Chapter 1: The Calm Before the Storm
A few years later, Nida's dream of becoming a member of Rescue Team had begun to be realized… Sort of. She was still a Nidoran, still in training, but no longer quite as small or young. She had largely moved on from watching the stars by night, as her life had grown busier and seemingly filled with times when she was hecticly darting through crowds of Pokémon by day. Today was no exception.
"Hey rookie, watch it!"
Nida swerved to the side, narrowly avoiding the feet of a passing Rhyhorn, who shot her a frustrated glare.
"Alright! Alright! Sorry!"
She darted out of the crowd to rest a moment and catch her breath. With a navy blue scarf adorned with a solitary white star around her neck, a small glinting badge affixed to it along her throat, and a satchel on her back, the Nidoran was not quite the same kit she had been so many nights ago.
The square that Nida was making her way into was ringed with simple wooden huts and garish tents styled after Pokémon. There were item shops, eateries, raucous juice bars, even the odd tailor or two—the latter eagerly claiming that their wares would outlast the toughest rigors thrown at them thanks to silk they spun themselves.
The sky turned a vibrant shade of orange under the setting sun, the air crisp from the sea. The mountain that anchored the island loomed in the background, its far face graced by the fog around its Mystery Dungeon.
Along the sea, rickety wooden ships moored alongside similarly rickety wooden docks, with Pokémon clambering on and off helping to load and unload small parcels. Other Pokémon, bobbing in the water, chattered with their terrestrial counterparts, trading gossip that had surely travelled great distances with the waves.
It was a scene that might have filled Nida with wonder… if she had not already lived through it hundreds of times before. Though only rarely did she almost get stepped on as she had tonight. Nida hopped up onto a crate and then, after a brief bit of scanning, bounded up to a small shack with a low counter. She rested a short moment and then called out into the shack's interior.
"Calino? Are you still there?"
Much to the Nidoran's relief, she was answered by a green and yellow lizard with a long tongue popping up from behind some crates, who gingerly sauntered over to the counter.
"Speaking, missy. What can I do you for?"
"...You still haven't replaced your old tent?" Nida said, sizing up the Kecleon's somewhat rough pavilion.
"Ahehe… See, the thing about those custom buildings and all… They kinda are a little hard on the coin purse. Especially when you're looking to get them fireproofed so that the next one won't get burned down by a wet Combusken," the Kecleon chuckled awkwardly.
Nida couldn't help but wonder how Calino managed to get himself into such situations. He was a Pokémon from outside Tromba who had a shrewd sense for business and seemed good-natured… mostly, somewhat, maybe. Calino usually had a grating sense of humor, which was perhaps one of the reasons why he was here selling wares out of a wooden shack in tiny Bluewhorl Town and not on some other island.
"Of course, you could help speed up ol' Calino's renovations if you did a little shopping, eh?"
"I'd be able to buy more if you'd let me get some of the discounts you give to the other teams, you know," Nida said, flattening her ears while hopping up onto a stump serving as a stool.
"Perhaps you should spend a little more, or else boost your Team ranking a bit then, eh? Why, I wouldn't give a discount to the Protector himself if he was still at your ranking!" Calino teased, flushing a burnt yellow.
"Come on, Calino. My mami used to be una Cazadragones! Surely Dragon Busting's worth something, of all things?" the Nidoran protested.
"Well then, perhaps you just need to waken that familial blood of yours a bit, eh? That'd be quite a lark, doncha think? Hahaha!"
The Kecleon watched as his customer's countenance twisted into more and more of a scowl, sensing that he had perhaps gone a bit too far in his attempts to provide some good-natured banter. Calino deemed it best to drop the attempt at humor and revert to a more business-like tone as his scales reverted back to their normal green.
"Haha… more seriously Nida, as much as I'd like to cut you a discount, I can't. Or at least not outside of hatching days and other big events," Calino sighed. "Why, between the take that the Company sucks out of Bluewhorl Town here each year and all of the rookies that go off for more mundane work like berry picking after their mandatory stint servicing in the guild or with the town guards…
Heh heh, I'd be left with nary a scale left over afterwards!" the Kecleon chortled.
Seeing that his customer was looking away towards the pebbles on the ground and not visibly moved by his appeal, the Kecleon decided that it would perhaps be best to offer some reassurance.
