As it turned out, I was right. The little Cleffa stayed with Ted during the night, and when they awoke the next morning Ted offered the Pokémon the chance to come along with him.

The Cleffa took some time to think about it, but before we set out into the tunnels once again, it had found a new home in one of Ted’s Poké Balls, and a new name.

Silver the Cleffa had a long way to go to being ready for any actual Gym battles, but he was scrappy nonetheless.

Two weeks passed by in exhausting monotony as we trudged through the tunnels, heading further and further south. The only way we were relatively sure that we were going in the right direction was because of the compasses we had.

The monotony was only broken thanks to the occasional small caves and underground biomes that we stumbled across. While none were as large as the cavern with the Tentacruel, they made up for their smaller size with their diversity..

There were caves with grass and trees, caves that were home to pools of lava and were scorching hot, caves that were so cold and icy that they made me wish for the lava pools, and even one miserable cave that was a swamp.

None of it should have been physically possible, at least according to my understanding of geology and biology, but then again, the Pokémon world never really played by the rules.

Thankfully, we were able to supplement our traveling rations with food gathered from the caves so we didn’t have to eat the same boring protein bars and dried food packets. Silver proved invaluable in this area, and I was grateful he was with us, as he could identify which fruits and berries in the more plant-filled caves were safe to eat.

The other Pokémon that helped us out was Switchback - if the Poison-type was excited to eat a particular food, we all made sure to avoid it.

By the end of the two weeks, we were thoroughly sick and tired of the caves. Everybody was exhausted and snapping at each other, all of our normal rhythms thrown off by the lack of sunlight and a proper day-night cycle. Really the only one who was happy about the entire affair was Kōjin, who was able to burn off a lot of his energy by running up and down the caves, ecstatic at having the opportunity to go as fast as he could in a straight line.

The only thing that I was even slightly happy about by the end of those two weeks was that there were no more encounters with hostile Pokémon like the Tentacruel.

That’s not to say that we didn’t encounter any wild Pokémon, as each of the caves had their own unique ecosystems and Pokémon populations, but none of them seemed interested in trying to eat any of us.

What was more interesting to all of us were that very few of the Pokémon in the caves should actually be there. Only a couple of the Pokémon that we had seen were native to Sinnoh, the rest were from all over the Four Islands.

I knew that it was a justification by the game designers to have rare Pokémon for the player to collect in the remakes of the Diamond and Pearl games, but that didn’t make the reality of it any less confusing.

Ted and Lucas lost a decent amount of sleep trying to figure out just how all of these rare Pokémon managed to make it into the underground passages. I was curious too, even though I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

The breakthrough, so to speak, came when we were passing through one of the small icy caves. It was small in comparison to the massive cave where the Tentacruel had lived, but it was still about the size of a full city block or two.

/^\

Most of the caves we had passed through were relatively open spaces, but not this one. The cold wind howled through the tall, spire-like stalagmites as snowflakes drifted down around us. Nevermind the fact that, logically speaking, there shouldn’t be snow this deep underground, but here we were, in the next-best thing to a blizzard.

None of us had really bothered with bundling up in any winter clothes, after all, in a few hundred yards the biome would change back to the boring, rocky tunnels, and we would have to change into our regular clothes.

Instead we decided to be miserable for a few minutes and braved the cold.

Kōjin, Sunny, and Maggy were our saviors for this particular cave. Kōjin was having the time of his life, bounding through the snow and blasting great gouts of fire. The three Fire-types were burning us a path, which meant that we had to trudge through piles of slush instead of knee-high snow drifts.

“Did you see that?” Lucas asked, pointing with a shivering finger towards one of the pillars.

“No.” Ted grumbled.

Out of all of us, he was taking the icy caverns the worst. Hoenn was a tropical region, after all, and they rarely had to deal with any kind of cold weather.

Lucas was the most accustomed to these kinds of conditions, and I had vaguely fond memories of having to shovel snow off the driveway when I was a kid.

“There!” He said, pointing again. “It’s right there!”

