[X] My Assistant

[Master Houndoom]

This is where you post your entries for the PANE Fanfiction contest.

The contest is going to run THROUGH today. Meaning it isn't late until 12:00:00 AM PST (or PDT, whichever it is now) on Monday, the 28th. And I likely will allow some leeway for those who posted and didn't finish, until I wake up on that Monday.

EDIT: The contest is officially over! Judging will occur ASAP.

[Vena Sera]

I apologise if this is a bit long, but once I had the idea it wouldn't leave me alone until it was all down. Please enjoy.

Summers in Pewter City are usually described by both residents and villagers as one thing - perfect. The temperature was balmy and warm - never humid - and if the day began to get too hot, a well-meaning breeze would pick up or a cloud would pass in front of the sun. Storms were brief and pleasant, leaving plenty of puddles for the children (and some adults) to jump and splash in. There were few bugs and the nights were always cool and clear on fireworks nights. It was often boasted that the only other place in the whole world with a more perfect summer was Verdanturf Town, all the way across the sea in Hoenn. No child of Pewter would ever dare to stay inside during a summer such as this.


'Grounded?! But mum-!'

'Any more buts and I'll add another week, Terrence.'


The boy's mouth snapped shut, but his eyes remained wide and disbelieving. Melissa Braunstein was busy making breakfast, her long blue-black hair held away from her face in a ponytail. Her Machamp, Lorraine, busily handed her ingredients for her infamous apple pancakes with one set of arms, the other flipping a pan of bacon on the stove. At the table in the dining room, Roger and Lawrence were both holding a newspaper, the Hitmonlee's word search nearly completed. Every window and door in the house was open, and the sweet smell of flowers and the laughter of children floated inside. As Terrence watched, a Frisbee spun past the front door, followed by a Growlithe. Sighing, Terrence slumped into the chair next to his father, crossing his arms and pouting. Roger looked at him over his newspaper before setting it down, smoothing out a wrinkle.


'Well, that's what you get for trying to play fetch with Albion in the house. Although I don't really approve of three whole weeks…'

'In case you forgot, he broke the trophy Brawly gave me before I left his Gym.' Melissa said breezily, setting a stack of pancakes on the table. In one fluid movement, Lorraine placed a plate in front of everyone at the table and set two pieces of bacon on each plate. Roger sighed and pushed back his chair, taking a few cups of coffee from the coffee maker on the counter. He filled three cups and clumsily tried to set them on the table, spilling more than a few drops and nearly soaking Lawrence in coffee.


'Uh, oops…'

'Roger!' Melissa frowned and grabbed the cups, putting them on the table and handing the Hitmonlee a pile of napkins. Lorraine sighed and shook her head.

'I don't know why I married him either, Lor.' Roger spluttered coffee all over the table, tears beginning to well up in his eyes. Melissa laughed and kissed him on the forehead, patting his back as he hiccupped. 'Just kidding, Roger.'

'I wish you wouldn't do that,' Roger said, sullenly. 'One day I'm going to come home and you'll be gone, off back to Dewford Town and Brawly, leaving me all alone…'


Terrence sighed again and tuned out his father, glumly grabbing some pancakes from the stack and plopping them on his plate. He cut off a chunk with his fork and was about to eat it when he heard a disapproving noise to his left. He looked up at Lawrence, who nodded at a small plate in the middle of the table.


'Thanks, Lawrence.' Terrence picked up his knife and slathered his pancakes with fresh apple butter, wishing badly that Albion could be eating this with them. As part of the grounding, the Onix had been sentenced to his Pokeball, only to be let out by Melissa when Terrence was asleep for dinner. It really wasn't fair; he had had the whole summer planned out - skateboard races with his friends, drum practice, exploring Diglett's Cave with Albion, a trip to Johto to visit his dad's parents - and now he was stuck inside for three whole weeks with nothing to do. He sighed again, earning a Look from his mother.


He was just about to open his mouth for another round of complaints when a succession of quick knocks jolted the whole family out of Eating Mode. Kingsley stood in the doorframe, smiling widely and holding a skateboard. Tom and Rock - who had the most unfortunate name in the whole town - were out on the lawn, annoying Roger's Glameow with blades of grass.


'Hey there, Mrs B!' Kingsley said, waving enthusiastically at Terrence. Roger mouthed soundlessly for a moment before uttering a weak 'stop bothering Puffin!' and slumping back in his chair, Lorraine giving him an odd look. 'We wanted to know if Beat can come out with us - some punks from Viridian challenged us to a race next week and we gotta get some practice in!' He held up his skateboard, accentuating his point. Tom and Rock waved from the yard.


'I'm sure Terrence would love to go, James,' Melissa said, standing up. Kingsley winced at the use of his real name, his smile faltering a little bit. 'But I'm afraid Terrence has been grounded for the next three weeks. Oh, before you go, take some pancakes to your mother - and here's the recipe.' She handed Kingsley a plate full of pancakes and a scrap of paper before shooing him out the door. 'Tell your father I said hi, and no hard feelings for his loss last week. Bye!' Kingsley stared at Terrence, shock written all over his face. What'd you do? he mouthed, backing up to where the other boys were standing. Terrence shrugged and watched Melissa closed the door on his friends and his hopes for summer.

- - -

It was a little past two and Terrence was bored out of his mind.


His window was closed and the shades were drawn. His bed was a mess of pillows and covers, clothes flung all over. The shelf on the other side of the room was lopsided, the stuffed Pokemon he kept on in a pile on the floor. There was a huge, boarded-up hole in one wall, fragments of a toilet visible through gaps in the boards. The door hung on one hinge, part of the frame torn off. He could see the hallway and the top of the stairs from where he sat on the floor, his mother's voice - scolding Puffin, most likely - floating up from the first floor. Roger had long since left for work at the museum, once again nearly in tears (his favourite sitcom had been cancelled that morning). Terrence ached to go with him - a day spent carrying boxes full of rocks was better than spending hours upon hours in his room, staring at the floor - but he had asked for the summer off two weeks earlier.


'A whole lot of good that's gonna be now,' he muttered, picking at the carpet. Sighing for what he guessed was the eighty-sixth time that day, he flopped on his back and stared at the posters on his ceiling, his too-long brown hair fanning out around him. The biggest poster was a group shot in front of Mt Coronet in Sinnoh, featuring the Big Five of Rock and Steel-type Gym Leaders, all surrounding Steven Stone. Steven stood behind the biggest Moon Stone ever found, smiling. The rest of the Big Five were all either smiling or laughing as well, holding up different kinds of evolutionary stones found within the mountain. Terrence had gotten the poster from Brock during a fundraiser for rebuilding the Gym (there has been an accident involving an angry Golem and a cake; nobody was really sure of the details) and it had even been signed by the whole group. Terrence had asked his mother if he could hang it in the show room right above his collection of rare rocks, but she had shaken her head and asked Lorraine to put it on the ceiling in his room instead.


As Terrence studied the poster, he began to drift off. He was on an epic adventure around the world with Steven Stone, exploring the darkest and deepest caves for the rarest and most valuable stones. Albion - now a massive Steelix - dove into the ground, making a huge tunnel that Steven's Metagross would carry them down. Even the small, annoying pinging sounds coming from the top of the tunnel wouldn't stop them on their mission - wait…


'What?' Terrence sat up, his hair immediately covering his face. Brushing it out of his way, he held his breath and listened. Yes, it was definitely a real - a small, sharp sound, like a rock hitting the side of his house. The pinging suddenly turned into a loud twang and he faintly heard someone yell in surprise. Terrence sprung up and hurriedly yanked the string on the shades, flinging open the window just in time to get a face full of pebbles.

'Oh, crap! Sorry!' Kingsley stood in the middle of the backyard, his hand full of the small, round pebbles Roger used in his garden. He could just barely see a mop of blond hair over the fence - probably Rock. He could hear a Poochyena barking somewhere nearby.


'Ready to bust out and go on an adventure?' Kingsley shouted, a wide smile on his face. His dreadlocks waved a little in the breeze. Terrence shook his head sadly, leaning on the window frame. 'I'm grounded, remember? Can't leave the house. Besides, if mum saw me outside-'
'Come on, Beat! We're not gonna parade you in front of the whole city. I said we're gonna go on an adventure, yeah? Now hurry up and get your stuff before Tom gets hungry and chickens out.'


A faint 'I heard that!' drifted over the fence. Terrence could hear Rock laughing.


'Alright, but if mum finds out-'

'She won't, man! Now get your butt moving!'


Terrence grabbed his exploring shoes, a pair of sensible sneakers, and quickly put them on. He grabbed his pack from the corner of his room and checked to make sure that he had re-stocked the energy bars, then pulled the strap over his head and went to the window, throwing his leg over the frame onto the thin trim below. Just as he was about to swing his other leg up and jump, he remembered something.


'Hey, Slowpoke! What's taking you so long?'

'I forgot Ion!' Terrence said, nearly falling over as he slid back into his room. He ran into the hallway and looked over the stair rail, breathing as quietly as he could. There was nobody in the living room and the window was shut. Mum must be taking dad lunch, Terrence though, sighing with relief. He sprinted into his parents' room and grabbed Albion's grey-topped Pokeball off the end table. Within the next two minutes he was in the overgrown alley behind his backyard, exhilarated. Rock play-punched him in the arm and Kingsley poked fun at Tom's weight, prompting the shorter boy to take a swing at his face, missing by a good two feet. They all laughed and Terrence let out a whoop, jumping on a rock in the path.

'I'm FREE!' he shouted, smiling as the others cheered and then fell into hysterics as the rock revealed itself to be a Geodude. Grumbling, it rolled away, leaving Terrence dazed and on the ground.


'Hey, where are we going anyway? I thought we had that race you needed to practice for.'

'Nah,' Tom said. He had pulled a Snackems cake out of nowhere and took a bite. 'Onff thher guyssh-'

'One of their guys broke a leg trying to board off the Gym,' Rock translated, elbowing Tom in the gut.

'And as for where we're going -' Kingsley ran in front of them and held his arms above his head. 'Mt Moon!'

As the others whooped, Terrence gaped. 'Dude, it'd take us an hour at least just to get there from here! And then an hour back, plus however long we're in there - dude, my mum's gonna find out -'

'Beat? Chill.' Kingsley draped one long arm over his shoulders, his dark brown eyes seeming to shine. 'We found another way in.'

'You - what?'

'Yep! There's a little cave entrance up past the museum. Too small for grown-ups to get through. We only found it 'cause of Miss Lena's Poochyena. That thing's got the nose of a Growlithe, I tell you.'

'Whoa,' Terrence breathed. A new entrance to Mt Moon - maybe they'd find something in there! This was almost as awesome as his daydream - the only thing missing was Steven Stone to guide them.

'What are waiting for? Let's go!' he shouted, running full-tilt down the path, followed by a chorus of 'Slow down!' 'Let me finish my cake, first!' and 'Beat! Take a chill pill, would you?!'

- - -

His lavender eyes were open wide and he couldn't stop moving. He tried to take in everything all at once, spinning round and round until he got too dizzy to stand. Kingsley caught him before he fell and helped him up.


'This-'

'Awesome, yes?'

'-is amazing!'

'Knew you'd like it!' Kingsley declared, clapping his hands together. 'I would've brought Meowzy but momma didn't want her out. That Meowth can smell treasure from a mile away - anyway, I think there's a tunnel over there.'

Terrence looked around. The cavern was dark, the faint light from the entrance illuminating Tom's skin, making him look like a ghost. Rock and Terrence were too tan and blended into the darkness. Kingsley's smile - reminding them uneasily of the Cheshire Cat - floated in the dimness near a pitch-black crack in the cavern wall.


'Torches, please!' Rock fumbled in his pockets for a moment and then pulled out a flashlight, handing it to Kingsley. He quickly turned it on and shined it into the hole as Rock passed out the rest of the torches, the dark cavern filling with light. 'Alright then, ladies first,' Kingsley called. Tom nudged Rock, earning a glare from the tall, lanky boy. Terrence laughed and turned, almost having a heart attack when Kingsley popped up in front of him.


'You crazy, Tom? Beat's got the longest hair here! He's got the honour.'

'Wait a second, your hair's longe-'

'Shut it. Go on, Beat. I'll be right behind you.'

'…Why does that not make me feel better?' Terrence muttered. He turned sideways and slipped into the crevice, feeling a loose rock scrape against his cheek. He kept moving forward, feeling Kingsley's arm brush against his every once in a while. He heard Rock joke about Tom getting stuck and was just about to voice his worries about the tunnel being a dead end when his foot hit nothing.


Terrence yelped as he fell, visions of broken bones and smashed skulls flickering through his mind just as he hit the ground - two feet from the tunnel. Rolling his eyes, he scooted backwards as Kingsley carefully stepped down, Rock and finally Tom emerging seconds later. Kingsley helped Terrence to his feet, brushing dirt and pebbles from his shirt.

They all looked around - the chamber they were in was large and roughly circular. The ceiling was dizzyingly high above them, and Terrence could see small, moving shapes in the darkness. Tom began to point his torch upwards, only to have it wrenched from his hand by Rock.


'Jeez, Tom! Do you want a whole pack of screeching Zubat on us?' he hissed, pushing the torch back into his hand. His eyes were wide and he was shaking - Terrence remembered that he was scared of Zubat. He gently patted Rock on the back as Kingsley looked around.


'Here's another tunnel. It's kinda far up though, I think the Zubat use it to get out.' He shook his head, his dreadlocks swirling around his face. 'I think we should go back. There's no way farther in, and it's had to have been at least half an hour already.'

'What?' Terrence gasped, unbelieving. Sure, the trip through the tunnel had seemed long, but he'd assumed it had only taken about five minutes - not a whole half hour.

'Hey, wait,' Rock said. He had been leaning against the roundest part of the cave and was now pushing against the stone. As Terrence watched, dirt and small rocks began to shower from slightly above Rock's hair.

'Hey, hey!' Kingsley shouted, excited. Terrence felt a rush of energy, the thrill of discovery running through him. 'Hey, Beat, go help him!'


Terrence and Rock were the strongest of the group, and the thin layer of rock didn't stand up to them for long. After the dust had cleared, a new tunnel lay before them, wide and almost perfectly round. The walls seemed to shimmer in places, and the floor was slightly damp. The boys cheered, high-fives filling the air with sound - along with an odd, half-chirp, half-screech noise. Rock froze.


'Oh, crap.'


The boys quickly ran into the tunnel, yelling in fear. Terrence felt a Zubat pass in front of his face, screeching loudly. In front of him, Rock's back was quickly getting farther and farther away, his panicked voice seeming to echo back to him.


'Rock! Get back here!' Terrence ducked under a large rock that was sticking out from the ceiling. The tunnel seemed to be getting narrower and narrower. Water now covered the floor and their frantic sprinting became careful splashing; the shimmering rocks above them seemed to become more numerous. The three boys finally emerged into another chamber, their fear and worry melting into awe.


Every surface of the cavern seemed to shine. About two feet of water was on the floor, sending waving white light onto the walls and ceiling. A small, shimmering stalactite was dripping water into the pool, filling the room with a calming dripping noise. Rock was huddled on a dry rock on the other side of the chamber, completely soaked in water, his blond hair plastered to his face. He didn't look scared anymore and was instead staring at the shining rocks around him.


'Man, we don't even need our torches in here!' Kingsley shouted in glee, flicking his off. Terrence and Tom followed suit, before wading through the cool water to the dry rock. They all climbed on and started in awe at the cavern walls - which now seemed oddly familiar to Terrence. He had never been here before, but he'd seen something like it in the museum. Something like a-


'Arceus' breath,' he muttered, realisation dawning on him. 'We're in a geode!'

'…We're in a Geodude? What the heck has Mrs B been feeding you, Beat?1'

'Not a Geodude,' Beat murmured, reaching out to touch the walls. 'A geode. We're inside a crystal.'

The others fell silent, stunned. Rock slid off the rock into the water, taking a deep breath before plunging his hands into the water, bringing them up and taking a quick drink. Tom, Terrence, and Kingsley sat motionless, dripping and the water lapping against the rock the only sounds. Finally Rock looked up.


'This is aweome.'


Not another word was said, but all four of them immediately dunked into the pool, drinking deeply. The water was cool and fresh, with a faint bubbly aftertaste. They drunk greedily for a few minutes before stopping. None of them wanted a stomachache, but they were reluctant to stop drinking the water.

'Okay, agreed: If we ever tell anyone about this adventure, we're leaving the geode out.' Kingsley said, crossing his arms. The rest nodded soberly, the water throwing white light onto their faces. 'This is for us only. This is our secret - and we're never gonna come here again after this. We're not gonna let anyone ruin it.' He looked each of them in the eyes while he said this, the others nodding firmly. They stood there for another minute before Tom spoke up.

'Um…anyone got any food?'

- - -

The energy bars in Terrence's pack were gone now, six of the twelve in Tom's stomach. They had left the geode through a small tunnel they had found in a crack in the wall, the torches back on once the glimmer of the stones faded. The tunnel widened slowly and began to go up slightly, until the boys were climbing more than walking.


'Do you think this thing goes to the top of the mountain?' Rock asked nervously, using Tom's head as a foothold.

'No,' Terrence said, pulling himself onto a ledge. He grabbed Rock's hand and helped him up. 'The top of the mountain is near Cerulean. We're probably around the middle of the mountain now.' He and Rock pulled up Tom and then Kingsley before turning around. The ledge led to another ledge and then a tunnel that was, thankfully, straight. It was also a different shade of darkness then the rest of the cave system they had been through - a sort of natural darkness, as opposed to the still blackness of before. He thought he smelled fresh air, and he quickly licked his hand and held it in front of him.


'What are you-'

'Shh.'

They stood in silence for a moment until Terrance felt a breath of air against his hand. He smiled and began walking forward, turning off his torch and putting it in his pack.


'What-'

'Fresh air. We're near the surface!'


The boys cheered and began moving forward. After a few feet the tunnel began creeping upwards again, but less steep then the last one. It also curved the left a little, and soon Terrence felt like he had been moving in circle for hours. However, the breeze was growing stronger by the minute, and now he could feel it without wetting his hand. In his excitement he didn't notice the tunnel getting narrower or the fact that it the walls were beginning to become smoother. He just wanted to be out of the darkness and into the light.


When he emerged, he was confused. There were high walls of rock all round him, the ground covered in sparse patches of mountain grass. He could smell flowers nearby, which surely meant the sun had to be out…


Everything was dark. Terrence's heart began to beat wildly in his chest. Had he gone partially blind in the mountain? He knew people who stayed too long in the darkness could have visionary problems sometimes, but they hadn't been in the mountain for longer than an hour at most -


'Dude, look at the moon.'

'The…the moon?' Terrence looked up and gasped. He wasn't blind; it was nighttime - the moon hung still and impossibly huge in the corner the sky, glowing pale silver. Now that he was over his shock, he noticed that everything was coated in a beautiful silver-blue sheen. He smiled and let out a breathless laugh, looking at his silver hands. Kingsley and Rock had linked arms and were dancing gleefully in a patch of grass, and Tom-


'…Where's Tom?'


The boys stopped, looks of horror dawning on their faces. They all ran to the entrance of the cavern and looked in. They could see Tom's pale face in the light of the moon, as well as his shoulders. The rest of him seemed to have been swallowed by the walls.


'Guys, I-I can't move,' Tom stuttered, sniffling. Tears were beginning to well up in his eyes. 'I c-can't get out-'

'Hold on, Tom, hold on-' Rock frantically tried to run into the cavern, stopped by Kingsley's arm. 'Kingsley, move it, I need to help Tom!'

'How?' Kingsley said, his voice hollow. He turned to Tom. 'Can you move back at all?'

'N-no! I can't m-move at all, I wanna g-go h-home!' he sobbed. Terrence felt horrible. The moon's serene light had turned sharp and horrible, outlining everything in that hateful shade of silver. Terrence usually loved that colour, it reminded him of a Steelix, but right now it was -


Right now…


Terrence didn't remember how Albion's Pokeball appeared in his hand; he only knew how to use it. He hit the button in the centre and threw it in front of him, sending Rock and Kingsley scurrying out of the way. There was a flash of light that matched the light from the moon, and Albion emerged.


The giant Rock Snake blinked a few times and then looked around, curling his massive body into a loose circle. From where Terrence stood, Albion's head and crest were nothing but a silhouette in front of the orb of the moon. Swallowing, he pointed at the cave entrance, all of Albion's attention focuses on him.


'Can you help Tom?'

'Nix.' Ion nodded his head once, slowly. He reared up and placed his bottom jaw into the cave, pressing down on the rocks above it with the top of his mouth. There was a impossibly loud crunching noise, and then the crushed rocks were being dropped a few feet away. There was a small shuffling noise next to Terrence and he felt Kingsley's hand close around his. Rock sat nearby, huddled up like he'd been in the geode after his flight from the Zubat. They all watched in silence as Ion continued his work, tearing through the tunnel as if it was paper. Finally, Tom's head and shoulders were in the moonlight and Ion leaned over, turning his head to the side and gently pulling Tom out. The boy sobbed a thanks and hugged the Rock Snake Pokemon tightly, Rock and the others hurrying to make sure he was alright. Once Tom shakily said he was fine, if a bit bruised, they all swarmed Albion, praising the Pokemon. Ion, however, wasn't looking at them at all. He was gazing out above the rock walls the surrounded them, where the smell of flowers came from. Without a sound, he raised his tail high into the air.


'Whoa, Ion, what-'


The Onix brought his tail down, sending a cloud of dust, dirt, and rock into the air. The boys coughed and waved their arms around, trying the clear the air. Unmindful, Albion continued tearing the wall down until the tear was low enough for the boys to climb up. He quickly slithered over the wall, the boys clambering up the rocks behind him. What awaited them took their breaths away.


In front of them was a meadow, stretching on to more stone walls in the distance. Grass thickly carpeted the ground, clusters of silver-blue moon flowers bursting out of the ground. In the exact middle of the meadow was a depression devoid of grass and flowers, surrounding a perfectly circular lake. The bottom of the lake shone like the inside of the geode, and in the middle was a giant, dark grey stone - Terrence recognized it as a Moon Stone. It almost rivaled the Moon Stone Steven Stone had found - in fact, this one could even be bigger. He felt Kingsley grab his hand again, squeezing it so tightly that Terrence had to nudge him with his elbow.


'Sorry,' Kingsley whispered. It didn't feel right to talk out loud in this place, for some reason. 'Kinda…I mean, it's…you know what I mean?'

'Yeah,' Terrence murmured. 'Yeah, I do.'


The group stood in silence for a minute before Albion suddenly reared up again, staring straight at the moon. With a jolt, Terrence noticed that it had moved from the corner of the sky to the exact middle, right over the lake. The giant Moon Stone began to glow softly, then with more strength until-


'Did you hear that?' Rock whispered. A strange noise was beginning to fill up the meadow, a cross between a lonely cry and a mysterious chant. Terrence's head was buzzing with the music. He noticed that Albion was swaying to the sound, his eyes shut tightly. Rock and Tom, standing next to the Onix, looked like Terrence, felt - like they didn't belong here. Like they were about to see something nobody else ever had.


The alien music was closer now, and Terrence saw small pink creatures dancing through the grass, singing with all their hearts. One passed near where he and Kingsley stood. It didn't even stop to acknowledge them - it breezed past them, leaving the grass almost untouched. There was a slight rumble and Terrence dreamily looked at Albion - he was moving closer to the depression, Rock and Tom following, seemingly in a trace. He squeezed Kingsley's hand and they moved forward, stopping on a small bluff overlooking the lake.


The creatures stood side by side, unmoving. The song began the wane and finally stopped, leaving the four boys blinking as if the had just woken up. Another pink creature was walking through the grass, but this one was larger and had a strange-looking tail. A tiny little thing followed it, holding one of the moon flowers and chirping joyfully. Terrence suddenly realised what he was looking at - Clefairy. The large one was a Clefable, then, and the smallest was probably a Cleffa. He watched in awe as the Cleffa skipped down the bluff through a gap in the Clefairy, laying the flower in the lake. The Clefable filled in the gap and raised its arms towards the moon, the Clefairy following its lead. The strange chant began again, and the Moon Stone in the lake glowed more fiercely than it had before.


The lake itself reflected the moon and was beginning to shine, the flower the only dark spot in a sea of glowing white. As the group watched, the Clefairy began to dance again, led by the Clefable. The Cleffa was giggling and spinning around in circles, waving its arms in the air before leaping out of the circle and running towards the boys. Without warning, it leaped up and grabbed Kingsley's free hand, making a grabby motion at Terrence's hand. Smiling, he let the Cleffa take it and hunched over as it made them dance with it, going round and round in circles. It soon got tired and waved its arms at Kingsley, looking like a toddler demanding to be picked up. Kingsley looked at Terrence and shrugged, picking the Cleffa up.


The moon seemed close enough to touch now, resting on the arms of the Clefairy. All at once, they began to glow with the same intensity as the lake. Their strange chant rose to a pitch and Terrence looked away, unable to stand the intense light and sound any longer. When he looked back a moment later, the Clefairy were slowly returning to normal - but they were no longer Clefairy. A circle of Clefable stood before them now, cheering and clapping. Within seconds they were gone, back across the meadow into the mountain. Only the first Clefable was left. It smiled at the boys and Albion and motioned to the Cleffa. The small pink Pokemon pouted and Kingsley gently set it down, watching as it skipped back to the lake. Terrence watched as the Clefable waded into the now-still lake, stopping at the Moon Stone in the centre. It carefully pulled the stone out; the boys gasped when they realised that no water dripped from it. The Clefable and Cleffa slowly walked out of the lake and up the bluff to where the group was now huddled together, Albion towering over them. The Clefable held out the Moon Stone to Terrence, smiling mysteriously.


'W-what? You want me to…?' The Clefable nodded and gently placed the stone in his arms. He thought it would be heavy because of its size, but it was incredibly light. The boys stared at it in awe. Terrence looked up to thank the Clefable.


It was gone. The moon and the lake were all that was in front of them - but the moon looked different. There was an oddly shaped patch on it, as if…


'Cleffa!'


They all looked down again. The Cleffa was hugging Kingsley's leg, staring at him with huge, pleading eyes. The boy quietly picked it up and held it close, watching at it yawned and closed its eyes. They stood there for a minute more, letting the night settle in their memories.


'Let's go home.'

- - -

'I cannot believe you disobeyed me! I should ground you for another month for going off like that!'


Terrence flinched and tried to make himself look smaller. Melissa was pacing in front of him, her dark purple eyes hard. Lorraine stood behind her, both pairs of arms crossed. Terrence's pack was next to him on the couch, the Moon Stone inside. Almost as soon as the group entered Pewter their parents had appeared, scolding and dragging them home. Kingsley and the Cleffa had stood next to Terrence and Albion as Melissa and Mrs Kingsley had talked to each other in quiet voices, deciding on a punishment for the boys.


'…Hey, Beat.'

'Yeah?'

'I'd say that I was sorry for dragging you into this, but…' Kingsley stopped and stared at the moon, now tiny and unimposing. '…but I think we needed to see that.'

'Yeah. No hard feelings, Kingsley.'

'Um, hey.' Kingsley paused again, looking at the Cleffa. 'I don't want you to…I mean, uh. Just…just call me James from now on, okay?'


Terrence stared at his best friend, not knowing what to say. Even after Melissa had taken him home, he had though about what that had meant. Lawrence had been waiting at the door for them, locking the house behind them and going into the kitchen to make Terrence something to eat. He had been inside of Mt Moon for almost eight hours - he had been shocked when he'd found out. It had only felt like eight minutes to him - the Zubat, the geode, helping Tom out of the cavern, watching the Clefairy dance…He reached for his pack and fumbled with the opening.


'Terrence, would you-'

'Beat, mum.' Melissa stopped cold. Beat had never interrupted her before in his life, but tonight was a first for everything. 'I want to be called Beat from now on.'

'Alright, Beat.' A smile was tugging at the corner of Melissa's face and Beat suddenly realised how tired she looked. She knelt in front of him and smoothed out his hair, matted with mud and dirt. She sighed. 'Do you know how worried we were? Brock organised a search party. We spent hours looking through the Viridian Forest and Mt Moon, but we couldn't find you. One of you could've gotten hurt, or…' She sighed again and shook her head, her blue-black hair framing her face. 'Where did you go, anyway? How did James get the Cleffa?'

'I…I can't tell you mum. It's…' kind of like magic. We went up there as little boys wanting to make the most of the summer, and we came out… 'My birthday's next month, right?'

'What? Well, yeah. You'll be thirteen.'

'Oh, okay.' I think we grew up a little.

'What's in your pack? Do you want me to - is this a…? Roger! Roger, wake up! Look at what Ter- look at what Beat found!'


Beat closed his eyes and smiled, drifting off into a pleasant dream. There was a meadow on a mountain and a beautiful lake, and the moon lit the world in a silver light.

- - -

The moon was moving rapidly towards the horizon. The dark shapes scurried through the waving grasses and the now-dead moon flowers, carrying a large bundle. They quickly walked into the lake, no ripples breaking the mirror-like surface. They slowly lowered the bundle into the lake, watching as it glowed once, faintly.



The moon slipped under the edge of the world, and they were gone.

This story takes place before Mt Moon collapses (sometime prior to generation two) and the lake is accessible by everyone.


Giant geodes do actually exist - a quick Google search shows a few pictures of people standing inside of massive, naturally-occurring geodes.

This post has been edited by Stasis Key: Jun 14 2010, 01:50 PM

[Kamaitachi]

I created Tag not a week ago, so I'm still working on how to write for him. Hopefully this will suffice.

"Taggarty Lee, you are hereby banished from Blackthorn City. Your pokemon have been confiscated, and are now in the care of the Elder. For all intents and purposes, you will never see them again."

Tag stood silently, eyes downcast. He couldn't see much in his periphery...all he knew was that he was standing in a single, sharp pool of light, effectively cutting off all vision beyond it. He could hear them, though; he could hear all the murmurs, the howls of delight at his sentence and the jeers. If he hadn't been considered a criminal during his rampage, he most certainly was declared one now. From the age of 16 he had started his journey with his pokemon, and now here he was at 26, and it was ending only after 10 short years. It was supposed to last the rest of his life...why was it ending now?

The test. The test of the Elder. It had been much harder than people said it was. Elder had expected more of him and given him a harder test...at least that was what he had accused the Elder of. Painfully, he recalled the Elder's calm responses to the barrage of angry yelling, screaming and tears. As if by reflex he'd drawn a pokeball with his trusted companion Dragonite, and ordered an Outrage on the Elder. He had gone on an outrage of his own too...all six of his magnificent dragon pokemon, tearing apart the frail little shrine and all offenders, pokemon and human alike. It all seemed a sordid blur, Tag couldn't remember ever having lost control like that.

And since he lost control, and had thrown a childish, but deadly, tantrum, it seemed he wasn't fit to be a trainer after all. Even less fit, he decided, to become the fantastic dragon tamer he'd always dreamed he'd be.

He accepted his verdict with a gentle nod, but nothing read across his cold, emotionless, and bandaged face.

"Your eyes show even no remorse." The authoritative voice continued "You are a heartless man." It wasn't true. Tag had never considered himself heartless...it was just in this moment, he was unable to express any emotion, lest it all come tumbling back in cascades of anger and humiliation. "Your sentence has been agreed on by the tribunal. It is effective immediately. You will be given one hour to gather whatever you need from your residence, and then you will be escorted to the city limits. What you do from there is up to you."

Wordlessly he nodded. Exiting the building, he was met with a crowd of leering faces, roaring in delight at his sentence. They threw stones, food, drinks, whatever they could get, as Tag silently walked by, seemingly unaffected by the hateful madness around him. He barely even flinched as sharp stones hit his bandages. He moved slowly, almost remorsefully, until grabbing hands reached out to hustle him along faster.

When he got to his home, he simply stopped and turned to the two escort guards. Behind them, the crowd had followed. He couldn't exactly tell, but it felt as if it had grown over the walk. The dozens of faces seemed to have expanded, appearing as if a hundred faces had come to laugh at his punishment.

"I don't need anything. I'm ready." The crowd followed him as he walked to the edge of town, facing the rocky, winding mountain road at the south of the city. Cautiously, the policemen removed his cuffs, and roughly shoved him forward. Tag all but tuned out the roaring of the crowd and all of their insults, yells or curses. He simply walked forward until it was all but a faint sound in the corners of his ears.

The summer sun felt particularly relentless. The bandages on his face were not doing much to protect the sensitive skin their from the searing heat of the summer rays as he walked slowly forward. With only heaviness in his heart, he continued South.

* * *

Even in his somewhat dazed state, he couldn't help but notice the various happenings on the mountainside path. Battles had broken out between ambitious trainers...bolts of lightning, waves of water, pillars of flame all shot up here and there...or dust from a collision would wash over his path for a moment, caught in the shock waves of the intense battles around him. Occasionally he'd spot a wild pokemon, that would look at him and scamper off. He looked upwards for a moment, watching a Fearow fly by, its trainer on its back. Perhaps he imagined seeing it, but he could clearly read the exhilaration of flying on the young boy's face. Semi-consciously, Tag found himself amazed that no wild pokemon had attacked him, or jumped out at him to bar his path...it seemed to him that even the wild pokemon, with no knowledge of his sin back in Blackthorn, were actively avoiding him as well.

People and pokemon were meant to coexist, he had been taught that since the earliest days of his youth. However, if people and pokemon were to coexist...and he had no pokemon, there could be no 'co' or 'exist' without it. There could be no 'exist'. Without pokemon, Tag had no reason to exist.

* * *

The sunset that night had probably been one of the most beautiful sunsets to see...but Tag paid it no attention as he entered the boundaries of New Bark Town. He looked to his left for a moment, in the direction of the setting sun, but all he could focus on was the little spire that indicated Professor Elm's Pokemon Lab. In that moment it hit him...no matter where he went in the wide world, there were pokemon. No matter where he traveled to, there would be some reminder that he was now painfully alone. He was ostracized in a world that worked with these creatures. He would see them everywhere; he would see places that he'd visited with his old friends and realize that those were no longer places he could go to without evoking memories, which would ultimately make him all the more depressed.

There seemed to be no other courses of action anymore. With his halcyon days gone and his future looking dimmer by the second, he simply turned eastward and walked again.

* * *

Night had fallen very gently over Cherrygrove. A few denizens wandered about in the night, taking care of whatever various errands they had left. A few trainers were finishing up some noisy little battles just at the outskirts of the town...all was the same in Cherrygrove. Tag walked somberly through its streets, keeping his placid eyes straightforward into the evening. The warm, cool, summer breeze washed over him; it smelled faintly of salt. For a moment he stopped, feeling the salty air caress along his skin. In that moment he knew what his course was now.

