a.4
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
| Vote results Quick summary: [X] Speak of the time when your family's boat ran aground on an ancient Wailord won at 18 votes. QM Note: I really hope the options at the bottom get across the idea of what you'll be dealing with, but I'm still not 100% sure about them. I rewrote those sections several times, I rewrote a lot of this chapter several times, but I hope you enjoy all the same. Also sorry about some of the more slapshod images I included. I couldn't find any better way to show the specific parts of the map. |
"Before I forget again, anyone here want a drink? I don't have anything alcoholic on me—it seemed like a bad idea considering the circumstances—but I've got soda, some juice and water," Harun says suddenly, shouldering his backpack free and setting it down on the ground in front of him. "Thought it'd be nice to have, considering the weather," he adds, almost sheepishly.
Dario walks up to Harun's side, grinning. "Don't get all embarrassed about it," he teases, before growing rather more serious and giving his bag a look. "Did you bring any cola?"
Harun, seemingly caught between exasperation and embarrassment, jabs Dario in the side with his elbow. "Yeah, I brought cola. I knew you were going to be here, so it'd be a bit like forgetting to call the fire department when your house bursts into flames."
"Hey, don't compare me to a house fire!"
Harun ignores him, turning to look at you. "Kylie, Suzume, either of you want something?"
"I'll take water," you say. It's the safest option out of the three in terms of getting something you could drink without grimacing.
"Me too," Suzume chimes in across from you.
Harun pulls a bottle of soda - a brand you can't recognize, unsurprisingly - a single bottle of orange juice, and two bottles of water out of his backpack, handing them out as he goes.
You pop the seal on the bottle and take a deep swig, suddenly reminded that you haven't had anything to drink since your belated lunch. Or eaten anything, for that matter.
You're going to have to scrounge something up when you get back to your hotel.
"What a mess," Suzume says into the silence, pausing to take a sip from her water only for her face to suddenly flush with shame. "Gods that's mean of me, I'm sorry—"
Dario holds up his cola, interrupting her. "Hey, no, it is a mess."
"It is. I'd love to have shown you both around Hoenn when it wasn't... like this, but honestly, the last few months have been leading up to this anyway," Harun agrees, sighing. "Team Magma and Team Aqua didn't exactly emerge out of nowhere—the legendaries might have blindsided us, but things were building to something. Nobody expected Groudon and Kyogre, or Rayquaza, but then why the hell should we?"
"Hear, hear," Dario mutters, taking another drink. "I don't like that Hoenn's so hurt right now, but I can hardly say I'm ashamed of the fact that we need help. I think any region would need help if something like this happened."
You consider for a moment what might have happened if Groudon emerged from Mount Battle and Kyogre from the coast, and quickly come to the conclusion that Orre would probably end up a combination smoking crater and half-flooded wasteland within a day.
The thoughts of calamities back home does, however, tug on the memory that you'd plucked out of your childhood just a minute or two ago. You glance around, finding some of the tension and sadness from before gone—but not entirely forgotten.
"All three of you were here for when this all started, right?" you ask.
"I was in Lilycove," Suzume offers. "Just got done doing a training exercise when the skies went from completely empty and clear to covered by clouds. I... I can't describe it, not well enough, you'd have to see it, but here's a fact I never wanted to know: the rain was summoned by Kyogre, which meant I got to watch as the entire sky glowed that water-type blue all at once before the clouds formed. I hope I never see anything like that again—that's too much power."
"I was supervising a construction site in north Mauville City," Dario picks up, next. "The company has a bad habit of sticking its nose up about regulations, so I was sent over to babysit and advise. Nine days of nothing, of being told they'd 'take what I said under consideration' with a look like they were being forced to stare at an open wound, and then... Mount Chimney erupted off in the distance, and then it just kept erupting. Perpetually. Earthquakes started up after that, and I had to start getting people out of there. I thought it was just a really bad eruption, one nobody really accounted for, but... it didn't take long for me to start getting emergency calls and announcements about the situation."
Harun turns to look at you as the other two finish speaking. "I was on duty at the time, just doing the rounds on local habitats we had concerns about. I was on Route 123, and I didn't actually see it when it happened. I felt Groudon's emergence, and then I got caught in the storm Kyogre created sometime after." He pauses, then, taking in a long breath. "Like Dario, I was out of the loop until the full context got passed down, and since I was out in the middle of nowhere, it took a while. When it did, I spent the next several hours evacuating small towns and villages who were in the path Groudon was making across Hoenn. I never got close enough to see Groudon, but I could feel and see them. Groudon generates a lot of light, both from heat and just by... altering the environment around them—I could tell when Groudon was getting closer as it suddenly started going from night to day."
You nod slowly. "I can't say I know what any of that is like, besides the general elements, I mean," you say, stopping briefly to finish the rest of your water off. You've seen destruction, you've seen chaos—civil strife does not discriminate; it is far too opportunistic for that. "Most of what I dealt with growing up was human-driven. You probably all know about the stereotypes surrounding east Orre; I won't retread them, but while a lot of them are just that: stereotypes, the ideas did come from somewhere."
You watch the others. Suzume looks thoughtful, though confused; Dario, by comparison, looks more curious than anything else, probably about where you're going with this. Harun, as he had before, remains staring at you with that focused look on his face.
"I don't think telling you about the times I've seen a car explode would be super insightful," you admit, which startles a bewildered laugh out of Dario, and even has Harun's lips twitching in an aborted smile. "But it wasn't always criminal conflicts or west-east civil strife—there was the one time we were out at sea and we ran aground on a Pokemon."
Suzume leans in closer, eyes almost twinkling. "Oh please, you have my full and undivided attention."
The other two seem interested, if less so than Suzume's rapt focus.
You breathe out. "It happened something like this:"
It is the dead of summer and you are eleven whole years old.
The vessel beneath your feet hums, the purr of the engine felt right up through your boots and into your knees as the boat cuts through ocean waves. The sound of the engine in your family's fishing boat is a close friend by this point in your life, as familiar to you as the confines of a classroom.
"Just got off the radio with Vin," your father says, the door to the boat's cabin squeaking angrily as he steps back out onto the deck. "We're with the last group coming back in, but everything seems clear. How far off are we, Merrion?"
