PK - Chapter 13: Alolan Daze Elseworld Interlude (Patreon)

IN ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE, ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER LIFE...

The terrible might of the dreaded Day Star was on full display today.

But that was normal given the Alolan archipelago was firmly in the tropics.

For me, it mostly meant that I had a great excuse to indulge in a midday nap.

“Ab! Absol!” My partner groaned, flexing against me, twisting and stretching.

Which, sadly, was a good indication that my siesta was over.

I groaned similarly to my pokemon as I stretched against the grass mat that I'd been lying on. The sun was like a warm blanket laying heavily on top of me, making even my mind a bit lethargic as I slowly woke up and cracked my eyes open. Thankfully, I'd set up in my usual nap spot, so I wasn't a cooked corphish, but even with the filtering shade of the palm trees above me, my skin was still caked in layers of dried sweat I'd accumulated over the course of my nap.

I released a jaw-cracking yawn and sat up slowly, popping my neck and looking around.

“Ahhhh-bsoo-oool!” My partner echoed, his mouth going wide as he planted his front paws and dragged his rear back into the air, pulling his body taut. “Absol!”

“Yep, buddy, just another day in paradise,” I hummed, shifting so that I was leaning up against a rock and scratching absol's mane around the long curved horn that emerged at the right of his head.

Ahead of me, Melemele Island stretched out, the city of Hau'oli glittering against the early afternoon sun.

“Best view on the island,” I chuckled, tucked away into a small thicket in the farthest hollow as we were, basically on the outer edge of Ten Carat Hill overlooking Melemele Sea and the open ocean to the south as well as the bay to the east. As always, I could see tourists and islanders alike dotting the sea, primarily using ride pokemon, but some riding waves instead.

I looked over to the rest of my team and found they were still snoozing in the afternoon heat.

“Ugh...” I sighed, leaning back and stretching a bit more. “If we don't get up, we're going to laze the whole day away.”

“Absol,” he nodded, agreeing with me, then-

Gruugle – Grrgl!

I snorted, reaching down to scratch my stomach through the white shirt I was wearing. “Looks like that decides it for us, huh?”

“Ab!” My friend barked, the sudden sharp noise provoking a response in my other friends.

“Roooow-let!” The grass-bird chirped, stretching on his perch as he did so. It was a simple thing, carved from a piece of driftwood I'd found and lodged into the rocky soil of the dead volcanic mountain to give rowlet a place to sleep during my frequent naps here.

“Pika-pi!” My most recent addition to the team cried, yawning widely.

Yep, I'd caught a pikachu. Call me a basic bitch or whatever, but she'd been a pretty nice add to the group given my coverage was pretty weird without her.

“Well, let's get down and... I dunno, you guys feeling fish today?” I asked, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. Normally, I'd head down to Aina's, but... too much of a good thing. And mom and dad were busy doing important diplomacy stuff, so unless I wanted to bum a lunch off my little brother's babysitter...

I was usually on my own for lunch.

“Chu!”

“Ro-row!”

“Sol!”

I clapped my hands and nodded. “Okay, fish it is. And I didn't forget your vitamins this time, so we don't have to swing by the store.”

I grabbed my bag and looked over my secret camping spot, making sure everything was tucked away properly. We were getting into rainy season and while I didn't keep much out here, I'd prefer if it didn't get soaked through. Once I was satisfied that everything was tucked away in a larger cooler I'd lugged up here, covered with reeds, and my 'mons properly returned, I blew a short whistle to alert my ride we were ready.

“Absol!” He barked, then...

I blinked, the feeling of a premonition ghosting over our bond.

“Shit,” I spat, slipping onto my pokemon's back and holding on tight. “High-ho, Silver!”

“Absooooo~oooo!” My mighty steed howled, bouncing up Ten Carat Hill in mighty leaps. It wasn't the smoothest ride, but I trusted Silver with my life by this point, and he was sure-footed enough to traverse the rockiest terrain Alola had to offer. His horn thrumming with energy, we craved an arc towards where I had already suspected we were going...

