To Dewford
“Ah, thank you, thank you again!” President Stone said, shaking both of their hands and pulling a letter out of another drawer, which Saylee took and put in a side pocket of her bag with her dreamcatcher. “I cannot thank you enough, truly!”
“Before we go,” Saylee asked, “Is it alright if I have a look around the research labs downstairs?”
~
“Are you allowed to take those?” Key asked as Saylee pulled a blue sphere out of her pocket and began inserting rolled-up schematics, which vanished into a small transmat field.
“Compact technologies like this are very rare back home,” Saylee said. “We’ve only got stuff that’s been salvaged. Nothing new’s been made in the past twenty years. Even stuff like pokéballs was just scavenged out of production warehouses for years, new ones were only made recently by expanding on traditional apricorn styles. This stuff will work wonders for repairing the infrastructure. I’ve made sure that it’s all going to a very good friend of mine who works in public welfare, none of it’ll get tied commercially. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, that the commercial sector always manages to recover and thrive even when healthcare is barely functioning...”
“That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it,” Key said, watching Saylee shake hands with and thank a researcher. “I didn’t even know that the Indigo region existed, really, before I met you. Dad sometimes talked about foreign normal-types, but he never said where they were from.”
“The Indigo area is... unstable. Has been for a while,” Saylee said. “Not somewhere you want to go for a holiday. But,” she added, tucking the blue ball into her pocket, “it is my home and I’m here because I want to help it.”
“So how do you think we get to Dewford?” Key said, opening her Pokénav map. “It’s not that far... if only Manami knew how to Surf...”
“I do have a Surf HM, but it’s only compatible with Indigo-region pokéballs,” Saylee said. “Molly and Manami are too young to support us, anyway. It’s too far for them.”
“So how do we get there?” Key complained. “It’s an island.”
“Lucky we know an old Seaking then, eh?” Saylee said. “Let’s head back to the Pokémon Centre and get some sleep for tonight. If we’re going back through the Petalburg Woods, we’ll want daylight, right?”
~
“Oh,” Key said, stopping abruptly as they stepped out of the market. “Umm... want to look around a little more before we head out?”
“No, we’d better go see Mr Briney, if we head out now it should be high tide by the time we get through Petalburg Woods,” Saylee said, reading her Pokénav map. “Why?” She looked up and saw that Key was nervously staring at a lanky teenage boy in a stupid hat who was jogging up to them with a big grin on his face.
“Key!” he cried, running up and giving her a bear hug. “Your mom said you were taking on the gym challenge! Did you fight the gym here?”
“Yep, and won too!” Key said, proudly showing off Roxanne’s badge. “So, what are you here for?”
“Following a migration pattern for my dad,” the boy said, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly and dislodging his hat. Saylee was relieved to see black hair underneath; at least it was just the hat that was stupid and not his hair as well. “Oh, they said you left with a foreign trainer, is this her?” He said, turning to Saylee. “What’s her name?”
“It’s Saylee,” Saylee said, “and we do speak the same language in the Indigo region.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” the boy said, flustered. “I’m really sorry, I don’t really know about that region...”
“This is Brendan,” Key said, “and yeah, he’s always this dim. When we first moved into Littleroot, he thought I was a boy because I was a leader’s kid.” Brendan just grinned.
“Well, I couldn’t tell from your name,” he said. “Key’s kinda weird. So’s Saylee, for that matter.”
“A kid called Brendan is calling my name weird?” Saylee muttered. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Brendan. We need to get moving to catch the tide...”
“Um, Key?” Brendan said. “Before you go, do you want to have a battle? I’ve been training since the last time we fought, and I was to introduce you to Samuel.”
“You’re on!” Key said, suddenly fired up. “It’ll take all of five minutes,” she confided quietly to Saylee. “Brendan wants to be a researcher, not a trainer.”
“Fine,” Saylee agreed, stepping back to watch as Key and Brendan cleared a space to fight in. A small crowd of passers-by stopped to watch the battle being set up.
“Ready?” Brendan called, palming a pokéball. Key picked one up as well.
