The sound startled Trip, but he then turned to watch Ash, warily.

That bad...?

He looked at the fruit in his palm suspiciously, then... rubbed it against the cloth of his hoodie, before shoving it into his mouth.

He looked as if he were choking, but stubbornly refused to spit it out and attempted to swallow it anyway, until all his attempts failed and he had to give up the venture.

"UGH!"

As if to add insult to injury, Tranquill appeared in a flash of sparkling white light on the ground, opened its beak, and snapped up the discarded fruit before it hit the ground. It seemed to like it just fine and flew back up to peck at more.

Trip wanted to agree, but Tranquill eating it without trouble confused him.

"... m-" Trip coughed, made a face, then tried to speak again, "Maybe..."

Was it really only appealing to Tranquill? Watching him gobble up another two, Trip wondered if there was something he was missing.

He looked at the remaining fruits in his hands and wondered.

Tranquill happily agreed with that statement!

Trip discreetly used leaves as tissues while Ash kept busy with the Rotom Phone's explanation. When Ash spoke again, Trip felt too embarrassed to say it had only been a Unovan expression and not him actually knowing the figs were only suitable for bird Pokemon...

He was too embarrassed to speak and quietly drank, before getting back up, flinging the dirty leaves into the grass.

Tranquill also hadn't realized the threat yet, being a bit slow on the uptake, like many of its kind.

Stantler's antlers glowed and produced a mist-like haze that passed around the boys, hoping to isolate them in illusions to make them lose their way through the forest... or at least until it felt them sufficiently punished!

He felt his head hurt less and less with the drink.

"Thicker...?" Trip asked, confused, and looked around.
The moment he did so, he felt a pit of dread in his stomach. He hadn't turned around, hadn't stepped away, but it felt like the whole forest was weaving around them unrecognizably, like standing in the water on the beach and feeling as if you were getting further and further away from the shore just by the motion of the waves.

"... I think... we should just keep... walking as straight as we can and try not to get lost..." he said, slowly, trying not to lose his spot.

He reached out to hold the nearest tree and looked to where Ash had been a moment ago, without stepping away, not to lose direction, but found even while turning just his head, he couldn't see Ash.

"... where did you go?"

Tranquill flew around overhead, he could vaguely hear the wingbeats, but not see it... was it flying over the treetops?

Tranquill cried out, also sounding closer than the treetops were... how disorienting.

This didn't feel right.

He tried to keep watching while feeling the trees, but noticed he was no longer feeling trees he could see. "... this isn't real. Probably."

Should he grope around blindly, then, and disregard what he sees? Unable to decide, he opted to stand still.

"I'm still here! I'll stop walking."

Tranquill tilted its head, concerned, flying near Trip's face. He could hear the flapping wings and feel the air rush about his face, but couldn't see Tranquill, so he stepped back, wary of it and unsure what it was, until his back bumped into a tree, but looking back, it looked like he was about to fall over a steep cliff— since when was that there?! Yelping and stumbling back to the nearest safe surface, flinging tossing the cup back in the safer direction (the roots he grabbed didn't exist, the boulder was a further off from where it seemed, and he got scratched up, but he avoided whatever real or imaginary peril there was!).

Tranquill didn't understand why Trip backed away, but saw Ash further back, also looking lost. He flew quickly to Pikachu and asked him what was wrong—their masters were acting so strange!

At least, the Pokemon seemed to be spared of the illusions.