It was pitch black. Not like the darkness of night with no moons out. There was absolutely no source of light for my eyes to pick up, like the bottom of the ocean or a cave deep in the earth type of darkness.

The only thing my senses could pick up was the heavy scent of damp earth and the echoing drip of water from somewhere in the cave we landed in. A pair of glowing yellow eyes opened up at my feet, “zorua!” Winnie barked. He probably could see everything, unlike my pitiful human eyes.

“Why did we get dumped in a cave? I dunno, maybe Giratina felt like it was being too nice to us.” I grumbled, swinging off by backpack and crouching down to look for something in it that could provide me a bit of light.

A few Will-O-Wisps flickered to life, the dim light wasn’t enough to penetrate far into the darkness of the cave, but it was enough for me to light up my immediate surroundings.

A chorus of high pitched chittering in the ceiling above let us know that the Zubat weren’t happy about the intruders. Or maybe they were happy for a prospective meal.

At least I wouldn’t have to try to feel my way through an entire cave system. “Thanks bud, I don’t suppose you know how to navigate caves?”

Winnie gave me a haughty grin before disappearing through a wall, yipping a short, “Zorua!” to me as he poked his head out from the wall.

I chuckled, “Yeah, right. You’re a ghost, you can phase through stuff. Well, go wild. Make sure to stay safe and stay out of the way of anything that looks dangerous.” And with that, I was left alone to my own devices.

The little wisps of ghostly fire that Winnie has left behind provided just enough light to see what I was doing, but they wouldn’t last forever, so I got to searching my pack for a source of light.

After digging through a few pockets, I was able to find a Rotom phone, though it didn’t come with a Rotom, but it didn’t need one to function. It was nice to see that it still had the blue phone case from the game.

I quickly opened the phone up and looked through it’s apps. There were a few games, a camera app, maps, Pokenet, which was probably this world’s version of Google, and a few more. Most of which weren’t accessible due to there being no wifi or data connection. I’d have to wait till I got to the surface to use those.

I found and turned the flashlight on, making sure to point it down as to not disturb the Zubat any further. The phone was fully charged, so unless the battery was shit, I wouldn’t have to worry about having no light for a while.

Next thing on the checklist was to see what I got from the Unknown. I asked for the same stuff I had from my Pokemon Violet game, but I never bothered to see what stuff I had in it unless I needed it.

The bag was organized similarly to how the bag in game was organized, it was even labeled: Key Items, Treasures, Medicine, Pokeballs, Battle Items, Berries, Other Items, TRs, TR Materials, and Picnic Items, and Clothes.

The first thing I took out of the Key Items pocket was my Trainer ID, there wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy about it.

TRAINER ID

Name: Azalea Lang

ID No. 613381

Date of Birth: 2xxx | Sex: Female | Home Region: Unova

According to the date on my Trainer ID and the date on my phone, this current body was 15.

Miraidon’s Pokeball wasn’t in the Key items pocket, but the upgraded Terra Orb was, as well as the Catching and Exp. charm and a few others items.

Food and water weren’t going to be an issue, the berry pocket was almost overflowing, and the picnic pocket was full of food that I had bought a ton of, but never really used in the game, and I had a ton of Fresh Waters, Lemonades, and Soda Pops that I’d never used either.

It was a similar scenario with medicine and Pokeballs, I wouldn’t have to buy any for a long time, I mean, how long will it take to use up more than two hundred assorted potions or the same amount of assorted Pokeballs?

The clothes pocket wasn’t something that I had in the game, but made sense cause I had asked for extra clothes. There were a few plain changes of clothes and light jackets. Since the cave was a bit chilly, I pulled out the jacket with the most pockets and quickly donned it before putting a few different Pokeballs into the pockets for later use.

The treasure’s pocket had stuff I could sell for a lot of money, like big gold nuggets, and the Other Items pocket had the usual assortment of evolution and battle items, tera shards, and the like.

A flicker of movement caught my eye and Winnie announced his return with a few happy yips and ran over to me.

I put everything away, shouldered my pack, and pat Winnie’s soft head, “Sounds like there’s good news. Did you find a way out?”

