Chapter 25: The Tower Part One
(A/N: So I have a confession to make, I've fallen into a rabbit hole recently… the Hololive one to be specific. So I've definitely spent a good amount of time between my job and getting ready for the new Genshin patch, minecrafting, and watching clips/streams from Hololivers. Such is life, the writing itch comes and goes as a result but there certainly is a story to be told and I appreciate the consistency my readers have had in keeping up with my story, so I won't be giving up anytime soon rest assured. Once again, hope you enjoy this chap, things are starting to heat up in Kalos!
General
The first thing Red heard in the morning was not his usual pidgey alarm.
For some reason, he could hear the sounds of his pikachu ring tone.
"Hellllooo?" Red uttered in a groggy voice as he picked up his phone.
"Hey Red… I made some breakfast for you downstairs, I hope you'll come down and enjoy it with me soon." The call ended abruptly but Red could tell that the meek voice on the other side of the call was definitely Yellow's.
Red glanced at the time and saw that it was 9:55am, about 5 minutes before his alarm.
He wondered if Yellow had planned her little wake up call on purpose as she definitely knew he tended to set his alarm for 10am, but he concluded that this was something too mischievous for Yellow to do.
With that, he got out of bed and started getting ready to go down and enjoy Yellow's breakfast.
"Oh man, I really did it…" Yellow murmured to herself.
"I can't believe I actually woke Red up early just so I could be the first one to give him a wake up call … I'm such a bad girl." Yellow lamented.
She had heard the other girls joking about using the newly obtained contact information to give Red a wake up call and this lead her to make up her mind that she would be the first one to do it.
She convinced herself this would be okay because she had done it in the past when they had camped out together… but for some reason, doing it over a phone call was a lot more embarrassing.
Unfortunately for Yellow, she hadn't realized that the other girls were joking about doing this, but this had at least given her the impetus to do something as she felt she had been too passive with Red recently.
Her attention fell on the omurice (omelette rice) that she had made for Red, she had wanted to do something special for Red since he was going to be challenging the trial today and she couldn't take part in it directly.
Of course, being the girl she was, she had also made meals for the others. It was just that there was probably more feelings involved in Red's portion.
Red came down shortly after and his nose piqued towards the aroma of fried rice, eggs, and ketchup.
He was surprised to see a set of home cooked meals on the table and Yellow standing next to them.
"Hey Red, your seat is right here next to mine, you should take a seat, I'm going to go get everyone." Yellow said sheepishly as she walked past him while avoiding eye contact.
Red took a seat and eventually the other members came down for food.
There was a general mixed feeling of gratefulness for the homecooked meal and regret at realizing that Yellow had played the powerful "win a man through his stomach" card.
Still, with the trial being today, the mood was heavier than normal and conversation trended towards how Blue, Platina and Red would be best prepared.
After discussing some potential preparation with Red and Blue, Platina addressed the rest of the team.
"We might need everyone's support in case Team Neo decides to interfere while we're busy with our trials, I think if the team focuses on trying to stop outside interference while also being ready for any internal interference we should be set."
The team found this suggestion to be generally prudent and as breakfast had finished they proceeded to set out.
Before everyone had left the room though, Yellow stopped Red at the door and asked him "So… how was it?"
Red realized that this was about the meal but decided to mess with Yellow a bit "Oh the trial preparation? I think we're going to be fine Yellow, Platina had a good plan for the rest of the team so we should be set."
Yellow pouted and lightly hit Red while saying "Reddd… you know that's what I wasn't asking about."
"Haha, sorry Yellow I was kidding around… the omurice was great, I would be happy to have your food everyday." Red said as he dropped his feigned ignorance…
Well, at least he thought he was giving it to Yellow now, but inadvertently he had hit Yellow with a whole different kind of attack.
Yellow's cheeks heated up and she went ahead to catch up with the team while muttering "Everyday…? Oh my…"
Red was bewildered at the reaction and before he could think about it too hard, Serena looked back and called out for him to catch up with the rest of the team.
He decided to figure this out some other time and joined up with the team as they set out for the tower.
The trip to the tower was relatively uneventful (compared to all the messes that had happened recently) and the team soon found itself at the base of the tower.
Near the entrance there were two gym trainers guarding the entrance.
When they noticed Red and co., one of the trainers whispered something into their phone and then after a moment, turned to face the group.
"We've been expecting you, can the trainers named Red, Blue, and Platina come forward? As for everyone else, we will be detailing you on where to help assist with our patrolling. We'll be counting on you!" The trainer remarked in a smart and curt manner, before standing to the side slightly to welcome the three challengers.
Some of the more accomplished trainers in the group noticed that the gym trainer's actions looked suspiciously similar to how the elite four gym trainers guarded the entrance to the Pokemon League Challenge.
This gave the impression that the gym trainers in charge of guard duty were not your run of the mill trainers.
With the urgency of finishing the trial and earning the rite to mega evolution on the line, the trio promptly said a brief goodbye and good luck to their teammates and entered the tower.
