Searching Far and Wide - 26 (Patreon)

Mt. Moon IV

[Narcissa]

The conclusion she had arrived at was that Mt. Moon was awful. Mainly because caves were awful, really. There was so little space to fly in that Narcissa felt like she was in a cage. Somewhat like being in a pokeball, but not nearly as comfortable. At least in the devices, it felt fine to just stay still. In the caves, she wanted to move, but was keenly aware that any movement could, and likely would, end up with her crashing into a wall.

It had happened a number of times already, after all.

So, she hadn’t flown around anymore, instead latching on Pierce’s back and staying there. It wasn’t like it was a chore, really. She rather enjoyed being close to him. It carried a somewhat comforting feeling, much like how it had been to be carried in the man’s arms when she was a kakuna. He was also warm, which helped too. Especially in the relative coldness of the tunnels.

Good thing Cygnus was more fond of staying in his pokeball instead of being surrounded by the darkness of the cave system. Not even the occasional light source seemed to reassure the psychic type really and Narcissa could understand that. So much rock around certainly made her feel uneasy too, but she refused to leave Pierce alone…

Well, there was Lily and her pokemon, but the point stood.

“You can go into the pokeball like Cygnus, you know?” Pierce asked as they walked through the corridors inside the mountain. To that, Narcissa firmly clicked her negative response. Honestly, the gall of the man to insinuate that she wouldn’t- “You are shaking, Narcissa,” he pointed out.

She so wished she could glare at her own body. How dare it betray her so. She wouldn’t give up though. The tunnels sucked, but she could withstand it. She refused to leave Pierce on his own. They were partners. More than that, he was her first partner and she was his first partner, their relationship was a step above what he had with Cygnus and Orion, no offense to them. No way she would-

“You know it’s no big deal, right?” Pierce reassured. “I’ll call you out if anything happens. There’s literally no reason for you to be uncomfortable. Besides, it’s not like I’ll be alone. Lily, Root and Gem will be here with me too,” the man continued, gesturing towards his human friend, the bulbasaur and the geodude.

For a long moment, Narcissa remained silent.

Ultimately, she decided to be magnanimous and allow her trainer’s request. If he was so intent on granting her the comfort of the pokeball in such an unnerving territory, who was she to argue? Besides, it was likely that the man wanted some time to himself. Yes, that must have been it. It wasn’t that Narcissa was leaving him, it was that she was giving him what he wanted. Of course.

She resolutely ignored the roll of Pierce’s eyes after she voiced those thoughts as best she could.

[}-o-{]

[Pierce Lawson]

Turned out that Cygnus wasn’t a fan of the dark. Not only the typing, but the literal darkness. He guessed that made some sense though, just like a fire type not being a fan of normal water. Sure, the psychic type could be in dark places and such, but he certainly didn’t like it. It wasn’t a phobia or anything, of course, but that was no reason to force the pokemon to be outside.

Unfortunately for the little guy, there were lights through the tunnels, but not nearly as many as there needed to be for the place to not have long patches of practically pitch black spots. Those few sources of brightness and the flashlights Pierce and Lily had were certainly not enough to make the abra comfortable. A shame, really, but it wasn’t like the guy would be trapped in his pokeball through the whole trip… just most of it.

As it also turned out, Narcissa wasn’t a fan of the rock tunnels of Mt. Moon, or any such corridors in general, he supposed. It was an interesting thing to learn, that was for sure. Something he’d never quite considered and he didn’t remember reading anything regarding that in his many research sessions involving his pokemon.

So, he found himself without company of his own pokemon, since Cygnus and Narcissa were staying in their pokeballs to avoid the unnerving – for them – surroundings. As for Orion… Well, he was a bit of a cave in risk, sadly, so he also needed to stay inside unless they were in a more spacious part of the place. Unfortunately for the rock serpent, those were mostly the places that were unofficially designated as campsites, so there wasn’t a lot of traveling while out in Orion’s future.

A shame, really.

