Pokémon: Topaz
Chapter 2: Sneak Attacks, Sidetracks, and Flashbacks
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything solely belonging to the franchise and very few things Poké-related at all, except perhaps the video games which I purchased myself. AND, remember. As stated in Chapter 1, small, but eventually notable changes will be made to the battle mechanics, and you can use the wikipedia sites to find good images of the Pokémon that are mentioned.
Oh, and, just to make sure it's understood. Sentences placed in italics will most likely be thoughts.
Summary: So what if Eve doesn't have her own television show? Doesn't mean she won't become famous,….hopefully. Follow sixteen year old Eve, the newest Pokémon trainer, as she braves the Sinnoh region after six years of waiting! A more mature feel than the show, for more mature readers, basically.
XxXxX
Sunday
Route 202
11:13 a.m.
The scent of pine assaulted Evelyn's senses as she entered the denser section of the forest twenty minutes south of her home. With the trees varying between tall and super tall, and the green but slightly snowy hills scattered beyond that, the town she was attempting to reach was completely out of sight. Though continuing to peddle at a steady pace, she suddenly halted. Placing her bike off to the side beside a large stone, and moving the kick-stand up, Evelyn took in the current scenery and noises of the forest.
Every so often, the short shrieks of Starly and Pidgey could be heard from the skies all around. She'd even seen a few flocks of them gliding on the breezes above her; most likely scouring the grounds and trees for any bug Pokémon to make their next meal.
"Oof?"
Feeling something brush up against the back of her boots, Eve quickly spun around. On the ground beside a bush of plump red berries, one of which was in the small creatures paws, was a single Bidoof. Bringing its prize up to the large beaver teeth its kind was known for, it happily began munching, paying no mind to the human observing it.
She may have not had a Pokédex on her, but after years of devotion to hardcore studying, it would've been a serious embarrassment to not know anything about such a simple Pokémon.
Kneeling down she came face to face with the wild Bidoof, who was still having a rousing good time stuffing more and more berries into its cheeks. "Bidoof."
Placing even more berries inside of its mouth, it turned towards the human that had just called out to it. "You're known as the…Plump Mouse Pokémon." The Bidoof merely blinked as she continued. "And you're called that because of because of your round cheeks and tail, aren't you?" Again, Bidoof merely blinked, then chewed as it stared in wonder at the bizarre human analyzing it.
"And you're also known for your speedy getaways." Suddenly, the Bidoof's plump ears perked up, and it began checking the area, its body completely tensed.
Demonstrating its speed, the small mammal zoomed off farther down the path, and then sharply turning, headed into the dark underbrush.
Wonder what caused it to run away?
Setting herself back onto her bike, she brushed the question off, choosing to concentrate solely on reaching her destination point for the time being.
XxXxX
What Evelyn didn't know—couldn't have known—was that she too was being watched, being analyzed by a pair of menacing green orbs. This person had been watching her; nay, stalking her. They'd been stalking her since she'd entered the forest. Dodging past the low hanging branches, silently hopping over the scattered frozen and moist debris, they followed. All the while, making sure that the only ones their presence was known to were the few Cascoon and Silcoon scattered about the high branches of the trees, awaiting their moment of evolution. Sliding in and out of their crimson eyes' field of vision, he continued on his hunt.
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"11:32, huh?" Checking her new Pokétch, Eve was happy to find that she was making pretty decent time so far, considering. She could now see the exit of the forest no more than a mile away as she continued her bike through the trees strewn along the path. Weaving between plants and stones that were scattered along the dirt road, Eve kept moving with a new vigor, taking in the crisp winter air.
What would undoubtedly be odd weather for many other areas in Johto, Kanto, and Hoenn, having unbearably hot days followed by chilly frigid mornings was not entirely uncommon for the people of Sinnoh. They were barely nearing the end of December, a month when, in Sinnoh at least, the weather tended to alternate between dire heat, icy winds, 2 inch snowfalls, and long lasting rainstorms. Having so many different types of climates strewn about all over the different zones of their continent, and being so naturally close to the planet's equator, their highly random weather patterns were, and had been, natural yearly things that most Sinnoh civilians took without a second thought.
