KoN (3/8)

[aetherling]

This only took an hour. To format. 

III. dream-sharing
 

To: Black <black_yang>
CC: Bianca <biancabel>
From: Cheren <cheren1>

Congrats on the job.

To: Cheren <cheren1>
From: Black <black_yang>

what
how did you find out

To: Black <black_yang>
From: Cheren <cheren1>

That’s what I deciphered from your text last night.

            >To: Cheren <cheren1>
            >From: Black <black_yang>
            >
            >hey cheron
            >aldwrs hair
            >he says its natursl
            >liek a galon of hairspray natrual
            >
            >To: Black <black_yang>
            >From: Cheren <cheren1>
            >
            >...It’s 2:30 in the morning, Black.
            >
            >To: Cheren <Cheren1>
            >From: Black <black_yang>
            >
            >oops
            >but youre awkae
            >cheren
            >ald watns to ask if youll help me
            >
            >To: Black <black_yang>
            >From: Cheren <cheren1>
            >
            >I will not help you with your hangover.
            >Alder can deal with his poor judgement.
            >
            >To: Cheren <cheren1>
            >From: Black <black_yang>
            >
            >hey ar you kiding
            >im not evn tipsy
            >ugh
            >theses butoons are to smal
            >i mean
            >kick plsma butt
            >me yiu an banica
            >i mean bianca
            >alder wants to know if you’ll help me take down plasma
            >yess
            >did you see thta
            >no typos
            >
            >To: Black <black_yang>
            >From: Cheren <cheren1>
            >
            >I will frame it and hang it on your wall for you.
            >Why is Alder asking you that?
            >
            >To: Cheren <cheren1>
            >From: Black <black_yang>
            >
            >cuz he’s hiered me
            >to make n see poikemin liveraton
            >is stuopid
            >hang on
            >he’s tangld in teh string thnig
            >brb

To: Cheren <cheren1>
From: Black <black_yang>

i don’t remember this
i can’t understand what i’m saying

To: Black <black_yang>
From: Cheren <cheren1>

My sentiments exactly.
Apparently you were either more coherent with Bianca, or she’s an expert at reading typos.

To: Cheren <cheren1>
From: Black <black_yang>

i was texting bianca too?
dang

To: Black <black_yang>
From: Bianca <biancabel>

4 the record, i congradtulated you 1st
wanna meet up? it’ll be easier to talk about your new job
 

And that is how Black finds himself sitting in an outdoor cafe when Cheren smacks the side of his head with a rolled up newspaper.

"That is for making me read through your stupid typos at 2 in the morning."

“What about your hot pink uniform?” asks Bianca unhelpfully.

“Right.” And Cheren whacks Black again.

“Geez, no mercy for the hungover,” Black grumbles, rubbing his head.

“That’s not my fault,” says Cheren as he and Bianca sit across the round table from Black. “You have no one to blame for your poor choice of actions except for yourself.”

“How is it? Do you feel like eating anything? Did you throw up yet?” Bianca is too chipper for the hungover to deal with in the morning, Black thinks to himself, but he answers all the questions in the negative.

“Well, I wouldn’t object to some coffee and eggs. Since you’re employed, you can treat,” says Cheren. Bianca adds, “I’ll have bacon!” over Black’s weak protests.

After they ordered breakfast (and a glass of water for Black), Bianca says, “Okay Black, time to spill your secrets. What are we gonna do to stop Team Plasma?”

Black takes a deep breath, and looks at Cheren, then Bianca.

“Inception.”
 

Half of Cheren’s eggs and all of Bianca’s bacon are gone when Black finishes explaining everything. He’s not sure how many glasses of water he drank since the waitress kept refilling it, but he knows his throat still feels really dry.

“So,” Cheren starts. “You’ve been exploring dream-share with White for years but none of us knew about it. How did Alder know?”

“I’m not sure,” Black admits. “I think...it was a really educated guess on his part? I think he knew there was a chance I would still be interested in dream-share after my father passed away...he knows it’s not something you can easily forget.”

“Have you ever performed an extraction before?”

“Once.”

“Who was the target?”

“Some Plasma grunt. It was...her idea.”

“How did it go?”

