Chapter 19: Stranded, part II
While Sada was out looking for food and generally making herself much more useful for their immediate survival, Turo had slowly started to examine the building they had sought refuge in. The lights didn't work; he had tried the switch -after figuring out where it was, because it's not like he had ever needed to use manual light switches in his life - a couple of times, but there wasn't even a flicker. He had no idea if it was because the building itself had no power or the light bulb itself was burned. The fact that they all didn't work made him lean towards the former... And that already was a foreign concept to him. You never really found yourself... With no power in his time. And that was already a problem. No power meant no way to call for help, if he ever found something capable of it.
He had managed to find a matchbook and some candles inside a drawer in the small kitchen, and stared at the little packet for a good five seconds, feeling like he was about to embarrass himself. He had never lit a match in his life, obviously, but... Come on. He had made actual fire with his bare hands. Old movies made it look so easy!
How difficult could it be?
He opened a packet and took a look inside, grimacing when he found only five matches inside.
Turo took one out and did his best to copy what he had only ever seen in movies. He put the round end against the colored stripe on one side of the box, and dragged it quickly along the rough surface.
... It snapped in half.
He cursed in a low voice, throwing it away for another one, repeating the motion. Was he doing something wrong? Were the matches too old? Could they expire or something?
The second one he almost dropped when it actually lit up, and he smiled-
Then immediately went back to a scowl, feeling silly for having gotten excited for something so minor.
He preferred to light only one of the candles for the moment, caution telling him that they had no idea for how long they would need them, and carried it with him back to the main room. He wanted to examine the shelves for any document that could point him to what age they had landed... even just the century would do. They had electricity and radio, so... Anywhere from start of the 20th century or so?
Carefully setting the candle down on the desk, Turo grabbed one binder at random from the shelves and opened it up, squinting to read anything in the small light. What looked like observations about the flora and fauna of the crater with old, printed black and white pictures poured out, one of them depicting... he had no idea what it was honestly. It was big and lumbering by the looks of it, and mostly hidden by vegetation. One of those old, grainy and blurry pictures that made him honestly wonder how people could even pretend to make out something out of it.
He turned the picture over, looking for anything that had been written on it.
... Man, reading handwritten cursive that wasn't his own was hard, but he managed to at least make out a date. Somewhat. 195... Something?
Problem was, he had no idea how old these pictures were supposed to be, and they could have been sitting here for decades.
He went to examine the typewriters next, not without some fascination: after all, they had been the very first keyboards in a sense. The whole reason keys were still arranged in that order was because the layout of most letters had been designed for typewriters first.
The fact that there was still paper inserted into every machine struck him as strange. It was like they had expected to come back soon to finish typing something up, but then never did. Had whatever exploration team that had been living here have to leave in a hurry? What had happened?
Turo moved back to the binder he had opened and started reading the actual typed report, eyes now skimming over it much more easily that with handwriting.
... It just looked like day-by-day observations of the weather inside the crater, if you could even call it that, notes about temperature and humidity, soil composition, and sightings of wild Pokémon.
Nothing that looked particularly important or useful right now. He left it on one of the desks, scrunching up his nose when it kicked up a cloud of dust; not something he was used to. So much dust, that is.
That was when something caught his attention, half hidden on another desk in the very corner of the room. His eyes went wide when he recognized it as an old radio and he approached the bulky device. It looked... very dusty, and he frowned. Would it even work anymore? That was the problem with old analog technology like this; one little thing broke or even just got a bit too much dust on it, and suddenly nothing worked. Or at least, that's how it seemed to always be in media. And you didn't even get some error message about what was wrong.
He sat down at the desk, cautiously examining every little dial and notch on it. It had no power right now, obviously, and he had just the vaguest idea of how it worked, so he wanted to just get a bit more familiar with it before attempting to use it. He knew the theory, of course, radio waves and all that, but seeing one in person was... different. He was literally staring at a museum piece.
