Wings Have We

[Giratina!]

Sure, this could "insult" you by asking questions about your work like that; but if you think about it, there may have been a way to make your story twice as good if not more.

I know you're not trying to insult me; if you had, you probably wouldn't have tried to offer some more helpful opinions. I understand what you're saying, and there is always room for improvement. I suppose I do need to question myself more. |D

Ha ha, no. I don't mean kill, I mean raise the stakes/risk.

Er, I never said anything about killing...

An event that changes the course in a story will grab readers' attentions and then you can interest them more.

Considering this is Trainer fic, there's not much to go by for drastically changing the course of the story, and we're already too far in to say "Okay, here's this totally normal opening, now go get sucked into cyberspace!" or somesuch.

Besides, what is a gym going to do? Sure, a battle with action, but what if it had something that not only advances the plot but also shows a character twist we didn't expect . . .

Which it does. Please trust me a little here.

Next off is your sig "A Pokémon affected by the electromagnetic waves given off by a tower in the center of Holon. The Delta Pokémon in the past had only received changes in power; recent years have found the Delta Species mysteriously gaining some more easily visible mutations." Now think about it, is your story relating enough to this to be what we generally expect?

Right now, no. No it isn't. And I won't make any promises saying "Literally next chapter we're going to learn everything", but I do have an idea in mind on how to implement the Delta Pokémon into the story more... besides, as of Chapter Eleven, we've already met three!

You see, I'm just thinking of how I can advise you on your story, there are many things debatable in the story, but it's up to you if you want to change anything.

That's true. I can't thank you enough for giving me an honest opinion on my story... I haven't had too much more than three-sentence songs of praise up until this point.

Moreover, it's kind of my job as a reviewer to question things in a story, it happens.

That's true, too. Well, in any case, thank you again for reviewing honestly! Now that you've mentioned the things you see wrong, I see them too, and I will try to fix them in the future.

 

[Akiyama]

Yeah, you're welcome, thanks for commenting. Glad to review you since I didn't see many people commenting on your fic, well, enjoy writing.

 

[Giratina!]

{12} let's make tracks​

Lounging in swivel chairs was surprisingly amusing.

Despite himself, the man sitting in such a swivel chair gave a very sinister chuckle. He was alone in a dark room on top of the highest tower on the eastern side of the Earth; who was going to hear him except his own conscience? However, he soon grew tired of acting childishly sinister (if that was even possible), and the man’s only visible eye drifted down to the computer screen sitting in front of him, a bright box of light with Mew-knows-how-many recording… doohickeys hiding in the wings.

The man frowned at the possibility of this, took his arms out from their previous position of pillowing his head, and returned to the proper seated position. The computer was a sleek desktop computer which he had ordered for himself earlier that year, and right now it showed nothing but a generic desktop (he didn’t care what it looked like).

Prodding the mouse with his right pointer finger, he raised his eyebrows at the text box that had appeared on screen.

“Oh look,” he noted with a devious little smirk. “An update. I was getting bored here.” With a few keystrokes expertly executed by his left hand, the Notepad program started up and… there. Waiting for him was a lengthy summary of events, written in his underling’s trademark elegantly-scripted font. He swept the hair out of his right eye and pushed it behind his ear – reading on the computer one-eyed was not an easy task.

He poked the down key a couple of times and finished reading. Something at the end seemed to have displeased him, and by the frantic workout he was soon giving the keyboard and tracking mouse it looked like he intended to resolve it. After pulling his finger along a skinny gray wire attached to the web-camera now perched upon the monitor, he switched a few USB cables and finally reclined in his chair again as the unmistakable face of his accomplice showed up in yet another window.

“I’ve received your note,” he began, interlacing his fingers and speaking in a way that would make a Bond villain green with envy. “Perfectly composed as per usual, Mr. Hikaru.”

“That’s wonderful,” replied the man on the other end. “I trust that…”

“Sir!” called a voice from somewhere off-screen.

The fedora-clad man in the tallest building on the eastern side of the Earth raised his eyebrows as (after a brief confirmation of entry from the man on the other end) a BDV Grunt stormed in the room, panting and looking up at Hikaru worriedly.

“What is it?” asked Hikaru.

“Sir,” said the Grunt after he had caught his breath, “there’s just been a terrible discovery. More than one. They’re terrible, they really are, I…”

“Calm down,” said Hikaru, “and tell me what’s happened.”

Fedora Man watched on in silence.

“One, another one of the Grunts has possibly escaped. I don’t know who, but we’ve just counted now and found a lack of one Grunt past the usual suspects to not show up, avoid counting, or tossed their tracking device out the window. Two, one of the Files has gone missing. It’s Briefcase A, only basic information and a few profiles on the less dangerous specimens, but it still contains important information that should not be leaked. And three…” He paused and shuddered. “The Karmada are getting rambunctious.”

Hikaru’s eyebrows rose to match Fedora Man’s. He stared at the Grunt for a few minutes, apparently deep in thought, and then drummed his fingers on the side of his head.

“The Karmada are hungry, you say? Good.” Upon seeing the Grunt’s confused expression, Hikaru chuckled and continued. “We can use this to our advantage, you see. Let them track down the escaped operative. Place the beta trackers on them, and specify for them to hunt down the person fitting all details we know about…”

The Grunt waved a hand to signal Hikaru to pause. (Fedora Man frowned.) He whipped out a standard-issue BDV Communication Machine (often referred to as a ‘Mech’) and listened to the message sent to him like a walkie-talkie partner. Finally, he smiled weakly and brought the Mech down from his ear.

“We have finished the inspection,” he said. “CD0000 was reported missing, and his Mech tracking signal could not be found anywhere. It must have been destroyed…”

“Wonderful,” replied Hikaru cheerfully. “Then send the Karmada to seek out a man carrying a very silly-looking hollow metal rod. Bonus points if he is holding a File. It shouldn’t be too hard for them to hone in on him…”

-

Caro, being the (arguably) strongest member of the group, wound up carrying Casey on his back. Rotom hovered behind – originally he had tried to lie on Casey’s back, but an irate and worn-down Caro had soon told him that the extra weight was definitely not appreciated.

The group, counting the unconscious Casey, now had four members. Both Caro and Sheridan kept casting anxious glances at the skulking figure in the background, a scrawny twenty-something with overgrown, messy brown hair and a rather narrow face shape. Over his shoulder was heaved a three-foot-long rod of metal, and in the opposite hand a very impressive-looking leather briefcase. He wore a long, billowing blue coat with a turned-down hood. Truth be told, his robe-ish jacket looked like it was exactly that: a robe.

CD0000’s arm eventually got tired of wielding the pipe over his shoulder, and so (after taking a few steps back so as not to hurt anyone) swung it down from the previous position and vouched for the much easier option of simply holding it in his right hand.

They were currently wandering through the Holon Forest, Rhoter District – the mess of trees covered so much of the Region that it needed to be fenced off into Districts to avoid such cases as people coming in on the eastern side and out somewhere in the west. The Regional Government had recently had the wonderful idea to construct paths that cut right through the trees and over the water. One of these paths was what the Groupie Galaxy (and CD0000) were trekking along right now.

Eventually Caro settled on ignoring the shady twenty-something, and focusing more on keeping all available strength that could be used to haul Casey and himself. Sheridan, on the other hand, simply couldn’t get his presence out of her head and attempted to learn more about him.

“So…” she said, backing up to fall into step with CD0000. “What’s your name?”

CD0000 flicked his eyes towards her. (Sheridan found herself almost scared by the nearly-black shade of brown they held.) “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because,” said Sheridan matter-of-factly, “if Casey does decide to let you join our little group, we’ve got to know something about you.” Internally, she smiled; whether he should join the party was still under mental debate, but she did know next to nothing about him. She had expected some surprise on his part after she asked, but (even though she hated to admit it) his response caught her off-guard.

He looked at her wide-eyed and said, “You were serious about that?”

“Well, yes,” said Sheridan, herself surprised at his response. “Why would we not be? After all, you clearly didn’t want to be there, and considering you didn’t have that suitcase earlier and you stomped on that little walkie-talkie in your pocket it doesn’t seem like you intend on going back.”

“No, it’s not about the whole leaving thing,” he responded. “Of course I wanted to leave. What I didn’t think you were serious about was me… um, going. You know. With you guys. I didn’t think you all would want a criminal escapee in your group.”

Sheridan frowned back at him in response. “I don’t care if you’re a criminal escapee, alright? I don’t think Casey would care that you’re a criminal escapee. Caro can be easily convinced of your innocence. You’re coming with us.” Sheridan looked at him in a way that suggested that this was an order.

“Er,” replied CD0000, taking a step away from her as he walked. “Um… alright… Wait. You wanted to know my name, right?”

Sheridan nodded.

“Please don’t laugh; it’s not really that funny when you think about it. I’ve had quite enough of people making fun of it. But… I’m Grant.”

Caro cracked up.

Loudly.

“I told you not to laugh!” snapped Grant.

Sheridan, having foreseen this happening based mostly on instinct, held out her arm to prevent the blunt weapon Grant was carrying from making contact with Caro’s head. She did well.

His eyes flicked to her outstretched arm for a second before he returned the metal rod to its previous position of resting on his shoulder, kept in place by his right hand. “Sorry ‘bout that. Just… yeah.” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Caro grinned. “Sorry… it was funny.”

Grant gave a defeated sigh.

-

Caro opened the door to the four-person Pokémon Center room the newly-expanded group had rented for the night. Casey (whose eyes were cracked open, but who didn’t respond to any prompting) was lying on the small red-colored couch, Sheridan was scouring the small bookshelf in the corner for a time-waster that looked promising, and Grant seemed to have not moved from his spot in one of the two armchairs (both the same color as the couch) since they arrived. He was currently occupied with staring at a briefcase in his lap.

Without a word, Caro dropped a Pokéball and a JAWS on Casey’s stomach before crashing into the other armchair, making it groan loudly and causing Grant to wince (without looking away from the briefcase).

“Hello,” said Sheridan airily, selecting a lengthy volume with a Rapidash on the cover and walking over to Caro’s chair, frowning at his stealing of her perch and sitting on the floor to read. “Everything went alright at the lobby?”

“Yeah, nobody tried to pester me once I said I was healing the Pokémon for Casey over here.” He nodded to the boy, who was just then pushing himself to a sitting position. “Hey, you’re back. Nice to see you again!”

Casey rolled his eyes and put his head in his hands. “What was that?”

“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about…” said Caro breezily.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me that Trainers always pass out when they lose battles,” snorted Casey, reaching up to catch Rotom (who didn’t seem to notice that his Trainer was right below him). “It would figure, what with all of the other crazy things you’ve got going on in this whole business!”

Grant peered over at him, one eyebrow raised. “You are new to Trainerdom, then?”

