;019;
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Trek North! A Thieving Pokemon!
The water rose, the water fell. Though few had seen it who had not participated in it, an exodus of mass proportions had taken place. And Nature, powerful though it was to resist changes and disturbances, found itself shaken.
What had seemed a million people had walked through the Tokiwa Forest, and Nature, pressed for space, had fought back in its typically passive-aggressive manner. The Pokemon that had been disturbed had left the forest and begun terrorizing the surrounding areas.
Beedle and Caterpie, not to mention most of their brethren, had crawled outside the forest and began building a new nest, to the east, near a tiny village between Tokiwa and Nibi. The once graceful birds that had flown over the forest had opted to fly elsewhere, and now great flocks swooped through the air, east, west, south, north. Any direction. It did not particularly matter to the Pokemon.
Meanwhile, the Pikachu had retreated deeper into the forest, a once common Pokemon now becoming limited to smaller areas. Pikachu, unfortunately, lacked a pack instinct, and fights broke out amongst the habitats. A once common Pokemon quickly became amongst the rarest of the rare.
The trees of the forest lacked any particular urge to migrate, and were instead in ruins. Many had been torn down by the humans who had left Tokiwa. A great gash split one quarter of the forest from the rest, and any who flew over the forest would see it.
Then of course, came the damage from the overuse of Digda's Hole, a strange cavern system which led all the way to Kuchiba City. The Digda had not taken well to the sudden invasion, and had fled the cave, and settled in the village.
Meanwhile, of course, the villagers who had become so terrorized by the insect and mole Pokemon that had left the forest found their own ways of coping. They abandoned their homes, and made an exodus southward.
Their arrival was not welcome in Tokiwa City, which already sat on the brink of ruin. However, the exodus confirmed one theory regarding the missing people; that they had traveled away; and so the arrival also came as a reassurance.
But everything had fallen out of balance, and the few who knew the ways of the forest feared that the real effects of the ecological breakdown had not yet come to pass.
And when they did? Tokiwa City would find itself entirely unprepared to deal with the consequences of a rapidly collapsing environment, not to mention the more pressing concerns of the humans who did not know that the ripples of the exodus had spread, long and far.
So, the water rose, and the water fell, crashing against the shores of a lake that would soon fade away, as the numbers of those that drank its water multiplied.
***
Satoshi woke the next day feeling refreshed, and wondering what on Earth could possibly happen next. The last few days seemed like a blur; catching Fu, surviving the Lucky, and his reunion with Shigeru... Three days... It seemed like far too long a time for so much to happen.
He followed the same routine as he had the previous morning; quickly eating and then showering afterwards. Then, he dashed out the front door and into the wild world. It took him what seemed an eternity to cross the entirety of Tokiwa City, but once he'd left it, he found himself amongst the many-colored blossoms that made the wilderness before the abrupt beginning of the Tokiwa Forest.
Unfortunately, the passage between Tokiwa and Tokiwa Forest was long and arduous, containing rough terrain all the way across the path. Satoshi found that he became exhausted extremely quickly, and so decided to sleep beneath a tree before continuing on...
***
And so he dreamed. The majority of the spurts of temporary consciousness are uninteresting at best; disturbing at worst. Nightmares and constantly recurring (yet quickly forgotten) dreams played out.
And then something changed...
The world became one constant color, gold, shining, and then a woman stepped out of the gold. She was young, perhaps only fifteen years older than Satoshi. Her face, pale, cold smooth, shone out in contrast to her long dark hair. She wore a red uniform of some sort, with boots to match, and she walked towards Satoshi.
One of her hands held three cards, each sporting an intricate design of gold on a blue background. She held them out to Satoshi, wordless. Satoshi took a card, and flipped it over.
The design resembled that of a Tarot card. On it, an intricate picture, a cloaked man, hobbled over and sitting against a decrepit building, holding out a tin. Another man stood nearby, holding out a hand with a golden coin in it. Below were letters of a strange sort. It seemed as if each letter had an eye.
“Beggar.” The sound echoed, and yet... Satoshi could have sworn the speaker had not spoken up, nor done anything but whisper. He stared at the woman, uncertain.
“You are the beggar,” she explained kindly.
He glared at her, and reached for the other two cards, as if to change his fate, but she withdrew them and the cards burst into flames.
“Those are not for you,” she said forcefully. “You will find those who have them, of course, but you must not ask what the cards read. Tell of your own destiny. They will give you theirs, if they so choose.”