More than one time, he found himself gesturing in midair for a screen to appear out of pure habit to look something up, only to be left confused when nothing happened. This would take... a while to get used to. At the third time of waving his hand in the air, he let out a frustrated sigh and stood up, going back to the shelves. This stupid thing had to have some... manual on how to use it, was it? They used to be printed, in the past.
He was still looking for one, piling up documents and books on different desks to categorize them, when Sada returned. He turned toward her and had to blink when he saw that she was dragging what looked like a bunch of branches.
« I found food » she declared, raising her bag full of... he supposed those were berries inside.
« What are those for? » Turo asked, helping her drag the branches inside and shutting the door, leaving nothing but the small rectangle of lights from the ceiling windows and the candle light to illuminate the room.
« I want to make a "bow". A spear is difficult to use, here.» she explained as she offered him a couple of the berries. He took them, and they sat at one of the desks to eat. They were pretty crunchy, and hard, and resembled chesto berries a bit with a dry, dusty flavor. Honestly, they tasted a bit like what he imagined biting on a piece of bark would be like, but flavor was the last thing on his mind at the moment. For a couple of minutes, they simply ate in silence. A weary heaviness hung in the air, and Turo could feel that there was still something that Sada wanted to ask him. He simply waited for her to bring it up when she felt comfortable as he held the berry over the little candle flame in an attempt to roast it and make it taste a bit better. It took three berries before she did.
« Your people... can they not... jump here? Find you? » the question made his stomach twist painfully in a knot.
He had been wondering the same thing, but... he shook his head after a moment. He wanted to believe it was possible, than one moment or the next a blinding flash of light would fill the room and he would see Ortega or Vega show up and clap him on the shoulder, laughing about how he had managed to land himself in Area Zero of all places and then get them both out of here. But there was one simple, glaring problem stopping that perfect little scenario from becoming true.
« The time-anchor... the bracelet, is broken. They don't know where I am.» Turo took a long, shuddering breath.
« And if they did find me... they would already be here.» he added.
If they had somehow found a way to pinpoint the coordinates where the bracelet had broken down and he had landed... it would make the most sense for them to appear right where he and Sada had first woken up. He kept thinking about it, but his mind kept circling back to a single conclusion: if they could find him, they would have already done so. They fact that they didn't could only mean that they couldn't.
« They don't know where to jump. We're... we're lost.» he hated how his voice almost cracked on that last word. Sada simply nodded at that, head held low.
---
After their meager meal, Turo went back to searching for something between all the paper notebooks that lined the walls.
Sada had tried to do the same at first, but every time she tried to read anything written in those notebooks she found she couldn't make any sense of it. She could read them, meaning that she recognized almost all of the same symbols Turo had taught her... but she couldn't understand the words they spelled. Too many words she didn't know... and she didn't want to interrupt Turo by asking about them. It frustrated her. It made her feel stupid, and useless, the fact that she was of more help sitting aside not saying anything instead of actually doing something. So she had sat down at one of the desks, and started examining the branches she had brought in, testing their flexibility to better search for one she could make a bow out of. She could at least do that, she thought with a scowl.
After a while, Turo called her to show her the strange device in one corner of the room.
« This is called a radio. We can use it to call for help... but it needs power. And I need to know how to use it, first... so I'm looking for the manual. »
Sada looked at the strange, bulky device.
« What kind of power...? » she asked, not quite sure how to help. She would have started prodding it and examining it, but they had to be cautious. She didn't want to accidentally break something.
« "Electricity"... thunder.» he added after a moment, by now used to adding explanations whenever it looked like she didn't know what something meant. Sada's eyes went wide at that. She... maybe she could actually do something about that.
« I've seen creatures that use thunder here! » she felt a little bit of excitement come back to her as Turo whirled around.
« You saw... can you catch one? » he asked, walking up to her, eyes shining in the candle light.
Sada simply nodded, confident, and he let out a little laugh and hugged her.
