Hard Enough - Chapter 214 - Grampa Canyon cave nightmares! (Patreon)

“And that boys is how you secure an evolution stone!” Flint said as he carefully extracted a green stone from the wall. “Interestingly this one appears to be a Leaf Stone,” said Flint. 

“A leaf stone?”  Gary asked, taking the offered stone and inspecting it under the light of his headlamp. “But this area isn’t known for its grass types? In fact it's much the opposite? Fire types and rock types no?” said Gary. 

“Ho?” Flint said, curious at this response. He hadn’t expected one of these youngsters to question him. He decided to stay quiet and let Gary talk through his own thoughts before stepping in. 

Gary nodded. “Yeah from what I’ve read… of certain people’s works, evolution stones have something to do with the types of pokemon and the environment don’t they? So, Leaf stones should be found in super verdant areas like forests, jungles and… grasslands?” Gary said. 

Flint nodded. “Ah, yes I’ve read a few of those works, there’s some interesting takes, but you’re forgetting a few things. The level of strat that we’re at right now, is actually a few hundred if not a thousand years old. So at that time, it most likely was a jungle. You can tell by the colouration of the earth. This is fine—” Whatever else Flint was going to say about geology was lost as a loud wail sounded out. 

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!” called a boy’s voice. 

Gary tilted his head. “Was that a girl?” 

Forrest shot Gary a flat look. “Really? Now isn’t the time for that,” said Forrest before he hurried towards the sound of his distressed friend. Flint frowned. He hadn’t felt anything shifting or any rumbles that would have given off anything serious like a cave-in. 

So had they found something good? Flint tossed that idea into the bin as soon as he raised it. No, they must have found something bad. 

Brock must have sent Ash back.

Flint started moving quicker, prompting Humphrey and Gary to follow after him. They returned to the first cavern and found Pikachu waving his hands about. 

“Pi! Pika! Chu! Pika!” shouted the little electric mouse to Forrest who nodded along seriously only to shake his head. “I have no idea what you’re saying,” Forrest said. 

Pikachu took a moment to stare at Forrest. 

Then he zapped Forrest. The flash of light illuminated the cavern and Flint growled low in warning from the back of throat. It was a useful trick that pokemon with good hearing, or a lot of rock types could pick up on without it really registering on a human’s range of hearing. 

Pikachu, sensing the warning for what it was, stiffened and stopped zapping Forrest to turn towards Flint.

Flint nodded. “Good pokemon,” he said before inspecting his son. Forrest shook himself off and coughed out a little. 

“Alright alright!” Forrest raised his hands in submission. “Sorry, Pikachu! I don’t know what you mean alright? We don’t spend as long talking as you do with Misty or with Ash, okay?” 

Pikachu huffed but nodded and turned to point at the tunnel he’d run through. The sound of frantic crawling was soon followed by a light source as Ash came into view. 

“Urrrrrgh,” said Ash as he shot to his feet at the end of the tunnel only to stumble. He took in huge heaving lungfuls of air. “Flint! It’s bad! Brock! He’s really hurt! There was blood all over his face and he was down! We need to get him out of there! He’s hurt! Or dying! I think the monster of the depths got to him!” Ash said, his hands waving about. 

Flint stiffened. “What? Where?” he said, shooting forward. He didn’t even wait for the answer before releasing Golem into the tunnel. “Get me to the other side!” 

“In the tunnel to the —” Ash started to say, only for Golem to grab onto Flint and begin dragging him through the tunnel at a sprint. It wasn’t the fastest method he had of getting around in the depths, but other options would risk cave-ins. 

That would come later, once he’d secured all the boys and gotten eyes on his son.

Golem had him on the other side of the tunnel hurriedly. Flint noted down that it had taken him slightly up on a gradient for around two hundred metres. He filled in the details to his mental mud map that he used to picture the layout of the tunnels. 

They were close to the surface. Good, that was good. 

Flint didn’t have to look hard to work out which tunnel Brock was in. the fancy redlight of his headlamp shone off to the side and Flint pointed his hand. “Golem!” he said as he got his feet back. He sprinted into the tunnel and found his son slumped on the wall. 

Flint’s heart lurched as he took in the red lines that tricked down Brock’s face, looking like he’d cried tears of blood. Around his mouth more blood appeared to have trickled out. 

His neck was red as well. 

Flint’s mind betrayed him. Similar scenes of friends and fellow defenders of pewter with their throats torn out, found laying on their sides in trenches came to the fore of his mind and his breath hitched. 

