They walked for a few hours before anyone was comfortable enough to speak. Stumpy was the first to say something, breaking the silence with an unusually subdued tone. "So, what did that Charizard mean when he said you were dangerous? That you would 'spread your rot'? It doesn't sound like he was just mad that his friend got hurt."
"Don't worry about it." Gaia dismissed, "It isn't your business."
"I thought that Charizard was going to kill me!" Cinder said, animated but still just above a whisper. "It was worse even than my dad. But I stuck up for you, we're a team now! This involves us." He was right, Oscar thought. And the Meowth was already out of the bag about their presence, perhaps throwing them a bone wouldn't hurt?
"Yeah, well, no one asked you to! We could have gotten away!"
"But we are still in danger too! C'mon Treecko, we are a team now. How can we work together to get stronger if you are keeping secrets like that from us! I saw the picture, that Charizard was just one of five Pokémon on that team! It seems like they all are going to be hunting us down. Cut us some slack!"
"Well…" Gaia hesitated. These were good points, Oscar admitted. Of course if one of his assistance had pulled that line of reasoning on him back at base, he would have told them the information was need-to-know and they didn't need to know. His assistants knew better than to ask prying questions in the first place, however, so he never needed to give that talk. They were not with Team Rocket right now, however, and these two Pokémon were currently their lifeline in this world. It was only smart to appease them. But how much to tell…
Gaia looked at him and he nodded. Time to see how well she could say something without giving useful information away. "We used to be part of another… team. We were not really bandits, but we worked with bandits. We mostly, studied stuff, you know? Tried to find useful information to make the team stronger. The Riolu and his friends were sent to stop us, and there was an accident. The Riolu got hurt, and one of the… artefacts we were looking at blew up. That's how we ended up here." Perfect! Oscar couldn't have said it better himself.
They continued to walk in silence for a moment, before Cinder spoke up. "Wait, what's so dangerous about studying stuff? Why would they need to send a Charizard that strong to stop you? And others too?" Oscar was beginning to think the Charmander line was smarter than he gave them credit for. "And why would bandits need to study stuff in the first place? That doesn't make any sense."
"Well it's true, it's your problem if you don't believe me!"
"Wait, if you only studied stuff, does that mean you didn't fight? How come you are so strong then, Treecko?" Treecko? What was Oscar, chopped liver? Did Pokémon only respect brawn or something?
"W-well," Gaia lost a little confidence now. She was strong, but couldn't stand up to the main fighting Pokémon of the grunts at base. She was too young, unevolved and not formally trained. "No, we didn't really fight much. I trained with a lot of the battlers, but I never saw any battles myself." She let her eyes drift to the ground as they walked. Perhaps Oscar had underestimated just how important fighting was to Pokémon. He assumed the sparring exercises would be enough to meet her needs, but he was starting to think that this was not the case.
"Oh!" Stumpy noticed the change in mood and moved to walk next to Gaia. She didn't resist when he brushed his head against her. "Don't worry, the Boss doesn't need any stupid studying done or anything like that! You are super strong, and I'm sure you will get plenty of battles in when we get home. Don't worry!"
"Yeah!" Cinder added, putting his claw on her shoulder on the other end from Stumpy "your previous Boss might not have seen your talent, but our Boss won't hesitate!" Gaia looked between them with a sparkle in her eye, the previous bad blood between them seemingly forgotten at the prospect of future battle and glory. Pokémon were odd creatures.
"Thanks, guys. I know I can be kind of a jerk, but its just so frustrating never getting to let loose, you know?" They nodded, they knew.
"Wait, I thought you couldn't read. I thought you needed to read to have a job studying stuff?" Cinder asked, it was a good observation.
"Oh, we can read, just not those footprint symbols or whatever you have here. We can read, oh what was it called again?" She looked behind her to Oscar.
"Unown script."
"Yeah, that." Cinder thought for a moment.
"What, like the Human language? How do you know that? Only Guildmasters and Guardians know how to read that, from what I heard."
