The mountain did not want them.
They knew it about an hour in, when the trees thinned and the wind changed. Mt. Silver went up and up, grey and enormous. The air on it was thin and cold.
Nothing here was pretty. Nothing here was small.
"Adam," Ren said.
Forty metres up the slope, a bear was watching them.
It was enormous. Brown and heavy across the shoulders, with a pale ring on its chest. An Ursaring. It had been eating something. It had stopped eating to look at them. You could see it in its eyes, it did not like them one bit.
Ren stared at it.
The Ursaring stared back.
"This bear is not running and it's pissed. Isn't that different for once, Adam, huh."
"I noticed."
"It's coming toward me." She was already moving, you could tell Ren was excited. She was grinning so hard it looked painful. "Adam, it's coming toward me, this place is great."
The Ursaring came down the slope like an avalanche. Ren's Pidgey came off her shoulder to meet it.
The bird was fast. The bird was clever. It had beaten the Rock gym without once being touched. It lasted eleven seconds. The Ursaring caught it out of the air with a swipe that would have taken a man's head off. The Pidgey hit the stones and did not get up. Ren's grin died so fast that Adam almost heard it drop.
He was moving before he decided to.
He could have ended it. He didn't even need a power. He could have walked up that slope and put the thing in the ground with one hand and gone back to breakfast.
He stopped himself.
Ren returned the Pidgey, and sent out the Butterfree, and got it back three seconds later. She didn't have anyone else to send. She stood in the wind with two balls on her belt and looked up at a bear the size of a car.
Adam stepped up next, sending the Mankey, and the Mankey bought about forty seconds, and then it went down too, hard. Well, that was expected. Even the type advantage didn't help. Yikes.
The Ursaring lost interest before they did. It went back up the slope to whatever it had been eating, because they had stopped being interesting, and that was the most insulting thing that had happened to either of them in two years.
They sat down on the rocks in the cold. Ren had the Pidgey in her lap and her hands were not steady.
"That's the first thing we met here," she said. "Just a regular pokemon. It's not a boss. It's not anything. It's just a bear."
"Yeah."
"They're all going to be like that."
"This place is on another level."
Ren looked at the mountain going up and up into cloud, and Adam watched her work it out, and he watched the exact moment she decided she liked it.
"Good," she said.
"No brute force, Ren. Remember what we talked about."
Ren pouted. "But the bear looks strong. Can I take it? I promise it's the last time."
"No. We will have more chances."
Later that night they made camp.
Ren walked around treating the pokemon. They had bought plenty of medical supplies this time. Adam knew that there was a possibility of this happening all things considered.
Adam looked at the Mankey, which was asleep with one eye open and its jaw swelling, and at the Cubone, which had refused a blanket and was sitting up against his boot with its club across its knees like a soldier who had decided not to sleep this century.
These guys will have a tough time here, but this is also good. This place is a great furnace for their growth.
After everyone had their meal they went to sleep.
"Ren."
"Mm."
"We're going to stay a while."
"Obviously," Ren said, without opening her eyes. "I'm not leaving. This is a great place."
On the fourth day, they found it.
It was in a scree field on the mountain's western face, and it was small, green, and eating a rock. Not scraping at it. Eating it, in bites, with total casualness, like it was eating cake.
Adam stopped walking.
Sage.
Sage did not answer immediately, which she never did.
[ On it Host. ]
Say it.
[ SCAN — Larvitar (wild) ]
Potential: Black
Type: Ground/Rock
Affinity: S
Ability: Guts (burn it, poison it, break it — its attacks only get stronger)
Speciality: Mountain-Eater — it eats more than usual allowing it to grow further, and what it grows into will not be shaped like other Tyranitar. It will be larger. Considerably.
Compatible Treasures: Red Orb Fragment, Earth Vein Marrow Possible Route: Pupitar → Tyranitar, and then further than that
Adam stood in the wind and did not say anything for a while.
"You've gone quiet," Ren said. "Spill it."
"It's Black."
"That's better than Blue?"
"It's two above Blue." He couldn't stop looking at it. It was the size of a small dog. It had a rock in its mouth. "Ren, we have never seen anything above Blue on this world except my shadow friend, and that one broke the scale. This is a wild pokemon in a rockslide and it's Black."
"So catch it."
"I am just concerned about its, let's say, eating capabilities. These things are known as Mountain Eaters," Adam said. "That's not a figure of speech. That's what the species does. It eats the mountain, and it grows, and this one especially will be a glutton like no other. I am afraid the thing will grow into something like a Godzilla."
Ren looked at the small green thing chewing gravel.
"That," she said, "is a very stupid-looking Godzilla."
Catching this thing was a challenge.
Adam crouched a respectful distance away and held out food for it. The Larvitar looked at him with the flat, unbothered contempt of something that ate stone and did not require his charity. When he came closer it hit him with a rock. When he came closer than that it buried itself, straight down, in seconds, into the ground.
He tried for two days. It hit him with a great many rocks.
"Send the monkey," Ren said, on the third morning, watching him pick grit out of his hair.
