Chapter Text
Friede groaned as he slowly blinked into consciousness. Dragging himself into a sitting position and bringing up his hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes, he noticed how weirdly groggy and drowsy he was—he hadn’t stayed up too late the prior night, so what was up with that? Maybe I overslept instead..? He reached for his phone to check the time, wincing at the absurdly bright screen—which for some reason, had a completely different lockscreen (an Umbreon? He brushed it off; he wasn’t awake enough to figure anything out at the moment.)---9:37 a.m. It’s that late? Usually the glare of sunlight through the ship's windows beaming straight into his face would annoy him into the waking world far before then.
Which is when he noticed said sunlight was...completely absent from the room . Instead of the ship’s bright and open windows, the room had long blackout curtains blocking any natural light from entering the room. He pushed himself out of bed and yanked the curtains open, flooding the room with sunlight and blinding him out of his sluggish, half asleep state. And with this newfound awareness, he realized upon turning around that this was one hundred percent, absolutely, without a doubt not his room.
“What the hell..?” he muttered under his breath. Last thing he remembered he fell asleep in his own room, not…wherever this was. Not only was the room far more spacious than his own on the Asagi, the room’s contents were completely different. A computer set up with what Friede thought was way more monitors than could ever be necessary sat in the corner of the room, alongside a bulletin board that looked straight out of a conspiracy theory TV show, with red strings connecting photographs and everything. On the bed, atop the extremely thick blankets (he questioned how he didn’t overheat sleeping in it) sat an Umbreon, in the middle of waking up due to the glaring sun and looking more agitated than a Primeape, despite not even having her eyes open yet.
Wait, an Umbreon? Same as the lockscreen… So the phone was very likely not his, and likely belonged to whoever’s room this is. “That’s a start, at least,” he mumbled. He filed through everyone he knew that had an Umbreon (which, during Friede’s contemplation, buried her face into the blankets to hide herself from the sun, back to snoozing away), with his horror growing every passing second. An Umbreon. An extremely dark room. Absurd amounts of technology. Only one person he could think of fit the contents of this room, and it was the last possible person he could’ve hoped for. Surely this can’t be his room, Friede tried to convince himself. There was no conceivable way—he didn’t even know where the guy lived, how could he end up in his room?
He reached towards the phone placed on the bedside table in an attempt to figure absolutely anything else out when he came to a realization that probably should’ve been obvious much sooner, and his first hint towards how on earth he got here.
The arm reaching out was one hundred percent, absolutely, without a doubt not his arm. It was both far paler and thinner than his own. Other than Dot, Friede knew only one person with this sort of only-goes-outside-once-a-month build. And unfortunately for him, and unfortunately for his continuously declining sanity at whatever the hell he managed to get himself into, it was the same man whose room he was almost certain he was standing in. Every new piece of the picture he put together only grew his dread. There’s no way.. unless? He reached for the phone again, this time actually picking it up and swiping over to the camera, and switched it to the front camera, bracing himself for what he knew (yet hoped against) he would see.
And sure enough, when he brought said camera up to his face, he was met not with his own face, but instead with the visage of the man he’d been dreading since he first noticed the blackout curtains. Spinel.
—
Spinel buried his head as far as he could into the pillows and groaned, dragging his oddly thin blanket over his head. There was a reason he used blackout curtains, and it was to avoid this exact scenario. There was no worse awakening than getting blinding sunlight in his eyes at the crack of dawn (with the exception of when Sango spam called him in the middle of the night after stealing his phone and turning the ringer on, for no reason other than to piss him off), especially after staying up as late as he had the prior night, and yet he found himself in that exact scenario. That wasn’t even all; the pillow he shoved his head into was nowhere near as firm as the ones he usually used, and the blanket was far too thin. It shocked him that he hadn’t woken up from how cold he was. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t fall back asleep. Figures.
Wait.
He immediately shot up, yanking the blankets off of him. Why the hell did the bed not match his? Why was there sunlight streaming through the windows? Scanning the room answered his question immediately—this was not his room. The room was small, the windows round and without curtains, not to mention everything he owned was completely absent. He scooted out of bed to peek out the windows; the more information he could gather on where he was and how he got here the better. Looking through, he saw…a wooden deck, and a bit farther, the ocean from a top down view. Circular windows, a view from the air…could it be..? He’d never successfully surveyed the inner rooms of the Volt Tackler’s airship, though the circular windows and deck placement matched the notes he’d taken on the ship’s outer layout. Though he could be wrong; usually he’d be confident in his own deductions, but in such an unfamiliar situation he figured everything was on the table.
However, his suspicions were soon confirmed by a very agitated Pikachu dragging its way back onto the bed—seems this was the airship, and the professor’s room at that. His eyes widened as a small (and somewhat unsettling) grin formed on his face. This could be just the opportunity he'd been waiting for all this time, a perfect chance to catalogue all the information he could find on the ship, the crew, and most importantly the professor. He let out a small chuckle, though before he could figure out how to accomplish anything without being caught an annoyed "Pika!" startled him out of his thoughts. He…must’ve accidentally catapulted the Pikachu off the bed when throwing off the blanket. If it could survive launching itself into a cold, hard, stone wall hard enough to break it without injury then it could survive falling off a bed, he figured. Eventually his thoughts caught up to him, and Spinel tensed in preparation for a fight, though unsure how he could manage one without his Umbreon — and as he processed her absence, panic wormed its way into his mind. He attempted to stomp it out; he had bigger worries at the moment, such as the Pikachu who is...not attacking? For seeing an enemy just standing around in its trainer’s room, the Pikachu was surprisingly passive—it sat glaring at him for his transgression of ruining its sleep in such a harsh way, yet not attacking at all. After all he’d done, he figured it would hold a good amount of resentment for him, or at the very least some wariness. His brow furrowed as his eyes narrowed. Something is wrong.
Spinel’s gaze immediately shot down towards himself, and found exactly what was wrong. A Pikachu, tan skin, and—he reached up to drag a chunk of hair into his line of sight—white hair; he was, without a doubt, stuck in both Friede’s body and room.