Pokemon - Solo's Strange Journey

Riolu-POV:

Yaaawn. I smack my lips a few times as I stretch my limbs as far as they can reach to keep me awake.

They don't reach far.

I feel like a cripple. Every waking moment of my new life reminds me of what I used to have.

Sometimes I wonder if reviving me was even worth it.

But for everything I do, he is there with me: The most important person in my life.

My thoughts wander to him and how happy he was when he found out I returned to life.

Daddy-- no, Swole. Or master. I need to defeat the base urges of my body. He still believes I am entirely Lucario, but I wonder how much of that is just his wishful thinking.

Would he be angry or sad if he found out?

"I am not Lucario."

... No reaction. They are still asleep. I am the last on night guard duty.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking that I'm not Lucario.

Does it even matter if I am my own person or not?

One day, I will evolve, and then there really won't be any true difference between us. All I will miss is a few memories that made her complete, but I will have gained my own that make me whole.

She used to be an honorable aura guardian, and I don't plan to be any lesser than her.

I will surpass her, no matter what it takes. For that, I will improve my aura as much as my body can handle.

Thus, I close my eyes. I feel my aura feelers rising on their own. I open my mind's eye.

A dark world greets me. Shining beacons of life energy sleep safely close behind me, everything else is dead emptiness.

Not a single sign of life nearby. Not even a leaf of grass, or a bug, or worm. No, wait. At the edge of my range, far off in the north; there is something.

We will travel there today... But why? I forgot the reason why we wanted to travel north.

Anyway, there is a faint sign of life. Seems like grass. There is another life form, much stronger than grass. But it's too far away and too blurry for now, I can't tell what it is.

Dad-- Swole is waking up. I feel his blood coursing through his veins a little faster than before.

"Good morning."

"Gdmorni..." His eyes are still closed. "Riolu?"

"Yes. There is a pokemon around 400 meters north. On the route we plan to take."

"Hold on." His blood rushes even faster. I feel his head turn to try and look at it. He quickly gives up because it's too dark. "A pokemon? An enemy?"

"Not yet."

"400 meters?"

"Correct."

"That's insane. How are you making progress so quickly?"

I tilt my head 45 degrees: The universal gesture for a lack of clarity.

"I'm still far from a 50-meter range with my aura, and the day before we fell down here, you were still around my level."

"Oh, that." I wag my feelers. "I'm built for it. And all I did as we traveled, was practice aura."

I feel his hand move closer to me. "Can I touch them?"

"Of course." I tilt my head towards him.

It's not like they are sensitive. "They are solid." He gently moves them around. "Like steel." I hear it inside my head when he raps his knuckles against them. "And heavy too. I wonder how they work..."

"I'm not letting you dissect them." I pull my feelers back and hide them behind my paws.

He laughs my concern off and scratches me behind my ears until I shake him off.

The motion woke up Lopunny and Salandit. "Good morning."

Lopunny is still sleepy. She is content to continue lying on Swole.

Salandit looks around. "Enemies nearby?" She asks me, and Lopunny slowly stirs upright.

"North. One pokemon. Not yet an enemy."

"Should we ambush it, master?" Lopunny suggests, itching for another fight.

I could use another battle too. I feel like all this salt is rusting my bones. Hehe. Luckily, I'm not a rusty old steel-type pokemon just yet.

"I'm not sure." Swole scratches his chin in thought. "We could try talking to it too. I bet we could have avoided fighting Hatterene if only we knew what she wanted in the first place. Let's put it to a vote. Who wants to talk?"

Nobody raises their paws. Or claws. Or hands.

"Who wants to ambush?"

No responses again.

"... You want to fight without ambushing..."

I raise my hand and see Lopunny and Salandit follow suit.

"Salandit? Even you?"

"Ssorry, master. I'm all for asymmetric warfare, but I need more fighting experience."

"Good grief. Let's scout it out first and then see. I don't want to risk another fight like the one against Hatterene while help is quite literally a world away."

Hm. We're stuck in the underworld, as he calls it. Or sometimes the hollow earth. We are so deep below ground, that I can't even begin to imagine how we plan to escape.

The ceiling is out of my aura range, so I can't tell how deep we are. My normal eyes open so I can finally look at it again.

It's so far up. But also so very pretty. It's difficult to tire from the sight, however, as beautiful as the twinkling fake stars are, we have barely seen anything else in days. It's starting to lose its appeal.

