Last Time, on Explorer's of Prehistory...
The Shadowed One found Tyberius the Gallade on a small reef in the ocean, and was enraged to discover that the explorer has transferred his mind into another body. Out, of spite, she destroyed Tyberius's comatose body, and flew off to complete her evil plans. Meanwhile, Venom, Cotton, Aero, Kiara and Ace were still lost at sea, trapped in a frozen fog in the middle of nowhere. Though Ace initially blamed himself, the others (even the normally grouchy Venom) were quick to tell him that freezing to deah in the ocean was far better than being slaves to the Darkclaw Pirates. Though Ace and Venom soon sank into a coma, induced by the freezing weather, the hopes of the party were renewed when they hit land!
What will happen next? Find out now!
And today's special thanks goes to... Lucky Amulet for her awesome OCs!
"Land... Land!"
The excited cry of Cotton signaled the others that the sight before them was not a mere illusion. The trio of girls, Cotton at the lead, leaped off of the tiny boat, their paws and feet sinking into cold, but solid, sand.
"We made it!" exclaimed Aero, hugging Cotton. "Thank goodness..."
"No more water..." Cotton sighed. "No more water..."
Kiara purred with content as she stretched her body in that feline way. "Wonderful... I'll never go to the beach again," she promised herself. "It's dry land for this kitty cat from now on."
The "dry land" they had discovered wasn't actually so dry. They had found the source of the freezing mists that filled the surrounding sea. The island they had hit was not the mainland; it was a frozen land of ice and snow. Mountains filled the horizon, pine trees rose tall and proud out of the ground, and snow covered every inch of the land. A cold wind blew, shaking snow from the trees, only for more flakes from the sky to cover the bare spots all over again. The sky was filled with grey snow clouds, and the sun peeked out from behind the barrier.
"What is that stuff...?" Cotton asked, looking around the winter wonder land.
"Beats me..." Kiara muttered.
Aero, who had traveled more than the other two, said, "It's called snow. It's kinda like rain, except its softer and more fun." She looked around the frozen landscape and quickly saw a plumes of smoke rising off in the hazy distance. "Look - over there!" she shouted happily. "Smoke! That means..."
"A town!" Kiara and Cotton shouted with delight.
"That means warm food!" Aero said, her mouth watering at the thought of something besides half-frozen algae and kelp.
"Warm beds!" Cotton said, the idea of a warm mattress and a soft blanket over her body washing away the weariness that had previously gripped her tiny body.
"Let's go!" Kiara exclaimed, getting ready to charge across the tundra and get to the town as quickly as possible.
"Wait!"
Aero gestured back to the boat. Venom and Ace were still laying on the deck, immobile and comatose. "We can't leave them here," Aero said, with unneeded sternness in her voice.
Kiara sighed. "Yeah, yeah," she muttered, shaking her head; she had been through too much with these knuckleheads to leave them behind like this. "Load Gramps onto my back, and you and the squirt can haul Ace."
The two younger girls nodded and complied. Kiara shrugged Venom's coiled body over her back and Aero grabbed Ace's lower half with her second set of jaws, and Cotton supported his torso as best as she could. The men were heavy, yes, but that didn't matter to them; their eyes were solely focused on those lovely plumes of smoke that lay across the tundra.
Bravely supporting the weight of their male companions, they bravely set forward into the snow.
An hour passed, and then two, and then three. The wind blew harder, the snowfall intensified, and the weight of the males grew heavier and heavier. However, the sky could be raining fireballs right now and that still wouldn't deter their march. So, they went on and on, the distant promise of a settlement, food, and an inn keeping their spirits molten hot, melting away the chill of the landscape.
Finally, four hours passed and they decided to take a break. They were climbing up a tall, rocky mountain, a barrier that stood between them and the sweet, sweet promise of civilization. However, by now the eager springs in their steps were diminished by the fatigue of a four-hour long walk and hike up to where they were. They had found no paths or roads to make the journey easier, and no stars to work by either.
Cotton shivered as she clung to Aero, sitting miserably against a half-buried boulder. Kiara was shoving the limp bodies of Venom and Ace onto the top of the boulder, where they could keep out of the freezing snow and stay a little warmer. "N-n-now w-w-what?" Cotton murmured, her teeth chattering so hard that they felt almost brittle.
"It's okay, it's okay. We just need a rest," Aero reassured her. "We'll be in whatever town that is in no time, so don't you worry."
Kiara sniffed distastefully, batting away a snowflake from her face. It was odd, really: out of all of them, she was the most adapt to such a hostile environment, and yet she was probably the least happy to be here. Her keen eyes scanned the sky, the plume of smoke lying tantalizingly beyond the mountain. "We need to get a move on," she muttered, exhausted but determined. "Load up the guys, and we'll..." She sniffed the air, her eyes going wide. "What the..."
Cotton smelled it, too, her sensitive nose twitching. "F-food...?" she muttered hopefully.
Kiara purred. "It's just over that ledge..." she said, bounding up the mountain.
"Hey, wait!" Aero shouted.
