Weathering a Castform, Chapter 54
"Tomorrow, expect clear skies and cold winds on the western coasts of Hoenn. Temperatures will be at 21 degrees celsius, going as low as 13 due to wind chill."
If the weatherman was to be believed, it would be a beautiful day for adventuring tomorrow. I've always heard the saying 'since when can the weatherman predict the weather?', which always kinda threw me off. Wasn't it his job to tell everyone what kind of weather to expect? What could he gain from lying? Somehow, I felt the entire meaning of the saying was somehow going over my head.
The night before I departed, I was staying at the Pokemon Center, as usual. It must've been past midnight that night when I got up from my bed and went outside. Vulpix was sound asleep, so I didn't bother to wake her up for nothing. I hadn't had a restless night like that in a long time. The streets of Rustboro were surprisingly silent and still, considering the sheer size of the city. I wasn't planning on wandering far from the center, but before I knew it, my feet were taking me half way across the city.
My heart was beating much faster than normal; anxiety, I thought. But what was I anxious about? The trip, or something else? After letting my feet drag me along for a little while, I forced myself to stop. I had ended up near the school, naturally locked up tight at this hour. Still, the front lawn, where some chairs and swings for younger kids were situated, was still open to me. I skipped along to one of the swings, and took a seat. I let myself swing back and forth for a little bit, trying to shake off my anxiety. My thoughts started to wander back home, to Mom and Deneb. Perhaps I was just feeling a bit homesick.
"What would Mom say?" I whispered to myself in the dark. I giggled before I answered myself. "She'd probably chew me out for not calling sooner. 'You never call', or something."
Just thinking about Mom seemed to lift my spirit a bit, but the anxiety was still there. My thoughts turned to Deneb, and the first memory that came up was of that kiss in Viridian City. I admit, I sort of blushed at the memory, despite not actually being embarrassed by it in any way. I just wished I could talk to Deneb again, face to face.
At that moment, I felt something rub up against my leg. I shrieked a bit and tried to back away, forgetting that I was on the swing, so I fell off it on my back. It turned out to be Vulpix, who had followed me all the way here. She licked my face as an apology, and helped me to my feet.
"Don't do that! Scared me." Vulpix just tilted her head slightly as we looked at each other. I couldn't help but smile at her, and I gave her a hug in the darkness.
"Come on, girl. Let's get some sleep." I led Vulpix away from the swing first, then let her lead me back to the center. As I walked back, that anxiety which had kept me up all this time vanished into the night. I let out a large yawn just as I went back inside the center.
~o~
The weatherman cannot predict the weather if his life depended on it.
That was pretty much the extent of my thoughts the next morning, shortly after departing from Rustboro City. It was a beautiful morning, I woke up energized despite the fewer hours of sleep, and I decided to leave the city on bike to gain some distance. Not long after setting out, I noticed some rainclouds forming over the mountainside. What surprised me even more was the speed at which those clouds spread over all of Route 115.
The rain started pretty quickly, too, not even giving me a chance to find some cover. I know it sounds like I'll I'm doing is complaining at this point, but Route 115 doesn't have any form of cover to hide from the rain! Trees were so plentiful elsewhere in Hoenn, yet now that I needed them, only the dried out, leafless ones remained here. To spare you from any further complaints, I did manage to find some cover from the rain, under a strange rock formation by the mountainside. Of course, by that point I was already soaked.
"You okay, Vulpix?" I helped her out of the basket on the bike and put her on the ground next to me. As a response, she shook her body violently, spraying me with all that rainwater as she dried herself off relatively well.
"Thanks a lot, girl," I commented. The rain was still coming down hard, and the skies had darkened pretty much entirely. It felt more like the late afternoon, which scared me a little. Such strange weather, this close to the winter months? Regardless, I had another matter to concern myself over: my clothes. Mom always said staying in wet clothes was the fastest way to a cold, and being so cold today, especially with the wind, wasn't helping my case. I'd be lucky to get out of there with just a cold.
I looked through my bag, hoping something inside it remained dry. My luck would have it, everything was soaked, right down to my new towel. I had bought one just for this little trip, and it wouldn't be drying me off much anymore. I felt my body start to shiver, so I turned back to Vulpix.
"Vulpix, could you make a fire here? I'm f-f-freezing." It didn't take me more than a second after asking Vulpix that I realized she couldn't do that. There was no safe place to start a fire, and I didn't have anything to burn. I was stuck soaking wet in the cold.
