Chapter 5: Deep Down Under
The morning rays passed through the jungle foliage and hit Landon's eyelids, announcing his revival from the world of dreams. The Minccino tossed and turned around a bit on the ground before finally deciding to get up. The first thing the Pokemon noticed was how sore his muscles had become; granted he had been constantly running around and attacked for the past few days and this was the first night he had been able to get a decent amount of sleep. The second was the delicious scent of berries being slowly roasted over a fire, and of course, he also saw the last person he wished to see on this side of the planet.
"Morning sleepyhead," Grave said in a sarcastic, almost mocking tone.
Landon just rolled his eyes at the statement.
"Man, even after a good night's sleep you're still gonna be a pain in the ass? Who could've guessed."
"Shove a fucking sock in it," Landon replied with a sharp glare. Immediately afterward he grabbed a handful of uncooked Oran berries from a pile next to the fire and started to eat them.
"First, I was just about to cook those and secondly, who said you could have any."
The Minccino decided to just ignore him and keep eating.
"Well have you at least decided whether or not you'd like to be a useful pain in the ass and help me with my endeavor?"
Landon took a big gulp to swallow all the food in his mouth and then wiped his snout off with his paw. "Yeah," he spoke in a completely casual tone, "you're going to go that way," he then pointed in a random direction, "and I'm going to go this way," he spoke while pointing in the exact opposite direction, "and you're never going to come anywhere near me ever again."
The Cubone let out a half-hearted smile before speaking, "you're really not gonna make this easy for me, are you?"
"You're the one making this hard for yourself by not understanding what 'fuck off' means."
"Tell me, what did I ever do to make you hate me so much?"
The Minccino once again chased his pupils around his skull. "Let's see, there's the fact you attacked me, held me in a cage, and wasted so many hours of my life."
"I helped you escape from the cage didn't I, or are you gonna tell me you could've escaped from the entire tribe on your own? Also, no one said you had to be here, you could've left whenever you wanted."
"Even if you did help me, that doesn't make me want to be with you."
"Well you can at least answer me this, if you want to leave so badly then why haven't you already? I've said many times before you can just go, it's not like I have you tied up."
The Minccino, for once, didn't have any smart-ass response, although he didn't want to accept it, Grave did make a good point.
"Maybe it's because you enjoy being a thorn in my side, you even said you don't have anywhere else to be. I'm asking for your help, not for you to be my friend. You can continue being as big of an asshole as you'd like and still aid me in doing this. Once it's all over you can screw back off to whatever corner of hell you came from."
The Cubone was right and he hated the fact that the other Pokemon was right. Additionally, despite what he had protested, he couldn't abandon Grave and expect to make it that far. Afterall his muscles hurt like hell from just taking a few steps forward and it would be at least a couple of days until he could expect to be back in fighting shape. Still, he wasn't about to make it that easy for this Pokemon anyway.
Without saying a word the Minccino, while slowly walking towards Grave and despite how badly his muscles ached in objection, picked up a rock off the ground. The Cubone looked at him in both confusion and like he wanted to say something. While being only a foot or so away he launched the rock into the side of the ground type torso, something that must have caught him off guard because the attack was enough to send him flying onto the ground. Landon then moved up to make himself essentially standing on top of the other Pokemon. "You might have a point but I want you to know that under no circumstances that this means, or will ever mean, that I'm warming up to you."
The Cubone just replied with a sarcastic, "Suuurrreee," that contained some slight sense of pride in the word.
The Minccino was just about to kick him in his rib cage when he decided against it, instead, he was just barely able to bring himself to swallowing his anger and instead reached out his paw to Grave.
The ground type accepted his implied proposal, grabbing onto the Minccino's paw with his clubless hand and shook it. The Cubone then hastily pulled the Minccino down onto the ground and used this leverage to bring himself to his feet. Grave then scoffed, " guess that doesn't make me your friend either."
