Pokemon - Solo's Strange Journey

... The ship is grounded... 

By that, I mean the ship is literally stuck inside the wall.

Ha. Funny.

The light that illuminates my surroundings and allows me to make that observation, are Quilava's flames on her back. She's working hard to give us light to look around.

Which prompts me to pull my own high-power flashlight from my backpack to ease her burdens.

The ship clips into the wall and looks like a glitch in a video game. The railing broke off and its jagged pieces of metal are scattered on the ground.

As for the wall... It's a cave-wall. Made of stone, same as the ground and the ceiling and there are a few specks of light coming from a sparse scattering of luminescent crystals.

"Are either of you hurt?" I ask with none of the panic I felt previously remaining in my voice.

If Buneary was knocked out from the fall, then chances are high that there must be a couple of broken bones in us fragile humans.

"My arm is bruised. Maybe a fracture, but not broken." Akari replies, examining her injury and then heading over to Dawn.

"My leg hurts a lot. Can you check if it's broken?" Dawn winces on the ground. Her pain is apparent, tears are sparkling on her face but she is determined to look away from her own leg and to pretend that nothing is wrong.

A cursory glance at the angle in which the leg is bent makes it clear that it's very broken. Akari takes care of it, so I take another look around.

This really doesn't make any sense.

The smell of the sea is gone and replaced with a slight earthy and damp smell.

This seems like some kind of natural cave-tunnel. Maybe a lava-tunnel or perhaps water washed out a tunnel of limestone?

Either way, the tunnel is not tall enough to fit a massive fucking ship completely. 

Only the very tip of the ship reaches into the cave and the bow is... a good 5 meters up in the air.

Which means we fell 5 meters.

I read a fun-fact once; Each meter of fall height happens to correspond to a decrease in survival chances of 3.5%... That means the chance for all 3 of us to survive was just..... 56%. Not even taking 'pierced by metal' into account.

... Wait. Never fucking mind. The news said fall damage is not deadly anymore.

Honestly, this all seems like a bad dream.

I check my phone for any working services when Buneary starts stirring awake and I hug her tightly. "Hey, you. You're finally awake?"

Ha. Ha. This never stops being funny... 

... Good grief...

She immediately scans our surroundings, ears and face rapidly facing every way possible to make some sense of where we are.

"Don't bother." I tell her. "This is just a fucked up dream. None of my observations make sense either." I tell her and she looks up at me in a concerned way.

"No service." I mutter to myself.

No phone, no internet and no GPS.

It's obvious, really. We were outside the internet range before and now we are in a literal cave. It would take a miracle for a single bit of data to reach my phone.

"Buneary, can you tell which direction the exit should be?"

She strains her ears as she listens intently to both directions of the tunnel...

~"No..."

"Alright. Let's investigate a little."

I double check on Dawn and Akari and see them still busy treating Dawn's leg. Quilava and Piplup are standing guard.

As I investigate, I check out one of these glowing crystals out a little closer. But I stay well away from it. 

Glowing stuff is either magical or radioactive. I'm not touching that.

They are faintly glowing light blue. They remind me of nothing. Just soccer-ball sized crystals that can probably illuminate the cave a little if my eyes get used to the dark.

I find a puddle of water, about a hand deep and new water is dripping in from the ceiling.

After each drop, a little bit of overflow spills over and gives me a hint that tells me which way goes deeper into the cave.

The other way, by logic, should go up.

It's not bulletproof, but it's the best heuristic we have to get out.

Let's return to the others.

Akari has already realigned Dawn's leg and used a Sitrus Berry to heal the worst of the injury. Strenuous activity risks re-injury.

"I might know the way up. And we have access to water here." I say as I plant myself on the ground next to them.

"Sometimes I wish I was a pokemon." Akari says as she begins treating her own fractured arm. "It fucking sucks to be so frail."

"Ohhhh, you said the F-word!" Dawn jokes.

"F-word? You both say it all the time!"

"Hahaha, we say a lot of curse-words all the time. It's the modern normal."

