Disclaimer: I own Pokémon Platinum… My game chip is sitting right over here…

Author's Note: What with the upcoming Black 2 and White 2, I'm not entirely sure how much interest there still is in the fourth generation games. Writing a Sinnoh fanfic is something I've wanted to do for a really long time, though, so I figured I should stop putting it off for any longer. On the bright side, me delaying this for so long has led to a lot of differences from what I originally had planned, which I think will change the fic for the better. Anyway, here we go!

Prologue: Vs Gyarados!

"With the increasing frequency of reports, our intrepid crew made the journey to Johto's Lake of Rage to investigate the rumors…"

The old, bulky television's screen blurred slightly as the news reporter swung her arm broadly, gesturing towards the lake behind her. The crew spread out along the shore, a few of them stopping to question a couple of nearby trainers. After the pause, the reporter continued speaking, her voice a bit more excitable now.

"However, other reports indicate that we may be too late. Local residents have mentioned that the supposed red Gyarados may already have been caught. Let's ask one of the nearby fishermen—"

Static drowned out the rest of the woman's sentence, covering the screen for a few moments. When it cleared, the crew was now miraculously in front of Lake Verity, the interruption making it seem as if they had managed to travel between two countries in the span of several seconds.

"Hey, they had to have filmed that separately. This obviously isn't live coverage. That would have made it so much more interesting—"

"Shut up and listen!"

"So we turned our attention to the three lakes in Sinnoh, hoping to find an equally unique Pokémon. We started here in Lake Verity… Whoa! A flash of red, perhaps? Could there be relatives of the uniquely-colored Gyarados here in Sinnoh? The crew investigates further—"

Frowning, Percy Antares leaned forward and pressed the power button on her practically-ancient, black-and-white television, cutting the reporter off mid-sentence again. She then turned around to see her friend, Leo Regulus, outright pouting. He jumped up from where he'd been sitting on Percy's bed, his arms folded across his chest.

"Why'd you turn it off?" he demanded.

"Come on," Percy groaned. "It probably wasn't even an up-to-date report, so even if there was anything interesting in Lake Verity, it's long gone by now."

"How do you know that unless we actually go?"

Percy felt her eyebrow twitch as the blond boy glared at her. She knew she'd get dragged along whether she wanted to go or not, yet Leo's statement was too simplistic to help his argument.

"Look, Leo. We've been down there plenty of times before and seen nothing special, so what makes you think that something that happened over in Johto will change anything?"

"Whatever, Percy!"

Leo was now standing at Percy's bedroom door, his hand resting on the knob. He then flung the door open and started running down the hall towards the house's staircase.

"Meet me at the lakefront in ten minutes or I'm coming back and getting you myself!"

His voice echoed back into the room as he pounded down the stairs. Percy sighed, running a hand through her short, green hair. Last time Leo had wanted to go out somewhere, he'd managed to sling her over his shoulder and carry her out, despite being a few inches shorter and slightly skinnier than she was. Besides, although the boy could annoy her on occasion, it wasn't like there was much else to do around Twinleaf Town.

Grudgingly, Percy shuffled out of her room and headed down the stairs herself a few moments later. Fortunately, her mother was currently out of the house — not that Percy had a problem with her mother, but Leo's usual antics tended to worry the woman. It's not safe to go to the lake, she'd always say. Even with the two of you together, you don't know what could happen.

Despite being more cautious than Leo — not that that really took much — Percy still wasn't quite the worrywart that her mother was. The Pokémon that lived around Lake Verity were fairly tame, so it didn't matter much that she and Leo had put off getting Pokémon of their own. She highly doubted that anything would happen this time, either.

Locking the front door behind her, Percy broke into a slight jog as she headed towards the edge of town. Really, though, "town" was a bit of a misnomer. Twinleaf was barely larger than a neighborhood, and it only took a few minutes for Percy to reach the lakefront with her long stride.

Leo was already there, naturally, his brown eyes set in another glare.

"Eight minutes, Percy!" he said loudly. "Hurry up!"