Landon pushed himself painfully off the ground, ignoring Grave entirely and moving to the pile of uncooked oran berries to start eating them. The Minccino was just about to grab a handful of the blue fruit when something straight out of the bizarre began to happen. The ground beneath him began to shake, at first, it was almost negligible but the quaking grew more and more violent the longer it went on. The pile of berries that he had tried collecting from was now scattered all across the floor and Landon found his own balance failing him. This forced the Minccino onto all fours as he was no longer able to compete with the vicious shaking in a standing posture. The tremor had grown so strong that the rocks scattered across the ground had begun clattering together.
Landon's attention was immediately grasped by the loud sound of ripping and snapping coming from his side. A tree had been uprooted straight out of the earth and was now bearing down over him, only mere seconds away from crushing him like a bug type.
Having already expended all his energy in the days prior, the Minccino could do nothing but stare helplessly awestruck at his impending doom.
Right before the huge cylinder of bark connected with him, he felt an object strike him with incredible force from the side. Landon didn't fight the impact and instead fell with it, causing him to roll to the side and nearly avoid the log which hit the ground with a cataclysmic "THOOOOM."
A minute or so passed with Landon lying half-dead on the ground while it shook fervently. The shaking began to cease but he still laid there, attempting to make some calm out of the near-death experience.
Grave quickly broke the moment of calm, walking over to the Pokemon and picking up the club off the ground which was the tool that propelled himself from doom.
"I guess this makes me two-for-zero, how many more times do I have to save your life for you to start being a little nicer to me?"
"About a million," Landon scoffed as he pushed himself from the dirt and patted himself off.
"Well that's no way to talk to your savior," the Cubone said in a mocking tone while taking the stance of a superhero.
Landon really wanted to deck him in the face in order to put him in his place, but barely managed to quell the rising rage.
"Oh, and I probably should have mentioned the earthquakes, they've been occurring ever since I arrived here, usually they happen once or twice a week. You should probably stay somewhat mindful of them."
"You don't say," Landon said scornfully while rubbing the forming scar on his back.
"Anyways, I think you owe me something," Grave said, pulling out the bluish tablet from his helmet as it gave a soft glow.
"I think I'd be happier as a bloody smear under that tree," he replied with a deep sigh at the end.
Grave began walking off without saying another word, Landon knew that the Cubone was hoping he'd follow without instruction and thus, without a fight.
He shot his eyes around, looking at the few shrubs that surrounded him before deciding to trail the Cubone, albeit at a far distance.
…
"Aw, that's not fair," Jae said as after the group had flipped over their playing cards, Max's card being a king which beat out everyone elses by far. The only person who even came close to competition was Rose who had unveiled a six.
The Minun pushed his winnings into his pile, the game they were playing was War, one of the many things Lucus had taught him while they were aboard the ship. Max found that he was surprisingly good at it, or at least as good as one could be in a game completely about luck. He did enjoy playing these games far greater than most physical adventures as they were nicely controlled, even though most featured luck as a key aspect, there was still only so much that could go wrong. This stood at an exact opposite to real life which constantly held the anxiety of calamitous failure in front of him.
The next round began and with it, the Minun slide a face-down playing card off the stack while the others did the same. They flipped and he had beaten everyone but Jae who tied with his queen. As the rules dictate they both placed three cards next to each other and then played and flipped a fourth. Once again, Max found himself winning with a perfectly timed ace. Jae, who found himself with almost no cards remaining, grumbled, "This game sucks, how come you always win," a few embers shot out of his mouth as he spoke, one ended up landing on one of the playing cards and setting it ablaze.
Lucus quickly stood up from his seated position and stamped out the blaze, preventing it from spreading and ruining the rest of the deck.
The Scorbunny with the face of embarrassment, apologized with, "sorry I guess I should have been paying more attention to where my words went."
"It's fine," the human affirmed, "we've had a long enough break anyways." He then proceeded to pick up what remained of the deck while the others stood up from the grassy surface they had been playing on. "Now come on, let's get going and not waste time."
