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[Pokémon] The Middle Ground

FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 16 – ...Double Trouble (Part 2)

(A)

"You people make me sick; abusing Pokémon for your own selfish ends. They're meant to be treated with love and respect, not treated like items to be sold and then thrown away. Didn't you people learn your lesson two years ago? You cannot carry on without consequence!" Fuji cried as he was being led up a hill just to the north of Lavender Town. His hands were tied behind his back and the Team Rocket member in charge was following close beside him with a single grunt following behind. The other two had been left to guard Fuji's Grandson.

I followed close enough to hear what they were saying, but far enough away that I wouldn't be spotted. The path we walked up was littered with large rocks to hide behind, but in the cover of night they were not really needed.

"You need get some respect, get some morals, get some –"

"-Shut it you!" The grunt cried, tightening the grip on Fuji's restraints.

"Now, which way is it?" The superior Rocket asked Fuji, invading his personal space, using his wide, intimidating gaze to ensure he gained the truth.

Fuji hesitated before averting his gaze to a small gap between two sides of a large rock formation, blocked by a sizeable boulder. "Move that."

"Do it." The senior Rocket commanded to his Grunt.

"Yes Proton Sir!"

"You better not be lying Fuji-boy, because if you are…" Proton said, holding up a small device, presumably a remote detonator as the grunt pulled the edge of the boulder outwards, making enough room to get through. Whatever these people were going after it had to be worth hiding.

"Sir, there's nothing here." The grunt said. "Just a load of useless rocks."

"What?!" Proton cried, walking over to examine the crevasse. Sure enough, the small space was littered with many fist-sized, grey and black rocks.

"What are you trying to pull Fuji? You said it would be here!" Proton cried holding up the detonator.

"It is. And if you untie me I'll show you where." Fuji said calmly, meeting Proton's gaze with a stern one of his own.

Proton quickly gave it some thought before nodding to the Grunt. The Grunt produced a small pocket-knife and sliced through the rope binding Fuji's hands. Fuji stretched outwards in front of him, letting the blood flow to his fingertips again.

Fuji slowly walked over and rummaged through the rocks carefully examining each one in turn until he found what he was looking for and rose to his feet.

"Give it to me." Proton demanded, walking over to him holding out his hand.

I felt that I should intervene and stop the Rockets getting hold of that item. There was only two of them and my pokemon had grown so much – our badges were proof of that, I was sure we could at least make them back off… for now. But waiting for the right opportunity was crucial.

Fuji looked at the item in his hand and sighed before placing it in Proton's grip.

"This is a rock." Proton stated looking at the black mass of sediment in his hand.

"No. It's a specially designed capsule made by Bill to keep it away from the likes of you. Turn it over." Fuji said, sounding disgusted at himself as he spoke.

Proton turned the black 'rock' around to reveal a small silver spot that shimmered in what little light there was. Fuji pressed his thumb against the spot, causing it to turn a shade of green before it clicked and a gap began to appear as it opened in a similar fashion to a Pokeball.

"Take it. You won't achieve anything - It's useless on its own." Fuji said, not bringing himself to look at his abductor.

Proton looked inside it and took out a shimmering rock that shone a brilliant shade of green.

"Sir.. Is that –"
"-The Emerald. So it is true." Proton muttered.

"You've got what you wanted – now leave." Fuji said, looking up.

"Ahh yes, we will. You of course are free to go; you should hurry back to your grandson." Proton said with a smirk.

Fuji slowly turned, presumably thinking about Proton's choice of words and began walking down the hill towards me when suddenly there was an ear-splitting sound of an explosion coming from behind me. I looked behind to see a fiery cloud of yellow that was soon engulfed by blanket of thick, black smoke. The explosion had taken a large chunk out of the side of Pokemon Tower, simply erasing several floors of the building I was just in, throwing bricks and debris all around the surrounding area.

I turned back and saw a look of pure horror in Fuji's eyes, both of them reflecting bright yellow of the burning flames in front of him.

Fuji's shock turned to anger he rotated 180 degrees and marched towards Proton who was still holding the detonator in his hand. His finger still pressed to the button.

"You said you wouldn't do it if I helped you!!" Fuji bellowed, his voice straining as he spoke showing a glimpse of the fury inside of him.

Proton looked down at the old man in front of him and smirked with a disgusting look of smug satisfaction and simply said. "I lied."

Fuji, about to burst suddenly swung his fist for Proton who dropped the detonator from his hand and grabbed Fuji's arm in mid-swing.

"Ariados – Spider Web!" I cried, throwing my Pokeball into air, not being able to stand the Rockets' attitude to living things.

Ariados appeared in a bright flash of light and shot out a thick piece of web towards a startled Grunt, that separated in midair to form a web that pushed the Grunt against the wall sticking him there before he had a chance to move.

Proton acted instinctively and twisted Fuji around by his arm and pulled him against him.

"Don't come any closer boy or this man will be next on the list of the dead." He threatened as I stopped in my tracks, Ariados next to me letting out a deep hiss.

"…Adam?!" Fuji cried, recognizing me from earlier.
"Get out of here before you get killed!"

"No. I'm not letting them leave with that emerald. Do you know how many people you just killed?!" I yelled at Proton letting my anger get the best of me.

"Plenty. Just enough to get the message across – Don't. Get in the way. Of Team Rocket."

Suddenly I heard a noise from behind me. I looked to see the Grunt cutting his way through the web with a knife to free himself.

"Exeggutor – Hypnosis!" Proton cried, pushing Fuji to the floor, utilizing the opportunity that my back was turned.

I turned back around to see several yellow rings of energy fly through midair and hit Ariados and me. It felt as if someone had made all of my joints stiffen and then numb as my legs turned to jelly and I collapsed upon Ariados, straining to keep my eyes open.

Fuji tried to get up and strike Proton once again but he saw it coming and hit Fuji on the head, knocking him out and to the floor.

Proton walked over to the grunt and pulled off the remaining web, releasing him from he wall in one swift motion.

"Thank you Sir. What should I do with these two?" The grunt said, wiping his uniform down.

"Leave the old man. Tie the boy up – we're taking him with us."

"And where is that Sir?" The Grunt asked as my eyelids closed.

"Chrono Island. We need to pay Gideon a visit."

I lost consciousness.

(B)

I was drawn aback, shocked by what we'd witnessed, deceived by the people inside. The people inside, not only were they not who I thought they were, they were criminals; the people behind all the attacks - the attack on Robin. Whoever they were, I wasn't about to let them get away with it.

"April… Who are these people?" I asked, looking over to her.

April was squatted in the mud, her face and hair drenched in the pouring rain. Her eyes were wide, her gaze fixed, something was wrong.

"April… what's wrong?"

"It's nothing… Don't worry." She said, only averting her gaze after finishing the sentence.

"Stalker, did you hear that?" Robin asked from behind me. "They have Courtney – she's in there all by herself, we've got to find her."

I joined Robin in looking for a way in, but, if opened, a window anywhere near the basement would alert them that someone was here because of the noise of the pouring rain. April rose to her feet, still with the same look painted across her face but began helping us search for a way inside.

We eventually came back around to the front of the house where Robin spotted that the pair of large front doors were ajar. Sebastian, or rather Petrel, had forgotten to shut it entirely giving us the perfect chance to sneak inside.

Robin's initial nerves seemed to have been calmed as she was the first to sneak inside. I protested that I should go first; having been inside before and that she should follow with April behind. After quietly protesting, she saw that it would be a much safer idea. April however, seemed much more nervous all of a sudden and stood, frozen stiff at the door.

"April, what's wrong?" I whispered, walking back through the wooden doors to her.

She looked around her, up to the top floor of the mansion and then to me."This place… these people. I don't know if I can…"

I took April's shaking hand looked into her eyes; she was obviously terrified of something.

"Robin's friend Courtney, she needs our help." I said calmly. "So we're going in there to try and get her out. You can help too. You can go get Officer Jenny or someone from the police to come over and help. Can you do that?" I asked.

April lowered her head and looked as if she was thinking about it.

"No." She said, pulling her hands from mine. "I want to help here."

"Atta girl." I said, sneaking back inside.

Inside, the golden chandelier hanging from the ceiling was switched off, there was virtually no light besides the moonlight from outside in the room. I carefully looked around to see which direction to go in. The large oak doors that led to the battle arena dominated most of one of the walls whilst the grand staircase dominated two of the others. It was then I spotted a small door I hadn't seen before on my last visit, I carefully walked across the tiled floor to it, careful not to make any noise as I went and slowly opened it to find only a solid brick wall behind.

"Stalker look!" Robin whispered, a few steps up the grand staircase behind me.

Robin pointed to the top where, after disappearing around a corner, the staircase simply stopped, not attached to anything.

"It just looks like an ordinary staircase from down here." April whispered back.

"What is this place…" I muttered.

On having nowhere else to go, we had to enter the room we battled in earlier. Even though I didn't remember any rooms coming off of it, it was the only place left to go.

I pushed the large doors open carefully, only slightly at first to check there was no one in the room before opening it just so much that we could all fit through. Inside, the room was just how it was this morning, Cupboards and chests of drawers lining the walls and a large rug set over the arena.

The room was also dark, but moonlight shone through a window high up near the ceiling onto the carpet illuminating a part of the rug, showing us the way to go. Along it there was a trail of wet footprints leading up to the corner of the room where a cabinet was moved away from the wall.

Looking through the space behind it, we could see a stone passage with steps leading downwards into the basement. Deciding that we should go down one by one so that if we were noticed, we would not all be caught.

I went first, stepping on each step as lightly as I could as even the slightest noise would echo throughout the passage. Eventually I reached the bottom where I was met with a door straight ahead of me and a corridor to my left leading into a large, open room, presumably the room we saw through the window.

Needing a place to hide, I looked at the space underneath the out of place wooden door amongst the stone to see only darkness. Rather than risking entering the lit room at the end corridor, I decided that the darkness was a much safer bet of not running into the kidnappers.

I opened the door and went inside; from a quick glance of the unlit room I could see no one else inside and so signaled to the girls to come down the stairs. They each did carefully as to not raise any attention to ourselves first Robin and then April. As April reached halfway we could hear someone coming out from the room at the end of the corridor. April began to panic but we beckoned to her to come towards us and she did, running down the steps and closing the door behind her.

The three of us backed against the wall inside, trying to be as quiet as possible, April's breath was heavy from running so she put her hands to her face, trying to stop herself. The footsteps became louder and louder, edging closer until they were outside the door.

I could feel my heart beating through my chest as if I was going to burst from it. If we were found then that would be it for us; after the gym battle, April had no pokemon able to fight and I only had Sandshrew. With Robin's pokemon hidden away somewhere we would stand no chance of winning a fight.

Slowly the footsteps began again, except this time they were getting further away, whoever it was was going up the steps.

Suddenly we heard a noise, something was rustling on the other side of the room making April jump backwards against a table, causing Pokeballs to fall down around her. April turned around to find a box filled with Pokeballs sitting on the table.

Meanwhile Robin moved towards the noise, squinting as she did so as something stood out from the darkness. It was blue hair in a familiar bob.

"Courtney!" Robin cried rushing over to her friend who was tied up and gagged, lying on the floor.

"Alex look – it's the stolen pokemon!" April cried, picking up the Pokeballs she knocked over.

Robin untied Courtney and took the gag from her mouth. Courtney's face was wet with tears with a look of horror painted across it. She jumped into Robin's arms and gripped her tightly in a similar fashion to how Robin had gripped me earlier.

It was then I noticed that there was also someone else tied up behind Courtney; a man with brown hair wearing a blue shirt. I ran over to untie him. He was badly beaten with cuts and bruises all over his body, I was scared of taking off his gag incase I hurt him but it had to be done. The man gasped for air as I took it off and he clung to my arm.

"Thank you so much." The man gasped.

What's your name?" I asked. "Can you walk?"

The man pulled himself to his feet using my bodyweight as a balance.

"Yeah… I think I can, and the name's Bill."
Suddenly we heard footsteps rushing down the stairs outside along the passage as everyone held their breath.

"D, someone's here!" We heard Petrel cry as it echoed through the hallway.

"What?!" Domino yelled back.

"I went back upstairs to shut the door and there's sets of wet footprints all over the rug. Someone besides me has come in from outside."

"You mean you left the door open? So people could just waltz inside?! Idiot!" She cried as the sound of a slap to the face could be heard down the hall.

"Nevermind. We've got what we need from Bill anyway, anything else will come from the others."

"So what do we do now?"

"Protocol." Domino replied bluntly.

There was a short silence before Petrel began speaking. "…Are you sure?"

"We've been found out Petrel, word will get out and this whole charade is going to crumble one way or the other."

"What about the intruders?" Petrel asked as the sound of keys clicking on a keyboard could be heard.

"If they're stupid enough to still be here then they can burn with the other two. We've got ten minutes, now let's go."

Everyone in the room began to panic. We could of made a run for it but with Courtney near hysterical and Bill injured we wouldn't be able to keep at a fast enough pace to get away. But just as I thought that I heard footsteps run along the corridor and up the steps away from us, if they were leaving then that was our que to do the same.

April picked up the large box of Pokeballs and I helped Bill to walk whilst Courtney clung tightly to Robin. Once again I led the way; I opened the door back to the corridor to see who I guessed to be Petrel about to ascend the steps. The man stopped and looked towards us, seeming to look at us each individually with his black eyes, they seemed kinder than I'd expected a criminal's to be.

After stopping to glance he was quickly off up the stairs, his flat purple Mohawk becoming the only thing we could see through the dark.

Thinking we'd been granted a break we quickly made for the exit. Not met with any resistance we all ran as fast as we could until we ran out of the large front doors, back into the garden and the pouring rain.

After quickly descending the two stone steps onto the grass, something darted through the air and rooted itself into the ground just in front of me to which I quickly jumped backwards. It was a black tulip, but something wasn't quite right about it. Suddenly it flashed red several times within a single second and created a small explosion in front of me, making Bill and I fall to the ground.

April called out to us but as I looked up I saw Domino standing beside a black helicopter with another tulip in her hand.

"I should've known it'd be you two brats again!" Domino cried across the garden angrily. "Do you like my tulips?" she asked, her voice changing to a much more sadistic tone.

The helicopter's blades began to spin, creating what felt like an instant hurricane all around us.

"D. The chopper's ready." Petrel cried, running around to machine to an open door, loading a crate inside.

"Pity you came outside, now you're going to have to learn the hard way!" Domino cried through the storm with a smile on her face.

I looked back to the others behind me who hadn't moved as I rose to my feet, helping Bill up again.

"Everyone go, find officer Jenny – get some help!" I cried as Robin and Courtney needed ran across the garden, not needing telling twice.

"Alex!" April protested taking a few steps forward.

"I'm the only one with a pokemon left that's able to fight these people and if I can just delay them until the police get here then these attacks can stop." I said, something inside of me coming alive, something that was determined to stop these people.

"But those people… they're-"

"-Can you get Bill to safety too?" I said, almost thrusting him onto her."Now go!"

April began running away, looking back several times as I reached for a pokeball on my belt.

I gripped Sandshrew's Pokeball in my hand; my only pokemon that wasn't physically exhausted from the gym battle.

Domino looked straight at me and let out a loud maniacal laugh. "Are you honestly going to try and fight using your pathetic pokemon? Were you not here earlier?!"

I clenched the Pokeball harder, trying to contain the anger that was building up inside of me.

"Teach him a lesson Petrel, he needs to learn not to get in the way of Team Rocket." Domino continued as she went inside the cockpit.

The helicopter slowly began to lift off of the ground and I threw the Pokeball through the air, releasing Sandshrew just as another flash of light appeared in front of me making Sneasel appear opposite. Sandshrew winced at being outside in the rain, something I'd never made him do before.

Petrel sighed before saying, "And I'm supposed to be the nice guy…"

Suddenly two pairs of long, razor sharp claws that looked more like blades appeared from under the fur of Sneasel's arms. Something that wasn't there before.

"Sandshrew – Rollout!"
"Quick attack."

Sandshrew curled up into a ball and began to speed off as Sneasel disappeared in a flash and reappeared in front of Sandshrew, slashing him throwing him backwards onto his back, exposing his weak point, his soft stomach.

"Beat up!"
"-No!" I cried.

Sneasel jumped on topof Sandshrew as he squirmed to get away. Sneasel retracted his claws and began brutally battering Sandshrew all over with its fists at a lightening fast speed. Sandshrew couldn't take the beating and lost consciousness.

"…Fury Swipes."

Sneasel smiled as it drew its razor claws once more, eager to get started. Sneasel began slashing away at Sandshrew again and again without restraint, almost
enjoying it.

"Stop!" I cried, looking at the pokemon and then at the trainer, neither showing any intention to do so.

"I said stop!!!!!" I Yelled, running over to the pokemon and pushing it off of my own. It wasn't a pokemon – it was a monster.

"We're done here." Petrel said jumping onto the hovering Helicopter and withdrawing his pokemon.

"I hope you enjoy my lovely garden!" I heard Domino cry as they flew off into the night sky.

I collapsed in front of Sandshrew, not able to contain myself I burst into a neverending flow of tears, every drop of rain feeling like it came from me. I clutched my pokemon's lifeless body hoping it wasn't real but this pain tearing my heart apart was not an illusion, it was very real.

Suddenly the garden around me began glowing flashing red, near matching the blood-stained grass as every tulip began lighting up, exploding causing a chain reaction of explosions spreading through the garden around us enveloping the house and then myself, knocking me unconscious.
 
Last edited:

FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Silph Arc - Tragedy and Kidnap:

Chapter 17 – The Mourning After

April and Alex sat in the back of a car as it drove along a bumpy road. Alex rested his head upon his hand and leant his head against the window, watching as the world went past it. April occasionally looked towards him wanting to start a conversation but when she couldn't find the words turned back around.

Houses started to flash by, the sign of nearing civilisation. Some were different colours to others and stood out from the rest, but to Alex they were all the same; dull, lifeless and bland. Only shades of black, white and grey seemed to exist to him now. He had learnt that the world can be a cruel and vicious place, something April had learnt two years ago. April was concerned for him and had been through something similar to him, if not worse, and he knew that, but he couldn't bring himself to speak to her; not yet anyway.

He looked down to the darkened pokeball he clutched in his hand, a searing pain spreading across the right side of his neck as he did so. After a day of being unconscious in the hospital he had woken up to learn that he had been badly burnt from the explosion across the side of his neck and that the pain would last for a while, eventually leaving a scar. It was bandaged now; he was waiting for it to heal and for the pain to eventually go away.

The doctors thought he had been lucky, but as soon as he was discharged he headed for the pokemon center to find out that Sandshrew had had no such luck. Sandshrew's body was withdrawn into his pokeball and sealed permanently, turning the red half darker to almost a jet black colour.

The police offered a ride to Lavender Town, a place to bury fallen pokemon, and they had accepted. People tried speaking to Alex several times before he left Cerulean City; Bill, Robin, Courtney, all wanting to thank him or otherwise but he didn't listen, he didn't want to listen.

The road ahead turned to a dirt road as a landmark came into view, a jagged tower that seemed unfinished, but was too old to be a new build. The scenery became increasingly rocky as the squad car drove up to and under a large piece of doming rock that seemed almost like a tunnel.

Nearing in on the town it was obvious something had happened there. Lavender was barely big enough to be called a town with houses set sparsely apart with the large tower set in the middle. It seemed the top third of the tower had fallen leaving the rest crumbling and damaged with debris all over the small town, bricks, windows, graves everywhere.

Stationary next to the tower however was a large mechanical crane with a wrecking ball attached. It was empty but there were sounds of yelling from many people that got louder and louder as the car neared.

April thanked the driver as the pair got out of the vehicle and into the large crowd of people that were the source of the yelling. There were men in high-vis construction jackets holding people back who tried to enter or get near to the tower. There was an elderly man who seemed to be leading the mob. He was bald with left arm in a sling and a few cuts spread across his head.

"You cannot do this! It's not right, can't you see?" He yelled to the men.

"I'm sorry sir but we have our orders; this building is dangerous and unstable, what was left of the rest of the top of the tower fell yesterday and who knows how much damage was done to the inner structure. It's amazing this building is still standing if I am honest." The worker in the light blue high-vis jacket said, guarding the entrance, obviously the most senior member there.

"But the graves! All of the pokemon laid to rest there – would you demolish a cemetery?!"

"I'm sorry Mr. Fuji, there's just nothing I can do, now can you please all just move back to behind the barricades and we can get this over with!" The man shouted waving his arms as if to say to his colleagues to push the crowd backwards.

As the crowd was being pushed backwards Mr. Fuji grabbed the man in charge's arm tightly with his right arm. "Listen you! All of this happened to me because I tried to protect this tower and I'm willing to go through so much more if it calls for it, but I'm asking you; please don't do this."

The man looked straight at Fuji with compassion at first and then with a stern sense of duty. "This is my job. Now please move away Sir." The man said grabbing Fuji's hand and forcefully removing it from his arm.

It was at this point the crowd had reached April who had been watching the events unfold since she had gotten out of the car. She looked around for Alex for support but he simply wasn't there. She searched through the numerous amounts of heads all around her until she spotted a head bobbing along in front of her, in front of the crowd and in front of the demolition workers, heading for the tower's entrance.

Alex, after using Fuji's plea to the most senior worker to slip through the human wall, stopped just outside the main entrance and turned around and sat, cross-legged on the rocky floor facing everyone else and held his arms out to the side.

Seeing this April dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling through spaces between legs in the crowd and eventually passed the demolition worker to reach Alex. April sat next to him and locked arms, holding out her other one to her side.

Seeing this, the crowd decided to join in as some dropped to their feet whilst others pushed back at the workers and over powered them. Each person sat next to another, locking arms all around the tower, eventually reaching back to Alex's other arm.

Suddenly Alex spoke the first words he had said since being handed Sandshrew's pokeball.

"My name is Alex and I lost my Sandshrew."

The workers began to get back up on their feet as April pondered for a moment before speaking.

"My name is April and I lost a Sandshrew too."

This caused a chain reaction as everyone spoke in turn, carrying on around the circle, each person listening to every single statement of loss.

"My name is Nathan and I lost my Venomoth."

"My name is Jessica and I lost Swirly, my Poliwhirl."

The workers gathered round, unsure of what action to take next. Fuji then walked across to them.

"This is a miniscule portion of how many people are grieving for lost pokemon, this is a tiny portion of the people that care for this place, just like me, and we will not move until those graves are taken care of." Fuji said, standing strong in front of us.

The man in the blue high-vis paused for a moment, assessing the situation.

"…name is Nicole and I lost my Skarmory."

The man then took a sizable radio from his belt and spoke into it. "Sir, we may have a problem, you may need to sort this one yourself."

"Thanks Dan, I'll be right there." The voice on the other end came through.

The men looked to the skies for something as gradually the sound of spinning blades could be heard. Soon after that a white helicopter came into view and began its decent to land many metres away from the trainers all gathered around the tower.

As it came into land, flashes of the Rocket's helicopter flashed through Alex's peripheral vision. Alex concentrated and pushed them aside, wanting to move on, not to dwell on it.

Dan, the senior worker, ran over to the helicopter, crouching through the gusts the blades created and slid the door open. A man in a black suit stepped out and walked over towards them. He had a pale face to match his white shirt and his facial features were very defined. He had spiked up blue hair and a stern gaze.

"Mr Cyrus, Sir. This is the problem."

The man glanced around assessing the situation.

"And who might you be?" Fuji asked, presenting himself in front of the businessman.

"Well Sir, my name is Cyrus and I am the CEO of the country's biggest construction and development firm. I make it my business to personally oversee every demolition I contract… I assume you speak for these people?" Cyrus replied, tightening his tie.

"Yes Sir, I believe I do."

"Very well. Follow me if you would." Cyrus said turning around, not even checking to see if Fuji was following.

Fuji took a moment to look around at the scene, looking at every face individually before moving on reminding him of his cause. April and Alex were the last faces his eyes came to, and as their eyes met his April gave a quick nod of approval, deeply trusting the man she'd only known for a few minutes, whilst Alex simply went back to looking at the ground.

-----------------------
"Absolutely not!" Fuji cried out in anger, slamming his fist onto the wooden picnic bench they sat upon.

"I can't stop the demolition, the building is too unstable for public use and a firm in Johto has already bought the rights to the site. There's nothing I can do."

Fuji let out a deep sigh as a crispy brown leaf floated down onto his hand.

Fuji looked around at the park that they were sitting in. It was surrounded by trees with numerous fresh leaves on, ready to take in sunlight.

"Do you see this leaf?" He asked.

Cyrus nodded.

"It fell from the tree much earlier than it should have. This leaf barely got a chance to live and now, just like that; it's gone. Imagine that leaf is a pokemon, and it had its life cut short, you wouldn't just leave it lying around here would you? Now look at all the other leaves still up there, enjoying the sun, enjoying life. Any one of them could fall at any given time and eventually, they're all going to fall. Now if you had a garden you'd gather all of the leaves and put them together somewhere. Pokemon need a place like that too, and people need a place to lay those pokemon to rest; we can't just leave them lying around like a piece of rubbish."

Cyrus looked up to the treetops that surrounded them before looking down to his fists.

After a long moments silence Cyrus eventually began speaking.

"All right. You have made a valid argument. Let us say that I were to commission a memorial building that would house many, many more graves than the tower? Would you call off your protesters?"

Fuji thought on Cyrus' choice of words before making the next move.

"And you'll move all of the graves left inside of the Tower into this new 'memorial building'?"

Cyrus sighed before agreeing.

"So we have reached an agreement then?" The businessman asked, holding out his hand.

"I do believe we have." Fuji said with a smile, extending his good arm to shake hands with Cyrus. "Thank you." He said with sincerity in his voice that Cyrus felt.

"Please come back later tonight, we're holding a candlelight vigil for all those that perished as a result of the attack on the Tower. I would be honoured if you would join us."

"I would be honoured."

------------------------------
As night fell, more and more people had gathered in the centre of Lavender Town, each holding a candle or a lighter in their hands. Many people were weeping, some sobbing uncontrollably. The destruction of the tower had not only affected pokemon, but people too.

With the help of a man, Mr Fuji mounted a large piece of debris and stood above everyone, ready to address them.

