*dance* *dance* Look loook look! Chapter 2!
Rating: Pg (not that I want your parents reading over your shoulder...)
CHAPTER 2
By the time we had driven home, dusk was beginning to fall. I was especially glad to get out of the car, because although like the others I wanted to stretch my legs, my mom wouldn’t let me take Charmander out of his Pokčball in the car.
“His tail flame will set the car on fire!” she had said.
So now that I was home, I released him into the newly cleaned living room.
“Charr!” he said, popping out of his Pokčball. Then, he said in real words, “I wonder where I am?”
“You’re at my house er... Charmander,” I answered, not knowing exactly what to call him.
Charmander gave me a surprised look. “You took pokčspeech lessons?” he asked. “You were supposed to tell the Professor if you had. He’s taking a poll of all of the people who have, you know.”
“I know,” I said, “Its part of the registration process. ‘It is the trainer’s responsibility to inform the pokčmon Professor that you get your starter pokčmon from if you have taken any introductory pokčspeech or pokčspeech courses.’” I had memorized this information way back when I was twelve. “I didn’t do my duty because I really never have taken any lessons.”
Charmander looked even more surprised at this, although he looked slightly relieved at the same time. “Oh. Well then, why do you know pokčspeech?”
I then related to Charmander all that had happened today, and what my grandfather had explained to me.
“Wow, I had always hoped for a special trainer, but I had never imagined anything like this! Although,” he added as an afterthought, “for a second there I thought I had gotten a lying trainer!”
I laughed, which must have wiped away any remaining doubt he had left, for he grinned, a broad grin which exposed his pointy charmander teeth.
“So,” I said, suddenly curious, “what about you? Now you know some stuff about me, so I want to know some stuff about you!”
“Well,” he told me, “I'm just a normal charmander from a normal family. Nothing special like you. I was the eldest of three other siblings, two males and a female. They and I used to talk a lot at night when we should have been sleeping about what an ideal trainer should be. Our ideas got wilder and wilder, such as being trained by a legendary pokčmon, until our mother, who by then obviously knew of our discussions, told us to ‘shut up and go to bed’. Once I got to level five, my mommy flew me to the Professor’s. There I waited with those other tyrannical pokčmon, excluding bulbasaur of course, until you came. I'm guessing you know the rest,” he finished with a laugh.
“Charmander,” I said, struck by a sudden thought, “what’s your name? I'm not sure I want to call you Charmander all the time. It gets kind of old, hearing other people calling their pokčmon by their breed all the time, you know what I mean?”
“Glad you mentioned it, I don’t much like the thought of that either. My name’s Blaze.”
“Cool!” I said.
Throughout the time that I was talking with Blaze, my parents and Jaymi apparently had packed all of the stuff for my journey that was to begin the next day, and now came filing into the living room, collapsing on the other sofa.
“Thanks guys!” I said, upon hearing of their accomplishment.
“Oops!” said my mom randomly, smacking herself with her hand, “Miyah, dear, the only thing we forgot is the money for you. Could you go get it?”
“Of course, Mom,” I said, “Where is it?”
“In the dresser in my room— the one that’s the same as the one you have, top shelf.”
I got up and walked into my parent’s room, closely followed by a curious Blaze. I spotted the dresser in question almost immediately. As it was dark in the room, even with the small table lamp on, I couldn't see into the drawer. Reaching in confidently, (having reached the same way into my own dresser for years) I was surprised when my hand hit the bottom much earlier than expected.
“Ouch!” I exclaimed sucking on my jammed fingers. “Hey Blaze, could you jump up here and use your tail flame as a light for a second please?”
He obliged, and with the newly added light, I saw the money almost immediately. I grabbed the many bills, and as I did, I saw a small finger-sized hole in the bottom of the drawer under the spot where the money had been.
“Look!” I said excitedly to Blaze. I removed the rest of the junk that had also been in the drawer, stuck my finger into the hole, and lifted. There, in the real bottom of the drawer, was a yellowed scrap of paper, which upon closer inspection was revealed to be a newspaper article, dated three years ago:
Scientists discover way to merge people with Pokčmon!
For a long time, writes Lisa Carson, people have been wondering what the scientists in Kounei forest have been up to. Now, at last, we know! “We've been working on this for years,” one scientist explains. “Although we know exactly how to merge people with pokčmon, it will take a couple of years for us to find someone who is enough like a certain pokčmon that we can merge them.” The scientist further explained that the pokčmon and human who are to merge have to have similar characteristics and both have to agree to the merging. None of the scientists, however, would tell exactly how they could achieve this, for fear of their idea being stolen by their rivals in...
