“So what are you all doing here?” asked Elaine, once we had greeted and a round of introductions had taken place. Gogoat had brought us to a small clearing where the champion had set up a tent and looked, for all purposes, to have decided to go camping in the weirdest location possible.

  “The professor wanted us to investigate the ruins. He thinks there are significant breakthroughs to be made by studying them,” I said.

  “Specifically, Professor Leaf is interested in records or depictions of Pokémon. From the little we have seen, it has been clear that this civilisation kept extensive documentation of them. Any little bit more would go a long way in his investigation on Pokémon adaptation and evolution, and that’s without the possibility of discovering new species,” added Kurt.

  “That sounds like Dad,” said Elaine. “But I can’t believe he sent you into the Greenforest. Why didn’t he tell me he wanted someone to search the ruins?”

  “He was going to, but you ran off,” said Darren. “We didn’t expect to meet you here. Are you training? Or...”

  “Not exactly,” said Elaine. She bit into a biscuit and passed the packet around. I took one, though most declined. Comfey decided it was the perfect time to find out what they tasted like, so I broke off a crumb and gave it to her.

  “I’m here as a witness, sort of,” continued Elaine. “And it’s probably a bad idea to enter the ruins now.”

  “A witness to what?” asked Baltazar. Elaine took her time before responding, looking over our group as if judging if she could trust us.

  “I received a tip about how there could potentially be significant misconduct by trainers going on there. Sort of.” She sighed.

  “More concretely, I’m here to gather evidence that trainers without some sort of oversight are prone to damaging places of historical interest, damaging ecosystems and the Pokémon living in them, and that kind of thing. Darren, you aren’t the only one concerned about the extent to which trainers seem to live by their own laws. My... colleague's idea is if the champion spoke out on the subject, centred around a landmark as significant, and more importantly, sensational as these ruins, then the media would be more likely to spread the story.”

  “Isn’t that, I mean, is it such a big deal?” said Rebecca. She barely squeaked out the words. She was a bit awestruck since meeting Elaine.

  “It is,” said Jade. She seemed to be following what Elaine was saying better than I was. “Pokémon trainers are supposed to be the bridge between humans and Pokémon. We’re supposed to be able to protect people from dangerous Pokémon when they appear and serve as guardians for Pokémon habitats, maintaining a healthy relationship between the two. Instead, for the past ten years or so, there has been a consistent push to strip legal protections from Pokémon and to let trainers resolve their own problems without the law intervening. This has eroded the trust both non-trainers and wild Pokémon have towards us.”

  “It’s true,” agreed Quentin. “There didn’t used to be nearly as many anti-trainer protests going on a couple of decades ago. Now they’ve all got a bad name because a bunch of them do whatever they want, and the police have suddenly decided that dealing with a trainer with a Golurk is too much trouble to deal with, especially when they’ve only got a Growlithe. Better let trainers take care of themselves, which is an awful idea. Which is why it’s important to have people speaking out, though, I’m sceptical on how much an article or interview is going to do.”

  “Getting back to the point,” said Baltazar. “What kind of misconduct are we talking about here, specifically?”

  “It’s become some sort of hub for bounty hunters,” said Elaine. “And I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but so far, I’ve seen evidence of smuggling, poaching, and Pokémon abuse. It’s as if all the worst of them thought they weren’t getting away with enough in the towns and cities and found someplace where the law doesn’t exist at all. Well, I say I’ve seen, it’s mostly been Sableye sneaking in. I’ve stayed away, and the only thing I’ve managed to confirm with my own eyes is that there are a lot of people coming and going. Far more than you’d expect for a place should be mostly abandoned.”

  “You’re going to need more than that,” said Baltazar. “People are quick to dismiss Pokémon as a valid witness.”

  “I know,” she said, looking glum. “My partners have infiltrated and are the ones collecting more significant evidence. I’m mostly here for the name.”

  “I don’t suppose you could introduce us to these partners of yours?” asked Baltazar.

  “Probably not,” said Elaine. “At least not yet.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  ***

  We had come too far to simply stop here, no matter what Elaine said, and some of us, namely Baltazar, were even more motivated to enter the ruins. Others were scared, and this was the more reasonable reaction. It was one thing facing wild Pokémon, and another thing entirely coming within poking distance of what, if Elaine was right, was an organised criminal operation. I won’t deny my fear, but this wasn’t something I could leave untouched either. If I had been alone, maybe sense would have won out, but with Baltazar and Elaine, I still felt that nothing we’d come across would be that dangerous.

  That evening, a group of us went to scout out the ruins. Kurt and Baltazar were up ahead with Darren, Jade, and Quentin following after. I was behind with Elaine, who’d begun in front, but dropped back once everyone knew in which direction they were going.

