Why am I not surprised at no posts? Oh well, maybe after this.
Chapter 1
First Day of School
September 4th 8:03 AM, Suburbs of Laflira, New Sundai
Shane Mackenzie quickly sat up in bed when his older sister, Rachel, yelled from outside his door. “Hey, Shane! Get up! You’re gonna be so late for school!”
Shane looked at the Magnemite styled alarm clock on his bedside table. “Jeez!” He had overslept by an hour. He cursed himself and for forgetting to turn on the alarm of his clock. He quickly grabbed his watch and popped on a shirt from his closet, then proceeding to put on the nearest pair of jeans. He bolted down the stairs to the kitchen, pushing past his sister as he did so.
“Nice shot, shrimp!” She shouted after him with a grin on her face.
“Shut it!” Shane shouted back as he poured some water into a glass. He chugged it as he grabbed a couple granola bars from the cupboard. He ran to the door, put on his coat and shoes, snatched his backpack that was sitting by the door as usual and dashed towards his bus stop.
Cursing the school board for having the first day of school on a Friday of all days, he jogged towards the corner store that had the bus stop in front of it. When he reached the stop, he saw his friend Liam Collins. He swallowed the piece of the granola bar that was filling his mouth and called over to him. “Hey, Liam! Sorry I’m late, I overslept.”
The boy brushed back the shoulder length hair that was several shades darker and redder than Shane’s own medium brown hair. “Well that explains it,” he said back. “And don’t worry; unless the bus came half an hour ago, you didn’t miss it.”
“So… it’s first day of grade 11, huh?” Shane said breaking the ever-present awkward silence before they get the conversation going. They might have been best friends but their socializing skills still matched those of a Porygon, and they weren’t even half as popular as one of the polygonal creatures.
“No duh.” He sighed. ”I just wish I could skip school and go on a journey. You know, like Red or Lucas back in the day.”
“Come on Liam, you know that won’t happen. Those days are over. Anyway, we’re not battlers.”
“I know that, but a guy can dream can’t he?”
“I wouldn’t know, I never remember mine. And quit daydreaming, you’ll never be a trainer. New Sundai doesn’t have a league; we just make stuff for trainers.”
“Don’t remind me,” Liam said with a groan. “This place is so hopeless. Other regions have leagues, awesome ruins, actual history, tons of stuff. The only reason trainers come here is to get cheap deals on TMs and Vitamins. That’s why I want to get out of here.”
“Come on Liam, you’ve said that plenty of times before. It could be worse. We have one of the best universities in the world here. We don’t have a mafia like Team Rocket in Kanto, definitely nothing like the Team Plasma fiasco from Unova a few years back. Our region is quiet and peaceful, just the way I like it.”
“Too quiet if you ask me. I really wish things could be more exciting around here.”
“Careful what you wish for, you might just get it.” Shane said grimly. Little did he know that those words would soon ring very true.
***
10:52 AM, Interregional University of New Sundai, Laflira
“And so, to quote the words of the famous professor Birch, ‘Pokémon that travel with trainers are generally better off than those in the wild. They are under care of a trainer, and travelling around means they don’t always battle with the same species of Pokémon every day. Pokémon who live with humans live longer and are much happier.’ Once again we see an example of how humans and Pokémon are much better off together then they could ever be apart. Team Plasma learned that the hard way a couple of years ago. Their moral meter must have been off.”
This got a couple of laughs from the freshmen crowding the seminar hall where the youngest professor in the university, aged at only twenty-seven, was presenting a brief history of Pokémon training. In this case, brief meant a full hour and a half. The young man gave a slight smirk and nervously pushed his glasses up his nose. He had been forced to do this. The man who usually did couldn’t. He personally thought it was the other professors’ version of hazing. At the very least they allowed him to add those little one- liners to keep the pressure down. “The paths of Pokémon and humans are more interwoven than most people think. Yet still some things about them remain quite mysterious. Now, it may seem dark that I say this, but some of those things are probably better off unknown. This about concludes this speech. If you have some questions stick around, if not I say ‘now go, your university journey awaits.’” He inwardly grinned at the parody of the most famous words of the world-renowned Professor Oak as the vast majority of the students filed out of the room. There was a young woman with blond hair, (who must have thought she was one of those ‘cool’ kids, as she was wearing sunglasses indoors) sitting off to the side as she raised her hand. The professor turned to her and nodded. “Yes?” It appeared that she didn’t notice that he was looking at her. “Miss ‘blond on the right with sunglasses.’”
The woman didn’t realize she was being spoken to until a guy walking by her nudged her and muttered something to her. She stood up and spoke over the noise of the crowd trying to shove its way out of the doors. “Professor Morgan, do you happen to have any experience with Pokémon training?”