Platina (POV)
As I entered the massive tower, I couldn't help but marvel at the scale of the structure.
For how ancient it looked, it was bigger than any structure that I had ever seen. Even the massive Spear Pillar in its current state had shrunk down due to the test of time.
To be fair, the Spear Pillar was actually ancient, while this building just looked old.
As I was musing about the wonder that was the tower's existence, I was suddenly snapped back into reality by a familiar voice.
I saw my potential rival/friend Korrina standing near the entrance and heard her say "Alright for the trials, you will all be taking different paths so we can properly judge your abilities."
It looked like today wouldn't be a day for small talk as I was promptly led to an old looking spiral staircase.
It… would seem that part of the trial would just be climbing this tower.
I was encouraged to bring out Lopunny so I immediately acquiesced and let her out of her ball.
She looked excited to get some action for the first time in a while and we both started ascending the tower.
As I went up the tower, I noticed that the motifs on the walls of the tower seemed to depict variations of the symbol I saw on Sapphire's mega charm keystone.
It would be fair to deduce this was probably the symbol for mega evolution.
I was always curious as to why a phenomena as powerful as mega evolution was so rarely discussed back in Sinnoh.
My competitive side flared up at this thought.
I started to imagine the kind of havoc I could wreak back home with my potential Mega Lopunny as well as future mega pokemon.
Of course, the Pokemon League would probably get upset with me and do something to balance things out if I went too far…
But can't a girl dream about beating the shit out of all the Sinnoh Gym Leaders in record time twice?
I think it's about time for the gym leader's to get a grim reminder that there was still a champion level titan out there to wreck them.
With these trivial thoughts in mind, I finally reached a conspicuous looking room with Lopunny.
We both peered inside and were surprised to see a room full to the brim with what looked like oversized square metal tiles about two meters wide. The tiles were split in the middle by a pit that looked to be about 8 meters deep or so.
As for the configuration … at a glance the left side looked to be 10… no 11 tiles wide and around 20 tiles long.
This held true for the opposite side so it seems like the room was designed symmetrically.
The other thing that made this even more surprising was the fact that there were trainers with pokemon standing on the set of tiles on the right side of the pit.
All that information was processed in the course of ten seconds or so. As I tried to deduce what the trial was going to be about, my attention was distracted by two different stimuli in the room.
First of all, at the end of the room there was a distinct looking stone with a cream and brown color to it. With it matching the color of Lopunny's coat, this was undoubtedly the mega stone for Lopunny.
Secondly, the overseer for the event coughed lightly to get my attention which broke me from my analysis mode.
I sheepishly looked over and nodded in her direction.
As a consummate professional, she didn't remark on me zoning out and proceeded to explain the challenge.
"Hello Platina, the idea behind the Tower of Mastery's trials is to test the bonds between trainers. For you and Lopunny's specific test, we will have you splitting up in this room and testing how in sync you are with each other. The specialties in this room are that some of these plates are not solid so if you step on the wrong one, you will fall to the bottom of these pits onto the Snorlax's we have sleeping below."
I didn't really know what kind of tsukkomi to make in response to that "safety" system but the difficulty of the challenge kept my brain focused.
The overseer continued to explain "On the left side of the field, the trainer will be asked to walk through the tiles, and on the right side, Lopunny's correct path is the exact same. Only one path is correct, and if you step on the wrong tile, it will drop within a second. You can use whatever method you want to communicate with each other on the path forward, but we will also have trainers on the correct path to obstruct your progress. The last thing to note is that some of the plates will occasionally shake gently to denote that the tile is on the wrong path, but only the trainer's side can see this so you must make sure that Lopunny gets the message in time. Finally, the last catch is that if Lopunny falls into the pit, the challenge attempt is automatically over. Both of you must make it to the end to succeed in the challenge."
Before I could affirm that I understood, the overseer started speaking again "To summarize, both of you must find your way to the other side in order to pass, and the tiles that are shaking are a no go."
I appreciated the thoroughness of the explanation and even thought I didn't need the summary, I had the feeling that someone less patient like Blue probably would have appreciated that summary.
With that being said, a thought came to mind, "How many attempts do I get to complete this?"
The overseer gave a cunning look and said "Unfortunately, we can't disclose how many attempts you have so you will have to work off the assumption that it can be any number, including zero.
And with that damning revelation, my trial for the mega stone began.
(A/N: So the trials begin. I know more or less what I want to do for Platina's trial and am still formulating exactly what I want for Blue and Red's trials. I think that when it comes to the other team member's mega stones, the trials will probably be a shorter due to the difficulty level properly scaling with their skill compared to the maximum level difficulty of the current trio's trials. Once again, I find myself feeling bad for my readers that this chapter took a while. I'm currently nearing the holiday season for ecommerce/retail so my job is keeping me properly busy. With all the potential instability going on here in the U.S. with the recent election, I hope y'all are keeping safe and staying indoors if possible. See y'all in the next chap.)