Why are we Even Here.

Mercury the Fennekin dragged her friend Kye around a smoky haze of apparent toxins, following the directions that a shady Nidorino had given them earlier. She looked around at everything around them, though the misty fumes made it hard to see everything clearly. Regardless, Mercury bounced around energetically.

All the mist was AMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZIIINNNGGG, and it was blowingerestering Mercury's tiny, broken mind.

"Wow Kye, look at all the mist around here!!!" Mercury exclaimed, bringing him closer and closer to the Gulch. It had taken them most of the morning to get here, and it was now around noon for them. "It's amazing, isn't it?! Have you ever seen anything like it?!?!" the odd Fennekin gushed. She was extremely happy, to be there, especially being there with her new, besterest best friend.

(Mercury - 3 Energy)

Velikye followed along, become progressively more worried as they had come to an area with some oddly menacing colored fog. Instead of running away from the fox, however, it seemed Mercury had other ideas. She wanted to go deeper into it.... For some reason, the eevee got the feeling this wasn't a good idea, but he wasn't going to protest. Maybe they'd be fine, maybe it was just unusually colorful fog.

"I've seen mist before, but none like this.... Might wanna....", he trailed off as he reached a paw up and pulled Mercury's scarf over her mouth. "Keep that there. What ever's making this mist look purple, you probably don't wanna breathe it in.", he explained, a bit worried about the purple fog.
He didn't have anything to cover his own mouth with, but at least Mercury didn't have to breathe in too much of what ever this stuff was.

The little grey fox flinched in surprise as a paw came out of seemingly nowhere and adjusted her scarf so that it was over her mouth. She stopped to look at Kye, and though her mouth was covered, the smile was evident in her eyes. "Thanks, Kye!!!" she grinned, before something struck her as off. "Wait... Kye, you don't have a special mask thingy to wear!! We can't play if the odds aren't even," Mercury frowned pensively, unaware of the paradox her statement had just created. She put a paw to her gold-draped chin, before her eyes lit up into a "Eureka" moment. "I know!!!" she exclaimed, hastily undoing her ribbon scarf. She scooched over a little closer to Kye, then wrapped both their faces in the golden garment. There was just enough to cover them both, but not much room was left between.

"There!" Mercury announced proudly. "Now we can both play masked explorers. Gee, this fog is thick though. What kind of fog is it? It almost smells a little funny," Mercury mused, crinkling her snout a bit as she started to move forward. She didn't go fast this time, though; she waited for Kye to move with her. To her, that was part of the game. "It's like a 7-legged race!" Merc giggled, "Only with 8 legs. And two heads tied together. 1-headed race!"

"Wha-", Velikye began as the scarf was wrapped around him.  He wasn't overly fond of being literally attached to the fenniken, but he had pretty much been attached to her so far due to her dragging him along, so this wasn't all that different. He just hoped it wasn't making it any more difficult for his friend to breathe through it.  He didn't mention any discomfort, not wanting to disappoint Mercury.  Maybe this would be able to help both of them.  "Yeah.... a game.", he agreed.  Perhaps it was better to think of this as a game, maybe that made it less worrisome.

Still, he was worried about this odd fog.  Clearly Mercury was still inhaling at least some of it.  He was too.  So if there was something wrong with it, they were probably both going to start noticing at around the same time, which would be soon.  Unless one of them had a higher tolerance to what ever it was.  "What even is this place?", he asked as he carefully followed along, making sure not to trip himself or Mercury since they were kind of intertwined now.  If one of them fell, they'd probably both fall.

Walking in step with Kye, Mercury kept drinking in the sights that surrounded them. The fog grew thicker, but the young fox wasn't fazed. She found it exciting, the fog gave everything a creepy, ominous aura and Mercury was completely eating it up. She had no clue that she had inhaled one too many fumes, and by this point they had already traveled from her lungs to her bloodstream. Those fumes were on the highway leading straight to her brain, and she was already starting to feel light headed as the two small foxes arrived at the foot of the gulch.

