C107 - The Drampa on Mount Lanakila

The next morning, Pete was surprised to find Metagross waiting for him outside the tent with its usual stoic demeanor.

"Hey, did you find something?"

Metagross hummed in response and told its trainer to get dressed and leave the other pokemon behind.

With blind trust, Pete did as he was told, left some food out for his pokemon to find and released the three battle hungry pokemon he had put into their pokeballs overnight.

"Hey there. Could one of you stay behind to guard those sleepyheads inside? You can start roaming once Espeon wakes up. Just make sure you return once around noon, and if I'm not there, return before nightfall."

Nidoking agreed to stay behind to guard, and Arcanine and Serperior started running away, eager to battle some more ice and dark pokemon.

After turning to Metagross and giving it the okay to proceed over their psychic bond, Pete found himself high up on the cliff's wall at the mouth of a tall cave.

Pete looked to Metagross for a moment, saw this was where he was supposed to be, and entered with the knowledge that no harm should come to him. Metagross wouldn't lead him into a trap.

Inside the cave, the temperature slowly started rising. It didn't reach a tropical climate, but it was still around coat weather as opposed to the freezing blizzard weather it was outside.

"Drrraaaampaaa~" a low growl rumbled through the cave that shook the ice on the walls enough to create small tinkling sounds.

Pete stopped in his tracks and turned to Metagross with a raised brow. The steel/psychic pokemon understood the implied question, rolled its eyes, and floated forward. A short moment later, Pete was instructed to move forward again.

"Woah," the pokemon scholar exclaimed as he saw a Drampa almost twice the size of the hundreds of years old Drampa living on his dragon's peak. This Drampa must be a lot older still, which meant it was positively ancient.

The dragon pokemon huffed with a pleased expression at Pete spell-bound look, preening a little before lazily putting down its giant head on what looked like a huge depleted fire stone.

"There must have been a mega stone inside that thing ages ago," Pete mumbled when he finally noticed the fire stone with yet another stunned expression.

He finally snapped out of it and regarded the wizened dragon pokemon for a moment. He bowed a little, as taught to him by the dragon trainer Clair, and asked in a small voice to reduce the echo in the cave, "Hello, respected Drampa. Have you asked me to come here because you agreed to my Metagrosses' proposition? The climate near my farm must be quite a bit more pleasant for your bones than this cold."

It spoke some syllables of its name in a deep voice, and Metagross translated it for him.

"You're too old to move? Nearly at the end of your lifespan?" Pete cautiously asked, so nothing was lost in translation. The dragon nodded a small nod and continued on with its explanation.

"I can respect that," Pete praised, though he was inwardly a little saddened that he wouldn't gain such an experienced ally for his dragon pokemon breeding ground. This Drampa must have lived through quite a lot and probably had a wealth of knowledge it could share.

After some time, he finally learned why he was called here.

Drampa, despite being proud dragon pokemon with unyielding characters, were known to be willing caretakers to all kinds of pokemon. In its long life, this Drampa in particular had raised quite a few lost baby pokemon that turned older and eventually started their own clans, families, or herds.

It was how it survived to this age despite not being young and quick enough to go out to hunt. He regularly received tributes from the offspring of the pokemon he had raised.

Yet now, at the end of its life, there were two pokemon he couldn't raise properly - so with the offer of Metagross came the hope that Pete was a worthy trainer for the pokemon under its care.

"I'll gladly care for two little lost pokemon," Pete instantly agreed despite not knowing what he got himself into. "No worries about their care! I have hundreds of pokemon living on my farm with plenty of fun things to do, opportunities to grow stronger, and no fear of ever going to sleep with an empty belly."

Seeing no deceit in Pete's eyes and words, Drampa lifted one of its white, cloud-like claws and revealed two Alolan Vulpix nestling under Drampa's body.

"Cool! I've been looking to raise an Alolan Vulpix, so this is perfect!" Pete beamed. "No worries, I have many fairy pokemon on my farm and a fairy affinity of my own. I can take care of them perfectly! I even have an ice affinity should we bond - though it's currently my weakest."

Drampa regarded Pete with narrowed eyes for a moment after the trainer flexed both affinities a little, and Pete realized his folly.

"My bad, of course as a mighty dragon you don't really like either of the two typings, hehe," Pete excused as he scratched the back of his head with a gloved hand.

"Is there anything I can do for you other than raising the two Vulpix in your stead? I can ask Metagross to hunt for you? I also have some berries I could share?"

The ancient dragon pokemon talked a little to Metagross, and eventually, Pete happily parted with a big bowl of berries that Drampa slowly began to eat one berry at a time to savor the taste.

In the meantime, Pete introduced himself to the two Alolan Vulpix who were inconsolable when they heard Drampa wouldn't care for them anymore.