You turn to look behind you. Your mother—Merrion—is busy at the boat's wheel, just visible through the fog that hangs in the air, her gaze fixed on a small GPS dongle your family bought some years ago. "Twelve klicks or so, but we're not sailing as the Murkrow flies—we're going to have to divert to avoid the new patrol routes," she explains. "We should be home before midnight at least; the rest of the convoy no later than a few hours after that."
This is the way of things for the Nealfolc of east Orre. It is not just the fog your people use to their advantage, but their numbers, too. The seas outside of Orre are not particularly safe; pirates are a natural consequence of the vast amount of civil strife the region has experienced, and west Orre has arrest-on-sight orders for 'unlicensed vessels', of which your boat, and practically all boats of east Orre, qualify as.
After all, west Orre is not about to let your people in to register their boats. Even if they did, you are fairly certain your family would spit in their eyes for the audacity to assume they would acknowledge them as a governing body in the first place.
All the same, your people moved in large groups because pirates and government patrol vessels will not generally take on a fight lopsided six-to-one against them, especially not when most of the boats have battle-trained Pokemon and well-armed sailors crewing them. In cases where they have an equal number of vessels on their side, well, it isn't hard to track them, and your people are much better at going unnoticed than they are.
The side effect of your entire extended family going out to sea at once is evident in you being on the ship in the first place: you are but eleven, and that just barely still qualifies as too young to be left to your own devices for days at a time. That will change when you hit twelve years in a few months, the decision in part informed by the situation that is about to unfold, but that is not your current reality.
You don't actually mind it, though. Sure, days like today were boring, but days like these, where the fishing is already done and there are no Pokemon to watch beneath the waves, are few and far between. You spend far more time anchored out off of a shoreline, hanging over the edge of the boat and trying your best to count the number of Tentacool schooling beneath your vessel than you do saddled with boredom.
"I'm staying awake!" you call out. It's not evening yet, though it's hard to tell how close to evening it is at this point. You can feel the sun through the fog that surrounds your boat—of which there is plenty, but that is not unusual for this time of the year—but no matter how hard you look, you cannot actually find the sun itself through the mist. You could get up and check a clock, sure, but you are feeling a bit too lazy for that at the moment. "It's okay, right? Since we won't be home until super late?"
You make those last few words more of an open challenge. Let them try to justify putting you to bed while you're still on the boat and you will make it everyone's problem.
Your mother knows this, and as such begins to sigh, only for the noise to be cut off into thoughtful silence.
You feel a chill run down your spine as you squint her way. Nothing good ever comes out of thoughtful pauses from parents.
"If you're so energetic," your mom begins with a much-too-gleeful tone, "why not help unloading some of the bigger cargo when we get back?"
Oh no. Nuh uh. You already unload a lot for someone your size, you'll have them know! But—you want to stay awake. You struggle to put together a coherent and clever reply, and manage neither. "Uh, but—well, no—"
"Good thinking, Merrion," your father says, evidently deciding now was the time to throw his daughter to the Houndours. "We'll put her on 'karp hauling duty!"
Karp hauling—?!
"No way!" you shout, springing off of the box and turning to directly stare at your parents in horror. "I can't carry any of those crates off of the ship, are you crazy? I'll be crushed to death by those boxes of Magikarp!"
You rush to think of a way to make them reassign the most physically-intensive work you can get on a ship like this—of the fish of the sea, there is never a shortage of Magikarp—and after a moment remember something your father has a habit of saying.
"What would the neighbours say if I died?!"
Your mother explodes into laughter. "Did you hear that, Inmar? What would the neighbours—"
There is a hideous lurch and bang as the boat beneath your feet jerks.
You drop, tangled in your own limbs, and hit the deck hip-first with a yelp of pain, tumbling over yourself.
The boat gives a second lurch and shoves you some additional feet down towards the nose of the boat, dragging your face against the deck.
Ears ringing, you lay there for a moment on the salt-soaked deck and wait for the pain in your hip to slowly recede. You've had your share of bruises and licks in your childhood, so you already know that one is going to suck for the next few days. You felt that in your bones.
"Kylie!" your mother's voice is frantic, cutting through the keening in your head. "Inmar, is she okay?! I thought I saw her head hit the deck!"
You blink away the last few spots and rearrange yourself so you can stare right up, finding your father and Angus - the family Mantine - looking down at you worriedly. Angus floats above dad's head like an umbrella, and your father is already extending a hand towards you.
You grab hold of it, and he hauls you to your feet.
"Did you hit your head?" he asks, once you're upright and not toppling over.
You shake your head. "Just hit my hip—it stings, but it's not an injury. What was that?"
Your father grimaces and you pull away from him, stepping towards the railing on the boat.
The first thing you notice is that the angle you're standing on is all wrong. It takes a few seconds to click, but the boat's been pushed up by several degrees, not enough to send you sliding back down towards the boat's rear, but high enough to make your feet sit at odd angles when you step ahead.
The second thing you notice is that the wind is gone. You're not moving—that much comes as less of a surprise, though.
You glance out over the side of the boat, and find that, just beyond the fog, are shallows. You track them with your eyes as far as you can before the fog swallows up all visibility, and find that they almost don't seem to end. There's only a single part, which you find when you make your way over to the other side of the boat, that's to your back and slightly to the left, where the shallows finally drop back out into the ocean.
Your family's boat hit the shallows at a crude angle, rather than dead on; that first lurch would have been your ship slipping up onto the shallows, and the second would have been when it finally came to a full stop.
The shallows resemble a portion of the seafloor that has been torn up and dragged to the water's surface. Bundles of aquatic plant life—mostly rigid, hard-shelled growths—stick out from the waves, joined by clusters of barnacles, seaweed, and a thick crust of rough, miscellaneous material. It's all plastered over what you can only describe as a grayish-blue, pale stone, which looks not unlike the stone riverbeds you'd find back on shore—worn down and smooth.
"We ran aground," your father explains to you, as if you don't have eyes.
You grunt. "I can see that,"
"I know you're hurting, Kylie, but drop the tone," your father says tiredly.