"Here you go, Riolu."

"Huh?" I spaced out. Dad-- Swole hands me a couple of pellets.

"It's Pecha Berry flavored. And you don't want to know the rest of the ingredients today."

Heh. I doubt I will. He optimized them for nutrition and knowing which mundane animal he squeezed into a tiny pellet like that, doesn't enhance its taste.

It was a fish. It's a little crunchy on the inside. Fish bones. Yucky.

Once I finish them up, he speaks up again. "Let's head out."

---

"Dad-- Swole." He looks at me weirdly. "It's a Dracovish." His face twists into a baffled visage. "I could take him with a little help from Salandit."

"There is no way that's a Dracovish. Dracovish aren't real."

"No, I'm sure. We're close enough, his shape is completely clear to me now."

He sleeps on a riverbank, partially submerged. His head is underwater and his legs dangle in the air.

"No way... Wild Dracovish don't exist... But what if? ... I have to make sure... Salandit, prepare Toxic. Riolu, Ice Beam. Wait for my signal before you fight."

"Understood."

"Yesss, ssssir."

He turns on his flashlight and brightens up a lush riverbank.

The wild Dracovish startles awake. His legs struggle to find purchase on the ground, once they do, they run in panicked circles. His head, which is mounted on his tail, looks around in confusion, trying to find the source of light but the legs make it difficult.

Dracovish barks at his legs to order them to calm down. As soon as they stop, the both of them coordinate again and then Dracovish runs towards the river which feeds this area with the moisture it needs to grow plants.

Swole just stands there, his mouth opens wide in shock. "Swole? Where is the signal?"

"You gotta be shitting me. A real fucking Dracovish..."

"Massster?"

Splash

He hopped into the river and we lost every advantage we had, before using Whirlpool to create dozens of whirlpools all over the river.

It blocks the way forward, nobody would try to fight him in his environment. I wonder, does he actually capture anything with that strategy? Most creatures will just avoid a river filled to the brink with whirlpools.

"Let's leave. I don't like him." Master just walks upstream, while Dracovish is busy making a bigger mess of the river. "Something's wrong with that thing. Diseased, maybe... I can't believe Doctor Cara Liss was right... No... It must have been a Ditto. Or perhaps Mew? Mew is supposedly playful. Maybe she thought it was funny to pretend to be a Dracovish..."

I look back and sense Dracovish at the bottom of the river, waiting for something to fall into his maelstrom.

"Don't look back, Riolu. This thing doesn't exist."

He's in full denial.

"There is no universe in which fraudulent sham Doctor Cara Liss was right."

As we continue to walk along the river, Swole mutters out various, increasingly deranged theories about the very real Dracovish. I decided not to listen. Everyone has their moments of weakness.

Eventually, we reach a small waterfall. Three or four meters tall at most.

A flowery aroma wafts down from the top, together with an earthy smell from below.

The cliff, where the water flows down from, looks weird. Extremely smooth. It looks like someone removed the ground with a razor-sharp edge.

"I've seen that before." Swole comments, and Lopunny and Salandit nod along.

"Where?"

"When you were still an egg, at the edge of the Tree of Beginning. The entire area was, like, teleported into Sinnoh. I'm guessing this underground area is the same, and it's made out of multiple sections."

He points up. "We're at the edge of One Piece."

He waits for a moment for some reason before resuming his explanation.

He pulls out some climbing equipment from his backpack. "Up there is another piece."

"What are you doing, master?" Lopunny asks with a grin on her face that reveals her nefarious plan.

"I need a grappling hook or a tool for digging footholds. I can't scale the smooth wall otherwise."

"Here, let me help you out."

She suddenly picks him up bridal style - so cute!!! - and then jumps up.

"Ahhh!" Swole screams while I hold on tight to his shoulder. I even wrap my legs around his arm to stay on.

"Ssshit!" Salandit falls off. "Oof!" She smacks with her back into the ground below while Lopunny lands gracefully on top of the ledge. "Hey! You used your ear to throw me off!"

Lopunny puts us down again. "Oops. I didn't mean to. I'm sooo sorry, Salandit."

"Stupid rabbit." Salandit picks herself up and grumbles while she scales up the wall as if she walked on regular flat ground. "I will pay it all back as soon as I evolve... Shitty bunny."

