{18} a name once heard...
The atmosphere among the Groupie Galaxy had improved significantly from the previous night, but there was still a strange silence hovering over them, only making itself known when conversation seemed to die down and making those times that much worse. They had left Amelia Wolfe’s hospitality earlier that morning.
“Um, Casey…” said Grant, looking around.
“Hm?” he replied (somewhat absently).
“You are looking for Pokémon to train on, right?”
Casey paused for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose I am.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like there are many around here. Do you think we should go back to Rhion and try a different forest entrance?”
“No,” he replied. “I think we’re okay here. It’s morning; a lot of the Pokémon are just waking up or just going to bed, right? If we wait a couple hours, the forest should be swarming with Pokémon as usual.”
“Right.” Grant didn’t sound particularly convinced, for he pulled the Pipe down from its previous position of slung over his shoulder and instead opted to carry it in his hand like a club.
“Larvitar, keep looking for any early risers, okay?” Casey took out Larvitar’s Pokéball and released the Ground-type again. He initially did not look too pleased to be out in the open (Casey had woken him up, the little Ratatta), but upon hearing that they were in a forest with potential victims to be had, all hard feelings were forgotten.
…Well, except for the ones directed towards Caro.
Sheridan, noticing the arrival of Larvitar, shot a glance in Caro’s direction lest she need to block any more physical assaults. Fortunately, though, the boy had simply tried to ignore Larvitar and kept his eyes fixed on the forest ahead. Sheridan wanted to say something, she really did, but comforting those in a bad mood was definitely not her strong suit.
Casey, sensing the rather unpleasant silence once again, turned back Larvitar with an inquisitive expression on his face.
“So are you ready to do some training?” he asked the Pokémon.
Larvitar nodded with a smirk and a glint in his eye. Training induced getting stronger, and Larvitar was always one for getting stronger.
‘If I get stronger,’ thought the Pokémon for the sixth time since he came under the ownership of Casey, ‘then maybe I can evolve into something actually good. And when I evolve into something actually good I can ditch this kid and…’ The Larvitar was unaware that he was now grinning maniacally, and only the calling of his Trainer returned him to something resembling a calm state.
“Larvitar!”
The Pokémon looked up at Casey, blinking innocently.
“Don’t daydream,” said the redhead, stopping to look around. “This is serious business.”
Larvitar saluted his Trainer, cheered even further by the concept of the Casey kid finally growing a spine. <Yeah!>
Both Pokémon and Trainer took a good look around at the surrounding forest, hoping to find some sort of Pokémon to begin their training session on. (In the meantime, Grant, Sheridan, and Caro gawked with unrivaled amazement at the sudden initiative their friend was showing.)
“Ssssssssr.”
Everyone in the area straightened up at once. Even Caro popped out of his funk temporarily to look around with a confused expression on his face. “Who just said that?” wondered the boy.
“It sounded like someone snoring,” observed Grant helpfully.
“And who would be asleep in the middle of a forest?” asked Sheridan with raised eyebrows. “No, it’s probably not someone camping out for the night, unless they’re really outdoorsy types. It must be a Pokémon of some kind… but you might be onto something with the snoring thing. Look over there!”
Indeed, there had been a rustling noise from directly in front of them. Out from under the bush squirmed a small brown Pokémon with half-open eyes and sharp claws. It had its stomach to the ground and stared up at the group dopily before giving off a loud yawn.
Larvitar perked up almost immediately afterward. <Opponent!> he shouted. <Yes!>
Caro rolled his eyes and returned to sulking position – hands jammed in his pockets and staring out at everything under a mess of spiky hair that seemed to have lost all power over gravity that it once held. “Your Larvitar’s found his next target,” he told Casey flatly.
“Right. Thanks.” Casey had definitely sensed some hostility in the boy’s words. He clearly hadn’t recovered entirely from the rather unpleasant stay at Amelia’s house. “Larvitar, use… uh… hold on.” He fished the JAWS out of his backpack again and checked Larvitar’s moveset, ignoring the Pokémon’s bemused expression. Meanwhile, the newcomer Pokémon squirmed into what could perhaps be called ‘battle position’, somehow sensing the hostility emanating from Larvitar in waves.
“…Okay, now use Rock Slide!”
Larvitar stomped on the ground a few times. A nearby boulder became dislodged from its position and, with some body language coaxing by Larvitar, hovered above the Slakoth’s head. The Normal-type didn’t bother to look up at it, but rather shivered as it yawned again. With a loud battle cry, the tiny Ground-type brought the rock crashing down on his opponent.
