CHAPTER 15: OH, FOX!

Traveler’s Inn

After that evening’s dinner, it was time for Ryan, Sofia, and the others to introduce their new companion. Before Ben, Quincy and Felipe entered their room, Lena took one of the spare bedsheets and covered Mike with it to not startle their teammates.

“Alright, Mike,” the sneasel said, “now that you’re covered up, we’re going to need you to stay perfectly still until it’s time for us to show you to our friends.”

“Affirmative,” the robot replied. Just then, somebody knocked on the door.

“Showtime,” Lena said, adjusting her purple bandana before answering the knocking. As she expected, a litten, fuecoco, and quaxly waited on the other side.

“Before we show you the… thing we wanted to show,” Terry said, “please make sure you stay calm. It won’t hurt you unless you show aggression, so it is extremely important that you do not panic, okay?”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” the litten said impatiently, tugging at the bedsheet. “Show us already!”

The sneasel and pachirisu, as well as Ryan and Sofia, worked together to remove the bedsheet from the object, which was revealed to be a grey, floating robot. Ben’s eyes sparkled.

“No way! You found a robot?”

“I personally believe that this metang here,” Terry began, “is the beldum that my team saw one time a month ago, and again two weeks ago.”

“Wait, so it isn’t a robot?” Ben said, then asked, “are you a robot?”

“Affirmative. My name is CSP-375, but the others just call me Mike, and you can as well.”

“I also invited this big lug to accompany us the rest of the way to Pojoin Town!” Lena added. “We certainly could use the extra muscle… even though it probably doesn’t… have any muscles…” She waved an arm. “You know what I mean.”

“Can robots even evolve?” Ben mused aloud.

Even though he wasn’t asking it, the metang still responded. “Negative. I was designed after a metang. I have never been a beldum. I will also never become a metagross.”

The litten’s ears dropped. “Oh,” he said, disappointed.

“There goes that theory,” Terry added. “Looks like this is a completely different metang.”

“Wait a moment,” Quincy said. “I don’t know very much about robotics- surprising, I know- but I’m fairly certain that they can’t normally act as if they’re sentient beings.”

The pachirisu shrugged. “Its programming is complicated. It said so itself.”

“Hold on,” Ryan said. “We keep referring to Mike as an ‘it’, but we should ask how it wants to be referred to as.” He turned to the metang. “Mike, how do you want to be referred to?”

An hourglass spun in its eye. “My internal operation manual refers to me as a ‘they’, so refer to me with that, please.”

“Got it,” Ryan said, nodding.

“Any other queries at the moment?” Mike inquired.

“Oh! I have one!” Ben burst out. “Where did you come from?”

“Outer space.”

“Wow, you guys found a robot with a sense of humor? I’m real impressed,” Quincy said.

The looks on the faces of the four that had originally seen the metang quickly told the quaxly that it was telling the truth.

“I may have been programmed with a sense of humor- the man who placed the order for me saw to that- but what I was not programmed with was the ability to lie.”

The metang then reshared what it had told Ryan, Lena, Terry and Sofia earlier in the library.

“So, what you’re saying is… some space human is watching us through your eyes?” the quaxly inquired.

“Affirmative.”

“That’s not creepy at all,” Quincy muttered sarcastically.

“Do not worry, I am scheduled for sleep mode starting in three minutes, so I will not be able to watch you sleep, even if I, or my master, wanted to.”

Just then, Ryan yawned. “Yeah, I think it’s time we got to sleep ourselves.” He leapt onto the nearer bed and curled into a ball. “Goodnight, everyone.”

Before long, everyone else had gone to bed as well.

---

The two teams and their new partner were all up bright and early, as they had another long day ahead of them. Unlike yesterday, either of their two possible routes would take them through a mystery dungeon. They ended up choosing the Wistful Winterlands, a chilly taiga perpetually blanketed in snow, inhabited primarily by ice types.

The dungeon had twelve floors, so the two teams had originally expected it to take them nearly to dusk to get through it. Thanks to Mike, with their type advantage and sheer strength, they had little trouble making it through, and were able to make it out by four in the afternoon. Despite making it out relatively early, the sun wasn’t as high as it would’ve been back in Luneria. Nevertheless, after about another hour, they made it to their next stop: a small semicircle of five cabins, one of which had been reserved for the two teams, and all of which faced the road to Pojoin.

Both teams entered the cabin to escape the cold, snowy environment, especially as there were hints of a snowstorm on the way. The interior was decidedly less fancy than the mansion from last night, but it would be more than enough to keep them warm, dry, and comfortable, and to them, that was what mattered to the pokemon, who, aside from the resistant ones, were chilled to the bone. Sofia, who had had it especially bad, was still shivering even though the others had stopped by now, so she curled into a ball right in front of the fire that Felipe had started in the fireplace. Ryan, meanwhile, stared out the window, watching as snow started to fall in the darkness outside. At several points, he could have sworn he had seen something staring back at him from the forest, but each time, they disappeared after deliberately blinking, so he figured they were just in his imagination. After five repetitions of this, he decided it would be best to not look out the window right now.

