Professor Rowan was understanding of my predicament, and curious about my encounter with the nightmare monster. He took notes as I told him what happened.
"If you want to come back to the lab and rest for a night or two, you're more than welcome to," Rowan said.
"No," I replied, shaking my head. "I'm going to keep at it. I'll admit I'm a little shaken, but I'm not letting it stop me."
"Hm. Maybe you could see what Dawn is doing, and maybe she could escort you."
"I don't need to be escorted. I have Missy. She's protection enough."
"Hm." Rowan scratched the stubble on his chin. "I question your reasoning, but trust your judgment."
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"You just woke up from a four-day coma, one that some might consider a near death experience, and you—who, need I remind you, are not a trainer—insist you don't need anyone to protect you."
"I don't need protection. This isn't much of an adventure. I'm just doing some sightseeing and reading some books."
The Professor stared at me for a second, his chin rested on his knuckle. "If you insist. Where are you headed next?"
"I'm thinking Oreburgh," I said, staring up at the map of Sinnoh on the wall. "I'm in the mood for some natural history."
"Oreburgh, eh?" Rowan took a drink from his '#2 PROFESSOR' mug. "If you do go there, could you do something for me? You would be compensated for your help."
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's really not much. I would like you to find me a fossil."
"A fossil? That's it?"
"Essentially. And when you do, take it to the Paleontology Center and give it to a man named Hal. He's an old colleague of mine."
I leaned back in the chair. "Sure, I can do that. What is it for?"
"Hal is working on a very experimental method of studying Pokemon who lived in the past. That's all I can tell you."
"I thought after six years of being your assistant, I'd have some level of clearance when it comes to things like this."
Rowan feigned sympathy. "I'm afraid not."
I took the ferry back to Jubilife. I didn't find much of a reason to stay in Jubilife. There wasn't much history there. It had been built at the intersection of four different cities, with the intent of being a commercial center. I'd also been there on more than a few occasions since I'd moved to Sinnoh, so I figured if there was something there for me to discover, I'd already know where to find it. And if I did find out I overlooked something, I could always stop there on my way back home. I'd have to pass through there anyway.
I took the bus from one end of the city to the other, and got off at the city limits. Because Jubilife had been so meticulously planned before it had been built, the entire city existed on a slab of rock that had been carved out of the mountainside. There was a clear border between the city and the surrounding countryside.
Case in point, Route 203 was a quiet woodland path. The brown mountain that hid Oreburgh City rose over the pine trees. Missy and I stopped to sit at a small pond that sparkled under the midday sun. I ate a granola bar for lunch, and fed Missy a poffin. Poffin baking was one of the more recent hobbies I'd taken up. I wasn't good at it. Missy didn't really notice, though. She was happy to eat anything that smelled like food and fit between her mandibles.
"Hey, man!" I turned to see a kid, probably no older than eleven or twelve, walking towards me. She wore a baseball cap with a black and white feather pin above the visor. Her denim jeans were caked in mud, and her tennis shoes squished in the grass as she walked.
"Hey," I said, scanning myself and trying to figure out what I had dropped or forgotten about. "What's up?"
"Nothing," she said. "I just wanted to tell you that your Bug is totally cool."
"Oh," I said, Missy smiling and raising her forelegs, "Thanks. Her name is Missy."
"Are you from Pastoria City?" she asked. "I hear they got lots of big Bugs in the Great Marsh down there."
"No, I'm from Six Island. There are lots of big Bugs there, too. Do you like Bugs?""
"Oh, wow. And yeah, Bugs are cool. I like Flying Types best, though." She pointed to the feather pin.
"That's cool," I said. "Are you a trainer?"
"Yup! I've been one for two weeks. I wanna travel around the world, but my parents make me stay around here."
"Don't worry, I'm sure once you get strong enough, they'll let you go wherever you want." Missy buzzed around, chirping and doing loops in the air to show off to her new fan.
She shrugged. "I dunno, man. They told me she'd never let me do that. But, they also told me they'd never let me have a Pokemon, so…"
"You'll get there," I said.
"Are you a trainer? How long have you been doing it?" she looked along the shore and picked up a few smooth, oval-shaped rocks.
"Oh, I'm not a trainer," I said. "I'm a scientist. Sort of. I'm going to Oreburgh to research fossils."
"That's cool!" the girl skipped a rock across the pond. "I learned about that stuff in school, but I'm sure you already know everything I do."