A strange fog began to appear around the woman, and she sighed. “The shields are being raised. Be sure you sleep properly three days from now, for I will visit you then. Your companions will soon find that destiny waits for no one.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“What? Ready for what?”
“Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“You are not ready. You must be ready. Do not assume that you can survive by wits alone. Follow the card. It means everything.”
“Beg for mercy?” Satoshi muttered sarcastically. “Yeah, that'll be a big help.”
The woman sighed again, longer, drawn out, exasperated. “I see faces and images all around you. Remember Mori. He's important.” Her feet were now covered in fog, and the tendrils of air began to glide upward, obscuring the rest of her.
“I know he's important! He stole that weird Monster Ball!”
“What?” the woman struggled against the fog for a moment, as if she wished to step forward but could not. Sighing (again), she said, “Did it have an 'M' on it?”
“Yes! Why?”
“Where is it? Is it safe?”
“It's been destroyed!”
The woman smiled for the first time in the dream. A cold smile, and cruel, but Satoshi thought that her expression might have been based upon the fact that her entire legs were now surrounded in thick fog.
“That is as it should be. If you find another, destroy it too. Destroy them all!” The fog spread upwards quickly now, covering her torso, her chest, her neck. “Goodbye, Satoshi. We both have things to do. Remember, she will-”
Her head disappeared into the fog, and Satoshi found himself alone, the last two words, an unfinished sentence, echoing throughout the dream world.
***
Satoshi awoke with a start. He sat up groggily, and rubbed his eyes. Doing so, he noticed he held something in his hand. A blue card with a gold design on one side, and a picture of a beggar on the other. He started.
He had not had that card when he had gone to sleep. It should have gone away when the dream ended, like all other shadowy parts of his subconscious. Yet there it sat, the beggar seemingly staring at him.
Satoshi felt rather uncomfortable about that.
Luckily, his discomfort over the card did not last long, for as he looked down, he noticed something wriggling in his backpack. His eyes widened and he snatched the bag away from whatever was inside.
It was a purple, rat-like creature, and it sat there, looking up angrily at him. Satoshi realized that it had clutched onto something in its mouth, but he couldn't tell what. It looked an awful lot like food though.
“Hey! Give that back!” he shouted angrily.
The rat Pokemon looked up at him for a moment, then rammed into his leg.
Satoshi had never had an idea of how strong Pokemon were. He'd thought, reasonably, that Pokemon like fighting types would be quite strong, but he'd never imagined that a single Koratta could knock a person over.
It could.
As he fell to the ground, his backpack fell out of his hands and back to where it had been sitting. In front of the Koratta, who eagerly bit onto one of the straps and started carrying it away.
Satoshi jumped up and dashed after it, across even more treacherous and bumpy terrain than before. The Koratta knew its habitat well, and jumped this way and that across the surface. Satoshi could hardly keep up with it.
“Go, Kya!” he shouted, throwing the Monster Ball ahead of the Koratta.
The green caterpillar popped out of the Monster Ball and began spraying its Spit Thread all over the Koratta, which quickly began to slow down. Satoshi darted forward, grabbed the backpack.... and tripped over a rock.
The backpack went flying into the air again, and the Koratta tried to run and pick it up, but it had become entangled in the various threads. It struggled for awhile, and then fell over. Kya, not wanting to waste a good opportunity, gave it a gentle nudge and knocked it over onto a sharp rock.
Satoshi stood up and retrieved his backpack. He took a quick look at the Zukan, which revealed that Shigeru had not yet caught a Koratta, so Satoshi readied a Monster Ball and tossed it forward.
The ball didn't work. Neither did the next one, or the one after that. Satoshi rapidly cycled through the Monster Balls he'd obtained in Mori's shop, even having Kya administer a few more Body Blows to the Koratta. Nothing worked, and soon Satoshi was down to one Monster Ball.
Satoshi shook his head angrily and nodded towards Kya, who administered one final body blow. The Koratta was knocked unconscious.
Satoshi turned to recall Kya, but froze. The Kya had burst into white light, and slowly began to shift in appearance. Suddenly, it was no longer a simple Caterpie, but had become a Transell!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hooray! Yay! Etc. Satoshi can't catch a Koratta, but Kya has evolved! Next chapter? THE TOKIWA FOREST! A FERAL POKEMON!
