Truth be told, Dewford Town wasn't really Roxanne's kind of town. She was a city girl, born and raised, and didn't just like the hustle and bustle of the city, but rather needed it. Without the ambient sounds of activity that a whole metropolis of people and Pokémon, like her home of Rustboro City, could produce, Roxanne felt anxious and isolated.
Yet, here she was in sleepy little Dewford Town. The people here didn't even have the excuse of age like the retirees of Lavaridge Town to justify their lackadaisical attitude towards everything. If it wasn't for the local pokémon gym, it seemed to her like the whole island might have sunk under the sea due to the weight of the islanders' complacency.
That attitude bothered Roxanne the most about small-town life, and here in Dewford Town where she was standing in front of the red-roofed Pokémon Center, complacency was everywhere she looked. From the motionless fishermen who may very well have been dozing on the beach to the "out for lunch" sign hung on the Pokémon Center's door, Roxanne was frustrated by how little of herself she saw in the sand and surf of Dewford Town.
Most galling of all was that this tendency towards indolence was also apparent in Roxanne's colleague and fellow gym leader Brawly. He had seemed enthusiastic enough about the idea of Roxanne's visit when they had first arranged it two weeks ago, but now that the agreed upon day and the time was here, and Brawly was nowhere in sight.
Roxanne thought about heading off to Granite Cave alone, but she didn't want to be rude. That same desire kept her from expressing her frustration by pacing in front of the Pokémon Center, although Roxanne did allow herself to check her handheld PokéNav repeatedly. She halfheartedly tried to lie to herself that she was only checking to see if she had a message from Brawly, but in truth Roxanne was merely checking for a scientifically accurate assessment of how much of her time was being wasted.
When Roxanne finally saw Brawly, she was annoyed by the blue-haired gym leader's unhurried pace. When he saw her, Brawly waved to Roxanne and increased his speed until his sandals were flopping clumsily on the sand. Roxanne thought that Brawly was only picking up the pace out of enthusiasm, rather than out of any embarrassment at having kept his colleague waiting.
"Hey there, Roxanne!" Brawly called when he was still a way off, and as soon as he was close enough to do so, he took Roxanne's hand in his one for a handshake that threatened to turn into a hug if Roxanne hadn't resisted Brawly's pull. Seeming to take no notice of Roxanne's disgruntled attitude, Dewford Town's gym leader ran a hand through his short hair and said, "It's good to see you outside of those stiff Pokémon League events. Aren't you a little warm, though?"
Roxanne pulled at the sleeve of the light sweater that she was wearing and frowned. "Well, it's going to be colder in the cave, right? That's what I thought, at least."
Brawly scratched the back of his neck and said, "Ah, you're right! I totally didn't think of that!"
Well, I did," Roxanne said back with a mere fraction of the annoyance she was feeling. "So, shall we get going?"
"Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to grab some lunch, first?" Brawly asked with an easygoing grin. "I figured you might be hungry after your trip, and it might be nice to unwind a little bit before our little pokémon hunt!"
Roxanne kept a lid on her temper, but her mouth still narrowed to a thin line as she forced out, "No, thank you. I did plenty of unwinding while I was waiting for you. What I want is to get going and catch my new pokémon."
"Well, yeah, sure, we can do that!" said Brawly brightly. The frustration in Roxanne's words appeared to have washed over him without leaving even the faintest trace that a wave left upon the beach. Roxanne knew that her impatience hadn't been communicated to the other gym leader because he didn't make any move to lead her to Granite Cave, but rather remained standing in front of the Pokémon Center with his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
"Ahem," said Roxanne once, and then again more forcefully. "Can we get going, please?"
"Oh, right, of course!" Brawly said after his eyes blinked rapidly over his genial smile. "Right this way!"
