TOBIANNA'S SECRET.
This is set nine years after the events of "Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness." Cyril and Rachel's daughter, Tobianna, is now 17 years old, and has set off on a round the Pokéworld trip. However, her parents have heard nothing from, or about her, for months. Until now, that is...
Chapter One
Officer SherlesCyril heard the urgent beeping of his PDA, and pulled it from his back pocket. He opened it, to find himself looking at a grey-haired man he didn't know.
"Hello, am I speaking to Cyril Smart?" he asked.
"You are." Cyril said.
"I'm sorry to bother you." The man said. "I'm Officer Sherles of the Pyrite Police, but I also patrol the whole Orré Region. The Orange Island Officer Jenny gave me your PDA number so I could contact you on a matter of some importance. Would it be convenient if I visited you at your home on Shamouti Island in a couple of hours? I'm on the ferry now." he asked.
"Um..yes, but can't you give me some idea what it's about?" Cyril asked, as his wife, Rachel, came through to find out what was up.
"It's regarding your daughter, Tobianna." Sherles said, and Cyril heard Rachel give a little gasp, and Sherles must have guessed they were thinking the worst, for he said "She's not dead, but I think I know where she is, and if I'm right, she could end up in serious trouble."
"We'll be here." Said Cyril, and Sherles signed off.
A couple of hours later, Cyril was opening the door of their traditional Shamouti Island home to admit Officer Sherles and a younger officer called Johnson.
He came in, and Rachel and Cyril treated them to some Shamouti hospitality, giving them the comfiest seats in the place and giving them some fruit juice to drink. The fruit juice was gratefully received, as it was one of the hottest days of the year on Shamouti Island so far. Relaxing back in his seat, Sherles said "Okay, let's get to the point. Your daughter, Tobianna. Have you heard from her recently?"
"She hasn't been in contact for months." Rachel said. "Then again, we were warned that some of the places she was visiting while journeying around the world might have no PDA or rather dodgy mail service. Her silence isn't totally unexpected, though I must admit I'm hoping she'll find some way of contacting us soon."
Sherles opened a folder. He picked up a photo, and handed it to Rachel, who was standing beside Cyril's chair, leaning against the arm. "Would you say that this is your daughter?" Rachel nodded firmly, handing the photo to Cyril, who also nodded upon seeing it, handing it back.
"Yes, that's Tobianna, I'd know her anywhere, though her hair seems a bit mussed up."
"That is because she has just taken off her helmet." Sherles said. "That picture is an enlargement of a frame from the film from a CCTV camera in Pyrite. It's a hidden camera: we're using it for surveillance of a certain organisation we believe is back in business in the Orré Region."
"You don't mean Cipher?" Rachel said. Sherles looked at her in surprise.
"I'm surprised that you've heard of them over here in the Orange Islands." He said.
"Oh, we've been troubled by them ourselves-me and friends of ours both here and in Kanto." Rachel told Sherles and Johnson.
Rachel had been involved in the last "Shadow" incident in a much too personal manner, partly due to the wings and tail grafted onto her by an ex-Rocket scientist as an experiment in the year 2000. She had, in the intervening nine years, had her wings and tail removed. She could have spent time and money having the blue Lugia-like markings tattooed around her eyes removed, but hadn't bothered.
She quickly explained how she and Cyril knew about Cipher, from the first Shadow incident in 2004, and five years on, when Rachel had herself been subjected to the Shadow Process, Lovrina's pet experimental subject in an attempt to Shadow human beings.
"If Tobianna's been captured or harmed by those people, I will personally go and wring their necks and make them wish they'd never touched my family!" she growled. Sherles looked at Rachel, and shook his head.
"You are not going to like this, not one bit." He said with a sigh.
He showed them a further picture of Tobianna, the same as before from a further distance, a head and shoulders shot. "Still her?" he said. Cyril nodded.
"Yup, that's her. It's odd how she turned out darker skinned than either her mother or I, but I guess that's from the darker skinned elements of her grandparents." Cyril said. "It does make her pretty unmistakable. She looks happy enough." He observed. "I'd know that cheeky grin anywhere."
"And this one." Sherles said, handing a picture to Rachel. "Same frame, less close up."
Rachel took one look at it and her eyes widened. Then Cyril saw her crumple up out of the corner of his eye. He was out of his seat by the time she hit the floor. Concerned, he went around and helped her sit up on the floor. Her face was white, no colour in her cheeks at all, and her eyes were wide, and she had tears in her eyes.
"Why, Cyril, why?" she asked. "I don't believe it, it can't be but it is. Why? Where did we go wrong?" Rachel's voice broke on the last word, and Cyril pulled her towards him, as she cried in his arms. Wondering just what had provoked that reaction, he reached his hand out to pick up the photo. Picking it up, he stared, and he swore, something that Cyril didn't often do.
It was a picture of Tobianna-still unmistakably his daughter at that distance-and two other people. She did not appear to be in distress or under duress. Tobianna he recognised, for the helmet that concealed most of the facial features of the other two was held in her hands. She had obviously just removed it. Who the other two were, he didn't know, and didn't need to know their identities to know they were trouble.
For both they and Tobianna were wearing identical black and white uniforms with brown bandannas sticking out the back. The helmet she was holding in her white-gloved hands was identical to the ones her companions were wearing. The outfit was one that Cyril recognised all too well from nine years ago.
His daughter was wearing the uniform of a Cipher peon.