about her med supplies being all over the floor. "You're Sugi, right? Tesni hasn't really- we haven't talked much, Tesni is usually downstairs and you're usually -"

"Upstairs. Yeah." Sugi handed back a roll of bandaging. "I'm usually upstairs- probably for the best, huh?"

"Oh no! Tesni loves visitors! Not many guildmembers come down here anymore." The Snubbull took the bandages with a frown, and tucked it back into the box. Sugi blinked- wait. Had Tesni not heard about what she did to Honden-?

"Were you the one who patched Honden up?" Sugi glanced at the box of supplies. Bandages, clay jars sealed with wax, a roll of clean linen.

"Oh!" The bulldog jowls rearranged around what was definitely a blush. Quickly she looked down and away, poorly attempting to hide it. "Tesni keeps supplies stocked nearby. For emergencies. It's a guild, someone's always getting scraped up, and Honden usually isn't the one who- I mean, Tesni was just -" She tucked the last jar into place and looked at the box instead of Sugi. "He said it wasn't that bad. The bandaging held really well, actually! Tesni used the good linen, the one that breathes, because scales need airflow or the wound -" She was starting to ramble, and Sugi could tell instantly that bulldog pokemon was embarrassed.

"Sounds like he was in good hands." Sugi smiled- she didn't know why Honden didn't tell Tesni though. But, she would take what she could. "Usually my father is the one patching everyone up. You must be a big help around the guild when he's busy."

Tesni responded by grabbing her own ears and pulling them to cover her face. "Oh no- no no! Tesni is more for storage! I store all the items, not do the healing! Though-..." A pause, before she shook her head. "No. No. Tesni must be good at her current job before asking more- I need to not mess up!"

Sugi chuckled. "Well, I can respect that. Maybe we both can stop doing that sometime, yeah?" She brushed herself off as she glanced down the hallway. "Hey- have you seen Essa? I've been looking for her."

"Essa?" Tesni's head tilted, and she dropped her ears. "Tesni thinks she's in the gear room? She was pulling supplies for a field rotation, Tesni saw her come through storage about an hour ago." She pointed down the corridor toward the back. "That way."

"Thank you." Sugi pushed herself to stand, brushing herself off. Maybe... since Tesni hadn't heard yet... maybe Essa didn't either. Maybe, if she hurried-

"Is everything okay?" Tesni asked, and it was so indignant in its tone that Sugi nearly answered honestly. Instead, the mawile tightened her smile.

"Yeah. Everything's fine. Just looking for Essa. Thanks, Tesni."

Tesni's face relaxed- the bulldog jowls settling- and she went about her way, undeterred from her original mission, wherever it went.

The passage narrowed further toward the gear room at the end of the hall. Deep in the bowels of the guild, the walls were even rougher and the oil lamps spaced farther apart. She heard the voices before she reached the end: one high and fast, the other too low to catch. The pitches were recognizable before she caught a word.

"- and she just went for the new kid, I'm not exaggerating, the whole back of her head just opened up and she was going for his throat- like, great welcome, right? Kid's been here a week -"

Wix. He'd found Essa first.

"- and Honden had to jump in, like he had to physically get between them, and she just bit right through his coat, his actual shoulder, Essa, and he doesn't even- you know how he is, he just goes 'it's handled' -"

"Wix." Essa interrupted, flatly.

"- I'm just saying, and then she starts screaming about Honden being the monster here, and Enzu does her whole 'oh-she-didn't-mean-it thing'. Seriously, is anyone going to do anything? Or is everyone just fine with this? Because I'm not- I have to work in this guild too, and have you seen me! I'm snack sized!"

Sugi's hand trailed against the wall as she stopped walking. Her eyes unfocused as she stared ahead.

She could leave. Go back up the corridor past Tesni and past Honden's open door and up the stairs and tell Enzu she'd tried. Save herself the embarrassment... but... She knew that Enzu would ask. And... She'd never sell it. She'd be caught the second she opened her mouth. And that'd definitely convince Enzu to send her to see her dad. And Sugi wouldn't be able to offer any alternative.

Sugi took two quiet steps back. Then she let the next one land extra loud. The steel of her foot rang against the stone. She cleared the last stretch loud enough to give them both a few seconds, making sure her claws clicked in a way that alerted everyone where she was. It made her feel like a brute, but, as Sugi turned the corner she spotted the two of them.