"There are Humans here?" This was not the most shocking thing Oscar had heard or seen this last week, but still very important. It left a lot of questions that needed to be answered.
"Nah," Stumpy dismissed, "they are just in stories. No one has even seen one."
"They aren't just stories dummy, the hideout is in some Human ruins! They just aren't around anymore, is all." So old stone structures or something? What kind of ruins would bandits hide out in?
"What happened to them?" Gaia asked this time.
"No one knows, was waaay before our time. Some say the legendaries united to wipe them out for challenging them. Some say they used magic to run away into space to escape some great disaster. There are lots of stories, no one really knows. However it happened, they are gone now, and they left a lot of cool stuff behind."
"Yeah like those TM disks!" Stumpy said excitedly, "I want to learn shadow ball! I never had the poke to afford one though."
"The Guild has most of the good stuff, what with all the exploring they do. The Guardian families have most of the rest of it. Places like our hideout were picked clean a long time ago. None of the machines there now could be moved, and they are probably all broken in the first place. If they aren't, no one knows how to work them."
Machines! These eight days could not pass fast enough, Oscar decided.
"I'm sure Master could figure it out! He's great with machines." Dammit Gaia, you were doing so well.
"Master?" Cinder seemed confused for a second. "Oh yeah, hey wait." He said, turning to look at Oscar, stopping while doing so. The rest of the party stopped as well. "Are you her boss?"
"Technically…" he was her owner, and she was functionally a slave. He doubted any of the Pokémon here were familiar with the concept, and he made sure not to expose Gaia to it.
"So you are the reason she never got to fight?"
"We were researchers, we left fighting to the grunts."
"So you wanted to look at dusty old books all day instead of battle?" He seemed confused, and looked at Gaia with some pity. "I feel sorry for you, I get now why are you so wound up."
"It wasn't that bad…" she said, clearly sharing the Charmander's opinion on the subject.
"I mean no offense, I get why you might not want to fight, you are kinda wimpy. But look at her! Why would you stop her from fighting! She would probably have evolved by now and be even stronger. Way more useful than some books if you ask me." He nodded definitively.
"We will see how wimpy you think I am after I embed your head into half a meter of oak!"
"Well, you couldn't do that to me!" Stumpy strutted up, striking a pose and waggling his brows. Oscar picked up a small stone on the side of the trail and chucked it gently, but firmly, upside the mutt's head.
"I can use rocks." Stumpy rubbed the back of his head and chuckled.
"I knew you had some fight in you! Pokémon are supposed to fight." Oscar got played. He wasn't sure if he was more embarrassed that Pokémon had gotten a rise out of him, or that the Pokémon were not even into double-digit ages yet. He was suddenly very glad he was the only former-human in the group, he would never hear the end of it otherwise.
"It's a couple of days before we get to the mystery dungeon, so we won't get a proper fight until then." Cinder said, turning his attention back to the road and begging to walk again. Apparently they were on the move now, as the rest of the group followed. "Still we can probably practice some moves before we get there without drawing attention. I'm not the best battler, but I'm really good at navigating dungeons. Stumpy can sniff out traps like a pro." Cinder was using names with them now after their little pep-talk, Oscar noticed.
"I have been hearing about these mystery dungeons a lot lately. What are they?" Oscar decided this was a good a time as any to explain. Cinder explained the basic concept, with Stumpy occasionally filling in details or making small corrections. Mystery dungeons were, from what Oscar could gather, semi-stable space-time anomalies. Some would be permanently located in certain areas, like the two they would traverse on their way to the hideout. Some were transient, appearing randomly or if certain conditions were met, only to disappear after a time. This Oscar could accept readily enough, after all it was a spatial anomaly that brought them here. It got weird when they described the insides of the dungeons. Subjective time passing faster for the body than the mind, leading to extreme hunger even just after eating. Multiple 'floors' linked by short caves or often literal staircases. And they were inhabited by wild Pokémon who would invariably attack on sight. These Pokémon did not suffer from the same hunger that explorers would, and it was still unclear if these Pokémon were part of the dungeon itself or were unfortunate souls that had become trapped and corrupted after meeting certain conditions. The 'low-level' dungeons were generally predictable in the kind of traps, encounters and items they would find, but the exact layout of the dungeons were never the same. More space-time nonsense.
