Chapter 2: Watch Your Step

The following morning, Nida found herself bounding down the now-muddy paths of Bluewhorl towards the Guild Hall.

"I'm late, I'm late," she panted, dashing past the shops on the shoreline plaza, dodging between Pokémon and weaving around the occasional footstep of someone much larger than her.

The storm had been about as kind to the town as it had been to Nida's home; that is to say, not at all. Nida passed a grumbling Azumarill along with her Chinchou partner, the two of them surveying a gaping hole in the stern of a boat that had been pushed into one of the piers. She passed Calino, who busied himself dumping out some ruined stock; all the while, he bewailed the damage it was going to do to his renovation fund. All of the tents and huts the Nidoran passed by the water had caved in on one side or another from the harsh winds and waves rolling over the docks.

As Nida made her way up towards the guild hall, the storm's damage became less noticeable. A tear in some tent canvas here, a missing patch of roof there, some drenched papers on the mission board blotted to illegibility by the rain.

"I didn't keep you... waiting too long... did I?" Nida struggled to relay her meaning to Kiran in between ragged breaths. She waggled her leg, trying to free it of the flecks from mud puddles that she'd run straight through in her rush to get to the guild.

"We haven't been waiting longer than anyone else, no. Guildmaster Hatteras has been busy all morning trying to get everything back in order around here," the Swellow said, pointing at an Ampharos surveying tears along the different pieces of canvas on the tent.

"I see," Nida said, "So… that means we're ready to go, then?"

Kiran visibly shifted his wings a bit, "Erm…"

"Kiran, we are going, aren't we?" Nida demanded.

"It's just that, perhaps we should let a few other teams go into the dungeon first today," the Swellow offered.

"Kiran. It's apple-gathering," Nida mumbled, feeling cross at her team leader's sudden hesitance. "We've done missions to scatter them before, just how well-hidden do you think they'd be?"

"Yeah! We could probably finish up halfway just in the first room!" Crom said, his beating wings displaying a hidden side of youthful eagerness much like his shorter partner's.

"That sorta work sounds right up your alley, tykes," a familiar Sentret volunteered as he passed by.

"Hey! I don't see you doing any work, Scout!" Crom growled after the squirrely windbag.

"I know that," Kiran replied, "But… after storms like these, Mystery Dungeons usually shift around. A lot. We don't really know how the floors will be ordered, or what will be on them, or…"

"If any outside Pokémon will have been blown in again," Nida finished.

There was an uncomfortable silence among the three Pokémon, the Swellow and the short Druddigon trading looks with Nida.

"You said after everything happened that that was all a freak incident, so did everyone else. So if it was such an accident, why are we just standing here? It's not like it would happen again, right?" Nida said, giving a firm and determined gaze at the Swellow.

"Nida. I know that it doesn't always seem so, but things always happen for a reason," the Swellow began to reply, but his words soon trailed off after seeing his red-and-blue charge also looking at him.

"It is just getting apples, Kiran. Maybe she has a point," Crom said, his eyes adopting a bit of a pleading expression.

Kiran paused for what seemed an eternity before he responded, "Fine. We'll go, but on the first sign of something more dangerous than normal, we're calling for a lift out of there. Understood?"

"Understood," the two agreed.

From there, the three Pokémon headed off, up a winding trail that lead out of town up towards the fog shrouding the far side of the mountain.


A ways up the path, the trio found themselves trudging their way past innumerable trees, bushes, assorted flowers, and little pebbles which marked the contours of the path, all drenched by the prior night's storm. The aroma of freshly-moistened earth wafted all around as it always did after heavy rain. Despite the pleasant atmosphere it created, the three found themselves shrouded in an uncomfortable silence. Nida took it upon herself to try and break it.

"... So, Crom. Did you remember to bring that bread?"

"Yep! It's right on top of Kiran's bag- Oof!"

En route to the Swellow, Crom found himself knocking heads with an unfortunate dangling Spinarak with an unmarked body. The creature knocked the Druddigon backwards, hissing angrily.

"Hey! Watch where you're going, you little village runt!"

"A-aah!" Crom cried out. He backpedaled from the angry Pokémon as Kiran swooped in to intervene.

"Eeek!"

The Spinarak promptly flew into a state of panic at the sight of the swift-winged bird before him.