"Thank you all for coming, and I am sorry you've had to. Pokemon Tower has been, for as long as I remember, one of this country's great landmarks and has served as the final resting place for many, many Pokémon. But tonight we are not here to mourn pokemon or the Tower, but to mourn all those lost in the blast, be it in the explosion or as a result of the falling debris.

This accident was the result of criminals; terrorists out to benefit themselves and cause pain and anguish to others. Now we all feel a sense of loss here, but hopefully, thanks to the generosity of Mr Cyrus and his company, we can have a small part of that loss filled in, as a new building is being created to house graves for departed pokemon and to serve as a memorial to all those who lost their lives.

Now something like this will not happen again, and do you know how I know? Because of all of you. There was a young man whose name escapes me, who tried as hard as he could to stop these people achieving their end, but only just failed, but when this building was threatened yet again a few days later; all of you, led by this young man were adamant not to let anything else happen to it.

So tonight I ask you to remember these people, remember these people so it will never happen again. Thank you."

Fuji looked at the faces in the crowd before he stepped down. Everyone's eyes glistened with tears, reflecting the light of the moon and the stars back at him. April and Alex were in the front row, listening to every word he had spoken and after being helped off of the debris, slowly walked over to them.

"Thank you for coming." Fuji said.

"We wanted to, really. That was a beautiful speech." April said softly.

"Why thank you young lady, but would you both like to come with me? There's something I would like to show you." Fuji asked.

"S-sure…" April said as Fuji directed her in the direction they should walk. Alex followed April, still clutching Sandshrew's pokeball in his hands.

"-Mr Fuji!" Came a voice from within the crowd.

A man gently pushed his way through the crowd of mourners until he appeared in front of them, it was Cyrus the businessman.

"Mr. Cyrus, I'm glad you could make it."

"Thank you for extending me an invite. I'd just like to say I am truly sorry for what happened here. Emotions are… truly a burden one must carry."

"They are indeed, but where would we be without them?" Fuji says, forcing a small smile.

"Indeed…"

"Well if you'll excuse us there was somewhere I was meaning to go."

"O-of course." Cyrus said before parting ways, seemingly deep in thought.

---------------------------------
After walking down a few dimly lit streets, the trio arrived at a small house with a simple wooden door. Fuji let them inside and led the pair down the hallway to a room at the end. Walking down the corridor they passed a room where a man was lying in a bed. He was pale and looked like he had lost quite a lot of weight. April stopped and looked inside with a concerned look upon her face.

"Please… do not worry about him." Fuji said leaning against the doorframe of the room at the end of the corridor.

"What's wrong with him?" April asked.

"Spinarak poisoning, but he's passed the worst of it."

"That's terrible…"

"It could've been a lot worse so I'm thankful for that. But would you like to come in here?"

April and Alex walked into the seemingly large room at the end of the corridor. There were many shelves crammed with books, bags of wild plants, and small bugs. The room was also littered with many different bags of pokemon food, complete with Poffins, pokeblocks and all mannar of other things. The room was a lot messier than the rest of the nearly spotless house. In the corner was a small playpen meant for children, but had obviously been used to house small pokemon as there were scratches and markings all around it.

A pair of large French doors also took up part of the wall leading outside to where the shapes of numerous animal pens could be made out.

"What is this place?" April asked, looking around at the various photos mounted on the wall.

"A shelter for abandoned or orphaned pokemon. A place for domesticated pokemon who have nowhere else to go."

Fuji paused for a moment to see Alex still standing in the doorway. Fuji walked up to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.

"Alex, I would like, in light of your actions today, for your Sandshrew to be the first pokemon laid to rest in the new House of Memories."

Alex's gaze shifted from the pokeball to Fuji.

"That way everyone will know how much Sandshrew meant to you and will get the rest he deserves. …Is that okay?"

Alex nodded as Fuji moved his hand to the pokeball and gently took it from Alex's loosened grasp. Fuji placed the darkened pokeball onto a small pedestal atop a fireplace before moving to a large cupboard next to it. A shining, warm light appeared from within as the aged man opened its large doors. From inside he took something and closed the doors once more before turning towards Alex.

He was holding a light blue egg, fairly large that seemed to pulse a small light from within it every couple of seconds.

"Here, I want you to have it. It belonged to a trainer who was killed when he was hit with debris falling from the explosion. I'm sure he would've wanted someone to have it who would treat it with the same love and respect he would of."

Alex stared at the egg for a few seconds before reaching out to take it. The egg was warm to his skin and could feel the pulsating light without looking at the egg, it felt almost like a heartbeat.

"Now please, rest here for the night and continue on with your journey tomorrow; you've done more than enough around these parts." Fuji said with a kind smile on his face.

Alex began clearing his throat; it'd been a long time since he had spoken. April looked on, silently stunned at hearing him try to speak after almost a week of silence.

"Thank you… for everything." I said.
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 18 – Trials and Transformations

Moving on from Lavender Town after a sound night's sleep, we arrived on Route Twelve, otherwise known to the rest of the world as Silence Bridge. As long as Silence Bridge is, it doesn't look particularly grand; in fact, it's a simple bridge built of wooden logs suspended a few metres above the water's surface, resembling a small dock.

It was quite a shock after leaving the mountainous area of Cerulean City and Lavender Town, to suddenly find myself on the seafront.

The salty sea breeze drifted across our faces as we looked outwards to the ocean, stretching on endlessly with each wave shimmering in the light of the near-midday sun. Wingull circled the skies, looking out for what could potentially be their next meal whilst the fish below daren't go near the surface, fearing for their fate.

The bridge itself struck me as odd and I couldn't work out why until I noticed it had no railings. Dotted along the edges instead were many, many avid fisherman all sat as still as stone, not even speaking to one another to pass the time.

April hadn't spoken too much since we'd left Lavender but I think she was just being cautious about speaking to me but had since started up a conversation about the egg.

The egg had kept me warm all night, it was a nice feeling and helped me drift off into a comfortable sleep, something which I hadn't been able to do in a while. The shell itself was many different shades of blue and purple. The blues were more dominant and swirled around the egg clashing together, almost as if several paint brushes had all randomly swiped at the surface. The deeper patches of blue however were seemingly translucent and a pulsating yellow could be seen flowing within.

"So what do you think is inside? They say you can tell a lot about what pokemon is in an egg from the shell. I bet it's a water type... or an ice – maybe even psychic!"

"I… I dunno." I said, looking down at it.

"I hope it's pretty. I mean, it's a baby so it's gotta be cute right?" April said, imagining all the possibilities as she walked beside me.

"Well I just hope it-" I began but stopped as the egg wobbled in my hands and I stopped in my tracks.

April carried on for a few paces before turning around. "What's wrong?" She asked.

"The egg… it moved."

"Are you serious? Is it hatching?!" April cried rushing over and getting on her knees, inspecting the egg.

For a few seconds there was just silence until the egg suddenly jolted slightly forward.

"It did it again!" I cried.

April began rubbing the shell.

"Come on little pokemon, you can do it!" she cried, the excitement painted across her face.

I couldn't believe it, the egg was hatching already, but I couldn't see or hear anything that sounded like hatching. Although I could hear some breathing. Something was inhaling rapidly. I looked downwards towards April just as…

"Ahhhh… achoooo!" The egg sneezed all over April's face, covering her in gunk and causing her to scream, forcing me to burst out laughing uncontrollably.

The 'egg' in my hand suddenly became smaller and more rubbery – it was Ditto!

"Eww, Ditto I'm going to kill you!!" April yelled as she lunged for my pokemon.

I quickly moved to the side as she ran at me, causing her to bump into the back of a fisherman sitting on the bridge and fall to the floor.

"Oi!" bellowed the fisherman, scaring me so much that I stopped laughing prettymuch instantly.

"Oh I'm sorry…" April said apologetically, clambering back to her feet.

"Watch where you're going – and keep the noise down! You're scaring the fish!" He cried with a face like thunder before turning around.

April looked at me and sighed; her make-up was smudged from where she'd wiped off Ditto's sneeze and I had to really try to contain myself so I wouldn't burst into laughter again.

"Hey look, there's an island over there, doesn't look like we'll disturb anyone there." I said pointing south to where the bridge hits land briefly before becoming bridge again. April however, was already walking before I had finished my sentence.

"I guess that's why they call it Silence Bridge…" I said under my breath.

------------------------
"Wait a minute! Ditto, where is the real egg?!" I cried looking straight at the pokemon in my arms as we arrived on a small piece of land. Thoughts rushed through my mind; had I left it at Mr Fuji's house? Did I leave it behind when I stopped to tie my shoelaces? Or did Ditto's overwhelming appetite get the best of him?

April had somehow drifted behind us on our walk and as I was freaking out, made her presence known by clearing her throat quite loudly. I turned around to see her standing pointing in my direction, but she wasn't pointing at me but at my white satchel bag. I looked downwards and breathed a sigh of relief to see the egg safely packed into it and padded with some old clothes. How could I have forgotten? I had packed it away in there this morning.

"Awwwh, I think Ditto is feeling a little left out." April said brushing her hair.

I sat down on the grass with my legs crossed and stared at my starter pokemon. "I guess I have been neglecting you these past few weeks huh?" I guessed it was just the excitement of all of the trainer stuff alongside catching new pokemon, Ditto kind of got pushed to the back of the queue.

Ditto looked up at me with his beady black eyes and I remembered a promise I'd made to him back in the Cerulean gym battle.

"Want to try some training? I did promise you after all." I asked him.

"To!" He cried as if to say yes.

"All right then!" I cried, jumping to my feet and looking around at the landscape to see what we could use, eventually coming to the biggest, and most obvious thing – the water.

"First thing's first; swimming. Now, we've done it before but that was one way as a Luvdisc. The majority of water pokemon use fins to swim around, so that's what we're going to practice today. Without that skill, we're going to be at a disadvantage." I said, walking to the water's edge, Ditto right beside me.

We looked into the shimmering water past our reflections to see a small Magikarp feeding off of some fungi in the shallows.

"Aha! Perfect. Okay Ditto, Transform into that Magikarp!" I cried.

Ditto nodded and became encased in an opaque white aura where he stretched and became twice his length, growing fins, antennae and gills before the aura faded and revealed a now red, scaly skinned fish bouncing aimlessly on its side. I pushed the Ditto-karp into the water, making the other Magikarp flee off into the distance.

April had made herself and her pokemon comfy on the grass and she took the chance to reapply her make-up. Slowpoke was lazily lying at April's feet asleep with a bubble blowing out of his nose whilst Primeape threw some punches at thin air.

"Now the trick to moving is to alternate the movement of your body as you did with Luvdisc but use your fins for direction and extra power." I said as Ditto started to manoeuvre his way around the water fairly quickly and easily. The little pokemon seemed surprised at how fast he could swim around the water and started to get almost cocky, performing loopdeloops and all manner of acrobatics against the incoming force of the waves.

Finding swimming a lot easier to master than I thought, I challenged Ditto to try flying by transforming into a Wingull. Launching himself high above the water's surface he once again became encased in the white aura and became a thin, white seagull pokemon with a single blue line spread across both wings and its tail.

Ditto-gull tried to steady himself against the sea breeze that was blowing inland but found it hard to stay in the air, eventually being blown backwards and landing hard on the grass of the island. This one wasn't going to be as easy.

I ran over to the spot where Ditto had landed but he was already back on his feet, determined to carry on. I began to think about ways that I could help with flying but who was I to talk about something I had no idea how to do?

"Why don't you try using Swablu to teach him?" April suggested, now sat watching us on the swaying grass whilst cuddling Slowpoke like a child with a stuffed toy watching a movie.

"Of course!" I cried reaching to my head before realising that Swablu wasn't perched on there, and hadn't been for quite some time. Instead, I reached to my belt and threw her pokeball high into the air releasing her. Swablu floated softly on the breeze before perching herself on a nearby rock.

"Okay Swablu, we need your help!" I cried, only for her to turn her head up at me in disgust.

"Swablu… please?" I asked again in a softer tone.

She didn't move a muscle; her beak was held high and she stood rigid in the wind as the breeze wafted through her cotton-like wings.

I knew what she wanted, Swablu was a proud bird and had been inside her pokeball for almost a week now without being let outside once. I sighed before I came out with the apology she craved.

"Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have neglected you, especially at a time like this. It was wrong of me…." She glanced at me before averting her gaze once more; she only really wanted one thing. "And… I'll let you sit on my head again."

Swablu chirped with glee and took off of the rock and landed gently back onto my head. "Okay, so I need you to teach Ditto the basics of flying; take-off, landing, the whole package."

As the hours went on Ditto was learning quite fast. They had practiced their take offs before learning landings which in hindsight wasn't the best idea and had moved on to working on their actual flying.

It was at that moment I had realised the amount of time and effort Ditto's training would take up. When he was an Eevee, all I had to worry about was which evolution we'd eventually pick. Now, we have to work together to master mimicking the abilities of as many types of pokemon that we can. But the fact was, it truly didn't bother me too much.

Since Ditto was having trouble flying on his own Swablu had taken to clutching him in her talons, making him copy every movement she made. She had her wings spread wide and was rhythmically flapping them to keep her height maintained, Ditto was naturally doing the same and then something magical happened – he was flying on his own!

I don't think he noticed until April and I started cheering for him. Swablu had let go in midflight and Ditto had kept on going, which reminded me of how my dad taught me to ride my bike.
Ditto realised and tried not to celebrate before he'd made it back safely and so he gently tilted his wings and turned in the opposite direction, heading back to us. But Ditto had underguessed his landing and hit the ground rolling sending spikes of grass flying up in the air.

Our cheers turned to gasps as we ran over to him to find him back in his normal gelatinous form laughing and crying out his name out of joy.

"I think we need to work on your landing." I said before joining in with Ditto's infectious laughter.

Suddenly I heard a loud rustling in the bushes next to me and quickly turned my head causing pain to seer through my neck from my burn as images of the Rocket's helicopter, the explosion and Sandshrew flashed past my eyes.

I gritted my teeth to help with the pain and pushed the images out of my head.

'That's over and I'm moving on.' I thought to myself. 'But the Rockets… They're going to pay.'
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 19 – A Slow Goodbye

After deciding to head west where the path split in front of us, we were well on our way toward our new destination; Vermillion City. We slowly walked barefoot along the shoreline that had appeared once again before us, the tiny grains of sand sticking in the spaces between our toes before being washed away by the ebbing sea.

The sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky which had made a change from the rain that had poured down on us the day before. In the distance we could just begin to make out the outline of a city, a big one at that with vessels of all shapes and sizes going to and from its equally big harbour.

Scattered along the beach were plastic cups, napkins and every so often a person, each one looking out to the horizon.

"What do you think happened here?" I asked April as I looked at the litter along the beach.

"Looks like some kind of festival or celebration or something. Let's ask them." April replied before walking over to two people, a man and a woman in their twenties who were taking down a large red banner from a set of poles.

"Hello there!" The man cried from a few steps up a ladder. "You folks here for the festival? I'm afraid you missed it by a couple of days."

"Festival?" I asked.

"The Migration Festival. Every year Slowpoke migrate from across Kanto to this beach to evolve in the summer, and then journey back home for the winter. So we hold a festival to celebrate and people come from all over, it's a lot of fun!" The woman said as she reached for a litter picker and began clearing up.

"There was a Slowpoke festival and I missed it? But I promised him I'd take him to the beach to evolve!" April protested.

"Well, if you want, you can still give it a shot." The man said as he descended the ladder. "But I wouldn't keep your hopes up."

"What do you mean?"

"You see those people over there, sitting by the shore? They've been here since the festival started and haven't gotten anywhere. I don't think you'll fare any better than them if I'm honest."

"-Danny that's not fair and you know it." The woman said, giving a scornful look to her friend. "I'm sorry, he's just annoyed because he didn't win the contest, pay him no mind."

"It's okay." April said, looking a bit disheartened nonetheless. "So how does it happen exactly? The evolution I mean."

"Well, each Slowpoke has a unique tasting sap that it uses to lure potential catches when fishing. This sap will attract one of the many Shellder that live in the waters of this beach and it will latch onto the Slowpoke's tail. The poison it then injects with its bite reacts with the sap of the Slowpoke and triggers evolution."

"Cool." I said, quite amazed at the process.

"So… Is that it? I still have a chance?" April asked, not quite so phased.

The woman laughed before replying. "That's it."

April giggled and thanked the woman before running to the shoreline and releasing Slowpoke from inside his pokeball.

"Alright! C'mon Slowpoke, let's go fishing, you'll be evolved in no time."

"…Slow?" Slowpoke said as he looked up at April questioningly.

April waited five seconds for her pokemon's brain to process what she had said and watched as he slowly dipped his tail into the water.

"You're doing it wrong." Came a voice from our left. It was a boy of about ten years old sat with his knees pressed to his chin and his arms folded around his legs, staring out to sea. His short, brown hair was waving in the wind as his feet slowly sunk into the sand.

"Excuse me?"

"Your Slowpoke, he needs to go further out." The boy said, turning his head to face us.

"And why does he need to do that?"

"'Cos that's where the Shellders are at." The boy said as a head of a Slowpoke with scruffy fur appeared from beneath the water's surface a few meters out. The boy lifted his head and asked; "Still nothing?"

"Slow…" The pokemon cried sadly.

"Well keep trying, this is our year – I just know it!" The boy encouragingly cried back as his pokemon submerged itself and he once again rested his head upon his knees.

April kneeled down to her Slowpoke and told him to follow the other one, hoping for him to be lead to where he needed to go, and slowly but surely he did as he was asked and disappeared unto the blue ocean.

"You seem to know a lot about this." I said, deciding to sit next to the boy.

"I guess… but me knowing a lot doesn't really help us much."

"What do you mean?" April asked, sitting on the sand the other side of the boy.

"Well the Slowpokes have to do this all by themselves without any help from us. So me knowing stuff isn't too helpful y'know? Its just scary not knowing what's happening."

"I didn't think about it like that…" April said quietly, adopting the same pose as the boy.

"So if this is 'your year', then you've been here more than once?" I asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing.

"Yeah. Me and my mum used to come every year until my baby brother was born."

"Every year huh? You trying to win that contest?"

"Nah, that thing's dumb; people win a prize for having the Slowbro with the prettiest shell each year. I don't want a pretty shell."

"What do you want?" April asked.

"I wanna be a pokemon trainer. If Slowpoke can evolve then I know I can do it!"

April chuckled and looked at the boy. "You remind me of my brother. What's your name?"

"Jake." The boy said before asking us the same question. We introduced ourselves and talked for about an hour and a half before realising how much time had passed.

"Is it supposed to take this long?" April sighed, her concern for Slowpoke growing.

"I wouldn't worry too much; Slowpokes can stay underwater for ages without coming back up –"

And suddenly Jake was interrupted when a Slowpoke's head breached the surface. April and Jake both gasped and rose to their feet as the pokemon came ashore. It stood on its hind legs and had a harder skinned stomach and sure enough, latched to the pokemon's tail was a spiral-shelled creature. This wasn't a Slowpoke anymore.

'Slowbro; the hermit crab Pokemon and the evolved form of Slowpoke. The Shellder attached to its tail feeds on the host's leftover scraps and if the Shellder is thrown off, Slowbro will once again become a regular Slowpoke.' Came the mechanical voice from my Pokedex which instead of being in my pocket was in April's hands.

"How do you do that?" I asked, baffled.

April and Jake looked at each other, ignoring my question as they had a bigger problem to deal with.

"Whose is it?!" they both cried.

April and Jake both addressed the Slowbro, trying to get an idea of who the Pokémon recognised as his owner, but as they soon realised, they both called the pokemon by its species name. Slowbro clearly hadn't become any cleverer upon evolution as he stared blankly ahead of him, stopping only to shake himself dry. After he did, it had become clear to April that this wasn't her pokemon; the scruffy haired Slowbro was Jake's.

The ecstatic ten year old ran over to his pokemon just as something else was emerging out of the water; a familiar fat, pink head and chubby body plodded back onto the shoreline from the same spot Slowbro had emerged. But something wasn't right.

"Slowpoke?!"

His eyes were wide, much wider than they usually were with a look of pain painted across his face.

"SLOOOOOW!!" He howled and with one quick motion flung his tail from beneath the water into the air, sending something purple flying upwards. It disappeared into the bright light of the afternoon sun and reappeared seconds later, crying out its name and falling to the ground at an alarming rate. The three of us braced ourselves not knowing where it was going to land until we uncovered our eyes, hearing nothing sounding anything like an impact and saw that the purple item – a purple pokemon, had landed and using its mouth, latched itself onto Slowpoke's head."…Poke?"

"Slowpoke?!" April cried again as her pokemon began to glow a brilliant white. He grew about an inch in all directions and a webbing formed outwards around his neck whilst the shell that latched to his head grew to large horns from each side of its base and several small spikes from the tip.

The light faded and a different creature appeared before us to the one we expected.

"Did… did he just?" I stammered.

"That's a –"

'Slowking, the royal pokemon and the evolved form of Slowpoke. It has incredible intellect and intuition and in whatever the situation, it remains calm and collected.' The pokedex said in its mechanical voice, still held by April.

Slowking looked at his immediate surroundings before pushing himself upright onto his back feet. His lower underbelly was scaled, much like Slowbro's and his tail was missing the white patch it once had. The webbing around his neck was patched red and white whilst the shell on his head had turned a light grey and held a red gem in its centre.

Slowking put his arms behind his back and let out a loud, echoing yawn, sounding almost like a roar before clutching his head and wincing in pain. April ran over to her pokemon checking every inch of him for anything that could be hurting him but found nothing.

"What? What is it?" April asked confused.

"Uh… Guys?" Jake said from behind us.

I turned around to see a group of about 12 Slowpoke walking past us as if from nowhere and stopped by Slowking, every single one of them had their gaze fixed on him.

"What's happening?" I asked, saying exactly what I was thinking as the Slowpoke all lowered their heads simultaneously in a bowing motion.

"Slowking?" He said, tilting his head to the left.

"-Slowpoke." His followers repeated, tilting their heads.

"They must think he's their leader… "

"What's the PokeDex say April?" I asked, keen to know more.

April stared at Slowking, watching him move around oddly and then watching the Slowpoke mimic him, not hearing my voice until I asked again.

"Oh right, sorry." She said, holding up the pokedex again.

'Because Slowking is much more intelligent than Slowpoke or Slowbro, wild Slowking must lead colonies of wild Slowpoke and Slowbro and make decisions in times of crisis.'

April looked up from the PokeDex screen as a single tear trickled down the side of her cheek.

"April? What's wrong?"

"Slowking… he's got to go... hasn't he?"

"Go?"

"With them. Didn't you hear it? They need him."

Slowking stopped playing with the crowd of Slowpoke and turned to look up at his trainer.

"But April, he's your pokemon, you caught –"
"-I didn't catch him! Don't you remember?!" April cried out, tears now streaming from her eyes. "I promised him I'd take him to the beach to evolve and so he got inside the pokeball. He only came with us because of that… he doesn't want to be with me."

"April…. How can you even say that?"
"-Because it's true! Now I've taken him here he doesn't need to be with me anymore, but these Slowpoke… they need him."

April knelt down next to her pokemon and looked into his eyes for a moment without saying anything. Jake and I looked on whilst she began rummaging through her bag, eventually taking out a pokeball.

"I kept my promise." She said softly, stroking Slowking's face with her hand.

Slowking said his name questioningly as April stopped stroking his face and opened his pokeball, pressing a small switch on the inside of the capsule sending a jagged blue line of energy at Slowking that surrounded him briefly before dispersing into the air.

"Now… you're free." April sniffed, shutting the pokeball. "You can be with your own kind now."

Slowking turned toward the crowd of Slowpoke and stared at them for a moment before turning back to April and shook his head from side to side.

April stopped blubbering in shock. "But… look at them, they need you."

Slowking again turned to the crowd of pokemon and began saying his name repeatedly, apparently talking to them looking like a true king.

The Slowpokes' faces remained emotionless as Slowking turned to April.

"Slowking…Stay… April."

"W-what?"

Slowking turned his head to the crowd of Slowpoke who were turning around and walking back the way they came.

"Slowking… Stay… April." The pokemon said, touching the middle button on the pokeball in April's hand and disappearing inside it.

"Did he just… speak?" I asked as the button that flashed red on the pokeball turned to a cool white.
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I've posted. It's certainly been a busy one and I apologize for not keeping my activity up, but on the brighter side - Happy New Year!
This chapter is a small introduction to Naoko and her friend Dillan, it will hopefully give you a glimpse into their personalities as they will be making a reappearance in the future. As always, thanks for reading. :)

Chapter 20 – Naoko

Lanette was right. The SS Anne was breathtaking; the halls, the galley, the decks, even the toilets oozed class and elegance. The floors were buffed, the cutlery shone and the bedsheets didn't have a single crease. Everything was, well... ship shape.

The other passengers however were not so perfect – they just thought they were. Most of them appeared wealthy, easily able to afford a trip on the luxury liner ten times over without a second thought. The rest were culture and nature enthusiasts keen to sample tastes of the different parts of the world they docked at.

I could tell that they all thought I didn't belong amongst them – and they were right. To them, I was just some 'jungle girl' from Fortree City who they could look down their noses at.

The crew on the other hand were the only people who spoke a word to me, we had something in common after all; the other passengers treated us like dirt. Although, unlike them, I wasn't about to purposely stay out of their way as most of the crew did.

After following the direction of the masses, I eventually arrived in the Grand Hall; a befittingly large room adorned with gold mouldings, pure white walls and an expertly painted ceiling depicting the vessel powering through a mighty storm (Ironic considering how the original ship met its end).

A domed skylight let the setting sunlight in, turning the white walls and red curtains a warm shade of orange. Centred directly below this was the buffet, so naturally this was the room I was staying in.

People were dotted in small groups here and there, mingling and making small talk to pass the time whilst a string band played music to suit the mood. Many sets of eyes gave me piercing looks as I filled up my plate, the passersby only taking one or two pieces of food. When I was done I quickly slid the plate under the draping tablecloth.

"-What are you doing?!" Came a sharp whisper as someone pulled me up by my arm. "You know pokemon aren't allowed out of their pokeballs on board."

I turned to see the face I knew would be in front of me. "Relax Dillan, these people are way too busy talking mindless rubbish with each other to notice a few pokemon under the table." I said calmly, brushing him off as I reached for an oyster.

