“Good to know you’re still gunning for the solid age of thirty-five– tops,” June called out. At least she’d probably not die from any of the germs or dirt on the rocks, thanks to her rock-solid immune system from, well, licking rocks. No slow agonizing death from MRSA or anything like that.

It’d happen when she licked something like asbestos or solid Rattata poison, not knowing what it was, that’d do her in. A tale as old as time.

But curiosity grabbed her by the neck, and she craned her neck over the side. Bits of debris scattered in the wake of the drill, alongside dust and who knew what else. The circular motion was mesmeric, like those short videos on the internet that she got lost in for hours at a time.

“What is this thing trying to dig up again,” she looked to Eris, “some kind of expensive mineral? Oh– do you think they’ll share any of the money with us?"

---

Eris Halla

Eighteen? Arceus, they really needed to teach positive mentalities in school or something. How to set your hopes high to avoid the crushing weight that was reality. June slightly frowned and opened her mouth to say something, but the words died in her throat. Instead, she pursed her lips and returned to her relaxed position.

It’d be too hypocritical from her mouth.

At the mention of tera crystals, she shrugged. “Hell if I know. And they are paying me– not nearly enough for the shit I gotta do, but there is a paycheck at the end of this.”

Was Eris going to get a paycheck from this? Felt weird to, but weirder not to. Something about child labor rubbed her the wrong way, but not as much as it should’ve. Her own childhood had likely been nothing but child labor.

“How much they paying you?” she asked. “You on a payroll, or do they just sign off on your school transcripts, and you get to skip a few grades?”

“... What grade are you in any way?”

---

Eris Halla

… Huh?

Huh??

“You can… just not go to school?” June stared at the teen with a mix of confusion, envy, and worry. “I thought all kids had to go to school. Like, a law says that. What the fuck?”

That’s what Dad had told her one day when she clung to her bed frame and sobbed her eyes out at the prospect of school. ‘If you don’t go, the cops will show up and throw you in jail!’ he said so cheerfully. As if that would work on a young, naive child. No, she cried even harder and got out of school anyway.

And then went nearly every day for the next fifteen years with perfect attendance. Now that the thought entered her head, that was really fucked up, huh.

“What do you do for that shit then? Do you just, like, do a project at the end of every semester or something? You get put into an accelerated learner’s program?”

Arceus, was this one of them kids that got put into university five years before the average person? Please no, she couldn’t afford to be stupider than a fourteen-year-old teenager who licked rocks for fun. That’d be embarrassing.

---

Eris Halla

June pulled at her collar and looked away to hide the scarlet red that sprouted in her cheeks, “Y-yea. I did that all the time too. Totally…”

She was getting one-upped by a middle-schooler. Where did that put her on the totem pole, about seven spots below her? Arceus, if he could make that sunlight about a million times stronger and fry her to a crisp, that’d be nice. Not her fault reading was a monumental task. It was like they put tranquilizers inside the pages.

If it didn’t have pictures, she struggled to finish. Except for the mechanic's books, but that was cheating. “A-anway, I’ll, uh, trust that you’re qualified to be here. I guess.”

Wait a second. “Hold on, how the hell did you get to be in this place anyway? League really that desperate for bodies that they’re recruiting middle-schoolers?”

---

Eris Halla

Fucking hell– the kid was nice about it too. Eris thought June wanted to comfort her? Far from it. If anything, she was trying to save face in front of the child prodigy. Arceus, how it managed to get worse.

“Wait, we have a middle-school gym leader?” She turned to Eris again, with a raised eyebrow and a dozen questions that ran through her brain. Another one? How? What made these kids qualified anyway? Who the hell signed off on that? How did their caretakers feel about the situation?

“Damn,” she said. “Forget the ‘Leaguers’, I’m more surprised your guardians signed off on it. Or Hidee-hi-Hideo? That his name? His older people too. Is he down here somewhere?”

She didn’t know if she should be proud of them for being proven so capable, or sad if they had no other choice but to be capable.

---

Eris Halla

“I see.”

Not much June could do about it– or wanted to do about it. She’d much rather sit with her back against the warm drill, in the warm sun, and simply be bored than worry about some middle schoolers. Other people thought them competent enough to be down here, so who was she to judge? Too hypocritical to do it too.

Not like she was much more qualified to be down here either. And they weren’t dead.

“Well,” she stretched her arms and itched her palms, “That’s cool, I guess.”

Not really, no. “What do you think it's doing down here, anyway? Every time I hear about it, it’s just running around on the ‘prowl’, or whatever. And that thing is supposed to be a guardian of Hoenn, so it makes me wonder what the hell it's trying to do.”

On second thought, she wasn’t sure what the hell a middle schooler would know about the giant, massive rock creature down here in the Giant Chasm. But she couldn’t rewind time and unask it.

---

Eris Halla