I flare up my body in fire to heat all of us up.
"Lere?"
"Yeah Smeargle?" I say.
"Can you call up Azumarill? Tell 'er where we are right now."
I hold up my wand and twist the red orb on top. A red holographic screen emits out of it and in front of all four of us. It rings like a telephone, and then the screen displays Azumarill sitting at a table while twisting the orb on her own wand before setting it down. Gourgeist slides a berry drink onto the table.
"Thank you Gourgeist-" Azumarill clears her throat and turns to us all. "Hello you four! How's the mission going?"
"So far so good! But we ended up somewhere unexpected. Some… Ice town or something. Can you ping us on the radar?"
"Mhm. Sure, let me pull that up." Azumarill on the other end taps her holographic screen and drags some things around on it. A small muffled blip is heard.
"... How the- what? Lere- how are you guys that far away? Didn't you all just descend into the abyss a minute ago?"
"Yeah." I nod.
"Do you know where we are exactly? What's the name of this city?" Smeargle asks.
"Can you turn the screen so I can see the city? All I see is snow."
Smeargle turns the red screen towards the city. "There."
"Hmmm… I can see some signs but they're too far away to read. The blizzard doesn't help much either."
"Hmm… I wonder…" Walker says, looking towards the city.
"Regardless of that, you're in uncharted territory. The place here on the map seems surrounded by a mountain range- no one's been here yet. I have no clue how the heck you're all there. But proceed as normal! Go explore that city and anything around! The fact that that abyss leads here is quite intriguing!"
"Hey! Are you talking with Walker and Marble there?" I gasp upon hearing the odd voice and I extinguish myself. My teammates are gonna have to bear the cold for a while, but it's better than some random dude seeing some cat on fire and having to deal with what social situation follows after.
"How's the abyss going?" Bisharp leans onto the table. His chest blades dig into the wood. Azumarill rolls her eyes and pushes the holographic screen more towards the wall, away from Bisharp. I stand up on my hind legs and fumble before getting a grip on the screen. I turn it towards Team Starstruck so Bisharp can get a better view of them.
"Sir, this is an important meet-" Azumarill is cut off by Marble.
"Hi Bisharp! We're at the bottom of the abyss! I think!"
"Psst, Marble… We aren't in the abyss." Walker faintly whispers to Marble.
"We're somewhere really far away from the abyss somehow!" Marble says in response, correcting himself. "It's super cold here!"
Bisharp's eyes move around the screen, focusing on the radar.
"Hey… Woah. You guys are far, far away. Where the heck is this place?"
"We don't know. Somehow Azumarill doesn't know either. Some uh, icy city I guess," Walker says.
"Bisharp, you're digging your blade into the table. Can I please finish this meeting first? You can talk to Walker and Marble later, they're kinda busy right now- look, I'll give you a wand for your own use to call them when you want," Azumarill says while pointing an empty wand without an orb at him.
"Busy?" Marble says, tilting his head slightly.
"Aw... Well, ok! I'll call you dudes up later. Peace!" Bisharp does finger guns at Marble and Walker before leaving the table. Walker does finger guns back. Marble tries to do finger guns along with Walker. I tilt the red holographic screen back towards all of us. Azumarill glares off away from the table, presumably at Bisharp, before turning back to us. Her expression suddenly goes from annoyed to beaming with a smile.
"Now! Where was I~? Oh, right!" Azumarill clears her throat. "You all must go into that city! Since it's a city, you all are free to split up to explore the whole thing. Call back to me in the morning I guess?"
I nod.
"Good! Okay, off you go now, I'm gonna enjoy this drink." Azumarill taps on her screen and communications are cut. After twisting the orb to turn off my red screen and putting the wand at my side, I flare up in fire again. Times like these make me glad my wand is made out of stone and not wood, but the slate still ges charred in spots.
"Well, what are we standing around for? Let's go check out this new city!" I exclaim. Walker adjusts the straps on his bag while Marble bounds ahead excitedly, occasionally looking back at us to make sure he doesn't go too far ahead of us, I assume. Smeargle stretches her arms out to me to warm up.
"...Can't you just hold your paws by me as we walk?"
"No," Smeargle says. "I'm not about to trip and fall into you by mistake while you're on fire."
"Hmm… Hey, I've got an idea."
"What?"