Minus the extreme heat waves from time to time, Evelyn loved the month of December, if not just for her birthday toward the end of the month, but for the cool rains that always seemed to cleanse the end of the month, bringing a more 'fresh' feeling, if you will, to the rapidly approaching New Year. Lost in the flashbacks of the previous New Year's celebrations, Evelyn was oblivious to the young boy that had just leapt out from the bushes attempting to scare her.
She was also oblivious to his shriek of terror as she ran him over.
(BUMP)
And then there's mom's delicious Pecha-Berry Cobbler with her home-made syrup and……wait…wha…?
After a momentary pause and the nagging feeling that something was wrong, Eve turned her head, eyeing the strange young boy more-or-less flattened on the dirt road 7 feet behind her, and cried out.
"Oh Shit!"
XxXxX
Laying the boy against one of the numerous pines along the path, Eve began fanning him, and searching his bare arms and legs for any serious damage. She started to contemplate using her Pokégear and calling her parents for help, until the child she'd run over began to stir.
"…what's…huh?"
Giving the boy some room to breathe as he re-entered consciousness, Eve took a few steps back onto the dirt road, checking her bag for an extra bottle of water.
His legs a little wobbly, the boy began to stand using the tree behind him for support. He instantly took to looking around the place that he stood; his gazing stopped short as the details of the black-haired girl ahead of him came into focus. "W-Who are…YOU!"
Eve stared blankly at him, water bottle in hand, as the now fully awakened child pointed viciously at her.
"Me," she asked.
"Yes…you!"
"What about me," Eve questioned, though knowing full-well that he probably recognized her as the one who'd knocked him out.
"It's you!"
"Yes. It is me," she stated.
"You're the one that…"
Eve gave a short sigh. "Yeah. I'm the one who ran you o-"
"You're the one that I was following!"
"..-ver…wait. Following? What do you mean you were following me," Eve asked in confusion.
"I've been following you since you entered the woods here. I was hoping to catch you by surprise and-"
"You're a little young to be a stalker, aren't you? Don't you have anything better to do," Eve probed.
"..No…I-I mean. S-Shut up! I'm trying to get through my monologue here! Don't interrupt," the boy screamed.
Evelyn, still trying to make sense of the precocious boy and his intensions, decided that she at least owed the kid a chance to explain himself. "Fine…monologue away…"
"Thank you…Now, like I was saying. I've been following you since you entered the woods. I was hoping to catch you by surprise, battle and beat you, and then, while you were busy crying over having lost to my superior battling skills, I'd take your Pokémon and your money!"
Watching as the boy puffed out his chest with fists at his hips, Eve took a large breath. "Wow."
"Impressed by my ingenious scheme are you," the kid smirked. "Well. Can't say I'm surprised. Not many people have the proper intellect to come up with-"
"No. It's not that. I'm just surprised at how a little kid like you, with such a wide vocabulary, could come up with such a stupid idea and actually think it's even halfway decent."
She suppressed the urge to laugh as the child's superhero pose faltered and his jaw practically dove straight for the floor.
"HOW DARE YOU," he shrieked, "It took me two whole days to come up with that plan!"
"What a waste of 48 hours," Eve replied sardonically.
As she had expected, the boy's face began to scrunch up in anger, as well turn a rather humorous shade of red. However, as fast as it had taken for his facial features to flare up, his steadily rising balloon of anger seemed to immediately deflate, and his leer of malice was replaced by an almost over-confident scowl.
"Not really," he sang, "…Since I never said that that was the only plan I came up with…."
Too curious over his change in demeanor, Eve couldn't help but ask, "What are you talking ab-"
"NOW SWELLS!"
Hearing a high pitched cry uttered and a rather unnatural breeze behind her, Eve quickly spun around. To her surprise there didn't seem to be anything there. Nothing but her bike, the bag with her Pokémon egg hung over the right handlebar,…and that was it.
"Where's my BACKPACK!?" She spun back around just in time to see the boy and his Swellow, her backpack in its claws, diving deeper into the woods to the right of the path.
Hastily dashing to the point the kid had entered, she angrily eyed the opening he'd used, hoping to find some hint as to the direction he took. She ceased her attempts to see though when she realized that the blanket of closely growing treetops above, allowed for very little sunlight to get through to the ground below. After kicking out a small rock imbedded in the damp ground below her in frustration, Eve dragged herself back to the main path.