"Well... I believe that is fucking stupid."

...

Like this we joked around some more, just letting the situation fly past us.

None of us plan to discuss what just happened. 

And I'm doing my best not to look up again by accident. I don't want to see the little arm sticking out of the wall. Or think about the current state of all the people who were on the ship...

But eventually, we can't continue ignoring everything. 

We pool our resources together, to calculate how long we can afford to do nothing. And then we vote whether we head to the exit, or stay for the night.

Staying might be dangerous because the noise of our... landing, could have attracted pokemon.

Leaving might be dangerous because we leave into the unknown.

Dawn is exhausted and her leg is still injured but she votes to leave. She probably doesn't want to slow us down.

Akari and I outvote her. Making sure her leg has more time to heal should be the highest priority.

And we have food for a month as well as a little bit of water in addition to our filled filters.

Tonight... for now?-- We decide to stay here and camp.

---

"It is decided then? We will camp here?" Akari asks as she pulls out her sleeping bag, prompting us to do the same.

We will need to pull out as little equipment at once as possible, just in case we have to run away suddenly.

As for food, today it's pressed pellets, raw veggies and pickled eggs.

We can't risk lighting a fire in a cave. Explosive gases might not be an issue, according to the news, but using up all the oxygen could be.

Eventually, we are all fed and ready for bed.

... But then Akari pulls out another pokeball... Some kind of mix between the modern, regular pokeball and Quilava's pokeball-- Oh! I remember! 

It's the pokeball from her box of letters from the past!

I totally forgot about that!

"What's inside?" I ask, curiosity beating out the resurfacing memories associated with the ball.

Akari doesn't respond. 

She is transfixed on the pokeball for a while before looking around at us, seemingly remembering we are here too.

"I... I think I can be honest with you now." She starts.

"Dawn-- Swole already knows this, but I am a time traveler from the past."

Dawn continues eating some carrot sticks. "Bullshit."

"She tells the truth. Remember when she and I went to the restaurant in Floaro Street? Akari got a note from the restaurant owner and it told us to get a package from her friends and family from the past. That's where we found the pokeball."

Dawn stops eating the current carrot stick and holds it passively between her teeth.

She slowly reaches up and pulls it away. "You're not joking? ... You-- You're one of these people the news talked about, aren't you?"

Akari nods along to every question.

"Why haven't you told us-- No, Swole knows... So why haven't you told anyone else? Aren't we your friends too?" Dawn says with pain audible in her voice.

"I could not tell you... I should not have told anyone, I was not really thinking things through when I was out with Swole."

She pauses a moment to collect herself.

"You see... I knew of a few events from this time. And, if they didn't happen, a so-called 'time paradox' would occur. And... and the most important event was for Lucas to travel alone, back to Sandgem Town... I'm so sorry everyone." A fresh set of tears starts streaming down her face.

Wait what? What the hell does Lucas have to do with any of this?

"Wait what? What the hell does Lucas have to do with any of this?" Dawn voices my inner thoughts.

"When I had just turned 13... Lucas arrived out of nowhere on a beach near Jubilife Village-- That was a little over 300 years ago. When he was allowed into our village, he recognized me immediately... He told me everything he knew about the me from this time. How to be accepted to trainer school, what my excuses are for missing information, in practice, everything he was around for, I knew too."

Lucas had Akari's and my fight downloaded on his phone to analyze Quilava's evolution... "So our fight was rigged from the start?"

"Ha." Akari wipes a tear away. "Always has been. You stood no chance. Still, I was surprised that your feint still worked. I expected it and looked especially hard to figure out how, but I never expected you to simply whisper the right orders."

"Wait, who cares about your stupid fight, where is Lucas now? Is he gone? We need to save him!"

Oh, shit. Right.

New tears form in Akari's eyes, matching Dawn's own budding ones. "Lucas... is already gone. The letters told me about him. He died almost 300 years ago. I'm sorry."

Seriously?

... Fuck.

Dawn doesn't respond and just turns over in her sleeping bag... Quiet sniffles can be heard.

