Chapter Ten – Friends

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10.

Friends

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“I-is he still out there?” a drilbur asked, pacing about the colony’s hiding spot behind the large, pointed boulder uncomfortably. The glow of the setting sun, gleaming over the massive rock, illuminated many of the drilbur colony’s anxious faces. Cloaked in golden light and purple shadows ahead of them was the huge, looming mineshaft, which lay still and silent.

“He’s still pacing around,” answered another, who had just returned from their sentry spot atop the large rock. “We heard him grumbling about ‘no-g-good-troublemakers’.”

Many of the drilbur drooped their heads at the scout’s report.

“N-now what d-do we d-do?” one of them asked, the collective stutter beginning to return to their voice full force.

“I supp-pose we c-could stay back h-here for the rest of-f our lives,” another drilbur proposed. It seemed like the colony was actively considering it.

Suddenly, there came a rumbling from deep inside the mine shaft, and the very three children they were fretting over tumbled right out on top of each other, all panting heavily and covered in sparkling dust. The Drilbur of the Mines were left agape.

There were several muffled shatters from within the bag Espurr was carrying. She wilted at the sound, realising what those were. The gemstones…

“We… defeated… your… monster…” Tricky spat out between gasps.

“Y-y-you what?” a lone drilbur stammered. A few others, prone to drama, fainted on the spot. Espurr, Tricky, and Goomy all picked themselves up on shaky feet.

“We. Beat your monster,” Tricky repeated matter-of-factly. “Y’know… Gabite?”

Several gasps rang throughout the drilbur clan, amongst shocked whispers of ‘It’s true!’.

“H-how?” another drilbur spoke up. “H-how did three children…?”

“It was crushed by all the treasure,” Espurr explained frankly.

“And the gemstones,” added Tricky for posterity.

“G… G-gemstones?” The word seemed to catch many of the drilburs’ interest. “W-what gemstones?”

“Y’knooow…” Tricky drew out her sentence promptingly. “The gemstones?”

One of the drilbur walked forward, picking up a few grains of the dust that had fallen from Espurr’s fur in his claw.

“Emeras…” he quietly whispered to himself. “We s-struck emeras!” He yelled to the rest of the clan. There were cheers everywhere, as the mood in the cave suddenly went from overwhelmingly anxious to undeniably joyful.

“What’s an emera?” Espurr asked Tricky and Goomy.

“Beats me…” Tricky yawned, falling flat on her haunches. “I was asleep that day in class.”

Goomy’s antennae perked up.

“I-I know–” he began.

“H-how can w-we ever thank you?” the drilbur asked, interrupting him accidentally.

“I have an i—” began Tricky excitedly.

“Aha!” snarled Watchog loudly, surprising all of them. He reached around the boulder, stepping into the clearing imposingly. The rest of the drilbur all made way for him, fear written on their faces.

“Finally came back, did you?” the Vice Principal sneered at the three students.

“We can explain—–” began Espurr.

“Explain?” laughed Watchog. “Save it for the jury. You three are in a world of trouble.”

Then he noticed the bag on Espurr’s shoulder.

“Where did you get that?” he snarled, roughly snatching the strap. Espurr gasped as she was pulled forward, stumbling forward as he yanked her.

“Hey!” yelled Tricky.

“Quiet,” growled Watchog.

Espurr swallowed the pain from her still-stiff arm and met his yellow, glaring eyes with her own violet ones.

“It’s my souvenir from the mines,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

“Troublemakers…” Watchog seethed, leaning in close. “Don’t get souvenirs.”

“B-but they weren’t t-t-troublemaking,” one of the drilbur piped up.

“Yeah!” Tricky fired back, much louder. “We weren’t troublemaking!”

“Y-yeah,” chimed in Goomy.

Watchog couldn’t contain himself. He let out a high-pitched chuckle of disbelief, letting go of the strap. Espurr tumbled to the ground, hitting the dust. That hurt.

“You expect me to believe that?” the vice principal wheezed, coming down from his laughing trip. “You probably just bullied the drilbur into saying that!”

“No-mon bullied us,” the drilbur spoke, his voice suddenly losing all stutter. “Except you.”

“You barged onto our property!” another piped up.

“Forced us to let them work!”

“Yeah! Is that even safe for children?”

“Kicked us out of our own mine-yard!”

“Bossed us around!”

“You’re a b-bad vice principal!”

Watchog’s face contorted into several, increasingly exaggerated faces as he tried to process the mounting accusations against him.

“You can’t give us orders!”

“You aren’t fit to give orders!”

“You shouldn’t be here!”

