Chapter 28: Putting Two and Two Together

As the hours went by on the deck of the Siglo Swellow, Crom and Kiran did what they could to try and keep themselves preoccupied until Maranda's medic shift ended. When that time came to pass, the two and Captain Beatrix would be led to "a place of my choosing", where Team Traveller would finally be returned to them. Mentor and pupil played a couple rounds of monster cards here, struck up a few idle conversations about nothings such as "what do you suppose that big tree with the dangling hut is for?", and occasionally cast glances off at the town's scenery. Crom took the time to reexamine his wounds from the beating aboard Lyn's ship; fortunately, most of them had healed by now.

But as much as they tried, nothing seemed to fully dislodge a lingering anxiety among the ship's crew. The Pokémon with sea-green scarves glowering at the ship from the docks and the water the whole time certainly didn't help, but more importantly... this town was holding their Protector and the missing children from town, and it didn't sound like it would just be giving them back… But… why?

Had they gotten wise to Pleo's nature? Were they trying to extort them? Were they unwilling to leave him in the claws of Company lavenders?

"Aherm."

Until, at about the time of Team Traveller's visit to the Ryūbokuya bar, Maranda returned to the docks flanked by guards who were now clad in sets of bluish-green cloth armor, including the Durant from earlier. Crom and Kiran traded wary looks with one another, was this Leavanny getting ready to hand Pleo over to them, or to fight a war? From the bottom of the still-lowered gangplank, she looked up at a wary-eyed Illumise captain, wearing a stern and serious expression.

"It's time," the Mairesse said. "If you want your friends back, do come along."

"Yeah, and don't try any funny business!" the Durant chittered.

Crom, Kiran, and Beatrix made their way down the gangplank and were quickly flanked by a small detail consisting of a handful of Pokémon, headed by an antsy Durant and a Masquerain that occasionally attempted to calm his counterpart with "Calme-toi, mon fils." The churlish-looking reception quickly whisked the three lavender-scarved sailors along Maranda's steps.

In spite of the uninviting glares, the path over to the warehouse was still a treat for Crom's eyes. One could see shops, huts, and even what looked to be a shrine nestled in the trees off in the distance. The tantalizing smell of fresh gummis wafted here and there from eateries along the wind...

The treat was cut short as the trio and escort arrived at the warehouse Maranda had mentioned. It was a tall structure, "50% taller than the lighthouse" as Kiran put it, formed by erecting wooden walls in between trunks of a roughly rectangular clump of mangroves with a shingled roof. As the three slipped in, the light and color from the town around them faded away into tight, dimly lit corridors between stacks of crates and barrels.

The trio were led down a few dimly-lit twists and bends, past stacks of crates and barrels that Crom was just able to notice were worn and cracked from repeated use. When the three made their way a little further along, they caught sight of a ray of light peeking down from the ceiling.

"We're bringing your friends in right now," Maranda said. "Go on, and follow the instructions that the guards give you."

The three Pokémon looked uneasily up ahead as Maranda, the glowering Masquerain, the Durant, and the other guards fell back into the shadows, leaving Crom and his companions to carry on. Crom, Kiran, and Captain Beatrix shuffled forward uncomfortably towards an illuminated spot under a hole in the ceiling. The three squinted ahead, looking for any sign of Pleo, when a voice from the direction of the light called out.

"Come nice and steady," it barked. "Keep your limbs raised where we can see them and no sudden moves."

One by one, the trio followed the voice's orders and raised their arms and wings, stepping forward slowly towards the light as thoughts raced through their minds.

Did these Pokémon know about Pleo's true nature? Had the team gotten into trouble here? Were they still alright? Would these Pokémon try to blackmail them for something to get them back?

"Mrph!"

Everyone jumped as the sound of two protesting creatures pierced the warehouse's silence.

"Ow! Watch it, you dumb bugs!"

A Frogadier and an Ursaring, hogtied and loosely gagged with silken bindings, flopped forward in front of their three guards; a Crustle, a Galvantula, and a Seismitoad. The three Pokémon from the Siglo Swellow paused, blinking at the sight of the two strange Pokémon now in the circle of light, before turning to trade uneasy glances with each other.

"Er… are either of those yours, Kiran?" the Illumise asked. "They're kinda big for rookies."

"No, they're not," Kiran sighed, as he buried his face in a wing.

"E-Eh?!" Crom cried. "This wasn't who you were supposed to have at all!"

The guards on the other end, for their part, seemed to grow impatient from the outburst, and growled back irritatedly.

"Oi! Don't give us that nonsense!" the Galvantula hissed.

"Yeah, don't play sly with us!" the Crustle interjected. "We didn't catch any other troublemakers from your ranks here!"

"Come on, you jerks!" the frog huffed. "This isn't funny! Misha and I have been stuck in this white glop for a day now!"

"Stop stalling and get these bugs to let us-!" the Ursaring began, before noticing something amiss with these 'rescuers' of theirs. "Wait… you're..."