"Monster! Monster!"

The team breathed a collective sigh after the small creature skittered into the cleft of a nearby tree and began to cower in silence, waiting for the dangerous creatures below to pass.

"Crom, you need to remember that there are ferals outside of Mystery Dungeons, too!" Kiran admonished, rubbing a wing against his forehead.

"But they usually keep to themselves!" Crom protested, dusting himself off from his fall backwards.

"That one did seem a bit meaner than normal, Kiran," Nida said while continuing on up the path, "I thought you said that the reason why ferals attacked more often in Mystery Dungeons was because they could get away with it easier."

"Well, you have to understand it from the perspective of a feral, Nida," Kiran said as he took flight once more.

"If they get hurt and no one helps them or lets them get away, well… That's sometimes it for them. So if someone seems scary, and you feel like you have a chance of scaring them off or defeating them, you have to try and do something about it."

"Sounds like a really tough way to live," Crom remarked, following Kiran down the path.

"Well now, I guess we'll just have to show them why being part of a Rescue Team is so much better, huh?"

"Heh, I gue- Oh, look!"

Crom pointed out a side path which wound around a couple bends to a simple wooden pavillion with a shingled roof that stood on a seaside ledge, stubbornly defying the elements and its unkempt surroundings.

"Huh… That ánima held out better than I thought it would. Why, I'm not sure if I see any change from the storm beyond a few missing shingles," Kiran said.

"Why don't we pay a visit, huh? It can't hurt for a little good luck before we head in, right?" Crom asked.

"Well, I don't suppose it can," Nida responded as she led the way over to the simple shrine, her teammates close in tow.

Nida hopped up a jutting stone at the shrine's base in order to peer in. There were some small pebbles laid out in front of it, and the shutters that normally protected its interior at night had been opened earlier that morning by its custodians. Now that the shutters were opened, one could see that inside the shrine was a simple iron bell; above it each panel of the roof was painted in a different scene.

One panel depicted a white and blue bird rising from the sea, with red, yellow, and blue birds waiting for it. Another depicted those same birds being struck by arrows of light and falling to earth. Another depicted a strange egg with various nondescript Pokémon gathered around it. Finally, the last panel pictured the egg being carried into the fog further up the mountain.

Crom took two loaves from his bag, setting one on the ledge of the shrine.

"One for the Protector… And one for us!" he cheered, breaking up the remaining loaf and sharing it with his companions.

"Don't the ferals just take the food that gets left here anyways?" Nida asked while biting into her chunk of the loaf. The bread was firm, but much to her pleasant surprise, less stale than she had expected from day-old leftovers.

"It's the thought that counts!" Crom insisted as he greedily gulped down his piece.

"Leth geth going, kidth," Kiran prodded the two in-between mouthfuls of bread. He then picked up the remainder with his beak and ushered his charges back to the winding path, finishing his portion alongside Nida as they walked.


By the time everyone finished their bread, the team found themselves entering a foggy portion of the forest leading up to a cave entrance.

"Do you remember the rules of going in?" Kiran asked his two charges at the mouth of the cave.

"Stay together in the fog, don't wander off the path, and don't run into the dungeon," Nida and Crom recited, groaning at having to partake of this ritual reminder.

"Good, then let's make our way in," the Swellow said, extending a wing for Crom to hold onto. As the two began to set off, Nida scurried up Crom's back and onto his crest, her preferred perch for ensuring she stuck with the group.

"So, what do you think we should do with the apples that are left over after this mission, Nida?"

"Eh? Wouldn't we just keep them for later?" Nida asked, tilting her ears.

The fog had grown increasingly thick, and as the group made their way in, the less they were able to see of each other. Heads, limbs, tails disappeared into the haze.

"You're thinking too simple! Why... think about the things you can do with those apples! You could bake them into bread... You could candy them… Kiran said they might be a decent Gravelerock substitute…"

Nida couldn't help but giggle at the idea of trying to clock someone with an apple; it was one of those silly, nonsensical ideas that had a way of taking the edge off someone. As the fog thickened enough that she lost sight of her own whiskers, she decided she quite appreciated that sentiment.

The thickest portions of the fog were always unnerving, even after all these times passing through it. For what seemed an eternity, Nida couldn't see past her nose, sounds and smells became garbled and misleading, and even the very air seemed to grow thick and heavy. It was during this stretch that she was silently grateful that Crom had allowed her to hitchhike on his crest today.

