Chapter 10- Steel Yourself

The only thing stopping them from traveling was Quentin and Jacqueline having next to no spare clothes. Their backpacks and Quentin's duffel had respectively been packed for a day at school and a boat ride. Not the best circumstances for clothes; Jacqueline had a pair of jeans, but that was it. Quentin refused to leave before he could at least wash, and gratefully jumped into a freezing underground river that Haruka pointed him at, no warning about the temperature. Laughing, she managed to lift Jacqueline and throw her in as well. Their visitor watched impassively as they managed to wash the worst of the dirt and grime from their clothes and skin, only setting off once the two teens had dried off in the sun.

As soon as they started walking, their visitor leading the way, Jacqueline leaned in towards Haruka and asked in an urgent whisper, "Any idea why in the nine hells Steven Stone of all people is wandering through Granite Cave? He's the damned Champion. Why is he here?"

The shorter of the two girls placed a calming hand on the other's arm. "It's probably nothing. Steven and I are acquainted. He's usually prattling on about looking for rare stones and the like. He seems more serious than the last time I saw him, but I don't know him well. I'm pretty sure he isn't a threat. The occupants of this cave, however, are definitely a threat. Yuki nearly lost his arm to a herd of Mawile down here. I don't want to lose any friends to a cave of all things."

Mollified, Jacqueline returned her attention to the twisting rock walls. The strange Champion led the way, a strange metallic creature floating serenely beside him and emanating a pale light. Jacqueline followed closely, leery of the darkness of the cave after Haruka's warning. Haruka followed immediately after, not especially troubled by the darkness of the caverns. Despite his earlier blunders, Quentin hadn't lied about his lack of qualms with the shadowed tunnels. He moved in and out of the edge of the light, only occasionally stumbling over the uneven ground.

Steven led them deeper, and deeper, until they passed out of even Haruka's knowledge of the caves and were traveling blind. After scaring out another haven of Zubats, with multiple Golbats interspersed among them, Steven spoke. "Don't let me stop you from training. You'll want to be in tip-top shape by the bottom of this cave."

"Come on out, Rono," called Haruka, releasing her Lairon, who upon materializing, gave a rumbling roar and searched for an opponent. Finding Steven, he squared off against the man, pawing the ground.

"Silly boy, he's not the enemy. We just want to you to walk with us, kay? If anything comes out at us, you can attack it. We're just running an errand for Steven," the man jumped slightly at the mention of his name, "and we're gonna train on the way." Continuing to gesture and point to indicate to the literally rock-headed pokemon what they were doing, Haruka managed to inform him near-perfectly what he would be doing, despite the fact that neither could directly understand the other.

"Turnus, think fast," grinned Quentin as he tossed a pokeball out onto the cave floor. It bounced farther than he intended. His momentary frown disappeared as he knuckled the edge of his mudkip's head fin. Chuckling at the mudkip's annoyed grumble (Turnus was no stranger to the stasis of a pokeball, and found it rather relaxing), he followed Haruka's example in talking to his pokemon.

"We're gonna train while walking, kay? Anything not ours, soak it." Unconsciously matching Haruka's voice patterns and gestures, Quentin attempted to explain the same thing to his little mudkip. However, despite the skill of the person he was copying, he was still a rookie trainer with a relatively fresh pokemon. The mudkip looked back blankly. Sighing, Quentin pressed a hand to his temple. This just wouldn't do...

Then it was Jacqueline's turn to call out her Pokemon. "Showtime, Terry!" announced the vulpix's arrival. He didn't seem very perturbed by the whole ordeal, licking his paw to straighten out the fur. Jacqueline didn't bother trying to explain the arrangement to the little fox.

This arrangement was immediately put the test as a Geodude levered itself over to them on its two limbs, drawn by Rono's roar. Setting its body down, it crashed its boulder-like fists against each other in challenge.

"Rono, Metal Claw!"

"Turnus, Water Gun!"