"What was that?"

"Nothing..."

She wouldn't get treated like that if she just accepted her place. Silly lizard. When will she learn?

I look around. "Oh, wow! Look! It's so many flowers! They are everywhere!"

I sniff at the air to enjoy the aroma, but my nose picks up a new smell. A pokemon. Using aura to check more carefully, I sense a little Metapod hiding in the tall grass nearby. Not an issue.

I snap open my eyes to see the new sight some more, and it's beautiful. Thousands of flowers blossom in the dark, their petals mirror the blue light from the crystals above.

Some glow! White and yellow flowers are steeped into the mix. Some are even pink! Finally, colors that aren't blue, shades of gray, and brown!

"Daddy? Can we stay here?"

"We can't." He rubs the top of my head as I feel my ears lowering themselves on their own. "We need to travel north again as soon as we can find a place to cross the river. But I'm sure we will see these flowers for a while... I just hope this area isn't as large as the salt flats."

I don't think I could get enough from this area. It's so pretty! And we have food and water around here too.

"Good grief. We spent almost four days in the salt flats. Sometimes, I wish I had a flying pokemon, just to shorten travel at least a little. Or a mount. A ride pokemon. Like Tyrantrum. Can you imagine? Traveling from city to city on the back of Tyrantrum? That would be sooo cool."

He lets out another sigh that he forcefully corrects into another good grief again.

"You can mount me anytime, master." Lopunny wags her massive eyebrows suggestively and Swole blushes.

"Hold on with the jokess." Salandit suddenly tenses up. Her tongue darts out of her mouth. "An enemy is nearby."

"Oh. It's just a Metapod in that grass over there."

"Thiss grassss?"

"Yes." I nod.

Salandit uses Ember.

It's super effective.

Metapod is KO.

"Can I eat it? Ouch." Swole flicked his finger against her snoot.

"You can take an egg out of the backpack. Leave the wildlife alone."

He walks up to the tall grass, kicks a few flames out, uses a few spritzes of a potion on Metapod and carries it into a different set of tall grass.

Crunch

Salandit found an egg in his backpack.

Sluuurp

Yuck. She eats her food without any dignity at all. Terrible.

---

"That's a good spot to cross the river."

Bees buzz, birds flap their wings, and the lush flower fields are partially submerged by the river. It has widened tremendously and flows very slowly. The shallow water is clear enough to allow many types of plants to sprout from the shallows and blossom above its surface.

Magikarp and Goldeen swim past the plants, splashing around and jumping up every once in a while, trying to snack on some insects.

Islands scatter along the width of the river, between them are a couple of rocks that jut out and slow down the water even more.

Everything is carpeted in vast arrays of glowing and reflecting flowers, while the grasses and usual greens appear pitch black in the dim blue light that the crystals above provide.

"It's a beautiful place, isn't it?" Swole asks as he takes in the view. "I bet this is what the first gym challengers must have experienced."

He takes in our questioning gazes.

"The gym challenge was invented before we had routes connecting every town. Nature was left untouched, untamed, and wild. Wherever trainers traveled, they had to rely on their skills. But most importantly, there were places humanity had been to before."

It truly is an amazing place.

I can't remember the places I explored in my past life, but I feel like I have reconnected with a part of myself by visiting this place.

"Riolu, can you check up and down the river if there are any stronger pokemon around? I don't want to get a nasty surprise in the water."

I nod and after a quick check give him the confirmation that the river is safe to traverse.

Lopunny leads the way once more. She takes large leaps from one rock to another to avoid stepping into the cold calm waters. "Are you coming?" She turned around in the middle of the river to goad Swole into hurrying up. "Hurry up, Slowpoke!"

"Yeah, yeah." He answers and steps back. - "No, no, no!" Salandit is flipping out. - He runs up to the river and jumps over the water, landing on the first dry rock but almost overshooting his target. He flails to keep his balance to avoid falling face-first into the water.

"Ahhh! Are you inssane?!"

"Ahhh! Get your claws out of my shoulder!"

"Only if you wade through the water like a normal persson!" The least normal pokemon suggests. "I don't want to get wet!"

"Well, I don't want to get wet either. We're jumping."

"Nooo!" She whines.

"Do you want to wait it out in your pokeball?"

Her whinery continues. "Nooo!"

