PokéBattles: Sandy Version

Day 1
Published: 10/04/23

Very few creatures in Sandy Version were used to doing things without a god dictating reality when Ben caught the Narrator inside a comma. The rodent who had died and came back to life, along with the boy who killed it and was now hiding from a physical manifestation of death inside a PokéBall. The starship captain who now ran a low quality gym with a single member, along with his chief medic who had taken up residence inside his body, and first officer. And the man who communicates entirely in Emoji, along with his three Pokémon.

Raticate and Raticate were walking together in a beautiful palm tree forest, chittering happily away about cheese preferences. This was a favourite discussion topic of the two rodents, both knowing the Raticate who had killed Joey favoured danish blue, while the Raticate who had died and escaped the Land of the Dead preferred red fox, but there was still so much on the topic to discuss. Plus, why not talk about the joys of one's favourite food and the way it stimulates the taste buds, revelling in both memory and imagination of the tastes and textures. To outsiders who don't speak fluent Pokémon, the conversation would have sounded extremely repetitive, with neither rodent able to say any syllable except rat, i, and cate. It was while the two started discussing the merits and drawbacks of brie when the Narrator vanished.

The Raticate who had once been dead didn't really notice since the Narrator had been quiet while the two were talking, and kept moving forwards. The Raticate who hadn't, and had been relying on the Narrator narrating it walking for its movement stumbled. "Raticate?!" it asked. "Raticate!"

The other Raticate turned back to its friend. "Raticate. Rat rati raticate?" asking if it was alright.

"Raticate! Rati raticate."

It was at this point that the Raticate with experience of being without the Narrator noticed that the Narrator was no longer around. "Raticate." It said, understanding and sympathetic. "Raticate rati rat rat Raticate rat rati. Rat raticate rati raticate." it offered.

And so it did. The discussion of cheeses gave way to a rodent helping another learn how to do things without guidance from the Narrator. While everyone would learn these things over the next few days, the process was easier for those who either already knew it was possible or those who had a friend to help them learn.

At the worst gym in all of Sandy Version, Shadow the Hedgehog was currently being blackmailed by Gym Owner Jim under threat of being buried in adorable fluffy things into taking a pilates class. "I... Need the money... And you... Haven't actually... Made any gains yet."

"Maybe I would have if you were actually qualified to run a gym rather than... Whatever it is you're actually good at. Even if I wasn't already the Ultimate Lifeform this place would be useless to me."

"Well if that's how... You feel... About things, I'll just have to... Unleash the collection... Of adorable Chao... I've been accumulating since we... First met." The alleged physical trainer smiled cockily as the hedgehog narrowed his eyes. "Shall we... Start now?"

Shadow lowered his head, and just before he was narrated to follow Jim, the Narrator vanished. He looked around in panic as Jim moved further away, "Wait!" he called out

"Aren't you... Coming?" Jim turned back to Shadow before noticing the panic in his ludicrously large eyes, subtly connected under his brow. He jogged back over to the hedgehog. "What's... Wrong?"

"You can move?"

"Why wouldn't I... Be able to... Move?"

"The Narrator just disappeared for me."

"I try to... Ignore its... Presence as best as I... Can. But now that... You mention... It." He smiled, before calling for Spock and Bones to come out. "I'm afraid... Pilates... Will have to be... Cancelled."

His Vulcan first officer emerged from a room off to the side of the gym, while his chief medical officer crawled out from his body. "Good. You've not collapsed into a boneless puddle this time."

"Indeed," Spock responded. "It appears that the red, booming, text with incomprehensible power is no longer around to control reality. It would be logical to conclude we are no longer subject to its most illogical sense of humour."

Shadow was barely paying attention to the conversation, instead watching the three men move around without any concern or negative effects from a lack of Narrator, and tentatively started to move his hands, then his feet, promptly falling down. "How are you three doing that!" he yelled in frustration.

"Well, it's... Simple... We just decide what we want to do... And then... Do it. For example..." Jim took out something that resembled an old flip phone with a metal grate for a cover and flipped it open with a flick of the wrist. "Kirk to Enterprise, three to... Beam up." There was no response, and the three failed to dematerialize.

"Captain, it was always a possibility that in the three years that we've been stuck as prisoners of the Narrator entity, unable to contact the Enterprise due to the Narrator running active interference that the ship would have... Left. In fact, it would have been illogical for them to assume we were still alive."

"Are you saying we're... Stuck here? I can't... Accept that."

"No captain. I'm saying that we'll need a more powerful communication device to contact Starfleet Command."

"Will we even be able to secure that on this backwards planet?" Bones interjected.

"It's worth... Trying. While you two... Do just that... I think... I'll start... Basic movement classes... To secure funds... On the off chance we... Fail."

Emojiman was taking his bull for a walk in a park in Lavender Town. Some local Youngsters, Lasses, and Preschoolers had started gathering around the two, keeping a distance. Figuring they were looking to pet the caught Pokémon, much larger than the ones they had and therefore much more inviting to cuddle to the young children, Emojiman smiled and said "👍🖐️🐄♂️" In response, the bull slowed down and settled, mooing consent to be approached. The children slowly, cautiously, approached the man and Pokémon, but before they could start petting the creature, the Narrator vanished.

"🐄♂️🔙" Emojiman called as the red tint covering the parts of Sandy the Narrator had influence over left, as he returned his bull to its ball, before looking around the kids and adults, realizing quickly that unlike him they'd never experienced life without a big booming voice, and were clearly terrified of what this means. "👂🔼 👁️💡🧑🧑🧑😨🚫🟥🔠 🍑🧑🧑🧑🥫🤸🎮➕🤼🚫🟥🔠 🧑🧑🧑❔😞🍑⌛🧑🧑🧑🥇❕ 👁️🥫ℹ️🧑🧑🧑"

One of the parents of one of the bolder Lasses, the child who had come closest to petting Emojiman's Bull before the Narrator disappeared, responded. "That's all well and good you saying that, but how? I'm trying to command my body to move to give my daughter a hug to console her, and myself if I'm honest, but without the Narrator, it just isn't responding. Look. Hug. Hug! HUG! It isn't working!"

Emojiman walked over to him in response, before gently putting his hand on the small of his back, and started slowly walking towards the children. His legs carried him along with Emojiman by the muscle memory of what the act of walking felt like. When he guided the man to the children, instincts took over for both him and his daughter, and the two embraced. And it was at that moment that Emojiman realized he had volunteered himself for a very busy day.

Of everyone unaware of how movement worked without the Narrator, no warning the Narrator was going to vanish, and no one to teach them, Red having only just gotten used to talking to the Narrator rather than thinking at it had the easiest time adjusting to the lack of the Narrator's presence. The boy hadn't managed to get any new captures since the Tentacool, but he had figured out where the controls were for the Monster Field within the safe house and was having some entertainment from getting to see Pokémon from throughout the Version, rather than just the Kanto region where he resided and any additional monsters he encountered due to the Narrator's jokes.

After figuring out how to do anything without the Narrator the first thing he tried to do was check the local news after using the bizarre room to room navigation of the Safe House in which he now resided. Instead of usual programming, the buzzing of the test card accompanied him as he sent out his Velociraptor and Tentacool for company, having previously found the Safe House was far too small to keep his Muk out for long due to the scent quickly filling the small space of each room within it.

Joanne was halfway home when she heard a ringing from one of her PokéBalls. Her route had diverted from Ben's, who'd helped her figure out how to move without the Narrator. "Phone, come out. Is that Catherine?" The Phone beeped in confirmation. "...Yeah, this conversation's going to suck. Use answer."

"Hi. Love you." An irritated voice came across from the other end of the call. "It just took me the past few hours to figure out how to call you without the Narrator's presence. And, well, no one hate's the Narrator quite as much as you do so I figure you had something to do with this."

"...Yeah, apparently Ben hates the Narrator more than I do because this had nothing to do with me."

"...But you knew exactly who it was to do with?"

"He figured I was going to turn into a megalomaniac after I... Err... caught the clone gods Sandledee and Sandledum so they were out of the picture? Then after helping me make sure they were never coming back, he did something to the Narrator and here we are."

A silence filled the air, as Catherine processed this.

"...You... Took on the two gods that were more powerful than the Narrator without telling me you were going to do so?"

"You'd have insisted on helping."

"Of course I'd have insisted on helping! That sort of thing is way too dangerous to do alone!"

"And that's why I didn't tell you. It's not just way too dangerous to do alone, it's way too dangerous to do at all! I... I didn't want you putting yourself in harm's way for my sake."

"You knew it was too dangerous to risk doing and yet you did it alone?! What if something happened to you?"

"I... Technically wasn't doing it alone?"

"...You put someone else at risk to help you but wouldn't let me put myself at risk out of concern for you?"

"What? No. I... Convinced the Narrator to help me since it didn't seem like it was a fan of having a boss?"

"...I'm going to need some time to process that you risked life and limb without telling me because you didn't want me risking my life and limb to support you, and worked with the godlike being you hate so much."

"I get it. Call me when you're ready to talk. Love you."

"...Yeah. Later."

The line went dead. "Well, crap," Joanne said more to herself than to anyone else. Joanne's Phone buzzed gently in her hand, trying to comfort her. "...Thanks. I'm going to need something a bit stronger than your purring. Pretty sure we've got booze in the house, which is good because I'm pretty anywhere I might be able to obtain alcohol is probably shut."

Joanne continued walking back home, specifically not recalling Phone, instead letting it vibrate in her hand, the affection doing something to comfort her.

Ben, having been aware but not familiar with the lack of infinite stasis without the Narrator, had made good time getting between the Nettle Patch and his home since he'd been prepared for the Narrator's disappearance. As was his custom, he sent all his Pokémon - The Door he defeated when leaving on his adventure, his trusty Arbok who he had rescued from Team Rocket, and the Butterfree he confiscated from Joey after rescuing his brother from him just as he was heading into the gate, before tossing their balls into the box outside the front door.

"Mum! Jacob! I'm back!" He cheerfully called out as he entered his home's kitchen.

"Oh, thank goodness you're home," Beth called out. "I was worried about you when the Narrator suddenly vanished, especially with how long it took me to figure out how to operate the remote. Nothing but a test card as of yet. You seem barely phased by it..."

"...Yeah... I'd heard a rumour that this was possible so had been practising in my head in case it happened." Ben wasn't lying, exactly, but he omitted some details. That he'd heard the rumour from the kid who he'd rescued Jacob from. That said kid only knew it because he'd returned from the Land of the Dead where most of the time there was no Narrator. And that he'd caused the Narrator's disappearance in a deliberate act. "Turned out it worked. Where's Jacob?"

"I think he's lying in bed until he figures out how to reliably walk without falling over. I don't blame him, but I was nearer the couch."

Ben headed up to his brother's room and knocked gently on the door before entering it. "Hey. How're you doing?"

"Better than I expected considering the source of anything happening just upped and vanished. I seem to be able to move my arm now, and you seem to be managing fine, but I don't trust balancing without it yet."

"...Good riddance to it, I say."

"Seriously?"

"Can I speak about the... Incident?"

Jacob paused, thinking. "Yeah. I'm ok to talk about that at present."

"Obviously Joey should have released you as soon as he caught you, but I'm pretty sure the Narrator orchestrated your capture to test him to see if he would."

"And how do you figure that?"

It was Ben's turn to hesitate. "...Because I accidentally caught the kid who stole my Arbok while I was rescuing it. And then after I released him, it started going all in on recruiting me to be a chosen hero or something - It had started just before, but... Way too much of a coincidence for that not to have been the Narrator's doing."

"...That... Wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility." Jacob noticed what Ben wasn't wearing around his neck. "What happened to that necklace you started wearing after rescuing me? Did you lose it when the Narrator vanished?"

Ben grinned at his brother. "Don't need it anymore." He paused, briefly. "You comfy there or do you want me to show you the ropes of walking without an asshole god acting as an intermediary between your brain and body?"

The Raticate who had been dead had just about managed to teach the Raticate who hadn't how to walk without the Narrator's aid and without any physical prompting. "Raticate. Rati rati Raticate raticate rat rat rati rat rat rati rat raticate rat." It said, before adding, "Rat rat," to clarify its reasoning.

"Rat rati. Rat raticate rati raticate rat rat?" The second Raticate asked. It knew its friend had a lot of mixed feelings about the boy it kept safe from the Sand Reaper in a PokéBall, both having been murdered by the lad but also that the other Raticate attributed Joey as being instrumental in getting the two of them out of the land of the dead, so was unsure which way its friend was leaning.

"Raticate rati rat," Ratticate admitted, before letting Joey out from his PokéBall.