“Ready when you are,” Key called and in unison they shouted, “one, two, THREE-”
To Saylee’s surprise, Brendan’s first choice was a Slugma. She’d heard that they could be found in Hoenn- indeed, anywhere there was magma near the surface- but they weren’t exactly common. Unfortunately, rarity wasn’t going to save him from Key’s first choice, Manami.
“Whoops,” Brendan muttered, fiddling with his hat. “Samuel, use Yawn!”
“Manami, Water Gun!” Key ordered. Manami was quicker, and her water gun brought up a thick cloud of steam when it hit Samuel. “Oh, hold up. We don’t want to kill him.” The water gun abated, and Samuel oozed backwards, cooled and hardened shell dropping off of him. Brendan returned him.
“Second round?” he called, picking up his second pokéball.
“I’m ready,” Key said, returning Manami and picking her second Pokémon. “One, two, THREE-”
Milo transpired to be a Mudkip; Key faced him with Thomas. Milo didn’t even have time to do anything before Thomas knocked him out with Absorb.
“You were always gonna be better than me, Key,” Brendan said sheepishly, returning Milo. “You’ll have the rest of your badges in no time, I’m sure of it!”
“Thanks,” Key said, blushing a little. “Hope your research goes well. She returned Thomas and turned to face Saylee. “So, on to Mr Briney’s?”
“Sure,” Saylee agreed. “Nice meeting you, Brendan!”
Brendan waved them off as they headed down the path to Petalburg Woods. Key told Saylee about a shortcut that would get them through the woods in no time, a quick southwards slope.
“I ran off and played here a lot when I was a kid,” Key said. “I figured out that I could go as far as I liked, since this slope would get me back in no time.”
“Did you play with Brendan?” Saylee asked. Key shook her head.
“Not in Petalburg,” she said. “I didn’t meet him until Mom and I moved to Littleroot. I think he’d have liked playing here, though. He’s always been pretty outdoorsy. His dad’s a very hands-on professor.”
“He’s a nice boy,” Saylee said, looking down at the slope. “You first.”
“He’s nice enough,” Key agreed. “A bit dim sometimes. Here we go!” She crouched down, one leg stretched out in front of her, and pushed off, skidding down the slope sideways. Saylee followed suit. It was an easy descent to control, provided that you kept to the thick, slick moss and didn’t hit any of the large roots. They reached Mr Briney’s far faster than Saylee expected, with his small but serviceable boat tethered by the only marginally larger hut.
~
“This doesn’t feel safe!” Key yelled over the growling of the engines and the roar of the waves.
“Try riding on a Gyarados!” Saylee yelled back. She was casually dangling one arm over the edge of the boat, her fingers skimming the surf. “This is a much sturdier boat than it looks like!”
“Dewford ho!” Mr Briney called. Both girls leaned over the edge a little to get a clear view of the approaching island. It wasn’t large; a few houses crowded around something that was a bit large to be called a hill but a bit small to be called a mountain. They pulled up to a small quay, drawing some ire from a group of children who were sitting on the end of it fishing.
“You’ve scared ‘em all away!” One small boy yelled, sticking his tongue out of them.
“You’ll catch nothing but Magikarp with a rod like that,” Saylee called back, sticking her tongue back out at him. The other kids just giggled and recast their lines.
“So, where to first?” Key asked.
“Is there a Pokémon Centre around here?” Saylee asked Mr Briney, who nodded and gave her directions. “Good. You can find out about the gym, and I’ll find out if there are any good caves around here.”
“Caves? Why?” Key asked.
“Rare stones,” Saylee responded. “Mr Stone had an office full of them. This Steven bloke might well share his enthusiasm. If nobody in the Pokémon Centre knows where he is, I’ll want to check the caves.”
As it transpired, Steven had indeed been seen going into the Granite Caves to the north of town. Since Brawly, the local gym leader, was having a training day today and wouldn’t be taking challenges until tomorrow, the girls agreed to go explore the caves and try to find Brawly. A hiker in the Centre gave them the Hoenn HM for Flash, warning them that the cave was extremely dark.
“I can’t legally use that, though,” Key said morosely. “Not until I have two badges.”
“I’ve got sixteen, I’ll do what I want,” Saylee said, booting up the HM and connecting it to Nina’s pokéball. “Come on, let’s go spelunking!”