Wix had seemed to notice first. The cutiefly went rigid mid-hover, floating gently downwards before his rapid-beating wings whisked him back up and away from Sugi. Not behind Essa. But closer to her than he'd been before.

"Oh- Sugi! Hi! I didn't- we were just catching up, it's nothing, I hope you're doing okay after- I mean, that must have been so scary for you too, right?" He was already drifting toward the corridor behind her. He was bounding up and down as he spoke, like he was so small the air in his lungs made him drift up and down. "I was actually just heading out- I've got sentry duty coming up and Gulo gets all- you know how he gets- so I should really- but I'm glad you're okay! You look great!"

"Hey, Wix. Yeah. Uh, good luck with that." Sugi gave a small wave, and let him go. His wings pitched higher as he passed her- giving her a wide berth, the bowtie a red blur at the edge of her vision- and then he was gone up the passage and the buzzing faded.

There was a small tapping of a talon against stone and Sugi found her tired eyes drifting towards the sound. Essa was standing by the staging wall in the gear room doorway, still and upright the way Xatu were, the white khimar draped around her head catching the lamplight. One foot tucked under herself, knocking against the ground, a field pack half-loaded on the peg beside her. Her eyes were half-lidded- they'd been half-lidded every time Sugi had seen her since coming back home.

"Essa." Sugi tried reaching for a smile and it wasn't coming right. Her face didn't want to do it. The maw hung heavy behind her skull. "I was- I wanted to ask -"

"You're going to ask about my team." Essa responded in turn, and Sugi felt like an arrow had been shot between her ribs, and the air escaped her own lungs. "...I can't, Sugi." Essa took a second before she... just ended it with a simple, "I'm sorry."

"No, yeah." Sugi could feel the crinkle of the edges of her eyes wrinkling as she smiled as bright as she could. "No, totally. I get it. It's fine. Thank you Essa."

Sugi turned and walked away.

The walk back up was longer than it had been going down. She passed Honden's open door and didn't look in and kept the steel of her jaw pressed flat and her feet quiet on the stone. Tesni was gone too. Good.

The stairway felt steeper than it should and she took it too fast and nearly clipped the wall at the top because her eyes were burning and her throat was pulling tight and she was not going to do this in the corridor, she was not going to do this where Malt could see her from the front desk, she was not -

Malt was back at his desk. His head turned as she came up the stairs too fast and for one horrible second they made eye contact- his round Tranquill eyes catching hers across the common room- and he gave a small wave from behind his ledger. She tried to return it but her hand got halfway up and gave out. Sugi turned her head quickly, gritting her teeth.

Sugi made it to Pappy's corner instead. The small library near one of the inlet sections, opposite the basin and far from the entrance, tucked into the corner of the room where the rock had been dug out, with a small window where she could glance at the outside world. She dropped into the wooden stool of a chair and put her hands flat on the wood and looked at them, her claws digging into the wood underneath and her arms shaking.

Her face was hot and her jaw ached from clenching it and there was a fine vibration buzzing through the steel that wouldn't quit. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until the burning stopped.

What was she thinking. You couldn't solve someone being frank about just not wanting you near them. They hated her. They all had to hate her. She couldn't blame them. She couldn't! How could she? What else could she do? How could she possibly ever leave this stupid guild ever again? What was Enzu going to think? What would everyone think? Everyone knew what her jaw had done. Everyone knew everything, and they were right to hate her. Everyone was right to hate her. They all should hate her, what sort of pokemon bites someone.

What could she do?

Pappy's shelf always had distractions, ones she could waste her entire life on. Thankfully, this library was filled with his old toys and games. She pulled the wooden one with the sliding panels, eight tiles in a three-by-three grid, each carved with the crest of a different guild. You had to get the fan to the center- Stillmere's crest, same shape as Pappy's hand fan.

Sugi pulled it down and sat back at the table. The first tile stuck where it always stuck, the groove worn smooth from use, and she worked it loose with her thumb and slid it into the top row. Click. The CREST tile- wings spread around a mail seal- slotted to the right. Second tile down, the one with the chipped corner she could find by touch, a flowering cactus from some desert guild she didn't know. Seventeen moves if you started from the left corner, fourteen from the center. She'd solved it four times already. She went center path. Her three fingers fit the grooves like they'd been carved for her hands, each tile warm from the wood and small enough to pinch between thumb and forefinger, and the sequence was so familiar her hands could run it without her eyes.

