This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.

[7-3] Cave Story

Ciel wanted one thing right now: a motorcycle.

It's not like he wanted to dislike boats or planes—in fact, he'd found his experience with both quite pleasant until recently. But just the thought of the open ocean swallowing the horizon all around him or being stranded thousands of meters above all known safety made his hands pale and sweaty.

Trains also weren't always an option. No routes ran perpendicular to Mt. Coronet, for example—that meant a hike all the way to Jubilife for the next connection to Floaroma. And while he'd hitched rides on other people's cars before, most cities were too crowded and the wilderness structurally hostile to make them widely useful. So, he decided on a motorcycle, and had been absentmindedly doodling in his notebook about it the entire trip down the mountain. A sleek, off-roading, mobile steed that he could ride to his next adventure.

And if not that, just something to get him off his aching feet, and to shit his sister up.

"Are we there yet?" asked Laina.

"Please, please, ask me anything that's not that," he begged.

"Fine. How do Poké Balls work?"

"Oh." He blinked, not expecting that to work. "They connect to the PC network using a, what's the word, a broadband adapter? Each individual ball has to be registered to the account and a specific party slot, after which it can call a Pokémon to and from that specific spot."

"Uh huh. And how does the breadband— broad... how does it do that?"

"Well, the beam hits an object, and it reads DNA based on a blacklist. If it finds blacklisted DNA, or if the object isn't a living creature, it doesn't work." Ciel motioned with his hands, trying to formulate a mental model of the process for his own purposes. "If it does work, it'll poll nearby cells for matches until it finds none, which means the beam has encompassed the entire shape of a Pokémon and can begin to dematerialize them. It does tend to shave off some excess material here and there."

"Huh. Huh. Huh," she sounded, nodding with each. "Who's the World Champion right now? You said you wanted to try the tournament thing."

He was a bit hurt at how quickly she moved on from his thought-out explanation, but at least she wasn't asking that question. He said, "It's Oberon Terminus. He's also the CEO of the Pokémon League. Err, he was World Champion first, since 2002, but he inherited the company after his father died in 2005."

His sister snorted. "Sounds like a lot of work for just one guy."

"I'm sure he has, like, secretaries, right?"

"You're the nerd, you should know." He glared at her, which only made her sly grin grow wider. "So, I got another question."

"What's your question, soldier?"

"Are we there yet?"

Ciel whipped around with an assertive finger, trying his hardest not to let the muscles tremble in his exhaustion. "I swear, if you ask that again, we're going to detour to Mt. Coronet."

"Yeah, and?"

"Up there, there's these ancient ruins called Spear Pillar—a really cool name, I know—and we're going to explore thousands of years of preserved history."

"Uh huh."

"And then we're gonna climb to the very peak, sit down, and stare out at the entire Sinnoh Region."

"...Where are you going with this?"

"And then I'm going to shove you down the mountainside," he said.

"Okay! I get it. But still, how close are we?" she asked.

He checked his Poke GEAR and his notes. It was their tenth day of traveling, he thought, unless the blurred timeline squeezed an extra Tuesday in there somewhere. Unfortunately, the incline up the Coronet Range had slowed their pace to a crawl, and the angle of descent, though faster, made him want to amputate both legs at the ankle.

Judging by his initial prediction, plus the approximate delay on the ascent through Route 208, plus the half-day rest they took atop the mountains, they should arrive at Oreburgh in approximately…

"Twelve minutes."

Laina nearly screamed in frustration. "Gah! That's what Mom and Dad always used to say when I asked."

"No, here," he flashed his Poke GEAR's map, which showed their approximate location along the route. Comparing some landmarks on the earthen trail, they were only a little ways off from a mountain passage that led directly into Oreburgh City. It was an awfully generous gift from life for how grueling the latter half of the trek had been.

His sister bounced high. "Well then, what are we waiting for? Let's go, go, go!"

She stole his hand and dragged him down the side of the mountain, tripping over any and every rock or root they stumbled across. That twelve was halved to a six at the threat to Ciel's life, and he and Laina found the high-walled passage they were looking for. At its end, above a long descending staircase, they stared out over Oreburgh City.