We all turned, and I just managed to get a glimpse of gray fur disappearing into the snowstorm.

“Son of a-” Ted cursed. “Yes. I saw it. Probably just a Sneasel.”

“But where’s its pack?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re all hiding in a different cave somewhere, safe and warm.”

Lucas frowned. “But they’re Ice-types, wouldn’t they be happy out in the cold?”

“I don’t know Lucas! I don’t know how anybody can be happy in this stupid weather.”

Some neurons started to fire in the back of my head, and I frowned over at where I had seen the moving Pokémon.

“Say, what color is a Sneasel’s fur?”

“Blue-ish.” Ted grunted. “Sometimes black, but mostly blue.”

“But not gray?”

“Gray? No. Not gray.”

“I think it was a Sneasel.” I said, thinking back to the shape I had seen. “It looked familiar, at least.”

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“And?”

“Well, think about it. What looks like a Sneasel, but has gray fur?”

“I don’t know, Alina. Why don’t you tell us?”

I had a shit-eating grin on my face as I pointed at his belt.

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lucas started giggling at Ted’s expression, having picked up on where I was going with it.

“What’s so funny? I swear, next time Switchback finds a poisonous berry, I’m going to-”

He stopped.

“And the penny drops.” I stage-whispered to Lucas.

“What’s a penny?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait, you think that it’s a Hisuian Sneasel?” Ted said, eyes wide as he tried to peer through the gusting snow towards where the Pokémon had vanished.

“I think it’s a possibility.” I replied. “Think about it, what kind of Ice-types have gray fur?”

“Weavile.” Ted shot back immediately.

I hesitated for a moment, then shook my head. “They live in packs. Besides, did you see any red on its crest?”

“No, but I only saw it for a second. And besides, just because we saw one doesn’t mean that there’s not others. Plus, these Hisuian Sneasels you talk about aren’t Ice-types, you said so yourself. Why would they be living in an ice biome?”

“Shinx aren’t Grass-types, but you find them living on the plains.”

“Come on everybody,” Lucas said. “There’s an easy way to figure this out. Just let Switchback out, and see if any Pokémon responds to his presence.”

Ted and I shared a look, then we both shrugged.

“It’s worth a shot.”

Ted just mumbled something about the cold, but his desire to know more about Pokémon evidently won out against his personal comfort, and he pulled out Switchback’s Poké Ball.

The short gray Pokémon emerged from the ball with a yawn, stretching slightly, then perked up as a gust of cold wind blew through the cavern.

“Hey there buddy.” Ted said, kneeling down to take a closer look at his companion.

I didn’t miss the slight grimace as he planted his knee into the cold snow.

“There might be another one of your species around here, and we were wondering if-”

Switchback’s head whipped around to the rest of the cavern, and cut Ted off with a joyful cry.

A few seconds later, a similar voice shouted back from the cave, sounding much more uncertain.

The little Sneasel tore off from where he was standing next to Ted, disappearing into the snow covered landscape, leaving the three of us blinking at each other in confusion.

I was barely able to make out the sounds of Switchback and the other Pokémon chittering to each other underneath the sounds of the icy wind, along with a few thumps.

“How is there even wind?” I muttered. “I mean, we’re underground, it’s not like there’s wind currents or anything.”

My musings were interrupted by Switchback prancing back through the snow, dragging a miserable looking Sneasel behind him.

The other Pokémon was smaller than Switchback, and far scrawnier. It’s fur was matted and dull in places as compared to Switchback’s much more luscious coat, and I could tell from a glance that it was nowhere near as strong or well nourished as Ted’s partner was.

Probably had a hard time finding enough food in the caves.

More importantly, it looked incredibly awkward as it saw us, tugging at its arm firmly locked in Switchback’s hand. I got the distinct feeling that it would much rather be anywhere else.

Switchback, for his part, chittered excitedly to Ted, looking back and forth between himself and the other Hisuian Sneasel.

And it was a Hisuian Sneasel, that much was obvious. Ted merely stood there, mouth agape, and I leaned over with a smile and nudged him in the side.

“Told you.”