"Yeah but if someone else sees them then I'll get the boot for sure." He whispered again, taking the oyster from my hand and placing back onto the buffet before picking up a tray of empty champagne glasses and walking behind the nearby bar.

Dillan and I were quite similar; dark skin, curly black hair and powerful green eyes. Actually, I was quite surprised that we weren't related – the only real difference between us was that he was a guy.

"You know I was going to eat that." I protested.

"Look, we're almost at port and with the barbaric way you shove food down your throat you'll just leave me with more cleaning up to do."

I scoffed at the notion as Dillan let out a small chuckle whilst cleaning the glasses he had picked up. Looking back at him I noticed the landmass he mentioned out of the large window behind him; the next port of call after leaving Hoenn – Kanto.

"And anyway-" He continued before coming to a sudden stop, staring peculiarly at me.

"Dillan?"

"Naoko… look." He said slowly, pointing behind me to where a patch of yellow disappeared behind a blanket of elegant dresses.

I gulped before turning and looking underneath the buffet table to find nothing except a full plate of food. Crawling forward I poked my head out of the other side of the tablecloth to see where they had all run off to.

"Oh no." Dillan said bluntly.

"What is it?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"I think I found your Marill." He said, nodding in the direction of a lady's large dress. The multi-layered red gown had a small spherical blue orb protruding from underneath.

"Lulu!" I whispered sharply after my heart skipped several beats. "Get back here!"

No response.

"Can't you just withdraw them into their pokeballs?" Dillan asked, kneeling behind me.

"No, the beam doesn't work through solid objects." I sighed.

Suddenly, as another crew member emerged from a nearby door, two yellow pokemon seized the opportunity to run from under the dress into the staff only zone, closely chased after by Lulu.

"I take it those were yours as well?" Dillan sighed.

"Puzzle and Meena, my Plusle and Minun. They have a habit of… exploring."

"-And you let them out of their balls?!" He hissed.

"Well it's a bit late for that now isn't it. Right now we need to focus on how we get in there."

Dillan rose to his feet and tightened his gloves. "I believe that's where I come in."

-----------------------
After passing through the door thanks to Dillan's key card, we were met with a split pathway. One lead to a kitchen and the other down a set of metal steps blocked by a chain with a sign labelled 'No Entry'.

Inside the large kitchen to our right were countless crew members dressed exactly as Dillan was; pristine white gloves and waistcoats positioned neatly over a smart grey shirt and tie that heralded the SS Anne crest atop the knot. Every person seemed to be rushing about, each getting on with an individual task.

After thinking it over I explained to Dillan that it didn't make much sense for them to run to the kitchen in search of food as I had already put a large plate of food underneath the tablecloth.

"So that means they went blow deck." Dillan concluded.

"What's down there?"

"Dunno. The only people allowed down there are the Captain and his first mate. Anyone else gets the boot if they're caught snooping around."

"Well that settles it then." I said, climbing underneath the chain.

"Where are you going? Didn't you hear what I just said?"

"Yep, but I'm not part of the crew am I? Now are you in or are you out?"

"Well…" Dillan pondered until spotting a CCTV camera pointing right at him. "I guess I'm in."

"Great, now hurry up before someone catches on!" I cried, beginning my descent.

Dillan sighed. "I'm so fired."
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 21 – And You Are? (Part 1)

(A)

On day one I woke up suddenly when the roar of an engine throttled beneath me, vibrating the floor and breaking me out of my hypnosis. I was in a tiny room, cluttered with mops, brooms and all manner of cleaning products. My head was dazed, my eyes dreary, but even so I could sense that the room around me was swaying – I was definitely at sea.

Little by little feeling was returning to me. First the shroud upon my memory lifted, bringing back to me the last things I remembered; a hilltop, an explosion, the Rockets. My first instinct was to scream but my throat was sharp and fierce, and nothing above a half-hearted cry of pain came out of my mouth. Then, as my body began to loosen, I could feel my stomach clenching from hunger, but it was a long, drawn out pain; the hypnosis must have put me out for days, a week, maybe even more.

When I tried to stand in the small, confined space I realised that my hands and feet were bound. Deciding to save my energy I sat upright and rested my head on the door to my right. Hoping to gain a glimpse of the ship's layout I peered through to the next room. But it was dark, too dark to make out shapes or spaces. Lifting my hands to turn the doorknob I found that it was locked – Of course, so I wouldn't have an easy time escaping like I had so naively hoped.

---------------

On day two I was woken by sunlight beaming into the small room through a porthole high up on the wall I hadn't seen the night before. Looking around the room with fresh eyes I saw what I thought was an illusion – five bottles of water! I crawled across the room frantically, opening a lid of the bottle and pouring the cool liquid down my throat. Only it wasn't cool, it was warm, harsh and salty; causing me to spit it out over the floor and curse blindingly into the air. Despite the fact it was sea water, but water nonetheless, and I had a funny feeling it was all I was going to get.

From the amount of noise above me I could presume it was the main deck. It was alot more active than the night before, with footsteps going to and fro in every direction. From what I could gather, the boat was pretty small and I had a fairly good idea of my escape route should I manage to get out. By the end of the day I'd tried kicking the door open several times but it didn't budge. I had a feeling I was too weak to finish the job so I tried reaching for my belt, but it wasn't there. My pokemon were gone, but hopefully still on board. For now anyway, I was truly alone.

---------------

By day three I had put names to the footsteps above me; when there's not much to look at you tend to listen. I counted four separate sets of steps, each belonging to one of them.

The strong, confident stepper was Proton, a foul excuse for a human being.
The two that followed after him with short, quick steps were his lackeys.
The fourth, a foot-scraper who doesn't appear much was most probably the captain, weather he was one of them or some innocent I didn't know.

More salt water, no food. The swaying of the boat was getting worse, or it was just me. But whatever way, I was throwing up regularly. Life is grand at sea.

-----------------

Day four – I woke in the early hours to hear someone new boarding the ship. From what i could tell they were a somewhat slow but uneven stepper who seemed to lose their balance every so often. Hobbler alert.

After a few more hours sleep I tried again to answer the questions that'd been in my mind since I'd woken up on the hell vessel; 'Where in the world is Chrono Island? Who is Gideon?' And more recently 'who has that damn hobble?!'

----------------

On the night of day five we stopped. The engine silenced and everyone on the deck above disembarked leaving me alone. No change there.

After a few minutes, sea birds walk upon the empty deck in the search for scraps of food but suddenly they scramble away. Something had spooked them, probably a pokemon. But then I hear footsteps – swift and unnaturally quiet, but definitely human. Someone is here who isn't supposed to be.

Sensing danger I instinctively reached for my pokeballs, taking me a few seconds to realise the futility of what I was doing. For some reason, the presence of this stranger frightened me.

I could hear them rushing down the stairs, one on foot and two other creatures jumping from rail to rail, the metal clanging as they did so. They were pokemon, and they moved just as swiftly as their master. They reached the room the other side of my door and began searching end to end for something, or someone.

Again I shifted myself toward the keyhole and peered through but I was met with darkness once again. The handle turned. Then the door began to shake. Quickly. Violently.

Then, after a few moments of silence, I hear a clinking, metal against metal – the lock was being picked.

So, using the wall behind me, I pulled myself upright and readied myself for the appearance of an attacker.

The lock unlatched and the door opened slightly. A figure appeared in front of me and I leapt forwards, attempting to use my bodyweight against them but the figure was too quick, darting to the side as I fell to the wooden floor.

Before I hit the ground a pokemon was on top of me. It blended into the night, letting me only see its deep ruby eyes and yellow rings around its head and ears.

"Argh, get off!" I cried, trying to push the beast away.
"-Relax." Came a voice from the figure who stepped into view. It was a man, only a year or so older than me with short, spiky blonde hair. The rest of his face was hidden from the moonlight but he wore an undone black trenchcoat and dark blue trousers.

"Who are you?!"
"-A friend."

"What do you want?" I asked as I still struggled to escape.
"-To help."
"-Then untie me!"

The man slightly lowered his head for a few seconds before gesturing his hand. A white-furred pokemon with a gem set in its forehead stepped out from the shadows.

"Stay still if you want to keep your hands." The man said bluntly as the white-furred pokemon used its razor-sharp antennae to slice through the ropes binding my hands with a single flick of its head.

The black furred pokemon leapt from on top of me and in shock I scrambled back against a desk that's drawers had been turned out.

"Thanks..." I said, sliding the ropes off of my feet.

The white furred beast grunted in the doorway before leaping up the stair rails, quickly followed by its black furred companion.

The man in the trench coat produced a piece of material from inside of his coat and held it up – my belt!

"You'll be needing this." He said, throwing it over. "C'mon. There's something we need to see."

"We?" I asked just as the man quickly ran out the door, barely even finishing his own sentence.

Silence.

"Hey - wait up!"

(B)

Are you sure?"

"Yes. Um... I think." April answered, doubting herself.

"And you saw it too?"

"One hundred percent. There was another boy called Jake who heard it too, but he was more interested in his own pokemon and went home." I explained to Vermillion City's Nurse Joy; an aging woman whose face had just begun to show wrinkles, with gentle green eyes and greying blonde hair tied up in a neat bun.

"Did he say anything since?" She asked, circling a large metal table in the centre of a pristine examination room. The walls that surrounded us were large sheets of frosted glass tinted in the traditional pokecenter colours.

"No... I tried getting him to talk again on the way here but he seemed alot more interested in everything else than me."

"Everything else?" Nurse Joy inquired. Turning her head to face April.

"Just everything around us; buildings, people - even birds."

"Hmm." She grumbled. "How odd. I've heard stories of Slowking capable of speech but that's only in legends and myths, I never thought I'd actually hear anyone claim to have heard it themselves."

"I never knew that Slowpoke even had another evolution, let alone myths about it." I leaned from the corner and whispered in April's ear.

"Go figure." She whispered back. "Hey, do you think the professor will know anything about this?"

"What, my sister? I'm not sure it's exactly her specialist field..."

"Well she seemed to know everything worth knowing about water types when I lived there, she might know something useful."

"I s'pose it couldn't hurt." I shrugged, turning towards the room's video phone to see Joy still speaking, completely captivated by her own ramblings.

Even though I hadn't had an account for very long, using a videophone had become second nature, back home we used to have to walk into the city if we ever wanted to make an important call. It took me a few seconds between digits to remember Ivy's direct number, but every time I stopped to think when dialling, April presented me with the missing one almost instantaneously. It was then it hit me just how much time her and her brother must have spent with Ivy and how we never knew about each other's existences until we just happened to meet.

Once the phone had been answered we could see Ivy on the monitor, actually in focus for once. The tips of her azure hair and part of her labcoat had been singed, with ash covering most of her right cheek.

"Alex? April? What a nice surprise."

"Taking the hands-on approach again I see?" I said slyly, raising an eyebrow.

Ivy gave herself the once over, realising the state she was in before answering, "Well there's no better way to get results. Now, I'm guessing this isn't a social call?"

"Well Professor the thing is tha-
"-Slooooooooow!" Slowking suddenly cried out repeatedly in pain as he held his hands to his bowed head.

"What is it? What's happening?!" April asked, her gaze darting between the three of us and the monitor.

"I- I'm not sure!" Joy replied, checking the pokemon for a wound.

"Sloooow! Slowking!, Sloooooooooo... Ouch." Slowking cried, coming to an abrupt stop.

"Ouch?" I repeated after a few moments of silence, dumbfounded by the revelation that this pokemon really could speak. The first time I could've been imagining it, but hearing it a second time made it become a reality. "He just said ouch didn't he?"

"That's... Impossible." Nurse Joy said as she stepped back and sat on a plain, white chair in disbelief.

"I knew it!" April cried. "You saw that didn't you Professor?"

Ivy was stunned, "Did I hear that right?"

"Slowking," April said, quickly walking to her pokemon's side, "say something else!"

"...April?" The pokemon said in a deep voice that sounded airy, almost as if he was talking in a constant yawn.

"Yes, yes that's right Slowking!" She cried excitedly as her pokemon's attention turned to me.

"Al...ex?"

I froze, tongue-tied. A pokemon has not only spoken to me, but recognised me! What does a person say back to that? Slowly I raised my right hand in a greeting, only managing to utter the word "H-hi."

The pokemon stared at me before cautiously raising its own arm in a similar fashion, probably unaware of its meaning.

"Amazing." Nurse joy proclaimed, rising to her feet. "He actually understands what he's saying..."
"-This is groundbreaking!" Ivy piped up. "If I could be the first to document it..."
"-I wonder just what level of intelligence he has, perhaps we could teach him. He'd be invaluable as a translator for the injured pokemon..."
"-you could send him over and then maybe I could perfect..."

It was then I came to another shocking realisation; "Oh dear god there's two of them."
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Sorry to anyone who has been following this story, I lost my memory stick with everything I had written on it but thankfully it showed up earlier in the week. I promise not to keep you waiting so long for the next chapter!

Chapter 21 – And You Are? (Part 2)

(A)

After passing through a small corridor I clambered up the metal steps, my legs weak and not belonging to me after being bound and malnourished for so long.

Outside, fresh air swiftly filled my lungs, the salt in the air making it bittersweet. It was a dark, starry night and the boat was docked at the base of an L-shaped Island on which a large, dilapidated factory dominated most of the terrain to the immediate right. The factory was surrounded by woodland and to the left of it, lights dotted the distance like fireflies, revealing the location of a small island town.

"In there." Came a voice from behind me. It was the man in the trench coat, staring up at the factory, his coat blowing in the wind.

"What is?" I asked, still wary of this stranger. But at that point, he was the only ally I had.

"Gideon."

That name struck a nerve with me, a name that I'd never had to place a face to but had been trying to for the last six days. "Who is he?" I asked.

"A freelance scientist who used to work for the Rockets before their so-called 'disbanding'. He's been here ever since-" The man stopped talking suddenly and pushed me up against a small cliff behind him, covering my mouth, he strength surprising me more than the action.

Struggling slightly after being caught off guard I silenced myself when I heard voices overhead shortly followed by the echoing sound of scraping metal, presumably the door of the factory sliding open before slamming shut again.

The man I decided to call Trench released me from his grip and I took a deep breath, giving him a dirty look even though I knew why he did what he did. Trench helped me up before turning on his heel and dashing up the hill, silently as ever.

I hot-footed it up the dirt path towards the factory. Atop the hill, the grass was overgrown and was littered with large rocks. Trench was squatting behind one, right beside a smashed window pane. to someone who wasn't looking, he would have been virtually invisible.

Trench was completely fixated on what was happening inside the factory walls, his gaze not even flinching when I squatted next to him. Until now I hadn't seen his eyes; a very light shade of blue that was almost turquoise in the moonlight. And for some reason - they unsettled me.

Looking inside, the factory was mostly deserted apart from a few old cages lying scattered here and there. In the shadows a man in a tattered lab coat with erratic blue hair was tinkering with a laptop, turning away from it upon hearing the sound of footsteps marching towards him.

"You people just won't leave me alone will you?" He said, cockily folding his arms only to be pushed against the wall with Proton's hand wrapped around his neck.

In the light the scientist seemed to be in his early thirties but his wild hair and eccentricity made him appear much older.

"Tell us where it is Gideon." Proton demanded as he flexed his fingers and tightened his grip around the eccentric man's neck.

Gideon let out a nervous laugh. "Hehheheheh! What could you possibly mean? You took everything from this warehouse months ago – Years if I'm not mistaken..."

"But not what you took from the Dotted Hole."

"Oh ho ho! That Sapphire? It was a passing fancy – useless in fact! Gideon couldn't even get a buyer."

Proton smirked. "Well, I'm sorry to break it to you Gideon but if you thought that gem was useless then you're not as great of a scientist as you think you are."

Gideon's expression completely changed; his eyes became enraged and anger spread across his face. I could tell by Proton's smug expression that he'd produced the reaction he was hoping for.

"Well it matters not anyway, Gideon doesn't have it."

"What?!" Proton yelled chillingly. "Where is it?!"

"Hmph. Here's the deal; tell Gideon why your trinket is so important... And Gideon will tell you what he did with it. Simple, no? Even a buffoon such as yourself should be able to understand that."

Proton angrily pulled the scientist closer and raised a fist.

"Stop." Came a voice from across the room. "Let me deal with him."

Proton immediately released his grip as a hooded figure walked, no... hobbled across the room. In the dark it was hard to make out the actual size of the person, let alone a face. The voice was deep and twisted, disguised somehow.

"You..."

"Where is it?"

"Gideon told you-"
"-Tell me!!" The figure bellowed, hitting the mad scientist and drawing blood across his cheek, making him fall to his knees.

"All right, all right!" He cried, wincing in pain. "I'll show you."

"Good. Now if you give us what we want then we'll let you in on our little project. So tell us; where are we going?"

Gideon grit his teeth and stared up at the cloaked figure with menace and intrigue. "Knot Island."

With that Proton and his grunts picked up the scientist and exited from the rear entrance.

"Knot Island... how far is that?" I asked Trench, rising to my feet.

"Not far." He replied repeating the action.

"Perfect – we've got them!" I cried. "Can you take me to the police?"

"No."

"No? Fine." I sighed. "I'll find them myself."

"No." He said again, grabbing my arm as I began to walk away. "You have to come with me."

I turned back to face him and pulled my arm from his grip. "These people destroyed my home and now I know where they're going and can put a stop to them, so the only place I'm going is the police station. I don't have to go anywhere with you." I said, starting into the forest when a pair of deep, red eyes and white teeth appeared as if from nowhere in front of me. It was the black Pokémon from earlier growling deeply, crouching and ready to pounce.

"Are you sure I can't change your mind?" Trench said, appearing behind me.

"No." I said. "You think you can threaten me to get what you want? Forget it. I'm done submitting to threats and I'm done letting them hurt any more people."

I put my right foot out in front of me to continue into the woods thinking of the last time someone gave me an ultimatum only to go back on their word. When my foot touched the ground I felt something gab my forearm and say "Then I'm sorry." And before I could react properly, my arms had been pulled up behind my back and as I turned to try and fight him, I slipped and twisted my left ankle.

I cried out in pain and cursed violently at him.

"Now walk." He said, pushing me forwards.

(B)

Once the two women calmed down they began pondering how Slowking happened on his extreme intelligence, throwing theories back and forth, completely excluding April and me.

"His migrains." Nurse Joy said, pacing around Slowking, her arms half folded with one arm held stroking her chin. "Has he ever had one before?"

"Just the once I think, straight after he evolved..." April replied, still squatting beside the table her pokemon was perched upon.

"Then this shell could be the source of it all." Joy said as she placed her fingers underneath the shell and began prising it off his head. "Perhaps it's digging into his-"

The nurse stopped mid sentence, staggering back, a look of shock plastered across her face. April and I exchanged confused glances.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"The shell… It has eyes - It's alive!"

April and I quickly exchanged glances again before rising to our feet and inspecting it for ourselves. The shell, greyish in colour, was in fact alive and had a large pair of white, cold eyes staring straight at us. Also, on closer inspection, the base of the shell had sharp white fangs protruding from it that were digging into Slowking's head.

"April, just how did you say he evolved?" Ivy piped up from the computer screen.

April and I explained that a purple pokemon managed to latch itself onto Slowpoke's head and how it began to evolve straight after.
"-Of course!" Ivy cried, coming to a revelation.

"What? What is it?" Nurse Joy asked, as interested as we were.

"The evolution from Slowpoke to Slowking usually happens when a special chemical found within an item known as a King's Rock is exposed to their skin and seeps into their bloodstream. However, it's recently been discovered that the same chemical is present in a certain purple shelled pokemon named Shellder-"
"-Which could explain the evolution!" I said, finishing Ivy's sentence for her.

"Wait, but if that's the case then shouldn't there be a heck of a lot more Slowking running around?" April asked, finding a flaw in Ivy's logic.

"Well it's possible that the amount of fat in a Slowpoke's tail stops the chemical from ever reaching the bloodstream, causing a branched evolution into Slowbro."

"That may be all well and good," Nurse Joy began, walking forward, "but it still doesn't explain why he can actually speak."

"Could it be the poison?" I asked, throwing an idea into the foreground.

"What do you mean?" April asked, stroking Slowking's arm with a look of worry in her eyes.

"Well Ivy," I began, again turning towards the computer, "you said that the chemical can't get through the fat in Slowpoke's tail so maybe the poison couldn't either, but now the Shellder is attached to his head maybe its making him smarter somehow."

"His migrains…" April muttered, putting two and two together. "He only spoke after he had one on the beach – they must be making him smarter!"

"That… actually makes sense. I'll have to do some tests but you two could've actually made your first scientific discovery!"

Chuffed, I decided to give credit where credit was due. "I suppose I'll have to give you a mention when I announce it to the world…"

"Why thank you for your generosity." Ivy replied with just a hint of sarcasm.

"But professor… this poison, it can't hurt him can it?" April asked, looking up from beside her pokemon looking quite concerned.

Ivy lowered her head for a few seconds in thought before raising it again to speak. "I can't say for certain, but it doesn't seem to do any permanent damage... He may just have to live with a small migraine every now and again."

April looked down at her pokemon and smiled. "Well at least he's okay. Oh my god - he. He needs a name."

"Why don't you let him pick?" I suggested, making me think about the egg in my bag Mr Fuji gave to me.

"Yeah, good idea. So Slowking, what do you want to be called?"

Slowking looked up to the various humans gathered around the table and pointed to himself. April nodded her head and the pokemon said, "Slowking called Slowking." Sounding confused as to why we'd even ask such a question. "Slowking is tired."

"Oh... okay. Do you want to go back into your pokeball?" His owner asked in response to the blunt statement.

Slowking nodded and so April produced the red and white ball allowing Slowking to disappear inside via a beam of ruby light. Even though April saw fit to give her pokemon a name now he was capable of speech, he was still a pokemon after all – and he needed his pokeball to rest.

Suddenly the sound of a horn echoed throughout the room.

"What was that?" I asked, taking the egg from my bag.

"That must be the SS Anne" Nurse Joy said checking her watch, "On time as usual."

Suddenly April's face lit up and she began to follow Nurse Joy into the reception area. I explained to Ivy that I'd be right back and followed the two girls through the door.

In reception, the port was visible through the glass wall and a very large ship had just docked, lighting up the night sky in the distance.

"Oh my gosh that's really it." April said under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.

Confused, I asked the question, "Am I missing something here? What's so special about this boat?"

"'This boat' - Do you live under a rock? It's the most famous ship in the world and it only stops at each port once a year for one night only. I've always wanted to see it!" She cried, practically giddy.

April turned and headed for the front door, picking up her drawstring shoulder bag as she went.

"Aren't you coming?"

"No thanks." I laughed, failing to see why a ship could possibly be so interesting. "But I'm gonna go have a look at the gym later and try and schedule a match with the leader."

"So I'll meet you back here later?" April said almost rhetorically as she walked out the sliding doors not even waiting for an answer.

"Sure - have fun boat spotting! …Weirdo."
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
I've known how I have wanted this chapter to go for ages but I just havent been able to write it down well enough until now. I hope this will suffice :)

Chapter 22 – What Lies Beneath (Part 1)

(A)

After what seemed like an eternity of being forced to walk through the forest on my twisted ankle, we arrived at the outskirts of the Island village. I'd exhausted myself in the forest just trying to stay upright and had lost the will to fight Trench's grip so I decided to gin and bear the pain to see where he was taking me.

In front of us stood the back of a rural bungalow on the very edge of the settlement. No light came from inside; either no one was home or it was abandoned. At least, that was what it was supposed to look like.

Clutching my arm behind my back he pulled me closer and whispered "You going to cause trouble?"

I wanted to think of something smart to say back to him but it never came so I reassured him with a convincing "No."

Still clutching my arm he pulled it back from behind me and put it over his shoulders to help me walk. At the time I figured he'd felt guilty but that wasn't the case.

"Open it." He said.

Seeing nothing but a large bush in front of me I asked the logical question. "Open what?" Just as soon as the words had left my lips, the bush separated into two revealing a set of steps leading underground. Looking closer with the help of light coming from below, I could faintly see the outlines of his two pokemon that blended so well into the night, holding the bush apart.

With Trench's aid I hobbled forwards, down the stairs and through an empty doorway to the right. We entered a room filled to the brim with computers great and small; the sound of typing on a keyboard filled the air whilst discarded pieces of paper littered the floor. Among them was a blonde-haired girl in her mid-twenties with her hair tied into a single ponytail squatting against a mammoth machine to our left, tinkering with its insides and not even noticing our presence.

A curly redhead turned his head from studying a bookcase on our right. He looked only a few years older than me and his face was badly bruised and his left arm hung loosely in a sling.

The third, a brunette with a slight quiff and rounded oval glasses was fast at work typing numbers and letters onto a screen and after a quick glance, carried on with what he was doing.

"Oh good – you're back" The redhead smiled to Trench, it dropping when he caught sight of me limping beside him.
"-What took you so long?!" The blonde cried, rising up from the floor. "We don't exactly have much time to sp-"
"-They went to the old lab on One. We've got a while." Trench interrupted.

"Fine." The woman huffed. "But be quick – I don't like this." Trench grunted and released his grip on my arm. Then, without realising how much I was relying on him to stand up, I put my bad leg to the floor, making my leg buckle from the pain causing me to fall to the floor with it.

As I cursed at him again, the girl turned and gasped before kneeling down to help me sit up. "Crowe, what the hell are you doing?!" She yelled, checking me over for an injury. "...Are you okay?"

"Don't act like you lot didn't just drag me here, what do you want?" I demanded, pushing the girls hand away from my ankle.

"You dragged him here?!" The redhead asked 'Crowe' quite angrily.

"Technically I pushed. But he was going to the police." He shrugged, leaning against the vacant doorframe.

The two exchanged worried looks with the brunette who had stopped typing on his laptop.

For a moment I thought that they could be in league with the Rockets but then it occurred to me that we wouldn't have had to stay hidden at the factory if that was the case.

"Who are you people?" I asked, getting mixed signals as to their intentions.

"Friends."The brunette said, rising from his seat.

"Friends?! Ha!" I laughed. "That's what this guy said before he twisted my ankle!" I cried, pointing with my thumb to the man behind me formally known as Trench.

