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Colress should have stayed at the P2 laboratory. Unfortunately for him, he would never turn down the chance to study something he found interesting. In this case, a pokemon he had only ever seen once before, Zoroark. He had only ever seen it once, during a battle, and even then he didn’t get as close of a look as he would like. Which lead him here, on a condemned route, mildly lost, following what could easily be a completely baseless rumor. This was maybe the second worst decision he had ever made. And it was so incredibly exciting.
The old victory road had supposedly collapsed two and a half year ago due to the castle incident. This was mostly true, some of the route was still traversable, and it was technically the easiest way to get to the aftermath of the castle, but building a new victory road was definitely the right call. If anything Colress had expected it to be in a better state than it was, he was completely prepared to circumvent the badge gates with counterfeits and computer trickery, Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, most of the gates had been destroyed. Even the gate for the trio badge, the one Colress had expected to have the most trouble with, simply pushed open without any effort whatsoever. The various installations of the badge gates were a mess. The fanciful electric display for the bolt badge now sat deactivate and dusty. The dramatic chasm for the jet badge had a hasty orange emergency bridge slapped over it. The ice field for the icicle badge had melted. He didn’t even have to have one of his pokemon help. This made logical sense, obviously everything would have been left exactly the way it was the day the “sinkhole” had occurred, but he was still incredibly disappointed. All of that prep time for no payoff.
The path was overgrown and difficult to follow. The plants that used to sparsely dot the cliffs had now spread, snaking their way into almost every open patch of dirt they could get thier roots on. It seemed like the distribution of wild pokemon here hadn’t changed at all in the last two years, an oddity considering the way the swarms had completely changed the rest of the region. Vullabies cackled from unseen nests. Mienfoo cried back and forth between blows. Weren’t there also wild Fraxure here? There were two years ago, it seemed safe to assume they were still around. Formidable, but he knew his pokemon could handle it. He was a bit less sure if he could handle it, he did spend the vast majority of his time cooped up in a lab or collecting data within the controlled space of trainer battles. He had fought a handful of dangerous wild pokemon before, most notably subduing Kyurem to get it onto the frigate, but her had backup then. He didn’t need said backup, but it was nice to know that if something went wrong he wasn’t immediately doomed. Currently, he couldn’t even go to a pokemon center safely. Everyone knew what he had a hand in and no one was particularly happy about it to say the least. He told himself this was fine, that if he put his trust in his pokemon they could protect him with their full potential, but it felt very different staring down the route itself.
Genesect had very quickly become his partner pokemon of choice any time he left the P2 lab. It was his pride and joy, an incredible advancement in fossil-based pokemon reconstruction, and it was supposed to be a living weapon. Colress knew that, while extremely powerful and absolutely not fair to bring to a trainer battle, it absolutely could not be used as a weapon. Sure, it could easily hurt someone on accident. Thats why Colress usually kept it in its ball, tucked away in a pocket of his labcoat. But it didn’t have the kind of mindless precision a proper weapon would require. It could and would refuse commands, especially from Colress’ now ex-boss, it often hid behind him instead of the other way around. It was immensely powerful, but at the end of the day it was still a pokemon.
Genesect barreled ahead, ripping through the unruly plants. It started fires, it put out those fires, it beeped and clicked noisily while firing lazers at nothing in particular. It had been a long time since it had gotten to run aroud like this without Colress holding its pokeball ready to return it. Having it out and about wasn’t particularly safe, obviously for surrounding people and pokemon, but Colress was always more worried about Genesect itself. Even if it was a high ineffective weapon he still expected people to see it as a weapon first, not a pokemon. It didn’t help that its mannerisms seemed almost alien to most pokemon trainers. It was a bit sad, honestly. Genesect suddenly ran back up to Colress and handed him a full heal that was covered in dirt and dust. Colress suspected that it would be ineffective if used now. It was still probably good to pick it up, however. Picking up litter is one of those things that people consider good.
