The terrifying Froslass that had an equally-terrifying aura was about to throw another barrage of icicles when he heard a familiar voice, before seeing—

“Is… is that you?!” he exclaimed, quickly rolling over and pressing a hand to his cheek, hoping that the blood flow would stem… however, there was a shadow that was looming behind her…

“Get down!” he yelped, finally managing to get to his feet and literally facing the shadow that had dive-bombed them head-on, before making to grab one of the icicles that had fallen and chucking it at said shadow that was screaming bloody murder right at them.

“What the—T-Terra?!” he exclaimed, blinking. Since when did his Aerodactyl’s coloration turn… oh, no.

Oh, fucking hell to the no!

The Aerodactyl let out another resounding scream, before he raised both his arms in a defensive position, blocking her from the incoming ‘apex predator’ and then getting a rather… morbid idea.

“…it’s me you’re after, aren’t you?” he mused quietly, smearing his right hand with the sticky blood that was bleeding from his cheek; before flicking the blood in the Aerodactyl’s direction, who roared in their direction—but made no further violent… moves, for now, their way.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Without blinking, and while said Aerodactyl was distracted, he then threw the Dream Ball at said ‘apex predator’, watching as it was sucked into the beam of red light.

“I would deign to call you ‘Miss Elise’, but we know that… things… work differently here. Let me guess. You picked a name related to the supernatural,” he continued with a thin smile, before following it up with,

“Hecate. I guess… that’s what we should call each other for the moment, while we’re here.”

And he trusted her to know what his nickname was.

The moment the Dream Ball confirmed the capture, though, he was torn—why were there two prompt windows flashing in front of him? And what was up with the…

He felt his blood run cold at the option. But then again… he’d had enough of always being protected. Wasn’t he supposed to be doing the protecting, too?

Swiping away the option to ‘purify your Pokémon’s heart’, he hesitated for a few moments on the second window, before locking his answer in.

‘Keep your Pokémon’s strength’

(Of course, there would be a very belated realization down the road, but now was not the time for that.)

Eventually the world would return to normal after he made his choice; being frozen in time for what felt like an eternity.

---

Elise Calcifet

ability; alyosha: your blood will lure Pokémon to you—however, it only works for one particular prehistoric creature; raised from a minuscule sample found from a single fosillized piece of amber.

Unfortunately for him, the world warps and shifts—for a few moments he catches sight of Hecate and tried to reach out for her before he’s whisked away…

…to the dreaded, familiar streets of Mistralton.

“Miss E—Hecate?!” he called out, looking around wildly. What the fuck was going on?! Adding onto that, Terra the Aerodactyl—the changed one, mind—continued to follow him around.

“The fuck’s this?!” he exclaimed as he then immediately looked through his inventory and then—and then let out a bark of laughter. Irreverent at the moment, but well…

The three items that he’d found in his inventory were a ball of red string (Destiny Knot), a small pouch of incredibly white sand (was it sand? It was Bright Powder) as well as a strange stick with a feather attached to the end of it (A Poké Toy, arguably the worst item of the lot).

“Well, what the fuck,” he grumbled, before the Aerodactyl decided to headbutt him in the side…

“Ouch! What the fuck, Terra?!” he exclaimed, before looking around… why were they out here in Mistralton, anyway?! And where was Miss Elise?!

The next thing that he would encounter, though, would make him stop dead. For it was…

“Hey, Frog?” he blinked, looking over at his companion; while they did resemble his amphibious partner, fact of the matter there was something decidedly off about all this. He couldn’t quite put a finger on the damned thing, however his Aerodactyl had already charged on ahead!

“Hey, Terra! Wait for me—us!” he exclaimed, quickly grabbing his partner’s ‘hand’ and following said Aerodactyl; who had completely gone off the deep end biting and snapping at the figments that were getting in their way.

“Whoa. That’s fucking scary.”

Was this version of Mistralton the ‘dungeon’ they had to conquer together…?

