Omanyte and Kabuto

The Sinnoh Underground was a maze of tunnels, well lit and well traveled. At first, it was simply a connection of distant caves, naturally occurring at many points. Then people began to mine in those caves, following veins of precious materials until they connected to other caves. After a few centuries, it had turned into a subterranean passageway network, allowing some people with good digging Pokemon to move from town to town without touching the surface. Much of the official mining went on in areas cut off from the public, but there were still things to be found within the rock walls, or so people claimed.

"We want the fossils," a boy named Evan said. He and his friend, both about ten and a half years old, were walking in the Underground. He had his blue cap on backwards and the laces on his blue and white sneakers coming undone. In one hand, he pulled along a wagon to carry whatever they found. "That's what that professor likes, fossils."

"And we'll ask to get the Pokemon revived from the fossils?" the other boy asked. Ryan had borrowed a yellow hard hat for this adventure, but it had been made for an adult and was loosely sitting in place. He patted one of the many pockets on his cargo pants, searching for reassurance from the small flashlight, in case the tunnel lights failed.

"No, we'll trade the fossils for Pokemon."

He frowned. "What if he doesn't have Pokemon to give away? He could need them for his studies."

"Ah, come on, haven't you heard?" Evan said, shaking his head. "Some of the best Trainers in the world have gotten their first Pokemon from a professor. So, if we want the best chance to become top-notch, we need to work with him."

"I still think it'd be better to ask for the fossils to be revived."

They squabbled for a bit about it, but whichever way it worked out, they still needed to find some fossils. Figuring that anything good near the entrance had already been found, they went down several passages until they came to a area that went away from the main path and looped back. There, they took the kits they had gotten from the Underground Explorers Club and started looking for places to dig.

At first, there was no sign of fossils. They found other things that might be useful for when they had Pokemon: certain rocks and items could boost a Pokemon's abilities, while shards and crystals were often searched for by people who could teach Pokemon useful things. But when they didn't have Pokemon, these things weren't any good. Stores might buy them, but only a few items would have a worthwhile price.

Evan was soon complaining about how long it was taking, using more time to shuffle through the little items they were getting rather than digging for more. Ryan kept looking for spots to dig. Whenever he came to dig, it was hard to pull away. He always felt like he might find a great item in just a few more minutes. When he didn't find anything, he kept thinking that it might be the next spot and kept digging until his mother called to say that he had to come home for dinner. So he didn't mind. He had skipped out on fossils before, losing them to shifting rocks in order to get other items. This time when he went looking for the fossils, he wasn't seeing anything like bone.

"Wish we had a bone radar," Evan said. "Wouldn't that be cool? Then we'd know right where the fossils are."

"It wouldn't be useful after we found them," Ryan said, then paused. He saw a curve in the rocks, with a different texture from what surrounded it. A fossil... he nearly said so aloud, but then thought better of it. Last time he had called Evan about something he'd found in the Underground, his friend had hit the rocks too hard and caused a large shift. It had taken a week for the wall to be safely dug at again, but selling that Max Revive allowed him to buy his mother a nice birthday present. This time, he stayed quiet and carefully picked around the fossil.

Before long, it was apparent that there was something odd about this fossil. It was rather large. He'd found fossils parts of a Pokemon before; those were all small. As the curve revealed itself to be a complete spiral, Ryan felt his heart race. Was it really a whole fossilized Pokemon? He chipped away another loose part of the rubble, causing the surrounding edges to quiver.

His heart stopped for a moment as he feared that the fossil would get buried. But the quiver stopped, allowing him to judge the size of the fossil better. It was about one and a half feet wide, not quite as tall. How far back did it go into the rock wall? He searched the rock, then hit his pick a couple inches above it. This caused a crack to appear. With the chisel, he worked on expanding the crack without getting it into the fossil.

"Maybe we ought to head back, try another spot tomorrow," Evan said, his enthusiasm for this idea of his dwindling.

It was Evan's wagon, and Ryan didn't want to have to carry this all the way out himself. "I think I've got one. But it's something I got to be careful with."

"Oh, you do?" He came over and watched from close behind. "All right, now that's what I wanted to see!"

Ryan felt a bit tense with his friend watching. What if he made a wrong move and made the wall collapse? Evan would get mad at him, plus the fossil might break. He kept at his work slowly. Behind him, Evan started to tap his foot. Then it shifted. "Here, get your fingers in there. We should be able to pull this out carefully now."

