A story of Sky, a story of Sea, and a story of Hunters; Arceus has brought Pokemon to Equus and left all mortals to scramble for safety. The islands and reefs of Hawhinny is where this story begins. Inspired by zeusdemigod131's A New World, A New Way
The Hawhinny archipelago lies hundreds of miles off the coast of Las Pegasus, a full day by air and weeks by boat. Peaceful, laid-back and touristy, it is the land's gateway to the underwater city of Marelantis, otherwise impenetrable by friend and foe alike. But, as infamous as the region is for welcoming new residents, it can be safely said that no pony was expecting anything like Pokemon.
This tale will follow the story on land through the eyes of Paige, a hippogriff police officer, and the story under the waves, through the eyes of Rafe, the son of a merpony and a unicorn. Spanning both worlds is the plight of the four Tapu and the pokemon who call themselves the Tapu's Hunters, who must defend their own and beat a path for their kind to follow.
The goal of this story is for it to be understood without context. If you have any critiques, I'd be happy to read them!
The beginning of the beginning, and the end of the end. 7PM
Hippogriff Sargent Paige of the Hilo county police stood guard at her post. She and her colleagues were forming a parameter while yellow tape and reflective roadblocks were set up, blocking off strange, unidentified structures that had appeared close to a residential area.
Paige looked around at the fragments of carved rock and totem idols. Just an hour ago they had received an anonymous tip about rubble in a suburban neighborhood. And sure enough, when the police arrived the whole district looked like an archeological dig site, or at least a very complicated (and heavy) art display.
Pretending to stoically stand her post, Paige strained her ears to eavesdrop on a conversation the forensics team and a local archeology professor were having with the higher ups. Their words drifted over from behind the largest totem, obscured only by the statue. The other police ponies were as silent and sharp eared as she was.
The new deputys must be desparate for something new to gossip about. Paige let herself muse, then focused.
“--unlike anything I've ever seen. They don't resemble anything from the historical record of what these islands totems should look like, and when I get back to my lab I will have to find out just which legends they have been modeled after to even have the faintest clue of where they could have been carved--”
“You don't recognize these?”
“Not this style of totem, no.”
“...so they are not authentic relics.”
Paige humphed and flicked a pebble away with the back of her talon.
“No, these are ancient and weathered artifacts. The tests show they are used to store magical power. But, these are the most unorthodox vessels I’ve ever seen. I've never seen these sorts of creatures carved into totems, and especially not into this type of rock. They might be recent enough to still have magic traces.”
Paige stiffened, glancing at a broken stone face that she could imagine was glaring at her from the ground.
“They could have been left by an artistic vandal, do you think that’s plausible?”
"Oh, please. Something this expensive, and on such a huge scale? Who would have the time or money for this?"
"Then, who do you think put them here?"
"...Uh, well, there's no way to know for sure..."
Their conversation wore on about who could have done it and what sort of tests they would be running on the rocks, and Paige caught a tidbit of talk about setting up an ‘on-site laboratory’ before the flood of magical science jargon discouraged her enough to focus her boredom elsewhere.
She stared around at the rubble. Although it was mainly covering the main street and whichever front lawns were closer to ground zero, there was no property damage that Paige could see. No houses with rocks imbedded in their roofs, no holes in windows, the rubble didn't even reach the flowerbeds by the front porches since the rocks were so close to the road.
It all seemed so deliberately...
Contained.
Paige looked around at her fellow officers. They all looked as bored as she felt, freely chatting and poking the tape that Deputy Contest was still tying into place. Paige let her eyes roam over the scene, and it wandered up the far-away slope of Mauna Kea. The snow hadn't completely melted off the top yet, and if Paige strained her eyes at the clouds wandering by its peak she could just see some stray frost…
Someone was coming. Paige snapped her attention to the sound of a pony galloping towards her.
“Police!” she yelled, glasses askew and mane disheveled as she slowed to a stop to scratch gravel out of her shoeless hooves. “Ugh, ow, hey! Police! There's a gigantic dog in my backyard!”
“A what?”
“Oh come on.”
“DOG?!”
“What seems to be the trouble ma’am?” Paige was closest to her and stepped forward. “Is the dog attacking you?”
“N-no,” the pony glanced over her shoulder. “it’s asleep. But it's big and I’ve never seen it around here before. Please, I'm afraid to go back!”
“It’s alright, ma’am, I’ll come with you--”
“Going somewhere?” Paige froze.
“Ch-Chief,” Paige took a step back as a large earth pony with a baton as a cutie mark leisurely trotted to the hippogriff, pausing only to duck under the yellow tape.
“Well, where were you thinking of going? Away from your post?”
Paige stopped herself from taking another step back. She dragged in a breath of air as quietly as she could and tried to stutter out an answer. “We-well, sir--”
“Please officer,” the pony interrupted. “I was just asking for her help. She wasn’t--”
“Ma’am, ma’am. I am not angry at her, there is no need to come to her defense!”
“I--” but the Chief waved her off.
“I’ll send someone else to assist you, ma’am. It’s just that we’ve been getting reports about strange animals appearing all over the island and our forces are already spread thin as it is. We need to be wary of who is going where and conserve our forces. You understand, I hope.”
“Of course.” the pony looked relieved. The Chief led her away and began to write a description of the case on a notepad. Paige stared after them, slowly relaxing.
Three dogs, Paige heard them say. One kind of old looking, one that looked like a puppy and what seemed to be the pup’s mother. They were all sleeping huddled together. They were bigger than ponies, blue and black fur on all of them, some yellow on the older ones. They had spikes.
Wait, what?
Yes, shiny spikes, not on a collar but sticking out directly from their bodies. The pup only had nubs, but they were growing in. Paige strained to hear more, but they were already out of earshot.
“Ay!” an earth pony named Ruben Void also stood guard just outside of the taped off scene. He must have heard the whole thing. “Ay, bud, what was that?”
Bud. To Ruben, every living thing on Equus was named bud.
“Yeah, I’m good, thanks for asking!”
Ruben was about to retort, but Paige decided to answer his question just instead.
“Another sleeping monster appeared in someone’s backyard. Dogs, and really big ones.”
“How many?”
“Three, why do you care?!”
Paige sighed inwardly as Rubem made an obscene face. This new chief was the strictest in a while, and his very presence was grating on everyone.
Whatever. She turned away. She wasn’t going to be the scapegoat for a fight breaking out in the ranks twice in a row.
“Cutie!”
What.
Paige looked around. That wasn't Ruben’s voice, much too high pitched. The other officers were all about 20 feet away in different directions, and they didn’t seem to have heard anything.
“Cutie!” It had gotten closer, but there were no ponies around who could have said it.
A fluffball landed on Paige’s beak. She jumped and nearly swatted it away, but she had a suspicion about what it was. She had to cross her eyes to get the thing on her nose into perspective.
A beefly. Harmless, nectar feeding insects with all the cuteness of a honeybee and the cuddliness of a stingerless bottom. But Paige had never seen one this big so close to the city.
“Hey there little cousin,” Paige chuckled. “You’re a little far from home, aren'tcha?”
The beefly tilted its head and buzzed it wings a bit and said “Cutiefly!”
Paige let out the ugliest scream and shot herself into the air. That was the voice! But she wasn't expecting it to come from a two centimeter tall insect with a proboscis for a mouth.
“Cuuuuuuu!” the deafened, addled bug rubbed the sides of its head, drifting away and landing on a rock to recover.
Paige let herself fall to the ground, clutching her chest. She was getting a lot of stares now, but Paige hardly noticed.
That bug! Talked!! She hadn't just imagined it, right?
Paige looked around at her colleagues. They were all staring, some laughing.
"I'M OKAY!" Paige tried not to look as spooked as she felt.
“Cuuuuuu….tie?” the beefly shook itself off. It looked up at Paige. “Cutie. Cutiefly.”
Paige noticed it and bent down to listen to its chatter. “You...haha...you can talk!” She whispered.
“Cutie? Cutie!” the beefly jumped up and down in excitement. “Cutiefly!”
“But, you can only say 'Cutie' and 'Cutiefly'…” Paige continued.
“Cutie! Cutiefly! Cu?” it stopped, wings drooping. “Cuuuuuu....” it sat down with a sigh.
Paige blinked. “Hey…” the beefly looked at her. “Can you...understand me?”
“PAIGE! What in Equestria was that?!” Colonel Crackle Licks shouted directly into the hippogriff’s ear.
“Ow, I’m right here, jeez.”
“Paige, this is the last straw.” The bloodred unicorn Colonel growled as she turned to salute him. “You have been acting in this unruly manner all day. You have been trying to rush off from your post against orders and now you are causing confusion and disruption in the middle of a crime scene!”
“What! Alright sir, FIRST of all--”
“SERGEANT!” Crack screeched to interrupt her. “You are dismissed from duty for today. We have no need of this sort of behavior here, and this WILL be coming out of this week’s paycheck!”
Money. He was threatening her with money now, and that was the line she wasn’t willing to cross. “..Yes sir. See you tomorrow.” Paige saluted again, flaring out her wings and launching herself into the air again, but this time flapping up into an updraft and letting herself rise into the sky. She watched as the Colonel glared after her, then turned away to stalk two chatting officers. Paige chuckled as the yelling started up again, bitterly trying to milk some enjoyment from other ponies’ misfortune.
Something was tickling the back of her neck.
“Cuuuuuuu!” the talking beefly had buried itself into Paige’s downy feathers. It clung for dear life, and Paige might not have even heard it if it wasn’t so close to her ear.
“Oh! Little cousin,” Paige evened out her flight and dropped a bit of altitude. “I didn’t see you.”
“Cutie!” the beefly said, determinedly tightening its grip.
“I was just on my way home,” Paige explained, letting herself glide a couple yards above the rooftops. “if that doesn't sound like where you want to be, then just let yourself off if you want.”
“Cutiefly!”
“Whatever you say, cousin.”
“Cutie cutiefly!”
“Yup,” Paige gazed back at the blocked road and the totem rocks catching the sunset’s pink glow before they disappeared behind a shingled roof. “I know.”
At least, that's what she thought that flash of light was.
The world, the world, the world, done to the death. There's so much more than this, you know?
The four Tapus represented many things to the people and pokemon of Alola. The seasons, the four islands, the four states of being and more were all represented by the four protectors of the Land Overflowing with Life.
But they were not considered legends in a very...conventional way.
While pokemon trainers and legend hunters attempted to catch mythical pokemon and legendaries, it was considered a great blaspheme to even enter the ruins of any Tapu if one was not deemed worthy, much less challenge them to a fight and attempt to catch one. The reverence by which the Tapus of Alola were held allowed them to bond with human communities on a level no other legendary pokemon could dream of in the modern era.
Many legendaries lived in constant fear, traveling the world for a human-free hideout or being sealed away--even sealing themselves--into centuries long slumbers. Ever since Arceus's defeat the human’s respect and reverence for the legendaries had waned into a lust for fame and power over an immortal. Millennia after millennia, the humans proved that although they had the capacity--
“PAIGE! WHAT IN EQUESTRIA WAS THAT?!”
Tapu Lele jolted awake. She was asleep inside her totem statue in the Ruins of Life. But, something was off.
As the yelling continued, the pink nature spirit reached out with her mind and scanned the area, finding her ruins swarming with strange creatures. Several stood on guard and many more were hiding in their homes.
Their...homes...
Lele needed to figure out what was happening. Why were there so many creatures with such densely packed territories and where had they come from without her noticing? The creature's minds were largely unprotected by psychic barriers, and the few that did were constructed in ways she had never seen before. She reached into the mind of the loudest pony in the vicinity and scanned his mind while he was busy.
Equestria. The ruins, her ruins had been picked up, transported across space and time somehow and had been unceremoniously dumped into some poor civilian neighborhood, where it was all now sitting and blocking the main road.
She said civilians, but she had to take a moment to figure out what that meant. They seemed to the Tapu to be exotic mudbrays, but the closer Lele looked the more she realized that they were not pokemon. She scanned the mind of...his name was Crackle Licks, Crack for short. She scanned Crack's mind and cobbled togther the knowledge she needed.
They were called ponies. They were intelligent, advanced and intricate, and reminded Lele of humans more than pokemon. Now, what of their situation...?
These particular ponies were police. They had come in response to her ruins apparently dropping out of the sky somehow, and they were not happy. They were having a hard time moving her ruins from the road, and a couple of totems had actually broken where the neighborhood ponies had attempted to clear a path that morning to get to work. Lele needed to move her ruins somewhere where they wouldn't get in anyones way, but more importantly she needed to tell these creatures that she wanted to do that for them without scaring them off.
The pony, (no, unicorn) Crack, was yelling again. He was directing the others around to stand guard. Lele needed to move these creatures so that she could relocate the ruins if her temple without hurting anyone.
With a flash of light, she rose from her sleep in the largest and most intricate of the carved rocks. Her power alone had kept it from cracking and wearing away like the ones closer to the ruins entrance, but now she channeled that power into reforming herself into a pink shell that resembled some sort of face. The smoke coalesced all at once, and Tapu Lele popped her head out of her shell to get to her bearing in the physical world.
The police ponies were facing away from the totem she had just exited, not even noticing her Psychic Surge sweeping gently over the rocks like a pink mist. They did, however, notice when that smoke warped the dimensions into a Psychic Terrain. The jumpier ones yelped and tried to run, but a certain unicorn barked orders at them all: stand your ground, prepare to apprehend.
She turned her attention to Crack, sifting around for more useful information. Barodius Strident, the Chief of police, had left Crack to watch things while he was away investigating strange animals that had appeared in someone’s backyard. Lele’s best shot was to earn Crack's trust, then by extension the Chief’s--
Two magical blasts fired, followed by seven earth pony and pegasi full body assaults, all deflected by two well timed Protects. Tapu Lele lifted the magic users from the ground, floating up to sprinkle her scales onto the earth pony assailants below.
She giggled as Flatter began to take effect, the ponies stumbling and bumping into one another as they tried to discern the sky and the ground in a state of Confusion. She sprinkled another handful onto the unicorns that she had levitated, who she gently let back onto the ground as their eyes lost focus.
The pegasi lunged for her while she was distracted with that, but there were only three and Lele had a plan for them.
She dodged their attacks by shooting herself straight upwards, corralling the ponies as they tried to apprehend her. They were surprisingly coordinated, never once bumping into each other.
But it wasn't enough, and Lele caught them all with one Mean Look.
Her psychic powers slowed the stunned pegasi’s descent as Tapu Lele floated back to earth. She was rather pleased with herself; all assailants dispatched and strictly with non lethal status moves! Being familiar with the human police for so long did wonders for figuring out just what she would be held accountable for in court. Now if she could just find that insufferable Colonel--
Fire, everything was fire. Lele Withdrew into her shell, hoping the burning wouldn't turn into a Burn status. She was caught in a roaring vortex that had sprung up out of nowhere!
She peeked out into the swirling flames, and saw him.
Crack's horn glowed with flickering orange magic that might as well have been fire itself. He used his magic to unbutton and levitate his uniform off, the absence of a shirt and saddlebags revealing a burning sword for a cutie mark.
Lele took a moment to recast Psychic Terrain, then turned her attention back to the unicorn.
“Whatever you are,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “You are NOT going to get away with this.”
You would think that a water-typed defensive move would do more against fire, but Withdraw hadn't lessened Crack's...Overheat? Yeah, Overheat. Withdraw raised physical defense instead of special and hadn't lessened the blow at all.
Crack was taking a moment to recover from using so much fire all at once. He was circling, a good tactic for keeping on your feet and blood flowing, even if your attacks weren't muscle-based. Lele stayed put, floating around would just mess up her concentration. She set up a Light Screen and mulled through her movepool for something useful. She had Safeguard, but she wasn't worried about statuses that much. She supposed she could start spamming Calm Mind to help her think and raise her defenses, but how many could she use before the damage stacked up?
A magic tug. Crack was trying to pick up the totem rocks and throw them at her, the nerve of this guy! Attacking a Tapu was one thing, threatening ancient, defenseless relics were something else entirely, and called for much more drastic measures. Lele’s grip on the rocks was stronger, and she scrubbed Crack's orange magic off of them, letting it cling to broken shards and loosened sand.
Then, she released a psychic flare.
Crack's connection to his magic wavered and broke as a basic understanding of the reach of Tapu Lele’s power swept through his mind and senses. His mental defenses buckled under a mere demonstration of her psychic abilities, his control over his very body stolen from him for a noticeable moment.
Now do you see? Lele had no voice, but her thoughts burned through his mind. They scared him more than any spoken word.
“D-d-do…” he gasped, the words emblazoned on the backs of his eyelids and ringing in his eardrums, but in his panic Crack could not comprehend what they said to him. “d-do I...s-s-see?”
Lele looked back at the other police ponies, shaking themselves of Confusion and helping each other up. The ones that noticed her were looking a lot more scared by her presence, and were either sheilding their colleagues or ducking behind the braver ones. Lele sighed, preparing a psychic message for explaining the situation to all of them. She was no good with spoken word, seeing as how she had no lungs or need to breathe--
A Will-O-Wisp struck her shoulder. Lele grabbed at the signed, throbbing skin, glaring daggers at Gill.
“You don't TOUCH those ponies,” if Crack was angry before, he was livid now. “Your fight is with ME.”
What was this guy's deal? Lele threw up a protect instead of dodging a barrage of smaller, faster fireballs. One minute he was screaming himself hoarse at the those ponies, and now this show of martyrdom?
One attack got around the Protect and she dropped it and started dodging, losing all patience and preparing a simple Astonish attack.
A riolu was running up the street, Chief Barodius Strident hot on his heels, and the mother lucario carrying an elder one on her back trying desperately to catch up. She could read the thoughts on the fronts of their minds: Barodius was not chasing out of malice, but the riolu had something planned.
While Barodius had stopped before the line of fire, pup charged right in. The blue blur easily dodged fiery attacks not aimed at it, running right up to Gill and balling its paws into fists--
POW! Crack's head snapped back as a devastating uppercut landed to his chin. The flames fizzling out when they lost their magic fuel or quietly chewing through greenery where the spells got a little too close to people's flowerbeds. The unicorn himself crumpled to a heap.
Lele floated over to Crack, sprinkling scales onto his bleeding nose. The scales fluttered onto his face like pink snowflakes, sinking into his fur and skin wherever they touched. The bleeding immediately stopped, and soon Crack sat up, smacking his lips without the slightest hint of the fight that had happened mere moments ago. He looked at the two monsters without quite processing them, then noticed his superior standing, mouth agape, about a yard away.
“Chief Barodius sir!” Crack sprang to his hooves and saluted.
Barodius looked past him. Crack blinked and turned without thinking to see what he was looking at.
The pup. It was saluting the weird pink floater. It had one paw clenched into a fist over its heart, its eyes downcast. A few feet behind it, the mother was actually bowing to it, still balancing the older one on its back.
This was bizarre. Strange monsters appearing, acting like ponies, using magic and fighting, now showing respect to superiors...
Showing respect…
Crack snapped back to attention, quaking with fear, expecting Barodius to fire him on the spot. When that didn't happen he noticed that the Chief was smiling, watching the monsters interacting.
“Colonel, there will be no arrests of these creatures,” he said, flipping open his notebook. “But, send word to headquarters. We have some...guests...that need interrogating.
“Most, hon-oray-ble Tapu.” the riolu gave a salute, a hand cleched into a fist over his heart, how strange...
Where did you learn the Salute to Honor? Lele’s telepathy started the first-stage slightly, but his pride bounced him back.
“Because I'm a hunter!” he replied with accidental indignation. He realised he used an inappropriate tone and cast his eyes down. “Sorry, didn't mean to yell.”
Tapu Lele chuckled, glancing at the lucario mother standing farther back. She was performing a shallow bow that was hindered by an older lucario she was carrying on her back.
Nothing to worry about. Now, care to introduce yourselves?
“O-oh yeah!” he slapped his paw to his chest. “I’m Gon Freecs, and those,” Gon pointed back at the two lucario, the younger not breaking her precious stance. “Are my Aunt Mito and Grandma Abe.”
Please rise, for your sakes and mine. Lele sighed with relief as Mito straightened up, as if she was the one carrying an elderly lucario on her back.
“It’s truly an honor.” Mito finally said, stepping forward. Gon tapped her side and reached out his arms. She understood, gently and gratefully moving Grandma Abe from her back to his.
Likewise. I hope you all have been taking the move well?
“Move?” Gon looked to Mito from under Abe’s arm and Mito looked to Gon while stretching out her cramped joints.
Ah, I suppose you haven’t yet realized, Lele scratched the back of her head, mulling over how best to deliver the news.
I do not know how or why, Lele began. but we seem to be very far from home, in the familiar house of a stranger.
“...Huh?”
Okay that sounded less cryptic in my head--
Seeing the expressions on the mortal pokemon’s faces, Lele tried again, bluntly this time.
We are not in our land, but in a place called Equestria, or Equus, I'm not sure. I do not know how we got here, but I do know that this world is already teeming with ponies, who are not pokemon and have no idea what a pokemon is.
“What?” Gon looked at Mito again.
“How did we get here?” Mito sounded worried. "Who moved us and why?"
I...have a theory. See, I can think of no Alolan pokemon strong enough to move us as far as we have moved in the way we have moved. The only pokemon who can manipulate minds and interdimensional space-time travel are the Sinnohnian creation and lake trio. And I see no reason as to why they would work together to do something as big and reckless as this, unless…
Lele held them for suspense, Mito looking unamused and Gon looking confused.
....unless they were acting out coordinated orders. Orders from Arceus.
“Who’s Arceus?” Gon asked.
Lele sent a smaller, less severe psychic flare through his mind to show him everything she knew about the distant legend. She was still impressed when he didn't so much as stumble after having information injected directly into his mind.
I’m not sure if I will be able to find Arceus, Lele admitted. But that is something you should leave to me. I will move my ruins so that they are not in the way and begin my search. I have a feeling this new world is going to be bigger than Alola.
“Colonel,” the pokemon all jumped, turning to Barodius. “there will be no arrests of these creatures.”
“Arrest?” Mito stepped in front of Gon instinctively.
He said DON'T arrest. Lele corrected with a twinge of silent hope.
“But, send word to headquarters. We have some guests that need interrogating.”
Unicorn Deputy Phosphorus (Phos for short) was stuck with griffon Senior Deputy Plith on scribe duty for the interview the Chief ordered for the dog monsters. Or, more accurately, the interveiw with the strange pup, who for some reason was the most eager fighter out of all three dogs and the least mistrusting of the ponies. The two scribes sat behind tinted glass, the interrogation room spread out in front of them like a TV screen larger than their budget could ever afford.
Two figures sat on opposite ends of a table in that room: the pup sat nervously with its paws folded on the table and crumbs from a cafeteria meal still stuck to its whiskers. The Chief himself was the interrogator, sporting a fresh notebook, a pack of pens bound by rubber bands, a steaming mug of coffee and a wide, smug smile just for the occasion.
All for show.
The real transcribers sat behind their rusted old typewriters while the coffee machine brewed in the back, already tapping away. They began the base sketches of their work, describing the scene and the expressions, posture and known history of the two subjects. They settled themselves into a clip, not rushing the steady taps on the typewriter keys, but never letting a second pass without the steady stream of taps and Dings.
“So, little puppy,” Chief started, increasing the flow of typewriter noise. “Now that the Colonel has cast a translation spell on you, now don't worry,” the pup tensed at the word ‘spell’. “it’s a harmless one, and all it does is let the two of us talk.”
The pup didn't look convinced.
