Chapter 5
The crystalline blue of the cavern’s light gave way to a dull, colorless glow. The massive outcrops that had defined the environment were now nothing more than scattered bunches and a few small flakes in the ground. The solid, dark stone of the floor was now a crumbling brown. The towering chasm that had connected so many hanging platforms was now far behind them, having been replaced with twisting tunnels that criss-crossed through the earth and often reconnected with themselves.
The Iron Valiant noticed that a measure of confidence had entered Nick after leaving that lab. He was more ready to travel, and he was ever so slightly more alert to his surroundings. There were times when he would still look around with awe, but it was far more subdued. More importantly, when there was movement, his eyes tracked it. His hand would hover over where that rod-like creation hung off his belt.
However, the Pokémon here mostly didn’t fight. They were often unevolved and would choose to flee instead. Groups of Diglett would vanish underground the second they detected footsteps. So unlike how their evolved forms would lay traps to protect themselves, unevolved Glimmet would stay attached against the walls and merely watch passively as the Iron Valiant passed.
Still, there were some Pokémon that couldn’t resist their instinctual urges. Territory had to be protected, after all.
As they hiked through the tunnels, ahead of them, a two-headed Pokémon crawled out of a den carved into one of the few remaining crystal growths. The Pokémon’s two sets of eyes were both covered with hanging black hair, and the blue and red scales that protected its stomach almost dragged along the ground as it trundled out.
This was a dragon—a not fully evolved one, but a dragon nonetheless. Though it did not reach either the Iron Valiant or Nick’s stomach, it was still aggressive. The Iron Valiant recognized it; the only time this species’s two heads were ever in unison was when it was forced to deal with an approaching threat.
Here, the hostile nature of this creature likely made it one of the stronger Pokémon in these tunnels, but it did not hold a candle to the beasts that populated the lowest reaches of these caves. There would be no avoiding this battle, so the Iron Valiant brandished its polearm and took a step forward—
But Nick walked out ahead, instead.
“Let me handle this.” He pulled out that hastily assembled weapon and let his thumb flick over its switch. “You’ve been fighting for both of us before now. I need to pull my weight, too.”
Nick sent a grin to the Iron Valiant and turned to face his opponent—a Zweilous, he called it. The Iron Valiant knew it could personally handle a Pokémon like that in seconds, but it chose to stay its blade for now.
Instead, it looked away from the fight to snap its head up and glare at a pair of tittering shadows. Two pairs of eyes, both sparkling with amusement, stared back out, unabashed. The Iron Valiant remembered Nick had once called these two Pokémon’s species “Flutter Mane,” but the Iron Valiant simply knew them as pests.
Pests that were far too fond of pranks.
Thankfully, this pair seemed to have no interest in attacking, so the Iron Valiant’s attempt to intimidate fell flat. The floating pair of Pokémon stayed near the cavern’s ceiling, and, rolling its shoulder, the Iron Valiant flicked its blade to the side and focused on Nick's upcoming battle instead. If Nick wanted to practice so badly, it could at least give him that.
The human and the dragon circled one another in this tunnel, and Nick took off his backpack to throw it to the side. A Flutter Mane cheered. He wielded that metal assemblage in one hand, and the giggles rang out when he unknowingly mimicked the Iron Valiant’s fighting stance.
“Alright. It’ll be just you and me. But I’ll give you a chance to get out of it. We’re just trying to get past, and if you let us by—”
One of the Zweilous’s heads interrupted him with a hiss. The other snapped its jaws forward, already eager to bite.
With that clear sign of aggression, Nick ran his hand through his hair, brushing the blonde strands out of his face. He stopped the slow-motion circle to press his thumb down. Buzzing filled the air.
Electricity crackled between the broken metal at the end of his weapon. The zapping noise came so abruptly and suddenly that both Flutter Manes shut up, and they drew back toward the wall to hide in the shadows.
Then, Nick charged. The faint glow of the crystals around the Zweilous’s den cast him into uneven light. His intentions were made evident by the way his eyes locked onto the point right where the Zweilous’s two necks connected. The way his muscles tensed in his arm spoke of getting ready for a jab, but he was not the only creature here ready to make a move.
A human was not a Pokémon. A human did not possess that same level of speed or strength. Resilience was another matter entirely—Nick had injured himself far too easily just by smashing his fist through a pane of thin glass.