“So, um, what are we going to do with Mike after this expedition of ours is all over?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t know,” Lena said, shrugging as she sat in front of the fire next to a sleeping Sofia covered by a blanket. “You’re the designated team leader, not me.”

“So, it’s up to me, then,” the eevee said, placing a forepaw to his ‘chin’. “Hm, not sure if exploration teams are allowed to have five members in them… I don’t even know if that’s a question that’s ever come up. I say we let them join if they can and want to, but if they can’t, we can see if Sofia’ll let them join Team Waterburn, since they only have three members.”

“And what if they don’t want to join an exploration team?” Lena asked inquisitively.

“Ah…” Ryan thought aloud. “I don’t actually… know what we would do then… but I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“I see. But another thing,” the sneasel continued. “You really seem to have come around to the idea of allowing Mike to stick around with us, you know. Not that I didn’t think you would, I’m just surprised that it happened so soon.”

“Yeah, well… they figuratively carried us through the Wistful Winterlands, literally in the case of Terry and Sofia, so they’ve kinda proven themselves to me, you know?”

Lena nodded, and the brown fox laid himself down in front of the fire, next to the sneasel.

---

Some hours later, everyone in the cabin was fast asleep, either in the beds, on the couch or on the floor in front of the gradually dying fire. The snowflakes were piling on heavily outside, and the snow that blanketed the ground outside was nearly two feet deep. Despite this, something lurked outside the cabin, preparing to make some kind of move.

The first inhabitant of the cabin to notice that something was amiss was Mike, who took to sleep mode next to the front window. It had detected the sound of tiny pawsteps crunching in the snow outside, which caused it to rise from sleep mode. After looking outside, it tapped on Ryan’s comatose body to wake the sleeping eevee, who hadn’t even bothered to remove his scarf or badge before going to sleep. He stretched his legs out and yawned.

“Unh…” he moaned. “What time is it?”

The robot answered at a volume significantly lower than its default level. “It is currently 1:13 in the morning, on July 28th of the year-“

“What?” Ryan whispered, almost as a hiss. “That’s five hours too early!”

Ignoring what he said, Mike said, “I have an urgent notice for you. Movement has been detected outside. It is a ghost type, but the specific species is not registered in my internal pokemon index.”

“And you’re saying you want me to come along and help you?” Ryan asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Why me?”

“You, as a normal type, cannot be touched by a ghost pokemon. None of your other companions have that attribute.”

The eevee, now wide awake despite the gloomy atmosphere, shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“However,” the metang added, “the snow outside is nearly two feet deep, so I will carry you outside instead.”

“Alrighty then.”

Ryan hopped onto the arm of the couch, careful not to wake Ben, who was sleeping on it, and from there onto the top of the metang’s head. The metang then levitated to the door and forced it open using their ESP. This made Ryan wonder how psychic powers are even programmed, or if they are at all and it’s not made possible through some other method entirely.

Since it was dark, and since Ryan wasn’t nocturnal and lacked night vision, Mike used flash to illuminate their immediate surroundings. As the robot levitated over top of the snow, the eevee looked around to see if he could find what his robotic companion had detected. In the treeline across the way, Ryan could’ve sworn he had seen a vaguely-glowing silhouette of a zorua.

“A zorua?” Ryan thought aloud. “They may not have the most trustworthy reputation, but maybe it knows something.” He then requested, “Mike, take me over there, please.”

The metang obeyed Ryan’s command and floated toward the other side, slowly to not spook the other fox. As the duo got closer, Ryan noticed that it didn’t look like a standard zorua. Its fur was mostly an ash-gray, it appeared to have a white scarf-like tuft of fur around its neck, and its blue-tipped head tuft seemed… wispier than a regular zorua’s.

“Oh, I see,” Ryan said quietly, recognizing it as a shiny, and the Hisuian variant, “this is our culprit.” He placed a forepaw to his chin. “But what was it even doing near the cabin?”

It was then that the ancient variant of zorua noticed them. It tensed up before fleeing in the opposite direction.

“After it!” Ryan shouted, not caring about remaining quiet anymore, and the eevee braced himself as the metang sped up significantly to remain caught up with the ghostly fox as it sped through the trees. As they kept going, Ryan could’ve sworn he saw something glowing up ahead, and it was far too bright to be the zorua.

The pokemon now emerged into a clearing, no zorua to be found. What they did find was a giant rock in the center of the clearing that was almost entirely frozen over: an ice rock. Ryan wasn’t worried at first, he had no reason to be. He was a safe distance away, and besides, he had an everstone in- wait…

Ryan reached to his side with a forepaw, but only felt his soft pelt. My bag! He thought, his heart sinking. I must’ve left it in the cabin by accident! Oh, this is really bad. Not because I would even mind evolving anymore, but because they might not think I’m me.

