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CHAPTER XII
SMALL FISH IN A BIG POND
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(-o-)
After the call with the professor, we committed ourselves to trailing the flying target. We had almost turned back when we realized that it was leading us to a target hotspot. The enigmatic bird had remained invisible since leaving Clattermore, only occasionally circling back and giving us a sign that it was still around. Charli was so sure that it wanted us to follow, and I eventually got convinced of it as well.
Though, if it hadn’t been for the professor’s ‘go ahead’, I don’t think either of us would have decided to face five targets at once. He did not seem very concerned about the danger they posed, but maybe that was because he was safe back in his lab. That said, we trusted him enough to keep moving, after all, he had just asked us to have a look. If he could learn something that would help him wake Gran and the other villagers up, then it was worth a shot.
Drowzee and Natu both seemed calm, but we were still roughly a mile away from the spot. Thankfully though, Arbok’s ball had not acted up again.
“You haven’t really said why you’re doing this…” I said as we walked.
Charli shot me a surprised look. “What’dyou mean?”
I looked at him sideways and turned back ahead. “Your parents are fine, and Sally is fine…”
Sally was his 11-year-old sister, a blondie too, and just as outgoing. I always knew Charli wanted to be a pokémon trainer, but I was somewhat curious if that had been the only motivation he had.
“I’m here because the village needs us. They said other kids would jump at the chance but we’re the oldest… We’ve gotta be the ones to do it.”
The face of a classmate suddenly sprang to my head.
“What about Saris? I didn’t see her at all in the last few days…”
Charli tensed up and blinked a few times, reaching up to Natu on his head and adjusting her slightly.
Saris had been Charli’s crush for a long time. She was a mild-mannered introverted girl two years older than us, and he had never confessed it, but we all knew he had a thing for her. He was the target of a lot of teasing for it and I think it somewhat put Saris off. It was only a two-year age difference but in your teens that could be quite the gap.
As for myself, the only crush I really ever had in Kakuna left almost a year ago and I would never admit it to anyone either, but I was down in the bogs for weeks after she left. She was from Hoenn too, and she and her family only stayed in the village for a year. Her name was Tallu, short for Tallulah, and she would still pop into my thoughts every now and again.
“Saris is out cold,” Charli said, and though I didn’t mean to, I grinned.
“That explains it…”
He shifted over and punched me in the shoulder as Natu let out an irritated squawk at his sudden movement.
“Nothing wrong with it!” But I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
He made to nudge me again and I put up my hands. “I’ll tell Drowzee to hypnotize you! Stop!”
“Hah!” he cried. “I’ll tell Natu to peck your eyes out!”
Drowzee whined happily, striding along beside us. I wondered how much time he spent inside his pokéball when he was with the professor, because he looked quite animated toddling about, stopping here and there to sniff the ground or watch young flocks of pidgey flapping about from tree to tree.
Hyooooooo…
A howl from the sky. The bird had circled back again, and we both saw a puff of dark smoke be swept away as it flew through it. It revealed itself for a few seconds, swerving to our northeast, right over another patch of tall shrubs and trees.
Charli and I shared a look.
Back into the wilds it would seem…
We tread through woodlands with great big rocks protruding from the earth and clumps of mushi-berries growing from little crags around them. Drowzee took great interest in them, and I began pinching clumps of them off the ground and putting them in the polythene bags from TCs. Charli did the same. Growing up in Kakuna meant that most of us knew what was safe in the woods to eat, and mushi-berries weren’t only safe, but tasty as well, roasted or sundried.
“It feels like we’re finally doing something right,” Charli commented.
“What, this foraging?”
He nodded. “I wonder how the others are doing…”
I looked up through the canopies for any sign of the shadow bird as my hand pinched at the mushis. Isabel had an Espeon and she was with Anna who wasn’t lacking in maturity. I worried least for them. I was actually more worried about Myke and Kieran. They were both big boys, but to a pokémon it wouldn’t matter if you were the strongest man in the world.
