We All Live In A Pokemon World...

Chapters

Gastly Heights (Prologue)
Three Wise Professors (Prologue)
Sweetie B and Miror B (Side Story #1)
Your Geodude Learned Rock Throw! (Episode 1)
Cacturne of Events (Episode 1)
Maku 1 Speeds (Episode 1)
The Beginnings of An Adventure (Episode 2)
Team Rocket (Episode 2)
A Joke Laid To Rest (Episode 2)
Chronicles of An Apple (Side Story #2)
Mid-Morning Rapids (Episode 3)

Gastly Heights (Prologue)

I walked out of the kitchen with a content smile on my face and a tray of food in tow. It wasn’t a sight that my friends saw too often nowadays either. Usually I never have time to do any of the smaller jobs myself.

It wasn’t like I hated doing stuff like this. I just didn’t usually have the time. With everything that’s been happening lately, I’ve barely had the time to sit down and enjoy my day. So this was a welcomed change to me.

Although due to all the destruction that spread across nearly the entire town and basically destroyed every bit of my home, it was a welcomed change of pace. I had originally thought that I would be stressing out about the reconstruction and schedule changes. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. With the more important projects now on hold, I had plenty of time to replan everything.

In the meantime I could rest and spend some time with my friends and family. I can’t say that any of this was a surprise. They've all been waiting for the perfect opportunity to drag me away from my projects.

I should’ve seen all of it coming in all honesty. If someone close to me was surrounded in destruction and danger I would be just as worried.

Of course, I was perfectly fine in the end. Maybe I was a little disappointed with how everything was destroyed—like my home for instance—but there were still a few silver linings. After all, it wasn’t like any pictures were lost forever. Again, my friends and family could help recover any of those.

The one thing that had mattered to me the most is that no one had gotten hurt from the attack. If they were I wouldn’t know what to do.

I shook my head to try and make myself change the subject. There wasn't any point in worrying about any of that right now. Besides, I still had other things to take care of.

As I approached the door that led to the study, or at least what I was using as a study for now, I went over everything in my mind. I had my clipboard with everything I needed to look over. Some snacks for my ‘Number 1 Assistant’ to have. The repair costs that I now have to look over.

Rumble…

Heh. And some much needed breakfast for me as well.

Chuckling at the convenient timing, I opened the door and walked inside. Just as I was closing the door I began to hear a distinct yawn/roar coming from over at my desk.

I could only laugh. "You’re tired? What happened being ‘wide awake’, huh?"

As I rounded the wall that shaped the room, I spotted my desk with the pouting baby dragon on top of it.

He let out a fire-breathing sigh before finally looking up at me. "Char. Char-Charmander." He seemed so pumped about doing something outside the bio-dome earlier. I guess the time of day had finally caught up to him.

“Right, right. I forgot that you’re not much for mornings.” I placed the tray of food on the table and passed on the bowl of Pokémon food before Charmander.

“Char.” He shook his head and reached for the food. He seemed to be upset about something else.

“Oh,” When I made my way to my chair, I remembered just what it was that was making him feel this way. “Right, Squirtle and Bulbasaur.” When I looked back at him he seemed to be slumping forward a bit more than before. “Don’t worry Charmander. Just because they evolved before you, that doesn’t make them any better. You’re just a late bloomer is all.”

I reached over to pet his head but stopped midway as he gave me a look that explained to me just how bad that actually sounded.

“That, uh…” He took this moment to pick up the bowl of Pokémon food and make his way towards the windowsill. The fire on his tail growing as he went on. “N-Not that being a late bloomer's a bad thing! It’s just. That…Uh…Oh.”

I fell back into my chair with a defeated sigh. Alright, I’m gonna need to work on my pep talks.

Charmander jumped up to the windowsill with one leg hanging off the side and the other resting on the sill to hold up the Pokémon food. He didn’t even attempt to look back as he snacked on his food and looked out the window to pass the time.

“Sir! Please step away from the ledge!” “Char?” Before Charmander could get a chance to eat even a piece of food, he spotted something and stood up on the sill to get a better look.

“Char, Charmander!” Almost immediately, he turned to me and made a gesture to bring me over so that I could take a look.

I furrow my brow but stand to walk over anyways. And the second I got there I looked out the window to try and get a better view.

“Hey, watch it! If you’re not careful then you might just—AHHH!” A crowd that had apparently gathered up in front of the lab all gasped at once as they kept their gaze towards something higher up the building.

Charmander jumped out of the way and I leaned out the window to get a better look at just what the crowd was made of. Most of them were a group of people and Pokémon that were probably passing by. However, towards the center of the crowd was one person in particular that was currently using a megaphone.

“Officer Jenny, what’s wrong?!” She, as well as two Machokes that stood on either side of her, seemed to be on the scene.

“Professor,” She yelled up at me next through the megaphone. “There’s a young boy up on the roof and he slipped off the side of the ledge!” The two Machokes took that as a signal to start setting something up directly underneath where I was. It looked like some type of tarp.

“On the roof?” I couldn’t see for myself unless I wanted to slip off the side of the building myself. “I’ll go check it out! Go ahead and come in if you have to!”

I backed out of the window and reached for my belt, only to remember that Garchomp was helping out in the bio-dome this morning. “Charmander,” I turned towards him next. ”I think I’m gonna need your help.”

“Mander!” He nodded with ready determination.

Without wasting anymore time, we both run for the door as it started to open up thanks to someone on the other side. “Hey, uh, Professor Sycamore,” The scientist began while not paying attention to the two of us still charging at the door. “There’s a crowd of people out in front of the la—WAH!”

He just barely managed to jump out of the way as both me and Charmander come barreling past with no intent on stopping. He was okay, thankfully, but I couldn’t do much for him except yell out a quick apology and run along with Charmander.

Eventually, the two of us made our way towards the emergency staircase. Although with Charmander’s rash nature he simply tackled the door and knocked it off its hinges. He didn’t even give it a second thought. Instead, he just jumped over the door that now lay on the ground and continued on up the staircase.

I’ll remind him that it was a push door later.

I begrudgingly followed suit and followed him a full flight of stairs behind. I tried my best to catch up, but only got to the last flight of stairs as Charmander broke through the roof door just as easily as he did the first door. As I reached the top of the stairs I realized that it wasn’t just knocked off its hinges, it had burst into splinters.

However, that only managed to hold my attention for a few seconds before I spotted something else on the roof. It was transparent, floating, purple, and currently laughing to itself.

“H-Help!” Somewhere below the floating orb, I saw two sets of fingers holding onto dear life on the edge of the roof. “I can’t get back up!”

"I'm coming," I called out. "Just hang on!"

"I AM!" He retorted in fear. Okay, maybe that was a bad choice of words...

Meanwhile, Charmander was staring down the laughing, floating orb. When it finally did turn around I noticed what it was instantly. A Gastly.

With its form, most people assume that they could identify what kind of Pokémon it is during the day. What people don't seem to realize is that several ghost-type forms look almost identical during the day.

When Gastly finally saw us he finally stopped laughing. For a solid four seconds.

Gast-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas!

Charmander didn’t share the ghost Pokémon’s humor and instead allowed the flame on his tail to flare. “Char…”

“Charmander, wait!” He ignored me, however and charged for the still laughing Gastly with his claws at the ready with a Scratch attack.

And phased right through it.

GAST!-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas-Gas!

Charmander began to visibly shake with fury before jumping back to his feet and trying repeatedly to scratch Gastly in two. But with every swipe, Gastly’s laughter just got louder and louder.

“Enough!” Both Pokémon stopped and turned towards me. “Gastly, get away from here. You’ve caused too much trouble.”

Gastly’s smile shrunk slightly as its face turned a few degrees to the right. It had looked like it wasn’t too sure what it had done.

“WOAH!” I turned back to the ledge as I now only saw one set of fingers holding on to the side.

I took this chance to hold a hand over Garchomp’s Pokéball. He may not have been there to help, but Gastly understood the notion full well and finally dropped his smile entirely.

Charmander took the chance to try one last scratch attack, which just fazed between the Gastly’s two eyes. The ghost, however, ignored the attack entirely and took the chance to run. He floated right over Charmander and off the roof and towards the neighboring building directly ahead of us.

Charmander didn’t seem too pleased about his ‘opponent’ running from the fight, but I didn’t have the chance to worry about that. Without wasting a second I ran for the side of the roof where I saw the boy trying with all his might to keep a grip on the ledge.

“Okay, the Gastly’s gone. Here, take my hand.” I knelt down and held out my arm, watching as he looked down towards his free hand as if trying to convince it to do as he wanted.

It took nearly all of his strength, but he made one last ditch attempt to throw his left hand in order to catch my own. He lost whatever grip he had on the ledge in the process, but thankfully I caught his left hand before he could fall. I then noticed his look of complete fear as I bettered my grip. “It’s alright, I got you…” He looked up and saw me clearly struggling to try and pull him up...But to no avail.

“Uh, c-can you pull me up?” His voice was quieter, but still terrified. The situation he was stuck in wasn’t helping him relax either.

“I’m...Trying…” Already I realized just how big of a mistake I had made. The biggest problem was that I was, just barely mind you, not strong enough to pull him up. And as if that bad news wasn’t enough, I was holding onto his hand in a way where I didn't have any leverage to help pull him up. So I was just as trapped as he was. “Okay...Slight problem…” I was speaking through gritting teeth, now just trying not to let him slip.

“S-Slight?!” His eyes grew wide in fear as he started to look down. All four or five stories down.

“Hold on, I’ll be right over!” A female voice had shouted behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted Officer Jenny rushing over and reaching down to pull up the boy’s other hand.

With our combined strength, we were able to pull him up to the point where he could bring up one of his legs to push back up onto the roof.

The crowd below us began breaking out in applause while me and the boy tried to catch our breath from the whole experience. Jenny, on the other hand, wasn’t winded in the least bit.

“What has gotten into you?!” Jenny glared at him sternly. “You have so much of your life ahead of you, why would you risk it with a dangerous stunt like that?!”

“W-Wait,” He shook his head. “Do you...Do you think I wanted to be up here?” He was obviously very confused about the situation.

I took this chance to study the child as the two of them had turned their focus away from me. He wasn’t in anything too unusual per se. It looked like everyday sleepwear with a pair of sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, complete with a nightcap somehow still perched on his head.

I also spotted a few other things strewn about the roof. Caught on an antenna was a small blanket, almost too small for even the child to use. Meanwhile, behind the three of us, I saw Charmander holding part of what looked like some kind of woven basket. It was broken into pieces and due to the wind most of it was probably left to the wind, but the bigger pieces were still here.

“You didn’t want to be up here?” Jenny rose an eyebrow as she crossed her arms, re-earning my attention on the two of them,

“No!” He held up his arms, shaking his head. “L-Look, I don’t even know how I got here! All I know is that I woke up and saw that black and purple smoke-thingy floating in my face!” He pointed over towards where Charmander was still looking at the basket parts. “It wouldn’t go away and no matter what I did. It just kept following me over to the edge, and there wasn’t a rail or anything, s-so I tripped!”

“Hmm…” Jenny put a knuckle under her chin as she pondered his words before turning to me. “Professor, can you confirm any of this?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “When Charmander and I came up here, we spotted Gastly bothering him.”

She closed her eyes as if debating whether or not to believe any of this. “Well…” She turned to the boy. “It does match up with the reports we’ve been getting recently. A Gastly’s been going around and disturbing males whenever asleep.”

I nodded along with her. It was the same rumor that had been going around all of Lumiose and it had been around just as long as the ghostly human-figure in one of the office buildings.

“However,” She placed her hands on her hips. “That doesn’t explain just what you were doing up here in the first place.” Jenny lowered her eyes at the boy. “I’m glad this wasn’t anything like a suicide attempt, but how do you think your family’s going to respond when I tell them how you snuck into Professor Sycamore’s Lab?!”

“W-What?!” All the color from his face had faded away as he just kept staring at her. “S-Snuck…? Bu—I didn’t—I jus…” He froze like a Stantler in headlights, watching as Officer Jenny’s stern look became more and more upsetting.

“Now hold on, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I took this as my queue and took a step between the two of them. “This young man’s actually an assistant of mine.” It was a complete lie, but the smile on my face was entirely genuine. I knew that he was telling the truth about being attacked by Gastly, after all I saw the Gastly myself. And if the story’s correct, that means that he really was asleep on the roof.

“Oh, he is?” Jenny blinked a few times, seeing no reason as to why I would lie.

“Y-Yeah,” The boy nodded, earning both of our attention. “I...I help him with sorting books and schedules.” Quick enough, he gave Jenny a shy grin. “My name’s Spike. A-And, sorry about making you worry.”

Slowly, Jenny began to relax. “Well, I guess there’s not much to be upset about. After all, if you are the Professor’s assistant then there’s really nothing you did wrong.”

I allowed myself a small breath of victory as Jenny took out a radio and gave Spike a kind smile. “Sorry for yelling at you. I guess we’re still all on edge from that Garchomp rampage.”

Spike muttered something under his breath, but neither of us had any hopes in hearing it.

Jenny then turned to me. “Good luck with rebuilding the lab Professor.” And with that, she walked off, not wasting a second to start reporting news on that Gastly.

“Well,” I shoved my hands into my pockets and allowed myself a content smile. “I don’t know about you or Charmander, but that’s more than enough excitement for one morning.”

“Charmander?” Spike took a second to look around the roof before finally spotting the Pokémon in ques— ”Wait a second, how’s come he’s still a dragon?”

“...” The smile on my face slowly left me as I studied the young man’s face. He was watching Charmander as he made his way over towards us. By the expression on his face, he wasn’t making some type of joke. And even if he was, he was paying no attention to me anymore. Instead, he watched as Charmander looked back at him with an equally confused look on his face.

This continued on for a minute more as I could only look between the two and weave my fingers through my hair as if to make sure my head was still on straight. When I knew for a fact that it actually was, I cleared my throat and regained their focus.

“How about we go ahead and come back inside? After all,” I let out an exasperated sigh. “It seems that we have a lot to talk about.”

Author's Note

And so ends the prologue.

As many of you might have spotted, this chapter wasn't revised too much. That's because I really don't have a lot of time on my hands. I can go over a chapter and check for errors, but other than that it would take so long for me to write up a single chapter and perfect it. So if the pacing is ever off, I'm sorry.

Also, if any of you have read my stories before, and by that I mean any stories that I've posted on FANfiction instead of this site, you might know that I like to do something at the end of each chapter known as a QotC.

QotC stands for Question of the Chapter, and this is hopefully where the story will get much more interesting. You see, I want to try and make this story as interactive and enjoyable as possible. So I figured why not everyone have a hand in writing the story? So here's how it works:

Each chapter I'll ask a question. And, based on what you guys answer, the story will change to reflect that. Think of it like...The Walking Dead games. Where you guys make a choice and the story will change around those choices.

It's...A bit hard to explain any more than that, so...How about an example? Here's the first QotC of the story:

QotC: What's your favorite Pokémon?

Simple enough, eh? Go ahead and give your answers and you'll see just what happens next. Until then, can't wait to see What Kind of Pokémon Are You. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Three Wise Professors (Prologue)

I held up my shaky hands towards the fireplace as I kept the rest of me still inside the same blanket I slept under back home. Apparently waking up on that roof made me feel colder than usual, especially with my feet for some reason.

When he noticed it, that professor guy had the baby dragon, Charmander I think was his name, guide me to this room and light the fireplace for me. The dragon was still in here too. He was eating some brown pellet-looking things from a bowl. A dog bowl.

It didn’t take me too long to know that I wasn’t in Equestria right now. But the jury was still out on whether I was in Sunset Shimmer’s world or not. I mean, her world had humans instead of ponies, but it looked nothing like this. Besides, I couldn’t see Canterlot High anywhere.

And then there was the weirdest part of it all. I was a human. Not a dog, not a dragon, but a human. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be though. After all, I would rather be a human than a dog any day. It wasn’t even that hard for me to figure out how to walk or use my hands considering that I was just a little taller compared to how I am as a dragon.

Still, it did feel a little weird to be in clothes. For some reason I had on a purple shirt without the sleeves and a pair of dark green sweatpants. At least they fit me well.

The door to the left of me started to open up as I brought my hands back under the blanket. And as I turned to look, I saw a lady with a lab coat similar to that professor guy’s walk in with a mug in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

“Hello there,” She gave me a friendly smile as she walked over besides where I was sitting. “Professor Sycamore said that this may help.”

Careful not to spill it, the lady handed me the coffee mug full of hot chocolate. Except, aside from just smelling like chocolate, I was able to sniff out some cinnamon in there too.

“Thanks!” I didn’t waste a second to start chugging it right away. Although after drinking nearly half of it down I finally gave myself a second to lick any excess chocolate off my lips.

She gave off a small chuckle. “I was going to warn you about it being hot, but I guess it doesn’t bother you.” I smiled at that. Unless it was ice cream, I only hated anything cold.

“My name is Sophie,” She introduced. “And as soon as you’re feeling better, Garchomp and I will get you home. So may I ask your full name?”

“My name’s Spike. And thanks for the hot chocolate.” With another sip, I was able to tell that there was apparently some extra creamer in it too.

“The Professor made it himself. He asked if I could bring it to you since he had to make a call.” She started writing something, but paused. “Um...What did you say your last name was?”

“Last name? I only have one.” She looked puzzled for a second before giving a nod and putting a line through whatever she was writing. “By the way, who’s Gar—”

From the hallway behind Sophie, I heard a few dull footsteps approaching.

Sophie heard them to and turned to see...Something come through the doorway. “Ah, there you are Garchomp. I take it Cosette took over in the bio-dome?”

“Gar.” It nodded before seeing me staring. “Garchomp.”

“A...A teenage dragon?” I put the chocolate down on the small table besides me and stood up, forgetting about my blanket as it folded onto the ground beneath me.

I turned towards Charmander, who was watching everything from the windowsill. “And there’s still a baby dragon here too...”

“Mander!” It jumped to its feet, glaring at me intensely.

“Thi...How are...Why are there…”

“Well, actually,” Sophie got my attention again. “Charmander’s a fire-type Pokémon.”

“Fire-type? Wait, you call dragons ‘Pokémon’ here?” I shook my head. Wrong question, I thought. “Where am I anyway?”

“Where?” She furrowed her brow. “Well, you’re in Professor Sycamore’s office right now.”

“No, I mean,” I looked out the window for a second and already I didn’t recognize any of the buildings. None of them looked like the ones around Canterlot High either. “Where are we? Like, uh, what town?”

“The town…?” She checked back over her clipboard, looking a little concerned. “Um...We’re in Lumiose if that’s what you mean.”

“Lumiose?” No matter what I tried remembering about Sunset’s world, I didn’t remember anything with that name. So I tried a different idea. “Okay, well do you know where Canterlot High is from here?”

“I’m guessing that’s a school, correct?” After seeing me nod, she kept quiet for a few moments. “Well, there are a few schools around Lumiose, but I don’t remember there being one by that name.”

By now I was starting to get worried. “What about a Carousel Boutique? Or Sugarcube Corner? Or Sweet Apple Acres?”

She furrowed her brow. “There are dozens of boutiques in Lumiose and I don’t have an idea what a ‘Sugarcube Corner’ is. Sweet Apple Acres though…” I broke out in a grin when she paused.

“Well, there aren’t any farms that grow apples specifically, but there might be a forest in Kalos that’s named after the apples that grow from it.” My smile fell right back down.

Sophie looked around the room hoping to avoid looking at me while she tried to think this all over. “Do you...Do you not live in Lumiose?”

I shook my head.

“...Well, you’re from Kalos, right?”

I shook my head again.

She took in a breath. “Well, then by any chance do you have any psychic-type Pokémon where you live?”

“A psychic-type?” What did that even mean? “Well, there’s Owlowiscious I guess, but he’s not a Pokémon...” I took the chance to sit back down as I tried to figure out what she meant.

She looked more and more confused with every answer I gave her. “Maybe it would be best if you spoke to Professor Sycamore after all.”

“Well then I guess my timing couldn’t be better.” All of us, Garchomp and Charmander included, turned to see Sycamore standing in the doorway. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, I thought that I’d be able to determine where Spike lived with a few questions, but I guess that idea won’t exactly work anymore. You see, Spike claims that he isn’t from the Kalos region.” Sophie handed the professor the clipboard and watched in silence as he looked over it himself. Not that there was much to look at.

I couldn’t really see his expression from behind the clipboard, so I could only hear the tone in his voice. “Is this true Spike?” He lowered the clipboard; finally revealing a serious expression on his face.

“Uh-huh,” I nodded along. “I’ve never even heard of Kalos or Lumiose before.”

Sycamore gave a slow nod as he returned the clipboard to Sophie. “In that case, could you tell me where you are from?”

“I...I um…” My throat felt tighter as I tried to tell him. It wasn’t really a matter of keeping Equestria a secret, instead, it was more a problem that he wouldn’t believe me.

Still, I fought through the feeling and swallowed the pain as best I could. “I...I live in Ponyville. It’s a town in Equestria.”

His frown deepened. “I’m guessing that this Equestria is a region, no?”

I shrugged awkwardly. “Uh…I guess you could call it that?”

Sycamore dragged a hand through his hair as he let out a sigh. “None of it seems to add up...”

“Th-Then what happens now?” I looked turned to Sophie. By this point, she looked as clueless as I did about what was coming next. And to be honest, that wasn’t making me feel any better.

“Well,” He walked over and took the opportunity to sit down in the other chair that was besides the fireplace. “For now, how about we start at the beginning? Can you remember anything that happened before you woke up this morning? Like last night for instance?”

I thought it over a little bit before taking another sip of my drink, emptying it entirely. “Yeah, I think I can do that. Uh...Could I have some more hot chocolate though?”

He started to chuckle. “I don’t see why not. In fact, I think I’d like some too.” He got right back up out of the chair, letting out a quiet sigh as he had just gotten comfortable. “Come on. We can talk on the way.”

I started grinning before standing up and bringing the mug along with me. I was warm enough now so I left the blanket where it was.

“By the way, is it alright if you tell your story to a couple friends of mine as well?” I hurried through the door and followed Sycamore down the hall.

Meanwhile, Sophie, Charmander, and Garchomp were all already going down the hallway in the opposite direction. I guess they had something else that they all had to do.

“Uh, sure, I guess that’s okay. Do you think they can help?” When I caught up to the professor, I saw a content smile on his face.

“I think so. They’re both in the Sinnoh region and I think they know more about what’s going on then either of us do. In fact,” he looked towards me with a cheerful smile on his face.

“I think they can explain exactly what’s happened.”

? ? ? POV

“Good afternoon passengers! I hope you’ve had a wonderful time flying with us. It’s been a long flight from Hoenn, but we have officially arrived in Lumiose City.”

“Woah…” Both of us looked out the window in awe at the city below us. It was even bigger than Mauville City!

“Your jaw’s open...” A joyful voice giggled from the back of my head as I could only shake my head in response.

“Could you blame me? It looks so cool!” The city was almost bigger than some of the islands back in Hoenn! The thought alone of walking through the streets made me dizzy!

“You have a point. I wonder where we should start...”

“Well,” I leaned back into my seat, looking towards the only member of my team that came with me to Kalos. “First thing’s first, we gotta find out where we can update the PokéNav.”

She sighed and held her head up with her hand. “Yay…”

“Oh come on Kirlia, lighten up,” I gave her a grin. “Once we do that, we’ll be able to finish everything else in time to head out to the first gym!”

She seemed to perk up at that. “Well, I guess that doesn’t sound too bad. Besides, maybe we’ll find someone else to join the team while we’re still here.”

“Exactly! After all, we promised the others that we’d get the best team we could get.” The best team excluding them of course.

“Excuse me,” Both of us turned to see one of the flight attendants standing beside our seats.

“Kirl?” Kirlia took this moment to speak as a normal Pokémon would as we both focused our attention on the attendant.

“We’ll be landing soon. I’m afraid I have to ask that you put on your seatbelts.” She gave a sad smile as if she were sorry for reminding us.

However, one look around the plan and we could see everyone else already in their seatbelts. So looking back to her, we both started to look embarrassed. “Oh, y-yeah. Sorry about that.”

She could only smile before quickly putting the seatbelt on around us. Since Kirlia was a small enough sized Pokémon, she had to stay with in my seat.

Airplanes were always pretty strict about that rule. As long as Pokémon were under three feet tall and weighed less than 200 lbs, they could share a seat with their trainer. Thankfully, the seats accommodated for this and we could both sit side by side under the same seatbelt.

“Thank you. Have a nice time in Kalos.” She gave a slight bow as she headed off to make sure everyone else had their seatbelts on securely.

“Yeah,” I looked down at Kirlia with a ready smile, which she returned. “We will.”

Spike's POV

“Well, that’s quite a story!” The lady exclaimed on the weird box thing. “And you’re sure that you don’t remember anything before that?”

“Nuh-uh…” I half-heartedly hid myself behind the third mug of hot chocolate as I sipped it down.

After the Professor had gotten me some more chocolate like he promised, he introduced me to these other two professors. At first I thought they were just pictures, so imagine my surprise when they started talking to me. And then my surprise when I spilled the second mug of hot chocolate.

“It’s actually rather peculiar.” An older man scratched his white sideburns in thought. “Tell me, did anything out of the ordinary happen before you appeared in Kalos?”

“Uh, n-not that I can think of…” I took another sip to keep from looking at the screen. Both of their pictures were side by side in the box and I could see a smaller picture towards the top that showed me what we looked like. Professor Sycamore was in the picture too. “It’s kind of hard to remember actually.”

“Well, could you walk us through it all?” The lady, who’s name was Juniper I think, asked me.

“Uh...Okay…” I gave a slow nod as I took one last sip of the hot cho—Aaaaand it’s gone.

After putting down the mug, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, thinking that it would be better than looking at the three professors staring back at me.

The only problem was that I didn’t know what exactly to do. I wasn’t lying when I told them that yesterday was hard to remember, but there was another problem too. I wasn’t from around here.

When Twilight and I first got back from Sunset’s world, Princess Celestia asked us not to tell anypony about it. It was already dangerous that both of us and all the girls knew about it...Apparently. I didn’t get why it was dangerous, and I forgot whether or not we even asked but we both promised not to tell.

Still, if they were gonna try to help me, I wanted to try and tell them something. So I focused back on trying to recall yesterday.

“Well, I remember that Twilight woke me up early because she needed some help with putting away all her books…”

“Twilight?” Professor Sycamore questioned.

“Yeah, Twilight. She’s a friend of mine. Anyways, she was up really late reading a bunch of books about...Actually, I don’t think I ever asked.” Not like I would’ve remembered anyway, Twilight’s always reading about something.

“Next, I ate some apple fritters for breakfast since Applejack gave us a bunch of leftovers from when she was teaching Applebloom how to make them.” Now that I remember perfectly. Those fritters were almost too burnt for me to eat.

“Applejack? Applebloom? I’m assuming they’re friends of yours as well?” The older professor asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. I wasn’t telling them anything serious about my world by just talking about my friends. At least, I don’t think I was.

“After that, I just read some comics. Got in a staring contest with...Somepon—Someone. With. Someone.” After taking a quick glance on the screen, it didn’t look like any of them noticed what I almost said.

“Then it gets kind of fuzzy from there,” I went on. “Me and Twilight got out of...The house,” I lied. “And went around the town for some reason. Then we came back and…”

“And…?” The woman trailed off with me.

“And, that’s it.” I shrugged. “I can’t really think of anything else. The rest is kind of a...Pink blur?” I looked off to the side, confused from my own words.

“A pink. Blur?” The older man repeated, his expression hardening.

“Yeah. Or wait, maybe it was a flash? I-I can’t tell what it is really.” I wanted to say that it reminded me of Pinkie Pie, but they wouldn’t know who she is.

“Why a pink flash exactly?” The man persisted.

“Well...I don’t know,” I scratched the side of my head. “It’s kind of weird. It’s like some of the things I’m trying to remember from yesterday are just...Pink?” I didn’t know how to explain it. It was even more confusing the more I thought about it.

“...” Both of the professors on the screen had the same hardened expression on their face.

“Is there something wrong with that Professor Rowan?” Professor Sycamore seemed just as confused as I was.

“...Spike.” When the older professor, which name I had just found out was Rowan, looked back towards the screen it felt like he was staring at me as if he were actually here with me.

“Y-Yeah?”

“What day was yesterday?”

“It...Wait, what?”

“What day was yesterday?” Rowan repeated, his appearance unchanging.

“Uh...I-It was Saturday.” I looked at the other two professors and received two different answers. Professor Sycamore had furrowed his brow in confusion, but the lady had a look on her similar to the older man.

“As I thought,” He looked off to the side for a moment. “Professor Juniper, do you have your notes with you at the moment?”

“You mean the ones about Mt. Coronet? Yes, I have them right here.” I couldn’t she what she was doing, but I did hear the rustling of paper in the background.

“Wait a second, what’s going on? Is there something wrong?” I looked between the three of them, feeling just as confused as when I’m listening to one of Twilight’s lectures.

“Well that depends,” A voice from behind me, Sycamore’s voice, began. “Do you usually sleep for four to five days at a time?”

I gave him a double take. “N-No...Why do you ask?” I started to move around in my chair some more. My mouth started to feel dry too, and of course now I didn’t have anything left to drink.

“Because today’s Thursday.”

“Thursday?” How was it Thursday? I don’t sleep in that much. Sure there was that one time that I slept through a whole day, but five?

“Spike,” Professor Juniper regained my attention. “I know you said that you haven’t heard about Pokémon before, but I think that I should at least try to ask; have you ever heard of the names Dialga and Palkia?”

“Dialga and Palkia?” I juggled the two words around in my head for a little bit, but nothing came up. “What are they exactly?”

“Dialga and Palkia are known as Legendary Pokémon,” Rowan explained. “And more specifically, they are the masters of time and space.”

“Time and...Wait, do you think that it has something to do with me?”

They both stayed silent for a few seconds. They were still looking at the screen, but I don’t think they were looking at me specifically. And after a few more seconds of this, Rowan gave a random nod.

“Not only do we think that it has something to do with you," Juniper started with a somber look on her face. "But we're almost positive that it's much bigger than we know."

"Bigger how?" I started to squirm a bit in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable by the way I was sitting.

"Well," She held the syllable for a good two seconds. "We think that you might not be from around here."

I gave out a weak sigh. One that none of them seemed to pick up on. I couldn't tell why, but a part of me was kind of glad to hear that. Maybe it's because now I could try and explain everything a little better.

“And,” She continued, my eyes growing two times their size.

“And?” I questioned.

“And,” She repeated with a nod, making me hate that word even more. “If there are other people that were affected by this…” She paused, opening and closing her mouth repeatedly. She almost seemed more worried about this than I did.

“They might be spread out.” Rowan concluded with a stern tone. “Across Kalos at the very least.”

“I thought the pink pulse had originated from Sinnoh.” From behind me Professor Sycamore started raising mo—

“Pink pulse? Wait a second,” I whipped my head back to face the screen-thingy. “You guys saw it too? But how? I saw it from Ponyville.”

Rowan closed his eyes as if to try and shut us all out for a moment of silence. “I suppose that now it would be a good idea for us to tell you our part of the story.”

“Yeah. Good idea.” I started to lean back in my chair again, still caught up on what they said. That pink pulse was in this Sinnoh place and in Ponyville. Then I woke up in Lumiose or Kalos or whatever this town was called.

And then there’s the biggest problem of them all:

Where is everypony else?

Author's Note

I know, I know, this chapter was a long wait away. It's just, as you've read by now, it's an exposition chapter. And while it's probably less action oriented than the last one, it's still a necessary evil. Or at least, it seems that way for the way I have this story planned.

But lets focus on something else. Like the picture of the story! Pretty cool, huh? It's actually the first picture I've ever made for one of my own stories!

Okay, but in all seriousness, I do actually have something to say about it. As you can see, there are six figures below Spike. Those Pokémon are to be his team. Or at least, his team as far as I'm willing to reveal to you guys. As the story goes on, the picture will be updated to accommodate for that. So have fun trying to guess which Pokémon will join Spike's team. I'm interested to see whether or not you guys can guess the team. Especially his starter.

And now finally, the final part of the Author's Notes. The Question of the Chapter! And as a quick note, while we haven't seen any of your favorite Pokémon appear, they have been recorded. After a few more QotC I'll give you guys the Google Docs link.

QotC: Out of these three characters, which one's your favorite?

Big Mac
Rarity
Sweetie Belle

A random question, I know, but you'll see just why I asked next chapter. That's a promise.

Sweetie B and Miror B (Side Story #1)

“Ludicolo, ludi-ludi. Ludicolo, ludi-ludi~”

Ugh. Rarity, turn off the music…

“Ludicolo, ludi-ludi. Ludicolo, ludi-ludi~”

“Rarity, turn off the music!” Or at least, that’s what I tried to say. All that really came out was a bunch of mumbles and other sounds that nopony could understand.

I don’t really know why, but for some reason Rarity and I are not morning ponies. She always drinks coffee so that wakes her up pretty quick, but apple juice just doesn’t have the same kind of kick. A bit of a shame really. I drink apple juice almost as much as Rarity drinks coffee.

That’s when something finally clicked in my head. There’s no way Rarity’s listening to music right now. Mainly because, one; there’s no way she can make that much coffee so fast. Well, not unless she’s freaking out about some kind of design or something. And Rarity hates any kind of noise in the morning. Especially music.

Actually, it kind of explained why the Crusaders and Pinkie Pie aren’t allowed in the Boutique until noon.

And then there was a second reason. Rarity would never be caught dead listening to rumba music!

The second that the horn section starting blaring was the second my head sprung off the pillows. After a quick glance I could tell that I was still under the covers. Except for some reason everything seemed to be a little smaller.

Slowly I peeked my head out from under the covers and came face to face with my own hair blocking me from seeing just about everything around me. Although I did manage to get to spot where I was. Outside.

I was outside and still laying in my bed somehow. That alone didn’t make any sense. Although something that made even less sense was exactly where I was. Because not only was I outside of Rarity’s Boutique, but apparently I was nowhere near Ponyville at all.

Pushing some hair out from the front of my face, I immediately came face to face with what had to be the most random thing that I had ever seen. For dancing around my bed were three happy looking, perfectly in-step, dancing, sombrero-wearing pineapple ducks.

…

...

Very slowly, as if not to interrupt the happy pineapple ducks, I lowered myself back under the covers. Then I closed my eyes as if to drown out the image of said pineapple ducks dancing to rumba music.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Oh, and screaming. I also began screaming. Very loudly. Did I forget to mention that before?

“WOAH! Jazz, Rock, Salsa, what’s going on over there?!”

When I started hearing another pony’s voice I stopped screaming. I couldn’t tell whether this was some kind of dream or real life, but somepony else was still a gift from Celestia as far as I was concerned.

“Help me!” I cried from under the covers. “Get the creepy pineapple ducks away!”

“Pineapple...Oh! You mean my darling Ludicolo? Fuhohohoho!” A high-pitched man’s voice rang out in a fit of weird laughing. “Why don’t you worry little lady. These three mean you no harm.”

I froze underneath the covers. “They...They don’t?”

“Of course not! Why, they simply wanted to perform a show for you! Let the music pause!” As soon as the stallion called that last part out, the rumba music had stopped instantly. “Now then. How’s about we all bear witness to that darling face of yours?”

“...” With shaking hooves I lifted my head back from under the covers. And just like last time my hair was down in my face. It was kind of weird too. Obviously my mane wasn’t as swirly as it usually was in the morning, but it never drooped down this low. Not unless I was pulling it down by force at least.

So after begrudgingly moving the hair out of my face for the second time, I saw the face of the stallion that had been talking before. Only, there was a sliiiiiiiight difference from what I expected:

He was a dragon.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

“AH!”

“Ludi!”

“Colo!”

“SPINDA!”

Everypony, the pineapple ducks included, all looked to the left in confusion to see a weird pale and red baby bear that was having problems standing on two legs.

“...Fuhoho…” The purple and pale dragon was the first to regain his composure. “Nice to hear that you jumped in on the fun too my young Swing.”

“Now then-WOAH!” He turned back towards me just in time to see a pillow being thrown directly towards him. And as if he expected it, he dodged underneath it by doing the splits with the kind of agility I thought only Pinkie Pie had.

“What’s the big idea miss—” “What do you want with me, dragon?!” I placed my hoof on another pillow and gave him the nastiest look I could. I wasn’t afraid to use this pillow and I wanted to prove it to him!

“Dragon?” With a pinkish talon, he lowered his funky-looking sunglasses and looked at me with a skeptical look. “Now young lady, what gives you such a notion to think me a dragon of all things?”

“My sister told me about dragons like you!” I swallowed that feeling in my throat. “She said that teenage dragons were really tall and skinny and creepy and were really really weird!”

The dragon stiffened up and took a step back with a pained expression behind his sunglasses before falling to his knees in defeat.

“Such injuring words from such a young heart...It pains me with every fiber of my soul…”

“Ludi…” One of the pineapple ducks starting making his way over towards the—dragon(?)—and put a hoof...Claw...Leaf— Whatever it was —on the dragon's shoulder.

"Thank you Jazz,” He smiled up at the pine...Jazz, as his name was apparently. “But I believe I’ll be alright. Truly.” With a nod, he stood back up on two legs.

“Uh...Th-Then what are you then?” It was kind of weird talking to him while I was still halfway under my covers, but I still didn’t want to get out of bed until I knew just what was going on. “I-If you’re not a dragon, I mean.”

He started to smile before running his claw over the giant white and red afro that sat on his head. “Well I’m glad you asked young lady. My name is Miror B! One man Orre sensation!” As if he were in a photoshoot, he pointed up into the air and leaned to his side just like a disco pony would.

