Liftoff 1.18

  August 2015

  By my estimate, I was about fourteen or fifteen miles in when we first started moving at dawn. The morning hours blurred together, and given the excitement of the night prior, a bit of doldrum was welcome. Like the day before, we kept our lunch simple: stale bread, canned chili, and dried fruit. I was running low on water again, but we’d be fine for the day.

  Thankfully, we hadn’t had too many battles. Rocket was in good health, but Scout was still nursing his left wing where the gligar had bit it. I couldn’t for the life of me remember if those fuckers learned Poison Fang. The wound didn’t look poisoned, but I also wasn’t a doctor. Regardless, the two puncture wounds caused by the bat-scorpion’s fangs clearly bothered Scout.

  What few pokemon we did find, Rocket took care of with ease. A graveler, cubone, and more of those ground-grass tentacool were all manageable threats. I wasn’t looking forward to dusk though. Pokemon seemed far more active and aggressive during that hour or two before the sun completely set.

  When I first stepped foot in the dungeon, I was given a time limit of forty-eight hours to circle the Stampede Reservoir. That timer ended at dawn tomorrow, but my effective end point was sundown. If I couldn’t clear the dungeon before then, I’d be forced to move in pitch darkness. I might have been willing to before, but after our run-in with the gligar, I got the feeling that I’d underestimated the dungeon’s lethality.

  So I hurried us along, ever cognizant of the approaching dusk. How much distance had we covered today? Ten? Twelve? The number didn’t matter anymore, only that we kept moving forward.

  “Tran-Tranquil,” Scout trilled as he glided down onto my shoulder. He’d only been taking short flights to avoid stressing his wing, but his vision was too great an advantage for me to bench him entirely.

  “See anything?” I asked.

  “Quil. Tran. Tranquil.”

  Understanding my pokemon had always been a challenge. I wasn’t Ash, who seemed to be able to hold full conversations with his pikachu. Rocket and I understood each other, but that was through constant companionship and years of me studying his body language.

  In the wild, we typically communicated through a series of codes we’d agreed on, barks and sign language designed to get the message across without alerting prey. If aura played a role in our communication thus far, it was so minor that I couldn’t tell.

  I’d had Scout for a far shorter time than Rocket. He knew basic callouts and signs thanks to Ranger Tom, but our communication was much more stilted. Sometimes, all I could do was make broad, sweeping conclusions about what he saw.

  By his nod and carefree shrug, I got the feeling that he wasn’t warning me of an immediate danger. In my current circumstances, that was as much as I could hope for.

  “Okay, thanks. Anything we should avoid that might become a danger?”

  “Quil,” he chirped, pointing with one wing. He wasn’t panicked, but he looked in one direction while skewing us away in another, which I assumed meant whatever he saw as something to be noted but not immediately feared.

  “We should go that way or avoid going that way?”

  “Quil.”

  “Okay, Scout. We’ll do it your way.”

  We skirted around the “maybe a threat” Scout saw. When we drew closer, Rocket also began to act strangely, smelling something in the breeze. His tail flicked to the left and swirled, a pattern I didn’t think I’d see today.

  “What do you mean prey, Rocket? We’re in the dungeon.”

  “Lin-Linoone,” he barked softly. He then pawed at the ground and buried his snout into the dirt before tossing a small clump of dirt with his nose.

  “That’s… Rabbit? No, a hog?”

  “Lin.”

  “Rocket, there are no hogs here…” I trailed off. That wasn’t strictly true. There were no mundane hogs here. “Swinub? You’re smelling pig, right? That’s the only ground type pokemon I can think of that’s also pig-like.”

  “Lin.”

  “Huh, is this the thing you saw, Scout?”

  “Quil.”

  “Good call then. Let’s go around.”

  Wild boar were dangerous. They were great for roasts and stews, and a part of me wondered what a swinub would taste like, but hunting even a mundane boar could be very risky for squishy humans like me. When backed into a corner, boars had some of the nastiest tempers and their tusks could do some serious damage even without poke-magic on their side.

  Perhaps, if I had time, I might have risked it, but encountering an ice type now wasn’t in my best interest. My decision was further reinforced when we drew nearer than I would have liked. Rocket indicated three scents, which meant at least three swinub. But knowing my luck, there was bound to be at least one piloswine, a mother and her young.

  Soon after, the sun began to set and the nonstop stream of battles began anew. With only a mile or two to go, we moved closer to the shoreline. I really wanted to clear this stupid dungeon before it got dark.

