Vote results
Quick summary:
[X] Join team two wins at 39 votes.
I'm back! Let's get working on finishing off this mission, shall we? |
"I think we should look for Old Storm's nest," you say to Shou, after only a moment of thought.
Shou turns to look at you, blinking slowly. "I don't mind doing that," he begins, "but as far as jobs go, it's the one where our Pokemon are not going to be relevant. Are you sure their energy isn't better spent elsewhere?"
You shrug. "It probably could be, but honestly? It might be nice to have a job they don't need to be so heavily involved in, and it'll give B.B. even more time to adjust."
Shou tips his head in a nod. "Then it's settled," he says without hesitation. "Team two?"
"Team two," you confirm, glancing towards Gereon. You find the man in question rather busy, in the middle of what looks to be three simultaneous conversations. "I'll wait a bit until Gereon's less swamped. Want to come with me when I head up?"
Your question is met with a silent shake of Shou's head.
With that, you settle in to wait. It's not a long wait, thankfully, and you spend it observing Gereon, coming to find the man seems to be in his element amid the chaos, easily jumping between conversations without even a pause. When two of the three conversations finally subside, a few rangers trekking their way back over to their coworkers, you slip out of your seat and make your way over to him.
Gereon greets you with a smile when you arrive, before his head snaps back around to the conversation he's having.
"You'll want to check in with Lei, he's the one who's volunteered to spearhead it," he explains to a woman a few years older than you, tilting his head towards the eastern section of the crowd. "He's just over there, look for gray hair and orange eyes, he's hard to miss."
The woman nods, mumbling out a quick thanks, before departing.
Gereon turns back to you. "Kylie! Good morning. I suppose you and Shou have decided on where you want to go?"
You nod. "We'd like to join team two, if that's possible."
"More than possible, I'm still working on getting that team up and running," Gereon explains, eyes dropping down to his laptop, perched on a small table next to him. He quickly taps out a few things on the keyboard, and you see his face crease with interest. "I notice your records say you're certified for piloting nautical vessels, is that accurate?"
"Yeah, it is." Not many rangers back in Orre went through the process of getting certification for it, admittedly. East Orre's coastline isn't large, and most travel is done over land; very few of your classmates had even touched a boat or ship before, and fewer still saw a point in spending however long it would take for them to learn how to safely pilot one. You, of course, had known how to operate boats and ships well before most people would learn how to drive, so it'd only taken you the few days of testing to get your permit. "Why?"
"Well, I wanted to know if you're up for piloting the ship," Gereon explains, eyes glinting with the same friendliness you can find in his smile. "If you don't want to, that's fine, I just prefer to pass this kind of duty around from person-to-person. It means I can avoid forcing people into doing any one thing for an entire mission,
and it looks better on an individual's after-mission reports, showing they're capable of putting their entire skill-set to use. You up for it?"
"Given it's not a sailboat or some kind of giant monstrosity, sure," you say, a little hesitantly.
"It's a smaller RUCG vessel, though it doesn't have a helipad, if that's what your angling for."
You give your expedition leader a mock-glower. "I'm not 'angling' for anything, I just want to make sure I can actually do what you're asking me to."
"See, everyone says that, but I know how people look at the big ships with the helipads," Gereon tells you sagely, so serious it circles back around to being transparently bullshit. His face breaks back into a smile, and you manage to smother a laugh before it rattles out of your chest. Gereon ducks his head for a moment, pawing through the drawers of his table, before eventually pulling out a sparsely-populated key ring and handing it over to you. "Here you are, the keys to your chariot. You'll have to wait until the meeting's done before you get acquainted with her, but she's down by the docks."
You take the keys and nod, before heading back towards Shou.
With the time it takes the two of you to finally get down to the waterfront, it's no surprise that you're the last to arrive.
You can lay the blame of your tardiness firmly at the feet of being held back by Gereon and drafted into hauling the supplies you'll need to today, while everyone else got to leave. As it would turn out, some things weren't in the right places, and by the time you'd both been given a bag apiece, you'd been some of the last people left in the building,
including the operators currently present for this mission.
The bags aren't precisely overflowing with supplies or anything, but you are carrying enough food, water, paper maps and additional gear split between two bags to support spending an entire day out on the water, if it came to that.
B.B. follows after you as you step down onto the wooden dock, silent and alert, with Urchin keeping up the rear, alert, if not particularly
silent.
"Mar, mar-mar?"
"Vee!"
Similarly, both Rune and Kaleidoscope follow after Shou, Rune chirping back whenever Urchin opts to babble - so, frequently - and Kaleidoscope mutinously shooting glares at the Eevee whenever he does. She'd tried mean-mugging Urchin for a bit on the walk over, but all that had accomplished was making Urchin try to talk to her, which unsurprisingly had been met with a hasty reversal in strategy.
Three people wait for you at the end of the dock, two of whom you easily recognize: Tex and Hye. The two of them wave you down from where they're standing, and a short distance behind them, near the edge of the dock, you can find both Dewdrop and Gigi sitting next to one another.
The last of the three you can't recognize, though he is easily identified: a man in his mid-to-late twenties, dressed in the standard military fatigues of the unit, clean-shaven and with a crewcut. That would be the person the military has 'gifted' your outing. He watches your approach carefully, almost warily, and it leaves you wondering if you've met him before. Unfortunately, without asking him - which you're not about to do - the reality is that he is one tanned-skin, short-haired man in military fatigues among a unit consisting of a lot of tanned-skinned, short-haired men in military fatigues.
So it'll probably remain a mystery.
As you approach, you turn your attention from the people to the ship you'll be piloting today. It is a decently sized vessel, you eyeball it to be around twenty-five, maybe thirty metres. The hull is mainly painted the bright orange of the Union, with the rest being mostly matte black. The design of the ship is an eminently recognizable one: back home, the few copies of this vessel the Orrian Ranger Union have access to are known, rather unflatteringly, as
boots.
