Chapter 2 rework! Yays I got it done and checked! Enjoy! I own nothing beside Soul Readers!
Soul sighed with relief; after hours and hours, she had finally trekked back to New Bark. Her feet and legs were drained from all the walking, but there was no stopping now. She went quick as she could down several blocks to Elm's lab, with her Chikorita following just as swiftly at her heels. She pulled open one of the double front doors and was instantly confused at the sign of an Officer Jenny. 'She doesn't look too happy…' Soul thought, gulping as she hesitantly approached. And she squeaked when the officer whirled suddenly and pointed right at her.
"You! Was it you? Are you even aware that it's a major crime to steal other people's Pokemon? Do you know how much jail time you've got lined up, little miss?" Soul stared, stunned, unable to speak against the accusation. Luckily, Ethan interjected and slapped the officer's hand out of his friend's startled face.
"She didn't do it! Soul would never do that, she wasn't even in town all day! It was some redheaded guy. I saw him running away after he stole the Pokémon!" Ethan said in her defense. The officer glared at him with a striking 'bad cop' glare, and then directed her attention back to the brunette.
"Fine, then. Did you happen to see this thief?" She asked, irritably, like she expected to get no answer.
"Um, yeah, I did!" Soul replied hastily.
The officer's eyes widened and she set her hands against the hard belt on her hips. "Really. Do you know anything of him at all? His name?"
At this, Soul frowned, "Uhm, nope! I didn't hear his name. I saw him as I was leaving Cherrygrove maybe three hours ago, or four." Her Chikorita frowned up at her trainer for the half-lie, but made no sound of protest.
The officer sighed. "Well, that's something. That counts as a trail of evidence. I'll start up a full investigation for you, professor. I'll inform the Cherrygrove police to look for him, too, and I'll be back in a bit with the paperwork you need to consent the investigation, too." Professor Elm nodded fiercely at her directions and made no sound as she left the building.
"Well, she's scary." Soul smiled and shook her head.
The professor didn't comment at that. He sighed and said in a subdued voice, "I hope that Cyndaquil is okay. It's so young…he might hurt it." They both went silent at this for a long minute, which was interrupted by, of all things, Elm clapping his hands together and all but yelling, "Okay! Now let me see your Pokemon!" Her attention snapped to the Professor as he sighed, Both the teens gave each other a funny look. Ethan was the first to pick himself up and take out his Totodile's Pokeball. It formed in a flash, and Chikorita stepped up next to him. surprise.
"Ahh, my. Look at those grinning faces. And how active! Why, they must like you quite a lot to be so bouncy. You know…why don't you both keep them? I have plenty of Pokemon to feed and care for here already, and these two would surely like to be with you more. Right, little guys?" Chikorita and Totodile's faces erupted with joy, and Totodile jumped up and down. "Yep, they do. Well?"
Soul and Ethan were smiling similar to their Pokemon. Soul stopped, though, to twist and start digging around in her shoulder-bag. "Professor, oh, I almost forgot this! Here…yeah, right here!" She lifted the egg out from the bottom of the bag. "This is the egg Mr. Pokemon wanted me to give to you. I walked really carefully with it." Professor Elm took the thing out of her hands, with only one hand. He nodded to himself.
"Well…Soul, you can just keep this, too. Take care of it till it hatches. Go on." Soul's face became befuddled yet again as she took the egg back and stored it right back into her bag. "I have one more task for you, though. Optional. Since it's a very large endeavor."
"…Kay."
"Soul, why don't you try for the Pokemon League?"
Once again Soul became silent. After school was done with, many trainers her age made an attempt for the Pokemon League of their region, or at least tried to attain some badges. It would be hard to find someone who didn't try it at least once. And Soul herself had always wanted to as well. Today, the idea had just kind of been forgotten amongst all the…stuff that had happened. Now she remembered just how she felt about the dream of the Pokemon League.
"Sure!" she said, brightening up. The excitement was all but bleeding into her voice. "I'd love to! I've always wanted to! When can I go? Like, today? Or tomorrow? I have to tell my mom! Chikorita, you wanna go, right?"
"Chi-ko!"
The professor laughed at her, and clapped his hand on Ethan's shoulder. "Whenever your mom says you can, I guess. I'll make you a license in a jiffy. Oh, don't leave without proper supplies. A sleeping bag, food money, hygiene things, all that. And I don't think your mom would stop you anyway, right?"
"Nope!" Soul was wringing her hands in excitement now. Ethan was just trying to get the hyper professor away from him.
"Well, the nearest gym from here is Violet City. The gym leader there specializes in flying types, so I suggest either get a new Pokemon or train Chikorita to fight her worst enemies."
