By Yohann DeSabrais
The Hyperion Factor
Part 1: First Encounter
The sky couldn`t possibly have been bluer that day, with barely a
few puffy white clouds here and there, a gentle summer breeze
pushing them along. Down on the ground, a little yellow pokemon
looked up to the sky in contentment, smiling as he enjoyed the
wind fluffing his short fur.
"Piiiii... kaaaaa..." said Pikachu.
Making his way through the wild grass, pokemon trainer Ash Ketchum
joined the little electric mouse and sat besides him, sighing
profoundly while reflecting back on the past few weeks.
Pikachu looked at his trainer, saying nothing as he waited to see
how to handle Ash`s mood that day.
"I have to face it, Pikachu, I really messed things up for the two
of us." said Ash in a glum tone.
"Pikapi?" said Pikachu.
"Yes, Pikachu, I can see now that there`s no point in blaming
anyone. It was my own stupid idea to choose Charizard as my third
pokemon in the fifth round, and we lost because of that. All our
efforts laid to waste because I thought I could handle that loose
cannon." apologized Ash.
"Pi, Pika, chu!" said the little mouse, objecting his friend`s
apologetic mea culpa.
"It`s no use denying it, Pikachu, I screwed up. I thought I was the
best trainer in the world, Richie just showed me what I loser I
really am. I`m sorry." said Ash, turning his eyes away to avoid
meeting the gaze of his tiny friend.
Pikachu couldn`t hear anymore of this self-pity from Ash. Reaching
out with his tiny hand, he touched his human master`s arm and
released a mild amount of electrical current.
"CHUUUUU!!!" he yelled as Ash reeled back in a stunned stupor,
smoke billowing from his mouth as he laid on the ground.
Pikachu blew the smoke off his finger just like he saw a sherif do
with his gun in a movie a few weeks before. He was really tired of
Ash beating himself up over his defeat, and figured that a little
"shock therapy" might do him some good.
"Yeow..." complained Ash as he got back up. "Thanks, I needed
that." he said, his voice still a little shaky.
"Kachu!" said the little pokemon, his smile returning.
"Hey, there they are!" said a familiar voice, a young feminine
figure making her way through the tall grass. Misty joined Ash
and Pikachu, her little hatchling pokemon in her arms as always.
"Togepi!!!" went the cute little pokemon who still wore part of
his cracked shell as pseudo-clothes.
"We heard the electrical shock all the way across the field." said
Misty as she sat down with Ash and Pikachu, laying down Togepi on
the ground.
"Chu!" said Pikachu, running to the cute auburn girl and cuddling
to her.
"Why did you come here? I thought you said you were tired of
hearing me whine." asked Ash.
"I am. But your mom asked me to bring you this." she replied,
reaching out in her jacket pocket and pulling out a calculator
shaped miniature encyclopedia. "You forgot it this morning after
you had breakfast. She insisted that you bring it along in case
you met a new pokemon and wanted to record it in."
Ash opened Dexter and checked at the high number of pokemon he`d
tracked, but then closed it up right away.
"Thanks, but I don`t think I`ll see any new ones today. I`ve roamed
the surrounding area of pallet and seen just about every pokemon
there is. There`s a few legendary pokemons I`ve never met, of
course, but the odds of seeing them here are about as good as those
of Team Rocket actually managing to steal something." said Ash,
laughing a little as he did.
"How are you feeling today, anyway?" she wondered.
"Better, I guess. Funny how having a few hundred volts go through
your spine can cram some sense in your head." replied Ash.
Pikachu and Misty giggled at this last comment.
"I`m supposed to meet professor Oak today. When I got up, I
decided to cancel, but I`ve had time to think it through." he
continued.
"You`re going after all?" guessed Misty.
"Yeah, I guess I am." said Ash, pocketing his pokedex and heading
back to town. "Coming, Pikachu?"
The little mouse hopped from Misty`s lap, running after Ash and
jumping on his shoulder. Misty looked at him walking confidently,
unsure if he`d really worked out all his confidence issues. She`d
know soon enough, most likely. For some reason, trouble always
seemed to follow Ash around no matter what he did. If he was his
old self again, he`d easily make it through almost unscathed...
unless he tried using Charizard again, that is. Then he`d get
scorched in the process like the last time.
"Gepi?" went the little hatchling creature.
"Yeah, Togepi, I`m a little worried too." said Misty. She was
honest when she said she cared about Ash, even more than anyone
suspected... but she`d be damned if she let anyone find out.
* * *
Somewhere on a road between Pallet and Viridian, two teenagers and
their pokemon ally tried to make some sense out of their travelling
plans, without too much success.
"I`m telling you that this map is outdated!" growled the girl with
the red hair whose styling defied and the laws of both gravity and
reality.
"Is it my fault you spent so much on facial care products that I
had to buy the cheapest one?" protested her friend whose short
blue hair looked like it had received professional care just five
minutes ago despite the amount of time he`d been walking around
on the roads of the Viridian area.
