Episode 36: The Ancient Tomb
After Niko defeated Winona and earned the Feather Badge, he and his friends walked over to the pokémon center—on the other end of the city—and had a meal before they packed up and left Fortree for their next destination.
"So, two badges left…" JJ said as he examined the map on his pokénav. "It looks like the last two major gyms in Hoenn are Mossdeep and Sootopolis City. Looks like Mossdeep is closer, though."
"Let's head there, then!"
"Only one problem, though," JJ said, a slight look of concern on his face. "It's an island. How're we going to get there?"
"We'll figure that out later. That's what we usually do," Niko said.
"JJ's right, Niko," Brittany added, "We should have a game plan for this."
"Well, there is Lilycove City on the way, maybe we can find someone there?" JJ suggested. "It also has a Pokémon Contest coming up, so I think we should enter, Brittany,"
"Oh, yeah! I've heard about that one! It's famous for being the first contest hall in the Hoenn region!" Brittany exclaimed, feeling ready to take on another contest. "I need two more ribbons to enter the Grand Festival, anyways, so why not compete there?"
"It's best to compete anywhere you can," Niko added. "By the way, JJ, what type is the Mossdeep City Gym?"
"Looks like psychic type…oh! That's, well, interesting," He said, looking surprised and curious at the same time.
"What's up?" Niko asked.
"There are two gym leaders. You'll have to do a double battle to win."
"Looking forward to it, then!" Niko said, looking determined. He thought it about it more in that moment, and only remembered having one double battle…ever. That was with JJ against Gabby and Ty. Would he have to battle the Mossdeep Gym leaders without a partner? Niko wondered how much more difficult it might be to have to control two pokémon at the same time in a high stakes match like a gym battle. Plus, there's no way these two would have only two pokémon, right? They'd probably have more than two, which would raise the difficulty of the battle. It would also be a significant factor in any strategy he came up with.
Ultimately, though, Niko settled on the idea that he needed to train more. And train in a different way than he previously had. As he and his friends got up to grab their bags from their rooms and prepare to leave Fortree City, Niko started considering which pokémon would work well together. He has quick and slow pokémon—three and two, respectively. Could he go for an offensive/defensive combination, or a solidly offensive and solidly defensive combination? Would he be better off using pokémon on his team that naturally worked well together? He hadn't thought much about that—all of his teammates seemed to enjoy one another.
As Brittany and JJ bought more supplies for their nearly week-long trip to Lilycove City, Niko continued to ponder this, earning his little brother's attention.
"Niko, you alright?" Jake asked curiously, grabbing Niko's long sleeve to get his attention.
"What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine buddy. Just thinking."
"Thinkin' about what?"
"This next gym battle, Jake. I've never really done a double battle before."
"Oh, yeah. I bet it's going to be a lot different. But we can help you!"
Suddenly a light bulb lit up in Niko's head. Of course! Why hadn't I thought of that? "Jake, you're a genius!"
"Yeah, I know," Jake said rather modestly.
"Let's have a double battle later today, after we've walked for a bit, yeah?" Niko suggested. Jake nodded in approval just as JJ and Brittany finished the shopping and motioned the group to leave the tree-topped city.
While they walked along Route 120—a rather wet strip of land, due to near-constant rain storms—Niko explained his new training regime to his friends to get their input. For the most part, Brittany and JJ thought it would work well, but with one problem: none of them had psychic types.
"Oh, I won't worry too much about that yet. I don't have anything that can beat psychic anyways!" Niko said rather nonchalantly.
"Are you sure you'll be fine?" Brittany asked cautiously. So far in Hoenn, Niko had been fine with the occasional loss or difficult battle, and while this was certainly an improvement in her eyes, she was still concerned that his natural lack of confidence could still get triggered at any given moment.
"Yeah, I think we can do this. My team and I have gotten out of some tight spots before, and they're far stronger than they seem. I mean—swellow beat a dragon type!" Niko said, still proud of his swallow bird's performance in the Fortree Gym.
"You make a good point, Niko," JJ responded. "But I think we'll have to test your double battling skills as much as possible. And, hey, it'll help all of us train, too!"
The group all agreed, seeing the opportunity to not only help out a friend, but to improve their own battling skills too. Brittany and JJ wanted to practice to get ideas for their performances. Jake, on the other hand, wanted to get better at battling in general, since he aspired to challenge gyms just like Niko one day.