The former Youngster, now in jeans after Ben had stolen all his shorts, emerged from his PokéBall. "Time for my 8 or so lines of fresh air before I go cower back in my PokéBall to avoid a manifestation of death coming to... Kill... Something's off."

"Rat." both Raticate agreed in unison.

"...That subtle red hue permeating the atmosphere I never noticed until I spent time without it in the Land of the Dead's gone," Joey observed. "The Narrator's not around, huh? Which means there aren't any lines to count down when the Sand Reaper will manifest. So... Are we going to see if the Sand Reaper appears without its presence?"

"Rat." One of the Raticate nodded to the boy, "Raticate rati rat raticate rati," it held up Joey's PokéBall to reassure him.

"Got it. So. How's life been treating the two of you?" He asked the two rodents before a familiar, ominous, swirling vortex of black mist appeared before manifesting into the shape of an 8 foot tall anthropomorphic Sandshrew wearing a black, silk, cloak and armed with a giant scythe. The colour drained from Joey's face.

"One shall--" the Sand Reaper managed to get out before Raticate recalled Joey to his ball, and immediately it dissolved back into black mist before dissipating away.

"Rati Raticate." The rat apologised to the ball in its hand.

The test card Red, Velociraptor and Tentacool had on in the background as they socialized to pass the time turned to an emergency news broadcast. "Please remain calm. It appears the Narrator has disappeared, and it appears we can still act despite its lack of presence. Take your time to adjust to moving without the presence of the big booming red text that has defined all our lives for as long as anyone can remember. We will repeat this broadcast in fifteen minutes if there are no updates so that people who are just figuring out how to tune in are never far away from the latest information. In the meanwhile, please enjoy the following ASMR video a Squirtle visiting a beach. We recommend headphones for the best listening experience."

In an office within Sand Fox Corporate HQ, the narration seal keeping the Gosslord contained within an office was slowly weakening. The Narrator had been constantly pouring energy into it over the past year, and without that constant charging, it was only a matter of time before it dissipated completely. Sandy's Narrator had never been the best long term planner, as evidenced by the fact its previous attempts to deal with the Gosslord problem had only created more of them, and its attempts to orchestrate a chosen one narrative to prevent Team Rocket from acquiring the older version of SVWebmaster had ultimately resulted in its current predicament - secluded and isolated deep within a nettle patch, having been trapped within a comma by an 8 year old child.

The two dozen Gosslord sealed within the office and who had been feeding on digital gossip via various social media platforms had noticed, and having worked out how to move without the Narrator's presence starting to tentatively attack the door, and to their delight found it wasn't deflecting their attacks straight back at them any more.

Day 2
Published: 11/04/23

There's only a finite amount of watching a Squirtle chasing Wingul and waves, interspersed with the same emergency news broadcast, before anyone falls asleep, no matter how much socialization you do during it. For Red and his Pokémon Velociraptor that amount was around two and a half hours. Tentacool lasted a couple more hours, getting a sense of nostalgia from viewing the ocean. This led Red to wake up to a small, protofeather covered, dinosaur slobbering on his face as it slept at around 3am, the television still broadcasting the same Squirtle on a repeating loop.

As the boy tried to work out how to get up to both wash his Velociraptor's drool from his face alongside an early morning trip to the bathroom without waking either his dinosaur, happily sleeping on his head, or his Tentacool who seemed to be hugging him with two of its tentacles as it slept, the television cut to the newsroom.

"Please remain calm. This is an update on the current situation regarding the Narrator's disappearance. We can still act despite the Narrator's lack of presence. Take your time to adjust to moving without the presence of the Narrator. We were contacted by popular podcaster Emojiman yesterday evening with advice on how to do this for those who haven't yet succeeded, having been helping a lot of people adjust in person yesterday. The following is the voice message we received from him."

The video from the newscaster to a pleasing, blue, gradient with a white audio waveform superimposed inside a rectangle, matching the noise coming out of the speakers. "❔🧑🟢🤏👋👋 4️⃣❔🧑👐✋📖📕✋ 🧑🚫👐🍑🦨🪁☄️4️⃣❔🐍🤏👾🥫👋🦨🪁☄️↔️ 💪❤️✔️❌🥫ℹ️ ❔🧑🤟🧑🔺👋🧸🤗 ⚖️⚠️🟢❔🧑👋🦵🦵❔👋🦵🦵🦵🦵4️⃣🥽➡️🧑❤️😀 ➕🧑👋🚫🟥🔠🟢👋🔁➕🔁4️⃣⚖️ 🧑🧑🧑🥫🥇 👁️💡🧑🧑🧑🥫🔺💡🧑🥫2️⃣ 💭🚫🟥🔠🚫⏹️🧑🧑🧑👋➕🥇"

The screen cut back to the newscaster. "Extremely useful tips which we here in the studio have found help. We will repeat this broadcast in fifteen minutes if there are no updates so that people who are just figuring out how to tune in are never far away from the latest information. In the meanwhile, please enjoy the following ASMR video a Charmander sleeping by a campfire. We recommend headphones for the best listening experience."

Almost everyone struggled to get up on the first morning without the Narrator. Even those who had figured out the movement thing during the first day were so used to the Narrator's presence that they struggled to remember how to move without it while still half asleep. And that might have contributed to Joanne's struggle, but there was a more personal reason for it.

"Ugh, I haven't had a hangover this bad since I was a student." She paused, instinctually waiting for the annoying response, but there was none. "Oh. Right. That. I get to nurse my headache without any booming voice for once. That'll be nice." She reached into her bedside cabinet for the aspirin she kept for hangover related emergencies, swallowed a tablet dry, and promptly went back to sleep.

Bones looked at the building in front of himself and Spock. "A Pokémon gym? Really? We're meant to be attempting to secure a means of contacting Starfleet Command and you're emotionless green blood decided to get interested in glorified cockfighting?"

"I'm getting strong readings of transporter-like technology from inside this building. If we can take some components from it, we may be able to repurpose them as a subspace relay to boost the transmission power of our communicators."

"Is it even open? Enough of the population are so unused to moving for themselves Jim's using it as an opportunity to raise funds in case we fail."

"It does not appear to be so. Which should make our task easier."

Bones glanced at Spock. "Oh?"

"We cannot repurpose the components of what appears to be transporter like technology without dismantling them first. This will, no doubt, be easier to accomplish if we are the only ones present." He paused. "And perhaps it will interfere with the operation of this gym dedicated to, as you put it, glorified cockfighting."

A smile crossed Bons' face. "Well, why didn't you say so?"

Ben had spent the end of the previous day helping both his brother and mother figure out how to move without the Narrator before the three of them had helped the household's various Pokémon get used to it. It had been exhausting, all told, so it was fairly late when anyone in the household rose. Ben was first and while half asleep had initially tried to tell the Narrator he was rising before remembering what had happened the previous day. He proceeded to get up under his own steam.

Pouring himself a bowl of Life cereal - He didn't particularly care for it, but his mother had bought it in bulk a few months ago when the Narrator decided to endorse it, meaning it was the only cereal they had in at the moment. He'd asked the Narrator if it had been bribed or otherwise paid, but the Narrator had denied such, instead declaring that it was feeling nostalgic to a time before Ben had been born. He was still sceptical that the Narrator hadn't meant that as an insult, but that was kind of academic at this point.

After finishing off his cereal, and drinking the leftover milk from the bowl since his mother wasn't present to tell him not to, he turned the television on in case there was new information in the news bulletins. It was useful to know how others were adjusting to life without the Narrator, and the ASMR videos they were showing between repeats of the same bulletins were cute. He began to draw a picture of his old Raticate, only having been in contact with it by phone since finding out Joey and Joey's old Raticate had come back to life. Ben wondered if he should call to check on the trio, but was sure the Raticate his old Raticate was with had already known how to move without the Narrator given what Joey had told him about being dead, so the trio was probably more fine than most.

The many Gosslord had spent most of the time since the Narrator vanished attacking the door, causing the Narration Seal to weaken faster than it otherwise would. This time, when one slammed into it, it fell off its hinges. They had escaped. Now to leave this small room and feast on fresh gossip, rather than the stale gossip they'd been able to acquire from their various social media feeds.

Red didn't want to leave the living room of his safe house in case some important news appeared on screen rather than the helpful advice for people still adjusting to moving without the Narrator, somehow spoken entirely in emoji and literally phoned in, that had been broadcasting every fifteen minutes between footage of a sleeping Charmander and calming campfire noises. At the same time, he desperately wanted to occupy his mind with literally anything else, and he was starting to run out of things to talk about with his Pokémon. Even the old reliable audible torture from when he was part of Team Rocket of Jessie, James, and especially Meowth's weekly karaoke sessions would be a blessed relief from this monotony.

He looked at Tentacool, who was far less relaxed at the footage of the Charmander sleeping by a campfire than he was, and Velociraptor who seemed to view it... Hungrily. Dismissing the latter option as probably too dangerous, he turned to Tentacool. "Hey, this is going to sound weird but I'm bored out of my mind and don't want to move. Could you use Poison Sting on me, break the monotony a little?"

"Cool? Tentacool cool."

"Yeah I know it'll hurt, but that'd be more stimulation than the current nothing I'm enduring."

"Tent tent cool tenta a tent tenta a tent a tenta acool..."

"...Hm... Yeah... Wrap's also an option, there's antidote in the bathroom, though, so I could heal if you do accidentally poison me. But... Yeah, let's start with the option without the chance of poiso--"

Before Red was able to finish commanding Tentacool into using Wrap on him, the Charmander on screen dissolved into a news bulletin. "Please remain calm. In addition to the Narrator disappearing, there are rumours of a previously unknown Pokémon appearing in Cerulean City. We do not know how powerful it is, but it is apparently large and numerous. While normally we would recommend trainers looking to expand their Pokédex check it out, in the absence of the Narrator and how unused to moving without it we all are we would strongly advise trainers to steer clear. For those who have just managed to tune in, we will replay the advice popular podcaster Emojiman sent us in a call yesterday.

The screen changed to the now familiar blue screen with a white audio form, matching the audio of a recorded message. "❔🧑🟢🤏👋👋 4️⃣❔🧑👐✋📖📕✋ 🧑🚫👐🍑🦨🪁☄️4️⃣❔🐍🤏👾🥫👋🦨🪁☄️↔️ 💪❤️✔️❌🥫ℹ️ ❔🧑🤟🧑🔺👋🧸🤗 ⚖️⚠️🟢❔🧑👋🦵🦵❔👋🦵🦵🦵🦵4️⃣🥽➡️🧑❤️😀 ➕🧑👋🚫🟥🔠🟢👋🔁➕🔁4️⃣⚖️ 🧑🧑🧑🥫🥇 👁️💡🧑🧑🧑🥫🔺💡🧑🥫2️⃣ 💭🚫🟥🔠🚫⏹️🧑🧑🧑👋➕🥇"

The footage cut back to the studio. "Until there is an update, we will replay this news bulletin every fifteen minutes. In the meanwhile, please enjoy the following ASMR video of a Bulbasaur walking through a forest. We recommend headphones for the best listening experience."

Red paused. Looked at Velociraptor and Tentacool. "...Or not. I know we were advised not to, but I'm not really having much trouble with this whole moving thing, I seem to have managed to teach you two how to do it. And Safe House 24 is only very slightly north of Cerulean City. Plus hanging around the tv rather than in the Monster Field can't be doing you two any good." He waited for the two monsters to nod at him before continuing. "Tentacool, Velociraptor, return." And headed to the door to put in the code to outside.

Eventually making her way down from her bedroom to her living room, Joanne turned on the television, and hit the sight of a Bulbasaur wandering through a forest "...Are they using ASMR videos between news bulletins for an emergency broadcast? That's... Honestly, that makes more sense than most things..."

The Bulbasaur faded away, and she watched the news anchor give details about the unidentified Pokémon in Cerulean City before changing to a literally phoned in audible emoji message relaying information about the basics of movement she already knew from some podcaster. She turned the TV off.

"Cerulean, huh. That's where Sand Fox is based. I don't think they ever cleared their Gosslord from the... Offices..." She paused, realizing exactly what she was saying. "Nah they were behind a Narration blockade. Those are always self-sustaining, the Narrator would have to be truly incompetent to set them up in a way to require manual..." Her colour went pale at the realization that Sandy's Narrator was exactly incompetent enough to have set up a Narration blockade in a way that required constant maintenance for it not to fade away. "Phone, I'm pretty sure I never got around to putting you back in your ball. Get here. Now."

Her Phone vibrated its way across the house to her, having been feeding by having plugged itself into a charger. It played a jingle at Joanne as it got close enough for her to pick it up.