"What do you mean, no?! It's either the pokeball or you're going down with me! Ouch! Stop it with your claws already!"

"Salandit," I ask and she stops struggling for a just moment. "Have you tried thinking nice thoughts?"

"Like jumping over a river of acid? ... Good idea."

"Great!" Swole says. "We're playing the floor is acid, and I can only touch the rocks."

He swings his arms to gain more momentum, shaking up Salandit and me in the process. "Hup!"

And again. And again. We have almost reached the other side, but then he stops. Just two more rocks--

"Hi." Lopunny stands in the way. She set her sights on Swole.

He tries to look past her but almost slips again. Lopunny holds him by his arms to keep him stable. "Thanks. You're in the way."

"I know."

"Could you move?"

"Nnnope. But I might, once you paid the bridge toll."

"This can hardly be called a bridge. It's just a bunch of rocks."

"You can take a different set of rocks if you don't like my bridge."

He would need to backtrack for six jumps before taking another route.

"What's the bridge toll?"

"You know what it is." She leans closer and puckers up her lips.

I can hear him mutter. "Damn, that's good. I'm stealing that for Dawn... Ahem! I can take a guess."

He leans closer. Lopunny closes her eyes. He wraps his arms tightly around her body. "Sorry, Salandit."

"Huh?"

Splash

Urgh! My fur!

"His his his his!" Salandit laughs. She sits on the rock, her forelegs braced in front of her and her ass seated on the dry surface as she laughs at us.

I fell off his shoulder while he body-slammed Lopunny into the water together with himself. I tread the water a few times before I realize it's shallow enough to stand in.

"Did I guess right?" His shit-eating grin threatens to split his face. "Woah!"

Lopunny wrestles with him in the water until she's on top, and Swole's face barely peeks out of the water.

Swole-POV:

"Woah!" She's too strong! My head dips underwater before I turn the fight around and gain the advantage. I wrap my leg around both of hers and use my body weight to wrestle her underwater.

But then she pushes herself off with her ears before rolling over, and suddenly I'm on the bottom once more. Her hands press my shoulders down, her thighs lock my legs in place, and her ears give her stability so that no matter how I push or pull, she stays on top.

Cold water drips down her wet face and onto mine. Her shit-eating grin threatens to split her face. "You won't escape the toll so easily. Everyone too weak to fight me must pay it."

The scariest part; a small part of me looks forward to it.

Slowly, her face inches closer to mine. Her hands shift away from my shoulders. She holds my face firmly in place.

With my torso freed, I have the wiggle room to fight back again, but I don't.

Her lips press against mine. Her eyes close and so do mine.

The water numbs my senses as it surrounds my head. All but my face is submerged; I can only hear her movements reverberate through my skull as she knocks her tongue against my teeth, gently, but firmly, asking for permission to enter.

Her thumbs rub across my cheeks in small circles, coaxing my jaw into granting her access... until I allow it entry.

I open my mouth and feel her tongue scrape past my teeth, seeking out my own. It feels thinner than a human's.

A moan vibrates through her mouth into mine.

Her whiskers brush against my cheeks.

Her lips are so soft and thin. And furry. It feels as if I brushed my lips against a warm but fuzzy human girl.

Her tongue is so agile and relentless in its exploration of my mouth.

Her bunny tail shakes left and right, knocking into my hands as they grope at her--

Where did my hands wander?

Oh no.

What the fuck am I doing?! I need to stop! I can't be doing that with my pokemon!

I move my hands to stem against her shoulders. With all my might, I push her off, but she barely budges.

Only her mouth lets go of me. ~"Do you need to breathe already?" She smacks her lips. ~"I could have done that for a few more minutes at least."

I couldn't push her off. She let me go.

I can't help but swallow down my dread at the thought... Swallowing down my dread left me with a lingering taste of caramel in my mouth.

Pokemon are so much stronger than humans, it's not even funny.

I have to stop this, but force won't help me. "I thought I sensed something through aura." I lied. "We need to get out of here and continue traveling north."

Like pulling a switch, she jumps up and transforms from her playful mood into her fighting stance.

I stand up. The water is ankle-deep but I am drenched. I feel the extra weight in my boots.

... Lopunny urges me to hurry up and leave the dangerous waters.

After picking up Riolu who seems to be deep in thought, and Salandit who complains about being picked up - ~"Yuck! Sstop! You're wet! Don't touch me!" - after picking them up, we continue the rest of the way through the river and into the flower fields beyond it.