The tourist side of the mountain.

Which, technically, the whole thing was open for exploration. Melemele was the tourist island, after all. But there's a difference between where we encouraged tourists to go and where we discouraged them from going. In particular, there was a great deal of signage indicating which trails were safe and which were outright dangerous.

For what we called a 'hill,' this place reached high enough to have some seriously nasty sheer cliffs that ended in rock-strewn beaches.

“HELP! SOMEONE HELP!” A woman screamed.

“There's today's Little Timmy!” I called out as we bounced onto the side of a hill to avoid a pack of tourists freaking out.

“Absol!” Silver barked beneath me.

“No I'm not going to explain the joke!” I cried, the wind stinging my eyes as we slid around a corner. “That'd ruin the gag!”

“Help, Please!” The woman at the end of the path called out, very obviously freaking as she danced around, seized by panic.

I took the scene in, my eyes sweeping over the broken guardrails, the slip-marks in the sandy gravel on the path-

I'd pulled a rope out of my bag before I could consciously think to do so, making part of me worry that I'd developed very concerning habits even as a nine year old. But, this was the pokemon world, so it was probably better than the alternative. Sorting out which end was which I jumped off of absol and tossed out the bite-guard for him as he steadied himself. Reaching the edge of the cliff, I peered over and nodded to myself.

“Rope coming down,” I called out to the hiker hanging by his fingers on a slab of rock.

“Wha-Arceus thank you!” The twenty-something shouted back as I let the rope dangle to his side.

“Silver! Weight coming up!” I called back, taking up my own place on the rope and planting my feet. Then-

“Oof!” I grunted, my tiny child frame admittedly doing the lesser part of catching the sudden weight on the line as Absol growled around the bit. “We got it, climb up!”

There were grunts from the edge of the cliff, Absol and I pulling against the hiker as he slowly climbed the ten feet or so he'd fallen. I looked over to the woman who was clasping her hands and not being very helpful. “Hey, lady! When he gets to the edge, help pull him up!”

“Oh!” She jerked, blinking as she hurried forward, her sandals slipping for a moment before she got traction. “You're almost there, honey!”

And, with another few grunts and tugs, the hiker was back on to trail, his arms shaking with the effort of pulling himself up as I dropped the rope and heaved a sigh.

“I-I was just-and the railing gave way!” He gasped, laying on the gravel.

“Thank you! Thank you, so much,” the woman cried, clinging to her... husband? Boyfriend? Something.

“No problem, all in a day's work for the Absol Patrol!” I grinned.

“Absol!” Silver barked, picking up the rope with his teeth and handing it over.

“Thanks boy,” I smiled and gave his hair a tussle.

“Wait, that's an absol!?” The man cried, finding strength enough to begin crawling backwards away from us. “That must be why I fell! They're bad omens!”

The warm glow of accomplishment soured and I sighed, reaching into my bag and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “Okay, here. Take this and read it.”

The tourists both blinked at the sudden colorful pamphlet shoved in their faces. The woman wiped at her tear-stained eyes and reached out for it. “Absol: Nature's Warning System.”

“The details are in the pamphlet, but basically Absole are actually trying to warn people that something bad is going to happen,” I explained tiredly, slinging the rope around one forearm and rolling it up. “But because they show up whenever something bad happens, people started thinking their bad luck or some kind of 'harbinger of disaster.'”

“O-oh... wait, no... I was sure...” The hiker we'd just saved squirmed. Still looking at Silver like he was about to attack.

“Silver and I were on the other side of the mountain when you fell, anyway,” I shrugged, pulling out a yellow roll of caution tape and carefully moving to where the guardrail had broken. “He sensed something bad about to happen and we started running this way. How would we have caused your accident if we weren't anywhere near you?”

The male hiker blinked again, rubbing at his jaw as his breathing finally calmed. “H-huh. I suppose... um, thank you?”

The carefully-ventured gratitude earned him a happy bark from my partner who floofed his mane with a quick shake. “Absol!”