"Okay, okay, why don't we all just take a breather?" He said, approaching the group. "Crowe, I think you should make yourself scarce – why don't you go on patrol duty or something."

And just like that Crowe silently disappeared up the steps and out of sight. The brunette pulled me over a chair and put it against the nearby wall before helping me up onto it.

"Beebs, can you fix him up?"

The blonde girl nodded and pulled out a first aid kit from in between two wall-height computers and began rummaging around inside it. "Sorry about him – Crowe I mean." She began, rolling my trouser leg up to get a better look at my ankle which was now red-raw. "He's my brother, although you wouldn't think it…"

"Beebs, we're being rude. Celio Browne, nice to meet you."The brunette said, extending his hand towards me. A gesture which I made a point of ignoring.

"Bebe." The blonde girl piped up, putting the finishing touches on a bandage she was wrapping around my ankle.

"And this is Bill." Celio continued, pulling up a chair beside me as the redhead summoned up a smile. "You want to know what we want? Well, in all honesty... we need a favour."

I huffed, thinking that we must of had different definitions of the word. "And I suppose if I don't help you with this 'favour' then you'll get Mr. Trenchcoat out there to set his pokemon on me again?"

"No,no." Celio replied, seeming genuinely shocked. "You're free to get up and leave anytime; we just wanted the chance to talk to you before you went to the police. Don't worry, you can trust us."

I looked closely at the three faces, trying to decipher from their expressions if they were telling the truth or not. Could I trust them? They had freed me from the Rockets and given me my pokemon back, but I'd also had my ankle twisted and been abducted...again.

"...So what is this favour?" I asked, almost dreading the reply.

Celio sighed.

"We want you to go back onto the Rockets' boat and pretend you're still their hostage -"
"-What?! No way!"

"We only want you to listen out for any information that will help us. Crowe will stay close by to keep you safe-"
"-Safe? You call this safe?!" I yelled, lifing up my bandaged ankle."Forget it! I don't trust him - in fact, I don't trust any of you! And why do you need me to do this when your little lapdog out there is obviously more capable of doing this by himself?"

"Because you're involved now!" Celio bellowed, slamming his fist against a desk as he rose to his feet. "I'm sorry and believe me, I wish you weren't, but the fact of the matter is that you are involved and we need to make the best of the current situation."

"That's a lie." I said, pulling myself upright using the wall to keep my balance. "This has nothing to do with me. And like you said, I can just walk away."

"Don't you see? People will get hurt - you can't walk away, you need to do this. It's your responsibility - why don't you care?!"

As I stumbled along the side of the room to the steps, a combination of rage, hatred and sadness bubbled up inside of me, something that I hadn't ever let surface before.

"Oh let me see... My parents were murdered, I alienated my sister, watched as people died in an explosion that I could've stopped, I was beaten up, kidnapped and almost starved to death. So tell me; what have I got left? Why am I supposed to care?!"
"-Because this is all your father's fault!"

"What did you say?!" I cried, turning around and pushing Celio up against the wall with what little strength I had left. For a few seconds there was silence, I had to process what was just said, replaying it in my mind to make sure I didn't mishear.

"He meddled with something we told him to leave well-enough alone. If it wasn't for him, none of this would even be happening!"
"-Stop it!" Bebe cried, pushing the two of us apart and standing in the space between.

I stumbled backwards and caught onto Bill's right arm to steady myself, but before I knew it my legs gave way and I collapsed in a mess on the floor, physically exhausted. Confused and angry, tears streamed down my face.

What had my father done? Was he involved with the Rockets? Why was he really killed?

I couldn't answer any of the questions.

"Celio stop it." Bill said, kneeling down to try and help me in some way. "It's not right to put the blame on him – He hasn't done anything wrong. Don't make him do this; he doesn't know what his father did."

"No... No I don't." I sniffed, wiping my eyes. "But please tell me - I want to know everything."

(B)

After April left, I went back into the examination room to finish up my call to Ivy but instead we ended up chatting for ages - we hadn't spoken properly or had a catch-up since I was last home. Ivy told me of her daring experiments and endeavouring research, leaving out all the things that had blown up in her face (which is usually alot), while I told her of everything that had happened on my journey so far, trying to leave out the frightening parts but sadly there was no way around Sandshrew's death.

Talking about it still left me with a gaping hole in my gut but I was determined to move on from the subject, hastily changing the subject and tightening my scarf to try and keep my bandaged neck from showing.

After she realised that I didn't want to dwell on the subject, Ivy, like me, was fascinated by the egg I held in my arms. Having studied with Professor Elm, the leading expert on pokemon breeding, for many years, she was quite adept at identifying the species of pokemon simply by the markings on the shell. I protested that she didn't tell me what was inside, but she insisted that something wasn't as it seemed. She rambled something about possible regional differences before returning to the real world.

A small blinking on the top right of the screen had been annoying me throughout the whole call but I hadn't the slightest idea what it meant.

"It means you have a message." Ivy said, shuffling through various pieces of paper on her desk. "There's a button on the side of the monitor - press it."

I did as I was told and the image on the screen split into two panels, Ivy on one side and a list marked 'Inbox' on the other. I had two messages; the first was from mum asking me how everything was going and was dated a week ago (Oops!), and the second was from someone I wasn't expecting - Robin.

Selecting the message I was met with a loud "Hiiiiiiiiiiii!" Nurse Joy looked in through the glass with a look that was a cross between confusion and concern on her face before returning to help the queue of people that had suddenly appeared.

Robin was stood in the foreground of a shop, dressed in a pokemart apron in front of a window that looked out onto what looked like a very well-kept park with flowers blooming in every available space. Courtney was close by, both of them looking healthy and back to their old selves which, by itself, put a smile on my face.

"Now Stalker, since you like, totally saved our lives back in Cerulean-"
"-even though you were rude and didn't say bye-"
"we figured that we owe you a little bit."

"Soooo, we've sent you and April all-access passes to the show at the new Dome in Fuschia City!" Courtney cried.

"We know we're being super-duper generous, but don't worry about it, you can give us the difference later."

"So yeah, when you get here just print off the tickets and you're like, good to go!"
"-Hey girls - Get back to work!" Came a voice from behind the camera.

"Uh-oh, gotta go!"

"Byeeeeeee!"

I looked at the screen blankly. Not knowing what the 'Dome' was or what show they were referring to, but sure enough there was an attachment with two tickets in, ready to be printed.

"Friends of yours?" Ivy asked slyly.

"Oh shut up, they're the girls we helped in Cerulean... How'd they get my number?"

"Every phone is linked to the PC system in some way. It's like a big phonebook; you can search for someone with a registered Trainer ID - it makes communicating on the go and trading with other trainers alot easier."

"Oh that's cool, so can i fin-" I stopped mid-sentence as the screen lit up. I had a new message.

"Someone's popular." Ivy remarked. "Who's it from this time?"

I looked at the message, it was marked as from 'Unknown'. Curious, I opened it.

The image was grainy and the sound was muffled, it looked like an old video that someone had taped over. There was a woman with black hair wearing a red hairband across her forehead, dressed in a full-length kimono of the same colour. She seemed quite distressed but I couldn't make out much of what she was saying.

"April.... I need.... help.
...Adam ....weeks...
Please! Come... bad feeling..."

The screen became too grainy to make anything out and 'End of Message' appeared on screen.

Whoever she was, she knew both of the siblings and something was most definitely wrong. But the question remained; if this message was meant for April then why did I get it?

"Alex? Alex what's wrong?" Ivy asked, seeing my blank expression. "What was that message about?"

"Its.. well.. I-I've got to go - speak to you later!" I said hastily turning the monitor off and cutting off Ivy's cries of protest mid-sentence.

Something wasn't right, I looked at the clock - April should've been back by now. I had to find her and show her the message so I ran from the room and checked the foyer. Apart from a now diminished queue of people and Nurse Joy, the place was empty.

Without saying goodbye I ran out into the dark of the night. People were still lesiurely walking along the main road in the safety of the streetlamps, but there was no sign of her. I ran ahead through a maze of darkened alleys headed towards the port but when I reached the seafront I was confronted with a large metal fence. It stretched as far as I could see, and although the fence was scaleable, I would've been stopped by the spikes lining the top.

Frustrated, I clutched a pokeball from my belt and threw it high into the air, releasing Swablu in a flash of white. She hovered in the air, sensing something was wrong.

"Swablu, I need you to go and have a look for April in the docks - Please hurry!" I cried, watching as she propelled herself through the air looking like a pice of wool in the wind.

I waited in what seemed like an industrial estate - a place where I was surrounded by large, corregated metal factories. Looking around, one in particular caught my eye. The front of the factory had two lightning bolts painted on it, crossing each other and forming an X above the entrance whereas written just below it was the word 'GYM'.

Touching the rusty metal I wondered if this really was the gym; there was no light coming from inside and the area didn't exactly look like it had been busy anytime in the past.

Suddenly I heard a series of loud explosions behind me. I turned to see smoke pouring outwards from a massive cruise ship docked closeby, inscinctivly I covered my eyes as a cloud of smoke engulfed me.

"Swablu!" I cried out, slowly stammering forwards.

Carefully, I opened my eyes. A howl echoed through the air just before a dark figure appeared in front of me, hidden in the smoke. It was big, on four legs and coming straight in my direction. Right then I knew that if this was the thing that did all that to a huge boat - I was a dead man.

(C)

It was a warm evening in Vermillion City; the smells of the sea floated in the breeze and the cobbled streets were filled with people, most of them leisurely heading for the comfort of home after a long day's work. The brightness of the night sky was dimished by the illuminations of the city, with only a few stars dotted about the empty space above.

April moved quicker than most in the crowd, eager to see first-hand the world-famous ship she had always dreamt of taking a voyage upon. Arriving at the port she quickly located the dock she was looking for – a raised, stone platform made of smooth grey slate that had been pieced together with the utmost care and precision. A dock fit for royalty no less.

She ascended the steps leading up to the dock and when she reached the top of the platform she could see a slow stream of passengers disembarking. She gazed in awe of the beautiful suits and glamourous dresses shimmering in the moonlight from a distance as they disembarked for the night, only to be confronted by a man dressed in a white Navy uniform.

"Sorry Madam – passengers only." He said, extending an arm.

"But – oh please, I really want to see it up close."

"Rules are rules kid." He said again, standing firm.

Knowing she wouldn't be changing his mind anytime soon, April turned away disheartened, descending the steps. Just as she disappeared from the Nay officer's line of sight, a man carrying a net of fish bumped into her. After apologizing with a grunt, the man proceeded to walk down a set of wooden steps adjacent to the dock. April was surprised she hadn't seen this before and even though she felt in her gut that she shouldn't, she followed the man down the creaky set of steps.

At the bottom she found that the wooden platform was much larger than she'd anticipated , built underneath the stone platform and around the columns that held it up. People were busily rushing about; fishermen, sailors –everyone had a job to do.

The smell of gutted fish was overpowering and a salty, wet muck coated the wood underneath – this place was not meant for royalty.

April ducked and dived through the oncoming people with cries of "watch it!" and "move!" filling the air as they collided again and again. The fishermen were clearly locals with that gruff accent that Vermillions are famous for whereas the sailors had an accent all their own that seemed to be an amalgamation from all the different places they had been.

After narrowly escaping the barrage of dock workers, April found herself in an area filled with crates twice the height of her, stacked on top of another. Walking through the area felt like navigating a maze but eventually she came face to face with the base of vessel itself.

The ship's crew were hard at work unloading luggage and yet more crates to add to the maze through a large, rectangular door in the base of the ship. Some of them were not even in uniform, giving April the perfect chance to slip through unnoticed.

Just as she was about to take her first step towards the boat a familiar face walked past her and into the cargo hold of the boat. The man with shockingly bright blonde hair wore a white uniform with many military badges attached to it. April recognised the man's face from Adam's first gym battle – Lt. Surge.

Suddenly thoughts of Alex passed through her mind – he was looking for the gym leader and the last place he'd look would be the harbour. But she was conflicted – she wouldn't get the chance to see the SS Anne again. It was then she saw something that would make up her mind for her.

A woman with blood-red hair in a similar white uniform followed the gym leader into the bowels of the cargo hold. The same woman April saw on the night her family was torn apart.

The same woman who murdered her parents.

Without thinking about her actions for even a second, April strode forwards, following the woman into the bowels of the ship.

Inside, luggage was tied into clusters; ready to be wheeled out at any second whereas further back, things that were staying on board for lengthier periods of time were stored securely. She passed cars, crates and even artefacts that were centuries old but she didn't give any of them so much as an inquisitive glance. Instead she was focused on the woman in front of her, her high-heeled shoes echoing throughout the open space with every step she took.

Suddenly, light was cut from the cargo hold with an almighty creaking noise. The Loading door had been shut, leaving April in complete darkness. For a moment she panicked, but hearing the echo of heels against the cold floor made her realise that she still knew exactly where she had to go.

Using her hands as a guide, she navigated the twists and turns with ease, the rough, wooden crates feeling more and more like the cold smoothness of metal with every step. Angry and scared, her breathing became heavy and fast.

The footsteps stopped in front of her for a fraction of a second before continuing on as normal. Realising she had been heard, April backed up against a metal crate, putting both hands to her mouth to try and silence herself.

Ahead of her the woman picked up a metal object and carried on walking a few yards.

April tried to regulate her breathing and calm herself down, she thought she had gotten away with it.

Suddenly the woman turned sharply, swinging a pole she had picked up against the metal crates creating an almighty clang. The crates suddenly lit up the entire area with an intense, bright flickering light. April turned around to see that the metal crates weren't crates at all, but cages with pokemon trapped inside. From what she could tell, they were all electric types screaming to be let out and frightened at the sudden noise.

Footsteps came towards her.

Out of the corner of her eye April could see the woman's red hair, slanted nose, menacing eyes and the long metal pole she was carrying in her hand. She confidently strode through the isle of cages behind April, clearly on the lookout for someone.

She stopped on the corner beside April, looking around the immediate area slowly. Just centimetres away, April held her breath and shut her eyes tightly, reaching for her pokeballs - sure she was going to get caught until a voice cried;"Over here."

Turning back to the direction she was facing before, she grunted viciously, throwing the pole to the floor and then proceeding towards the origin of the voice.

After waiting a few seconds longer, April gasped for breath and glanced inside the cage she was leaning on. A small, blue and black pokemon with a yellow tip on its tail was passed out from hunger or exhaustion, she didn't want to think about which.

Looking around, the cages were filled with pokemon she had never seen before, all electric types that had been illegally smuggled in appalling conditions, she couldn't bring herself to look at them. After composing herself, April slowly crawled forward two isles to an empty cage, being careful not to spook any of the already riled up pokemon into giving away her location.

Through the bars two figures stood side by side. Surge's muscular arms were folded, standing beside the woman looking quite content. "So what do you think?"

"They'll work perfectly." She smiled sadistically, kicking a bar of a large cage in front of her containing a few Electrode. "Get them to Mahogany when you can."

April clutched a pokeball on her belt, barely able to contain her anger. She wished she had gone back to get the police or at least spoken to Alex whilst she could, but there was noone here, noone to help her. She was outnumbered if she tried to do anything.

Then, for some reason, among the cages she was drawn towards a small yellow pokemon with blue cheeks crying out for help. It was alot more active than the other pokemon around it, trying to squeeze its way through the bars whereas the others looked like they had given up trying. It then hit her - she wasn't alone. April knelt to the floor and began pulling at the small cage, trying to levy it open. The pokemon looked at her, confused but still adopting a hostile pose, trying to figure out if she was friend or foe.

Suddenly she heard a footstep behind her - "Found you."
 
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I...have something of a review? It's not much, because I'll save the more details for when I catch up. But I wanted to give you something, since you requested.

(I'm only up to chapter six, sorry!)

Alex, so far, just strikes me as a regular starting trainer. So far, I'm wondering where his relations to Professor Ivy is going to take him. (By the way, "Ivy" isn't the character's first name. It's Felina. So it's odd to read the scenes where the family's talking about her.) Same with that Eevee. I'm wondering what's up with that stretched-mouth Eevee.

One thing that I'm wondering is why you went with first-person narration. The plus of writing in first-person is that we're right inside the reader's head. We're noticing what they're noticing, thinking what they're thinking. We're right in their brain. What I feel is missing through a lot of your narration is how your characters actually feel. The plot itself is moving at a good pace. You don't slow anything down when it doesn't need to be. But I would like to see more about how the characters actually feel about what's going on around them.

It was also just a bit confusing to have two different first-person narrators in one chapter...but then I figured out that that's why you have the bold separators.

So far, this is just a simple original trainer fic. But you definitely put the work into this, so I'm going to continue reading and see where this goes.
 

FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
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14
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Thanks for the review :)

I think i've gotten better at stating and describing emotions in the later chapters but it's definitely something i'll look into for future reference. And in regards to Alex and his Dad calling Felina by their last name, I briefly mentioned it around chapter 12 ( I think) In Felina And The Bird, where Alex states that his sister had always hated her forename.

Thanks for continuing to read, and I look forward to any future comments!
 

FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 22 - What Lies Beneath (Part 2)

(A)

"You look alot like your sister you know." Bill said with a smile, handing me a peanut butter sandwich. "Sorry, it was the only thing in the fridge."

"You... know April?" I asked, before looking down at the plate.

The sandwich was the best looking piece of food I had ever seen and I wasted no time in scoffing it down. I had been starved for what felt like an age and eating felt good but also like poison at the same time as my stomach cramped every time i swallowed, making me wince in pain.

"Your body's just got to get used to eating food again, don't worry." Bebe smiled.

After calming myself down, Bill and Bebe helped me up onto a computer chair whereas Celio disappeared to cool off. The pair apologized for their friend's behaviour explaining that he was on edge - they all were.

"Yeah, she rescued me from the Rockets in Cerulean City about a week and a half ago. If it wasn't for her, this" He said, slightly lifting his arm in the sling, "wouldn't have been my only injury."

"She was with the Rockets? - Is she okay?!"

"She's fine. It was because of her and her friend that me and two others managed to escape and loads of pokemon were returned to their rightful owners. They're heroes."

"Her friend?"

"A boy named Alex I think. Brown hair, stripy scarf, glasses?"

I was stunned. I felt pride in my little sister for helping so many people but at the same time one of the reasons i let her travel with Alex was so she could stay out of trouble. My train of thought was interrupted by Celio walking back down the steps carrying a laptop under his arms.

For a moment the four of us said nothing. Celio then slowly approached our group in the corner of the room.

"I... I'm sorry for what I said earlier." He said with his head to the floor, his apology seeming genuine. "It's just that, well... Let me start from the beginning." He sighed, pulling up another nearby chair from the mess.

"Three years ago, when the Trainer PC network was still fairly new, we had trouble connecting the Kanto system with the one in Hoenn. So, to fix the problem I managed to set up an amplifier here in the Sevii Isles, but it needed the power of two relics, which according to local legend, were named the Ruby and the Sapphire."

"They were rocks with enough energy in to be used as a kind of battery for the machine, similar to how Moon Stones have a form of radiation in them." Bebe added.

"So with the help of a young trainer we managed to find the Ruby and the Sapphire, but unfortunatly for us, the latter was stolen by a scientist; a scientist working for Team Rocket." Celio continued.

"Gideon." I said, putting everything I had heard at the warehouse into place.

"Exactly. Needless to say the Rockets were in the middle of their 'disbanding' and so it was fairly easy to re-obtain without too much hassle. Then the problems began. After a couple of weeks the machine began to continuously overload, so I took a few readings - the relics were exerting tremendous amounts of energy. Energy that I had never seen before."

"We were astounded by the level of power these relics had but we could not work out just why, so we decided to send them to someone who could find out more about them - Dr Moon." Said Bill, looking me in the eye.

"My dad?"

"One of the best in his field, scientifically speaking." Bill said.

"In his early years on your home island, your father accidentally discovered a hidden temple in the woodland and instead of reporting the discovery, he kept it to himself.
The temple was empty, looted by thieves in the past for all it was worth, nothing of value was left apart from the partial remains of a wall mural.
This piqued his curiosity and so he began studying it whenever he could but wasn't able to make heads or tails of it. He knew it was a piece of Orange Lore so he began going through all sorts of legends and theories, even consulting with Professor Juniper on creation myths but still came to nothing - he'd reached a dead end." Celio explained.

"Then, out of nowhere, the Unown code was cracked. Instantly, thanks to generations of painstaking archaeology in the Ruins of Alph, we could decipher and understand centuries upon centuries of history - of course there were regional variations but the base understanding remained." Bebe added.

I remembered that. Dad's job was apparently the reason we lived on Cleopatra Island in the first place; it was a place steeped in ruins and culture but apart from a small community, it was virtually deserted.
The year the Code was cracked he was a different person. He hardly spoke to any of us, and if he did it was about his work - he shut himself away from the rest of the world.

"With the rough translation of the symbols on the mural he found out that it revolved around five relics known as the 'Gems' - the 'Diamond', the 'Ruby', the 'Sapphire', the 'Emerald' and the 'Pearl'.
To anyone else, this would have been just another piece of superstitious myth that had been lost in time, but Dr Moon thought there was something more to it. Unfortunately for him, the trail still ran cold.
The mural looked as if it once contained the location of the other Gems but, like everything else in the temple, it had either been destroyed or long forgotten."

"Imagine the look on his face when we turned up out of the blue with two of them!" Bebe cried.

"Needless to say, he told us about his little hobby and, out of curiosity, we agreed to help his research along by taking him to the Dotted Hole and Icefall Cave, where the Ruby and Sapphire were originally found.
Inside, we noticed a wall mural alot like the one found on Cleopatra, only it was preserved perfectly. It displayed similar pictures and symbols to its counterpart but also contained a map which displayed the location of the other Gems. Using it, we managed to find the Emerald and then eventually the Diamond; the only thing missing was the Pearl. And after studying the mural over again we found that the Pearl was the important one – it was the catalyst."

"…The catalyst for what?" I asked, too concentrated on trying to keep up to think about my feelings.

"The Gems had apparently been worshipped in ancient times for their 'magical powers'. They were sacred items used in rituals to grant humans control over the elements, similar to pokemon." Celio revealed.

"Wait, so you're telling me these Gems can give people Pokemon powers?"

"Yes. But much more powerful, they would not be restricted to one single type. Each Gem represents a different element - with all of them they could wield any type out there."

"But that's..."

"Dangerous. And wrong. At first we didn't believe it. But thinking back upon the amount of power they exerted, it was surely possible." Bill added again.

"We warned your father of the dangers, if they got into the wrong hands, what destruction could happen... but he wouldn't listen. He continued, obsessed for weeks until one day we discovered that Dr Moon hadn't been telling us the entire truth. Alongside the first piece of the mural in the Cleopatra Island site, he had found what he believed to be the Pearl.
When we went to confront him however, he handed the Gems back to us shouting to high heaven that we had started this so we should take the gems back and leave him alone. He gave us four of the relics before saying that he had hidden the Pearl in a place that no one will ever find.
...But it was too late.
The Rockets must have somehow gotten wind of the research and well... it cost him his life."

"But… I don't understand. If you have all the Gems then how did Mr Fuji have one?" I asked, trying to digest all the information at once.

Bebe spoke up this time, with a look of sadness and shame across her pale face. "Well, when we heard what had happened to your family, it didn't take us long to realise what the Rockets were after. We made a pact; Lanette, Bill, Celio and me, to each take a Gem and find a safe, secure place to hide it and not to tell another soul where it was. Just incase… well, if one of us got captured."

Celio looked to the floor. "They took Lanette." He said, slowly looking up to face me. His bottom lip was trembling. "On her way from Hoenn. She… She couldn't get here quick enough."

"So you see we are all involved." Bebe said, clasping Celio's hand. "…Will you help us?"

I was overwhelmed. So much information in such a small amount of time- too much; my father's obsession with a thousand year old myth, relics that can give people control of the elements and finally, a reason for the slaughter of my home island.

"I-I need time to think... Sorry." I said, slowly rising to my feet, clutching to the wall behind me for support. Bebe quickly stood up to assist me as I tried to tackle the staircase leading back outside, into the fresh air of the night.

----------------------------------------------

As soon as Adam disappeared out of sight, Bill turned to Celio.

"Why did you lie?"

"I had to. The truth would have killed him."

(C)

April froze.

The voice was a woman's but not the redhead Rocket's; someone else was in there and she daren't turn to face them.

"Meena you're okay…" The girl whispered, appearing beside April, kneeling down and speaking into the exact cage that she was just trying to open.

The girl was dark-skinned with black hair tied up using a bandana, wearing unusual clothes, two metal bracelets on her right wrist and a small necklace around her neck. Her accent was thick and foreign but the language the two spoke was the same. She had seen April trying to free her pokemon earlier, so quickly made up her mind on where her allegiances lied but April however, remained unsure.

A small yellow pokemon with red cheeks and a round, blue and white pokemon followed close behind the girl; the small, yellow pokemon greeting its blue cheeked counterpart by rubbing their cheeks together through the bars creating static. April recognised the blue and white pokemon as a Marill that instead of running up to the other pokemon, clung to its trainer's leg looking petrified at everything happening around it.

"Get back, we'll make quick work of this." The girl smiled.
"-wait!" April whispered sharply, grabbing the girl's attention. April pointed towards Surge and the redheaded woman.

A look of annoyance spread across the girl's face. "Looks like we'll have to do this the old fashioned way." She reached under her bandana and pulled out two small hexagonal pieces of metal, each end with a different thickness and length and began using one to unscrew the hinges of the cage. "Can you give me a hand?"

April quickly nodded, took one of the peculiar bits of metal and set to work on her side of the cage.

"Who are you?" April asked whilst trying to unscrew the hinges which were much tighter than she had anticipated.

The girl looked at her strangely as if judging whether or not to divulge the information. "Naoko... Who're you?" She said, removing one of the hinges and making it look easy.

"I'm April. Why are you down here?" April asked, quick and to the point.

Noako explained that she was a passenger above deck and when her pokemon ran below, her and her friend Dillan who worked on the ship came down searching for them.

"...I found Puzzle by himself in this place so I knew Meena had to be locked up somewhere around here, but by the time I found her - I'd lost Dillan. I'm such an idiot; I should never have come on this stupid boat."