“We only had to go down one level of dreaming. We built a labyrinth so his subconscious projections couldn’t find us while we extracted the secrets he put in our safe. That’s how we found out Ghestis was calling all the shots in Team Plasma, not N as he led everyone to believe.”

“It sounds so unreal,” says Bianca. “If anyone else told me about inception or extraction, I would not have believed them for a minute. I mean, how would you create enough detail to fool N into thinking it’s real? Wouldn’t he notice at some point that he’s dreaming?”

“Well, dreams seem real enough when we’re in them. It’s when we wake up we realize something strange was happening... And you never quite start at the beginning of a dream, you always start in the middle of it, unaware of how you got there. True?”

Bianca nods thoughtfully.

“Now how did we end up here?”

“Um,” Bianca looks around the cafe. It seems innocuous enough. “We were...uh.” She gasps a little. “We’re dreaming?” Immediately, Cheren’s fork rattles loudly against his plate as the world begins to shake around them.

“Right. We’re in your dream, to be precise.” Black’s glass of water topples over and the contents land on Bianca’s lap.

She gasps. “If this is a dream, why can I feel that? What’s going on?”

“The sensation is all in your head, your brain crea--” The surrounding tables collapse one after another, cutting Black off, and Cheren bolts out of his seat when the nearest table falls rather dramatically.

Black grabs Bianca’s hand. “Bianca, calm down--” But Bianca looks like a deer trapped in headlights; she shakes her head at Black and mouths, “What?” And Black yells, “It’s your dream, you can contr--”
 

Next thing he knows, he is staring at a white ceiling and lying on his back. Beside him, Bianca’s body gives a jerk and her eyes fly wide open. “What?”

“As the dreamer, you’re in control of the environment of the dream.”

“Oh...I panicked. I’m sorry, I--”

“No, no, you did fine.” Bianca starts to shake her head, but Black continues, “It was really impressive, you got most of the details on your first try--”

“And she managed to fool herself into thinking she wasn’t dreaming.” Cheren is sitting up from his reclined chair, giving Black a hard stare. “Black, what if we forget we’re in a dream?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll wake when the sedative wears off,” says a voice behind them. 

Cheren twists around to look up at a dark-haired woman wearing a lab coat. “Professor Fennel? We’re in your lab?”

“Yup! Who better to assist Black and Alder’s dream mission than the Dream Mist researcher herself?” Professor Fennel walks up to Cheren and begins pulling a tube off his arm. Black and Bianca are wearing similar tubes as well, which connect to a peculiar-looking machine behind them.

“Professor, please,” Black motions her to stop removing Cheren’s tube, “give us another 5 minutes.”

“‘Another’ 5 minutes? We were talking for at least an hour!” says Bianca.

“Time runs slower in a dream,” Professor Fennel explains. “5 minutes will give you an hour. And when you dream inside a dream...”

“It feels like 6 hours,” finishes Black. “But single-level dreaming is enough to deal with for now.”

“Right then,” Professor Fennel presses a few buttons on the machine before pressing a large gray button with some finality. “Sweet dreams.” Black can hear the smile in her voice as his consciousness slips away.
 

They’re back at the outdoor cafe. All the tables are still standing and people are continuing with their lives as if nothing happened. Black scans the surroundings before looking down at the same table they were sitting at moments earlier and notes, “Impressive. Even the napkins are embroidered this time. Are you sure this is your first time dream-sharing, Bianca?”

“Wh-yes, I’m very sure,” Bianca flusters.

“She likes the details,” says Cheren. “I would know. I’ve edited her fanf--”

“Um.” Bianca presses her foot on top of Cheren’s as politely as she can while Cheren pretends his foot isn't being crushed. The motion catches the eye of a passerby, who gives the briefest of glances before walking ahead. “Where are the people coming from?” Bianca asks Black.

“From our subconscious. Erm, wait. You’re the one providing the dream, so I guess it’s just ours.” Black waves between him and Cheren. “We--the subjects--make projections that you can talk to, so that’s one way you can discover a secret. Otherwise you would create a secure place, like a safe, for the subject to hide their information. Then the extractor breaks in and steals it."

