4PM
There's a dead bird outside.
A mangled corpse of half rotten flesh and shredded feathers. One eye a pitch bck bead, the other an empty optical hole surrounded by cracked skull bone.
It's the first bird Joshua has seen since he got here.
He wouldn't be surprised, a dead bird is ironically one of the more normal things he's seen.
At least it would be.
But it's staring at him.
It's perched up on a branch, sat half hidden between the leaves of a tree just outside the perimeter. He barely caught it at first, but now he regrets looking right at it.
How many things are watching him right now?
The… thing. The tall figure in the treeline.
And now this.
Joshua clenches his teeth, and tries to ignore it while he continues his work.
…
The ck of gunpowder is really bumming Joshua out. Not having access to guns is a nightmare for his American mind.
So he decides to mine.
Long strip tunnels, which doesn't look ominous at all while looking down it.
“Woah, what the hell?”
He's been mindlessly digging, zoning out as he pours whatever he finds into his inventory. When suddenly the block he breaks opens up into a dark expanse.
The two mares back up as the strip mine is swept through with a damp air.
A cave?
“Girl? A light please?”
Jophiel ignites her horn, and a ball of light slowly drifts down into the darkness.
Joshua looks down, but beside the gray dull stone walls, he can't see much else.
Jophiel seems to sense his annoyance and sends a pulse of psychic energy down the hole. While she can't make out anything specific, it would allow her to ‘ping’ other mental signatures like a radar.
Which is a good call, as something is picked up.
“Th*** i* s*meth*** h***”
“Any idea what it is?”
“N*...”
Annoyance.
He reaches down and ruffles her mane to cheer her up.
“Woooooow! Look Mister Joshua, it's so deep!” Gabriel leans over the edge.
Jophiel chortles.
“Love, that is a child, cease”
Jophiel just waves him off with a hoof.
Rolling his eyes, he looks back down, as the light of Jophiel’s Magic Unicorn Powers drops lower.
“This kind of looks like a cavern…” Joshua whispers to himself.
Reaching into his inventory he flicks out a lit torch and tosses it down the hole.
It goes down quicker than her light, and actually hits the bottom with a distant ctter of wood.
There's a small shine at the bottom, reflecting off the light.
An iron vein?
Squinting his eyes he looks closer.
No… that's…
Something.
“Actually wait, what is that?”
“I d**t kn**”
Plopping a crafting table down, he quickly makes a decent amount of stairs. It's going to be a fucking pain making a downward staircase but considering both of his companions are inconvenient horse-things he can't just use dders.
Gabriel might be fine, considering she's basically just a cloud of super-anthrax that's pretending to wear a suit. Jophiel doesn't have the psychic strength to reliably lift herself yet, but she's getting close.
So stairs it is.
Each block pced resonates a dull thud across the cavern, it takes him a rather uncomfortable amount of time to finally reach the bottom.
“Now where is… ah, there you are”
Jophiel brings her light closer, lighting up their surroundings as they make their way to the strange shine.
Considering the torch is the only other thing in the cavern that isn't cloaked in pitch bck darkness, it's not hard to find.
And he sees…
“Is this another structure?”
It's a metal box, not raw metal, like pted iron bolted at the sides.
There's treads at the bottom, is it a vehicle? A small rusted dder hangs off the side that allows him to climb into the open top.
Seeing the spiral pointed section on the front of the vehicle, he makes a strange realization.
His chat is quicker to notice.
[IonoZone: A drill? ( ?◇?)？]
[Why is a drill here???]
[wtf…]
[Anyone familiar with the model?]
[Nope]
[Nada]
[StevenStoneOffical: Metagross concluded that it's simir to the drilling sites we have in Hoenn, but we do not have a vehicle variant of it. Completely unique to us]
Joshua pauses, looking at the user's name.
what.
[Oh hey it's Steven Stone… HOLY SHIT ITS STEVEN STONE ? ? ( Д )]
[The CHAMPION watches my streamer…]
[What in Arceus’ name is Steven doing here???]
[StevenStoneOffical: Hello Joshua, it's nice to finally speak to you]
…Steven was the Hoenn Champ, right?...
Mega Evolution guy, likes rocks.
“Iono… did you drag the fucking champion here?”
[IonoZone: (；゜?゜) hahaha…]
[IonoZone: no]
“okay yeah sure like I'll believe that no problem”
Jophiel looks up at him.
Concern.
“I'm fine love”
Suspicion…
There's a pause as she inspects him.
Acceptance.
He hears her sigh.
Looking back at the chat, he isn't even sure how to proceed. He should keep it basic, right?
“Uh… hello, Steven. Are you caught up with everything that's going on?”
It's weird talking to a normally fictional Pokemon Champion, but he powers through.
Iono was easier, mostly because she typed like she was a monkey smming the keys.
[StevenStoneOffical: I am. I am sorry about your situation… I sincerely wish I could help you, but you seem to be in a different reality or something of the sort.]
“It's cool. It's not like you put me here”
[StevenStoneOffical: If you have any questions, I will be avaible outside of my work hours, please don't hesitate to ask]
[What does the champion even do in his free time?]
[StevenStoneOffical: Updating my mineral collection]
[How did I not see that coming]
“Thank you, um… Steven. I'll get back to you in a second, I want to check out this thing first”
[StevenStoneOffical: That is fine.]
Joshua sighs and looks around.
A drill. A drivable one.
A dashboard of different knobs and switches, gauges and screens.
That's a lot of electronics to deconstruct.
And a lot of iron.
What a haul! What a weird structure generation though.
“Mister Joshua!” He hears Pinky below him.
“What's up, Pinks?”
“Mr. Suit says you can turn this on! Something something y-piss bat-ter-ry… yeah”
“Pony”
“La…pis. Lapis?”
“Pony”
“Bat-tery. Baddery? Oh! Battery! My bad, hehe~”
Joshua ignores the giggles and the barely held back murderous intent coming from his psychic link.
“Lapis battery?... Where is…”
He rummages around, looking under the dashboard to get a better view of the electronics.
Wow, this is pis powered? He has to admit, it's impressive work for an amateur like him.
He sees a small brass cylinder filled with a murky blue substance id behind some of the wires but still easily accessible.
“Is this the battery?...”
[BRASS LAPIS BATTERY (0.000E/100.000E)]
Well okay then.
Unscrewing the top is easy, even without proper tools (which you would think he would have by now) he managed to get it up and repce the shriveled up raisin of the old pis core with a fresh one.
Immediately, as soon as he puts it back together the gaps in the battery start glowing a soft blue.
[BRASS LAPIS BATTERY (0.028E/100.000E)]
[BRASS LAPIS BATTERY (0.087E/100.000E)]
[BRASS LAPIS BATTERY (0.102E/100.000E)]
…wonder what the ‘E’ stands for.
Joshua inserts the battery back into the dashboard and dusts himself off.
With a low rumble, the engine purrs to life, and various lights start fshing from across the screens.
One such screen catches his attention, a ft terminal dispying lines of green text.
A file is already presented on startup, not yet opened.
[LOG - STRONGHOLD - PROTOTYPE DRILL - ?]
That symbol…
Ace?
He cmors over and opens the file.
