Chapter Three: Dropped By Dragonite



POV: The Unown



Okay, so that was not our finest moment.



We were under attack. Thundurus was trying to kill us all, and honestly, he might have succeeded with some of us (we never did find Gamma or Zeta after that one). The human girl was yelling at us to get her and her friends out of there.



Well, if that was what she wished...



We pulled the same teleportation spell we'd used to get her and the cat out of her bedroom. Unfortunately, this happened the same time that Thundurus aimed the Discharge attack at us. The shock paralyzed a few of us, we weren't all able to connect, and the teleportation went awry.



As in, several hundred feet up in the air awry.



Naturally, the girl panicked. Could we blame her? We'd successfully gotten her out of the Interdream Zone, but we'd brought her and the cat and the Hoopa into a whole new set of problems.



Gravity, for one.



Gravity has never been a problem for us Unown. It didn't seem so hard on Hoopa either, at least judging from what we've seen of its movements; it's always floating anyway. Humans, however, are pretty limited by it. So clearly we had to do something about it.



We quickly took stock of who among us was not paralyzed and could still create. Among that group, we created a Guardian. Guardians are Unown-created Pokemon that mainly serve as, well, guardians to those that they are created for. In one case, we created an Entei. In this case, we formed a Dragonite, one large enough to comfortably house both the girl and her pet cat creature, the one we'd transformed into a Litten.



The girl had the wind knocked out of her when she landed on Dragonite, and she nearly slipped off. It took a little bit of psychic guardrails to keep her on the Guardian. The cat, not so much; he had claws, and he knew how to use them. We winced a little at the scratches in our newborn Guardian's hide, but Dragonite can tank much worse damage than that. They can dive into lava, for crying aloud.



"Wh-where am I?" the girl asked.



Some among our number were asking this ourselves. As Unown, we don't tend to get out and about outside our own dimension, preferring to stay inside. Direct sunlight is harsh on the eye, you know, and we're mainly eye.



We are outside was honestly the best answer we could come up with. Where exactly, we do not know. The fight with Thundurus disrupted our teleportation.



But as it was, the girl answered for us, looking down. "This... this is Kanto!" she exclaimed. "There's the Seafoam Islands, and Cinnabar, and Mt. Silver way over there, and right down there there's Pallet Town! I'm in the Pokemon world! It's all real!"



The Litten meowed something to the effect that they were very, very high up and he would like for us to remedy that before they fell very, very far down.



If that is what you wish, we answered.



Then things went terribly wrong.



---



We didn't have the only Dragonite in the sky. In fact, we'd modeled it after another we'd telepathically encountered not far off, flying from the northwest.



It also had a rider. A human male somewhere in his mid-thirties, with a crisp navy-blue uniform, light skin, and bright red hair like a Druddigon's scales. He noticed us, urging his Dragonite forward.



We tried to gauge his intentions, but found we could not. He bore a shield of aura, too strong even for us to read his thoughts directly. But the shield itself was born from dark thoughts with great power behind them, power shared with his Dragonite steed.



One of us, by name of Kappa, was the first to realize what was wrong. So good are we at reading emotion from aura, we tend to miss more subtle details such as the expression on another lifeform's face, especially in bright light. Kappa, on the other hand, picked up the older human's scowl from several feet away.



Hey, guys, Kappa said nervously. I think that dude's gonna--



And then the red-haired man shot a blast of aura straight at our Guardian Dragonite.



We fought desperately to control it, pouring all of our Hidden Power into counteracting the aura burst. On some occasions our Guardians grow too powerful for us to control, but this only happens rarely. This time, however, it took all of our telepathic power to even begin to fight off the sheer wave of anger and loathing our Guardian was struck with.



Guardians are meant to accept orders from those whom they are created to serve. This means, in the wrong hands, that any sufficiently strong psychic intrusion that strikes them where they are most mentally vulnerable can entirely drive them off the rails.



The red-haired man's orders were simple: DROP THE GIRL.



We should have realized sooner that the Guardian had done it.



---



Terra's POV



Oh my gosh.



Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh.



I'M GONNA DIE!



I'm falling, falling, falling -- the wind through my hair, raging around my entire body, growing sharper and sharper the faster I fall. I'm gonna go splat!