"Nida, look at it this way. It's just a matter of time before you wind up becoming one of my big buyers, right? Why, a Pokémon like you- always chomping at the bit for tougher missions even while in a trainee team- once you get into a real team it would only be a matter of time before you rise through the ranks!"
"Or wind up dying in the dungeon," a passing Sentret volunteered.
"Or wind up d-Oi!" Calino turned around visibly flustered. "Snark at your own customers, Scout!"
"Just… Give me the usual, Calino," Nida grumbled, as the Sentret continued on his way.
The Kecleon quietly gathered a couple berries and a few assorted seeds and deposited them into Nida's bag as she shuffled a few misshapen but glinting coins across the counter.
"Say… Marley's had some more kids since you and your three brothers and sisters came along, right? Two… three…?" Calino asked apologetically, his scales having turned a teal color.
"Six," Nida corrected, scowling at the Kecleon.
"Oh! Ah… That's a bit more than I- Ahem, anyways, maybe on their next hatching day, I could arrange for the mon that buys their gift to get a little something extra, huh?"
"I'll keep it in mind after I tell Mami about my day, I guess. I'll be sure to include how my run here went," Nida said while turning off, finally giving a small smile.
"Er… About the discount I offered?" Calino asked nervously as he knocked over a few seeds from a box behind him and flinched a moment. His scales began to flush a dingy brown.
"Nah, about everything," the Nidoran smirked, before bounding off down a dirt road.
"Erk! Gods help me… Wait, Nida! Come on! Let's be reasonable here! That was just good-natured ribbing!" Calino called after the rapidly escaping Nidoran, flushing white in distress.
"Aw, relax, ya old miser! I'll say enough to keep you alive so I can shop here next time!"
Nida continued bounding up the road for a time before arriving at a large round pavillion tent. Behind it, she could see a wooden structure fashioned in the shape of an Ampharos' head with a sheltered platform up top, seemingly for signaling. From her vantage point, she also saw some simple roofed huts where the guild members sometimes ate together and stayed overnight, and a large earthen clearing along a seaside ledge kept dutifully free of obstructions.
Pokémon busied themselves milling in and out of the complex; a Rattata happily chattered with some other similarly experienced peers about having just graduated from the lowest rank. Meanwhile, a Natu and a Sealeo discussed the recent arrival of letters from off-island and who a 'Manternal' by the name of 'Maranda' was supposed to be. Nida's face lit up as at last she reached what she'd been looking for: the guild's Mission Board, which was occupied by a Loudred, Shiftry, and a Croconaw who were sizing up the listings.
"See anything yet?" the Croconaw asked.
"It's all a bunch of fetch quests this time around. Unless you count a bunch of outdated bounties on pirates as jobs," the Shiftry scoffed.
"Well, what's the one that makes most sense for us to do, then?" the Loudred demanded.
"I'm working on it! Hrm… fetching some kid's 'lost treasure...' Pass. Hunting for rare gummis… eh, not feeling it. Oh, here we go, finding an 'ahp-gredh' for Melissa."
"Melissa? The move tutor? What's an 'ahp-gredh' and why on earth would she want one of those?" the Croconaw asked.
"Eh, beats me, but when a client's offering that much Poké, they're always right," the Shiftry mused, before taking the mission listing off the board and heading off chattering with her companions about just what exactly an "ahp-gredh" was anyways, leaving Nida behind to stare at the mission listing and sigh.
"Oh, I see you brought supplies for our mission tomorrow. Are you staying overnight at the guild hall?"
Nida turned around, and came face to face with a Swellow bearing a bandanna of the same design and color as her scarf.
"Oh, hello, Kiran. I thought I told you that I couldn't stay over tonight."
"Eh? But why in the world not? Why, you're still in training! Starting brisk from a relaxing night straight from the guild hall is proven, by my observations, to improve performance in Mystery Dungeons by 100% for rookies like you!" the Swellow said, craning his head down to the Nidoran.
He was a creature with the best of intentions, and a heart for guiding young Pokémon into becoming full-fledged members of Rescue Teams. But every so often, the navy blue and white bird couldn't help but come off as ever so slightly… clueless.
"Kiran, it's my turn to babysit my younger siblings. Besides, how much energy does collecting apples need anyways?" Nida muttered, starting to flatten out her ears.
