The next day, ridiculously early in the morning, hours before the Gym even opens, Ran looks down from the tall steep cliff Chuck has taken them to with a faint sense of unease. Cianwood City is by no means a small town, yet from the height they’re at, it suddenly seems quite insignificant, only further increasing Ran’s awareness that they’re very, very high up. Not that he’s discovering a fear of heights he wasn’t previously aware of, there’s just something… humbling about being so high up. It makes everything seem so much smaller.
With the sun little more than a suggestion at this hour, artificial lighting and moonlight are the means by which the city is visible down below, whilst their own path up the cliffs was lit by flashlights. As he fully realizes just how high up they are, Ran can only warily wonder just what challenge Chuck has in mind for them.
Because when neither Doro nor Ran himself had backed down, Chuck had declared that he’d test them, to see which one of them was worthier of training a Croagunk. Something Ran had initially been more than happy to hear, as he figured any battle between Doro and himself would favor him in a big way, considering their relative type-specialties. But then Chuck had rather summarily dashed those hopes by declaring that he wasn’t interested in watching them battle.
Instead, he sent them away for the day, with instructions to report back at the Gym at an absolutely unreasonable hour. Ran had balked slightly at that, but when Doro hadn’t even blinked, he’d been left with no option but to accept as well.
Upon reporting to the Gym, Chuck had taken them on a demanding hike up the cliff sides, until eventually, after almost two hours of walking, pausing on the crest they were currently standing on. It leaves them standing on one of the highest ridges of the first of a series of mountainous spines that ring Cianwood City. There’s a great variety between the different spines as well, as even at a glance deeper into the mountainous landscape, Ran spots signs of different plateaus, peaks and valleys.
He hadn’t explained what exactly the challenge would be yet, but considering the long hike and the rather demanding pace Chuck set during it, Ran was growing increasingly worried that the advantage might not rest with him after all.
A slight distance behind him, Doro is stretching enthusiastically, her training jacket already tied around her hips. Compared to himself, his thick purple jacket still snug on his shoulders and his breath only just now leveling out after a few minutes’ rest, it’s a rather intimidating sight.
Chuck takes things to another level entirely of course, the man apparently not just going shirtless in his Gym, but constantly. It’s as Ran looks in the Gym leader’s direction, that the man responsible for the safety of Cianwood City and its surroundings finally breaks the silence that has been hanging over their group for the past two hours.
“Alright! That’ll do for a warmup, time to give you the challenge!” He proclaims enthusiastically.
“Any second now, you’ll be getting three locations close to the main hiking path sent to you through your pokégear. At each of these locations, there’s a pair of flags present. Whichever one of you first gets me a flag from each of the three locations, wins the right to choose one of my Croagunk!” Chuck declares boldly, Ran’s pokégear vibrating accordingly as he receives the locations.
“A few rules before you both get started and set out,” Chuck continues, one finger raising in warning just as Doro tries to burst into motion and Ran starts to raise his pokégear, leaving both trainers to falter as they focus back on the Gym leader, “You can’t do anything to the flags your opponent is supposed to be gathering, you can’t mess with the main hiking path the flags are placed along and you can’t directly attack each other. Otherwise, I’d have just let you two battle it out from the start, but that’s not what I’m looking for here.”
Ran and Doro both nod in agreement, though Ran can’t help but wonder if those are really the only restrictions Chuck will be imposing. Because although the racing aspect of things will at the least ensure that there is a challenge, it feels somewhat underwhelming thus far, not to mention that as long as they stick to the hiking path, all that will be tested is their speed and endurance.
“Finally, there is no set order in which you need to gather the flags, nor do you have to stick to the main path, as far as I’m concerned. You’re young and healthy and you’ve got pokémon besides, so use ‘em! I’ll be waiting for you both in my Gym. Oh, one final thing, I have a few Gym trainers out here on training sessions of their own, they’re under orders to make things difficult for you. Good luck!” Chuck declares, before jogging towards the cliff’s edge you’re standing near and casually starting to scale down it.