Roxanne trotted after Brawly and tried without much success to keep her eyes from finding every fault she could in her guide's conduct. At the very least, he seemed to be making a bee-line for the network of the caves to the north, but that only meant that his detours were verbal instead of physical. As Dewford Town's gym leader, and especially given the town's small size, Brawly knew every person who he and Roxanne passed on their way to Granite Cave. Roxanne could have understood a casual exchange of greetings since that was what she had experienced the most in Rustboro City, but Brawly seemed to determined to have a short conversation with every man, woman, and child that they encountered. Each dialogue was only five minutes long at the longest, but as the total amount of time wasted on chit-chat climbed higher and higher, Roxanne felt her jaw clenching behind the smile she had to fake every time that Brawly introduced her as the Rustboro City Gym Leader.
"I didn't think we'd be doing an entire meet-and-greet," grumbled Roxanne after she finally pulled Brawly away from a conversation about Magikarp spawning with a chatty fisherman. "I was hoping that we could have a simple hour or two to ourselves without the whole day turning into public outreach for the Pokémon League."
"Huh? What do you mean?" asked Brawly. "We're not doing a townhall or anything like that, just saying hi to a few neighbors and friends!"
"'A few'?" asked Roxanne with a roll of her brown eyes, before sighing, "Never mind." As they had walked north of Dewford Town to explore the rest of the island, the ground had grown less sandy and craggier until the two gym leaders had started climbing up the side of the rocky dome which marked the island's highest point above the surrounding sea. Roxanne gestured to an opening in the rocky earth and asked, "Is this the entrance we'll be using?"
"This is the spot!" agreed Brawly cheerfully. He stood by the side of the dark pit breathing in the fresh air rolling off the ocean until Roxanne thought she would start yelling at him. But before the other gym leader's annoyance could boil over, Brawly appeared to be satisfied by some sign he detected in the atmosphere or the sun above and he reached into his pocket for a red and white poké ball. He depressed the button at its center and released a hefty-looking yellow pokémon with a cheery smile under its sleepy eyes, a set of blue-black gloves, and markings of the same color around its neck. "My makuhita and I know these caves like the back of our hands," asserted Brawly as he started helping the heavyset pokémon down into the opening in the earth. To Roxanne, Brawly asked, "Do you know which of your teammates you're going to use to catch your new pokémon?"
Without looking up from digging through her bag of supplies, Roxanne said, "I'll be using my trusty nosepass. It's too heavy for it to climb down easily, so I'll be letting it out of its poké ball when we are inside the caves." She ignored Brawly's nod of acknowledgement in favor of pulling out two flashlights from her satchel. Roxanne handed one to Brawly when only the top of his head was visible.
"Oh, flashlights! Great idea!" Brawly said enthusiastically before placing the one Roxanne gave him in his mouth and continuing his climb down. It was hard to understand him with the flashlight in his mouth, but Roxanne thought he was thanking her and wondering why he didn't think of her idea himself. With Brawly focusing more on his spelunking than on her, the other gym leader afforded herself a heavy sigh and a brief massage of her temples that let off some of the pressure that had come from her mounting frustration. Then, she swung her leg over the lip of the cave and followed Brawly into the depths of Granite Cave.
It wasn't Roxanne's first time in Granite Cave, after all, she had caught her prized nosepass here, but it had been a few years since she had been back. That wasn't to say that Roxanne had forgotten how to properly explore a cave. Meteor Falls was located between Rustboro City and Fallarbor Town, and Roxanne made regular trips to that network of caves and quarries to train herself and the pokémon trainers who served under her in her gym. Meteor Falls had its own challenges, but one thing that Granite Cave had over Meteor Falls was the darkness. Meteor Falls had been shaped, in large part, by a shower of meteors which left the land scarred and uneven, but had also punched large holes in the earth above the natural tunnels that let in the sunlight and moonlight which drew out the cave's wild solrock and lunatone. That wasn't the case with Granite Cave.
Having grown accustomed to spelunking around Meteor Falls, Roxanne had not been prepared for how dark it was going to be inside the depths of Brawly's island home. Sure, she had been intellectually prepared, hence the flashlights, but that still hadn't readied Roxanne for the strange sensation of not being able to see in front of her nose without the aid of her flashlight. The teenaged gym leader's instinct was to swing the beam of her flashlight every which way to try and get a handle on her surroundings, but Brawly stilled Roxanne's sweep with a gentle touch of his hand on her forearm.