"Shut up you two, I can`t hear myself think." observed their feline
pokemon, a Meowth with the unique abilities to walk and talk like
a human being, skills he once taught himself out of love, those
unrequited feelings further fueling his already strong resentment
toward society in general.
"Jessie, where are we supposed to go, anyway? I can`t find the
place anywhere on this map!" said the teenage boy.
"James, I told you before: Chartreuse Valley has been uninhabited
until just recently, that`s why you`ll only find it on the most
recent maps! Now the boss wants us to go there, so get your ass
into gear!" ordered the girl
"Yeah, these reports of unusually large pokemons over there make
it sound like there`s a good haul to be had!" said Meowth.
"That`s right, Meowth, we`ll get ourselves a bunch of rare pokemon
to please the boss and show him how good we really are!" agreed
Jessie.
"We`ll make him proud of us yet!" said James, taking a dramatic
pose before looking confused once again. "What direction is
Chartreuse again???"
Both Jessie and Meowth slapped their foreheads at once.
* * *
Deep inside his fortress mansion, Giovanni looked onto the
television screens in his office, most of them picking up the
various channels covering the Indigo Plateau championship. The
competitions had crowned this year`s new champion already, and
were seeing her efforts in trying to defeat the four league
masters.
This, however, bored the enigmatic leader of Team Rocket. With
the push of a button, he switched his main viewscreen to the
various spy surveillance camera systems he`d set up in various
cities. Giovanni was a man with many devious plans in motion at
once, and he wasn`t one to let any one of them fail by letting
incompetent underlings go unsupervised.
And speaking of incompetent...
He pressed another button on the arm rest of his chair, and the
main screen was activated into videophone mode.
"Jessie, James, Meowth, are you there?" he said as he made a call
to his field agents.
"Yes boss, we`re here!" replied the red haired girl who took her
softest, sweetest tone to adress her leader.
"And we`re ready for action!" added James as he squeezed himself
into the view range of the small cell phone they were using.
"Hey, let the boss see me too!" squeeled a third voice offscreen.
"Yes, Meowth, I know you`re there as well." acknowledged the
hardened man, his expression refusing to show any emotion.
"So what are our orders?" asked Jessie.
"As you may have heard, rumors abound that a new pokemon specie
has been seen in Chartreuse Valley. I want you two to find it, and
bring it back to me." said Giovanni, petting the purring Persian
who was asleep on his lap.
"No sweat, it`s as good as caught!" assured James.
"We`re on the case, boss!" said Meowth who suddenly climbed
James` leg to be within sight of the cell phone, his cat face
filling the whole of Giovanni`s viewscreen.
"That`s what I`m afraid of..." mumbled Giovanni, sighing in despair
as the communication link severed.
* * *
Arriving on Professor Oak`s compound, Ash and Misty were greeted by
a small group of Nidorans, both males and females. The adorable
little pokemons were busy playing in the wide open stretches of
grassland surrounding the professor`s lab, having a good time in
the warm sun.
"They certainly look happy here." observed Ash.
"Of course they are, professor Oak takes such good care of them!"
replied Misty who hoped she`d get a chance to drop by the pond
where the professor kept the water pokemon left in his care.
"Pika!" said Pikachu as he saw a small group of electric mice
running around a few yards away at the edge of a small wooded
area.
"Wanna go have some fun with them for a little while, Pikachu?"
"PIKA PIKA!" he replied, hopping off Ash`s shoulder and joining
with the other pokemons of his kind.
"It`s been a long time since he`s been here with other Pikachus,
hasn`t it?" asked Misty, looking at her small electric friend as
he ran to the woods.
"It certainly has... I can hardly believe he and I have been
together for over a year now."
"I know the feeling, Ash. It`s been two years now since I caught
my first Staryu, and he`s been a Starmie for a year now. That
reminds me, I better drop by Cerulean to pick him up soon, and
let my Staryu have a little exercise too!" said Misty as she
handed Togepi to Ash for a few moments, taking a pokeball from
her pocket to unleash her starfish pokemon.
"Staryu, come out to play for a while!" she said, a red beam
shooting out of the ball and releasing the pokemon inside...
which instead turned out to be a short, stubby and confused
looking duck.
"Psy?" he went.
"PSYDUCK?!? Why do I ALWAYS take YOUR pokeball out of my pocket
when I want my other pokemons???" she whined.
Ash could hardly contain his laughter.
"I think he likes you, Misty." he observed.
She silently replied by bashing him behind the head with the
empty pokeball.
"Oh well, come along, Psyduck. You need to strech your legs too,
I guess." conceided the red haired girl.
"Psy."
The two young trainers and their pokemons made their way along the
trail until they reached the large home of the famous pokemon
researcher who had originally given Pikachu to Ash. He was busy
taking care of a large group of bird pocket monsters, feeding them
the various kinds of seeds they needed to keep their health at
their peak.
"Hello, Ash, I was beginning to wonder if you`d come. Your mother
has been telling me that you`ve been a bit under the weather this
past week." said the grey haired man dressed in his eternal
scientific labcoat, his nearly wrinkle free face glowing with
an equally permanent smile.