The way the Zweilous drew back its heads and flexed its muscles revealed that it itself would be quick to respond. Just like how it had snapped out a threat before, it would snap down on Nick’s arm the second he was in range. He would not have the sturdiness to resist that bite.
Instead, the Iron Valiant found itself lunging forward. Before Nick and the Zweilous ever clashed, the Iron Valiant was already there, interposed between them, bringing down its blade to block the dual attempt to bite as the Zweilous slammed itself into the flat of its blade.
The Zweilous breathed in to ready another move from there, but the Iron Valiant was already moving, its blade glowing with a brilliant light. A swing saw a flash burst above its body, searing it, the air, and the floor. The Iron Valiant didn’t even need to try to bring out this Dazzling Gleam. The use of this move came out reflexively.
“...Really?” Nick whined. “Come on. What’s the point of making this thing if I don’t get to use it?”
He released his thumb, causing his weapon’s buzzing to stop. The Iron Valiant looked down at Nick as he stood up from where he had been ready in a crouched stance.
It did not need to change its expression to anything more revealing to send him a flat stare, and Nick let out a sigh.
“Yeah, yeah. A Zweilous was probably too much.”
After taking that Dazzling Gleam, the Zweilous was not unscathed. The light had burned into it, and it was already scrambling away to return to its den.
Just to make sure it understood not to come back out while they were present, the Iron Valiant swept out its weapon to flick lingering embers off of its blade. The shining sparks faded away into nothing.
“I know that Pokémon are the ones to fight, and I know humans are way weaker than Pokémon, but I can’t just rely on that. I plan to explore the world!” Nick said. “I need to learn how to fight, too. What if, while we’re escaping, a Pokémon gets past you? Or, what if once I’m out, a criminal attacks me and tries to take my future team?”
Nick clipped his weapon back to his belt, and he frowned while staring into the Zweilous’s darkened den. Though it was back to being tied to his belt, he still had his thumb run along its cables.
“I need to practice,” he mused. “I don’t know if I could stomach standing to the side forever.”
The Iron Valiant silently collapsed the rod of its weapon. It couldn’t and wouldn’t teach him. He was too weak to fight, and its own fighting style wasn’t anything he could ever master.
Nick mumbled something about needing to fight against weaker foes, and the Iron Valiant checked on their surroundings. Save for some echoes in the distance, this tunnel was quiet. No Pokémon nearby bothered to let out a final hiss, and no Pokémon bothered to respond to the battle with soft, amused laughter.
...Which was strange.
The Iron Valiant looked up. It could tell by the soft outline of their bodies that the Flutter Mane were still hidden in their shadows, but the Iron Valiant would have thought they would have come back out by now.
In fact, not even the Zweilous was making any noise. It hadn’t even tried for the barest sense of intimidation after running back to its den. Yes, the Iron Valiant had hit it with a powerful move, but its draconic instincts should have seen it at least hissing or glaring in an attempt to save face.
Nick walked over to the side to pick up his backpack.
The cavern was otherwise silent.
However, far in the distance, those echoes from before continued. And, this time, rumbles followed them—rumbles that seemed to be growing louder.
“Well, we—I mean, I’ll get out of here eventually, so I probably just need to find a Route 1 somewhere. Probably with something that’s not effectively a cattle prod, too. And, I probably need to check to make sure fighting myself isn’t illeg—”
A roar.
The human froze in the middle of putting on his backpack, but that freeze did not last long. The Iron Valiant dashed up to him, grabbed his arm, and then yanked him along as they began to run.
“What is that?!”
The rumbling grew louder.
The air itself seemed to shake when a roar pierced through the tunnel.
Around them, the smaller crystals cracked and crumbled. Chunks of earth hit the floor. The dirt vibrated beneath their feet, and the Iron Valiant scanned the entire environment ahead of them, desperately searching for somewhere to hide.
Quickly, it located a decent-sized nook in the wall and didn’t wait to shove Nick in. He yelped, but any attempt to complain was silenced when he saw what the Iron Valiant was doing.
Non-essential systems shut down. Anything critical entered low-powered mode. The passive glow of its body faded away into almost nothing, and its dim light wasn’t out of place among the smaller crystals of this tunnel.