"Oh, but plenty of energy! Why, you need to be brimming and up and at them for any trip into a dungeon!"
"Kiran… we've done missions like these before all the time, they're not exactly hard. And if it didn't ask for the apples to specifically be ones scattered in the dungeon as a training exercise, we could just complete it by stealing from Mildrew's orchard on the south side of town."
"... The Tropius? I mean, well. Um... yes, I suppose that's not completely inaccurate, but that doesn't change the-", Kiran stammered, ruffling some feathers to regain composure, before getting interrupted by his small charge.
"Why on earth are we still doing missions like these? I thought that Rescue Teams were supposed to help Pokémon, not do idle busywork!"
The Swellow paused and extended a wing over the Nidoran, trying to offer her some reassurance.
"Nida, I know that you want to move on already. But I swear, I'm not doing this just to annoy you. You've got much more drive than I've normally seen in rookies… especially with what happened last year and all…"
"Let's… not talk about that, Kiran. It happened, and everything worked out in the end without anyone getting really hurt. Let's just leave it at that," Nida said with an involuntary shudder.
"But my point is, moments like those are real possibilities!" Kiran said, throwing his wings wide and flailing. "The entire point of training is so that you can be prepared for them if you stay on a Rescue Team past this first stage! And… well-"
The Swellow lowered his head and found his voice dropping to a little above a murmur, uttering some uncomfortable confessions.
"None of us want to see you get hurt from trying to push on ahead too fast. Not Crom. Not your mami. And especially not me... you understand, don't you?"
"I guess," Nida said, looking down. She kicked at the dirt, not really sure what to say back to her team leader's concern, only to feel a feathery sensation moving up against her and seeing Kiran patting her head with his wing.
"You're almost through, Nida, I promise. I just need to be able to see a little more from your teamwork with Crom that shows you're ready to be guided under less tutoring wings."
"So… if I can definitively prove to you that I can take care of myself as a Rescuer, you'll upgrade my rank?" Nida asked, starting to smirk- much to the immediate concern of the Swellow.
"Now hold on, that's not what I said at-!"
"I think I can live with that, Kiran," Nida cheerfully replied.
"Ah… Nida."
"Whelp, I'm off," the Nidoran said, turning to leave.
"Nida!" Kiran called after his charge.
"What? Oh… right."
Nida then shook her satchel off her shoulders and passed her bag off to the Swellow.
"Almost left without leaving the supplies for your bag tomorrow, didn't I?"
"Yes, let's… leave it at that," Kiran said, his voice betraying ever so slight hints of exasperation, but deciding for the moment to let the matter be.
The Nidoran then turned and bounded off down another path, the guild hall quickly disappearing behind her as the shacks and tents she passed grew less extravagant, and the paths less-traveled.
"Don't forget to remind Crom to prepare on your way back home!" she heard Kiran calling after her.
"Heh heh, silly Swellow, I don't need anyone to remind me to do anything with Crom," she called back, and away she went. Past wooden and canvas buildings, past the Day Care run by the Froslass (who stopped watching her siblings after dark after the incident with her Pomeg plants), past one of the little bridges over the creek that went through town, until she came to a small hut radiating the scent of toasted grain.
"Crom? Are you in there?" Nida called towards the humble building, but to no apparent response. The Nidoran thought the whole matter was rather peculiar- usually Crom had no trouble coming to the front- and so with a bit of concern, she poked her head into the rude hut's doorway...
"Crom-? Meep!"
… Only to find herself scooped up by a set of blue claws and brought up a couple feet off the ground, where she came face to face with a jagged red maw and its piercing yellow eyes.
"Hee hee, gotcha!"
Nida untensed and breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized the welcomer. "Phew… Crom, don't do that. You know how Nidoran like me feel about suddenly getting snatched like that."
"Aw, but then how am I supposed to ever get you more than a foot off the floor?" the young Druddigon piped back as he set Nida back on the ground.
"Did you come to head off to dinner at the guild hall together?" he cheerily asked.
Crom and his family were ever-so-slightly strange creatures. Usually when one thought of dragon Pokémon, one thought of fighters or warriors, or the heavens forbid, pirates. Crom and his relatives on the other hand…
"Mom said that I could stay overnight at the guild hall once the evening loaves are done. A bakery's hard work, you know?"
