Chapter Text
It all started with fire.
Sasaki jolts awake, eyes snapping open and darting around to squint at the blurry, rocky ceiling. The persian's head spins as he heaves himself up to look around. He snaps his head back and forth, ignoring the pain throbbing in his skull and stomach to look around at the blurry cityscape with wild eyes. Where is he? What happened? What should he do? He needs to assess his environment. That's the first step to controlling the situation.
What is this place? He spins to squint around the dull lights consuming the building he's in. The building he was in before was so much brighter... Wait, why isn't he in the building? What's he doing out in the middle of the street? The tip of his tail flicks back and forth in annoyance as his eyes narrow in concentration. What was he doing befo-?
The realization hits him like Nazo's Sucker Punch. His mind fills with memories and all he can remember is red, red smoke and bright, bright fire. His head swirls with fire blasting from the uncontrolled maws of feral beasts. The fire consuming the building. The fire consuming him. The walls of the skyscraper crumble around him as he struggles against the weight chaining him to the floor. Burns wrack his unmoving body with a sporadic message of pain, pain, pain. It hurts to even move. Why can’t he move? He tries to take a deep breath and his lungs constrict in pain. He coughs and coughs and coughs, but nothing gets rid of the aching in his lungs nor the smell of smoke in his nose. He can taste something ashy and metallic in the back of his throat. His muscles finally give out and he lies limp on the floor, his sight getting hazier and hazier. He eyes trail down to see his once beautiful, well-groomed fur is scorched black. He tries to move again and a spiking pain radiates from his back legs. Why do his legs hurt? What happened? Why can’t he hear his master? The ringing in his ears reaches a deafening volume reminiscent of the moment before one of Hime's Earthquakes. His head throbs to remind him of the headache that flares up at the sound. Where’s his master? He would know what to do. All he has to do is find his master. A shaky sense of calm settles over him as he struggles to muster up the energy to turn towards his master. His master will know what to do. He just has to wait for orders like always. He finally gathers the strength to turn to look for his master with half-lidded, expectant eyes. Everything will be fi-.
He sees nothing.
He spins around wildly, trying to find out where.
Where did he go? Where did his master go? Did he abandon him? Why did he abandon him? Why? WhyWHyWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYW-?!?!
“Hey! What’s another meowth doin’ here?”
The voice is high and raspy. It hurts his ringing ears in the same annoyingly familiar way the high-pitched cry of zubats does to pokemon who live alongside the overpopulated beasts in their caves. Or pokemon like him who spend even the slightest amount of time around the grunts. The voice is almost familiar, but he can’t quite put a paw on where he remembers it from. Maybe it's a child? Arceus, he hopes not. Mai would go on a rampage if she found out a child was trapped a burning building. A small weight ghosts over his heaving form. He nearly growls at the person to leave when another wave of nausea hits him, forcing his head back to the floor. The taste of ash on his tongue surges up. The smell of blood is overwhelmingly potent as he retches, acid burning at the back of his throat. The burn hurts more than any burn he has had before. It feels as if a million tiny, electrified claws are digging into him at once. Everything hurts! Someone- anyone- help, heLP, HEL-!
“Alright, just hang on, champ. Ain’t nothin’ gonna bring down a meowth, right?”
The useless platitude brings Sasaki very little comfort as he heaves. What happened? What is this human doing here? They should be running. Why aren’t they running? Everything is burning. They should run. They should escape. They need to get out of here. The fire will get them too and-.
... Wait… meowth?
Is this human blind? Is that why they got left behind? He’s clearly a persian. Pity wells up in his chest. How unfortunate. He may sympathize with the human, but he worked hard for his evolution and refuses to have his efforts denounced. He looks away from the embarrassing pile of vomit and turns towards the human to correct them with a yowl.
Shock knocks him into a stupor, thoughts of pain, pain, pain, temporarily halted as he stares at the dimly lit, unburned face of a bipedal meowth speaking a fluent human language. He’s seen many things in his life- it comes with being partners with his master and the rest of the team-, but he only knows one meowth that wasted time learning to do those things. His lips curl into a sneer as his mind falls into familiar scathing thoughts about the grunt. Sasaki glares at the oblivious meowth with a sense of superiority, their tail thrashing back and forth aggressively. The grunt should talk to his betters more respectfully. Could he not recognize his superiors? Or was he so incompetent even that was impossible?
