Chapter 26

Sam cursed in the deepest, throatiest voice he could push from himself. Not just at the wind that was ripping through his body and shearing his soul with its cold, and not just at the snow that was falling faster, harder, and more violently as it began sticking to his face and clothes rather than selflessly melting away. No, he was cursing the entirety of Mount Coronet. 

He plodded through yet another patch of the dead, frozen thicket that seemed to cover the exterior of the mountain in bitter spite of the fact that no vegetation should possibly be able to survive the year-round ice and wind storms that swept the top half of the ridge. He felt the gnarled thorns grabbing for his legs as he tried to pass through and tearing into his snowsuit, and he cursed again; it was like the lifeless plants were put there by a brutal god just to hinder him. As he leaned down to give the plants his full shouted opinion of what they could do with their own mother, he heard a throaty laugh from behind him.

“It is not so easy, is it?” The laugh mocked him. “I was be told that you thought we could just ride an helicopter to the peak. You see now why that is not so possible?”

The anger at Sideburns’ snark burst inside Sam, and he let out an animalistic scream as he pried his leg free from the briar. He stumbled forward, having lost all balance as he yanked himself loose at the cost of the fabric of his pants, and ate a faceful of snow for his trouble. With the snow and ice surrounding and quickly bonding to his head, he could not hear what he was sure would be laughter from Carlos and his crew. 

Sam threw up his hands and shouted to make sure Carlos could hear him over the shrieking wind. “You’re so clever and know so much about mountaineering? You find this damn cave entrance! Maybe I’ll sit back and judge the lot of you for a while!”

Carlos merely shook his head and motioned for his men to follow him past Sam. “Yes, it is such different from usual,” he said as he moved by him. Sam could not see his sideburned face what with Carlos’ large goggles and snow-mask, but he was sure that Carlos was smirking. Sam felt his nose wrinkle in rage, but pushed the anger back down. After they found the alleged cave that wound around the interior of the mountain, things would hopefully be easier. 

Sam plopped down onto his bottom in his water-resistant gear and watched the crew survey the mountain terrain for the entrance to Coronet. It suddenly struck him as humorous that he once found Celestic Town to seem like such a journey. Compared to where they were, Celestic Town may as well have been a sea level metropolis. Sam and the Phoenix workers had driven as far up the mountainside as they could before the conditions made further travel by vehicle impossible. Since then, they had been desperately searching for an entrance to the mountain’s labyrinth-esque cave system. It might not have been ideal to go spelunking in an undiscovered system, but it could not possibly have been a worse option than trying to scale the exterior of the mountain when none of them had the experience or talent for that. 

He took a glance in the direction from which they had come and was depressed to see that the snow and ice had already covered up any tracks they may have made. It was like their very presence there was a fading dream, and if they froze to death before they found the mythical entrance, their bodies would be vanished under the white cover within an hour. Sam doubted anyone would ever find them or even know they had ever been there. Beyond that sobering thought, Sam also found himself concerned for the convoy carrying Mr. Alonzo and Mr. Mentené; they were traveling separately, a few hours behind Sam’s group, so that they could be alerted to anything unusual. Sam found himself quite enamored of the idea of a secondary “safety group”, but he was dismayed to find that Mr. Mentené wanted him on the lead. In the event that the frontrunner group encountered any legendary pokemon, he argued, it was wise to have Sam and his rapport with such creatures there. What Alonzo and Mentené saw as a rapport that Sam had formed with the lake guardians, Sam felt was only dumb luck and desperation, but still… it was enough to have him placed in what Sam referred to as the “Hey-go-see-if-we’re-all-going-to-die” group. With Sideburns. Of course. 

Of course, the odds that Sam’s supposed rapport with the lake guardians would help him on this mountain were slim considering—

“Carlos, es justo aquí. Lo he encontrado!”

Sam was shaken from his thoughts and perked up at the excitement in the voice of the worker he believed was called Esteban. He didn’t know what the man was saying, but Esteban was eager for Sideburns to hear it.

“What? What’d he say?”

Carlos turned. “He saying he found the entrance!”

Sam clasped his hands and snorted frozen snot from his nostrils. “Thank god. It’s about time we get out of this frozen hellscape. What are we waiting on?”

Carlos nodded and rushed over to Esteban; for the first time, he and Sam seemed to be on the same page, even if all that the page read was “I don’t want to die next to this idiot”. Sam tried to run up to join the two men as the other employees converged on Esteban, and he was reminded of how much he loathed the snow. He felt as though he were trying to hurry with suction cups attached to his feet; the knee-deep snow refused to let him move with as much agility as he would like. As he finally approached, he no longer even needed an explanation for why the men weren’t rushing into the alleged safety of the cave; the entrance was frozen over with a sheet of ice. Sam tapped the nature-made seal; it had to be several feet thick.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s ten others,” he muttered to himself. 