"It'll get hurt."
"It's already hurt. Everything's already hurt." She was sharpening something, which she did when she was thinking. "It doesn't want a friend, Adam. It wants to know if there's anything on this mountain worth its time. So show it something."
The Mankey had been listening. The Mankey had, in fact, been listening very hard, because it had watched a small green rock-eater ignore its trainer for two days and it had opinions about that.
Adam looked at the Mankey.
"What do you say?"
The Mankey cracked its knuckles.
"I guess the nice way is out."
It took eleven days.
The Mankey lost the first fight in under a minute. Larvitar was armoured, it was heavy, and it did not care about pain. Every hit it took only made it hit back harder. The monkey came back to Adam with a broken hand and an expression that dared him to say one word about it.
He didn't. He set the hand, and fixed the footwork that had let it get hit. The next morning the Mankey went back.
It lost that one too. And the one after.
On the fifth day it lasted twenty minutes, and the Larvitar buried itself instead of finishing it.
On the seventh day, in the middle of a brawl, with its shoulder torn open and its guard gone with the Larvitar coming in to end it, the Mankey changed.
First there was a shining light, and then it came up out of the dust bigger. Longer in the arm, heavier through the chest. Its eyes had gone from furious to something worse, which was furious and patient. Primeape stood on the rocks with blood in its fur and did not roar. Adam felt his throat go tight.
It still lost that fight. But the Larvitar had to work.
The rest of the mountain went the same way.
Nothing on Mt. Silver was a training exercise. Golbat came in packs and went for the eyes. Graveler dropped out of the dark. There was a Donphan on the eastern ridge that rolled. The first time it came down the slope the Beedrill misjudged it and took a hit that snapped one of its lances clean off. It flew back to Adam with its wings shredded, but its fighting spirit burned hotter than ever. By the second week it had learned to kill a Donphan by going for the joint behind the foreleg, while the thing was still curling to roll. Beedrill would never evolve again. It didn't need to. By the third week Adam had stopped thinking of it as a bug.
The Gastly stopped being funny for about a week, sulked, decided the mountain was a joke it hadn't gotten yet, and then one night in a cave full of Misdreavus, it fought untill the morning and came back as a Haunter with hands. It used them immediately, trying out new pranks on Primeape, and got chased around the camp for an hour. Adam let them go. It was good for morale.
Ren's Pidgey was the one that surprised him.
She had built it to be untouchable, and on this mountain untouchable was worth nothing, because the things here didn't need to touch you; they took the sky out from under you. It got hurt. It got hurt badly and often. And Ren, who had never once in her life told a living thing to endure something, sat with it every night and healed what she could and put it back up in the air every morning.
It came back down as a Pidgeotto on the ninth day, out of a fight with a Golbat flock. After this its fighting style changed. It did't evade anymore, now it hunted.
"Now we're talking," Ren said.
She was hoping every day for it to evolve and rise above this challenge.
Something had been robbing them.
It started small. Food, first. Then a knife. Then the Butterfree's medicine, which was actively cruel. Whatever it was, it moved at night, it never took the same route twice, and it left a single set of narrow prints and then no prints at all, which meant it was intelligent enough to walk on stones as to not leave the tracks.
On the fourth night it took the food and left the wrappers arranged in a small neat pile, which Adam felt was a bit much.
"It's mocking us," Ren said, delighted.
"It's mocking you. I don't care."
"Adam. I can sense it this one is my next pokemon."
[ Sneasel. Ice and Dark. They are clever, cruel and they steal because they enjoy it more than they need it. ] A pause. [ Ren. This one has been watching you for six days. It is not afraid of you. ]
Ren went very still, in the way she did.
"It's hunting me," she said.
"Ren."
"It's hunting me, Adam."
"Please don't enjoy this so much."
She hunted it for two nights and failed, because it was better at this than she expected and because she was trying to catch it the way you catch prey. On the third night she stopped trying to catch it. She sat down in the open, in the dark, with the food out and her back to the rocks, and she did nothing at all for four hours.
Adam watched from the tent and did not help.
At some point past three in the morning the Sneasel came down off the rock face to take the food, because it had won every other night, and Ren caught it by the wrist.
Not the neck. The wrist. So it could see her do it.
It shrieked and slashed her forearm open to the bone. She let it. She did not let go, and the two of them stayed like that in the dark for a few seconds, bleeding, understanding each other perfectly.
Then she put a ball against it and it went in without a fight.
[ SCAN — Sneasel (R. Delacroix) ]
Potential: Purple Ice/Dark
Affinity: A
Ability: Keen Eye (nothing you do will make it miss)
Speciality:
Patient Thief (rare — it adapts quickly and takes small losses on purpose to ubnderstand its opponent. After it sees the way to victory it is almost a guaranteed success as it gets increased attack damage.)
Compatible Treasures: Razor Claw, Never-Melt Ice Possible Route: Weavile
"Purple," Ren said, when she got back to the fire with her arm dripping. She was reading the scan with an expression Adam had last seen on her mother. "Purple, Adam."
