If Fennekin and Houndoom were any indication, fire types loved the heat.

Pokéopolis had steadily grown warmer the past few days, and now that he actually had the chance to find out, he knew that was because it was early summer. As a whole the streets were still jam packed, but many individual Pokémon looked about as miserable he felt. At least the two with him seemed to enjoy it, or at least not be bothered by it. Or they were just good at hiding it.

They had left the Academy only a few minutes before, and the crowds were keeping their pace to a crawl. They were almost at the banks, sure, but he figured that this walk would take no time at all if they decided to go at night when nobody was out and stock up the night before their explorations and missions. How he wasn't losing Houndoom in the sea of Pokémon was a mystery.

Eventually, they came to the bank building by the Academy, and squeezed inside; while there was a line to see both Kangaskhan and Morgrem, they had room to stand and it was quiet enough to speak. "We don't really have any money on us," Ethan said to Houndoom, "so we can just wait for Kangaskhan and get out."

"Sounds great!" he beamed before going and standing in the line for the item deposit. "So, what made you guys want to become explorers?" Almost immediately after saying so, it looked as if a sudden realization came over Houndoom. "Oh, right. Sorry, Ethan."

"Still a good question," he thought aloud as he walked into line with him. "I guess, like...not like I

had anything else I needed to do, right? And Fennekin found me and helped me get to Pokéopolis, so I might as well join her."

As Fennekin walked into the line, Houndoom looked to her. "What about you, Fennekin? Why did you want to become an explorer?"

"M-me? I just wanted to, I guess."

"Come on, everyone has something about it that they really liked! Was it the treasure? The adventure?"

"I…" She trailed off, mumbling something Ethan couldn't hear.

"Sorry?" Houndoom asked, leaning in closer. "I couldn't hear you."

"I…" She paused. "I wanted to help people."

"That's great to hear! Same reason I got into exploring, as a matter of fact!"

Almost instantly, Fennekin perked up and stared at Houndoom with wide eyes. "Really?"

He nodded. "Yeah! My dad used to be a Deputy in the city when I was a kid, and I thought it would be so cool to be an adventurer helping bring all the bad guys in! I met Leafeon and Meowstic not long after I started, and we were all new, so we decided to adventure together."

"I know you guys as explorers, not bounty hunters. Why did you stop?"

"We still did some bounty hunting, but we also did a lot of requests to rescue Pokémon or do other missions they needed. We mostly explore now, but we still try to help out wherever we can!"

"That's so cool…" Fennekin had seemed to be trying to fight a smile around Team Sunstriders, but the urge was now apparently overwhelming her. "I mean, I wanna explore too, but I just really love the idea of being able to help people!"

"I'll make sure to mention that to Leafeon and Meowstic; we're here for you guys, so if there's something you want to focus on, just tell us!"

Ethan looked at the line ahead of them; it was moving, albeit slowly. "So, what made you three decide to become mentors? Fennekin said you're a three star team, right? I would've thought you'd be too busy to help us."

Houndoom shook his head and waved a paw. "Nah. I mean, we're busy, but we pushed some things aside to make time for this."

"Why?" Fennekin asked. "Is the Academy giving you something for this?"

"Nope! We just thought it would be fun, and it's always good to help out new teams, you know? Exploration teams have to look out for each other!"

"Do you work with a lot of other teams? I bet being Ruby rank, you know a lot of the famous teams out there!"

Houndoom ruffled his brow for a moment, clearly deep in thought. "Well, kinda? The Exploration Society asks high-ranking teams for assistance with big tasks they want done so we know some from there, but in terms of working directly with other teams, not really. Nothing like what we're doing with you guys, anyway."

"Big tasks, like what? Big expeditions?"

"We've done some of those, yeah. We were planning to help out with one to find the ruins of a city made of gems, but then this came up so we declined it."

"Oh." Fennekin's enthusiasm left almost as soon as it had come. "A city made out of gems? That sounds like it would've been a lot of fun. You really gave up that just to become mentors for nothing?"

Houndoom shook his head again. "They have expeditions all the time, don't worry about it. And we don't even find anything a lot of the time; sometimes, rumors are just rumors! Leafeon and Meowstic don't even think it was made out of gems; they said the city was called Gem City, and they think it was where gems came from or just a fancy name."

"What's the coolest thing you've ever found on an expedition? Or maybe the best treasure?"

"Two different answers," he laughed. "For coolest place, we were in the Pumpkaboo Mountains, and there's this river that runs right through them that's really beautiful! I can't really describe it, but nobody else was around, and it was just so much fun to come over one of those mountains and look down to that winding, crystal clear river down below. In terms of our best treasure, we found some ancient human art in the Holly Falls, way far to the north."

"Human art?" Fennekin blurted out rather loudly; by how red her cheeks got, it was much louder than she intended. "I've never heard of ancient human art being found. What was it? What did you do with it?"

"Was some statues." He shrugged. "I don't know a lot about art and less about humans, maybe Leafeon would know; we gave them to an archaeologist that his sisters work with. Maybe we could've gotten more money if we just sold them to collectors, but she still compensated us and we agreed that giving them to an archaeologist was better than just selling them to some random Pokémon. She'd put them to better use than just showing off in a collection."

"Pokémon collect human art?"

"Oh, yeah! All sorts of human artifacts get collected, even down to stuff that archaeologists think was junk."

