"you need to grab onto this for as far as you could ok?" I said, handing Grimer the other end of the escape rope. He nodded briefly and stared at the rope in his hands for a few seconds before looking up at me and tilting his head, "it's necessary, trust me." I replied, hoisting myself up onto the trunk of the crystal pillar, "I don't know how it ended up here but since it's a Mega Stone, it's worth the risk,"

"Grimer?" his head tilted further downwards,

"yeah, a Mega Stone," I didn't care if he was wondering how I knew, him knowing how important the stone on the tip of the stalagmite is more important, "it's something that allows specific pokemon to evolve past their final evolution," his eyes widened at that, I met them, "for a brief period," his expression became calm and he nodded in understanding, "Mega Evolved pokemon are said to be able to level and most times even bring down Pseudo's too, such as Dragonite or a Tyranitar,"

He grunted but nodded in the end. He started pulling on the rope and I felt myself getting pulled. I sighed in relief, "thank god, I honestly thought it wouldn't even work," Grimer grinned at that, "anyways, we're gonna see if you can pull me up yeah?"

Grimer moved over to the other side of the stalagmite and after calling out his name, I replied with a quick "pull!" and started climbing up the crystal. My weight started to lessen when my feet touched the trunk and with that, I started climbing up, bit by bit, step by step, I started to slowly move up the 8-foot tall structure until I reached the middle point and I felt my skin starting to burn as the rope tied to me sizzled and smoke before proceeding to snap and I fell.

Unlike before, Grimer wasn't at the bottom to catch me and so, I fell face-first into the hard ground with a back-breaking crack. Heaving, I stood up while trying to ignore my burning lungs, Grimer jogged up to me minutes later with a concerned look on his face, I waved him off, "I'm fine, I'm fine," I said, heaving, "I've taken an explosion straight in the face and I'm pretty sure that's worse than what happened right now,"

If anything, the pain I was feeling was just that, pain, telling me that I was stupid and that if I continued, then there was going to be real damage to my body. With that in mind, I took out my sleeping bag from my backpack and took a brief moment of rest where I let my head run wild with solutions for my current problem.

And through that, I learned a lot of things about how the Mega Stone's "burning effect" worked, even without me knowing anything about it, my power still offered me solutions that involved how to bypass the machinations of effect, such as, for example, using the seemingly immune crystals around me to break the Mega Stone off the stalagmite- the most common solution given to me by my ability so far, it has a lot of variations as well with my power somehow knowing about the oddly shaped crystals around the cave, these crystals would make the job easier thanks to their shape but either they're too far away for me to reach or they would take a lot of effort to break off. My ability, of course, gave me solutions for those as well.

Back to the effect's workings though, apparently, one of the solutions given to me was to get a Zubat, (and a Zubat alone as far as I'm aware, I thought that maybe it was because flying types couldn't be found anywhere else in the cave and so, these guys are the only option and I'm sticking with it unless proven otherwise,) and command that Zubat to take the stone for me.

That, has a lot of implications, for one, that proves that it's only Grimer that can get affected by the Mega Stone's burning effect, and second; that it's possible to get a Zubat around the place. Following that line of thought from my ability ends up with blank leads though.

I sighed, "it feels like the Zubats suddenly disappeared..." I murmured thoughtfully and proceeded to ignore Grimer's odd look, "still, at least it's possible to grab the damn thing without any flying type," I said, considering on doing the only two viable options to grab the stone, both involving the use of the crystals around us; one was the aforementioned method of picking off the stone using them, and the other was to throw small crystals at it until it breaks.

The other methods were to either force myself to use my entire supply of escape rope (not even guaranteed, not to mention the fact that I have to move quickly because the coil of rope can only buy so much time,), coat Grimer in crystal dust by pounding them and making him roll around in the resulting pile of glitter (again, not even guaranteed with too much effort around it to boot, even with one of them breaking under my weight, that was because of one-time pressure and I exactly know how hard it is to pound these crystals into dust thanks to the ability mentioning it,) and one of my least favorite, to just, break the stalagmite pillar apart!

Because how hard could that be?

I palmed my face, "the crystal glitter method doesn't seem so bad though," I whispered to myself as Grimer happily munched down crystal fragments. I knew he had a maximum capacity of just how much he can eat but the guy looks like he was enjoying himself way too much to even remotely care about that thing at the moment.

After a few more minutes of resting, I got up and stretched, when he noticed me do so, Grimer stopped eating, "we're going to remove that thing from that stone bud," I said to him, "and we're not leaving this place until we do so," he threw the crystal in his hand and nodded, "great! to start things off," my eyes moved over to a hooked-shaped crystal on a far end corner of the cavern, "we're gonna have to remove that thing,"

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He nodded and started moving and I quickly followed suit. I didn't have any tools in my backpack but- "this should be good enough," I weighed the regular stone in my hand, it had an arrow-like tip, it was blunt, but I should be able to at least put pressure on the areas that I want, - a regular stone is sometimes good enough for the job.

"Grime?" my pokemon stopped moving,

"I'm joining yep!" I replied, lifting the stone in my hand to emphasize my point.

The crystal that we picked was growing in an area directly above my head and so it was pretty hard to reach under normal circumstances but there were thankfully other stones around the place and some of them had flat surfaces. I counted around 10 of these flat surfaced stones and Grimer and I took one and five of them respectively to act as our foothold.

