The trek north was largely uneventful, as there were no dungeons between Pokémon Square and Thunderwave Cave. Alti and Cannon passed through some small, lush woods, but the Pokémon that lived there were less aggressive than the ones they had encountered in the Tiny Woods, and so their journey didn't feature even a single battle. Additionally, the lushness of the woods meant they came across a large number of small fruits, allowing them to eat and collect some food to take back to the rescue base with them.
The sun was high in the sky when Alti and Cannon finally arrived at the entrance to the cave, which was in the side of a rocky mountain that rose up above the grasslands. The mountain was only one of what appeared to be several stretching off to the east and the north. According to the map, the path they had taken to Thunderwave Cave was not the most direct one. Hilly lands were in the direct path of the cave, and rather than scramble around changing elevations and steep slopes, Cannon had elected to just head a little west and avoid the hills altogether. The sheer amount of mountains and hills Alti could see in the distance told her why they called this continent the Stonelands.
Outside the cave, a single Magnemite floated erratically. Upon spotting Alti and Cannon, it moved toward them and spoke (though Alti had absolutely no idea how).
"Are you a rescue team?" it asked in a very mechanical and emotionless voice, looking at Alti and Cannon with its singular eye.
"That we are," Cannon said, swinging the bag around to display the rescue team badge pinned to the outside. "Are you the Magnemite who wrote a letter saying that your friends have been stuck together? Stun, right?"
"Correct," answered Stun. "This is Thunderwave Cave. It's a very small cave, but my friends are in the back of the cave. They haven't really been willing to move since the incident, for fear that trying to do anything would damage them further. I'd appreciate it if you could help them as soon as possible."
"Of course," Alti said, nodding. "Cannon, let's get going!"
With that, the two Pokémon proceeded into the cave.
Surprisingly, the cave was not as dark as Alti had expected when she heard that they were going to be exploring a cave. The entrance was large and let in a lot of light, and there were often little holes in the ceiling and walls letting in small patches of sunlight. In addition, there were regularly small flashes elsewhere in the cave – which Alti assumed had to come from Electric Pokémon – that helped light up the interior of the cavern for Alti and Cannon.
Almost immediately after entering the cavern, there was a pronounced squealing noise, the sound of paws on hard ground, and suddenly there was a pain in a place Alti had never expected to feel: her tail.
"Yowch!" she shouted, surprised by the sensitivity of it. Alti turned and saw a small purple rat with its teeth embedded in her tail. She shook her tail wildly and succeeded at dislodging the Rattata, which tumbled away. Alti had very little time to recover, though, as the Rattata quickly scrambled to its feet and bared its large teeth at them. Alti quickly tried again to attack it with an electric attack, but she still had no clue how to actually do it, and she ended up just stupidly standing there with a concentrated look on her face as the Rattata got another chance to attack her. It tackled her, and she stumbled backwards, though she stayed on her feet.
"Come on, Alti, attack it, do something!" Cannon yelled in exasperation as he himself tackled the Rattata. The Rattata skidded a little ways away, but turned back to face them with a determined expression.
Alti wasn't so sure of the extent to which she could plausibly attack the Rattata without electricity, but nonetheless she took a few steps forward and then flung herself at the Rattata, knocking it to the ground. It scrambled to its feet again, but rather than face them it got an expression of pure fear in its eyes and fled as quickly as its legs would carry it – which, Alti, thought, was surprisingly fast.
"Still no luck on the electric attacks, I see," Cannon said, crossing his arms.
"I'm a human in the body of a Pokémon," Alti retorted, allowing some slight annoyance to creep into her voice. "Humans don't have whatever quality it is that allow Pokémon to spit water and fire and shoot leaves and electrocute things and all those crazy things Pokémon can do. I have no idea where to even begin trying to use electrical powers. And of course, that's the nature of a Pikachu, so I keep wanting to do that instead of actually using physical attacks." She grunted to punctuate her own annoyance.
"No idea how to help you there," Cannon said. "All Pokémon are different. It's also just normal for us to do things, you know? For us, humans are the odd ones for not having any abilities. I've got no idea how to begin explaining what it's like to just feel that aspect of Pokémon. Sorry." He didn't sound entirely sympathetic, which kind of bothered Alti slightly, but she supposed that there really wasn't any way for a Water-type to help her discover her own electric abilities. She'd just have to try and figure it out herself, she supposed.
"But we should get going," Cannon said. "Thunderwave Cave isn't terribly big, but we may as well work quickly."
Shaking off her misgivings about herself and her current confusion, Alti followed Cannon further into the cave.
The rest of the cave took about half an hour to get through, if Alti had to guess (although she'd never been good at guesstimating time). Alti and Cannon ran into a handful of other Pokémon on their way through the cave, including several Electric-types – but they didn't use electric attacks, so Alti had no frame of reference for how they might have used those attacks. Instead, she and Cannon just hit them with tackles. Alti knew hers were significantly less powerful than Cannon's, but for the time being it was all she could do. Even after Cannon started spitting forceful bubbles at the enemy Pokémon, Alti still couldn't use electric attacks and knew she was falling behind Cannon in terms of fighting ability.