<Hopefully,> yelled Larvitar, <this will teach you to respect your opponents!>
Caro snorted.
The Slakoth screeched and climbed out of the wreckage. It took a few steps away from the crumbled boulder and yawned, scratching itself behind the ear.
“Isn’t it going to do anything?” asked Casey.
“Slakoth are exceptionally lazy,” said Sheridan matter-of-factly. “In battles, they don’t even do anything half the time.”
“So we attack again. Larvitar, Rock Slide aga—”
“Hold on just a minute, twerp!” yelled an irritated voice from somewhere in the forest.
Before any members of the Groupie Galaxy had time to question this mysterious intonation, the presumed origin of the noise stormed out of the nearby underbrush. This presumed origin was a tall, slightly heavy man who looked to be about thirty, with white hair sticking out in two separate directions on his head. “Don’t you know not to go stomping around attacking other people’s Pokémon?”
“I thought it was wild,” said Casey, crossing his arms. “Does it belong to you?”
“Yes it does!” snapped the man, before turning to his Slakoth and saying in a considerably less irritated voice, “Return.” He held out a Pokéball, which sucked up the Pokémon instantly.
Sheridan gave out a pondering “Hmm.” She was ignored.
Cramming the red-and-white object in his pocket, the man frowned at the sight of Casey’s traveling companions. “You’re a League Challenge trainer, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes,” replied Casey. “I’m getting Badges, so…”
“I know what you’re doing,” he snorted, arms crossed impatiently. “Why do you think I guessed you’re chasing after a spot in the Hall of Heroes or whatever? No, I know what you guys do. Only Badge twerps run around with three other people in toe behind them. Seriously… I don’t know what gets into you people, just following the kid around and begging to be—”
“Clyde!”
The man recently identified as Clyde stopped in mid-sentence in favor of letting his eyes widen considerably and letting a surprised expression wash over his face. Clyde turned around to face a woman’s head that had recently popped out from behind a tree, much to everyone else’s surprise. His body language (slumping his shoulders and sighing melodramatically) suggested he was not pleased to see her, and she didn’t exactly look hyped up about finding Clyde, either. This woman’s head happened to have a lengthy mess of very light pink hair, and it was not looking amused.
“Clyde,” she continued. “You’re supposed to be looking for Slakoth, not having a little chat with strangers!”
“This ‘stranger’ was trying to beat up my Pokémon,” said Clyde in his own defense, holding out the Pokéball to prove it. “What was I gonna do, just return it and leave?”
“Certainly sounds like something you would do,” said the woman primly.
“Tiffany, just shut up,” Clyde grumbled. He turned his head to the group so that the woman behind the tree couldn’t see him, rolled his eyes, and mouthed the word ‘Sisters’. Thus accomplished, he turned back to Tiffany with a frown on his face. “Alright, whatever. I’m coming…”
“Well surely you’re not going to just leave them here!”
“Sure I am.” Clyde disappeared among the trees, long blue coat flapping weakly as he moved. “Whatever happened to not conversing with strangers, hmm, sis?”
Tiffany shrugged at the travelers. “I’m sorry. My brother Clyde has a total lack of manners, among other things… I feel like I need to make it up to you somehow.”
“No, that’s really not ne—” began Casey.
“Oh, I know!” continued Tiffany, not seeming to notice Casey’s words in the least. “Would you four care to join us for some lunch today? Billy was being an idiot and packed way too much food again.”
There was a unanimous, if somewhat delayed, nod. Free grub was not to be declined.
-
{A few days previous…}
“Sir, there seems to be a… development.”
Fedora Man looked at his computer screen, which now displayed the cold but feminine features of a relatively plump twenty-something on the other end. She had steel-gray hair pulled up into a ponytail, but this didn’t stop a mess of it from falling down into her face.
“With what?”
“Nami was just getting to focus the Beam. She was going to use it on… you know, the Rhyperior. Well, she had Juan here in order to help her – evidently, her immense knowledge was not quite immense enough to keep the Beam working. She needed to get everyone’s favorite mechanic over from Rhoter City. Because, sir, you see…”
“It broke?” interrupted Fedora Man. “Solana, are you trying to tell me the Beam broke?”
“In basics, yes, sir,” said Solana with a blank tone. “It broke.”
There was a long silence.
“That would be a problem, wouldn’t it,” said Fedora Man. It was presented as a statement.
Solana nodded. “Nami told me to tell you about it.”
“Why? It’s a simple malfunction, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly, sir,” remarked the woman on the other end, frowning slightly. “Because, sir, you see, we’ve actually found out something quite unnerving about the side effects of that Beam.”