"And so, I think it would be best if we reviewed our moves so we can come up with a game plan before going in." Cinder said at last. He seemed to be taking charge of the situation, comfortable when talking something he was familiar with. It was because he seemed so familiar with the subject that Oscar let him carry on like this. It was not like the Fennekin had any understanding of what was in store for them.
"I'll go first. I know Scratch and Ember, of course. I can Growl but its not very good so I don't practice it too much. I also learned Smokescreen not too long ago, but I haven't had a chance to use it in a dungeon yet. I'm sure it'll be fine. I also know Dragon Dance, 'bout the only useful things my parents gave me." He finished and turned to Stumpy.
"I know Tackle, Bite and Sand Attack pretty well. I don't really use Howl, that's something I guess I need to work on. Not too long ago I was able to score a Thief TM. It's as funny as it sounds! Not too many wild Pokémon carry things, but it helped me get out of scraps with Guild rookies before."
"Ha! That's good, but check this out." Gaia puffed out her chest, "I know Quick Attack and Pound, as I'm sure you remember Stumpy." She smirked at him. "I also know Absorb, Double Kick, Bullet Seed and Sword Dance. I haven't practiced the last two much, but I can use them in a pinch." Cinder and Stumpy were impressed.
"How do you know so many moves as a Treecko?" Cinder asked.
"I told you it wasn't all bad working as a researcher. I got first dibs on all the best TMs and move training. I just didn't get to use it all that much." The two closed their eyes and nodded their heads. Her tolerance of such a horrible state of never-fighting made a lot more sense to them now.
"Alight, cool! So what about you, uh, what was your name Fennekin?"
"Oscar."
"Right. So Master Oscar, what moves do you know."
"Psychic."
A few seconds passed, and Cinder rolled his claw expectantly.
"Just Psychic." Oscar clarified. The lack of moves made sense to Gaia, but the other two couldn't believe what they were hearing.
"You are eight and all you know is one move! That can't be right." Cinder declared.
"Never battled, never learned any moves."
"Battling helps but you don't need to battle to learn moves. You should know at least two or three just by being as old as you are! Haven't you ever just felt the urge to try something, anything? Just a desire out of the blue to do something you never had before and let a move out?" Now that Cinder mentioned it, in their weeklong trek to Baram Town he had more than once felt a bile rising in his throat and a desire to simply scream at his opponents, as unthreatening as they were. He pushed those feelings aside, one did not simply act on every fancy that struck them.
"Yes, a few times in the last week I felt something like that. But I ignored it and just bashed my opponents against trees or rocks instead. Or held them under water. Whatever works, right?" The Charmander shuffled uncomfortably at the reminder of his near-death experience, but regain control quickly.
"Well, you are going to need to do more than bash things together to make it though a mystery dungeon! You are going to tire out super fast if all you use is one move over and over, and before you know it you will be useless. What kind of Pokémon are you, anyway? You look like a Fire type, but you use Psychic so…"
"The Fennekin line is pure Fire type until the final evolution, which is a Fire/Psychic type. I know Psychic as an egg move, I guess you could say."
"An eight-year-old pure Fire type that doesn't even know Ember?" He turned to Gaia with a look that screamed 'Really?' before turning back to Oscar after she simply shrugged. "And I thought I was a late bloomer. Okay, we have a couple of days and it sounds like you already have the instincts to use Ember from what you said, we just need to let it out. The three of us and your smash-things-with-my-mind should be enough to get us through both of these dungeons no problem, but I would like to not be the only Ember user in a forest dungeon if I can avoid it." Oscar couldn't disagree, and for the next couple of days he and Cinder would practice to try and learn Ember. They focused mostly on travel, but took breaks every few hours for rest and light training.