"Pikachu shocked some sense into me. It put some perspective in
my head, and gave me the chance to put that defeat behind me."
explained Ash.
"Good for you! Now you can learn from your defeat and become an
even better trainer now." agreed Oak.
"Hello again, professor." warmly said Misty.
"I`m glad to see you again, Misty. Your little Togepi seems to
be doing great as well!"
"He certainly is, professor." she replied.
"Psy." quacked her duck pokemon.
"That`s a lovely specimen of Psyduck you have there." observed
the professor.
"Do you want him? Because I`d be glad to give you a chance to
study him if you want! Would two years be okay?" she was prompt
to offer. Seeing the professor hesitating to respond, she quickly
made a counter-offer. "Three years? Five? I wouldn`t mind going up
to ten years if you needed to, I`d be glad to contribute to
science in any way!!!" she said, laughing nervously.
Ash and Oak both had big sweatdrops.
"I don`t think that`ll be necessary, Misty. I have plenty of
Psyducks here." said the professor.
"So why did you call me here?" asked Ash, trying to change the
topic.
"Oh, goodness yes, I almost forgot. Let`s go to my lab, I`ll
explain everything."
* * *
"Okay, I should have a pretty good haul today." said Juniper as
she picked up the six pokeball special package from the shelf
of the Chartreuse general market.
Carrying the colorful carboard box with the Sylph company logo
prominently displayed on all sides, the blue haired thirteen
year old girl made no false impression that she was indeed a
pokemon trainer out for capture. Her two long ponytails shook
left and right as she looked left and right at the various
pokemon merchandise, her heavily caffeinated nerves twitching
like an hyperactive kangaroo on a sugar rush.
"It`s such a nice day... there`s sure to be a lot of bugs out
there!!!" she said out loud as she paid for her purchase at
the cash register, solliciting a surprised expression from the
cashier.
"You LIKE bugs?" he asked her.
"Yeah, I think they`re amazing! Wanna see my Beedrill?" she asked,
taking a small pokeball from her jacket pocket.
"Err... no thank you... I`ll take your word for it."
"Your loss. It`s a beauty!" she said, putting it back in her pocket.
Walking out of the store, she wasted no time to rip open the
package and put the empty balls in her pocket, ready to be used.
She pulled out her pokedex from her shirt pocket, flipping it open
to see which pokemon she hadn`t seen before that she hoped she might
meet along the way.
It didn`t matter that she loved bugs above all other types, a full
pokedex would still look very nifty to show off to the trainers she
met along her travels.
"Let`s see... Geodude, Onix, Graveler, Diglett... lots of ground
and rock types I`m missing. Chartreuse has a lot of those, from
what I heard, so I should see a couple along the way." she mumbled
to herself. "Well, time to go catch some. Beedrill, I`m gonna need
you honey!"
She threw in the air a ball she had marked with a small bee sticker
and a large Beedrill came out, making a few jabs in the air with its
large stingers to show off his skill.
"DRILL!!!" he said to Juniper, eager for a fight.
"Come on, let`s go!" she said, and the two of them marched off
into the nearby forest where wild pokemons roamed free.
* * *
"I`m telling you there was SOMETHING out there!!!" screamed a man
to the Chartreuse city officer Jenny.
"Calm down, sir, just take it from the beginning and I`ll see what
I can do to help!" said the calm police woman, managing to keep
the frightened man from starting a mass panic among the people
who were starting to gather around them.
"It was HUGE! And it ran after me, growling like it wanted to
kill me!!!" said the man, fear shining in his eyes.
"Was it a wild pokemon?" asked Jenny.
"I`m not sure it was a pokemon... it was made of rock, like
an Onix, but it had LEGS! I`ve never seen or even heard of
anything like that anywhere, and I`m an expert about the local
species!" he explained.
A short distance from the small crowd, a trio of Team Rocket
members were listening with great interest.
"A new pokemon specie... the boss was right, it is out there!"
said James.
"Imagine what the boss will say when we bring it back to him...
and how much money he`ll shower us with!" added Jessie.
"He`ll finally get rid of that mangy fleabag of a Persian and
I`ll be his number one kitty again!" purred Meowth.
"How are we supposed to catch a rock pokemon that large,
anyway? I`m still feeling pain from that giant Onix back in
the mountains near Pallet, and we dismally failed to catch
that one." complained James.
"Don`t worry your pretty head with that, James, I have an
idiot-proof plan to accomplish that." said Jessie.
"It better be good, because James is as big an idiot as they
come!" snarled Meowth.
"HEY! I resent that!" protested James who smacked the small cat
pokemon upside the head.
"Let`s go, we have a pokemon to grab!" ordered Jessie, pulling James
by the collar and Meowth by the skin of his neck.
* * *
Professor Oak punched a few keys on his keyboard and called up a
large chart on his screen, displaying all the pokemons who go
through an evolution process at some point in their life.
"I`m sure you`re both familiar with these species, and the
conditions required for their evolutions to take place." said
Oak.
"Of course." said Misty.
