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Cal wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly. One second he had been—well, he had been somewhere, but now he was here, wherever here was. Sand, it felt like. Something damp. He wasn’t entirely unused to waking up in random places, but waking up with a tail was a first. Waking up with a tail, and an incessant roaring in his ears which felt too long. How did ears feel too long?
“Hey.” Something poked him, and something else lapped against his… fur. “Are you alive?”
Cal groaned. The water washed away from him, sand dragging out from under his body. Alright. Tail, weird ears, and fur. Did he still technically have feet, or should he call them paws? Whatever they were, he pushed himself to them. They were bright yellow. And as for that voice—either a weird-looking chicken had grown to be well over six feet tall, or he had shrunk to chicken size. The latter was a more comforting option, so he decided to go with that.
The not-chicken, which was a vibrant orange and yellow, tilted its head, head feathers flopping in the light breeze. “You shouldn’t fall asleep when the tide is coming in.”
Tide. Right. Cal shuffled around, nearly tripping over his feet, tail dragging behind him. Ocean. Okay, sure. He’d never seen an ocean before, but he was pretty sure that was one. It was very large. There was a lot of water. More water than Cal had ever imagined.
“It’s the ocean,” the chicken thing said. “Why are you acting weird?”
“I…” Cal said, trailing off. The waves came crashing in, each one just a little closer to those yellow—paws?—of his. The foam trailed white behind it. He turned to the chicken. “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember what?”
The waves, the water, the rocks and cliffs breaking up the bay, even the trees. He felt small. Cal shook his head, those ears flopping after him, and what he wouldn’t give for the water to hold still long enough for him to get a look at himself. “I don’t know.”
The chicken took a few steps until they were standing in the foam. “Do you have a name?”
“Cal,” Cal said, but there was more to it than that. His name wasn’t just ‘Cal,’ it was something else, and why couldn’t he remember his own name?
“Okay, Cal, do you know how you got here?”
He’d been… somewhere. Dark. Dry. Cool. Human. “No.” His ‘hands’ still had five ‘fingers,’ which was a relief, but they weren’t exactly arranged like they were supposed to be. These were also bright yellow and covered in short fur. “Where am I?”
The chicken lady sighed. Cal wasn’t entirely sure how a chicken could sigh, but it wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened in the past three minutes, so he set that matter aside. “You’re at Treasure Town Beach, under Sharpedo Bluff. Were you attacked? More Pokemon have been going feral.”
Treasure Town? Other than a pirate colony on an asteroid belt, he’d never heard of a town named Treasure. Cal frowned. A pirate colony on an asteroid belt? “Pokemon?” he asked, instead of everything else.
“Pokemon,” the chicken said, slowly, “like us.”
Some kind of genus, then? Certainly not the same species, unless there was some insane sexual dimorphism going on. “Like us.” He turned back around, away from the wall of water stretching to the horizon, towards the cliffs bordering the beach. “Like them?”
There was a bat and a floating purple rock. The floating purple rock had a face. The bat, which was also purple (which Cal vaguely recognized as a strange color for a bat) and about the same size as him, had picked up a satchel in its feet and was flying away as fast as it could with the rock. The chicken turned. Growled. Charged after them.
Cal wiped the spray of sand from his face and gathered his too-big feet under him. “Wait!” He stumbled after the chicken sprinting after the bat flapping after the rock. He could barely stagger. Trip over every half-step, like he was trying to fall backwards. Cal dropped to all fours and pretended he was doing bear crawls. It worked surprisingly well.
The chicken flew backwards and hit him head-on. For the second time that morning, Cal hauled himself to unfamiliar feet and blinked sand out of his eyes. The chicken pinwheeled her feet until she was back upright. Cal stepped closer; the air surrounding her was distinctly warmer than everywhere else. It was like standing next to a radiator.
“Friends of yours?” Cal loped out of her bubble of heat until the sand transitioned into stone. There was a cave, just around the corner where those two purple Pokemon had disappeared. Moss hanged over the lip, nearly draped to the ground, a vibrant and lush green he couldn’t remember having ever seen at home.
“Zubat and Koffing.” The chicken spat. It fused a few loose grains of sand together into glass. “They stole my stuff.”
“Your stuff?” Judging from the feel of it, Cal didn’t have eyebrows to raise anymore. A pity. Maybe he could negotiate something with his ears. “How deep is this cave?”
The chicken shook her head and scrambled up the rock next to him. “It’s a mystery dungeon.” She shoved aside the moss with her head, her feathered crest pulled down from the weight. “It doesn’t matter. They stole from me, and they’re going to regret it.” She disappeared into the tunnel.
