From his perch at the window, Von contemplated how to get back down. He scaled the few feet up without thinking, and now his tail hung off of the tiny sill he sat on. What practice he learned from clambering over driftwood found use in scaling a wall. The tips of his claws found purchase in the tiniest of cracks in the masonry around him.

Looking down, he wondered how much a fall would hurt, his perception colored by his shrunken size. What would have been a casual hop was now a fall of thrice his height. Hesitantly, he sunk his grip back into the wall, and attempted a descent. It came easily despite his disorientation.

“Salandit?” Rockruff’s familiar bark echoed up the stairway.

“Over here!”

By the time Night Vision found Von, he clung tightly to the wall eight strides off the ground. His claws sunk into the grooves between stone brickwork and his tail drooped with the pull of gravity.

“What are you doing up there?” Rockruff asked from the base of the stairs. She sat and waited for Ren to catch up to her.

“Making do.” He peered down at the pair at an awkward angle. “I found out the fastest way to climb human-sized stairs is by ignoring them.” With three claws dug in deep, he waved at them with the fourth. “I figured if a three-hundred pound monitor lizard can climb a wall, why couldn’t a ten-pound me?”

“I’ve never met any Monitor. Did you have those in the Shoals too?” Ren asked Rockruff.

She shook her head. “Probably a human thing. Salandit, how were things with Braixen?”

Von’s tail lashed against the wall. “Fine.” He resumed his descent, each movement made with purpose. Slow and deliberate, he reached ground level without incident. “Not sure if it’s frustrating or reassuring that no one else really knows how we got here.”

Ren perked up. “All the more reason to join our Research team!”

Von carefully dismounted from the wall and dropped onto all fours. The hopeful look on Ren’s muzzle gave him pause. “I was considering it-”

“Great! We just got reinstated, and we’ve got an open spot all set aside for you!” Ren proudly placed a paw on the badge on the bag Rockruff wore; A Mobius strip sporting two black stripes.

“-but I think I’ll pass.”

Ren flattened his ears. “What? Why?”

“Your dungeon delving group? You find impossible geometries and willingly wander in? I don’t think I’m cut out for that.”

“Least he’s honest,” Rockruff grinned.

Ren looked crestfallen. “But you’re a human! We need your kind’s ingenuity!”

“My ingenuity ? Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not exactly a prime example of my species.”

Ren furrowed his brow. “No-one is when they first start out.”

“Start out? Dude, I’ve been a human longer than you’ve been alive. I think.” He assumed both members of Night Vision to be about the same age. “In all that time on Earth, I accomplished nothing but making people angry.”

“I knew I sensed some kinship in you,” the Zorua hummed, only to falter at Von's look of incredulity. “All in good fun, of course!”

Rockruff spoke up. “Not counting the accidents, or the failed missions, or that one time Ren tried to eat-”

“Hey, heyhey! All in good! Fun!” Ren strained through a forced smile

Rockruff shook her head. “So if you’re not joining us, what are you going to do instead?”

“I want to find a way home.”

“I don’t understand how you’ll do that without signing up,” Ren said.

“I’ll be looking for a way home that doesn’t involve… what were they, Mystery Dungeons? ”

Both Pokemon looked at Von blankly. “You came here from another world, and you think your way home will be outside of the areas that distort space?” Ren asked.

“There isn’t a stone left unturned in all the land. The humans before you scoured every stride of every glen, cove, and peak,” spoke Rockruff. “The humans here firmly believe if there's a way back, it's through Labyrinth."

The word made Von’s skull tremble as if something intangible haunted it. “Are you sure? If not found on this land , why not another? Somewhere else, across the ocean?”

Ren cocked his head. "Does the Liner even go that far? Sounds more dangerous than the dungeons. I guess I can't stop you from running away from your problems, but if you're determined to stay on the surface, you might as well just stick around Halfhenge where it's safe. Hey, maybe you and Braixen can work together!"

Von grimaced. “Don’t think I have it in me to be a village doctor, or whatever it is she does around here."

“‘Sides, you’re stinky enough as it is without basking in the fumes of her big pot all day,” Rockruff agreed.

“Am I?” He was skeptical, seeing as no one else had commented on it so far. Not even Lapras, who had scooped him up in its mouth. “What do I smell like, then?”

Ren wrinkled his nose. “Kelp.”

I guess I walked into that one. Von studied Ren, who still held the spark of hope in his eyes. "The other humans- what do they do?"

"They're Researchers, like us!"

"And where are they now?"

"Out researching, probably! I thought the title was pretty self-explanatory."

Somewhere out there, braving untold dangers of their own volition. On one hand, they've apparently been at this for years-, and haven't found a way home. What makes me think I can do any better? But still; what’s taking them so long?