« Yes... yes! If I find a battery, or whatever it uses, maybe we can... give it power...» he trailed off, falling deep into thought. Sada had no idea what a battery was, but it didn't matter. She could still help, in a way. Together, they could do anything. They would get out of this place, even if it meant that she had to personally fight everything in the crater to do it.
It was difficult to keep track of the time of day in the crater; it seemed to never become night; after a while, the sky had darkened slightly, but it was impossible to say if it was because the sun had set or clouds had simply blocked it. It was like the air itself was somehow lighting up their surroundings; more than one time, Sada saw what looked like snowy fragments of crystals catch the light, just for nothing to be there when she actually turned to look. It was... disorienting. It made her skin tingle, like the air did when Fluffyhead or other Spark Tail had charged their thunder.
With the strange clouds covering the sky, she couldn't even use shadows to get a sense of the passage of time, so in the end, they both ended up settling down for the "night" when they were simply too exhausted to continue. Sada laid herself down on the "mattress', as Turo had called it, pulling a flimsy blanket they had found over both her and Turo. Even as exhausted as she was, she doubted she would fall asleep. For once, she didn't have to worry about wild creatures creeping up on her as she slept.
She somewhat wished she had to, because it would at least keep her mind occupied from thinking too much about... what had happened. They were lost. Alone. She would never see her village and her tribe again... even if they somehow found a way to live in this crater, or made it out... she would never see them again. It didn't feel real. Would they simply think that she had.. fallen prey to some creature? Would someone go look for her, wondering what had happened? What about Winged King?
It was all her fault that they were both trapped here now.
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She realized she had been shivering only when she heard Turo turn around and put one hand on her shoulder. It was warm, like him, and he slowly started caressing her shoulder, then her hair, and finally let his hand rest on her cheek.
« Sada... it's not your fault.» he repeated in a whisper, shuffling closer to softly kiss her forehead.
« We're still alive. We are still together.» he added after a moment, and that made her shivering slowly slow down until it finally stopped. She looked at the glowing lines on his suit, how they seemed to pulse slightly with each controlled breath he took, and traced one with a finger, slowly, until she came upon the barely visible outline of the necklace she had given him so much time ago. She gradually matched her breath to his, burying her face on his chest.
« ... yes. We're still together.» that was what she had to focus on. The only thing that mattered.
---
He wasn't quite sure how much time had passed when they woke up. The weird lighting in the crater made it impossible to tell, and Sada seemed particularly frustrated by it. Had one day passed? Did it even matter?
Sada had gone out to look for more food and for the electric Pokémon she had mentioned, while Turo kept reading. He had found the radio manual, finally, a thick and dusty tome that thankfully seemed to be pretty detailed. Then again, in a time when people couldn't readily look up information online, he figured it was probably required to write down every pointless detail than risk leaving something out. You just had to write down everything, and for that, Turo was now deeply grateful, as he started to read the instructions on how to use it and how to disassemble it if anything needed fixing.
The language it was written in... made his head hurt a bit honestly. It was Paldean, in theory, but... ancient. Some words he had no idea what they meant, others must have surely changed meaning in the meantime because they absolutely made no sense in context for him. Some sentences left him with the infuriating experience of being able to read every word and still have no idea of what they actually meant.
One thing that thankfully was unchanged was the scientific notation. Even like that, it was slow work, and he had to finally stop to take a break. Normally, this would have been the moment where he shuffled out of his office and dragged himself to the sanity room for a coffee and a chat. There was no trace of coffee here, just a sad empty moka pot he had found in the kitchen with rust in it. He would probably die if he ever attempted to brew something in it.
With nothing else to do, he stopped in the doorway and watched Sada carefully carve her bow out of a branch. She had one of the research reports open in front of her on the grass, and would glance at it every couple of minutes, her mouth slowly reading out words she didn't know. Her determination to somehow grasp the meaning of them made him smile, and he carefully moved to sit down next to her.
