“Once more into the breach,” I murmured as I eyed the entrance slope to Mt. Moon. Next to me Sabrina finished another check over of her gear.
“It’s rather interesting that the giant Onix hasn’t emerged once more.”
‘Nah, it’s probably a quirk of it’s development. It had a good, long stable life growing large in the earth’s depths and when it emerged, it got beaten back pretty hard.”
“Tru enough.” Sabrina finished up her check and nodded to me.
“Wait up a minute,” I asked, gaze still locked towards the top of Mt Moon. “I think I want to check on something.”
Following my gaze Sabrina nodded, understanding where I was looking despite it being well out of sight.
Holding her hand out for me to take, we vanished into a Teleport a moment later and re-emerged at the top of a very specific path.
Within moments of our arrival a large man appeared and assessed us.
“Hiker Harry,” I greeted the man.
His face started to shift into a smile only to harden a moment later. “What day was I hired?” he asked.
“Uhmmm like two years ago.. I think it was a Saturday?” I replied, uncertainly.
Harry’s face broke into a smile. “Ha! Good it is you! I thought with all the Ditto news I’ve been hearing I better add an extra degree of safety!”
“OH, that’s some good thinking,” I offered before giving him a flat look. “Although maybe you should message me with that suggestion?”
“Ahahaha!” he replied, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Well all is well Gym Leader! There has been a lot more traffic though so I’ve been using up a lot more revives and potions fighting with the kids that have been forced across this route.”
“I thought that might be a flow on effect. None have discovered the cave?” I asked.
“Some got close, and one even saw the signs warning them off. Thankfully, they turned away and I didn’t let them take any photos. I didn’t fight them that time as I pretended to be a concerned hiker.”
“Oh?”
The large man nodded with a smug grin only to adopt a quiver and sad tone. “H-hey kid! Come away from the edge! I know times can be bad but… don’t do that!” he wailed, pretending to reach out to a distant kid.
“Ah, that would be quite effective,” I mused.
“Shocks them right out of wanting to explore cause they asked what my problem was and I told them this sob story about my little brother perishing here. Ehehe! I’m an only child!”
Something about that struck me as very wrong, while at the same time being extremely clever.
"Suicide is not a joke,” Sabrina cut in, giving the man a flat look. “Don’t belittle the strain that some people are under. We can never truly know what each person is going through, and I say that with the ability to look into their thoughts.”
Harry stiffened. “Oh… sorry! I didn’t mean that. I was just chuffed that I got to use the acting classes I took as a kid. Never really thought they’d be useful and got teased a bit growing up for them,” he murmured. “You’re right it isn’t a joke, I apologise.”
He bowed his head and I scratched my cheek. “Is it actually something that happens on mountains?” I asked.
He straightened and gave me a look . “Sometimes,” he murmured. “Sometimes people… they just…” he made a walking gesture with his hand towards the edge of the mountain and I grimaced.
“Ah. Have you ever seen it happen or spoken with anyone considering it?” I asked.
Sabrina blanched at me, no doubt sensing my concern as she shifted a little closer to me.
“Oh… once I guess, but I was young then and I didn’t really understand what she was talking about.” he looked away with a sad look, and I gathered that he’d never spoken to that girl again and he was just now connecting the dots. He made a face.
I considered him for a long moment. “If you do find anyone that references it, or talks about it openly, give them my number and tell them I wouldn’t mind talking with them. Or suggest this psychiatrist,” I offered, reaching into my pouch and digging around for a while before handing him a business card for the psychiatrist I saw.
“They’re good,” I suggested. “Helps me out when things are…” I made a scrunching twisting shaking gesture with my hand to indicate how sometimes you could be frazzled and Harry stared.
“You see a Psych?”
I offered him a small shrug. “Sometimes life can be heavy, even while being a wonderful thing,” I replied, speaking with the experience of a man that had now lived two lives. For all that I cherished this life, there were dark moments.
