CHAPTER 1 - THE SEALED CHAMBER
It took some getting used to, swimming behind a pokemon using Surf, but Vincent had to admit it was efficient. He looked back at the fading shoreline of Slateport City to discover he was making great time. The bony brown fish in front of him seemed to understand, too, that its freedom hinged on whether it accomplished its task well or not.
Vincent had half a mind to question where the Relicanth had come from, but the man he was working for, known only to him as "the man with the black suit," did not appreciate questions.
Most likely it was stolen, just as Vincent himself had needed to steal that poor trainer's Wailord. He felt bad about it, but then again, how else was he supposed to earn money for food?
*****
The beaches of Hoenn were nicer than the ones in Johto, the girl tanning on Slateport beach would admit at least that much. But it still couldn't compare to her homeland. Especially in terms of pokemon trainers. Terri decided that if her dad was able to become a gym leader here, that didn't say much for the strength level of the trainers.
So far, this assumption had been correct, as even her newest capture, Zubat, had been winning battles. Pushovers.
Terri was brought out of her reverie by a splash of water over her head. She looked down the beach, ready to scream at someone. Her gaze fell upon a scrawny boy about her age out treading water behind a large blue jellyfish pokemon.
"Sorry!" he called out. "I didn't mean to splash you that much, but I had to get your attention. Have you seen some guy about my height swim by on a Relicanth?"
The boy waded up to the sand and sat down dejectedly. His Tentacruel laid a stinger on his knee in what was supposed to be a comforting manner, but looked slightly disturbing instead. Terri found herself walking over to him.
The things I do for other people, she thought, trying to pull her soaked hair into a ponytail before remembering she had cut it short for her fourteenth birthday.
"A guy on a Relicanth came by here earlier and stole my Wailord," the swimmer explained. "I'll probably never find him now."
Now that he was sitting on land, Terri decided the boy wasn't bad looking at all. The orange cutoff shirt and ripped jean shorts did nothing to help his appearance, but she saw a certain innocent charm in him.
"I can help you look," Terri blushed while making the offer, "if you have another water pokemon for me to swim behind."
She glanced at his mean-looking Tentacruel, hoping it wouldn't be another one of those. Its presence unnerved her slightly. She had assumed he had a different water pokemon at least.
The boy released another pokemon into the ocean next to Tentacruel that looked unfortunately similar. It was the pokemon's unevolved form, Tentacool.
As long as I get a date out of this, Terri thought, I suppose I will put up with it.
"Well, let's go then!" the boy said in an attempt to be cheerful, diving into the water and resurfacing behind his jellyfish.
"This had better be worth it," Terri mumbled to herself as she also got in.
The current created by Tentacool and Tentacruel carried the two north past Slateport before they were forced to turn east.
"Thanks for helping," the blond boy commented between strokes. "I'm Carter by the way."
"Terri Evans."
Despite Carter's lean arms, he was able to swim much longer than Terri had anticipated, and she felt guilty for making them take rest breaks at every little sandbar they came across. She suspected the conversation the jellyfish had been carrying on was about her wimpiness, in fact. It was during one of these breaks that Carter spotted what appeared to be a cave sticking out of the water.
"You think we should go in?" he asked.
"If this guy is a pokemon thief," Terri reasoned, "that could be where he hides all his stuff."
As they approached the small cave, however, Terri's nerves began to get the better of her.
"Carter, I'm not sure this is a good idea," she spoke quickly and shakily. "What if the guy is dangerous? I mean, I don't even know what a Relicanth is..."
Tentacool exchanged a glance with his evolved form while Carter stifled a laugh. The opening of the cave, a rocky dome protruding above the water, stood right before them.
"It's part rock type with tough outer scales," the fisherman explained. "Definitely slow but with some powerful attacks. Relicanth is rare, so I'll give you that one. I need to get you up on your fish knowledge sometime!"
With that, Carter and his two pokemon swam forward into the dark hole and Terri had no choice but to follow. When her eyes became adjusted to the darkness, she could see there was a rock shelf to climb up on. Eager to be on land again to rest her arms and legs, Terri quickly scrambled up to the top of the rock, only to discover a whole enclosed room before her. Carter retrieved his pokemon into their balls and came up to join her.
At the far end, a figure holding a flashlight was facing the wall.
"It's him!" Carter whispered, accidently giving away their presence.
The shadowy figure turned to face them, and Terri readied a pokeball in her hand for a possible fight. They approached the far end of the cave slowly until the man at the far end gasped.
"You're the Wailord's trainer!" he blurted out. "I... I'm sorry... I swear you can have it back when I'm done here!"
Terri was not one to let her guard down so quickly, but apparently her partner was. Carter just walked right up to the thief to see what he was doing. It appeared the thief was actually no older than either of them, holding a flashlight in one hand and a chart with strange symbols on it in the other.