His body started to stiffen and he felt a spasm come on.

He stared at his son. 

That last word echoed in his mind. 

Son.

He pushed back the threatening episode with everything he possessed. He found himself no longer frozen like some marble statue and he moved, slowly at first but with increased control as he lurched toward his son. 

“I-it’s just a trick of the light!” he said aloud, trying to convince himself as much as he could. 

It had to be a trick! 

Damn Brock’s insistence on using a red light. It was his fault! He reached out with shaky hands and touched his son expecting it to come back wet. 

…

It was dry. 

He pushed his fingers into his son’s cheek.

His son’s head lolled to the side and a huge snore came out of Brock. 

Flint stared, his mind suddenly going blank. Golem, who’d been slowly moving up next to Flint leaned in and sniffed Brock. In doing so he blew air into Brock’s face and Brock snorted, waving a hand in the air. 

“No kisses. Need a breath mint sorry babe,” he said before rolling his head the other direction and continuing to sleep.

Flint, now thoroughly confused. Relieved, but confused, began dabbing his hands at the red lines that he’d mistaken for blood.

He drew his hand back and rubbed his fingers. They came back dry… ish. A soft noise sounded from behind him but he ignored it, trusting in Golem to watch his back. “Shuckle, get me a good look at Brock?” he said, making his shuckle direct all the light at his son. 

Brock grimaced as soon as the light of multiple limbs were directed at his face. 

“Urgh? What? Go away,” Brock said. 

Flint barked a laugh and hugged his son. “Marker! It’s just a marker!” he crowed. 

“What? What’s going on?” Brock said as he squinted at Flint. “What’s going on? I’m just having a little nap,” said Brock, clearly still disorientated. 

Flint laughed. “That’s fine! Grand even, keep sleeping!” he prompted. Sleeping was good, so much better than… Flint felt a shudder run through him. 

Bocok stared at him. “Are you alright?” he said blearily, slowly starting to rouse dispute Flint’s urges to stay down. 

“Never been better,” said Flint as he allowed himself to fully relax and feel the relief of knowing his son hadn’t… died. 

“Jiggly?” said a voice from next to them. 

Flint ignored it, too interested in watching his clearly alive son. Brock tilted his head. “Oh hey Jigglypuff, nice song,” he said with a dopey tired smile. 

“Jiggly?” the voice. Flint glanced behind him to see a squirming Jigglypuff. It bounced around happily, hands waving back and forth. 

Flint couldn’t help himself. “What’s this about a song?” he said. 

Jigglypuff turned and grinned at him. Something small like a microphone swept up to her mouth and Flint had just long enough to recognise it as a red marker pen before she began to Sing. 

Flint felt his mind slowly lurch back into gear as he connected the dots. 

He just started to react when the song hit him and he leaned back as the tension left his body all at once. He smiled to himself as he began to dream about his happy, and very much alive family. 

Brock was right, it was a good song.

____________________________________________

Forrest twitched. “Dad should have come back by now already… what’s going on?” he said.

Ash hopped from foot to foot. The monster must have gotten him too!”  

Gary shook his head. “There is no such thing as monsters!” he said. Next to him, Blastoise nodded its head, the twin cannons twitching up and down as it did so. 

“Kabutops!” said Shin who’d risen from the pond alongside Blastoise while they’d been waiting. Chou huddled behind her taller friend. 

Humphrey nodded his head in agreement. “Shin is right. We need to get in there.” he said, slashing his hand towards the tunnel  “It doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t a monster; we need to get in there and find out what’s going on. If both of them are injured then we need to help them. This time though we need to stick together.” 

He gave Gary and Ash a firm look. “No running off on our own!” 

Ash and Gary gave him equally affronted looks but Humphrey ignored them, choosing to instead release his Lairon. “Need you out and keeping an eye on our surroundings buddy,” he said to his starter. “Something’s fishy,” he said. 

“Lair!” grunted the steel-rock type before positioning itself at the front of the pack. Forrest chuckled. “This is just like playing a game of Pokemon dungeon… we need to work out the order we’ll move forward,” he mumbled. 

Gary rolled his eyes while Ash kept quiet.

Selene tried to go after Humphrey but Forrest put his hand on the floating pokemon.

“You should go in the middle. If there is something causing problems we need you in a safe position. Forrest’s eyes then darted around the group. “Gary we need you after Humprhey with Blastoise preceding you in case we need some power. I’ll follow up with Selene and Ash will have our backs as the rearguard. Got that?” he said. 