"Hey Mister...why d'ya look so sad." A young looking kid ran up to him, holding an ice cream cone that had probably been in his hand for hours; the remains of the ice cream could be seen melted all over his hands, mouth and shirt. "It's summer. We don't have school, and we can play all day."

"I won't have any more summers." Tag replied softly, patting the child on the head before moving off.

He moved slightly faster, weaving his way through any people who happened to be present in Cherrygrove. He couldn't even feel them around him...or hear them as he essentially walked through them, forcing them to jump to one side. The yells of protest and the curses for his rudeness fell on deaf ears; he only had one goal left and he was most certainly set in completing it.

Before long, he stood at the edge of the water, looking blankly out over its glistening, star reflected surface. "I'm sorry." He said aloud to no one before gently taking a step forward. The water lapped gently at his foot, causing him to stop and think for a moment. His mind flashed back to earlier that morning, the day before, and then slowly backwards through his lifetime to when he had met each of his pokemon companions, to his achievements and failures. Finally, his thoughts settled on the day he had first met Dratini, his first pokemon, and how happy they were to meet one another. A sharp pang shot through his heart as he imagined the eyes of his first friend, and knew that the same Dragonite, somewhere in Blackthorn, felt the same one. Finally, after an entire day, the tears began to flow as he took another step.

The water was warm, on that summer night. He felt it hug his calves, then his thighs, hips, waist, stomach, chest, neck...and finally his head as he simply continued walking forward. He watched as the bandages gently loosened from his face, floating off and away from him until he couldn't see them anymore in the dark waters. Closing his eyes, he felt the warmth envelope him as he struggled to continue moving forward.

"Goodbye" he mouthed, letting the water flow into his body. Goodbye

This post has been edited by Kamaitachi: Jun 15 2010, 12:47 AM

[Yzarc Drowsnam]

Hitmontop and Bonsly were the only things he had left to remind him of her. She left him as soon as she found out he chose the life of crime over honest work. She didn't even give him an ultimatum. She just left without a hope of return. She did, however, let him keep the pokemon she gave him a few months earlier. Tyrogue and Bonsly, but the tyrogue recently evolved. She was everything to him. He would have easily gone back to his construction job if she wanted him to. But she didn't care what he did, because she wanted to have nothing of him.

Justin Smart sat in his apartment on the couch, just looking at those two pokemon. His others were in their pokeballs still. Bonsly and Hitmontop did nothing but look back at him. They knew something was wrong, but they didn't know what. They never really got to know Tina.

He took a sip of his beer and began reminiscing on the best summer he ever had, right after Tina graduated high school.

The sun was shining, the air was hot and the water was cold. They were at a public lake with universally disregarded "No Swimming" signs up. Pokemon and their trainers alike swam in the water and played in the grass. Families were enjoying picnics and even some pokemon trainers were battling. Justin and Tina sat on the rocks, their bare feet dangling in the water. They were watching her goldeen and poochyena swim in the water. Goldeen, in particular, was enjoying it while Poochyena was still trying to figure the whole situation out.

"So are you still gonna do school?" Justin asked. He had dropped out a few months earlier during his senior year in order to take on more hours of work. Tina, however, stayed in school and graduated. Now she planned on going to college.

"That's the plan," she said, continuing to watch Poochyena. Then she looked over at Justin, her big green eyes gazing into his. "Are you ever gonna go back?"

"I don't know," Justin looked back at the water. "I mean, I don't know how easy promotions are. If they start promoting me, why go back?"

"I thought you wanted to be an architect," Tina suggested. "You need to go to college for that, you know?"

"Could we talk about something else?" Justin asked. He knew he made a bad decision. He didn't need her getting onto him about it. Well, on the contrary. He did need her to do that. He didn't want her to do that, though. "I just, uh,"

"It's fine," she smiled, putting her left arm around his waste and resting her head against his chest. He wrapped his right arm around her as well, and they just sat in silence for a while, just enjoying their day together. Justin only got one, maybe two, days off a week, and this is how he wanted to spend every one of them. He did spend a fair few like this and it paid off, as this was the memory he retained years later. He didn't remember the countless hours working. He didn't remember getting home at nine and waking up the next morning at six. He remembered this. The shining sun, the lake, Tina's pokemon...Tina.

"Justin?"

"What's up, babe?"

"What do you think about moving in together?"

He stayed silent, but didn't let go of her. They had been going out for a year and they had already had sex and said "I love you," to each other. But they were only eighteen years old, and Justin wasn't confident in the "L" word anyhow. He just wasn't quite sure what it meant. "When were you thinking?"

"Whenever you're ready," Tina said. "It's just that my dad says he's gonna start charging me rent since I'm graduated. I mean, I'll split the rent if we do this, I just figure if I'm gonna be paying rent, I might as well not live with my parents."

By that point, Justin already had an apartment. It was a small, one bedroom place, but it worked for him. Tina had seen it, but he still wondered whether or not she'd be comfortable in such a small place. Her pokemon certainly wouldn't be.

"So you'd be moving in with me?" he asked. "At my place?"

"Yeah, if that's. I mean,"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I mean, yeah. Definitely. Of course I want to live with you." He wasn't as confident as his words may have lead on.

"Really?" Her grin was so big and gorgeous that he immediately became more attracted to the idea of waking up next to her every morning and going to sleep with her every night. It was enough to make him want to be vulnerable, to make him want to cry and laugh and love. He wasn't sure whether he did, in fact, love her, but he wanted to love her so badly. Looking into her bright and cheery eyes, he knew she was the one.

He tried to stop it, but it was inevitable. A tear rolled down his face and he smiled. "Yeah."

"Promise me one thing, though, Justin," her face got a fake sort of serious. One that still had an aura of happiness, but her smile dissipated. Her big green eyes still looked up at him, though, her eyebrows both raised cutely.

"What's that?"

"Promise me that this won't change us. Promise we'll be together forever."

Justin answered that by kissing her. He didn't care that there were little kids around, nor did she. They used all the tongue they wanted, their hands wandering over each others' backs, their bodies moving closer and closer together. Justin ended the exchange by pulling Tina with him into the water where they were playfully tackled by Poochyena and Goldeen. "You jerk!" she screamed jokingly, shoving Justin's shoulder.

That was the beginning of a scorching hot summer, when Justin worked 50 hours a week in the sun. It was the most miserable and yet the most nostalgic summer of his entire life. Years later, he lived in the very same apartment just as he did before that memorable summer - Before Tina moved in. Now Tina had moved out, and only memories remained. Memories, pokemon and beer. He ended his consciousness for that day by chugging the last half of his last can and closing his tear filled eyes.

[Douken Sota]

A lazy yawn came from the young youth's mouth.Another day has come to his small island home he called Fidona.Another peaceful day, in this mixed up city, where most of the population was with current times, while the rest his away in the woods, as if hiding from time itself. Douken, the twelve year old boy, felt like he was in the middle of it.

"Morning Mom," he said as he entered the dining room, his mother, Lyna was in the kitchen, working on breakfast.

"Morning, dear," she said, placing some scrambled eggs on a plate. She is a kind-hearted person, and even if she didn't wear their clothes, she was still an Amazon at heart. The most obvious way to tell would be the markings on her shoulders. To them, they meant she was an honorary member of the tribe she was in, even if she went and married a male.

A Chansey walked on over to grab the plate as two strips of bacon were placed alongside the eggs, before taking it to the table and placing it in front of a seat, then heading back for a glass of milk to add with it. "Thanks, Seras," Douken said, the Chansey smiling with a bow before taking some Pokemon food and running out of the house.

With a small laugh, Douken pulled out the chair, just to see he had himself a little company in his seat. "Abby," he sighed, looking at the Skitty who was sleeping in his chair, which had him take his father's seat instead. "So Mom," he said, filling his fork with some eggs, "What's the plan for today?"

"I say the plan is for you to head out today, and have some fun," she said with her usual smile on her face. "I talked to the Tribe's leader today, and she said you may qualify for her trials next year, which means you have to learn to take care on your own, which means today, you will have to see what you can do. And besides, today is a great day to be outdoors anyways instead of inside. You should enjoy your summers!"

"Now, now," an older male's voice was heard as the front door opened up, Douken's Croagunk running in. "Remember, where I lived, everyone began their journey at the age of 10!"

"Morning, Dad," Douken called out, greeting his father, Sven. He grew up in an area he called Sinnoh, so he clearly showed signs that he was clueless when it came to Amazon traditions.

"Now dear," Lyna began to complain, "who in their right minds sends out a ten year old child into the open world with just an empty backpack and an inexperienced Pokemon?"

As the two argued about culture (note, this not the first time this has occurred), Douken ate his breakfast before taking his plates to the kitchen sink. "Well, if I have to go on my own today, might as well start now, right?" he said, interrupting them. "Croagunk and I will just grab Seel and be on our way! C'mon!"

AS the two ran out, Sven called out, "Seel is swimming with Lumace again." With that noted, Douken ran out of the house, petting Tamia, Sven's precious Kangaskhan, right under her chin to the right, before heading to the pool to grab Seel. With the one year old Water Type and two year old Poison and Fighting Type by his side, the headed north into the woods that filled Fidona's landscape.

The surrounding trees were no trouble for Douken and Croagunk. Seel, however, was another story. She was disliking the feeling of the tree roots and dirt under her fins and belly. The feeling of water around her felt a lot better for her. She would be able to swim a lot faster than her brother and father when it came to the water, that's for sure. She knew because she already beat them in many water races. Land, they had the advantage, which she didn't enjoy. "C'mon, girl," Douken called to her, "you don't want us to leave you behind, right?" Seel only grunted at the comment with an angry face and began to hop along to catch up.

The trees around then soon began to rustle, stopping Croagunk in his tracks. "Hey Croagunk, what's wrong?" Croagunk's cheeks just puffed, looking around, which made Douken and Seel curious enough to look around as well. "Are you sure its not just a Spear-" As he turned around, he was interrupted mid-sentence by a spear at his face, held by a woman who wore furs, an Amazon who kept her heritage, son to be followed by more from all sides, surrounding them with stoned-tipped weapons. The shock held Douken still, unsure what was going on, but Croagunk stood his ground, lifting his hands up to be ready for anything. Seel was just too confused to know what was happening.

"Akek!" came from behind some of the women in front of Douken and they moved aside, revealing a woman who donned herself in pelts that different from theirs in kind, but matched in style, and also wore a headband on her. "You, male. Who are you?" she demanded from him.

I-I'm Dou-Douken. Douken Sota," he stuttered. "M-My mother is Lyna Sota, an Amazon like you..." He could feel nervous sweat drop from his brow as he was being interrogated by the group of woman.

"Lyna Sota?" the woman with a headband repeated questionably before laughing, "You mean that Zakhan woman who married that Sinnoh man?" At those words, the spears drew closer, Douken's body being an inch away from some of them. "Now, what does an offspring of a Zakhan think he is doing, in Kelmena territory? Didn't she teach you our tribes have been at war?!"

"N-No ma'am...' he said with a tone full of fear. "I-I was just e-exploring the woods. F-Forgive me. I-I didn't know."

"You think we will take that kind of excuse?" one of the women yelled at him, before the leader placed her hand on the other's shoulder.

"If you can prove that you know not of our war, then we shall leave you be. However, if you fail, we will hold you prisoner and use you like a slave. Comply." With a nervous nod from the head, she said, "Very well. Remove your shirt, now." Without even fighting back, knowing the shoes he was in, he carefully removed the shirt he wore, bearing his plain chest and shoulders, which made them lower their weapons a little, giving the boy room to breathe. "You do not bear the Zakhan markings, it seems. Now, my only assumption is that you were not told, right?" Nervously, Douken nodded, agreeing to her. "Very well. Dekek!" At the command, the women lowered their weapons around the trio, placing a little ease on Croagunk. "Now then, follow me."

Douken and his teammates soon followed the tribe down to a small village that resided in the forest. "I would like to speak with Douken alone for a moment, if you may." The rest of the female warriors nodded in response and look off in their own ways, before he leader walked as well, signaling him to follow, leading him to a clear surrounding.

"What is it you wish to talk about?" Douken asked her, clueless to why he was here.

"How is your mother doing these days?" the woman asked, out of the blue.

"Fine, I guess... Why?"

"I still remember her, coming to our village, all those years ago. She was about the same age as you," he reminisced aloud. Douken couldn't help but listen in. "She went into our land, just as you, and faced the same trial. Only difference was she had the marks. When the leader at the time, my mother, asked why she was there, she gave an innocent smile, and replied, 'I wanted to make some friends.' She knew we were at war back then, but she still came on her own accord to meet our people. If she was the daughter of their leader, maybe they could of stopped all this, or been taught to think of us as enemies as well."

"So how did you meet?"

"We kept her as prisoner on our land, and it was my job to keep an eye on her as I learned to be leader. It was supposed to teach me how to deal with them, but instead, I grew to enjoy her company. She was one of the few people who I met on daily occasions who did not lecture me on how to lead others. Guess I grew a little attached."

"Wait, if my mom was kept as a prisoner, then wouldn't-"

"Yes. Her clan came and attacked to rescue her."

"I see. So, to be clear, I am not being a captive here, right?" He knew he went away from the question, but he didn't want to have a battle over him.

"Of course not. You are free to go any time you wish."

"Then I think I have used up my time here. I think we shall be going now," he said thanking her and headed for the exit.

"As you wish, but first, I have three things to tell you." Douken stopped to listen to what she said. "First, do not let the things in the world outside of here control your mind. Nothing shall beat the instinct you were given. Secondly, if you come here again, we will not take ignorance as an excuse. And thirdly, please tell your mother that Kana still thinks of her, and wants all of this to be over." As she said, a faint blush came over her face as Douken left, taking those words in as the scenery faded and Douken's eyes opened to a new day.

"Can't believe it has been four years already," sixteen year old Douken said before letting out a yawn as he say in an Arasam hotel room. It was odd. Every year on the day of special events, he would dream what occurred years back, just like when he knew of his tribe's rivalry, as if a reminder of what he went through. He was sure to remember what occurred with the Vonmoto event with the years to come,and hoped he would have more like it. "It's another new day, everyone," he said as his four Pokemon were around the room. "Let's make the best of it."

Yes, I know, weird ending...

[Xal]

The sun beat down on the coach as it rolled along the road. What was supposed to be a fun Summer's outing to Pewter City (which, Malcolm suspected, was really just a trip to a stuffy museum) was already turning into a dismal experience and they were only halfway there from Celadon. The teacher, Miss Watts, stood at the front of the bus watching over the class. She made it impossible to do anything fun; Malcolm wasn't planning on doing anything wrong, but there was something a bit off putting about a teacher staring at everyone. Sadly, the obnoxious Karl Reed didn't feel the same way.

"One more time!" He yelled, waving his chubby arms in the air with glee.

"No." Miss Watts commanded, the pain in her voice at the thought of listening to another round of 'nine hundred and ninety nine bottles' very clear. "That's enough."

Malcolm and Karl had never got on. Karl was a bit of a bully and Malcolm had always been the weird one in the class. He'd never been allowed to have pokémon, but had recently secretly caught a Pidgey. However, a few days earlier Karl had said he'd snitch to Malcolm's dad if he didn't give him his sweets. Malcolm was fine with that though, they were joke sweets which tasted foul and turned your tongue black which he'd bought with the express intention of kindly offering Karl one. The combination of his screechy twelve year old voice singing and the sweltering heat was making Malcolm wish that he'd stayed off to train Pidgey like he often did. Malcolm's thick green jumper wasn't making it much better either. He'd worn green jumpers in all weathers for as long as he could remember, and at that moment made a promise to himself that he'd change that habit soon. It just wasn't practical, especially in this weather. He couldn't go on like that his whole life. Beads of sweat started to trickle down his face, causing his glasses to slide down his nose. He took a moment to put them back into place and then looked down at the pokéball he held in his hand. Lots of people had at least a few pokémon in the family, but Pidgey was all Malcolm had. Ever since his mother had been lost searching for pokémon Malcolm's father had been terrified of them, making sure that neither he nor Malcolm had anything to do with them. For a while Malcolm lived in accordance with that, but soon fell victim to the pokémon bug and ended up catching Pidgey. It wasn't a difficult capture, he just threw a pokéball at him in a field. For a while he did feel a bit guilty about this, though. What if Pidgey had a family? He soon bonded with the pokémon though, and seeing how happy Pidgey was with him stopped his worrying. He trained Pidgey quite a lot, mainly when he should have been at school, but the small bird was still quite weak. He ended up getting mocked, especially by Karl, for it. On the few occasions he'd allowed himself to be battled he'd lost miserably. He sighed and shoved the minimised pokéball back into his pocket. He was considering releasing Pidgey and giving up on pokémon. He'd be much better off without Malcolm, and Malcolm didn't really need Pidgey for anything. It wasn't as if he could ever live a life going around catching and training pokémon whilst he had to keep a simple Pidgey a secret. He knew that he could never be a trainer, and nothing made him more depressed.


"Here we are, everyone off. One at a time please, slowly and calmly..." Miss Watts said as the class ran off the bus in a huge crowd the moment the doors squeaked open. To their dismay it was no cooler outside than inside. The heat was still stifling and the sun was intense.

"Come on everyone, the museum's this way!" She said cheerfully, marching ahead. A few assistants, mainly parents, watched to make sure all the children were following. Malcolm looked behind him at a forest just about visible between the buildings. It must have been Viridian Forest, he'd read about it quite a lot. He looked back towards the class, noticing Karl and his friends trying to get away. They were slowing down and letting the rest of the class get ahead, at all times trying to remain casual. Making an intense effort to look casual was a self defeating endeavour however, and the teaching assistants soon picked up on their plan on told them to rejoin the class - exaggerated whistling with their hands in their pockets whilst suspiciously looking behind them at every possible moment wasn't casual, it was downright creepy. Grumbling, they jogged ahead and rejoined the group. Karl took a moment to try to straighten his short greasy ginger hair, which was standing on end on one side.

"You too, Malcolm." One of the adults said. Malcolm sighed and joined them. He wasn't up to no good, he was just walking a bit more slowly. It wound him up no end when teachers tried to exert authority just for the feeling of power, which was the excuse he told himself every time he ever got in trouble.

It wasn't long before the class reached the museum's entrance. The teachers were bustling about getting tickets sorted out, and the class was impatiently stood outside. Some were moaning about the heat and thirst, others about having to spend a day in the museum. Malcolm didn't really want to either, but what else could he do?

"Now's our chance." He heard Karl mumble to one of his friends. The four of them quickly shuffled out of the crowd and past Malcolm, but after a few steps they stopped.
"Hey, Specs!" Karl called out, using his favourite nickname for Malcolm. "Come on, don't be a loser. Come to the forest."
Malcolm knew they only wanted to go with him so they could make fun of him, but he knew they'd manage to make him miserable about it even if he didn't go. Besides, he thought the forest would probably be much cooler than the museum. He meant colder, of course, but it would probably be cooler in the 'like, totally awesome!' sense too. There would be bug types, of course, and maybe - if he was lucky - some of the Pikachu family. He'd always wanted one, but he never expected he'd get one. They were just too uncommon for someone with a weak Pidgey and no expertise to catch. He wouldn't be catching one today anyway, Pidgey wouldn't stand a chance in a fight with one of them and even if he could he didn't have any empty pokéballs. There were some hidden back at home in a shoebox under his bed, but they wouldn't be any use all those miles away.

Malcolm sighed and joined them as they quickly darted around a corner whilst no one was looking. Malcolm was no stranger to running off from school, he did it all the time to train Pidgey. However, they were far from home and he was with people he didn't really like. He already knew it was a bad idea, and considered running back, but it was too late now. They'd just laugh at him when they next met up, and Malcolm would have been deprived of the opportunity to go around Viridian Forest.

"Specs, they'll notice we're gone soon... keep hidden." Karl demanded, looking over his shoulder to see if they were being followed. It was all clear. They'd be at the forest within minutes, and once they were in that maze of trees they'd be hidden completely. After scuttling through the city they made their way past a large complex with several pokémon in the garden which bordered the forest. There was a group of Pidgey and a Pidgeotto, as well as a Raichu, Pikachu and Pichu playing there. Malcolm looked at them enviously. He wished he had pokémon like that. There was no use in being jealous though, he probably never would. He had his Pidgey, of course, but not one of the 'chus, and he didn't expect Pidgey would ever evolve. As he stood there he considered letting Pidgey out and sending him to be a part of that flock. He'd be much better off with his own kind, and would doubtlessly fare better in if he was attacked - he'd be stronger and would have the support of a group. Malcolm decided to hang on to Pidgey for a little longer, though. He had no way of knowing if the wild pokémon would accept him, and not only that but he had grown quite attached to Pidgey. He'd be sad to see him go, and hoped Pidgey would feel the same way about him.

"Look!" one of Karl's friends, Matt, interrupted Malcolm's thought. He pointed one of his sausage fingers towards a group of Kakuna by a tree, apparently all alone.

"Awesome!" Karl squeeled. "Free pokémon!"

Karl and his friends jogged towards the Kakuna, but Malcolm wasn't so eager.

"I'm not sure this is such a good idea..." He called out to them, as quietly as he could with them still being able to hear him. He didn't know a great deal about pokémon but he'd still read a couple of books over and over again, and one of those books was about bugs. If Kakuna were there, so were the rest of their family. That meant Weedle and, more importantly, the terrifying Beedrill. Terrifying to Malcolm, anyway. He didn't know if Karl and co. would be worried about them, or if their pokémon could fight them off if they attacked.

"Oh shut it Specs." Karl spat on the ground. "I knew it was a bad idea to bring a baby. Run home to Miss if you're too scared."

Malcolm wished he could, but probably wouldn't be able to find the way. And he'd be in trouble when he got back anyway, so he might as well stick around for a bit. Karl reached into his pocket and pulled out a pokéball, grinning at the Kakuna. He looked around to in case there were any pokémon who might interfere, but he couldn't see any. He bit his lip with excitement, hesitated a moment, and then threw the ball forward. There was a flash, and suddenly one less Kakuna.

"Awesome!" His friends guffawed, taking out pokéballs of their own and catching their own Kakuna. Malcolm suddenly realised what a nightmare this was - a group of bullies with a pokémon that would soon evolve into Beedrill? Oh dear. However, Malcolm's worries were eased as, one by one, the Kakuna broke free of their pokéballs and returned to their wild state. Karl cursed under his breath, grabbing another pokéball.

"You look like you need some persuading." He mumbled, releasing his pokémon.

"Captain Falcon! Attack!" He ordered, talking to his Rattata. It leapt towards one of the Kakuna with its mouth wide open, baring its sharp teeth. As the Rattata bit into the bug Malcolm recognised the attack as Hyper Fang, a move that the vile little rat had used on his Pidgey not too long ago.

"Now, are you going to cooperate?" Karl asked the Kakuna. Malcolm didn't expect it would be able to understand him, and even if it could then it would probably only laugh (if it had a mouth) at Karl's attempt to sound intimidating. Still, Hyper Fang must have done some damage, and he could easily see Kakuna being captured now.

The nearby Beedrill, however, had a different idea. It had seen the attack and wasn't at all happy about it. In one swoop it had appeared as if from nowhere and flown straight at the Rattata.

"Captain Falcon! Nooo!" Karl yelled as the Rattata was knocked to the ground. Malcolm didn't expect he was bothered about the Rattata's wellbeing, just the fact that without him he wouldn't be able to catch the Kakuna. At this point it didn't matter though, the Kakuna were defended by an angry Beedrill so catching one or not was the least of their worries. All they had to worry about was getting out of there, which Karl's friends were happy to take care of. Within a few seconds they'd vanished from sight leaving only Malcolm, Karl and the pokémon. The enraged Beedrill turned towards Karl, the hatred in its eyes clear for all to see. Rattata was still lying on the ground, and Malcolm didn't think that things could turn out well. Pokémon didn't attack people, did they? His dad had always said they would, but he had no idea if that was true. The tense scene was interrupted by a slight snuffling. There was something making a noise, but what?

"Falcon! Great! Get the Beedrill!" He cried out. "Captain Falcon", a name Malcolm had always thought hilarious (which wasn't Karl's intention, since if it was Malcolm would have made sure he didn't find it even remotely funny), had climbed up and, despite looking a little dazed, seemed to be fine. Malcolm expected he'd be able to battle, and couldn't help but smile as relief washed over him. Despite not having a very high opinion of him or his trainer there was no denying that it was a strong pokémon, and so everything looked as if it was going to be all right. Beedrill had just caught him off guard, but he'd probably be able to beat him in battle now that he knew the bug type was there. The Rattata, however, had different plans. It looked at the Beedrill, looked at Karl, and then back to the Beedrill. It hesitated for a second or two and then joined Karl's friends in running away, and despite the situation Malcolm couldn't help but be impressed by its speed.

"You worthless..." Karl's insults were interrupted by the Beedrill flying at him, knocking him to the floor and away from the Kakuna. It flew above him, pointing its sharp stinger at him. Malcolm had no idea if what he thought was going to happen actually would or if he was just being silly, but he wasn't going to stay and watch. He wasn't going to put himself in danger because that brat decided to run off and attack a Kakuna.
As he was about to dart off and get help, he turned back and looked at the boy desperately trying to escape. How could he possibly live with himself if he ran away? Yes, he'd be getting help, but how long would that take? The complex with the pokémon was only a minute or two away, but even if there was someone there and they came straight away it would probably be too late (assuming anything was actually going to happen - in spite of his fear, Malcolm had no idea what the Beedrill was going to do). But what could he do? He did have one idea, but didn't expect it could possibly work. Still, there was a type advantage...

"Pidgey, go!" He called out, throwing the pokéball to the ground. His ever loyal pokémon burst out, attracting the Beedrill's attention. Pidgey was too weak to battle a Beedrill, but he had to try.

"Use tackle!" He ordered, the only offensive move it knew. Pidgey flew forward and struck the Beedrill in the face, forcing it backwards a little but mostly irritating it. Things weren't going well. He knew this was a bad idea, all he'd succeeded in doing was angering the Beedrill. It may have been slightly injured but not significantly. However, at least it was away from Karl now. Malcolm ran forward and grabbed the boy by his shirt, pulling him to his feet.

"Run!" He shouted, which Karl was ever so eager to do. After nodding hurriedly he too ran off at an impressive speed despite his clear lack of an athletic figure, leaving Malcolm behind to face the Beedrill.

"All right Pidgey... sand attack!" He called. He might not be able to defeat the Beedrill but they were extremely close to the forest's edge. It wouldn't follow them out and if Pidgey could stop the Beedrill from finding them even for a few seconds then that would be enough. Pidgey followed the order instantly, blowing sand and dirt from the floor into the Beedrill's face. It closed its eyes and shook its head, struggling to remain airborne as it tried to shake the sand from its eyes.

"Now go Pidgey, go!" He screamed, darting away from the Beedrill and out of the forest as fast as his legs could carry him. As he left the shelter of the tress the heat of the sun hit him again, but if it meant he was out of the forest then it was a blessing. Pidgey flew alongside, wanting to make sure Malcolm got out safely even though he could fly away effortlessly. Malcolm didn't stop running until he was well into the city, and only then did he look back. There was no Beedrill. He wasn't being followed. He was safe. He smiled and started to make his way back to the museum, or where he thought the museum was anyway. With any luck, no one would know he was gone. However, as soon as he looked ahead he saw Miss Watts, her arms folded and looking furious. Karl and his friends were right behind her, and apparently they'd been caught too.
At that moment a furious ferocious Beedrill didn't seem like such a scary thing at all.

[Protoman]

This is a crossover fanfic, basically talking about wnat would happen IF Richie was able to leave Noverus and go back to Johto.

Tyson hated the headaches he had. He didn't always know what they meant, or why they happened. He did know, however, that it came from his family, somehow.

"You'll be fine," His mother told him one Saturday afternoon after one of his tremendous headaches kicked in and crippled him instantly. "Soon they'll go away, and you will be alright. I promise."

How would she know, Tyson asked himself as he was back in Johto for the time being. She's never had these headaches, has she? Assuming that his mother had something to hide, Tyson was about to confront her, until he was stopped by his father.

"Son," Mr. Parker said to Tyson, causing him to flinch slightly, "we need to talk...now."

"Uh-oh," Tyson muttered to himself, "here comes trouble..." They began walking into the wilderness, stopping after being in the middle of the forest. "What's up, dad?" Tyson smiled widely, trying to protect the fact that he thought he did something wrong, like hiding the fact about his headaches occurring more frequently now than they had been.

"I know you are a clairvoyant, Tyson," Mr. Parker responded, "and I know the pain you're going through right now. Your mother knows better than I do, but I had to go through pain and suffering when I was your age too."

"Like what," Tyson asked, "lost your Pokemon?"

"No son," Mr. Parker told him, laughing at his son's question, "the truth is, your mother and I are psychics. Your mother more so than me." For a moment, there was silence, then Tyson scoffed, making his father slightly upset.

"No way," Tyson said, shaking his head in stubborn disbelief. "I won't believe it."

"Have you ever lost consciousness," Mr. Parker said, causing Tyson to begin to worry, "seeing glimpses of the future? Skull splitting headaches that make you pass out? Never paying attention to certain details and wind up seeing deep or narrowly into the future?" Tyson said nothing, but simply stared at his father. "How about feeling a sense of security when you see them, knowing what to expect before it happens?" Again, Tyson simply stared at his father. "Answer me," Mr. Parker barked, making Tyson begin to breathe heavily.

"It was nothing, dad," Tyson lied, "I didn't feel any pain, I didn't pass out, and I didn't see into the future." His dad scoffed this time, smiling in disbelief and slight frustration.

"Really now," Mr. Parker said, "then you wouldn't mind if Alakazam checks you out, right?" Tyson again flinched at this being said. A Poke Ball was tossed into the air, revealing Alakazam. Tyson looked at the Psychic Pokemon and back at his father before swallowing hardly.

"Wait," Tyson said before he was busted in a lie, "okay, it's all true." Mr. Parker smiled in success, "but it only happened once here at home! The rest of the time I was in Furoh!" Mr. Parker put his hands on his son's shoulders, calming him down.

"It's alright," Mr. Parker stated, "now come on. Richie's here on temporary leave and we don't wanna miss him being here." With a nod, Tyson gripped his dad's hand, who in turn, touched Alakazam by the hand. "Teleport us home, Alakazam." In a fraction of a second, the three of them were all in front of the house. After stepping inside, Tyson immediately saw Richie and smiled.

"RICHIE!" Tyson yelled in joy as he darted towards his cousin. Richie, not expecting this at all, was tackled and landed on the floor.

"TYYYYSOOOOON!" Richie bellowed in anger as Tyson darted out of the house, Richie close on his tail.
----------------
"How are things in Noverus, Rich," Tyson asked, intrigued as to how his cousin had been living in the Hoenn region.

"Still pretty bad," Richie responded dreadfully, "now that Magma's getting even stronger anyway." He sighed and took a sip from a glass filled with lemonade, smacking his lips as it splashed down to his stomach. "What about your adventures in Furoh?"

"Pretty good," Tyson told his cousin, "I checked out an ancient ruin there."

"Sounds pretty cool," Richie told him with little enthusiasm.

"Wow," Tyson said in just as dry of a tone, "try to control your excitement."

"Let's battle," Richie told him, getting a slight shiver from Tyson.

"Now," Tyson asked, smiling meekly.

"Yeah," Richie responded, grinning from ear to ear.
-----------------
With the battlefield set, the opponents ready, and Pokemon at their disposal, Tyson glared at Richie, who simply smirked at his younger cousin.

"Ready to lose," Richie asked cockily.

"I was gonna ask you that," Tyson said in a smug tone, causing Richie to snarl up.

"Both of you can only use three Pokemon," Mr. Parker stated, "The person with no more Pokemon at their disposal is the loser, understood?"

"Yep," Richie responded plainly.

"Got it Dad," Tyson stated before pulling out a Poke Ball.

"Spunky," Richie stated before tossing the Poke Ball he had lightly into the air, "show them what you've got!" In a flash of white light, The Growlithe began to hop around, panting happily and ready to battle.

"Perfect," Tyson muttered to himself, "Hydro, let's rumble!" Another flash revealed the Squirtle, staring at Spunky before noticing Spunky snarl up. Hydro looked a little nervous until he saw Richie pet Spunky lightly.

"It's okay boy," Richie told his Growlithe, " They're my cousin's Pokemon I'm battling, not a member of Aqua or Magma." Spunky yipped playfully, going into more of a friendlier attack pose, calming the Squirtle down. "Spunky, use Tackle!"

"Hydro, Bubble to slow it down" Tyson shouted. In a quick set of motions, Spunky charged forward, straight through the barrage of bubbles, knocking Hydro down. "Hydro!" The Squirtle, who luckily landed on his front, got back up and glared at Spunky, who was grinning. "Tackle!"

"Smokescreen, Spunky," Richie called out, which then made a cloud of smoke appear around Tyson and Hydro, who stopped after being surrounded in the cloud. "Now Bite!" Teeth clamping together was heard through the smoke. "Don't let go, boy!" The smoke began to clear, causing Tyson and Richie to have shock written all over their faces. Apparently, Hydro had gone into his shell, causing Spunky to bite down on the protective casing. Spunky whimpered in pain as he finally released the Squirtle. "Flamethrower!"

"Aqua Jet, Hydro," Tyson yelled, causing another chain reaction, Hydro went straight through Spunky's attack, coming out on the other side and hitting Spunky, knocking him to the ground. Spunky got up, growling lowly. Behind the Squirtle, a cloud of smoke was produced from the two attacks mixing together. "Water Gun at point blank range!"

"Ember, now," Richie yelled before both Pokemon released their devastating attacks. As the smoke and steam cleared, both Spunky and Hydro were down, resulting in a draw. Tyson made his partner Hydro return, as Richie returned Spunky. "Nice counter, man."

"Thanks," Tyson stated, smiling widely as to how much he had improved since his leaving.

"Don't get too happy, though," Richie told him, "That was just the tip of the iceberg." A smile appeared as he pulled out a Luxury Ball.

"Huh," Tyson said, utterly confused as to why he would own a Luxury Ball.

"Ryu," Richie stated, tossing his Luxury Ball in the air, "let 'im have it!" In another flash, the small, yet strong, Riolu bounced playfully in the area. Tyson thought about the current situation.

"Riolu is a fighting type," He said lowly, "so I'll use..." He pulled out a second Poke Ball tossing it into the air. "Aero, let's go!" The sphere opened and the Pidgey took to the skies, swooping down and landing on Tyson's shoulder.

"You love playing it smart, huh," Richie asked smugly.

"Yep," Tyson responded, grinning afterwards.

"You won't once I'm done with you," Richie told him, "Ryu, Bullet Punch!"