“Well, um...I-I’m Sweetie Belle and...” I looked around and saw nothing but desert for miles. “Uh, where are we exactly?”

“Hmm. You don’t know where you are? Funny. With your groovin camp I figured you lived somewhere out here.” He put his claw under his chin in thought. “Well, regardless, we’re out in the deserts of Orre right now. More specifically, between Pyrite Town and Realgam Tower.”

I stayed silent and watched as the man leaned to his left leg with a claw on his hips. “I suppose you don’t know where that is now do you Sweetie?” It was hard to tell behind his glasses, but I think this Miror B dragon was giving me a worried glance.

“N...No…” I looked over everything around us. The three pineapple ducks and the dizzy bear were watching me by this point. It was kind of creepy, but they all looked a little worried about me as well. “Do you...Do you think…”

“That I can help you find your way back to the sweet stage of civilization?” He flashed me a grin. “Why I believe that we would be honored to help a young lass in need. Isn’t that right everyone?”

“Ludi!”

“Colo!”

“Spin! Spin!”

“Well I guess it’s official!” He spun around in place and struck another disco pose. “The Orre Restorers are here to assist!”

“Uh...G-Great. Yeah, thanks!” I couldn’t help but smile a little myself. “I guess all teenage dragons aren’t as bad as the ones my sister met after all!”

“Uhhh,” His smile turned to an awkward one as he stayed in that pose. Though he quickly recovered. “Well, assumin’ that’s a compliment, I’ll take it with spirit to spare!”

He went back to leaning on one leg again in a casual pose. “Now then, are you fine with leavin’ now or do you wanna try and pack up your bed there? Fuhoho...”

“Oh yeah…” I didn’t really have a way of knowing why I was out in the middle of nowhere with my bed of all things, but I didn’t really have any way of bringing it with me. Besides, Rarity would probably scream if I came back home with sand and dirt all over the bedsheets.

“I don’t think I can.” I turned back to the teenage dragon. “So I guess it’s probably better if we just leave it.” With the one hoof I had under my blanket, I got ready to push the covers off of me. Although for some reason it was kind of difficult to get a grip on the covers.

“Fair enough, your call.” He turned over to the four weird things that were gathered up around him. “Alright boys, the plan still stands! We’re heading off to Realgam Tower. From there we’ll check in with the rest of our posse and drop off Ms. Sweetie while we’re there. Next up, we find whatever Shadow Pokémon that are out in the wild! Sound like a plan?”

The four things all called out random words in agreement, looking determined to do what Miror B had told them about.

“Alright then! So with that said!” He took in a deep breath and stayed quiet for a few seconds as if building dramatic tension. “LET THE MUSIC PL—”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

“Oh what now?!” With sudden anger, Miror B turned over to glare me down in rage. “You just went and threw off my groove! What is wrong now child?”

“Why...Why…” I couldn’t put words together to answer him as I kept staring at my...At my... “Why do I…”

“What? Speak up child, I can’t hear you when your all silent!” He put both claws on his hips as he and the four weird things looked me down.

“Ludi?” One of the pineapple ducks, the ‘Jazz’ one I think, looked towards me with a concerned look.

“Why…” I was shaking, but I finally managed to look up at Miror B with a devastated look on my face. One that immediately made him drop his glare.

“Why am I a dragon?”

Miror B stood there, not reacting as he and the weird things around him all just continued to look at me for what seemed like a good minute.

Then I watched as Miror B gave a very slow nod, his expression still unchanged. “W...Well then…” Slowly, he let out a sigh from his trembling lips. “It seems this is going to be a challenge in and of itself…”

“Spin—Daaaaa~” The red and pale bear did a small twirl, trying its best to make a disco pose like Miror B had done. Only it couldn’t keep its balance and instead fell flat on its face.

“Yep,” Miror B shook his head with an exasperated style. “Could not have said it better myself Swing.”

Author's Note

What's wrong everypony? Is this not what you had expected? :scootangel:

If any of you have ever played/heard of Pokémon Colosseum or Pokémon XD? If you have than you'll no doubt know about the Orre region or Mirror B here. And if not, go ahead and check those links for the pictures. The hilarity that is Miror B's appearance alone is worth it.

So next chapter were going back to Kalos with Spike. But don't worry about Sweetie Belle. We'll hear about her as the story goes on. Or at least, if you guys vote to check in on her we will. Until then we'll leave her in the capable hands of the Orre Restorers number one sensation, Miror B!

QotC: Including the Orre Region on this list, what is your favorite region in the series?

Careful with your choices now. You never know who it might effect. :pinkiesmile:

Your Geodude Learned Rock Throw! (Episode 1)

? ? ? POV

“Hey, there you two are!” The screen came to life with picture as my sister looked at us with an ecstatic smile. “So, you finally made it to the Kalos Region huh?”

Both her and her Skitty looked at us with smiling faces. Although, behind that smile, I could tell that something was off. The smile didn’t seem honest. Instead it looked...Rehearsed. As if she had tried to practice talking to me beforehand.

“Y-yeah…” I still tried to smile back at her but it looked nothing but awkward. I’ve wanted to forget all about what happened at the Hoenn League so I didn’t even think about what to talk about.

“Uh…” I sighed and dropped the stupid smile. “May, look, I’m really sorry about how badly I did at the League. I mean, I should have had my act together and—”

“Wait a second, why are you apologizing? If anything I should be the one saying sorry! I couldn’t even make it there to watch my own little brother in his first Pokémon League. I was so caught up in all the after-events of the Grand Festival that I wasn’t even in the same region to cheer you on with Mom and Dad!”

“But...B-But I…” I sighed and rested my face into the palm of my hand. What was I even doing right now? I don’t even know the actual reason as to why I was apologizing. “I guess that...I’m saying, sorry for making you look bad?” Even saying that made me confused. Still, that was the only reason I had. It was the reason I was avoiding her until now.

Although that didn’t stop her from trying to find me. She had caught a flight to meet us at the end of the League, which I had to stay for a ‘Final Goodbye’ ceremony with all the other competitors. Of course as soon as that was over I left before May could even find me.

Mom got really upset, but luckily Dad was there to take my side after I explained myself. So he had everyone give me some space. Which I was thankful for, but that meant that I didn’t have the chance to talk to my May until...Well, right now.

“Max,” And for the first time in almost six months, I heard her call my name. It had almost made me flinch, but I managed to look back up to see her with a worried look on her face. “You and I both know that some silly title doesn’t matter. Let those news stations say what they want. You’re my brother! I don’t care how badly you do at a Pokémon League, I’ll never be mad at you.”

I couldn’t help but slouch forwards with a deadpanned stare. “Gee, thanks May.”

“Nice to know we have your support.” From my lap Kirlia had spoken up with a tone similar to mine. It was a little hard to do, but she was able to channel her thoughts into sound for whenever we talked over video.

Even though we both kept our stares trained on her, she couldn’t help but giggle at our reaction. It was soon followed by Skitty and sure enough the two of us started to ease up with our expressions until finally all of us were laughing.

“Thanks May. I needed that.” I gave her a small smile before taking up a more comfortable position in my seat.

“Don’t mention it Max.” She gave me a bigger smile before suddenly remembering something. “Oh yeah! So I wanted to ask, what’s the Kalos Region like?! Is it as amazing as the brochures are?!” She and Skitty looked at us with their full attention yet still somehow stayed planted in their own fantasy land. Some things never change.

“Well we haven’t seen too much of it yet. We called the second we got off the plane.” May and Skitty’s smiles dipped greatly, but they kept a content look to them. “Still, the airport alone looks pretty great! Not to mention I can see Prism Tower from here and that’s even better than what the pictures showed!”

As I told them this I looked behind the screen and saw the tower peeking out from above a few buildings. It wasn’t lit up like the pictures had shown but it didn’t need to be. It looked great enough as it was.

“What do you think Kirlia?”

“It’s definitely a sight to see.” She had her thoughts sound off again so the phone could pick it up. “Not to mention I’m picking up a calm yet awestruck emotion from the locals. It seems like the people that live in Lumiose are still impressed with the town despite living here.”

Well that was about what I expected from her. They didn’t call Kirlia the “Emotion Pokémon” for nothing after all. She could see the emotions either from individuals or groups of people. Sure, it made it kind of hard to keep a secret from her, but it also helped us get through plenty of problems in the past.

“Even the locals are impressed?” May leaned back a little. “Wow. I guess everything there is just that beautiful. Maybe I should just come over there and compete in the Kalos Grand Festival instead…”

“Nya-nya~!” Skitty started mussing to herself with a blissful look that matched my sister’s.

“Oh. Uh. W-W_it—” Kirlia’s thoughts started to stutter as she shook her hands side to side in denial. Neither of us wanted May to come with us on what was supposed to be our own journey.

“But May,” I perked up. “Didn’t Mom and Dad say that you were planning on competing in the Unova region with Dawn?!”

“Nya~!” Skitty gave a dismissive wave of her paw.

“Skitty, that’s the worst excuse that I’ve ever heard.” Kirlia deadpanned. “And besides, if Dawn’s Piplup really does get that clingy than just tell Munchlax that Piplup has a crush on her. That outta keep him away.” Kirlia’s expression turned to one of a devious smile, no doubt ignoring the look I was giving her.

“Nya~...” Skitty brought a paw to her mouth as she hummed in thought.

While this was going on, May gave out a sigh. “I guess you have a point Max. It wouldn’t be fair to Dawn if I just canceled the trip.” With a shrug she continued. “Besides, at least Harley’s not competing in Unova the same time as me.”

“Oh yeah. Harley…” That was one name I hadn’t heard in awhile. He was probably one of the most annoying people that I’ve ever met. He was a Pokémon Coordinator just like my sister May was. The only difference was that he did literally anything in order to win. He sabotaged May, sided with a group of bad people known as Team Rocket with little to no consequence, and finally he had this nasally voice that drove nearly all of us insane.

Still, the news of no Harley brought a huge smile to my face. “Yeah, see?! An entire region with no Harley in sight! Nothing sounds better than that!”

“Ex-cuse me?!”

All of us, Skitty and Kirlia included, flinched at the nasally voice calling out from behind me. And upon hearing it, all of our eyes doubled in size.

“No…” As if not to sound off some kind of sensor, I took my time turning around. Yet no matter how careful I was I still saw the last thing I wanted to see. One purple-haired freak in a Cacturne costume glaring straight at us.

“What did you just say about me?!” Harley’s fingers curled into fists as he continued trying to turn us to paste with his glare.

Why can’t it ever be easy?

Spike’s POV

“Alright Spike, here we are. The biodome.”

After pressing a few buttons on the little box the glass doors in front of us opened up. And from what I could see it seemed as though we were walking into a small forest. There were forests that came up to the top of the glass ceiling and a small stream that went from one side of the dome to the other.

The place looked to be about as big as Fluttershy's hill and seemed just as full of woodland creatures. Only instead of them being animals, they were all Pokémon. And thankfully they were nowhere near as scary as that weird floating orb thing, which the professor told me was a ghost type Pokémon.

As the glass doors closed behind us I kept looking at one Pokémon to the next. Each of them looked so different from anything that I had seen in Equestria.

Professor Sycamore started chuckling as he watched my excitement. “I guess I should’ve seen this coming. If there really aren’t any Pokémon where you come from than this must be an interesting sight.”

“You're telling me.” I turned my attention to one of the creatures that was watching me curiously. It was hiding in the knothole of a tree trunk so it was hard to tell just what it looked like. All I could really see was a small glowing red orb and black wisps of aura that reminded me of magic.

...Duss…

“Ah, there you are Duskull.” The professor walked over to the knothole with a chuckle. “You don’t have to hide from the sun you know. I promise it won’t hurt you.”

As he stopped ahead of the knothole I saw the red orb start to angle inwards as if to give off an angry glare. One that cause the professor to stiffen up in utter terror.

Duss...KULL!

“WAHH!” The professor instantly jumped into the air like a frightened cat from the sound before falling onto his back without any grace.

“P-Professor Sycamore!” I took a few steps towards him before locking eyes with the glowing red orb once again. Only this time it only watched me for a few seconds before fading further into the knothole entirely.

Once it was gone I went over to Professor Sycamore as he was now leaning onto his elbows. “Are, uh, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m alright Spike. That was just Duskull’s Leer and Astonish attack.” He took my outstretched hand and got onto his feet. “You see, Duskull are nocturnal Pokémon and have a strong urge to avoid any sunlight.”

“So then that Duskull Pokémon’s...A ghost type? Like that Gastly was?”

“Correct.” He nodded.

“But then, why does Duskull not like the sun if Gastly was okay with it?” I tried to spot Duskull in the tree again, but he was still nowhere to be seen. However I did see a grey figure floating off into the shadows of the small forest behind the tree.

“Actually that’s something that we’re trying to figure out right now.” After dusting off his lab coat he continued. “You see one of my lab assistants is actually studying Pokémon Culture whenever she’s not helping my own research. Duskull is only one of the Pokémon helping her.

“Duskull is actually one of the few Ghost-type Pokémon that don’t actually rest. So it’s a mystery as to why they’re known as nocturnal. So far, she’s discovered that Duskull naturally avoid the sun.” He explained.

“Because they’re afraid of it?” I pieced together.

“Well...Possibly.” He grew a look of confusion. “You see, I’m not too caught up on her recent discoveries because of my own research.” Suddenly, his face grew into a very upset frown. “As well as covering the damages of my lab…” But thankfully his frown left his face as quick as it appeared.

I chose to ignore it as best I could. “So what other Pokémon are helping her?”

With one fluid motion he turned to the side and held out an arm towards part of the stream that was next to a leafy bush. “Plenty of them. For instance, there are three Eevees all enjoying their day around the biodome.”

Following where he had pointed, I spotted a small brown-furred Pokémon with a cream colored collar of fur calmly drinking from the river. “Yeah I see it. He has a lot of fur on him.”

“Her,” He calmly corrected. “And she apparently gravitates towards one certain element more than any other.”

“What do you mean by element?” I turned towards the Eevee and watched as she kept drinking from the stream. It didn’t seem to care about how her cream collar of fur was partly submerged in the water despite how well groomed it seemed.

“The water. You see, Eevee is known as the evolution Pokémon since it can evolve into several different types of Pokémon. And because of this, it seems that there’s a bit of instinct in the way an Eevee live out its life.” He looked back at me. “That particular Eevee loves being around the water.”

I kept watching her as she suddenly stopped drinking the water. It’s fur was still underwater, but it didn’t seem to care as she suddenly began smirking.

“So...You think that’ll it’ll evolve into something that has to do with water?” It had only been a few hours since that video call. Since then, Professor Sycamore has been telling me about Pokémon and how they work. One of those things being evolution.

“Well, that’s our theory anyways. Eevee has a water evolution called Vaporeon. And so far only this one seems to fit into that category. The other Eevees seem to like keeping dry so the idea is that they don’t want to become a Vaporeon while she does.”

She continued to stand perfectly still as her smirk slowly turned into a mischievous grin. One that reminded me all too much about Angel Bunny. I didn’t really get what she was so happy about though. All she was doing was watching a small red triangle float down the stream.

As she pulled her head up out of the water, dozens of droplets started dripping from her fur, not that she paid any mind to them. She just kept watching this weird triangle as she got ready to...Do something, I guess.

The professor sighed upon seeing this. “Those two are always messing with each other.”

“Huh?” I looked up to him and immediately regretted it because while I looked away I heard a splash and some incomprehensible cries of something else followed by something struggling in the water.

I could not snap my head back faster as Eevee sat there with her tail wagging back and forth with a content, yet entirely innocent smile as he kept that same red triangle in its mouth.

That red triangle was apparently connected to a blue tail. And on the opposite end of this tail was a blue alligator flailing his head and arms in hopes to get away from this Eevee. Its voice was difficult to understand since the mouth was halfway underwater, but I could tell that it was more than startled.

“Woah! That. That looks kind of like Gummy…” Yep, no mistaking it. The front legs looked similar and his jaw was nearly identical to Gummy’s. Except this one had some teeth to it. Very sharp teeth. Although Eevee didn’t seem to care about that.

“S-So where are the other two Eevees?”

“Well, right now the other female Eevee is in the denser part of the biodome, playing with a few of the other Pokémon in the shadows. My assistant believes that since she likes staying in the darker parts of the biodome, she may prefer evolving into an Umbreon.” Professor Sycamore began to smile as Eevee let go of blue alligator’s tail.

“Toto,” The alligator called out once he recovered in the water; his head was the only thing above water. “Toto-Totodile!”

“Eevee~!” The Eevee gave an obvious wink towards the alligator, And as she winked, a few light pink hearts appeared around her before fading towards Totodile.

Once the hearts faded away entirely, Totodile’s face went nearly full red as he started acting really bashful towards her. It looked as though he forgave her for ever snatching him out of the water.

The professor sighed. “There she goes again. I swear she’s always using Captivate on that poor Totodile.” Totodile took to swimming away quickly before Eevee burst out into a fit of giggles.

“Pip. Piplup Piplup.” Eevee stopped laughing when a blue penguin looking Pokémon looked at her with its flippers on its hips. After a small staring contest, Eevee started to paw the ground in a circular motion.

“Eevee eve…” It frowned and sounded apologetic. Or at least that’s what I think she looked like. It was hard to tell when these Pokémon only said their names.

Before either of the two could say anything else, they both raised their heads in attention at the sound of two other Pokémon talking to each other. Except both of those voices sounded a little angry about something.

“Eevee…” She put a paw to her face as the penguin gave a look of defeated annoyance. “Eevee eve?”

“Pip.” The penguin could only give a single nod.

Confused, I tried listening in to whatever the two Pokémon were upset about. I didn’t have to try too hard thankfully as two figures made their way out from the thicker part of the biodome.

“Ah. I was wondering when those two would show up.” He turned to look at me. “Spike, take a careful look at these fighting types.”

I nodded along and noticed the shapes of the two Pokémon walking forward. While it was still in the shadows, I could make out their outlines and that was almost enough to figure out what they looked like.

One looked about my size, or at least the size I used to be. He was thinner than I was though and had what looked like baggy pants on him, though I couldn’t tell the colors right now.

When looking at all of him, the “fighting type” remind me of...Well, a fighter. He was nimbler than I was and he was saying the words “Ty” and “Rogue” several times.

The other one was completely different in almost every way. Instead of being skinny and nimble, he seemed...I guess bulky would be a nice word for it, and was about as tall as Twilight or the others.

Instead of looking like a fighter, he was more along the lines of a sumo wrestler. And this one seemed just as upset as the purple fighter and said the words “Hita” and “Maku” just as much as the fighter.

“So...Do all Pokémon say just their names?” It was a pattern I was starting to notice. In fact it was kind of hard to avoid noticing it.

“Most of them, yes.” His smile grew. “You’re starting to get Pokémon a little quicker than I expected. But anyways,” He looked back at the two bickering Pokémon that had now made their way to the center of the clearing. “Those two Pokémon are Tyrogue and Makuhita. Both fighting types that seem to have quite a rivalry going on.”

“How’s come?”

“Well, now that they’re out of the shadows, have you noticed the painted emblems on their chests?” He placed his hands on his hips, watching as the rest of the Pokémon, as well as the Eevee and Piplup from earlier, started to walk over towards them.

“Y-Yeah,” It wasn’t too hard to see what the professor was talking about. The sumo wrestler Pokémon had a dark blue pattern on the top of his chest and inside of that was the emblem. It looked like a fist ready to punch something and it was painted in silver.

Meanwhile the purple boxing Pokémon had the same emblem, but painted in a different color; white. However, he didn’t have the same blue pattern that the sumo wrestler had. Instead, he had bandages wrapped around his abdomen for no reason other than appearance. And on the bandages is where the emblem lay.

“Apparently there are fighting-type Pokémon follow a sort of training called The Way of the Punch. This is where they aim to master every “punch” move that there is. Those two actually belong to another Professor by the name of Kukui. Although my assistant wanted to borrow them for a small while in order to see how they interact with one another.

“There are other trainings as well such as The Way of the Kick or The Way of the Claw, but for now this is as far as her studies have gotten her. Still, Kukui’s trying his best to find one or two Pokémon that follow under those training styles as well to help her research.”

As their argument got closer and closer to a breaking point, the sumo wrestler finally pointed out towards a small tree. “Maku?! Makuhita!”

“Ty, Ty,” The boxer Pokémon gave two small nods before they both walked over to a small tree.

“Happiny?” A small, pink egg-shaped Pokémon let out a disappointed sigh before facepalming.

“Zang,” A red and white bipedal fox-looking Pokémon gave a dismissive wave. It didn’t look like he was at all surprised by the sudden fight between the two.

“Bid-Bidoof!” A small beaver Pokémon called out excitedly as he eyed the tree the fighting-types were walking to. It didn’t really take a genius to guess why.

“Huh. It looks like they’re about to have another competition,” Professor Sycamore leaned against the larger tree near the entrance. “I wonder who’ll win this time.”

“This time?” I looked back towards the Pokémon as the sumo wrestler got in a pose reserved for boxers. That’s when I noticed that instead of hands and fingers like the fighter had, Makuhita only had boxing gloves. “Does that mean that they’ve been fighting like this for—” “MAKU!”

The Pokémon suddenly made a jump towards the tree, slamming its fist into the base of the tree with the kind of strength that only Applejack or even Big Mac had.

The attack had the tree shaking back and forth with leaves and a few of the weaker branches falling as a result. Although that wasn’t everything that fell.

“Burmmmmyyyyyy!” Suddenly, a white line of string shot out from a patch of leaves and swung its way over to towards the next tree closest to it.

"Hmm. Makuhita's Arm Thrust has gotten stronger since last time." The professor scratched his chin in thought.

"Burm! Burmy!" The odd pile of leaves started to glare back at the two of them before getting comfy in its new tree. The sumo wrestler looked apologetic while the boxer--

"ROGUE!" In a flash of light the boxer went from watching to flying forward into the tree with a solid hit.

Pieces of bark and branches flew off from the tree as it stayed leaning in place, halfway out of the ground. And down at the base of the tree stood Tyrogue, who was now beaming at Makuhita with a toothy grin.

“Sssssssev-Viper.” A large dark-blue and gold colored snake with long red fangs began nodding in approval, earning a shiver down my spine from the size of it alone.

“Biiiiii~” The small beaver that stood beside the snake, somehow not terrified of the splinters nearly hitting him. In fact, the weaker the tree looked, the more excited that beaver was getting.

“I never knew something like him could be that strong,” Heck, I’ve never met anything that could punch like him. How did that boxing Pokémon do something like that?

“That was Tyrogue’s Mach.” Sycamore informed. “Now I wonder how Makuhita will respond…” He leaned forwards toward the challenge as if it were a title match.

“Min-Minccino!” Something resembling a chinchilla was making some punching motions as it looked towards Makuhita. As if it were his personal trainer or something.

“Maku,” Makuhita took comfort in whatever the chinchilla said and started taking a few steps back and taking up a defensive stance. And just before his head snapped forward, his fist, as well as his entire arm, turned into solid steel.

In an instant, Makuhita vanished from his spot, leaving only a small cloud of dust where he was previously. Next, the tree violently detached from its roots as a sonic boom resounded across the biodome. Directly in front of it stood Makuhita with its arm striking the tree.

Finally, in speeds somewhat similar to what Makuhita had earlier, the trunk of the tree was sent flying towards a miniature mountain. And with several more snapping sounds, the tree shattered like glass against the rock, leaving only chunks of a trunk and dozens of loose branches tumbling to the ground.

“...” The entire biodome stood silent before a number of Pokémon suddenly broke into cheers and applause with Makuhita being at the center of it.

“So it seems that Makuhita’s mastered Bullet Punch. Impressive.” The Professor stood up straight.

“I’ll say,” I looked over towards the tree where underneath it a few Pokémon were admiring Makuhita’s handywork. One of which being that beaver who was now in tears over the splintered wood. “How did he even do that?”

The tree was in a billion pieces, and only some of them were still moving. But still, it should’ve been impossible to send a tree flying like that. Not even Applejack or Big Mac could hit a tree that hard. Although they were at least able to keep the tree from shaking. Afterwards...?

Trees don’t shake…

“Geo…” Splinters and mulch started to make their way down the mountain as one of the rocks on top began moving on its own. Next, a set of eyes opened up on the front as two rocks on either side rose up, revealing that the rock had arms connected to it.

Meanwhile, I was just standing there watching the magic rock float in the air with a look of complete confusion and fear.

"Geo! Geodude?!" The Rock pointed down at the chunk of tree that had fallen onto him as he started glaring at every Pokémon in the area before finally settling his gaze down on the only Pokémon standing near the shattered tree stump, Makuhita.

"M-Maku..." He gave an awkward wave and took a few steps back as the rock began to shake in frustration.

"Geo...Dude! Geo-Geodude!" The rock reached down towards the rock bed with his arms and, without warning, started throwing rock after rock towards Makuhita.

Makuhita instantly ducked out of the way of the first one and jumped again as the second one came right after. And as the third one came flying Makuhita tried jumping higher up to get a greater distance in one bound. However, as Makuhita did that, Geodude started chucking more rocks while Makuhita was airborne, resulting in rocks landing everywhere throughout the room.

One slammed into the blue crocodile’s back, launching him back into the water and snapping him out of his daze. Another slammed into a tree and down fell a white ape-like Pokémon with a tuft of red hair and a ribbon on the top of its head.

Finally, the third rock that went wide made its way in our direction. I was lucky enough to spot it coming since Professor Sycamore was concerned about all the Pokémon running for cover. So acting quick, I tackled the professor to the ground just as the rock flew right where his head was previously.

The both of us looked behind us and watched as the rock slammed into a small red glass box with a hose folded up inside. “That was too close!” Professor Sycamore took the chance to stand back up and help me back up to my own feet. “Thank you Spike.”

“Yeah…” I turned back towards the hose. “No problem…”

“Eev! Eevee!" We looked back up to see a small set of Pokémon all looking up towards the rock with a glare. The Pokémon in the center looking like an Eevee with several small patches of fur missing entirely as well as a few scars here and there.

“Piplup Piplup!” The penguin from earlier started calling out from the stream as it helped pull out the crocodile.

“Gee…” The rock lowered his next piece of ammunition as it looked around the room at his handy work. And the place looked like the makings of a battlefield. Rocks were starting to litter the clearing, a few branches had fallen off their trees, some broken glass along the walls of the biodome, and finally all the Pokémon that were peeking out of their hiding places. Makuhita being the only Pokémon in the center of the clearing.

“Please Geodude,” The professor took this chance to step forward. “Let’s just calm down and take a minute to explain what was going—”

“Viiiiiiggggg..." Every Pokémon, as well as the professor, flinched as a growl emitted from behind them. And slowly, all of them began to turn all at once to see that ape-like Pokémon practically shaking with fury as it was holding the same rock that was used to knock it out of the tree.

“Viiiiiigooooo..." Slowly, she began to raise the rock behind her, staring at the living rock ahead of her.

“Wait, Vigoroth, please don’t!” Professor Sycamore took a single step forward and that was all he was able to get before the Vigoroth lost it.

“Vigorrrrrrr!” The professor and all the Pokémon ahead all dove out of the way as she launched the rock at speeds triple that of what the rock was throwing them at. The rock noticed that, thankfully, and flew out of the way as the rock whizzed by and continued straight towards the biodome walls. All of which were, sadly enough, windows.

The rock smashed entirely through the window and echoed throughout the dome, startling everyone. All except for Vigoroth, who was jumping and yelling its name towards the rock.

...Dusk…

“Vig?” Vigoroth stopped its rampage and looked around it, unable to discern where the voice had come from. However, anyone that was watching Vigoroth could see the dark figure appearing behind her in the shade of the tree they were standing under.

Dusk...SKULL!

The Duskull went up above the Vigoroth and charged directly down through Vigoroth’s body and into the ground, causing it to shake and shiver with complete fear.

“Vig...Vigor…” With all of its anger and frustration gone, Vigoroth fell to her knees and continued to shake without any resistance.

“Geo. Dude…” Geodude gave a nod towards Vigoroth with a smug grin before scanning the area for Makuhita. It looked around the trees, past the river, and around the base of the small mountain before finally a snap of a tree branch earned the rock’s attention.

He flipped around and cocked his throwing arm as he spotted Makuhita trying to tiptoe away while crossing a number of wooden bits of the destroyed tree. Once Makuhita saw that Geodude spotted him, he gave another shy wave before diving out of the way of the rock, as well as a second, before making a run for it.

“H-Hey!” However, as Geodude pulled back his arm with a third rock, it looked over his shoulder to see me with the hose I had pulled out. It had a nozzle on it and from the few times I squeezed the trigger it looked like it would go pretty far. From what I could tell, and hope, it could reach far enough to spray Geodude from where I was standing.

To tell the truth, I had no idea whether this hose was going to help with anything. I only had what the Professor told me about “Pokémon Types.” Some of them were kind of confusing and I couldn’t remember all of them, but one of the ones that I did remember was that water was good against rock.

“Geo…” It started to glare at me, but made no movement to throw another rock at anyone.

“Uh,” I stiffened up a bit and aimed the nozzle towards his face like a water gun. “P-Put the rock down! If you don’t then...I-I’ll use this!” I didn’t sound at all sure of what I was doing. Besides, this Pokémon got up from a tree hitting him in the face and had a rock the size of my head in his grip. Meanwhile I was holding a hose that was a little stronger than a water gun. Already I was starting to regret this decision.

“Gee…Geo!” With a yell he turned around to pull back his throwing arm towards me, forcing me to flinch and pull the trigger by accident. Before I could try to stop the blast, Geodude was drenched in water. What resulted was a flailing and enraged Pokémon dropping the rock from his hands and back onto the small rock pile under him. He didn’t look hurt, thank Celestia for that, but he wasn’t happy either.

By the time I moved the nozzle away, Geodude floated there soaked to the core. That didn’t slow him down in the slightest, much to my dismay, as he picked up two more rocks and flung them forward towards me in a mad fury.

I froze in place before shuffling from one direction to another to try and find a way to run, but I didn’t have time as the rocks closed in like large baseballs.

However, just as the rocks were about to strike, a familiar bundle of leaves planted itself in the crossfire and tilted forwards as the rocks suddenly impacted some kind of see-through forcefield and fell to the ground harmlessly.

“Woah...T-Thank you!” I looked down and saw that same Pokémon that got knocked out of the tree earlier, who gave me a friendly smile and the word “Burmy” before turning his attention back towards the forcefield.

“Geo...Dude! Dude! Dude!” One after another, Geodude kept launching more rocks towards the shield, not even for either of us anymore as he just kept firing a volley of rocks.

Still, as each rock hit fell away from the shield, I could see the light getting fainter and the Pokémon that was keeping it up looked as if he were flinching from each hit. Burmy wouldn’t last too long against Geodude.

I looked back up and saw Geodude angrily chucking rocks without even looking at them. That was his downfall though as the looser rocks underneath him finally began to disappear. So after three or four more throws, his hand clutched one last rock, only for him to find that it was jammed under some of the other rocks around him.

It was the only chance I could think of. “Barn—I mean—Burmy, take the shield down!” I could only here a small mutter with his nod as the shield went down and I picked the hose back up to point it towards Geodude who had finally pried the rock from the ground.

“Hey! Hey!” He locked eyes with me as the rock stayed in his hand for a second time now. “Put. The rock. Down.”

“Geo…” I could see his hand tighten its grip as the rock let out a dry crack. It took all the strength I had not to flinch.

“P-Put the rock down and no pony gets soaked.” Slowly, I took a step forward and curled my fingers around the trigger of the nozzle. When I didn’t see him go to throw the rock I continued. “Come on, put the rock down. All the Pokémon here just want you to calm down. R-Right guys?” I tried looking over towards the Burmy behind me, who called out in agreement.

“Lup.” Piplup stood from one of the nearby logs, one that wasn’t knocked to the ground from all the fighting before, and put its arms on its hips.

“V...V-V-V-Vigor…” From the ground, still trying to recover from the Duskull scare, Vigoroth tried to step to her feet with a defeated look.

“Gee,” Slowly, Geodude looked around and saw most of the Pokémon staring him down. The ones that weren’t looking towards him were helping whatever Pokémon were recovering from the flying rocks. So with a sigh, he nodded. “Dude.” Without any further argument, Geodude dropped the rock.

As he looked back at me from the corner of his eye, I smiled and dropped the hose. “See? No rocks, no water.”

Off to the side I saw the professor petting the sobbing beaver Pokémon before focusing his attention on the broken window of the biodome. “And no Makuhita.”

“What?!” I looked over to spot Makuhita duck out of the biodome and to the left. Sadly as he ducked off to the side, I saw one of the Eevee jump through the broken window as well and take off in the opposite direction. It was the one Eevee that came out when Geodude was angry. The one with several marks and patches of missing fur on its neck “Another one got out too!”

“That’s not good! There’s no telling what that Eevee will do in the city!” Before any other Pokémon got anywhere near the window, Garchomp stood guard. As he did that, Sycamore turned towards me. “Spike, I need you’re help. Do you think you can try to find Makuhita for me while I catch Eevee?”

“Wait, me?! But I don’t know anything about this town!” I tried looking around for one of the other lab assistants around here, but no luck. It was just us and the Pokémon.

“Well, neither does Makuhita, he’s going on instinct. If that’s the case then it might be best that someone unfamiliar to Lumiose goes after him.” Quickly, he started heading for the broken window to follow the same way the Eevee and Makuhita left. “After you find him, meet me at Prism Tower! It’s the large tower in the center of Lumiose, you can’t miss it! Good luck! And thank you!” And with that, he started heading out towards the right.

I gave one last look around the room and slumped a little as there was still no lab assistants coming into the room. So, carefully as to not get cut on the glass, I got through the window and looked down the road.

“Okay, I guess I’ll go this way then,” Anxious, I turned around to see most of the Pokémon looking back towards. “Well, wish me luck everypon...Every Pokémon?”

I shook the idea away and tried to refocus. “And, uh, Geodude? Please don’t throw anymore rocks.” I saw him cross his arms and huff before I turned to run down the road.

“Dude…” He looked off to the side before spotting a small ground of rocky terrain that was in the sun and floated over, trying its best to ignore the looks that the others were giving him.

Max’s POV

As we finally cleared the thick crowds of the street, both Kirlia and I stopped to catch our breath. It may have looked pathetic to anyone that we passed, but once Harley and his Cacturne B-lined it towards us, we ended May’s call and made a run for it.

We lost him at one point, but just a few minutes later we spotted him trying to sneak up on us. Thankfully, we had seen several points of Lumiose for Kirlia to simply Teleport us away from him.

“So...Did we lose him?” I tried my best to look as casual as possible, but it was hard considering I was about to double over.

“I think s_. _ can’t sense a__on_ _ith an enra__d aura anymo__…” Even with her speaking telepathically, I could hear breaks in her thoughts. She was even more exhausted than I was.

Picking up on my confusion, she took a second to compose herself. “Sorry. I keep forgetting that it takes almost all my focus to keep a conversation.” Suddenly, she perked up and turned towards the center of the plaza where Prism Tower stood tall. “That’s weird. I’m sensing a few people and Pokémon with aggravation.”

“Like Harley’s?”

“Not even close,” She waved a hand as if to fan away the idea. “But they’re still upset about something.”

“Upset, huh?” Well if it was something serious then it might be a good idea that we look out for it. “Let’s check it out.” Kirlia nodded as she started to walk forward with her eyes closed and focused on the group. Within minutes we weaved our way through a smaller crowd and found ourselves reaching the center of the city.

After another minute of rounding the building, I could see a small group of other Pokémon Trainers about my age, with one or two of them being a few years older. However, aside from most of them being angry in one way or another, they looked injured for some reason. Not only that, but it looked like all of them were electrified just as much as their Pokémon.

“Um, excuse us,” As we closed in, Kirlia opened her eyes and stopped searching for emotions around us. “What happened here?”

“The Gym Leader,” One of them, one of the younger ones of the group, answered with a mix of anger and disappointment. “We each went in there and wanted a battle, but when we told him we didn’t have four badges, he kicked us out. Painfully,” He said as his Pokémon, one I had never seen before, gave out a small whimper as static ran across its fur.

“I had enough badges though,” One of the two older trainers raised his hand slightly. He then gestured to the girl besides him. “As did Ashley here. We were able to walk in and all we saw was this guy dressed up as a robot. Then, after he beat us, he sent us out of the gym through the trapdoor.”

“Trapdoor?” Kirlia and I shared a look before looking back towards the trainer. “That sounds a little extreme, don’t you think?”

“What’s even more extreme is that it leads out through the center of that emblem.” Ashley pointed towards the emblem that resembled a Pokéball in the shape of a lightning bolt. “Everyone who gets kicked out goes flying outta there and straight to the ground. Luckily, someone was nice enough to leave this cushion for everyone to land on.”

As she kept pointing, the emblem suddenly opened up with the echo of some other trainer yelling in shock. Although before the trainer flew out, an Aron was sent out of the emblem and fell like a rock, no pun intended, towards the cushion. Before any of us could duck, the cushion gave out a loud pop as Aron sit there, stunned from the fall, but otherwise completely unharmed.

“AHHHHHHHHH!” Next the trainer came tumbling out, screaming as he fell towards the deflated cushion.

“Kirlia! Psychic! Quick!”

Instantly, Kirlia’s eyes glowed bright blue as the falling trainer was brought to a complete stop in mid-air, surrounded in the same blue aura. He started to catch his breath and prepared to land on his feet as the ground got closer to him.

“Good Call.” Kirlia’s voice was now coming from my mind instead of being projected like before. I guess she didn’t want the others to hear her speak.

“Okay…” Once the aura dissipated, he crouched down to pet his Aron that had just found its way out of the cushion’s remains. “That is the absolute last time that we try to take on that gym!” After seeing Aron look back at him worriedly, the trainer took out a Pokéball. “Come on Aron. Let’s get you to a Pokémon Center.”