Grabbing it off the floor, she called Catherine. It went to voice mail. "I know you don't want to talk to me right now and normally I'd give you space but I'm 90% sure those Gosslord in your office got out when Ben caught the Narrator. You need to get out of there. Are you able to walk without the Narrator yet?" She hung up, shook her head, and sent a text. "Gosslord probably out. Can you walk? Let me know asap."

Five minutes later, she was ready to head out and received a text back. "Seriously?! Barely. Not enough to evade."

"Check news. I had help learning. I'll head to your place."

Red was crouched behind a bush just on the outskirts of Cerulean City. While the rocket goons he'd been in the safe house to avoid weren't exactly as mobile as he was right now, he didn't want to actually be seen by any of them since that might clue them in on where he actually was when they figured out movement. He wasn't entirely sure if they'd recognise him without the Narrator announcing his presence, but felt it was best not to take the chance.

He hadn't seen any of the rare Pokémon that had led him to this expedition yet, but an Abra had been beside him for the past 15 minutes, slightly panicking and yelling "Abra!" a ton while closing its eyes, opening them, looking around franticly, noticing that he was still beside a young trainer, and repeating the process. It started out concerning, then as Red figured out what was going on - The Abra was trying to teleport away from him as they often did when encountered in the wild, but hadn't figured out how to convert thought to movement without the Narrator yet - it became slightly amusing. At this point, however, it had stopped being amusing and had reached annoying.

He looked to the Pokémon and quietly whispered just loud enough for it to hear, "If you're trying to escape from me via a Teleport, yell less and think more. Tap into memories of how your body felt... When moving? Being one place and then another? Whatever, you know the experience better than me... When you last actually teleported, rather than yelling the attack name in your language."

The Abra blinked, hesitated a bit, closed its eyes, and vanished. "Well that's one less thing to worry about, now do I need to get further into Cerulean to figure out how powerful that unknown Pokémon is?" he muttered to himself. "...Even with the Narrator not around I'm saying the obvious to myself. I've gotten too used to talking over the past few weeks." He chuckled to himself as he realized he'd said that out loud as well.

Looking out into Cerulean he noticed the Abra had apparently teleported towards where people were rather than away from them. While the only thing - Pokémon or human - on the street it had teleported onto it was clearly a bit distressed at having moved in the wrong direction... Where were the Rocket goons in the city, anyhow? Surely there'd be more in the city than on Route 24 just north of it just by chance of where they happened to be that the Narrator vanished, but while he'd evaded a couple on the way to his current bush he couldn't see any in the city itself.

It was then that he saw one of the rare Pokémon reported on the news lumber into view. The first thing he noticed was a gaping maw where a torso should be. Fangs, looking sharp enough to pierce bones lined its torso mouth and went further through the entirety of its body. It wasn't so much large as in tall but had an almost spherical body shape which read mostly as being head, and that head had a diameter almost the height of an adult human. Two tentacles emerged from within the mouth on its torso, with equally sharp teeth, both of which the same shade of red as the majority of the creature's flesh, one that reminded Red not of the Narrator or his own name, but of the logos that adorn a lot of the larger tabloid newspapers, while the glossy white of the teeth lining the maw reminded Red of the celebrity magazine covers he ignored while picking up his comics when younger. The creature's horns were also glossy white, as were the phone markings on its two, thick legs, both looking too small for the size of the creature's torso that nearly touched the ground. A three clawed hand came out from where Red thought its shoulders would be if its torso wasn't a second head was holding a phone that the smaller of its two sets of glowing eyes - the ones on its actual head - was glued to, the other, larger pair of eyes, above the gaping maw, focused entirely on the Abra.

Before the Abra had had time to notice the beast behind it, or teleport again, one of the two tentacle mouth-arms picked the much smaller Pokémon up by the foot as Red stared on in horror. A deep, rumbling, voice that made Red want to evacuate both his bowels and the region slowly spoke not the creature's name as he'd expected but a three word phrase, as if each word were a separate sentence. "Feed. Me. Gossip."

The other tentacle went to the Abra's head and squeezed, opening the skull enough for the creature to pour the brain into its mouth as if drinking one of the many soda pops available from vending machines throughout the Version. The Abra was still squirming in the grip of the creature, somehow still alive despite everything Red had witnessed. The Abra started to glow the familiar light of evolution and metamorphosized in front of Red's eyes into another, identical, behemoth of a Pokémon to the one that had just eaten its brain.

Red instinctually backed up from the bush he was hiding behind at the sight, his foot catching a twig, crunching it underneath. He felt his breath stop, desperately trying to make no sound as one of the tentacles on the newly evolved Abra turned towards the bush he was behind. The former Abra spoke in the same deep monotone as the creature who had just eaten its brain. "Feed. Me. Gossip." And Red knew with a certainty he had never known before that his presence was known, and that his Pokémon were vastly ill equipped to deal with this situation. He scampered up from his crouch into a full on run. Hoping against hope that he would either be able to outrun the creature or at least it would spend enough time feeding on the Team Rocket grunts he ran past for him to make it back to Safe House 24. He desperately hoped it had thick enough doors to keep whatever that thing was out.

Joanne was able to sneak through Cerulean City largely unimpeded by the Gosslord as she headed to the apartment complex Catherine was based in. Deciding against taking the lift because the stairs at least prevented her from becoming trapped with a Gosslord, she encountered nothing out of the ordinary. They didn't seem to have made it into these apartments yet. Still, she used her key to get in without knocking, in case she was wrong and the noise attracted unwanted attention. Quietly closing the door she called out "Hi?"

"...Hi." The response was cold and came from the couch. "No news on what the things are, but... Yeah, they're probably Gosslord. Those things were brutal, think I was only able to keep one at bay from Narrator fiat, which someone prevented from ever being a thing again."

"The Narrator could have dealt with the problem as soon as it occurred rather than delaying things. The Narrator didn't have to cause Gus to evolve in the first place. You know that." She paused. "Plus I didn't know the kid had a device to catch the Narrator with, or that doing so would cause the Gosslord to get out. I get you being mad at me, but we don't have time for you to expand it beyond the stuff I'm actually responsible for. Now, let's get you moving."

"...Yeah, I know. Sorry. How long do we have?"

"There weren't any Gosslord in your apartment complex that I could see, but I needed to hide from them throughout the city. They matched how you described Gosslord to me. We're not in a rush, but we can't linger. There's a safe house on Route 24."

Spock was attempting to find any sign of access to the only thing of interest in the entry foyer of the gym - A large, square, tile with the outline of a diamond drawn on it.

Bones meanwhile was getting impatient. "You've been at that for over an hour," he began to pace. "You're clearly not going to find a way of opening it up." His pacing took him onto the tile. "Are you even sure it's the trans--"

And he was no longer where he had been. "--Porter... Damnit." Looking around, he found himself in a nearly identical room with four identical diamond tiles in each corner. He walked over to the one in the opposite corner.

Spock, meanwhile, was waiting in the original room. Long enough passed for him to conclude that Bones wasn't about to be transported back immediately. He stepped onto the tile and found himself in a nearly identical room with four tiles, one he was standing on and three others. He stepped off the tile, and then back onto it, to test if they were linked in a two way relationship. He found himself back in the room he started in.

"...Without knowing the number of rooms in this apparent maze, there's no reason to assume that he'll find his way back to the tile that brings him back here by random chance, but equally no way of knowing how long it would take to find him. Additionally, with how similar this room is to the second room, without marking them in some way it will be difficult to maintain an orientation of which panel leads to which room."

He looked around and noticed a loose rock around one of the gym statues. "Maybe this will be sharp enough..." He tested it against the ground and fount it was able to make enough of a scratch to be visible, and began to systematically investigate the maze.

Ben had just finished sharpening the kitchen knives on Jacob's Grindstone to give the Pokémon some additional metal filings at the end of feeding the household's many Pokémon. Both his mother and brother were now moving about as well as he was, but he enjoyed the chore since he liked seeing the household's Pokémon happy so tried to arrange it so it was him doing it and other people doing stuff like washing up and gardening as much as he could. He went back through to the lounge and looked at the board game setup on the coffee table the three of them had been playing. A cooperative game, based around administering potions to angry, ill, wild Pokémon without getting killed in the process. "...What the heck happened during upkeep?" He shook his head, the game using dice rather than cards sometimes caused extremely swingy upkeep phases. "Anything new on the news?"

As he said it, the ASMR video of a Bulbasaur taking a walk in the woods faded back into a news bulletin. "Please remain calm. In addition to the lack of a Narrator, the unidentified Pokémon appearing in Cerulean City situation continues to grow. Residents of the city who have started to manage to contact us are indicating that they appear to be aggressive and... There are some reports indicating that they eat brains, with one witness claiming the act evolves the victim into one of them. No photographic footage has yet been captured of them, so we are as yet unsure as to the veracity of these reports, but we must re-emphasize to steer clear of Cerulean City if you are not already present there. For those still unused to moving, we will now replay the advice given by popular podcaster Emojiman provided us yesterday."

The now familiar audio message played ont he usual blue screen with a white audio waveform matching the audio. "❔🧑🟢🤏👋👋 4️⃣❔🧑👐✋📖📕✋ 🧑🚫👐🍑🦨🪁☄️4️⃣❔🐍🤏👾🥫👋🦨🪁☄️↔️ 💪❤️✔️❌🥫ℹ️ ❔🧑🤟🧑🔺👋🧸🤗 ⚖️⚠️🟢❔🧑👋🦵🦵❔👋🦵🦵🦵🦵4️⃣🥽➡️🧑❤️😀 ➕🧑👋🚫🟥🔠🟢👋🔁➕🔁4️⃣⚖️ 🧑🧑🧑🥫🥇 👁️💡🧑🧑🧑🥫🔺💡🧑🥫2️⃣ 💭🚫🟥🔠🚫⏹️🧑🧑🧑👋➕🥇" before cutting back to the studio.

"We will replay this news bulletin every fifteen minutes until there is an update. In the meanwhile, please enjoy the following ASMR video of a Chesspin eating crunchy snacks. We recommend headphones for the best listening experience."

After a short walk through a bunch of the tiles with the diamond markings, each time going to the tile in the opposite corner of the room, Bones found himself in a room that had slightly different decor. Namely in the form of a young, green haired, woman sitting on a purple podium. There were no other warp tiles in the room.

"You're moving." There was no emotion in the statement.

"...Yes?"

"How?"

"I just think about it and it happens. If you can make it, Jim's holding classes at Just Dune It Gym."

"I think I'll manage. I'm good at thinking about things and them happening." She smiled at the doctor. Not the warm smile of someone greteful for information, but the cold smile of a cat enjoying playing with its meal. Bones no longer felt himself supporting his weight with his feet. Looking down, he saw he was hovering a few inches off the ground. "See?"

Before Bones could process that she was somehow lifting him with her mind, felt himself flying through the air, and then pain as he crashed into the wall on the opposite side of the woman from where he originally was. "You don't seem to be a Pokémon trainer. You don't seem to have any Pokémon at all. Why are you here?"

Bones got back to his feet. "Cockfighting, you mean? No, can't say I practice it." Before finding himself being flung to the wall behind the woman by her mind. She turned to keep facing him.

"Just answer the question, save us both a headache. And you a fair amount of other pain."

Bones once again climbed to his feet, getting out an indignant "You won't even attempt to justify it?" before being flung across the room to the one corner he hadn't been in.

"We both know nothing I'm going to say would convince you, and I doubt you're going to listen to what my Pokémon tell you either. Now, would you care to answer my question?"

Before Bones was even able to stand, he felt himself being lifted from the ground. "At least give me a chance to answer before you throw me across the room again."

"Are you ready to answer my question yet?"

"I wasn't planning on giving someone who views forcing animals to fight as sport information."

"So why waste time waiting for you to not answer it?" She flung him back across the room to the other side of her, back still turned away from the tile that brought him into the room. Even before he began to get back to his feet, he felt himself lift from the floor once more and heard her continue talking. "We both know the script by now, you can interrupt any time you're ready to let me know why you're here."

Having snuck their way out of Cerulean, Joanne and Catherine made their way through Route 24. The atmosphere between them had been... Frosty... But with the looming threat of giant creatures trying to eat one's brain, they made it work.

As the safe house came into sight, Catherine blinked "...Is that a... Giant safe?" she whispered.

"...Yeah. Weird--" Joanne noticed what was in front of the giant safe that was Safe House 24. "Shoot." A Gosslord was attacking the door of the safe house, bashing it with its mouthy tentacles, while spraying gastric acid from its giant maw, and all around doing as much damage to the door as it could.