Slide, click. Slide, click. The fan settled into the center square on the fourteenth move. She scrambled it and started again.

The Mawilite on its chain pressed warm against the base of her skull. It had been doing that since Enzu cleaned the jaw. That only could mean she tried to mega evolve on her own, and if she had... if she really had done that, Honden wouldn't have an arm anymore.

The rain had started, and she could hear it from her spot in the room as it dripped into the basin. Malt left his desk at some point- she heard the rustle of feathers on his way past. The afternoon light through the light well shifted from gold to grey and the common room got dimmer and she ran the puzzle again, and again, and again, her thumb catching the stuck tile, working it loose, sliding the flowering cactus out of the fan's path.

Center, top-right, bottom-left, center. Fourteen moves. Scramble. Fourteen moves. Her fingers knew the path which meant she was just a Mawile sitting alone in an empty room moving tiles around while the rain got louder and whatever she was actually trying to solve wasn't going to fit in a three-by-three grid. She had to keep going. She was going to keep going until reality stopped blurring at its edges.

Then there were footsteps on stone. Heavy, spaced too far apart- and she knew them.

Sugi flinched. The puzzle slipped and the tiles rattled against the wood and she was half out of her chair before she caught herself, the jaw swinging at her back, her feet scraping the stone -

Honden stopped, only to step back. His weight shifted to his back foot, eyes aimed at her jaw.

"It's time."

Sugi swallowed. It tasted like copper. She put the puzzle box back on Pappy's shelf with the center square in the wrong slot, slipped a chess piece into her hand- the one designed to look like a Zebstrika- and followed him down the corridor without a word, the rain tapping in the basin behind them both.

There were grip-holds on the walls too high in the Guildmaster's office, the platform at the back shaped for a body twice her size. Pappy's woven fan still on it where he'd left it, like the room was holding his spot. Enzu didn't use the platform. She'd settled on the visitor cushions on the floor instead, which made the whole room feel like it was being borrowed by someone who hadn't decided if she was staying.

Enzu was already settled on one of the cushions on the floor, the blue bowtie sitting neat against her chest and her hair pulled back but loose enough to move. Sugi sat to her left, close enough to reach but not touching. Honden she didn't need to look for. His tail gave him away- the small sounds of it sliding against the stone ground, somewhere near the woven panel Pappy used to watch the common room from.

"Sit down, Honden." Enzu started.

"I'd rather stand." Honden remained where he was.

"Okay. Jou, I need you away from that wall. Come over here, please." Enzu tried again.

"Yeah, so I can get a matching scar? No thanks, Boss." Jou retorted.

Enzu's brow pulled, but she moved on.

Sugi was holding the little knight in her hand, curling her jaw around to lay it on her lap. The room was too open and too quiet and there were too many eyes and not enough walls between her and the person she'd bitten three hours ago. She wasn't exactly going to hide herself in a corner as well, though.

Enzu took a breath. "Okay. Before anything else- I want to know how everyone's doing."

"You already know how we're doing." Jou picked at the floor with one claw. "That's your whole deal, right?"

Enzu pressed her lips together, the pink markings under her black eyes darker than they'd been this afternoon. "Yes. I can understand feelings, but I'd still like to hear how you're doing."

Jou shrugged one shoulder. Enzu looked at Honden. Honden said nothing. His shoulder sat wrong under the trench coat, the bandaging visible at the collar.

Enzu looked at Sugi and everything in Sugi's chest pulled tight.

She couldn't say fine. She couldn't say anything else, either.

"Okay," Enzu glanced upwards at the ceiling, held there for a second longer than she needed to, like she was sending a tiny prayer somewhere for strength. "I want to figure this out so it doesn't sit. Honden, you're expecting consequences."

"I'm expecting you to do your job." Honden hadn't moved but his stance had changed, turning to focus on Enzu fully.

"Sugi did something today that she can't take back. I'm not going to pretend she didn't." Enzu's hair shifted, just barely. "Sugi, starting tomorrow, you're doing dungeon fieldwork for the guild. Unpaid for as long as I say."

Sugi's fingers tightened on the game piece. Unpaid fieldwork. She nodded. That was... That was fair. She'd bitten someone. That was more than fair. But... how? She couldn't go out on her own. Unless maybe being sent into a dungeon on her own-

Sugi felt a shiver run down her spine.