---

Elise Calcifet

ability; alyosha: your blood will lure Pokémon to you—however, it only works for one particular prehistoric creature; raised from a minuscule sample found from a single fosillized piece of amber.

He didn’t realize that he had grown a tail similar to what an Aerodactyl’s tail was like, while they were running through the ‘dungeon’, dealing with roadside plants suddenly mutating and going on a rampage; lamp posts suddenly coming to life and trying to bat the daylights out of them with their stiff, metal ‘arms’…

What the fuck was up with this place?!

“Never mind that, let’s go!” he yelled as his companion wanted to take a detour somewhere; it looked like an alleyway that may have had an optional ‘super boss’ to handle…

“No, Frog! Let’s g-go! We’re almost at the end of this entire place!” he continued as he had to forcibly pull—drag—no, yank the other towards… the only place he knew where this would all end—

The family home.

“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Taking a deep breath, he braced himself—just as his berserk Aerodactyl ran on ahead and literally broke the door off its hinges.

“Terra, you could like, wait for us, you know?!” he yelled as he quickly took out the feather on a stick (the Poké Toy) and chucked it at the mooks that were accompanying…

“Oh, fucking hell!”

For what awaited them at the very end—right in the living room, of all places—

Was a Tornadus. Not quite similar to the one he had with him; but still—

A powerful Bleakwind Storm then shook the area, making his companion shiver; but he stood his ground.

“Terra! Go!”

He didn’t even need to instruct his Aerodactyl to charge forward as Terra had flown forward of his own volition; never mind if the weather was biting cold—before slamming straight into the ‘Tornadus’ with a new move he had never seen before—

“What was that?!” he exclaimed, quickly pulling out the incredibly bright ‘sand’ (the Bright Powder) and then flinging it at the line of sight of the ‘legendary’ Pokémon that they knew was…

Why, of all things, did it have to be Tornadus himself!?

(Well, it was marginally better than either one of his parents being the avatar of the djinni…)

The roaring, screeching, screaming noise from the Aerodactyl signified that the two were locked in battle; and after several minutes of trading blows, the Aerodactyl emerged from the bright cloud…

“Don’t tell me you—” he trailed off as he blinked and the ‘brightness’ faded away…

…which left him with the ball of red string.

Was this supposed to mean something?!

“Miss E—Hecate?! Where are you?!” he called out once the ‘Mistralton’ dungeon had disappeared and he was pretty sure he was back where everything had all started.

---

Elise Calcifet

ability; alyosha: your blood will lure Pokémon to you—however, it only works for one particular prehistoric creature; raised from a minuscule sample found from a single fosillized piece of amber.

It wouldn’t take too long before they would end up back here again—only this time, they had to do…

“Wait, you want us to do what?!” he exclaimed as he blinked and checked the contents of his inventory. Man, how was destroying something going to happen if he had a ball of red string—it was the only thing he had left with him since the other two items he’d already used up when he fought that fake ‘Tornadus’ earlier…

“And you’re telling me, we have to go through this part alone?” he continued, before looking over at Miss E—Hecate, before nodding grimly.

“See you on the other side. Hope you don’t have too hard a time without me—” he said before everything just disappeared and he was warped back to—back to the ‘Mistralton’ that he’d traversed with the dream-version of his partner.

“I’ll never get used to this…” he sighed before looking around, and then realizing that Terra had flown on ahead, as always, screaming bloody murder at—

“Terra!” he exclaimed, before letting out a sigh as he realized that there was something within the code… something—why was the ball of red string glowing? What was waiting for them?

He couldn’t hear himself think; not even the tail whipping around impatiently behind him could make him look up as he watched his mutated Aerodactyl raining down all manner of hellfire and—

What was that attack (Shadow Storm again?!)

“Terra, are you fucking nuts? What are you—” he trailed off before something even more worse than the warped, twisted version of the Wandering Stormbringer came into existence…

It was his fucking father.

