Chapter 3: A Bolt from the Blue
Further and further Nida fell. From somewhere, Crom and Kiran called her name; but as she slipped deeper into the abyss, her teammates' voices quickly faded into muddled gibberish. Soon, the only sounds that remained were her own screams piercing the silence.
"Aaah!"
The next thing she felt was the dull thud of her rump striking something hard and her body pitching forward. Her head and legs slammed into hard stone and she felt herself tumble a few times along a floor before coming to a rest on her back. As stars swirled around her eyes, she heard something bounce off the floor nearby with a clink, followed by the distinctive splash of a small object falling into water.
As Nida regained her bearings little by little, she couldn't help but groan. As if the piercing headache that the fall had inflicted wasn't enough, realizing the sheer carelessness of what she had done added insult to injury- a blind leap in the wrong place and the wrong time, one that could have led to a long stint in the medics' tent... or the afterlife.
Gingerly, she moved a paw up against her neck, to where she always pinned her badge on her scarf. Nida pressed where the badge normally was, dreading the chewing out she was sure to get from one of the Psychics back at the guild who would sense her presence. "I really screwed this one up, can I get a lift out?" she sighed.
The only response that came was her own voice echoing back from deeper in the cave. After a few fumbling prods, Nida discovered that the cold, metal bauble she had expected to find on her scarf had vanished.
"Oh no," she muttered. The Nidoran stumbled to her feet in a panic- so that was that clinking noise she had heard- her badge! The one thing that would have allowed her an easy escape back to the guild hall was gone! Mercifully, wherever she was seemed to be lit a dim blue- enough for her to see a rock-strewn passage that carried around a bend straddling a long, slow-flowing stream that her badge had surely fallen into.
"Please still be here," she muttered, hopping into the channel and groping around its bottom for her badge. She splashed and flailed around in a frantic search in the water, but for all of her combing of the stream's bed, she found nothing but cold sand and pebbles.
"Please still be here, please still be here," she muttered again and again.
After what felt like an eternity, the unmistakable sound of a metallic clink echoed from around the bend, along with an occasional staccatoed tapping. It was her badge! As Nida pulled herself out of the channel and the sound of the flowing water grew fainter, she began to discern the sound of something shifting and moving about... in the direction of her ticket out of this pit.
"Wh-who's there?! Give that badge back right now! It's important!" Nida cried as she bounded out of the channel, not bothering to shake off the water that had drenched her pelt. She rushed towards the tapping noises, but as she rounded the bend, she froze in her tracks.
"That's-"
There was a round stone dais in the middle of a pool of water that took up most of the room. It sat between corridors heading off in the three other cardinal directions, and on that landing, a white bird with blue accents along its head and spine, a long neck, and a tapering tail rested, facing away from her.
From her position, Nida guessed that the creature was just a bit bigger than Kiran. Around the bird's feet were some fragments, like pieces of a large, freshly broken pot. The creature was craning its long neck down; enraptured from tapping at something by its feet that Nida couldn't make out, but assumed was her badge.
It stopped to preen its shoulder before being distracted by a steady dribbling of water off of a stalactite in the passage to its right. The creature stopped preening itself, pulled its head up, and waddled towards the corridor. When it reached the lip of the water, it spread its wings and gave them a playful beat just as Nida began to realize...
This was the very same white and blue Pokémon she'd seen depicted on the shrine bell!
"It's you! The Prote-!"
The creature gave a shrill cry as its blue markings and the contours of its wings began to glow, before beating them together. Nida flinched as a burst of wind from between the bird's wings sucked most of the water from the moat around its platform and tore into the right corridor. There was a brief shudder of stone and then a loud crash that shook the chamber as the passage's ceiling collapsed.
"Ha-aah," Nida shuddered, mouth agape. This 'Protector,' it just- if that water had dripped down from her passage, that would be her buried under a wall of rubble. The bird then cocked its head, turned towards Nida, and began to draw towards her with a few flapping hops across the now depleted moat.
Nida felt her legs go numb and her stomach begin to twist into knots, freezing in fear at the sight of this thing drawing near to her.
"W-Wait! Stay there! I'm a Rescue Team member! I just need my badge and th-then I'll get out of here!" she stammered, backpedaling all the while away from the creature.