“It helps having good people to share the burden of what weighs on you,” I murmured as Sabrina stepped right into my side to give me a quick hug.
“I see,” he murmured, obviously still unsure about what he was being told, but nevertheless willing to give it a go.
Nodding I gestured down to the side where there was a hidden path leading to the pink diamond cave. He nodded, stepping away and to the side.
We walked down the path in silence, Sabrina still at my side.
“You’ve never…” she trailed off carefully. “Felt the…” she licked her lips.
“No, not in this life,” I replied easily. “I’ve had dark thoughts and angry moments. Arceus but I’ve had some angry moments. Especially with Flint and Lola, both when they left and when they came back, but I think I’m doing good these days.”
I kissed her on the temple. “Got a lot of good in my life.”
“There was also that issue with Will last year, but I imagine getting to punch him was rather cathartic?”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe. If I could, I’d punch him at least a dozen times more!” I claimed, knowing it was a terrible admission that made me a lesser man.
But fuck that guy.
If there was ever a guy that I hated, it was Will.
“If he ever breaks out, I will absolutely take any excuse to punch him in the face.”
“Even if he is reformed?” Sabrina suggested.
I grimaced, not liking the idea of a ‘good Will’. “Well in that case I won’t but… I doubt it. But… if it does happen. Good for him. I’ll just want nothing to do with him. And that’s alright, I’m allowed to not like people,” I said, recalling a previous session with my psych where we’d gone over Will and the troubles I’d faced back then.
Thankfully my thoughts were interrupted from the depressing direction as we walked through the entrance of the cave and into the chamber proper. A quick adjustment to my torch to make it a lantern resulted in the entire cave glittering with pink light as rainbows played out.
“You know, if it worked for your dress you could add a few of these to it to really give it a next level glimmer,” I suggested.
Sabrina blinked, then gave the cave a long thoughtful look. “That… might just be one of the best ideas you’ve ever had,” she said.
Rather than take umbrage with it, as I’d definitely had some better ideas in the past, I nodded and we began looking for some loose diamonds to take with us.
When we amassed a sizable haul we stored it away and checked the area over for any signs of pokemon nibbling on the diamonds, or, arceus forbid, a pokemon like Onix slithering underneath the surface and hollowing out the cave.
That would lead to a pretty significant collapse.
It might be best to take the diamonds if I wanted to use them, but at the same time I wanted the natural habit, just in case I ever did encounter a Diancie.
Or, if I got hold of enough Carbink to form a breeding population.
Which Kalos could just give me. I’d already put in a request for a myriad of pokemon. I’d made sure to word it as an idle fantasy of having such pokemon.
Diancie were thought to be mutated Carbink and If anything could make them mutate, surely a diet of highly precious gems that were literally present in the imagery of Diancie would fit the bill.
“What should I do if I’m too successful?” I asked thoughtfully as I considered the cave.
“Get a Diancie first,” Sabrina replied. “Or read your breeding specialist into the project and see what she thinks about it.”
“Hmmm, true. She says we’re still a year away from a variant Growlithe you know?”
“Yes, I’ve been tracking her studies and reports,” Sabrina replied. “I’m employing a lot of what she uses with my own for pokemon variants.”
“Ah, Alolan Raichu and Galarian Ponyta?” I surmised. “I suppose I’ll know the instant you have the later.”
“Yes, with the Ponyta club I run and the nature of young girls, it will likely be the most talked about pokemon development for some time.”
“Huh, I wonder if that will impact Suzie at all? She’s already for Togepi, and with Diancie being her goal along with a potential Rapidash… she’s got a lot of potential for her starting pokemon to be very heavily Fairy specced.”
“Heh, she’s been Karen’s bane,” Sabrina murmured, and I shot her a look. “You realise that it will be like six years before she even starts her Journey right?”
“Indeed and by then she will likely have a Togetic, no?”
“She still is just playing with it, but I suspect the instant she trains with her, she’s going to get the evolution, and then she’ll just need a Shiny Stone.”