I wrapped myself up in the towel and tried my best to stay as warm as possible, hoping the storm would pass. Vulpix pitched in every few minutes with a small burst of flames, heating the air around me. She couldn't keep this up for long, but every little bit helped to fight off the death I could feel creeping around me. That is, until Nancy arrived to bail me out of this problem.
About an hour after I went into hiding, someone in a yellow raincoat and umbrella, redundant though it was, walked by the rock formation I was under. She noticed I was there, and ran over, revealing her face once she was out of the rain. There wasn't much space to work with, but that'd soon change.
"Who are you?" I had asked, fearful it might've been an obnoxious Pokemon Trainer.
"I'm Nancy," the girl answered, showing me her face underneath the raincoat. "Are you alright? You look a bit sick."
"I was caught in the rain, and everything I have is wet." By this point, my nose was runny, and I let out a loud sneeze just after answering her.
"Oh god, let me help you out!"
Nancy released a Pokemon, a blue and green critter with a leaf on its head. Unsure what a Pokemon that wasn't a fire type could do, I watched intently as the Pokemon somehow opened a hole in the mountainside wall with a move called Secret Power. Nancy helped me to my feet, covered me with her umbrella as best she could, and led me into the newly formed cavern.
I didn't deserve the amount of kindness she provided. Aside from getting me out of the rain, she had her Pokemon, a Lombre I'd later scan to find out, gather tinder from around the area to make a fire. She let me borrow her dry sleeping bag and a change of clothes, all so I could warm my body and try to prevent the cold from getting any worse. And she did this all without saying more than a few words that weren't orders.
"Nancy, thank you for everything," I finally ended up saying. With the fire inside the cave going strong, I could safely say I was starting to sweat a little rather than shiver.
"No trouble at all!" She was now in the process of laying out my clothes by the fire so they could dry properly. "I can tell by your dresses here that you didn't come prepared for this storm, huh?"
"Weatherman lied to me," I said, coughing a bit in between. "He said clear skies all around."
"Truth is, this storm has been pestering Meteor Falls for two days now. The people up in Fallarbor Town thought it was strange, a storm only over one tiny part for so long, but they didn't want to see why. I was traveling in this direction from Lavaridge, so I went looking myself."
"And? What did you find?"
"Team Magma. There's a whole bunch of them all over Meteor Falls, working a bunch of computers right there in the caverns. I couldn't hope to take them all on myself, so I snuck by them by taking a different tunnel. I don't know how, but they were making that storm with those machines."
"That doesn't make any sense," I said. "Team Magma is looking for Groudon. What are they trying to do by controlling the weather?"
"Well, I don't know, and I really don't want to, either. If you go that way, be sure to avoid them, as well. If I don't have to take you back to Rustboro's hospital, that is." I couldn't blame Nancy for being worried. At this point, I had a cold, a nasty one too, but the last thing I wanted was to be forced back to the city and into a hospital bed for a few days. Plus, if Mom found out I was sick, she'd fly to my bedside in a heartbeat and drag me back home. I swear, that was my biggest driving force behind staying safe and healthy.
"I'll be okay, thanks to your help. Just need to rest a bit more, is all." And by rest, I meant sleep until the next day.
A little while after that conversation, Nancy prepared some soup with what little ingredients she had left from her own hike. It wasn't the best tasting, not counting for my eternal dislike of soups, but it did seem to prove the theory that soup kills colds. After that, I dozed off for good, and didn't wake until the very next morning.
~o~
"Good morning, Star. I hope you don't mind, but I took some food from your bag to make breakfast." This was Nancy's greeting the following day, followed by a simple yet surprisingly delicious meal. I was feeling much better that morning, but I could still feel the cold in my throat, as well as an overall sense of fatigue.
"It's no problem, especially after everything you did for me yesterday. I owe you so much!"
"Please, I couldn't just leave you there! And on that note, the rain isn't letting up."
I couldn't believe her at first, so I had to look for myself out the cavern entrance. Indeed, it was still raining, though considerably lighter today. If Team Magma was behind this storm, how were they making it happen?
"Well, I can't just sit here and wait for it to stop raining," I said, determined to press onward in my journey. "I'm moving on, whether or not it stops raining by midday."
"You shouldn't do that! You're still a bit sick, and if you continue to get wet, you'll just make yourself worse." She had a point.
"But I can't just sit here and wait! If Team Magma is behind this, then I'll have to stop them! I've dealt with Team Rocket in the past, I'm sure they're no different!"
"Well, Star, it's your decision. You can have my umbrella, if it helps. I'll be fine with my raincoat, but I would like my sleeping bag and clothes back."