"Alright, we should be through the worst of it!" Kiran announced.

True to his word, the fog around them slowly thinned, the air felt less weighty with each trudging step forward, and the smell of rushing salt water came on the breeze. After a few steps further, they found themselves able to see their paws, claws, and wings once again in the haze. Finally, the fog cleared entirely, leaving an unobstructed view dimly lit by scattered patches of glowing algae of the surrounding sea cave the group had wandered into.

"How does this dungeon look like a sea cave when it's halfway up a mountain?" Nida asked before hopping off of Crom's head. "I mean, I know that the Distortion in here probably has something to do with it, but still..."

"The lower levels apparently open out to deep in the seas off the shore," Kiran said while taking his wing back to his side. "Not that we will need to go anywhere that far today."

The Swellow beat his wings a few times - "to get my blood flowing," he'd explained in the past- and turned back to his two teammates after taking flight.

"Remember, if you get lost or in trouble, find a place apart from everything else and use your badges to call for help," the Swellow reminded.

"We will," the two younger Pokémon responded in unison, before turning their attention to helping the Swellow scan the floor for apples.


The first floor was rather quiet. Aside from the tidal pools and the various rocks, all the team encountered were items. True to Crom's predictions, they found half of the apples they had been tasked to deliver, which were stuffed into Kiran's bag. About two hours had passed between then and the search for the stairs, which had primarily been spent by Crom and Nida playing in the tide pools that just so happened to be along the way. They also, at Crom's request, tested Kiran's theory of apples as a substitute for Gravelerocks… on Kiran himself.

Eventually, the three found themselves in front of the stairs to the second floor, peering down a pathway which separated their position from the next chamber.

"Are we sure there's nothing else we want from the first level? Once we set down these stairs, the Distortion will seal the entrance by the time we reach the next floor," the Swellow asked cautiously.

"We're sure, let's keep going!" Nida said.

"Yeah, it's no fun to only go to the first floor of a dungeon anyways!" Crom added.

The group descended the stairs, heard the normal scrapes and shudders as a wall of stone from the floor above closed over the way they came, and quickly took stock of their surroundings… finding their room to be barren with the sole exception of some further stairs heading down.

"... That's it?" Nida asked, in a flat and unimpressed tone.

"Erm… Not quite," Kiran said, pointing out where the ceiling for the chamber would normally be. In its stead was the incredibly distant-looking layout of the floor they had just came from. Upside down.

"Shame we'd never be able to reach it thanks to the Distortion… I wonder what it feels like to be able to walk upside down without falling," Crom said as he stared up at the inverted floor.

It was one of those unsubtle moments that helped to bring back into the minds of the three explorers that in spite of their previous times traversing this Mystery Dungeon, it was very much not home.

After the group's attention turned back to the stairs to the next level, there was a bit of a collective shrug and the three continued down deeper into the maze.

"Heh, I think the storm might have actually worked out quite well for us!" Crom said, pleased with their fortune on the last floor.

As the trio headed down the stairs, they found that the third floor was a bit more mundane in appearance. The ceiling was seemingly all there, unlike the prior room. The floor was still mostly rocks and shallow water pools. All seemed to be normal.

"See anything, you two?" Kiran asked while scanning the room.

"There are definitely apples in here… I can smell them," Nida replied.

"Oh! Oh! I smell them too! But… I don't see any apples," Crom added, drooping his wings a little.

"Maybe it would be best for you two to lead the way on this floor, I'm afraid I can't smell much of anything."

"Hmm… I think I'll take the higher stuff. You'll be able to handle the ground, Nida?"

Nida flattened her ears a bit at the idea of having to deal with attempting to plant her nose on the waterlogged ground. It always was so much more comfortable when the apples were plainly visible and the damp ground could remain underneath her feet where it belonged. Unfortunately for her, it didn't seem like there was much of a choice on this floor.

"I think I'll survive, Crom."

The two then began to attempt to ferret out just where the scent of the apples might be coming from. Crom strayed a bit to the left of the room, while Nida went to the right. In spite of the strong odor of salt, she could tell that there definitely was an apple out there… somewhere. Little by little, she continued to follow the smell ever closer to-

"Oop!"