"Yup, I'll get right on it, Professor. I gotta go tell my mom byyyye!" The Professor and Ethan watched as she sprinted out the door, this time with Chikorita barely keeping up.
(BREAK)
After she heard the news of what her daughter suddenly wanted to do, Soul's mother began crying, half in joy that her daughter was going on that ritual journey, a trainer's attempt for the Pokemon League, and half in typical parent's tears that her child was leaving her. She attempted to comfort herself by stating she'd start a book club, or start hanging out with Mrs. Kamiya more, something to not feel quite as lonely. She and Soul both went to bed that night happy, and had an equally happy morning. They were both excited.
She had packed all the necessities—the sleeping bag, the food money, the hygiene stuff, Professor Elm would be proud that she remembered—plus some extra things, all of which amazingly fit into her bag quite well ('Bag technology' was awesome these days? Whatever, it meant traveling would be a breeze.) The goodbye to her mother was a little hard, but it had to be done, and her mom wanted her to have an excellent journey. Soul and Chikorita took off running, all the way past the town gate, down the road to Cherrygrove, even when the path got close enough to the woods that tree branches hung over it.
After the exciting running, though, she practically skidded to a stop and used her Pokemon trainer supplies for the first time by gulping from one of her water bottles, and letting Chikorita sip what she wanted of it, too. "We're on our way today, Chikorita," Soul told her, still panting.
"Riiii-ri," Chikorita said. She was still nearly out of breath.
"We'll rest a little, right here. And keep going, but walking." Chikorita now seemed a little happier.
The journey to Cherrygrove took a few hours just like it had the previous day, and she recognized some of the landscape from that trip, too. The three trainers that passed her on the road—and one in the sky, on a big Flygon—all waved at her or said hi, but didn't offer to battle, and Soul kind of didn't feel like it right now either, so that was okay. She did get challenged by a kid not even old enough to be a legal trainer, and Chikorita barely needed any commands to kick his Rattata into the ground.
The next battle was actually kind of frightening. The trainer was a lot older than her and his Furret had battle scars on its sides. She'd probably remember it for a long, long time. He had cried, "Get 'im, Furret!" and the Furret came screaming like a war-Pidgeot. And that was Chikorita's first triumphant victory as a real trainer's Pokemon: scraping her way to victory through a real, though challenge. The victory from that battle was sweet.
It was evening when she got to Cherrygrove, due to being slowed down by more battles and a random nap, and she was actually pretty tired when she got into town. "We'll try a Pokemon Center before a hotel, since they let trainers stay for free. How d'you like that?" she said to
Chikorita, who was looking up at various Cherrygrove buildings and walls for the second time. It turned out Chikorita thought sleeping at a room in the Pokemon Center was awesome, and so did Soul.
The next day, they set out northward again. It took them two hours to get to Mr. Pokemon's house, but it didn't look like he was home anyway, so Soul just shrugged and passed his home by. Just afterward, another trainer appeared, stumbling out of the woods and onto the road. He looked at Soul in a really weird, frantic way that reminded her of a psycho guy from some TV show she liked, and he said in a voice just like that, "Hey, girlie! Battle me!"
'If I win, at least he'll go away!' she thought. And she was so relieved that the kid's Spinarak was blind or something and kept missing Chikorita, so the victory was easy, and he moped on home right after without a word. 'Weirdo…' Soul thought, and continued on her way. She and Chikorita stopped under a nice tree to eat lunch, and then dinner and then Angel—then she was there.
'My legs are officially jello.' Soul thought, and Chikorita wasn't much better. Apparently they still had to get used to the ridiculous amount of walking a trainer could do in a day. But hey, at least they had made it to Violet City in one day instead of two, or even three. They wobbled in through the suburbs where the houses were and kids were playing with family Pokemon on their lawns, and then into the shopping districts were people who definitely hadn't spent the past ten hours walking in the woods were chatting and buying their clothes and fancy dinners. And freaking finally, there was the city's Pokemon Center.
She wobbled into the room, and when she got to the front desk, which thankfully had no line, she said, "I'd like a one-person room. If you have one," and then decided she was totally freaking done with wobbling.
"We sure do. We're actually not even half-full tonight. Here, you can have Room 38. Down that left hallway."
"Thanksss." Soul muttered. She could feel Chikorita, and Angel, pushing against her ankles. "Yep. We're here, Chikorita. Hooraayyy." She used the room's shower, mostly standing like a zombie, and pulled on her set of sleeping clothes like they weighed fifty pounds.
Only then did Soul officially fall onto the bed with her Chikorita, and fall into a dreamless sleep.