You flush and pinch your lips shut.
Footsteps echo from behind, and you turn to watch as your mom joins the two of you, pausing for long enough to glance out over the side of the boat.
Your mother's face twists into a frown. "We... that can't be right. We've sailed through this area multiple times and I have never seen shallows or shoals this far out, and I've seen this part of the ocean in the best conditions with clear waters."
"Maybe it's a volcanic island," your father suggests with a shrug. "It'll be here and then gone in a day, and there's precedent for it. Orre is plenty tectonically active."
You've all lived through enough earthquakes - the normal kind, not the ones some Pokemon could make - to know that to be the truth.
Mom's face doesn't stop being pinched, though. "I still think I should have seen at least some signs of it," she says, voice coming out in almost a hiss. "...But I can't exactly deny the reality staring at me, can I? Papa is rolling over in his damn grave, I was trained to be a better navigator and helmswoman than this."
You smother a groan. Conversations never go well when Grandpop is brought up. The man's been dead for going on sixteen years now and yet his legacy haunts the living world like a particularly spiteful ghost-type.
"Merrion, it is fine. The boat isn't sinking, we lost none of our cargo, and while we look to be pretty far onto land, we can fix this," Dad replies gently, reaching out to touch your mom's shoulder. "I'll go get the radio to tell the others we ran aground and ask them to keep an ear open for any patrol boat sightings."
Mom nods, eyes narrowing in thought rather than stress. "I'll go try to get us back out onto the water. Kylie—are you good enough to walk?"
Even if you were in more pain, you would still say yes. "My hip only hurts a bit, y'know? I didn't fall on anything else, so I'm good."
"Go check the front of the boat, see if there's any damage and check how badly we ran aground," your mother instructs quickly, already turning away to survey her surroundings. "We need to get moving as soon as possible—we don't want to be picked off like this. That said, take Angus with you, understood?"
"Yes mom," you say, barely managing to keep your tone restrained. You aren't upset about taking Angus—Angus is your best friend and lets you use him like a slimy blanket, you just wish she wouldn't fret so much. "I'll go check the front then! C'mon Angus!"
As your parents rush off, Angus descends from above until he's floating at around knee-level. He turns to look up at you happily, the two antennae on his head twitching as he opens and closes his mouth.
Pausing just long enough to take your boots off and roll your pants up to your knees, you nod.
You reach out and clamber your way onto his back before gently patting the space between his antennae. "Alright buddy! Off the boat we go!"
"'Tine!" Angus coos agreeably, lifting up into the air. He carries you over the side of the boat and then down onto the shallows.
You slip off of his back.
By the time your heels meet the solid stone and crusted barnacles of the island, the water's about up to your diaphram. To your surprise, though, the water is oddly warm—Orre doesn't really have warm ocean waters, but the water you're submerged in now is almost bathwater-warm.
Your dad does think it is a volcanic island, though. You don't know enough about them to be sure if volcanic islands will create warmer waters through... lava or something, but that at least sounds about right.
"Mantine?" Angus warbles, coming up to nudge you with one of his wings.
"Oops, got distracted," you apologize, refocusing. Gotta check on the boat, right.
You make your way forward, fording through the ocean tides carefully. The ground beneath you is uneven owing to the great many random pieces of aquatic life stuck to it, giving plenty of room for random holes to trip over, which you become closely acquainted to after stumbling no less than four times over the short walk to the front of the boat.
Once you're there with some of your dignity left intact, you inspect the boat. The nose of the fishing boat is lifted ever-so-slightly up, making the entire vessel lean back at a slight angle. What's above the waves doesn't look to have any damage—there's the odd, shallow dent, but then you know for certain those have been there since you set sail. A couple of scuff marks look new, but that's hardly troubling.
Crouching further down until the water's up to your neck, you reach below the waves and pat around the rest of the boat. You don't find any new or deep dents, but that doesn't mean you're in the clear. As your hands reach where the boat meets the island, you find something that is almost worse.
A groove.
Not in the boat, but in the stone beneath your feet. Like a path worn into solid rock after thousands of years of travel happening back and forth. Most of the groove cups the underside of your family's boat like a palm, and what gaps you can find with your fingers are full of silty mud. It's not a perfect seal, no, but...
"That is not going to release us easily. Tidekeepers tears, what awful luck," you mutter. The boat must have hit this groove dead on like it was coming up onto a dry dock. Pulling away, you cup your hands to your mouth. "Mom!"
"What?"
"I think the boat's properly stuck! We sailed right into a groove on the island, and it's a really close fit! I don't think we could push her back out so easily!" you shout back.
"Oh for—alright! I'll get the dinghy, we'll have to kedge her back out into open waters. Kylie! Go check the propellers and rudders, I've got the engine off already, but I want to make sure they're all still in one piece!" your mom shouts back.
"Okay!" you shout back, before turning around to find Angus floating next to you. Reaching out, you tap him on the wing a few times to get his attention. "Follow me," you instruct.
"Mantine!" Angus happily obliges.
You start wading forward again, making your way around the boat. The water quickly deepens until it's up to your sternum, but it gets no deeper after that point, plateauing off.
Without the engine rattling away, the silence of the day suddenly feels a lot more oppressive—almost unnatural. You struggle to think of why as you get closer to the propeller, before the insight strikes you, and you look up into the fog.
Where are all the Wingull and Pelipper?
You've grown up with the Wingull line, and if you know anything about them, it's that they love shallow waters like this; it gives them a place to roost, but it also lets them hunt for food more easily. You're only twelve kilometres off of Orre, and you've seen them much further out on tiny little rocky islands mostly made up of guano.
You suppose the island might be so new that none have come by yet and started covering the place in their poop, but...
You shake the thought off. Today has been weird enough, you just want it to be over now.
The water deepens again as you near the propellers proper, until it's deep enough that you can no longer wade through it. Using the boat as a guide, you swim the rest of the way over to the back, and then dive down to check the rudders.
The butt of the boat is not quite off of the island itself—there's plenty of space behind it where the island's still present, but it is most certainly on the fringes of it, where the island has begun to slope down deep into the water below. Something about how it looks this close strikes you as odd, but again—you can think about these things later. You have a job to do.