But it was no use; the 'Protector' seemed to be set on catching this strange blue intruder. It quickened its pace, closing the gap faster and faster. Nida turned to run, but stumbled over an underfoot pebble and fell- just as the shadow of the bird's head fell over her.
"I'm a- A-Aaah!"
Nida screwed her eyes shut and fanned out her barbs, bracing herself for whatever this strange beast was about to do. She then felt a light peck at her head, and then heard a soft voice.
"What are you?" it asked.
"I-I'm a Nidoran! A-and I'm poisonous!" Nida squeaked as she kept her eyes firmly closed. "S-so don't get any ideas about trying to eat me!"
"'Poisonous'?" the voice asked.
"Y-yeah! I'll make you sick if you hurt me! Y-you'll regret it afterwards!" Nida said, trying to muster up what little bluster she could while curled up in a spiky ball.
"'Sick...?' 'Hurt?'" the voice asked again.
"E-eh?"
Nida opened her eyes, and saw that the white creature had drawn its head back away from her and was holding it at a tilt, perplexed by the little blue Pokémon's words.
"Can you play with a 'sick' or a 'hurt'? What are they?" it asked.
"Uh… I mean, I guess you can kinda play with them- B-but that's not saying that you should! They're not good things to play with!" Nida answered back as she cautiously uncurled herself, still unsure what to make of the much larger bird before her.
"Are Nidoran good things to play with?" the Pokémon asked, tilting its head the other way and inspecting Nida's blinking red eyes.
"Uh… I mean, if you don't hurt the Nidoran, they're good, yes," Nida responded, still blinking.
"Okay!" the creature responded, as it opened its jaws and began to clamp down on one of Nida's ears.
"A-Aah! Biting hurts the Nidoran! Biting hurts the Nidoran! Lemme go!"
The creature opened its mouth and retreated hastily, startled from the abrupt noise of the Nidoran's shrieks. After the two bounded back a small distance from each other, the white creature turned back.
"Was that playing with a Nidoran?" it asked.
"No!" Nida retorted as she nursed her nipped ear and finally shook her pelt dry from her earlier dunk into the channel.
"But then how does playing with a Nidoran work?"
Nida stopped and thought. There had to be a way to get this thing, Protector or not, to leave her in one piece long enough to get her badge. But… How?
It was then that her hind leg chanced to brush up against a pebble. Immediately recognizing the opportunity, Nida declared, "Here, I'll show you how to play with a Nidoran."
Nida circled around the pebble and picked it up with her forepaws. She then dropped it onto the ground and batted it forward with a swipe towards the white creature.
"See? Now you try," Nida said.
The bird eyed the pebble, and after puzzling on what to do with the rock, the Protector nosed it back to the Nidoran with its beak. "Like that?" it asked.
"Yes! Exactly like that!"
"Do Nidoran only play with this rock?"
Nida couldn't help but slap a paw over her forehead at the question. What kind of Pokémon assumed that someone would only play with a single rock?
"Uh… No- hey wait-! Where are you going?"
As Nida spoke, the strange bird darted back to its platform, tromping through the remaining water in the moat. It stopped and grabbed some things off of the floor with its mouth and then returned back to the Nidoran.
"I broth more rokths!" it declared, beaming. The Pokémon then promptly spat up some assorted objects from its mouth… Which were all coated in a film of saliva.
"Ew..." Nida muttered, repulsed from the 'playthings' before her. She wasn't going to have to touch these grody things, was she?
There were a few cave pebbles, some berries that had been pecked into pieces of skin and pulp, an elliptical-shaped thing half-caked in mud that glinted in the dim blue light- Wait a minute!
"That's my badge!" Nida declared, snatching up the muddy and drool-slicked bauble at once. After a few moments to register her disgust from touching the sullied badge, Nida swallowed her reservations, pressed down upon it, and began to speak.
"Hey, if any of you on the other side are listening, I kinda need to be rescued here!" Nida fumed. But there was still no response and no obvious sign of anything at all coming from the muddied badge.
"Did- did the fall break it?" she fretted, beginning to panic. Her fears were then somewhat distracted by the strange white Pokémon beating its wings in eager expectation.
"Aren't you going to play with it?"