“We know about the side effects of the Beam, don’t we?” asked Fedora Man, standing up. “Potential mutations and power increases. That’s it, that’s all it’s been showing for years, even when the previous residents were using it to track the creature… to track Her.”
“Yes, but the scientists didn’t have any arianite around when they were tracking Her.”
“What’s the significance of arianite in this?”
“Well, sir, without going on too long…”
“Oh, heavens forbid you did that,” said Fedora Man. “Just be sure to get all the details in, won’t you?”
“Of course, sir! Anyhow, you are aware that arianite was discovered in Kanto… the shards of a rock originating from outer space, makes Clefairies evolve and whatnot?”
“Yes, I know that,” said Fedora Man. “I’ve known that since I was a—since I was in high school. Go on.”
“There’s no need to hide that, you know. In any case, we happened to have a sizable hunk of arianite on hand. It was being transported to another room for use in our… other project. Well, the arianite reacted strangely to the Beam. Just by being around it, just by letting the free-roaming waves get near it, that arianite began to emit power. And by placing it down near the Beam and retrieving a small chip of the other project material… well, we now have a little flicker of light hovering around the labs.”
“A what?”
At that moment, the door behind Solana (which had previously been closed) creaked open. Fedora Man watched in awe as a small diamond-shaped light hovered in to the room. It had a faint orange aura about it.
“That thing, sir,” said Solana bemusedly.
“I see it, Solana,” said Fedora Man in a similar tone. “And… and what has the good professor said about this?”
“Upon consultation after the incident, he said that it was perfectly normal and that he would be quite surprised if it didn’t appear. However, we seem to have come across a specimen different than what he has encountered in the past… he said that he had never heard of this small glowy friend being orange. Only green ones have been discovered. Of course, he also says this could be a side-effect of certain types being studied and others not, so…”
“What’s your point, Solana?”
“Our friend the professor has been dubious about giving out all of his information,” said Solana. “He never seemed to mention this previously, did you notice that? However, he seems to be a bigger help than we previously predicted. Should we remove him as you suggested?”
“No,” replied Fedora Man. “That won’t be necessary… Oh, by the way. How is the Mime Jr. doing?”
“She was perfectly healthy, so we sold her.”
“Good, good. To who, though?”
“A rare Pokémon dealer. A large amount of them had crowded around our city in order to partake in some sort of yearly street festival. He was interested in her due to her strange coloration, and offered up a hefty sum for such a shady character…” Solana grinned wickedly. Certainly a change from her previous blank expression, but it worked just as well in the given situation. “No need to worry about her, sir.”
“She went to a street festival? And… will she be sold again?”
“To some fortunate passerby of the stall? Of course she will. We can have someone make sure she is, if you’d like.” Solana leaned her head on one arm.
“Not necessary,” said Fedora Man, just realizing he had stood up and returned to his seat. He then continued the conversation as if nothing had happened, causing Solana’s eyebrows to rise and the grin to fall from her face. “Whatever she does with her reformed life isn’t ours to decide, is it? We’re done with her.”
“That’s true as well, sir.”
Fedora Man dusted himself off and stared at Solana as only Fedora Man could. “So is that all to report?”
“Yes, si—”
Fedora Man cut the connection there.
-
“Oh, so you brought friends, did you?” asked a laughing voice from the clearing ahead.
“Yep,” said Tiffany. She had drilled everyone in the group individually on the way there; she also failed to notice (or was that ignored?) Clyde, who had been moving back to the camp ahead of them and left a trail of ecological destruction in his wake. Having done this, she also took the trouble of introducing them all by name. “We found them running around in the forest, and since you were kind enough to carry supplies for the next three years, I figured we ought to invite them over for some lunch. Alright with you, Billy?”
“I’ve got no problem with it,” said the man sitting on a tree stump. He was similar to Clyde in some respects – about thirty, tall, white hair pointing in two opposite directions – but he was also thin as a stick, and the hair was much, much larger and less obliging to gravity. “Mr. Moody over there is a different story.” He snickered again and pointed to Clyde, who had taken up residence leaning against a tree.
Suddenly, there was a little gasp from Sheridan’s direction.
“I knew I recognized you… and then your names…” Sheridan put her hands on her hips and smirked in triumph. “Of course. You could be nobody else. Billy, Tiffany, Garret, and Clyde – the Go-Rock Quads!”
There was a silence.
“Well, at least the chick isn’t completely worthless,” grumbled Clyde. “She remembers us.”