Max and Rose gave out a synchronized nod as usual and began to follow behind him. The Minun had only managed to take a few steps forwards before he started to feel the ground tremor beneath him. As the others looked around in sharp confusion, he could also feel something else, he could feel the floor giving way right from under him. Quickly sharp, jagged cracks formed a circle around the blue Pokemon as he was slightly jostled lower, the vibrations of the world not being his only threat. Max was being helplessly tossed around as he watched a fissure growing wider and wider around him, stopping just short of Rose. His floor turned into a platform, and one that was about to collapse, it slid down hard to the left, sending the small Minun into a dense wall of clay and dirt. After the collision, Max fell onto the sinking ground, his side hurting like hell from the blunt impact. Before he could even make sense of anything but pain, the entire sinkhole caved in beneath him. He was now free-falling towards what was sure to be certain death, with no one to stop him but the hard floor. Only moments later he collided with the ground, his body recoiling up a few inches before gravity punished him again.
Somehow though, when everything settled and the world ceased to move, he found he was still alive. The Minun feared the few moments that were to come, if he was granted one miracle by having his life spared, there would be no way he could expect to still be in one piece. The only thing was, the endless agony he was awaiting never came, in fact, the only thing he felt out of the ordinary was the slight, blunt pain running across his side.
"But… how," was the only thing that coursed through his mind. Max pushed himself off the hard floor below him, able to walk and move just fine. A fair amount of light came in through the wide hole he fell through which allowed him to see somewhat clearly. Even if the impact wasn't enough to finish him, the ground was covered by sharp jagged bits of rock that should have left at least some mark on his fur.
"Hey! Hey Max," he heard being yelled from above him.
The Minun shot his head up to see Rose gleaming over the rim of the hole and looking straight down.
He saw the red Pokemon pull away from the edge and heard her again in a muffled tone, "... yeah, he seems alright… I'm not sure… OK, I'll tell him…"
"Max," he heard shouted expectedly from above. "Will you be OK in there for a bit, Lucus has some rope he just needs to untangle it."
He nodded his head even though he wasn't sure if she'd even be able to notice the gesture from this far down. Rose must've though because she once again exited his line of sight.
Max used the downtime to observe the pitfall he was residing in. Several things struck him as odd about the trench. For one, the circular walls were almost perfectly smooth and didn't look like anything a Pokemon would make, or at least none that he knew off. There was also the entrance of a cave that cut into the walls of his cylindrical entrapment. Despite his inability to see more than a few inches into it, an unsettling eerie feeling filled him whenever he looked in itsf direction.
"Look out below down there," he heard be echoed from above as a cable quickly fell from the surface, just falling short of touching the gray stone beneath him. This was quickly followed with, "Alright we're coming down now, stay clear of the rope."
Max watched as Lucas leaned over the edge to clip his harness onto the cable. The human then quickly dropped himself over the edge, holding Rose in his left side as he carefully scaled down the rock surface.
After a few moments, they landed down beside him, Rose quickly leaving Lucas' side and running over to his own. The Plusle was not shy towards embracing him, trapping his arms against his side as she squeezed him with vigor.
Once he was released, the Minun found himself stumbling back, having relied on her support just a little too much. Max managed to regain his balance before he tripped onto the ground but was now left to staring at Rose with flustered embarrassment, hopping his accidental escape didn't come off as rude to her.
He wasn't granted a lot of time to dwell on this because Lucas firmly gripped his shoulder and started shining a bright light into his eyes. He was then spun around sharply, feeling the skin of the human running across his back and side before the human finally released his grasp. Max found himself staggering back again, this time by choice.
"Apart from a bruise on your side, you look perfectly healthy which is somewhat surprising given what just happened, but I guess we shouldn't look a gift Ponyta in the mouth." Lucas paused for a moment before something seemed to attract his attention his the direction of the cave.
"You guys see that too right," the human, approaching the hollowed passage while piercing its darkness with a flashlight.
"Yeah," squeaked Max lightly in reply, despite his low position on the ground being obscured by stalactites, he could still see the shimmering of a few small objects reflecting the beams of the flashlight.
Max stood back while the human moved forwards, carefully maneuvering himself through the spiky corridor. The Minun only decided to follow suit once he noticed Rose go ahead with following Lucas.
