A/N: This story now has a Sufficient Velocity thread. It's a pretty cool place. Sometimes I drop a drawing or two. You wanna check it out, then I'm sure you could find it.

I suck at drawing, but I still drew the cover for this story. I wanted a Riolu that looked annoyed, so I made one myself.

Let me ask you something real quick. If you were faced with a force of nature far greater than yourself, with two teammates to worry about, all the while spiritually bound to a crystal three times your size that you had just torn out of the ground, what would you do?

Now, the correct answer is nothing, because you're not dumb enough to get yourself into such a predicament. Unfortunately, I am not you, which left me in a cavern, facing down a force of nature far greater than myself, with two teammates to worry about, all the while being spiritually bound to a crystal three times my size.

What, did you think I was being hypothetical?

I didn't know how long I had until the water would be on top of us. Probably not nearly long enough, if I had to take a guess. The cavern offered me nothing as I searched frantically for something, anything that could possibly help us in this scenario.

Unbidden, a tiny giggle bubbled up from my throat. I would have slapped myself if I had the time or the appropriate environment to do so, but I would have to sort out my personal problems later. Right now, even if it was never made official, I was the leader of Team Poképals. If I let myself do nothing but panic, then we were all dead.

Skitty was making her way towards me, for what reason, I'll probably never know. Krabby was eyeing the way we'd come, and the enormous pile of rocks that I hadn't even noticed had fallen to block it off. I could see the panic on both their faces.

My lips split into a wide grin for a moment, a maniacal cackle leaving my mouth before I slapped my free hand over it. The laughter echoed through the cavern, audible even over the water that was bearing down on us, and the faintest of ideas was beginning to take hold in my mind.

Still not quite able to shake the smile, I shot a glance at the water, planting my feet against the floor as Aura began to gather in my hands. The waves easily reached the ceiling of the cavern, and that was a fair distance above our heads. I had to reactivate my Foresight as I fell backwards, throwing myself off balance entirely and bringing the crystal with me.

The water had been activated by us moving the crystal, which meant that it could be contained. The fact that it reached so high probably meant that the stone around us was watertight, which was something I would have to change unless I felt like going for a swim.

Swimming itself wasn't too bad. Swimming through a current that could crush me, with no chance of getting my head above the water, while no doubt being assaulted by rocks from all angles? Not quite so fun.

My eyes flew over the roof of the cave, simultaneously knowing exactly what they were looking for and not having the faintest clue what they were looking for. Somehow, I just knew that I would know it when I saw it- there! Just behind me, a slight colour change upon the stone, where the depth of the shadows went the tiniest bit further in.

Images began to flash through my mind, sinister and sinful and downright scary in some cases. As I increased the flow of the Aura that I was pumping into the crystal, I saw the entire world slowly sink into the murkiest depths imaginable. When the force I was about to exert doubled in the time it took to think about blinking, I saw the sun doused by a tidal wave that moved on to swallow the rest of the universe.

When I released the crystal from my grip and it flew into the ceiling so fast that my eyes couldn't actually follow it, I could feel more than see the homes that I had just ruined. I laughed, though it sounded far more like a scream, when it impacted against the ceiling. The Aura within it, my Aura, kept it in one piece. The ceiling wasn't quite so lucky, as boulders bigger than the crystal itself began to rain down upon us.

I didn't even realise I had Skitty in my grip until I was gently pushing her back the way she had come. I was actually pretty damn scared in that moment, because I both knew exactly what I was trying to do while also having no idea what the fuck I was doing. All I knew was that if this little plan of mine was going to work, the water would need somewhere to go and solid stone wasn't going to give me the results I needed.

I had approximately no time to worry about being careful. All I needed was a blast of Aura to take out the floor in front of the rockslide I had just caused, so I just called on all of it at once.

That wasn't an exaggeration or a generalisation. I quite literally did call upon everything I had in that moment. That wasn't including the odd haze that was starting to rise from my limbs, but it joined in too, so whatever I guess.

The Aura didn't gather in my palms, didn't form any coherent shape or fill me with warmth. It just came forth in a rush, flooding from my hands and mouth and maybe even from my eyes, too. I had been going for the balls of Aura that I'd used in order to get into the cave, but now I couldn't see what was happening; my only view was the one my mind supplied me. One of myself, high in the air, raining down fire upon helpless cities and burning their populace to the ground. There was an odd roar shaking the walls, beyond that of the tidal wave I was trying to hold back, and it took me a second to realise that I was listening to myself within the throes of what had started as laughter.

