{ === + === }
So, I found a job that requires the use of a van.
Or, rather, A job needs quite a lot of vans and I happen to have one.
So!
South of Lumiose, a Mystery Dungeon opened up. The Rangers have the place cordoned off and Trainers are exploring it…as en masse as a Dungeon allows them to.
Mysteries Dungeons are…well, dungeons, I guess. I'll be calling them Dungeons for short.
Ahem.
According to currently accepted research, a Dungeon is basically a tear into a different dimension. Which, y'know, makes perfect sense given that there are Legendary Pokemon who are very good at this kind of thing. They last for some amount of time before they close, and are in general very dangerous to explore, with even the most peaceful locations being on par with Deep Wild areas.
Tangent: some company in Alola seems to be researching on how to harness these Dungeons. I wish them luck, they'll probably fail.
Anyways.
This current Dungeon was detected about a month ago, has an estimated duration of eleven days, and seems to be primarily grass themed. It's currently day three, and on the ninth day the Rangers will close exploration to minimize the risk of people getting trapped on the other side.
My job is basically to be one of many first aid tents available for the trainers. I patch up minor damage and do some triage, and anything heavier is flown to the nearest hospital in Lumiose for intensive care.
So, what is a Dungeon?
Officially, they're called 'Nonstandard Dimensional Aberrations', and come in two flavors, commonly referred to as 'Rifts' and 'Dungeons'. The official label also implies a 'standard dimensional aberration', though I have no idea what that could be.
Standard ones would be, say, Giratina's personal domain, or the Ultra Domain in Sun/Moon. In Game terms, any area that lacks a time limit (even if they're only one-off areas) are considered Standard Dimensional Aberrations.
In any case, a Rift is small, and a Dungeon is large. A Rift is basically just a boss fight, while a Dungeon is similar to how the Mystery Dungeon Games work.
For clarity's sake: in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, you play as Pokemon and walk around on a tile-based, randomly generated map of big rooms and long corridors. Fighting is turn-based and moves, items, so on, are retooled to have relevant effects or application for that 2D space.
Dungeons here are, therefore, rooms and corridors by and large. Differences are that instead of corridors being good places to keep your fights 1-on-1 unless ghosts or water tiles exist, corridors are good places to keep your fights many-on-few and sneak surrounds are depressingly common.
To elaborate, in-game there are impassable tiles (more or less). No impassables in reality, especially for Pokemon that are very used to the Dungeons. Also no forced 2D map, so, y'know, beware of above and underground where conditions apply.
Dungeons are also huge. In-game, each instance dungeon is usually multiple maps, because yay memory restrictions. In reality, each Dungeon may as well be one giant map. It's fairly common for Dungeons that are open for a month to have an estimated completion rate of maybe 15% by the time it closes.
From a non-map-related difficulty standpoint…
Rifts are, again, basically just a boss fight. There may be a little complexity in the layout, but usually there's a Pokemon much, much stronger than it has any right to be and there are goodies and interesting things in the rift so the Pokemon would have to be disabled or killed in order to get them. Most of the time the Pokemon can just be convinced after a fashion, but sometimes there are some definitely dangerous ones.
That said, most of the time the mission is just to guard the Rift–they generally close after a day.
Speaking of Rifts, I've heard that the…place. Uh…Galar. Galar and Paldea, actually. Both regions are known for having a lot of Rifts open up in their region. Paldea in particular is dealing with Pokemon that have crystals or something growing on them.
Both regions are in preliminary talks to join the IPL. A lot of…opinion, is on them wanting help to deal with these Rifts. Supposedly most of their Rifts were pretty benign until very recently. 'Very Recently' as in fifty years ago, give or take.
Anyways.
Dungeons are worse.
It's not really noticeable in Rifts, but both types create significant amounts of stress due to the fact that they're 'Dimensionally Distant', whatever that means. This makes it difficult for Pokemon and people to work in a Dungeon for long periods of time. Pokemon armed with cameras and radios are primary explorers, taking most of the danger onto themselves. People follow after to set up campsites and defensive positions so those Pokemon can rest.
One of the hardest jobs in a Dungeon exploration team is setting up new campsites, because they get attacked constantly. Dungeon Pokemon are, at their weakest, on par with Deep Wild Pokemon several levels higher, and getting mobbed tends to be an inevitability, so, yeah, dangerous.
Campsites, when fully set up, have a healing aura, beam walls, and so on, so there's a chance for Pokemon to rest there and for humans to move in and be forward operations.
I think if we were to translate it into game terms…it would be like if Pokemon lost 1 HP for every step they took? And move PP is divided by five.