“Err… Yeah, actually, I do. Here, give me just a moment.” Professor Morgan reached into his pants pocket and felt the familiar shape of two miniaturized Pokéballs. He felt one of them to see if it had a small chip in the metal casing near the button, a factor told the two balls apart. Not feeling the aforementioned chip he drew it out and released the creature inside. “Come on out Miss Masquerain.”
The bug type Pokémon materialized and hovered in the air in front of him on wings that seemed far too small to suspend her in the air. He had never found out how it was physically possible in all the years he had known her. “Masquerrr,” She cried with a stretch and a yawn. The professor knew he ought to let her out more often but due to his busy life he just didn’t have the time.
“Hey, cool Pokémon!” a guy called close to the back of the room. “Weak, but cool.”
Professor Morgan struggled to hold back a laugh as his Pokémon shot a glare at the man in question. While he knew his Pokémon’s special ability was Intimidate, she had yet to learn that it didn’t work on humans nearly as well it did on Pokémon. Still, it was the most fitting response. His Masquerain was stronger than it looked. He had learned the hard way years ago. “Wasn’t one of my points not to make assumptions on a Pokémon simply by looking at it without sufficient experience?”
The guy just snorted and walked out the door. “Whatever, man.”
Professor Morgan just rolled his eyes. “Are there any other critics?”
He clarified some of the things he had said for a couple of the students who needed and/or wanted it. Then the woman who spoke earlier called out again. “So were you an actual Pokémon Trainer? Do you have any other Pokémon?”
Professor Morgan gave a little chuckle. “This is a seminar, not a biography Miss…”
“Thompson, Sarah Thompson.”
Professor Morgan nodded though he knew that he probably wouldn’t remember her name. “Well Miss Thompson, I don’t have much time and some of these other students have other more important matters that I must attend to. Maybe we can talk some other time.” He hid slight frown at the obvious dodge around the subject.
Miss Thompson nodded and collected her things, including a thin metal pole that she used for tapping the floor in front of her as she walked out of the room. It was then that the professor realised that the student was blind. He committed her name to memory and pledged that when he saw her next, he would help her as much as he could.
After answering a few more questions pertaining to the seminar, Professor Morgan bid the few remaining students farewell and exited through a side door, his Masquerain still hovering over his shoulder. He grinned to himself and the fact that the seminar didn’t go nearly as bad as he believed. He still wished that he didn’t have to do the task, nor did want to do it again that afternoon. However, this was what he signed up for.
He paused in front of the door to the office for the Professors of Technology to look at the names on it. “Prof. Alex S. Morgan”. He had worked hard to make it here and the name had a nice ring to it. It was listed underneath a second name on the door, a “Prof. Albert K. Halley”, the man with whom he shared the office and the one whom he had to cover for today. Professor Halley was thirty years Alex’s senior and had an extreme fear of bug type Pokémon. While Alex didn’t know the entire story, though he suspected that it had something to do with Beedrill. This was due to the fact that he triggered a prank meant for his colleague that involved a recording of what was indefinitely the cries and buzzing of a large swarm of Beedrill. Alex had quickly disarmed the trap and warned Professor Halley about its existence. The professor had chuckled and told him that pranks like that were even more common between the professors of the university than between the students. None the less, he thanked Alex and warned him that the only reason that he hadn’t been on the receiving end of one yet was because no one knew anything about him. Alex nodded to him and thanked him for the warning, though he knew that if anyone found out about his past, pranks wouldn’t be the only thing he would have to worry about.
Alex took the chance of his colleague’s absence and let Masquerain explore their office as he awoke the laptop on his desk. While he waited for his calendar to load, he sifted through some of the papers piled on his desk. He didn’t know how Professor Halley completed paperwork like this for so many years. Alex had only been there a month and already stuff had piled up. He told himself that his workload only looked bigger because he had smaller desk and it wasn’t as organized, but he knew he was just fooling himself. He sighed and looked at his to do list. Other than the seminar he had to do that afternoon, he had to assist some of the senior students in a creating a new addition to the Pokédex. Hypothetically it was supposed to track family lines and show if there was another sibling, parent, clone or so on that belonged to some other trainer. Alex guessed that this was all due to Pokémon wanting to have family reunions. Good in theory, sure, but not all the time, especially for bug types, who could have upwards of a thousand siblings, or for those Pokémon who simply just didn’t care.