-tumbling headfirst into one of the shallow pools. The Nidoran hastily pulled herself out, and after coughing up a little water, shook herself dry.

"Grr… I don't understand, I can smell the apple right here, but this is just a-!"

She then looked up and saw that the apple was floating within the water itself, apparently having rolled off of a ledge overlooking the pool.

"Found one!" Nida called out, which quickly drew her companions over to the pool. Kiran came first, followed quickly by Crom, who had apparently already found his apple on the left and deposited it into Kiran's bag.

"... I'll need to find out what team was responsible for scattering these and tell them to be a bit more cuidadosos next time," Kiran sighed, watching the apple bob up and down lazily in the water.

"Eh, it's just a little pool," Crom said before clambering into the water. The Druddigon waded along, the water coming up to his wings as he went out far enough to grasp the apple.

"See? Piece of- YEOW!"

Much to Nida's shock, Crom then pitched forward and into the water.

"Crom!"

He shortly resurfaced, thrashing and flailing as something had latched itself onto his wing.

"Get it off! Get it off!"

The most unwelcome assailant quickly revealed itself to be a Krabby, fastened tight to Crom's left wing.

"Get out of our pool!" the Krabby chittered, trying to find something for his other pincer to latch onto. Kiran immediately tried to swoop in to intervene while Nida rushed over to the water's edge.

"Hold on, Crom, we're comi- GACK!"

Only for another Krabby to latch onto his foot as he passed over the water.

"Go away and stay away!" it demanded, as Nida came to the side of the water. She tried to rear up the barbs in her pelt much as her parents and more experienced siblings would. While she managed to fire a singular barb, the little missile accomplished nothing but to sail through the air a couple feet and fall into the water with a weak splash.

"Rats… How on earth do they make stinging seem so easy?"

She decided to try a more proven tactic, and called out to the Swellow, "Kiran, quick! Give me your bag- Meep!"

Only to be forced to abruptly sidestep a beam of bubbles. The bubbles popped against the spot where she had just been, drenching it with sticky glop that was scalding hot to the touch.

"You'll not get away from me so easily, furball!" hissed a third Krabby, the apparent culprit of the bubbly attack, who made haste clambering out of the pool.

"Kiran!" Nida shouted, fanning out the barbs under her fur, "The bag would be nice about now!"

"Agarra!" the Swellow cried as he tried to fling the group's bag to Nida. The bag sailed through the air, its trajectory having been jerked off course by his ongoing struggle with the Krabby clamping down on his foot, and landed a good distance away from her, towards the middle of the room.

"Oh yeah, great throw ther-" Nida grumbled, only to have her train of thought promptly interrupted by having to sidestep a snapping claw.

"Stay still so that I can grab you!"

"Get away from me!" Nida cried, giving two stiff, spinning kicks to the Krabby that was almost upon her. Her legs felt as if they were striking damp stone, but they were forceful enough to cause the crustacean to stumble a bit, which Nida took advantage of to sprint towards the bag as fast as her feet could carry her.

She threw open the flap to the bag, stuck her head and forepaws in, and began to fling out its contents. "Gravelerock, Gravelerock," she muttered to herself while fumbling around inside. She knew that Kiran had one in there from an earlier mission when they went in… Apple, apple, another apple, why had the guild been so adamant that they had to gather these stupid training apples in the first place?!

"Where is it?! I know we had a-!"

Nida was suddenly cut off by a set of stinging, hot bursts and the sensation of something gummy and warm that stuck to her fur. The next thing she knew, she and the bag went tumbling, coming to rest staring at a far wall in a daze.

"Can the room stop spinning no-OW!"

Her dizziness was suddenly joined by a sharp pain shooting through one of her hind legs.

"I've got you now!" an irate voice chittered.

"Let me go!"

This was bad, Nida had not expected a Pokémon who could only move sideways on land to close the gap so quickly. Worse still, she couldn't kick her way out of this one with one leg caught and her underbelly half-open to further attacks from the Krabby.

The Krabby then tugged on Nida's leg, and began to drag her. She began to flail and shouted out from pain as the creature's grip tightened. It was then, in the corner of her eye, that the relative movement of being dragged along a stone cave floor caused a slim object to come into view.