Abruptly, the concentration I'd somehow managed to maintain cut itself off. The power I had felt coursing through me retreated. I had to stumble backwards as the ground began to splinter underneath the weight of the water, thankfully having the mental capacity to leap backwards when the first rock landed directly in front of me and cut off my view of the water entirely. Others followed, and before the flood had been given the chance to pass over where we had yanked the crystal out of the ground, a wall of boulders had stopped all progress it could have possibly made.

This all took about five or so seconds, keep in mind. And that was all before the coup de grâce occurred, in the form of the crystal that started this mess in the first place; the damn thing landed so close to me that I'm surprised it didn't manage to take my nose off, burying itself in the ground by the stem and doing a pretty good imitation of itself before we'd come along.

I'd never hated an inanimate object more in my life. At least it was cold, so when I rested my aching head against it, I no longer felt like ending my own life and taking the suffering with me. Even trying to open my eyes made my head throb, and the less said about the state of my throat after that little freak-out, the better.

Some of the things I'd seen, some of the things I'd thought about, the way I couldn't stop laughing… what the fuck was that?

"Krabby didn't know Luke could use Nasty Plot."

I grimaced, lifting my head away from the crystal so I could pull it out of the ground. No matter how hard I tried, the picture of me standing over someone I didn't even know, the ground red around us-

"Make sure I never use that again." My wobbly voice sounded weak even to my own ears, and it had nothing to do with the way my throat stretched painfully to accommodate each word. Nobody was ever born to be as loud as I had been, and I was now probably going to pay for it until the day was out. "I don't care if the world is ending. Never again."

Krabby stared up at me, his blank expression giving nothing away. Even in the doom and gloom of our current surroundings, I could see his expression, as blank as it had ever been. Shrugging to myself, I turned around, planting a shoulder against the crystal and throwing the entirety of my weight into one good shove.

It toppled over, kicking up a cloud of dust as it slammed into the ground. Skitty, oddly silent, stopped it before it could start to roll into the darkness, while I searched through my bag for something that would hopefully work towards getting rid of this headache that I was beginning to get.

My hand closed around something hard and cool to the touch, and my back stiffened in such a way to be extremely uncomfortable under the current circumstances.

"Don't you dare…" I murmured to myself, not even sure how to feel, as I withdrew my badge from the bag. You know, the teleportation badge, the one that I had managed to wrangle out of Wigglytuff while I was striking a deal with Chatot in order to take over the world? The ones that proved we were verified Explorers and we capable of instantly transporting things to the Guild? Yeah, that one.

Catching a ray of light, I tilted the badge until the light was shining on the crystal – and the stupid thing vanished. I could see Skitty's mouth dropping open from where I was standing, and even Krabby did a double take once he noticed it wasn't sitting there anymore.

Just to add insult to injury, a stone that was maybe the size of a pin-head chose that moment to buckle under the pressure, shooting out of the wall that I had constructed and hitting me in the side of the face with deadly accuracy. It did nothing but nudge my head to the side so that my ear was in the optimal place to fully take in the tiny surge of water that followed it.

Refusing to let the world beat me down any further, I shifted in my seat and turned the badge towards Krabby.

"If anything happens to that crystal, I will cry," I told him solemnly, looking him dead in the eyes to make sure that he knew that I had never been more serious in my life. "Don't make me cry."

The light hit him before he could respond, which worked out for me, because it hadn't been a request. Oh no, that had definitely been an order.

More of the stones were creaking against the weight of the water. I pointedly ignored them, searching instead for Skitty once I discovered she'd moved from her spot. I wasn't expecting her to be within breathing distance of my neck, but when I glanced to the side there she was, doing that thing where she looks right through me despite not having eyes.

Yeah, I'm still on that.

"Is there something we need to talk about?" She asked me without preamble, which was nice, because at that point I was pretty sure that the rockslide wasn't going to hold much longer.

"Once I figure it out, you'll be the first to know."

She smiled at me. I don't know what she was trying to convey, but she did, and I did my best to return it as I angled the badge towards her.

"I trust you," she managed to say, before the light bounced off her forehead and sent her back to the Guild. I stared at the dot of light that now occupied where she had stood, heaving a long sigh as I turned the badge on myself.

The first of the boulders came crashing down beside me. What had been a trickle became a flood as a veritable river bore down on me, smashing rocks out of the way now that it had an opening and further ruining what was left of this once picturesque place. I turned around to face the water, grasping my bag and offering the encroaching natural disaster a sneer that did nothing but make me feel slightly better about myself.

"Fuck you."

With that, the ray of light landed on my face. Or, more specifically, my eye.