Ash and Gary nodded, their chests puffing out at the implied importance of their position. 

Forrest held in a sigh and looked to the only other mature trainer here. Humphrey met his gaze and nodded before getting on his hands and knees and crawling after his pokemon. 

The procession moved along from there. Thankfully Blastoise didn't have any issues. Shin was able to crouch down and waddle through the tunnel in a manner that seemed entirely practised too Forrest’s point of view. 

Chou rolled after them down the tunnel. 

When Forrest reached the cavern, his eyes flicked around noting that a few of the tunnels were marked out in the glow paint. Forrest wanted to start looking into them, not seeing any light sources that would indicate Brock or his dad. 

And didn’t that raise some worries. It was bad enough that Brock was out of action, if what Ash said was to be believed. 

And for all that Ash could sometimes drop the ball, especially with reading a map, he wouldn’t scream around for something serious like this. 

If Brock had looked hurt, he must have been. 

Thankfully Ash was right behind Forrest so he didn’t have to wait long. Still, the seconds ticking by seemed to grate on his nerves. When they all emerged from this, Forrest was so going to get Flint to show him how to get his pokemon to carry him through tunnels like he’d seen Flint do. 

That had been crazy fast!

Forrest had no idea how to even approach something like that without getting really, really messed up with limbs banging into the edges of the rock or falling on your face. 

You’d need to really trust your pokemon to do it, cause if they tripped you were in for a world of hurt. 

It was just another surprise from his dad.

When Ash’s hand appeared in the tunnel Forrest latched onto it, not waiting for Ash to crawl the last metre or two, instead choosing to drag his friend out. “Right Ash, where was Brock?” he said before setting Ash down on his feet. 

Ash reeled at the sudden burst of movement. He shook his head before remembering what he was there for. 

“Right! He was in that tunnel over…” Ash paused and looked first one way, and then another. “Uhm, there!” Ash said.

Forrest did not like hearing the hesitance in Ash’s voice. 

Gary sighed. “You forgot, didn’t you?” 

“No! I just… I remember seeing Brock’s light setup glowing into the cave which should have made it easy, but it’s not shining!” he said firmly. 

Forrest nodded. That made sense, in the heat of the moment you would notice something like that more than precisely which tunnel it was in. Now with there being no easy light source, they’d need to rely on other methods of finding Brock. 

The others started directing their lights to various tunnels, but most of them twisted in a way that made the lights rather useless. 

They didn’t see anything but some interesting rocks in a rock wall that Dad would have no doubt started lecturing them about.

From what he’d been showing them earlier, Forrest could make out a diamond, and some gold nuggets.  

Gary rubbed his chin. “What if Brock was hurt enough to need immediate evac? Maybe Flint left already?” he said. 

Forrest shook his head. “He’d have sent back a message or a pokemon.” 

Humphrey glanced down at his wrist. “Hmmm no message would reach down here. We’re not on the network, or it's too weak for transceivers,” he said. 

Forrest nodded at this point. Caves, after all, weren’t great places to get reception. 

Forrest licked his lips. What else could he use? What would he do if this were a Dungeon crawl? 

“Any… noises or smells?” he suggested. 

Pikachu perked up, his ears swivelling this way and that while a few other pokemon began sniffing at the ground only to snort and send a dust cloud billowing out. Forrest grimaced, about to discard that when Pikachu perked up and pointed in one direction. 

A sound like a growl echoed through the cavern and Forrest frowned. There must be something here. Forrest began moving towards the cave. It might be a bad idea to investigate the growling, but if it was a pokemon that had hurt Brock and Dad perhaps it was still growling?

He walked a few steps forward only for something to move behind him.

 “Puff!” said something and Forrest snapped his head about. 

His light arced over the rocky ground and walls, only for something pink and red to flash by. He stilled and swept his light over the site again. Nothing. There was nothing there. 

Forrest held his light there. He’d spent some time trawling the pokenet about certain types of rock pokemon.  

A lot of rock pokemon were big, and that meant they needed a diverse source of nutrients. Sometimes the best nutrients were other pokemon. 

A good deal of rock pokemon were notorious ambush predators. 

Was that what had happened to Brock and Dad?

Was that what was growling right now?

“See something?” Ash asked; his own light bobbing this way and that erratically. 

Forrest reached out and grabbed his friend by the head to steady him. “No, but I did see something for a moment.” 

“You sure about that?” asked Humphrey, his own beam of light slowly panning around in an arc. 

Forrest resisted the urge to nod. “Yeah, on the first thing. Now I’m holding position in case there is a rock pokemon waiting to take us by surprise. That noise might have been them crouching down and preparing to strike,” he said casually. 

Immediately every other set of torches snapped to where his was. 

Pikachu’s cheeks sparked up, Shin raised his scythes, Selene hovered a bit higher, Lairon tensed up and Blastooise’s cannons slammed into position. 

Forrest privately felt like that last one offered the most support and surety that nothing was going to attack from that particular angle.

Forrest sighed. “Keep sweeping the other angles of approach guys,” he said. 

The other lights twitched away only to arc back around quickly, creating a semi-strobe light and giving Forrest a headache. “Stop that!” he snapped at them. “Just take the flashlights off your heads and sweep them around slowly instead of snapping your heads about!”

He said, channelling a bit of Misty to get his tone waspish and to get the others jumping to what he needed of them. 

Right after he shouted, he felt bad. 

“Sorry!” he said, taking a breath and pausing like he knew he needed to. “Alright let’s start checking the tunnels. We’ll start with the tunnel that—” 

“There! I saw something move!” shouted Gary, his hand snapping towards an open tunnel. “Blastoise! Water Gun!” he said before anyone could see what he’d pointed at. 

Blastoise, following his trainer’s command, unleashed a torrent of water into the tunnel saturating it. The sound of the water hitting a wall caused the caves to tremor as the noise echoed.

“Woah! Woah! Stop!” Forrest called but it took a few seconds for Blastoise to stop. 

When he did so Gary coughed sheepishly. “I saw something! Let’s check out if we got it!” he said, striding forward and not waiting. 

“Gary! Just hold up a moment!” Forrest said, reaching towards the other boy. Gary ignored him, marching forward with Blastoise at his side. 

Forrest growled. “Come on guys let’s back him up!” he said knowing he needed to keep everyone together. Ash grumbled but Humphrey followed without complaint, which Forrest was extremely thankful for. 

 “Ah!” shouted Gary suddenly, causing them to sprint into the tunnel only to find Gary running right back at them. “Zubat!” he shouted, and sure enough behind Gary and all around Blastoise a number of Zubat were harassing them. A larger Golbat was latched on behind Blastoise and looked to be draining the powerful pokemon.

“Go Challenger!” Forrest called. “Precise shots! Nail those Zubat!” Forrest said, standing his ground. 

Challenger, his Graveller appeared and began to launch attack after attack with Rock Blast and Rock Throw. Selene and Shin joined in and the flock of Zubat were quickly thinned out. Zubat crumbled under the various attacks and soon their knocked out forms littered the ground. 

Blastoise continued to whirl about, annoyed by the persistent Golbat on its back. Gary, now free of any harassing pokemon whirled about. “Tuck up into Rapid Spin and fling it off!” he called. 

Blastoise did just that. Its limbs and head tucked into its shell before it landed on its stomach where it began to spin. 

Within moments Golbat, despite its best attempts, was flung off and became a sitting duck for a twin Rock Throw and thunderbolt courtesy of Challenger and Pikachu. 

Forrest exhaled before rounding on Gary. “Keep the party together! Come on man!” he said, chopping his hand threateningly at Gary. 

Gary rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry, I did see something but it must have just been the Zubat flapping about,” Gary said. 

He spared the small cave they were in a furtive look over with his torch. “Huh, there’s some more deposits around here,” he said only to pause his light on one part of the wall that looked perfectly flat as well as wet. Blastoise must have hit that wall with its Water Guns, Forrest concluded.

He stepped forward and inspected the extremely flat wall, which even as he watched had dust sloughing off it to reveal something.  

Forrest frowned and shone his own light on it before stepping up and taking a look at it. The wall was flat, but there were small indents within it that appeared squarish in shape. Age had worn down the edges. Shapes were formed up with darker tones of rock and small indentations. 

Blatoise’s Water gun appeared to have cleaned it up some, making it visible.

Forrest raised his hand and swept it across the square of rock. Mud and dust fell away to reveal something which he frowned at.

A four-by-four row of squares stared back at him.

Forrest couldn’t help but feel he’d seen something like this before. 

“The Ruins of Alph,” Humphrey said. 

The other boys blinked. “Huh?” said Ash. Gary also looked clueless but he held his tongue. 

Forrest frowned at a memory of his younger brother reciting a geography assignment to Brock coming to the forefront of his mind. “Aren’t those the sites where they found some rare pokemon? Something to do with the alphabet?” he asked slowly. 