The two shouts came within milliseconds of each other, Haruka reacting an instant faster. Curling his paw into deadly spikes of blunt, pointed steel, Rono swiped forward, cutting diagonal gashes into the rocky center of the pokemon as it rumbled in pain, barely hanging on to consciousness. It did not come to this challenge unprepared for a fight, however. It plunged both its disturbingly human hands into the ground, which began to shake in a Magnitude attack. Rono, very weak to terrain attacks due to his weight, begin to shift unsteadily, almost tipping over onto his back. If a Lairon falls onto its back, it is nearly helpless; its stubby legs cannot right it easily, and its underbelly armor, while still armor, is not nearly as durable as its upper metal carapace.

Steven's light order of "Metang, renew Magnet Rise," was lost as a jet of water slammed into the deep grooves cracking the Geodude's body/skull, blowing apart the Geodude's cranium into shards of rock. The ground stopped shaking, and Rono stopped teetering just in time, crashing back down onto four legs with a discordant jangle. Looking over to the much smaller mudkip, Rono touched his massive head to the ground once, closing his eyes in a gesture of thanks, before lumbering back to Haruka.

Geodude, the Rock Pokemon. It is impossible to distinguish from rocks. It slams against others in contests of hardness.

"Good work, Turnus," smiled Quentin. "Good hit. But we could have been faster. As it is, we could barely keep Rono from tipping over; we'll try and shoot faster at the next ones, okay?"

The mudkip barely had any sense of what the guy was saying, but nodded anyway. The emotion was clear. You did well, but you could have done better.

Jacqueline had remained calm, picking up Terry to protect him from the ground attack. "Come on Terry, they'll leave one for us eventually. Despite how jumpy the two of them are, they'll let one get through eventually, and we can prove that we aren't just tagalongs."

Steven didn't acknowledge the close call with Rono, merely leading the way once more.

A further multitude of ground types and small bats appeared, all creatures Rono was naturally disadvantaged against; however, Haruka was careful to prevent similar close calls from happening, managing to dispatch all of the creatures with her metallic dinosaur. In relentless fashion, bats were out-maneuvered, fighters out-muscled, and tricksters shut down; all with a single pokemon weak to all of these methods. Turnus attempted to help, his pride flaring, but was held back by Quentin, who wished to perfect the speed of Water Gun before he even thought of battling again.

Jacqueline ranged out slightly from the group wherever the passage opened up, preferring to fight the venturesome Zubat rather than a stocky Graveler; Terry's long-range Ember attack served him well here.

"Terry, Ember to the left, lead it!" cried Jacqueline, pointing. Acting upon command, the fox spat a small flame at that spot, catching a Zubat mid-dive. Shrieking, it bounced off of the wall, before flapping its way back up and diving at Terry from an oblique angle. Gauging how this Zubat had been flying for the last ten minutes, she spoke cleanly: "Straight ahead. Ember. On my mark."

Slightly confused, as the Zubat was not approaching from the front, Terry nevertheless moved to obey.

"Mark!"

Terry exhaled bright fire even as the bat swung by, attempting to confuse Terry with high-pitched sound while strafing across his flank, but its path carried it straight into the fire. Once more, the Zubat was touched by burn and crashed headfirst into the rock wall.

The rock wall, of course, wasn't completely rock. A horde of angry Geodude fell out of the wall, and lashing out in a fight-or-flight response, all began to shake the ground. Uncaring of how they hurt each other, each dug its fingers into the ground, concentrating only on upheaving the ground around itself as a defense.

That many Geodudes shaking the ground in one place, underground, had some side-effects, as dust began to fall from the ceiling, heralding worse to come.

Her eyes widening, Jacqueline internally went on a swearing spree.

Cave-in. Miles underground.

Well, ********************************************

Jacqueline wasn't one to blank during a panic; she quickly recalled Terry and began to race farther down the passageway, calling out for Quentin and Haruka. She found both staring at the shaking ceiling, and grabbed their arms, wrenching them towards the direction she had chosen. The dust was thick and billowing now, obscuring vision, muffling the cracking and sliding of stone as they charged onwards. Rono trundled besides them, deflecting larger obstacles with his heavy head; Turnus sat on Quentin's head, whimpering in terror.

The cracking and sliding stone was getting closer as they stumbled onwards in the darkness, not really having any idea where they were going. Jacqueline could feel the vibrations through her feet of rock grating against rock. It was getting louder. Then a shocked cry, cut off, that was definitely Quentin's voice- she couldn't do anything helpful in this situation, even as a loud crash announced Quentin meeting the ground. At least one of them needed to get out of range of the cave-in, and then could dig out the others in safer conditions if necessary. Terry was their only possible light source, so she needed to escape first. Right? Right?

