Chapter 6
Mt. Horn
The group had decided that they wouldn't go to the bounty board in the same day so decided to take the day off and do what they wished for the remainder of the evening, when the group woke up the next morning they had a quick breakfast then went straight to the guild's base for a brand new job. Wigglytuff's guild seemed the same from the front, it had (of course) the guild master's face on the top of the small hut. Anyone who had never seen the inside of the base would have never guessed it was bigger then what you could see, but instead the inside was a large three floor construction of which had a lovely sea side view of the ocean, but probably not as lovely as their den's view. Aaron seemed confused "this is the famous guild's base? Seems way to small" he said, Chance smirked to himself as Zoei explained to him just how big it would seem "trust me its a lot bigger once your inside, although it might be a little hard getting down the ladder for you two, you know having to walk on all fours and all" Aaron gave her a stern look "you have to walk on all fours to remember?" She grinned; "I know this you baka, but I have these to help me climb down" she brought out her vines and tapped him on the nose. Jacob and Chance laughed at this as it was funny to watch Zoei mess with him.
Zoei was the first one to step on the wooden grate at the front of the guild and looked down, she couldn't see the bottom, which meant one of two things, ether the hole was bottomless or it was just a trick of her mind. When a voice from deep within the hole yelled out "Pokémon detected! Pokémon detected!" Zoei jumped at least five feet in the air from the sudden loudness of the voice. It was all to familiar in Chance's mind and he knew who the voice belonged to and who he would be yelling to, I'll just spare you the repetitive dialogue and skip right to the part where the gate opens. When the iron bars that had previously blocked the way down into the guild opened, we all headed inside to see a ladder and a hole in the middle of the tent. "That's the way down? Seems suspicious…" Jacob said thinking that there was some sort of trick to it. "Come on Jacob, the ladder isn't going to eat you, just climb down and all will be fine. Plus the sea side view is almost as impressive as our view from the den" Chance said trying to reassure his friend. Jacob grinned "Haha ya your right but I get enough views of the sea from where we are, I don't need a special side view." He chuckled to himself
With that out of the way the crew worked their way down the ladder to the light that resided below, in order of descending it went Chance, Aaron, Zoei, then Jacob. Zoei was right about it being harder for both Chance and Aaron to climb down since they didn't have paw hands or vines to stabilize them selves like the other two did, so descending went very slowly. "Come on you two! Can't you go ANY faster?" Zoei said "No we cant! You try doing this without your vines helping you!" Aaron yelled back up in irritation "can you guys just stay cool? Look we are literally right, there just a little far-" his voice was cut off with a loud "Shit!" everyone looked up to see the orange weasel falling straight down on them and soon crashing into everyone causing everyone to fall to the dirt ground at the base of the ladder. Jacob spoke up "Hey that didn't hurt as much as I thought it would" "Cause you landed on us you dip! Now get the fuck off of us!" Chance yelled from beneath all of his companions as everyone had landed on him and used him as a landing pad. The group scrambled off of each other stood up to see that the guild that both Zoei and Chance had known before had now completely changed, it was no longer a three floor base but rather a two floor with many passage ways leading to different rooms that were marked in foot runes on the sides of the hardened clay walls. "What the… this is new to me" Zoei said with a confused look on her face and a cartoon question mark above her head that quickly disappeared. "I don't know how to read foot runes…Aaron didn't Marowak teach you how to read these? You know before Chance here flipped the fuck out on us?" she exclaimed loud and clear for Chance to hear "hey that wasn't my fault…I couldn't control myself " his ears folded back in embarrassment. It wasn't like he knew what he had done to them in the dojo, it was just like something had taken over him and used his body to attack those closest to him in an attempt to harm them in more ways then one. "No one said it was your fault bro, hell I don't think you even knew you were doing it" Jacob exclaimed patting Chance's back "Ya, no one is blaming you for it. But to answer your question Zoei I do know how to read foot runes, let me have a look." He got close to the carving in the wall and began to read them silently in his head word for word "ok so if we went left we would end up in the public mess hall where I'm guessing all the exploration team eat during the day, if we went right we would walk into the guild members bedrooms." he said proud of himself for translating the messages. "Well what about the bounty boards? I'm guessing they are straight down the middle passage?" Jacob asked, his patients for this place had been running thin and wanted to get a job going. "It didn't say anything about the boards, so that might be our best bet" Aaron replied.