Alex sat back in his desk and spun around slightly to look at the electronics sitting on the shelves that lined the back wall. Other than a couple of books he managed to cram in on his end of the shelf and his Masquerain perched on the top shelf, there was nothing outside different versions, including prototypes, of Pokédexs, Poké gears, Pokétchs and the like. Alex always had a head for technology and it was a rapidly growing business. If he had really wanted to he could have gotten a higher paying job at RIM, or Research In Motion, the local company that produced most, if not all, of the TMs used worldwide. Instead, he got a job at the university that involved more freedom and paperwork, sacrificing pay, but gaining a lot more free time. The people were more interesting as well; such as Professor Halley who was one of original professors who worked on the Pokédex project.
While most people solely credit Professor Oak with the invention of the Pokédex, it was actually the collaboration of several professors around the world. Professor Oak, although coming up with the idea and leading the project, had mainly just programmed the Pokémon recognition software and created some of the informational text that described each Pokémon, text which some people claim is biased and faulty. Alex had heard stories that Professor Oak was quite an artist back in the day. He even heard that an assistant of his found an old book that contained a sketch of the Legendary Pokémon Celebi. Various other professors added things from their own fields of expertise: Prof. Rowan for evolution chains; Prof. Birch on Pokémon habitats; Prof. Ivy on egg groups; etcetera. Professor Halley was even in on the project, due to his expertise on the usage of TMs from being the former head scientist for RIM. He designed the capability for the Pokédex to activate and utilise TMs. That was before he had retired and became a professor at the university.
Alex sighed and shook his head for allowing his mind to get off track. He opened the task list on the calendar and typed in “Find Miss Sarah Thompson and help her in any way possible”. He then picked up a pen and started doing some of the paperwork wondering all the while where Professor Halley had disappeared to.
***
11:37 University Grounds, Laflira
By this time, Sarah Thompson was making her way around the campus looking for a private space, were she could rest without people looking. While of course she couldn’t see any people, she had an ability that very few people had; the closest anyone got was the Aura Guardians of old and even they weren’t as acute as she was. She could see spirit or as most people put it, aura. Every living thing produced their own unique colour based on what they value and to what degree. She was attracted to this university because the hundred plus years of great minds wandering the halls had left an imprint of a warm yellow glow on the place, the colour of intelligence.
Using her sense, she homed in on the largest center of yellow spirit in the school and using her walking stick to guide her along, she walked into the library. This was where she should be, reading anything she could lay her hands on. Her power could let her sense who touched the book and in the cases of some older book, the spirit of who wrote it. But the actual words on the pages were dead, she couldn’t pick them up. Of course there was braille but hardly anything was written in it and being read to just wasn’t the same.
After exiting the building, she finally found a spot in a tiny park; it was inside a small grove of trees. Sensing no one nearby, she focused her energy and her body spasmed as though it was struck by a Thunderbolt. That was when her body disintegrated, revealing her true form at the core. She stretched her arms and twin tails, though she kept its eyes closed. She ‘looked’ to the sky and located a distant, but very powerful pure white spirit and made a connection with it. “Lord Arceus, it is I, Uxie, reporting.”
Another signal was sent immediately back. “I trust your mission was successful?”
“The human, Halley, knew nothing. There isn’t enough time to interrogate another one, and even if there was, they would be either too important to go without an alert, or not important enough to know anything. Halley was our best bet.”
“I take it you took care of him?”
“Yes sir, he won’t remember a thing.” Uxie sensed displeasure from her master. “Sir, he’s just a harmless old man. I didn’t need to kill him.”
“Uxie! It’s the old ones we need to worry about the most! Don’t you remember the war the humans had? Hundreds of Pokémon senselessly killed just because humans couldn’t stop bickering.”
“You ended it in the end, though.”
Uxie practically felt her master’s spit of disgust and saw a couple purple sparks shoot through his spirit, an event that was becoming more and more common. “Yes, but only because I had to work with those two narcissistic, hypocritical, Johtonian scumbags.”
Uxie smirked at the irony of her master’s words against the legendary duo Lugia and Ho-oh. “We’ll not have to worry about them this time, Milord. What are my orders now?”
There was short a pause, and then her master replied. “Darkrai has put a lot of pressure on the human leader. Epsilon Team is enroute to break him. Monitor them and make sure they complete the task. When finished you may continue monitoring the human establishment which you’re residing at now.”
“Yes, lord Arceus.” Uxie terminated the mental connection as she began floating off invisibly to the to the spirit signature of Epsilon Team. Though she knew that nothing harmful to their cause was going on at the university, she felt attracted to the place. For some reason, however, one of the professors stood out for her. Their spirit was almost a pure white, with a very slight orange hue. White was extremely rare in humans and finding one that is steady white was even rarer. Something special will come from them, though what, she didn’t know. She shook the feeling off and prepared for the mission at hand.
Island of New Sundai (PG 13)
*Facepalm*
Reply With Quote
Hello there and welcome this new comer 