For a moment all I could do was stare at Smith in disbelief. Then I whooped in excitement and ran over to Drowzee to offer him a high five.
To be honest, defeating Charity and Maisy in a battle wasn’t that impressive. They had no actual training or battling experience, and Maisy was probably around the same level as Drowzee. Still, it was an authentic victory in our first battle that hadn’t ended in running away or fake draws. And that felt good.
Drowzee returned my high five, and I rubbed his head in a burst of affection; he snorted in reply. Then I turned towards Charity to gloat – and stopped short. She had rushed forward to Maisy and was cradling the Slowpoke to her chest, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh jeez,” I muttered under my breath. Charity had seemed so confident before, and I hadn’t expected her to break down so easily. I took a step towards her, trying to figure out what to say. “Charity…”
She didn’t look at me. She just hefted Maisy up into her arms and stormed off of the field, back in the direction of the town. I rubbed my ear as I watched her go. It felt like I was supposed to run after her and say something to fix whatever the problem was, but I didn’t really think I had done anything wrong, so I didn’t know what to say.
Smith came to stand next to me and sighed. “Ever since her mother died, Isaac has given his daughter whatever she wants. She needed to learn this lesson someday, but I am afraid she will blame you for a while until she gets used to the idea.”
I frowned, thinking, as Florence joined us in the center of the field. “Umm… if it’s okay to ask, do you know how Charity’s mother died?”
Smith closed his eyes as Venomoth fluttered down to rest on his shoulder. “It was an unfortunate event, but I am sorry to say not an entirely unexpected one. She and Isaac often went exploring in the wild together, gathering materials and studying majū.” He opened his eyes again and looked straight at me. “Several times they went into Union Cave. On the final attempt there was a cave-in, and Marigold did not return.”
A shiver ran up my spine. Union Cave was where we were going to collect the special stones. Was Smith giving me a warning?
Florence seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she spoke up. “If the caves are normally so dangerous, we will need to be careful. Trainer Smith, do you have any advice?”
Smith tilted his head to the side, smiling sharply. “My primary advice would be to not go, but it seems likely that you will not accept that.” I smiled sheepishly and nodded in confirmation. “In that case, keep the trip as efficient as possible. Do not go exploring down side paths unnecessarily. Keep your voices down and your lanterns burning – many cave majū avoid the light. If you are attacked, have Drowzee counterattack only in defense, and flee as quickly as you can.”
I gulped. “I thought Drowzee did a good job in the battle, though.”
Smith’s smile softened. “He did; in fact, you both did. Drowzee, you show admirable fortitude and persistence for one so new to battling.” Drowzee’s trunk swished next to me; he looked pleased. “Monroe, you have a good head for strategy for someone your age.” Now I grinned, feeling warmed by the praise. “But those qualities do not mean you will win every battle. When in the wild, and especially when in enemy territory, you must pick your fights. If you are not careful Drowzee may faint, and you will then have greater difficulty returning to the safety of this town.”
“Thank you for the advice,” Florence said, her eyes thoughtful. I mumbled my agreement as well, though I was a little distracted worrying about what would happen if Drowzee did faint in the middle of the cave. Sure, I could always return him to his ball, but what would I do? Before I could get too carried away with that line of thought, Florence said something else that surprised me. “Though if this trip will be so dangerous with only Drowzee accompanying us, perhaps it would be safer if you escorted us as well?”
Smith laughed gently. “Venomoth and I are well past our days of taking missions out in the wild, Florence. That is why we spend our time assisting the trainers of the future; it is how we contribute to the well-being of the town.” Venomoth trilled his agreement, and Smith raised his arms in a shrugging gesture. “Besides, even in our younger days we rarely assisted in expeditions into the caves. Venomoth is quite vulnerable to rock majū. It was simply too risky.”
“Oh.” Florence sounded a little disappointed, but she nodded. “Thank you anyway.”
Smith bowed his head slightly in acceptance; then he straightened and clapped his hands together. “Battling is good practice, but it must not distract from the basics. It is time for the three of you to return to work.”
I groaned. “Does that mean –”
“Running first,” Smith told me, his mouth inching up into a smile. “Three laps, the same route as yesterday. Begin!”
~
The rest of the day passed without incident. Charity refused to talk to us, but she did eat the bowl of food we left by her door, so that was progress. Isaac showed us the supplies he had bought and how to use them. Florence went out foraging and brought back a bundle of berries, then gave some to Drowzee; he ate them and quickly seemed to regain his energy, no longer looking quite so worn out from the battle. She left a few of the berries by Charity’s door for Maisy, and they disappeared as well.