After a few hours of walking, the group stopped near a rather large lake southeast of Fortree City to have dinner and set up their small camp. While they were doing that, the pokémon came out and spent time their helping their trainers or playing in the lake or small puddles surrounding the larger body of water. Or they were numel…sleeping.
Niko then broke down their training for the following week or so until the Mossdeep Gym. "Hey, everyone!" Niko said, calling his pokémon over. "So we found out our next gym battle is in Mossdeep City, and it'll be a double battle. So at least two of you will be battling side-by-side, got it?" The pokémon nodded, seeming to understand what Niko was saying. "Great. Well, only manectric has really had any experience in official double battles, so we'll be changing up how we train for now. We'll be battling Jake, JJ, and Brittany, and they'll also be doing double battles too! It'll give us an opportunity to learn how to work together as a team! So, how does it sound?"
Numel, obviously, hardly heard Niko, as it was dozing off to dreamland. Grovyle and manectric seemed intrigued by the idea, and looked willing to participate. Swellow seemed to have reservations, judging by its look, and lairon seemed excited about it.
"Numel?" Niko asked his fire type. "How do you feel about it buddy?"
Numel looked up groggily at its trainer and shrugged before falling back to sleep, clearly upsetting lairon, who is usually tolerant (at best) of numel's laziness. The iron armor pokémon kicked dirt at the numb pokémon, which seemed to anger it. Moments later, the two were exchanging mud slaps and embers.
"Stop! Stop it you two!" Niko shouted before grovyle got in between them, firing bullet seeds at the ground, which generated a loud enough noise to quiet everyone down. Niko sighed loudly. "Lairon, numel, you do not fight each other. Got it?"
Lairon and numel both looked at Niko, angry with him now that he interrupted their spat. Numel even rolled its eyes before descending back to sleep.
"I SAID GOT IT?" Niko shouted. Numel ignored him, though. Lairon, still upset, turned and walked around to the other end of their group, refusing to look at numel. "Alright, don't use lairon and numel in a tag team—noted."
Niko was about to head to bed when he heard a rustling in the bushes nearby. Curious, he got up, flashlight in hand, and walked to the bush. He pried open the branches to see an injured pokémon sitting on the ground. It was a reptile-like pokémon with sickly green skin, a swirling tail of the same color, and two fin-like objects protruding from each side of its head with small yellow spikes on them. However, the most intriguing aspect of the pokémon was that it was flickering in and out of sight as if it were turning invisible.
"You alright?" Niko asked the pokémon. It slowly nodded its head and tried to get back up but collapsed onto the ground again. "Oh, don't worry, let me help you," Niko said as he tried to grab the reptile's paw. It obliged with relative ease and Niko pulled it up onto its feet. Slowly, the trainer brought the pokémon over to its campsite and set it down in front of what would have been the fire. "So…what happened?" Niko asked as he sat across from it, fully realizing he couldn't understand any of it.
However, the pokémon tried its best. It pointed behind it, in a northwestern direction, although not quite the way Niko and his friends had come from. Then it changed its color to a dark gray color, as if trying to resemble steel. That's when Niko decided to grab his pokédex from his backpack and analyze this pokémon:
"Kecleon, the color swap pokémon. Normal type. A pokémon that has the ability to alter its body colors to match its surroundings. A kecleon reverts to its original colors if its startled."
"Hmm…never heard of kecleon before. You sound really interesting, though," Niko said, and the kecleon clearly appreciated the compliment. "So, you got hurt in that direction. Was it a wall or a machine?" Kecleon shook its head. "Was it a human, like me?" Once more, it shook its head. "Was it a pokémon?"
Kecleon nodded.
"Alright then. A pokémon hurt you. Was it a big pokémon?" Kecleon nodded again. Niko then stood up. "As big as I am?" Kecleon shook its head. "Bigger?" It nodded. "Alright, so a big, gray pokémon attacked you. That's really weird. Why would it do that?"
Kecleon shrugged.
"Well, you can stay with us for the night, then. Here, have something to drink," Niko pulled out a water bottle and tossed it to the color swap pokémon, who took it and eagerly drank it. "Feeling better?" Kecleon nodded. "That's good. Well, I'm off to bed. Feel free to stay as long as you want."
"AHHHHH!" Niko awoke to a scream. Shooting up in his sleeping bag, he looked over to see Brittany and JJ freaked out by kecleon, who evidently decided to stay at their campsite.
