Drake and I were, understandably, somewhat reluctant to move after everything that had happened. Really, it wasn’t more than we’d faced beforehand, even if we’d done it without other backup, but still. Drake had spent himself nearly dry in the last portion, desperately trying to reach me through the crowd of Ghost types that’d blocked his way, abandoning his usual careful husbanding of the Dark TE he pumped into his aura. While there was still something left in his tank, he’d absolutely burned through nearly everything he had.
Still, the best prescription for such a situation was rest. We took the time we needed for me to recover and get my breath back, Blake directing his team and Ajax to methodically sweep the area for any other ghosts. The entire time, he held the Pokeball that contained the gengar, his grip around the sphere tight and his expression grim every time he looked at it. He’d wrapped the thing in a sort of sheath that prevented it from opening, as there was no override that sealed a Pokeball shut. Apparently, there was one that prevented someone from opening one from the outside, but none that prevented a Pokemon from getting out. Finally, though, my breath made it back into my lungs. The spasm of diaphragm that had driven all the air out of me finally calmed, and I was able to push myself to my feet, an anxious Drake making circles around me.
“Good to move?” Blake asked, his eyes still on the dark, the gengar’s ball clutched in his hand. I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me.
“Yeah, good to go. Think I’ve recovered as much as I will.”
As Drake circled me, Ajax came up, nosing me in the stomach. I winced, realizing that I would probably have a very pretty bruise there come tomorrow morning, but used both hands to stroke his neck anyway. Where Drake had broken his usual stoic countenance to exhibit how much he was worried about me, Ajax had mostly contained his, though I could still see his own worry poking through. I reassured him, best as I could, until he was satisfied enough to step aside.
The tromp back to the camp was harder than it had been getting here. I’d already been tired the first go ‘round, but now I was hurting and still a little shaky. Without any shame, I crossed the log bridges on all fours, even more cautious than before about falling off and into the water below. Blake said nothing, and I sensed that I wouldn’t see a return of his laid back humour until the gengar was gone. It was a little unnerving, honestly, even as it made sense.
Blake and his team, having gotten a full sleep and being ready to go, split off from us to keep working on the spillway. Without the gengar to lead, guide, or push them, I doubted the ghosts would make another attempt at the dam, even with some of the worst elements to try and corral them. Between the two fights and the gengar’s capture, they were shattered completely, and no longer a problem in any real sense. A huge relief, almost as much as the capture itself. We wouldn’t have to stand watch over the dam anymore, without the force driving them to attack it.
Between Blake’s team, my team, and the efforts of the graveler and their gang, I had little doubt that we’d be finished tomorrow. It felt like we were cutting it close, leaving only a single night and some day between the uncertain deadline the absol had given us, but I supposed there was nothing else for it. It was the simple fact of the matter that I didn’t realistically think that things could’ve been done faster than that, though I did think that popping the cork on the spillway couldn’t happen fast enough.
That, of course, left the question of what we were going to do once the spillway was up and the water had drained enough that it wasn’t slowly eating at the dam. I turned the problem over in my mind as the three of us walked back in the direction of the camp, gears turning despite the tiredness that hovered about the edges of my head.
I’d suggested the simple solution of more clay and branches to Blake what felt like a lifetime ago. It would work well enough, but turning it over in my head, I was worried what baking the clay would do to the integrity of the whole thing. If we could secure the help of the graveler and gang, we could convince them to shape stones that could reinforce the dam itself. Ideally, a grass type would be magnificent; grass and other plants were very commonly used to prevent erosion, naturally and artificially. The introduction of a large amount of fast-growing plants manipulated by a grass type would be very nice. If Mirra were here, we’d have already all but ceased the dam’s slow erosion.
Still, you had to work with what you had on hand, and what we had on hand was Fire, Dark, Flying, and Electric, with a variety of Normal moves scattered among them. Plus, of course, the Rock typing of our helpers. Between all of them, it wasn’t ideal or the right combination to take care of the dam immediately, but it was enough to solve the problem if given the time to do so.
I shook my head, pushing away the wandering thoughts. I was too tired right now to really consider solutions to the dam problem, hah. I’d have a clearer head the next morning, when I was fully rested and could get some breakfast in me. Until then, I’d just have to trust that Blake had things well in hand, and that, if he needed me for anything, he’d wake me up.
As we came back into camp, the absol, who appeared to have taken up a sentry position on the flat rock they’d been sleeping on, practically jumped to their feet. There was concern in their face, which immediately gave to relief when they saw we’d returned without overt harm. I smiled and gave them a small wave, and they nodded regally in return, laying back down on their lofty perch. Ajax returned the absol’s nod respectfully, but Drake simply stared blearily in the direction of our tent. Poor pup was wiped.
I barely had the presence of mind to clean my teeth before I flopped into the tent, Ajax and Drake already having made themselves comfortable, rapidly bringing it up to a comfortable temperature inside. I stared at my sleeping bag sleepily, mulling over whether I wanted to expend the effort to open it up and climb inside, before simply giving up and flopping down on top of it.
If, for some reason I couldn’t comprehend, I felt cold or uncovered some time during the night, then future me could expend the effort to go through the effort. Present me was far too wiped to do so. And, with that, I closed my eyes and breathed out.
----------------------------------------
Something prodded me.
I groaned, curling inwards towards myself as I measured how sticky my eyelids were. Moderately, I thought, which puts me at five to six, so I should present that number to the sleep elves to convince them that I had clearance to get some more. But the thing kept prodding me and wouldn’t stop, and my not entirely awake brain couldn’t rationalize it with a nonsensical line of logic, so I pushed myself up on one elbow and felt around for my phone.