Swimming closer, you get an arm's length from the propeller but no more than that. The boat might not be doing anything right now, but your uncle - missing no less than four fingers across two hands - has instilled in you a polite wariness of propellers even when the engine is supposedly off. The only time you should really be touching something like this is up at dock or in dry dock. The worst time, of course, is when your boat had run aground and as such you couldn't be completely sure if the impact hasn't made your engine twitchy.
So you don't touch it, but you do give it as close of a look over as you can, checking the rudders and propeller both before reemerging out of the water.
"The rudders and propellers are fine, mom!" you shout. "Or they look fine, at least!"
"Alright!" your mom calls back, sounding much closer this time. "At least we don't have to worry about that. Now—watch your head!"
You glance up and push off the boat with your feet as you see your mother appear over the side of the boat and toss out a bright orange dinghy into the waters below. It lands next to you with a splash, kicking seawater into your face, which you wipe away with your forearm.
The dinghy is just that—an inflatable dinghy with no motor, oval in shape. It doesn't need a motor when you have Angus, of course, but there is one somewhere in the ship that could be attached to it if needed.
Your mother vanishes back onto the boat, out of your line of sight, and you take the opportunity to scuttle up onto the dinghy with some effort.
She returns a moment later holding an anchor up with one hand, attached to a line of thick yellow rope.
You paddle the dinghy closer using your hands, until it comes to rest up against the boat, just beneath where your mom is.
"Anchor's coming down!" your mother tells you, and starts to lower it towards you using the rope.
You reach up and are nearly squashed by it as the weight settles into your hands. Your mom might make it look like the anchor weighs next to nothing, but she is like... an adult, and strong, and you are neither of those things yet.
Huffing and puffing, you lower the kedge anchor down onto the dinghy between your legs while your mom keeps chucking rope over the side. It's to give you some more length to work with before you start pulling on the reel.
"You'll want to go straight out from from here—until you hit the deepest shallows," your mom calls out to you, pointing forward for emphasis. "You remember how to use the kedge, right?"
You cannot restrain the eye-roll that overcomes you. "Yes mom, I know how to use the kedge," you tell her flatly. Your parents are big about safety—you know a lot of technical things about boats that most kids your age don't. You swivel around in the dinghy until you're facing in the direction she pointed, then clear your throat. "Angus! Sail please!"
"Man-tine!" Angus booms, floating over from the side and dropping down behind you, attaching himself to the back of the dinghy with his tail.
"Remember! If anything looks weird out there, come back, okay? Your safety comes first!" Your mom quickly reminds you.
You wave at her. "Don't worry, I'll be here and back really fast! Angus! Forward!"
"Man!"
Angus whips out both wings, surging with pale light. A wind picks up behind you, curls around your body like a curious Zigzagoon, before surging forward—pushing against both you and Angus both.
The dinghy jolts forward, shoving you, before steadying out into a forward push that quickly scuttles you both out into the open waters.
Angus continues to flap his wings sedately behind you, keeping the dinghy moving. You, by comparison, keep your eyes trained on the shallows, watching as the blue stone begins to recede from its apex, dipping deeper.
You open your mouth, ready to tell Angus to stop—
When your chest twists in confusion. Your vision swims, and your brain staggers, trying to find an explanation.
"Angus—" you start, choked off.
Angus, to his credit, does stop, leaving you floating out maybe a few paces away from the edge of the island's shallows, where...
...The island has simply stopped. Even volcanic islands have slopes, places where they recede down into the waters below. Some might cut off more dramatically than others, but—but—
Your eyes track lower.
You can see beneath the island. That's not right, that's not how islands work, that's—
"Angus," you rasp, unable to keep the panic from your voice. "I—"
You turn in your seat, looking back the way you came. Your mother's figure is just barely visible through the fog, more of a blurry silhouette than anything substantial.
You swallow thickly. This isn't right, this can't be real—
Your mother shouts something, but it's lost in the sound of the tides. She must have noticed you aren't moving anymore.
"I... I can't panic," you say—maybe to yourself, maybe to Angus. You swallow your fear, breathe in, then out. "I need to get back to Mom. Tell her that this is the wrong—"
She needs to know now, they might be in danger—
"—lie? Wh— wrong? Swe—art!"
Mom's voice spurs you on, rekindles your brain before it can completely shut down.
You suck in a breath, and shout as loud as you can.
"The island, Mom! It's not an island!"
"—at?"
She can't hear you, you realize.
Nobody can hear—
Something hears you.
Angus lets out a shriek—a noise you have never heard from him before, one of sudden panic and rage. He lunges from his place behind you and lands right in front of you, his back facing you as he bares out his wings—
It's almost enough to block it out.
Almost.
The island beneath the waves shifts.
Even now, years later, when you are no longer eleven and your vocabulary has grown, you cannot really describe it—not fully. Some part of you still thinks it defies description, really.
If you had to say it is like anything, though, it might be what it is like to witness the land itself come to life and tiredly shake free the things that have grown on its surface.
Barnacles, plant-life, mud and stone and dirt sloughs away, crumbling as part of the island begins to peel up—peel open.
The island opens a single eye a few arm's lengths from you, one of such titanic proportions it dwarfs you, Angus and the dinghy collectively. The eye is marred almost entirely by a single, phone book-thick, milky-yellow cataract, leaving only the far fringes of the eye clear.
And it is through one of those fringes that the island sees you.
A lurch of movement rolls through the entire island—and it surges without warning. You hear shouting from your family's boat as the great beast shifts and begins to turn its entire body. The movements are slow, glacial when compared to the skittish fish you are used to.
But the impact is colossal, beyond anything you have seen before and anything you have yet to see after.
A twist of its body completely distorts the sea. The waters around your family's vessel plummets, revealing the island's surface in full, while the water around you surges up, higher and higher and higher—all from a bare shift of the Pokemon. A wave that carries you high, so high that you are above the boat, above the Pokemon, to the point where the fog below almost comes to replace your sight of both.
The Pokemon's head breaches the surface of the water, mouth cracking open to reveal blunted teeth.