  “How’ve you been?” she asked.

  “Fine, I guess,” I said. “I caught, Junior, a Mankey recently. I’ve got to show her to you later. She’s a bit of a handful, but I think we’re getting through to each other. What about you?”

  “Not bad. Sorry for leaving so suddenly before. You know I had to get out of the house.”

  “I know, you don’t have to apologise. I’m thankful you took the time to help me train and everything.”

  “Don’t mention it, it was fun.”

  It took us less than five minutes to reach the long-awaited ruins. I don’t know what I had expected: a hole in the ground that led to some kind of underground temple, or maybe a few stone pillars jutting out of the ground. What I found was an excavation site taking a massive chunk out of the forest. Half-dug-out buildings replaced trees. The place was roughly square-shaped and had deep trenches where the earth had been removed to reveal concrete housing which, somehow, felt familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on why. The view was interrupted by mountains of sandy dirt piled up in walls between areas of significance. It would be easy to get lost in there.

  “There are two parts to the ruins,” Elaine told me. “The bit you see here is the surface part. It seems to have been a fairly important settlement with the current estimate being of about two-and-a-half to three thousand inhabitants. You can’t see them from here, but the two things that have Dad really excited are what appears to be some kind of temple, and some sort of university or library.”

  I nodded. So there was a temple after all.

  “Even more exciting,” continued Elaine, “is what they found underneath the temple. There’s a whole underground complex which covers at least as much area as the aboveground. I don’t think anyone knows why that was built. A few people think it’s a catacomb, like they have in Lumiose City in Kalos. The glaring problem with that is the lack of any remains found in them. I mean, some still say some kind of Pokémon came and ate everything or something, but that’s unconvincing. A more likely explanation is that it was a place to store knowledge and culture as scrolls, art, and sculptures have all been found down there. Not enough to lend the theory enough weight, and it remains a mystery as to why they would need such a place when they have a library above ground.

  “It’s in those tunnels that the bounty hunters are hiding. I’ve been told they scare other explorers by luring wild Pokémon into their path or harassing them with their own Pokémon without showing themselves. If we do plan on going in, expect to have to fight off many encounters to make little progress.”

  We stayed just within the treeline, watching until I was supremely bored and incrementally underwhelmed. There wasn’t a person besides us in sight. Everyone else was tense and silent, and I simply couldn’t muster up the focus. Shortly before I would have cracked and returned to the tents, a spot in the sky grew larger, and by the time I could hear the wingbeats, the silhouette of a Tropius carrying an absurd amount of crates descended in the middle of the site. A man dismounted and was met by a younger man who must have been hiding in a building acting as a lookout. Jade swore.

  “That’s the Weavile who was hunting Masquerain,” she said. Quentin put a hand on her shoulder, as if worried she would rush out, but she shook him off and continued watching. The two men unloaded the crates from Tropius, and, with the help of a Machoke, lugged them out of sight.

  “What were they carrying?” I whispered to Elaine.

  “Food, probably,” she replied. “There’s an awful lot of food that needs to be brought here every day.”

  “Alright, should we head back and plan?” asked Baltazar.

  Back in camp, we gathered around with everybody to discuss our options. It wasn’t in question that some people would go exploring, but who and why was more difficult. Both Kurt and Baltazar were adamant about going, but Kurt wanted to avoid the underground entirely and see what he could find in the university building. Baltazar wanted to storm the criminal hideout and be some kind of vigilante hero. Gallade convinced him not to do anything rash, but even he fully supported the idea of facing the bounty hunters head-on, just, with a bit of strategy in place in case things went wrong. The more sensible ones of our group, loath as I am to apply that to Clair, Sarah, and Rebecca, wanted to stay away from the entire thing and leave.

  “How many people can we expect to find there?” asked Baltazar.

  “There’s no less than ten at any given moment, though that number can rise to fifty. Yesterday, Sableye said he counted twenty-six,” said Elaine.

  “That could be tough, though if they’re all like the fellow Jade met before, Elaine and I should be enough for the lot of them.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” said Jade. “The feeling I got from him was that he was fairly low in whatever hierarchy he’s part of.”

  “I guess that would be too much to hope for,” said Baltazar.

  In the end, we split into three groups. I would go with Kurt, Sunny, and Darren to explore the surface around the university or library building, or whatever it was. Elaine, Baltazar, Jade, and Luca would head underground, and the rest would stay at camp. The hope was that the group going underground would distract the bounty hunters from my group, who were in charge of collecting research materials for the professor. The group at camp would be ready to pack up for a quick getaway if necessary.