The Nidoran's ears drooped after hearing the young dragon's words.
"You won't be able to come?" Crom asked, visibly disappointed.
"Sorry… Mami and Papi have field work late tonight, and I got the short end of the stick for babysitting my younger brothers and sisters," Nida sighed.
"Oh. Well, it's just four of you guys, ri-?"
"My younger brothers and sisters, Crom," Nida said, bringing an awkward silence over the room.
"Oh, right."
"I take it that you already knew about Kiran wanting us to be prepared for tomorrow, right?"
"Uh huh!" the young Druddigon beckoned Nida to clamber up his back and onto his crest, and brought her to see a table set with the first loaves of the evening.
"I'm already planning on bringing along all of the ones that don't sell in the morning!" Crom beamed.
Nida's ears flattened out at the mention of the idea of bringing day-old bread along.
"Um, Crom… Wouldn't fresh bread make you grow even faster? And be less hard on your jaws?"
"Well hey, beggars can't be choosers. And mom says that eating well will help me to grow big and strong just like her! I'm at her chest height now! It's not that different for Nidoran, right?"
"... Whatever, I'm just saying, whenever I eventually have kits, that's not what I plan on feeding them. Ever," Nida said, furrowing her brow a bit.
Crom couldn't help but giggle and tease a bit after hearing his passenger's comments.
"Is that a hint that one day we're gonna have-?"
It was then that the two were abruptly interrupted by another Druddigon half a head shorter barging in.
"Cro-om! Mom says to stop dawdling and help put the bread out onto the display tables!"
"Alright, alright!" Crom replied, reluctantly bringing his snout to the ground to let his passenger off.
"Sorry Nida, but I need to get back to helping. Good luck with babysitting?"
"I'll try, I guess," Nida said.
"See you in the morning," Crom said, waving a hasty farewell.
"Yeah, you too," Nida sighed, before heading off towards the hills above the town.
A short time later, Nida returned to the area around her burrow, a hillside with a distinctive lack of buildings and tents. Most Pokémon in the area lived in nests or burrows; the lack of undergrowth, the sparser trees, and the reed mat placemarkers were the only major difference from the forests deeper in the island.
Eventually, Nida came back to her family's burrow. Absently, she noted how little had changed in the last couple of years, since the nights she would sneak out to stargaze.
"I'm h-"
Before Nida could finish her breath, six rowdy and visibly smaller Nidoran with matching white scarves with blue whirlpools on them bounded out of the burrow's entrance.
"Whee!" a little blue ball cried out, hopping circles around Nida.
"Sissy, play with us, play with us!" a purple ball demanded, tugging at Nida's leg.
"Sissy, Dia stole my berry earlier!" another purple ball pouted.
"Did not!" a blue ball responded.
"Did so!"
"They're both lying, I saw them!" another purple ball interjected.
"When's Mami gonna be home? And are you going to be a boring babysitter like Dorin?" the last, blue ball asked skeptically.
As the six little Nidoran continued jabbering, a larger male Nidoran slipped out from the burrow, mouthed something that seemed to be "They're your problem now," and quickly hopped away.
"-ome..." Nida sighed, as she resigned herself to what was going to be a very long and weary night.
The final strains of day eventually gave way to night, and activity in Bluewhorl Town began to largely wind down and come to a close. But further up the mountain, behind a shroud of fog, the ever-changing passages of Tromba Island's Mystery Dungeon were slightly more active.
A couple floors beyond the entrance, in a chamber composed primarily of light stone intersected by small tidal pools, some Krabby scuttled across the cave floor between shallow pools of water, snapping at any Finneon that happened to float by, while a Corsola pulled itself out of another pool to gather salts from a damp rock. An unremarkable night for Pokémon whose lives followed an alternative rhythm to those slumbering down the hill.
The only sign of any disturbance to this rhythm came when a strong wind began to blow, causing the Pokémon in the chamber to stop what they were doing and mill about towards shelter uneasily.
Then the winds abruptly picked up, followed by thunder, and the walls began to shake. It was far more severe than the poor creatures expected, and they now madly and desperately scurried about the chamber for some respite. A few lighter creatures were swept up in the draft and blown elsewhere into the maze, giving panicked chitters, yelps, and cries.