“ALRIGHT!” Watchog suddenly yelled, so loudly that Tricky’s ears flitted from the volume. He took a few deep breaths, then composed himself into something calmer and more appropriate. “Why don’t we just go home… and forget this all happened?”

“And you’ll never come back?” The drilbur all collectively gave Watchog the stink-eye. Watchog blinked and opened his mouth a couple times in disbelief, but then thought better of it and nodded his head instead.

“And you’ll take our word that these three haven’t been up to any troublemaking today?” The drilburs’ stink eyes only seemed to get more intense, all directed his way. Tricky had a goofy grin plastered on her muzzle, and Espurr had to admit the positivity was contagious.

“They just helped us uncover a very large stash of emeras today,” one drilbur mentioned. “And you know how much money emeras are worth…”

Terrified, Watchog nodded his head ferociously.

“We’ll just be going now,” he said with a quiet, stricken voice, picking up his stuffed bag and traveller’s cloak and shuffling off stiffly. Espurr, Tricky, and Goomy shared a look of triumphant disbelief, barely able to contain their grins, then quickly followed along before they could push the bar any further. A Watchog down on his luck was not a Watchog to test.

“Yeesh, I h-hated that ‘mon…” Espurr heard the drilbur begin to loudly gossip behind them as they left. She was sure they knew Watchog could hear them.

“T-tell me about it. T-talk about p-proud ponyta…”

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Watchog, huffing and puffing and silently stewing, let them loose and stormed off the moment they reached the town square that day. Espurr couldn’t complain. The three of them were quite scuffed up, and even though they were all likely to get a lecture at the school tomorrow, somehow Espurr just didn’t care right now. She was grateful and happy to have made it out of there alive, and from the similarly relieved faces on Tricky and Goomy’s faces, it looked like they felt the same.

“I can’t believe that worked!” hissed Tricky under her breath once Watchog was gone.

“I hope he doesn’t feel too bad,” said Espurr.

“Who cares?” shrieked Tricky in a hush, bouncing up and down. “It’s Watchog! This is epic.”

“I-I think he’s g-gonna punish us at the school tomorrow,” stuttered Goomy.

“Sooo…”

The three of them, interrupted, looked to the far side of the square, near the Café Connection. Pancham, leaning against a house near the Café, beckoned to them smugly. Shelmet was next to him, and they both had extremely annoying looks on their faces.

“Did you get them?” he asked.

“You didn’t tell us the mines had a monster in there!” Tricky yelled at him as they walked up to Pancham, then hurriedly checked to make sure Watchog was out of earshot first. Sure enough, the long, brown pokemon was moping his way home, far off in the sunset distance by now.

“We… uh, we knew about the monster,” Pancham said. “I was just testing you. Did you get the gems?” His voice was grating towards the end, like there was something he knew that they didn’t. Espurr could already feel her gut churning with annoyance; she could tell exactly where this was going.

“We tried,” Espurr began. “But they exploded into dust the moment we took them out of the dungeon.” She showed them the dust in the bag for good measure. She was met with the downright mean laughter of Pancham and Shelmet. It just made her fur bristle more.

“You two are such dimwits!” Pancham gasped out between laughs. “We got you so bad!”

“Everymon knows you can’t take emeras out of dungeons without processing them first!” Shelmet added, crying tears of laughter. Espurr’s eyes narrowed, pink annoyance flickering at the corner of them, and Tricky was staring at them in hurt disbelief. Espurr saw the darkening look upon Tricky’s face, the burgeoning cloud of red that was growing around her head. Even Goomy looked annoyed.

Well, if they wanted to dish it out…

“Anyways,” Espurr said, closing the strap on the old, tattered bag. “Thank you.”

“What?!” Both Shelmet and Pancham ceased their laughter to look at Espurr in shock. Espurr sent them her best attempt at a smile.

“It was fun,” she sweetly lied to their face. “I’m glad you sent us.”

“You had… fun?” Shelmet gasped. “In a mystery dungeon?”

“More fun than picking berries would have been,” Espurr replied.

By this point, Tricky had caught on. She blew a raspberry at Shelmet, before quickly nodding along with Espurr.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Pancham said, folding his arms. He rolled with the punches quickly. “I always knew you were a freak. Just like your partners. Now the whole village gets to know, too…” He blew his own raspberry at Tricky.

Tricky gasped. “You wouldn’t!” she shot back at him, some steam puffing out of her ears. “You can’t prove it!”

“Yeah,” Pancham brushed Tricky off nonchalantly. “But who’s the village gonna listen to? Me… or the local troublemakers? Untouchable, remember?” he sent Tricky a wink that made her look like she wanted to blast him onto the next continent. She growled at him, some more steam blowing from her ear fluff.