"I've been translating the runes on the wall here," he shone the flashlight to reveal carvings in the rock wall, "and it says I need both a Relicanth and a Wailord for some purpose... but now I see it also says I need a pokemon with Dig, and I don't have that either."
Rolling her eyes in resentment, Terri released a small green rock creature from the pokeball in her hand. This seemed harmless enough to her, deciding that the thief must be just some crazy treasure hunter.
"Where do you want Larvitar to dig?" she asked.
"Just right here I guess."
"Who are you anyway?" Carter asked him. "I mean, I've met a few treasure hunters before on that abandoned ship near Dewford, but I've never seen you around."
"Well first of all, I'm Vincent," he began, "but I'm not a treas..."
While digging, Larvitar had discovered that the layer of rock was not actually very thick at all and instead gave way to a large underground stream. The small rock pokemon fell forward into the decent-sized hole it had created and plunged into the darkness before the others heard a splash. Terri began screaming for her Larvitar while Carter released his Tentacool into the water below.
"Terri's Larvitar fell into the water down there," he called to it, "see if you can find it."
The red orbs on the jellyfish pokemon's head began to flow, giving off just enough light for it to navigate around. After gauging how far the fall was, Vincent prepared to leap into the hole himself.
"What are you doing?" Terri asked the pale-faced boy incredulously.
"I have to keep going," he said with a look of defeat, "or I won't get paid."
Carter kneeled down and peeked into the darkness where he could see the two orbs of red light coming from his pokemon, along with a third smaller light in the middle.
"It looks like there's enough room for Wailord to fit down there," he commented. "I bet that's what you need him for."
Nodding, Vincent produced a pokeball from his belt and released the large pokemon into the underground stream. It filled up nearly the entire space and Carter hoped that his theory was right and Wailord wouldn't get stuck.
"Don't worry buddy, it's me, Carter," he reassured the massive whale pokemon before it started thrashing around very much. "We're just... exploring here I guess."
He hopped down through Larvitar's hole, landing on the squishy body of Wailord. Vincent soon followed, and Terri, muttering to herself about how Carter better be a romantic, joined them.
As she sat down behind Carter, who was behind the water spout, she found a limp body being flung up from the water into her arms. Realizing it was her Larvitar, Terri quickly returned it to its pokeball.
I hope Larvitar is okay, she thought briefly.
Vincent took a seat behind her as she watched Tentacool inch up the side of Wailord's body and into Carter's arms where he held it.
"Let's move forward I guess," the orange-shirted boy addressed his pokemon.
The underground stream seemed to lead nowhere in Terri's opinion, so she focused instead on the eerie red light given off by Carter's Tentacool.
"I didn't know they could do that," she pointed to the pokemon in Carter's lap.
"He stores up sunlight during the day in order to see at night," the fisherman explained. "Tentacool is a really cool pokemon, you just have to give him a chance."
The current of the underwater stream suddenly began to pick up. A deep, siren-like sound filled the tunnel, which Carter explained was Wailord's voice, and that it was worried. Their little underground river was now a raging stream. Nobody could open their mouth to speak due to the violent spraying water coming off Wailord's front fins. It was therefore in the three trainers' best interest to lie down flat against the whale's body to avoid being thrown off.
Before anyone could react, the tunnel, relatively narrow given the space taken up by Wailord, gave way to a large open area. Tentacool's spheres of light showed a waterfall's crest ahead, to everyone's general horror. Wailord shot straight off the end of the large waterfall and right back onto the front of a second waterfall that faced the first.
Terri looked back at the opposing waterfalls in shock, the experience having updated her definition of fear. In fact, she hadn't even screamed, instead going from "scream mode" to "holding her breath mode."
Upon seeing the river branch off up ahead, Wailord fought against the current and took the path that made a sharp right, landing the group in a pond of totally calm water. Carter retrieved his Wailord and the three trainers breathed a sigh of relief as they waded to a shallow end of the pool where there were more rocks to climb up onto.
"No other pokemon could have cleared that twenty food gap between waterfalls," Vincent said, switching his flashlight back on so Carter could return Tentacool to its pokeball.
Another set of runs were on the far wall. Vincent translated out loud as he got his sopping wet chart back out.
"We sealed these... Regi... pokemon away," he read slowly, "We... feared it. Those with... courage, take these... and open the doors."
Sitting on the ground below were fist-sized chunks of three different substances: a blue crystal, a brown rock, and a shiny gray rock. Vincent stored these away in his backpack, along with the rune chart. Everyone was silent for a moment.
"H-how do we get out?" Terri asked cautiously. "I mean, I thought there would be a way out at the end..."