"Err... yeah!" added Ash, trying to hide the fact that he had
trouble recognizing several of the evolved pokemons displayed
on the screen.
"You see, this not a well known field. Some pokemons evolve
once or even twice in their life, but the natural process that
led these species to develop evolved forms is almost totally
unknown... but we might have a chance to study it now." said
Oak.
"How come?" wondered Ash.
"We`ve been receiving reports of unusual pokemon species in
the area of Chartreuse valley, and it`s my theory that the
unique conditions there are making it possible for pokemon
species with no evolved forms to actually CREATE such a form,
and go up a step on the evolutionary scale." explained Oak.
"So what would you like us to do?" asked Misty.
"I`d like you to go see if you can find anything unusual over
there that could be making it possible for pokemon to grow larger
than the rest of their species in general. Finding a new evolved
form of any pokemon would be absolutely marvelous, if it were
convenient for you to get me one, but I refuse to have you take
any stupid risks, got it?"
"Understood, professor." agreed the two young trainers.
"Good lads! Now if you`ll excuse me, I have an experiment in
progress which I have to monitor."
* * *
After an hour of trekking around the woods, Juniper was beginning
to be slightly annoyed.
"Where are all those huge bugs that are supposed to be hanging in
this valley?" she asked to Beedrill.
The pokemon shrugged, unable to give her a satisfying response.
"Yeah, I know, I`m kinda disapointed myself... hey, what`s that?"
she said, hearing a rustling sound in the brush nearby.
"Who`s there?" she asked.
A large stagbeetle with thorn-covered pinsers on its head walked
out into the open. Juniper held her breath, as the bigger than
average Pinsir was every inch as tall as she was.
"WHOA!!! PAYDIRT!!!" she blurted out.
Beedrill flew into action, slashing at the large insect who quickly
blocked with its solid pinsers.
"Yeah, that`s it, Beedrill! Show him what you`re made of!" she
encouraged her pokemon who traded blows with the huge insect at
a dizzying speed, lunging and hacking in between parries and dodges.
Eventually, the highly trained Beedrill outlasted the wild Pinsir
who began to show signs of exhaustions. The young girl saw the
opening her precious one needed to make the final blow.
"TWIN NEEDLE!!!" yelled Juniper to her Beedrill.
The pokemon complied to the order, using his fast stinger attack to
deliver a pair of weakening strikes to the rather large Pinsir which
Juniper had just stumbled unto by sheer luck.
"Pin...sir..." yelped the wounded bug as it crashed on the ground,
losing the battle that it had fought so bravely. In the end, the
bee pokemon had proved the stronger one.
"Well fought, Beedrill!" said Juniper, picking an empty pokeball
and tossing it on the knocked out Pinsir. The ball opened on
contact, a red energy beam grabbing the bug and sucking it
inside the ball as it dematerialized the pokemon`s physical
form and loaded the pattern inside its complex inner workings.
Juniper bit her lip as she saw the ball shift and roll, as the
pokemon caught inside still fought against the power of the
compression field and made a final effort to escape. It proved
useless in the end, as the ball stopped moving and a small red
light blinked on the ball`s surface.
Pinsir had been captured.
"YEAH! I got it!!!" she yelled, happily hugging her Beedrill.
"Beedrill!" said the flying insect, proud of the battle`s outcome.
The young girl picked up the ball, smiling. "This one`s going to
make a GREAT addition to my competition roster for next year`s
Indigo Plateau championship. And I`ve got a whole year to train
him too!" she said to her Beedrill, who nodded in agreement.
"I`m telling you, this little Jiu-Jitsu Bellsprout that kicked
our asses last week is going to pay big time if we face off
against its trainer again." Juniper added.
She then went completely silent. She thought she heard something.
Another bug pokemon,maybe? No, the ground was starting to shake.
She pulled out her pokedex, ready to identify whatever it was that
was making its way in her direction.
"It`s a rock type for sure, and a heavy one." she thought, barely
managing to keep under control her tendency to word out loud
everything that went through her mind.
Crawling silently through the underbrush with Beedrill following
close by, she stumbled upon something absolutely remarkable. It
looked sort of like an Onix- it had its head and the same long
trademark body, except that this beast didn`t have a segmented
body. It looked more like a dragon, with four muscular and clawed
legs.
Stunned, she pointed her pokedex to this strange creature.
"No entry for this pokemon." was the reply from the small digital
encyclopedia.
"Well, whatever that is, it`s a pokemon... but a bigass one,
that`s for sure." she said out loud, realizing too late that
she had just given away her position.
The large beast turned its head in her direction, making direct
eye contact with her. The long growl it let out was not a very
reassuring sound to her ears.
"Just stay calm, Beedrill..." she whispered to her friend. "Maybe
if we don`t appear aggressive, it`ll just walk away and leave us
alone to..." she added in a hushed tone, but got interrupted by
the massive beast.
"DRAGONIX!!!" it screamed before starting to charge her way.
"Oh, bloody hell... RUN!!!" she yelled to Beedrill before making
a run for it as well. Suddenly, her luck seemed to have vanished
in a hurry.