Jacqueline felt rather than heard Haruka turning on a dime and leaving her side.

Exhaling sharply and shaking her head, Jacqueline kept going. If they couldn't catch up, she couldn't help them until the shaking stopped. There were several dozen more tense seconds where she was only aware of four things: the vibrations under her feet, the ragged pants of her breathing, her heartbeat, and the faint sense of space that dictated which way the tunnel turned.

Eventually, the vibrations stopped, and Jacqueline fell to her knees, head in her hands. She waited, listening for footsteps, for her friends to come around the bend and laugh at her for worrying, to gently chide her and pick her back up; Jacqueline waited. Jacqueline waited, ignoring the pain building up in her legs as she remained on her knees; her mental picture of the situation steadily getting worse and worse as she tried to imagine what happened back there. It was possible that Quentin had merely tripped. He had done that just yesterday when trying to run in the dark. Hopefully he had been safe from the shifting topography of the cave, and was most likely sitting somewhere else in the dark with Haruka. But, if as she guessed, he had been taken down by falling stone, then he was trapped by rubble, that far back. Haruka had almost certainly reached him, but did that only mean she had been trapped too? Considering how much of the cave had been collapsing as a result of her rash action, it couldn't be good, could it?

Jacqueline found herself hyperventilating, blind in the darkness of the cave thousands of feet below the ground, alone and lost. As some kind of comfort, she let out Terry, who silently snuggled into the curve of her neck, lighting up with a faint glow. Her friends were on their way, weren't they?

A horrifyingly clear image flashed into her mind: she could see Quentin half-buried under rocks, unconscious; Haruka's black-and-white gloved hand protruded from the rubble next to him, but nothing else of her body was visible. Shaking harder, Jacqueline stood and began to hesitantly stumble back towards where the tunnel had collapsed, using the rock wall for support.

She became conscious of the edge of the tunnel, and the edge of her hand about to brush the telltale shine of a Sableye's burrow. Not wanting to anger the mischievous creatures, she drew her hand away, and discerned the two walls of her tunnel, stepping forwards unaided, away from all supports, trembling slightly. She needed to get to her friends, to try and save what she could of the problem she had caused; if only she hadn't trained Terry away from the group!

Then, she could see her hands outstretched in front of her. She could see relatively accurately now. Jacqueline began to step out with greater confidence, able to see and avoid the boulder-like clumps of Geodude along with their adult stage Graveler, only distinguishable from rock by their skull frills. Moving better and better, she began to wonder. Where was this light coming from?

Then a brilliant light rounded the corner and burned her narrowed eyes.

It took a good fifteen seconds for her eyes to adjust- painfully, she might add - to this new, powerful brightness. When she squinted through the flash, she could make out what it was. Steven Stone stood there, faithful Metang hovering over his shoulder and flashing, and two human bodies thrown over his other shoulder. Jacqueline's heart dropped, before running forward to make sure the two were alright.

"They'll be alright, barring a few bruises and a nasty headache once they wake up." Steven's voice broke into her thoughts.

"How did you manage to get them out? Are they alright? Where did you find them-" Jacqueline's barrage of redundant questions was cut short as the darkness behind the Champion shifted. Leering down at her was the barbaric splendor of what had to be the largest Pokemon she had ever seen. Its shining armored head and two wicked horns identified it as an Aggron. Steven's Aggron. Shifting again, it rumbled its greeting, sending another tremor through the ground.

Jacqueline put the thought about how much radiation does the pokeball of a creature that size generate? to the back of her mind, and instead gulped and nodded, not taking her eyes off the Aggron. She flinched when Steven dumped her companions upon the dirt floor, before reaching out behind her with his mechanized arm-brace, retrieving some glittering oval object. "A dawn stone," mused the rock collector.

"Quentin really needs to stop getting knocked out, he's gonna get brain damage one of these days," muttered Jacqueline under her breath as she checked them over for obviously dangerous injuries.

Thankfully, they started to stir and Jacqueline's self-deprecating train of thought was sidetracked by another train. "What happened back there?"

"ow my head." was the most coherent thing she understood of Haruka's jumbled speech.

