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MEW-CHILD: Ch.7: Relics of Ancient Times

by NonAnalogue

NonAnalogue Mel and Repeat take a nice, relaxing trip to the Pewter Museum of Science, where nothing out of the ordinary happens at all.
When Mel was in her teens, she'd come down with Togepox. Were it not for her age, this would have been a completely ordinary occurrence, but Togepox hit harder the older the victim was; she ended up spending several days bedbound and slathered in calamine lotion. Being cooped up tended to make Mel antsy anyway – at least unless she'd voluntarily chosen to sequester herself – but not even being able to get out of bed was nearly enough to drive her mad.

The worst part was that the only book she had within easy reach was A Relentlessly Thorough History of the Pewter Museum of Science. After a week of being in bed, unable to sleep full nights because of the itching, Mel had memorized the whole thing front to back.

Coincidentally, 'front to back' was how Mel was reciting the contents of A Relentlessly Thorough History of the Pewter Museum of Science to Repeat as they sat side by side on the deck of the Seagallop, cutting a swift path through the ocean back towards Vermilion City. The sun hid itself behind a layer of angry clouds, but it hadn't yet started raining; the breeze that caressed their faces was brisk and bore a pleasant sting of salt water.

"After Mr. Rockwell donated the sizeable endowment to the Stone family (no relation, of course, to the famous Stones of the Devon Corporation), they had enough capital to begin construction on the museum."

"Boss."

"The museum's prize Kabutops fossil was actually found during construction – when they broke ground for the first time, they came across said fossil in remarkably good condition. Though the contents of the museum's fossil collection enter and exit the public-facing exhibits on a rotating schedule, the Kabutops fossil always stays on display (excepting the period where it was loaned to the Nacrene Museum in Unova; it was returned quickly after an undisclosed event the gym leader of Nacrene described as 'haunting' and 'inexplicable')."

"Boss."

"Following the museum's fire, officially stated to be caused by wild Magmar but rumored to be related to the then-ascendant Team Rocket, the Stones elected to renovate the entire facility rather than simply rebuild. This was, of course, the first of many renovations that the museum underwent. Curiously, the museum's Omanyte fossil disappeared in the fire, roughly around the same time that a live Omanyte appeared in the Fuchsia City Zoo. Mr. Baoba, proprietor of the Safari Zone and the Fuchsia City Zoo, claimed the two events were 'wildly coincidental'."

"Boss! Please, for the love of my sanity, stop talking for a minute!" Repeat rubbed his pseudopods up and down the side of what would have been called his head if he had been wearing the guise of anything else. "I can't even start describing how little I care about the history of the museum. I just asked if you knew anything about this place, and clearly that wasn't a good call."

Mel rubbed Repeat's back. It was an old-wives'-tale remedy for seasickness, she knew that much, but she figured it couldn't hurt either way. "Did I give you a headache? My bad," she said.

"Yeah, a little bit of one," Repeat said, taking slow breaths, "but it's going away. No worries." A Wingull, rare this far out from their natural habitat, squawked somewhere behind them; Repeat smiled, then, too late, realized his mistake. "But don't start—"

"It's estimated that over the course of its esteemed history, the Pewter Museum has had on display more varieties of fossils than any other museum in the world, but to assume that they only dealt in ancient Pokemon would be to do a massive disservice to their aeronautics and space exhibits…"

For as much as Kanto had grown over the years, one problem that the region had never quite figured out was transportation. Sure, the magnet train ran from Saffron to Goldenrod in Johto; sure, the S. S. Aqua ran from Vermilion to Olivine. There were even underground paths that connected Lavender to Celadon and Vermilion to Cerulean. But if, hypothetically, someone were so inclined to travel from the port at Vermilion to the museum in Pewter, the quickest available options were to take Diglett's Cave or cut back through Mount Moon.

Some days, Mel thought as she reapplied a protective layer of Max Repel ("Silph Co.'s hottest hit! Keeps the pests at bay! Now for Longer!"), it felt like everyone assumed she had a Pokemon that knew Fly. As she trudged through the cavern, she saw with some amount of satisfaction that the Diglett were avoiding her; every so often, though, what she thought was a group of Diglett huddled together turned out to be a single Dugtrio, and it invariably gave chase. Dugtrio were speedy critters, and she only barely managed to outrun them each time – except the last one.

"Ready to go, Repeat?" Mel asked, driven into a corner by an especially belligerent Dugtrio.

"You got it, boss," said Repeat, climbing down to the end of her outstretched arm.

"Then let's give this Dugtrio a taste of what it's angling for." Mel tossed Repeat into the air; by the time he landed, he was a near-perfect copy of the Dugtrio, albeit one that wore the same face on each head. "Repeat! Give it a Sand Attack!"

Repeat burrowed underground and kicked up behind him a thick cloud of sand and dirt, heavy enough that it obscured the two of them from view. The Dugtrio closed its eyes, trying to keep sand out of them, but when it opened them again, its foes had vanished.

