Pokémon Chronicles 零 (ZERO)

Episode 10: A questionable start

"Geez... so much work getting you two under control," Lucca sighed, wiping his forehead. "If we're going to get through this, you're going to have to keep your quarrels to a minimum."

"I know that. I can't help it if someone keeps wanting to fight everything in sight now, can I? Someone's got to tell Megan off," I argued with my wings on my hips.

"And I can't help it if someone wants to be weak and avoid every fight. Don't you know how it goes? If you run from battles, eventually when you have to fight, you'll be too weak to win. Keep running and you'll drive us to fail!" Megan cried.

"Both of you don't even bother starting that up again!" Lucca snapped, tapping us both. "If we're really going to get through this, then that means we all have to work together. That goes for both of you! Understood?"

"Yes daddy," Megan teased.

"Da-daddy? Wa-wait, what?" he stumbled, making her giggle. I shrugged my shoulders and gave up, paying more attention to where we were.

I didn't know how long or how far Megan's squabble dragged us, but right now we were deep into Fossil Hill, surrounded by mountains and rockery. It didn't look much different from last time, other than the fact that we had passed the statue so now the path looked unrecognisable to me. Before I wound up wandering off in a random direction, Lucca took the lead and waved for me to follow, quickly helped out by Mimia. I casually rolled with it, walking close behind them.

"Do you two know your way around here?" Shelly asked, playing with his hands.

"Yeah, we came through here to get to the academy. I didn't know about the river being the safest way, though," he nodded. "I'm sort of thinking about how we can get down there..."

"Hmm? Couldn't we just climb down the cliff or something? It doesn't look that steep," Megan wondered.

"Oh come on now. Maybe for you guys, but for me?" Lucca complained, swerving to show off his tail. It only just hit me how inconvenient travelling was for him. Even a simple trek like this must be tiring.

"Ehee hee, sorry. I suppose you kinda need the water too, huh?" she giggled, twiddling her feet.

"I mean, if we're really going to talk about impossible solutions, we could all just dive from the top of the cliff or something. Meg, you can climb," I joined in, looking away.

"I'm down for that," Lucca smiled.

"I... guess I could..." Shelly whimpered, looking for an edge to the cliff.

"You too? You guys are not serious about this!" Megan cried. I laughed to myself, scanning the area again to find somewhere we might actually have been able to dive from. The path around us was quite wide at the moment, but its edges were in plain sight. One of those edges had a straw bridge leading to a path that couldn't be seen over the horizon, implying that it was where the mountain path descended. It had hardly hit midday yet, and we were nearly there, from the looks of things.

"So this Cerulean Village... Lucca's been there, right? Is it just at the bottom of the mountain?" I inquired.

"Yeah. It's just a plain village at the foot of the hills. That bridge there, we go past that and at the bottom of the path, there'll be a cave leading straight into the village," Lucca explained. Mimia yipped in approval. "If we take that path. We'll certainly run into a few herds of feral Pokémon, so I'll leave it up to you girls if you want to take a break once we get there."

"We can just have lunch and hit the road again, if everyone's alright with that," I proposed lazily. Mimia yipped again.

"Okay, that got annoying, fast. Why do you keep doing that? Are you some kind of Rockruff now?" Megan complained. Ironically, Mimia responded in kind with a few more yips and growls.