The water sparkled as we got nearer. It was so clear, our growing reflections felt to be another four school children walking alongside us. Its still surface was like a mirror, occasionally rippling with the touch of a rogue Pokémon's footsteps. The pathway flattened out into the pool, and Arven took the first step into the cool water. It barely reached an inch over the sole of his brown boot. The cave echoed with every splash of our shoes, the sound of water trickling in my ears. We headed towards the lab that was being swallowed with massive, white crystals. From above, it looked small and insignificant, but approaching it from its level, it towered over us all. We stood at its entrance—or what looked to be its entrance. There was a huge, long ramp that led up to a hexagonal gate, multiple diagonal seams at the door that I assumed meant the door opened circularly. On the ramp was some sort of emblem with strange symbols for letters. I had never seen it before in Paldea.
I looked up. It was dizzying how far down we were. The clouds that had been above us were pitch black. It was like staring down a bottomless abyss... but from below. I gulped.
"We made it!" Nemona cheered and shook Penny by the shoulders. "Ready to see if those legends of treasure down here are for real?"
Penny grabbed her hands to prevent her friend from accidentally pushing her over in excitement. "Heh. Yeah, right. That's just fluff they write to fill the textbooks."
Arven's rotom phone started to ring strangely from his pocket again. "Is that... Professor Sada?" I asked him. Without a word, Arven reached into his jeans and took out the angry phone that zipped from his hands and floated in the air. The professor's face snapped into the screen. She was centered in frame, but we could see that in the background, she was inside a lab. It was a bit dark, but I could see her handwritten notes posted on the wall behind her.
"Hello, children. You've done well to make it here," she congratulated. "The structure you see before you is the Zero Lab." The crystalized laboratory flashed red with the siren above the door that swung around a light. It was quiet, but the flashing was vaguely threatening.
Nemona pushed her way through us to speak with the Professor directly, pupils wide and ecstatic. "That's where you are, right, Professor?" Sada nodded.
"But wait..." Penny stood beside her, leaning against her side to make eye contact with the Professor through the tiny phone. "Why does it look like the whole place is being swallowed up by crystals?"
"The crystals here in Area Zero possess a peculiar energy. This energy can alter the functions of living things and optimize the performance of machinery," Professor Sada explained. She looked to Nemona, the Elite Four opposer. "It is the same energy that allows Pokémon to terastallize." Nemona gasped. I had never gotten into Pokémon terastallization. It was a strange phenomenon that only occurred in Paldea that allowed for Pokémon to either become twice as powerful or completely change their typing without altering their biology at all. It was a confusing and scary system, but only those given the scarce Tera Orb were able to perform the act. Nemona, being the student president of the island's top battling academy, of course, had one.
"So, this entire building's been terastallized?" Arven spat in disbelief. "Is that what you're saying?"
"Don't be silly, Arven," Penny chided. "The professor implied something important about Tera Orbs just now." She turned to the Professor. "They're made from the crystals down here in Area Zero... aren't they?"
Professor Sada nodded. "Indeed. Though not many know it." The powerful orb was surely a rare object, but I had no idea that its material had to be farmed from so far down the crater. The professor had to be the only person to have supplied the crystals. That was probably why the only people I knew that had Tera Orbs were super important like gym leaders, the Elite Four, and Director Clavell. "Since you have disabled all four locks, the gate to the Zero Lab should now be open for you. But once you open the gate, you will quickly be confronted with the dangerous Pokémon inside. They will likely make a break for freedom."
Nemona and I shared eye contact. "Dangerous Pokémon?" We said in unison. Unsurprisingly, Nemona was beaming with excitement. She was battling the Elite Four after all. Her team was likely obnoxiously overpowered compared to what could possibly be lurking inside the sealed lab. We had nothing to worry about.
"With the four of you working together, you should be able to best them. Prepare yourselves well, then open the gate." The Professor signed off, and the phone screen turned black. Arven sighed and put his phone away.
Nemona smacked Arven pretty hard on the back in an attempt of support. "You've got me and Lugosi here! Doesn't matter what we're up against. We'll be fine!"
"Hah! Well then, that puts all my worries to rest." He winced and rubbed the spot she had hit him. Nemona bounded over to the control panel by the base of the gate and studied its surface. There were a bunch of green words flooding the screen above two large, white buttons. Nemona was ready to break open the gates. "Hold it!" Arven stopped her.
Nemona spun around, confused and slightly disappointed. "Huh? Why? We're finally on the cusp of getting into the lab!"
Arven scratched the back of his head. "Look—if it's true that a bunch of really dangerous Pokémon might come at us, then shouldn't we also have Koraidon help?"
"Yeah!" Nemona exploded back into exhilaration. "I wanna see it battle!" I felt the ball on my belt and stared at it somberly.
"Uhhh... But it hasn't even wanted to let us ride it ever since we came down to Area Zero," Penny pointed out.