The bear sized up the three lavender-scarved Pokémon on the edge of the illuminated circle, glaring once his eyes came across the short Druddigon among them. The Ursaring growled, realizing that the lizard was none other than...

"You're that brat from Tromba who snuck aboard our ship!"

"Er…"

Crom felt the color drain from his face as he saw Kiran and Captain Beatrix grimace. The Druddigon's mind recalled that dark moment of getting discovered aboard Lyn's ship, and he instinctively fell behind the Swellow and Illumise to try and hide.

"Yeah, you'd better be scared!" the brown Pokémon snarled. "You're all finished as soon as we get out of this-!"

"Send these two away for a moment," Maranda's voice chittered, the Leavanny pushing her way through the guards to take a place alongside the three Tromban Pokémon. "It sounds like things are a bit more complicated than we thought they would be."

"Yes, madam," the Crustle chittered.

The Ursaring and the Frogadier were unceremoniously dragged off shouting and struggling against their bonds, out of the illuminated circle and into the darkness. Some angry words continued to stream out, particularly from the Ursaring, until they were replaced by muffled noises (the gags around their muzzles had been tightened, it sounded). In their place, the Mairesse of Seahive Square stepped into the light and turned to the three now-shaken Pokémon in lavender scarves.

"Care to explain to me what's going on here?" she demanded. "Either the Company's been having more trouble in its lower ranks than I've heard of, or you three aren't quite what you seem."

Beatrix, Kiran, and Crom traded uneasy looks with each other. If they were in trouble, there wouldn't be anything that this Leavanny wouldn't figure out soon enough. So then, for the sake of being able to get Pleo back...

Perhaps it was best to take a gamble.

"Not one word of this leaves your mandibles, alright?" the firefly finally answered.

"They're sealed," Maranda replied. "But I do want an explanation."

"We're a team sent by Bluewhorl to look for our Protector, and some local kids who went off after him," Kiran explained. "You could say that we've had a little bit of trouble keeping him at home."

"They told us they were here in a letter!" Crom added "And we thought that the Pokemon you were talking about would have been Pleo... and Nida... and Elty… but…"

The Druddigon trailed off and began to droop his head and wings, leaving Maranda to pause and give a curious twitch of her antennae. After a long pause, the Leavanny's eyes softened, and she patted at the young dragon's shoulder as she began to speak.

"Well, they were here. But yesterday, one 'Commissioner Lyn' came by and claimed they were pirates," she responded. "Before we could act one way or the other, the three flew off and got past a pursuit with a little help from a concerned observer."

"Eh?! So then they left?!" Kiran squawked, beating out his wings in surprise. "Where'd they go?!"

"I'm afraid that I don't know myself," Maranda said, shaking her head. "I lost track of them fairly early on, and I don't know if the team changed course once they got out to sea."

Dejected looks passed among the three Pokémon. So here they were, out on Boisocéan, with even fewer leads as to where Pleo and the others could be than when they left Tromba! It was then that Maranda cleared her throat and began to speak again.

"It's a long shot, but... there might be some Pokemon in town that overheard their plans. Spending some time asking around certainly couldn't hurt…" the Leavanny offered, before pausing and pointing a leafy tarsus at Crom's lavender-scarved neck.

"But do wear something a bit more presentable than what's around your necks right now," she instructed. "You'll be hard-pressed to get anything out from the Pokémon here in that attire!"

BOOM

Just then, the sound of a blast and crates crashing against the ground could be heard. A cry rang out among the guards that had drug the captured Company Pokémon away. Apparently the Ursaring had managed to shoot a Hyper Beam through his muzzle, punching a hole through a few crates and into the ceiling.

BOOOOM

The boom was followed by a fiery flash, several yelps and more crates crashing. As Crom squinted to see what was going on across the warehouse, he saw the Ursaring and Frogadier get blown back into a pile of ruined crates- now with their gags and most of their cords singed off, and copious burn marks.

"I thought we got rid of all the Blast Seeds in this warehouse," Maranda sighed, burying her face in a leafy hand.

"Er… what do we do with those two again?" Kiran asked.

"Yeah, if they get back to their home base, we're in some serious hot water," the Illumise buzzed, shaking her head.

"Well, the official record shows that you're the Company representatives who came here," Maranda explained. "If you for whatever reason wanted to keep them busy here, well… it would be hard to argue with Company orders, wouldn't it?"

The three thought about it, and as quickly as the question was raised, Crom, Kiran, and Beatrix knew exactly how they wanted to keep the two Company lackeys from going anywhere quickly.

"Community Service," they collectively replied.

"Very well," Maranda answered, before turning to the guards behind her. "Help your colleagues with taking those two back to the cells, I'll hold a sentencing for Community Service for them later tonight!"

"Wait, what?!" the Frogadier protested.

"You can't just-!" Misha began, before he was cut off by a swarm of guards. In the dim light, Crom could see the mob of guards unceremoniously burying the Ursaring in sticky silk, hoisting him up, and carrying him on their backs; his partner met a similar fate as the two struggled futilely against their bonds.