“Silver says you're welcome,” I nodded at him, finishing up the job of taping off the hole between the two still-sturdy posts. “Okay... that should do it for now. You folks need anything or can I call Officer Jenny to report this?”

I slipped my radio-phone out of my pocket bag and waved it for emphasis.

It wasn't anywhere near the weird rotom-phones I remembered from the games and anime, but it got the job done.

“So... wait,” the guy paused, standing up and dusting himself off. “You... why'd you have the rope and the, uh... tape?”

“We're the Absol Patrol,” I replied with a shrug, then nodded to Silver as I scratched his back. “I met silver a while back when my little brother was in danger and he guided me right to him. We became friends during the ensuing glorious adventure and now we run around the islands dragging people out of danger and fixing problems.”

“And... wait, your parents just... I mean, shouldn't you be in school? You don't look old enough for a journey, even,” the guy frowned, looking me over.

“I'm a once-in-a-generation genius,” I replied bluntly, then paused. “Also, I kind of averted a major crisis involving a million-pokedollar kickback scheme, a greedy mega-corporation, and the local legendary pokemon. So... everyone kind of figures that I can do more good for the world running around the islands than sitting behind a desk.”

Also, Kukui was awesome, but I could only take the man in small doses.

Fucking extroverts, man. Just too much energy.

The tourists were staring at me somewhat blankly, so I decided it was time to leave.

“Anyway, I'd recommend stopping by the clinic in town if you have any aches or pains,” I stated, making sure I had everything packed up before hopping on Silver's back. “But me and my team really have to get going, now.”

“Th-thank you again!” The girl cried out, then stopped. “Hey, what's your name?!”

“Aznaro Kalakaua!” I waved at them one last time. “Alola!”

Then Silver and I galloped off into the sunset.

...or, well, I'm sure we would, when the sun eventually set. But 'galloping off into the early afternoon' just didn't have the same ring to it.

“Hey Porygon!” I called out over the rushing wind. “Call Officer Jenny!”

There was a distorted warble from my phone as my fifth 'mon initiated the call. A second later, the voice of the Alolan variant of Officer Jenny spoke up. “Aznaro, I'll assume you've got another one?”

“Nothing major,” I replied. “Hiker fell off one of the higher paths on Ten Carat. I think it was the blue trail. Silver and I pulled him back up, didn't look worse for the wear, and I've got the guardrails that broke marked with hazard tape.”

“Good job,” Jenny sighed in relief. “I'll head over there and make sure everything looks okay in an hour or two. Team Skull decided to deface a building and I'm still writing up the report.”

I sighed, shaking my head. Jenny would learn, hopefully, that a bit of graffiti – especially the higher-quality artistic kind – wasn't something to fret about.

Or not. The woman was kind of high-strung, honestly.

“Roger that,” I replied, gripping Silver's fur tightly as he slid down a grassy slope. “I'm heading to a fishing spot for a late lunch. Consider me off the clock for two hours unless there's an emergency.”

“Good to hear,” Jenny replied. “Over and out.”

“Absol!” My trusty stead barked.

I scoffed as I shoved my phone back into my bag with a quick thanks to the silent partner of my team. “For the last time, Silver! Human mating doesn't work like that! Jenny and I might be pack because we work together, but we're not-uuuugh, you're not even listening, are you?”

“Ab-ab-ab!” The doggy laugh I got in response was clue enough.

I sighed as Absol made a sharp corner and then slowed down.

I blinked. We were in the middle of the forest, nowhere near the beach, much less a good fishing spot.

“Silver, what's going-”

I jerked in place as it hit.

This was a big one.

A wave of anxiety and potential destruction hit me, the feeling almost like one of Faba's reckless psychic-wave assaults during his 'tutoring' sessions. The grumpy asshat's shenanigans aside, I almost wanted to thank him for giving me the training that let me withstand what I was feeling.

Not seeing. Absol's premonitions were nowhere near as clear as that.