"What is it?" snapped Roxanne.
"Zubat," replied Brawly in a hushed voice. "You don't want to wake them up if you can help it." Then, with a smile and a tap of his finger to his nose to show her that there were no hard feelings, Brawly motioned for Roxanne to follow him and his makuhita down the tunnel in which they found themselves.
Roxanne had to keep her head down to avoid scraping it on the roughly formed ceiling, and Brawly, being even taller, was nearly doubled over to do the same. Reading his companion's thoughts, Brawly said to Roxanne, "Don't worry, we'll be able to stand up in a cave just up ahead. How are you doing?"
"I'm fine," Roxanne whispered back. "Let's keep moving."
True to his word, Brawly ushered Roxanne through a cave and then the two gym leaders stood up to their full heights in the cavern. After he had finished stretching out a few of the kinks in his neck, shoulders, and back, Brawly suggested, "Why don't you let out your nosepass, Roxanne? There won't be too many steep climbs or drops if you're careful."
Roxanne nodded in the shadows cast by the light of their flashlights and then sent out her nosepass with a flash of red light which was harsh enough to make the two pokémon trainers shield their eyes. As she blinked away the momentary brightness, Roxanne took in the boxy shape of her nosepass. The pokémon had a stubby body hewn out of blue rock save for the prominent red protrusion at its front which gave the species its name. The short arms of Roxanne's nosepass were held against its head and it shuffled around on two small feet as its body swiveled this way and that.
"What's it doing?" asked Brawly.
"Nosepass is reacting to the minerals around it. Its body works as a kind of magnet, so it attracts and is attracted to certain kinds of metal. That's how I'm going to find the pokémon we're looking for," Roxanne said confidently.
"An aron, right?" asked Brawly. "Yeah, I remember now. Said you wanted to try mixing up your team a bit before the next League season starts."
Roxanne didn't look at Brawly, keeping her focus on her slowly rotating pokémon instead, as she said absently, "That's right. I thought it would make for a good project, and surprise a few of the new trainers who thought that raising a grass-type pokémon would help them easily take on my gym." Brawly looked like he might object to her description of her new pokémon as a "project", but Roxanne preempted him by giving a short command to her pokémon, "Nosepass, start charging up your energy for an electrical attack."
"Nose. Pass," the gym leader's pokémon grunted and stopped its swiveling movements so that it could focus on gathering enough energy that its body began to glow with a soft yellow light. It would have hardly been remarkable outside in the island's sunshine, but in the dark recesses of Granite Cave, the glow was enough to shed some light on the room around Roxanne and Brawly to aid the focused beams of their flashlights.
"Perfect," said Roxanne, just as Brawly began warning her, "Be careful, Roxanne, there's a lot of pokémon in here who're going to be drawn to a big glowing target like your nosepass there."
Roxanne's eyes flashed with irritation as she said sharply, "Nosepass isn't a 'target'. It's a highly trained battling pokémon and I'm sure we can handle it." She paused to return a wayward hair to its place in her styled hair before continuing, "Now, if you don't mind, let's get moving. From how Nosepass keeps orienting towards that tunnel there, I'm certain that there is a steel-type pokémon that way, maybe even a whole nest of them. Can we get going?"
Brawly exchanged a look with his makuhita, only for the rotund pokémon to shrug its shoulders. With the same attitude, Brawly conceded, "All right, we can go that way if you'd like. But just be careful, and stay close so you don't get lost."
After his makuhita came Brawly, then Nosepass and its trainer. All of them crept down the tunnel which Roxanne's pokémon had indicated to them and into another cavern, much larger than the first. The group paused only long enough for Brawly to warn them away from dangerous stretches of terrain or areas which hosted especially territorial pokémon. Roxanne ordered halts as well, but only to briefly consult with her nosepass's magnetic wayfinding, and then they were off again. As much as she resisted the sentiment, the gym leader had to be impressed by how extensive the caves under the island's surface were. Roxanne was curious about how often the islanders of Dewford Town came to Granite Cave, only for Brawly to laugh good-naturedly at her question.