As the… colorful sailors' language of the duo faded away, the sound of a door opening and closing could be faintly heard. After the warehouse returned back to silence, Maranda turned back to the group, and cleared her throat to speak again.

"Is there anything else I should know right now?" she asked.

"Actually… we have some posters with fake bounties on our Protector," Kiran explained, as he dug into his satchel and pulled out a stack of papers. Each one of them had a simple wanted notice with the depiction of Tromba's Protector, and a listed reward great enough to make a prince of a pauper. "Obviously, we don't want them up right now, but we need someone to keep them in the wings to go up if anything goes pear-shaped for us."

"Consider it done," Maranda answered. "And good luck with your search."

"Thank you…" Crom replied, lowering his head gratefully.

And with that, the three Pokémon of the Siglo Swellow headed back into the darkness towards the entrance of the warehouse. Back for the town, where hopefully they would be able to find some lead as to where the missing members of Team Traveller had gone to after changing out of Company Lavenders.


Not too long after leaving the bar, the red-scarved members of Team Taxonomy lead Team Traveller's members back up the winding path of the seaside bluff into the more reputable parts of Mossaisle Town. Now that they weren't darting down cluttered alleys, Nida began to see things that reminded her of home back on Tromba.

The crowded, but seemingly cheery town the team made their way through might as well have been an island apart from the scruffy scum-bucket they just left. Nida noticed the local Kecleon shop, as its proprietor cheerily passed an Apple "on the house!" to a Cleffa as her Noibat partner perched upside-down from the eave muttering something about "pre-dusk naps". A little further, there was a card shop lined with carefully-drawn slips of paper covered with all manner of images. A few young Pokémon and a few elder ones that were still young at heart played a prize-taking game on the counter. The streets were all filled with a warmth and vibrancy like the square back home, even if the colors were drabber than the buildings down at the Andaku Docks.

They passed a great wooden gate with tiled, square-eaved roofs in front of a taller building that loomed five or six stories tall in the background; after chancing to overhear a Beheeyem chattering with a Dugtrio about 'that new batch of Three-Star Missions' Nida realized that this must have been that 'second guild' Elty talked about. The lack of a mission board at the entrance struck Nida as strange, until she remembered that the 'guild' at Andaku had also hidden its mission board inside. Local custom, perhaps?

There were other things that struck the Nidoran as strange about the town… Now that Team Traveller were on the main lanes and not preoccupied with watching out for pursuing Company grunts, they noticed that most of the windows were barred and reinforced. Most of the shops and houses appeared to have sturdily-built doors; the ones without seemed to always have a carefully-watching Pokémon not far from it. Even the passerbys looked more guarded, as Pokémon heading down more secluded lanes would always carefully look down and sniff or listen for unexpected presences. She hadn't seen these little tense and unsettled details in the town's atmosphere back at home, with the notable exception of when Lyn came to collect the Company's dues.

"Well look at it this way, Wally. If we have to redo all that work, then we'll at least have a place to start in town."

As this 'Machalí' and 'Wally' from Team Taxonomy led the group past a mural with dot-like runes on it, Nida spotted a small square pavilion beside it and realized that the shack and wall must have been the town's shrine.

The strange glyphs carried transcriptions in runes underneath, done in the archaic footprint style that nowadays saw little use outside of seals on documents. It was a series of scenes depicting the local Protector moving about islands, its fate in the death of the old world, and its egg being carried to the local Mystery Dungeon…

Not unlike the paintings on the anima at home... was Tromba doing alright right now?

As the pair prattled happily along with each other about the mural and their research, it too brought back wistful memories of home and her father and the apple-farmer from the orchard next to the family's Leppa field. Growing feelings of homesickness began to gnaw at her, leaving Nida to drift further and further behind her teammates and their new guides.

"Something the matter?" the Marshtomp called 'Garth' interrupted from behind. "You've been looking kinda glum."

Nida looked back at Tropius and Nidorino and, after pausing, tried to throw on a brave face. The rabbit shook her head and turned back to the Marshtomp.

"It's nothing, really," she said, her tone still coming out with a plaintive tiredness that made the Marshtomp frown and twitch his antennae.

"You're not a very convincing liar, but I won't pry into it," he sighed. "Besides, the hostel's right here."

The Marshtomp pointed out an inn just up ahead built into an earthen slope. The structure's ground floor was formed from stacked earth and stone, while its second floor rested atop a layer of sod with the same spartan wood and thatch construction as the other buildings around it.

A short walk past its entrance revealed a room with exposed timber columns and supports hosting a small collection of low, square tables with stool-seats on a floor covered with reed mats. Towards the back, behind a counter next to a hallway heading further back and some stairs heading to the upper floor, there sat a Bellossom sipping at a cup full of steaming liquid. As the Grass-Type noticed the party entering, she gave an askew glance at the three strangers that Team Taxonomy drug in.

