144 To Sky pillar

"Whats going on?" he asked confused. "I flared my aura up to show my status as an aura master. Pokemon tend to feel reverence for those blessed with the stuff so Sil here is wanting to show her good side to impress me. To be fair though I was already quite impressed with how strong she is." I said and the bird preened under the compliment. "I see , sounds useful." Steven said as he mounted the birds back and and I followed suit. It was a bit roomier than it was on Flannery's Staraptor so we weren't right up on each other thankfully.-

I knew it would take awhile for us to get there and decided to sit back and enjoy the view as it really was awe inspiring. From above the area near Lavaridge and Mt. Chimney there were few trees but one could see every plant and pokemon there for miles in every direction. This didn't even begin to cover the sheer vastness of the sky itself that looked so much wider than when you were on the ground. Honestly I couldn't even begin to describe how incredible the view truly was from so high up.-

The wind was a bit cold and you could occasionally get hit by a bug which stung something fierce if the curses Steven spoke afterwards were any indication. The land below changed fairly quickly as we rapidly flew by and I could admit that flying places was definitely WAY faster than walking or running. After only about an hour I could see Mauville in the distance alongside the trail of destruction that just barely seemed to miss it. We were heading almost straight south after all so we could see the path left by Groudon and it really struck home just how bad it was.-

Steven had made a point of showing me the locations that used to house people and in all of them everything was just gone. There was no ruins or partially destroyed buildings but those settlements were just erased entirely without a trace. Clearly Groudon took anything between it and it's goal as an enemy and vaporized it as all that was left was molten lakes of cooling metal and stone. I didn't even want to consider the amount of pokemon that had been killed along the way as well.-

As we passed over Mauville I could just barely make out Watson lead a small army of electric types to herd the refugees and league personnel that were rapidly working to house the now homeless many. "Head down real fast so I can drop off some supplies that might help out." I spoke over the sound of the air rushing by us and Steven nodded before leaning forward and tapping on his pokemon to take us down. Watson clearly recognized the steel bird as he had an area cleared out for it to land on and we didn't even get off as I started piling up a bunch of potions on the ground next to us.-

Watson saw this and gave me a thumbs up before we took off again and left the place behind. I could see Watson bark out orders and some people quickly rushed over and grabbed the stuff I left behind before taking it where it was most needed. It wasn't as much help as I would have liked to give but we were already on a tight schedule to stop Groudon and possibly Kyogre. Thanks to the differences between this world and the games I wasn't one hundred percent sure where the sky pillar was so we may have to search for awhile to find it.-

In the games it was a short trip from Pacifidlog but in reality i was pretty sure it was much further away. Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense that no one seemed to know where it was. I also couldn't help but find it ironic that after we hit the sea to fly over it Groudon had created a sort of land bridge to Sootopolis that while crumbling away at the edges from the sea cutting into it it was technically an expansion of the land. So in a way team Magma succeeded in their goal after they had been dismantled.-

Our path differed from Groudons however so we never caught up with the titan and eventually made it to Pacifidlog. The town was an unusual one in that the entire thing was built on top of buoyant materials that were anchored in place via the sea bed below them. The walkways between the buildings appeared to be felled logs just floating there but I could tell that was actually just the aesthetics of the place. "Alright from here it should be north east somewhere." I said and Steven nodded.-

Rather than tell you all about the boring search for Sky pillar I think i'll skip straight to it after sharing some interesting information about Pacifidlog. See the town had been anchored in that spot for so long that a coral reef of sorts had formed under it attached to the chains. This reef was actually one of the most successful cases of humans and pokemon living in harmony as nearly all the pokemon living in the reef had been there their entire lives so they only knew how to work with the people living above them. -

The town was almost part of the ecosystem of the reef as the humans regularly dived down and nourished the reef or collected things from it like food or pearls. The pokemon there also benefited as the people fed them and kept them healthy thanks to the pokecenter in the middle of the town that the pokemon knew they could go to if they were injured or ill. In a fascinating way Pacifidlog had become a recognized neutral ground for pokemon living in the sea so even if a champion tier pokemon were to show up nobody would panic at all as they were coming in peace for treatment or just to relax.-

A good example of that was the elite tier Lapras I spotted getting barnacles pulled off it near one of the buildings. Trained pokemon don't get barnacles due to the way pokeballs worked so any living thing on a pokemon gets left behind when a pokemon is balled. Barnacles are part of that so it was obvious that this particular Lapras was wild. Despite that it trusted the neutrality of Pacifidlog enough to allow a person on it's shell to get the barnacles that it had.-

This wasn't the only example of this either as far as I could see but certainly the most notable by quite a wide margin. In a way it was almost strange seeing children swim with Sharpedo happily and not get ripped apart by the predatory pokemon. Anyways after searching for about three hours we finally spotted Sky pillar and I had to admit that it was certainly understandable why no one seemed to find it , the whole thing was surrounded by a thick fog that felt suspiciously artificial to me.