"Dust!"

Something sharp was pressed against my side like a blunt knife.

I rolled around, still feeling very fuzzy and confused.

"Dust, wake up now!" A voice hissed into my ear and the prodding continued.

I opened my eyes and saw Fay standing over me. It was still very dark inside my tent. I couldn't see much, only dark shapes. I resisted the urge to turn on the flashlight, even though I was tired I knew that might be a bad idea.

"What?" I asked lazily, trying to shake off the feeling you get when you wake up in the middle of the night. My mouth felt dry, my body was limp and I could feel the bliss of sleep calling for me.

"Finally!" Fay let out a sigh of relief. "You have to get up."

I slowly sat up in my sleeping bag and rubbed in my eyes. "What's wrong?"

I was the kind of person that could sleep through a plane crash. Of course, that might be a consequence of staying up till 2 am in the night but old habits die hard.

"Something is coming." Fay said mysteriously with a noticeable amount of dread in her voice. No, it wasn't dread, she was sounding scared.

{100 meters away from us.} A second voice shared telepathically with me.

Probably Luna.

As I tried to find out where I had put my knife I found the small psychic standing in front of the tent opening, staring off into the distance.

"What's wrong?" I asked as my hand gripped around the cold metal of a gun, not exactly what I was looking for but it would do.

"Also, is it on its own?" I asked.

{Can't tell} Luna answered.

"Fay, can you see something?" I turned to my second radar. "Use your aura sight."

Her eyes turned from red to a soft glowing blue color. She gasped. "What?"

"What-what?" I asked, feeling very annoyed and I had to resist the urge to fall asleep. It was as if something was actively trying to make me feel dizzy.

Fay stuttered before finding the right words. "It's like a wall of aura- wait no, it's more like an emotion?" Her answer turned into a question I couldn't answer.

My mind immediately went into a state of dazed panic. What should I do?

At least not turn on all the lights inside the tent like an idiot and start screaming. That was obvious but what could I do?

Something of unknown quantity is coming towards us, was it a wild Pokémon? A person?

I can't plan if I don't know what's going on.

{70 meters,} Luna shared.

{60 me…} Midway through the sentence, she stopped. With my own eyes, I witnessed Luna dropping to the ground.

Fay backed away from her.

"It's coming closer! What's happening!?" She cried out.

"Stttt." I pulled the Riolu closer to me and placed my hand over her mouth to prevent her from making even more noise.

She kept struggling and I was forced to drop the gun and find a way to silence her quickly. Not knowing what to do I began to pet her soft fur in an effort to calm her down.

Miraculously it worked, her heartbeat slowed down and she stopped struggling.

"Don't make a noise," I whispered into her ear.

She silently nodded and I released her from my grip.

"Big sister." I said, trying to keep my voice as low as possible.

"What?" Fay asked.

I shook my head. "How far is the wall?"

"5 meters," Fay whispered.

I took hold of my gun and aimed it at the tent opening, ready to shoot whatever came through.

There were no sounds coming from outside, I could only hear two heartbeats and a strained breathing.

My head began to spin and my already blurred vision began to get worse.

I felt Fay's muscles suddenly relax and she slumped in my arms.

An extreme wave of tiredness crashed over me.

My arms dropped and the darkness took hold.

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

"Can you please let go of me?"

I yawned and noticed I was holding some kind of plushy in my hand.

Realizing I don't have a plushie I opened my eyes to find out what the hell I was actually holding. Once I opened my eyes I was met with a pair of red eyes.

Had Luna once again snuck into my bed? When I saw blue fur everything in my mind snapped into place.

"Fay, what the fuck?"

She attempted to wiggle herself out of my arms. I immediately released my hold on her and she broke free,

"That's what I wanted to ask as well!" Fay scowled at me. Her hard expression dropped when she took a second look at me.

"Why are you holding a gun?" She pointed her black paw at my left hand.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I blinked and saw that I was holding the golden gun I had taken from Crimson in my hand. The safety switch was still on but it still freaked me out.

Why was I holding it?

Maybe I had reached out to it in my sleep but I had never done that before. To say that I woke up confused would be an understatement.

Also, one person was missing.

Ah, I already found Luna.

She was standing at my feet, her fist clenched and red eyes narrowed.

For some reason she wasn't smiling, instead, she was glaring daggers at Fay.

"What?" Fay answered her glare with one of her own.

"Ralts!" She yelled with such intensity I didn't know she was capable of putting so many emotions into one word, let alone her own name.

A headache began to form.

"Time out everyone," I made a T with my hands and both Pokémon turned to look at me, both looking very displeased.

The very real possibility that they might turn their anger on me came up in my mind.

"Something is wrong." I pointed out everything that was out of place.

"Yes, how did I end up sleeping in your arms?" Fay asked accusingly.

{How could you?}

The same headache began to increase and I noticed my throat was very dry.

"Why am I holding a gun?" I questioned. "That's not normal."

That made both Pokémon shut up.

"Maybe you were trying to kill yourself in your sleep?" Fay offered.

"Hahaha," I glared at her. I had a gut feeling there was more to it. I grabbed my Pokédex to see how late it was. However, when I opened the Pokédex I wasn't met with the usual home menu. Instead, I was looking at the recording screen with a red blinking dot indicating it was still recording audio.