Both Doro and Ran watch in disbelief as the man casually risks his life without a harness of any kind and whilst descending along a worryingly smooth surface. Chuck doesn’t pay either of them any mind whatsoever however, merely whistling merrily as he descends at an impressive speed.
Ran glances towards Doro, the two of them both clearly caught equally off guard by Chuck’s sudden departure. Then his expression hardens, as he hurriedly breaks eye contact and looks at his pokégear to determine where he needs to go to find the flags. In front of him, he hears the pounding of feet as Doro breaks into a run down the path immediately.
Which he can only assume means that she’s just going to race along the main hiking path as fast as she can and assume that the flags are positioned visibly enough to be easily noticed. It’s a valid plan and one she undoubtedly has the advantage in, as there’s no doubt in his mind that she’s got him beat in both stamina and speed. Still, it seems highly doubtful that just following the main hiking path, which by virtue of needing to be walkable is likely needlessly circuitous, is the only way to go about this particular flag hunt.
Even a quick glance at the map feature on his pokégear is enough to confirm as much, as the main hiking path winds back and forth amongst the cliffs as it descends to the valley separating the spine they’re currently on, before ascending up the next one, only for the path to end up easily four times as long as the remarkably straight line that forms when he simply connects the three dots on the map as the bird flies.
As Ran examines things in more detail however, it also becomes apparent just why that’s how the path runs. It’s the only point where the slope isn’t too steep to be feasible as a walking path. If someone wanted to make the straightest path possible through the mountain from the first flag to the second to the third, that would involve either extreme amounts of climbing and descending, or the use of explosives or drills to burrow through the rockface where it ascends far too steeply to be traversable.
Still, Ran at least wants to have a look at the shortest possible path, only for even a cursory glance in that direction to leave him looking directly at the steep ravine that runs between the mountainous spine he’s on and the next one. Even worse, on the other side of the ravine there’s only a slim ledge before the rock wall rises up at least another twenty feet. So simply traveling in the straightest imaginable line isn’t humanly possible.
But that’s the point. He isn’t forced to rely only on what’s humanly possible.
A single tap to the center of the Level Ball on his belt is enough for Aria to gain her freedom, as she materializes next to him. In the distance, Doro has long since turned the first corner, ensuring she doesn’t see just what Ran has planned, rather than trying to race along the main path like his opponent.
“Aria,” He asks, gesturing towards the chasm and the rockface rising behind it, “Can you make a rope across the gap?”
She chitters enthusiastically in response, mandibles moving apart slightly in clear preparation. Before she can act however, Ran hurriedly asks another question.
“Can you crawl up that cliff wall once you’re on the other side?” He asks next, earning a moment’s pause from his bug-poison-type, before she chitters in agreement once more. This time however, she doesn’t move to act, instead turning those large purple eyes of hers towards him as she clearly waits to see if he’s about to ask any other questions.
“Can you do so with me on your back?” He asks next, watching with mild amusement as Aria’s pupils widen in surprise as she processes the question.
This time, she doesn’t offer an immediate response, instead skittering over towards the edge and examining just how much of a distance there is to cover. Rather than pay her trainer any mind, Aria spits out a first massive strand of concentrated webbing, which plasters itself against the rock face on the other side of the chasm, a few feet above the ledge they’re aiming for.
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Ran watches quietly and whilst doing his best to seem patient, even as he warily tries to figure out just how much distance Doro is covering whilst he’s still at the starting point. He’s still got other options, ranging from Aria simply providing him with ropes he can use to scale down ledges, to grabbing on to Golbat’s feet and finding out just how long the massive Bat Pokémon can carry so much dead weight. Not to mention the option of having Aria stick him to Caesar’s back and letting his massive serpentine body go to work.
But the day promises to be a tiring one, so the more options he has and the better he can divide the load, the better. Which is why it’s a good thing that Aria chooses that moment to fire off a second strand of webbing, parallel to her first one. She tests both strands for tension for a moment, hopping on to her makeshift bridge, before turning her head in his direction inquiringly.