“You could say that,” said Casey. “But what’s in that suitcase you’ve got there?” He stood up and walked over to Grant’s armchair, leaning on the back of the chair and looking down at it curiously. Caro turned around from his previous position (legs sprawled over the right arm of the chair, head and arms leaning off the left) and actually sat properly, so as to get a better look at the mysterious object.

“Things they won’t need anymore, and that you all shouldn’t be looking at,” he grumbled, with a scathing glance around the room.

“‘They’?” asked Casey, looking down at him quizzically.

“Aw, let me see it,” said Caro, craning his neck.

Grant frowned, drumming his fingers on the ever-elusive case as he wondered just how much Caro would damage the things within. “Well… fine. Here.” He slipped onto the floor. After carefully placing his metal pipe he dragged around onto the chair, Grant then concerned himself with standing on one knee as he fumbled to open the case. Soon, he had done that as well, and everyone else in the room moved to see what was inside. Within the ever-special briefcase was quite a lot of…

…papers.

Yes, papers. Certainly they were somewhat important-looking papers, documents even, but papers nonetheless. Caro – who no doubt thought it would be a cool super-weapon Pokémon or something – looked disappointed.

However, he soon got over it and snatched a paper from the top of the pile. “Lemme see this!”

Grant reached out a hand to stop him, but found only air in his grasp. With yet another defeated sigh (he seemed to be very well-practiced with these) the man waved the hand he had out in a motion to get Caro on with reading it and focused back on the ‘case’* before him.

Caro settled back into his chair slowly, all distinguishing characteristics of a modern hyperactive teenager lost in the urge to further observe the thing in his hand.

It wasn’t particularly frilly, and was in fact hand-written. Caro had to look a bit closer to make sense out of the squiggly handwriting the creator had used, but once he had he found the true purpose of the paper and it interested him quite a lot. ‘Hm,’ thought the brunet in his mind, ‘imagine that. This is all some notes on those old Delta Species Pokémon who used to run around the region… everyone should know about those.’ His eyes flickered to Grant.

“Where’d you say you got these again?”

“I didn’t say where I got them,” replied Grant distantly, still rummaging through the case.

“Oh. Cause this is all about the Delta Pokémon, and I didn’t know who would really care about ‘em these days.” Sheridan plucked the papers handed to her out of aforementioned man’s hands, sitting back into the chair to read them. She, after hearing that Caro’s paper involved a rare variation of Pokémon, was now looking at them with renewed interest and vigor.

Casey, on the other hand, took one of the papers at random, scanned over it lazily, handed it back to Grant, and yawned.

“Guys?” he asked. “I’m getting tired. Can we get to bed now?”

“It’s only eight, Casey,” said Sheridan, not looking away from the papers. “You can go if you want, but we’ll still be up.”

“Fine.” The young man placed the paper he was just holding in Grant’s lap and plodded into one of the bedrooms. It wasn’t long before he called out again: “Hey, guys?”

“What is it?” asked Grant, replacing the papers that hadn’t been distributed back into the case. He left it on the floor as he entered the room now occupied by Casey, knowing Caro and Sheridan would likely tear it apart again as soon as he left. “What do you need?”

“Um,” said Casey, flushing pink, “do I just sleep in my clothes or…”

“Yeah, if you weren’t dumb enough to pack extra stuff, that’s usually what you do. You are wearing something under that, right?” Grant was, of course, regarding Casey’s pratically-alien outfit.

“Oh. Um. Yeah. Thanks… uh…” Casey paused.

“Grant,” said the man himself, backing out again. “Now you go crash somewhere. We’ll continue the research.” As he closed the door and turned on his heel back to the common room – where Sheridan and Caro had, indeed, opened the briefcase again and were still poring over the letters inside – the man made an observation that was closer to truth than he thought.

“How old is that boy? He acts like a kid.”

“Hmm,” replied Sheridan, sounding decidedly unimpressed.

“Yeah.” Caro nodded. “He does that sometimes.”

“You’ve both found yourself with a pretty strange traveling partner,” noted Grant, opening the window to let a rather large gust of cold air enter the room. (Sheridan quite enjoyed the chill, while Caro and his hoodie didn’t seem to notice.)

Now, the room was definitely quite stuffy. And in any other situation, opening the window would have been a perfectly acceptable and quite wise thing to do. Unfortunately, though, this was not ‘any other situation’; for zooming towards the window was an invisible horde of extremely quick Ghost-type Pokémon, all honed in on a certain man who was currently in the ownership of a blunt weapon and The Briefcase. And if Grant hadn’t opened that window that night, he might have saved himself an awful lot of trouble and a considerable amount of pain in the future.

But, of course, he had to go ahead and do it.

And as Grant turned his back to the window and kneeled down to continue fishing through the (extremely strange) files with Caro and Sheridan, the aforementioned Ghost-types shot into the room. Without a second thought, they all wormed themselves nearer to him and eventually slipped into his brain.

There, they would lay dormant for an inexplicable amount of time, wearing no useful tracking devices. Beta anythings are prone to developing uselessness.



*Yes, that was terrible. Sorry.

delta species plus: character profile #6​

 

[Giratina!]

{13} dancing ludicolo dance
(don't ask about the title)​

“Sir, the tracking devices…”

“There’s no reason to recount it. I know now what happened.”

So, proclaimed Fedora Man, sitting once again in his little office at the top of the world. He was in yet another digital conversation with Hikaru, and was watching his Admin’s surprised expression upon learning that he didn’t need to break the news after all. “I have my methods, Hikaru, methods which will be revealed to you when they must be. You do understand that, I hope…”

“Of course, sir.” Hikaru regained his composure and dipped his head in respect.

He had no idea that Fedora Man was lying through his sharp teeth.

“Thank you, Hikaru,” replied Fedora Man with a chuckle, flipping the red hairs out of his eyes yet again. He leaned on the desk in front of him with fingers interwoven and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to end this conversation now.”

“There was nothing else I was to report, sir,” said Hikaru. “Farewell.”

Fedora Man wasn’t one for goodbyes. Without giving Hikaru a second thought he jabbed a few buttons and the Admin’s face disappeared. Fedora Man removed the headphones from his ears and replaced the telltale blue-and-yellow fedora; wearing it and listening to his Admins speak was a difficult task. Not to mention those sound systems that clipped to one’s ear; they were just a waste of money.

Fedora Man shook his head at the unfortunate existence of those money-grabbing wares and continued to stare at the screen, which was now showing the usual program that his computer ran. Almost on instinct his eyes scanned over the green radius display, even though he knew that the Holon Tower’s energy detector would come up with nothing as it usually did.

It’s easy to imagine his surprise when it didn’t do that at all.

There was a faint reading of Her skittering around the boundaries of the tower’s range, moving closer in slowly but steadily. Fedora Man broke into a pleased smile which, considering the lighting in the room and his general air of dastardliness, came across as simply nasty. ‘Shouldn’t dive for Her too early,’ thought Fedora Man. ‘She might get frightened and run away again. And goodness knows how many times she’s run away.’

He watched as the next video-chat request popped up on screen. Fedora Man pressed another button and waited with something like interest for the identity of his next caller (confound the lack of identification!). “Yes?” he asked as soon as he thought the line had been made.

“Hello,” said a voice with a Snowpoint* accent. “I am calling you from a public video-phone… transmitter or… whatever this communication object is. I am also calling from what you call a Pokémon Center in the middle of the night. I’ve heard you are searching for my mother.”

Fedora Man’s jaw dropped.

It was not his Mew… it looked sort of like a Mew. It floated like a Mew. It had the same psychic signal as a Mew. Why, it even sounded like the little pink Pokémon. But if he was looking for this not-Mew’s mother, then it was definitely not Mew. It must be… some sort of spawn of Mew. As Fedora Man realized this, he suddenly remembered the meeting that had occurred a few months back. The memories returned as if a floodgate had been opened.

“Amarachi of the Mewkizuu,” he said with a smile that seemed much more imposing thanks to his pointy incisors. “Hello. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” said Amarachi coldly. Fedora Man could see she was all business. “I’ve called about something extremely important.”

“I would assume you would, considering that most of the time your kind are not inclined to use the human technology of today,” said Fedora Man. He leaned his head on one arm and gazed with great boredom at the digital, ever-moving image of Amarachi. “So enlighten me. What does this extremely important something concern?”

“It concerns your tower.” Amarachi noticed the man’s expression and continued. “Oh, yes, it’s a fine, big tower. An exquisite tower. Please, I am not at all insulting your tower. However, the Mewkizuu have had a meeting. An ambassador of The One was present… you’ll know who The One is, or else I mist say you’re disrespecting your roots greatly.”

“I know who The One is,” said Fedora Man. “Continue.”

“Lovely,” said Amarachi bitterly. “Now, we the Mewkizuu had a meeting. We discussed with The One the problems your tower was causing… a colleague of The One reported a mysterious presence in his realm that we all believe has strong connections to your tower.”

“And how is it connected?” asked Fedora Man, frowning.

“Are you aware of the Pokémon recently named ‘Deoxys’?”

-

“Blair!”

“Good morning to you too, Professor.”

Morning had dawned on Our Heroes, and Casey was right now in the middle of a truly gripping conversation between him and Professor Delilah Driftwood. Casey had been woken prematurely and as such was not in the greatest of moods, and was therefore a hypothetical blind man in a minefield. He was now holding his JAWS (plugged into the video-phone PC) in the lobby of the Pokémon Center. Caro and Sheridan were off to hold discussions with random Trainers, while Grant (who found himself with nothing better do) was now sitting in an armchair, staring at his Pinsir in its transparent Pokéball (imported from the region of Moga).

“Blair, you walked out without claiming a starter.” Professor Driftwood didn’t sound or look pleased.

“Oh. Sorry about that.”

Professor Driftwood sighed. “You cannot just ‘oh, sorry about that’ your way out of this, Blair. Did you know the starter Pokémon I give out changes daily? Because you simply walked out before I could remind you that you needed to stay, I gave out all the rest of the starters. I hope you enjoy Poliwags.” The PC made a whirring noise and, a second later, a Pokéball appeared on one of the red platforms within the PC visible only by a sheet of clear plastic.

The Pokéball dropped into another holding dock like returned change in a vending machine. Casey took it, looking at the red-and-white Pokéball curiously. “Poliwag?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Professor Driftwood. “Now, before we get any farther, when will you be returning your Pokémon and JAWS?”

He looked up. “What?”

“You’re surely wanting to reconsider your decision to be a Trainer by now.”

“Uh… no, sorry, I’m not.”

“Oh, really?” said Professor Driftwood, her disapproving stare morphing into one of surprise. “I would think that someone born in Calda wouldn’t be quite so persistent. Well… have you made any headway, at least?”

“One badge from Rhoter,” he replied. “Do you want to see it?”

“I don’t need to,” said Professor Driftwood with visible disgust. “Just wanted to make sure you weren’t floundering around like a Drifloon in a tornado. Well, as long as you’re doing something, fine. I’m signing off.” And the screen went blank.

