> Won't Vesta shrink a bit if you give her less fuel? Could you put her in a pouch of adamantine spider silk since it's not flammable? maybe put some seaweed in too?
She's already shrinking nicely, since you forgot her seaweed. And while you can't really make a pouch, you can sort of scrunch the silk up into a kind of... well, to be brutally honest it's a mess, but you should be able to tie one end around your shoulders and have Vesta hang down at your side. Just be careful when you put your hands in your pockets.
On second thoughts, perhaps there are some things you shouldn't joke about.
Othodox crafted one Tangle of Fireproof Webbing! Othodox arranged the Tangle of Fireproof Webbing around his shoulders.
You glance at Elm.
"You ready?" you ask. He has packed his stuff away into a Bag similar to the one you used to have, only it's made of some special rugged material that will survive long after both of you are dead.
"As ready as I'll ever be," he says.
You have created a party!
Professor Elm joined the party!
Vesta joined the party!
Othodox became the party leader!
Hm. This is not a mechanic you remember existing before the Dreaming. Perhaps there's a help module that can offer more information.
> Take a few more minutes to wrap your head around the situation, then do an inventory (both yours and Elm's, if they're separate) and ceiling check. If the inventories are separate, make sure to ask Elm before you check his, and only check if he says it's okay.
Othodox's Inventory:
Elm's Key x1
Hideously Dangerous Stabby Thing x1
Highly Persuasive Handgun x1
Large European Eel x4
Loaded Portable Spratchery (Two Shots) x1
MooMoo Milk x2
Rocks x12
Sodden Lava Cookie x1
Sturdy Scale x3
Elm's Inventory:
Cutlery Set x6
Cooking Pot x2
Empty Bottle x4
Fibreglass Rock Wall x1
Folding Chair x10
Fuel Cell (Full) x2
Fuel Cell (Half Depleted) x1
Laptop x3
LED Cluster x12
Limpet x52
Master Ball x2
Portable Generator x1
'Tea' Flask x7
Water Bottle x3
Water Purification Unit x1
Vesta's Inventory:
BURGEONING ELOQUENCE x1
Flaming Seaweed x14
RAVENING HUNGER x1
Smoke x∞
UNDYING LOYALTY x1
Vesta's property is mainly abstract, but since they're listed in her inventory, you could probably take those abstracts from her. Although I don't recommend taking away the UNDYING LOYALTY if you value the finer things in life. And by 'the finer things in life' I mean 'not being on fire'.
> Also, your dress. Check to see if it's still in good condition.
If any of the rags of it have survived, you lost them in the storm. You changed out of it a long time ago, back in Olivine.
Damn it. Perhaps Lugia messed with your head more than you thought. You at least hoped you still knew what you were wearing.
> Be grateful that Lugia didnt brutally destroy you. After a quick prayer to Tabiti for luck, a quiet one so Elm doesnt hear you, begin your ascent.
Astonishingly, you're already grateful enough without being told. On account of it actually happening to you.
Funny how these voices seem not to notice details like that, isn't it? Almost as if they don't regard you as a real person.
You mutter a brief prayer to Tabiti, and in doing so indirectly remind her that you've been keeping busy with the whole 'defending the sacred fire' thing recently. Hauling a bonfire through a sea cave isn't exactly easy; anyone who goes to such lengths must be pretty devoted.
Othodox's Devotion has increased!
Othodox is a Priest Sheathed in a Glorious Flame!
> I don't think there's anything left to do in here so...Get to the Chopper!
You nod at Elm, and the pair of you begin to retrace your steps. Soon, however, Elm takes a turn that you never noticed before, and then works his way through a series of tight twists and curves so quickly that you actually begin to feel dizzy.
"We're still on the lowest level," says Elm, moving swiftly on ahead of you with practised ease. "I travel along these tunnels all the time to get to the good tidal pools, where most of the edible weeds and molluscs are. But to get back up, we'll need to go up through here."
He points at a side passage that yawns blackly to the left.
Neither of you move towards it.
Are we going? asks Vesta, apparently unconcerned.
"I'm going first, aren't I?" you say. It isn't a question.
"Of course," replies Elm. "You're the one with the weapons. I'll direct you from behind."
"Great," you mutter, and step into the passage before you can convince yourself not to.
The walls glisten with beads of water and crystals of salt in the soft glow of Vesta's flames; you draw your Highly Persuasive Handgun and keep it ready, taking comfort in the solid weight of the implausible machine in your hand.
You walk through the dark, and everything is so quiet that you jump and nearly shoot your foot off when Elm whispers:
"Take a right here."
You take it, and now you really feel the ground sloping upwards beneath you; you're higher up already, you can feel it. Soon, you emerge into a large cavern, featureless save for the black water in its centre, and Elm motions frantically for you to stay still.
"Don't make a sound," he mouths desperately. "This is where the others were taken."
You glance around uneasily, but see nothing out of the ordinary; Elm shakes his head and points up. You follow his finger, and see—
—a ceiling of gently rustling skin and bone, of gently flexing fingers and tufts of fur.
You look back down again. That doesn't help: it just means that you notice that the rocks here are not in fact white, but merely covered in a thick crust of guano. A snippet of information comes to mind – mining for guano is highly damaging to bat populations, due to the fact that they die of stress easily when their roost is repeatedly invaded – but that doesn't seem to hold true for the Zubat and Golbat up above. Even before they turned Eldritch, you strongly suspect they would sooner eat a guano miner than be scared off by them.
Given that Golbat has the largest gape of any animal of its size, you're actually certain they would sooner eat a miner than be scared by them.
"OK," you mouth back to Elm. "Where do we need to get to?"
He points across the cave, and you see a dim and distant tunnel mouth through the gloom.