"What the hell?" I stared at the screen.

"What is wrong?" Fay asked, "If you're looking for excus-"

"No, look!" I showed Fay and Luna the Pokédex that was still recording.

"It has been recording sound since 3:18 in the morning," I explained as I stopped the recording. It automatically began to save it to the internal hard drive. A red spinning Pokéball indicated that it was working on saving it. The loading time indicated that the file was quite big.

"So?"

"Oracle, did I use a keyword last night?" I spoke clearly out loud.

"Yes," Pokédex lady spoke with a slight mechanical edge to her voice. "Keyword 'Big Sister' was spoken at 3:19 this morning."

"Keyword?" Fay questioned.

"You are aware that the Pokédex can be used with voice commands right?"

Fay nodded.

"Well, keywords are codewords for performing certain actions. You can install a lot of commands, for example, if you want to call the police or make her erase all the data. It’s useful if a trainer is for example running away from a swarm of Beedrill, or injured and can not use their device manually. Big Sister is the command I created that tells the Pokédex to start recording all sound but without giving off any sign of doing it. You know, if someone suddenly threatens me, I simply find a way to use the code word in a sentence and they wouldn't even notice they're being recorded."

A new recording was started but I immediately canceled it.

"See?"

Fay stared at me like I was crazy.

"What? It's a dangerous world, prepare for anything."

Luna grinned at Fay's surprised look.

"There's a word for that, paranoia," Fay offered.

{Not if someone's out to get you} Luna said.

I smiled brightly at my small psychic and offered her my high five. "She understands!"

She met my high five with one of her own, visibly satisfied with the praise.

I turned to the Pokédex and went to all the saved files.

"So you said Big Sister in your sleep?" Fay turned to face away from me.

"Let's find out."

I went to the recently created files and selected the 10 hour long audio file.

With one quick tap, it began to play.

I expected not too much out of it but to my surprise, I heard my own voice.

A short conversation between Fay and I began to play, although calling it a conversation would be a stretch.

I only said two things and heard a soft Ri which must have been Riolu's Pokéspeak without the translation.

Hearing your own voice in a recording was already weird as hell but this managed to trump that feeling by a wide margin because I don't remember that I was even saying anything. Or woke up!

It was interesting to see that Fay's Pokéspeak didn't translate through a recording but that wasn't surprising or relevant.

Bigger point was that something made past-me activate the recording mode and now current-me has no idea what made me do that.

Fay stared at the Pokédex screen, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish, or a Magikarp.

To my relief, nothing else happened, instead it was a solid 10 hours of me doing nothing except breathing.

I selected the option to view the entire recording as an audio trail. I was looking for significant spikes that would signify a change but nothing came out of it.

Skipping to random intervals also proved to be fruitless which was good news. There were only the few words spoken at the beginning and then hours of just sleeping noises.

I closed the Pokédex and stared at it, hoping it would reveal the secrets.

"Okay, freaky," I muttered.

"Luna, check if someone's close with bad intentions." I asked her, just to be sure.

Luna sat down next to me and leaned against me. {We are safe}

"Fay, you seeing something?"

"What?" She stiffened.

"Aura sight." I clarified to her.

"Oh." She nodded and her eyes flared blue for a second.

She turned her small head around, scanning for something only she could see. The eye color changed back to red and she shook her head. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

Fay fixed her gaze on me. "What is going on?"

"Fuck it, I don't know." I threw up my hands.

"You must know," Fay insisted. "You always know what's going on."

That was not true at all, no idea where she had picked up that idea.

I rubbed my temple and closed my eyes, trying to visualize what must have happened.

It should be relatively easy to know what I would think and do in certain situations.

"When I woke up I was holding a gun, meaning I expected an attack and I used you as a radar to detect it."

She nodded, "What else?"

I kept trying to imagine my own thought process.

Something was coming our way and I expected to either lose my memories or expected to be abducted. In both cases, the Pokédex would function as evidence, either for myself or for someone finding my stuff."

That was the only conceivable reason for my actions, right?

{Memory gone?} Luna asked curiously.

"Yes, Pokémon can erase memories, heck Mewtwo can do it so it wouldn't be too far off if other Pokémon can as well."

"So you think we lost our memories." Fay slumped her shoulders.

"Only from last night."

I got up and opened the tent to see if something had transpired outside. The soft beams of sunlight slipped through the cracks in the tent. I was met with the same trees I had seen before going to bed, the same field and the same sky.

"I think I can cross off 'abduction' from the list."

I looked around to see if I could find footprints or any other evidence of someone or something passing through but I found none.

Not that it meant a lot since I had no idea where to look for clues anyway.

I saw nothing that indicated anything happening outside here whatsoever.

The only noticeable thing was the lack of wildlife sounds. It was very quiet.

"Figured it out yet?" Fay asked behind me.

Did I feel like panicking? Absolutely not.

"I think a Pokémon with memory-erasing powers passed through, or was very close. We luckily haven't been attacked."

"So what happened?"

"Again, I have no idea. I can only make guesses."

The entire day I spent looking for clues and trying to remember anything that could help.

I found nothing.

It wasn't until 2 days later that I heard the news about wild Pokémon disappearing in that forest.