To be continued
The Hyperion Factor
Part 1: First Encounter
The sky couldn`t possibly have been bluer that day, with barely a
few puffy white clouds here and there, a gentle summer breeze
pushing them along. Down on the ground, a little yellow pokemon
looked up to the sky in contentment, smiling as he enjoyed the
wind fluffing his short fur.
"Piiiii... kaaaaa..." said Pikachu.
Making his way through the wild grass, pokemon trainer Ash Ketchum
joined the little electric mouse and sat besides him, sighing
profoundly while reflecting back on the past few weeks.
Pikachu looked at his trainer, saying nothing as he waited to see
how to handle Ash`s mood that day.
"I have to face it, Pikachu, I really messed things up for the two
of us." said Ash in a glum tone.
"Pikapi?" said Pikachu.
"Yes, Pikachu, I can see now that there`s no point in blaming
anyone. It was my own stupid idea to choose Charizard as my third
pokemon in the fifth round, and we lost because of that. All our
efforts laid to waste because I thought I could handle that loose
cannon." apologized Ash.
"Pi, Pika, chu!" said the little mouse, objecting his friend`s
apologetic mea culpa.
"It`s no use denying it, Pikachu, I screwed up. I thought I was the
best trainer in the world, Richie just showed me what I loser I
really am. I`m sorry." said Ash, turning his eyes away to avoid
meeting the gaze of his tiny friend.
Pikachu couldn`t hear anymore of this self-pity from Ash. Reaching
out with his tiny hand, he touched his human master`s arm and
released a mild amount of electrical current.
"CHUUUUU!!!" he yelled as Ash reeled back in a stunned stupor,
smoke billowing from his mouth as he laid on the ground.
Pikachu blew the smoke off his finger just like he saw a sherif do
with his gun in a movie a few weeks before. He was really tired of
Ash beating himself up over his defeat, and figured that a little
"shock therapy" might do him some good.
"Yeow..." complained Ash as he got back up. "Thanks, I needed
that." he said, his voice still a little shaky.
"Kachu!" said the little pokemon, his smile returning.
"Hey, there they are!" said a familiar voice, a young feminine
figure making her way through the tall grass. Misty joined Ash
and Pikachu, her little hatchling pokemon in her arms as always.
"Togepi!!!" went the cute little pokemon who still wore part of
his cracked shell as pseudo-clothes.
"We heard the electrical shock all the way across the field." said
Misty as she sat down with Ash and Pikachu, laying down Togepi on
the ground.
"Chu!" said Pikachu, running to the cute auburn girl and cuddling
to her.
"Why did you come here? I thought you said you were tired of
hearing me whine." asked Ash.
"I am. But your mom asked me to bring you this." she replied,
reaching out in her jacket pocket and pulling out a calculator
shaped miniature encyclopedia. "You forgot it this morning after
you had breakfast. She insisted that you bring it along in case
you met a new pokemon and wanted to record it in."
Ash opened Dexter and checked at the high number of pokemon he`d
tracked, but then closed it up right away.
"Thanks, but I don`t think I`ll see any new ones today. I`ve roamed
the surrounding area of pallet and seen just about every pokemon
there is. There`s a few legendary pokemons I`ve never met, of
course, but the odds of seeing them here are about as good as those
of Team Rocket actually managing to steal something." said Ash,
laughing a little as he did.
"How are you feeling today, anyway?" she wondered.
"Better, I guess. Funny how having a few hundred volts go through
your spine can cram some sense in your head." replied Ash.
Pikachu and Misty giggled at this last comment.
"I`m supposed to meet professor Oak today. When I got up, I
decided to cancel, but I`ve had time to think it through." he
continued.
"You`re going after all?" guessed Misty.
"Yeah, I guess I am." said Ash, pocketing his pokedex and heading
back to town. "Coming, Pikachu?"
The little mouse hopped from Misty`s lap, running after Ash and
jumping on his shoulder. Misty looked at him walking confidently,
unsure if he`d really worked out all his confidence issues. She`d
know soon enough, most likely. For some reason, trouble always
seemed to follow Ash around no matter what he did. If he was his
old self again, he`d easily make it through almost unscathed...
unless he tried using Charizard again, that is. Then he`d get
scorched in the process like the last time.
"Gepi?" went the little hatchling creature.
"Yeah, Togepi, I`m a little worried too." said Misty. She was
honest when she said she cared about Ash, even more than anyone
suspected... but she`d be damned if she let anyone find out.
* * *
Somewhere on a road between Pallet and Viridian, two teenagers and
their pokemon ally tried to make some sense out of their travelling
plans, without too much success.
"I`m telling you that this map is outdated!" growled the girl with
the red hair whose styling defied and the laws of both gravity and
reality.
"Is it my fault you spent so much on facial care products that I
had to buy the cheapest one?" protested her friend whose short
blue hair looked like it had received professional care just five
minutes ago despite the amount of time he`d been walking around
on the roads of the Viridian area.
