Slowly, ever so slowly, I calmed down. Even alone once more, there were only so many tears I could cry. And whether or not I liked it, I was alone. Part of me was screaming that Nathan might have a rock or ground type and would save me again, and the rest of me knew with a sinking certainty that I was truly alone this time.

Even if Nathan had such a pokémon, shifting so much stone that so recently collapsed is almost certainly still unstable… He’d be more likely to cause another cave-in or even cause the mountainside to collapse in this area, and he wouldn’t risk it, not even for a kid. Especially not when doing so might very well kill that very same kid.

As I wiped away what tears were still on my face, I looked around at the near-total darkness around me. The only light seemed to be coming from the still lit pokégear on my wrist and the small inventory screen on the Devon Corp bag in my arms. Realizing suddenly what exactly it was I held, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

Nathan had shoved his bag that likely had most, if not all of his supplies into my arms before having me get out of the way of whatever it was that attacked. He had his pokémon with him, so I wasn’t too worried. Even in the middle of a veritable blizzard, he had an excellent chance of survival so long as he had his pokémon. Doubly so if he really was strong enough to try and make his way towards the top of Mt. Coronet.

Me, on the other hand? That bag was my lifeline. I was alone, trapped in Mt. Coronet and without pokémon. The supplies in the bag were likely to be my one and only chance to survive long enough to maybe get out of the mountain and back to some kind of civilization.

Moving as quickly as I could while still being careful, I spun the bag around in my arms so that the inventory screen was facing me.

Devon Corp had long since created their relatively famous brand of backpacks. Utilizing small pocket dimensions, their bags could hold a shockingly large amount. To my luck, Nathan’s bag was definitely one of the higher-end models, meaning its internal space was probably enormous.

Using the inventory screen to flick through its contents, I started taking in what there was. I took note of the two ultra balls along with the luxury ball and premiere ball. An idle thought of perhaps catching a pokémon started playing around in the back of my mind, but I forced myself to focus.

There were several potions and even a revive. I was confused when I came across the entry for a ‘Twisted Spoon.’ Ignoring that, I practically grinned as a tent, sleeping bag, lighter, traveling clothes, and an electric lantern showed up. I didn’t hesitate, hitting the retrieve button on the screen and reaching in to pull out the lantern. Using the pokégears light, I searched for and found the activation button.

Suddenly, the tunnel was brightly lit. Looking back at the cave-in, I could now clearly see the tons and tons of rock that I only barely escaped being crushed by. And in the other direction, the tunnel led down and further than the lantern could illuminate.

Taking deep breaths, I nodded slowly to myself. Now that I could see, I could feel some of the dread and fear lift off my shoulders. With a tiny spark of hope in my chest, I returned to looking through the bag.

I quickly came across listings for a little over two months' worth of human travel food packs, along with five different 1.5-liter water flasks. Twenty meters of rope made me nod slowly, while the three oran berries made me sigh in relief. Oran berries were one of the few berries that worked on humans, too, giving me at least one way to heal myself if I got hurt.

What I found after that made me freeze where I sat. Listings of pokémon food. For Alakazam, Charizard, Roserade, Blissey, and Deino. That was five different pokémon, and I clearly remembered that Nathan had only had four pokéballs. That tiny spark of hope grew ever so slightly, even as I scarcely dared to breathe.

When I flipped to the following listing in the bag, I couldn’t help the massive grin that split my face. An Egg Incubator. A large-sized one, too, apparently. I couldn’t help myself. I immediately hit the retrieve button and reached into the bag. It took me a minute and a half to actually get the incubator out, given that it was just barely able to fit in the bag.

But afterward, there it was. An almost two-foot-tall, one and a half foot wide, black and blue egg sitting in an incubator barely large enough to hold it. As I sat there just staring at the egg, I slowly came to a realization.

Nathan would only have pokéfood for what pokémon he knew he would have with him. And since Alakazam, Charizard, Roserade, and Blissey are all fully evolved pokémon, they couldn’t possibly come out of an egg. Which left me with the simultaneously terrifying and thrilling conclusion that the egg in front of me held a Deino. The first stage of the Hydreigon line.