Tiffany grinned. “You’re sharp, Sherry, you know that? I was waiting for someone to notice that! Good…” She paused mid-sentence when she caught the glare Sheridan was directing at her.
“Never. Call. Me. ‘Sherry’,” the woman growled. “Ever.”
“Um, alright,” said Tiffany, all jubilance gone from her voice. “You got it… um… yeah. Okay. No ‘Sherry’. Sure.”
“Thank you,” replied Sheridan, hostility lost from her tone but certainly not back to her previous triumphant self. The male members of the group stood in silence – none of them had ever considered calling her Sherry, even Rotom, and right now they were all very pleased with themselves that they didn’t. Billy didn’t seem to be fazed by this outburst, as he simply smiled knowingly and whipped out a large amount of food seemingly from thin air.
“Sorry about that, guys. Tiffany doesn’t take hints too smoothly, if you see what I mean.”
“Hmm?” Tiffany asked, turning to Billy. “I heard my name called…”
“Nothing, nothing,” the man mumbled, simply reaching out his hand and letting a multitude of foodstuffs fill them up as he did so. “Okay, sit down, I think we have everything we need… Clyde!” He raised his voice to be heard by his brother, who was now in the process of seeing how long he could stare at the forest before he got sick of it. However, upon prompting from the black-coat-donning man, he returned to standard walking position and slouched over.
“Finally,” he said out loud as he sat.
Everyone else took the hint, and Billy climbed down from his wooden perch to sit upon the ground with the rest of them.
There was a few minutes of silence broken only by frequent chomping, until finally Grant decided to bring up the subject a lot of them had been pondering up until that point. “So how did you start conjuring food out of thin air like that?”
Billy froze up for a second, but then relaxed again. “Oh! You were talking about that! Sorry, I didn’t quite get what you were thinking about for a minute. Anyway, have any of you guys heard of Hammerspace?”
Giratina chose the worst possible time to intervene. “Oooh, I’ve heard of it~” she sang softly through the Megaphone Rock. Casey gritted his teeth and ignored her.
Since nobody else could really answer that except with a shake of the head, Billy continued. “Oh, boy. I’ll need to explain it now, won’t I? Well, I don’t know if you know this, but there are different dimensions in the universe. Lots of them.” Minds temporarily switched to Caro, who fortunately did not feel all of the mental attention his case was getting. “One of them is typically called Hammerspace, because back when it was first discovered people used it to carry weapons around easily. Basically, what happens is you can store almost every item in the universe in your own specific part of Hammerspace, where you can later refer back to it and take out whatever you need.”
This news impressed all of them, and the sounds of devouring had all but stopped. Even Tiffany and Clyde had paused their meals in order to listen to (and potentially correct) Billy. “It takes years in order to manipulate Hammerspace somewhere close to well, and fortunately all… all of us have been doing that since we were kids, upon request of our parents. Recently people have come up with some strange ways to use Hammerspace with just some machinery, but they don’t work as well as if you’ve been training yourself and learned to Traverse – that’s the name of the art so it’s capitalized, person who does that is a Traverser – naturally. And that’s my lengthy speech on the art of Hammerspace manipulation.” Billy sat back and resumed eating. “Well?”
“He actually covered the basic points for once,” remarked Clyde.
“As if you could do much better, Clyde? I think he did a good job.” Tiffany hopped to the leaner brother’s defense.
“Hmph, sure,” replied the man in question with a shrug. “I thought he did a good job too, remember?”
“So…” said Billy, eager to divert the subject away from Clyde’s numerous sibling rivalries. “You guys are running the Holon gym circuit, huh?”
“That’s right,” said Casey. “I’m the one doing a lot of the collecting. These guys came along for their own reasons.”
“I see, I see.” Billy nodded. “The reason I ask is that we’ve actually been traveling around for our own reasons. Sheridan, you’ve noticed that there’s only three of us here, right?”
“I was wondering about that,” she confirmed.
“Right. That’s because Garret pretty much left with not much more than a note. It said something about how he was coming to Holon in order to pursue a profession that didn’t involve the rest of us, because he figured that we were doing okay as it was and he wanted to do it for a while. Never told us what it was he was chasing, though…” Billy’s smirking gaze turned to his brother. “Oh, and because he wanted to get away from Clyde, of course.”
The Go-Rock Quad in question harrumphed.
“And so now you’re trekking all over the region just to find him?” asked Grant, impressed. “That’s dedication to your family there.”
Tiffany and Billy basked in the good words in a perfectly-practiced fashion, while Clyde said nothing.