"What? No! This is important! I can't play around with this!" Nida shot back.
"But... it's a rock."
"No, it isn't. It's a badge! I need it to go home!"
"Go... home…?" the creature asked as it tilted its head again at the Nidoran.
It was then that Nida heard the voice of another, more familiar bird calling from the leftward corridor.
"Nida!"
Along with the voice of a young dragon joining shortly afterward.
"Nida, where are you? Please, say something back!"
"I'm here! I'm alright!" Nida cried back, dashing through the mostly-emptied moat around the platform and hopping around the bend.
When she came out of the moat, she saw that the passage opposite the one the Protector had destroyed was filled with a thick fog like the one she passed through at the Mystery Dungeon's mouth. This place must have been a stable patch, one of a handful of points in the maze she heard about that, while still shifting, kept a floor pattern that wouldn't get warped and reformed with a strong wind like the rest of the dungeon… Or at least one that wasn't caused by a Pokémon, anyway.
More importantly, she saw the forms of her Druddigon and Swellow teammates exiting that fog. Nida squeaked out of overjoyed surprise and bounded up to Crom, who drew her into a tight-yet-careful embrace.
"You had us so worried!" Crom cried out, "The Pokémon from the retrieval pad said that a strong feral made off with your badge!"
"Thank goodness we made it down here before the floors shifted!" Kiran said, rushing up to inspect the Nidoran, "We were afraid that you'd be a goner by the time someone found-"
"Wait! You stopped playing!" the strange bird's voice cried out, as it hopped and flapped after the Nidoran, coming to a stop behind Nida, and before two very surprised teammates.
"Wow! The Protector rescued you, Nida?" Crom asked, his eyes widening in awe of his partner's companion.
"Er… kinda?" Nida said, flattening out her ears with a sheepish expression.
"That's so cool!" Crom said, gushing at the luck and honor of coming face-to-face with the legendary Protector of Tromba Island.
The eldest team member wasn't quite sure what to make of the specimen before him, "Er… I mean, the markings are definitely the Protector's, but- It seems like he's just a pollito- According to the legends..." Kiran trailed off, gesturing with his wings at the white creature before finishing his thought. "Shouldn't he be bigger than Crom at least?"
"He's supposed to be bigger? But his pictures were so much smaller," Crom murmured before turning to his Nidoran teammate, "Does he have a name, Nida?"
"What's a 'he'? And what's a 'name'? Are these also Nidoran?" the Protector asked, blinking at the two strange new faces in the chamber.
"Uh…"
"I don't think this Protector has been around very long, Crom," Nida sighed.
"If those things on that little rock over there are what I think they are, he hasn't. Why, that looks like it used to be un huevo..." Kiran said, pointing out the shattered clay-like pieces in the center of the moat. All the while, the white creature continued to try and make sense of these two new Pokémon that now seemed as puzzled as it was.
"Do they play with rocks, too?" the young stranger asked.
"Er," Crom mumbled, wondering just why the Protector of all Pokémon would ask such a thing.
"Uhm, I guess I can't say I haven't before-" Kiran added, to which the strange bird seemed to perk up.
"Okay!" it beamed, as it waddled through the moat over to the middle of the central platform, and spread its wings upward, preparing to beat out a gust.
"Ack! Wait! Don't do that in here-!" Nida cried as the creature sent a whirling gust towards the ceiling... that turned out to be a pitiful, feeble wind that was just strong enough to dislodge a few small pebbles that plunked into the moat's water for a blinking audience of three.
"I'm pretty sure that the legends also stated that the Protector was supposed to be stronger, too," Kiran muttered, growing perplexed with this most strange 'Protector'.
"But- that isn't normal!" Nida interjected. "He destroyed that entire passage over there!" she insisted, pointing at a passageway obstructed by boulders in the background.
"That gust looked pretty normal for him though, Nida," Crom said, tilting his head out of skepticism.
"Are you sure you're not suffering a concussion, Nida?" Kiran asked. After all, she had just fallen through a Pitfall Trap; a knock to her head could have made her see things earlier. "If you are, we should really get goi-" the Swellow volunteered as he happened to brush his badge while shifting a wing.