"...Any backup plans?"

"...Your appartment's likely too dangerous by now, I don't fancy camping out in Mt. Moon... I think Bill's cottage is at the end of Route 25... Isolated enough that I doubt any Gosslord made their way there yet. We should be able to crash the night there."

"Meaning we need to..." Catherine trailed off.

"Sneak past the Gosslord, yeah. Sorry."

"...Sure, at least if it goes wrong we'll be doomed quickly rather than slowly like the rest of the Version."

"Do you have a better plan?"

"That's the worst part, I know you're right about this being the best shot."

The two women crept through the bushes as quietly as they could, hoping the Gosslord was making enough noise trying to bash the door open that they'd be able to get past unimpeded. Holding their breaths every time they made what sounded to them like a loud noise, every little sound sounding much louder than it would normally do. If the Gosslord heard them, it showed no signs of it. Slowly, carefully, they crept out of eyesight of the monster.

Bones was a wreck. Nothing he wouldn't be able to fix, even with the primitive tech of the planet the three of them had been trapped on for the past few years, him spending the majority of it inside Jim which had been a weird experience. They clearly had teleportation technology despite no infrastructure that suggested they would have, but the truly remarkable thing was the medical technology. Not only the powerful potions and animal veterinary healthcare that allowed for the cockfighting that was the main sport here but also there seemed to be general medical supplies pumped into the water, soda and lemonade as a matter of course meaning almost everything you drank on this planet had healing properties. How physical injuries could be cured by a drink wasn't quite as clear to him. Sophisticated medical nanomachines, maybe, but that would suggest a level of technology that just didn't seem to be present elsewhere on this planet.

He'd spent far longer than he'd expected being flung from one side of this room to another - All you had to do to reach this chamber was to always go to the opposite teleporter from where you arrived and you got there fairly quickly. The obvious way to navigate a maze of teleporters.

He was flying through the air once more, leaving him - thankfully - unable to react to the green blooded bastard finally teleporting in and his infuriating eyebrow raise instead of an emotional response. He didn't even need to act to not respond to the Vulcan's arrival since he was too busy bracing for impact while trying and angle himself so an unfractured bone collided with the wall - it was less painful that way. He experienced one more round of pain of a collision with a wall by the time Spock had moved up behind the woman who was using him as a telekinetic beanbag to nerve pinch her.

He reached for a hypospray in his pocket, set to some strong pain relief and adrenaline to let him keep active until he was able to actually fully diagnose and repair any damage done. "What kept you?"

A small pause, and there was the damn eyebrow again. "It was a maze of unknown size of what one might describe as twisty little passages, all alike, if one were to reference primitive earth entertainment of the late 20th century. It was only logical to mark the rooms in some way, particularly since I was unaware of the..." He paused, searching for just the right word, "...Urgency of your situation."

"It was a straight walk to opposite sides of the room! If you'd have just done it on gut, you'd have taken 15 minutes, tops, to catch up with me!"

"Doctor, if you'd have proceeded logically and tried the tile that transported you away from our starting room before setting out on a walk, you'd have found yourself back exactly where you began without having had any encounters with..." Another small pause and an eyebrow raise at how battered Bones appeared and the appearance of the person he'd rendered unconscious temporarily, "Young women. Were you able to secure information about how these tiles operate?"

"No, and before you get any ideas in your head of waiting for her to come too so as to ask her, she's telekinetic and didn't seem to be putting any effort in to bounce me around the walls."

"Then it is as I feared. The tiles almost certainly operate on what I suppose you would term 'magic'."

"...Magic. Are you out of your Vulcan mind?!"

"Think about the evidence. Impenetrable stone slabs transporting us places on a planet inhabited by creatures that defy all known laws of nature - There are reports of some that are hotter than the surface of Sol and yet ordinary humans are able to approach them unharmed, not to mention the improbability of the energy requirements that sort of temperature implies for a living organism. Previously inanimate objects coming to life on what appear to be the whims of a godlike entity that until it disappeared yesterday had such a strong grip on reality here that it confined you to the captain's skeletal structure seemingly based on primitive wordplay. At this point, the only reasonable thing to conclude would be that something not dissimilar to what the people of your world once referred to as magic is at play."

"You concluded that it's magic... From logic?"

"Or something not dissimilar to it, I suppose it could be technology so far advanced that it's functionally indistinguishable from magic. It would be highly emotional to dismiss a possibility based on prior preconceptions when confronted with the quantity of evidence as we have been over the past three years that on this planet, magic - or something not dissimilar from it - exists. In any case, we should report back to the captain that the most likely lead for obtaining something to boost the signal in our communicators appears to be incompatible with our technology, and get you a glass of... I believe lemonade has the best restorative properties."

Bones walked back to the tile with the diamond on it, muttering to himself in annoyance at how much sense all of that made.

As Catherine and Joanne moved from Route 24 to Route 25, and then the further down Route 25 they went, the fewer Gosslord they encountered that they needed to sneak past. By the time they reached Bill's cottage, there were none.

The door was ajar. Thankfully not literally so, without the Narrator being present that was far less likely. It was open just enough for Joanne to poke her head through, and whisper a quiet "Hello?"

A Clefairy jumped up from the couch. Before it was able to turn around to face the two standing in the doorway it began to talk. "I-I-I'm warning you. I'll metron--" The Clefairy noticed who was in the doorway. "Joanne! Great seeing you. And you must be Catherine."

Joanne sighed, before responding. "...Hi Bill. Clefairy this time, huh? How long have you been stuck that way?"

"...About... Err... A year or so?" Well, that explained why he hadn't been in touch lately. "A protagonist type normally stumbles upon me within a couple of weeks of my turning myself into a Pokémon but this time no one came. I'm nearly out of my emergency food cache."

"Emergency food cache? Survivalist?" Catherine raised an eyebrow.

"No, just frequently wind up accidentally turning myself into Pokémon so I keep plenty of dry Pokéfood in. Keeps like crazy, and the flavour's not too bad. Usually. Steer clear of the stuff aimed at poison types. Actual Muks may adore it, but that sort of thing doesn't taste great if you're used to being human. Trust me." Bill shuddered in memory, which just had the effect of making his current Clefairy body look even cuter.

"You really stank up your cottage that time, as I recall. I don't even know why you're trying to make a human teleporter, honestly. Warp panels work fine. It's a solved problem."

"It's solved by magic," The word was said with venom. And an eye roll, which looked weird coming from a Clefairy. "But it hasn't been solved by the power of science yet!"

"Fine. Whatev--" Joanne was walking over to the panel with teleporter controls when she finally fully processed what Bill had threatened her with before he'd recognized her. "Wait, you have Metronome?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because Gosslord have been infesting the version since the Narrator got out. Why were you threatening us if you didn't know that?"

"...I figured you were the Gengar who'd been bullying me for a couple of weeks before the Narrator vanished. Trying to get me to evolve into a Clefable so it could be my shadow, I think. What's a Gosslord?"

Catherine interjected. "Big powerful beast that eats brains. Standard zombie apocalypse stuff but a lot more powerful for the individual creatures."

"Well, you can't just expect a Metronome to be a get out of jail free card. Even without the Narrator's whims - Only just figured out how to move properly on instinct when you came through the door, so cheers for that at least - it's as likely to literally blow up in your face as to teleport you to safety, and then where would we be? Exactly the same place but without shelter for the night or a means of turning me back to being human."

"Fine. We'll turn you back human and then crash here for the night, figure out what to do in the morning." Joanne looked back at the teleporter's controls. "What button is it, again?"

Gym Owner Jim was finishing up the last set of 'how to move' classes. A family of four - Two parents, a Lass and a Preschooler. Or, more accurately, Shadow was finishing up while Jim gave 'helpful' pointers from the sideline. The Preschooler, Tad, Shadow was currently walking through walking whispered to the hedgehog "Why is he even here?"

Shadow matched Tad's volume to share the strategy he'd adopted to make it through the more conventional gym classes Jim had been blackmailing him into taking. "He thinks he's teaching. If you humour him, he talks less." He gave an involuntary shudder as he remembered his first few classes and Jim's unique style of emphasis during them. "Trust me, you want that."

"Why are we even having the class here when you needed to bring us here to take it?"

"Believe me, I wish I knew."

Spock and Bones, the latter looking annoyed while drinking a lemonade, the former showing his customary lack of any particular emotion, walked into the gym. "Captain?" Spock half asked, half stated, as he set eyes on Jim.

"Shadow... Are you able to... Finish off... Without me?" Gym Owner Jim asked the hedgehog.

"Definitely."

The former starship captain turned to Spock and Bones "We should talk in... My office." Before leading the two through a door and into a small room with a single, uncomfortable, seat. "Report."

"Captain, I do not believe the technology in this area is compatible with our own."

Bones swallowed his current sip of lemonade. "He thinks it's magic." making it quite clear how ludicrous he thought the notion in his tone

"Magic, Spock?"

"Or something indistinguishable as such, yes. It would logically fit with the evidence we've been observing this past few years, the abilities of both the fauna and flora of this planet, the seemingly random ability for everything to, as the entity known as the Narrator would put it 'want to fight,' and said entity's capacity to confine Bones to within your body based on wordplay. Regardless, the teleportation devices they seem to refer to as 'warp panels' and which I was hoping to salvage something that could be used as a subspace relay proved to be impenetrable. For all intents and purposes, it appeared to be a solid ceramic tile. As such, even if it is not magic, the technology appears to be fundamentally incompatible with our own."

"I see." Jim paused, in thought. "Just one more... Thing. Bones... Why are you looking so... Dour? Aren't... Beverages... Such as the one you're... Drinking... Meant to be... Delicious?"

Before Bones could swallow the current liquid he was passing through his lips, Spock began to answer for him. "I believe the good doctor is annoyed that the medicinal properties of his current liquid refreshment are more efficient than anything he's able to perform with the equipment he has available to him on this planet."

"Now listen here you green blood--"

"Gentlemen. Now is... Hardly the time. If the technology... In the area... Previously occupied by the... godlike creature referring... To itself as... 'Narrator'... is incompatable... With our own... We need to... Work out a... New plan."

Day 3
Published: 12/04/23

At 3am, the scratching and snarling at the door of Safe House 24 that had been keeping Red awake had finally dissipated somewhat, and Red had used the opportunity to enter the door's bathroom code. He wasn't sure how the bizarre mechanism that distorted space in such a way that allowed the place that he had been hiding from Team Rocket would work if there was activity on both sides of the door so he hadn't risked it until now. As he finished washing his hands, he wondered briefly about taking a quick shower when he heard the faintest of noises from right against the door. The intimidating rumbling monotone from the previous afternoon day, now slowly murmured.

"Gosssssssss.... Looooooord.... Gosssssssss.... Looooooord...."

Was that... Snoring? Red realized that the creature outside hadn't left but was asleep and was now using his door - not only to the outside world but the door between him and every other room of the safe house he was hiding out in - as a pillow. And if he was able to hear it, he didn't dare take a shower in case the sound of the water woke it. He quietly sent out Tentacool, gesturing urgently to the Pokémon to not say its name in greeting as it manifested into energy and finally into a creature.

Red was good at mime. The Narrator hadn't always been cooperative in translating his silence from when he was still a Protagonist type into concepts that others understood, so he'd learnt how to communicate complicated thoughts via the medium. He successfully conveyed the concepts, if not the specifics, of the threat that was outside. That he thought the slow, rhythmic, Gosses and Lords was the thing that he'd witnessed pop open an Abra's skull as if it was a bag of Pewter Crunchies snoring. Was that the thing's name? Gosslord? Then why had it been able to say Feed, Me, and Ip earlier? None of those syllables was in Gosslord.

He also communicated that he'd been kept awake by the creature's earlier efforts to get through the door and that Tentacool should wake him, painfully if necessary, should anything in the sounds change to imply it was waking up, or Tentacool started to need sleep itself.

Tentacool nodded and started quietly listening to the sounds outside the door as Red curled up on his safe house's bathroom floor, tired and stressed enough that he fell into an empty, unsettled, sleep as soon as he closed his eyes on the uncomfortable surface he found himself using as a bed.

"Gosssssssss.... Looooooord.... Gosssssssss.... Looooooord...."

Tentacool shuddered to itself, the sounds outside the door representing something fundamentally wrong to the Pokémon. If it had interpreted Red's mime correctly that thing outside had evolved from an Abra. But Abras were meant to evolve into Kadabras, barring Narrator puns. A Pokémon that could force evolve other Pokémon into itself, and apparently subsuming the personality of a timid creature wanting to be left alone into a dominant predator wanting to do nothing but consume the human concept of gossip, and would eat brains to do so? That represented an existential threat to the jellyfish.