Casey didn’t like Delilah Driftwood. There, he admitted it. He found her grumpy and hard to deal with. But as usual there were grumpy and hard-to-deal-with people in his universe, and after a moment Casey mentally concluded that this was just part of life.

‘I shouldn’t let it get to me too much,’ he thought. ‘It’s probably just-’

“Hey! Casey!”

He blinked. Was that… ‘Oh no.’ Sighing, the boy ducked his head and spoke into the Megaphone Rock. “What do you want, Giratina?”

“Heya!” I chirped through the Megaphone Rock. “How’s it going so far? I see you found a Water-type. That’s nice. A good Water-type rounds out the team. So, anyway, even though you don’t need it now that you’ve got a full team of shiny new Pokémon, go check your PC. I forgot to tell you earlier, but I’ve got some freebies. Though they aren’t all that good – you’re lucky I scrapped up Rotom for you, getting a Pokémon from His Royal Zoo isn’t an easy feat – maybe you’d find some comfort in knowing I do sort of care about you.”

“Gee, thanks.” Casey pressed the necessary buttons on his PC and observed the small pictures of the three Pokémon stored inside. Frowning at them, Casey had to agree about the ‘not all that good’ part, but he decided to make sure, just in case. “Hey! Caro!” he called, turning around to look for him.

The hoodie-wielder in question wasn’t engaged in epic conversation at the moment, and darted over quicker than Casey thought possible. “Yeah?”

“I got these Pokémon from… a friend of mine. Could you check ‘em out, see if they’re any good?”

Caro stood up to his full height and frowned at Casey. “Now, Casey, whether a Pokémon is good or not depends not on its species, but the Trainer who raises it. In fact, one of the most powerful Trainers in the world once said, ‘Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. They’re only the false perception of people’ or something. But anyway, you shouldn’t be…”

“Yes, Caro, thanks for that,” said Casey. “But could you please look at them anyway?”

“Oh yeah, man, sure.” Caro stepped to Casey’s side and peered over his shoulder at the Pokémon onscreen. “Hey, Casey…” he said after a few minutes of extremely concentrated staring.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know if this friend of yours is the best person to be accepting gifts from. I mean… a Sentret and Taillow really aren’t the most stellar choices you could have made when choosing Pokémon.”

“Oh,” said Casey. “Figures Giratina would give me something useless…” he muttered in a lower voice. He had meant to only think that, but evidently his miserable early-morning mind had different plans. The damage was done.

“Whoa, whoa!” said Caro, turning around to gaze at him in awe. “Did’ju say that Giratina gave these to you?”

“Um…”

“Man, that Pokémon is a total nut case! I hosted a discussion with her once with some of my friends. It was in her dimension, and she was changing the color and making loud music play and flinging people around and writing in the air and everything!” He laughed. “I’m surprised you lived through receiving a gift from her with your sanity intact.”

And worse than that, Casey heard snickering coming from his bandanna.

Caro listened for a second, and then looked surprised. “Hey, where have you got some sort of walkie-talkie from her from? ‘Cause she has a tendency to not really mind her manners, and I coulda sworn I heard her back in Holon the city. So I guess she got you to do something stupid.”

Caro. Do not insult your author. That is seriously not a good idea. So maybe when you’ve discovered the Internet and end up reading you finally get a clue.

…Wait. Ahem.

“Well…” said Casey, stalling for time. But Caro persisted on the subject, and eventually Casey figured that since Caro already knew about Giratina then it couldn’t hurt to explain. “Actually, yeah. She does have a walkie-talkie thing on me. Very near my mouth… see? It’s actually jammed somewhere in that handkerchief around my neck. Evidently she ripped it off something that does the same thing…”

“Sounds like her,” said Caro with a nod. “Well, anyway, man, that’s seriously really cool that you met a Legendary. I mean, like, I would have never met one at all if I hadn’t gotten this real one-in-a-million chance with going on a trip with these two friends of mine – yeah, remember, Kris and the not-really-big-brother-mentor-guy – and I used to live around with Pokémon literally all over.” Caro waved his hands in the appropriate motions, including a grand sweeping motion right after his last words. “So when people ask if you’ve seen a Legendary yet, they’re probably like joking or something. Only either really cool people or really boring people – or occasionally really crazy people – see Legendaries in their lives.”

“Er… Legendaries?”

Caro blinked.

“So… what are these Legendaries, then? Are they like Giratina? She was hanging around with some other Pokémon… Palkia and a little green pixie thing with a head like an onion. Were those…?” Casey cut his sentence short.

Caro was slack-jawing at him.

“Um…” said Casey, in a frail attempt to fill in the silence between the duo.

“Dude…” said Caro after a minute.

“Yes?”

“You’re… you’re sure you haven’t broken any intergalactic laws or something? ‘Cause that’s a lot of Legendaries you saw. I mean, other than Kris and—well, aside from my friends, I’ve seen the highest Legendary count. And that’s two. But you’ve seen three! How do you do it? Is there like… some sort of Legendary-attracting ancestry you’ve got?”

“I should hope not,” said Casey with a frown, recalling where exactly his ancestry came from. (It quite scared him that his thoughts hadn’t strayed back to Calda in an exceptionally – for him – long time.)

“Well, whatever. Just… don’t go strutting that you’ve seen ‘em, okay? Especially not to Sheridan. No offense, but I think that with all her rare Pokémon hunting she’d… well, you’d never get an ounce of sleep until you’ve learned to channel out her voice.”

Casey snickered. “Yeah, sure.”

Caro pressed a button and turned off the PC.

Perfectly timed, Sheridan appeared out of thin air to Casey’s left. “So you’re on the Badge course, right? If so, I think you’ll be looking for Rhion.” Sheridan gestured to something on the wall.

Caro walked a few paces to the left and checked out one of the millions of region maps plastered on the almost sickeningly-sweet cream and pink walls. “Looks like the next stop is Rhion City as Sheridan said, better known as Fort Rhion. Electric-types…” He turned back to Casey. “What Pokémon do you have on hand?”

“Um… Rotom, Honchkrow, and that one Poliwag…”

“Kid,” said Caro, slinging an arm on his shoulder and sighing dramatically, “I think you’re going to get a lesson on getting your Pokémon’s carcasses handed to you on a silver platter. …In other words, you’re at a serious disadvantage here.”

“Because of Types?”

“Yessir. My recommendation: get out there and find a nice, shiny Ground-type. Or at least something that won’t dig up old memories of the whole Fearow issue.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, you know,” said Sheridan almost randomly. “Research has been performed. And all results I’ve found point to one answer.”

“Which is?” asked Casey.

“That Fearow shouldn’t exist,” Sheridan replied simply.

“I thought so,” said Caro after a few seconds of vacant gawking. “Um, I mean, it doesn’t make much sense for a Pokémon to learn a move with a type that’s powerful against it. Except for Dragon-types, because they’re powerful against themselves and stuff.”

“Right,” said Sheridan grimly. “I don’t know how he got that Fearow to use Thunder, but I’m pretty dubious on its legitimacy.”

“How do you get an illegitimate Pokémon?” asked Casey. “I mean, they’re Pokémon, living creatures. They can’t be changed, right?” He ignored the giggling that spouted from the Megaphone Rock.

“Well,” began Sheridan. “Do you know of the Delta Species? They’re Pokémon who received a type change and power increase and so on that were generated by the tower over west of here. The builders of the tower – the scientists – changed Pokémon. Some men in Kanto made a Pokémon with a full evolution line and everything out of some computer data. And some other men in Kanto – who I don’t recommend you speak of too much, I might add – took a Pokémon’s eyelash and used it to build a totally new one, with form and powers and being. They made a Pokémon. So yeah, if you’re messed up and well-funded enough to do it, I guess you could make a Fearow use Thunder.”

“Legit points,” said Caro.

“Alright, thank you,” said Casey, who was trying not to make it too obvious that he had been swamped by information. “So… next city. Rhion, was it?”






*think northern New Jersey. ‘Snowpoint accents’ are actually used across most of northern Sinnoh, stopping around the line created by Eterna Forest’s southern border. The Unown Dialect and Snowpoint accent sound extremely familiar.

 

[Giratina!]

{14} but who can name the face?
(whoever gets the reference gets a cookie; also, sorry about the short chapter and the long wait)​

Six people (and a computer) sat around a table.

It was a rounded table, large and intricately carved out of wood. At the six areas of the table where the points of a pentagon would be was a chair, one person sitting in each chair. One of the people, a woman sitting on the bottom left spot, had an opened laptop computer next to her. She was currently in the process of pressing certain keys on the computer, occasionally speaking into it with short phrases like “Um…” and “Can you hear me?”

After a few minutes of this, there was a reply. “Yes, Anima, I can hear you perfectly fine. There are no communication errors whatsoever. Now can we please get this over with?”

“Wait!” said another woman, sitting to the left of Anima (who was now staring at the computer and blinking). “How do we know it’s you? Is someone tapping into our computer systems?”

An irritated sigh spilled from the computer speakers. “Mina, it is ME. In case you had forgotten, you have asked whether it was me speaking every time that we got together for one of these, and it has always been me! Must I spell it out for you?”

“Rodney—” protested Mina, pulling the headphones previously around her ears down to dangle around her neck. She flicked some auburn hair out of her already quite short-cut hairstyle, and leaned over to stare into the computer screen.

“Evidently, yes I do,” said Rodney. He did not sound happy. “I. Am. The. Gym. Leader. Of. Raxi. City. And yes, Anima, I know, don’t say it again. Shall I continue?”

“Yeah, thanks. We get the point,” grumbled another man, sitting on Anima’s other side. He adjusted the pale blue beanie hat on his head and scowled at the camera. “You’re Rodney. Good. Peachy. Now be quiet, can’t you? Like you said yourself, we’ve got business to attend to.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Rodney’s side of the line, implying he was about to raise his voice, but he evidently thought better of it and released the air soon after. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” said Mina with a frown once everyone present had died down. “With no further interruptions, I’m quite sure we are ready to begin the meeting properly. Any objections?” Nobody objected. “Good. First order of business: Pokémon. Marianne, I have your missing Pokémon right here.” Mina pulled out a red-and-white Pokéball and handed it across the table to the young lady now beaming wildly.

Marianne snatched the Pokéball and cuddled it tightly, singing in a high pitched tone, “Cloysterrr~ Coysterrrr~ my baaaa-by~…” The two people on either side of her – a well-muscled man with a red shirt and a skinny white-haired guy who had an electric guitar sitting in his lap – tried to inch away from her as inconspicuously as possible.

“Buck. Garret.” Mina sent them a warning glare. The two men shared a quick wide-eyed glance and returned their chairs to the proper position, mumbling apologies under their breath.