"Hey, don't try to talk just yet," reassured the taller girl. "You hit your head pretty hard."

Quentin groaned and rolled over, not even bothering to open his eyes. "I need to stop doing that," he muttered. "I think I have a concussion."

Steven sighed, slouching against the wall. It'd be a while before they started moving again. Why did he take these kids along?

-Idealism-

Another hour of breaking rocks under the Champion's directions, and Steven had amassed a small collection of stones, and Quentin was starting to walk somewhat straight. For some inane reason, the two refused to rest up after what was most likely concussions from falling rocks, no less. They made the (bad) decision that if they somehow added their dizziness and fuzzy vision together, they'd be able to navigate in a straight line. This is how Jacqueline ended up steering two concussed people leaning on each other, wondering if she should run them into a wall. Rono and Turnus took upon themselves the duty of clearing out any opposition in their path. Turnus would turn after sniping down a Geodude with an accurately aimed and remarkably speedy Water Gun, only to be disappointed when his trainer hadn't seen. Quentin couldn't concentrate enough to walk perfectly straight, let alone acknowledge his Pokemon's successes.

Finally, after climbing down a ladder carved into the solid rock (very difficult for Haruka in her current state), the four came across a striking sight. This chamber, in contrast to the rough, natural sides of earlier, had sharp edges and smooth faces, and reflected bright lights from Steven's Metang. The pale, shining rock opened at a single point, with more darkness inside. The Champion, evidently seeking this strange place, stepped forward without hesitation.

"Wait," called Jacqueline hesitantly. "Should we let these two go in there? They had a concussion not two hours ago for Jirachi's sake."

"For whose sake?" asked Steven, seeming to not hear her correctly.

"Jirachi? Legendary granter of wishes?" the girl replied in a questioning tone. Why did it matter whose names she used for emphasis?

The Champion's eyes narrowed, giving her an appraising glance, before relaxing somewhat. "Let them rest out here. You and I can go in to look for the target."

He's no longer calling it an object, noted Jacqueline. A little rattled by the man's strange behavior, she nodded and steered the two stumbling teens to sit against the wall, facing the dark gap in the sheer crystalline stone.

Then, dusting off her jeans, she followed Steven Stone into the flickering shadows.

The air was... different on the other side of that gap. Despite how dumb she felt for thinking it, Jacqueline felt that there was something significant about stepping through that doorway, that this place was fundamentally different from that place. Taking her time to appraise her surroundings, she again noted how the Champion seemed to be anticipating something, tugging at his vest slightly and surveying the crystal with avid interest. The ground here was smooth, barely even any dust or debris marring its perfect regularity. Jacqueline rephrased her mental terminology to describe the walls as crystalline, because rock did not naturally form at that level of glassy smoothness and reflectiveness.

Steven beckoned, and she hurried onwards. The Champion and the girl who had only been a trainer for a double handful of days proceeded down the passageway, wary of everything. The first hitch in the journey was when the passageway split without warning into identical tunnels. After a short, whispered conversation (neither of them was very comfortable in there), Steven unlocked a Beldum from its Pokeball and placed it at the intersection, to call them back if need be. And then, in a decision that slightly terrified the girl, they split up to explore both passages.

-Idealism-

The white-haired Champion padded softly through the crystalline chambers and passageways, scouting every fork in the road in his meticulous reconnaissance. His Metang provided steady, clear light, freeing his vision from the shifting shadows that could hamper his search. Steven fairly vibrated with anticipation and excitement. However, the rooms he came across were repeatedly empty, bare chambers that only reflected his Flash. After about ten of these empty rooms, a frown worked its way across his features. He had to be close to the center, judging from Metang's magnetic analysis.

Exiting another pointlessly square widening of the passage, he felt a breath of fresh air. Heart leaping, he strode forward into a truly gigantic cavern that stretched up into darkness. He had found the center of the maze.

-Idealism-

Haruka was bored, to put it simply. Despite her pounding headache, her equilibrium had returned, and she was sitting against a wall, staring at a terribly inviting opening in a crystal wall. Quentin hadn't said a word, instead holding his head in his hands and staring at the ground. Boring. Standing up without a word, she doubted the other concussed person even noticed her walk forward and disappear into the crystalline maze.