The tunnels that made up the majority of victory road were surprisingly still in-tact, almost as if nothing had ever happened. Colress did not like this, this meant someone had been here maintaining the tunnels, it was entirely possible that the tunnels of this victory road and the tunnels of the new victory road intersected at points. Someone might see him. Depending on who it was, that could get him in a lot of trouble. Still, Zoroark was reportedly in the tunnel system, not outside. Specifically his source, the trainer that had helped him with his research, had said she saw it “in that place with the weird dark tiles.” Colress had absolutely no idea what that meant, generally the league tried to keep victory road as similar to the natural habitats of the wild pokemon as possible. Still, that trainer had no real reason to lie to him. Even if she did, this particular lie didn’t exactly pose a large threat to him. The wild pokemon here were generally considered threatening, sure, and he wasn’t going to let his guard down, but at the same time he knew for a fact that the pokemon in the areas surrounding the lab were stronger on average. On top of that, if anyone actually had it out for him they would sooner alert the the authorities than send him on a wild farfetch’d chase. Tiles in victory road still seemed odd. Colress pondered if Zoroarks capacity for illusions was more potent than he had assumed. If it could perfectly mimic the appearance of another pokemon, it wasn’t completely unbelievable that it could alter the appearance of its environment as well. Which would mean that he actually had no idea where to look for it. That would be a major issue.
Genesect stopped, suddenly. A conversation echoed through the tunnels. Colress couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he did recognize one of the voices. It was that boy, the one who had forced his way onto the frigate back when Neo Plasma was working on the Kyurem Power Concentrator. That boy had punched someone in the face. He also definitely had it out for anyone who ever associated with team Plasma, neo or otherwise. Colress reassured himself that boy wouldn’t end up over here, after all he probably had no reason to hop the construction barriers. However, that boy was also friends with that trainer he heard about the Zoroark from. She probably wouldn’t try to cause Colress harm on purpose, but he hadn’t yet considered that she would accidentally tell the wrong person the right information at the worst time. She probably wouldn’t even think he was at any risk at all. She may be an incredibly competent trainer, she may have managed to take down Colress’ ex-boss, but she was still a child. Colress needed to get out of sight immediately. He silently signalled for Genesect to shift to its high-speed flight configuration and quickly made his way to the (quite artificial) lake, being sure not to cause an echo with is footsteps. At the very least he could tuck himself behind the small bend at the end of the corridor, and hopefully there was a path back there he could follow further, both for the sake of getting away and to continue his search. Although at this point he was seriously starting to consider abandoning it.
Genesect was, admittedly, not a very good ride pokemon. As much work had been put in to giving it a flight configuration, used more like a hover configuration really, it was still relatively small compared to a person. Colress had to crouch to keep his balance, and even then he worried about tipping into the water. Still, he could swim, and he almost certainly could not talk himself out of this particular trouble. Genesect zipped just above the surface of the lake. Despite not touching the water, it created an incredible wake with a roaring fwooosh. So much for subtlety. With the speed they were going at, however, as long as this wasn’t a dead end they would be just fine.
Genesect had managed to slow down a bit, in its own odd way, moving and then stopping just as it started to accelerate. It was incredibly nauseating, and absolutely did not help Colress balance, but he preferred it over potentially crashing into something. The water seemed to continue for quite a while. It was quite odd, really, it was very obvious that a lot of people had spent a lot of time carving out this space that no one would bother traversing. Victory road was supposed to be traversed with a pokemon capable of surfing, but most trainers wouldn’t go out of their way to surf back into a seemingly empty space. Eventually the room opened back up, into what Colress realized was the first room of the new victory road. A crisscrossing net of intentionally weathered bridges loomed above, the cries of various pokemon and hushed footsteps of trainers noisily echoed around the cavern, everything smelled vaguely of groundwater and construction. Notably, there was a small stone archway tucked in a darkened corner, truly weathered in comparison to the obvious patterns of the “weathered” bridges. It was intriguing, and more importantly it would hopefully get Colress away from all these people, and somewhere that no one would bother looking. At least they hopefully wouldnt bother looking. he was aware that a dark ominous corner is the sort of place someone would expect an “evil” person to lurk, but he wasn’t evil. He was a scientist.