How many man-hours had been sunk into finding a route home only to come up empty, and how much more time need be invested? If searching every corner of the planet is the only option, wouldn't he have to pitch in if he wanted even a slim chance of regaining his humanity?

Von sighed as he looked between the two members of Night Vision. Ren's ears perked up, while Rockruff cocked her head. "Maybe," he said, "Maybe. What exactly does a Research team do?"

----------------------------------------

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The pair led him up the stairs, bounding up the steps while he scuttled slowly up the wall. At some point, between landings, Ren enshrouded himself as a mirror image of Von. The fluffy black fox rounded a corner, and when Von turned to follow, he found himself staring at the back of his own reflection. His sudden twin turned and grinned at him from over his shoulder at the surprised noise the human made, and swished his tail in greeting. “Not a bad shape, Von.”

Von grumbled as he watched the Ren-crafted facsimile ascend the steps with all the grace afforded by the vulpine body hidden beneath and urged himself to climb faster.

From stairway to hallway, Von followed them to the solar of the keep; a modestly sized study with a long, low central table. A Pokemon that loosely resembled a mongoose stood over it, teeth bared in a scowl at the page it pored over. Its brown coat gave way to yellow stripes, and the fur that grew down over its eyes meant to shield it from the sun reminded him of an unfortunate combover. It looked up at the newcomers. Its frown didn’t fade.

Unperturbed by the studious glare, Rockruff trotted into the room. “Hello Gumshoos!"

The mongoose cocked its head. Its eyes scanned over the twin Salandit at her tail. “Night Vision. We thought you died," it chittered with a certain lack of concern in its tone.

Ren stepped forward and hissed "Hey, show some concern for my friends! These two saved my life!"

It took a few moments for Von to connect that Ren was pretending to be him. He wasn't sure if that was the best first impression- he thought about speaking up, to break the illusion. Social anxiety kept him rooted to the spot.

"Yes, yes, disgraced 'heroes' drag a human home with them and expect all to be forgiven, as if the life of a human is worth more than any Pokemon. Take off that mask, Zorua, before you put any more words in your friends' mouth."

The shroud fell from a sulking Ren. "Killjoy," he muttered. "What gave it away?"

"Your human friend doesn't know how to play along."

Von's attention stayed on his friends as he watched Rockruff's tail curl downwards. She noticed him staring. "This is the solar," she said, returning to the tour so as to brush off the mongoose. "Humans stockpile information about our world here."

A number of conspiracy boards dominated one entire wall, interwoven with webs of thread. Papers and scraps of parchment completely covered the surfaces of each wooden panel, strings bridging each island of thought together. As he wandered closer he glimpsed words in English and Simplified Chinese, both written on pages torn from journals. He didn't know which page to start, nor which thread to follow.

“Braixen could explain this better. She can even read some of it!” Rockruff followed after him.

They came before a board papered over in essays penned about plantlife. One page recounted a handful of theories on pollination in a world without Earth’s bees, while another logged attempts at crossbreeding berries. A third juggled between one notion that familiar species of plant life might have been transposed to this world just as humans had, and another idea that what humans thought of as pine trees in this world merely evolved on its own into a remarkably similar twin. All three of these documents had string leading to a fourth questioning the existence of this world’s microflora, while that page strung off towards three separate conspiracy boards.

Scanning the first few lines of messy handwriting was enough to make Von’s head spin. His brain brimmed with questions, but to see even more strewn out in a physical space, impossible to organize cleanly with how thoughts interlaced into intricate webs, he turned away. “Wyn made this?”

“Wyn and Fei,” Rockruff nodded her head to one of the boards particularly saturated with Simplified Chinese writing. “Fei started it all. Before then they just kept maps here.”

Gumshoos clicked its tongue with disapproval. “Made a mess of it all, he did. The number of times they’ve had to re-weave the entire room after a wing got caught in these nets of his, I can’t say.”

"You wanted to know what Research teams do?" Ren sat before another board, larger, stringless and isolated from the others. Von moved to join him and scanned the papers. The majority of notes were in Chinese script, but the further down he looked, the more it yielded to Wyn's scrawl.

"Attempts to ascend the Gilded Switchbacks on foot reveal caves leading into the cliffside. These tunnels behave as expected for a Class B dungeon. After approx. 7 hours on loop, one tunnel rerouted itself into Labyrinth. Sub-par ephemera harvest. Encountered three amalgams total. The maze ejected us out into Ruby Roil."

A number of reports read similarly, all sharing the same formatting with lettered classifications and mentions of amalgams and ephemera alike. “They’ve been at this a while, huh?”

“You can read it?” Gumshoos asked. It set down the papers it was rifling through and crept closer.

“Not all of it. Just what Wyn wrote. What’s an amalgam?”