As the name would suggest, the vessels are shaped quite a bit like a boot, with the main cabin of the vehicle crammed in to the tail end while the front is left relatively open, with considerable deck space meant for cargo, additional personnel, or to act as a staging point for amphibious operations. The only thing that takes up any space on the deck is a single raised structure containing a smaller, powered boat, one meant for use as either a life boat or for when the ship itself would be too large to fit into a given area. Somewhere within the storage of the ship - located in the cabin, you remember - is another half-dozen less sturdy dinghies, for use in emergencies.
These vessels are, as far as you understand them, mid-to-near shore vessels, meant to fill the operational gap between the small, speedier coastal boats and the larger patrol vessels. In exchange for not being particularly fast, what this style of vessel does best of all is punch through tumultuous waters without swamping or capsizing, and can do so at a pace that would risk most other boats, including ones larger than them. They are stable, reliable vessels, with enough onboard infrastructure to act as a rescue operation's anchor.
Written near the nose of the ship, noticed briefly as you pass, is the ship's name:
Mamoka Matsumura.
"Hey, want me to take the supplies off of you?" Tex offers as you get near, stepping forward. Dewdrop, drawn by his voice, perks up and carefully struts over to join him, bobbing her head genially in your general direction.
"If you wouldn't mind getting it all sorted?" you offer, extending the bag out towards him. "I need to get settled in the cockpit."
Tex flashes you a quick smile, taking the bag. "Not a problem."
"Thanks."
Leaving Shou to his own devices, you step up onto the deck of the boat, moving towards the cabin. Behind you, you hear Urchin's
slap-slap-slap of her tendrils come to a brief stop, before there's a
huff, then a thud and a subsequent crow of triumph, probably from her jumping across the short gap between the ship and the dock. Somewhere a little closer, you hear B.B. grunt noisily, almost a sigh.
Arriving at the cabin, you unlock the door with the keys and slip inside, glancing around. Despite its size, the cabin isn't actually all that large—the majority of the space above you is taken up by extra storage space, with the aforementioned dinghies and other random gear, accessible by a metal staircase stuffed into one corner. What space is available for you to work in is functionally split up into two sections: the front, which consists of the cockpit, and the back, which is taken up by a seating area surrounding a large table, bracketed by a few empty shelves.
Making your way up to the front, you're met with a cramped dashboard consisting of enough knobs and screens to probably tell you every last detail of the ship's current condition and position, joined by the ship's wheel, navtex, radio system and throttle.
Sinking into the faux-leather chair, the first thing you do is check above you, finding a few sun visors tucked into the space above the large window dominating the front of the cabin. Reaching up, you pull one of them down, and find a printed list of the local frequencies bobby-pinned into the visor itself, which probably isn't up to code, but you'll take it. The other sun visor is lacking in secrets, revealing only a mirror.
Powering the ship on, you go through the routine checks you've been trained - both by your parents and by the Union - to do before putting yourself out at sea. Everything looks fine, even if it takes you a moment to translate the unfamiliar Daugo when your instincts are trained to expect Galarian. You put the radio through its paces, cycling through the listed frequencies, and to your relief, pick up on the general babble of sea traffic beyond the island.
Pretty good range on this, too, you can't help but admit.
You've grown up dealing with vessels worth a fraction of what this vessel would cost on a good day, so you've been conditioned to expect much worse.
There's a gentle knock, and you turn your head to find Hye leaning up against the frame of the cabin's door, smiling genially at you. A short distance in front of him, sitting on either side of the door's entrance, are B.B. and Urchin, who you're proud to find fell into position even without your command, though you suspect Urchin is simply copying B.B. in this instance.
"Everyone and thing is on board, and we're ready to get going," Hye tells you, sticking his head further in to look around the cabin. B.B. shoots him a rather dirty look, which Hye takes on the chin without faltering.
"Ship's untied and everything?" you ask, glancing out through the front window. You can see where it's tethered in place, if not where the rope leads to, and it certainly looks no different than it did when you last looked out there.
Hye gives you a blank stare.
"It's near the nose," you explain slowly, "and unless you want me to rip the dock out when we leave, go and get that untied."
Hye fires off an awkward salute and departs. You watch him make a line for the rope and pause, staring at it in what could only be the befuddled expression of a man trying to remember the rope-tying lessons he went through in the first year of ranger school.
You settle deeper into your chair with the dawning realization that you are, probably by a wide margin, the most experienced person on board.
You try not to get a headache about that.
Following the coastline of the island north isn't difficult, so it's not long before you've eased the ship to a stop, finding yourself facing the south side of the peaks. It looms overhead, large even with the distance between your ship and the formation, as unnervingly tall and obstructive as they were when you were driven up them the first time.
Still, this is definitely close enough for the binoculars to be useful, and so, after making sure the vessel's not going anywhere, you swivel your seat around and rise to your feet.
Waiting for you near the door are B.B. and Urchin, both of whom haven't moved since you left, but now jerk to attention as you rise. You smile their way, watching Urchin fidget impatiently on the ground. B.B. is a little better at hiding his boredom and impatience - in part because you're still getting used to reading his new face - but you're pretty sure he's feeling it as strongly as Urchin.
"B.B., Urchin, alert," you instruct, and your two partners rise completely. "On me."
"Mar!"
Slipping out of the cabin, you step down onto the deck and find yourself greeted with the sight of your four other coworkers, all standing around and looking out towards the distant cliffs. Shou and Tex already have their binoculars out, but aren't putting them to use, while Hye and the soldier - Klein, as he introduced himself to you on the trip over - stand nearby, waiting patiently.
"Is this a good distance?" you ask, heads turning to look at you as you approach. "I can bring her in closer, but I'm leery of getting too close, we know there's shoals around the island."
You can thank the paper maps for that. You weren't just getting them shoved on you in the event you lost access to the internet, no, there'd been a few topographical maps of the island's shelf, among other geographical survey information.