“Ar,” Aron looked confused, but complied anyway. Then with Aron in his Pokéball, the trainer hurried off towards a Center as fast as he could.

“Wait, Wallace! I’m pretty sure Aron’s not…” One of the older trainers, I think her name was Ashley, sighed. “Come on Dave, let’s go after him. Besides, our Pokémon actually do need to go to the Pokémon Center. Good luck, man.” She gave me and Kirlia a quick wave before she and the other trainer started walking towards the Center.

“Kirlia? Let’s try and see what’s going on with the gym leader ourselves.” It didn’t take long for me to spot the entrance. “Someone needs to tell this leader that what he’s doing isn’t right.”

“I agree. It’s one thing to be a tough leader, but it’s another thing altogether to literally throw out your competitors.” The only thing that those around us could see from Kirlia was a nod. “The trainers and Pokémon said that they fell through the trapdoor. If that’s the case, there must be an elevator that leads up.”

“Good point. Let’s hope it’s still active.” Quickly, we started to walk forward towards the entrance as the remaining trainers simply watched as they were checking on their Pokémon that had fallen through with them.

Author's Note

Alright! Well, this chapter took a long time to make! That said, I'm sorry for the wait. I had some stuff regarding college and moving recently so I haven't been working on stories nearly as much. Not to mention I just got Pokémon Moon...

In fact, some of you guys might've seen the small mention of Pokémon Moon in the chapter. With this new gen, I finally have a few blanks filled in.

Some of you guys might have also mentioned that there were a select few Pokémon in the Biodome. As I said before, the QotCs I put in this section will make the difference here.

That said, allow me to say one more thing before the Question of this Chapter; for those that find this story even after a few chapters have been posted, please respond to the questions if you want to! I always write them down off to the side and I like to incorporate them into the chapter as much as I can! So that said, let me give you guys the QotC of this chapter!

QotC

Since I've been rambling a bit for this Author's Notes, I'll make this one short. It'll be aimed specifically towards those that like the show, but fans of the game can answer too.

What human character do you like from the Pokémon Series?

And for this question, you can't answer with a Pokémon. And while there are restrictions, don't put Ash either. That'd be too obvious. Still, I hope that doesn't bother too many of you guys. Until then, see you guys whenever the next chapter comes!

It won't be too long of a wait either! I swear.

-Zeke

Cacturne of Events (Episode 1)

Max’s POV

“Well, either the gym leader’s electric-type based, or they’re obsessed with technology,” As we exited the elevator, Kirlia began to project her voice once again. “Either way, this is unsettling.”

“Yeah. You’d think that the room would be a bit more well lit.” While the pathway was lit up well enough for someone to walk on, the rest of the room didn’t have too many lights. In fact, most of the light from this room was due to the static electricity that was coursing through the glass columns alongside the pathway.

“It’s not just that.” Kirlia started to look around suspiciously. “I can’t sense anyone’s emotions around here. It’s almost as though this tower is abandoned.”

“Abandoned? But that’s impossible, some of those trainers said that they saw the gym leader. So he’s gotta be somewhere around here, right?” It took only a few more steps as we came up to a metal door and a large monitor hanging over it. As we stopped and listened to the hum of electricity, the monitor booted up and lit up with the familiar Pokélightning emblem rotating on the screen.

“Welcome to the Lumiose Gym.”

“Oh, uh, hi there.” I tried looking around for a camera that was watching us, but with the dim lights I couldn’t see anything so decided to keep watching the screen. He probably had some kind of speaker somewhere near the screen anyways. “You’re the gym leader, right? My name is Max and I was hoping that maybe I could talk to you about something.”

“Max, I’m sure that something’s wrong. I can’t sense anyone in this entire tower.” Her eyes were glowing blue again as her voice was filled with caution. On average, she could sense emotions about twenty feet away from her without having to focus. However, she could extend the range if she wanted to look for someone farther away.

“How many badges do you have?” The voice ignored my questions. This was getting a little too strange.

“Oh, well, we just got to the Kalos Region,” I took this chance to back up a step or two, as did Kirlia. “So we don’t have any badges yet. But if I need a certain amount to fight, that’s fine, I can come back. I just wanted to—”

“You have none?!” The voice suddenly rang out as if it had some emotion to it. However, Kirlia didn’t look at all responsive to any spike of emotion. If this wasn’t a real person than it seemed pretty realistic. “Not a single gym badge?! In order to challenge the Lumiose Gym, you must have accumulated at least four gym badges!” Well then, I guess it’s safe to say that this is a recording.

Before I could try to say anything in response, two active tesla coils were lowered towards us from the upper corners before the static began to grow more wild and more menacing. “Please leave immediately!”

This was a pre-recorded message asking us to leave with preset tesla coils already charging up. It wasn’t giving us a warning, it was some command. There was no escaping the coils in time and now chance to reason with the voice. Not without some kind of deactivation code.

“Kirlia, use Protect!” She instantly dashed forward and held out her hands, forming a small green dome of energy on all sides of us. Good thing too, because as the two tesla coils began to unleash all electricity it was holding, the other machines started to divert more electricity from behind us.

“Good call,” Kirlia projected. Sadly, just as the coils started to retract, the floor underneath us slide out from under us. With no ground below us, Kirlia lost her focus on the shield and we both fell through.

“Kirl, Kirlia!” With her focus gone, I couldn’t understand her anymore as we kept sliding left and right through several vents. Still, I managed to find her hand and held onto her as I saw a light open up ahead of us.

Not a second later, both of us were shot out from the Pokélightning emblem and sent flying towards the cushion below us. However, the cushion was still destroyed.

I gripped Kirlia’s hand as tight as I could. “Kirlia! Teleport!” As we reached the arc of our throw, Kirlia’s eyes brightened up with a bright blue aura and in an instant we appeared only a foot or two above the ground. With the shorter distance, we were safer, but not done.

Teleport is better done whenever you’re standing still. If you’re running or falling, the momentum carries with you. That in mind, I quickly brought my feet forward and managed to stumble to the ground without falling flat on my face.

“KIRL!” From beside me, however, I could see Kirlia behind me, clutching her leg and wincing as she tried to put any kind of pressure on it.

“Kirlia, what happened?!” I got up as fast as I could and ran over to pick her up. Still, she was seizing her leg in pain.

“A__kle. __rts. H__t, hu__, ___!” Without realizing it, she transmitted her emotions to me as she tried to explain it. I obviously couldn’t read emotions anywhere near as well as she could, but I was able to read this one. Pain.

It probably didn’t hurt nearly as much as her ability was transmitting, but right now the emotions were so strong I could almost feel her pain myself. It took all the strength I had not to fall to the ground myself.

“S-S__ry,” The emotions faded faster than they came, but my head was still aching a little. “Can we tr_ to get to the Pokém__ Ce_ter?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you there as soon as I can.” I reached in towards my side pocket and pulled out a Pokéball. “I know that you don’t like it, but let’s have you rest up for now. That way you won’t get hurt on the way to the Center.” Most of the time she was like Ash’s Pikachu. She liked to walk around with me outside her Pokéball to see the world herself. Of course, if she was hurt or the weather was too bad then she would prefer to be in her Pokéball.

“...Okay…” She let go of her leg and reached out to touch the button on the Pokéball. Although just as she was about to press it, I saw her start to shudder. “Oh no…”

“What?” She drew back from the Pokéball and looked over my shoulder. "Is something wrong?"

"He's here."

"He's..." All of a sudden the crowds around us started to quiet down until there was nothing but whispers. Finally, as I turned to look where Kirlia was staring, I could see a group of people making their way through the crowd with sets of camera equipment set to record. And at the front of them all was a condescending grin wrapped in a Pokémon costume.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the “Princess of Hoenn’s” little brother, Max.” The cameramen stopped just in front of the crowd and were recording both Harley and us.

“Oh, why now…” It was under my breath, but my face explained it even louder. So doing my best to keep a neutral frown, I turned to face him and only him. It was almost impossible ignoring the spectators at the Pokémon League. Compared to that, the small crowd and few cameras were nothing. “What do you want Harley?”

“Simple. I want to battle. When I heard that my dear rival’s brother had come to Kalos to hide his shame from his horrible lose back in Hoenn, I wanted to show everyone that it wasn’t just some stroke of bad luck.” It was almost painful how obvious he was playing up for the camera, but I wasn’t in a place to call him on it.

“I’m not battling you Harley,” I took a second to adjust how I was carrying Kirlia before I went on. “Kirlia just got hurt and I need to get her to the Pokémon Center.” I could see the red roof from just behind him. Besides, I wasn’t about to grant Harley his fifteen minutes of fame.

“Cact-Cacturne, turne, turne.” While Harley was thinking of just how to egg me on, Cacturne stood there staring at Kirlia, chuckling to himself.

“Max. Put me down.” I looked down only to see Kirlia looking up at me with a determined look on her face.

“Kirlia, I can’t put you through this battle right now. If your ankle gets any worse than I don’t know what might hap—”

“Max, that living cactus just called me frail. There is no way that I’m letting him get away with that. Besides, a twisted ankle isn’t going to stop me. I’ll just kick his butt with the other leg.” With each word I could hear her calm demeanor slipping.

“Man. However he said it, it must’ve really ticked you off, huh?” I began to slowly let her down as she balanced herself on her good leg.

“Well, that was just the straw that broke the Camerupt’s back. What I’m more concerned about it the cameras. If Blaziken ever hears about how I was too injured to fight, I’ll never hear the end of it from him.”

Why am I not surprised? With a sigh, I looked back up to match Harley’s smug grin. He had my conversation and that was all it took to know that Kirlia had changed my mind. Thankfully, the whole time I was talking with Kirlia, she had been taking whatever she was telling me and verbalizing it as well. If she didn’t do that then people might think that I was a crazy person.

Harley placed a hand on his hip. “So I take it that you’ve changed your mind?” His voice sounded so grating at times. Honestly, how does a guy that dresses in spiked pajamas become the bully?

“Yeah, we’ll battle you Harley. As long as you don’t cheat like you do in your contests.” Seeing that this was going to be shown on TV, I know that Mom was going to be mad at me for stooping that low. Still, it’s only fair since he used the Hoenn League on me.

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about, you little liar!” He quickly tried to right himself before the camera landed on him. Too bad it wasn’t working. “Now then; a one on one battle seems long enough to prove your lack of talent.”

I grinned at him. “Fine by me! I only need Kirlia anyways!” That was a bold-faced lie, however. There was no way I’d let her go through a battle if there was any other way. Sadly, she was the only Pokémon I had with me.

I just hope that this won’t come back to bite us.

Spike’s POV

“Makuhita! Makuhita are you there?!”

I ran across what had to be the fourth overpass in this town and down another road of nothing but houses. None of them looked all too interesting, nor did I think that Makuhita would just run into some random house. At least I don’t think that he would.

So without a reason to stop, I turned the corner and found myself on one of the main roads. This one was also big enough for these weird metal carriages to pass by in the middle so I made sure to stay on the sidewalks.

As I turned to my left I saw a man walking some well pampered dog, Pokémon, thing towards my direction. “Excuse me,” Both of them looked towards me. “Have you seen a Pokémon called Makuhita? About this tall, kind of big, boxing gloves for hands?”

“No, I don’t think so, sorry. Is it your Pokémon?”

“Uh, no, not really. It’s...Well, I’m pretty sure he said that it belonged to somepon—err—someone named Professor Kuku? Cocoa?” It was only the fourth professor I had heard of today, why was I blanking out on his name?

“Oh, it belongs to the professor?” The man paused for a second. “Would you consider him to be more of a wild Pokémon then?”

“Uh...Sure?” I shrugged.

“Well if it’s a wild Pokémon then you might wanna try the Shuckle Shack. It’s the red and yellow noodle stand just down the street and to the left. You can’t miss it. Trust me...” He pointed behind him for emphasis.

“Uh, o-okay, thanks!” I took off running again down the street, giving every person and Pokémon a wide berth as I kept going. And as I passed them I tried to note every single Pokémon that I passed. Most of them looked somewhat like animals that you’d find back in Equestria, but a few of them I couldn’t begin to compare to anything.

Finally, after only half a minute or so of running, I rounded the corner and immediately spotted the most out of place store on the block. Every other building there looked the same as most of the buildings in this town save for a few that were only two stories tall. However, this building was even smaller than them.

Instead of looking like a rectangular building, it was a curved, red dome-shaped building with these odd yellow tentacles folded along the sides and made into benches with tables set up in front of them. Towards the top of the dome I could see two holes, one on each side, towards the top with the rims of each hole painted white. Not only that, but the holes had a very small amount of steam emitting from them.

Finally, there was the entrance. As if the entire building didn’t look distinguishing enough from the color and shape, there was one last white rimmed hole towards the front of the building. Only this one had a yellow, noodle-like, head sticking out of it with only a black line for a mouth and two thin vertical eyes looking off in the distance. In the head’s mouth, however, was a very simple yet noticeable wooden sign that read only:

Shuckle

Shack

I rubbed my eyes to see if it would go away, but sadly that didn’t work. What made it even more confusing is that a few of the people on this street didn’t even make any movement to pay attention to it. The only thing I could really notice is that a majority of the people on this street were on the opposite side of the road from this “noodle stand.”

As I kept staring, the only thing that had managed to snap me back to reality was the twitch of my nose. For some reason I wasn’t even near the building and yet I could smell the amazing aroma of broth from the place.

“I wonder how the girls would respond to this place...” The thought alone almost made me laugh. Fluttershy would be terrified, Rarity would faint from the atmosphere, Pinkie would be drooling from the smell. Honestly, the place looked like it would get a reaction out of anyone.

Once I made my way over there, I was able to look through the windows of the restaurant. Although instead of having anyone in there, all I could spot was a lady in a blue vest stepping out of the store and messing with some sort of weird blue and white notepad looking thing.

Upon looking up, she finally spotted me. “Oh, Hey Spike! What are you doing here?”

After a few seconds I realized that it was that woman from this morning. “I’m trying to find a Pokémon called Makuhita. One of the windows in Professor Sycamore’s lab broke and he was one the two that ran off.”

“A Makuhita? Hold on a second,” She walked forward a few more steps, sitting against some weird metal bike. Next she started tapping and sliding her fingers back and forth on the notepad. Finally, she pressed some kind of white button towards the bottom, making some weird blue aura appear out of the notepad.

“Woah!” I took the chance to take a step towards her and the thing. “I thought there wasn’t any magic here!”

“Uh...What?” She couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “It’s not magic.”

“I-It’s not?” Seeing her cock an eyebrow at me, I cleared my throat. “I mean, I knew that.” I crossed my arms and looked back towards the weird blue aura. “So what is it then?”

“It’s called a Pokémon Identifier. PokéID for short. It’s made to help those of us keeping the peace identify Pokémon and come up with ways to safely take care of any situation involving them. Of course there’s a criminal database in here too, but it’s not used all too often.” As she kept explaining it I saw her start to tap the semi-reflective part of the PokéID with the aura reacting each time.

“It’s not that new either,” She continued. “It came out a few months ago and it uses the same kind of technology that a Holo Caster uses. But since you’re working as Professor Sycamore’s assistant, I’m guessing you’ve already heard about the Holo Caster and Lysandre Labs, huh?”

“Not really,” I shook my head. “I’m his assistant, but I just got here a little while ago. I’m from...Sinnoh.” I didn’t sound all that believable, but thankfully she was still tapping on the PokéID. Between some of what Professor Sycamore was trying to teach me about Pokémon, he thought it would be a good idea if we came up with a story to tell people.

“Well, in that case, watch this,” With one more button press all the symbols and small pictures from the aura disappeared and were replaced with writing and graphs that only made my head spin. The only part of it I could recognize was the picture of Makuhita in the center of it.

“Makuhita. The Guts Pokémon.” The PokéID announced. “This Pokémon stands at an average of three feet and three inches tall and weighs around one-hundred and ninety pounds. For small towns near forests and caves, a wild Makuhita sighting is not uncommon. However, for towns far from forests or for most larger cities in general, Makuhita sightings are quite rare. They are not normally aggressive and do not try to become a threat to others unless challenged. However, due to their large diet and harsh training regimen, there threat level is Above Average.”

“Wow! That’s definitely better than a book!” She simply smiled at that as she started to tap on the PokéID again.

“Couldn’t agree more,” I watched as a small file symbol showed up with the picture of Makuhita going into it at the same time she slid her finger across the weird do-dad. “Still, you can usually tell which Pokémon are dangerous or not. Either way, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a Pokémon like this. Provided no one catches him first.”

As the aura faded back into the PokéID, she put it in some kind of holder strapped to her belt and turned towards me. “And luckily for you I’m looking for him too.”

“You are?” She nodded. “Why?” Within moments, her smile disappeared and her shoulders slouched a bit.

“Well, apparently Professor Sycamore’s Makuhita found his way here not too long ago,” She gestured towards the noodle place behind her with a nod of her head. “From what I can guess, he was probably drawn to the smell of the broth and came in to starting eating the first bowl of noodles he saw which was supposed to go to a customer. Long story short, things got out of hand and before I could get here in time, the owner ended up chasing him out of here himself.” She gave me a sad smile. “Aside from the incident regarding you and that Gastly, you could say that today’s been pretty slow.”

“Yeah, I wish.” With a sigh, I looked back in the restaurant. All I could see in there was a few of the Pokémon that the building was designed after making their way around the shop, helping the owner clean up the knocked over tables. “So where do you think he went?”

“Well, the owner said that Makuhita left the store and made a left so if I had to guess than I’d say that he’s almost at Prism Tower by now.” To emphasize her point, she pointed towards the tower in the distance.

“Oh great,” I deadpanned. “How am I supposed to catch up with him now?” I turned back towards the woman just in time to catch a blue helmet.

“Easy,” With a twist of her wrist, she turned the handle on the bike, causing it to give out a small roar. She then gestured to the back of the bike as it continued to hum. “Get on.”

I looked back down towards the helmet and then back towards the tower. It definitely wasn’t how I wanted to get there, but it was the only option I could think of. “Okay then,” Reluctantly, I put the helmet on, strapped it together, and climbed on the back of the bike.

Before I could even tell her I was ready, the bike suddenly blasted forwards with me holding onto dear life in the back and screaming like a foal.

Max’s POV

After Harley and I had gotten to our respectful sides of the field, the crowds were still in the process of clearing while at the same time getting bigger. Thankfully there were still lines on the cement for the Pokémon field, so people knew just how far back to get.

“You know Max,” From the other side of the field I saw Harley standing there with his hand resting on his hip. His experience as a Coordinator made being on camera easy for him. “You could just admit your faults right now and I’ll call it even!”

“Call what even? You’re the one that keeps pestering me and my sister!” I saw one of the two cameras focus in towards me, nearly making me cringe. Whether it was two cameras or two hundred, I was not cut out for TV.

“Pestering?! Why you little twerp!” Almost all in an instant he went from a walking cucumber to a steaming vegetable. And with a huff, he turned up his nose. “And to think I offered you a way out.”

“Huh, twerp...That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.” I couldn’t help but smile at the memories, only making Harley even angrier.

“Alright then, if both sides are ready!” Suddenly, both of our attentions were brought towards a man in overalls with a light green flat cap stood of to the side of the field. “My name is Meyer and I’ll be the ref for this battle! So, as stated before, this will be a one on one Pokémon battle between Max with his Pokémon Kirlia and Harley with his Cacturne!”

As he finished introducing him, I could hear what sounded like several dozen girls cheering Harley’s name with Harley simply giving out some “polite” waves in return.

“Max? Was Harley always this popular?” Kirlia’s voice rang out in my mind as she stood directly ahead of me. Thankfully, Kirlia has perfect balance, so her leg wasn’t really an issue right now.

I couldn’t respond to her without speaking out loud, but she had a good point. Harley was a good Pokémon Coordinator, as much as I hated to admit it, but he wasn’t really so good as to warrant a fan club or anything.

“So, if both sides are ready,” As Meyer brought all attention back on him, any sign of Kirlia speaking to me faded out. That was the biggest downside with her speaking telepathically. She needed plenty of focus to do it. It wasn’t exhausting, but it just wasn’t possible if she were in a battle.

“Let the battle begin!”

From across the field I could spot Harley with a smug grin. “Alrighty Cacturne! Let’s end this quick with a Feint Attack!”

With little warning, Cacturne began to rush forward at an alarming rate towards Kirlia while keeping low to the ground.

“That’s what you think! Kirlia, use protect!” Waiting until he was directly in front of her, Kirlia rose up a single arm before a near-invisible force field formed around her. Just in time to as Cacturne brought up one of its knees with the intent to smash into Kirlia’s side.

Instead, the force field caught the blow, the strength rippling across the shield. Harley gave out a growl as Cacturne tried to jump back.

Too bad he wasn’t about to get far. “Kirlia! Hidden Power!”

Immediately protect faded odd as Kirlia held out both arms, one on each side, and focused as pure energy began to collect in her palms.

“Kirl!” Her attention snapped up towards the still suspended Cacturne as she brought both arms forward, forcing the two balls of energy to form into one. What resulted was a strong blast of water directly to Cacturne’s face, redirecting him further back away than what he initially intended.

However, as Cacturne slid to a stop, all the water remaining on him suddenly faded away and was instead replaced with a light green aura. And as the green light faded, Harley’s grin grew.

“Well thanks, Maxie! How’d you know we were feeling thirsty?!” Both he and his Cacturne were laughing at us whereas we were both gritting our teeth in anger. I forgot that Cacturne had the ability Water Absorb.

As I narrowed my eyes, I spotted a small part of the ground under Cacturne was now a puddle of water. Perfect!

“Well if you like that so much, than how about this! Kirlia, Charge Beam!”

“Kirl!” She brought her arms back in front of her and held her hands as if she were cradling a small sphere in her hands. It didn’t take long before I could see the sparks emitting from the small orb of lightning she created.

“Good, now aim for his feet!” Instantly, Harley and Cacturne looked down and spotted exactly what my plan was. Sadly it was too late as the orb instantly became an electric beam, shocking not only the puddle, but Cacturne at the same time.

“Oh no, Cacturne, hun!” instantly, all the water from the puddle was reduced to nothing as Cacturne was shaking off whatever static remained.

“Caaaac…” Slowly, I could see Cacturne eyeing Kirlia from under his hat. As he did, both Kirlia and I could see that whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t good.

“Err...I’ll show you! Cacturne! Use Bullet Seed!” He held out a hand in our direction, playing up the crowd as he went on. Meanwhile, his Cacturne’s smile began to grow a bit wider.

“Cac, turne-turne-turne-turne-turne!” With a small breath, he began shooting seed after seed with them first striking the ground and then slowly making its way towards Kirlia.

Instincts took over and Kirlia tried to take a step back, but there existed the problem. The moment her bad leg touched the ground she out a yelp and held her leg for comfort only for a steady stream of seeds to strike the same bad leg.

“No, Kirlia!” Suddenly, the seeds brought with them a small amount of steam, covering Kirlia in a kind of smokescreen. “Are you okay?!”

“If she is then she won’t be for long!” I looked back up to see Drew sucking up to the camera some more. With a small spin, he pointed down towards the smoke where Kirlia was sitting. “Cacturne, keep that Pokémon on the ground with Needle Arm!”

“WHAT?!” My hands clenched upon hearing his command. What was Harley doing, he can’t just attack Kirlia now! She might be unconscious already!

“Kirlia!” I regained my attention on the smoke, knowing that Cacturne was charging towards it from the other side. “If you can hear me then use Teleport, quick!”

“Caaaaaaaac…” From the other side of the smokescreen I could see Cacturne jumping up the smoke with every single thorn on its arm extended almost threefold, ready to skewer Kirlia. “Turne!”

It dove down, disappearing into the smoke before all of us could hear the loud crack of cement from the center of the arena.

“Ha!” Harley struck a pose in victory. “Game. Set. Match.”

I leaned back, letting out a sigh of relief that I didn’t realize I was holding in. “Check again Harley.”

“Huh?” His grin turned sour as he tried to get a clearer look inside the smoke that was finally beginning to subside. So far, everyone could see Cacturne’s silhouette, but they couldn’t tell much else.

For a few more moments the crowd was just as silent, trying their hardest to see what was in the smoke. The only noise that came from them was the sound of some kind of bike screeching to a stop.

“Any sign of him?”

“No! Check near the tower!”

Finally, the smoke began to clear and to everyone’s surprise the only thing they could see was Cacturne with one or two needles from his arm embedded into the ground. There were several cracks in the ground, but aside from that, there was no sight of Kirlia anywhere.

“Cac, turne! Turne!” Cacturne was looking around with a scowl, trying his hardest to pull his needles out of the ground.

“AHH! Cacturne!” Harley tried striking me down himself with a scowl of his own. “You little brat! You set us up!”

“Not yet, I haven’t! Kirlia, come on back!” Looking past the helpless Cacturne, Kirlia teleported right behind him with her eyes glowing with a faint blue aura. She was still crouched low to the ground, hugging her leg, but as far as she was concerned she was too angry to care.

“Cacturne, honey, get outta there quick!” Harley was clutching his arms in fear, worried about the position he was in now.

“Now so great when the tables are turned, huh?! Kirlia, use another charge beam!” Cacturne froze, looking up towards me with a mixture of fear and anger.

“Cacturne! Try to block it with—” Harley couldn’t get his command out in time as suddenly Kirlia shot the beam forward, striking into the center of Cacturne’s back.

Cacturne immediately convulsed as the electricity made its way around his body and as soon as the beam faded away, Cacturne fell to his knees with an heavy look to him. It was winded, but I knew that Kirlia wasn’t doing even worse than he was.

“Alright, that’s it! I’m done playing nice! Cacturne!” As Harley called for him, Cacturne snapped to attention. It gave one last scowl at me before finally busting out its arm. “Time to bring this charade to an end!”

You mean he’s not even tired?! I stood in shock as Cacturne slowly craned his head towards Kirlia, who was taking a moment to try and get back on her good leg only to fall to her knees once more.

I knew that this was a bad idea, I thought to myself. If this keeps up, Kirlia’s going to end up needing much more than an afternoon at the Pokémon Center.

“Now, hon, let’s show them once and for all who they're dealing with.” Harley hid his face under his hat as though to keep any more surprises from breaking his composure. “Poison Sting!”

“Turne,” Cacturne stretched out its arms towards Kirlia.

“There you are!”

“Maku?!”

“Kirlia, Double Team!” She looked back up towards me and upon seeing Cacturne, narrowed her eyes before quickly making one image after another, creating plenty of other targets for Cacturne to aim for.

“Cacturne,” Cacturne’s gaze narrowed in response as small needles of poison jutted out from both arms like sprinklers as he mowed down the entire set of Kirlia. Once most of them had faded, Cacturne finally struck the real Kirlia and continued to focus the rest of his Poison Sting on her alone.

“Kirlia?!” Instead of falling to her knees, she fell to her hands. She had reached her limit and even the referee could tell.

However, just before he could call the match, Harley smirked from under his hat. “You should’ve stayed with May, kiddo. Cacturne, time for the encore!”

“No, wait, stop!” The ref tried to call off the attack, but neither of them paid him any mind. Meanwhile, I had given up trying to call out to Kirlia and instead took the chance to run forward.

“Makuhita, slow down!” From the left I could see a Pokémon running out onto the field at the same time as me, although with the path it was going it was going to go somewhere between Kirlia and Cacturne.

“Not so fast!” Suddenly from the opposite side of the field a woman in blue stepped out of the crowd, holding out a hand towards the Pokémon and causing him to skid to a stop. Directly between Cacturne and Kirlia.

“Kirlia!” Kirlia called out towards the new Pokémon, earning its attention for a moment before it looked ahead and spotted the Cacturne about to unload poison.

“HITA!”

“Lookout!” Finally, a third person came running onto the field just as I managed to get halfway towards Cacturne. This time it was a kid about my age and right behind the Makuhita.

Sadly, all of this had happened so quickly that not even Cacturne could stop his own attack from going off. So with little choice left, the kid jumped in front of the stray Pokémon, taking the attack a point-blank range with nothing but his own arms to help block the shot.

All of us, Harley and myself, the crowd, and the cameras could only stand there and watch in horror as dozens of stingers struck every part of this kid, causing him to only recoil in pain with each hit.

To Cacturne’s credit, once he saw that what he was hitting was definitely not Kirlia, the Poison Sting ended as soon as it could, leaving the kid to slowly lower his arms with a painful hiss.

“H-Hita...?” The Pokémon behind the kid, who had braced for the attack himself, slowly looked up and saw that he was perfectly safe. Then, he noticed that the kid in front of him, shaking from what had just happened. “Maku?”

“Oww,” The kid looked over his shoulder with stiff movements and found the Pokémon behind him. “Uh,” He tried to look over the Pokémon. “Are you okay?”

“Maku maku.” The Pokémon nodded along, walking up next to him to look him over as well. “Hita?”

“Huh?” The Pokémon pointed towards the kid’s ripped up clothes to try and get the point across. “Oh, yeah, I’m...Fine?” It sounded as though he were unsure of the answer himself, but as he checked around his chest and arms he looked more confused than injured. “Huh. That’s weird. No needles.”

From behind him, Harley began to clear his throat, earning the kid’s attention. “Excuse me. I think you’re interrupting something!”

“Interrupting?” The kid took the chance to look around for the first time, seeing the group of people, the Kirlia on the ground, the cameramen, and finally the Cacturne standing directly in front of him.

“Gah!” Instantly, the kid jumped back, not daring to break eye contact with the Pokémon. “Dude, that’s creepy.”

“Cac!”

“WHAAAAAAT?!” Both Harley and Cacturne took double-takes at what he said. “Did you just call my darling Cacturne creepy?!” Harley’s tone went from whiny to high-pitched annoying as he glared holes into the back of this guy’s head.

Was he really not paying any attention to the battle?

“Uh...Darling? I dunno...” The kid looked over his shoulder towards the man, and within a second he spotted the clothes Harley was wearing. “Um, why are you dressed up in the same way that he is?”

From where I was I could see Harley losing it the more this kid kept asking questions, his eye twitching, his hands trying to make some kind of gestures while he kept stumbling over every syllable.

Meanwhile, I could spot the Pokémon that had run out here make its way over to Kirlia, offering a hand to help her back up. One that she gladly accepted.

“Thank you,” Kirlia’s telepathy went out to both the Pokémon as well as myself as she knew I was just as concerned about her if not moreso. Still, as she got up to her feet, she winced in pain from her leg being targeted during the battle.

“Maku,” The Pokémon picked up on her injury right away. “Makuhita?”

“No, it’s not from the battle. At least not initially. I twisted my ankle before they challenged us,” She then looked up towards Cacturne, who was going back and forth between the kid and Harley right now as their one-sided argument got even more heated. “Tall, dark, and pointy over there didn’t mind making it worse, however.”

“Hita?!” The Pokémon turned to glare down the Cacturne. “Makuhita, maku!” Cacturne stopped watching Harley by this point and had turned to look back towards the Pokémon with only a satisfied grin to give in return.

“Yes. It was pretty unfair,” Kirlia nodded along. “Then again, I would’ve beaten him if I was at my best.”

“Haven’t you heard of me before?!” Suddenly, all attention was brought back onto Harley. “The name’s Harley, shrimp! Harley Cassanote! The same Cassanote that became Top Coordinator in the Sinnoh Region!” Oh, if I haven’t heard that enough times.

My sister ended up taking second place to this guy and while she was hiding it pretty well, I knew that she was dying inside because of that. It was also probably why she took on Unova with Dawn. She knew for a fact that Harley wasn’t going to the same region.

“Nope,” The kid shook his head. “I’ve never heard of you.”

“GAH!” In that moment, Harley looked about ready to collapse. I made sure I wasn’t in the way of the cameras as that happened. “Why you…!”

Once he righted himself, he took a few steps forward, getting right up into the kid’s face and started talking just quiet enough where the cameras and crowd couldn’t hear him. “Now look here. I didn’t come here to be ridiculed by some young critic. Besides, you’re the amatuer trainer that barged onto the field with his hideous Pokémon.”

“MAKU?!” The kid’s Pokémon looked enraged, but thankfully Kirlia was able to calm him down before anything became of it.

As the kid stood there with Harley standing in his face, he started to glare back, finally realizing this was an argument. “Hey! I’m not the one that tried to shoot needles at a defenseless Pokémon!” He pointed towards both of them, so it was hard to tell whether he was talking about Kirlia or his own, especially from an outsider’s point of view. “Besides, if you didn’t wanna be critiqued so badly, than why are you in your pjs?”

“...” Harley’s jaw hung loose as he straightened his back, looking down on the kid thanks to his height advantage. “You little brat! I’ll have you know that my fashion sense is the best you will ever find!”

“Pfft, not a chance!” He just crossed his arms and glared Harley back down. “Anything Rarity makes is ten times better than your cactus clothes!”

From the left of me I could see a small group of girls give out a collective gasp of horror. This whole time they have been doing nothing but cheering Harley on and now they were glaring daggers through this kid.

“Fine then. How’s about you try and back up those claims then?” Cacturne took the chance to walk over beside his trainer. “Just one battle. Myself and my darling Cacturne versus you and your Pokémon over there. That should be more than enough to jog your memory of who I am.”

“My. My Pokémon?” He looked back towards his Pokémon who was trying to keep from swinging at both of the figures in green. “You mean the Makuhita?” And finally I have a name! I didn’t have a PokéDex with me so I couldn’t find out what his name was.

The kid looked back towards Harley. “I mean, he’s not really—” Before he could explain, Makuhita called out, running up beside the kid.

“Maku! Maku-hit-hit-hita!” He started making a few jabbing motions before just standing in a boxer’s pose.

“You...You want to fight?” Makuhita nodded. “Uh…” After looking around a little, he finally stopped at me since I was the closest to him. “C-Can I really just do that? Here?”

“Yeah, sure. We don’t mind. Right Kirlia?” She simply gave out a small cry of her name, nodding happily as she turned to look towards Makuhita.

“I got him all warmed up for you. Be sure to give him a good punch for us.” Kirlia held up a hand, looking just as determined as she had before.

“Maku-maku,” The Makuhita made a gesture towards the weird symbol on his chest before giving out a chuckle.

“Good to hear.” Kirlia’s spirits looked even better as she went ahead and used Teleport to appear right beside me. It was kind of a way of the move, but she knew that she was probably getting to a Pokémon Center sometime soon.

“Well o-okay,” The kid gave out a small cough before turning back towards Harley. “I guess we’ll battle then…”

Author's Note

Hey look at that! I managed to pull out another chapter in the span of a week or so! Cool.

Anyways, I'm glad that I was able to get this out as fast as I did. I was worried I would overthink the battle. Of course for future reference there won't be anywhere near this much conversation in every battle. This one was just special.

All this said however, I do have a small announcement to make. There's a holiday that I need to deal with. And with this holiday coming up, I'm not sure if I'll have the next chapter up before than. So there might be a delay.

Still, I guess while we're all still here, I'll leave you with the QotC for this chapter:

Let's all take a moment and put ourselves in Spike's place for a second here. You've been challenged by Harley, or as many would happily call him, that freak in cactus pjs. If you were allowed any Pokémon to use, that wasn't a legendary and only at lvl 20, what Pokémon would you choose to battle him with? You get one battle, no subs or heals, and his Cacturne is a little weakened. (Also Grass-Dark Type).

Also keep what lvl the Pokémon is. If it can reach its final evolution at 20, great! If it can't, then he stays at whatever evolution he would be at 20.

Sorry for the handicap, I just wanna see what you guys would challenge him with. Or if you like Spike's chances with Makuhita.

Think carefully on this and have a Happy Holidays!

Oh! And one last thing! If you haven't seen it yet, look at the image for the story! Something's different! Can't figure out for the life of me what it is though...

Maku 1 Speeds (Episode 1)

Max’s POV

“So who do you think might win this?” Kirlia was currently sitting on my shoulder as we stood behind where the kid and Makuhita were. And it wasn’t that she was heavy or anything, but it was kind of hard to walk with a Pokémon on your shoulder. I really never got how Ash managed to do this every day.

“Not so sure,” With a shake of my head I studied the kid. He was starting to get a little worried about the crowd around him. Not only that, but he looked more confused if anything else. “It might just be even with Makuhita’s type advantage.”

“Oh yeah…” I saw the kid turn towards me. “Wait, isn’t that cactus supposed to be, uh, grass type though?”

“Grass and Dark,” I gave him a smile. It was a common mistake actually. “Cacnea was pure grass so a lot of trainers think that Cacturne’s the same.”

“Right,” He nodded along, looking just a little confused. “Oh! I don’t think I ever said my name. I’m Spike.”

“Max,” I gave him a friendly smile before gesturing up towards my Pokémon. “And this is Kirlia.”

“Kirl!” She gave out a fist-pump before giving Makuhita a thankful look.

“Maku,” He nodded from where he was, not taking his eyes off of Cacturne. He was standing in a boxer pose, bobbing from left to right.

"Well, this is..." As Spike turned to gesture towards him, he paused for a second as if trying to remember something. "Huh. I never got his name."

"What?" I cocked an eyebrow. "You don't know your Pokémon's name. It's Makuhita."

"No, I know that much. But that's not his name." He crossed his arms. As he looked off ahead, Spike noticed Harley apparently signing autographs for his small fan club. "Hey, uh, Max? Is it cheating if I ask for some help?"

"As long as you just some advice, it’s not cheating. Besides, Harley’s not going to play fair anyways, so go ahead." As Harley gave one of his fans a hug, I could see him shooting us a smug smirk. I still didn’t get why he had fans clear in Kalos’ve never even heard of him coming here before.

I saw him mutter to himself before looking back at me. “So you said I had some kind of type advantage. So how do I use that?”