The benefits for exploring Dungeons, on the other hand, are stuff like: ribbons, orbs, gummis, and TMs. so, in other words, standard drops of the Mystery Dungeon games.
In order of value…
Orbs are highly condensed amounts of Pokemon Elemental Energy. They have their own effects–a Blowback Orb will blow someone in front of you back–but they're usually sold to be decanted back into energy. That energy is the bread and butter of EV boosters–Iron, Calcium, so on–and therefore orbs fetch a decent price.
Gummis are similar, they're highly condensed PEE, but increase IV instead. Not as universally sellable as an Orb, but trainers will pay more for them. In game terms, they can max out, then go over, the IV cap of 31. In Here terms, I've never seen a Pokemon eat a gummi so I don't know how much the impact is.
TMs are…Technical Machines. They're about as effective as the ones the Rangers have but are more brittle and require more maintenance. Usually they're not sold, but kept as a part of the trainer or an associated team's inventory because buying/renting TMs for daily use is expensive.
Pokemon will eventually entirely forget TM moves if not refreshed. The ones gotten from a Dungeon are marked as DTMs until they're retooled according to IPL specifications, which is usually a few days, tops.
So, yeah, TMs are incredibly valuable but have a small target audience.
Lastly, ribbons. Ribbons are PEE condensed into physical material and they have a frankly absurd concentration level. Ribbons, then, are highly sought after due to, among other things, the fact that they can be made into other stuff, like jewelry, appliances, high performance pokeballs, healing equipment, and so on. Each ribbon is cheaper than a TM, sure, but ribbons can be sold basically everywhere.
…
Monetary rewards aside, there's also a practical purpose to exploring a Dungeon.
Dungeon Pokemon are powerful, and, well, if we can enter a Dungeon then the residents of said Dungeon can also get out. Depending on where a Dungeon is, a Pokemon getting out can be, at best, very very bad, and at worst, cause incredible loss of life.
Like…say there's a Dragon-themed Dungeon and a pissed off Dungeon Salamence decides to wander out of the Dungeon. Salamence are not known for having good special attack, so if it flies and decides to Hyper Beam Lumiose because the city looked at it funny, then, fortunately, we'd be looking at casualties in the hundreds of thousands within the first five minutes.
And that would be bad. So, yeah. A little bit of community service is expected of the very powerful when Dungeons show up.
…
All that aside, my job is not to do anything with a Dungeon and just be on the outside with refreshments.
My van, like many others, is parked at the foot of the hill that the Dungeon appeared on. The Dungeon itself is like shimmering hot air, but huge. Like a ten-meter tall wall of shimmering air. Ten meter tall wall of shimmering air and a tear in space in the middle. Probably should have described the tear first.
The tear is the gateway to the other side, and we can see, to some extent, what the other side looks like through the tear. It's about five meters up on our side, and ground level on the other side, so there's a bit of a climb. The Rangers got a temporary ramp built real quick on the first day.
Apart from me, there's maybe at least fifty other cars here. Some are like me, healer vans, and others are catering.
There are several teams here, too…I count at least five C1 banners. There's also a Sub-League team, with their own skyship, even.
The Rangers have two skyships. The skyships have cannons. The cannons are pointed at the Dungeon entrance. There is always a non-zero chance that the exploration can dramatically fail and Dungeon Pokemon who are, again, very strong, come out and play in a non-friendly manner.
To get into the proper mindset of what you'd have to do to handle Dungeon Pokemon: imagine a scenario in the game, like, say, fighting Lance in Elite Four, and his Pokemon are all a hundred levels above yours. And moves like Endeavor only cuts enemy HP equal to the HP you've lost, so goodbye FEAR, and so on.
Dungeon Pokemon are also uncatchable-ish. The dimensional differences can be analyzed and mitigated, but until that happens a Pokeball will not work. The differences can be analyzed, with the fastest available technical prowess available, in about three months.
So, yeah.
…
Incidentally, my special vision lets me see information about the dungeon that nobody sees, such as, but not limited to, the dungeon typing and its dimensional bandwidth–how strong is it from a non-Pokemon standpoint. I have no way to use 90% of the information available but, y'know, it's good for my ego.
Some of the other information I do have includes a top-down map of the entire Dungeon. Which is nice. The map has no information beyond basic geography, but it's nice to see what it kinda looks like. I could probably copy it for some neat fantasy world maps.
Something that's actually useful in meaningful ways is a relative power gauge. It's a percentage comparison between Dungeon and non-Dungeon Pokemon, and it shows both an aggregate for the entire dungeon, as well as trends for each room or corridor. If I see that the gauge is tipping heavily in favor of Dungeon Pokemon, I mentally get ready to treat patients and move stuff around just in case.