Still staring at the egg, I slowly swallowed. I knew very little about Deino, but what I did know made me both excited and wary. While the entire Hydreigon line was rather powerful, they were also one of the hardest to raise dragon types. And that’s not even taking into account that dragon types were already notoriously difficult to train. Oh, and they were also A-rank pokémon, with the rest of their line being even higher.

Tearing my eyes away, I finished looking through the bag's contents. All that remained was a pair of sound-filtering earbuds and a pokédex. The earbuds I knew were used by higher-level trainers because of how loud some battles could get, but it was the pokédex that got me excited. Depending on its model, it could have any number of features, including maps and communications. Most importantly, pokédexes are built for those traveling in distant locations, giving them a much stronger signal and connection than my civilian grade pokégear.

Quickly retrieving the pokédex from the bag, I activated it with glee after seeing it was a more recent model. My hopes for communication were quickly stalled by a facial scanner locking me out of the pokédexes functions. The only things I could access were the emergency settings and battery charging ports.

It took me almost ten minutes before I finally managed to navigate through the screens to the one setting that had a chance at getting me access. Upon finding it, I quickly activated the factory reset, causing the pokédex to wipe all acquired data. Which included the data preventing it from recognizing me as its owner.

New Face Detected, would you like to register as Pokédex 110937’s Owner and Trainer?

Grinning slightly, I quickly answered yes and watched as a few screens flashed by, waiting for the pokédex to configure itself to the default settings.

Signal Unavailable, Communication and GPS functions inactive. Pokémon Scanning, Catalog, and Sinnoh Region Map functions active.

I swore loudly as the pokédex declared itself to be unable to connect. Letting out a long, deep breath to calm myself, I figured why not. I quickly raised the pokédex and had it scan the egg.

A Deino Egg. Deino are a quadrupedal dark and dragon-type Pokémon that evolves into Zweilous and eventually Hydreigon. This egg is in its final gestation stage and will hatch soon. This egg is slightly larger than average but within known limits.

“I don’t know if I’m lucky or unlucky….” I whispered to myself. Shaking my head to clear it of the thousand thoughts flying through my head, I turned off the pokédex and slid it into a pocket. I spent a few minutes carefully placing the incubator back into the bag after ensuring that the bag was connected to the incubator and arranged to set off an alarm when it began to show signs of hatching.

“Not gonna accomplish anything sitting here,” I muttered as I slowly began standing up, slinging the backpack over my shoulder and picking up the lantern. I glanced back at the collapsed rocks one more time before shaking my head. I lifted my hand that held the lantern and began walking deeper into the tunnel.

Little changed for a long time, the same walls of stone and rock hemming in the tunnel, a little over ten meters illuminated around me. The only way I could tell the passage of time was with my pokégear, but when I noticed myself checking it every five minutes or so, I forced myself to turn it off.

What must have been an hour passed, with surprisingly little happening. I had remained on the lookout for any pokémon but hadn’t found any. Apparently, Nathan had been right; this level of the mountain was blessedly and surprisingly deserted. Finally, I came to a split in the tunnel. Two paths curving away from one another, the left leading down and the right leading up. Naturally, I chose the left, even if it did seem to lead me deeper into the dark mountain tunnels.

I saw little reason to go higher up and towards more powerful pokémon on the off chance that the path lead outside. If I was going to be surrounded, I would choose the weaker path.

Again and again, this choice came sometimes only minutes were between the tunnel splits. Still, sometimes I managed to walk for up to an hour without the tunnel splitting.

“This is… Rather more boring than I thought it would be,” I muttered under my breath. Walking down a slightly narrower tunnel, only two meters across, I heard a sound and froze. Looking up towards where I heard the sound, I took a long, slow breath.

Latched onto a small crag in the tunnel ceiling was a large Zubat. Its twin tails were beginning to thicken, and its mouth widen, all signs that it was getting close to evolving into a Golbat. And its head had just turned to face my direction.

Breathing as quietly as possible, I slowly and carefully began walking a path as far from it as I could while within the tunnel, hoping that it didn’t decide to attack. I froze for a moment when it let out a small warbling cry and rearranged its wings. Taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart, I took another step.

A step too far.

