3.1- A Museum Exhibit
- Location
- Australia
It feels strange to be looking at your Gym now that it's actually been built.
By the look on Juliet's face, she agrees. You've brought her- and the rest of your Gym Trainers- to check on its progress several times over the last few weeks, watching as the bones of the building were built and the caverns within the former mine terraformed, but this is the first time any of you have actually seen the finished building.
Well, okay.
Technically, you've been given daily updates on the Gym's construction, complete with photographs of the progress made each day, budget estimations, delays in shipments of materials, price adjustments as delayed materials were sourced locally at increased costs due to time constraints, and a ten-minute phone call after dusk each night where the foreman talked you through what work had been done and how the timeline was progressing.
But it's the first time you've seen the Gym in person, and that counts for something. It's much more impressive in person than it is in photographs.
"It's bigger than I expected," Juliet says, looking up at the symbol carved on the building's brown roof. She has to tilt her head back quite a bit to look up at it
The front wall of the Gym is quite tall. To make the building look even more imposing, the builders had contracted in a local builder with a trained Steelix to carve away at the roof of the cavern, giving them more space to work with. Where the bulk of the caverns and tunnels in Halley stand just two to three metres tall, this one now rises up a good six metres tall.
It's the same size as most Gyms, but it looks more impressive when the surroundings make claustrophobic people shiver.
Still. "Need to get some statues ordered in," you muse. "Some gargoyles to sit beside the doors, or something like that."
Juliet blinks, mouthing the word 'gargoyle' to herself with a confused look on her face, but you don't give her any time to question you on the topic. Instead, you stride forwards towards the glass doors of the Gym, forcing her to fall quickly into place behind you.
One of the nice things about this Gym being yours is that you were able to craft the amenities to suit you, in particular. For instance; though these glass doors are automatic, set to open to anybody approaching them between the hours of eight in the morning and seven in the evening, they're also keyed to a fob you can carry around on your person. A single press of a button, and you finally have a set of automatic doors that aren't confounded by your existence.
Truly, technology has wrought miracles.
The Gym's foyer is nothing particularly special. It's lit brightly, the gentle lights in the ceiling set to wash the room in light reminiscent of the morning sun. There's a large desk off to the side, locking off an area behind which your League-assigned Gym Aide is going to be working, and a large screen set to the other side of the room, displaying challenger's appointment times and your own availabilities. Currently, it's empty. The door leading into the Gym proper lies between the two, and that's where you and Juliet bustle off to.
"Ah." You make a noise of satisfaction once the two of you have made your way inside and you can actually see the walls of your Gym. "They managed to get the artwork done. Excellent."
Your Gym is structured like this:
There are three caves within. Each cave is linked to the next by a long, winding mineshaft, the first of which emerges from the foyer. The entire Gym is a good few kilometres long between the mineshafts and the caves within, though that's a misleading distance- challengers aren't expected to walk through the entirety of the last cavern, nor the final mineshaft that lays past it. The area that challengers are expected to travel is just slightly under two kilometres long, winding its way through Halley and ending up somewhere in the outskirts.
There's one single problem you'd encountered with this design; Roland had forbidden you from terrifying the trainers walking through it.
Truly, it is the most depressing situation you can imagine. It would have been so easy, too; you could have killed the lights in the tunnels and forced people to progress through blind while playing sounds of Pokemon hunting them, or disoriented them within the tunnel's depths, or chased them with false boulders to terrify them into sprinting down the mines. There were so many ideas you'd been forced to discard.
So, instead, to give it some measure of aesthetic flair, you'd been forced to do this.
"Why does it look like a museum exhibit?" Juliet's face is knitted in confusion as she looks at the wall beside you. "I thought that this was…" She trails off, looking vaguely put out.
You look at the wall. It's a description of the Impactor- the massive asteroid that had impacted the land where Halley now sits. The one that had formed this crater.
The only response you can give to her is a bland shrug. "If you have to walk through a couple hundred metres of tunnel, I figured we might as well put something on it," you reply, your tone blase. "There's some windows further in with fossils and the like behind them, too. Come on."
You know it's not as impressive to look at as one might hope, but there's only so much that can be done in three weeks. The walls have been blasted back by Ground-types to make them smooth and workable, which renders them much nicer to look at, but the more important part is what you'd had painted onto them.
Every twenty metres or so, new text has been written on the wall. They're short infographics, as you don't want your challengers spending half an hour within the gym's tunnels stopping to read literal walls of text, but they're still as informative as you can make them. You'd set yourself a strict limit of one hundred words each, and it'd been hard, but you'd done it.
Written across the walls of the mineshafts, painted onto the very stones of Halley itself, lies now a timeline of the extinction event that had once given life to Halley.
It's quite aesthetically pleasing, at least in your opinion. There's a natural curve to the mineshafts that prevent too many of the infographics from being read ahead of time, but each one's big enough that they can be read while walking down the hall. Occasionally, you've interspersed them with transparent glass panes, behind which lie items of interest- asteroid shards, fossils of Pokemon and plants that had been immortalized in the aftermath of the impact, and the like.
As much as you like the effect, though, that isn't what you'd brought Juliet down here for. The two of you have come down here to meet with a particular Pokemon, not to admire your design decisions.
The first room in the Gym opens up after a little under half a kilometre, revealing the first room- the one you've designated as Adam and Juliet's.
Previously, the room had been a stark cave. Stalagmites and stalactites had run through the room, and a small stream had been the only real point of interest. A natural cave, to be certain, but it hadn't been visually interesting.
Now? Now, you've had the room carefully shaped and re-done. The floor of the cavern has been worn down to provide a roughly even walking surface, and some of the stalagmites have been thickened out, creating 'pillars' of stone jutting up from the surface. Finally, literal tons of sand have been dumped on the floor and spread out.
Walking into the room, it's almost easy to forget that this is a cave still, except for the walls that surround you in every direction. It looks like a section of the desert above has been transported below the earth.
The two of you step in the room, and are instantly swarmed by Pokemon.