It breathes out.
The fog disintegrates.
Your hair is pulled hard against your head under the sheer torrent of wind from the exhale, your eyes watering, forced open under the pressure. You hear Angus cry out and watch in horror as his body is snatched free of where he'd been trying to grip onto the dinghy, tossed to the side, but you can barely track him—can't focus on him, because... because...
You see the totality of the Pokemon.
It is not an island—it never was. But neither is it some hitherto unknown species.
You know the shape of this Pokemon, for they flocked to Orre for its cool waters.
It is a Wailord, the oldest one you will ever see. The blues of its hide dulled pale and gray, its body easily three times the size of any other Wailord you've seen, maybe forty-five meters. What your family's boat ran aground on is the curve of the Wailord's back, and next to it, the boat looks so terribly small.
You almost laugh, almost break down into hysterics—you can barely understand what you're looking at.
You don't, however, because your dinghy drops out from under you; the kedge anchor in the dinghy keeps it attached to the collapsing wave, driving it down into the waters below. You tumble after it, arms lashing out as gravity snatches you from the air and hurls you towards the waves.
The drop feels long, but the fall is short. The ocean rises up to greet you.
You cover your head, the only thing you can remember to do.
Something slams into your side—slimy skin and an accompanying scream of "Mantine!" telling you it's Angus. Your body is jerked from its deadly drop, but you're still moving. From the gap between your arms, you can see the water beneath you, skimming past as—
Angus howls in panic.
You slip free and hit the water like a stone.
You don't really remember the next few moments.
What you do remember, however, is your head breaching the waves, gasping and sucking in frantic breaths of air, something solid and sturdy beneath you, raising you higher until no part of you is underwater anymore.
Your chest roars with a dull ache with each gasp, but the relief of getting oxygen into your lungs far outweighs the pain. Your vision, blotchy around the edges, fades back into focus, and with trembling limbs, you paw around on the ground before finally finding something that isn't slippery to the touch and pushing yourself upright.
Your chest protests every single inch you move, but you grit your teeth and push through it.
Where you find yourself is on a Wailord. Not the same one that had, through a single jerk of surprise, nearly killed you, but a more normal-sized one, with the distinct blue skin, untarnished by age or aquatic plantlife. They float sedately in the water below you, and are in fact, joined by more of their species.
Countless Wailords and Wailmers. A pod, your brain supplies, finally catching back up with your body now that there was more oxygen running through you. Also, you might have broken a rib.
You wheeze out as the pain hits you twofold. Almost certainly broke a rib.
The pod of Wailord and Wailmer are arrayed around you, some keeping deeper - if still visible - beneath the waves, but a great many come to stick their heads out of the water. Most of them are looking at you.
A blur of gray makes you flinch, triggering another spike of pain in your chest as Angus drops from the sky and lands on the Wailord right next to you. He leans in quickly, brushing his face into yours, running his tongue over your cheek, sniffing you, looking for injuries.
Weakly, you reach up to push him away. He doesn't budge.
Your focus is elsewhere, though, as your brain begins to go over what you know about Wailords and Wailmer. They all have human-level intelligence from birth, both Wailmer and Wailord. They move in pods to protect their children and weaker Wailords - whether due to size or age - and they will sink boats if someone hunt—
Your head snaps up in a panic and you quickly scan your surroundings for your family's boat. You don't hunt Wailords, nobody is stupid enough to hunt Wailords unless absolutely, grotesquely desperate, but mistakes are possible—
Reliefs floods over you in a wave so intense you nearly collapse as you find your family's boat, floating next to that same ancient Wailord that set this entire incident off. You can see your mom and dad on the deck, staring at the Wailord who, in turn, has risen up enough above the waves to look at them.
After a moment, something rumbles up and out from the Wailord—a sound so loud it should break you, should crush everything near it, but it doesn't, even when you can feel the vibrations in your heart.
The noise it makes is unmistakably sad, mournful and guilty—impressions of emotions washing over you as the song settles somewhere deep into your bones, communication beyond words.
The pod around you takes up the song in turn, crooning in wordless apology. It all rattles up into you, into your head, swallows up your focus so much that you don't even notice Angus licking you straight across the nose.
The song falls away slowly, but you can still feel it in the water—in the air, like an echo. You reach out and this time manage to dislodge Angus from your face.
Slowly, the ancient Wailord moves forward, drawing your family's boat along with it, towards where you sit on the Wailord beneath you. The pod parts for their approach, and the closer it gets, the better you can make out your mother and father.
The better you can make out the relief on their faces as they take you in, too.
At some point, you start crying.
"I'm pretty sure that incident in particular is what really got my parents to start pushing me to leave behind the family business," you tell them as the story winds down, rolling your shoulders back in a shrug. "I think they always had the idea to do that—fishing is a dangerous job, low-paying, and I know both Mom and Dad have lost family and friends because they went out one day and just... never came back, whether because of hostile Pokemon, the weather, or western Orre. They wanted better for me than either disappearing out there myself, but... I remember them getting a lot more focused on me getting a good education and turning my interests to other pursuits after that."
"It's really not hard to see why," Suzume replies, her prior excitement softening into something more thoughtful, if no less curious. "I mean—Arceus above, I'd love to see the Wailord myself. Specimens that large are so rare, and that one must have been near the end of their lifespan, but I would not want to meet one like that. I'm honestly surprised you still went on to become a ranger after that! Those kinds of formative experiences usually scare people off from a job principally about handling wild Pokemon."
You pause, thinking about it. "I'm almost certain a major part of why I didn't avoid wild Pokemon after that was because they apologized—or at least that's what it felt like. I used to really dwell on this incident a lot, and I spent a lot of time trying to piece together what happened and why, especially in the years after, where my parents adamantly refused to let me come on fishing voyages. The best I could ever piece together, as disappointing as this is, is that I just... probably spooked that Wailord. Nothing more, nothing less. It didn't attack us, we just made it flinch because it woke up with me floating right next to its eye, and it was nearly enough to get me killed."
Dario nods. "What the pod did after—those sounds? That does sound like an attempt to convey that they were sorry or that they at least didn't mean to do it." He pauses, then. "Not that I really know much about Wailords. I've never seen one in person."