“It’s nice seein’ another meowth around here, but what’re you doin’ here? This‘s ruffiti turf, y’know!” The grunts’ meowth looks around the dark building warily, completely missing Sasaki’s obviously derisive attitude towards him.
‘Another meowth?’ Sasaki scoffs in his head, still sneering at the grunt. ‘What’s this idiot droning on abou-?’ The cat’s thoughts come to an abrupt halt as he stares at the window behind the meowth with wide eyes. Looking back at him from the reflective glass are the forms of not just one, but two meowths.
How did this happen? Is he dreaming? ‘No.’ Sasaki quickly concludes, a strangled sound coming from his throat. He feels filthier than Kenji on a mud day, and the awful acidic smell is definitely real. So how is he a meowth? This is completely unprecedented. For a pokemon to return to their previous evolution is completely ridiculous. It should be utterly impossible to regress back into a meowth after he had evolved into a persian. And yet here he is, back to his weaker form. Back at the beginning despite all the hard work he put into obtaining his evolved form. A growl builds up in his throat as he glares at his reflection. All that work for nothing. Now he'll have to start all over again. Each painful, grueling step will have to be done all over again. Was all that work for nothing? Was all that suffering for nothing? And he doesn't even know where his mas-
“Hey, you ok?” The meowth turns at the growl and waves a paw in front of Sasaki’s angry face, cutting off his rapidly spiraling train of thought. Meowth flinches back a bit when the other meowth’s deadly look turns to him. Scary. He wonders who stepped on that cat's tail enough for the him to be that angry. “C’mon, newbie! We gotta get outta this building. It looks like it's been around since Mew was born."
The persian- now a meowth- is pulled from his horrified stupor as the unusual, bipedal meowth drags him along towards an alleyway. ‘What's the grunt doing?’ Sasaki cringes, yanking his paw away from the grunt’s dirty paws before they can get too far. He glares down at the dirt left on his fur before looking back up into the meowth’s confused eyes.
“You gonna come or not?” Meowth’s eyes narrow at the rude cat before he brushes it off at the sound of a distant bark. He whips around to look, ears flicking irritably as he glances around anxiously. "C'mon! We gotta get outta here before the dogs come barkin'."
Meowth scurries over a few cargo boxes and out a broken window, popping his head out to gesture Sasaki over with a jerky head tilt before ducking back out the window. Sasaki hesitates at the other cat's tense reaction. Should he really be trusting this incompetent grunt? Sasaki takes one last glance at the pile of acid beside him and sighs before stepping towards the grunt. He supposes he’ll go along with him for now. The cat might be useful in this strange place anyways.
Sasaki scowls at his weak legs as he takes a few steps forward and almost crashes into the floor. He hasn't been a meowth in a long time and his most recent memory wasn't exactly helping him keep his balance. But Sasaki had never been known to back down from a challenge and he steels his legs, carefully stepping onto the cargo boxes and clumsily making his way up the boxes. He leaps over a box and out of the window. And almost immediately crashes into a wall.
Sasaki hunches over, groaning at the pain on his snout and glaring at the grunt cackling to his right.
"Heh, didn't know concrete could be a meowth's type." Meowth snickered behind his paw, the corner of hid mouth curled up mischeviously.
Meowth didn't even see the shadow looming over him before his head knocked against the ground. "MeOWth!"
Sasaki sits on his back and checks his claws nonchalantly as Meowth cries out, squirming and pleading for Sasaki to get off. "C'mon, man, it was just a joke! You ain't gonna break my back for a joke, right?!" Sasaki glares down at him for a minute before eventually deciding that he needs to explore and stands to get off of the grunt. But not without kicking Meowth's head when he sighs in relief.
"Meowth..." He groans, rubbing the back of his head gingerly with his ears pinned to the side of his head at the pain in his back and head.
"So where are we going?" Sasaki sits down elegantly, turning expectant eyes towards the grunt. After all, what was the point of staying with the grunt if he can't even act as a guide?
Meowth's ears perk up. That's the first time the cat has talked! "I'm gonna get us grub. Then we're heading back to Level 5." Meowth puffs out his chest. As long as no security pokemon are around, he'll get to show off the the newbie! "Just follow me!"
The two meowth slide between graffitied buildings pressed close together and jump over the knocked over trash as they make their way away from the abandoned street to an alleyway beside a more populated street. Sasaki grimaces at the filth all over the alleyways, carefully walking around the garbage when Meowth climbs over a pile of garbage bags. He's pretty sure he saw one of the bags of garbage move and he's not concussed enough to truly want to find out if it was real.