A man was still a man. They couldn’t breathe fire or split trees in half with their bare hands. Myke especially, had been so used and daring with the pokémon around the village that I feared his sense of danger was dangerously skewed. Poliwhirl wasn’t a Psychic-type either, but more of a hands-on kind of pokémon. That meant that their battles must have looked a whole lot different than what we had seen so far. If Kieran and Myke did join up again, at the very least with Mr. Mime, they’d have some defensive power with its invisible walls and longer-range moves.
We’d have to call them later and catch up.
Soon after picking the mushrooms, we checked our Tracking Tools and the targets had begun to glitch. We were finally closing in.
“Discover the ghosts…” I told Drowzee in a low voice.
Charli refrained from telling Natu, as we both agreed that Drowzee’s slow and steady tracking would be best, and after the novelty had worn off, there wasn’t much point in having both of them track the same thing.
We saw a few rattata scampering and darting away as we crept through, and Natu stood atop Charli’s head like a sentry gun, ready to fire off psychic beams at a moment’s notice. There was a constant and cool breeze ruffling in the trees, as if rain was on the way, but the skies showed no sign that it would happen.
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“Look!” Charli said quietly, alarmed. He pointed through the gaps in the trees up ahead and after a moment of shifting for a view, I froze in a quick panic.
It was a big bird, perched somewhere atop a boulder that protruded from the ground. A plumage of brown, shadowy feathers covered its body, and its wings were outspread as if it had just landed.
Hyooo!
“It is a Noctowl!” I whispered. “It’s looking right this way, Charli.”
“I can see that! What should we do?”
I stared at Drowzee, who had his snout trained in its direction. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t know!” Charli said. “Probably waiting to ambush us! What if they want to free Arbok?”
Holy shit… What a time to come up with that theory.
“They would have attacked already,” I said with every ounce of hope I had in me. My temples were throbbing, and my breath grew shallow with dread. I was seriously stupefied as to why my blind eye was making no complaints. Like wasn’t this the perfect time for a fit of phantom itches? I was nevertheless grateful to not have to deal with the added discomfort.
“I think we’ve done what the professor asked. He also told us to turn back if we thought it was dangerous, and I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Tom!”
I was nodding absent-mindedly. “Yeah… yeah… I think so.”
Hyooo! The Noctowl cried again, and Drowzee began to glow with the same blue aura he had in Arbok’s forest. I began to calm down.
…
…
Beep! Beep! Beep!
My head swung around to Charli.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Charli looked down at himself, feeling at his jacket bound around his waist.
The beeping was coming from him.
“What is that?” I said with eyes wide.
He felt through the folds, grabbing at something and unwedging it out.
“The Vs. Seeker…” he muttered.
Its display was a ring of light which according to the instructions, would light up in sections towards any nearby trainers who also had one active. If there was a trainer with an active Seeker to your west, the left part of the ring would light up, for example. He had switched it on while we were still in Clattermore for a test and almost the whole ring had lit up.
FZZCRACK! The noise ripped through the air followed by a loud BOOM!
The four of us jumped from the shock and the area where Noctowl had been was a violent cloud of smoke and woodland debris.
The howling cries of a symphony of pokémon erupted and Drowzee and Natu cried out with them. It was overwhelming on the senses and I crouched, gripping at the earth with my hands, it taking everything I had to hold on.
The ground was trembling, and I heard Charli make a garbled sound that got stuck in his throat. I could barely get to my feet. Everything was shaking, the air, the trees, and the earth.
A huge form burst out of the smoky cloud and I stood shellshocked when I realized that it was an Onix, black as obsidian and with pupilless eyes. It thrashed in the air before diving down into the earth, shearing trees and smashing rocks as it bore its way through.
FZZCRACK!
A bolt of smoking, crackling, fire shot at the Onix, striking it on its tail and shattering a few of the boulders on it. A loud rumbling came from under the earth, which I was sure was a complaint by the giant rock-type pokémon. In this cacophony of madness, a rumbling roar I immediately recognized vibrated through the air.
“Ursaring!!!” Charli yelled, pointing, and Natu, thinking she had been ordered to attack, leapt off his head and shot out a zapping beam of psychic light, striking the Ursaring right in the chest. The large monster shrieked and a cloud of smog erupted around it as it flailed with its claws.