---

Riolu-POV:

I saw him struggle, but I was powerless to stop Lopunny.

He's fucked.

Maybe, actually, truly, literally fucked.

She's too strong for Salandit and me to stop her.

"Psst." I try to catch Salandit's attention. "Psst, Salandit?"

"Yesss?"

"What are you thinking?" I'm whispering so Lopunny won't hear us.

"I'm thinking that you underestimate her ears. You can't whisper quietly enough so she won't hear it."

Lopunny just nods as she leads the way.

"Sssigh. Other than that, I think I have lost my place as number one. She'ss sso sstrong, it's not even funny anymore."

I nod. "If she wants to claim Swole first, then she'll just do it, won't she? And we can't stop her."

"Yess... masster iss fucked."

"G-good grief! Can you girls stop talking about that?!" I heard that stutter. "Nobody is getting fucked! We'll train and fight, and eventually, we will beat the league and become the next champions. Like every other trainer tries to do it."

"Well," Lopunny pipes up. "Maybe every other trainer does it wrong, and that's why they can't beat Cynthia. Don't you always say something about a bond between trainer and pokemon?"

Ha! That's the weakest excuse I ever heard. What a horny rabbit.

And she's not even in heat yet. Once she is, Swole is absolutely f--

Wait. What's that? I can feel it from above! "Something is coming at us from the sky!"

That was a stupid thing to say.

"What sky? We're underground." Lopunny of all pokemon corrects me.

"Above us! A Hydreigon!"

Swole begins to panic immediately. "Hydreigon!? Are you kidding me? What is a fully evolved dragon doing here?!" And then he switches to a mutter while the massive pokemon approaches us through the air.

His isn't flying fast, but as a group, we couldn't run fast enough to escape. Salandit and Swole are too slow.

"Dark and dragon type... huge overall stats but known for their special attack moves like Dragon Pulse, Hyper Beam, and Dark Pulse... Fighting type and ice are good options... Fairy would be perfect-- Damn it!" He suddenly curses. "I knew we should have spent more time training Play Rough!"

"He's 50 meters away." I get ready to use Protect in case he tries a surprise attack.

"There!" Salandit points him out with her claw.

"I see him! Riolu, get ready for Protect!"

Already on it.

The wind picks up. For the first time in days, I feel the wind brush over my fur.

A cold feeling spreads over the area, like a thick blanket of unease. The sign of a powerful dark type pokemon approaching.

I feel Swole shivering in fear and see his fists clench to keep steady. A forceful effect by the pokemon's aura.

But they don't scare me. I eat them for breakfast.

Whomp

Never mind. He's huge.

The ground shook when he landed just a few meters in front of us. His bulky tail smacks into the ground threateningly. Six dark wings weave through the air, creating far more draft than the spindly-looking things should.

He has one head on his neck, where it's supposed to be, and two more instead of hands at the tips of his arms.

The head on his left hand lets out an aggressive roar.

"What do we have here? A couple of snacks sneaking through my territory? What should we do with them, boys?" The center head asks, and the one on the left replies.

"They should pay a toll! A fee for crossing through our territory!"

"Yes! YES! Make them pay! Hihihue." The third and final head speaks up before ending it with deranged laughter.

My eyes shift to Lopunny. It feels like it's somehow her fault that Hydreigon appeared.

"What did he-- uh they say?"

I translate for Swole.

He turns his head to glare at Lopunny. She flinches under his stare.

Everyone agrees: It's her fault.

"Good grief. Alright. What is the toll we must pay?"

Again, the center head leads the negotiation. "I'm feeling rather peckish. I could have a bite or two. How about... three of your companions? Pay me with the meat of your companions, and you may pass, human."

"We are hungry. Make it six companions, human."

"Yes! YES! Six is more than three! Hihihue."

I translate it all to the best of my abilities... Even the gibberish that the third head says. I feel like I'm becoming stupider just by listening to him.

"How about a counteroffer? What if I fed you nine of my former companions, and you let all four of us pass?"

The dragon rises in the air. His wings flap once, almost blasting us over with the force, and then he remains afloat without any additional flaps.

"That is a trick! He's just another human with his cowardly tricks! I demand you pay with your current companions, human!"

"We demand your current and past companions, human!"