But the feeling of impending doom had a scope, scale, and depth to it. Most importantly, it had direction, even if only a vague one sometimes.

I locked in on my bond with Silver, focusing on it as much as I could, feeling my soul overlap his own and magnify our mutual potential.

“Don't be Hau'oli City, don't be the city, don't be the city...” I prayed fervently, then...

Cursed.

“Dammit!” I spat, pulling Silver towards the city. “Run boy!”

The feeling was still building, so we had time, but it was... deep in a way that I hadn't felt before. I... had to wonder, was this what an impending eruption felt like? No, not exactly... if it was that, it would have been directing us back to Ten Carat Hill. A tsunami? I hadn't heard about any earthquakes...

Would the Thrifty Megamart breaking ground have felt like this? If our bond then was what it is now?

An icy shiver raced down my spine at the thought, heedless of the hot Alolan sun burning in the sky.

“Quick Attack,” I called out, steeling myself for the-

The world sped up as normal type energy flooded over us, a blur of landscape allowing us to cover cover double or triple the distance we could have in a fraction of a second. Silver's muscles, straining beneath me, were barely taxed by the movement. No, the true test was what would come next.

“We're going to keep it up, boy,” I said solemnly into his ear, and I felt our bond pulse in acknowledgment. “I'll help as best I can.”

We flew.

A run that would have taken us half an hour at a decent pace, we covered in under five minutes, speeding across half the island and outpacing all sorts of ride pokemon, bikes, and even the occasional car or motorcycle.

Hau'oli City blurred into a colorful mass as we kept moving, speeding through the distance by spamming quick attack. Part of me was worried, but we'd trained for this. Specifically for this. I couldn't teach Extreme Speed, after all. I didn't have a pokemon that knew it natively so I had to resort to the next best thing.

The humble quick attack.

But quick attack had a distance limit and, yeah, you could train to overcome that distance. To push it further. But, you could also train to simply do the move more often. More frequently. Time after time.

The bargain bin version of extreme speed, if you will.

This was just... a lot longer than we'd ever held it for.

And we'd never practiced it with me on Silver's back, either.

I was... kind of grateful we hadn't eaten yet, too. Given that we were routinely pulling speeds that left me thinking I'd dropped my stomach a few miles back and pulling turns that made my inner ears wonder what the fuck I was doing.

“Absol!” Silver howled beneath me as we felt the feeling solidify.

“Aether Labs!” I shouted, my eyes locking onto the towering building. It had been some sort of old city hall or something before the budding Aether Foundation had bought it up. They were building a newer, more complete facility out in the middle of the fucking ocean-

Pokemon Tech, I fucking swear...

-but their insane supervillain lair had yet to be finished. So they were still operating out of the older laboratory complex for now.

I heard a siren kick off and knew Jenny would be hot on my trail.

Granted, I had run through virtually every traffic light in the entire city, completely careless of any vehicles in my way. And I think Silver had left a few dents in hoods and roofs of cars while we were at it.

Good response time, Jenny.

“See the gates?” I asked, focusing on the mostly-performative barrier that had been set up to keep Team Skull from causing trouble. “Think you can Shadow Sneak?”

“Absol!” Ruthless affirmative, despite the way I could feel him pushing himself.

“Three, two, one-” The guards in their crazy white uniforms were waving at me, holding pokeballs out, “Go!”

We vanished into a pool of darkness, flowing along the ground under the gate and manifesting in the courtyard.

Next up, doors.

I had a choice to make-

The feeling flared.

“Slash!” I shouted, instinct taking over.

“Absol!” Silver howled, spinning his horn and shooting out a pulse of energy. Another jump through the now-broken door and we were into the facility.

Down.

We needed to go down.

“Stairs, stairs!” I pointed, ignoring the group of people who'd dropped everything and started screaming.

Silver bounced off the wall, hit the second wall, and then careened down the final part of the stairs.

More people screaming!

But these were coming from one of the labs!

And, therefore, hadn't had contact with me or Silver yet! Which also meant they were screaming because of something else! And were therefore the people we were here to help.