“No worries,” Carlos said, his voice uplifted. He held out his pokeball and gave it a squeeze through his glove. A burst of energized radiance gave birth to his Hariyama who let out a cry of joy at being freed. Carlos pointed to the wall of ice and gave an order in Hoennese. Sam saw Hariyama take a fighting stance and nearly choked on his own horror.

“No! No! No! Please stop!”

His plea came too late, and Hariyama thrust its arm forward in a flash; it collided with the ice wall leaving it cracked, but intact. The rotund pokemon reared back for another shot.

“Do not let him do that again!” Sam cried. He seemed to catch Carlos’ attention that time, and the Phoenix worker barked an order for Hariyama to stop. 

“What? We are getting through.”

Sam slapped his head with his gloved palm. “We are on a mountain covered in snow and ice with who-knows-how-much-more mountain of snow and ice above us, and your plan is what? To attack the mountain? Because—“

A rumbling sound built overhead, and Sam paused long enough to look upward along with the rest of the workers. The rumbling was growing louder, and with it, the entire mountainside seemed to shake. 

“Oh, Ferrothorn me right up my ass,” Sam gasped. Hariyama’s heavy shot wasn’t enough to burst through the icewall in one shot, but it was enough to knock loose snow and rock and ice hundreds of feet above them all. Snow and rock and ice that would soon be collapsing down on them if they didn’t get into the cave right away. 

With no wasted flourish of movement, Sam released Vlam from her ball. She was always the most intuitive pokemon Sam had ever known, and she hit the snowy ground with an immediate sense of dread. 

“Yeah, it sucks out here, baby. I need you to fire blast that ice now! And you,” Sam spit out in half of a breath. He turned to Carlos and his Hariyama who were busy trying to calm the other workers, who themselves seemed on the verge of desperate panic. “Plans changed after all! Beat the shit out of the mountain!”

It was impossible to drown out the shouting and crying from the workers who were beginning to lose their footing as the mountain shook beneath them. Sam could not understand them, but he was sure they either calling out to their god or alerting each other to the avalanche they all knew was coming. The rumbling was almost on top of them when Vlam exhausted her warmth into a concentrated ball of flame. As her attack hit the ice, so did Hariyama’s second shot. The ice collapsed into a shattered puddle, and Sam and the workers dove inside. They rushed and crawled on unstable hands and knees to get as far back from the entrance as possible as untold tons of ice and rock buried the mouth of the cave. The sound of the avalanche deafened them as it reverberated off the stone walls, and it was all Sam could do to cover his head and ride it out. Seconds that felt like hours passed, and it finally ceased. 

When he uncovered his head and opened his eyes, he saw that several of the workers had already released their fire- and electric-based pokemon in an attempt to illuminate the mountain. A flaming Magcargo was wondering down the corridor before them, while a glowing Pikachu stood closer to the entrance. Carlos’ Hariyama stood up to reveal that it had thrown itself on top of its trainer to protect him, and Sam found himself amused that being tackled by such a massive creature could be for the best. 

“Vlam, can you help them light this place up, please?” He started looking around after the request, but no extra light seemed to come. “Vlam, I know you just used a lot of energy, but we could use it just until we get our bearings, okay?” Moments passed, but there was no response.

“Vlam?” Sam’s eyes darted across the Phoenix workers to find her. She had to be there; she had to just be tired…

His eyes came to rest on the collapsed cave entrance. Unless she wasn’t. 

“No.”

Tons of ice and rocks…

“No.”

A growing blizzard outside…

“No.”

And no one else coming that way for hours…

“No!”

Sam threw himself at the caved-in hole and clawed at it with both hands. When he felt like the gloves were impeding his progress, he tore them off and pitched them aside; he did not care if the jagged rocks or frigid snow wore his fingers away. He continued trying to rip his way through the freezing rock even as it took seven Phoenix workers to pull him away. He growled and screamed at them to let him go, but they weren’t listening. He threw elbows at them and shook his legs to get free before they finally put him in the unbreakable grip of Hariyama.

“Sam!”

“Lemme go!”

“Sam, calming down!”

“She’s out there!”

Carlos grabbed Sam’s coat collar and yelled into his face. “I know! We all is know! She saving us all by getting us in here! No one of us wants her out there! But this is not stable here! We have to keep going!”