The next morning the four of us woke up early and started walking out towards the cave system as soon as the sun rose. Isaac thought it should be possible to get to the tumbled stone deposit and back again in a single day, but we didn’t want to run the risk of being out in the wild after dark. (Smith had grumbled about us missing training practice again, but eventually allowed it.)
As we walked through the east side of the town, the shops were replaced by houses, then the houses were replaced by farms. Large paddies of rice and fields of other crops that I couldn’t identify sprawled out on either side of the path, with people already out tending to the fields even this early in the day. I smiled when I saw one man attempt to chase what looked like a Spearow away from the crops without getting too close to the bird; he wasn’t having much luck. The tall hills that housed the cave system loomed larger and larger as we walked down the path, and I eyed them with a fair amount of trepidation.
Finally we reached the end of the path. The entrance to the town was guarded by another Slowbro, like the one we had met outside of Ilex Forest. Except this Slowbro had a giant yellow bow tied around its neck. The decoration just made the giant Pokemon look even more silly, in my opinion.
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Isaac approached the Slowbro carefully, walking around it so that he was in its field of vision. “Greetings, Gloria,” he said as he bowed. “We are going to Union Cave for the day. We should return by nightfall.”
The Slowbro didn’t react at first. After a few seconds she slowly tilted her head to the side and fixed her eyes on Isaac; then, equally slowly, an echoey voice reverberated through my mind. Careful, she thought to us all (I assumed).
“We will be,” Isaac promised with a smile. He then motioned for us to follow him out onto the rougher ground.
I jogged a bit to catch up with him, leaving Drowzee to walk with Florence behind us. “That Slowbro – Gloria – she’s like the Slowbro we met outside Ilex Forest, right?” Isaac nodded. “They’re guarding the town?” He nodded again. “Who are they bonded too?”
This time Isaac turned to me, smiling in an amused way. “No one in particular. I have seen that people from outside of town find this unusual, but in a way, the whole town is bonded to all the Slowpoke and Slowbro.” He gestured behind himself, indicating the fields we had passed. “We provide them with food, and shelter.” Then he gestured up into the sky. “They call the rain, and protect us from wild majū.” He shrugged and put his hands behind his back. “Together, we have created a cooperative society.”
“That is beautiful,” Florence said from behind us, sounding wistful. “I wish my village had a similar mindset.”
“It is not only mindset,” Isaac replied offhandedly. “The majū must be willing to cooperate as well. We are lucky here, as Slowpoke and Slowbro are particularly amiable creatures. That is not the case with most other species.”
I pondered this as we kept walking towards the cave entrance. I had never really thought about why Pokemon were willing to cooperate with people, especially considering they had to do most of the work when it came to battling. I snuck a glance over my shoulder at Drowzee, who was sniffing the air happily as he ambled behind us. How did Drowzee feel about being my Pokemon? Would he still have agreed to train with me if my dad hadn’t caught him?
The landscape transitioned from green to rocky as we continued forward, and the hills before us loomed larger and larger. Then we crested the top of a smaller hill, and suddenly I could see a wall of stone soaring up into the air above us. The rock looked too sheer to climb easily, especially since it had lots of slippery-looking moss growing along the cliff face. But climbing wasn’t necessary; right in front of us was a dark, gaping hole that led into the hill itself, the entrance to the caves.
We paused to light the lanterns, then walked in a single file line into the cave. Isaac went first since he knew the way, with Florence right behind him. I came third, then Drowzee took the last position so he could watch our backs.
I was nervous, sure, but I was also curious. As soon as my eyes adjusted I started looking around to see what the cave was like. It was much larger than the cave below Slowpoke Well had been, with rock formations standing here and there. I could see a giant pool of water not that far off to the side. A drip from the ceiling fell into the larger body of water at a slow, continuous rate, sending echoes throughout the cavern. The light from our lanterns only reached so far, so I couldn’t see all the walls, which made the whole place feel eerie.
Then one of the rock formations shifted and I stepped backwards involuntarily. That wasn’t a natural structure – that was a pile of Geodude! One of the Pokemon opened its eyes and glared at us suspiciously, but it seemed too sleepy to attack. Florence had noticed the Pokemon too and stared right back at the Geodude until I poked her in the back and hissed a warning at her.