Turning back towards the cliffs, Shou raises his binoculars up to his eyes for a moment, before letting them drop back down. "Looks good to me," he tells you.
You'll take it. "Good, we'll start here, and once we run out of things to look at, I'll move the boat a bit more. I'll keep doing that until we're sure we've scoured every bit of this side of the cliffs, and then I'll move the boat further up north, until we're facing the western side of the cliffs." You pause to pull your bag out from behind you, pawing around inside until you find your binoculars. "We'll repeat until we run out of vantage points, and if that happens without finding Old Storm's nest, I'll call it in and we'll anchor off the north of the cliffs and head onto land to finish the rest of the survey. Any questions?"
"I... know we're looking for an Altaria's nest," Klein begins slowly, "but how should I tell that apart from some other bird's nest?"
"The first thing you'll want to do is check for cleanliness," Tex informs him, and you turn to find the man already staring out of his binoculars towards the cliffs. "The area around the nest will be clear of detritus, while the nest itself will probably be dug into stone, and rimmed with carefully-placed sticks and branches. The bedding of the nest will primarily be the Altaria's white 'fluff'. Besides that, the nest will have at least partial exposure to the sky above, as Altaria can't stand nesting under rock or heavy cover, and there won't be any Pokemon nearby, or for that matter, any sign of meals. They don't shit where they eat."
Klein nods, pulling his own binoculars out from where they are hanging around his neck, and brings them up to his face as he steps closer to the side of the deck.
Before you follow suit, you glance behind you, looking towards both Urchin and B.B., who stare back up at you patiently. "Alright you two. Alert and guard."
Perking up at your command, Urchin gurgles delightedly and scuttles off to one side to oversee one end of the boat, while B.B. remains nearby.
Turning back to the cliffs beyond, you walk the rest of the distance to the boat's railing and pull your binoculars up to your eyes. At first, the intensity of the magnification is too low for you to make out much, but with a few twists of the knobs, you remedy that.
As you do, you're comforted to find that your hunch this morning - that finding Old Storm's nest might not be as difficult as one might assume, considering the amount of space you have to cover - was right. The reason is simple: bluntly, what you can see of the cliffs from here is an utter, messy, disorganized ruin. There's a surprising amount of leaf litter, given the local environment, but dwarfing it by magnitudes is the sheer amount of rocky rubble strewn haphazardly across various ledges and outcroppings. The mess hasn't yet been scoured away by the weather or curious Pokemon, though you imagine the amount of debris was probably higher when it was first deposited.
What it does mean, though, is that you'll be looking for bastions of order and cleanliness amid chaos, as it would presumably drive an Altaria up the wall to have to nest near piles of loose gravel and dirt.
You end up spending your time tracing the narrow ledges where the rubble isn't, or at least isn't quite so intense, following the creases and openings in the rock up from the lower rungs, higher and higher, glancing through what gaps you can find, and making assumptions about the gaps implied by the shape of the local landscape.
It is during a time when you're busy trying to figure out if the path you can see continues on, or if what you're seeing is an illusion created by distance, when the silence your group has fallen into breaks.
"I see movement," Hye says suddenly.
Glancing away from your binoculars, you turn to look at him. Following his line of sight, you swivel your head up and around until—
there, you see it, true to his word. Just barely visible against the red-brown stone, you spot the occasional flash of brown, red and white, visible just from behind a lip of stone. Even so, from this angle it's impossible to tell what it is, besides the fact that it is moving, and there is quite a lot of it.
"Keep your eyes on it, I'm going to pull the ship around to get a better angle," you instruct, not waiting for an answer.
Jogging towards the cabin, you hear Urchin gurgle curiously, if not the sound of her tendrils slapping to keep up with you. B.B., however, has no compunctions, and you hear him stomp after you, huffing determinedly as he does.
Climbing back into the cabin, you drop down into the seat and push the ship back into motion.
With a tight grip on the wheel, you fall back into the same meditative instincts that you rely on for using your styler, grabbing hold of your own memory of seeing movement, of where you were looking and how that referenced against your position on the boat. It's a loose and uncertain sense of spatial awareness, of a place in the world, but using it, your instincts guide you to pull off to the side and to move a bit further out from the cliffs, imagining the shift in position as a line drawn between your intended scouting target and your current position—
"The angle's good!" Hye shouts.
You cut the boat's propellers and scramble out of your seat, passing B.B., who is looking at you curiously, but intently. Hauling ass back out of the cabin, you're followed by a stomping B.B. as you jog back up to the railing, pull your binoculars out, and aim towards where you were last looking.
There, you find yourself looking at a flock of Spearow and Fearow.
You can't be sure how many there are, due to a combination of you being too far away and the sheer number of bodies in motion, but there must be at least twenty or thirty Spearow, and maybe five or so Fearow. The flock froths, circling an opening in the stone from above, and as you glance in through it, peeking between a gap afforded by your new angle, you see more Spearow spill out from within the cave, joined by yet another Fearow, all looking frazzled as they join the circling flock above. Even from this distance, it's impossible not to see the tension not just in the bodies of each individual Pokemon, but in the flock itself, with the flock being so close together there's almost no gaps between one body and the next.
"...What are Spearow and Fearow doing in a cave?" Klein asks, confused.
"That's a good question," Hye responds tightly.
"They're not living in it, I can tell you that much," Shou replies flatly. "Look down a bit—they're nesting right in front of it."
You find what he's talking about: a series of clustered, disorganized grassy nests, presumably made from materials pulled from the less harsh, lower portions of the badlands, where arid grasses thrived in what shallow soil the wind hadn't scoured from the rock.
Before you can start counting nests, something in the flock
shifts, something they notice, but you can't, not from here. The flock breaks apart a bit, gaps widening, going from what was once a dense dome of angry feathers, beaks and talons into something more like a cloud of agitation.
