Climb up the sandy spiral of strife.

There's sand in her vest, in her bag, (even though it was closed?) in her shoes, in her pockets and even in her hair.

She gets off lucky that she had a handkerchief on hand to cover her mouth and her nose. For her eyes-- well, let's just say she found a pair of swimming goggles at the bottom of her bag and decided it would be better than nothing.

She trips over a Trapinch, nearly crashes into a Cacnea, then the bicycle wheel sinks.

It was an endless route of trouble, but eventually, they found themselves in front of the tower, brushing a hand against crusted golden sand. There was no door in the entrance, but the buffet of the sand was significantly less arduous with the new walls around them.

Finding a flight of stairs on the other end of the ground floor, they made their way over with nigh a moment's hesitation, eager to get out of the weather.

-

"No no, no water gun. It'll get muddy."

Citrine wiped her own face clean with a damp towel, working on the edges of Magnemite's sand-infested screws while Lombre whined about the dryness, spewing water gun all over Loudred.

Zubat flew right into the water geyser spouting from Lombre, and got knocked away. Citrine snatched it out of the air, depositing its muddy butt on the towel and just madly ruffled the water out of it.

Seriously, Crowy was the bat equivalent of a dog so stupid you'd want twenty.

"Guess we're definitely in for a bath soon," Citrine sighed. Well she wasn't exactly expecting a desert trip to be clean... "I hope the sandstorm quells soon. We'll need to get Magney to a Centre."

Sprawled around on a decently-clean mat from her bag, they had a meal of berries and sandwiches.

Or, they were going to.

The next moment had Loudred diving for Citrine, barely scraping her out of the way of a malicious Fury Swipe.

They turned around to an angry horde of Sandshrew.

Loudred took a breath, and Citrine interrupted with a sharp "wait, Whismy, No! The whole tower might collapse!"

Then the Sandshrew made the most hateful hissing noise Citrine had ever heard an armadillo make. Citrine gathered her bag in her arm and they bolted right out of there.

-

The only way they could go was up.

They had to forgo the bike in the rush, and though that gave the Sandshrew an edge on flat ground, Whimsy could leap up a flight of stairs if he tried.

At some point, Whismy picked Citrine right up in his arms and they ran off just like that. Maybe he remembered that Citrine wasn't supposed to be running, and Lotty clumsily grabbed at the half-closed bag, where Zubat and Magney were dizzily rattled inside.

"Lotty!" Citrine clambered upright, wrapping her arms around her Loudred's head. "Water Gun!"

Lombre skidded to a stop-- and when the aquatic beam gushed forth, half the Sandshrew in the front skidded off course. They crashed into each other, hit rocks, and some fainted from the type advantage.

But the rest used the fallen frontline as a launching pad, dodging the water gun easily. Some even rolled against the walls and flipped across large stones.

"Lotty, Bubblebeam! Then-- Crowy, get out of the goddamn bag already!"

Lotty strapped the bag around her shoulders in one smooth motion, then emitted a wave of bubbles in a sharp beam. It had a narrower range than Water Gun, but was certainly much stronger.

Finally stable, Zubat teetered out of the bag. Confused, he hovered around the area for a moment, spotted the bag, and clawed around to zip it back up.

"Crowy, that way! Enemies that way!" Citrine yelled, pointing furiously, not really registering that the bat can't see, "use Supersonic!"

For a moment, Zubat was going to hit a rock with Supersonic. But Lombre grabbed him out of the air and just about chucked him into the mess of Sandshrew, right when Crowy decided to release Supersonic in every known direction to man.

Needless to say, they took off running up the stairs, the Sandshrew went mad, and Lombre managed to grab Zubat with her tongue before they caught up.

-

"What did we do to make them angry?" Citrine sprawled on the ground (they left their mat and the food down there, along with the bike and wheelchair) breathing heavily and sweaty from the run. "Were we in their territory? Did they want our food?"