Cya.
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Trek North! A Thieving Pokemon!
The water rose, the water fell. Though few had seen it who had not participated in it, an exodus of mass proportions had taken place. And Nature, powerful though it was to resist changes and disturbances, found itself shaken.
What had seemed a million people had walked through the Tokiwa Forest, and Nature, pressed for space, had fought back in its typically passive-aggressive manner. The Pokemon that had been disturbed had left the forest and begun terrorizing the surrounding areas.
Beedle and Caterpie, not to mention most of their brethren, had crawled outside the forest and began building a new nest, to the east, near a tiny village between Tokiwa and Nibi. The once graceful birds that had flown over the forest had opted to fly elsewhere, and now great flocks swooped through the air, east, west, south, north. Any direction. It did not particularly matter to the Pokemon.
Meanwhile, the Pikachu had retreated deeper into the forest, a once common Pokemon now becoming limited to smaller areas. Pikachu, unfortunately, lacked a pack instinct, and fights broke out amongst the habitats. A once common Pokemon quickly became amongst the rarest of the rare.
The trees of the forest lacked any particular urge to migrate, and were instead in ruins. Many had been torn down by the humans who had left Tokiwa. A great gash split one quarter of the forest from the rest, and any who flew over the forest would see it.
Then of course, came the damage from the overuse of Digda's Hole, a strange cavern system which led all the way to Kuchiba City. The Digda had not taken well to the sudden invasion, and had fled the cave, and settled in the village.
Meanwhile, of course, the villagers who had become so terrorized by the insect and mole Pokemon that had left the forest found their own ways of coping. They abandoned their homes, and made an exodus southward.
Their arrival was not welcome in Tokiwa City, which already sat on the brink of ruin. However, the exodus confirmed one theory regarding the missing people; that they had traveled away; and so the arrival also came as a reassurance.
But everything had fallen out of balance, and the few who knew the ways of the forest feared that the real effects of the ecological breakdown had not yet come to pass.
And when they did? Tokiwa City would find itself entirely unprepared to deal with the consequences of a rapidly collapsing environment, not to mention the more pressing concerns of the humans who did not know that the ripples of the exodus had spread, long and far.
So, the water rose, and the water fell, crashing against the shores of a lake that would soon fade away, as the numbers of those that drank its water multiplied.
***
Satoshi woke the next day feeling refreshed, and wondering what on Earth could possibly happen next. The last few days seemed like a blur; catching Fu, surviving the Lucky, and his reunion with Shigeru... Three days... It seemed like far too long a time for so much to happen.
He followed the same routine as he had the previous morning; quickly eating and then showering afterwards. Then, he dashed out the front door and into the wild world. It took him what seemed an eternity to cross the entirety of Tokiwa City, but once he'd left it, he found himself amongst the many-colored blossoms that made the wilderness before the abrupt beginning of the Tokiwa Forest.
Unfortunately, the passage between Tokiwa and Tokiwa Forest was long and arduous, containing rough terrain all the way across the path. Satoshi found that he became exhausted extremely quickly, and so decided to sleep beneath a tree before continuing on...
***
And so he dreamed. The majority of the spurts of temporary consciousness are uninteresting at best; disturbing at worst. Nightmares and constantly recurring (yet quickly forgotten) dreams played out.
And then something changed...
The world became one constant color, gold, shining, and then a woman stepped out of the gold. She was young, perhaps only fifteen years older than Satoshi. Her face, pale, cold smooth, shone out in contrast to her long dark hair. She wore a red uniform of some sort, with boots to match, and she walked towards Satoshi.
One of her hands held three cards, each sporting an intricate design of gold on a blue background. She held them out to Satoshi, wordless. Satoshi took a card, and flipped it over.
The design resembled that of a Tarot card. On it, an intricate picture, a cloaked man, hobbled over and sitting against a decrepit building, holding out a tin. Another man stood nearby, holding out a hand with a golden coin in it. Below were letters of a strange sort. It seemed as if each letter had an eye.
“Beggar.” The sound echoed, and yet... Satoshi could have sworn the speaker had not spoken up, nor done anything but whisper. He stared at the woman, uncertain.
“You are the beggar,” she explained kindly.
He glared at her, and reached for the other two cards, as if to change his fate, but she withdrew them and the cards burst into flames.
“Those are not for you,” she said forcefully. “You will find those who have them, of course, but you must not ask what the cards read. Tell of your own destiny. They will give you theirs, if they so choose.”
