Dungeon Diving: Team Unity

Soku whistled appreciatively. "Wow that is quite a long way down."

"Don't even try to suggest we take a 'shortcut'." Kage glanced at him, frowning.

Soku put a hand on his chest in mock offense. "Me? Suggest something dangerous? Do you even know me?"

Kit chuckled. "Plus something like jumping down wouldn't be productive anyway. First we don't have a safe way to land, but we also are supposed to explore the entire dungeon so we can record it."

Kyu nodded as he pulled out a blank map. "I'll do my best to map out the dungeon if someone else can jot down notes of any important features and stuff?"

"I'll handle it." Kage took the journal and pencil that Kyu held out to him. "I wouldn't trust Soku to do it and it would be harder for Kit."

"Hey! My handwriting isn't that bad!" Soku said in mock offense. "I bet I could do it!"

"Sorry Soku... I'm going to have to agree with Kage on this one..." Kit shrugged. "I think it would be more useful to the guild if they could actually read the notes."

"Ouch." Soku winced. "Betrayed by my own team. I see how it is." He sighed heavily. "But uuuuuh, also fair assessment. I know Kage will do great."

The group slowly wound their way down the canyon. If they hadn't needed to map out the place and take notes. Though Soku supposed that sometimes it was nice to take things slow, enjoy the sights, fight some wild pokemon along the way. Kyu threw a duo of lairon off the cliff with a psychic. "Sorry!" He yelled down after them, looking slightly guilty.

"There's no need to apologize to them." Kage threw a few ice shards at some approaching zweilous. "They won't understand it like this."

Soku knocked a graveler away with a brick break. "Yeah, as much as I don't love having the fight wild mons, we don't have much of a choice here." He wheeled around and hit another graveler with a trailblaze. "Until we can come up with a more permanent and easier to distribute solution to the wild problem we're stuck with doing this." He jumped out of the way of a rock blast and hit the offending pupitar with a brick break as he landed. "Good news is that they shouldn't remember a bunch of teams beating them up."

"I'm not sure that's nearly as encouraging as you meant it to be..." Kit shot off a mystical fire at a small group of dwebble. "I get you're under a bit of pressure right now though."

"Thanks for your understanding bud." Soku panted heavily as he glanced over the battlefield. It looks like this larger fight had been wrapped up. They'd had a few scuffles on their way down but this had by far been the most wild pokemon to attack them at once.

"I wonder if they were protecting something." Kage hummed as he gestured to the cave at their right.

"It's possible." Kit tilted his head. "It would be good if we checked it out. We need to record whatever we find here, and we can't be thorough if we don't check everywhere."

"Let's just make sure we're careful ok? If they were protecting this cave then there might be more inside." Kyu tapped his fingers together as he looked into the dark cave.

"No sweat, we'll be fine." Soku waved off their concern. "Just keep an eye out for anything and we'll be good."

Kit took the lead, light from the fires around him helping to illuminate their path. For a long time there was nothing except an eerie silence. Soku really wanted to strike up some sort of conversation to help push away the suffocating feeling of the quiet but he knew it would be safer to not. There could be more wild pokemon waiting to ambush them, so despite him not liking it he knew it was safer to stay quiet. Eventually the somewhat cramped space opened up into a small room. It seemed pretty empty but Soku's eyes caught Kit's fire glinting off something reflective. He cautiously made his way over to it. It took a moment of brushing away dirt and rock debris but once he'd moved enough material away he froze from shock. "Guys?" He called out quietly.

Kage was the first to make his way over. "What is it?"

"This... is a person." Soku gently pulled the metallic, limp body up. It looked like an alolan sandshrew. Honestly he had no idea how robotic pokemon worked. No idea if the poor thing was ok or not.

"Let me take a look." Kit had come over as well and it seemed like Kyu wasn't far behind. Silently Soku passed the limp body over to Kit. The zorua fusion grunted under the weight until Kyu used psychic to gently lift the limp sandshrew. "Forgot that you got stronger with the whole were thing." Kit rubbed the back of his head sheepishly before getting to work. Soku felt pretty tense watching Kit work on the sandshrew. It felt sort of wrong to see Kit pulled out and readjusting wires, but he guessed that was normal for robotic pokemon? At least some right? He'd never actually met a robotic pokemon before. "Ah! Got it. I can't do a full set of repairs right now, but I bet I could boot them up." Kit closed the panel on the back. "Based on their condition they've been sitting here for a while but I think what caused them to be like this was damage from fighting. I wouldn't be surprised if the local wild pokemon were to blame."

"That seems reasonable. That just raises the question of why they were here in the first place." Kage crossed his arms, looking at the sandshrew thoughtfully.

"Well if we boot them up we can ask?" Kyu suggested.

"Should we get them outside first? We don't know how they'll act when we wake them up. I know if I got woken up after fighting a bunch of wild pokemon and losing I'd be pretty on edge." Soku gestured to the path they'd come from.

"Ah yeah." Kit nodded. "That works." Kyu once again gently grabbed the sandshrew with a psychic and the group carefully wound their way out of the cave. As they exited Soku glanced up at the slowly darkening sky. They'd been here a while huh? "Ok turning them on in three... two... one..."

The sandshrew jerked to life and glanced around wildly. Tense posture relaxing slightly as they took in the team. They'd likely realized none of them were wild or trying to attack. "Hey there dude, we managed to come across you and Kit managed to fix you up enough to get you back on. What happened?" Soku tried to make himself as non threatening as possible.