Fortunately, though, there wasn't much time for Alti to fail further as a Pikachu, because not long after Cannon started using Bubble, he and Alti stumbled across a small alcove in the cave wall where two Magnemite were huddled. Instead of attacking, they shrank back against the cave wall, which told Alti they were clearly not hostile.
"Are you the Magnemite from the rescue request?" Cannon asked. "The ones Stun said were stuck together by a magnetic wave?"
"That'd be us," said one Magnemite. "We can't separate ourselves, and there haven't been any friendly Pokémon around to help. Just pull us apart."
"Can do," Alti said, moving around to the side of one Magnemite while Cannon approached the other. At the same time, Alti and Cannon pulled the Magnemite's magnets in opposite directions, and with a small sound that sounded like a pop, the two Magnemite came apart.
"Thank you," one Magnemite said, at the same time as the other twirled around in delighted freedom.
"It's what rescue teams do," Alti replied, grinning. "Shall we go back to the entrance? Stun is waiting for you."
"Sounds good," said the Magnemite who had formerly been spinning. "Let's go."
The small troupe of Pokémon headed back through the cave – sticking to the side walls, for the benefit of avoiding running into Pokémon on their journey out of Thunderwave Cave. It ended up taking around the same amount of time to get out of the dungeon, though, despite them taking a longer route, because they didn't get lost at any point and they didn't have to fight any wild Pokémon.
Upon exiting the cave, the Magnemite they had met on their way in hurried (as much as a Magnemite could appear to "hurry", at any rate) over to the four of them.
"Scrap!" it said, then made a noise that sounded like an overworked computer – which Alti assumed could only be the way that they said that name that had been on the rescue request, "Bzz". "You're okay!" Turning to Alti and Cannon, it said, "I can't thank you enough for this."
"Thunderwave Cave isn't a difficult dungeon to work through," Cannon pointed out. "And it wasn't too hard to get to them."
"Regardless, we're still grateful," said one of the two Magnemite that Alti and Cannon had rescued. "Bzz and I had no way to get out of that situation on our own." He didn't say "Bzz", but rather made the same sound that Stun had made earlier, and Alti couldn't help feeling rather confused at the oddness of this name.
"Glad we were able to help," Cannon said simply. "It's a rough time."
"Indeed," said Stun. "But for saving my friends, I do have to reward you. Underneath that rock over there–" the Magnemite turned and pointed its magnet at a reasonably sized stone near the entrance to Thunderwave Cave – "I've put some items, if you want them. I can't grab them and give them to you myself, though."
"Okay," Alti said, not bothering to voice her inner confusion at how the Magnemite had ever brought the items out if it couldn't pick them up now. Instead, she just headed over to the stone, and turned it over to see a small pile of differently-sized coins, a tan-colored seed, and another Rawst Berry.
"All this?" she called back, holding up the items and showing them to the Magnemite.
"Yup," responded Stun. "I know it's not much, but –"
"It's more than we got yesterday," Cannon interrupted, eyeing the coins that Alti was holding. "Thank you!"
"You're welcome," replied Stun. "And thank you for getting Scrap and Bzz un-stuck!"
"Of course," Alti said, smiling. "Bye!"
"Goodbye!"
With that, Alti handed Cannon the rewards, and he placed them into the treasure bag, drawing out the map instead. The two Pokémon then headed away from the cave and back the way they had come.
"Wait!"
Cannon stopped as Alti whipped around, her tail smacking Cannon in the face as she turned.
"What did you – Alti?" Cannon asked, rubbing his face as he noticed that Alti wasn't paying attention to him. Rather, she was running back toward Thunderwave Cave and the three Magnemite outside. Cannon rolled his eyes and followed her with a heavy sigh.
"What is it?" asked one of the Magnemite – though Alti still couldn't tell which one it was; she'd not gotten to a point where she could identify Pokémon of the same species by sight yet.
"This is going to sound really weird," Alti began, "but I'm a Pikachu who has no idea how to use electric attacks. Do you think you can give me a quick lesson?"
All three Magnemite stared. "Are you serious?" asked one.
"Deadly," Alti replied, not changing her tone of voice. "It's too long of a story as to why for me to tell you, though. Can you just indulge me?"
Despite their initial confusion, the Magnemite agreed to help her out. Even though she could tell Cannon was impatient behindher, Alti made a point to learn all she could about electricity and the use of electric attacks from the Magnemite, and at the end of it she could use some small electrical attacks on the plants around her. After she was confident she knew the theory behind the ability to use electric attacks, she and Cannon left for real and headed back.
The sun was still in the sky when Cannon and Alti returned to the rescue base, although it was dipping quickly behind the trees. "We're not going to have time for another rescue today, are we, Cannon?" Alti asked as the two Pokémon approached the base.
"Probably not," said Cannon as he picked up the hammer he had used to nail in the banner that morning. "Besides, I need to return this to Pelipper Post Office. Want to come with me? We can go check out Pokémon Square."
Alti shrugged. "Nothing better to do," she pointed out. "Let's go."