"What are you guys doing with that feral down there? Are you trying to get yourselves rescued or wiped out-?" an unseen voice interrupted, its words filling the minds of the four Pokémon in the room before fading as quickly as they came.
"Ah! The walls spoke!" the strange bird cried out, flinching out of surprise.
Kiran jumped up with a start from the voice, before he realized that it was just one of the teleporters at the guild. He didn't know whether it was their fault for being over-sensitive or if his badge was just finicky, but Kiran always seemed to be in the habit of accidentally messaging them.
The Swellow then gave the talisman a firm and more deliberate press. "It's not what it seems like, we're perfectly fine here! Come and get us out!" he replied back to the voice, before releasing the badge.
"What's going on? The walls weren't talking before!" the Protector asked, starting to grow a bit worried from the sudden unseen speaker.
"It's not the walls. It's the Pokémon that is going to get us out of here. She's a Psychic," Kiran corrected in a reassuring tone.
"Sorry, Mister Protector, but I think we need to get going," Crom demurred in an apologetic tone as he went over to his team leader..
"Thanks for helping me find my badge," Nida said, as she turned and drew near to Kiran.
"But you can't leave!" the white bird protested, which caused the Pokémon of Team Traveler to trade flummoxed looks with each other.
"But we live outside of here," the Druddigon tried to explain.
"Outside? But I want to play! And I can't play if you leave!"
"Eh?! What makes you think that you can only play here?" Nida said, this time tilting her head at the Protector.
"I... can play in different places?" it asked while drawing a wing to its mouth, the question presenting a possibility it had never considered.
"Yes! Of course you can!" Crom answered.
"We'll explain later, but… We will play with you outside of here. We promise," Nida responded.
"You 'promise'?" the strange bird asked. It seemed to garner that whatever this 'promise' was, it was something that was important to the Nidoran.
"It means that we'll do it no matter how un-fun it is!" Nida said. The response seemed to reassure the white creature a bit, as it headed over to the other Pokémon.
"I mean- If it's really possible to play outside," it said while sidling up with the Nidoran. Meanwhile, Kiran had become increasingly impatient with the teleporter that still had not arrived in the Mystery Dungeon and pressed down on his badge again.
"Pataki, stop stalling and just come and get us!" Kiran barked at the shining orb under his wing.
"But the feral is still right there!" the disembodied voice protested.
"Look, you peabrain," Kiran squawked, "That's our-!"
The Swellow stopped, as a brief flash of inspiration came over his eyes. He then proudly declared, "That's our newest recruit!"
"Say... what?" the disembodied voice asked, taken aback by Kiran's words.
"You heard me, Pataki! Now hurry up and get us out of here!" Kiran fumed as his patience wore thin.
"You're gonna have a long story to explain once we get back," the voice snapped as Kiran let go of the badge.
The owner of the disembodied voice became apparent as a Kirlia abruptly teleported beside the moat down the corridor, and came up fuming towards the waiting rescue team...
"Alright, there you a-! Ah!"
...as well as the Protector that they had somehow inducted into their ranks. The shock and awe of the ordeal all but left the little Fairy dumbstruck.
"Tha- that's-" the teleporter babbled.
"Hey! Teleport now, story later!" Kiran demanded, irked with the Kirlia's continued hesitance when home was literally just a blip away.
"O-of course! Hang on tight to each other!"
The Kirlia grasped a handful of Kiran's flight feathers, as did Nida, as well as Crom, who used his other claw to latch onto some of the flight feathers of their newfound recruit. The white creature looked around for a moment, bewildered, before the five Pokémon vanished from the room with a blip of light.
In the blink of an eye, Nida and her compatriots found themselves in a cleared and leveled dirt field in between the sea and the Guild Hall's structures. The blue sky was visible again, the air was crisp and fresh... The Kirlia was huffing and catching her breath… if only for a moment.
"Omigosh! You guys found our island's protector? And recruited it?"
Pataki quickly recovered from the exhaustion of teleporting the group and was soon busy babbling in a giddy tone and inspecting every feature of the young white bird's plumage.
"You have no idea how exciting this moment is for me! Just being able to stand here face to face with a god!" the Kirlia beamed.
"I think we have a good enough idea, Pataki," Nida replied under her breath as the Protector's gaze flicked to and fro, bedazzled by this strange new place this white and green stranger had brought the group to.
