The World Below

by icewaker22

When Ash arrives late to Professor Oaks Lab he isn't given a pokemon. Instead, he is given a Pokedex and six Pokeball and told that he is on his own. Determined to be the best he decides to go to a hidden area near Pallet Town to catch his first pokemon but got lost and ended up in an underground region full or fossil pokemon.

The World Below the Sea

Summary: When Ash arrives late to Professor Oaks Lab he isn't given a pokemon. Instead, he is given a Pokedex and six Pokeball and told that he is on his own. Determined to be the best he decides to go to a hidden area near Pallet Town to catch his first pokemon but got lost and ended up in an underground region full or fossil pokemon.

I don't own pokemon but if I did ash would age and be sleeping with his male travelling partners by now.

Chapter 1

Ash stumbled for what felt like the millionth time in who knows how long as he mad his way thru the winding tunnels. To be honest, he was more than a little worried about how lost he was, but he also knew that there wasn't a lot he could do about it at this point except for going forward. He had started out with the plain to search the lower area around Pallet Town for a rare grass type he had heard there a few years ago only for it to start raining suddenly. This was a problem because it had started when he was haft way down the cliff. Thankfully there had been a small cave for him to climb into.

It was as he pulled himself into the cave that the problem happened. What he had thought was a small cave turned out to be a small cave entrance that had a significant slope inside it. So as Ash pulled himself inside the cave, he was also pushing himself down a wet slide. He didn't realize this until he was already going down the smooth stone that was water-worn. While he didn't go fast, it was impossible for him to stop given his size, so he did the next best thing by rolling onto his back and bracing himself with his legs.

When he reached the end of the slide, it was to a massive pile of sand that took ash a good few minutes to work his way thru. Eventually, he was able to stand, but it leads him away from where he landed. Not that he would have been able to use that as an exit given that but the time he left it the cave/slide had changed from a small thing that he could barely enter into a gaping fifty-foot oval beast with nothing but the smooth stone that had no real hand traction what so ever.

With a resigned air to him, Ash made his way to another cave after fishing out his flashlight. With no other options but to keep going, he made his way further down the caves. Sometimes taking slides like the one that leads him to these deep caves, to begin with only stopping to rest when he got too tired. This went on for almost a week before Ash felt a soft breeze and the sound of rushing water. Running to see where it was he was met with the sight of an underground river that seemed to be flowing somewhere. Know that he didn't have the supplies to last much longer Ash put everything that he could into his backpack before putting it on and tying the loose straps together before jumping in and letting the current take him.

This led to a very odd river trip that was thankfully short as only an hour later Ash saw the end of the cave if the light was anything to go by. Just as left the mouth of the and was making his way towards the shore he felt his leg get grabbed by something. Panicking Ash managed to twist around enough to see that it was some type of plant that was under the water thinking he could brush it of Ash tried to kick it with his other foot only to find it was grabbed by a second plant just this one purple instead of green. It wasn't until he saw the glowing yellow eyes that it clicked in his head. These were pokemon.

Ash didn't have time to think about that for more than a second as he was pulled under the water of the river and towards the sea flower like pokemon. Hoping that this worked Ash grabbed two Pokeballs off his belt and expanded them before thrust them at the pokemon trying to eat him. In a burst of light the pokemon were inside the pokeballs and only seemed to put up a minor struggle before they stopped moving.

With the way, clear Ash kicked off the sandy ground before he started swimming towards the surface once more after clipping the pokeballs to his belt. As he was pulling himself out of the river onto the stony, he was met with a pair of red eyes and yellow legs. Not even thinking about it and too tired to risk another fight Ash grabbed a third Pokeball and threw it at the unknown pokemon.

As the unknown pokemon was caught Ash dragged himself out of the water and picked up his third pokemon before he clipped it in his belt and made his way over to what seemed like hills only to find that they were ships that had been dragged out of the river it seemed. To tired to care one way or the other Ash claimed into one before passing out.

The next morning he was woken by a light scurrying sound that revealed another pokemon he had never seen. This one looked like some type of bug mixed with a crab with razor sharp edges. Once more a Pokeball was thrown, and once more the creature didn't seem to know how to fight the capture. After that Ash honestly took note of his surroundings. The place he was in was some type of giant cave that was lit with crystals that seemed to bring light and magnify it. This was why there seemed to always be light as any light that was introduced into the area spread throughout the whole cave rapidly.

The boat he was in seemed to be part of a boat graveyard that seemed to take up both sides of the river as if the pokemon were merely throwing junk out of the way and it seemed to build up over time. The river in question wasn't that big with it only being about twenty feet across and ten feet deep, but now that Ash was rested he could see more of the sea flower pokemon on the bottom gathered around glowing crystals with the little brown beetles swimming around them as well. There was also some spiral dome like pokemon in the water as well as some brown fish.

Over the course of the next few days, Ash was able to plunder most of the ships for useful supplies. It seemed that most of the larger ships didn't come down this river but one a couple of km away. While the boats he found were mostly pleasure and old naval vessels dating back hundreds of years the ships by the broad river mainly were cargo ships that still had their cargo either still attached or around them.

Ash made significant use of the fact that pokeballs could be used as temporary storage as he loaded up all the supplies. He even managed to get his hands on a healing machine, spare battery cells and a portable solar-penile that he used to charge them by shining his flashlight on a crystal.

As for pokemon gear, he got more potion veterans, TM's, and types of pokeballs then he could think of. Food, clothes, money, and endless other little things were added, but the this that help him most was the Pokedex update that let him finely know what pokemon he had captured and what was around hear. The sea flower pokemon as he had been calling them was none other then Lileep and Cradily. The brown beetle was a Kabuto, and the other bug crap was an Anorith. He had also caught an Omanyte that had was rather friendly to him. He had taken to calling it Star as it was the only pokemon he trusted to be out and help him at the moment.

For the next year, Ash gathered supplies into an old cargo ship while also catching any pokemon that he came across that seemed to be struggling as well as mapping out the area. It was in his second month that he learned of the valley as he called it. Or indeed the center part of the underground supper cave. The valley was different from the barren upper portions of the covered as it was included in lush greenery and filled with more fossil pokemon. The cave seemed to only have them along with Sheller and Relicanth inside it.

The main problem was it seemed that the area had a massive overpopulation problem making it exceptionally dangerous for anything not a local to enter as they were often seen as little more than food for a large number of predators. This led the fossil pokemon to fight each other over scraps until the young ones seemed to catch on that Ash would feed them using the pokemon food he got from the cargo ships around the cave. This led to him catching most of the calmer young pokemon in the almost one thousand km cavern while being left alone by the older ones as he was removing their compilation.

It was four years after he had first arrived into what he called the Abyss and while he had been all over the place, he was most proud of the team he had put together that contained one of each fossil pokemon family.

It had been pure chance that he found a cave that supposedly leads to the surface according to his Aerodactyl. This started his long trip to the land above that would take two months of climbing to reach. As he arrived the entrance to the outside world, Ash wasn't shocked to find it blocked but that was quickly taken care of with a zen headbutt from his Rampardos who was named Zen cleared the way and gave Ash the first sight of moonlight in almost four years.