  Rocket fought against tympole, palpitoad, and wooper while Scout kept an eye out for other threats. If he found another of those red sand shovels, he was to let me know so we could steer clear. Most of the time, he was keeping those ground-grass tentacool at bay with deft Air Cutters from his good wing.

  I’d found myself a thick branch and hastily cut a walking stick out of it. I poked it into the puddles in front of me to make sure I wouldn’t receive a nasty surprise.

  My caution was proven correct when a fucking bear trap closed over my stick with a bone-snapping crack. It chomped clean through a wooden stick as thick as my forearm and scared the shit out of me.

  “Holy shit!” I cried as I stumbled back, almost slipping on a patch of mud.

  “Stun!” the bear trap cried as it slowly opened itself. It eyed me with a gimlet stare, daring me to approach, but otherwise seemed happy to hold its ground. Slowly, it folded back into a familiar, flattened shape, but with teeth that shone with a metallic glint in the setting sun.

  “Is… Is that a stunfisk?” This wasn’t normal. Stunfisk were ground-electric types, a flounder-like flatfish that lived in the muck. It wasn’t supposed to have metal fins with serrated teeth. I let out a sharp whistle, calling Rocket from where he was discouraging a wooper. “Rocket, back off. We’re going around.”

  I was glad I’d decided to circle the reservoir from a higher altitude. If this was what was in the mud, there was a good chance I would have lost a leg by now. The mud made it hard for Rocket’s Odor Sleuth and all it took would have been one moment of inattention.

  Heart pounding in my chest, I carefully found a dry patch of ground. At least here, I could mostly see the threats coming.

  X

  We made it across the finish line at about ten at night. The sun had long since set, but we were lucky enough to avoid nocturnal predators. Or maybe there was just the one gligar near the lake. I didn’t know but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Rocket was completely exhausted. With Scout’s injured wing, he’d been taking on the bulk of our opposition, rushing them down with Liftoff and Slash or suppressing them with Seed Bomb long enough for us to run away. On the plus side, I doubted he’d have any trouble fighting in the dark after this.

  The moment we crossed the finish line, a square of blue light boxed us in. From there, a trail of blue wisps led the way back towards the entrance of the dungeon. The sounds of the forest faded into the background as more words appeared before me.

  Congratulations! You have cleared the Stampede Reservoir Dungeon. May you walk a thousand miles with your partners by your side. In light of your achievement, you have been rewarded with the following:

  - Shane Hayes has been added to the RKS System as a trainer.

  - Trainer Hayes has obtained a packet of pecha berry seeds.

  - One Paldean wooper has been added to Trainer Hayes’ party.

  From this point forth, the denizens of this dungeon will be seeded across the world in appropriate habitats.

  The dungeon will remain open from this point forth for those who seek greater challenges.

  I let out a sigh of relief and allowed myself to collapse to my knees. I didn’t have a pokemon’s natural stamina, nor was I some anime protagonist who could shrug off life-threatening danger with just a feelgood speech and a hearty meal. I’d been on the move for two days, with only lackluster provisions and very little sleep between. Constantly remaining alert for threats, fighting against that gligar, it was all too much.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue light form into the shape of a wooper, a Paldean wooper. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but the wooper in front of me was one of those brown ones I saw in the dungeon. Its whiskers were also shaped differently from the blue variant. Next to it was a brown packet, presumably the pecha berry seeds the System promised me.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Like every other wooper, my new pokemon was covered in a sticky, shiny film.

  It looked at me. I looked at it. Then, its mouth opened into a wide, toothy grin. It hopped close and nuzzled its face into my arm before I could stop it. I let out a groan of pain as a familiar, stinging numbness seeped into my skin. I was too tired to do more than wiggle fruitlessly.

  “Help…” I croaked. Rocket snorted but slapped the wooper off my arm like the wonderful partner he was. His fur probably protected him from the mucus. Or maybe his natural resistance was better. Probably a bit of both. “Thank you…”

  “Woop?” it tilted its head in confusion. “Woo-Woop? Woop-er!”

  “Lin-Linoone.”

  “Woo?”

  “Oone.”

  “Woop. Wooper.”

  The ferret talked to the salamander. It was weird just listening to them, but he must have gotten the message across because the wooper made no attempt to hug me again.

  “Yeah… You’re poisonous, little buddy,” I groaned. It was adorable, but admittedly a pokemon best admired with a bit of distance.

  “Woop…” it said, slumping a little with disappointment. I took that to be an apology.

  “All good. I’m just tired.”

  The wooper wasn’t entirely unexpected. Strange subspecies aside, everyone knew that people who cleared the dungeon got one, loyal pokemon. It was a pattern that began with Wilhelm Ziegler and his houndoom. Or maybe only the first-time clearers got one pokemon, like a starter. Either way, the addition was something I’d accounted for.

