Aurin’s desire to venture inside the Underground Dojo was at an all-time low, something he had previously considered impossible. It had already been at an all-time low, only now it had sunk beneath even that. While he was satisfied in defeating his latest mysterious assailant, his encounter with Heart had rattled him somewhat.
Luna’s theory about the card suits seeming correct meant that there were at least four individuals pursuing him. If it truly was just to battle him, that wouldn’t be a problem. It was their strange costumes and usage of rift magic that bothered him the most. Although Heart had shown she had trained her Volcarrow well and it was indeed a powerful Minakai, Club seemed to be the most competent of the two. Should the two team up against him using a Minakai each against one of Aurin’s, he would have to use one of his most powerful to be able to stand up to them.
“Is everything okay, Aurin?” asked Nolan as the two walked down the grassy bank and onto the riverside path.
“It will be,” said Aurin with a smile. “Don’t worry about me, Nolan. Let’s head inside, shall we?”
Nolan guided Aurin to the doorway built into the river path. The last time Aurin had looked at this spot, it had been a simple grassy bank used to conceal a tunnel. Now, the metal door was as blatant as could be. Nolan opened the unlocked door and gestured for Aurin to enter, which the young man did.
A sinking feeling arose in Aurin’s chest as he remembered the fear he had felt venturing down here last time with Luna by his side. The Zodiac Squad base had already been abandoned by that point with only Virgo lingering behind to deliver Aurin a message. Aurin couldn’t help but be overcome with an uncomfortable nostalgia as he thought back to fighting the Zodiac Squad. He was the one hunting them rather than the reverse as was the situation now with Club and Heart. He supressed these feelings and put on a fake smile as he and Nolan approached the door at the end of the hall.
Nolan tapped a number into the keypad and it opened to a brightly lit room with several battle arenas marked in white paint on the floor. There were dozens of tamers in here, most of whom were watching the four battles occurring within the arenas. Standing at the edge of an arena where a Shamasaur and a Rabbafat brawled, was Gray.
The man with the black and silver hair bore a look of deep satisfaction as he watched the battle before him unfold. It was obvious how much he loved fighting, both partaking and spectating. He was similar to Aurin in that regard, and the man was more than competent with his own Minakai.
When he heard Aurin and Nolan approaching, Gray turned around and extended a hand. “Aurin!” he said merrily. “Welcome, welcome.”
“Gray,” said Aurin, shaking his hand and giving a small nod of the head. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“That’s no trouble at all,” said Gray with a faint smile. He cocked his head to the side. “Please, allow me to show you around our facility.”
“Sure,” said Aurin, but he felt that he needed to say his piece first. “But please understand that I’m not interested in joining or being affiliated with the dojo. Not because of who anybody here is or how they train, but because of what this facility represents to me.”
“I presumed that would be the case,” said Gray, bowing his head low. He did not sound disappointed. “I will, of course, endeavour to change your mind once you’ve seen the good work we’ve done. Of course, I cannot take much of the credit as my time here has been short.” Gray looked up, his eyes wide with pride. “The work of the tamers, both experienced and inexperienced, is what’s led us to such great feats. While none of our tamers can claim any titles for themselves, national or local, they are striving for them, and bettering themselves each day in pursuit of their goals.”
“And I would never diminish that effort.”
Gray gestured towards the battles unfolding. “Then let me show you. Nolan, please return to your training.”
“Yes, Gray,” said Nolan. The young man disappeared through one of the nearby doorways as Gray guided Aurin to an arena.
Rick was one of the tamers battling, using his Desparee to fight a Funglie. The weeping Minakai was whipping the mushroom-headed beast with thorny vines. Each time the Funglie tried to spit spores, it was struck across the face. The opposing tamer gave order after order, trying to outmanoeuvre Rick until he had the opening he needed to let loose his toxins, but Desparee refused to let up. It was clear that Rick was going easy on the boy too. Aurin presumed this was a training match rather than a proper battle, but he had to admit that Rick had already shown signs of improvement since he’d battled Aurin in the town square. Aurin could have pointed out a dozen small flaws in his technique that would have kept him in a hardcore battle for longer, but those were the sorts of things that came with time and were often better to learned through experience. Those were the lessons that stuck the best.