"Honestly, if it weren't for me and my gym trainers, I doubt that anyone living on this island would give these caves a second thought!" When he looked back and saw the incredulous look on Roxanne's face, he started to laugh harder, only to remember to muffle the sound to avoid disturbing the pokémon inhabiting the cave around them. "I mean, we always get the people passing through who want to explore a little bit, like the traveling trainers and Steven is always looking for rare rocks. But the people who actually live here don't really see the appeal of climbing into some dangerous caves and bothering some pokémon when there's plenty of beaches to enjoy instead. I guess we're not really people who're interested in excitement for excitement's sake."
"I've noticed," muttered Roxanne under her breath. Then, she offered, "Well, people in Rustboro City don't really like to go trudging through caves, either, but there's still plenty of people who have to do so for travel or for their jobs. The city got its big boost as a mining operation working out of Meteor Falls, actually."
Brawly rolled his broad shoulders and said, "Well, the caves around Rustboro City actually go somewhere, right? Maybe if Granite Cave led somewhere interesting, you'd have more people coming through here, but, then again, maybe not."
Roxanne felt herself getting sucked into what could have proven to be a long conversation, so she changed the subject. "So, do you think we're close to finding an aron, yet? I'd like to get out of here as quickly as possible."
"Yeah, they really like to hang out down here," Brawly answered confidently. "Lots of good rocks for them to munch on. Wait, here comes something now."
The two gym leaders and their pokémon halted and held their breaths as the sounds of an approaching pokémon drew nearer. Roxanne swung her flashlight towards the sound before Brawly could stop her, and the light illuminated a flat purple face with two glittering eyes of mismatched red and blue and a smile of sharp teeth. Before her shriek of surprise had fully left Roxanne's mouth, the strange bipedal pokémon leapt out of the beam of the flashlight to vanish in the darkness. "That was a sableye, right?" asked Roxanne as she turned her flashlight this way and that to try and catch a glimpse of the purple pokémon. "Where did it go?"
"I don't know, but we should go," said Brawly, his usually relaxed voice now tight and firm. "Sableye tend to be loners, but they can be really dangerous in a gang. Even if it is just one, we don't have the best pokémon for fighting one."
"Speak for yourself," Roxanne shot back. She continued her fruitless scan of the cave with her flashlight until she heard an eerie chuckling sound echoing around the cavern. She lifted her flashlight and looked up to see the sableye climbing on the surface of a gargantuan stalagmite. Its gemstone-like eyes flashed when Roxanne's flashlight passed over it and it chittered rapidly before leaping down towards Roxanne and the others, its clawed hands outstretched for an attack.
Roxanne reacted instinctively and she ordered, "Nosepass! Thunderbolt!" For a moment, her pokémon's glow intensified and then went out completely as the stored energy was used up in a massive electrical attack with struck the oncoming sableye midair and sent its compact body flying away into the darkness. "Easy," she said to Brawly. "Now, where did it go?"
While Roxanne's flashlight cut through the darkness, Brawly whispered, "Foresight, Makuhita," to his pokémon. When the next attack came, Makuhita saw it coming and was ready to knock the onrushing sableye back with a steady series of jabs to the purple pokémon's midsection. The sableye scurried away, but not before another one leapt onto Roxanne's nosepass and started gnawing at the top of the rock-type pokémon's stony body.
"Blast it off with another electric attack, Nosepass!" said Roxanne frantically, and her pokémon eagerly complied. It gathered up a store of energy again and funneled it into an attack which threw the sableye off of Nosepass's body with a crack and a shower of sparks which left the smell of burnt ozone in the air. Despite the counterattack's success, the momentary glow of Nosepass's body revealed an array of glittering eyes belonging to more sableye that were drawing a noose around Roxanne, Brawly, and their pokémon. "There's so many of them!" cried Roxanne as she stood back-to-back with Brawly.