Seven, said my phone’s screen. Not so long after sunrise, and meaning that I’d gotten… yeah, about six, if I’d gone to sleep around one. Not great, not terrible. I looked over to find Drake, absolutely wide awake, and antsy. He shifted back and forth on his paws, looking towards the tent flap, then back to me. That, of course, very quickly sent me from wanting to get back to sleep to being entirely awake.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I said, low, my voice grave.
Drake shifted, uncertainty flashing over his expression. Glancing over at Ajax, I recognized that the hellhound was awake as well, blinking sleepily, his muzzle furrowing. Well, nothing for it but to figure out what was going on, I supposed. I grabbed my glasses, after a moment of fumbling around trying to find them, jammed them on my face, and went to open the tent flap.
I couldn’t help but stretch as I climbed out. I was still in a pair of shorts and a shirt, usual sleeping attire, but I figured that whatever was happening warranted a look before I went to the effort of getting dressed. Finished with the morning popping of all my joints, I looked in Drake’s direction. The poochyena had jumped through the opening of the tent, looking back and forth as if searching for something, before his ear twitched and his nose snapped to the north… maybe the northeast. My gaze followed his, and, instantly, I realized that what he’d noticed was impossible to miss.
A green and blue star, still bright enough to be visible in the day, glowed in the sky. As I stared in its direction, I realized that it was moving, coming down through the atmosphere like a meteorite. I took a single step backwards, glancing at Drake, who was staring at it with wide eyes. At the absol, who seemed poleaxed for the first time since I’d seen them. Ajax, who was anxiously pawing at the ground, uncertain.
And I could feel why. There was power in that star, more than I’d ever seen from any Pokemon I’d ever met. It was a towering mountain even compared to the extreme amounts of Type energy that Blake’s team had thrown around. And it was a mountain of energy that, I realized, was coming straight at us. For the first time since I’d come here, I felt truly helpless, put up against an approaching titan that was beyond any of our measure, something that was truly deserving of the title.
It streaked down towards us, path amending itself as it swung in our direction. It left streaks of green and blue in its wake, and as it approached, I realized that the scrublands around us were flowering with colour. Plants awoke, reaching up towards the sky, towards this approaching star, brought to life by its approach.
“Legendary.” I whispered to myself, for it had to be. There was nothing else that could be this powerful. Drake’s eyes flicked to me, and for the first time, I realized that the Dark type felt truly lost, here.
It was almost anticlimactic, when the star faded and landed instead of impacting like the meteorite that it resembled. Dust still billowed in all directions, and as it cleared, I realized that a wave of grass had sprouted from where it had landed, lush and healthy. The figure behind it was less than half a meter in height, but that did nothing to diminish the wariness I felt at the sheer strength I’d seen. They stretched their head high, wing-like ears folding slightly against their head, something red and scarf-like standing out against the white of their body and the green of their socks and the tuft of fur on their head. There was another flapping, and another Pokemon landed besides them- a staravia, chest heaving as they panted. They saluted in the direction of the absol, wobbling slightly.
Ah. I connected the dots swiftly. This, if I had my Pokemon right, was the legendary shaymin- in the alternate form, specifically. The absol must’ve spread the call far and wide enough that a Pokemon, this staravia, who knew specifically where the shaymin made their home had flown straight for it. Then, flying type desperately trying to keep up, the two of them had come back here. And it was a legendary grass type, if I recalled correctly, which was perfect for our purposes.
I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I relaxed somewhat, having realized that one of the physical gods of Pokemon hadn’t taken offense to us and wasn’t about to smite us from on high. I had no doubt that we’d be less than a speed bump to them, barely even worth the attention to strike us down. It was rather like staring down the barrel of a gun, then having it be pointed somewhere else.
“Hhhhello.” I started. The shaymin’s eyes went back to me, a solid and serious green that glowed slightly even despite the brightness of the day. Or perhaps because of? “Uh, I assume you came about the bibarel dam?” They nodded, once. “Well, if you’d follow me, er…?”
Sir? Ma’am? How do you address a legendary? Whatever, it’s not like they were as capricious as many godlike beings were. I doubted they’d make a grease smear out of me for the simple mistake of being unsure of how to address them. I left it lamely at the trailing off, gesturing in the general direction of the dam and began walking that way, Drake and Ajax falling in at my sides and the absol following from a distance. Glancing back, I saw that the shaymin had fallen in behind us, while the staravia appeared to have stayed behind to catch its breath. Fine, then, absolutely fine, I didn’t have any issues with being followed by such a creature. None at all.
It was the most awkward stretch of time I’d experienced thus far, easily beating some of the segments that I’d encountered in the home of the Jinnouchi. Being followed by something like the shaymin was an experience that I hadn’t expected; hell, I hadn’t expected to encounter any legendaries unless something of apocalyptic proportions was happening, and I’d hoped to be far away from such events when they did. My team and I were a long way from having the sheer strength to make a difference. But here I was, regardless of any plans I might have had.
We came upon the dam swiftly enough, the graveler already perched above the worksite and directing all their subordinates through the process of working farther on the spillway. It looked to be about done, the trench entirely done and the Pokemon themselves working to place the last few stones and weld them into place. Blake stood from where he was sitting to one side of the construction, wiping his brow with his hand, and turning in my direction to smile. And freezing as he looked past me, eyes wide.
The shaymin stepped forwards, casting a glance across all present. The graveler, whose attention had been drawn by my arrival, knelt, going down on one knee to the legendary. The shaymin gave them a nod, saying something in lilting Pokespeech that shuddered something deep inside my core. The graveler wavered, then made an affirmative sound and stood, waving their hands over the construction and explaining things in a voice that sounded like rocks scraping against each other.
Me and mine drew back, uncertain of what to make of the situation we’d suddenly found ourselves in. I couldn’t say that I’d expected playing host to a legendary, even considering the fact that the absol had gone for help. I guessed, vaguely, that this had been major enough and close enough to wherever the legendary called home that they’d felt obligated to step in.
For the first time since I’d met them, Blake’s partners looked distinctly nervous, watching the shaymin closely. It wasn’t hostile, I doubted that they were planning for the possibility of attacking them, but they couldn’t help but be wary of such a powerful creature. I understood the feeling, though seeing them feel like that certainly gave me a shivering sensation deep in my gut. There were real gods that walked this planet, and one of them stood before me.
That ticked something in my head. They were right there, and I had a Pokedex right here…
“Um, excuse me.” I said, speaking up before I had an attack of common sense and changed my mind.
The shaymin turned their head, curiosity flickering behind those forest green eyes, and I felt myself silenced for a moment. I gathered myself and pushed through the sensation, trying to straighten my spine and drawing the device out of my pocket and showing it to them. They gave it a cursory glance, before dismissing it, turning their glowing gaze back to me.
“I don’t suppose you’d mind if I just took a quick scan, would you?” Legendary data, the scav bit of my mind whispered. Legendary data!
They considered for a moment, then nodded, and for a wild moment I made the connection with someone off the street asking if they could take a picture of them with a celebrity. I dismissed the ludicrous image that brought up, opening the dex and navigating to the scanning functions, pointing it in their direction. There was a whir, and then a beep as the scan finished, the data recorded to the internal memory.
There was a flash of curiosity in their eyes as they stared at the device, and then they dismissed it, turning their attention back to the spillway and the dam beyond it. They nodded in approval at the spillway we’d constructed, the geodude paused in their work to stare up at the legendary in awe. With a flick of their wing-like ears, they were across it, settling on the opposite side and staring down at the wood and clay that made up the dam. I sidled up to Blake, Dex held in my hand, as he stared at the shaymin. With a start, he seemed to notice me for the first time since he’d noted my arrival.
“When that absol went to get help,” he muttered to me, “I didn’t think that this was the intended result.” I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I’m pretty happy to have a legendary here.”
He hummed, noncommittal, watching them closely. I suppose that it was more the sheer power than actually being nervous about their intention, I had little doubt that he could feel the stuff curling through the air like ozone. It was what made me nervous as well, honestly. You couldn’t escape the blanket of the stuff, though it didn’t feel quite oppressive. More like… it reminded me of the quiet of the deep, old forests, a solid blanket of pressure that was almost indifferent to you.
The shaymin appeared to have finished whatever line of thought they were pursuing. As I watched, they nodded to themselves, then their power- well, I wasn’t sure how to put it other than it flexed. The green in their aura flared, then sectioned itself off into little orbs, which condensed into smaller brown spheres that gathered around the legendary like an orrery. Bullet Seed, I wondered?
I didn’t have to wait long. As I watched, the orbs suddenly streaked away from the shaymin, then angled themselves down and shotgunned into the ground at the base of the dam. I winced at the impacts, then relaxed after a moment when the dam didn’t immediately collapse. As I watched, they breathed in and out, and their power flared again.
There was a great creaking, the sound of shattering stone, of shifting dirt. As I watched, awe rising in my chest, branches exploded from the depths of the ravine. The wood meshed itself with the wood already present in the dam itself, wrapping itself around the clay, integrating seamlessly with the construction that was already there. It spread over the dam like veins, and wherever it went, a wave of grass and small plants followed, growing into the clay and protecting it from the wearing away of the stream of water.
The branches reached the top of the dam, then kept going, weaving together into a great trunk and then splitting back off into branches that reached towards the sky. Leaves sprouted, and quickly, the bare wood that had been like bare bones reaching towards the sun was covered in a lush carpet of green. The plantlife spread from the dam, taking root in the ground around it despite the rocky and tough nature of it.
The shaymin relaxed, finally, surveying what it had accomplished and giving a satisfied nod. It turned away, then bowed its head in our direction. I understood the intent of the gesture in a moment: it had done what it could to make our success more likely, and now, it was up to us. Flower petals swirled around them as their legs coiled underneath them like springs, then launched them into the sky. They lit up again, a comet of Grass and Flying energy, then vanished rapidly into the distance and were gone.
We stared in the direction that the comet had disappeared in. Slowly, the Pokemon returned to working on the spillway, first the graveler and their gang, and then spreading to each of our partners individually. Out of the corner of my eyes, I watched Blake wander over to a relatively flat rock and sit down, looking completely unbalanced.
“Well.” He finally said, somewhat stunned. “That was…” He trailed off, seeming unable to finish the thought.
“I didn’t expect that. You didn’t expect that.” I shrugged, weakly. “I don’t really think anyone could’ve anticipated it, though it makes sense if you think about it.” Blake gave me a look, and nodded.
We spent a minute there, staring at the northeast horizon. Even with the recent departure of an actual legendary, however, eventually, my urge to keep working crept up on me. I was sitting around, and I itched to do something. I turned away, back towards the spillway, and walked to the rim of it.
The rocks had been bound together in a solid sheath that would prevent any erosion to the spillway itself, and any gaps had been filled in with clay baked into a ceramic by extreme heat. As I watched, the Pokemon present were clearing the last of the clay and dirt that was in the way, finishing up the last few meters of spillway. Ajax had joined Devi, the two of them working their way through a number of much less rough stones that the geodude had shaped for their use. They were extending out the sheath around the end of the spillway, probably ensuring that the water couldn’t undermine the stonework, as well as coating those last meters.