“Yes, we’ve been around,” said Tiffany after a few seconds of almost-rehearsed beaming. “Garret has no idea, of course, so when we do find him then he’ll be pleasantly surprised with our…”
“However.”
Everyone looked around and finally realized the single word had come from Caro, who had been pretty much ignored up until now in the conversation. Evidently, he just didn’t have uch t say…
“Are you quite sure Garret wants all of you around?”
There was a lot of surprised blinking before Sheridan turned on him, glaring. “That was totally uncalled for!”
“Yes it was,” replied Caro icily, “but so was his disappearance, wasn’t it? I’m not saying this is definitely what happened, but frankly his explanations for going off on his own sounded a little vague. And since he also wanted to get away from Clyde, who clearly returned the viciousness in full…”
Despite the unorthodox and absurdly out-of-character way Caro was bringing them up, everyone agreed (in varying degrees) that maybe he had a couple of points there. But there was a lot of worried glancing between siblings, and finally Billy (as the most talkative and least temperamental of the group) nodded his head. “That’s all true, and you bring up a lot of good points. But even if Garret were trying to evade us on purpose, we ought to at least go out there in order to find out if he really did, right? And if he does then we can nod and go our separate ways. If not, we can see just what he’s been doing all these months.”
“I suppose so,” said Caro before he lapsed back into his cloud of silence. It certainly unnerved everyone else; how long was their normally borderline-hyperactive companion going to keep this up?
“That’s a good idea,” seconded Casey in considerably lighter spirits. “You ought to do that.”
“But first we need to find Garret, and we haven’t covered much ground,” pointed out Tiffany.
Billy smiled. “Exactly.” He then turned to the newcomers with an almost pleading expression on his face. “Guys, I hate to push this on you when we’ve only just met each other today, but I don’t know how many more opportunities like this one we’re going to actually get. So… would you mind taking one of us with you as you go through the region? You know, just to find Garret? When we do, we’ll leave you, I promise.”
This was met with more surprised silence, even from his siblings.
Eventually, though, Clyde decided to finally take notice of the conversation. “A-are you serious?”
“Completely,” said Billy. He sounded the part.
“Well, it’s a good idea and all, Billy, but…” Tiffany hesitated, and eventually her sentence faded into nothing. “I mean, that’s still a tall order, pulling us apart further…”
“Is it too tall for finding out what happened to Garret?” asked Billy, in a not quite accusing but mildly peeved tone of voice. “I don’t think so. Besides, we can talk to each other whenever we want, right?”
Tiffany nodded. She had been silenced.
Clyde didn’t object. This was perhaps because his face was doing all of the objecting for him; the glowering he was delivering to Billy was certainly not a glare to be trifled with. However, Billy apparently failed to realize that, as he took Clyde’s lack of response as an acceptance and smiled. “We’re all agreed on our side, guys. What do you think?”
“Casey should choose,” said Grant almost immediately. “It’s his journey, after all.”
The other two members of the Groupie Galaxy, and Rotom (previously cuddled up in Sheridan’s arms) squirmed free and had Beast nod his enthusiasm. “Yeah!” chirped the Pokémon. “Let someone come along, Casey! Pleeeeeeease?”
Casey realized with some concern that his Pokémon was acting like a little girl whose parents were contemplating letting her get a pet.
“Well,” he said, “as a person I’ve got no problems with one of you coming along, but there’s still the issue of funding to think about, right?”
“You think we’re going to join your troupe and not give you anything for it?” snorted Billy. “Casey, that’s not how we roll. …Anymore. In any case, though, no. We’ve got plenty of money we’re not going to use for the rest of our lives, so seriously, that’s not so big a deal anymore. Of course, Dad is still watching us, and trying to explain something to him would be like… well, reasoning with a sleep-deprived Primeape. So we can do what we can, which should probably fix all serious issues, but no over-spending to whoever ends up going with them. Got that, you two?”
“Right,” the other two said in unison.
“Okay then!” said Billy, getting up and standing on the tree stump. “Let’s do this!” He pumped his fist in the air, expecting to be met with a rallying mess of cheers.
Clyde just shifted his gaze towards Casey and mouthed ‘He does it all the time’.
See? It really is a name once heard and never forgotten! Or is that a motto once heard? Hmm. Well, anyway, as soon as you read the title all of you who played Ranger knew what was going to be coming up, right?
...Right?
Anyway, stay tuned for the next chapter. There will be a big ol' battle, I swear. >:3
...Right?
Anyway, stay tuned for the next chapter. There will be a big ol' battle, I swear. >:3
They were so awesome in Ranger. It's nice to see some never used canon characters in a fanfic.