"Hey, hey, hey!" you protest loudly, though you can't prevent the small smile that steals over your face as the Phantump insistently bumps your navel. "Give us a little space, please."
The crowd of Pokemon all back off, though you catch one of the Duskull at the back rolling its eye at you, and you shake your head. "We're not here for training time just yet," you inform them, causing at least three of them to let out concurrent discordant wails of shock and grief. You roll your eyes, though Juliet beside you twitches and pulls her hands over her ears. "We'll be back in a few hours to prepare you guys for tomorrow- after you've all eaten. That includes you, Houndstone." You stare pointedly at the dog-like Pokemon, who whimpers and bows his head.
Juliet shakes her head fondly at the group. The Gastly who'd fought alongside her so many weeks ago is hovering behind her head, glaring at the other Pokemon- that's why they'd all swarmed you instead, probably. Idly, you wonder if they'd still be swarming you if you released Froslass. Probably not.
You don't move on immediately from the room, of course. You're not here to be rude to your Gym Pokemon, so you do spend a few minutes with them, checking over all of them for any injuries from yesterday's training session and making sure that all of them are doing fine.
Some Gyms, you're vaguely aware, keep their Gym Pokemon in stasis when they're not training or being used for matches. Other Gyms have their own areas outside where their Pokemon can spend time when not actively being used, similar to the small cave outside your own house; natural areas, warped out into being something big enough to host dozens or even hundreds of Pokemon through spatial-warping devices.
Most people don't have the benefit of their Gyms being built into a pre-existing mineshaft, though. It's much harder to have your Gym Pokemon live within the Gym itself when you have to spend millions actually building the physical shell to let them.
You just prefer the feeling of giving them a home to call their own.
It takes the two of you a while to disentangle yourselves from the pile of Pokemon here. The Ghost-types are more affectionate around the two of you than they are around Vera and Hawthorne, and they really showcase that every time you turn up without them. Eventually, though, you manage to extricate the two of you without causing real offense to the Pokemon, and the two of you can set out into the next hallway.
It takes a minute or so for Juliet to comment on this one once you do. Her pace is slower now, her attention actually drawn to the words on the wall here.
"You really are making a museum exhibit, huh?" Juliet laughs, but it's a shaky, unnerved laugh. You swing your head to the side, taking in what she's looking at. It's another infographic, this one scrawled on the wall in black ink that's run down the wall, giving the text a vague bloody effect when set against the faint red tinge to the stone.
This Pokemon lived in the swamps of inland Laurum. It would contract its limbs and streamline its shape, then use its shell to propel itself through the water. Members of this species are suspected to have had an entomophagic diet, subsisting primarily on insects, but would opportunistically drink the blood of prey Pokemon like Omanyte and Cradily.
Experts estimate this Pokemon lived between 30-32 million years ago. It's believed the rivers that formed Kabutops' primary habitat froze when ash clouds from volcanic impacts blocked out the light for the sun, resulting in the Great Freeze.
Beside it, resting behind the full-body glass pane, is a Kabutops skeleton.
Or, well, a plaster recreation of one. You're not stupid enough to try and house a valuable ancient Pokemon skeleton within a museum accessible to the public. Team Plasma had shown everyone that was a bad idea.
"It's educational," you reply in a deadpan tone of voice. Then, more conversationally; "Apparently, there's a museum with a fossil display in Emerald City, too. They have a full set of ancient fossils, apparently, even a Relicanth fossil."
"Huh." Juliet blinks, then turns to look at another display as you walk past- this one a series of amber beads hung carefully on strings, displaying fossils of ancient leaves and insects from tens of millions of years ago. "Aren't Relicanth still around now, though? I thought I heard a news article about them a few years ago. Or maybe I'm thinking about Remoraid…"
You shake your head, checking over each display quickly as you walk past. "They were only recently rediscovered. They're deep-sea Pokemon, and we still aren't able to explore down there very much."
She sounds properly curious when she replies now, like you've actually caught her interest. "Then how do we know they're still around? Did one wash up in Galar or something? I think I watched a movie like that, but it was about an ancient Lapras…"
The corner of your lip curls up. You're pretty sure you know what movie she's talking about. The Transport Pokemon: Legend of the Deep. It was one of your favourite movies as a kid. "Hoenn, actually," is what you answer with. "A school of them washed up in Sootopolis when Kyogre and Groudon fought. We think they were dragged up by Kyogre's waves and couldn't find their way back out. Ended up bonding with the Gym Leader there, so there's a tiny breeding population now."
"Huh…"
She doesn't have the time to offer anything more, though, because you're emerging into the second room now.
Just like the first room, this one's been moulded to look more like the desert above than a natural cave. Tons and tons of sand were transported down in sealed trucks and carefully spread around. There's been substantially more work done to this one, though.
First; there's a big 'cliff' rising off on the right-hand side of the cave, neatly dividing a third of the room off. The top of it juts outwards, leaving a lip where a handful of Ghost-types lie blissfully on the stone, but that's only there to provide 'shade' for what lies at the bottom of the cliff; a small pool of water, bubbling up slowly from below.
Around this pool of water, and within the shade provided by the cliffs above, lie a good handful of the Ice-types who had readily agreed to come fight in your Gym for you. Mostly from the Swinub and Bergmite lines, though there's two Glaceon and a variant Sandslash lying half-buried in the sand, yawning at the two of you as you pass by.
It doesn't quite mimic the watering holes of the desert above. Usually, pools of water like this are found deeper underground in half-buried caves, not just hiding within the shadows of cliffs where sand could bury them any time the wind blows in the wrong direction.
It gets the point across, though. Along with the shrubbery and the handful of flowers you could find that can survive down here, this room speaks of that truth of the desert; they're not dead and dying places. Life thrives even here.
It might run a little contradictory to the idea you're trying to get across with your exhibit on the extinction event that had formed Halley, but that's fine. Vera and Hawthorne are the ones who have to sell the idea that this is how the land looked after the comet had hit. That's something they can do through careful artifice and structured drama; the shrubbery won't affect them that much, and it's important that people understand that deserts aren't just endless stretches of sand dunes as televisions try to portray them.
