The rain was pounding on the leather ceiling above me in the cold night. The grey tent managed to keep me safe from the rain by keep the water outside and not letting it through the weak, thick walls. I also had warmth as the tent did keep some heat in, but not good enough to keep everything warm. It didn't provide any light for my research though, but a traveler must be one step ahead. In the four corners, lanterns are lit to show all shadows and even one above me in the middle of the room has been helpful. The reason for so many lanterns was not because I was scared of the dark, and I will confess that I still am at the age of forty-nine, but that the tent was large enough for an entire football team to sleep with spacious room. But half of the tent was full of samples that we have taken and testing equipment for what we found.

What is all of this stuff for? Well, just recently, we found a new island in this world. We hoped that perhaps a new species of Pokemon would be here, but so far, we have found nothing. My team was told that if a new species of anything, plant or living creature, was discovered, then the island will be given to science for further studying. But if we found nothing in a month of working, then the island will be turned into a resort. It is a lovely island actually, a dormant volcano in the middle, beautiful beaches as far as the eye can see, an ocean that shows no other land (besides our boat a few miles out,) and a dense jungle full of wildlife. But for now, we have found nothing on this hundred square miles of land.

I looked back at the map, tons of marks have been made of where we have explored, and with only a week, we had one last spot. The rest of the areas have shown nothing but things that do exist in our world. Nothing impressive either, just common things you could find on just about any island.

My Persian, my only pet that I have every owned and also one that just couldn't stand being away from me for a long time, had his head laid down on my right leg, sleeping peacefully like he always did at late nights. But he suddenly woke up and looked behind me, the opening to the tent. He would only wake in these kinds of things if someone or something was coming, he'll even meow at me if someone was at the front door. I looked behind me and started to listen. The pounding rain muffled every little noise I could hear, but someone had to be there. Persian got up and started to walk over to the opening, meowing like he usually did. Surely the person wasn't bad, probably just someone returning from the rain.

"Don't worry, it'll be alright," I could hear a female voice talking outside. There was only one woman who came with us on this trip (and no, she's married just like everyone else who came along,) Samantha. But was odd was the person she was talking to. We were sure that there was no other human life on this island, and everyone else knew that this tent was open for anything but partying. So who was it?

I turned around in time to see the first person I guessed there, Samantha. But her leather coat that she wore this afternoon wasn't on her. Instead, a smaller figure that clutched onto her soaking wet jeans. I couldn't see who was holding onto her so closely, but I guessed that she found some child. Perhaps this island was inhabited by other humans after all.

Persian sniffed the kid, but the child just put himself (or was it herself?) closer to Samantha and made a small whine. "It's alright," Samantha kneeled to the child, "It won't bite. Why don't you show yourself to professor?" Samantha pointed at me and I was quick to figure out the attitude of this one. Turning his head to look at me (I was still confused at the gender,) but I was shocked to see something completely different from a human. A guessed a boy now, but that wasn't the surprise now. The boy's face was circled and blue with what almost like a black mask over his large red eyes. His noise was black like a canine's, which showed that he wasn't human. On the side, I could barely see two small black bumps over the hood of the coat.

"Isn't he just a-?" I quickly asked, thinking this might have been one of Samantha's attempt to save a poor Pokemon.

"No, look!" Samantha gently showed the creatures hand. A normal Riolu would have three fingers, but this one had four and a thumb on a bigger hand! "See! And even his feet show the same thing!" Samantha continued on.

"Do you know what this means?" I asked her, "This could mean a new chapter in intelligent life forms!"

She thought about it, and came with a surprise, "But this could also mean something else. I don't know if the public is ready for this kind of discovery, there might be some complaint about how the world should be run with view of wildlife."

"Yes but-" I tried to explain thoroughly.

"Professor, if you don't mind, I would prefer if this was a secret in just our group, okay?"

I couldn't say no to that one now. Samantha looked at me in the eye with her little smile. Ever since I watched her grow up when she first entered the laboratory as a freshman collage student many years ago, her smile always made me feel like something good was going to happen. I tried to looked at the creature to avoid her glance, but it was bothering my decision with his soft petting to Persian who purred at his soft touch. "Are there others of his kind?" I asked, I couldn't forget that we needed an excuse for the island to be saved.

"I'm not sure," Samantha answered, "I kept trying to ask him that question, but he would never respond to it at all no matter how much I pleaded. I don't think he wants to talk about it."

With a sigh, I came up with an excuse, "We'll put in the report that the final area has shown a sign of new species, but everything else appears similar."

Author's Notes

Probably going to be my one of my last two Pokemon fanfictions for a while, so I hoped you enjoyed it. So far, this is going to be one-shot and stay as one until I think readers want to see what happens afterwards and if I can think of something a little interesting this time (I'm not going to make that mistake again...) Anyways, thanks again for reading my short burst of an idea (that can never work out) and feel free to hit the review button for just about anything (including flames that could be useful.)