After a brief conversation with the receptionist, and convincing her that these three strangers would be out before the hour was over to avoid raising their room's rate, they navigated down a narrow, wooden hallway lined with strange wall partitions jutting out slightly. The partitions seemed to be made of paper over pieces of wood, and had runes for numbers written on them. Curiouser still, they also let in light from behind much like windows. After passing a few partitions, Garth stopped in front of one and pulled at the side…

Pjaaaaaak

Ah, they weren't walls at all! But a strange sort of door that slid open and shut! Once it was pushed aside, the contents of the room behind were revealed: the simple, mostly featureless room had straw beds laid out, a round table shoved in a corner with cross-segments of logs hacked into stools for seats, and an exposed rafter down the below the ceiling from which articles could be hung.

"Whelp, the roof leaks and the walls don't keep the sound out, but… this is it, our home away from home during our stint here," Garth said. "And it's a bit more private than the sleeping halls on the first floor."

The Marshtomp shook his whiskers before heading off to the corner to pull out the table and seats for the new guests. One by one, Team Traveller cautiously took their places about the low table as the mudskipper stretched out a kink in his body and his companions drew near to the table.

"It takes a bit more out of pocket than staying at guild accommodations," he added. "But in our line of work, sometimes the extra privacy is needed."

"Elty, why didn't we stay in this place?" Pleo asked, craning his head down to peck the Fire-Type's shoulder curiously.

"Oi! Just how are we supposed to pay for rooms when we don't have any money!" the Growlithe grumbled back. "And I told you, we're in more danger of getting in trouble here!

"Relax," Wally answered. "As long as you three keep your end of the bargain, no one's getting in trouble."

"Right," Nida murmured to herself, before she tilted her head curiously at the Tropius. "So what's it that you need us to do?"

"Well, for starters… let's have you stand right there for a moment!" Scholls said, puffing his chest feathers out. "Need to take some measurements and samples…"

The Archen fished out some sticks and strings marked with lines and began to compare them against Pleo's body as Machalí grabbed a notebook with a worn, green cover, flipped it open, and began to sketch and doodle in it. The Flying-Type was surprisingly pushy, moving Pleo's head down, his wings out, and pulling out a loose feather, which made him fidget more and more uncomfortably until...

"E-Eh?! What are you doing?!" he cried.

"Observing you, of course!" the bird replied. "We've never seen a Pokémon like you before in any of our travels!"

Nida stared agape at the two bird Pokémon circling each other in that particular game the Archen was trying to get Pleo to join in. Her teeth showed, more out of incredulity than any sense of threat. She turned to ask Elty something, but instantly found her answer in how his baffled expression matched her own.

"You sure about that, Scholls? I could've sworn we've seen a Pokémon like him somewhere before," Machalí mumbled, as he moved the charcoal nub from the journal to the corner of his mouth. "But it's eluding me… Maybe it was a picture back at that last library we visited?"

The Archen darted away from Pleo and, after looking over the scribbles and sketches his Nidorino teammate made, gave a satisfied grunt and returned the measuring tools back to the bag as Pleo tried to figure out why any of this was needed. Nida shook her head and now felt somewhat silly for feeling homesick from overhearing Machalí earlier. Papi and the Pokémon he knew weren't this strange!

"Eh, but- Why is it that you want to do that?" Pleo asked.

"As we mentioned earlier, we're a team of researchers," Wally answered. "We go around from place to place in the Cradle, taking notes on the Pokemon there while financing our next leg from odd jobs in town."

"Huh? How come?"

"Well, back in the old world, it's said that humans had magical tablets with writing that would change in front of your very eyes," the Tropius continued. "In these tablets, they'd keep all the knowledge they knew about Pokémon gathered together so that anyone could see it for themselves as long as they had one of them."

"Now, we don't have a way to make any of those fancy tablets," Garth added. "But we can get the information that was in it by putting it back together piece by piece and recording it."

"Eh? Can you narrow that down a bit?" Nida asked. "What kind of information about Pokemon?"

"Well, we decided to start with the basics," the Marshtomp said. "To record about how Pokemon like you and I live and behave. The moves they'd learn. Things like how your friend's belly fire reacts to different things that he'd eat or drink."

"We even tested out those rumors about some Pokémon having an easier time breaking out of Apricorns!" Scholls squawked. "Except we couldn't really find many volunteers other than ourselves…"

"Gee, I wonder why?" Elty grumbled, rolling his eyes.

So Team Taxonomy went around studying all about Pokémon? Then, they must have learned all sorts of things about all the different kinds out there. Then maybe… they also knew the answer to something that he had been wondering about since Boisocéan...

"If you've been studying all about Pokémon," Pleo mumbled as he moved a wing under his chin quizzically. "Does that mean you also know what Pokemon the Prince of a Thousand Enemies was?"

"Heh," Machalí chuckled, casting a glance at the blue Nidoran in his midst. "You told him una versión of that story, didn't you?"

"Just a little-" Nida sheepishly began, before she suddenly caught herself and shook her head as she realized something amiss with the Nidorino's question. "Wait, una version? There's more than one?"