There wasn’t really anything for me to do here, I realized. Arguably, the digging that Blake and I had done had contributed somewhat to the progress of the spillway, though we struggled to match the output of one of our Pokemon. It only made sense, really. However, now, with the digging done, there wasn’t much for a human to actually do. With a shrug, I crossed the spillway, sliding down one angled side and then climbing up the other.
Looking over the edge, I could see what the shaymin had really done to the dam. The tree that they’d grown from seeds had integrated itself fully with the clay and branch wall that was the dam, branches reaching into and through. A network of wood, adorned with leaves and the occasional branch poking out of the dam’s surface, covered most of the surface. The rest of it was coated in a thick layer of grass, which appeared, for the moment, to be resisting the erosion of the water pouring over it. Still, I couldn’t imagine that the grass would last forever, and eventually it would wash out too. The shaymin had drastically increased the strength and durability of the dam, however, and it would be more than enough to finish what we’d started.
At that point, however, I was interrupted by my stomach growling. With a sudden thought, I realized that I’d been so fixated on the legendary appearing that I hadn’t even eaten. None of us had eaten, in fact, which was something that I could actually do something about. Filled with a bit more cheer now that I’d found my way to contribute, I pushed myself out of a crouch and dusted off my hands. I stopped for a moment after coming down one side of the spillway, nodding in appreciation at how nice it looked, then climbed up the other side.
Blake had apparently shaken off whatever mood had afflicted him after the legendary had left, and was now supervising the Pokemon working. Ultimately, that was mostly composed of crossing his arms and watching them, but he’d occasionally shout something to coordinate some effort. I supposed that just sitting there and not contributing in a crisis, even if he was aware that he really couldn’t at this point, didn’t sit well with him either. As I came up over the edge of the spillway, he glanced in my direction before refocusing on the Pokemon.
“Hey, I’m gonna go make something to eat.” I raised my voice for the second part. “Anybody want anything!?”
Blake hummed in thought. “Mm, yeah, maybe something small. I think we’ve got the stuff for a sandwich in the cooled section of my bag, one of those sounds fantastic right now.”
The rest gave a mix of affirmations and negatives, with the graveler and their number being of the latter. That was somewhat of a relief, given that I doubted that we could’ve fed the rowdy gang of Rock types with whatever we had on hand. I would’ve had to go foraging, and I didn’t much fancy my luck in an environment like this. Maybe, I mused, I could go fishing, but I’d need to get some line out of wherever I’d stashed it in my bag, and I didn’t have a rod. There was, of course, the matter of accidentally setting off a magikarp bomb near the fragile dam…
None of that was a real concern, however. For the moment, we had plenty of MRE’s still left, and I wasn’t worried about our food situation yet. Of course, we’d consumed more food by this point in the journey than we’d planned for, but the actual MRE’s and stuff were more of a contingency against situations like this. I’d mostly counted on the food stores that Blake and I carried and whatever could be foraged from the environment around us, feeding us off the land like a roving army. Which, in small terms, I supposed that we were. I felt a bit of amusement at the idea as I unzipped Blake’s tent zipper, stepping inside and examining the interior.
It was obvious immediately that Blake’s tent was of a much higher grade brand than the half-broken tent that I’d salvaged out of Vinewood’s lost and found, and, simultaneously, that it was much heavier used than mine had been. The fabric was of much better quality, and there was even a light at the apex of the tent, with a little cable leading out through a flap to a solar panel I’d seen on the exterior. His sleeping bag was obviously better than mine, as well, no stains or anything wrong with it, and obviously of a high grade brand.
“Sweet digs.” I murmured to myself, nodding in appreciation. I could respect shelling out for the nice stuff, though I was fine with the salvaged, and completely free, things that I was making do with.
Blake’s backpack, carrying the trend, was obviously much newer and more expensive than my poor, ancient hiking backpack. Like it, it had a frame that held the bag itself, redistributing the weight over the back and allowing the person to carry more comfortably. Where my backpack had been made by a manufacturer that I hadn’t recognized, however, this was a branded Sylph bag, with labeled compartments. I had to wonder if some of the things I’d heard about backpacks using some offshoot of Pokeball tech to expand themselves internally was accurate, before putting the thought aside and focusing on the insulated pocket on one side.
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As I reached inside, I realized, to my shock, that it was just about refrigerator temperatures inside. I could feel the cold air running over my hand and fingers, and the pocket did feel bigger internally than it looked from the outside. I felt around, and located a number of bags that felt like they contained slices of meat, pulling them out. Some more searching of various pockets revealed the loaf of bread that Devi had made toast of before, and I quickly got down to making a few meals.
With food in hand, I was given a hero’s welcome back at the worksite. The graveler gang mostly ignored us, focused on putting the finishing touches on the stonework, but the teams seemed overjoyed to see a meal of some kind. I’d brought a small array of sandwiches, as well as a number of different MRE’s, and the Pokemon present tucked in with abandon. I handed a sandwich to Blake, who opened it and raised an eyebrow at me.
“Just meat?” He asked. I shrugged, my own sandwich in hand.
“If you want something more than meat, ask somebody else to make you a sandwich. You want me to make you a sandwich? You’re getting meat.”
I took a bite and savoured it, then promptly inhaled the rest of the thing. While I hadn’t really been focused on it, I’d been extremely hungry, and having something to fill that hole was exceptionally satisfying. Despite his misgivings about my sandwich construction techniques, Blake still dug into his, and it was gone nearly as fast as mine was. Around us, our partners devoured their own varying meals, picked from the stack of options that I’d brought. I set the few that hadn’t been touched aside to return to camp at some point, watching as Devi and Ajax jumped back into the spillway to finish welding the rocks into place.
“D’you think we’ll be done within the hour?” I asked, and Blake nodded.