"Shut up you two, I can`t hear myself think." observed their feline
pokemon, a Meowth with the unique abilities to walk and talk like
a human being, skills he once taught himself out of love, those
unrequited feelings further fueling his already strong resentment
toward society in general.
"Jessie, where are we supposed to go, anyway? I can`t find the
place anywhere on this map!" said the teenage boy.
"James, I told you before: Chartreuse Valley has been uninhabited
until just recently, that`s why you`ll only find it on the most
recent maps! Now the boss wants us to go there, so get your ass
into gear!" ordered the girl
"Yeah, these reports of unusually large pokemons over there make
it sound like there`s a good haul to be had!" said Meowth.
"That`s right, Meowth, we`ll get ourselves a bunch of rare pokemon
to please the boss and show him how good we really are!" agreed
Jessie.
"We`ll make him proud of us yet!" said James, taking a dramatic
pose before looking confused once again. "What direction is
Chartreuse again???"
Both Jessie and Meowth slapped their foreheads at once.
* * *
Deep inside his fortress mansion, Giovanni looked onto the
television screens in his office, most of them picking up the
various channels covering the Indigo Plateau championship. The
competitions had crowned this year`s new champion already, and
were seeing her efforts in trying to defeat the four league
masters.
This, however, bored the enigmatic leader of Team Rocket. With
the push of a button, he switched his main viewscreen to the
various spy surveillance camera systems he`d set up in various
cities. Giovanni was a man with many devious plans in motion at
once, and he wasn`t one to let any one of them fail by letting
incompetent underlings go unsupervised.
And speaking of incompetent...
He pressed another button on the arm rest of his chair, and the
main screen was activated into videophone mode.
"Jessie, James, Meowth, are you there?" he said as he made a call
to his field agents.
"Yes boss, we`re here!" replied the red haired girl who took her
softest, sweetest tone to adress her leader.
"And we`re ready for action!" added James as he squeezed himself
into the view range of the small cell phone they were using.
"Hey, let the boss see me too!" squeeled a third voice offscreen.
"Yes, Meowth, I know you`re there as well." acknowledged the
hardened man, his expression refusing to show any emotion.
"So what are our orders?" asked Jessie.
"As you may have heard, rumors abound that a new pokemon specie
has been seen in Chartreuse Valley. I want you two to find it, and
bring it back to me." said Giovanni, petting the purring Persian
who was asleep on his lap.
"No sweat, it`s as good as caught!" assured James.
"We`re on the case, boss!" said Meowth who suddenly climbed
James` leg to be within sight of the cell phone, his cat face
filling the whole of Giovanni`s viewscreen.
"That`s what I`m afraid of..." mumbled Giovanni, sighing in despair
as the communication link severed.
* * *
Arriving on Professor Oak`s compound, Ash and Misty were greeted by
a small group of Nidorans, both males and females. The adorable
little pokemons were busy playing in the wide open stretches of
grassland surrounding the professor`s lab, having a good time in
the warm sun.
"They certainly look happy here." observed Ash.
"Of course they are, professor Oak takes such good care of them!"
replied Misty who hoped she`d get a chance to drop by the pond
where the professor kept the water pokemon left in his care.
"Pika!" said Pikachu as he saw a small group of electric mice
running around a few yards away at the edge of a small wooded
area.
"Wanna go have some fun with them for a little while, Pikachu?"
"PIKA PIKA!" he replied, hopping off Ash`s shoulder and joining
with the other pokemons of his kind.
"It`s been a long time since he`s been here with other Pikachus,
hasn`t it?" asked Misty, looking at her small electric friend as
he ran to the woods.
"It certainly has... I can hardly believe he and I have been
together for over a year now."
"I know the feeling, Ash. It`s been two years now since I caught
my first Staryu, and he`s been a Starmie for a year now. That
reminds me, I better drop by Cerulean to pick him up soon, and
let my Staryu have a little exercise too!" said Misty as she
handed Togepi to Ash for a few moments, taking a pokeball from
her pocket to unleash her starfish pokemon.
"Staryu, come out to play for a while!" she said, a red beam
shooting out of the ball and releasing the pokemon inside...
which instead turned out to be a short, stubby and confused
looking duck.
"Psy?" he went.
"PSYDUCK?!? Why do I ALWAYS take YOUR pokeball out of my pocket
when I want my other pokemons???" she whined.
Ash could hardly contain his laughter.
"I think he likes you, Misty." he observed.
She silently replied by bashing him behind the head with the
empty pokeball.
"Oh well, come along, Psyduck. You need to strech your legs too,
I guess." conceided the red haired girl.
"Psy."
The two young trainers and their pokemons made their way along the
trail until they reached the large home of the famous pokemon
researcher who had originally given Pikachu to Ash. He was busy
taking care of a large group of bird pocket monsters, feeding them
the various kinds of seeds they needed to keep their health at
their peak.
"Hello, Ash, I was beginning to wonder if you`d come. Your mother
has been telling me that you`ve been a bit under the weather this
past week." said the grey haired man dressed in his eternal
scientific labcoat, his nearly wrinkle free face glowing with
an equally permanent smile.