Arven crossed his arms. "But it's really strong. I know it is. It ate all those Herba Mystica we found, too! When it really matters, I'm sure it'll fight!" He watched the locked gated inquisitively, glaring as if a Pokémon would burst through it at any moment. "And Area Zero is where it used to live.... If you bring it out of its ball now, maybe it'll be able to find its family, too. Right?"
Nemona huffed, reminded by her family reunion fantasy. "That's pretty sensible by your standards, Arven!"
Penny still wasn't convinced. "Hmmm... I dunno..."
"Go on, Lugosi!" Nemona coerced. "Let Koraidon out!" We were finally at the bottom of the crater where Koraidon had lived for who knew how long, away from the terrifying drop at top where Koraidon had surrendered. Maybe he was ready to fight. I unclipped his ball from my belt and pressed the button to call him out. Koraidon fazed into the physical world, awoken from a sleep. He tensed up and threw his head around, making strange noises as he scanned the area. He didn't seem too comfortable.
"All right!" Arven breathed, a lot more stable with our side of the battle. He signaled Nemona at the panel. "Come on, Nemona! Now that we've got Koraidon ready, it's time to open that gate!" Nemona leapt with glee and leaned onto one of the white buttons with all her weight. The siren went off, giving off a blood-curling, low-pitched alarm. Three huge pegs from each side of the hexagonal door pistoned outward. We all huddled together to watch the amazing scene. A metallic sound came from inside before the first green triangle of the gate tore away from its locked state, disappearing into the door. Then the next triangle started to slowly screech its way open. The gate was taking unexpectedly long to open, but no one knew how long the gate had been clamped shut.
A reptilian rumbling echoed around the bottom cavern. I looked to Koraidon to see what was the matter, but he was cowering close to the ground. I stood up straight, a pit boiling deep down in my stomach. Something else had made the noise.
There was a whiz of bright feathers before the ground beneath us shook as a monstrous Pokémon slammed into the water before us. We all were taken aback. The creature was another koraidon, a spitting image of mine. It was muscular and tall, hunched over us on two legs. Its feathers on its head and back were frayed in an intimidating fan. Its chest was puffed up to twice its size and the opposing koraidon's claws were flexing and prepared to strike. It did not look friendly whatsoever. It marched closer and closer to my Koraidon, and he trembled down into a squat. The wild Koraidon gave him a sniff, yellow eyes contracting in anger, and gave him a deep, nasty roar.
"Woah... No way!" Nemona breathed. The wild koraidon's whiskers rattled like the tail of an aggressive silicobra.
"No," Penny observed. "Something's not right." We all flinched as the wild koraidon raised an outstretched claw in the air, sharp nails glimmering, muscles flexing, about to maul our teammate, but there was nothing we could do at that moment. A frail human was no match for such a massive creature. Throwing ourselves in front of the confrontation would be suicide. Koraidon accepted his punishment, bracing for impact, but the wild koraidon became distracted by something else. The final triangle of the gate creaked as it began to disappear. The wild koraidon's pupils dilated back as he lost interest in attacking my Koraidon and let its arm fall to its side. The door had been opened, and a red glow came from inside. The wild koraidon gave a familiar purr and eagerly padded over to the ramp, completely forgetting about my Koraidon and us, and started up the steep ramp. At the top, it gave us one final, judging glare before disappearing into the lab. Koraidon stood back up, sadly cooing.
Nemona stroked his scaly nose. "Huh? What's wrong? Are you bummed that your heartwarming family reunion got cut off so quickly?"
"Are you joking?" Penny spat. "There was nothing heartwarming about it! We were this close to getting caught up in a nasty brawl!" I had never seen Penny so peaved. I glanced over at Arven who was also shocked at the outburst.
Nemona covered her mouth in shock. "Wait, for real?"
Penny gaped in fuming speechlessness before groaning, frustrated. "How do I have—" She sighed, exasperated. "Just look at Koraidon. Poor thing's terrified. That other one isn't exactly its pal." Koraidon was still shaking. He looked melted. His face was drooping in sadness. Nemona continued to comfort him in face pets.
Arven joined her. "Yeah, that other Pokémon was giving off some real bad vibes.... Uh... not that you should worry a thing 'bout any of that! Once we really get going and you get your confidence back—maybe once you meet my mom—I'm sure you'll be going toe-to-toe against that jerk! If... you know, if you want to. S-sorry.... Guess that doesn't really help, huh...." His hand grazed the soft feathers of Koraidon's head to his back.
Penny was standing off to the side. "Do you think that other Koraidon was one of the 'dangerous pokémon' the professor warned us to watch out for?"
Nemona squinted. "But didn't the professor say the dangerous Pokémon would come out from inside?" She pointed at the open, yet empty, gate, noises coming from inside.
