Boldore and Woobat
The large three legged creature stood before her master patiently. The orange crystal growths on her back were glowing bright, as she had recently awakened and was brimming with energy. Would she actually get work to do today? Or would it be another dull day of guarding the chamber when there were a dozen other Pokemon guards on the way that would alert them to the presence of any foolish romantic 'hero' that was trying to make a name for himself?
Her master traced his finger around an area on her right side. He was dressed in the usual brown lab coat (which hid a layer of protective armor), heavy heat-proof gloves, sturdy boots, and large goggles. For his line of work, it was all necessary. And if his secret lab happened to get invaded, well, he had some rather more effective, or dangerous, armors lying about.
"Why do you keep getting these heart-shaped indents on your hide?" he asked. "I know you're a girl, but isn't that a bit too obviously girly? Hmph, I need to work on that Pokespeak translator before I can get a clear answer on that. But not important enough; those marks aren't about to hinder your abilities. I have a job for you today, in the underground tunnels. Hang on a minute." He went over to his dresser and began checking drawers.
This could take a while. The Boldore shuffled over and watched. When she had first been allowed in here, the lab had been interesting, making her both curious and nervous. There were a massive amount of strange tools lying around, as well as machines that always looked dangerous and always changed. Her master kept building them, taking them apart when they failed, then reusing the parts to build something new. As a Pokemon, she had no idea what he was doing with that constant work most of the time. Sometimes she saw him do things with those machines that she understood, like making earthbound objects fly, or shoot lightning, or instantly freeze everything in ice (that had been a particularly bad day). Most days, though, she could count on something exploding. Good thing she was sturdy enough to endure that.
"I could have sworn I put it in this drawer," the master mumbled, searching through one thin drawer. This particular dresser had dozens of drawers, every one of them stuffed with strange objects. So it could take an hour… no, he brightened up. "Ah, there it is! Check this out carefully."
She looked at the item, although wasn't sure what to make of it. It was a clay tablet of some kind, with two straight edges and one jagged. And yet, the thing didn't feel like clay. No, it had a feel like the lightning her master called up sometimes. It had the smell of power and strangeness… ancient strangeness, not the new strangeness that was in this room.
"This is a piece of a special item known as a Plate," he told her. "The Electric-typed one. I only have this tiny fragment… kept meaning to find some stable use for it in my machines… but it's broken. I can't make use of this tiny piece. So I need to find a whole Plate. It doesn't even need to be the Electric one, so long as it's whole. Best of all, I've discovered that the location of these Plates is said to be right here, deep in the ground!
"And we are connected to a vast network of underground tunnels here. Boldore, I want you to go checking around to see if you can find any whole Plates. I'm going to use this piece to try to make a detection device, but if you can find it, that'd be a whole lot faster and simpler. Give it a shot, okay?"
She gave an affirmative response, then headed out of the lab. Finding this Plate thing, huh? She wasn't so sure she could do that. Sometimes, she was sent out to find water, either for general use or specific experiments. Some pools in the tunnels infused the water with abundant minerals or chemicals, making them useful to her master. That was because that was a natural talent of her kind. But finding an item not related to water? That would be tougher.
If it was her alone. She knew who to go to for help, and was certain they would agree. Trudging along the tunnels, she went for the place they hung out at. As a Boldore, she could never move fast. She could shift her three legs in sequence, but to keep balanced, she had to have two of them on the ground at a time. If she really had to hurry, she could build up speed and use just one leg at a time to push herself along, but that kind of running was terribly unstable.
In time, she found a cavern with lots of heart-shaped marks on the walls, much like the one her master had complained about. This was the place. She came to the center and called out, "Woobats? Are any of you around?"
Several squeaks and wing flaps responded from far overhead. Soon, four of them appeared in the air around her. "Oh, hi friend!" one squealed happily. "We haven't heard from you in days!"
"Yeah, are you okay?" another asked. "We thought that maybe that crazy guy finally blew you up!"
A third chimed in, "But yay, you're back here to play with us!"
She chuckled. "Settle down, it's okay. I'm fine. I've just been stuck on guard duty for a week."
"Oh, that sounds boring boring."
"But why've you got to be guard?" the fourth asked. "I mean, he has that scary Hydregion at the way to the Outside, and that guy would scare away anyone."