She took three steps inward before stopping and pulling out her flashlight, taking stock of her surroundings much as the others did. Of more interest to her were the lack of smooth junctions between the vertical slabs of stone and the claylike floor. She crouched down, sitting on her heels and running a hand along the intersection. "It's as if the walls weren't originally part of the cave," she spoke to herself quietly. "Something or someone has to have built them," she continued, rising back to her feet with a little difficulty. Her balance must not be quite as recovered as she had hoped.

Beginning to slowly walk forward, Haruka trailed her gloved fingers upon the walls, taking some measure of comfort in their perfect smoothness. She progressed more slowly than Steven and Jacqueline could have, as she did not seek anything deeper within the maze; she merely wished to investigate the maze itself.

Experimentally slamming the heel of her hand into the wall, she hardly winced as it didn't budge. "It's definitely quite sturdy..." Next; her pocketknife. After a few minutes of pointless prying, she replaced the knife in her pack. She'd only dull it or warp it by attempting to crack stone. There weren't even any edges or cracks for her to try and exploit. How could something so perfectly planar even be constructed? The inaccessibility of the area and relative pointlessness ruled out heavy construction.

She scratched her head through her bandana wonderingly. How had this structure got here?

Haruka continued on, staring intently at the glassy slabs walling off her path. It would only be another twenty-two steps before she noticed the first inconsistency. This segment was distinguishable from the others; it was the only one to have edges. Curious now, Haruka went down on her hands and knees to peer at the base of this particular oddity. The flashlight showed that here, the stone went smoothly into the claylike ground, matching exactly each and every imperfection in the ground. She narrowed her eyes. Turning back, she shone her light on the base of the wall parallel to hers. Yep.

There, the dirt clumped up against the wall. This odd segment was the only one where the wall seemed to follow the ground, rather than vice versa.

She prodded the wall experimentally, and gasped as her finger sank into it, meeting only the resistance of water. "What the fuck..." she breathed.

Removing her hand quickly, she checked it over for signs of immediate damage, and found nothing except the eerie coolness from having it immersed in a wall. Growing bolder, she slid all five fingers into the stone, gauging distance only by the serene chill on her hand. Once more, she was forced to pause from shock as her fingers parted the cold stone-like substance and emerged into air where she assumed there would be an actual wall or more of this strange illusory rock.

This time, she removed her hand all the way and paused. No way she was going in there without some kind of backup. Calling out Rono, she indicated the wall and asked him non-verbally if it seemed different from the others. Cocking his head at her, in a manner she understood as confusion, he simply walked straight into the wall, which rippled as he passed through.

Rono can't see or sense it? I'm confused...

Sighing, she touched her hand to the wall again, letting it pass straight through. This time, however, she allowed her entire arm up to the shoulder to pass through, shivering at the eerie coolness on her bare arms. Then Haruka dared to pass her foot through the strange not-wall, panicking for a second before finding footing. Her next move, however, would be the one that gave her the most pause. She'd have to move her head and torso through something that still looked like a rock wall to her. A brief thought of suffocating while stuck inside a wall flitted through her, a shot of cold injected into her veins. But if there was one thing Haruka knew how to deal with, it was fear, and she willed herself into motion before she could think of all the possible consequences. Again, the flash of panic as she went blind and the numbing coolness spread over her face and neck; but the fear passed soon enough, and only Haruka remained, on the other side of the false wall. She now had access to a long, perfectly regular hallway, where the crystal was so polished as to appear like a mirror. Tapping Rono's shell in a pattern of two short beats and a long one, in a predetermined set of signals, she waited for him to begin moving. Three moments later, she followed, sighting his path for him with her ever-handy flashlight, Rono covering her front as she regularly turned to check their six.

Her hands began to quiver as she came to a stop at the end of the tunnel and took a good, long look at what sat there, suspended within a jagged block of crystal. Haruka stood her ground despite every instinct telling her to flee, powering through her fear. Though this was put sorely to the test when all three of its eyes blinked lazily at her, a terrible pressure building against the invader's temples. Yeah... she couldn't fight a powerful psychic with her flashlight and knife. She already had a headache, for Arceus' sake.

-Idealism-

Jacqueline had wandered her way through the maze, her flashlight scouring each and every corner as she lazily looked them over. Nope, more walls, more shiny walls, she hated this cave.

