Claire and Lucas leaned forward as if Terrance was about to reveal that hidden location to them. Given that we shouldn’t head into the underground thus far, I wasn’t sure what that information could do for them, but they seemed interested.

“Does that really matter? We should get him back to town.” Cliff interjected, acting as a voice of reason.

“Yes and don’t forget, we are far too weak to head down there. Look at what happened to him, I don’t want to end up in that situation!” I added, my voice a little shaky. The idea of being stuck underground, wounded and unable to move made me shiver in fear.

“And that’s without considering that we have no knowledge of the tunnels down there, I doubt we could correlate his location to anything we know.” I added, trying to add reasons why going down there was a bad idea.

“Why don’t we do it like this? You get me back to town, and I’ll give you a map to the Underground? You can expand the map in your own time, and once you feel confident enough, you can come to me, and I’ll give you the location.” Terrance suggested, sounding quite reasonable for someone who almost dug his own grave. But then, if he gave us the beginning of a map and we wanted to expand it, we’d have to move down there, exploring more on our own. Which sounded exactly like what he wanted. More people exploring the Underground.

“Sure, we’ll get you back to town,” Claire immediately agreed, looking quite eager. I could only close my eyes in exasperation, still not sure what to make of the old man.

“Claire, can you ask Twiggy to carry him first? We have some daylight remaining, and with the wounds on him, we should hurry.” I asked, trying to stop the discussion before it could develop further. “Does that work for you, Terrance?” I asked, looking at him after Claire gave a nod.

“It works, yes;” he nodded, “But could I trouble you for a bit of Revive? Mine ran out a few days ago,” he asked, the light blush incredibly obvious on his utterly pale face.

“Here, have some of mine,” Lucas agreed, handing over one of the precious Revives. Given their rarity, we tried to use them as seldom as possible. To run out in the wild meant your Pokémon, once defeated, would be incapacitated for a day or two, and even after that time, they’d be somewhat weakened. Potions could alleviate the weakness a bit, but if a lot of time passed after the original injury, their efficiency would greatly drop.

“Thank you, I’ll make it up to you,” Terrance promised, putting the applicator against a Pokéball he pulled from beneath his jacket. The bottle energized, pumping the liquid through the applicator, somehow transforming the energy stored within the minerals of the Revive into something that could be radiated into the Pokéball. How that worked, I had no idea, I suspected if I asked someone knowledgeable about it, I would be courting a headache, but the how wasn’t too important anyway, it worked. That was all I really needed to know.

Getting Terrance onto Twiggy was a bit of a chore, we needed to jostle him as little as possible and ultimately, we had Twiggy lay down, withdrawing his legs and putting his belly to the ground, before carefully shifting Terrance over. There was still some sweat, some grunts of pain and curses, but we managed. Twiggy showed just how patient he could be, not moving an inch in the whole process and soon, we were on our way, back to Eterna City.

On the way, whenever I wasn’t in the lead, I kept to myself, keeping a bit of distance from the others, especially from Terrance. There was something about his demeanour that creeped me out, that he was able to cheerfully try recruiting us, even while gravely wounded and in a seriously dangerous situation just wasn’t normal. Even as we walked, he tried to convince Claire and the others that travelling in the Underground was far safer than above ground, repeatedly looking into the sky, as if there were some dangerous Pokémon flying above, just waiting for him to let his guard down, so they could dive and kill him.

Instead of listening to the old man ramble on about the magnificence of the Underground, I tried coming up with a way for Charm to cover his weaknesses. Sadly, in all my reading, there had been very little to help him, or I would already have started to work on it. For now, I decided to try using the primordial fire of his Dragon’s Breath as a base and maybe translate it into another move, maybe some sort of conversion to turn his tail-flame into that kind of flame and strike enemies with it.

Sadly, as I was grasping at straws in the dark, there was very little progress. He could slam his tail, but we utterly failed to actually get some sort of attack going, making it a purely physical move.

Luckily, with Twiggy or Gem being permanently out of their Pokéball and required to carry Terrance, there were a lot of wild Pokémon that felt like attacking us was the right thing to do. None of them caught my interest, but they most certainly helped Charm vent some of the frustration of the previous days and I used up quite a bit of Potion, keeping him in fighting shape.

Su, too, was able to get some training. I sent the surly feline out whenever a flying Starly came flapping through the valley, letting him play to his strengths. It was quite impressive, he quickly managed to utilise the slopes around us to get some vertical height, using that height to intercept the flying attackers in the air, where they had thought themselves safe. While there weren’t too many of them and only a single Staravia, he looked quite proud of himself when he brought down that particular foe.

Lastly, Vio got the least amount of training, which I felt was quite fair. On the way in, when I had carefully played to my partners’ strengths, conversing as much of the Potion I carried as possible, Vio had been the partner of choice. Now, on the way back, I had decided to use up my supply, leaving only a small, emergency reserve, so all three of my partners could battle as much as possible.

We managed a reasonably good pace and it only took us two days to travel back to Eterna City. Given that we had to make sure that Terrance wasn’t jostled around too much, mostly accomplished by having Claire walk next to Twiggy, or Lucas next to Gem, depending on which Pokémon carried the injured man, and steadied him, it was a great accomplishment.

When we reached the boundary of Eterna City, the Guard had seen us coming from far away. By the time we reached the gate, she had realised that Terrance wasn’t sitting on Gem because he was lazy, but because his leg was injured and sent someone to the Pokécentre for help.

“Good Evening,” she greeted us when we were about to enter, “I’m afraid you can’t bring a Pokémon outside its ball into the City, the rules are the rules.”

For a moment, we were all pretty flabbergasted, only Terrance seemed to have expected that. That they would even bar entry to a Pokémon, if the Pokémon was carrying an injured patient was an incredible surprise to me, but the Guard seemed quite serious about it.

“Doesn’t this count as an emergency or something?” I asked, still incredulous.

“Not necessarily dire, I already sent someone to the Centre, they’ll bring a stretcher,” the guard just shook her head, “If you could set him down and recall your Pokémon, you are creating a bit of a disturbance,” she asked, sounding so reasonable, despite her patently unreasonable suggestion.

Before I could make up my mind what to say, Lucas acted, “Gem, carefully curl up around me. We’ll let Terrance slide down as soon as the stretcher is here,” he ordered, already preparing his partner to set the patient down as carefully as possible.

By the time Lucas had arranged everything together with Cliff, Leana had come over with another helper, carrying the stretcher.

Working together, we managed to send Terrance off and finally, Lucas could call Gem back, making the gatekeeper extraordinarily happy.

It seemed that in Eterna City, keeping within the rules was more important than keeping the people healthy. What a weird, weird town.