“And now, I must be off, ladies.” he bid them goodbye in the most obnoxious tone possible, blowing them a kiss and then sauntering off. Shelmet blew a raspberry at Tricky before scampering after Pancham.

Tricky growled with anger, watching them stroll back to their house on the other side of the square.

“I hate them…” she snarled, her ears flat with rage.

“Maybe they’ll leave us alone now,” Espurr said.

“Pancham and Shelmet never leave us alone,” Tricky muttered. “They’re just dumb, rotten bullies.”

Goomy, who had stood awkwardly off to the side this whole time, slimed over a bit. Espurr and Tricky remembered he was there.

“I… I-I’m g-gonna go home now,” he said, dejectedly.

“Bye,” said Espurr and Tricky, waving him off. Goomy was gone quickly. Very quickly.

“So, you really had fun?” asked Tricky hopefully. And immediately, Espurr was put out again. Had Tricky seriously not picked up on a single thing in that dungeon?

“Tricky…” she trailed off, annoyed. She didn’t know whether to be angry at Tricky, or at herself. “No. I didn’t enjoy it. I just wasn’t giving them the last laugh.”

“So… you didn’t have any fun?” Tricky asked, dejected, focusing intently on the ground she was pawing. Espurr dug down for an answer, one that would get Tricky off her back forever, and then realised she didn’t have one. Except that they’d nearly died several times today and narrowly avoided another week of detention, and that was that.

“We almost died,” she told Tricky firmly. “And Vice Principal Watchog nearly kicked us into next week. We barely got out of it. So no more dungeons.”

But then there was the hard part. When Espurr thought back to it, defeating the gabite, the huge treasure pile, running through the caverns… some of it had been fun. That was the part she hated. Because at the end of the day, it was more fun than picking berries, and… ugh, she didn’t know how to feel about that!

“Okay…” said Tricky. “No more dungeons. Got it.”

They stood in silence for a bit. The silence lasted long. The silence was awkward. Espurr could feel the corners of blue negativity beginning to creep into her head from Tricky’s direction again, swirling with honey-coloured hope.

“Um, well… I should probably get going,” Tricky finally said, ending the quiet. “My Pops is gonna give me the lecture of the century if I don’t get home before dark. Also if he finds out what happened today, so don’t tell him.”

Espurr couldn’t imagine a world where she’d willingly tell anymon in charge about what had happened today.

“Well, bye then,” she said.

Tricky waved goodbye with her swishy tail, and then ran off in the direction of her house. Espurr gave her a halfhearted wave back, then started towards the pine tree path with the old, tattered bag.

The question hung in her mind and bothered her as she walked past the trees: Had she had fun? They’d nearly gotten killed. More than once. And they’d broken into a place they shouldn’t have gone, and Vice Principal Watchog was going to have it out for them now for sure. But there was a rush that came from doing all that dangerous stuff, that made her feel more firm, more rebellious than before. Despite the bullying, and the danger, and the way Tricky kept pushing her into everything, some of it had been fun.

The conflicting pit in her stomach grew all the way back to the School Clinic.

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Somehow, Watchog never punished them. Espurr was fully expecting to receive a huge lecture and more detention in the Principal’s Office the next day, but when Watchog came back to school he was still moody and simply didn’t talk to her. He glowered around near the blackboard the rest of the day, as the other students gossiped between classes about what could possibly have made him so upset.

The events of that day hung fresh in all their minds over the next couple of mornings. The three of them managed to go at least two days without talking to each other – at all. Espurr was still meant to be on a no-talking basis with Tricky, and now that they weren’t having detention together, Goomy sat in the back of the class and wasn’t near them at all. But they did find themselves sitting close together at lunches, and without detention to fill their evenings anymore, that left a large block of time Espurr and Goomy mostly filled with spying on Ampharos as he went about his day.

But it felt like somemon was missing.

On the third day, Espurr, Tricky, and Goomy decided they had to talk about it. So after school, Tricky promised to take them to a place she swore up and down was ‘private enough that no-mon would ever find it’.

That place turned out to be a small, crumbling fort in the woods near the beach, made from solid stone bricks. They’d needed to pass the Crooked House to get here. The small, one-room tower was entwined with an ancient, massive oak, with branches that spread far out above all the other canopies. The second floor of the fort had caved in after years and years of battering by the elements.

“I found it a year ago,” said Tricky, deftly hopping around a few pieces of junk and into the crooked stone doorway. Espurr and Goomy peered in, looking down at the cluttered, dirty stone floor unsurely.

“What?” asked Tricky, looking back. She looked where they were staring, which was at the debris-littered floor, ridden with broken wood, soil, acorns, and dead leaves. “It’s fine! Just step around the junk.”