/^\

Our meeting with the other Hisuian Sneasel didn’t last long.

At the end of the day it was still a wild Pokémon, and from what I knew, the Hisuian Sneasel line was much more solitary than their regular counterparts. Switchback seemed to be a bit of an exception, but I chalked that up to the fact that he had been raised in a very friendly environment.

Judging by the size of the cavern, the other Sneasel had probably only ever seen another of its kind a couple of times in its life, and certainly not one as companionable as Switchback.

After a few minutes of letting us examine it in exchange for some Poké Blocks, probably more nutrition in one place than it had gotten in months, the other Hisuian Sneasel had had enough. It scooped up the small pile of Poké Blocks Ted had laid out in front of it, and disappeared back into the snow, its fur proving remarkably adept at disappearing into the snowstorm.

“Huh.” Ted said after a minute, looking down at his notebook and camera. “Well, never say that I won’t admit when I was wrong.”

All of us had pulled out our notebooks to take down observations, and Ted had even gone so far as to pull out his camera, taking pictures of the other Sneasel and a brief video. The wild Hisuian Sneasel had obviously no idea what they were, but food had gone a long way in bribing it to allow us to examine it and take photos.

“This changes… everything.” Ted said, before stuffing his camera and notebook back into his pack to protect them from the cold. “I mean, one Hisuian Sneasel in Switchback is one thing, maybe he was just a weird genetic mutation while he was in his egg. But now that there’s two, and presumably more, we might be looking at a whole subspecies of Pokémon living down here that were presumed extinct!”

“Maybe they retreated down here before they went extinct on the surface?” Lucas mused, flipping through his notebook. “I mean, I’m not the best at history, but I vaguely remember something about some weird storms a couple hundred years ago. Maybe an environmental disaster drove the Hisuian Sneasel underground, leaving their regular Johtoian cousins to become the main species that people know about?”

‘Some weird storms’ was an understatement. Those storms had been anomalies ripping holes in time and space, spitting out Pokémon from all over the world, it was part of the main plot of Pokémon: Legends Arceus. Of course, it wasn’t like I could just tell Ted and Lucas that, not without explaining how I knew that information.

“How did I not know about this?” Ted muttered to himself.

“I mean, you're not an expert on Sinnoh Pokémon or history.” Lucas said.

“But even still, I mean, somebody should have said something. It’s not like…” He shook his head. “No. The only reason we even know about this now is because of the cave-in caused by the mudslide, if not for that, then nobody would even have known that this was all down here.”

“That might not be true.” I said, frowning. “I think the Rangers had some idea that there were weird things happening underground.”

“But do they know about all of this?” Ted asked, waving a hand at the snowy landscape.

“Probably not.” I admitted.

After all, the only reason I really knew about it was because I had knowledge from the games.

“Well, we can talk about the things people knew or didn’t know.” Lucas said, teeth chattering. “But honestly, right now? I’m starting to feel the cold. Can we talk about this someplace else?”

Ted and I shared a look, and I realized that in the excitement of finding another Hisuian Sneasel and examining it, we had all forgotten about the fact that we were currently standing in a cavern filled with a physics-defying blizzard.

“Your lips are a little blue.” I said.

“Your ears are looking kinda pale.” Ted replied.

“Let's get out of here.” Lucas gestured to the direction we had been initially going towards and the exit of the cave.

We bustled our way through the snow and wind, leaving the mystery of the Hisuian Sneasel behind. I had the feeling that Ted, at the very least, would probably be finding a way to return down here despite the cold so he could study them some more.

And maybe, I thought, rolling the idea around in my head. It would be interesting to come back down myself.

After all, I needed something to do after I did the Gym Challenges, and I was technically a Pokémon researcher now.

Kōjin was a Hisuian Growlithe so maybe there was a cave around here that had some of his subspecies? Did he come from the Grand Underground too? If he did, how did Kane find him and the other Growlithe Kōjin had been traveling with? Unless Kane knew about the Grand Underground as well.

All of a sudden, I had a lot of questions and precious few answers.