“So.” I said, staring out at the magnificent vista before us. “Are you still bored?”

Lucas gulped, his gaze fixed on the beautiful springs and natural water features. “No, not really.”

“I was wrong.” Ted admitted. “This is definitely the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a cave.”

I’d never really played Pokémon Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl. I hadn’t been a fan of the remastered art style, the relative lack of new content, or the fact that it seemed like a cash-grab to get people to buy into the games for nostalgia’s sake.

Pokémon: Legends Arceus had been more impressive to me because it actually had new ideas and an interesting concept, while still being in Sinnoh, or rather Hisui.

As a result, I only knew of the Grand Underground from reading other people’s reviews, and doing some research on Serebii. Enough to know that it basically served as a revamped Underground and even kind of a Safari Zone, and that it had some interesting visuals.

I had never expected to actually see those sights with my own eyes.

The area the Clefairy had led us to was almost too big to be called a cave. It was a massive underground ecosystem that was clearly self-sustaining in some way, and was large enough that the far wall was a little hard to see.

Several stories above us a massive gestone hung from the ceiling, glowing in a mesmerizing inner light that illuminated the entire cave with its warm, sun-like radiance.

The center of the cave was a massive underground lake, almost idyllic in its presentation. Crystal clear water shimmered under the light of the faux-sun, and even from this distance I could see shapes of Pokémon splashing around in the water.

Smaller pools were scattered around the cave, flanked by green bushes and ferns, or often surrounded by stalactites. Stalagmites? Surrounded by pillars of stone.

It was as if somebody had taken a chunk of paradise and dropped it into a cave in the middle of nowhere.

“Have either of you heard of anything like this?” I asked.

Both Lucas and Ted shook their heads, still stunned.

I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing, or a bad thing. I thought to myself.

“Have you?” Ted asked, looking over at me. “You were the one who floated the idea of the Grand Underground.”

It took me a second to formulate my response.

“I knew that there were rumors, and that there were strange Pokémon not native to the region popping up where they shouldn’t, but this…”

I waved a hand, gesturing at the view in front of us.

“This is way beyond what I expected to find.”

It wasn’t even a lie. I had honestly been expecting to see a bigger cave, sure, but not an entire water biome underneath the ground.

There was an annoyed sound behind us, and we turned to see the Clefairy frowning at us, obviously impatient that we were taking so long. For a brief second I was vaguely annoyed at it, after all, it had been the one to force us to carry its kids through the long tunnel, and now it was getting mad at us for taking a few moments to admire the view?

Then I blinked, and sighed. I supposed it was kind of cute in a strange way, seeing the pink blob frown like that. Besides, we really should keep going, after all.

I rearranged the sleeping Cleffa in my arms, and started to follow my two traveling companions down the slight incline that joined the tunnel to the larger cave.

“Where are we even going?” Lucas asked after a minute. “I mean, like beside Oreburgh.”

The Clefairy frowned again, and pointed at the far end of the cave.

“Looks like that way.”

I furrowed my brow as we started across the cave. It was pretty big, and if I squinted I could see some dark spots on the walls around us that looked like other tunnel entrances.

Quickening my pace, I hurried over to Ted.

“Hey.” I whispered, and he looked over at me.

Ted and the feisty Cleffa he had been given to hold had reached a kind of understanding, and the two weren’t struggling with each other anymore. Instead, it actually looked like the Cleffa had settled comfortably in his arms, and though it tried to glare at everything, I could see its eyes fluttering closed with exhaustion every now and again.

“Do you have a compass?”

Ted looked at me blankly, before blinking. “A compass? Sure. Check the back pocket of my bag.”

It took some careful juggling, but I was able to reach into Ted’s backpack and pull out his compass while still maintaining a careful grip on the Cleffa in my arms. It made a soft noise that caused Ted’s Cleffa to begin to squirm, but he simply patted it on the head and showed it that it’s friend was alright.

My frown deepened as I stared at the compass. At first the needle spun wildly, but then calmed down.

“What’s it say?”

“We’re going east.” I muttered, double checking the orientation of the caves and where the Clefairy had pointed us.

It was Ted’s turn to look concerned. “Oreburgh is south. Quite a ways south, actually.”

“About a hundred kilometers.” I confirmed. “Not that bad, all things considered…”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“But who knows what the path will look like.” Ted finished. “And while we have supplies, I don’t know if we have that many supplies.”

I eyed the pools of water as we started to cross the cave floor. “If there’s water like this down here, there might be fish.”

A Magikarp, its scales looking a bit paler than the normal vivid orange, poked its head out of the water, staring at us while we passed.

“Actual fish.” I clarified, and Ted gave me a non-committal hum.

The idea of eating Pokémon still wasn’t sitting well with me, but if it was between that and dying…

“Well,” Ted said. “We can drop off the Cleffa and the Clefairy, and then turn back around and head south.”

“But where are we going?” I hissed. “Where is the Clefairy leading us? And why were they in that tunnel to begin with?”

Ted didn’t have an answer, until the Cleffa in his arms yawned, stretched, and held its two stubby arms above its head. It then traced a circle in the air, before looking at us expectantly.

“What?” I asked, but Ted’s eyes lit up.

“The moon?”

The Cleffa nodded vigorously.

“What day is it?” Ted asked me.

“Uhh, Sunday? I think.”

“No, no, the date.”

“Oh. It’s the nineteenth.”

“It’s the full moon! It comes out on the twenty-eighth, the Clefairy must have been taking its pack to go see it.”

I stared at him. “Why do you know that?”

