Liftoff 1.12

June 2015

The morning after, I followed Sabrina and Austin towards the caverns. Our very own Professor Kush had decided to join us after all, Spade the drilbur waddling at her heels like the most adorable murder-mole in the state. It caught me off guard a bit, Sabrina wasn't an outdoorsy kinda gal by her own admission.

"You could have stayed behind," I pointed out, tapping a disposable camera. "We would've come back with pictures if we didn't recognize something."

"Trust me, I'd like prefer that too. But I don't think some of those idiots will believe you," Sabrina said apologetically. "Austin's good, but better to have a third eye witness for anything we find."

I frowned. Beneath me, Rocket let out a derisive snort. I'd intentionally kept my distance from most of the townsfolk and it was coming back to bite me in the ass. Without a good relationship with the normal folks, it was all too easy to tar me with whatever brush they liked.

"Then we're glad to have you," I told her, quashing my irritation.

"Besides, this shouldn't be too bad. We're just going down there to identify whatever's been stealing the food," Austin added. "Then those guys can finally pipe down and maybe we can get a new friend out of this."

Sabrina and I shared a meaningful glance at that. For all that he knew about pokemon, Austin wasn't a ranger. He mostly helped his dad around the town and acted as an administrator. That meant he hadn't seen any of the bloody business that went on outside the walls.

To be fair to him, Sabrina was largely sheltered from it as well, Tom made sure of that. I couldn't blame the old ranger either; if I had a daughter, I'd want to protect her too. But unlike Austin, she was a vet and a self-professed "pokemon professor." She at least read the reports that came in about just how close some of the encounters really were.

"Let's find out what's up first. We can decide what to do about it later," I said finally. I didn't want to tell Austin that there was a good chance I'd have to shoot whatever was eating our food, and worse, giving Rocket and I a bad name.

The caverns were located north of Carnelian Bay, inside the walls so no one could just crawl through them to get at the village.

I'd never been down there. In fact, in the months I'd been around, I'd only seen a graveler twice. There was a little geodude who liked to contribute to Rocket's training by pelting him with little Rock Throws, but that was the sum of my interaction with my underground neighbors.

"Come on, this way," Austin said. He led us to what seemed like an abandoned shed. Inside, I found that a cellar had been converted into a tunnel system, with little flashlights hung on the wall for light. "I had this dug a while back because the main tunnels the graveler use aren't big enough for a person."

"Makes sense. Those things are only like half our height, right?"

"Just about. Either of you get claustrophobic easily?"

"A little," Sabrina said hesitantly. "Please tell me it widens out eventually."

"It does, but we're going to have to stoop. Well, two of us at any rate."

"Ha-ha. A short joke? Really?"

"Meh, gotta break the tension somehow."

Rocket and I watched them bicker like a married couple as we descended. They were the sorts of friends who could argue about anything. And if nothing was wrong, they'd find something new to argue about for the sake of it. That was how they bonded.

I offered to go first, with Rocket in the lead so we could react to threats, but Austin waved me off. He said he'd been down here dozens of times and the rock pokemon would recognize him more easily.

Besides, he was the one lugging around a bag full of roasted bones. If pokemon were anything like humans, a good meal was the perfect start to any dialogue.

As Austin promised, the tunnel opened up a bit more after several minutes. The chamber we found ourselves in was tall enough that I could stand fully, if only just. I'd been a little curious to see what a graveler nest looked like, and it was… Well, I felt a little bad for getting my hopes up.

There were bowls of stone and soil dug out into the ground. I could see smaller pebbles lining them, like padding for a bed, as my flashlight scanned the room. As I watched, a geodude picked out a pebble and crunched it between its teeth, making a grinding noise that made my gums hurt vicariously.

Along the ground, I saw rows of divots, almost as if a farmer had taken a hoe to the earth. I saw another geodude roll by, using Rollout to quickly avoid the bright light.

"Grav-graveler," I heard a faint rumbling come from below.

Then we were forced to take a healthy step back as the earth beneath our feet swirled like quicksand. From the depths of the earth rose a large graveler, not one of those "alpha" pokemon like the dragonite that visited Bill's house in the anime, but one that was a third again as large as the others. All told, he had to weigh at least half a ton, maybe more.

It popped out of the quicksand like a marble from a pinball machine, twirled in the air, and landed with a rumbling thud on the suddenly hard-packed dirt again. And its four arms were… dabbing…

"Grav," it said. I didn't understand pokespeak, but the tone was akin to a child's "Nailed it!"

"Mr. Pebbles," I heard Austin say in greeting. He waved a hand and tossed down his sack of roasted bones in favor of going to give the big lug a hug.