He doesn’t need any further prodding, as Ran hurriedly jogs over and delicately looks for a position on Aria’s back. The position he settles on is uncomfortable and cramped, as he hooks his arms under the foremost of her limbs whilst forcing his legs to fold around the front of the vestigial limbs on her back. Considering the size disparity between them, it leaves him folded up uncomfortably, his knees and elbows only slightly over a foot apart.
Still, he sits securely, only momentarily feeling an immense urge to call the whole thing off when Aria first bursts into motion.
Her moves aren’t tentative or hesitant in the least, as she opts for speed over caution, racing across the large chasm in mere seconds. Ran for his part instinctively squeezes down tightly on the joints he’s wrapped himself around, only for a chiding hiss from Aria to have him ease up apologetically.
She pays him no further mind however, as even as Ran is still processing just how far there is to fall if things go wrong on their makeshift bridge, Aria’s attention is already firmly on the second part of their challenge. Without hesitation, she moves directly from their makeshift bridge to the stone cliff, confidently starting to climb in spite of the dead weight hanging off of her back.
Ran does his best to make things easier for her, trying to keep his own center of mass as low and as close to the middle or Aria’s body as he can. There’s still a few moments where, due to the cliff bulging or receding oddly, it feels like they’re unbalanced and there’s a risk of them plummeting backwards, but Aria’s attached tightly to the stone and Ran in turn clings closely to her. In the end, from the moment he took his seat to the moment Aria crests the top, only about thirty seconds pass.
Going by the racing of his heart, it might as well have been five minutes.
Still, he releases Aria hurriedly and stands up to take in the sight in front of them. A long plateau, before the ground drops away once more, the rest of the cliffs hidden out of sight below. Grinning confidently, Ran jogs forwards, Aria keeping pace by his side as he catches her up on just what they’re doing. As he does so, he isn’t blind to the clear signs of exertion his companion shows, making it clear that though she can serve as a temporary mount, it asks a lot of her.
When they reach the other side of the plateau, Ran looks down to take in their surroundings, the cliffside they’ve ascended up proving to conveniently be one of the tallest in the entire range.
There’s more of what they’ve already faced, with deep valleys and steep walls alternating for at least a mile as the mountainous spines continue to run nearly parallel to each other, only to intersect randomly in places. Then, however, there’s an entrance into the mountainside, as the path turns into a tunnel. A quick glance at his map shows that he can’t circumvent entering the tunnel either, as one of the flags appears to be somewhere in there.
Which is unfortunate, but there’s still a lot of distance to cover before reaching that point. A distance that includes the first pair of flags, which he spots hanging off the side of the valley that separates the third and fourth ‘spine’, counted from where he’s standing. There, the flags hang easily ten feet beneath the ledge along which the hiking path runs. The path winds upwards towards that point however, with a series of large bends ensuring that anybody running along the path will easily spot the flags long before reaching them.
As for Doro, she’s not rounded the massive cliff which Ran scaled yet, confirming that he’s got a nice lead for now. That’s no reason to rest on his laurels however, as he does still have a lot of distance to cover and there’s little doubt in his mind that Doro will win an endurance race against him, if he doesn’t keep looking for shortcuts.
Which is why, as he looks out over the path ahead, he can’t help but get stuck on the simple fact that the flags he needs to reach are at a lower elevation than his current position. So to his mind, there’s an obvious opportunity that at the very least has to be tried out right now.
“I’m going to try something, Aria. Thanks for the help, but you can take a break, alright?” He tells the Long Leg Pokémon by his side, waiting for her assenting chirp before he taps both the Level Ball and Friend Ball at his belt.
Aria dissolves in red energy even as Golbat appears on his other side. Rather than spend time on explaining what they’re doing, which he knows Aria likely appreciated, with Golbat, Ran just gets straight to the point.
“Do you think you can carry me to that ledge above those flags over there?” He asks immediately, gesturing towards the point he’s aiming for. Assuming Golbat gets him that far, he’ll skip five ‘loops’ of the path, putting him an enormous distance ahead of the still unseen Doro. Though that part of the path is only some twenty feet below his own current position, so it will only work if Golbat manages to slow their descent significantly.