« What are you reading?» he asked, and for a while they simply stood side by side, like they had done months ago, teaching each other unknown words.
---
On the third night, or at least that's what it felt like, she suddenly heard Turo get up in the middle of the night. Sada kept still, her eyes wide open as the mattress creaked under her and he stumbled outside the bedroom. She silently got up and followed him when she heard him curse under his breath.
She found him in the kitchen, furiously working the little buttons on his bracelet at the feeble light of one of the candles, face ashen wide and eyes desperate.
« Please turn on, come on... you piece of shit, I need you to work just once... we don't have much time left... FUCK! » he suddenly screamed, enraged. Sada walked slowly into the room, gently cupped his face with both hands, and simply held him close as he trembled.
« They are not coming... they are not coming... Nobody knows we are here...» he repeated in a whisper, over and over.
« Sada... if we can't get out... what do we do...?» he asked after a while.
She made him lift his head and looked into his eyes.
« We will get out. And we survive until then. Together.» Turo nodded slowly.
« Together. Right. Right. » he repeated after a moment, with a bit more energy.
They fell into a strange routine of sort. Sada started to track the wild creature's movements, and they agreed on keeping track of time by observing when certain creatures would come out from their burrows or go to the lake to drink. Turo would stay cooped up inside most of the time, at most sitting down on the grass right outside the doorway to read to at least not burn through their candles so quickly. The only moment when he strayed somewhat far was to accompany her to get water from the lake. She needed both hands free to use her new bow, so he had to help carrying supplies.
On the fourth day, they stop along the way to peer over the cliff, deep into the crater. While you could barely make out the bottom, hidden by fog, they had seen creatures come in and out from cracks in the side of the crater, similar to the little cave where she had found the berry bush.
« Do you think there are more caves under there? » Sada wondered out loud.
« Maybe the treasure is there... or a passage that leads outside.» she added, but Turo simply shrugged.
« People would have found a passage. The only way out is up. » he seemed pretty convinced, so she just sighed, looking back up towards the circular edge of the crater.
Her eyes caught the silhouette of one of the massive black birds that seemed to live here, and she frowned. She had noticed something strange about them.
« ... I don't get it. Why don't they fly out? » she commented, pointing it out to Turo. She had even thought about trying to tame one like she had done with Winged King and attempt to fly out of the crater... but they seemed to just turn around and fly back inside as soon as they got too high up.
She had noticed that birds didn't fly really high here.
« I'm not sure... maybe they don't want to. If they have food and everything they need here... » Turo commented.
So bribing them with the little food they had was out.
Maybe they could keep it as their last resort... if calling for help with the "radio" didn't work.
They stood side by side, transfixed by the light that seemed to come off the deepest part of the crater. One part of her just wanted to go see what was at the bottom. To explore, to discover if that "treasure" was really there. The other, more cautious part, the one that had kept her alive until today, told her that it wasn't the right moment.
« Let's go. » she put one hand on Turo's shoulder and forced herself to turn away.
On the fourth day, she managed to get one of the little "electric" creatures to follow her to their shelter, coaxing it with plenty of roasted berries. It squeaked as it ran circles around them both, it's bright orange fur crackling.
« Will he be powerful enough?» she asked Turo, who looked up from his manual with a tired smile.
« He will. »
---
The sixth day it rained; they dragged every reasonably clean container they could find outside, and watched the water pool in as it fell from the sky. The rain formed little rivers that cascaded down into the crater from all sides, disappearing into the depths.
« With how often it rains in Paldea, there must be a massive underwater lake down there. Or maybe it connects back to the sea. The water has to go somewhere, or the crater would have long filled up. » Turo pointed out, rubbing at his chin with one hand.
Sada simply nodded, her eyes still on one of the research reports. She had gotten a bit faster in reading them, and was using a yellowed piece of paper from the typewriters and a pencil to take notes on the meaning of words she didn't know.