"Yes! YES! I accept! Hihihue."

"The third head said yes." I translate.

"Great!" Swole pulls out nine steaks from his backpack and throws them to Hydreigon. "Here you go. Nine of my old companions. Prepared and ready to eat."

They aren't even cooked yet. There is no way this will work.

"..."

"..."

"Yes! YES! Nine is more than six! Hihihue."

"You idiot!" The center head bites the right head as he tries to eat the steak from the ground.

"Argh! Don't! It's our head! We can't kill it! Stop!"

The left head struggles to keep the center head in check.

The dragon spins around in the air, each head trying to do their own thing. Somehow, the third head snaps up a steak.

"Yes. YES! So tasty! Hihihue." He swallows the first steak whole while we make a huge circle around the quarreling pokemon.

The noise picks up while we run away as fast as we can.

Swole's breathing speeds up as he presses on. I jump off to run on my own, making it easier for him.

We continue to run through the vast fields of flowers until our steps are the only sounds we can hear, and then some more just to be sure.

Eventually, the flowers become sparse once more, and the terrain changes with the soil becoming loose and dusty. Swole determines we have left Hydreigon's territory.

"Whew." Swole pants from exhaustion. He finds an oddly rectangular rock and sits down on it to take a breather. "That was close!"

Lopunny crosses her arms and pouts. "Close? We could have just fought him-- them."

Swole rolls his eyes.

She then closes in and looms over him. "Instead of battling, you wasted my precious steak supply on that-- those idiots!"

"His his his." Salandit lets out slow-paced laughter. "Very funny. The pot callss the kettle black."

Lopunny's scowl falls apart as she looks at Salandit with ignorance clearly written all over her face. "What do you mean? What pot and kettle?"

"Nothing."

Her glare resumes. "You'd better mean nothing by it."

I can hear Salandit swallow.

"Lopunny, calm down." Swole tries to be the voice of reason but despite her large ears, she is deaf to it.

"Calm down?" She looks back to Swole and tries to stare him down. He sat down. Huge mistake. "It was my food! And--"

"And we don't know how many pokemon we would have to fight today. Even if we won, what if the fight attracted more pokemon than we could handle? Or he could have his family waiting on standby to overrun us!"

Despite his seated position, he appears to be the tallest in the area.

"..." But Lopunny's defiant gaze is incredibly intimidating, and I'm not even the target.

She's clearly trying to undermine his authority.

I wish I could put her in her place for that.

Sigh. I miss my old strength. I bet she wouldn't dare to act like that with my former self around.

But Swole is not intimidated. "Remind me, Lopunny. Why am I the trainer?"

She finally breaks his gaze and looks down. "Because you make good decisions..."

"You're right. And who would have died without me in the past?"

"... Me." She whispers but her voice can still be heard in this completely silent field of ashes.

"What was that?"

Her ears hang low. "I would have died without your good decisions in the past."

"That's right. And when I say we avoid a fight, we avoid the fight. Keep Bibarel in your mind."

Who?

"I understand." She nods.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Good... Now come here."

She slowly approaches him. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." He reaches out with his arms and hugs her tightly.

For almost a minute she does nothing but submit to him in his embrace.

And then, it abruptly ends.

Swole looks into the distance. A frown forms on his face. He must be deep in thought: Probably thinking about how to properly punish Lopunny for her increasingly disobedient behavior.

"Anyone else thinks the horizon looks a little weird?" Or not.

It's just more crystals that glow like stars. I guess, if I squint just right, the crystals closer to the horizon seem larger than they should be.

He turns on his flashlight.

Ahh, yes. Never mind. I see what he meant.

It's a wall. Entirely smooth, except for the few crystalline growths. As the wall reaches higher it curves and transitions into the ceiling. As if something removed a sphere, or rather an ovoid, from the planet's crust and filled the bottom half with the ground we walk on.

But just a couple dozen meters in front of us...

His mouth drops open in disbelief at the sight.

---

"It's an ancient temple." Swole describes, his mouth finally closing. "There might be humans nearby!"

Standing right against the wall is an imposing structure of gleaming white marble. Pillars, as thick as Swole is tall, line the facade, each one towering as high as a house. The massive marble roof of the temple looms above, completing the impressive sight.

"I wonder who built that. Even today, it would cost a fortune."

A broad staircase leads to the temple's floor where shadows pool between the pillars. I can barely make out a tall portal leading inside.