"Did... did the letters tell more about him?"

I can't believe he is gone.

"Yes. He ended up happily marrying Mai from the Diamond clan. He helped form the League and pushed for the creation of the gym challenge."

His whole life... spent without us.

We will never hang out together at the lake again.

No more complaining about Barry's idiocy with him.

"My last words to him were, 'not if I smell you first'... Fuck." It didn't even make sense back then.

Even if I smelled him first, he could still be smelling me later.

"I told you to say goodbye properly. I'm sorry."

We were both too retarded to say goodbye like normal people.

"Was-- Sniff... Was there anything else in the letters?" Dawn still has her back turned to us and Akari hands her a few letters and another flashlight.

Then Akari releases the pokemon from the ancient pokeball.

Out pops a small, white, fox-like pokemon. She is asleep. She has red, wisp-like accents and her general build looks a lot like Zorua.

A regional variant? Like the cotton-candy Ponyta from Galar?

The letter said she's a ghost type, right? Well, she must be, if she survived 300 years inside a pokeball.

The sudden cold and the other stimuli of the outside world must have disturbed her sleep.

Zorua wakes up. 

She looks around the room and immediately rushes Akari with a cry that could only be the purest form of joy I have ever heard. "Zo!"

"Hello there. Who are you?" She asks but receives no response. All that Zorua does is continue nuzzling Akari while the wisp of hair on top of her head flails around wildly.

I pull out my pokedex. According to... Roseanne? Right, according to Roseanne, the pokedex can even identify completely new pokemon. 

Somehow.

I scan her, a little 3D render appears on the screen and the robotic voice of the pokedex rings out.

"Hisui Zorua, the cute pokemon: A once-departed soul, returned to life in Hisui. Derives power from cuteness, which rises as energy atop its head and takes on the forms of friends and foes alike. In this way, Zorua vents overflowing adorableness."

...

Seems right. She looks cute, cuddly and affectionate. 

I wonder where the pokedex pulls the completely new data from.

Zorua apparently heard the pokedex and after taking another look around, rushes to me, jumps on my lap, right next to Buneary and nuzzles my stomach too. "Zo!"

Wow! How cute!

I scratch her a little behind her ears until Buneary gets too jealous and shoos her away. But Zorua seems too happy to care and just runs back to Akari for more scratching.

"Awe, she's so cuuuute!" Dawn has turned around in her sleeping bag.

The letters are gone. Stashed for later, I assume. Her face is covered in dry tears but the cuteness is too much for her. 

...

"Hey, how are we going to handle sleeping? Who guards us?" I ask since my eyes are slowly starting to fall closed.

In the past few hours, far too much has happened.

It's so much to unpack and I'm just tired.

Maybe I will just wake up later and it was all just a shitty dream...

---

Buneary-POV:

I hate guarding the nest.

There. I said it. It's the worst possible task ever.

It's dark, everything could be sneaking up, I'm bored, tired and I can't do anything except sitting around; Doing nothing at all.

...

What was that!? 

Something just made a sound from deeper inside the cave.

Both my ears are stretched out and pointed that way.

... 

Was it just another drop of water? Or a loose pebble?

Probably some fucking pokemon, sneaking up on us.

Sigh, master's habit of constantly cursing is starting to wear off on me.

'Master'... I can't believe I keep thinking of him that way.

But... there really is no better way to call him. I'm his pokemon and he is my master.

Without him, I would be dead. I'm too weak and... and... grrrrr... AND too stupid to survive on my own.

The Starly had almost killed me, even though they were so much weaker than me. All because of their stupid distractions.

The Bibarel would have killed me, because I'm too weak and I was stupid enough not to listen to Swole.

I wouldn't have stood a chance against Ariados either if it wasn't for him.

Swole has saved me every time. Therefore, Swole is my master and I... I should be proud of that. 

He's the best.

But... I'm not good enough. I keep losing because I'm too weak. 

Quilava - the one who definitely deserves my scathing glare - won because she evolved and everything about her just got so much stronger!

