"Before we get on with it, how 'bout a reunion Kawami?", I offered my partner. She turned to me, mouth agape. That wasn't particularly special, but she was shocked. Then, she bobbed her enthusiastic ascent and moved ahead to guide us to her old cave. We clambered through the underbrush and bits of ruin for a good while before finally reaching that familiar river of filth that was the hallmark of Kawami's old home. Kawami went straight into the dark opening. "A ladder if you will, my good man!", I unseriously ordered Toma. He hopped right to it, literally jumping from my back and spitting webbing out onto the wall to catch himself. Before long, I was climbing to meet Kawami's family.
I crouched slightly as I scuttled deeper into the cave, the yellow-brown walls of the cliffs giving way to the dark tunnel. I didn't dare pull out my flashlight and upset the Zubats, instead waiting by the entrance for my eyes to adjust. Then, I slithered my way deeper in, past a few tiny stalactites poking my head, to a larger chamber where the Zubats slept. Kawami was fluttering around in circles below the carpet of sleeping Zubats hanging from the low ceiling, making a racket that earned her Mean Looks from some of her ramshackle family.
As I entered however, the Zubats seemed to finally take notice. They swiveled their ears and turned to me, some falling in controlled spirals from the stone to fly over and inspect me up close. The room was filled with the faint ringing of their echolocation. I gave a small wave and sat back on my butt to avoid knocking any of them with my head, then scooted across the floor to where my friendly Golbat gesticulated haphazardly at me. I moved my mouth without entoning the words, to not grate on the tired Zubats' sensitive ears.
"Hi. I'm Kau'i, I became Kawami's trainer a few years ago, but I never met the rest of you. Sorry for taking her away so suddenly, but given her personality I'm sure that wasn't much of a surprise." Kawami gave me a big frown after hearing that, but I went on, "If you have any questions on how she got so strong, go ahead and ask her now, cause we'll be working to make her even stronger as I take on my island challenge this year."
The Zubats stirred and trilled between eachother for another few seconds before seeming to focus all their attention on Kawami. I just sat back smiling as she frantically tried to answer every one of the dozen questions coming at her every second. As the cacophony continued, Toma wandered in to greet the ramshackle and the Zubats' focus split. A few minutes later, after the ruckus had finally died down, I pulled a bag of berry slices from my backpack, already bruised in transit, and handed a slice out to each of the Zubats. With the Mean Looks put aside, we made our exit in good spirits.
Toma took down his ladder so Kawami's family wouldn't be bothered by wild pokémon using it, and we were on our way. The Spinarak crawled along the cliff face next to us as we walked to the Vast Poni Canyon's vast maw, giving me two contented smiles at once. Kawami just lazily clung to the top of the egg in my arms.
As we approached, the plateau seemed like a pair of chapped lips emerging from the earth, the geological structure formally called a canyon, upon coming into view, appeared more like Groudon's ancient jaws stretched wide to swallow up the sky. The enormous walls of multicolored layers of stone towered over us with a coincidental bridge of sharp rock that connected the two masses of compressed history. The arch seemed small from the bottom of the canyon, but taking the distance into account, it was easily 20 feet thick. In the distance, before the ravine sloped steeply upward, was an ancient gnarled tree standing alone in what at one point was presumably a riverbed or flow channel of some sort.
Toma's face pattern shifted to an impression of Kawami's extremely wide mouthed awe. "Have a bit of fun you two, this is the only safe part of the canyon. I'll get to that tree, take a break, then we're moving on to the dangerous parts.", I told them. Toma gave Kawami a look of, "I have a plan" with his more dexterous buggy face, and Kawami promptly flew away with Toma connected by a thread. My boots, which had been given to me mostly as a fashion piece, cushioned my feet expertly from the coarse ground as I stayed the course to the tree.
I sat down under the meager shade of the dead branches, resting my chin on the Salandit egg. "Nice and quiet, isn't it?", I asked her. She couldn't respond of course, but it was common knowledge that pokémon were somewhat aware of what happened outside their eggs. "I've been thinking about what name to give you.", I told her, watching Toma shoot complex web fireworks out as Kawami swung him around. "How's Waiola sound? Wai means water, and Ola is life, so 'Water of Life'. Pretty good for a Poison and Fire-type, right?", I chuckled at my own joke. No response came from the egg, but I wasn't bothered, I simply stewed in the peace of the moment.
When Toma finally directed Kawami to meet back up with me, I returned the two to their balls and started into the cave entrance behind the tree. Bringing out my flashlight for this early incursion into the dark depths of the stone, I surveyed my surroundings. To my left a solid slab of hard rock stood upright in front of a seemingly bottomless shaft. Peering through the crack between the slab and the wall to see beyond the shaft, I spotted a few dark passages turning out of view. To make it to the other side, you'd need to both circumvent the slab and cross the gap, which would best be done by knocking the several tons of rock over the gap to form a bridge, something completely out of my wheelhouse.