Now how am I supposed to find him?! It wasn't as though she could simply sniff him out…
Eve then smacked a palm to her forehead, laughing at her thick headedness. She had a dog Pokémon at her disposal!
Reaching into her right pocket, Eve took hold of her only Pokémon. "Come on Houndour." Lightly pushing its center, she tossed the Pokéball into the air. Forming from the bolt of light that had erupted as the ball opened, Houndour took a slow look around itself before setting its sights on its trainer.
It took Eve a moment before she noticed the strange look Houndour was giving her, or the fact that she had already caught and collapsed its Pokéball back in her hand.
Mom was right…I did enjoy calling him out a lot more then returning him.
Trotting over to the point the thieving brat had been only moments before, Eve gently called over Houndour with a few waves of her hand. Houndour rather slowly trotted over to her, his sharp coal-colored eyes boring into hers as he waited for her to direct him.
"Sniff around boy," Eve commanded, wafting the air around the kid's previous location, "There was an annoying runt by the tree here that ran off with my stuff. Think you can pick up his scent?"
Without any form of reply, Houndour immediately put his canine nostrils to work, sniffing away at the spot his trainer had instructed him to.
XxXxX
Picking up the child's scent was, for Houndour, all too easy. Without missing a beat, Houndour quickly began trailing after the path left by the young male's odor into the denser part of the surrounding forest. Keeping his nostrils almost religiously focused on his work, he continued to pointedly ignore the trainer behind him, as well as her problems of maneuvering her two-wheeled transportation vehicle through the forest, while he moved in between trees and through the dirt and mud.
He knew his previous master had instructed him to protect this girl, his offspring, and that she was now rightfully his new master. Things however, were not that simple. His previous master had bested Houndour in battle, not his offspring. His own kind was known, not only for their strong noses, but for its strict rules in following the strongest member of its pack. The leaders were in charge of everything from obtaining the pack's next meal, where and when to mark their territory, and when and when not to do battle with the members of other pack's for dominance over an area.
(Flashback/Memory)
During most of his time in the wild, he had not had much of a presence in his own pack due to his being only a pup in comparison to the alpha-male. Somewhere around the end of his first year of life, he'd managed to help take down a rather large group of Poochyena and their fully-evolved leader, when its pack had strayed too far into their territory.
Scouting out areas for potential prey or various threats was the role he'd been given by the leader himself, whenever they ventured to a new area from then on, though that obviously hadn't lasted long. Only a month after that he'd been captured; he'd strayed too far from his pack during his scouting, and found himself on the outside patch of the forest near a bright and rather green-hued human town. Within mere moments, Houndour had been confronted by a rather tall human male, one of his hands discreetly reaching for something towards his back.
Too caught up with sizing up his opponent, Houndour had failed to see the man bring out a fellow Pokémon onto the field, though the likes of which he'd never seen before. The body of his opponent had been nearly four times as big as he was, and its gaze was even more menacing than that of his former pack's leader. Though his eyes remained unwilling to break the connection with the mammoth, he'd caught onto the commands the man gave the creature.
"Now Venusaur! Razor Leaf!"
The green behemoth's eyes, still deadlocked with Houndour's own, didn't falter in the least as it let loose with a plethora of leaves from the area of the large floral growth on its back. He recalled attempting to incinerate the leaves with his own fire, even to avoid the radius of the attack, but there had simply been far too many. He could only try his hardest to stand his ground as the onslaught of blurred vegetation sped by all around him, cutting into him and staining his fur with his own blood, while a few embedded themselves in the ground at his sides.
Through it all he'd found himself still standing, though only barely, with the man now kneeling directly in front of him. Ignoring the warning-looks of the man's Pokémon a few feet away, he tiredly turned his attentions to the man.
"I think you'll do just fine," he'd said, and gently ran a finger down the middle of his head. Before he even had the chance to build up any desire to harm the uncommonly bold man for his strange behavior, he felt the cool touch of some foreign object lightly knocked against his fur where the man's finger had been only moments before. And for a time, all he knew was rest…
…After being released from his unknown confines, and finding himself completely healed of all injuries, the man had taken him to a spacious green pasture bathed in the warm rays of the morning sun, obviously not too far from where he'd been caught, and formally introduced himself to Houndour, and to Venusaur.