Lily was having a better time with this unexpected development. For one, because she’d already been made aware of this kind of thing by her family. For another, because the only member of her team inconvenienced by Mt. Moon was Talon. Root might not have liked the lack of sunlight much, but that was much more easily dealt with than the stuff the others had to deal with. As for Gem – her now nicknamed geodude –, she was right at home in the dark, rocky tunnels of the mountain.

“So, any plan for where you wanna go?” he asked, looking at his own map. The both of them would have one of those each, they decided, and they’d keep close watch on their pathing. After all… “This looks easier and easier to get lost the more I look and I really would rather not.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Lily said sarcastically, looking over her own map. “Getting lost in here would be peachy, wouldn’t it?” she asked then, rolling her eyes as she considered the path. “Although, in all honesty, we kinda need to go deep into the mountain, away from the standard paths. No way there’s any chance to find any of the clefairy line members that live here in those, I imagine.”

“Sounds about right,” he agreed before finding a bunch of options for where to go. “How about this one? There’s that big room that we can use for training without having to worry as much, I feel.”

“That works,” Lily mumbled, idly tracing their hypothetical pathing to that place. “Yeah, I like it.”

“So, we should go down that corridor,” Pierce said, pointing at one of the tunnels they had decided to stop at for a bit. “And from there, we gotta take a bunch of left turns, then a middle path and-”

“Yeah, one at a time, Pierce. It’s already difficult enough to keep track.”

“Right, sorry,” he mumbled with an apologetic smile.

[}-o-{]

Pierce’s finger traced the wing of the pokemon on his lap as he hummed to himself. His brow was furrowed, as he focused on what he could see under the lantern’s light and what he could feel with his hands. Nodding to himself, he relaxed as he picked up the zubat he’d been checking up.

“You are fine, little buddy. Thanks for the patience,” he said with a slight grin before picking up the berry he’d set to his side and feeding the bat pokemon. “I hope it wasn’t too bothersome,” he added absently. Sure enough, there was nothing to worry about, if the pleased sound the zubat answered with was any indication.

After having gone through the progress with several pokemon, Pierce was developing something of a theory. He was almost sure that the creatures took to his check ups like someone would with a massage. He wasn’t sure why that was, considering he hadn’t read anything regarding the process being pleasant for the patients in his study material, but he’d take that win. Maybe it was because he was always extra careful and mindful of keeping a soft touch? Then again, it wasn’t like the books suggested harsh procedures or anything, so that couldn’t be it, right?

It wasn’t like he could get an answer to those questions, at least not for the moment. He’d already made a mental and physical note to ask a nurse or a ranger or something the next time he came across one. For the moment, he’d be content with the knowledge that he wasn’t bothering the pokemon with his practice exercises. It’d have been a little more worrying then, since one never knew when one of the creatures would react badly.

“I think they are having fun, huh?” he asked then, as the zubat climbed on his arm towards his shoulder. Next to him sat Cygnus, in a rare occasion of being outside his pokeball. Understandable, since they were at the moment in one of the bigger “rooms” inside the mountain. A well lit one, for a change, which was the actual reason the psychic was out.

Both, the zubat and Cygnus, replied in the affirmative.

As to what he was talking about? That would be Lily and the rest of the zubat… flock? ‘Wait, no, colony, it’s a colony, right?’ he thought with a frown. He was fairly sure he’d read something regarding that while studying them. Then again, his books focused a lot more on their anatomy than they did much of anything else.

Back on topic, the girl was, at the moment, dancing in the middle of the cave-room while the group of zubats flew around her, as if following her motions. It was quite the beautiful sight, to be sure, made all the better by how happy the girl and the pokemon looked. Pierce could only watch with a smile on his face as they continued on. He almost wished they had some way to provide actual music, it’d have made it much better too, he imagined.

‘Didn’t Cerulean have that water dance show thingy with Misty’s sisters?’ Pierce wondered to himself then, blinking. ‘Was that an anime only thing? Will that be a thing here?’ his mind continued asking. After all, he was fairly sure there were elements of both games and anime as far as he’d seen. He wasn’t very familiar with the manga and other pokemon media, but… Well, he just wasn’t sure what to expect about the world he was in anymore. ‘I wonder if that show would be anything like this though,’ he finished then, leaning back.