Before we got too far in, Isaac turned back to us and spoke in a low tone. “Stay quiet from now on, unless there is an emergency. Beware the pools of water – some of them are deeper than they look.” He waited for us to nod, then faced forward again, and I noticed the way he put his shoulders back like he was bracing himself for an attack. I felt bad for him, suddenly. He had lost his wife in these caves, and now he had to go back into them again?
If Isaac was feeling emotional, he didn’t say so. He just led the way into the cave with the rest of us in tow. And at first, it wasn’t so bad. We kept well away from the Geodude groups, who seemed content to leave us alone. We also kept far back from the edges of the water, as we could see Pokemon splashing through the pools; some even came right up to the edge to stare at us. We did see some other Pokemon here and there – a few Rattata who would scurry away right at the edge of our vision, a Sandshrew who burrowed into the ground as we approached – and Florence pointed excitedly at each new creature when we encountered it. But they didn’t bother us; not yet, anyway.
We came to one part of the cave where we had to awkwardly clamber up a slope with gravel that rolled around under my shoes and almost made me trip and fall. Then we reached another part where the ground dropped off suddenly to reveal a lower cavern ten or fifteen feet below us. Isaac pulled a long rope out of his bag and tied one end around a rock that jutted up into a spike, and we took turns shimmying down the rope until we reached the lower cavern. The coarse material of the rope made my hands burn, and my shoulders and back were aching by the time I reached the floor.
The lower cavern felt more closed-in, with more pools of water and walls of rock blocking our view. Isaac hesitated for a moment, then pointed down a particular pathway and motioned for us to follow him again.
Maybe it was my imagination, but the lantern light didn’t seem to stretch as far in this new part of the cave. I flinched when a Zubat screeched overhead and fluttered its wings at us menacingly. Then I twitched again when a Wooper suddenly jumped out of the pool next to us, whipping its tail back and forth in the air as it snarled.
It was like Ilex Forest all over again. This was a wild place; we weren’t wanted here.
We hustled past the Wooper as quickly as possible, Drowzee glaring it down until we were out of range. For a while after that, the caves seemed emptier, safer. Then I noticed that Isaac was getting nervous. He kept looking around us and squinting at the different streaks on the walls and edges of the ponds, and he kept hitching his bag up over his shoulder over and over again.
That lasted for about ten minutes, until we reached a medium-sized cavern with a large cluster of rocks in the middle. Isaac stopped as soon as we entered the room, then sighed. “I was afraid of this,” he told us in a quiet voice. “I do not recognize this room at all. We must have taken a wrong turn earlier.”
“That is not good,” Florence replied shortly. I grumbled my agreement as I walked past Isaac to sit on one of the rocks. “Can you find a way back to the entrance?”
“Oh, yes,” Isaac assured us in a hurry, “that should not be a problem.” Then he sighed. “Finding our way to the stone deposit will be harder. If I cannot retrace the original path I took it may take us days, or even weeks, to locate the appropriate room.”
I barely kept myself from shouting in protest. Weeks? I didn’t want to spend weeks combing through dark, creepy caves! I forced myself to keep quiet and slung my bag off of my shoulder so I could fish around in it for my water bottle. When Drowzee noticed what I was doing, he trudged over to join me.
Florence didn’t look thrilled about spending weeks in the cave either, but she resettled her own bag in a way that suggested she was going to do what had to be done. “We could split into two groups. That would allow us to double the amount of space we can search.”
“Absolutely not!” Isaac said too loudly; then he lowered his voice again. “We are safest as a group. We will not split up.”
I started pulling at the stopper of the water bottle, then paused. Something was shifting beneath me. I locked eyes with Drowzee; he stared right back at me, his ears flat against his skull. “Umm…”
“Then at least tell us what you are looking for,” Florence replied, her own voice growing louder in her annoyance. “Currently Monroe and I are effectively useless. We could help you more if you shared more information!”
Yes, the stones were definitely moving underneath me. I jumped up and shoved the bottle back into my bag, staring in a kind of morbid fascination as the stones started to reposition themselves. Drowzee settled himself into a defensive stance, fists up. “Guys, stop,” I whispered.
“I have the most experience with these caves,” Isaac retorted in a raised voice, now sounding annoyed as well, “and you do not have much to contribute to this effort, so if you do not mind –”
“Guys!” I yelled, finally getting the attention of the other two humans. They both looked at me, clearly about to tell me to shut up; then they both stopped and stared.
We all watched as a giant rock snake uncoiled itself from the ground, shaking bits of gravel off as it reared up into the air. We kept staring in horror until it roared and attacked.