“Yeah. We’re just putting the finishing touches on, making sure that the water isn’t going to wear at some part of it and go a different direction, like back towards the dam. Also making sure that the water isn’t going to get through the bottom or sides, and that it’s not going to undermine the whole structure and cause a collapse of some kind.” He let out a lengthy sigh. “I’m almost wishing that I’d had some classes in civil engineering, now. Would’ve come in handy.”
“Yeah, but how would you have predicted that you’d be doing something like this?” I pointed at him, affecting a ‘stodgy teacher’ voice. “Blake, how long would a dam made by bibarel and attacked by ghosts last against a constant stream of water? How would you repair it, while being attacked by the ghosts that drove off the Pokemon that constructed the dam?” I let out a huff of laughter, and Blake couldn’t help but laugh in kind, shaking his head.
“It’s a little far-fetched, isn’t it?” His lips quirked again at his own pun, and I chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think that any of us saw us being here, working on something like this, when we set out.”
That did bring to mind my own questions about Blake’s past. Clearly, he was highly skilled and his Pokemon partners were extremely powerful. This wasn’t even mentioning, of course, his and his team’s obvious long experience with training and refining their abilities that my team and I had shamelessly taken advantage of at every possible turn.
“Why did you set out?”
“Hmm?” His attention had wandered to where several geodude were shaping a boulder into a series of flat stones, then handing them down into the spillway. “What’d you say?”
“Why’d you set out, then?”
He went quiet at that, thoughtful. I followed his gaze, and realized that he was watching Devi, the rabbit working with Drake to check their work across the rest of the spillway as the geodude got the last of the stones in place. For a long moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer my question, and then…
“I wanted to be a Pokemon Champion.” I gave him an incredulous look, and he smiled self-consciously. “Yeah, I know. Every kid wants to be a Champion, if not a Master. Of course, most of them stop after four badges, when they get tired of it, feel they’ve gone far enough, or just realize that being on the challenge circuit means that they don’t have the power to fight their way to the top. Me, though, I met Devi, and I was determined. A lot of kids would go out, camp a bunch, visit four gyms, do the challenges. Go home with four badges and a couple partners, and go into secondary school. That’s entirely normal.”
I thought I could see where this was going. “But you weren’t?” Blake shook his head ruefully.
“No. Devi and I- we were going to climb to the top, no matter what anybody thought or said. We weren’t going to do the challenge circuit, we were going to fight our way through every gym, do our absolute best.”
A memory tingled at the back of my mind. “You said you lost the first few times that you attempted a Gym.”
He nodded, the smile turning somewhat fonder. “Yeah. Got the hell beaten out of us, when we made it clear that we weren’t going to back down. And it was the Grass gym, which just made it even harder. But we picked ourselves up after every fight, and I came across a friendly zigzagoon that had been watching trainers for a while.”
“Jive?”
“Yep. He was eager, wanted to prove his worth. He’d seen the power and skill of Pokemon that worked under a human tutor, and wanted that for himself. From the gist I’ve gotten over the time we’ve spent together, he was considered the runt of the litter, wanted to prove that he had what it took to the rest of his family.”
“Hah, yeah, that sounds like him. Did he?”
“He went back and kicked all his sibling’s asses, before we left Galar.”
“Hah!” I laughed again, louder this time. “You go, Jive.”
“Was damn proud of him.” Blake said, and I could hear it in his voice, the sheer pride in the strength of his partner. “But we’re getting sidetracked. So, between Devi and Jive, we beat our way through the first Gym, and other Gyms after that. I quickly got the hang of training, real training, and we tackled them one after the other. Sure, sometimes we got beaten back and had to get stronger before we could try again, but that was the climb. We spent years building ourselves up, training, finding mentors. We were strong, and getting stronger, and with every step we climbed the top came closer.” He gave me a speculative look. “How much do you know about how to become a Champion?”
I shrugged. “You beat the Elite Four, and then the regional Champion’s team.”
“Mm, that’s one way of doing it, yeah. The other way is through the yearly League tournament, where the victor is crowned a Champion. The tournament route is, objectively speaking, actually easier than the Ee-four route, because your Pokemon get fully rested between matches. The Ee-four is an extreme in endurance, with only whatever medical items you can carry with you allowed.”
“Sounds rough.”
“It is. But the prestige of being an Elite Four Champion is significant, and I didn’t want what I felt was the lesser option.” He smiled. “Of course, the Champion doesn’t fight you with their personal team, but it’s enough to stop most people dead. I’d long picked up Mika and Noble by that point, and when the five of us put our heads together and debated how we were going to reach that peak, we were unanimous. We’d beat the Elite Four and the Champion.”
“That’s a really lofty goal.” I said, quietly. “Cutting your own work out for yourself like that.”
“We were determined to be the best, and wouldn't settle for anything below that. So we took two years out, tracked down a Master or two, the best trainers we could find. We fought and honed and struggled, we sharpened ourselves until, if we were a blade, we’d cut a string dropped on the edge. Two years of work, and we felt we were ready.”
“Were you?”
He snorted. “Hell no. We croaked after number three. We were cocky, after so much training and making it that far. It was good, and taught us that there were still some mountains we couldn’t climb. But that just made us more determined, so we kept going.”
“Did you make it?” He merely smiled at me, and it finally clicked. If he was implying… “You’re a Champion?”
“Galar Champion, yeah. It's not hard to find the records online. Was actually really refreshing, traveling with somebody that didn’t know. Most people aren’t sure how to act around a Champion.”