Honden didn't move, but the membrane flickered. "That's it."

"That's the start of it." Enzu's own lips were pressed tight together, both of her small hands placed behind her.

"I would've pulled her from the guild roster entirely. Restrict her for the time being until she can prove she won't hurt anyone else who couldn't take it." Honden took this opportunity to stand up taller, towering over everyone else in the room.

"Yes, well, you're not the guildmaster. I am." Enzu shot back. Honden was staring, and Sugi glanced between the two of them quickly. Sugi's own claws tightened.

"Guild's already paying shit anyway." Jou kicked one foot out from his sitting, leaning back with a scoff. "So she's working for even less shit. Big deal- she lives here. That's punishment?"

The knight's little spikey mane bit into Sugi's fingers as she pressed against it in her palm.

"Your situation is different, Jou- we'll talk about that separately with you another time." Enzu's hair settled.

"Yeah. I bet we will." Jou rolled his eyes.

"There's something else." Enzu glanced at Sugi. "I asked Sugi to talk to the team leaders about joining a team as well. What did they say?"

Sugi took a breath. Okay. She expected this - just... maybe not in front of the others. Some part of her felt. Far away from this moment, like her words slipping from her teeth weren't her own. "Ley said we're the same rank. That I could run my own team if I wanted to." She turned the little knight between her fingers, running her thumb over the carved hooves. "Same thing as saying no."

"And Essa?"

Sugi liked the ground. It was very nice to stare at. "She just said she couldn't."

"Why?"

"I don't know. She didn't say why." Sugi wasn't going to bring up what Wix had been telling Essa in the gear room. The last thing she wanted was Enzu trying to address that. "Nobody wants me on their team. I asked everyone there is to ask."

She hadn't meant to say it like that. The smile was trying to come together and not getting there, and Sugi couldn't look at any of them right now. Her stomach pulled tight and her knees drew together on the cushion and the poor knight was going to have a permanent dent in it at this rate. The grain of the wood pressed into her palm and she couldn't tell anymore if she was holding it or hiding behind it.

"There's only two teams?" Jou was looking at the ceiling, she could see from the corner of her eye. "This guild fucking sucks."

"There used to be more," Honden said from the wall, fast enough that Enzu's jaw twitched.

"Cool. There's not now." His beak flared brighter. "This is stupid. Just fuckin' pair her with me and get it over with."

Nobody moved.

Sugi looked at Jou. He was still stretched out on the floor, one knee kicked up, arms crossed behind his head. His beak had the same curl it'd had when he cracked the punishment line. The same what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it angle.

Enzu tilted her head just a smidge. "Hm, alright."

Jou's knee dropped.

"What?" The curl was gone. He sat up, both hands on the floor, embers stuttering at the corners of his beak. "I wasn't- that's not-"

"I think that's a workable option." Enzu's hair had lifted off her back and was pulling taut against the air behind her. "Sugi leads. You run missions together under her supervision. She has much she can teach you."

"I was being- that was a- f-fuck off, I wasn't volunteering for shit." Jou had gone from horizontal to upright in a blink. His tail was lashing the floor behind him, leaving scorch marks on the stone that Tesni would be scrubbing out later. "You can't just take a joke and-"

"You made a suggestion." Enzu's voice didn't change. "It was a good one, actually, I'm glad you're stepping up. This will do good and shows how you're wanting to grow." She put her small hands together, such a polite smile plastered on her face, clearly satisfied at such a clean solution.

"No." Honden, from the wall. One word. His underbite was set and his claws had curled around his own forearms under the trench coat. "That's not happening."

"Wh--!" Jou rounded on Honden so fast the air between them heated. The embers weren't at the corners anymore - they were spilling over his lower beak, flaring and dying and flaring again. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare defend me."

Honden didn't move.

Jou jabbed a finger at him. "I didn't- I can say no for myself, asshole. I was saying no, and then you- you don't get to-" Jou's voice climbed. "Stop acting like I need protecting."

"You're seventeen and on probation. You will not be sent into dungeons with someone who bit me this afternoon."

"I don't need YOU deciding shit for me!" Jou took a step forwards as his flames started to leave his mouth.

Enzu's hair whipped forward - a snap, the tentacle cutting a line between Jou and Honden's sightline and stabbing at the air between them. "Both of you, stop. Sit down, Jou."