"Aero," Tyson said to his partner on his shoulder, "get in there and hit him with a Peck the likes he's never seen!" The duo clashed, hitting each other with both of their attacks with all they could muster. It appeared that Ryu had the upper hand, pushing the Pidgey back into a corner. After knocking him back slightly, Aero began to flap his wings furiously, making a mini tornado around Ryu.

"Gust," Richie said, "that Pidgey's using Gust? That is gonna hurt a little." Richie was right. Even though the attack was super effective, Ryu was still too strong for the attack to have done major damage. "Force Palm, Ryu." The Riolu placed his hand in front of Aero, who didn't know what to expect.

"No," Tyson said, "IT'S AN ATTACK!" Too late. Ryu knocked the Pidgey into a tree, knocking him out entirely.

"Aero is unable to battle, Ryu is the winner," Mr. Parker said.

"Last chance to quit, Tyson," Richie said in a dull tone. Tyson shook his head vigorously.

"I won't lose," He bellowed, "BLAZE, YOU'RE MY LAST HOPE!!!" One final flash came from Tyson's side, revealing the young Cyndaquil from his Poke Ball.

"So, you kept him after all," Richie said, smiling at Tyson's choice.

"You know I save the best for last," Tyson told his eager cousin before pointing towards him. "Plus, I can't lose to you. Not this time. Blaze, show them your Flamethrower!"

"Quick Attack, then Force Palm," Richie said loudly, Before the flames could hit the Riolu's body, he wasright next to the Cyndaquil and had his hand near his face. With a little force, Ryu knocked the Cyndaquil towards a tree, but not before getting slightly caught within the attack. He was hit and burned, causing him to jump around a little. This made Tyson happy. He would have been even more happy if Blaze wasn't paralyzed from that Force Palm. Blaze began to shake violently, Showing signs that victory was just within a reach. The problem was Ryu being injured as well. "Bullet Punch!"

"Quick attack and then Ember," Tyson told his Pokemon, who somehow managed to do both of those things, adding more pain to Ryu.

"Force Palm again," Richie told the Riolu, who obeyed by doing so. Blaze slowly began to slip out of consciousness, but wouldn't give up. "Just stop him, Tyson!" Richie began to feel sorry for not only Tyson, but his Pokemon as well.

"Blaze, please," Tyson told him, with tears in his eyes, "just stop fighting..." The Cyndaquil wouldn't listen at all, and was hit with a Quick Attack, knocking him out. Tyson returned Blaze to his Poke Ball, tears welling up in his eyes. Richie stood there, half wanting to say something, half wanting to leave Tyson to himself...
----------------
"You both have to leave so soon," Mrs. Parker asked, wishing Tyson could stay longer, "I have some brownies in the oven." Tyson loved his mother's brownies, but knew he had to go back to Furoh.

"I wish I could, Aunt Pam," Richie said, smiling after hearing about brownies, "but I'm just not able to. Duty calls."

"I understand," Mrs. Parker stated, smiling warmly at Richie. Tyson, still teary eyed, had his back turned to Richie as he left for the boat back to Noverus. Mr. and Mrs. Parker both looked at their son and then each other. "Honey, what's wrong?"

"I lost," Tyson said lowly, his eyes a bright shade of pink from crying to himself. "I couldn't beat him...again." Tyson slung his bag onto his shoulder and headed west. "I'll be back home soon. After I get stronger..."

A light flashed within Tyson's face, Blaze, Hydro, and Aero all staring at him in amazement.

"A dream," Tyson asked out loud, looking around and seeing Tikal and Alex still sound asleep. He smiled and laid back down. "I know what I'm doing this summer..."

This post has been edited by Protoman: Jun 16 2010, 01:52 PM

[Toogee]

The following takes place during Pan's 16th summer, two years prior to her arrival in Furoh:

“Alright class, single file. No pushing or shoving,” said Mr. Henderson, the short, bald man sitting up front. His appearance personified the geeky teacher look: a short-sleeved buttoned white shirt, navy blue slacks, and a red bowtie with white polka dots. His beady eyes behind his thick-rimmed glasses watched for trouble among the young crowd.

In one of the upper rows, Pan watched as her fellow students walked off the bus, the teacher, Mr. Henderson, directing them so no stampede occurs. Not that she would have blamed them: they had just been through a long plane ride from Celadon City in Kanto to Mauville City in Hoenn. They were immediately put on a bus to the desert region north of the city for another hour. Pan couldn’t wait to get off and stretch her legs, though her fellow classmates were still suffering the effects of jetlag.

While the students bore weary looks and frowns, Pan was bright-eyed and all smiles. Aside from a nap in the plane, she kept her eyes on the nearest window so she wouldn’t miss a single sight. This was her first time in Hoenn; she wanted to see what made it so different from home. Among the biggest points was the desert, a vast wasteland that held unknown mysteries. She watched as the green grass transitioned into a sandy sea that stretched for miles. Meanwhile, her faithful bulbasaur slept upon Pan’s lap for much of the trip. Turnip’s slumber was cut short as the human nudged him awake. Both followed the crowd outside.

The group of twelve students (including Pan) crowded outside the bus for further instructions. Pan looked around their surroundings: aside from a few small cacti and a large sign (“Dig Site. No Trespassing.”), there was nothing but sand all around. The bright sun was already taking its toll; students were fumbling for their water bottles. After a few minutes of waiting, a blurry shape appeared on the horizon. As it quickly approached the students, the shape became clearer: a man riding upon a beautiful rapidash. When the man arrived, his features were more visible. His white hair was a bit long, yet it stood up rather than drape down his neck. His beard grew to the point where it was indistinguishable from his hair, reaching to the sides of his chin. It gave the man the appearance of having a mane, a quality that made him quite feared among some of the students. Many were expecting him to bellow out a mighty roar! His denim jacket and pants were tinged with dirt; he had been working prior to the meeting. Standing at 6’5”, the mystery man was the tallest person among them. The class remained silent as the intimidating man gazed upon them with his narrow brown eyes.

“Class, may I introduce you to the leader of the Route 111 Dig Site: Professor Marcus Stone of the Petropolis Museum.”

“Thank you,” Marcus replied in his deep voice. “Your teacher has informed me that you are among the best of his class. I applaud your success. However, you will need more than thesis papers, textbooks, and late night study sessions to get through this assignment. Here, you will need your eyes and skills of deduction.”

Marcus started walking towards the site, the group curiously following him.

“Today, you are no longer students. You join the ranks of the great explorers before you, a part of the solution to the age-old puzzle of history.”

Marcus stopped at the edge of site, waiting for the students to bear witness of the site. Pan and the others looked down to see a crew of workers uncovering an ancient pyramid. Only one side had a wide staircase built into the side. The stone stairs led to a doorway, where archeologists were bringing in tools and leaving with buckets of sand and/or rubble. Though the structure was only about two stories high, it still managed to elicit oohs and awes from the students. Pan was quite impressed; she hadn’t read too much on ancient ruins within Hoenn, so it was quite an opportunity to explore them in real life.

“Welcome to the Route 111 Ruins,” Marcus finished. He returned his rapidash and headed down the ladder, the chattering class followed him down and into the pyramid itself.

***

The group spread out across the large space, taking notes of the various carvings on the wall, while others helped scientists make imprints of those same carvings. While Mr. Henderson was lecturing a student about putting wads of gum on ancient artifacts, Pan was on picture duty. With Turnip by her side, she took pictures of anything that stood out. These included the ornate pillars arranged in three rows down the room, a strange clay pot depicting a cross between a helicopter and a hot-air balloon, and a couple of her friends goofing off with the digging instruments (Mr. Henderson did not approve).

Pan noticed that not many people were looking at the back end of the room. She walked over there and wiped off a layer of dust from part of the floor. The young teen took notice that one of the revealed tiles appeared jumbled up. It was a fairly large piece, big enough for two people to fit on top of. And yet, the design differed from the wavy lines inscribed within the other tiles. This looked like a shape of some sort, but it was divided into nine pieces, all jumbled up to hide the meaning. Pan knelt down and thought about how to solve this ancient jigsaw puzzle.

What she didn’t know was that Prof. Stone was watching her work from behind. All the other students were busy examining the work his group spent days studying. There was nothing wrong with that; it was good to have a few pairs of eyes looking at the same discovery. That’s how important observations were made. However, there was a certain quality about Pan going off on her own that caught his interest. She wasn’t simply interested in seeing what scientists found; the girl wanted to find her own discoveries, find something that they missed. It was true that Marcus missed this particular puzzle; most of these types of tiles were built into walls rather than floors. He knelt down beside her to offer sage advice.

“Start with the corners,” Marcus said, causing Pan to turn her head. After the initial surprise, she started pulling the tiles aside and placed the corners. As she worked, Marcus inquired further on the bright student.

“What is your name?”

“Pandora Gibbs, sir.”

“Well, Ms. Gibbs, this is indeed an excellent find. Do you have any experience in researching digs?”

“No, this would be my first.”

Marcus nodded; it always seemed that amateurs find the best discoveries. Before he could go on, Pan had finished with the puzzle. The finished image appeared to be an eye with an upside down triangle on top. Many people would have thought it was simply an odd shape, but the students and scientists in this room knew it was a particular unown.

“Ooh, I know this one,” Pan exclaimed. “It’s a V-shape, so that means…”

“Vanish,” Marcus finished. Suddenly, the entire piece started to glow as the two stood on top. Next thing they knew, the tile gave way, send both Pan and the professor hurtling downward into the unknown darkness. Turnip attempted to pull them back with his vines, but the weight of both humans simply pulled the bulbasaur down with them. Upon hearing a short scream, the students and scientists quickly gathered around the hole, wondering what became of them.

***

Pan, Turnip, and the professor fell deeper into the structure. Fortunately, they avoided serious injury, for a pile of sand broke their falls. The sand was arranged in a way so that the humans and pokemon would slide down the mound, losing much of their momentum as they slowed to a stop. The generous incline allowed Pan to land on her feet, though she stumbled a bit at first. She was glad to see the professor was all right; she almost laughed as Marcus shook his head to get the sand out of his “mane”. Turnip was busy wiping off the sand off of his human while Pan looked around to see where they landed.

“Are you two alright down there?” said a voice. Pan wasn’t sure who it was, but the professor seemed to recognize him.

“Better than all right. We found a new chamber! Toss my lamp down, then find yourselves a ladder,” the professor asked, feeling a bit excited about the situation.

In the dim light, the humans could only see each other. Pan liked how the professor was seeing this turn of events as an opportunity for discovery, not panicking in the face of adversity (FYI: her teacher would have broken down). Likewise, Marcus admired the young girl’s work ethic; she wasn’t waiting for his orders to start looking around. She genuinely wanted to be down in the chamber. Such natural curiosity could prove to be an asset in this expedition.

As the electric lamp rolled down the sandy slope, Marcus grabbed it and set the light to full power. Bright light filled the room, revealing an elaborate diorama upon the walls. It depicted an ancient people ascending into the sky and onto a new land. Man, woman, and child entered a pyramid-like structure, where they recorded their journey for generations to see. Pan looked on in awe: if that pyramid was the same building she was standing in, what kind of magical land could they have left? Why would they leave in the first place? The picture raised many questions in Pan’s mind. Marcus, however, didn’t look surprised. He was absolutely satisfied about the find, but it was the kind of find he was expecting. A find he may have missed if it weren’t for the young girl.

***

The light also revealed a tunnel leading to yet another room. The turn prevented any view of the adjacent room. Perhaps it revealed the rest of the story. Pan did not waste time and headed straight for the passageway, the professor lighting the way behind her. As she wandered through the path, Pan felt an urge to keep going, as if someone was telling her that something was waiting for her at the other end. While they were traveling, she decided to strike a conversation with the professor.

“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly are you doing in Hoenn?”

“Ah, well, I’m looking into a theory about an ancient civilization in my country. You see, these people disappeared without a trace. Thanks to your help, I may have another piece of the puzzle.”

“So, you think they immigrated to- WOAH!”

Pan jumped back as an object suddenly came to life amidst the still scenery. Marcus also was startled, but mostly in reaction to Pan’s shock, as well as Turnip’s immediate attack. The bulbasaur was not waiting to find out what the “enemy” was; he quickly unleashed a vine whip attack. As the perpetrator was flung into the wall, Pan recognized the object: a clay doll molded into the shape of a top. As the pokemon fell to the ground, both Pan and the professor kneeled down to examine it.

“Amazing,” commented Marcus as he shined the light closer to the baltoy. “It’s possible it may have been hibernating within this tunnel. I cannot say how long, but perhaps it has more answers for us.”

Pan would have loved to listen to the rest of his comments, but she was busy trying to keep Turnip from dismantling the unsuspecting pokemon. One hand pushed on Turnip’s forehead to keep him away, while the other reached out of her pack for a spare pokeball. Pan showed it to the professor, who nodded approvingly. The baltoy could prove to be a part of the mystery; it would be wise to keep it handy. If nothing else, it was a just a pokemon that wandered inside for shelter. A simple tap was all that was needed to absorb the baltoy into its new home.

The girl went back through her backpack and grabbed a potion. The professor watched as Pan summoned the baltoy and applied the medicine (while keeping an eye on Turnip). Compassion for pokemon partners went very far in remote locations like the temple. When no other humans were around, a loyal pokemon could prove to be a lifesaver.

***

Pan left the baltoy out as she finally entered the other secret room. All along the walls were rows of an ancient language made up of unown letters. As soon as she stepped into the room, the letters literally came to life, forming a large cloud over the room. Eyes looked down upon the visitors, watching for their next move.

“I didn’t think unown were even in Hoenn,” Pan remarked as she entered with her camera. As she took several snapshots of the gathering, a group of five unown separated from the cloud and circled around the girl. She felt some sort of mystical energy around her; it was difficult to describe. It was as if she reached a shocking secret in an engrossing story, where a great mystery was finally solved. Something was being revealed to Pan, something not even Turnip dared to interrupt.

The professor stood a little outside the room, careful not to disturb the creatures surrounding Pan. Instead, he decided to narrate.

“Ancient texts in Furoh suggest that young people would enter dark tombs to find these unown chambers. The pokemon were said to be able to predict the future, telling the person their true path.”

Pan was only half listening as she turned to see the group of unown around her. She reached out to touch one, but the unown dodged her hand.

“What is it?” Pan asked the pokemon. “What are you trying to say?”

The professor simply smiled and continued, talking to himself aloud.

“Find, undo, reassure, observe, help,” he said, translating the five unown letters around Pan. “Taken as is, they are just a bunch of words with no meaning. But what if they could be read differently? Would they have a different or even multiple meanings? The letters alone spell “Furoh,” but what does that have to do with their translations? What are these creatures trying to tell her?”

As Marcus pondered the mystery, the unown started retreating into the walls. Just then, more lights and footsteps entered the tunnel. The two turned to see that Marcus’s team and Pan’s class made their way to the room. While the scientists did not hesitate to set up the site, the students stood by and awaited orders.

“Sorry you missed the show,” Marcus replied, “I’ll fill you in later. For now, look out for anything that catches your eyes.”

***

Students and scientists alike were examining the walls of text that adorned all sides of the room. Some were writing down the letters in a notepad, while others were staring back and forth between textbooks and writings. More than a few students had the look of a RP mod judging a hastily written profile: utter frustration. Deciphering the language would take several hours. Many resorted to the notepad strategy for future translation in more air-conditioned environments.

Meanwhile, Pan was examining, of all things, a torch. It was brought in by the scientists and placed in a hole within the wall. At first glance, its purpose as a torchbearer seemed appropriate, but Pan wanted more than a quick look. She removed the torch to examine the hole itself.

“Ms. Gibbs! Don’t tamper with equipment,” Mr. Henderson warned. Professor Stone quickly interrupted him. He wanted to see what she found. Besides, it was just a torch.

“Wait,” he said. “Let’s see what she does.”

Pan continued her work, peering into the crevasse. As she removed some webbing and dust, Pan saw one large cone-shaped hole with two slits on each side. This didn’t seem like just a place for torches; it somewhat resembled a key. What could it possibly lead to? More importantly, where was the key?

Her thought process was interrupted when her new baltoy started bumping into her leg. Pan stepped aside and watched as the baltoy levitated up the wall and into the hole. It’s bottom section and arms fit neatly within the cavities, causing a clicking sound to echo through the room. Everyone quickly stopped working to gather around and see what would happen next. It appeared the baltoy was waiting for a command, but Pan wasn’t sure what to say. She thought back to her pokemon classes: one attack she remembered distinctly was a spinning maneuver. It was handy in removing spikes and leech seeds; perhaps it could be used to turn the baltoy into a key. She hoped it knew the maneuver and gave the command.

“Rapid Spin,” Pan ordered.

The baltoy turned as ordered, causing part of the wall to recede into the ground. Several people looked on as the new room was revealed: it resembled a closet in size, consisting of a stone altar with an impressive looking staff lying on the top. Upon closer examination, the staff was made of gold and carved into the shape of the legendary Rayquaza. As Professor Stone grasped the staff in his hands, he examined every detail: the scales carved across the shaft, the pair of arms protruding out, and the head itself. Eyes and teeth revealed craftsmanship work of these ancient people. This truly took the professor by surprise.

He looked back at Pan and nodded his approval. Pan smiled back, proud of herself for helping delve deeper into the mysterious structure.

***

As the afternoon waned, the students of Celadon High wearily headed backto the bus. Many were eager to get out of the desert and explore the nightlife of Mawville City, while others were simply looking forward to a nap on the ride back. Before that could happen, the bus had to wait on one last person. Pan was making one last visit to Professor Stone before departing.

“Thank you for letting me keep Pivot- er, the baltoy I found,” she said.

“It was a fair capture. May it serve you well in the future,” Marcus replied. “Speaking of which, have you thought about what you will be doing after high school?”

“I can’t say I have,” Pan answered hesitantly. “I’ll likely apply for college, maybe study archeology.”

“Tell me, how would you like to do what you did today, but on a much larger scale?”

The professor looked intently at Pan, noticing that she was a bit confused about what he was asking. He decided to clarify.

“What do you know about Furoh?”

The next few minutes consisted of a brief history lesson of the continent, specifically emphasizing its unknown past. To Pan, she felt like she was back with the unown: just as the pokemon were revealing a path, the professor’s words were having the same effect. Their message, though incomplete, was one in the same with the professor’s.

Go to Furoh.

And the rest is history…

[knil1]

Pretty long. That's about all of my comments. I believe it's one of my better fanfics, but that's not up for me to decide.
It takes place when Koryu is 11.

The mud under Koryu’s flip flops was packed much more tightly with every step that pressed against the dirt path. A girl with red hair followed after him, making sure to stay under the trees to keep from getting entirely wet.
“What do you think you are doing?! It’s pouring, and your feet and shoes are getting completely dirty. I thought you didn’t like rain!”
“I don’t. But since I’m completely soaked anyways, I don’t care much anymore. Also, I’m not killing the grass while walking on the path…”
“Ugh. Your affinity for plants is killing me.”
“Rebecca, your bag has a hole in it.”
The girl looked down and noticed her poke balls were rolling down the slope to the muddy path.
“Koryu, you’d better make sure my pokemon don’t touch the mud!”
Sure enough, Koryu waited till the last second and grabbed them mere centimeters away from the path. Rebecca walked down the slope, leaning backwards to keep from falling forward.
“Give me those.”
Koryu smiled and continued walking. He rummaged through his sopping wet bag and found a map. As the rain pelted it, he followed the path to find that the nearest civilized area was a few miles away.

~~~

By the time the two reached the town, the sky had cleared and their clothes had begun drying. Koryu stopped at the nearest clothing store and bought new clothes to wear while he washed his wet clothes at the Laundromat. Rebecca chose an outfit as well and by 3:00 their laundry was done. While their clothes were being washed, Koryu had released Bulbasaur and Chikorita. Rebecca’s pokemon were also released. Her Squirtle went and sat with Bulbasaur and her Mudkip played with Chikorita. Her Diglett however, sat outside and watched the Pidgey that had been following the two trainers.
Rebecca wiped her glasses on the new sundress Koryu had bought for her and placed them back on her nose.
“Bella, stop antagonizing the lady.” The Mudkip looked out from under a pile of clothes in a laundry basket and the woman carrying it looked shocked. Bella jumped out with Chikorita following after her and the woman laughed to herself.

They left the Laundromat hungry so Koryu treated them to a small vendor selling sandwiches.
“I think we should go down to Fuchsia. Lavender town isn’t far from here and there are bikes we could rent.”
“Or we could go to Saffron. It’s closer to, if not the same distance from Lavender Town.” The sun reflected off of Rebecca’s glasses into Koryu’s eyes and he cringed as the light penetrated his cornea. Rebecca laughed, “Wow, I haven’t ever seen your eyes so blue till just then.”
Koryu saw spots and complained that he was steadily going blind from that experience.
“I don’t know. There’s a beach in Fuchsia, and the Safari Zone. It is Farther from Lavender Town though. But we could probably find a place to stay on the bridges over the ocean. Wouldn’t that be nice?! And once we wake up, Fuchsia wouldn’t be far, so we could spend the entire day there! Besides, we’ve already been to Saffron.”
“You always sound so excited when there’s mention of an ocean. Ok, I guess we can go there.”
Koryu jumped up and called his pokemon. The pidgey flew over also and landed on his head. “Well, I guess you can come too, if you like.”
“Koryu, that’s the strangest pidgey I’ve ever seen.”

~~~

Koryu pulled up the stakes and Rebecca folded the cloth tent. After they were ready to go Koryu handed the tent to some oncoming trainers. Rebecca stared at him in awe.
“Koryu, you just bought that tent.”
He looked at her, somewhat confused. “And? It was pretty cheap. Not to mention, I highly doubt you would want to carry it, I certainly know I won’t.”
She looked at him incredulously. She ran her fingers through her red hair as Koryu quickly took interest in the ocean. They had found a spot along the series of bridges that was on the mainland and they slept there. Koryu made sure they camped there by yanking his friend off the wooden planks and onto the grassy area.

The two and their pokemon strolled along the passage until they hit the mainland again. Rebecca slumped over.
“More dirt.”
Koryu jumped behind her and smacked her back, “The Earth is full of it. Get used to it.” He ran down the road as Rebecca tip-toed to the grass where her shoes would get less dirty.

The two walked along slowly and saw a sign advertising a festival that happened to be going on the time they got there. The group still had a while to get there and Koryu pulled out a small bag to fix food for the two trainers and their pokemon.

Once their food was prepared and they started eating, a few kids, not much older than them approached them. Their leader was a 13 year old wearing black leather and metal boots. The clothes were way too large for him and it could be interpreted that he had taken his older siblings clothes.

“You two look lonely.” He taunted them, proving himself to be only more obnoxious than they expected. The rest of his “group”, however, found it funny.
Koryu put his juice pouch down and smiled at them “And you look retarded.” Koryu’s partner tried not to let the juice come out of her mouth as she laughed. Chikorita was busy stuffing her face and Bulbasaur was too tired to care what was going on, but Rebecca’s pokemon got on their guard.

“Oh, do I look retarded to you?” The kid chuckled. “That’s strange, coming from a housewife looking after her four-eyed nerd.” Koryu continued smiling as he worked on his lunch, knowing that by ignoring their insults Koryu would annoy them more than their insults annoyed him. Rebecca stopped eating and watched as the kid came closer. Bulbasaur opened one eye and watched them and the stalker pidgey puffed up in a nearby tree.

He set foot on Koryu’s wool blanket being used as a place to sit for lunch and eyed their setup. “Wow, this actually looks great. Surprising for such a –“ Koryu and Rebecca looked at each other confused. She mouthed to him, “What does that mean?”, but his only response was a shrug.

The kid reached into the oversized pocket and grabbed a small box, then reached in the other pocket and grabbed a box of matches. The kid put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match. The other kids in the group watched in a trance as their magnificent leader hesitantly lit the cigarette.
“Wow, George! You’re so cool!” The kid, now known as George, inhaled the smoke and took the cigarette out of his mouth,
“I know, that’s why I’m your leader.” He threw the lit match in the grass and proceeded to cough. Rebecca looked at the match in the grass and, now wide-eyed, saw the blur that was Koryu.

Koryu snatched the cigarette from George’s hand and pulled the leather jacket off of his back. Because it was dry that day, a small fire had appeared where the match landed and Koryu used the jacket to put both it, and the cigarette, out. George was still recovering from the smoke, but yanked the jacket out of Koryu’s hands.
“What are you doing?! This is my brother’s jacket!” He wiped his hand across the burnt part and glared at Koryu and Rebecca. He calmed down and smiled. “I’ve got an idea. How about we battle, my pokemon against your group’s pokemon. If I win, you give us all your money and food. If you win, well, same thing.”

Koryu cheered up almost instantly, “Sure! I’d love to.” Rebecca however, was iffy on the plan. Two eleven-year olds against a thirteen year old seemed easy, but she didn’t trust him. Koryu skipped to an area that would suffice for battle and sent Chikorita on the field. Rebecca walked over next to Koryu and looked at his bright hair as it rustled in the wind. “Uh, Brett, I guess you first.” Her Squirtle strolled down the field next to Bulbasaur and they prepared themselves.
“Wow, that’s what you’ve got?” George grabbed a poke ball from the belt that was falling off of his waist and tossed it in the air. A Muk appeared on the field. “Wow! I had no idea my brother had a Muk!” The slime pokemon looked at his opponents with a questioning glance. He looked back at his current trainer and looked even more confused.
“Alright Muk! Show ‘em how much stronger we are!” The Muk turned to his two opponents, still confused, and used toxic on Bulbasaur.

Koryu watched, concerned, as Bulbasaur took damage steadily from the attack. The Muk looked surprised, then concerned as well. “Come on you rotten stink bag! Win!” The stink bag looked back at George and glared at him. He turned back around and winked at his two opponents. Bulbasaur and Brett were confused, but Brett used water gun anyway. The Muk flew back, as though it had propelled itself in the air, and fainted. As George returned it to its poke ball, it snuck a thumb up to Brett. Everyone besides the two pokemon on the field was shocked. Rebecca soon jumped up and congratulated her pokemon and Koryu smiled happily to George.

“That shouldn’t have happened! My pokemon are much better than yours!” He grabbed three pokemon from his belt, and just as he was about to sling his arms forward, someone grabbed them.
“What are you doing?” The boy in all black shrunk down and got ready to run. Then the person grabbed his jacket and held him in the air.

“Again, what are you doing?” The man held the boy up to his face. The man was really tall, and maybe in his early twenties. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt.
“Nothing.”
“Do I smell smoke?!”
“No!”
“I can’t believe you! Oh, Mom will be thrilled to hear this.” George squirmed energetically trying to escape his brother’s grasp. “Sorry about him, guys. He’s a little…. Well… Off….” George’s group walked off, trying to avoid trouble with George’s brother as well. Koryu and Rebecca just stared on, bewildered.

~~~


Shortly thereafter, Fuchsia could be seen. It was 5:18 and the festival could be seen.
The two ran into town and within a few minutes were in traditional clothing and enjoying candy and sugared almonds. There were some rides. A large swing was set up next to the zoo and both climbed on the boat on opposite sides to watch each other laugh as they sat parallel to each other horizontally. Rebecca’s vivid red hair swept over her tan face and her glasses nearly fell off. Koryu laughed the entire time and when his eyes did open, Rebecca could see the lush green that filled his iris.

Once they got off, they walked around the zoo for a while. Rebecca’s light green outfit had gotten a little dirty while in the ground pokemon section, but the small red flowers were still visible. They took the opportunity to ride in a kangaskhan’s pouch and ride on a lapras’ back, making sure to save time for meeting with the gym leader.

At 8:06 Koryu rushed over to the gym to try and meet with Koga. The Gym was full of people being told that Koga couldn’t be seen at the moment. Koryu jumped to the side and pulled Rebecca with him, and they watched, from a hidden spot, the people leave the Gym. Once they walked out of the hiding spot, Rebecca scolded him,
“What are you thinking? This is not allowe., We shouldn’t be here.”
“Ehhh, calm down. This is the last gym leader I need to meet. Besides, better now than never, right?” Rebecca looked around cautiously, holding her arms in trying not to bump into anything. Koryu strolled about the gym looking for the gym leader, and after looking in almost every room, declared the gym vacant. His shoulders dropped as he walked towards the exit.
“You aren’t giving up that easily, are you?” A man in a strange purple garb, and a young girl dressed the same dropped in front of the two.

The girl eyed them over and smiled. “You two didn’t try very hard. I was above you the whole time.” The man knelt down and glared at the two.
“What do you want?” Koryu perked up and smiled at the man.
“You’re Koga! I’ve been looking for you so you could train me!” The man smiled and the girl laughed.
“I don’t think I can do that.” Koryu’s eyes watered up and his shoulders fell again.
“But you are the last one I need! I’ve gone all over Kanto and now that I’m here, I was almost complete! Please, I just need one hour at the most.” Koga smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
“Well, I don’t see why not.” Koryu perked up again and Rebecca shook her head as if she had seen that routine before. The girl was shocked and ran back into some other room. “Don’t worry about Janine. She’ll get over it. Now, let’s see your pokemon and your hour starts… Now!”

~~~

Koryu and Rebecca walked out of the Gym exhausted. Koryu was a little aggravated and Rebecca was flat out tired.

“I had no idea that he would be that strict. Sorry I got you involved in that Rebecca.” The two reached a bench and sat down.
“You’d better be. That was the first time I had heard of dodging shuriken as part of training.”
“Well, at least they weren’t sharp.”

Koryu looked up and noticed that the beach was glistening right in front of them. And farther down to his right, A huge group of people looked out over the ocean. Suddenly, a colorful explosion lit up the sky and the two trainers could see each others face. Their pokemon watched as the vivid colors formed shapes, and they played around under the starry night.

“Pretty. Koryu, I had no idea there were going to be fireworks tonight.”
“Niether did I.”
“Well, while we’re sitting here, what’s up for tomorrow?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Aww, come on, tell me!”
“Nope.”
“Please?”
“Nope.”
“Pretty please with sugar and cherries on top?”
“Jow many cherries?”
“A bajillion cherries.”
“Ok.” Koryu smiled at the thought of a bajillion cherries. “We will finally go into Johto tomorrow!”
“Oh.” Rebecca’s smile left her face.
“Yeah! I’ll finally be in Johto. Right after Pallet Town. Then my parents will only be.. 1..2..3.. 4 towns away! Goldenrod doesn’t really seem very far now that I think about it…”
“Um, Koryu.”
“M-hmm?”
“I think I’ll be staying in Pallet Town. And leaving a little bit after.”
“But Rebecca. Goldenrod.”
“I know. But my mom said that the next time I’m in Pallet Town, she will be there waiting for me, and I’ll have to go.”
“Well…. I don’t know how we can avoid this. I promised my grandparents I would see them before I left Kanto.”
“Don’t worry about it Koryu. We’ve been travelling together for 8 months now. And we’ll see each other again. Besides, it had been 2 years since I had seen you before this trip.”
“Yeah, but I hadn’t heard of Furoh before you came back.”
“So. I know we’ll meet up again. Maybe at a festival , even. With fireworks.”
Both kids sat together and watched the explosions.

Rebecca looked at Koryu. “Haha! Before the firework explodes, your eyes are green, but once there’s light, they go back to blue.” Koryu looked at her and smiled.
“I’ll miss you Rebecca.”

“Pshh. We have tomorrow. Don’t get all sappy now. How about you sing for me?” Koryu wiped his tears and smiled.
“No. I’m shy.” After a short pause the both laughed.
“No you aren’t. Sing. I want to see the pretty plants.”
“What song?”
“I don’t care. Choose one.”
“Ummm….”

People were sitting down at the beach and the festival was still going on behind them. Koryu made a face as he tried to remember lyrics to a song he had heard. It was foreign, but it was pretty, and he had managed to learn part of it.

Bulbasaur watched as grass slowly sprouted around his feet and Trent had to move so that new roots didn’t harm his ground body. Rebecca smiled as plants and flowers sprouted and vines crept up the bench legs.

“No no non esistono piu. It's time to say…”

“Aww, Koryu, that’s such a pretty song.”
Soon both kids were singing along. Rebecca hummed the tune and watched the plants grow. They held hands and sung until they decided to go buy a new tent.

“Con te io li rivivro. Con te partiro io con te.