Directly in front of the entrance, the cave wormed its way up and to the right. With seemingly no other options, at least none that got me any closer to the trial at the end of the canyon, I pressed forward. Just past where someone could see from the entrance, the path upward was blocked by a huge boulder caught as if mid-roll in the tight tunnel. With no gaps large enough to fit the egg through, the only way forward here was to smash right through the thing. Even with its softer material, relative to the stone slab, it was out of the question for me and my team to tunnel through.
"Well shit. Great start to a journey huh?", I mused. Already beginning to plan, I brought my teammates back out. "Alright guys, we've got our first roadblock, and I mean that literally. This way, there's a huge slab in front of a chasm, and down the tunnel is a big honkin' boulder stuck in the path. We've got to come up with plans to deal with one or the other, but I don't think we can do either as we are. Kawami, Toma, which do you each think you can handle?"
Toma gave an unsure gesture while Kawami flew off to uselessly attack the boulder. Without actual ideas, I pulled the beaten stray textbook from my shoulder bag and paged through to the litany of scrap-paper tabs for moves my pokémon could learn naturally. I already knew the ones we were anywhere close to learning, and none of them stood out as solutions to our problems. Maybe working towards Toma's evolution for Swords Dance could work in a different scenario, but he didn't have any suitably powerful physical attacks to destroy a boulder.
Not yet out of options, I moved to the I's of the ability section. In the margin of the page detailing Inner Focus, I had copied down notable TM and egg moves for Kawami. I had done the same for Toma on the page for Insomnia. With these notes, I began to work toward a plan. Two moves, one for each pokémon and one for each big annoying rock. Kawami would work towards Steel Wing, a powerful Steel-Type attack that would allow her to cut away at the boulder. Toma would try learning Acid Spray, a Poison-Type ranged attack that weakens its target's resistance. With it we would wear down the massive slab and break it to bits, then just cross the gap with one of Toma's handy webs.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
With the training regiment set, I explained the idea to the team and set up a cute little battery-powered night light I'd found lying on the side of the road once and a blanket to sit down on while they got to it. "Acid Spray isn't gonna be some fancy ball of goo for you, Toma! You're not a Grimer! Think about it more like spitting up stomach acid the way you do thread. Vomit attack!", I advised. Toma briefly showed disgust on both faces at the perversion of his nature as the string spit pokémon, but steadied himself and returned to face the slab.
With confidence that Toma could handle himself in the empty cave, I took the night light with me to check on Kawami's early progress. It was bad. With each thrust of her wings to attempt the Steel-Type move, she either sent out an Air Cutter that curved ineffectually around the rock, or hurt herself with a Wing Attack directly into the surface of it. "It's not a Flying-Type move Kawami.", I chided "You need to make your wings hard like metal, ya know, uh... pointy. A bit... flexible? Ok maybe I shouldn't help with this one, I don't get Steel-Types either. Just try hardening your wings with Steel-Type energy without attacking first, so you don't hurt yourself, 'kay?"
She lowered herself to her feet, and then saluted. I smiled, gave her an overpowering head rub the way she likes, and went back to watching Toma's slow progress choking rancidly on nothing. The day passed just like that, nothing big, just training to take down some big stinkin' rocks. When the sun went from pouring very little light to no light into the cave, we shared a small meal and moved to sleep under the safety of the dead tree.
Toma was perfectly in his lane setting up an invisibly thin network of detecting webs encompassing us like a bubble, and even more ecstatic when I told him to close off the exits. The canopy became the hub of the expansive web that stretched up, to cover against the flying pokémon of the canyon, out, for anything exiting the myriad small caves and burrows in the walls, and across the ground, as first warning of a burrowing threat. With the nonexistent traffic in the early days of the island challenge season, we had free reign of the area.As Kawami and I wrapped around the egg to keep it warm through the night, Toma seemed to almost be meditating in the center of his web.
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I woke up with a stretch, accidentally rolling the egg on top of Kawami as she tried to sleep. I lazily lifted it out of her forced open mouth and wiped it down with the fabric of my tank top as I sat up. Toma crawled down to greet us and I gave him our battle signal for taking down his webs, since I was too tired for words. Toma and I completed our halves of cleaning up camp at the same time, and I got in my first words of the day. "Back to it...", I yawned.
We entered the cave again and I set down the egg to begin surveying our progress. Kawami had not learned to use Steel Wing in the slightest. In her "training" of Steel Wing, she would move from standing still grinding her teeth together trying to solidify her wings, and recklessly throwing herself at the boulder to no avail. There was more to it than that though. When she stood still for long enough her body seemed to suck in any light in the area and her movements became sluggish. Conversely, when she attacked the boulder she seemed to glow a faint red and her high pitched echolocation shrieks turned into a low rumble that resonated in the cave. Instead of learning Steel Wing, she had learned Curse and Frustration.