None of the Pokemon in here rush over to you as the Ghost-types in the first room had. You'd wanted the Pokemon in that room to be the ones with vibrant and expressive personalities, the kind that Adam and Juliet can utilize easily to play out dramas of the approaching meteor above. These ones are colder, more lethargic. No less powerful for it, but it's easy for these Pokemon to sell the kind of tired hopelessness that appears in the wake of disaster.
Juliet hasn't said a word since the two of you entered this room, just looked around, rubbing her arms and shivering in the colder temperatures. You don't say anything, but you do wordlessly slow your pace for a moment until you're walking beside her, fixing your eyes forward. She might not understand the gesture, but that's fine.
The silence continues as the two of you finish making your way out of the room and into the final hallway.
This one is your favourite.
Something people tend to forget when they hear you talking about things like disasters is that there's more to them than the disaster itself. People think of the event- the fall of the meteor, the earthquake, the avalanche- but when they think of the aftermath, they only ever think of the immediate aftermath. They think of the lives lost, the land destroyed, the injuries and destruction and loss.
People have a bit of trouble conceptualizing long-term effects. They forget that the aftermath of a disaster extends months, years, decades, centuries into the future in some cases. There's all the maimings and the loss of life and the environmental destruction, but after that comes the gradual recovery.
Loss is a bitter thing, but given time, people can learn to live with it, to make space in their hearts to remember the dead and move on into the future. Buildings can be rebuilt. New animals will move in and have families of their own. Seeds will fall and take root and germinate, and decades or centuries or millennia later, new life will have taken root.
That's the final hallway. If the second room of your Gym is the cold and bitter aftermath of the disaster, then this is the long recovery afterwards.
From here, a countdown starts. Thirty million years ago. Twenty-five million years ago. Fifteen million years ago. One million years ago. Fifty thousand years ago. Ten thousand years ago. One thousand years ago. One hundred years ago. Today.
Fossils aren't as common after the extinction event. The formation of so many of them around that point is what's led to their current ready availability. Unfortunately, that means it's been much harder for you to get your hands on any actual bones or fossils more than around twenty million years old. You've had to rely on recreations and paintings and things that scientists think are plants that resemble those from millions of years ago. Not really much else you can do other than that, though.
And once again; silence. Until finally;
"Okay, I don't get the lighting." Juliet doesn't quite sound annoyed- perhaps consternated might describe it better, but that doesn't quite seem to describe it either. "Why is it getting darker now?"
You look up at the ceiling, where the lights are indeed growing dimmer- and fading into blue- and then offer her a smile with just slightly too much teeth to be comforting. "You only noticed it now?" you ask, then hurry on when that causes her to shrink back into herself rather than roll her eyes at you. "It's a time of day theme. I thought it would be cute if it felt like time passed while you were in there."
Her eyes widen in comprehension then. "Oh! That's why the lights were more orange in the last room!"
"And why we offset them to the west," you confirm. "The lights are set to gradients. Walk into the foyer, it looks like morning, just after dawn. Then noon, then dusk, then…" You pause a second for theatrical effect, waiting just until the two of you emerge from the hallway into the final room, then gesture, swinging your arms out in a sweeping motion that encompasses the entire room. "Midnight."
This one; this is your favourite room of them all.
The room's dark, and it's cold. The temperature here's set automatically to below freezing, cold enough that you can see Juliet rubbing at her eyes from the sting and trying to pull her jacket up closer. The temperature's almost cold enough to be comfortable for you here.
And again; it's dark. You and Juliet can see fine down here, but most challengers will barely be able to see a thing. The only light you've set into the room is a huge, pale orb, illuminated from behind by a single feeble light to give it a vaguely luminescent glow like an enormous full moon, just barely throwing out enough light to let challengers see by. It's set behind your own Gym Leader platform- a bar slung across two chains hanging from the ceiling.
It doesn't look very impressive right now, but you've tested the effects before. It's striking, seeing someone sitting up there, featureless and blank, the only thing illuminated in the entire featureless room.
Of course, you're going to have your Gym Pokemon roaming the sands when challengers walk in; vague, formless things stalking around in the dark, whispering to you and hearing your own fractured whispers in turn. That's part of the challenge- seeing who can determine that they're not meant to fight you, that they're meant to sneak around you and make it to the secret hall in the back where their Badge sits on an illuminated pedestal.
Right now, the Pokemon aren't doing that. Lazy things are still sitting off in their alcoves enjoying breakfast, probably.
Juliet's been struck speechless, so you're the one to pick up the slack this time. "Alright," you say loudly, your voice a drawl that echoes across the room. "He's in here. Watch your footing- sand's a bit unstable in here."
You lead her around the edge of the room to the second of the alcoves here. They're hidden behind a layer of solid rock, rock that depresses only when you press another button on the fob in your pocket and then turn a seemingly random protrusion of rock on the wall down. A section of the rock shifts back, then up- revealing one of the several hidden alcoves in the room.
This, of course, is where you keep your Gym Pokemon whenever there's a challenge going on. They live here, but you can't just have dozens of random Pokemon wandering around while challengers walk around twitching at perceived threats. You could just keep them in Pokeballs, of course, but- that goes against the whole point.
These alcoves, on reflection, were probably responsible for a whole week of construction time. Even flinging League money at the construction workers hadn't made setting up these alcoves and the spatial fields inside them go up that quick.
Mamoswine's in here, the ancient Pokemon grunting at you as you walk in, but he ignores you in favour of his food, and you return the favour. He's not one for socialization at the best of times, but even less so on an empty stomach. The Cetitan that wanders around his legs does come over for a pat, the Banette looks blearily at you from a pile of plushies buried in the back corner of the alcove, and the two Vanillice who've claimed a shelf on the wall as their nest burble happily at you as you and Juliet walk past, but you're not here for them.
You're here for this little guy.
Most of the Pokemon you'd found are well-behaved. You'd gone out of your way to only recruit Pokemon who want to be here, whether that's from wild populations straining for resources in the desert or League Pokemon who'd agreed to fight alongside you for a few years for the battle experience, but this one's an exception.