“See, you could understand me before," the Chief explained. "but I couldn't make heads or tails of what you were saying, and that's just going to get in the way of an interview. So right now you can say whatever you want, and I'll understand your every word loud and clear.”
The pup sat back into its seat. It mumbled something…
“I'm sorry? Couldn't quite catch that, hey,” Barodius jokingly called over his shoulder. “Can we get that spell recast? Maybe a megaphone spell to go along with it.”
The pup giggled, then stood up, “Hey look,” it cupped its paws over its mouth and called out “it’s working!”
“There we are,” Barodius flipped open his notebook and grabbed a pen in the side of his mouth. “Well, then, let's start simple. You got a name, kiddo?”
“Yup!" The pup thudded back onto his chair. "My name’s Gon Freecs.”
“G...oh...n…” Barodius muttered as he wrote, the typewriters starting on the base colors. “Freaks. Alright, Gon, mind telling me about your little family? Where are you from?”
“Uh, okay. I live with my aunt Mito and my grandma Abe on a smaller island just off the coast of Akala island, it's kind of shaped like a whale, so…”
Phos's brow furrowed, and she took a moment to write ‘Akala Island’ but clarifying that she had no knowledge of such a place.
“Alright,” Barodius shifted the pen in his mouth to give one side of his teeth a break. “When you say Akala and Whale Island, what does that mean? Where are these islands?”
“The Alola region,” Gon replied, not missing a beat. “That’s where we are now, right? This,” Gon shifted again, Barodius straightening in his chair. “this is Alola, right?”
Barodius set down his pen, regarding Gon much more seriously than before.
“Hawhinny,” he said, looking Gon in the eye. “We are in Hawhinny.”
Gon shrank, brow furrowing, paws sliding off the desk and falling out of sight into his lap. “Okay. I...think I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“What Tapu Lele said to me, about the ‘move’.”
What, no! Phos was still working on blending, she wasn’t ready to start shading the whole thing! The stream turned to a flood, who was Lele, what was the move, when did they talk, Lele is in Cassarina’s lab, what are they saying now? Phos’s blood was freezing over with the fear that she had missed something. Typing became a numbing tedium, an avalanche of information pouring through her mind, her horn and the keys she was magically manipulating were the floodgates that let them spill and run free over the paper, already as wide open as it's open as its rusted, waterlogged hinges would allow.
Plith cast a sideways glance at the hyperventilating unicorn next to him. He swallowed and scooted away a couple of inches.
“Describe,” Barodius continued slowly, as if sensing the imminent demise of one of the transcribers sanity. “describe what ‘Tapu Lele’ meant by ‘The Move’.”
Gon took a deep breath and a moment to think.
“Tapu...Tapu Lele said that she was confused about why her sacred ruins had been moved without her detecting anything, and why this place looks so different from home. She...she thinks that maybe Arce--that a really strong legendary might have moved stuff from Alola onto your islands. Like the Ruins of Life and a bunch of Pokémon.”
“Okay, I think I got all that,” Barodius scribbled away on the notebook. “Still dunno what a legendary is--”
“A god.”
Barodius snapped back up. “A…?”
“Well, they are! Kind of...maybe…?” Gon shrank so much he was practically ducking under the table. “It’s...probably more complicated…”
“It’s fine, Gon,” Barodius laughed uneasily. “you didn't do anything wrong. Now, can you tell me--”
“Can Tapu Lele answer some of these?” Gon blurted, his unrest and embarrassment seeping into his voice. “I'm just making you more confused.”
Barodius heaved a sigh, letting a pause hang in the air.
“Yeah, we'll just ask Lele to clear up anything you have trouble explaining.” he cracked a smile, trying to catch Gon’s eye. “so don't worry about it if you don’t have an answer, okay?”
Gon nodded without looking up.
“Now, how about the--what was it--Ruins of Life?”
“Oh, well, Tapu Lele lives there, and uh...eh...maybe you should ask her…”
Phos was starting to slow down after fifteen minutes of nonstop rapidfire typing. Her paper was twice as long as Plith’s, and as he peeked over to read it he found entire paragraphs that were near unintelligible. This...probably wouldn't be an issue for a unicorn, as she could cast an editing spell to decode it. But those kinds of spells were usually a bit complex--
“Alright, Gon, I think that's all the questions I have for today. You've been a good kid, so don't keep that aunt of yours waiting. Deputy Phospherous will take you to your family's sleeping quarters.”
Phos all but slammed the typewriter across the desk and threw herself at the door, tearing out of the room and leaving Plith in the dust, wings spread out in an imagined attempt at flying away and a talon pressed to his thumping heart.
Phos fixed her frazzled mane and glasses just as Gon and the Chief were just exiting the interrogation room. She forced herself to appear unconcerened, as if she had been standing idly by all along. As soon as goodbyes were exchanged Gon and the exhausted Deputy trundled down the hall. Gon was yawning and dragging his feet all the way and Phos digging deep into her last shreds of self-control to keep herself from doing the same.
Barodius watched them until they turned a corner. He took his pager out of his shirt pocket and typed up a message to the head forensic scientist.
Dear Cassarina,
Done with coffee. I’d like you to look over both transcripts. Edit to your liking.
He clicked send, then let the pager fall from his hoof to ths floor. He suddenly smashed it with his hoof, grinding the slightest scrap of evidence to pieces.
A hunt for a most magnificent quarry. Foolish, if you don't know what you're doing.
‘Lil cousin’ seemed like a good a name as any for Paige’s little beefly. He gleefully sipped from a saucer of sugar water as Paige prepared a pot of coffee on the stove, stirring in the instant coffee powder. She set down the spoon and went to a cupboard for three mugs.
The tiny pokemon couldn't believe how much had happened in just yesterday. He wished that he could have someone to talk about it with. If he played his cards right, this little bug type might get a shot at being a police ‘mon!
“Paige,” her father called from the bedroom down the hall. A wrinkled old griffin and pegasus couple were just beginning to rouse themselves. “Come here, I can't find my glasses.”
Paige checked the coffee on the stove and turned it off, then left the kitchen and Lil cousin alone to his breakfast.
After he had drunk his fill, Lil cousin decided he was bored, and eyed the steaming pot on the stove. He buzzed into the air and over to the pot, spreading his wings and catching the warm air rising from the coffee like a steamy miniature thermal.
He was boosted upwards as he glided over the Boiling Bean Juice Chasm of Death and landed on the other side as graceful as a liepard, striking a pose and imagining a crowd of adoring fans cheering him on…
He snapped back to reality as Paige returned to pull two of the kitchen tables chairs out. An elderly pegasus pushed his griffin wife on her wheelchair as Paige poured out the coffee. Paige set a business insider newspaper and a gardening magazine onto either end of the table. Paige’s father helped his wife to sit down and pushed in her chair before sitting down and picking up his magazine.
“Thank you, dears,” the old griffin croaked, stroking her husband’s hoof when he sat extended it to her and Paige’s cheek when she set down her mother's coffee.
“Okay, I’m off to work!” Paige called, opening a window. “Can you guys leave that up? I don't want Lil cousin to be all cooped up in here.”
The two nodded and mumbled in response, burying themselves in their respective media and sipping at their coffee.
What! Leave him here? Lil cousin took to the air once again and tried to land on Paige’s head.
“Huh?” Paige looked up from pouring her coffee into a thermos. “Oh, no no no you gotta stay here.”
“Cutie!”
“No,” Paige frowned, closing her saddlebags and tossing them over her back. “you gotta stay here.”
He landed on her beak staring into her eyes with all the willpower he could muster. “Cutie cutiefly cu!”
“Lil cousin,” Paige leveled her own determined gaze at him. He shrank back, fighting the urge to take off again.
“You can't come. Please stay here with mom and dad
“Where it's safe.”
Hours after Paige left, those words haunted Lil cousin. He could fly through the open window and catch up to Paige whenever he wanted, but those words held him back.
It's not safe. Something about that made him uneasy. It perturbed him, it conflicted with something he had so deeply believed, because just out of the reach of his memory, there was a gentle whisper. A benevolent reassurance of something, that he had brought home. that he was living far, far from a world of darkness and in a world where he was free to bask in the light.
Then, what was Paige warning him about?
The morning of the second day of the pokemon’s arrival to Equus, Lele was taking a break from lugging fragile rocks into the Hawhinny police station's forensics lab.
She, Gon and Gon’s family were the only pokemon being kept at the police station according to the orders of Chief Barodius, and Lele had a feeling she should be keeping an eye on her fellow poke-guests. Especially if one of them was a hunter.
She had found his aunt and grandmother awake in a guest room alongside a crowd of lost tourist ponies the station seemed to be harboring. There wasn't much privacy, but the pokemon didn't mind a couple of eavesdroppers. Besides, it was the ponies who were generally more uncomfortable with the casually chatting monsters they had to share a room with
They sat in a corner with Gon’s grandmother and aunt. Some ponies had started up a poker game with Abe and Mito, but Mito got too distracted with hearing Gon’s stories again.
“After we went sightseeing with Alluka, Nanika and Killua, Killua told me we should split up. He wanted to show his sisters as much of the world as he could before they got trapped again.” Gon near the end of telling Lele his life's story. “So I climbed the tree where my dad was waiting for me at the top. We talked about stuff for awhile, and he told me about the adventures he was planning. I don't know where he is now, but I hope he gets to that ‘dark continent’ place.”
Didn’t you want to accompany Killua and Alluka on their adventures? Or spend more time with your long-lost father? Lele was paying more attention to a glowing stone she was holding in her hands, but she had enough psychic power to multitask.
“No. I found him and got to know him, and that's all I was looking for." Gon waved off the question. "Anyway, after that I came home, and I was living with Mito and Abe to catch up on all the stuff I missed about growing like a normal riolu. Besides, Killua only had a few days to go sightseeing with his sister before he had to come live with us on Whale Island so he could find a way to free Alluka and Nanika from their curse. Maybe even try being normal, too.”
But you're not normal, neither of you are, Lele mused, shaping the stone like clay and smoothing out the rough edges. If even half of what you’ve told me is true, you’d both be pokemon destined for legend.
“You know, we heard that a lot." Gon nodded with a hint of indignation in his voice. "But only, like, from the ‘mons that were strong enough to tell us something like that in the first place, so it was kind of like ‘you have potential but you're still a first stage so I can look down on you and be all cryptic about stuff.’ Kind of annoying, but they were right a lot of the time.”
I suppose, Lele finally got the shape she wanted. But maybe it's different coming from an actual legendary?
“Yeah, like when we studied under Hoopa while trying to complete Greed Island." Lele deflated as Gon accidentally forgot what kind of pokemon he was talking to. "Or, maybe it was when we fought the ultra beasts? Well, Hoopa was a tough tutor, anyhow. But it was fun to learn from an actual legendary, even if Killua didn't get along with her much. Hey, why do you think Hoopa never told us about Arceus?”
...ah. Lele thought to herself. I don't know, Gon. I haven't met Hoopa.
“Do you think,” Mito said suddenly, breaking her long, thoughtful silence. “do you think Hoopa is the one who moved us?”
I...no, why…?
“Think about it,” Mito sat up. “Gon said that Hoopa is a trickster that thinks with portals. It would deal with a lot of holes your Arceus theory has. Like, why would any other legendary go through the trouble of messing with a couple of Alolan pokemon by moving them to some strange pony region? And if there was a pokemon that was even capable of doing such things, why wait until now?”
Hoopa, huh? Lele mused, letting the rock float from her hands. I’ll have to give it some thought. But, this would have to be one of the most elaborate pranks I’ve ever seen, moving billions of pokemon from earth--
“What.”
--and depositing them in another, faraway dimension--
“WHAT.”
--and leaving the cryptic mental message to each and every single mind to, and I quote, “Rest now my children, for when you awake a whole new world shall be your home.”
“That…”
“Doesn't sound like Hoopa.” Gon deadpanned.
“No! Well, yes but--ugh!” Mito looked a bit frazzled now. “With all due respect, most honored Tapu, why didn't you share any of these important details from the beginning?”
What, you guys didn’t know any of that?
“No!” Mito exclaimed exasperatedly.
“Not...really…” Gon admitted sheepishly.
“I knew about the ‘rest now my children’ part.” Abe added unhelpfully.
Oh, dear. Better late then never, I suppose? I apologize for not telling you all sooner, but we are on another world far, far away from everything we once knew.
Gon looked down at his paws as Mito put an arm around his shoulders.
“That’s not all I know,” Abe said quietly, after a moment. “I remember our cottage, and the ports, and all of the pokemon in the town at the end of the forest trail." Abe gripped the cards in her hand. "Whale island was the home of my grandmother, and of generations who preceded her.”
“We’ll...never see home again, huh?” Gon murmured.
That’s why this search is so important. Lele let the floating rock fall gently back down into her hands. If we can find out how we got here, She snapped it in two. It began to glow, and as each half of it shone, they slowly grew into two full crystals that each glowed with their own light. We can find our way back.
“Hey, what are you guys talking about?” one of the other poker players asked.
Portals.
“Pfhah! Nerds.”
Lele shrugged. Well, I still kind of like your Hoopa theory, Ms. Mito. It's worth considering, anyway. Now, Lele levitated both of the crystals into Gon and Mito’s paws. Hold these please.
“Does Abe get one?” Gon turned his over and sniffed it.
In a minute, it's been awhile since I made Z-crystals. Lele explained, floating back a couple of feet. Now, this might tingle a bit, but it won't work if you drop your crystal.
“You could be a little less cryptic.” Mito raised an eyebrow comically, which Gon snorted at.
Nah, I think this will be pretty self explanatory. Lele’s eyes glowed a soft pink, and the rocks followed suit with a slightly harsher flash and white light.
Mito and Gon held onto their crystals. Then, a sensation like a radio station clearing static filled their minds, not blocking their senses but a bit distracting.
Is this thing on? Gon grabbed his head with one paw and Mito dropped her crystal.
Looks like it. Let me just turn down the volume...that better?
Yes! Much better, thanks. Gon picked up Mito's crystal and gave it back to her. These seem to be working fine.
We can read each other's thoughts! Mito clutched her crystal now. We can use your mind link if we hold these crystals?!
Yup. Now that I know that these crystals work, let’s see if I can call on the other hunters. I’ll just build up power with Calm Mind…
Hey… Gon mused. Are these Z-crystals? As in, the crystals that the Tapu give hunters when they complete the Hunters Exam?
Yeah, Lele was shaping a third crystal as she meditated. Why do you ask?
You just handed them to us! Gon sounded panicked and mildly hurt. We didn't do anything to earn these!
Weren't you already a hunter, Gon? Lele said serenely.
I...yeah, but my license and crystal came from Tapu Fini and Kahuna Netero.
And where are you keeping those?
In my backpack! The one I left...at home…
Lele laughed a noiseless chuckle. Keep the one you're holding as a replacement, then.
Mito shifted. Should...I give mine back?
No, consider yours a gift. Lele set up her sixth Calm Mind and let her built up energy radiate, twisting the dimensions into a Psychic Terrain with the greatest of ease. Oh, and here's Grandma’s present, she tossed a brilliantly glowing stone to Gon. Once she's finished with her game.
What are you doing now? Mito’s nervousness at being so close to such immense psychic energy was hard for her to hide.
Expanding my reach. All I need to do, Lele raised one hand. Is...ping.
Up until this point, onlookers would have seen all three pokemon sitting in silence and exchanging looks. After Lele’s ping, however, they would have seen two of those three faces go slack with shock.
For a moment the ping let Lele and the holders of her crystals into the mind of every single sentient creature for miles of sea and land. Lele’s power reached from where they sat in Hawhinny to the docks of Las Pegasus and the outskirts of the Marelantis suburbs. Gon could hear the thoughts of a vaporeon chasing a cloud of schooling fish in the open water, but at the same time see a merpony making breakfast in a building made from coral, and even then notice the archeology students who had collected and saftey-wrapped the Ruins of Life and taken over the forensics lab a ways down the hall as the head unicorn scientist that supervised them poked at a sleeping roggenrola in subdued wonderment.
Now to streamline the search, Lele was calm and calculating, blocking out the torrent of active minds. Lets block out anyone who doesn't have a Z-crystal made by me as a reward for completing the hunter's exam. 1...2...and, PING!
Her reach shrunk to five individuals, including Gon and Mito. An elderly turtonator, a sleeping graveller and a suspicious salamence all that was left of the expanded mind link.
What? Hey come on, that can't be it! Lele’s calm demeanour shook with the unexpected revelation.
What is happening? The salamence cut in. Who is this? Who are you?
Well now, the turtonator was in much more in awe than the other dragon. Here I thought I’d been stranded, when suddenly my old trusty Z-crystal starts a-glowin’ for the first time in decades!
Decades...? Mito glanced at the Tapu floating beside her.
Who is this?! The salamence continued to demand.
Ye don't recognize yer own Tapu? This here crystal was made by the one and only Tapu Lele, and awarded to those who were fortunate to have passed one of the last exams she's ever hosted.
And how long ago was that? The salamence grumbled as Lele slowly shriveled into her shell.
Eighty years! The turtonator said proudly as groaning noises started coming out of Lele’s closed shell. And I happen to be the one and only Gerson! Head of the Royal Guard, the Hammer of Justice, blacklist hunter! Er, retired, o’course.
You don't say. Gon could imagine the salamence snorting fire in annoyance.
Eugh, what's with all this racket? The graveller grumbled. Hey, that funny rock I found is glowing all of a sudden...
Lele was on the verge of letting her despair take her over. She needed at least twenty well-trained hunters for the jobs she had in mind and she wasn’t sure two of these new guys had even passed any hunter's exam at all.
Lele half-listened as Gon and Mito tried to explain their situation to the other pokemon on the mind link. Those poor mortals. She didn't have the resources to cook them dinner, much less send out for a quest to find Arceus! And worst of all, she had no one to blame but herself. Stranded and homeless on a strange world, with only a promise that Lele couldn't keep.
She got herself into this mess, and she was going to drag the whole of Alola out of it.
Mito was concentrating on explaining what the Z-crystals were when Gon noticed Lele floating away over the heads of uncomfortable ponies towards the door. He glanced at his aunt, but she was too wrapped up in arguing with the grumpy salamence to notice anything. Gon hopped to his feet and wove through the crowd, following Lele through the door she let swing shut.
It took only a moment for Gon to catch up with the Tapu.
“Where are you going, Lele? Ah! Uh, I--I mean, Most honor-”
Lele is fine. She said without looking at him. And, I’m going outside.
It took a moment for Gon to muster up the courage to continue. “Why? What's going on there?”
I’m going on there. She burst through the double swinging doors and Gon had to jump out of the way of them slamming shut.
“Most--Lele?” Gon stopped. Lele was on the police station’s front lawn.
Gerson is on the slopes of an active volcano called Mauna Loa. Lele sounded like she was reading off a list. The salamence is perched on an office building in the next town over, and the graveller is at the base of Mauna Kea, pretending to be rubble from a recent avalanche he just caused.
They’re all on this island, Lele turned to the riolu.
Below, below, far far below. You won't even see it coming.
While the land dwellers had three classifications of pony, the ponies who lived underwater were known collectively as Merponies, and split into only two persuasions: the seahorse-like Seaponies and the dolphin-tailed Hippocampi. They were ruled over by the benevolent, immortal Queen Oceania, who ruled over the tides and currents from a coral palace in the capital city of Marelantis.
But Rafe was an unusual case. At least, he was by the standards that merponies found unusual. While mixes between seaponies and hippocampi were biologically impossible because of the vast differences in seahorse (and by extension, seapony) biology, seapony and hippocampi marriages weren't unpopular. Therefore, it wasn't too far of a stretch when Rafe’s father fell for a clever unicorn, who let him see the world above the waves in exchange for him guiding her through the mysteries of the deep. The result of their union was a baby hippocampi with a tiny horn, already giving off sparks of magic not known to his father's people.
Magic was not unfamiliar the underwater world, but all merponies who practiced magic drew it from the bioluminescent glow of scales and fins, available to any merpony who lived underwater. In order to learn how to control unicorn magic, Rafe’s father taught him to float a merpony sized bubble of water in order to keep hydrated on land. Since then, Rafe carried himself to school every morning extra early to catch the unicorn magic classes taught nowhere else for dozens of miles. And now, he was on his last year. Once he graduated, he planned to go to Canterlot and become a great wizard, maybe even earn a position of power on either Celestia’s or Oceania’s councils if he played his cards right.
But for now, he was a high school senior. And a rather bored one, since he had already passed most graduation requirements. He did have his part time job on weekends, but as long as he still needed an extra foreign language credit he could only sit around the school grounds for four hours until the Prench language tutor showed up. He had to do this, and keep doing it every day till the end of the year.
But this morning, Rafe had other plans. He wolfed down the breakfast his father had put on the table, called a hurried goodbye over his shoulder and rushed out the coral fan door before he could be asked where he was in such a hurry to go.
Once he was out the door, the darkness of the night sea hit him like a cloud of octopus ink. Rafe had gotten up so early that the sun hadn’t yet climbed high enough in the sky to reach the seafloor. Normally, casting a simple horn glow spell was child's play, but Rafe was a bit shaken by the unexpected. Trying to keep his teeth from chattering from unfounded fear and an early-morning chill, Rafe lit his horn and struck out into the darkness.
The smarter nocturnal animals had turned in to sleep by now, but some of the more brave and foolish were still pecking around sleepily at imagined morsels hidden in the sand. These were used to merponies (even the glowing-like-a-unicorn kind) and payed him no mind as he passed.
The pokemon--as he had recently found they were called--were a bit more jumpy about weird glowing things on the prowl. They didn't wait for the light to fall on them while before they scuttled away from Rafe’s path.
As the sun climbed higher in the sky, dappled rays poked through to the seafloor, where Rafe was nearing his destination.
The outskirts of the city of Marelantis were made of sprawling reefs growing on a limestone cave system. It was located two nautical miles south of the Hawhinny islands, but a northeast bound current helped shorten the trip there. For most, the only problem was waiting for the return current to clear up from traffic. Ever since Rafe mastered teleportation spells, he rarely ever used the crowd-clogged currents.
But that was before pokemon.
Rafe swam past the current’s underbelly, past the coral tower station where the bulk of traffic entered and exited the underwater highway. He stole past the winding lines and away from the grumpy, sleep deprived sea life and merponies either exiting or entering the fray. Rafe turned a corner, and the voices receded behind another pillar of coral growth. Rafe finally breathed a sigh of relief and turned his sights to a pokemon more beautiful and powerful than anything he had seen before in Marelantis. He slowly approached the sleeping serpent monster that he had left to wait for him yesterday night.
Its tail was a mosaic of brightly colored scales, and its body was a warm honeycream color that let its vibrant hues of rose and sapphire pop. She was asleep, her body curled around a half-buried rock on the seafloor, her snores scaring away curious fish and crabs.
She had introduced herself as Milotic in both species and nickname, once Rafe cast a translation spell on her. Everything about her was surprising; the way she looked, the way she spoke, the way she simply appeared in a flash of light right in front of his house and the doting way she had apologized for nearly giving the neighbors heart attacks. Milotic had quickly proved there was more than met the eye, as evidenced when she had been strong enough to convince a rampaging shoal of gyarados to leave town with just an introduction. Apparently she was some sort of deadly celebrity, as there were just as many gyarados who wanted her to sign their scales as there were fleeing for their lives.
But all of that was yesterday, and today this celebrity had a much more low-key day planned. Milotic slowly reared her head, letting out a stream of bubbles in a yawn.
“Good morning, Lady Milotic,” Rafe said with his most pompus butler voice and a sweeping bow. “I do hope you had a restful sleep.”
