GB~

"They were more critical this time," Kaz explained, "They admonished the members of our guild for not 'taking charge' and 'working for the greater good' when nobody agreed to their recruitment calls. Gentle admonishments, true, but the underlying message was that they believed we were making a mistake by not joining their organization." The Marowak then sighed and glanced to the side before adding, "And then…"

"…Then?" Vylet prompted, finding that she was hanging on his every word. "At the very end," Ketch explained, "After Zarah told them off with some…very colourful language. They said some stuff like…'You'll be sorry.'"

—

The air was filled with the thick sound of flapping wings, like a tennis racquet hitting a rug repeatedly, before the familiar Noibat fluttered into view. Fawkes called out a greeting to the both of them as he flew past, and then he alighted himself on a nearby wall and flipped over to hang upside down.

"Ah… Well, hello again," Vylet said, nodding politely to him.

"Hi!!" Fawkes replied excitedly, waving one of his wings, "I'm so glad you two could make it! It's great to see you!"

Anrey approached him, craning his neck to look up at the hanging Noibat. "Good to see you too," he replied, "We were, uh…quite surprised, to say the least, when our guildmaster told us we'd been requested."

"Yeah," Vylet concurred. She approached him as well and asked, "What's this all about?"

Fawkes looked at them coyly for a moment, averting his gaze a few times. Eventually, he simply burst out all of a sudden. "I wanna join your team!"

Silence filled the cave entrance for a few awkward seconds as Vylet and Anrey both stared at the Noibat in befuddlement. Fawkes' eager grin slipped slightly as the silence wore on and there was a tiny flash of worry in his eyes.

After it felt like too much silence had passed, Vylet shook her head and said, "I'm sorry, come again?"

—

"Good work!" Anrey called to her once they had reached the second floor down.

"Nice!" she replied in kind, "Let's keep at it. Keep adding to our score."

"Oh, we've got this in the bag!"

Vylet couldn't keep herself from smiling with pride; both in herself and in Anrey. After all the frustrating times she'd had to deal with that Quagsire, it was so cathartic to actively be proving her own skills against his. She didn't know what his score could possibly be at this moment, but she knew in her heart that it was low. She was about to rush off, eager to hit the next room and take down even more Monochromes. Instead, though, she slapped her own forehead. "Anrey, we forgot to look for herbs!"

—

"You're kidding me!!!"

Standing across the room near the missions board were two Pokémon that were unfortunately very familiar to Vylet. They were wearing smarmy grins and laughing together about something dumb one of them had no doubt said. Like always, Vylet felt a surge of rage building deep in the pit of her stomach the moment she set eyes upon that Quagsire and his Lycanroc teammate.

However much Vylet wanted to ignore those two and pretend they weren't there, her attention was drawn to something new about them. They were both standing proudly with their chests held high, trying to be subtle about it but failing in that regard, to bring attention to their brand new adornments.

Lev, the Quagsire of her nightmares, and his partner Kamar were wearing blue scarves.

The two Pokémon took notice of Vylet's disbelieving stare and shared a smirk with one another before walking across the room towards her. "Hey there, princess," Lev said smugly once he reached her, "Normally I'd say it's rude to stare, but in this case I get it. It's pretty impressive to look at after all."

"How?!" Vylet blurted out, "How the hell did the two of you manage to reach Great Class?!"

—

"I made a big announcement about this in the morning but you weren't here. No taking missions off of the board today for anybody. I need everyone to work on this instead."

Vylet and Anrey shared a concerned glance. Something that concerned the entire Clover Town branch of the guild? Vylet's mind reeled as she tried to imagine what could possibly garner such a response. The only thing she could think of was some extremely powerful natural disaster, though she couldn't imagine how news of that would have escaped her ears until now.

"What is it?" Anrey asked, "What's going on?" Zarah looked at them both with a serious, grave expression. "New Mystery Dungeons have suddenly appeared overnight," she stated, "A lot of them."

—

Vylet looked over in the direction of the stairs, still not seeing anything. Then she slowly turned her head back around. Once she was facing the opposite way, she suddenly found a pair of bright yellow eyes less than a foot in front of her face.

"Boo."

Her sudden shriek echoed through the caves, badly startling Anrey, and she lashed out with her claws. They connected with nothing but air, and she caught a glimpse of something small flying away into the darkness.

"What was it?" Anrey asked, half crouched and on high alert.

"I don't know! It startled me…It was on one of the stalactites or something…"

—

She stared at him for a moment, then held a claw up to her head. "What?"

"I'm as lost as you are," Anrey said with a frown.

"What is going on??"

Anrey flinched a little and glanced away.

"Oh…" Vylet said, immediately feeling remorse, "I'm sorry, Anrey. I don't mean to make you feel like a circus show or anything. I'm just…in such disbelief. My brain is demanding answers, even though I know none of us can provide them." "I'd honestly like to figure it out myself," Anrey replied

—

Sundial City was much larger than Clover Town by a factor of at least three, and Vylet had never been there before. It was mostly a trade city filled with businesses, workshops and financial institutions. It wasn't exactly high on the list of touristy places to visit, but it wasn't an unwelcoming place either. The main attraction of the city was the expansive park sitting right in the centre, dominated by the larger-than-life sundial made out of solid stone that rested in a plaza in the middle.