The city contained no greenery on the ground, the entire main road a dirt path surrounded by dunes of iron-blackened dirt. However, pads of dying grass covered the roofs of the wooden homes. Many of them looked like they hadn't been renovated in a century, maybe since the town was born from a mining rush. Their wood rotted and frayed, but to Ciel it felt like an eternal damage—the houses would petrify and remain standing even after Oreburgh was abandoned.

Like Jubilife, the chimneys coughed black. They were unfortunately high enough that it hit them at nose-level. Ciel offered Laina a filtered face mask from his bag and kept one for himself. He was used to wearing them when he was sick, not when the air was trying to kill him.

As they directed through the metal town's streets, they marveled at deranged constructions along the road. Nestled between each wooden building was a scrap metal monstrosity full of pulleys and hydraulics. His head pivoted to follow a mining belt that scuffed its wheels to carry raw materials into a large drum. Other conveyors were laid across roofs, carrying their cargo down the city blocks to parts unknown.

His mask could block flying coal particles but not the smell of fire. He hoped they could get inside, and fast, but it didn't appear that anyone was around. There was no one. Oreburgh, for all its sounds of grinding metal, was empty.

"It's just like Canalave," whispered Laina.

The battling machines weren't enough to substitute the missing humanity. The revolving wheels and rubber belts and pistons and presses were nothing without people to man them. It had been over a month since Cynthia and Lance's deaths and yet Sinnoh was still trapped in this pit of misery.

He actually disagreed with his sister—it was nothing like Canalave. Canalave had shown signs of life hiding between its buildings, and he'd seen sparse residents paralyzed on the sidewalks. But here it was like the entire population of the town packed up and headed for the hills.

No one kept up the production lines that every building seemed to service or carved the dirt trails deeper with their boots. What looked like a wooden church, with some books freely available in an outdoor bookshelf, was similarly empty, and he couldn't help but feel that such a divine place being deserted was unsettling. They then passed the most recent looking construction in the town—judging by the abstract Poké Ball logo, it was the Gym. Closed, as expected, with only darkness past the glass doors.

He'd studied the Sinnoh Gym Leaders extensively in the months leading up to his trip, looking for any strategies online that successful Trainers had shared on online forums. When he last checked, that Roark guy he met in Canalave was the Gym Leader of Oreburgh. Ciel squinted at the dirty sign beside the doors.

"Russel Daisaku," he said. Was there a recent change? "That's a Johtoan name, but I've never heard of him before. I think."

And below it, a smaller sign sported a sloppy "OUT" and what he assumed to be its Sinnohan equivalent below in different handwriting.

Suddenly, the dust kicked up when a person shot past. Ciel only had a short glimpse of their black-stained tank top and golden hard hat.

"Hey! Where the heck is everyone?" he called out.

By the time he heard his answer, the man was far enough that it was only a whisper amongst the machines. "Gruver!"

Sinnohan, right. But there was a tangible fear in his voice that made Ciel hesitate. The man had to have come from a dangerous work site wearing clothes like that.

As much as he wanted to rest his feet, the dreadful air around them made it difficult to unwind. He looked to his sister. "I'd normally tell you to find a Pokémon Center, but I get the feeling you won't listen to me."

"I want to know why he's freaked," she said with puffed cheeks.

"Okay, stay close."

They took off after the sprinting man, which took them down another wide stairway into what looked like an open mine. Massive, treaded vehicles idled around the hollowed pit, and conveyors crossed overhead towards some unknown location. They descended deep enough that his ears popped. An arch ahead denoted that the mine dug further into the mountain, labeled plainly as "Berlitz Mine".

Berlitz. He'd seen that name a few times already, and it was what Ujenn called the access tunnel to Canalave. Some big corporation, maybe? It seemed as if the entire Sinnoh Region hadn't quite pushed past its industrial revolution, and if he were to judge entirely on the air pollution, it was probably a small group of "family-run" companies in control of the enterprise. The Pokémon League was just the same. Either way, it was a note for later.

The tunnel engulfed them, and soon his vision was reduced to nothing. In the time it took his eyes to adjust, he had already been presented with a headlamp by someone passing by.

What?

Ciel tried to shake the dilation into his eyes, and when he could finally parse the cave, he noticed dozens of people mulling about. Many of them wore similar mining outfits, but others were in casual clothing, the other residents that had abandoned their posts in town. The tense aura hadn't disappeared, but there wasn't much movement for how many people were gathered.