If what the Iron Valiant was doing had a biological equivalent, it would have been holding its breath. Seeing the effort, Nick’s eyes widened, and he moved to cover his mouth.
The noise grew.
Both of them waiting.
For a second, a sudden shake made the Iron Valiant think this nook was about to break and collapse over them.
Instead, something blue and red rushed past them in the tunnel. A crescent shadow covered the floor beneath it. A flap of its wings saw it slam into a side wall, and an attempt to correct itself then saw it crash into the floor, and then into the ceiling.
In its frenzy, it continued on, far too enraged to notice either of them.
“The Roaring Moon?” Nick whispered next to the Iron Valiant. “There’s no way that’s the same one, right?”
The Iron Valiant snapped up a hand, and Nick went utterly silent. Thankfully, the Roaring Moon seemed unable to hear something that quiet.
The earth rumbled in its wake, and its screams echoed around them. The roars that came from its throat were piercing, but the dragon flew on, eventually managing to regain some aspect of stability as it vanished far out into the distance.
It was only after the silence became deafening that the Iron Valiant pulled itself out, and Nick crawled out of the nook after it. Light and color returned to the Iron Valiant’s body, and even the Flutter Mane behind them poked out of their shadows to make sure the Roaring Moon had truly disappeared.
“That was definitely the same Roaring Moon,” Nick said as he tried to fix how his backpack was hanging off his back. “If it’s up here, and if it looked that mad...”
He shivered.
“It might be looking for us, or it might be lashing out because it lost.”
The Iron Valiant possessed no response to that. Dragons were practically alien to it. They always seemed to need to lord over others. An unexpected loss like the one it had experienced to the Iron Valiant would have shaken it.
Even with the use of Dazzling Gleam, the Iron Valiant doubted it would win.
Both the Iron Valiant and Nick lingered in the tunnel, staring out and making sure the Roaring Moon would not return. The two Flutter Mane left in the other direction, not wanting to deal with any of this, and hissing started up as the Zweilous made it clear that it really wanted them to leave.
“Okay. Let’s—”
A crack.
Something broke above their heads.
Though Nick froze, the Iron Valiant lashed out, and its polearm sliced right through the disturbed rocks that almost slammed into them. The sudden near-fatal experience looked as though it shook Nick, but that shock vanished in the face of what the fallen boulders had revealed behind them.
“Light,” he whispered.
He rapidly looked around, identified a branch in a tunnel a distance away that led upwards, and then charged straight toward it. The Iron Valiant followed, easily keeping in pace, but it also made sure to continue keeping an eye out to ensure they suffered no ambush.
The path curved and split, but Nick always managed to find some way forward, locating even the slightest of trends upwards. At one point, he sniffed the air, and then he held up a licked finger to try to discern the direction of a soft breeze.
A sudden turn and dash saw him charge down a side tunnel, and the Iron Valiant followed hot on his heels. The scattered crystals in the cave had all but vanished at this point, and the only thing left seemed to be dirt and stone.
But, ahead, there was the same thing Nick had seen before—an absolute abundance of light. The glow far surpassed any glow of the crystals in the lower caverns, and Nick didn’t hesitate to race right into it, practically exploding out into wherever this tunnel led.
This was a brand new room, a sort that the Iron Valiant did not recognize. It would have said they had just entered the largest cave it’d ever been in, but here, there was no ceiling.
Only an endless expanse of blue.
Nick laughed out loud and let himself fall into a patch of green that grew out of the earth. He let his arms fall into it while his eyes stared up at the emptiness that stretched up above their heads. Large cliffs surrounded both of them, placing them at the bottom of some kind of bowl. Except, those cliffs were surrounded by higher cliffs, and those cliffs were surrounded by even higher cliffs. There had to be platforms and flat areas like the ledges in the lower cavern, but the Iron Valiant couldn’t see them from how low it was. It could not comprehend just how much open space had to be out here.
“We’re out,” Nick said, pulling back to his feet and turning in a full circle just to take it all in. “We’re back outside! I never thought I’d be so happy to see the sun in my life!”
He let out another laugh, and then he inhaled just to taste the air. A waterfall cascaded down an upper cliff in the distance.
The smile on Nick’s face was the largest the Iron Valiant had ever seen, but they had not reached their destination just yet.
The Iron Valiant might have helped Nick escape the caverns, but there was still the rest of this expansive crater to get through.