Either way, she wanted to sleep now. No, they should at least get back out there somehow...it's still storming out there. Maybe they should build a barricade so the Sandshrew wouldn't chase after them?

"Is Magney okay?" Citrine unzipped her bag-- great, everything's covered in sand again! But at least Magney was still in there, sleeping soundly.

Citrine set a hand on Lombre's head, smiling warmly in thanks. She dusted the sand out of Loudred's back and rubbed him on the head too. Zubat flew into her hand, asking for attention, and she just ruffled it with both hands like a furball, making it dizzy.

Tugging her bag over her shoulders, they went away from the stairs. Carefully avoiding some holes on the ground, they followed the curve of the floor, guessed out some intersections, and found themselves before a dead end.

"Did we make a wrong turn...?"

She counted internally. Mirage Tower had four floors... but that was the game. Surely the real thing had more floors. It was a repetitive route of similar spiras in the game, but there were twists and turns in this one. Surely, there were more floors...

Zubat crowed at her. He had flown ahead to the back of the pillar from a small opening at the side.

"Is there something back there?" she asked.

It was a small cavern, barely enough for something like a decently sized dog to wriggle through. Or maybe Citrine could, if she tried hard enough...

"Whismy can't fit in there," she deduced. Setting her bag down and plucking out of her twintails, she handed one of her hair ties to the Pokemon. "Lotty... oh, your body fits but your lily pad is in the way. Alright, then."

Loose clothing would make things tough, so she stripped off her vest jacket and playfully put it around Lombre's shoulders. The Pokemon looked almost proud to be wearing Gym Badges.

"Hold onto Magney for me, alright? I'll go check things out and we'll be right back out," she said, "if the Sandshrew come, you can drive them away, right?"

The two made compliant noises, Loudred proudly huffing its chest and Lombre raising an arm in agreement.

Citrine pulled her hair into a low ponytail, tied at the base of her neck. Crouching down at the little hole in the wall, for a moment she feared she really couldn't fit.

Then Zubat fluttered by with its cheerful little crows, and Citrine couldn't help but smile.

It took a little wriggling and a lot of bellysucking-- she's fairly sure she's gotten a few new scrapes she couldn't feel. Maybe she should switch to clothing with longer sleeves in case something like this happens again...

The little pathway opened into a large room. There were windows in this room, which thankfully made it less of an oxygen hazard, but it also made the sandstorm blow in weakly.

"What did you want me to... oh."

She turned around-- and sure enough, on the far wall, embedded into the sandy bricks, were two brown cores that looked too intricately-patterned to be wind-blown aftermath.

From the way it jutted out, they were stones-- no...

"The Root and Claw Fossil..." Citrine brightened immediately, turning to the little bat and giving it a little nuzzle in joy, "great job, Crowy! You found exactly what I meant to look for."

The Zubat chittered, not really understanding but at least it's happy it was praised.

"Let's go take them, then we can settle down and wait for the storm to... uWAH!!"

Her footing gives way, and a loud rumble courses through the ground-- no, the whole tower. The world shook around her, earth crackling and walls shuddering--

"But I haven't-- taken the fossils yet! Something's wrong!"

She laid low, arms over her head protectively as rocks fell from the ceiling, and parts of the wall crumbled. She could hear Loudred and Lombre panic on the other end, and she yelled for them to stand back. That wall was too thick for them to logically try breaking in.

"This isn't the tower crumbling, this is--"

She lunged forward to catch her Zubat before a stone hit it. It would be super effective, wouldn't it?

Almost abruptly, the ground stopped shaking. She slipped on the sand and fell to her bottom, Zubat still in her arms.

"I knew it, this is--" she turned toward the fossils again. "A Pokemon move... probably Earthquake."

This time, there was a Pokemon standing before the two fossils, poised in anger and wings raised in irritation. The dragonfly-shaped Pokemon was large enough to be Citrine's whole body in size, and that was honestly intimidating in itself.

"A Vibrava..."