The entire building resembles a colossal white box surrounded by pillars on all sides with a gable roof on top, the slopes reaching down on the sides and the flat side facing us.

As always, Swole gets distracted by the weirdest things: "Do you think the pillars are just decorative, or are they supporting the roof?"

Probably both. The intricate spiral designs carved into the stone elevate the grandeur by a lot.

"Da-- Swole, is that what we were looking for?" I ask him, making his whole body shudder as it tenses up. His head slowly turns to me.

His eyes widened as if fear suddenly took hold of him. "We weren't looking for anything. We traveled north because we had to. But we had no reason..."

Ah right. I wanted to know the reason why we had to go north. It had slipped my mind to ask. Somehow, I kept forgetting it.

"... Did the building attract us? Is this all just a gigantic trap?"

"Ssandcastles can sometimes be pokemon." Salandit comments. "Maybe thiss is a disguised Palossand?"

"Don't say that!" I see his whole body shudder. "That's creepy. Anyway, we should check it out."

He said what?

"There must have been a reason why we had to go here, and if I had to guess, the reason is inside."

"Are you sure we should check out the obvious trap?"

He thinks for a few seconds. "We're going to be careful, Riolu. Don't worry. But it's the only hint we have to proceed, so we don't really have a choice in the matter."

This is a mistake--

Don't think about it.

And so he leads us closer.

Uhhh, wow! The flashlight messed with my depth perception. The temple is a teeny, tiny bit bigger than it looked from afar.

As we approach, the true scale of it becomes apparent. Each step of the stairs is as tall as Swole. The pillars are actually much thicker too, and the whole thing is at least as tall as Alamos Town's twin towers, but five times as wide.

"Holy shit. Did giants build that?" Master reaches up to feel the top of the first step. "That's unreasonably large for any human."

It really is. My aura sight can't even cover the whole building.

He lifts Salandit and me to the first step before climbing up. His muscles bulge.

"Hot." Salandit comments as she stares at his small workout.

Lopunny is down below on the lookout for enemies. "What is?"

"Nothing. Hiss hiss hiss."

She stops to turn around and see what is going on. Instead of doing her duty, she just stares at Swole's ass as he pulls himself up one step of the stairs at a time.

For every step, he lifts Salandit and me further before repeating the process.

"Swole?"

"Yes, Riolu?" He's not even out of breath yet.

"I think you should go shirtless."

His upper body has become much stronger than the rest. He should use it to his advantage. I bet the female gym leaders will be very distracted.

He stops in the middle of his climb. One disproportionally thin leg is already resting on top of the next step. I think it's all the walking that messes it up for him. Too much 'cardio'. "... Not you too..."

"Not me too what?"

"Nothing."

"Hey! What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Forget about it." He resumes his climb, and his muscles reveal themselves through his long-sleeved shirt.

I could watch it forever.

He puts us down on the final step and then Lopunny quickly catches up. Even taking the last two at once.

"Show-off."

"Jealousy isn't becoming of you, master." She strokes her ears with her hand and strikes a pose.

"Ha! Don't worry, I'm not jealous. Your success is my success."

But it also means our failures are his. And I am the weakest link.

I should put in more effort. Although, my body is reaching its limits through aura. I will need to grow my physical body to make more meaningful progress.

But my moves can still improve. I can focus on them in the future, once we find another moment to train.

Swole pulls out his flashlight. "Let's go inside."

He lights up the temple past the monumental entryway.

It's vast, cavernous, and almost empty. At the very least I don't see any other pokemon inside.

At the end of the room is what appears to be an altar. This seems to be some kind of long forgotten religious site. Murals and wall paintings support that theory.

"Are those... Dialga and Palkia?" Swole mutters.

I follow his eyes to see what he means.

It's them. A painting that reaches from the bottom to the top of the room depicts Dialga and Palkia as the gods of destruction that they are. It shows them fighting each other and destroying a whole city in the process.

The buildings they destroy all have the same white marble style as the temple, but they have flat roofs and seem human-sized.

An evil-looking storm roars above them. Twisters, tornadoes, and lighting, reminding me of what Alamos Town looked like near its end. It's so detailed, I can even see the people running for their lives on the streets as a lighting bolt pierces into a crowd.

"Why is the altar so huge?" I look back at what Swole points out.