The next morning Soul was awakened by her Chikorita poking her with its foot. After she noticed that, she was happy to realize her exhaustion from the previous evening was all gone, and good riddance to that! She sighed at having to be woken up anyway, and got up. At the side of the bed was her trusty new friend Chikorita, and her even newer friend, Angel the Pidgey, cooing and staring excitedly at her. She'd been caught for less than a day and she already seemed excited about having a trainer now. Soul petted her head and she cooed some more.
She dressed in her regular attire again and combed her hair in her usual, favorite style. She ate one of the breakfast bars she'd packed, and probably would be buying some of for months to come, and then left the room. "Time to explore the town," she said quietly to herself. Her energy was back, and she was ready to see what the city had to offer. Chikorita was clinging to her shoulder, and looked like she was ready, too.
An hour or so later, she was on the north edge of town and without other buildings in the way, she could see dark tower reaching up into the sky. She crossed a fancy little bridge to get to the entrance, and once she got close, she felt it…practically beckoning her to come in. She did.
The inside looked like the sort of temple where monks would sit and elegantly pray. It was all made of wood, and statues of Bellsprout stood around, looking regal and…kind of—
"You don't look like you're from around here," muttered a voice from behind.
Soul jumped and saw only a harmless old lady, holding a book that was probably even older than her. "H-how'd you know that?"
"Everyone except the Violet natives think the statues are ridiculous, or intimidating. They stare." She walked closer to one of them, staring up at the black stone that had been inserted in place of eyes. Soul thought they looked…funny. But she stared at them still. "I assume you don't know the legend of this tower?"
"…No?"
The woman looked around. "Hm? Not even in school? I thought they taught this in…history, or something like that. I met a young man from Hoenn the other day, who said he learned it in school. But you didn't?"
"Nope," Soul said with a shrug, popping the p in the word. Angel tapped her talons on the ground near her trainer's feet.
"Well. When it was being built, a Bellsprout was born here. It was a hundred feet tall, right from birth. So the tower was named in honor of it, and its whole species."
Soul very much doubted that the Bellsprout had been that tall.
"And I'm sure you're here to make your way to the top by battling the priests." Now Soul was standing at attention, all curiosity. "What, you don't know that, either? You can climb the tower if you battle any of the priests you see on the way, and once you get to the top, there'll be something interesting waiting for you."
"Hmmm, really…" Soul said, looking up at the stairs at the opposite side of the room. As it turned out, the woman wanted to shoo her up there, so Soul gleefully went.
The battles were gleeful, too. She shouted "Vine whip!" and "dodge, jump to your left!" and "Tackle it!" a couple dozen times, fighting constant streams of Bellsprout that swayed and shot leaves at her. Chikorita was sure getting a workout today, and Soul was, too, with all the yelling and tensing and waving her arms to gesture commands. Occasionally she would look out the windows, seeing Violet City from a higher and higher view, like she was flying Pokemon, and a couple times that made her stare.
It took a couple hours to climb to the top. But she knew she was there when she saw the final staircase, a spiraling deal that looked too beautiful to be in this plain, old tower. She and her two Pokemon climbed it, looking up and up, till they met the eyes of a priest at the top. A Hoothoot was on his shoulder. "You have one final opponent, young lady," he said, in a soothing, old-man voice that for once made "young lady" not sound derogatory.
Soul thanked him, and then followed the line of his fingers, thinking, 'Great, this guy is probably the toughest of them all. She sighed to calm her nerves, and walked forward to approach the last man. It took her a second to realize there was a head of 'Oh, please don't be him…' As if hearing her thoughts, the boy turned jerkily around and locked eyes with her. Soul broke eye contact and relaxed, trying to get a read on him. 'Nothing, great'. Soul groaned as she approached the two men.
The boy's eyes slowly looked her up and down, quiet at first, but his nastiness picked up pretty soon. "Oh, it you….what's your name again? Sara? Sadie?"
Soul turned pink in the face and growled, "It's Soul!" The red head laughed to himself and shook his head and she just puffed out her cheeks, irritation growing.
"Well, at least my name isn't a color, Silver."
The insult didn't go so well, Silver's face seemed to say. He scoffed and glared at her with a snide little comment: "Oh, please. My 'color' name's not even on the same level of weird as yours." He turned around again and Soul watched, her head cocking a little, as his mean frown turned into a hateful one. "Anyways, I wouldn't waste my time with this guy. He's weak as a newborn Azurill. I'll see you later Sora."
"IT'S SOUL!" She cried out as he walked away with a smirk on his lips. Soul glared as he went tromping arrogantly down the stairs before turning to the final priest. He was right in her face by now, and she yelped in surprise. His eyes were just plain wild, which didn't help at all.