“As restful as I could, since I had to sleep on the floor.” she grumbled, missing Rafe’s joke entirely. “why can’t a lady rest on the waves without worrying about floating off? Damaging the coral structures indeed, why can't they just ask a corsola to repair it?”
“Do corsola really repair the skeletons of coral?” Rafe wondered, not quite expecting an answer and a bit too tired to process one.
“Well, yes. Did I not tell you about corsola yesterday?” Milotic began uncoiling herself from the rock, stretching out cramps. Milotic had encyclopedias of trivia about the pokemon world, which drew Rafe in like a magnet. “We were talking with your father and neighbors until nearly sunset if my memory serves me well.”
“I dunno. But we can discuss that when we’re in the current, right?” Rafe pointed upwards with a fin to the current flowing through the gaps in the reef. “I told you yesterday that I would take you to the islands of Hawhinny to look for your ‘human’ trainer.”
“Don’t say human in such an indignant manner.” Milotic huffed, following Rafe to the lifeguard station and waiting in line behind him. “They are most certainly real and when I find my darling Cynthia you will eat every word of those doubts you were spouting yesterday afternoon.”
“Who knows?” Rafe murmured, swimming past the much thinner lines for the station and picking out a blind spot where he could enter without the stationmaster seeing until they were already in transit. “We can find the most fantastic and mysterious things on the surface.”
“Why, yes we most certainly ca--Rafe?” but he was being whisked away by the current, off into the distance.
Milotic dove in, scattering fish and a particularly unlucky nurse shark. She pinpointed Rafe through the throng of their fellow highway patrons and coiled her body up so that the water would push her faster. Rafe watched with amazement as she caught up to him and uncoiled just enough to match his pace.
“Brilliant.” he laughed.
“Hmph. I like to think I still have my sea fins.” she said over the rushing water and sea life. Sleepy morning shift workers were entering the current from all angles, the ponies accidentally edging out shoals of fish by sheer numbers in their morning transit. Rafe ducked to keep his head from hitting a large sea turtle flanked by remora fish and more foreign looking remoraid pokemon.
The current rounded a bend and the entire reef came into view. It was a valley of coral and tropical fish, coral fan doors waving as underwater creatures of all kinds came out of their homes and hidey-holes to greet the morning. The sun's rays were finally strong enough to pierce through to the beds of coral, illuminating them into a forest of color that attracted shoals of fish and lazy reef sharks, and a bustling underwater city come to life. Milotic gasped, twisting her head left and right to take it all in.
Rafe laughed, but Milotic was too excited to keep up a stoic front. It was like bringing a land pony below the waves for the first time.
“Now,” Rafe said suddenly, as the view fell behind them. “we were talking about ‘corsola’, weren't we?”
Paige waited by the beach in the shade of an exeggutor, the only tree the other ponies were too scared to try and steal shade from. (the trick was, very obviously, to politely ask permission to sit instead of just plopping down wherever you liked.)
She stared around at the tourist ponies milling about, all on vacation to spend their earnings from their years of daily monotony. All of the islands had caught on to the arrival of pokemon like the flu, tourists treating them like fashionable new attractions and souvenirs and the locals cashing in any way they could, as store mascots and living curiosities. Even more bizarrely, a good portion of the pokemon seemed somewhat used to all of this attention. The ones who hadn’t already slunk away in search of peace and quiet acted like tourist attractions all on their own. They posed for pictures, let little ones ride on their backs within sight of their fascinated parents, and begged for snacks in return.
Paige was in no such situation. In fact, if her walking buddy didn't show up soon, she was going to be late to her daily cycle of tedium. She looked at a clock hanging over the lifeguard station and stood up.
“Argh, I’m late.” she said to no one in particular.
“Guuuuuu...” came the exeggutor’s faraway reply.
Paige cast one more glance to the miniature docks attached to the lifeguard station. Her friend usually came up out of the water from under there, preferring a spot to surface where he wouldn't disturb ponies and ponies wouldn't disturb him.
She sighed and turned away, unfurling her wings and waiting for the sidewalk to clear so that she do a running start.
“Oh, there she is, there-Paige! Paige wait up!”
Paige let her wings fall back to her sides. She turned around, and saw just the merpony she was waiting for poking his head out of the water.
Rafe’s horn glowed as he cast a lifting-liquid spell, collecting a bubble of water that rose over his head and floated his body up out of the water. He prodded his magic forward, ducking out from below the docks and floating to his favorite hippogriff.
“Mornin, Rafe. You're late.”
“Ah, what's one more tardy this late in the year? I’ve already been approved to my first choice.” Rafe seemed to swim through the air in his water bubble, paddling with his tail and angling his fins. He stopped just before the exeggutor’s shade. “And how do you do, kind ‘mon? Thanks for keeping my friend shady.”
“Gutor!” a pleased rumble came from the heads unseen in the branches.
“Talkin to pokemon now?” Paige asked walking out from the shade onto the sidewalk, carefully omitting that she had done the very same thing just minutes ago.
“Who’s Milotic?” Paige called to Rafe’s retreating tail.
Rafe stopped just before the breaking waves, where the head of a beautiful sea monster poked out her head and giggled. Slowly, without Rafe’s spell, she slithered out of the water and into the air, coiling herself about a foot above the sand.
“Milotic?” she tossed her head and fanned herself with her peacock tail. “Ohohohoho! Why, that would be moi!”
“That’s amazing!” Rafe gasped. She gave him an elegant bow, then passed him to float to Paige.
Paige felt the slightest bit intimidated as Milotic stared down at her. “Oh, and you must be Rafe’s girlfriend! Such a pleasure.”
“I, uh,” Paige’s feathers wilted. “Pleasure to meet you, too, but, look I dunno what Rafe told you, but we're not…”
Paige faltered again as Rafe came back. “We--we aren't…”
“Hm?” Milotic blinked at Paige from behind her fan.
“Dating. Me and Rafe, we aren't...doing that.” Paige stuttered.
“Ah, but talking like Yoda you are!” Rafe pointed out.
Paige gave it a forced smile, but Milotic stayed hidden behind her peacock tail. That was weird, this new talking pokemon was weird.
Paige stretched her wings again. “Well, let's not waste any more time, huh? I’ve still got a spotless record to keep, you know.”
“Spotless?” Rafe snorted. “Since when?”
Paige playfully booped his nose with a knuckle. “You going to clown college or what?”
“Yup!” Rafe giggled in mock pride. “Going to the same clown college the rest of the Queen’s Council attended! And I’ll learn all of the finest tricks, making this mile high stack of voter complaints...disappear!”
That one got a chuckle out of Paige, and what might’ve been a smile from behind Milotic’s mask.
“Okay, but seriously, we should get going.” Paige flapped into the air. “I don’t mean to be rude, but we are already late.”
“Oh, yes, I'll be accompanying you to the police station, miss Paige. Rafe already informed you that I was looking for my dear friend Cynthia, of course.”
“He did?” Paige side eyed her friend.
“I did?” Rafe tapped his chin with his fin. “Well, I guess you mentioned Cynthia, but--”
“Then, naturally, you would bring me to a friend of yours that could help me, isn't that correct?”
Rafe wanted to retort with something, but his mind was buzzing with red flags. Milotic had barely introduced herself to Paige and she was acting all weird and demanding favors. Rafe had a feeling that this pokemon was more spoiled brat than she first let on.
But to his surprise, Paige smiled. “Sure, you can follow me to the station, and I'll walk you through reporting a missing pony when we get there. But we need to hurry up!” she called the last bit over her shoulder and took to the air.
“Right!” Milotic slithered after her. Rafe sighed and followed, imagining swimming over Hawhinny as he went after them.
The route Paige and Rafe followed each morning was well worn in their minds, a path they had been taking together nearly every morning for two or three years. Giving the tallest buildings in the skyline a wide berth so that they could fly a bit lower than most pegasus traffic had saved them from tardiness more than once. Milotic was unfamiliar with the imagined airway and trailed a bit behind, giving Paige and Rafe some room to talk.
“So, mind telling me about your crazy new girlfriend?” Paige said with the appropriate amount of sarcasm.
“Huh. Well now who’s making assumptions, you or her?” Rafe waited until she made a comically disgusted face at him before he took the conversation seriously. “I found her just the other day when I was coming home from school. She seemed safe enough to talk to and help out a bit, but now I'm having my doubts. Sorry about dumping her on your lap like this, by the way.”
“Eh! I deal with crazies like her for a living.” Paige checked behind her to see if Milotic had heard her. “Plus, she doesn't seem like a dangerous kind of crazy yet. Just a manipulating/self-absorbed kind of crazy.”
“And you're okay with that?” Rafe asked sheepishly.
“Almost every job in the world means you have to deal with annoying ponies and situations.” Paige shrugged. “At least my job provides me with a baton and handcuffs for when things get out of hoof.”
“...You’re not going to--?”
“Of course not! Violence is a last resort in every situation. It's illegal to use any kind of force unless you or somepony else is in danger. And, in Milotic’s case...”
“The worst she’s done so far is assume we were dating, huh?”
“And ask a police officer to help her find her missing friend.” Paige bumped Rafe with her elbow, splashing through the bubble to jab at his side. “Passive-aggressive, sure, but nothing in any way damaging. Now do you feel better about you making her my problem?”
Rafe could have retorted if Milotic’s voice didn't catch up with them just then.
“Wait! Wait for me, this isn't a race, you know!” Milotic was panting with exertion as the two mixed equines paused their idle chatter to regard her.
“Don’t worry,” Rafe called. “You and Paige are almost there.”
“So get going!” Paige would have slapped Rafe towards the school if he hadn't already been flying there. She stopped for Milotic and watched as Rafe waved his fin at them, then continued towards a building complex with a tropical bird mascot painted on the side and dozens of ponies filing into the entrance.
Milotic fanned herself with her tail when she finally caught up to Paige. She watched as her escort circled to the ground and let herself float down as slowly as she could.
“Hey, Milo! You coming or what?”
“M--Milo?!” Milotic nearly dropped out of the air. “What on earth is that kind of awful nickname?!”
“Short for Milotic?” Paige shrugged as she walked down the block, not even waiting for Milotic to catch up. “If you don’t like it, I could always use ‘Tic’.”
“That. Is. WORSE!” Milotic growled. “You have no right to refer to me in such an undignified way. Now say it with me: My-Low-Tik. Milotic! There can be no more elegant and beautiful name in the world to suit me, given to me by my darling Cynthia…”
Paige sighed as she rounded a corner. She didn’t mean to do that. But now she knew just how obsessed with beauty this sea monster was.
The police station was just across the street. Paige pushed the button to cross and half-listened to “My-Low-Tik’s” continuing rant. Soon she could push all of these pokemon troubles onto a pony who could add ‘Cynthia’ to the ever growing list of missing ponies (which may or may not serve pokemon, she was about to find out) and then go about her day as normal.
Barodius’s attention flickered to the crystal tablet hanging on the wall of his spacious office. He set down the letter from the mayor he was reading and reached towards the light switch on his desk, turning off all the lights in the room with one click.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the purple dragonfire that burned within the crystal. It was as wide as two ponies and as tall as a minotaur, but looking at it from the side would reveal that it was only as thick as a bottlecap. And, unless you were in total darkness with the crystal, you would never begin to guess its fiery secrets.
The voice that had grabbed Barodius’s attention before crackled through the sounds of flames working through firewood. It was rasped and urgent, but subdued to authority just like anyone else under the iron hoof of Hawhinny’s Chief.
“M’ilord, m’ilord there is an extremely powerful pseudodragon entering this building. You must--”
“How did it get in?” Barodius said flatly.
The voice stuttered. “A-according to the badge, it was a Sergeant. Please sir, she's astronomically powerful and fully capable of undermining this entire--”
“And what is she here for?” Barodius sighed, unamused.
“A...missing pony. She's reporting a missing pony with Sargent Paige, the hippogriff. Sir, if she stays in this building too long she might sense us--”
“And if she is escorted right out, she won't have time to sense anything.” Barodius ripped open another letter. “Honestly, my dear, you can be so dramatic at times. All of this worry about a pseudodragon--not even a real dragon, mind you--and I barely heard a peep from anyone when I allowed an immortal psychic and aura sensing canines into the waiting room.”
“Ah,” the voice retreated, either relaxing or shrinking in dismay. “of course. Just like you let that same psychic and the aura-sensing pup leave about an hour ago.”
Barodius slammed both hooves onto the desk, rattling knick knacks and the pony behind the purple fire. “I did no. Such. THING.”
“Well, sir,” the shivering pony gulped. “They are at Mauna Kea at this moment. It's not as though they left the island, but--”
Barodius didn’t hear that far. At the mention of Mauna Kea he slammed his hoof onto the light switch, threw on his coat and stormed out of the office. He scattered ponies with just a glare and stomped past the door where Paige was having Milotic describe her missing friend to a bored pegasus behind a window.
Barodius burst through the front doors of the police station. He paused just then, seeing the twin mountain peaks rising above everything and everyone on the island. He sucked in a breath of clear Hawhinnian air and started towards the dormant Kea at full gallop.
At its base were two pokemon that had acted against orders, and Barodius wasn’t going to let them roam free.
At the base of the towering, majestic Mauna Kea, Tapu Lele examined a pile of rocks.
She scanned the largest boulders by picking them up and setting them down one by one, looking for the distinctive magnetic iron filings found on alolan gravelers. She and Gon had been through at least five of these piles, but she couldn't find an electric rock monster hiding in any of them. Gon waited on the rocks she had already set on the ground as Lele scanned the floating ones for a hibernating mind. Gon had taken a break from rock lifting to update his aunt and grandmother on his location. He had almost left without a word,which meant a lot of apologies. To make it worse, they often wanted to ask Gon what he was doing and he would just...drop whatever he was holding to sit down and talk with them. Lele thought that it was getting annoying really quickly, but Gon was delighted to tell his family about all of the things he and Lele were doing and all of the stuff they had seen so far.
Gon said goodbye to his family for the fourth time that day. But it was more of a ‘talk to you soon’, just like the other times. Which was probably appropriate.
Lele set down another rock next to the one Gon was sitting on. They both let silence hang in the air for a few moments. A sea breeze blew past, and Gon heard a gull call that Lele either ignored or couldn’t sense.
“Why do we need a graveller, anyway?” Gon wondered aloud as he began to sharpen his nails with a smaller rock that he scooped up from the rubble pile. “He didn’t seem like a hunter from his voice, he didn't even seem like much of a fighter.”
But we need allies. Lele set down two rudely awakened roggenrola siblings, and awkwardly waved at them as they stomped off. Besides, rock-type pokemon are generally pretty reliable, even if some of them don't like to fight. What we need from this graveler is longevity and a sturdy handhold.
“You say a lot of confusing things, like, all the time.” Gon mumbled, now sharpening his toenails.
Lele either ignored or didn’t hear this remark. She had set down nearly all of the boulders back onto their pile, and was floating the last one a few inches off the ground. At first glance, it was completely unremarkable. But if one stayed quiet for a moment and listened, one would hear snoring so soft that no one could have guessed who could have been making it. Gon pricked up his ears and sniffed at the boulder in suspect, temporarily abandoning his half sharpened nails to confirm Lele’s discovery.
Now that Gon looked at it, it looked like an amateurishly carved tiki. It had a lopsided face and four arms in all, in different sizes and tucked around itself. Its legs were basically three-toed foot like stumps, its mouth and eyes three closed slits and its face bordered by a crude crest of rock spikes.
“Oh, just a regular graveler.” Gon giggled and knocked on its face, making the graveler snort and bat away his paw. “I thought it was going to be an alolan one.”
I thought so too. Lele said. She set off the weakest psychic flare she could, hopefully enough to jolt this deep sleeper out of dreamland.
It was, and it woke the graveler. The only problem was that it was not happy with them.
“OW, WHAT.” he woke up and started swinging at them in delirium. “Ugh, put me down, you pigheaded psych-head….”
Pighead Psych-head... Lele saw Gon flinch. What an interesting choice of words.
“The only ones that properly describe ‘mons like you.” the graveler snapped once Lele set him safely onto the ground. “Muckin around with mind powers and cowardly tactics. If there wasn't a kid here I’d tell you what for!”
“Sir,” Gon piped up. “please don't talk like that to Tapu Lele.”
“Oh, now, you listen here kid.” the graveler spun around and ranted as though Lele didn't exist. “these self-righteous ‘mons are the absolute worst. They pretend like they got the secrets of the universe in their heads, when all they’ll give you is fortune cookie advice and cheap parlor tricks.”
Someone had a bad breakup. Lele chuckled as Gon began to argue for his Tapu.
“That’s really mean! I get that some psychic types can be full of themselves, but Lele isn't cheap or full of hot air. She's a Tapu of Alola!”
“Alola?” The graveler crossed one pair of arms and put the others on his hips. “You mean that tourist trap region?”
Gon bristled. “It’s not a tourist trap! I used to live there!”
“Well, now here you are in Johto.” the graveler raised an arm in a sweeping gesture at the mountain and horizon. “Welcome to a REAL pokemon region.”
“We--Johto?!” Gon looked like he wanted to fight, fluffing up his fur and taking a wide stance to appear bigger. “We’re nowhere NEAR Johto!”
Don’t get so worked up, Gon. Lele giggled behind her hand. He just hasn't heard of me.
“But you're a legendary.” Gon whined to Lele. “He wouldn't be like this if he was in front of Suicune or something.”
Not this guy. Lele shrugged, now ignoring the irked graveller. We can’t just sling names around. We gotta back ourselves up with evidence. Pretend you’re him. Do you have any way to prove that you aren't allied with some two-bit psychic?
Gon paused. “Hm…”
“Look, if you guys are gonna be like that, I'm just gonna go back to sleep--”
“Z-crystals!” Gon exclaimed, jumping down from his perch and snatching his from where he had dropped it in the grass and held it out to the graveler. “See, Lele made these! We talked to you with telepathy with these before--”
The graveler snatched it from Gon’s paw. “That’s mine! What, do you go around pilfering treasure, you buncha crooks?!”
Gon actually threw a punch that stopped just before connecting to the graveler’s surprised face. Lele’s pink psychic aura formed a film over Gon’s fist, pulling him out of striking distance before he could try anything else.
Lele pulled him into the air with his fist, shaking her head. That’s the one I made for Gon. She said to the graveler in a disappointed tone. Yours is in your shorter left hand and has three parallel scratches on the left side.
“What’re you yammering about now?”He opened the hand in question. “I'm not holding--oh.”
Lele rolled her eyes as Gon glared at the graveler as he compared the two crystals.
“Oh, yeah, I remember. Mine had some scratches, and it wasn’t this bright and new lookin.” he sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “I’m sorry for sayin that about you, kiddo.”
Lele let Gon drop to the grass, where he crossed his legs and arms, pouting angrily. Gon’s eyes prickled with irrational tears, and Lele watched the turbulent thoughts whirl through his mind, mixing and churning as though in a blender.
“Yours is the newer one, right kid?” The graveler held out the brighter crystal to Gon. “I’m sorry for saying that to you. By the way, where’d you dig yours up--?”
Gon snatched it from his hand, scratching the graveler’s palm with his claws and darting away to hide behind another rock pile.
I think he deserves a bit more for an apology. Lele drifted next to the graveler as he sat down. You insulted his homeland, and smack-talked a legendary that he holds in high regard.
“What, you?” the graveler sneered, then stopped. “No, it’s enough I insulted him. I probably shouldn’t keep roasting his...what’re you, his mom? Aunt?”
Tapu. Like, a famous political figure. But, like, with emotions and freinds.
The graveler snorted. “Okay then, ‘Tapu’. Sorry about all of that.”
I’m not the one who was offended. Lele shrugged towards the rocks Gon peeked out from behind when he thought they weren’t looking. And you can apologize after I explain why he takes it so seriously.
“...I’ll bite. What’s with that kid?”
Lele gazed at the rock Gon was hiding behind, and thought of how best to word her response, for both of them. The short answer? A lot of his and others expectations, and piles of little failures that he keeps looking at and wishing he could redo. If you want the long version…
“Not really. I’m no good with listening to long stories.” the graveler plucked a blade of grass and tried to whistle with it. “Besides, that sounds like what a regular kid goes through at this age.”
Lele thought about that as the graveler blew air through his grainy, rugged hands. Maybe that’s for the best. He’s not a very regular pokemon.
“Ah, looks like we got ourselves a special snowflake here.” the graveller chuckled halfheartedly, accidentally blowing the blade of grass away and plucking another strand.
Don’t let him hear you saying that. Lele joked. He’s got a lot riding on his shoulders.
The graveler held the blade between the hands of his shorter arms this time. “Oh yeah? Like what?”
Well, I’ve been enlisting hunters to help me find Arceus...or Hoopa...and I need the help of more than just one riolu, no matter how special. So, I’ve been looking for other pokemon to help bolster my allies.
“How many you got so far?” he finally tossed the grass away without picking anymore.
It’s just me and him against the world, I’m afraid. Maybe his grandma and aunt.
“Pfhah! Oh man, you guys really are pathetic.”
Lele shrugged again.
“Well,” the graveler asked, with more interest. “how’re you planning on finding this Arceus fellow?”
Another long story, I’m afraid. A complicated plan that searches continents over the course of months.
“Yikes. Is that what you came here for? To ask me to join you guys?”
In all fairness, you don’t even have to join me. Just accompany us on recruiting missions to make our cause seem a bit more...fashionable? Is that the word I’m looking for…?
“Probably not.”
Probably not what? The word choice or the offer to join…?
“I probably wouldn’t go with you guys just for looks.” He flashed a toothy grin at Tapu Lele. “Nah, if you guys want me on your side, we gotta be a team. Like, one of them fancy rescue teams, with badges and all that. Ya dig?”
Actually, I think you dig.
“Ah, I see ya.” The graveller guffawed.
Haha…
Why does he need to be on a ‘team’ with us?
Lele blinked and saw Gon peeking over another boulder.
He’s basically a stranger. Gon’s irked tone carried over in his thoughts. What reason does he have to trust two faker mons?
Who knows? Lele waved her hands around mysteriously. Do you want to answer that for yourself, Mr. Graveller?
“Huh. Was that really the first stage? So he was actually another psych-head…”
No, no, no, no. It’s the crystals. The crystals are, uh...psych...helmets! You hold one, and you can talk like a psych-head. Now on sale for nineteen bits!
Gon listened to Tapu Lele and the graveller crack jokes to each other, buiring his muzzle into his crossed arms and pulling his knees to his chest. He hadn’t meant for the graveller to hear that, but Tapu Lele was being really annoying, too. Taking in this homeless weirdo that had just happened to find a crystal while digging for worms or something. He glared at the crystal in his paw and dropped it to the ground to keep his thoughts to himself.
The thing was, Gon liked making friends. But he didn’t like this graveler’s typist attitude*. And what he hated even more was Lele’s attitude! She was laughing with this guy, cracking jokes and being all buddy-buddy. They had said something about apologizing earlier, but that was swept away by their conversation and antics. Gon wouldn’t feel sorry for someone if he had insulted them and their buddy started a friendly conversation with him like he hadn’t done anything. No, he’d just take their friend's behavior as a sign that the other guy didn’t need an apology. Yeah, this graveler would act just like that in this situation. Just pretend it was all water under the bridge, like the rock-head he was.
Gon? Lele’s telepathy quietly bled through his turbulent thoughts.
What. The thought was so angry, he might have yelled it out loud.
Stay hidden behind those rocks for now. Lele sounded anxious. We could use the element of surprise.
Gon looked up and sniffed the air, on the brink of fighting mode. An unfamiliar scent, but it was being blown away by the wind. He snatched up his Z-crystal and pressed himself into the shadow of a sturdy boulder, listening for the source. It didn’t take long for the sound to reach his ears: wingbeats, loud and powerful.