She took the treasure bag from Cannon as the two Pokémon walked away from the base they had just returned to and instead headed off to the left, in the opposite direction from the Tiny Woods. Alti had vaguely noticed the existence of some buildings in that direction, but she hadn't had a chance to go over there since she and Cannon had come to the rescue base the day before. As they approached the buildings, however, Alti's eyes widened and she couldn't help letting out a small gasp.
Pokémon Square was packed. There were a ton of Pokémon in the square: talking, exchanging items or information, crowded around booths that Alti could only assume were shops of some kind. Alti and Cannon stopped before a small wooden bridge that crossed a stream, and as they stood there, a Sunflora and a Raticate, engaged in some deep conversation Alti could not make out, passed close by. The noise of chatter rising above the square was so prominent that Alti couldn't help but wonder why she hadn't noticed it earlier.
"So many Pokémon!" Alti breathed, her mouth falling open. She heard Cannon snort beside her and turned to see Cannon, looking at her with an expression of equal amusement and smugness.
"Pokémon Square is a significant rescue hub," he said, gesturing to all the Pokémon around them. "A lot of them live to the north, past Whiscash's Pond, in a number of small villages. But we also have a lot of visitors from other hubs, especially Dune City and Nortown, since those are the closest. But the river to the south goes out to the ocean, and so we regularly do water-based transportation with the Frost Highlands villages and even the continent of Sacado in the east." Sacado? Alti couldn't help thinking. The Stonelands and Sacado. I'm not even going to try to understand the logic behind that. "But point is, there's a lot of Pokémon that visit Pokémon Square. Business booms here, especially recently with the surge of rescue teams being formed."
"I can see that," Alti agreed. "It looks like there are a ton of shops, too." She could see some small booths lining the main path of the square on both sides, and noticed that a lot of the congregation was around the booths.
"Yup," responded Cannon. He began walking across the bridge, and Alti began to follow. "A lot of them are for rescue teams, actually," he pointed out. Alti and Cannon passed by a booth that looked to Alti like it was designed after Kecleon. "Kecleon's shop sells all sorts of stuff, from rescue supplies to simple food. Sometimes, they have some really rare stuff like TMs and bands, so it's always a good idea to check up there."
They have TMs here? With every new piece of information, Alti found herself more and more impressed at the sheer advanced nature of the world she'd ended up in.
The two Pokémon passed by a crowd of Pokémon haggling with the Kecleon and continued down the street to a booth that looked like a Persian and one that looked like a Wigglytuff. "Persian's bank and Wigglytuff's friend area shop," Cannon explained. "The bank is self-explanatory. The friend area shop…" Cannon paused for a second. "I'll tell you about that later."
Despite her overwhelming curiosity – what in the world was a friend area? – Alti just continued after Cannon. Her head was spinning already with the information she'd received and the sudden introduction to a lot of Pokémon at one time, and she didn't want to overload herself any further.
As they moved away from Wigglytuff's shop, Alti noticed that the number of Pokémon seemed to be dwindling. They passed a small grove of trees, and then Alti saw the sea down below and she realized that they were on a path heading for a cliff. A steady, salty wind blew into her face, and Alti realized with disgust that her fur was beginning to feel sticky and gross.
"Pelipper Post Office," Cannon said, pointing out the Pelipper-shaped building on the top of the cliff. "The Pelipper employed here travel regularly between here and the other cities in the region, collecting and exchanging both information and rescue job offers. They also serve as the rescue team registration facility for Pokémon Square."
"Right," Alti said. "I remember that."
"Rescue requests get posted on this board here," Cannon explained, pointing to a wooden board standing on the ground outside the building. Alti could see a ton of papers tacked to the wall, their corners flapping in the mild breeze. "Any rescue team can come up and take a request off the wall, and then if you complete it, you bring it back to the post office to register a successful rescue."
"I guess that makes more sense than expecting Pokémon to send you specific rescue requests every day," Alti mused. "Plus you can actually pick up rescues that you can do."
"Yeah," Cannon agreed. "Anyway, I'm gonna go drop this hammer off and register our success, and then we should probably eat and turn in for the night."
Alti nodded in agreement, and looked over the rescue board as Cannon went over to the post office. She didn't take any missions off the board, though, and she and Cannon left without taking any new missions. On the way back to the rescue base, Cannon pulled two apples out of the treasure bag, apples that they had collected on the way to Thunderwave Cave. It was dinner, Cannon said, because apples were normally enough to fill up Pokémon their size. Alti remembered having a big appetite as a human, and she was a bit skeptical of this claim regardless, but didn't say anything as Cannon and Alti headed back to the rescue base.
Alti and Cannon ate mostly in silence; Alti was rather tired out after the first rescue mission (she'd have to get used to somewhat strenuous – by her standards – physical activity, she supposed) and wasn't much in the mood for talking. The apple actually did fill her up, much to her surprise, and so with dinner complete, Alti tucked the treasure bag into a corner and fell quickly into a relaxed sleep on the hay pile.
There was originally a significant discussion of the pseudoscience behind the Magnemite trying to teach Alti electric attacks. Then I realized it was just a bunch of dialogue that didn't add anything so I scrapped it. You'll have to be content with the very short scene dedicated to it.