Somewhere within that city was Pyere's shop. Vylet still couldn't quite believe what they were about to do.

—

Vylet sighed and added, "There's no way we're gonna be able to get to him without them noticing, especially if they're so fascinated with just staring at him. And we won't be able to carry him away to somewhere safe where we can use the Escape Orb. So that means…"

"To rescue Pyere, we're going to have to fight them. All of them."

"Yeah…" Vylet said anxiously. She crept back over to the corner and looked at the circle of Monochromes again, quickly counting them. "Well, there's six of them. That's less than the usual huge mobs of Monochromes we encounter, but it's more than we've ever defeated at once I think."

Anrey was frowning and looking down at the ground. "I…Do you think we can do it…?"

"I don't…know the answer to that." Vylet looked at her partner and she could tell that he was doubting himself. Fighting and defeating six Monochromes was a tall order, and she knew it was a lot to ask of the relatively inexperienced Eevee. "We…have to, though," Anrey spoke up, "We have to rescue Pyere."

—

"Well, Anrey," she said, finally breaking the silence, "What about this?"

Anrey lifted his head again and regarded her with a questioning look.

"And, like, hear me out," she added. When he nodded, she then folded her claws together and said, "Have you ever thought about…evolving?"

The Eevee's ears perked up a little. "Evolving…?"

"Mhm," Vylet said with a nod, "'Cus, you know, evolution provides a boost to attack power, strength, stamina and all that stuff, regardless of a Pokémon's skill level. In pretty much all cases, it just makes you better in battle. And, since you're an Eevee, you'd gain access to a totally new type of attacks when you evolve." She smiled as she thought more about it. "In fact, no matter which one you would choose, it'd be a type that we don't already cover. There's no Poison or Fighting Eevee evolutions after all."

To her delight, Anrey was now sitting up straight, his lethargy had disappeared, and he was giving her his undivided attention. That said, though, he didn't seem sold on the idea. "I…I don't know, to be honest," he replied, "I've…never even thought about it."

—

"All right, so here's the deal," Fenyx said to them. The laid-back relaxed tone in his voice was gone, replaced with a serious tone that betrayed how experienced he was at his job. "This dungeon," he continued, "is one of the main hideouts for the Shadow Scales. You might have heard of them."

Vylet nodded. "They're mostly known for thievery," she replied.

"Their gang is also almost entirely made up of cold-blooded Pokémon," Fenyx continued, "Beezo Grotto actually gets colder and colder the further down you go. By the bottom, it's subzero temperatures. Since cold-blooded Pokémon don't do so well in the cold, they only inhabit floors two through four."

"But the Elixir ingredients are further down, I'm guessing," Anrey spoke up.

"Eeeeexactly," Fenyx replied with a wink

—

It had been a while, but the memory was still fresh in her mind as if it had happened yesterday. Just like last time, there was something distinctly unusual about this Pokémon, and it was not hard to notice.

"Another one…" Anrey remarked.

—

"How 'bout this one?" she asked and pointed to one of the papers tacked onto the board, "Rescue mission!"

"A rescue?" Anrey replied, "Someone's in trouble in a dungeon?"

"This could be our very first rescue!" Vylet said excitedly. It was basically unheard of for rescue missions to ever be ranked D, and it was still rather rare for them to even be ranked C. Rescuing Pokémon in trouble was one of the things she had looked forward to when she first decided to join the guild. She had wondered if they would have to wait until they ranked up again before they could do one, but here was a C-Rank rescue mission waiting to be completed.

Anrey stepped next to her and read the posting aloud. "'My friend often goes into Craggy Cave to gather materials for our crafting business and he's always come back out without any problems. Craggy Cave is usually completely empty; we've never seen hostile Pokémon there. But he went in yesterday and still hasn't come back. I think he's in trouble and needs help.'"

—

There was a single Pokémon standing at the far side of the room. It was facing away from them and standing completely still, but there was no way to sneak past it without being seen. Vylet subconsciously held her breath and quickly took stock of the situation. She was about to turn around, planning to make a silent escape in the opposite direction before they were noticed. However, she briefly caught a glimpse of something sparkling on the ground. Vylet remained silent and squinted, then her heart dropped when she realized what she was looking at.

The necklace was in the room. It was laying on the ground, and the other Pokémon was standing between it and the two of them.

Vylet signaled with a wave of her claw for Anrey to back up. She carefully turned and followed him, keeping an eye on the Pokémon for as long as she could, and then followed Anrey back around the corner and a few metres down the corridor.

"Well, crap…" she whispered to him once she figured they were far enough away.

Anrey gave her a concerned look. "What do we do?" Vylet quietly groaned in irritation. "Well, we don't know for sure if it's a hostile Pokémon, so we can't just sneak up and score a knockout. Although, the fact that this Pokémon is here, alone, inside of a Mystery Dungeon, is a pretty good indication…"

—

Vylet clapped her claws together and said, "So! Let's spend the rest of today getting started on battle practice. We won't do too much, we'll just get a feel for how things are. Sound good?"

"You're the boss," he said with a chuckle.

"All right, then. So, what moves to you know?"

Vylet was met with a blank stare. "…Oh," she muttered, "…Wow. Really?"

—