The stone wall was hard and cold, much like the rest of the place, but he didn’t mind that much. The sight before him was pleasant enough to forget that. On top of that, he had the company of his pokemon, with Cygnus by his side, Narcissa flying around and occasionally stopping by and Orion munching a rock somewhere to his right. Furthermore, there were a handful of zubat, including the one he’d been checking up before, that didn’t partake in the improvised dance and instead decided to perch on top of him to watch the show with him.

For a definition of watching, that is, since they didn’t have eyes.

A squeak from one of the zubat got his attention – and everyone else’s a second later –, making him turn to the side. Almost immediately, Cygnus sent a picture of a sandshrew behind some rocks. Sure enough, peeking out of one of the tunnels, there was one of the ground types.

“Hey there, little guy,” he called softly, making the pokemon jump a little. He mentally thanked Cygnus for helping him figure out it was a male. Even having studied pokemon biology and such, it was sometimes difficult to tell genders apart. “How about we make a little deal? You want some food?” he asked then, giving the sandshrew a friendly smile.

Sure enough, the ground type perked up and Pierce’s grin widened.

[}-o-{]

He loved pokemon, he had found soon enough after waking up in Viridian Forest. They were wondrous creatures, fantasy beasts come straight out of a book, in a manner of speaking. Furthermore, they were like animals, which Pierce had already been a fan of, but they were also intelligent, which meant there was less risk of him messing up by being misunderstood. After all, at least with Pokemon, he had a chance to explain himself and such.

And yet, Pierce also knew by then that the pokemon world wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. He’d seen enough news of tragedies around the world. He’d read enough disturbing stuff during his research sessions and his studies. He’d even seen some of those things for himself, like the mess that had been Zone 5 after the Rocket attack on Mt. Moon.

That didn’t mean he was prepared for some other things he would likely come across in his travels. He was faced with one such thing in the tunnels of Mt. Moon, as it turned out. It wasn’t a pokemon eating another though. It wasn’t some messed up human being that took for granted the wonders of the world they lived in. It was… Somehow worse.

“You liked that one, huh?” he asked weakly after having handed out a berry to one of the pokemon skittering around in front of him. “I thought you might. I remember reading that your line likes bitter berries,” he commented, his tone almost flat as he uneasily regarded the creatures. Something that he wasn’t used to. Sure, he could be scared of some of the pokemon he came across, but most of the time it was more wariness than… What he was feeling at the moment.

After all, Lily and him had come across a small gathering of paras.

Paras, one of the few pokemon that Pierce wasn’t sure he could come to actually like. They were adorable, for sure. Those big beady eyes were like puppy dog eyes as far as he was concerned. They were friendly too, crawling over him as he offered them food and chittering animatedly.

However, he couldn’t quite push away the nauseating knowledge he had on the species. He couldn’t quite forget, when all he had to do to remember was look at them or, more precisely, at the mushrooms growing on their backs. Mushrooms that he knew were eating away at the crab-like creatures, and would one day basically kill them and turn them into zombies when they evolved into parasect.

Nature could be, as he well knew even if he tried to forget, just as disturbing as it could be beautiful.

So, there Pierce sat on the ground, interacting, talking and playing with the paras. Creatures that he knew were doomed and that he couldn’t help, no matter how much he wanted to. He’d looked into it too, quite extensively, but there was literally nothing to do. The species was just like that, and trying to take away the mushroom would just kill them faster… There was no easy answer to the paras dilemma, sadly.

What was he supposed to do?

In the end he just… settled for giving the little ones some happy memories. It was very little, almost nothing, but it was what he could do. There was nothing more he could offer the bug types, sadly, no matter how much he wished there was something else.

“Pierce?” he heard Lily call him and it snapped him out of his thoughts. Enough for him to realize that a tear was falling from his eye, which he immediately wiped away. “You okay?” she asked him, looking concerned. She hadn’t been looking much better than he did before, for obvious reasons, but she certainly hadn’t been hit by the situation as much as he had.