“Well, you should probably try using some Fighting-Type moves to take down Cacturne. Pretty simple really.” In fact, the more I thought about it, the more Kirlia and I were at a disadvantage. Even if she didn’t have that bad ankle almost none of her moves would even do anything against Cacturne.

“Right,” He gave a slow nod and a quick cough. “And, what kind of moves are fighting-type again?”

“Um, well, what kind of moves does Makuhita know?” Honestly, it wasn’t too hard to tell what moves were fighting-type. They were pretty straight forward.

“Well…” For a few seconds, Spike stood there thinking to himself until finally he decided to just turn towards his Pokémon. “Hey Makuhita, what moves do you know?”

“You mean you don’t know what your Pokémon can do?” I deadpanned, Kirlia sharing the same bored expression

“I mean, he’s not really my Pokémon…hehe…” He started tapping his fingers together. “Wait.” After a few more moments, some kind of epiphany struck him. “I think I know one move that he can do.”

“Alright then! If both sides are ready to continue,” As the referee began to speak I spotted Harley approach his side of the field where Cacturne was standing. Apparently both Pokémon had been in a staring contest the entire time.

“This battle will have the same rules as the one before! A one on one battle between Harley Cassonote and his Cacturne versus...Um…” The referee gave a sheepish grin towards the newcomer.

“Oh! S-Spike.” Spike straightened up, acting as though he were an officer of some kind.

“I can sense it. He’s nervous.” Kirlia’s voice rang out in my mind.

“Any chance he has an idea?” Since she was on my shoulder, I didn’t have to ask too loudly.

“It’s faint, but there’s determination in him too. Not to mention a blinding amount of fighting spirit from Makuhita.”

“Think you can keep from picking up on that?” I couldn’t help but smile at the thought. Sometimes the emotions of others made her act without realizing it.

“Very funny Max.” She turned away from me and pouted.

“Right then,” The referee gave him a calming smile before refocusing. “And Harley’s opponent will be Spike and his Makuhita. So, if there is no further delay, let the battle begin!”

“Gladly,” Harley smirked before looking towards Cacturne. “Let’s hurry this along, hun. Bullet Seed.”

“Caaaac,” Cacturne took in a deep breath as Spike began to tense up already. “Turne-turne-turne-turne-turne-” Just as it had done towards us, the seeds fired out like a volley towards Makuhita, who was still bobbing side to side in the same tempo as before.

Spike on the other hand, “Ah! Q-Quick, get outta the way!”

“Mak,” From underneath him we could see Makuhita’s left foot twist from underneath him before propelling away from his spot with surprising speed. The seeds could only hit vacant space before Cacturne stopped his attack and watched as Makuhita slid to a halt. He had made it somewhere past five feet.

“Hey! Good job!” Spike stopped tensing up as he congratulated him.

“Maku-Maku!” Makuhita held up a single fist before quickly going back to his boxing pose, still refusing to break eye contact from Cacturne.

“Hmm,” Harley’s smile broke the celebration. “If you think it’ll be that easy then you really haven’t heard of me. “Cacturne, don’t give them another chance to cheer!”

And Cacturne did just that, delivering another Bullet Seed directly for Makuhita without warning. Thankfully, Makuhita was still on the opposite side of the field

“Keep on dodging it! He has to run outta seeds eventually!” After a few coughs, it was as though a light bulb went off above his head. “A-And try to get closer to him too!”

“He can’t be serious, right?” I would be lying if my tone sounded anything but doubtful. “It’s not a bad plan, but I don’t think it’s possible for a Pokémon like Makuhita.”

“One would think so, oui.” From behind me I could see a man with a dark blue shirt and white lab coat come stand next to me with an Eevee in his arms. It looked pretty upset to say the least, but was content enough to stay in the man’s arms. “Still, it’s actually a very sound idea for Spike to go with.”

“Really? But I thought that Makuhita were built to take hits, not dodge them.” I watched as the Makuhita kept hopping sideways from the bullet seed every time it got closer, resulting in Cacturne trying to redirect his aim continuously. Then, as it seemed that Makuhita had been cornered to one side of the stage, he put all his strength into jumped up and over the projected seeds, quickly hopping closer from the opposite angle.

“Normally, you would be right.” The man kept watching as Makuhita got closer and closer. “However, keep in mind that Makuhita may be just as aware of that fact himself.”

“He’s got a point,” This time, Kirlia chimed in. “Makuhita are known for their tough training regimen. So if one actually focused even half of that training on speed,”

“Then that means that is just what Makuhita is prepared for.”

“Très bien!” The man called happily. “So, all that’s left for them to do is find a way to close the gap. And by the looks of it, I’d say that Spike has come up with a plan for that.”

As Makuhita got closer to Cacturne, Harley’s calmness became much more determined. “That’s close enough. Now, knock him to the ground with Needle Arm!”

Makuhita ignored the warning and took the chance to charge straight for Cacturne with only Spike for to think up another idea. “Jump! Jump as high as you can!”

“Hiii,” Without losing any speed, Makuhita made one last hop towards Cacturne before landing with both legs and an arm for balance. Then, just as Cacturne had finished pulling back his arm, Makuhita put all his strength and momentum into jumping directly into the air, just barely missing the needles from Cacturne’s attack.

“Ha! You think you can beat us with just hopping around? You’ll have to try and attack some time you know~!” Harley kept taunting with that sing-song tone before giving his Cacturne a dark smile. “Go ahead and bide your time my dear partner.”

“Turne,” Cacturne kept the Needle Arm active, waiting underneath to strike.

“Jeez, you’re just like Trixie.” Spike deadpanned before looking up towards Makuhita, who was only now reaching the arc of his jump. “You ready?!”

“Maku!” Seemingly aware of Spike’s idea, Makuhita nodded as it began to fall like a sky diver.

“Good! So,” Spike looked back down towards Cacturne. “Use that Bullet Punch move!”

“Bullet Punch?” I looked towards Makuhita as it pulled back its right arm as he let gravity bring him down faster. That Makuhita knows Bullet Punch?

“Kuu…” Suddenly, a small flash of light ran across Makuhita’s arm as he began to plummet towards Cacturne from above at even faster speeds. Due to the light, it was hard to tell what had happened, but all I could note is that Makuhita’s arm had begun to shine as though it were made of metal.

“Cac!” Cacturne’s eye went wide.

“Knock him away, now!” Cacturne tried to comply as best he could, but it was a wasted effort. Even after managing to strike the falling Pokémon across the face, Makuhita powered through it and delivered an even stronger punch directly into Cacturne’s permanent grin.

However, that wasn’t even the worst of the attack either. As soon as Makuhita finished with the haymaker, Cacturne’s head immediately hit cement, causing another set of cracks to form into a scarecrow-shaped crater beneath him.

As that happened, Makuhita had also hit pavement too, albeit fist-first with the remaining force of his attack. And while it was not anywhere near as nasty a landing as Cacturne's, Makuhita had his own issue.

"Maku?" The Pokémon took a moment to look away from Cacturne only to spot his fist embedded into the ground. "HITA?!"

"Oh no!" Spike wasn't reacting too well to this problem either. "Are you okay?!"

Makuhita gave out a weak call before trying, and failing, to pull his arm free.

Cacturne wasn't faring too much better either. With slow movements it began to stumble up to its feet before taking a few steps away from the crater and up to Makuhita.

"Now then," From about five feet away, Harley kept his expression in the shadow of his hat. "Needle Arm."

"Needle wha--" Spike was once again interrupted as he started coughing into his hand. However this time, his coughing sounded much more violent than before.

This sadly did not stop Cacturne's onslaught of Needle Arms as Makuhita was forced to do nothing but take the beating as his hand remained imbedded in the concrete.

"N-No..." Spike wiped off his mouth and watched as Makuhita was a little dazed from being knocked around so badly. "That's not fair." His voice was a bit dry, but otherwise he was just worried.

"Well maybe if you didn't put your Pokémon in such a compromising position." Harley offered a shrug. "Besides, let this be a lesson in speaking towards a superior."

"Senior?" Spike raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you were that old."

"Excuse me?!" Harley's voice was akin to a scratched record. "How dare you try and bring my age into this!"

"Oh brother," I took off my glasses just to pinch the bridge of my nose. I wasn't even sure if this was about the battle anymore.

As Harley kept trying to give this kid a helpless lecture on manners, Kirlia's voice rang out in my mind. "Max, I think there's something off about Harley."

"No kidding," I answered with no surprise.

"Hmm?" Meanwhile, the man in the lab coat beside me only heard my response.

"Not the argument, Max." Kirlia shook her head. "Look at the back of his hand. Do you see what I see?"

"His hand?" I took a second to readjust my glasses and look as carefully as I could. And as I looked on, I could tell that he had an excess amount of saliva from when he wiped his mouth.

Although that wasn't what drew Kirlia's attention. Instead, I noticed that as the saliva faded away, it had a purplish-tint to it.

I recognized the symptoms almost right away. "Poison." I could feel Kirlia tense up on my shoulder. She wasn't as good at spotting conditions like this whereas I had learned straight from Brock.

"Wait, you mean Spike?" From beside me, the lab coat guy had spoken up, visibly concerned. "When could that have happened?"

"When could what have happened?" From our right we could see an Officer Jenny approaching us.

"Spike's poisoned," I repeated. "It must've happened when he saved Makuhita from that--"

"Alright, that tears it!" Harley, who had only been having trouble trying to argue with his, finally just brought the yelling to a halt. "Cacturne? Let's end this quickly. Poison Sting, directly!"

Cacturne stopped his onslaught of Needle Arm only to hold out an arm towards Makuhita's face more for flair than anything else.

Spike cleared his throats before wiping away more purplish saliva. "Makuhita..." Spike started to hold out a hand towards them with a bit of a dazed expression. Another symptom of poison that usually showed up when the victim was on their last legs.

However, as he looked over the scene before him, he had seemingly snapped to attention. "Makuhita! Push him away with, w-with a fighting move!"

"Well, at least he's trying," I said with a dull expression.

"Thought that counts, I guess." Kirlia shared the same look as she accidentally copied my emotions.

Still, Makuhita nodded along and stared back up at the Pokémon looming over him. Then his gaze settled at the arm pointed towards him as Cacturne was still prepping his poison sting. I guess multiple Needle Arms tired out Cacturne a little more than it seemed.

"Mak," Giving up on freeing his hand, he decided to pull back his other hand close to him like his boxing pose from before.

Next, Makuhita tenses up his hand before immediately driving it forward in a shoving motion. Only, instead of aiming for Cacturne’s torso, Makuhita aimed for the thorned arm pointed at him.

The very next second, almost all the spectators to the right of us looked ready to take cover as Cacturne’s arm was pointed out towards them. Thankfully, none of them got hit, or even came close for that matter, as the poison stingers shot off towards the sky before fading away.

Meanwhile, Cacturne had quickly lost focus on the move and was currently spinning like a top due to the off center hit from Makuhita’s Arm Thrust. Nearly five rotations later and Cacturne managed to plant his second leg back on the ground, regaining some bit of control. Except Makuhita wasn’t done yet.

“Mak, maku,” Whatever Makuhita was trying to say, it grabbed Cacturne’s attention long enough to have it look up towards him while swaying back and forth. However, instead of saying anything else, Makuhita pulled back his arm again, this time striking Cacturne directly into his face.

“Yeah! Good jo—” Spike interrupted himself again only to try and fight the urge to cough. “Ugh, I don’t feel so good…”

Jenny narrowed her eyes. “Alright, the Poison Sting’s getting worse. This battle needs to end, now.” Officer Jenny looked over towards the referee, who was taking a moment to check over the spectators. And by the look on his face, he was almost ready to call the match a draw. “I’m going to make my way over towards him. I don’t think he realizes the condition Spike’s in.”

Me and the man nodded in agreement, and turned back to watch over Spike. As much as I wanted to try to convince the guy to give up the fight for now, he wouldn’t be able to hear me over all the commotion the crowd was making. Not to mention it was dangerous to run out onto the field and I couldn’t put Kirlia in more danger.

“Cacturne, are you alright?” Harley didn’t even turn to look towards the crowd. Instead, he just watched nervously as Cacturne was down on one knee after the blow he just suffered.

“Caa...Turne…” With a heavy breath, Cacturne took a moment to catch his breath. Makuhita looked winded, but he was about ready to collapse.

“Kuu…” Makuhita place both feet on either side of his trapped glove before pulling as hard as he could. “Hita!” And with one last tug, he finally broke free from the ground. “Maku-maku!”

“Gre-at,” Spike was breathing almost as heavily as Cacturne was while trying his best to stay on two feet.

“Ma?” Makuhita turned his full attention back towards Spike. With his hand stuck in the ground the way it was, Makuhita wasn’t able to even glance over at Spike. Now that he had all interest in battling Cacturne had subsided.

“Bullet Seed.”

Although that didn’t mean that the battle was over.

“Hii?” Makuhita threw a glance over his shoulder, but it was too late. Makuhita’s back acted as a target as seed after seed drilled into him.

“Taaa…!” Makuhita tumbled forward before finally collapsing in front of Spike. And to make it worse, his eyes were now replaced with those ever familiar swirls.

“Makuhita is unable to—Huh?” As Officer Jenny finally reached the referee, it was too late. From where he was looking, the referee could see Spike out of the corner of his eyes with not only some of color draining from his face, but he was coughing into his hand while trying to keep his balance as best he can.

Even without the match being called, we knew it was over. So, as fast as we could, the man and I ran forward towards Spike and Makuhita to check on them.

“Spike, how are you feeling?” Professor quickly caught Spike before he could fall to the ground with me helping to support him on the opposite side.

Meanwhile, the man’s Eevee ran over towards Makuhita with Kirlia teleporting over to his side.

“Eve. Eevee eev.” The Eevee spoke with a calm, almost forceful tone.

“Kirl!” Meanwhile, Kirlia wasn’t having it. “Kirlia? Kirlia-kir?” She leaned down to try and help him up, regardless of the ankle.

“Ma...Ma. Ku…” Makuhita blinked a few times before looking up towards the two.

“I’m not feeling so good,” My attention was brought back towards Spike who was trying his hardest not cough again. “I kinda...wanna lay down...right now…” True to his word, Spike’s legs gave out from under him, leaving the two of us as the only thing holding him up.

“Har…” Once I made sure that Spike was standing, I looked up only to see that same stupid green hat sticking out above the audience. “He’s gone.”

“Alright, everyone clear out! This battle is officially over!” From our right the referee was standing with Officer Jenny beside him. With both of them combined, the crowds didn’t dare try to question it as already they were beginning to thin out.

Repositioning himself so that he had a free hand, the man reached into his lab coat and pulled out a Pokéball. “Gogoat, we need your help out here!” He opened the Pokéball in front of us out came a burst of light only a few feet away from us.

“GOOOO!” I could only gawk at the Pokémon before me as it came over towards us. The size of it was about the same height as a Rapidash, but it was able to comfortably fit both Spike and his Pokémon.

The man looked over towards me. “Quickly, help me get him on.”

“Right,” I could only nod along as I brought Spike up to lay on top of the riding Pokémon. Next, I saw Makuhita being lifted up by Kirlia’s psychic and placed on top of Gogoat behind Spike.

“Alright then, Gogoat.” He looked Gogoat straight in the eyes. “Get them back to the lab. We’ll be right behind you.

Gogoat gave out a huff as it nodded and quickly took off through the space between the crowds, careful not to run so wildly so that the two wouldn’t fall off on the way.

“Professor Sycamore!” Officer Jenny came up not too soon after. At the same time, Kirlia and the Eevee made there way back over to us. Sadly, having taken care of the two guys, her ankle was already coming back to punish her for helping.

“Is he going to be alright?” Jenny stopped before the two of us, watching as Gogoat had already made it down the end of the street and turned onto the next.

“As long as he makes it to the lab, he should be back on his feet before the day’s up.” He turned back to me as I was in the process of picking Kirlia back up. “Your Kirlia’s hurt too. If you want, we can try and help with that as well.”

Kirlia and I shared a look before her voice came from the back of my mind. “We should go. Besides, it’s our fault that Spike and Makuhita got caught up in this whole situation anyways.”

I nodded along before turning back towards the professor. “Thank you.”

He returned it with a small smile. “Don’t mention it. Now let’s hurry.”

“Right.” The professor turned on his heel, jogging down the same road that Gogoat had rushed down before. We followed closely behind with the Eevee right beside us, all headed for the same place.

“Max, calm down.” Kirlia was holding on tightly from my shoulder. “Neither of them are in critical condition. In fact the poison will probably be taken care of by the time we—”

“That’s not it.” I shook my head if only to make her telepathy fade out for a few seconds. “Something wasn’t right here.”

“What do you mean?” Her grip tightened as we turned the corner. As we kept going I could see the Professor weaving in and out of the small crowd as best he could.

“Harley’s a jerk, but I don’t think he’s ever gone so far with his tricks as to bring cameras and start arguing with just any person in front of him.” Now it was our turn to go through the crowd, but thankfully they had already moved off to the sides. “Ugh!” Halfway through the crowd, I felt something land on my opposite shoulder. It was only half the weight of Kirlia, but I knew that I couldn’t hold them both up like this forever.

“Vee eevee, eev?!” Taking a glance at my right shoulder and I spotted the Eevee that was following us.

“He said that it’s only until we get out of the crowds.” Kirlia translated. “Anyways, I don’t know too much about Harvey apart from what you and May have said. What’s he usually like?”

“Well,” Passing around some kind of holographic map, I kept making my way through the crowds. “He still goes off on the littlest things, he puts himself and his Pokémon above everything else, and he’s...Well, he’s a bit girlish.”

“...And what is that supposed to mean exactly?” Kirlia’s tone didn’t sound angry—yet—just guarded.

“Uh…” I slowed down for a second as I got through a tougher crowd before slowly starting to speed back up. “Well, I just mean that, he just acts with these flamboyantly feminine gestures...On purpose.”

“...” Kirlia stayed quiet for a few seconds, with the Eevee burying daggers into the side of my head with its glare. “I’ll let you have a free pass on that, but I can’t say the same for Eevee over there. Right Eevee?”

“Yeah,” Even though I could hear Eevee give out a small growl, Kirlia went ahead and brought Eevee into our little telepathic phone call. That way I could hear what she was actually saying as well. “Jerk trainer.”

“Regardless,” Kirlia brought us back on subject.“I think that all matches up with the emotions I kept picking up from both him and that Cacturne. Only, there was something else there that I couldn’t help but notice.”

“What was it?” As we finally got out of the crowds, I made a turn to the left and once again trained my sights on the professor. From there, Eevee hopped off and started leading the way.

“Every time Spike ‘insulted’ Harley, and I do use that term loosely,” Her eye roll counted as credit to what she said. “There was some obvious rage that sprouted as a result. However, there were emotions of fear that mixed in there as well.”

“Fear? What was there to be scared of? Harley’s used to being in front of crowds and on TV, his Pokémon Coordinating can atest to that. And I’m pretty sure that Spike kid wasn’t really terrifying to anyone.”

“With how confused he was, I don’t think anyone could’ve taken him seriously to begin with. No, there was another reason. But being a little preoccupied with the battle going on, the crowds of people with their own emotions, and with seeing Spike’s emotions fade out thanks to that poison, I couldn’t really see anything past the fear. All I know is that Harley was concerned about something.”

We all rounded another corner and this one was one of the main roads. Sadly there was another small crowd that seemed to go on as long as the pathway. And with another crowd in our way, the Eevee jumped back onto my shoulder. This time slowing me down a little.

“Eevee, vee vee!”

“She said I’ll guide you, just please let me stay up here!” This was exactly why Kirlia didn’t like playing translator. Too many Pokémon abused her ability. I guess they came to some kind of agreement while I was running or something.

“Fine,” With a sigh I started to make my way through the crowds, albeit at a slower pace. If I had a guide than there was no point in sprinting the whole way. It’s not like I could help with poison conditions anyways.

After getting a steady rhythm through the crowd, I turned to look at Kirlia. “Once you’re feeling better, we’ll call May. Maybe she knows something about what’s going on.”

“Good idea. She might be able to shed some light on this. Not to mention, we need to see just what all those cameras recorded.”

The second she said that, I stopped in the middle of the crowd. Aside from a few people directly behind me, and the nervous looking Eevee, everything around us just kind of went silent for me.

“Max?” Kirlia leaned forward to look at me.

“We were on camera.”

“Max?” As she said my name again, it was less curious and more cautious.

“Oh Arceus, we were on camera.” I buried my face, glasses and all, into my hands. “You and I battled Harley on camera when you had an injured ankle.”

“Max.” She patted the top of my head for comfort. “That lose wasn’t your fault okay? Don’t think for a second that this is anything like the Pokémon Le—”

“Mom and Dad are gonna kill me for letting you battle like that.” I continued.

“—ague.” Kirlia finished, the patting of my head stopping. “You...Are you actually...ARE YOU THAT DENSE?!” Her voice rang out in my head like a fire alarm. And to make the headache worse, she used all the strength she had to smack me upside the head.

“OW!” I reached for the back of my head, almost knocking off the fidgeting Eevee on my shoulder in the process, and looked back towards Kirlia. “What was that for?!”

“Kir!” With the telepathy gone, Kirlia crossed her arms and turned up her nose in a “Humph” like fashion, apparently ignoring me on top of that.

With another sigh, and an injured head, I tried my best to shake off the scream that was still echoing in my head. “Sorry…”

Even though I had no idea what I was even apologizing for, I started walking forward through the crowds once again. Hopefully the professor had some aspirin in his lab.

Author's Note

Alright! I didn't think I was going to get the chance to finish this chapter before the year was up! Still, that probably doesn't make up for the fact that Harley won, does it? Well, sorry I guess, but you didn't really expect Spike and Makuhita to have a chance, did you? I mean, this was their first battle after all. Spike didn't even know any of his moves other than Bullet Punch.

Anyways, I hope you guys have some Happy Holidays! As for me, I'm taking a trip down to see my family in Georgia. So this time, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to put another chapter up before the year. But who knows? The opportunity might just come up.

Can't wait to put up the next chapter. So until then, have a nice rest of the year everyone!

The Beginnings of An Adventure (Episode 2)

Kirlia’s POV

Once Max and I had all gotten to the lab we noticed how everything was already starting to calm down. Spike was given an antidote for his poison and was apparently resting up in his room. From what the Pokémon around here had told me, he had already been through enough today so he was going to just be staying in a room for the night. Thankfully the professor had three or so rooms since a majority of the lab aids were doing some projects outside of the lab.

As for Makuhita, I saw him in what I could only call a makeshift Pokémon Center. They had all the necessary things to help me and him with our injuries. In fact, I was already up and walking after about an hour or so. Although Makuhita was still resting when I headed out to see Max about his call with May.

Except there was a problem with that. Apparently after talking with her earlier today, she already headed off to the next town, Striaton City. That’s what the Nurse Joy had told us at least. She overheard May and another girl named Dawn making plans to go to this popular restaurant that was located there.

That being said, Max had no choice but to wait for the next chance to ask May about Harley. He went ahead and put in a notice at Striaton City’s Pokémon Center ahead of time to let May know that we’re trying to get a hold of her, but aside from that we didn’t have anything else to do.

To make things a little nicer for us. Professor Sycamore offered us a place to stay for the night. Apparently the Pokémon Centers around here, emphasis on the plural, never had too many vacant rooms for trainers. So we gladly took the professor up on the offer.

That led me up to this point now. At the moment, Max’s parents had finally received word about what happened here in Kalos so he was trying to explain everything to him. And with how angry Max’s Mom seemed, I was thankful that I couldn’t sense their emotions through the phone.

Still, that left me without much to do. So to try and fight off boredom, and get as far away from Max’s phonecall as possible, I was heading for the biodome that the professor told us about. If I wanted to go visit, then I was free to do so.

It didn’t take too long to find the place either. It was just down the stairs, turn right, and voila. A glass door leading into the biodome. What made it even better was that the door wasn’t secure from a psychic-type opening the doors. Usually these kinds of rooms made it so that way psychic-types and ghost-types couldn’t just phase through the doors or force them open manually.

Once I was through the entrance I let the doors close on their own and began to walk forward. The entire room was like its own little forest in a bubble. I had thought that it would just look like some kind of park, but the entire room was pretty in its own right.

“Huh. You’re new.”

Over towards my right I saw another Pokémon, a Tyrogue, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. He looked adamant, but his emotions didn’t make him out to be quite that negative. He was angry about something, but not me.

“You get caught too?”

I raised an eyebrow towards him. “Caught?” I shook my head and changed the subject. I didn’t come here to have this conversation. “Do you know where I might find Makuhita?”

In an instant I could sense his anger gravitate towards me. With a huff he stood back up and uncrossed his arms. That allowed me to see the symbol on his chest as he squared up to me. “Okay seriously, why is that guy getting so many fans for losing a match?”

Without waiting for a response, Tyrogue turned on his heel and started walking off in a random direction. He then pointed off towards the stream that led deeper into the trees. “He’s over there with the rest of his fanclub.” And with that, he turned to go around this large rocky hill.

“Well...Pleasant guy,” Still, I had my destination and started heading out. It didn’t take too long considering that the room was much smaller than an actual forest and I could just teleport onto the opposite side of the stream.

“I still don’t get it,” After teleporting, I could hear a familiar voice from my right. “How could Cacturne play so unfair? That’s not how a battle’s supposed to go.”

Next came a sigh from a higher voice. “I swear, you are too innocent sometimes. Obviously the fight wasn’t meant to be fair in the first place.”

“The little lady’s gotta point,” A rougher voice had agreed. “Seems ta me that they had it all planned out. Well, excluding you and that kid jumping out in the battle.”

“Still, you have to wonder why that Cacturne and his trainer were so mean to that first trainer.” Another young female’s voice, coming from the Happiny from beside Makuhita. She was apparently applying bandages to him despite him not needing them whatsoever.

"I think I know why." My voice startled a few of them, but others were happy to see me regardless.

All except for the Happiny who let out a sharp gasp. "What are you doing walking around like that?!" After securing a liberal amount of bandages on Makuhita's arm, she rushed over to me with an entire new roll of bandages in her hands. "You're ankle is still messed up!"

I could only chuckle. "Don't worry about it, I already had it looked at yester--" "No!"

I blinked and watched as the Happiny gave me a disapproving pout. For someone that looked younger than me, she was acting too much like a mother.

"Those scientists know nothing about treating injuries! The last time I left their work unchecked, the bandages weren't secure and Snubbull had an infection!" Happiny's narrowed her eyes at me. "So come sit down and let the professional check your ankle."

"...Okay," Slowly I nodded along and slowly followed her back to the group before sitting down with them.

"Thank you~!" All of the previous anger had turned into happiness as she began to play nurse. As she did I saw a few of the other Pokémon rolling their eyes, but they said nothing.

"So what was Cacturne's problem anyways?" Happiny looked up to me for a second before continuing to examine my ankle.

"Well apparently his trainer Harley is a Pokémon Coordinator, as is my trainer's sister, May."

"Coordinator?" The same Eevee from yesterday was among one the group. "What the heck is a Coordinator?"

"A better version of them Pokémon Performers." This time it was the Geodude that spoke up. "Instead of dressing up the Pokémon and having some kinda talent show, they use their moves in these creative ways and battle each other with a point system instead of last Pokémon standing"

His voice sounded gruff and elderly, but that was probably far from the actual truth. His tone and emotions pointed towards something of a teenager. To make it even more confusing, however, a teenage Geodude sat somewhere around 80 years old. Honestly it was almost as confusing as dragon-type Pokémon.

To make this even weirder, that gruff voice had explained Pokémon Contests with some kind of high regard. Resulting in everyone slowly turning towards him with looks of confusion.

"What?" Geodude wasn't all too thrilled by the looks and crossed his arms. "Am I not allowed ta ya like Contests?"

Once he saw my shiver of disgust, he began to tighten his glare at me. "Oh, I'm sorry Ms. Ballet! Didn't know it was that unbelievable fee you ta hear!"

"No, no, it's not that." I held up my hands in defense. "I was just picturing me in one of those Performances."

"Oh. Pardon the glare then." He dropped his frown before finding someone else in the group who looked creeped out by his opinions.

"Why hate those performance things then? Stage fright?" A Piplup cocked his head to the side.

"Oh please, I couldn't care about crowds," I looked down towards Happiny as she continued. She had put the bandages away and was doing one last check for any other problems. Despite her childish personality, she apparently took being a nurse seriously.

"The bigger problem I have is the performance itself. Trying to impress the crowd with these useless tricks, points instead of a straight battle, having to dress up..." Another shiver went down my spine. "It's just not for me. I'd rather be in real battles and be in the Pokémon League."

"Pokémon League?" Makuhita chimed in for once in the conversation. Before now he was just stretching a little whenever Happiny wasn't looking. "That sounds kind of familiar. What's that about?"

"You've never heard of it?" I looked at him confusedly.

He merely shook his head. "Nope. I don't think they have one of those in the Alola region. And before that, I was only in the Hoenn region for three years."

"Alola? Huh, I've never heard of that region before." I pondered over the name for a few seconds before going on. "Anyways, the Pokémon League is basically where a skilled trainer and up to six of his Pokémon go through a tournament of battling with other trainers.

"In order to even compete in the League the team must defeat eight gym leaders and earn eight badges from across the region. So far, Max and I have only been in one Pokémon League." I decided it was probably best that I leave out how we lost for now.

"Woah..." I could almost hear the light bulb about to activate in his mind. "So, you fight some strong Pokémon there than?"

"Yep," I nodded with a triumphant smirk on my face. "It was actually pretty tough if I'll be honest." Now if only we got to fight more than one other team.

"Huh...Okay then." With a nod, he jumped up to his feet. "I'm going to this Pokémon League thing."

"Huh?" Happiny stood up and gave me a nod, signaling to me that I was good to go. "What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna be in that Pokémon League." Makuhita made a wide smile.

"Uh, you can't just say that you're gonna go there you know." I gave him a disapproving look. He had no idea how difficult it actually was.

"But I just did though." He looked confused. "Besides, it sounds fun."

"Hey, Kirlia." The Minccino looked over at me with a bubbly emotion about her. "You might as well go along with it. Makuhita doesn't say no to much of anything."

"Yeah. He's as stubborn as that one trainer that came by here." Geodude closed his eyes and thought back. "Both him an' that Pikachu a his were so determined ta save Garchomp."

"Pikachu?" I turned towards Geodude. "There was a Pikachu that came by here?"

"Sure as a rock slide," Geodude nodded along. "Apparently that Pikachu an' his trainer were runnin all the way here ta save that little runt, Froakie."

“Hey, don’t talk bad about Froakie!” Eevee, a second one, chimed in. “Froakie’s been here longer than most of us! Besides, that trainer was the nicest one that Froakie’s met yet.”

That’s gotta be him.

“I need to go find Max,” I stood back up and dusted the grass off my skirt as I did. “Sorry for bothering all of you.”

“Oh! Can I come with you?!” Without waiting for an answer, Makuhita hopped up onto his feet, ignoring the complaints that Happiny was shouting. “I still need to find that Spike human and say sorry.”

“And you also you want to go to the Pokémon League.” I added with a raised eyebrow.

“...” His smile slowly diminished until it shared the same amount of guilt as his aura. “Well, yeah. But I still want to see if he’s okay though.”

I nodded along and smiled. “Well in that case, come right this way. I think I saw him and the professor just next door to my trainer.”

“Awesome!” He threw his arms up into the air with a huge grin on his face. However, he had failed to notice the bandages on his left shoulder loosening.

“Hold it right there!” Running towards him, I could see the ends of Happiny’s hand’s glowing faintly. Then, as she ran right up in front of Makuhita, the light transformed into long, sharp claws. “You’re not going anywhere, you!”

“AH!” Makuhita tried to shield his face, but his guard was dropped. So without any defense at the ready, Happiny began to claw at Makuhita’s face. However, with as wild as her attacks seemed, she had avoiding hitting any of the bandages anywhere on Makuhita.

“Hmph,” She stood beside him with a huff as the claws retracted back into light before fading entirely. “Now sit down so I can fix your bandages.

“Yes mam.” However, instead of sitting back down, he just collapsed onto his back and let Happiny joyfully correct his bandages.

“Good choice~!” Her tone was very sing-song as she, quite professionally, tightened his bandages.

“That was metronome, wasn’t it?” I looked back towards Happiny. “What if you used a stronger move by mistake?”

“Well then I guess Makuhita would learn the hard way then, wouldn’t he?” She gave me a wink before checking over the rest of his bandages. “Okay then, get going.”

“Really?” I couldn’t help but smirk at the exchange between them. “Aren’t his bandages going to loosen if he starts walking off?”

Her smile quickly diminished into a tired sigh. “Yeah, but he’s going to go whether I want him to or not.” Quickly, an idea hit her as she looked up at me. “If he’s going wherever you are, do you think you can keep an eye on him for me? You know, to at least make sure that he doesn’t go into any more battles for the time being?”

I could only chuckle as Makuhita jumped up to his feet, which made Happiny glare at him. “I can try, but I make no promises.”

“Trying is all I ask.” With a nod, she went to pick up her set of bandages and tucked them away in her pouch right beside the egg-shaped stone.

“So, how do we get through the door anyways?” From behind me Makuhita hurriedly making his way towards the door.

“Huh?” I spun around to face him, narrowing my eyes in his direction. “You know I’m supposed to lead the way right?” I ignored the responses of the group behind me and decided to Teleport right beside the door. Other psychic-types might call me lazy for using Teleport in such an irresponsible way, but I didn’t really care. Pokémon didn’t have too many chances to Teleport ‘responsibly,’ so why waste the move if you have it?

“Woah, you’re fast!” I rolled my eyes at the comment and used Psychic to open the glass doors with a wave of my hand. And apparently it was enough to make his eyes light up momentarily.

“You’re a little too easy to impress you know?” Nonetheless I accepted the silent praise as we went through the door and closed it behind us. “The room we’re looking for should up the stairs and to the right. Follow me.”

Spike’s POV

“Ugh...I think those poison needles made me groggy. Maybe I should go back to bed...”

The professor chuckled. “Nice try, mon amie.” A pat on the back didn’t help me to snap out of my daze either, but that didn’t stop him. “Besides, it’s better for you to be awake by noon at the least.”

“Not if this guy has anything to say about it.” I gave out a tired yawn before spotting the other guy in here. “Hey, uh, Max?”

“Yeah?” After he went off to talk to someone, he came back here with a look of relief before seeing if I was okay. It wasn’t that I was unthankful, I just wish I could’ve slept in a little more.

“So who was that guy anyways? He seemed really angry at me for some reason.” I reached over to the coffee table in front of me and helped it serve its purpose. Holding my coffee. I guess that was a perk of being here; Twilight couldn’t keep me from having the very thing that kept her awake all morning.

“Oh. That.” He took a second to glare off to the side before turning back to me. “His name was Harley. And for some reason, he has it in for my sister, May. They’re both Coordinators.”

“But what does that have to do with either of us?”

“That’s a good question, isn’t it?” Max just nodded along. “For some reason, he just gets offended by everyone, no matter how little a thing it is. And now I think we’re both on his list.”

“Great…” Not half a minute has gone by and already I need to reach for my coffee again. “Let’s hope that I just never run into him again.”

“Hey, if you do, then at least you’ll have Makuhita to help take him down. You almost had him yesterday.”

“Have Makuhita? What do you mean?” After another sip of coffee I decided to just keep it in my hands. Never know when you need another sip. “He and I just got caught in the middle of the field.”

“Wait, so, Makuhita isn’t your Pokémon?” Max took his turn to start asking questions.

Although before I could answer…

“Max, that’s a great idea!” Professor Sycamore smiled before turning towards me. “Spike, you can take Makuhita with you on your journey!”

“Wait, you’re going on a Pokémon Journey too?” Max looked over at me with some surprise. “That’s great Spike!”

“...” Meanwhile, I was enjoying a long sip of coffee as the both of them only got more and more excited.

“Maku-maku!” Suddenly, the door swung open as Max’s Pokémon and a heavily bandaged Makuhita came running in, causing me to choke a little bit on my only liquidy friend. There was now only a third of it left.

“And speak of the Pokémon and he doth appear.” The professor chuckled as Makuhita rushed over to me, stopping directly in front of me as he started saying his name over and over again in different ways.

“H-Hold on, hold on!” I gave a sad goodbye to my coffee before setting it back on the table. “A-Are you okay? Why do you have so many bandages?” And after seeing his face as he stood still, I noticed something. “And what’s with all the claw marks? Did you get scratched up by a cat or something?”

“Hii,” Makuhita shook his head with a bashful smile. “Mak makuhita! Ku, hita mak?”

“Uh…” I don’t even think I could pretend to understand that.

“I think he’s trying to see if you’re okay.” Max gave me a small smile as Makuhita nodded along. How did he get that?

“Well, I guess I’m fine. Or at least, better than you’re doing right now.” Makuhita looked confused before I pointed towards the bandages on his shoulder.

The professor just gave out a sigh. “Seems like Happiny didn’t think we did a good enough job helping Makuhita. Still, at least he’s in good hands.” He stood up and began to head for the door. “I’ll be right back, I just need to get a few things. In the meantime, I think you have a question for Makuhita, right Spike?”

By the time I even opened my mouth to respond, he had left the room. “Gee, thanks for the help professor.” Shaking my deadpanned expression away, I turned towards Makuhita. “...” Wait a second, just what exactly am I supposed to ask him?

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Max’s Pokémon taking a seat next to him on his couch. Neither of them seemed to say anything, but they were looking towards each other for a second. Then, after a few more seconds of it, Max spoke up again.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you guys, what’s with the paint on Makuhita?” He pointed towards the Makuhita’s chest, but he was making eye contact with me a little too much. Almost as if he were trying to give me some kind of signal. But what?