It was cold, and lonely, and miserable. What were they even getting for helping out the Champion? Eternal gratitude or something equally pointless? She was shaken out of her rather cynical thoughts by Terry's yipping. As he bounded back to her and nuzzled her hand, she remanded her statement. It was cold, and pointless, and miserable.

But Terry had not merely appeared to cheer her up; he urged her onwards, yipping excitedly. Pushed forward by her enthusiastic kitsune-fox, she stumbled into a large, spacious chamber, which her flashlight could not really adequately show. Pointing it in any particular direction didn't really show her much. "Woo, Terry. You found an even bigger ro-" she halted her sarcasm as she saw a brilliant source of light appear from around the corner of something, illuminating the vast object it was circling. Squinting, she was able to distinguish pale hair and dark clothes. What was this pedestal, to capture Steven's attention so? Was this what he had ventured into the dark to find?

She began to walk towards him. If he found what he was looking for, the sooner they could be out of this damned cave. But something kept her from calling out, and she paused outside his ring of light, as something was clearly wrong with Steven.

-Idealism-

Quentin woke up, immediately feeling cramps and bruises down his back and a horrible crick in his neck. Opening and closing his eyes slowly, he figured most of that was from the fact he had fallen asleep against a cave wall. Haruka was no longer beside him; she must have left when he had dozed off. That mayyyy be a problem, given that he had no idea where anyone else was, or how to get out of this cave. A sudden adrenaline boost pushed away the fog of sleep, as he realized that he had been asleep in a foreign cave filled with dangerous pokemon, with no form of protection. Summoning Turnus with a croaked command, he knuckled his starter's head fin happily.

Given that he had been left here on his own, and everyone else was probably wandering throughout that portion of the cavern delineated by the smooth, reflective walls, he had either been abandoned or they would came back to this spot. He had to consciously slow down his breathing after his treacherous mind brought up the first option. So he remained at the rendezvous, so to speak. Now he had some time to himself. What to do?

Figuring now was as good a time as any to get it over with, he removed a pokeball from his pocket and stared at the tiny Ralts he could see within. "Time to yell at me, Brasidas!" he uttered with a wry grin twisting a corner of his mouth. As the small psychic materialized, arms upraised and glaring, he edited this to "snapping my spine with psychic powers."

Nope, not dealing with that right now. Quentin recalled Brasidas immediately, before opening up his Pokedex and reading up on the Ralts genus.

When ten minutes later, Brasidas appeared once again, Quentin was much better prepared. Reaching forward quickly, he placed one finger on the Ralts' head spike, now knowing from the Pokedex that these assisted in the transmission of emotion and in controlling psychic power.

"Can't we discuss this like civilized people?"

Trust. Pleading.

He attempted to broadcast his emotions as loudly as possible through the emotion spike thing. He, of course, hadn't read the Pokedex deep enough to realize that this did absolutely nothing; but as that gesture was the right thing to do to stall the Ralts, he wasn't dead yet. In Ralts colonies, a simple touch in that fashion from an older or more evolved member of the colony is used to reaffirm psychic dominance and loyalty. Of course, Quentin had zero psychic dominance, but the touch still quelled the Ralts in a vague instinctual fashion.

"Yo, can you do the psychic thing and read my mind about what happened there? I don't really have a way with words."

Brasidas glared at him further, pushing Quentin's finger off of his head, but acquiesced, nodding.

"Good Ralts, good Ralts, please don't rip my brain apart."

-Idealism-

Jacqueline was more curious than anything about what was going on with the champion. He had sunk to his knees, holding the sides of his head, as he gritted out, "Metang! That's definitely psionics. Ugh... Trace it! That's got to be it! It's got to be in this room!" Metang obediently floated away, following minuscule trails of energy throughout the cavernous space, but paused, calculating. It was at this time that Steven slumped against the base of the statue, panting, holding one hand to his temple. His eyes were still screwed shut in concentration. A sheen of sweat appeared on his brow. What was he doing?

The Metang returned to its trainer's side, clicking worriedly. "Just a little help, Metang, then I'll be fine. It just flared up, and Metagross isn't around. Some stirring as reaction to the psionic flare right then." Metang touched its metallic limb to Steven's languid hand, and a pale glow traveled up his arm to his shoulder, then his neck, and then into his head, at which point Steven relaxed even further, taking his hand from his head and opening his eyes tiredly.