"Oh yeah!" the others said. One went on, "Cause that dragon, he is so mean that he makes the two heads on his hands bite each other in super-gross puppet plays. And you ain't any meaner than making your own body fight. I mean, I wouldn't make my two wings fight each other."
"If your wings fought each other, then you wouldn't be able to fly."
"Hang on, friends," the Boldore said, trying to interrupt them politely. They had good hearts bigger than the ones on the end of their snouts even. But the fluffy bats could chatter one's ears of, if one was a sort to have ears. "My master has sent me out on a mission, but I don't think I can do it alone. I want to ask for your help in this."
"Help?" one asked, curious.
"Well we would help you, because you are friend to the whole entire tribe," another Woobat said. "But, uh, that master of yours, you know, we avoid him. He's even scarier than the Hydregion."
"Oh yeah!" another said. "And he makes the big booms that scare everybody and make rocks fall down."
"And sometimes strange things come out of there," another added.
The Boldore looked to her little friends. While she had expected the resistance, she wasn't going to be able to complete this mission without their help. There wasn't another of their type in the tunnel systems. "I do know that you don't like him," she said. "Even though he's helped me and the other Pokemon improve considerably, beyond what's normal. He could help one of you become great too. But that's not important. What is important is that, if I don't manage to find the thing he's after, he's going to build a device that can find it, and he'll come down here himself."
That spooked them. "Himself?"
"Like, by himself, or with the crazy Hydregion?"
Hating herself for scaring them (but her master was scarier when mad or disappointed…), the Boldore replied, "Maybe by himself, maybe with the Hydregion… or maybe with the weapons he makes, I'm not sure. But he will be very disruptive to everyone, and I'd rather do things nicely."
"Ah…" the Woobats looked to each other for a second. "So, um, what did he send you to look for?"
"Something called a Plate," she said. "It's made of clay and I only saw a fragment of it, but it was an ancient power of Electric, nothing like any other clay object. It may be of an Electric type, or it may be of another. He thinks one or more might be in these tunnels."
"Ooo, could he mean the sacred Plates?" one Woobat asked.
"That could be a lot of trouble."
"They're only supposed to be used by the ancient Creator god."
"And other times they've been dug up and used, it led to terrible times."
"Are your kin set to guard them?" the Boldore asked. She knew some Pokemon species were called on to guard sacred object. If the Woobats watched the Plates, then she might not get them after all.
"Well no," one of them admitted.
"But we meant, like, really terrible awful times," another said. "Plague, blight, terror, war, demon possession, drought, flood, noise… and we don't want to be responsible for helping such a time come."
"Um, there are the fake ones," the quiet Woobat said. "There's some things that look and seem like the Plates, but they're not as powerful. I heard my gran say that sometimes, we would let a human explorer find one of them, so that they thought they were all weak and didn't go looking for the real ones."
Honestly, the Boldore liked that idea better too. If giving a real Plate to her master would cause a terrible time to come, then the gods might forgive her for disobeying this once. "That would be better for all of us," she said. "Can we find one of the fakes?"
"Oh sure, I know where one is," he said, pleased to be useful. "It's pretending to be a Rock-type Plate, but that makes it stand out from the real rocks around it, but it doesn't have the power of a real Plate. I can take you there."
"Great, thank you," the Boldore said. "You can ride along, in case of trouble." That was the reason for all the heart-shaped marks on her. The Woobats attached to cave walls, or to her, by gripping on with their snouts. While it wore off some of the surface rock, it didn't hurt her. They would breathe through their mouths.
"No, I'm good," he said, flying towards one of the tunnels. "Come on!"
While the fake Rock-type Plate didn't affected her power, her master seemed convinced that a real Plate would. The fake kept his attention for some time, but eventually, he wanted the real thing.
…
Woobat White entry: Suction from its nostrils enables it to stick to cave walls during sleep. It leaves a heart-shaped mark behind.
Boldore Black entry: When it overflows with power, the orange crystal on its body glows. It looks for underground water in caves.
The new user format here does look nice. But I got so many time-out errors trying to upload this last night, argh. Anyhow, on the story, I've been reading a bit much mad scientist stuff lately.