Arven followed her eyeline. "You mean from inside the gate we just—?" The ground began to rumble again, metallic footsteps boomed from inside the door, getting louder before a burst of Pokémon ran out, clashing against the metal ramp, a thunderous noise deafening us. There were too many Pokémon to count. There were misdreavus and amoonguss and donphan all racing down the ramp to freedom. Many of them zoomed past us, the wind from their bodies almost knocking us to the ground, but a good few spotted us and immediately fell into a defensive stance. "What the—!"
"We're surrounded!" Nemona noticed.
"And it's pretty obvious they're not here to roll out a friendly welcome mat," Arven added.
Penny seemed nervous. "There's no way we can handle this many! And don't tell me... they're all ancient Pokémon?"
"We've got a little disaster on our hands here." Koraidon was shrunk into his skin, eyes darting about. Arven touched his shoulder. "Look, even this fellow's ready to bail."
Nemona jumped into a battle stance, a Pokéball miraculously already tangled in her fingers. "Then I guess it's my turn! I've been waitin'!" She shouted, enthusiastically. "C'mon, mis amigos! Let's do this together!" She sent out Skeledirge whose fire-typing was strong against the amoonguss coming at her, though, after the donphan titan incident, we could never be too sure about the typing of the ancient pokémon.
Arven joined her with his cloyster and Penny with her umbreon. Everyone seemed to have all the typings covered, so I decided to have some variety by throwing out Pawmo, in case there were any surprises. Nemona spun around in a majestic sort of dance before crying out: "Skeledirge, Flamethrower!" The reptile blasted out an angry fire at an ancient amoonguss, doing double damage with its grass-typing. Nemona laughed diabolically.
"Gee!" Penny jumped. "Relax, Nemona!"
Nemona adjusted her stance. "No puedo, Penny. I've held back for too long!"
"Cloyster," Arven commanded. "Lay out Toxic Spikes before Nemona, here, turns the crater into a volcano." The cloyster shook its body before throwing out an abundance of poisonous nettles in a circle around us. All the opposing monsters were affected and backed away from the dangerous playing field, but they kept their aggression.
It was Penny's turn. She was targeting a misdreavus. "Umbreon, Dark Pulse." The umbreon shut its eyes and its yellow ring on its forehead glowed, sending out an aura of dark power at the misdreavus. It didn't seem to take as much damage as a ghost-type should to dark-type moves. "Hey, what's going on?"
"It happened when Arven and I were battling the donphan titan, too," I told her. "It seems like the ancient Pokémon don't have the same typing as their modern-day variants."
"Oh!" Penny swallowed.
I sent out Pawmo to attack a different amoonguss than that Nemona was set on with an fighting-type move, and it looked to do twice the damage. "Supereffective?" Nemona questioned. "I thought amoonguss was a dual grass-poison type."
I shrugged. "Definitely still a grass-type, but I'm guessing the ancient form's other type is something weak to fighting-types."
Nemona hummed audibly in thought. "Let me try Shadow Ball, Skeledirge!" Skeledirge conjured and hurled a black ball of ghost energy at the amoonguss who was half hurt but retreated from its low health anyway. "Resists ghost-type moves," Nemona observed. "So ancient amoonguss are dual grass-dark type Pokémon!"
"Genius thinking, Nemona," Arven praised, though it oddly sounded sarcastic. Nemona stuck out her tongue at him. Arven tried another Toxic Spikes to buy us more time and space. Another one of the amoonguss retreated, being especially weak to poison-type moves. There were only two of them left with the crowd mainly made up of donphan and misdreavus. Penny changed her target to an amoonguss with her dark-type moves. The opposing Pokémon were enraged, and ran around in the circle, pinning our team. "Uh oh," Arven frowned. "I think they're attacking now."
"Could we survive all of them?" Penny asked. The two amoonguss both shot out at Arven's cloyster, who was strong against them, with grass-type moves which it was weak against. It fainted, and Arven replaced his teammate with Toedscruel. The misdreavus targetted Nemona's skeledirge who was taken down after only two hits. The other two misdreavus struck out at Penny's umbreon who then fainted after their two attacks. "Yikes!" Penny quickly switched out her umbreon for her vaporeon. The remaining donphan had yet to strike. Two of them fainted my Pawmo while the other two went after Arven's newly-switched-out toedscruel who luckily defended itself through the double team.
"Wow, they're strong!" Nemona appreciated. "Now this is a worthwhile challenge!"
Penny squinted at her. "I'm glad you're on our side, but you're still really annoying when you say stuff like that."
Nemona returned a smirk. "I'm glad I got to meet you, too, Penny... and I'm glad you know how to put up with me."
Penny was surprisingly affected by this and tried hiding a blush that was rushing onto her face. To her avail, the ancient donphan started getting closer to her personally. "Gyah! Why're they coming at me? Help me out here!"