It’s time to Say Goodbye”

~~~

This post has been edited by knil1: Jun 19 2010, 09:40 PM

[Dragava]

The bulk of the story takes place during Lizzie's childhood. She is around 8. Maybe 9, since her birthday is in the summer. Italicized parts take place in the present

Lizzie liked the beach in Barley, especially in the early morning when there were few people and a lot of pokemon. She would just sit and look at the waves into the distance. It was the perfect time to think.


The Scyther that belonged to Bertha, Lizzie's mother, was very carefree, and she had the habit of sticking her blades where they don't belong. The 'green bug of lovable trouble', as Lizzie called it, was happy just basking in the sun and occasionally nibbling at tasty-looking flowers.

It was a very warm day, perfect for walking though the fields with a Charmander on your back. Fearow, the oldest and most responsible of Bertha's was busy sorting out an argument between her Skarmory and Murkrow and couldn't keep an eye on Lizzie on that day, but her very optimistic Gligar was only too happy to look after her in Fearow's place.

Unfortunately, Scyther also tagged along.

Lizzie did not know it at the time, but Gligar had a crush on Scyther, and it was a pretty big one too. The problem was, Gligar thought that Scyther was intimidating. He had seen many opponents fall to Scyther's Wing Attack and Slash. The fact that Gligar was barely half her height did not help either.

Lizzie walked into the field, oblivious to Gligar's discomfort. She set Charmander down in a patch of short grass and they started a small game of tag. After a while, a tired Lizzie fell into a sitting position on the grass. Her eyes went in Gligar's direction, and she noticed that the usually cheerful pokemon had a very serious look on his face.

“What's wrong, Gligar?”

“Gli, gli gar gar gar,” Gligar explained, gesturing to Scyther, who was sunning itself on the grass.

“Something about Scyther?

“Gar, gligar. Gli...”

“It's okay Gligar,” Lizzie replied even though she had no idea what he was saying, “You will be able to work it out, won't you? You always have that 'I can do it attitude', and that is all you need, isn't it?”

“Gli!” Gligar exclaimed. That was it! All Gligar needed to do was overcome his fear. “Gli, gligar GLI!” Gligar pointed its claw at Scyther, who sat up, looking confused. Gligar got into a battle stance and looked at Lizzie. “Gli.”

“You want me to help you battle? I don't know...”Lizzie started, but one look at the determination on Gliar's face made her give in. She thought that Gligar wanted her support because of what she said earlier. It was a good thing that she knew all of Gligar's moves. Although Lizzie's mother was not actively training her pokemon, she did participate in competitions every now and then.

Scyther made the first attack after stretching for a bit. Lizzie told Gligar to block Scyther's charge with a Sand Attack, which gave it enough time to duck out of the way. Lizzie commanded a Slash, but a quick Double Team caused it to miss. The real Scyther and the Scyther copies began to do a Swords Dance. Lizzie then ordered an Earthquake to get rid of all the clones and expose the real Scyther, which jumped into the air and charged at Gligar with a Wing Attack. Lizzie asked Gligar to use Guillotine, but Gligar did not want to hurt Scyther too badly, so it left itself wide open. After Wing attack knocked Gligar down, Scyther lent him her arm to help himself up with, but Gligar was scared and embarrassed because he lost.

“It's okay, Gligar. I shouldn't have told you to use that move. I should have known that you did not want to hurt Scyther too badly.” Gligar just whimpered. If only there was something it could do to get Scyther to notice.


A pokeball opened as the sun started to rise. It was Budew, her newest pokemon. It stretched its bud towards the sun, soaking up its rays. Lizzie stroked it lightly, and told it her bittersweet memory.


Lizzie wanted to help Gligar, but she was not too sure what the problem was. All she could do for the time being was sit by Gligar and try to make him feel better.

“You just have to keep trying, like you always do.” Gligar just looked away.

“Then it's something you can't change, something you can't help?” Gligar nodded.

“Then maybe...” Before Lizzie could finish, Scyther screamed. Charmander, who was sitting quietly stood up and readied itself to attack or defend if necessary. An irritated Roselia had a bite taken out of one of its roses, and Scyther was wobbling. It looked like Scyther was poisoned after taking a curious nibble. It scoffed and strutted away from the Scyther, who was starting to lose consciousness due to the poison's effect.

“Scyther!”

“Gli, gli!” Scyther gave the three of them a faint smile before closing her eyes.

“How are we going to get it home?” Lizzie asked.


Lizzie felt the morning rays on her face. Lizzie thought that her Riolu would wake soon, and the sound of a pokeball opening confirmed her hunch. Budew shyly explained the story. It was the same story that Charmander told her, only this time, it was Lizzie, not Charmander, who was speaking.


Charmander was usually calm, but with Scyther fainted he started to panic a little. He could tell that Scyther was the strongest of the three pokemon present, and he knew that Gligar would be reluctant to leave her. The only option that they had right now was to carry Scyther back, and that did not seem very likely since Scyther looked very heavy.

“What do we do?” Charmander asked. He did not expect anything, but asking took some of the fear away.

“I.. don't know... Scythie...” Gligar gave the fainted Scyther a hug. Charmander saw some understanding in Lizzie's eyes. She had finally realized Gligar's dilemma.

“I guess I could go back and get help?” Lizzie asked.

“But... I'm supposed to watch her. Bertha wouldn't like it if something happened to her.”

“You cannot go,” Charmander told his trainer while shaking his head.

“Okay, then what should we do?” Charmander looked at Gligar. While it was true that Lizzie was a human, she was still young and was not capable of doing much by herself. Gligar was not being much help either since he was in a state of shock.

“We could... build something, I guess?” Charmander suggested after a bit. He remembered seeing boxes on wheels before, what were they called? Wagons? “A wagon maybe?”

“That... just might work. Okay, let's do this!” Lizzie looked at the two with a blank look. “Oh, I forgot.” Gligar Slashed some grass away, leaving an Earthly patch. He drew a box with wheels on it.

“A wagon... That sounds good. How are we going to make it?” The two pokemon looked at each other. Neither one had thought about that. “But maybe...” Lizzie drew a picture of Scyher being supported by two horizontal sticks. She drew a stick figure of herself carrying the ends of both sticks at the front, and Gligar supporting the back. Charmander was in the middle, under Scyther's wings.

“I think I should be under her wings,” Gligar explained, “Charmander might accidentally burn Scythie...”

“That's true,' Charmander explained, and drew arrows between the stick-figure of itself and Gligar.

“So you want to be at he end?”

“Yep!”

“Okay, so first we need to find some sticks...” There were a few trees nearby, and some had long branches that would be perfect for the job.

“Charmander, cut some of the Branches off with Ember.” Charmander aimed a weak Ember at two long branches, knocking them off. The branches were glowing slightly from the Ember, but Gligar managed to put it out. The tree looked a bit misshapen, but otherwise fine. Ember did not do too much damage to it.

The branches were placed at Scyther's left and right. After some lifting, and adjusting of her arms Scyther was lifted off the ground. Gligar ran to the spot between Scyther's wings to support it. Now all the party had to do was bring Scyther back to town.


Charmander already knew the story, but Lizzie let it out anyway. There were some things only pokemon could understand, and other pokemon was one of them. Charmander did his share of explaining before Lizzie continued her story again.


Scyther was heavy, the three of them made it only a third of the way to town before Lizzie was too tired to carry Scyther. They set Scyther down at the base of a hill.

“We should try something else. “ Charmander sighed, and agreed with Lizzie. Gligar just jumped around impatiently.

“Maybe we can getl Gligar to fly Scyther back, but,” Lizzie looked at Gligar, who was trying to make itself look as big as possible, “Gligar might be a bit too small to carry it.” Gligar ignored that comment, and went under Scyther. He secured her blades in his claws with a look of determination in his eyes.

“Charmander?” Charmander took Scyther's legs without being told. The two of them dragged Scyther up the hill, with a few occasional pushes from Lizzie. Lizzie and Charmander watched as Gligar jumped down the hill, trying to hurt Scyther as little as possible while building up enough speed to lift himself and his extra load off the ground.

The strain of flying with Scyther's weight was visible on Gligar's face, but he stuck with it.

“Gligar must really like Scyther, huh,” Lizzie commented. Sht turned to Charmander, “I know you want to watch, but, we have to get back as soon as possible. Return.” Lizzie ran downhill after Gligar. The best thing for all of them was to get back to town as quickly as possible.

After ten minutes of nonstop running Lizzie was feeling pretty tired, but she was nowhere as tired as Gligar. The strain of flying with Scyther of his back was obvious; Gligar was flying much lower than when they started. The two of them were glad when town was in sight.

In fact, Gligar was so glad that he fainted. Gligar's body glided for a bit, then descended into a sharp fall.

Fortunately, the two falling pokemon were caught by Fearow, who was used to carrying heavy loads on her back. Her sharp eyes saw Gligar struggling into the town with Scyther on his back.

“Fearow, Pokemon Center!” Fearow did not need to be told. She was already flying in that direction before Lizzie yelled. Lizzie ran to the pokemon center with the last of her stamina. She wanted to see how this would end.


The air was warm now that the sun had risen. Too warm. Charmander did not mind, but Budew and Riolu were feeling uncomfortable in the heat. Lizzie recalled her pokemon and headed back to the pokemon center. Once she was there, she let them out again and the king Nurse Joy gave everyone some breakfast. Riolu looked at Lizzie encouragingly. She wanted Lizzie to finish the story.


Scyther was still a little weak because of the poison, and Gligar had an acing body, but the both of them were well enough to leave the pokemon center. Lizzie knew that she could rest easy that night, especially after seeing the two of them from her Bedroom window. Charmander crept up next to her to watch too.

“Scyther, scyth scyther scy scy...ther scy ther scy...” ( Gligar, thanks for today... You didn't need to...”

“Gligar... gli...” (But... I...)
“Scyther. scyther scyther scy.” (That's okay. It was nice of you, though.) Scyther leaned in and nuzzled Gligar. His blushing face was illuminated by the moonlight.

“Gli....Gli gligar!” (Um... I'm tired.) Scyther tilted her head as Gligar flew off. It did not matter too much to her because she knew that she could see Gligar anytime she wanted. She just lay back on the grass, watching the moon.

Lizzie and Charmander smiled at each other. They did help the two, if only a little. What happened on that bittersweet day would be remembered for many years to come.


Now that the story and meal was over, Lizzie recalled Charmander and Budew. Riolu then jumped onto her shoulders. She was going to resume her adventure in Furoh with a renewed spirit.

Not very good in my opinion, but at least i tried.


E- Noticed that the title came from a song, so I'll change it.

This post has been edited by Dragava: Jun 21 2010, 09:07 PM

[Umbrae Calamitas]

The Proof is in the Ice Cream

"Don't look at me like that," Tuesday chided the charmander standing beside her. "Brone is not a vampire, and I'm going to prove it this year."

Ten year old Tuesday Berdison narrowed her eyes at the window. Outside, the sun had not yet risen, but the young girl was wide-awake and watching for the first rays of light to peak over the horizon. She had been waiting all year for this day to roll around. The Summer Equinox, with the longest day of sunlight a year, was the perfect day to prove what she needed to prove.

That is, that her older brother, Brone, was not a vampire.

It wasn't an easy thing to prove, as Tuesday had learned the previous two summers. At that time, her desire to prove such a claim came from an unpleasant argument with a girl she went to school with. The girl - one Melissa Grier, a mean and high-horsed twelve-year-old - had gone out of her way to make sure Tuesday heard the mean things she was saying to her friend about Brone, and when Tuesday denied such ridiculous and mean claims, Grier turned the words onto Tuesday.

One of the claims - one of the more ridiculous ones - was that Brone, who rarely went outside, especially during the day, was a vampire. Tuesday had really doubted it, but after trying and failing multiple times to get Brone to come outside with her and enjoy the sunshine (he claimed he couldn't enjoy it since he couldn't see it), she started to doubt her trust in the fact that her brother was human. And so came about the summer chore of trying to prove that he was, indeed, a human.

"And what am I going to do if he is a vampire?" Tuesday asked sporadically, turning to her charmander with a look on concern.

Dante, as she had named the charmander she had received the previous year, was sitting beside her on her bedroom floor, staring out of the window. As she spoke, however, he turned and looked at her with his wide eyes.

"I suppose you'll have to stab him through the heart with a stake, won't you?"

"Don't say things like that!" Tuesday chided him loudly. Dante just cocked his head to the side in mild confusion.

As it was, Dante hadn't said anything at all, and nor was he likely to, being as he was a pokemon and Tuesday, a human, couldn't understand what he said. That didn't stop her, however, from pretending that he was talking to her, or imagining what he might say.

That didn't mean she had to like what her imagination came up with, though.

"I'm not going to stab my brother through the heart with a stake!"

"We're going to have to wear lots of garlic, then."

"I'm not afraid of my brother."

"You're not afraid of a vampire?"

"My brother is not a vampire!"

Tuesday's adamant tone kept her imagination from dredging up any form of disagreement, and they waited in a mostly comfortable silence, as the sun finally rose above the horizon.

"Right," Tuesday said, standing up and dusting off her hands, "let's get started!"

Tuesday liked watching horror movies, which not a lot of people knew, and she loved to read, which no one was lucky enough to not know. That being so, Tuesday knew a lot about vampires.

She knew that vampires were repulsed by garlic. She knew that they had a compulsion to count things that were dropped, like pins or pennies, but that it didn't take them long to do so. She knew they drank blood, avoided sunlight, and slept in coffins. They had magic powers, could sometimes read minds, and could control people's actions by making that person fall in love with them merely by looking at them. She knew they could only be killed by direct exposure to lots of sunlight (unless they were a vampire that could go out in the sun) or by having a stake driven through their heart. They were pale, cold to the touch, and they were technically undead.

Unfortunately for Tuesday's state of mind, a lot of these facts corresponded with Brone.

Brone hated garlic, and when he did, by chance, eat any, he suffered tremendous migraine headaches and was often sick from them.

Brone liked to play the "guess how many" games that some places put out, mostly to shock people with his ability to be blind and yet guess right. You could say he loved to count things...

Tuesday didn't know about Brone's sleeping habits, but it was already clear to her that he avoided going outside in the sunlight.

And Brone could read minds. He could move things with his mind. He could see the future. He could speak to her in his mind. And he could make people do things, if he wanted to.

Brone was very pale, which her mom and dad had always said was a repercussion from his "affliction," but what if his affliction was being a vampire?

It wasn't, because Brone wasn't a vampire, so there.

Tuesday snatched a hat from off of her bed and put it on sharply. "Just call me Tuesday Holmes Van Helsing!" she declared. She looked at Dante. "Holmes because this is a mystery, so we need Sherlock Holmes, and Van Helsing because we're hunting a vampire - or a not-vampire, actually." She grinned and patted the charmander on the head, before turning and rushing out of the room. "Come on, Watson! And act like a doctor!"

Dante hesitated, cocking his head to the side. He looked down at his claws, then back to his tail, and then over at the bed. Straightening up, he tilted his nose in the air and, feeling very self-important, walked right into the wall.

Shaking his head, he decided to feel self-important while looking straight ahead, and followed Tuesday out of the door.

Three hours later found Tuesday and Dante back in the bedroom, the latter sitting on the floor and the former sitting contemplatively on the bed. "This... is not going quite as I had planned."

"Why not?"

"Well, I had planned to have proven by now that Brone isn't a vampire."

"But didn't you plan that last year, too?"

"Yeeeeeeaaahh... but that's not the point." Tuesday jumped to her feet and pointed dramatically toward the ceiling. "I will prove that Brone is not a vampire! And I will do it right now!"

"And how exactly are you going to do that?"

Tuesday gave a devilish grin and tugged a little on the brim of her hat. "Why, it's elementary, my dear Watson." She pointed toward the door. "To the garage, my good man, and step on it!"

"Step on the garage?"

"You don't have big enough feet. Now let's go!"

The garage was an almost forbidden place, filled with all manner of trinkets that were once tools or toys but over the years had been forgotten or cast aside. It was within this place of lost things that Tuesday found the item that would allow her to prove, once and for all, that her brother was not a vampire.

"A mirror?"

"Yeah!" Tuesday was nearly bouncing on her heels in excitement. "Vampires don't have reflections, so all we have to do is set this up so that Brone walks in front of it, and if he has a reflection, then he's not a vampire!"

"And if he doesn't have a reflection?"

"That's the beauty of it!" Tuesday said, failing to hide the slight anger in her voice behind the humor. "He does have a reflection!" Tuesday grabbed the mirror by the top - half-length though it may have been, it was still very large for her - and began to drag it slowly from the back of the garage, scraping it across the cement floor.

"Somebody's going to hear you!"

"I can't help it! It's heavy!"

"So ask Cassie for help."

"Cassandra is an ally of Brone, and she'll tell him my plan. If he is a vampire - even though he's not - I don't want him to know I'm going to find out until I've found out." With that said, she stepped beyond the threshold of the door and continued to drag the mirror through the grass and toward the house.

~*~

"Don't you think you've kept this going on for rather long?"

"Three years isn't all that long of a time, Cassie. Besides, Dr. Kike said I should enjoy myself this summer... so I am."

"And do you think that your sister is enjoying herself, trying to fight off the suspicion that you're a blood-sucking creature?"

"Of course she is. Fears and suspicions aside, she finally got to use that Sherlock Holmes quote that she's been stewing over for some time."

"But this is the summer when it ends?"

Sitting in the Psychic Plane, the recently-evolved kadabra and the blind psychic human sat across from each other, separated by a Chess board. As they stared down at the brown and cream checkered board, Cassandra blinked slowly and a cream-colored Bishop slid across the board and into a brown Rook, catapulting the tower out of existence.

"Check," Brone said, as though it were an afterthought of his moving his Queen into the place of the cream Bishop with his hand rather than his mind, sending it away into the depths of the Psychic Plane. "Yes, this is the year it ends. Third time is the charm, after all."

"Indeed. I find your attempts at self-amusement to be decidedly lacking in tact. That aside, will you be falling into her mirror trap?" She took his Queen out with a Knight. "Check."

Brone smiled, holding a hand over the board as though trying to derive some hidden meaning from it through Psychic Osmosis, but Cassandra knew he was merely trying to bait her. "You should have a little more faith in me, Cassie. Have I ever been known to do anything to directly annoy someone?"

"You mean besides me, right?"

His smile widened. "Annoy you though I might, you're learning because of it." He tapping his King on the head, as though thinking about forfeiting, but she knew he wouldn't. He'd never simply quit.

"Oh? And what exactly could that be?"

"That I never do anything without a reason?" he offered, and tapped his Rook on the head - he could slide it forward and take out her second Bishop, but it would leave him open for direct destruction from her King. "That you should have more faith in me?" He tapped his own Bishop on the head - he could move it diagonally to the left and take out her Queen, leaving his King open to a Check from her Rook, or move it to the right, blocking his King from attack by her Knight, but leaving his Bishop open to be destroyed. "Or perhaps that you have to challenge those you care about to make them grow strong enough to stand on their own feet. Even the smallest, after all, can be a formidable force." He slid a Pawn forward one space and then leaned back in his chair with a smile. "Checkmate."

~*~

Tuesday's attempts so far to prove that Brone wasn't a vampire had been admirable, despite their failure. She had taken the plastic jar of toothpicks out of the cupboard and, while walking past Brone, dumped it on the ground. A vampire would have had top stop to count them, whereas a human would have walked on by with perhaps a simple glance, but no compulsion.

Being Brone and also being amused, he'd crouched down and, picking each one up individually, began to count out load. Five hundred and twelve toothpicks took a surprisingly long time to count.

Vampires were well-known to have fangs - it was a trademark of their species. Naturally, Tuesday would be most easily able to prove that Brone wasn't a vampire by checking his mouth for fangs, and so she was adamant in her complaints to Brone that his breath smelled really bad, and he needed to go brush his teeth.

It was completely by coincidence that he had happened to find his vampire fang accessory for the costume he had worn five years before for Halloween, and was trying them on to see if they fit.

Because of Brone's allergy, they didn't keep garlic in the house, so Tuesday couldn't carry any in her pockets to see if he had an aversion to her. She did, however, find her father's Rosary hanging on the bedpost where he kept it when he wasn't using it, and she took it and carried it around throughout the day.

It was totally a misunderstanding on her part when she walked into the room where he was and he yelled when she swung the Rosary toward him. He had, after all, just stubbed his toe on the bed frame.

For some reason, when Tuesday tried to raise the shades in Brone's bedroom and bathe the room in sunlight, the shades kept falling back down or refusing to rise in the first place. About the third time Tuesday got hit on the head - albeit, lightly - with a shade, she gave it up as a bad job and left to find another way to prove her fears false.

Brone's adamant refusal to go outside because he couldn't enjoy the sun or it was too hot didn't help ease her suspicions, and he imagined that his slurping on his red slushie didn't give her any feelings of hope, especially since he refused to share and let her know what kind it was.

All of the failed attempts, rather than causing her to quit, made her more than willing to try a new plan. That was how a half-length mirror ended up outside of Brone's bedroom door, leaning up against the wall of the hall, reflecting the image of his doorknob and the sign on the door that read "Brone's Room" in both red crayon and, also courtesy of Tuesday, pencil-punched braille.

Tuesday, leaning against the wall next to Brone's door, drew a deep breath, hesitated, and then called out. "Brone! Dante's tail's burning blue!"

"Now that would be a sight to see, if I could," Brone said, and Tuesday spun around quickly, to find him standing at the other end of the hall.

"Brone!" she whined loudly. "You were supposed to be in your room!"

"Was I?"

"You said you weren't going to leave it at all today!"

"Aah." He stepped forward and help out a waffle cone topped with vanilla ice cream. "You missed the MooMoo Truck when you were in the garage. I thought you might want a cone after being outside on such a hot day."

"Oh." Tuesday took the cone slowly. "Thanks."

"Sure." Brone smiled softly, and it wasn't at all an accident that when she went to lick the cone, he bumped her and ended up coating her nose in vanilla cream.

Tuesday made a distressing sound and quickly wiped the ice cream away with the back of her hand. "S'cold," she complained.

"I bet. You missed a spot," Brone said. He waved his left hand gently in a spinning motion. "Here, look." With an exaggerated twirl, the mirrior leaning against the wall spun to face them, so Tuesday could look in and see her reflection.

As she wiped off the ice cream left on her nose, she could see the reflection of Brone, standing slightly behind her, clearly not a vampire.

"Thanks, Brone." She meant for more than just the ice cream.

"Any time, Silence." He sent the mirror leaning back against the wall. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of homework to finish and I'm afraid it's going to take the rest of the night. I won't be able to go and enjoy the fireworks with you."

"They're not having fireworks tonight. It's too bright with the full moon out," Tuesday said, sounding both disappointed and surprised that he didn't know.

"Well, I'm going to be a little busy. Have to get this done and can't go out dancing the moonlight." With a smile, he stepped into his room and closed the door behind him with a click.

Standing in the hall, rather successfully ignoring her ice cream, Tuesday was deep in thought. So deep in thought, in fact, that Dante managed to stand up on his toes and lick some of the vanilla ice cream off of the cone in his trainer's hand.

"He said he can't come out tonight, because he's doing homework, but it's summer!"

"Maybe he has a summer class."

"Brone's too smart for summer classes! He's can't be doing homework."

"Maybe he didn't want to go outside because it's a full moon?"

"But that's silly. It's not like he's a... werewolf... or something..." Tuesday stared at her brother's bedroom door.

"Are you Tuesday Holmes Van Helsing again?"

"Of course, Watson!" Tuesday pulled the brim of her hat down over her forehead. "And we're going to prove it this summer! We'll prove that my brother is not a werewolf!"

As she dashed off down the hallway with Dante in tow, the charmander trying to snag another lick of ice cream, Brone leaned back on his bed and laughed quietly to himself. With a grin and a new Chess game started on the Psychic Plane, Brone began conversationally, "Cassie, you wouldn't happen to know a psychic way to make your hair grow really fast...?"

[Captain Combuske...]

Cutting it a bit fine, I know, but I only just finished. This is probably the first one of these contests that I'm really proud of. It's Alex at 68 years of age, way into the future. He'd seen much and evolved his Pokemon fully. He's got a wife, had a kid and lost his wife in old age, and now lives in a house next to the huge nature reserve he owns in his home town. This story takes place on the birthday of his dead wife.

Alex Slasher woke up on the morning of the 5th of July. Not a special or indeed very different day by any standards, but it was a summer's day, and on this particular summer's day, it was sunny and shining. Alex had always loved the sunshine as a little kid, and as a teenager, and even in his early adulthood. During his work career it dwindled a little due to the fact that he was too busy to appreciate its warmth and beauty, but now, during his old age, it was re-kindled because he had very little else to do.
Alex remembered his days of youth, when he used to travel all around Furoh with great energy, and battle at every chance he got. He remembered fighting Team Deception a number of times, which he was always proud of when he looked back at his life. He loved all his Pokemon then, and still did now.

The old man of 68 years proceeded to stiffly rise from his bed, slipping his feet into his slippers before heading, with difficulty, to his wardrobe. He cursed grumpily as he realized that the clothes he wanted were stuck at the top, where he couldn’t see them. Alex had always been short, and he’d always had the frustration in his life of never having quite enough height to do things. He reached up, running his hands along the surface. He came across the cold but soft feeling of clothing, and pulled. Down tumbled a huge stack of clothes. Alex gasped in surprise as he saw his old clothes, battered and worn. These were the clothes he wore as a trainer!
He rummaged through the pockets, and a huge grin swept across his face as he pulled out a packet of Doritos crisps, crumpled and with faded colours. Some things never changed. Alex’ preference for food was one of these. The second item he got out of his pocket was a picture of a young girl, a very pretty young girl. Lily. His wife, who had passed away only a year ago. Alex then remembered the purpose of today.
He got dressed in his usual attire, a bright yellow and orange Hawaiian shirt, and his familiar old jeans. Alex needed nothing more. He was still fit and healthy from his youth, and very able and agile. He headed down the steps, his legs creaking slightly from the strain of his body weight. He rarely walked these days, especially when riding Wind was much more fun. Wind was his Rapidash, a fine, energetic individual, who rested in Alex’s riding house. Alex’ house was small, but his garden was huge, and he had lots of areas where his Pokemon ran around, free. He had a stable where he kept all of his Pokemon that he rode on, such as Wind, Banana (his Tropius) and Emperor (his Empoleon).

Once downstairs, Alex headed to the kitchen, where he wasn’t surprised to find his breakfast already made by Billy, his Machamp, who was both a skilled wrestler and a great cook. Alex ate this breakfast quite quickly, and once he had done so, Billy took his plate. Alex thanked his Pokemon before heading out to the garden. He always took six Pokemon with him whenever he went out. Just in case.
First, Alex headed towards the lake in the southern corner of his Pokemon “reserve”. He owned many Pokemon, but even more simply liked to live with them in their habitat. He saw many of his Pokémon; Goldie the Golduck, Toad the Politoed, Me Heartie the Luvdisc, Roxy the Blastoise, Lord the huge Wailord. He also saw his wife’s Zoe, the Azumarill. He continued down towards the slightly more marshy area of the lake. Along the way he saw a family of Quagsires and Woopers, the children playing in the sun. A Lone Sharpedo, circling round a closed Clamperl shell at the bottom of the lake. Finally, Alex saw the Pokemon he was looking for; Swamps, his Swam pert.
“Hey there, buddy!” he called “We’re visiting Lily today. You’re coming.” Swamps cheerfully nodded and started making his way back to the house. Alex nodded. Five left!
Next he headed to the western corner of the reserve, to the large forest. Here he was looking for two of his Pokémon; Treecky the Sceptile and Stryk the Streator. He also saw many of his Pokémon, such as Scizor, Butterfree, Beedrill, Heracross, Shiftry, Pidgeot, Yanmega, Ursaring and Ambipom. He found both of them, and once again called them, and once again they went towards his house.
Next he headed north, towards the large plains. He saw his Togekiss, his Linoone, his Swellow, and his Kangaskan. He also saw a couple of his wife’s Pokemon, and once again an expression deep grief washed over his face. He even shed a tear. He’d loved his wife dearly. Although there was a lot of joy in his life, she was the one missing thing to him. He needed her. And she was gone now. He saw Leo, his Luxray, and he nodded, also heading to the house.
Finally, he headed east, to the “badlands” of his reserve, where his fire, rock, ground and fighting Pokemon resided, along with all his tough Pokemon. He saw his Houndoom, Hariyama, Salamence, Flygon, Arbok and Drapion and gestured to them. Once he saw Lucas and Blaze, his Lucario and Blaziken. He stopped. Lucas headed to the building but Blaze stayed. Blaze was Alex’ first ever Pokemon, his best friend. Blaze and Alex had been through an awful lot together. In fact, Cece, Lily’s Chansey, Blaze, Alex and Lily were the only ones aside from the cook and Kit, the Skitty the couple owned, allowed inside the house. Blaze followed Alex to the stables, past the haunted manor where Alex’s Dark, Psychic and Ghost Pokemon lived. Alex went to Wind and said:
“Hey girl, come on. We got stuff to do today.” Wind simply nodded, finishing her mouthful of hay. Alex got on her back.
“OK then Wind; let’s head back to the house.” Wind neighed, smiling mischievously. Blaze smiled back in the same manner. Alex did too.
“Go go go!” shouted Alex, holding the reins tightly. He looked sideways to Blaze, who was running extremely fast alongside them. Blaze looked up, and Trainer and Pokémon smiled at each other. Alex loved racing with his Pokemon. It helped him to escape his worries and grieves, it helped him to stay fir and active, it helped him relax and be happy.
As the two Pokemon reached the house, it was neck and neck. Alex urged Wind on, and she ran a little faster, crossing the line ahead of Blaze.
“Woohoo!” shouted Alex, ecstatic.

Once Alex had recovered his breath a little, he made his way over to the rest of his Pokemon, although slowly. He couldn’t walk fast anymore. He was still fit, but he still ached. He went into the house, collecting seven things; Kit the Skitty, and six Pokéballs. Alex left the house then, locking up as he did so. The Pokemon seemed to groan slightly at the sight of the Pokéballs, but Alex shook his head, retuning them to their Poke balls. Kit looked up at him, cute eyes smiling innocently.
“Oh yeah, you’re coming along too buddy. You’re walking next to me!” he said, chuckling.

Kit smiled cutely, before jumping up onto Alex’ shoulder. Kit liked master’s shoulder, it was comfy. Master was nice, master fed him every day. Master did not always remember to keep the door open for Kit like mistress did though. Mistress was gone now.
Kit’s Mistress had been a very nice woman. She was dedicated to the couples’s job of running the nature reserve as well as their secondary Job, which was a daycares centre. Lily had been a master breeder, and that was why Kit the level 30 Skitty knew two egg moves, Sucker punch and Mud Bomb, as well as its normal attack Faint attack and the TM move Dig. Lily always put a huge effort into making her Pokémon powerful and using clever unexpected move pools that completely baffled the opponent. She’d been a fantastic trainer in her day. She’d also been a brilliant, devoted wife to Alex, as well as a pillar of support. Her only faults were here slightly pessimistic, sarcastic view of life at times, but Alex quickly learned to accept her the way she was, just as she had accepted his over-enthusiastic, optimist-at-all-times view.
Now the Daycares Centre had been shut down, and Alex woke up every day just to twiddle his thumbs, waiting for his day to see his wife again. His old energetic self had been weathered into a stiff-moving, lonely man whose prime had long gone. But someone as great as Alex Slasher, the famous, brilliant Alex Slasher, surely he still had room for one last adventure?

Alex entered the empty Churchyard. It was a beautiful, peaceful place, quite unlike anything in horror movies. There were flowers growing on every grave, as if all the people who’d been buried here had been cheerful, happy people. Alex walked around a little until he found Lily’s grave. A rose bush grew here. On the tombstone lay this message:
Here Lies Lily Slasher
A Devoted wife, Fantastic Mother and grandmother
And worldwide expert Pokémon Breeder.
Ah, thought Alex as he remembered other parts in his life, Thomas.

Tom Hawk had been Alex’ best friend for most of his life. The pair had met at 14, at the start of Alex’ Pokémon journey. Their friendship and adventures were many and great, but when Alex settled down, Tom continued his mad antics. Unfortunately, the man had died at thirty years old in a horrific accident involving a Gyrados, Water and some rope. That was the first funeral Alex went to. His parents came after that, and then his wife much later.
When he and his wife, at the age of thirty-two, two years after Thomas Hawk’s death, had their first and only child, they both agreed to name him Thomas in memory of Alex’s friend. Tom Slasher now lived with his own wife and children, at the ripe age of 36, in Gigarte, with a good, solid job, having also had his own Pokémon journey. He came to visit Alex often recently, presumably because he knew how lonely the old man must be. It was sweet of him, thought Alex. But it wasn’t really necessary. Alex could look after himself!

Alex then remembered his adventures with Tom Hawk and Lily, and the moment at which they’d first met. During her youth, Lily was a Pokéathlon trainer. She and Alex had met in Gigarte, where Alex had received his second gym badge for Furoh. She’d just finished a Pokéathlon, having won, and was pepped up. She challenged the first person she saw, who happened to be Alex. From there, their love blossomed at they travelled the length and breadth of Furoh, each catching many Pokémon and winning man y battles. Eventually, they decided to get married, and soon after they settled down in their nature reserve and daycare center, and brought up Thomas.

Alex started to cry as the memories enveloped him, reminding him of old times. He stayed at her grave for another half hour with Kit, before deciding to leave and enjoy the rest of the day. The last thing Lily would have wanted was for him to grieve too much.

From there, Alex headed to the beach. It was a lovely warm day, so he wanted to do a little sunbathing. He was fortunate enough to live in Daas, his hometown, which was right by the sea. Alex looked upon the quiet beach. Most people were having their holidays in other places around Furoh, so Alex found a spot easily. He set up his patch, putting up a parasol and un-folding his beach chair, before rummaging through his bag to take out his book, Lord of the Rings. Alex grinned to himself; he’d started reading that when he was 15! He was very nearly finished, but was taking it very slowly. Some bizarre feeling told him that once he’d finished, he’d die soon after.
Alex was just reading about Frodo Baggins escaping the Orks with Sam-wise Gamgee when a young boy came up to him.
“Excuse me sir, but are you Alex Slasher?” asked the boy timidly. Alex guessed he was about 14. He was Blond, and wore bright clothes. Alex noticed the six Pokéballs in his belt.
“Pokémon trainer, eh? Yes, young lad, my name IS Alex Slasher. Can I help you?”
“I challenge you to a Pokémon match!” exclaimed the boy. Alex grinned. He liked it when kids challenged him.
“Oh OK then. This old man may as well enjoy another battle while he’s still able to!”
“OK then. Go, Zard!” shouted the boy enthusiastically, and out came a huge, powerful Charizard. Alex chuckled.
“Leo, go.” He said calmly. Alex’ enthusiasm for battled was another thing that had been weathered over the years. His Luxray came out, and looked at Alex questionably, seeming to say “What? Another Pathetic Newbie?” but did turn around to battle. Alex then went and sat on his beach chair again, this time picking up the newspaper.
“Aren’t you going to battle?” asked the boy.
“Oh, my Pokémon fight by themselves,” said Alex casually. This wasn’t fully true; his Pokémon were each extremely clever, and knew that whenever Alex whistled a certain tune to use a certain attack. It was a genius system that made the Pokémon seem ultra strong and intelligent and made Alex seem like practically a God to some Kids who couldn’t control some Pokémon.