Cal peered after her. The entrance was dark, but there was light up ahead coming from the walls themselves. He turned around, nearly tripping over his tail, and the ocean with its rolling waves was still thundering just where they had left it. There was a path up the bluffs tucked on the opposite side of the beach from this cave, presumably leading to Treasure Town. He could leave now, go off, fend for himself, figure out how to walk and use his ears and tail.
Cal stumbled through the moss and into the cave. “So,” he said, “who are you, what am I, and what’s a mystery dungeon?”
The chicken scratched aside a pile of seaweed, another tunnel gently sloping down and out of sight. “You can call me Mad. You, Cal, are a pikachu. I am a torchic. This is a mystery dungeon.”
“Helpful,” Cal drawled. He peered into a puddle, gently lit by those glowing rocks lining the walls. Small, yellow. Kind of beady black eyes. Short furred with long ears tipped in dark brown. Stripes on his back, his tail jagged like lightning but oddly blocky and thin. Two red splotches highlighted where his cheeks were. He looked rather like an oddly shaped rabbit.
“You really don’t remember anything?”
“Nope.” He popped the ‘p’ and patted the red splotches. They sparked. Magic rabbit-mouse. Why not? “I was human about ten minutes ago.”
Mad narrowed her eyes. “And I’m a psyduck,” she muttered. “Behind you!”
Cal whirled around, tripped over his feet, belly flopped onto the cool stone of the cave. There was a pink coral-like thing, glaring daggers at him. “Hello.”
The pink thing tackled him. Cal wheezed. The pink thing tackled him again, and he did not sign up for this and ow, it actually hurt, and then Mad was scratching at it. And she kept scratching at it. Cal rolled himself back to all fours, then up to two, and she was still scratching it. The pink thing stopped moving. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone in after her.
“Human, you said?” She rolled the creature to the side of the trail and marched onwards. Cal glanced backwards. The entrance was gone. Mystery dungeon, she had said? “You don’t know anything?”
“Did you just kill that thing?”
“That thing is a corsola. It will survive, or a kabuto will eat it.” The tunnel opened up into a room, and she kicked a rock towards him. “You know how to throw?”
Cal took the rock in both… paws. He rolled his shoulders as much as he could, tested the range of motion there. “Sure. We’re just going to leave it for dead?”
Mad poked around a tide pool, careful to keep her claws dry. “The Pokemon in mystery dungeons aren’t like us. They’ve gone feral. They want to kill us.”
“It can’t be all of them,” Cal said, starting to figure out the rhythm between his limbs. If he just wanted to go slow, he could stand upright. Anything faster, that was down to a bear crawl. Pikachu crawl. “Someone’s tried talking to them, right?”
“Like this?” Mad chose a path out from the room and shouted down the hall, “listen up!” A blue slug thing fell off the ceiling and splatted on the ground. Its face was entirely expressionless. “He doesn’t want to fight you. Leave.” The slug slithered towards them. “That’s a shellos. If it comes within leaping distance, I want you to zap it.”
“Zap it?” The shellos slugged, ever-steady, towards them. It was silent save the sticky sound it made as it moved. “With what?” Mad’s feathers ruffled, and Cal decided to twitch his ears backwards.
“I saw you spark. Channel that and don’t hit me.”
Sparks. Right. From his cheeks, because that made as much sense as anything. He brought his paws to his cheeks and rubbed until he felt sparky. “Maybe we can still reason with it?”
The shellos spat water at Mad. Mad ducked behind him. The excess water splashed off the wall and onto him. “Zap it.”
“Oh, sure,” Cal said, concentrating on the sparky feeling and the shellos crawling at them, “let me just figure out magic real quick, and why I’m suddenly a yellow rodent, and maybe the mysteries of the universe while I’m—” It ripped from him. Fur on end, remnant sand vaporizing off of him, and he dropped the rock. The shellos lay unmoving. Burnt fish. It smelled like burnt fish, and there was a blackened scorch mark on the ground. “I just shot lightning.”
“Thunder Shock.” Mad kicked the shellos on the way by. “Lightning isn't a move. If you’re human, how are you a pikachu?”
“I just shot electricity. From my body.”
“Pickup your geopebble and hurry up.”
Cal grabbed the rock and scurried after her. Of all the things to finally get to him, magic bio-generated electricity shouldn’t be it. It really shouldn’t be it. “What the fuck.”
“You know your typing?” Mad asked. She scratched the ground. “Never mind. You’re an electric type. Shellos and corsola are water types. Electric is powerful against water. I am a fire type.”
