The story is set in Orre some time after Gale of Darkness. Cipher has improved their Shadow conversion method, and it's unlikely that they can be taken down by one single person. Ordan, the head of a large pokémon capturing company, is in the neighbouring region of Orre at this time, where he learns that there exists a pokémon not seen by anyone before.
As for author notes, I don't like including them with the chapters. I feel that they put the attention on the author instead of the story. I've included this note because it's before the story actually begins. I might put one after the last chapter, too. Whenever that time comes.
1. First Encounter
Ordan had been the leader of Sonos for a long time. Too long, some might say. But he still had a lot to give. He knew he would have to give the company up to his daughter, Alya, one day, but that was not yet. He was approaching 70, but he was capable of managing Sonos for a few more years. He knew that. Everyone knew that.
Sonos was an import company. They were situated at the edge of the Orre region, and earned their money capturing pokémon from the neighbouring Nenta region and selling them to Orre trainers. Nenta, unlike Orre, was a flourishing region, filled with interesting plants and pokémon. The import industry was an enriching one, and workers in the Sonos corporation had generally higher payment and better working conditions than others. People in Orre wanted pokémon, and the few pokémon that were easily available weren't enough to satisfy most of them. Nenta had many species, and most of them were easily available. The license Sonos had was one of the two licenses Nenta had ever handed out to allow capturing of pokémon en masse, the other one had been aquired by a science team that needed the pokémon for research.
Some people regarded Sonos' services morally unfavorable, since it had a large impact on the wildlife of Nenta, while others regarded it better than having people going in to capture the pokémon themselves, something that could potentially deal an even stronger blow to the wildlife of the region. Ordan wasn't on either side. He just owned a company, and ran it the way a company should be run. Though, he wasn't without morals at all. He had before had a chance to run a highly profitable corporation that tested the effects of various chemicals on pokémon and pokéballs, but had declined.
A corporation that lived by capturing pokémon couldn't keep all its workers in a standard office environments. Most workers were out in the field most of the time, and the only time they were in the office was when they were filing their reports. The workers were divided into teams of 7, with one leader and six subordinates. The teams then went out into one of the areas of Nenta to capture pokémon. Above the groups were a few coordinators. They planned out where to send each team according to the orders and the teams' skills. They would then go with their groups to the area they were situated in and help them out from a base. There were also specialists, people who were exceptionally skilled at capturing and training. Their pokémon were much stronger than the others', and some of them had adapted their pokémon to capturing. These were sent out alone, and in the field counted as a whole team. There were nurses and other health personnel, but they were scarce and had to be dispatched with the more inexperienced teams. Above the coordinators were the office ranks. At the end of each week, the coordinators would report back to the main Sonos building, with details about every pokémon that their groups had caught. The administration would then take care of the paperwork, and the pokémon would be sent to the waiting customers.
At the top of it all were the administrators, or admins for short. To be an admin, one had to either inherit the position, or show exceptional skills in administrative work and at the same time show off strong pokémon and good trainer abilities. Critical voices had drawn parallells to the evil syndicates that had at several times bothered the various regions, and Ordan laughed every time at the truth of it. He explained that it was like that because that was an effective way of controlling a company in a world where strong pokémon were a sign of strength, intelligence and skills. At the moment there were 6 admins. Ordan was one himself, and he was the strongest of them. His daughter, Alya, was the second in command and second to Ordan in power. Rolli was the third on the list. He had started out as a regular worker, and had later gained a specialist position. He was a loyal subordinate, and eventually ended up as an admin. Satza was the fourth. Alya had known her since she was a child, and guaranteed her honesty and loyalty. That had been enough for Ordan. The fifth admin was Lorno, a man in his late thirties. He wasn't really as much an admin as a bodyguard, since his only task was protecting Ordan and his family. Finally, there was Uness. He was the only admin that didn't have strong pokémon. He didn't have any at all. However, he was the best in both regions at controlling and maintaining the electronical equipment, and could fix computers that were stuck doing something or other, or in other words, a computer genius. He had built several programs that eased the workload of the administration, and indirectly the workload of the field workers. He had even developed a new type of pokéball, that provided food for the pokémon inside for up to 7 days, so that transporting would be easier.
Ordan was currently on his way to capture a special order. Some pokémon were rarer and harder to capture than others, and some were even considered legendary. When a customer asked for one of these, provided they existed in the Nenta region, one of the Sonos admins would go and attempt to capture it. This didn't always succeed, several tries were usually needed. This time, the order was for a Jirachi. Jirachi had at one point been very common in the mountains of Nenta, but since it had never been seen in any of the other regions, it had been fetched out of Nenta at an alarming rate. As a result, very few of them existed in Nenta anymore, and even less of them outside. Ordan knew it would be hard to find a Jirachi. Still, he had to attempt, and he was certain he'd find one eventually.
He arrived at the base of one of the larger mountains in Nenta. The two capturing teams he had asked for were there, as were the three specialists. He ordered them to let their pokémon out to aid them in the hunt. This was only ever done in these legendary hunts, never in any other situations. Ordan had two specialized searching pokémon, a Crobat and a Dugtrio. Crobat would use its speed and its eyes to look for a Jirachi from the air, while Dugtrio would use its sensitivity to sense anything that moved from underground. He knew that Dugtrio wouldn't be of much help, since Jirachi hovered, but he sent Crobat out, hoping that it would find something. He would go up the mountain himself with the rest of his pokémon, and his subordinates would do the same. If Crobat found something, he'd know, and they would go and get the pokémon. If they had found nothing until the evening, which was pretty likely, they would go back to the base and call it a night.
As expected, by that evening, they had found nothing. Ordan went back to the base to find one of the teams sitting there. Each team were allowed to make their own definition of when it was time to go back to the base, this team simply happened to be a little earlier than him. All the teams were back soon, and the cook had prepared food shortly afterwards. It was a simple soup, but there was a lot of it, and after a hard day at work looking for a pokémon, the workers were starving. Ordan made no attempt at being higher than any of them. He ate with them, talked with them and had fun with them. However, in the middle of a particularly long joke by one of the workers, he noticed a shadow. His contact with pokémon had taught him to recognise their shapes and shadows, but he couldn't pin this down. He settled down, thinking that it was probably just a shape-confused Ditto, or maybe a pokémon behind another. But he still didn't get why it was inside the base. He went to check. The shadow moved quickly, but he was able to keep up, thanks to his training. It had probably stolen food, as it came from the storage room, but the shadow made it rather difficult to decide. Then, then shadow picked up speed. Ordan couldn't keep up with it, even though he tried hard. Eventually, though, he had to give up. He went back to the storage room.
It became apparent that the pokémon had stolen food, but it had stolen a lot more than Ordan had first assumed. The large food container was almost empty, there wouldn't be enough to feed the workers for another day. Ordan uttered a few bad-mouthed words, then went back to the coordinator and told him to abort the hunt. After having the situation explained to him, the coordinator passed the word on to the workers. They weren't too happy about it, but understood the situation. Ordan had the worse end of it - he was the one who had lost a good deal of money, and had to tell the customer they were unsuccessful. However, Ordan disagreed strongly. He had thought about it, and he knew that this had to be a new species of pokémon. If it wasn't, it couldn't have taken all that food so quietly. And it had stolen a lot of food, more than it would need for itself. This meant that there were more than just the one. Ordan travelled back to the headquarters in a hurry.