She couldn't tell what the object was, but that was beside the point. She needed something to hurl at her sopping attacker, and this would have to do. She quickly latched onto the object with a forepaw.

"I said, 'Let me go!'" Nida shouted, before blindly throwing the slim item at the Krabby. It was then that she heard a cracking noise and felt the crustacean's grip release and the sharp pain became dull.

Nida whirled to her feet, and gave another two kicks at her attacker. The second one was with her injured leg, the immediate shot of pain causing Nida to yelp and hastily change tactics.

"Go away!" she yelled, tackling the Krabby. The crustacean flopped backwards. As Nida stumbled backwards and uneasily tried to regain her footing, she noticed that the Krabby was weakly snoring with fragments of a seed's husk scattered about it. It was subdued enough for now, she supposed.

"Kiran! Are you okay?!" she called out.

Nida was answered by the sound of a wing striking chitin and the sight of a limp and groaning Krabby bouncing off some rocks into a pool of water.

"I'm alright! I'm alright!" the Swellow cried back, "Where's Crom?"

"H-Help!"

Then, both sets of eyes turned to the young Druddigon, who was busy pressing a wing against a rock.

"I defeated it, but it's not coming off!" Crom cried.

"Crom... Move away from the rock and let it fall off," Nida said in between gasping breaths. Leaving the Druddigon to stare back with a sheepish expression.

"Heh heh… right," Crom replied awkwardly, and moved away from the cave wall and through the pool, the dazed Krabby falling off his left wing and into the pool with a splash.

Crom crossed the pool back over to Nida as Kiran sighed and began to regather the contents of his bag… minus one Sleep Seed. "Are you two alright?" he asked.

"Erm… well..."

"No," Nida interjected emphatically.

"Stay still, lemme come over and take a look," Kiran started, only to be interrupted while passing the sleeping Krabby as it started to come to.

"Rrgh… You! Bird! So you think that you can blow us around like the monster did last night? Well, you're sorely mis-!"

Kiran quickly cut off the Krabby's rant with a stiff swat from his wing, which flung the crustacean unconscious into the pool with his dazed companions.

The two were rather scuffed up, which made Kiran silently grateful that he merely had some scrapes on his foot and damaged plumage to tend to; Crom's left wing was turning red and had scales scraped off in the place where the Krabby that attacked him had latched on, with other scuffs from the creature's free appendages. Nida's right flank was covered in sudsy glop, showing red in between the strands of her pelt and the barbs underneath, with her hind right leg visibly limping from having been caught in her attacking Krabby's claws.

"Well, I suppose it could be worse. Lie down on your left, Nida, I'll get the Oran Berries," Kiran said while rummaging through his bag.

He drew out one of the blue berries, tore away the peels with his talons, and after scraping the gummy mass off of Nida's flank, pressed the naked fruit against it, letting the juice seep into her skin as she winced. Oran Berries always stung when their juice seeped into wounds, both in their natural state, and after the rare cases they had been changed and made more potent by prolonged exposure to the Distortion. And the little berry that Kiran was squeezing against Nida's body was no exception.

"That… Didn't go as well as it could have," Crom sighed. Nida flared her ears as the the initial sting from her flank dulled, and began to talk back.

"Understatement mu- Ow!" she winced, Kiran having moved on to applying the rest of the berry to her right leg.

"Make sure to eat the pulp at the least, it's where most of the nutrients and healing properties are," said the Swellow as he left the remains of the berry to Nida and turned to tend to Crom's wing.

"Kiran… How many more of these apples do we need to get?" Nida asked, while starting to bite into her Oran Berry's pulp.

"The mission asked for at least six," Kiran responded.

"Maybe we should just head back and get that last one la- ARGH!"

Crom's flinching caught Kiran off guard, if partly because he was a full foot taller than the Swellow and not-so-slightly heavier. This made steadying him when treating wounds a bit trickier.

"Easy there, and if you two aren't feeling up to going further, I suppose-"

"No," Nida said, her stern tone softened by the mass of Oran pulp in her mouth. The effects of the berry's healing properties had already started to kick in as the sting from its juices faded, dulling the pain from her leg and flank.

"E-Eh?" Crom stammered.

"Nida, it really isn't that necessary to-"

"Kiran, we need one more apple. We can get one apple. We haven't even gone half as deep as the furthest point in our last mission yet!" Nida protested.