“Thank you,” said Mina with false cheeriness. “Now then… we’re fortunate enough to have a few words from the Champion for us all to listen to. It was a typed-up letter directed specifically to us, and I expect that you’re all going to listen quietly while I read his letter out loud… and no, Anima, you can’t read it this time.”

There was a unanimous groan from the rest of the people at the table.

Mina ignored the whining and whipped out a piece of paper, folded into thirds. She pulled the paper apart so the text on it could be read, and began to read the Champion’s letter to his subjects.

“Members of the Holon gym circuit—Hello! I haven’t contacted you in quite a while, and I apologize for that, but some difficulties on my side of the fence have prevented me from composing letters in time for those monthly meetings I know you’re all so fond of.” There was more general scowling; not many of them truly enjoyed seeing (or hearing) each other on a constant basis. “However, I have found time in my busy schedule – which is currently overflowing with projects to make our Region better for everyone – to compose a letter in time for your meeting…”

“He managed to contain his ego-stroking to only a few sentences,” said Rodney flatly. “Quite an accomplishment.”

Mina scowled at the laptop and continued to read.

-

Casey sidestepped a ditch in the ground.

The foursome was right now walking along a well-beaten path, surrounded entirely by particularly large trees. Sheridan, seeing an opportunity to go into tour guide mode, happily pointed out, “This forest has been here for ages, and it’s been specially protected by the Holon government. It was a stretch just to get established paths out here, if I recall correctly.”

“Right,” said Grant absently, not bothering to pull his head down from the clouds before responding. He was still carrying his pipe and The Briefcase.

A silence descended over the group, having come to a stopping point in their admittedly not-quite-riveting discussion. For a while, the only sound was shoes crunching against stray twigs and the occasional cough or yawn. Sheridan stopped to look around for a moment, and the entire procession crashed to a halt as the others turned back to look at her quizzically. After a few seconds of remaining frozen in that pose, Sheridan shook her head and continued to walk.

However, she turned around at exactly the wrong time.

“Sorry,” she said, completely unaware that her entire group was being watched, “I thought I heard a little sound.”

“Probably just a wild Skitty,” replied Grant with a shrug.

“Though why anything would be hanging around here is beyond me…” said Casey with a hint of weariness in his voice. “We’ve been walking all day, and if we don’t find a way out of here before nightfall we’re probably going to freeze to death or something.”

“Don’t forget, you signed up for this!” called Caro.

The boy scowled and continued walking.

Some ways behind them, trailing along after the group in the underbrush, was a… well, a something. It was perhaps a human something, or maybe a human-shaped Pokémon something, but it was hard to tell considering almost all of the body was covered by fabric in one way or another. Every so often, someone would stop and look around, and their reasoning was always the same – they could have sworn they had heard a little voice, or a crunching noise that didn’t come from the others, or had just gotten the feeling that something else was there. This would cause a chain reaction, urging the others to stop and look around too. After they had convinced themselves that nobody was hiding in the dark, the procession would continue.

This pattern repeated itself until about noon.

Sheridan had just finished concluding that it was probably a curious Pokémon looking to find out what people were doing in their forest. By now, nobody looked convinced, and all residents of the Groupie Galaxy were looking around nervously for anything that was too out-of-place in the light-sucking woods.

And then, as they turned a corner, they were staring into the mask of a little girl.

This girl was standing in the middle of the trail, standing no higher than four and a half feet. She was wearing a very heavy pink cape that went down to her waist, and under that was a purple shirt and pants. On her hands were pink gloves, and she wore leather boots. This was all pretty distracting in its own right, but without a doubt the creepiest thing about her was the face. Framed by long red hair was a big, pale pink mask with lots of spikes on the side and three tiny black dots – two where her eyes would be, and one near her nose. Her mouth was pulled up into a tight pout.

The girl and the adventurers stared at each other in silence.

“Um,” said Casey, “excuse us…”

“Yeah, we were just getting through the forest…” mumbled Caro, who – despite his immense experience with decidedly scary people – was quite unnerved by this mute little thing. “Sorry ‘bout that. If we were, you know, intruding or anything.”

“Do you know if we will be out of here soon? Where the forest ends and the road begins and that sort of stuff?” asked Grant.

Sheridan blinked.

The girl stared back at them, not moving and remaining mute. She didn’t even flinch when Rotom zoomed up directly into her face and chirped, “Hi! Who’re you?”

“What’s your name?” asked Sheridan gently, walking towards her and swatting away Rotom in the same motion. “Are you lost?”

The girl’s mask stared. She didn’t move.

Sheridan looked at her for a few minutes, then reached out again. “Poor kid. You’re lost, aren’t you? Here, let me take off that mask for you. You probably can’t see anything with it on, right?” She took a step forward and reached for the mask.

The girl raised her gloved hands and held the mask to her face.

“Or not,” said Sheridan, straightening up again. “Okay, then.”

“Give it up, Sheridan,” called Caro from behind. “She’s not gonna talk. Let’s go.”

Sheridan turned around and frowned at him before returning her gaze to the girl. “You’re sure you’re going to be okay out here by yourself?”

No response.

“Um…” she mumbled, sidestepping a few paces and continuing to walk. “Okay then. Bye.”

The others followed suit. Grant, though, stopped as he passed the girl and looked down at her. “What’s your name?”

The girl twisted her head to stare up at him, but her face didn’t change. Grant nodded as if this was an acceptable answer and looked to the road again; he broke into a run once he had realized the others had disappeared from sight.

She turned her entire body around and watched him scramble off in silence, until she was quite sure he had left. And then she said, in a meek little voice that sounded like the chirping of a young Skitty:

“Amarachi.”

She stood there for a few moments, thought, and then ran after them.

Not too far behind where Amarachi had been standing there were three other creatures, these ones with distinctly more malevolent ideas in mind for the Groupie Galaxy. One was a bulky man in a blue coat, another a lithe woman of about thirty, and the third was a Delcatty. They had been lurking in the shadows and watching the adventurers, but once the new kid came into the picture…

“She looks familiar,” said Aerith.

“I do think I’ve seen her around before,” replied Kidd.

Billy shrugged.

“Do we investigate it?” wondered Kidd.

“We do,” said Aerith with a sneaky little grin.

And the three got up from their hiding place of scrunched behind a bush and, after a brief pause to dust themselves off (no self-respecting member of Team BDV would be caught in such a scruffy outfit) they ran ahead to find the kid.

She was gone.

“Well, whatever,” said Aerith almost immediately, shrugging off the loss of the creepy girl with a toss of the head. “We weren’t looking for her anyway. We’re just out here to get back The Briefcase and pummel the turncoat to a pulp, right? So they’re both ahead on the trail. If anything, she’ll be protecting Mook and The Briefcase, and we can’t have that.”

The two humans nodded their agreement and walked forward. Kidd did not see it appropriate to mention that she really did think the girl was familiar somehow.

Amarachi, who was sitting in a tree watching them, waved her arm and hopped away in between the trees. Three hours later, Billy, Kidd, and Aerith would wake up collapsed in the middle of the forest being sniffed by a bunch of Mightyena currently in the process of wondering whether they were dead food already or if they ought to be attacked again before being eaten.

ds+ character profile #7​

 

[scizorstrike]

i dont get the reference, but can i still have the cookie? (just kidding)
i have been a silent reader since the begining, and it is very good. on a scale of 1 to 10 i would give it an eight for originality and an 8 for writing.

 

[Giratina!]

Haha! Sorry, no cookie for you. >3 Google is your friend, remember~? Anyway, thank you for the rating.

 

[Giratina!]

{15} i've got something to confess
yeah, it's in italics now. why not?​

“Um,” said Casey, “hi.”

The sun had long since fallen below the horizon, and the time read about nine o’clock. Mr. Blair was taking a leisurely nighttime stroll around the outdoor botanical garden attached to the back of the Pokémon Center (he suspected it was there to make up for the abundance of metal everywhere else) when the kid from earlier showed up once again in his path, sitting in the middle of the road staring up at him. This time, though, she actually made an attempt to talk.

“Hello,” said the masked girl.

Casey, who due to the late hour and his own failure to think, couldn’t come up with a way to ease into his intended subject casually. “So why are you stalking me?”

“I’m not stalking you,” she replied, unmoving.

“Uh, yeah, you sort of are. I mean, wherever I went you were always somewhere near me and watching, right? I felt you looking at me all day. That’s stalking to me.”

Though Casey couldn’t see it, she raised her eyebrows. “I’m not stalking you,” said the girl. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Casey Blair,” he replied. “Now you do. So who’re you, then?”

“Who was your friend in the blue coat?” asked Amarachi innocently.

“Grant. Now what’s your name?”

“Does he work for a bunch of Pokémon?”

“What the… no! What gave you that idea?”

“He smelled like Pokémon. Lots of them.”

Casey sighed. This girl clearly wasn’t all there in the head. “Listen. He probably smells like Pokémon, but so do I and everyone else. We had just got out of a place infested with Pokémon, okay? I don’t know what you’re here for, so if you could just give me your name or get out of here, either one of those would be just fine with me.”

“I won’t leave,” said Amarachi.

“Well, then…” Casey’s patience was being tested for the fiftieth time since The Giratina Incident. “If you’re not going to leave, then what’s your name? At least tell me that.”

“If I told you what I am then I would be lying because I’m not that,” she replied.

Casey opened his mouth to reply, and then noticed the problems with the question ‘So what ARE you, then?’ according to his masked companion. “That makes no sense! If you’re something, then you’re that thing… but I’m not asking what you are. I mean, you’re human. Anyone can see that. I’m asking who you are. Who are you?”

Amarachi stared.

“Name?” he repeated impatiently.

Amarachi stared.

“What do you go by?” The boy was sufficiently steamed by now.

Amarachi stared.

Casey was about to begin shouting when he heard a sigh emanating from somewhere in the general area. He turned his attention (and rage) on the owner of that sigh.

“Giratina, what do you want?” he snapped into the Megaphone Rock.

“Whoa, whoa, watch it there,” came the reply from the Goddess of Never-Turn-Back. “Sorry I called at a bad time… but I just needed to tell you that resistance is futile.”

“What do you mean?” he snapped. “Are you playing alien now?!?”

“No,” the voice from the Megaphone Rock replied icily. “I’m just saying that she’s not easy to crack. Unless you just want to make your temper worse, back away from the girl and run back to your room, okay?

“Do you know her? Is she another one of your… Legendary buddies?”

“Hmm…” Giratina mused. “Um, no, I don’t think she’s considered a Legendary. Sorry, kiddo. But I do know what she’s like and how she acts – I’m the Goddess of Never-Turn-Back, remember, I see everything – and you’re not going to make her tell you anything.”

“So how do I make her tell me her name?” demanded Casey.