"I'm not-" Jou started.

"Sit. Down."

Jou stared at the Guildmaster, and Sugi looked over and saw she had floated herself back up to her full six foot height. The hair was barely touching the ground where she was, and the scowl on her face could curdle milk.

Jou sat. His fists were clenched on his knees and his beak was superheated so much his nostrils were glowing.

Enzu then looked at Honden. "You are overreacting."

Honden tilted his snout upwards. "You're letting her-"

"She bit you once. Today. It shouldn't have happened but she is being held accountable for it. She is clearly sorry. I trust her to learn." Enzu's hair was pulling tight against her back. Sugi could feel the vibration from across the room. "What I do not trust are the emotions in this room. Are we having a mature discussion to come to a proper solution or a blame war? Because right now all I see is two guild members shouting over a third like she isn't sitting right here, while she says nothing, and I am done watching it."

Sugi's stomach turned. Enzu was putting herself between them like the knight in her palm, and Sugi didn't feel like she deserved it at all. Why was Enzu fighting this hard? For her...? Sugi was a guildmember now, they weren't...

Sugi gripped the brave, sweaty knight in her palm. The carved electric mane finally pierced her skin a little. The pain stirred her.

Sugi finally broke the tension: "Ley was right about my rank. I'm Gold. I've done more dungeon fieldwork than anyone in the entire guild with Enzu. And I don't-" She stopped. "I can lead a team. I can."

"Sugi." Honden's tail scraped the floor once. She met his eyes and held them. His face gave her nothing. She pictured being like the little knight. Hold fast...

Sugi continued, "I'm sorry, Honden. I'll say it over and over, okay? I'm sorry and I fully accept doing unpaid fieldwork, that's the least I can do. But I want to do this, too. I can help Jou, I can help you and Enzu, I--" She gulped. "I won't mess up again."

Her jaw pressed against the back of her skull. Despite her whole body being covered and woven in steel, it felt like paper and putty under Honden's flat stare. He could see right through Sugi, couldn't he? She trembled.

He breathed out audibly and Sugi's breath hitched. He looked away towards Enzu again. "Trial basis. Not permanent."

"Trial basis is fair." Enzu agreed. Her hair settled back against her shoulders - not all the way down. "You will both report to me after every mission. Immediately and without exception. I will hear your reports separately to check."

Jou hadn't said a word since Enzu told him to sit. His fists were still on his knees and the embers had died to a low glow at the corners of his mouth. He was staring at the floor between his feet.

"Jou?" Enzu asked.

"Whatever." He picked at the floor with one claw. "Fine. I'll fucking do it."

Honden was unmoved. "And what will you do if something happens?"

"Then I deal with it." Enzu straightened where she floated, pulling herself back to full height. "We're done. Jou, Honden - thank you. I'll finalize the paperwork tomorrow. After that, Sugi and Jou are officially a team. Good luck, you two."

Jou left first. Stood up and walked out as soon as Enzu finished her sentence. His fists at his sides and his tail dragging behind him. He didn't look at Sugi. He didn't look at Honden. The door stayed open behind him.

Honden paused at the doorway on his way out and turned his head one more time towards Sugi. Her stomach dropped. It was the same exact face he had been making the entire meeting, the entire day, but it still felt like there was something reproachful, or resentful maybe? Sugi couldn't tell. It must be disgust.

Sugi smiled at him. More of a twitch of the corners of her mouth.

He walked out and pulled the door closed behind him.

Enzu's hair had gone soft against her back. The circles under her eyes were at their darkest the whole day.

"So. You have a team."

Sugi finally released the captured knight and looked at it. The small pockmark of its attack against Sugi's palm was prominent, but it paled in comparison to the marred claw marks she'd left on the little pony. She wanted to apologize to her second victim of the day, but it wouldn't look good if she started apologizing to inanimate objects again. She and Enzu had worked so hard on that habit.

"Yeah." Sugi stood up. Her knees ached from the cushion. "I'm going to do great." She looked at Enzu and meant it. She said it with the most conviction she'd had all day.

"I know you will, Zuzu." Sugi saw that her conviction had lightened the look in Enzu's eyes. The clear relief washed over her partner, and Sugi could almost believe what she had just said.

She had been good at this team leading thing, once. She could be good at it again. Probably.

Her jaw pressed flat against her skull the whole walk out, and her hands were still shaking when she closed the door.

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