“Shadow Sneak!” I called out again, shouting the command as we flowed into a patch of darkness and reemerged-

Into chaos.

Mohn, the head of the Aether Foundation, was screaming as he desperately held onto a dislodged railing. He was being held aloft horizontally by the force of a giant hole in the air that was trying to eat the building like a Arceus-dammed Stargate gone mad. A fractal cloud of colors swirled around the sucking vortex, various pieces of debris, office supplies, and laboratory equipment being consumed as we watched.

Huddled in the observation booth was that mudsdale's ass Faba, Mohn's wife Lusamine, and another research I knew by association – Wicke. All of them wore horrified expressions as they stood, unable to do anything while Mohn was dragged to his doom

My reflexes served me well again as my rope was already mysteriously in hand, the bite block being passed to a tired but determined absol.

“Catch!” I shouted, throwing the rope and holding fast to the bit right before Silver's mouth.

“AAAAAAHHHH!” Mohn intelligently responded, barely managing to grab hold of the rope just before he reached the event horizon.

“Pull!” I shouted at Silver, dragging the rope backwards as hard as I could.

“Grrr!” Silver growled in agreement, our bond pulsing in time with our pulls.

“C'mon Timmy!” I shouted, “You ain't going down the well today!”

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!” Mohn cried out again, the rope looped around his hands as the vortex behind him began to pulse erratically.

Arceus, please don't let that mean it's going to explode!

Worse, I could feel my feet beginning to lose traction. Not for the first time, I vowed to find some kind of shoes that I didn't mind wearing. Mom was always on me about that.

I really hope I'd get to hear her complain about that again.

Finally, the kaleidoscope of colors began to collapse just as my feet began truly slipping and the rope burning my hands.

One instant, the laboratory was being consumed by a literal whirlwind of air being siphoned off through a nightmarish vortex to another world. The next, the suction surged one last time and abruptly died, the wormhole disintegrating and leaving Mohn, Silver, and myself all crashing to the floor.

For a long moment, I just lay there, sore and shaking as I stared up at the half-functioning lights on the ceiling. Some were still stubbornly clinging to life, others had been destroyed by flying debris, and a few were just missing entirely, sacrificed to the all-consuming void that had tried to eat the entire lab.

“Everybody still alive?” I called out feebly.

“Ab!” Silver whined.

“I-I'm okay!” Mohn called out shakily, his voice trailing off into slightly-hysterical laughter.

“Mohn!” Lusamine cried out, throwing the observation booth's door open and rushing to her husband's side. “Thank Arceus! Thank the Tapu! I can't believe it, I thought I was going to lose you!”

“We're taking tomorrow off, Silver,” I sighed, still unwilling to move, even given I was laying on something sharp and uncomfortable.

“Ab-sol,” Silver whined in agreement.

“Cosmog!”

I blinked, turning my head to where a bundle of… prismatic gas was floating? A rough spheroid with two smaller bubbles on either side of its head?

“An unknown pokemon!” Faba called out, sounding shocked. “It must have come from beyond the Ultra Wormhole!”

“Cosmog!”  It - she - said her name again as it bobbed away from the loud grouch, swooping down to me.

I sighed as its gaseous body alighted in my hand, chuckling as Wicke tried to calm Faba as he lost his shit. “You’re going to be a load of trouble, aren’t you?”

The door burst open and Jenny stepped through, her gaze sweeping over the crowded room. “What on Earth is going on here!?”

I frowned, looking around at the people and the disaster area. “Actually, for once? I have just as much idea about this as you do, Jenny.”

~~~

Aznaro's mother and father met when the latter was in Alola as a diplomat. They fell in love, got married, and moved to Paldea to start their family.

But Aznaro's father could have chosen to stay amid the tropical islands instead.

So... what if he had?

A special interlude chapter of Paldean Knights. The Alolan Daze Timeline will recur... every now and then.

Next update? Another surprise. Birthday week shenanigans will continue.