One foot in front of the other. What are you waiting for? It's not that hard, Stone.
Then why did it feel like an impossible task? His feet were filled with lead. A chill crept over his whole body, spilling out from the portal in a slow, cold wave that coiled around his ankles with icy tendrils.
He gave a miserable shiver, wrapping his arms around himself to ward off the cold, or was it more an effort to keep himself propped upright? Either way, he couldn't just stay here forever, lost in whatever cave this was. He had no food, no water, no light, nothing. He had to start walking in order to get out. Save himself. Head into the darkness and find his way back.
He shuffled one foot through the portal. The grinding of gravel underfoot echoed deafeningly loud. Almost too loud for him to notice the faint tinkle of wind chimes. Almost. He froze.
His head snapped in the direction of the sound. Except there was nothing there but more darkness.
...I'm sending you home...
A warm breeze brushed his cheek, gentle, like the caress of a hand. He leaned into it, followed it, his back now completely turned to the portal.
I love you to the stars and back
He nearly choked, his eyes wide, searching for her in the dark. "...Mom?"
But she wasn't there. Nothing was there. Empty rock walls. Endless darkness. Then where...? She was there, he
heard her.
Felt her.
Somewhere behind him, the portal
roared. Voiceless, noiseless, but it roared just the same. An icy, formless tendril slithered forward and wrapped around his wrist. Another around his leg. His waist. Pulling.
Demanding. It was
owed, and it would not be
denied.
He should listen to the darkness. He should... But then he wouldn't be able to find her. She was out there. He had to go to her. He
promised--
Suddenly, he was running. Running away from the cold, towards...? Something? His heart hammered in his chest. There was something here besides the dark. It was just ahead. His breath was loud in his ears. He could feel it. He had to find it. Warmth? Light?
What?
Was that... Wallace's voice?
....ou....sca...ed.....us...for...a...mome...t.....
...How?
And then the thread SNAPPED. Like he was launched by a cosmic catapult, Steven hurtled from the cold dark nothingness back into consciousness. Groggy, disorienting consciousness that was hardly better than the state he was in prior, but consciousness nonetheless. Gone was his racing pulse, and panting breaths. In fact, he didn't need to pump blood or breathe at all. Strangely familiar, yet oh so foreign all over again.
His eyes cracked open, only to get hit with a wave of nausea, and he shut them again. He felt like death warmed over. Emphasis on warm.
Holy gods it was warm. He was still exhausted, limbs too heavy to move, and instead of freezing he was
baking.
Lacking the strength to do much else, he cracked open his jaw and groaned.
Wallace's fin had hardly flopped back to the dirt when he felt the ground shift beneath him. A dry, crumbling, grinding sound as
something moved made Wallace freeze. And then the Metagross carcass above him let out a groan like the hull of Sea Mauville in a storm that sent Wallace scrambling to his feet and darting out from beneath his about-to-collapse-and-crush-him shelter in a panic.
The return of the sun on his back was already unbearable, but it sure beat being flat as a pancake. Except as Wallace warily watched, his shelter didn't collapse on itself nor crumble into dust, and his look of terror slowly morphed into one of annoyance. He stood up on his tail fin and put his hands on his hips with a huff.
"You know, you didn't have to scare me half to death just because you didn't like your new name."
He paused, almost as if he was expecting a response, but of course none came. Gods, he was starting to sound like Steven, talking to inanimate objects like this. Wallace huffed again, sending a bubble into the air. Right. Popplio. He would have to get used to that little side effect...
Just as he had finished deciding the risk of getting crushed was worth being able to get out of this wretched sun, the cracking, grinding sound happened again. And this time, he watched slack-jawed as the supposedly-dead-and-gone Metagross
moved.
Unfortunately, groaning hadn't seemed to help any, not that Steven thought it would. He was still hot. Still exhausted. Still nauseous. Still couldn't see much either. He'd tried opening his eyes again, only to find one couldn't see anything, and the other could only see blurry... dirt? He worked to bring things into focus, because that was somehow easier than trying to stand up. Why was he lying face first in the dirt anyway?
And then everything came rushing back. Sunward, the Covenant, Amida-- He had to get up. Something happened, something bad.
Steven grunted with effort has he tried to rise. Claws ground against the dirt, trying to gather his sprawled limbs. His legs strained to move, but they hardly budged. Since when was his body so godsdamned
heavy? Oh right, he'd evolved. But still, he hadn't had this much trouble before. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Betel? What happened? Why can't I move?
Well, that was anticlimactic. The Metagross moved, but not very much. Still, a little movement was more than no movement, and that meant that the Metagross had to still be alive! Somehow. Maybe. Unless this was the heatstroke kicking in and he was hallucinating the whole thing. But he had to bank on it
not being heatstroke, though. Because if the Metagross
was alive, they might be the only two living creatures within miles in this gods forsaken desert.
Still keeping his distance, Wallace shuffled around until he could see the Metagross's face and... Ah-ha! It was faint, but he could see a red eye glowing in the one visible socket. Moving closer, he waved a flipper in its field of vision. No time to be subtle, they were both slowly baking to death.
"Hello? Hello in there! Blink twice if you're alive."
His ping to Betel was met with dead air. No response. Okay, definitely something bad. His body might have betrayed him, but not his mind.
Think, Stone. What could have happened? He squinted through the lingering nausea. Could he still be in Sunward? The heat felt right. The sunlight, too. But the dirt-- it was the only thing he could see much of-- wasn't right. Not red enough, more salt than iron. So he wasn't in Sunward anymore. Then... where was he?
And suddenly he became aware that he should have been asking 'with whom' instead.
He could recognize that sass anywhere said:
"Hello? Hello in there! Blink twice if you're alive."
No, that was impossible. Could it be--? Steven swiveled his eye towards the sound of a
very familiar voice.
"Wallace?"
Wallace gaped. That was most definitely not two blinks. That was most definitely a Metagross staring right at him and saying his name in the voice of the very person he'd named them as as a joke.
His flipper dropped back to earth in a puff of dirt. "Steven?!"