"I-" Their voice was staticky and hard to understand. "Exploring, ambushed, tried to fight, lost." Their kept their explanation short likely trying to work around the issue of their voice glitching.

"That's sort of what we figured." Kyu nodded.

"Once we get out of here I can fix you up some more. With your permission of course. I couldn't do too much here because I didn't have any tools or anything." Kit frowned.

"Fine." The sandshrew nodded. "Safe?" They tilted their head before glancing around.

"There aren't any wild pokemon around if that's what you're asking. We handled them before going into the cave we found you in." Kage nodded with his head towards the cave. "That was the only large group we encountered so far, so I find it unlikely that we'll have to worry about something like that again."

"Speaking of..." Soku cut in. "We're nearly done exploring the dungeon, should we finish up first and then get this guy out of here?"

"I mean, shouldn't we go though? He's still hurt and uh needs repairs." Kyu glanced at the still very much battered robotic pokemon.

"Fine." The sandshrew nodded, placing a hand on their chest confidently. "Keep going."

The team all looked at each other before Soku shrugs. "Look if they say they're good then they're good. We can just keep an eye on them. It'll be fine."

After a few nods and other agreements the team continued their trek down the canyon. Thankfully they didn't encounter any more pokemon on their way down. As the group split up to search the area for anything of note Soku hung back with the sandshrew they'd saved. "So why were you here anyway? Like why come here alone?"

The sandshrew seemed to think for a moment. "Rumors." The voice cracked at the end of the simple word.

"What kind? I'm not sure I've heard of any rumors about this place. We just picked it cause it was close by." Soku glanced up, taking in the moon that was just starting to peek over the canyon walls. He sighed quietly to himself. Hopefully he didn't startle the sandshrew with his transformation.

"Gems." The sandshrew certainly was starting to seem frustrated with their lack of ability to properly communicate. "Make stronger."

Soku hummed. "I think I have heard of something like that." Before Soku could say anything else the area shook. Everyone was suddenly on edge. A large form became visible at the end of the valley. "A salamence." Soku frowned. Guess they weren't getting out of here without another fight.

"Guardian." The sandshrew had also fallen into a fighting stance. Well the salamence in question certainly had the look of a guardian. It was clearly an alpha based on it's size and it was covered with extra spines and large horns atop it's head. Fur covered the top part of its hide rather than scales. Overall a rather intimidating looking dragon. The pokemon roared and there was no time to exchange any more words as it let out a massive flamethrower that caused all of them to scatter further. Soku barely managed to grab the sandshrew to get them put of the way in time.

"Well, this ought to be fun." Soku rushed forward as he felt the light of the moon envelope him. What dramatic timing. He felt his body grow and change, his hands fell to the ground as he changed to a quadruped run mid stride. He slammed into the salamence with a dire claw before pushing off of it with his back legs just in time to watch it get hit by two separate ice shards. After landing he glanced back to see that one had come from Kage like he expected and the other had come from the sandshrew who had a determined look on their face. "Nice shot you two, now let's keep up the pressure." He grinned, showing off his sharp teeth. Thankfully the sandshrew didn't really seemed phased.

The salamence flapped its wings and took flight. It gained some height before diving for Soku He gave it a cocky smirk as he was snagged with psychic energy and pulled out of the way. The salamence collided with the ground wit ha satisfying thud. "You need to learn to be more careful." Kage rushed forward to land a night slash on the downed salamence, quickly backing up as the dragon pokemon rose back to its feet and swiped at him with a dragon claw.

"And you need to learn it's ok to rely on others." Soku launched himself into the air with a quick attack, grabbing Kage, as the salamence was hit with an ice shard, will-o-wisp, and air slash. "Cause sometimes other people will see things you don't." Soku continued as he landed and put Kage down. Kage looked mildly annoyed but said nothing, probably realizing the merit to Soku's words.

The fight continued in a similar fashion. Soku and Kage took up the front lines while the other hit the salamence from a distance. Soku could tell the sandshrew wanted to get in closer but decided against it because of the condition they were in. Maybe once Kit had them fixed up they could spar. He was pretty curios about what they could do. Soku was panting by the time the salamence gave them one last roar before vanishing into the canyon. "I for one vote we don't chase it down." Kyu's ears were drooping in clear exhaustion.

"I second that." Kit looked equally tired.

Soku shook himself out. "Yeah that was a tough one." He gently prodded a tender spot where the salamence had struck him with it's tail. "But we did what we came here for. We explored the whole thing and I'm sure our wonderful note taker can update his notes once we're out of here." He glanced back at Kage.

"Of course. I don't want to really stick around and find out of that salamence will come back." Kage crossed his arms and winced slightly.

"Well then that's settled let's head... out?" Soku watched as the sandshrew wandered past him and began digging through a mound of dirt. "Uuuuh what are you doing there?"

The sandshrew ignored him for a moment before they seemed to find whatever they were looking for. They held out a light blue gem. "Gem." They seemed happy. Well Soku supposed he'd be happy too if he'd finally finished a mission that had caused him to essentially be dead for a while.

Soku smile. "Glad you found what you were looking for. Even if it took a bit longer than you thought. Now c'mon let's get out of here." The sandshrew nodded and happily trotted back over to the group. As the team made their way out of the dungeon Soku couldn't help but think that they may have just gotten themselves a new team member, and that was fine by him.