My jaw dropped a little. This guy named a graveler… Mr. Pebbles… I didn't know if I should be impressed or offended on the graveler's behalf.

"Grav-Graveler!" Mr. Pebbles said with a cheerful grin. He grabbed Austin's hands and shook them aggressively, flinging the short-ish man like a barbie doll.

I now understood, just a bit, Austin's carefree attitude. He placed his trust in the power of friendship, truly believing in it. I watched the two interact and felt a little introspective. Rocket and I were close, but hadn't I wondered when he'd turn on me back when we first started out? Each night, I'd gone to sleep thinking I might not wake up the next morning, the feral 'coon having turned me into chow during the night. Of course, none of that happened. I slowly came to trust Rocket as my partner.

I'd considered Austin's naivete to be immature, childish even. But this was pokemon we were talking about. Maybe, a bit of childlike faith was exactly what I was missing in my life.

Austin walked up to him without a care in the world. He ignored Sabrina's calls to be careful and got out a metal brush before giving the graveler an aggressive scrubbing. It seemed to enjoy it if the way its four arms waved was any clue.

"Relax, Mr. Pebbles is the boss of this place. He likes me so we're good," he said.

Rocket ambled up to them and began to sniff at a geodude. The sentient rock was as curious about Rocket as he was about it and seemed to enjoy being batted around with Rocket's powerful tail. Spade hopped out of Sabrina's arms and quickly got into a wrestling match with a rather amused graveler.

Sabrina and I watched them for a minute before deciding that we may as well join in. I never fully dropped my guard, but I found myself sitting down on a nearby boulder, after making sure I wasn't sitting on another graveler or something.

We began feeding the rock types with the roasted bones we'd brought. I was pretty sure most of these had been used for stock at some point before being dried and roasted off somewhere. They probably didn't have much in the way of nutritional value, but the rock pokemon seemed to enjoy the crunch they made. Or maybe they actually did need the calcium. What did I know anyway?

"Say, Mr. Pebbles," Austin said, "have you seen any new pokemon around here? Someone's been stealing from the Icebox."

"Grav? Grav…" Mr. Pebbles shrugged, then nodded.

"Really? What do they look like?"

"Grav…"

"Come on, Mr. Pebbles. They messed up a lot of the storage bins when they were digging around. If they keep doing that, we might not be able to make enough roasted bones for you guys," Austin said leadingly.

"Veler? Grav? Grav!"

"Yup. This is bad. There's a process to these things, you know."

"Graveler. Graveler!"

I watched them go back and forth like this. Next to me, Sabrina had pulled out a notepad and began to take notes on their interaction.

"What're you writing?" I asked.

"IThis is all fascinating," Sabrina whispered back. "Back when we were first coming from Truckee to Carnelian Bay, the geodude and graveler weren't anywhere near this friendly. It's amazing what Austin's done here. I think they have a real connection."

"Seems like it, at least with Mr. Pebbles."

"Pft, we can't let him live this down. Tease him later?"

"Agreed. Seriously. Mr. Pebbles? What was he thinking?"

"Heh. Jokes aside, it makes me wonder if we've been going about this all wrong, you know, with the rangers. N-Not to say you and dad aren't doing a great job, but…" she fell silent, trying to put her thoughts to words.

"I get it," I told her. "Tom and I are focused on surviving. I know pokemon are intelligent, but for the most part, that means I see them as intelligent competition. You won't believe how many times some spearow's stolen my kills. Meanwhile, Austin thinks of friendship first, even if it's risky. And I can't deny that it's paid off for him here."

"Yeah. I've been trying to see things from a strictly academic angle, you know? How does a rattata compare to a rat? What behavioral similarities do they share? What can we do to keep them from our food stores? That sort of thing."

I watched Spade struggle to lift a geodude between his claws. He chucked the oversized pebble at Rocket, only for my partner to slap it into another geodude with a lazy Tail Whip. Liftoff had been working for him for sure.

The two geodude clashed like a crack of thunder. If that happened to me, my skull would have cracked like an egg. And yet, the two barely reacted. Actually, I was pretty sure at least one of them was asleep.

"Are you sure rock types aren't a little more… malleable…?" I asked, trying to frame this right.

"You mean stupid," Sabrina said with a chuckle.

"No… Just… I think they have a different perspective, you know?"

"True. It's something I've been thinking about as well," she admitted. "We have a decent sample size now. Plue's a water type. Scout's a flying type. We've also got Spade, Rocket, and the oddish and skiddo out by the farms. We interact with them all a little differently and I can't help but think that their types and lifestyles affect that."

