//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 - Rough Landing // Story: Master // by NejinOniwa //------------------------------// Chapter 3 – Rough Landing Brock, gym leader of Pewter City and on his off days fifty percent of the Moon Mountains’ human population, stared patiently at his stove. The man who made up the other fifty percent for most of the time, Bruno, would have made fun of him for using it, he was sure. Sure, the Elite Four’s Fighting-type master spent just as much time out in barren wilderness like this as Brock did, but Bruno’s reasoning was entirely different from his own. Like many Fighting-type trainers he honed his body as much as he honed his bonds with his pokémon, and “testing his might against the unforgiving harshness of nature” as he put it, was a fairly standard method of doing so as far as Brock knew. Chuck, Johto’s Fighting-type gym leader, even had gone so far as to install a waterfall inside his own gym, so he could spend as much time as possible for his rather ambitious training. Brock had nothing against Fighting-type users, and normally found them to be reasonably down-to-earth people he could easily find common ground with in most cases. However, his own philosophy – regarding this mountain, at least – had little to do with testing his power, or training at all for that matter. Brock sought to understand Rock-type pokémon better than anyone else in the world. To learn how they thought, felt and reasoned was his lifelong dream – and the limited success he’d had achieving that so far was the very reason he’d managed to become a gym leader in the first place. Understanding his pokémon meant understanding their strengths, and that meant understanding their – and by extension, his own – abilities. Understanding the lengths and limits of your power was the first lesson of any trainer, but Brock had always felt it stood to reason it was also the last – simply because as they progressed in their lives, many trainers seemed to forget it. So he had taken the old axiom to heart, and vowed to understand the heart of Rock-pokémon on his own. That meant spending a lot of time in their habitat, and behaving like them – and while he couldn’t survive on sediment alone like a Geodude, he wasn’t going to follow Bruno’s lazy example, no matter how much he praised his fire-breathing Machamp’s cooking prowess. He hadn’t believed it the first time he’d him say it – it had taken him a visit to the man’s rather permanent camp to realize it was actually the truth. Seeing that four-armed mountain of muscles dressed up in a frilly pink apron and spitting flames at a frying pan had radically decreased Brock’s respect for the older man, and he had seldom talked to him since then. Instead, Brock spent his time like many of his fellow Rock-type trainers: hiking. Moving his tent from one spot to another, climbing the massive mountain and exploring its many passes and peaks one by one. And, of course, using a portable stove to cook his food on. Dependable, sturdy and usable in almost any weather, but tediously slow. Patience was a lesson any aspiring Rock-type trainer needed to learn early, however. That old saying about trying the patience of a stone was, after all, quite appropriate. He was just about to once again remove the lid from his kettle and see if the water was anywhere close to boiling yet, when he heard a loud crash from across the crest of the small peak he’d spent yesterday scaling. This immediately caught his attention – this was normally a very quiet part of the mountains, and neither other trainers nor wild Onix normally ventured this far up – and he swiftly killed the stove to save fuel before scrambling off across the rocky terrain. He was fairly surprised when he managed to spot a pair of wild Clefairy just as they rushed out of his path – they were normally very shy pokémon, and he had no idea they inhabited any peaks other than that of Mount Moon itself – but the sight that met him once he reached the top was all but astonishing. A fine spread of shattered amethyst, several meters wide, covered the grayen rocks that made up the peak. More to the point, however, in the middle of it lay a creature of pure white and amethyst purple, sprawled out and unmoving. Brock had never seen anything like it before, but it was obvious that whatever it was, ramming its head into the mountain hadn’t done it any favors. He approached it cautiously, but broke into a jog the last few meters. He disliked seeing pokémon hurt, and the state and circumstances of this one made him fear the worst. Thankfully it was still alive when he reached it, but it wasn’t by much. Its breath came in shallow gasps, and its pulse was weak. This pokémon needed medical attention, and soon. While there wasn’t any coverage on normal phones out here, his emergency radio could easily reach tens of kilometers away even without the booster back in his tent. Pewter City was clear on the other side of the mountain from his present location, and the pokémon center by the entrance to the Mount Moon Caves didn’t have any helicopters, since it was specifically outfitted to cater to trainers taking the underground route through the mountain range. He could clearly see the Cerulean River snaking through the countryside to the southeast, however, and his signal should be able to reach Cerulean City without problems. He took the radio off his belt, and it powered up with a humming sound when he flicked the switch. Fiddling with the controls took a bit longer than usual since he wasn’t familiar with the station, but he got a decent connection within a few seconds. Eyeing the creature one last