Then, just as April was about to console her, the cage door came loose and fell to the floor making a loud clanging noise that seemed to reverberate throughout the cargo hold. April was dreading the fact that she might've been caught and bracing herself for the worst, she peered through a gap in the cages to see that the two figures were still speaking as they had been minutes ago.

Once they had been reunited, Naoko wasted no time in withdrawing her plus and minus pokemon. "C'mon, we need to find Dillan." She said, rising to her feet and looking around in the flickering light produced from the caged pokemon.

"But what about the other pokemon - these people are criminals! God knows what they're going to do with them." April protested.

"Which is why I need to find Dillan. He's hopeless at fending for himself and he hasn't even got any pokemon to defend him if he gets caught wandering down here."

"You don't understand - these people are murderers, kidnappers and God knows what else. If we don't help these pokemon, we're practically condemning them to death."
"-What about Dillan? If we don't bother searching we'd be doing exactly the same to him. Look, if you want to help them, then help them. I'm going to find my friend." Naoko said stubbornly, turning to walk down the row of cages.

April grabbed her arm and stopped her in her tracks. "-Who's to say your friend is even still here? If he had any sense, he would've gotten off this boat when he realised what was going on!"

"-Captain?" Came a voice from behind the cages. A voice Naoko instantly recognised.

The girls stopped their feud to peer through the cages.

Surge and the redhead turned to the boy. He was of similar skin tone to Naoko and wore a grey and white SS Anne Uniform. Dillan looked afraid, much more than he should when addressing a fellow crew member.

"Captain... what is all of this?"

Lt Surge raised an eyebrow. "Are you not supposed to be at work boy? You shouldn't have come here." He said with a coarse tone to his voice.

"Sir, where did all of these pokemon come from?"

"Here and there. Not that it's any of your concern, they're well taken care of."

"'Well taken care of' ? Look at them - they've been beaten and starved. These pokemon have been poached - What you're doing is illegal!"

The woman burst out in maniacal laughter. "You talk about these things as though they have feelings. Oh dear boy tell me, is that why you were snooping around here earlier - hoping to free the poor, defenceless pokemon?"

Dillan was confused at the question; he had been mixed up with April.

"Relax, this boy is hardly worth the effort. Stop toying around and get rid of him."

"Captain, how can you do this?! You're a Gym Leader for crying out loud! ...You don't deserve either of those titles... You won't get away with this."

"What are you going to do baby - tell your mummy? Go ahead; you won't even make it to the door." The redheaded woman threatened, brandishing a pokeball.

"I-if you kill me... People will notice that I've disappeared; the crew, my family, my friends. You won't be able to cover this up, not from everyone."

------

"We have to do something!" Naoko whispered sharply.

April agreed, enraged to her core. Everything about these people made her sick and she was determined to get revenge.

------

"Hahaha, you have no idea how far our influence spreads, we're pretty good at covering things up; after all, Team Rocket does not exist anymore so how could we possibly be involved?" She said as she released a large purple Arbok from her pokeball.

The redhead began slowly advancing towards Dillan with a crazed look upon her face, her high heels echoing ominously throughout the area. The cobra pokemon slithered alongside its trainer, its brightly coloured chest was flexed as it flailed its forked tongue, ready for its next meal.

Suddenly in a flash of white, a Primeape appeared alongside Puzzle and Meena creating a wall between the two humans. "Get away from him!" Naoko cried as she and April ran towards the group, ready to fight. Surge remained completely motionless with his arms folded, as if he wasn't even involved in what was happening.

The redhead stopped her advance and slightly turned her head so she could see the two girls behind her. "Oh bodyguards, touching. Unfortunately for you two you're now defenceless - Arbok, Poison Fang!"

The cobra pokemon lunged towards April with incredible speed, its serpentine teeth coated in a deep purple poison. April had no time to even flinch; she was going to be bitten. That was until Slowking burst from his pokeball, appearing with his arms outstretched in front of his trainer.

"You will not hurt April!" He cried as the whites of his eyes transformed into a strong blue. The Arbok became engulfed in an aura of the same colour and stopped still in midair before being thrown into a row of empty cages by Slowking's psychic.

"What do you think you're doing?!" The redhead bellowed, infuriated. Her eyes met those of the Gym Leader, "Surge, do your job!" She cried, producing another pokeball and releasing a Vileplume.

He nodded and then smiled cockily, releasing a Raichu from a hidden pokeball. Raichu stood poised to attack anything that came near, its whip-like tail waving back and forth behind it.

For a brief second the cries of the caged pokemon were drowned out and noone said a single word. Tension filled the air until the silence was broken by the Captain issuing an order:

"Get them."
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 22 – What Lies Beneath (Part 3)

(A)

We emerged out of the hidden basement into the black of night. Freshly fallen leaves crunched under our feet and there was a distinct chill in the air, a sure sign that autumn was on its way.

Bebe helped me over to sit on a tree stump at the edge of the forest and then returned below without uttering a single word, instead offering a small strained smile that wasn't at all convincing. The area was peaceful; crickets sang their tune from within the grass and the ebb and flow of the tide was enough to put anyone at ease. The small community in which Celio and his friends had hidden themselves amongst was quaint, with small picturesque houses dotted about the island all facing toward the open ocean where a selection of small fishing boats were docked in a makeshift harbour, seemingly the local trade.

For a brief moment I'd forgotten the conversation I'd just had. Relics that can give humans power over the elements - Pokemon powers. Could it really be true? My dad being obsessed over what, to him, was no more than a myth... They'd have no reason to lie about it. But what would they want me to do - be a Gem hunter? Get revenge?

The trouble was I knew what Celio wanted me to do. I didn't know if I could bring myself to intentionally go back and be around those people... those murderers and act like nothing had happened. Pretend to be their hostage.

Hostages... The Rockets had already taken me, Bill and Lanette, but me... why me? For information? No, they didn't know who I was. I was nothing special, I had nothing of value and they hadn't even said a word to me since they locked me in the cupboard. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became.

I sighed deeply and laid back upon the stump, looking to the night sky for answers; nothing made sense.

A soft breeze blew through the treetops, the rustling the leaves looking as if they were reaching for the stars.

"Leaving?" Came a voice from above unexpectedly.

Startled, I pushed my body upright and looked around, studying the branches for signs of life... Nothing, but I did know who's mouth the words had come from.

"Crowe? ...Where are you?"

The air around the trees began to appear if it was rippling and then suddenly Crowe appeared, perched directly above me in the branches swinging one of his legs off of the edge.

"H-how did you do that?" I stammered as the ripple effects began again.
A Pokémon's face appeared beside him, seemingly floating in midair.

"Shadow Sneak. I'm on guard duty remember?" Crowe replied.

I sighed and again laid back upon the hard wood of the tree stump, not bothering to respond to him. After the conversation I had forgotten all about the man I'd named Trench and the unfortunate circumstances in which we had to meet, but I had other things to think about.

"I forgive you, you know." Trench said smugly, tossing a pokeball up and down in his hand.

I paused before responding, wondering if I had heard the boy correctly. "You forgive me? What for?!" I cried, furious that he would even accuse me of doing anything to him.

"Your outburst earlier." He said, catching the pokeball and making eye contact with me. His piercing glare was off put by a raised eyebrow.

Again I paused. Was he trying to provoke a reaction out of me? I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

"Well then I guess that makes us even." I said, resting my head back upon the wood and shutting my eyes.

"Oh?"

"Let's just say abuse for abduction, sounds about fair." I said supressing a small smile.

"I'm glad you see it my way - without me you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't have known what you do now."

"I wish I didn't." I sighed.

"But you do. The decision now is what you're going to do with the information." He said, turning his body to face me.

"I want to help - I do... but I don't think I'm strong enough, not for all this. You know what happened in Lavender, if I end up fighting the Rockets it'd be the same story all over again."

Trench turned his pokeball to the air behind him and withdrew the almost fully invisible Pokémon before leaping to the ground swiftly and smoothly, making it look as if he'd jumped from a small ledge instead of a treetop.

"Believe me, you and your Pokémon have a lot of strength in you, everyone does. You've just got to find the right way to use it. And anyway, I'll be there to protect you so you won't ever be alone as long as we stick together." He said, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder.

I smiled. The first proper smile of the past few days. "When did you become so nice?"

"I'm always nice." Trench replied, almost rigidly, lowering his tone of voice.

After sharing a small laugh he helped me back inside the "abandoned" bungalow's basement to where Celio, Bill and Bebe were all gathered around a large ceiling-height computer in the centre of the room; Celio was typing away on his laptop that seemed to be connected to it and Bebe was tinkering with the mammoth machine's insides. Bill, who was watching the computer screen over Celio's shoulder, was the first to spot us.

"Adam..." He said, grabbing Bebe and Celio's attention.

They all looked towards me, even Trench, as if they expected me to make some grand announcement. I couldn't tell what they were expecting me to say but the second Bebe saw me in front of her, her eyes lit up expectantly, full of hope. That seemed to be enough, knowing people would be behind me in this... whatever it was, was enough to give me the determination to do it.

"I want to help."

Small smiles spread across the faces of the others and the same glimmer of hope I saw in Bebe's eyes lit up in the eyes of the others.

"But," I began again. "I want April kept out of the loop. She can't know anything about this, the Rockets, our Dad - any of it. I want to keep her hidden."

Trench looked at me suspiciously.

"Understandable, we're already on it." Celio said, resuming his work on his laptop.

"What are you doing?" I asked, hobbling beside Trench to the other side of the laptop. A mess of numbers and code sped across the screen continuously; I had no idea what they meant.

Bill explained that they were transferring her videophone account which was linked to the trainer PC network over to someone else's so she couldn't be traced through it. "I suggested Alex. They seemed quite close when I met them and he is quite a capable trainer so it seemed like the logical choice, as long as it's okay with you of course."

I'd never really spent too much time with Alex but I seemed to trust him, perhaps a lot more that I should have. But Bill was right - Alex did seem like the logical choice.

I nodded in agreement and Celio finalized the change.

"All done down here!" Bebe cried from inside the machine.

"Now all the messages she had will head straight for Alex's account, she'll be untraceable for anyone else but us." Celio said sitting back on his chair.
An overwhelming sense of relief swept over me. It was one less thing I wouldn't have to worry about anymore, my sister was safe.

"But there's something else I have to ask." Celio continued with a serious look upon his face, turning his chair 180 to face me. "Do the Rockets know your name?"

"Erm... I'm not sure." I answered truthfully.

"Think Adam, this is important."

I was thinking. Proton and his goons hadn't spoken a word to me since I was put onto the boat so the only thing I had to go by was the night by the Rock Tunnel. I stumbled upon them, so they couldn't have known who I was, but Fuji was there - he knew my name! He did call out to me when I showed up but that was just my forename, they couldn't have known who I was.

"...What did they do to Mr. Fuji?" I asked.

"He's completely fine." Bebe said, brushing herself down. "He was knocked out for a while after your encounter but apart from that, nothing. They left him behind."

"Then your answer is no."

Celio ran his right hand through his hair. "Then we can stick to the plan."

"And what exactly is the plan?" I asked, wanting to know what I was getting myself into.

Celio gestured to Trench to start the explanation, where he told me that in order for everything to go smoothly, I had to pretend to still be a hostage whilst Trench stows away on board the Rockets' boat. "And together we need to find out any information we can; the extent of their knowledge, where they are heading and anything else that could be useful which I'll then relay back to these guys."

"And if they go after a Gem then you two need to stop them getting it. But for now, you need to lay low." Celio said solemnly.

I agreed. Laying low was easy; the hard part would come if we had to fight to get one of the Gems back. Although I was comforted by the fact that I would have Trench and his Pokemon around to protect me; they were a frightful force, I was just glad they were on my side.

"Adam, there's also something you should know... When we set to work trying to hide April's identity, it looked like someone had already done it. According to official records, you and your sister don't exist."

Again I had to do a double take of what had just been said. "What do you mean we don't exist?"

"There's no birth certificates or any official documentation in the national archives to say that either of you two exist. Looks like professor Moon wanted to keep you safe too. That's why, no matter what the Rockets do to you, you cannot tell them your real name. They will try to get any piece of information out of you that you can, and they won't stop until they do."

"Okay... But I have just one question," I began, "aren't the Gems useless without the Pearl? If no one knows where the catalyst is then aren't we safe?"

"We can't take the chance that they don't know where it is, which is where we come in. We'll hold down the search for the Pearl here while you two gather any information you can."

What Celio said made sense, if we idly stood by and let them gather the Gems and then one day found out that they had found the Pearl too, we wouldn't be able to stop them. We discussed the details for another half hour before Trench decided that we should be leaving to get back before the Rockets did.
Before we left I said goodbye to everyone, who in turn wished me luck. Celio seemed distracted but Bill and Bebe seemed almost saddened at my departure.

"Are you sure about this? You know you don't have to do it if you don't want to…" She said softly, embracing me in a farewell hug.

"Yes, I want to do this… Not just because of my father, for him." I smiled.
-------------------------------------

After a much less distressed trek through the woods than last time, we arrived back at the factory as the sun began to rise, followed by Trench's two loyal Pokémon. We carefully peered over the cliff's edge where we could see that the Rockets' boat was still docked and that we were the first to arrive back.

With Trench's help we went below deck to the room I was bound in only the day before. Crowe performed a quick tidy up of the mess he had made earlier searching for my pokeballs and then helped me assume the position I was in before in the small cupboard, no matter how uncomfortable it was. Trench then left the cupboard door ajar slightly and retreated to another corner of the room, releasing a Pokémon from its ball.

The Pokémon had white legs and lower body and a green upper body and head. Its forearms were shaped like scythes and a teal coloured plume stood atop its head.

"Gallade, Shadow Sneak." Trench commanded.

His pokemon followed its orders as its forearms began to emanate a shadowy gas which it seemed to spread across its trainer and itself like a veil. Then, as the two stood still, the air around them seemed to ripple and they faded out of sight.

"Now… we wait."
--------------------------

I awoke to the sound of a crazed man's scream as he was thrown across the room, his body sliding across the wooden floors into a wall - It was Gideon, albeit very bruised.

"You said it would be there!" Proton yelled, striding into the room, readjusting his glove.

The hooded figure we'd seen at the factory earlier stood at the edge of the doorway, just barely visible, watching the events unfolding and this time not intervening. Proton knelt down and grabbed the scientist's coat with his left hand and raised a fist in his right only to begin punching the quivering scientist's already bruised face amid his screams of protest.

I looked to Trench's corner of the room. He was still invisible, not moving, not helping the scientist who I suddenly felt sorry for. I wanted to help him myself but I knew I couldn't, we had to let this play out.

"Wait – wait!" Gideon cried, gasping for breath through the blood in his mouth. Proton stopped his onslaught to **** an eyebrow at his victim expectantly.

"The lab, it may have been deserted… but Gideon… Gideon knows of another."

Proton smiled and released the scientist from his grip. "We're leaving!"

(C)

"Naoko!" Dilan cried, overjoyed to see a friendly face coming to his rescue.

The cobra pokemon quickly recovered from its impact into the cages and slithered back into the fray, leaving the broken remains of the metal prisons in its wake.

"Vileplume - Energy Ball now!" The redhead ordered, pointing toward Slowking and its trainer.
"Volt Tackle." Surge ordered, eerily calm.

Arbok, acting of its own accord, lunged at the trio of pokemon protecting Dillan who instinctively dispersed in different directions. Whilst Dillan and Primeape sidestepped the attack, Puzzle and Meena turned on their feet and ran in the opposite direction, only narrowly missing the serpent's bite. Aggravated, the snake hissed sharply and slithered onwards to gave chase to its new prey.

Meanwhile, Surge's Raichu was fast approaching upon an oblivious Primeape, its orange fur ablaze with electricity. Dillan felt a gust a of air blow past his leg and by the time he had realised what was happening, it was too late. The electric attack had connected sending Primeape skidding across the rough metal flooring of the cargo hold.

The large, heavy petals atop Vileplume's head covered its body in darkness, its small yellow eyes being the only things visible through it. Then, as ordered, the pokemon lowered its large head to the floor where its petals miraculously changed from a poisonous shade of deep red to a rich, healthy shade of green. Vileplume's stamen seemed to come to life as it began to gather large amounts of energy from other parts of the pokemon's body, forming a sphere of energy.

"Slowking - deflect it using confusion!" April cried as the green energy sphere was launched from Vileplume's head.

Slowking concentrated hard on the incoming attack, his pupils dilated as he reached his arms forward, encasing the energy ball in a blue aura. With one mighty swing of his arms to the left, the energy ball's trajectory veered into a collection of metal cages set in the same direction.

As the small could of dust settled, small brown and yellow pokemon began running free through the large hole the energy ball had created in their cages.

April smiled contently as the pokemon ran free from their cages, much to the redhead's disgust.

"Slowking, Zen Headbutt!"
"-Stun Spore!" The Rocket countered.

In the midst of the madness Naoko dodged past the attacks, closely followed by Lulu, running across the room to her friend's aid. The Raichu that had just tackled April's Primeape had turned to Dillan and was poised to launch a new attack, one Naoko recognised. Just as she was about to call out to her friend she felt something forcefully grab her arm so tightly that she was pulled backwards as she ran. Naoko stopped and looked at her arm, she was grabbed by a tall, broad man with bleach blonde hair wearing a clean white uniform - It was Captain Surge.

"And where do you think you're going?" He asked rhetorically, tightening his grip even further.

Naoko's heart was practically in her mouth, she wanted to cry out in pain but she had to warn her friend: "Dillan - hit the deck! It's using Iron Tail!" She yelled across the room just as Lulu fired a water gun from her mouth directly into the Gym Leader's face. Naoko took the opportunity to quickly knee Surge in between his legs, causing him to loosen his grip just enough for her to struggle free.

Dillan ducked to the floor as the poised Raichu leapt into the air and lashed out with its whip like tail, the small hardened lightning bolt-shaped tip powered through the air where his head had just been. Dillan was scared stiff, not knowing how he would defend himself until he noticed the remains of the cage Arbok had slammed into earlier. Reaching out, he grabbed a metal bar and rose to his feet, milliseconds after Raichu touched down onto the floor. The pokemon growled sharply and again turned to face Dillan ready to launch another attack when the steam ship employee swung the metal bar as hard as he could into the pokemon, knocking it out and across the room.

April watched the redhead's every move; each eye movement, each flexing finger, waiting for her to expose some sort of weakness.

Slowking slowly moved his head backwards trying to latch onto Vileplume's wavelength, but the opposing pokemon was quicker than him, shooting an orange haze of tiny spores from within its lowered petals into the air above April and her pokemon.

April covered her eyes; when they were re-opened she saw that the spores had latched themselves onto Slowking and he couldn't move.

The redhead laughed as April begged her pokemon to move, before turning her attention to the last of the pokemon escaping from their cages. "Vileplume baby, stop those pathetic Electrike with Razor Leaf!"

As the last of the Electrike escaped from the cage behind April, four large leaves began to fall from in between Vileplume's petals. April then realised she had no pokemon to stop the attack with; Slowking was paralyzed and Primeape was on the other side of the room. To her, there was only one thing to do.

Vileplume hoisted itself upright and performed a 360-degree spin, using momentum to release the razor sharp leaves into the air. The Electrike stopped, sensing an attack but didn't think fast enough to dodge it, then suddenly April appeared in front of it acting as a shield. The leaves tore through April's clothing with ease and sliced open the skin on her back in four distinct lines. April screamed out in pain and told the pokemon in front of her to run while it could.

Puzzle and Meena had been separated, Meena had climbed to the top of a set of cages behind April and was desperately searching for her partner, every so often letting out a small Spark attack against the Arbok that was snapping at the air around the structure trying to feed, but the attack of the minus pokemon was too weak without the positive charge of her partner.

Puzzle could see the fear in Meena's eyes from behind the cobra pokemon and needed to get to her to launch an attack but daren't climb up the cages because Arbok's speed was far greater than his. Then, seeing an opportunity, the Plusle jumped onto the serpent's tail and began climbing up its body, only stopping halfway to sink its teeth into the snake's skin.

Naoko thanked her Marill for her help as she ran but heard frantic cries of Meena from behind her. Dillan had taken care of himself and was helping the injured Primeape to its feet, so she turned on her heels to help her pokemon.

The redhead laughed coldly at April. "Oooh baby, you really care about these things don't you? What a strange little girl you are! Why protect something that would not do the same for you unless you told it to?"

April breathed deeply from the pain with a tremor in her voice. "I care... ab-bout protecting anything that you want to destroy."

"Oh? And what is that supposed to mean?" She asked, folding her arms, genuinely interested.

"You... you destroyed my home, you killed my parents! I... I'm not going to let you destroy anything again!"

"Hahahaha! So this is a little revenge mission? Well I'm sorry baby, whoever your parents were - they had it coming to them."

Arbok cried out in pain, hissing violently at its attacker. It began thrashing about violently trying to shake Puzzle off, very much aware that it would be in danger of biting itself if it tried to use its mouth to scare the pokemon off.

"'Whoever they were'?! They were my family; they had names, jobs, lives, and what? You don't care?"

"I don't remember. You'll have to be more specific I'm afraid." She said, smugly flicking back her deep red hair and, unaware to April, was keeping one eye on the events occurring behind her.

Naoko arrived on the scene and quickly withdrew Meena into the safety of her pokeball from atop the cages. She attempted to do the same to Puzzle but Arbok's movements were too fast for her to get a clear shot at her pokemon. Arbok became increasingly more violent and began throwing itself against the cages next to it attempting to crush or knock the pokemon off of its back.

Naoko lost sight of Puzzle.

The serpent stopped its onslaught and checked its body over for signs of where the pokemon went. Suddenly Puzzle's cry could be heard a few feet away as it struggled to get up after being thrown onto the cold floor. The cobra pokemon paused, looking at its prey. Slowly it turned its head to the side and began swaying its body back and forth, flexing its brightly coloured chest.

Then, as fast as lightning, the snake darted forwards flailing its tongue and bearing its fangs. Noako acted quickly and withdrew her Plusle without a second to spare, but the snake carried on going - Puzzle wasn't his target!

"Y-you don't remember? - You monster! How can you not remember killing someone?! Their names were Vir-"

Having been following everything happening around him, Slowking watched as Arbok charged towards his trainer. The pokemon suddenly regained control of his limbs, the effect of the spores having almost completely worn off and he moved himself between April and the path of the snake.

Arbok anticipated this and with one quick motion of his neck, slammed Slowking across his side, propelling him across the floor.

"April!" He cried out to his trainer who was cut off mid-sentence and saw just enough out of the corner of her eye to realize what was going to happen to her. Then, as if out of nowhere, a large wolf-like yellow and blue pokemon charged straight into the lunging cobra head-first with a Skull Bash attack.

Witnessing the event from behind, Naoko gasped. "That's a Manetric..."

The Manetric's piercing eyes looked deep into April's as if to tell her something. After a few seconds April responded. "You're that pokemon from before... the Electrike."

The redheaded Rocket snarled upon seeing her Arbok struggle to recover from the attack.

"Looks like I underestimated you but it's not something I plan to make a habit of." Surge said calmly, appearing beside the redhead as she began to issue an order to her Vileplume.

"Ariana. I'll take care of this." Surge said, stopping the redhead mid-sentence before throwing five pokeballs high into the air. Four Magnemite and one Magneton appeared hovering in midair around their trainer; cold spheres of metal with magnets set either side and a single eye set in the centre.

Manetric grunted and nodded to April. "You want me to get on?" She contemplated.

The opposing pokemon would surely beat her own and Naoko's water and electric types - it would be no use trying to fight. Manetric was her way out, but she would have accomplished nothing. She had learnt nothing. Only a name... the name of the vile woman who destroyed her home; Ariana. That had to be enough, for now anyway.

Surge watched as April climbed up onto Manetric and acted instantaneously. "Thunderbolt - all of you, don't let them get away!"

The Magnemite and Megneton gathered, their magnets shaking as they charged electricity for their attack which was aimed at the two girls.

"Naoko - get on!" April cried as she withdrew her pokemon from across the room.
"But -" She cried hesitantly, looking towards Dillan who had just helped Primeape to his feet only for him to be returned to his pokeball.
"We can't win - now come on!"

Naoko nodded sombrely and sat in front of April on the Manetric.

Dillan ran towards the girls but he realised in a heartbeat that he would not make it to them in time for them all to escape unharmed.

He stopped, about to do the bravest thing he had ever done.

"Dillan?! What are you doing?!" Naoko cried.

Not kidding herself as Naoko was, April realised what was happening and placed her arms either side of the dark-skinned girl and tugged on the Manetric's fur, telling it to go.

Accepting his fate, Dillan raised the pole in his hand high into the air to act as a conductor, before looking back to his best friend and smiling. Then, it happened. The pokemon unleashed a wave of electricity that blanketed the crew-boy from head to foot, electricity flowing to every end of his body and back again.

"DILAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!" Noako screamed as he was engulfed in a veil of smoke and Manetric ran up a set of stairs to the upper levels and out of sight. "Go back - go back!! He might still be alive!" She continued hysterically, struggling against April's grip. "-Let me go!!"

April didn't speak, instead concentrating on getting off of the wretched ship.

The group were speeding through the corridors of the ship, passing room after room, however, the Magnemite were in close pursuit. Spark attacks flew through the corridors, aiming for the girls but closely missed. The blue electricity making holes in the polished floors and ornate walls, singing plaster and exploding expensive sconces.

Every level they rose, the halls became more and more lavish but before they knew it they were on the uppermost deck and had nowhere to go. Manetric turned to face the Magnemite and backed away slowly to the edge of the ship as they began charging another series of thunderbolts. Suddenly a white cloud blew past the magnet pokemon followed by a pink haze which caused the Magnemite to all turn their attention to it as they fired their attacks, completely missing their targets. April recognised the cloud immediately - it was Alex's Swablu using attract.

"Blu - Swablu!" It cried flying over the edge of the deck to the harbour below.

April put her life in Swablu's hands and told Manetric to follow her. Not wasting any time, the pokemon ran towards the edge and howled up into the night sky as they took their leap of faith over the side of the ship to whatever was waiting below...
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 23 - The Spark of Life

The creature charged directly towards me, there was nothing I could've possibly done to avoid it. I turned around and clutched the egg in my arms tightly, doing what little I could to protect it when I heard Swablu's chirp overhead, flying straight past me.

