Author's Note:
It's finally expedition time, which means lots of mystery dungeons. This was originally going to be two separate chapters, but they were both kind of short and I didn't want to extend the next one to include three mystery dungeons. Anyway, enjoy the Bidoof chapter!
As the sun shone through the window onto my bed, I contemplated whether or not I should wake Crest up. I really wasn't feeling motivated to do my guild work today; as long as Team Skull was around there was little chance of us getting anything done. Still, the last thing I needed was to give Chatot another reason to be upset with me. Deciding that the best way to please him was to be early for the morning briefing, I roused Crest so we could take our spots in the main room.
When we reached the meeting area, I was surprised to see that Chatot wasn't there yet. Normally he was one of the first pokemon here, but today the only one waiting in the room when we got there was Sunflora. In fact, Chatot was one of the last pokemon to reach the meeting area. Regardless, the morning briefing started on time, just like it usually did.
"Okay, everyone," Chatot began, "before we get to our usual cheers, the Guildmaster has an announcement to make, so you should all listen carefully."
Wigglytuff then stepped forward. "That's right friends, I have very exciting news! We will be going on the big expedition today!"
The guild erupted with excitement from the announcement. Well, everyone but me anyway; I knew I wasn't going. It did seem strange that the expedition team hadn't been announced before now though. Wigglytuff seemed to be scanning the crowd to gauge everyone's reactions, and when he reached me he gave me a sly smile. After a moment of confusion, I realized that the expedition was not originally planned for today; Wigglytuff just moved it forward to get rid of Team Skull.
As the guild began to quiet down, Chatot resumed the meeting. "Alright, that's enough out of all of you. Now, everyone listen up. The expedition will be to Foggy Forest, which is quite far from the guild. As such, those of us going on the expedition will set up base camp just outside the forest. In addition, we will be traveling to the campsite in small groups that the Guildmaster has already assigned."
"That's right, everyone gets to work together in their own teams this time!" Wigglytuff interrupted. "And I have those teams on this piece of paper. Everyone listen closely for your names." As he finished speaking he handed the list to Chatot.
"Alright, the first group is Sunflora, Loudred, Diglett, and Croagunk," Chatot began as he read the list. "The next group is Dugtrio, Chimecho, and Corphish. Group three is…" Chatot stopped himself as he realized something. "Wait a moment, this list contains every member of the guild!"
Every member of the guild? But that means…
"We got picked?" Crest questioned.
"And I get to go too?" Bidoof added.
Chatot frantically turned to Wigglytuff. "Guildmaster, is this really the list for the expedition?"
"Of course it is," he answered. "I should know, I wrote it myself."
"But we would be leaving the guild unattended," Chatot reasoned. "Are you sure that is wise?"
Wigglytuff's cheery demeanor didn't change. "It will be okay, we'll just lock everything up tight, and then we can all go exploring with our friends!"
Skuntank seemed annoyed by the decision, probably because it meant Crest and I were both going on the expedition. Little did he know Crest was always going to be picked, so nothing he could say could change anything. Of course, that wouldn't stop him from trying. "Guildmaster, I also have some concerns. Have you considered that we may have too many members for the exploration?"
Wigglytuff put on a thoughtful expression, though I could tell it was fake. "Hmm… when I friend says something like that, it makes me wonder why…" he said, subtly warning Skuntank to back off.
"It's just, is it really necessary for so many pokemon to go? What is the point?" he defended.
Bouncing back to his cheerful personality Wigglytuff answered, "Of course there's a point: if everyone goes it will be more fun!"
Skuntank didn't have a response for that. Instead he just stepped back, dumbfounded.
Chatot also appeared surprised, but he recovered enough to finish the meeting. "In that case, the final group is Bidoof, Crest, and Brandon. Now, if you'll excuse me, the Guildmaster and I have to finish preparing for the expedition. The rest of you should meet with your teams and make any necessary preparations of your own before regrouping here. You are all dismissed."
With the meeting over, everyone broke into their respective groups. Bidoof came over to me and Crest, not bothering to hide his excitement. "Golly, I can't believe we got picked! I've never gotten to go on an expedition before."
"Me either," Crest replied, "and after what happened yesterday, I don't think anyone would have been surprised if Brandon and I stayed behind."
"Well, I'm glad we get to go, yup-yup," Bidoof continued. "So, uh, what do we do now?"
"I think we should go to the Kecleon Market for supplies," I suggested.
Crest agreed with me, "Good idea. We're running pretty low on items."
Our group went to town only to realize items were not the only things we were low on; we only had 145 Poke to spend. I guess our lack of standard missions messed up more than our training. Despite our lack of funds, Kecleon let us buy a luminous orb.