Kiara ignored her, shooting across the mountains with ease, her fatigue forgotten. Aspear berries - she smelled aspear berries. They weren't her favorite food, but anything besides blasted kelp would taste fantastic by now.
She made it about half-a-mile away before she found it. A small pile of aspear berries laid in the snow. It was an obvious trap, of course, but Kiara's highly developed thievish instincts were dulled by her empty stomach.
The aspear berries practically glowed in the sun. They were roundish fruits, yellow in color and with greenish blotches. Kiara's stomach growled as she punched without a second thought.
Her foot tripped the wire, and the trap sprung. Ropes went slack, levers were pulled, and the catapult was sprung. A massive snowball, almost twice the size of Kiara, was launched into the air, smashing onto the dumbfounded Persian and dousing her with snow. In mere milliseconds, the feline was completely buried from nose to tail in snow.
"Hahahahaha!" a rancorous sounding laugh chuckled, obvious finding Kiara's pain (or her mild inconvenience) to be quite hilarious. The Persian snarled as she pushed her head out from the snow ball, glaring at the mastermind behind the trick. It was a spherical creature, perfectly round, with a pair of sharp black horns sprouting from its head. Two blue eyes stared down at her, filled with childish mirth, as he laughed uproariously. "I can't believe you were dumb enough to fall for that! Offlanders! Hah!"
Kiara roared, bursting out from the snowball and pouncing at the Glalie. "Shadow Claw!" she shouted, slicing at the Ice-type with a razor sharp slash.
"Hail!" the Glalie shouted. A wall of hail and snow burst up from the ground, surrounding the laughing Glalie and shielding him from Kiara's attack. When the frosty wall vanished, the Ice-type was gone.
Kiara snarled, clawing at the ground and swearing angrily. "Little brat..." she growled angrily. She turned back to the pile of snow. "At least he left the berries..." she muttered, digging into snow pile. Sadly, her work was for naught: the berries, she soon discovered, where merely stones, painted to look like aspear berries, and dipped in aspear berry juice to give the illusion of real food.
"Little brat..." Kiara repeated, smacking the rock away with a scowl.
Cotton managed to pull herself up to Kiara. "W-where's the food?" she asked, eagerly.
"There wasn't any," grumbled Kiara. "It was a trick."
Cotton's demeanor fell and she bowed her head. "Oh," she muttered in a dejected tone.
Aero scowled as she hauled both Venom and Ace up to the others, nearly losing her balance as she pulled the two much heavier Pokemon up the steep, slippery terrain. "T-thanks for nothing..." she grunted.
Kiara ignored her. "Well," she said, "we're closer to the town now, right? No need to quit now..."
Cotton moaned. burying her face into her paws. "Oh..." she groaned unhappily.
Aero was next to collapse. "N-no more..." she gasped. "I need a break..."
"We just took a break," snipped a still irate Kiara with a scowl.
"Yeah, I know. And then I got to drag these two up a mountain!" Aero retorted. The weariness of the climb was beginning to grate on everyone's willpower and their nerves.
Kiara scowled. "Fine, take your break!" she snapped. "See what I care!"
...
Aero, who was about to snap back at Kiara, blinked. "Did you hear that?"
Kiara's ears perked. "What the...?"
...Rumble... Crack!
A small drift of snow crumbled off of the side of the mountain, shattering into flakes as it hit the ground. Another fell, this time with rocks, and then another, until...
All who were conscious looked up with eyes as wide as saucers as the entire mountain-side crumbled and came apart, roaring as it descended towards them.
"Avalanche..." Aero's shook her head, returning to her senses. "Avalanche!" she screamed. "Grab the boys and-!"
Sadly, the avalanche didn't let her finish what she was saying, slamming into them and carrying them off. The girls screamed as they griped the bodies of Venom and Ace, trying not to be swept away, grabbing at every rock and pine tree that they passed. The rocks were buried, and the pine trees swept away by the sheer current of stone and snow, carrying the Pokemon along with it.
It didn't take long for them to be buried - or for everything to go black.
It took about ten minutes for the avalanche to come to an end. By the time it was done, the entire mountainside was bare of snow, and most of its trees as well. A massive pile of carnage had settled down at the bottom of the mountain. The massive racket produced by the natural disaster had subsided, leaving nothing but dead silence. Even the wind had gone silent, as if in mournful respect for the carnage.
A pile of snow shifted, and Aero slowly pulled herself out of the snowdrift. Everything hurt - so badly. So badly that she could barely walk, stumbling about as she tried to find her comrades.
The weariness took her. She groaned in a small, wheezing voice, and collapsed face first into the snow. "Guys..." she half-cried/half-called, before falling silent.
She laid there, alone, for quite some time before she was found.
The wind began to howl again as she approached, as if to salute her approach. The icy gale shrouded her white and indigo body, making her seem like a mirage, there for a second and gone the next as she silently floated to the unconscious, half-dead Mawile.
The Froslass's eyes narrowed as she looked from Aero, to the pile of snow. She could see a purple tail sticking out from the pile, along with the head of a Persian, a the back of a Rattata, and a green clawed arm. These Pokemon didn't belong here.
The Froslass sighed and set to work.
When Aero woke up, it was very, very warm.