He's a rescue. An abandoned Pokemon someone had brought in to the Pokemon Centre, having found him curled up miserably on the side of the road.
"Alright," you say with a huff, drawing yourself down so you can meet him from a more even height. "This is the Pokemon I was telling you about, Juliet, the one I want you to help one of the others out with. Meet…"
[ ] Swinub.
Swinub is a depressing case. Swinub is also, depressingly, a common case.
The League encourages mutual co-operation between Pokemon and Trainer. This is the core and most fundamental idea of the League, the ethos which drove its foundation and which is its primary mission today. This manifests in a thousand thousand little ways, from the television programming it funds to the highlights official materials put out on trainers who give special care to their Pokemon.
Unfortunately; there Gym Circuit leads many to misunderstand this bond. There are those who look at the dynamic between Trainer and Pokemon and think to themselves; yes, this is about strength.
This is Swinub; a Pokemon who attempted to befriend a Trainer. Mamoswine are powerful Pokemon, known for their awful physical strength and ability to control sharp shards of ice, and as such the Trainer readily agreed. Then, it became apparent that Swinub is not that strong. Maybe one day he can grow into the level of strength that Mamoswine display- but today, he cannot even summon Rock-type energy, let alone display mastery over Ancient Power.
He is simply a weak, vulnerable Pokemon, and as such his Pokeball was broken and he was left in front of Halley at night. The pain of this betrayal stings still, and the Pokemon has grown bitter and resentful since, untrusting of humans and their capricious natures.
You'd like Juliet and Adam to show him that this isn't the natural endstate. There are those that care for and love Pokemon for their own sake. Perhaps, given that, he might one day be able to find the friendship he'd sought out before.
[ ] Cubchoo.
Cubchoo is a case that grinds at your heart. It is, thankfully, also a rare case.
The bond between trainers and their Pokemon is a beautiful and precious thing. For a hundred years and more, the League has poured immense amounts of money and immeasurable man hours into ensuring that these bonds remain strong and all who wish to be a part of these bonds are given the opportunity to do so.
Unfortunately, the world is rarely a kind or warm place. Protecting the bond between people and Pokemon is the League's shining ideal, but sometimes harsh reality interferes and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it.
Cubchoo's story is as such;
There was a family born at the foothills of Mount Townsend, the largest and coldest mountain in Laurum. The family was a kind family of four, two parents and two young children, and they often ventured up into the mountain together. They were safe about it, only venturing to areas that young children could be brought to no serious harm.
It was on one of these ventures that young Jamie found a Cubchoo alone, wandering the slopes of Townsend. The Cubchoo had grown large enough to leave his mother's den, but he was not yet old enough to fight off the pangs of loneliness. The two quickly formed a bond and became inseparable, and on Jamie's ninth birthday, their friendship was made permanent with the gifting of a Pokeball to young Jamie.
The two would train and train and train, enthralled with the idea of one day taking on the Gym Circuit. Their minds were filled with the idea of Championship, of standing on stage and waving down to their family flushed with victory and acknowledgement.
Then, at age eleven; a diagnosis. Leukemia. Fifty percent survival rate. Soon, that hope flickered, then died. Six months to live. A month later, downgraded to three. Two months later, downgraded to a week, at best. Say your goodbyes, Jamie.
The family moves soon after. Away from the cold peaks of Townsend to the hot, dry climes of Torne, as far away from the memory of their child as they could get. There was always one thing left behind, however; one little Pokemon left shivering and lonely, a reminder of what they'd lost. That's how Cubchoo's Pokeball had ended up abandoned on the side of the road, thrown away in a fit of depressive anger by a grief-driven parent.
You'd like Juliet and Hawthorne to care for the little Cubchoo. It's a tragedy, really; he'd barely gotten to know his former owner, and now they've been ripped apart by cruel fate. That tragedy doesn't have to define his life, however. Maybe between the two of them, they can remind Cubchoo that others do exist- that he can, one day, move on, keeping the memory of a child close to his heart.
[ ] Variant Darmanitan.
Darmanitan is a case that makes you angry. There are other things you can say, but that encompasses it all. It makes dark anger rise in your heart, and that is not something that happens much.
The bond between humans and Pokemon is something that is special to you, to Morgan Redden, the human being. There is something beautiful about seeing two beings from such disparate walks of life come together and make their lives fuller and brighter. You are a twisted person with a heart of ice, but moments like these can bring even a person like you to tears.
Not everyone understands this. Not everyone believes it as true.
Sometimes, the capture of a Pokemon goes like this;
A trainer will decide they want a particular Pokemon. It can be for a variety of reasons; perhaps it is rare and will sell for a lot of money, or perhaps it is strong and will be a valuable addition to their team, or perhaps it is merely due to arbitrary fascination. Either way, the process is always the same; the trainer decides that they want a particular Pokemon, and the Pokemon disagrees. It is not interested in going with this person.
This is irrelevant. The trainer believes their desire to be more important than that of the Pokemon.
It is possible to forcibly capture a Pokemon. It is more than simply fighting them- there are those who will test a trainer before allowing themselves to be captured, but this is more than that. It is possible for one to beat a Pokemon, to attack them so much the Pokemon risks fainting, and then continue applying pressure to them. Exhaust them so much that there is no fight left in the Pokemon, then pull out the Pokeball.
Then, keep it up. Beat them down when they show any hints of rebellion. Put the boot to them. Crush their independence and their will and every thought they have of escape.
This is Darmanitan's story.
The unexpected ending; a thief is caught by surprise by a Trainer arrived in Halley in preparation for the Gym Circuit's opening in a week. He fights, and he loses, and in his panic he throws Darmanitan at them and flees. The thief flees, but Darmanitan is left behind, unconscious now the Trainer has been forced to fight it to submission. Its Pokeball is still with the thief- but the Pokemon itself is safe now, even if it might never be recaptured again.
It's your hope that Juliet and Vera together can work to show Darmanitan that this is not representative of what humans have to offer. Maybe, just maybe, through careful and concerted effort, they can help Darmanitan to reclaim its independence and will to live its own life.