"Pikachu shocked some sense into me. It put some perspective in
my head, and gave me the chance to put that defeat behind me."
explained Ash.
"Good for you! Now you can learn from your defeat and become an
even better trainer now." agreed Oak.
"Hello again, professor." warmly said Misty.
"I`m glad to see you again, Misty. Your little Togepi seems to
be doing great as well!"
"He certainly is, professor." she replied.
"Psy." quacked her duck pokemon.
"That`s a lovely specimen of Psyduck you have there." observed
the professor.
"Do you want him? Because I`d be glad to give you a chance to
study him if you want! Would two years be okay?" she was prompt
to offer. Seeing the professor hesitating to respond, she quickly
made a counter-offer. "Three years? Five? I wouldn`t mind going up
to ten years if you needed to, I`d be glad to contribute to
science in any way!!!" she said, laughing nervously.
Ash and Oak both had big sweatdrops.
"I don`t think that`ll be necessary, Misty. I have plenty of
Psyducks here." said the professor.
"So why did you call me here?" asked Ash, trying to change the
topic.
"Oh, goodness yes, I almost forgot. Let`s go to my lab, I`ll
explain everything."
* * *
"Okay, I should have a pretty good haul today." said Juniper as
she picked up the six pokeball special package from the shelf
of the Chartreuse general market.
Carrying the colorful carboard box with the Sylph company logo
prominently displayed on all sides, the blue haired thirteen
year old girl made no false impression that she was indeed a
pokemon trainer out for capture. Her two long ponytails shook
left and right as she looked left and right at the various
pokemon merchandise, her heavily caffeinated nerves twitching
like an hyperactive kangaroo on a sugar rush.
"It`s such a nice day... there`s sure to be a lot of bugs out
there!!!" she said out loud as she paid for her purchase at
the cash register, solliciting a surprised expression from the
cashier.
"You LIKE bugs?" he asked her.
"Yeah, I think they`re amazing! Wanna see my Beedrill?" she asked,
taking a small pokeball from her jacket pocket.
"Err... no thank you... I`ll take your word for it."
"Your loss. It`s a beauty!" she said, putting it back in her pocket.
Walking out of the store, she wasted no time to rip open the
package and put the empty balls in her pocket, ready to be used.
She pulled out her pokedex from her shirt pocket, flipping it open
to see which pokemon she hadn`t seen before that she hoped she might
meet along the way.
It didn`t matter that she loved bugs above all other types, a full
pokedex would still look very nifty to show off to the trainers she
met along her travels.
"Let`s see... Geodude, Onix, Graveler, Diglett... lots of ground
and rock types I`m missing. Chartreuse has a lot of those, from
what I heard, so I should see a couple along the way." she mumbled
to herself. "Well, time to go catch some. Beedrill, I`m gonna need
you honey!"
She threw in the air a ball she had marked with a small bee sticker
and a large Beedrill came out, making a few jabs in the air with its
large stingers to show off his skill.
"DRILL!!!" he said to Juniper, eager for a fight.
"Come on, let`s go!" she said, and the two of them marched off
into the nearby forest where wild pokemons roamed free.
* * *
"I`m telling you there was SOMETHING out there!!!" screamed a man
to the Chartreuse city officer Jenny.
"Calm down, sir, just take it from the beginning and I`ll see what
I can do to help!" said the calm police woman, managing to keep
the frightened man from starting a mass panic among the people
who were starting to gather around them.
"It was HUGE! And it ran after me, growling like it wanted to
kill me!!!" said the man, fear shining in his eyes.
"Was it a wild pokemon?" asked Jenny.
"I`m not sure it was a pokemon... it was made of rock, like
an Onix, but it had LEGS! I`ve never seen or even heard of
anything like that anywhere, and I`m an expert about the local
species!" he explained.
A short distance from the small crowd, a trio of Team Rocket
members were listening with great interest.
"A new pokemon specie... the boss was right, it is out there!"
said James.
"Imagine what the boss will say when we bring it back to him...
and how much money he`ll shower us with!" added Jessie.
"He`ll finally get rid of that mangy fleabag of a Persian and
I`ll be his number one kitty again!" purred Meowth.
"How are we supposed to catch a rock pokemon that large,
anyway? I`m still feeling pain from that giant Onix back in
the mountains near Pallet, and we dismally failed to catch
that one." complained James.
"Don`t worry your pretty head with that, James, I have an
idiot-proof plan to accomplish that." said Jessie.
"It better be good, because James is as big an idiot as they
come!" snarled Meowth.
"HEY! I resent that!" protested James who smacked the small cat
pokemon upside the head.
"Let`s go, we have a pokemon to grab!" ordered Jessie, pulling James
by the collar and Meowth by the skin of his neck.
* * *
Professor Oak punched a few keys on his keyboard and called up a
large chart on his screen, displaying all the pokemons who go
through an evolution process at some point in their life.
"I`m sure you`re both familiar with these species, and the
conditions required for their evolutions to take place." said
Oak.
"Of course." said Misty.