But not just any wingbeats. A flying pokemon was approaching.
Gon couldn’t be blamed for mistaking Barodius’s arrival, Lele convinced herself. The thoughts of a dangerous pokemon swirling in his mind was a bit unnerving to her. But he seemed to have mistaken the sound of wings to those of hooves striking the earth somehow. Lele and the graveller watched as the Chief of Police slowed his gallop to a canter.
“Tapu Lele!” Barodius called as he approached, the canter slowing to a walk. “A word, if you please?”
Lele promptly floated to the air. The graveller shifted, unsure of what Barodius was. Lele gave him another weak flare to explain, but he reacted with an overblown “YEOWCH!” and rather dramatically fell over.
Chief Strident. Tapu Lele nodded once as he stopped in front of her. You’ve come a long way.
“Indeed I have,” the Chief sniffed. “and that’s not even the half of it. You simply up and left without a word, the only reason I knew you had gone anywhere was because of police ponies that had seen you leave, and I only found you here because of tourists that you had asked for directions!”
Lele prided herself on being able to deal with bureaucracy and the unfortunate creatures wrapped within its clutches, and she hoped that her talents would not fail her now. I'm terribly sorry that you had to go to such lengths. I did not expect to be out long and decided not to bother you.
“I see. Well, the next time you decide to leave police property, please inform me or management. I promise that we will not be overly bothered with an update of your location.”
I will certainly do that in the future, and again I apologize. Lele pondered her options. If you’ll forgive me, might I have permission to complete my errand?
“What,” Barodius’s tone took a deadly turn for a moment, but he corrected himself. “What sort of errand?”
Best to make the sell short and sweet. I am locating allies. I have so far found one of three. The other two are near Mauna Loa and an office high-rise in the next own over, respectively.
“I see. Will they take you a full hour to locate as well?”
Lele stiffened. She hadn’t been out for that long, had she? Of...course not. Now that I have one on my allies I’m sure the search will be much faster.
“Splendid. So, while your friend attends to that, you will come back to the police station with me.”
I… Lele scanned his mind, finding bureaucratic mazes and mountains of paperwork that she might have caused if she had stayed out longer and been reported missing. Better to act like she didn't understand. I do not see why you went through all of this trouble personally. Couldn’t you delegate somepony else to take care of all of the work you must complete if I am only going to complicate things?
Barodius ground his teeth, Lele nearly backing away in surprise. “I came here myself.” he said calmly. “By myself because no one else can deal with you, Tapu Lele, because I am the one responsible for you personally! Now, if you pokemon are to have a chance at peace on this island, you must stay with me and figure out how to deal with your ‘friend’ on that office building and all of his little ‘friends’ rampaging around and injuring my ponies and racking up a pile of complaints that I will be hearing about for months, if not years!”
Lele couldn't quite figure out if that helped him blow off steam or if putting all of his troubles out onto the table had made the problems more intense in his mind. This might take more work, best to go along.
I apologise, sir, and understand completely. I will accompany you once I have relayed more specific instructions to my hunting party. Mr. Grave;ler. Lele turned to him once more. I’m afraid I’ll be sending you one more, but if it can be helped it will more than likely be the last.
“Ugh, let's get this over with,” the graveler grunted as he tossed away the blade of grass he had somehow ripped exactly in two with his breath. “Lay it on me, sistah.”
His cry of pain was much more subdued this time. The graveler knew enough that this was no time for theatrics, but Lele hadn’t sent him a very weak flare.
There was a lot to explain.
That should do it. Lele said as he clutched his head and groaned. If you need to contact me, simply use the Z-crystal. Now I must be off.
“Keep in touch,” he grumbled.
It took a couple minutes for Lele and Barodius to have travelled out of earshot on their way to the police station, entrenched in conversation as they were. Finally, the graveler ripped his eyes away from their retreating backs and looked over at Mauna Loa.
It was the shorter mountain, and it was on the way to the town the salamence was in. He needed to get the turtonator on his side, because there was no way in distortion that he was about to face a dragon type all on his lonesome.
“We’re going to find Gerson on the active volcano next.” the graveller nearly jumped out of his skin when Gon’s voice piped up behind him. He had completely forgotten about how he had hidden and avoided being taken back himself. He studied Gon’s face. It was strangely blank of all expression, even boredom. Gon met his eyes, then looked away towards Mauna Loa.
“Y-yeah.” the graveller remembered all of the things in the flare Lele had sent him and wondered how much Gon already knew “Uh, hey listen--”
“Then let's go!” Gon bolted away so fast the graveler thought he had used Quick Attack. The graveler called out in vain as Gon got farther and farther from him. Finally, he gave up, curled into a ball, and Rolled Out after him.
Under-Chief Nurzak rubbed the sleep from his baggy eyes and took a long sip from his near empty coffee cup. He was an old minotaur who had come to Hawhinny from the tense, hectic border between Equestria and and Minos for a life of manageable cases and paper filing. At least, that was what he had hoped he would find, but now that dream seemed a little dated.
He squinted through his reading glasses over the paper he held in his cloven hoof one more time, then looked up at Paige.
“This is going to reflect poorly on you on paper, you know,” he sighed setting down the complaint onto a pile of five or ten more that he had received this morning. “Crackle Licks is a proud pony, and he will most likely take this as a challenge to his authority.”
“Maybe,” Paige stated with a straight face and a steady voice. “but I believe that calling the Colonel out on his actions will convince him to think of ways to move up the ranks besides terrorizing the ponies below him. Besides, I'm not alone with my complaints. There are plenty of other ponies here--”
“Plenty? Seven isn't plenty.” Nurzak removed his reading glasses and hung them on one of his horns. “In order to get the attention of management, I would estimate you would need around twenty individually written complaints detailing clearly defined offenses. Getting them to act within the year? Forty, maybe fifty complaints and at least three different cases clearly botched by his actions.”
“That seems a bit extreme, sir.”
“Extreme is the only thing that will turn heads.” Nurzak sighed, shaking the paper stack into a manilla folder and dropping it into a drawer. “I’ll keep these around, might come in handy if Chief feels like he needs to be put in his place. Especially if they happen to...pile up with time.”
“I’ll make sure of that, sir.” Paige said.
Nurzak paused at that. “Perhaps it's for the best. All he knows about life at the top is the money he might make for his family.”
Nurzak let the drawer slide shut, carefully eyeing the open door just behind Paige. He couldn't see anypony in the hallway, and saw no shadow of a spying eavesdropper. Only then did he snatch his wallet out of his pocket and flip open a secret compartment and give Paige the folded paper within.
“Our new ally will be complaining of sandy shores.” Nurzak whispered as Paige tucked the paper into her coat. “He is in the blank chatroom already. He is in the favor of the dragonborn, but neutral to the mad scientist. Put in a bad word for him if possible, but above all else you do not. Know. Him.”
“Thank you for your advice, sir.” Paige said at a normal volume. Nurzak went back to the papers on his desk as she saluted and left, as though they had just finished the most ordinary of conversations. As she walked out of the room, she subtly checked for a spy the elderly minotaur might have missed, then relaxed and tried to look bored as she made her way to the room that hosted her desk and cubicle.
The office room was a gray, fuzzy maze of ringing phones and loose paper. Deputies rushed as quietly as they could, higher ranked officers exchanging case files and hushed whispers with them as they all tried in vain to make sense of the maze of bureaucracy.
Paige took her seat amongst the chaos, at the mountain of papers and manila folders waiting to be filed that she assumed was supported by a desk buried by the sands of time. This was her workplace, and it would be much more manageable if the higher-ups could ever find somepony else to dump their extra workload onto.
She picked up a case file from what Paige guessed was near the bottom of the stack. A missing pony case…
Milotic. Paige had to escort her out of the station after she had finished reporting her friend missing. She hadn't put up much of a fight when she was told she would have to wait for the police to find her friend, despite her stating otherwise at every opportunity while she was filling out the forms. Paige was a bit worried about where Milotic had gotten off to, especially if she only knew her and Rafe. She worried, but she had a feeling that Milotic was stable enough to know not to bother a student in the middle of a school day.
Paige leaned back in her seat and flipped open the file, reading over the specifics of the case and glancing over at the ancient whiteboard that she had scrawled the names of the deputies under her command. Her eyes flitted to the three unicorns on the list, mulling over who had the most experience with tracking spells.
“A’ight. What happened with her, bud?” Ruban’s much more familiar voice responded in turn.
Paige frowned. This wasn't the time when new deputies from the academy usually came to work. And even if they were, wouldn't she have seen more ponies at the mission briefing she had nearly missed that morning?
“So, I’m a bit new to the capitol, yeah? Well, I grew up all the way over on near the northern side of the island, and lemme tell you, we didn't have this...this diarrhea of mainlanders--I hear the southern side is worse but still--so, I’ve never seen this many mainlanders in one bar before, right? And I go up to a mare that I think is local. But she isn't. Know why? Cause I introduce myself and she goes like ‘what kinda name is Mason Kale?’”
Paige buried her beak into the file, squinting at fine print as the two ponies passed her cubicle.
“And so I said, ‘the one my parents gave me, what's yours? And, listen, I'm not kidding with you she says her name’s Sandy Shores!”
Sandy Shores?
Curious, Paige quickly glanced at the two earth ponies deep in conversation. Walking next to Ruben's dusty red coat and platinum blonde mane was a painted pony in varying shades of brown. He was also a bit short in comparison to Ruben. To Paige, this guy looked a little like her dad. Shorter stature, earthy tones, Paige’s grandfather was a pony directly descended from the native herds of the islands. Was this new guy the same?
She sat back in her chair. Sandy Shores. Did Paige know somepony by that name? Sandy Shores...Sandy Shores...complaining of Sandy Shores.
Oh.
Paige felt like tearing out her feathers. Of course! Of course the pony Nurzak hired would walk by with a perfect cover and slip her a message, and she probably blew it by stupidly looking over at him when he mentioned the codeword.
Paige balled her claw in her lap into a fist to keep herself from having any other reactions for about a minute. Just because she might have botched the mission didn't mean she couldn't play it off like nothing had happened. She faked a yawn and rubbed the soft parts of her talons over her eyes. Yeah, just pretend to be tried, not like it's the oldest trick in the book or anything.
Paige let her claws fall to the armrests as she swiveled her chair back to the desk with the open file. She scooped it back up and rifled through the witness account. She read over the report with a sigh of disgust.
Young griffon cub, last seen talking to a police officer. If Paige kept messing up, she’d go the same way.
Nurzak heard a knock on his door, more subtle than any hoof of talon employed on the force.
“Come in,’ He called, smiling as he finished signing a notice with a flourish.
The door’s handle clicked and loudly squeaked open as a young minotaur with a backpack and a fancy pencil case dangling from her right arm poked her head in.
“Hi, Dad!” she dropped her things onto a chair and ran over to hug her beaming father.
“And hello to you, too, Floria.” Nurzak patted his daughter's head with one hand and brushed away the scattering of papers on his desk.
Floria came every school day to her father's workplace when her school had lunch period. He never found time in the mornings to pack lunch for either of them. Not when his daughter practically dragged him out of his bed by his hooves every morning to when she darted off to school with a mouthful of wildflower salad for breakfast. Instead, Nurzak always tossed some leftovers into a bag or bought a cafeteria lunch and shared it with his daughter when she came by to visit him.
“So, what’ve you got today?” she took a free chair across his desk and sat down with thinly veiled anticipation.
“Quick to the punch, as usual.” Nurzak chuckled and Floria began to bounce in her chair as he procured a thermos flask and two bowls from his desk.
A flash of disappointment flew across Floria’s face as he poured yesterday's leftover taproot soup into them, however warm and steaming as it was. She quickly tried to hide it as Nurzak screwed the cap back on, noting that her father had done that strange thing where he gave her a much bigger portion than his. Floria often told herself that her dad could just get a snack from the cafeteria if the portions he gave himself really weren't enough, but something about how stingy her father was with money told her that he didn’t bother.
The two slurped their soup in relative silence. When two people see each other every day, they tend to run out of conversation topics and just enjoy each other's company.
Floria’s ear twitched to the half-open door. Somepony was standing outside.
“Come in,” Nurzak called.
Tapu Lele floated in, holding multiple thick files in her arms.
Excuse me, she said, looking frazzled. Is this where I drop off mail?
Oh! Of course. So sorry to disturb. She bowed out of the room, dropping a few papers and catching them with Psychic, the door clicking shut behind her.
Nurzak finished his soup and put the empty bowl next to the thermos under his desk. He glanced up at Floria’s to see if she had finished, but she was staring at the door with excitement.
“Those things!” she turned back to her father. “The Pokémon! Even the police have them around!”
“Finish your soup dear.” Nurzak suggested warily.
She gulped the rest down and handed her father the bowl.
“So dad,” Nurzak flinched, knowing which question was coming.
“Can I have a Pokemon?”
Nurzak took a moment to put away the bowl before he answered. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “After everything has died down, I'll take some time off to help you find one. I don't want you to go looking on your own and run into a dangerous one.”
“Just like prom, huh?” Floria snickered.
Nurzak kept his face blank. “If all goes well, my dear, it will be nothing like prom.”
That got a bigger laugh from his daughter. She glanced at the hanging clock on the wall and gasped.
“LATE! I'm late!” She reached over the table to give her dad a neck hold of a hug that smacked his glasses off his face before she grabbed her bag and pencil case. She was halfway out the door before she heard her dad tell her to wait.
“Yeah?” she called. Nurzak had stood up, but now he just stood awkwardly behind his desk.
“Floria, dear,” he said, voice shaking slightly. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn't eat lunch here for awhile. Things are more hectic than I anticipated, and I might not be here to give you anything. I’ll give you some lunch money for the week when we get home, is that alright?”
Floria beamed. “That sounds great, dad. See you soon!”
Nurzak listened as her hoofsteps faded down the hall. He sunk back into his chair, gingerly picking his glasses up from the floor. He ran his finger across a hairline crack in the glass, pondering his insurance plan.
Floria raced down the halls of the of the police station. She knew the way out through the back door, which was often a lot less crowded than the front lobby exit. She decided on a route that would be a bit longer, but would have less traffic from the mail room. She nearly missed the shortcut and grabbed the edges of the walls to make swifter turns.
A white hoof shot out and nearly tripped her. Floria tried to sidestep the pony that was now standing in front of her, but she was trapped. Fortunately, now that she looked, she knew who this was.
“Miss Cassarina,” she panted, not at all subtly looking over her shoulder at the next turn in the hall. “can I help you?”
He sat near some other pokemon on a flat, plateauing slope of Mauna Loa, an active volcano that reminded Gerson of the highest peaks of Wela Volcano park. On instinct alone, he had migrated to the strongest source of volcanic activity he could sense (along with probably every other fire type on the island) and settled down as far as he could from the tourist trails and the feistier pokemon that frequented them.
It wasn't so bad here, Gerson thought to himself, running his claws over his old Z-crystal for the thousandth time that day. At least, he hoped so. Most of the fire types he had managed to get some passing conversation out of were either blase or unaware of just how far away they were from the alolan volcano their ancentors had spent their whole lives on.
So now he sat, waiting for another message from Tapu Lele after the first one he had gotten this morning. She had mentioned that she needed help from whatever hunters she had available, but she had made no attempts to clear up what she planned to do about that. Not over the Z-Channel where Gerson and his posse could hear it, anyway.
Gerson was surrounded by drowsy salandit, who were all settling down to sleep and sunbathe through the sweltering heat of noon. In particular, they clustered around a tough-looking Garchomp that crouched on her haunches and shaded her head with one wing, and a wizened old salazzle that let her youngest children climb on her back and play Got Your Tail. They were as noisy as a flock of chatot, complete with pinching and play fighting and shreiking right into their grandmother's ears, but she snoozed through everything with a serene smile. They left Gerson alone, since all he wanted to talk about was boring old person stuff.
"So," Avior finally grumbled, carefully scooting away from the tiny first stage pokemon littering the ground. "I guess I owe you and that old salazzle a thank you for pulling me out of that lava vent I was trapped in.
"Yer most welcome." Gerson replied.
"Ah, okay." Avior grunted as she sat on the floor with a thump. She looked towards the piles of salandit. "One apology down, about a hundred left to go."
"Those little lizards really got you out of a tight bind, didn't they?" Gerson chuckled, holding up his Z-crystal against the sunlight. "If it weren't for them, you might not have been found in time for us to pull you out."
"Yeah," she breathed, leaning back against her tail.
The two sat in silence after that, staring out over Hawhinny. The only noise for awhile was the play-fighting of the baby salandit, and the distant sound of two pokemon rapidly climbing the mountain.
"Hey...are those more marowak?" Avior asked, squinting at the distant dust clouds.
Hearing this, a sentry salandit scurried over and perched on Avior's knee to get a better look.
"Too fast for Marowak." He proclaimed after a moment, and jumped off to go tell the grandma salazzle.
The two dragons looked back at the approaching...whatever they were, pondering.
The messenger salandit came back, but this time he perched on Gerson's head.
"Hmmm..." he mused.
"Hm?" Gerson wondered aloud.
"HMMMMMM..." The salandit mused harder.
"Hm?" Gerson repeated, unsure of what exactly was happening.
The salandit suddenly leaned down, said simply, "Hunters, no doubt" and slithered off Gerson's head shell and went back to his post.
"Hunters?" Avior snorted. "Is one of them prey and the other predator?"
“No, no." Gerson chuckled, tucking his now glowing Z-crystal into a notch in his shell. "They're both hunters. Hunting me under orders of the esteemed Tapu Lele, if I'm lucky."
"They're here."
"What? Wh--Whoa there!” Gerson fell over as a riolu skidded to a stop and a rolling graveler zipped past.
“Gerson, right?” The riolu brightly inquired, standing squarely in front of Avior. The graveler trundled back to where his companion had stopped on a dime, noticing the elderly turtonator strewn on the ground when Gon had passed him by.
“Euh…” Gerson looked between the curious faces of the two new arrivals, then caught Avior's amused eye.
"Gerson? These kids know you from somewhere?"
Gon followed Avior's gaze, finally noticing the old fire turtle the graveler was helping up. Gerson sat up with a grunt, easing back on to the flat rock he was sitting on before.
"Gon, you mutt!" The graveler scolded, giving Gerson some space. "You could've KILLED this old guy!"
"What?! Oh no," Gon ran over to Gerson. "I'm so sorry, mister. I should've been looking where I was going!"
"S'fine. Still kickin, aren't I?" Gerson stood up to regard the speedy first stager and the grumpy second stage.
"GROUND TYPE!" Everyone jumped as the call went out across the salandit sentries. "GROUND TYPE! GROUND TYPE!"
The salandit and governing salazzle all lept into action, strongest pokemon closer to danger, weaker in the back. A writhing wall of towering salazzle began to form with piles of salandit filling the cracks between their feet and widened the wall's reach as best they could. The graveler cried out in shock as a pile of lizards began to advance, hissing and spitting fire and venom.
Avior sighed in a way that was just too nonchalant for what was happening, then reached out to pluck the graveler up from the ground and plunk him on her head.
The lizard wall reeled in confusion for a few moments. Staring at the graveler clinging fearfully to Aviors head and whispering among themselves.
Finally, the grandma salazzle pushed her way to the front of the formation. She walked with a slight limp, claws behind her back as she silently regarded the situation.
"Avi," she finally said in a creaky voice. "if this is a freind of yours, I will allow thier stay. Provided there are no incidents, of course."
"Of course, Grandma Sala." Avior nodded, almost knocking the graveler loose. "I'll be the first on to chuck him off the mountain if he causes any trouble."
"Thank you, dear. False alarm!" The elder salazzle proclaimed, her call echoed by the sentries.
"False alarm!"
"False alarm!"
"Back to sleep everyone, chop chop!"
And the lizards all spread out across the hardened lava floes of Mauna Loa, leaving Gon, Gerson and most of all the graveler in a state of slight shock.
"Anyway," Avior said cheerfully. "what brings the two of you to our humble encampment? I assume you hunter guys had some buisiness with Gerson over there."
"Y-yeah, " the graveler stuttered, still slightly dazed. "Gon and I came to find you, Gerson sir. We--Gon?"
"Got your tail!" A salandit shreiked, yanking Gon to the ground. Gon yelped as the salandit scattered away from the new tail-puller. Gon stood up, brushed himself off, and cast a cheeky eye over his new playmates.
"I'm comin to get you!" Gon laughed, lunging at the quickest salandit of the bunch, who was taken completely by surprise, and almost got caught. They laughed as Gon chased down his quarry with all the seriousness of a playful puppy.
"Oh, he's run off." Avior observed.
"D'aw, let 'im have his fun." Gerson chuckled. "You're only young once, yanno?"
"I'm the exception!" Gon yelled back, laughing as he caught his prey. "Got your tail!"
None of the older pokemon could descern what that meant, so they left him be.
"To get back on topic," the graveler slowly continued. "We came with news and instructions from Tapu Lele."
“Whose-” Avior started just as Gerson exclaimed “Finally! Well don't leave me hanging, what is it?”
Gon continued to play with the baby salandit, leaving the graveler to give a report to the dragons. He thought about the flare, meditating on its contents until the message moved the graveler’s mouth all on its own.
“Tapu Lele is currently acting as the sole mediator of pokemon and pony relations. Her main job, as of now, is to quell rampages and reign in pokemon that would be dangerous to ponies or the environment.”
“Seems like her.” Gerson mused, not looking at all perturbed by the drastically different voice that had just come out of the graveler’s mouth. “She was always more keen on thinking an talkin her way through her problems. A bit of an oddball among the Tapus, if ya ask me. Not that that’s a bad thing.”
“Right,” the graveler muttered, searching through the flare. “Uh, she said that she met a minotaur in the police force that could prove useful later, called Under Chief Nurzak. But she has no idea where the other Tapus are, so she sent me and Gon out to find more allies for her. She's very overworked at the moment."
"Again," Gerson sighed. "that sounds just like her."
"None of this makes any sense to me so far." Avoir reminded them.
"Oh, of course." Gerson bapped the side of his own head with his hand. "Lemme lay it out for ya. The four Tapus are the guardian dieties of Alola, and they keep the pokemon and humans of Alola at peace. They have kahunas overseeing trial captians and trail-goers to keep in touch with humans, and three star hunters to keep track of two star, one star and zero star hunters for pokemon."
"So in this case, hunters are part of a hunters association?"
"Exactly!" Gerson exclaimed, accidentally waking up some nearby salandit. "The pokemon have hunters, and the humans have the Island trials."
"So, can just any pokemon be a hunter...?"
"No, no, there are plenty of prerequisites." Gerson began to count on his claws. "Be at least level 30, pass the hunters exam, not be a trainers pokemon--you can get yer license revoked if yer ever captured by a trainer--and a buncha other rules that I can't remember right now. Ask me later and it'll return to me."
"Or just dig up a glowing rock buired near a bunch of bones, I guess." The graveler murmured to himself.
"Okay, let me try and figure this out." Avior pressed her claws to the sides of her head. "You two and that riolu over there are part of a formal organization under the jurisdiction of your patron legendary, and you call yourself hunters. So, right now, you both are on a mission for that same legendary...Tupui? I forget."
"Tapu Lele--"
"Yeah, that's the one. Anyway, you, graveler, are here to report about this Tapu's whereabouts and about the new allies she has gathered amongst the ponies, as well as the job of pokemon-pony relations that she has been assigned under the pony government. Am I on the right track?"
"I think you've just about hit the nail on the head." Gerson beamed.
"So, graveler, what do you want this old turtle to do about all this?" Avior closed her rant. "You said that Tapu Lele needed allies, but what does she need them for?"
"I..." The gravler searched though the flare once more. "It says...I mean she said, that we would need to gather up allies to search for Arceus."
A silence hung in the air after that proclamation. The graveler shrank, believing he had said something wrong. Gerson looked at Avior, trying to catch her eye. Her gaze was fixed at the ground, gears turning in her head.
"So..." Avior said slowly. "she thinks that a legendary from Sinnoh--that hasn't been seen or believed in for centuries--has risen and caused all of this pony ruckus?"
The gralever nodded.
"Well, this Island aint so big." Gerson replied cheerfully. "We could sweep the whole thing in about a week or two."
"Do you really think this is just about one island?" Avior asked quietly.
All three were dead silent after that. They watched the game of the first stagers, as a smaller and slower salandit clawed at her playmates tails, nearly crying in frustration when they all scampered away from her. Gon was panting in the heat of high noon, and sat down to rest in Grandma Sala's shade. He nonchalantly stuck out his tail, pretending not to notice as the sniffling salandit snuck up and yanked it with all her strength. He yelped and jumped up, inspiring the salandit to let out a peal of laughter through her jagged sobs. He caught sight of her over his shoulder, and she scurried away as fast as she could to join her friends. He looked around and picked his next target to chase, and paced around on all fours to pretend like he wasn't planning a coordinated attack.
Suddenly, he pounced towards the largest clump of salandit, catching three (one in each paw and one in his mouth) and called "Goh Ouh Taih!"
"That's cheating!" one shrieked as Gon lept backwards.
"Wait, which one of us is the tail-puller?" another pondered.
"You!" the last one screamed, grabbing his tail and yanking as hard as he could. "Got your tail!"
And so, the game dissolved into chaos. Random salandit grabbed each others tails and yanked each other to the ground, play-fighting for the sake of roughhousing. Gon snuck away from the chaos and hid himself in Avior's shade, panting. He looked dazed with heat.
"How you doin, bud?" Avior curled her tail around her legs to better hide him from the wild salandit. Gon said nothing, as all he could do was pant with his toungue lolling out try to keep himself from overheating.
"So, would ye say we've covered everything in the flare, graveler?" Gerson looked back up at the precariously balanced pokemon on Avior's head.
"Just about, yeah." He said. "She--Tapu Lele explained the rest without any flare, so if you need any details about the hunt for Arceus I can fill you in."
"The Hunt for Arceus." Grandma Sala mused from beneah her pile of screaming grandchildren. "That does have a nice ring to it."
The hunters and the ground types watched warily as the ancient salazzle propped her head onto her elbows and shooed her offspring away with a few quiet commands. The salandit scurried off, shouting and pulling tails the whole way.
Grandma Sala remained sunbathing on the ground. The other pokemon gave her quizzical looks, until the graveler asked, "Well, what's it to you?"
Avior almost chucked him off the volcano right then and there, but Grandma Sala took it in good humor. She barked a hearty laugh and slapped at the ground with one wrinkled claw, which helped Avior relax considerably.
"What's it to me?" Grandma Sala asked much more seriously, and Avior tensed again. "Those words that you spoke are orders from my Tapu, you overgrown roggenrola. Tapu Lele is the mind of the islands overflowing with life, alongside the body, Bulu, the blood, Fini, and the heart, Koko. And I was a totem of Akala, totem to the trial of Wela Volcano like Alain before me, and Kaizuk before her. And in all my years of serving that position, never once has something so great and so jarring happened to scare my stupid little children as much as they have been by all of this ponyland nonsense. That's what a hunt for Arceus means to me. Now," she fixed the graveler with a hard stare. "What's in it for all of you?"
"...We might get to go home." Gon said, just out of Grandma Sala's sight.
Sala blinked and stated at Avior's tail as Gon poked his head over the long, battle scarred fins at the end. He stared back at Sala with apprehensive determination.
"Well, that's my reason, anyway. Going home to my island. I left all my stuff there..." He said, sinking back down. "...I just thought your reason sounded the same..."
Grandma Sala looked to be deep in thought for a moment, then sat up. She crossed her legs and her back arched involuntarily, but she was up.
"Indeed it does, strange little rockruff." She said. "Very much the same."
The graveler let out a releived breath as Gerson asked "Does this mean you're joining the hunt?"
"Nope!" She beamed. "I'm volunteering Avi."
"Wh--hey!" Avior stood up so suddenly that the graveler actually did lose his grip. He fell onto her back, his long arms still clutching Avior's torpedo-like head crests. "Don't I get a say in this?!" She cried.
"I dunno, do you have anything better to do?" Sala asked with a cheeky smile.
"Yes!" Avior said with an exasperated yell. "I could look for my trainer Cynthia."
"Then you'd have better luck finding her if you had three licenced hunters on your side, wouldn't you say?"
"I..." Avior looked around at Gon and Gerson, then back to Sala, then back around at the graveler.
"Okay, all of you, look," She hissed. "If Sala is volunteering me, you don't get to refuse my services. We can look for Acreus, but only if I get somemon's help looking for my trainer."
Seeing the look Avior was giving Gon, he quickly suggested "Like Dharak?"
All at once Gon wished he hadn't said that. Avior locked him with a glare so feirce that he ran away to hide behind Grandma Sala. The old salazzle chuckled and bowed her head to Avior with her eyes cast to the ground, which meant peace in draconic body language.
Gon looked up at what Grandma Sala was doing, and seemed to understand. He sat down and tried to mimic exactly what she was doing.
Avior continued to glare for a moment, but slowly relaxed and bowed her own head in apology.
"Dharak?" The graveler asked, perhaps against his better judgement. "You mean that loud Salamence that we were talking to with the Z-crystals?"
"That would be the one." Gerson confirmed. "You two weren't thinkin of 'recruiting' him or anything, right?"
"Maybe," the graveler hoisted himself up and settled back into a comfortable position on Avior's head, with his feet on her shoulders. "we'd have to meet him first. Why?"
Gerson looked at Avior, who kept her head bowed to Gon and Grandma Sala.
"You can ask him yourself." Avior said suddenly, a bit of edge in her voice. "It'd be nice to get him back for one of my older scars."
"Oh, yeah!" Gon perked up. "We can talk right now with the Z-crystals!"
"Wh--right now?" Avior asked uneasily as Gon held up his crystal and closed his eyes to concentrate on it.
"You offered." Grandma Sala shrugged.
"Y'know," Gerson said suddenly. "I haven't heard much from that guy. I mean, Gon was using the crystals a lot earlier, but I haven't heard much from anyone since. Tapu Lele, Gon's family, all dead quiet."
"You think they're too busy?" Grandma Sala offered.
"No," Gerson replied. "I think someone's jammin the signal."
"Guys!" Gon yelled suddenly, spooking everyone. "Listen with your crystals!"
"Oh, what's happening now?" The graveler complained as he pressed his crystal to the top of Avior's head and Gon shared his crystal with Grandma Sala.
They all went silent to the sound of a dragon's wingbeats, far away from Mauna Loa, towards a familiar police station.
A dragons roar, loud enough to make the cubicle walls rattle, startled unicorn Deputy Contest Steer and his hippogriff superior Paige out of their heated debate.
Of course, out of the two, (indeed, out of everypony in the building) Contest was mildly sure that he was the only pony who recognised the sound. Perhaps he was being harsh, but he highly doubted that anyone else from this sheltered tropical paradise had ever heard a dragon’s roar.
“What was that?” Paige asked with a lilt of worry carrying through her voice, and it was so familiar that Contest had to keep himself from cracking a smile.
They heard a chair creak. The entire office turned to watch as Ruben determinedly stood up and trotted out the door without a word as to where he intended to go.
Contest and Paige exchanged a glance and returned to their case file. Before they had been interrupted, Paige had been arguing that she needed a unicorn to handle the tracking portion of the missing pony case.
“Listen, Sarge. ” Contest hissed as the white noise of the office started up again, slowly, quietly. “I mean no disrespect when I say this, but assigning me only search and rescue cases one after another...it's counterproductive! My specialty lies with disguise and espionage, not tracking and spell-slinging.”
“It helps to work outside of your comfort zone every once in awhile, Deputy. That’s how you get promotions instead of a pink slip.”
“Saying that is easy, doing it is a whole other mess!” Contest raised his voice as the conversations of other officers returned to their normal levels. Paige’s annoyed attitude was beginning to seep into her own mood. He already knew he couldn't fully win here, but he had other things to worry about besides locating whatever random belongings that some airhead tourist lost at the beach that they should have left at home.
Paige opened her beak to deliver a sick burn to her lazy underling at the exact moment that Ruben screamed from the office entrance:
“There’s a dragon on the front lawn!”
Contest died a little. A dragon. On the front lawn of this exact police station. Paige craned her head over the cubicle wall to search Ruben’s face for an explanation, then looked to Contest’s lock-jawed expression with confusion and disbelief.
After a hesitant moment, the office began to ruffle with a doubt, until the first officer got up to follow Ruben to his dragon. Then another, then yet another, until the trickle of curious ponies devolved into a stampede around Paige’s cubicle.
Contest was out first, slipping into the crowd before Paige could call his name.
He darted between ponies and was soon squeezing through the front door and following the crowd of ponies spilling out of the front entrances. He pushed his way forward to get a better look at the scene.
A bright blue and red four legged dragon, too big to be an adolescent but not big enough to be fully grown, stood motionlessly in front of Chief Barodius, and behind him Doctor Cassarina cowered as she maintained the shield spell she had cast over it.
What is it? What happ...ened... Tapu Lele flew over the crowd but ground to a halt when she saw what was happening.
“Miss Lele,” the Chief casually called her over. “I believe I have found our second official police pokemon!”
Your what? Tapu Lele looked over to the salamence trapped in the magic shield. He glowered back at her and lashed his tail against the barrier, letting out a roar muffled by the restricting magic.
Dharak? Why are you here? She asked as she examined the force feild.
Dharak didn't respond. In fact, he didn't seem to notice Tapu Lele at all. He paced around a bit, then suddenly Dragon Rushed at the walls for a few minutes until he tired himself out.
"Oooh, feisty." The Cheif chuckled. "I like that."
Tapu Lele put a hand on the sheild, which sparked and gave off a small Thundershock. Dharak was getting rather badly electrocuted as well.
What is the meaning of this?! Tapu Lele asked, nearly shrill. Why are you keeping him in such a state? Doctor Cassarina is using too much power to keep thishorrid thing activated! Doctor, please, she turned to the strained unicorn.
"That'snot her call to make, Lele." Cheif Barodius said with hint of annoyance. "You may go back inside now, you still have lots of papers to look over."
Tapu Lele froze. That was the rudest anyone had ever been to her! Not refering to her as Tapu, dissmissing her like that. She floated down to address the Chief to his face.
Mr. Strident--
“That’s Chief to you, Miss Lele.” Barodius snapped.
Then it's Tapu to you, Mr. Strident. Lele calmly retorted.
A flicker of tension hung in the air as Contest looked from pokemon to pony. He didn't realize that Paige was standing next to him until he heard her whisper.
“Gyo.”
Contest nearly jumped out of his skin and nearly smacked into the pony next to him.
“Not one bit.” Contest wheezed. “And, go? Go where?”
“Nowhere.” Paige turned back to the standoff between Chief and Legend. “I wasn't talking to you.”
...was just going to be for a side mission on my own time. Lele was gesturing towards the dragon now. Besides, I made sure to tell you that I was planning on having Dharak come over and assist me.
They had missed a bit of the Tapu and the Chiefs argument, but it looked like with the choice of topic he had backed her into a corner.
“So, if I have this straight,” Barodius brushed her explanation aside. “You have been planning to send out a scouting expedition to find some ~legendary~ pokemon that you don't know the location or appearance of based on a theory--a theory! Of why your pokemon are on my islands, rather than focusing on their immediate troubles?”
It wasn't time taken from my duties--
Barodius interrupted her. “It is an endeavor that you have been putting horsepower behind. You have been delegating complacent, working pokemon that could be helping my forces--”
They are NOT complacent! Lele exploded, the Chief darkening his glare. They are independent beings that have their own goals, and I am not the one who orders then around like you do for your...police...army!
“But they take your commands, and since you are under my command--”
Dharak is NOT under my command! He has every right to refuse my request if I ask him, but you are keeping him in a pokeball and FORCING HIM TO TAKE ORDERS! And I will not assist nor condone this! So order your soldiers to go back into the building so that they will not be harmed when you LET HIM GO.
Cassarina made a noise and tried to whisper something in Barodius’s ear, but he brushed her off just as easily as he did Tapu Lele.
“I am afraid not, Miss Tapu.” he sighed. “Because for now, it is a matter of subjugating one pokemon so that many other creatures--pony and pokemon alike--may live.”
You… Tapu Lele began, her tone full of hatred. She stopped herself before she could say anything out of anger, but it was hard to cool down as she felt the eyes of the gathered ponies boring into her. Although she couldn’t read Barodius or Cassarina’s thoughts, the thoughts of the police pones were terrifyingly agreeable. Yes, why not? Maybe Barodius is right about that ‘good of all’ thing. Just keep this one dangerous dragon in captivity as a big red button in case of danger. It might go around eating ponies if it was allowed to roam free. It would be safer, it just makes sense. Why is that pink pokemon so defensive? Why was her hunt more important than ponies lives--
Tapu Lele glowed suddenly, with the light of a Calm Mind and the spread of a misty Psychic Terrain. She cooled her thoughts and steeled her determination.
Chief Strident. She began slowly, confidently, as the ponies around her flinched and wondered if she was going to attack. I can see why you would want this dragon on your side, under a watchful eye that will protect him from situations that may provoke him to violence. But I can not allow you to set an example of pokemon subjugation for all of your officers to see.
“Meaning?” Chief Barodius was either on the verge of winning or about to be defeated in front of all of his forces.
Meaning that the only way you will have a pokemon under your command is with their consent. The only way that this salamence Dharak can work as a police pokemon is if he graduated from an academy or passed an exam to earn a badge of a Private Officer of the law. He is sentient, and hopelessly untrained, you understand.
Lele scanned the minds of the ponies again. All of thier previous thoughts were replaced with mullings of the logic in recruiting a technically sentient dragon into a small-town police force. Wouldn't he need training? What would he do on the force? Who would care for him?
Others among them now thought of her a bit too clever for her own good, but there was also a changeling hiding amongst the crowd that was starting to consider allying herself with someone who could so easily think up and exploit bureaucratic loopholes, which cheered Lele up considerably.
So, until the Salamence Dharak consents to formal policemon training, your Doctor Cassarina will have to set him free. I would advise that all personnel go into the police building as I have previously requested while we speak to him.
A pregnant pause followed this declaration. The prying eyes of all of the police ponies flitted from pokemon legendary to defiant Chief and back again, watching and waiting for a verdict with bated breath.
“Tapu Lele,” the voice of Barodius’s hatred was in no way hidden, but it was no vicious snarl or spat curse. His anger was spoken in the lofty, disappointed monotone of a school principal talking to a rowdy foal, an immovable wall that dealt consequences while taking none, unaffected by reason of any sort. “I am afraid that you are in no way authorized to give those orders.”
But...you have no right to force Dharak to your bidding. Lele was growing more and more uneasy by the thoughts of the crowd, especially that of the cowering changeling. You have no more right to force Dharak into your forces than you do with any tourist--
“I think that you will find, Miss Lele,” He looked Tapu Lele in the eye as he said this. “that there is no law preventing me from doing so.”
What? So you can just take random ponies off of the street here?
“No, but there is no law preventing me from drafting a willing volunteer into active service. Cassarina, if you will.”
The shaking unicorn let her shield and her body fall. The police ponies gasped and shrieked as the magical light flickered out. Dharak tentatively stepped out of the boundaries of the trampled grass, scanning the scenery around him as his eyes adjusted to the light outside of the force field.
STOP! Tapu Lele forced herself out of shock to command the Psychic Terrain around her to surround the salamence, whipping it into a miniature pink tornado that obscured him from the ponies now stampeding back into the building or scattering to the streets.
Lele was having a hard time keeping Dharak from lifting off and snacking on the fleeing ponies, but she was having a harder time keeping herself from slapping Barodius upside the head. Are you insane?! You could have killed all of these ponies! You could have killed yourself!
"Really now?” Barodius smiled.
Dharak flapped his wings, Defogging Tapu Lele’s Psychic Terrain just long enough to roar “SALAAAAA!”
A flash of confusion crossed Lele’s face. She turned her head from Barodius’s smug expression to the enraged salamence she was holding down.
“What is he saying, Miss Lele?”
Lele didn’t answer. She stared at the tornado mist and the shifting silhouette of the dragon inside.
Barodius was chuckling now. Did he have this planned all along? “Come on now, Miss Lele. If you weren’t going to translate, I’ll simply have my darling Cassarina do it.”
Lele still said nothing, but slowly, reluctantly, she waited for Psychic Terrain to dissipate. The tornado blew out into a swirling gale, then a strong current, then a mild breeze, until Dharak could ignore it entirely. He triumphantly threw his head back and approached the Chief with his head held high.
Barodius didn’t flinch as the dragon drew closer and closer, smiled as he stopped close enough for Dharak to reach and bite him in half.
But Dharak reached his claw into a crook in his wing, where he held a scratched, pink, glowing crystal. He set it down at Barodius’s hooves, watching Lele out of the corner of his eye.
Barodius only noticed the crystal, and he snatched it up and tossed it to Cassarina, who was still virtually passed out on the ground and made no attempt to catch it.
He...
“Hm?” Barodius finally looked at Lele.
Dharak. Lele looked perturbed, yet defiant. You said ‘He’s my master.’
“Mence.” Dharak bared his fangs and snarled at Lele. “Sal Sala!”
‘I am trained, and bow only to a trainer.’ Lele translated slowly. The speech patterns of wild dragons were often highly simplistic and their meanings context-derived.
“Well, at least somemon around here has good taste.” Barodius chuckled.
Well, if you bow only to a trainer, Lele continued. Then, you are in no way a hunter.
Tapu Lele held up her hand and summoned the Z-crystal where it lay on the grass near Cassarina. It zipped into Lele’s grasp, and just before she crushed it to dust she sent a huge flare to all of the pokemon listening on the other side of the Z-channel.
She watched the depowered sand crumble through over her palm, the crystal’s power seeping back into her reserves. She could already feel a fresh wave of the Chief’s anger, and Dharak’s resentment bore no better. She paid them no mind for now.
This new flare had been the most detailed yet, and might last longer in the minds of the hunters, but she needed them to know what she was thinking. Even though her ‘plans’ at this point were going to be mainly her bureaucratically grasping at straws and stalling for time, but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care about anything else but the hunters she had left on Mauna Loa.
She hoped they could find Arceus, but more importantly she hoped she could keep them away from Barodius Strident.
On the flat slopes of Mauna Loa, all of the pokemon listening through the Z-crystals were on the ground, clutching their heads and groaning.
Gon was the first to recover. His vision still swam but the ringing in his ears had stopped and the pins and needles pricking every inch of his flesh were starting to subside. He sat up and squinted around at the other pokemon still immobile on the ground.
“Is--cough--is everyone okay?”
No one answered him, but the pokemon strewn around Gon all seemed to be breathing, so he let himself fall back to the ground to quiet the growing headache forming just above his brow. He noticed the fuzzy shapes of salandit crowding around Grandma Sala.
“Gon?” She shakily called out.
“...Hhhhm...?” he strained to listen through the ringing in his ears.
“Please...do me a favor…”
“...Yeah…?”
“If I ever meet Tapu Lele again in my lifetime...hold me back."
The sun had sunk nearly to the horizon by the time Paige could leave the police station. She crunched through the gravel walk leading from the police station to the street, musing quietly about her day.
Chronologically, she had met Rafe’s new friend and helped her report a missing pokemon, which had resulted in an argument with the receptionist over what form the report should be filed as, and after Milotic had left she met with Nurzak about her problem with Crack yesterday and was updated on the new recruit that she almost blew the cover of...alright, she probably did blow that guys cover...and after that Dharak the terrifying dragon pokemon with cardboard cutout wings appeared and got Tapu Lele in hot water with the Chief.
Paige sighed and dragged her wings off her flanks. She usually finished her work day before Rafe finished his tutoring job, but she was mildly sure that Rafe was already home by now, as he usually left the school just two or three hours after everyone else.
She took a running start and stumbled into the air. She let herself find an updraft before she tried to glide over to the school building. It was about three blocks down and would have been a marathon to fly over to without a breeze to carry her.
She flew over the grounds and paused over the main building, circling to see who was still there. The classroom Rafe normally taught at was empty, and there were no signs of anypony leaving the building or loitering near it.
Satisfied, Paige pumped her wings and left the thermal, anything to carry her away from the school she had long since left behind as she headed for home.
The pink, orange and gold sunlight stretched the shadows of buildings and ponies as Paige flew overhead, her own shadow too far off to the side for her to see without craning her neck. She steered herself towards her house, even though her route was usually to go by the beach to drop off Rafe.
She realized very quickly how lonely it was to fly home without anyone to talk to, and began to count the buildings she passed by. There was the shave ice shop, the bookstore, Milotic, the post office…
Huh.
The peacock serpent pokemon spotted her from the sidewalk. She was looking tired, bleary eyed and just a little bit destitute.
Paige glided down to greet her. She might as well, she wasn’t in any hurry.
“Hey!” Paige grunted as she let herself fall to earth a little too hard. “What’ve you've been up to?”
“Oh, hello, miss Paige.” Milotic wasn't floating, Paige observed. She was coiled up on the ground, tail drooping and sunken eyes. “I was just looking around.”
“For?”
“My darling Cynthia, of course!” Milotic grumbled. “What else?”
Paige sighed. This was just what she was afraid of. “Auntie, didn’t you come to the police? All you're doing out here is tiring yourself out.”
“I don't care.” Milotic tossed her head and refused to meet Paige’s gaze. “She’s here somewhere, and she needs me now more than ever. I can’t wait for the police!”
“Yeah, the night shift ponies are pretty lazy.” Paige shrugged. “But, The deputy I have in charge of missing pony cases is pretty reliable. She should be on the case within the next week.”
“That’s exactly my point.” Milotic spat as she tried to slither away.
Paige winced as Milotic her scratched her scales on a jutting crack in the pavement. “Hey, stop! Look, Auntie, stop, you are way too tired to be doing this search yourself--”
“Aqua Ring.”
A film of water ran over Milotic’s scales, stemming the bleeding over the cut and making a scab form over it, which promptly popped off and dissolved into water, leaving no trace of the injury. “You were saying?” Milotic smirked at Paige.
“I was saying that you still look too tired to be doing this search all night.” Paige finished.
“You needn’t worry, Paige. I am much stronger than you think.” Milotic turned to continue on her way.
“You know the way to the beach?” Paige asked suddenly.
Milotic paused. “...No. Why?”
“Well, I was just thinking.” Paige put a claw to her chin in mock deep thought. “That once the sun goes down, the biggest gathering of ponies is usually the beach for dinner and luaus for tourists. And since the pokemon got along so well with tourists during the day, maybe they will stick around at night. And if there are so many pokemon all in one place...maybe you’ll find a human?”
Milotic’s eyes widened, snapping her head to stare at Paige. “I…” She composed herself. “It’s worth a shot!” Slightly.
“Then follow me.” Paige turned towards the direction of the sea breeze and gestured with her wing. “C’mon, it won’t be any trouble.”