Kiran and Crom exchanged glances. The little Nidoran did have a point: an extra day in the dungeon would be an extra day that they wouldn't be able to do other jobs, or spend time with their families, or run errands in town.

"I mean, if you're sure it's a good idea, Nida," Crom said hesitantly, "I mean, the Oran Berry is making me feel a lot better already."

"I'm not sure if I like this… But I guess it would be pretty silly to just pack it in if the last apple was lying in a corner on this floor here," Kiran mulled as he looked about the room. "Did either of you smell any more apples around?"

"No," Nida said.

Crom took a minute to sniff the air, and after a pause, he gave his verdict. "I do smell one. But… it seems really faint."

"Which way is it, Crom?" Kiran asked.

"Past that wall over there," Crom replied, pointing out a slab of cave rock with a bend to the right that went around it.

"Let's get going, then," Kiran said.

"What about the Krabby?" Nida asked, only to have her question answered by the dazed voice of one of the earlier Krabby weakly skittering up some rocks.

"Hey, where'd that furball go?"

"Okay never mind, they seem well enough," Nida quickly decided, "Let's get going!"

The three quickly put some distance in between themselves and the Krabby-infested pool, rounding the dungeon wall and finding a crossroads.

"That way!" Crom said, gesturing to a passage on the right. The team went down the passage, and relaxed their pace after they could no longer hear or sense the Krabby further back. They then found themselves nearing a third flight of stairs.

"Are we sure this is a good idea, Nida? I mean, the smell of the apple's fairly strong here, but…" Crom shifted uncomfortably, "That one last Krabby did mention a monster and all."

The suggestion unnerved Nida; she knew full well that such talk wasn't always without reason. But then again, hadn't that Spinarak on the path called Kiran a monster?

"I'm pretty sure that the 'monster' is just some Pokémon that's slightly bigger than them," she huffed.

"Well, I guess that is the most likely thing it would be," Kiran said, his misgivings not fully dispelled.

"Then let's get going!"

"Fair enough," the Swellow sighed, as he began to lead Crom and Nida down the steps, a bit more wearily than their last one. Heading down, there was no obvious sign of anything amiss, not that a staircase could go awry too badly. The Distortion that shaped the other floors, for whatever reason, seemed to always make the "stairs" some manner of rough ramp consisting of low, staggered stone ledges.

The fourth floor that day had its furthest wall composed of water which crashed against some unseen lip and cascaded down into some abyss far, far below. At least, it seemed that way. It was hard to truly know where one thing began and another ended in this tangled pit. The floor was a bit easier to make sense of, consisting of small outcroppings of rock that jutted out of a layer of water meandering forward from the cascade at the rear.

"Oh great, just the sort of floor I was looking forward to," Nida groaned, lowering her ears as she hopped across a small stretch of water to another outcropping.

"Well, at least the visibility's good," Crom offered as Kiran flapped up to get a better view.

"And the main hazard in the room seems to be visible off the bat and not too hard to avoid-"

"Look!" Nida interrupted, gesturing to a small, elevated alcove that was obscured by an overhanging ledge. There, next to a spiral-shaped shell embedded in the rock was the last of the small red fruits that her team needed.

"Heh, heh, looks like it's mission accomplished!" she proclaimed as she drew near to the alcove, preparing to hop across another small waterlogged gap.

"Good work! Hurry up and get it so we can bring these apples to mom's bakery!" Crom cheered.

Nida dug her hindclaws into the dungeon floor beneath her and, after a short moment getting her footing against the slick stone, hopped forward to the crimson apple.

She had no sooner just left the ground when she suddenly heard a surprised squawk from Kiran, "Nida, wait!"

"Huh-?"

She crested the lip of the ledge, and noticed a faint crosshatched pattern on the stone below.

Her feet rested upon it.

To her horror, there was a soft, but audible click.

"Tra-!"

Then the floor gave way beneath her, and the Nidoran found herself tumbling head over heels through thin air.


Author's Notes:

- ánima - Spanish (Southern Cone): "shrine", specifically of the small, roadside sort
- cuidadoso(s) - Spanish: "careful", "s" is added for plural subjects.
- (¡)Agarra! - Spanish: "Take it!", specific verb carries more urgency than the otherwise identical ¡Toma!