By the look on Juliet's face, she agrees. You've brought her- and the rest of your Gym Trainers- to check on its progress several times over the last few weeks, watching as the bones of the building were built and the caverns within the former mine terraformed, but this is the first time any of you have actually seen the finished building.
Well, okay.
Technically, you've been given daily updates on the Gym's construction, complete with photographs of the progress made each day, budget estimations, delays in shipments of materials, price adjustments as delayed materials were sourced locally at increased costs due to time constraints, and a ten-minute phone call after dusk each night where the foreman talked you through what work had been done and how the timeline was progressing.
But it's the first time you've seen the Gym in person, and that counts for something. It's much more impressive in person than it is in photographs.
"It's bigger than I expected," Juliet says, looking up at the symbol carved on the building's brown roof. She has to tilt her head back quite a bit to look up at it
The front wall of the Gym is quite tall. To make the building look even more imposing, the builders had contracted in a local builder with a trained Steelix to carve away at the roof of the cavern, giving them more space to work with. Where the bulk of the caverns and tunnels in Halley stand just two to three metres tall, this one now rises up a good six metres tall.
It's the same size as most Gyms, but it looks more impressive when the surroundings make claustrophobic people shiver.
Still. "Need to get some statues ordered in," you muse. "Some gargoyles to sit beside the doors, or something like that."
Juliet blinks, mouthing the word 'gargoyle' to herself with a confused look on her face, but you don't give her any time to question you on the topic. Instead, you stride forwards towards the glass doors of the Gym, forcing her to fall quickly into place behind you.
One of the nice things about this Gym being yours is that you were able to craft the amenities to suit you, in particular. For instance; though these glass doors are automatic, set to open to anybody approaching them between the hours of eight in the morning and seven in the evening, they're also keyed to a fob you can carry around on your person. A single press of a button, and you finally have a set of automatic doors that aren't confounded by your existence.
Truly, technology has wrought miracles.
The Gym's foyer is nothing particularly special. It's lit brightly, the gentle lights in the ceiling set to wash the room in light reminiscent of the morning sun. There's a large desk off to the side, locking off an area behind which your League-assigned Gym Aide is going to be working, and a large screen set to the other side of the room, displaying challenger's appointment times and your own availabilities. Currently, it's empty. The door leading into the Gym proper lies between the two, and that's where you and Juliet bustle off to.
"Ah." You make a noise of satisfaction once the two of you have made your way inside and you can actually see the walls of your Gym. "They managed to get the artwork done. Excellent."
Your Gym is structured like this:
There are three caves within. Each cave is linked to the next by a long, winding mineshaft, the first of which emerges from the foyer. The entire Gym is a good few kilometres long between the mineshafts and the caves within, though that's a misleading distance- challengers aren't expected to walk through the entirety of the last cavern, nor the final mineshaft that lays past it. The area that challengers are expected to travel is just slightly under two kilometres long, winding its way through Halley and ending up somewhere in the outskirts.
There's one single problem you'd encountered with this design; Roland had forbidden you from terrifying the trainers walking through it.
Truly, it is the most depressing situation you can imagine. It would have been so easy, too; you could have killed the lights in the tunnels and forced people to progress through blind while playing sounds of Pokemon hunting them, or disoriented them within the tunnel's depths, or chased them with false boulders to terrify them into sprinting down the mines. There were so many ideas you'd been forced to discard.
So, instead, to give it some measure of aesthetic flair, you'd been forced to do this.
"Why does it look like a museum exhibit?" Juliet's face is knitted in confusion as she looks at the wall beside you. "I thought that this was…" She trails off, looking vaguely put out.
You look at the wall. It's a description of the Impactor- the massive asteroid that had impacted the land where Halley now sits. The one that had formed this crater.
The only response you can give to her is a bland shrug. "If you have to walk through a couple hundred metres of tunnel, I figured we might as well put something on it," you reply, your tone blase. "There's some windows further in with fossils and the like behind them, too. Come on."
You know it's not as impressive to look at as one might hope, but there's only so much that can be done in three weeks. The walls have been blasted back by Ground-types to make them smooth and workable, which renders them much nicer to look at, but the more important part is what you'd had painted onto them.
Every twenty metres or so, new text has been written on the wall. They're short infographics, as you don't want your challengers spending half an hour within the gym's tunnels stopping to read literal walls of text, but they're still as informative as you can make them. You'd set yourself a strict limit of one hundred words each, and it'd been hard, but you'd done it.
Written across the walls of the mineshafts, painted onto the very stones of Halley itself, lies now a timeline of the extinction event that had once given life to Halley.
It's quite aesthetically pleasing, at least in your opinion. There's a natural curve to the mineshafts that prevent too many of the infographics from being read ahead of time, but each one's big enough that they can be read while walking down the hall. Occasionally, you've interspersed them with transparent glass panes, behind which lie items of interest- asteroid shards, fossils of Pokemon and plants that had been immortalized in the aftermath of the impact, and the like.
As much as you like the effect, though, that isn't what you'd brought Juliet down here for. The two of you have come down here to meet with a particular Pokemon, not to admire your design decisions.
The first room in the Gym opens up after a little under half a kilometre, revealing the first room- the one you've designated as Adam and Juliet's.
Previously, the room had been a stark cave. Stalagmites and stalactites had run through the room, and a small stream had been the only real point of interest. A natural cave, to be certain, but it hadn't been visually interesting.
Now? Now, you've had the room carefully shaped and re-done. The floor of the cavern has been worn down to provide a roughly even walking surface, and some of the stalagmites have been thickened out, creating 'pillars' of stone jutting up from the surface. Finally, literal tons of sand have been dumped on the floor and spread out.
Walking into the room, it's almost easy to forget that this is a cave still, except for the walls that surround you in every direction. It looks like a section of the desert above has been transported below the earth.
The two of you step in the room, and are instantly swarmed by Pokemon.
"Hey, hey, hey!" you protest loudly, though you can't prevent the small smile that steals over your face as the Phantump insistently bumps your navel. "Give us a little space, please."