It took a bit of effort, but Milotic floated off the ground and swam through the air beside Paige. The sounds of ponies’ conversations and the smells of cooking food soon began to waft over the breeze as well. Ponies walked by, some going home for the night, others headed to the same destination as the pair. For the most part they were ignored, but not out of fear. The two didn’t talk, but they stole quick glances at each other when they thought one of them wasn’t looking.
“What did you call me back there?” Milotic asked suddenly. “Auntie?”
“Oh. I said that without thinking.” Paige realized as the ground went from street to grass to sand. “Yeah, it’s a bit of an islander thing. Er, a Hawhinnian thing, now that I think about it. Everyone’s a cousin or an uncle or an aunt.”
“Everyone’s family.” Milotic sighed. It wasn’t melancholic, but Paige wasn’t sure if it was happy, either.
“Is it okay if I call you that?” Paige asked as Milotic slithered ahead towards the water.
“...Yes. It’s better than Milo, anyway.” Milotic looked back at Paige one last time. “See you tomorrow?”
Paige cracked a grin. “I hope so, auntie."
Paige walked slowly up to the shadow of a cottage made of clouds among a field of other cloud homes. With a grunt, she kicked off the ground and flew up to the door of her parents house. In place of a front lawn, an herb and vegetable garden lined the squishy cloud path up to the entrance, beads of water gathered on the leaves lit by the dulling orange of the fading sunset, the smell of wet plants and earth saturated the air. She fished a bent,worn key from a hidden pocket sewn into her saddlebags, humming as she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
A fluffy yellow bug pokemon buzzed over her head and softly landed on the keyrack. “Cutie!”
“Howzit, Lil Cousin?” Paige chuckled as she set down her things. “You planning on staying here?”
“Cutiefly!” Lil Cousin exclaimed without thinking, then on second thought nodded his head.
“Say, have you seen my parents around?” She caught Lil Cousin’s eye after a moment, then reconsidered. “Can you point to where they are, I mean?”
Lil Cousin pointed with one leg towards the sliding door leading from the livingroom to the back lawn and pool. Paige walked up to it, pressing her beak against the glass to see her parents lounging in the jacuzzi. On closer inspection, they appeared to be feeding each other some sort of finger food and watching the sunset.
She rapped her knuckles loudly on the glass and waved to them, then called “I’ll be in my room” to them. Her mother gave her a thumbs-up, and Paige left to rummage something from the refrigerator.
Paige didn’t even let Lil Cousin into her room. She had important, classified work to do, and she couldn’t afford a security breach of any kind.
She sat down at her desk, setting her cold dinner of tuna salad off to the side. She had already taken out some files from work, but she kept them on the side for now. She retrieved a folded sheet of paper that Under Chief Nurzak had given her that morning and spread it out on the worn wood of her desk.
The paper didn’t look all too remarkable, just a slightly folded and crumpled blank sheet, but when Paige took out her fountain pen and scribbled her name right in it center, the ink didn’t dry. Instead, it soaked into the page, like a sponge, then the whole page began to shiver.
It straightened itself out, like it was being pressed by an invisible iron before Paige’s eyes. Then, after the iron, a squadron of invisible quills scratched out looping borders in the margins of the paper, dividing the rest of the space into four even sections, each labeled with a name: Nurzak, Mason, Paige and Lele.
{The Blank Chatroom Is In Session.} These words appeared in the at the top, surrounded by looping calligraphic border designs. Now they could talk by writing whatever they wanted in their own box.
{Hello, Every Pony♡!} Appeared in Tapu Lele’s section, making her look like a dork right off the bat. She even adorned the message with a little heart, how embarrassing.
{HELLO.} From Mason. All caps, no punctuation or grammar. Except for the required Period at the end, which was how the chatroom knew to send the message you had just written.
{We meet at last, Mason and Tapu Lele.} Paige wrote.
{YOU BLEW MY COVER.} Still sour, huh?
{Hello, Sarge!} Tapu Lele continued to have no sense of self-preservation.
{What’s today’s discussion?} Paige helpfully tried to keep the group in focus.
{NURZAK CALLED MEETING.} Mason sent. {WAIT FOR HIM.}
Paige rolled her eyes and tapped her pen on her desk. After about a minute, Tapu Lele sent another message.
{While we wait, someone please tell me what is this operation cross examination you are planning?}
Paige started to write a response, but Mason beat her to the punch.
{OPERATION CROSS CONTAMINATION.} He corrected.
{We are planning to expose the Cheif’s illegal dealings to the press and have him publicly releived of duty.} Dangit, some typos...
{*etc.} Paige corrected. {He collects them, but we don’t know where or why. He probably is adding some pockaymons to his collection.}
{*pokemon.} Tapu Lele corrected.
{WE KNOW ONLY WHAT CASSARINA WRITES. NURZAK USES THIS CHATROOM TO COLLECT INFO FROM CASSARINA.}
{Wow! This paper has a lot of uses then! Is it magic?} Tapu Lele wrote. Paige was beginning to suspect she was acting ditzy on purpose.
{IT IS HATSU.}
{Cool! What is Hatsu?} Did Tapu Lele ever just use a regular period?
{A Hatsu is kind of magic discovered by Islander Ponies.} Paige sent. Better that Lele was in the know. {It takes a lot of practise to manifest one. The Blank Chatroom is Mason’s Hatsu.}
{Only Mason has one?}
{NO. NURZAK AND PAIGE KEEP THERES SECRET.}
A message out of the corner of her eye. Oh, in Nurzak’s section! Paige and Mason crossed out their boxes in order to clear out the messages their conversations had accumulated.
Then, Paige took a moment to actually read his message, blotted by tear stains and stray drops of ink.
{Cass Floria did not come home today I spkeo conver talked to her teachers and she he they said that she didn’t come back after lunch listen i kno Cassarina took her they are getting bolder we need to attack now soon.}
Oh.
{What is your plan, Chief?} Tapu Lele sent.
{Under Chief.} Mason corrected.
{It’s Chief to us.} Tapu Lele replied. {I’m not going to give MR • BAROdius any respect after the stunt he pulled today.}
Paige suspected she purposefully made the period in Barodius’s name too big so that it wouldn’t send right away. Kind of clever, really.
{Cheif?} Paige sent. {Do you have a plan?}
A few moments after Paige thought he had walked away from the Chatroom, Nurzak’s plan shimmered into view in his window. Paige quickly grabbed an old bake sale flyer off her desk and scribbled down the plan’s main points. But as she skimmed Nurzak’s message, she found less to write about on the flyer, and soon she was frantically writing for him to reconsider.
{I suspect that Barodius took Floria to get us to act faster and expose ourselves so we must be covert and I will be the only one to go after Floria so as not to involve anyone else if I am captured I will not tell you whether or not I am successful so that you all can react organically to any news except for an emergency I will not use the Blank Chatroom for updates I will send my copy back to Mason for now I will be in contact with Tapu Lele with her hatsu Z-Crystals I will leave tonight do not come looking for me continue Operation Cross Contamination Lele will take my place in spying operations GOOD LUCK.}
Everyone was writing to Nurzak now, trying to convince him not to go, trying to get him to rethink things, not to be hasty, to at least get a second opinion.
But when Mason cleared his section and wrote that Nurzak had sent his Blank Page back to Mason by folding it into an airplane and letting it fly back to him, they all stopped.
“Raffelisa!” Rafe’s father called, and Rafe winced at the use of his full name. Rafe hated being called anything other than his four-letter nickname, but his father (named Starfish) always used it because ‘that’s what your mother and I named our son, and that’s what I’ll call him by.’
His mother, Botany Garden, had chosen it. Nevermind that ‘raffelisa’ was a species of putrid smelling corpse flowers, it *~sounded pretty~*.
“Yes father?” That was the snarking response he always made. You’re my father, not my dad. Dad is just so linguistically incorrect (neither side of the debate really knows the truth to this argument).
“Zip Zam came to visit. Should I let him in?”
Rafe paused. Was he ready for a guest right now? He looked around at the disorganised landfill that had settled to the bottom of his spherical coral cave room.
He had piles of old paperwork that he really should have tossed in the recycling bin (standard Hawhinnian printer paper tended to be magically waterproof), various thrift shop knickknacks from the surface that were useless underwater, ranging from mismatched teacups (just try to drink anything underwater), to tangles of hand-sewn blankets and pillows (merponies sleep floating or in sandbanks), and footstools and chairs that held even more things that he had no use for. (Underwater living means that loose furniture often floats away, and in most residential housing the rooms are spherical and the walls are made of rock with no windows. Therefore, wall alcoves are widely used in place of such things as desks, closets and pantries.)
Rafe was, unfortunately, somewhat of a packrat of any and all things from the surface.
“Uhh...yeah, let him in.” Rafe said as he started sorting his mess into random alcoves with telekinesis.
Rafe’s dad poked his head through the empty doorway of the bedroom and looked around at the impromptu spring cleaning.
“Raffelisa…” Starfish sighed as a very familiar seapony stuck his head into the room as well.
“Z!” Rafe dropped his cleaning session to nuzzle his friend (hugs are difficult with fins, so nuzzles and kisses are used instead. This has proven to be one of the bigger cultural gaps between surface ponies and merponies). “Sorry about the mess, I didn’t think you were already here.”
“And I didn’t think you could be any more embarrassing to be friends with.” Zip Zam laughed and swam into Rafe’s room, grabbing onto a heavy table leg with his tail as though he was taking a seat.
“Well, if that’s the case, you can leave the way you came.” Rafe turned away from his friend and continued to sort his things into various alcoves.
“Dude, I was kidding!” Zip Zam began to float away with the table and Rafe had to grab it and set it back down again, putting some heavier items on top of it to keep it on the ground. “But seriously, all of this junk in your room is not doing you any favors.”
“Mmhm. Don’t get tangled in the coral fans on your way out.”
“I hate you so much, dude.”
Rafe finally looked back at his friend, smiling from ear to ear. “It’s mutual, bro.”
Starfish looked between the two of them, then shook his head and left. “These kids…” he grumbled as he thought about what sort of snacks to make.
There were no more accusations or declarations of hatred between the two of them for the rest of the seapony’s stay. Rafe was still cleaning, but that didn’t stop him and Zip Zam from their lively banter.
“So, Z, remember those pokemon that have been appearing everywhere underwater?”
“Bro, don’t tell me they’ve been on land too.”
“But they’re everywhere!” Rafe exclaimed, throwing his fins up for emphasis. “And the ones on land are even weirder than the ones you’ve been seeing.”
“Are you sure? You don’t know what I do in my free time.” Zip Zam crossed his fins with a challenging smirk.
“Yes I do.” Rafe put a fin to his chin and said in a sultry voice.” You read those awful dime romances.”
“You can NOT prove that was even my copy, dude.” Zip Zam scoffed, ducking as Rafe carried a large school trophy over his head and plunked it on the table
“Then why was it in your room last time I slept over?”
“Because that was half a year ago and my roommate was pranking me. Obviously!”
“Raptor moved out way before then, liar!”
“Well, before he left the outskirts to go to the Capitol, he left me one last prank. That’s just how he is.”
“Oh, sure! Whatever you say, my most trustworthy friend. Anyway, you know Milotic?”
“The big snake?” Zip Zam side-eyed him.
“That’s the one. She’s still looking for her human, and I think now that the police are looking as well she and her friend can be reunited!”
Zip Zam’s faux hostility melted. “D’aww. Oh, so what’s she doing in the meantime?”
“I dunno. I haven’t seen her since this morning. I’ll look for her tomorrow, probably”
“Hmm…”
The two friends lapsed into silence, having exhausted all pleasantries so quickly in their conversation. Starfish came in and gave them spicy algae patties wrapped in kelp leaves after awhile, so they ate in silence.
“Hey.” Rafe asked thickly, as he finally cleared a sizable portion of his room’s clutter. “You mind if I finish grading some worksheets?”
Zip Zam shrugged, so Rafe grabbed his bag and one last patty with his magic and started grading his student’s math homework at a cramped desk alcove. Zip Zam let his gaze wander around the room as the sun coming through the skylight slowly faded, eating out of boredom rather than hunger.
“I’ve been sending letters to Raptor.” Zip Zam said suddenly. “He said he was promoted to a palace guard for Queen Oceania.”
“You could’ve said something sooner.” Rafe smiled down at his work. “I’ll have to send him something to congratulate him.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Which is why I came to you, yanno? You’ve got piles of junk that would make great gifts.”
“To a nursing home, maybe. But to a royal guardspony?”
“I wasn’t gonna send him one of your tables, dude.”
“Then?”
Zip Zam looked around a bit before answering. “Like...Maybe a board game? You still have that old parcheesi set, right?”
“I don’t have it in travel size. Where would Raptor stash it? When would he use it?”
“Then how about a perfume bracelet?” (Aerosol perfume doesn't work underwater, so perfumes are often embedded into jewelry.)
“Are you saying he smells bad?”
“No, but what if he was just at a really sweaty training session and he has a date with his new marefriend in a couple of minutes and he doesn’t have time to wash up?”
Rafe pondered this. “I don’t have any good or new ones. We could go through my dad’s room--”
“Nah, I’ll just buy one tomorrow. He’ll probably be more offended if I sent you something from your room rather than an actual gift.”
“Ah. I see.”
More silence, and it lasted much longer this time. Zip Zam finished the plate and brought it to the kitchen. When he came back he noticed that some of the stuff that Rafe had tried to sort onto the wall alcoves had settled back to the bottom of the room. Zip Zam gently picked up a round ceramic teapot and set it onto one of the less slanted shelves.
Zip Zam looked up through Rafe’s skylight at the dark water of nighttime that seemed to absorb the light shining from the assorted lamps Rafe had turned on as night fell. He quietly swam over to Rafe and tapped his shoulder.
“Hey. I’m going home, okay?”
Rafe snored.
Zip Zam blinked and shook him awake. Rafe squinted awake and slowly rubbed his eyes out with his fins.
“Dude? You okay?”
Rafe yawned, seeming to finally notice Zip Zam. “Oh. Sorry, I fell asleep.”
Zip Zam waited as Rafe roused himself, not moving even when Rafe was awake enough to read his expression.
“What?”
“Have you been getting enough sleep?” Zip Zam asked with a worried expression. “I know you have your bad habits from summer vacay.”
“I’m fine, Z.” Rafe sat up and made himself look as awake as possible. “The neighbors have been a bit loud recently and it’s been keeping me up. I’m kind of glad I’ll be out of the house this weekend, you know?”
Zip Zam looked confused. “Music?”
“Yeah, I think it could be ‘cause of the whole pokemon thing. There are some really weird ones.”
Zip Zam’s expression hadn’t changed, so Rafe straightened up and returned the stare.
The two held their staring contest for a minute, until Zip Zam could see that he was fully awake.
“Make sure you go to sleep early tonight, okay?”
“Mmhm.” The two exchanged goodbyes and Rafe turned back to his work as Zip Zam swam out the door. He wished that he could sleep early, but he knew that he wouldn’t have time to finish grading tomorrow.
The finished pile of homework stacked higher and higher as the hours went by, but Rafe knew he wouldn’t finish before those awful noises started up again.
He was on the last page when he heard it. He rubbed his tired eyes with a fin and cast a sound dampening spell over his ears. He wasn’t sure what kind of music the neighbors or those pokemon were playing, but it was really echoey and ambient and made him feel sick to his stomach the longer he listened to it.
With his magic covering his ears Rafe had to use his mouth to put away the worksheets. He shoved them in, crumpling them all in the process and probably ripping a few. He struggled with the zipper for about a minute before he gave up and released the spell over his ears to fix up the mess he made.
As he magically uncrumpled and unripped his students worksheets, Rafe began to really listen to the music his neighbors were playing. But the more he listened, the less it sounded like music. It was ear-grating ambient noise, but it was also just that. Noise. Noise with no beat, rhythm or pattern. And the more Rafe listened, the faster that sickening feeling from last night crept up on him and threatened to turn his stomach inside out.
He finally straightened out his bags and recast his invisible earmuff spell. He pondered going to sleep, but then he realized that he might as well cast the same spell on his dad, too.
Rafe dragged himself across the house to his dad’s room, not wanting to wake him up at such a late hour. He quietly poked his head past the coral fan doors and squinted into the darkness of his dad’s room.
His dad was fast asleep, and it took Rafe only a moment to cast the spell. He had retracted his head from the room and turned around to go back to his own bed when he felt his dad’s fin on his shoulder.
Rafe turned and watched his dad attempt to speak for a few moments before he realized what was happening. He gestured to his ears until Rafe took down the spell for both of them.
“Raffelisa, is this some kind of prank?” his dad grumbled.
“Eugh, no, it’s not,” Rafe clutched his ears. “I just thought those weird noises might also be keeping you up and--”
“What noises?”
Rafe made a face and raised his voice over the sounds. “Dad, c’mon, the noises you’re hearing right now? I thought it was music yesterday, but it’s louder now, and I’m starting to feel sick the longer I listen to it--”
“Son,” His dad yawned. “Except for you yelling, it’s pin drop silence in here.”
Rafe had recast the spell over his ears again, before his dad could tell him to go to sleep. He swam back to his room, unable to make sense of anything with his sleep-fogged brain.
Perhaps he should have gone to sleep earlier, after all.
The moon was high in the sky when the headaches of the hunters finally subsided enough to hold a prolonged conversation. Avior and Gon had completely recovered and could pace about freely, but neither Gerson nor the graveler could stand up without seeing stars. They were about to discuss what their next course of action would be, but the Salandit tribe had other plans.
“You lot better stay away from Gramma! You and your crystals could have killed her!” a lanky young salazzle scolded them all as healer salandit set another fire to keep Grandma Sala from getting too cold.
“I’m sorry.” Gon hung his head, looking so dejected that the salazzle’s heart melted. “I didn’t mean to hurt your grandma.”
“Well, in any case, you’d better keep those crystals away from her. And if you want to bring any more weird characters up here, you’d better ask permission from a sentry. That goes especially for you two pruney excuses for dragons!”
Gon snorted out loud at that, but neither Gerson nor Avior seemed at all offended.
“We promise!” Gon said with a salute. Satisfied, the salazzle turned and left.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Gon’s face split into a cheeky grin. He made a face at the salazzle’s retreating back, then hid behind the graveler when she turned around.
“Thought she’d never leave us alone.” Gerson chuckled. “If only she knew, huh?”
“Yeah,” Gon agreed, plopping down on the floor. “Those flares were pretty annoying for us, too.”
Avior suddenly growled, lashing her tail across the ground and carving deep furrows into the rock. The graveler flinched and scooted away. Gon didn't run, but he eyed the lashing tail suspiciously.
“What was that for?” Gerson scolded, but faltered under Avior’s glare. "A-alright! We shouldn't have sassed that salazzle the way we did, she was only lookin out for her grandmother--"
“You people have no sense of focus!" Avior roared, starling everyone. "Tapu Lele sent those flares because the situation is out of her hands. We need to discuss our next move!”
“A-alright, then,” Gerson replied nervously, then cleared his throat. “I was thinkin that Tapu Lele needed to send such a big psychic flare because she was sending us all the information she had gathered on Equestria and the creatures living here, as well as brushing us up on other important information, such as her Arceus theory and a list of the ponies she’s met. Friendly, neutral, and enemy alike.”
“What about Operation Cross Contamination?” The graveler suggested from a hidden corner of the rock overhang in an attempt to stay as far away from any angry pokemon as he could. “I think we were supposed to figure out something about that, but we don’t have a lot of information to go on.”
"That’s all irrelevant!” Avior shouted, whipping her tail and dashing rubble into sand, scaring the graveler a few more feet back. “I could care less about the police station layout and whatever hatsus are when freaking Dharak has pledged loyalty to a power hungry mudbray!”
Gon cocked his head to the side. “...Say that again, but slower…?”
“AUGH!” Avior screamed, but then fell to back to the floor, covering her face with her claws.
Gon put a paw on the now resting tail. “Hey, are you okay miss Avior?”
Avior slowly uncovered her face, a tired look imprinted in her drooping eyes.
“It’s more of a personal grudge than anything else, but I suppose I should tell you all...” Avior sat up and crossed her legs. Gon, sensing a story, scooted in front of her to listen with a wide, expectant smile while the others got comfortable a bit more subtly.
“Dharak was the former ace pokemon of Hoenn Elite Four member Drake.” Avior began. “We met back when Cynthia first rose to power in the Sinnoh league and held meetings and sparring tournaments with the Pokemon Leagues of other regions. Me and Milotic were always in attendance, and we had some of our greatest matches wherever we went to visit.”
Avior leaned back, a nostalgic gleam in her eye. “Cynthia always rode on my back, wherever we went. ‘Champions fly in first class,’ she always said. The fans came in droves, and the press and paparazzi waited in ambush even when our visits were unannounced. But I had a much different welcome on our first visit to hoenn.”
“So I was Flying along,” Avior held up a wing and held it horizontally to mime her flying over a vast sea. “whoosh, clear skies all around, plenty of pelipper to catch for a midair snack, omnom nom,” she pretended that her wing ate the other one, then held it behind her back as she pretended to chew. “we were about to touch down, and I was feeling pretty good until--whapow!” She suddenly whipped around the wing she had previously pretended was a pelipper, but this time it struck the wing that represented her younger self, and both wings tussled and fell towards the imagined sea.
“Was it Dharak?” Gon leaned forward, swept up in the old dragon’s tale.
“Yup, and with Drake on his back! ‘Ahh, no! Dharak, heel! Don’t attack!’ But Dharak couldn't hear his trainer, he only saw another dragon type who he had challenged to a brawl high up in the clouds.”
“Izzat really what he said?” Gerson asked dryly.
“Ahh, whatever.” Avior batted away his question with a wave of a wing, then continued her mock fight.
“So we fought, and we might've killed both our trainers if Drake hadn’t taken a huge risk. He sent out his flygon and altaria--ptchoo ptchoo, and ordered them to attack Dharak while he was still on his back! I thought to myself, this guys totally nuts! Both of the new dragons fired--boom! Boom! Drake jumped off! He recalled Dharak--ptching! In midair, thousands of meters from the ground! His Altaria caught him as though this was business as usual.”
“‘Sorry for the trouble, young miss,’ he says to Cynthia. ‘but we’ve been waiting on the new sinnoh champion, and you’re the third trainer he’s tried to knock out the sky. Although, he’s never gone so ballistic before.’”
“He didn’t even know it was her?” Gon giggled.
“Now to be fair, there were a lot of sinnohnians following us to hoenn, since Cynthia was a new champion back then. Anyway, we touched down, boosh,” her wing landed on her knee. “and Cynthia recalls me so I can take a nap. It was a much longer nap than I thought it was, and the next day Cynthia wakes me up and asks me if I'm up to having a fight.”
“So I’m like HEL--heck yeah!” Avior sheepishly rubbed her jaw as if wiping away a slip of the tongue, then leaned forward to emphasize the conversational part of the story. “But, then she gets a bit more serious than usual and says that it's gonna be against the salamence from yesterday. And you know? At first I had no idea what she was so worried about. Like, c’mon, have faith in me, Cynthi! I coulda takin’ him if I wasn't trying to protect you.”
“But then she says to me, for the first time in my career, ‘I’m really worried about what he’ll do to you.’”
Avior sat up again. “Even if Cynthia could understand pokespeak, I couldn't have said a word to her after that. That was my trainer’s expert assessment of the enemy, and I was starting to get a bit nervous of fighting a mon that had the newly crowned champion of Sinnoh spooked.”
Avior stood up and began to mime a sparring match with a punching bag. “I did a couple of warm up fights and exercises in the leagues’ training hall while Cynthia attended her meetings, which were gonna take all day. Now, Hoenn is an old and well established league, so eventually I took a moment to enjoy the perks. The best pokeblocks and pokesweets money could buy, massages and backrubs, I got to peek in on some super expensive and high tech battle items being polished for Hoenn Champion Steven Stone, and I got to meet some of the prettiest dragons hoenn had to offer.”