"Me neither," Harun admits.
Suzume shoots them both an appalled look. "Hoenn has one of the largest native Wailord and Wailmer populations on the planet! How is it that the two of us, foreigners, have seen more Wailords than either of you have?"
""It's a tourist thing,"" Harun and Dario manage to say together, pausing to give one another baffled looks.
Harun shakes his head and clears his throat. "Like I said, it's what tourists do. It always felt kinda... artificial to go on one of those Wailmer watching boats, and there aren't too many opportunities otherwise. It doesn't help that—well, it feels kinda wrong?"
You mull that over. "I can see where you're coming from," you admit, which makes Harun and Dario look at you with hopeful eyes, and Suzume raise one eyebrow your way. "Wailmer are as intelligent as we are—like I said. They're as emotionally intelligent as we are, too. Putting myself in their shoes, I'm not sure I'd really appreciate it if pods of Wailord and Wailmer came to 'tour the humans', so to speak?"
"Huh," Suzume says, humming. "I... yeah I suppose I never thought about it that way. There isn't anything like a 'Wailord watching boat' back home—I live in the far north of Sinnoh. We get some cruise ships, but well, seeing a Wailord is always a kind of random chance thing."
"Also—uh, Kylie? I'm pretty sure the Wailords and Wailmer do do that," Dario tells you after a moment. You turn to look at him, confused, while Harun next to him has paused with a thoughtful look on his face. "Those tour boats? If the Wailords really didn't like them, they'd just ignore them, go underwater, that kind of thing, but like... they bring their children up with them to show off or stare at the boats. I'm pretty sure they're using them to show their kids us weird humans."
Huh.
"Anyway, that Wailord you described," Suzume starts up again, barrelling forward. "That would be so cool, like I said, ancient Wailords are pretty rare! Their lifespans are around five to seven-hundred years total, though most die well before that point. Having one that old back home would probably come as a huge comfort, as it would mean a major pod in our area wouldn't try to eat our herds."
Dario turns to look at her. "Honestly, with each and every new piece of information I learn about aquatic ranching, I get more and more confused about how people manage it in the first place. You know what the Union policy is for dealing with an enraged Wailord? Run."
Suzume just waves him off. "Time and effort and setting boundaries are key, Dario! Wailord pods know not to poach from us since we'll put up a fight if they try. The only real times we came into conflict with any pods was when a Wailord would get exiled from its pod and made a new one or struck out on its own to do so, which is—well, not uncommon, but also not frequent. Those ones tend to see our lands and wonder why their past pods never tried to eat any of the tasty, freely-available food, or if they do know why, they think they can do it when their past pod can't. Then it's a few weeks of beating them up with our Sandslashes, Empoleons, and other herd protectors until they get a clue that they can't just come over and eat a Spheal whenever they're hungry."
"We just avoid them," you tell the three of them with a shrug. "Nobody hunts Wailords. You can get into fights with them, sure—but they know how to identify the difference between 'a fight that went too far' and 'you are selectively targeting us to hunt and eat us'. Sometimes a curious Wailmer might try to jump onto a boat and cause a lot of problems because we've got fish they can smell, but the Wailords tend to keep them in line and otherwise ignore us like we do them."
"The benefits of having to deal with intelligent Pokemon, I suppose," Harun says after a moment. He opens his mouth to say something more—
"Whis!" B.B. cries out in abject misery from a ways away.
You glance up to find B.B. making a tactical retreat from Totter and Sentinel, who are chasing after him. He looks—well, as tired as he was before, but he's doing the closest thing to a sprint that a Whismur can accomplish, given their body plan. He zips past Suzume and Dario in his way, managing to just barely outpace either Totter or Sentinel, and dives forward.
You move your arms open and catch him as he clambers rapidly into your lap.
Totter and Sentinel break past their trainers next, coming to a stop just short of you.
B.B. turns and hisses at them, a noise of acute annoyance and threat.
"Sly!" Totter shouts.
"...Shrew?" Sentinel adds.
"WHISMUR," B.B. screams in reply, just on this side of too loud. Totter, Sentinel, and everyone else nearby for that matter, winces at the noise.
B.B. then proceeds to turn around and tuck his face into your chest and warble out a piteous cry.
You sigh and wrap your arms around his body, glancing up to find Dario still wincing, touching his ear. B.B. burrows deeper against your chest and begins to relax, the tension you felt in his body leaving. Before long, he's loose and sagging against your grip, but adamantly refusing to move his head from your chest.
"Sorry about that, it seems like Totter can actually make B.B. furious enough to cause a scene."
"Bonsly?"
Your mandated rest period ends on your fourth day in Hoenn; not the day after your meet-up with Dario, Suzume and Harun, but the day after that.
You find yourself in the Mauville Peninsula Ranger Lodge, some several hours out from Mauville City proper. B.B. is tucked away in his ball on your hip, and everything you own is once again secured in your bag, leaving your hands free as you wait patiently in the sterile, bare-bones office you've been directed to.
To your left, a single window is open, allowing a faint breeze in. The sun is still rising, heavy on the horizon and shining orange. It's still very early—it is the only time that could be afforded to you, as far as you know, with the added workload of thousands of out-of-region rangers coming to Hoenn to help.
Behind you, the door to the office opens, a woman letting herself in with a manila folder tucked under one arm. She looks harried, thin blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail that cannot quite hide the lingering bedhead, her eyes lined with stress. Her operator uniform is just barely put together, with half of her shirt left untucked and hanging out from her back.
"I'm so sorry," she breathes as she rushes in, kicking the door shut behind her. "Kylie Parsons, right? Certified in Orre, Whismur as a partner?" she continues, almost sprinting to her desk.
You watch her patiently as she sits down, then nod. "That would be me, yeah."
The woman breathes out a sigh of relief. "Good! One thing that hasn't gone wrong today—I made it on time, but only barely, so I'm still getting my bearings. I'm Talita Misano, your temporary operator for the next..." she pauses to check the clock hanging from the wall, then turns to look at you. "Fifteen minutes, at which point I'll become someone else's operator—or well, about six people, they're doing group assignments for dealing with some hazard locations. Anyway, we are exceptionally short staffed at the moment, so I'm going to have to make this quick."