"Stay calm," the other gym leader said firmly to Roxanne. Then Brawly called to his partner, "Makuhita! Clear us a way out of here!" Makuhita nodded once and then lunged with a swiftness which belied its body to grab a sableye that had ventured closer than the rest of its gang. With movements honed from years of training, Makuhita pulled the startled pokémon to it by the arm and then lifted it off the ground to throw it at three other sableye. The wild pokémon on either side were able to get out of the way of their ally, but the one in the middle crumpled under the force of its fellow sableye striking it to the ground. "This way!" Brawly yelled, and he grabbed Roxanne's arm to pull her through the opening that his makuhita had made in the group of sableye.
Roxanne made the split-second decision to return her nosepass to its poké ball, and then she devoted her attention to hurrying after Brawly. When his makuhita started to fall behind, Brawly recalled it as Roxanne had done with her pokémon so that the two teenagers could run at full speed away from the horde of sableye nipping at their heels. Questions and worries swirled in Roxanne's head, but she decided not to waste the breath on them when it was more important to keep throwing one foot in front of the other.
For her sake, Brawly panted out, "There's an exit up ahead, lets in enough light, will keep the sableye away." Roxanne just nodded and followed him. The pair built up a steady lead over their pursuers, but as they neared the surface and the tunnels grew tighter, the claustrophobia of the narrow walls and low ceilings was accentuated by the sense of the sableye behind them drawing nearer. Neither of them dared to look back, however, not even when Roxanne swore that she felt a swipe of claws pass through the air where her leg had been a scant moment before.
They reached a narrow vent which was marked by the shaft of sunshine it let into the caves. Brawly stopped and made his stand bathed in that life-giving light. Just the sight of proof of the outside world gave him and Roxanne strength even as the sableye slowed and began to edge cautiously around the fringes of the lit section of the cave. "Climb on up," Brawly said to Roxanne, "makuhita will hold them off until we're out, then I'll call it back. Easy."
"Yeah, easy," huffed Roxanne. She was too winded to make an argument for letting her and her pokémon take on the sableye, so she merely stepped around Brawly and ignored the light that heralded his makuhita's reappearance. There was enough on her plate with climbing the chimney-like passageway out of Granite Cave. Not for the first time today, Roxanne was glad that she had opted for a sensible pair of hiking shorts over her usual dress as she clambered uneasily up the rocky surface of the vent. Her light sweater that Brawly had pointed out got torn on one of the hooks of stone jutting out of the chimney's interior. Roxanne couldn't complain too much, though, because those were the same protrusions that gave her the hand- and footholds she needed to reach safety.
After more than ten minutes of steady climbing, Roxanne's head led the way for the rest of her body to emerge from Granite Cave and onto the surface of the island. She took a deep breath of fresh air and then looked back down the tunnel which had borne her to see that Brawly was clambering his way up with hardly more confidence than that with which Roxanne had tackled the ascent. It was hard to see around the edges of his body, but Roxanne could hear the sounds of struggle going on below. "Is Makuhita all right?" she asked Brawly.
"When I get up there," responded the other gym leader, forcing each word through gritted teeth as he pulled himself up. Finally, Brawly tumbled out of the cave's opening and spun around on his hands and knees so that he could aim Makuhita's poké ball back down the shaft and summoned his pokémon back with a steady beam of red light. Once he had his pokémon in hand, Brawly rolled away from the opening in the earth with a relieved smile on his face. "Well, was that enough excitement for you, Roxanne?"
Roxanne let herself smile and she said, "I think so. Suddenly all of the islanders staying away from this place makes a lot more sense. Those aren't quite whismur that you've got down there."
"No, not quite," agreed Brawly happily. The two of them just lay on the uncomfortable ground for a few minutes, slowing their racing heartrates and counting themselves lucky to be out in the sunshine instead of stuck inside the bowels of Granite Cave.
A small noise attracted Roxanne's attention and she turned her head without moving the rest of her body and was pleasantly surprised to find herself watching a gleaming, silver-armored aron lazily chewing on a heavy stone held between its front paws. "Brawly," Roxanne said quietly so as not to startle her quarry, "I found an aron. I'm going to go catch it." The other gym leader flashed her a thumbs up but didn't show any signs of getting up from his sprawled-out position on the ground. The message was obvious: Roxanne was going to handle it by herself.