A strange fog began to appear around the woman, and she sighed. “The shields are being raised. Be sure you sleep properly three days from now, for I will visit you then. Your companions will soon find that destiny waits for no one.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“What? Ready for what?”
“Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“You are not ready. You must be ready. Do not assume that you can survive by wits alone. Follow the card. It means everything.”
“Beg for mercy?” Satoshi muttered sarcastically. “Yeah, that'll be a big help.”
The woman sighed again, longer, drawn out, exasperated. “I see faces and images all around you. Remember Mori. He's important.” Her feet were now covered in fog, and the tendrils of air began to glide upward, obscuring the rest of her.
“I know he's important! He stole that weird Monster Ball!”
“What?” the woman struggled against the fog for a moment, as if she wished to step forward but could not. Sighing (again), she said, “Did it have an 'M' on it?”
“Yes! Why?”
“Where is it? Is it safe?”
“It's been destroyed!”
The woman smiled for the first time in the dream. A cold smile, and cruel, but Satoshi thought that her expression might have been based upon the fact that her entire legs were now surrounded in thick fog.
“That is as it should be. If you find another, destroy it too. Destroy them all!” The fog spread upwards quickly now, covering her torso, her chest, her neck. “Goodbye, Satoshi. We both have things to do. Remember, she will-”
Her head disappeared into the fog, and Satoshi found himself alone, the last two words, an unfinished sentence, echoing throughout the dream world.
***
Satoshi awoke with a start. He sat up groggily, and rubbed his eyes. Doing so, he noticed he held something in his hand. A blue card with a gold design on one side, and a picture of a beggar on the other. He started.
He had not had that card when he had gone to sleep. It should have gone away when the dream ended, like all other shadowy parts of his subconscious. Yet there it sat, the beggar seemingly staring at him.
Satoshi felt rather uncomfortable about that.
Luckily, his discomfort over the card did not last long, for as he looked down, he noticed something wriggling in his backpack. His eyes widened and he snatched the bag away from whatever was inside.
It was a purple, rat-like creature, and it sat there, looking up angrily at him. Satoshi realized that it had clutched onto something in its mouth, but he couldn't tell what. It looked an awful lot like food though.
“Hey! Give that back!” he shouted angrily.
The rat Pokemon looked up at him for a moment, then rammed into his leg.
Satoshi had never had an idea of how strong Pokemon were. He'd thought, reasonably, that Pokemon like fighting types would be quite strong, but he'd never imagined that a single Koratta could knock a person over.
It could.
As he fell to the ground, his backpack fell out of his hands and back to where it had been sitting. In front of the Koratta, who eagerly bit onto one of the straps and started carrying it away.
Satoshi jumped up and dashed after it, across even more treacherous and bumpy terrain than before. The Koratta knew its habitat well, and jumped this way and that across the surface. Satoshi could hardly keep up with it.
“Go, Kya!” he shouted, throwing the Monster Ball ahead of the Koratta.
The green caterpillar popped out of the Monster Ball and began spraying its Spit Thread all over the Koratta, which quickly began to slow down. Satoshi darted forward, grabbed the backpack.... and tripped over a rock.
The backpack went flying into the air again, and the Koratta tried to run and pick it up, but it had become entangled in the various threads. It struggled for awhile, and then fell over. Kya, not wanting to waste a good opportunity, gave it a gentle nudge and knocked it over onto a sharp rock.
Satoshi stood up and retrieved his backpack. He took a quick look at the Zukan, which revealed that Shigeru had not yet caught a Koratta, so Satoshi readied a Monster Ball and tossed it forward.
The ball didn't work. Neither did the next one, or the one after that. Satoshi rapidly cycled through the Monster Balls he'd obtained in Mori's shop, even having Kya administer a few more Body Blows to the Koratta. Nothing worked, and soon Satoshi was down to one Monster Ball.
Satoshi shook his head angrily and nodded towards Kya, who administered one final body blow. The Koratta was knocked unconscious.
Satoshi turned to recall Kya, but froze. The Kya had burst into white light, and slowly began to shift in appearance. Suddenly, it was no longer a simple Caterpie, but had become a Transell!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hooray! Yay! Etc. Satoshi can't catch a Koratta, but Kya has evolved! Next chapter? THE TOKIWA FOREST! A FERAL POKEMON!
Cya.