Chapter 8

Avery was far less intimidating to him than she had been a few moments ago. Quinn floated down beside her, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. Tiny limbs twitched, and thin claws emerged from between her toes with each movement.

Not the kind that would hurt Quinn by mistake, though. Instead of fighting danger, this creature now radiated a sense of familiarity and desperate need for help.

This is a newborn without a mother. Does that make me her mom?

The kitten shivered. When she spoke, it wasn't physically, as though the effort of moving her mouth was too much for her. "Why did you… How did this happen, Quinn? I remember… we…"

She looked up at him, or tried. Even her eyes barely stayed open, glazing over with the effort.

Her whole body is smaller than a human's brain. How much of her had to melt to fit?

He floated next to her, running one hand along her back. The touch was not a pleasant sensation, her whole body covered with a kind of amniotic slime that clung to the skin as thick as oil. "You came to my experiment at the BBLEC," he said, voice as gentle as he could make it. "There was an accident. Remember?"

One blue eye opened all the way, following his hand as it moved. "I remember that! Explosion, thought you died, then you said I died…"

I watched it happen. He had done the same thing here, though it didn't take bullets this time. This death was his fault.

"Why is everything so huge, and so… gross?" she demanded, reaching towards him with both forelegs.

Paws pushed him away, sending Quinn spinning through the air. His wings caught him, though he probably would've just fallen before. That long flight had given him good reason to improve.

"Thought fairy knew what he was doing. Fairy is bad at this." Baast said. The cat eased Avery into the air in her forelegs, lifting her towards her mouth.

"Wait!" He zipped in front of her, floating next to Avery in the air. "Wash her off in the river first, Baast. She was irradiated—invisible poison could be all over her, in that goo." He still didn't know why Pokémon were less susceptible, none of their numbers showed any signs of sickness, except Avery. But external exposure and swallowing something were very different beasts.

"I think the treatment Lane gave me cured her, but the radiation had to go somewhere. If you swallow that, you'll die."

Baast fixed him with a flat, exasperated stare. "Kitten, I am sorry. Your friend who is fairy now told me to. You will not like this."

She was right about that—Avery hated the river. Even holding her in the shallow water for a few minutes, just long enough to wash away the mucus clinging to her and lift her out again, turned her from a confused kitten to a shivering and furious one.

Baast curled up around her then, licking her clean in the way felines often did. Quinn remained nearby, watching their surroundings with Sirius. Not so much because he expected attack, as it was easier not to be right there.

A Celebi could bring her back to the present. But even if I was a real one, I couldn't fix her body. She's as screwed as I am.

"You did good keeping them safe while I was gone," he said, floating over to the fox and touching one hand on his shoulder. He could usually be a little more affectionate, but the heat was too intense now. Like running his fingers through that fur actively drove away the moisture, making it painful instead of slightly pleasant. "Thank you."

The fox nodded proudly, both paws on his hips. "I knew master would be back. Help you, so you could help not-mate. Sure she would die."

Avery didn't seem to be fully conscious anymore. She occasionally stretched or mewed under Baast's attention, but that was all. I hope you're still in there, Avery. If I killed you without your body dying, this won't be any better.

Quinn entrusted the fox with a little more protection and returned a few minutes later with an armful of berries from the upper branches for them to share. A light meal, though at least he recognized the species this time. Almost all Pokémon could eat them without fear of poisoning.

At his direction, they moved up the river a short way, with Baast carrying Avery in her forelegs the whole time. The Pokémon couldn't understand the potential side-effects of radiation poisoning, and who knew the concentration of dangerous things in that fleshy cocoon. But their group had already been exposed, and might be close to some critical threshold between themselves and poisoning.

Besides, he had found a nice little burrow in the roots of a tree near the river, one large enough for all of them to share and no recent scents of other occupation.

He left all of Avery's things behind, along with his own human possessions. No more radiation, no more exposure.

Avery didn't eat with them that night, having already fallen asleep. But she had somewhere warm to shelter with her Pokémon, who had taken up a parental role without any prompting on Quinn's part.

She seemed to know what she was doing, even if she was a very different type of cat. But maybe not that different, considering their similar abilities.

"You going to be okay with her tonight?" Quinn asked, when he'd finished covering the entrance over with branches and leaves to hide it from the outside. "She's delicate. Those little limbs…"

"Yes, fairy," Baast said, exasperated. "Was big cat before, even though she could barely do anything right. Dropped things, knocked things over, made noise everywhere she went. Thoughts so loud and distracting. Powers like helpless kitten."

She stretched out into one corner, curling around the kitten tucked up into her chest. Without any sign she was awake, Avery pressed herself closer to that warmth, wrapping her absurdly-long tail against herself.

"Was never sure about tall human and fox before. But fairy is… better. Made big cat into right size. Harder to get into trouble. Make me do things I don't want. Maybe not as good for brushing fur properly. Maybe you can do it."

He sat down near the front of the burrow, resting his fingers against the branches he'd used to clog the opening. There were still a few green leaves there—it would be better to sleep somewhere green.

"Maybe," he muttered. "I am going to fix this. Make us human again." The words felt hollow even as he said them, lacking any conviction. He would feel much more confident about his chances if he knew what had happened to cause his own transformation, so he could then reverse it.

But most scientific organizations were skeptical of the existence of Pokémon like them, especially Celebi. Mew were more accepted as a common ancestor, though believed long extinct.

But people becoming Pokémon, that wasn't in any research Quinn had ever considered. If he'd thought the accelerator had a chance of causing that, he could've made his thesis more theoretical instead.

The fox didn't fit quite as well in the burrow, needing to remain on his belly and brushing up against the dirt whenever he moved. He would probably clear more space later, if Quinn hadn't already clogged the exit. "Master, will we go home soon? I want my bed. Better food home too. Not just berries."

Quinn nodded weakly. "I hope so. Just as soon as I figure out how far back in time we are, and how to… jump the other way."

He lifted his forelegs from the branch, staring down in front of him. A curtain of green spread away from that contact, living moss that crept in through the opening and grew over half the burrow. It reached all the way around Quinn, then stopped.

How did I… He wasn't the one who needed somewhere soft to sleep, anyway. Avery was the one with insomnia. Though being a kitten seemed to have cured that too.

His dreams in that shelter were even stranger than the last time. Quinn saw a featureless, colorless abyss extending in all directions, where great fish much larger than any living human swam along their dark purposes.

His own presence there was an insignificant suggestion, a blip that would be quickly crushed if he moved the wrong way.

Yet this time, there were words, distant yet clear. Without knowing how, he knew they were important. "Lost child. Kitten in the jungle. Helpless. Rescue party."

He tried to turn and see who was speaking, though he still lacked the dexterity to control his position in that strange place. He tried to look anyway, searching for the speaker.

His desire worked, and Quinn's vision filled. There was a… ship, floating somewhere in that sea. It wasn't a boat like any he'd ever sailed on, yet his mind parsed the shape as one anyway. On that boat were thousands of… people.

He saw them as humans, though part of him knew that was wrong too. It was the shape people ought to have, because all other living things were Pokémon, and thus not people. Of the thousands dwelling there, a small but not insignificant number now focused towards him, eyes searching through the sea and its many horrifying fish for whatever had attracted their notice.

Not him. He wasn't like them, in ways he couldn't quite comprehend from his nonvisual view of their bodies and minds. But there was someone who was, someone asleep near him.

They're looking for her.