“Weak to water?” Cal guessed. It was easier to focus on mythical creature typing than shooting weaponized electricity from his body.
“It’s probably why Zubat and Koffing ran in here.” She shook her head. “Thought I’d be scared of getting a little wet, those idiots.”
“Zubat and Koffing—are those names, or more species?”
“They don’t deserve names.” She leapt ahead and scratched another pokemon to submission. “I also have never asked,” she admitted, quieter. Mad shook herself and pressed onwards. “They’ve been causing trouble around town for weeks. Little things: petty theft, breaking and entering, pushing Wurmple in front of a charging rhyhorn. The guild hasn’t apprehended them yet because they don’t have authority in town, and Magnezone hasn’t caught them yet because he’s too busy dealing with mystery dungeons and feral pokemon complaints.” She scoffed. “They must have thought I was an easy target. A lone torchic on a beach, near a water-based mystery dungeon, two on one.”
Another room, another more hidden tunnel, another feral pokemon. Cal threw his rock at it and picked up another one. “What did they steal?”
“It’s personal.”
Cal scampered after her until they were side by side. “I’ve followed you into a random cave for this thing. I think I deserve to know.”
“You followed me because you don’t know anything.” She tilted her head. “You still don’t know how to move your tail.” Cal jerked the tip of his tail off the ground and out of the puddle and twitched his ears at her. Mad rolled her eyes, although it was accompanied by a roll of her entire head. “They shouldn’t be much farther down. When we find them, you’re going to deal with Zubat.”
“Sure.” Presumably, that was the one which looked like a bat. Wheezing must be the purple rock thing. Electricity probably wasn’t too effective against purple rocks, but neither, Cal imagined, was fire. Mad picked up a random seed off the ground and carried it in her beak. “Snack for the road?”
“Blast seed.” It came out more like ‘blasteed’, but if there was one thing Cal knew how to do, it was interpretation. Well, probably. Maybe. He really didn’t know, but it felt right. This tunnel opened into another room, more well-lit than the others they had travelled through. Pools of water flowed around three sides, salt-covered stepping stones in all but the farthest pool. From that pool, light shone free and sunny. Another way out, Cal supposed, if one were willing to swim.
“Give it back,” Mad said, “and I’ll drag you out of here.”
Zubat fluttered near the ceiling, flapping desperately as though Mad’s satchel weighed more than it. Judging from how the satchel pendulumed with every slight adjustment in flight, it probably was heavier. Wheezing spewed some kind of green-looking gas from random holes in its body, and the part of Cal which had never left primary school began coming up with fart jokes. Now was not the time.
“Drag us out of here?” Zubat crowed. It plummeted to the floor, wings just barely catching it before it could crash. “A weakling like you?”
Cal considered the way Mad had clawed almost every pokemon they had encountered on the way down here to submission. “Last chance,” he said. To Mad, he whispered, “can you spit fire or something?”
“Not yet.” Yet. Cal hoped everything was back to normal before she got to that point. Zubat dropped the satchel and flew free. Instead of coming around to split them up, however, it remained at Wheezing’s side, baring its fangs. It didn’t have eyes, Cal realized. Echolocation? “You have three seconds.”
Wheezing rotated around, slowly twisting on its axis like a noxious planet. Cal sniffed and opted to breath out his mouth. One second.
Cal hurled the rock at Zubat. Mad leapt for Wheezing, and a blast spewed from her mouth. Zubat yelped, fell. Blast seed, Cal thought to himself. Think sparky thoughts. He dropped to all fours, charged the bat and hurled them both into the water. Swimming, and biting. Fangs in his skin. Focus on the spark. Paddle downwards, bring Zubat with him. Find the spark.
He found the spark.
It burst from him, uncontrolled, electrifying.
He could barely swim. Barely dog paddle upwards, limbs heavy and still too unfamiliar, Zubat limp between his teeth. Maybe it wasn’t smart. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t a good idea. Maybe he shouldn’t have ever woken up. Cal clawed himself into the air, onto the landing. Water sopped behind him. His fur clung to his body, messy little whorls all sticking in the wrong direction. Mad was just shouldering her satchel around her neck, Wheezing lying, fainted, on the ground next to her. There were scorch marks and scratches across its purple body.
Cal dragged Zubat across the landing. Every step felt restrained, dragged through mud, muscles after a hard day at the gym. Before he could stop, he shook himself. Water flew every direction. Why was the ocean so cold?
“Not bad,” Mad said. Somehow, she didn’t have a single feather out of place. Cal scraped himself back the way they had come. “That way is closed.”