Everything in here is made for giants.

The inside of the room is large enough to fit Oreburgh City's arena twice. I hop off Swole's shoulder when he crosses to the other side, walking up to the altar with Salandit to check it out from above.

I inspect the next painting. It's a highly detailed depiction of Arceus with a single human kneeling before him. She seems small like an ant in front of Arceus but the painting is large enough to make out every detail. I can see individual golden blonde strands of hair cascading down her head.

She reminds me of that powerful trainer we met in Floaroma Town.

Rays of light stream around Arceus and seemingly merge on top of the woman. Is she receiving some kind of blessing?

"It'ss a feeding trough!" Salandit shouts down from the top of the altar.

Was this place meant to placate Arceus? Is this where they talked with him?

Another mural shows the construction of the temple. Slaves were ordered around by blonde-haired people.

A queen, I think it's the same person from the previous painting, sits on top of a throne and oversees the work. The slaves push huge blocks of marble by rolling them over tree logs.

While they push one rock, another is being put in place by a crane. Various pokemon seem to help. Unlike the slaves, they don't wear collars or receive strikes from whips. Volunteers? A single Machamp can carry one of these blocks on his own.

The fourth painting in this series shows the temple in its finished state. It's in the middle of a city and its doors are shut. I didn't see anything that looked like a door when we entered. It was just a wide, open portal. No hinges or fixtures for any doors.

The people celebrate a festival in front of the temple. They cheer, eat, and drink as the first stars appear on the horizon. The queen resides over the festival. She barely aged from the previous images. Her face is still beautiful, but a couple of grey hairs showed up.

The finished temple seems to be a lot taller in the painting. As if they added three of these steps to make it look grander. About one house-height taller, to be exact.

Underneath the painting is some script. It looks like they used Unown for their alphabet. "Hey, Swole?"

"Yes, Riolu?"

"Can you read what that says?"

"Oh, sure. It says... Uh oh."

"What?"

"I promise, the trap will work."

Uh oh.

"I have a bad feeling about this." He looks over the other paintings. "That's bad. I don't think this is a temple for Dialga, Palkia, or Arceus... This building exists to trap one of them."

"Hey guysss!" Salandit shouts. She sneaked off into a little side room. Its doorway is just tall enough for a human to walk through. "I found a lever!"

The ground rumbles.

"Salandit! Don't you dare pull the lever!"

"... Too late."

"Salandit!"

"What?!" She pokes her head out of the room. "I'm sorry! It's a lever! I had to pull it! You would have done the same!"

The rumbling becomes louder.

"Fuck! Are those gears or something?" He presses the button on Salandit's pokeball, but it's not working for some reason. "Salandit! Run!"

He runs past me, snatching me up on his way. He pushes himself as much as he can, forcing his legs to sprint for the exit.

Lopunny is on standby near the exit, guarding it from the pokemon who could be outside in the dark. Confusion is written all over her face as she looks around, at the ground, and at Swole running for his life.

Rock scrapes against rock. The ground quakes. The rumbling comes to a crescendo when a wall rises up to block the entryway.

Lopunny stood right on top of it when it happened. She loses her footing instantly and slams down against the rising floor. She recovers fast enough to reach out to us with her hands.

Swole grunts, sprints, and jumps!

I smack against the wall, Swole's arm is the only thing cushioning the blow. Above me, Lopunny strains to keep hold of Swole. Her face twists in concentration and focus. She looks at the outside, to the freedom waiting for us, and then she looks back inside.

Her face twists even more. "Salandit! She won't make it..."

Salandit sprints across the ground on her short hind legs. She's running as fast as they can carry her... But it's not enough. She's still so far away and we're so far up already. The wall is about to shut close soon.

"Don't leave me behind!" Her scream wrenches at my heart.

She can't make it.

Lopunny growls and pulls us up as the ceiling comes ever closer.

"Pleasssse!"

Suddenly, Swole braces his legs against the wall and pushes himself off.

Lopunny falls. Swole falls.

Booom!

The wall snaps shut against the ceiling. Dust jets out from the impact site, building a dense cloud above us.

Wind rushes past my ears. We're freefalling, once more.

Lopunny tries to embrace Swole, to take the fall for him, but he won't let her.

Oof.

I feel the pressure on my back as I slam down on Swole's stomach. Then darkness envelops me as Lopunny lands on top of me.