I could not tell up from down, I had no idea what was happening. All I knew was that we had to get out of here.
“Drowzee!” I rushed to his side. He looked just as panicked as I was. “We run! Drowzee!” I placed a hand on his back. “We run!” I cried desperately, hoping he would understand me. When he began to glow with baby-blue, I looked at Charli carrying Natu in his arms with a wild look in his eyes.
“Them too!” I told Drowzee. “Cover them too!”
I felt it was a miracle when Drowzee’s blue aura carried through the air and enveloped itself around them. Drowzee was a legend.
“Tri-Attack!” a voice called out, and a man riding a swift-moving Dodrio dashed out through the trees. Lights began to shine from Dodrio’s beaks and an inexplicable brightness shone around the moving duo of trainer and pokémon. The lights merged, shooting off at an angle as the Dodrio circled the cloud of smog with rapid strokes of its legs. The same bolt of crackling, smoky flame whizzed into the haze and the silhouette of Ursaring flashed inside with a screaming roar.
I grabbed Charli and leapt up high, to a fat tree. Charli mouthed his muddled surprise at suddenly weighing no more than a feather and I held on to him as he found his footing on the branches.
“Don’t worry, Charli!” I said, trying to calm him down. “It’s Drowzee’s psychic-thing.”
His hands latched on to a thick branch above us and I let go of him.
“Drowzee can do this?!”
A quick, nervous laugh left my lungs as my eye darted to the commotion. “You didn’t believe me?”
Hyoooooo! howled the Noctowl from somewhere above the trees. Drowzee was looking up at me, from some fifteen feet below, his outline glowing. I turned to the action and watched Dodrio’s trainer hurl something into the smoky haze. A light flashed and much of the smog, along with the Ursaring was sucked up into what could only have been a pokéball. The battlefield cleared up in an instant as the ball dropped to the ground and began to wiggle. The Dodrio trotted around the ball with its trainer pulling on the reigns that had been strapped around each of the pokemon’s heads.
When the ball stopped moving, the man dismounted and went over to pick it up. He wore a grey haori and had a conical straw hat was strapped to his back. These were old, traditional clothes which were usually worn during ceremonies of certain clans within Kanto and Johto. The man walked with a sure step, and grabbed the ball, bouncing it in his hand before placing it in a pouch on his waist.
Dodrio let out a harsh cry and let out another Tri-Attack whizzing through the canopy. The trainer calmly approached his pokémon as if nothing and placed a hand on its side. One of its heads acknowledged him as the other two kept scanning through the trees.
“He’s captured the Ursaring,” Charli spoke into dead air.
He’s caught our target... He’s caught it without a custom ball or Arrest.
I held onto a branch with a hand, watching the scene below with a river of thoughts. The battlefield had quieted, and there was no sign of any other pokémon in the area. The ground was still trembling though, but it was receding. The Onix had fled, and likely so had all the other targets.
“Oh crap…” Charli muttered beside me, and I glanced at him holding out his pokédex at the Dodrio below.
“What is it?” I said anxiously.
“That Dodrio is in the level 60s…”
My mind froze but my body acted of its own accord.
“Hey!” I called out with the most intense sense of surrealism.
The Dodrio’s heads turned sharply towards us and the trainer gave us his full attention.
“Tom!” Charli hissed.
What am I doing, what am I doing?!
“We don’t want to battle!” I called out and I found myself climbing down the tree, hopping off the last ten feet down.
Dodrio reared up and cried out, but its trainer patted it and muttered to it in soft tones.
“That pokémon you caught!” I said, treading towards them. Drowzee warily joined my side, both our outlines still glowing pale blue.
“What of it?” the trainer called back.
I got closer, not wanting to shout. The man was young and had slightly slanted eyes. His hair, covering almost half his face was black, but had a deep hue of blue to it. Drodrio had looked big from far away, but up this close, it was massive. Easily over 7ft tall with thick, powerful legs, and long, sharp beaks that glossed like polished stone.
I swallowed the knot in my throat and looked him in the eye.
“We need it!”
(-o-)