It took me a second or two to register what she had just asked for. I looked down, quickly remembering she had lent me some of her clothes the day before. I giggled a bit before I was forced to remove them and hand them back.
~o~
Because of the rain, I didn't get to travel very far that day. Route 115 was actually pretty long, and made longer by the slow pace I was forced to move at without the use of my bike. The rain continued all day long, but at least it wasn't pouring anymore, and Nancy's umbrella kept me practically dry the entire way. I ended up stashing some money in the outfit she lent me to pay for it, and not abuse her good faith. At the risk of getting a bit wet, I ran a small ways in the afternoon, gaining enough ground that I was able to camp inside Meteor Falls that night instead of outside.
Well, I say camp, but I didn't exactly get any sleep that night. As I was about to set up camp, Vulpix started barking at something deeper within the cave. Fearful that it was Team Magma, I grabbed hold of two Pokeballs and prepared myself for battle. At first, only a few Zubat flew over my head; Pokemon which I had seen so many of in my time as a trainer that their sight no longer made any impact on me other than mild annoyance. Still, Vulpix continued to bark at something deeper still, so I decided to investigate.
Meteor Falls, if travel agents of Rustboro City were to be believed, was the sight of a meteor crash many years ago. It created a large chasm in the otherwise mundane cave, exposing it to the elements. It was also the sight of a Pokemon discovery; two in fact, believed to have come from outer space! Many trainers have tried to catch these Pokemon, but so far none have been successful. I was fortunate enough to be able to identify one of them that night with my Pokedex.
Vulpix's nose was sharp as ever, and the thing she was tracking down was one of the extraterrestrial critters in question. It looked like an actual moon, its bright red eyes staring me down at a distance. It did not seem to like being disturbed, and Vulpix wouldn't stop barking at it. I pulled her back by one of her tails, telling her not to anger the Pokemon. It kept a close watch on me as I produced my Pokedex to scan it.
"Lunatone, the Meteorite Pokemon. Its health ebbs and flows with the lunar cycle. It brims with power when exposed to the light of the full moon."
"I heard something over here!" A voice echoed from beyond Lunatone's position.
The gray Pokemon instantly teleported to safety, leaving me exposed in that tunnel to whoever was coming. I scooped up Vulpix in my arms and ran behind a rock, hoping the darkness would conceal me from the men. They approached a few seconds later, and from my hiding place I could just barely make out the red uniforms. They were Team Magma members, of course.
"Strange, I swore I heard something," one of them said, looking around the area with a flashlight.
"That blasted moon Pokemon has given us the slip each time we go looking for it at night. Maybe we should just try and catch it during the day, like we caught the sun at night."
"You already forget? I think the moon knows we want to capture it like we did its friend. We should just tell the boss it left the cave, and we don't have to stay up all night anymore!"
"I'm starting to agree with you on that. Let's head back, don't want it to sneak up on me like it did Joe."
The two grunts turned around and went back down the tunnel they came. Once I was sure they were gone, I let out a huge sigh before looking at Vulpix directly. They had captured the sun Pokemon, most likely Lunatone's companion. At first, this wasn't adding up for me. What good were these Pokemon going to do for Team Magma's goals? Curiosity wouldn't let me forget it, so I followed the grunts down the tunnel. What I didn't know at the time was that Lunatone was following close behind.
After a short hike through the tunnels, we came upon the chasm mentioned by the locals. In the heart of it all was a giant opening, the sky covered in clouds and still raining, albeit softly now. In the slightly better light of the area, I saw the two grunts making their way through the rain into a tunnel on the far side of the chasm. I opened up the umbrella, still keeping watch over my fragile health even during espionage. After going through that tunnel, I came upon a cavern well lit by not only dozens of computer monitors, but normal lighting as well. It was Team Magma's base.
There were over a dozen grunts standing watch all around, and a few working diligently on some machine in the center of it all. It had two tubes, one containing a small gray mass, the other encased in metal so you couldn't see what was inside. I was betting on the sun Pokemon being in there.
"What were the results of the last diagnostic?" One of the grunts handed a clipboard over to a well-dressed gentleman amidst the others. He flipped through the documents for a second before being answered.
"The Pokemon is dying. We cannot continue to force its body in this manner for much longer. The Solrock remains perfectly sedated."
"Very well. This may be the conclusion of our tests here. I'll have Archie procure another Castform for use on Mt Chimney. In the meantime, prepare the Solrock for transport. It will prove to be a powerful tool for the next phase of our plan. You have your orders."