“You know, that’s a good question,” she mused. “I’ll need to get back to you on that.” There was a short noise that sounded like static, and then the connection fizzled out. Casey was left to yell briefly at the Megaphone Rock before returning the conversation to the little girl, who was still sitting there. The mask was staring at him and she had a confused frown on her face. It took a moment for him to realize what that meant.

“Why are you talking to your necklace?” asked the girl.

“Bandanna,” Casey said, gritting his teeth. “And I was talking to someone.”

“How? Magic?”

“I don’t know. Probably is some sort of stupid magic that woman cooks up.” Casey snorted, shaking his head. “I’ll never understand her. But seriously… why won’t you tell me your name? You only need to give me a first name, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Amarachi shook her head. “No,” she replied.

“No what?”

“I’m not worried about you hurting me by knowing my name. I can stop you if you do.”

“So will you tell me your name now?” asked Casey, who had passed the ‘anger’ stage and was now sinking into weariness from this bantering with a six-year-old. “I swear – I just want to know who you are. Then I’ll leave you alone and you can leave me alone and this will never come up again, okay?”

“But you don’t need to know who I am,” she said.

“Well, no, I don’t…” muttered the teenager, looking to the right at a swarm of Oddish rampaging around in the night. “But I do want to know who you are.”

“Why?”

“Because your parents must be worried sick. If you spent all day stalking me, then…”

“My parents are fine,” she huffed. “They can see me right now. They’re right over there.” And she pointed upwards to the clear sky. Casey’s eyes followed her, and his mouth opened slightly.

“You don’t mean…” he spluttered.

“No, not like that.” She crossed her arms. “Not like that. They’re okay. But they’re watching me from up there, and they know I can take care of myself.”

There was a silence. And then…

“How old are you, kid?”

She looked up at him as her frown and raised eyebrows (visible above the mask) suggested the girl was startled. “Huh?”

“If you won’t tell me your name, I just want to know how old you are. Surely you can tell me that.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” She crossed her arms.

“I’ve probably heard stranger than whatever you’re going to tell me…” he sighed.

“Oh really? Like what?”

Casey frowned thoughtfully and looked the little girl up and down. He was pondering something with the potential to be extremely dangerous or embarrassing. Casey did not particularly enjoy being embarrassed or in danger, and it was for this reason he employed a very elaborate scheme to see if the girl was worthy of being in on it. “Well…” he sighed. “Hey. Are you good with secrets? Keeping them?”

“Oh yeah,” she replied with a grin.

“You mean it?”

“Yep!”

Casey glanced downward at the Megaphone Rock and coughed into it softly. A grunt of acceptance echoed back out to him. Having obtained permission from the only person (or, indeed, Pokémon) that would have a true answer, he walked a few paces forward and plopped down on a bench. “Did you know I’m a Trainer? Come on, sit down.”

She plodded over next to him and sat down on the bench, making sure to get her cape out from under her before she did so. “You were traveling with people and Pokémon, so I thought you were.”

“Good. You’re pretty observant. But…” He gave a short burst of laughter. “Wow. Truth be told, you’re the first person I’m telling this stuff to, and you’re a young girl who I barely even know. Hard to imagine, especially for me…”

“How come?” asked Amarachi, sitting cross-legged on the bench and letting her mask stare up at Casey with her mouth twisted into a rather uncomfortable-looking upside-down V. “Tell me, okay? I have time!”

Casey glanced upward at the moon. It was almost directly overhead. “Must be about… eleven PM right now,” he sighed. “Okay, fine. So I was born in a region called Calda – do you know where that is? It’s an island way off on the other side of the world, and some time ago the regional government had a big idea. Now, keep in mind that I don’t understand a lot about this since I never really learned much about it, so I can’t answer your questions if you have any. Since it’s so isolated from other landmasses, and there haven’t been many living cargo-toting ships going to and from it anyway, they figured that they really ought to get all of the Pokémon off of the island, in order to make it more appealing to those who weren’t exactly fond of Pokémon.”

Amarachi’s mouth hung open. “What? How could they… who doesn’t like Pokémon?”

Casey sighed heavily. “Well…” He looked only mildly contemplative on the outside, but the various parts of his brain were in an epic battle to decide whether he ought to say the word ‘me’ or not. Finally, they came to a decision, and he spoke. “I was born and raised there, so for a big part of my life I didn’t… well, it’s not like I didn’t dislike them… but…”

The kid’s mouth opened.

“Wait… hey! Note my use of the past tense! Opinion changed!”

He was too late. The girl hopped off the bench, stuck her tongue out at him, and briskly walked away.

Casey sighed melodramatically and stood up, walking back towards the glinting lights of the Pokémon Center. Now, this Pokémon Center’s apparent goal was to be in as direct contrast as possible as the rest of Fort Rhion; what parts of it weren’t coated in potted plants or some sort of ivy, there was a very homely feel about it, with soft lighting and the perpetual scent of Rotan onion soup lingering around the entire place. However, there was nobody present to enjoy this true spectacle of nature and humanity combined, seeing as the time read about 4:30 AM.

Except, of course, for Casey, who did everything in his power to get through there and into the elevator at the far end of the room as quickly as possible.

He heard a few distinctly musical sounds echoing from one of the other rooms for rent. This confused him considerably; up until now, Casey had honestly thought that he was probably the only one in the city who wakes up any earlier than seven on Saturday. Pondering this, he reached the right door and turned the doorknob very slowly.

As he was soon to find out, everyone who came within a one-mile radius of Casey Blair automatically had their mood turned sour.

It was now about five in the morning, and Casey had tried to sneak into the Pokémon Center room as quietly as possible. Not quietly enough, however, because once he had gone in the tired boy was met with three definitely awake people. None of them looked all too happy, and all of their faces were ‘graced’ with a bemused glare in his direction. Grant was sitting in an armchair, legs crossed and arms playing with his metal pipe. Caro was leaning on the back of said armchair, arms pressing down upon the chair almost directly above Grant’s head. Sheridan was staring with her hands on her hips.

“Care to explain where you’ve been?” she asked.

“I was on a walk,” yawned Casey. “Didn’t wanna wake you… good night.” And he made a beeline for the door to his bedroom.

Caro took a few steps to the left and blocked the entrance to his companion’s solace. “What took you so long, then? Did you go start playing with an Oddish or something?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning,” he grumbled, slipping past Caro and into the doorway. The door shut and locked (loudly) behind him, which created a silence amongst the rest of the group. There was a soft scratching noise coming from outside outside, as if some Pokémon were having a midnight scuffle. Sheridan’s eyes flicked toward the window, but she found nothing unusual.

However, what she found and what actually happened were two very different things.

Because, at that moment, there was a little girl running frantically through the streets of Fort Rhion, dodging the early risers now on their way to… somewhere else. All early risers’ eyes turned on her as she passed, due in no small part to the undeniable strangeness about her. They would all admit that yes, sometimes their morning commutes were eventful, but never again would they see a little girl in a heavy pink cloak and carrying a briefcase run down the street.

Later, there would be a very chaotic late morning at Pokémon Center room 4-28. That morning would involve plentiful amounts of yelling, anger, pointing fingers, begging, and the occasional threat of being hit over the head with a heavy metal pipe. Thus accomplished, everyone would sit down at a cute little café in the town square and discuss twice-stolen goods and Gym Badges over coffee and pastries.

“So,” said Caro through a mouthful of cookie, “what brilliant plan have you got for this Gym?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Casey, shrugging and poking inattentively at a piece of pound cake. “I can’t make any strategy for battling a person I know nothing about, you know.”

“Well then find out more about the Gym Leader and make a plan for him,” laughed Sheridan, putting down her coffee. “I think back when I took this challenge the Gym Leader was a young man – a really young man, I mean, like twelve years old – named Stathis. He trained Electric-types, and I’m guessing he came from Slateport or something.”

“Slateport?” asked Caro, Casey, and Grant in unison.

“How do you figure that?” tagged on the latter.

“Well, the Pokémon pretty much didn’t listen to his commands, and the only other place where they do that in a respected battling ring is the Battle Tent in Slateport City.”

“Didn’t listen to his commands?” asked Casey doubtfully. “How on Earth did he get to be a Gym Leader with disgraceful Pokémon?”

“Oh, they’re not disgraceful,” said Sheridan with a smug little grin. “As a matter of fact, they seemed to like him very much.” She was hiding something, and made no effort to hide that fact.

“Well, if they don’t listen to him or whatever it makes it easier for you to win, right, Case?” said Caro, standing up dramatically and swallowing the last of his cookie. “Let’s get moving! Daylight’s burning, right?”

“Have you ever seen him get that excited before?” asked Grant in an undertone. “Or call you ‘Case’?”

Casey shook his head.

 

[Giratina!]

{16} a little birdhouse in your soul
​

“You know,” said Casey bitterly, “finding this place would be a lot easier of we knew where it was.”

“I told you,” replied Sheridan. “The building has been vacated since I last entered – the Gym must be somewhere else in the city now. I can’t help you on that count. We’ll have to ask someone in the street where it went.” She looked around, apparently searching for someone who looked enough like a Trainer or an in-the-know native to point them in the appropriate direction.

Instead of finding a useful source of information, though, her eyes lit up almost immediately and she began to walk. The other three, still confused about just what she was going towards, looked around until they found Sheridan’s assumed destination. It didn’t look good for their goal of dealing with Stathis by the end of the day.

“That is not the Gym,” said Grant.

“No, doesn’t look like it…” Casey remarked in utter confusion, listening to the unmistakable squealing of a woman who has just found something absolutely wonderful at a bargain price.

“Did she catch sight of some sort of Shiny?” wondered Caro. “Hey, Sheridan, what’re you doing?” Not bothering to discuss Sheridan’s (or his own) odd behavior with the others, Caro set off at a brisk walk, slipping past members of the current throng in order to find out what Sheridan was actually squealing about. Once he had gotten within arm’s reach of her he tapped her on the shoulder softly. This was considerably easier than it had been; Sheridan had stopped walking and had joined an especially large crowd around some sort of caged Pokémon.

Casey and Grant watched in awe as Sheridan swiveled around and immediately began gushing about something. They couldn’t hear what she was saying over the muttering of the rest of the crowd, but Caro had put his hands on his hips and was now shaking his head in disbelief.

Sheridan then proceeded to… oh dear.

“I think she’s… pleading.” Grant turned to Casey worriedly.

“This won’t end well, will it?”

“Probably not.”

The two descended into conversation.

Meanwhile, amidst the mass of people and after a lengthy discussion of the group’s funding, Sheridan cuddled an Ultra Ball affectionately and practically pranced over to the other side of the corridor of Pokémon stands. Caro followed behind, not wanting to say anything for fear of his head being bitten off. After all business there had been taken care of, Sheridan actually did prance back over to the other two. Caro remained in his spot of walking behind Sheridan, separated a few feet so as not to give off the impression that he actually knew this crazy woman.

“Casey!” she chirped as soon as he was in earshot. “I’ve got some thiiiiings~!”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I can… I can see that, Sheridan. What have you got?”

“Oh, just a few things.” Sheridan was beaming from ear to ear. “Only two. One for you, and one I’ll show you all later!” She held out two Pokéballs, an Ultra Ball and a Great Ball, and handed the latter to Casey. “Consider it a… late expression of gratitude for inviting me on your quest, okay?”

“Um, sure.” All of the other members of the Groupie Galaxy were feeling nervous and embarrassed to varying degrees, ranging from Rotom’s curiosity to find out what’s wrong with Sheridan to the flush of red now spreading across Casey’s face. “So… what’s in it?”

“Well, considering it’s in a Pokéball, I think it might be a Pokémon. Why don’t you just release the thing and find out?” Sheridan placed the Ultra Ball in her jacket pocket and smiled.

“Release it!” said Caro enthusiastically. “Yeah! When someone gives you a Pokémon, you ought to use it! …Usually,” he added on, recalling the Taillow and Sentret that Casey had received at the beginning of his adventure.

“We should go somewhere less crowded,” said Casey. “The Pokémon might freak out if there are too many people around, right?”

“That’s true too,” said Caro. “Should we go to some sort of park? It probably won’t be so busy again for a few hours. Come on!” And without another word he swiveled on his heel (once again, Casey noticed, with perfect balance) and began walking back towards the red-roofed building. It was now Caro’s turn to have someone trail around in his wake.

Grant and Casey shared a confused glance before Sheridan called for them to hurry up.

Casey shrugged at the Great Ball and set off at a run with the last remaining members of the Groupie Galaxy – Rotom and Grant – in hot pursuit. They both weaved through the complaining crowd, squirming into the smallest holes they could find in order to catch up to Sheridan and Caro. And although the concept wasn’t on Casey’s mind at the time, what with the whole plowing through a crowd of people thing, there was a small part of him that did want to know what this new Pokémon was going to be. And though he didn’t linger upon (or indeed consider) the matter, he honestly wanted to see a Pokémon.

For the first time in Casey’s life, he wanted to see a Pokémon. And had Casey somehow been reading this and have realized that he honestly did want to see a Pokémon, he would have shrugged it off, once again for the first time.

There was definitely a shifting of position in Casey Blair’s brain. Watching him through the magical computer screen on the Dea Procol Machina, I realized this, and a satisfied grin spread across my face. Goodness knows why he was sent on this prophetic quest of peril and not, say, some aspiring young man in Kanto, but there was no doubt in the world that it was doing the boy some good.

And when a good queen’s subjects are happy, she’s happy, too.



Whoever came up with the concept of Trainer-and-Pokémon bonding clearly had never met the newest addition to Casey’s team.

It had been agreed upon soon after the small brown Pokémon was released into the open that it had the cutest little scowl ever, but unfortunately that was all Larvitar had going for it. Oh, sure, at first he looked acceptable (if a little rowdy) – no taller than two feet, with about a fourth of that height courtesy of the large spike that stuck up from his head, the new arrival was a small green dinosaur with a tail like a pinecone and two hollow holes on either side of its torso. There was a red diamond-shaped pattern on his stomach, in between the holes (which were now beginning to trickle sand out onto the ground).

“Imported directly from Sinnoh,” said Sheridan with obvious pride in her voice.

“Hmm,” said Casey, fishing out his JAWS from the pack slung over his shoulder. “Let’s see what you do.”

“Larvitar, the Rock Skin Pokémon,” said the JAWS flatly, while Casey blinked. He hadn’t realized that the thing actually talked. “They feed on soil, and must eat their way out of nests underground. After eating, they usually fall asleep.” Information about this particular Larvitar flashed on the JAWS’ screen.

Larvitar coughed and stared up at Casey with small, beady eyes. Before the boy could react, Rotom had zoomed out of Sheridan’s arms and right up into Larvitar’s face, grinning. His mouth was open, ready to be filled with hyperactive greetings.

Instead, it was filled with Larvitar’s fist.

“Mmph!” yelled Rotom, backing away at once and cowering against his owner’s chest. In the same moment Larvitar scowled at his hand, which was now covered with glowing blue plasma, and wiped it off on the grass. Casey closed his arms around the small Ghost-type and fixed a disapproving stare at Larvitar.

“That,” he said firmly, “was uncalled for.”

Larvitar rolled his eyes.

Casey’s glowering slid to Sheridan, whose pleased expression had quickly deteriorated to one of heavy consideration.

Larvitar crossed his stubby arms, now completely free of Rotom’s glowing gunk, and began to speak. “Lar. Larvitar, tar, lar-vi-lar-tarrrrr. Lar, lar, lar-vi-tar!” The small Pokémon continued to ramble – his body movements made it quite apparent that he was trying to lay out ground rules for how he was to be treated and exactly what sort of pain was going to ensue of they weren’t followed.

Caro’s expression got steadily more irritated as Larvitar continued.

Larvitar didn’t seem to notice, but instead went right ahead with his demands until Caro silently excused himself from the group to slam his head against a tree. Brushing the debris out of his hair as he returned, Caro said flatly, “Casey, do you intend to keep this Pokémon safe and comfortable at all times?”

“Yeah.”

“And do you intend to feed it twice a day?”

“Don’t Pokémon not need feeding while they’re in their Pokéballs?”

“Do you also intend to keep Larvitar out of his Pokéball so that he can truly see the rest of the world in full, living color? And to make sure that whenever he is too tired to walk, he will be carried? And see to it that he will not be used more than your other Pokémon just because he’s already out? And ensure that he will be remembered at all times, and never, ever, EVER deposited into the PC?”

There was an extremely uncomfortable silence that ensued.

Caro’s arms were crossed, and Casey realized with some concern that this was the most bemused facial expression that he had ever seen his friend and semi-mentor pull. “You might want to talk it over with him on that.” Caro ignored Larvitar’s irritated protests.

The distinct lack of noise didn’t just surround the Groupie Galaxy – it seemed like the entire park had stopped making noise, people and Pokémon alike. (Well, they were still making noise, but everyone’s brains were too busy trying to analyze what had just gone down to notice.) And then Caro said, “Just thought you’d need to know if you wanted to keep him. And since Larvitar here doesn’t seem to realize that you’ve got no stinking idea what he’s trying to say, I took it upon myself to translate.”

Larvitar looked up at him with a shocked and angry expression. “Lar-lar?!?”

“How did I do that?” he replied, looking downwards. “Oh, you know. I’ve done it all my life, the talking to Pokémon thing. Remember when I said that growing up I was around Pokémon literally all the time?” He looked back up at Casey. “I meant it.”

Grant’s head was the first one to crack under the pressure. “Wait. Wait… so you can talk to them?”

“Of course I can talk to them,” Caro replied with a shrug. “And since nobody else could and I didn’t think Casey was going to oblige to Larvitar’s commands without him knowing what he was doing, I was just trying to save us from any further pain – physical pain, I might add, Larvitar went into detail on that – down the road.”

“You, sir,” said Sheridan, “have some explaining to do.”

“Not now,” replied Caro. “Right now we need to get this Larvitar situated with our ground rules, am I right?”

“No,” said Casey. “You’ve gotta explain first.”

“What’s more important – making sure your Pokémon doesn’t beat you up or playing Let’s Learn About Caro?” he asked. “I’ll get to that part later on, I promise. But right now we need to get some training done, and the only place to do that is in the plentiful amount of forest right over there.” Caro pointed to a large wooden arch, under which seemed to be a path into the forest. “There’s about a million entrances and exits to Holon Forest, and the different areas are blocked off. Good place to spend some time training if you ask me.”

“So what about Stathis?” asked Sheridan.

“He’s got a Rotom, a Poliwag, and a foul-mouthed Honchkrow,” said Caro flatly. “The Gym will be crawling with Electric-types, won’t it? He’ll get squashed.”

“You have a point…” muttered Grant. “…but why are you being so testy about it?”

Caro pointed to Larvitar, who seemed to have recently found a deep hatred for the boy and was now snarling ferociously at him.

“Oh,” said Grant. “I see.”

Larvitar objected. Loudly.

“You were the one who started pushing things on us!” Caro protested back.

“Larvi-vi-tar! Tarlarlar!”

“Wh—what do you mean, I started it by buying you? I didn’t do it!”

“Lar lar,” said Larvitar firmly, crossing is stubby arms.

“What did you say?” Caro hissed back.

Indeed, Larvitar’s attitude and mere presence did seem to make Caro feel a lot worse. Casey wisely decided to simply recall the little thing before a scuffle broke out and somebody lost an eye.

“Your point has been made,” he said to Caro, returning Larvitar’s Pokéball to his backpack. “But you’re gonna have to deal with him later once we get into the forest and wild Pokémon start popping up. Let’s go.” Sheridan, upon recognizing the highly unpleasant edge to his voice, nodded silently and followed. Caro snorted in contempt and started walking, until Grant was left standing alone with The Pipe slung over his shoulder.

“What’s with you all today?” he wondered out loud.



The Pokémon count, contrary to the Groupie Galaxy’s popular belief, had been remarkably low. Sure, there had been plenty of Ratattas and Weedles squirming around (and even the odd Slakoth), but after they passed a certain point all of the Pokémon activity just… stopped. The wildlife all suddenly ceased to exist. Everything went silent. This unsettled the group immensely…

“Where did the Pokémon go?” wondered Sheridan, looking around at the suspicious lack of fauna.

“Beats me,” replied Caro with his hands in his pockets. “But if it keeps that thing in its Pokéball they can stay where they are.”

Casey rolled his eyes. “Can’t you just get along?”

“No.” Caro looked away. “But… the sky is getting dark. Are we just going to camp out in the dark or what?”

“If we don’t get out, we’ll work on that,” said Casey. “Besides, I’m sure we can find some sort of shelter somewhere in this forest… even if it’s just a big tree.”

“Or a cave,” remarked Sheridan with a shrug.

“Or a spontaneously-abandoned campsite,” suggested Caro.

“Or a creepy, dark house,” piped up Grant.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” snorted Sheridan with her hands on her hips. “Where did you come up with something like that?”

“From up there.” Grant pointed with one gloved finger through the trees and to a few window-shaped, faint pinpricks of light. On the spot above them, smoke from a fire chimney billowed up into the moonlit night.

“Point taken,” said Sheridan, amazed.

Casey began walking towards the house, in a very different direction than they had been moving previously. When Sheridan raised her voice to object, he turned back around with eyebrows raised.

“It’s worth a shot, right?” asked Casey. “I mean, whoever lives in the middle of the forest must be used to Trainers losing their bearings and running to their house for a place to sleep the night… just like us.” He turned to face the others – their expressions didn’t show any dislike towards the idea, but nobody was particularly happy about it either. “Come on, you guys. I’m sure it happens to the owner all the time.”