I hear Benga's terrified caterwauling, and realize with horror that he's going to die with me. With how high up we are, even he can't land on his feet. I hear Hoopa yelling something, but in this wind, I can't really make it out.



Is that a building? It seems kind of round for a --



CRASH!



---



...Ow.



Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.



How am I still alive?



If this is really the Pokemon world, it's gotta be the anime, because I call Tauros crap on the physics. But, then, I'm still alive, so that helps.



Whatever I've landed in tastes as bad as it smells. I have broken glass all over me, sticking into me, and I'm hearing Benga complain loudly, so he must have landed right with me.



Someone pulls me out by the hair. "Human-kun!" it says. "You're not dead!"



It's Hoopa.



"What. The. HECK," I ask, pulling myself up in what I now see is a bunch of organic rubbish sitting in a huge bin in the middle of a plant-filled greenhouse. Which I just fell through the roof of. "Normally when I have dreams of falling, I wake up before I hit the ground!"



Hoopa pauses. "Maybe Human-kun isn't dreaming?"



I have no words for this, so Hoopa blathers on. "If Human-kun is dreaming, Hoopa is dreaming too. What's that, Litten-kun?" it asks Benga. "Oh -- Benga-kun! So Benga-kun is dreaming too?"



I spit out something disgusting. "Okay, what the heck?" I ask, reminding myself not to say the word I'm really thinking. "He's meowing! How can he give you his name when he's meowing?"



Hoopa pauses. "Hoopa... doesn't know," it admits sheepishly. "But Benga-kun just did!"



I turn and look at Benga. He's black all over, with red stripes and whiskers. His eyes are still green, but the whites of them are now yellows. His fur is slick and textured, something like a cat might look who shampoo'd with crude oil.



So it wasn't a dream. Holy crap, this is no dream.



It's a nightmare.



"Mrowr?" Benga asks me. I sigh in somewhat premature relief. If he'd said "Lit litten!" then I would have probably completely lost my mind.



"Ouch," I say instead. "I have broken glass and cuts all over me, and this compost bin is highly unhygenic." Although it could be worse, I realize, seeing that the bin right next to me is clearly labeled MANURE.



Hoopa floats up to me and inspects me. "Oh. Human-kun is hurt. Hoopa is sorry." (Benga meows something at Hoopa.) "Oh, Terra-kun? It's a lovely name!"



I remember vaguely that the -kun suffix is mainly used for younger males, but is not strictly gender-specific. I also remember that Terrakion is a thing, and probably a real thing, because we just got attacked by Tornadus and Thundurus in what HAD to be the Interdream Zone because it looked just like the real world but uglier, which is pretty much what the Interdream Zone looks like. I felt some slight satisfaction in now knowing that it wasn't strictly an error of the 3DS's AR limitations that left the colors all wonky.



"Terra. Just Terra," I answer. "Terra Allen, if you want to get specific. Ow. Any clue how I'm getting out of here?"



Hoopa considers, looking down at the ground. The compost bin comes up to about the same size as a regular dumpster on Earth would. "Hoopa guesses Terra-kun isn't jumping."



Great. I'm stuck up here in a compost bin with my housecat and Djinn Elmo.



Then I hear a noise. A door opening, and the sound of footsteps. "Hey!" a voice calls out. "Anyone in here?"



I recognize the voice. It takes me a moment to fully register, but I recognize the voice. "Gary Oak?"



"Hey, your reputation precedes you," jokes another voice. This one I don't recognize -- it sounds a bit like Ash Ketchum, but not entirely; if anything, it happens to sound even younger and less mature than Ash did in the original anime.



The voice belongs to a kid, about eight years old, with a wild shock of dark green hair that his backwards baseball cap can't keep down. He's got a Pikachu beside him as well; I'd read in a manga that Pikachu are common in Pallet Town, which I guess they must be, although I'd never been able to catch one there in the games. It's a female Pikachu, with a black heart shape on her tail, but no costume. And her trainer wears some sort of disc jockey headset over his left ear for whatever reason.



Next to him is Gary Oak, who's looking pretty grumpy right now. "What are you doing in that compost bin?" he asks.



