“Y-Yeah…” Larry broke the silence, “I did get caught by Valerie.” He pointed at his trainer behind him, still lying on the tarp.

  Donphan looked at the girl hatefully. He rose, and the rangers tensed, their Pokemon rose in response, awaiting some sort of fight.

  Maxie put up her hands in compliance, “Alright! I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” She pointed a finger at the angry Donphan, “but he looks pissed. Let's all just calm down.”

  “W-Wait!” A panicked Larry sidled up to Donphan, pulling at him to sit back down, “She saved me, Donphan! Please listen before you come to a conclusion!”

  He looked ready to retort, but Phanpy’s trunk and Ursarings' arm held him back, finally calming him back down, “Give Larry a chance, he’s a friend, isn’t he?”

  “Please, Dad?” If he hadn’t known, Larry would’ve believed that Phanpy somehow learned Baby-Doll-Eyes. Donphan’s emotions calmed in an instant, and he sat back down. Pulling Phanpy in close and petting him on the head using his trunk as he huffed angrily, “You better have a good explanation.”

  “I do.” Larry nodded.

  …

  Everyone calmed back down, and Larry finally explained the entire situation. Ursaring, Phanpy, and Donphan looked shocked at the turn of events, the fact that a Moltres was living in the caves, that his mother had fought the Moltres, and that Larry was pulled into a stream of water during his escape.

  The Ranger Pokemon listened in to his story too, but kept an impassive face at the mention of the legendary Pokemon. They hadn’t been here to experience the fight, so they probably didn’t have a frame of reference to compare the fight to.

  “We experienced the fight,” Ursaring mentioned in a break in his story, “I was playing with my cubs when suddenly, the cave got terribly warm and the ground began to violently shake.” According to Ursaring, most of the Pokemon fled to the cold outside when large chunks of the second layer began to collapse. It all happened so quickly, just a few minutes later, the earthquakes stopped, and some brave Pokemon decided to move back into the cave.

  “It was so warm inside!” Phanpy raved. The second layer had been rocked, to say the least, a large part of the spiraling walkway had collapsed into the inside of the spiral. All the hot air from the fight had risen upwards, and a strong hot breeze blew against the second-layer's inhabitants as they reentered, only to find out that many of the second-layer inhabitants lost their homes in the destruction.

  “The worst part was the aftermath…” Donphan continued regaling his part of the story. Many of the first layer's wilder inhabitants, instead of fleeing out of the first layer to Route 28, fled up into the second layer. Their new friends weren’t keen to adapt, though, mistaking the friendliness of the second layer's inhabitants as a weakness. “You would hand them a berry and they’d try and attack you,” Donphan complained as he shook his head.

  “Luckily, they started behaving when they began to get beaten up,” Ursaring mentioned with a toothy smile, “they’re all nice and civilized now.”

  With the mess on their hands, Donphan and Ursaring decided to investigate what had happened down below to be better prepared for the future, “And that's where we are now,” Ursaring finished, “We haven’t been making quick progress unfortunately…I hope Golduck and Machoke are handling everything well up above.”

  “Machoke is strong and Golduck is smart,” Donphan said calmly, “they’re not the weak little Machop and Psyduck we knew.”

  “Yeah, but my cubs are such troublemakers!” Ursaring lightly slapped her clawed arms against Donphan's armor, “Even I can’t keep them out of trouble all the time!”

  ‘So they’re at least managing, that's good to hear…Everyone on the second layer was very welcoming. It would suck if they couldn’t live there anymore.’

  “Larry!” Phanpy urged him from underneath his father's trunk, “Now you gotta tell us what happened after you got sucked into the water!”

  He told them everything he could, about waking up in the Pokecenter and about what Valerie told him, that he was floating in a river when she’d caught him and brought him into the center to heal. Larry raved about meeting her parents, about fighting in a league battle, and the wonders of modern technology. Healing him from near-death to healthy in a single night. He was forced to explain a lot of human terms to the group though, it seems Donphan and Ursaring knew just as little about trainers as his mother did.

  “That stuff they sprayed on you did work wonders,” Ursaring remarked as it scratched its chin.

  “Humans have some crazy inventions,” He explained, not explaining anything in the process. The Sci-Fi technology of the Pokemon world, where teleportation and energy-to-matter conversions were an everyday thing, was still entirely unexplained to him. So he wasn’t going to be any help to them if they wanted an explanation.

  Donphan eyed Valerie far more amicably, “This girl doesn’t seem so evil now. It is good to know that nothing worse has befallen you.” He turned back to Larry, seriously, “Considering you’re defending her, I suppose you’ve made the choice to stay with her?”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Larry nodded back, “Yes, I wanted to explore the world and do something with my life, and it feels like Valerie is my way to the top.”

  Donphan stared at Larry, “I see…”

  “It was her idea to return here and release me back to my mom.” Larry remarked, "That's why we're here, to look for her. I only told her about me wanting to stay with her a bit before we entered the caves again.”

  To their left, Valerie finally found the courage to speak up, “Uhm…So, these are your friends, Larvitar?” She was still cramming through her phone, even with her shoulder injured, ‘That's some commitment…’

  “I hope they’re not too mad about me catching you? That Donphan looked angry before…” She had a guilty expression on her face, unsure of how to make up with a Pokemon.