I threw out Camerupt and ordered a Bulldoze which hit all the attacking Pokémon at once. One of the amoonguss retreated at that. "Haha!" Nemona laughed. "That's it! Let's hit 'em with moves like that!"
"Moves that hit multiple targets?" Arven clarified.
"Like... Vaporeon, Muddy Water!" Penny commanded. Vaporeon flooded the ground beneath us with muddy water, taking out the final amoonguss. The remaining Pokémon were anxious. Half of them began to run off before they would faint, one of the donphan tackling Arven's toedscruel out of spite before retreating with the others.
The toedscruel fainted, and Arven frowned. "I just switched him in!"
"Guh! The ancient past must've been terrifying," Penny stated, watching the group of pokémon run off into the distance, towards the path upward to the crater mouth.
"Oh no! They're running away!" Nemona shouted.
Penny blinked at her. "Yeah, and?"
"If those Pokémon get out, we're gonna have a gigantic mess on our hands!" She explained. "We gotta go after 'em, Penny!"
Penny froze, "Why me?"
Nemona winked at her before giving chase. "Waaaiiit! Hah... Hah..." Her playful laughter echoed around the cave walls.
Penny tried to reach out to her before she ran off but was embarrassingly slow. "Gah! Hold on, Nemona—and why do I get the feeling you're enjoying all this?" Penny caught up to her friend and the two ran off to finish off the fleeing pokémon.
Arven watched them disappear. "I hope the two of them can handle their part, but at least the crowd's been thinned out now." There was only four of the pokémon left: two donphan and two misdreavus. "Guess it's up to us to deal with what's left!" Before Arven could choose which pokémon to throw out, Mabosstiff forced himself out of his ball, snarling and wagging his tail in his yearn for battle. "Bud! You want to fight?" Arven's partner seemed to smile at him, the muscles in his legs significantly larger and healthier. "That's amazing! You see this, Lugosi?" I smiled at him. The pokémon didn't care about the sentiment and decided to instead attack first. The majority ganged up on my camerupt who had washed them out with a multi-target move and caused her to faint, overpowering her for no reason other than to make a point. Only one of the opposing team went after Mabosstiff.
Mabosstiff growled in anger and landed a Payback on the donphan that attacked him, fatally wounding it and forcing the wild pokémon to retreat. I sent out Quaquaval to go after one of the misdreavus, fainting it. The remaining pokémon were very weak from the previous battle. The final two ancient pokémon attempted to attack us, only for our team to hold up and force them into submission.
Arven hugged me tightly after the clearing emptied out. "See! The power of friendship had us perfectly in sync! All thanks to our Titan hunting together!"
I rolled my eyes. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
Arven swayed us side to side, Mabosstiff licking his hand behind my back. "I didn't mean it like that..." he chuckled.
"Well, isn't this romantic?" I teased. To the side of him, I saw more ancient pokémon sneaking up on us. Arven turned to look at where I was staring. "Here." Arven quickly swung his bag from his back and took out the Scarlet book from one of the pockets. "They're gonna keep coming, so lemme take on some of the burden. These stragglers should be nothing! Me and Mabosstiff here can take them!" He handed me the book and strapped his backpack back on. Koraidon, beside me, let out a shrill groan. Arven put a palm to Koraidon's forehead. "Still scared, huh? You worried you might have to face that other one of your kind?" Arven's smile faded into indifference. "I'll hold them off and keep them away from the lab. I couldn't have gotten this far without you, so, Lugosi, you take your partner there and go take care of business!"
I felt myself wanting to frown. Arven's mom was inside the lab, and he was sacrificing this moment to keep Koraidon and I safe, but I forced a confident look. "Got it."
Arven turned his back on me to face the creeping, wild pokémon. "Hehehe, glad to see you've got some faith in us at last! Mabosstiff can't wait to battle, either!" His partner was almost wagging himself into falling over. He had come so far from the paralyzed pokémon I had met him as. He truly was extraordinarily stronger than I ever thought he could be. "Koraidon," Arven said coldly. Koraidon perked up, confused on whether to be pleased or frightened. "You really ruined my whole childhood, you know, but it's not like seeing you cowering and scared outta your wits makes me feel any better about it." He turned back around to look the reptile in the eye. "You've got amazing powers, if you just use 'em! And you've got us, too!" He pointed to me, himself, and somewhere behind him where Nemona and Penny had wandered off to. "So... so... so don't even think about losing to that jerk! Be brave—stand up and fight!" Koraidon took a thoughtful breath and puffed up his chest.
I patted my partner's tough shoulders and gave my boyfriend one last, sweet grin before starting towards the ramp. "See you later, Arven," I sighed.
"Say 'hi' to my mom for me, hm?"
I paused, my hurt face not visible to him. I shut my eyes to push away the emotion. "I'll let her know you've missed her."