He stopped. “We just came that way.”
“It’s a mystery dungeon. It’s closed.” She hopped over to the last ledge before the far pool. “Unless you want to fight your way out, the only escape is down.” She kicked the same rock he had thrown at Zubat into the water, towards that shining light. Cal groaned. “It’ll be better for you than me.”
“Fire type,” Cal muttered. “Sure. Okay. Can you even swim?”
Mad jumped into the water and paddled like a particularly uncoordinated duck to the wall. She bobbed there for a moment, then dove under, little chicken wings out like a poor attempt at fins. Cal shivered again. Slid in. Under. Out.
The current pulled him through the tunnel. He dared open his eyes, just for a moment. The salt stung and he was passing Mad, struggling with her bag, listing increasingly starboard. He hadn’t gotten this far with her just to not get some answers. Cal caught the strap of the satchel in his mouth and tugged them both through the tunnel. Up, into the light. Up, into the breaking waves. Up, onto the beach.
He never wanted to move again. The waves pushed at his tail, pulling his fur. They rumbled as they passed by and caressed his too-long ears. The foam caught in Mad’s feathers. Her crest was stuck flat to her head, every feather dark brown and blood red. Apparently, most of the bulk on her body consisted of fluff; everything soaked down, she was positively skeletal. She was also staring dead at him, beady eyes unblinking. Cal supposed he was in no place to judge anything about eyes.
“Do you have plans?” Mad lurched to her feet. She rocked, and Cal just managed to haul himself to his paws to support her before she fell. “Do you?”
Cal waited until she was upright on her own before shaking himself off. It was just cold, despite the sun. Mad was nothing more than legs, beak, and temper. At least Cal’s new body had some substance to it, if a little more around the stomach than he was used to. “I’d like to be human again.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.” She straightened the satchel and fluffed out. Tried to fluff out. Her feathers stuck fast against her body, but whatever she was doing was warm.
Cal shifted closer to her. “Guess not, then.”
“We’re forming a rescue team.”
She lurched towards the path leading up the bluff. Cal followed, only for the bubble of heat. “Why would I do that?”
“The guild has resources. If there is anything to know about how this happened to you, they will know.”
The guild. She had mentioned it earlier—it brought in criminals, she’d said. Now it was sounding like it was some kind of town authority. “People need a lot of rescuing around here?”
Mad nodded. “You saw the Pokemon in that cave. Imagine them, but in almost every area, stronger, more vicious. Imagine how criminals and outlaws can use these mystery dungeons to their advantage. Take every Pokemon who has ever toyed with crime, and give them the opportunity to do as they please. Treasure Town is one of the last remaining calm zones.” He wasn’t sure how she expected him to find the energy to hike the path up the bluff, not after that cave. He mustered his limbs and focused on every step.
“What do you get out of it?”
“Resources.” She kicked aside a rock and stumbled into him. Slowly, she was fluffing back out. “My brother. He disappeared when the dungeons opened up.”
“You think he’s out there?”
“If he were in his right mind, he never would have left without his rock.” She jerked her beak at the satchel. “It’s just a piece of rock with a fancy design, but he was convinced it was the key to some hidden treasure. He always called it ‘The Relic.’ Took it with him wherever he went.”
Cal shook some water out of his ears. “Why haven’t you gone to the guild already?”
“I have. They haven’t done anything.”
“And you haven’t searched on your own?”
She snorted. “Me and what strength? If I’m going to find him, I can’t turn feral. Besides, all information goes to the guild—all the missing Pokemon notices, the recent sightings, everything. But I can’t get access to that without being part of the guild, and they don’t allow rescue teams of one Pokemon anymore. Single Pokemon are at the most risk of turning feral. You’re my way in.”
Thank whatever deities existed in this universe, the hill was finally evening out. Up ahead were the beginnings of buildings and streets. It was about the same size as the town he had grown up in. Cal frowned. How could he know that, and not know its layout? The style of building? The people who lived there? His family?
“Will you help me?”
There were other Pokemon milling about the streets between the buildings. A chatter of voices rang out overhead. It still smelt like salt and wind, just the same as the beach. A few of the townspeople stared at him, but there must have been something in the suddenly-steady set of Mad’s walk that caused them to turn right back around. She stopped at a crossroads.
Up a flight of stairs loomed an odd-looking pink structure. Statues lined either side of the path, torches lit despite the sunlight. To the right of the stairs ran a trail and a signpost. Out of town. The last vestiges of civilization until Pokemon Square, it read. Beware.
Cal looked back up the hill to the pink guild building. “What the hell? I’m in.”