In a reference to the inestimable KillerBuneary, I remind you this:

"Normal Talk"

Thoughts

"Telepathic Speech"

Also, for the purposes of this fic, Johto represents America, Kanto is Canada, Sinnoh South America, Hoenn Britain, and Unova Germany.

Splish. Sploosh.

Water dripped from the roof of the cave, creating a pleasant rainlike beat. I brushed a little water off my helmet and walked on into the darkness.

As I walked through what seemed like a copy-pasted a tunnel, I felt something brush against my arm. I laughed a little as a zipper appeared in midair, followed by an entire bodiless head. "Cut it out, Banette," I said half-jokingly. "You know how much I hate it when you do that."

Banette seemed to shrug-can disembodied heads really shrug? -before smiling his zipperlock smile even wider as a full gray body materialized. "We there yet, Bossman?" he asked. "I'm getting a little bored here."

"Does it look like we're there?" I responded, rolling my eyes as well as I could-the Y chromosome seems to dislike the ability to eyeroll. "Now shush or you go back in the ball."

"Whatever." Banette groaned before spinning his head around-literally, he spun his head 360 degrees-and stared out into the black. "Hey, look, boss; the idiot's coming back around."

I squinted my eyes, and sure enough, I could fuzzily see a purple shape in the distance flying closer. "Hey, just because he doesn't have a telepathic link, doesn't mean he's any dumber than you are."

I jumped a little, as the formerly small purple shape had become a very large golbat who was very close to my face. "Sorry, you scared me for a second there, boy," I said with a touch of annoyance in my voice. Golbat looked down ashamedly. "Did you find anything?" The monster bat nodded. "Good. Lead the way."

Golbat nodded, and with a little spring in his wing, flew out towards the rest of the cave. Banette groaned before floating after his purple comrade. "Great; he'll be chattering all day now."

"Shut up."

After fifteen minutes or so of trudging along, with no sound but the pitter-patter of cave water and the occasional annoying interjection from Banette, Golbat stopped at a very conspicuous stone wall with about four hundred thousand markings on it. I traced my finger along one of the lines on the wall. Around the center there was a grouping of shapes arranged in a strange fashion. "Looks like a puzzle," I said to no one in particular. "Let's see, I can either go through a lot of trouble and waste a lot of time trying to solve this puzzle, or…"

"Or what, Bossma–oh, I gotcha. Yep, go with choice 2."

"Glad we're on the same wavelength. Literally, too." I grabbed a ball off my belt and pushed the button. "OK, Rhy, time for you to go to work." A flash of light erupted from the ball and a rock dinosaur was standing at my side.

"Rhydon!" The aptly named creature shouted, nearly bringing the cave down on us. I quickly shushed it with my sleeve.

"Quiet down there, big guy. Hey, would you mind knocking this down for us?" I asked, gesturing to the wall. The rockosaurus roared its approval. "Alright then. Get to work."

Rhydon punched the wall, sending bits of rock flying in all directions. Another swing of its massive arm and the entanceway was nothing more than a pile of rubble. Rhydon beat his stomach in delight.

Out of the corner of my ear, I heard a strange whizzing sound. Confused, Iturned around–and an arrow whizzed right by me, inches in front of my face. "Shoulda seen that coming. I suppose hindsight is 20/20, though." Another arrow launched itself right in between my legs, barely missing the family jewels. "Golbat, mind dealing with these?"

The purple bat didn't even respond before an arrow hit it in the wing, sending it flying into the wall. Groaning, I returned Golbat to its ball and turned to Rhydon. "Okay, big guy. Your shot. Rock Blast 'em."

Rhydon let out a massive yell before picking up part of the rubble pile. Shoving the rocks into its mouth, it began to spit out a volley of mini-rock terrors, snapping the arrows in half as they flew from all angles. Seconds later, the arrows stopped and Rhydon yet out another war cry.

I petted the rockasaurus happily. "Good work, Rhydon. Back in the ball you go." A flash of red and Rhydon disappeared.

I turned to the now-clear entranceway, then over to Banette. "You ready?"

Banette grinned. "Ready as I'll ever be."

On that note, we slowly approached the now-clear entranceway, being careful to look for any other traps the paranoid cave-people might've set up. Moving at barely a shuffle, I passed through into the room.

A quick observation revealed the room to be a dome with no light but what was radiating from the flashlight on my helmet. I feel like I should be watching a hockey game or something.

Thoughts of ice sports and room shape, however, were quickly loaded onto the airplane of unnecessary thought baggage and zoomed down the runway and out of my mind when I caught sight of the pedestal in the center of the room; or rather, what was on top of the pedestal.

"Banette, it's here. We've found it." The puppet of doom, who had been admiring what appeared to be a piece of damp moss he had found on the wall, turned around.

If I recall correctly, his cloth jaw fell so low that his zipper nearly unzipped itself.

"The Quill. The Silver Quill. We found it." Banette spun his head around and took another look at it. "It's beautiful."

He wasn't lying. The silver feather sat atop the ancient granite birdbath, angled just right for my flashlight hit it. The sun couldn't match the brilliance it gave off. "Archeological immortality, here we come."

Banette grinned. "What are you waiting for, then? Take it."

I started into a jog towards the pedestal before slowing down to barely more than a shuffle. Can't take the risk of getting stabbed by a flying potato or something. Step by step, clunk of the left boot by clunk of the right, I approached the Quill. About five minutes after I began walking–it was a pretty big room–I stopped in front of the pedestal. Fishing through my coat pocket, I pulled out a bag of sand and balanced it in my left hand.