Continued on B4
And that was all there was. I flipped it over, but there was only an advertisement for a coin laundry.
“Miyah! What happened, did you get lost?” my mom shouted from the living room, while everyone else laughed at her quip.
“Coming!” I yelled, quickly replacing the article, the false bottom, and all of the junk. Blaze followed me as I quickly walked back to the living room.
“Sorry,” I said, knowing that even if I didn’t want to, I had to lie, “I was just astonished by the amount of money you guys are giving me! There’s like...” I started to count the pokčdollars in my hand but my mom interrupted.
“... Twenty-five hundred,” She finished, “We know that you have five hundred saved so you can start off with three thousand.”
“Wow,” Jaymi remarked, “I only had two! But look,” She pulled out her pokčdex, “There's a compartment on the back for your money!” she pulled it open, revealing some bills. “And your pokčdex will keep track of the money in there for you.”
“Cool,” I said, pulling out my own Pokčdex and adding the money my parents gave me, before dashing off to retrieve my own from my room, followed, yet again, by Blaze.
“Is this your room?” he asked, looking surprised.
“Yeah,” I said, “why?”
“It’s just that,” he paused, then continued, “you didn’t seem like a very smart trainer, yet you have so many encyclopedias and such.”
“Oh,” I said, slightly abashed, “After they changed the age limit for beginning trainers, I decided to try and become the best trainer ever. I studied for almost a year before my dad gave me a talk about how ‘a good trainer isn’t made from books’. I haven’t really studied since.” I walked to my dresser, grabbed my Sproink bank, smashed it on the ground, and grabbed the pokčbucks that were scattered amongst the shards.
“Hmm...” Blaze looked at the shards of ceramic on the ground.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you think you could fix that with, you know, your powers?”
I frowned. “Lemme try.” I concentrated as hard as I could, but nothing happened.
“Maybe if you imagine the pieces reassembling?” Blaze suggested.
This time, I concentrated hard while imagining the pieces floating in midair.
Suddenly, the spectrum took on a very bluish tinge as the pieces lifted up into the air. I reassembled them in midair, holding them there, while asking Blaze, “Could you sort of melt this back together?”
Blaze nodded, and by grabbing his tail and blowing the flames towards the held together pieces of ceramic, he welded the pieces back together.
I laughed, grabbing the newly fixed, but slightly funny looking sproink bank and putting back on my dresser. “We did it!” I exclaimed. Then I looked up at the clock. “We should get some sleep,” I said. Blaze and I walked out into the living room to say good night to my parents and Jaymi, explaining that we wanted to get an early start the next morning.
As I got into bed, I heard a “Good night!” from Blaze. I smiled, replying, “Good night!” as I recalled him to his pokčball.
The next morning, I woke up very early, grabbed my new belt, with Blaze’s pokčball on it, and backpack, with all of the new stuff in it, put on my bandana, and left while my family was still sleeping. I had never been one for goodbyes, so I avoided them at all costs.
I had decided last night, after viewing the newspaper clipping, that I would seek out the scientists and see if I qualified to be merged with a pokčmon.
I set out into the woods near my home; they were a branch of the Kounei forest, and followed a trail that had been cut through the forest from years of forest pokčmon following it. I knew it had to lead somewhere, so I followed it, calling Blaze out of his Pokčball to keep me company.
We walked along in silence for a while, savoring the quiet of the deep woods. Suddenly, as we stepped into a clearing, we saw what looked to be a young, deer-like pokčmon chewing on a clump of sage. It appeared to be a stantler, but as soon as it looked up, I could tell that it wasn’t one. I whipped out my Pokčdex and scanned it. ‘Fawneer, the fawn pokčmon. Fawneer is a pre-evolved form of stantler. Fawneer are reclusive Pokčmon, who like to live in deep forests.’ I read.
When the fawneer saw me, it turned, which exposed the pale spots on its back, and started to run away.
“Wait!” I called, “Want to battle me?”
The fawneer stopped running and turned, shaking its head before bounding off into the forest.
“Darn,” I said, “I was hoping to have our first pokčmon battle.”
“Next time,” Blaze laughed, “challenge it to a battle before it starts to run away.”
“Oh,” I said, “I forgot about that.” Then, I laughed, “I wasn’t thinking; I guess I was too excited.”
We continued to walk along the path, sometimes encountering and battling wild pokčmon, but no others that I might want to try and catch.
Then, as we rounded a bend in the path, a wild eevee leapt out of the bushes and stood right in the middle of the path.
“Battle me!” it said, although I figured that it didn’t know I could understand.
“Sure thing,” I replied, “Go! Blaze!”