Evan was usually the definition of not careful, but he followed Ryan's directions and pulled on the fossil with him. After a few seconds, the fossil popped out of the wall and the rubble shifted immediately, rendering that spot unstable for more mining. They nearly dropped it as it turned out even larger than they had thought. Once it was in the wagon, they looked at it closer.

"Wow, is there a whole Pokemon in there?" Evan asked. "That's awesome! We didn't even break it!"

"It looks weird," Ryan said. "See here, there's a spiral on this side, and it looks like a different kind of shell with odd marks on the other side."

Evan grinned. "Maybe we have a mutant fossil? Because that would be so cool! And the professor would have to give us something awesome in exchange."

"It could just be two fossils in one rock," Ryan said. "Which is good cause there's two of us. Let's get it out of here."

Taking turns with the wagon, the two boys pulled it out of the Underground and back to their hometown. Evan ran up to the professor's workshop when they got close and knocked on the door. It was answered by a young man wearing goggles on the top of his head and a face mask around his neck. "What is it?" he asked. "I'm in the middle of some work."

"We found an awesome fossil in the Underground," Evan said, grinning in pride. "And we wanted to show it to you; it's right here."

The professor looked skeptical at first, but on seeing the size of the rock in the wagon, he became interested. He knelt down for a closer look at it, brushing away some loose material and examining all the lines. Nearby, Ryan had to send a quick sign to Evan to be quiet and try to be still. Sometimes he had a hard time believing they were nearly the same age, as Evan was so childish.

"Well, this is amazing," the professor finally said, with his eyes still on the rock. "You boys have some skill as excavators. It's rare enough to pull a full Pokemon fossil out of the Underground, and here you have two of them. They look to be complete, so it's wonderful proof of what Pokemon lived in similar time periods, and how they might have interacted."

"Can we get the Pokemon revived from this?" Ryan asked. "You can have the fossils, but we were hoping to get the Pokemon."

The professor bit his lip. "Hmm... fossil Pokemon take a lot more care than regular ones. We don't know as much about them. But, with these two, I think you can find some data on them around. I need to find out if I can get DNA extracted without extensively damaging them. With the quality of these two, I'm sure I can manage that." He smiled and pulled a pen and pad of paper out of his pocket. "Tell you what," he said as he scribbled a note, "this could take some time because I want this form preserved. I'll do my best to get the Pokemon cloned from this, and I'll have you take care of them. I'll even give you some money to start with, since this fossil is worth a lot academically. But you two boys have to promise me that you'll take extra care and caution in raising them." He then looked at them expectantly.

"Sure thing, I promise!" Evan said, probably more excited than realizing what he was agreeing to.

Ryan felt a bit nervous. But if it was going to be his first Pokemon, then he would want to take special care of it anyhow. He nodded. "Right, I promise to treat it well."

"Good." He tore off the two notes he had written and passed them over. "Return with these in three days and I'll tell you what I can do for certain." He then had them help bring the fossil into his workshop and sent them home after.

"I thought we'd get Pokemon today, but this is good, I think," Evan said, stuffing the note in the pocket of his jeans.

Ryan folded his note up and tucked it into one of his pockets. "He's a professor of geology and fossils, I told you. He probably doesn't have extra Pokemon to just give away since he studies rocks and bones."

Three days later, Ryan had to help Evan find his note to retrieve the Pokemon (thankfully they found the pants he'd been wearing before his mother put them through the laundry). Then they went back to the professor's workshop. It took a few rounds of knocking, but the professor came to greet them, brushing dust off his jacket and apologizing for the mess.

He gave them both face masks and brought them into another room where he had been working on the fossil. Some of the rock had been further chipped away, revealing more of the two forms inside. "From the look of things, it would seem to me that these two Pokemon got into a fight over something," the professor said, touching the smoother shell of the pair. "This one attacked the other fatally, but it didn't kill right off. Instead, the other one latched onto it and would not let go even after it died. The first one was probably badly hurt as well, so it couldn't escape. That's why you found them like this."

"Wow, that's awful," Ryan said. "I didn't think fights between Pokemon could kill both sides, or even just one."

"The world was a lot rougher in ancient days," the professor said. Then he pulled out two brown and orange Pokeballs from his coat pocket. "Well, you boys are in luck. I managed to get nicely intact DNA off both of them, and what fragments there were could be found in other specimens. Which one do each of you want?"