Sam struggled like an infant in the powerful grasp of Carlos’ pokemon. “Fine! Go! I have to get out there and find her! Just leave me then!”

Carlos’ mouth trembled. “I am sorry. She saving my life, too. But even if we can get out there, we will died. Okay? I’m trying save your life. Just like Vlam did. The mountain is still unstable.”

Sam stared at the pile of rocks and ice. He knew he could get through it—Chispa could help blast it away with her electricity—but if he did that, he would be putting everyone with him at risk. It would be possibly all of their lives for Vlam’s. Sam continued staring at the wall as if he were willing himself to see through it. He bowed his head as the situation soaked through his waterproof coat and into his bones. Hariyama, sensing Sam’s turn in emotion, relaxed his grip. 

“Are we going now?”

Sam looked back up at the barrier. “Yeah, I—damn it.” He scratched at his face with his freezing hand. “God, I—yeah, we’re… let’s go.” 

The Phoenix crew began gathering everything they had dropped as they threw themselves into the safety of the cavern. The ones that had not done so already began releasing their pokemon to help protect against whatever the system might throw at them. Sam stood still and continued studying the rocks for movement, as if his brother’s Ninetales as going to just push through and wag her tails at him. Vlam’s hollow Dusk Ball was brick in his hand. 

Sam took up the rear of the group as they ventured into the caverns. The workers spoke quietly amongst themselves as they journeyed deeper into the darkness, but none of them—even Carlos—made any attempt to speak to him. Not that Sam was making any efforts of his own; he was happy to trail several feet behind the rest of the group and think about having left Rowan’s home under the cover of night to make a visit to Henrique Alonzo. From there, he agreed to join their expedition to Mount Coronet in search of the legendary pokemon of Sinnoh. He joined the first wave group with Carlos and his crew. He released Vlam to help the Hariyama bust through the ice. One decision after another, and they replayed in his mind as the minutes and meters of jagged path cruised by him. 

He was shaken from his recollection of recent days by the sounds of conflict ahead of him. It hadn’t been unexpected—there were sure to be wild pokemon inside the mountain who weren’t used to the presence of humans—but the men began yelling frantically to one another, and the once-hypnotic bouncing of light off of the stone walls became more rapid and violent. Suddenly the group of whom Sam was trailing so far behind was bustling back toward him. 

As they rushed to where Sam was, one of the workers that Sam was not familiar with yelled something to him, but Sam could not decipher it. The man seemed unconcerned with Sam’s lack of understanding and continued pressing past him. Then another did the same. Sam finally saw Carlos coming upon him amidst the fleeing group.

“What is going on?” Sam called.

“Too many!” Carlos seemed flustered by what he had seen, and was unable to get much else out in Kantoan at first. “Can’t get through them! Turned back!”

At Carlos’ words, Sam saw an enormous shape bowling through the air. Lifeless limbs dangled out from the ball of humanity, and Saw recognized it as the unconscious form of Carlos’ Hariyama. Something very powerful was able to not only beat it so badly, but to fling it back at the group. The defeated pokemon vanished in a flash of energy.

Carlos, holding Hariyama’s ball, grabbed Sam’s shoulder with a squeeze of desperation as the rest of the Phoenix workers poured past them. “Going! We must to be!”

Sam’s legs initially turned to flee with him, but something in his mind fought the urge. If they backed out now—if they gave up on this path—what Vlam went through would have been for nothing. A fire ignited in his core, and he knew he wouldn’t abide that. Better to die fighting for what she gave them than to have it be so meaningless. He turned square to the cavern they had been heading into and braced himself, Chispa’s ball rolling in his hand. From the darkness of the cave erupted a Golbat, its tongue wagging greedily. Then another. Then two more behind that one. Behind the pair came a trio of large Machoke, their vicious grunts echoing off of each wall, back-and-forth, creating the sound of an army. Sam kept expecting the parade to end, but it seemed infinite; a stream of Golbats and Machokes who had come to live in symbiosis in the caverns poured from the shadows. Sam still couldn’t make out the end of the train of predators when the first Golbats were just yards from him.

He squeezed Chispa’s ball, and she appeared just a few feet in front of him. For a moment, Sam was startled by her; he had almost forgotten she evolved in the scrimmage against Miah. As a Luxio, she stood almost twice as tall as she had been as a Shinx cub, and her growing coat glowed with electrical energy. She sniffed the air upon her arrival and immediately became aware of the threat.

Sam stared at her as the threat bore down and watched her lower her head and raise her rear. He thought again of Vlam.

“Discharge your energy, Chispa! All of it!”