“Alright, let’s stop here.” Meowth heaves, ears twitching at the bustling noise of a market a few alleys away as he leans a paw against a wall. Just a little futher and they would be in the market.
Sasaki was still a little jittery with energy and standing still wasn't going to do him any good. Though he was more tired than he'd usually be after such light exercise. Hayato would be disappointed. Well, at least he wasn't at the grunt's level. Sasaki snorts derisively, reluctantly sitting down a meter away from the grunt. “Weak.”
“Shortstack!” Meowth shoots back, standing up straight to look down at Sasaki with a crooked grin.
Sasaki glares up at the meowth. Being on two paws grants the cat extra height over him that he wouldn’t have even considered if it wasn’t so glaringly obvious now that he has regressed to a mere meowth. Something about being shorter than the other, weak meowth makes his hackles raise. He refuses to be smaller than a grunt, especially not this one. He'd already gotten enough teasing from his team about his comparatively less than stellar height (excluding Nazo, but no one knows what's going on beneath the surface for that one and that incident never happened stop thinking about it Sasaki).
He places a paw on the wall, pulling himself onto his shaking hind legs with a grunt. Arceus, this feels unnatural, how can that idiot stand it? It's not really that useful anyways. Maybe he should stop… ‘No.’ Sasaki shakes his head to banish the thought. That’s admitting he is incapable of doing something. He has faced far greater challenges than standing on his hind legs. If he can take down a charizard of all the bloody monsters- then he can learn how to stand on two paws.
Meowth stares at him with a confused look. “Hey, ain’t this supposed to be normal for you, newbie?”
“No.” Sasaki grits his teeth as he lets go of the wall, thrown by the higher perspective. “Why would I have ever need to walk on two legs?” He moves faster on four and he feels more vulnerable on two paws, but it does give him a height advantage and it's not like he can't win in a fight against anyone who might decide to target him.
“Yeah, I guess it ain’t needed.” Meowth tilted, his ears flicking thoughtfully. “Then why’re you giving it a go now?” Meowth hovers around Sasaki, paws outstretched to catch him if he falls.
“Considering you’re still alive, I’m certain I’ll be well enough off.” Sasaki deadpans as he walks a couple of shaky steps, balance slightly disrupted by the lack of two other paws. However, he is rather pleased that he’s quickly getting to the odd sensation of moving with all his weight on his hind paws, ”Keep going. We haven't reached our destination.”
Meowth starts walking to the market again with drooping ears. ‘Man, the cat didn’t even tripped or anything.’ He slouches forward with a sigh, remembering tripping and stubbing his paws against random objects. He hadn’t even been able to help since the newbie caught on so quickly.
Sasaki growled at his trembling legs. This is incredibly frustrating. He hasn’t had such difficulty with such a seemingly simple task in quite a while. Well, he supposes it’s of no consequence. Whether it’s the past or present, he’ll overcome every obstacle standing in his way. No matter what it takes.
“Hey, where did’ja come from?” The grunt interrupts his thoughts, tilting his head slightly in curiosity. “I don’t recognize you from anywhere.”
“Kanto.” Sasaki says flatly, rolling his eyes at the grunt meowth. Why would he give significant information to this random pokémon? ‘And a rather untrustworthy one, too.’ Sasaki thinks back to countless calls from that particular group about failed missions with distaste. It’s honestly a surprise that his master entertained even half of those calls. Even though his master likes to be in direct contact with his grunts, that group reported failures more often than not and called about the most insignificant things. His master got calls about the grunts capturing basic pokémon, unevolved pokémon, funding, random legends, more funding. He can barely trust the idiotic meowth to not trip over his own paws, let alone with any significant information.
“Ain’t you a wise guy.” Meowth says sarcastically, ears twitching irritably. “You coulda just said you don’t wanna tell me instead of givin' me literally every 'mons answer.” Meowth looks away from Sasaki petulantly, scuffing a paw against the floor of the alleyway.
Sasaki scoffs before turning to look around the alleyway more closely. How interesting. Every wall they’ve walked past so far has been covered with graffiti. Layers upon layers of graffitied words and pictures, especially skulls, covered the surprisingly tall building from the top all the way to the bottom. How did they even get all the way up there?
Meowth tilts his head to take a sniff of the air. “C’mon! We’re almost there!” Meowth grins back at him, taking off with a run as he follows the pleasant scent of food. Sasaki groans, looking down at his shaky legs. Was it even worth it? He could probably just move faster on four paws. He briefly thinks about it before his stubbornness wins out and he shuffles towards the quickly retreating meowth.