The dragon pokemon growled and rumbled for a short while in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice. After some time, the two Vulpix staggered towards Pete with teary faces, so he gently picked them up. His own ice typing affinity was the only reason he didn't shiver with the ice pokemon in his arms.

"No worries, Drampa might be too old to care for you, but that's life. I'm sure he lived a long, fulfilling life if it brought him this far. Be glad you met him before his death and cherish that memory," Pete advised the two ice fox pokemon nestled against his chest.

With a flex of his psychic energy, he made his tablet float out of his bag and captured a few photographs of the group as well as a video to remember this giant Drampa by. After showing the picture to the two Vulpix and explaining to them that he would print this out for wherever they would sleep in the future so that Drampa can always watch over them, the two pokemon calmed down considerably.

Curiously, Drampa watched it all with an intelligent glint in its eye and decided that it hadn't chosen wrong. Pete was indeed a good trainer for the Vulpix.

As he sent the group out to regain its peace and quiet, Drampa ordered Metagross to take the group to a cave not far from this one that had a small walkable path if you weren't afraid of heights since on one side was a wall and the other was a ~200m/655ft fall.

"Uh, could you just teleport us over?" Pete asked as he made the mistake of looking down.

Metagross did as asked after sending over an amused expression through the psychic bond, and the group entered the cave Drampa described.

Inside, Pete was once more flabbergasted. It was cold inside the cave. Way too cold. And that told Pete exactly what he would find inside.

He looked to Metagross and ordered him to look inside since he wasn't sure that even with his functional snow gear on and the ice affinity that he wouldn't turn into a human icicle. Pete himself moved back to the entrance of the cave

A few minutes later, Metagross came outside with five Ice Stones and a melon-sized chunk of Never-Melt Ice floating next to it. With a much more pronounced shiver than before, Pete quickly took out another box and stored these six items away.

The temperature hadn't changed at all, which meant what Metagross took out of the cave wasn't even the tip of the literal iceberg.

"Crazy. I don't think there's many ice type evolutionary stones on the market, so two of them are definitely a welcome boon for these cute Vulpix," Pete stammered as he walked away from the cave a little in the hopes it was warmer somewhere further away. "Maybe one of my Eevee can turn into a Glaceon as well? I bet the little Eevee down in the tent would either freeze to death or evolve in a second if you throw it inside that cave."

Metagross looked at Pete narrowed eyes, and now it was Pete's turn to roll his.

"Obviously, I won't do that. Not only would Espeon throw me inside in retaliation - I already discussed its future with that Eevee. Chances to find a possible ground type Eeveelution excites the little furball just as much as me," Pete quipped with an amused expression. This Eevee was special after all. Pete had pumped it with ground type energy when it still had been an egg for a very long time, and he still does whenever the Eevee was nestling in his hoodie or sleeping next to him.

"I kind of doubt there isn't at least one mega stone inside that cave. Are you sure you don't want to check?" Pete asked his Metagross with a sly grin, and the pokemon complied with what looked like a nonchalant shrug.

Five minutes in the cold later, Pete cursed himself for the silly choice of not asking his pokemon to send him down to the tent first. A low rumble ran through the cliff, and Pete had to stabilize himself with both ice and psychic typing energy as small pieces of ice started raining down the mountain.

Metagross appeared next to Pete and immediately teleported them away down to the tent, after which Metagross shielded the tent together with Espeon via the use of a move Pete had cooked up that combined the normal move Protect and the psychic move Barrier that should raise the defense of a pokemon by two stages if the world was a game.

When the rumble finally calmed down and it stopped raining ice shards, Metagross turned to Pete and started explaining what happened.

A legendary pokemon resided inside that mountain and told Metagross to buzz off the deeper it went inside that neverending cave the led deep inside the mountain.

"I bet that Drampa is snickering at my panicked expression in that cave of his," Pete complained with a pout but quickly shook his head. "It's my own greed that led to this..."

Pete turned to Metagross and asked, "Which pokemon was it? Articuno? Regice? No, wait, there shouldn't be any Regice in Alola... no, wait again! The legendaries in ultra sun and moon were all catchable in wormholes, no? Ugh, I should have finished those games even if they were objectively terrible..."

Metagross didn't understand the rambling but still answered the question as it showed the picture of a massive dragon to Pete through the psychic bond.

"A Kyurem!? Are you kidding me!?"

Pete started packing his belongings as quickly as possible. He definitely had no plans to meet with a legendary dragon pokemon. Regular dragons were already hard to deal with.

A legendary dragon. One that had to freeze its own body to keep its power contained, one that was still missing two parts in the form of Reshiram and Zekrom to be in its true form that was closest to rivaling Arceus, now that was a legendary Pete could do without in his life.

But just as he had finished packing, time itself seemed to freeze around him as a voice echoed in his mind.