Sbarina pursed her lips and I gave her a look. “I’m just saying, it’s not like we don’t know where to look for them with the reveal of the Froslass near Mahogany Town.”
“Yeah, but she hardly needs a fully evolved pokemon before she even starts.”
“No, but when she’s ready for it, it can easily be arranged,” Sabrina argued easily.
“True,” I conceded. “She’s a while off on that as yet though. And she’s doing what needs to be done with being the best friend she can be to Togepi.” Then I considered the diamonds around us. “With her being our flower girl, she might also do well to spend some time observing Sir Lucario in Rota, as Togekiss can learn Aura Sphere so having her aware of the move will…” I coughed, realising I was falling into Sabrina’s mindset.
She smirked at me, and I huffed.
“We can make it happen." Sabrina inclined her head down to where we’d come from. “Shall we?,” she suggested, and I nodded.
Once more we vanished in a Teleport and reappeared at the base of Mt Moon. This time we arrived closer to the Ranger hut, causing the occupants to flinch in surprise.
“Ah! Gym Leaders!” one called in greeting. “You’re back again?”
“We’re going to do another deep dive to look for that Alpha Onix that we fought a few weeks ago now. Need to make sure that it hasn’t slunk back in.”
“And you’re not just looking to add a super strong Onix to your team?” pointed out the Ranger.
“I won’t say no,” I replied with a smirk, earning a chuckle from the rangers. Growing more serious, I gave the Rangers a firmer look. “Has there been any signs of this Onix or any other alpha pokemon at this point?”
Noticing my shift in posture, they too straightened up. “There was a rumor about a giant pokemon up near the Cerulean Coast but with the mists that sometimes come around and the lighting it might be a shadow that people are seeing rather than the pokemon itself.”
“Hmmm, no signs? Footprints or otherwise," I asked, recalling the episode where Ash and co met Bill and that had very much looked like a giant Dragonite.
“No, due to the shadow being projected from the ocean, any signs that might appear get washed away. There is also the issue of other people witnessing this and there being something of a tourist surge due to the ‘Giant pokemon’.” The rangers shook their heads in unison, and I nodded in commiseration.
Young trainers that were far too cocksure for their own good and that of the people that were going to have to beat them back.
“Great time for that to happen,” I grunted, referring to everything that had happened with Blaine.
They nodded along.
One of the Rangers frowned. “There’s also been a lot of issues with the perpetual storm off of Vermilion City.”
“Perpetual storm?” I asked, having never really heard about such a thing.
“Huh? Oh, well it isn’t shown with meteorological displays like the weather and it’s only with people trying to sail or go for long ocean trips that some of the more experienced trainers or fishermen go on.”
Another of the Rangers shrugged. “People can see it from a long way off and know to avoid it, it’s just that the waters around it have gotten rougher of late and it is thought to be a carry on effect of the Shamouti incident.”
“Huh,” I murmured. That sounded like another site to investigate. I shared a look with Sabrina and she nodded, projecting a strong sense of agreement.
With something new to investigate, one that was in the open air and not down a dark and potentially foreboding cavern.
Loosening a long sigh, I shook my head. “Right, I need to do this to make sure my area is safe for trainers to pass through. Giant Onix that might strike from ambush is very much not something a rookie trainer could handle,” I said more to myself than anyone else.
Sabrina gave me a consoling pat on the shoulder as we trudged down into the depths.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, giving her a smile.
She returned it.
Like last time we spelunked down into the depths. This time I let Titan and Bertha out to inspect the tunnels and begin checking the scents they could pick up.
Straight away Titan shook his head.
‘Old scent, injured’ he informed me through the bond.
“Hmmm, old scent and injured,” I repeated for Sabrina. “That is good in one way, but rather annoying in another.”
“What are Onix’s natural inclinations when they become injured?” she asked, inspecting the tunnel walls.
