Ruins in the Green

An adventure through the untamed jungles of Cayari sounded exciting and wonderful in the abstract—until Lane actually had to do it.

Within the first kilometer, he'd discovered his urban shoes did him little good against the mud, and within two he found that drinking water through a filter-canteen didn't actually make it taste good.

Elisa followed along beside him, her absurd stuffed-Pokémon now positioned securely atop her backpack, which combined with her jacket made it look almost like a gigantic celebi was taking a normal sized one out for a walk.

After a few hours of hiking, he'd have taken a celebi if it meant they could go home. They didn't, though there were plenty of biting insects and the sounds of distant predators.

"You don't have anything to worry about," Elisa insisted, whenever he looked nervous. "Lopunny and I have this covered if we run into anything dangerous, don't worry."

Lopunny is a normal type and this jungle could be full of legendaries. Lane kept his mouth shut—any argument with her was just an invitation for her to remind him how little he knew about Pokémon.

"You just keep an eye on things with that mapping app of yours." She glanced over at his phone, eyes skeptical. "You, uh… you're sure we're going the right way?"

He nodded hastily. "Of course, yeah! This is… exactly the way we're supposed to go." He turned the screen so she could see, and the map was clear. Well, the direction was clear. "All it does is point to where the press release said they went. It doesn't know anything specific about what might be in the way, or the path they took. That's on us."

"Just like it's on us to get out of this, when you realize how crazy it was to go blundering into the jungle after an extinct Pokémon?"

He stiffened, pulling up his hood defiantly and speeding ahead of her. It wasn't easy to keep moving that fast—his shoes probably wouldn't last the day, and thanks to the pokémonitoring stuff his pack was twice as heavy as hers.

"They're not extinct. An expedition found, uh… something, in this jungle. Obviously they didn't catch one, but maybe they met her too."

"Her now?" Elisa taunted. "How'd you figure that out."

"I didn't. The researchers at Celadon University did. Apparently the mammalian Pokémon have decent coverage of the sex genes, and their common ancestor only has female genetic expression. That means the one living out here is probably a girl."

Elisa waved something in his face—her old pokedex, red plastic scuffed and hinge held together with duct tape. "According to this, mythical are all genderless. I think you're just projecting."

He tapped his bag with one hand, emphatic. "You can read it yourself, the data's all there. I think they just put placeholder data like that in the pokedex because they don't know what the hell is true, and if they didn't they'd have to admit it."

But he didn't have the strength left for too much banter, not with a trail so unforgiving and supplies that left him feeling like he'd left half of what he needed back at home.

His endurance was eventually rewarded, however, when they forded their third river and emerged from the trees in a river valley filled with ancient stone buildings.

They were made of the same dark rock as the natural formations, and Elisa hadn't noticed at all, but he took her by the wrist, dragging her along until she pulled free. "O-oh. That's a pyramid."

A pyramid that isn't on any maps of important archeological sites.

Lane slowed as they approached, searching for any sign that they might be getting too close to a restricted archeological site. The forestry service used red cordons to mark forbidden areas—even if there weren't any Pokémon Rangers nearby, they would have remote cameras to watch, and by the time they made it back to Cayari they'd have a hefty fine waiting.

He saw none. Just the ruins of an ancient city, mostly buried in the loamy soil. They passed through a series of low walls first, then through the courtyard to a pyramid overlooking everything.

It wasn't that much taller than the jungle trees all around it, but even so—it had to be visible from above. We should know this is here.

No one in the inn had said anything about ruins, or gone to much effort to persuade them not to go.

"Lane, look," Elisa whispered, pointing to the wall of a nearby building. The roof had caved in, but even so—the side of the structure was intricately carved in tiled sections, with different Pokémon depicted in a crude style.

Most were washed out, the stone covered with a thin lichen that made the image difficult to see. But there in the center was the exact mew image Lane had seen his whole life, the stone meticulously cleaned back to its original brown.

"I can't believe I never thought to ask where this came from," he muttered, flipping out his phone and recording the whole thing. "Of course it came from somewhere. And if Mew likes the jungle, then… she'd be living here."

Elisa rested one hand on his shoulder. "Lane, I know you're excited. But please, temper your expectations a minute. Even if the ones who lived here knew about mew, that doesn't mean they're still around. Look how overgrown this place is. This city has been empty for a thousand years."

"Not even two decades," he corrected, touching the edge of the carving with one finger, away from the image. He didn't want to smudge it, just feel it. Prove it was real, if only to himself.

"This is where we have to look for her," he declared, voice confident. "I've got those recorders… we can look through the city, set up some image traps. And if we're lucky, maybe she'll visit."

"Maybe," Elisa admitted. "We made it all this way. It would be… a pretty awesome story to bring back, if we actually find her. But let's cool it on going into most of these buildings. They might not be safe. If one of us gets trapped under a collapsed wall or whatever, we'll never get rescue out in time. Just… appreciate it from afar, alright?"