“The paint?” I shook away the feeling for a second and looked down at the Makuhita’s chest. “Oh, that. Well, the professor says it’s supposed to resemble something. I think it was called Way of the. Fist?”

The Makuhita shook his head and made a punching mot— “Punch! Sorry, it’s Way of the Punch.” He nodded in agreement.

“Way of the Punch?” Both he and his Pokémon shared a look. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”

“I just heard about it yesterday.” I shrugged as Makuhita got in a boxer pose, similar to how he stood in the fight yesterday. “He’s trying to learn every punch move there is. And,” Makuhita decided to give them a demonstration. He wound up his right arm until he had some momentum behind it. Although instead of throwing a punch, he instead swung upwards just as his arm seemed to give off some kind of bright shine to it. And just as that shine faded away, his entire arm seemed to be coated in metal as if it were some kind of robot arm.

Sadly, at the same time the bandages on his shoulder flew off of his arm and landed besides him lifelessly. Upon seeing the bandages, Makuhita folded his arms behind him as the metal faded away. He then gave a nervous chuckle towards Max’s Pokémon before saying a few more things.

“Kirlia,” However, she merely dismissed Makuhita’s worry with a small wave.

Max just smiled along. “Well there’s still a lot more punching moves than that. It sounds like he has a pretty long road ahead of him.” The Makuhita nodded along with a look of triumph.

“Yeah, it actually sounds pretty cool.” After Makuhita untangled himself from the remaining bandages, he started hopping in place, psyching himself out in the middle of the room. As he did, I saw Max and his Pokémon looking over towards me. Neither of them were saying anything though.

“...” Slowly, we all kind of went into an awkward silence with Makuhita blissfully unaware of it. In fact, he was doing the exact opposite as he just started punching in a random direction before ducking under an imaginary swing from the enemy. It was almost hilarious had I not been directly across the room from the other two.

“Um…” I slowly reached for my coffee without breaking eye contact. Then as I took a sip I saw Max nodding his head in a weird way with his Pokémon’s expression quickly going into an impatient one. “So, what are you guys going to do no—”

“Oh for the love of Arceus, I’m not doing this; ASK HIM ALREADY!”

“Waugh!” Nearly dropping the mug of coffee, I clutched my head in pain as something akin to the Canterlot Voice kept echoing off in my brain. “Ow, what was…?!”

“Makuhita’s as pumped up as he’s going to be! Just ask him to travel with you NOW!”

Wait a second. That voice…

“Twilight?” I ignored the echoing as much as I could and looked around. I swear, it sounded exactly like her...Almost like her...A little, like her…

“Kirlia?!” Max turned towards his Pokémon and talked through gritted teeth. “What was that for?”

“Sorry! Sorry.” The same voice came the other side of the room like a soft speaker. More specifically, it came from the Kirlia that had a faint flow to both of the red things sticking out of her head. “It’s just that this is such an annoying situation. I mean both of them want to travel with each other.”

The more I heard that voice the more I found the similarities. It was almost exactly like Twilight’s voice. The only difference was that the voice had the same kind of ‘ready for action’ tone as Rainbow Dash, so it seemed just different enough to tell the difference. But only barely.

“Maku?” Makuhita stopped shadow boxing and looked over towards Max’s Pokémon. “Hita?”

“Oops.” Quickly, the Kirlia covered her mouth with her hands. Even though she wasn’t talking through her mouth. Or was she? “Okay, that was my bad.”

“Mak. Hita?” Makuhita turned towards me with a curious look.

“Um, well…” I still couldn’t understand him, although I wish I could, so instead I went ahead and put the mug down, empty. “So, what do you think? Do you want to travel around? You might be able to learn how to get other, erm, punching moves.”

“Hii…” He kept looking at me as if he were trying to figure out if this was all real. But in seconds it all drained from him and he jumped up as if to tackle me to the ground. “Maku-hita!”

“Woah! Okay, okay!” The guy was standing beside me on the couch, shaking my shoulders until I couldn’t feel them anymore. “I get it, you really want to! Stop it!” Despite the pleas, I was laughing through it all. Not to mention all the grogginess was shaken out of me now.

“Well, at least it’s all taken care of now.” Max was laughing along with us while Kirlia joined in with her actual voice instead of whatever that speaker voice was.

“So, I guess all that’s left to do now is figure out wherever we’re going.” Once the Makuhita had stopped shaking me, he settled for just relaxing on the couch.

“Maku. Makuhita!” Makuhita threw up a hand with a huge smile.

“Did you already forget what I told you?” Kirlia’s speaker voice was back as she frowned towards Makuhita. “You need to go through eight gyms before you can go into the Pokémon League.”

“Pokémon League?” I looked towards Makuhita before turning towards Max. “What’s that?”

“You don’t know what the Pokémon League is?” His expression looked dumbfounded.

“Uh...Well, I mean, obviously I’ve heard of it. I just wanted to know what. You…” The combination of both his and Kirlia’s flat faces made me drop the lie. “No, I’ve never heard of it.” I slumped down a little.

“Maku maku.” Makuhita just nodded along in agreement. I guess he didn’t know either.

“I told you about it not ten minutes ago.” Kirlia’s expression got even flatter.

“Ku. Hita,” Makuhita wore a guilty smile as he scratched the back of his head.

“Right, well anyways,” Max righted himself before going on. “The Pokémon League is where Pokémon Trainers compete with other trainers who have collected eight badges in the region. There’s one in every region and they’re all kind of broadcasted live everywhere.”

“Broadcasted? You mean all over the place?”

“Yeah,” He took a second to take a breath before going on. “It’s kind of like that battle you had with Harley, only I don’t think that went any further than Kalos and a few parts of Hoenn.”

“So you’re telling me that if we get to the Pokémon League, then people will see me all over the place…” They could all see the gears turning in my head, but I wasn’t sure if they knew why. “That means my friends could see it!”

“Probably, yeah.” Max nodded along, not understanding why I was so excited. “They’d probably be really happy to see you on there too.”

“No,” I was about to shake my head, but I stopped. “Well, I mean, yeah, they would, but that’s not it. You see, I’m trying to find them.”

“Find them? Are they lost or something?”

“Yeah. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity...Twilight,” I bit my lip as I thought about wherever they might be. All those professors I talked to yesterday told me that the same shock wave in Equestria came from a place called Sinnoh. And yet Kalos was one of the places farthest away from Sinnoh.

In fact, they said I was probably lucky that I showed up at Professor Sycamore’s lab. If I could’ve appeared anywhere between Kalos and Sinnoh then I might’ve woken up in the middle of the oce...

“...I wanna try and find them as soon as I can.” I swallowed my nerves and looked up. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say all of that.”

“Huh…” Max looked guilty as he leaned back into his seat. I guess he was upset about asking. “Well...How about we help you?”

I looked back up at him with eyes wide as my face could let me. “What?”

“That’s a great idea,” This time Kirlia spoke up. “If you’re trying to get into the Pokémon League, than you’re going on the same Journey that we are. Besides, we’re looking for a friend of ours too.”

“Really?” Huh, talk about coincidence. “Who are they?”

“His name’s Ash Ketchum,” Max leaned forward again. “We travelled with him about two years ago with my sister May and another friend of ours. Last we heard, he came here to Kalos.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Kirlia stood up and walked towards the center of the room. “While you were...busy,” I could hear her clear her throat despite still not talking. “I went down to the biodome. While I was there, the Pokémon told me about a trainer and his Pikachu.”

“No way!” Max jumped out of his seat. “You mean he was here?!”

“From what I heard, yes.” She turned towards our couch. “Makuhita, you and the others said that a trainer and his Pikachu came by here not too long ago, right?”

“Ma-ku!” He nodded along. “Hita, mak mak Maku makuhita Hita.”

“He brought Froakie here and helped Garchomp out.” Kirlia interpreted. “The others also called the trainer nice and determined.”

“Yeah, that kinda sounds like him.” Max chuckled. “When was he here last?”

“Hita,”

“Three days.” Kirlia translated. “And from what you’ve told me, he’s probably headed off towards the first gym of Kalos.”

This time it was my turn to jump in. “Well which gym is that?”

“That would be the Santalune Gym.” As the door opened, Professor Sycamore came in pushing a cart with a few select things on it.

“What’s all of that?” I looked towards the others and they had their own reactions. Max seemed to recognize some of it, Kirlia was too busy covering up her red horn things from the professor, and Makuhita looked just as confused as I did.

“Well, since Makuhita’s going to be travelling with you, you’ll need his Pokéball. I just had to talk with Professor Kukui and he agrees that Makuhita going with you would be the best course of action.”

“Pokéball?” I went over as he handed a small red and white orb the size of a marble. And noticing a button between the two colors, I pressed it and watched as it suddenly grew to the size of a baseball. “Woah!”

Professor Sycamore smiled, but managed to stay focused. “I also took the liberty of getting all of your things packed and ready for you to take on your journey. Not to mention I also got you some essentials for travelling the Kalos region.”

As he went over a few of those ‘essentials,’ he handed me the backpack that was on the top shelf of the cart. Whether he intended to get one that looked like it or not, the backpack kind of resembled me. Or at least, the colors of my scales back in Equestria. The majority of the backpack was colored purple with a scale design to it. The zippers and small clips were all a darkish green color with the side pockets looking jagged in appearance to resemble spikes.

Finally, there was a small ‘swoosh’ kind of symbol on the main pocket. It was in a dark yellow circle that shined like a gem and the swoosh inside of it was pure black with a small eye shape towards the front of it. As I looked it over I saw that underneath the symbol was a single word:

Dragon.

“Finally, there’s a small journal in there.” My attention was brought back to Sycamore. “Okay, it’s not really essential, but I figured it would be nice to add. Arceus knows I have enough journals lying around here anyways.”

“Thanks Professor Sycamore.” I unzipped the top pocket and sure enough, all the stuff was in there. I knew that I’d have to look through it sooner or later to actually remember what’s in there.

“Next, I have something for both of you.” As he said this, Max and Kirlia walked over to join us as Sycamore held up these two red square objects. “Since you both got here yesterday, I’m pretty sure that neither of you have a PokéDex. So, I’d like to take the chance to give you both your own.”

“Awesome!” Max happily took his and immediately started to look it over. “I was hoping that I would get one for the Kalos region!”

“Wait a second, this looks like that PokéID that Officer Jenny had.” The only difference between them was the color and lack of a black screen.

“Well it works a bit simpler than that. Simply face it towards a Pokémon that you want to learn about and press the button towards the bottom. The PokéDex will take care of the rest.”

I looked it back over before getting an idea.“Hey Max? Kirlia? Do you two mind if I try it out?”

“Sure. Can I try mine out on Makuhita?” We both agreed and rose up our new PokéDexs.

“Kirlia. The Emotion Pokémon. And the evolved form of Ralts.” I watched as a picture of Kirlia appeared on screen with some details on the side. Meanwhile, Kirlia rested her hands on her hips as she listened in. “Whenever Kirlia have closely bonded with their trainers, their psychokinetic abilities become stronger. At the same time, their emotions will begin to grow parallel to that of the trainer’s.” Once it finished telling me all it had to say, the PokéDex gave off a catchy four note tune.

“Well at least that one wasn’t embarrassing.” Kirlia relaxed and smiled once again.

“Makuhita. The Guts Pokémon.” Makuhita saw the picture on the PokéDex and tried to copy it as best he could. “Whenever you hear a rhythmic echo in a forest or cave, it may just be Makuhita in the middle of a rigorous training regimen.”

Makuhita just chuckled along and rolled his shoulder to show off.

“Finally, I think I have something for you Max.” The professor reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny little puzzle piece looking thing. “You had mentioned earlier that you needed to update your PokéNav, correct?”

“Wow! Thanks Professor!” Even more excited than the PokéDex, Max took the puzzle piece and took out another weird looking device. All the beeps and lights probably made sense to him, but I’d rather just stick to the PokéDex and ID.

“So, I guess that’s everything then.” I pocketed the PokéDex and shrunk the Makuhita’s Pokéball back down to marble size. Although, as I watched it shrink, I realized there was one last thing I had forgotten.

“Hey, Professor Sycamore,” I put Makuhita’s Pokéball in my other pocket. “I almost forgot to ask, what’s his name?”

He hummed in confusion. “You mean your Pokémon? His name’s Makuhita.” He pronounced it carefully so that I could memorize it.

“No, I already got that.” I looked over towards Makuhita, who only seemed lost. “I mean, what’s his name. I mean, he has his own name, doesn’t he?”

The professor took a moment to think it over before shrugging sarcastically. “I guess you’ll both have to come up with one for him.”

I looked back down at the Makuhita as he did the same to me. He didn’t seem too against the idea, but that just made it even harder to come up with something. It wasn’t like he was my pet or anything, or I didn’t think of him as one at least. If I was going to give him a name then it had to be something respectable. Only how was I going to name something that was supposed to be my partner?

? ? ? POV

“Ugh...Failed again…”

“Is it really that much of a shock?”

“No, but tha twerp’s Pokémon sure was…”

With a groan, I sat up on the branch I had so graciously landed on. As previous experience has taught us, we could have landed in worse places like on a rooftop or in water rapids.

There were better landed spots to end up in for sure. Sometimes we’d land in a lake or something else that would break our fall. Of course if anyone outside of our team saw how us land in a lake then they’d say that was bad luck.

“Oh Yeah~!” After an awkward enough amount of time, a loud, upbeat, and oblivious voice cried out with a salut. “Let’s do it again!”

This was one of our partners. A Pokémon partner to be exact. He wasn’t my Pokémon, but anyone with eyes could have figured that out. He was just another Pokémon that worked along with us. Although seeing as how I was the brains of the team, maybe he did work under me.

He was actually the only that’s been with us from Johto onwards. Even the boss had him staying at HQ and yet somehow he still managed to join back up with us.

This was Wobbuffet. One of Jessie’s first Pokémon.

He wasn’t that bad of a Pokémon to be honest. Others have been more annoying than him before. Not to mention he can take attacks that would tear me to shreds like my own fury swipes.

“Ya know,” Wobbuffet turned to us while standing on a lower branch. “After the seven hundredth time, blasting off is pretty fun!” That never-end smile of his was still on his face as he saluted towards Jessie.

“Wobbuffet Return…” She tiredly held up a Pokéball as beamed him back inside.

“Well at the very least we have a little bit of ample room.” Above me I could see a tendril be pulled back up onto the branch above me. It, as well as the poindexter voice, both belonged to Inkay. James’s new Pokémon.

Inkay’s cheerful tone went on after rubbing his head. “Oh, what a pleasant surprise! We seem to have returned to Lumiose City.”

“Huh—OW!” I tried to jump onto my hind paws, but my head slammed into the branch Inkay was on, causing him to land on top of me as I rubbed my aching forehead. “Whadda mean we’re in Lumiose?”

“Well at least we know where we are.” James, who didn’t bother to sit up from his branch, added.

“Oh who cares where we are?!” Meanwhile, Jessie had finally found her rage and glared at the three of us. “The only thing that matters right now is tracking down those twerps, again, and teaching them a lesson! Starting with that Pikachu!”

James and I only slumped in defeat. “Right…”

“Um...Question.” Inkay held up a tendril as he sat upon my head. That only lasted for a few more seconds, however, since I shook him off and left him to float beside me. “I know that I am still new to the team, so I don’t know the correct protocol, but why do you refer to the targets as twerps?” He used his tendrils as air quotes for the word. “Do you not know their names? Because if so, I could,”

“Of course we know deir names!” I frowned as Inkay shut his mouth with a smile. “It’s just easier ta call ‘em twerps is all. Besides, da main twerp—”

“Ash Ketchum.” Inkay corrected.

“Yeah, yeah, whateva,” I waved him away. “He’s always tradin’ out twerpy partners for new ones. Callin’ ‘em twerps is just easier.”

“Alrighty then! Thank you for the clarification Meowth.” And with that, Inkay floated over towards James as he finally started to sit up.

Inkay was probably one of the smartest, if not the smartest, Pokémon that’s been on the team. Aside from me that is. The only other ones that were actually worth considering “smart” were Yamask and Yanmega. Still, all three of them had their issues. Yamask was a crybaby whenever James wasn’t babying him. Yanmega was just always full of herself and practically repeated every compliment Jessie gave to her. And then there was Inkay who…

“Oh! Good news master! You have only suffered minimal damage!” Inkay spun around in front of James as though he were dancing.

...He found the bright side to things a little too often.

“Hmm? That’s funny…” As James nudged Inkay aside, Jessie put her attention towards the street below us. “That kid looks somewhat familiar…”

“More than likely,” James rolled his eyes. “We were in Lumiose City not three days ago.”

After a swift reaction from Jessie, James joined her in watching the streets with a large bump on his head. “Wait a second, you’re right!”

I moved a few leaves out of the way and sure enough I spotted a small group below us made up of two Pokémon and two trainers. One of which did seem pretty familiar. “Huh. Maybe he’s friends with da twerps er somethin’.”

“Oh, he’s friends with them alright…” As she spoke, James instantly started retreating further into the tree while covering his head. Probably for the best too as Jessie looked ready to burn the tree down with her rage. “He’s little brother to the twerp who ruined my chances of fame back in Hoenn.”

“Hey, yer right! It’s all comin’ back ta me!” As I kept staring at the twerp it all started to come back to me. His name was something along the name of Mac and he ended up running around with Ash back in Hoenn. Mac’s sister was a Coordinator starting out in Hoenn, and the same could’ve been said about Jessie.

Still, because she was part of Team Rocket, Jessie couldn’t be that good a Coordinator. Or at least, that what she blames her skill on. The other thing she blames it on is Mac’s sister who was probably gallivanting around as a Coordinator to this day.

Regardless, Mac left the twerp brigade after what I think was a year or two now. I guess we never really paid him too much mind since he didn’t even have any Pokémon back then. I mean, even the new little twerp has a Pokémon n her little bag.

Although now that he does have some Pokémon of his own…

“...” As the group began to pass us, I could see the two Pokémon taking up the rear. One of them looked like a jolly kind of guy and the other one looked a bit prim and proper, but still pretty strong in her own right. However, as the group went underneath us, the prim and proper one began to slow down.

“Huh?” The second Pokémon turned to look at her. “What’s wrong Kirlia?”

A Kirlia? Now that’s a Pokémon ya don’t see everyday.

“...” She kept quiet as she scanned around the area, looking for something. “I’m not sure. I just feel something...Above us.”

“Hide!” The others barely had time to react as we all ducked further into the tree and used as many leaves as we could to hide from them.

“Above us? But I don’t see anything.”

“Hmm…” It was Pokémon speaking, so none of the people around here were going to think much of it. Still, there was an uncomfortable silence as neither of them said a word.

“Maybe it’s a flying type up there?” The jolly one offered.

“...Yeah...Maybe you’re right.” And with that, we could hear them hurry off to catch up to their trainers.

“Okay, too close.” We all shared a sigh of relief before making our way out of the tree and onto the ground. And aside from a few odd looks from the passersby, we were in the clear.

“Alright, who’s the loudmouth who almost gave us away?” Jessie started to look over all of us irritatedly.

“No idea,” I shook my head with a huff. There was no point in trying to point out the obvious to her.

“Actually, I don’t think that was it.” Earning both our attentions, James pulled out a small deck of cards before finally finding whatever he was looking for. “According to this, that Kirlia could sense our emotions.”

James held up the card for us to read over and sure enough there was a small picture of a Kirlia with a few bullet points of info. Since we didn’t have any of the tech that most of Team Rocket had, James had these cards of Pokémon that we were supposed to be keeping a lookout for. Of course Pikachu was always in the deck, which was why we went after the twerps, but since Kirlia was here too…

“Well then it looks like we got some sorta side project on our mitts!” With a turn, I looked up towards the two of them. “I say let’s take a break from the Posse O’ Twerps and take a practice swing at Twerp Duo. Besides, that Kirlia would be perfect for da boss!”

“You think so?” Jessie turned to look back in the direction that they were going. Meanwhile, James started sifting through a different set of cards.

“Picture it like this; the boss gets out of a meetin’, practically miserable wit no one ta understand his woes. So he comes ta his office and locks himself in to escape the stress o’ work. At that point, who else to help him speak his mind then a lovely Kirlia?”

“After helpin’ him through his problems, he’ll have no choice but to commend Meowth and Team Rocket for givin’ him the best Pokémon he could ever need!”

“And with a commendation comes a big check!” Her eyes turned to dollar signs as her face lit up.

“Now we’re talkin!”

“Too bad we won’t have a chance to double down.” James fanned out another set of cards, each of them being fighting-types. “Apparently that other Pokémon that was with them isn’t on the list.”

“Well who cares about that?” Jessie turned up her nose. “One Pokémon is more than enough to turn some heads.”

“Then what are we waiting for?! That Kirlia’s practically gift wrapped for us!”

“And with no Pikachu, there’s no risk.” James jumped in.

“Which means,” Jessie locked eyes with all of us before the three of us cheered on while Inkay and Wobbuffet stood beside us.

“Easy promotion for us! YAY!”

“We are sure to succeed!”

“Ohhhhh Yeah~!”

Author's Note

Hey everyone! I'm actually kind of surprised that I managed to get this out before New Year's Eve. Still, seeing as how it's a bit of exposition, I hope it wasn't too boring to read. Next episode will be a bit more interesting to read however.

That said, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I hope you'll have a great New Year's!

QotC:

Before we all head out to enjoy New Year's, I just have one question for you guys. And this one's a little important. You see I've been meaning to get everyone else's opinion on this:

Which is the superior race? Pegasus, Unicorn, or Earth Pony?

Yeah, it's a loaded question, but at the same time, I've wondered what everyone's answer is. I always say Pegasus, a ton of other people I know say Unicorn, and I've been trying to find out where the Earth Pony fans are.

Not to mention, it'll probably tie into something...Probably.

Now with everything said and done, I'll see you all next chapter everypony!

Team Rocket (Episode 2)

Spike’s POV
Pokémon Center
10:44 AM

“Holy Guacamole…”

Coming into this Pokémon Center place was already a trip in and of itself. The doors slid upon on their own, the place looked almost as big, if not bigger, than Twilight’s castle, and finally when you came through the entrance there was this really nice breeze that came from above us. With that breeze alone I almost wanted to stand at the doorway and I probably would’ve had I not been in front of the Pokémon behind us.

“Good morning,” The second thing that snapped me out of my awestruck mind was this one lady that greeted us with a small bow from behind the reception desk. Or at least I think it was a reception desk. It had more of these weird monitors and was long enough to have three of these ladies standing behind it.

“Good morning Nurse Joy,” Max returned the bow and left me wondering whether or not I should join in. Still, I decided against it and turned to look up to see the lady herself with a polite smile. She was in a pink and white apron looking dress with her hair an even deeper pink. Almost the same color as Pinkie Pie’s hair, only instead of its poofy appearance this nurse had it dressed up kinda like a pretzel.

“At this Pokémon Center helping Pokémon in need is our number one goal. We’re here for Trainers and Pokémon alike.” She returned the smile to me as she had explained all of this “How may we help you today?”

“Professor Sycamore had told us that we needed to come to the Pokémon Center to register for the Pokémon League. Is that true?” By this point, Kirlia and my new partner had stepped up besides Max and I respectively.

“It sure is. If you both could place your PokéDex’s on these panels in front of you,” As she said that she took a moment to wave her hand over two of the weird non-hologram screens that were on the reception desk. And sure enough once she brought her hands back I could see that there was a square shape made of a thin line that pointed out where and how to put your PokéDex up against the screen.

“Huh. Alright then.” Seeing how straightforward it was, Max had pulled out his PokéDex and placed it down as instructed. What resulted was all the pictures changing around after a second or two followed by some voice coming from it.

"Max, from Petalburg City, is now registered to enter the Kalos League. Number of badges currently in your possession: Zero. We wish you the best of luck." The panel concluded its speech and Max took back his PokéDex.

"That's all there is to it? Usually there's some kind of paperwork along with it." It didn't really look like Max was about to complain about that fact though, so instead he had settled for pocketing the small device in his back pocket.

Meanwhile, “Spike, from Canalave City, is now registered to enter the Kalos League. Number of badges currently in your possession: Zero. We wish you the best of luck.”

Canalave? Is that supposed to be where I lived before coming here?

“Here in the Kalos Region, we make entering the Kalos League much simpler for both those that live in Kalos and those who visit from other regions. Although the rest of the application process will need to be filled out at the Kalos League itself.” As she explained this I was trying to figure out just how all of that was going to work.

“Well that makes sense. After all, Kalos is a touring region.” As he dismissed the idea, he turned towards me and my partner with a smile. “I guess all we have to do is get our eight gym badges.”

“That easy, huh?” Nevertheless, his attitude helped me forget about that for now as the Makuhita next to me rose up a fist in cheer.

“By the way,” Our attention was brought back towards the nurse. “Every registered trainer is eligible to receive a Kalos Region Badge Case.” She then gestured to her left, our right, as a tall and pudgy light pink Pokémon with a similar apron and cap that the nurse had on. In its paws were two small glass cases that it had held out for both of us to take.

“Woah, it’s a Wigglytuff!” As Max accepted his case the Wigglytuff held up its chin with pride before proudly taking a few steps over to me.

“A Wigglytuff…” I looked down in my hand at the PokéDex I still had with me. Curious, I held it up and activated it towards the Pokémon while its proud demeanor stood strong.

“Wigglytuff. The Balloon Pokémon and the evolved form of Jigglypuff. A Wigglytuff’s body is soft and malleable. When angered, it will take in large amounts of air and can inflate itself to an enormous size. In some cases, it has even been confused for a parade float.”

After the four-tone jingle faded away I lowered the PokéDex only to see the Wigglytuff standing in front of me. Only now all of its pride had vanished and was now replaced by a frown and a some low grumbling. And just as the PokéDex had stated, it seemed just a little bit bigger.

“Uh...Sorry?” With an awkward look I accepted my own badge case and let it walk off with a huff, letting its inhaled air release and allowing the Pokémon to shrink back to its usual size.

“Oh, it’s alright. Wigglytuff gets like that whenever a PokéDex gives that particular explanation.” Her smile seemed apologetic, but she sounded almost humored by the exchange.

I decided to put the PokéDex in its pocket and the case in my pack for now. It’s probably best I don’t go around holding this thing out to the rest of the Pokémon in the lobby.

“Hey Spike?” Once Max got his case put away, he turned towards me. “I was going to go check the communicator one more time before we head out. That alright with you?”

“Sure,” I didn’t really mind anyways. Besides it was still only a little past noon and I was still a little groggy. The more I could try prolonging walking for who knows how long the better.

Nevertheless, Max thanked me regardless and walked off towards where I assumed the communicators were, leaving me with my partner and—

“Um,” Noticing that Kirlia was still here with us, I shuffled a little in place. “Aren’t you going to go with Max?”

“Normally, yes.” Again, that voice started to speak to me from the back of my mind. I’d be lying if I said that this was a new thing to me, Twilight had this spell as one of her lessons multiple times, but the fact that it was almost the same voice…

“However, since we’re all going to be traveling together I figured that I might as well try to introduce myself a little better than I did back at the lab.” As she explained it, she had spoken some of the words out loud as well. Of course all that I understood from her speaking was her name over and over.

“Oh. Alright then,” I glanced back up only to see Nurse Joy looking at me with a bit of an awkward stare. Once I realized that we were just standing five feet from her, I gave the nurse a cheeky smile and started walking off in a random direction.

The main doors were behind us and Max went off left of the reception desk, so that left the three of us heading to the right.

“So, can all—” “NOT so loud, please.” She broke my train of thought and made my head buzz a little at the suddenness. “I don’t want every Pokémon around here finding out that I can talk with trainers. I’m already trusting you and Makuhita with this.”

“Oh. Right, sorry.” I talked just above a whisper, but it did get me thinking. Twilight’s telepathy spell could go both ways. The only trick was that I had to do something to speak back with her. Still that left me with a problem; I couldn’t remember it right now.

“I guess I should start with the basics. I’m Kirlia, or the Emotion Pokémon like your PokéDex told you. I can sense and read emotions almost by instinct, so sorry ahead of time if it sounds like I know what you might be thinking about.” Just as I scrunched my nose, her voice chimed in again. “Yes, I know it sounds like I’m invading personal space. That’s why I wanted to say sorry ahead of time. It’s not really something I can dismiss or anything.”

“...Oh.” I shrunk a little bit as I felt a little guilty. It sounded suspicious to me but I guess it wasn’t really her fault. “Well, thanks for telling me ahead of time.” I guess…

“Well, my name’s Spike.” I tried changing the subject. “I’m uh...I’m...Kinda new to everything.” It left a bad taste in my mouth to leave it at that, but there wasn’t much I could say. “I’m an assistant to one of my friends so I guess there’s that. Not much else I can think of though.”

There was a small pause as Kirlia closed her eyes, apparently in some small thought. I tried looking towards Makuhita to get some advice, but he looked just as confused. Thankfully, the silence didn’t last too long. “Well what about skills?” Kirlia looked up towards me, sounding a bit more kinder with her words. It was almost like she was trying to help me out. “What are you good at?”

I thought about it for a few seconds before a few things popped into my mind. Thankfully none of them were obvious enough to give anything away. “Well I guess I picked up a few things from being a number one assistant.” I beamed a little a Kirlia as her smile faltered a little. I’m guessing that’s not what she had in mind.

“Well I helped out Twilight with whatever she needed, like cleaning, reshelving the books, running the library...Making lists,” That wasn’t the fondest memory but it was definitely the most common one. “Oh, then I helped Rarity with hunting for gems every once in a while.”

“Gems?” The names of the girls probably went over Kirlia’s head, but that seemed to make her chuckle a little. “Well I guess if I was a male Kirlia then this would probably be the part where I beg for a Dawn Stone.” Despite my confusion, her small giggling buzzed from the back of my mind. “Anything else?”

“Well,” As I tried thinking it over, my stomach took front stage as it growled. “I guess I’m not too bad at cooking either. Although I need the recipe in front of me to know what I'm making.”

“Maku?!” Suddenly, Makuhita’s focus went straight to me with a look of complete joy. His attention was on whoever was in the room.

“Well that's pretty useful.” Kirlia nodded along as we kept walking around the lobby. Although, after walking along room for so long, I finally decided to go down a hallway. Apparently this one in particular led to a few shops with a blue sign above the entryway reading ‘PokéMart.’ It was a store of some kind.

“Max and I don’t have too many skills when it comes to cooking. We had to make do with sandwiches and Pokémon food until we found Swalot. And if we have to eat a single tomato again it'll be too soon...” I had no idea whether this Swalot was a Pokémon or another trainer, but that didn’t seem to matter. Or at least, it didn’t matter right away as Kirlia stopped directly in her tracks before we came into this store.

“Uh, Kirlia?” Both my partner and I shared a look as Kirlia continued to stand there, unresponsive. Her eyes were almost entirely closed and the horn on her head looked like it was glowing with a really faint aura.

“There it is again.” She made no movements, but that was the only response we got.

“Maku?”

“No. It’s not more flying-types. At least, I don’t think so.” She looked out towards the Center from behind us and tensed up. “They’re...It's heading this way.”

“What?” Instantly the both of us went on high alert, scanning the entire room around us. “Where? W-Who?”

“Not sure.” She faced back towards the PokéMart and started to walk inside. “Hurry, in here.”

“R-Right.”

“Ma-Maku.”

All three of us hurried into the store and ducked underneath the nearest hiding spot we could towards the front of the store. It didn’t look like any of the other aisles and it seemed more like someone put together a fruit stand indoors. From the small canopy cloth to the weird striped skirt that went along the bottom.

I didn't have much more time to look as all three of us piled in underneath the stand to hide. It was able to fit us all pretty well, however by Kirlia's expression I don't think that she expected all of us to dive into the same hiding place.

“Can I help you?” All of us tensed up as a voice from behind us sounded just as awkward as it did confused.

“Maku,” My partner simply shook his head with a small smile before turning back to face forward. Not only that, but he didn't seem to realize that someone had already found us.

“Uh...Mak—” “WAIT A SECOND!” Suddenly I was yanked out from underneath the stand by my leg and before I could even register who or what had pulled me out I was yanked onto my feet and held still by the collar of my shirt.

By the time my eyes had caught up with the rest of me my face was met by the determined finger of what I assumed was the owner of the stand. And behind said finger was a girl only a few years older than me with brunette hair pulled up into these two short, unbraided pigtails that were slightly hidden behind her red and white bandana.

The rest of her face had freckles around her cheeks and a frown to finish it all. If it wasn't for the fact that she had me in an iron grip then I would've tried running away.

"So. you're the trainer of that hungry Pokémon, huh?!" I could feel the collar of my shirt getting tighter as she clenched her fist more and more. "How can you just let him run around like that?!"

"Wait, what are you talking about?!" Judging by her twitching eye, that was not the correct answer.

"You mean you don't know?!" With little effort she dragged me around the stand and forced me to face towards the red and yellow sign.

"Here. Take a look at this little stand of mine. Do you know what this is?” She managed to quiet down, but the annoyance in her tone was still very much there. So with her free hand, she gestured towards the little sign hanging off the side of the small clothed canopy.

"Berry Fields’ Produce." I read it aloud and noticed right away that it was a handmade sign. That wasn’t a bad thing, however, it actually looked pretty nice. Maybe a bit too old fashioned if you ask me, but I’ve definitely seen worse. "Huh."

As the girl gave me a moment of silence for her ‘advertisement’ I looked down and noticed that the two Pokémon were still hiding down there. From where I was, Makuhita wasn’t doing two good a job at hiding himself since he wasn’t the right size for hiding there. Meanwhile, Kirlia seemed to be small enough to hide in the center without being seen.

Upon noticing my gaze, Makuhita sheepishly shimmied his way out and stood back up, only to be completely taken by the smorgasbord of colorful fruit-looking foods. Some of them seemed semi-recognizable, but most of them were just entirely foreign to me.

"Spike, I think they left. I need to go tell Max, I’ll be right back." Before I could even argue against her, I noticed a small flash of light come from underneath the fruit stand. If I had to guess what happened, I’d say Kirlia knew how to teleport.

“So,” Suddenly I could feel someone’s arm wrap around my neck before pulling me into some kind of a submission hold. The girl ignored my flailing and instead picked up one of the blue berries from the cart before bringing it right in front of my face.

“Tell me,” She went on. “It’s an average oran berry, right?” She tossed it a bit in her hand and went on. “Wrong! Most average oran berries are a little too plain for my taste. Too run-a-the-mill. Our oran berries? Not a chance! These things have some actual Kick to ‘em, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

She tossed it off to the side, letting it land in Makuhita’s gloves before he quickly bit into it. He then quickly stuffed the rest of it into his mouth in hopes to keep from drooling onto it.

She finally released me with a flick of her arm, causing me to spin a complete 360 degrees before stopping myself. Once I looked back up, she beamed at me. “Don’t worry,” With a click of her tongue and a snap of her fingers, she pointed at me with both hands and a wink of her eye. “For you? That one’s free.”

“Uh...Thanks?”

“Don’t mention it!” She started pulling out a bag and started to put oran berries inside of it. Or perhaps dumping would be a better word for it. “So, how many oran berries did you wanna invest in? Seven? Ten? Oh, i know! How’s about we meet the best a both worlds at seventeen?!”

She held up the small plastic bag that looked ready to burst from all the berries.

“N-No thanks, I, uh, don’t need all of those.” I found myself slowly backing away as her eye started to twitch for the second time. My partner on the other hand seemed pretty depressed that I wasn’t into shopping here.

“...D’OH!” She slapped her forehead with her left hand with enough force to make it sound like a violent slap. “Duh! How stupid of me, you couldn’t possibly want seventeen of the same berry! Seriously, what idiot in the right mind would want oran stew for three nights in a row?!” Her nervous giggling made me think that she answered her own question.

“Still,” She tossed the bag back towards the cart, miraculously having the bag land directly on top of the remaining oran berries. “Let me try and get a read on ya.”

“I think you’re missing the poin—” “Let me guess, you’re the go-getter kinda guy, right? The kind that every lady wants to be around, huh?”

“...” Slowly, I took in a breath and fixed the collar of my shirt, puffing out my chest as I began. “Well,” I gave out the most stoic nod I could. “I don’t usually like to brag, but I guess you could say that.”

“Wohohooah~! Easy there Casanova, I can feel my heart stopping,” She fanned herself with a smile as she went on. “But still, furthers my point. Trust me when I say that ladies love a guy who can make a great dish. And what is the key to a great dish, I hear you asking? Simple. Fresh ingredients!”

“Maku-maku.” Makuhita quickly slid beside the girl with his arms crossed, nodding along to her.

“Pfft. Well, obviously. I mean, how are you supposed to have hay fries when the hay’s more than three days old? It’d just taste like sand at that point.” That’s usually why I ask for extra crispy. Restaurants are always trying to pawn off old ingredients even after they get fresh ones in that day.

“Makuhita?” My partner gave me a confused look before looking back towards the girl who was instead nodding along as though she were following along.

“See? You? You understand. We can’t just eat something from any old store. No. It’s either fresh or bust!” She stepped aside and gestured back to her stand. “So, back to the matter at hand. For you and your Pokémon, I’m thinking at least five persim, eight payapa, and...” She paused for what had to be the first time during all of this and studied Makuhita’s face intently. “...Durin berry. Definitely a Durin berry.”

“Durin?” Makuhita looked just as confused as I did. Although that didn’t stop the girl from practically diving behind her cart and looking through the few crates she had tucked away.

“Yep. Durin.” After a few more seconds, she finally stood back up and held out what looked like a green spiked fruit almost too big to fit in her hand. “It’s said to be the absolute most bitter berry there is out there. So much so that it takes some pretty special preparation since the tough outer skin of it is almost too bitter for anyone to chew on. However there are a few Pokémon out there that can handle the skin of it too.