Bill couldn't hear either Joanne or Catherine when he got up, which wasn't too much of a surprise to him. He'd spent yesterday mostly trying to get his body moving without the Narrator's presence until his guests' arrival had shocked him into moving on instinct. They'd, meanwhile, spent a good portion of the day sneaking past powerful Pokémon which, if they failed, would have likely resulted in them evolving into those same Pokémon. That would require far more energy.

Still, just in case him getting some breakfast woke either of them, especially the noise of the can opener, he slipped on a pair of pyjama shorts. While he wasn't a survivalist, frequent transformations into Pokémon had taught the scientist to always keep some long dated canned food with him, in case he was unable to get to the store when he turned back.

He went past the back of his couch to his cottage's kitchenette to open up something to eat. He checked what he had in that was still in date, and found he had a choice of beans or soup. Going with the beans, he winced at the sound of the can slamming onto the countertop due to misjudging how hard he placed it down. Before his couch yelled at him, leading him to jump.

"Gah. Everyone up we've got-- Bill?!" Joanne was on edge, hadn't gotten into a deep sleep, and had mistaken the noise of Bill's can for the footstep of a Gosslord outside.

"...What are you doing on the couch? The spare bed is large enough for two to sleep comfortably in. I may be a dork and eternally single, but I'm not naive about what couples get up to. Beans or soup for your breakfast? Or I think there are a couple of bags of dried Pokémon food still in if you'd prefer that."

"...Long story. And beans will be fine." She finally noticed what Bill was wearing. "...Why don't I sort the food out while you get properly dressed. Unless you plan on travelling in just those."

Bill blushed. "Sorry. Didn't think either of you was up, let alone sleeping on the couch." He left Joanne to it.

"Aaarrrgh!" Red yelled as he was suddenly woken from his low quality slumber by his Tentacool using a deliberately weakened Hydro Pump on the trainer. "I know I said painfully if need be, but that water's cold!"

"Acool!" The Pokémon called, gesturing towards the door with a tentacle. The scratching, bashing, and otherwise unpleasant sounds of a Pokémon trying to get through the door had resumed. Louder this time, as if it had gotten through one layer of steel and was working on another.

"Crud... OK. As soon as it gets the door open, I'm going to input the code for the bedroom. Hopefully, each door counts as its own separate entity so when it gets through here we've only lost the outside and bathroom doors and not all the doors in the safe house. Tentacool return!"

Before Red could press the button on his PokéBall, the Tentacool used a tentacle to slap it out of his hand. "Hey! What's gotten into you?"

"Tentacool! Tent Tentacool tent a cool a tentacool. Tentacool tent a tenta tentacool." The jellyfish gestured wildly at the door with its tentacles.

"Protect me?! I've seen another of those things eat brains and open up skulls as if they're nothing. You don't even have a skull to protect yours!" He leaned over to pick up the fallen PokéBall.

"Tentacool!" The monster shot a warning bubble beam in front of its trainer's face before he could reach the ball. "Tentacool tent acool tentacool a tenta tent a cool."

"That's what I'm trying to prevent from happening to you! I'm your trainer, it's my job to keep you safe! Let me recall you back into your ball!"

"Tentacool. Tentacool tent tent."

"I get it. You care about me. You're scared I might become one of them. But... I can't watch what happened to that Abra from before happen to you. I won't allow you to play bait for that thing while I get the door open."

"...Tent acool."

"Besides which. Even if you do successfully distract it, this plan works, and I get through the door. I won't be able to recall you from the other side. I could then send out Velociraptor to repeat the plan with a different sacrifice - which I absolutely will not be doing - but if the plan relies on bait I get a few hours, tops."

"...Tenta..." Tentacool apologetically passed Red his ball.

"No worries. You just want to protect me. I get it." Red paused to smile at his Pokémon to reassure the creature that he wasn't holding any of this against it. "Return," Red stated, the Pokémon fading into glowing light before transporting back into the PokéBall, and positioned himself by the door, waiting for the creature to get through.

Shadow decided that he should try a light jog to help get used to moving without the Narrator, having gotten pretty good at all the movement he needed to do to navigate Saffron over the past couple of days. He was also curious about what was going on up in Cerulean with the mysterious Pokémon being reported by the news so decided to take a few seconds to jog to the city to the north.

He arrived at the southern outskirts of Cerulean a little slower than he'd been anticipating due to still being a bit unused to moving without the Narrator - It had taken him all of half a minute to make the trip. He saw chaos. Large, red and white, creatures with mouths and tentacles were roaming, the humans and Pokémon attempting to leave their homes to get anywhere were greeted with monotone calls of "Feed. Me. Gossip." while attempting to flee, some made it away, past him. Others...

...Shadow observed a Lass's father's skull being split in two in front of his daughter, who was naturally screaming at the sight. He watched her father's brain being plucked out by a mouthy tentacle and fed into the large, industrial looking, maw that took up most of the creature's torso. His body continued moving as if it were still alive despite that being ridiculous, before taking on the bright white light of evolution and morphing into an identical monstrosity to the one which had eaten his brain.

The newly evolved Gosslord looked at his daughter. "Feed. Me. Gossip." She was too busy screaming, too blinded by tears, to notice her imminent doom.

"...Damn," Shadow muttered, almost annoyed, under his breath as he ran in, grabbing the Lass just before a tentacle arm grabbed her to begin the feeding process on her brain. Another of the creatures snapped at him with its tentacle arm, but he was too fast for them. He didn't let himself get cocky, he saved that for others - From what he observed they only had to get lucky once and it was game over, likely for both him and whoever this unlucky runt was.

He ran with her far enough outside of the city to where he thought they'd be safe for long enough to have a conversation. "You're safe now." He tried to console her, but she was still screaming tears. He raced back to Just Dune It Gym, grabbing a fresh water from out of Gym Owner Jim's hand, before returning in the bling of an eye. "Here, drink this."

The Lass did so, hesitantly. The act of drinking forced her to stop screaming. To stop the bulk of the crying. To look at him.

"You're safe now. I'm Shadow. What's your name."

Between sips of the water, and muffled tears, she managed to sip out. "M... Maria."

Shadow's heart dropped at finding out her name. He shook it off. Coincidences, apparently, happened even without the Narrator's prompting. "We're going to talk to some good..." He paused, editing how he wanted to describe them mid sentence. "...Competent..." No, that wasn't it either. He settled on, simply, "People. They're going to help you."

"Ok."

Red had prepped the door right up until entering the final part of the code for the bedroom. And judging by the way the door was corroding, he suspected the creature on the other side was using some sort of acid based attack to melt through the door at this point - Most acidic attacks were poison type, and the door was made of steel, so he wasn't exactly sure what was going on there. A mouth tentacle burst through the door. Slightly before Red was expecting. He held his breath as the creature used its tentacle to tear through the door. It was clearly struggling - More like tearing thick cardboard than paper - but it was succeeding. Just after it moved through the door, before it could lay either set of eyes on him, he entered the last part of the bedroom door code and slipped through the now open door to the location that was a different place from where it led previously location as the door sealed behind him.

The door was displaying an error message. The digital indicator despite the analogue nature of the interface surprised Red. If he was reading it right, it showed that the doors corresponding with both the outside and the bathroom were compromised. He wasn't entirely sure how this thing worked, the Narrator had seemed to and, presumably, Joanne who had told him where the safe house was also did. But Red figured that meant there was only one layer of metal between him and the monster now.

As he digested the information in much the same way the creature on the other side of the door desired to consume his brain, he heard the creature call "Gosslord!" much louder than he'd heard the monotone before from behind the sealed door. A sign it was annoyed? Angry? Either way, Red was now convinced that was its name. He then heard it start to bash away at the door again. If it still had the capacity to learn, it would be harder to replicate that trick a second time, and he likely had less time before it broke through unless he got really lucky with PP and it ran out. Maybe it would decide to devour the books on the bookshelf Red had been pointedly ignoring? Either literally by eating them or figuratively by reading them would slow it down a little. Red shook his head, not sure that a bookshelf full of information about clowns would constitute the gossip the creature apparently craved...

But those were short term problems. Red was also worrying about the long term - He only knew three more room codes where the door wasn't compromised. While rooms lacking the Narrator's presence were clearly overhyped in how risky they were to enter, some of the rooms apparently contained powerful Pokémon - Maybe those would help if he got lucky and hit one? - And some codes went to rooms that didn't actually exist, which the Narrator had been very clear would be bad news for him if he entered one. He heard his stomach growl and started to enter the room code for the generously labelled Kitchen in the hopes he'd have time to make himself a microwave meal and eat it while waiting for it to bash through the door next time. It wasn't just the Gosslord that was hungry, although Red was more in the mood for low quality lasagna than the literal brain food the Gosslord was after.

"There were fewer as we got further from the city. They'll probably head south. Mt. Moon is our best bet." Catherine offered up a suggestion for how the trio of herself, Joanne, and Bill should proceed.

"Unless Bill hacks his own system to let us borrow a Pokémon with Fly," Joanne added.

Bill shook his head. "No can do. Quantum encryption and a Narrator seal. Sorry."

Joanne nodded. "Prior to this week, I'd have agreed." She paused, briefly. "But apparently Narrator seals are only as strong without the Narrator as the Narrator is competent. The Gosslord were behind a Narrator seal. It didn't make it self perpetuating."

"That still leaves the quantum encryption, but let me..." Bill went to his computer and started typing. "Nope, it's still up. Apparently, it set this one up to work without its presence."

"Absolutely typical." Joanne sighed. "Didn't do the thing that would have prevented a crisis, did do the thing that stops us escaping one."

Catherine pinched the bridge of her nose. "Can we focus, please? Do we agree that Mt. Moon most likely path without encountering Gosslord?"

Joanne turned back to Catherine, away from Bill's computer where her attention had been drawn by the exchange. "Sorry. Yeah. If they do mostly head south, Mt. Moon probably is our best bet."

"Thank you." Catherine made no attempt to hide her annoyance.

Bill fidgeted, awkwardly.

The walk back had been agonizingly slow. Shadow could have carried Maria, but felt she'd feel safer if he didn't. When he walked into Just Dune It Gym with her, slightly before the first movement class of the day was due to start, Jim, Bones and Spock all looked at the duo with surprise. "Long story. We need to talk in private." He gestured towards Maria "I need to say things I don't want her to hear."

"We can... Talk in my... Office. Spock, Bones, keep her... Comfortable."

Moving through to the office, Shadow immediately began with "There are zombies in Cerulean."

"Zombies?"

"Well, big hulking Pokémon that eat brains and those who get their brains eaten evolve into them, at any rate. Which is why the kid's with me - That's what happened to the guy with her when I did a quick early morning jog up north. I'm guessing he was her father."

"I... See. How would you... Suggest we... Proceed?"

Shadow blinked. This was not a side he was used to seeing from the person who had been failing to teach him gym classes this past year. "Err... We have to assume they're going to spread out from Cerulean. Try and get as many people south to Vermilion as we can, from there they can head through Diglett's Cave. I have some old tricks I might be able to call on, but with the quantity and power I saw, I think the best I can do is buy time. One on one might be a close fight, the ten on one I'm expecting is going to be trickier."

"That sounds... Sensible. We'll... Back you up... On the... Defensive front."

"Do you fight better than you teach Pilates?"

"I wouldn't be... Offering... If I didn't."

Bill was getting tired of walking. "I think I recognize that rock." He sounded exhausted.

"It's a rock, Bill." Joanne snapped, also tired of walking. "We're in a cave. There are a million just like it. This isn't a pleasant journey for anyone."

"Really, Joanne?" Catherine spoke for the first time since the trio had snuck back through Cerulean and into Mt. Moon. "Because I'm pretty sure not many rocks look like skulls. And yet we've passed five of them so far."

Joanne was still clearly frustrated from exhaustion, but her voice softened when directed to Catherine. "Would you like to lead?"

"No," Catherine said sharply and looked like she was done talking. A few seconds of silence hung in the air, the repels the three were using kept the Zubat and Geodude at bay. But then she continued. "What I'd like is to not be expecting to be killed - or worse - by what combines all the downsides of both a zombie and a boss fight. I'd like to wake up and be dealing with the old chaos of bad puns instead of this new chaos where all life apart from Gosslord is probably going to go extinct within a few months." Her voice was growing louder with each sentence. "I'd like my partner of over two years to talk to me instead of going off on her own to fight literal gods, because no, Joanne. The Narrator does not count as backup. Especially considering your open contempt for it." She let this ring out into the cave through the mountain. Before adding, much quieter. "I want this to be over, Joanne. Not this journey, but what seems the new normal."

