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“Did you know that approximately fifty-two percent of the percentage-related statistics I tell you about are completely false and made up by me on the spot?”
Lisia acknowledges the comment with a roll of her eyes. “It’s much higher than that, May.”
“Hey, I’m not that much of a liar!” says May, pouting and crossing her arms. “Just because it’s totally made up doesn’t mean it’s not true!”
“I mean, it kinda does, but whatever,” says Lisia. “Here, give me another completely false statistic.”
“Uh…” May digs around in her brain for something she could pretend is true. “Did you know that at any given moment, there’s an eighty-seven per cent chance that there’s an autistic person in Granite Cave?”
Lisia considers this. “No, Uncle Steven’s usually in Shoal Cave.”
“He’s not your uncle.”
“He might as well be. Anyway, he hasn’t been to Granite Cave since … well, since the first time you met him.”
“I’m pretty sure he has.”
“Well, he hasn’t told me about it.”
May chuckles. “Maybe he, like, goes at night! Secret spelunking!”
“Ugh, only Steven would be ridiculous enough to lead a double life for the purpose of spelunking.”
They make a few more jokes about Steven’s spelunking-related double life, including a few about whether Wallace is in on it or not, and then May mentioned something about the latest episode of a cartoon that led to the conversation changing in topic before either of them could seriously consider the possibility that May’s statistic isn’t all too unrealistic.
She’s wrong anyway, of course. It’s not true that an autistic person is in Granite Cave eighty-seven per cent of the time.
It’s true that an autistic person is in Granite Cave ninety per cent of the time.
It’s usually Steven, of course. He’s not living a secret life for the purpose of spelunking, not as such, but he’s certainly not telling people about his trips to Dewford when he probably shouldn’t be leaving his position at the League. The Elite Four aren’t supposed to let him leave Ever Grande when there might be challengers on the way, but what are they meant to do, grab his arms and stop him from moving when he has a Pokemon made entirely of knives on his side?
Brawly says he knows absolutely nothing about this. Many suspect him of falling to temptation and allowing Steven to bribe him to look the other way. The truth is much simpler: It’s been his job since long before he was Gym Leader to guide rookie Trainers through Granite Cave and he still hasn’t caught onto the fact that Steven can navigate the caves unassisted after over fifteen years of practice.
The reasons for leaving when he’s on the job vary. Sometimes he hears a BuzzNav report about someone discovering something new in the cave and arrives there in an instant to check it out. Sometimes he receives an urgent call that requires him to meet up with someone in a place where nobody will think to look.
Most of the time he just gets bored.
Justifiably, of course. Getting eight Gym Badges at all is a challenge, and most who obtain every Badge will not even attempt to go to Ever Grande. Victory Road deters many challengers, and the few that make it through to the League are usually defeated swiftly by Sidney. More still are beaten by Phoebe, Glacia, or Drake, and only the best of the best make it to Steven’s chamber at all.
So essentially, he’s expected to spend several hours a day sitting in an empty room doing nothing. It’s no wonder he sneaks off.
Of course, the obvious question is, why doesn’t he just go to Victory Road? And the answer is: He does.
Most of the time, when he’s bored and in need of a cave, that’s the first place he tries. It’s just the most practical choice -- it’s close to his workplace, it’s still in Ever Grande so he’s not technically breaking any rules, and it’s easier to explain away if someone questions his being there.
But Victory Road is home to hundreds of Trainers on a busy day, and they always battle each other, to try and weed out competition when and if they become the next Champion. And all of them at the very least have five Pokemon, usually a full team of six, so double and triple battles are common. Which means that, on peak hour of the busiest day, it can add up to hundreds of Pokemon battling with their full force, holding nothing back.
On the bright side, the lights and noise filling the caves make it easier for him to go unnoticed.
He tries to tell himself that it’s not because he gets overwhelmed, it’s because of Wallace. It’s because Wallace is always nagging him about his spelunking, about his tendencies to go into the dangerous parts of caves without considering the risks or taking the necessary precautions, and the teal-haired Gym Leader is always paranoid that loud noises in caves will lead to a cave-in.
Steven’s not actually sure if this is the case, despite his near-encyclopedic knowledge on caves. Every time the environment in a cave grows too loud for his liking, he finds an exit or finds a way to stop the noise before anything can come of it. Victory Road is okay sometimes, but it’s too loud too often, and it’s certainly not a place he can count on being safe when he’s already overwhelmed by the Elite Four’s somewhat loud tendencies.
There aren’t many other caves to go, really -- Shoal Cave is too close to Mossdeep for him to make it there during work without someone noticing him and asking him to babysit the Gym Leaders, his swimming ability (or lack thereof) knocks out any caves that require him to go underwater unless he can borrow a Pokemon from Wallace beforehand, Meteor Falls is home to some extremely territorial Draconids at times, and half of the caves he’s found seem to have a magical quality that makes them near impossible to find a second time.
So Granite Cave is his only escape, sometimes, his only relief from the noise of Ever Grande. He flies over and sneaks in when Brawly’s back is turned, then goes to the deeper parts of the caves, the parts only veterans like him dare to enter. He stays there for a while, then goes back to Ever Grande and pretends he was just going to the market in Slateport to buy some rocks.
He never fools anybody, but he has plausible deniability.
Sometimes, it’s the purple-haired girl who nobody knows anything about apart from the fact that she’s a Gym Leader’s sister and she’s in an autistic geology cult.