"What room is this? What's 'recruiting'? And why is the wall-speaking thingy looking at me like-?"
"Hey, Pataki! Get off the field with those rookies already!" a voice called out in a scolding tone from a shaded hut on the edge of the earthen space.
Nida and the others saw the forms of a Natu and a Kadabra approaching them, their eyes betraying some aggravation at the party's dawdling on a space that needed to be keep free of obstacles for abruptly appearing Pokémon.
The Kadabra began to chastise his counterpart on the earthen patch. "It's like you're trying to cause a teleportation acci- Eh?!" his voice giving way to stunned surprise upon catching sight of the stranger in the group's midst.
"The white and blue feathers, the eyes, the wings shaped like the Great One's hands," the Kadabra recounted while piecing the bits and pieces of the white creature's appearance together "That's-"
"Lugia, the Guardian of the Seas!" the Natu interjected. The two's faces were filled with awe, and they couldn't think of a better way to react to their visitor than to prostrate themselves before the Lugia, much to its puzzlement.
"Um… Why are they scrunched up like that? Are they also 'poisonous'?"
"Why, they're showing reverence to you!" Kiran chirped heartily, which was unfortunately not as complete of an explanation as the young 'Guardian of the Seas' needed.
"'Reverence'? Is that a kind of playing?"
"Uh… sorta?" Crom said with a sheepish look.
"Oh! I wanna try-!" the Lugia said before beating his wings out for a bow.
"Oi, you two! Enough pointing your bums in the air, we've got the rest of the guild to inform!" the Kirlia barked at her two compatriots, who began to trade flustered looks.
"Oh! H-heh, of course!" the Natu agreed a bit over-quickly.
"Sorry for the lack of propriety, Master Lugia," the Kadabra apologized, before the three darted off into the Guild Hall's complex, their fading cries about the awakening of 'the Protector' and 'Lugia's arrival' carrying with the winds.
"Aw. They left before I could 'reverence' too," the young Legendary said halfway into a bow, its words betraying some disappointment, "Now what'll I play with?"
"It's an entire island! Why there's the town, the fields, the beaches… there's even one just down that path over there!" Crom said, gesturing to a worn, rocky path fenced in by some string and wooden posts.
"Ooh," the Lugia said to itself, "I wanna see this 'bea-'" only for its progress to be interrupted by the sound of the the voice of a returning Kirlia.
"You guys aren't going to believe it," Pataki declared, pride swelling in her voice, to a number of accompanying Pokémon coming into view through the brush on the other end of the teleport field.
"Kiran and his little tykes found Lugia!"
"What? Kiran?" a Hoothoot asked.
"The captain who's always working with trainees on Team Traveler?" a Shiftry who had been interrupted from preparing to search for an 'ahp-gredh' questioned.
"They can't even find orbs half the time in the dungeon," the Rhyhorn that had almost stepped on Nida just the day before huffed out of skepticism. "And you mean to tell us that they somehow stumbled across-?"
The gray creature found himself coming face-to-face with the Protector, and verily enough, the members of one 'Team Traveler' standing alongside the creature.
"I stand corrected," the Rhyhorn murmured, slack-jawed.
At once, awed mumbles began to travel about the gathering. After the initial 'Wow's and 'Whoa's quieted and the novelty of the matter tapered off a little, a few Pokémon in the crowd began to get a little ahead of themselves. Voices here and there gleefully volunteered possible implications of their newest recruit's presence for Tromba and Bluewhorl Town.
"Oh wow, I can't wait to see the looks on the faces of the next pirates to try and come around here!" a Persian smirked, taking a moment to entertain a few fantasies.
"Pirates? You're thinking too small! Why, I'd like to see the Company try and push us around now that the Protector's awake!" declared an Azumarill from the docks in a triumphant tone.
Others wished to know more about the newfound Protector.
"What's being a sea god like anyways, your lordliness?" a bright-eyed and curious Shellos inquired.
"Um… I'm me, I guess?" the Lugia replied, perplexed as to what the creature was asking about.
An Ampharos who was advanced in years drew near to size up the white stranger. "Where on earth did you find him? Or is it a her, Kiran? I can't tell with you birds half the time," the electric sheep asked with a reverent, if strangely uncertain, tone.