I reel back and hurl a fireball out of my mouth a ways away into the snow. It melts through it and hits the ground below it. Just dirt. Smeargle stares blankly down at it.
"...I don't get it."
"Sketch it!"
"Oh."
Smeargle grabs her palette of paint, dips her tail into the red, and paints an orb into the air. It wobbles before becoming solid. She taps it to make sure. Then, to my shock, she pops it into her mouth like a cherry.
"Wh- what are you doing!? You're not a fire type!" I yell.
A red hot glow comes from her mouth and she suddenly gasps and paws at her tongue.
"HOT! HOT HOT HOT!"
I scramble about a bit, panicking.
"Uh- snow! Eat some snow!" I say.
Without a second delay she shoves her face into the snow. Walker trudges through the snow to us.
"Marble wanted me to come check what the hold up was- what are you two doing?" he asks.
"N- uh-" I choke on my words. Smeargle rises her face from the snow, looking at me in frustration.
"Why did you tell me to sketch that!?"
"You put it in your mouth, not me! Like, it was ember! You don't have to hurl up a fireball to use it, you can just use your paws."
"Wait… Ugh, let me try that."
Smeargle looks down at her paws. She rubs them together, blows some air on them and a little spark appears before becoming a small fire on each paw. She sighs.
"Man, now I just feel dumb. And now my tongue hurts." She says.
"Sorry… I didn't think you'd try to freakin' eat it. At least you have hand warmers for the trip?" I say, trying to make her feel a bit better about it. She shrugs and holds her paws together.
"... Uh." Walker speaks up.
"Eep!" I jump. For a bit I kinda forgot he was even there. "Sorry! We're done, we're done. We can go now."
Smeargle rolls her eyes and walks forwards, while me and Walker follow behind. We leave the rope dangling high from the sky so we can come back to climb up later.
"Sooo… No one knows about this city, not even the guild who's job is to explore the whole world?" Walker asks.
"Yeah, apparently. But now we're gonna fix that," Smeargle answers.
"And it'll also be our first time discovering a new area!" I exclaim.
"But aren't you two veteran explorers? Azumarill said so…" Marble points out. Me and Smeargle are veteran explorers and we have some seniority in the guild.
"Well…" I start to explain.
"Yes, we've been in the guild for a while, but haven't actually discovered any new areas. We've only ever been assigned regular jobs in places already well explored. It kinda sucked for a while, but it was new for us, so it was still fun."
"Ohh! Cool!" Marble says.
"So when we got this mission, we sure as heck weren't gonna pass it- WAH-!" As we were walking I stepped forwards and found myself falling. There was a hole that was hidden by the snow! Steam from the snow melting and boiling rushes out of the hole.
"Holy sh- Lere?" Smeargle says, peering down the deep pit I've made for myself. She recoils when the gust of steam hits her face.
"Pah!"
I extinguish my flame. Walker and Marble come over to look down the hole too.
"I'm ok! I'm cool!" I say, getting up on my feet. Something moves under me and I lift a paw to see. All I can really discern among the dirt and whatever snow survived is some metal plating.
"There's some weird metal thing down here! Uhm…"
It moves again and I look back up. Smeargle, Walker, and Marble all look at each other.
"Ok, you two go towards the city together while I get Lere out of this," Smeargle says. Walker gives a thumbs up and Marble glances down at me, looking a little disappointed. They head off towards the city, leaving me and Smeargle here. Shortly after they leave I can hear Walker say in the distance, "Don't worry Marble, they can handle whatever it is, and this means we get to be the first ever people- Pokemon to explore whatever this city is."
"Here," Smeargle reaches a paw down. "Grab it and I'll pull you up."
"Rebooting… Circuits unfrozen. Normal operations can now continue. Damage from condensation buildup combined with sudden increase in temperature is critical. Error. Logging crash report. Retry. Detecting heat from above. Source possibly alive."
I look down and see a robotic Delcatty's face uncover itself and stare at me as its eye's glow up in green.
"Readying combat mechanism… 3… 2…"
I grab onto Smeargle's paw.
"Pull me up PULL ME UP!" I yell.
I'm swung out of the pit and onto the snow. Fire doesn't exactly have much weight to it. Fearfully, I hide behind Smeargle and look down with her. The robot Delcatty finally gets up. It brushes away any snow and dirt still on its metal plating.