Their position along the walls was like a walk of death. As he proceeded forward into the mines, unsure if he was even allowed here but so far undisturbed by would-be authority, it felt like the loitering people lined the road to disaster. He felt his sister squeeze his hand.

Ciel accosted one hard-hat loiterer and asked, "What's the problem here? I saw someone running."

"Uhh…" His single syllable dripped with accent, far stronger than what Ujenn had offered. The man was leaking his weight in sweat, even though the entrance wasn't particularly hot. "Can't say, uhh, Unova. People behind. Coal cave… bad?"

"Cave bad? Does anyone here speak Unovan?" he called out to no answer, not knowing if it was the language barrier or the pervasive unsettling feeling keeping their lips sealed.

Okay, information gathering was probably out. He had to see for himself what exactly was going on.

They ventured down the suffocating tunnel under the dim hanging lights. Each flickering bulb matched a tremble in his spine—the last time he'd ventured into a cave like this, he nearly died. He'd only been saved by a chance meeting with a cave-dwelling… individual. Had he not, his skeleton might be shedding rotting flesh somewhere at the bottom of Union Cave. Near-death experiences seemed to be a recurring theme with his travels, and he was starting to wonder why the Gym Challenge was widely recommended as it was.

His headlamp outlined a junction of two separate tunnels, each of which was barely illuminated by the upper light fixture for a few meters before the stomach of darkness consumed it. Just as he was contemplating where to go—and what exactly they were going to gain by investigating—a tremble took hold of the entire mine.

His instinct kicked in and his arms were around his sister in an instant, hunched over her like he was the desk in the earthquake drill. He clutched her tightly until the quaking stopped and held on a little less tightly for a few extra seconds, before standing up and brushing himself off.

"You okay?" he asked. As he did so, he grabbed Hector's capsule from his boot.

She didn't seem to care about herself, and said, "Why are all these people just standing around? This place isn't safe!"

"I don't know." Hector joined them moments later and roared into the tunnel. It alerted some nearby miners, few of whom checked their own Poké Balls as if the idea had only just dawned on them, but they didn't release their charges.

Ciel approached his Rhydon and offered a hand. Hector was far too busy examining this exciting environment to pay him much mind.

The fact that he needed to ask this question tightened a knot in his stomach created by the quakes and the atmosphere. It was one thing to call his Pokémon out for battling, something that was part of their socialization ritual in the wild, or to fix an obviously harmless problem like the one in the Berlitz Tunnel. But here, the response of the miners implied that the instability in the cave was both unusual and terrifying.

Yet he was going to ask his Pokémon to lend his services in this death mine, and knowing Hector, he'd accept. Ever since Ciel first encountered Hector in Union Cave, he'd been the first Pokémon to throw himself in the way of danger.

He'd more than once taken an attack that would otherwise have hit Ciel and shook it off like it was nothing. It was his duty, protecting his new herd. But he sometimes took those memories to debate, whether or not it was right of him to place his Pokémon in harm's way.

"Hector," he finally began. "I… I need your help. Something bad happened in this mine and I think you're most built for an environment like this. Are you willing to do that for us?"

He didn't even phrase his question correctly. It was too decisive. It was too one-sided. And it made him turn away when the Rhydon spun up his drill.

Without another thought they pushed down the dark road in a cautious jog. He could feel Hector's stomps vibrating up his own ankles and had to suppress the fear that it would bring the whole place down. He had a theory on what had happened and didn't want to risk making it worse, but if that theory was true, they had no time to lose.

A maze of tunnels beckoned them and he picked a direction at random, following the signs he couldn't read. Would it kill them to put everything in two languages like Johto did? It's not like they weren't mandated to learn Unovan like the rest of the Regions.

Another tremor showered him with dust from the walls. The blackness from his vision wasn't just the darkness that the light failed to kill, it was also the black particles infecting the air. He held longer between breaths and urged his sister to do the same.

"Is this a part of the Underground?" she asked.

"I don't know. The tunnels travel underneath all of Sinnoh, so maybe they—" He coughed, feeling the sparse oxygen and the stain of black in his lungs. "Maybe they found these coal deposits when they dug those tunnels."

