Continuing their journey to Appaloosa City for the fifth Gym challenge, Flash and his friends find an underground Pokémon ecosystem and have to save it.
- Bait-and-Switch: A thirsty Flash, Spike, and Peewee seemingly find a spring that could quench their thirst, but once Spike tries to cannonball into it, the spring turns out to have completely dried out and he hits himself in the crater.
- Beneath the Earth: After falling through a dried out spring, the main group finds a thriving Pokémon ecosystem underneath.
- Breather Episode: Compared to the action-packed "Team Shadow Strikes" arc, this chapter returns to the usual light-hearted tone of the series and has lower stakes.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: The group learns that the cave ecosystem is under threat because their waterfall isn't producing enough water for the environment to survive in the long-term, since a giant boulder is blocking the source. However, the rock can't simply be removed because it would risk flooding the entire system and destroying the environment anyway.
- Didn't Think This Through: To resolve the water shortage, Flash and his friends destroy the second giant boulder preventing the water from reaching the rock pools. Just as the boulder begins to crumble, the group realizes that the boulder is the only thing keeping the water flow contained and try to run away, but they're quickly caught by the current instead. Fortunately, no one is hurt in this incident.
- No Antagonist: The conflict in this chapter revolves around a second giant boulder blocking a waterway vital to a Pokémon ecosystem, with no other present threat facing the group.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The Lokelpie attacks the group when they find the underground Pokémon sanctuary, but only because it perceives them as hostile intruders. Once the confusion is cleared up, the Lokelpie reverts back to being passive.
- Secret-Keeper: Before leaving, the group decides to keep the existence of the cave environment a secret to the rest of the public, believing that making its presence known will potentially invite poachers to ruin the delicate balance of the ecosystem.