The trio knew there was no way Wailord could swim upstream back to the start, and thus began frantically searching the room for an exit. Now that the possibility of being trapped was real, it wasn't fun anymore.
"Here!" Carter cried. "In the corner!"
He had discovered a stream of water that flowed into a small hole in the rock wall. Vincent bent over to shine his flashlight in it. When he looked at Carter in confusion afterward, Terri dreaded the words that were going to come out of his mouth.
"It just... ends," he said plainly.
"No!" Terri screamed at him. "It can't be a dead end! Make it go through!"
The three sat down in silence by the dead-end-hole-in-the-wall fora moment, each trying to think what had gone wrong. It was Carter who eventually solved the problem with his knowledge of water pokemon.
"I bet Relicanth would fit in that hole," he said to Vincent. "It has this signature Head Smash move, maybe we need to use that."
Vincent nodded, releasing the bony fish pokemon into the stream. Terri had never been so much in love with Carter as the moment when Relicanth's head busted through the wall and bright sunlight shone in through the hole.
"But how do we get out?" she wondered out loud.
"I think they expected the Dig pokemon to still be alive," Carter grinned mischievously at her.
"That's not funny!" she retorted.
Outside, the Relicanth gave one more good Head Smash, and it appeared the trainers had vastly underestimated the attack's power. They watched on in shock as the entire stone wall before them crumbled away into the ocean. The cave they had started out in was only a few hundred feet away now, straight in front of them.
Traveling on Wailord this time, the trip back to Slateport City was quick. Upon reaching the harbor, Terri and Carter immediately headed south toward the pokemon center.
"I... have to go meet someone," Vincent hesitated. "No hard feelings?"
Carter smiled.
"Nah, it was fun in the end."
*****
The sign read "Pal Park." Nia didn't quite know where this square shaped building would be located on a map, despite having lived in Sinnoh her whole life. All she remembered was swimming for a long ways and then running even farther. That was all she could recall from the day's travel. That, and Horsea's evolution of course.
Nia had seen it coming for weeks, ever since Horsea had mastered the Brine attack. Today the evolution had happened while fending off one of the many Tentacool that had approached them while swimming. In fact, Tentacool was now on Nia's hate list, earning a spot directly below the man who murdered her parents. She was far too tired to deal with emotions concerning him right now though.
"I said, are you okay?" Nia finally noticed the young man who had been watching her stare at the "Pal Park" sign for the past few minutes.
"No, not really," Nia sighed, turning to face the trainer. "I've been looking for a police station all day and I don't know where I am."
The boy laughed, obviously unaware of her situation. Nia realized that under normal circumstances she would have found him attractive.
"You're heading way in the wrong direction for that!" he said. "This is basically the southern bounds of Sinnoh here, no city past here, nothing!"
Nia stared off into the distance, annoyed with herself for having run away to nowhere. She should have just tried to make it east out of Sandgem and through the fields in the beginning, but escaping over the water had for some stupid reason seemed like a better idea.
"I'm finished here," the boy continued. "I can give you a ride to Jubilife City as long as you don't mind riding on a Skarmory with me."
She considered the offer. Either way, she would have to end up in Jubilife City eventually, and this would shorten her trip to about an hour. Plus it avoided going through Sandgem again.
"Okay," Nia told him, hanging her head to let her brown hair cover her face. "I'll fly with you. Thank you very much. My name's Nia."
"Hi Nia, I'm Keith," the tall boy produced a strange yellow pokeball from his backpack.
It soon released a large gray bird pokemon that he climbed onto. Nia stepped up onto the Skarmory's back, taking the hand Keith offered, and they took off.
"So what all did you do at Pal Park?" Nia asked conversationally once they were soaring slowly over the river she had spent the better part of the day in.
"Well," Keith thought for a second, "last week I caught this Skarmory and trained it for a couple days straight. Zangoose learned Psycho Cut while I was using him to train with Skarmory. And yesterday..."
"You've only had this Skarmory for a week?" Nia exclaimed, suddenly feeling unsafe as she glanced down and saw they were well above the treetops.
She gripped the back of Keith's navy blue jacket as an extra safety measure and forced herself to look upward at the sky instead of down.
"Yeah, but he knows what he's doing," Keith reassured her. "We had this flying business taken care of by about the third day. I only had one really bad crash."
Forcing herself to stop listening at that point, Nia gazed now toward the sunset, which really did look pretty. And before she knew it, they were back on the ground again and facing the front doors of the Jubilife Police Station.
"I hope you find what you're looking for," Keith waved her off as he and Skarmory left to go to an undisclosed location.
It then occurred to Nia that not once had he been nosy about why she needed the police. Of course, he also coerced her into riding on a brand new bird pokemon...
She pushed the thought from her head and walked inside the building.
END CHAPTER 1