The Zubat screeched and flared its wings, its mouth falling open to bare its fangs. I instantly began sprinting down the tunnel, raising my left arm to cover the back of my head and neck as my right hand held the lantern, lighting the way. I could hear screeching and rapid wingbeats getting closer as I ran as quickly as I could.

A single deafening screech punctured the air before a bolt of pain shot through me, and I felt something rip across my arm, blood starting to weep from the cut. I flailed my other arm out wildly, somehow managing to connect and slam the lantern into the pokémon. Somehow, the lantern didn’t break but did send the Zubat flying away with a hissing sound.

Spotting a few rocks on the ground, I dropped the lantern and scooped them up. The first one I threw missed, the Zubat glowing a faint white as it used Quick Attack to dodge the rock, but I managed to nail it with the second. It recoiled with another hiss when the third and final rock managed to hit it in the wing, causing it to fall a foot and a half towards the floor.

I knew just watching the Zubat that I wasn’t causing any real damage, and I was just hoping to be too much trouble to bother following after. Snatching up the lantern again, I broke into a sprint again, cradling my bleeding arm to my chest. I heard one final screech before silence fell in the tunnel once more.

I ran hard until I finally stopped another ten minutes down the winding tunnel, breathing hard and muscles burning. Glancing back down the tunnel, I was relieved to not see anything. Glancing down, I winced. There was a cut almost seven inches long across my forearm, and just closing my left hand into a fist caused pain to lance through it.

I quickly knelt on the ground and placed the backpack on the floor. Retrieving the oran berries along with a thin shirt and water flask, I set to work. I used a flat stone to mash the berries to a pulp against the metal water flask’s side. Ripping a big strip off of the shirt, I doubled up the fabric into a thick facsimile of a bandage and transferred as much oran pulp to it as possible. Pouring just a little water over the pulp helped make it into a paste.

Cradling my arm between my knees, I reached out and gathered the paste on two fingers of my right hand. Taking a long breath and shaking my head, I quickly smeared the paste across the cut. I groaned and winced at the sharp stinging, forcing myself to cover the whole cut and apply it evenly. Once that was done, I quickly grabbed the makeshift bandage and began wrapping it around my arm. It was more to make sure the paste didn’t come off than for anything else. But if you were hurt, you bandaged it.

I hoped I was doing this right. All I knew was that the Housemothers used a paste with oran berries in it to help heal cuts like this. As soon as the cloth was tied off, I sagged against the tunnel wall.

“Fuck….” Hearing myself curse softly in the silent tunnel made me laugh softly. I played the memory through my head, trying to ignore how just a Zubat managed to hurt me that much when it didn’t even seem to be trying all that hard. That, more than anything, made me realize how important it was to have a pokémon with you.

The Zubat scratched me once, and I had to use all three oran berries and bandages. I hit it with the lantern and two rocks, and it was completely fine. Chuckling wryly, I forced myself up, ignoring the way the crashing adrenaline made me want to just collapse.

Gotta keep going, just gotta keep going. Movement is life; if I stop, I die. I smiled darkly at the turn my thoughts took so easily. “I’m getting annoyingly used to being in this life and death situation….”

Slinging the backpack onto my shoulders, I then reached down and picked up the lantern as well. Letting out a deep breath, I started walking once more. Ignoring the slowly building ache and stinging from my left arm, I focused solely on walking forward and looking out for any pokémon. I lifted the lantern higher up, letting the light wash over the ceiling. I wasn’t going to get surprised the same way again.

Almost twenty minutes later, I heard another sound, this one much more welcome. Crashing water echoed faintly in the distance. Moving forward cautiously still, I walked for another five minutes before the tunnel widened into a cavern that had to be almost two hundred feet across and fifty tall. Stalagmites stretched upward from the ground amid even larger rock outcroppings. A few stalactites littered the ceiling. But what caught my attention was across the cavern.

A large rush of water emerged from the wall halfway up and crashed down into a small lake. The water dominated the far side of the cavern, the sound of crashing water echoing all around the cavern.

And the reason I could see all this? The ceiling emanated a soft, gentle light from dozens and dozens of softly glowing white stones.

It was beautiful.