“Unfortunately for me, some of those lady dragons were already spoken for. I dunno how Dharak found me out so fast, but he barged into the training hall and the first thing he sees is me. Not just me, but all of the lady dragons in his harem and then some. All just laying around, sharing poffins and exotic sweets with me like I own the dang place.”
“‘YOU!’” The pokemon all jumped as Avior’s voice suddenly went down two octaves, and rumbled in a way that everyone could feel vibrating in their skulls. “He runs at me like he’s gonna clobber me right then and there. ‘I CHALLENGE YOU FOR THE KINGDOM!’”
“The what?” The graveler meekly asked, having scooted closer.
“It’s part of the dragon’s code of honor.” Gerson explained. “When two dragons try to claim the same territory or mates, they have a battle to decide who will continue to have access to those resources, who will keep the ‘kingdom.’”
“But, it wasn't your fault!” Gon interjected. “You didn't know you were doing anything wrong.”
“I’m afraid not, kiddo.” Avior explained. “I knew there was a unstable dragon type being housed on the premises that my trainer all but warned me not to provoke, yet I let myself indulge in the lap of luxury surrounded by girls that he’d clearly already bitten.* I can't say that I’m blameless for being careless.”
Gon blinked in surprise. Avior continued, unheeded.
“I knew I wasn't allowed to fight this guy without my trainer, but I had very clearly worn out my welcome in his territory, so he wasn't about to hear me say no. We took it to the arena, no refs and no regulations. We were both prepared to get kicked off the league for an illegal grudge match.”
Avior stood, squaring up against an invisible opponent. “He hits me with a Fireblast right off the bat, FWAHH! I dodged, he fires another one, and another one! FWAHHAFWAHHAFWAHH! Like he’s tryna melt the whole stadium!”
Avior was fully enthralled in her own story, dodging pretend fire blasts and winding up a fake Dual Chop.
“So I get in close, hah, hah!” she swiped at lightning speed at thin air, dodging another pretend attack. “But he’s ready for me! He slams me with dragon rush, OOF!” Avior doubled over. “A direct hit!”
“But I’m not out of the fight yet! I grab his neck with a Crunch attack--aaomph! And manage to throw in a few Fire Fangs and hope for a burn or flinch chance. But he’s not happy about that, oh no sir.”
“He takes a different approach. My legs are unprotected--SMACK!” she stumbled backwards. “Dragon Tail attack! I let go--but I Burned him! If I can just attack from afar he might just tire himself out. So I back up and start to set up some defenses. I set up a Substitute and whip up a Sandstorm to help along that sweet DOT. I hunker down behind Protect and think to myself that it’s only a matter of time before I win this match, fair and clean.”
“Unfortunately for me, I forgot that I was dealing with a veteran Elite Four Ace salamence. Maybe if his ability hadn't been Intimidate I would’ve done enough damage to let him wear out, but even that’s probably a stretch. So, I was sittin there, peering out into the Sandstorm for a chance to snipe him. I can't see him anywhere. He was using Dragon Dance before, why can't I see him now?”
“I wait and wait until the Sandstorm peters out, then I look around the arena. Hey, I’m the only mon here! What gives? Did he just give up and walk out the door? I look all around, and then I look UP.”
“His eyes are glowing red from the rafters. I could feel his Outraged aura staring me down like a hungry Ursaring sizing up a Slurpuff!” Avior dramatically fell to her knees, her eyes fixed upwards. “I charge up a Dragon Pulse, too late! He Jumps! I CAN’T ESCAPE!”
Avior crumpled to a heap on the ground, breathing hard, but just pretending to be unconscious. The pokemon all stared at their fallen storyteller, until Gon slowly approached on all fours. He sniffed around Avior’s face until she opened one eye and smiled.
“What happened after that?” Gon sat back up. Avior sat up as well, but with a grinning expression that no one could quite place.
“I lost, that’s what.” Avior confided. “I lost, and I got a huge scar for losing. The biggest one I have. Guess which one it is, huh?”
“The notch on the fin on your back?” The graveler suggested.
“The claw marks on your flank?” Gerson pointed to them.
“That skinned patch on your tail?” The graveler tried again. Gerson tilted to the side to get a better look at it, wearing a rather queasy expression.
Avior’s eyes fell on Gon, but had said nothing yet. He sat closest, and hes was staring at her intensely. He stood, silently, and put a paw on her knee.
“This leg…” He said, with a tone of assurance. “This whole leg is your greatest scar.”
Avior raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? That isn't even the leg that’s missing a toe.”
“That's not surprising.” Gon confirmed. “since you probably had to get a new leg to replace the one Dharak chewed off.”
Gon was pointing directly at a seam in the skin. It was a line that went around her thigh where the leg connected to the pelvis. Now that the other pokemon were looking, the skin below the seam was strangely smooth, and scars above it stopped at the seam.
Gerson clasped his hands in his lap, rubbing them together with an uneasy expression. The graveler whimpered, turning away from Avior altogether. Gon took no notice of anyone else and asked, “What happened next?”
Avior shrugged. “What else is there? I woke up in the infirmary the next day to the news that Drake is in the process of retiring Dharak and finding a new shelgon to train up to take his place. All of the blame that I should have taken was lifted off my shoulders and dumped onto Dharak’s, and since then I can only imagine how he’s been out for my blood.”
“You spooking these youngsters with old war stories again?” Grandma Sala hobbled into the circle, carrying some burning brambles. She dumped them onto the ground and arranged them into a pile as some other salandit added more sticks and logs onto the growing flame.
“Sala…” Avior shook her head. “You should be resting.”
“Nonsense, Avi. If you have time to keep these kids up, then you have time to warm yourselves around a fire.” She sat down and crossed her legs, some of her children settling down around her; keeping watch, but totally relaxed.
“Alright, now we know that Avior and Dharak do not mix.” The graveler postulated. “What do we do? Wait for further instructions from Tapu Lele?”
Gerson shook his head. “If she was gonna keep in touch, why would she give us those migraine-inducing flares? Nah, her orders are as clear as day: we need to stay away from the Pony Police, and look for Arceus on our own.”
Gon huffed as he warmed his paws over the fire. “That’ll take forever.”
“It may,” Gerson agreed. “we don't have any leads to go on, yet.”
“Nothin suffered nothin gained.” Grandma Sala agreed.
“We’ll be doing it as a team, at least.” The graveler said to reassure himself more than anyone else. “We’ll gain more followers and help each other out. It’ll take work, it’ll take commitment, but we can do it.”
With nothing else to say, the pokemon all fell silent. Their campfires crackled and whipped about in the wind, spinning their embers into the night sky. The fires chattered and squabbled and sang in a language all their own, as though they knew how little time they had to live, thier desperation to make the most of it as old as time and matter. None of the salandit nor the hunters, nor even Grandma Sala with all her years could understand them, for they spoke only in the language of the universe.
On the Land, Paige woke up and went to work. A bit more solemn than usual, but nothing noticeable to her peers.
Underwater, Rafe woke up and went to school as usual, but only after he and his dad had a short but confusing discussion about the trip to his mom’s place and discordant music in the night.
And for the hunt, the hunters sitting beneath an old overhang of cooled lava rock still felt yesterday's headaches, sorting through their thoughts and trying to decide how to act.
And, halfway across Equus, Arceus decided to choose just now to project his voice across the world.
“Greetings citizens of Equus, both old and new.” Arceus’ voice echoed through the mind of every being on the planet. Whoever didn't panic or plead insanity realized the importance of what was happening, and quieted down to listen.
Mason Kale, in particular, lunged for a blank paper. He smoothed it out on his desk and spoke aloud Arceus’s words as they came to mind. Even in the panic of the police headquarters cubicles, his hatsu recorded his every word in bold, looping cursive onto the page.
“I am Lord Arceus, creator of the creatures that you have seen over the past few days.”
Grandma Sala dreamt these words as her salandit tribe fell into panic all around her. Avior let the three hunters clamber onto her back and flew away to escape the panicked fire-types, her liftoff scattering the dying embers of last nights campfire. There wasn’t much room on the old garchomp’s back, however, and they almost missed the rest of the announcement trying not to fall off.
“You have no reason to fear me for I come in peace.”
The two hippocampi guards in front of Queen Oceania’s throne room looked to each other with worry. They could hear a commotion behind the heavy limestone doors, and they were torn between eavesdropping on it or paying attention to the telepathic announcement that they may or may or may not be hallucinating.
“I am the one who brought the creatures you see to this world, they are known as Pokémon.”
“Your fault, hmm?” Barodius flicked the lights off from his desk, the dragon crystal’s fire bringing a flurry of animal screams and Cassarina’s pleads for help reigning them in.
“I have my reasons for bringing them here, I will be holding a summit with the world's leaders so that they can help inform their citizens the best.”
Paige’s father frowned deeply, something that didn't slip past his wife. She put a wing over his shoulders, and they exchanged a look that spoke volumes.
“For now I issue a warning; Even if some do not appear as such, the Pokémon are just as intelligent as any other creature that calls this world home.”
Zip Zam looked back at the horsea hiding under some coral in front of his house. “So...you really can understand me?” The pokemon nodded furiously, and Zip Zam gasped in delight.
“Since they are MY subjects I will not tolerate their mistreatment or abuse. Treat them as you would your own neighbor.”
A gardevoir, trapped and unconscious in a cage, would have barked a sour laugh if she could control a single muscle in her body. Some of the stronger animals and pokemon in the surrounding cages had woken up and were now screaming and rattling the bars of their confines. She wished she could join them, but she didn't have the strength in her body to get up.
The cellar doors banged open, and three ponies came down the steps. A tall unicorn, balancing something being carried on the back of a heavily muscled earth pony with her magic, and a young bat winged pony between the two of them.
They stopped at a rather unremarkable cage that housed only a young teenage minotaur. The unicorn, with great effort, lifted the body off of the earth pony’s back and put it on the floor of the of the cage. The batpony held open the door, then let it slam shut on its spring-loaded hinges.
“Pokemon who have awoken in this new world, do not seek to harm the natives of this world. To the pokemon that experienced certain... Changes... when you arrived; You are the ones who proved that not all of your kind deserved vengeful retribution, consider this your reward.”
Milotic’s brow creased at that. “Changes?” She murmured.
“He means me!” A silvery, shiny eevee jumped up and down in front of Milotic. “Pokemon that experienced changes?! I’m telling you, I used to be human!”
“Woah Little Dude.” An alolan raichu put his paws up and floated back. “Calm yourself.”
Milotic watched how the eevee hopped about, how he relied on his back legs to kick himself into the air and how he sometimes forgot to land on all fours.
“To live new lives, free of the burdens of the old world, a chance to start anew. As sentient beings of varying intelligence, the laws of the respective countries you now reside in apply to you, and only those laws.”
Tapu Lele sighed at ‘varying intelligence.’ That part was a bit rude, she thought out loud to Kite Flyer, the only pony in the Mailroom. Kite Flyer nodded without listening, tossing another letter into an overflowing box labeled ‘Pepe Silvia’.
“That is all for now, the Pokémon are not to be harmed simply out of spite. If you have any qualms with what I have done, I reside in a temple located within the Everfree forest and welcome all who would like to speak, or a pocket dimension outside of the space time continuum, so if any of you wish to face the sheer power of a god, feel free to come by.”
At these words, a yellow shell cracked open to let an eye peer out, staring through a gap in some twisted, vine covered trees.
And just its luck, there was the marbled walls of the old Temple. Just as they remembered.
“Goodbye for now, though I doubt this will be the last you hear of me, and peace to you all.”
Avior touched down at the base of Mauna Loa, knees buckling under the extra weight. “Okay, everyone off before you break something.”
The graveler fell off without any further complaint, slamming a small crater into the dirt. Gerson was a bit more careful getting off, and Gon decided to stay right where he was on top of Avior’s head.
“Well,” Gerson said cheerfully. “I do believe we have a lead. For our hunt, that is.”
“Arceus,” Avior murmured. “Arceus really just spoke now, didn't he?”
“A Temple in the Everfree Forest.” Gon recited. “We need to find an Everfree Forest. Is that on Hawhinny?”
“Ow…” The graveler finally pulled himself out of the ground. “If I never fly again, it’ll be too soon…”
H-hewwo…?
The graveler blinked and looked around. “Who said that?”
“I think it was Tapu Lele!” Gon held up his Z-crystal and concentrated.
Are you here, Tapu Lele?
Oh, Gon! Yes, it’s me! Did you guys hear that--what am I saying, of course you heard it. Where are you guys right now?
We are at the base of Mauna Loa. We got chased out of a salandit tribe’s encampment. Gon said, almost interrupting himself with his next thought. We have a lead to Arceus! We just need to find Everfree!
Okay, okay, I hear you Lele laughed soundlessly. I’m glad you’re all okay. Hold on a second...
There was silence on the other line for a moment. Avior sat down with a huff, and the two hunters on the ground followed suit.
Finally, a response. Gon, everyone, listen, it’s important.
Nice of you to talk to us this time. The graveler complained. Instead of, you know, injecting us with flares like some kinda mad doctor.
Gon cast an indignant look over to the graveler, but he heard Lele sigh on the other end.
Yeah, I know. I won't be doing that again...much. Look, I don’t have a lot of time, so listen carefully: Chief Barodius is really powerful and really, really dangerous. I won’t be able to reliably communicate with you with crystal magic at all as long as he has me working for him. So, I’m sending a pony named Mason with directions to this Everfree Forest. He has a more secure method of communication we can use, and he can tell you all about Operation Cross-Contamination. I need to know where you guys are so I can send him there, okay?
Gon looked around where they had landed for any landmarks. What caught his eye first was a dense forest off to the left, but he was pretty sure that trees were too plentiful to be at all reliable for this sort of thing. To his right, there was a sign that Gon couldn't read, but it had a picture of a volcano and a red circle with a line cut through it, so he had a pretty good guess of what it said. Finally, he looked back up at the mountain, and noticed the Salandit tribe’s spurts of Flamethrower directly above them.
Lele read his mind as he searched. I got it. He’s on his way now.
If I may ask, Most Honorable Tapu, Gerson spoke up now. Why are you staying in the police station, close to Barodius? You could join us for the hunt. You don’t need to be there.
Actually, I do. If I don’t mediate pokemon and pony relationships, we are going to make some very powerful and very angry enemies here. It’s a delicate balance, and I’m the only one who can do this.
I don’t like this. Gon admitted. It’s like he’s got you in a pokeball.
Don’t think like that. I’ll be fine. But listen, if Barodius finds out about you, you guys will really be in trouble. I’m going to temporarily cut off all crystal communications, effective as soon as this call ends.
Will you reopen it soon, Most Honorable Tapu?
Yes, as soon as Barodius stops breathing down my neck. I can’t keep it open for too long, otherwise I’ll be found out.
We understand.
Good. Mason is about a quarter of the way there. Sit tight, and he’ll be there before you know it. Goodbye for now.
And the Z-crystals stopped glowing. It took a moment for the hunters to reorient themselves back into the real world, where Avior was sitting with a bored expression.
“So,” She asked, picking her teeth. “anymon want to fill me in?”
Mason, as it turned out, was a pony who looked to the pokemon a little like an awkward preteen evolution between a Mudbray and a Mudsdale. He wore only some saddlebags, a collar-like necklace, and a white button-down shirt that a policepony’s badge and jacket would usually be worn over. His eyes were sharp and shrewd, giving him an air of being rather suspicious of whoever or whatever he was looking at. Whether that be a tree, a stray cobblestone, or the group of four slightly-burnt hunters sitting at the bottom of a volcano he had come all this way to meet.
Mason had spotted them from the trail, and cantered over. He glanced from pokemon to pokemon as he approached, rather haughtily in Avior’s opinion.
“Alright,” He said, looking at all of them and none of them down his nose. “Can any of you talk?”
For a moment, no one answered, too shocked by the pony’s blatant disregard for manners.
“Depends,” Avior looked down at him right back. “Can you get your head out of your rear end long enough to hear us?”
Mason blinked, then made a sort of ‘fair enough’ nodding gesture. “Well, then it looks like this weird necklace works. I’m Mason Kale, sent by Tapu Lele, as you all know. So! Where should we start? The new instructions for the operation? That announcement from that Arceus dude?”
“Do you know where the Everfree is?” Gon blurted out, drawing all attention to himself. “We need to go to the Everfree to find Acreus’s temple.”
“...Do you now.” Mason sighed. “Look, kid, I understand that this whole voice-in-head announcement is kind of a big deal for you pokemon, but we can just get a map to Ponyville whenever we want. I didn’t let your Tapui lady inject me with a migraine pellet just for you to ask for directions.”
“Hey, lay off the kid, will you?” The graveler crossed his arms. “Just tell us what's constipating your brain if you’re gonna be so whiny about it.”
“You can start with Cross Commotion if you want.” Gerson offered, smiling as Mason glared at him. “Tapu Lele didn’t tell us much about that in any flare or conversation. All we know is that we would be given an update when y’all weren’t feelin so...tight lipped.”
“Operation Cross Contamination” Mason strained the words through clenched teeth. “Is a plot to expose Barodius’s illegal dealings to the public in the least dangerous way possible. At first, all we had to do was find the hidden bunker where he keeps all of his experiments, but we haven’t had much luck on that front. That was back when my old boss and one or two other underlings were looking for it, so I’m hoping your Lady--”
“TAPU LELE!”
“WHATEVER! --is going to have better luck than we ever did. We might have to wait a couple of weeks, though, so that the pokemon mess is old news and the island won’t be divided on the issue of bringing down our corrupt Chief. Did you get all that?”
“Yes,” everyone except for the graveler said in unison.
“Good. Moving on.” Mason reached into his saddlebag to retrieve a clipboard of blank pages. He set it on the ground and grabbed an empty fountain pen between his teeth.
“Uh…” the graveler began to say timidly, but Mason ignored him.
“Yeh might be outta ink there, sonny.” Gerson suggested, but Mason ignored him, too.
“Whah we neeh toh do righh now ish delegah eahh o’ you guysh to shpeshific tashksh…” Mason mused as he drew a clear line down the center of the paper with vividly black ink, much to the pokemon’s shock. “We hab two frontsh dat need to be manned: the Operashun--” Mason scribbled ‘O.C.C.’ on one side of the line. “--an’ th Hunt fo’ Arceus.” Mason wrote ‘H.F.A.’ on the other side of the page.
“Get that out of your mouth.” Avior gave him a solid poke to the back of his head. “And speak clearly.”
Mason rubbed his mane indignantly, spitting his pen into his other hoof. “We’re splitting into two groups. One to go find Arceus, and the other to stay and help take down Barodius. The hunting party should be as minimal as possible for two reasons: to travel faster with less baggage and to leave behind more backup in case Barodius acts up before we’re ready for him.”
“I want to be on the hunt.” Gon piped up.
“Hang on!” Mason grabbed the pen in his mouth again and started making a list of words on the back of the page:
MASON SHARK DOG TURT ROCK PAIGE LADY
The hunters stared at this in confusion as Mason put his pen down. “These are all our functioning operatives. We just need to sort out who is going where, and why.”
“Is that what it’s supposed to be?” The graveler asked as he peered over Mason’s hooves. “Those don’t look like names.”
“It’s a list of...code names. It has me, all of you four monsters, and Tapui Lady, and one of my colleagues that you haven’t met yet who’s still at the police station.”
A light bulb clicked on in Gon’s head. “Put two more names!” He shouted down at Mason. Mason gave him a questioning look so Gon explained, “My Aunt Mito and Grandma Abe are at the Police Station with Tapu Lele. They can help, too! So, please write them!”
Mason shrugged and added MITO and ABE to the end of the list.
“Alright then,” Avior declared. “to restate a rather pertinent question Gon asked before: how far away is the Everfree?”
Mason thought for a moment. “I think it was by a town called Ponyville, in the Equestrian mainland. The mainland itself is two-or-three weeks by boat, and a day’s flight from here, and that’s not counting how far inland you’d have to travel after that to get to Ponyville, and from there to the Everfree.”
“Then I’ll be on the Hunt for Arceus,” Avior said immediately. “I can fly, and I don’t want to be anywhere near this island if Barodius and Dharak are on it.”
“I feel the same way!” Mason chuckled, then went back to being serious. “If that’s how it is, then we can just send you on your own--”
“I want to go on the Hunt, too!” Gon cried out before Mason could change the subject. “I have something I need to ask Arceus for!”
Mason ignored him. “If we only have the shark on the hunt…” Mason tapped the paper and the names that he had written on the back of the page shimmered onto the diagram, with SHARK on the H.F.A. side, and the rest of the names on the list on the O.C.C. side.
“There.” Mason said with a self-satisfied grin. “Now this is Ideal.”
“Now, hold on, sonny.” Gerson crossed his arms. “I have a coupla things I’d like to ask of the Big Mon Upstairs myself. And I don’t think whatever I want to ask is gonna be on the forefront of Miss Avior’s mind when she finishes her two-day trip.”
“I get it.” Gon realized. “It can’t just be Avior. She needs someone with her that can communicate with the island.”
“And someone with directions.” Avior snorted. “Now who do we know who checks all those boxes?”
All eyes were on a now very nervous islander pony. “H-hey wait..”
“But I wanna go!” Gon wined. “I want to see Arceus!”
“Don’t you have a Grandma back at the station?” The graveler reminded him, and Gon drooped.
“Yeah...but..” Gon sighed. “I..guess I’d have to ask them first…”
“Don’t worry, she’ll understand.” Gerson said with a sultry grin. “Perhaps you could introduce me...?”
Everyone at camp groaned at him, and Gon looked a bit more distraught than before. “I’m only kidding.” Gerson waved a claw dismissively at their disgusted faces.
“Moving on” Mason continued. “If I would be better to send on the Hunt for communication purposes, then I should go alone.”
“No way! I’ll fly you faster and cheaper than any plane, guaranteed.”
“And how,” Mason turned around to glare at the giant blue shark towering over him. “will I ride on your back, hm?”
“You just hold on.” Avior shrugged.
“I can’t! How am I supposed to ride a flying shark over an ocean with no harness or safety belt!?”
“You don’t need one. I can keep you on my back if I’m using the move Fly. It’s like..a harness...made out of Aura.”
“She used to carry important people all the time back on earth!” Gon added. “She knows how to Fly.”
Mason cast one more suspicious glance over his shoulder. “...I’ll think about it. But!” He pointed a hoof at Avior’s nose. “Only if you take me for a test fly first.”
“Deal.” Avior said with a final looking nod.
Mason turned back to his paper and dragged his name from the O.C.C. section and onto the H.F.A. side.
“Alright, now let’s send this to the Tapui Lady.” Mason tapped on the paper with his pen twice, and the ink sank into the page, not fully disappearing. It stayed like that for a few seconds, as if loading, then the ink started clearing up again, with slight alterations.
“Looks like she replied!” Mason announced.”But...she only wrote…”
The only change to the diagram Mason had drawn was a circle around the names MITO and ABE, with an arrow pointing to the circle labeled “Who?”
“Hang on,” Mason started writing again, clarifying that those names were requested by Gon, and what he had said about them being at the station with Tapu Lele.
Tapu Lele’s reply was a bit more delayed that time around. The camp waited for a good few minutes, staring at the faded ink and wondering...