The crowd of Pokemon all back off, though you catch one of the Duskull at the back rolling its eye at you, and you shake your head. "We're not here for training time just yet," you inform them, causing at least three of them to let out concurrent discordant wails of shock and grief. You roll your eyes, though Juliet beside you twitches and pulls her hands over her ears. "We'll be back in a few hours to prepare you guys for tomorrow- after you've all eaten. That includes you, Houndstone." You stare pointedly at the dog-like Pokemon, who whimpers and bows his head.
Juliet shakes her head fondly at the group. The Gastly who'd fought alongside her so many weeks ago is hovering behind her head, glaring at the other Pokemon- that's why they'd all swarmed you instead, probably. Idly, you wonder if they'd still be swarming you if you released Froslass. Probably not.
You don't move on immediately from the room, of course. You're not here to be rude to your Gym Pokemon, so you do spend a few minutes with them, checking over all of them for any injuries from yesterday's training session and making sure that all of them are doing fine.
Some Gyms, you're vaguely aware, keep their Gym Pokemon in stasis when they're not training or being used for matches. Other Gyms have their own areas outside where their Pokemon can spend time when not actively being used, similar to the small cave outside your own house; natural areas, warped out into being something big enough to host dozens or even hundreds of Pokemon through spatial-warping devices.
Most people don't have the benefit of their Gyms being built into a pre-existing mineshaft, though. It's much harder to have your Gym Pokemon live within the Gym itself when you have to spend millions actually building the physical shell to let them.
You just prefer the feeling of giving them a home to call their own.
It takes the two of you a while to disentangle yourselves from the pile of Pokemon here. The Ghost-types are more affectionate around the two of you than they are around Vera and Hawthorne, and they really showcase that every time you turn up without them. Eventually, though, you manage to extricate the two of you without causing real offense to the Pokemon, and the two of you can set out into the next hallway.
It takes a minute or so for Juliet to comment on this one once you do. Her pace is slower now, her attention actually drawn to the words on the wall here.
"You really are making a museum exhibit, huh?" Juliet laughs, but it's a shaky, unnerved laugh. You swing your head to the side, taking in what she's looking at. It's another infographic, this one scrawled on the wall in black ink that's run down the wall, giving the text a vague bloody effect when set against the faint red tinge to the stone.
This Pokemon lived in the swamps of inland Laurum. It would contract its limbs and streamline its shape, then use its shell to propel itself through the water. Members of this species are suspected to have had an entomophagic diet, subsisting primarily on insects, but would opportunistically drink the blood of prey Pokemon like Omanyte and Cradily.
Experts estimate this Pokemon lived between 30-32 million years ago. It's believed the rivers that formed Kabutops' primary habitat froze when ash clouds from volcanic impacts blocked out the light for the sun, resulting in the Great Freeze.
Beside it, resting behind the full-body glass pane, is a Kabutops skeleton.
Or, well, a plaster recreation of one. You're not stupid enough to try and house a valuable ancient Pokemon skeleton within a museum accessible to the public. Team Plasma had shown everyone that was a bad idea.
"It's educational," you reply in a deadpan tone of voice. Then, more conversationally; "Apparently, there's a museum with a fossil display in Emerald City, too. They have a full set of ancient fossils, apparently, even a Relicanth fossil."
"Huh." Juliet blinks, then turns to look at another display as you walk past- this one a series of amber beads hung carefully on strings, displaying fossils of ancient leaves and insects from tens of millions of years ago. "Aren't Relicanth still around now, though? I thought I heard a news article about them a few years ago. Or maybe I'm thinking about Remoraid…"
You shake your head, checking over each display quickly as you walk past. "They were only recently rediscovered. They're deep-sea Pokemon, and we still aren't able to explore down there very much."
She sounds properly curious when she replies now, like you've actually caught her interest. "Then how do we know they're still around? Did one wash up in Galar or something? I think I watched a movie like that, but it was about an ancient Lapras…"
The corner of your lip curls up. You're pretty sure you know what movie she's talking about. The Transport Pokemon: Legend of the Deep. It was one of your favourite movies as a kid. "Hoenn, actually," is what you answer with. "A school of them washed up in Sootopolis when Kyogre and Groudon fought. We think they were dragged up by Kyogre's waves and couldn't find their way back out. Ended up bonding with the Gym Leader there, so there's a tiny breeding population now."
"Huh…"
She doesn't have the time to offer anything more, though, because you're emerging into the second room now.
Just like the first room, this one's been moulded to look more like the desert above than a natural cave. Tons and tons of sand were transported down in sealed trucks and carefully spread around. There's been substantially more work done to this one, though.
First; there's a big 'cliff' rising off on the right-hand side of the cave, neatly dividing a third of the room off. The top of it juts outwards, leaving a lip where a handful of Ghost-types lie blissfully on the stone, but that's only there to provide 'shade' for what lies at the bottom of the cliff; a small pool of water, bubbling up slowly from below.
Around this pool of water, and within the shade provided by the cliffs above, lie a good handful of the Ice-types who had readily agreed to come fight in your Gym for you. Mostly from the Swinub and Bergmite lines, though there's two Glaceon and a variant Sandslash lying half-buried in the sand, yawning at the two of you as you pass by.
It doesn't quite mimic the watering holes of the desert above. Usually, pools of water like this are found deeper underground in half-buried caves, not just hiding within the shadows of cliffs where sand could bury them any time the wind blows in the wrong direction.
It gets the point across, though. Along with the shrubbery and the handful of flowers you could find that can survive down here, this room speaks of that truth of the desert; they're not dead and dying places. Life thrives even here.
It might run a little contradictory to the idea you're trying to get across with your exhibit on the extinction event that had formed Halley, but that's fine. Vera and Hawthorne are the ones who have to sell the idea that this is how the land looked after the comet had hit. That's something they can do through careful artifice and structured drama; the shrubbery won't affect them that much, and it's important that people understand that deserts aren't just endless stretches of sand dunes as televisions try to portray them.
