Ren got her hot springs and tried all their weird meals and customs.
"They actually have a herbal taste to them," she said, holding one up like evidence. "You were wrong. Admit you were wrong."
"They taste like eggs." Adam answered.
"You have no palate."
The hot-spring town was built for exactly this, doing nothing, and just relaxing in the comfy heat. They took a room for a few days. There was a private bath, very hot, and a stretch of black sand behind the bathhouse that the volcano kept warm from underneath, where you could bury yourself to the neck and cook gently in the ground.
The team took to it better than either of them expected.
The Larvitar found the hot sand and would not be moved. It dug itself in until only the top of its head showed and lay there for hours making the low sound Adam had learned meant it was happy, occasionally surfacing to eat a warm rock and then reburying itself. The Marowak sat in the shallow end of the spring with its club across its knees and its eyes closed, and looked, for the first time since Adam had known it, relaxed.
The Metang refused to even touch the water. It hung in the steam at the edge of the bath, judging everyone in it, and could not be talked in.
"It thinks bathing is beneath it," Ren said, up to her chin in the soup.
"It thinks most things are beneath it." Adam had the chess set balanced on a flat rock at the water's edge. He moved a bishop. The Metang, without appearing to look, lifted a knight with a thread of psychic force and took it. "Including that move, apparently."
"You're losing to a magnet in a hot tub."
"I'm aware of the situation."
The Haunter spent the whole first evening trying to figure out how to prank them. It hated the water for some reason, so it stayed out and moved their things around while they relaxed. It found glue somewhere and stuck Adam's boots to the ground, convinced he'd never get them off. It was barely an inconvenience. It hid in dark corners and jumped out to scare them. That never worked either, but Adam faked a flinch a few times to give it the satisfaction.
They stayed three days. On the morning of the fourth, Adam went up the mountain.
He took the Larvitar, because it had a nose for precious rocks and with its help he'd be far more likely to find the Mega Stone. Just the two of them for this trip. Ren decided to stay with the rest of the team at the hot springs one more day.
The path up the south face was called the Jagged Pass, and it had earned the name. It went up in steps and ledges of sharp black rock, the kind that could cut straight through you if you slipped. The ash came down the whole way, soft and grey, settling on his shoulders. The Larvitar walked beside him, exploring every little hole and tasting all the rocks on the way. It never looked tired. This was its element, and it loved it here.
Along the way they didn't meet a lot of pokemon. A Numel, orange and slow, half asleep, that woke up annoyed and changed its mind about fighting the moment the Larvitar looked at it. A pair of Machop working through their own morning training on a ledge, who watched them pass with professional interest. Adam let the Larvitar handle the one fight that did happen, a territorial Spoink that bounced down at them shrieking, and the Larvitar put it on its back with one unbothered swing and went straight back to eating. He didn't call a single instruction. There was no need, the power difference was massive.
Near the top, the land turned strange. The rock went darker and heavier and, in patches, half-melted, the way the ground had looked at Meteor Falls.
[ There, Host. Under the overhang, where the ash doesn't reach. I can sense a unique energy reading. ]
Around the same time the Larvitar also seem to notice something as it run towards it.
It was wedged in a crack under a shelf of rock, and it caught the grey light wrong, too bright, a slow swirl of colour turning over in the middle of it. He managed to pry it out with his fingers. It was warm, warmer than the rock around it. It had a unique feeling. The colors inside of it seemed alive. Moving slightly.
The Larvitar looked at it eager.
It came over and put its face very close to the stone in Adam's hand, nostrils working. Adam watched it arrive at a decision he should have seen coming.
"No," he said.
The Larvitar opened its mouth.
"No. Not that one." He lifted the stone out of reach, which on a creature that could jump was optimistic, and put his other hand flat on the top of its head. "I know it smells good. Probably the best-smelling stone you'll ever see. But you can't eat this one. This one's different."
The Larvitar gave him a look of pure betrayal.
"It's yours," Adam said. "It is. But not to eat. Later, when you're big, when we've done a lot of things first, this is going to matter. You and me, we hold onto it until then." He crouched down to its level. The wind pushed ash between them. "I'm asking you to trust me. I know that's a lot."
The Larvitar looked at the stone. It looked at Adam. It made a low, deeply put-upon sound. Then it turned around and stalked off to eat a different rock, aggressively, to make a point.
Adam wrapped the Tyranitarite and put it away. He had a Mega Stone now and no way to use it, no Key Stone, no bond deep enough, nothing but the stone itself and the promise inside it. Steven had said the stones were the easiest part of this process. Standing on the mountain with the wind and the ash swirling and a sulking Larvitar, Adam was starting to believe him.
He sat up there for a while anyway, in no hurry, and let the Larvitar have his fill. After an hour the two of them went back down.
Ren was waiting for them in the hot sand. She looks like a tomato, don't tell me she sat in there all this time..
"Did you get it?"
"Got it." He dropped down onto the warm sand next to where her head stuck out of it. "The Larvitar's a little pissed he couldn't eat it, though. It's a Mega Stone. He doesn't understand that yet."
"Monster." She had her eyes shut. "Denying a child its dreams." A pause. "Did it try to eat it in front of you or did it wait until your back was turned?"
"In front of me. No shame at all."
"Good. Shame is for losers." She cracked one eye. "So that's one, but we still don't have the keystone."
"The keystone is a problem for later." He lay back in the sand and let the mountain warm him through it. "Steven's out there hunting his own. They turn up. Old collections, dig sites, dead men's drawers. We'll find one when we find one."
"Or you buy one off some idiot who doesn't know what he's got."
"Or that."
They lay there while the light went long and orange over the valley and the steam came up off the springs in slow ropes.
"Where next," she said, eventually.
He'd been thinking about it. There was still a stone in Hoenn, out east on a resort island, the one that would suit a Gengar, and the Haunter was going to be a Gengar one of these days. There was a whole coast they hadn't seen. But there was also a need to finish their teams, a long way north, across a lot of water. There was a Pokémon up there Adam had wanted since before he'd set foot in this world. He'd been excited to catch it.
"North," he said. "A long way north. There's a cold region up past everything, all mountains and snow. I want to go there next."
"What's up there?"
"Yours and mine, same as always." He watched the last of the light on the smoke above the peak. "A lot of interesting Pokémon up there. And I think we need a change of scenery."
Ren finally hauled herself up out of the sand, shedding it in sheets, and stretched until her back cracked. "When do we leave?"
"There's a boat out of the eastern port that runs north. Few days on the water, then a lot more cold water after that." He got up too, brushing sand off. "We can take our time getting to the port. The view on the way is good, or so they say."
"Alright. Any towns on the way? I need to do some shopping," Ren said.
"Yeah."
"Good. I'll go pack up."
As she went, Adam noticed the Metang staring at him intently. I should not have shown it chess. Now all it wants to do is play, huh.
Meanwhile the Larvitar, still burrowed in the sand, was still mad about the stone.
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