Then, a fraction of a second later, an Aggron emerges from the opening.
Beaks open, and the flock begins to
scream. Feathers bristling, the flock very visibly puts their all into verbally harrassing their target.
The Aggron opts to ignore the flock, trudging forward with steady steps, and they're soon followed by several Lairon, lumbering after them. Finally, once the Lairon have all made it out, a final cluster of Aron follows, more skittish than their larger evolutions, and moving in to keep close to the sides of the Lairon, heads swivelling as they take in the open hostility of their surroundings.
One of the Fearow drops from the flock above, diving towards the herd, but before they can cross the distance, the Aggron plants itself between the Fearow and the more vulnerable Aron. The Fearow, smartly, sharply breaks off their attempted dive-bomb, flapping wildly back up into the rest of the flock.
There's a moment where none of the Aggron's herd moves, while the Spearow and Fearow circle. You know what's going on now, the mental calculus the flock is making, wondering if committing to a fight would be worth it or not.
Your shoulders begin to tense.
Then, the Aggron moves again, slowly wading forward, and whatever potential, whatever
courage the collective flock once had disintegrates. The flock peels apart even further, individuals now visible from what was once a mass of churning bodies, and a decent portion of the flock breaks off entirely, flying to higher ledges. Instead of pursuing, the flock remains mostly where they are, watching as the Aggron leads their herd along the ledge the flock has been nesting on, careful to avoid trampling any of the nests as they pass.
"It's unusual for an Aggron to surface this high up, let alone bring their entire herd with them," you say, unable to hide the worry in your voice.
Not that it changes the fact that the migration is happening, but it's still probably good to recognize.
"Could be related to the flooding we've found, it wouldn't surprise me if their old stomping grounds has taken on enough water to make it unsuitable for them," Tex says, his tone a mirror to your own. "They're smart enough to know digging in a flooding cavern is just going to let water get to whatever new cavity they find or create, so there's really only one way out of that."
"That makes me concerned about how the Aggron got to that ledge," Hye says slowly. "Could be that the Aggron followed an existing route up to the ledge, but it could also be that the reason we saw Spearow and Fearow coming out of that cave is because they heard them tunnelling through to the nearest known opening, especially if an opening they would have used normally was damaged or blocked off due to earthquakes. It could mean that the ledge might become unsafe in the near future, if the water can find a way through that new hole."
"It could also be that the ledge was never safe, and if the underground flooding gets bad enough, it'll wash the nests out anyway," you point out.
"You're not wrong, but we should probably still make a note of it."
The Aggron and their herd fall out of sight again, vanishing into the mouth of another opening at the far end of the ledge. The Spearow and Fearow watch them go, slowly returning to the ground as the threat departs. None of them look thrilled about the interruption, and more than a few Spearow - likely the youngest members of the flock - still resemble very angry balls of feathers, even with the potential threat out of sight.
You pull your binoculars from your face. "That's probably for the best, yeah."
You pull the boat into its new position, facing the western side of the cliffs.
Of all the areas your group has to search, this one is likely to take the longest, considering its size compared to the other 'faces' of the cliffs.
All the same, you've got work to do, so after you've settled the ship into place, you pull yourself back onto your feet, B.B. springing up to join you as you make your way back out onto the deck.
"Ready for round two, everyone?" you ask, glancing across the crew. Off in one corner, you find Urchin and Rune in the middle of play, the former chasing the latter. Both of them are being overseen by Kaleidoscope, who despite having her muzzle buried in her tails, has adopted a long-suffering look so potent it reminds you of some of the older folks back home being introduced to new electronic devices.
"Aye-aye," Hye replies back sardonically, joined by a general chorus of affirmation from everyone else, Urchin included, of course.
Morning has nearly reached its apex, and you'll soon be calling for lunch. That said, it's not
quite time for that yet, and you want everyone here to get at least half-an-hour of searching in, just so they have some familiar landmarks to build from while you spend however long it takes searching the cliffs from top to bottom.
Grabbing your binoculars from where you left them on top of of your bag - which you'd left on the deck - you go to pull them up to your eyes when you both hear and
feel a distinct, pronounced
thud.
You pause, and your first instinct is to glance towards Urchin, who is more often than not the source of unusually loud bangs or thumps. This time around, though, she seems to be innocent, as you find her frozen in the middle of playing with Rune, staring towards one side of the vessel with a look of palpable confusion on her face.
Another
thud follows, as loud and powerful as the first, and the second it comes, Urchin zooms forward, right towards the railing.
The sight of it jars you into motion. "Urchin,
on me," you instruct, tone brooking no argument. You need to catch her before she gets the urge to throw herself off of the boat in search of interesting things, in your experience.
Urchin screeches to a halt, gurgling in
abject annoyance, but does move towards you as you make your way over to the side of the boat, falling into place next to your leg as you arrive. The others, you notice, have also moved this way, apparently jarred into motion by your voice.
Planting your hands on the railing, you tip your top half over and stare down into the water.
There, you find yourself looking at a cluster of Carvanha and Sharpedo fins jutting out of the water. Something in the back of your mind buzzes, a memory or piece of information you can't quite grasp, but you don't have the time to focus on it.
Thud. This one is a bit more powerful, and though you can't see the culprit themselves, you can only assume it's a Carvanha or Sharpedo, just one that's out of sight. That said, you heard it coming from the other side of the boat, which means either the culprit is moving around, or much more likely, there's more than one Pokemon hitting the ship.
There are, in the grand scheme of things, only so many explanations for the current situation, and the only realistic one among them is simple:
"We're in a pod's territory," you quickly deduce, hauling yourself back from where you'd been leaning over the railing. "And we're being given a very polite request to leave."
One that you suspect won't last if you don't start hustling, so without further comment, you start moving back towards the cabin, a trip you've become unfortunately familiar with over the morning.
