Hello! Welcome to my newest story after my Warriors one failed because I ran out of ideas for it. Almost completely. So I started writing this, which I hope to become better, more exciting, longer, and for me to be bothered to write lots and lots :3 Hopefully that won't be too hard for me, when I've been meaning to write this for over a week but couldn't think of any names for the characters :p Don't worry though, I'll manage it. Anyway, on with the story!
Chapter 1 ~ Levinia Lost
Dappled shadows covered the ground as a small creature slinked silently past a low-lying bush, causing it to rustle quietly. It ignored it, even when the shrill cry of a bird came, filling the area followed by the rush of wing beats. It was all normal, nothing for them to worry about, for all it could be just another thing living there. The lizard-like being soon ducked down even more so as they crawled underneath another bush, large leaves concealing their presence from the searcher. As quietly as she could, she waited.
"Levinia! Where are you?" The feminine voice of an Eevee rang out around her, clearly coming from some place nearby. She smiled. Nobody would find her like that, just wandering around calling her name. There was much more to the game than just that.
The eevee continued searching, ducking down to look under leaves, up into the trees, but Levinia was nowhere to be found. She paused. Of course she couldn't find her just like that. Levinia was never the easiest Pokémon to be found.
"Have you found her yet?" A Vulpix bounded over to her, closely followed by a Shinx. "We couldn't find her anywhere. It's like she just - disappeared! But Helioptile aren't meant to be able to use Teleport or anything like that, are they? I don't remember her ever being able to turn invisible either." The vulpix looked down to her paws. "What if we never find her?"
"Don't be silly, Kitsune, were you really expecting to find Levinia that easily?" The shinx asked, giving her skinny tail a single flick. "We all know she's the best at hiding out of all of us. Look harder."
Kitsune grunted. "If you now where she is, Elysia, then just tell us." She sat down, slapping her six tails onto the ground behind her.
The Shinx, Elysia, sighed. "I never said I knew where she was. But if you're not going to look, then just Aki and I will."
Meanwhile, Levinia listened intently on her friends' conversation from her hiding spot which lay just a couple meters away from where they had gathered. Was her hiding spot seriously that hard to find? They should be used to it by now. Whenever they played this game, Levinia would always take the hardest spots, yet they still hadn't learnt to look harder? She thought at least her colour would give her away - being yellow - but it still didn't seem too.
Aki nodded. "I'll look under these bushes here. Levy never takes the obvious spots." The eevee began to squeeze underneath the closest bush, keeping her fluffy tail close so it wouldn't get caught in the branches.
"Okay," Elysia mewed before wandering slowly away to look somewhere else.
"If you two are looking, then so am I." Kitsune announced, standing back up. "I'm not going to sit around doing nothing while you two do all the work."
Aki turned back to look over at the vulpix, and giggled. "Meanwhile, you're still just standing there while Elysia and I have already started looking again."
Kitsune stood there for a second, before realizing that Aki was right. "Nope!" She squeaked, turning around and dashing off before the eevee could say another word.
"What does she expect to do? Step on Levy lying in the middle of the path?" Aki muttered under her breath, before she continued making her way to find the young helioptile.
"Took you long enough," a very familiar voice sounded from just ahead, surprising the eevee.
"Levinia, there you are!" Aki mewed, surprised yet relieved at the same time. "You better not tell me your were here the entire time."
"I was here the entire time," Levinia grinned. "That make you happy?"
"No, it doesn't." Aki murmured straight-forwardly. She didn't really care though. She already had a great idea on her mind.
Levinia didn't say anything in reply, just giggled quietly at the eevee's furious yet not-so-furious expression, giving Aki the chance to continue speaking.
"Well then, how about we go trick Elysia and Kitsune?" Aki suggested, speaking quietly so only the helioptile could hear her, not even those with the most acute hearing above the other forest sounds surrounding them.
"I like the sound of that." Levinia agreed, talking in her normal quiet voice. "You have an idea on what should be do to them?"
"Hmm... It's not really anything exciting, but we could go back to the meadow and act like we were there the entire time? They won't be looking for you there because we already agreed to not leave the forest." Aki explained, glancing up at the trees in thought.
Levinia shook her head. "Something more exciting. Like, umm.. I don't know. Just.. something. We could do your idea, but maybe if we could trick them into thinking something somehow?" She stood up onto her hind legs, scanning the area around them for any ideas.
Aki looked back at the electric Pokémon, and nodded. "We could hide in the trees and follow them everywhere, and then when they come back here saying to the other how they couldn't find you, we could jump down and surprise them!" She explained excitedly. "You can follow Elysia, because she's an electric type like you, and I'll follow Kitsune."
"Okay! We can be stalker-buddies!" Levinia high-pawed Aki, keeping quiet. "You can stay in plain view while you're looking for Kitsune because you can just say you can't find me, but then sneak out of sight and secretly follow her. I can just keep to the shadows. Sound good?"
"Perfect. Let's go!" Aki bounced away through the bushes back to the main pathway, leaving Levinia by herself again.
The lizard Pokémon looked around, listening intently for any signs of the shinx. 'Left', she decided, crawling sneakily up the slight slop. She was now on a ledge, about a meter and-a-half above the main path, the ground sloping rather steeply downwards on her right. Keeping low and under the leaning trees, she ran almost noiselessly ahead, any leaves hardly crunching under her light-footed gait.
Elysia was a short distance ahead, still searching under and around every bush and fern, every tree and shrub. Of course for her, Levinia was yet to be found. Not at all was she aware that at that very moment, that same helioptile was, quite stalker-like, watching her every move from her perch on a wide branch just some height above her head.