The excitement on her face changed to what appeared to be intense thought, bringing the conversation to a halt. After a few seconds of silence, the Pokémon in front of them stepped away from the counter with Kangaskhan, allowing them to go up.

"Good morning, Houndoom!" she beamed as they walked up to her. "And who might these two be?"

Ethan looked to Houndoom, who looked at him and motioned his head towards the counter. "We're Team Stargazers," Ethan said as he walked up. "We opened an account here last week?"

"Oh, of course! Give me a moment." She turned around and disappeared behind a small doorway; now that she was gone, Ethan could see storage crates piled high, all the way to the ceiling — there had to be thousands in there! He supposed it wasn't surprising given Pokéopolis' size, but it was still overwhelming. She returned quickly, leaving him to wonder how she could find it so fast.

Ethan took their bag and put it on the counter, and as he started going through it, Fennekin walked up and stood on her hind legs, front paws on the counter to see better. "We haven't really gone through this since starting, have we?"

"No, I don't think so." He pulled out a rollcall orb, causing her to tilt her head and look at it in confusion. "When did we get that?"

He looked back at the line, which was now as long as when they came in, and back to the bag. "We can probably just do with some apples and a few of these oran berries, right? It looks pretty crowded in here, so we can come back when it's less busy and we can go through everything."

"Honey," Kangaskhan laughed, "it's always this busy. Take whatever time you need!"

"Not a bad idea," Fennekin mused. "Keep the escape orb, but we can probably store everything else. We'll want some room to pick up anything we find in this dungeon."

One by one Ethan picked out everything else in the bag, handing them to Kangaskhan to put away. "Anything else I can do for you today, dearies?"

After closing the bag back up, he threw it over his shoulder. "We should be good, thanks."

"Good luck!" she called to them as they walked away. By the time they got to the door out, the line was already spilling onto the street. It was still early in the morning! It was super crowded when they came to set up their accounts, sure, but it was later in the day. Made sense that a city the size of Pokéopolis would always be busy, he supposed.

"So, where are we going?" Fennekin asked once they were back outside of the bank. "And what did you say we'd find there?"

"We're going to a cave on the coast called Sandy Point; it's across the Chespin Bay from Pokéopolis, so we'll take a boat and walk the rest of the way. As for what's there...I don't know!"

"You don't know what we expect to find?" Ethan repeated. "Then how do we know when we've found it?"

"That's part of the fun!" Houndoom beamed. "It wouldn't be an adventure if we knew everything we were getting into, right?"

"Well, how do we know there's something there, then? Or even that this place exists?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "We met a Pokémon at the Café who said there was treasure there, but they weren't strong enough to get it. Lots of Pokémon are willing to share information like that; maybe they're from the area and everyone there knows about it, or maybe they found it and couldn't get to the end."

"I think it'll be fun," Fennekin spoke up. "Where are we supposed to get a boat, the river?"

"Exactly. I know a Pokémon that can ferry across the bay for cheap; he's an old friend of mine, and we always go to him whenever we need something."

"I've never been on a boat before, this should be fun!"

"Just be warned...try not to get sick! Everyone's first time is always tough on them."

"Wait, seasickness is real? I thought that was just in stories! Why would being on a boat make someone sick?"

"Just the motion, it's weird to be moving back and forth so much when you're perfectly still. Some Pokémon get it, some don't. And most get used to it if they do it a lot."

"I'm still excited." She squeed. "I'm sorry, this is just all so cool! I always wanted to be an explorer when I was little, and I still can't believe I'm doing it."

"Even I can't believe it sometimes, don't worry!"

They walked into the large, central market of Pokéopolis, which was already wall-to-wall crowded. Houndoom turned to the right and started weaving through the crowd; Ethan was improving at navigating through lotf ot other Pokémon, but he was still grateful that Houndoom's horns made him easier to see above the sea of Pokémon. After pushing their way through for a few minutes, they entered into a smaller alley, this one much less crowded, letting them walk in peace. Before long they came up on the river, a small dock further down it to their left. A few small boats were moored, and small groups of water Pokémon splashed in the river banks while many more worked on the boats themselves.

"Houndoom!" a Pokémon called from one of the boats as they approached the docks.

"Floatzel!" He walked up the gangplank and embraced the Pokémon, a mostly orange Pokémon with a tan stomach and what looked almost like an inflatable sack draped around its neck, in a big hug with a few hardy pats on the back. "Been a while, how've you been?"

The Floaztel shook his head while giving a large, singular dismissive wave. "Ah, you know. Same old same old. Need to get somewhere?"

"We're going across the Bay, are you able to get us there?"

"Got nothing better to do." He looked at some of the bird Pokémon that were idling nearby, some in the water and some in the masts of the ship. "Cramorant, we're shipping out!" He turned back to Houndoom, then to Ethan and Fennekin. "You two kids need something?"

"They're with me," Houndoom replied as he passed a back of money to Floatzel. "We became mentors at the Academy, and this is Team Stargazers, our mentees."

"Pleasure to meet ya," he said with a single nod. "Feel free to go below deck, there's a small lounge you can kick your feet up at. Come up here if you need anything, we'll just be prepping to set sail. When're Meowstic and Leafeon coming?"

"Just us three today."

"That works. When you feel the boat moving, you'll know we're on our way there."