“It depends on the nature of the injury,” I replied. “They are typically happy to merely devour local resources, you know, iron rich earth, things that have minerals in it, process and pass it along. If it is a niggling injury, something that isn’t going to heal right… well that’s when you get a problem.”
“It becomes angry,” she concluded, earning a nod from me.
I gave the tunnel we’d come from a long look. It had been a sizable fall on top of the damage we’d already dealt to it prior to the fall.
“Yeeeah there’s a pretty good chance that this pokemon is injured in a way it might not naturally heal from. It’s going to need a wild Chansey or Blissey encounter, which it’s not going to do in the depths of…”
“Is there a possible Chansey encounter within Mt Moon?” Sabrina asked, her gaze snapping to me.
“Not, Mt Moon, but Cerulean Cave isn't that far off, and Chansey can be encountered there…” I muttered. “Not that it’s ever been witnessed but then again…” I shook my head. “It would need to be crazy lucky. Or potentially have a support system set up, which I highly doubt.”
“Stranger things have happened. It might have a hidden cavern down here that is much like the Tree of Beginning.”
“Yeah but Onix are kind of solitary pokemon in the wild. It is rare that you will see a congregation of the mass they typically will devour a lot of resources and will only come together if…” a thought occurred to me.
Sabrina raised an eyebrow and I coughed. “I’m not being weird but, we might be able to lure Onix out with a female Onix. If the female is interested in mating then she will leave markings around her territory.”
“I can only assume the Onix were looking for is male then?” Sabrina asked.
I made to nod only to blink. The part of the Onix’s body that actually indicated if they were male or female was usually the tip of the tail, which I’d never seen.
“Shit,” I muttered only for Bertha to cough and give the wall a small sniff.
“Oh, it’s a female apparently,” I murmured.
“Well that’s great!” I said as I released Jormungandr.
He gave me a less-than-impressed look but nevertheless began racing down the tunnel, making sure to carve his own markings into the wall.
Sabrina hummed and shot me a smirk that never boded well. “You sounded a little like Elm just now.”
That drew a full body shudder from me, and I grimaced. “Right, well…” I huffed as my shoulders slumped. “I have no defense to that,” I stated, throwing my hands up and earning a small giggle from Sabrina as she pat me on the shoulder.
“Careful, or next time I might just lean into it,” I threatened.
“After our talk yesterday?” Sabrina teased. ”I might just listen.”
That left me stunned into silence and I had to chuckle as she moved deeper. “Anything different about the tunnel walls? Rare metals? Gems? Fossils? Evolutionary Stones?” she asked to put us back on track.
“Nothing that I’ve seen so far, but this is old ground for us, we’re going to have to go further this time along,” I stated.
For the next few hours, we marched along at a good pace, making sure to inspect the walls as we went.
When we made camp for a break my pokemon continued to sniff around while Jorm rubbed himself over the walls. Bertha stood back with her arms crossed only to begin pointing at parts of the wall and making suggestive wiggles of her hips.
Sabrina gave Bertha a flat look but Bertha was unaffected by it, instead smirking and wiggling her eyebrows.
I shook my head. “No Bertha, Jorm does not need to up his ‘slut’ game to draw in the giant Onix. it is a long way off and this is just to lure her back in.”
Bertha nodded, like what I’d just said had been in agreement with her.
I gave her another flat look and raised her pokeball as if I was about to return her only for her to skip away.
In doing so she caused a small shake in the tunnel around us. Which… did nothing?
I gave the walls another look over.
“Huh, she’s been packing these tight with her passage,” I murmured. “Bertha jumping around just now should have caused a few cracks or debris. She must have been passing through here a lot.”
“Which means there is all the more chance of her return,” Sabrina stated.
“Hopefully,” I replied as I considered the wall. “What say we go another half hour then dig into the walls some to see what else we can find?”
“What are our chances of finding anything?” Sabrina asked.
“Fifty-fifty,” I answered with a firm nod.
Sabrina shot me an incredulous look. “Fifty-fifty? I can feel my Alakazam twitching in his pokeball at such numbers.”