« That makes sense. It also can't all flow out, or the... » she scrunched her nose, then briefly consulted her makeshift dictionary.
« "Ecosystem" would die.»
He had carefully opened up the radio in order to remove the dry cell batteries that powered it and examine them. If they were lucky, they were just empty. If they were unlucky, they couldn't hold a charge anymore. He was more interested in the cables that hooked all the pieces together anyway. He hoped to be able to use the Electric Type to give the radio enough power to call for help. He had no idea what the Pokémon was called: it looked similar enough to a Pikachu, but there had been so many of those electric rodents in the past they all kind of blended together to him. How were you supposed to remember them all? There was a different one in every darn region it seemed.
Native to Paldea... Paw-something? Or was it Dedenne? He was only sure it wasn't a Mincinno, because he knew what the ancestor of Steelcino looked like, and it wasn't that.
Whatever, it's not like it mattered.
« You, umm... Pipsqueak. Come here.» he gestured for the Pokémon to approach, and after a moment they carefully crawled near.
Now, how was he supposed to explain what he wanted from them? He wasn't even sure that it would understand his words: if people hadn't come here in decades, they were probably the first humans this Pokémon had ever seen.
Maybe that was why it had no fear of them.
Which was good.
But that also meant it had absolutely no exposure to human language.
Which was bad.
« I need you to... hold this and use your electric powers.» he said, holding up the cable that was supposed to connect the battery cell to the radio. The Pokémon just stared at him blankly, because of course it did.
« Erm... use Thunder Shock?» more blank stares, because of course it would have no idea of what a move name was.
Sigh.
... how did people do this?
Most Pokémon in his time had started as Artificial Pokémon, and those literally came with natural language processing models installed for most languages. The ones that had evolved naturally like Miraidon usually lived so close to humans anyway they just learned fast.
He didn't have time to reinvent domestication-
« You have to teach them what you want with each command. Here-» Sada got the creature's attention by waving one berry around, and then waited patiently.
The Pokémon looked at her and tried to get at the berry, only for her to move it out of the way, raising her hand high. It let out an irritated squeak, rubbing their front paws which made sparks crackle between the short claws. The instant she saw the little sparks, Sada was quick to give it the berry. The Pokémon's eyes widened. It looked at the food it had been given, and Turo could swear he could almost see it make the connection between what it did and the reward it got.
This was going to take a while. As long as it didn't eat all their food.
---
It took ten days for the mysterious noise to reoccur. This time, it had been in the early morning, and Clavell only happened to hear it because he had briefly stopped in the lab before a lesson, preparing it for the next lessons of Pokémon Biochemistry that was going to take place in it half an hour from now.
This time he froze, staring at the radio. He opened the wide windows, and stuck his head outside. Not a single Magnezone in sight. They mostly circled the crater, but sometimes happened to drift close to the city, attracted by all the electromagnetic fields of thousands of devices. Clavell closed the window, and went back to the radio. He turned the volume up to the maximum. All right, so it was picking up something. Maybe the radio frequency it was listening on had been accidentally changed and was just picking up some random broadcasting station-
« ... llo...? Anyone... ple... espond.»
He stared at the radio in shock.
That was definitely a radio transmission. Directed at the secret frequency used only and exclusively to communicate in the past without interference with a specific place. But that was... impossible.
He picked up the transceiver with a trembling hand, pushing the button to switch from "receive" to "send".
« H-hello...? Who is this...? » he asked, eyes wide.
There was a long silence, before another answer arrived.
« ... trapped... Area -- ero.» and after that, just a single word, in another voice.
« Help.»
---
It couldn't be. It couldn't be, Clavell thought as he ran out of the Academy. Nobody had entered Area Zero in decades. Nobody had even received permission to do it in decades. What were two people doing in Area Zero? But the signal could have only come from there. And if there really were two people... trapped in the crater... Arceus knew how they had gotten there or how long they had been under there.
Even if it was some kind of error, a prank, an illusion by some ghost Pokémon or anything else... he had to make sure.