"You'd be surprised," I said. "I learn new things every day, from all sorts of people. I'm about to go read fairy tales on the internet to see if I can learn anything new from them."
"That's funny," the girl said as she skipped another rock. "Being a scientist sounds fun."
"It's pretty fun," I said. "Being a Pokemon trainer sounds fun."
"It's a lot tougher than it seems," said the girl. She skipped her third and last rock across the pond. "But I love my Pokemon!"
"Keep at it," I said. "My friend started off like you, and now she's one of the strongest trainers in the world."
"Cool! Tell her I said hi next time you see her!" she glanced down at the watch around her wrist. "Oh, shoot, it's lunch time! I gotta go home. See ya, mister scientist."
A few minutes after the young trainer left, Missy and I continued down Route 203. I realized that although I had been asleep for four days, I was exhausted and paranoid. I kept my eyes on the shadows under the trees. I kept thinking I saw them moving or following me. I ordered Missy to attack a tree after a pinecone fell out of it. I told myself I'd book a nice hotel in Oreburgh and sleep as much as I could that night. The idea of sleeping admittedly made me uneasy. I assumed the Nightmare Pokemon had left me, but I had no real way of knowing. I was also tired enough that I was willing to take my chances as soon as my head hit a soft surface.
Route 203 led up an incline, then into the side of a mountain through a cave called Oreburgh Gate. The cave was rugged, a hastily carved tunnel from one end of the mountain to the other, marked by a stone archway at the entrance. The cave smelled of earth. Dripping water echoed from somewhere deeper inside.
A dark mass descended from the cave ceiling in a flurry of flapping and hissing. A colony of Zubats swarmed me in a hurricane of fangs and purple wings. I fell to the floor shouting, "Missy!" as I felt the Zubats try to bite me, their fangs only scratching my skin as I struggled. I swatted at them with my arms, but there were too many. I was engulfed in a cacophony of screeching.
There was a buzzing sound, then a loud crack before the world fell silent.
The silence soon gave way to a ringing in my ear. Several of the Zubats fell out of the sky. They squirmed on the floor of the cavern before frantically waving their wings and fleeing with the rest of their colony. I sat up to see Missy hovering over me, chasing away the straggling Zubats. I taught her Sonicboom for situations exactly like this.
Once I could hear again, I stood on my feet and dusted myself off. "Thanks, Missy," I said, taking a poffin out of my bag and tossing it in her direction. We were out of the Gate soon after, the mining town of Oreburgh sprawling below us. On the northern end of town, museums, and factories breathing trails of white smoke. The further south the city reached, the more improvisational and ramshackle it got. At the very southern end was the mouth of a mine with conveyor belts fed through either side. I followed Route 203 until it disappeared into the town, then headed for the Paleontology Center.
The Oreburgh Paleontological Research Center wasn't hard to find. One of its walls was covered in a mural depicting ancient-looking Pokemon and various other ancient wildlife. A group of Starly were fighting over a bag of fast food out front. I returned Missy to her Poke Ball and walked inside. The interior had shiny, black tile floors and dark brown walls. I approached the man at the front counter and asked to see Hal.
"Sure thing! One second…" The man dialed an extension on his phone and nestled the handset between his shoulder and face. After a few seconds, his jaw shifted and he looked around the room awkwardly. He placed the phone back on the receiver. "Sorry, I guess he's not in right now."
"Oh, that's okay. Do you know when he might be back?"
The receptionist tilted his head and raised his shoulder. "There's really no telling with him."
"Oh. That's okay."
The receptionist put on his customer service voice once again, "But while you're in the area, we do offer free admission to the Oreburgh Mine! Why not take a tour?"
"I'll… consider it, actually."
"Great! Just head straight south. It's very hard to miss!"
Historically, I have been very bad at navigating cities. I grew up in a small town on a small island, and then spent the next six years of my life in a tiny beach town. I had no street smarts. As I walked out of the OPRC, I expected to get lost. But, Oreburgh was a city that allowed itself to breathe. The streets and sidewalks were wide and lazy. The buildings were short and well-spaced. The town had previously been a planned mining colony, and as a result, the streets were uniform and easy to navigate.
I arrived at the entrance to the Oreburgh Mine when the sun was starting to sink below the mountains west of town. My feet hurt. My eyelids were heavy. I'd been walking so much lately, and the only rest I'd had was in the form of a monster-induced coma. I remembered I still needed to find a hotel. I wouldn't stay at the Mine for too long. I just wanted to get a feel for fossil hunting so I could find one tomorrow.