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

"So maybe because they're so defensively capable, rock types don't really have natural predators?"

"Maybe. It probably helps that they're main source of food is rocks, which they live in…"

I laughed at that. "Hey, remember that old meme from Before? A geodude sits alone in a cave-"

"And wonders, 'Is the cave made of flesh?'"

"'Or is he made of cave?'" I finished for her. We burst out laughing at that. It was such a stupid meme, but being in this scenario, we couldn't help ourselves.

"As funny as that is, a geodude probably doesn't see things that way," she pointed out. "It would explain their more passive lifestyle. I understand that we can't be friendly with every pokemon out there, but… seeing Austin and Mr. Pebbles like this… I wish we could be."

"Yeah, you're right."

We were interrupted from our introspection when Mr. Pebbles rolled away. He dipped into an alcove we hadn't noticed before thanks to the darkness.

"Grav, graveler!" he called, waving us over.

We followed and found strange, conic baubles made of rock. They were about the size of a small melon. Mr Pebbles nudged one our way.

Sabrina grunted as she flipped one over; the girl really needed more exercise. Though the exterior was as rough as expected, the bottom had a smooth hole that curled inward, as if polished by something.

"Lin-Linoone," Rocket chuffed, pawing at the fist-sized hole in the rock. His tail twitched in a set pattern, one of several we used for quick and silent communication. This one meant he'd caught the scent of prey.

"Guys, Rocket smells something he recognizes," I told them.

"Acid," Sabrina said, "nothing else for him to smell. We were right then; this isn't a fire type. I think I know our culprit now."

"Dwebble?"

"Dwebble."

"Grav," Mr. Pebbles nodded, confirming our theory.

"That explains why Rocket couldn't find them," Austin said. "The dwebble must come in and out of the caves somehow. I didn't know they learn Acid though."

"They don't," I told him. "I know from the competitive scene that they don't really learn it at all, at least not usable in a battle anyway. It's a brief blurb in the pokedex about them melting rocks with their saliva to build homes."

"Yup, like this here," Sabrina said, tracing a line at the entrance of what we now realized was a hermit crab's discarded shell. "And the smell of the food, graveler, and the dirt itself must have messed with Rocket's ability to track them down."

"So now what?"

"Well, that depends. Do we know how many there are?"

Mr. Pebbles rolled seven stones over to us.

I hummed in thought. Dwebble weren't powerful pokemon, at least not without Shell Smash, and they shouldn't be completely bulletproof either. Then again… "I don't like my and Rocket's chances of clearing them out on our own. Unless Mr. Pebbles wants to help us out?"

"Grav-eler," he said, though none of us understood. He then turned around and gestured to the bones he'd been eating. "Eler?"

"That's right. The dwebble need to stop ruining our supplies," Austin said. "Otherwise, we might not have enough for ourselves, never mind snacks for you guys."

"Grav!"

I watched in disbelief as three other graveler rose up in arms. "You know, I expected this to be a lot harder than it was. Kinda makes me feel like we wasted time searching above ground when this all could've been over in a day if we started searching here."

Sabrina shrugged. "Eh, what can you do? None of us are detectives and we honestly didn't know what we were looking for."

"Still, this raises the question: What are we going to do about the dwebble?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do we kill them? Chase them off? Try to turn them to our side somehow?"

"We befriend them, obviously," Austin said. "Mr. Pebbles is just going to lead us there but I want to talk to them. More pokemon for the town is always a good thing."

Shrugging, I chose to defer to Austin. "Hey, it's your show. I'm warning you though. The geodude and graveler get along with us because we're not competing for the same resources. In fact, our waste is their resources. Same with the oddish and compost. Dwebble apparently want our food and they might not be willing to play nice."

"We'll see. Talking is always worth a shot, Shane. Not everything has to start with a crossbow bolt."

"I agree with you. Frankly, I'd love to have a second pokemon partner to help out Rocket and I, maybe even to train together. But even if the dwebble are willing to listen, I'm a little worried about how we're going to explain to the town that they're part of the community now."

"I don't see what the problem is. They're pokemon; they didn't hurt anyone."

I sighed. There was that naivete again. "Austin, a good quarter of the town still thinks Rocket's a wild animal. And it's not like Rocket did anything to them. The dwebble? They're confirmed thieves. The townsfolk don't trust pokemon easily is what I'm saying."

"Shane's right, Austin. I keep Spade mostly in my house because of that, you know," Sabrina added.

"I still say it's worth a shot," Austin said with a determined look. "We're never going to grow as a town if we all just ignore how crucial pokemon are to survival."