He envied her that.

“I’m fine,” he replied with a bitter smile.

[}-o-{]

“Huh, you are right.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Lils,” Pierce replied with a flat tone. “Really, I’m moved. Especially coming from the girl that wanted to lead us in circles.”

“Oh, shut up,” she huffed then, pouting as her cheeks turned pink. “It would have been fine.”

“I’m telling you, Pierce, five left turns in a row isn’t that bad,” he said, mimicking the girl’s own words from before, making her blush grow even darker. “I know what I’m doing, Pierce, years of experience in treasure hunting.”

“I-I said shut up,” she protested, which was somewhat ruined by the stutter and her beet red face. “You really don’t let go of things.”

“You could say that. So, we have the food thing-” he said, sticking up a finger as Lily protested the now old accusation. “-and now a shitty sense of direction,” he added then, a second digit joining the first. “Why do I stick with you again?”

“You are mean, you know that?” she asked him, glaring and pouting.

“Oh right, the nice eye candy. How could I forget?”

“Pierce!” she cried out, her face pushing the boundaries of the color red now. Unable to keep a straight face anymore, he started laughing. Somehow, the very angry and embarrassed expression on his traveling companion didn’t really help matters. Neither did the fact that both Root and Gem seemed to be laughing too. “Guys, why are you laughing too?! You are supposed to be on my side, not his!”

“Just accept it, Lily, you might be a little…” Pierce started, only to trail off as they walked through one of Mt. Moon’s many tunnels. His walking slowed down too as his eyes fixed themselves on the wall.

“Pierce? What’s the matter?” Lily asked him, coming to stand next to him and not quite getting why his behavior had shifted so suddenly.

“It’s just… the change is very obvious, isn’t it?” he asked softly as he stepped towards the wall and placed his hand on it. “The tunnels… they are pretty smooth up to here but…” he mumbled, his fingers trailing the jagged edges of the stone surface. “It’s suddenly not… You think this is the Rockets’ doing?” he asked, looking around. Sure enough, it wasn’t only the part that he’d found. Most of the path forward looked much the same.

“I… Imagine it might be,” Lily agreed, following his example. “The rangers might have tried to rebuild the place some,” she added, finding a place where the surface was too smooth instead of looking like it’d had been blown up. “It’s… Now that you mention it… It’s quite jarring, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he replied with a slow nod. “Doesn’t have the same natural look, it’s… quite a shame, honestly,” he commented, looking at the walls.

“Yeah, it’s… Not bad, but a little disappointing, I guess,” Lily said then, letting out a sigh as if to emphasize her point. “As if the whole mess wasn’t bad enough,” she added, some annoyance bleeding into her voice. “There’s also lasting effects in stuff like this… The Rockets suck.”

“You can say that again,” Pierce commented with a sigh of his own. That is, before an idea occurred to him, making him perk up and his eyes widen. His lips pulled up into a smile as he looked at the tunnel in a new light. “But it doesn’t have to stay like this…” he mumbled, his hand moving to his belt and pulling out a pokeball.

“Pierce?” Lily asked, confused. He ignored her though, in favor of letting out Orion from the device in his hand. The onix gave a little roar-grumble greeting as he appeared, receiving a rub on the side of his face courtesy of Pierce.

“Hey, big guy. I need your help with something,” the man said, smiling softly at his team member. “You see this tunnel? It’s… kind of in a very sad state, I’m sure you’ll agree,” he pointed out, placing his hand on the stone wall once more and receiving an agreeing grumble from the onix. “I was wondering if you could help make it look better, Orion,” he asked.

After a moment of silence, the rock type gave an almost excited rumble as he looked around. Not a second later, the onix started rubbing his body against the walls and occasionally biting pieces off of them. Pierce wasn’t sure if that was for the sake of their new mission or because the big guy wanted a snack, but he wouldn’t begrudge the young one if it was the latter.

“I guess we can help with that, can’t we, Gem?” Lily asked her geodude, who readily agreed and started following the onix’s example. She was much smaller than Orion, of course, and that meant she had a harder time doing the redecorating of Mt. Moon’s walls, but there was no rush. The traveling group kept to that with a very sedate pace while the rock types did their work. Neither of the two pokemon seemed to mind overly much having to do that.