Voices touched his ears and they slowed to meet them. More people gathered just as they had at the mine's entrance, and then slowly increased in density as they neared exactly what Ciel had feared.

This wasn't a small crumble like that blockage in the Berlitz Tunnel, which he'd been able to punch through with ease. The walls of the cave curved under stress, and the ceiling dipped towards the encompassing mass of rock that blocked the road ahead. Chunks of various sizes had rained down from the ceiling, and hundreds of thousands of tons weighed down from above

The entire mine tunnel had collapsed.

Ciel threw himself at someone, with far more urgency than at the beginning of the tunnel. "Is everyone okay?"

"N-no, it's…" The man struggled for words, and Ciel let him have his time. At least it was in a language he could understand. "Some people inside. Miners."

"How long have they been trapped?" he pressed.

"T-two hours," the man replied.

"And how long do they have?" He fired the question as fast as possible. The tunnel was gone, and people wouldn't be reacting like this if they had a way out. That meant they were cut off from the air on the surface. That meant they didn't have forever to fix this.

"A… a few more. We don't know what to do."

"You need to help them."

"We tried!" shouted the man, nearly tearing up. "We tried to dig out the rocks but it's too deep, and we don't have enough powerful Pokemon in town to break the massive sheet on the middle. We don't know if we'll even make it in time."

"So you just stopped?"

Ciel was really getting pissed now. He snapped his head to the other miners, most of whom wallowed in their own inability even as some Pokemon were throwing themselves at the cave-in to remove rubble piece by piece. Their trainers were trembling, but they weren't helping.

They had given up. They had given up and it made him want to vomit. Somewhere beyond that wall of busted stone was a group of people terrified and praying that each remaining breath wasn't the last, all the while sucking in this blackened dust. And looking at this mound of earth in front of him, looking so monumental that it might as well be the planet itself, he almost, for a split second, understood why their free hands weren't moving.

But for only a second.

He ordered his Rhydon forward. "Hector! Consider this training. Pick up a boulder and toss it. If it's too big, break it into pieces. And don't stop until nothing is left!"

His shout brought the attention of everyone in the tunnel, including his sister. Their eyes fell on Hector as he trudged forward, hoisted a boulder above his head, and pitched it over Ciel's towards the entrance of the mine. It landed with a thunderous crack. The Pokémon spun his horn and drove a crack into a larger piece before continuing his work.

The eyes gave him the energy to do this. As priority as the rescue should be, he couldn't help but feel giddy knowing that his face outlined by their headlamps was being permanently burned into their retinas. Just like the plane, it was an opportunity.

Two more joined the battle, Arden and Raven. Rather than having the former resume his role from the Berlitz Tunnel, he ordered him to pick up and move stray rubble that Hector left behind. He didn't want to risk burning away the oxygen for people on this side of the cave and reducing the entire thing to molten rock was both unfeasible and highly dangerous.

As for Raven, he first asked if she was strong enough to work with them. A defiant growl was her answer. If this counted as disaster, it had technically already occurred, so there was nothing to set off her sense further. He set her up at the rocks away from Hector and told her to carve at them with her sickle. It wouldn't do much, but it couldn't do nothing.

Ciel himself hoisted a small boulder on his collarbone, feeling his shoulder nearly cave beneath it. It was fine. He'd dislocated it before—sort of—so he'd know how to sort himself out if worse came to worst.

The three miners who had released their own Pokemon to pick at the hazard, upon seeing him start to work, joined in as well. As they took stones, a gargantuan Snorlax, a bandaged zombie-looking creature he wasn't too familiar with, and a Machamp with only three arms followed their lead. Ciel traded "Hello" for "Hallo" and then worked in silence, only the sounds of their frantic motions filling the cave.

The pile behind them became a mound and then a mountain. He ordered Hector to throw stones further back to keep from blocking the passage behind them. The trapped were their top priority, not the cleanliness of their attempt.

An attempt. That's all it was. There was no guarantee they would save anyone. Knowing this, Ciel shouted, "Is anybody in there!?"

No response. He could feel the vibrations of his shout bounce off the rock back at him. Still, he kept up his shouting, even after his throat began to dry, hoping just once to hear a response from beyond the wall. His hand hovered over the rocks a bit each time an answer wasn't returned. To anyone still watching, he was sure his screaming sounded horrid.