Alex remembered his Pokémon troubles. He’d only really had it with three Pokémon. These were Treecky, Lucas and later on, Sammy, his Salamence. Swamps hadn’t liked him much at the start of his journey, but that had faded within a few battles. Treecky had started off just grumpy, and had then got worse. But once Alex had got most of his Pokémon to level 20, he soon saw sense and obeyed. Lucas disobeyed from the start, presumably because his Aura abilities couldn’t stand Alex’ inexperience. However, He also soon warmed to Alex as Alex’ experience grew.
Alex sat down in his beach chair and picked up the day’s newspaper, starting to read it. He started to whistle “Eye of the Tiger” by survivor, and Leo nodded, starting to do what looked like push ups.
“Flamethrower, Z!” shouted the boy. The Charizard swooped up into the sky and blasted several bursts of fire towards the Lion Pokémon. Leo was a very deft Pokémon and managed to dodge five of them, but was unfortunately hit by two, weakening him. However, he was now ready. Leo roared to the sky, and a million volts zapped out of him in most directions. Leo was using Discharge. Zard had nowhere to hide; the move destroyed him, and he feel to the floor, K.O.d.
“Come sit over here then, Leo,” said Alex. Leo nodded and went to Alex, sitting down like a true cat next to him. Kit was on Alex’ lap, smiling cutely. Alex picked another Pokeball from the tray that lay next to him, and threw it. At the same time, Alex’ challenger threw his own Pokeball. Alex’s Lucas came out, and turned round to nod at Alex.
“Go, Fogg!” shouted the young boy opposite. Out came a Murkrow. Alex was surprised to see an unevolved Pokémon out on the battlefield, but shrugged his shoulders. He knew what to do. Alex simply thought hard.
Stone Edge, Lucas, he told the Lucario. The Lucario turned round, concentrating on the ground. But before he could even begin, the Murkrow dived at him, attacking him with tremendous speed.
“Aerial ace; a clever move.” said Alex, out loud. The speed-over-anything-else tactic was a good one; Alex had used it himself on a couple of his Pokémon. Throughout Aerial ace, Lucas kept concentrating on the beach sand. Just as Fogg flew back to its place, sharp stones shot out from deep underground to strike the Murkrow. Any normal first stage Pokémon would have been knocked out by the move, so Alex was surprised when it survived the attack. Then he noticed the band around Fogg’s waist; a Focus sash! It was a very clever move, and Alex smiled a little. This kid had real potential. The next move, however, Alex was ready.
Lucas, try him with an Aura Sphere. Lucas obliged; a huge blue ball of energy began growing within Lucas’ palms, and it shot towards the Murkrow. Fogg was knocked out.
“Two out of three. I win,” said Alex. Opposite him, his challenger looked down darkly. There was a
Flicker of recognition in Alex. Where had he seen that look before? Then the recognition faltered, and Alex went up to speak to the boy.
“Hey kid. You’re a good battler. I’m being serious here.”
“I bet my dad could’ve beaten him,” said the boy, seeming to ignore Alex. Alex rolled his eyes. The typical bad loser grumpy attitude. Once again, Alex recognized that specific look from his youth. But from where? He kept delving into his memory, desperately thinking, and trying to remember. However, just at the moment, the crucial moment when Alex had thought he’d remembered, a little boy ran up to the pair, panting a little. He’d obviously rushed over here as quick as possible.
“Mist Slasha! Mista Slasha!”
“Ah, hello there, Jack isn’t it?” said Alex.
“No Mista. It’s Johnny.”
“Oops! Sorry Johnny. Thos old man’s met too many people... Anyway, may I help?”
“Yep! Me an’ Tyler found a Pelipper injad on da beach!”
“Injured Pelipper, eh? Well then, lead me to it!”
“I’m coming too!” blurted out the young boy who Alex had just beaten.
“OK, I’m good with that!” said Alex. They started walking towards the spot where Pelipper was. The young boy came up to Alex.”
“By the way, Mr. Slasher, my name is Jamie. My dad knew you. Well.”
“Nice to meet you, Jamie. I’m afraid that I’ve met many people who could be your dad in my time. You’ll have to be more specific.”
Once again, at the crucial moment where Alex was sure he’d finally know, they arrived. There, they found Tyler Hure, Johnny’s older brother. Tyler was a very strong, honourable boy, who Alex admired a lot. The boy couldn’t afford to attend the Pokemon School, so his Pokemon journey’s start had been faltered. He was however, very knowledgeable about Pokemon, and about many other things.
“Tyla! I foun’ dem!”
“Awesome, dude!” replied Tyler, who then turned to Alex. “We found him here, injured. There are these big tracks going towards Jukka cave. I was going to go myself, but Johnny said we should get you as you’d know what to do. They look like a Deceptomobile.”
“Uh-huh. I agree.” Alex looked at the Pelipper. It was a native in these parts, and in fact occasionally visited his ranch. He’d called it Percy. Percy was breathing heavily and was visibly suffering, something which Alex hated to see. It had huge scars on it.
“Get Pelly here to the Pokemon Center, boys” said Alex. When he saw Tyler’s look of ‘I want to come too’ Alex decided on something he’d wanted to do for ages, but just hadn’t had the right opportunity. “Tyler, if you go with your brother and keep Percy safe, I will capture you a Pokemon in Jukka cave.” Tyler nodded at this, and reluctantly helped his brother to carry the injured Pelipper away.
“Jamie, you’re coming with me,” said Alex once the brothers had left.
“I can’t think of anything else I’d like to do.”
So Alex called back Blaze and Leo, and with that, he and Jamie rushed towards the cave.

They soon got to the cave entrance. They saw the Deceptomobile, the vehicle that Team Deception travelled in.
“Well, we’re in the right place.” Said Alex
“God, it looks scary in there,” said Jamie, pointing at the cave.
“Yes, few people have been in here. I have though.”
Alex and Jamie then headed into the cave. Once inside, Alex soon got the slightly scared feeling he always experienced when in this cave. He’d been here many a time, and twice he had even caught Pokemon inside here. Inside this cave, there were the typically occurring Zubat, Geodude, Graveler and Sandshrew, but also Shellos and the occasional Gligar and once, Alex had even seen a Pachirisu! Mind you, that HAD been because it had gotten lost. It had belonged to a little girl in Daas.
So Alex and Jamie stepped through the cave cautiously, as it was a little daunting. Luckily, it wasn’t too dark, as it was quite a small cave, and the light from outside shone through.
They kept searching for the Team Deception, but couldn’t find them. Suddenly, Alex heard a weird noise. He gasped, but when he turned round, he saw it was only a Sandshrew. Alex sighed.
Phew, he thought. Alex then remembered his promise to Tyler, and remembered that Tyler said that he really liked Sandshrew. He sent forwards Kit, who was as usual outside a Pokeball.
“Go on kit, gently does it, use Faint attack.” Kit used Faint attack. It obviously knocked a lot of health out Sandshrew, so Alex threw a Pokeball. It rolled once, rolled twice, three times and then went still. Alex smiled a little, and picked up the Pokeball. Promise kept.
With Sandshrew caught, Alex and Jamie continued searching for what seemed like ages. They thought they’d looked everywhere! They were on the verge of giving up when they heard another noise. This time, it was not that of a Pokemon, but of a machine. A Team Deception “Enclosure Pen”, and electrical fence. Alex and Jamie rushed towards the noise, and to their shock saw two Team Deception Grunts, although that was it. They were laughing and chilling out, looking at their latest capture; a shiny Wingull.
“Percy’s baby,” breathed Alex, furious. “Deception, you’re done for!” shouted Alex, and he and Jamie stepped out, revealing themselves. The grunt on the left nearly choked on his coffee.
“It’s Red Menace!” he shouted. Alex smiled. He’d foiled their plans too many times; they knew him far too well. He was infamous in their ranks.
“Oh s**t,” said the other grunt. They looked at each other, and then turned back to Alex.
“RUN!” they yelled, and legged it out of the cave.
“Aren’t we meant to ‘capture the criminals’?” asked Jamie.
“Yes,” said Alex, laughing, “but personally, I don’t think they’ll come back to Daas, and it’s just FAR too funny to go and catch them.

It was now the late afternoon the same day, and Alex and all of his Pokemon were sunbathing peacefully.
“Mr. Slasher!” Alex awoke with a start, opening his eyes.
“What, what’s up?” he said.
“Nothing, sir, it’s just it will be dark soon.” Alex looked to the speaker. It was Tyler. Jamie and Alice, Tyler’s older sister, were also present. Alice and Tyler giggled.
“Ha ha.” Said Alex. He sat up, and there was silence for a few seconds. Alex then remembered the promise he’d made earlier.
“Tyler, here is your first Pokemon.” He said. Tyler accepted the Pokeball with a huge smile on his face. His sister was a Co-ordinator, and already had many Pokemon. She was home for the summer holidays.
“What is it?” asked Tyler. Alex smiled.
“Take a look.” Said Alex. Tyler threw the Pokeball. His new Sandshrew came out, and Tyler’s eyes seemed to sparkle with joy.
“Oh thank you, sir, thank you so much!”
“It’s nothing. Now then, could you leave this old man in peace?”
Tyler and Alice walked back towards the town.
“Mr. Slasher, I’ve been trying to tell you all day, we just haven’t had the chance,” said Jamie, “So I’ll show you instead.” He threw a Pokeball. Alex gasped with shock. The Pokemon was a Raichu. Leo headed over to it, and they said hello enthusiastically.
“Rai.” Said Alex. Tom Hawk’s first ever Pokemon. “You devil, Thomas!”
“Yep. That’s right. Tom Hawk is my dad.” Replied Jamie.
“But how? I SAW him get swallowed by a Gyrados!”
“He survived. But he’d infiltrated Deception by that point, so he couldn’t tell you. He’s only just finished de-railing them from the top.”
“My God. Jamie Hawk.”
“My dad is still alive, you know. Mum’s died, but dad’s alive and well.”
“I’m in a similar position. Tell your dad to come visit sometime, OK? God, I haven’t seen by best buddy in years!” at Alex Blaze looked at Alex questionably.
“Oops! Sorry Blaze, sorry guys. I meant by best human friend.”
“Anyway, that’s why dad sent me here. As a warning. He’s coming.”
“A Warning! Tcheh! It was a pleasure working with your today, by the way, Jamie.”
Alex sat back. He was old, sure, and his days to come were fewer, but maybe, just maybe, his adventures had yet to finish.

[Fei Fei]

Last minute entry is last minute. I hope this makes it in time.

Anyway, this turned out rather longer than I expected it to. I'm still iffy on some details, but overall, I'm actually fairly proud of this.

One important aspect of this story is that a lot of it focuses on Rosie, Alex's best friend (and eventual girlfriend). I felt that it was important to focus on her for the impact of the story to be where i wanted it to be. I hope it turns out alright, in any case.

Besides all of that, this takes place when Alex is 9 years old, Rosie is 10, and they decide to investigate the local haunted house.

“Alright! On the count of three, Hiiro! One! Two!! Three!!!”

“Chaaaaaaaar!”

“Aleeeeeeeeex!”

As the young girl and charmander stood, feet braced, arms bent and hands fisted, yelling their own names with every drop of air in their lungs, a small trickle of flame snaked out of the fire-lizard’s throat, ending in a bursting of flame not a foot from his mouth. Both girl and pokemon were startled by the small-scale explosion, and both fell back in surprise, each of them blinking owlishly up at where the smoke still hung suspended in the air.

A gentle, lilting laugh carried over from the shade under a tree about three yards away. Alex lifted herself into a sitting position as she looked over at the girl in the frilly flowered sundress, and smiled a wide, toothy smile at the girl resting out of the sun’s rays.

“What are you laughing for, then, Rosie?” Alex called over, stretching her short arms over her head, her long tail of hair thumping against her back.

‘Rosie’s’ laughter came to a end, and she smiled in return as she looked back at Alex. Her legs were drawn up at the knees, her hands folded on top of them as she looked on, watching Alex and Hiiro go about their ‘training’. “I was just wondering why you had to yell your own name, as well, Alex,” she asked, the corners of her eyes narrowed against the sun as she looked out at her blond best friend.

Alex scrambled up from her fallen position, barely stopping to brush off her overalls as she quickly strode up the slight hill to flop onto the grass next to Rosie, Hiiro following close behind her to flop himself down next to Rosie’s sandshrew, Antoinette. The charmander gave the sandshrew a winning smile, which was returned with a polite one from the ground-pokemon, and Alex chuckled, turning her head back to Roise. “Because, Rosie, Hiiro needs the moral support. Someday we’ll- er, he’ll- learn flamethrower. I can feel us getting closer to it.” She had full faith that someday, with enough practice, Hiiro would have the biggest and most powerful flamethrower in the entire world.

The sun shined down on that beautiful summer day, clear with just enough of a breeze that Alex had no intention of seeking the shelter of the in-doors. The four of them- Alex and Rosie, Hiiro and Antoinette- sat under the shade of the tree in easy quiet born only of close friendship and of a desire not to break the calming silence of the field that ran along the deserted dirt road.

Rosemary Jones was ten years old, just half a year older than Alexis ‘Alex’ Treinem, (who would finally be turning ten this fall), and she was Alex’s very best friend in the world. She was a quiet girl who preferred to read by the sidelines while Alex went off any did whatever crazy stunts Alex liked to do, but she was never far from her blond tornado. She had pale blue eyes and long brown hair that was neatly braided over her shoulder, held together with a soft pink ribbon that Alex had bought for her for her ninth birthday (that was the birthday where the clown and his Mr. Mimes had taken time out from the party to teach Alex how to juggle). Alex had even helped Rosemary- Rosie, she liked to call her- catch her very first pokemon just this year, the equally gentle if a little more shy sandshrew, Antoinette (who, incidentally, wore an identical soft pink ribbon around her neck). Out of all the things in the world, Alex loved Rosie the best (well, along with Hiiro and her own parents of course).

Alex felt like telling Rosie that right now.

“Rosie, I love you,” she said with a smile, rolling over onto her stomach to pick at the grass under her.

Rosie blinked, startled out of watching the clouds, turning pink in the setting sun, and looked down at Alex, tilting her head slightly before a serene smile crossed her face. For some reason, though, Alex almost thought it looked pained.

“I know you do, Alex. I love you to.”

Alex brushed the bad feeling that maybe Rosie was sad off, and her smile widened as she looked back up at her brunette friend. “Good. Because I love you the best in the whole world. You’re my very best friend.”

“And you’re my best friend, Alex, though I don’t think Hiiro appreciates you choosing favorites.”

Alex blinked, then looked over at Hiiro, who was poking at her, looking vaguely put out. “Hahah!” She rolled over so that Hiiro was trapped under her belly, and the fire pokemon began to squirm frantically as she hugged her arms around him. “I love you too, Hiiro! You’re like my own brother!”

Hiiro snorted, but nodded, as if that was exactly what he wanted to hear. Almost in unison, Antoinette and Rosie laughed lightly, and Hiiro’s face reddened as he scrambled out of Alex’s grip to go sit next to the sandshrew, and Alex rolled back so that she could look at Rosie again. “Hey, Rosie! Do you want to go to that house in the forest tonight? Some of the kids say that it’s haunted! Like, not with ghost-pokemon or anything, but with real ghosts! I want to check it out!” Her face lit up at the prospect, and Rosie would have laughed if her stomach hadn’t just plummeted to her feet at the suggestion.

“I... don’t know Alex. I don’t know about it being haunted, but my parents said that it was old, and almost falling down. We could get hurt.”

“Aw,” Alex pouted, sitting up to hug Rosie with a pouting face. “Pleeeease? I promise I’ll take care of you. I always take care of you, don’t I Rosie? Plus, Hiiro and Antoinette will be there, too.”

And, of course, when could Rosie ever really say no to Alex? With a sigh, Rosie resigned herself, and nodded. “Alright, Alex, we can go. But we have to go to your house and get flashlights. I don’t know how to fight off ghosts, but I can at least make sure you don’t go tripping over loose floorboards in the dark.”

Alex cheered for joy, and practically pulled Rosie all the way back to her house.

---

Of course, the only proper time for going to a haunted house is night time. It really can’t be done in the day, and even the evening is stretching it. Luckily, after getting the flashlights from Alex’s house, and after taking the long walk through the woods to actually reach the mysterious haunted home, dusk had already settled into the sky, and it was dark enough for haunted house viewing by Alex’s standards.

“Alright, so, here’s what we do. It’s a three story house, and I’ll admit, Rosie,” Alex gave the brunette a pointed look, “that it might be a little dangerous on the top floor, so let’s try to stick to the bottom two floors, alright?”

Hiiro ‘char’d in agreement, and Alex turned on her flashlight with a dramatic movement. “Alright then! Explorers, away!” Then she turned, and with Rosie, Hiiro, and Antoinette behind her, led the way up the last few yards to the house.

It was a big, ornate mansion, and sometimes Alex had to wonder who’d build a house out here, but that just added to the mystery. It must have been a beautiful house at one point, but now the windows were either broken or ghosted over with dirt and cobwebs, and vines crawled up the sides, making the walls weak. There were four rotten wooden steps that led up to the front door, and Alex and Rosie made sure to stay as close to the sturdier sides of the steps as they could, before carefully making their way across the porch.

The door was already open.

In the quiet of the forest, the creek of the door as Alex pushed it open was almost deafening, but she didn’t pay any attention to it. She stepped halfway through, and shined her light around the main foyer, her breath catching in her throat.

There was a chandelier crashed to the floor in the middle of the large front room, and a double staircase lining each wall. A door stood in each of the walls, leading off into rooms that Alex couldn’t see. She looked back at Rosie and cocked her head, motioning that she was going to go in. Rosie nodded, gulping down her fear so that she could be strong for Alex (who, frankly, looked even more frightened than Rosie), and the four of them went in together.

“Maybe we should put Hiiro and Antoinette back into their pokeballs,” Rosie suggested as it was her turn to look around the room. It was dark and dusty, with cobwebs in every imaginable corner, and there were broken pieces where the ceiling hard started to fall through, and where the floor had even begun to sink. “I don’t want them to get lost in here...”

Alex nodded, ignoring her shaking hands, and looked down at Hiiro. The charmander looked like he’d been paralyzed by a pikachu. Alex actually spared a whisper of a laugh, and called quietly, “Alright, return Hiiro. I’ll call you if I need you.” Hiiro looked all too glad to be going back into his pokeball.

After Rosie called back Antoinette, she followed closely behind Alex as they slowly moved into the room. They both stood in the middle for a moment, looking around, wondering where to go first.

“Let’s go upstairs first,” Alex suggested, motioning to the left set of stairs in the room. “We can explore there first, and then come back down.”

It was alright with Rosie, and so the both of them slowly made their way over to the stairs, keeping their eyes open and ears alert for any sound.

It was eerily quiet.

Carefully creeping up the stairs, almost on top of one another, Alex and Rosie shined their lights ahead of them, and finally made it to the second floor landing. It was even darker up here, but the floor was in better shape, though just as dusty. There was less broken furniture, and there were even some spots on the floor where it looks like some dust had been disturbed, like someone had walked there recently (or, at least, more recently than anyone had been in the house as a whole).

Rosie stared at the patch of disturbed dust and felt fear being to rise in her throat again, but Alex looked almost annoyed at it. “Jeeze. And Zack even said that he and Billie hadn’t been here. That liar. Look, Rosie, there are footprints. They must have been here already, last week or something.”

The fear in Rosie’s throat didn’t let her point out to Alex that there was only one set of foot prints.

“Come on, Rosie. Let’s follow them. If Zack and Billie lied about not coming here, maybe they found something cool.”

Rosie was about to tug on Alex’s shirt, to beg the other girl to leave, but Alex had already started following, and Rosie desperately started forward to keep up.

The hallway was long, longer than Rosie would have guessed, and it was lined with doors on either side, all of them locked. The footprints never left their straight path, though, so Alex never even gave them a second glance.

From what Alex could guess, they were about half-way down the hall (she was remembering how many doors they’d passed versus the windows she’s seen from the outside) when a single light suddenly came on, in the light fixture attached to the wall directly beside them. Rosie squeaked in terror, but Alex placed a (shaking) hand on her shoulder, silently asking her to calm down.

“Look, Rosie,” she soothed. “There are lightbulbs in all of these fixtures. That one was probably just loose, and our walking twitched it on. See?” She tapped the wall under the glowing light, and it fizzled off again. Rosie spent a few moments staring at it before she slowly nodded, and turned back to Alex, clutching tightly to Alex’s long haired ponytail.

“Ouch, Rosie. You’re holding too tight.” Rosie quickly let go, but Alex just laughed, and handed the tail of hair back to Rosie. “You can hold onto it, if it makes you feel better.” Rosie nodded- it did make her feel better. Alex has such soft long hair. It was something she loved, and it made her feel better in the now dark again hallway.

“Let’s keep going. The footsteps still continue. Say, Rosie?” She asked, in an attempt to keep the girl calm with talking, though her own voice shook a little. “Do you know anything about this house?”

Rosie shook her head once, one hand clenched firmly around Alex’s ponytail while the other diligently moved around with her flashlight. “N-no, not really. When I asked my mother about it- that was when she told me not to come, because it was dangerous- she told me that it belonged to the family of a young woman who lived her about fifty years ago.”

“Geeze, this is a lot of damage for just fifty years,” Alex said as she looked around in awe. “I’d have guessed a hundred.”

Rosie laughed weakly, nodding before continuing on. “Anyway, I think, eventually, it was just the young woman living in the house, but I don’t know what happened to the rest of her family. Anyway, that’s all I know. You could say all of that about any house, I guess.”

Alex hummed, thinking about the information, then shook her head. “No way!” She whispered enthusiastically, glancing back at Rosie with a smile. “That’s a perfect haunted house story. I wonder what happened to her family. Living here all alone must have been boring. It’s so big!” She threw and arm out to emphasize how big it was.

Except, her hand knocked into a chipped vase on a table in the hall, and crashed to the floor. The noise was ear-shattering in the quiet, and both girls froze, Rosie jumping forward to hug onto Alex’s neck.

“W-was... was it just the vase?” Rosie asked, and she bent slightly at the waist, keeping as close to Alex as possible as the blond knelt down to pick up the pieces.

“Alex, the house is abandoned. You don’t have to pick them up...”

“I know, Rosie, but I feel bad. Look, there was even a dried up old rose in the vase. I should at least pick up the pieces,” Alex said, setting her flashlight on the ground beside the broken pieces so that she could see and use both of her hands.

Rosie nodded slowly, then straightened up carefully so that she could keep watch as Alex deftly gathered the larger pieces.

Rosie’s blue-eyed gaze scanned each end of the hallway twice before catching her own gaze back at her in the mirror that was hanging above the table where the vase had once been. It was a beautiful mirror, but she could hardly see anything in it, it was so dirty. In some places, the dirt was so caked on that she couldn’t tell if pieces of the mirror were broken out or not.

Then, she saw something that made her blood run cold.

The light that had flashed on earlier was lit in its reflection, but it hadn’t been lit when she’d scanned the hallway just a moment before.

In the mirror-light’s reflection, a figure in a white dress was reflected, positioned as if standing behind her, its face obscured, blocked off by one of the black dirt-caked parts of the mirror.

Rosie couldn’t even scream.

When her eyes- widened all the way in terror- landed solidly on the figure, it stood still for the briefest of moments, before almost vanishing, the figure blurring as it almost looked to run away at light-speed down the hall.

Rosie spun around, almost falling backwards onto Alex before she caught herself. In the hall behind her, the light was still un-lit, but underneath it a perfectly fresh pair of bare footprints were traced in the dust. Except, it was just those footprints. There was no sign in the dust that someone had moved from that spot. If she hadn’t seen... whatever it had been move away, she might have guessed that it was still there, standing, invisible, showing itself only through misplaced dust on the floor...

Rosie was still frozen, staring at the spot where the footprints stood, when Alex turned around, her cheery “Finished!” ringing quite at odds with what Rosie was feeling at the moment.

It took a moment for Alex to notice her very-best-friend’s state, and she blinked, confused, before putting a gentle hand on Rosie’s shoulder, shaking it gently. “Rosie? Are you alright? What’s wrong?” When Rosie didn’t move, didn’t even blink, Alex’s stomach began to turn in fear, and she moved around to face Rosie’s front, placing both hands on her shoulders. “Rosie!” She called more forcefully, shaking a little harder as panic set into her voice. “Rosie!”

Rosie blinked, suddenly breaking her eye-contact with the dusty footprints and un-lit lamp, looking back at Alex, startled.

“Alex-”

“Rosie!” Alex lunged forward and hugged her bewildered very-best-friend as tight as she could. “Oh, Rosie! I was scared! You were just standing there, looking at the floor and it didn’t look like you could hear me. Are you alright?” Alex moved back enough that Rosie could see the concerned look on her face.

“I-,” Rosie started, and glanced back down at where the footprints had been. Alex’s hurried movements had disturbed them, though, and now they were obscured beyond recognition. She looked back up at Alex. “I’m find, Alex,” she finally said, smiling a little and putting a small hand on Alex’s cheek, comforting. “Let’s keep going. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can leave.” Of course, all Rosie wanted to do was run out of this place screaming, but she knew that, in the end, Alex would be disappointed. She’d suffer through it for Alex.

“OK!” Alex said, seeming to forget their earlier silent-decision to only whisper while in the house. She gave Rosie a sheepish look after the outburst, and then added, more quietly, “let’s keep going. You can keep holding onto my hair, if you want to, Rosie.”

“I think I’d rather hold your hand, Alex,” Rosie said shyly, and Alex wasn’t sure why she looked away a little when she asked that.

“Yeah, of course,” Alex offered with a smile, extending her hand. “Now, let’s go.”

The two kept especially close together as they walked, almost tripping over one another as they tried to coordinate walking with flashing their lights around, Alex much more careful not to knock into any more fragile objects, Rosie on the lookout for any more mirrors and... ghosts. If she hadn’t come into the house believing it was haunted, she surely believed now.

“You know,” Alex said quietly as they continued walking, holding onto Rosie’s arm, her eyes constantly moving around the hallway as she kept a look out for danger, “if we were in a movie, there’d be creepy music playing over us. Do you think we’d be able to hear it?”

Rosie was startled at the question, but slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She smiled as she realized that Alex was trying to cheer her up, then nodded. “Because, if we could hear it, we’d know we were in a movie. And the good guys never die in a movie. There would be no suspense.”

Alex blinked. She hadn’t thought of it like that. “Hey! You’re right! Can you imagine, if we were in a movie or story right now? We’d know that would couldn’t get hurt... we could just walk right on to the end of the hallway, without being scared at all.” How clever. I guess that’s why no one in movies ever hears the music, she thought to herself with a nod.

“Well, if we were in a movie, what song would you want to be playing now as we walked, Alex?” Rosie asked in an attempt to keep up the good humor.

“That’s a good question...” Alex answered, looking distressed. Rosie knew that Alex always had trouble picking a favorite song. She had too many that she liked, and always ended up changing her mind. It was good to see a look of concentration on her face, though, instead of the look of poorly-hidden fear.

“I guess, I’d choose Midnight by the Beldum Steels. That’s such a-” Alex cut herself off as her flashlight’s beam caught the end of the hallway in its light, and Alex tilted her head, moving away slightly from Rosie to look about the hallway.

“Rosie,” she said slowly, in a tone that Rosie distinctly did not like. “There’s no door on this side of the hallway.”

The brunette blinked, and looked at where Alex was standing. The blond girl had her hand flat against the left-hand wall, smoothing her hand over it as if looking for bumps.

“What’s wrong with that?” Rosie asked, confused. “So there’s no room at this end. Is that a bad thing?” She desperately hoped it wasn’t a bad thing.

“No,” Alex said slowly, turning slightly to look at the door across from her, in the right-hand wall, and then looked at the last door on the left-hand wall, which was almost fifteen feet back the way they’d come. “It’s just that...” Alex said, wondering how to put it, before looking up at Rosie, “there was a window that I could see from outside. Like there should be a room here, but there’s no door...” She looked back at the wall in front of her, knocking slightly before turning back to look at Rosie.

Rosie gulped, and looked around the hallway the same way Alex had. “Well, maybe the last room is just bigger than all of the others. Maybe it just has an extra window. Maybe that’s-” Rosie’s voice froze as the hallway went dark. She could see anything, but she lifted her flashlight up, and shook it, pressing the on/off switch several times.

“A-Alex, my light...”

“Mine too,” Alex replied, her voice a little steadier, but grim sounding. “Where are you Rosie? Let me take your hand again... Rosie?”

“A-alex... isn’t there... isn’t there a light on, just behind you?”

“No, there isn-”

Rosie sucked in a quick breath, causing Alex to stop, and, in the dark, it sounded like Alex turned. Rosie didn’t know why Alex couldn’t see it. In the mirror at the end of the hall, all of lights that they’d passed... all of their reflections were lit, the mirror hallway looking as bright and clean as the day the house was built, while the actual hallway was dark and dusty and broken.

“Alex, t-the mirror,” Rosie tried to warn, her voice barely coming out in a squeak as she raised a hand to point at it.

“Rosie, I can’t even see where the mirror is. It’s too dark. There’s no light at all.”

And Alex was right. Even though the mirror was lit, and it was as bright as day, she couldn’t see anything else. If the mirror was lit up, then logic stated told Rosie that it should give off light, and she should be able to see Alex. But Alex, and the rest of the hallway, were pitch black.

Then, Alex moved, and she could see her inky black silhouette against the lit mirror as the blond girl stumbled about, trying to find Rosie in the darkness.

“Rosie, keep talking so I can find you,” Alex said, her voice almost commanding if it hadn’t been shaking slightly.

“Alex,” Rosie said pitifully, reaching out a hand to try and reach Alex’s shadow, finding that she was rooted on the spot.

Then came the footsteps.

Like the beating of her own heart, she could hear footsteps behind her, thumping in time to the drumming in her ears.

Rosie’s breath froze in her throat as she kept her eyes on the mirror. In the mirror, in the well-lit, clean world of the mirror, she could see herself past Alex’s shadow, even though Alex wasn’t reflected in it at all. And behind Rosie, she could see a bare pair of feet moving. The mirror was tilted forward slightly, so the very end of the hallway was cut off, and so too was the upper half of the figure ‘walking’ towards her. All she could see were the feet and the fluttering hem of a white dress as the figure walked.

She tried to open her mouth, tried to warn Alex that something was coming, but she couldn’t. Alex had moved again, no longer did her silhouette stand out against the mirror, and as if from far away, Rosie could hear her calling to her.

“Rosie!” But Rosie heard it as if from underwater, her ears blocked by the sound of drums in her ears, her blood pumping frantically, so loud that it blocked out all other sound.

Then, as the figure moved closer in the mirror, just when, in the mirror, Rosie should have been able to see the face of the figure, it vanished. The figure vanished along with the lights and the clean, pretty new hallway, and all Rosie could see now was the real hallway reflected in the mirror, dust and cobwebs and all.

Except now, there was someone else- someone real- standing in front of it.

It wasn’t Alex. The hair wasn’t bound into a ponytail, and it didn’t have that cute little piece of hair that stuck up from her bangs that Rosie loved so much. An elegant, mature form replaced the cute little boy-ish form that Rosie knew so well. It wasn’t Alex standing in front of the mirror, casting a frightening silhouette.

But, now Alex was in front of the mirror, in front of Rosie, blocking her vision of the phantom. Suddenly, sound came back to her, and Alex’s hands were on her arms, shaking her and yelling her name.

“ROSIE! RosieRosieRosieRosie!” Alex sounded like she was crying, shouting her name like it was anchoring her down to reality.

“Ale-” She raised her arm halfway, intending to latch onto Alex’s arm, Alex’s hair, Alex’s anything, but she stopped. She couldn’t even finish saying Alex’s name. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement that wasn’t Alex, that couldn’t have been Alex because Alex was still in front of her, trying to wake her up.

And then the world went black for both of them.

---

The next thing Rosie knew, she was somewhere else. She wasn’t in the hallway anymore. The thing she noticed after that was that Alex wasn’t anywhere she could see. She was lying on the floor, and she started up, looking around frantically. Alex? Where was she? How could she be...

As she was looking around, something else glared out at her. Something off about the room she was in...

There was no door. Just one window, set in the far wall.

She stood up, shakily, and placed her hand at her side, where Antoinette’s pokeball was. If she was here, alone, she wanted her partner with her.

Her hand met air.

She looked down to her side, only to see that the thin belt she always wore- the one with the special holder for her one pokeball- was gone. She felt around for it, not trusting her eyes in the dark room. Maybe it had fallen off...

“Why?”

Rosie froze, then turned her head from where she was kneeling on the ground, looking about the room and afraid of what she might see.

Standing by the window was a young woman with an elegant white dress on. Her skin was pale, and her hair was black and silky looking. Her eyes, though- her eyes negated any air of elegance she might have had about her. Her eyes looked lonely. Her eyes looked angry. Her eyes looked... about what Rosie expected a ghosts eyes would look.

And, since the woman seemed to be floating a few inches off the floor, a ghost was exactly what Rosie expected her to be.

“Why!” It demanded again in a voice that sounded like two or three voices at once, and Rosie flinched, turning quickly, and backed up until her back hit the wall behind her. The door-less wall.

“W-where is Alex?” Rosie demanded, her voice shaking. “W-what did you do with her?” She could feel tears begin to pool in her eyes, but there was no way out of here.

“Why!?” The phantom insisted, its face twisting into a look of anger.

“Why what!” Rosie demanded back in a desperate voice, tears falling freely now as her body began to shake like a leaf.

“Why do you have someone like that? Why do you get someone like that!?”

“I-I don’t know w-what you’re tal-” Before Rosie could finish, finish insisting that she had no idea what the ghost was asking of her, it disappeared from its spot by the window and reappeared not a foot in front of her so quickly that she didn’t even have time to draw in a startled breath.

“Why are you allowed to have someone to love you like that!? Why do you deserve to be happy?!” It yelled, so close to Rosie’s face that her eyes crossed just to see it.

But when it said that, Rosie stopped being afraid.

She looked at the ghost, raging in front of her, and slowly lowered her hands from their defensive cross in front of her body. “W-what did you say?”

“You can see me,” it- she, Rosie amended. The ghost was a she- insisted, and its many-voices voice dwindled down into the single voice of a woman. “Why do I have to die here alone, when you can come here with someone who loves you so much, and not be afraid. Why do I have to die afraid!?”

Rosie’s eyebrows knit together, fear fading into confusion. Well, for one, she was hardly unafraid. Secondly, she wasn’t here with anyone that loved her that much...

Rosie watched the ghost move back, away from her, and tears were streaming down her face now, her mouth open in an ‘o’ as she wailed silently. Rosie carefully stepped away from the wall, stepping closer to the ghost.

“D-did you have someone you loved?” Rosie carefully asked, not wholly sure that she should even say anything.

The ghost’s silent wail erupted into a ear-piercing shriek of grief when Rosie spoke, and she had to cover her ears, else she feared to lose her hearing.

“Why do you have someone to love so much?!” It demanded, the many-voices returning as it glared at Rosie, still crying as it yelled.

Rosie flinched, but kept determined, not moving back. “Do you mean Alex? I don’t know why I have her. I do love her, if that’s what you mean. I’m lucky.” Her voice was firm, and set, and for a moment the ghost stopped and stared at her warily. “And maybe Alex doesn’t know how much I love her, but that’s alright. I love her enough for both of us,” Rosie continued, straightening up to her full height, stepping towards the ghost-woman. The ghost-woman stepped back.

“A-and maybe, maybe you died here, and maybe you loved someone who didn’t love you back, but, well... well, then, so what!” Rosie almost yelled, stepping angrily towards the ghost as the ghost moved now fearfully back. “B-because, you know, I love Alex, but maybe Alex doesn’t love me. A-and, t-that’s alright. Maybe, maybe that’s the same thing that happened to you. But, but that also doesn’t give you an excuse to do- to do this!” She stomped her foot for emphasis, and the ghost seemed to flinch. “That doesn’t mean you get to stay here and haunt this place! You’ve got to learn to move on! And! And, if you’ve hurt Alex, even the slightest, tiniest bit, then, I don’t care if you’re a ghost! I’ll... I’ll kill you all over again! Because! Because if you hurt- if you hurt Alex, I’ll-”

Rosie couldn’t continue, because she was full out crying now, her eyes so full of tears she couldn’t see anything. And she was pretty sure that snot was beginning to run down her nose, too. But, still, she stood as strong as she could, despite how she was shaking now. Because no matter what happened, ghost or not, if this ghost killed Alex-