Mercury stopped abruptly and stared off into the distance. Her ears were sticking straight up into the air, alert and focused on whatever it was Mercury's little pea brain was seeing. She suddenly began pushing Kye forward urgently, insisting that there was something he had to see. "Up there!! On those rocks!!!" she marveled, "in that little blue flower garden!!! In the rocks! Floating shiny! Floating shiny!!!" She relentlessly kept demanding to go see the floating shiny, whatever it was.

Velikye coughed from the inhalation of the fumes. The scarf really wasn't doing the trick. It probably didn't help that it was shared between Mercury and himself, or that they'd already inhaled some of what ever this purple gas was before he'd considered the scarf. He turned his head towards Mercury as she began behaving oddly and raving on about some shiny thing atop some nearby rocks.... In a flower garden.... that didn't exist. He hesitated to answer, trying to see what ever it was that the other fox was seeing. But no luck, all he saw was ground, some rocks and the smog coating the area.

"Uuuh.... I.... I-I don't see it.... There's nothing up there, Mercury....", he hesitantly tried to explain as he was pushed forward.
He didn't dare to try to stop from being forced forward as that could result in the scarf untying or one of them simply slipping out of its grip. If that happened , the fumes would be able to get into their bodies faster. It seemed like Mercury was already being effected, but the eevee had been spared so far. At least, his mind had been spared. It was, however, making it harder to breathe.
"W-we shouldn't go climbing rocks tied together like this. If one of us falls, we'll both fall.", he spoke quickly, trying to get the fenniken to stop with her delusional goal of getting him to see what ever she was seeing.

Mercury halted her mad dash for the invisible shiny thing on the top of the hill of rocks and looked over at Kye. Her pupils were dialated and her eyes were slightly bloodshot. She looked out of it; more out of it than usual. Her tail twitched nervously, no longer haboring its typical happy wagging motion. The Fennekin gave Kye a look of insistance. "Of course there's a something up there!!" she claimed, talking as if she was sure she was right. "There's a shiny light up there, along with a bunch of flowers in colors I've never even seen before!! Look harder Kye, it's there!!" She knew he was right about the other point though. She didn't want Kye to get hurt over a shiny thing. "Well... let's try to go around the rocks, then? Maybe there's a path or something?" Mercury conceded, giving up on pushing him. She really wasn't even sure what the shiny thing was, nor did she know if it was even worth checking out. If they went around to the other side of the pile, perhaps they'd find something better?

Velikye sighed in relief as his friend finally seemed to calm down a bit. She wasn't exactly in the right state of mind, raving on about flower gardens and shiny things, but she did have some sanity left still. Or, some of Mercury's version of sanity. If the eevee thought hard about how he worded things, perhaps he could keep her on the right track and keep them both out of trouble.... Clearly, she wasn't interested in hearing that she was seeing things, but she seemed to listen when safety was brought up. So, he just had to pretend the hallucinations were real and convince the fenniken not to pursue them.

"Alright, we can do that, but if we can't find a safe way up to the garden we need to keep moving. You don't wanna miss out on seeing the rest of this place over one little thing after all, right?", he replied, playing along with this weird game.
All he had to do was keep himself in the right state of mind and he could hopefully keep Mercury in.... basically the same state of mind she always seemed to be in, which wasn't necessarily "right", but it was certainly better than this.

Mercury grinned when Kye said they could go looking for the garden. "Oh boy!! Yaaaa, c'mon Kye!! This'll be fun; who knows what's waiting for us!!" She skipped forward lightly, leading Kye around to the rock pile. Once they arrived, she began walking around the pile, towards the right wall of the Gulch. As Mercury rounded the rock pile, though, she stopped dead in her tracks. She noticed an odd marking, almost like a compass rose with one of the arrows enlarged, marked onto the gulch. The enlarged arrow pointed further up the gulch. Mercury completely forgot about the flower garden in favor of the new strange marking she had found. "Woah, Kye!! Look at this, look at this!!!" she cried excitedly, leading him up to the wall.

Velikye followed along, not really having a large amount of choice even if he had wanted to stay behind.  Which he didn't.  He was ready to just get to the "garden", let Mercury have her fun in it then continue through this land of purple death.  Or perhaps not find any safe way to get to the nonexistant garden and continue along without checking out the barren rocky terrain where Mercury had decided a shiny thing and a flower garden were located.  But, it seemed fate hat other plans.  Or perhaps just a sense of humor.

