Author's Note: This Desert Resort mini-arc has decided it's going to be slightly less mini than I originally thought. Looking through the Bulbapedia and Serebii data on possible encounters and such in the area really just lengthened what I wanted to do.
Also it's hilarious how much easier it is to write when I'm stuck at the front desk when they don't need me for covering classes than literally any other time.
Also having done desert archaeology survey (and excavation, but the survey work is what's relevant) work in the American Southwest, I would have KILLED to have had some pokemon along when I was surveying haha.
Chapter 16: The Heat Was Hot
The next day did not go any better. We managed to get a good fight in for Hannibal on a particularly tough crustle, which I captured more for breeding and move tutoring purposes than to add to my fighting team, and then he was amicable to flying scouting missions. He was to check back immediately upon finding any ruins like what I showed him from my sketchbook and some print outs of ruins with architecture from the same time period, the First Unovan Unification Period, and to check in with a flyover every hour to catch our own directional bearings for his next pass.
We could only move so quickly on the ground compared to him so as long as he knew the direction we were heading he could quickly calculate where we were likely to be when he next needed to check in.
It was long, hot, and grueling to survey what felt like half the desert. However, I did not get exhausted as easily as I thought I would, something about the desert's environment was invigorating. The heat was draining but the crunch of the sand beneath my boots or the crumbling dirt of the embankments along the long dried riverbeds invigorated me.
Eventually when we came across another oasis, much smaller than the one where the bisharp had been camping, I decided to take a siesta. I let Estella munch on some berries from the miniaturized case I took out of my bag while I pulled out my pokegear's uploaded Unova map and my printed out copy of an archival map of the region from around two hundred years prior I had found through some research.
I frowned as I scrutinized the maps once more. There were…discrepancies. However, in a world where there were creatures able to literally move or alter mountains on a whim this wasn't too shocking. What was curious however was how subtle some of the changes were. Instead of a gaping sinkhole, new mountain, or leveled mountain…I noticed that one of the dried riverbeds was completely different between the two maps.
Which considering that the Desert Resort had been uninhabited since before the oldest map was…very odd. Why would someone move a dry and inactive riverbed? When nobody lived there?
I had, however, based some of my surveying along the lines of where the riverbeds had been moving. Civilization required water, that was an inherent fact of life. And the ancient civilization that had built the Relic Castle and Colossus Ruins would have been advanced enough and controlled strong enough pokemon to build irrigation I had to assume.
So taking into consideration the old lay of the changed riverbed and ideal irrigation patterns…along with distance from the Relic Castle for optimal regional control…I still had about four new possible locations.
Groaning, I fell back upon the oasis's ochre embankment. Estella looked over at me questioningly, picking up her bone and gesturing about asking if she needed to hit something for me.
"No, girl. I'm just mentally wiped out. Here, I'll set up a proximity alarm and we can take a nap under this palm tree, yeah?"
She nodded enthusiastically and I took out a Silph brand mine looking device from my pack. I set it for proximity detection, it would let out a whine if anything got close, and I laid back to rest my eyes and my mind for just a little bit.
It was not frequently that I had a dream that was not a triggered memory from my past life. Of watching a battle involving a pokemon I had recently seen, a person I had recently met, or in slightly less frequent cases of seeing myself do work similar to that which I had done the day before.
This siesta nap was an exception. I was swept up in a sandstorm. After what felt like being stranded inside of it for ten or twenty minutes I decided to move forwards, it was…not quite a lucid dream state, but it felt close. I had some slight intention to react to the situation. But I couldn't really decide to do anything other than move forward.
I pushed forward against the howling wind and sand for what felt like hours. A sensation of pressure began to weigh on me, making it harder and harder to mentally will my dream-self forward.
Eventually, in the distance I saw a large silhouette looming in the center of the sandstorm.
"Un un…UN!"
The pressure increased and I snapped awake. Flailing, because some heavy weight had settled on top of my stetson that I'd put over my face and eyes to stop errant sand from blowing and irritating me as I napped.
"Va va ba!" Something called as I lifted my quite heavy hat off of my face.
Two curious bug-eyes stared back at me.
"Uh…hello?" I said, blinking up at the vibrava roosted upon my hat. Holding up thirty pounds of dragon-bug was…not as difficult as it would have been in my past life. I had to chock it up to pokemon world fuckery. My mind immediately flashed to a scene of Ash running while carrying an entire larvitar with himself. Those things were a hundred and fifty pounds! Or seventy-two kilos! Five times what this little guy weighed.
"Va bra!" It chittered back at me, lifting a front leg to…wave hello?
"Umm…hello to you, too?" I glanced over at the now awake Estella who just shrugged at me. She didn't know what to make of the encounter either.
It happily chittered in response to my greeting. I set the stetson aside, pokemon still perched, and took out my pokedex for a quick scan. It appeared it was in its later adolescent phase and a female. She would likely be ready to evolve here in the wilds in the next few months. At that point the new flygon would likely migrate out of Unova. In fact, many vibrava migrated for better hunting southwest across the sea into Hoenn anyways. Trapinch was not originally a native pokemon, they'd become semi-invasive in the Desert Resort after a few flygon had been stranded here during that maritime trade conflict in the previous generation.