Grrrrr. We would have been number 1!

At least I'm still stronger than Piplup and this new one. Zorua, I think she was called.

I don't like how affectionate she is with Swole. She has no right to set herself between me and master. 

Her trainer is Akari!

Sigh, maybe she's just too immature and I'm imagining things... I guess there is not a lot of mental development going to happen when you're 300 years stuck inside a pokeball.

As for Dawn, I like her. She knows her place and unlike that Zoey-human. She doesn't try to force herself ahead of me in our social hierarchy.

Hum. Dawn is acting in the way she should be; I come first, then master, then everyone else as they fit in. 

And once I evolve, I can finally enforce that rule again.

And Akari--

There! I fucking heard it again!

I strain my ears again and try to see in this damn darkness but nothing seems out of place.

Once my eyes got used to the low light level, I could barely see the contours of the cave with just the glowing rocks around us.

But the contours are not enough. Whoever is out there manages to hide in the shadows and doesn't move a muscle for me to hear.

An ambush predator.

That's it. I'm waking--

"Psssst, hey you." A hissing voice whispers from the shadows.

Female. And I managed to tell in which of the shadows she is hiding herself.

I get up from my throne, Swole's chest, and prepare myself for a fight.

"Get closer to one of the lights. I want to see who I am talking with." I order and she has the decency to comply.

A low shadow creeps along the ground and reaches the glowing rock, closest to her hiding spot.

She reveals herself to be some kind of lizard.

She is walking on all fours with her entire body close to the ground. She has dark gray and black scales and the darker shade on her head makes it look like she wears a mask.

Her eyes are purple and she has slit pupils.

"Iss he your male?" The lizard asks.

Who starts a conversation like that? "What?"

"The one you were guarding. He musst be the only male in the entire cave that doesn't belong to mom... I want him. Iss he part of your harem? Why are there sso many females with you? Are you a pervert?"

What is a harem? How did she rattle so much but only create more questions?

"Can I have him?"

"No! He is mine!" That was the first question I really understood.

And the answer is obvious.

"Sso he is part of your harem?"

"What's a harem?"

"Oh. Uhm... Mom explained it that a powerful pokemon collectss partners to protect herself with. Oh and they are potential matess too. The whole group is called a harem." The reptile nods along as if her statement made any sense at all.

What she described sounded a lot closer to a 'pokemon trainer'.

Swole told me that he wants to collect strong partners to protect him on his journey... 

Does this mean that he keeps me around as a potential mate?

I feel myself blushing but quickly shake the thoughts off. I can't get distracted with an enemy around.

"By your description, Swole, the human I sat on, would be the owner of the harem. He calls himself a pokemon trainer, collects strong pokemon and he also has his friends under him."

He always travels in the middle of the group and they defer to him for decisions... Dawn literally follows him around on his journey.

"Huh. That would fit. I can ssmell only 1 viable male but smell and see 5 femaless."

"Oh, and he also has Zoey and both of her pokemon are female too. But they are somewhere else."

"8... That'ss not a bad size for a harem... But a male leading it, hissss?" She mumbles to herself.

I think she had already stopped talking with me a few sentences ago.

The incoherent mumbles and hisses continue for a while until her eyes look at mine again, as if she could easily see them in this pitch black darkness.

"In other wordss. He is a single, high value male that many females think is valuable enough to sshare. He is even valuable enough to completely turn over the way harems are meant to be! ... That's sssso kinky."

Kinky?

"Hishishis. I want in. How can I join?"

... "Are you in heat?" ... No. She doesn't smell like it.

"Huh. That would explain why mom kicked me out of the nesst. She told me she would kill me if I took any of her maless away."

Great... Another Zoey.

Movement behind me alerts me to the fact that Swole woke up.

"Are you alright, Buneary?" He asks, probably not seeing the stealthy lizard ahead of us.

"Yes. But there is a lizard over there."

"You're alright? Good." He lays back down.

...