His Luxio’s black-and-blue coat flashed brilliant white energy that consumed the cave in its iridescence. Bone-shaking cracks of electrical energy reverberated off of the cave’s walls, and Chispa’s loosed her attack in every direction around her. Sam was unable to even inspect his friend’s damage; the light was far too potent for him to do more than seal his eyelids and guard his face with his arms. 

Chispa squealed in fun, and the booms of energy intensified. The attack went on and on, and she sounded absurdly pleased with herself over it. Below her singing along with her attack, Sam could hear the wails and screams of the onslaught of both bat and buff pokemon. 

The sounds of the attack faded, and Chispa yelped to let Sam know what she had done. When his eyes adjusted, he was amazed at the sight of dozens of felled predators, some with very visible burns covering their bodies. The few that were conscious enough to move were pulling themselves backwards into the safety of the cave’s darkness. Chispa turned to Sam and mewed to alert him; he was almost too stunned to reply.

“No, Chis. It’s, ah… it’s okay. You’ve done enough. You really, really have.”

“Are you okay?”

Sam jumped at the words before recognizing the voice as Carlos’. He nodded. “Yeah, I just wasn’t expecting… you know… that much. I was just thinking we could scare them off. I was–”

His thought was interrupted by a charging Machoke who had somehow evaded Chispa’s attack. Whether in desperation or fear or anger, it seemed to have become reckless and single-minded; it grabbed Chispa by the throat, heaved it up to its own level, and slammed her back against the cavern wall.

“Chispa!” Sam cried. He instinctively took a step forward to protect his friend, but the Machoke turned its head to him and let out loud growl that shook his body and pushed him backwards. It narrowed its eyes, and its lips quivered in hate at him while it maintained its stranglehold on Chispa. It growled lowly, pulled the Luxio back to itself slowly, and then thrust it again into the rock. Chispa choked a whimper, but was apparently unable to defend herself. Sam knew that the massive attack had let out everything she had.

He fumbled for Bree’s Net Ball in his pocket, but the cruel combination of his panic and his still-cold hands made it hard to get a grip while he watched the muscle-bound warrior pokemon squeeze the life from his friend. His thoughts rushed by, too fast for him to make any sense of…

From behind him, a large metallic lizard sped forward. Sam caught enough of a sight of it to recognize it as the Lairon that had tried to attack him on the ship to Snowpoint. It rammed its iron head into Machoke’s knee, buckling the predator and freeing Chispa from its grip. For all her previous bravery against the horde of cave pokemon, Chispa limped quickly to hide behind Sam. He was more than happy to put his body in front of her as he finally managed to pull Bree’s ball from his pocket.

The Lairon’s initial success against Machoke was short-lived, and the latter soon had the worker’s pokemon pinned to the ground with its great strength. The Lairon struggled and squirmed in its grasp, but the Machoke’s clubbing blows were taking their toll on its dense exterior. The worker’s Lairon had put itself in danger to save Chispa, and Sam knew he wouldn’t allow it to suffer for that. A terse squeeze on her ball freed Bree.

“Get that Machoke, baby, okay? Help out that steel type for me.”

Bree nodded and buzzed cheerfully, as undaunted as ever. She zipped through the distance between them and began buzzing in circles around the Machoke’s head. It swatted the air, but Sam’s butterfly pokemon was much too quick for it. With the distraction giving it a chance to pull free, the Lairon went back on the attack; it lunged forward and bit down hard on Machoke’s calf. The cave pokemon screeched and dropped its chasing of Bree, giving her the opening she needed to land on the base of its skull. Her wings spread out and her antennae stiffened in a sharp psychic attack. The Machoke wobbled, smacked the wall in agony with a flailing fist, and toppled forward onto its face, at last defeated.

Bree flittered back to him, chirping with great pride. After rubbing her head, Sam leaned down to examine Chispa. He squeezed each of her paws in succession and poked around her ribcage; she was shaken, but there didn’t seem to be any serious injury. 

Carlos leaned down next to him. “How did you knowing she would not hurt you, too?”

Sam tilted his head at the question; it wasn’t something he had thought much off, and then something on the cave wall caught his eye. What used to be dull gray and brown rock was now covered in soot and charred black. He turned to the opposite wall and saw more streaks of black burning lining the walls. He glanced down and saw that most of the ground around where Chispa had stood was burnt and letting out wisps of smoke. The black char ended just a few inches from his feet.

His eyes darted back to Chispa, who was stiffly walking in circles before finally settling on a spot to lie down. She tucked her face under her glowing tail.

“Oh wow. I, uh,” Sam turned back to Carlos and gave a half-shrug amidst the smoking rocks. “I guess I didn’t?”