“What is that?”

“W-what is what?”

“Love... I haven’t felt love... in so long,” she continued, her voice quieting into something that sounded contemplative. It moved forward, and brought a hand up to touch the side of Rosie’s face, and the brunette flinched back. The ghost didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s real. I haven’t felt love... real love... only...”

Rosie sniffed, looking as best she could up past the tears and to the ghost. “O-only what?”

“Only... hate, I think...” She looked off, her semi-transparent body flickering slightly in the moonlight streaming through the window. If Rosie hadn’t been feeling so many things at the moment, she might have thought it was beautiful.

“What happened to you?” Rosie asked after a few moments, running a hand over her face and nose.

“I don’t remember anymore,” she answered, not moving her translucent eyes from gazing out the window.

“Can’t you... move on?”

“I don’t know how.”

Rosie sniffed again, and looked around the room before settling back on the ghost. “Well, why are you still here?”

“I can’t leave.”

“I know that,” Rosie answered, almost frustrated with the vague answers. She had a right to be. She was tired, frightened, confused, and most of all, worried about Alex. “I mean, do you know what you can’t leave? Is there something keeping you here?”

The ghost suddenly looked back at Rosie. She jumped a little bit, but the ghost made no other move. “No,” it said. “I cannot leave. I cannot leave this room.”

Rosie blinked, looking around again. “Just... this room?” She asked, and as she looked about, she saw the remnants of what looked to be a very broken, very dusty bedroom. A rather sparse bedroom, but a bedroom, unmistakably. An old, dusty mirror stood out amongst the debris. “Did... did you die in this room?” That thought sent chills down Rosie’s spine.

“I don’t know.”

Rosie shut her mouth after that, and turned around to run her hand down the wall behind her, thinking. If this room had a window, but no door, then just outside must have been the hallway where she and Alex had been, however long ago. If Alex was still out there...

She pounded on the wall with her fist, and shouted “Alex!” as loudly as she could, but only once. She didn’t want to be too loud, with a ghost in the room.

“Why are you doing that?”

Rosie looked back at the ghost, who was looking at her again, and Rosie met her gaze with a determined one of her own. “So that Alex will find me.”

“She won’t find you. You’ll die here, like me.”

Rosie paused for a minute, and she and the ghost simply looked at each other, in silence. She ran her hand over the wall again. Then, Rosie slowly smiled, as gently but as happily as she had ever smiled. “No I won’t. Do you know why?”

The ghost looked at Rosie, mouth open slightly and eyes drawn in confusion as she stared. And then, the wall next to Rosie splintered apart.

“Because Alex promised, you know. Promised to protect me,” Rosie answered with a smile, moving to the side to avoid the splintering wood. The ghost watched with wide eyes as pieces of the wood paneling were tossed about, looking from the wall to Rosie.

Then, the ghost’s eyes softened, and her form began to flicker and dim.

Alex stepped into the room through the hole she's made..

The ghost stared at Rosie, and disappeared. Rosie could barely hear the “Thank you” that it whispered at her as she soon found herself with an armful of Alex.

“Rosie!” Alex shouted, hugging onto her friend. “I-I don’t know what happened, Rosie! I woke up and I was outside the house but you weren’t there and I was worried because for some reason I had Antoinette’s pokeball so I came back in here looking for you but I didn’t know where you were but then I heard you yell my name and I found this room again and Hiiro used his ember to set the wall on fire a little bit and then me and Hiiro and Antoinette started to punch away at the wall and-”

Rosie quietly put a finger to Alex’s mouth, silencing her tirade with a hushed ‘shh’. Alex immediately obeyed, snapping her mouth closed with an audible click.

Rosie stood up from where Alex had toppled her over, and looked around the room one last time before looking back at Alex, holding her hand forward to take Alex’s hand in her own. “Let’s go home Alex.”

Alex stared for a moment, then nodded, and turned to carefully lead Rosie out of the hole she’d made in the wall. Rosie silently inspected it for a moment.

“The wall was already weak,” Alex explained more slowly. “Hiiro used his ember to burn a small part. It was easy then for us to claw our way through. Rosie, how did you get in there?”

Rosie looked back into the room for a second, then shook her head, tugging on Alex’s hand to move them both back down the hallway. “It’s not important. I just want to go home.”

“Alright, Rosie. But, Rosie, are you alright? Were you scared.”

“Nuh uh,” Rosie said, shaking her head slightly before looking back at a confused looking Alex. “I knew you’d come for me.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good then.” Alex smiled, and for a while was quiet as they walked down the hallway. They were in the front foyer, almost out of the house when she said offhandedly, “it’s too bad we didn’t see any ghosts. I guess this place wasn’t haunted after all.”

Rosie nearly tripped herself laughing.

Alex just stared on as Rosie laughed, and laughed, and then Alex ‘eep’-ed as she realized that Rosie had gone from laughing to crying, holding onto Alex’s hand so tight that it hurt.

Alex quickly moved forward and gathered Rosie in her arms, even though Rosie was just a little bit taller than her. “Rosie! Rosie, it’s alright. I’m sorry I left you alone. I’ll never do it again, I promise.”

Rosie sniffed. She tried to stop crying, but it took a little while. They both just stood there in the front room, Alex awkwardly patting Rosie’s back, not knowing what was wrong. Rosie stood there thinking.

Finally, Rosie stepped away, and rubbed her palm over her face as Alex watched her every move with a look of concern. After sniffing a few times, Rosie just stood there, looking at Alex as Alex looked back.

She’d died alone. All alone. Rosie was lucky, to have someone like Alex.

Why do you have someone to love so much?

Even if, maybe, Alex didn’t know it.

What is that?

Rosie would probably have died in that room without Alex.

Love... I haven’t felt love... in so long.

“Alex, I-”

Alex looked up at Rosie, expectant and curious, but when Rosie looked back at Alex, she just smiled, and her shoulders slumped as she let out a sigh.

And maybe Alex doesn’t know how much I love her, but that’s alright. I love her enough for both of us.

“What is it, Rosie?”

Rosie smiled, and shook her head, letting go of Alex’s hand. She linked her hands behind her back and turned to walk slowly out the door , making it out the door before Alex shook herself out of her confusion to follow after her.

“Rosie? What’s wrong Rosie? You can tell me.”

Rosie shook her head, and looked back at Alex as she caught up to her. She reached out and took Alex’s hand in her own before giving the girl a quick kiss on the forehead. “I promise I’ll tell you someday. Not right now though. I’m happy right now. Why don’t we go home, hm? You’re mother is going to be very angry with us, you know.”

Alex’s face took on a look of abject horror, and she looked down at the ground as they walked through the forest path, hand in hand. “You’re right. She’ll kill me. Of course, she’ll probably just give you a cookie for ‘putting up with me’.”

“That’s right. And I’ll share my cookie with you. Or maybe I’ll share it with Hiiro. He’s probably did all of the work in getting me out of that room.”

Alex pouted. “That’s not true. I helped a lot.”

Rosie laughed. “So, just an ember? Not a flamethrower?”

Alex kicked a rock, and pouted. “No, no flamethrower.”

“Pity.” Rosie looked back at Alex, and playfully tweaked her nose. “I guess you’ll both need more training.”

Both of them shared a laugh at that, and Alex completely forgot about Rosie not saying her whatever she was going to say.

---

On Alex’s 15th birthday, Rosie finally told Alex what she had been going to tell her that night at the haunted house. Afterwards, Alex had smiled, and told her that she loved her too. For real.

Their first date was to the haunted house, which was scheduled to be torn down that summer. Rosie placed flowers on the front step, but when Alex asked why she did it, she didn’t answer. She just smiled, and they turned back to walk home, hand in hand.

If the ending feels a little fluffy, that's because I wrote it to be that way. This is pokemon. This is the franchise where the major villains do bad things because 'they wanted a friend'. I tried to reflect something of that endearingly-pokemon feeling here.

I hope you enjoyed.

-Fei

[Kranic]

Woo last minute entries!

The roleplay takes place on Castor's first try up Carello (which he obviously failed) and also has a quick flashback for when Castor get's his Mareep and the relationship they develop with each other.
I haven't really been able to work on it so much given little computer time (and the fact that when I type, it ends up bother some people.)
But I managed to get it done, even though I cut out a lot of the flashback.
Particularly the battle Castor had.
But hey, it's better than nothing.

Castor gave a content sigh as he looked at his surroundings. It was a wondrous beach, warm and delightful, a perfect place to be for the summer. He looked about, seeing his frolicking pokemon happy and cheerful with their current location. His Marill and Shroomish both played in the water’s coast, splashing each other with watch in the various ways they could. His Mareep and Charmander both effectively decided to stay out of the water, for various, important, reasons. The two happily gossiped with each other near Castor’s side. Smiling, Castor took a nice grip on both the pokemon’s head and shook them affectionately and proceeded to take his leisurely position in his chair. He went inside his bag and picked out a silver, red, and black badge case and proceeded to open it up and put it up into the sun. Inside was a single badge, imaged with two red wings that spread out from an orange fire. It was the Emberwing Badge, the badge of Arasam. The badge Castor has yet to get. Castor quickly came to reality, releasing that he was daydreaming. The golden sunny beach was gone, his badge case was gone, the happiness was gone, the warmth, all the warmth was done. It was desolate and cold, white and foreboding. His happy beach fantasy was no longer a reality. Indeed, Castor was no longer on his Arasam. No, he was stuck on the cold icy mountain named Carello.

“This sucks.”

Castor gave an unhappy sigh as he pushed himself up the mountain. He was freezing, carelessly when packing for his journey, Castor had forgotten a jacket and as a rambunctious youth, Castor simply refused to ask for his parents to send over a jacket knowing that he would feel weak and useless for doing so. Instead the boy decided to follow his own way in conquering Mt. Carello, he will conquer the mountain with-out the need of a jacket! But now, Castor is regretting this discussion, shivering and sneezing as he rubs his elbows, trying to keep some warmth. He could always go back and the thought has come to him, time and time again, but the idea of giving up, was something Castor couldn’t do, not after growing so frustrated with that boy the previous day for giving up during his battle. No. Castor knew he was to fight on and by doing this, he knew that he would be stronger by doing so. Let us just hope that Castor grows a little wiser with his choices in the future.

After climbing up a few cliffs, Castor managed to find himself a rather clear cut path to walk through, very fortunate for the boy, seeing that he was unbelievably cold and was most probably going to face death from frostbite or some other cold related illness, but as a strong boy, the kid endured. Atleast, for a few seconds. After spending so much energy climbing up the cliff, Castor fell nearly lifeless after taking a few steps on the path. It was much too much for him. He struggled as he tried to get up, but quickly fell back to the cold snowing path.

“This sucks.”

He stayed in the cold for a few seconds, before finally giving up on his adventure. Castor wanted to go home, grab a jacket, or something. He closed his eyes as he tried to think of something to do. Nothing came to him. He once again let out another sigh and opened his eyes. In front of him was a cute little swinub, staring at him with (oddly open) cute little beady black eyes. He started the johto native pokemon and once again tried to get up, this time fairly successful. It seemed that Castor just fell; it wasn’t a situation of energy exhaustion or anything extreme, simply a fall in the snow. That being said, Castor was still tired as dirt.

Castor looked at the swinub, growing a little annoyed by the situation Castor stared at the cute eyed swinub, who proceeded to return to its normal closed eyed face and gave a sweet growl to Castor. Not affected by the pokemon’s cuteness, Castor tried to bypass it, but the pokemon wouldn’t allow it. It stayed by his foot refusing to allow the boy move it.

“This sucks.”

Castor let out a sigh and proceeded to punt the pig over a few feet. It let out a cry and got up. Scared by Castor’s harmful kick, the pig pokemon quickly considered running away, but soon came to reminisce something it learned in the pass and instead, decided to fight. The pokemon took in a deep breath and began to blow a ray of ice shards at Castor. Quickly realizing the Pokemon’s power, Castor ducked, barely avoiding the several shards of ice. He rolled in the snowy terrain and threw a pokeball, releasing his Charmander.

“Icuru, flamethro-I mean ember!”

The Charmander nodded and blew a small flame at the ice pokemon, which turned out to be super effective. The swinub replied with a painful cry, but still had quite the bit of power. The swinub then attacked with a quick charge at the Charmander, but the swift little lizard dodged easily and attacked again with an ember. The swinub was forced to its side by the close range ember, rolling a few times before regaining its stability, sadly, by the time it realize what was going on, the swinub was being assaulted by a barrage of flaming claws form the Charmander, an attack the pokemon created by fusing it’s ember and scratch attacks.
The swinub began to cry and beg for strength. It didn’t want to die in the snow. It only wanted a trainer, to become stronger and safer. It didn’t want for this to happen, it didn’t expect for this to happen. Obviously, the swinub wasn’t too smart, but there was something more too it. It had strength, but not the strength Castor admired. It was strong, far stronger than all of Castor’s pokemon, but it didn’t use the strength it worked for. It didn’t know how to use it and honestly, it didn’t want to use it. The swinub was a sweet pokemon, not a battling machine, despite showcasing a wish to be one. That was, in till this moment.
While crying and bleeding the swinub began to glow in a bright white light. Its body began to grow and morph. It was undergoing, evolution.

“Swiiii!”

The pokemon growled out as its body changed and a sudden flush of power overcame it. It’s small and light voice slowly grew deeper and more powerful as it proceeded with its screech.

“IIIINE!!!”

The pokemon stomped as the evolution finally finished. Its body was several times larger now, two tusk burst out of its jaw, around a pink piggy nose to represent its origin. Lumpy and brown, the Pokemon’s fur covered its beady eyes. The Pokemon’s ears were now much more notable, flopping on its sides. In its best effort to stomp the pokemon turned over to the Charmander, to release one more growl.

“PI…LO! PILOSWINE!”

Just as the pokemon shouted, it had evolved into a Piloswine, far stronger than it was before. After its powerful roar, the pokemon dashed at the Charmander, attacking with a powerful take down. The Charmander fell back, critically injured by the attack, but still retained just enough strength and will power to move on. Taking advantage of the Piloswine’s attack, the Charmander did its best to saddle on the pokemn and proceed to attack the pokemon from atop its back, using the previous combination it used before. It was fairly effective and left the piloswine unable to attack bringing Castor much happiness to see how strong his pokemon was, unfortunately this wouldn’t last too long, as the Piloswine learned a new move.
The Piloswine took in a deep breath as the Charmander assaulted its back. It closed its eyes (not that you could see them behind of its fur and proceeded to charge up for an attack.

“SWI-SWINE!!”

The Piloswine roared as it opened its eyes and grew a blue aura around its body. Rocks appeared about the pokemon all covered with a similar aura. With sudden and quick precision the rocks focused in and hit the Charmander that was on the piloswine’s back, knocking it out instantly. The Piloswine let out another roar as the blue aura transformed into a familiar white light. It was evolving, again.

“MAMA, MAMO, MAMO…SWINE!!”

The pokemon unless a horribly powerful roar after its slaughter of a victory, Castor could only stand back in horror as he saw what he was now forced to face. In only moments, a cute little pokemon, that he himself had enough power to kick away, had managed to evolve into a practical mammoth! He fearfully tried to gather his pokeballs as he thought of what he should do.

“Should I run…should I keep fighting…I don’t stand much of a chance.”

He looked over towards his Charmander who was out cold. He couldn’t help but feel guilty about what he had brought onto his pokemon and quickly returned him shortly after the pokemon’s evolution. He looked over towards the mamoswine, who was taking a bit of time to adjust to its sudden new size especially consider its previous sudden evolution: This was Castor’s only chance to escape.

“What should I do…what should I do.”

Castor put in a lot of thought about this action. A normal trainer would probably just run at this point, but Castor wasn’t a normal trainer. He was Castor. He refused to simply run away from a battle, not when he has a chance for victory…or atleast that is what he told himself. When faced with such a small chance, could he really just go and fight this beast. He growled to himself as he thought, staring at the Mamoswine, ensuring that it doesn’t proceed to attack. Unfortunately, it seemed that enough time had passed the Mamoswine was ready. The Mamoswine turned its direction and looked directly at Castor, with its angry black eyes.

“Run or fight, run or fight…I’ll…”

Castor took a moment to consider his final decision as the Mamoswine began to stomp its large feet.

“I’ll fight!”

Castor yelled out as he rolled out of the way of the Mamoswine’s path. He proceeded to release his remaining pokemon to fight the behemoth.

“Virva, Azure, Kaize, we have to take down this guy!”

The three pokemon nodded as they spread apart to take different position in the battle.

“Virva, go to the right and attack him with thunder shock! Kaize go to the left, use stun spore and then try and ‘seed him! Azure, I need you to go straight at him with Rollout! Attack as many times as you can!”

The pokemon followed Castor’s commands and did their best to follow his orders. His Marill courageously took a charge towards the Mamoswine and quickly rolled into a fast ball, hitting it directly on its forehead and bounced back, maintaining her momentum and proceeded to try and attack again. Once the female Marill was out of the way, Kaize proceeded with his own attack, spewing a large cloud of spores into the swine’s, taking advantage of the wind, the spores managed to cover the Pokemon’s body and proceed to paralyze it, leaving it unable to move for the final attack. Taking the few moments to charge up energy, Castor’s Mareep released the most powerful thunder shock she could on the Mamoswine, unfortunately, Castor was a tad bit ignorant of the Pokemon’s typing and was surprised by the outcome of the attack.

“It’s…a ground type!”

As it is said, ignorance is bliss…unfortunately, in this situation it isn’t. The thunder shock covered the Mamoswine’s body and quickly blew off much of the spores that covered the pokemon, making the Shroomish previously very effective attack, not too effective. The Mamoswine once again roared and proceeded to tackle the incoming Marill, knocking her out instantly. It then turned to the Shroomish and then summoned a white ball between its tusks, which it launched straight towards the Shroomish, hitting him directly and leaving the mushroom pokemon near fainting. It then ran up to the Shroomish and trusted at it with its large tusk and effectively knocked it out. It then turned to Castor, whom responded with a gulp, he looked over towards his fainted pokemon and then back to the Mamoswine, there wasn’t too much he could do at this point, but run…but as long as there was a chance, he would keep fighting. He took a solid stance and prepared himself for any attack the Mamoswine had coming.

“Maaamooo!!”

The Pokemon taunted, as it stood back on its hind legs and stomped onto the ground. It pushed its left hind leg back a few times and went into another blind tackle. Castor stared adamantly as the pokemon ran at him; he pulled two pokeballs and returned the unconscious duo. He continued to glare into the incoming beasts eyes, in till he saw a sudden golden aura surround the pokemon and a loud sound coming from in between the two of them; he looked down to be surprised to see his pokemon.

“Mareeeeeeep!”

In desperation the small sheep pokemon continued to try and use thunder shocks to slow down the Mamoswine, despite knowing that it would have little effect, she knew she had to do something and this was the best she could give. Tears almost formed in the boy’s eyes as he saw his pokemon’s loyalty come into action. She would protect him with all her effort, despite knowing that her ‘all’ wouldn’t be enough. Castor couldn’t help by yell out to his starting pokemon.

“Virva, Stop!”

The pokemon ignored the boy’s command and proceeded with the attack.

“Virva, I said Stop!”

The pokemon continued to ignore the command as the Mamoswine was only feet away from the sheep.

“Virva, return!”

The red light flashed and the sheep returned to its pokeball. The Mamoswine continued its rush towards Castor, as he once again readied himself for the impact. Time seemed to slow as the Mamoswine was only inches away from Castor.

“I really hope this works.”

Doing his best, Castor grabbed the Mamoswine’s tusk, carefully ensuring and hoping that he would ruin his hands doings so and as it turned out, luck decided to join Castor’s side. He grabbed the pokemon’s tusk and proceeded to kick the pokemon as many times as he could in the face before the pokemon finished its charge. When grabbing onto the pokemon’s tusk, Castor was slightly surprised by how cold the bone was and when he looked over towards it, he was surprised to see that the tusk weren’t bone at all, but instead a rather interesting form of ice, when realizing this, Castor grew frighten of what was to happen next as the tusks began to crack and the Mamoswine was still running.

“…crap.”

The tusks broke and Castor fell to the ground, to be tackled by the Mamoswine directly. He let nearly screamed at the thought of losing an arm, but as luck likes Castor, the pokemon magically managed to miss all of limbs when running over him and only left castor with a few bruises from the tackle.
Realizing that he still was in one piece, Castor got up and began to think of what he should do. The pokemon lost its tusk so he didn’t have to worry about being impaled by the beast, but he knew he would be able to survive another tackle like that. There was really only one thing left to do.

The Mamoswine turned around and readied itself to tackle the boy again, knowing that it was a pretty easy way to finish the lad. Castor smiled once he realized how he could end the fight. He pulled an item from his pocket and shouted to the Mamoswine:

“This is my only Chance,”

Castor stretched his arm back as the Mamoswine rushed his way towards the boy. With all hs strength, he yelled:

“Take this!”

He then punched the pokemon in the face. Yes. Castor Punched the Mamoswine in the face. After being punched, the pokemon’s body began to morph and lose shape, its grip on reality was loosening, the pokemon wasn’t solid anymore, instead if began to become a plasma like material and quickly changed into a monotone red, which engulfed it’s body and overtook it’s features. The punch was much simply too much for the Mamoswine to handle and brought him into a state it never experienced before. In his new light like form, the Mamoswine was soon pulled into the child’s fist, unable to comprehend what was going on. Castor smiled and commented:

“Gotcha’ bitch.”

He opened his fist revealed a pokeball, still jiggling. Acting quickly, the kid threw the pokeball as far as he could and then rushed his way down the mountain, not bothering to look and see if the pokemon was behind him or not. After running for what felt like hours, Castor managed to escape the higher altitudes of Mt. Carello, he was no longer in the snow.
With a heavy sigh, the boy took a quick rest and released his only conscious pokemon: Virva. She let out a great cry and jumped to her owner, fearful that something horribly may have happened to him. After seeing that he was alright, tears flowed from the pokemon’s face as she pushed her head into the trainer’s shirt. Castor did his best to console his pokemon at that moment.

“It’s okay, I’m fine, you see?”

Castor caressed his pokemon fluffy fur, as she looked up to him, tears still streaming from her eyes.

“You remember the first time we met?”

The pokemon gave a quick nod, as the two began to reminisce.
It was a bright and sunny day in Olivine City. It was a certain boy’s tenth birthday. It’s been after his childish celebrations and other expected ritualistic normality’s that would occur during a child’s date of birth. The day was nearing an end, in till the boy’s parents decided to come in and visit their sun, to give him one final present.

“Castor, we hope you had a fun day today and we have one final present for you.”

The young castor looked up to his parents, who came to into his room, his father with a single hand behind his back. Castor looked up wide eyed, already happy with his passing birthday.

“What is it, what is it?”

Castor asked, his voice a much higher and cuter version of his currently, teenaged one. His father took the item from behind his back, revealing pokeball. Castor grew with glee as he saw what was currently happening.

“Really, you are giving me a pokemon?”

Both parents nodded as Castor grabbed the pokeball. He pressed the button and happily smiled curious of what was inside. His smile quickly turned to a frown as he saw it was just a Mareep.

“Wait..Just a Mareep? We have a bunch of Mareeps! Why do I have to get a Mareep?!”

Castor threw his little fit, while his parents tried to calm him down.

“She’s a special Mareep, Castor. Top of her breed.”

His mother reasoned, while his father pushed the subject further.

“She was going to be picked to be the next Lighthouse Ampharos when time came around, but we decided to pick her out for you.”

“But, we have so many mareeps…”

“And you have the best of all of them.”

Castor’s father said as he shook the boy’s head. Castor sighed and looked over towards his first pokemon.

“You know you have to name her, right Honey?”

His mother precluded as the Mareep gave a happy growl and walked over towards Castor, unbothered by the fact he didn’t really want her. Castor stayed quiet for a little bit as he tried to think up a name. He had the temptation to name her something stupid, but he felt like he should be the least bit more mature with his first pokemon. He thought little by little trying to get a good idea for the pokemon, in till it finally sparked.

“Virva.”

The pokemon again gave out a cute growl and then rubbed at Castor’s leg affectionately. Castor scooted away, a little bothered by the Mareep’s willingness to be so happy. From there Castor’s parents left the room in order to let the two know each other.

“Alright, just one rule you have to follow in order to keep Virva, you two cannot battle.”

The statement made Castor freeze. How could they betray him as such? They knew he was extremely excited to partake in at least one pokemon battle, with his own pokemon. Why would they purposely destroy his hopes and his dreams? It wasn’t fair at all was all that could flow through castor’s ten year old mind. Sadly, the only way he could respond was with a simply pout.

“We know you are really excited about partaking in a pokemon battle, but it’s just way too dangerous, at least at your age.”

“But! Ten year olds all around the world partake in pokemon battles. Ten is the age that people are legally allowed to be trainers! So why won’t you let me be a trainer? “

“We aren’t stopping you from being a trainer…we are just letting you get some more time to be used to Virva. You’ll have your time to battle eventually. Besides, Virva is still very young she could be hurt and you know yourself very well Castor. You would just push her to her limit and bring something to her that none of us would want. Just be patient Castor. You will have your time someday.”

The two then said their nightly farewells and went out of the room.

“We love you Castor.”

Castor looked down to the Mareep as he went off to his bed, the Mareep sheepishly followed. He flopped onto his bed and complained internally to himself. It was his tenth birthday and they just had to ruin one of the greatest moments of his life. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. Picking up on her trainer’s sadness, Virva tried her best to comfort the boy. She jumped on his bed and shrugged at his stomach, trying to make him laugh or giggle. It wasn’t effective. Instead it just bothered Castor, he looked over towards the pokemon and pushed her off his bed.

“Just stay off! I’m not in the mood for it right now.”

The Mareep sighed as she looked up at the trainer. She sat around for a few minutes watching the child suffer. She then again tried to make the boy laugh and be happy, but again she was pushed off and told to be left alone. She then tried again and again and again, with a similar result each time. She kept trying in till she got on Castor’s last nerve. After pushing the Mareep off his bed, Castor got up and looked down on the Mareep.

“I don’t want you as my partner! Just leave me alone!”

He then kicked the Mareep away and went back to his bed to fall in a sad sleep. The Mareep shocked by the boy’s words and furthermore, by the boy’s physical assault, brought itself to a corner, not wanting to deal with the child anymore.
After this moment, the two’s relationship turned sour. They hardly spoke and kept their distance from each other. They didn’t like each other and expressed it thoroughly. It worried Castor’s parents, but there wasn’t too much they could do. Time and time again Castor asked if he could get a new pokemon (preferably not a Mareep) but time and time again they simply said no. The two were partners and that was about it

It wasn’t in till Castor and Virva got into a true battle that their relationship turned. Castor had been forced to walk about Olivine with his Mareep, in hopes that by doing so the two would come to like each other more. Naturally, the walk wasn’t such a good idea and the two simply fought on their way. Virva spewed various levels of electricity at Castor, who simply yelled at the pokemon, seeing as he was forbidden to actually hit the pokemon, considering the trouble he would get into and the Mareep’s quickness in being a tattletale. Eventually the two became quiet and just walked about the city, refusing to look at each other. It was an ordinary day in the life of Castor and his Mareep.

As the two walked they eventually met up with a random kid, who too had a pokemon, although he had an Aipom rather than a Mareep, who actually seemed to like its trainer. He seemed to be about Castor’s age, albeit a tad bit taller. He looked at the boy and went with the typical request.

“Wanna battle?”

And with that statement, everything changed for Castor and his Mareep. Castor quickly accepted, already accepting the punishment he would have to deal with afterwards. His Mareep also willingly complied, possibly just to have Castor get in trouble. The two sent out their respective pokemon and the battle commenced, that being said, given the pokemon’s extremely low levels and lack of any experience, the battle was rather boring, but for the competitors, it was something thrilling and fun. Through the battle, Castor saw Mareep as a companion and a partner rather than just an annoying nuisance he had to take care of and by partaking in the battle, the Mareep was able to truly understand Castor’s confused emotion, by being forced into not being allowed to battle. He was missing out on so much. The Battle taught both the trainer and the pokemon much about each other and brought a new light to their relationship.

Sadly, the battle ended in a lost and Mareep was rather beat up by the Aipom. The kid smiled at his victory and walked off. With some final words:

“Smell ya later. Loser.”

Although angered by the arrogance of the kid, Castor rushed his way to take his Mareep to a pokemon center, which reflects his new bound care for the pokemon. When Castor finally got home and prepared for the trouble he was going to get into for partaking in the battle, since he absolutely knew that Virva would show off some of the wounds she got during the battle, Castor was surprised to see that his Mareep strolled around leisurely, as if the entire event had never happened. Their relationship really did change that day. While the two still bickered and fought and Castor did occasionally get into trouble on his Mareep’s behalf, the two began to like each other, rather than loathe the other’s existence. They occasionally got into street battle’s which strengthen their relationship further and soon enough, the two became best of friends, happy to spend time with each other.

Castor looked down to his Mareep, who he fondled happily.

“You know you’re my favorite right?”

“Reep!”

“Good.”

Castor shook the pokemon’s head and gave it a few berries to give her some strength.

“Alright, let’s get off this God forsaken mountain. We can try again tomorrow.”

“Mareep!”

After some time, they finally reached a small town on the side of Carello, Castor quickly went to the nearest pokemon center to heal up his pokemon and then went about town to see if he could get a decent Jacket. Finally finding a nice red, black, and gold one, Castor prepared himself for the following day, hopefully ready to challenge Carello again. As a final action, Castor decided to check his PC box to see if he caught that Mamoswine he was fighting earlier, because if he did it would be an awesome addition to his team, but as he looked about his boxes he couldn’t find a single pig in sight, or even a single pokemon really. Castor let out a brief sigh and then jumped back in bed, his pokemon all released and relaxing in his temporary room.

“What a wonderful way to spend a summer, am I right?

“Reep..”

“Mar.”

“Shroom.”

“Char.”

This post has been edited by Kranic: Jun 27 2010, 11:16 AM

[Living Arrow]

Not finished just yet but it shall be done before the deadline!

“Da-aaz?”

“No. Tanning.”

A silent pause.

“Da-”

“Tanning.”

Cleo Kellor stomped her foot and pouted, folding her arms under her breasts and sucking air through her teeth with impatience. Her brother, lying on the sunbed wearing only a pair of briefs and a look of utter calm, slowly raised his arm and flipped her the bird.

“I don’t get why you’re so relaxed right now!” Cleo slumped down next to his feet and rubbed at her own arms, checking for signs that the sun had done its summer magic and transformed her pale flesh into the summer brown that she longed to pick up every year. Even so, her sunny complexion wasn't at the forefront of her mind right now. “You’ve only got three weeks and then you start your Pokemon journey – you should be training and, more importantly, catching your first Pokemon!”

Darryn lifted his head a smidgen and blew air out of his nostrils heavily. The heat of the mid-summer sun drained him of what energy his sister was describing and at that moment in time his lacklustre tan needed more attention than his career as a Trainer. Sweat beaded on his upper lip but otherwise he remained fairly composed, absorbing the heavenly rays with utmost calm.

“Like you said,” Darryn rolled his eyes and reached for his Gucci sunglasses, “I’ve got three weeks – that’s more than enough time to catch a Pokemon and go back to Furoh.”

Cleo snatched the sunglasses before Darryn could grasp them and held them out of reach.

“Oh? And capture them how, exactly? Unless you’ve forgotten, Mr Big-Shot Trainer, you have to battle and weaken a Pokemon first before you can get it. Since you don’t have anything to battle with in the first place I’d like to see you get anything other than a Magikarp and think how that would look when you start out.” Cleo taunted him, putting the sunglasses on herself and tilting her face to the sun. “You’d be a loser even before you started.”

“And your remedy for the situation?” Darryn sniffed, quirking an eyebrow and taking a long sip of lemonade. “That is, if you have one? Anyway, I don’t see why you care so much – it’s me going out to Furoh, not you.”

“Well, I was going to offer to battle something for you but if you take that attitude then-”

“Deal. Celadon Forest. Ten minutes.”

“Wha-? Bu-?”

“Tanning.” Came the stubborn reply. “Ten minutes.”

***

“Now, let’s see…” Cleo put her fists on her hips and surveyed the surrounding forest. “Where to find a Pokemon…”

Darryn stood nearby, shirtless but now wearing shin-length camouflage shorts and flip-flops. He ran a hand through his glossy red/brown hair and sighed. For all that he loved his sister, he hated how she went everywhere unprepared (it had taken them near half and hour to walk back to the Gym for her to remove a rental Pokemon for the afternoon). As a practice exercise to never fall into the appauling routine his sister had apoted, Darryn counted off the Trainer Essentials in his head.

1. Pokemon.
2. Food and Water.
3. Map and compass.
4. Materials to start a fire.
5. Spare Pokeballs.
6. Change of clothes.

Most of those were not needed here – they were only a short walk from Cleo’s crummy apartment in the local Gym so the only real essential was Pokeballs.

“So, are you gonna give me that thing or not?” Darryn sighed, reaching out to take Cleo’s Pokeball.

“Uh, no?” She evaded him deftly and span the orb in her hand. “This has been loaned to me so hands off.”

Darryn groaned. Another thing about his sister – she was an awful Trainer. In her relatively short career she had had many battles but the number of wins could probably be counted on one hand.

“Fine – just get me something good.” Darryn grabbed an empty Pokeball from the satchel he had brought with them. It was a Premier Ball - fitting for the device that would catch Darryn's very first Pokemon. “Like a Teddiursa or a Glameow. Oh! Or even a Scyther!”

Cleo sniffed. “Hate to burst your bubble but they aren’t native to this area.” She set off into the trees at a brisk walk scouring the forest floor and trees for signs of wild Pokemon.

“Right… so what does live around here?” Darryn asked as he followed her, also keeping a sharp eye out for any movement or indication that a Pokemon was nearby.

“Well, I was going to try and find an Oddish or a Bellsprout and then-”

“Bye, Cleo.” Darryn turned around and started walking off, back to the city.

“Hey! Wait! What!?”

“I’m not looking for a flower-arranging session like what you do at the gym – an overgrown raddish and a flycatcher are hardly on my list of ‘must-haves’ for when I start out.” Darryn snorted, putting his Pokeball away. “Looks to me like you’ve lost your touch if you’re only up for getting things like that!”

“Fine.” Cleo stuck her tongue into her cheek. “If you feel that strongly about it then I’ll just have to prove my power as a Celadon Gym Trainer and capture something with a disadvantage to Grass types.”

“If you can. I still don't get why you care about this so much.”

“Just you see.”

Darryn inwardly grinned and trotted after Cleo as she stalked into the underbrush, intent on capturing something that would prove her right. Darryn didn’t really care as long as it was a cool Pokemon. On Furoh, new trainers started out with what they had – you weren’t donated anything like in Kanto. As such, Darryn had had no expectations of what to start out with after Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle had been denied him with his parents’ move to the other region. Instead, he was hoping for something doubly as cool… Like a Larvitar!