"Err... yeah!" added Ash, trying to hide the fact that he had
trouble recognizing several of the evolved pokemons displayed
on the screen.
"You see, this not a well known field. Some pokemons evolve
once or even twice in their life, but the natural process that
led these species to develop evolved forms is almost totally
unknown... but we might have a chance to study it now." said
Oak.
"How come?" wondered Ash.
"We`ve been receiving reports of unusual pokemon species in
the area of Chartreuse valley, and it`s my theory that the
unique conditions there are making it possible for pokemon
species with no evolved forms to actually CREATE such a form,
and go up a step on the evolutionary scale." explained Oak.
"So what would you like us to do?" asked Misty.
"I`d like you to go see if you can find anything unusual over
there that could be making it possible for pokemon to grow larger
than the rest of their species in general. Finding a new evolved
form of any pokemon would be absolutely marvelous, if it were
convenient for you to get me one, but I refuse to have you take
any stupid risks, got it?"
"Understood, professor." agreed the two young trainers.
"Good lads! Now if you`ll excuse me, I have an experiment in
progress which I have to monitor."
* * *
After an hour of trekking around the woods, Juniper was beginning
to be slightly annoyed.
"Where are all those huge bugs that are supposed to be hanging in
this valley?" she asked to Beedrill.
The pokemon shrugged, unable to give her a satisfying response.
"Yeah, I know, I`m kinda disapointed myself... hey, what`s that?"
she said, hearing a rustling sound in the brush nearby.
"Who`s there?" she asked.
A large stagbeetle with thorn-covered pinsers on its head walked
out into the open. Juniper held her breath, as the bigger than
average Pinsir was every inch as tall as she was.
"WHOA!!! PAYDIRT!!!" she blurted out.
Beedrill flew into action, slashing at the large insect who quickly
blocked with its solid pinsers.
"Yeah, that`s it, Beedrill! Show him what you`re made of!" she
encouraged her pokemon who traded blows with the huge insect at
a dizzying speed, lunging and hacking in between parries and dodges.
Eventually, the highly trained Beedrill outlasted the wild Pinsir
who began to show signs of exhaustions. The young girl saw the
opening her precious one needed to make the final blow.
"TWIN NEEDLE!!!" yelled Juniper to her Beedrill.
The pokemon complied to the order, using his fast stinger attack to
deliver a pair of weakening strikes to the rather large Pinsir which
Juniper had just stumbled unto by sheer luck.
"Pin...sir..." yelped the wounded bug as it crashed on the ground,
losing the battle that it had fought so bravely. In the end, the
bee pokemon had proved the stronger one.
"Well fought, Beedrill!" said Juniper, picking an empty pokeball
and tossing it on the knocked out Pinsir. The ball opened on
contact, a red energy beam grabbing the bug and sucking it
inside the ball as it dematerialized the pokemon`s physical
form and loaded the pattern inside its complex inner workings.
Juniper bit her lip as she saw the ball shift and roll, as the
pokemon caught inside still fought against the power of the
compression field and made a final effort to escape. It proved
useless in the end, as the ball stopped moving and a small red
light blinked on the ball`s surface.
Pinsir had been captured.
"YEAH! I got it!!!" she yelled, happily hugging her Beedrill.
"Beedrill!" said the flying insect, proud of the battle`s outcome.
The young girl picked up the ball, smiling. "This one`s going to
make a GREAT addition to my competition roster for next year`s
Indigo Plateau championship. And I`ve got a whole year to train
him too!" she said to her Beedrill, who nodded in agreement.
"I`m telling you, this little Jiu-Jitsu Bellsprout that kicked
our asses last week is going to pay big time if we face off
against its trainer again." Juniper added.
She then went completely silent. She thought she heard something.
Another bug pokemon,maybe? No, the ground was starting to shake.
She pulled out her pokedex, ready to identify whatever it was that
was making its way in her direction.
"It`s a rock type for sure, and a heavy one." she thought, barely
managing to keep under control her tendency to word out loud
everything that went through her mind.
Crawling silently through the underbrush with Beedrill following
close by, she stumbled upon something absolutely remarkable. It
looked sort of like an Onix- it had its head and the same long
trademark body, except that this beast didn`t have a segmented
body. It looked more like a dragon, with four muscular and clawed
legs.
Stunned, she pointed her pokedex to this strange creature.
"No entry for this pokemon." was the reply from the small digital
encyclopedia.
"Well, whatever that is, it`s a pokemon... but a bigass one,
that`s for sure." she said out loud, realizing too late that
she had just given away her position.
The large beast turned its head in her direction, making direct
eye contact with her. The long growl it let out was not a very
reassuring sound to her ears.
"Just stay calm, Beedrill..." she whispered to her friend. "Maybe
if we don`t appear aggressive, it`ll just walk away and leave us
alone to..." she added in a hushed tone, but got interrupted by
the massive beast.
"DRAGONIX!!!" it screamed before starting to charge her way.
"Oh, bloody hell... RUN!!!" she yelled to Beedrill before making
a run for it as well. Suddenly, her luck seemed to have vanished
in a hurry.
To be continued