Pierce wondered if that was a rock type thing, to be pleased while working with stone. Or maybe it was more that they were just as disturbed by the state of the tunnels as he was? If it was one of those or another reason entirely, he couldn’t rightfully know without checking with Cygnus, but Pierce would take the win regardless. The fact was that they were helping the caves look much more natural and, in his opinion, better. Everything else didn’t really matter all that much.

“This is surprisingly nice, even if it’ll slow us down a lot,” Lily said, walking behind Orion and Gem with her hand trailing behind her against the wall.

“You do know that you are doing basically nothing and those two are doing all the work, right?” Pierce asked, receiving amused snorts from both rock types and Root.

“You just love to mess with me, don’t you?” Lily growled under her breath.

“Of course, that’s why I keep you around, after all,” he answered, as if that were obvious. “Don’t worry though, the eye candy thing was true enough,” he added then, getting a half-choked wail from the girl. “Man, I think I need to keep up with this. You have the best of reactions, Lily. Doesn’t she, guys?” he asked then, receiving agreeing sounds from all the pokemon around.

“You suck, Pierce,” the girl hissed through gritted teeth.

“Thanks,” he replied cheerfully, which seemed to piss her off even more. Go figure. “I get the feeling you might be a tad angry, Lily. Weird, right?”

“Really fucking weird, yeah,” she hissed, eyes narrowed. If looks could kill, Pierce was fairly sure he’d have died a very gruesome death then and there. As it was, he was left alive to continue enjoying the annoyance of his traveling companion. “I’m suddenly wondering how good an idea was to keep you around, mister.”

“Please, you love me,” he waved her off then with a chuckle. “Furthermore, you love our little run-ins with pokemon. I’m pretty sure you could get those on your own, but I don’t think you agree with that.”

“I certainly don’t keep you around for the eye candy. I can tell you that, Pierce.”

“Ouch. That hurts, Lily, right here,” he said, dramatically placing a hand over his chest and grimacing as if she’d physically stabbed him. “And I thought we were friends.”

“We are not, because, as I said, you suck,” she told him, glare still in place.

“Eh, I guess that makes sense,” he replied, “recovering” in an instant. “I might have gotten carried away, I’ll admit. In my defense, you really do have the best of reactions.”

“You still suck,” she grumbled, giving him a light punch on his arm.

“Come on, I’ll cook tonight,” he offered, making the girl perk up. While she didn’t hate cooking per se and it was certainly better than the plain rations they’d had before Pewter, the girl didn’t take any joy in the craft either. She’d much rather do without that, really. Fortunately for her, Pierce was about as good as she was, which wasn’t saying much, but it still beat the bland rations… Rations that the man didn’t mind that much so long as there was some variety to it.

Which was why him offering was rather nice, Pierce was sure. ‘Guess I have what to bribe her with if it comes to it,’ he mused. Who knew, maybe he could learn to cook better, add some cooking for pokemon too. Pokeblocks were good and all, but he’d much rather prepare something that… Well, looked better.

“That’ll do,” Lily agreed immediately, bouncing back to being a happy camper as if the whole previous interaction had never happened. “What do you feel like cook… ing?” she asked then, her words coming out slower and slower as she went through them.

Blinking, Pierce followed her now wide-eyed stare down the stone tunnel.

Sure enough, there was a rather eye-catching pink creature down the corridor.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Business as usual with the traveling. Encounters here and there, spending time with the adorable and not-so-adorable pokemon. Pierce doing Pierce things and Lily doing Lily things. Nothing out of the norm here.

On an unrelated note, people have complained about the pokemon nicknames and such, saying that they can’t remember who’s who and all that. With that in mind, I’m gonna ask in a general sense, do you want me to leave a list with the names at the beginning of the chapters or is it fine as is? I’ll wait for a while and see what people say, but if many people agree with this, I’ll just start doing that.

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Is the pacing fine or should I go slower? :D

See you.