As if being near an ice rock without his everstone wasn’t bad enough, he heard something roar from inside the forest.

Ryan was too scared to move, not that he could have anyways with how deep the snow was. Even though it was tightly packed enough that he wouldn’t sink too deep, he would still end up deep enough that he would have a difficult time getting away. It’s not like he could have Mike take him back either, as it was too busy searching for the zorua as if something hadn’t just loudly roared from the taiga’s depths. Speaking of which, the source of the roar came out. It resembled a zoroark, the ancient variant like the zorua, which was next to it. Unlike the zorua, it had mostly white fur with bits of red. An angry snarl twisted its face.

“Are you the ones who were attacking my son?” the zoroark growled, eyes glowing.

“N-no!” Ryan stammered. “W-we weren’t going to attack him, we just wanted to ask him-“

“I don’t want to hear it,” it roared, startling the eevee into silence. “You tried to take my son, and now you must pay.”

“Eep!” Ryan squeaked as the zoroark shot a shadow ball at him, but Mike’s consistent movement caused it to miss, not that it would’ve hit him anyways.

“Nice try,” Ryan bragged, “but you can’t hit me. Normal types can’t be hit by ghost moves.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” the angry zoroark said, shrugging. “That was just a distraction.”

Before Ryan could even ask what she meant by that, the zorua had already jumped up and headbutted right into his side, sending him flying right toward the ice rock. Ryan recalled the moss rock incident and how he got lucky in that situation. In this moment, he hoped that he would land in the snow instead, that he would get that same luck now.

He did not.

The sound of Ryan slamming into the ice rock caught Mike’s attention, snapping it out of what it was doing. “An ally has been harmed,” they said monotonously, referring to Ryan, whose body had started to glow. “Attack mode engaged.”

The metang turned their arm into a cannon, aimed it at the zoroark, and began charging a flash cannon. The spiteful fox’s anger quickly turned to fear as she snapped out of her blind rage.

“W-whoa!” she said with a nervous smile on her face as her and the zorua slowly backed away. “N-no need to do s-something you might regret!”

Mike’s eyes simply flashed red. “Robots do not feel regret.”

The zoroark stumbled back as she tried to flee, but she couldn’t get away, so the best she could do was curl around the zorua to protect it the best she could. Once the flash cannon fire made contact, a large grey flash of light could be seen from miles away, flinging up a lot of snow. Once it had all settled, a bruised zoroark, still curled around the smaller ghost fox, lay unconscious in a crater of Mike’s creation.

“Threat neutralized,” Mike said as they disengaged their attack mode. They followed up by conducting a scan to check for signs of life in the larger fox. Predictably, the scanner said they were dead, but Mike knew that was just because she was ghost type.

“Ghost types can’t die twice,” Mike reasoned as it left them in the crater to check on his other foxy companion. “They’ll be fine.”

By now, the glow emanating from Ryan had subsided, leaving behind an icy blue fox with ice crystals on its forehead and tendrils that grew from them; it had a body about double Ryan’s size. The metang sensed a human life force, finding that it was, in fact, Ryan, and that he was still alive as well, despite sustaining a slight back injury from the impact with the ice rock, but nothing a bit of rest and some oran juice can’t fix. They then hoisted the uneasily unconscious, newly-evolved glaceon onto their top and carried him back through the night to the cabin. After tending to the ice fox’s bruised back, carefully removing his slightly torn scarf, and placing him down on the armchair, they reentered sleep mode in the place the robot had originally taken as their own.

---

Pernautica Mass-Transportative Space Station

Martin woke from his slumber, with the feeling that something that he could, and should, have tried to stop had just occurred. Shaking it off as just a bad feeling, he turned over and went back to sleep.

---

Near the Ice Rock

The zorua wiggled its way out of it’s unconscious mother’s grasp. Luckily for him, the she-zoroark always kept a reviver seed in her mane, so he dug through to find it, opened her maw, and fed it to her. After she came to, she smiled at her son.

“Thank you for reviving me,” she said, having calmed down. “But that other fox… I’m not certain he was actually trying to hurt you.” She sighed. “Still, I wish you’d have not led him here, because I’m pretty sure he was with the guild. I don’t think him, or the metang, knew I’m an outlaw though, because they would have taken me in if they did.

“Even so, little pup of mine,” she told her offspring, “I don’t think it’s safe for us to stay around here, because although they don’t know, they may be about to speak with pokemon that do know, and if they tell them, they’ll come back for us… we have to go, now! Especially since they’ll probably find the signal blocker I covertly installed in Pojoin Town sooner or later; then things’ll really head south for us.”

She scooped up the zorua and ran off into the forest, in the opposite direction that the metang had headed, hoping to find somewhere safe to hide out.