"I want that one of the pair," Evan said, pointing to the smooth shelled one. "That okay with you?"

Ryan nodded. "That's good."

Smiling, the professor handed the two over. "Great. Then you Evan get the Kabuto, and you Ryan get the Omanyte. Don't call them out in here, though. There's a lot of fine dust in the air from my work, which is why we have to wear masks in this room."

Evan looked over the Kabuto's ball and grinned. "Wow, so we get Pokemon that hardly anyone one else has. We're going to have to be really watchful and see what they do."

"Actually, there have been living Kabuto specimens found recently," the professor said. "In one project I did in grad school, we compared a modern Kabuto with one revived from a fossil, and there was hardly any difference between the two."

"Really?" He was disappointed, hearing that his wasn't quite as special as he'd imagined.

"Well they are very rare these days, limited to a few locations," he said. "As for the Omanyte, we know they all died out well before humans appeared on this world. I did find some records of revived specimens in the Kanto database, so you should be able to get some help figuring out how to take care of it."

Then he had the even less common one? Ryan looked at the fossil there, particularly the spiral shell that his new Pokemon had come from. "Um, professor, is it going to be okay if we have our Pokemon together? Since they killed each other there."

"They won't remember it because they're clones of these two, not the Pokemon themselves," he said reassuringly. "But you may wish to be careful having them interact, since this indicates the species may have been enemies of some level. You should definitely check out one of the websites I frequent... here, I can give you the address in a moment. They have good information on how to help fossil Pokemon adapt in the modern world."

Later that day, Ryan was wondering if this was a good idea after all, having fossil Pokemon for their starters. According to the website, a Trainer had to be able to recognize old instinct patterns and find ways to alter their behavior. This was best done with a tolerant or caring modern Pokemon which could provide a good example. He should find such a role model soon, since he already had the Omanyte.

But watching his new Pokemon observing his room, he felt proud to have her. After all, it had been a tough fossil to get out of the mine. People wouldn't know what to expect from her either, so Ryan could have an advantage in building a battle team. She did seem a little nervous, ducking back into her shell at sudden noises or unexpected movements. But that could also be because she was young.

"Ryan, Evan's here," his mother called from downstairs, shortly before he heard his friend's footsteps hurrying up the stairs.

"Okay!" he called back down, then turned as Evan entered the room. A small reddish-brown Pokemon, almost like a bug, scuttled in after him. Ryan's Omanyte saw the Kabuto and slipped a little further into her shell. "You already got it to climb the stairs?"

"Nah, I let her out in the hallway," Evan said. "I was looking up stuff about her, and saw that she'll evolve into an awesome Pokemon that has blades for hands! But yours is going to stay dopey looking like that."

"I don't mind what they look like," Ryan said. "I was more worried about getting her used to the present. I'm going to go out tomorrow to try and catch another Pokemon so that she has help."

His friend grinned. "I want to do that too, but I'm going to catch Pokemon to prepare for summer when I'm going to challenge the Gyms. It'll be awesome; betcha I'll be the Champion before school starts up again."

He laughed. "Yeah, that's likely to happen. You'd be better off not going so fast."

"You're just worried that you won't be able to keep up with my greatness," Evan boasted, but then laughed too.

"It might help if your Kabuto didn't eat your shoes first," Ryan pointed out, as the Pokemon was tugging at the end of a lace and nibbling at it to find if it was edible.

Evan groaned and picked up the Kabuto. "Not again. I don't think there were shoes to eat in prehistoric times, silly goose."

Ryan laughed again. In the meantime, his Omanyte kept her head out of her shell, watching the scene warily. It would be some time before they were all used to this arrangement.

…

Omanyte Emerald entry: One of the ancient and long-since-extinct Pokemon that have been regenerated from fossils by humans. If attacked, it withdraws into its hard shell.

Kabuto Emerald entry: It is a Pokemon that has been regenerated from a fossil. However, in rare cases, living examples have been discovered. Kabuto has not changed for 300 million years.

This was written for the fourth year anniversary of POS. Although I happened to pick a tough pair to write for, as the entries for them in the Pokedex don't have a lot to work with creatively. This would make for a different kind of opening for a game, though, getting your starter through a fossil. People might not like having to wait on getting it, so maybe not.