“However, it has some pretty good perks to it too. It’s the go to berry for hiccups and it makes what has to be the biggest wake-me-up energy drink there is! That is, as long as you mix it along with some...Da-dada-daa~!” She held up the bag of overflowing berries from earlier. “Oran berries!”

The previous grin I had on my face was replaced with a skeptical look. “Are you sure they can do that?” It didn’t make too much sense to me so I was having a hard time believing that. Only putting in two berries in a drink seems like nothing. Although I guess I wasn’t much to talk since I’ve never really had a smoothie before. It’s usually just been gem filled pancakes and coffee when it came to mornings.

“Well, don’t look at me if you’re skeptical. Ask your Makuhita there.” With a bit of effort she tore off the berry from the side and tossed it over towards him.

“Ma!” He didn’t even try to catch it however. Instead, he settled for having it land in his mouth. It only took a few seconds after that until all three of us knew his opinion as his face lit up in utter joy. “Maku…”

I stifled a laugh from the single tear running down his cheek. “You really like that thing, don’t you?”

“Hita!” With a swallow, he threw both hands up into the air and started to stare back towards the berry owner as she took out two more durin berries.

“Well I guess you two are in luck then. We usually don’t have too many people that want Durin berries, so we don’t have too many for sale.” She took a moment to get out a better bag to put the oran berries and the two durin berries inside, as well as some of the other berries that she had mentioned. “As a matter of fact, we only have a harvest of these once every other month.”

“You mean this PokéMart place?” Once she had finally gotten all the berries into the bag, she picked it up and brought it over to the small ancient looking cash register she had set up on a barrel.

“Pfft. Yeah, because the PokéMart always harvests their own berries.” She rolled her eyes. “No, I’m talking about my family’s farm. I help out my pops and little sister with taking care of Berry Fields south of Route 7. Or at least, I started helping them out recently. You see, my pops doesn’t know how to sell stock at all. So, I’m helpin’ them out.” She cracked her knuckles as if to get the point across.

“Riiight,” I found myself just nodding along before she get all excited again. “So, how much are these berries again?”

“Oh, just 512₽.” She flashed me an innocent smile.

“O—” I paused. “Say that again?”

“What again?”

“Did you say 500?” I could feel my brain breaking down as I repeated it.

“And twelve ₽, yes.” She blinked before realizing something. “Oh! And I almost forgot the sample of Durin that your Pokémon tried. That’s an extra fifty.”

“...”

“Ma...Ku…”

Both of us slouched in unison as the lady continued to give us the most innocent smile she could muster.

Max’s POV
Outside Entrance to Route 4
11:38 AM

“So, are you gonna be okay? You look pretty upset about something.”

“I’m fine…” Was all Spike had to say.

“Translation: Not fine.”

I shot Kirlia a quick glance but otherwise let the question go for now. Apparently after Kirlia had gathered us all up to leave, Spike and his Pokémon had met us with a large grocery bag filled with berries and a bitter expression on his face. Err, no pun intended.

“So Kirlia, why did you want us to leave the Pokémon Center in the first place?”

“There was something there.” Instead of just speaking telepathically, she decided to cut out the middleman and just projected her voice. After all, we were already outside of Lumiose by this point. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it was just...everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”

Spike tilted his head on its side. “Well that’s confusing.”

I looked back to her. “Well was it just one person or a few?”

“That’s just it. At one point I saw two. Then there were four. It dropped down to three. At just random times the number changed around. It never stayed the same. Not only that, but it wouldn’t sit still either. I would sense it from ahead, behind, beneath us, the roof. It would never stay still. That same sinister emotion would just dart all over the place before just...Disappearing!”

All of us held our ears as Kirlia took a few seconds to try and take a few breaths. As she did I noticed her horns glowing with the same rhythm as her breathing.

“Well, isn’t that supposed to happen?” Spike was the first to recover. “I mean, if the emotion thing comes from someone then maybe they just started thinking about something else.”

Kirlia started to shake her head. “Not how it works. If someone’s emotion changed than at least it would still BE there. It’d be a different emotion, but still there. No, this one just vanished! As if it were never there to begin with! That never happens!”

“Hita, mak?”

“I...I don’t know,” She fidgeted a little. “It might’ve been the same as earlier. Although that one didn’t vanish. No, that was something else entirely.”

“Kirlia, what are you talking about?” She looked back up at me with a very worried expression. Her voice wasn’t cutting in and out so she was at least able to keep herself calm enough for the moment. The voice wasn’t what I was concerned about however.

I had never seen Kirlia this scared before. She was acting all twitchy and worried, almost as though she were a different Pokémon. Usually she was accepting of something she didn’t understand. In fact she was always open and adventurous to what she didn’t understand.

The only time that she ever broke her ambitious personality is whenever she saw someone either in pain or when she saw someone who was entirely enraged beyond belief. At times like that she would be much more soft spoken.

There would even be times where she would apologize for something that wasn’t actually her fault. In normal circumstances, she would be just stubborn enough to only apologize if something were her fault directly, like losing a battle for instance.

So when she had literally broke out into a run when she found me I knew that something was wrong. Already this ‘crimson red’ emotion made me understand that it was that same enraged emotion that she hated coming across. Although, usually it was something like a fiery red or a vibrant red. Only a few times was it a dark red, and even then we at least knew the situation. We were able to work with that.

However, it was never crimson red. Just the thought of only seeing a crimson red aura in literally every direction sounded terrifying. So to see her be on the receiving end of that...

I needed to get her out of here. Now.

“Kirlia, let’s go ahead and—” As I turned to look at Kirlia I noticed that all of them were no longer talking about any of this. In fact none of them were even looking at each other. Instead, they had their heads craned upwards as they were looking at something up in the air.

“Hita.”

“Cat?”

“Crimson.”

All of those words could easily be used to describe what was currently floating towards us from the sky. Although green, balloon, and annoying would work too. Except none of those words are what I would use. In fact, there were really only two words I could manage to say in the face of this nightmare.

However, it looks like the nightmare had a few words to yell at us from over their speaker.

“Prepare for trouble, it’s a blast from the past!”

“And make it double, for we’re here to last!”

“To protect the world from devastation!”

“To unite all peoples within our nation!”

“To denounce the evils of truth and love!”

"To extend our reach to the stars above!"

“Jessie!”

“James!”

“Team Rocket, blast off with a memorable speed of light!”

“Surrender now, or prepare for a nostalgic fight!”

“Meowth! That’s right~!”

“Wobbuffet~!”

“Is...Was that some kind of performance?” Spike and Makuhita were confused a great deal, but explaining could wait for now. Right now, I felt almost weak-kneed from the memories that were coming back.

“No...You can’t be serious.” Every thought I had all made its way back to the same conclusion. The same name. Even after three years I could never forget that stupid Meowth balloon no matter how hard I try. For that matter, I couldn’t forget any of the three of them either.

“Well, well, well. It looks like the kid twerp remembered.” First there was Jessie, and just like Harley she not only messed with all of us, she messed with May’s chances when it came to Pokémon Contests.

“They really do grow up so fast. Not only that, but he remembered to bring a gift after all this time.” Then there was James. He never stood out to me as much, but that didn’t make him any less painful to run into.

“Then I guess it’s time ta collect!” Finally, Team Rocket’s own talking Meowth. Somehow he ended up being the smartest one of them despite not knowing how to battle.

“Look out!” Spike and Makuhita suddenly dived off to the side as two retracting, three fingered claws shot out towards us as record speed. The first one looked to be aiming for Makuhita, who had the chance to dodge it.

“GAHHHH!” All of us flinched at the yelling that scraped at our minds as Kirlia was electrocuted on contact from the claw before she was dragged through the air and into the balloon.

“So much for da two fer one deal.” Meowth stood at the edge of the basket and looked down underneath it with some sort of control mechanism in his paws.

Underneath the basket itself were two separate glass boxes where the claws had come from. Although one of them was still empty with claw struggling to get out of the ground, the second one now had a restrained Kirlia inside of it.

“Kirl! Kirlia!” She attempted to get herself free from the claw, but every time she tried using psychic it just administered some kind of controlled shock.

“Well then get that claw out of the ground and claim our other prize already!” Despite no longer using their speaker I could hear Jessie’s voice loud and clear. As I turned to look at the second claw, I noticed Spike and Makuhita getting back up off the ground.

“Spike, be careful! They’re trying to take Makuhita too!”

“What?!” He flinched at the claw as it finally freed itself from the ground and turned towards the two of them.

Not having too much time to react, Spike got between the claw and Makuhita before taking in a deep breath, “Ack-” And almost immediately choking on air for doing so. “ow”

“Ha! You think a road block’s gonna stop this baby?!” Meowth yanked one lever back and the other forwards as the claw quickly navigated around Spike like a snake before opening the finger-like appendages opened wide.

“Mak!” Makuhita had been wise enough to take a few steps back during Spike’s distraction and had time to react. With one final step he jumped back in an attempt to dodge the oncoming strike and managed to clear almost seven whole feet before even hitting the ground again.

James’ brow furrowed. “Hm? That’s odd. I thought Kirlia was the ballerina of the group.”

“Kirl!” Kirlia tried to argue as she struggled, but none of them paid her any mind.

I looked back towards the others. “Spike, you need to make sure that Makuhita doesn’t get caught! Team Rocket’s a group of thieves!”

His expression grew shocked as he turned to study the balloon for a second before he quickly tried to steel his nerves as well as he could. “R-Right! Makuhita!”

“Hita,” Without any command Makuhita got into a boxer’s pose while the claw pulled itself back. Team Rocket wanted to make sure that they hit their mark this time.

“And I thought prize grabbas were a pain!” The claw lashed out again, only this time they were ready for it.

“Go right!” Spike ran forward as he gave the command. Then, as Makuhita dodged the next swipe, Spike and I tried to grab the arm of the claw in attempts to slow it down.

“Oi! Hands off da merchandise!” The entire arm coiled about, sending both of us back to the ground before rushing forward again.

“Makuhita, uh, j-jump!” Spike had only just managed to get the command across before Makuhita did as instructed, jumping up into the air above the claw.

Jessie started to growl from their balloon before yelling into the speaker by accident. “Alright enough of this! Meowth, catch that pudgy thing already!”

“...”

Makuhita reached the height of his jump just as the claw began to reposition itself like a baseball mit beneath him. And with no way to adjust himself in the air he began to fall.

“Oh no,” Spike tensed up as he realized his mistake.

“Gotcha now!”

“...Wait,” His shoulders slacked as he saw Makuhita falling towards the claw. “This is kinda like...Makuhita! The Bullet Punch thing!”

Makuhita’s attention drifted to Spike for a moment before he began to wind up his arm and gaining momentum as he did. As he did the distance between him and the claw shortened. Once he was within striking range, that’s when he acted.

Just like with Harley, Makuhita’s entire arm gleamed with metal as his arm winded up one last time before he brought it forward with a haymaker-esque punch directly into the palm of the machine’s claw.

Instantly, Makuhita’s entire body was covered in static as the claw electrocuted him the same way it had done to Kirlia. However, the momentum behind Makuhita’s haymaker forced him to drive his arm through the entire claw regardless until his fist met the ground below it. This in turn ceased the electricity and forced the appendages to go flying off in different directions with one of them almost landed near the two of us.

“You twerp! Do you know just how much that cost us?!” Jessie looked almost ready to pounce out of their balloon and towards Spike.

“I’m not paying for it!” Instantly, Spike held up his arms in defense with a look of terror on his face.

“I think it’s time we take our winnings and retreat.” James started to back up as the rest of the robot arm started to go slack due to part of it now currently in pieces.

“Oh no you don’t!”

I ran forward for the the arm and latched onto it with the intent of climbing up there myself. No way was I about to let them make off with Kirlia!

“Nice try bozo, but dis jungle gym's closed fer da day!” From above I could hear Meowth as he pressed something on his little control panel. Next, before I could even make it ten feet off the ground, I felt the arm go slack as the joint that connected it to the balloon suddenly unlatched. So with a grunt I fell to the ground along with it.

“Kirlia!” I looked up only to see Kirlia still restrained inside the glass box. She had only managed to get a hand free and the claw was still electrocuting her with each attempt at using a move.

“Sorry, but your weekly running of Team Rocket has concluded for today!” James began to speak as though they were part of some television series as the balloon began to float out above the treeline of the forest.

“Ta-taa~!” They all began to wave happily as the distance got farther and farther from us with Kirlia trying to escape all the while.

Once they were too far away to even hear from the speakers, I felt my knees hit the ground below me as I sat there stunned. Kirlia was getting farther and farther from me and I…

I’m still here.

It felt like this wasn’t really happening. That any second now she’d teleport right next to us with an annoyed look on her face and some aggressive remark about the whole thing.

“That must be the Team Rocket you’re always talking about.” Or something along those lines. It’d be sudden and none of us would instantly recognize it as her.

Except that didn’t happen. Instead, we could only see the giant Meowth head getting farther away.

So instead of Kirlia appearing, Spike and his Pokémon rushed to my side instead, asking and checking to see if I was okay. I wasn’t, and they knew that, but it didn’t stop them from checking up on me.

“Max? What do we do?!” Spike kept looking between me and the balloon once he realized I wasn’t moving.

“...”

From the right of me I saw Makuhita’s expression. He was worried about me, but as he looked back towards the balloon his expression darkened. Of course I didn’t expect him to have an answer either. Neither of them have run into Team Rocket before.

“Why did they just…” Spike turned back to me and saw that I still wasn’t reacting. “Hey! Snap out of it already!”

“And do what exactly?” I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “We can’t keep up with them like this. We don’t even have a flying type to help search for them.”

I tried running every time I had run into them before. When they interfered with contests May was able to handle it or we had someone helping us take them down. If they actually managed to take Ash’s Pikachu or another Pokémon, we had enough of us to track them down. Even when the group got separated we were at least in small groups a majority of the time.

But this time, I didn’t even have any of the others with me. Kirlia was the only Pokémon I brought and now she was gone.

“...” As Spike stood up, he turned to look at his Pokémon. “Makuhita, you’re pretty fast, right?”

“...Maku,” He nodded.

“Do you think you can try to follow that balloon? At least for a little bit?”

“Hii,” Makuhita studied the balloon for a few seconds before rolling his shoulders. He was about to start running.

“When you start going, try and leave a trail behind you. Like a stick or something, okay?” I looked up towards Spike as he explained all of this to Makuhita. He didn’t look like he was too sure about any of this idea. In fact, it looked like he had no clue what he was doing.

“Maku-ku,” Without another word, Makuhita hopped back a step before dashing forward, clearing the distance between here and the treeline in a small amount of time. Then after about ten seconds we heard a dull slam from in the forest.

“You think that’ll work?” I bit the inside of my cheek as I tried listening to more noises from the forest.

“Uh...I don’t really know.” He gave out a sheepish shrug before offering me a hand up. And while it wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, I still took the help to get to my feet. “It’s just a trick that one of my friends told me about. But what I do know is that their hot air balloon can’t get too far away from here.”

“Really?” I took a moment to think about it and it did seem to match up with what I knew about Team Rocket. Their balloon never made it too far away. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because there used to be this one balloon back in Po...Canalave City.” He coughed a little before going on. “That one was smaller and was only able to ride for an hour or so. There balloon had a better heater, but it was bigger and probably heavier. Plus there were a lot of them inside of it. And since they flew toward us, then they were already up there before they found us. At least, I think that’s how it works.”

He didn’t seem so sure about his guess, but he still sounded like he knew about the subject in general. Regardless of whether he was right or not, he at least knew more about it than I did.

“Well then where do you think they landed?” As I asked that I pulled out the PokéNav and brought up the map. Once I had zoomed out the map and showed him how to move the view around, he started to mess with it.

“Um...Maybe...N-No…” It took him almost a minute of trying to move the camera around with his tongue sticking out the side like a fool, but eventually he stopped the camera and held it up to me. “I think that’s the best guess I have.”

I put a mark on the location and let the Nav do the rest. What came up was a pathway and a clock that told us when we would get there.

“It’s twenty minutes from here. Think you’re ready to run?” I picked up my pack and quickly slung it over my shoulder before seeing Spike test the weight of his before nodding along.

“Good. Then let’s go.” And with that, we began the chase.

Author's Note

Whelp, I got one question for everyone and then I'm signing off until the next chapter! So let's get the Question of the Chapter, QotC, started!

Not next chapter, but the one after this one there will be another side story thing similar to what happened with Sweetie. Only this time I think I'll have two questions to mold the story around. Here's the first of the two!

QotC: Each of the Mane Six really aren't like the others. So with that in mind; which of them is Best Pony?

A Joke Laid To Rest (Episode 2)

Max’s POV

Within the Forest

12:03 PM

“Okay…Maybe…I wasn’t ready for this…” From behind me, Spike was still able to keep pace with me, but he didn’t look like he could keep it up for too long. From what I could tell he wasn’t too fast of a runner.

“…” I bit my lip as I ran around one of the bigger trees in our way. As I did I saw a large chunk of bark ripped off of the side and laying a few feet away from the actual trunk. “Let’s…” I trailed off with a grimace. A part of me wanted to keep going to get to Kirlia as fast as possible. Although I knew all too well what happened if I pressed too hard to get there right away. “Let’s take a break.”

Both of us started to slow down until finally we stopped between a set of trees that we gladly leaned on for support. Again, just ahead of us was some more small carnage in the form of an uprooted shrub sitting next to a hole in the ground.

“Wow. Makuhita’s pretty. Energetic, huh?” My fatigue was started to catch up with me already, forcing me to try and get my breath. Although I couldn’t say I was surprised, we were running as fast as we could for almost ten minutes now.

“Yeah…He’s like a…Wonderbolt or something…” Spike let his bag fall next to him as he continued to lean against the tree.

“…What’s a Wonderbolt?”

“Huh?” Spike looked up as he took in a deeper breath. “Oh, yeah, there…They’re these really good, um…Flyers?”

Flyers? “You mean like in jet planes or something?” That was the only thing that came to mind at least. That and trainers that ride on their Pokémon.

“Yeah. Sure.” Spike tried to nod along. “He’s really fast. Kinda like a jet!”

Both of us continued to catch our breath in silence. It took a little longer than I would’ve hoped, but soon enough Spike seemed at least good enough for us to start heading in the same direction as Makuhita and the balloon.

“So,” With one more breath, Spike started to walk beside me. “Just who were those people exactly? You said that they were thieves, but…Why?”

“Honestly? I don’t have a clue.” I shrugged. “They apparently followed Ash way before I even met him. All I really know about them is that they’re bad people called Team Rocket that try and take Pokémon from their trainers. That and they usually use all these underhanded tricks.”

“Doesn’t that sound familiar,” Spike muttered before looking back towards me. “You always managed to stop them though, right?”

“Oh yeah, plenty of times.” I actually smiled a little at the thought. “Usually they would sneak up on us and sometimes manage to make off with Pikachu or a different Pokémon only for us to track them down and stop them. Still, we were able to stop them because of how many of us there were and how well everyone worked together. Not to mention we had a flying-type or two to help track them down.

“And not only that, but even when there was just one or two of us that could stop them, we at least had an advantage or something.”

“Well at least they don’t sound too hard to deal with. You know, aside from the whole stealing Pokémon part.” Spike smacked his forehead. “No, wait, that didn’t come out right.”

“It’s alright, I know what you mean. I just wish I did something other than stand there.” Kind of like what I did at a certain Pokémon League.

“Nah, it’s fine.” Spike waved a hand around and smiled. “We’re doing something now, aren’t we? That’s gotta make up for something, right?”

I stopped walking. “Make up for it?”

“Uh-huh. I mean, I’ve made a few tiny mistakes before.” As I watched him clear his throat I could almost see him having some kind of flashback. “Okay, maybe a few big mistakes before,” He corrected. “But none of my friends held it against me. Even before I tried making up for it they didn’t hate me for it or anything.”

I bit my lip as the words repeated off in my head. “They didn’t hate me…”

I started to replay what May was telling me back at the airport. How she was nothing but nice despite how much I avoided her as well as Mom and Dad. She wasn’t disappointed in me, she was considerate.

“You’re my brother! I don’t care how badly you do at a Pokémon League, I’ll never be mad at you!”

I sniffed a little bit and went to adjust my glasses. I was the only one that was disappointed in myself. Not May, not Dad, not Kirlia or the others on my team. They were on my side the whole time. I was the only one that wasn’t…

“Max?” I glanced over at Spike and saw that he was looking at me with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I ended up just taking off my glasses to wipe my face before putting them back on. “I’m okay…Now let’s hurry up and get Kirlia.”

“Okay,” Spike righted his backpack a little more before looking back at me. “How much further was that spot again?”

“Um…” I quickly brought out the PokéNav and pressed a few button to see the map itself. “It looks like we’re about halfway there.”

“Wait,” Spike blinked. “Halfway? We’re only halfway there?”

“Yep,” Closing out the map I put the Nav back into its pocket. “If we keep jogging than it should be just another ten minutes.”

“Ugh…” He started to slouch forward while I made sure my running shoes were still tied. “If I’d have known we were that far I would’ve saved the talking for later.”

“Ah, come on, ten minutes isn’t that far. Besides, we’ll probably find Makuhita waiting for us when we get there. So that means we have to get there as soon as possible.” With my shoes laced up I wasted no time jogging forward. A few seconds later I could hear Spike running up behind me before keeping pace. Of course it didn’t go without a little complaining.

“Just for the record, I think that we should get a balloon next time!”

Makuhita’s POV

Middle of the Forest

12:07 PM

With a heave I jumped up onto a fallen trunk and launched myself forward past a set of swirling thorn bushes. After I was over I grabbed a couple of low hanging branches and yanked them out of the tree. It wasn’t much, but at least it would catch their attention if they were still behind me.

Once that was taken care of I started to glance around me to get my bearings again. From what I could tell I was in the center of a small clearing with some shady trees above me. However, that was it. It was just a clearing. No sign of other Pokémon running around, no Meowth balloon that I could see past all the branches, I couldn’t even see the trail that I was running near anymore.

“Oh great,” I groaned. I had been using the trail as a landmark so that I wouldn’t get lost. Which means that without the trail, I already messed up. And only about fifteen minutes into my run.

“Maybe it’s just behind one of the trees.” I rushed over to my left and tried to see through the tree line to spot the trail. I had managed to keep it to my left most of the time. “No…” I turned and ran to the right of the clearing to do the same, but the trees looked the exact same as they did on the left. A bigger tree next to a smaller one and a bush or twelve scattered around with no trail in sight.

“Dang it!” I smacked the tree beside me ignoring the bark that scattered close to my face. “Okay. Maybe if I just keep going forward I’ll try it again.”

And so I did. Except once I made it to the edge of the clearing I saw a patch of thorn bushes and a fallen tree log that I had jumped off of. No…

Turning on my heel I leapt over the branches I pulled out and ran across the small field only to see the same exact thing. A bunch of thorn bushes and a fallen tree trunk.

“Ah, come on!” I twisted directions around again and decided to just run in a random direction. Too bad I didn’t realize just how close the branches were until I stepped on one end of them.

Thwack!

“GAH!” My eyes couldn’t register the hit until it smacked my face, leaving me stunned and flat on my back with a giant red mark on my face. With a weak groan I hold my nose in place while I sat up. “Ouch…How am I messing up this badly?”

“Well, stampeding through the forest and yelling at the top of your lungs probably isn’t helping your case.” From my right I heard some rustling of bushes before a familiar Pokémon walked out with a calm expression. “But then again, you’re the one that managed to dodge the hands so I guess I’m not much to talk either.”

“Kirlia!” I threw my fist down onto the stick, smashing it in two before hopping up and hurrying over to where she was. As I got closer I noticed that she didn’t look hurt or scared. Instead, she was more concerned about picking the leaves and twigs out of her hair. “How’d you get away from those Meowth People?!”

“Oh, you know,” With the final twig out of her hair, she beamed at me with a huge grin. “I just showed them my claws is all.” She held out her hands like a Meowth before suddenly a set of small green claws slid out of them. “Get it? Claws?” She started to giggle.

“Woah…” I stared at one of her hands for a few seconds before tilting my head to the side. “You had claws this whole time?!”

“…” Her expression turned shocked. “Oh, darn it! Did I let that slip?!” She retracted her claws and set her hands on her waist, striking a heroic-esque pose. “Well then I guess the cat’s outta the bag now! Dero-shishishishishi” She nearly doubled over in laughter as her jaw grew somewhat to accommodate for her sharp teeth.

“Uh…Kirlia?” I took a step back. “Your teeth got bigger…And pointier…”

“Huh?” Her laughing stopped on a dime before a puddle formed between the two of us, making me hop further away from her as she started to innocently study her appearance with the same unsettling grin. As she did, some dark smoke began to emit from her entire body. “Aw, fiddlesticks. Guess I still don’t have the hang of this move yet…”

“Move? What move?” She continued to study her form as her eyes left her face, floating above her head and looking directly at me. “Uh, K-Kirlia?”

“Ah, come on kid.” The floating eyes rolled as Kirlia’s body started to decompose into purple and black smoke. I tried to back away as slowly as I could, but my foot began to roll on the same stupid stick from earlier, causing me to slip and fall onto my back as the smoke started to navigate its way around the two eyes.

“You can’t be serious, right?” The floating eyes started to make their way over towards me.“I mean, I know I’m a Grade-A actor and all, but I’m not exactly knockin’ em DEAD here! Shishishishishi!”

“Actor?” I started to shuffle away from her eyes as suddenly my fist went through the ground. Wait, that wasn’t right. When I turned back to look where I was going I saw nothing but black nothingness where there was previously green forests and thorn bushes. “W-What’s going on?!”

I jumped to my feet and tried to hide my face behind my boxer’s pose. After all, if I couldn’t go anywhere then my only option was to hold my ground. However, as I glanced up at those eyes I saw them giving me an increasingly bored look.

“Oh please kid. You can’t even touch me.” Still, almost as if it were daring me to try, it backed away from me so I had just enough room to lunge at it. “Still though, give it your best! Come on. Plant one right in the jaw! Oh. But wait. I don’t have a jaw! Dero-shishishishi!

As it continued to laugh, I noticed that the gas’s voice sounded like it was coming from every direction. Almost as though it was on a speaker. Not to mention that annoying laugh that he made was starting to echo above everything else. That wasn’t what made it sound creepy though. The part that made it creepy was that Kirlia’s voice was still mixed in with it somewhat.

Finally, the laughing had started to get to me. “That’s what you think, you…You…” I watched it float in place as the irises of Kirlia’s eyes blinked away, leaving only these tiny dots that made the pupils in seas of white. “You…Not Kirlia, gas-thing!”

All at once, the laughter and voices stopped cold as the eyes focused back towards me with a thin line appearing underneath them to act as a mouth. “Wow,” It mocked. “That was terrible.”

I gritted my teeth. “You’re terrible! Arm Thrust!” With a yell I took off to meet the gas at its own height and brought my first attack forward to strike the center of his fa—I’m going straight through him!

“Oof!” I fell back on the ground with a thud and groaned in pain as my face landed on top of that stupid stick for the second time now. “ow.”

As I pulled my face back off of the ground I watched as the gas floated around to meet me again. “Okay, but for realzies kid, you literally cannot touch me.” I tried to prove it wrong by throwing the stick into his face, but once it flew through him he started to laugh all over again. And to add to how creepy it was, a large tongue and small fangs on either side were all that his mouth consisted of. No throat, no other teeth, not even gums.

Once the laughing ceased, thankfully, he spoke again. “Alright, fun and games aside, listen up. In case you haven’t put two and two together yet, I’M A GHOST! Your Knuckle Sandwiches will only go right through me! Shishishi.”

With a sigh I got up to my feet. “Okay, fine.” I clenched my fists before looking back up at his smiling face. He was messing with me. “Where am I anyways?”

“Oh don’t worry, we’re still in the forest. You’re just passed out is all.”

“Passed out?” I slapped my face a lightly. “Like, asleep?”

“Well, Hypnotized is a better word for it really. After all, if you were dreaming you wouldn’t be BEATING yourself up so much!” He gave me a huge cheeky grin.

“…”

Without moving his mouth, I heard him clear his throat. “BEATING. Yourself up so much!”

“…” When he didn’t say anything else I shuffled in place a little. “Um…So, can you—“

“Oh dear Arceus!” He flew right up in my face again. “Come on, tell me you’re joking! Beating? You’re a Fighting-Type? Come on kid, these are the jokes!”

“…Right,” I backed up a little as one of his smile started to turn sour. “Look, mister, I need to go find my—“

“Mister?” He started to chuckle again, the smile returning two-fold. “Kid, what makes you think I’m a guy, huh?”

I gave it a sideways look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I said! Why do you just assume that I’m a guy? I mean, my voice doesn’t really sound all that manly if you ask me.” As he, err, it pointed it out, I guess it was right. The voice sounded a little genderless.

“I mean, you don’t know!” His smile turned into a mischievous one. “For all you’re aware, I could be a female Gastly! Heck, this might just be me HITA-ing on you! Dero-shishishishi~!”

I gritted my teeth until the laughter finally stopped. “Fine, whatever you…” Wait a second, I thought. What kind of Pokémon did she say she was?

“You’re a Gastly?” I looked back up only to see one of her eyes twitching as his smile fell again.

“r-really?” He looked away. “does this Pokémon really not understand comedy? I’ve tried ghost-jokes, puns, impressions, the whole shebang! What am I miss—“ Once she saw that I was waiting for her to answer my question, she flashed another huge smile at me.

“I mean, we’ll duh!” She yelled. “Of course I’m a Gastly! Just what gave it away, huh Brainiac?! The Enamoring Eyes? The Sensational Smile? The ENTOXICATING Smoke?!”

“…” Again, I stood there and tried waiting out the awkward pause.

Gastly’s face began to tremble. “The ENTOXI—OH FORGET IT!”

“AH!” Suddenly my head jolted up as I snapped awake with a yell. The drool all over my face and stiffness from sleeping while on my feet was annoying, but as I looked around I was almost glad to be right back in a normal part of the forest. Not only was that, but the trail I had been keeping close to directly ahead of me, past a few stray trees. I was back in reality.

I swear…

Or not.

Her voice was echoing from every direction. Instead this time, it was faint and coming from one direction in particular; behind me.

Pansages, Scatterbugs, even the stray Pikachu in this forest all understand my jokes!

Wiping the drool off my cheek I turned around and saw a few wisps of smoke hiding from the sunlight up underneath a large amount of shade patch of leaves. And in that smoke I saw two faint eyes glaring at me.

Well, at least they do until they start running away in fear, but they still understand them, Arceus dangit! And yet, for some reason, the one Pokémon that doesn’t run from me and it had to be the ONE that doesn’t have a sense of humor! Go figure.

“Well, sorry, but I’m not in the mood for jokes!” I made sure to get a few more sticks in the middle of the clearing before getting my bearings again. “I need to find my friend before those jerks run away again!”

Oh? You mean that Kirlia in the glass box currently being mocked by Team Rocket?

All at once, my muscles tensed up. “Wait a second, how did you…?” Slowly I started to turn back and look at her. Only when I did, I saw her near toothless mouth appear and form a large, ear to ear, toothy grin.

Boo.

Without another word, her form flew further into the forest with only that stupid laughing leaving any trail of what direction she was going.

Not two seconds later and I was running after her at full speed. At this point, forget the trail. Heck, forget leaving signs behind me. This dumb Gastly knew where she was. I was just going in the same direction I saw them in! So if she could tell me where Kirlia was then—

DERO-Shishishishishishishishi! You gotta be faster than that!

“Shut up and get back here!” I hit the brakes and turned left at the next tree as her voice trailed off in that direction. Only, after a few more seconds of running I ran into a dead-end in the form of cliffs.

Then I heard her voice from above me.

Shishishishishi. Sorry kid, but you’ll have to try harder than that to catch me! But hey! Look at the bright side! You can only go up from here, amirite?! Shishishishishishish—Huh?

“Hup. Hup. Hup. Hup. Hup!” Reaching the final step, I gave one final heave and threw myself up past the final makeshift platform that led up to the top of the cliff. Once I was close enough, I clenched my fist as I neared the laughing ball of gas. “Bullet…”

Uh-oh

“PUNCH!” I brought my steel-covered fist forward and finally found purchase on Gastly’s face, forcing her back and into the sunlight as she spun out of control.

Owowowowowow-OWWWWW~

In an instant, Gastly’s form faded out of view only moments after she met the sunlight. That didn’t stop me from hearing her complaining about the pain that she felt. “Haha! I thought you said I couldn’t hit you!”

Ugh…Didn’t know you could do that!

A few more seconds of looking around and I spotted her appear behind me past the cliff’s edge. Half of me was surprised to see her actually able to show up at all while the sun was out. Still, I guess it didn’t really matter much right now.

Dang it kid, a guy can only take so much!

“Guy?” I looked at her questioningly. “I thought you said that you were a girl.”

Nnnnnnnope! I said that for all you know I could be a girl! See, there you go again, assuming things! You really need to work on tha—

“Whatever!” I held up my fists, ready to throw another Bullet Punch as I stared her—he—IT down. “Look, I just want to know where Kirlia is! I need to find her so we can get her back!”

Aw, ain’t that sweet? The kid wants to be her knight in shining armor.

She paused for a second as though pondering what she said.

Shining Armor…Huh. That’s weird. For some reason, it feels like there’s a joke to be had there but for the LIFE of me I can’t figure it out. Shishishi…

I growled. “Forget the dumb joke! I wanna know where I can find her! What will it take to have you tell me already?!”

What will it take?

I growled in frustration before throwing up a fist to point at her. “Yes! You put me to sleep, you said all these weird words that make no sense, and you had me chase you all the way up here! So what do you want?!”

Huh…You know, you’re not as dumb as I thought you were.

With, for once, a calm expression, Gastly floated over to me and met me eye to eye.

It’s actually rather straight-forward. I want a trainer. Same as you, same as Kirlia, same as any other Pokémon bored to tears, really.

“A trainer?” I lowered my fists a bit. “That’s it? But aren’t they everywhere?”

Yes, but I want a Good Trainer! A fun one! And I hate to sound like every diva ever, but seriously! Good trainers are SO hard to find these days! Shishi...

“So then,” I lowered my fists entirely. “Like Spike?”

Spike, huh? As in the kid that just went poof on the roof yesterday? Shishishi... Funny you bring him up actually, I’ve been trying to find a good time to get something off my chest. Oh. But I don’t have a chest. GHOST-A-JOKE, DERO-shishishishishi!

After he stopped laughing, Gastly took a few seconds staring me down before going on, getting angrier as it did..

Geez, you cannot take a joke, can you? Kinda reminds me of someone I know. Still, if you agree to help me out I’ll gladly tell you where your friend is. Hey, agree now and I’ll even throw in a ‘Helping Hand’ free of charge! Shishishishi!

“Help you find a good trainer?” I looked back up towards the sky. The sun was a little further in the sky than it was earlier. A little too further the more I thought about it. Still, if helping Gastly find a trainer was all she, um, it wanted then I guess it couldn’t hurt to try.

Not only that, but it would probably be a good idea to have some help just in case Max and Spike don’t catch up in time.

With not too many other options to pick from, I looked back to Gastly. “Okay, it’s a deal. You help me get Kirlia back and I’ll make sure you find a good trainer.” I held out a fist to shake her…Oh.

Thought that counts, kid.

She beamed at me regardless before looking off towards the north.

Anyway, them goons are that-a-way! And if you’re willing to slow your speed just a little bit, Little Miss Gastly here’s got a plan a-brewin’ in his pot!

“Miss? His pot?” I gave the ghost-type a weird look. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”

Oh I’m sorry Grammar Police! What’re ya gonna do, kill me?! Dero-shishishishi! Now hurry up! We got plans to scheme, villains to thwart, and ironic sayings of good and evil to mix together! Come along dear boy! Tally HO!

With a loop, Gastly flew straight down the cliff-side, leaving me standing there doubting just how good of an idea it was to really agree to this.

Kirlia’s POV

Large Forest Clearing

12:18 PM

While I was in the glass box all of my psychic abilities were limited. I couldn’t see auras, I couldn’t teleport or project my voice, and I couldn’t use any psychic moves to break out either. However, given everything that had been happening today it almost seemed like a blessing.

Still, there was really only one thing I would prefer that this trap have and I would almost take the box in stride. Nearly the whole time that I had been locked up in here I was forced to listen to three idiots cheering and singing in pure joy about how they had managed to catch me. And this entire time I had been trying to block them out by any means necessary. Thus why this stupid box needed to be sound proof.

Eventually I gave up and just lied on my side, propping up my head up with my hand as I just kept lounging around with a sour look on my face the entire time. Not that any of them ever noticed. They were coming up on the half hour mark of celebrating.

“We got a Kirlia~! We got a Kirlia~! We got a Kirlia~!” This was their fourth cheer routine and to give them at least the smallest amount of credit it was at least better than the other three. Still, that didn’t mean that I was about to skip out on giving them a hard time.

“Correction; you kidnapped a Kirlia! And the Kirlia is not too thrilled about it, either.” I mocked them with a yawn before continuing to glare at them. Not that any of them could understand me. Well, their Pokémon could, but that wasn’t much sadly. The Inkay had done nothing but agree to whatever was being said while the Wobbuffet had only said two words this entire time.

“Oh yeah~!” Wobbuffet saluted towards...Nothing really. In fact, he was just saluting out towards a random direction, smiling at nothing.

“That is an adequate way to put it!” Inkay added his own two cents, smiling happily towards me as though he were on my side with the subject.

“Yes, well,” I brought my attention back towards the three who were orchestrating this entire joke. More specifically the scratch cat that could understand me. “Another adequate thing to say is that it’s only a matter of time before Max finds out where we are.”