"Fine, I'm just letting you know what to expect," I told him.

I said nothing else on the matter. In the end, Austin was a grown-ass man who could figure things out. Hell, he'd obviously had more success with this little detective shindig than I did. Maybe he knew something I didn't.

Although, I couldn't help but think that the dwebble weren't going to be all that helpful, even if they did join the town. They weren't really active hunters as far as I knew. They couldn't farm or fish either. What could they be used for? Maybe guards? Or maybe their acid had some useful property I didn't know about.

In the end, I followed along behind Mr. Pebbles and Austin but in front of Sabrina so I could cover her if something went wrong. I'd remain cautiously optimistic, but not enough to let down my guard.

X

I'd expected a fight. Truthfully, I thought Austin would try to negotiate and ultimately fail. Maybe that made me a cynic, but I didn't think the building blocks for a relationship were there.

The townspeople would likely mistrust the bug pokemon for obvious reasons. Even if we assumed everything was water under the bridge, the dwebble just didn't bring enough to the table to buy that cooperation. Worse, "intelligent" didn't mean "friendly." Sometimes, the smartest people around were the biggest assholes, simply because they enjoyed the thrill of taking from others or the lack of consequences.

Fortunately, I was proven wrong: There was no fight.

Unfortunately, Austin was also wrong: There was no negotiation to be had.

I stared down at the hole Mr. Pebbles led us to. We'd traveled a ways towards the entrance that the graveler used to go outside and had to stoop quite a bit. Even Sabrina was forced to brace against the walls for balance. They just didn't need a big, human-height tunnel.

And the dwebble were even smaller than that. Their burrow was off to the side, branching away towards the southwest. I guesstimated that it would end near the Icebox if not right below, probably beneath a bush or something if I couldn't see it while keeping watch the past few days.

It was all pointless to guess at though because the damn burrow was a foot wide, maybe a few more inches.

"Well?" I asked. "What now?"

"What can we do? We have to go back to the surface. At least we found the burrow," Sabrina said.

A part of me wanted to see if Mr. Pebbles could collapse the cave on top of the dwebble, maybe with a Magnitude, but I put that thought to bed. Not only were we still in said cave, the dwebble were perfectly capable of digging themselves out, and we'd be back to square one looking for the damn nest again.

Seeing no other option, I followed Professor Kush back to the surface.

X

It was almost funny in a way, how everyone and their mother seemed to have an opinion on what should be done now that we knew who the culprits were.

We were gathered in a repurposed church, a small, brick affair meant for the local residents of the town back before things went to hell. The worship hall was now used as something resembling a town hall now.

I'd been lounging around with my thumbs up my ass for the past three hours, listening to people argue. A whole lot was said, but I reckoned most just liked hearing themselves talk and thought having the loudest voice made you important somehow. Unfortunate, but it was a part of living in a society.

All told, there were three camps: The first was led by Austin and his father, Mayor Rodney McAllen. They wanted to try talking to the dwebble with the ultimate goal of getting them on our side. According to one of them, a chemical engineer from Before, some organic acids could be repurposed for batteries, providing the dwebble something to contribute to the town. Of course, that was contingent on research we didn't have and the dwebble couldn't make that much in terms of volume anyway.

The second camp was represented by Hunter and Shane Adams, the brothers who fixed up most of our cars for rangings. They thought we ought to kill them off, though from what Sabrina told me, that wasn't because of anything the dwebble did specifically. Their mother died during the snorlax attack on Truckee and they didn't like any pokemon. Hell, they barely tolerated Rocket and Scout and I'd learned early on to avoid them where possible.

Somewhere in the middle was Pat Myers, the farmer. He wanted to chase them off, mostly because he didn't think they could be trusted in town. As tiny as they were, seven dwebble were still a significant danger for normal folks.

"Look, none of this matters unless we can talk to them somehow," Dr. Lansdowne said. As one of two doctors who didn't fucking bail on the town after the snorlax, he was well-respected and perfect for acting as the mediator.

"We don't need to talk to them; we just need them dead," Hunter said. "Even if we chase them off, there ain't no guarantee they'll come back, or worse, want revenge. We can't have them in town and that means we need to make this permanent."

"They're sentient like you and me," Austin argued back. "You're saying you want to murder seven people for theft, Hunter."

"They may have only taken a few dozen pounds of food this past week, but they ruined five times that and wrecked the storage unit," another said. I was pretty sure I'd seen her working at the Icebox. "It's not that I don't get what you're saying, Austin, but it wasn't just theft. The food they ruined is food we can't eat ourselves. And stuff like metal locks or plastics aren't exactly easy to replace anymore. If we didn't have the oddish helping out at the farms, we might actually be at risk of going hungry because of those few nights."