He grumbled noncommittally, then nodded. "I guess Mew probably wouldn't be happy living in a ruin built by humans anyway. She's probably not inside."

They worked until sundown. The first priority was setting up camp, and Elisa enlisted the help of her lopunny for much of that. It's not weird that she walks on two legs and knows how to set up a tent.

It was very weird, but Lane had bigger things on his mind just now. With the Pokémon occupied with menial labor, he could focus on getting the image traps deployed.

Each one of the little machines was the same—a tiny cube about three centimeters long, with a night vision camera and a motion sensor. All he had to do was switch them on, hide them somewhere with a good view, and wait.

Lane only had four, so he had to make them count. One near the wall, because obviously Mew would want to come and appreciate her own image. One overlooking the pyramid, in case the stories about her ability to fly were true. One alongside the river, where Pokémon of all kinds probably came to drink. Then one in camp, in case she decided to investigate the ones hunting her.

"We've got three days of trail rations left," Elisa said, over their bowls of dehydrated camp stew. "That means we have two more days to look around and hope we get lucky. We have to save a day's worth for the trip back, in case we have more trouble getting back to the village than we had coming out here."

"That's not enough!" he argued, rising from his stump and gesturing back at the stone city with a plastic fork. Their camp was about twenty meters from the nearest structures, far enough that not even an ambitious piece of falling rubble could get near them. Also far enough that—they hoped—any Pokémon who had moved into the ruins wouldn't take their intrusion like a violation of their territory. "We practically made it to the end of the world, Elisa! What if Mew's like… migrating or something? She might need more than two days to realize she has visitors."

Elisa glared back. "Or it might be extinct, and this whole thing is just a fun way to burn a few thousand poké-dollars. I want to find it as much as you do, Lane, but no amount of time would be enough. Even if we could wait a year… when a year was up, you'd probably want to stay just a few more days."

"If we waited a year, a few more days wouldn't seem like very long," he muttered, slumping back into the stump. "I'm sure she'll notice us. We're making all kinds of noise, we lit a fire—and all the stories say they're curious. I'm sure she's already on her way here."

Elisa tossed her empty camp bowl into the plastic tray. "Why don't you tell me one of those stories while you do dishes. I cooked, so it's only fair."

Lane would've complained about the chore, if he had anything better to do. But the simple stew did taste good after a full day of mapping out an apparently undiscovered city in the jungle.

"I wish there was more to tell you," he admitted, once he made it back from the river with a full canteen for cleaning. "It's not like celebi, there wasn't ever a mew village to share stories about their forest guardian."

Even with just the dying embers of their campfire, Lane could see her roll her eyes. "You mean this place doesn't count?"

He splashed a little water towards her, throwing up a burst of steam as it struck the coals between them. "Nobody knows this is here. That doesn't make any kind of sense either, by the way. It's close, big enough that it should be obvious on every satellite map. Apparently people already visited once. What kind of secrets did the indigenous people know? Where did they all go?"

"The truth will always be less interesting than what you imagine," Elisa said, settling her stuffed animal in her lap. "Take this little sweetie here. He's adorable, but time travel, really? No chance he could really exist. He's the way the ancients who lived in Azalea explained the parts of their past they couldn't make sense of. Or maybe they're really an ancient Pokémon trainer, with a strong team all working together. Over time it's easier to take all that power, and boil it down into one character. Myths survive when they're simple and clean. Clear heroes, clear villains, nice morals. Mew is probably something like that."

"She's not." He stacked up their finished dishes, dumping the wastewater into the undergrowth. "Mew is actually the common ancestor of all Pokémon, it's genetic. And people have seen her, they know how she looks." He turned, pointing his headlamp back into the city. He had no desire to return to it in the dark, not with so much rubble everywhere and the sounds of Pokémon all around. But he could still picture that wall, even so.

"Thousands of years ago, people knew what she looked like. Is a little invisibility and flying around really that strange? Psychic types people know and train all the time can do more."

"Sure, but… a Pokémon that's as smart as a person?" She packed away the last of their spices into the food-canister, sealing it with a hiss of compressed air. Hopefully that would stop them from smelling too interesting to any passing predators. "Pokémon giving eternal life, or purifying lakes of water, or raising the oceans? That seems less like reality, and more like universities want lots of poké-dollars to fund their expeditions. The best way to get money out of people is to scare them, Lane."

"Mew isn't scary," he argued stubbornly. "And I can't believe you'd say celebi doesn't even exist. Why bother joining us if you don't take it seriously?"

"Oh, I love celebi." She squeezed the stuffed Pokémon in both arms, grinning at him. "Something doesn't have to be real to be cute. I know I'll never see one. Being with you guys was always more important."

She blushed, then hurried away to the tent, zipping it closed behind her.