"Hey, relax. How you enjoy anything when you're that hasty has always been a mystery."

Ignoring Percy's rather sarcastic tone, Leo turned around and marched down the lakefront's tree-lined pathway. Ahead of them, Lake Verity's clear waters sprawled out invitingly. The view was always nice, despite the number of times they'd seen it, with more trees and a few small islands dotting the horizon.

As usual, the lake was almost completely calm, and nothing seemed to be stirring near its surface. A flock of Starly flew overhead, enjoying the clear sky as they collectively dove around in a circle. Several moments later, a Bidoof trotted over to the edge of the water, curiously looking at the small waves. Percy rolled her eyes as Leo scampered over near the Bidoof, startling it, and he began to inspect the water as well.

"I doubt anything would come this close to the shore," Percy called. "Especially anything as big as a Gyarados—"

"Shut up, Percy!" Leo waved a hand as he scanned the horizon. "Come here and look with me."

She strode forward, admiring the gentle waves in the water rather than listening to Leo, who had started to ramble. True, she certainly wouldn't mind finding an unusually-colored Pokémon, but she couldn't expect to see one immediately after watching a report about one. That would be much too convenient.

"—and I should have thought to bring my mom's fishing rod with me—"

"You could have remembered if you weren't in such a hurry."

"—but I'd need some Pokéballs anyway—"

"You didn't even bring any Pokéballs with you?" Percy put a hand on her hip. "You're the one who wanted to come here so badly!"

Leo paused abruptly. "Can you stop being so sarcastic for just one minute? Oh, hey, look! I think I see something out there!"

He was gesturing towards something pretty far out in the distance. Squinting, Percy could barely make out a few waves stronger than the ones currently hitting the shore. It was probably just a school of Magikarp, as they did travel in fairly large groups… But then, as the waves grew closer, something didn't feel right. It was approaching them much too quickly to be a normal Magikarp school.

Suddenly, there was a large splash, obscuring whatever had just burst out of the water and soaking Percy and Leo. The Bidoof that had been sitting nearby squeaked loudly and scurried away, clearly terrified. As it turned out, the small Normal-Type had good reason to be scared.

A particularly large Gyarados was towering over the two teens, roaring. Leo seemed to have frozen, looking up at it in awe as the sun glinted off its red scales. Taking a step back as the angry sea serpent roared again, Percy grabbed Leo's arm.

"We've got to get out of here, you moron! You've heard how short-tempered those things are, haven't you?"

"But—but look at it! Have you ever seen a red Gyarados in person before?"

"Who cares about that right now? You just said you don't have any Pokéballs on you, so we can't do anything about it!"

Before Leo could reply, the Gyarados lunged forward. The two of them dodged instinctively, each leaping in opposite directions. With a snarl, the Gyarados seemed to be sizing up the two humans. It seemed to decide that Percy was stronger and thus a bigger threat, as she was slightly taller than Leo, and it lunged towards her.

It was fast, she'd give it that compliment. Percy tried to run backwards in order to keep her eyes on it, but running backwards meant she couldn't focus as well on where she was going. Before she had time to react properly, the angry Pokémon had clamped down on her arm with its mouth, the massive jaw being wide enough to hold her entire outstretched arm.

It would have been quite funny under any other circumstance how Leo's shrill screaming registered more on her than the pain in her arm did.

The next thing she knew, Percy was being flung backwards. She crashed into one of the lake's many surrounding trees, crumpling as the Gyarados turned towards Leo. All she could hear was him gibbering frantically as he backed away rapidly.

Oddly enough, before the Gyarados could lash out at him, an orange blur collided with it. Another roar filled the air, but this time it was one of pain rather than anger.

"Monferno, use Fury Swipes!"

An unfamiliar voice rang out, followed by the furious cries of the trainer's Monferno. It was hard to see, as Percy had been flung a fair distance and her vision had gone slightly blurry, but the monkey Pokémon seemed to be dancing all over the Gyarados's back, swiping at it with perfect timing. Just as the Gyarados would twist around to bite it, Monferno would jump further down its back, slashing at it.