He followed along with Mercury when she insisted on looking at what ever else she'd hallucinated, sighing as he hadn't expected her attention to be shifted to some other nonexistent thing yet.  But then, as he looked over to the wall, he noticed something.  It was a symbol that seemed to be pointing in a direction.  "Oh great, now I'm tripping too....", he muttered, feeling this was a bit weird for a "real" occurrence.
What did it even mean?

Mercury looked back and forth between the arrow and the direction it was pointing in. The tiny wheels in her proportionally-sized mind turned and turned as the Fennekin processed what this could be implying or what it could mean. "We should follow it, Kye; maybe there's a way out of the Gulch somewhere! Or maybe there's a shiny treasure! Or a shiny way out treasure!!!" Mercury exclaimed, nudging him in the direction the arrow was pointing. "C'mon Kye, it's the only thing we have to go by! And besides, it could be fun!!!" Mercury reasoned, actually making an argument that made sense for once.

Velikye hesitated for a moment as the fenniken with him began once again trying to get him to move, but he didn't even fight it this time. If they weren't simply going back, then following this thing was about the best option they had. It seemed unlikely that they were sharing the same hallucination and from the sounds of it, Mercury was also seeing the arrow, so the eevee assumed it was real. "You know, if you wanna leave, we could just go back the way we came....", he pointed out, though he knew this wouldn't matter.
Mercury wanted to explore, not to leave.

Kye couldn't help but wonder where the arrow would lead them, though. Maybe it actually DID lead to treasure of some kind, or another way out. Or maybe it was a trap set by some bandits to lead travelers to them. Perhaps it was just some graffiti. There was still the possibility that it was a shared hallucination, too, even though that seemed kind of unlikely.

"Why would I plant a leaf? Leaves don't grow trees, silly; leaves grow bushes," Mercury remarked as she trotted forward, rolling her eyes as if to say, "Jeez Kye. How could you forget that?" Soon, the two pokemon came across a small ledge path on the edge of the Gulch, which was very conveniently placed as there was a huge puddle of absolutely toxic looking water swallowing the path that they were travelling currently. For once, Mercury did NOT want to investigate. She had been avoiding the shallow streams of water flowing past them, and she had no intention of getting close. At all.

"Uuuugh," Mercury groaned, crinkling her nose at the lake, "that water looks more evil than normal water." She backed away from it nervously, skittering away from it and towards the safe, dry path that led over the sludge water.

Velikye sighed as the fenniken completely misunderstood what he was saying. He decided to not try and explain himself, figuring he would just get the same response once more. Then they came to the body of water Mercury seemed to dislike for some reason. He figured it was probably due to her fire typing; it looked perfectly fine to him, clear blue and fresh! "Well, I get that you're a Fire-Type so you probably don't like water.... but I'm not.... and I'm kinda thirsty. Soo I'm....", he ducked out from under the grasp of the scarf as he spoke, "....gonna go get a drink."

He slowly walked towards the water, wondering why Mercury seemed to dislike it more than normal water. Sure, it was in a rather toxic place, but the water its self seemed fine to him.

Mercury watched in shock and horror as her good friend ducked away from her and started to trot over to the evil devil water as he talked about drinking it for some reason. WHY?!?! She stood frozen in a panic, unsure of what to do. "KYE!!! Don't do it; it's devil poison water!!!" she cried out, but he didn't seem to be listening. Mercury was terrified of the water, but... she was MORE terrified of what would happen if Kye tried to DRINK that evil devil water. So, despite her better judgement, she abandoned the sweet embrace of safety and the promise of dry land and dashed at Kye, litterally flinging herself at his side to knock him away from the water and towards the dry land. She held her breath as she did, which was a good thing, because after 360 noscoping Kye she flopped right into the bank of the murderous water, getting her entire side wet. The Fennekin's eyes filled up with tears and she began to scream in pain, flailing her limbs around in a panic as she failed to stand up out of the devil water.

"OOOOOOWWW, IT BUUURNS!!!" she cried, a small ammount of steam and sizzling noises coming from the side of her that had been dunked in the toxins. "IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HUUUUURTS!!!" she cried out, "SOMEBODY HELP MEEEEE!!!"