Grinning at how I was annoying her pokemon, I decided to elaborate. “Yup! It’s either there or it’s not!” I said, nodding again like I was any sort of authority before shrugging. “I just figure that at these depths we’re either in a layer of earth that has a lot packed into it, or we’re looking at there being nothing due to Onix having eaten it all and there being a much larger network of tunnels that we’re moving around.”
“... that’s not how this would work but I suppose you’re technically correct.”
“Which is sometimes the only thing that matters!” I replied as I stood and started marching down the tunnel a bit further.
To no-one’s surprise we didn’t find anything in the last jaunt and instead turned our attention to breaking down the tunnel walls around us to explore the earth.
“Rhyperior!” cheered Bertha as she got the chance to start digging instead of merely walking along and watching out for any sudden ambushes.
Instead of merely slamming her fist into the wall like I half expected of her, Bertha instead gave the tunnel around her a long thoughtful examination only to tap a section of it. Titan and Jorm both moved over to inspect it before nodding.
From there, Bertha’s fingers began to rotate like drill bits into the wall, then she opened a path forward.
Titan followed her with Jorm moving close to the breach as dirt flew backwards.
“Huh, maybe we should have let her loose on this during lunch I murmured as rather than tearing through the ground like she might have with a regular Dig, she instead moved steadily forward, expanding and packing down sections of earth.
Occasionally I’d see a few flecks of oddly shaped rock.
Deciding to inspect them I frowned as I found myself holding something that emitted a vague aura of its own.
It was a light green and as I probed it with my rock aura it broke.
“Ah…” I murmured watching as the shard of something broke into smaller piles that quickly lost the feeling it had previously exuded.
“That had aura, didn’t it?” Sabrina surmised.
“Yeah, and whatever it was, it was weak to Rock type aura,” I hypothesised.
“Bertha!” Sabrina called, projecting her mind while also calling out. “Slow down even more.”
At Sabrina’s order, Bertha did just that, taking more care with her surroundings. A few times she paused in what she was doing to sniff or probe the tunnel she was forming.
After a few minutes of tediously careful work, Bertha drew something out of the wall.
“Is that… a gem?” I murmured.
“A gem?” Sabrina asked as I accepted the plate from Bertha’s much larger hands.
With the now intact gem I could feel a lot more aura emanating from it. “Yeah they were an item in the games that help empower pokemon,” I said, focusing on the gem. I gave it a few light taps with my finger before turning it over, noting the faint green colouration.
“They’re supposed to only be useful for empowering a single move of a specialised type. And if my guess is on point, this is a bug Gem, and the shard’s that I’ve been encountering are also parts of the same type.”
Drumming my fingers on my chin as Sabrina took the Gem to inspect it herself, I gave the area a thoughtful look. “We’re underneath Mt Moon, but perhaps this ties into the idea that Scyther must have once frequented the area to discover the rocks they needed to evolve then it would make sense that their remains might have crystalised into Bug Gems.”
“Hmmm, interesting,” Sabrina replied.
Deciding this was worth noting down I started passing my pokedex around the walls while continuing to have Bertha extract more and more of the space around us.
With her going more carefully we found more and more bug gems.
“The number we’re encountering is rather strange,” I murmured as I deposited the seventh such gem into a pouch. “They’re not rare per se but for them to be this easy to find is rather odd. If my previous theory were to hold weight then there had to be a swarm of bug types that perished here.”
The oddities only continued when we began finding the skulls, or rather heads of various bug type pokemon.
Heracross, Scyther, Kakuka, and Metapod were all found causing me to tilt my head and tap them lightly. “The Kakuna and Metapod make sense if Harden was used a lot… but this is still odd for the rest of them.”
“No, this is a sign of early civilisation,” Sabrina stated, tapping the skulls/exoskeletons. “See here how they’ve been worn down?,” she traced her finger around the edges. “It’s also… extremely old, but I am able to get a sense of veneration and worship from this headpiece.”