  Donphan spoke up, addressing Valerie, “I had the wrong impression of you.” Valerie simply heard a few grunts, which one could interpret as, “Do-Phan Phan-Don.”

  “So you're not mad anymore?” Valerie tested, only for Donphan to nod back. She put a hand on her chest in relief, “Thank goodness…”

  “Look,” Valerie put her phone down as she proposed, “I wouldn’t want to get in between your friendship, so how about this? I'll be bringing Larvitar back over here to meet with his mom when we find time, you guys could go ahead and hang out then a bit as well. How does that sound?”

  Larry and Donphan nodded at the idea, happy at the compromise.

  “New friends!” Phanpy escaped his father's grasp and sped over to Valerie's side, “Larry's friends are our friends, right, Dad?” His father nodded back unsurely, still not quite sure of how safe his son would be near a trainer. Valerie, for her part, looked star-eyed at the adorable little Phanpy approaching her.

  “Ohh my goodness!” She raved as she pulled Phanpy into her embrace and pet him on the head lovingly, “You’re just the cutest little thing! Let’s be friends, I wanna take you home with me right now!” A huff from Donphan makes the group of rangers jump, and Valerie throws her hands up and away from Phanpy.

  …

  Donphan eventually relented and let Phanpy relax next to her, Valerie was keeping a respectful hand on Phanpy's head, petting away while reading on her phone as he slept. Larry grinned at the sight and walked back over to her side, plopping himself down next to her to get a good look at her phone. She noticed his gaze, “Aww, you wanna read too?”

  Valerie showed him the document proudly, “See? I wrote all this up for your training! I’ve been doing everything I can to become a good trainer.”

  ‘Woah…’ Looking over the document, Larry found out that he couldn’t read, throwing off his eventual plans to learn to write by quite a bit. The letters looked like something in between a stylized Japanese and some made-up language, ‘Well, at least I know she wrote a lot, even if I won’t know what she wrote…’

  “I wrote up a plan here for your training once we’ve finally met your mom and are back home. I thought your mom might appreciate the thought that I'm putting in so much work, but it’s a real challenge to find any training tips for Larvitar out there…” She changed apps to some sort of browser, only for the page to buffer endlessly.

  “Gah! Of course, I won't have any reception in a cave,” She knocked on her head for effect, “guess I’ll show you later…” She looked over to him, only to find him quirking his head to the side at her phone. She smiled guilelessly, “Oh right, you can’t read…”

  She put her phone down and gestured to Larry, “Ok, so basically, there are only a few Larvitar with trainers because they’re so rare. And people wanna keep rare stuff to themselves. So getting tips about caring for you has been a real challenge. I'll find some stuff for you though, don't worry!”

  In response, Larry nodded with a smile, ‘Guess she’s a bit of a scatterbrain if she gets into something.’

  Their one-sided conversation ended, and Valerie calmed down, hugging both Phanpy and him close to herself, “I was worried, y'know…”

  “I've never fought in a battle before, so I didn't know what I was doing. You looked like you really took a beating, and I was unsure how well your wounds would heal.” She ran her good hand across his rocky skin without thought, looking up as she lay on her side, “Did I do good?”

  ‘I've never fought a real trainer battle before, but her commands were solid…’ Larry wasn't sure if he was the best judge, but with the girl's dad out of commission, Larry took up the mantle, nodding at the girl, “You did pretty well for your first fight. Though I'm not the best judge.”

  “...Thanks…” Silence returned as Valerie kept petting him and the mood was beginning to become anxious. Just then, she spoke up again in a whisper, that only Larry managed to catch, “I'll get better, for you and for me. Can't let you get hurt like that again…”

  …

  “How long was I asleep?” After his session with Valerie, he freed himself from her grasp and returned to the Pokemon. Larry asked Lairon, walking over to chat with them as well.

  “Half a day?” It turned to Graveler, who nodded back, “Something like that.”

  “You put up a good fight!” The Fire-Type praised, earning a slightly embarrassed “Thank you…” back from Larry. Arcanine sighed, looking at the dark, dank cave, “Though, I can’t wait to get out of these dark caves.”

  “Sorry…” Larry excused himself sheepishly, he was the reason they were here after all.

  Arcanine smiled, “Don’t worry, work is supposed to be hard. Otherwise, we wouldn’t grow from it. From what you told Donphan, you went through a lot, so this is the least we could do.” Larry was surprised by the Pokemon's eloquence, ‘Guess I had the wrong image of them…’

  “I like the cave!” Graveler spoke up as he picked up a large stone effortlessly, “So many rocks!”

  “And so many deposits…” Lairon cut in, eyeing a deposit of some kind with hunger in its eyes.

  ‘...Or maybe it's only Arcanine.’ Larry corrected himself mentally.

  Behind Larry, Maxie pulled a rubber ball out of her backpack's pocket. Arcanine's head and eyes immediately stopped dead and tracked the ball. “You wanna?” Maxie spoke with a grin, and Arcanine nodded back as its tail began to wag.

  She chucked the ball, and Arcanine shot away, mouth wide open. He returned not 20 seconds later, depositing the ball from his mouth straight into Maxie's hand as he panted away, “Aww, want another?”

  ‘...I don’t even know anymore…’

  Those games made me realize it just never was a series for grown-ass men, which I now unfortunately am.