***

“If you catch that, I’ll cook it for dinner.” Darryn said with unimpressed arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, come on Daz – it’s just a Pidgey.” Cleo rolled her eyes.

“My point exactly!” Darryn raised his hands in the air. “Why should I start out with a fat little feather ball when you got a Bulbasaur!?”

“Um, beggars and choosers, Daz?” Cleo shook her head disapprovingly. “Just count yourself lucky that I’m doing this at all for you.”

“I never asked you to.” Darryn moaned. “Just give me the rental Pokemon and I’ll go out and catch something myself – I honestly don’t mind. Or we could go down to the beach in Vermillion and soak up the sun while you get me something even better! Like a Staryu!”

“Patience. Seriously being tried now.” Cleo growled through clenched teeth.

The wild Pidgey, watching this exchange between siblings, cocked his head to the side in thought for a brief moment before going back to guzzling Pecha Berries.

“Whether you like it or not, I’m getting you that Pidgey!” Cleo declared, brandishing a Pokeball. “Let’s go, Cherubi!”

“Aww, LAME! You’re going to battle the fat bird with a squishy little fruit!?” Darryn held back a laugh. The squat Cherubi who emerged hopped up and down on the spot, shouting angrily at the boy while Cleo called out for the first attack.

In short, the ensuing battle was rather embarrassing - the wild Pidgey turned out to be so fat that it couldn’t fly. Moreover, when it attempted to fight back it lost its breath within seconds and was victim to only two Tackle attacks before Cleo indicated that Darryn should throw his Pokeball.

“But it’s such a waste!” He complained loudly, refraining from releasing the ball in his hand. “Can’t we just go and find something else?”

"Look, you're leaving me in three weeks and I can't bear to have you leave without me doing something for you, OK?" Cleo sighed, her shoulders slumping and her face drawing down with built-up sorrow. "I'll be left here, without you, and you'll be miles away in a place you don't know where no-one has a familiar face. I just can't stand the thought of my little brother shooting himself in the foot by not preparing for this because he's given up already! Look, Darryn, I may be your annoying older sister but let me do something for you this one time so that I can feel even a tiny bit better about you going away. Please."

Before he knew it, Darryn's fist was white-knuckled around the Premier Ball and a solid lump had formed in his throat.

***

Back in Celadon City, the sun had past its zenith but still shone brightly in the sky, casting its rays down upon a young man with a Premier Ball clutched tightly in his hand.

"Da-aaaz?"

"Tanning."

A silent pause.

"Da-"

"Thanks, Cleo..."

[Amissa]

Completed at last. It sort of took a lot longer than I expected, but hopefully it's worth it.

I wanted to talk about how Daniel lost his color vision while also hinting at some secret inner power. It sort of snowballed from there.

CRAAACK! BOOM! Boom! Boooooom!

The rumbling of the thunder was loud and frightening enough to startle the boy awake. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was still in his family’s car where he had fallen asleep earlier. His head and hair felt wet, from sweat he imagined, since it was a hot and humid summer night in Gigarte. He ran his hands through his unusually messy brown hair anyway just to check. I am in Gigarte still, right? It seemed silly to wonder, since he’d never traveled very far from Gigarte in all of his life, but something seemed very different today. He looked around, investigating the car a bit further. It was a nice luxury sport, the kind that ran on electricity and didn’t produce any sort of harmful waste. It was also full of enough cool gadgets that Daniel’s father had once successfully convinced his son that he was a super spy pretending to be an architect and businessman. Crawling into the front seat, Daniel observed that his parents were nowhere to be found.

Outside, the rain was slowing down and the thunder had stopped, so the young boy curiously ventured out to see what there was to see. It only bothered him a little bit that he couldn’t remember how he had gotten to wherever he was. It bothered him more that he didn’t know where his parents were and that he’d been left to sleep in the car all alone on a stormy night. He was only five years old, after all, and wasn’t used to being forgotten. Above him, the clouds were already retreating and revealing a beautiful pale morning sky. However, he couldn’t recognize the street that he was on. The car seemed to be parked in a clearing of red brick and surrounding the area were many small houses, very small houses. Daniel didn’t expect that any normal people could live in such tiny houses. Just then, people began to cautiously peep out of the doors of the small homes and file out towards Daniel. As they came closer, he could see that these people weren’t normal at all. They were all the size of five year olds, like him.

“Hurray! You killed the witch!” All of the little people began to cheer, dancing about in their brightly colored clothes, tangerine orange waistcoats and cobalt blue silks, hats that were robin’s breast red and ties that were a soft sunset pink. This was beginning to remind Daniel of a movie that he’d seen recently…that one about the girl with the dog who had to kill an evil witch if she wanted to go home.

“I guess our car must have gotten taken by the thunder storm just like that girl’s house in the tornado,” Daniel muttered to himself, barely audible beneath the happy shouts of the little people. “And I didn’t think that stuff like this could really happen.” He bent down, looking for a witch under the car, but he couldn’t find one. One of the tiny people noticed his searching and pointed to the front of the car instead. There, lying sprawled on the red brick after apparently being run over by the car, was what he presumed to be a witch. She even had two tire tracks running over her body like he had seen in cartoons. “Hey! She looks a lot like my kindergarten teacher!” On the witch’s head was a sparkly red baseball cap.

The cheering suddenly came to a stop when a bright light appeared and floated down amongst the crowd. There was a sudden popping sound and the light expanded to become the form of a beautiful woman who looked exactly like Daniel’s mother in a fairy dress. “Mom! Hi mom!” Daniel shouted happily and ran over to the lady.

The woman, tall and dark-skinned with black hair and warm brown eyes, gave him a kind smile but shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not your mother, dear boy. My name is Linda, the good witch. I’m here to welcome you to Roz. You have very kindly killed the evil witch for us and freed all of the Munchkin people from her tyranny.”

“Yes, well, it is summer vacation. She’d have to be pretty evil to make all of these kids go to school during the summer.” Daniel said because inflicting schoolwork on children during summer break was the most evil deed that he could think up and he had always secretly believed his teacher to be a scary old witch. The fact that she really was one wasn’t that astonishing. “But I want to go home! Don’t I have to fight another witch or something?”

“Oh no! There was only one evil witch in the land of Roz and you’ve already taken care of her. Here, take her magical ruby baseball cap and wear it to Viridian City. There, you will find the Abra of Roz and he will help you to find your way back home.” The kind fairy/witch/mother said and took out a small book bag from out of nowhere. It looked just like the book bag that he took with him to kindergarten. “Inside, you will find everything that you need to reach Viridian City.”

“Wait, don’t I get a dog or something? The girl in the movie had a dog.”

“Hmmm.” The good witch tilted her head in thought for a moment and then had Daniel hold out his hand. She took her magic wand, which looked just like a stick with a glittery star glued on top, and tapped his palm so that a pokeball suddenly appeared. “That should do.”

Daniel held the pokeball reverently. Boys his age weren’t allowed to have pokemon yet, but maybe the rules were different in Roz. He pushed the button on the pokeball, causing a flash of light as a grey poochyena popped out. It barked and wagged its tail in delight upon being released. “Puppy!” The boy cheered with joy as the poochyena struggled to lick his face. “How do I get to Viridian City anyhow?”

“Why, you just follow the red brick road,” The good witch explained and motioned towards the long twisting road of red. Daniel could have sworn that the road was supposed to be a different color, but he didn’t mention it. After all, red was his favorite color.

“Follow the red brick road!” All of the munchkin people echoed in unison.

“Okay then,” Daniel said looking down the road and across the vast land of Roz. “Is Viridian City very far away?”

Linda made a thoughtful face and tilted her head one way and then the other. “Yeah.”

“In that case, can I take the car, Mom?”

“Sure. I mean, I’m not your mother! I mean…drive careful, sweety.” Linda replied, scratching her head with the star on her glittery wand and looking puzzled, as though she wasn’t entirely certain who she was either.

Daniel happily hopped into the driver’s seat of his family’s blue Jolt while his new pokemon, Poochy, took the passenger seat. Daniel waved goodbye to all of his classmates, er the munchkins as Poochy barked happily out the passenger window. Daniel drove the car down the winding road, feeling thrilled about having a pokemon to keep him company. Driving the car was surprisingly easy and the land of Roz was surprisingly large and gorgeous. The road was lined with the occasional house, each house as small as a backyard tree-house. Distant purple mountains could be seen on the horizon and before long, magnificent green trees began growing thick all around.

“Well, look at that,” Poochy said suddenly, catching Daniel off-guard. The boy slowed down to glance at whatever his bite pokemon had suddenly taken an interest in. Pulling over to the side of the red brick road, he could see a dusty metal contraption lying on the ground. The boy and his pooch hopped out of the car to investigate better, Daniel remembering to take his little backpack with him. Bending down to wipe off some of the accumulated dust, he revealed what appeared to be an eyeball and leapt away in a panic.

“Eww! It’s an eye!” Daniel cried, hiding behind his poochyena. The grey pokemon just gave him an exasperated look and wiped away more of the dust with a paw, revealing that the device was not just a giant eyeball but actually a magnemite. Daniel crept back, curious about the uncovered pokemon. He poked it, petted it, and picked it up. “Why doesn’t it move?”

“Maybe giving it an electricity boost will revive it.” Poochy suggested. “What do you have in your book bag?” Daniel reached into the bag and pulled out a bunch of cables with clips on the ends. The five year gave the dog a puzzled look. “Hook those up to the car and hook those to the magnemite. Hopefully the energy from the car can revive the pokemon.”


The boy cluelessly attached the clips on one end of the cables to the front bumper of the car. Poochy considered correcting him, but decided that he’d better not. Trying to talk a child this young through attaching the jumper cables to the car battery could take a lot of effort, and considering the circumstances, this way would probably work fine too. Daniel hooked the clips on the other end of the cables to the magnemite, one clip on each magnet. Just as Poochy predicted, the magnemite immediately began to charge electricity. Daniel backed away as yellow bolts of energy flashed and sparked. The magnemite began to levitate as it’s voice rang out strong and true, “Magnemite!”

The revitalized magnemite shook the clips from its magnets and began levitating happily around Daniel and Poochy. “You saved me! You saved me! I’ve been lying here for so long without the energy to move, and you two came to my rescue.”

Daniel rolled up the jumper cables and put them back in his book bag. “It’s no problem. We were just passing by on our way to see the Abra of Roz in Viridian City. I guess I need to give him this cap so that he can send me back to my home.”

“The Abra of Roz?” The magnemite echoed, sounding curious. “And I see that you’re wearing the baseball cap of the Wicked Witch. Did you defeat her?”

“My car ran her over.”

“Oh my! Well, if you’re heading to see the Abra, then could I come with you? Maybe the Abra can help me out also.”

“What do you need to see the Abra for?”

“Why, I don’t have a heart!” The magnemite cried, sounding as though nothing in the world could be more tragic. “It really is a horrible affliction, so I’m hoping that the Abra might know a good remedy.”

Daniel didn’t know what an “affliction” was, but he figured that the Abra would probably be able to set it right. “Okay then, why don’t you get in the car then with me and Poochy. We’ll all drive there together.”

Therefore, the three friends all piled into the little blue Jolt and began their journey again. The red brick road led the trio into miles and miles of farmland. The purple mountains were nowhere in sight now and all that surrounded the car was flat plains. Golden wheat fields grew and small farmhouses could be seen near every field. As they drove further along, a loud commotion could be heard.

“Get away you stupid birds! Get away! Help me! Help!” a voice called. Daniel immediately parked the car and ran out towards the frightened cries. Behind him, Poochy and the magnemite whom Daniel was now calling Mighty followed. There amidst the wheat was a little bulbasaur who was flailing its vines about in an effort to protect itself from a menacing murkrow. The dark bird pokemon kept dodging the vines and flying in close to peck at the bulbasaur’s face.

“Hey, leave him alone you mean bird!” Daniel shouted and ran towards the bird. The murkrow, seeing the angry boy and feeling utterly underwhelmed, simply modified his attack so that Daniel became the target himself. “Whaa!” Daniel threw his arms over his head to protect his face as the angry bird flew at him.

Bzzzzt!

A brilliant flash of yellow light lit up the sky above the boy, causing him to drop his arms just in time to see a slightly singed murkrow flying away. “That will teach you not to mess with my friend!” Mighty yelled mightily, circling protectively about Daniel’s head.

“Thanks Mighty! Now, where did that bulbasaur go?” Daniel asked, feeling concerned for the injured grass type.

“Here I am!” came a shy feminine voice as a bruised and battered bulbasaur approached from amongst the wheat. The sun was setting , casting a rosy light over the group. Daniel crouched down and petted the pokemon as he examined her injuries.

“You poor thing, you need to get some rest right away.”

“I’ll be all right,” The bulbasaur reassured him. “Come on, we can relax in my house over there. Thanks so much for saving me, by the way.”

“It was really Mighty who did all of the work.”

The magnemite sparked proudly. “My name is Mighty and this poochyena is Poochy. We’re travelling with Daniel to visit the great Abra in Viridian City. He’s going to help Daniel get back to his home, and he’s going to give me a heart.”

The bulbasaur gave Mighty a thoughtful glance before suddenly brightening. “Hey! Maybe after we get some rest at my house, then we can all travel to Viridian City together. I have something that I would like the Abra to help me with too.”

“What’s that then,” Poochy asked, feeling like he was the only one who was just there for the ride.

“I want to ask for a brain.”

There was an awkward hesitation after the bulbasaur said this because the first image that came to Daniel’s mind was of a zombie movie that he had watched late at night when his parents weren’t paying attention. He looked at the pokemon carefully before concluding that it was clearly not an undead bulbasaur, at which point he shrugged and smiled. “Okay, we’ll rest for the night and start again tomorrow. Welcome to the team, um…Bulby?”

“Hurray!” Bulby cheered and led the group to her house with such good spirits and energy that it was easy to forget that she was injured. And thus the sun set in the land of Roz, leaving Daniel and his new pokemon friends to rest peacefully and safely until their next day of adventure.

--------

Victor and Marie Worthington waited anxiously in the lobby of the Snorlax Resting Facility, hoping for any good news about their son’s injuries. The night had be the worst in any of their lives. The Worthington family had been heading home from a party that was meant to celebrate the opening of the new Green Mega Mall. It had been one of Victor’s greatest accomplishments, constructing a true mega mall while neutralizing any damage that such a structure may do to the environment. It actually housed a large indoor park and greenhouse and was powered entirely by clean energy. It actually had a veritable jungle growing on its roof. There was nothing quite like it in all of Furoh.

However, on the way home from the party, tragedy had struck. While driving home, the family had gotten into a car accident. Marie and Victor were both fine, as was the driver of the other vehicle, but their little boy, who had been fast asleep in the back seat of the car, had been critically injured. The boy had been sent to the hospital where doctors had spent the night doing the very best that they could for the young Worthington boy. Their son, Daniel, had suffered from a traumatic head injury and was left in a comatose state. Terrified and desperate, Victor and Marie had Daniel transferred to Snorlax Resting Facility where they specialized in all types of sleep disorders.

In this facility, they had been introduced to Roz Riker, a surprisingly young pokemon trainer who was famed for his success in helping comatose patients recover. Praying for a miracle, they left their only son in the care of him and his pokemon. Now at last, they would hear whether or not they might be helped.

Mr. Riker came out of the recovery room dressed in his white coat and carrying his prized abra in his arms. He wasn’t officially a doctor, but he was often given matching respect despite his young age and child-like facial features. The trainer had begun learning about pokemon when he was only ten years old, training his abra when he was just a boy. Now, at age eighteen, he’d managed to put together a team of pokemon that were able to specialize in dream therapy, a rare and controversial method of curing sleep disorders. His trademark abra was actually at a very high level, way beyond the level of training that it would need to evolve. However, for the sake of its occupation, abra remained just as it was.

“Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Worthington, I’m pleased to reassure you that my pokemon have successfully made contact with your son in his dreamworld.” Roz Riker informed them. It all sounded very arcane to the Worthingtons, but the parents were desperate enough to try anything.

“How long might it take for Daniel to get better?” Marie asked shakily though she managed to keep her eyes clear of tears for the moment.

“I’m not sure how long it will take him to wake up,” Roz said, keeping a sober face and trying not to make the parents too hopeful. “That largely depends on him. He will wake up though. Then you may wish to transfer back to the main hospital to deal with any other problems.”

“Any other problems?” Marie asked weakly, looking uncharacteristically frail as her husband placed his arm around her to hold her steady.

“Understand that a coma is usually caused by bilateral damage to the reticular formation of the hindbrain,” Roz tried to explain, but changed gears after seeing the black and confused looks on the face of the Worthington couple. “He’ll probably suffer some brain damage. From what my pokemon have learned by entering his dreams, it probably won’t be too much. However, we won’t be able to tell for sure until he wakes up. He will wake up.”

Marie wrung her hands, but nodded solemnly that she understood. Victor held his wife close in a comforting embrace and whispered to her, “He’ll make it back to us Marie. That boy’s a fighter.” This wasn’t quite true, as in the five years of Daniel’s life he’d never shown any inclination to want to fight anything. However, he did always show a certain enthusiasm and eagerness to experience the world, and it was that love of worldly experience that Victor was hoping would motivate his boy.

“We will resume therapy in the morning. For now, let’s all take a rest,” Roz said, gently encouraging the Worthingtons to relax in the lobby until the taxi came to take them home for the night.

---------

Daniel awoke in the clear warm morning that graced the land of Roz. He sat up in the bed, noticing the patchwork quilt that was both familiar and not at the same time. Looking about, he saw his pokemon all around him. Poochy was snoozing right next to him, cuddled up like a teddy bear against the young boy. Mighty had plugged himself in to an electrical socket and appeared to be recharging somehow. Bulby wasn’t sleeping on the bed, but seemed pleased to stretch out in front of the window on the place on the floor that the sunlight first touched in the morning. The bulb on her back in the morning sun was the most vibrant green that he may have ever seen and it rose and fell in the rhythm of her breathing.

“Guys, hey guys! Get up, we have to go find that abra!” Daniel said, keeping his voice below a shout in order to avoid being rude. Only Poochy seemed to notice his call, and the little canine stretched and yawned. “They won’t wake up, Poochy,” Daniel complained.

“Oh, they won’t?” Poochy eyed the others seriously before releasing a howl loud enough to shake the windows. Sparks of electricity bounced off of Mighty as the magnet pokemon became active, and Bulby jumped straight into the air, looking in all directions before spotting Poochy and proceeding to glare.

“You didn’t have to be so loud,” Bulby complained, still looking sleepy.

“You guys want to find the abra don’t you? Let’s get moving right now!” Poochy responded, all business and looking at Daniel to lead the way. Happily, the young boy got the pokemon in order and marched everyone out to the little electric car that was still parked on the red brick road. He once again began to drive along and eventually the golden wheat gave way to verdant forests. The trees began to grow so large and so close together that barely any sunlight made its way through the branches. Roots growing under the bricks caused the path to be bumpy and damaged. Eventually, the path became so rough that Daniel had to stop the car and told everyone that they would need to continue on foot.

“Well, I don’t mind,” Bulby said cheerfully. “I would like a little more light, but I feel perfectly at home in the forest.”

“Stay alert everyone, we don’t know what’s out here,” Poochy said, feeling protective and making sure that he knew where everyone was.

“I hope that we aren’t attacked by any wild pokemon.” Mighty said with his voice shaking slightly from fright.

“Wild pokemon, like what kind of wild pokemon?” Daniel asked as he took the lead, pushing large branches out of their was as they went.

“Like Luxray!” Mighty said.

“Or Mightyena,” Poochy added.

“Or Arcanine,” Bulby continued.

At that moment, all of the trees in the forest shook at the sound of a mighty bark. Leaves and small twigs rained upon the group as they all huddled together in fear. There was the sound of a creature running closer, four-legged and big judging by the way its steps shook the ground as it approached. Suddenly a head lunged out at them from a tangle of branches.

“ARCANINE!” The beast roared as it stared at them with burning eyes, its fangs long and deadly. Daniel and the pokemon tried to run for their lives as the beast revealed itself, over six feet of lethal beauty and over three hundred pounds killing power. Daniel, however, got his foot tangled in one of the fallen branches and tumbled to the ground. Poochy saw and was filled with protective rage that only a loyal canine pokemon can feel. He stopped his fleeing and ran back to Daniel, standing over the little boy and facing the mighty legendary pokemon.

“What the heck is wrong with you?” Poochy yelled, all of his terror forgotten as he stared into the face of the massive fire type. “Running around and scaring people like that! Does that make you feel good, to run around and scare little children. Why, you haven’t even got the courage to face a real pokemon. You’re nothing but a coward aren’t you?”

The arcanine looked down at the much smaller dog and its face contorted into what appeared to be, not rage, but horror. It’s entire orange and black body began to tremble, shaking like a newborn pup facing a Kyogre or something equally as intimidating. “I’m very sorry, sir. You’re right. I ought to be ashamed of myself,” The arcanine said, its voice trembling just as much as its body.

Bulby hurried over to help Daniel off the ground and Mighty swiftly rejoined the group as well. Everyone watched as the arcanine stuttered on. “You see, I’m supposed to be the guardian of this forest, but every time people come near I just become so afraid. I was just trying to be brave. I didn’t mean any harm. If only I had just a little bit of courage…”

“Courage!” Mighty quickly interrupted, “Why I bet that the Abra of Roz could give you some courage just as sure as he could give me a heart!”

“And as sure as he could give me a brain,” Bulby added.

“And as sure as he could send me home to be with my Mom and Dad again,” Daniel continued, feeling suddenly quite homesick. “Would you like to come with us to Viridian City to go visit the Abra?”

“Oh, would I! Thank you so much for taking me with you. Viridian City isn’t far from here either. It’s just through this forest. Uh, it might take us a while if you all are walking though,” the arcanine said, looking at the little group with a great deal of uncertainty. “I wonder how we could hurry this along.”

“Well, the car is stuck all the way back there,” Daniel tried to make himself look as charming and adorable as possible. “Why, you’re so big and strong. I bet that you could easily carry us along.”

The arcanine gave the little boy a critical stare before a great smile broke across his majestic muzzle. “Sure, why not.” With that the huge fire pokemon kneeled down and after quite a bit of struggling Daniel managed to climb on the beast’s back. Unfortunately, the other pokemon weren’t quite able to stay on and so they were caught in another predicament.

“Daniel, why don’t you look inside that bag of yours. There might be something to help us in there,” Poochy suggested, practical as always. Daniel obediently checked the bag and pulled out three pokeballs.

“Do you guys mind riding in these?” Daniel asked since he’d always wondered about carrying pokemon in such tiny balls.

Poochy only chuckled, “No, Daniel. We pokemon are used to travelling in pokeballs and it’s really quite comfortable for us.”

“Okay then. Poochy, Mighty, Bulby, go into your pokeballs.” Daniel said, unsure of how real trainers called their pokemon back. His own call seemed to do the trick though as before his eyes the pokemon disappeared in a sudden flash of red light and vanished into the pokeballs.

“Shall we go now?” Archie, the arcanine that Daniel had just named in his head, asked.

“Yes, let’s go.” Daniel replied, getting a firm grip on the giant dog’s thick fur before the beast climbed to its feet and began running through the forest. The experience was simply surreal as foliage flew by so quickly that all Daniel could make of his surroundings were blurs of blue and red and green. Archie never lost track of the red brick road beneath his paws, though it disappeared to Daniel several times. At first, the rush was frightening but with a bit of time the feel of the pokemon beneath him and the wind blowing past him began to feel natural. Once they were out of the forest, Daniel could turn his head upwards and lose himself in the beautiful blue sky. They briefly passed through a field of flowers. Blooms of all different colors, white and pink, blue and yellow, danced as Archie ran past them at a speed that could beat any car. Butterflies also fluttered in the field, their orange and black wings matching the arcanine’s own striped coat. Soon, a city began to rise up in the distance and Daniel’s spirits soared as he thought of going home to tell his parents about his great adventure.

The city itself was green, but as Archie and Daniel entered, the boy could see that it was not built to be that way. What made the city green was actually the tall ivy vines that grew over ever building. The people were the most interesting part of the city, however, as none of them were human and all of them were pokemon. They passed a plusle and minun pair sharing icecream on a park bench. A group of walrein lazed about near a pond in the center of the city, and a meowth haggled with a glameow over the price of fish in a store. Since he was the only human in the city, many of the pokemon stopped to stare at him as he came riding by on the back of his arcanine friend.

“Excuse me,” Archie said to a nearby houndoom who was standing guard over his group of gaily playing pups. “We’re looking for the Abra of Roz. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

The houndoom pointed with its tail to the tallest building in the city, one that looked suspiciously like the pokemon gym that Daniel had seen in Gigarte. As they headed off in that direction, he heard the houndoom mutter something about “stupid tourists” but didn’t care to inform Archie. Once they reached the gym, Daniel called out the other pokemon from their pokeballs. Poochy, Mighty, and Bulby all joined Archie and Daniel in marveling at the magnificent structure.

“I’ve never been inside a pokemon gym before,” Daniel said.

“Do you think that the abra is a gym leader?” Bulby asked.

“I don’t know, I hope that he doesn’t want to battle,” Archie replied, sounding terrified by the very thought of facing an abra in a fight.

“I will feel sad to see you go,” Mighty whined, hovering around Daniel. The little boy smiled at the pokemon and actually hugged Mighty, never mind that the steel type was not made out of the most huggable material.

“Maybe I’ll see you guys again someday. But I have to go home. I miss my parents so much!”

“Well then, let’s head on in and get this over with. I hate long goodbyes,” Poochy snorted gruffly, though he couldn’t keep the melancholy expression from his face at the thought of leaving the boy.

The group marched into the pokemon gym together and sitting before them in the huge battle arena was none other than an abra. “Hello!” Daniel called as they came in, hurrying over to the pokemon and observing the battle arena that it sat on. “We’re here to see you. We’ve travelled all through Roz to find you and beg for your help.” Daniel wasn’t quite certain what the proper etiquette was when it came to begging for help from a powerful pokemon, so he just hoped that his sincere plea would do.

“It certainly took you long enough,” came the crotchety reply from the small psychic type. “Two days I’ve been waiting for you to navigate your way through your own dreamworld to find me. And you pokemon! You all got caught up in his dream didn’t you? You forgot what your jobs were, but I shouldn’t complain so much. At least you got him here.”

Daniel didn’t understand and looked around at his pokemon friends for answers. Bulby stepped forward first, seeming a bit shy but still eager to have her wish granted. “Oh great Abra of Roz, I was hoping that you could give me a brain.”

“You’ve already got one, Bulbasaur. Just how do you think you’d go on living without one?”

Next, Mighty came forward. “Please sir, I would like to have a heart.”

“You’ve already got one of those too, Magnemite. You’re the most emo magnemite I’ve ever met, not that that’s saying much.”

Finally, Archie walked forward. He was trembling again and twice he jumped backwards as though reconsidering his request. At last he was able to find his voice and ask his request of the abra. “Please mister abra sir, I would just like a little bit of courage.”

“Courage eh, you could use some of that. But you won’t be getting any from me, Arcanine. Face it, you’re the wussiest beast on four legs and you probably always will be.” Suddenly the abra’s voice softened, becoming almost friendly, “But your true friends will always love you, no matter cowardly you may be. Perhaps you may take courage from that fact.”

“Daniel,” The abra called out, not even waiting for the little boy to approach and make his request. “You’re going home now. Hurry up.”

“Now wait a minute!” Daniel said, digging his heels in. This wasn’t the way that the story went, and Daniel felt that he was somehow getting short-changed by this experience. “Shouldn’t we have had to unmask you to reveal who you really are? Or fight some flying mankeys? Shouldn’t I be learned something important about…I don’t know, how much I love my parents and how there’s no place like home?”

“You already knew there was no place like home, and now I’ll bet that you never forget it! Shouldn’t you have had to fight an evil witch? Shouldn’t you wake up from this just to find that it was all just a dream? Well listen here, young one, nothing is ever just a dream! Now come over here so that I can teleport you home!” The abra shouted, sounding very cross now.

Daniel muttered something unintelligible and took the ruby cap off from his head. “It’s okay, Daniel. The cap looked good on you, at least. Goodbye now,” Poochy said, looking up at the boy with big misty eyes.

“Goodbye Daniel, we’ll miss you,” Mighty added as sparks of electricity flared up around him. Daniel wasn’t sure what the sparks were for, but he guessed that the magnemite was showing emotion.

“Bye bye, Daniel, and take care of yourself,” Bulby said sweetly as she nuzzled his leg.

Archie didn’t say anything, but pulled Daniel close to him with one huge paw and licked his face with a huge wet tongue. “I’ll miss you guys too. Goodbye now!” Daniel said, trying not to show how grossed out he was by the large quantities of arcanine spit that he was now covered with. He ran over to the abra and crouched down, gently placing his hand on the pokemon’s head. He leaned in close, trying to tell whether or not the abra was awake or asleep.

“You smell like spit,” was all that Daniel heard from the abra before the vision of the gym arena and all of his pokemon friends melted away. The yellow and rusty brown of the abra, the bold orange of the arcanine, the shiny silver of the magnemite, and the earthy green and turquoise blue of the bulbasaur all faded away to be replaced only with the dull grey of Poochy the poochyena.

-------------------

“Yena! Yena!” The pokemon barked, his tail wagging a mile a minute as he stood over the sleeping child.

“Poochy?”

“Poochyena!” He answered delightedly, calling for his trainer’s attention.

“Why look at this! I do believe our little fella’s wakin’ up.” A man’s voice said as an unfamiliar human face made its way into Daniel’s vision. Daniel blinked and wiggled, trying to see clearly in the bright lights.

“Oh Daniel!” A woman’s voice cried and the man was roughly pulled aside to make room for a tall dark lady with warm brown eyes full of happy tears and a smile bright enough to make the sun jealous.

“Mommy!” The boy yelled and joyfully through his arms around his mother’s neck.

“My boy! My boy’s all better! Thank you! Thank you Mr. Riker!” Marie Worthington cried as she clutched her child.

Victor Worthington went up to Roz Riker and shook his hand very vigorously. After a few crazy seconds of this, Victor pulled Roz into a tight hug as the older man cried a few of his own thankful tears. “I’ll admit that I had my doubts. But these pokemon of yours, they really did the trick didn’t they?”

“They did their job as they were trained to do it. There is no thanks needed. Now please, spend some time with your son. In time, we can have him transferred back to the main hospital where he can be checked out and properly diagnosed if he shows any signs of…complications.” Mr. Riker said, carefully escaping from Victor Worthington’s grip. “I must go now. I have other patients to attend to.”

Victor soon took his place beside his wife as both parents fussed over their son. “Mom, something’s wrong. Things don’t look right. I can’t see well,” Daniel complained as he blinked around, feeling half-blind. “What happened?”

“There was a car accident, Daniel. It was my fault, but everything is going to be okay now, so just get some rest.” Victor said, running his hands through Daniel’s hair as the boy blinked his brown eyes up at the man.

Roz Riker was only too happy to exit the room, calling each of his pokemon back into their pokeballs before he left. Arcanine, Bulbasaur, Magnemite, and Poochyena all returned to their balls, but Abra he carried in his arms as he walked into the corridors.

That appears to have gone well. Roz's thoughts sought out those of his Abra.

Not as well as it seemed. That boy has some powerful dreams. Even Poochyena became caught up in it. It was so hard to remember what we were there for.

Young children always have the most powerful dreams, but they seem to weaken as people age.

As most people age.

So how is the boy doing really? I know you know.

The child is doing fine, though his sight will never be the same. Seems like achromatopsia, though thankfully there seems to be no more brain damage more severe than that. The accident sure did shake things up though. The psychic waves coming off of that child is nothing short of bizarre.

How so?

It is hard to describe. Poochyena had been showing signs of a cold before she was brought out to treat the boy. Now she’s fine. Magnemite had been dealing with that odd energy blockage for a while now, but now he’s fine too. Strange things happen to humans when they endure great trauma, but he even these anomalies will likely stabilize with time.

Are you sure?

Pretty sure.

Roz stood by an open window, looking outside to admire a grand June day in Gigarte. The summer was only just starting and some of the plants still sported their colorful spring costumes. Soon there would be berries along with fresh peaches and plums. There would be pool parties and icecream cakes.

It’s hard for a child to be deprived of something so precious, Roz thought as his gaze fell upon the flower beds, all carefully tended and in full bloom.

Maybe, but it’s a lot better than being dead.

His parents are wealthy enough. They’ll make it up to him somehow. For all that we know, this may turn out to be the best summer of his life.

I hate when you sound all sentimental. On to the next, I say.

Aye then, on to the next.

The following are some random notes and comments.

Daniel's head injury kept getting worse and worse as I wrote this. At first he was just supposed to have a concussion that resulted in him being unconcious. I went for the coma because it played in well with brain damage and causing achromatopsia. I also started Daniel out at age 10, but I needed to change it to keep him from questioning the dream-logic. Five year olds don't question dream logic, so I made him younger.

Also, I watched the Wizard of Oz after I already had started writing. It was only then that I noticed that it starts and ends in black and white while Dorothy's adventure in Oz is all brightly colored. It was a win moment!

This post has been edited by Amissa: Jun 28 2010, 04:49 AM

[deyv87]

My first fan fic! I had so many more puns ready, but never really had a reason to use them.

Mack had been wandering, homeless, for nearly a year now, and had just left Barley for the second time the day before. The research facility he used to lead had already been demolished, and his old house had been left dilapidated. The bathroom window had been broken, and the grass outside nearly reached his shins. Mack had returned to the coastal town to see if he could pick up the pieces of his former life, but every day he stayed in the broken down home, every minute he spent working on his latest electronic gizmo in his old workroom he was reminded of how it was all taken away from him. So, after collecting enough food to survive for another week, and making a few bucks playing his guitar on a street corner, he had decided to leave the town again, with the intention of one day returning to buy and fix up the run down home.

He walked along the side of the road which stretched out before him into the distance. His Makuhita, Buck, and his Starly, Ohmega, walked along side him as sweat dripped down his back. “I know you guys must be tired, why don’t we take a break at the next intersection. I think I see a road sign or something on the horizon.”

Buck simply responded with a quick grunt of “Mak,” and continued walking, head forward.