Yeah, you know what, whatever.

XxX

"So I take it that your first exploration was successful?"

Having the sound of rushing water be replaced with Chatot's voice was discombobulating in its own right. Unfortunately for me, the badge had seen fit to transport me to the front gate instead of where Chatot was speaking from, which lead me to stumble blindly before my vision had caught up to my shift of position.

I don't know how many times I'd fallen down the ladder at that point. I can tell you that this wasn't the first time, it wouldn't be the last, and it probably wouldn't be the most embarrassing of my journeys. I tripped over my own feet, or maybe it was a root or a loose tile or the malevolence of some asshole deity far beyond my mortal comprehension. Either way, I ended up going down the ladder headfirst, knocking my skull against every rung on the way down.

I did get the presence of mind to Endure after the third hit, which was nice. I also managed to flip around half-way down, so that even if it was the back of my head hitting the ladder, I managed to land on my feet. I mean, if you ignored all the dents that I'd just caused and the fact that I was staggering about like a drunken toddler, the entire thing may have even looked graceful.

It didn't, not one bit, but it may have.

"So what are we looking at, Chatot?" I was definitely strutting as I made my way in between Skitty and Krabby, both of whom looked to be absolutely fine despite the travel. To be fair, I wasn't waving my arms around because I thought it looked cool, I was doing it so that I would be able to keep my balance.

I came to a stop beside Skitty, and draped one arm over Krabby's head. Krabby took one step back, but I didn't move; Aura kept my feet bound to the floor and my knees strong enough to support my own weight. Chatot eyed me for a moment, then the massive crystal that was lying between us.

"That all depends on what you want to do with your-"

"Sell it." Skitty interrupted, possibly for the first time in her life. If the way Chatot's beak was moving without actually forming words was any indication, he hadn't been expecting such a prompt response either.

"Sell it." Krabby concurred, still standing behind me.

Chatot and I exchanged looked, and I just shrugged at him. It didn't matter to me where the damn thing ended up, I just wanted to get it out of the cave. Sure, it would have been a nice decoration for our room, but if some shmuck was willing to pay money for it, then I wasn't about to complain.

"Sell it." With my cool pose, my blasé attitude, and my somewhat croaky voice due to a sore throat, I certainly looked the part of someone doing business with a crystalline substance of questionable quality. I nodded to myself, content with the image I provided, and didn't question the floating berry that prodded me in the side of the head.

I took it and swallowed it after one bite, so hopefully I wasn't supposed to question it. The pain in my head and throat did lessen somewhat, so I may have been drugged in that moment, but I genuinely did not care.

Chatot hopped forward, coming up alongside the crystal and running a wing over it. He tapped at it a few times, twice with his other wing and once with his beak, before shrugging to himself and facing the three of us once more.

"I have no idea what it's worth," he confessed, not that I really blamed him. If it were up to me, it would be worth the entire world, but Chatot hadn't been in the cave so he was probably justifiably confused. "I can call in an expert, that won't cost you anything. I will warn you now that the split for treasures that have been brought to the Guild for examination and auction is sixty-forty, in your favour. If you want, you can sell it at the Kecleon Market, but you will likely be looking at drastically reduced prices."

I looked at Skitty. Skitty looked at me. I looked at Krabby. Krabby looked at me. Krabby looked at Skitty. Skitty looked at Krabby. I looked at the outlaw board behind Chatot. Skitty got distracted for a moment by a strand of hair that was floating by in the wind. Then, the three of us looked at Chatot.

"Here," we said in unison, which was honestly a little creepy. I don't know how we did it, but I never want to do it again.

Chatot looked between the three of us, then down at the crystal once more. He opened his beak, and a chime cut him off before he could actually say anything.

"Dinner is ready!" Came Chimecho's consistently happy voice. I swear I blinked, and in that next moment, the only things I had for company were vaguely bird, cat and crab shaped after-images. And then those faded away into nothingness, and I was left entirely alone on the second floor of the Guild.

I could already hear the beginning of the end in the dining room. Searching through my bag, I pulled out an apple, shoving it between my teeth as I grabbed the crystal and began pulling it towards the ladder.

I would go and eat in the room I shared with Skitty, as always. But damn it all if I was leaving this crystal unattended, after all we'd gone through to get it.

Bidoof flew past me when I reached the ladder, coming in hot from the front gate and doing his best to sink his teeth into my apple on the way down. He missed, instead tearing the first rung from the ladder as he tore out of sight below me.

I just shrugged and destroyed the second rung by throwing the crystal over.