You nod, and give your lions a sound mental girding.
Then you begin to creep.
You've done your share of sneaking over the past few days. You've crept through houses as you looted, ever-aware of what could be lurking behind corners; you've slid near-silently across Mr. Pokémon's ruined floor. You've hid and dodged and run.
But never have you been up against so many opponents, or ones with such good hearing, and you're almost convinced that they can hear the very beads of sweat as they pop into existence on your forehead, or the thudding of your heart in your chest...
They let you get halfway across the cave before they confirm your suspicions and show you that they can.
You are standing near the edge of the great pool of seawater when the first bat peels away from the roof. You barely have time to blink before the air is full of them, all awake, all screeching, all diving—
Othodox used Flash Cannon!
The searing light cuts a giant swathe through the swarm, and hundreds of foul bodies burst into petrol-stinking shreds of dried flesh and leather; the remaining bats bunch up closer, retreating for a moment, waiting to see if you'll strike again and you and Elm are running, all thoughts of subtlety gone from your heads, and the great bluish cloud is coming down at you again, shedding teeth, claws, fur, excrement like the shambling undead in a horror movie, and you don't have time to turn and shoot or to get your sting out but the passage is so far away still and you can feel claws digging into your shirt and teeth in your arms—
Boom.
The great bats pull away, shrieking like broken train-whistles, and flap over to the lake; you turn to see what happened, moving despite yourself, and you trip and fall, Elm tumbling over you onto the floor. The guano breaks beneath you, cracking like dried mud, but you don't notice: your eyes are locked on the mighty head protruding from the lake, the huge sleek white-furred cone of flesh whose ponderous jaws snapped shut a few moments ago and created that colossal noise. The Golbat are slashing at it with their claws, the Zubat are screaming out odd ripples in the air – but the Eldritch Dewgong, its mouth full of their comrades, doesn't seem to feel it; it sinks, slowly and gracefully, back down under the water, en route to its resting place to chew at its leisure.
The bats strike angrily at the water for a moment, so many gathered together that the lake actually disappears under the purple leather of their wings, and then, their numbers thinned but still enormous, rise up again and look towards you—
Elm grabs your shoulder, and you get up and sprint.
Again the bats are coming, and they are so much faster than you and you know there are too many to shoot – but the tunnel mouth is right here, and you've flung yourself in, smashing your shoulder painfully into the wall but you don't care—
—and the bats are spewing into the little space with you, and there really is only one thing you can do and that is to throw Vesta.
Nothing survives.
The Golbat, the Zubat, any little organisms that might have been feeding on the guano – nothing on land or in the air in the cave from which you've come had a snowflake's chance in hell.
You realise, with a certain sense of incredulity, that you knew that bat guano was pretty flammable. They used to use it in gunpowder.
And equally, you know what sort of a fire Vesta is. She has a RAVENING HUNGER, after all.
You and Elm are completely blinded for a while, so bright is the green glow from the bat cave; then you are deafened, too, by shrieks and screams so piercing that your ears bleed and something in your nose hurts; you both scrabble on all fours away down the passage, bits of bat stinking and burning and falling all around you, petrol and ash and musk fighting in your nose and incredible heat at your back.
Then there is nothing but darkness and silence.
A while later – who knows how long? You have no way to measure it – your vision returns, and your hearing. You get unsteadily to your feet, and squint down at Elm, a supine shape dimly visible in the dark. He seems OK, as far as you can see.
The other direction, then. The way you came from.
There's light coming from that way – green and red. The stone of the cave floor is glowing orange on its surface, superheated by supernatural fire; what bits of bat remain are crisping and burning to nothing on the stone floor. The lake has boiled away, revealing a deep, salt-crusted tunnel where it once was; overall, the cave looks cleaner than it probably ever has done. There is nothing left in it at all save hot rock and, near the entrance, a small pocket of green flames wrapped up in a bundle of white silk.
You poke the Tangle of Fireproof Webbing tentatively. It doesn't appear to have taken up any heat at all. The inside of it is probably hot enough to boil granite, but that's all right, since only Vesta has to touch that.
Did I do OK? she asks.
You stare. Try to answer. Cough.
"Yeah," you say after a while, spitting dust. "Yeah, that was... that was good. Really good."
Good good, she says happily. Shall we keep going?
"Yeah," croaks Elm hoarsely from behind you. "Let's do that."
You put the Tangle of Fireproof Webbing back on and plunge back into the tunnels. It's a while before you can think clearly again, but when you can, you realise that you're actually quite near the surface now, and nothing else has attacked you. Presumably, you think, the total destruction of a couple of thousand mutant bats taught any other Pokémon hanging around that you and your fire are a pair of real mean motor scooters.
You resolve never to call yourself a real mean motor scooter ever again. It worked for Seth Gecko, but it most definitely does not work for you.
While you're in the middle of this sobering realisation, you round the corner and are instantly blinded all over again: the sun is shining ferociously out here, and it's reflecting off the sea with almost as much power. You feel like an ant that's wandered too close to a Charmander's tail.
Elm lets out a wild, incoherent yell of delight and jumps for joy; strong winds and a lack of practice mean that he doesn't land on his feet, but he doesn't mind, and scrambles back upright with a grin on his face.
"God!" he cries. "I'd forgotten how good it feels!"
You smile back and look around. You seem to be on the most westerly of the Whirl Islands, which is also the tallest; you are standing near its peak, atop a crag that overlooks the others. You can see Cianwood to the south, and if the top of the hill weren't in the way, you could probably see Olivine to the north.
And right beside you, as unaffected by the passage of time as any building you've seen so far, is a large helicopter.
To the south is the path to the beach.
There is a cave here.
There is a helicopter here.