I'm trying not to move stuff around, actually, because I'm not exactly hidden out here and I imagine there's at least somebody who would have drawn a reasonable conclusion as to why I always put my phone down before we get a lot of casualties.
…
The job doesn't really pay well, per se. My expenses are covered and that's pretty much it. I originally wanted to rent a hotel or something near Lumiose so I wouldn't have to drive all the way back to Shalour, but the hotels were full because, y'know, Dungeon, so I'm just sleeping in the car.
It's a standard Lumiose summer so it's very nice out. Misdreavus comes out to play in the night and if you're nice to them they'll cool you down via haunting you. Kinda weird, but, y'know, comes with the territory and all that.
Also Dusknoirs come out to play at night as well and man I can go without seeing one of them in my face in the future, thank you.
Anyways.
…
…
It is now Day Seven.
Casualties for the Dungeon is hovering at around three hundred a day. No fatalities yet because nobody under C1-rank is dumb enough to bite off more than they can chew. The strong take point, the weak do collection and logistics.
I got a few repeat customers because my special vision lets me know what kind of damage a Pokemon suffered beyond physical ones, so my treatment is usually faster and more effective.
Tangent: the healing provided by the Pokemon Center-esque equipment can be tuned for specific injuries that heals them up faster and more completely. It also feels better, in the same vein that sometimes the things we do to heal from injuries are kinda ouchies and it'd be nice if they were less ouchies, and such.
So, yeah, I've been moved to be closer to the C1 team 'Avalanche', which specializes in…Ice and Steel types. Sure, I guess. It's a little annoying because the ice types drop the temperature much lower than comfortable, but eh.
They're nice people. Tappy and Patty are not amused at being around their type weakness, though.
…
Day Eight.
Things go bad.
Something happened in the Dungeon. I'm not sure what, but the relative power gauge suddenly spiked towards the Dungeon. Casualties have spiked up to the low thousands.
Like there are a lot of teams participating in this thing.
…
Day Nine.
Avalanche has two of its members trapped, or at least, not accounted for. The situation in the Dungeon in general had gone sour quickly, and yesterday's final tally had nearly a hundred fatalities on the Pokemon side, and near total losses of human life on the support squad side.
Avalanche is planning a rescue for its squad, or at least confirm that their members are dead.
The Problem is that there is a Rift-class Pokemon that appeared near the entrance, so getting past it and heading in the correct direction is near impossible.
…well. I feel bad. I'm not involved, but I feel bad. Again, they're good people, and seeing some of the team members old enough to be my parents crying their eyes out makes me feel…guilty? Not quite the right word, but close enough.
Again, the map is divided into corridors and rooms, and even if the discrepancy in reality isn't so clear cut, it's still clear enough that people periodically relay back their position through radios and repeaters.
The Rangers have a flow chart of what the Dungeon looks like, with pins denoting who has gone where. I have a more detailed map in my head, and I can see, through the relative power balance, where the team is.
This could work.
…
Day Ten.
Last day before the rangers close it down for good. They're debating closing it down early due to, y'know.
I've written down directions that would lead to the last known position of the trapped Avalanche folks, just one rescue plan out of many. I've taken care to avoid giving too much advice, because I don't know what the inside actually looks like and do not wish to guess.
The Avalanche rescue team is: Froslass, Glaceon, Weavile, Ralts.
Weavile is the point man with his speed and, if needed, the distraction if the rescue party is intercepted.
Froslass is on defense, what with being a shooty shooty lady and all.
Glaceon's main job is to carry Ralts, and Ralt's main job is to do the recovery via Teleport. This Ralts is telepathically linked to a Gardevoir stationed outside. They have a map of the region built using their information, though I've submitted a slightly revised one that the Rangers are going to use because it's better drawn. Strictly speaking, they can use earpieces and radios since the gear is still there and working, but for best chances they're on total radio silence. The eight potential locations of the rescue targets are marked as well. For obvious reasons, the first point of interest on my map is the correct one.
Since the map is mine, I'm on revision duty in case revision is needed.
The four Pokemon all volunteered for this mission. Before they depart, they bid their trainers goodbye. Weavile in particular is trying very hard to sooth a young girl sobbing into its arms. Seems like it's used to it.
…I don't like the way it's smiling. It looks so…ready.
I wish there's something more concrete I could do.
…
Whew. Ok.
Through judicious use of the surviving sensors, the team enters when the Rift-class Pokemon is away.
Rescue Mission Start.
…
[Five minutes in]
All is well.
[Ten minutes]
Team has reached the first room.
