Author's Note: This diverted FAR from where I initially planned it to a year ago, but I did a weird amount of research for some of my history classes on scientific theories from the 19th century that we would consider odd nowadays. And I always loved Journey to the Center of the Earth and other Hollow Earth novels as a kid, so this scratched that itch. We won't fully explore this YET, but this is definitely a sneak peak of where things are going to go after the New Island arc.

Anyways as there are new acquisitions here let's recap current team and then I'll toss the new acquisitions in at the end, I don't do this every chapter as I view it as word count padding if there's nothing new:

Nidorina- Cleo

Marowak- Estella

Rhyhorn- Alberich

Quagsire- Huckleberry

Piloswine- Alexei

Alolan Sandshrew- Brinker

Scyther- Artagnan

Galarian Meowth- Rum Tum

Chapter 11: Hollow Earth Theory

It turns out I was far ahead of the game of canon, Grampa Canyon, on a rocky peninsula jutting out between Pallet and the Cycling Road, had yet to be discovered or bought up by the company that started the Fossil Rush from the anime.

I forlornly surveyed the landscape, so different from what it would be after a bunch of fossil hunters and Team Rocket got through with it. It was, in a word, breathtaking. It reminded me of the Chaco Canyon region of New Mexico, just without the cliff dwellings and kivas. It was completely untouched by humans instead.

My old life rarely felt close and personal, instead feeling more like a distant dream that was a barely remembered haze unless some outside stimulus triggered it, which was why most of the time the only things I remembered were triggered memories of observing or playing Pokemon media.

But sometimes a specific object or view would trigger something else. Something that felt deeper. This vista was one of those moments.

I long since had stopped feeling sad or morose when these moments hit, however, whatever life I had had I could feel it had been full and vibrant, so it only made sense to enjoy this one to as full and vibrant a level.

I had to cut my appreciation for nature's beauty down to get to business. I called out my newly evolved piloswine, Alexei, to help me survey the ground for fissures, sinkholes, or other ingress points to the cavern system I hoped was filled with ancient pokemon just like canon.

I also released Cleo, my poor nidorina and starter who hadn't gotten as much action as she deserved lately. She'd do well with helping defend from any wild pokemon while Alexei swept the area with his seismic senses.

I had my suspicions from pulling up some cursory land surveying data that was available for the area and led us around and over some of the fissure-like canyons towards a high mesa that was the remains of a volcano whose cone had collapsed inward after it went extinct.

Cleo only had to growl at a few curious graveler, every other wild pokemon in the area, of which there weren't many, were weak enough that two middle stage evolutions scared them off.

It was quite the hike from the shoreline, which had cliffs that were a pain to scale…if I hadn't grabbed the Rock Climb technical machine from a Porto Vista shop I might have been in for a real problem. Luckily with the machine Alberich had been able to charge me up the sheer coastal cliff faces with ease, I'd returned my rhyhorn afterwards but once we managed to reach the odd volcanic mesa I assumed I'd be bringing him back out.

I admired the region even more the further we explored, if the ancient pokemon find panned out I might try to purchase the land from the League and set up my research-gym for my trainer retirement I had planned after I had a title or two under my belt. That probably would require me to also take some time off for an internship with a known professor as well unless they wanted to outright sponsor my set-up.

We were about half-way up the mesa and about ten meters short of where I would bring out Alberich for another Rock Climb when Alexei began snuffling excitedly around a boulder lodged in a mountainside depression.

"We get a hit? There's a hollow area pretty near the surface?"

His bushy brown eyebrows waggled excitedly which I took as an affirmative.

I grinned, "Perfect! Alright, Alexei, return! Let's get digging, Brinker!"

The Alolan Sandshrew really was my most versatile team member, though he'd likely be somewhat eclipsed on the offensive flexibility side by Cleo when I finally decided to give her the Moon Stone I'd managed to pick up at the same time as the Rock Climb TM. Porto Vista had great shopping.

"Oh…I hope Misty is still there when the tentacool swarm happens to de-escalate that and get her horsea."

I shrugged, that was a canon event I was firmly lodging in the 'not my problem' territory. As Team Rocket had acted so differently on the Anne that I couldn't possibly assume it would have gone the same way as canon even without me.