I looked, and sure enough, Sabrina was right. The heads had been worn down internally. I raised them up, making as if to wear them before nodding when I saw that they were roughly head sized.
“A pre-civilisation tribe, perhaps even older than the Crusher Tribe,” I mused. “One that had a relationship with bug type pokemon.”
“An archaeologist’s dream find,” Sabrina said, only to glance back the way we came. “One in the middle of an Alpha pokemon’s lair, one that we’ve been potentially luring back in.”
“Shit,” I summarised.
Bertha, hearing this, leaned over and playfully slapped Jorm on the back of the head and shook her head like she was disappointed.
I snorted. “Really? Now you’re going to chide him for ‘slutting it up’? That’s a bit rich.”
Bertha sniffed and raised her head to the air, ignoring any part she had in what we’d done prior.
I rubbed my hands across my face. Did I want to sit on this… or hand this off? There was every chance that with more people down here that the risk of re-encountering the giant Onix would happen, but there would be few people I could trust with such a task.
At the same time I couldn’t sit down here to fend Onix off.
“We seal it off, and mark the area with a Max repel,” I eventually decided. “It will keep Onix away which is counter to what we previously wanted but… this find might be useful in other ways.”
“Knowing where we came from and how prior humans interacted with pokemon will be valuable.”
“Elm can never know,” Sabrina said and everyone, myself and my pokemon all nodded our heads in unison.
“We’ll give the information to one of the universities and the rangers. They’ll be able to work on a plan, perhaps.”
“It’s also not a bad idea to have those organisations owe us another favour,” Sabrina pointed out.
“Hmmm, yeah, the Rangers will be needed as guards for the wedding,” I replied, gaze shifting as I considered the find. “Guess this means that Onix hasn’t depleted the natural resources of the area.”
Sabrina gaze turned towards the pile of broken up bug gems. “Hmmm, do rock type pokemon like eating those?” she asked.
I smirked and without giving a verbal command, let Jorm, Bertha, and titan off the lease. Each of them snatched up some of the gems and gobbled them down with me having given my permission.
“Ah,” Sabrina said, understanding that I had been holding them back. “Is that part of their usual diet?”
“No. I’m not paying for them to eat Bug type gems. They’re not rare, but they’re not cheap either. Also there isn’t a lot of benefits…” I gave the spot the broken gems had been at another look. “At least I thought they hadn’t. If we’re delving into Aura, though perhaps there might be?”
"Something to talk to Alakazam about.”
“Urgh, he’s going to love this. So many studies he can set up. If he wants to lecture again at Bill’s can you at least com—”
Sabrina’s nostrils flared. “I am not going to Bill’s, ever.” I gave her a look and she replied with a firming of her eyes. “I don't want to touch anything in that man’s residence.”
“... fair enough,” I replied, as I pushed that thought right to the back of my mind to repress it. Chances were I’d be going back there in the future.
Another thought occurred to me. “You know who is going to love this find?”
Sabrina raised an eyebrow at me and I smiled.
“The Bug catcher clubs around the world. A pre-civilisation tribe that loved bug types? It’s like their club has roots from eons ago.”
“Hmmmm, let’s not ask Celebi to confirm such a theory,” she replied and I nodded quickly.
I’d been sent a few decades back, I had no desire to go back to before Kanto as a nation was even an idea.
As we finished up our work I gave the surrounding tunnels another look. “Guess this means we’re going to have to do more excavations in the future. If bug gems were what we found this time, I wonder what else there might be?”
“According to your estimates? Nothing of note,” Sabrina teased.
I huffed and gave the tunnels another look. I hadn’t found what I was looking for, however that didn’t make this a waste of time.
Far from it in fact.
I found myself rather looking forward to the next delve we could perform, perhaps even more than investigating this perpetual storm off of Vermillion City.
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A.N. Thanks go to my patreons for your continued support!
Thanks also go to Twmmy for proofreading this chapter!