"...Polite? They must be hitting the ship with enough power to"—
thud, as insistent as the last—"kill a man," Hye says, sounding exceptionally concerned.
"This is polite, because if they
weren't being polite, we'd have them ripping holes in the hull, and if they were feeling angry, well, we'd be getting hit with attacking moves," you explain, raising your voice as you duck into the cabin. "In fact, if we don't move soon, we run a real risk of ending up that way. I need someone to go to the back of the boat and keep an eye on the propellers, tell me if there's a Carvanha or Sharpedo down there. I need to move the ship, but the last thing we need is to mutilate one of the pod members."
"I'll do it!" Klein offers.
"Thanks!" you call back, before dropping into the seat. Turning your head, you watch both B.B. and Urchin scuttle in, the former having shadowed you most of today, and the latter still obliging by your request to remain near you.
Another
thud rattles through the boat. You're not sure if they're hitting the boat with their side, head, or rear, but any of them are possible. Carvanha especially are pretty physical, bullish Pokemon in your experience, if not Sharpedo, who tend to just go for the kill as quick as they can manage.
Dropping one hand onto the throttle and another onto the wheel, you prepare yourself to move the second Klein shouts, or the second you hear part of the hull get torn apart, whatever comes first.
Urchin meanders in closer, her head swivelling around to take in the space beneath the dashboard. You end up planting one of your legs in front of her to stop her from delving too deep into there—there's cords you don't want her playing with—and she responds by rubbing her cheek merrily against your ankle. It helps defuse some of the tension you feel.
"You're clear!"
Klein's shout it is.
Urging the ship forwards, you hear your coworkers begin to file into the cabin one after another, but keep your eyes pointed on the waters ahead. You run through your memories of dealing with the Carvanha line back home, and come to the conclusion you'll need to keep this pace for a little while yet. Carvanha and Sharpedo pod territories could be pretty extensive, even if they are transitory - the line is seasonally nomadic, so any given territory only lasts for as long as the pod remains in any given area - but there is a limit on how large they can get, or at least you think so, anyway.
"So what's got the Carvanha and Sharpedo so territorial, d'you think?" Tex asks from somewhere behind you and to your right.
"Probably the same thing that has the rest of Hoenn's hackles up: Groudon and Kyogre," Hye responds matter-of-factly, and you can all but hear the uncomfortable shrug that would accompany the words. "We know water-type Pokemon are among the most impacted, and in particular the Carvanha line lost a chunk of their population. It's why we had to send people out to catch or cull invasives Kyogre brought in, rather than leaving it to the apex predator population. I can't be sure if it affected this group in particular, but we also know Kyogre displaced a lot of water-type Pokemon
within Hoenn, shuffling individuals around and by extension their territories. Could be that they've had to adjust quickly to living in these waters over the last month or so."
"It's also mating season," you say, finally grasping the knowledge that had begun to bubble up when you first saw those fins jutting from the ocean's surface. "Or at least it is in Orre. Pups will be emerging within the next month or two, once eggs are laid, and then they'll migrate into shallower waters for several months after that, both for the easier access to food and the safety it provides their young."
"And if they've lost big portions of their pod, they're probably on edge," Shou says with dawning recognition. "I'm going to assume they're not normally this... direct and territorial?"
You shrug. "It varies. An entire pod swarming and headbutting your ship for passing through or near their territory? No, that's really weird, but
individuals might behave this way if they're feeling twitchy, especially if a boat is too close to egg sites or recent kills. You wouldn't see the rest of the pod like we just did, though."
You squint out through the front window for a little more, before finally easing your forward motion to a standstill. You've pulled the boat out a bit further than you normally would have if you were trying to avoid a pod's territory, but you figure it's probably better safe then sorry.
Slipping out of your seat - and jostling Urchin away with your leg, earning yourself another happy crow of delight - you follow your coworkers back out onto the deck, where Klein is waiting patiently. Glancing over the side of the railing, you crane your head and look back the way you came, taking in the sight of a great deal more fins pushing up above the surface, circling and tangling up with each-other now that your boat is gone.
None move to give chase, and their behaviour seems more relaxed. You figure you've done what they wanted you to.
"Alright everyone, the locals are happy—let's get back to staring at rocks!"
"Okay, Urchin, show me your spikes!" you instruct.
In front of you, Urchin pauses, parsing your command. Then, a moment later, she throws her tendrils out, slamming them into the ground around her and pushing her trunk up off of the ground, her cheeks puffing out. You watch as every single spike on her body pushes out, extending out as far as they can get without dislocating and falling from her body.
You let her hold it for a moment, just long enough to make sure...
"Good girl!" you cheer, smiling brightly. Urchin
slumps, trunk hitting the ground as she crows in victory, her spikes pulling in. "Alright princess, one more for me and you'll get a treat."
"Mar!"
You've been finding moments like this during your duties to train Urchin ever since you embarked on this mission, and she's shown a marked improvement in following commands each and every day you spend reinforcing them. You feel a surge of pride, but keep it buried in your chest for now; she hasn't quite earned the chunk of Corsola shedding you have tucked into your palm.
"Alright Urchin, go... find B.B. for me!" you command.
Urchin pauses once again, face going blank. You can almost
see her processing the command, trying to parse it. Then, something
clicks, Urchin's tendrils slap out around her, gripping onto the surface of the deck, and she's off to the races, scuttling her way over towards the cabin, where you left B.B. to finish up his lunch.
You leave her to it, glancing up at the others on the deck. You're getting quite a few amused looks from your coworkers, the soldier included.
"It's still so interesting how loud she is," Shou offers from one side, still picking at his own lunch. "I've genuinely only seen a few Toxapex who come close to that in terms of temperament, and they were all hand-raised, which Urchin isn't."
"Loud?!"
You reach for your bag and begin to rummage around for one of B.B.'s treats. If he responds like you expect him to, you'll need it. "See, I actually have a theory for why she acts this way."