"1…" A spark flies out of the Delcatty's back, followed by some smoke. There's a circular hole for something to slot into there.
"No heartstone tank detected. Weapons unable to function. Analyze threat…"
Their head snaps up to look at us. Smeargle flinches.
"Don't do anything funny now! I've got a fireball ready to burn a hole in your gears!"
"Threat level: 0. Not strong enough to do any major damage."
"No major damage huh-!?" I say. Smeargle elbows me in my side. "Hey!"
"Lere, cut it with the temper, it's a robot."
"Systems back in working order."
Smeargle readies the ember she sketched from me earlier in a paw. The automaton blinks and changes their expression from a blank and empty one to look more friendly with a slight smile.
"Sorry for the scare. My circuits are all- all- all messed up right now. Sorry for the scare, my circuits- my voice function got messed up and I had to use the default voice instead of the one I prefer. Do you know where this is?"
"What the heck are you?" Smeargle says, ignoring their question. "I've never seen a robot before, especially not a full-on smart one. Only ever in fiction."
"I am a G.C.A.S.U., short for Genesect Combat Automaton Soul Unit. In terms of my iteration I am the ++/!* robot constructed. ERROR."
Delcatty takes a moment.
"Okay, it appears that some memories I've had were corrupted. I am unsure of my assigned number. That's unimportant though. Let me again apologize for that outburst just a moment ago. Automatic response when heavily damaged is to defend myself. Help me out of this hole?"
Smeargle hesitates but reaches down to help the Delcatty up. Smeargle struggles.
"Y-you're freaking heavy!" Smeargle says. I help pull them out of the hole.
"You are explorer guild members, yes? The badges you're wearing," they say shortly after getting their own footing.
"Yes, that is correct! We are guild members," I say.
"Experienced ones, too. The badges you have are quite shiny," Delcatty points out.
"That's uh… Nevermind." Smeargle shrugs.
"Anywho, since you two are explorers, I ask that I could come with you for the time being. I am unsure of where I am and what I am supposed to be doing. I only know really about my main creator, Genesect. So assistance towards getting myself situated and repaired would be greatly appreciated."
Me and Smeargle look at each other.
"Me and Lere want to, uh… discuss this first."
"Understandable. I would probably act the same if the first thing you heard a robot say is 'readying combat mechanism.' Especially if you've never seen a robot before. I won't be dead weight if you let me follow along."
Smeargle and I walk a little ways away. That robot sits down in the snow, patiently waiting.
"What do you think, Lere?"
"I think this is a freaking terrible idea. It's a robot. It tried to kill us but failed because it didn't have enough heartstone, whatever the hell that is. I say we freaking ditch it."
"I think we should take them along."
"WHAT!?"
"Well if we take them along, they said they'd pull their weight. And they said it was an automatic response that they tried to pull out weapons on us. I say it's harmless. We can use their help and get them fixed up."
I take a minute to process and think. I look back at that Delcatty. They wave back innocently.
"Fine, but you owe me dinner as soon as we get to that city," I say. Smeargle rolls her eyes. We walk back over to that robot.
"You can come. But before we go, do you have any kind of name?" Smeargle asks.
"G.C.A.S.U. Genesect Combat Automaton Soul Unit."
"Anything else?" I ask.
"I don't understand what you mean," the Delcatty responds.
"Like I mean, any other names?"
"No."
"Can we make a new name for you? G.C.A.S.U. is long and hard to remember. How about uhh…" My speech trails off.
"Gicasu?" I continue. "Turning that acronym into an actual name. Does that sound good..?"
Gicasu's eyes blink, flickering off and on. "Sure. You may call me Gicasu. I am fine with any name and I appreciate that you incorporated the acronym into it. Can we go now?"
"Sure, sure, yeah." We start to walk. Learning my lesson from last time, I don't engulf myself in flames and stay walking on top of the snow.
"So what the heck can you do anyways?" I ask Gicasu.
"Repair me and I'd be able to recover what I can do, in addition to telling you what I can do, because I am unable to remember."
"I didn't know robots had sass. Lere, where do you think Marble and Walker got up to during all that?" Smeargle asks me as we get closer to the city. There's a big sign towering high in neon that says "WELCOME TO VERIAL METRO."
"Probably nothing much. I'll give them a call and let them know about the new… robot." I take my wand off my side and twist the orb.