"Yeah, keep in mind, the amount of food they've been taking has only grown," someone else chimed in. "Either they're getting friends or they're getting comfortable down there. Both sound like bad news."

Dr. Lansdowne raised his hands before people could get into yet another shouting match. "Let's take this step by step. Do we have a way to get them out on the surface? Whatever you want to do with them, you can't do anything unless you can reach them in the first place."

"We can lure them out with bait," Pat tried.

"Won't work," I told him. "We've done that already. Pokemon are sentient, remember? They're smart enough not to fall for that."

"Well, have you tried asking then? I mean… You keep telling us how smart Rocket is, Shane. Could we just… ask…?"

"We tried," Austin said with a frustrated sigh. "They aren't exactly eager to chat."

"Say," Shane, Hunter's brother, hummed. "What if we just flood the tunnels? I mean, there's gotta be a point where we can do that without flooding the one that the graveler built right? Tunnels fork?"

"We're not drowning them!"

"Says you. Hey, Vincent, your boy's got that blue rat-thing, right?"

"Marill, named Plue, and yes, though I doubt Phil and Plue will go along with that plan."

"Well, make them! You're his dad!"

The older man quirked an eyebrow in challenge. "And what makes you think I agree with your plan?"

"They're fuckign vermin!"

"Not everyone sees it that way, boy."

"Don't boy me, old man. You got any other ideas? Cause I don't fucking hear them."

"Chill, Shane," Hunter said, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder. "We ain't winning anyone over like that."

I thought about it. "Flooding their tunnel would get them all to surface."

"Shane!" Sabrina gasped.

"Hear me out. Austin wants to talk to them, and I'm all for it, but we can't do that because they're all underground and the burrow's too narrow, right? Well? They're rock types. Most don't really like water and I bet dwebble aren't any different. We get Plue to spill water into the burrow at one end and have Rocket and Spade dig a hole at another. That way, the dwebble will have to climb up our side eventually. We can reinforce the caverns made by the graveler before we start."

"You can't just flood their home."

"I mean… I really don't see any other way of forcing them to talk to us, do you?"

"Well, no, but that's not going to make them want to cooperate."

"They don't want to cooperate now. I don't see how this changes things besides forcing the conversation. We can't exactly wait to see how much more of the Icebox they'll destroy while we come up with a better plan either."

"Well, how about…"

X

The discussion went on for another hour, but in the end, we ended up going with my plan. Sabrina and Austin weren't happy but they didn't have any better ideas so they'd just have to be satisfied we weren't drowning the dwebble in the caverns.

It took another day to fully implement. We had to explain to Mr. Pebbles and Plue what was going on and get their cooperation for what we hoped would lead to an understanding between the town and the dwebble. That took a bit of doing, Mr. Pebbles because we were asking to flood a part of the tunnel network he'd built, and Plue because Phil didn't like the thought of forcing them out this way.

Everything proceeded as planned. We signaled Plue and Phil down below. At the same time, Rocket and Spade worked together to dig a much wider hole from above ground, roughly where we thought the dwebble nest would be.

Around us, a host of geodude and graveler watched, curious as to the humans' antics. Myself and the rangers were careful, weapons ready, just in case. Behind us were a bunch of busybodies who probably should have found better things to do but insisted they were "concerned citizens."

And then, because the world hated peace, everything went to shit.

It started with a hard clack, as if they'd struck something a lot more durable than packed dirt. That it was loud enough for us to hear from the surface was worrying. Then, there was a chittering grumble before a host of dwebble fled the rising waters.

One… Two… Six…

I counted six, just in time for the earth to erupt and the biggest fucking hermit crab I'd ever seen popped out. It had a deep, reddish-brown carapace and a layered shell that reminded me of sandstone. It looked at Rocket and Spade with murder in its eyes as its pincers grasped menacingly. At the top of its mantle-like shell, I'd estimate its height to be about four and a half feet.

Well… We now knew why only seven dwebble stole so much damn food. And, likely why they were so damn particular about which foodstuff they took.

One of them evolved.

Author's Note

Not much to say so have an animal fact: Hermit crabs go real estate shopping together.

When a large hermit crab outgrows its shell and finds another, it will almost certainly be stalked by smaller hermit crabs looking to take over the shell it left behind. And, in turn, that smaller crab attracts an even smaller crab and so on, creating a chain of house-hopping. That's what this little adventure was based on.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.