"Nee, nee! Mar!"
"Oh?" Tex inquires, working a comb through his hair. He has a
lot of it, but you hadn't really realized that until he'd freed it from its braid a few minutes ago.
"Yeah, I think Urchin is a bit special, in that she doesn't seem to struggle with the same territorial instincts as other Mareanie and Toxapex," you explain idly, fishing the bag of sour treats you bought for B.B. out. They're just Pokemon-friendly candies, but then unlike iapapa berries, they can't go bad on you. "She definitely still has them, but maybe not as much, and she is a
lot more calm about it than other members of her species. I think that this might have let her scavenge and steal from other members of her species a lot more successfully, as I imagine most Mareanie and Toxapex would only really go into other territories looking for a fight or out of desperation, unlike Urchin, who'd slip in and out without getting worked up. Again, just a theory, but it's one I've developed through my experience around the species and Urchin in particular."
It would also explain why she has such a... lackadaisical relationship with setting traps - in that, sure, she does set them, but she doesn't seem to care that much about them - and why, when you first caught her, she was in surprisingly good health despite being hauled to Hoenn from Alola. Other Mareanie and Toxapex would probably instinctively hunker down after setting up a territory, and as more Mareanie and Toxapex accumulated on the main source of food to be found - Pacifidlog, in this instance - they'd get caught up in territorial disputes and become increasingly boxed in. Comparatively, Urchin, theoretically nowhere near as beholden to those same territorial instincts, would be much less restricted and much less defensive, giving her the freedom to move between viable targets and, like the bandit she's so often proven to be, snagging food out from beneath the noses of her competition without driving herself mad with stress.
This isn't to say she can't get freaked out by other Pokemon. You saw as much when Urchin tried determinedly to stop you from getting near the Toxapex feeding on the giant Corsola, but then you never said she had
no territorial instincts, nor did you say that she lacked self-preservation. You could make a solid argument that in that case, Urchin was trying to avoid getting you - and by extension, herself - killed by getting too close to several Pokemon she had no confidence in stealing from and with a known predisposition towards violent retaliation.
You also don't know how successful this strategy would be in the wild. It
seems like it was working for her when she was wild, but at the same time, her being less defensive might mean she could be less prepared if her own territory got invaded, or if she got caught in the middle of a heist she was pulling. Sure, she could probably just run off, but it might in theory put her more frequently in the line of fire from members of her own species.
Shou makes a thoughtful noise. "That might hold some water, honestly—"
"
Lou
d," B.B. announces his arrival behind you.
You turn and can't quite help yourself: you start chortling.
Standing there like a small child just rescued from time-out is B.B., with Urchin latched onto his leg like a single spiky sock. He looks exasperated, quite done with the situation, but notably not
upset. You wouldn't have sent Urchin after him if you'd thought he would get upset, but it still brings a flush of warmth to your chest that he's come so far all the same.
He does still obviously want you to stop Urchin from clinging to him like a limpet, though.
"Good girl Urchin," you call out to her, and just like that, Urchin detaches herself from B.B.'s leg and scrambles over, arriving next to your leg and hopping a few times in place, excited. You quickly pass the Corsola chunk over to her, and she eagerly hoovers it up before scrambling off to one side. In silence, you watch her plant her trunk down on the deck and curl her tendrils in around her face as she begins to gnaw on it, relishing her treat.
Turning back to B.B., you find him looking at you in a mixture of horror and betrayal.
Snagging one sour candy out, you stretch your arm towards him, candy on the palm of your hand. "Good job to you too, baby," you coo.
Just like that, the tension bleeds back out of B.B., and with a gravelly huff - evidently making sure you know he's still not impressed with this situation - he stomps over and takes both the candy and the subsequent scratches you apply to his chin.
It's only after your lunch break that you find something.
When you do, you're not actually sure what you're looking at initially. Rather, your brain is just insisting something about it is wrong. It's a part of the cliff where the rock sinks in deeper than its surroundings, leaving a groove bracketed by ragged teeth of stone. It goes in at least a meter, possibly more, but...
It finally clicks.
The colour of the stone, faint as it is, indicates it has been scorched.
You're looking at signs of a battle, or at least move use.
"Follow my binoculars, I think I've found a battle site," you call out, hearing the scuff of boots and shift of clothes as your coworkers follow your request.
"See that crease in the centre? It's discoloured deeper in, where the wind and rain haven't quite gotten to it yet, and I'm pretty sure it's a scorch mark from fire-type move usage," you explain. "If I had to guess, it's an impact site, either from a move that missed, a move that didn't miss and hit the target right by the wall, or one that carried them back to it before detonating."
"The chunks of rock near the impact site, those aren't just variations in the shape of the cliff, either," Shou points out just moments after you finish speaking. "Look at the gaps, some of those are too clean; I think it was sliced or slashed apart."
He's right, now that you're looking at it more closely.
"Claw marks on a nearby cliff edge," Hye points out just a few moments later. "Something gripped onto it and was then torn away. It's probably not a landing or impact, you'd expect to see signs of that."
"That sharp line up there? The one that kind of sinks into the stone?" Klein adds, indicating a sharp rift a few meters above the impact site you found. "I've seen it before during training. That's a cutting move impact site, think Slash, Aerial Ace, Cut, Night Slash, that kind of thing. You can tell because of how clean the damage is, it's from how the aura is condensed down into such a narrow form."
"I'm seeing impact damage elsewhere, too," Tex says a moment later. "Something with a lot of kinetic force hit this shelf, and it tumbled down until it collapsed onto the lower shelf, down there."
Most damning of all, however, is one you all end up finding collectively over the next several minutes: a series of impact sites, a kind of dotted line of destruction to the landscape, which draws a path where something—perhaps a rock, or possibly a body—had fallen from higher above, hitting several parts of the cliff on their way down and taking pieces of it with them, until it finally hit the bottom.