The white fox’s tail slightly wagged and he nodded hesitantly, “zor… zorua…”

“Bad news too? We’ll figure it out when we get there.” I said, getting up and dusting off my pants. “Lead the way buddy, I’m ready to get out of this place!”

“Zorua!” Winnie barked as he lead me towards one of the bigger tunnels.

Squeaks echoed from Zubat in the roof above as we trekked through winding dark tunnels. We had to deal with the occasional Zubat diving at us, but a weak Extrasensory from Winnie was enough to send them on their way.

The tunnels were leading upwards, which I guess meant that we were getting closer to the exit. Hopefully I’d be able to rest soon, after all that jumping in the Distortion world plus caving, my legs were absolutely dying.

We stopped a few times to rest up and eat. It seems that whatever effect of the Distortion world that prevented me from not needing food or water had worn off by now. I quickly found out that Winnie had a massive sweet tooth, his favorite berry was the Pecha berry, which gave off a mouth watering sweet peach scent. The berries were so much better than any other fruit I’d ever eaten before, and I was revitalized after eating a Sitrus berry, which had a more pear-like taste.

Eventually, we came to a massive cavern. It was big enough that even the semi-bright light from my phone wasn’t enough to pierce through the darkness, and I could only see the tips or bases of stalactites thicker than a tree trunk and a few outlines of countless Zubat hanging from lower parts of the ceiling. It was kinda like a cave forest but the trees were rock pillars.

Winnie stopped and perked up his ears, he had tensed up. Suddenly, the entire Zubat swarm dropped from the ceiling, the panicked flapping of wings and squeaking from swarm echoed relentlessly throughout the cavern as the bat Pokemon fled the cavern in droves.

I looked down at Winnie when he began growling, his fur was standing on end.

“What’s wrong?”

Before Winnie could reply, a dinosaur-like roar resonated throughout the cavern, drowning out the noise of the frantically flapping Zubat swarm. Then a chain of resounding BOOMs shook the cavern. Dust and grit sprinkled down onto us.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Okay, that’s concerning.”

Another chain of booms from an attack resounded throughout the cave system, this time coupled with furious roars and screams of pain from multiple Pokemon.

“Someone’s having an all-out brawl,” I muttered under my breath.

“rua.” Winnie replied, flicking his tail for me to follow him as he trotted away. Seems like the bad news he had was some sort of dangerous big Pokemon living in caves.

Random flashes of light from the battle illuminated cavern as we wove between the stalactites. We both paused behind a stalactite as a boulder the size of a car landed in front of us with a loud crash.

I looked towards where the boulder came from, straining my eyes to make out who the battlers were amidst the occasional flashes of light in what looked like the middle of the cavern.

I was slowly able to make out the silhouettes of an enormous 3 headed dragon grappling with a smaller, but still massive large shark-like dragon.

“A Hydreigon and a Gabite!” I muttered under my breath. “I wonder what they’re fighting about. Maybe a territory dispute?”

“zorua.” Winnie replied, his paw was pointed towards the other end of the cavern where another tunnel was. We were one third of the way there, but the exit had only just become visible.

“That’s our exit?” I asked, Winnie nodded a confirmation. “Got it.”

Gabite roared, shooting a purple-blue beam of energy at Hydreigon, who shot three similar beams back at the shark dragon, one from each head. The dragon pulses met each other in the middle, with Hydreigon’s triple Dragon Pulse easily overpowering Gabite’s single attack before hitting the landshark and exploding.

The entire cave system shook, filling the place with dust. I recoiled, ears ringing from the explosion and ducked back behind the stalactite to avoid being hit by shrapnels of rock, coughing and wiping my watering eyes.

Winnie sneezed and shook himself, then tapped my leg to get my attention before darting away, snaking a path towards the entrance. Turning my flashlight off I followed Winnie’s Will-O-Wisps, the last thing we need is for the cave to collapse on us and trap us in here.

We took a path that skirted the edges of the cavern, ducking behind boulders and stalactites in order to avoid the fight and being detected by the two battling dragons. Though they were pretty preoccupied with fighting each other so the chance of being noticed was rather slim.

It was hard to see anything, even with the light from the Will-o-Wisps, the occasional blinding flashes from the dragons fighting from didn’t help much with visibility.