He walked slowly and carefully through the chasm because, despite the other two having already moved up, the eerie feeling of the place maintained itself in his mind. Once he caught up, the objects which were producing the glare presented themselves willingly to the flashlight. It was a short trail of glass shards that lead up to a corroded metal door that had a tiny rectangular spot where a glass pane should have been.
All three of them looked at each other in a bit of confusion, Max knowing they must be just as confused as he was to what a building was doing in this of all places.
"I think this is some kind of bunker or something," Lucas said, peering through the smashed out window, "it looks like it's almost all concrete and this door doesn't look like it is willing to budge easily."
That seemed to make enough sense to Max, and if that was the case it's really not their business to be messing around with it, even if it does appear to be far past its usefulness. "I- I think we should leave, it really doesn't seem like a good idea to stick around."
"I think I can agree with you there, come on Rose lets get out of here, Jae is waiting topside at the rope."
"Aww," the Plusle remarked, "but what if there's something cool inside, don't you want to find out what's in there to explore?"
"Not if it belongs to someone else who could be somewhere around here just waiting to ruin the day of some would-be intruders."
"I dun-know it looks pretty abandoned to me…"
"That may be the case but we can't just assu-" his lecturing was brought to a halt by the sound of a metallic creature's screeching which caused both of the electric creature's ears to shoot to the top of their head.
Rose was quick to move on this opportunity, blurting out, "See, there could be an injured Pokemon inside and they could need our help!"
"I guess that is true but how do you assume we get past this door, it doesn't look like it's willing to give way to a simple Pokemon attack."
Rose's ears lowered at this before she looked around a bit and spotted something that restored her ambition. The Plusle moved to a heavily corroded vent at the very right edge of the concrete wall, the shaft was about half the height of her. A bright sparkle emanated from her hands for a brief moment, which resulted in the brittle metal of grate shattering from the intense electrical input.
"Come-on Max, we can get in through here," she shouted happily towards the Minun.
Max on the other hand, wasn't feeling too excited about the endeavor, his natural disposition towards anything foreign preventing him from feeling sound at mind towards entering the potentially hazardous place. "There's no way I'm gonna let her go alone though," he thought to himself in an attempt to psych his mind up.
Rose had already started crawling through the tight shaft, disappearing around a corner quickly, leaving Max with just Lucas, who he looked towards and saw the human having a look of uncertainty in his eyes.
"Ok, I'm through, you can come on Max," Rose echoed from the other side of the wall.
Getting onto all fours the Minun began crawling his way through the ventilation shaft, taking note of the trail of water leaking throughout it. After going past a corner and up a slight incline, he found himself tumbling out of the tight space and into a long concrete corridor with a metal floor.
Max looked at Rose who was standing beside him and providing a smile as well as enlightening the room with a red sparkle from her hands. Max quickly picked himself up from the cold steel floor and into his natural standing position. He looked around and saw that they were indeed on the other side of the door, in a corridor that was lined with several metallic cupboards and cabinets, all damaged or ruined in some way. The hallway also appeared to exit out to a larger room in the distance. The strangest thing about the place was how it felt alive, he could sense electricity traveling through the walls. He couldn't read too far into this as Rose had already started moving forward and the last thing Max wanted to be was left alone in this place.
They both made their way down the hall, Max tried not to creep himself out by concocting theories of this odd shelter while Rose looked more and more intrigued with every step. Once they reached the exit of the passage, they both saw openings to three rooms, albeit only one was actually accessible as the other two had doors that were in a far past usable state. The room also contained a plethora of bland furniture and appliances that weren't in any better condition than the rest of the room.
They only been in the room for a few moments when a mechanic whirring sound echoed from deeper in the building, followed immediately by the same screech from earlier.
"Don't worry we're coming to help," Rose shouted, an action that filled Max with fear as he still was far from certain they were alone in this place and if something else was here, they definitely knew of their presence now.
This horror in the Minun's mind came true as a floating, all-black creature recklessly hovered into the room, slamming itself against the walls of the building as it rapidly tried to move around. Max recognized it instantly as being similar to the creatures from the temple, albeit this one was amalgamated slightly into a different shape. Along with this, several small machines orbited it, perfectly avoiding contact with the creature while firing a small bolt of electricity at it every few seconds.
