Chapter Text
Emmet slammed into awareness in much the same way a train slams into a wall.
One moment, he wasn't. Then, he was.
He was lying on his back, limbs splayed around him like a discarded doll. Everything ached. It was pitch-black. The very air around him warped and shuddered, thunder and lightning tearing great glowing strips through the darkness as if the world itself were coming apart at the seams.
He could feel static electricity, like the field after a Thunder Wave, his clothing crackling and popping and discharging sparks of electricity with every minute movement of his body.
Each breath tasted like sour ozone, it stung his throat to breathe, leaving an awful metallic taste at the back of his tongue.
And he was scared . He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t afford to die. But if he stayed where he was, he would die. This, he knew with a terrible certainty.
The world around him screamed, a wavering, constant pitch that rose and rose and rose and rose as the chaos grew.
He wasn’t alone where he lay, either. There were things dropping into the mud around him as if it were raining, yet the rain was just… Stuff .
An entire washing machine sat to his left, wedged into the ground by its own weight.
With a few pops of lighting, a handful of glass marbles popped into existence, hitting the floor with a few muted thuds .
He needed to move.
His body felt leaden and heavy with unconsciousness, clumsy and barely cooperative, but he had to move. He had to move! Move, Emmet.
“I am Emmet.” His voice shook, “I am going to be okay. I am going to be okay. ” He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t know how he’d gotten there. “I am Emmet.”
The ground was wet beneath him, thick slush and mud trying to suck him in, soaking through his clothes and pasting them to his body.
Emmet rolled, his elbows sinking into the mess as he scrambled desperately to leaver himself up and then-
Then, he was screaming too.
The world turned white in blistering agony. His elbows buckled and Emmet dropped, and that just made it worse -
There was- There was something- There was something in his leg-
Something sharp and heavy - Awful and foreign- He could feel his pulse around it, he could feel the blood soaking into his clothes from the wound, pasting his sodden trousers further to his skin with every terrified heartbeat; A sensory nightmare under most circumstances, but barely even a blip on the radar amongst everything else.
It hurt. It hurt. It hurt! Electric arcs of pain shuddered up his body with every shift of his limbs, every shiver of his breath.
But that voice at the back of his mind still screamed; Danger, danger, you’re in danger , Emmet.
Go!
With shuddering, jerking movements, Emmet lifted himself from the ground and began to crawl, elbow over elbow through the thick mud and slush and who knew what else coating the world around him.
“I am going to get help.” His pounding heart roared in his ears like an approaching train. “I am going to be okay.”
The repetition helped somewhat, as it always did. He was Emmet. He was going to be okay. It was nice to have a script to stick to, as if concentrating on the words, the movement of his tongue and mouth in sync, could distract him from the bone-deep fear clenching through his gut, the agony in his leg- Growing with each passing second as he scrabbled along the ground like an animal- Too slow, far too slow - Not going to make it in time- End of the line-
His breaths were coming in thick heaves around the growing lump in his throat. “I am going . To be okay .”
The air felt like it was growing thicker , pressure building and building and building at an unsustainable pace, the thunder and lighting and terrible wind rising alongside it.
It felt like something was coming. Something big, something awful, something he didn’t want to stick around to see.
But he couldn’t go any faster. The mud sloshed around him, grabbing onto his arms, his coat, his trailing, useless leg, dragging him back, increasing the effort needed just to move by tenfold.
“I am going- I am- I am going-” He could barely see where he was going. His muddy, bloody tracks wavering unsteadily behind him as his route failed to run straight, routing and rerouting around rocks and debris. “I am going to be okay.”
Something crashed, the pressure grew further, Emmet’s hand flew to his belt and found nothing .
He had no pokemon. He was alone. He had no pokemon. He was alone.
He had no pokemon, he was alone, he was very injured.
Emmet scrabbled at his wrist, smearing mud over the screen of his Xtransceiver as his shaking fingers failed and failed to activate the device.
It was off. Why was it off?
“Please, please, please-” He begged the thing, as if it made any difference. “Please turn on. Please.”
The screen flickered and stuttered, the electricity in the air catching upon it and causing it to flash at random, but it was working , the watch rebooting with a small chime, the home screen blooming, illuminating a web of cracks he was sure weren’t there before, and- And-
“No.” It had no signal. “Please.”
He was very injured, and his pokemon were gone, and his Xtransceiver had no signal. And all those were very bad things that would have a very negative impact on his survival.
And he didn’t want to die. He was Emmet. He was in pain. He was injured. He was alone. He couldn’t call for help. And he didn’t want to die.
“I am Emmet. I am going to be okay. I am moving to safety.” His whole body felt like a fresh bruise, his lungs burnt, each movement sending a constellation of pain shooting through his body, but if he stopped, if he let himself lose steam for even a second, he would not start up again, his engines would freeze, and it would be bye-bye Emmet. “The next stop is just ahead. I am going to be okay.”
There was a dark, swirling boundary up ahead, stretching into the sky and over his head in a great dome, sickly colours crawling across it like an oilslick rainbow.
It was semi-transparent, wavering like fabric and washing over clumps of snow like the sea over stones, engulfing them and releasing them with perfect rhythmic timing.
That was where he needed to be. “I am Emmet. I am moving to safety. I am pulling into the station.”
The lightning was getting worse, the taste of the air ever stronger; Pressure rising like a boiler filled to bursting, reality itself straining and creaking like overstressed metal as the energy in the atmosphere continued to grow. It felt like something was building, a terrible sense of doom, a freight train screaming towards him as he laid passively across the tracks.
It felt to Emmet like he was being crushed, like he was splitting at the seams, his breaths fizzed like soda in his throat and then some. Thing. Popped .
And then Emmet wasn’t alone anymore.
The world around him shattered , and something hit the ground hard , mere feet away from his head.
Emmet flinched in alarm, stifling a squeal as his elbows gave way in shock, dropping him bodily into the mud as the newly-fallen pokemon nearly trampled him in its haste.
Up above, the air tore like paper, spiderweb cracks buckling apart under the sheer weight of the atmosphere, sending roiling waves over him and through him, lighting striking every which way as creatures great and small tumbled like leaves in the wind as they fell bodily through the tears splitting the air above.
And as they landed, the world exploded with panic .
The ground shook as battle after battle after battle commenced, attacks cutting through the already shredded air as the disoriented, terrified pokemon clashed over and over again.
Emmet could barely move for the fighting, slowing his pace and forcing him to freeze where he lay with held breath and a prayer whenever something moved past.
But he was almost there! His heart pounded harder, one leg moving to scrabble against the ground and speed up his crawl, the other dragging limp and useless, the thing lodged inside rendering the whole thing inoperational.
Emmet broke the boundary headfirst, gasping for air as he dragged himself over the threshold and allowed himself to flop gracelessly onto his back.
He was safe! He was out! He was-
He was cold.