Golbat’s gaze sharpens for a moment, before he spreads his wings and takes off, flying up to hang just above Ran’s head, offering his feet in a clear unspoken signal. Considering the even more daunting fall involved should this not work out, Ran is somewhat hesitant to grab on. When he does so, he doesn’t do so without giving out a warning.
“Just try and lift me up first for a few seconds, alright? Just to make sure you can-”
And then Golbat has lifted him up and is flying forwards doggedly. Which goes smoothly for about five seconds, at which point the weight clearly starts to become a major issue, as they rapidly start losing height.
“Aim for the nearest ledge!” Ran cries out frantically even as they descend at a worrying speed, but Golbat ignores him, merely redoubling his efforts as his wings beat frantically whilst they cross over the first two chasms.
Distantly, he’s aware of an awed shout, but Ran can pay no mind to who exactly is shouting, his attention fully on the distant goal Golbat’s clearly aiming for. At first, they seem doomed, descending far faster than they’re advancing even as the path itself rises up to meet them with each consecutive loop.
Then, however, their descent slows down, Golbat no longer laboring silently but letting out frustrated shrieks as he puts his all into a heroic effort to keep them airborne. Incredibly enough, he’s successful too, as when they still have some thirty feet to cover before reaching the ledge with the flags, Ran’s feet dip below the ledge’s level for just a moment. It’s as if Golbat has a third person view of things, as from that moment on, they don’t drop another inch, the Bat Pokémon simply refusing to give in to the laws of gravity.
As they reach the ledge, Ran has to lift his feet just slightly to make sure he doesn’t clip the hard stone edge, before he’s landing on solid ground. Immediately, he lets go of Golbat, who almost shoots directly upwards as he continues to put the same amount of force into his wingbeats for a few more seconds. He reigns himself in easily enough however, at which point Ran doesn’t even need to give a command for Golbat to fly down over the path’s edge, flying back up a few seconds later with a flag in his large mouth.
“Perfect!” Ran cheers happily, accepting his prize from Golbat, before recalling him with a quick thank you.
A hurried look back at the large part of the path they just skipped over shows Doro’s jogging form only just having become visible. She’s all the way back at the foot of the cliff Aria had carried him up, as she’s only just finished rounding it. She was likely responsible for the awed shout, then. Even as she seems to meet his gaze across the significant distance between them, Doro keeps up a jog that is significantly faster than any pace Ran can keep up for more than a few minutes.
And that’s without mentioning the figure that’s loping along easily by her side. He can’t tell whether she used the Hitmonlee that’s jogging alongside her against Chuck’s Gym trainers, whether she encountered some obstacle or another or whether she just felt like giving the fighting-type a work-out. Her reasoning doesn’t really matter, in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that she has a Hitmonlee, which is useful information he duly files away.Even as Ran watches, Doro clearly picks up her pace further from what appears to have been a, for her, comfortable jog, now loping up the path at a speed only just shy of a full sprint. The way her eyes are locked on him leaves zero doubt about the fact that she’s dead set on catching back up to him.
Ran suppresses the worried gulp he wants to let out at the sight of an angry fighting-type specialist chasing after him, instead turning around and looking towards the remaining path. There’s no chasm in front of him, the ledge simply running up to the next cliffside, at which point it raises up perhaps some twenty feet. If there were enough handholds, he’d feel comfortable about trying to climb it himself rather than taking the long way around by running along the slowly ascending path.
Fortunately, when encountering a lack of handholds, he has a convenient solution available. Soon enough, he’s once more on Aria’s back, as she lifts him up another cliffside. He badly wants to look back to see Doro’s reaction to his particular method for climbing the steep cliffs, but even if he’s willing to rely on Aria as they ascend, he still isn’t comfortable enough to do anything but cling tightly against her and tuck his head in as he focuses on not panicking before they’ve crested yet another climb.
Aria meets the challenge wonderfully however, gratefully accepting his choice to recall her yet again as he finally breaks into his own first proper run of the challenge, as he heads into the tunnel. With the first flag rolled up in his backpack and a multiple minute lead over Doro, he’s feeling great about his chances of winning the day.