"Well, yes. Just about every island has a group of rabbit Pokémon that seem to remember details differently. Sometimes the Prince is a Nidorino, sometimes he's a Lopunny, sometimes he's a Diggersby, and so on," the Poison-Type explained. "The stories about him shift details in versions, but a few seem to have constants such as him tricking different foes like a "Prince of Rainbows" or some monster with a lettuce patch."

"The thing we were trying to observe here is actually something distantly related," Wally added.

"Hrm?" Pleo asked. "What is it?"

"Ancient writing!" Scholls cheered.

"Ancient writing?!" Elty spluttered. "But what does that have to do with Pokémon?!"


Much to Elty and his teammates' swift regret, Team Taxonomy's members were all too eager to indulge the Growlithe's curiosity. They went through the legends of how Arceus had passed on the skill of writing by teaching Pokémon to form runes with footprints to preserve what they remembered of human knowledge.

Things became foggier once Wally moved on to talking about how the contact between the Cradle's islands led to the creation of a common tongue for trade, and with it, a unified set of runes. Pleo nodded off entirely as Scholls explained how the various tongues used the same writing in spite of different grammars and conventions thanks to a standardization of readings. By the time the Flying-Type got to lecturing about how the current age's paw-stroked runes were simplification of those stamped runes of the past, the sun had dropped from the sky and the moon and stars were up.

Not that any of that seemed to weigh down on the bubbly Archen.

"Did you get all that?" Scholls cheerily asked.

"Zzz… Whuh?"

As Pleo stirred awake and pulled his head out from under his wing, Nida and Elty groaned tiredly, trying to remember what they had done to bring this torment upon themselves in the first place.

"Uhh… yo… creo?" Nida replied. "Was there anything after the 'common tongue' part?"

"Oh?" the Archen chirped. "Well, I suppose that I could give a bit of a refresher-"

"NO."

Everyone jolted awake at the sound of a loud, growling refusal from Elty. The dog cast an agitated glance out the window at the night sky in the distance. His friends were surely at Ryūbokuya by now, and it wouldn't do any good to be any later than he absolutely needed to. The Growlithe shook his head and tried his best to re-rail the conversation.

"What does this have to do with watching Pokémon here on Kenobi anyways?" the dog groaned.

"It's simple!" Wally exclaimed. "According to myth, Unown helped humans create their very first mystic scripts back in the old world, so we wanted to spend some time watching the Unown here in town and their feral counterparts in the Mystery Dungeon."

"And the old counterpart to this island's Protector," Garth added.

"Wait, Unown?" Nida asked.

"You may have seen one or two before," Machalí responded while hastily scrawling out some shapes on a page of the notebook. "These look familiar at all?"

When the Nidorino passed the notebook over she saw the rough forms of strange, floating creatures with single eyes and several small appendages attached to them. Why, these were the Pokémon the team had seen playing cards while sneaking to the Andaku Docks!

"So as Machalí was saying," Wally explained. "If we learned from those Pokémon, we might be able to figure out how to read those mystic scripts that we Pokémon can't seem to decipher."

"Huh?" Pleo chirped, giving a curious tilt to his head. "Aren't they just like the writing that Pokémon use?"

"No, not at all!" Scholls interjected. "Some of their writing systems only have a handful of runes to work with, far too few to render any ideographic meanings to them like ours. They look like they convey a different concept instead- from the way they look, we think they were used purely for rhythmic value."

"Eh?" Nida replied. "Runes that were used 'purely for rhythmic value'? As in each of these runes meaning something like 'Nee' or 'Dah'? But how would you understand anything that way?"

It would be a strange way of writing indeed. After all, how could anyone tell "Nee-dah" from "Dee-nah" when runes had no meaning beyond their rhythm? As Elty saw the Archen's beak began to move, his fur bristled, and the Growlithe swiftly interrupted what would surely be another long lecture.

"Okay, so back onto the main topic… why can't you get these notes back yourself?" Elty demanded.

"Er… we kinda might have trespassed into a graveyard belonging to feral Cubone and Marowak while we were going through the Mystery Dungeon last time," Garth explained sheepishly, the mention of the incident making the Water-Type's partners fidget uncomfortably.

"For the record, I told you guys it was a bad idea!" Scholls exclaimed.

"So… yeah. They kinda hate our guts right now, and the last time we tried to get our notes back, we were getting ambushed by Monster Houses on every floor," the Marshtomp murmured, before suddenly growing particularly cheery and gesturing at the three members of Team Traveller. "Which is where you three come in! They don't know that you're with us yet, meaning that you'll have better luck than us at getting our notes back!"

There was a long silence as one by one, the three Pokémon traded uneasy looks with each other.

"Er… Nida?" Pleo asked.

"That… uhm… well, I'm not sure-" Nida began. The Nidoran folded her ears back and began to understand just how different Machalí was from her father in spite of similar appearances, only for her train of thought to be cut off by a startled bark.

"J-Jesteś szalona! How are we supposed to do that?!" Elty cried. The Growlithe fumed, and then shook his head and gave a frowning scowl. "I don't know about these two dweebs, but there's no way that I'm getting drug along for that!"

The Growlithe then got up and began to head for the door.