Blaze leaped out in front of me, calling out, “Charrrr!!”
“Blaze, use tackle!” I shouted, as Blaze charged at the eevee. As Blaze got close, the eevee jumped out of the way, and used its own headbutt attack which hit Blaze squarely in the side. Although the attack winded him, I could tell that he wasn’t hurt too badly.
“Er,” I said not entirely sure what to do next, “Use scratch while its close!” I yelled, hoping that Blaze wouldn’t miss.
Sure enough, Blaze scored a direct hit on eevee’s back leg with his sharp little claws as it tried to get away from the attack.
The eevee limped away quickly so Blaze couldn't get a chance to scratch it again. It turned and with surprising speed launched a quick attack towards Blaze.
“Blaze, step aside and use scratch again when it gets closer!”
Yet again, Blaze scored a direct hit on the eevee, this time on its face. Purely by accident, the Eevee’s momentum after the quick attack was so much so that, even skidding along, it ran straight into a tree. As the eevee was staggering around, trying to clear its head, I grabbed an empty pokčball from my belt and tossed it at the eevee. The ball rocked as the eevee tried to escape, once, twice, thrice! Then, it was still.
“YES!” I shouted, “I caught my first wild pokčmon! Nice work Blaze!” I said as I let out the eevee.
“You did all the work,” he said modestly, but he was interrupted by a loud wail.
“NOO!!” another pokčmon came running into the clearing, obviously distraught. “After all of the warnings I gave you, you just had to battle someone, didn’t you Kara, and now look what happened! You got caught!” By now I recognized the cream colored, fiery dog that was yelling at Eevee, who was obviously its pup. It was a flareon, the fiery evolution of eevee.
“I'm sorry, mom,” said the eevee in an obviously female voice, “But the only reason I did run off and fight a battle was because you never let me do anything. I have no regrets that I got caught, because now I can get away from you and all of your stupid rules!” The eevee turned to me, “Thank you for capturing me, now, can we go?” it asked.
“Of course,” I said, “But only after you apologize to your mom, and say goodbye.” Eevee glowered, but did as I ordered.
“Sorry mom, see you around,” it said before turning away.
“Thank you,” said the flareon, and as it said this, I heard a sizzling noise. The noise turned out to be flareon’s tears evaporating as they hit her fiery fur.
“No, thank you,” I corrected, “for allowing me to take your daughter.”
“J-just take good care of her,” she said, before turning and bounding off, crying harder than ever.
“Sorry I made you do that, Eevee, but I didn’t want you to have any regrets later, you know what I mean?”
“I know,” said Eevee, “But please do call me Kara. By the way, how did you learn pokčspeech?”
“I’ll explain while we eat lunch,” I said, setting out a picnic blanket that my parents had given me.
After explaining everything to Kara (who had a very good appetite and ate all of her own food plus half of Blaze’s) she said, “Prove it, put away all of the picnic supplies.” I did, resulting in a very happy Kara when I picked her up too.
“Whee!” she cried happily, “I’m flying!”
“Me too,” shouted Blaze, holding his arms up, so I picked them both up and flew them around for a while.
“I can’t wait until I'm a charizard and can do that on my own!” said Blaze, when I set them back down.
“Oh, yeah, that reminds me,” I turned to Kara, “What do you want to evolve into? I know eevees can evolve into jolteon, flareon, vaporeon, espeon, and umbreon, and I was wondering which you liked.”
“I think I like vaporeon, but I guess we’ll see. I don’t want you to have to spend money on me, you know, for a water stone.”
“Don’t worry, Kara, I’ll spend the money if that’s what you want, but for now, I don’t quite think you're ready to do anything other than think about it.”
“Oh,” she said, looking thoughtful before turning and limping towards the path.
“Hey Kara, get back here,” I said, picking her up and floating her back. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a potion, squirting some on both her and Blaze. “There,” I said, before walking out onto the path with both of them walking happily after me.
We walked for another day before anything happened. Kara pointed out that the trees seemed to be thinning slightly, and when we rounded a bend in the trail, the three of us stopped dead, too astounded to speak.
There, before us was the most beautiful lake I had ever seen. The surface of the lake was so still it reflected the trees on the other side.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a voice from behind us. We whipped around, ready to fight, but it was only a guy that was perhaps a smidgeon older than me, smiling disarmingly.
“Er, yeah,” I said hesitantly, then, in a much more confident voice, “Who are you?”
“I'm Rick,” he stated simply. “And you are...”
“Miyah, and this Blaze and Kara.”
“Cool,” he grinned devilishly, “fancy a battle?”