I thought about it. It made sense, given how Blake’s Pokemon were a force of nature when provoked. I’d seen them sweep the ghosts, even despite most of them not having direct ways of harming them, and I could imagine people being intimidated by that. Between the strength of his team and his title, nobody would really know how to act if they knew who he was. But I sensed there was more to the story. Blake didn’t look like he’d finished talking, and he definitely wasn’t taking a victory lap.
“What happened, then?”
“We’d climbed the mountain. And, for that first bit, the view from the top was stunning… but then, we realized that we’d climbed it. We’d achieved the goal that we’d always wanted to, in the way that we’d wanted to, and after that…” He stared off into the middle distance, eyes unfocused. “I don’t know. What happens when you achieve your dream? When you sacrifice everything else to get there, and then you do?”
“And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain,” I murmured, “he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”
Blake looked slightly surprised, with a flash of something else, but nodded. “Something like that.” He set aside the tissue I’d wrapped his sandwich in, folding his hands together. “We’d achieved our goal, and after that? We just weren’t sure what to do, where to go. We kept up our training, wandered around Galar and did things for the Rangers, the League, but it wasn’t…” He sighed. “Everybody knew us. Everybody could recognize my team on sight. It was… stifling, and none of us were enjoying it. So, in the end, we lined up the names of all the regions on a dartboard, and just…” He mimed throwing a dart.
“And Sinnoh was where it landed?”
“We came in through Pastoria. I’d never been outside Galar before, so it was a bit of a shock to see how different things were. Many of the serious trainers, those that were determined to follow the trainer career path, knew who we were. Your average undecided trainer, though? The kids following the challenge path, even the average person? They had no idea. So we just wandered, working our way out as far as Sunyshore City, then bouncing back around. Came by Lake Valour in time for the festival, stuck around to watch, but contests have never been my thing. Tactics and power and skill are our thing, contests are just too flashy for me and mine.”
“And, eventually, you found yourselves in Hearthome.” He nodded. “So, that’s why you followed Jive’s hunch about me, then? You just… were wandering, without any other intention, and figured that you might as well follow some late blooming novice zero rank?”
He snorted. “Don’t put yourself down like that. I said that you and your team were two or three rank at least, and I meant it.” Still, he nodded, looking thoughtful. “Though, yeah, I suppose you’re correct about the rest of it. I figured that guiding a trainer through achieving the strength they wanted was as good a goal as any.”
“Honestly, thank you. If you hadn’t joined up with me…”
If it wasn’t for Blake, I doubted that I would’ve had a chance against Fantina. It was his training of me, and his Pokemon tutoring Drake, that had given us the endurance, the strength, and the tactics to pull out a win against all odds. They’d pushed us hard over that week, hard enough that we’d gotten our Gym badge first try. If we hadn’t won that badge, I wasn’t sure that we’d have gone out looking, might not have found Mirra. Without Mirra, we wouldn’t have gotten into the Jinnouchi’s compound, been inducted into the clan. I’d never have met Ajax.
“The reason my team and I are here, right now, is because of you. Without you, we wouldn’t have made it this far. We wouldn’t have had the strength to do so, and, most damningly, we probably would’ve been overwhelmed by those ghosts without you and your partners to push them back.”
“Thanks.” He said, and I could see that he meant it through the smile he gave me. I returned it, then glanced towards the spillway.
“Looks like they’re done wrapping it up.”
Blake hummed in agreement, brushing off his knees and pushing himself to his feet.
The geodude group had climbed their way out of the spillway, and our partners were arrayed on this side of things. There were a number of different geodude stationed at the large, flat stone we’d levered into place, blocking the water from flowing into the channel that we dug, prepared to lift it out of place. Ajax and Devi inspected every inch of the stone and claywork that they’d done with the help of the Rock types, nodding separately before climbing out. Devi said something to the graveler, who then signaled to the geodude at the stone.
They all grabbed the large rock, hefting it between their sheer strength and their ability to manipulate rock. It lifted, making a sucking noise as it was pried from the mud that it had embedded itself into. Water, first silty and full of dirt, then clear, rushed through the gap between the stone and the lakebed, more and more as the stone was lifted higher and higher. As it reached the end of the spillway, the momentum it had gained shot it out into the air before it curved downwards and into the ravine beyond my line of sight.
We cheered as the spillway held together, none of the rocks coming unglued from where they had been set. Slowly, as I watched, the water coming over the dam lessened, the flow in the spillway calming from rapid flowing water to something a little more serene as the level of the lake fell a little. The pressure from all that water diverted, no longer pressing against the dam as it flowed over, relieved me greatly.
Slowly and carefully, the geodude on either side of the channel lifted the stone that had just been blocking the mouth of it. They set it down, forming a stone bridge across the water that they rapidly crossed, giving the water flowing beneath them wary looks. While the current was strong, I doubted that it could wash away something so heavy as them. I supposed that it was just a Rock type thing, disliking water.
I settled down at the side of the channel with a smile, Drake coming over to me and curling up in my lap, and Ajax taking his place alongside me. I leaned into the hellhound, watching the water glitter as it flowed past me. It had been a rough few days, fighting and rushing and working, trying to get this done so that thousands of people and Pokemon downstream wouldn’t be flooded out. Now, though, we’d completed our work, the gengar had been captured… Now, we just waited for the civil engineers that Kevan was sending our way. They’d want to reinforce the dam, of course, and give our spillway a look over, but the bulk of the work was done. It was no longer a race against time just to prevent the thing collapsing: between us and the shaymin, it was now just about making sure that it wouldn’t be in danger of collapsing at any point.
I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and glanced over to see the absol. Their eyes swept over the tree that grew out of the dam, over all the effort we’d put into the spillway, the glittering water that flowed through it. Their horn glowed, dim in the sunlight but still bright enough to be visible, and they nodded. I let out a breath that I didn’t realize that I’d been holding, at that. We really had averted the crisis.
