The lapras surfaced for air, before diving down to sing again. He'd given up on his long, complex songs, and settled for a short, simple one, mostly comprised of whistles and hums. He sang a simple melody, repeated it a couple times, then was silent as he listened.
After a moment, he heard a friendly reply; a mimicry of his own song. It was distorted by the water and tunnels, but was still easily recognizable.
He surfaced for another gulp of air before swimming down the tunnel towards the reply.
He was getting frustrated, though. If they were going to match his song each and every time he sang it, regardless of the melody, rhythm, or pitch, then why did they always swim away as he got closer?
He reached a fork in the tunnel, and stopped to sing again and listen. He got a reply from each tunnel, but the left one was a bit stronger and clearer. Clearly, they joined up later, but the left one must be the shorter route.
Having made his decision, he continued along the tunnel until it opened up into another empty cave. He hummed absentmindedly as he swam around and examined it, and was surprised to find that it was a dead end.
He snorted angrily, then surfaced for more air.
How could a lapras sing down two tunnels, then have the shorter one lead to a dead end? What's more, it was an empty dead end.
He looked around the above-water portion of the cave, something that he usually didn't bother with. There was a small tunnel at the far end of the cave, not too hard to access from the water, but was too small for a lapras to fit in. There was also a human and some kind of yellow pokemon, but he had no interest in trainers.
"Holy crap, a lapras!" The human shrieked, its voice echoing off the stone walls. "I thought there weren't anymore in these caves! Bo-Peep, use-"
Whatever the human was yelling about was cut off as he dove back under. Perhaps if he backtracked and followed the other tunnel? It still made no sense that this tunnel was empty, but maybe there would be someone down the other one.
His musings were cut short as the water was struck with electricity. His muscles cramped painfully and he could barely move.
He snarled in frustration as he started slowly floating to the surface. He did not have time for this!
Just before his head breached the surface, he gathered the cold into his horn, ready for an ice beam. It would be awkward to aim, but it was one of the few attacks he could use without needing to move much.
"All right, it's back!"
He forced his neck to turn as he honed in on the human's voice.
"Use thunderbolt!"
Just as he managed to get the human in his sights, he was hit with another, much stronger, bolt of lightning, this time in the neck.
His neck muscles spasmed and cut off his air supply, something that he wasn't used to above water. He panicked and lost his ice beam, only for everything to disappear into a white light, and then there was only darkness.
He quickly got used to being a trainer's pokemon, and he was certainly less lonely. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he never found out that without him chasing his own echos, the underwater tunnels were forever silent.