"Did he not hear what you ssaid? And I'm a Salandit! Don't call me a lizzzard." The lizard says, which prompts Swole to look into her direction and wake up completely.

"Oh! A Salandit! Buneary, why didn't you tell me about her?"

I shoot him a glare that should manage to tell him exactly what I'm thinking right now.

"Sigh. Humans can't really understand pokemon. Most of the time he only understands yes or no answers." I inform the uneducated lizard.

But Swole thinks I said it to him. "Sorry, I didn't get any of that. Is she friendly? Does she want to join our team?"

"Tell him 'yess'. Hishishis." Her eyes are half-lidded and look really perverse as she says this.

She technically is friendly.

"Yes... But I don't think we want her on the team."

"Yes? Alright. Nice! Do you think she is strong enough?"

"Of course I am! I'm the strongest of all my ssiblings and can beat up most of my dads!"

She does seem pretty strong. 

Almost as strong as me. 

If she wanted to ambush us, she could have caused some real damage.

"Yes, but really: If we put her on the team she might attack you at some point."

"I would never!" She says but the gleam in her eyes says something differently.

"Another yes... So, we put her in the team or what?"

"Yess!" - "No."

"What?"

Urgh! That's so annoying!

"Can I get a yes if you think she should be on the team and a no if you think she shouldn't?"

"Iss it annoying to deal with that all the time?"

"Oh yes." I answer Salandit. "It's so annoying."

"Alright! Let's capture her then." 

Wait. What!?

I whirl around.

"No! Don't!"

"Right." He nods in understanding. "We should fight her first. It's how pokemon are normally captured, after all."

... I give up.

Get raped if you want to.

I get back into battle position but it's already too late. 

"Oh shit, watch out!" Purple glowing fire converges on my position and sets me aflame in a roaring inferno.

The fire doesn't hurt but the burn mark it leaves behind does.

"Will-O-Wisp. Sneaky. Good combat awareness. Buneary get in close. Quick Attack into Double Hit."

The world zooms past me as I start running and smack into her. Some wisps of poison energy escaping her mouth. 

I punch her once - "Jump Kick, right after." - another punch and hop back for a bit to charge up my kick.

She charges some poison attack in the meantime. There is no order to dodge. Tanking it.

She finishes first and spits out a single, small glob of poison at me.

Humpf. Even without the order, dodging it is easy enough and the glob lands on the floor next to me--

Cough-- Fuck! What the hell is this shit? Cough cough. The glob turned into smoke on impact and I breathed some of it in.

"Poison Gas. Continue with Jump Kick and Double Kick."

My master's voice rings out and I calm myself and straighten back up.

With Jump Kick fully charged, I hop back in and land a drop kick, right into her smirking face.

Ha! Who is smirking now? Critical hit, baby!

And a one-two combo of kicks later and she's lying on the ground.

Her eyes are closed and her tongue lolls out.

.... That bitch! She's faking it!

"Buneary, stand down." Master orders after I tried to make my way over to her to give her a few more kicks for good measure.

"She's faking it! She's a degenerate! She just wants to get into the team to get to you."

This stops Swole in his tracks. 

He had already pulled out the extra pokeball from his belt and was about to throw it.

"You're right." Whew! That was close. I think I finally got through to him. 

"Thanks for reminding me." ... Reminding him? 

"I should use the Luxury Ball for her instead. Glad I have you around."

I fall on my ass. Coughing and with a burning sensation in my arm. 

Salandit is struggling not to laugh.

That smug bitch.

Swole passes me and drops 2 halves of berries into my paws.

"For the poison and the burn." He reminds me. 

I don't recognize either of the berries but one tastes very sweet, the other tastes really bitter. 

Yuk.

The next moment after eating them, purple and red smoke escapes from my body and the pain is gone.

Over at Salandit, Swole holds out a black pokeball with golden accents--

Mine looks cooler!

He moves the ball towards Salandit who is breathing heavily-- Gross.

Then the button of the ball touches her snoot. 

Salandit's face scrunches up and she turns into red light before being sucked into the ball.