Though, now, I had the inexplicable urge to throw salt over my shoulder or something.
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The graveler and their gang of geodude, satisfied with the completion of the spillway but not with the strength of the dam, swapped jobs the moment we’d truly confirmed that nothing was going to break down with it. I had the assurance of the absol that the crisis that had threatened everyone in the valley below had been averted, true, but that didn’t mean that any of us were happy about the state of the dam. So, we threw ourselves into reinforcing it, using the geodude to shape stones and spires that we then moved with sheer Pokemon muscle and implanted into the surface of the dam.
Whether through a lingering influence of the shaymin or just of its own accord, the tree that had worked its way deep into the structure of the dam accepted the reinforcement. Its branches and roots wrapped themselves around improvements, pulling them in and further strengthening the structure. Mostly, though, what we were doing was the final round of cleanup, making sure that things were structurally sound enough that nothing would happen until the civil engineers got here. Which would be sometime tomorrow, by my reckoning.
“Hm.” I said to myself. “I should probably update Kevan on how things are going.”
Drake huffed in exertion, slotting a stone into place so that the tree could pull it in closer, and nodded. I figured that we were just about reaching the end of what we could do with the materials and Pokemon that we had on hand, so at this point it was mostly a matter of cleaning and finishing up. Waiting was the big thing, now, making sure that I was right and that none of the gengar’s force of Ghost types came back around, ensuring that nothing else happened which might flood the valley below with water. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t going to just leave the thing alone and unsupervised. I slipped my nav out of my pocket, then paused thoughtfully. I turned in Blake’s direction, waving him over.
“Hm?” He made an inquisitive noise as he approached, and I held up my nav.
“I want to get everybody that worked on this into an image. Y’know, just something to commemorate it, I guess.” I scratched my head, feeling suddenly somewhat self-conscious about it. “I just feel like, everybody put a lot of effort in. It was a, a…”
Blake held up a hand, a small smile quirking his lips.
“You don’t have to justify it to me. I’ll talk to Devi, see if he can wrangle the rest of the team, and talk the graveler into wrangling theirs.” He glanced around, nodding in satisfaction, his eyes going to each of the Pokemon nearby. “See if you can’t grab that absol. I think they deserve to be part of it, given all they did for us.”
I nodded in agreement, and Blake walked off, waving Devi down from where he was inspecting some stonework midway up the dam. I glanced around; Drake was still right next to me, nudging stones into place. Ajax was a little farther, helping some of the geodude reinforce the walls around the dam and bake the moisture out of more clay. The absol, however, was nowhere to be seen, and I had to wonder where they’d gone off to.
“Hey, Drake, buddy!” Drake looked up, curiously, from his most recent stone.
I noted that his coat was somewhat dirty, and I realized, with a slight twist of my face, that I was too. None of us had had a chance to get clean in nearly a week at this point since we’d left Hearthome, and it was showing. After we were done here, we’d all be taking a dip in the artificial lake the dam made, hopefully. For now, however, I put that aside, focusing on the more immediate issue.
“Have you seen that absol anywhere?”
Drake looked upwards, frowning with a squint. He thought for a long moment, then shrugged, which I took to mean that he hadn’t seen them since earlier today when we’d all been together. I made a slightly disappointed hum, then ruffled his fur.
“Thanks anyway, mate. I’ll go ask Ajax, huh?”
He nodded, going back to his work without complaint, the little trooper that he was. I turned away from him and walked in the direction of Ajax and his little work crew of geodude, who were currently shaping a large amount of clay into a support-like structure against the wall of the dam while Ajax baked it. Not as good as concrete, I should think, but certainly better than just piling some dirt against it and hoping. Though I rather wished that we had some rebar to work with… well, whatever.
The geodude eyed me somewhat warily as I approached, the crowd of them still not entirely used to being near humans for this long. Or at all, really. Ajax, on the other hand, was perfectly happy to see me, lighting up as I came closer. He turned his head towards what they’d been working on, then back to me, looking for approval with huge puppy eyes. I couldn’t help but smile, using my fingernails to scratch my way up his neck. The big puppy patted the ground with his forepaws rapidly in happiness.
“Good job.” He just managed to hold on to his dignity and not start jumping in place with joy, but it was a near thing. Man, what did I do to get such cute Pokemon, huh? “I was wondering if you could help me out. Have you seen the absol anywhere? I want to get a picture with everybody, and I figure that they deserve to be in it as much as any of us.”
He tilted his head, poking his tongue out in his own version of Drake’s skyward-facing thinking face. After a moment, he perked up, ears swiveling, and turned his nose towards the rim of the ravine. I gave it a contemplative look: I supposed that it made sense that they’d want to keep watch on things from a higher vantage point. I patted Ajax’s head, the bone crest warm beneath my palm.
“Thanks, buddy.”
I left him to his work, and began the climb up the side of the ravine. Thankfully for my sore, exhausted muscles, it wasn’t too hard, not like I was climbing a sheer rock face or anything. Still, I found myself groaning my way up it, and I looked forward to the rest of today and tonight after we finished what else needed to be done. We desperately needed some time to release tension, and some time splashing about in the lake that could very well have killed us… alright, so, it didn’t sound so great when I put it like that. Maybe I’d pitch it a little different when we got around to it.
Still, spending the rest of the day messing around in a lake sounded like a great way to release some of the tension that had built up over the past few days. Honestly, I was seriously considering keeping us here for at least another day, if only to make sure that the engineers settled in nicely and that everybody had fully recovered. We hadn’t gotten anywhere yet; I figured that we were a bare quarter of the way to Oreburgh, and there was a lot of mountain between us and there. Another ten plus days of traveling, and that’s if we could maintain the pace that we had over relatively easy gradients. I suspected that things would get rougher as we approached the peak.