[Fifteen minutes]
Team has reached the second room. There are fifteen rooms until the target.
[Twenty minutes]
Team has reached the fourth room.
[Thirty minutes]
Team has encountered a problem. The seventh room has a Pokemon guarding it and the team cannot fight it. It may be a Grass dungeon but unusuals do happen.
Gardevoir silently pings me for instructions, and I quickly map out a viable drag-and-escape route for the Weavile to take.
[Forty minutes]
Weavile has removed the problem and is on the run. The Team has reached the ninth room.
I have absolutely no skin in any of this and I am so, so scared right now.
It may just be the stress talking but I feel like crying.
[Fifty minutes]
Weavile has broken radio silence. She is isolated.
Team has reached the tenth room. Glaceon wants to double back for his teammate.
I don't know where Weavile is because she doesn't know where she is. Her strength isn't showing up at all on the power ratio gauge.
Do I have any more map modes? Anything that I overlooked?
The girl that was with Weavile has stopped crying. She's stopped doing anything.
I have to have something.
[One hour. T+60]
Weavile is under attack. She's fighting and running. No going back.
The team has reached the twelfth room. Only three left.
I asked the handles to let us know if Weavile sees any kind of large landmarks in the rooms she's hitting.
[T+70]
Weavile is at a room with three pillars. I have a match on my map.
The Team has reached the 15th room. The Avalanche party is mangled, bodies everywhere, but not all is lost. The surviving members of the team are hunkered down and hiding. Ralts will do a teleport and the Team takes defensive positions.
Teleport isn't necessarily time-consuming, it takes maybe thirty seconds to activate, tops. The problem is that it's one of the most energy-intensive moves and, in a nutshell, lights the Ralts up to anything that is even remotely sensitive to elemental energy.
Most Grass types are sensitive to elemental energy. It's how they eat.
I've thrown caution to the wind and have given Gardevoir detailed instructions on nearby rooms.
I'm not sure who answered my prayers, but my Dungeon map has updated. Or maybe it was always there and I never paid attention.
Either way, the heat map now shows globs instead of just a bar. Bigger globs are stronger Pokemon, smaller are not. My vision is superimposed on reality in front of me and has no lighting, so I may have simply missed it due to the sunlight.
Whatever, it's fine. I've taken the radio and am now guiding the Weavile room by room. If I never see the light of day after this due to being an IPL person of interest, then so be it.
I'm being far too emotionally invested in people I have met over the past two hours.
Well, whatever.
[T+71]
Ralts has successfully teleported back the Avalanche advance team. Two humans, five Pokemon. The Pokemon are heavily stressed and missing body parts, so they go into healing stasis immediately for transport.
The humans are…both are dead.
…dead(?).
One of the Pokemon is a "Mimikyu" from Alola, a very marionette-esque kind of drapey…Pikachu-looking cloth. Mimikyu put the humans under and possessed them, so they would not be targeted by Pokemon. The humans are damaged, with one of them technically dead due to blood loss if not for Mimikyu's possession.
Mimikyu will not be able to release the possession until it recovers from its injuries. According to the doctor on staff, it's taken damage that should have been fatal several times over, and is alive through sheer force of will.
Whew.
One last push.
[T+73]
Weavile is headed down an alternate route. She's managed to pit the Rift-class against her chasers and has thrown off a majority of them.
We're ready for her.
[T+75]
Weavile busts through the Dungeon entrance, chased closely by a dozen odd-looking Sunflora. My special vision shows them as being dual type Fire-Grass before the forty-some trainers on defense slathered them with fatal attacks.
Weavile's missing its left arm. The bone and muscle of what's left of her arm is enclosed in ice and she's in remarkably high spirits considering the circumstances.
[T+80]
The map just lit up. It's red all over. Blobs everywhere. Oh my god.
We're not the only rescue attempt in the Dungeon.
I…how do I tell EVERYONE to bail?
[T+81]
A Gardevoir has probably sensed my sudden and total panic, and has sent command to the other Ranger Gardevoirs and Kirlias. They're canceling all rescue missions immediately.
There's mass confusion and anger, but a command stop by a Ranger Gardevoir is final.
In the next minute, every party bails and returns via teleportation. There's a lot of rage but no attempts to argue the merits of the order.
[T+83]
The 'Last Man Standing', the Ranger team tasked with securing the Dungeon entrance and only the entrance, flees and comes back over. Everybody is now on high alert.
[T+84]
Dungeon Pokemon start coming out of the gate. All Pokemon and the ships open fire and the entrance quickly becomes a bloodbath of a chokepoint.
[T+120]
The swarming finally stops, and things calm down, even in my vision.