  If I had my way, I would have loved a grass type that could help the town farm, or a powerhouse tank like a swinub that could contribute with a lot of hard labor. Hell, even a geodude would have been more immediately useful as a liaison with the local graveler now that Austin was… Austin.

  A wooper… I didn’t think there was any such thing as a useless pokemon, but I had to admit, its uses were a bit less easy to figure out.

  I didn’t even know what type it was. Ground, obviously, but what its secondary type could be, if it had one at all, was a mystery. My go-to guess would have been poison, but even the regular wooper had that poisonous mucus so that wasn’t as much of a hint as I would have liked.

  Then there was the prefix: Paldean wooper. Clearly, it denoted a subspecies of some kind. Was Paldea the name of the scientist who discovered it? A region? For all I knew, it could be a special type of radiation that some wooper eggs were exposed to to cause this weird mutation.

  The exact details didn’t interest me as much as it might Sabrina, but it was yet one more reminder that the pokemon world was far, far bigger than the games implied.

  I sighed and turned my attention to the bag of seeds. My third pokemon was neat, but because its potential remained to be realized, it was more of a mystery than it was an asset. The real prize from the dungeon were the seeds.

  I smiled at the thought. The wooper I fed in the dungeon repaid me with a treasure worth more than gold. I had a small, foil ball in my backpack with a dozen, unassuming seeds. Oran berry seeds. Along with the bag of pecha berry seeds the System gave me for completing its challenge, I knew I’d made a genuine contribution to the town.

  I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the stars. They were beautiful, untainted by light pollution. Would mankind rise to blot out the stars once again? Could we? Was Arceus somewhere up there, looking down at us? Had Dialga and Palkia taken hold of the fabric of our universe?

  I didn’t know. There was so much to think about. That little blurb from the dungeon’s announcement system was itself a treasure trove of information.

  The “RKS System…” It had to be a riff on “Arceus,” the creator deity of the Pokemon setting. It certainly told me who was really in charge of the cosmos now, as if the hoops around the dungeon gates weren’t a big enough clue.

  I’d been an agnostic in the Before, with a general acceptance that humans couldn’t know it all, that there would always be the inexplicable. Yet here I was, with concrete proof of divine intervention.

  I wasn’t sure if that made all of this better or worse.

  A divine presence didn’t necessarily mean a perfect and benevolent plan to uplift humanity. For all I knew, this could all be Arceus’ attempt at a divine comedy.

  And, even should there be some grand design, legendary pokemon tended to be more like the gods of Olympus or Asgard from my understanding. They weren’t perfect, infallible beings, alien and detached in their holiness yet somehow loving. They were almost human, with their own desires and goals. Hell, Groudon and Kyogre were notorious for feuding.

  I didn’t know what that might look like outside the confines of a Gameboy, but I sure as shit didn’t want to find out.

  I was drawn out of my musings by another popup.

  Warning: The protection granted by the RKS System will be withdrawn within 00:03:59.

  I scrambled to my feet. Fucking dungeon couldn’t even let me stargaze in peace.

  X

  The moment I left the dungeon, the gate shimmered and vanished behind me, leaving behind a golden, gear-like symbol not unlike the hoops that bound the god of pokemon. I crawled into a hole Rocket dug and passed out. The wooper could wait. The seeds could wait. My new aura could wait. I was too exhausted physically and mentally to do much else.

  I woke up as a new man.

  There was no other way to put it. I felt refreshed, as if I hadn’t just spent several days hiking through the woods and fighting for my life. I felt like I’d just emerged from a spa day at the most luxurious five-star resort in the world. The aches and sores that I’d grown accustomed to were gone, replaced with a limberness and vitality that I could only assume came from aura.

  There were reports, interviews of people who’d survived the dungeons. They always described aura with broad, sweeping generalizations like “I just feel stronger.” It always felt vague to me but now, I understood. It was impossible to fully encapsulate what aura was, and any attempt to do so sounded like philosophical proselytizing, not because aura didn’t exist, but because it was just that universal.

  I couldn’t do anything with it, not really. My body didn’t glow when I thought deep thoughts. I couldn’t fire a hadouken by thrusting out my palms; I’d tried. Nor could I see further or hear and smell more.

  Even so, it was there, an ever-present feeling that suffused my entire being. My senses weren’t enhanced in any way, but what I had simply felt more, more vivid in a way that went beyond just good physical health.