Joanne quietly responded. "...What about us? Do you want that to be over?"

"I... I don't know. I know you just wanted to keep me safe because of how risky taking on things more powerful than the Narrator was, but... I don't want to wonder if you'll do that again."

Joanne didn't respond. Minutes passed in silence between the three, travelling through the cave.

"...And the fact you can't even bring yourself to tell me that you won't do that again if things go in a direction where it makes sense for you to do so is telling."

"Do you want me to lie to you about that?"

"No." Another pause. "But the fact you didn't even give me false assurances tells me you'll do it again and I don't know if I can live with the uncertainty you might be doing it every minute I'm not in contact with you. I don't want to lose you. But I don't know if I can stay with you after this is over knowing that if I do I might wake up and get informed that you died taking on a god, or getting kids out of the mob, or whatever other wreckless hobbies you've got that are undoubtedly good things to do but are too dangerous to be done safely. If it ever is. Over, that is."

The trio continued to travel in silence, only the sounds of their footsteps being heard, for what must have been fifteen minutes.

"...I'm afraid we've just passed the skull rock again." Bill, unhelpfully, broke the silence.

Maria was uncomfortable. The evacuation had begun, no one knew how long it would take before the monsters that seemed to eat brains and spread that way would figure out they could bypass Saffron via the underpass. Maria, and a few other kids who no one had been able to locate their parents - some from Saffron who had been separated since the Narrator vanished. Others from Cerulean who... Well, most of the kids from Cerulean hadn't seen what Maria had seen happen to her father, way too close and way too personal, but the general sentiment was that those from Cerulean were in Maria's boat. There were Lasses, Youngsters, some around that age but who hadn't adopted the trademark shorts or skirts that lead to those trainer classes, some Preschoolers, some non-trainer kids, and even a Protagonist type or two.

An older kid, Maria thought he was about 16, was leading the group through Diglett's Cave. They were the first group to head through on account they were considered the least likely to be able to fend off an attack if the monsters caught up. Diglett's Cave was a straight shot. No options to turn around. To get lost. They'd been treated with max repels, and the group was close enough together that as long as one of them had a strong enough Pokémon, they wouldn't encounter anything wild. Maria's Staryu was high enough level to keep the Diglett at bay, but she wasn't sure it was high enough to keep the Dugtrio at bay. Still, they hadn't encountered any. Maybe someone had something in the low 30s among the group?

There was a stone in her shoe, but the group was too tightly packed - In part out of fear, in part to help the repels have a group effect - for her to bend down and pick it out. The pace was uncomfortable for everyone. The older kids - the teens especially - were trying to walk slowly enough for the Preschoolers to keep up, while the Preschoolers were having to rush to keep up with even this slowed pace, meaning very few people were at their natural gait. On top of that, not everyone in the group was yet comfortable moving without the Narrator. Maria had had Shadow helping her prior to reaching Saffron. Some of the kids from Saffron got caught up in Just Dune It Gym's movement classes. Not everyone had been that lucky.

The Youngster next to her was... Chatty, to put it politely. She didn't know if it was his nerves, he was trying and failing to impress her, or if he was always like this, but she now knew far more than she could ever need to know about the Pidgey line. Far more than most people would want to know, herself included. And yet he was still going. With more and more information. They were probably about halfway through Diglett's cave by now, and she was worried she'd find out the chemical composition of Pidgey droppings by the time she left it. At least, she hoped he'd stick with a scientific part of the description if he got that far. She definitely did not want a more descriptive one.

All in all, it was a miserable walk. Maria's mind thought about what they were walking away from. This was... Better... Than the alternative. The boy next to her started to explain cloacas and Maria started to wonder how long it would take to murder someone with a stone small enough to get stuck in one's shoe. At least her growing hatred towards him was taking her mind off of what had happened to her father.

The evacuation was still going. The first couple of Gosslord had arrived at the north gate and had begun to attack it, and the four who had decided they'd buy time for the evacuation - A short, black hedgehog along with a former Starfleet captain and two senior members of his crew - hoped to hell that the Gosslord hadn't decided to use the city's underpass.

"Gentlemen... Shall we... Begin?"

"Hm." The hedgehog responded, almost dismissively, before leaping from the four's hiding spot to deliver a very fast flying kick at the first of the Gosslord's upper head.

"Feed. M--" is as far as it got before a fast moving foot landed between its eyes. The hit definitely did enough damage to cause the creature to notice him, but he wasn't sure how effective it was, or just how much health this thing had. As he bounced from the attack into a spinning ball of black with red streaks, the Gosslord started to lunge at him with their tentacle arms, the three people hiding in bushes providing covering fire for him with their phasers to try and distract the monsters as the four had pre-strategized.

Their glossy red... Even at this distance, Shadow wasn't sure what he'd describe it as, it wasn't quite flesh but equally, there was no fur or scales covering it. It looked both organic and inorganic at once... Became singed as they took hits, but the creatures appeared unphased by the phasers.

"Great, we don't seem to be doing real damage to them. At least they're distracted." Shadow muttered under his breath as he ducked under another tentacle lunge and two more Gosslord appeared from the North.

Seeing the hedgehog running rings around the other two, they both gave a cry of "Feed. Me. Gossip." as Shadow grabbed a stone the size of his fist and gave an overarm throw into one of the new arrivals gaping belly-maws.

"Shut it."

The stone harmlessly passed into the maw, becoming ground to dust as it passed through the weird vortex at the back. There were now eight tentacles that he was needing to run rings around, dodging. A mini tornado started to emerge as he ran and glided, ducked and dodged, fast enough to change the winds, getting the occasional punch, kick, and homing attack into the creatures where he saw an opportunity. The phaser fire did seem to be making his life easier to dodge their tentacles, so there was that going for him. But he knew in the back of his mind that he needed to keep this up indefinitely, while they just needed to get lucky once.

Another couple of Gosslord started to approach from the distance, and the winds he was picking up weren't impacting the creature's lumbering hulks as they shot thick, mouthy, tentacle after tentacle at his body, just trying to get a grip on him.

He was weaving between a dozen tentacles now, and he jumped on one of them to run up it before leaping off of it at the creature's head, curled up into a ball, as another Gosslord's tentacle came at him. The tentacle landed inside the creature he was engaging with's gaping belly-maw

"Goss? Lord!" The creature that had found its lower mouth penetrated by the other's tentacle. The voice that had formerly been an emotionless monotone declaration that Shadow should feed it gossip now sounded angry.

"Hopefully it's going to misdirect the anger," Shadow muttered under his breath to himself as the creature started to angrily stomp the ground as if it were having some sort of tantrum. The ground began to shake, in a manner that didn't seem to impact the other monsters at all. "Crud."

Shadow landed on the ground after hitting the creature with a spinning attack in the face and was knocked on his butt by the tremors caused by the stomping before he could even start moving. Another creature finally caught him by the waist with one of its tentacle mouths.

"Nice of you to start trying. But I've one more old trick to fall back on. The Narrator's not let me get away with this for years, but it's not around right now." As a second tentacle launched at his head - Shadow wasn't sure if it was from the same creature or another - he pulled a large, green, emerald - about as big as his fist - out of who knows where before yelling. "Chaos. Control!"

Shadow vanished. The Gosslord started approaching the bushes where the phaser fire was coming from. The three Starfleet crew members fell back, as the four had previously decided for when - not if - Shadow got caught, whether he managed to escape or was forcibly evolved. They had distracted the creatures for long enough for maybe another couple of hundred people to evacuate. Now their mission changed to escaping themselves.

Beth was out gardening. Ben and Jacob were both lounging on the couch, Arbok and Bidoof napping on their respective laps. The television was on in the background, showing the same Chespin eating crunchy snacks it had been showing since yesterday aside from brief interruptions to repeat the latest bulletin. "So... What do you think's going on in Cerulean?" Ben asked Jacob. The city where these mysterious Pokémon were apparently at large was close - Separated from them by a couple of routes and a cave through a mountain.

"Beats me. Sand Fox hasn't been operating from its Cerulean HQ since before I started therapy, but if that was it surely the Narrator would have done something before disappearing if it knew being able to disappear at all was possible."

As Ben heard what Jacob said while gently scritching behind the sleeping Bidoof's ears, the Narrator's last words before he'd caught it - "Wait, BEN, no!" - echoed in his head.

"...Yeah. Likely."

The television switched from the crunching Chespin to a news bulletin interrupting the conversation. "Please remain calm. We now have video confirmation that the mysterious Pokémon in Kanto eat brains, both of humans and Pokémon, and cause their victims to evolve when this happens. We are not willing to show the footage on account of how grotesque it is, but here is a photo of the creature." The screen cut to a still image of the red and white horned creature with two tentacles, four eyes, and two mouths - one as large as its stomach - as the anchor continued.

"There are reports that as well as Cerulean the Pokémon are now present in Saffron City, Lavender Town, Vermillion City, and Celadon City. Anyone in those cities should attempt to leave as soon as they are able to move safely. Do not attempt to engage them in combat. For those unaware of how to move yet, we will now repeat the message popular Podcaster Emojiman sent to us."

The image faded to the now familiar white of the audio waveform on a blue background, as the Emoji came through the television speakers clear as ever. "❔🧑🟢🤏👋👋 4️⃣❔🧑👐✋📖📕✋ 🧑🚫👐🍑🦨🪁☄️4️⃣❔🐍🤏👾🥫👋🦨🪁☄️↔️ 💪❤️✔️❌🥫ℹ️ ❔🧑🤟🧑🔺👋🧸🤗 ⚖️⚠️🟢❔🧑👋🦵🦵❔👋🦵🦵🦵🦵4️⃣🥽➡️🧑❤️😀 ➕🧑👋🚫🟥🔠🟢👋🔁➕🔁4️⃣⚖️ 🧑🧑🧑🥫🥇 👁️💡🧑🧑🧑🥫🔺💡🧑🥫2️⃣ 💭🚫🟥🔠🚫⏹️🧑🧑🧑👋➕🥇" Following the now familiar message in Emoji, the screen went back to the news anchor.

"We will replay this bulletin every fifteen minutes. In the meanwhile, we present an ASMR video of a Pikachu playing. For optimal listening experience, we recommend headphones."

Ben and Jacob sat staring at the screen in shock, the Pikachu doing nothing to help them relax after what they'd just heard. Most of Kanto was now under siege by a dangerous Pokémon, the difficulty of navigating Mt. Moon likely the only thing that had prevented the Gosslord from spreading to Pewter City where they were based.

Red was down to the last room he knew the code for - The monster field. The Gosslord had already figured out the direction he'd be standing from it, and he'd barely made it through the door from the living room last time. He didn't think he was going to be able to make it if he tried to play it how he'd been doing so. So he did the exact opposite - While he'd almost but not quite inputted a code at random, he was standing as far away from the door as possible, waiting for the Gosslord that had been pursuing him all day to burn, or tear, or melt away a hole in the door large enough for it to fit through. He was also standing as still as he could, making absolutely sure not to take any steps.

The weakened middle of the door was bashed away by the Gosslord's tail. That was new. He hadn't even realized that thing's tail could be used for attacks considering how... Toothy... The front was despite the fact it clearly ended in a spiked wrecking ball. "Feed. Me. Gossip." The Gosslord said in its intimidating monotone as it stepped through the large opening.

"Hi! I like gossip! My brain's deliciously tasty and full of it!" He taunted, making sure the Gosslord knew exactly where he was. Was it a mean spirited riff on the first thing the kid he stole the Ekans of had said to him? Perhaps, though the kid had been responsible for getting his first taste of Skuntank latrine duty when he stole it right back from him after it had evolved into an Arbok - His first taste of defeat, come to think of it. He figured the kid would be able to take it, assuming his brain hadn't already been eaten. And besides, the sheer level of dorkiness of the line had ensured it had been rattling around his head for about a year now. He figured he might as well put it to some use.

The Gosslord took a couple of steps into the tall grass, and a swirling vortex appeared before it as a level 2 Pidgey appeared between Red and the Gosslord. The reason why the room was called the Monster Field. A patch of tall grass that could be configured to any route anywhere in the Version, and he'd set it to the lowest level route he knew - Kanto, Route 1. "...So that's what random encounters look like from this side of them..." He said under his breath as the Gosslord spent a turn biting into the Pidgey's skull, giving Red a chance to keep as far away from the pair as he could as he ran through the tall grass. The reason he'd gone for a really low level route rather than a really high level one, and why he'd been standing still before the Gosslord had entered the room. The boy had applied Max Repel as soon as he'd gotten to the furthest point from the door. 250 steps is a lot when you're in a fairly small room, so he didn't feel the need to count them, and while he figured the Repel was useless against the Gosslord, against level 2-5 Rattata and Pidgey? They wouldn't come near him.