"So much for restocking our bag," Crest said as we left the market.
"At least we got one item, even if we really shouldn't have," I responded.
"That's Kecleon for you, yup-yup," Bidoof explained, "They just want to support the expedition. If we find something, that's good news for the entire town."
"Well, since we're out of Poke, there isn't really anything left for us to do," Crest continued. "Unless there's something you need from town."
To my surprise, Bidoof actually did have something he wanted to do. "Golly, I bet we will get a lot stronger during the expedition. I'd like to stop by Electivire's shop to see what kinds of moves I might learn."
"I thought he just ran a move relearning service," I questioned.
Crest explained for me, "He mostly does, but Electivire knows a lot about moves. It makes sense that he could answer questions about learnsets."
Bidoof led the way to Electivire, who greeted us enthusiastically. "Howdy, explorers! Are you looking to learn some moves?"
"Not exactly," Bidoof explained, "but our guild is going on an expedition and I wanted to know what moves I should try to learn while we're gone."
"Alrighty then, let me see your badge," Electivire instructed. Upon receiving the badge from Bidoof, he placed it behind his table and appeared to be reading something. "Let's see, you're level nine, so the moves you should learn soon are… Rollout and Headbutt." He looked up and asked, "What about you two? Should I check your movesets as well?"
"We would, but we don't have any Poke right now," Crest explained.
"But you're members of Wigglytuff's guild, right? The guild funds the dojo and by extension my services, so there's no need to pay for them. In fact, I'd like you to test something for me," Electivire answered.
"Test something?" Bidoof repeated.
"That's right. You see, to predict learnsets I connect your team badge to a database filled with the average levels most pokemon learn new moves," he explained. "But it would be more useful to most pokemon if they could access that information on their own. I want to install predictive moveset analysis onto team badges so pokemon can see what moves they should be able to use, but I need someone to field test it. Ya interested?"
Crest and Bidoof seemed to get lost in the explanation, but it sounded like a good deal to me. "I'd like to try it. I would probably struggle to learn new moves if I didn't know what they were."
Either Crest caught up to the earlier explanation or decided to trust my decision, because he handed over his badge when I gave Electivire mine. "Okay, just give me a moment…" He worked behind his table for a while before handing us our badges. "Alright, that should do it. Whenever you want to check which moves you might learn, just navigate to your current moveset and select 'Predictive Moveset Analysis.' That should show you which moves are common at different levels."
Following Electivire's instructions, I found a new option when viewing my current moves. Upon selecting it, something resembling a list appeared on the screen. Unfortunately, I couldn't read Footprint Runes well enough to make much sense of it. Still, the first four items matched my current moveset, and the numbers next to them matched the levels I learned each move. As far as I could tell it was working.
Perhaps realizing I couldn't read the display, Crest pointed out what I needed to know. "Your next move is Synthesis at level twelve. That's pretty useful."
"What about you?" I asked.
"Apparently I can learn Water Sport. Not like it matters though," he answered.
"That could be useful, I am a Grass type after all," I argued.
"Name one dungeon with Fire types," Crest countered. I had no answer. "Exactly. Fire attacks are extremely rare in mystery dungeons. Water Sport is not worth learning, I'll just wait for Peck."
"If you say so," I conceded. "I think we're done here, so let's head back to the guild before Chatot decides we're late."
"Are you finally ready to go?" I asked when Brandon emerged from the guild. We met with the rest of the guild on the lower floor as Chatot instructed, but there was nothing to do there. He just showed everyone where base camp would be on the map, and Wigglytuff said we were free to find our own routes to Foggy Forest. Bidoof and I followed the other guild members outside before we realized Brandon wasn't with us.
"Yeah, I'm ready," Brandon answered, "and I asked Wigglytuff about our route. He suggested we take a detour through a few easy dungeons instead of trying to go straight to base camp."
Bidoof seemed to like that idea. "Sounds good to me, yup-yup. It is our first expedition after all."
"Lead the way then," I replied. "Which dungeons are we going through?"
"The first one is called Craggy Coast. Once we get through there we will be at the entrance to Mt. Horn, which should lead to the campsite," Brandon explained.
From the crossroads we followed our map until we reached the entrance to Craggy Coast. It took quite a while to reach the dungeon, partially because it was so far from Treasure Town but also because we had Bidoof with us. Brandon and I were not used to having a third team member, and Bidoof wasn't much of an explorer. We decided to take a moment to prepare ourselves before continuing.
"So, why are we going through this dungeon again?" Bidoof asked. "I mean, was this really the best way to go?"
"It's the easiest path through the mountains," Brandon answered. "At least, that's what Wigglytuff said."
"At this point we might as well go around the mountains," I responded. "We've already made this much of a detour anyway, why not keep going? I think I see a path right there."