With that, she lays the manila folder out on the desk in front of her, then gestures out towards the front of the desk—
—Where there are no seats for you to take.
Talita visibly pauses, shuts her eyes, then breathes out. "Sorry, you'll have to stand. I forgot we're using those seats for temporary office spaces in the gym room."
"It's fine," you say, stepping up to the desk.
"Alright, so. As it is now, we need more focused aid—in that we need people who would be willing to temporarily stay in a ranger lodge and do work out from it," Talita explains quickly, already thumbing through the folder. "Nomadic aid would still be useful, but it says here you have no flight capabilities, nor are you certified to fly, would that be correct?"
For all that the image of B.B. flying, propelled exclusively by screams, is funny, you do not, in fact, have an air-capable Whismur. "It is."
She nods. "Then that means you can't do nomadic work, as much as it would probably fit what you would be doing so early on in your career. As it stands right now, a lot of transportation infrastructure needs to go to emergency aid, and we have people who can move without it. That would leave the option of being stationed somewhere for a longer period—several missions, at least, possibly up to a month or more." She pauses, then, flipping through the folder. "If you had come in yesterday, which would have been its own mess, I could have offered you four lodges as options to work out of—Sawara, Hoenn Archipelago, Chimney Highlands or Lilycove. As it stands though, both Sawara and Lilcove are in a much more manageable state than Hoenn Archipelago or Chimney Highlands are, and we won't need anyone else in those locations to do work for the time being."
"Hoenn Archipelago and Chimney Highlands were both hit the hardest, weren't they?" you ask.
Talita inclines her head. "Hoenn Archipelago most of all—the site of the battle between the legendaries, I should stress, is off limits to anyone without official clearance, so you wouldn't be put there, but yes, both regions were exposed to large amounts of damage due to the emergence of Groudon and Kyogre respectively. Hoenn Archipelago has a lot of flooding and destroyed villages, while the Chimney Highlands is still dealing with ten or more feet of ash and stone in some areas covering over evacuated towns, among other issues like wildfires."
She flips the manila folder around, then scoots it forward. Two pages are visible—one for the Mount Chimney Highlands, and the other for the Hoenn Archipelago.
"As I said before, here are your options. Choosing one of these means you'd be stationed there for at least several missions, possibly more if things continue to grow more complicated," she says plainly. "You'll be helping to bulk up emergency personnel while also doing ranger missions. I won't rush you—you can take hours, if you'd like, but you'll need to find me after you choose and tell me which one you want to go to. I would, however, prefer if you could give me an answer within ten minutes, it would cut down on the extra work."
You pick up the folder, then take each of the pages out, nodding. Slowly, you begin to read them.
Choices:
The Hoenn Archipelago has a long and complex history. Settled by a cousin culture to the Alolans further south, the area has maintained a long and storied naval tradition, as well as a close relationship with the native Pokemon in the region. The great, winding island chains of the archipelago are home to no small variety of Pokemon, not to even mention the wealth of aquatic life in the seas.
Yet, it is sadly also the most wounded part of Hoenn. The battle between Groudon and Kyogre took place in the middle of the archipelago and wrought unimaginable destruction, radiating out from ground zero—once a common schooling location for aquatic Pokemon, and now a tangled mess of permanently-churning currents and tall, geothermal vents that spit endless lines of smoke out from within, hauled to the surface by Groudon in their desire to reshape the world.
Little has gone unscathed in the archipelago, and its ecosystem, collectively, reels—attempting to recover. Yet, if something is not done, it will never manage to recover. The great many predators of the area have had their numbers culled to record lows in the wake of Kyogre's fury, which leaves the door open for other aquatic species to migrate into the area and disrupt the ecosystem—many of which, if they managed to form sustainable breeding populations, would be nearly impossible to uproot. This is not to even mention those Pokemon Kyogre dragged into the area in its fury in the first place—already, sightings of Toxapex and Mareanie have rangers on edge, fearing the worst for the heavily-damaged Corsola colonies, still in recovery after the near-total destruction of the largest Corsola colony on the planet, Pacifidlog Town.
The Pokemon on the islands fare better, but only just. Habitats drowned or burned, many of them have been forced into closer proximity with the villages on said islands, giving rise to dangerous conflicts that have resulted in countless injuries. Worse yet, many already vulnerable species have been made more visible than ever as a result of this—and risk drawing the attention of poachers, a long and pervasive issue the Hoenn Archipelago has dealt with.
This and plenty more haunts the future of the Hoenn Archipelago, yet not all is lost. For all that the damage wrought destroyed the ranger lodge overseeing the area, its administrative role has been moved onto the shining jewel of the Hoenn Ranger Union Navy: the RUS Redeemer, which shall serve as your home base if you so desire to lend your aid. Formerly a mega-yacht owned by a Unovan oil baron who used it to go out on poaching trips with his fellow tycoons, it was retooled into a large-scale sanctuary and patrol vessel upon his arrest several years ago, and has now become the functional ranger lodge for the region, until such a time where the original one can be rebuilt.
Yet, it is sadly also the most wounded part of Hoenn. The battle between Groudon and Kyogre took place in the middle of the archipelago and wrought unimaginable destruction, radiating out from ground zero—once a common schooling location for aquatic Pokemon, and now a tangled mess of permanently-churning currents and tall, geothermal vents that spit endless lines of smoke out from within, hauled to the surface by Groudon in their desire to reshape the world.
Little has gone unscathed in the archipelago, and its ecosystem, collectively, reels—attempting to recover. Yet, if something is not done, it will never manage to recover. The great many predators of the area have had their numbers culled to record lows in the wake of Kyogre's fury, which leaves the door open for other aquatic species to migrate into the area and disrupt the ecosystem—many of which, if they managed to form sustainable breeding populations, would be nearly impossible to uproot. This is not to even mention those Pokemon Kyogre dragged into the area in its fury in the first place—already, sightings of Toxapex and Mareanie have rangers on edge, fearing the worst for the heavily-damaged Corsola colonies, still in recovery after the near-total destruction of the largest Corsola colony on the planet, Pacifidlog Town.