Humphrey nodded. “Yeah, there were a lot of conditions supposedly to find any of them, as they’re still rare as anything and I’m not sure if they were named or just considered unknown pokemon, but some of the researchers did publicise information about square sliding puzzles like this.” 

He put his hand on one of the squares and tried to move it around only to find it locked in place. Humphrey huffed. “I think it’s stuck,” he said after a moment more’s testing. 

“Probably full of dust and worn down,” Gary supplied, raising his transceiver and taking a picture. “Still, it's a good find. I think it’ll give me a few moments of fame when I solve it,” he said casually. 

Forrest, knowing what was coming next and deciding to get ahead of any drama, gave Ash a look. When their eyes met he made a show of rolling his eyes. Ash grinned and stayed quiet. 

“Sure thing Gary,” Forrest said. “For now we need to check the other tunnels for Brock and Dad,” he said, reminding everyone what they were actually here to do. 

They turned and marched back to the branching point only to frown. Forrest chewed his lip. “Which tunnel did we come in by?” he said realising he hadn’t seen a marker set up for that yet. 

A quick glance at the marked tunnels showed that Brock had marked them off, but Forrest didn’t know what the marking meant. 

Damn, he’d need to do some reading, this was just embarrassing. Imagine being the son of a famous cave explorer like his dad and brother of the rock type Gym Leader and not knowing tunnel markings!

Gary swallowed. “So… we’re lost? What should we do now?” he shot Forrest a look. “Any tips from that game you like to play?”

Forrest thought about what he’d tried so far. Sight wasn’t useful in the caves, sound hadn’t worked too well, and scent had been stumped due to dust build up. Forrest paused. “...footprints,” Forrest said.

The boys glanced down, hoping to track their movements through the footprints from their passage. They exhaled in relief as one tunnel looked a lot more travelled with it having a wide stampede of footprints on show. 

“We came in from that one,” Forrest said before tracking another thicker set of footprints. “Which means that Brock and Dad must have gone this way!” He said feeling good about this logic. 

The other nodded and followed his lead. Shin took the lead this time. 

They moved and as they did so Forrest noticed that the growling was growing louder. 

Forrest licked his lips and signalled for Challenger to be ready as they advanced cautiously around the curve. 

Shin, leading the way paused in the opening just as a particularly loud growl sounded out. 

Forest held his breath. “What do you see Shin?” he said, inching forward to peer around his brother’s pokemon.

“Kabutops,” said Shin as the fossil pokemon shook his head and stepped to the side. He waved a scythe in to indicate the others should advance. 

Forrest found Gary and Ash pressed up to him as they slowly stepped forward. 

They were greeted by the downed forms of Brock, Dad, Izumi the Geodude, and Dad’s Golem causing Forrest to stiffen. Gary and Ash both gasped.  

“Dad! Brock!” Forrest called running forward to check on them. 

It didn’t look good with all the red over them, which looked sort of weird. Forrest got within a few metres before his Dad twitched and lolled his head to the side. 

Forrest was in the perfect position to watch as his mouth opened and a huge snore rang out, sounding just like the growl he’d been hearing for the last few minutes. 

Forrest couldn’t help himself as shock caused him to trip. He sailed through the air, his mind stuck on the weirdness of this scene and that his dad was in a cave… snoring his head off. 

As he sailed through the air he noted other, smaller details. 

Like how both Brock and Dad weren’t actually hurt. The red was just weird markings on their faces and bodies.  He noticed the drawn-on spectacles, moustaches, beards, and laughter marks. Dad looked like he had some weird tribal tattoo on his face. One half of Brock’s face was simply coloured in like it was a colouring book left to Tilly with only one crayon. 

Forrest hit the ground and slid through the soft sand. His mind reeling with this revelation. 

He stayed down. feeling too stunned and drained by the sudden rollercoaster of emotions. 

Flint let loose another loud snore that echoed through the cave.

“Is he dead?” Ash asked.

Forrest barked a laugh and smirked. “I know how to check. Shin use Hydro Pump on them all!” he said. 

Shin must have been feeling equally annoyed by how things had shaken out as he followed Forrest’s command without complaint, dousing Brock and Dad along with the sleeping pokemon. 

Flint spluttered awake while Golem shot up and growled. Izumi and Brock merely smacked their lips and shook themselves off sending water droplets flying about them. 

Brock blinked blearily. “Oh, hey guys, what’s up?” he said, sitting up only to frown at the large oval rock that he had in his lap.