"The fine print is how they get ya," Mel muttered. Their mad dash left them at the western end of the tunnel, and Mel braced herself against the mouth of the cavern, holding up an empty bottle of Max Repel. Across the bottom, in font so small she had to lift her glasses up, get right up close, and still squint on top of that, was the text 'Product may not perform as expected against comparatively powerful Pokemon.' She knew that was how the whole Repel line of items worked – she was no novice when it came to avoiding battle, and it wasn't like Repeat was an especially strong Pokemon, as much as she loved him – but hope still sprung eternal.

Pewter City was never especially lively, a trait it shared with most of the towns on Kanto's western edge. It was built into the side of a mountain, and was bordered on its southern and eastern exits by a forest filled with poisonous bugs and a cavern filled with less-poisonous but more-obnoxious bats respectively; those traits combined meant that the town was quiet on the best of days. Even the construction of a fully-fledged Pokemon hospital to supplement the Pokemon Center, a project spearheaded by the Pewter gym leader, hadn't brought many people to the area. Mel suspected Brock liked it that way; to hear Janine tell it, Brock was a gym leader with several projects on the side, including fossil hunting, exploring Mount Moon, and Pokemon breeding. It was a miracle that he spent any time at all at the gym, Mel thought. He'd become a gym leader when he was young, quite some time before Janine, and the years since had, admittedly, been good to him.

Brock paced around the entrance of the museum as Mel approached, a stack of fliers in his hands. "Interested in rocks? Who wouldn't be, right?" he said, holding a paper out to her. "Right now, the Pewter Museum of Science is running a special on… on…" He paused, his chiseled features creasing as he looked her over. "I don't know you, do I? Did you ever have a match against me?"

"If I did," Mel said, plucking her glasses from her face and cleaning them on her shirt, "I don't remember it. I'm Mel Rylan. This is Repeat."

Repeat waved.

"Rylan… Rylan… Ah-ha!" Brock snapped his fingers, then scrambled to keep the fliers from spilling after the sudden motion. "You're from that Pokemon shelter down in Fuchsia! That's why I know your face. Janine showed me that commercial you filmed, with the ninja costumes. What a trip."

"Oh. Er." Mel felt her cheeks heat up. Being recognized by a gym leader came with the territory, but she had hoped it would have been for a more reputable reason. "Thanks, I guess."

"You know, Janine wouldn't shut up about you," Brock continued. "Mel this, Mel that."

Mel's face burned even hotter.

"But, uh, I suppose that's a conversation to save for happier times. Hopefully the police find her soon. Er, what brings you around these parts?" asked Brock, suddenly not meeting her eyes. Sadness and melancholy oozed off of him; Mel remembered that Janine had told her that Brock had been one of the kindest gym leaders to her when she had just been starting out.

The following series of thoughts ran through Mel's head in response to his question:

I'm looking for a fossil or something else that 'has life within it'.

I'm probably going to have to take it with me.

I can't tell him that I'm trying to take a fossil. They don't just let you take fossils.

Right?

Right, of course not. What kind of museum lets you take the fossils? Dumb to even think that, really.

But imagine if they did. You could just walk out of the place with a whole Kabutops skeleton in tow. How awesome would that be?

What would I even do with a Kabutops skeleton?

What wouldn't I do with a Kabutops skeleton?

Maybe Repeat could eat it. Then he'd be, I dunno, some kind of Ditto-Kabutops. A… Dittobutops. A Dittops?

Okay, okay, getting sidetracked. I should have answered by now. He's giving me a weird look. Or maybe that's just how he normally looks. Either way. Um. Think of something. Think of something!

"I was, um. I heard about the, about the…" Words spilled from Mel's mouth as quickly as they were crossing her mind. "The special! The special on, er…" She could just see the fliers in Brock's arms; they were upside-down and his arms covered most of the text on them, leaving only the letters 'AERO' visible. "The… Aerodactyl… fossil?" Mel said, praying that she'd guessed correctly.

Brock shifted the fliers from one hand to the other, revealing more of the text: 'AERONAUTICS EXHIBIT'. Mel's heart dropped through her stomach. "I'm really surprised, Mel," he said. His expression was inscrutable, and even his emotions weren't giving her anything useful – he still gave off sad vibes over what happened to Janine. "I can't believe…"

Here it comes…

"That someone's actually here to see the Aerodactyl fossil!" Brock pressed one of the fliers into Mel's hands. The top half read 'AERONAUTICS EXHIBIT', while the bottom half read 'AERODACTYL FOSSIL'. Fine print underneath it all indicated that there was a discounted entrance fee on both new exhibits. "Everyone's been coming to see the exhibit on the space shuttle! You know, it's a perfect scaled-down replica. You can even get inside and see all the different control panels. But nobody's cared about the fossils, which just breaks my heart!"

"Uh, yeah," Mel said, trying not to let on how quickly her heart was beating. "About that. Why are you out here shilling for the museum, anyway?"

Brock waved a hand. "Oh, you know how it is. I owed the director a favor, I tried to take her out to lunch to repay it, she told me that she would sooner swim through the Seafoam Islands in the buff than go out to lunch with me, I asked her if dinner was okay instead, she shoved a bunch of fliers at me and told me to hand them out. And so here I am. I've almost made it through a third of the stack!"