"Cute." He says-- 

Hey! I'm cute! Not her!

The ball shakes once in Swole's hand and then makes a ding sound.

"Wow. A critical capture. She must have really wanted to join the team, huh?"

The sound of my paw meeting my face rings out through the cave first and then the congratulations of the other trainers who awoke during the commotion of the fight.

I get closer to my trainer, since he shouldn't be sitting so far away from the nest on his own.

He scans Salandit's pokeball with his pokedex and mumbles something nonsensical to himself before calling Salandit back out.

She doesn't even have the decency to continue her act and immediately attacks Swole's face. 

He pretends to defend himself as her tongue moves over his face and her snout nuzzles into his cheek and neck.

... Wait, those must be lizard kisses! And even worse, she's marking him with her scent!

Grrrrr.

I told her, he was mine!

"You bitch! Get off of him, or I'll knock you out for real!" I shout out before kicking her off my mate!-- 

I meant my master!

"Buneary. You can't treat our new teammate like that. You need to get along from now on and share a little, alright? And Salandit, I'm amazed at your recovery speed and at your moves. But we're going to have to work on your defenses."

"Yess, thank you." She says to Swole before turning to me. "You heard that? We're nesst-buddies now. You better treat me nice now. Hishishis."

The bitch has the audacity to simply climb back on Swole while he treats her wounds with a potion.

"... Grrrrr." I grumble out as I take my spot on his lap to wait for my turn at the treatment. 

"Go on the other shoulder. That one's mine!"

"Ssure." At least this time she listens and moves to the left shoulder instead.

"Buneary..." Swole starts and waits for me to look up at him. "Do you think she can be trusted overnight? I don't really want to wake up with a missing finger or something like that."

... "Sigh. Well, yea. But I'm not so sure about your pants... I'm going to stay up with her and make sure she doesn't cause any trouble."

"Hey! I won't do a thing!... Yet-- I swear! ... Maybe just a little lick or two, hishishis." The lizard cannot be trusted.

"Actually," Dawn interrupts our talk as Swole sprays my wounds with the stinging potion. "We might as well break up camp and start heading out of the cave. If the clock can still be trusted, it's morning already."

"Yess, it would be better to leave ssoon. Or else mom might come and steal Ssswole."

---

The humans quickly gathered up all the little bits and pieces of our nest and we began our track out of the tunnel.

I'm walking ahead with Salandit following right beside me; That way I can scout and keep an eye on her at the same time.

We've been walking in an awkward silence for a while now. The occasional chatter of the humans and their shoes stepping on the ground is the only background noise.

"Ssssso." Salandit eventually tries to break the ice. "How did you end up in Swole's harem?"

I ignore her for a while. On purpose. Just to make it more awkward for her.

"Hey--" - "A little over 2 months ago, after my parents were eaten."

"Ah, I understand. Happens to the besst of us. Pretty sure my real dad was eaten too. Posssibly by mom."

I shoot her a look. Her family is messed up.

"And then Swole swooped in and saved you from being eaten too? Only to savor you later all for himself?"

... "Gross. And no. My parents told me of this lake near our nest. It would be safe there and I could grow up in peace... Sadly, the pokemon right around that lake are vicious. I ended up outnumbered and then Swole swooped in to save me. No, not to savor me later."

"Are you ssure? Mom's harem has a triple function as emergency ssnacks. How do you know Swole won't eat you when there isn't any food around?"

"You see that bag he carries on his back?"

"Yesss?"

"There is over a month of food in there. And all sorts of stuff. -- Hey! Where do you think you're going?!"

She starts falling back and climbs up on Swole.

"I want to make ssure you are telling the truth. I don't want to wake up as emergency food. Besidess, the way out is ssafe. Only a few weaklingss enter the pervert-cave on their own."

... This is seriously called the pervert-cave?

"Wow! You're right! This iss food for months!" She says before making herself comfortable on his left shoulder.

Grrrrr... I guess I need to scout from Swole's other shoulder now.