“Take the hit and push through!” ordered the Funglie’s tamer, and his Minakai obeyed.
This immediately proved to be a mistake, for the Funglie had already taken a beating. The second it opened its mouth, Desparee twirled his vines wildly, lashing its fellow nature elemental across the face dozens of times in quick succession. Funglie projected its spores barely five feet before succumbing to the brutal attack. It fell flat on its stomach, spreading its limbs out before falling unconscious.
There came a smattering of applause and Rick approached the boy, offering a handshake. The tamer happily accepted, and Rick held up the boy’s hand.
“Give it up for Jeremy!” called Rick. “Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have lasted half as long, folks. Two weeks from now, he may just take me down.”
Jeremy looked around bashfully, trying to avoid eye contact with the other tamers. Even still, Aurin detected a small smile on the boy’s face. He watched as Rick offered him a few words of advice before clapping him on the back.
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“Rick, if you please,” said Gray, cocking his head to the side and holding up a hand.
“Oh, hello, Aurin!” boomed Rick enthusiastically. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Your Desparee is looking sharp out there,” said Aurin. “I can see the improvement since I first laid eyes on it. Nice job, Rick.”
“Thank you, kindly,” said Rick, grinning from ear to ear. “To what do we owe the pleasure of Tobias’s arch-rival?”
“That might be overselling me,” chuckled Aurin. “Gray invited me. He thought it was about time I took a look around the Underground Dojo.”
“I’m pretty sure I suggested that when me and the others had that training session at your place. You didn’t seem to keen then. What changed your mind?”
“I had the sense I would be pestered about it until I cave,” said Aurin, truthfully.
“That was indeed my intention,” said Gray with a sly smile. “Poor Nolan would have showed up on your doorstep with increasing frequency until you chose to visit. An irksome tactic, no doubt, so I’m glad it did not come to that.”
Rick returned to his training after some small talk, and Gray walked Aurin down one of the back corridors. He stopped every now and then to show Aurin inside a room. When Aurin had last been here, the rooms had been cleared out, making their utilities unknown. Now, however, there were rooms dedicated to medicine, tower supplies, and even dormitories for the tamers to sleep in.
While it was interesting to see how everything had been repurposed, Aurin couldn’t help but find the whole place very claustrophobic. There was ventilation, but the air was all fed in and out through pipes and shafts rather than windows and doors. He thought back to the Castle Dojo where the masters and students spent most of their day training outside. Even the castle itself had no shortage of natural light, even in its lower floors.
“This,” said Gray, “is our highest security room. But I trust you enough to not pilfer anything.”
“Scout’s honour,” said Aurin, putting his hand on his heart.
Gray input a long number into a keypad. It must have been at least thirty characters long and it was impressive he remembered it off the top of his head. Aurin briefly wondered if there was a mnemonic he used as an aid, but the thought slipped away when he saw what was held within the room. Eggs. And lots of them.
Aurin followed Gray inside and his eyes wandered from shelf to shelf. Even during his recent tower runs, Aurin could not help but marvel at the monster eggs held within. Last week, he had found a new egg and lost it after Gittup fell afoul of a particularly rambunctious Metortoise. He couldn’t help but wonder what Minakai he would have added to his team had that not occurred. Similarly, he wondered what Minakai lay within these eggs.
His eyes rested on a row of safes, not much bigger than the eggs themselves. There were eight in total with seven of the doors slightly ajar, revealing the safes to be empty. One, however, was locked, and Gray noticed Aurin looking at it.
“This is my personal safe,” he said. “I don’t have a house here, so I effectively live inside this dojo. I have a rare egg that I deliberately haven’t hatched.”
“Why haven’t you hatched it?” asked Aurin.
The only eggs he knew to require special hatching methods were those belonging to epic and legendary tier Minakai. Even rarer eggs like those of the Microbot species or cosmic elementals could be hatched in any old incubator.