Stumpy and Gaia would spend this time practicing their moves or lightly sparring. She was much faster than the Poochyena, but it turned out that when he could brace himself and not be caught flat-footed as was the case with their first encounter, he was tough as nails. It was hard to tell from sparing, but Oscar guessed he might even be more durable than Gaia herself was, which was impressive. And the sparring was doing wonders for his reaction time and ability to predict movements. He couldn't hope to catch Gaia, but he started to get better at figuring out where she was going to strike, and would was landing more and more Sand Attacks as interrupting moves, throwing off Gaia's aim.
When he wasn't tutoring Oscar in the use of Ember, Cinder was practicing Dragon Dance at the suggestion of Gaia. It took him too long to start the move, in her estimation, and he spent his time trying to get that time down.
For his part, Oscar was struggling with getting his Ember consistent. It was easy enough to start the move after a little coaching, and maintaining a sustained flame turned out to be easier than Cinder had suggested it would be. Breathing exercises he learned at dive school and intimately knowing the chemical and physical nature of fire helped him control his breathing just-so to make this happen. The problem was that the move simply did not have the range even a weak Ember should have. He should be creating a gout of flame about ten meters long if Cinder was anything to go by, but the most he could manage was a one-meter flame. It wasn't all bad, as Cinder assured him that the flame was very well formed and far hotter than a typical ember would be. But still, a one-meter reach left much to be desired.
It was around the afternoon on their third day of travel when they entered the dungeon, and Oscar did not even notice at first. I was only when Cinder mentioned that they had crossed the threshold into the dungeon that he began to notice some oddities. Gone was the chirping and buzzing of the forest wildlife that had been their constant companion up to this point, replaced with an eerie silence. Shadows were subtly off-angle from each other, not true to the origin of the light casting them. The plant life seemed normal as far as Oscar could tell, but inanimate objects like rocks were in multiple stages of their life cycle all at once. Basalt that on one end would be smooth and uniform but on the other end marred and breaking apart into sand.
Cinder and Stumpy were leading the expedition into the dungeon, with Gaia taking up the rear. Oscar was sandwiched in the middle, more concerned with observing the oddities around him than focusing on any potential threat. It was about ten minutes after crossing the threshold that they encountered their first wild Pokémon; three Seedot hanging from a tree branch about four meters above them and ten meters out. They had not noticed the presence of the four intruders yet, and Cinder waived Gaia forward.
"Three on one, you think you can take them?" He asked, teasing her. She knew she was being baited, but was happy to bite. She dashed off to the side and let out a Bullet Seed just as the three Seedot began to stir. The attacked was lined up to hit all three of the Seedot, hanging next to each other as they were. All three were knocked down by the attack, but only the first to be hit was knocked out from the attack. Before the two remaining wild Pokémon had a chance to recover, she sprinted to the closet one and punted it into the trunk of the tree, knocking it out instantly. She turned her attention to the last conscious Seedot and simply headbutt it into the ground with a growl. When it didn't get up she looked to the group and struck a dramatic pose, foot atop her defeated foe. They were just Seedot, but Oscar had to admit that was quite the show.
The next challenge was for Oscar, apparently. They found a Bulbasaur meandering around a clearing, guarding a pile of fruit by the looks of it. "I know you don't like to fight" Cinder said with a chuckle, "So if you don't think you can handle it I would be happy to-"
"I can see what is happening here." Oscar said as he strolled forward.
"Whatever works." Was the Charmander's response. Smartass.
"You! Horrible mutant! Step away from the food." He said, curious to see just how smart and/or stupid these dungeon Pokémon really were. He was met with a hiss and a Vinewhip to the face that sent him sprawling. It hurt, but no more than a strong slap would. So he get got back up and prepared to roast the thing. His ember looked like a blowtorch, as hot and focused as it was. Sadly, it still had nowhere near the range to make it an effective attack. Another whip, on the other side of his face this time. Well, he tried. He grabbed the Bulbasaur in a psychic grip and prepared to launch it above the treeline before Cinder's voice cut it.
"No! Use your Ember! You are trying too hard, literally just yell at it!" He tried that before and it didn't work, there was no way that would-
In his distraction, he got another whip to the face. It was a one-two this time, and his face was starting to get sore. "You little shit!" he yelled, letting the bile rise but this time not trying to consciously control it. He was rewarded with an unremarkable but otherwise proper Ember, and struck the Bulbasaur still struggling in his telekinetic grip. After a few seconds, the Bulbasaur stopped struggling. He kept going, how long could he keep this up? When he reached the end of his breath, he noticed the fire kept coming. It didn't get weaker or go out completely, if anything it seemed to get hotter. He was dimly aware of his companions saying something in the background, but he paid them no mind. He was getting tired now, tired in his bones, but still the fire kept coming. He couldn't really see the Bulbasaur at this point, he couldn't really see anything outside of the fire. He couldn't hear anything other than the whoosh of that fire and the popping of… well he wasn't in the state of mind to tell. His fire did eventually go out, but not because he quit. One moment he was mesmerized by the fire, the next he was staring at the sky.
He shook his head and tried to stand up, but was too weak to do so. He was aware of someone putting food into his mouth, and apple by the taste of it. Food never tasted so good! It was by his third or fourth apple that he finally regained his senses, and asked "What happened?"
"You used too many moves for too long all at once, is what happened." Cinder said. "Used up all your food and you probably won't be able to do much other than walk for the rest of the dungeon. Burned that poor Bulbasaur and all the food it was guarding to a crisp. I should ask you the same thing, what happened? One second you were using Ember, go you, and the next second you were dead to the world. Gaia had to knock you out to get you to stop, you weren't listing to anything we were saying." The other three Pokémon were sitting around Oscar, apparently it had been some time since he was knocked out.
"I wanted to see how long I could use the Ember. I was surprised to see that it kept going after my breath ran out, so I figured that was a good time to experiment." Cinder rolled his eyes.
"Yeah well of course it kept going, its not tied to your breath, that just helps. Breath is a, uh.."
"Queue?" Stumpy offered
"Yeah it's just a queue. How long you can keep an attack up or how strong it is depends on how strong you are, it runs of your Aura. Not like, Aura sphere or whatever Lucario do I think, but your innate nature and power. You used about all of yours up, that's why you are so tired."
"Oh." Oscar knew this, in an academic sense. You didn't spend so long studying Pokémon without learning something about the nature of their powers. How had he forgotten something so basic?
"Shouldn't we get moving? It's been a while." Stumpy brought up. Cinder jumped to his feet.
"Oh shoot, you're right. We are kinda on a time limit in the dungeons, we need to get moving before the dungeon moves us. I've never been in one when it happens, and I don't mean to ever."
They moved through the rest of the dungeon pretty rapidly after that. Cinder was correct, Oscar had overexerted himself and couldn't use any moves in an offensive manner. Gaia handled most of the fights after that, Cinder and Stumpy having come to the conclusion that she had a lot of 'catching up to do' when it came to battling. They didn't find much in the way of items in the dungeon, and Cinder explained that was to be expected in a dungeon as infrequently traveled as this one was. Most of the items found in a dungeon were lost by previous explorers in that dungeon. Even though this dungeon was on a smuggling route, all the smugglers were experienced enough in recent years to make it through without problems, and that meant few supplies to find. Still, it was a mystery dungeon and sometimes things just went missing, no matter how well prepared the team. They found another stash of apples guarded by another Bulbasaur, and a rain orb. Not likely to be useful to them, Cinder noted, but good to sell if nothing else.
It was getting dark by the time they left the dungeon, and they were all tired from a long day of hiking, training and traversing spacetime anomalies. Cinder insisted that they walk for about another hour before making camp, just to be sure the dungeon didn't swallow them up while they slept for daring to be too close. Cinder said the last part as a joke, but all of them took it seriously anyway. Oscar found his strength returned pretty quickly after leaving the dungeon, and was able to set up camp in record time. They all ate one last meal of fruit and dried meat, before settling in to sleep under the ridge tent for the night.