"Levy? Where are you?" She asked no-one in particular, just out of her purely wondering the same question. "You have to be there somewhere."
'Maybe I am, maybe I'm not,' Levinia silently said to herself in her own mind. The shinx was still not aware, even as they both continued on, one one the ground clueless, the other up on the branch watching.
"Hey Aki, have you found Levinia yet?" Kitsune asked the eevee as she looked back at her, who had just caught up to the vulpix.
Aki shook her head, "Nope, not a sign," she lied. "Still no signs here?"
"None. I've looked everywhere, but I still can't find that sneaky helioptile." She explained, looking back and forth to imitate.
"Hmmm," Aki wondered. "Maybe she's moving around? We could try looking back over there," she suggested, looking back and pointing her long ears to show what direction she was talking about.
"I suppose it could work..." Kitsune trailed off. "She wasn't there when you looked?"
"No, I told you before." The eevee shook her head more violently this time, like she was trying to shake some invisible joltik off her ear. "I haven't seen Levy since we started playing, when she slunk off to hide."
"Maybe you should go back and look?" Kitsune advised, wandering on while still glancing back at Aki, who kept her pace.
'No! You're meant to be the one looking over there! That was the plan!' Aki screamed in her mind, but what she said imitated a much calmer voice. "No, let's both go look back there. Four eyes are better than two in cases like this."
"...and who's going to look back there?" The Vulpix had fully turned around right now, stopped herself in her tracks with her multiple tails facing the way she was previously heading.
"Elysia can. She'll have to backtrack eventually when she reaches the stream, or the lake if she's already passed it." Aki pointed out. "Plus, I doubt that Levy would try and hide so close to the edge of the forest. She's far more likely to hide really deep into it."
Kitsune sighed, defeated. "Fine, come on."
'Well that took long enough,' she said to herself, 'hopefully Elysia hasn't already came and gone.' She followed her friend back the way they'd came without question.
After they had walked on for a bit, Aki paused. "I think I saw something move over there, I'm going to go have a look!" She quickly faked an excuse, and ran off before Kitsune could respond.
"Okay... I suppose I'll just keep going this way." The Vulpix muttered.
Levinia was lying down on a branch not far from where Aki had found her earlier. Elysia had eventually given up on looking for her after getting all the way to to the cherry blossom-lined stream and deciding aloud that Levinia would be smart enough not to go any further. How right they were. But it still rather puzzled her - was her hiding spot really that hard to find? True, Aki had found her so it wasn't an impossible to reach spot for them, but she had already decided when they started playing to take a more obvious spot - behind a bush against the ledge as opposed to one of her other hiding spots. One of which was near the top of one of the tallest trees in the forest, located atop of a short cliff overlooking the lake. On that one occasion, it had taken her friends so long to find her she ended up snacking on pecha berries (which very conveniently grew on that same tree) and watching the water Pokémon down in the lake while her friends went back to the meadow to tell one of the resident Staraptors they'd lost her. Luckily she was found by that staraptors eventually, who gave her a ride back.
"Levinia!" Aki's voice disrupted her thoughts as the eevee came bounding as quietly as they could over to her. "I see Elysia has already given up. Kitsune should be there soon. I managed to run off without her following me. You ready?"
"Yup," Levinia nodded.
The two waited in silence, watching as Elysia sat down on the ground below them, given up and completely unaware of her two friends presence right above her. Kitsune soon approached, giving the same greeting she had given Aki.
"Have you found Levinia yet?" The vulpix asked, but the shinx shook her head. "Has Aki passed by? She ran off saying she saw something but hasn't come back yet."
Aki snickered quietly at the mention, careful not to reveal herself.
Again, Elysia shook her head. "Do you think we should tell the staraptor again, so they can find Levy?" She asked.
"No, we should wait for Aki first. We don't want to loose her too." Kitsune mewed, sitting down to wait. Elysia nodded once more, and they fell quiet to wait, oblivious to what was right above them.
Aki turned to Levinia. "Ready?" She whispered.
Levinia nodded, a determined look showing on her face.
"Three..." the two of them got ready to jump, "two... one."
"BOO!" Both at once, they leapt down landing squarely in front of the two other Pokémon, who were most obviously very surprised.
"WHEN DID YOU GET HERE?!" Kitsune jumped back in surprise, eyes wide with shock at the eevee and helioptile's sudden entrance.
"A while ago." Aki giggled, while Levinia just smiled evilly at them.
Silence fell throughout the group, apart from Kitsune's rambling which everyone ignored, like they usually did.
"...well at least we found them, right?" Elysia spoke up quietly.
"Heheheh. I found Levy ages ago. No idea how neither of you found her, she was right behind that bush over there," Aki directed her ears towards the bush from earlier that Levinia had hidden behind. "And there you two were worried that she had gone off to the other side of the forest or something."
"We were NOT!" Kitsune argued, her tails lashing from side to side like one big tail.
"Were so," Aki replied evenly. "You can't deny you were just about to go tell the staraptor. Levy and I were here the entire time."
"Stalkers." Kitsune muttered.
"Yup. We're not going to deny it. That was our plan all along." Aki grinned.
"...can we just go back to the meadow now?" Elysia asked, standing back up and wandering over to Levinia, who had fallen silent again, but nodded in agreement to the shinx's question.
"Fine, let's go." Kitsune gave in, turning around and wandering away, back in the direction of the meadow. The other three Pokémon followed, and they walked quietly away.
How was it? Good? Bad? Terrible? Awesome? Best story ever? (I highly doubt that last one) I'll be making a labeled map for later reference to make it easier for you readers to imagine what's happening in later chapters when they talk about the meadow, the lake, and so on. Anyway, I hope you liked it! Please read and review!