Crys was riding in a helicopter across the vast expanse of the Viridian Forest. She was being flown in all the way from Johto to investigate a recent series of murders involving some species of Poison-type Pokémon.
Crys opened a manila envelope containing the case files. There were six incidents in total so far. She opened the most recent file: a couple went wandering into the forest and were supposedly attacked by some kind of wild Pokémon. No one had actually witnessed the attacks take place, but the victims' bodies had been severely mangled, with dozens of stinger marks covering their bodies.
"What do you think did it?" Gold had been sent along with her for protection.
"My first thought was a Beedrill, but they said that the venom's structure didn't match that of a Beedrill."
"They could be wrong."
"Yes, they could, but based on this picture, the attack pattern doesn't match a Beedrill either."
"You can't really tell everything from a picture."
"Gold, why don't you just leave the analysis to the professionals," she snapped. She was still angry with him from an incident he had caused over a month ago; they hadn't spoken since. "Besides, I have a lot of research to catch up on and I want to be back in New Bark Town by tonight to get started on it, so please stay out of my way."
"Whatever. Hey, pilot, how long 'til we land?"
"We've just reached the meeting site," the pilot responded. "We'll be touching down any minute."
"Good." Gold grabbed an emergency backpack filled to the brim with Antidotes. They landed about a minute later. There were about a dozen Viridian police officers there to meet them.
"Where are the victims?" Crys ask the commanding sergeant
"Over this way," he pointed past a yellow police line, "about four hundred meters into the quarantine zone." A large section of the Viridian Forest had been quarantined after the fourth attack.
Crys and the others moved over to where the victims' bodies had been found. She pulled out a tool kit and went to work on the bodies right away. After a few minutes, she rejoined the others.
"What did you find?" the officer asked.
"Well, you were right in saying that it wasn't a Beedrill. The venom I found actually belongs to a Weedle."
"A Weedle? But the Weedle here are always so docile. Even when you attack them, they usually just run away."
"I know, which means there has to be something in the forest that's causing them to become more aggressive. It could be a chemical spill or a mutated hive leader or-"
"Or maybe someone's using some kind of machine or something to control them," Gold interjected. Everyone stared blankly at him.
"Seriously?" Crys said, the annoyance in her voice blatantly obvious.
"Hey, it could happen; plus it's a lot more exciting."
`"Again, just leave the analysis to the professionals."
"Whatever. Let's go look for your evil chemical then."
"First, we have to plot out a-" Gold had already started wandering deeper into the forest. "Hey, wait!"
"Why?"
"We have to plot out who's going to look where."
"That takes too long. We need to start looking now, before it gets dark out."
"And it'll take even longer if we accidentally skip over the area that we're looking for. That's why we need to plot out exactly where everybody is going to look."
"That sounds really boring, so I'm just gonna go follow my instincts and see where that takes me." Gold continued deeper into the forest.
"Dammit." Crys turned to the sergeant. "Plot out different areas for everyone to look. I'll go try and get him back."
"Yes ma'am."
Crys caught up to Gold about a hundred meters out. "Wait up!"
"What?"
"Listen, I know you're the big hotshot Pokémon League Champion and all that, but this is my area of expertise. You follow my orders and do what I say. Then, when this is over, we can go our separate ways again."
Gold dropped the emergency kit on the ground. "And that is exactly why I walked out on you that day. Everything has to be your way. You just can't seem to go with the flow of things. That's how I got to where I am now, and I don't plan on changing it anytime soon. So, if you want my protection, get off my back."
"I never asked for your protection anyway! I don't need your help, so you can just go get lost in the damn forest for all I care!"
"Fine!" Gold turned around and continued on his way; he was out of sight a few moments later. Crys picked up the emergency kit and walked back to where the officers had gathered. She approached a group of officers that was preparing to leave for their assigned route.
"Have you all been assigned an area to search?" she asked impatiently.
"Yes ma'am. We'll be checking the northeast corner of the quarantine area."
"Excellent. I'll be joining you."
"What about Gold?"
"Gold can go do whatever the hell he wants as far as I'm concerned. We'll radio him when we've figured out what's going on with the Weedle."
"That might be a bit of a problem. We've been experiencing an unknown source of interference ever since we landed. We can't even get signal when you're standing right next to someone."
"Well then I guess he'll just have to figure it out himself. He's a big boy; he can take care of himself for the most part."
"Whatever you say ma'am."
"Let's just go already." Crys and her group headed off towards their assigned area of the forest.
After nearly five hours of searching, they found no results.
"I don't get it," Crys said. "We've been searching for hours and we haven't found anything, not even a single Weedle. You couldn't even walk ten meters without seeing a Weedle before this whole incident starting, and now it looks like they all disappeared. This doesn't make any sense."