Colress felt incredibly unsteady standing back up, stepping onto dry land was easier said than done when the thing you were stepping off of was an incredibly impatient bug. Not to mention Genesect had stopped at an uncomfortable distance away, Colress could still cross the gap easily, but it was enough that he definitely could fall in if he wasn’t careful. Standing on the ground didn’t feel much better, his legs were not happy with him crouching for as long as he did. The now sopping wet Genesect sprung back into its normal form, flipping in the air before landing next to Colress. He made a shushing motion in return, if anyone had seen that they might go looking, and if one person went looking then the wrong person could go looking as well. Genesect made a noise somewhere between an error alert and a whine.
The archway lead to similar cavernous tunnels compared to the rest of the victory roads, a little worse for wear compared to the others, which then lead to a staircase. The staircase was made from a dark stone, that was seemingly at one point well polished, now covered in dust. It looked completely different from the surrounding area. Colress started to connect the dots.
At the bottom of the staircase was what appeared to be a hallway, once ornately decorated, now in ruins. Dark triangular tiles covered the floor, some of them cracked or missing. Carved decorative columns were strewn across the floor in pieces. A large hole in the ceiling let in sunlight that quickly petered out into shadow further down the hallway. It was chilly, having the same wet smell as the rest of victory road. Really, the whole place was tense, as if it had been waiting to collapse entirely and simply hadn’t. There was a figure at the end of the hall, muddied by the shadows. Colress couldn’t really tell if it was a person or a pokemon, it might be Zoroark, but it could also be any number of things, really. Maybe it was a particularly odd plant. He decided to approach.
Before he could take as much as three steps, Colress was suddenly stopped by Genesect beeping wildly. He turned around, and on there stairs there was a person, luckily not the kid from earlier, but they did make Colress uneasy. Something about them reminded him of his ex-boss, likely the green hair, possibly also the way they glared down the stairs at Colress and his pokemon. Still, Colress didn’t know who this was, and it was entirely possible this was just someone who was lost, and ideally someone who didn’t know who Colress was.
“Are you lost?” he asked, just barely masking the fact that his voice was trying incredibly hard to tremble. The person tilted their head, silently, continuing to glare.
“Look, you really shouldn’t be down here,” Colress regained his typical confident tone, “It’s incredibly dangerous, if you need help getting back to victory road I would be glad to help you.”
There was still no response. They crouched down, their expression shifting from a pointed glare to an inquisitive one. He was making progress, maybe.
“Not one for words, I see. That’s alright, if you don’t want to leave you could help me with my research!”
They went back to a slightly more hostile glare.
“No? But its for science!”
There was an awkward pause as the two of them stared at each other. Colress wasn’t really sure what this person’s intentions were, exactly. They didn’t seem outwardly hostile, but at the same time they seemed like they didn’t necessarily trust him. This was fair, he didn’t exactly trust them either, but their total lack of action was a bit odd.
“What are you doing here?”
Colress felt an electric zorch of panic, whipping around to see who said that. They looked identitcal to the person on the stairs, and they were standing far too close for comfort. He took a step away from them, trying to keep his composure.
“Well, what are you doing here?” Colress hoped they wouldn’t notice that he didn’t answer their question, This isn’t somewhere a random trainer should be wandering.”
“I live here.”
Surely that was a joke, right? That had to have been a joke. Colress laughed nervously, which spun into genuine cackling. What a ridiculous thing to say to someone in this situation, surely he was actually here because-
“That wasn’t a joke. I do actually live here.”
Colress was suddenly on the back foot again, “What do you mean you live here?! This place looks like its been abandoned for years!”
“I’ve lived here my entire life… why are you here, again?” the stranger tilted their head just like they did on the stairs, or like the person on the stairs did, whichever one it was.
Colress froze up, if he admitted that he intruded on what was apparently this person’s home to look for a pokemon that might not even be here, well, that would be incredibly embarrassing. At the same time he had to say something, anything at all.
“Was that you on the stairs earlier?” answering a question with a question hadn’t worked the first time, but maybe the second time was the charm.
“The stairs… that wasn’t me,” they glanced at the stairs, “that’s my friend.”
“Your friend. And you two look identical?”