The heavy steps of the creature were getting closer and closer and I savoured every breath until it ran to the side of me and an all too familiar voice shouted out into the night: "Stop!"

The creature came to an abrupt halt, its claws digging into the hard concrete paving as if it were mud. It was a large yellow and blue pokemon that resembled a wolf with a pyramid-shaped mane atop its head; riding on top of it were two people and a Marill.

"Alex?!" A girl cried incredulously.

"April?!" I replied in complete shock, seeing her atop the large pokemon alongside a girl who was clutching and crying hysterically into its large neck.

April had a look of terror painted across her face but I could tell she was trying not to to let it show. She hastily looked behind her and then back towards me. "-Get on!"

I looked back in the same direction she had just turned to and saw the enormous cruise ship with several pillars of smoke rising up from it. "April, what did you..-"
"-Alex get on!!"

I didn't need telling a third time. Whatever was happening, April was endangering herself by stopping to speak to me, so I clambered up onto the pokemon and sat behind her, placing one arm around the egg and the other around my friend.

"Hold on - Go Manetric - Go!" She cried, tugging on a tuft of the pokemon's fur. It began running at an incredible speed that felt far faster than any speed I had been in a car; turning sharp corners around the warehouses with ease, into the streets, through the groups of people that had gathered to see what had happened to the SS Anne and eventually out of the city limits itself.

----------------

Manetric continued to run through the countryside for hours. Unlike Swablu, who I had to withdraw into her pokeball, Manetric showed no signs of being even the slightest bit tired. April's expression was stone; her gaze barely faltering from the road ahead, despite her having three large cuts across her back. The girl in front had since stopped her hysterical crying. Although her dark-skinned face was still damp from the tears, she wept no more; instead resting her head of the pokemon's neck and running her hands through his soft, golden fur.

Neither girl responded when I asked them a question. Every so often April would look behind her, but she wasn't looking at me - she thought she was being followed.

Eventually we slowed to a stop. April dismounted and unrolled her sleeping bag, placing her shoulder bag on the floor next to it. "We should get some sleep while it's dark."

----------

That night, April had nightmares.

Whilst she tossed and turned, the girl lay against Manetric, cuddling her Marill for comfort. She slept rather peacefully, probably from exhausting herself from crying so much. Whatever had happened to her, she had a few hours of peace in a world where real life didn't matter.

For some reason, I was the one who couldn't sleep. The egg I'd been clutching all evening felt colder than usual and the light pulsating from inside the translucent shell was definitely a lot dimmer. I couldn't help but feel like something was wrong.

I scanned the horizon trying to take my mind off of matters. It was a clear night, the stars shone brightly above us but there was no sign of the moon. In the distance, something even darker than the night sky seemed to be engulfing the stars one by one - It was the pillar of smoke from the SS Anne, still flowing upwards and showing no sign of stopping. Just what had gone on in that ship?

It was then I saw it out of the corner of my eye. April's bag... it moved. I'd thought I had heard a noise earlier but I told myself it was just the night playing tricks.

The bag shuffled again.

Curious, I climbed out of my sleeping bag, placing the egg in the covers and slowly snuck over to it. The bag was motionless. Was I imagining it? Was the night playing tricks? There was only one way to find out.

As I carefully picked up the bag, several water droplets fell from the lining - it was completely soaked through. I undrew the drawstring and peered inside where I saw fragments of an egg, the same egg I had held in my hands just moments ago, of all different shapes and sizes piled on top of one and another.

The egg... it was broken. Astonished, I looked back to where I'd been lying - the egg on my sleeping bag was still there!

For a moment I was completely confused, and then it had hit me; I was in a dream - I must've fallen asleep looking at the stars. It was the only explanation I could think of, but for a dream it seemed very real. I could feel the dampness of April's bag as I held it, I could hear each drop as it connected with the ground below, I could see the chill in the air as I exhaled and I could still smell the salty sea air on my clothes.

The bag shuffled from side to side. Instinctively I held it at arm's length before slowly bringing it back towards me as the movement calmed down. Carefully, I peered into the bag. It looked exactly the same as it had moments ago, pieces of shell piled on top of one another, but something... something had changed but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realised, there was a faint glow still emanating from the pieces of shell, but it was refracted - whatever was producing the light was underneath the shell pieces.

Curious, I reached in to manoeuvre the pieces of shell when I was jolted with a sudden burst of electricity. I dropped the bag and stumbled backwards, feeling slightly numb and fell to the floor. After a few seconds, the feeling seemed to have returned to my hands and I realised that I'd landed on my sleeping bag, only to become very much aware that my hands were now covered in a slimy pink goop - I'd fallen on the other egg!

A feeling of guilt and horror came over me. I didn't know what to do, how to react. I sat still, motionless as the goop continued to flow out from where I was sitting. When the supply of goop seemed to have been exhausted, it hardened slightly and began moving of its own accord to a spot slightly to my right. The goop on my hands peeled itself off and slid across the ground toward the bigger collection of goop which then after a few seconds fused together to make... Ditto.

"Ditto?!" I cried in disbelief. "I... I could kill you!" I continued, lunging for my pokemon and hugging him as tightly as I could. I couldn't decide whether I was furious or overjoyed at the fact he was masquerading as my egg but whatever the outcome he was still getting a bear hug from me.

"But that means..." I mumbled, quickly realising that the broken egg in the bag was the real one. I scrambled over to the orange shoulder bag that had spread most of its contents over the ground nearby, looking for any sign of life.

Nothing. Then the warm amber glow began emanating from under the last few remaining pieces of shell inside the bag. I opened the bag wider and uncovered a small antenna with an amber teardrop shaped tip. Then slowly the largest piece of shell began to rise and another antenna appeared, identical to the last, before a small blue face came into view. It was small and round, no bigger than a football, with a small fin either side of it and strange yellow eyes that had black crosses for pupils.

Ditto looked at the newly hatched pokemon curiously, as if deciding whether or not to eat it, whilst I was completely enamoured by the new life in from of me.

"Chou?" It cried cutely, looking at the new world around it from under the safety of the shell pieces.

Having never seen the species before, I reached over to my own bag to find the pokedex.

"It's a Chinchou."

I span around and saw April still in her sleeping bag, lying on her side and looking at the newly hatched pokemon. "A boy by the looks of it. They live in colonies further out to sea, it's rare to see one around here..."

"Oh... thanks." I said nervously, unsure what to say to her. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

"What, you falling over and spilling everything out of my bag? No, I slept right through." She said sarcastically - her sense of humour clearly still intact.

"She did." I smiled, nodding my head in the direction of the of the girl who was still curled up next to the Manetric.

April simply sighed deeply in response and looked to the ground for a few short seconds before changing the subject. "Anyway, you need to pick Chinchou up - let him know you're his parent before he settles on someone else."

Hesitantly I reached for the small pokemon. He quickly crouched down and hid underneath his former shell but with one scooping motion, I held him in my arms. He was slightly wet and felt as fragile as a water balloon - I was afraid of hurting him. At first he scrambled and tried to escape my grip but with some help from April I began to rock him from side to side and he quickly became much more relaxed and snuggled itself up against me.

It had all happened so fast it still really hadn't hit me that I had a brand new pokemon in my arms. Chinchou had settled into a gentle sleep and was warm up against my chest. I could feel his small heartbeat beating slowly and I really didn't want to ever let him go.

"Now he's accepted you, all I think you've got to do is capture him." April said gently.

"Capture him? But he was in my egg all along."

"Yeah. But he wasn't born in a pokeball, silly." She chuckled.

April was right, I'd completely forgotten that simple fact. I reached for a pokeball from my belt and tapped his small head carefully, as not to wake him, and the pokemon was transformed into a small cloud of soft, red energy that disappeared inside. A light flashed briefly from the central button on the ball before settling on its natural colour - a sign of a successful capture.

"There we go..." April winced as she adjusted her position in the sleeping bag.

Withdrawing Ditto and clipping the pokeballs back onto my belt I walked over to her.

"It's your back isn't it? ...I saw it earlier." I asked, concerned.

"It's nothing." She said stubbornly as she rolled onto her side away from me, revealing patches of blood on her sleeping bag.

"April you're bleeding! - That is not okay, you need to get this seen to!" I said kneeling down, to take a closer look.

"I'm fine!" She cried, pushing me away.

I lost my balance and fell back onto the floor. We stared at each other for a few seconds, me mostly out of shock but her wide watery eyes told me what I needed to know. She was upset; too upset for words right now.

"Just... let me help."

April closed her eyes in attempt to compose herself, giving me a small nod in the process. I burrowed through my bag looking for the small makeshift first aid kit I'd picked up when I visited home and then placed my sleeping bag next to April's to have something to kneel on.

I asked her to sit up straight and I looked at the cuts - they were deep, I didn't really have any idea how to treat wounds like this. I had bandaged a few Mareep on the farm but never anything this bad, but whatever I could do would be better than nothing.

"So... are you going to tell me what happened?

----------------------

"He just... stood there. And I went... I went without him, leaving him to die. Naoko kept hitting me, telling me to go back but the Magnemite chased us off of the ship, and that's when I saw you."

I couldn't believe what April was telling me. I remained silent, carefully placing the finishing touches on her bandages.

"And that was all for what? A name... A stupid name. Poor Dillan... Why does it keep happening Alex?" She asked, turning to face me, her eyes filled to the brim with tears.

"Why does what keep happening?"

"Death. People keep dying around me; Mum, Dad, Sandshrew, Dillan - when will it stop? ...I want it to stop!"

April collapsed into my lap sobbing uncontrollably. I'd been a fool for not realising how much everything in her life had affected her. So I did the only thing I could do; held her tightly and whispered some comforting words to her. I reassured her that none of those deaths were her fault and that she couldn't have done anything to save them.

We sat together for a good quarter of an hour as she cried out all of the pain inside of her and eventually she fell asleep, nestled in my arms. After a while I laid back onto our adjoined sleeping bags and entered the dream world with a new pokemon on my belt and an old friend in my arms.
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 24 - Misheard Whispers (Part 1)

The next morning I awoke with a warm sensation as the rising sun extended its reach over me. Within a few minutes April and Naoko had also woken up and were preparing to leave.

As April and I rolled our sleeping bags up, I could sense a weird vibe in the air - I caught her glancing over to me several times, and when my eyes met hers she quickly averted her gaze. I thought she may have felt awkward about our conversation last night, so I left it at that and didn't start a new one.

Having nothing to pack away herself, Naoko was already perched on top of Manetric feeding her Marill some poffins for breakfast.

"We never really had a chance to introduce ourselves." I began, as I climbed up onto the large wolf Pokémon. "You're Naoko right?"

Naoko tilted her head and gave me a once-over with her eyes before returning her attention back to feeding her mouse pokemon. "Yeah."

"So where are you heading? We could drop you off somewhere if you'd like; with family, friends?"

"My friends are my family - everyone I need is right here." She said, pointing to the lumps underneath her bandana, presumably her pokeballs. Her accent was thick and deep, but yet it was familiar. "There is someone I need to find but you can just drop me off in the next town and I'll find my own way from there."

"Are you sure? I mean we can help you find whoever you're looking for-"

"-I'm sure." She said bluntly, cutting me off mid-sentence with only two syllables.

"At least... come with us to the pokecentre to get checked over." I smiled, leaning into her line of sight.

She nodded gently with a small hint of appreciation as April took her place between us, ready to set off for our next destination... wherever it was going to be.

--------

After a couple of hours, the skyline of another city began to appear on the horizon. Despite how early in the day it was, we passed by many Pokémon trainers and travellers on the dusty trail; some engaging in early battle practice whilst others sat enjoying their breakfast.

The suburbs of the city were what you'd expect - contemporary houses stitched together into picturesque streets, all living somewhat peacefully away from the madness of the inner city. April shivered as we passed by a set of picketed fences and then suddenly glanced over her right shoulder, as if a devil was sitting on it.

"W-what did you say?"

"...Nothing?"

April questioned herself for a moment before dismissing it as nothing.

"Never mind - we'll be there soon."

Further in, the early morning the city streets were alive with movement, many different suits passed us by but the crowds didn't part or even take a second look at the people riding atop a Pokémon - instead we were made to push our way through as everyone else did. This urban jungle was home to a different type of beast, beast that didn't fear Pokémon or their trainers - the office worker.

Eventually we arrived at the safe haven of the Pokémon centre. Having dismounted Manetric, we made our way inside. I hadn't noticed the night before but in the morning light I could see that April was struggling to walk - the scratches across her back must have been affecting her alot more than I'd thought. Manetric could see her in pain and nudged her gently with his muzzle, hoping for her to use him as support. April ignored his plea at first but by the time she reached the door she had no choice but to take him up on his offer.

It was ten times the size of any centre I'd seen before, at at least 4 stories high it stretched back through the rows of office blocks as far as I could see. The entrance was fitting of a building this large. Two large staircases dominated either side of the backmost wall with the reception counter placed in the middle. Several corridors stretched off to the right and left, presumably all leading to the Trainers' bedrooms.

Despite its size, the reception hall was fairly quiet with two people sat at opposite ends of the room, one boy dressed in a grey tracksuit was crouched to the floor tying his shoelaces ready for a morning run with his Machop whilst a girl was stood in the centre of a circle of red sofas, brushing her hair next beside a television using her reflection on the glass wall as a mirror. Most of the trainers would have just been getting up for their breakfasts around that time so the Chanseys were nowhere to be seen, the only one manning the entrance was the city's Nurse Joy; a relatively young girl about my age who had her shimmering blue hair braided into two ponytails that hung down just past her shoulder blades.

As Naoko and I approached the counter, we looked back to April who was stood halfway across the room, facing the direction we'd just come from.

Concerned, I walked over to her and placed my hand gently on her shoulder. "April?"

She gasped and turned around, her expression setting to normal when she realised it was me who was standing in front of her.

"Are you okay?"

She looked back towards the entrance briefly. "I thought I heard... never mind."

"C'mon." I said, guiding her forward. "Let's go get you fixed up..."

She stared intently at her computer under the counter, the reflection in her stylish glasses showing she was busy reading through an online article of some kind.

"I'll be right with you..." She said, noticing our presence out of the corner of her eye, intent on finishing what she was reading.

Naoko and April placed their pokeballs on the counter.

"Please... we need you to heal our Pokémon." Naoko pleaded.

Joy silently chuckled before turning on her chair. "Doesn't everyone? ...Oh my god!" She gasped, rising to her feet and looking the two girls up and down. "Tim? Tim - Get out here!"

A young doctor dressed in scrubs, a few years older than Joy, came running out of a room behind the counter. "-What? What is it?"

Joy tilted her head in our direction and the doctor averted his gaze accordingly.

"And here was me thinking today was going to be a quiet one..."

-----------------------

In hindsight I must've looked very out of place standing next to the girls - them both with frizzy hair and small electric burns across their faces, April with a trio of large scratches across her back and then me standing at the counter with not a mark on me.

Whilst the girls were being checked over, I sat in reception with my newly hatched Chinchou and introduced him properly to Swablu and Ditto. After a few minutes, Swablu lost interest and perched herself on my head. Ditto however, quickly befriended him, taking the exact shape of the new Pokémon and copying his every move, keeping both of them suitably entertained.

The thing that played on my mind was what the girls had been through the night before. If what they had said was true then a gym leader had been illegally smuggling Pokémon into the region with the help of a supposedly extinct criminal organisation - this would be big news.

The incident in Cerulean was just put down to remnants of the organisation loyal to their missing leader taking matters into their own hands, but if there were more... this could be the start of a full-scale revival. I couldn't just sit on the information - I had to do something; so I called the police using my mobile.

Slowly I pressed 9 three times on the keypad and, as it began to ring, I began to realise that I had no idea what I was going to say.

"Nine-nine-nine, what is your emergency?" Came a voice from the other end of the line.

I contemplated my choice of words very carefully, trying to think of a sensible way to explain this somewhat mad situation when Naoko entered the room and slowly walked to the ring of sofas surround the TV.

"...Hello?" The voice asked.

"Sorry... Police please. I want to report a murder."

"What is your current location, sir?"

"The Pokémon centre... I'm not sure what city I'm in."

"Don't worry, we'll trace the call to your location - don't move, we'll be there as soon as possible."

I thanked the man and ended the call. Ditto and Chinchou were still happily playing with each other across the room, using their antennae to create shadow shapes on the wall, so I decided to go over and sit with Naoko.

She was sat clutching her necklace in her right hand and her head resting on her left which was perched on the back of the sofa.

"No injuries then?" I asked, sitting cross legged on the sofa next to her.

"Nothing. A few cuts and scrapes but that's it." She replied, her eyes fixed on the TV.

"That's good though, right?"

"Not for Dillan."

"Sorry... I didn't think."

"No you didn't. He was one of the nicest people I'd ever met and one of the only humans I could actually trust. And now... now he's gone."

"I lost someone too you know."

She turned her attention to me and looked me over, trying to decipher if I was telling the truth. "You have?"

"Yeah... and so has April. That woman you met - Ariana; she burnt down April's hometown and murdered her parents, so we know what you're going through."

Naoko sat upright, clasped her hands together and looked to the floor. She was trying to stop herself from trembling.

"I called the police, they'll be here soon and at least then -"

"-then what, everything will be sugar and rainbows? What good will that do? It won't bring him back - none of it will." She said gently as a single tear rolled down her soft, brown cheeks. "It's just not-" Naoko stopped mid-sentence as she raised her head.

"What? What is it?" I asked.

She tilted her head in the direction of the TV.

'If you've just joined us, this morning's breaking news is that there appears to have been a suspected terrorist attack famous steam ship - The Saint Anne. The SS Anne, as it is more commonly referred to, arrived into Dock 5 of Vermillion City Harbour early yesterday evening, where the passengers disembarked for the night. It then appeared that at some point during the night, a member of the crew discovered a set of stowaways on board who detonated an explosive device, killing the crew boy instantly.
Gym Leader and Captain of the SS Anne, Lieutenant Surge made this statement to the public this morning:'

The screen switched to a man with short, striking blonde hair stood atop a podium in front of a smoking ocean liner dressed in a white naval officer's uniform, dirtied with black smudges.

'Today, this world class ship played host to a tragic event. A member of the crew here, who shall remain nameless until the family have been properly informed, sadly fell victim to an attack by a set of terrorists. However, we now know that he saved the ship and the passengers on it from a much greater tragedy that we believe was planned. For this, I'm sure, the whole nation will give thanks and honour this tragic loss with the decency and respect that he deserves.
That is all I currently wish to say on the matter, thank you.'

The screen shifted back to the news anchor.

'The police aren't releasing much information at this time aside from this piece of CCTV footage that shows the perpetrators fleeing the scene of the crime on what appears to be a Pokémon.'

A dark and very grainy video played on screen, showing three consecutive frames of three shadows riding atop a large Pokémon across a dockyard - It was us!

'At the moment the identity of these three individuals is presumed to be unknown but the police have urged everyone to be on the lookout for any suspicious behaviour following last week's attack on Pokemon Tower and the incident at Cerulean Manor.
In other news, the new member of the Indigo Plateau's Elite Four was announced today...'

At that moment I felt as if someone had ripped a hole in my stomach lining - I wanted to be physically sick but nothing would come. I - We were now being framed for a terrorist plot and a murder that we didn't commit - something that I wasn't even part of!

"No!" Naoko protested into the air, standing up and kicking the sofa in frustration. "How can they do that?!"

Suddenly my heart skipped a beat as I realised what a terrible mistake I'd made.

"...Naoko."

"We didn't kill Dillan, we didn-"

"-Naoko!"

"-What?!"

"The police..."
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 24 - Misheard Whispers (Part 2)

"So? We're innocent - they'll listen to our story and they'll believe us."

I slid my hands through my hair, contemplating how everything would look from an outside perspective. "You don't understand... I phoned to report a murder - Surge is saying that there was a murder on board, they've got us on CCTV and we've been here before..."

"What are you talking about?!"

"The incident at the Cerulean Manor that the reporter just mentioned - April and I were there."

"So?"

"It was an undercover Team Rocket base; they were kidnapping people and stealing their Pokémon to try and get information out of them. April and I accidently found out and freed two people and the Pokémon they had captive. But the Rockets blew up the whole Manor and escaped in a helicopter before the police arrived - there was no evidence left to prove they were ever there.
I was unconscious but apparently they suspected us of stealing the Pokémon for a few days but thanks to the two people we rescued they had no evidence to actually hold us on. But if the police come now and find out that that" I pointed to the TV, "is us, then they'll put all this together for sure!"

Naoko's eyes shifted in different directions as she thought on what I had just told her. Her eyes settled as she reached a decision and she picked up her purple bag from the floor. "I'm out of here." She said with raised eyebrows as she headed for the door.

"Wait - you can't leave without us!" I cried, chasing her across the foyer.

"Why not? You saw how grainy that CCTV was - if I'm not with you then they'll never know it was me."

"You owe April." I said, grabbing the girl's arm to try and make her stop and listen.

Naoko turned to me, enraged. "My friend is dead - I don't owe her anything." She said, pushing my hand away from her using more force than she needed to, marching to the exit.

"She saved your life!" I bellowed as she walked out of the doors and out of our lives.

Just like that, she was gone. Disappearing into the ever-moving streets of human traffic.

To my left I noticed that Ditto and Chinchou had stopped playing and were staring at me, their eyes full of concern.

"Don't worry guys, everything's fine." I said before withdrawing them into their pokeballs, lying through my teeth.

As I began pacing up and down the room nervously, wondering what we could possibly do to escape the situation, a steady stream of people began emerging from their rooms. Which led me to the conclusion - we could just walk out.

I had phoned the police on my mobile - they didn't see my face so we could just act like we were any other trainers and they would be nonethewiser. The only problem was that they would start asking questions about the phone call which would make Joy and Tim point us out as the most likely suspects - we still had to leave.

----------

The back of the Pokémon Centre looked alot more like a hospital than the reception, aside from the number of Chanseys that were strolling in and out of various rooms performing their rounds. The floors and walls all shone a marvellous white and the smell of disinfectant lingered in the air.

Walking down the corridor, I briefly glanced through the glass panes in each door trying and find the room April was being treated in. I stopped when I spotted Tim's spiky brown hair through a window pane crouching down next to a familiar brown-haired girl who was sat upright on a surgical bed.

Lifting my fist up to knock on the door I stopped myself and thought for a moment.

"Swablu?" I asked, holding my right arm out to the side of me in a rigid L shape.

The cotton bird uncurled herself from my head and gently flapped down onto my arm, creating a small breeze that wisped through my hair in the process. She stood to attention and tilted her little blue head inquisitively.

"I need you to keep watch at the entrance and come and find me as soon as you see any police arriving, okay?"

Swablu chirped in agreement and took off, gracefully flying back down the hallway.

I knocked at the door but didn't receive an invitation to enter. Tim glanced over to me and then said something to April before standing up and coming out of the room to greet me. Shutting the door behind him, he gestured me slightly to the right, out of view of the window.

"Your friend April-"

"-Is she okay?" I asked abruptly.

"She'll be fine, luckily the lacerations weren't as deep as they looked and the electric burns are only minor, so all she needs to do is to take it easy for a while and let her body heal. What concerns me is that neither April nor Naoko would explain to me just how they came upon these injuries. If it's a question of confidentiality then I can assure you, we are more than strict on our oaths. But if it's something else... then maybe you'd feel more comfortable talking to the police?"

My heart skipped a beat.

"No, no you don't need to do that... We just ran into a bad batch of Pokémon really, and April took the brunt of it. I think she's just a bit shaken up - I know I would be."

Tim raised his eyebrows and looked at me questioningly with his arms folded. "If you're sure?"

"Positive." I replied, relieved that he had believed the lie. "But she'll be okay?"

"Absolutely. Just... take it easy for a couple of days." He said with a smile, patting my arm and then continuing down the corridor.

Wasting no time, as soon as Tim disappeared around a corner, I took the opportunity to go inside the nearby room and saw that April was still sat upright on the surgical bed. She'd put on a new set of clothes and looked like her old self again, but was sat gazing out of the window to her right, not even acknowledging me entering the room.

"April?" I asked, slowly advancing towards her.

No response.

As I neared in closer I could see that the colour had drained from April's eyes; her irises had diluted into a plain white and she was staring blankly... at nothing. Stunned, I looked closely at her and waved my palm across her line of sight but still there was nothing - not even a single blink.

I crouched down in front of her and gently turned her head to face me. April blinked heavily and suddenly her ocean-blue irises were back again.

"...Alex?" She asked groggily, as if she had just woken up from a dream.

"April, listen to me..." I began, holding her hands which she immediately pulled away to cover her ears.

"Ah, the Voice! It's so loud!" April cried, shutting her eyes to try and block out whatever she was hearing.

"Voice? ...April there's no one here!"

"I can hear them... In my head..." She said, rocking herself back and forth where she sat - something was clearly going on inside of her head but unfortunately I wouldn't have time to figure out what as Swablu flew into the room through the gap in the doorframe chirping hysterically.

Realising what this meant, I thanked Swablu for her help and withdrew her into her pokeball before turning back to April.

"I'm sorry April, but we need to leave - now."

"Leave?" She asked, trying to concentrate on what I was saying. "Why?"

"I don't have time to explain; there's cctv and a murder, but basically - we need to hide from the police." I said, trying prise to open the room's only window. "Argh!" I cried out in frustration as I kicked the wall, knowing we couldn't force our way out. We had to sneak away unnoticed so as not to arouse suspicion but in the state April was in there was no way we could manage that.

All of a sudden a flash of white appeared from inside April's bag that lay open on the floor and Slowking appeared in front of us. Looking about the room as if to determine the source, he proclaimed; "I hear it too."

"Make it stop!" April cried, still clutching her head, rocking herself back and forth atop the bed.

"Sorry." He replied, seeming shocked that he hadn't done anything sooner. The regal Pokémon slowly raised his left arm to his forehead and shut his eyes to concentrate as a small deep blue aura began to encase him. He clearly began to struggle as his eyelids clenched tighter together and his arm began to tremble, but nonetheless he still stood his ground and kept trying until a white halo appeared above his trainer's head. The halo lowered itself until it began to absorb into April's forehead almost immediately spreading an expression of relief across her face.