Something was wrong.
The Mawile's ruby eyes fluttered open as her consciousness returned to her. Everything still hurt, but she was alive, and warm, wrapped in a thick wool blanket. A bandage was wrapped around her scalp (because, as we all know, wrapping a bandage around someone's head in fiction instantly cures what ails them) and another around her leg. Hadn't she been outside, half dead in the snow?
Last time she checked she had...
Aero slowly turned her head and looked around the room. She was in a warm - a delightfully warm - room, made from bricks. A fire place was at the end of the room, glowing so brightly that it made Aero's still foggy vision even blurrier. The room was filled with other beds, made from thick oak, and on each bed there was a plush mattress and a woolly blanket, just like Aero's. And, thank Arceus, on two of the beds Aero could see the living, breathing bodies of Kiara and Cotton, still asleep.
But where were Venom and Ace?
"Alright, Crystal, give me a hand. There two are heavy..."
"Sure thing!"
Two feminine voices caught the Mawile's attention. She looked over to the fire place, her blurry vision becoming clearer as she focused on the two figures who were hauling two motionless creatures to the fire place. The first to become clear to Aero was a tall, female Pokemon. White and blue in appearance, she floated across the ground. A pair of arms hung from her head, oddly enough, and were long and lucid, made for graceful movements. Her face was purple and violet, and she had a pair of shining topaz eyes. The smaller Pokemon was small, and shaped almost like a tent. She had a tiny pair of arms and legs, and a dark colored face. A pair of tiny blue eyes sat above a large, grinning mouth.
Aero recognized the two Pokemon: the taller one was a Froslass, and the smaller one was a Snorunt, both part of the same evolutionary line, and both Ice-types. Oddly enough, however, the Snorunt was the wrong color: most Froslass were yellow, but this one was a light, icy blue. A shiny... thought Aero, impressed. Shiny Pokemon were so rare that they were sometimes considered non-existent.
However, her amazement was pushed aside when she saw the Pokemon that the two Ice-types were dragging across the floor. It was the still out cold forms of Venom and Ace. The Froslass had Venom's tail in her arms, and the Snorunt was hauling Ace over her head with surprising strength.
"Already, then," the Froslass said. "Now!"
With that, the two tossed the prone Venom and Ace into the large, black, bubbling cauldron in the fire place.
Aero heard someone screaming shrilly and realized it was her. She leaped out of bed, surprising herself and the Ice-types. "What're you doing?!" she shrieked, horrified.
As if to answer her question, Venom and Ace shot their heads out from the cauldron, screaming "HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT!" before a look of absolute bliss crossed their faces and they let out a happy "Ahhh..." and sinking back into the cauldron.
The Froslass was completely nonplussed by Aero's shouts, and simply stared calmly back at the dumbfounded Steel-type. "We are warming them back up. Reptiles are cold-blooded, you know. They can't make their own body heat."
"Uh... I know that..." Aero muttered.
"Oh?" The Froslass folded her arms. "Then why on earth would you be stomping through the tundra with two cold-blooded Pokemon without any aspear scarves? It seems to be a highly foolish decision."
The Snorunt nodded. "Highly foolish," she repeated in a much higher voice, shaking her entire body.
Aero sighed, seeing that it wouldn't do her much good to argue with her. "Where are we?" she asked, changing subject.
"My inn," the Froslass replied. "To be specific, the Cave of Dreams Inn. My name is Yuki, and I am the innkeeper here."
The Snorunt nodded. "I'm Crystal! Hello!" she greeted. "I'm Yuki's apprentice!"
"P-pleased to meet you both..." Ace sighed from the cauldron. He pulled out his badge from who knows where and flashed it. "Officer Ace, Dragonite Empire Police. The sourpuss here is Venom."
Venom made muttering bubbly sound from under the water, two relieved by the warmth of the cauldron to care about Ace's insult.
"Hmm..." Yuki looked over the group. "And here I thought you were explorers. How odd."
"Well, we are," Aero said, remembering the treasure map back on Tiny Island, and that magnificent gem that restored life to the lifeless.
"They're not professionals, though," Ace added, hopping out of the cauldron. "Can I have a towel, ma'am?"
"Certainly," Yuki replied. "Crystal..."
"Got it!" Crystal chirped, hopping off to get Ace a towel.
Yuki returned her attention to Aero, staring at her quizzically. "Well, now," she said, "why on earth would you be wandering about the tundra if you're not searching for the Cave of Dreams?"
"The what?" Venom asked skeptically.
"It's a long story," Aero explained, ignoring the rude tone in Venom's voice.
The Froslass shrugged indifferently. "Time is one thing I've got," she said.
Aero nodded. "Okay... It all started a while ago on Tiny Island..."
Author's Note:
Well, I'm back to my usual update day and my usual chapter length! Pretty neat, eh? I'm back! Well, technically I was never gone, but now I'm back to... Never mind...
Ahem...
Well, it looks like our happy adventurers are safe! They've managed to find civilization! But are they truly safe? And what is this Cave of Dreams that the Froslass was talking about? And what ever happened to that Glalie?
Tune in next time to find out! :D