I stared down the Quill for a few seconds, waiting for it to explode or something. Once I was certain the Quill wasn't going to stab me, I made my move. Moving as fast as I had in my entire life, I snatched the silver feather off the pedestal and replaced it with the sandbag just as fast. I tensed up for a quick moment, and then relaxed when nothing immediately happened.

About five seconds later, something happened.

Around the whole room, torches I hadn't seen before lit up, seemingly by their own accord. Right as I turned around, a big ball of gas appeared in my face. A second later, it grew a face of its own. A few seconds later, another one appeared in front of Banette. Within thirty seconds there were at least 20 of the gaseous masses in the dome.

"Gastly," I groaned. "Lovely. Banette, you got this?"

"Of course." With that, his left hand began to glow, and he slashed at a gastly to his side. It vaporized almost instantly.

While the death puppet dealt with the gastly, I took the time to turn off my flashlight–too much light for that now–and examine the room. Let's see…torches, of course…entrance, pedestal… I heard a rumble in the opposite direction of the exit. Turning, I heard a mumbled "-Aaax" coming out of a massive hole in the wall. Confused, I approached the hole, dodging a gastly that Banette was angrily chasing. As I got a better look, I saw a black shape coming slowly down out of the distance.

Uh-oh.

"Banette, the Gastly are just a distraction!" Banette stopped and looked at me confusedly, a gastly phasing through him as he stopped. "Run! Float, whatever! Get out of here! SNORLAX ATTACK!"

Banette didn't need a second warning. Flying as fast as he could, he raced up next to me as I heeded my own advice and high-tailed it out. Stupid short legs, making me so slow…

My thoughts were interrupted by an even louder moan of "LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX!" A snorlax, seeming more than a little pissed off, slammed out of the hole and onto the ground, rolling like a ball. Looking at its face every five seconds or so when it showed up, I noticed that its eyes were grotesquely deformed, with one mucus green, open and four times the other's size, and a nasty lump where its nose would be–if snorlax had noses, that is.

"That thing is nasty!"

"Duh; inbreeding. How else would they keep a snorlax up there for 400 years?"

"Fair point."

Still avoiding the rolling ball of angry snorlax, I caught sight of a light up ahead. "Almost there, big guy. We got this." Twenty feet, fifteen, ten, five two, one–

I leaped over the decent sized hole at the entrance as the snorlax was nearly upon us. Moving too fast to leap, the hunk of giant fat with eyes fell into the hole. Laughing at the closeness of death, I turned to Banette to give him a high-five of sorts. "All right, we rule!"

Banette was not as happy as I was, though. "Bossman…you might wanna look ahead." Confused, I turned around–to see an arrow being pointed at my face.

The man holding the bow with the arrow was a local, it seemed; the Sinnohans were still pitifully primitive. I glanced down at my belt, praying to see my revolver. Unfortunately, as I had suspected, it wasn't there; it was instead lying in a pile of socks in my dresser. Damn.

A man walked out from behind the Sinnohan, a smug grin on his face and a growling vulpix following him around. "So you're Sal Hion, ey? The one they call the 'Kid Explorer?" He spoke in a thick Unova accent that made me want to sock him in the face very, very hard.

"What's it to ya?" I spat back

"Now don't get too feisty. Make a move, he fires. Your banette makes a move, he fires."

"Your banette-" Banette protested to me in my head, but I shushed him.

The Unovan looked back, smug grin still locked on his face. "Now then, Mr. Hion. You don't need to know my name. All you need to know is that I want that Quill you found, and I take what I want. So hand it here, why don't you?"

I gave him a nasty look that would make most people wet their pants out of fear, but he barely even seemed to react. "Over my dead body, Fivie."

The man looked back at me, mock sorrow spread over his face. "I was hoping you would acquiesce more easily; more importantly I wish you hadn't used such a…nasty slur for my people. Alas, it was not meant to be." Switching dialects to Sinnohan, the Fivie gargled something at the native, what I could only presume to be "Fire!"

He never got the chance.

Out of the middle of the forest, a black ball of energy appeared, hitting the man in the arm. Grunting, he dropped the bow. Taking this chance, Banette swooped in at the Sinnohan, knocking him out with a well placed punch to the head. "Well, that's one down."

"Good hit, Zulu!" A voice, this one southern Johtoan, came out of the forest. After it, a black-clothed guy, probably in his late teens or early twenties, hopped out of the forest, an umbreon running beside him.

The Unovan, as surprised as I was, fumbled for his pistol and pulled it out, loading it as quick as possible. He never got the chance to fire, as the dude in black pulled out a katana and sliced off the barrel. The vulpix tried to stare down the umbreon, but the much larger 'mon merely had to growl for the little fire fox to run, whimpering, back to its trainer.

The Fivie, obviously angry about the severance of his firearm, threw a punch, but the swordsman was faster; grabbing the punch with one hand in midair, he used his other hand to thump his opponent, knocking the Fivie out for the count.

"Jeez," Banette mind-mumbled.

"No kidding."

The swordsman sheathed the katana–I noticed he had metal gauntlets on, which explained how he knocked out a full-grown man with one punch–and approached me, wild battle fire replaced with a calmer expression.

I looked up at him, confusion having more of my eye than the iris did. "What…was that? Who are you?"

He scratched his head and looked down. "What, no thanks? Whatever. That was a world class beatdown, little buddy, and I'm Mika Jones. At your service."

Hello, all. How are you? Lovely. Anyway, my computer has some issues, and as such, I will not be able to upload for any of my supposedly "current" stories. As such, here's a new story. And yes, the Indy references are intentional and well-loved. Toodaloo.