"Congrats."
"That's better than most pokemon we have seen till today."
"Lucky find, like the larvitar."
"By the way you gonna heal that or..."
"Eh, I forgot. I was excited to get a new team member, and a purple one at that."
They found the Thick Club on the sixteenth day, in a Golbat-choked side cave, in a heap of old bones that had been picked clean.
Sage flagged it before Adam even bent down.
[ Treasure detected. The club is a perfect addition or the Cubone. It also improves its attack. ]
He turned it over in his hands. A heavy, dense length of bone, old, worn smooth at one end, liek it was already used as a weapon before.
He crouched and held it out.
The Cubone looked at him. It carried its mother's skull on its head and a small blunt club in its hands. It had fought every day on this mountain with that club. Even when hurt it never let that club drop.
It looked at the club he was offering, then at the little one in its own hands.
It dropped its own and took the new one without a second thought. The weight of it nearly took the little thing over. It braced its legs and held it up anyway.
Heartless, I thought the old one had a special meaning to you. What can I say, Pokemon and their logic.
Adam had a second to think that it looked ridiculous.
Then something happened. The small Cubone shined and started expanding.
It became taller and heavier, armour thickening across its back, the skull settling down onto its head like it had finally found the head it was meant for. Marowak stood in the cave mouth with a bone the length of its own body and swung it once, experimentally. The swing cracked the rock wall.
The Marowak stood there breathing, and turned the club over in its hands, then looked at Adam.
Adam did not say anything. He put a hand on its shoulder, which it let him do, and they stood in the cave for a while.
"You look like her," he said, eventually.
The Marowak made a sound he didn't have a word for, and went back out onto the mountain to hit something.
Two days later Ren found a curved black claw in a crevice, sharp enough to open her thumb when she picked it up, and Sage told her what it was for. A Razor Claw. Sneasel's whole future in a piece of bent horn.
"It needs a night and a hard fight," Ren said, remembering the information she got from Sage and Adam. "That's the condition?"
"That's the condition."
"Well," Ren said, and looked around at Mt. Silver, which was made entirely of hard fights, "how convenient."
It took the Sneasel four nights.
It fought every one of them. That was not Ren's doing. The thing simply went out after dark and came back before dawn with something else's blood on it, and around the second night she stopped trying to stop it and started going with it instead.
On the fourth night they went up after a Golbat flock that had been picking at the camp. Adam, who had not been invited, watched from the ridge.
He didn't see the fight. He saw the end of it. The flocks and the sneasel had a fierce exchange.
Towards the end when the small pokemon was at his limits he shone bright.
What came out was leaner, red-crowned, standing upright, and it looked at its own hands like it was pleased with them. Weavile turned its head and found Ren in the dark twenty metres away.
Ren walked over. Patting its head. Adam did't think it would ever let her do it.
After some time she came back to the camp with a monster walking at her heel.
"It evolved. Its much stronger now. I bet it could fight any of you pokemon, well except that shadow." Ren said looking smug.
Adam did't say anything, he was just happy about their success.
Down
The Larvitar came to them on the twenty-second day.
The Primeape had finally beaten it. Properly. It took an hour. By the end of it neither of them could stand up straight. The Primeape had a broken rib, the Larvitar had a crack across its armour, and both of them sat in the gravel breathing at each other with their fists still up.
Then the Larvitar got up, walked over to Adam, and sat down on his boot.
That was it. That was the whole ceremony. It did not look at him. It looked at the Primeape.
Adam put the ball against its shell and it clicked. Somewhere behind him Ren said something that he didn't hear because there was a rushing in his ears.
[ Congratulations, Host. ] Sage sounded almost fond. [ This one will be a true monster. ]
I know.
They came down the western face after twenty-four days, into Johto, into thin sunlight and a smell of trees.
Adam checked his team on the last ridge, the way he had every morning.
A Primeape with a badly set rib and a habit of standing between Adam and anything new. A Beedrill that had learned to kill things four times its size. A Haunter with hands, which was a genuine mistake by the universe. A Marowak carrying a new club and wearing its mother's skull. A Larvitar eating the mountain it was leaving, out of spite. And a shadow acting as the spectator to it all.
Ren's Pidgeotto rode the updraft above them. Her Butterfree flew straight and level. Her Weavile walked at her heel with the black claw in its grip. It did not look tame, and Ren looked at it the way other people look at a favourite knife.
None of them were what they had been three weeks ago. All of them had scars.
"Say it," Ren said.
"Say what?"
"You've been chewing on something since the ridge."
Adam looked back up at the mountain, which had not noticed them leaving.
"I hated it," he said. "I stood there every day and watched them get hurt. I could have stopped any of it in about a second. I didn't."
Ren thought about that.
"You were unbearable," she agreed. "You sulked for three weeks." She bumped his shoulder with hers. "It's the most self-control I've ever seen out of a man who could punch a bear inside out."
"That isn't comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be. Come on. I'm starving and there are trees down there."
They went down into Johto.
AN: If we get to 300 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 500, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123