“Um,” Inkay hummed. “I am not sure how adequate that statement is.”

“Oh please! You really think dat twerp’s gonna find us clear out ‘ere?!” The two people watched Meowth as his grin went into that of a glare. “Wait a minute! Are you really jus’ loungin’ around?!”

I closed my eyes and stopped looking towards him, not moving an inch from where I was lying. “Wow, half an hour of cheering and you just now noticed?”

“I can’t belive dis,” I heard him step back. “She ain’t even takin’ us seriously!”

“Is that so?” Next I heard several footsteps coming towards me followed by knocking on the glass. “Well I guess she’s never heard of how Team Rocket works.”

“Oh how I wish that were true.” With a sigh, I opened one eye to try and get a rise out of the one that was tapping my glass as though it were a Magikarp tank. “I’ve heard the stories from Max. You find a Pokémon you want, you try to steal it, you get stopped.”

In attempt to drive her up the wall, I gave the purple haired one a shooing motion with the rudest expression I could muster. “Would you please bust the glass open for me?”

The woman’s expression suddenly turned furious. “Why you little twerp!” Suddenly, I felt the entire box teeter backwards as she started to rock it in attempt to get to me. It’s a good thing too, otherwise she would’ve noticed me smiling as she did it.

“Hold on, Jessie!” Before she could start kicking the box open, the man and Meowth started to drag her away from me.

“She’s gettin’ unda yer skin on purpose!” Finally deciding to sit up, I watched as the two of them spent the next minute trying to calm her down while I was still stuck sitting in here.

Earlier, I thought I saw them with a crimson aura. In fact I thought I saw just about everything have a crimson aura. But after seeing them dance and cheer for so long there is no way that was true. In fact I think it’d be safe to say that they were incapable of it.

Sure one or two of them had strong emotions, fury and greed from what I could tell from the woman, but none of them had an emotion that strong. I guess it would be wrong of me to say that crimson was an evil color, after all the aura that went along with it wasn’t inherently evil, but to see it shining like a lighthouse was unnatural. It’s even more unnatural when you’re a Pokémon that draws from emotion.

As I kept thinking it over, the man looked over at Meowth. Apparently they had all been talking once they calmed Jessie down. “So, she said that she knows about us already?”

“Oh yeah~! Known in every region!” Wobbuffet saluted off again.

“Inkay?” Deciding to let them believe what they want, I turned to look over towards the squid-like Pokémon. “Can you answer me something?”

As he studied me, he turned to float upside down. “As long as it is not how to escape from your imprisonment, ask away!”

“What do you know about a Kirlia’s ability to see emotions?”

“Hmm?” He blinked. “Huh. Not the question I expected.” His smile grew. “Very impressive, Kirlia! I must say it is not too often that anyone does something unexpected!”

“As for what I know,” He began. “Kirlia have an instinctive ability to read, sense, and see auras from any living creature. They see these auras in one of two ways. The first is passive, with them only seeing an emotion if it is incredibly strong, with each emotion having its own distinct color to it. In fact even the most polar opposite emotions can have similar colors. This baffles researchers as other Pokémon and even what colors we compare to emotions seems to have no similarities.

“The second way a Kirlia sees emotion is if they are actively seeking them out. Depending on the ability of the Kirlia, their range can extend to pick up aura from further targets. Not only that, but if a Kirlia focuses on a certain target they can pick up further targets.” He concluded his speech by righting himself in the air.

No doubt Wobbuffet and Meowth were listening in on what Inkay had said, but that didn’t matter. Everything Inkay said was common knowledge if anyone tried to learn about Kirlia past what the PokéDex told them.

“Good. So you’re caught up.” As Meowth tried to summarize what Inkay and I were talking about to the rest of Team Rocket, I talked just quiet enough so that he couldn’t hear. “Do you know what happens if something’s emotion is too strong?”

“...” He stayed quiet this time, but his smile remained.

“They blind us.” I shuddered a little. “They’re overpowering to the point where we just get freaked out by it and have no idea what’s going on. And honestly this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.”

“I see,” He nodded along. “So it was the ghost-type that had surprised you.”

“Ghost-Type?” I glanced up at him. “What ghost-type?”

“Oh? You mean you were not aware?” Inkay blinked. “During our confrontation, as you made your way to the Pokémon Center, and I suspect even before that, your group was being followed by this ghost-type.”

“Being followed?” I paused to think it all over. The time where I sensed something past the tree on the street, all throughout the Pokémon Center and PokéMart, it was all the same aura. If it really was a ghost-type than might explain how it managed to fly all over the place without me actually seeing where the aura came from.

“Wait,” I looked back up at Inkay. “How did you know that there was a ghost-type following us?”

“That is rather simple!” He started to move his tentacles as though waves were emitting from them. “In order to mask our own auras from you, I had to actively track aura to make sure that I was doing it correctly! Whilst I did that, I noticed the same intense emotion fluttering around wherever you were, mostly in front of a human in order to hide the fact that it was a ghost-type from you. Although, it seems that it was not aware of my presence at the time!”

From the treeline ahead of us I began to notice some of the bushes rustle from one side while the other side had a small wisp of smoke dance from one tree top to the other.

“That’s impressive,” I saw him put his focus back on me. “I didn’t know that an Inkay could do any of that.”

“Oh, well,” He started to revolve in attempt to hide his bashfulness. “It was nothing! I simply focused a psychic move into dispersing a small yet continuous pulse to help hide our emotions from sight!”

There was another rustle in the foliage. It was closer this time, but louder too.

“Huh?” James perked up towards it as he started to look in the direction it had come from. “I could’ve sworn I saw something just now.”

“Eh?” Meowth looked over. “Like what?”

I hid my anxiety as best I could and turned back to Inkay with a small smile. “But that doesn’t sound simple at all. In fact, it’s amazing! Why, I bet you had everything planned down to the last detail!”

“Oh yeah~!” Wobbuffet suddenly turned towards us. “We’re geniuses! We even made sure the box was electric-proof!”

“Oh?” My smile widened. “Well I guess it’s a good thing I don’t know any normal-type moves that can break me out, huh?”

“Yes. Come to think of it, that is very fortunate for us!” Inkay nodded along. “It is not very cost effective to purchase a container that is both psychic-resistant and durable to physical atta...Uh oh.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Inkay recoiled in shock from what he had told me, only to see that I was finally standing up while inside the box. It took a few seconds, but as I looked through one of the air holes in the box I spotted my target and took in a sharp breath.

“YO FURBALL!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, drawing Meowth’s attention. Once he looked over I held out in arm and gestured for him to step forward. “Taunt.”

Meowth’s muscles tensed up as his eyes flashed red for a few moments. “What’d you call me?” Without warning, he started to rush forward while he drew out his claws.

“Wait, Meowth!” Inkay tried to get between Meowth and my cell. “She is only trying to bait you into—” “Outta my way, Inkay!” Meowth swung towards Inkay, forcing him to retreat up into the air while Meowth struck the glass several dozen times before.

“Meowth, not you too!” James tried to grab Meowth and pull him back only for him to start struggling the second that he lifted up off the ground.

“Back off!” He didn’t even turn to look at James as he Fury Swiped him across the face, forcing James to drop him and urgently care for the red crossed marks already appearing onto his face.

“Oh nooo~!” Wobbuffet tried to snap Meowth out of it, but another stink eye from me forced him to keep his attention on striking at the glass box. Sadly it didn’t make too much of a difference. Meowth’s swipes were doing nothing but marking up the glass and yelling absolute gibberish at me the entire time.

However, with all the attention brought on trying to calm Meowth down I was the only one that noticed a familiar face peeking out from one of the bushes before quickly rushing into the clearing and ducking into the basket of Team Rocket’s balloon. Once he was there he began to go back and forth inside and getting something set up from inside of it.

While that was going on, I saw the wisps of smoke start to inch its way closer towards everyone as it stuck to the shade. Just as it got behind Team Rocket, it hid itself behind a rock just as the shade shifted away from it. It seemed as though it was trying its best to avoid the sunlight.

Whatever was going on, I had no idea, but it looked like were in place for their plan to start.

I looked over and saw that both Jessie and James were trying to force Meowth away while he kept trying in vain to break through the glass. With a roll of my eyes, I dropped the taunt and watched as Meowth started to get his thoughts under his control.

“Oi vey…” Meowth started to shake away the rest of the move before glaring back up at me. “Hey, what’s da big idea?! You got some nerve tryin’ ta make fun a me!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I rolled my eyes and tapped the glass. Like I thought, all the scratches were purely cosmetic. “And just what exactly are you gonna do? Call Officer Jenny?”

“Geez, this is nutso,” Meowth watched me carefully as he started to back up. Now he had his guard up in case I used another move on him. “Since when did da twerps have a Pokémon wit’ an attitude?”

“I dunno,” Out of the corner of my eye I saw something that almost made me break the whole act. “Probably around the same time that your balloon started flying on its own.”

“Huh?!” Meowth, followed by Jessie and James, all turned to see the balloon inflated and casting a shadow over the entire clearing. It was still anchored to the ground but that only made the Meowth head lean down in our direction as a result.

“What kind of bad luck is this?!” James started to rush towards the balloon with Inkay followed soon after. “Which of you left the burners running?!”

Jessie humphed as she looked away. “Well don’t look at me,” Jessie turned up her nose, her hair swatting the box in the process. “Meowth was supposed to do that!”

He snapped over towards her with a glare. “Whaddya mean I was! Suppose. Ta...Nighty-night…”

All at once his vigor vanished and he slumped onto the ground as the same smoke from earlier started to collect around him. Although before Jessie or Wobbuffet could raise the alarm, James and Inkay was suddenly forced out of the balloon with a yelp, sliding across the ground with large red marks on each of their faces.

James held his nose in anguish, jumping up and glaring over towards the basket of the balloon. “What?! Who said you could stowaway?!”

“No invitations were given out!” Inkay floated up soon after, one of his tentacles covering up his face as well.

With a hop, the same familiar face from earlier launched himself up and over the side of the basket before squaring up to Inkay and James with a fighter’s pose. However, once he saw that I was still trapped in the box, he dropped his focus and started waving over at me. “Hey Kirlia!”

“Makuhita!” I looked around the treeline a little more, but there was nothing there. “Where’s Max and Spike?!”

“They’re coming, don’t worry!” Seeing Inkay float towards him, Makuhita retook his fighting pose. “Who’re you?”

“Inkay,” Finally getting rid of the mark on his face, Inkay floated up a little higher. “Member of Team Rocket. Who are you?”

“Makuhita,” He drew back one fist, getting ready to strike first. “Member of...Uh, m-member of…” He glanced down at the symbol and a lightbulb went off. “Oh! User of Way of the Fist!”

“Wait a second,” James took a good look at Makuhita. “You belong to Twerp #2!”

“You’re kidding,” Jessie looked him over with a curious expression. “He ran all the way out here on its own?” Slowly, her expression turned determined as she straightened out. “I guess we’re getting two Pokémon for the price of one today!”

Yeah, I’m not too sure about that.

“Huh?” Jessie looked over to her left and was met face to face with a second unwelcomed Pokémon. Slowly, she watched as it hovered in front of her with a cheerful look on its face before quickly growing in size so that it was twice the size of her face. As Jessie’s jaw started to tremble, the floating face let out a single word, keeping the same unmoving smile on its face.

Hiya!

“GYAAH!” Jessie scrambled back, tripping over Meowth’s sleeping body and sending her flailing to the ground as the ghost-type started to float towards her with an upbeat tone in its voice.

The name’s Gastly, ya lassie! But go ahead and call me ‘AAAAAAAAAAAGH!’ That’s what everybody does!

Jessie didn’t catch any of that. All she would hear was the ghost-types name digging into the back of her mind as an echo. Although to at least give her some credit, she at least got the nickname right.

“AAAAAAAAAAAGH!” Amidst all her flailing, Jessie practically punted Meowth with her boot, sending him into the air and through Gastly’s gaseous form, making him disperse and giving Jessie a fighting chance to dive behind an equally terrified Wobbuffett.

Yoohooo~! Makuhita!

The bits of gas collected back and quickly flew above the mass hysteria, now attracting everyone’s attention.

Flag down dem trainers, good buddy! I'll get dese block’eads all warmed up fer ya’s.

Makuhita gave a brief nod before he started to take a few steps back. “Hang in there Kirlia, I'll be right back!”

Just as he started to retreat however, James spotted him. “And just where do you think you're going?! Inkay, psybeam!”

“Right away!” Spinning in the air, Inkay fired off a beam of colors, striking Makuhita in the back right as he made it to the edge of the treeline, forcing him to his knees as he clutched his head in agony.

Hey-hey! My face is up here ya know!

Suddenly, Inkay was blasted out of the air and into the ground below as a ball of dark energy struck him from behind.

Wait a second, that was Shadow Ball. I looked back down towards the claw marks that were all over the front side of the box. This is the same glass that the Professor’s bio dome has. It cancels out psychic and ghost-type moves. But if you can ruin the surface of it with one strong hit then the whole thing shatters.

I tried to focus on teleport but all it did was move me up against the glass. It wasn't scratched up enough to effect the inside. Although the outside of it might have been a different story.

“That hurt,” Makuhita stumbled up to his feet, clutching his head with one hand. “Thanks Gastly,” Quickly he ducked into the closest bush before running deeper.

“Oh great,” With a groan, Meowth stood up and watched as one of the treetops a little ways in the forest started to shake. Makuhita was making as much noise as he could to draw the others over. “He’s soundin’ off da twerp alarm.”

“Well good thing we have a new teammate!” Jessie stepped up to Gastly with a colorful sphere in her hand “Take this, Pokéball!”

Wha-?!

Gastly flinched as the orb actually struck the ghost along its side before getting forced inside by the lights.

With a thud the Pokéball landed on the ground before it begun to roll back and forth. The light was glowing on the button but that didn't stop the rest of Team Rocket from nearly breaking out into song.

“Way to go Jessie!”

“Alright!”

“Oh yeah~! New partner obtained!”

“Will you all knock it off!” She sounded annoyed but she looked pleased with herself as she picked up the still moving Pokéball.

As she held it up, I kept watching it carefully as the shaking started to get weaker. Come on, I thought. Get out of there.

Finally, all the cheering went silent as Jessie’s face twisted into a snarl. “Oh come on, stop rolling around already!”

As though to answer to her command, the Pokéball did exactly that. However, instead of the light fading out, the top of the Pokéball sprung open, sending a cloud of black and purple smoke straight past Jessie’s face.

While she went into a coughing fit, the Gastly started to laugh.

DERO-Shishishishishishishi! Sorry, but I ain't dyin’ today! Been there done that! Shishish—Woah!

Gastly ducked out of the way as Jessie chucked another Pokéball at it before the both of them glared daggers at one another.

Sheesh, determined little brat ain't ya?!

Jessie didn't stand down and only began to reach towards another Pokéball. From what I could tell she only had one left. Still, Gastly barely got out of the first one. If it got caught up in even one more Pokéball that might just be the end for him.

“Why won’t he just sit still?!” Jessie snapped.

Seriously? what is it with trainers in assuming I’m a guy?! Why does every Gastly gotta be a guy, huh?!

“Don’t worry Jessie! Inkay, Foul Play!”

As loud as I could, I used both sets of fingers and whistled towards Inkay, catching his attention before he rocketed off towards Gastly. Once I had eye contact, I motioned to crack my knuckles and gave him a cocky smirk. “Taunt.”

He tried to flinch away before I could get the word off, but I still saw his eyes flashing red. He gave a quick nod to James and redirected himself in midair before flying off towards me with malicious intent in his eyes.

“Wait, what are you doing?!” James and the others watched in absolute terror as Inkay continued to charge forward. “That’s the wrong way!”

But Inkay didn’t answer him. Instead, he collided with the glass, making the marks that Meowth had made into cracks that scatter across the entire side of the box before spreading off towards the other.

I quickly held up my arms and watched from under Protect’s cover as the box shattered entirely followed by Inkay helplessly bouncing off Protect and into the air, just as unharmed by the glass as I was.

“Prison break!” I heard Meowth cry.

Reacting quickly, I teleported away from the remnants of the box while there was still tossed dirt and dust covering the area. Within moments I directly underneath Gastly and in the center of the entire mess.

Almost instantly I noticed the crimson aura wafting in from above me. It was just like Inkay said, this was the Pokémon that had been following me and the others almost all day. Only this time, I didn’t feel terrified of it. In fact, the aura was almost welcoming compared to Team Rocket.

Huh. I thought you couldn’t stand all the aura.

I shook my head. “Well now that I know who’s behind it, it’s not nearly as terrifying. Besides, you’re not the first ghost-type I’ve met before.”

Oh? That sounds like a fun little episode.

“Cut tha chatta already!” Meowth drew out his claws, using them more as a threat than an attack. “You’re still knee deep in trouble!”

“Until you realize that I can teleport,” Not that I could actually leave at this point. If Makuhita was still coming back with Max and Spike then they were going to be in trouble if I just vanished back to Lumiose. I wasn’t about to give that away though.

“Psybeam!”

From above the carnage of the glass box Inkay directed his blast towards me, striking me in the shoulder and knocking me away from Gastly and leaving him exposed.

James smiled from the opposite side of the field. “Now, Foul Play!”

I quickly regained my footing and went to retaliate with Charge Beam only for something to step between me and the rest of the battle.

“Oh yeah~!” Wobbuffet saluted towards me just as the beam struck him directly. Except instead of pushing him away, or doing any noticeable damage, Wobbuffet instead began to glow with a plethora of colors before suddenly the same beam fired out towards me forcing me even further away from the battle itself.

From behind Wobbuffet, Inkay slammed into Gastly before it could fire off another Shadow Ball, sending the ghost backwards before bouncing pitifully off of Wobbuffet from behind. Once it reached the ground, its smoke started to become unfocused. It was on its last legs.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jessie throwing her final Pokéball out towards him. Desperate, I held out my arm and stopped it with Psychic just as it left her hand.

As I looked back I saw nearly everyone looking over at me with disdain while Jessie seemed ready to cram me into this Pokéball by force. “Will you butt out of this?!”

Looking off behind me, Jessie glared back towards the balloon. “Meowth, hurry up and trap her already!”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice!” With the sounds of machine creaking behind me I tried to teleport again only to be slammed back onto the ground thanks to another Foul Play from Inkay.

“Not. Again.” As I looked back up he seemed almost determined to stop me from getting away and floated there as the second glass box was being carried over towards me at blinding speeds. Without them catching Makuhita, they had a spare.

Suddenly, a voice came from the treeline.

Spike’s POV

Fifteen Feet Away

“Bullet Punch!”

“Maku!”

Makuhita rushed ahead of us into the clearing before jumping forward. Once he had closed the distance to the box thing, he spun his arm one last time before it coated itself in steel and he swung forward.

The glass didn’t even crack before it shattered entirely and allowed all the shards of glass to fall to the ground. Thankfully, Kirlia managed to teleport out of there and appeared right in front of the treeline as Max and I finally made our way out.

Once I made sure that Makuhita landed safely away from any of the glass I leaned all my weight against the nearest tree and finally give my lungs a chance to try and work again.

“Kirlia!” Max slid the last few feet between him and Kirlia and pulled her in for a huge hug. “You’re okay!”

Kirlia wasted no time in returning the hug as her worry melted into pure relief. “Of course I’m okay!” She started projected her voice, making the thieves behind her gawk in disbelief. “I knew you were gonna find me!”

“She can talk?!” The thieves picked up their jaws and looked at a total loss. They were probably even more interested in Kirlia now, but something told me that she didn’t care.

Seeing that they were actually reacting to this, I caught my breath. “Okay good,” Their attention went up to me as I nodded along. “I thought I was the only one that didn’t know that.”

“Maku-maku,” The nod from Makuhita told me that he was in agreement.

“Hold up!” From off to the left I saw a two legged pale-colored cat standing on the railing with some weird metal box with colored buttons in its hands. As it glared at me, it went on. “Yer tha rotten twerp that keeps gettin’ all our machines smashed!”

“...” All at once, I stopped panting and looked over at the cat like a dog with a whistle. I took in one final breath and just wiped my eyes off before looking back and...Yep. He’s still there.

Gasgasgas. Gastly...

“Huh?” Somehow my attention was taken off of the talking cat and was brought over towards the center of the clearing where a pile of smoke had gathered up in the shade of the balloon. As I spotted the eyes and mouth the memory all started coming back. “Hey,” The Pokémon stopped laughing and moved to look at me. “You’re the Pokémon who scared me yesterday!”

...Gas?...

Its entire form tilted on its side, the smile growing wider as it looked at me.

“Yes, you!” I looked towards the guy with the blue hair next. “So this is your ghost!”

“What?!” The man glared back at me. “I don’t remember taking the blame for him!”

“Wait, he-he isn’t?” I turned to Max but he looked just as confused as I did. “Then, who’s side is it on?”

...Ly, Gastly?...

“Oh who cares who’s side that thing’s on!” The woman snapped before holding out a Pokéball. “Right now it’s about to be on Team Jessie!”

Gas!

The Gastly started to frown before flying over towards us and turning back towards the thieves. It looked like it was ready to fight if it needed to.

“Max, Gastly needs our help. We can’t let it get caught either.” Both of them stood up just as Makuhita ran around the glass to stand beside me. All of us were standing between Gastly and the thieves like a wall.

“Right,” Max wasted no time in looking over towards Gastly. “Don’t worry Gastly, we’ll make sure you don’t get caught. Right Spike?” He smiled towards me and Makuhita.

I looked from Max to Gastly, seeing that the smile on its face was still missing. It almost felt weird in its own way to see it like that. The entire time it spent chasing me around on the roof it had a huge grin on its face and no matter what I tried its smile wouldn’t falter.

Still, he didn’t actively try to hurt me or anything. He was just floating around until I tripped off the side of the building. After that, he stopped trying to scare me...I think. Which is at least more than I can say about all of these people that tried to take away Kirlia.

I watched Gastly for a few more seconds before finally making up my mind. “Yeah. We’ll help.” I turned back towards Team Rocket and noticed that it was just the blue blob and squid ones that looked like they were going to fight with the two humans and talking cat standing off behind them. Finally, the balloon was behind their entire group with a giant shadow spreading across the clearing.

“Let’s get this over with quick,” The blue haired man pointed towards Makuhita. “Inkay, use psybeam!”

As the floating squid flipped upside down, a beam of multiple colors began to fire out like a laser towards Makuhita. “Kirlia! Cover him with protect!”

As Max commanded, Kirlia slide in front of Makuhita and created a green forcefield around the two of them causing the colorful beam to plink off ineffectively.

“Thanks!” I watched as the protect faded and both the Inkay and Kirlia were left wide open. “Quick, go for Inkay with Bullet Punch!”

“Hii,” Makuhita jumped over Kirlia before rushing towards Inkay with his arm spinning beside him like a windmill.

“Wobbuffet, block that thing with counter!” Right as Makuhita’s arm turned to steel, the blob leaned in front of him and didn’t even flinch as it struck the center of his face. It wasted no time and leaned so far back that its head rested on the floor before its body started to glow a faint orange hue.

“Wobbaa!” The hue flashed all at once as the blob’s body lurched forward and slammed back into Makuhita, sliding him back a few feet before reeling from the hit.

“Are you okay?” Seeing him raise a fist, I watched as the woman started to throw something towards Gastly. “Look out!” I threw my hand up into the air, knocking the weird object out of the air and onto the ground beside me.

Once I made sure that nothing else was coming for Gastly, I noticed the woman glaring daggers at me. “Stop getting in my way you little twerp!”

I shuffled in place a little, trying to keep from looking at the battle instead of her glare. “Why do you keep calling me that?!”

“Kirlia, push Wobbuffet away with Psychic!” Max ignored us and watched as Kirlia’s eyes and horn lit up a bluish aura now and plucked the blob off of the ground before tossing him into Jessie and the cat, thus sending them all flying into the balloon’s basket with a scream.

The man gritted his teeth, but again saw Kirlia with a huge opening. “Alright Inkay, let’s stop this charade with Foul Play!”

“Spike?” Max looked over.

“Yeah,” I looked as Makuhita was close enough to stop the squid before it charged on. “Makuhita, use that Arm Thrust move!”

He didn’t waste time responding and ran forward towards the two of them. And without a blob to stop him this time, Makuhita shoved his arm forward and slammed his fist into the floating Pokémon, sending it into the man just as Kirlia had done with the blob and Jessie.

...Gas…

As the cluster of people all tried to get off of one another and out of the basket, Gastly had managed to sneak forward while staying within the shadow of the balloon. However, as the group started to notice him one after the other, all of them drew back further into the balloon as they saw the expression on Gastly’s face.

It wasn’t laughing.

Slowly, a ball of spiraling black aura started to collect in front of it. Immediately the group tried to scramble out of the basket, trying their hardest to climb over one another in the process. Sadly for them, by the time that one of them even got one foot out of the basket they were too late.

Gast...LY!

Gastly launched the ball forward, striking the basket itself before it all exploded in a cloud of smoke and dirt as suddenly the balloon exploded upwards like a dust-made firework.

As the dust finally settled off to the sides, whatever pieces of the balloon were still there were now lying scattered around the clearing. Except, among all of the wreckage there with no sign of Team Rocket anywhere on the ground.

“And I was so close to catching that ghost too…”

“Something tells me you’re scary enough without it.”

“Woooobbuffet.”

“TEAM ROCKET’S BLASTING OFF AGAAAAAaaaaaiiign…”

They kept flying higher and higher until finally they disappeared into the sky with a twinkle of a star. Once they were gone for good I turned back towards Max. “Are they gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” He didn’t bat an eye at it. “For some reason that always happens to them. And they always come back like nothing happened.”

...Gas…

Ahead of us we saw Gastly still floating where he was as its form fought against the sunlight. It wasn’t turning back to look at us, but I could hear its voice fading in and out.

“Sure,” Suddenly, Kirlia nodded and turned back towards us as she started projecting her voice again. “Gastly says thank you for the help.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Max was the first to speak up. “Besides, you helped us safe Kirlia, right? It’s the least we could do!”

I didn’t really have anything to say so I just nodded along.

Gasgasgas...Gastly…

“You know,” Kirlia began to translate. “I never got the chance to say sorry, kid.”

“Sorry? For what?” Max looked just as confused as I felt.

...Gastly, gasgsasgas, gasss…

“When I saw you land in Kalos. Shishishi?” Kirlia Gastly an odd look as she translated, making Gastly just laugh some more. “ugh...I thought it’d be fun to say ‘high.’ Now I think that joke might’ve gone too far.”

“Huh? Wait, but I don’t remember seeing you when we got off the plane.” Max only got more confused as we listened on. Finally, he just gave up and turned towards me. “Spike, do you know what he’s talking about?”

“...” I bit my lip and before I could even answer, not that I could, Gastly went on and Kirlia quickly translated.

“I don’t really know how it happened either, but I’m pretty sure that I only saw a little of it.” Max and Makuhita were too invested in hearing everything that they didn’t see my eyes lighting up. “For now though, I’m as lost as you. Again, sorry.”

“And before you start throwing out questions in front of me, the Pokémon, and the other kid,” Kirlia’s eyes narrowed as she repeated it. Not towards anyone in particular, but just at the words she said. “No. I didn’t see it happen any other time. You’re a special case here.”

With the last part over and done with, Gastly turned towards us with its eyes closed and happy expression back on its face. As though whatever he said never happened.

...Gastly? GAST-gasgasgasgasgas!

“Really? Another joke?” Kirlia looked miffed from all the laughing and just crossed her arms. “I’m not repeating that.”

...Gas?! Gastly!...

Whilst they continued to have their spat and Makuhita watched in amusement, Max looked over towards me again. And this time he saw right through me as my mind was racing at everything that Gastly just said.

He saw everything? Just how much did he see? What did it look like? Was it a portal like when Twilight and I tracked down Starlight was it like Twilight’s teleporting? Actually, I still don’t know what made it happen either. The professors all said it was that weird pulse in Sinnoh, but didn’t make too much since. Why would that pulse thing go in this world and Equestria?

Finally, I just groaned at all the questions that kept building up in my brain. It was just like Gastly said, I had so many questions that I wanted to ask, but it wouldn’t help. Not unless I wanted to try and explain all of this to Max and the others.

“Hey Spike,” And speaking of Max, “Are you gonna be okay? Is something wrong?”

“Um...I-I don’t know.” I wasn’t even sure if I was lying. “It’s just that what it was saying kind of reminded me of my friends.”

“Well, is there anything you wanna say about it?” Max gave me a smile. “I might not know what’s going on, but if we have any answers then I don’t mind helping.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t end well. “Erm, no, that’s okay. I just wanna think about it for a while.” Looking down, I noticed that there was something on the ground. A Pokéball. “Oh. I think this is what they tried throwing at Gastly earlier.”

Behind me I heard Kirlia and Gastly’s bickering cease as I picked up the ball. Just like the one that Professor Sycamore told me was Makuhita’s, this one was red and white. The only difference is that it was already enlarged.

“Yeah. They were trying to catch Gastly.” I held out the Pokéball for everyone to see. “I guess it’s not stealing, but Gastly obviously didn’t want to go with them. It just didn’t seem right.”

...Gastly…

The ghost started to float past us to reach the shade before turning back towards both of us with a content smile on its face. He was watching the Pokéball.

“It says that he,” “Maku,” “Err, it, wants to go with you.” From behind us, Kirlia started projected her voice again.

“Wait, you mean it?” I looked from the ball to Gastly, putting everything together in my mind again. I mean, he did come all the way out here just to say sorry to me. Plus he even saw me landing on Sycamore’s roof. If he did come with me than I would be able to try and figure out what else—

...Gastly…

Slowly, the ghost rotated its head left and right as if he were shaking its head.

“Sorry kid,” Kirlia started, sounding a bit out of place as she explained it. “But I think that Pokéball’s better reserved for someone else. I don’t think I’m too good a fit for you.”

The ghost gave me one last sad expression and tried to say something else before turning towards Max with a smile.

“It also said that there’s still something else that sticks out with Max. I’m sorry Spike.” Kirlia’s voice came from my mind this time.

I saw Max looking between me and Gastly, but I just smiled. “It’s okay, I understand. Besides, I’m still new to the whole Pokémon Trainer thing anyways.” As I said that something else finally clicked in my mind.

“Oh yeah,” I turned around and walked over towards Makuhita, who was watching the whole scene play out beside Kirlia. When she saw me going for my Pokémon, she nodded along and traded places with me. “Hey Makuhita? Thanks for all the help today!”

“Maku!” He waved the thought away with a huge grin on his face.

“Are you kidding? Did you see how fast you were running?!” I watched as his grin got bigger. “Me and Max were trying to get there too, but you were able to find Kirlia without even knowing where to look!”

“Hita,” He scratched his arm and started acting a little bashful. “Makuhita.” Quickly, he pointed over towards Gastly and went on for a second or two more.

I shrugged. “Well, yeah, Gastly helped us out too, but you’re the one who helped us get here!” When I saw that Makuhita chuckling at all the praise I smiled. “In fact, I think I came up with a good name for you.”

“Hii?” His focus came back to me.

“Yeah. I got the idea when we were all running over here.” I crouched down so I was at eye level. “What do you think of Jet?”

“Maku?” He scratched his chin and took a few seconds to repeat the name in his head a few times before finally looking up to me again. “Hita?”

“Well, jets can go pretty fast right? And since you’re pretty fast too I think it fits pretty well.” I held out a fist. “So, what do you think?”

“...” Makuhita stared back at me for a little while longer. Obviously I couldn’t just come up with the name on my own. The only reason I did that for Peewee is because he was a baby. Although, I guess you could say that I was asking him what he thought was because he was smarter than the animals back home. Sure Fluttershy’s pets were pretty smart too, but that’s because she raised each of them. As far as I knew, he could’ve grown up in the wild this whole time.

When I wasn’t paying attention I felt something give me a fistbump. “Ma-ku!” Looking up, I saw Mak...Jet grinning again. He looked happy.

I smiled along. “Alright. Jet it is.”

By the time I stood up, I heard some kind of click sound from behind us. Not only that but as we around we could see Max holding a Pokéball of his own in his hand while Gastly was nowhere to be seen.

“Hm,” Max hummed in agreement before tucking the Pokéball away and turning around to face us. “So, are we ready to get going?”

Jet and I shared a look before going back to them and nodding. “Yep. Let’s go.”

Meanwhile

With no hesitation in their steps, a single person kept walking down one of the many sidewalks in Lumiose. In their grasp was a uninteresting suitcase with no discernible color or marking on it aside from the black gloved hand that held it.

Finally, as the figure reached the street corner, it finally reached its destination. A cafe. Sadly, this cafe never saw too many visitors. It was one of only a few interesting places near the Magenta Plaza and sadly the face of the store didn’t attract all too many customers in here. After all, the incredibly imposing color of maroon coating the entire front of the store as well as the furniture that sat outside did nothing but draw customers away from it.

Regardless, the figure kept going through the store’s entrance and was instantly met with an entire cafe full of nothing but the color red. The tables were red, the bar was red, the floor was an unsettling color of red, the color was everywhere. That is, save for the only man that was inside the cafe.

The man wasn’t tending the bar, nor was he cleaning up his establishment. Instead, he was sitting at the table, waiting for the person who was now coming through the door.

Not wanting to waste any time, the person walked over and placed the briefcase directly in the center of the man’s table before taking a step back. Once he saw the owner of the cafe give a nod, the person gave a salute before walking over to the bar itself, effectively doing his duties as a bartender.

Once the bartender was in place, the owner took the briefcase and opened it, revealing a computer set up inside. As it booted up, the owner undid a few clasps from the sides that allowed him to take the computer out of the actual suitcase.

From the left of him a woman walked past, collecting the outer shell and switching it around like a puzzle. Once she was done, it looked nothing like a briefcase and instead resembled a bus tray. She then began using to clean up the tables that had a few stray cups and dishes that were left unattended while the bartender and owner let it go unnoticed.

PASSWORD:

It was the only word on the screen as the laptop finished turning on. Underneath it was a blank box with a blinking line. Same as any other computer.

PASSWORD:
*********

The screen flashed green for a moment as the words “Password Accepted” came across the screen. No later did the words vanish only to be replaced by a screen overflowing with charts and statistics littering the sides with a seemingly endless amount of information coming from them.

However, the man ignored all of that. Instead, he looked towards the center of the screen where a large map depicting the world had a line going back and forth across it. On this map it had a picture of nearly every region located on it. The more important regions such as Kalos and Hoenn as well as smaller, more insignificant regions like the Orange Archipelago and Orre were also located on it.

What was more interesting however were the amount of glowing blue dots that were found scattered across the regions. To the top left of the map the computer had thankfully counted up every single glowing dot displayed. The small box read: 53*.

Directly under that number was the explanation for this asterisk. It went as follows: “*Among these 53 responses, 17 of them seem to have a much stronger energy reading from them. The rest are faint and are believed to be residue from the stronger energy readings.”

The owner hummed as he read the information, no doubt deciding to either abandon all focus the weaker ones altogether or come back to them at a later date. For now, the stronger ones had peaked his attention.

One by one, he clicked on each location that had a stronger region. He started in Kanto. From the readings displayed by that one it was shown that it had one of the strongest readings of them all. It had nearly dwarfed the other source that was found south of Kanto at Cinnabar Island. The smaller one was only just categorized as a strong energy source by only a few points.

He then went to Hoenn where two of the larger sources were found. One on the outskirts of Fortree City and another near Rustboro City. As he investigated those two the owner realized that one of the other large sources was appearing somewhere between Hoenn and Kanto on open waters. But with it nowhere near the top five energies he saw no reason to investigate it first.

The others he scanned over them just as quickly. Three in Johto, another in Sinnoh with a heavy amount of the residue sources scattered around, two on separate islands in the Alola region, one in Unova, and finally two in an out of the way region called Orre. One that was in the middle of nowhere and another was about twenty miles to the east of Phanec City. Which, just like the previous source, was out in the desert.

At last, the owner came up to the region he was now currently sitting in, Kalos. There was a reason that he came to this one last. He knew that whatever energy sources he saw here would be the first one he would investigate. And thankfully he wasn’t disappointed from what he saw.

As of right now there were six of them in Kalos. One of them seemed very promising as it had appeared directly in Lumiose City. However, when there was no reaction from the city, nor was there any way to track down the exact location at the moment, he would have to wait for some kind of opportunity to start investigating the city for the reading. Lumiose City was out.

Again he decided to ignore the three residue sources for now. Maybe send out a small team to look into that matter if there was a lack of projects any time soon. That left two more sources to look into.

The second larger source was directly to the west of Lumiose and perhaps the only case in which two large energy sources were anywhere within fifty miles of one another. Still, it was a little too close to Lumiose for his liking.

That left the final source of energy. To the southwestern side of the Kalos Region was the Glittering Cave and aside from its history regarding fossils and gemstones, it was worth little to anyone.

This was where his target was located.

Within about ten more minutes, the initial analysis of the energy sources was completed and the owner was ready to move forward with integrating this into his research. Whether it had anything to do with his main project he was unsure. However, it was now considered worth looking into and possibly keeping as a side project if it truly didn’t have anything to do with his current plan. Project Y.

Author's Note

Sorry it's taken so long for this chapter to come out. I've been working on another story with an interesting concept. Sadly this concept involves a lot of free time for me to do it.

Anyways, QotC!

Last time, Applejack won the contest! Funny, I was expecting someone else to win actually. Regardless, I have one more question and this will decide what we see next chapter!

QotC: Out of the following, which of these do you think is more important?

Creativity
History
Protection
Loyalty
Hard Work

Chronicles of An Apple (Side Story #2)

Author's Note

Author's Note: WOO! Finals are over! This had to be the most annoying semester of college I've ever had and it's finally over! Sorry that I haven't been posting anything anywhere, I've been way too busy with studies. However, that's over now and I'm finally back!