Brandon looked toward the path I mentioned and considered my idea. "I guess we could keep going, but it would probably take longer than going through the dungeon. We already have the slowest route to the base camp, so we really shouldn't take any more detours. Besides, we don't know where that path leads. At least by going through Craggy Coast we know where we will end up."
"Golly, I don't want to be getting lost," Bidoof cut in. "If you know where we are going, I'll just follow you. This is supposed to be an easy mystery dungeon, isn't it?"
"It's supposed to be," Brandon responded. "In fact, it looks like there would be a lot of Water types here."
By now I was checking the stats for the dungeon on my badge. "In that case you should take the lead. Your Razor Leaf will be useful here, and if you take a lot of damage you can practice using Synthesis. That way you'll know the move when we reach Mt. Horn." The information on my badge suggested this dungeon would not be as easy as Brandon made it sound, but his type advantage would still have some use.
We entered Craggy Coast and cleared the first few floors without incident. Bidoof had some trouble against the hostiles' ranged attacks and Brandon had to be wary of the occasional Wingull, but keeping our distance from enemies seemed to work well. That is, until one Wingull got a little too close to our group. If there was one thing we learned from that experience, it was to stay away when Brandon gets ambushed. Otherwise your Tackle could get you caught up in a poison cloud.
While Bidoof was recovering with a heal seed, Brandon tried to figure out Synthesis. He always seemed to struggle with learning new moves. With that giant leaf on his head you would think using Synthesis would be easy, but he misfired several Razor Leafs before getting it right. At least he had it down by the end of the dungeon, because Bidoof used one of our few oran berries. Luckily we found another one inside the dungeon, along with a pecha berry and even a reviver seed.
Speaking of the end of the dungeon, it was almost sunset when we reached it. "I guess your route was a bit longer than you thought it was," I told Brandon.
"In my defense, it was Wigglytuff's idea, and we've never had to go through multiple dungeons in one day before," he replied. "What do you think we should do?"
I checked my badge for information on Mt. Horn. "This next dungeon is almost as bad for us as Apple Woods was. Unless we're trying the side path this time, we should probably rest before continuing…"
"So are we setting up camp here for tonight?" Bidoof asked.
"I'd rather not," Brandon answered. "Everyone is expecting us at the base camp, and we don't have food."
"Golly, that's not true! I brought some apples," Bidoof corrected.
"And we're all too tired to go any further today anyway," I continued. That was enough to convince Brandon that we were not reaching the campsite tonight. "I'm going to gather materials to make beds, you guys can divide the apples."
Upon hearing that Bidoof didn't hesitate to dig into his treasure bag, and Brandon reluctantly joined him. Meanwhile I began to look around for leaves to make beds out of. When I finished with the beds I joined my teammates to eat some apples. To my surprise there was a small campfire waiting for me.
"How did you make that?" I asked.
"Some sticks and a blast seed," Brandon explained. "I didn't expect it to work as well as it did, but I'm not complaining."
With the fire to keep us warm, we spent a surprisingly peaceful night outside the entrance to Mt. Horn. Of course, Brandon made sure we got up early the next morning; we didn't want to keep the guild waiting for us after all. I used my Bubble to put out what was left of the fire before leading our group into the next dungeon.
Just as I expected, Brandon had some trouble with this one. Many of the hostiles were immune to Poison Powder and Razor Leaf wasn't much better, so he mostly avoided battling. What I wasn't expecting was how well Bidoof was doing. His Defense Curl gave him an advantage I hadn't considered before, and we quickly realized we could pair it with Growl to make enemy attacks nearly useless. Between that and Brandon's Synthesis, we only needed one oran berry to get through the dungeon.
It didn't take long to reach the guild's campsite. Chatot was waiting for us, but I didn't see anyone else there. "So, you three are finally here," he said, clearly annoyed. "Normally I'd have more to say about your absence last night, but it has already been excused by the Guildmaster. Now that you've reached base camp, you are free to split apart from your travel group. Make any preparations you need to make and start exploring the area. Everyone else has already started their own explorations, so you better hurry if you want to make any discoveries. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find the Guildmaster to report your arrival."
Finally, we got to do some real exploring! I couldn't wait to see what we would find. "I'm all ready to explore, what about you guys?" I said excitedly.
"Golly, I sure do want to, but I'm just too tired from that last dungeon," Bidoof answered. "I think I'll wait here for a while to rest, but I'll start exploring soon, yup-yup."
"I'm ready to go," Brandon replied. "And I think we should start right away. Wigglytuff can't stave off Chatot's wrath for us forever."
"Alright then. Bidoof, we'll let you know if we find anything interesting. We'll see you then!"