"I'm Isaac and this is Estella," I introduced ourselves, it was only polite.
The happy chittering continued. I offered her a mago berry and she snapped it straight up.
She eventually fluttered over to Estella and had what appeared to be a riveting conversation, she was very expressive and gesticulated wildly with her forelegs, Estella looking on in bemusement.
Eventually I had an idea and brought my marked up map over to her, "Hey…I was wondering if you could help me, if this," I pointed to a marker on the map, "Were the Relic Castle," I showed an image of the full structure, "And this was where the riverbed is now," I pulled up and gestured to the current placement on the updated map, "Do any of these locations have human buildings and ruins similar to the Relic Castle?" I gestured to the four pinned possible locations I had on my pokegear map.
She made a show of considering it, then nodded and pointed at the location furthest from the Relic Castle, in the southeast of the Desert Resort, about…oh maybe a two hour hike from where we currently rested.
"That's not bad! Thank you so much!" I decided that next time Hannibal flew over I'd call him down and return him and we'd move over that way. He deserved a rest and some BBQ jerky for his efforts today.
Luckily we only had to wait another fifteen or so minutes for him to circle around, he took a moment to menace our little vibrava visitor until I chastised him and tossed him his BBQ jerky and returned him.
"Sorry about him, he's new and grew up…more wild than normal."
We got on our way, the little vibrava darting around through the air ahead of us as we headed towards the ruins location she had indicated.
I started humming a tune that I am fairly sure came from my past life as we made our way forward. After the siesta and a new burst of hope I felt fully reinvigorated.
The vibrava looked on in interest partway through our journey when I called Cleo out to fight a duo of maractuses that tried to ambush us, I didn't want to risk Estella wasting too much stamina on a bad match-up when we still had the actual ruins to explore before we could leave back to comfort and civilization.
"Sludge Wave!" I called out after she caught a sucker punch that had been aimed at her and launched the cactus creature back through the air towards the other one.
The second yelped in surprise as its compatriot slammed into it and they were both shortly thereafter swamped by the poisonous sludge.
Beaten, they scrambled to retreat and I held up a hand to have Cleo back off and allow them to flee, "Not worth it, Cleo, let's get back on task."
She nodded and I returned her and we began moving again.
Estella was more than capable of fighting the scraggy and darumaka we ran into on the duration of the hike. There was barely more than a moment of pausing while she deftly handled those encounters. Perhaps I'd try to see if I could get her to learn Fire Punch so I could trust her more in some of the bad match-ups to use her speed to mitigate the handicap. She'd be a great choice in the Grass Arena of the prelims if I did that actually, trick the opponent into complacency. We'd see, she was already likely at her maximum number of mastered techniques before adding more would cause stress, strain, and perhaps even a deterioration of technical skill in the others.
Those few hours passed far more quickly now that we had a true destination in mind and pretty soon I saw the line of darmanitan statue-pillars begin to appear, stretching off into the distance where a half buried arch blurred into view.
"Dile, San!" A challenge echoed through the ruins as we approached, and quite comically a sandile burst from the sand, screaming what I could only assume were obscenities at us.
"I…you know what, I like his spunk. Don't hit him too hard, okay, Estella?" She chuffed in amusement and leapt forward, bone flourishing elaborately as she moved in for a quick knockout.
"Sand!" It gasped in shock and…I think I felt some indignation there, too. As if us daring to stand up to it was an affront? He was certainly an odd specimen, I mused as it 'dodged' Estella's feinted strike only to get punched by her empty fist and sent slamming under one of the darmanitan statues. I pulled out a Level Ball and caught it without much fuss from there.
"Well…he's going to be entertaining, at least!" My chuckling was cut short when the statue moved.
"Uh oh…" A Zen Mode darmanitan burst off the pillar, screaming angrily as it leapt at Estella.
"Nope!" I returned Estella and swapped her out immediately for Hannibal, he'd love this fight and his Crunch would do some work here if the creature was going to stay in Zen Mode.
"Hannibal, do your thing!" I called out as he appeared in the air above the befuddled former statue.
"Cru-and you're already on it, awesome."
Having smart pokemon was a blessing and a curse. It made them easier to train in tactics, but it also could make you feel a little useless in battle when they immediately jumped into the tactics you spent time teaching them.
He'd recognized the psychic glow around the darmanitan as its Zen Headbutt faded and had immediately gone for the move that utilized Dark-type energy. Just like I'd taught him over the past few weeks. I didn't have a dedicated anti-psychic yet, so I'd drilled recognizing that haze of energy into his rocky skull.
Hopefully with the pawniard egg, the new sandile, and this golurk I was planning to catch I would be able to safely say I had a full contingent of anti-psychic monsters to pull from.
"Bra! Bra!" The vibrava fluttered a foot or so behind me and…was making punching motions as Hannibal tore into this guardian of the ruins.
"Getting a taste for battle are we?" I joked and she actually nodded back at me in affirmation. "Va va!" She buzzed lightly and a lime green light of a Bug Buzz glowed around her.
"Oh? You think you could take it if it had come at you?"
"Ba ba!"
She and I continued our little side conversation as Hannibal wrapped up his fight, he worked best when I gave him slack on his leash anyways.