Dad blinked slowly, his mind reconnecting the dots while Forrest shot to his feet. “Don’t you ‘hey guys’ me! We were worried about you! We thought you were hurt and it turns out you were just in here sleeping after playing… makeup on each other? What the heck guys?” he shouted. 

Dad and Brock both flinched at the sudden barrage of noise. Behind Forrest the sound of another large flock of Zubat waking up echoed and he had a moment to feel sheepish about forgetting himself.  

“Sorry…” he said with a cough. “You guys just scared me.”

Brock opened his mouth only to shut it and reconsider what he was about to say. “Uhmmm, sorry little bro, guess I just let my guard down and got caught out. Sorry that you had to bail me out.” Brock glanced about only to pause as he took in Dad’s marked up face. 

His hand slowly reached towards his own face. “Have I also been treated like a whiteboard after a sleeping kid was called to answer some questions?” he asked.

Forrest snorted at the aptness of that answer. He snapped off a picture feeling extremely vindicated to have one over on his brother. He was so going to share this around and tease Brock forever with this. 

Brock looked at it and instead of getting embarrassed, he laughed. “Heh! That’s kind of hilarious. That little pokemon has some serious artistic talent. I should see if they’d enjoy being friends with a Smeargle.”

“A Smeargle did this?” Ash asked, raising up his pokedex in anticipation of a new pokemon. 

Brock blinked. “No, a Jigglypuff did. Did you not see it?” he asked. 

Dad nodded while everyone else shook their heads. 

Brock leaned to the side and looked past Forrest. “Oh, never mind, there it is,” he said before yawning. 

Everyone turned and found Jigglypuff smiling widely. It shot Brock and Dad glares before it raised up its small red pen to its lips. 

Brock and Flint called out a warning. “Stop it from singing!” 

“Jiggly-pu—” was as far as it got before Humphrey responded.

“Metal Noise! Now!” he called. Lairon responded by exhaling a shrill shriek of metal being tortured resulting in Jigglypuff, and indeed everyone grabbing at their ears in pain. 

Humphrey clenched his fist. “Celia used a Jigglypuff to great effect last year! Jigglypuff you’re going to be mine!” he shouted.

Jigglypuff stiffened and glared at Humphrey before brandishing its red pen threateningly. That glare vanished when Humphrey punched a fist forward. “Lairon! Iron Head!” 

His pokemon lunged forward and slammed into Jigglypuff, causing the smaller pokemon to sail back into a rock wall. Jigglypuff, instead of standing to fight turned and sprinted away. 

“Puff!” she called while pulling down her eyelid at us.. 

“Eh? Wait no!” called Humphrey as he ripped out a pokeball and hurled it after the fleeing pokemon. Forrest had to give it to Humphrey, his throw was good. It was just a shame that a Zubat, likely drawn by the noise, chose to sweep down and attack the ball resulting in it being sucked into the ball. 

“No!” Humphrey called, but before he could pursue it, a wall of Zubat flapped their way into the cave. Forrest blanched. This was easily double the size of the flock they’d taken down a few minutes ago.

Brock sat up, his expression serious. “Shin! Drive them back with Surf!” he ordered and Shin called up a wave that swept the oncoming Zubat back down the tunnel and away. 

Brock glanced at Ash. “Care to do the honours?” 

Ash was quick on the uptake. “Pikachu! Use Thunderbolt!” 

And just like that the fight was wrapped up even quicker than last time. 

Humphrey darted about looking for the jigglypuff that he'd been trying to catch, only to click his tongue in disappointment. “Lost it,” he said. 

Brock nodded in commiseration before glancing around, “so what did I miss?” he said before looking down at the rock in his hands. Forrest blinked as he realised it wasn’t an oval rock, but rather an egg.

Deciding that he didn’t want to be beaten by Brock’s lucky find, he puffed up his chest. “We found a puzzle like in the Ruins of Alph!” he said. 

Both Brock and Flint perked up at that and Forrest felt like this had been worth it. 

He’d found something neat, gotten some embarrassing photos of his brother and gotten to spend time with his friends. 

He wasn’t sure how today could get better! He shot Challenger a hopeful glance but sadly she remained the same and didn’t appear like she was about to evolve which was a shame. 

Oh well, he’d have to try out that trick he’d found in the Gym notes he had access to. 

That could wait, first he had to find out how big a score this puzzle was! 

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A.N. Thanks go to my patreons for your continued support

It also goes to Twmmy for proofreading this chapter!