"Why is this place called the pervert-cave?" I ask as I hop on his shoulder, even though I know the answer.

It's because Salandit's mom is a pervert.

"Becausse the pokemon outside know what happens to them when they enter. The only pokemon who do it are pervertss. Like you."

... Grrrrr... This damn lizard is so annoying!

"We didn't enter the cave. We just appeared in it... What are you eating?"

"Slurp. I found an egg."

I take a quick look at Akari to verify that she still has her egg.

"Just so you know, pokemon eggs are not on the menu. Humans put a lot of value on them."

"Slurp. You want ssome? ... No? How about you, Swole?" 

"What?" He says and she holds the half eaten, raw egg out for him to slurp it up.

Gross. No table manners at all.

"Do. You. Want. To. Eat. That?" She asks as if talking slowly would make a difference.

"Yes, you can eat it. I don't mind. But don't eat too much. Once we are out of the cave, we are going to make breakfast and I will try to make a diet plan for you."

"Thaaankss!" The wannabe bimbo gives our trainer her biggest smile before turning back to me with a scowl. "Well, I see now how thiss whole thing iss very annoying. I guesss he only understood that I asked a question and he hass to guess the rest from context?"

"Yep. Pretty much."

Then, finally, relative silence again. Some human chatter in the background... some annoying lizard slurping a raw egg, but otherwise silence.

The cave is just a whole bunch of nothing. The same glowing crystals every few steps. The same cave-walls everywhere and a pretty straight-forward path. 

So boring, that I close my eyes to focus on my hearing better.

I can't hear any predators around us, which is nice.

I can't hear Salandit's annoying voice, which is great.

But I can hear the rhythmic thumping of master's boots on the ground and his heartbeat... Both of which have just skipped a beat and I open my eyes to see Salandit all over his face again with her tongue!

Nothing a quick kick can't solve. I smack her off his shoulder, she lands on her back with a small oof and scurries to climb back on.

Swole pulled out his water bottle and tried to clean the egg from his face in the meantime. 

Ha! Egg on your face! That's what you deserve for not listening to me!

"Ahem. Salandit, do you want a drink? You know, to wash down the egg before you show your affection?"

'Show her affection'? That's one way to call it...

"Don't be such a slut." I call her out for what she is.

She takes a drink to clean her mouth before sticking out her tongue at me. Grrrr. 

"He likes it. See?" She then proceeds to make out with half of Swole's face again. 

Her long and yucky tongue moves all over his face and he just barely pretends to want it to stop. 

Probably only so that her tongue doesn't move to his eyes.

"He's just oblivious. Human courting doesn't work like that." Hehe, time to put her in her place. "Humans use their lips for courting. Like this."

I inform her to make sure her attention is fully on me before I move in and kiss him on the corner of his lips. Then I move my cheek along his to leave some more of my scent, just for good measure.

His heart skips another beat, his walking stiffens up and his face flushes.

Hahaha! Take that you stupid lizard!

His reaction was much stronger to me than to her!

"Ha! Take that!-- Oh? Oi! Let me go!"

Swole grabbed me from his shoulder and started carrying me around.

"Awe, were you jealous, Buneary? That's sooo adorable." He says before cuddling me, as if I have given him the permission to do that! Humpf! 

A punch on the arm later and I sit back on his shoulder.

The annoying hissing that Salandit calls laughter accompanies me all the way.

"Once again, you are my ssuperior in all things perverted."

Once again, Salandit needs to climb back up after I kicked her off.

"Hey, what'ss that white stuff coming right at us?"

---

"That's the end of the tunnel."

"Holy sshit! For real? I've never been sso far from the nesst! ... Why does that white stuff hurt so much when it gets into my eyess?"

Haha-- Gross.

"That's light."

"Bullsshit. Light is what comes off the crystals that makes the nest too bright. That sstuff is just pain! It burnss! Make it go away!" She screeches out before scurrying into Swole's backpack.

He finds her pain and misery just as funny as I do and we both let out a few chuckles.

Once we're in the light and my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I could see an amazing sight.