She’s not in an autistic geology cult, of course. Team Magma is more than an autistic geology cult. It’s a belief, a belief in Groudon’s role in what the world is today and Its power, and it’s a family, a family that found her when she was at her lowest point and saved her.
She tried explaining this to her sister, at one point. It ended in tears.
Courtney was in that very cave, by chance, when she ended up joining Team Magma. Oh Groudon, she remembers it like it was yesterday. She was fourteen, a young Trainer living in Fortree, and her sister was eighteen and shaping up to be the Gym Leader of their city.
She was angry, she remembers that well, she was so angry that her vision was tinted with shades of red and her heart was racing. She was angry because she hated the world because the world hated her, because her parents and her teachers and her so-called friends took such great joy in finding the specific noises and textures that caused her pain and using them against her.
They were sadistic and she hated it and she hated them and she hated that she tried to explain to her sister Winona why she shouldn’t “light it up blue” because Autism Speaks thinks it’s okay to kill autistic children and was met with a casual reply of, “Well, maybe they have a reason for wanting to kill autistic children, don’t you think?”
And in a fit of rage she ...stole? Borrowed? She’s not sure if it’s stealing or borrowing if you don’t intend to give it back but end up doing so. Anyway, she stole/borrowed one of Winona’s Pokemon, a Flying-type Swellow that she could use to get away.
At the time, she wasn’t sure if she was running away or just taking a break from it all, but either way, she found safety in the cave in the corner of Dewford, where nobody would bother her or ask why she was upset or tell her off for having feelings. The meltdown was practically instantaneous, barely giving her time to recall Winona’s Swellow, and she succumbed to it, not bothering to try and hold it off and delay the inevitable.
And he found her.
His red hair and matching coat and glasses were the only features she was able to memorise, the ones she used to ensure she could recognize him with her rather wobbly facial recognition skills. He sat beside her and waited for her to calm down, whispering meaningless encouragement like, “It’s okay,” and “Don’t worry,”, and she took it, because it was the most comforting response she’d had in a long time.
She’s not sure how much longer it would have taken her to calm herself without him, but it was over soon after he arrived, and within ten minutes she was a sobbing mess instead of a sobbing mess that was desperately trying to bite her own arm.
He listened for an explanation, and she tried to give him one, but talking is hard enough when she isn’t recovering from a meltdown and so he gave her some paper to write on. Her handwriting was messy, her hands still shaking, but he read it anyway.
He understood.
He explain that he, too, was on the spectrum, and offered her help. He explained that he had made sort of a group, devoted to Groudon, and offered to let her join Team Magma and stay with him.
He gave her a Talonflame for transport, and she went back to Fortree to return Winona’s Swellow and gather her most important belongings. She joined Team Magma and never looked back.
She still goes to Granite Cave sometimes, to remember the kindness she showed her in her darkest moments. Her loyalty never wavers.
Sometimes it’s the red-eyed woman from Meteor Falls.
Sometimes she drags her Mega Anklet along the ground as the added weight makes walking normally near impossible. She could just have her Key Stone on a necklace or a bracelet, of course, made from the same traditional metal that all Draconids use for Key Stones but with none of the immobility that comes with having it on her leg. She has a Mega Bracelet, actually, with a hole for the Key Stone if she ever decides to use it. She does use it, occasionally, when she needs to be quick on her feet, and the lack of weight multiplies her agility tenfold.
She still wears if more often than not.
The pressure is soothing, oddly.
Sometimes she stares at the mural of Kyogre and examines it closely. And sometimes she’s there, analysing the mural, when she receives a visitor, a blue-eyed girl who’s looking for a Meteorite Shard.
And sometimes she realises that girl is May, the new Champion of Hoenn, and also the girl she saw in Littleroot earlier. And sometimes she knows she’s going with Steven’s plan to stop the meteor, and she desperately wants to explain her culture and her plan and why Devon’s plan will do more harm than good…
And she tries to say that, but instead she battles her and gives her the shard.
Look, Zinnia might be great at planning things and manipulating people, but when it comes to effective, straightforward communication, she’s … well, she’s not exactly the sharpest egg in the attic.
And sometimes, after that absolute failure of a conversation, she sighs and talks to Aster and starts reforming her plan to account for May’s involvement.
It’s what Aster would have wanted.
And sometimes it’s May herself.
Sometimes she’s just gotten her Gym Badge from Dewford and she’s asking the Gym Leader, Brawly, if he knows where she could find Steven Stone. Sometimes he gives her instructions, even offers to guide her through the cave, but she refuses, insisting she’ll be fine with her Pokemon by her side. And sometimes he finds him in the cave and gives him the letter from Mr. Stone and he thanks her by giving her a technical machine and they part ways.
And sometimes she’s obtained all eight badges and is waiting until her thirteenth birthday to challenge the League and she sees the purple-haired girl from Team Magma. And sometimes she follows her into the cave thinking she’s planning something and battles her and then it turns out she was just looking at the mural.
And sometimes she’s looking for a Meteorite Shard and runs into the red-eyed woman. And sometimes she battles the woman and wins and gets what she’s looking for in return.
And sometimes she takes Lisia down there, because the teal-haired girl wants to look at the mural but is too scared of wild Pokemon to go in alone. And sometimes they analyse the mural together and Lisia sketches it and takes it home to colour in with her paint. And sometimes they kiss in the darkness of the cave.
Those moments are the best.