Thu-Thump

Only to see that a glaring red-scarved Marshtomp was now blocking it. And that behind him, a Nidorino was glowering and pawing at the ground. And an Archen. And a Tropius, too. And that they were all ready for battle...


About twenty minutes later, Mossaisle Town and the fields that stretched up the mountainside next to it were but an indistinct haze poking out from behind a heavily wooded peak. On the other side was the other arid peak of Kenobi Island, with its scraggly trees few and nestled in between dry, golden grasses under the moonlight. Behind them was the worn path that had taken them from the town up to this place, the trail's dirt occasionally flecked with the footprints of crossing ferals. And up ahead...

The familiar fog that separated a Mystery Dungeon from the outside world around it.

"'No way, I'm getting drug along for that', huh?" Nida scoffed.

"Oh, shut up, spike ball," Elty growled. "You could have at least tried to fight off the crazy Pokemon threatening to beat me up like a teammate's supposed to instead of letting them march us out of town!"

The Growlithe shook his head, and stared off into the shifting mists ahead.

"Are we sure that it's too late to go back to the angry bartender?" he asked. Nida and Pleo looked ahead and stared uneasily. Yes, they did owe Team Taxonomy a favor (one the researchers made clear they'd take out of their hides if they tried to bilk them), but even so…

That was still a completely unknown Mystery Dungeon ahead of them, with their hopes of escape hinging on the teleporters back at that shady guild by the sea...

"Well… if we work together, we can finish this mission, right?" Pleo chirped. "We've done scary-sounding missions before!"

"Let's hope," Nida mumbled to herself.

With that, the three set off, trudging away from the island and deeper into the fog shrouding the mysterious dungeon ahead of them.


After the sun dipped below the horizon at the Andaku Docks, Ryūbokuya was abuzz with activity, packed with patrons who overwhelmingly wore scarves bearing gray teardrop-like spikes on golden fabric.

"Bugh… what a day…"

Among the handful that didn't were three Company grunts: a Manectric, a Marowak, and a Yanmega, waiting on drinks from behind the counter. They had spent an unwanted portion of their day repairing a wall that they weren't even meant to touch in the first place! Really, the only way the night could become any worse was if the Aggron glaring and growling from a few tables over would act on his threats to claim his place at the bar. Fortunately for the three, the creature would curiously shrink and avert his gaze whenever the Ground-Type traded back a glare. Getting the cold shoulder out here while wearing Company scarves was to be expected, but this was just ridiculous!

"Seriously, getting forced to fix a wall and getting stiffed out of pay by an angry overseer?" Nori whined. "What did we ever do to deserve this?"

"Well, I dunno about the past piracy, or the current shakedowns you three do every now and then," the Throh barkeep added from behind the counter. "But I do know that you're behind on your tabs. And last time I checked with one of your square-neck friends that passed through here, they said you weren't on theirs yet."

"Thanks for the comfort, Shuho," Alvise grumbled. The sound of some excited chatter came from a nearby table between a Grotle, a Combusken, and a jittery-sounding Scraggy, the lot of them bearing lined blue scarves with red arrow designs and five-tailed blotches on their heads. The Scraggy continued on and on about a most peculiar topic, which drew stares from some of the nearby golden-scarved customers.

"I'm telling you guys, we need to get out of here!" the Dark-Type cried to the others. "I ran into one of the demons from the stories out in the alley across the lane! He even attacked me when I was trying to pick up some extra goods for our next job!"

"Oh, for crying out loud!" the Grotle growled back. "You didn't find a mark tonight. We get it, Eric! You don't need to make up a story to try and cover your tail about it!"

"I'm not lying!" the orange and yellow lizard protested, before turning to the Fire-Type pleadingly. "Come on, Sela! You believe me, right?"

"Urgh… did you take him out drinking Lansat Syrup again, Hanuna?" the Combusken groaned, putting a claw over her beak. "I thought we agreed to stay away from that stuff after that one raid where tripping on those lousy berries made us get 'pillage and burn' backwards with that Kecleon shop..."

"Oi, don't look at me! This is all him here!" the tortoise shot back defensively. "Lansat Syrup's supposed to make you happy, not a nervous wreck!"

"Mrph. As if that Iron Fleet captain's headache about some lackey of his who can't stick to a schedule wasn't enough," Shuho grunted, shaking his head as 'Eric' continued on in the background. "Ever since those three blotch-heads came in, that Zuruggu just won't shut up about that deadbeat bird from earlier today."

"Deadbeat bird?" Valatos wondered, giving a reflexive beat to his wings.

"Well, I think it must've been the same bird since the description matched up. It was a big old white and blue one, like some sort of mutant Swanna, or an overgrown Camome," the Throh replied as he slipped crude cups filled with strong-smelling liquids over the counter for the waiting Pokémon. "I thought he'd stop being a problem after his clients roped him and his buddies back into their job in the Dungeon, but apparently not..."

"Wait, Valatos," Nori asked. "Didn't we run into a majū like that earlier?"

The Bug-Type lowered his head over one of the cups, and paused for a moment, before pulling it back. The Yanmega then shot up into the air, and pulled his compatriots along with him towards the door.