I entered the mine, walking down a series of descending staircases lit by yellow lamps strung along the walls. I scanned the ceiling for colonies of Zubats, but there were none. I reminded myself that Oreburgh Mine was open to the public, and that they probably didn't like lawsuits. The mine eventually split off into two paths, marked by different-colored arrows pointing down them. I chose the blue one, on the left. The tunnel was winding and haphazard, with rocks littering the floor. I wasn't sure where to start looking for fossils. Did I need a pickaxe? Would they let some junior scientist loose in a public attraction swinging a pickaxe at the walls that hold it up? Would they change their mind if I pulled the Professor's Aid Card and said it was for science?
A beam of light cut through the cave, casting my shadow on the wall ahead. I turned to see a man in overalls, with shaggy hair and dusty glasses. His posture was slightly crooked. He waved a big flashlight around in his hand. The overalls were too big for his lanky frame, like he was borrowing them from someone else.
"Are you Lucas?" he asked.
"… Yeah…" I said, squinting and shielding my eyes from the flashlight. "I am. Hi."
He approached me, taking wide steps in his big overalls, and reached out to shake my hand. "My name is Hal."
"Oh, Hal," I said, shaking his hand while blinking tears out of my eyes. "It's, uh, nice to meet you. The Professor told me about you."
"I'm sure he did." Hal released my hand and directed the flashlight beam at the floor. "He's very interested in my research."
"Ah, yes, your research," I said. "Now that you've met me and we're talking, would I maybe… be allowed to know something about that…?"
Hal tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling. "I'd have to think about it. It's not something I want getting out. The last thing I want is some big company like, say, Team Galactic trying to buy it, or even replicate it…"
I folded my arms. "You don't like Team Galactic?"
"Well, it's not that I dislike them. It's their business model. Their sort of corporatization of scientific research. They're really strangling us independent researchers who like to do our business for ourselves."
"I'm with you on that," I said, nodding. "Before I left, Professor Rowan was saying he was interested in funding Cyrus' research."
Hal's brow hardened and his eyes moved back and forth behind his dusty glasses, like he was solving math problems floating around his head. "If that's so, he's gonna have to promise to keep this to himself."
"If you make that clear to him, I'm sure he will. Even if he thought it would be for the greater good, he'd honor your secrecy. I mean, I still don't know what it is, after all., so he's not going to tell one of the world's most famous people."
"True, very true…"
"Which, Professor Rowan trusts me, if you'd want to tell me what you're working on…"
Hal raised a finger and shook his head. "Patience, patience! My judgment is not something that processes like some sort of receipt printer. It takes time! It's like a typewriter, I guess, in that way."
"I think I understand the analogy."
"Good. I worry about my analogies sometimes."
"Anyway, I'm glad I'm not alone in my distrust of Cyrus. I talked to him, actually, at the dinner in Veilstone last weekend."
"Did you?"
"Yeah. He's… kind of difficult to talk to. Very cryptic. He really believes in this 'Galactic Future' business."
"Pshht." Hal rolled his eyes, "I'll believe in the 'Galactic Future' when he figures out what the hell it's supposed to be."
I carefully leaned against the wall of the cave. "Alternative energy, right? It… has something to do with discovering clean energy, I think"
"Whatever it is, I don't trust him anywhere near my work. I'm assuming if he's researching fossil fuels, he might take some kind of interest in regular fossils. That's how I'm justifying it, anyway."
"I don't know if I agree with the logic, but I'll accept the pettiness," I said. "And, speaking of fossils, where might I find one around here?"
"Oh, uhh," he looked around the tunnel, "probably not in here. This place is just a tourist trap. It's been stripped of its fossils for years. You'll have to go look around on the mountain, probably. We go up there all the time. I can show you a spot, actually. There's a rock formation full of Cambrian fauna. It—I don't know how much you keep up with paleontology. How much of this is flying over your head?"
"I keep up with it well enough. I know enough to be interested in that."
"Excellent! And, if you want to know more, we do have a museum at the OPRC." Hal paused. "They don't pay me to promote it, by the way, I'm just actually this fired up about paleontology. I love dead things."
"I might stop there," I said.
"It's very thorough," said Hal.
"I'll do it tomorrow, though. It's getting kind of late."
"Yeah, you're going to need rest, especially if you're gonna be out fossil hunting all day." Hal gestured with his hands as he spoke, accidentally shining his flashlight in my face. I'm not sure if he noticed or not.
"You wouldn't happen to know of any good hotels around here, would you?"