The new moves were nearly impossible to apply to Kawami's fighting style. Curse would turn the normally fast and flighty pokémon into a slow moving tank, and Kawami just didn't have the attacks to make use of both the boost in physical power and resistance with the lowered speed. Frustration was most effective when the pokémon didn't like their trainer, which I hated on several levels. Most obviously, I wanted my friend to like me, but also a Golbat would only evolve into a Crobat when that bond between trainer and pokémon was unbreakably strong. If she had learned Return, Frustration's opposite, I would be bouncing off the walls, but as it happens, Frustration would be entirely unusable going forward. Still, Kawami had taught herself an egg move and a TM move without any guidance.
"Good work Kawami!", I said, wrapping her in a hug. She wrapped her wings around me, then paused, looking up at me confused. "You learned Curse and Frustration, two moves that are hard to learn for a Golbat. It's no Steel Wing, but you've done alot! Come on, we'll let Toma deal with the slab while you take a break." She hugged a bit tighter and we returned to watch Toma's progress.
Reclining again across the blanket while warming the egg, we watched as Toma dribbled a pale ochre liquid from his mouth and down his mandibles. Occasionally, he would flick it out from the mandibles, sending it sizzling down the surface of the stone. I began advising again, "Alright, you've got the basics Toma. There are three things I think you're getting wrong though. First, you need more acid, that should come with time using the move but it is pretty damn important. Something to work on more actively is your technique, you need to be sending the acid outwards on its own without using your mandibles. It's a special attack, not a physical one, you'll just end up hurting yourself. Last, it's not just acid, it's an Acid Spray. You need to spread it out to really scour the target for that defense weakening effect. You got all that?"
Toma nodded, and tried to follow my instructions all at once, creating the same awful choking noise as the day before. "Stop! Stop! Stop!", I shouted, "That's not gonna work right away Toma! How about you try creating a spray with your webbing first, then work up your acid capacity until you can do it with that? Ok?" Again, Toma nodded and got back to practicing. It progressed like that for the next few hours, correcting Toma's bad habits when it came to special attacks as the slab slowly melted away.
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"Ok Toma you got this! Give it to 'em!", I encouraged, Kawami squeaking along with my sentiment. The spider reeled back dramatically, the goofy smile on his back belying his true feelings, and spewed forth a neon rain at the withered rock. The mass of stone creaked under its own weight, and I saw our path nearly open. "Air Cutter!", I called, and Kawami blasted the weak point that Toma had created, causing the rock to crumble uproariously into pieces on the cave floor. I gave the egg a little pat, watching as the remains of the prospective bridge were swept into the pit by another Air Cutter and Toma began to build his bridge of sturdy webbing.
Then, a low rumbling sound came from up the tunnel and started towards us. "OH SHIT! GO! GO! GO!", I yelled to the team. I handed Kawami the egg, her feet coming up awkwardly to secure it in her mouth as she flew it to the other side of the dark shaft. "TOMA! FAST BRIDGE!", I called urgently as the rumbling got louder and louder. He paused the complex construction he had been building, instead shooting two thick ropes of webbing parallel to eachother and hastily connecting the two to form a horizontal ladder over the abyss. I gave him a worried expression, but he just ushered me forward with an exoskeletal leg.
Out of the corner of my eye, the glittering flash of gold hit me and my hesitation melted away. As the rushing Dugtrio drew nearer, I practically ran onto the half-cocked bridge. The unstable structure bent under my weight and I fell onto it, clutching the handholds like I was digging claws into a wild pokémon threatening my life. The flashlight I had been holding spun impossibly far down the hole, breaking against the side before ever reaching the bottom. Then, the Dugtrio arrived at the edge of the abyss, its shimmering metal hairs the only light illuminating the darkness.
I wrapped myself around each strut of the ladder, filled with terror. The Dugtrio of the Vast Poni Canyon were infamous for ambushing unsuspecting trainers, tossing them around the tunnel system like beans in a maraca. The pit stopped this one's approach, but it was no less set on handing my ass to me. The point where the ladder was anchored on the Dugtrio's side of the bridge twisted on its control of the earth, forcing me to either switch over the ends of it or hang from the webs over the unending drop for parts of the way to make it across. The threats didn't stop there, the Dugtrio jostling up and down to create a mighty Earthquake that would have shook me free of my lifeline if it weren't for my adrenaline fueled death-grip.
"CUT THAT SIDE OF THE BRIDGE FREE!", I screamed. Kawami rushed to action, flying over and using an Air Cutter to sever the bridge from the earth where the Dugtrio emerged. The webbing dropped, slapping me coldly into the wall of the pit. The breath was knocked out of me as my body sorely hung from its tangled position caught in my friend's very helpful web. I faintly saw Kawami uncautiously swoop closer to the Dugtrio and put it to sleep with a Hypnosis.
When Toma and Kawami pulled me up from the wall, I let out a suffering sigh and picked myself up. "Onwards and upwards.", I declared tiredly, and began walking deeper into the caves, pulling out another flashlight.