With a group nod we strutted our way down the mildly long passage until coming to a room that seemed like a large dome structure and inside was, surprisingly, a large market. The place was filled with all sorts of different stores that sold a specific item or group of items and was had tons of different Pokémon walking around and selling or buying wares, to Chance and Zoei the guild's base was now completely different and seemed alien to them but Aaron and Jacob had a sort of gleam in their eyes for they had never seen such a thing before. "So this is the guild huh? Man when you told me it would be big I never would have believed you until now Zoei…how many stores are there?" Our jolteon friend asked. Out of nowhere something had jumped onto Chance's back scaring the living shit out of him, he turned his head around to see who or what had gotten onto him just to see a small pichu with a familiar voice "Chance!" the small electric mouse cried in glee "well look who scared me half to death, how are you doing Alex!" "Trying my best to stay out of trouble, my mom and dad and brother are here to! I'll go get them!" before Chance had a chance (no joke intended) to stop her she had already ran off in search of her parents and seemed to disappear into the large crowds. He looked around and had found that his friends had also run off to each store awhile ago and were no where to be seen until Jacob came up from behind and startled him yet again "bro this place is huge! There are so many stores that could help us in our missions!" he was smiling from ear to ear, Chance laughed "yes I suppose so, hey you never did meet the kid's parents did you?" Jacob smirked "no I didn't, what? Are they intimidating?" Chance scrunched my face up a little bit in thought "not really… I mean the father of the two is a little, how you say, straight forward with questions. But overall they are nice enough Pokémon" Jacob chuckled "I'm guessing he got up in your face when you brought they younglings home?" he asked. "No he didn't, err… well I guess you could.." Chance's sentence was interrupted by a large bellow that seemed to echo in his ears
"Ah there he is! Hey boy over here!" both Chance and Jacob glanced over in the direction from where the voice had come from to see both Bruce and Jewel making there way over to us. When they were within talking distance Bruce began to speak more quietly "fancy meeting you here Chance, what are you here for?" Jacob answered first "We were trying to find the bounty board, but cant seem to locate it" Bruce gave a cold stare "And you are?" he asked in a gruff tone. "Uh hehe… my name is Jacob, I'm Chance's friend and teammate" he held out his paw and shook Bruce's. Just then both Zoei and Aaron had found their way back to us and grinned as they introduced themselves to the electric type parents, Jewel gave a warming smile to the group "I just want to say that we both really appreciate what you did for us, without our kids I don't know what we would have done." she gave everyone a hug as she spoke "And please pardon my husband here, I know he seems a little rough at first, but he needs to be to anyone we don't know or trust." "Its alright madam, we understand how protective you must be when their that young" Zoei said "but do you know where the bounty board is? We were going to head out on a job today" Bruce huffed "Ya it right over there, one for the outlaws, and one for the regular missions, specifically marked" he pointed over to a spot next to croagunk's swap cauldron and there we saw to large wooden boards. "Thanks Bruce, tell Alex and Max that when we return you guys can come over for dinner" Zoei exclaimed "by the way, where are they?" "Oh we gave them some money to go spend on what ever they want, and are you sure you want us over? Cause we don't want to be a bother" Jewel asked. The group smiled "No no please we insist, we would love the extra company" Zoei said again. Bruce gave a rugged grin "Then expect us when you get back, cant wait for it!" for one last time they all exchanged goodbyes as the team went off for job hunting. "Its hard to find good hearted Pokémon anymore…" Jewel said to her husband, he gave a loving smile to his wife and put a paw around her "I know what you mean, those four are something else." he exclaimed "but there is something about them that I don't understand…" Jewel gave him a confused look "what do you mean? There's nothing wrong with them." "And I never said there was, but each of them has a special feature that is quite obvious to see…" he pondered the thought in his head before speaking further, he was right though the sharp ears on Aaron, The three golden triangles on Zoei's forehead. It was an odd subject and Bruce was determined to figure out why they had them "I'm sorry its just odd to me, cause if they have features…why don't we?" Jewel began to think the same question "I don't know Honey…I don't know…"
There wasn't a lot of Pokémon around the boards looking for jobs when they had finally made their way through the crowds, which didn't completely worry them cause that just meant that there were more jobs for them to pick up and complete, but what was weird was that some others started whispering and talking to each other and pointing at our heroes like they didn't belong. "Does anyone else feel…awkward?" Jacob said nervously, everyone's cold stares were getting to him "I know what you mean, try to keep your voice down we don't want to attract anymore attention then we already have…" Chance said in a hushed tone. More over it didn't really bother him that others were staring, the many eyes that were on him and his friends made him feel like their team was all the more popular. Jacob pulled a job off the board "hey how about this one?" Zoei swiped the note from his grasp rather quickly and started to read it to herself in a hushed tone "ok apparently a young mudkip got stuck up in Mt. Horn trying to explore by himself, the mother also wrote that she hadn't even known he left until she read his note" she said. Aaron gave a look of courage "Well lets go! We cant have him there all by himself, he could be really hurt right now for all we know!" with a determined nod from everyone they rushed out of the market, up the ladder, and straight to the large mountain known as Mt. Horn.