Chapter 9

It wasn't the light that woke Quinn, but something sharp and painful, digging into one of his hands. He stirred, then opened one eye to stare at whatever had caused so much pain.

A tiny pink creature had latched onto his fingers, digging teeth into his skin. "W-what?"

She released him, leaving a pair of dots where her canines had sunk into his skin, leaking amber-colored sap. "Sleeping too long!" Avery called. Her telepathy was somehow smaller than before, though simultaneously much louder and clearer. "Wake up! Wake up! I'm starving to death!"

He closed both eyes, then rolled the other way. It didn't really work—there was too much light in the burrow. Now that he was awake, he wouldn't easily go back. Even hiding his face in Sirius's tail only helped so much.

The floor was much softer now, all the dirt now fully covered in moss. Despite the distance from the river, it somehow hadn't dried out. Maybe he felt like he had, a little. The warmth of sunlight outside called to him.

But Avery had bitten him, and he wanted to show her that strategy wouldn't work.

Unfortunately for him, it kinda did. Something shuffled around the moss beside him, moving easily around the corner using her much smaller size. He felt the tiny jaws closing around his leg before she bit down, and he opened one eye. "Don't bite me again, please."

Avery let go, then looked the other way. Her tail curled around her body, and her ears pressed flat. Even if he couldn't feel her emotions, he would know exactly what that kitten was feeling. Pokémon were much easier to read.

"Wasn't," she said. Out loud this time. Her voice sounded nothing like the Avery he knew—a feeble, feline mew, high pitched and shrill. But just as the fox and the other cat, just like the wild Pokémon he'd met so far, Quinn understood her. "Just wanted to get your attention. Hungry!"

She moved over to his head, bouncing up and down several times. When she jumped, she lifted right off the ground and hung in the air over his eyes, before dropping down another second later. "Don't you want food too?"

Her noise woke the other cat, who now watched from her side of the burrow. But she didn't interfere, only watching the kitten in silence.

Let someone else deal with the kid when she's being annoying, and you can take her back when she's in a better mood. Perfectly fair.

"Yeah, I guess." He sat up. Easier for him in the burrow than the fox, though Sirius was still pretending to be asleep. "You're not starving. You're not a kid either, Avery. Don't act like that."

She smacked her head into his leg—not hard, she didn't seem capable of doing anything hard.

"It would be easier to think if I wasn't so hungry," Avery said, a little louder this time. Now it came off more like a mewling kitten, not even clear words exactly. "Bring me food!"

"You can come with me."

He had lifted berries with him before, how much harder could it be to lift a cat? Besides, he needed more time with her to figure out just how bad the damage was. Avery could be playful, under the right circumstances. Never anything as bad as this…

He waved, and the plants covering the burrow parted for them. It wasn't levitation exactly, more a command to the growing things themselves. In spite of picking them up off the ground, these branches hadn't withered during the night. Those leaves were only bigger and more vibrant, spreading to cover the entrance from the sun.

Quinn's wings buzzed, lifting him an inch or so off the ground. He already felt them brushing up against the ceiling. If he got too close, that would turn painful very quickly.

He didn't though, waiting until he was out of the burrow to pick up Avery.

It wasn't quite as simple as picking up a berry. Avery bent and warped the space a little differently around her, like trying to hold water in something curved. It took more focus, slowing Quinn in the air while he watched her.

She didn't seem to mind being picked up, or notice that she'd been completely naked since her transformation. But it wasn't like there was anything human to remind them about things like that. "We can go together. Just… let me get the hang of this for a second. You're harder to lift than you should be."

"Because Mew fly," she said, sticking out her tiny red tongue. She rolled over in the air, though she could do nothing more. That wasn't the same level of control of her flight as he had, since she wasn't the one flying herself at all.

Her tail trailed out behind her, along with those slightly oversized lower paws. "I feel it. I'm… not supposed to be carried. Gotta pull my own weight."

"You want me to drop you?" Quinn already had them at human head level, what probably looked like thirty or forty feet up from her perspective. "If you want to fly yourself…"

She squealed, and somehow moved herself in the air. Not holding her weight—she pushed sideways, zipping over to him, where she could latch those claws into his side. "Don't drop me don't drop me don't drop me don't drop me!"

"Easy with those, Avery." With every passing second, his concern grew, for reasons entirely disconnected from the physical pain. Yeah, it hurt, but the way she acted…

He kept floating upward, adjusting the kitten against his side so he could see her face. "What's your last name, Avery?"

"Arcallis," she said, tilting her head to the side. "Feels kinda long though, doesn't it? Last names… like there are a whole lot of other Averies I gotta stand out from. Bet there's none who look like this!"

She pushed off from him—and immediately started sinking, moving desperately through the air as though swimming with her forelegs.

She wasn't very good at it, and might've dropped all the way to the forest floor below if he didn't intervene. Fortunately, Quinn was better with his abilities, skilled enough to move her closer. It had been harder before, but this time it felt relatively simple.

"Why are you so much worse at this? I was flying like… an hour after I changed."

She shrugged. "Dunno, Quinn. Quinn Veyron. Veyron…" She stuck out her tongue again. "Everything is so… different. Even thinking is different from before. Can I have food now?"

He scanned the trees around them. Naturally Sirius had already brought anything within reach of a fox his size. Anything they found would be too high up for him, but not so obvious that flying types would have already grabbed it.

He found what he was looking for only a few moments later; a rich, fleshy-looking berry with soft yellow skin. He tugged it off the tree without difficulty, then held it in front of them both. "I thought you were dead, Avery. Even now… I used time travel to save you. Saw what the radiation would do, then found someone I had already told. She gave me the injection we used."