None of the Pokemon in here rush over to you as the Ghost-types in the first room had. You'd wanted the Pokemon in that room to be the ones with vibrant and expressive personalities, the kind that Adam and Juliet can utilize easily to play out dramas of the approaching meteor above. These ones are colder, more lethargic. No less powerful for it, but it's easy for these Pokemon to sell the kind of tired hopelessness that appears in the wake of disaster.
Juliet hasn't said a word since the two of you entered this room, just looked around, rubbing her arms and shivering in the colder temperatures. You don't say anything, but you do wordlessly slow your pace for a moment until you're walking beside her, fixing your eyes forward. She might not understand the gesture, but that's fine.
The silence continues as the two of you finish making your way out of the room and into the final hallway.
This one is your favourite.
Something people tend to forget when they hear you talking about things like disasters is that there's more to them than the disaster itself. People think of the event- the fall of the meteor, the earthquake, the avalanche- but when they think of the aftermath, they only ever think of the immediate aftermath. They think of the lives lost, the land destroyed, the injuries and destruction and loss.
People have a bit of trouble conceptualizing long-term effects. They forget that the aftermath of a disaster extends months, years, decades, centuries into the future in some cases. There's all the maimings and the loss of life and the environmental destruction, but after that comes the gradual recovery.
Loss is a bitter thing, but given time, people can learn to live with it, to make space in their hearts to remember the dead and move on into the future. Buildings can be rebuilt. New animals will move in and have families of their own. Seeds will fall and take root and germinate, and decades or centuries or millennia later, new life will have taken root.
That's the final hallway. If the second room of your Gym is the cold and bitter aftermath of the disaster, then this is the long recovery afterwards.
From here, a countdown starts. Thirty million years ago. Twenty-five million years ago. Fifteen million years ago. One million years ago. Fifty thousand years ago. Ten thousand years ago. One thousand years ago. One hundred years ago. Today.
Fossils aren't as common after the extinction event. The formation of so many of them around that point is what's led to their current ready availability. Unfortunately, that means it's been much harder for you to get your hands on any actual bones or fossils more than around twenty million years old. You've had to rely on recreations and paintings and things that scientists think are plants that resemble those from millions of years ago. Not really much else you can do other than that, though.
And once again; silence. Until finally;
"Okay, I don't get the lighting." Juliet doesn't quite sound annoyed- perhaps consternated might describe it better, but that doesn't quite seem to describe it either. "Why is it getting darker now?"
You look up at the ceiling, where the lights are indeed growing dimmer- and fading into blue- and then offer her a smile with just slightly too much teeth to be comforting. "You only noticed it now?" you ask, then hurry on when that causes her to shrink back into herself rather than roll her eyes at you. "It's a time of day theme. I thought it would be cute if it felt like time passed while you were in there."
Her eyes widen in comprehension then. "Oh! That's why the lights were more orange in the last room!"
"And why we offset them to the west," you confirm. "The lights are set to gradients. Walk into the foyer, it looks like morning, just after dawn. Then noon, then dusk, then…" You pause a second for theatrical effect, waiting just until the two of you emerge from the hallway into the final room, then gesture, swinging your arms out in a sweeping motion that encompasses the entire room. "Midnight."
This one; this is your favourite room of them all.
The room's dark, and it's cold. The temperature here's set automatically to below freezing, cold enough that you can see Juliet rubbing at her eyes from the sting and trying to pull her jacket up closer. The temperature's almost cold enough to be comfortable for you here.
And again; it's dark. You and Juliet can see fine down here, but most challengers will barely be able to see a thing. The only light you've set into the room is a huge, pale orb, illuminated from behind by a single feeble light to give it a vaguely luminescent glow like an enormous full moon, just barely throwing out enough light to let challengers see by. It's set behind your own Gym Leader platform- a bar slung across two chains hanging from the ceiling.
It doesn't look very impressive right now, but you've tested the effects before. It's striking, seeing someone sitting up there, featureless and blank, the only thing illuminated in the entire featureless room.
Of course, you're going to have your Gym Pokemon roaming the sands when challengers walk in; vague, formless things stalking around in the dark, whispering to you and hearing your own fractured whispers in turn. That's part of the challenge- seeing who can determine that they're not meant to fight you, that they're meant to sneak around you and make it to the secret hall in the back where their Badge sits on an illuminated pedestal.
Right now, the Pokemon aren't doing that. Lazy things are still sitting off in their alcoves enjoying breakfast, probably.
Juliet's been struck speechless, so you're the one to pick up the slack this time. "Alright," you say loudly, your voice a drawl that echoes across the room. "He's in here. Watch your footing- sand's a bit unstable in here."
You lead her around the edge of the room to the second of the alcoves here. They're hidden behind a layer of solid rock, rock that depresses only when you press another button on the fob in your pocket and then turn a seemingly random protrusion of rock on the wall down. A section of the rock shifts back, then up- revealing one of the several hidden alcoves in the room.
This, of course, is where you keep your Gym Pokemon whenever there's a challenge going on. They live here, but you can't just have dozens of random Pokemon wandering around while challengers walk around twitching at perceived threats. You could just keep them in Pokeballs, of course, but- that goes against the whole point.
These alcoves, on reflection, were probably responsible for a whole week of construction time. Even flinging League money at the construction workers hadn't made setting up these alcoves and the spatial fields inside them go up that quick.
Mamoswine's in here, the ancient Pokemon grunting at you as you walk in, but he ignores you in favour of his food, and you return the favour. He's not one for socialization at the best of times, but even less so on an empty stomach. The Cetitan that wanders around his legs does come over for a pat, the Banette looks blearily at you from a pile of plushies buried in the back corner of the alcove, and the two Vanillice who've claimed a shelf on the wall as their nest burble happily at you as you and Juliet walk past, but you're not here for them.
You're here for this little guy.
Most of the Pokemon you'd found are well-behaved. You'd gone out of your way to only recruit Pokemon who want to be here, whether that's from wild populations straining for resources in the desert or League Pokemon who'd agreed to fight alongside you for a few years for the battle experience, but this one's an exception.