Also, something to note here. The story starts with Applebloom having already been here for seven days, so something to keep in mind.

I hope you enjoy the chapter and I'll see you all in the next one!

-Zeke

Chronicles of An Apple (Side Story #2)

Applebloom’s POV

The S.S. Travelling Foster

As the sun started to set off to the right I heard a voice call out from somewhere off to my left. They were asking me if I had seen anything yet. But just like every other time they started checking in on me, I just shook my head and started looking around somewhere else.

For some reason this had become a part of this weird routine I had been having to deal with lately. I’d start by waking up in some hotel room, stretch a little and once I get ready for the day I nearly get drowned in all these persons— I think that’s what they’re called anyway —asking and inviting me to go watch the Poké-whatsits with them.

Once I manage to convince them not to, I usually come up to the railing and just watch the sky and waves. At least then I’m not bothered all too much. That is, until it hits two o’clock. That’s when most of them start coming out on the deck where I usually sit around.

Again the voice called out again. Only this time, I could hear footsteps with it too. “Well, how’s about a break then? I don’t think either of us have gotten a bite to eat in a while. You must be starving.”

“Eenope,” I sink a little more against the railing. Sadly, my stomach betrays me and starts groaning up a storm. Hearing the man chuckle, I sighed and turn around to face him. “Alright, fine. That bird thing ain’t comin’ around any time soon anyways.”

As the person continued to chuckle, I saw him tuck a large notepad into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. As far as i could tell, he looked pretty average as far as all of these persons went. He had a plain green shirt, pants that only went as far as his knees on his hind legs, and the only real distinguishing thing about him was the bandana he wore to keep his hair out of his eyes.

This was Tracey Sketchit. And out of every name I heard on this entire ship, his was the only one that sounded normal around here.

Apparently he had been on this ship for a little while now thanks to a friend of his buying him a ticket, so he was just about as new to this ship as I was. However, since his talent had something to do with sketching, the captain of the ship offered him a job of being a caricature artist for the other passengers.

And here’s where the only difference between the two of us started to shine through. He came here by choice and happens to really like this ship and everything that it has to offer for the people on board.

I don’t.

Truth be told, I was barely interested enough to even look around this place.

However, I was grateful for the company he was willing to give. As I thought about it I noticed that I didn’t have much of a reason to go anywhere around here if I was on my own. I didn’t know anypony here, I don’t know where here was, and I didn’t feel like exploring around it either. The only places I’ve been to are my room, the doctor’s quarters, the deck, and this one large arena space they have for the Poké-things. So in a way I was kinda glad that there was someone to help drag me around a bit.

The only thing that I’ve been trying to figure out is how I got here. As far as I can remember, nothing out of the ordinary had been going on in Ponyville. It was just the average friend from out of town or the giant monster/magic/social problem goings ons. And in all of those problems, none of them had to do with being zapped to another world or anything.

That is until six days ago.

Six days ago around noon or so I woke up to a huge splash from underneath my bed. Instantly I woke up, only to tumble off the side and into the ocean myself. At the time I didn’t even notice what happened to me, I was more focused on remembering all the swimming lessons that Granny taught me.

After a few seconds of that, I noticed that the headboard of my waterlogged bed had come loose and was keeping afloat. So I used that to try and swim wherever I thought there might’ve been land.

“Captain! Man overboard on the rig—err—starboard side!”

“What?! How far out?!”

“Uh, one, no, t-two hundred feet!”

“two-hundred...Sharpedo, help us out here!”

Without warning I tried shaking the thought outta my head, nearly hitting the guy beside me with a face full of hair thanks to the whiplash. Thankfully he didn’t hold a grudge as he waited for me to get ahold of myself.

“Are you okay?” His voice was steady as I clutched my head. “What’s wrong?”

“N-Nothin’,” I lied. “Jus’ a headache.” Well, that part wasn’t a lie. Every time that happened I had started to get all jumpy like a bull at a rodeo and the headache that came after didn’t make me feel any better about it.

“Well, all the more reason to get something to eat for now. Come on,” He waited until I started to move before walking along with me to the dining hall. From what I could tell, any person who worked on this boat got their meals for free, and this guy was extending the offer to me.

I guess I should be grateful and all, he didn’t have to do anything, but I still didn’t know what to think about all of this. None of what was going on around me felt normal at all. Even walking around like this was unnatural. Still, I was at least starting to get used to it for as much good as that did me.

“Woah! What kinda Pokémon is that?!”

Right as we were about to get to the buffet tables, these two persons, both of which were mares I think, had caught our attention. One of them was looking curiously at the second one’s Pokémon that was resting on the back of her shirt. And to make it somewhat more confusing, this Pokémon was trembling like a pig in a snowstorm from the attention.

“Oh, dat’s Wimpod!” The second girl spoke with an accent kind of like Babs’, but kind of higher. “He came clear from Alola. Ain’t he a doll?!” As she clicked her tongue, the shellfish-looking thing started to skitter up the girls back before nesting itself in her brown beret.

“Uhh…” The first girl’s spine rattled in disgust as she backed away from the shellfish and the girl. “You don’t...Let that thing near any of the food, do you?”

“Hey! He ain’t an it! An’ Wimpod’s a gift from mah Grannie! Show some kindness, why don’tcha.” The second girl reached her hand up and scratched the Pokémon’s head gently, causing it to burrow itself further into her beret.

“Sorry, sorry, I just...Not a fan a bug types…” The girl shuffled in place before the two of them eventually went further down the buffet line to get their own food. Leaving room for us to start getting our own plates. Before we could though, Tracey noticed that I wasn’t moving.

“Applebloom?” He waited for me to snap out of it, but I wouldn’t budge. Eventually as the line started to form behind us, he tried a little harder and slowly waved his hoo—hand in front of my face.

“Applebloom, are you okay?”

Finally, something finally clicked in my head and I snapped out of my daze, stammering out with “I-I’m fine!”

He quickly drew back his hand and we both quickly got our food and got out of every person’s way before finding a seat towards the crew’s part of the dining hall. Once we found an empty table, which wasn’t too hard given that most of the crew was working around the rest of the ship, we sat down and I was left with Tracey giving me a worried look.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” I sunk in my seat a tad before looking down at my food. I didn’t know what most of the stuff they were serving was, but thankfully they had plenty of familiar stuff at the ‘Salad Bar.’ That, plus a few apple fritters from the dessert table and I had a meal I could recognize.

“It’s okay,” Tracey’s plate probably looked a little more normal. He had some of everything they were serving. “Is something wrong? You’ve been acting more out of it today than the last few days you’ve been here.”

I wonder why… I try to hide the guilty look on my face, but it was shining through too well. “It’s, uh...Jus’ what the captain guy said yesterday.” I felt the back of my throat start to strain from the talking so I quickly gulped down some water to make it go away.

“You talked to the captain again?” Tracey drew back a little and looked towards his own food. I just became friends with him the other day, so he only knew so much. Then again, the whole ‘treading water’ thing is turning into a rumor around here, so I guess every person knows something about me by this point. “Is everything okay?”

“Well…” I took one last swig of my water and set the empty glass down. “I dunno. I’m still tryin’ ta figure that part out mahself.” Already the waitress was coming to get me a refill and I was thankful for it.

The first time I spoke to the captain of the ship, it didn’t end too well. He was the one who fished me out of the water, so he and the ship’s doctor were there when I woke up.

“Okay. So, let’s try something simpler. What’s the last thing you remember?”

The doctor swept a strand of red hair out of her face as she held up a clipboard. She was trying to find out who I was. But as I sat up in the bed that was in the doctor’s office, still very out of it from all the swimming, I was just frustrated.

“I keep tellin’ ya, I didn’t ferget anythin’!” I tried to yell, but my voice was so ragged that the only thing that came out was something louder than a whisper. “Mah name’s Applebloom. I was goin’ ta bed when this loud boom sounded off. Then there was this weird pink cloud comin’ from Ponyvillle an’—”

“Okay, okay, calm down.” The captain held up a gentle hand as he stood behind the doctor. He looked tired too, but he was pushing through purely because of how worried he was. “I think we can all agree that it’s been a long day for you. Look, it’s almost nine now. Let’s get you something to eat and then you can rest here for the night. By tomorrow you’ll feel much better.”

“Yer not listenin’!” I pounded my hooves into the bed, my voice getting raspier. “I ain’t actin’ funny! I jus’ wanna go home!” Finally my voice had had it and I felt myself coughing up my lungs. My throat felt like it was on fire.

Still, there was nothing more the captain could do. He gently apologized and went to get me some dinner and some water, leaving me to sit in bed with the doctor focusing on some other patients.

“I wanna go home…”

The morning after all of that was where I realized that they weren’t going to believe anything about Equestria or the pink boom. So the next time they came in to talk to me I changed up the story a little bit. I pretended like I knew what I had been turned into and then told them that I was separated from the rest of my family and was trying to find them.

The only parts I kept the same was that we owned an apple farm, I have no idea how I wound up in the water, and that I had no idea what these ‘Pokémon’ were. Apparently everything except for that last part they seemed to believe. Thankfully, the doctor just assumed that I must’ve forgotten a few things from all the stress. It wasn’t how I wanted any of this to go, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Except now that horse was offering one doozy of a gift.

Feeling my throat burning up from all the strain, I chugged down about half of the water the second the waitress filled it. Aside from a sideways glance from her, I felt much better now and looked back towards Tracey. “Can I get yer take on it by any chance?”

“Sure, I’d be happy to help.” He quickly swallowed the food he was chewing on before before cleaning off his mouth. “What did he say?”

“Well,” I waited until the waitress was done filling up the water glass before I started talking. “He said that he couldn’t let me sail on the boat forever. So unless I can scrounge up enough money to pay fer a ticket he’s givin’ me two choices. One; I can enjoy the rest a my free ride until some place called Cinnabar Island,”

“Oh. That’s in the the Kanto region.” Tracey’s attention was now fully on me. “That’s where I’m from.”

“Really?” I almost erupted into a cheer, but something stopped me. “Wait, but aren’t you stayin’ on this cruise ‘till the end of the line?”

“Afraid so, yeah.” His smile faded away as fast as mine. “I could try and point you towards Professor Oak’s Lab in Pallet Town, but that would take another boat ride to get you there.”

“Yeah. I kinda figured, what with Cinnabar bein’ an island an’ all.” Truth be told, that wasn’t the real problem. Tracey might’ve been my only friend on this ship, but I only knew him a few days. I couldn’t start asking him favors like that.

“And then there’s the second option,” I sat back in my chair, eyeballing my food that I had barely touched. “The captain asked if I wanted ta work on the ship.”

“Work here?” Tracey blinked. “What would that do?”

“Well, the captain knows I don’t have anything. He even had ta get me a new set of clothes since mine were all soaked.” As if by habit I pulled at the pale and red shirt that I had on now. “But if I was working here then I’d have some money ta try an’ get ta wherever I need ta go. ‘Sides, the captain said that he an’ his crew could help me keep a lookout for mah family.”

“Well that doesn’t sound too bad,” Upon noticing my frown, Tracey furrowed his brow. “Is there something else about it?”

“Kinda,” I folded my hands together and gave a sweep across the room. Apparently for every two persons that was in here, there was one Pokémon. Each of them looking goofier than the last. “There’s only one catch. I need to have one a them Pokémon of mah own.”

“Oh? That’s all?” Tracey sat back and watched my confusion. “There are Pokémon everywhere. You just need to catch one yourself.”

“But we’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean.” I held out my arms and decided to ignore the weird looks I was getting from whoever was passing by. “The only Pokémon I’ve seen are the ones that everyone else has. How am I supposed to get a Pokémon clear out here?”

Tracey’s smile only widened. “Applebloom, you’ve been helping me with Pokémon Watching for the past three days. You’ve done nothing but seen Pokémon.”

“What?” My confusion reached its peak. “No, I’ve just been starin’ at that weird metal bird-thing that you were askin’ about.”

“Uh-huh,” He just nodded. “That’s a Pokémon.”

“...” After a second or two I took another scan around the room towards those Pokémon. Like I thought, most of them were pretty funky looking like this plump blue mouse-looking Pokémon or that shellfish thing from before…

I took a glance at another corner of the room and studied the fish tank. However, just as I thought, each of them didn’t look right. One was large and red with a crown-looking thing on its head and another just looked like a sideways heart. There were several other weird fish floating around in there, but the one in the center caught my attention the most. Mostly because it was a shark.

That was one of the few Pokémon I already knew the name of: Sharpedo. It was the captain’s Pokémon and the one that had apparently saved me from drowning before. At the time I was too exhausted to even be terrified of a shark swimming towards me so I guess you could say I got on good terms with Sharpedo.

“So…” Slowly, as I watched Sharpedo interacting with the other fish the same way a big brother would, it all started to click. “Pokémon are jus’ animals.”

“Well, they’re a lot more than that,” Tracey chuckled. “But I guess you’re not exactly wrong either.” After a few more seconds I could almost see the light bulb forming above his head. “Hey, are next stop is Cinnabar, right?”

“Uh,” I gave Tracey my full attention. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Tracey pulled out this red and white marble sized thing and handed it over to me. “Well then how about we find you a Pokémon while we’re there? With Venonat and me helping you, I’m sure we can find a Pokémon for you.”

“You mean that?” I quickly took the marble and looked it over. When I first met Tracey he had Venonat with him trying to spot that bird Pokémon earlier. The little puffball was actually kinda fun to meet. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” He didn’t even give it a second thought. “I haven’t been to Cinnabar in a long time. Besides, it’s the least I can do for your help keeping an eye on that Pokémon.”

As he explained it I looked over the marble and noticed a button on the front of it. Once I pressed it the marble instantly grew to the size of a baseball in my hands. While I stared at it dumbfounded, Tracey just started to chuckle again.

“Uh, r-right,” Embarrassed, I turned the orb back into a marble and tucked it away as casually as I could. “Well, I guess it’s a deal then. Let’s go find a Pokémon.” I held out a fist for a hoof bump which he gladly returned. I guess some things never change.

Two Days Later

Cinnabar Island Docks

3rd Person POV

Once Applebloom had finally made it off the ship she adjusted the almost empty backpack she had over her shoulders before looking around. Dozens of the other passengers were already off the ship and doing their own thing and enjoying the land beneath their feet just as Applebloom was.

Finally, she spotted them and began to make her way inland towards three individuals. One was a guy in a green t-shirt with a sketchpad in his hands as he starting picking out several interesting Pokémon from the crowds. That was Tracey. The second was a purple puffball with bright red eyes that I could see scanning the whole area for Pokémon, just like his trainer. That was Venonat.

And finally the third was a person standing beside them with a bright red colored floral print shirt, sailing hat, and a smoking pipe in his hand watching over the passengers as he scratched his beard with the other.

That was the captain.

Apparently, the captain had asked if he could come along with the two trainers. He had tried explaining that he had to make sure that the Pokémon Applebloom had was something she caught. Sadly, it didn’t take much for her to figure out that he was lying. In fact, the more she thought about it, she was sure that he had just wanted to avoid doing any ‘captain duties’ seeing as he was dressed like a tourist.

“Sorry about the wait!” As she called out to them, they all welcomed Applebloom with smiles all around. “I didn’t wanna fight the crowds ta get off the boat.”

“Oh, that’s quite alright missie,” The captain chuckled as looked back towards the ship. “Truth be told I have just as hard a time sneaking off the shi, err, taking a stroll, myself.”

“Yeah, sure,” Applebloom was struggling to keep up her smile and thankfully Tracey had spoken up before she lost her act.

“Well, if we’re all ready then let’s go find you a Pokémon Applebloom.” “Ven-ven!” From beside him, Venonat started to hop along beside him, voicing Applebloom’s excitement for her.

Applebloom’s smile only widened as she rested her hands in her pockets and finding the Pokéball in one of them. Over the last two days Applebloom took some time to learn how Pokéballs worked and a few basics of Pokémon, courtesy of Tracey and the captain’s help. She was ready.

“Right,” She nodded with a look of determination. “Let’s go.”

However, as the four of them started to walk further into the island, none of them were aware of something watching over them. It watched them with carefully before flying up higher into the air and ahead of them towards the middle of Cinnabar.

Finally, when it was far enough away where it wouldn’t draw too much attention to itself, the metal bird gave out a screech.

“SKARRRRMORY!”

The hunt was on.

Mid-Morning Rapids (Episode 3)

Spike’s POV

Santalune Forest

Kooooom!

Each of us all sat around the table with tired eyes and oran berry pancakes dangerously close to our faces. Eventually Max stifled a yawn and sat up, looking over his shoulder. “Is he at it again?”

From beside him, I saw Kirlia’s horns glow a faint blue aura before her voice faintly echoed in our heads. “Yep.”

Kooooom!

“Fletch!”

“Fletch-fletch!”

“Fletchling!”

As a distant tree started to shake again, several birds launched themselves into the sky before angrily chirping back down at the tree they once called a home.

KRRK!

“Fletch?!” All at once, the chirps went silent as the large tree instantly bent in an awkward angle. In moments, silence coated across the forest like a blanket as more and more birds started to rise up from the treeline and join the three that were already in the air.

I kept watching the birds form a small cloud above the tree as sharp cracks sounded out from below. Slowly I started to realize what was going on. As the tree started to fall below the treeline.

Careful not to make any sudden moves, I reached for my backpack. Aside from the plates of pancakes, everything was packed up. “Guys...I think Jet’s in trouble...Again.”

As if to further prove the point, the birds began to attack. One after another, like arrows from their cloud, the birds dive bombed the fallen tree with tiny war cries. Only after half of the birds were out of sight did we have our packs ready to go.

“maku-maku-maku-maku-maku-maku-”

“Guys, we need to run!” This time Kirlia’s voice projected loud and clear and we were all suddenly wide awake. In seconds we were already coming up on the trail and leaving the park table behind as the sound of angry birds was already starting to get closer.

“How many are there?!” I screamed.

“You don’t wanna know!”

“maku-maku-maku-maku-maku-maku-Maku-Maku-Maku-Maku-Maku-Maku-Maku-Maku-MAKU!”

Right as we left the campsite, Jet burst out of the foliage and started to sprint across it in record time, reducing the park table to mulch as he slammed into it fist-first with every ounce of momentum going into it.

Boards and pancakes alike went sailing all over the place as dozens of birds kept flying after him. Sadly, in their rampage several birds were knocked out of the air from boards and knocked to the ground unconscious while others were slowed by the syrup sticking to their wings.

Meanwhile, Jet was already catching up to the three of us in a huge panic, still calling out “maku” repeatedly as he kept on running. Either he was oblivious to the pancake-induced carnage behind him or he didn’t care. Regardless, once he had finally caught up to us, Max skidded to a halt and the rest of us followed suit.

“Okay Kirlia, get ready!” Kirlia and I turned towards him with Jet sliding to a heavy stop directly in front of us. “When I give the word, be ready to teleport okay?” Both of them then turned back towards our old campsite without saying another word.

However, Max never ended up saying anything. Instead, both of them stood there like statues as the red and grey cloud started to die down. It only lasted for a minute or two more after that until every single bird stopped swarming the place and instead started to chirp happily as if nothing happened.

“Huh. I guess the situation worked itself out.” Kirlia relaxed her stance and folded her arms behind her head calmly. “Still, I would’ve preferred it better without the wake-up call.”

“Maku?” Slowly, Jet reached for his back only to pull out one of the stray pancakes that had landed on him in his panic. “Hita!” Aaaaaaand he ate it.

Slowly a small fear started to dawn on me as I turned towards Max’s Pokémon. “Hey. Max? Kirlia?” Their attention went over to me. “You guys remembered to grab some of the food, right?”

“...” Both of them blinked towards me with the same blank expression I was wearing. Finally, after what felt like hours of silence, both of them began to speak at once.

“I thought you saved some.”

“I thought you saved some.”

The three of us continued to stand still with only the sound of the birds and Jet enjoying every single pancake I had made. And as Jet pulled another part of a pancake off of his arm to scarf down, three stomachs started to growl in protest.

“They’re…” My knees hit the ground. “They're all gone…All those pancakes were…”

“Uh, Spike?” I could hear Max from behind me. “Are you oka—”

“YOU MANIACS!” Max stepped back as I drove my fist into the dirt. “You ate it up!” I looked up as the birds continued to feast on our pancakes. My pancakes.

“CURSE YOU!” Max took another step back as Kirlia ended up mimicking my emotions, even with driving her own fist into the ground. “Dear Arceus, curse you all to—” “Guys, get over it.”

Max stood there with a look of both confusion and worry as both of us kneeled in defeat at our fallen breakfast. Meanwhile, Jet was licking whatever syrup was left on his glove from eating his pancakes before giving me a joyful look.

They will never understand what we’ve lost here today…

Two Hours Later

Spike’s POV

Santalune Forest

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Somewhat irritated, I glanced over at my partner who was now clutching his stomach in grief. He wasn’t getting any pity from the rest of us though. In fact, the rest of us just ended up giving him curt glances. “Why is your stomach growling? You’re not the one who had to skip breakfast.”

“Maku-hit...” He groaned.

“You had three pancakes stuck to you.” Kirlia gave him a longer glance. “How is that barely a snack to you?”

“Come on guys, please stop arguing.” From the front of the group Max was messing around with his PokéNav in an attempt to ignore his own growling stomach. “Look, it says here that there’s a Pokémon Center a ways up the road. If we keep walking like this we’ll make it there in time for lunch.”

“As long as there aren’t any more angry bird clouds.” I started to check the sky for any sign of them, but thankfully I couldn’t hear a single chirp.

Jet started to slump. “Hita…”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing Jet,” Kirlia sighed. “I just wish you would stop using the forest as your own personal punching bag store.” Jet straightened back up with a guilty look on his face.

The saddest part about all this is that this wasn’t the first time some Pokémon had gotten angry at us. This was our third day so far going through this forest and for all three of those mornings Jet gave us all a morning call with his loud training.

Thankfully Max and Kirlia were pretty calm about the whole thing. That still didn’t mean that letting Jet wake us all up with falling trees could keep going on forever like that. We needed to find some type of solution.

Jet’s morning training aside, the last few days had gone more or less the same way. Once we all woke up we’d walk for a while and eventually find a place to stop for lunch. Once we stopped I would be in charge of lunch and Max would be in charge of Pokémon food for Kirlia and Jet while Gastly just enjoyed itself in whatever shade it could find.

Apparently he didn’t eat anything, but every time we all start eating I keep trying to figure out what would be weirder; if he could actually eating normal food, or the fact that he’s watching us eat normal food.

After that we’d go a little further until we found a good spot to camp. We would set up tents, make some kind of fire, we’d train with our Pokémon for a while, and then by the time we’re done it’s time for dinner. It wasn’t a bad schedule, but it was definitely different than anything I was used to.

“Oh, here’s something interesting.”

As Max spoke, the two Pokémon stopped bickering and joined me in watching Max show us the PokéNav. “Apparently there’s a large garden between here and the Pokémon Center.”

“A garden in the middle of a forest?” I contorted my face in confusion. “What’s it doing clear out here?”

A few more taps on the Nav and Max studied the screen. “Well, it says here that the garden’s mostly cared for by the Pokémon of the forest which mostly includes Pokémon like Pansage, Combee, and…” Slowly I saw the smile vanish from Max’s face as he carefully reread the last part.

“Uh...Something wrong?” I looked over towards Jet and Kirlia, but both of them only shrugged.

“Well...” Max bit his lip for a second before looking back up. “One of the Pokémon that help out at the garden isn’t exactly...Friendly.”

“Not friendly?” Instantly the bird cloud flashed in my mind for a second. “Well, can we go around it or something?”

“Oh please,” Kirlia projected her voice as she started to take to the front of the group. “We’ve dealt with more difficult problems back in Hoenn. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Heh,” I chuckled. “If I had a bit for every time I heard...” Before I could join them my senses started going into overdrive. Every time I heard that…

“Maku?” Jet was the only one that noticed. “Makuhita?”

“Get ready Jet,” I started to look around in the bushes and trees. “I think something’s gonna happen.”

“Hiit?!” Instantly, Jet got in his boxer stance as now both of us were looking around. “Makuhit?” He looked at me for a second before going back to looking. I assumed he was asking what we were looking for.

I took in a deep breath. “I dunno. But every time somepony says those words something happens.” Twilight and the others always think that I’m nuts whenever I say that, but that’s when panda bees or something jumps outta nowhere and—

“Are you two okay back there?”

“AHH!”

“MAKU!”

Both of us flailed are arms in response and turned back to see Max and Kirlia giving us somewhere between confused and concerned looks. As the both of us stayed with our arms up in defense, Kirlia slumped her shoulders in slight disdain.

“Nothing is going to happen!” Oh sweet Celestia, she did it again! “Are you two really so worried about a bunch of gardening Pokémon?”

“...” My attention kept going from one side of the path to the other with Jet acting just as attentive as I was. However, after a few more seconds of nothing Jet finally turned back towards me. “Maku, makuhita?”

“Wait, what?” Kirlia’s scowl deepened. “Are you two on edge just because you think I ‘tempted fate?’ Seriously?!” Her hands settled in on her waist as she glared us down like some kind of disapproving mom.

“Come on Kirlia you don’t have to be mad at them,” Max tucked away the PokéNav before folding his arms. “Besides, they might have a point. Those Pokémon are a lot scarier than you—”

“Max, not you too.” Kirlia slapped her forehead in frustration before turning on her heel and marching forward with heavy steps. “Watch, I’ll show you.”

Max started to scan the trees before quickly walking after her. “Wait, you shouldn’t just start stomping around like that. They might…”

“OH, POOR DEARY ME!” Kirlia’s voice started to boom like a megaphone. “I AM SUCH A POOR. HELPLESS. FOOL OF A POKEMON WALKING THIS PATH ALL ALONE!” To help prove how much she couldn’t care, Kirlia began skipping.

With a huff I started after them. “Okay, you don’t have to rub it—” “LA LA-LA LA-LALALAAA~!”

Kirlia’s skipping was brought to an abrupt stop as she launched herself about seven or so feet forward with a ballerina’s leap. Upon landing the singing Pokémon instantly went into a graceful pirouette, making it three or four whole spins before having to give herself more momentum to repeat the same performance again.

“OH DON’T MIND ME FOREST, JUST PRACTICIN’ MAH DANCE MOVES IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS SCARY DIRT ROAD A TERROR! I HOPE NOTHING JUMPS OUT AND KIDNAPS ME!”

The three of us all watched unimpressed as Kirlia went into her fourth flawless quadruple pirouette. Finally, after two more pirouettes for good measure she stopped slowed to a stop to face us. “Now will you three calm down?”

I rolled my eyes but nodded along as she casually folded her arms back behind her head with a victory grin. “Good! Now let’s hurry and get to that Pokémon Center. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can have lunch.” And with that, she turned on her heel once more and started to march down the path at the same pace as the rest of us.

And once I was sure that Kirlia was just out of earshot, Jet and I turned to watch Max give us cheeky grin. “Heheh...Sorry about that. Kirlia can get a bit of an ego when she thinks someone’s worried over nothing.”

“Ya don’t say…” I deadpanned with Jet backing me up with a nod of his head. As I heard her start to hum the same tune from before I snickered. “Does she always sing like that?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” Max couldn’t hide his smile either. “But don’t worry, she doesn’t sing too often.”

My smile only doubled in size. “Well that’s still better than how much my friends sing on a daily basis.”

“I can still hear you~!” Her voice echoed in our minds this time as she began projecting her little song again. “La La-La La-Lalalaaa, La-Laalala~” She ended up repeating that tune several times only to stop as a black and yellow blur swept across the path, taking Kirlia with it.

“Huh?” The rest of us came to a stop, staring at the now empty spot in the path. That, doubled with the very cowardly squeal coming from within the forest had managed to stop all of us from reacting.

A few more seconds passed by us and after I had finally blinked, I heard three voices all screaming in terror. My voice being one of them.

“WHAT WAS THAT?!”

“KIRLIA!”

“MAKU?!”

All of us made a mad dash for the edge of the forest where we could see rows of branches and leaves having been snapped off from their trees, leaving nothing but a giant hole in the forest brush. Although by this point the screaming had already gotten too far away to actually for any of us to hear anymore.

“Max, what was that thing?!” I tried looking back behind us to see if their were any more of whatever that thing was only for Max to start trying to push the first bush or so out of his way.

“I don’t know, but we need to hurry!” Max tore away an entire branch and threw it off behind us with a pfft sound before moving for the next branch. “With how fast that thing flew in, there’s no telling what kind of damage it did!”

Once I noticed that there were a few other branches we had to clear I quickly ran in help him out. And with each branch tossed behind us I could hear branch after branch collecting behind us freely.

The last branch was torn down and not a second later did we start moving. Both of us vaulted over the remains of a bush and instantly we were running past more foliage. From behind I could hear Jet just stomping through the branches and keeping pace with us from behind.

For the next minute or so none of us looked back and just kept rushing forward after the trail of branches and leaves that were left on the ground. Whatever got Kirlia must’ve flew into every branch it could. Still, we had the occasional broken branch or vine to push out of the way as we kept running forward.

At the second minute mark we all saw the edge of the forest and gave one last push until finally bursting out of the tree line and reaching the edge of a sheer drop down some rocks and into some small river. Both of us quickly slid to a stop before just barely falling down into the stream ourselves.

Or rather, Max came sliding to a stop.

“WoOoOoOoOah!” In an attempt to keep myself from sliding straight off the edge I tried coming to a faster stop by dropping to my knees. However, that did nothing other than light my knees on fire from the pain and dislodge one of the rocks that were peppered along the edge.

“Crrk!” The rock tilted toward the rapids below with a jolt with me slowly grinding my knees further into the rock as I started to slip off.

“Spike, hold on!”

Just as the rock was about to give out I felt something grab the back of my collar and yank. And aside from choking me, that was all it took to help me fall back onto solid land with a cough.

From behind me I heard Max quickly jumping back up to his feet. “You alright?”

“Ye,” My coughing cut me off, but I scrambled up to my feet to help answer the question. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Guys! Water! Help!” Kirlia’s voice rang in our heads like bells as all of us, Jet included, started looking around in the stream for any sign of Kirlia.

“Maku!” Jet caught our attention as he pointed further down the rapids right as something breached the water. “Makuhita!”

Max didn’t even respond. Instead, he started taking off along the cliff side that followed the rapids in hopes of chasing after Kirlia.

With little choice, Jet and I followed suit and started to look further down the rapids. Except, it wasn’t what we saw that made us start running faster but rather what we didn’t see.

“Max!” I called out from behind. “We’re running out of rapids!”

Ahead of us I saw the water behind pushed up into the air before dropping out of sight behind some rocks. The cliff edge went a few feet past it with a tree growing out the side, but after that it would’ve been another sheer drop for us.

Max tried running faster, still nowhere near caught up with her. “Kirlia, you’ve gotta teleport outta there, quick!”

“No! He--y! --lp!” Slowly the telepathy cut out and Kirlia was left with little more than calling out with her name before she started disappearing back underwater.

“Hold on! I’m coming!” Max tried to run as fast as he could to match the speed, but by the time Kirlia came back up above the water she was even further ahead than last time. Although now I saw that it wasn’t just her.

It was proving difficult for her, but floating next to her was this yellow and black looking thing that was stay above the water but it was having an even tougher time than Kirlia was. It barely managed to make some type of noise and catch some breath before ducking back under water, but that was all we needed to get us all running even faster.

“Spike!” Max tried looking over towards Jet and I as we were starting to catch up. “We need to get to that tree!”

“Tree?!” I watched as he started fishing for Kirlia’s Pokéball and looked around. “What do you mean the tr...OH!” My attention went back to the tree jetting out from the end of the rapids that Kirlia and that other thing were heading for.

Wait a second, jetting?...JET!

“Jet!” I pointed towards the tree. “Get to that tree as fast as you can and get ready to catch the yellow thing! I have an idea!”

After hearing the command, Jet leaned forward and sprinted ahead of me and passing Max just as he had finally pulled out the Pokéball. “Max, can you catch Kirlia?!”

“Sure thing!” He ran a little bit closer until he was close enough to the edge. From there, he planted himself in the ground as I ran past him. He needed to aim carefully to be able to catch Kirlia.

“Kirl!” Kirlia burst out of the water in time to see Jet leaping onto the sideways tree and holding on as it bobbed up and down from the sudden pressure of weight. “Kirli—!” She tried to yell something out, but again had some trouble staying above the water with the yellow thing in her grasp.

Instead, Jet steadied his footing and leaned out as much as he could with his arm, yelling something back to Kirlia right as I was starting to close the distance between me and the tree.

The next few things all started to happen simultaneously. To start, Kirlia apparently took in one last breath of air before ducking back under water right as Jet grabbed one of the upward standing branches to use as an anchor.

Next, right as I made it to the roots of the tree, Kirlia launched out of the water one last time as she pushed the yellow creature ahead of her. From there, Jet grabbed the side of the thing’s stinger.

Jet’s grip was tight enough to hold onto the creature, but Kirlia wasn’t so lucky. Instead, her grip slipped and she was forced into a free fall. With no way of catching her fall and no time to teleport, she was helpless.

“Kirlia, return!” Right as the branch Jet was holding snapped, a bright red laser shot out beneath him, striking Kirlia’s chest before enveloping her entire body. Within seconds, her form turned entirely red and was drawn into Max’s Pokéball. Now only leaving Jet and the creature in free fall.

“I…” Not even thinking, I dove for the tree myself and clutched to it with everything save for one arm. That one was instead holding onto Jet’s now free glove. “...Gotcha!”

“Hita!” It was strained, but while I couldn’t see Jet with the giant tree trunk in my face, I could hear him shouting above the rapids to the right of me.

“Alright Spike!” On the other hand something that I could see was Max running over from his spot. “Are you all okay over there?”

“Oh, we’re fine. You know, just…” I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. “...Hangin’ around.”

He stopped just short of the tree roots with an unimpressed look on his face. “...Really?” He didn’t stop me from laughing it away. “Okay, hang...wait a second, for me to get some rope ready. I’ll have you guys back over in a second.”

“Got it,” As I fixed my grip I could feel some of the bark beneath me started to break apart. “Uh, m-might wanna hurry,”

“Don’t worry, I already got it set up.” Max made quick work of tying up the rope and lowering it down towards the yellow creature, which I only assumed Jet managed to help get secured around the thing.

Once it was up Max did the same thing for Jet and then threw it out for me to grab hold of. All in all, each of us had made it back onto solid ground just as the roots started to rip out of the cliff side.

As the tree finally gave away and fell onto the rocks below, Jet and I started to back away from the ledge. “Wow. Good thing we weren't still on that...”

“No kidding.” As Max started to pull the rope back into his backpack and looked over towards our new friend who was now unconscious on the ground beside us.

Back when it was in the water I had never gotten a good look at it. Except now that I was able to I sort of wished that was still the case. The yellow and black creature was unsurprisingly some sort of bee with bright red fly-like eyes on its face. With those things, even though it was unconscious it still looked like it was staring directly at you.

What made it even more terrifying is that instead of having only regular arms, they were just giant stingers that looked more like somepony strapped lances onto its body.

Add to the fact that this thing was almost as tall as me or Max and it was almost something I would expect Luna to be blasting out of nightmares.

Finally Max looked back towards me with a worried glance that mirrored my own. “Well, I guess all that’s left is to try and help this guy get to the Pokémon Center.”

“All the way back there, huh?” I tried looking for good place to get back through the trees, but with all the brush I only started to see even more problems. “That means we’re going to have to carry him, huh?”

Max looked it over, cringing just as much as I was at the stinger-shaped arms it had. “Yep...Seems that way...”

“...Right…” Swallowing all the fear I could, I approached the bug and with all the hesitation, I started to get my arms under it. Once I was sure that it wouldn’t wake up, I slowly lifted it up off the ground with a bit more trouble than I wanted.

After I was sure that it wasn’t making any sudden moves other than breathing, I waddled around until I was facing Max and Jet, who had at some point given me a good five or so feet of room to move.

“Well…” I clamped my mouth shut and once I was again sure that this giant bee in my arms wasn’t waking up I let out a nervous breath. “I’m carrying a bee in my arms...At least it can’t get any worse, righ...” Oh Sweet Celestia, I said it!

Jet’s eyes widened, or it at least seemed that way as he now started to give me ten feet of space before looking around frantically. “Maku-maku?!”

“Wha-What’s wrong, now?!” Max started to stand his ground as he darted around the area, looking for whatever we were freaking out about. Thankfully, nothing started to burst out of the treeline like before with the bee. No, instead it came in the form of a water droplet hitting Max’s glasses.

“Huh?” Max focused in on his glasses just as another one fell on his shoulder. And then Jet’s head. Then my nose.

Suddenly, water started to drop on all of us and we were forced to start running for some type of cover from the impending rain storm that the world had made on us. Now if only Kirlia were out to see this. Then she would know what happens when you start saying those six words.

What’s the worst that can happen? Rain. Rain can happen.

Author's Note

For those of you that might've noticed, this chapter as well as all the others now have something added onto them. While I was working on this chapter I started to realize that I was getting obsessed with the word limit of chapters and how to try and put that word count above a certain amount. Now obviously some people prefer longer chapters as opposed to shorter ones and vice versa, but I figured if I did it this way then I'd be able to write each chapter and 'episode' in a way that made them all flow a bit better.

I'll also be trying to keep each 'episode' within the same three part act as best as I can. So tell me your thoughts! You guys are the ones reading this after all!

By the way, let's see just how many people can guess which Pokémon the group just saved! It's probably an obvious answer, but I thought it'd be a fun question!

QotC: Who's That Pokémon?!