"Get back here, now!"

The Monferno sprung off of Gyarados's tail, just barely making it to land without hitting the water. A Net Ball then flew through the air, colliding with the Gyarados's forehead. It growled in protest as it was surrounded by a red light and was dragged into the ball. However, struggle as it might, it couldn't escape from the Net Ball, and it didn't reappear out in the water.

The vague outline of the Monferno's trainer was visible walking calmly towards the lake. He bent down to pick up the Net Ball floating near the shore, and then he carefully wiped the water off on the leg of his jeans. After a moment of silence, he suddenly whipped around.

"Hey! How could you two be so stupid?"

Leo froze again. He'd started to slink towards Percy as she blinked and sat up slowly. The shocked look on Leo's face conveyed the fact that he was too surprised to speak for once.

As Percy's vision cleared, she could easily see the trainer's extremely icy glare. His dark blue eyes seemed to grow narrower and narrower as he stepped towards them. Percy noted his eyes almost perfectly matched the shade of his shoulder-length hair; she still couldn't really register the events that had just occurred for some reason, focusing instead on small, useless details.

"I mean, what were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all? Do neither of you ever watch the news?"

"Sh-shut up and listen!" Leo suddenly snapped, his voice cracking as he repeated the phrase he'd used earlier. "That news report is why we came here!"

"Oh, that's even worse, then!" the other boy continued furiously. "So you knew that a vicious Pokémon could be out here and came anyway? It's actually a good thing that you don't seem to have any Pokémon with you! You're so reckless with yourselves that you'd be a danger to any Pokémon you might get. Humph… At least Professor Rowan will be happy to see this Gyarados…"

With that, the boy recalled his Monferno and stormed away from the lake. Percy and Leo watched him for a moment, and then Leo looked down at Percy's arm. Her sleeve had been ripped up quite badly, but more importantly, there were deep fang marks all over her arm. Blood was still dripping from the wounds, and it had stained her entire sleeve.

"You… you need to get that arm checked out," Leo said lamely.

"You think?"

Percy shot him a look almost as icy as the Monferno's trainer had as she managed to stand up. Gingerly clutching her arm, she started shuffling away from the lake as well. She tried to ignore the dull pain in her back from the collision with the tree as she looked over her shoulder at Leo. At least he looked incredibly guilty, though it was unlikely that his regret would last very long.

"I told you we shouldn't have come."

"No, what you said was that there was probably nothing here!" Leo retorted. The quiver in his voice revealed how shaken up he still was, though.

"Whatever. Oh, my mom's going to be so mad when she sees this arm… Oh, Persephone, how could you do something so dangerous?"

"Yeah… She'd use your full name if she's mad, huh?"

Leo tried to force a grin. He then paused for a moment, and suddenly a genuine smile spread over his face. Percy stopped walking with a horrified look on her face. He was clearly cooking up some new scheme, and she didn't want to know what it was.

"What are you doing? Let's get back home. Right now."

"That guy mentioned Professor Rowan, right? That's the name of the researcher who lives over in Sandgem Town," Leo started eagerly. "I bet we could get him to give us some Pokémon. Then if we ever get into this kind of situation again, we'd be prepared!"

"No. No way," Percy replied flatly. "First of all, that implies that you actually intend to do this kind of thing again. Secondly, I don't care if that's not really what you meant, since the last time you had one of your brilliant ideas, this happened."

She gestured down towards her limp, bloody arm as she finished. Leo's gaze was fixed on her arm for a moment, but he snapped out of it quickly.

"Yeah, but I just said that if we had Pokémon, it wouldn't matter!"

"Are you even listening to me, Leo?"

"Shut up and listen to me, Percy! We're going to go home, but tomorrow we're going to Sandgem Town, so be ready! Or else!"

"Ugh…"

Percy groaned as Leo darted ahead of her on the dirt trail. She was not looking forward to his schemes in the slightest, if only because she'd have an insane amount of explaining to do to her poor mother.

Yet she couldn't deny that the inherent challenge of the situation might make it worthwhile.