"Uh huh." Mel eyed the fliers. She was no expert, but she suspected that there were enough there to give one to every resident of Pewter twice over and then some. "Anyway. Aerodactyl fossil. Definitely what I'm here for. Can you point me in the right direction?"

"Oh yeah! It's on the first floor, in the western wing. You can't miss it once you're in there. And hey! Tell the woman at the front desk I sent you, and she might let you in free." Brock thought for a moment. "Or she might charge you more. Take care, okay?"

The fossil in question was in fact nearly impossible to miss – it hung, fully assembled, from the ceiling of the Ancient Rarities exhibit in a pose that suggested it was likely to take a bite out of the next person unwise enough to walk underneath it. "'This prehistoric Pokemon used its claws to grab prey and its massive jaw to tear them to pieces,'" Mel read from a plaque nearby. "Wouldn't want to run into one, huh, Repeat?"

"No kidding, boss. I'm pretty sure that if it had its sights set on you, you couldn't do much about it. Look how big it is."

"Yeah, pictures don't really do it justice." Mel walked along the edges of the room, where smaller fossils were on display in glass cases. "Now, see, look at this one."

Repeat, perched on Mel's head, craned forward to see. "This chunk of amber?"

"Yeah. Says it's got Aerodactyl's DNA in it. Wild, right? Something so small's got instructions in it to build something so big."

"That is how DNA works, boss."

"Shut up, Repeat. You know what I meant. I'm just, it's like, it's…" Mel flailed for the right word. "It's cool, is all," she finished lamely.

Repeat patted the back of Mel's head. "Relax, chief. I understand. What's that rock in the next display? It doesn't look like a fossil."

"This one?" A few paces away, there was another stand. This one had no glass surrounding it; the gemstone it displayed rested on a cushion and was exposed to the open air. It was a perfect sphere colored a glimmering lavender, and it could have easily fit in Mel's palm. A streak of darker purple and gray ran through the center like a lightning bolt. "I dunno. Never seen anything like it before."

"'This gemstone was excavated from the same site as the Aerodactyl fossil. It bears some strong similarity to the enigmatic Mega Stones; the current leading hypothesis is that it would allow an Aerodactyl to undergo Mega Evolution, though it has not yet been able to be tested. As such, we have given it the temporary name of Aerodactylite to match the naming conventions of other Mega Stones,'" Repeat read aloud. "A Mega Stone, huh? I wonder how it ties into the fossil… What do you think, boss?"

When Mel didn't respond, Repeat slithered down to her shoulder and looked her in the face. Her eyes were wide and glassy, and he could see in them the reflected image of the Mega Stone. "Boss? Hey, you okay?" asked Repeat. "What's up?"

Mel slowly lifted her arm, reaching her hand towards the rock.

"Whoa, whoa, boss, what's going on?" Repeat clapped his pseudopods together in front of Mel's eyes, which didn't make as loud a noise as he had hoped.

Mel gently touched the rock with her index finger, and—

"Excuse me, miss!" The curator for the exhibit, a small round woman with years of working around the general public etched into her face, grabbed Mel's arm and unceremoniously moved it and her out of rock-touching range. Just as Mel's contact broke, Repeat saw a small spark of electricity flicker between her finger and the Mega Stone; at the same moment, the life came back to her eyes. "No touching the exhibits, miss!" the curator continued. "Unless it's one of the Touch Your History exhibits, which are clearly labeled!"

"Uh, uh… Sorry," Mel said, placing a hand to the side of her head and blinking a few times. A fog had settled around her mind and it was only starting to clear. "Dunno what came over me."

That seemed to satisfy the curator, who went about her business, which in this case was telling a small child they couldn't lick the Aerodactyl bones no matter how hard they tried. The rest of the exhibit was empty, leaving the two of them alone.

Mel shook her head, trying to clear the mental haze faster. "What happened?" she muttered.

"That's what I want to know, chief. Are you okay?"

"Yeah… yeah," said Mel. "I think so. Hey, Repeat, what do you think…" She trailed off as she dug around in her bag for Hyacinth's notes.

"What do I think? That's kind of a big question, wouldn't you say?" Repeat said, resuming his place on Mel's head.

"Holds within it life of the past," Mel read under her breath. "Holds within it life of the past… Repeat, I think I just realized something. I don't think the fossils are what we're supposed to be looking for."

Repeat frowned, squinting at Hyacinth's perfect handwriting. "They're not?"

"The fossils, right, they don't have anything within them. Like, normal bone stuff, I guess, but there's nothing special about the inside of a fossil, I don't think. But there is something here that has life inside it." Mel paced back to the display they'd been standing at earlier. "The amber. That has life inside it. I bet that's what we're supposed to walk outta here with."

"Walk out of—what're you suggesting, boss?" asked Repeat.

"Easy enough. They're not about to just give us the amber if we walk up and ask for it, right? So…" Mel shoved Hyacinth's paper back into her bag, then snuck glances around her to make sure nobody was listening. "Repeat, we've got a heist to plan."
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