“Hey now,” Mack said back, defensively, “I know I said that a half an hour ago, but there’s no need to get snippy with me. I still think it was a doduo or something on the road that I saw. I’m pretty sure Ohmega saw its tracks too, didn’t you?”

The starly let out an exhausted “Staarly,” before flittering up and landing on Mack’s backpack. Mack continued on with his aimless conversation as they trotted forward, his pokemon responding appropriately when he prompted them. They finally reached a wooden sign that read “Under Hill, 2 mi.” above an arrow pointed to the right. It took him a moment, but Mack finally realized that the patch of dirt on his right was actually the start of an old dirt road. “Ok guys, let’s take a breather here. Then why don’t we try to get to this Under Hill before nightfall.” Mack pulled a water bottle out from his backpack and took a swig before passing it around to his pokemon.

About an hour later, the sun was low to his left, and in front of him the dirt road lead straight into the large opening of a cave in the side of a particularly large hill. Mack decided that he didn’t want to seem threatening to anyone, or anything, in the cave, so he scooped his two pokemon into their pokeballs before entering the cave. As soon as he crossed the threshold, two lights came on at the back of the cave. Mack could now see the natural stone walls at the sides of the cave, which ended abruptly at the masonry back wall. In the center of the back wall, between the two lights, there were what appeared to be the smooth metal doors of an elevator large enough to hold a truck. Next to the call buttons, a plaque was mounted to the wall which explained that this was one of a handful of entrances to the town of Under Hill, an experimental city founded by several Daioh companies.

Figuring he didn’t really have anything to loose, Mack pressed the call button for the elevator. Moments later, the doors opened, revealing a portly young man with short blonde hair, lightly tanned skin, a red tee shirt, jean shorts, sunglasses, and a hiking pack on his back. He held a red mountain bicycle by the handlebars, and commented to Mack as he walked past, “If you’re here to dig for treasure, good luck.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks.” Mack called after him, trying to sound like he knew what the guy was talking about. There’s treasure here? And this guy just assumed I’m here to dig some up? Mack entered the elevator, and pressed the down button. Mack would definitely have to look into this treasure thing. As the doors closed, he saw the man with the red shirt mount his bike, and make a quick left out of the cave, off the dirt road.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened, and Mack stepped out into the dimly lit cave system. Ahead of him there was what appeared to be a grid system of tunnels carved out of natural stone, with dozens of aluminum doors in the sides of the passages. The tunnels varied in size, but nearly all were large enough for at least one truck to fit through. It was fairly clear from the occasional skid mark on the ground that at one time cars or trucks had been driven through these tunnels. However, Mack couldn’t see any sign of a motorized vehicle in the dimly lit passages, nor could he hear the normal hum of a motor. He did, however, hear the comforting hum of neon lights in the distance.

It didn’t take Mack very long to find the source of the humming. Just around the corner from where he entered the city was what he assumed was the city’s mercantile district. Flickering signs indicated what each door lead to, including grocers, pokemarts, hardware stores, a pokemon center, and a few restaurants. Mack knew his pokemon weren’t too injured, but he always liked healing his pokemon whenever possible, so he entered the pokemon center.

A bell attached to the top of the door rang as Mack walked in. This pokemon center was surprisingly clean compared to what he had seen of the rest of the city. The natural grey walls, floor, and ceiling had been polished to a glossy sheen, and a counter had been carved out of the same stone. Behind the counter, Nurse Joy stood smiling next to her Chansey. “Can I help you?” she beamed.

“Well, I was hoping to get my pokemon fixed up,” Mack started, holding up his two pokeballs, “but I’m also pretty new in town… do you think you could point me in the direction of a…” Mack stalled as he pulled out his wallet and checked how little money he had, “…cheap hotel?” Normally, Mack would just sleep in an alleyway, or out in the woods, or rarely in abandoned buildings, but he didn’t see any tunnels that looked like alleys, and he really had no way of telling if any of these “buildings” were abandoned or not.

Nurse Joy took his pokeballs and handed them off to the Chansey, who took them into the back room. “Sure, there’s one down the street that way two blocks, toward the city entrance.” She offered, pointing vaguely down the road. “Also, there are some maps and pamphlets by the door, they should help you out.” Mack turned back to look at the door. Sure enough, there was a rack full of pamphlets and brochures attached to the wall next to the entrance. Joy walked into the back room to join her Chansey as Mack pocketed a town map and grabbed a small pamphlet entitled “TREASURE!!” He sat down on the nearby couch as he read it. He soon realized that the pamphlet was more of an advertisement than anything, but he still found it quite useful. Apparently, there was a business at the southern end of town that owned a large portion of gem and fossil rich real estate. For a small fee, collected upon exiting the “Treasure Fields,” one could go dig around and keep 90% of what one found. They also offered digging tools for rent, such as shovels and pick-axes.

“Thinking about going treasure hunting?” Nurse Joy asked from behind the counter.

“I’m definitely considering it,” Mack responded, “It would be the closest thing to a job I’ve had in a while.” Mack pocketed the pamphlet and walked up to the counter.

Nurse Joy handed over his two pokeballs. “Just be careful. They make you sign a waiver for a reason. With all the amateur treasure hunters digging around back there, the walls aren’t stable. I’m constantly treating pokemon who have had rocks fall on them or who get stuck from cave-ins.”

“Thanks for the heads up, I’ll watch my back. I’ll probably give it a shot tomorrow, so if you don’t see me tomorrow night, send a search party.” Mack joked as he turned to leave.

“Don’t think I won’t.” He heard the nurse say behind him. He wasn’t quite sure if she was joking or not, but he decided to let it go and to go check out that hotel she had mentioned. He started walking down the street, back to the city entrance, when he noticed that the few people he saw walking from one door to another all looked very similar. Even though they had varying hair colors, weights, and heights, they were all very pale. As he approached the hotel, he saw one girl who was about as tan as he was and probably ten years younger than him, enter the hotel. She wore dirty, rugged clothing, and a hard hat. Mack thought that it would be safe to assume she was a treasure hunter as well.

He entered the hotel’s lobby soon after the girl, and stood behind her as she waited for someone to show up behind the counter. She rung the bell on the counter as Mack glanced around the room. This building wasn’t nearly as clean as the pokemon center. A dusty area rug covered most of the matte stone floor, nothing was as polished as the pokemon center, and even the counter was less organized. As he looked at the counter, trying to make sense of the piles of paper, he saw a sign tipped on its side listing the room prices. Mack pulled his wallet out again, and counted his money, realizing that he had just over half the cost of the cheapest room.

“How much for a single?” The girl asked, in what was clearly an irritated tone. Mack looked up to see a pale, older looking man behind the counter, his grey hair streaked with black.

“It’s ‘tree fiddy with a bathroom in it, ‘tree hundred flat if you gonna use the public toilet.” The old guy’s voice cracked as he spoke, and reminded Mack of an old record player, or maybe the background noise from a speaker turned up way too high.

“Ok, I’ll take one with a bathroom.” The girl said as she pulled some money out from her pocket. She started to count it, then let an expletive escape her mouth before she continued, mostly to herself. “I spent all my money on digging tools, how could I be so dumb.” She focused back on the old man, “could I sleep in the lobby tonight?”

“Sorry lady, payin’ customers only. What about yous?” He asked, directing the last part at Mack.

“Maybe, just give me a second.” Mack responded, before turning to the girl. “Hey, I don’t have enough for a room either, and I know this is weird, but do you want to split one? I can cover half of a toilet-less room… I’ll even take the floor.”

The girl rubbed her forehead in obvious frustration for a second before responding. “Yeah, Ok. Fine. And you are sleeping on the floor. If you pay one fifty, I can cover the rest of a room with a bathroom. But I don’t sleep in the same room as strangers, so what’s your name? I’m Faith.”

“I’m Mack, nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, well if ‘dis heartfelt moment is over,” the old man interrupted, “yous two want a room or what?”

“Yes!” Mack and Faith retorted simultaneously.

About an hour later, Mack was standing in a lukewarm shower, a luxury he hadn’t had in months. Faith had been in before him, and he suspected that she had used up most of the hot water. He and Faith had had a decent conversation, telling each other their own stories as to why they were now in Under Hill searching for treasure. It turned out that Faith was also from Barley, but she had been off on a pokemon adventure during the time that Mack was stationed in Barley. She wanted to learn to breed exceptionally useful pokemon by breeding in attacks that a pokemon wouldn’t normally have. She explained that one of her goals was to teach the move spore to a treecko, so that after it was trained enough, it could learn the move false swipe, thus making it excellent at wearing down all types of pokemon to be caught. However, in her haste to breed pokemon, she brought different species to different daycares throughout the country, but no longer had the money needed to get her pokemon back. This was why she came back to Under Hill. She needed to raise several thousand pokedollars to buy back her pokemon, and the price was growing by the day. The only pokemon she had on her were her electrike, Gruff, her swablu, Cirrus, and just recently she caught a sandshrew she named Mort.

After his shower, Mack asked if she minded if he used the bathtub to wash his clothes, and if he could have the sheet from the bed to wrap up in and sleep with while his clothes dried.

“Use the blanket.” She retorted, “If you’re going to be wrapped up in something, I’d rather it be thick.”

The next morning, Mack awoke to a soft kick to his shin. “Hey, I thought I’d wake you up before I head out.” Faith explained,

Mack yawned while asking, “Aaaahhren’t you going to eat breakfast?”

“Well, yeah, I would if I could. But you know I’m broke.”

“Yeah, and you know I’m homeless. Stick with me and I’ll get you fed… just as soon as I get dressed.” Mack replied before making sure he was wrapped in his blanket properly and heading into the bathroom, where he had hung his clothes to dry. A moment later he came back out the cleanest he had been in months. He just thought it a shame that he knew he was going to work up a sweat today. He set his backpack on the bed and began rummaging through it. “So, do you know where any vending machines are?”

Faith thought for a moment before replying, “I think there are a couple just inside the grocery store, why?”

Mack grabbed a pair of scissors from his backpack as well as a length of fishing line, which he cut about three inches off of. He then grabbed a pokedollar bill from his wallet and cut a slit in the long side of it, near the edge. “Because…” He poked a hole in the end of the bill next to the slit and tied the fishing line to the hole. “…I happen to know how most vending machines operate. More importantly, I know how to get a vending machine to count a dollar bill, and then return it to you. So thank you for the bathroom, breakfast is on me.”

Faith muttered something to herself about being reduced to a petty criminal, but still lead Mack straight to the grocery store. They both stood in front of the vending machines for a moment, deciding what they wanted. Mack slid in his modified dollar bill, and held on tight to the fishing line as the vending machine read two errors at once, a damaged bill and a stuck bill. The bill was returned, and the money counter increased by a dollar. Mack knew this was because of an error in the Boolean logic required to program a simple machine like this. Even more useful, as they purchased food and drink from the machines, they were given change back from each purchase, which Mack pocketed.

“Ready to go hunt for treasure?” Mack asked moments later, finishing his bag of Gummy Slugmas.

Faith drank the last of her Lemonade before answering, “I was ready when you woke up.”

“Well, you’re welcome. What’s the rush, anyway?”

“I was supposed to meet my friends a half hour ago. They probably already went into the caves.” Faith retorted.

Mack was slightly taken aback. “Oh, geeze. I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Mack was able to hear Faith mutter, “Because I was hungry,” before walking off toward the treasure caves.

A few moments later, the two of them stood in front of a wall with the word “TREASURE!!!” cut into it above several teller windows. “Just go to a window, they’ll explain it all there.” Faith said before walking up to a window.

Mack walked to the window next to Faith, and before he had a chance to ask any questions, the short lady on the other side started, “Please read and sign this waiver before we begin.” She slid a piece of paper full of legal jargon through the window with a pen. “It states that if you or your pokemon become injured while in Treasure Caves, neither the people at ‘Treasure’ nor the company is responsible.” Mack looked over the waiver, clearly more so than the clerk was used to, before signing it and passing it back through the window. The clerk continued in the same bored tone, “Ok, there is an entrance fee of four hundred dollars, or ten percent of the value of the treasure you bring out of the caves with you, whichever is higher. If you do not have this much money, we will take what we believe to be twenty percent of the treasure you bring out. If you decide to rent a digging tool, an additional fifty dollars or five percent will be charged per tool. If you agree to these terms, sign this paper, and if you wish to rent digging equipment, please mark appropriately.” She slid another piece of paper through the window. Mack signed the sheet, and decided to rent two pick-axes for the day. “Thank you and enjoy your treasure hunt, please place your hand on the counter so I can stamp your number on your hand.” A moment later, Mack had a blue “#17” on the back of his hand. “The entrance is to your left, Tom will have your tools waiting.”

When Mark rounded the corner into the caves, which appeared to be much dirtier than the rest of the city, Faith was being handed a pick and a brush by a tall, muscular guy with long hair tied back. “Numba seventeen?” He slowly asked Mack, who just raised his hand, showing the stamp. “Here ya go. Thank you and enjoy your treasure hunt.” The man Mack assumed was Tom handed him two pick axes and a small flashlight on a clip.

Mark quickly clipped the flashlight to his backpack strap, caught up with Faith and asked, “So, from the sounds of things, you lost money yesterday? Do people normally lose money, or was that just a bad day for you?”

“I just showed up late. Like, we’re late now, but yesterday I showed up at noon. You see, the rates stay the same all day, and they come through and kick us out at eight o’clock. You’ll be fine, though. Hey, you should join me and my friends’ digging team. We try to group together toward the back of the caves, where nobody’s dug before, and we split what we get evenly. Well, we usually do, but I got a smaller cut yesterday.”

“Sure, why not.”

After leading Mack through the shoddily supported cave system, Faith stopped and began staring at a wall. It was dirty and covered with tool marks, which didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary around here from what Mack had seen. “So…” Mack started, not entirely sure where he was going with his sentence. “What’s… Where’s…”

“There was a corridor here!” Faith exclaimed exasperatedly, turning to Mack. “Just yesterday,” She quieted down, “My friends and I were digging down there yesterday, I’m sure of it.” Faith pointed at the wall.

Mack opened his mouth to point out the obvious problem, when he heard the sound of crumpling plastic coming from the wall. He looked up to see a vertical crack form in the wall, before being torn aside by a hand from within. Soon, there was a six foot tall hole in the wall, and inside stood a short boy. His short brown hair was parted neatly, despite the filthy conditions of his overalls.

“Ivan? Ivan! What’s all this?” Faith asked while feeling the crumpled false wall.

“Heh, I knew you’d like that.” Ivan said in a nasally voice. “I whipped it up last night to keep any competition out of our corner. Speaking of which, who’s that?” Ivan pointed at Mack.

Faith responded, “That’s Mack,” Mack waved at Ivan, “He got me out of a bind… well, actually we got each other out of a bind last night. Anyway, long story short, I think he’d be a good fourth in our mining group.”

“That sounds good to me. The more the merrier. Well, as long as the ‘more’ is on our side. So I guess I should have said, ‘the more friends the merrier.’ Or maybe…”

“Yeah, we get it. Let’s just get going before someone sees us.” Faith said as she grabbed Mack’s arm and shoved past Ivan, who closed up the false wall before following the two. The cave went straight back about forty feet. There were two passages at the end, forming a “T”, and two more perpendicular passages ten feet in from the entrance, forming a “+.” A head full of shaggy pink hair shot out of the far left passage.

“Was it her, Ivan?” The girl asked in a particularly high-pitched voice.

“Yeah, and she brought some old guy named Mack to help us out… well, and older guy. Late twenties, maybe?” Ivan directed the last part towards Mack.

“I’m 28, so yeah.” Mack responded.

“Hey, nice to meet you, Mack. I’m Jezebel…”

“And now that we’re all acquainted, let’s get to work, eh?” Faith interrupted. “Jez is down on the left, Ivan is down on the right, and my sandshrew Mort and I take the closest two tunnels. You can start digging your own tunnel in the middle.”

“Actually,” Mack released his makuhita Buck, “I was thinking I could make two tunnels, one on each side of the main one.”

“Whatever makes your lapras surf.” Faith commented as she walked into her tunnel. She then tossed a pokeball into the tunnel across from her. Almost immediately after a flash of light, Mack could hear the scratching of the sandshrew’s claws on the cave wall.

Mack walked to the middle of the main tunnel, set his guitar down next to him, and began scrounging around in his backpack. After pulling out a small light, a battery, a few more components, and a case for camera film, he assembled an extra flashlight. He then let his starly, Ohmega, out of her pokeball.

“Ok guys, here’s the deal. We’re digging for treasure now. Buck, you’ll be doing the actual digging in your tunnel.” Mack handed his pokemon a pick-axe before continuing. “And Ohmega, you’ll be holding this light so that Buck can actually see.” Mack set the already lit on flashlight down in front of his starly, who picked it up in her beak. “Now, whenever you guys find something interesting, just come let me know and there will probably be a snack for you. Ok, you guys start digging about there,” Mack pointed at the cave wall, “and I’ll dig over here.”

Many hours, two sandwich breaks, and an empty pocket of pokemon treats later, Mack had dug his tunnel in about ten feet deep, and Buck had dug a bit more than twice as deep. Mack pulled his headband off and wrung the sweat out of it. They had created a small pile of gems and stones topped with a fossil of some pokemon Mack didn’t recognize. Faith had a similarly sized pile, and Ivan and Jezebel each had piles about half the size of Mack’s. They had scooped up their pokemon, gathered around the entrance, and were discussing whether they should leave, since it was getting to be close to eight o’clock, or if they should try to stay longer if Tom didn’t find them. Ivan motioned for them to be quiet. Through the plastic false wall, they all heard footsteps pass by, then a man’s voice.

“Ok, we’re clear on this side.”

Mack recognized the ‘Ksh’ of a radio, then a crackling woman’s voice responded, “Took you long enough. The other two already cleared their areas. I’ve got the drill here and everyone’s in position… so get to a safe place, and then detonate the pineco I issued you.”

Jezebel mouthed ‘detonate?’ in shock.

“And don’t forget to recover it. When you get back and we’re sure we won’t be bothered, we’ll hollow out an area large enough for the excavators; then we dig our way to the surface.” The voice continued.

The four treasure hunters held their breaths as they heard the footsteps pass by again. Mack tried to hear which direction they were coming from, and was able to tell they were heading to the left. Mack turned to the group, knowing that whatever was happening couldn’t be good, and that they probably didn’t have much time to act if these people were blowing things up. He paused for a moment when he noticed that Jez had tears welling up in her eyes, but he thought it best not to bring it up.

“Ok, we need a plan quick.” Mack whispered to the others. “It sounds like they’re trying to cause a cave-in so they won’t be disturbed for a while, which means that we could be stuck down here even longer if we don’t get out of here fast. They’ve obviously split themselves up, so I say we hurry up and ambush that guy that went to the left before he gets a chance to detonate his pineco. We knock him out, get out of these caves, run to the cops, and let them take care of it. Sound good?” The other three murmured their agreements in unison. “Then let’s do this.” Mack whispered, grabbing Buck’s pokeball from his belt and turning toward the entrance.

He heard an earth shattering roar to his left, and delayed only by a fraction of a second felt the stone rumble under his feet. It happened again twice, but clearly these sources were further away. Mack ran his fingers through his hair for a moment before turning back to his companions. “Plan B then. Same first half of plan A; we knock this creep out. Ready?”

“What’s the second half?” Ivan implored.

“We’ll figure that out once we’re back here with an unconscious goon. Again, ready?” Mack asked again. The three of them grabbed pokeballs from their belts before again murmuring their agreements. Mack slid the plastic wall aside, trying not to crinkle it too much. He didn’t want this goon to know anyone was around until he was knocked out. Mack snuck down the left corridor, the others right behind, and followed it a good seventy feet before seeing a bend which turned right. They had passed several ten to twenty foot deep side-passages on the way which Mack checked, but this had taken him more time than he would have liked. He turned off his flashlight and whispered to the group, “Turn your lights off and hold hands. I’m going to see if he’s down there. Back in a jiffy.” The others flicked their lights out in turn as Mack slowly walked to the bend.

He peeked around the corner to see a man hunched over, and lit by a lantern on the ground. He wore a very large backpack, which almost entirely covered the back of his blue shirt. His pants were black, and he had a buzz cut. Mack wasn’t able to see much more detail because of the distance, but he could tell that the man was rummaging through the rubble of what was clearly the cave-in he had caused.

Mack crept back to the others before turning on his flashlight, which he covered with his hand to dim. “He’s down there looking for the pineco. I want you, Faith, and you, Jezebel, to hide in these tunnels.” He pointed at two side-paths across from each other. “Ivan, you hide in that one,” he pointed at a tunnel further away from where the man was, “and I’ll hide over there.” He pointed at a tunnel closer to the man’s location. “I’ll let him pass me, and as soon as he gets to you girls, you need to attack him. Ivan and I will jump out and attack as well. Four attacks from every direction; he won’t know what hit him.” Faith started to say something, but Mack interrupted. “Seriously, no time for chat. Move.” Mack shoed them to their positions; then he crept to his own.

Mack sat in the dark for a while, a pokeball in each hand. He was trying to decide which pokemon to actually use, since he didn’t actually know if this guy would really want to do him and his companions harm if he was given a chance. He finally decided to let Ohmega do the fighting, both because she hadn’t seen much action in a while, and also because Mack was afraid that Buck would do more than simply knock the guy out. Mack heard footsteps and humming approaching from down the tunnel. The light from the man’s lantern began filling the side passage Mack was in. Mack crouched against the wall, hoping that the dirt and grime from a full day’s worth of mining would make him look like a rock or something.

The goon passed by Mack’s position without noticing him. Mack fought the urge to release a sigh of relief, lest he catch the goon’s attention. A moment later, he saw two flashes of light come from down the tunnel and heard Faith and Jez shout commands at the same time. Mack dashed around the corner at the confused man, and released his starly, Ohmega. The following few seconds, the man tried to reach for a pokeball, but was paralyzed by the electrical charge from Faith’s electrike’s thunder wave, and pummeled by a dozen small orbs of light summoned by Jez’s Unown’s hidden power attack. Mack’s starly smacked the goon in the back of the head with her wing attack next. Ivan’s slowpoke attacked last with a water gun blast to the face.

Mack couldn’t tell which attack actually knocked the man out, but before anyone could give orders for their next attack, the man was slumped over on the ground. “Well, that wasn’t as loud as I thought it would be, but I assume sound travels in these caves. Back to base?” Mack asked as he released Buck to help him carry the goon.

After dragging the man behind the false wall, Ivan made sure he was properly tied up. Nobody had ropes, but Ivan was able to make strong enough straps out of the man’s shirt. They all paused for a moment when they realized that the blue shirt had a large black “A” on it, probably indicating that this man was a Team Aqua member. Once Ivan had made usable rope by essentially braiding strips taken from the man’s shirt, he tied the man’s ankles just above the spade end of the shovel Jez was digging with, and tied his hands behind his back through the handle of the shovel. While Ivan was doing that, Mack removed the man’s pokeballs from his belt and put them in his backpack. He also took the man’s radio and turned the volume all the way down, so that this man’s associates wouldn’t be able to talk through it and hear where Mack and his companions were located. Mack also found the man’s wallet, handed Jez the money inside to divide between everyone, and found the man’s driver’s license. Apparently, the unconscious man’s name was simply “Potent,” which led Mack to believe that this was a poorly made fake I.D.

Faith was sitting with her back to a wall, wringing her hands together. “So what are we going to do now? There are three more of these creeps out there, and we’re trapped in with them.”

Mack took a breath before saying anything. “Well, we could stay in here and hope they don’t decide to clear us out with that drill of theirs when they ‘make enough room for excavating equipment.’” he said while making quotation fingers in the air, “We could try to dig our way through that cave-in down there before they come looking for this jerk. Speaking of which, can someone gag him? If he wakes up, we don’t need him screaming.”

“If?” Jezebel cried out.

“I meant when. He’ll be fine.” Probably. Mack thought before continuing. “I just meant if he wakes up before we get a chance to talk to the police.

“As I was saying, we can wait until they find us, go to the cave-in and wait for them to find us there, or do the same thing we did to him, but to them. Besides, we know they’ve got a drill. So we can try to use that to dig our way out, or once we’re in the clear, we can just dig out using the tools we’ve already got.”

Ivan looked up from gagging the prisoner. “What’s with you? It’s like you’ve got answers before we even know what questions to ask. Were you in the military or something?”

“Ha! No, it’s nothing like that. I used to manage a research facility.”

“Whatever, that doesn’t matter right now.” Faith butted in. “I say we wait for them to come look for sleepy here,” She nodded at the unconscious man, “and we jump them.”

“Our turn!” A woman’s voice called from the false wall as she tore down the plastic covering. She tossed a pineco against the back wall of the tunnel and yelled, “Selfdestruct!” before diving out of sight to the left. Mack, being closest to the entrance, ran out and dove left after her into the dark. Behind him, he heard Faith exit to the right before hearing the bang of the Selfdestruct attack followed by the roar of another cave-in. Mack hoped that Jezebel and Ivan were alright as dirt and dust kicked up and spewed out of their former base. From the light of Faith’s flashlight down the hall, Mack saw a muscular man in an Aqua shirt release a Tyrogue from a pokeball. Faith responded by releasing her sandshrew. Behind Faith, a woman wearing a Team Aqua style tank top with her blonde hair up in a bun entered his friends’ hideout.

Before Mack had a chance to help his friends out, he heard the sound of a pokeball being pulled off a belt behind him. Mack flicked on his own flashlight and turned around in time to see the woman release a wailmer from her pokeball. It sagged and wriggled on the stone ground, resembling a large blue water balloon with flippers. Mack grabbed the first ball he felt on his belt and opened it in self-defense, releasing Ohmega, his starly.

“Shambah, use a water gun attack!” the woman shouted. The wailmer pursed its lips, gathering whatever liquid it held internally.

“Umm,” Mack hesitated. He realized that he didn’t have much time to think, and he didn’t want the wailmer to get a free hit in, so he blurted out, “Quick attack!” Ohmega instantly darted for the wailmer, head butting it in the face. Of course, this left Ohmega directly in the wailmer’s line of fire. Ohmega was propelled up into an arc by the wailmer’s water gun attack, landing at Mack’s feet before rolling back onto its talons, ready for another attack.

Now that the battle had started properly, Mack was able to pull his thoughts together and actually form a strategy. He knew that Ohmega’s growl wouldn’t affect the wailmer’s water gun attack, so he decided to just try pummeling the wailmer with Ohmega’s most powerful attack. “Ok, Ohmega,” Mack said to his starly in a much calmer voice, “Wing attack this blubber bag.”

“Shambah,” The woman called out, “cut its power with a growl!”

Ohmega flapped into the air and dove at the enemy wailmer, cracking it in the face again before fluttering back to Mack’s feet. As the wailmer let out a low, menacing, “merrr” at Ohmega, Mack wondered what to do when this impromptu pokemon battle finished. He really doubted that this woman would just quietly surrender if she ran out of pokemon. He knew for a fact that he wouldn’t. “Ohmega,” Mack said absentmindedly, “Another wing attack, pal.” Mack knew that the woman was shouting an order at her wailmer, but he was too busy removing his backpack and guitar to really pay attention. He also dropped his tool belt on top of his backpack, and began stretching his arms for the upcoming real fight he expected.

Mack heard the thwack of Ohmega’s attack, and looked up in time to see his starly flop on the ground at his feet again, drenched in water. Ohmega shook herself dry and turned back to the wailmer, breathing heavily. Mack knew that his starly probably couldn’t deal with another attack, but from the looks of the wailmer’s extreme sagginess, it would probably feint with another attack as well. Mack heard the woman command, “Shambah, finish it off with another water gun attack!”

“Ha! I don’t think so!” Mack retorted. “Ohmega, use quick attack!” The starly shot off toward the wailmer again, slamming into its mass at full speed. Mack was shocked when the wailmer still managed to blast Ohmega back to Mack’s feet with its water gun attack. The starly laid motionless as Mack scooped it back up in its pokeball. Mack hadn’t expected the wailmer’s growl attack to be as useful as it was. Oh well, Mack thought, I’ll just have to make Buck’s attacks count. “Come on out, Buck.” Mack said, releasing his makuhita from his pokeball. “He’s weak, use arm thrust.”

“Shambah, try to get one last water gun attack in.” The woman implored. The wailmer once again pursed its mouth, but was promptly pummeled thrice by Buck’s boxing gloves. Water gushed weakly from the now unconscious wailmer’s mouth, sloshing against Buck’s feet.

“Nice try, Shambah.” The woman muttered as she scooped her feinted wailmer back into its pokeball, “Your turn, Jean, show these guys what team… Aqua is made of!” She cried out as she released her lickitung into the stone cave.

“Ha! A lickitung against my Buck? Buck, use vital throw. Your move.” Mack knew that as long as Buck didn’t feint, this battle was in the bag.

In a last ditch effort to save her pokemon, the woman called out, “Jean, use supersonic!” The lickitung opened its mouth more than it already was and vibrated its tongue as it called out. Mack couldn’t hear anything, but from Buck’s cringing and stumbling, he knew the lickitung’s attack had worked. Mack stumbled around a bit longer, but then shook his head and marched directly at the enemy pokemon. Gripping the lickitung by the neck and a leg, Buck spun in place several times before chucking his victim directly at the stone wall. The lickitung remained still as the woman returned it to its pokeball.

“Ok lady;” Mack said, trying to sound as authoritative as possible, “lay on the ground face down with your hands behind your back, unless you want me to sick my Buck on you.”

The woman cried out, “Yeah, right!” as she ran away, back into the darkness. Buck lowered himself into another fighting stance, but Mack placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. Mack would have chased after her, but he needed to see if his cohorts were doing alright by themselves. He picked up his gear and walked back to the tunnel he and his companions had been using, Buck following right behind. At the tunnel entrance, the muscular man that had been attacking Faith was tied back to back on the ground to the woman who he saw enter the tunnel. Mack wondered where the rope had come from, but then assumed that one of these Aqua members must have had some. Both seemed to be woozy, and the man had a black left eye. Jez exited the hideout tunnel, pokeball in hand.

“Oh, thank mew you’re ok.” She said, “Faith is back there taking care of Ivan, he was knocked out from the blast, but it doesn’t look too serious.”

“That’s good,” Mack replied, glancing down the tunnel he came from, “There’s one woman left. I knocked out her pokemon, but she ran down that tunnel. It’s a dead end, and I’ve still got Buck here, but I’d feel better if someone came with me to take care of her.”

“I’ll come with.” Jez turned back to the hideout and called into it, “Hey Faith! Mack and I are going to go deal with the last goon!” Jez turned back to Mack, “Ok, let’s go.”

Mack and Jez followed the tunnel slowly, checking every side tunnel before continuing on. When they reached the right turn, Mack got a sense of Déjà vu as he watched the woman digging in the rubble of the cave-in. Apparently she hoped to dig out by hand before she was caught. Jez tapped Mack on the shoulder and whispered, “Check this out,” before releasing an unown of a different shape than the one Mack had seen before. She skulked around the corner, and when she had gotten somewhat closer to the enemy woman called out, “Use your hidden power on that woman, Delta!” The woman turned around and hurled a rock at the unown, but missed as the pokemon listed lazily to the left. The unown squinted and formed about a dozen pink, fist-sized globs in midair around itself, then shot them toward the woman’s chest, knocking her off her feet into the pile of stones. Mack walked up to Jez while keeping an eye on the limp woman. “Nice job,” he said, patting her on the back. “I guess Buck and I will carry her back to the others. Is there any rope left?”

“Yeah, it’s back at base.” She replied, already walking back down the tunnel.

When Mack returned with the still lifeless woman, Ivan was awake again, and re-tying the knots holding the captives. “Hey, Ivan. I’ve got another one for you.” Mack chuckled as he dropped the woman on the ground. “You ok?”

“Yeah, I’ll be good, but after I finish tying these knots, I’m going to go lay down again. Faith tied these guys up, but she clearly hasn’t had as much experience with crafts and I have.”

“Actually,” Mack knew he should approach this carefully, “if you’re up to it, I was hoping you and Jez could go look for that drill these guys were talking about while Faith and I try to dig our way out. Do you think you can walk around ok?” Mack asked as he removed the pokeballs from the captives’ belts and put them in his backpack.

Ivan paused for a moment and felt the back of his neck before continuing, “I should be ok, just let me lay down for five minutes first and I can go do that.”

Mack thanked Ivan and entered the hideout. Inside, Jez and Faith were dusting off the treasures everyone had found earlier. Fortunately, they were piled up far enough away from the blast that most of them weren’t destroyed, though Mack didn’t expect anyone would want the shattered fossil. The man tied to the shovel was awake now and wriggling in a corner. Mack explained his plan to the girls, who agreed that it was probably the best course of action right now. They also agreed that it was best to take a rest, probably until Ivan was ready to go.

Several minutes later, each of Mack and his companions had a radio attached to his or her belt, and the captives were tied up on the ground behind Faith and Mack, who dug away at the nearby cave-in with pick-axes. Mack had lost track of time, but it felt like an hour later, Faith held out her hand, indicating for Mack to stop, and pressed her ear against the stone. Mack could hear it too. There was a faint humming sound coming from the other side of the cave-in. Mack and Faith stood back as slowly, over the course of several minutes, the humming grew louder. Ivan and Jez rounded the corner with what appeared to be a jagged, thick, metal disk just barely smaller than the width of the tunnel mounted vertically to the front of a wheelbarrow full of mechanical parts.

“We got it!” Jez shouted as Ivan flinched.

Faith turned to her and smiled. “Nicely done,” she said, “but I don’t think we need it. It sounds like we’re being dug out.”

Minutes later, the wall began to shake, rocks fell from their perches as a disk identical to the one Ivan and Jez had found came plowing through the wall, spinning at high speeds. It retracted and several people in overalls and hard helmets with flashlights came through the newly formed hole, lead by a police officer. Nurse Joy stumbled through the hole last, and upon seeing Mack smiled and simply said, “I told you I’d send a search party.”

----------------

A year later, Mack sat on a park bench, munching on a sandwich as five children sat on the grass in front of him. It was a warm, breezy, and sunny July day.

“We explained everything that had happened to the police officer,” Mack continued his story, “and we gave back all the pokeballs, since they were evidence. I’ll admit, I kept the radio I took from the Aqua members… I figured they owed me. That night they sent a few squads of police to the surface and arrested four more Aqua members waiting at the surface, and impounded their excavation equipment. The treasure hunting company paid us all double for our treasure. I think they were trying to keep their business intact, but I tell you, I’ll never go back there again.

“Actually, I did return there once to visit Nurse Joy, but that’s another story, and I’ll tell it another time.”

This post has been edited by deyv87: Jun 28 2010, 02:19 AM