The three trainers begin to walk down the cobblestone street. Cheren walks with a mildly interested look around his surroundings, but also as if it's nothing he'd never seen before. In contrast, Bianca looks at every building, lamppost, and person with equal amounts of amazement and wonder.

"It's so surreal," she tells Black. "My mind made all this, yet I don't know what's inside that building or where we're headed down exactly. This is amazing! With dream-share, who needs pen and paper to express their imagination anymore?"

"You're sure we're the only ones projecting our subconscious here, right?" Cheren asks Black quietly.

Bianca halts in front of an ordinary looking building. "Hmm, I wonder... You said I can control my dream so..." She stares intently at the building, and in the blink of an eye, it is reduced to a gigantic plume of blue smoke. The smoke clears away and reveals a green meadow behind the now empty building lot. "Wow! Look you guys!"

"Bianca." Instead of sharing in her delight, Cheren is nervously looking around. "People are starting to stare. You should be more discreet." Several projections have stopped in their paths to watch.

"It's very impressive," Black says quickly. "but he's right. Major changes like this will draw our subconscious' attention to the dreamer."

“Fine then.” Bianca concentrates for a second, and a wall builds itself from the ground up, cutting them off from the street and their projections. Without another word, she leads them into the grassy meadow with a small hop in her steps. As they proceed towards what looks like another small town, Bianca occasionally stops, and without warning entire groves will grow with lightning speed--sometimes right in front of their path.

While Cheren asks Bianca if she can create something without blocking their way, Black admires the curled branches of the newly grown trees. It feels like he is walking through an art nouveau dream. But he catches himself and says to Bianca, “If you keep changing things at this rate, that wall won’t be enough to keep our projections from catching you.”

“Where are the Pokemon?” Bianca asks. “Are they supposed to be your projections too?”

That’s a good question, Black thinks. Where were the Pokemon? Now that she pointed out their absence, the wilderness seems too quiet and almost lifeless.

“Something’s not right,” he tells both of them, anxiety pooling slowly at the bottom of his stomach. “Bianca, stop altering the dream for now. Let’s reach the town first.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just follow me.” They cut through the grove at a faster pace and arrive at the first house in less than a minute. “Wait.” Black recognizes he’s been here before. “You recreated my house.”

“Well, yeah. This is Nuvema Town.”

“No,” Black says abruptly with an edge too harsh for his own ears. “You mustn’t--you have to imagine new places; never recreate from memory--”

“Isn’t it normal to dream about familiar places?” Bianca asks.

“Let’s go inside, we can figure things out in your room,” says Cheren, and grabs the door handle.

“No!” he says in alarm. Cheren and Bianca look quizzically at him, and he notices that his body is visibly tense but he can’t stop himself from being on the defensive. “We can’t go in.”

Cheren sighs and turns to face him. “Black, you haven’t set foot in your own home, let alone Nuvema Town, for a whole year now. At least in a dream, just try--”

Suddenly angry arms grab Cheren and a hand is clamped over his mouth. A furious swarm of projections both human and Pokemon pour out of Black’s house at a rate the front door can’t accommodate, which is violently ripped off its hinges. Bianca gives an involuntary scream and Black is too paralyzed with shock, a costly delay that allows the projections to grab and twist his arms behind him. “Bianca, run!” he shouts while trying to pull away from a Conkledurr’s grip.

But Bianca is trying to pry the projections off Cheren, to no avail. She manages to remove the hand covering his mouth, but he screams at her, “Run!” Bianca finally turns, only to find her way is blocked by hostile projections, which yank her away from Cheren.

“Black, wake us up--” Cheren says before another hand knocks his glasses askew.

“Black--” Bianca begins, but she is interrupted by a hand pulling at her hair, exposing her throat.

Black struggles helplessly against his captors and sees the crowd ebb a little, only to reveal a familiar figure walking towards Bianca. “White?”

“White!” Bianca breathes in both relief and disbelief. Then she sees the knife in her hand and begins to frantically scream, “No, no--”

“No,” cries Black. “White, look at me, don’t--”

“Black, wake us up!”

“White, look at me--”

The blade is at Bianca’s throat, and White presses-- 


to part iv