Professor Harrington would have to cover the lesson for him. He threw one of the Premier Balls on his jacket, letting out his Gyarados, and quickly climbed on the Pokémon's back, directing him towards the Great Crater. The water serpent flew fast and high, soaring high to avoid the Garchomp and especially Magnezone that loved to establish their territory there, before diving straight down. The communication should have come from... Research Station number 2.
They broke through the cloud cover, and he peered down towards the clouds, looking for the building that had to be somewhere down there...
Gyarados roared and started thrashing violently side by side, shaking his head and forcing him to hold tight to his crest.
« What's gotten into you?» Clavell looked around, trying to calm his Pokémon down, until he saw it. An arrow, sticking out from the yellow scales on his lower half He stared at it for a long moment, too surprised to react as the serpent barreled toward the ground, absolutely furious. With another roar, it opened his mouth and pointed his head towards the ground, towards... towards the figure of a woman with long wild hair, covered in what looked like pelts, holding a bow and aiming straight at his Pokémon, a second arrow already notched. He saw her pull the bowstring back to fire, before her eyes landed straight on him and went wide in surprise. She lowered her weapon, then ran straight back into the research station, yelling something he didn't quite understand.
His mind was still a bit stuck on the "there really was someone in Area Zero, and they just fired an arrow at me"; he made Gyarados carefully land and returned him to his Poke Ball, before carefully approaching the entrance of the building. The inside was dark, the only light provided by a couple of small windows near the ceiling, and a strange, light purple glow coming from one corner of the room. The woman was inside, her eyes wide as she approached... Clavell had to blink, recognizing the glowing lines as part of a strange rubbery suit worn by a man with dark hair, almost camouflaged in the dark. His eyes were similarly wide, and he grabbed the woman's arm, whispering something in her ear in a unknown language, before clearing his throat and speaking up.
« Did you... gEt the radio messAge...? »
He had a strange way of speaking; it was Paldean, without a doubt, but he spoke with an inflection that Clavell had never heard before. Were they foreigners?
« Yes, I... I got your message. W-who are you? How did you arrive here? » he asked, incredulous.
The more he looked around, the more details that just made the whole situation more surreal he noticed. Branches that looked carved up to make arrows were piled up in one corner. Plastic beakers filled with rainwater were amassed near the doorway. A little Pawmi hissed at him, fur standing up, before running under his legs and disappearing outside.
Dear Arceus, how long had they been stuck under here? How long had they been trying to use that radio?
Neither of them answered, the couple exchanging one long glance and another couple of whispered words with each other.
« We... We fEll. InSide. » the woman eventually answered for both.
They... They fell inside the crater...? Couldn't they have simply flown out, or called a Flying Taxi? How did they even survive?
« We nEed help...» the man added after a moment.
Clavell just kept staring incredulously at both.
The woman - who, his mind helpfully reminded him, had just shot his Pokémon with an arrow -, who looked straight out one of those extreme survivalist shows where they got dropped into the wilderness with nothing -, and then the man, with his weird glowing scuba diving suit or whatever it was, and felt a migraine set in, along with the weird feeling that he had gotten himself into something much bigger than what he had first thought. Much, much bigger.
... Well, what exactly was he supposed to do now?
Clavell didn't have to think long about it. Common courtesy and decency made his next step pretty obvious. Everything else could wait.
He straightened his glasses, looking at the pair with quiet determination.
« ... Let's get you out of here first. And something to eat. You both look like you need it.»
They both almost collapsed in relief at his words, holding each other for support.
« May I have your names? » he asked, and again it seemed to take a moment for his words to register.
« Sada, and...»
« ... Turo.»
They mumbled as a response after a couple of seconds.
Yes, they definitely didn't seem to have a complete grasp of Paldean. Which made their appearance here, literally in the middle of the region, in the one place that not even people that had lived in Paldea their whole life knew... Completely impossible.
Paradoxical.