"Oi! Where are you going?!" Shuho cried.

"Didn't touch our drinks yet, so don't need to pay!" Valatos shot back. The Fighting-Type was about to give chase after the three, until the Aggron from earlier got up and quickly claimed one of the freshly-vacated bar stools. After an offhand comment about "Thank gods that monster with them's finally gone," the Aggron's conversation turned to pushing aside a couple stools to sit on the floor before claiming the drinks for himself. The metal lizard shook his head and placed an order for a bowl of "those 'star bits" or "whatever that rock candy's called" to make up for a particularly dry and rough spell since their last haul. The sound of the Throh reciprocating in conversation, apparently satisfied enough that someone was paying for the poured drinks, faded away as Valatos and his cohorts dashed out of the bar, and ducked down a nearby alley."

"Ciò! Why did we just leave?" Alvise growled.

"Yeah, I was looking forward to that drink!" Nori whined.

"Stop thinking with your stomachs and listen to me a moment!" the Yanmega snapped. "Don't you get it? That bird with the ugly mug. That's the Protector that Administrator Farn was going on about!"

"The one that they were going to go through all that trouble for? Rooting around the island and putting up those bounties and everything?" the Manectric asked.

"Exactly! So if we got that bird and those dweebs with it…"

"We'd get their bounties!" Nori exclaimed, the Marowak's eyes lighting up in sudden realization that those little runts earlier were worth getting to work late after all! "Heh heh! I like the way you think, Valat-"

SMACK

"OW!"

The Marowak rubbed his belly after being struck by a large, flying stone as Valatos settled over the gouge in the earth where the projectile had been called and torn out from. The dragonfly buzzed loudly and buried his face and compound eyes into one of his tarsi. Did he have to explain everything to this bonehead?

"Nee, domkop!" the Bug-Type growled. "The bounties aren't up until tomorrow night! If we catch them before then, we could name our price! And as long as it isn't too insane, we could probably get it!"

"Oh! I get you!" the Ground-Type insisted. "Like getting promoted out of crate work! Or getting our records cleared!"

"Or getting that stupid rhino demoted so we can push him around!" Alvise added.

"Exactly!"

Valatos' thoughts turned to just what would be the best thing to try and trade in return for the runt and its buddies, when he suddenly noticed Nori growing uneasy.

"Eh? What's that look for?"

"Eto... there's just one problem, Valatos," the bone lizard said. "Those runts are going into the Dungeon, right? How are we supposed to catch up with them?"

"What do you mean 'how are we supposed to catch up with them'?" Valatos huffed. "You've got family that's still feral out in the hinterlands! Don't they know some shortcut in and around the place?"

"That's not the point!" the Marowak protested. "Say we set off for the Dungeon, we go through all that trouble of going through it… and they've already come and gone?"

The dragonfly blanched. That… was actually a really good point. There was nothing to keep their golden opportunity from just flying away from them! And with as thin ice as they were on as former pirates, if they did waste a day in the dungeon without their overseer seeing them at work, they'd likely be exiled to the Wastes.

Alvise looked at the ground and paused. For a moment everything seemed lost for sure... until a sudden idea came to mind that made him perk his head back up.

"Actually, Valatos… we might have a way around that," the wolf grunted. "You remember how that Drowzee on the teleporter team at the guild here in Andaku has a partner for his hobby selling Lansat Syrup?"

"Yeah?" the bug buzzed back. "What about it?"

"Well, that partner's a Beheeyem in the clean districts of town. If he got caught with that stuff past the barrier… well, a little favor sure sounds better than time in a cell or getting pushed around by the likes of that lunk-headed Rhydon, don't you think?" the Manectric explained. "And best of all, I think I know how we can find him..."


"Oi, can we make this go any faster?"

Elty's whining rang out along the corridors of the dungeon, much as it had in the two floors above. And as it had when the team found a second Oran Berry at the end of a corridor, and as it had for the Fresh Apple just by stairs on the first floor. Even as it had for the team's hasty dive for the set of stairs on the floor above, right after slipping past a charging Machop they had stirred awake.

"Well, if you keep bellyaching out loud like that, the ferals will find us and this will go even slower!" a Nidoran's voice hissed back. The forms of Team Traveller rounded a sharp corner, with a round, broken-down stone pillar jutting out of the walls to the side.

Yes, while most of the floors they had encountered consisted of tawny-stoned chambers with the expected stalactites and stalagmites of a mountain cave. The Distortion here provided light through little tongues of wispy earth-fire flickering from holes along the ground providing hints of illumination… which every so often, allowed the team to notice that parts of their surroundings clearly weren't just part of a cave system that the Distortion warped…

There were many pillars, some broken, some whole, but all clearly constructed by something other than natural forces. Every so often, portions of the floor or wall would be formed of flat, stone bricks. Though if the pillars' horizontal orientation on the current floor were anything to go by, the matter of whether the ground consisted of the ruins' flooring, its walls, or its ceiling seemed to vary with the whims of the distortion. Most curiously, some of these mysterious ruins sported drawings on them. There were strange, dotted runes much like the ones seen on the mural back in Mossaisle, but also a number of drawings depicting Unown in neat arrangements…

Ones that the Pokémon of Team Traveller would have sworn were watching them had they not thought better of it. Or at least they would have were they not preoccupied with their own disputes.