It was at this point that Jacqueline stepped into his line of sight, a concerned expression plastered across her features. She was more curious than anything else. "Are you okay? I just saw you collapse."

"Oh, nothing major," replied the Champion airily, waving a hand. Bullshit.

"Just something out there calling to something in here," he continued, tapping the side of his head.

That raised more question than answers for Jacqueline. Actually, it didn't provide any answers, just more questions. Acting like this was an everyday occurrence, she nodded before asking, "Is this pedestal what we were looking for?"

"It should have been here, on this pedestal, but if my little... attack was anything to guess by, it's long gone by now. Sorry to put you to all this trouble." Inwardly cursing himself, he raised his head upwards and promised silently into the encroaching darkness, I'll fix everything for you, one way or another. If the best doctors in Hoenn can't do it, then it's up to me and the world of Pokemon.

-Idealism-

Haruka was thrown backwards by the sudden focus of psionic energies, and tumbled through the false wall, landing spread-eagled in the passage way, even as Rono skidded towards her under an immense motive force. Rolling out of the way of her own Pokemon, she remained on the ground for a few seconds to catch her breath. This had just made her headache worse. Why did she have to make that stir in its sleep?

Next time she encountered a cave, she was not exploring any hidden passages alone. No sir. She was going to make someone else share her horrible luck.

Stumbling back out of the cave, back the way she came (she hoped), she could feel fatigue washing over her. Rono followed, cowed by the experience, and gently nudged her in the right direction. She could feel her eyes threatening to slip shut, and was reminded she had a concussion. Tripping her way out of the maze's doorway, her eyes fluttered shut about when she tripped over Quentin's feet and fell half across the similarly dozing boy with a faint "oof." She wasn't nearly lucid enough to notice the fact he now had two pokemon by his side; she certainly hadn't seen that Ralts before.

She fell asleep almost immediately despite the circumstances, Rono nudging her side worriedly.

When Jacqueline and Steven reemerged from the gap in the walls of shining stone, they found the two both fast asleep ,their pokemon keeping a vigilant watch as they slept unaware of the world around them.

"We're going to make our way back to the surface. You guys want to wake them up?"

The Ralts simply held out a hand, shaking its head. Steven, understanding somehow, touched the small psychic's hand, channeling Metang's psychic energy to boost the following Teleport. They left the cave in a faint blip of displaced air.

Author's note:

Just going to note, excess drowsiness and sleeping is a possible side effect of concussions, so there you go.

This chapter got some plot done, and probably raised even more questions than it answered; but we're almost done with the caves. There's something that lives down there and doesn't want to be found.

I realize that this isn't written too well, as my characters haven't actually messed everything up big-time or make mistakes, but writing like that is a bit cathartic. When I write this, I can tell the story of someone doing what they love for a living, free from doubt about their path, not having to suffer too much from their own weaknesses and guilt. It's kinda Sue-ish, but it's just how I'm going about this story.

Thanks, and tune in for the next chapter whenever!

CURRENT CAST

Quentin

Badges: 0

Pokemon:

Turnus (Mudkip). Known moves: Water Gun, Growl.

Brasidas (Ralts). Known moves: Confusion, Teleport.

Jacqueline

Badges:0

Pokemon:

Terry (Vulpix). Known moves: Ember, Tackle, Tail Whip.

Haruka

Badges: 1

Pokemon:

Rono (Lairon). Known moves: Roar, Metal Claw.

Chic (Torchic). Known moves: Peck, Flamethrower.

Steven Stone

Badges: 8

Known Pokemon:

Skarmory. Known moves: Fly.

Metang. Known moves: Flash, Magnet Rise.

Aggron.

MINOR CHARACTERS

Sam: Who?

Ranger Norris: Doing his job, which is probably a lot more important than whatever our protags are doing.

Norman: Threatening a distributor. Haruka's at the back of his mind for a while.

Mr. Briney: Autopsy shows he's dead.

Yuki: Finally got his name-drop. Convincing people that it's completely and totally a hat. Who would disguise their hair as a hat to avoid suspicion? Eheheheh...