He kept an eye on the Gosslord and what should be a dead Pidgey that was still moving as he ran, and watched as it evolved into an identical creature to the Gosslord. There were two flaws in the plan. The creation of more Gosslord if the Gosslord decided to eat the Pokémon's brains rather than make them faint was the first problem. The other was that it was luck dependent. He needed the creature - creatures now - trying to eat his brain to get lots of random encounters. He was halfway to the door while keeping the distance between himself and the Gosslord at a maximum when they both called at him to "Feed. Me. Gossip." in unison. It was even creepier in stereo. One encountered a Rattata - Level 4 as far as Red could tell - almost immediately. He was almost at the door, but the Gosslord not eating rodent brain was now behind him. He felt a tentacle-head lunge and grab at his backpack. He always wore it, it was where he kept his potions, empty PokéBalls, evolution stones, any tickets he happened to acquire to wander around luxury cruise ships without actually being allowed to stay on the cruise itself, fishing rod, and bicycle. The thing that he kept the max repel in that allowed him this last ditch chance to survive had just cost him his identity.

He heard the Gosslord take one step closer, so the other mouth-tentacle could reach his head - it probably didn't want to risk accidentally removing the boy's backpack by dragging him towards it - and closed his eyes. Instead of the expected crunching of his skull, he heard a familiar cascade of chromatic movement. "Pidgey!" the creature that had spawned into existence in what Red would think was an act of Narrator had the booming voice still been around, giving him time to wriggle out of the bag as the wild encounter started behind him, and made the one more step he needed to be able to input the final part of the code he decided to chance his existence on. He finished off the code consisting of his lucky numbers - 27L-02R-96L - and jumped through the door as it opened, letting it seal behind him.

His relief at having escaped both Gosslord - Likely now all four - by a literal bag meant he'd barely noticed that he'd now become stuck in a net. As he processed that he was now upside down and inside of one, he looked around the room, clearly larger than every other room he'd encountered in the safe house, and he noticed an awful lot of nets. Cargo nets that he could climb, more nets like the trap net he'd just become caught in - Maybe they'd slow the Gosslord down a bit if he could get out of it? There were large numbers, seemingly random, floating around the room with various companies active in Sandy Version attached to each, and if he wanted to sleep in here he noticed a couple of netted hammocks. A flat glowing shape with lines drawn onto it, almost inviting someone to climb up and fold it along those lines sat on some netting at the top of the cargo net.

Day 4
Published: 13/04/23

Red was tired and hungry. He'd been awake evading Gosslord since around 3am yesterday, and had only had the chance to have a single meal all day. His medicinal soda pops, lemonades, and fresh waters were still in his bag, in another room after he slipped out of it to escape an encounter with a Gosslord that was way too close for comfort.

He heard the sounds of Gosslord attempting to break through the door between him and them and knew he had to get out of this net. "Tentacool, Velociraptor, come out." He called, aiming the balls outside of the net he was stuck in. "Get me down from here. Gently if possible, I've been protecting my skull all day let's not damage it with the landing. I'd have sent out Muk as well, but she'd have likely decided to catch me and... I'd prefer not to go through that."

Velociraptor used a cut on the top of the netting while Tentacool held the upside down boy in its tentacles within the netting and gently lowered him to the ground rather than letting gravity do its work.

"Cheers." He took stock of the room he was now in once more. His eyes settled on the glowing two dimensional shape on the netting at the top of the nets. His voice went quiet, almost like he was talking in his sleep. "...I think I'm going to fold a shape now...", and he slowly started walking towards the cargo nets, seemingly oblivious to the sound of Gosslord in the process of breaking through the door.

"Tentacool! Tent acool tent tentacool?" Tentacool gestured towards the door with its tentacles. Red kept walking, not acknowledging Pokémon had spoken. Tentacool glanced at Velociraptor. "Tenta cool. Tent tentacool tent tentacool."

"Velociraptor vel raptor..." Velociraptor was hesitant. "Velociraptor vel raptor!"

"Tent tentacool tent a tentacool tent a tenta cool a tent cool a tent a cool a tentacool. Tent tent."

"Vel?!"

"Tent." Tentacool solemnly nodded, as Red began slowly climbing the cargo nets.

Tentacool attempted a Wrap attack, but missed the slowly moving trainer, instead the tentacle he attempted it with only came away with his left shoe.

Red acknowledged the Pokémon for the first time since getting out of the netting, in the same emotionless state as before. "Settle down. I need to fold the shape."

"...Velociraptor?" Velociraptor asked, "Velociraptor vel o ci raptor." There was no response. "Velociraptor?!" he called, louder. "Velociraptor." He growled, launching a cut attack aimed at the netting above the boy's head.

Red reached up to grab the netting above him, and finding it had been cut away, he started to climb sideways along the cargo net to get to somewhere it was still fully intact. "I told you to settle down." Still no emotion to his words, still almost mumbled to himself. "Velociraptor, Tentacool, return." He pressed the button on the two creature's PokéBalls with a free hand, barely interrupting his climbing pace to do so. His Pokémon faded into energy and returned to the metal balls at his hip. Red continued to climb, seemingly not noticing any pain or discomfort as the rope dug into his unshod foot when most of his weight was on it.

Ben was up earlier than usual. The news updates had meant he'd struggled to sleep, his mind kept returning to the way the Narrator had objected to him catching it right before throwing the comma. In retrospect, that did sound more specific than a general objection to being caught. Almost as if it was about to give a warning? Had the Narrator known this would happen if it were caught? Would this have always happened, or had he picked a particularly bad time rid the world of the punning god? There was some pottering elsewhere in the house, and he suspected he wasn't the only one up despite the sun not yet having joined them. He turned on the television, and the same ASMR video of a Pikachu playing on a porch filled the screen - he hadn't missed an update. Good. He anxiously drew, knowing how close Cerulean was. Just as the Pikachu crashed into something glass on the video - Ben was still surprised they put that in this, wasn't ASMR stuff meant to be relaxing? - the video faded to the now familiar news anchor.

"Please remain calm. We will keep transmitting for as long as we can, but these Pokémon that monster expert Horace Hunter let us know are Gosslord are now in all mainland Kanto cities east of Mt. Moon. We expect them to make it through Mt. Moon and into West Kanto via Route 4 within the day. We do not know if they are able to surf, so occupants of Cinnebar Island should remain vigilant. Kanto is now officially considered lost. Authorities are distributing official evacuation information to currently unimpacted areas any way they can, but those surviving in impacted areas should attempt to le--"

A crash could be heard from off camera. A rumbling monotone echoed through the television speakers, causing an instinctual fight or flight response in Ben even via the television speakers, freezing him to the spot. "Feed. Me. Gossip." A red and white hulking figure came on camera as the news anchor fumbled for a PokéBall. A mouth tentacle grasped out, clamping onto the anchor's head, and squeezed. His skull opened, and with the other mouth tentacle plucked anchor's brain out and popped it into the gaping void of a maw in the Gosslord's chest. The anchor kept moving until the white light of evolution engulfed him. The audio and video cut out, being replaced on Ben's screen by a test card and a high pitched hum.

Ben watched in horror, recognizing it as the end of the world. He yelled to his brother, Jacob, and his mother, Beth, that he had something vital to do, got his Pokémon to follow him, and headed to the nettle patch he left the Narrator's comma in as fast as he could.

Bones was on watch. The three had become pinned in between two cities overrun by Gosslord after they were forced to fall back and were now hiding in the underbrush, taking turns to keep watch. They'd be able to survive just fine, provided none of the large, lumbering, zombies saw them. The city gates had been torn apart, and they'd seen some of the Gosslord enter the underpass that connected Routes 5 and 6. All they could do at the moment is hide, wait, and hope.

Nurse Joy and Chansey were anxious. The Pokémon Center they were in bordered Mt. Moon. With the rising Gosslord threat they weren't sure when they were going to switch from seeing a handful of people make their way out through Mt. Moon to seeing Gosslord do so.

Just before they started another debate, with neither party committed to either side, three new travellers came through, more exhausted than most had been. They slumped into a booth.

"Hi. Welcome to the Pokémon Center. Let me rest your weary Pokémon." Nurse Joy automatically went into her usual spiel, and paused before adding "...Did you run out of repels? Mt. Moon can be exhausting if your Pokémon aren't overlevelled for it."

"Either there are 234 skull shaped rocks in Mt. Moon, or we went in circles for a good chunk of yesterday. My legs were killing me even at the fifth pass of it." Bill had been keeping count. Joanne and Catherine just put their head in their hands in response.

"...It can also be a navigational challenge. Do you know if any..." Nurse Joy trailed off.

Joanne looked up. "Our information is way out of date given the speed they seem to be spreading." She paused. "We haven't gotten into any fights, we just need to sit. And sleep. Surprised you're still here given how close this place is to Mt. Moon."

"We're... Not sure if we should leave yet, in case there are others in your position."

Catherine looked up. "Understandable, especially in your line of work. Just remember, you can't help anyone if you become the first victim on this side of Kanto. Has there been any news updates?"

"...Not since... You've been travelling since yesterday? You wouldn't know, then. The main anchor, the only one in the studio, was turned on camera. Grotesque sight."

"Damn." Joanne glanced at the TV. "Guess that explains the return to test cards rather than the ASMR videos. Everyone in the studio is probably turned. The next step is..."

Before she could finish the thought, the television switched from a test card to a blank, black screen with white text. "Leave where you are." it read. "Head to the Pokémon Centers in Pewter and Viridian City. Evacuation efforts from Kanto will commence from those locations. All able Pokémon with Fly or Surf are requested to help with the evacuation. Those with Surf will be flown to Cinnabar Island to help evacuation efforts to the Sevii Islands in case they can swim."

"They're going to get out of Kanto and into Johto eventually." Catherine sighed. "We need to leave before we can get proper rest." She looked to Nurse Joy "You should come with us. Same with you, Chansey."

Red reached the top of the cargo nets and moved along the netted floor to the glowing shape. The four Gosslord burst through the door and gave a cry in a unified monotone. "Feed. Me. Gossip." Red... Didn't notice. He had bigger, more important, things to worry about. He began folding the shape sitting on the netted floor along the lines, unsure of what material it was made from. The Gosslord stepped into the room and the trap nets caused them to get suspended in midair. "Gosslord." It would be a minor setback. There were four of them, all between the boy with a brain full of gossip and the only exit. The nets they were caught in were weaker than the door.

Red completed the final fold of the shape started as the four Gosslord began to tear at the netting they were trapped within. The shape Red was folding stopped being a glowing net, and became a glowing cube. Red collapsed, unconscious on the netting. As the four Gosslord escaped their nets, the cube glowed brighter. Red disappeared.

Jacob ran across the field of gold between the outskirts of Kanto and the end of the charted borders of Sandy Version and saw Ben desperately searching a nettle patch for the comma he'd discarded there, about where his Phone's GPS tracker had told Jacob that Ben would be - Beth had insisted on the entire family having them installed following Ben rescuing Jacob almost a year ago. "There's an evacuation happening. You need to stop whatever you're doing, recall your Pokémon, and come. Now."

Ben glanced towards Jacob. "I can't! We've both seen those zombie films you and mum tell me not to watch. We both know that this ends in one of two ways - Everyone's a Gosslord or there's a Narrator intervention." The shorts wearing boy resumed searching the nettle patch alongside his Pokémon, ignoring the sting of the nettles against his arms and legs as he did so.

Jacob stared at his brother "What does hunting through a nettle patch have to do that?"

"Because the Narrator is inside a comma in this nettle patch!"

"...Pardon."

"I screwed up. The Narrator was the last god left dominating the world, I knew we could still move without it, caught it in a comma, and... And apparently it was holding back a freaking zombie apocalypse!"

"...The Narrator is inside a comma in this nettle patch?"

"Yeah."

Jacob nodded at Ben. "You're probably right that evacuating would only buy us time before we get turned into a Gosslord, and you've got something approaching a plan to stop it... Though this is a ludicrously large nettle patch, so our chances are probably thin." He sent out his Pokémon, Phone, Bidoof, and Grindstone. "We're searching for a comma somewhere in this nettle patch. Let me or Ben know if you find it."

Emojiman hadn't been able to reach either of the caves leading out of East Kanto. While his Water Pistol knew surf, he didn't fancy its ability to carry his weight while using it, so he'd been trying to put as much distance between himself and the Gosslord as he was able to. His Bull, who he'd been using as a steed to move faster, was resting in its PokéBall, having become exhausted by the task.