We were three fourths of the way there before stopping again behind another stalactite. The entrance to the exit tunnel was so close.

“What’s up Winnie?” I rubbed my eyes and looked at where Winnie pointed to with his paw.

There were three Deinos huddled behind a small boulder that was directly in our path. Despite the dogshit lighting, I could still see the worryingly large puddle of red that the three Deinos were laying in.

“Oh shit, did they get caught in the crossfire?” I whispered. Winnie snorted in irritation at the obstacle and motioned for me to keep going.

“We should make sure they’re okay. This is stupid but I don’t think it’s right to just leave them there. Fuck mother nature.”

Winnie grimaced, but then nodded his head with a determined expression, “zorua.”

Putting a hand on Winnie’s back, I told him to wait a moment and peeked around our current hiding spot to make sure the two dragons were still occupied with their fight.

Hydreigon looked like she was winning the battle and she had Gabite backed into a corner. The shark dragon wasn’t giving up though, and burrowed into the ground, reappearing below the three-headed dragon and sending a barrage of mud at it.

“Yeah, they’re still going at it. Let’s move.” We dashed over to the boulder sheltering the three Deino. A raspy growl emanated from one of the little dragons, they were tiny, probably only thigh height.

Now that I was closer, I could see the rather nasty looking injuries that all three had. One had a claw injury on it’s side, but it didn’t look like anything serious was hit. The second was the least injured. It was missing a bunch of scales on its back and had a bad burn. The third smallest one had it the worst with a deep neck wound that was gushing blood.

“Stay on watch for their mom, I don’t want her to notice and maul us to death.” Winnie nodded, uttering an affirmative “rua!”

Having never done anything close to medic stuff before, I kinda just had to wing it. I ignored the raspy growl from Deino number two and approached the trio.

Number three’s neck wound was my first priority, I could tell by the slight rise and fall of its chest that it was alive, but just barely, potions and a revive weren’t gonna work fast enough, so I used plan B, the heal ball.

Retrieving a heal ball from my bag, I tapped the pink Pokeball on the injured Deino and watched as the heal ball pinged to notify a successful capture and began to glow a warm deep pink as the ball worked overtime to heal the Pokemon inside.

Then I got to work on the other two, using a burn heal and a max potion on them. Number one was still conscious but didn’t have enough strength to protest to me touching it as I applied the max potion to its side wound and gave it pieces of a Sitrus berry to eat.

The effects of the potion and berry combined and were pretty awesome to see as the bleeding stopped. Skin, flesh, and scales began to regrow and knit the wound back together.

Number two was still healthy enough to snap at me when I tried to treat its burn wounds. I recoiled at it almost took off one of my fingers, “Hey, I’m trying to help you guys, okay? This green bottle is for burns, and this blue one will make you feel better.”

The Deino didn’t seem very receptive to my reasoning and kept trying to bite me, so I shoved a Pokedoll in its mouth to distract it and quickly sprayed the burn heal and max potion onto it as it ripped the Pokedoll to shreds.

As I finished number two’s treatment, the heal ball softly dinged again to let me know that it’s treatment was done.

I let number three out, making sure to press the button twice to properly release it. It reappeared in a blue light and was now conscious and in much better condition now than before. Its neck wound wasn’t bleeding but still looked raw.

Number three was nice enough to let me use up the rest of the max potion on it and even grunted a friendly, “Deino!” at me as I set down a few more Sitrus berries near the trio for good measure.

I couldn’t resist petting it’s cute lil head after that, what a polite little guy!

Suddenly I got goosebumps. Something was wrong. The noise of battle had died down, Winnie jumped down from his lookout stop on top of the boulder and barked a warning at me. I guess it’s time to dip.

Peeking out from behind the boulder, I saw a still very angry Hydreigon floating over a very injured Gabite, pinning the limp body of the landshark down. It was charging up a hyper beam for a finishing blow on its opponent.

Without a second though, I grabbed two of the ultra balls I had put in my pockets earlier and chucked it at the two dragons. It was a long shot, but Winnie quickly caught on. His eyes glowed blue with psychic energy as he helped propel the two balls further than I could throw them.