He had the decency to flush a little bit. “It’s useful to know the moon's schedule, a lot of Pokémon follow its cycle.”

“Uh huh. If that is the case,” and it honestly seemed pretty likely that it was, considering all their lore. “Why were the Cleffa and the Clefairy leaving the caves so early? They would have exited the caves about ten days before the full moon.”

I looked around. We were making good time across the cavern, and were just reaching the edge of the underground lake.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s taken us that long to travel this far.”

Ted shrugged. “Well, they do have pretty short legs, we’re probably going much faster than they could. And maybe they wanted to find a good place to see the full moon? I’ve heard rumors that Clefairy like to dance around natural ponds that can reflect the moon. Or at the very least in a circular clearing.”

The Cleffa in his arms nodded vigorously.

“If that’s the case then why-”

I was cut off by a yelp, and a splash of water.

Ted and I both spun around to see a confused looking Cleffa on the ground, a frightened Clefairy, and the rippling surface of the lake as bubbles of air rose to the top.

A second later, Lucas’ head burst out of the pool, and he screamed before a massive tentacle wrapped itself around his shoulders and dragged him back down.

More bubbles started to pop and burst at the surface, until a massive dark form emerged from the water, red eyes glowing balefully as it stared hatefully at us.

Lucas was held limply in its tentacles, and the massive Tentacruel let out a piercing cry of anger.

/^\

Ted was the first one to react, tossing his Cleffa over to me as he pulled out one of his Poké Balls.

It was a struggle and a half to juggle the two small Pokémon in my arms, but I managed to get them settled before realizing what I was doing.

“Mayfly!” Ted called as his Scyther emerged in a flash of light and a buzz of her wings. “The tentacles! Free Lucas!”

The Pokémon jumped into action immediately, her wings blurring into action as she lept forwards, scythes extended.

With a snicker-snack of flashing blades, the tentacle holding Lucas was severed, dripping a viscous blue blood into the water.

Lucas dropped into the lake, before floating back up to the surface and bobbing there as the waves from the thrashing Tentacruel washed over him.

Shit!

I tried to put the Cleffa down gently, but I might have done so a little more harshly than I had intended to, using my newly freed hands to pull out Zetian’s Poké Ball. She emerged in a flash of light, her large, red, unblinking eyes scanning the room to see what was going on.

“Zetian, help Mayfly!”

It wasn’t the best match-up, especially since Zetian was still getting used to her new body. But Venus would have gotten caught up in the water, and Kōjin? Even though types weren’t everything, sending a relatively untrained Fire/Rock-type up against a Water-type was asking for trouble.

Besides, the two Bug-types were pretty friendly with each other, and had been training together.

They could keep the Tentacruel busy for a little while, at least.

I started running for the edge of the pond, where Lucas was still bobbing up and down.

“Ted!”

“I’m on it!” Ted moved as well. “I’ll get his head, you get his legs!”

We both splashed into the pond, and immediately I ran into a rather large problem.

I was short. I liked being short. That also meant that the water level in the underground lake came half-way up my chest, while Ted only had to struggle with water at his waist.

It was a challenge to get through the water, but I managed to get to Lucas’ legs and grabbed his ankles. Ted was already picking the boy up by his shoulders, and it was an incredibly difficult process to get him to the edge of the lake.

Taking a moment to glance around, I could see Mayfly and Zetian keeping the Tentacruel busy, while the Clefairy was occupied with shepherding the three Cleffa away from the action.

“He’s still breathing!” Ted called as we splashed through the water to the shore.

“Thank god!”

I spluttered a little bit as slightly bloody water got into my mouth with an awful copper tang to it. Then something tugged at my leg.

“Ted! I think that-”

Then I was in the air, a tentacle wrapped around my leg as the Tentacruel bellowed in rage. Mayfly tried dashing forwards to cut me free, but was batted aside by a blast of water to her thorax.

Then the view granted to me by being high up blurred, and I screamed as I was whipped through the air; the Tentacruel using me as a weapon against our Pokémon, forcing them to stay away.

It was all I could do to stay conscious as the blood rushed from my feet to my head and back again, the only thing that I was able to see was the two massive red glowing orbs on its head.

“Ze- tian!” I managed to get out while being whipped around. “The- orbs! Attack-”

I wasn’t able to say anything else, but thankfully Zetian was a gem of a Pokémon, and was able to pick up on my sad excuse for a command.

She took a deep breath in, and a horde of bees emerged from her abdomen. They were a bit small, and there were definitely not as many of them as there really should be, but Zetian had managed to build up a colony for her commanding orders.

It wasn’t really the move I had wanted her to use, Bug-types weren’t very effective against Tentacruel, but it wasn’t like she had the type chart memorized. Besides, the attack managed to do its job.

A horde of bees swarmed around the Tentacruel, each one stinging the much larger Pokémon in or around its giant red orbs, Zetian using a mix of pheromones and Type Energy to direct her servants.

She somehow managed to get a couple of the bees to land on my flailing body, and they glowed a soft green color before taking off and returning to their queen.

The Heal Order she had given to them wasn’t much, but at least it stopped me from feeling like I was going to pass out immediately.

The Tentacruel went wild as its orbs were stung, flailing around even more, but Mayfly was ready to capitalize on the opening Zetian had given her. A flash of scythe-like claws, and I was hanging in space for one terrifying moment before plummeting back to earth.

Much to my horror, it was the earth I was headed for. The Tentacruel had its tentacle cut off right at the apex of one of its swings, and instead of landing in the water like Lucas had, I was going to end up crashing on the hard floor of the cave.