“Don’t just run off!”
Locals weave through the bustling market easily, haggling and carefully guarding their valuables as they hunt for a bargain. The sound of people bargaining with venders bringing food from all over Level Four can be heard everywhere. The smell of fresh veggies fills the air as people bargain and argue. The citizens of level four can be seen buying potatoes and pumpkin and other goods from the venders scattered around the marketplace. Meowth glances around the corner, head quickly turning to scan the market. His nose scrunches in distaste at the smell of spoiled gyarados from one of the stands. Looks like he needs to stay away from that guy again. He ducks back into the alleyway when a monquer starts turning to look at his alleyway. He waits for a moment and turns back to look at the newbie. His silent companion stands on trembling hind legs as he nonchalantly examines his claws with a frown. He doesn’t really get why the newbie’s looking at his claws so much. It's not like they're dirty or anything.
‘Score!’ Meowth grins, taking another peak around the marketplace. There ain’t no chamchords or eleepeeps around to mess up his plan! He actually gots a shot at showing off to the newbie. “Alright, you stay here, newbie. I’m gonna nab some potatoes for us!”
“Where are your partners?” The newbie asks suddenly, nearly making him jump out of his own skin as he whips back around to stare at the cat. The other meowth’s impatient stare is ruined by his trembling legs. Meowth nearly laughs at the sight but covers it up as a coughing fit. He doesn’t think he tricked him with the angry glare the newbie was giving him. “Sorry, sorry. Don’t worry you’ll get used to it. Or you could just walk normally y’know?”
“Don’t care. Didn’t ask. Answer my question.” The meowth’s glare seems to darken the longer he stares at Meowth. Wow, he really likes glaring. The guy's so prickly he'd probably rival Kachi. And Kachi was an actual cactus!
“Oh, partners?” He briefly thinks about Jessie and James before shaking his head to get rid of the thought. He can't keep stickin' to the past. He already did that for a month and it didn't get him nowhere. He gots to keep goin' if he wants to live the best he can without his partners. “Lost my old pals a long time ago. And I ain’t paired up with no meowth since I lost ‘em.”
He hears a low hum as he turns back around, glancing around once more. He slips out of the alleyway, casually joining the crowd of passersby. A dirty meowth was weird around here, Level Four’s dog turf after all, but desperate meowths come up once in a while. He tries to peek around the eye searingly vibrant clothes that pretty much everyone seems to wear in Level Four. He locks onto a stand for boiling potatoes, licking his lips at the smell of fresh, seasoned food. Now what can he use as a distraction to nab a couple potatoes? People in Neo K are way more stingy about food, even that one guy running the hot dog store. He gots to throw ‘em off. Not a lot of things messed with the people in Neo K. But if one thing did, ‘specially the people on this level, it would be…
His ears prick up at the sound of a lady yelling and his eyes catch on the shine of expensive looking jewelry. He slides over to the right where the lady’s yelling at a guy for some jewelry. Jessie would've liked it, in fact she'd probably have been that lady. She’s pretty much shaking the stand. ‘Perfect.’ He slips past her easily, his foot lashing out to kick away one of the shaky legs of the stand before darting into the crowds with a smug smile. Drama. The cart immediately tips over, jewelry spilling across the stony floor. Soon the sound of full-on shouting reaches his ears, the jewelry guy’s patience finally running out with this customer as the lady throws scathing comments at him about his cheap stand and overpriced jewelry. The people of the fifth level are usually prideful and the two at the stand immediately start screaming at each other, pointing fingers at each other to toss the blame on the other.
The guy manning the potato cart is mesmerized by the fighting, practically leaning over the cart to catch a glimpse of the drama. It was almost too easy to swipe two potatoes and run off. He briefly glances back, staring at the bag of raw potatoes, just sitting out in the open, next to the guy’s feet with greedy eyes. ‘No.’ He thinks about the grumpy meowth followin’ him. ‘Next time.’
He scrambles back to the dirty alleyway, carefully keeping out of the stand owner's gaze as he turns away from the drama. He catches the newbie's expectant gaze and thrusts his paws forward and presents the boiled potatoes to the newbie proudly. His mouth salivates as the smell of sour cream and bacon bits fills his nose. He looks at the newbie with a happy grin, “Pretty cool, eh, newbie?”