Rose crackled some electricity out of her cheeks, probably in an attempt to scare the thing off. Max, on the other hand, saw the beast was in pain and couldn't even keep itself from slamming into any surfaces, much less attack them.
Only a few moments of the slim, white and black objects suffering continued until it fainted and fell static onto the ground, the drones that had been circling it quickly flew through the one open door and disappeared into the darkness.
"That was… odd," Rose said in a confused tone. She then walked up to the unmoving creature, which failed to resemble a Pokemon in any way, shape, or form. "What is this thing," she spoke out to Max who could only grant a shrug in reply.
With not much left to do they headed deeper into the facility through the only path that they could which ended up leading into another long corridor, this one lined with closed metal doors on both sides. A few at the very back were opened, however, granting them a path to go. One, in particular, stood out to the Pokemon as light flooded out the slight opening into it. The doorway in was a very tight fit but they both managed to squeeze through with a significant amount of wiggling.
The inside of this room bore a resemblance to the operations room of a Poke-center, a place Max had only seen once in his life but recognized it nonetheless.
The only thing that stood out as odd in the room was a row of computers on the counter against the wall. Most of them were powered off except for two on opposite ends of the counter, both lighten up with a green luminescent screen.
"Hey what's that," Rose said while looking directly at the PC's which Max had noticed moments prior. The Plusle hopped up onto the counter, followed shortly by Max, both of which looked at the screens with intrigue.
One of the displays showed a long, almost complete bar, slowly filling and surrounded by text that neither Pokemon was capable of reading due to their lack of understanding on most written language.
The other computer, however, was purely text, Max felt it looked important but couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The same mechanical whirring and screech played again, this time it came from right beside Max, causing him to jump and tumble off of the counter.
The fallen Pokemon rubbed the side of his head of torso while Rose climbed down and stood next to his side. Max quickly and shakily spoke his piece, "Can we please leave here now, I think the noise we heard was just from that machine and I have a really bad feeling about this place."
"I think I can agree to that," the Plusle replied in a playful tone, "we should also tell Lucas about what was in here, he might know what it's used for."
Max nodded his head and they left the facility without any interruption and outside they brought up the creature, the drones, and the operation room to the human who stood just as confused about it as they were. As per Max's request, they did return back to the surface hastily and rejoined up with Jae. From here they once again began on their foot journey through the jungle.
…
Deep underground in a nondescript bunker, an alarm goes off, this in itself didn't cause a commotion, but what it sensed was far from expected.
A scientist wearing a white lab coat rushes through a set of automatic doors, holding a set of paperwork in hand. He meets with a tall, sturdily built man wearing a dark purple suit that stands in hard contrast to the clinical white design of his office.
"Sir, we have an issue, several of the motion detectors in Lambda activated, we didn't think it was just one of the Unknown so we tapped into the cameras and spotted this."
The scientist pulled a sheet of paper containing several printed out pictures from surveillance footage, each containing two mice Pokemon running throughout the facility.
"I should inform you that Plusles and Minuns are not native to the island so that mea-"
"I can already take a fucking hint as to what it means, either someone sticking their nose where they shouldn't, or some idiot just got himself into a load shit, either way, what are the options to remedy this loose end?"
"Well normally I'd advise doing nothing, those Pokemon were far from a threat to the operation and even if this person did suspect something, their weeks from the mainland, we'd be fine to keep operating as we are. However, the sensor did pick up something that I think will interest you greatly."
The scientist placed a pile of papers onto his superior's desk, the man casually skims through them before cracking a slight smile.
"There is already a team waiting for your order to commit the interdiction. We don't have information on how vital the Pokemon themselves are to reproducing the signal, but we will try to capture them alive."
"Excellent, maybe you're not such a useless cunt after all. Go ahead with the operation and let's see what secrets our little friends are hiding."
Author's Note: … end scene. Looks like Max and the rest are far from alone, and even further from safe, on the seemingly deserted island. Even more so they seem to possess something that is of interest to this other group, how will it play out? Well, you're going to have to tune in next time!