time, he got up and raised the device to his mouth. “Trainer 21815311 calling Cerulean City, this is Brock calling Cerulean City. Are you receiving, over?” A few seconds went by with only the wind going through his ears, then the speaker crackled to life. “This is, um, station PC-K05, Cerulean City, we read you. You are using the emergency channel. What is the proble- wait. Did you say Brock? Pewter’s gym leader? Um, over.” He got an irritated frown on his face at the operator’s obvious inexperience, but then again, it was hardly surprising. Cerulean was geographically close to the mountains, sure, but none of the valleys or peaks were easily accessible from the southeast. This was probably just an ordinary city nurse, and at best she’d be accustomed to directing ambulance calls. He sighed, before raising the radio to his mouth again to speak. “That’s me. I’m at the peak of Mount Seldosin with a severely injured wild pokémon. Not sure what species, but I haven’t seen it before. I need a helicopter dispatched immediately to my location. Over.” The speakers crackled once to acknowledge, but it took a while before a response came. “We don’t have any helicopters on standby at the moment, I’m afraid. I will see what I can do, though. Give me a moment.” Brock cursed silently at his bad luck as he waited for the operator to return, and for a moment he started to fear that they’d be forced to call in a craft from somewhere further south, which would inevitably end up taking a lot more time – most likely too much, if his assessment of the pokémon’s health was anywhere near accurate. However, it took only half a minute or so before the speaker burst to life again. “You’re in luck. Misty is en route from the coast, and is about ten minutes north of the city. It’s her private craft, but it has basic medical equipment and better speed than any of our helis. She should reach you in about half an hour or so. Over.” Brock frowned a bit at first, but shook it away as she kept going and nodded as he gave his final transmission. “Good to hear. I’ll be available on this channel in case anything comes up. Trainer 21815311, over and out.” The operator responded in kind and the radio went silent. He didn’t turn it off, but he returned it to its spot on his belt, fastening it with a clip. Then he returned to his quiet vigil over the strange wounded pokémon. He wasn’t entirely happy about being forced to involve Misty in this, but that might just be his being annoyed at the lack of proper ambulance helicopters from Cerulean talking. They weren’t exactly close, but he’d spoken to the young gym leader at most of the Indigo League Summits since she’d been appointed. Not much, true, but she was undoubtedly a less annoying person to be around than many of the others. Sixteen gym leaders from all across Johto and Kanto made for a rather diverse group, after all, and there were plenty of personalities in there he just couldn’t stand. Like Surge. Throwing the Elite Four in there just made for even more trouble, and he didn’t think anyone could really like Lance as a person. It wasn’t that the Champion had a bad personality, he was just...too much. Hoping this encounter with the girl wouldn’t prove his old assumptions about her wrong, he sat down on the amethyst-covered rock and waited for her arrival. -/-/-/ Misty had almost snorted an enormous laugh when she heard the recording of Brock identifying himself with his trainer number, like some backyard nobody of a hiker who’d packed too little food and was too ashamed to call the pokémon center using his name. She’d managed to hold it in, though, and with the situation being was it was that had probably been for the best. Her craft was a recent donation from Bill, Cerulean’s famous resident Pokémaniac and likewise the maintainer of the Pokémon Storage System for the Indigo League. He always kept himself up to date in just about every conceivable area of technology conceivable, and what he didn’t buy himself he usually got from one of his friends at Silph or whatever. Sometimes that meant he had a slight bit of overabundance – a grave understatement if there ever was one, but that was the words he’d used – of things just lying around his house, particularly when there’d recently been a boom of new developments; and while that usually wasn’t much of a problem, not even his enormous mansion on the Cape could hold two state-of-the-art VTOL aircraft at once. So, he’d given it off to Misty after hearing her complain about the price of commercial airliners from Cerulean to the small coastal town where she had her villa. Misty had obviously been rather surprised by this seemingly senseless act of generosity at first, but after giving it some thought she'd managed to get the right of it. While she didn't regard Bill as a very close friend herself, he probably thought of her as such. He wasn't a very social person, after all. As it was she was hardly going to complain about having a private VTOL jet to use at her leisure. Thanks to its internal power source fuel costs were negligible, and while the maintenance routines for the thing gave her nightmares, nothing had even started showing signs of wear yet. So far, it had done nothing but drastically reduce the time, money and frustration she spent at transportation, and she was nothing but happy about that. Besides, flying it was awesome. When she got the call she'd been going at low speed to prepare herself for entering the city without causing too much of a ruckus. Now she was doing just below mach 2 and cruising through the countryside on a completely different course than she was used to, heading southwest straight