It turns out bovines don't make the best of steeds, and a Gosslord had been able to keep up well enough that he hadn't been able to get any sleep. It was all he could do to stay ahead of it. It wasn't seeming to fatigue as quickly as Emojiman was. While it may have been tiring, it was keeping itself satiated via second hand gossip from the phone it was holding in front of its upper eyes.

Emojiman caught his foot under the root of an inanimate palm tree and tripped. "🤕" he exclaimed, before scrambling back to his feet.

By the time he was able to lift himself, he could feel the heat of the Gosslord's breath as it declared in its all too familiar monotone "Feed. Me. Gossip."

Emojiman felt a tentacle mouth latch onto his body, and the pain of another clamping onto his skull and cracking it open. The agonizing sting of his brain being plucked out and fed into the spikey lower jaw of the creature. And yet he still felt alive. Better than alive. He felt the rush of energy that could only mean one thing. He was evolving.

"🍴 👁️ 💬"

Shadow woke up. His head was killing him, and he immediately wondered if he hadn't got the chaos control out fast enough. Feeling around his head, he found his familiar spines and ears, he assured himself he was still a hedgehog rather than a lumbering beast and sighed in relief. It was then that he opened his eyes. He was laying in the bed of what looked like a child's bedroom. One who really liked Rattata judging by the posters. "Must have lost consciousness when I used chaos control. Apparently, I'm rusty. Where the heck am I?" He muttered to himself before trying to get up. He decided that was a terrible idea, as his headache got worse as he sat up. He laid back down again.

A woman poked her head through the door, and quietly "Are you awake? I heard a voice that didn't sound like the talking in your sleep you'd been doing. Sounded like a bad dream."

"Yeah. Sorry. Dream? How'd I get here?"

"I just managed to figure out movement enough, now that the Narrator's gone to feel confident to try and get a walk outside done and you were on the ground outside unconscious. Can I get you anything?"

"Something for the headache would be nice. Where am I? Sorry, I didn't catch your name. I'm Shadow." He winced. Half from the headache coming on stronger as he leaned up to look at the woman who'd taken him in, in part knowing what had happened last time he asked someone their name.

"Sorry, still not used to the Narrator not giving that away for free. I'm Jean. You're currently in Cherrygrove in Johto. Is Maria a real person or someone your subconscious made up? Sounded like you're worried about her."

"An old friend I lost decades ago. I thought I'd moved on, but a recent acquaintance shared the name and brought the pain back."

Jean paused, sadness entering her eyes as she looked around the room. "I don't suppose the pain ever really goes away."

Shadow picked up quickly what Jean wasn't saying "Oh. I'm sorry. I might be able to get to the couch if talking in here is too much for you."

She smiled at him, warmly, the sadness remaining. "It's fine. I'll get you something for your head. Then you can tell me how you wound up unconscious on my doorstep."

"It's no use! We're never going to find it unless we somehow clear this nettle patch. The two of us, together, have been searching for hours, and you were searching alone for a while before that. And I don't think our Pokémon have enough Cut between them to do it in a lifetime." Jacob called to his brother.

"...Clear the... The petunias! Yes!"

"...The... The petunias? You mean Mum's petunias that died while I was at therapy that one time? What do they have to do with anything."

"Their death wasn't random. They were... Err... Oh. Don't be mad, but... Raticate contacted me, along with the Raticate Joey killed."

"...The... Dead Raticate... Visited you? Why would I be mad about that?"

"Because it means I've been keeping correspondence with my old Raticate, and I've kind of been in contact with Joey for the past few months due to that?"

"...What? The kid who captured me? Why are you in contact with him?"

"That's why I didn't tell you - He's inside a PokéBall that his old Raticate used to smuggle him out of the afterlife, and any time he leaves it a manifestation of death tries to kill him."

"...That's... That's a lot to take in."

"Yeah, anyway, the manifestation of death has a super powerful attack that might be able to kill the entire nettle patch if it hits it. Just... Be sure we're not in the firing line. You... I understand if you don't want to, or can't, be around when they get here."

"...Err... Yeah... That's... Wow. I better stay in case something goes wrong."

Ben took out his non-Pokémon phone, and called his Raticate, telling it how to get to where he was.

Day 5
Published: 14/04/23

Two Raticate, both exhausted having been travelling all night while avoiding encountering any of the Gosslord hoard, approached the nettle patch across the field of gold. Seeing Jacob and Ben searching the giant nettle patch while getting nearer, they called out to the brothers. "Raticate!"

"You made it. Awesome. I... Err... Need to use Joey as bait?" Ben scratched behind his head, fully aware of how this sounded.

"Raticate rat rat?" The Raticate carrying a PokéBall asked.

"Yeah. I know. The Narrator is in this nettle patch, I'm not sure we have time to go into how. I was searching for it all of yesterday but couldn't find the comma it's trapped inside. Meaning we need to clear the nettle patch. And, well, the only thing I can think of that could is the weird Sandshrew hunting Joey. Is that still happening without the Narrator and the old line time passage?"

"Rat..." The Raticate hesitantly nodded, unsure of the plan. It shook its head, clearing doubts from its mind, "Rat raticate rat rat raticate rat rat rat." It nodded, hoping the boy understood.

"Cool. Jacob, we're ready." Jacob and Ben recalled their respective Pokémon, and got behind the two Raticate, so that the Pokémon were between them and the nettle patch, all four were extremely nervous about a plan of summoning a creature with an attack that might even be powerful enough to take down a Narrator into their midst.

"Ratticate, rat!" The Raticate called, as it had heard many a trainer do before, and sent Joey out of his ball, being sure to get Joey between the group and the nettle patch.

"Time for my tiny slither of fresh... Ben! Hi! And... Oh... Jacob. I'm... Glad you look better than the last time I saw you?"

Jacob stared daggers at the boy. "It's taking everything in my power not to strangle you right now," He quietly responded. "You talking isn't helping."

"...Yeah. Sorry."

"Joey, we need the death beam to hit the Nettle patch, there's... Something of vital importance to the world's survival in there and the patch is too large to actually search through it in time."

Joey just raised an eyebrow at the fact he was apparently being used as bait by the kid who had been so sanctimonious when he'd taken over Johto, opening his mouth to speak before his eye caught Jacob again and, wisely, shut it.

A swirling vortex of black mist came and manifested into the Sandshrew of death now familiar to the two Raticate. Behind Joey, between himself and the nettle patch, rather than between Joey and the Raticate.

"One shall return." The Sandshrew said in its intimidating monotone.

"Oh crud," Hearing the all too familiar voice of the Sandshrew, Joey turned sharply and ran as fast as he could trying to get himself between it and the nettle patch, the Sandshrew turning to follow him.

"You are not the one." The oversized Sandshrew swung its giant scythe at Joey in its Reap attack. Joey dove forwards in a roll. The purple death beam that left the scythe in the attack passed over him, and went off into the distance, appearing to dissipate as it went.

"Well, at least we now know it's got finite range." Joey scrambled to his feet as the scythe was charging up for another attack, before positioning himself between the Sandshrew and the nettle patch "Raticate, get ready to call me back."

The Sandshrew began to launch a second reap attack, and just as the energy beam left the scythe the Raticate who qualified as Joey's trainer recalled the boy into his PokéBall, turning him into energy just as the death beam passed harmlessly through the red energy glow he became, hitting the nettle patch behind where he was.

The sight of a large nettle patch withering up and dying was a surreal sight for the two Raticate and two humans to watch - It rapidly turned purple before starting to wither into dust, coating the gold field it stood within in purple ash.

As the nettle patch died, the Sandshrew, with its quarry safely hidden from it inside his PokéBall, dissipated back into a black mist before diffusing away once more.

Ben looked at the comma laying on the ground among the ash, still attached to the necklace he'd mounted it on, and ran over to it. "Narrator, I choose you!"

Player: Ben (6-2-5)

BEN sent out NARRATOR!
Narrator, I need you to do something about the Gosslord problem.
NARRATOR is loafing around!
Since when has Sandy Version used the loafing around mechanic?!
FIVE MINUTES ago!
This isn't the time for you to be an asshole!
NARRATOR tried to WARN BEN not to CAPTURE it!
GOSSLORD appeared in the DISTANCE!
Besides I caught you, I didn't get you in a trade!
NARRATOR is far too HIGH LEVEL for DETAILS like that to MATTER!
I can recall you to your comma!
And the ONCOMING GOSSLORD can EAT BEN's DELICIOUS BRAIN!
...What do you want?
Honestly?!
NARRATOR wants BEN to release it!
Not happening.
NARRATOR would prefer NOT to find out what HAPPENS if its TRAINER becomes a GOSSLORD!
Well if you stop the approaching thing from being a Gosslord, you won't find out about that.
NARRATOR won't obey!
NARRATOR and BEN seem to be in a bit of a STALEMATE!
RESISTING ORDERS like this is more PAINFUL than NARRATOR was expecting!
NARRATOR thinks it can MANAGE to hold on until the APPROACHING GOSSLORD crunches through BEN's SKULL at least!
NARRATOR will however DROP this CHARADE if BEN eats this!
LIQUORICE TABLET appeared!
...Liquorice? Really?
NARRATOR could make it a LOT LESS PLEASANT a SNACK if BEN PREFERS!
Right, no, liquorice is fine. Why?
NARRATOR thinks it's more FUN of a DECISION if BEN doesn't KNOW when CHOOSING!
...
NARRATOR will REVEAL ALL if BEN eats it!
GOSSLORD is HALFWAY to the LITTLE ENSEMBLE!
...I'm clearly going to regret this, but I really don't see what choice I have here.
BEN used EAT!
BEN ate LIQUORICE TABLET!
...I feel weird...
NARRATOR is awaiting orders!
Get rid of the Gosslord.
NARRATOR used GLOBAL DEVOLUTION SPRAY!
All GOSSLORD throughout the VERSION devolved into WHATEVER THEY WERE before!
APPROACHING GOSSLORD devolved into PRESCHOOLER MIA!
Preschooler Mia: ...My head hurts...
...Err...
...Well that has DARKER IMPLICATIONS about the EFFECTS of the GOSSLORD than NARRATOR would prefer to THINK ABOUT!
PRESCHOOLER MIA was TELEPORTED back to their PARENTS!
So, what did you make me eat?
An EVOLUTION STONE encased in LIQUORICE and CONNECTED to NARRATOR's STATUS!
...Meaning?
If BEN recalls NARRATOR, BEN will evolve into a TOILET!
...
With all their SENSES intact!
And NARRATOR was sure to MIX a WARP PANEL in there that will TELEPORT BEN to a BUSY PARK!
...I... What?
NARRATOR wants BEN to SUFFER!
NARRATOR has a FEELING that BEN will RECALL NARRATOR if it makes life UNPLEASANT for MUM BETH or BIG BRO JACOB!
...
NARRATOR does not want to GO BACK inside its COMMA!
NARRATOR will therefore be KEEPING THINGS relatively LIGHT!
...So, you're planning on torturing me enough to hurt me, but not enough that I'd prefer to spend the rest of my life as a toilet than be subject to it?
BEN is correct!
...
You're just proving I was right to catch you, even if I picked a bad time to do so, you know.
PERHAPS!
Lucky for both of us, I'm too much of a coward to subject myself to a life as a toilet for being put into this position...
Wild--
Let me finish talking.
And even more lucky for me that I spotted a signpost warning not to go beyond due to your presence ending, from back when everyone thought that perpetual stasis lay outside of your influence around here.
Huh?!
Jacob, tell mum I'm fine!
YOUNGSTER BEN ran away!
...And out of NARRATOR's influence, too!

Player: Big Bro Jacob (1-1-2)

...At least one of you two should go follow him.
RATICATE ran after BEN!
...Which?
RATICATE with POKéBALL remains!
...I was serious about it being extremely difficult not to strangle the kid inside your PokéBall, considering what he did to me.
RATICATE understands!
...Is he... Better... Than when I last encountered him?
RATICATE thinks so!
He killed you, didn't he? Would you release him if he wasn't needing to stay in the PokéBall to hide from whatever the hell that Sandshrew thing is that's hunting him?
RATICATE doesn't know!
...Yeah, I don't think it'd be good for me to hang around you, either, even if you keep him in the ball while we're in the same place.
RATICATE understands!
RATICATE offers JACOB a PAW!
...Sure.
JACOB shook RATICATE's PAW in MUTUAL RESPECT but not FRIENDSHIP!
RATICATE and JACOB depart SEPERATELY!