The fact that there's a distinct absence of rubble near the bottom, where the terrain has been twisted up into a sharp landscape of valleys thanks to tidal forces, indicates it was probably a body, or at least something that has either been washed away or consumed in the time since the fight happened.
You end up spending more time on this particular site, looking for further evidence, but little else is revealed to you. The damage is faded, if not so old that it's completely gone, and you're forced to eventually give up inspecting this individual site, if only because you need to do work elsewhere.
The rest of the western face, however, gives about as much as your secondary searches did. You find a few Wingull nests, more signs of recent damage, but nothing that's so clearly marked as the result of a conflict between one aura-bearing lifeform and another.
"...I think that's it."
The words startle you from your thoughts, your head snapping around, away from your binoculars, and towards Tex, who you find staring up at the northern face of the Sky Perch Cliffs through his binoculars.
Glancing at the angle they're pointed at, you pull your head back around and follow his gaze.
It takes you a moment, longer than you want to admit, but you do eventually find what he's talking about.
Backlit by the afternoon sky, with clouds creeping in from the horizon, is a cranny nestled on the corner of the cliffs face, where it begins to wrap around to the western side. It is surrounded on one side by the natural rocky formation, creating a single wall, but leaving the space above and to all other sides of the cranny open. The flat terrain the cranny consists of is immaculately clean, not a speck of dust, gravel or dirt to be seen, and in the centre, just
barely visible, is a divot in the stone, one encircled by twigs.
Turning the dial on your binoculars, your vision narrows in.
And you find, behind those twigs, flecks of white—the wispy material of an Altaria's cloudy plumage.
You've found nothing like this yet, and while you haven't confirmed it, not quite yet...
Tex might just be right.
"Tex, you saw it, can you go up on Dewdrop and try to get a better line of sight on it to confirm?" You fight back the rising hope in your chest. This isn't the first false-positive to appear, but it is the only one that held up after even a minor amount of scrutiny. Past false positives had been mostly mistaking bands of washed-out brown stone for twigs or Altaria fluff, and quickly proven wrong once you had more than one set of eyes on it.
"It looks real," you hear Hye breathe in relief.
"Still needs to be confirmed," Shou interjects, always willing to tamp down on enthusiasm.
"I can," Tex confirms, and you pull your gaze away from your binoculars to find him stepping back. He brings one hand up to his mouth and whistles sharply, drawing Dewdrop down from where she's been napping on the roof of the cabin, leaving Gigi to their own devices up there.
Reaching behind his shoulders, Tex grabbed onto his helmet and pulled it back over his hat, before buckling it into place and moving towards Dewdrop. Dewdrop, in turn, bowed low, leaving her back - and the saddle wrapped around it - available for him to ease himself onto.
A moment later, and he's off, his Bombirdier carrying them both up into the sky above.
You watch him carefully without your binoculars as he guides his Bombirdier closer and higher up. You see him pull his binoculars up to his eyes and stare through them.
Thirty seconds later, he lands again.
Tex sidles off of Dewdrop, who croons idly, and gives you a serious, if relieved stare. "I think it's Old Storm's. We've mostly confirmed no other Altaria are living near the peak anymore thanks to his behaviour, and that would be the only other reason why that site would exist. The area's clean, the bedding is new, and I see no sign of water damage. We've found it."
"I'll call it in," you say immediately. "Shou, help Tex get the digital map updated, eyeball the distance if you need to so you can place an accurate enough pin. I'll check in with Gereon, make sure they haven't discovered a second Altaria in the peaks or something while we've been gone, and then we'll head on back to base."
It's not long after your team returns to the hotel that forces are mustered.
And you do mean
forces here, it's not just your coworkers that crowd the front lobby of the hotel, but
everyone who is to be involved, including every single member of the 32nd, by the looks of it, though you can't be sure if someone wasn't left behind in whatever place they've been holed up in.
There's not enough seats for everyone, or at least not enough without digging them out from storage, so you all stand.
At the front of the room is Gereon, a focused look on his face.
"We know where Old Storm sleeps, we know where he eats, and we know the timeline for removing the explosives from the deposits. We know where most of the heirs have made their homes, and we know how to reach those locations," he explains, hands folded behind his back. "And so, now that we know what to do, we need only do it. We have a plan, one that's going to be set into motion tonight, leading into tomorrow."
There's a hush over everyone present. The rangers, you suspect, are quiet because this is the final stretch of the mission, the days before they can rest. For the soldiers, you imagine they're relieved to finally be doing the job they've ostensibly been sent here to do.
"The plan is simple, if made up of several parts. First thing's first: one team will be deployed into the Sky Perch Cliff's Sandshrew-line colonies that Old Storm has been feeding from, to lay the bait and confirm he eats it. The bait has been dosed with a strong, if slow-working sedative, which will take around fifteen minutes to kick in, but once it does, Old Storm will fall unconscious. This team will then move in to capture and transport Old Storm to a stasis device we'll have set up at the base of the cliffs," Gereon explains. "This team will not be taking recruits, and I'll be leading it. I've already asked those who I want to come with me, and we'll be leaving sometime around two in the morning to get into position for when Old Storm comes to eat. Joining us will be a second team, made up of units of two, spread across the Sky Perch Cliffs. This team's job will be fairly simple: watch and track Old Storm's movement, passing information along using radios, both before and after he eats the bait. Once he has been retrieved and placed into stasis, this team will then watch and if necessary step in to defuse any potential situations between the heirs that make it to the cliffs despite our attempts to stop them."
There's a pause, a lull in the speech.
"This team will also be joining my own in the event that our attempt to sedate and capture Old Storm fails, whether it fails initially, when he's in a pokeball, or if he discovers, then attempts to attack one of us. Drake will also be part of this team, though he will be withholding his Pokemon until such a time that they become necessarily, hopefully never."