That was easier said than done. Espurr helped Goomy around the debris, doing her best to tiptoe around the mess herself.

A rickety ramp led up to the second floor of the fort, which was similar to an empty balcony. Much of the junk on the first floor had come from remnants of the second, which had fallen through a large hole in the roof. What remained of the second floor left a lot of room upstairs for sitting and watching the sun set over the easterly mountains.

“It was a bust,” said Tricky, head atop her paws, as they watched the sunset from the fort’s canopy. It was the first time any of them had spoken in entire minutes.

“I-I agree.”

Goomy deflated onto the stone besides Tricky and Espurr, having found a good spot to relax.

“I-it was a w-waste. And w-w-e d-didn’t even find anything about A-ampharos.”

Espurr, who still had that old, dusty bag next to her, folded her arms.

“We did find one thing,” she said.

“W-what?” Goomy looked at her curiously.

“Do you remember the scuff marks in the dungeon?” Espurr asked. She looked at Tricky.

“You said dungeons reset their environments every couple days?” she asked.

Tricky nodded. “Yeah… why?”

“If that’s true, then those scuff marks had to be made around when we went in,” Espurr continued. “But it wasn’t us. It was from before. From sometime last night.”

Tricky suddenly looked interested. Her ears and tail perked up.

“Wait,” she said, huddling closer to them. “You think somemon went in there and disturbed Gabite?”

Espurr nodded. “The same somemon who would have told Pancham exactly where to send three ‘mon on a dare…” she waited for effect as she saw Goomy and Tricky’s faces light up in realisation.

“And the same ‘mon who would have been sighted there earlier that day,” said Tricky.

“A-ampharos,” said Goomy.

“Precisely,” said Espurr. “He must have been there at the dungeon earlier that day. Remember that green fabric on the rock? And he used it to try and get us killed. If that’s not proof he’s linked to the earlier murder and the Coneheads, I’m not sure what is.”

“Earlier murder?” Tricky exclaimed, practically standing up. Some birds flew out of the oak’s branches above them.

“Wait wait wait,” she said. “How out of the loop am I.”

Espurr blanched, followed by Goomy beside her.

“We didn’t tell you,” she observed sheepishly. “Right.”

“Tell me what?” Tricky’s tail wagged like a blur. Her eyes were wide.

Espurr and Goomy just looked at each other.

“C’mon…” Tricky whined. “Nothing as cool as a murder ever happens around here! I need this!”

Espurr hesitated. The cat was already out of the bag… how much did she really have to lose by telling one more person?

Tricky turned out to be an intent listener when she wanted to be. Espurr was surprised that the fennekin didn’t interrupt once when she was telling the story, like she expected would happen. By the end, Tricky just nodded, adjusting herself in the grass with a serious expression on her face.

“So it’s a murder case,” she said levelly. “Right.”

Espurr nodded. “That’s right. But now that you know, you’re sworn to secrecy. No telling anymon else, okay?”

“Okay!” Tricky nodded vigorously. Then she tilted her head in confusion. “Wait, why aren’t we telling anymon else?”

“B-because we d-don’t want the w-wrong person finding out,” Goomy said helpfully.

“Secret investigation.” Tricky nodded sagely, then stood stiffly to attention. “Got it.” She flopped down onto the stone anyway. “Still a waste though. We didn’t get a single piece of gold!”

Espurr pulled the dusty old bag closer to her. Watchog had angrily searched it on the way back before letting her keep it, but upon finding nothing but old antiques and emera dust in the bag’s main pouch, assumed that it must have been a piece of rubbish no-mon else wanted and let her keep it.

“I wouldn’t say we didn’t get a single piece…” Espurr trailed off. Then she undid the bag’s clasp and opened a hidden pocket, showing Tricky and Goomy what was inside. The glitter of the bag’s contents, reflecting the sunset’s orange light, gleamed brightly and cast it into their faces.

“You WHAT?” Tricky screeched, loudly enough that whatever poor birds had come back or were still roosting in the big oak were scared away again, squawking as they went.

“Watchog isn’t very observant,” stated Espurr plainly.

“T-that’s…” started Goomy in awe.

“That’s awesome,” said a gobsmacked Tricky.

“I’d reckon we can afford a lot now,” said Espurr as she closed the bag, sounding quite pleased with herself. And as far as she was concerned, why shouldn’t she be?

Goomy, too, looked very content. And though she seemed to restrain herself from jumping up in the air and doing a victory fit, Espurr had never seen a goofier look on Tricky’s face. She could barely contain one from spreading on hers too. Even if it was reckless… she couldn’t deny it had absolutely turned out for the better.

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Music of the Week!

Roslin and Adama Reunited – Bear McCreary