Hell, Rocket apparently had mid-tier members that were from a spin-off game, memories of which had been pretty sparse until triggered by meeting Sierra. Before then, the only time I had ever had those memories triggered had been when I met Professor Willow at a conference with my father.

An excited cry of "Shreeeewww!" cut off my musings, however. Apparently Brinker had broken into the hollow zone.

Equally excited myself, I ducked into the decently sized tunnel for a pokemon of his size, he'd known to enlarge it enough and keep it shallow enough a decline that I could follow him in.

Shaking a professional grade glow-rod I held it up and the blue light illuminated a tunnel that went at least ten meters in and down until it broke into a chamber a short hop above the floor.

Cleo followed closely behind and soon we were standing below our ingress tunnel with Brinker happily dancing around and twirling, he was an excitable fellow outside of battle.

"Alright, bud, let's calm down and lower the volume just in case we aren't-"

First one, then two, then over a dozen pairs of red eyes illuminated the distant darkness."

"Alone…" I sighed releasing Alberich and Estella from their pokeballs as an angry, "Tops!" echoed out.

One instant they were forming in bursts of red light, the next Estella was in front of me, blocking a kabutops's scythe-like claw on its quest for my jugular.

"Yep, GO TIME!" I called out, taking a small leap back myself.

"Alberich, bodyguard and artillery support! Cleo, hit and run with Double Kick. Brinker, you're crowd control! Estella, beat down time!"

I backed up to the wall below our tunnel with Alberich in front of me. Brinker rolled off with Rollout to use Mist to create a wall of obscured vision stopping our not-so-fossilized foes from accurately spamming long range moves like the Water Guns that almost immediately after began firing through that fog and hitting the walls and boulders around us.

Estella, meanwhile, was having a rapid exchange of Bone Rush and Slash with the kabutops that had rushed out of the darkness. Whatever she didn't duck and dodge she leaned into and took like a champ on her rock hard skull. As they fought I noticed something odd about the creature she was fighting, it wasn't the standard brown and cream of a normal kabutops or the green of a shiny one. The coloring was some kind of mottled brown, black, and gray. Likely an adaptation coming from hundreds of generations of living in this cavern system.

"Alberich, Stealth Rocks into the Mist to intercept!" I commanded, causing Alberich to pause in his opportunistic usage of the occasional Rock Throw to instead send a bunch of rocky shards hovering off into Brinker's Mist.

A mix of cries from unknown assailants from the fog told me it was a good call.

Well, I could assume they were a mix of kabuto and omanyte, but technically they were still unknown.

An angry omastar managed to break through the line, looking pretty beat up, that was when I pulled out the first specialized pokeball and lobbed it at the creature. Sure enough, it was injured enough that the increased catch chance of the Dusk Ball sealed it away with very little struggle.

The ball sparkled in white light and disappeared over to the automatic storage system. I'd told the ranch supervisor that I was going to be likely to catch some volatile pokemon and to keep anything that came in on stasis until I dropped by to work on them personally.

The flash of light and the disappearance of his comrade startled the kabutops and it left an opening where Estella was able to slam a Bone Club into its skull, dazing it and opening it up directly for me to nail it with yet another Dusk Ball.

A few more cries from the Mist caused my grin to grow even bigger, "Brinker, Rapid Spin to clear your Mist!"

He did so as the kabutops's pokeball flashed away as well and I pulled a few more out to rapid fire catch the omanyte and kabuto that Brinker had mercilessly knocked out while they were trapped in his domain.

After about five minutes of constant throws I sat down, slightly winded.

"Whew! There must have been almost twenty!" I stated in surprise, far more than in the anime episode I vaguely remembered.

Looking around I saw perhaps why, there were a lot of shells of hollowed out kabuto and omanyte with very large teeth marks.

"The aerodactyl doesn't live here…it hunts here." I looked around, searching for some way deeper into the subterranean system I had no doubt that I had stumbled onto.

Cleo pointed and I slowly looked up to see that on a ledge overlooking a pool of water was a rather large opening of a tunnel.

"That must lead in deeper!" I grinned around at my team, "Wanna check it out?"

Final Note:

New acquisitions:

Kabutops x1, Omastar x1, Kabuto x10, Omanyte x6.