I had to get past the place where the spillway thundered down into the stream to get to where the trail led up the side. Thankfully, the cliff face retreated some, and the water itself arced out and away from it, leaving a dry passage behind it. Occasionally, drops of water flecked the stone walls, and I reflected that soon enough this would be wet and rather slippery. The stone that had served to block the spillway served as a perfect bridge, but I hoped that the engineers had a ladder that they could install in the cliff face to allow easier access to the base of the dam. Otherwise, coming down here was quickly going to become a rather dangerous affair.
I huffed in exertion as I hauled myself up and over the lip of the ravine, standing straight and stretching as I stood atop the flatter land that surrounded the gash in the ground through which the stream flowed. The spillway let out of the cliff to my left, pouring out into space, the thunder of the water crashing against the rocks at the bottom echoing up through the ravine and across the flat land. If I listened carefully, I thought I could just faintly hear the barest edge of it echoing back from the mountainside. Sound was funny like that.
Now that I was up here, the absol wasn’t that difficult to find. They lay off to one side, having found another relatively flat rock to lay upon, basking in the heat that it radiated. It was close enough to the edge of the ravine that they could easily get up and look over, seeing all of us at work down at the base, but not so close that it was in any danger of falling in and taking them with it. As I looked in their direction, their red eyes found me, taking my measure and then dismissing me. Clearly, they were still waiting for something to go wrong, even though they’d confirmed that the crisis had passed.
I approached their rock and settled down on it, letting out a small sigh of relief at being able to sit down. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just make out another considering look from the absol, most likely weighing why I was here. Given that I was a trainer, especially that I was a trainer with two Dark Pokemon already, and they were a Pokemon themselves… Well, it wasn’t hard to guess where their train of thought was going.
“I’m not here to ask you to join my team.” I said, flatly. Might as well get that out of the way immediately.
The absol actually looked taken off guard by that statement, either that I’d guessed their train of thought or that I’d come out and said it at all. Still, they quickly settled into an expression that looked far more relieved, some amount of tension going out of their form as they did so. I guess that was something that they’d been worrying about, maybe since they’d first seen me with Drake all the way back in Emeragrove. With me having added another Dark type to my team since, it had to have been a thought in the forefront of their mind, though pushed to the side by the crisis we were all dealing with.
“Still,” I said, a small exasperated smile stretching my lips, “I do wish we’d meet in better circumstances than yet another life-threatening event that needs prevention.”
The absol let out an amused noise, looking away, their eyes going half-lidded. Clearly, they agreed with the sentiment, even if they appeared to have accepted the way that things played out. Given an absol’s tendency to sense such events, and the general reputation that their species had for purposefully going out and warning humans, I figured that it was pretty likely that they’d simply accepted that that was just how things were for them. I could relate to that.
“I wanted to ask you something else, though.” A curious glance, like a king asked by a subject. “I wanted to commemorate the event with a picture. Get everyone together, take the thing, just to preserve the… accomplishment, I guess. And out of all of us, you’ve arguably contributed the most to preventing the disaster.”
A huff of doubt. Compared to the likes of the graveler, Blake’s team, or even the shaymin that had come through, I could understand the disbelief.
“I’m serious.” I started ticking off fingers as I listed the things out. “You warned us that this was even happening. You went out, negotiated with the graveler to bring them and the geodude into this. You jumped into the battle right when we needed backup the most and turned the tide. Heck, the shaymin only even showed up because you sent out the call for help and they responded.”
They seemed baffled at the credit that I was laying at their feet. Paws? Which they were now shuffling awkwardly, seeming unsure how to take the compliments. I decided to distract them, digging my dex out of my pocket and showing it to them.
“If you’re willing, I’d also like to get a scan of you, make sure there’s nothing wrong? Least I can do, I think.”
They hesitated, then nodded. I held up my dex and scanned them, in much the same way that I had the shaymin. Here, the dex showed… female, huh? And just a few scratches, nothing significant. I turned back to them- or, well, her, and smiled.
“Clear bill of health, as far as I can see. So, about that picture?”
She hesitated again, and pushed herself to her feet with a long-suffering sigh, as if she was so put upon answering my suggestion.
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It took some doing, lining everybody up for the picture. The geodude were somewhat rowdy and curious about what we were doing, and the graveler had to keep corralling them back into some semblance of a group. Blake and his team were exhausted, but pleased with the work they’d done, clearly wanted to go off and either collapse in the shade somewhere or just sit down and have a moment to themselves.
My own team, however, was easy enough to get into line. Drake was as stoic and outwardly unshakeable as he always appeared, though I could see the pride at what we’d accomplished dancing behind his eyes like little lanterns. Ajax was obviously still filled with energy, and eager to go back up and go back to training or doing something else. The absol had appeared to decide that they didn’t want to be near either the rambunctious geodude or the powerhouses that made up Blake’s group, and had settled down next to Drake, occasionally throwing frowns in Ajax’s direction when the hellhound started practically vibrating.
I set up my nav on a rock, angling it so that it caught much of the dam and the tree that crowned it. With the angle, I could fit all of the Pokemon into the shot, and the scene made for a nice little shot in and of itself. I directed them to huddle a little closer, then set a fifteen second timer on the camera, rushing forwards to step into my place behind Drake and leaning against Ajax.
“Alright, everybody!” I said, counting down the seconds in my head. “Say, ‘we’re damned’!”
The camera went off just in time to catch Drake breaking his serious expression to give me one of incredulous disgust at my wonderful pun, and Ajax letting out a literal bark of laughter.