“Two on two?” I asked.
“Sure!” he took out two Pokčballs. “Go, Chikorita and Metapod!”
“Go and kick some butt, Blaze and Kara!”
“Metapod, harden up, Chikorita, use a vine whip and throw that eevee for a loop!”
“Kara, avoid the vines and headbutt the metapod! Blaze, tackle the chikorita and then while its stunned try an ember!” I yelled, praying that the ember attack would work; it was our only advantage that could lead to victory.
Kara meanwhile was avoiding one of the long, leafy tendrils that Chikorita was maneuvering about very well until the other one snaked around behind her and grabbed her, hauling her straight up into the air. Chikorita had just started to twirl Kara in circles when Blaze tackled her. Kara was dropped, rather than thrown; therefore she immediately ran up to the metapod and headbutted it, looking at me for more instruction when nothing happened.
“Keep headbutting!” I shouted.
Blaze, while this was happening, was trying to figure out how to use ember as Chikorita tried to regain her wind.
“Imagine yourself doing it Blaze!” I shouted, feeding his words back at him.
Once more, he tried, and succeeded magnificently, burning the Chikorita with a cluster of flamey embers that he spewed from his mouth. To his astonishment, the Chikorita got back up.
“Good job Chikorita!” Rick yelled, “Keep it up! Pick up Metapod and hit that annoying eevee with him!”
Kara stopped headbutting Metapod as it was suddenly picked up by Chicorita’s vines. Chikorita swung Metapod along the ground at a high speed.
“Jump, Kara!” I shouted, and Kara obeyed with alacrity, jumping over the
Metapod, regaining her feet as Chikorita swung Metapod around again.
“Keep jumping!” I shouted, and would have laughed at the strange jump-rope game if I didn’t have more pressing matters on my mind.
“Blaze, burn the vines!”
Timing it just right, Blaze shot out more embers at the swinging metapod, which, although they didn’t really hurt the metapod, snapped the vines holding it. The metapod went sailing through the air majestically, only to be stopped by a tree.
“Metapod, return!” Rick called, as his chikorita drew its vines back in, panting.
“Kara, headbutt, Blaze, use ember while it’s distracted.”
Kara ran towards the seemingly done for Chikorita, excited by her first pokčmon battle and the upcoming win. But the Chikorita had one more trick up her sleeve. It swung its head around and released a razor sharp leaf from off its head, right into Kara’s face. Although Kara fainted, her distraction proved a winner as Blaze caught Chikorita in another devastating ember attack.
Rick and I recalled our fainted Pokčmon at the same time, congratulating each other on the well played battle.
“Good job, Blaze!” I said as I called Kara back out of her pokčball to heal her.
When she came out, she looked utterly depressed.
“Kara,” said Blaze, ever the one to cheer someone up, “You do realize that I
couldn't have won the battle if you hadn’t distracted the Chikorita, right?”
“I know,” she replied, “but I still wish I hadn’t fainted.” She still looked sad.
“I know what will cheer you up!” I said, “A picnic lunch! Want to join us Rick?”
“Sure,” he replied, releasing his three Pokčmon (Chikorita, Metapod and Pikachu) to join in, as the ever hungry eevee perked up.
“So,” I asked Rick while we cleaned up after the picnic, conventionally of course, “How far is it to the nearest town?”
“Only about a half of a day’s journey on the same path you’re traveling on now. The town’s a small one, not on any maps or anything; it’s called Brookdale.”
“Cool,” I said, happy at the idea that we could refresh our supplies and get cleaned up. “Are you headed that way?” I asked him, “You’re welcome to join us if you want.”
“Sure, I guess. I wasn’t originally headed that direction, but its not too far out of the way to escort a pretty trainer like yourself.”
“If you think I’m pretty you must be a cross-eyed politoed!” I replied. I had never been too good with compliments. “So what’s this lake called anyways,” I asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“The Lake of Reflection,” he said, still smiling slightly at my comeback.
“Wow,” I said sarcastically, “I wonder how it got that name?”
“I dunno,” he said, playing along, “maybe some old guy who likes to think a lot named it.”
We broke out into laughter as the two of us and our pokčmon set off towards Brookdale.
***
Well? What do you think? I had to re=space the paragraphs, so if there's a really wierd separation, be sure to point it out... xD I'm pretty sure I got them, but... Heh.
~Chareon
Price of Freedom (revision 2)
Reply With Quote
: So...might I ask why you're replying NOW, at midnight, when you just as easily could have a week ago when Chareon was standing right next to your computer?
Originally Posted by Chareon
: Chibi, you suck--this wasn't a review so much as incoherent rambling.