“No… well, sometimes. They like to pretend to be me sometimes.”
Colress stared at them quizzically for a moment. If their “friend” could look exactly like them, but only sometimes, and couldn’t speak, then wouldn’t that mean--
“Wait, is that Zoroark? You have a Zoroark?!”
“I wouldn’t say ‘have’… we’re friends. I already told you.”
“Still, it’s a fascinating pokemon! One I’ve been wanting to get a better look at for years at this point. No one knows how it creates such impressive illusions, and if we figure that out it’s entirely possible that there are entire species of pokemon who can do something similar that we haven’t discovered yet because they’ve stayed hidden! Not to mention that it could be entirely possible to train Zoroark to make specific illusions for specific purposes, or that we might be able to mimic that ability artificially, and-- what are you doing?”
The stranger had apparently stopped paying attention entirely and was, instead, making strange noises at Genesect, who seemed interested at least. Colress simply stood there and watched for a moment, trying to determine what exactly was going on. After a few moments of back and forth, the person turned back to Colress.
“Your pokemon… it talks so strangely.”
Colress furrowed his brow. Either this person was completely insane or they could talk to pokemon, either way, it seemed interesting, “Elaborate on that.”
“I’ve just never heard a pokemon like it before. I can barely understand what it’s saying… it seems worried, though.”
“Worried? About what?”
“You, mostly, it was worried Zoroark was going to hurt you. I find that sad… Zoroark doesn’t like to hurt people. Usually”
Colress looked at Genesect, wondering if it really was worried, if this stranger really could talk to pokemon. If they could that would be an incredible breakthrough, Colress’ research into the bonds between people and pokemon had been hampered by two things, his ex-boss, and difficulties communicating with pokemon in an objective manner. If this person could really talk to pokemon, and Colress could get them to cooperate with him, then that would be problem solved.
“So you can talk to pokemon?”
“You ask a lot of questions…”
“Of course I do, I’m a scientist. If you can truly talk to pokemon then I-- we can learn so much more about pokemon than ever before!”
The stranger seemed to think on that for a few moments, then they spoke to Genesect again for a short while. It was strange, watching someone speak to a pokemon, Colress had always assumed most pokemon weren’t necessarily capable of communicating in the way people do, obviously it did not surprise him that Genesect could as it was incredibly intelligent, but something like a Pidove? It seemed like non-question, and yet if this person claimed to be able to speak to pokemon in general then that meant all pokemon could communicate complex ideas through something like language. Or this person was crazy, he tried not to forget that this person could just be crazy. He hoped they weren’t, though.
“Okay, okay, right,” they waved their hands in the air, as if they were placing some boxes in a line, “Genesect seems to trust you at least, but I think you are very weird. I don’t know why you’re in my home, or how you found it, and you ask a lot of questions. Zoroark also thinks you’re weird.”
“Harsh, but fair I suppose. That being said I would really appreciate your help, if you’re willing. For science.”
“Well… not now. Maybe later if I decide I trust you, but not now.”
Colress didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know if he would ever find this person again, or if they would be safe continuing to live in this dilapidated cave-castle. On the other hand, its not like he could force someone to help him, especially with something as complex as communicating with pokemon, and they were right. It was extremely weird that Colress had just shown up out of nowhere and started asking questions, and he needed to ask even more.
“That’s very reasonable, unfortunately. Do you have an X-transceiver?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll be back later with a X-transceiver-- what was your name again?”
“You can call me N.”
“Like the letter?”
“Like the letter.”
Of course this odd person had an odd name. Colress felt like he had heard that name somewhere before, maybe his ex-boss? Probably not, and that man had no idea what he was talking about half the time anyways.
“Alright, N, I will be back with an X-transceiver as soon as I can, just in case something goes wrong here and you need help.”
“Wait… I don’t know what your name is.”
“Right, I never told you, I got too carried away with everything else, my name’s Colress.”
“Your name is weird.”
“So is yours. Anyways, I will return later, don’t let this place collapse on you in the meantime. Also if you see a boy with dark spiky hair around, don’t talk to him.”
Before N could ask him about any of that Colress was already off.