"Crys, over here," one of the officers shouted. Crys and the rest of the group ran over to where he was standing. "There, behind that bush." He pointed to a bush that was about knee-high. Behind it, a Weedle was thrashing about furiously, its stinger poised for battle.
"Be careful," Crys said. "It looks like it's confused. It'll attack anything it sees in its current state." Suddenly, the Weedle locked eyes with the officer who had found it. The Weedle jumped at the officer and dug into him with its stinger. The officer let out a scream of pain as the Weedle began to jab the officer furiously with its stinger.
"Go, Arcanine!" Crys threw a Poké Ball, and a flash of light brought forth her Arcanine. "Get that Weedle of off him."
Arcanine rushed towards the flailing officer, grabbed the Weedle in its mouth, and slammed it on the ground. The Weedle immediately fell unconscious. Two of other officers tried to help the first one to his feet, but he could barely stand. The officer suddenly began to foam at the mouth; the Weedle's poison was taking effect.
"This isn't right," Crys said as she threw the two officers an Antidote. "A Weedle's poison is nowhere near potent enough to work that quickly." Before they could even open the Antidote, the man went limp; dead.
Crys stared at the officer's corpse in terror; it had been mangled and torn apart by the Weedle's stinger. She was used to seeing gore from her research, but she had never actually watched someone die until now.
"Umm, Crys?" one of the officers said nervously.
"W-what?" She hastily stood up and turned around. All of the color in her face drained away as she laid eyes on a row of nearly 20 Weedle, their stingers raised for attack.
"Arcanine, use Flamethrower!" Arcanine breathed out a scorching stream of flames at the horde of Weedle, taking out about half of them. As the flames died down, more Weedle crawled out of the nearby brush to join the others, raising their numbers to nearly twice as many as before.
"Crys, what do we do now?" Crys was paralyzed with fear. "Crys?!"
"What?" Crys snapped out of her panic.
"What do we do now?"
"Oh...umm...now...RUN!" Crys and the others turned and sprinted away from the army of Weedle. "Arcanine, return!" she yelled, pulling Arcanine back into its Poké Ball. The swarm of Weedle gave chase, gaining more numbers the farther they went. Soon they were right on top of Crys' group.
Soon, more Weedle began to jumping out of the surrounding brush, taking out officers one by one until only Crys was left. By now there were at least a hundred Weedle chasing after her. As she tried to quicken her pace, she tripped on a large root and tumbled to the ground. As the Weedle raced towards her, she covered her head and screamed, waiting for her imminent death.
Suddenly, a bright flash of beige and blue hurdled over her head. A mysterious Pokémon stood up on its hind legs and let out a fearsome roar. Crys was still too frightened to recognize the Pokémon, even after it began to exude fire from its back. It then began to blast sun-hot flames across the line of Weedle, turning them to ash.
Suddenly, a hand reached out of the brush behind Crys. It grabbed her and pulled her to safety. The mysterious figure dragged her into a hidden spot beneath the brush and cupped his hand over her mouth, preventing her from screaming. The Weedle followed the fire Pokémon down a path away from them, blasting fireballs as it went.
When the coast was clear, the man took his hand away from Crys' mouth. She turned around and was only a few inches away from Gold's face.
"Are you ok?" he asked frantically.
"Yeah...thanks," she replied, still shaking with fear. "How did you even find me?"
"I just used my instincts. You're not stung or anything?"
"No."
"Alright. Now listen, we're gonna wait here a bit longer, then we'll head out."
"Ok." Crys still sounded like a frightened Lillipup. "Hey, Gold?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry about earlier. I...I didn't mean any of that."
"Hey, don't sweat it. We both kinda lost our heads a bit, but that's in the past. Right now we need to focus on stopping the Weedle."
The brush behind Gold began to rustle. He spun around, gripping a Poké Ball in his hand. Suddenly, the head of a Pokémon popped through; it was a Typhlosion.
"Explotaro!" Gold said ecstatically. "Did you get rid of all of 'em?"
Explotaro growled in his native tongue, nodding his head up and down.
"Good boy." Gold patted Explotaro on the head; he purred with delight. "Now, let's go stop the rest of them."
"Gold," Crys interjected, "we still don't know how to stop the Weedle."
"Actually, we do."
"What are you talking about?"
"Follow me." Gold, Crys, and Explotaro made their way through a long thicket of trees and bushes. They stopped and hid on the edge of a small clearing. In the center of the clearing was a large machine with an antenna sticking out of the top. Next to the machine was a short man wearing the stereotypical bug catcher outfit.
"Excellent," the bug catcher said. "My Weedle Mind Control Machine is working perfectly. Soon, I will use them to take over Viridian City, and then all of Kanto. No one will ever make fun of the bug catchers again! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Oh you've gotta be kidding me," Crys said.
