Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Ethereal Balance

Chapter 1: Just A Weird Day

The sun rose up, and an Espeon followed it accordingly. It stretched its paws as far as it could, yawning all the while. Across its vision laid an alarm clock, reading 5:59AM- a minute before the necessary yet incessant noise would have started. Instead, the Espeon's lips curled into a cheerful smile. Today would be a good day, he thought.

As it clicked the off button on the alarm, it noticed a lone picture framed next to it, the one it saw each day. The picture had a Glaceon with its tongue sticking out on the right of them, and a smiling Flareon on the left. In the middle of its parents was a younger version of the Espeon: an Eevee, it was tilting its head curiously. The portrait had a very neat caption on the bottom of the frame which read: "Momma's boy" and a little messier "Daddy's too" added onto the bottom right corner. As usual, the picture made him wince and smile at the same time, truly a sentimental artifact for the Espeon.

After a little bit of perhaps unhealthy reminiscing, he checked the clock again; 7:15AM, five minutes before he would usually leave.

"Fuck," the Espeon ran around his small apartment room, something the other inhabitants' ears didn't appreciate. As he collected the usual items he needed, he made a mental checklist. Wallet? Got it, hidden neatly in a pocket of fur he created. Tie without a shirt? Yup, fastened tightly around his neck. Toast? No, but he didn't need breakfast anyways. Running out of his small home, he made sure to use psychic to shut and lock the door behind him. The dust from the unclean apartment stairway collected on his paws as he descended the staircase, but he didn't let the uncomfortable feeling stop his skedaddling.

He rushed out the door and was greeted with something any Espeon would enjoy: morning. He ran down the cement side-walk, passing many things that rural Pokemon would gasp at. Towering buildings, Magnemite rushing to fix power-lines. A plane modeled after Skarmorys could already be seen this early in the morning. Separating the side-walk from the already bustling roads was a nearly transparent wall, the only way to leave was holes carved at crosswalks. The tight path had the Espeon nearly bump into several neighbors, all of which were not fond of the pink cat.

Yet on his "path of destruction," as one Pangoro put it, he often conveniently slowed down around a certain blue home. On the front lawn was a swimming pool, and usually it inhabited the owner of the residence more than their bed. The Espeon took a moment to tighten his tie with psychic before padding over to the pool. As expected, a Vaporeon's head popped out of the water.

"Hello, Mark!" A feminine voice called out to the approaching Espeon, and instantly he smiled in response to that pleasing voice.

"Hello Katherine," the Espeon said in a less enthusiastic yet cheerful tone.

"How are you this morning?"

Katherine spun onto her back, her head leaning out of the pool. She loved doing random things while talking to others. Mark was confused at the gesture at first, but wrote it off as 'Katherine being Katherine' in a positive way.

"Pretty good. I think. You?"

The Vaporeon stuck out her tongue in response.

"Always 'think', never certain, eh? I could always tell you apart from an imposter based on how much you self-doubt."

She rolled her eyes before continuing.

"I'm pretty good, I mean I just woke up to seeing my best friend, so why wouldn't I be feeling good?" She was seemingly pawing at the sun now.

For some reason, being called her "best friend" irked him inside, but he wrote it off as internal nonsense.

"Thanks, hehe. Shoot, I think I have to go Katie," he awkwardly said regretfully, remembering his initial objective of the day. He started to walk slowly away, now with a grin on his face.

"Aw, see you later!" The last the Espeon would see of her was her waving her paws radically, a cheerful smile on her face before she dove into her pool.

For some reason, his heart ached. It felt like he should go back and say something else. A strong urge in his heart even suggested keeping her near him for her own safety. That made him feel like he was going insane or becoming creepy, and just when he thought he could get past the weirdness, his psychic powers started to pick up on something far away, yet very powerful. However, by the time he felt it tingling in his brain muscles, the signal was gone. After a lot of pondering, he wrote the psychic disturbance off as just some newly evolved psychic type that didn't know how to control it's powers. It wasn't uncommon for newly evolved Pokemon to make weird disturbances for others with the same type as they didn't know what they were doing. He decided to ignore the prior events despite his mind feeling like something was off.

As he got closer to his workplace, he noticed a sign on a statue of Shaymin that marked his favorite (and only) home. 'Sunnydale City'.

Surrounding the city was a bubble shaped glass shield that was meant to keep in the sunlight emissions, allowing many crops to grow, and keeping a warm temperature at all times. Due to how big the place was, the greenhouse-like state of the city did not make it too hot for Pokemon such as Water types to live in for instance, but many crops were strategically placed on the conveniently tall buildings to maximize light.

Now he was in the mainstreet of the city, filled with businesses and the ripe vibe of competition. Across the bustling streets he spotted many outdoor floral shops, each with a matching Grass type employee to show authenticity in their products. The smell of baked bread filled his nostrils as he passed the many competing bakeries, he had to force himself to not run inside and dig into banana bread, he already was only barely paying off his rent weekly. Soon enough he found himself at his workplace. In front of him was the intimidatingly tall building, and one could already hear the loud shouting of sales-pitchers from inside. The front door had a sign labeled 'Jirachra', marking their business. While the company worked to sell their food products to stores, many Pokemon like Mark were just clean-up duty.

He pumped himself up a moment for the incoming long work day, filled with many idiots he would have to make sure had no consequence for their idiotic actions. One loud sigh permeated the relative silence before he finally pushed his paw against the cold door. That was when he felt the second psychic interference that day. This time, it felt much more like a tremor. His body lightly shook, his face telling anyone else around that he was in agony, his legs quivering showed fear. Once it was over, someone else walked right by the Espeon lying on the cement, lightly twitching every second or so. In his line of eyesight, he saw another psychic type, a Sigilyph floating... Weirdly though, he noticed that the Sigilyph was as fine as anyone else, it had no visible agony. That didn't make sense to Mark.

'Maybe I should go to a doctor...' Mark thought. He slowly pulled himself up from the ground and turned to see to his left. The direction he came from did not have a Pokemon Center to his knowledge.

Then he turned around.

His legs locked into place, eyes dilated, tail sprung up high and straight.