"I knew we should have chanced it with Shuho," Elty grumbled to himself. The dog flattened out his ears at Nida's rebuke, as Pleo chirped quietly to himself and put a wondering wing to his beak.

"Didn't we need to get as many items we could anyways, Elty?" he asked. "All we had when we came in were a Pecha and an Oran Berry… and we have been finding things here! Like that Apple and that other Oran Berry!"

"Yeah, yeah, to wspaniale," the orange dog grunted back. "If we take too long, who knows what'll happen to that book!"

It was a half-truth. While it was true that the longer they took, the more likely it would be that Team Taxonomy's journal would be lost to the Distortion or the dungeon's residents, it was at best a secondary priority to the Fire-Type's mind. After all, his ticket back onto the Iron Fleet could be at 'bokuya right now, and here he was stuck in this hole in the ground!

"Alright, alright!" Nida hissed.

The spike ball thankfully didn't know about his reasons, and for the sake of not getting knocked into next week and dumped in this strange dungeon by the huffing Nidoran ahead of him, it would probably be better that it stayed that way… at least until this mission was done.

"We'll try and pick up the pace a little-" the Nidoran began, only for Pleo to cut her off with an abrupt cry.

"Nida, look! There's a strange stick here!"

Sure enough, there was indeed a stick ahead. As Pleo shuffled it with his beak, the three Pokémon noticed that on one end, there was a round glowing, yellow jewel embedded in a whorl of wood.

"But… what's this thing on the end of it?" Pleo wondered.

"Well first off, that's not a stick, that's a wand," Elty sighed.

"A wand?"

Pleo looked back at the jewel in the wood and noticed that the yellow color seemed to be coming from yellow orbs shifting around inside, much like the Totter Orb from the night the team escaped Lyn's ship. Were wands also orbs? If so, they seemed to be awfully strange ones… The glassy surface felt thinner and easier to break, and upon closer inspection… there seemed to be a second layer of glass inside, also enveloping yellowish orbs.

"They're formed when essences of the Distortion cling to sticks and twigs that get brought in here," Nida explained. "It might have once been someone's Stick that they brought in for a mission a long time ago."

The Nidoran darted ahead, and took the Wand from Pleo's beak with her forepaws, rearing up as she sniffed at the wooden article and its nested, glassy spheres .

"Looks like this one's a Confuse Wand. They're pretty fragile, even compared to orbs," she said, slipping the twiggy staff into the satchel on her back. "A hard swing's usually enough to break open one of the layers. Once it does, it'll make a Pokémon on the business end of that jewel see stars!"

"Yeah, yeah, great lesson there," Elty grumbled, flattening out his ears. "Can we move on now-?"

The Growlithe suddenly paused at the faint sound of a pebble tumbling along and shot his ears up, Nida quickly following suit. Pleo blinked and watched uneasily as the two looked around and sniffed at the air uneasily, their noses and Nida's whiskers twitching in tense anticipation…

And then, there was a long silence, leaving the three casting leery glances at each other.

"Nida? Elty?" the little Lugia asked. "Did you hear something?"

After another wary sniff at the air, Elty shook his head and turned down the corridor.

"Whatever it was, it's gone. Probably a passing feral," he muttered. "So, are we going, or what?"

"Fair enough," Nida sighed. "The faster we move, the better our odds of getting Team Taxonomy's journal back."

The three set off down the corridor, heading deeper down the floor as their paces grew fainter and fainter, leaving behind silence… But then, the sound of another pebble being disturbed, of shuffling feet, and finally...

"Iku ze, they went that way."

The quiet murmur of small, raspy voices, and the sound of movement after Team Traveller's direction.


Author's Notes:

- Calme-toi, mon fils - French: "Calm down, my son."
- una versión - Spanish: "a version".
- Zuruggu (ズルッグ) - Japanese: "Scraggy". (Official Romanization)
- Camome (キャモメ) - Japanese: "Wingull". (Official Romanization)
- majū (魔獣) - Japanese: "Magical Beast", used in as a historical name to refer to Pokémon in M12 prior to creation of 'Pokémon'. (Hepburn Romanization)
- Ciò! - Venetian: Interjection/Intensifier. Means roughly "Hey!" or "Oi!" in this context.
- Nee, domkop! - Dutch: "No, blockhead!" (lit. "No, dumb-head!")
- Eto (えと) - Japanese: Interjection. Roughly analogous to "Uh...", "Er...", or "Well, actually..." (Hepburn Romanization)
- to wspaniale - Polish: Interjection. Roughly meaning "that's great", "that's wonderful"
- Iku ze (行くぜ) - Japanese: "Let's go", has 'commanding' connotations. (Hepburn Romanization)