He's a rescue. An abandoned Pokemon someone had brought in to the Pokemon Centre, having found him curled up miserably on the side of the road.
"Alright," you say with a huff, drawing yourself down so you can meet him from a more even height. "This is the Pokemon I was telling you about, Juliet, the one I want you to help one of the others out with. Meet…"
[ ] Swinub.
Swinub is a depressing case. Swinub is also, depressingly, a common case.
The League encourages mutual co-operation between Pokemon and Trainer. This is the core and most fundamental idea of the League, the ethos which drove its foundation and which is its primary mission today. This manifests in a thousand thousand little ways, from the television programming it funds to the highlights official materials put out on trainers who give special care to their Pokemon.
Unfortunately; there Gym Circuit leads many to misunderstand this bond. There are those who look at the dynamic between Trainer and Pokemon and think to themselves; yes, this is about strength.
This is Swinub; a Pokemon who attempted to befriend a Trainer. Mamoswine are powerful Pokemon, known for their awful physical strength and ability to control sharp shards of ice, and as such the Trainer readily agreed. Then, it became apparent that Swinub is not that strong. Maybe one day he can grow into the level of strength that Mamoswine display- but today, he cannot even summon Rock-type energy, let alone display mastery over Ancient Power.
He is simply a weak, vulnerable Pokemon, and as such his Pokeball was broken and he was left in front of Halley at night. The pain of this betrayal stings still, and the Pokemon has grown bitter and resentful since, untrusting of humans and their capricious natures.
You'd like Juliet and Adam to show him that this isn't the natural endstate. There are those that care for and love Pokemon for their own sake. Perhaps, given that, he might one day be able to find the friendship he'd sought out before.
[ ] Cubchoo.
Cubchoo is a case that grinds at your heart. It is, thankfully, also a rare case.
The bond between trainers and their Pokemon is a beautiful and precious thing. For a hundred years and more, the League has poured immense amounts of money and immeasurable man hours into ensuring that these bonds remain strong and all who wish to be a part of these bonds are given the opportunity to do so.
Unfortunately, the world is rarely a kind or warm place. Protecting the bond between people and Pokemon is the League's shining ideal, but sometimes harsh reality interferes and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it.
Cubchoo's story is as such;
There was a family born at the foothills of Mount Townsend, the largest and coldest mountain in Laurum. The family was a kind family of four, two parents and two young children, and they often ventured up into the mountain together. They were safe about it, only venturing to areas that young children could be brought to no serious harm.
It was on one of these ventures that young Jamie found a Cubchoo alone, wandering the slopes of Townsend. The Cubchoo had grown large enough to leave his mother's den, but he was not yet old enough to fight off the pangs of loneliness. The two quickly formed a bond and became inseparable, and on Jamie's ninth birthday, their friendship was made permanent with the gifting of a Pokeball to young Jamie.
The two would train and train and train, enthralled with the idea of one day taking on the Gym Circuit. Their minds were filled with the idea of Championship, of standing on stage and waving down to their family flushed with victory and acknowledgement.
Then, at age eleven; a diagnosis. Leukemia. Fifty percent survival rate. Soon, that hope flickered, then died. Six months to live. A month later, downgraded to three. Two months later, downgraded to a week, at best. Say your goodbyes, Jamie.
The family moves soon after. Away from the cold peaks of Townsend to the hot, dry climes of Torne, as far away from the memory of their child as they could get. There was always one thing left behind, however; one little Pokemon left shivering and lonely, a reminder of what they'd lost. That's how Cubchoo's Pokeball had ended up abandoned on the side of the road, thrown away in a fit of depressive anger by a grief-driven parent.
You'd like Juliet and Hawthorne to care for the little Cubchoo. It's a tragedy, really; he'd barely gotten to know his former owner, and now they've been ripped apart by cruel fate. That tragedy doesn't have to define his life, however. Maybe between the two of them, they can remind Cubchoo that others do exist- that he can, one day, move on, keeping the memory of a child close to his heart.
[ ] Variant Darmanitan.
Darmanitan is a case that makes you angry. There are other things you can say, but that encompasses it all. It makes dark anger rise in your heart, and that is not something that happens much.
The bond between humans and Pokemon is something that is special to you, to Morgan Redden, the human being. There is something beautiful about seeing two beings from such disparate walks of life come together and make their lives fuller and brighter. You are a twisted person with a heart of ice, but moments like these can bring even a person like you to tears.
Not everyone understands this. Not everyone believes it as true.
Sometimes, the capture of a Pokemon goes like this;
A trainer will decide they want a particular Pokemon. It can be for a variety of reasons; perhaps it is rare and will sell for a lot of money, or perhaps it is strong and will be a valuable addition to their team, or perhaps it is merely due to arbitrary fascination. Either way, the process is always the same; the trainer decides that they want a particular Pokemon, and the Pokemon disagrees. It is not interested in going with this person.
This is irrelevant. The trainer believes their desire to be more important than that of the Pokemon.
It is possible to forcibly capture a Pokemon. It is more than simply fighting them- there are those who will test a trainer before allowing themselves to be captured, but this is more than that. It is possible for one to beat a Pokemon, to attack them so much the Pokemon risks fainting, and then continue applying pressure to them. Exhaust them so much that there is no fight left in the Pokemon, then pull out the Pokeball.
Then, keep it up. Beat them down when they show any hints of rebellion. Put the boot to them. Crush their independence and their will and every thought they have of escape.
This is Darmanitan's story.
The unexpected ending; a thief is caught by surprise by a Trainer arrived in Halley in preparation for the Gym Circuit's opening in a week. He fights, and he loses, and in his panic he throws Darmanitan at them and flees. The thief flees, but Darmanitan is left behind, unconscious now the Trainer has been forced to fight it to submission. Its Pokeball is still with the thief- but the Pokemon itself is safe now, even if it might never be recaptured again.
It's your hope that Juliet and Vera together can work to show Darmanitan that this is not representative of what humans have to offer. Maybe, just maybe, through careful and concerted effort, they can help Darmanitan to reclaim its independence and will to live its own life.