"Morning, Brittany," Niko said in a groggily tone. "Meet kecleon. It's a reptile pokémon that can change color."
"And what the hell is it doing here?" She asked. Brittany was hardly a fan of reptiles, which was ironic, considering her first pokémon was a turtle. However, she certainly tolerated them more than Niko did bugs.
"It got attacked last night, so I talked with it for a bit, gave it some water, and let it stay here."
"Do you know what attacked it?" Jake asked, interested in kecleon's color-change ability. Mudkip and seedot were watching as it switched between blue and brown.
Niko shook his head. "No idea, but it was a pokémon. And it was bigger than I am, and dark gray. It also came from over there, apparently," He pointed in the same direction as the chameleon pokémon, who nodded to confirm.
"Should we go find it? Maybe it invaded kecleon's home or something. Is that what happened, kecleon?" Brittany asked, quickly getting over the excitement of seeing a reptile in her camp.
"I think that'd be a good idea," Niko said, getting out of his sleeping bag and getting dressed behind a tree before packing up his stuff and journeying with JJ and kecleon to find out what happened to it, with the color swap pokémon leading the way. After travelling down a trail for some time, they found an opening that led to a large clearing in the forest. There were puddles littered around a series of six pointed rocks, all surrounding a large tomb-like structure.
"What the…?" JJ asked, approaching the rock. "Niko, this kind of looks like what we saw back in the desert, right?"
Niko examined the structure, which had seven dots on it in a hexagonal formation, with one dot in the center. "Yeah…kecleon, is this it?" The normal type nodded, turning gray once more. "So, is there a pokémon inside here that hurt you?" Once again, it nodded, but pointed around the structure. Niko and JJ walked around to see an entrance leading inside it.
"Oh my god…" JJ said, unsure of what exactly to say. "Niko…want to explore it?" The brown-haired trainer nodded silently before slowly creeping into the tunnel that led downwards into another chamber. Pokéball at the ready, and kecleon hiding behind him, Niko walked into the chamber and saw exactly what the color swap pokémon was trying to communicate to him.
In the center of the chamber was a large pokémon with a spherical torso, two arms that hung at its sides, and seven dots in the same shape as the tomb on the outside. As he pulled out his pokédex, he noticed the pokémon wasn't exactly asleep.
"Uh, Niko…" JJ said, slowly backing away with kecleon.
"Registeel, the iron pokémon. Steel type. Its body is harder than any other kind of metal. The body metal is composed of a mysterious substance. Not only is it hard, it shrinks and stretches flexibly."
"…run…" JJ said, turning and bolting back up the tunnel with kecleon. Niko looked up from his pokédex to see registeel moving in its direction. Unable to read its facial expression—as it hardly had a "face"—Niko backed away and ran off with his friend as well, narrowing escaping a beam of electric energy that hit the ceiling above him, collapsing the earth and creating a wall between him and registeel.
"WOW!" Niko said, panting. "So, kecleon, that was a registeel, and it shouldn't be bothering you anytime soon. It collapsed the ceiling of the tunnel we were in, and I don't think it will be able to get out anytime soon."
Kecleon looked up at Niko and, without a second thought, ran up to hug his leg. Niko smiled warmly.
"You're welcome, buddy. Now, we've gotta get back to our camp and continue on our journey. But, here," Niko said, pulling out a candy bar. "You can have this. I'm not sure if you're allowed to, but try it, and if you don't like it, don't worry. It's my favorite, though."
Kecleon took the chocolate and peanut butter candy bar in its hands and, after looking up at Niko and JJ one last time, walked off in the opposite direction, past registeel's tomb. Niko and JJ then headed back to their campsite, where Brittany and Jake were eagerly waiting for them.
"What happened?" Brittany asked as she finished packing up.
"Kecleon was attacked by a pokémon called registeel. Apparently, it lives in one of those tombs like the one you saw back in the desert."
"You think it was another pokémon like registeel?" Brittany asked.
"No clue, but whatever, registeel locked itself back in its tomb with some electric type move. Could have been zap cannon, but I'm not too sure. Was too busy running from it."
"It attacked you!?" Brittany asked in shock.
"Yup," Niko nodded, again nonchalantly.
"Whatever. Let's just get going and put this registeel behind us," Brittany said, hoisting her backpack over her shoulders and motioning her friends to continue onwards towards Lilycove. Their training would have to take place some other time.