Finally, the ink cleared up with Lele’s new message: “Cassarina must have tampered with my mind. Gon, go with Mason and Avior on the Hunt so that she doesn’t tamper with yours. Gerson and Graveler, don’t come to the station, I will fetch you when the work day is over. Avior, Mason and Gon should leave RIGHT NOW. There is no time to waste for this hunt. Keep in touch, Tapu Lele.”
“So that’s it, then.” Avior said with a shrug. “If it’s really going to be a day’s journey, we might want to make some preparations. Pack some snacks, empty our bowels…”
“A bit too much information there, Miss Avior.” Gerson sighed, looking up at Gon. The little riolu’s brow was creased with worry, and he kept staring at Tapu Lele’s message. He didn’t react to anything else around him.
“We’ll stop at my house.” Mason said, standing up and folding the papers into his saddlebags. “That should be a sufficient test flight, I think.”
Avior helped Mason to climb onto her back. Fortunately, her ability was Sand Veil rather than Rough Skin, so Gon was just fine on his perch and Mason had a rather comfortable seat near her back fin. He looked over at the two pokemon they were leaving behind. A sly smirk spread over his face, as if he was taunting them. This effect was ruined when let out a rather embarrassing squeal of surprise when Avior stood up and spread out her wings.
“See you both soon, I hope.” Avior offered, with a draconic bow goodbye.
“Likewise.” Gerson said with a similar bow that the graveler tried to copy. “Put in a good word for me when you meet our maker, would ya?”
“Stay safe, kiddo!” The graveler called to Gon, who barely nodded in reply.
“Alright,” Mason said nervously, as Avior crouched and gave her wings a test flap. “so how does this Aura harness thing wor---AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHhhhhh”
Avior shot up from the ground in less than a second, the wind whipping away the tail end of Mason’s scream as she flew away. The two remaining hunters watched as she flew past Mauna Kea, then behind the mountain and out of sight. They remained in awkward silence for a few moments, before Gerson finally suggested a topic of conversation.
“Was Mason really the best pony to send?” Paige asked Tapu Lele in an offhand, but still passive-aggressive sort of way. She had gone to the mailroom on the pretense of having envelopes to send, but upon finding out that Kite Flyer was on lunch break, Paige had stuck around for a chat.
No, he wasn’t the best option, he was who we had on hand. Tapu Lele said from behind a mountain of paper, haggardly organizing mail into boxes with Psychic. He is helpful for keeping in touch with the Hunt for Arceus. Besides, I need you here. You’re more oriented for battle than he is. Not to say that he’s useless, he’s just...less useful in a fight, and more useful elsewhere.
“Hmm.” Paige nodded absently, hiding a smile by fixing a teetering stack of envelopes. “By the way, why are you here and not with the Chief?”
He’s gone home for the day. And I still have a couple hundred forms and papers to look over before I have to attend to my...side job.
“Well, good luck with that,” Paige called over her shoulder as she left. “I hope your new co-workers are more agreeable than the ones you found here.”
You too. Lele thought to herself, picking up a large stack of envelopes addressed to Barodius and heading back to her desk in Barodius’s office.
For the first time since the pokemon appeared, Paige was able to wait outside Rafe’s school to fly him home. She sat on a bench in the shade of some palm trees and watched the usual squirrels try to figure out how to deal with the weird electric ones that were trying to steal their food. There weren’t any students around in front of the building, since the school day had ended two hours ago. Still, Paige could hear the muffled, faraway hoofsteps and conversation of students who had stayed for club meetings and tutoring sessions. In one of them, she knew, Rafe was wrapping up his tutoring session for aspiring law students. As soon as Rafe finished and came out, he and Paige would fly to the beach together. There, Paige would drop him off to the ocean and then she could finally go back home.
Paige’s bag buzzed, so she dug around it for her pager (hah! paiger) and examined the screen.
Blank? She was sure she heard…
The bag buzzed again, and Paige opened the whole thing to let a small puff of yellow fly out.
“Lil cousin?!”Paige gasped. “How long were you in there?”
“Cutie!” Lil cousin could only say as he buzzed off towards some flowers decorating the school’s front entrance. Paige guessed that he must have hid in the bag that morning, and fasted until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Paige sighed, leaning over the side of the bench, watching him so that he wouldn’t get snatched up by a hungry bird, pokemon or otherwise. Lil cousin stumbled through the air towards a nearby bush and landed on a wide, bright red hibiscus flower. Then, with the finesse of a rhinoceros, shoved his whole face into it. Paige chuckled to herself as Lil cousin finished the nectar in that bloom and squeezed out in a puff of pollen.
“Paige!” Paige didn’t bother turning around as Rafe swam up to her bench. “I missed you! What made you bail this morning?”
Paige’s smile wavered. It was only just yesterday night that Nurzak had abandoned the operation to try and find his daughter. Paige hoped that Floria wasn’t captured by Barodius like Nurzak thought, because that could mean he meant for Nurzak to disappear, too.
Rafe nuzzled his silent, solemn friend. Paige couldn’t tell him just how dire things were. “I slept in.” Paige said, twisting the truth into technically-not-a-lie. “There was so much work management dumped on my lap yesterday that I missed a couple hours of sleep getting it all done.”
“Oh, same.” Rafe laughed as Lil cousin buzzed back from his snack and plopped onto Paige’s head. “Uh, about the missing sleep, not about...”
“Hey Rafe, did I ever introduce you to Lil cousin?”
“Cousin?” Rafe echoed, looking around the schoolyard before realizing that Paige was pointing to a beefly perched between her eyes.
“Oh, you little…” Rafe let his insult trail off as Paige snorted with laughter. He crossed his fins and turned away in a dramatic pout.
“I’m sorry, sheesh! Such a diva.” Paige gave Rafe a playful punch, still giggling.
Rafe puffed out his cheeks and gave her a side-eyed stare. But then, something occurred to Paige. She paused, eyes widening in realization.
“Hey...Rafe, do you know that translation spell you used on Milotic?”
Rafe continued to act juvenile for a few more moments, but then he put two and two together. He looked back at the tiny pokemon on Paige’s head.
“...I think so.” He carefully approached Lil cousin, who looked up at the bubbled pony seal in interest.
“Hi, um...Little Cousin, right?” Rafe asked gently. “Can I cast a translation spell, so I can understand you?”
Lil Cousin’s eyes lit up. “Cutie!” He jumped off of Paige and buzzed in circles around Rafe’s head. “Cutie cutie cutiefly!”
“I think that’s a yes.” Paige giggled.
“Ok, ok, hold still!” Rafe tried to follow Lil cousin, until he finally landed back on Paige’s head again. Rafe closed his eyes to concentrate, his horn glowing as he brought the spell he wanted to mind. The magic pulsed and shifted, going from pure power to a set of instructions to attach to a target. Rafe opened his eyes and aimed it at the fuzzy yellow fluff on Paige’s head.
The spell was aimed, then it hit Lil cousin in a brief, painless beam of magic.
Lil cousin blinked a few times, then started grooming his head with his front two legs. Paige went a little cross eyed as she tried to look for any change Lil cousin might have suffered. Lil cousin shook himself one last time, then spoke.
“Can...you hear me?” Lil cousin asked in a timid, but surprisingly deep voice.
“Yeah, I think so.” Rafe said slowly as Paige’s wings drooped in surprise.
“Very good!” Lil cousin proclaimed, buzzing into the air. “Then it is about time I properly introduced myself. I am Wolfurio, soon-to-be Pro Hunter (just as soon as I am strong enough to try and pass the Hunter's Exam). I am wholly grateful to the both of you, strange narwhal and Missus Paige, and in your debt until such time that I can repay you.”
“...Wolfurio.” Paige repeated.
“Yes?” Lil cousin--or rather Wolfurio--asked, landing on Paige’s beak.”
“That’s...your real name? Wolfurio?”
Wolfurio chuckled. “I didn’t mind the nickname you christened to me, Missus Paige. It was a rather endearing little moniker, wasn’t it?”
Paige blinked a few times at the cutiefly’s word choice. “Thank...you?”
“Well, Paige?” Rafe sniggered.
Paige gave him a disapproving stare and flared her wings. “I’m leaving for the beach.”
A whoosh of air rattled Rafe’s bubble as Paige took off. Rafe realised he was being left behind and hurried after her into the air.
“What’s the matter?” Rafe smiled his widest, most innocent smile as he caught up to Paige. “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”
Paige lifted her foreleg and poked Rafe’s cheek through the bubble. Rafe stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry, expelling a stream of air bubbles into his water one. Paige snorted, dropping her arm and ducking her head to try and hide it.
“Missus Paige!” Wolfurio yelled over the wind. “Forgive me, but where are we going?”
“I’m dropping the Rafe off to his home!” Paige explained, pointing down at the dock they had met at that morning as it came into view in the light of the setting sun.
“Is that the narwhal’s name?” Wolfurio asked as Paige began circling over the beach.
Rafe’s bubble caught the deep orange and flushed pink of the sunset as he let himself drift down to the sand. Once he was at ground level, he looked around for other ponies, then quickly and quietly slipped under the docks and into the water.
A moment later, his head broke through the surface a few meters from the shore. He swept his mane out of his eyes with a fin and caught sight of Paige, still wheeling through the air. They waved to each other one last time, and Rafe ducked underwater and Paige turned around in the air towards home.
She wouldn’t quite get there, but that’s for later.
Lele set down the last of that day’s paperwork on the Chief's desk with a mental sigh. It was getting late, and she still had to find Gerson and that graveler before her Barodius did.
Lele’s eyes wandered over the desk’s surface, which was littered with strange knick knacks that Lele could hardy imagine served any practical purpose. Mostly tourist junk like snow globes and dancing paperweights, but also hand carved trinkets that Lele suspected had some sort of pony enchantment, and a framed picture of a purple batpony with a white mane.
Lele groaned suddenly, clutching her head. She hated it in here, the Chief must have a truly powerful artifact hidden amongst these toys to be affecting her so much. But so far, she hadn’t located it no matter how many times she scanned his desk.
Lele floated out the room, resisting the urge to slam the door behind her. She was dead tired already, and she wished she could just reabsorb her physical manifestation into her ruins for the night, but she still needed to cross the island and---
Whoah! Lele jerked back, just barely avoiding getting stabbed by Crackle’s horn. I’m so sorry, sir. I should have been watching where I was going.
After about 10 seconds of silence, Lele took a second look at the unicorn she had almost collided with. It was the Captain, Lele’s eyes weren’t deceiving her, but the normally explosive policepony was uncharacteristically silent. He had stopped to pick up the mail Lele had sent flying, slowly grabbing each individual envelope with his magic and ordering it into a stack.
Captian? Lele studied his face. He wore a solemn expression, his eyes ringed with deep bags. Is everything alright?
He didn’t answer right away. Lele almost thought he hadn’t noticed her until he finally murmured, “Everything’s fine, private.”
...Right. Sorry to bother you. Lele floated to the side to let him pass. Crackle slowly trotted away, yellow, slitted eyes fixed to the ground in front of him.
Lele was suspicious, but she decided she wouldn’t let it get to her. She shouldn’t be wasting time.
Lele left the station and floated through the cool night air. The hour was later than she had thought, there were absolutely no ponies outside at all, and the nocturnal animals and pokemon had full domain over the moonlit streets. They scattered in reverence as Lele passed them, continuing with business as usual in her wake.
It didn’t take long for Lele to pass the town limits, and by then most of her fatigue had already worn away. Perhaps it was just relaxing to be outside after all that paperwork. Lele was passing by the base of Mauna Kea again, by the piles of boulders covered in vines and bursting with wildflowers that Gon and Lele had found the graveler in.
She wound her way up the path, following the trail to the place Gon had been. Lele was excited by the prospects of getting back in touch with one of her totem pokemon, especially an old friend like Grandma Sala. Lele had been so entrenched in her work that she didn’t have the time to look for them all. She had already used a ping to look for them, but they were either too far away for her to notice, or...
Lele tugged at her hair curls. It wouldn’t do her any good to dwell.
She snapped herself out of her daze and tried to focus in landmarks. Although the half-moon shone bright, he couldn’t see anything familiar, just an overgrown field of grasses and flowers. Out of the corner of her eye, Lele noticed a strange growth of plants.
Lele paused to give it a closer look. It seemed to be a rectangular structure, covered in tangled vines. The vines didn’t seem to have a firm hold, however, and left large swathes of the thing uncovered. Lele used the weakest Flash she could muster so that she could look at the thing and not attract attention to herself.
It was a roadside sign. A familiar roadside sign, a warning to pathfinders of a nearby active volcano. One with a bright red circle and line.
Is this it? Lele wondered to herself. It didn’t look like the place Gon had seen at all. There were a lot more rocks...and less...plants…
Lele was beginning to realise how oblivious she had just been.
Gerson? Graveler? Lele called with openair telepathy. It’s me, Tapu Lele.
Lele?
“We’re over here, Milady Tapu!” The old turtle called, waving furiously with a new wooden cane.
“We found another one of you!” The graveler called, pointing to the pokemon sitting behind him.
The pokemon’s horned shell gleamed, and split upwards. Tapu Bulu floated up, the familiar sound of his bell ringing was enough to bring tears to Lele’s eyes.
It’s been too long, little sister.
Lele didn’t bother with words, she just rammed herself into him, hugging him like he was about to disappear. Bulu laughed and hugged her back.
As Paige flew overhead a beach packed with luau-goers, she caught whiff of grilling food and looked down. Tourist ponies and pokemon alike were gathering around a circle of bonfire grills. They stood in a disorderly queue, holding up plates and drooling mouths but doing their best not to clamour and earn the ire of the chefs.
Just as Paige decided that it would be rather rude to circle overhead, especially since she could just eat at home, she locked eyes with a familiar face.
Milotic was sitting on her coils next to a weird floating plush rat monster with a shiny silver fox sleeping on its head. She looked ghostly pale in the fading light of the sunset, leaning away from the two floating pokemon but too tired to move to another place. But as soon as she saw Paige, she perked up and waved wildly at her with her tail.
Paige landed on the beach in a puff of sand. She eyed the two floating pokemon as she walked up to Milotic.
“Hey, Auntie!” Paige said to Milotic, the new floating monster catching sight of her. “How the search is going? Any new leads?”
Milotic sighed, dropping her tail back into her coils. “I may have a lead on a lead, if this gentlemon behind me is telling the truth.”
“I dunno if ‘gentlemon’ is really me, brah,” the floating monster cut in with a sleazy smile, leaning against Milotic’s coils as the sleeping fox on his head mumbled in its sleep. “I’m more of that ‘bad boy’ type, if you catch my drift.”
“He claims he knows a powerful psychic named Rose whose specialty is tracking and locating lost people and pokemon.” Milotic continued, completely ignoring him. “And the only reason I am humoring him is because he claims he can locate her.”
“So…?” Paige looked around at the three very stationary pokemon.
“So we are waiting until daylight to foolishly charge into that forest over there,” Milotic pointed at the part of the beach where the sand gave way to a ticket of trees. “And until then neither I nor my entourage have slept as much as we would like.”
Paige was about to make an excuse to leave when a loud snort from the sleeping fox interrupted further conversation. It perked its head up, squinting around at the scene in front of it.
“Wh...Raichu…? How’d you get such a big head…?”
“Awh, the eevee lives!” Raichu excitedly pulled the fox off his head and set him down on his surfboard tail. “Did you have a good rest my shiny dude? Didja remember anything?”
“So this wasn't a dream.” The eevee grumbled. “Great.”
“Ah, yes.” Milotic sighed with a dramatic wave of her tail. “Allow me to introduce to you, missus Paige, the soap opera amnesiac eevee.”
“This dude’s a real character.” Raichu explained, sitting down next to the fox and patting his shiny head. “He thinks he used to be human, and can’t even walk right. I think a mean psychic type is playing a prank on him, muddlin his memories. That’s one more reason to find my sister from another mister, Rose. She can help him.”
“Rose…?” The eevee blinked a few times, then his eyes widened in panic. “Rose?! I was just dreaming about her! Raichu!” the eevee looked left, then right, then finally looked down. “Raichu, we need to get to Rose right now!”
“Uh...yeah…?” The Raichu laughed confusedly. “we were thinking of heading out tomorrow---”
“NOW!” The eevee screamed, suddenly leaping off of his head and stumbling like a newborn deer towards the forest. “We gotta help her now!”
“Whaoh!” Raichu grabbed the fox with Psychic. “Chill! What’s your problem?!”
“Raichu, you gotta belive it’s me, Maika! Rose is in big trouble! I saw her in my dream, she was in a big cage with a ton of other brainwashed pokemon!”
“Calm down, little one.” Milotic reached over with a pink head-hand-fin to gently pat the eevee. “It as just a dream.”
Maika shook her off, almost Scratching her in his frenzy to escape Raichu’s hold. “It wasn’t! Rose was sending a psychic message, she’s been trapped by some ponies with bat wings! Raichu, don’t you remember?!”
Ponies with bat wings? That got Paige’s attention.
“Excuse me, you saw ponies with bat wings? In your...psychic...dream? How many?”
The eevee blinked and looked over at her. “Uh, there was two with wings that I could see. There was a big one and a little one, and one that had a Rapidash’s horn.”
Paige’s face lit up. “And you know the location of where these three ponies are keeping a lot of pokemon and mutants in cages?”
“Yeah, he signals coming from that fores---Mutants?!”
Paige had said too much, but she was too excited to stress about an information leak. She scooped up the eevee in her arms, plopped him on her back and took off towards the treeline.
Raichu and Milotic blinked twice.
“Did she just…?”
“Oh no.” Milotic groaned. The two exchanged a worried glance and chased after the rogue police pony.
Maika clung to Paige’s feathers as she galloped through the forest. “We’re on the right track! Keep going!”
Paige bowed her head to avoid low hanging branches and kept running.
“Turn left now! It’s not much farther.” Maika pointed with a paw. Paige turned and slowed her gallop to a sneaking trot.
“There’s a fake boulder covering a trap door.” Maika said, Paige shushing him roughly. “It’s the only way in or out.” the eevee lowered his voice to the point here Paige had to concentrate to hear him.
Paige tucked Maika under her wing and stalked forward, keeping low to the ground.
“That the boulder?” Paige asked, pointing to a moss-covered rock half-buried in the dirt.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” Maika managed to say even through the muffling feathers.
Paige smiled. “Bingo.”
An arrow shot into the ground just by her talon. She would have jumped away in surprise, but she couldn’t move at all. Maika, however, could, and he tumbled to the ground with a surprised yelp.
Another two arrows followed the first, aimed at the exposed eevee. Paige was almost certain one had gone through his tail, but his fur showed no signs of damage. Still, he scrambled to his feet and bolted out into the clearing.
Paige couldn’t open her beak to call out to him, though on second thought that would probably give away her position. No, wait, she still had to save Maika! Hideout or no, she couldn’t leave him to fend for himself in the woods!
“There’s nothing you can do.”
A whispering voice Paige didn’t recognise seemed to appear by her head. She slowly became aware of a figure standing on her left side, bowing its head to whisper in her ear.
“Watch.” The figure said, and straightened up.
Maika skidded to a stop, and his head swiveled to the side like someone in the woods had called out to him. He turned the rest of himself in that direction and started running again, but he seemed a bit more...sluggish?
In a few more stumbling steps, Maika had fallen over, asleep.
In the corner of Paige’s eye, the boulder moved.
It wavered, then disappeared, like a mirage. It left a strange, dark hole in the ground. A tall, toothpick thin fox slowly ascended an unseen stairway. It walked on its hind legs, slouched over. It looked malnourished, its movements haphazard and uncoordinated, eyes blank. It walked slowly to Maika’s crumpled form, gently picked him up, tucked him under its arm, and walked stately back into the hole from whence it came, down the steps and out of sight.
The boulder reappeared, and there was no trace of either of them.
A clawed hand reached out to the arrow embedded into the earth at Paige’s feet. In two tugs it came out, and Paige could move again.
“What--” She yell-whispered, just before a talon clamped around her beak. Whoever was restraining her carefully guided her away from the bushes by the clearing, and a little ways away so that they wouldn't lose the location, but they weren’t in immediate danger of being caught like Maika was.
“You came here to break someone out of there, didn’t you?” The claw’s owner whispered. “Someone who had been taken before that Eevee. I could tell from your body language, you weren’t about to rush in. You simply came here to confirm a location, and you were planning to retreat.”
Paige couldn't say yes or nod, so she gave a thumbs-up.
“Then you’re smarter, or at least more prepared than most. If your goal is to free the captured pokemon in that lab, then I would like to help you.”
The claw let go and Paige breathed, “That’d be great. We need all the competent help we can get.”
“My name is Shun Kazami.” The pokemon stepped forward so Paige could see him in the moonlight, and of course it was a pokemon, what else would a pony-sized owl in a green hoodie be? “I was formerly a human, although since Arceus’s exodus of I have been turned into a Decidueye.”
“You can talk,” Paige observed. “Not a common feat amongst pokemon.”
“I’m not very common.” Shun said bluntly. “But we’re getting off-topic. I would like to know what kind of plan you had to raid the facility, and who you’re working with.”
“I won’t sugarcoat things,” Paige sighed, rubbing the back of her head with her talon. “we’re only a handful of ponies, and we lost a good minotaur to whoever’s in that hole. We might have one pokemon, but she’s new and I’m not sure if she’ll be willing to go through with a mission like this. But our team has been trying to find this place for a really long time. We don’t have a plan just yet, you see.”
In reality, Paige was part of a network of nearly 30 undercover operatives, including their mapper, whose ability could get them a plan of attack in minutes. But Paige wasn’t ready to trust this pokemon with everything just yet.
“So I assume you’ve run into some ponies by now?”
Shun shook his head. “Not many besides you, and the bat-winged one who kidnapped my mate. I tried to raid that place once, and I barely made it out by the skin of my teeth.”
Paige wasn’t sure why this owl had teeth, but she wasn’t about to ask questions she didn’t want answers to.
“Well, maybe you can help me. What exactly did you see in there?”
Shun was quiet for a moment. “Cages. And pokemon. And creatures I couldn’t recognise at all. And a bat-winged pony, with glowing golden eyes and fangs. It was like...the darkness of the place itself had birthed a monster.”
“MAAAAAAIIIIIIIIKAAAAAAA!” A loud voice pierced the quiet conversation. "THAT'S YOUR NAME, RIGHT LITTLE DUDE?!" Two pokemon trundled through the woods, snapping of twigs underfoot, yelling at the top of their lungs and trying to be as loud and obvious as possible. Shun and Paige were both nearly startled out of their skins.
“Who--?!” Shun sputtered, instinctively shrinking back into the dappled shadows of the forest.
“Uh oh,” Paige groaned, getting up to run over. “Auntie and her new boyfriend came looking for me and the little fox.”
Shun hung back as Paige went to warn her two friends. She explained that it wasn’t safe, but she mentioned nothing about the lab or a raid, just a vicious equestrian fox monster that she had run into while looking for Rose. Maika was mistaken for a kit and was safe, but she couldn’t guarantee it would stay that way of they attacked. She would get the animal control branch of the police to deal with it tomorrow.
Paige gave Shun a reassuring glance over the shoulder as she left the woods with the to now very worried pokemon. Or, she seemed to think she was, as her reassuring glance was aimed squarely at a tree that had been nowhere near where they had been talking before.
But then, just before he turned her head back again, her eyes flicked to Shun and she caught his gaze.
Shun waited until they were too far away to hear, then went to inspect the tree.
There was something off about it. Shun couldn’t see anything remarkable about the tree at first glance, but in the pit of his gut he felt that there was something there.
Wait, he leaned closer. A bit of paper was rolled up in the crook of a branch. When he plucked it from its perch, the feeling of something important moved to his palm, right where the paper was unrolling as if being ironed out....