The ultra balls hit Gabite and Hydreigon, surprising the latter, and sucked the dragons into them, landing on the ground with two heavy clunks. Gabite’s ball quickly dinged a success and I dashed forward to retrieve the ball before booking it for the exit.

“Winnie we need to go! NOW!” I shouted at my companion, pitch rising with every second that passed. There was no way the other ball would hold Hydreigon for long.

Winnie caught up with me and jumped onto my shoulder. Legs pumping furiously, I sprinted for our lives for the exit and dived behind a large stalactite just as the area behind me exploded with a resounding BOOM!

The heat coming off from the Hyper Beam burned singed my hairs as I scrambled away from the impact zone. There was a furious roar from Hydreigon as she realized her Hyper Beam missed.

Sparing a glance back as I got up to run, I caught a glimpse of Hydreigon flying after me. Her fangs glistened, three heads snarling viciously as three balls of different colored energy gathered around the maws of each head.

Oh lawd she comin!

There was an ominous whoosh, and crackle as Hydreigon let out a bellow, releasing the ferocious Tri-Attack she had been charging.

Searing heat grazed my back as I dived into the exit tunnel. Three consecutive BOOMs erupted behind me. Pieces of rock and magma splattered all around me and I winced as a few pieces hit and burned my legs. Thankfully adrenaline helped me ignore the pain and quickly get back up on my feet.

Not bothering to look back this time at the carnage left by Hydreigon’s Tri Attack, I quickly scurried away through the winding tunnel with Winnie hanging onto my shoulder.

Another outburst from Hydreigon echoed through the passageways, but the three headed dragon didn’t follow us through the tunnel, and her enraged roars slowly became too muffled to hear.

Despite not being able to hear Hydreigon anymore, I kept booking it through the tunnels like a bat out of hell until we finally exited the cave. I didn’t even notice that the cave had been getting lighter until my eyes were blinded by the light outside.

Huffing and puffing, I bent over, hands on my knees as I tried to recover my breath. The fresh air and eye searing light from the midday sun was amazing compared to the dank air and total darkness of the caves where we were trapped with an absolute monster of a dragon.

Winnie hopped down from my shoulder and danced around with a somewhat crazed look in his eyes, “zorua! zor zorua!” He barked as he acted out what I assumed was the fight between Hydreigon and Gabite.

“You..*gasp* thought that was fun?!” I asked incredulously. Winnie gave me an enthusiastic nod and foxy laugh, his eyes were shining.

I took another deep breath as my heart rate finally stabilized, “Well I’m glad you enjoyed that. I sure didn’t.”

Winnie rolled his eyes at me and kept jumping around as if in an imaginary battle.

Once my breathing returned to normal, I surveyed our new surroundings. Behind us was a steep cliff face and the cave we just exited from. In front loomed a thick forest, with gnarled trees that reached high up into the sky with their densely packed branches.

I could see a few Pidove roosting in the trees curiously staring down at us, cooing to each other as if they were having a conversation.

Now that we’re out of the cave there should be some sort of connection that I can use, right? I pulled out my phone and opened the maps app.

According to Giratina we should be in Unova, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we were somewhere else considering how that bastard dumped us in a cave with a murderous dragon.

We were in Unova, far northeast Unova to be exact. There weren’t any towns or cities near us, the closest settlement to us was Humilau city, which was just under thirty miles away.

Well, who in the world would want to be neighbors with a giant Hydreigon? They were my favorite dragon type, but even I would know better than to live right next to a den of a wild Hydreigon.

“Urgh, we’re gonna have to hike at least thirty miles, that’s gonna take so long.” I groaned, my muscles were aching terribly from the constant running, walking, and jumping I’d been doing with little rest ever since I got yeeted to the Distortion realm.

Winnie let out a squeaky hehehehhe that foxes do, before reassuringly putting his paw on my shin.

“How in the world are you not tired?” I asked Winnie. “zorua, zor, zor rua.” He replied matter of factly. Then he pointed to my bag and his mouth.

I sighed and nodded, “Okay, let’s fuel up. Let’s first go somewhere a bit further from this stupid cave. I don’t want to encounter Hydreigon again if she decides to come get some sunshine and fresh air.”