Avery was barely listening. She sank her teeth into the fruit in tiny bites, spraying the nectar all over her face, and splashing some of it onto his skin.

She looked up at him, a huge chunk of it clutched in those tiny white teeth. "I knew you would help me, Quinn. You've always taken good care of me."

He lifted the fruit straight up and out of her reach, so he could meet her eyes again. That annoyed her even more, making her tail swish sharply to either side. "Wasn't finished!"

"I had cruise tickets," he said. "I'd already talked to Professor Fennel, got permission for you to take the next week off with me. We were gonna go all the way to Alola. If you agreed, I mean. I thought you would."

She reached up at the Hopo Berry, straining to get closer. But for all her obvious desire, it didn't translate into motion.

She's so weak. Why didn't I end up like that?

"Better late than never!" she said. "But now it's too late. We're…" She put her paws down, leaning forward to look at herself in the air. "Arceus, I'm a Pokémon! You're a Pokémon! This is bad, this is… your thesis exploded."

She does remember. Quinn lowered the berry back where she could reach it, the same section she'd already started to destroy. He was small enough that they could both share something this large, but that didn't mean he was willing to eat something so badly messed up.

"It did. Something in the particle trap… wasn't happy." Saying it like that physically hurt, a level of scientific rigor so far beneath him he should probably just jump out of the trees now. "I would need to see the readings to know exactly what happened. I'm sure Sada got an eyeful in the control booth. But we had to run for our lives before that."

Avery watched him for a few seconds, almost listening. But then the allure of the fruit drew her back down, and she went back to devouring it, one tiny bite at a time.

"So how come you turned into a Pokémon in the lab and I didn't? We were both in the same room. Practically next to each other." So she could still think clearly, if she wanted. That was the Avery he'd liked since middle school, not the child who bit his hand.

"No idea. Feels like… it's in the particle trap. Finding a material that could stop tachyons was already incredible. Somehow it released a lot more energy than we put in. Orders of magnitude more, if it could get through that transparent aluminum window. And that radiation exposure—that was more than you should've got from six months of standing in that room for test collisions. Maybe more… never even seen it that color."

He knew the second Avery was done, because she pushed the fruit away from herself, or tried. She floated a short distance away, but didn't start falling this time. So long as she stayed close enough for Quinn to hold her, she wouldn't fall.

Quinn took a few quick bites from their shared meal. It was less than he needed, or maybe just the right amount. It was hard to be sure, given that simply standing in the light had its own positive effect on him. He couldn't enjoy the sun quite so much when he was babysitting though.

"It's your theory," Avery said. "Your research. Your… thesis. How long do we stay like this?"

He took a little time to answer, finishing his meal. Though if he used his mind, he wouldn't have to stop eating to talk to her. "There's no natural way for a Pokémon to be human. Except maybe… the ones that have ways. You do, I think. Team Infinity claims they have a few Mew who joined. Remember… hearing about it, the one time I asked them about Celebi."

But this Mew wasn't listening to him anymore, not when she could move sideways over to one of the nearby trees, where she could tug at several exposed leaves. She pried and pulled at one, getting it into her little teeth before yanking away.

"Did you… feel anything, when you slept?" he thought to her. Hopefully it would be harder to ignore if it went directly into her mind. "Like there were people watching us? I think they might be looking for you."

He finished with what he was eating a few seconds later, then picked a few more berries for their partners on the ground. Though he didn't drop back down yet; Baast couldn't try to take the kitten away when they were fifty feet up.

"Me, not you?" she asked, rolling back over and hanging there upside-down again. "Why? You're the big, strong one. You time traveled us here, right? Basically discovered time travel. I dunno what I am, except tiny and useless. I'll have to find someone else to try my neurological conditioning experiments! It won't count if I'm psychic, if I'm a dang Psychic type!"

She smacked into Quinn again a few seconds later. She was still upside-down, though that might be intentional? Or maybe she just didn't know how to control her flight. "Say you're sorry! For… for all this stuff. Say it right now!"

"I'm sorry," Quinn said, holding his tiny hands out to either side. "It was my fault. I thought the experiment was safe, and I miscalculated. Badly. You being a Pokémon…" He shrugged. "I'm not so sorry about that part. I saw what radiation poisoning was doing to you."

He took her gently in one small hand, then turned her in the air so she floated upright in front of his head. "This is… better, I think. You still think you're Avery in there? You're acting… strange."

"I feel strange." She rolled out from between his fingers, which started her spinning in the air next to him. "There's this… crushing pressure, every second. I open my lungs, and it's barely enough to get the air in. Until we're floating, and I can think again. Down on the ground it's awful. I wonder what kinda Psychic reason would cause that."

They didn't get to speculate on it at that moment, because something appeared just over their heads, taking form above the trees. A split-second later, an explosion of air like lightning shook the forest, snapping tiny branches away and sending the two of them spinning through the canopy.

Quinn reacted by instinct, holding Avery close to his chest and wrapping both arms around her. That way, he protected her with his own body as they bounced and scraped against several trees.

Maybe it was luck, or maybe something else—but it didn't hurt that badly. At worst, he would have a minor bruise or two.

He righted himself a second later, his wings buzzing desperately to keep them airborne and upright.

Motion drew his eyes back to the aircraft, in time to see one of its metal walls constricting like an aperture. Soft white light spilled out from within, easily outshone by the sun. Then he saw the occupants, and barely had the discipline to keep flying.

One spoke into his mind, as flat and calm as any member of emergency services. "Do not be afraid, degenerate mutation. Your rescue has arrived."