“It is a long story,” said Gray, furrowing his brow and clicking his tongue. “Long story short, one of my prized Minakai gave birth to the egg, much to my surprise. It is an incredibly valuable egg that I am tempted to sell, but at the same time, I would feel simply awful selling the egg of one of my own monsters. I’m sure you know how rare it is for Minakai to breed in our world.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in all my time at Kyle’s ranch,” said Aurin.
“Indeed. Even when Minakai mate here, there is something about our world that hampers their ability to produce eggs. I’m sure there are dozens of books on the subject by various researchers, but I could not tell you what conclusions they have reached.”
“Do you mind if I ask what Minakai it is?” asked Aurin, his curiosity growing.
Gray smiled and tapped his fingers on the safe door. “If you can guess the combination, I will tell you,” he said. “Six numbers.”
“What’s your birthday?”
“The twelfth of June, two thousand and one.”
“Alright, my guess is one, two, zero, six, zero, one.”
“No,” chuckled Gray. “That would have been much too easy. But I appreciate that you tried applying logic rather than a random guess. You are not the first to have asked me that since I arrived, and I’m sure you will not be the last.”
Gray clapped his hands once and led the way from the room, sealing it shut behind Aurin. He continued showing Aurin from room to room, introducing Aurin to tamers along the way. While he recognised many of them, and even knew a few by name, there were plenty who Aurin did not recall in the least. He had known that a bunch of tamers in the Underground Dojo were not Hazelton locals, but it was a surprise to see just how many of them had come from afar in the hopes of competing in Hazelton. It was an even greater surprise to discover how many of them were here because they wanted a chance to battle him in the next Hazelton Tournament.
Although he knew there were no shortage of tamers wanting to battle him, it still threw him off guard even today. He’d had some level of national fame for months now, but he still felt like he was only known locally because of how he’d handled the Zodiac Squad and the Zeera Crisis. It made him feel like he was two separate entities, combined into one body. The first was fifteen-year-old Aurin, the young man from Buckstone who came here in search of a challenge in Harmony Tower. The second was his eighteen-year-old self, who had seen and done so much in three and a half years. It was jarring, to say the least, but he knew he would one day come to terms with these two sides of himself.
As the tour concluded, he was brought back into the main chamber where new battles were ongoing. Luna and Holly had arrived and were watching the fights unfold while deep in conversation.
“Did Sammy’s Sproufloat get his medicine?” asked Aurin.
“He did, and he’s back to full health,” beamed Luna. “I was just telling Holly about some of the different combinations that can be used using basic ingredients from the shop or the tower.”
“It’s been an educational morning,” said Holly, nodding fervently.
“I am glad,” said Gray. “Every day, we should strive to learn something new. If it is not a day in which we better ourselves, it is a day wasted.”
Aurin agreed. Even on the days he felt like being lazy, he usually got restless sitting about his house or the ranch. This, of course, led to him training with his Minakai and, while it wasn’t always a learning experience, he was building strength and so were his Minakai.
Gray turned to Aurin. “I hope you’ve found this little tour reward, Aurin.”
“It was… nice,” replied Aurin. “I’m still not planning to join you here, but it’s good to see that this old base is being used for something fruitful. That said, I still think you’d be better off not cooped up underground.”
“If that was the case, we would no longer be the Underground Dojo,” said Gray with a chuckle. “Would you like either Holly or I to see you out?”
“Nah, it’s fine,” said Aurin, extending a hand. “Thanks for the invitation, Gray. Good luck with your training.”
“May we battle soon,” said Gray, smiling widely.
After saying a quick round of farewells to the most familiar faces nearby, Aurin and Luna departed from the Underground Dojo. As they made their way back up the tunnel, Aurin leaned close to Luna.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered. “You were right about the suits. I fought someone named Heart on the way over there.”
Luna clasped a hand to her mouth. “Another one already?” she gasped.
“Let’s get back to the ranch quickly. I’ll fill you and Kyle in together.”
right here.
Aurin's Team:
Luna's Team:
