Author's Note: Remember, my fellow Americans, a meter is slightly more than a yard.
Without both work AND my master's degree to drain all my time and brain power I'm going to be writing more which is super exciting for all of us!
The second I began plotting out Grampa Canyon and came up with my expansion of the underground I knew what I had to do here.
Chapter 12: The Lost World
I returned everyone except Cleo and bit my bottom lip nervously as I looked down the tunnel. This was far more extensive than those flashes of Ash and Team Rocket's battle I had gotten would have suggested.
Alternatively…Team Rocket had used a lot of explosives. What if this had always been here? Waiting for discovery?
This…this was huge. This was the kind of discovery that absolutely COULD get me a direct sponsorship from Professor Oak as a conditional independent researcher. I would submit reports directly to him for approval and he'd be on them as a co-author. Lending his credibility to me and boosting his reputation as always being ahead of the game and cooperative on new research.
But, I needed to confirm my hypothesis first. And, I really needed that aerodactyl to have access to an appropriate flier for myself. Very few other accessible pokemon of my compatible types truly worked as aerial transportation. I'd have to go all the way to Hoenn for a flygon, because as cool as they were, a skarmory would take far too long to train up as safe transportation. They took a notorious length of time to teach how to angle their razor sharp feathers to be safe.
Plus, ever since my father's work on the fossil resurrection machine had triggered that round of memories and dreams about fossil pokemon knowledge from my past life, I'd known that aerodactyl had been my absolute favorite pokemon that my current self was compatible with.
An ancient dragon of rock that was meant to rule…no, dominate, the entire sky? I'm not frequently ambitious, but that for some reason stirred a hunger to strive forward and grow in me. One that my mother in this life had perhaps accidentally squashed by trying so frequently to force it to grow.
So, I would continue on until I caught this aerodactyl. No matter how far down it was or how insane these caverns got. Even if they were as extensive as the Sinnoh Underground I would persist. Because, there was something down here calling to me.
I could feel it, almost like I had just drained a huge thermos of hot tea, a burning feeling in my chest that pulsed with every step I took deeper into these tunnels.
I…hadn't noticed myself moving down through the tunnel. I had been in some kind of a trance, I looked down and Cleo looked up at me worriedly, she'd followed along but had definitely noticed I had been out of sorts.
"There's way more than an aerodactyl down here, girl." I whispered, worried for all of us. But I firmed myself, I wasn't just a trainer good with the earth elements. I was going to be a master of them.
I'd shown a lot of the reliability of stone in my life so far, but now it was time for me to show the resilience of steel.
Of all the elements people showed multiple proficiencies for, perhaps combinations of my three were the most common, though all three being high was slightly rarer. But there were plenty of people who had high proficiencies in grass and poison together, or water and ice together. Soon to be Champion Lance was a great example of Dragon and Flying being at extremely high compatibility in fact. And his cousin Clair with Dragon and Water, she apparently had a gyarados that could shame Lance's original. Or Agatha and her mix of Ghost and Poison leading her to have those terrifying arbok.
But if I was going to push all three of mine to the limit, I needed to embody them. And I needed to train and evolve my team to embody them. It was easy when embodying Rock and Ground to get stuck where you were. But I had to remember that for every mountain there were rock slides, for every mesa there were innumerable particles of sand whipping through the desert winds, and for every shield there was a sword.
And continents could shift. If I was all of the Earth I needed to stop standing still and hiding out in my schoolhouse.
I licked my dry lips and thought back to that small fight against Rocket Sierra with Artagnan. He and I were getting there, if I could find him a metal coat we would be where we needed to be for our bond to strengthen to as good as it was with any of my other pokemon upon his evolution. And Cleo, she'd be ready for her moon stone soon. I had to remind myself that everything was coming together, and I just had to make sure I wasn't the weakest link.
"Alright girl, let's move out."
The air became oddly humid as we moved forward. I frowned to myself, as this was rather odd compared to how dry it had been even with the underground lake that had been in the previous chamber.
However, clues started to slowly reveal themselves to us as we continued. The tunnel widened more and more until it seemed we were slowly spiraling down something the size of a decent highway, and with a ceiling of almost six of me.
Because slowly we started to see plant-life. There'd been some algae in the lake chamber, but nothing like the moss and mushrooms of increasing size we were seeing now.
Paras and even one or two parasect were visible out of the corner of my eye before they moved away and hid from us, shy creatures in the best of circumstances. I was not surprised that ones which had never even met a human in genetic memory would hide amongst the growing forest of funguses.
As the tunnel opened up into a proper cavern chamber however, things got…weird.
My glowrod was no longer the only source of light. Curious, I stowed it away to determine where the new light was coming from.
It was at first the undersides of some of the larger mushrooms, they were bioluminescent. Which was, excuse my language, so fucking dope.
I got a few flashes of seeing bioluminescent algae at sea as I took in the forest of flowing underbellies of giant mushroom caps.
"Cleo…this is…wow." My nidorina, also never having seen anything like this, nodded along mutely with wide eyes.
I had read something about mushrooms somewhat similar but only the size of people in Galar's Glimwood Tangle. This was so much more than that though, many of these mushrooms stretched all the way up to the ceiling, a solid five meters up. And the deeper I went the higher that got.
I also began to see flickering white and pink lights along the tops of them, another memory from that episode hit me, and I wondered for a moment if those were perhaps wild togetic? Or even togekiss?
Due to the size of the mushroom caps the stalks were spaced far enough from each other that Cleo and I could both pass between them with plenty of room as we continued.
"I can't believe all of this was down here!" I kept glancing around in different directions in wonder, trying to take all I could in.
We continued to wander and explore for the next hour almost, the forest seemingly not ending, merely going deeper as the downward incline continued. Twice I had to bring Alberich out to take us down some kind of jagged cliff face where the floor of the cavern dropped by a large amount only for the forest of mushrooms to continue on at the lower level.
It was a few minutes after I returned Alberich the second time that Cleo's ears twitched, giving us the only warning we got as a scyther of all things dropped down from one of the lower mushroom caps with a battle cry.
Cleo met the Fury Cutter with a Double Kick and the two creatures bounced away from each other.
"You can take this, Cleo!" I called out, however I still called Alberich back out as well and commanded the rhyhorn, "Bodyguard duty."
And it was a good thing I had called my trusty rocky boy out, because after Cleo and the scyther exchanged a few more blows and it cried out in pain as she got a solid Poison Sting in, a low buzzing began to sound through the area.
"Uh oh…" I muttered as Alberich kept his head on a swivel. "Stealth Rocks!" I called, and mere moments after he set up the trap the rock shards moved to slam into five figures attempting to blitz us with a round of Quick Attacks.
And more were coming.
"En Garde, Artagnan!" Fight fire with fire after all.
My scyther was a peak specimen I had trained rigorously. Like some sort of shonen samurai or dual wielding ninja he met two incoming Slash attacks from different bugs. My own battle crazed bug cackled wildly and used the spinning motions of Swords Dance to push both back and simultaneously raise his own attack.
"Atta boy!" I called out before also bringing Brinker back to run interference as well.
By this point Cleo was on her second scyther and Alberich was resetting the rocks.
Brinker couldn't jump back into his Mist tactic from earlier, because the wild scyther could blow away the fog with a concerted effort.
I clicked my tongue and moved him to hit and run tactics and wide shot Powder Snows.
It wasn't more than another minute of furious exchanges before the remaining scyther backed off into the distance, buzzing their wings angrily.
I pulled out a few Net Balls and tossed them, catching the ones that were fully knocked out and nearby.
The disappearance of their allies caused the grouped ones to cry out in alarm.
And that's when it went to shit, the mushroom above us shifted in a strange manner, then there was a loud and gruff cry of, "KLEAVE!"
Before a large scyther-looking monster with stone axes instead of scythe blades came crashing down on Alberich, knocking him out immediately.
"Holy shit!" I cried out as we all jumped back and I quickly returned my rhyhorn.
"SCY!" Artagnan called out before rushing in to block another ax sweep aimed at me with twin Slash attacks crossed in front of his body. The force of the blow still sent him skidding back into me and I was bowled over.
I quickly rolled back to my feet however, because I remembered a flash of insight years ago about an ancient alternative evolution for scyther from before metallurgy had changed the evolution to be scizor.
Kleavor, the Stone Axe Bug.
"Vacuum Wave hit and runs!" I called out, "Weave with Slash when he's in close and use Quick Attack for maneuvering!" He'd gotten off at least two each of Swords Dance and Agility during the fight with the rest of the swarm, so I didn't have to worry about buffing him.
This kleavor, I noted as they began viciously going at each other with their different blades, was still the same green coloring as a scyther, which usually denoted a 'shiny' pokemon as I believed from my flashes of insight that it was supposed to be a tan color for the body.
I wasn't going to replace Artagnan on my team, he was too well trained, but I was damned well going to catch this kleavor and study it to figure out how to evolve Artagnan into a kleavor instead of a scizor if I caught the aerodactyl down here. I'd mainly wanted scizor for the mega evolution potential after all, and if I had an aerodactyl I could forgo a second potential mega evolution.
I winced in sympathy as a few shards of the Stone Axe attack embedded themselves in Artagnan's thorax. That attack was super-effective twice over and I could tell that Artagnan was feeling the strain, he'd gotten very lucky with his double stack of Agility allowing him to dodge a solid eighty-percent of the wild kleavor's attacks.
The kleavor was feeling the strain as well however, Vacuum Wave might not be as super-effective as it could be if the bug-type resistance to it wasn't there, but it was a special attack based move and was getting around its hardy defenses while being boosted by Artagnan's Technician ability. It was also constantly being staggered by how fast that move was firing off.
Eventually I saw Artagnan's opportunity when the kleavor missed and embedded an ax into the stalk of a mushroom-tree.
"Dance into a major Slash!" I called out, with the exposed positioning of the kleavor I was hoping for a critical strike here.
And boy did I get it. Artagnan spun around in his glorious dance and used the momentum to send himself spiraling down to hammer both scythes into the arm of the kleavor, snapping it and partially shattering the stone ax while sending the other bug flying.
As the kleavor struggled to rise the stone shards embedded in Artagnan began to glow, and then HE began to glow too.
"Fragments of a defeated kleavor's axes as an alternative?" I whispered in awe, it made sense, of course a kleavor's ax was made out of the material used to evolve into the form in the first place.
And then everything happened way too fast.
A shriek from the sky caused everyone to look up just in time to see a gray, vaguely pterodactyl shaped, form crash through the mushroom caps and chomp down upon the defeated kleavor. Tearing the upper body free of the lower.
Just as Artagnan finished evolving.
Nature was terrifying sometimes.
And then the aerodactyl screamed at all of us in challenge.
Make that fucking terrifying.