I rushed to her side as she took a deep sigh, enjoying the calmness in her own head.

"Need to get away... hurry, it's strong." Slowking muttered, clutching his forehead.

"Away?" I asked, darting my head back and forth between the Pokémon and the human, feeling like there was something they both weren't telling me.

"From the Voice. But Alex, listen - it was-" April began, interrupted mid-sentence by a voice from down the hall.

"I think the people you're looking for are down here, but just to warn you the girl seems a bit shaken up." It was Joy. And she was leading the police straight to us!

Instinctively I grabbed April's hand and scooped Slowking up in the other arm whilst heading for the door. The corridor was alot busier than it had been a few minutes ago with Trainers walking up and down all eager to pick up their Pokémon to set off into the new day. Looking to my right I could see about 4 or 5 navy blue police caps advancing towards us from the back of the small crowd, so we took a sharp left turn out of the doorway. Making sure to walk at a relatively slow pace so we could blend in with the others, we continued down the corridor coming to a T junction with an operating theatre and prep rooms to the right and other, smaller rooms to the left. April quickly glanced behind us, before we made another left turn.

"Two of them are coming this way." She whispered across to me.

"We need a place to hide." I replied, trying not to let my panic show.

Each room was occupied by another person as we walked by - there was nowhere to hide! Panicking even more I turned around to find that April had disappeared too! Startled, I began to think she had been found by the police so I crept up to the corner and began to peer around it when I was suddenly pulled backwards into a dark, confined space.

It was a janitor's closet.

As I balanced myself I grabbed onto the nearest possible thing to steady myself, but that thing happened to be a woman's chest. "...April?" I whispered.

"That would be me." She replied.

"Oh... sorry." I said, feeling myself blushing in the darkness. Releasing my grip, I quickly backstepped away onto someone else's foot.

"Ow?" A familiar voice said rather sarcastically.

"Naoko?!"

"Shh!!" The two girls hissed, followed by a sharp elbow to my stomach from Naoko.

She pointed to a small vent in the door where outside a young policeman walked past, not quite sure what he was scouting for but on the lookout for anything suspicious nonetheless. We all held our breath as he strolled full circle around this end of the pokecentre, until finally disappearing back around the corner. We all exhaled heavily, trying to regain our normal breathing patterns.

"Do you need to elbow me? I asked sharply, actually more annoyed at her leaving us earlier than the throbbing pain in my stomach.

"Yes. Otherwise you would've gotten us caught, and I wasn't about to let that happen."

"Ugh, why are there so many of them?"

"You phoned to report a murder. If you're prone to killing people then they're not exactly going to just send one officer down to come and collect you are they?"

"Quickly..." Slowking muttered, sounding more and more like he was losing his grip on keeping the Voice at bay.

"Hey, I only asked a question, you don't need to be -"

"-Would you two stop it? We need to figure out how we're going to get out of here!" She whispered sharply, cutting me off.

"Let us handle this." Naoko scoffed, releasing her Minun from her pokeball as she knelt to the floor. "Okay Meena, just how we practiced."

The cream and blue Minus pokemon nodded and shifted closer to the door. Her trainer opened it only a fraction of an inch, just enough for her pokemon to squeeze through and then shut it immediately after. For a few seconds there was silence, April and I looked at each other questioningly, each of us having no idea what we were waiting for. Naoko raised her index finger to signal for us to listen closely and within a few seconds there was a small series of knocks from outside, quick bursts followed by two slow pounds.

"It's clear." Naoko said, opening the door and walking out into the corridor without a second glance.

We chased after her into what was, in fact, an empty corridor where she was heading for a nearby fire-exit. Again she knelt to the floor and began fiddling with a small wire that lead away from the door and along the wall beside it. "April, can you keep watch on the corner?" She asked, not even looking up from her work.

April contemplated this for a moment before nodding. "Sure." She said, carefully sneaking along the clean white walls.

Meena now held up the wire for Naoko as she rummaged about under her bandana, pulling out a small pair of wire cutters and set to work on whatever she was doing.

"...What made you come back?" I asked, taking advantage of April not being within listening distance.

"You were right." She said, concentrating on the wire. "I do owe her... And I'm sorry for the way I acted."

"You came back." I smiled. "That's all that matters."

An echo of shoes running across the tiled floor reached our ears. "They know we're not in our rooms and we haven't checked out - we don't have long!" April cried.

I looked down to Naoko who was still fiddling with the wire. "Any chance you can hurry that up?" Accidentally sounding more impatient than worried.

Naoko twisted two cables together and stood back up, Meena at her side. "Done."

"So that switched off the fire alarm?" I assumed.

"Only one way to find out." She said, pushing the door lever downwards and opening it.

A smug look of satisfaction spread across her face as an almost blinding ray or morning sunshine poured through the opening; a look that was quickly wiped off as a doctor with short, spiky brown hair came out of a nearby room - it was Tim. He looked across to us strangely and contemplated what he should do next.

"-There's Tim, maybe he's seen them." Came the sound of Joy's voice from around the corner.

The doctor remained calm and collected and looked towards us, gesturing his head backwards to the fire exit. Naoko didn't need telling twice and hot-footed it out the door, grabbing April's arm as she went. I stood there for a further second, shocked at what this doctor was doing for us - potentially risking imprisonment for people he didn't know. Tim smiled at me and I silently mouthed 'thank you' before following the girls out the door.

Outside, I rushed down a small set of stone steps into a back alley lined with dumpsters, just in time to find April releasing Manetric from a pokeball.

"When did that happen?!" I exclaimed.

"Nevermind that now, let's just get out of here." Naoko said, climbing up onto the giant wolf Pokémon.

April and I followed her example and we set off through the backstreets. Slowking, still held in my arms, began to shake quite violently as he lost his hold on whatever was inside his head. April turned to try and help her Pokémon but instead became pale and emotionless as Slowking's mental barrier had faded, letting the Voice take over.

"April!" I cried, watching her irises fade to white.

Trying to snap her out of it as I did before, I placed my hand onto the soft skin of her cheek and gently called her name.
...But it didn't work.

Panicking, I tried speaking to her normally. "April, the Voice is back isn't it? ...What is it saying? Just let me hear."

For a few seconds she remained in the zombie-like state; motionless and cold. That was until she opened her mouth and spoke two words; two words in a voice that was strained and that did not belong to her.

"Help....me."

 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 25 - Laughing in the Face of Me

I don't know weather it was my imagination or the presence that the voice seemed to have that made those two words linger in the air for a few seconds. But whatever it was; it sent a chill down my back that didn't stop until it reached the ends of my fingertips and the tips of my toes.

Apri's gaze remained empty, as if the real girl had been replaced with a china doll. She sat tall as the two words reverberated around us, but as they started to fade she collapsed onto my lap next to an exhausted Slowking. I tried to remain calm and not panic about the situation but I couldn't help but let a small bit of fear through.

"N-Naoko! She's collapsed, what do I do?!"

"Leave her to rest, she's probably just exhausted. I don't think she's slept since... well, before we met."

"Exhausted? You did just hear what I did right?!"

"Yeah, but what do you want me to do about it - go back to the Pokemon Centre and ask them to fix her up? And then while we're there we can say 'oh by the way, we're the ones that everyone was looking for earlier'."

"Of course not, but you could at least check to see if she's okay!" I argued.

"Is she breathing?"

"What?"

"-Is she breathing?!"

The short answer was that I didn't know, I hadn't even checked. After quickly glancing over her body for any signs of breathing, I couldn't tell for certain one way or the other so I placed my ear to her mouth where I could hear some very soft breaths.

"She's breathing." I updated Naoko, relieved.

"Then let her rest, we can't do anything other than that now."

"But-" I protested.

"Slowking told us to get away from here, so that's what I'm doing. He's about the only one who knows anything about what's happening to her so for now, I'm going to listen to what he said."

Knowing she was right, I looked down at April. Whatever this voice was that was inside of her, it was after her and only her, but why? And would she really be okay once she wakes up? - I couldn't answer those questions and the only one who could was passed out next to his trainer.

Curious to see if the voice was still inside her head, I gently lifted up one of April's eyelids to find that her pupils were still a glazed white. I couldn't look at them for longer than a second or two before being overwhelmed by a sense of fear; not for myself, but for my friend.

By now we'd reached the suburbs, a quaint place quite the opposite of the city it surrounded. It seemed serene and cosy, not exactly what I'd expected from a city this large. Eventually we left the city entirely and decided to give Manetric a rest for a while on a grassy hill. I went to withdraw him into his pokeball but he seemed adamant to stay out of it and nearby his trainer.

By the time the sun had began to set, Naoko was already fast asleep and Manetric had curled himself up next to April and Slowking, leaving me the only one awake. Not being able to sleep, I sat atop the grassy knoll twirling my three miniaturised pokeballs through my fingers thinking on everything that had happened recently. But the truth was that I felt guilty for neglecting my pokemon, I'd even had Chinchou hatch from an egg and spent barely any time with him, but that was about to change.

----------

"Swablu - Take Down!"

Inside a nearby forest, the cotton bird pokemon sped at the thick oak tree in front of her and slammed into its side with all of her might. Taking damage herself from the attack, she then flew back up onto my shoulder, panting heavily.

Praising her, I turned back to Ditto and Chinchou who were mucking about in some of the fallen leaves.

"Ditto, you two were supposed to be watching!" I cried, folding my arms in disapproval.

Chinchou looked downheartened by my tone and upon seeing this, Ditto transformed into something that scared me more than anything he had transformed into before - my face. It looked identical, almost as if someone had taken my head from my body and used it as a puppet in front of me. It had never occured to me that Ditto could transform into anything other than a pokemon

Ditto mimicked my mouth movements to make it look as if i was whining, exaggerating every syllable possible. "To. Toooooooooo. To-to." Chinchou found this quite entertaining and began to chuckle, even Swablu let out a small giggle. But, as I realised how strict and moody I was being, the laughter became infectious and I couldn't help but join in.

I laughed agonisingly for a solid minute before I could stop myself to breathe and decided that this kind of training wasn't going to help us tonight. We sat and played together for a while, Swablu choosing to instead watch from the comfort of her usual perch rather than actively join in herself. I tried all kinds of games including bouncing a ball from my bag towards Chinchou in an effort to teach him some battle skills such as how to dodge but he just wasn't treating it the same way as I was, opting to chase the ball instead.

After an hour or so my stomach began to grumble and moan, reminding me that we hadn't eaten properly in a while either, so I had a rummage through my bag but all I could find were empty wrappers and no human or pokemon food. I immediately knew that April was behind it because I can't stand empty bags and wrappers lingering around, so we would have to find food for ourselves.

Remembering that we'd passed a group of apple trees earlier, I figured that maybe the task of getting his own food could help Chinchou learn a thing or two. After explaining to the team, everyone set off to get their own apple.

Swablu was the first to set off, soaring right up to the top branch of the highest tree and grabbing an untouched apple in her beak by the stalk before descending, smugly perching herself on my shoulder showing off her prize.

Ditto had to be a bit more inventive; having transformed from memory into a slightly misshapen Mankey with two tails and one ear, Ditto began climbing the tree with relative ease, letting Chinchou hitch a ride on his back. When they reached a large branch, Chinchou released his grip moments before Ditto-Mankey launched himself through the tree, swinging from two smaller branches to reach a juicy looking apple on the other side. As Ditto sat comfortably in the tree munching on his apple, Chinchou was left looking around for an apple of his own.

He walked up and down the branch, looking at the apples that hung around it deciding which one to go for. When he did, he tried reaching across for a shiny red one it but his short, stumpy arms just couldn't reach far enough. Frustrated, he stomped his feet and tried reach for another. But again - same story.

Annoyed, but determined not to fail, Chinchou's antennae began to vibrate. His face clenched as he concentrated and with one swift motion, slammed his teardrop-shaped antennae together like a pair of cymbals, creating a yellow wave of electricity that spread through the air like a small sonic boom, exploding apples and searing away the stems of others around him.

On instinct I quick-stepped backwards away from the blanket of apples and leaves that fell from the tree just in time to avoid becoming an apple crumble.

"Wow..." I exhaled, recognising the move as Shock Wave - a rare attack electric pokemon sometimes receive through breeding. A Mareep once used it on the farm and knocked out our electrics for a week!

Chinchou, seeming proud of his achievement, fearlessly jumped from the eight-foot high branch. By the time I realised what he was doing, the only thing I could do was watch in horror as he crashed to the ground. To my shock, he hit the ground hard but seemed unphased by it, getting straight onto his feet and briskly walking to one of the many apple pieces that lay scattered around the tree, before digging in.

I decided to turn to the Pokedex to look for an explanation of how he could take such a hit and just get back up. I scrolled through the information before finding what I was looking for.

'A Chinchou's body is made up of over 80% water so they are able to take large physical hits without fear of much damage. Sometimes, Chinchou do not even feel pain from such blows as the water in their bodies absorbs all the force of the blow before it reaches the nerve centre.'

After reading that I got quite excited; a water pokemon that doesn't get damaged by physical attacks very easily with a kick-arse electric attack to boot - what a machine!

-------------------

We feasted on apples, making sure to leave the charred bits for Ditto, our pokemon bin bag, before heading back to the hillside to sleep. Withdrawing the pokemon back into their balls, I crawled into my sleeping bag and stared at the horizon.

To my left was the city we'd just passed through lit up like a Christmas tree in the night but just to my right was the skyline of another city - I'd never seen two places so close together like that before. It felt like the world had suddenly gotten alot smaller, probably also because we'd started riding around atop Manetric instead of using our own legs.

Diverting my attention to the stars I tried to make out a constellation or two like I used to do back home with Ivy when we were kids. I couldn't make out as many stars as I'd hoped, even though we were technically in the countryside the light from the two cities was still enough to pollute the night sky, so I just lay there and stared up at it, letting my mind wander.

Lying there I was struck with a sense of loss, almost as if I had forgotten something - something important. It had been niggling me for the past few days but suddenly it had caught up, causing me to rack my brain for answers. Was it something I'd seen or heard? Where was it? What was it?

Just as I thought I was closing in on it , my train of thought was interrupted by Slowking bolting upright, waking up from his sleep clutching his head. As I ran to his side he moaned in pain, trying not to scream as he had another one of his headaches, this one seeming to last longer than the others. Thinking there was nothing I could do, I sat there and watched, waiting for it to stop but then I remembered that I had the potions Ivy put in the package.

Scrambling across to my bag I rummaged through until a found a small phail of blue liquid and returned to the pokemon.

"Drink this, I think it'll help." I said as I placed the phail to his mouth. At first he seemed resistant but soon gave in, gulping down every drop like it was his last. At first it seemed to have no effect but after a few seconds he calmed down dramatically, taking deep breaths and removing his hands from his head.

"Thank you." The regal pokemon said, still breathing heavily.

"They're getting worse aren't they?"

"Yes... But I am getting cleverer."

I looked at the pokemon oddly, as if it had only just hit me that he could not only talk, but string whole sentences together.

"I've never had a conversation with a pokemon before..."

"Yes you have."

"Huh?"

"We... understand. You do not realise, but we know what each other means."

I thought on what he said for a moment. Even though he wasn't saying it the clearest way, I knew what he meant; people and pokemon do understand each other. Even though we don't speak the same language, there had been several times I'd spoken to Ditto and Swablu as if we were having a conversation.

While I was thinking, Slowking rose to his feet and examined his trainer, poking and prodding her in different places.

"You said we needed to get away, you did mean from the city right?"

"Yes. Something is trying to get in so I tried to push it away. In the city it was strong but now we are far away, April can push it out herself." He said, lifting up her eyelid as I did earlier, pointing out that the colour was slightly returning to her iris.

I felt comforted by that but it still bothered me. "Get in? What do you mean get in?"

"It was looking for a vessel, a puppet to take control of."

"A puppet?! Why did it pick April then? Out of all of the people in the city, why her?"

"I do not know."

"Slowking... What was that voice?"

"...I do not know."
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 26 - Dinner

I woke up with a tightened chest, struggling for breath. Sitting upright the strain on my lungs became even more apparent as they begged for oxygen, their pathways blocked by some unknown piece of bodily goop. Going with what I was taught to do, I beat my chest with my fist as hard as I could in the hope that the blockage would be dislodged. The first time had no effect so I beat it again and again and again until finally, the blockage came up and I was able to spit it out and take a very deep breath.

Once I was able to breathe normally again, it took me a while to notice that I wasn't in the same place as I'd fallen asleep. Deceived by my own memory, I couldn't remember getting here. The last thing I remembered I was on the grassy hill, talking to Slowking, and now I'd woken up there.

Deciding to explore a bit to jog my memory back into place, I found myself walking in a dark and misty area, a place where the purple mist was thick and clouded my vision. My footsteps echoed as I tried to wade through the darkness, brushing the mist out of the way with my hands while although I couldn't actually feel it on my skin, I could sense it around me.

Looking downwards, all I could see was darkness, endless darkness. I jumped backwards, falling over out of fright; I was standing on nothing - walking on nothing. I carefully reached out my foot and swung it in a full 360 degree circle against the 'floor' and it was stable on all angles.

This was definitely not normal.

"H-hello?" I called out, looking for a friend, an answer, any form of life. "Guys!?"

No answer.

I felt afraid, genuinely afraid and not able to understand or comprehend what was happening around me. My hands began to tremble as I rose to my feet with my legs feeling like jelly. Taking one step at a time, testing the ground before allowing all my weight onto the space between spaces that I was walking on, I endeavoured forwards.

After walking for a while my view still remained the same in all directions, almost as if I was smack bang in the middle of a desert - there was nothing there.

I stood still for a moment, trying to retrace my steps. It seemed like the most logical approach to the situation. I remembered playing with my Pokémon, Chinchou's Shock Wave, staring at the sky and speaking to Slowking but then all of a sudden I'm here. I couldn't remember going to sleep, or walking anywhere or anything; it was just blank, nothing there. Why could I not remember getting there?

As I stood there, I didn't notice that the mist began to slowly swirl around my feet. Then, out of the blue, a voice came from behind me.

"Alex?"

I span around to see April, in her torn and tattered clothes from where she's taken a Razor Leaf attack, surrounded by mist, shrouded in the darkness.

"April! Oh am I glad to see you - Where are we?"

No response.

I looked closer and she was weeping with her head bowed, her cries echoing into the space around us.

"April? What's wrong?" I asked, attempting to approach her. As I walked nearer she seemed to drift away without moving, still keeping the exact same distance between us.

"It hurts... It hurts so much." She sniffed, not attempting to wipe away her tears. Instead letting them fall into the mist. "Why didn't you help? Why didn't you stop them?"

"I-I couldn't." I stammered. "I wasn't there, remember?"

"But you could've. Now I'm stuck... stuck like this."

"Like what, the scratch? It'll fade won't it? You won't even feel it soon." I said, trying to advance again only for the same thing to happen.

"But it hurts..." She whimpered, turning around to show her bandaged back, her head still lowered.

Confused, I couldn't work out what she wanted from me, or what was happening. She was making me feel guilty for something that I had no part in and I had no idea why.

April then whispered something, but it was too quiet for me to hear properly, so I asked her to repeat it.

"...Help me." She said quietly.

"I'm trying to but I can't-"

"-Help me." She said again, more sternly.

Suddenly her bandage began to stick to her back and then I worked out why as a red smudge appeared. The smudge spread, wider and wider, making the bandage thicker and thicker with blood.

"Help me...Help me... Help me." She repeated.

I stuck my arm out to try and reach her but I just couldn't.

She kept repeating those two words, faster and faster, not even stopping for breath until she suddenly froze.

Silence.

The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breath, intermittent and afraid.

With one solid motion, April raised her head and bent her neck to the left and then to the right, clicking it so loudly that it sounded like bones breaking, before centering it again.

Then in an incredibly deep, almost demonic voice she said the words, "Help...meeee." As she turned to face me, giving me the fright of my life.

Her pupils had turned white and the rest of her eyes were a blood red colour, veins and arteries pulsated around her face, bulging out of her skin. Her teeth had turned jagged and she was panting heavily, her hair frizzy and unkempt.

Scared for my own safety I turned to run away only to be met by someone standing directly in my path, surrounded by mist. I stepped back to find that the someone was someone I recognised.

"Adam?!" I cried in shock.

"Why didn't you protect her Alex?" He said angrily, advancing towards me.

I backed away, keeping an eye on the distance between that thing and me. "I couldn't! - I wasn't there!"

"And why weren't you there?!" He demanded to know.

"I-I dunno! I can't remember!"

"Then get remembering!!" He yelled.

"I can't!" I cried, buckling over my own feet and falling to the floor.

"Remember!!" He yelled again, brandishing his razor sharp teeth into my face as his became like April's.

Terrified I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, either in an effort to remember or an effort to pretend he wasn't there. I like to think it was the former. Suddenly I could feel the mist culminating around me, I didn't want to open my eyes but I had to as I was shot up into the air by a pillar of mist.

I screamed, not knowing how to control it as I flew up and away from the demonic siblings like I was on a magic carpet and landed in an even darker space where the mist was black instead of purple, leaving the landscape looking truly barren.

"...Hello?" I called out reluctantly. "Naoko?"

There was no one here, that was until I heard the sound of a twig snap from behind me. I turned around but couldn't see anything. But I couldn't have heard that - there aren't any trees in this place. Then the sound of a coin dropping onto concrete came from the right of me.

Then I could hear the sound of something rolling towards me, something big. I turned to face the noise, ready to face it and then, out of the darkness, a small, scaly round thing, no bigger than a football rolled out. It circled me before stopping in front of me, uncurling itself to reveal itself as Sandshrew.

I was stunned, not sure what to think. The Pokémon in front of me was an exact replica of the the Sandshrew I used to travel with. My Sandshrew. The one that...

The mist swirled in front of me, creating a familiar large mansion, exactly as it looked like on that night in Cerulean. Then figures began to form; a terrified Courtney, clutching onto Robin; a battered up version of Bill crouching next to them, holding his arm; Domino standing tall with her arms folded and a sadistic grin painted across her face and Petrel, with wide eyes and an open mouth, issuing an order in slow motion.

The last to form out of the dark was Sneasel, running towards us brandishing its razor-sharp claws, ready to make the kill. Realising that this must be a part of me remembering I somehow knew to cry out into the air, "Stop it - this is too early!" Not wanting to have to live through that part of my life ever again.

I was again shot upwards into the air on a column of mist just as the mansion exploded, the red light of the fire being drowned out by the darkness. Looking down from my position I could see my life, laid out like a movie, scrolling through different scenes to get to the one we wanted, everything that happened since we were in Cerulean.

Directly below us was the SS Anne with plumes of smoke coming from within. Recognising it I declared that we had gone too far and I suddenly felt like I was being pulled backwards by the collar of my shirt. Everything was happening in reverse, like someone had pressed the rewind switch.

Upon seeing the Pokémon centre I shouted, "There!" and the mist sent me crashing into the scene, rolling across the floor.

When I got up, the room began to form from the mist. I saw that I was in the exam room, the past me standing in front of a videophone.

"Someone's popular." I heard, walking to the videophone. "Who's it from this time?" Ivy asked through the phone.

"Unknown..." The past me answered, opening the message.

The image was grainy and the sound was muffled, it looked like an old video that someone had taped over. There was a woman with black hair wearing a red hair band across her forehead, dressed in a full-length kimono of the same colour.

The memory started flooding back to me of the video message; the message from a woman I didn't recognise saying April and Adam's names. It was the reason I ran to the dock to find her that night.

"I remember!" I shouted into the air. "I remember!"

Suddenly the Pokémon Centre dissipated into mist and it began to attach itself to me, covering me from head to toe until I could see anything at all. I felt like it had lifted me into the air and spun me from side to side before throwing me to the floor.

I hit the floor and suddenly felt free, sitting upright as fast as I could, finding myself back on the hillside, sweating and panting heavily.

It was still night and everyone else remained asleep. Rubbing my head I remembered what had just happened, figuring it must have been a dream... A very vivid dream - then I noticed.

Sat directly in front of me, shrouded by the night was a small gold Pokémon that looked like a bi-pedal fox. I'd never seen it before but I somehow recognised it immediately as an Abra.

"What do you want?" I asked.

The Pokémon had its eyes shut but I knew it could still see me. Abra held out it's 3-fingered hand and floating on it was a small sphere of light, no bigger than a pea. I looked at it, unsure of what the Pokémon wanted and then sat back down.

The ball began to levitate higher and then sped in my direction, hitting my forehead and absorbing into it before I had a chance to move. Then suddenly, I remembered:

The night before, Slowking and I were having a conversation and I was having trouble remembering something... something important. But the conversation diverted so I didn't mention it again. Then, about an hour or so later, Slowking sensed something nearby and called out for it to show itself; that was when Abra teleported from the forest. Slowking said that it had been watching me all night and knew that I had forgotten something and wanted to help. Abra could only help if I was to dream so it could rummage through my mind. I didn't trust this Pokémon and asked if Slowking could do it instead, but he explained that different psychic Pokémon can do different things and he couldn't do what Abra could, so I would have to decide to either take his offer, or leave it.

On Slowking's advice I decided to go ahead with it, so he temporarily took my memories of meeting him so I wouldn't realise that I was in a dream and wake up before I needed to.

"So I remembered all because of you?" I asked Abra, still sat in front of me.

The small psychic fox smiled and then teleported away.

"Wait!" I cried, but it was too late. "...Why did you help me?"

Well, whatever the case, it had worked. I remembered the message and would show April as soon as she woke up.

I laid back in an attempt to go to sleep but the dream had left me far too hot to drift off so easily so I decided to read up on Abra, the Pokémon that offered its help so willingly during the night. After reading through various pages I eventually ended up at a passage that was quite interesting:

'Using its psychic power is such a strain on its brain that it needs to sleep for 18 hours a day and so it has adapted a method of feeding that it can use, even when asleep; it feeds on the dreams of others.'

Great… So I was dinner.
 
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FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Not really how I wanted to get to Celadon or introduce Naoko's backstory but c'est la vie, hopefully this one is decent enough for a read.

Chapter 27 – Return To Sender

In the morning I woke from what was thankfully a dreamless sleep to find my face stuck to the screen of the pokedex. Figuring that I must've fallen asleep reading it I peeled it off and wiped away the bit of drool that I'd left on the side before getting up.