It could only have been seconds, but felt like hours to her. The man's mouth twitched and a look of fear spread onto his face. He said, "Y-You are a Soul Reader!"
She only frowned at him. "Uh, a what?"
"A Soul Reader, girl! You read people's Souls and you can even steal them! Look see I have my pendant right here! I'm on your side!" He pulled a long necklace hidden in his robes and pushed out the pendant on the end towards her so she could see. It just looked like a regular old necklace pendant to her. And the guy sounded like a regular old Loony Toon.
"Uh, I have no clue what you're talking about…" she said carefully, giving the old man a weird look. She was pretty sure the old man had lost his mind.
The man's eyes widened at her. "You must not know yet." Maybe Violet City just attracted crazy people, Soul considered. There was that weird little kid on the way here, and this man, and probably dozens more she had been lucky to not meet. "Well, you came here for a battle yes?" The man asked suddenly. The craziness had faded from his expression and he looked like a regular, calm old Bellsprout Tower priest now. Only his yellow shoulder-robe distinguished him from any of his brethren.
Suddenly Soul…kind of wanted the crazy guy back, the part of him who yammered about Soul Readers. She took one step forward and said, "But, what about—"
The priest cut her off with, "No! I can say no more! Prepare to fight!" Soul frowned at his rude interrupted, but told her Chikorita to leap into the fray anyway. The head priest tossed out a Pokeball and a Hoothoot formed out of it.
"The first move is yours."
Soul didn't have to be told twice, "Chikorita, Tackle him!" Chikorita rushed forward in a mad dash, and Hoothoot wasn't quick enough to move out of her way. She headbutted the flying-type hard in the belly.
The priest didn't seem to care. "Hoothoot, use Confusion!"
"Hoo-ooo!" Hoothoot called, and took flight with his tiny little wings. A psychedelic, blue glow appeared around his eyes, and a matching one appeared around Chikorita's. She shrieked once and turned in a circle; Soul could practically see her head spinning in pain.
"Come on, girl! Attack him with Razor leaf!" Her eyes twitching, Chikorita did just that.
Attacks were traded back and forth for nearly twenty minutes, Soul's most drawn-out battle yet. Chikorita was bruised and panting by the end, but she won. At last. When the man returned his unconscious Hoothoot to its ball, Soul came forward and scooped up her Pokemon in her arms. Angel fluttered to her shoulder to have a look at her.
"Very good," the head priest said, nodding from his spot. "Just the persistence and power I would expect from a Soul Reader." Soul sighed. She was again annoyed by this guy's talk of Soul Reader. Soul sighed annoyed with the talk of her being a Soul Reader, and walked back to her own spot.
"Now, will you be able to beat my next Pokémon? I'm warning you…he's powerful. My long-trained companion of twenty-four years!"
Soul racked her brain trying to think what Pokémon could possibly be next. A Noctowl? A Haunter? Twenty-four years was a really long time, it might even be the fully-evolved form of something…really big and dangerous. But all she had left was Angel, so Angel it would be. She could do it, she felt confident.
"Go, Angel!" Soul yelled, and her Pidgey took flight from her shoulder.
The man only frowned at her, and fetched another ball from his sash. "Go, my Bellsprout!"
"Bellsprout?! That was the big powerful Pokémon you've had forever?!"
The man sighed, "Don't under estimate my Bellsprout! We've long since learned how to deal with flying types!"
Soul shrugged, thinking, 'Whatever. This should be easy.'
"Angel, use Peck!" Her loyal bird flew in, tucking her wings in tight to her body like a diving Staraptor, and slammed into the other Pokemon. The man winced at the huge blow; it could have torn open the flesh of a regular person, and for his Bellsprout, it was a one-hit KO. He stared in shock, and returned his beloved Bellsprout to its ball.
"Well done. You are quite the young trainer!"
"Thank you!" Soul replied happily,
"Yes very impressive indeed…." A mysterious voice mused. Soul jumped for the second time today, and looked round wildly.
"Was I right, master? Is she a Soul Reader?" The old man asked staring up at the ceiling. Soul herself could see nothing up in the ceiling, just ceiling beams and some shadows.
The voice came again. "Hmmm, yes she is. A very young one at that. How odd…Wait, no, it can't be…." By this point Soul was starting to get worried that the old man's craziness was rubbing off on her, and she was hearing voices, just like him…but her thoughts stopped in their tracks when she felt the hairs on her neck stand up. And that male voice was directly behind her.
"Who are you?"
Hm, who is this mysterious person? eh its not that hard... Next chapter dear lord...
-Keari