"I told ya," Gold replied. "Evil mind control machine."
"Gold, I swear I'll never make fun of your crazy ideas ever again."
"Why thank you, Crys."
"I bet that's the reason why our radios didn't work either."
"Most likely."
They sat for a bit longer as the bug catcher continued his maniacal laugh. "Alright, I think that's enough. Let's go stop him." Gold stood up out of the brush and walked towards the bug catcher. "Hey, bug freak!"
The bug catcher turned around, his face full of shock. "Well, I'm not sure what's more surprising: the fact that you made it this far into the forest, or the fact that they sent someone as powerful as you in to stop me. I should be honored, but since you are in the way of my success, you must now meet a gruesome end just like the others." The bug catcher flipped a switch on the machine. In a few moments, the entire area was surrounded by Weedle.
"Yeah, that's not gonna work."
"Oh really? And why is that?"
Gold dropped a Poké Ball. A flash of light illuminated the dimming sky, and a Beedrill appeared next to Gold.
"Beedrill, please tell Weedle not to attack us."
"Oh please, like that will actually work."
Beedrill flew around the lines of Weedle, buzzing out orders. The Weedle immediately lowered their stingers, though they still kept their hostile gazes.
"But I don't understand. Why are they listening to your Beedrill? They should be under my control."
"Because Weedle, like most wild Bug Pokémon, always answer to their own hierarchy first." The bug catcher just stood there with his mouth hanging open, dumbfounded by Gold's knowledge about Bug Pokémon. "Honestly, you call yourself a bug catcher and you didn't even think of trying to control the Beedrill too?"
A smile grew on Crys' face. "I remember when I taught him that," she said dreamily.
The bug catcher's face turned bright red. He threw out a Poké Ball and screamed, "Pinsir I choose you!" The Poké Ball flashed and brought forth a Pinsir, its pincers ready to crush anything in its path.
"Dude, you do realize who I am, right?" Gold let out a short whistle. Explotaro jumped out of the bushes and landed in front of Pinsir. "Explotaro, go easy on him. It's the trainer that's at fault here, not the Pokémon."
Explotaro puffed a few cinders at Pinsir, setting it on fire instantly. The Pinsir cried out in agony as the flames burnt its skin.
"Pinsir return!" the bug catcher cried as he withdrew his only Pokémon. He then tried to turn and run away, but tripped on a root sticking out of the ground. Gold pulled a spare set of handcuffs from his bag and secured the bug catcher.
"Just one question," Gold said. "How did you get the Weedle's venom to be so potent?"
"It was all in the radio broadcast that I was using to control them. Aside from stimulating the sector of their brain that increased aggression, it also stimulated the sector that creates the hyper toxin tetrahydrode-"
"Alright, I think we get the picture."
"Simpleton."
"At least I didn't get caught by one."
"...Dammit."
"Well, I guess that just leaves one thing unaccounted for. Explotaro, if you please."
Explotaro released a fiery blast on the machine, causing it to explode. The Weedle that were surrounding them instantly became less hostile and dissipated back into the forest.
"Alright," Gold continued, "let's bring this guy in. Crys, could you call the chopper for us?"
"Can do." Crys turned on her radio and called the pilot.
"Well it's nice to hear from you guys again," the pilot said excitedly. "I lost your signals as soon as you went into the quarantine zone. Did you figure out what was up with the Weedle?"
"We did, and the problem is completely solved now."
"That's good news. By the way, the feds got a bit unnerved when they found out that we lost your signal, so they're sending militiamen with us too. We should be there in a little bit to pick you guys up."
About an hour later, two choppers filled with Kanto militiamen touched down in the clearing where they had landed earlier that day. The bug catcher was loaded onto the first chopper and sent straight to Viridian City. Gold and Crys climbed into the second chopper and headed back to New Bark Town.
"Hey Crys." Gold said.
"What is it?"
"I was wondering, you know, since this has been a bit of a strain on all of us...maybe we could just, you know, go hand out sometime. You know, like before."
Crys smiled kindly at him. "I think that's a wonderful idea."
Gold was ecstatic. "Great. So I guess maybe tomorrow or the day after we could just go do something. How's that sound?"
"How about right now?"
"Right now?"
"Yeah. Pilot, take us to Goldenrod City instead. I hear the nightlife there is fantastic."
"Right away ma'am."
"Didn't you say you had paperwork to catch up on or something?"
"Well, sometimes you just gotta go with the flow of things." Crys' smile radiated through Gold like the light from the sun.
"Have I ever told you how much I love seeing you smile?"
"All the time."
As the chopper soared past New Bark Town and towards the flashing neon lights of Goldenrod City, Crys rested on Gold arm, excited about the adventures to come.