“You.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“Well, guess what, Dad, I’m still alive. I lived, bitch.”

“You broke our entire family apart when you left—”

“Excuse me? I broke the family apart? Why don’t you ask sestra Thea what you did when she left because you didn’t want her to be with kris flynn-edwards! She was in love! Yet you didn’t like who she chose! Are you really that old-fashioned?!”

“That—that is none of your business!”

“Well, it’s also none of your fucking business what I’ve done with my life after I left that loveless house! And for the record—I’m gay.”

With those words, he heard Terra the… the now-warped Aerodactyl roar, before charging forward at the person he hated the most.

It wasn’t any of his exes, it was his own flesh-and-blood father, telling him how useless he was…

“And you have no more power over me ever since I left Unova to find my own way in the world.”

The prehistoric Fossil Pokémon’s roaring shook the area as the Aerodactyl continued to lash out violently with Shadow Storm in the best way he knew how: with reckless abandon.

“You’re dead to me.”

“You think you can say that? I’ve always been dead to you! Ever since you found out I was sick, you wanted me to wilt away and die, erase me from this world! You’re not going to get that chance!”

With those words, he squared his shoulders and rushed forward—the tail behind him flicking incessantly as the two engaged in hand-to-hand combat; despite the fact that normally, he would never do such a thing.

(Maybe because they were in this strange… location, that he could do whatever the hell-ass he wanted? Who knew?)

Around them, the world burned. Ripped and torn apart, shredded into non-existence by his rampaging Aerodactyl; whose only objective was to destroy everything he could lay waste to.

---

Elise Calcifet

ability; alyosha: your blood will lure Pokémon to you—however, it only works for one particular prehistoric creature; raised from a minuscule sample found from a single fosillized piece of amber.

After he’d dealt with the ‘little’ problem from earlier, he was not surprised to find himself back where they’d all started—however the place looked like it was tripping and heading towards… well, the place was a ruin so there was that.

(You know like how texture packages work, but when they get corrupted it all goes to hell? Yeah, something like that.)

“Oh, a gift? That’s nice,” he hummed as he looked through the inventory—though there was an expiry date? Okay…

Curiosity got the better of him, though, so he would end up opening the gift—

Before being whisked away.

---

---

---

“Where—”

He looked around. Oh, no.

Why did he keep on coming back here?! But wait… the place looked much different from the time that he’d come to destroy it…

This was when he heard a quiet, yet familiar mewling noise from the door. He turned around, and saw that…

“Oh…”

For he’d found himself in his own room, and there was a younger version of himself asleep on the bed; right at the door though was…

“Papaya.”

The silly name that one of his sisters had given the family Delcatty that had taken to running around the house had stuck with the pastel-colored Pokémon, before aforementioned Papaya went deeper inside the room and then jumped on the bed…

Wait a second, was this the time when—

The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach only increased when he realized just exactly when this was.

“That time.”

He sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose, because his suspicions were confirmed—this was the time when their parents had started cutting him off from the rest of the world.

---

Elise Calcifet

ability; alyosha: your blood will lure Pokémon to you—however, it only works for one particular prehistoric creature; raised from a minuscule sample found from a single fosillized piece of amber.

That last instance… okay, that made him very sad in more ways than one.

Now the problem of everything here was… huh? That was it? The next time he attempted to access the ‘dreamscape’ there was no more glitching castle, no more Snubbull guide to boss them around, everything… it was like everything had ‘reverted’ back to the way it was.

There was only one thing left: he would need to contact Hecate—rather, Miss Elise about this.

Before he could do that, though… huh? Since when did he have a new Pokémon inside his PC? What was going—

Wait a second, since when did he have a…

“Shit.”

He almost missed the three gifts as well, but the tag attached to the Delcatty waiting for him was there…

“That. That wasn’t just any collective hallucination… was it?” he blinked.

---

Elise Calcifet