His sister touched her shoulder to his and picked up a rock. She asked, "Can I help?"

"No, you can't. Just say back and—"

Her glare caught him reasonably off guard, making him fumble with his own payload. He shook something out of his head.

"As long as you stay out of danger. If it gets unstable, you run," he said.

"Got it." A determined rumble in her voice surrounded her answer.

Just as he said that the walls around them trembled. One too many rocks was removed, and the entire mound shifted, settling unsteadily on itself once again. They resumed after checking its stability, and their endeavor had started to focus on one side to try to dig past the giant stone sheet.

An indeterminate amount of time passed, but it wasn't worth wasting precious seconds to check his Poke GEAR. He was running out the clock but there was nothing else he could do but keep shoveling. All he could do was keep working.

He couldn't match Hector's speed. For each piece he'd removed from the puzzle, the Rhydon had already carried three more to the new mountain. There was rarely a moment when the two were side-by-side, and he slowed for just a moment to meet his Pokémon at the cave-in.

"If you're tired, you can… you don't have to keep working," said Ciel. When the Pokémon maintained that frantic pace, he took a smaller than average rock and routed all power to his legs to keep up with him. The Pokémon's plates ground against each other as he walked, and Ciel could see the muscles contracting and expanding between the gaps. "I mean it. This whole thing was just about me, so you're not required to, you know, listen to me entirely."

Hector chucked his rock. It soared across the cave, and when it hit the massive stone sheet in the center of the collapse, it exploded.

Ciel heard something he'd never imagined come from his Pokémon's mouth. A growl. At him.

Rhydon barely made noise, it just wasn't common behavior. And to feel that scarce rage aimed directly at him almost made his tired legs give out. He watched in silence as his Pokémon resumed his duties, throwing all of his weight into hoisting a massive boulder overhead.

It was stupid to say something like that. He was an absolute fool.

The diminutive size of his Rhydon, compared to others of his species, wasn't just a fun quirk of life. Living with his pack, Hector must have had to compete with larger, more fit brothers and sisters day after day. He must have fought long and hard, and spent nights hungry, natural selection itself his enemy. Living in his comfy human society, he couldn't begin to imagine what his friend had faced for however long he'd lived—Ciel didn't know for sure how many years of torture Hector had endured.

And through all that, the first image of Hector in Ciel's head, the one that had convinced him on the spot to capture him, was a miniscule Rhyhorn standing defiant over a fallen herdmate, one who was taken back with the pack while the runt himself was left behind.

Even as the universe conspired against him, Hector could never refuse those who needed defending. He knew what it meant to be weak, to be small. And that pain didn't need to belong to anyone.

And so Ciel shook his head and placed a stone on his worn shoulder. The Pokémon, his sister, himself, and the three miners had to keep on working.

No, there were four miners. No wait, five. He eyed his left and right to see more had joined in their fight, their bodies already glistening. Ciel took their implied advice and discarded his jackets in favor of the form-fitting shirt underneath, as the heat of the work had finally bested the chilling fear inside him.

At long last, one of his screams was heard. In their group's quiet cooperation, they were all privy to the faded, distant, locked away muffle of another human's voice. When the working party realized what it meant, their work became a scramble.

More people joined in their effort upon hearing the shouts. Soon dozens of hands were clearing away the rubble. Ciel couldn't make out or understand their words, so he just yelled back as loud as he could and hoped that it would ease their terrified minds. His voice was hoarse, like one of Raven's growls, but he never let himself quiet.

Soon they had dug a small tunnel through the blockage as they found the weakest point in the cave-in, guided by the better expertise of the miners. Each person and Pokémon moved in sequence, grabbed something, and filed out to make room. It was getting harder to fit multiple people simultaneously. But the cries beyond the rubble grew louder, and louder, and louder.

A solid piece blocked their path. They'd cut and cleared everything in the tunnel around it, leaving them no way forward but to break it down.

Hector lined himself up and powered his drill, and Ciel told everyone else to stand back. The one Unovan-speaking person relayed a translation of his warning.