Far in the distance, I could see the biggest tree I had ever seen. It reaches all the way to the clouds and fills almost half of the horizon in my field of view with its width.

There is a very large, shimmering bird pokemon circling the top of the crown and moving into some nest inside the branches.

But the whole thing is far too far away for me to make out any specific details. The humans probably haven't even seen the flying pokemon.

There are jagged mountains all around the tree, as if they are reaching in to grab it; Almost like fangs, trying to chomp down on the tree.

A look behind confirms that the mountains are there too. The wall is steep and, at some points, it even bends overhead. I could probably climb it. But the humans couldn't.

The air is fresh. And for an ocean, the ground is surprisingly dry. A few veils of mist are blanketing the jagged and wild nature in front of us.

Besides the obvious tree in the center of the mountains, there does not appear to be a lot of plants. The only green stuff around is from moss, lichen and vines.

"Hey! That tree looks familiar!" Akari exclaims.

"It does?" Follows Swole. "Where did you see it before?"

"What'ss a tree?" Mumbles Salandit from the backpack.

"Come on out and you can see for yourself." I tell her.

Some rustling, followed by a pained hiss later, "No."

Akari took some time to think but couldn't come up with a sure answer. "I am unsure. It must have been years ago that I last saw it."

"Oh, ha. Ha." Dawn replies. "Because you're a time traveler from the past. Very funny."

"What? Oh, no! Haha, I'm sorry. I did not mean it like that. I believe that it was before my family sailed to Sinnoh. That means this might be the Tree of Beginning, in Kanto."

"Guys... I mean girls, check this out. Something is really fucked." Swole says as he stares at his phone.

Salandit also pokes her head out of the bag. "Fucked? Who!?"

I don't get what we're looking at. It's a weird picture with blue, green and brown blotches. There is also a red dot in the middle.

"What's going on? What are we looking at?" It looks a little like these map-things Swole carried around before.

"Everything else is still out of range but GPS works. Good news is, we're still in Sinnoh." Swole explains. "We didn't really move at all..."

"What'ss a Sinnoh?" Asks Salandit, her eyes shut tightly to avoid the burning sun.

"'What's the bad news, you ask?' ... Well, the map is completely fucked. There is supposed to be a gulf right here but there is now a land-bridge."

The humans discussed some more things that went in one ear and out the other.

Like, Swole marking the spot for ''EMS'' to recover the bodies or save them. Whatever he means with that.

And they talked about it being weird that ''there is no internet, but the maps have somehow been updated''.

It's like they are talking in another language.

"What's an internet?" I ask eventually; I thought it was where the funny videos and trainer-tips come from.

Swole didn't hear my question but Salandit did. "The internet is ssome kind of global service that allows the humans to sshare information."

"How do you know that? If you're making that up, I'll punch you."

"From context. You're kind of dumb, aren't you."

That's it! I get up to punch her--

"Haha, you're right." Swole says and stops me in my tracks. Did he understand what she said? "But she's a pure brawler and she got me to do the thinking. So it's alright."

I punch master on the shoulder and sit back down.

"Grrrr... I'm not dumb..."

"Hey, Buneary? How come he understood that without problems?"

"Dunno... Sometimes he just does it. Other times yes and no is the only thing that gets through... Why don't you find out why, if you're sooo smart, huh?"

"... I already know why. Bassically, if we're on the same wavelength, then he can understand it. Humu, humu. It means he thinkss you're a little dummy."

"No! That's not true! I'm not dumb! Tell her, Swole!"

"What? Buneary, don't pull me into your little arguments. Get along, you two."

Salandit laughs until she lands, once again, with her back on the ground before scurrying back on Swole's shoulders.

"Ouch. You hit way too hard, you know that?"

Good!

"I know, right?" Comments Swole. "It's like she doesn't know how to hold back at all."

Shortly after, Swole rubs a fresh, new bruise, forming on his arm.

"Well!" Swole says and catches the attention of the rest of the group. "To reach Canalave City, we need to get past that tree."