The man handed the clipboard back to the grunt and left via another tunnel behind the computers. A few of the grunts left with him, thinning out the numbers I'd have to deal with to stop them. I didn't know what they were planning on using those Pokemon for, but it was definitely not good, not to mention I still had to try and save that gray Pokemon in the glass tube. I was about to order Vulpix to rain down some Embers when Lunatone crashed into the cavern at full speed.
"It's the moon Pokemon! Get it!"
The grunts began releasing Pokemon and throwing Pokeballs into the air, while Lunatone's only goal was to break through the metal casing on the right tube. Taking advantage of the confusion, I ordered Vulpix to use Ember, while I released Wingull for another task. The small flames did enough to distract the grunts from focusing their attacks on Lunatone.
"Wingull, Peck the glass tube and free the Pokemon inside!"
Once Wingull was swooping down over the grunts, I was quickly spotted hiding out on the ledge above. A few of the grunts released their Poochyenas and Zubat to take me out. Vulpix stood fast, keeping the foes at bay with more Embers while I carefully managed both her and Wingull down below.
"Get the girl!" Someone in the crowd ordered.
"No, we must capture that Lunatone!" Another voice rang out.
"Protect the specimen!"
There was chaos amongst the grunts, which was only making it easier for me to ward off their attacks. The Lunatone was making steady progress on freeing his trapped companion, while Wingull was doing his best to face off against two Zubat without my input.
"Wingull, use Wing Attack! Knock them against the tube!"
The two opponents went in for the attack, but Wingull's longer wingspan allowed it to attack first, sending both crashing against the tube at the same time. The combined force cracked the glass, allowing Wingull to finally force it open with one more Peck attack. Meanwhile, Vulpix was going toe to toe with a Poochyena.
"Vulpix, just use Flamethrower!"
The sudden burst of flames sent the Poochyena running, while Wingull caught the trapped Pokemon on his back and was making his way up to me. Lunatone had also just broken through the metal casing, having used psychic powers and sheer force to break open that metal casing. Much as I wanted to stick around and see Lunatone's companion, I had to leave as soon as Wingull was back at my side. I carried the small gray Pokemon we had saved and ran back down the tunnel I came, Vulpix following last to guard the rear. The last thing I heard from the grunts was to ignore me and try to stop Lunatone.
After running for a little bit, as well as hiding out in another cave tunnel connecting to the chasm, I stopped to catch my breath. Luckily, not a single grunt had tried to catch me, effectively making the rescue operation a complete success! Wingull and Vulpix sat by my side, wondering just what kind of Pokemon I had in my arms. I put him down on the ground in front of me, and pulled out the Pokedex for a quick scan.
"Castform, the Weather Pokemon. Castform borrows the power of nature to transform itself into guises of the sun, rain clouds, and snow clouds. This Pokemon's feelings change with the weather."
"So that's why it was raining so much," I said, only just realizing it had stopped raining at last. "Team Magma was using this Pokemon to control the weather. They probably did something wrong and that's why it hadn't stopped for three days."
To my amazement, Castform didn't require more than a few minutes to recover. After it woke up, it looked around at myself, Vulpix and Wingull. I was expecting something of a warmer reception, but the small gray Pokemon sort of hissed at me before it flew off into the skies. I was a bit sad to see it go, but I couldn't exactly blame it either. It was being tortured by Team Magma for at least three days straight, if not for a much longer period of time.
What's more, the chance of some sleep was out of the question. If Lunatone had released his friend from Team Magma's clutches, they'd no doubt be scouring all of Meteor Falls to find them. I couldn't just start napping while the hunt was on. Instead, I picked up my things and started down the same tunnel I was in. One of these had to lead out towards Fallarbor Town and around Team Magma's camp. I only had all night to find the right tunnel.
~o~
Morning came without incident, thankfully. After getting lost a bit in those tunnels, I found one that led me out of Meteor Falls and up on top of the entire place. Because it was seemingly out of reach for Team Magma, I was free to take a short nap in the early hours of the morning. When I woke up, still a bit groggy, I was treated to a spectacular sight of the chasm of Meteor Falls in the dawn light. The entire place just seemed to glow golden, where it was silver in the moonlight the previous night. I wished I had a camera to snap a picture of it all to show Mom when I got back.
I didn't know what had happened to Lunatone and his friend. Because I never saw either again in my future run-ins with either team, I assumed they got away and left Meteor Falls for good. I myself still had at least two more days of hiking over the mountainside before I arrived at Fallarbor Town. For better or worse, little happened outside the occasional wild Pokemon encounter. Then again, anything would seem dull after the last couple days' events.