"Thanking God I'm not in the manure bin," I shoot back. "Yes, I just fell from the sky along with these two Pokemon, one of whom is a mythical and the other which comes from Alola. You wanna make something about it, Gary Oak?"



Gary gives me a look. "You're bleeding pretty badly," he says matter-of-factly. "You'd better get out of there."



"Thank you, Captain Obvious," I say. "If it was that easy, I'd have done it by now!"



Hoopa taps me on the shoulder. "Terra-kun wants down?" it asks. "Terra-kun should have said so!"



Hoopa removes a ring from around one of its horns, and the ring grows to about my height. Another ring appears next to Gary and Green Hair, and when I stick my hand in the ring close to me, it comes out of the ring next to Gary. After forcing my unwilling and still-in-pain body to brute force through the hoop, I find myself more or less on the ground.



Green Hair rushes up to me. "You're hurt!" he says, as if I didn't know that.



I know I shouldn't snap at him, but I've had a really bad day. "You think?" I shoot back. "Is there a hospital or a Pokemon Center nearby? I'm not sure I'll be able to WALK after what I've been through!"



Green Hair turns to Gary, who shakes his head. "Pallet Town isn't big enough to warrant a Pokemon Center. There should be some healing herbs in this nursery, though -- a Revival Herb should perk you right up."



I pick bits of broken glass out of my front side, then make a valiant attempt to stand up. Hoopa seems sympathetic, letting me lean on it; or is it her? Somehow I keep thinking of them as female; maybe the hot pink ponytail and hoop earrings have something to do with it. All the same, it's hard to lean on someone that's smaller than I am, and we both pretty quickly realize that's not gonna fly.



Green Hair watches us, then brightens up. "Oh! I know how to move you!" he says brightly.



His Pikachu makes squeaking noises in a tone of voice that suggests she doesn't trust Green Hair's plans, but Green Hair rushes off anyway. He's gone for a few moments, then comes back in wheeling a large dolly with a few potted plants on it. "Here! This should make the trip easier."



I thank him and step onto it. The plants, oddly enough, aren't any kind of plants I've seen in my world. The leaves are odd shades of blue, and the fruit they bear is unusual. It takes me a moment to realize -- of course, they're the same berries I've harvested in-game, although they're much larger in person and look more like fruits than berries.



I pick what looks like a Sitrus Berry and taste it. The flavor is kind of odd -- a little sweet, a little sour, a bit bitter, and a touch of what I presume is what the Pokemon games call "dry." But it makes me feel better, so I finish it.



Green Hair has a bit of trouble pushing the dolly with me on it. Hoopa's help doesn't make it much better. Gary spends a few moments laughing at how weak they are until Green Hair points out that he could help, after which Gary tries to weasel his way out of it and then finds out that it is kind of heavy. He asks me what I've been eating, which isn't really fair; no matter what I've been eating, I still probably weigh less than the dolly itself.



Eventually one of them has the bright idea to bring the Revival Herb to me rather than bringing me to the Revival Herb. And whee-oo, the games aren't joking about it being bitter. I feel like my tongue is trying to eat me alive. But in terms of a pick-me up, it works, on levels that I can only describe as "is this plant legal?"



Not that I don't still have problems. My clothes are ripped and torn, thanks to the broken glass. And I smell. Terribly. I smell like something died, which I'm still surprised I haven't. But, hey, anime physics, I guess.



"You need a bath," Green Hair says, holding his nose.



"Oh, she needs a hose-down before she's even stepping foot in MY house," Gary says. "This greenhouse has a hose, right?"



"Hoopa will handle it!" Hoopa says cheerily, pulling out one of her rings, and for one brief flash of a moment, I remember a certain scene from the Hoopa movie.



Oh no.



I get drenched. Benga gets drenched. Green Hair and Gary also get drenched from being in the splash zone. The plants get drenched.



Hoopa is laughing her rings off. "Were you surprised?" she asks. I give her a glare that tells her exactly how surprised she's going to be if she ever pulls something like that again.



"Well," Green Hair says optimistically, "we won't have to worry about watering this wing of the nursery."



Gary glares daggers at Green Hair.