April was still asleep with Slowking sat next to her and Manetric curled round them both, keeping them safe, whereas Naoko wasn't in sight at all.

I looked around for her and eventually found her walking back up the hill from the direction of the forest carrying something.

"Hey, look what we found!" She said, reaching the top of the knoll carrying what I could now recognise as a pile of apples. "They were all just lying there under this one tree, lucky huh?"

"Yeah..." I said unenthusiastically. "Lucky."

Naoko placed her horde of apples on the ground shortly followed by Lulu, her Marill, walking around her trainer to add three of her own to the pile. Seeming quite contented by her efforts, Lulu began eating straight away, practically diving into the pile of fruit in front of her.

Not possibly able to eat everything ourselves we let our Pokémon out to join in, and for some of them that was the first time they'd met each other. Puzzle and Meena struck an almost instant liking to Chinchou who decided that it was more fun to play with the apples than eat them. Lulu played the part of a friendly missionary, bringing an apple to Swablu as good will gesture and Ditto, hypnotised by the prospect of more food, sat by the pile on his own before engulfing half of it in one massive bite.

Naoko stopped and stared midway through her bite into an apple at Ditto.

"Don't worry, he does that alot." I chuckled.

Naoko finished her bite before replying, asking a question. "That's a Ditto, right? Where did you find him?"

"My sister gave him to me, he was my first Pokémon." I smiled. "As for where she got him... No idea. Who was your first Pokémon?"

Naoko nodded her head towards the blue mouse Pokémon. "Lulu."

"How did you get her?"

Naoko sighed. "It's a long story."

"Not like we're going anywhere without April awake; if we ride Manetric anymore we'll stick out like a sore thumb."

"Fair point." She said, conceding. "I grew up in this old part of Fortree City in Hoenn - a city where everyone lives in houses in the treetops of the forest. Our area of town still followed the really old customs and beliefs and my parents were especially strict traditionalists. They believed that Pokémon were evil and out to kill everyone and everything they saw, so no one was allowed contact with them and no child was allowed to set foot on the ground, which they said was too dangerous, until they were deemed an adult; or in other words - Eighteen.
People from the other parts of town didn't like us so we were told not to go there without an adult. I never saw the point in it and used to sneak off into the main part of town with my friend but of course the other kids ignored us, knowing straight away what part of town we were from. So one day when I was twelve I decided I'd go to the ground, and I did.
While I was there I found this small secluded pond surrounded by a row of wild bushes and a girl, staring at something nestled in pond weed. I heard something coming so I quickly climbed a tree and the girl hid behind the trunk, but what appeared was just an Azumarill heading back to the pond. It didn't have fangs, didn't look menacing or out for my blood, it was just... there; a blue and white creature that looked harmless.
The first thing it did when coming back was to check in the pondweed at what I worked out to be an egg, her egg. I was fascinated by this so every day for the next week I came back to watch this Pokémon and her egg, and every time the girl was there too. Her name was Lanette and she lived in a nearby village on the ground. On the last day of that week I tried to convince my friend from Fortree to come down with me to meet Lanette but she didn't want to. She said it was okay when we went into the city but going to the ground was too much, so I went without her.
That day... the Azumarill didn't come back. Lanette and I waited all through the night but the Pokémon had just disappeared. Lanette didn't think she'd be able to take care of it so I decided to take the egg home secretly to keep it safe.
When I got there I tried to hide it from everyone but my so-called 'friend' told on me which made my parents search the house. When they found the egg they were disgusted with me and long story short, they exiled me."

"Exiled?!" I cried, almost chocking on my food.

"Yup." She said, taking another bite from her apple.

"But you were twelve!"

"That didn't matter to them. I broke their traditions so I had to go."

"So what did you do? I mean... where did you go?"

"I travelled with Lanette for a while..." She said, laying back on the grass. "We had no money so we ate mostly wild fruit and veg and worked wherever we could to get by. It sounds worse than it was but, to be honest I think it was the best thing that could've happened to m-."

Noako was interrupted by a bark from Manetric. We looked over to see that April had sat up holding her head. She looked like she had a hangover as she squinted through the morning sunshine, looking around her.

"Where... are we?" She asked groggily.

"Just outside the city, you blanked out again as soon as we got onto Manetric." I said.

April looked around her again, eventually settling her eyes on Slowking. "Has it gone... for sure this time?"

Slowking shut his eyes as if he was listening out for something and then opened them again, nodding his head. "Yes, we're too far now."

April barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before we bombarded her with questions about what she heard. The only problem was that she couldn't answer us... not properly anyway.

"It was just so jumbled and so, so loud. It was like one voice saying a million different things at once and I could barely make out anything it was saying. All it was was a jumble of words like 'follow' and 'ghost' and 's-"

"- 'help me?' Naoko interrupted.

April paused. "Yeah... How did you know that?"

"You said it when you were under." I said, leaving out the small detail that she had said it in another person's voice. "You scared me you know."

"Haha, sorry..." April said, blushing.

"And you think he's joking!" Naoko retorted.

"Naokoooo..." I whined under my breath, also beginning to blush. "But are you okay though?"

"Yeah I think so... See?" She said, managing to stand up quite firmly on her own.

I smiled, feeling relieved. "Good, then there's something you need to see."

-------------------

After everyone had finished eating we set off for the nearby city and to our shock we arrived quicker than anticipated. Trying to stay away from a place where we could accidently draw too much public attention to ourselves, we stuck to the suburbs in hope of finding a public videophone, but we had no such luck.

The only things we could find were payphones and they didn't have monitors. Public videophones were free to trainers but the trouble was that they were few and far between, mostly in the town centres and Pokémon Centres.

"We can't go there - someone might recognise us." April protested, the three of us crowded around a phone booth.

"It'll be alright, that footage was way too grainy for anyone to recognise us." I began. "And the main thing people would be looking for anyway is three people riding on a great big Pokémon that vaguely looks like Manetric. The only other thing I suppose they could possibly notice would be Naoko's bandana..." I paused, looking at her suggestively.

"What? No way - The bandana stays on." She said adamantly.

"Really, who wears a bandana in this day and age anyway? You'll stick out like a sore thumb."

"Hey!" Naoko protested.

"...Doesn't your mum wear a bandana?" April remarked with an accusative look on her face.

"-Shut up." I countered, realising she was right. Sighing, I agreed to Naoko's argument. "Fine, as long as we don't ride around on Manetric all the time we shouldn't get noticed."

"Still, that being said, why is this video so important?" Naoko asked, flicking through the phone book aimlessly.

"Because it's just... it wasn't meant for me, I think it was meant for April. The woman on the screen looked really worried and she said both Adam and April's names, that has to mean something right?"

"She knew me?"

"And Adam too. At least, that's what it sounded like..."

April thought on it for a few moments, completely unaware that I'd carried on speaking.

"...I could've been wrong but I couldn't help the feeling th-"

"-This woman, what did she look like?" April asked firmly, interrupting me mid-sentence.

"Erm..." I mumbled, racking my brain to try and remember. "I dunno, black hair maybe? Pale face, it was kind of hard to make out."

Something I said struck a nerve with her. "I want to see it."

I looked at her in shock.

"You changed your tune." Naoko remarked, closing the phone book.

"I've got a feeling that I know who it is but I need to see it to be sure." April said, walking out of the booth. "Videophones are in the town centre right?"

Naoko nodded and without hesitation April began marching further into the city. Naoko and I looked at each other before running after her.

---------------------------

It was evening before we got to the city centre. April walked confidently for someone who was worried about getting sighted by everyone around her; something was definitely on her mind and I had a feeling it wasn't the fact that there was a distorted message on my videophone account addressed to her, but the person who the message was from.

The city centre was full of shops that were shutting for the day but also alot that were getting ready to open. You could tell that this was the kind of place that never slept, with every other building having a giant advertisement or light-up club logo atop it.

We followed the road signs for a public park, and eventually ended up at a small patch of grass no larger than a zebra crossing.

"They call this a park?" I said, turning my nose up at the bench placed on top of a small patch of grass in front of us.

"Nevermind that; look - a videophone." April pointed out.

I logged on to my account and to my surprise I had more than a few messages from Ivy, she must have been worried. After all, the last time we spoke I disappeared after receiving a weird message on here and hadn't contacted her since. Deciding I'd look at them later I scrolled down the screen and found the mysterious message.

"From 'Unknown'; that's the one." I said, touching the screen to open the message.

The grainy image of the black-haired woman appeared. I could tell by April's expression that she had recognised her immediately. The woman, wearing a red kimono, was obviously quite distressed but the sound quality was terrible so only a few words were actually coherent.

"April.... I need.... help.
...Adam ....weeks...
Please! Come... bad feeling..."

The screen faded to black as 'End of message' appeared, written in white.

I turned to see what she made of it and April stood still staring at the screen, chewing on her bottom lip, thinking.

"Was that who I think it was?" Naoko asked.

"Yeah." April replied.

"Do you two both know her?" I asked, dumbfounded.

"You're kidding right, you seriously don't recognise that face?" Naoko asked.

I shook my head.

"That's Erika, one of Kanto's Gym Leaders. How do you not know this - aren't you taking on the gym challenge?"

"Well yeah but..." I said coyly, feeling like a rookie all over again.

"-What city are we in?" April asked suddenly, looking to both of us for an answer.

I actually didn't know, we'd been moving around so quickly that I hadn't kept track of the city names we'd been through.

"I'm pretty sure this is Celadon actually." Naoko piped up.

"So that means...?"

"Mhmm. She's here somewhere."

The girls turned around to scan the immediate area. Not sure exactly what the girls were looking for I too had a look around, presumably looking for something resembling a Gym. Then I noticed, right next to the videophone was another signpost that pointed to my immediate right:

'Celadon Public Park --->'

I chuckled a little and turned to tell the others.

"Hey guys, I found the real park." I said, pointing to the signpost.

April looked in the direction the sign pointed and squinted to try and make out a building in the distance.

"That's it... that's the gym!"
 

FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Greetings kids! Uni has destroyed my online social life (which is ironic considering I'm on it about 80% of the time anyway) but I'm determined to finish this fic, so here's the next part of the story, sorry to anyone who had been following this before :)

Chapter 28 - Reverberations (Part 1)


'Ghost...'

The Gym looked different to when I last saw it. It used to be a solid glass dome with a top shaped like a Vileplume's petals but now the right side looked completely different. Two large flowers were the focal point of the roof but then very long yellow and green glass leaves hung down the sides to make a wall, making the building look like a Bellossom. It was really pretty but at that time it wasn't the main thing I had to be thinking about.

After blacking out and having a strange voice yell a million different things at me and then finding out that we're on the run from the police when I woke up, a strange message on the PC should have been nothing. The only thing was that it wasn't just from anyone, it was from Erika. Normally I'd ignore it but she would only send a message to me if she had noone else to turn to, which meant she couldn't turn to Adam - so that worried me.

I headed towards the Vileplume-shaped half of the building, expecting the automatic doors to open in front of me but they were locked shut. Looking through them I could see the receptionist sat behind a desk in the foyer just casually filing her nails.

"Excuse me!" I said, knocking on the glass. "Can you open the door?"

The snobby looking woman paused and glanced over her glasses at me before carrying on with her nails.

"Visiting hours are over, if you want to make an appointment to see the gym leader come back tomorrow."

'Follow...'

"You don't get it - she'll want to see me!" I responded, perfectly politely.

"Come back tomorrow..." She repeated, sighing.

"Hey - Listen, just tell her April Moon is here! You got that? April... Mooooon."

"Whatever." The receptionist mumbled, getting up and heading for the toilets.

"Hey!" I yelled, banging on the door. "Where are you going?!"

I kept banging on the door, hoping for a response from someone who was actually helpful, but noone came.

"-April, what are you doing?!" Alex panted from behind me, him and Noako finally catching up.

"Argh," I cried in frustration, kicking the door and turning away from it. "The stupid receptionist won't let me in."

"Well you don't need to beat the place down!"

"I know..." I sighed, sitting down on a step. Alex had never seen me like this before. Heck, I hadn't even seen me this wound up in a while, but I could tell he wanted to help. He even asked Naoko if she could pick the lock but didn't realise that it was an automatic door standing between us and the Gym Leader.

A few minutes later, I heard footsteps running towards the doors and turned around to see Erika unlocking them from the control box inside, the receptionist eventually appearing behind her. The doors opened and she leapt out towards me, wrapping her arms around me in a hug. It felt genuine enough and in a way I wanted to hug her back, but after the last conversation we'd had I couldn't believe anything she did without questioning it.

"April, thank God you're alright." She whispered in my ear, releasing me from the hug.

"I got your message, what's happened?" I asked, straight to the point.

Erika looked around cautiously. "Come inside, we'll talk there." She said, herding the three of us in like cattle before locking the doors behind us.

"Don't you want to say hi?" I heard Alex ask Naoko as they made their way in.

"I said I knew of her, not that I knew her personally." Naoko replied, looking around the foyer.

"Well sooooorry." Alex responded sarcastically.

The entrance was like an office reception rather than a gym, except it was covered in plants of different shapes and sizes. It'd always been like that, the gym was used for loads of things other than battles. Erika led us down a corridor to the left in silence and we went past a large archway into the new part of the building that I'd never seen before.

'Voice...'

It was a large, open space, the walls and ceilings made completely of reinforced glass. The floor was a stretch of grass, with flowerbeds and hedges dotted elegantly about the area with a fountain centred in the middle.

"What's this room for?" Noako asked, stopping to look inside.

Erika looked back and explained that there had been a fire a few years ago that had completely decimated half of the building, so she commissioned a new half to be built.

"In a way it's more of a recreation area. It's been named the Celadon Public Park actually."

"I told you the park was this way!" Alex declared.

"What, do you want a medal?" Naoko asked, not impressed by Alex's ability to follow a signpost.

Alex glared at Naoko as Erika lead us further down the hall into a room where the ceiling was littered with hanging baskets of different shapes and colours and the floor had an abundance of beanbags and comfy chairs.

"This is where I come to relax sometimes... it helps me to-"

"Why did you call me Erika?"

"...I thought you said you got my message?"

"Well I did but it was all grainy and distorted."

"Erm... about that." Alex piped up from behind me, already sat comfortably in a pile of beanbags. "Why did you send it to my account? I mean... We've never met, have we?"

Erika looked confused. "I-I didn't. I sent it straight to you April."

"But it was in my inbox."

"That's impossible... What's your name?"

"Alexander Ivy - Alex for short."

"Alex... Adam mentioned you were travelling with someone called that." Erika said, turning to me.

"Wait a minute, I heard you say Adam's name in the message. Is he here?"

"He was, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I'd hoped he could've been with you but I guess not."

"What do you mean?"

"Who's this Adam kid?" Naoko asked, completely in the dark about everything that we were talking about.

"I'll fill you in later." Alex replied, hushing her.

"Look." Erika said, brushing aside some vines to reveal a videophone. "He used to send me a message every couple of days to tell me how he was doing and what was happening with him." She said, scrolling down the screen, showing us the list of mail she'd gotten from my brother. "But then suddenly they just stopped coming - It's been over two weeks since i've even heard from him. I'm just so worried but I figured if anyone else would know where he is then it would be you."

"We haven't spoken much since we separated, just like you said we would. Did he mention anything before like where he was going or..."

"Nothing." She replied, not taking note of my comment. "But I know for a fact that he was in Lavender on the day of that attack on the Tower. ...He wasn't on the list of the dead so-"

"Dead?!" I cried. "You can't be serious!" I exclaimed in an automatic response. I didn't want to even entertain the thought, my stomach feeling like it had been twisted by the mere mention of it.

"Trust me, I've gone over every explanation in my head and it's either that or..."

"Or what?"

"Or... he's not being allowed to make any calls."

'Help...'

She'd called me here to tell me that my brother could be being held captive or even worse - dead; without any full-proof evidence! I couldn't understand her logic - did she want my help? The last time we spoke she called me a useless burden, there's no way I'd be her first port of call when she needed somebody.

"Have you told the police?" I asked, not believing her.

"I did and it turns out Mr Fuji has already filed a missing persons for someone with his name and matching description, but apparently there's no way to trace him."

Alex and I looked at each other and recognised the name immediately.

"The Mr. Fuji from Lavender?" he asked.

Erkia nodded. I was confused, he never mentioned Adam the whole time we were there, but then again, how could he possibly know that we were related?

"April, remember his speech outside the Tower?" Alex asked.

"Kind of..." I replied, only remembering small segments of it.

"He said something about a 'young man' that tried to stop the terrorists. You reckon that could that have been him?"

"That does sound like something he'd do without thinking about it." Erika replied with a slight smirk.

"You're both insane! How would Adam even get caught up in that in the first place?"

Erika didn't have an answer, instead looking away when I challenged her with a glance. The room went quiet for a few moments before Alex spoke up.

"Is it really that insane? I mean, look at the stuff we've got caught up in... If it can happen to us then it can happen to him too right?"

As much as I hated to admit it, he had a point. That was the moment it suddenly became real - Adam could be in danger, real danger and there was nothing I could do about it. We didn't know where he was, what he was doing or any of it, we were completely in the dark.

'Me...'

"So saying all this is true, why can't the police trace him?"

"They get hundreds of calls about missing people every day, many of them being travelling trainers, but the trouble is they're never as willing to track down pokemon trainers as they are other people. They can go travelling for months at a time, never contacting anyone and not using their videophone or PC accounts, turn up one day to a gym and gain a badge and then suddenly there's a record of them again. As far as police are concerned, it's a waste of their time that they could be using on other cases." Erika explained, sitting down on a beanbag clutching her forehead..

"Well, how do you know he hasn't just done that?" Alex piped up again.

We both dismissed that idea straight away. Even though Adam can be a loner sometimes, he's always in contact with at least one of us.

"I think you're all forgetting the obvious question here - the terrorists, who were they?" Naoko asked, speaking up for the first time in the conversation.

Everyone looked at Erika but she didn't look any one of us in the eye. As she clearly debated what to say in her head, an eerie silence filled the room.

"I'm so sorry April but I'm sure it's the same people that were behind all the other 'terrorist attacks' around here lately..."

I could feel what was coming in my gut and I didn't want to hear it but I had to make sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions.

"...The Rockets."

Them again - Why did they keep showing up in my life?! Every time they appear, someone new manages to get themselves murdered; and this time it could be Adam. He was the only piece of family I had left; if he died I don't know what I would do... My hands began to tremble slightly at the thought but I couldn't cry, I wouldn't cry - not in front of Erika.

Determined not to show any kind of weakness I kept back the fear welling up inside of me, but still I found myself wanting some fresh air to clear my head - It was a lot to process.

"Wait, are you talking about those arseholes from the SS Anne?" Naoko asked, looking to Alex for answers.
"-What? You three were involved in that?" Erika asked, slightly bemused.

"I suppose we should tell you something…" Alex began, reeling out the details of the past week. Everyone else was so engaged in the situation that I was able to slip out of the room unnoticed.

As I walked through the gym, I found myself being drawn to the Public Park.
It was peaceful there, no sounds or smells of the city, just nature in a little bubble. Breathing in what seemed like fresh air, I sat down next to a small stream of water and, in that serene environment, I felt like I could finally hear myself think.

'Silph...'

Except, it wasn't myself I could hear – It was that Voice. The Voice I heard shouting and screaming in my head not too long ago, except now, it was as though I could finally hear what it was saying.

Even though The Voice wasn't in my head anymore, the words still echoed around me, remembering them all gradually one by one. Some of them didn't even make sense to me but I couldn't shake the feeling that they, along with the Rockets, Cerulean, the SS Anne - it was all somehow connected. It's just I didn't know how... until I remembered another word. A word that gave me both a sensation of fear and hope:

'Adam...'
 

FlaafyFTW

Researcher of Orange Lore
102
Posts
14
Years
Chapter 28 - Reverberations (Part 2)

I couldn't describe what I was feeling; anxiety, fear, hope, confusion – all bowled into one.

Not knowing what to make of it, I consulted the only other person who could help me; Slowking. After releasing him from his pokeball he looked up at me questioningly, before sitting on the grass and folding his arms, simply saying; "Out with it."

"'Ghost.' 'Follow.' 'Voice.' 'Help.' 'Me.' 'Silph.' 'Adam.' – That's what that voice was calling out. It's Adam, right? It's got to be!"

Slowking scratched the shell upon his head as he contemplated the situation. "I've heard those very words before when I held the Voice back from you in Saffron City. However, I do not believe the message was sent by your brother."

"-Really, why not?"

"Think about it." Slowking said, rising to his feet. "Why would he refer to himself in the third person? It just doesn't make sense."

"Couldn't he want me to know that it was him sending the message?" I asked as Slowing bent down to take a sip of the indoor stream.

"Telepathy isn't like sending a letter." Slowking replied bluntly. "There's no addressee, no postmark – It's a gamble at the best of times that it'll even get through to someone... But that isn't to say that the person who did send it is not somehow involved with him which probably means-"
"-He is alive!"

I didn't really care about the fact that he could be in danger or whatever, he was definitely alive – I just knew it.

"So is that all we have to do, just follow the Voice and we'll find Adam?"

"That seems to be the case but that in itself presents an issue. It would seem that the closer in proximity that we get to the origin of the Voice, the more it begins to take over you. We need to find a way so that you can stay in your conscious state long enough so that we can locate the precise place where it originates so we can put a stop to it."

All of a sudden I was hit by a brainwave. "What if… we shared the Voice? Is that possible?"

"How do you mean?"

I scrambled to my feet and began to pace back and forth. "As in remember when you were able to completely take the Voice from my head and into yours at the hospital? Could we maybe split it and have half each? That way neither of us takes the full brunt of it and can stay conscious."

"That may just work!"

"Tehe." I giggled in satisfaction. "I have a brain somewhere in here!"

All of a sudden we could hear the sound of Erika calling out my name echoing down the halls. Annoyed at the mere sound of her voice I sighed and thanked Slowking, withdrawing him into his pokeball and headed for the corridor where Erika appeared in front of me, blocking my way.

"I thought I'd find you here" Erika smiled. "I guess I know you too well." She chuckled half-heartedly.

"You don't know me that well anymore." I snapped, tired, irritable and not in the mood to act all pally-pally with her like she was.

"April, wait!" Erika cried from behind me.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Suddenly memories flashed through my head, memories of all the years the two of us had known each other. The days we spent playing, laughing and the nights they stayed up talking when Adam wasn't around. Then there was that night…

-----------

It was an evening almost exactly like this one, the sky was clear; empty except for a sprinkling of stars and a crescent moon dangling in the night as if it were hung up by a piece of invisible thread.

The heating was busted in the research dorms so everyone was wrapped up in their thermals and knitwear. Well, I say 'everyone', but it was only Erika and me - the researchers were off on some study or another. She'd come to visit about a week before and had spent more time with me than Adam, which, although we got on so well, seemed odd.

We were both sat on the cushioned ledge of a large bay window where Erika was sat comfortably behind me, braiding my hair.

"I'm just thinking... maybe you shouldn't go." Erika proposed.

"...What do you mean?" I asked, confused at Erika's sudden change of heart.

"Well the Professor could always use the help here couldn't she?"

"She has other assistants, I'm just not sure that I want to leave."

"But if you're having doubts then maybe that's a sign?"

"A sign of what?"

Erika sighed. "A sign that you're just not cut out for it."

"Hey, I could take care of myself." I replied, laughing the comment off.

"Except for when a wild pokemon comes out of nowhere, what then?"

"I don't know..."

"You'll call to Adam for help but what if he's not nearby? You won't be able to do anything."

"Well... he's the pokemon trainer, not me." I said, pulling away and turning to face her. "Why are you being like this?"

"I'm not being like anything," she said so blasé. "I'm just saying - you'll be a danger to yourself and to him. Besides, you'll only slow him down."

"Hey, that's not fair! I can keep up."

"Really? I've seen when you two trek up the mountain together on your little research trips, he's always waiting for you to catch up. Face it April, you'll just be a burden, a useless burden. It'll be better for everyone if you just stay here."

"Stop it Erika!" I yelled, welling up with tears.

"I'm only telling you the truth. Besides, don't you think that it's better that you hear it from me now than from him when you're halfway across the region on your own?"

"You're wrong, Adam would never say something like that."

"Not now maybe, he'd keep it all in his head. But if you keep going like this, believe me - one day he'll snap and it'll sound a hundred percent worse coming from him."

--------------

"Now that we're alone, let me help." She said walking up to me and taking my hand. "Why didn't you tell me anything that you'd been through? You know I could've helped you."

"What, help like you did last time?" I said sarcastically, pulling my hand away. "It's because of you that me and Adam stopped travelling together, It's because of you that he's where he is now."

"That's not-" Erika began before I cut her off, not even being close to finishing what I had to say.

"-You made me feel like I had something to prove, that I wasn't good enough to do what Adam was doing. That's why I tried to show him that I could cope on my own when I told him to meet me ahead at Cerulean City when we first went to Pewter. Then oh, guess what – I got hurt, exactly like you said I would and we ended up going separate ways."

"April I didn't know what else-"
"-But the only thing I want to know is why you said all of that? We were friends and you just turned on me like that – why?" I asked, finally putting forward the question that I'd spent so long looking for an answer to.

"…I was trying to protect you."

"From what?!"

"The world. I thought that if you stayed working for the Professor then you'd be safe, and that was the only way I could see to do it. I didn't want to see you get hurt but now I know that was the worst thing I could've done..."

Erika bowed her head to compose herself, she never wanted to be seen crying but I didn't know how to respond. The answer seemed so simple, almost too simple. For some reason I was expecting a much different answer, maybe the fact that she wanted Adam for herself - one that I could really hate her for but she was trying to protect me. Could I really be mad at her for that?

"Just let me help you. With whatever you're going to do – let me do something – please." Erika pleaded, looking up and taking my hand again.

For some reason I felt sorry for her, the one emotion I didn't think I would feel in this situation, and for some reason I couldn't not think of a reason to forgive her. After all, having a Gym Leader on my side is never a bad option to have!

"Fine, you can help. I have a feeling we're going to need it – C'mon." I smiled taking her hand and leading her down the corridor to share what I'd learnt with her and the others.
 
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