“Well, yeah, but would he take four people?” wondered Grant, swinging his unarmed hand in an arc to reference the quartet.

“Maybe,” Casey replied over his shoulder. “But at least we can say that we tried… besides, who’s the one heading the quest here?”

“You are,” came the grumbled (but unanimous) reply.



Caro banged on a heavy wooden door.

“Coming!” yowled a distinctly female voice from inside, seemingly ignoring the cacophony of Pokémon trying to tell her that someone was on the front steps (but had done so a little too late). A few minutes later, the door creaked open to reveal a woman with long, dark hair that fell into clumps near the tips.

“Can I help you?” she asked, pulling the waist strings on her bathrobe.

“Sorry to bother you so late,” said Casey, “but we got sort of lost in the forest and…”

“Oh, you all are travelling Trainers? Don’t worry; living here I’ve heard the story plenty of times before. Come on in, and do your best not to tread on too many tail feathers.” She chuckled to herself as the door swung open completely to let the group in.

She wasn’t kidding about the tail feathers. Lurking in the rafters was an unnaturally high number of Murkrows, red eyes glinting in the light given off from bare-bulb lamps. These same lamps illuminated the old wooden walls and floor – despite their obvious age and the amount of Pokémon who seemed to inhabit the house, they seemed to be in good condition. “I’m sorry about the dinginess of the place,” the woman continued. “I don’t go for elaborate stuff… and besides, the other residents up there would have it ripped up in an instant.” She pointed upwards.

Casey was the first one to speak. “Thank you,” he said politely, looking around.

“No problem, no problem. The guest rooms are up the stairs and all along the right hallway; let me get into some proper clothing before I do anything else. It’s nearly supper.” Nobody felt like reminding her that it was about seven PM.

There was a general mumbling in the direction of ‘yes’ as the foursome scaled the staircase across the room. There was, indeed, a long hallway at the top, with doors all along both sides. Caro dove for the nearest available room on the right. Sheridan watched him sprint with great amusement before entering the next bedroom, letting Grant and Casey occupy the last two.

They weren’t, noticed Casey, very elaborately decorated – neat, yes, but not heavily furnished. There was just a bed, a set of drawers, and a table lamp on a nightstand to designate the windowed room as anything more than unused storage space. Casey placed his three Pokéballs on the table and turned to Rotom, who had settled himself by snuggling on the bed’s comforter.

“Don’t destroy anything,” he warned.

Casey left the room to the high-pitched affirmative of Rotom.

 

[scizorstrike]

wondered how long it was going to be before Caro's "talk to pokemon" thing of his got out

 

[Giratina!]

Yes, well, it was a rather obvious fact, wasn't it? xD We'll play Let's Learn About Caro soon, I promise.

 

[IJuggler]

I'm sorry that I didn't read through the whole story before reviewing, but, in my defence, it's a massive hulk

I got to the point where Palkia, Celebi and Giratina are giving the main character a makeover. At this point I really didn't enjoy reading, because all I could imagine was that the rest of the story would be talking about how this now Gary Stu character would be stumbling through the world, somehow finding awesome epic Pokemon and catching legendaries.

In short, I don't like reading that. But, from the reviews/responses so far, I don't think it's like that. If there's another slow fanfiction day, I'll be reading up on this again.

One nitpick; when he was asked if he liked his changes, he responded "N...NO!". What I think you meant was "N-NO!", because the ellipses make a trailing off sound, and I assume that he was just stuttering.

 

[Giratina!]

I'm sorry that I didn't read through the whole story before reviewing, but, in my defence, it's a massive hulk

You've got a point there.

I got to the point where Palkia, Celebi and Giratina are giving the main character a makeover. At this point I really didn't enjoy reading, because all I could imagine was that the rest of the story would be talking about how this now Gary Stu character would be stumbling through the world, somehow finding awesome epic Pokemon and catching legendaries.

Fortunately for you, that's not how the story was planned to go out. Casey won't be running around looking for Legendaries.

In short, I don't like reading that. But, from the reviews/responses so far, I don't think it's like that. If there's another slow fanfiction day, I'll be reading up on this again.

Without sounding too cheesy, hope to see you again! :3

One nitpick; when he was asked if he liked his changes, he responded "N...NO!". What I think you meant was "N-NO!", because the ellipses make a trailing off sound, and I assume that he was just stuttering.

Another good point. I'll go back and change that.

Well, first off, thank you for posting. And second, I'd like to ask a question - how did you get the idea that Casey was going to be running around collecting Legendaries? :/ I'm of the "Legendaries are a pain in the butt - if not impossible - to capture" mindset, and even then it would take a really experienced Trainer to find and catch them... which, obviously, Casey is not.

 

[IJuggler]

It's not so much that your story makes me think he'll run off and catch legendaries - although his ubercasual chats with these supreme beings of life could be a sign of that - , but every other story that starts off in any similar way to this usually has the main character 'owning' a legendary. Especially the whole makeover, explained away by making him older (or what will become his 'normal age', despite the fact that being aged in a vacuum is a giant plothole).

But don't worry about me, I just like to nitpick on everything about a story's start because I fear it won't go very far. Obviously, that isn't the case here.

 

[Giratina!]

I think you may have misunderstood the whole makeover thing.

Celebi first sent herself and Casey five years into the future, using her powers to allow him to age. Once five years in the future she immediately zipped back to the past, this time using her power to keep Casey at his new age. Hence, he wound up in the present day at fourteen years old when he should have been eleven. Palkia then proceeded to transform everything about him by manipulating space.

And, well, übercasual chats with Legendaries do tend to pop up in my stories - at least with the more socialable ones who don't see themselves as too good to hold a discussion with lowly mortals. Since Dialga - the only other manipulator of time - was one of those ones who think too highly of themselves, Celebi had to be dragged along in his place. Palkia was pretty much ordered by Arceus and Giratina together (of course, Giratina's say in the matter actually had no effect).

 

[Giratina!]

{17} the skeletons are catching up
​

The table, as everyone noticed at the same time, was big.

It must have seated at least eight, despite the fact that there were only five people present to eat. The house’s owner had apparently failed to realize this, as she ushered everyone in and let them chose a seat. Shortly afterward she slipped into the kitchen via a rather unnoticeable door, called out to tell them that she’d only be a minute, and then returned from the same unnoticeable door carrying a large plate and ceramic bowl. One was filled with mashed potatoes, the other strips of meat. Grabbing five plates and the appropriate cutlery from a drawer in the dining room, she placed them out on the table with an abundance of clattering and finally sat down.

She smiled as her eyes came to Caro, who was already busy shoveling food onto his plate.

“So,” she said, looking around at the group. “I’m Amelia. Tell me your names, won’t you?” Amelia had put on simple clothing – a gray shirt and some blue jeans.

Caro went first (as usual) and introduced himself, before returning to filling his plate. Sheridan snickered and went next, and the others followed in turn. Amelia nodded and welcomed them all, before turning to the subject she suspected would be on everyone’s minds: the Murkrows.

“Don’t mind the Flying-types, guys,” she said, nodding to one as it zoomed down onto the table next to her and stared at the new arrivals. “As you can see, Murkrows and Honchkrows are personally my favorite Pokémon…”

“Ah, I should’ve let Honchkrow out earlier,” remarked Casey, observing the staircase in the next room from his chair. “He’d certainly have lots to do.”

Amelia’s face brightened. “Oh, you’ve got a Honchkrow? Wonderful! Actually, come to think of it, you guys can let all of your Pokémon out after dinner. The flock here will give them a tour of the house.” She nodded to the black-feathered birds lurking in the rafters. “Like I said before, don’t mind ‘em; I guess you could call me a crazy bird lady of sorts. Living in the forest like this I find a lot of them around, most of whom had fainted but for some mysterious reason failed to sink into the ground.”

“So you take them in?” asked Caro.

“Yes I do, and a few decide to stay with me… well, alright. More than a few.” She looked around. “So how have you been, Caro?”

The small conversation screeched to a halt.

“Uh… do you know her?” asked Grant confusedly. “You never mentioned…”

“No, I don’t think I do,” said Caro, tapping one finger on the side of his head and knitting his eyebrows. “Sorry. Where do I know you from?”

“Well,” said Amelia with a grin. “You’d forgotten? Only after this long? That’s quite something, Caro… though I do suppose you knew me a little differently than this. Hold on.” She got up, motioned for Caro to stay, and scampered out of the room. A few seconds later she swooped back in, now decked out in a tattered black overcoat and Murkrow-crest hat. “Ringing any bells?”

Caro didn’t respond. His jaw was too busy trying to close itself.

“So you do know her,” remarked Sheridan dryly, crossing her legs. “From where, might I ask?”

“Hmm…” Amelia took off the coat and hat and stowed them on a nearby coatrack before returning to her seat. “Really? He didn’t tell you about the tour through Sinnoh yet? I’m surprised; you always seemed like the sort of kid to go boasting about things.”

“Well, uh, not really,” spluttered Caro. “I didn’t tell them. Yet. Well, I mean, I was going to… eventually. But, you know… with the whole…”

“I see, I see,” said Amelia sadly, nodding her head. “Didn’t want to mention him too soon, right?”

“I didn’t mean to insult you or anything,” said Caro quickly.

“Ah, no, no offense taken. It’s understandable.”

The conversation had now become completely lopsided, and those not in on what they were talking about were now utterly and visibly lost. Amelia noticed the confused expressions on their faces, and seemed to come to her own senses about the whole thing. “Oops! Hey, Caro, we’d better fill them in before we continue the discussion any further, right?”

“Oh,” he said, considerably less jubilant all of a sudden. “Right. Um… well… like she said, I went traveling a couple years ago. In Sinnoh, with a couple of friends of mine I knew from my old home. Remember I told you about that, Casey? Where I was surrounded by Pokémon literally all the time? I meant it. There were seriously no humans in Treasure Town. Not even me. ‘Cause… back in the day, I was a Pikachu. Born and raised.”

A general cacophony of interruptions rose up at this point.

“Hey, whoa, cool down,” he continued. “I’ll get to that, I mean it. So anyway, yeah, I was a Pikachu. And my best friend Kris, she was a Meowth – or a Persian, depending on what time period you’re talking here – and my other best friend Helio… he was a Magnemite or Magneton, same deal as with Kris. So anyway, we three were in an Exploration Team – that’s a group of Pokémon who not only go rescue other Pokémon but also explore these ever-changing Mystery Dungeons too – and at the time we were on this mission to go explore a strange Dungeon near Treasure Town, where our base was.

“So when we got there, we were running around inside the dungeon and eventually, we found a funny shining rock that sucked up light. Helio could identify it for whatever reason; he called it the ‘Dementia Key’ or something. Kris and I both went to touch it, but then there was this big flash of light and… well, a lot of stuff happened after that, but there were definitely no Badges involved. We were taken to the human-Pokémon world – that’s this one – and we pretty much spent the next few weeks trying not to get ourselves killed by a lunatic Legendary named Mesprit.”