The Pokemon on the islands fare better, but only just. Habitats drowned or burned, many of them have been forced into closer proximity with the villages on said islands, giving rise to dangerous conflicts that have resulted in countless injuries. Worse yet, many already vulnerable species have been made more visible than ever as a result of this—and risk drawing the attention of poachers, a long and pervasive issue the Hoenn Archipelago has dealt with.
This and plenty more haunts the future of the Hoenn Archipelago, yet not all is lost. For all that the damage wrought destroyed the ranger lodge overseeing the area, its administrative role has been moved onto the shining jewel of the Hoenn Ranger Union Navy: the RUS Redeemer, which shall serve as your home base if you so desire to lend your aid. Formerly a mega-yacht owned by a Unovan oil baron who used it to go out on poaching trips with his fellow tycoons, it was retooled into a large-scale sanctuary and patrol vessel upon his arrest several years ago, and has now become the functional ranger lodge for the region, until such a time where the original one can be rebuilt.
Before there were repels, there was the glass works of the Chimney Highlands. Created through a combination of volcanic ash and sand, these flutes and wind-chimes were powerful tools that warded away Pokemon, and still find use today to keep Pokemon who would otherwise be agitated by synthetic repels, such as dragon-types, away from humans. Royalty from around the world would spend prohibitive amounts of money to adorn their castles and villas with such items, and many consider them sacred treasures, for their potency continues even today.
But if one was to look for those old workshops and towns now, they would find only ash and stone. While the devastation was not as widespread as it was in the archipelago, the Chimney Highlands still aches under the damage inflicted on it by Groudon. Vast swathes of Route 111 have been turned to glass, countless towns evacuated as they were buried beneath slag and ash tens of feet high. Pokemon run rampant, driven from their homes and into unfamiliar habitats, while many roads throughout the area remain completely blocked off for all but those willing to climb over it on hand and foot, separating once-close communities and Pokemon and making moving supplies around quickly nearly impossible.
With few places to go, many of these Pokemon have been driven into towns that were safe from the falling ash. The subsequent conflict between harried Pokemon and harried survivors were most often violent, and has since led to the abandonment of more towns, further condensing the rural population of the highlands into increasingly smaller spaces, where conflict between people has started to erupt with worrying frequency—something which can only be solved by the reclamation of old land, to allow people to return to their ancestral homes.
The areas most affected are those surrounding Mount Chimney, where it was not just ash and stone, but lava floes that swallowed towns. Among them was Lavaridge, which had once thought itself safe to the occasional eruption due to its raised elevation versus the normal channels, yet that belief remains no more. One of the oldest towns in Hoenn, founded before the land was even called as such, remains buried under countless feet of ash, cooled magma, and rock.
Earthquakes have opened vast crevices in the earth, revealing habitats and their Pokemon once-isolated from the surface world which need to be resealed; Meteor Falls, one of the largest ecosystems for dragon-types in Hoenn, has become riot with stress-evolved dragons attempting to dominate new hierarchies, which may culminate in a vast exodus of enraged dragons out into the surrounding area if nothing is done. These are just two examples out of countless other habitats shaking in the aftershocks of Groudon's emergence, with plenty more facing dire problems that must be solved if they are to recover.
Yet, work is being done to turn back the tide of destruction. The Ranger Union has come in force, and Flannery, the local gym leader, has joined them in attempting to re-excavate old cities and relocate Pokemon back to their natural habitats. Willowglen Town, once a small, forested hamlet, has since become a central mission control for the slow, but progressive reclamation of that which was lost to ash and stone. In concert with rangers working further up the ridge, in their own ranger lodge, work has begun—but it will be some time and only after an unthinkable amount of effort when people can begin to return back to their land and start to rebuild.
But if one was to look for those old workshops and towns now, they would find only ash and stone. While the devastation was not as widespread as it was in the archipelago, the Chimney Highlands still aches under the damage inflicted on it by Groudon. Vast swathes of Route 111 have been turned to glass, countless towns evacuated as they were buried beneath slag and ash tens of feet high. Pokemon run rampant, driven from their homes and into unfamiliar habitats, while many roads throughout the area remain completely blocked off for all but those willing to climb over it on hand and foot, separating once-close communities and Pokemon and making moving supplies around quickly nearly impossible.
With few places to go, many of these Pokemon have been driven into towns that were safe from the falling ash. The subsequent conflict between harried Pokemon and harried survivors were most often violent, and has since led to the abandonment of more towns, further condensing the rural population of the highlands into increasingly smaller spaces, where conflict between people has started to erupt with worrying frequency—something which can only be solved by the reclamation of old land, to allow people to return to their ancestral homes.
The areas most affected are those surrounding Mount Chimney, where it was not just ash and stone, but lava floes that swallowed towns. Among them was Lavaridge, which had once thought itself safe to the occasional eruption due to its raised elevation versus the normal channels, yet that belief remains no more. One of the oldest towns in Hoenn, founded before the land was even called as such, remains buried under countless feet of ash, cooled magma, and rock.
Earthquakes have opened vast crevices in the earth, revealing habitats and their Pokemon once-isolated from the surface world which need to be resealed; Meteor Falls, one of the largest ecosystems for dragon-types in Hoenn, has become riot with stress-evolved dragons attempting to dominate new hierarchies, which may culminate in a vast exodus of enraged dragons out into the surrounding area if nothing is done. These are just two examples out of countless other habitats shaking in the aftershocks of Groudon's emergence, with plenty more facing dire problems that must be solved if they are to recover.
Yet, work is being done to turn back the tide of destruction. The Ranger Union has come in force, and Flannery, the local gym leader, has joined them in attempting to re-excavate old cities and relocate Pokemon back to their natural habitats. Willowglen Town, once a small, forested hamlet, has since become a central mission control for the slow, but progressive reclamation of that which was lost to ash and stone. In concert with rangers working further up the ridge, in their own ranger lodge, work has begun—but it will be some time and only after an unthinkable amount of effort when people can begin to return back to their land and start to rebuild.
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