Those that could maintain their rooting to the chamber couldn't help but stare down at the end where the winds blew from, a single dreadful question lurking in their minds.
What sort of beast, down deep in the dungeon, could cause a calamity like this?
In a chamber fashioned further on in the Mystery Dungeon, its position ever in flux with the disturbances that constantly reshaped the floors of the maze, a solitary silvery-white egg with blue swirls waited on a raised patch of stone ringed by a shallow pool of water. The chamber, fashioned from darker stone, basked in the dim glow of the bioluminescent algae on the ceiling. The stone room was blissfully separated enough from the cacophony elsewhere in the dungeon to hear only the faint but sharp whistling of distant-sounding winds, the eye to the storm that had engulfed the rest of the maze.
And then, the comparative stillness broke with a faint crack. And then a louder crack with the faint, wet sound of some viscous substance being pulled apart. The lights from the ceiling were just strong enough to produce a shadow of the rapidly hatching orb on the wall of the the chamber: a limb forcing its way out of one end, a snout and long neck from another. Soon, there was nothing left of the egg at all, but the form of a feathered creature rearing up, spreading its wings.
The chamber's separation from the storm was then broken by the creature's loud, feral screech.
Back in the burrow, and many, many earshots away, Nida was fast asleep, recovering from a long and exhausting night tending to six ever-moving lumps of fluff.
"Eeek!"
"The sky is breaking!"
"Mami!"
The sound roused Nida, causing her to mutter under her breath about kits these days.
"Not right now, plea-"
Only for a deafening boom to cause her to bolt up from her matted straw.
"Gack!"
Now that she was awake, she began to understand why her younger siblings were crying out from the chamber next to hers. A wild wind whipped the air outside, and the smell of the rain wafted its way into the burrow. A flash of thunder down the entrance to the burrow caught Nida's eye briefly.
All these sensations suddenly made Nida feel much smaller and more alone. She nestled into her bedding, bristling her fur and barbs on instinct.
"Eh? Still shrinking away from thunder? I thought your guild friends helped fix that," a voice from out in the hall called.
Nida sighed, and detensed her fur and spines a bit. "It's not the same when it wakes you up, papi!" she fumed defensively.
The speaker came into the room and revealed himself to be a Nidorino, leaning into his daughter's nest and giving her snout a soft nuzzle. "Oh come now, it's nothing worse than what your mami throws around, don't you think?" he chuckled.
Nida couldn't help but stifle a laugh at the question. He had a point, she guessed. No matter how loud and angry the storm, there would always be a moment where Mami could match it. Still, she couldn't help but be somewhat concerned about the abrupt gale outside.
"Papi, what's going on? Isn't the wet season not supposed to come for another two moons?"
The Nidorino shook his head, "I'm afraid I don't know myself, mija. The storm suddenly kicked up a little after the Sea Prince's Traveler went behind the moon and it's been like this ever since."
"Then… someone did this? But… who? And why?" Nida asked, starting to grow a little concerned.
"Let's hope for their sake that it was for a good reason. Your mami is going to be sour in the morning without her sleep," the Nidorino sighed.
Just as suddenly as they'd started, the winds began to die down. The sound of the pouring rain gave way to the gentler pitter-patter of a drizzle, and then eventually, silence.
"It just… stopped," Nida said, before quickly hopping out of bed and up the entrance of the burrow.
The once-scenic view outside had been wrecked by the sudden storm. The family's welcome mat oozed water when stepped on; some of the trees had had limbs blown down; cries of some neighbors' children rang out along the hillside, startled by the storm much as her siblings deeper in the burrow had been. Nida shuddered as she realized that some of those children were without an earthen ceiling to provide proper shelter.
But up in the skies, the clouds began to break, rapidly giving way back to the view of the cosmos as if nothing had happened.
The Nidorino followed Nida up to the entrance of the burrow, taking in the scene for himself. "Probably all just a dispute among some sea ferals," he snorted before turning back to his child.
"Come on, you should head back to bed. You've got a big adventure tomorrow, right?"
"Right."
And the two went back into the little burrow on the hill as calm returned to the night.
Author's Notes:
- Cazadragones - Spanish: "dragon hunter", lit. "hunter of dragons"
- Manternal - French: "Leavanny"
- Papi - Spanish: "father", "daddy"
