"No." Howard stared at Eris, unblinking and refusing to break eye contact. "I'm not saying it, no matter how much you try to stare at me."

Eris continued to stare at him. "No."

Her stare grew more intense. "Nope."

Her stare was drilling a hole into his head. "I said no-"

Melmetals felt weird. Howard never felt a particular attachment to the strange creatures. Their desire to eat metal made them the bane of museums nowadays, given their capacity for devouring rare objects composed out of metal. This was obnoxious, given most ancient societies cast their tools from bronze and iron. It was hard to find evidence for the Iron Age if a Melmetal ate all of the fucking iron.

Nonetheless, the Melmetal was a clever solution. Blasting was far more obnoxious than using your head. Howard beamed at her.

"Excellent! Come, chop chop!" Howard swerved around the Melmetal and lead the team of two deeper into the caves, only to suddenly stop. Looking down revealed a massive hole that seemed to sink down infinitely. Strange and funky mist seemed to be emanating from it.

"Arceus above, I hate this stuff. Once people started releasing weird stuff onto the region, my job got harder. Stupid dream gas." Howard grumbled, before taking a knee and opening his bag. "So, as I was saying about the Industrial Revolution..."

---

Eris Halla

Howard didn't get crazy-cool Pichu barriers. He didn't even get barriers. Or a Pichu.

Digging through his bag quickly, Howard eventually pulled out a gas mask made from a slew of different materials. Several plastic straps stemming from PokeDollar General checkout bags had been woven together and tied to create a strap, and bottles had been cut and glued together to create a gas mask that worked surprisingly well. Not as good as funky psychic barriers, but it had only cost about four PD for the composite parts.

With that in mind, Howard 1, Little Lady 0.

He was really impressive, getting points over a little girl. All the grunts in Team Rocket would laud him as a hero for all time because of this.

"I don't think we should go down there, little lady." Howard said through the muffled gas mask. For a second, he saw a Tauros run through the wall of the cave and into the other side. He blinked again. He had to tell Shred about the Interdream gas. It was a way better drug than whatever his fellow grunt was buying from the dealers in Slateport. "Taurosaren'treal..."

They were NOT real. Fake Tauros.

"Little lady, a mask." Howard turned towards her with another mask, unaware of her Pichu's protection.

---

Eris Halla

"Guh..." Howard's hand retreated slightly as she scrunched her nose at his gas mask. He worked really hard on it! He actually looked sad, like a puppy whose food had been taken away. Of course, that effect was lessened slightly once it became clear that part of the mask was made of a Yeggo waffle box.

" Whaddya mean 'no'! You can't scrunch your nose on something like this! It's not a plate of broccoli or anything, jeez." Completely unaware of 'Pichu's mental barrier, he crossed his arms. Fine, she'd change her mind once the dream gas kicked in.

Totally clueless.

"I'm fine! I'm fine! No matter how fast I put the mask on, I always get a puff of the stuff. It's the best I can do. Don't judge me." Howard peered down the hole, looking completely absurd in his mask. "Are we going down, little lady? Your call."

He was asking the little girl for advice on cave exploration. Maybe the funky gas had hit him harder than he knew. Howard blinked again as a Tauros ran through another wall behind Eris.

---

Eris Halla

"Tsk... Guh." Howard blinked rapidly as his gas mask slowly continued to fail. No matter what anyone claimed, you could not fight off a cancerous mist from another dimension with tape and cereal boxes. Yeggo boxes. Tauros. Whatever.

Man, there were a lot of Tauros, weren't there? Howard knew that something was wrong, but the gas made him lax. Chill. It reminded him of his days in grad school, when he smoked. Reminded him of the teenagers who smoked outside the laundromat below his apartment. Reminded him of the carnival.

Tauros...

Then, it stopped. Howard felt himself becoming more alert, yet disconnected from himself. It felt like he was a cloud, controlling his own body. He felt unplugged. He looked at Eris for a moment, confused, before shrugging. Either his body was shutting down from shock and nerve damage, or he was fine. Either way, best not to jinx it.

"I've got rope. Hold on." He told Eris, before walking to the edge and peering down into the source of the pink sauce. "One seco-"

The cliff shook slightly, then collapsed. Fuck. He was still sloppy from the mist. Howard would've noticed that if he wasn't puffing pink sauce.

"OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOOOOOOOOOOOOD" Hopefully Arceus would forgive the shortened name, because Howard was about to meet him. Thinking fast, he reached for his belt and tossed Ayer up the cliff. The Nosepass appeared on the cliffside with a flash of light. Immediately, Howard felt his belt buckles and other metal knickknacks shudder as they were attracted to Ayer's magnetic pull.

The fall lessened. Then Howard hit the ground.

...it still hurt.

Uggguhhhhhhhhhhhh?" Howard spoke into the ground, mouthful of sand.

---

Eris Halla

As Eris peered into the abyss, she heard a long echo. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu—"

Was he finally going to say it? After hours in the cave together, Eris had been waiting for this moment. Howard Slayte was finally going to curse. It was a momentous occasion! It was probably foretold in some ancient calendar somewhere as an apocalyptical event, and it was finally happening!

"—uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge."

Dammit.

Meanwhile, Howard tried to stand up, before cursing. He looked at his hand, before putting it to his side. Then he raised it up and tried to make a fist. Ah, there was the pain. He took a breath. Blast. Even with his surprisingly quick thinking, it hadn't saved him completely. He wanted to throw his hat at the wall and scream, but that was something people with issues did. He'd just suck it up and cry in his apartment.

"Guh." Howard's voice echoed as he looked up at the Melmetal. "Sprained wrist. Maybe broken. A rib is broken." Howard then said something in a rough and guttural language. "I lied, make it two." Immediately, though, he let out a sigh as Eris's Comfey made his life more Comfeytable.

This was almost as good as adrenaline. Howard stood up and looked around. His one eye blinked. "Wow. A discovery!" Howard walked towards the wall and peered at it. A ruin had been here, once. They were getting awfully close to the desert, and there seemed to be the remains of a small shrine that had once collapsed under the weight of the earth years ago.

"Funky..." Howard uttered a word that was more out of date than these ruins.

---

Eris Halla

"Likely." Howard smiled, his eyes crinkling in pain. "Yet adrenaline is cheaper than a hospital bill. You're pretty mature about this. Kids these days, you all go on your journeys so young. I don't know whether to mock the Gym Circuit or praise it." He was, of course, unaware of the hardships Eris had experienced. He simply equated her maturity to the youth of trainers traveling Hoenn, blissfully unaware of what had occurred in her life.

He felt the stone. It crumbled slightly with his touch. Logical, given sandstone's mediocrity as a building material. Sand became sandstone only to become sand again.

Eris was likely correct. This expedition was ending, all because of him. The stone was rotten, and he hadn't known. Arceus above, he felt so stupid. He was to set an example, but all he set was his face against the floor. "Old shrine. Old house. You're familiar with the Desert Cave and all those ruins out in the desert? There's a lot of civilizations who were simply lost in the dunes. Sand isn't a good building material, see. Easy to lose your footings."

Turning to Eris, he leaned down and closed her fist around the fragment. "But it wasn't always like that. Fields turn to desert. Desert turns to fields. I wish I had brought more equipment to measure..."

"But I've done these with less." Popping open a notebook, and sitting heavily on the ground, Howard stared blankly at the ruins for a few seconds, before drawing a basic sketch, alongside dimensions. Doing it by Joltik light made it difficult, but he had to do it nonetheless.

---

Eris Halla