Heads swivel to the man in question, and Drake offers a single rigid nod to the crowd, his hands folded in front of him.
"Two more teams will be arranged for the munitions. These munitions are to be extracted using teleporters, with the military detachment containing them and additional aid arriving tonight, consisting of several Alakazams and one Gallade. One ranger team will work with the teleporters inside of the munitions area, protecting them from hazards and aiding them as they request, while the other team will be located at the teleportation destination site: a flattened lot some ways outside of Reedpier," Gereon continues. "This second team will help protect not just the teleporter acting as an anchor for the others, but also the crew of ice-type Pokemon that will be deployed on-site to freeze the teleported munitions solid. The ice, infused with ice-type aura, will render the munitions inert, and once frozen, the explosives will be placed in a transport vehicle and moved to a temporary dock site in the island's south. This team will remain with the disposal team from start to finish, only parting ways once the explosives have left the island, to be disposed of elsewhere. The estimated time for removal of all munitions is around four hours, assuming nothing goes wrong, due to the munitions depot being relatively small, and the skill of the disposal team involved."
You glance off to the side briefly, taking in the sight of Captain Yasuda. He looks, if not pleased, then at the very least
comfortable with what's being said here. Not relaxed, no, you're not sure if you could read him well enough to identify that, but certainly not upset with the way things are being done.
Good, the last thing you need is more trouble.
"Finally, there are two final teams. The first will be the largest team, and will need the most support, as they will be separated out into mobile units of four to six individuals who will be placed at key locations and will be tasked with distracting, waylaying, and stopping the heirs in the eastern portion of the island. While combat should be avoided if possible, you're unlikely to go the entire night without a fight, so expect to get into a scrap with an Altaria or two," Gereon tells you, eyes scanning across the crowd. "For the last, smallest, and final group, you will be stationed in the area around Reedpier, mainly as additional scouts, observing anything that comes near Reedpier as this operation goes on, and as the designated evacuation leaders, in the event that this situation takes a massive turn for the worse. You'll also be responsible for overseeing the sole Altaria still remaining in the town, as while we can't be sure, strong evidence points towards her being a heir, and you will be tasked with stopping her if she attempts to head to the peak, though it's unclear if she will try, as she has made every attempt to avoid interacting with her peers or establishing a large territory. Every team will include rangers and what soldiers can be provided outside of roles already earmarked for them, as agreed between myself and Captain Yasuda."
There's a dull murmur in the room, both from soldiers and rangers both.
"All the same, where you go must be decided now, as we have to depart fairly early in the morning. While my own team and the second team will need to leave the earliest, if only to gain the advantage over Old Storm, the rest of you should expect to deploy not that much longer after we do. Discuss among yourselves, but choose something, and be ready to tuck in early tonight."
The murmur rises to a roar of voices, discussion, most of it tense.
You turn to look at Shou, he looks back.
For a moment, nothing is said.
Then, something deep inside of Shou seems to relax, and he meets you with a confident look—hard to tell, against the impassive neutrality he wears like a shield, but nonetheless
there.
"I trust you, Kylie," he says slowly. "I would like an area where me and my Pokemon can best perform using the skills we've developed, but in saying that, I'm... not making this into a tit-for-tat. If you think we are needed somewhere, then I'll follow. You've proven to me you can be a reliable leader. It's entirely up to you."
His voice is impossibly gentle for a guy you wanted to punch not all that long ago.
Choice:
[ ] Join the team watching the cliffs
You'll be on the front lines, tasked with tracking Old Storm for the initial part of the mission, and then remaining in place to observe and intervene in any conflicts the heirs that make it past the others try to start. Your ability to track Old Storm and, later, the heirs, is not one to sneeze at, as between you and B.B., you make quite the team. That said, this is the most dangerous role out of them, as if something goes wrong in capturing Old Storm, you'll not only be in the line of fire, but you'll be expected to intervene, hell or high water.
[ ] Join the team extracting the explosives from the munitions depot
You'll be heading down into the munitions depot discovered days ago, contained within a semi-flooded cavern full of explosives, where you'll bring your experience in navigating underground environments, especially flooded ones. You'll be joined by the extraction team, and be expected to help them get to their destination and protect them from anything you might disturb while down there. As evidenced today, there's plenty of movement visible within the cliffs, and rangers will be needed to make sure the teleporters can do their job as safely and quickly as possible.
[ ] Join the team protecting the teleportation site
You'll be part of the group protecting the site where munitions are to be teleported and frozen by ice-type Pokemon the military has trained for this purpose. You and your Pokemon have proven your ability in guarding sites before, with B.B. and Urchin both being powerhouses in defensive combat, making you a solid choice in this area. While there's little to no chance of the explosives themselves posing a risk once frozen, throwing that much ice-type aura around in the open plains surrounding Reedpier is unlikely to go unnoticed, whether by local Altaria or, more likely, the inhabitants of the grasslands.
[ ] Join the team waylaying the heirs
You'll be part of the units sent out to disrupt and halt the movement of the heirs as they come to investigate Old Storm's absence, where you can put to use your experience in navigating difficult jungle terrain and your known ability to disrupt the activities of Altaria using B.B.'s voice. This is likely to involve combat, and you have to take that into account, especially considering that you'll be facing down the heirs, ostensibly the next strongest members of the hierarchy. All the same, it's a job that must be done to ensure the hierarchy doesn't collapse during the operation.
[ ] Join the team protecting and observing the area around Reedpier
You'll be part of the small detachment sent to protect Reedpier and to watch for movement passing by it, as well as dealing with the Altaria in-town, if she attempts to make an exit. You're well-suited for reconnaissance, as established before, and you have developed a slight rapport with the Altaria in the town, which could give you an edge if she tries something. While ostensibly the least combat-oriented option, it's still one that must be done, if not for the tracking you can provide, then simply because someone with a calm head on their shoulders has to be there to start evacuating the town if everything goes wrong.