  I lay there in the ditch, Rocket draped over half my chest and my new wooper curled on my legs. It looked like it’d figured out that the water-resistant layer of my polyester-wool pants repelled its mucus as well. It let it share my body heat without leaving me a paralyzed cripple in the morning. Off in a nearby tree, I saw Scout awake and alert.

  “Good morning everyone,” I said with a small yawn. I scritched Rocket between the ears and moved to do the same to the wooper before pausing with a grimace. “Yeah, I need gloves for you, buddy.”

  “Woop,” it said, halfway between a croak and a chirp.

  “Not your fault, buddy. Speaking of, you need a name.”

  “Woop?”

  “I name my pokemon because it helps me tell you apart from other wooper.”

  “Woop-Wooper?”

  “Why can’t humans tell individual pokemon apart?” I guessed.

  “Woop.”

  “Well, I guess it has to do with our senses. I know linoone like Rocket here tell pokemon apart through different scents. Humans don’t have sharp senses, see? So we need a little help. Besides, having a name will tell other humans that you’re with me, and so they shouldn’t be scared of you.”

  “Woop,” it croaked. It looked down at itself before hopping to its feet with a big grin. “Woop!”

  “Okay, so, a name. Are you a boy or a girl?”

  “Woop!”

  “Umm… One ‘woop’ for boy and two for girl, please.”

  “Woop! Wooper-woop!”

  “Was that one or two? All words sound like ‘woop’ to me, bud.”

  “Woop!”

  “Okay, boy. How about… Mudball?”

  “Woop!” he stamped his little feet. He didn’t like that then.

  “Umm… Crossbones? Your whiskers look like bones, unlike the blue woopers’ which look like little antennae.”

  He thought about that before ultimately shaking his head. He hopped into the air and wagged his tail, making himself seem bigger than he was. “Woop-Wooper. Woop.”

  “You want a more impressive name?” I guessed.

  He shook his head and lied flat on his stomach before waving his tail around. “Woop.”

  “Hmm, are you saying you’ll get a lot bigger when you evolve? You… Aha, you won’t have the whiskers when you evolve so you don’t want to be called ‘Crossbones.’”

  “Woop!”

  “Okay, then. How about… Blooper?”

  “Woop,” he croaked. Another no.

  Then, just for fun, I said, “Sir Swagsire. That way, you’ll have a name that fits even when you evolve.”

  “Woop? Woop!” he cheered.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Wooper, Sir Swagsire now, wasn’t supposed to approve of that name. Then again, pokemon were quirky at the best of times.

  With that settled, I was about to make us a quick breakfast before heading home, but a System popup covered my vision.

  For granting Sir Swagsire a name befitting his gentlemanly stature, you have gained 1 Bond Level.

  “Oh, I almost forgot about this,” I muttered. The RKS System, however it worked, shared similarities with a video game. And like a scrub, I’d yet to check my own status screen. “Status.”

  Trainer Profile

  Name: Shane Hayes

  Title: Novice Trainer

  Body: C-

  Mind: D

  Soul: D

  Registered Pokemon/Bond Level

  Linoone (Rocket): 40/100

  Tranqill (Scout): 24/100

  Wooper-P (Sir Swagsire): 6/100

  Perks

  NA

  It was nothing unexpected. I was a little surprised that my “Body” stat was at a C-, I thought I was in better shape than that, but maybe the standard the System used was different from my world’s human average. Compared to the likes of Bruno of the Kanto Elite Four, I had no faith in my physique.

  The Bond Level was likewise unsurprising. Rocket had been with me longest and so naturally had the highest. That said, it was a little disconcerting to have my relationships quantified for me like this.

  “Well, let’s go home.”

  Author’s Note

  I could have added a dungeon boss waiting for him at the end of the path but decided against it. I don’t think this one really needed a high-stakes raid boss. The cave that Shane passed contained one, a “territory head” if you will, but there’s no need to fight to complete the challenge.

  I’m trying for minimal stats. There is no such thing as HP or MP. I’m just going to give Shane a letter grade a la Type Moon, with a few perks or titles later on. I think it’ll make for an overall better story.

  Besides, I’ve always been that one Asian that can’t do math.

  I’m thinking I can give Shane a perk once every 50 BLs, so two per pokemon. Special achievements, such as future dungeon dives, may also result in a perk.

  End of arc 1.

  Animal Fact: Unlike other salamanders, the axolotl don’t naturally go through metamorphosis, which means they never outgrow their juvenile state despite being able to reproduce. This phenomenon is called neoteny.

  Despite this and contrary to popular belief, they are not immortal. They do still age and have a lifespan of about ten years.

  Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: .