The three Pokemon exchanged glances. “They’re the natives of Labyrinth, we think. You don’t find them outside of dungeons, they’re- they’re fake Pokemon,” Rockruff began.

“Fake?”

“They look like Pokemon, but they’re not. Not really,” Ren continued. “They're maybe alive, but they babble nonsense.”

“Imagine you encounter an amalgam that looks just like me,” came Gumshoos. “While I am flesh and blood, as are many Pokemon, an amalgam has oil in its veins, and its meat is mere clay. They don’t breathe, as you and I do, nor do they communicate, nor do they think.”

Von’s skin crawled. “What do they do?”

Gumshoos looked to the board again. “The humans describe them as sentries, but that lends them the possibility of being organized. They act territorial, perhaps they exist to dissuade Explorers, Researchers, and Rescuers alike from entering Labyrinth. But to use ‘sentry,’ no… they don’t watch, they don’t report. They bite, they scratch, they claw. They are merely an obstacle."

Von turned to Night Vision. "How many have you seen?"

"Every dungeon has a few of them, but they're nothing we can't handle," Rockruff stood proudly.

"We've defeated plenty!" chimed Ren. "Easy to outwit what doesn't think."

"Outwit, perhaps. Don't pretend you haven't had to outrun them either," Gumshoos warned.

"It's the meat-eaters that're the real threat," Rockruff said to Von. "They can be clever." As she watched as horror dawned on his face, she gave him a nudge. "You're toxic, you're the safest out of all of us. And Ren'll keep the ghosts away."

Some reassurance, limited as it was, was better than none. Von looked around the room’s boards once more. “Are any of these about biology?”

The three Pokemon joined him in scanning the boards. “Most Pokemon can’t read human script,” Ren said.

“Braixen tends to be… intrusive when they conduct that sort of research,” Gumshoos recalled. “Monitoring diets, measuring limbs. Near obsessive, that fox, wound up provoking her own friends. You won’t find much of that research here.”

Not that Salandit appeared to be native to the region anyway. Perhaps it was too much to hope for. Von sighed. “If it’s okay with you all, I’d like to spend some time reading.” It would take time to unravel the notes pinned to the walls, especially being unable to read Fei’s handwriting. Or is it pawwriting? Wingwriting? Nevertheless, assuming his test with French was anything to go by, they should be able to understand one another.

“I figured you might! You humans always ask so many questions,” Ren smirked.

“I’ll save your breath, then.” He broke from the three Pokemon to review the semi-organized jumble of information left to him.

The three Pokemon exchanged glances before Gumshoos broke away. It moved back to the table to resume its work, whilst Night Vision watched Von from afar. They were silent until Von picked a board to read from. “... You don’t have to stay here if you want to look around,” Ren whispered to his partner.

Kaia’s tail began to wag. “You sure? I’m willing to wait for you before saying hi to our old friends.”

Ren shook his head and eyed Gumshoos, who quickly looked away. “I’m sure. It’d be best if I don’t dampen your warm welcome.”

Kaia shook her head and bumped her nose to his. “We’re in this together.” A lick to his cheek, and he was smiling again. “We didn’t come back just for me to let you hide from everyone.”

“I got tired of hiding, but Slowking…” Ren sighed and nuzzled into her gentle affection. “You’re right.”

----------------------------------------

“Attempts to correlate Pokemon with type effectiveness continue to be inconclusive. The portrayals of Pokemon in the media we’re familiar with has colored my preconceived notions to unhealthy and dangerous degrees. Take typing weaknesses with a grain of salt. For the sake of posterity, the type effectiveness chart below has been replicated from memory.”

The more Von read, the more it became clear that Wyn’s handwriting was made with the tip of a claw dipped in ink. On the rest of the page, she must have used a straightedge to make a spreadsheet. She wasn’t kidding when she mentioned fairies, he thought as he scanned rows and columns both.

His research was interrupted by Gumshoos’ chittering. “Free Aim has touched down,” she said from her seat by the window.

“Fei!” Rockruff leapt up from the floor, inadvertently shaking Ren free from where they lay. “Let’s go say hi! C’mon, Salandit!” She stood excitedly before Von, tail wagging faster, postured like a puppy begging to play.

Another human? “Yes, please!” Von descended from the wall beneath the board he was scanning, careful not to disturb any strings on his way down to the floor. Ren anxiously paced behind Rockruff. The tension surrounding Night Vision's return still eluded Von, and he doubted he'd find anything about it in Wyn's scrawl. I'll have to ask Ren tonight.

"Nice meeting you!" he called out to Gumshoos as the three of them filed out of the door. She said nothing, but gave a dismissive wave of her paw. They wound their way back to the stairs, and he took his place on the wall, scuttling after his companions.