"Well, his plumage certainly looks colorful and masculine enough, Guildmaster Hatteras," Kiran answered the sheep in a cheery tone, "So I'd think 'him' is a safe enough bet. As for where we found him, er…"
"We found him like this in a stable zone we found on the fifth floor!" Crom chimed in. His comment drew some confused murmurs from the watching Pokémon and some looks from Nida and Kiran.
"Did… I speak too soon?" the Druddigon asked, taken aback at the direction of the conversation.
"But Lugia's chamber is supposed to lurk somewhere way at the bottom of the dungeon," the Hoothoot piped up.
"Well, the whole encounter was just a little unexpected," Kiran chirped.
"What can I say? It was quite a trip," Nida added, pulling her ears a bit back sheepishly. "The storm must have shaken up the floors from the way they normally are."
"Also, why is the Protector shorter than Guildmaster Hatteras?" the Shiftry piped up, "I mean, no offense to the sea god and all, but Lugia's supposed to be huge! This thing's- I mean I guess getting overshadowed by Crom isn't that uncommon for a Pokémon, but…"
"Ah, who cares about looks?" the Persian interjected "Pint-sized or not, a god's still a god! Come on, give us a show of that power of yours."
Some nervous laughter went around the group, prompting the Persian to hastily qualify her request.
"Heh heh… Pointed safely out to la mar, of course," she said, flattening out her ears with an awkward chuckle.
Once again, Kiran and Crom found themselves placed in the unenviable position of coming between a Pokémon and her expectations.
"Er…"
"Ah…"
"Well, you see, about that 'power'-" Nida began to explain, only for the Lugia to inquire into the Persian's request.
"Wait, what do you want me to do?" he tilted his head.
"Just gust away those little sea rocks over there," the Persian explained. "Shouldn't be a biggie, right?"
"Oh, okay!" the Lugia answered, before he turned to the rocks at sea, and spread his wings.
The bird then sent out a weak, swirling gust. A small pebble by the edge of the bluff was knocked free and sailed a small distance before splashing into a tide pool on the ecru-colored beach below.
"Like that?" the Lugia answered with a cheerful, absentminded tone while staring at the place where the pebble had fallen. Completely oblivious to the creeping shock and disbelief spreading over the faces in the audience.
"He's kinda… inconsistent with it," Nida said to the gathering.
"Well hey, it's stronger than what we've seen, Nida! I think he's catching on!" Crom offered. Crom's awkward smile quickly faded as he noticed that the entire gathering was staring stunned and dismayed by the Lugia's display... or more accurately, from his lack of one.
Hatteras cleared his throat and began to try and dispel the worries of the gathered Pokémon, as their attention began to focus on the electric sheep.
"Ahem… I guess it wouldn't be out of the question for even a god to need training," the creature offered, "As strange as it might sound at first. Perhaps all he needs is a bit of time-"
It was then that Hatteras and the rest of the gathering noticed that the Lugia was absent.
"Wait, where'd he go?" Kiran asked, startled at the abrupt disappearance of the sea god.
Nida happened to catch the glance of a stray white feather caught on the string guarding the path. As Nida headed to inspect it, she caught sight of the Lugia hopping down the last few steps of the path to the beach.
The Lugia waddled over to the darkened sand along the shoreline, and as everyone watched, he began to dig into the wet sand and move it a little further up the beach.
"Hey guys! Where's the god that will deliver us from the pirate raids?!" a Chinchou called while flopping in with her fins. The little fish awkwardly continued up to the ledge expectantly, only to see the 'god' in question busy sculpting a sand mound.
"... Why is Lugia building a misshapen sand castle?"
"Hey, the wet sand here feels different from the sand back in the cave! Come and try it!" the Lugia called up to the gathering.
There was a sinking feeling in many a Pokémon's stomach at the gathering as Tromba's guardian cheerfully returned to focusing on his sand heap, which Scout the Sentret couldn't help but voice in his usual sardonic way.
"We're doomed."
Author's Notes:
- pollito - Spanish: "chick"
- huevo - Spanish: "egg"
- la mar - Spanish: "the sea", identical to el mar if with more romantic/literary overtones.