The groups are tallying their losses. I can see that the Dungeon is still a bright, angry shade of red, so further attempts at going in is a no-no. However, I have no power here, and I can't exactly summon a strong emotion on command, so the no-entry order is rescinded. That said, it's going to be a hot minute before anybody can enter on account of the sheer amount of bodies clumped at the entrance.
Most C1 teams have lost at most ten of their members, Pokemon included. IPL teams lost more, since they're carrying a larger bulk of the exploration.
Total MIA for both Pokemon and Humans are estimated to be a little under three hundred. For most teams, the people on the outside are calling for rescue teams, while the people who were evacuated are more or less against the idea. Similar to some parts of the Earth world, anybody declared Missing in Action, MIA, is presumed dead, just without confirmation.
Avalanche, one of the few teams with a successful rescue effort, lost a total of two people and seven Pokemon, all confirmed KIA, Killed in Action. At least there's closure there. One of the Pokemon, an Arcanine, was successfully retrieved with a special Pokeball and will probably be buried some days later.
Usually, this doesn't happen, or so the Rangers say. Losses do happen, people die, Pokemon die, less Nuzlocke and more Ironman, but the last time it was this bad, to the point where Kalos News Network is doing a Breaking News story, was at least eight years ago.
I only learned about it after the fact. It was a Rift that opened in Sinnoh suddenly and in the dead of night, and the then-Sinnoh IPL Champion got sucked in or something. Because it was so weird the IPL issued a gag order on all but the most basic information, so that's all I know about it. To this day that champion has not returned.
So…yeah. The Rangers are definitely going to close this down early.
…
The Rangers issue their last call. They're not going to stop anyone who really wants to enter the gate, but anybody who fails to identify themselves before crossing over runs a risk of getting shot.
Avalanche talks it over and decides to pack it up for themselves. Instead, they're now farming themselves out to other teams that could use the additional punch.
I respect that. I think it's kinda stupid, but I respect it.
I'm getting better at reading the Special Dungeon Map and the coloring. There is no way for me to viably feed the information to the outside world, though. My Special Vision is great, but the one overarching weakness is that using any information more detailed than the most generic stuff is hard.
So, to that end, I have the map I drew to navigate the Avalanche rescue team. It's a really bad map, all things considered. All rooms are circles and all corridors are little notches on those circles. There's no attention to detail whatsoever apart from the most obvious stuff, like a giant rock pillar.
Oh well. I have a copy of the Ranger's flowchart map and a deck of cards. I just stack cards on where each area has threats. Bigger stack equals more threats. Kent's Ranger Kirlia is watching the map and has probably synchronized the information into the telepathic network.
…
Day Eleven.
The Rangers give everyone the final call, and last minute-teleports are made. Predictably, the last few rescue missions were met with failure.
Except the ones that had Avalanche input. Parties with Avalanche support encountered fewer pokemon and fewer dangerous Pokemon.
Wonder why.
Ahem.
Still, the final tally puts us at near 500 fatalities. The IPL will not be happy with this one.
From a pure monetary standpoint, every team that went in came out significantly richer than before, so that's, y'know, nice.
All survivors, at least from Avalanche, are also a good fifty levels (ish) stronger than when they started. I can see that their EV is sky-high right now. It'll fall off as time goes on, especially when there isn't supplementary training to let the Pokemon get used to that new power, but still.
…
Whew.
That's done and over with.
There's a Breaking News (of a sort) about the Dungeon after the fact. Talking heads, pundits, analysts, representatives. Vigils, representation, honor for the fallen.
The story and afterword grips Lumiose for the following month.
Shalour, less so.
It's important, sure, but not so much that it eclipses Shalour's local news.
Shalour's main focus is the upcoming summit between all regions of the IPL. It's hosted in Kalos this year and it's Shalour's turn in the rotation. Per the issues with the Dungeon, Dungeon management and response is one of the issues boosted to the forefront.
If things get real bad, Legendaries will step in and normalize, but that's, y'know, after a significant traumatic event for a lot of people. There's politics behind the stuff and I don't feel like diving any deeper into this issue.
My Van is real neato, though. I spend my next month getting gigs running ferry. I help ship C3 teams low on training funds to the cusp of Deep Wild territory, and help be a local healing center for Area/Open Gyms that could use an extra hand. The amount of people that go a little too hard and don't want to leave a Gym's afterparty is surprisingly high sometimes.
Might just be a Shalour thing.
As that week wraps up, I get a message from the head of Avalanche.
…Well, the head of Avalanche's HR department.
They've been assigned a Rift, and I'm being tapped to help them out.
…How?
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
I strive for equal representation of all series.
Not doing a very good job so far.