There was a squeal that was far too fangirlish for comfort that echoed from Caro’s right. “You… saw… a Mesprit?” gasped Sheridan, who had stood up with wide eyes. “Really? D-did you talk to it? Was it nice?”

“He just said that this ‘Mesprit’ was nuts,” said Casey flatly.

“Oh,” she responded. “Right.” She sat down and cleared her throat. “Well… go on, then, I guess… but there’s one thing I don’t quite get.”

“What’s that?” asked Caro.

“Why did… why did Mesprit want you dead?”

Caro averted his eyes. He clearly wanted to slip over this subject as smoothly as possible while giving away the least amount of information – and he had failed. Miserably. “Well, um, you see…” he muttered trying to find a way to put it that wouldn’t make them all scoot their chairs away from him very, very fast. “It was mostly because of Helio… See, he had been born in the human-Pokémon world, as a human and stuff, but then he sort of got sent to the Pokémon-only world for… um… something…”

“What?” was the resounding echo from four other mouths. Amelia in particular was staring at Caro with much intensity, leaning forward in her seat. She had apparently not learned this part.

“For… well… something. He was sent there by… y’know… Arceus. Because he did some… you know… bad things…”

“Just tell us the man’s name,” said Grant.

Caro looked around. “Okay. But you guys… you’ve got to promise not to hold this against me – or him – in the future, okay? Because he’s sorry. I know he is.”

“We won’t, we won’t,” said Sheridan. “What’s his name?”

Amelia was now scowling. She did, apparently, know this part.

Caro sighed and muttered one word to everyone else, who had leaned in to hear him better after he ducked his head…

All it took was one word.

One word and they were all shaken up, sitting stock-still in their seats, frantically trying to piece together what he had just said within their brain. Three brains – those of the people who didn’t already know what was going on – sorted their clues out furiously, and when three people tried to think very hard at the same time… it was not a pretty picture.

He clearly thought pretty highly of the man, but… but… him?

Was that… was that even possible?

The only one who didn’t seem to feel the full meaning of this – indeed, even Amelia had sniffled and turned away – was Casey. His face turned to one of blank confusion. “I’m sorry…” he said shakily, watching as everyone’s eyes turned on him. “I’m sorry if I’m missing the significance here…

…But who cares if Caro traveled with a man named Cyrus?”



Any thoughts that had been building up in the minds of Sheridan o’Reilly, Grant Sternberg, Caro (who didn’t have a surname for obvious reasons), and Amelia “Yami” Wolfe simply fell away in that moment. Every single one fell out into the even-more awkward silence present in the room. Even the Murkrows had halted their game time, in order to watch in confusion. Why, even the Pokémon knew about him – well, living with Amelia they had to – and even their thoughts blanked at that moment and joined the silence. And then all that vacant brain space was filled at the same time, with only one unanimous thought: ‘He seriously doesn’t know?’

“Casey,” said Sheridan slowly, “are you perhaps somehow suggesting that you seriously can’t attach any significance to the name Cyrus Wolfe?”

“No, I really can’t,” said Casey, suddenly feeling like he had done something very, very wrong. “What… what did he do?”

This brought another wave of uncomfortable silence over the group, while Casey’s unanswered question lingered above them. It was amazing how just one person not understanding a problem could make it so much more painful for everyone else.

Everyone was hoping that someone else could explain to Casey just what he had somehow missed. None of them were any the wiser of the true reason: his upbringing’s touchiness on the matters of Pokémon and the lunatics who somehow got it in their heads that they could control them. However, the one who stepped up to fill the silence was quite possibly the next best thing aside from Cyrus himself.

That ‘next best thing’ was his sister, Amelia.

“Well…” she stuttered. “Casey, Cyrus did something terrible. It was perhaps thirteen years ago, when he was the driving force behind a criminal behemoth known as ‘Team Galactic’. After a few years of making his team’s presence known, Cyrus went ahead and made his own presence known – for perhaps the first time in his life, I might add. He went up to the top of Mt. Coronet in Sinnoh and made some sort of foolhardy attempt to reset the universe.”

There was no response, so she continued.

“Yes… really. Using the combined power of the guardians of two basic elements of a universe – Time and Space – he tried to bring the universe to a new beginning, deleting almost everything and everyone who ever existed. His intention was to bring it to a complete standstill, and somehow claim the throne of nothing and rule over… nothing. He summoned Dialga and Palkia, the guardians I spoke of, in order to bring the universe to its roots. He was stopped, primarily, by three beings – though there was an undocumented mention of a young girl named Dawn Driftwood – who were guardians of a different sort. They were guardians of the three basic components of the human mind. Knowledge was watched over by Uxie. Willpower was watched over by Azelf. And Emotion was watched over by…” Her gray eyes flickered through the web of tears to Caro. “…Mesprit.”

“But that was…” Casey began.

“Right, the psycho Legendary,” said Caro shakily, looking in even worse condition than Amelia. “Look… guys, I really don’t want to talk about this…” He turned away from everyone else, making a valiant attempt to make them think that drops of water weren’t threatening to stream down his face. “…I’m… I’m going to go to bed. See you.”

He got up stiffly and ran out of the room.



The rest of the night moved by in a haze – and it had nothing to do with the Pokémon. Everyone in the house either drifted around vacantly or locked themselves up in their room, and eventually all humans present slipped into their rooms.

Pinsir, who took the trouble of going around and spying on people in the middle of the night, lost his nerve and stopped halfway through. This primarily happened after he nearly received a nasty Thundershock courtesy of Caro’s Raichu, who seemed to be standing guard over his Trainer’s slumbering body. After this he merely scuttled out and back to his owner’s room, where he was surprised to find Larvitar and Kaeo staring at Grant curiously.

<Uh…> said Pinsir.

Larvitar turned his head quickly, but returned it to the original position. <Oh,> he said. <Just you.>

<Yeah, ‘just’ me,> said Pinsir, walking in the room. <So what are you guys doing staring at the Boss like that?>

<’Boss’?> snorted Larvitar. <Why’re you calling him that?>

<I don’t know,> said Pinsir, moving to join them. <I guess I’ve always been used to calling people who own me ‘Boss’. But seriously, what are you doing?>

<Kaeo over here says that he felt a really strange vibe comin’ off of your boss,> said Larvitar, pointing in the proper direction in case Pinsir didn’t quite know who Kaeo was. (He did, of course, but Larvitar evidently failed to realize that.) <So he went and sneaked in here to try and find out what was going on, and I found him. So now we’re just trying to sort it out together, you know?>

<Oh,> said Pinsir. <Well… Kaeo, what do you think is wrong with him?>

<Nothing’s wrong with him, technically,> said Kaeo with a shrug, <and I can’t pinpoint anything right now because it was faint, but in his mind readings I think I sensed a little bit of… hostility. Grant here is usually a good-tempered guy, right?>

<Usually,> said Pinsir.

<Right. So his mind readings ought to be pretty calm as well. And mostly they were. But I did feel a little bit of turmoil somewhere in there, hidden among the totally normal readings. Anger, frustration, that sort of thing. But the thing is it didn’t even feel like his – more like someone else’s.>

<Are you sure it was coming from him?> asked Pinsir, now considerably worried about the well-being of his Trainer.

<Definitely,> said Kaeo, crossing his arms. <It was definitely coming from him. But at the same time it felt alien, like it was someone else entirely…>

<These ‘mind readings’…> said Pinsir, looking at Kaeo curiously. <Do they change with someone’s personality, or are they set in stone from the moment of their birth?>

<They can change as the person does, but it would need to be a very drastic change in outlook for the mind-readings to change as well. For example, if someone had been using a certain new personality that they weren’t like naturally, their mind waves would remain in the configuration of the old personality unless they’d been using it constantly for a certain period of time. However, if they just mature with age, the mind waves stay the same.> Kaeo looked away from Grant and focused on the brown Bug-type. <Why do you ask?>

Pinsir waved his arm nonchalantly. <No particular reason.>

Even Larvitar could see that he was lying, and the knowing smile on Kaeo’s face suggested that the Stag Beetle Pokémon had more of a reason than that. But the purple Drowzee nudged Larvitar with his arm and shook his head at the small Pokémon, who doubtless wanted to inquire further.

Larvitar pouted, but obeyed.

For those of you who are confused or want to learn more about just what happened three years back... well, either track down the story called 'Metal Coat' on another site and cringe at its terrible grammar or wait a little for the rewrite. ^^
​

 

[Zadros]

I got a bit intimidated the first time I saw this by the number of chapters. But, I decided to read the whole thing Tuesday. At first I thought it was a comedy fic XD But now that some more character development is coming out I'm really starting to enjoy it. Mind you, at chapter seventeen I'd maybe expect to know a bit more about the main characters. Casey seems to have been in the background a bit, but it's good to know a bit more about Caro now. Sheridan, I dunno. She's been hanging out with them for a while but I don't really have much of a feel for he personality. Grant obviously hasn't been with them for very long. And you know, I'm sue I read something about a Raichu, Persian and Magneton somewhere. Did you write a trailer or something? Anyway, you've gained another reader =)

 

[Giratina!]

And you know, I'm sue I read something about a Raichu, Persian and Magneton somewhere. Did you write a trailer or something?

Was that thing you read by any chance called 'Metal Coat' or 'The Galaxy Key'?

Anyway, thank you. I can see where you're coming from on the vague personality thing. Casey has been in the background a lot, but I believe that's because he's not the sort of boy who would charge into everything headfirst. He's still learning the ropes of the journey he's been thrust into, and perhaps someday he'll loosen up about it and be more active in the storyline...

Anyway, thank you! =D

 

[Sinnohdragon]

First note that i'm not much of a reviewer i'm afraid. I'm not one for going through every detail and pointing stuff out as much as i would like to be more useful. So i'll just make my comments as i usually do when a story gets my attention.

I like this. It was the title that got me into this as i knew where it came from straight away. (The Delta series were my favourite EX expansion) I've never read a fic with Holon before. I noticed the electric Fearow (I have that card XD) but not the other Delta Pokémon. Although admittedly i did only skim the last six chapters.

Your style of writing is quite interesting- the almost conversation-like inserts make it more entertaining and easier to read. I might try that sometime ^^

You have yourself another reader.

 

[Giratina!]

FINALLY SOMEONE GETS THE FEAROW!!!

...Ahem, sorry. Nice catch. ;D A lot of the Delta Pokémon will be owned by Team BDV members of varying ranks, and a couple of people who aren't quite 'operatives' but are in constant contact with them. Heh heh. Anyway, thanks! I know a lot of people are iffy about the way I write because I go on tangents there so much, so it's nice to know someone besides me gets a laugh out of it.

Again, thank you for the review! :3 I'm pleased to know that people are actually seeing my fic now.