towards the easily recognizable mammoth that was Mount Moon. Seldosin was one of the lesser mountains in the range, but most of the Moon Mountains had fairly flat peaks. As long as she kept her cool, she shouldn't have any problem with the landing – her instructor had been an absolute asshole while teaching her, but in hindsight she was thankful for it. She could land this baby anywhere, including the floating platforms in the swimming pool of her gym if she was in a rush. Once the lesser peaks became discernible to the naked eye, she eased up the throttle and started going through her instruments. Her map wasn't the easiest to read – she hadn't gotten around to installing a GPS or anything for this thing yet, and her helmet didn't exactly have an HUD or anything – but thankfully Brock had left his radio on, so she just had to look for a few moments to find him on the radar. Bleeding speed as fast as she could she pointed her craft toward Seldosin, and prepared herself for a rough landing. Thankfully the peak turned out not to be as uneven as she'd feared, but due to the wind she was still forced to use the stabilizer clamps; even then it was a bit of a hassle getting the landing gear all in place safely. Finally she put the engine drivers on standby and unstrapped herself, before exiting the jet. She kept her helmet on as she made her way toward her gym leader colleague, who stood squinting at the wind and covering his ears against the screaming turbines. She stumbled a step or two when she got out of the jet's wind cover, but regained her step with well-practiced ease. Brock gestured for her to follow him, and she did so with a nod. It took some ten seconds before they were far enough from the craft to be able to speak to each other, and she popped the helmet seals and took it off. With a sigh of relief she shook out her hair, before returning her eyes to her colleague. “So, what have we got?” Brock – who had finally stopped squinting – rolled his eyes at her, and motioned for her to follow again. “I'm not entirely sure. It looks a bit like an undersized Rapidash, but it's fairly obvious it's not a Fire-type. I'd even say it could be a Rock-type, from the way it seems to have shielded itself from the impact. It must've fallen quite a way, though, from how things look...well, see for yourself.” Misty did see for herself, and it was a pretty impressive sight altogether – once she saw the pokémon, however, she cringed. “Wow. And I thought I had a rough landing.” A visible, foot-deep impact crater surrounded the white-coated pokémon entirely, and the ground was covered in cracked amethysts – the crater itself seemed to actually have turned from rock to crystal in the crash somehow. There were no wounds on the creature's skin, but its position and the way it made a generally good impression of a heap of broken sticks told her the same was most likely not true for the inside. Brock's description of it looking like an undersized Rapidash was probably the best thing she could think of as well, but the mane was entirely wrong. Aside from not being on fire, it was purple, and had curls in it that looked like someone had spent a lot of time on. That only increased the mystery as far as she could tell, but this was hardly the time to start thinking in that direction. Right now, they had a life to save. “Okay, help me lift it,” Brock said impatiently after a few seconds. She understood his feelings – he'd been here for some half hour with nothing to do but stare at this broken creature in pity, after all, and she knew he was pretty softhearted on the inside – but shook her head in response. “That wouldn't be a very good idea. No matter how careful we are we'd just hurt it further, and we can't afford that now. This is looking pretty bad.” She opened a zipper on her flight suit, and retrieved a pokéball from its rather stuffy depths. “Starmie, lift our patient,” she commanded as she pressed the button to release her pokémon from its confines, before closing the zipper again with a brief shiver as the cold morning wind made its presence known. With the help of Starmie's telekinetic powers they made their way back across the rocky mountaintop, and soon Misty was strapping herself back into the pilot's seat while Brock fastened the creature best he could to the craft's stretcher – the first time it was used for anything other than a makeshift table, as far as she could remember. Cradling the stretcher in his arms he gave the safety belts on the copilot's seat a long, confused look, before redirecting it to Misty with a questioning frown on his face. “Look, we're not going to go all too fast anyway, so you don't really need to strap up. I'm not using my helmet, either. Just keep your hands on the stretcher and don't fall over, and you'll be fine. Starmie, return.” Pocketing the pokéball, she flicked a switch to reengage the engine drives. However, an important thought came to mind just as she was about to finish her takeoff checks. “Oh, and if I see you touching the controls, I'm going to beat your ass to next Tuesday.” With all parts of the necessary pre-flight routine finished, she focused her mind on the joystick and released the stabilizer clamps keeping them secured on the ground. A gust of wind rocked the craft slightly as she throttled up and slowly let the aircraft take to the skies, but she kept her calm without problem. This was hardly the first time she'd dealt with bad weather, after all. Angling the thrusters back she began to raise the engine input – far slower than she was used to – accelerating as gently as the craft could handle as she set course for Cerulean City.