With the stones underneath us, it became pretty easy to reach the crystal, and Grimer and I started working from there.

...

"Hup!" the crystal flew through the air, whipping just a few inches past the mega stone. I sighed, "goddamit, it's still pretty hard," I sat down on my sleeping bag and glared at the Mega-Stone. The progress in breaking off the hooked-shaped crystal had been going well and Grimer is still going at it with as much effort as he did when we first started but me? I was just a regular human and could get tired in the same way as them.

So breaks were mandatory for me and as I took them, I would sometimes throw small crystals at the Mega Stone and I succeeded a few times, with a direct hit on the Mega-Stone itself on rare occasions. My accuracy, I think, was mostly thanks to my ability but even that wasn't guaranteed. I did hit more often than not though so there's that.

But with these successes, also comes with the problem of the Mega-Stone not budging at all!

I threw one more crystal from my seat for good measure, and it passed the stone completely. "how many times have I hit this thing? 17, 26 times now?" I asked out loud, sighing. "I mean, for fucks sake!"

Grimer called out his name from where he was working, "it's not because I'm weak!" I replied, "I mean, come on! you can literally hear the sounds of me hitting them!"

"Grimer!"

"yes it does! It means that my throws hit hard!"

And we argued back and forth like little children before I once again stood up to help out with the crystal. I don't know how long I've been here but from what I know, I spent enough time here to carve out a stone knife using the stones around me. I haven't changed yet, because I know sweat would just continue to accumulate.

Grimer has been eating the crystals as well, and his food was tightly zipped and it wouldn't spoil even if I threw it out in the open because of the lack of parasites, fungi, and other things responsible for it. Even then, Grimer's food is outright poisonous so I don't know what kind of extremophile is necessary to even live in such an environment. And if I do ignore all that, Grimer is a Grimer, he's made of toxic sludge and his kin back in Alola ate spoiled food as a delicacy, hell, I even think that it would make the taste just slightly better for the guy if that's the case.

The only thing I need to worry about is my parents. I was sure that they would have barreled straight into Union Cave if I went in here for more than two days without going back out...

They haven't so it probably just means that I have spent a short amount of time here.

Eventually, the last piece that held onto the crystal was broken apart and so, me and Grimer now had a 7-foot-long hook to grab the Mega-Stone with.

And the two of us immediately got to work.

Or, at least, I went to work since I told Grimer to take a rest and sprayed him with a potion. He agreed and decided that the time I took the Mega-Stone off the Stalagmite was the perfect opportunity for him to eat more crystals and so, he started stuffing himself as much as he could.

And soon, after a long amount of time and indefinite probing of the Mega Stone, it fell off its pedestal and struck the ground, rolling around for a bit before I went over and grabbed it. I took it into my hands, grinning, "haha!" I held the stone out to the Grimer, who looked concerned, I waved his worries off, "it's fine, the stone no longer burns," I said, scoffing, "you think I wouldn't check?"

He shrugged, "Grime,"

"yeah, yeah!" I pocketed the stone with casualty, much to Grimer's satisfaction of being right, "the only reason why I'm not excited is that I'm too exhausted to feel that way!" I reasoned but he ignored me and instead, continued eating the crystal in his hand.

Following his head, I took out my 7th meal since I entered the cave; prepared pork ribs in a can, because my lunchboxes were long since emptied and these were meant to be eaten if I got way out of schedule. And me eating the first one means that I probably was...

I stopped chewing, "bud, I think we should move out as quickly as we can," I turned to look at my Pokemon,

"Grime?"

I nodded, "yeah, pretty much," I took out an entire rib and started chewing, the bones cracking under my teeth. I gulped down my food and started all over again, the look Grimer gave me made me think that he thought I was insane but the way he ate the crystals even faster told me that he just thought as much,

He grunted, "yep! Persian is definitely gonna come sooner or later,"

And so, the two of us ate even faster up until I finished my meal and the crystals around Grimer had been completely wiped clean. Strangely, the guy didn't even look that puffed up from where I was standing. "ever wonder where those crystals you've been eating went?" I asked and the pokemon shrugged, "eh, fair enough, who cares right?" he nodded,

It was good and all but I should probably talk to professor Elm about this.

Storing my sleeping bag on my backpack, I zipped it closed and strapped my knapsack onto my shoulders and with a loud huff, I lifted myself off of the ground. I grabbed Grimer's Pokeball, nudging for him to finish eating the crystal half his size he was currently taking small bites off of, he looked at me then back at the crystal- and then his mouth opened up severely, with both of his chin opening up in ways that they shouldn't be possible as his chin parted, revealing a lower body filled with small crystals that glowed in tandem with the ones around us.

A loud suction of air was heard and seconds later, Grimer swallowed the crystal whole and grinned.

"huh," I said as he turned into a flash of red light, "I did not know you could do that," I said with genuine amazement. I patted his Pokeball, "but, go ahead and rest now, you've literally eaten half of the cave,"

I looked at my surroundings, where there were once a lot of crystals all over the place, it was now mostly empty, save for the massive spire that I took the Mega-Stone from as well as a few crystals on the wall that Grimer couldn't sadly reach. Me saying he ate half was an understatement...