And handle it she would, Roxanne decided as she lifted herself up first onto one knee and then back onto her feet. The teenager's legs were still shaky after sprinting through Granite Cave to get away from the gang of wild sableye, and that helped Roxanne to move slowly as she started towards the aron. It was hard to be stealthy in the open air on the domed surface, so the wild pokémon saw Roxanne coming with plenty of notice. Roxanne's hand slipped down to Nosepass's poké ball, but she didn't send out her pokémon just yet. There was no need when the aron's only response to her approach was to keep one strikingly blue eye on her while it continued gnawing on its chunk of rock.
"Steady, steady," Roxanne said to herself as she drew within a few yards of her target. Her hand was outstretched as though to beckon the aron to come and smell her and become familiar with her, but while that trick might have worked when meeting a friend's tamed pokémon in her home, the aron showed no sign of abandoning its snack. That was fine with Roxanne, because as soon as she reckoned that she was in the optimal range for her nosepass's abilities, she released her pokémon from its poké ball and was satisfied that the wild aron immediately stood up and studied the new arrival without showing any signs of running away.
Curiosity instead of fear meant that the aron was fairly confident in its own strength, and that was what Roxanne was looking for in the new member for her team. But the aron's confidence was going to prove misplaced soon enough. "Nosepass, start things off with a Thunder Wave," ordered Roxanne, and her pokémon hurried to obey her command. Thrusting its stubby arms in front of itself, Nosepass sent a wave of debilitating electrical energy that made the wild aron squeal in discomfort and shiver as sparks danced across the surface of its metal armor. It still didn't move to flee, which cemented Roxanne's opinion of the small pokémon. Instead, the aron lowered its head and took off running at Nosepass.
The wild aron's heavily armored skull struck Roxanne's nosepass with enough force that it pushed the larger pokémon back a few feet, though ultimately Nosepass absorbed the headbutt without difficulty. When its opponent tried to put some distance between itself and Nosepass, Roxanne's pokémon held out its arms again. This time the waves that Nosepass generated were magnetic in nature, and they exerted an irresistible pull on the aron's armored body, keeping it pressed against Nosepass's body. The wild aron was unable to effectively retreat or counterattack, but Roxanne's pokémon had the aron right where it wanted it.
"Thunderbolt, Nosepass," Roxanne ordered as calmly as if she had been answering a professor's question in the lecture hall. At once, her pokémon gathered up the energy required for its attack and then released it in a surge that echoed the attack it used against a sableye in the caves earlier. Even in the bright afternoon sun, Nosepass's attack shone with such brilliance that Roxanne shielded her eyes as a precaution and, when she opened them, the aron was swaying on its feet, but still standing.
"Perfect," Roxanne said to herself, then to her pokémon she shouted, "Nosepass! Finish this with your Rock Tomb attack!"
Nosepass lifted its arms as high as it could, and though that display was not impressive on its own, it was accompanied by stray rocks rising from the earth in response to Nosepass's movements. While the rock-type pokémon concentrated, it gathered the disparate pieces of earth overhead and then brought it down hard on the already woozy aron, knocking the armored pokémon to the ground. Once it was satisfied that its foe was not going to continue to fight, Roxanne's pokémon stepped aside to let its trainer approach the defeated aron with an empty red and white poké ball in her outstretched hand.
Roxanne knelt down by the unconscious aron and, without any ceremony, she tapped the poké ball against aron's helmeted head and watched the wild pokémon be absorbed inside of the capsule. Rustboro City's gym leader watched with the same steady gaze as the poké ball in her hand shook with surprising vigor despite its occupant's unconscious state. But in the end, there were no surprises and the poké ball ceased shaking with a soft "ding". "Good work, Nosepass," Roxanne said to her go-to pokémon and returned it to its own poké ball before marching back over to where Brawly was still lounging on the ground, watching the clouds drifting overhead, she thought.
"I caught my aron," Roxanne said as she sat down next to her colleague.
"Was it worth the wait?" Brawly asked with a relaxed smile.