Ciel and his Pokémon locked eyes for a moment. The structure of the cave-in wasn't completely solid, and they'd removed a large amount of the material that the collapse could rest on. Just like that shift earlier, there was always the possibility that the remainder, including that massive rock bearing down from above, could slip and fall on top of them. Still, this was their best—and only—chance to get the trapped people out, and he was ready to take that chance.

His audience shouted in support. They had been overcome with hopelessness when he arrived, but seeing the progress now, they were ready to keep forward. And he was the one who drove them there.

Knowing this, he nodded to his Pokémon and took cover. Only a few seconds later, a harrowing boom filled the cave when Hector's horn met the rock. The entire piece blasted away.

Ciel adjusted his headlamp and looked into the void left behind. Gasps reached through, followed by weak, grasping arms. Ciel caught someone's hand and pulled them back to the real world.

That person's body wrapped around him instantly. He could feel the man's hands clawing for purchase, as if he never thought he'd find another human again. They'd cut through the collapse, and they'd saved someone! Ciel at first shirked at the awkward contact, but then embraced the man back with his own relief.

"Du reddet meg! Du reddet meg!" the miner spoke through deep breaths. It was some kind of thanks.

Ciel funneled him past through the dug tunnel and had Hector help him funnel through more people. One, two, three, four miners passed through, wheezing in Sinnohan with abatement in their eyes. They kept filing through, and Ciel called through to beckon to any left on the other side. When the last miner passed through and hugged him, he let out a sigh. They had made it in time.

And then the mine shifted.

The ground, the walls, the ceiling all gave way, knocking him on his stomach and cutting open his arms on the rocks. An iron tang hit his nose and his eardrums went blank from the cumulative crash of the mine. Ciel looked up just in time to see that giant stone plate plummeting—it tore the entire ceiling of the cave down with it.

He shouted down the tunnel, "Run!"

The last miner cleared the hollow, leaving only Ciel to look up at the falling sky. Just when he thought it would crush him, it paused. All of Hector's strength held against the continental mass, keeping it only a few meters from the ground. Each passing second a cracked plate fell from his armor. Hector's muscle fibers must have been snapping under the weight, and he couldn't hold it up for longer than a few seconds.

"Hector! We have to— I'll get you out!" he shouted.

All his partner did was groan. His suffering face told Ciel to run. But he couldn't just leave his Pokémon behind. They needed someone to hold up the plate. That Machamp, or that Snorlax! Anyone!

"I'm not leaving without you!" Ciel's voice was beyond raw from his earlier cries, yet he still shouted at the top of his lungs. "Please, Hector!"

Ciel heard his sister screaming his name. The blood in his veins rushed like a river, making his head light. His vision blurred and he squeezed his eyes shut for the inevitable.

Nothing.

He couldn't see, or hear, or even feel. His only working sense was the lifeless taste of dust in his mouth.

Something grabbed his legs and left a bloody trail as it dragged him free of the tunnel. A hand guided his own to Hector's Poké Ball and fired its beam. The plate didn't fall when the Pokémon returned to the capsule, and a few moments later, the ground beneath him rocked violently when whatever holding it up finally released it.

Ciel laid there, barely breathing, clutching Hector's capsule to his chest. It was only when he felt someone throw themselves around him—Laina, judging by their size—that he finally opened his eyes. He was greeted to the light of a dozen headlamps.

"Holy crap, Ciel, you scared me!" said his sister, holding on tighter than the rescued miners had.

There was a Golem amongst the crowd, as well as an almost familiar figure—a Rhyperior. It looked much like Hector, but far larger and with a belt of reddish stones covered its midsection. Its presence alone far outweighed even his herculean Rhydon.

What grabbed his attention most, however, was that the person standing between the two Pokémon was a friend.

One of the other men shouted, "Treningsleder!"

The stout man wore a magnificent beard off his chin and would look more comfortable with a hiking cane than with a pickaxe. Still, the other miners let him take the lead as he offered Ciel a hand.

"'Lookin' like 'ou've fond yerself some big trable dis toime," he said.

This was one hefty part! It's also a chapter built more on continuity with the previous story than some of the others, which does go against my standalone mindset a bit, but I thought the character examination of Hector was too interesting to pass up. I try my hardest to flesh out the Pokémon characters, and it'll be a little more difficult this story than some of my others due to how much the human drama is taking center stage.

Volume 7 ends with Part 4: Appointed Protector. See you someday.