"First and foremost, I didn't capture you to keep you with me against your will. If you don't want to stay, I won't have any objections to letting you go."
Taking in the relative meaning of his words, Houndour turned to Venusaur as he too began to speak, though in their native Pokémon tongue.
"He gave us all the same speech when he captured us, and trust me, the man means it too."
Houndour responded back with a few short barks. "So this man captured me, but isn't planning on forcing me to stay. These humans are a bizarre breed…"
"They can be," replied Venusaur sagely.
Stealing a quick glance back towards his capturer, who was now fidgeting with his glasses and feeling rather left out of the conversation, Houndour continued. "If he didn't want to enslave me, then what?"
"Train you," Venusaur answered, "You see, he feels that taking a Pokémon against its will would only hinder its ability to prosper from his teachings." Houndour's response to all this was very close to what would've been classified as, had he been human, a scoff.
"Train me? What good could come from training with a human? What training could he give me that I wouldn't receive from my own pack?"
Again Venusaur replied knowingly, "You'd be surprised. His intentions are to make you strong. Perhaps even stronger than you would have been otherwise. No doubt training with your own kind would make you a force to be reckoned with, enough to drive your foes to fear you..." Venusaur stole a long gaze sideways at the man who'd helped make him stronger than he'd ever thought he'd be, and shifted his attentions again to the Pokémon standing before him. "But training with him would more than likely be enough to drive your foes to respect you."
"What's the difference, so long as my opponents know not to get in my way?"
"Well now," returned Venusaur, his body lightly shaking with a chuckle, "there's only one way to know that for sure, isn't there?"
With that, Venusaur began to take heaving steps back to his trainer and longtime friend, giving the man known as Renton a tell-tale nod. Houndour remained where he stood, feeling the heated rays coating his dark fur and soft underbelly with its warm embrace, trapped in thought. It only took a few minutes for Venusaur's words to get the better of his curiosity, before he slowly made his way back to the man and his companion that had so easily bested him.
Standing then in front of him, he bowed his head in respect, and nodded to the green creature at his right.
"All right then. Let your training commence…"
X
Those few weeks of training felt like the longest months of his life. Though the man had treated him with a kindness that he'd honestly never known out in the wild, during their sessions, Renton was far fiercer then his entire pack combined. There was no getting around that, towards the end, his skill had greatly improved. Though no where near the level of the man's other companions…but still. It was something Houndour was proud of. On certain days, he'd felt as though he could even best his former pack's leader. He usually put thoughts such as those towards the back of his mind for two reasons. One, such bursts of overconfidence would more than likely lead to his defeat, or so he'd been informed. And two,…ideas such as those brought constant reminders that his pack—his family—was now a part of his past, and nothing more.
The man, he felt, would surely have kept his promise had he decided to leave. But there was no point in taking him up on that offer. The others surely would've smelt the stench of humans on him, and his only welcome back would've been having the fangs of his comrades tearing him asunder.
It was one day after a rather rushed sparring session between him and one of his master's weaker, though no less well trained, companions that Renton singled out Houndour as the others waited down in the grassy fields, gathering their fill of the rays of the sunset.
"I'm sure I don't need to tell you this,…but you've greatly improved," praised Renton as he patted Houndour on the head. Renton took a long look up at the leaves of the tree he leaned against, and sighed. "But there isone thing I need to tell you."
Houndour squatted onto the grass, wondering patiently what his master could possibly want to tell him. "You see Houndour, I caught you for a very specific reason. I have a daughter back home, named Evelyn. My wife and I have decided that we're going to let her go off on her Pokémon journey soon…meaning she's going to be traveling very far away from home, and I want to make sure she's well protected."
Houndour watched as the man seemed to loose himself for a moment, and do nothing but stare off into the vast regions of the twilight skies above. Renton then gave a tiny cough, and continued. "I planned on coming out to this region, and finding a suitable companion for her, hence, why I caught you—since more than likely she'll be so wrapped up in preparing that she'll forget to get her own."
Regaining eye contact with Houndour, Renton began to slowly scratch behind the canine's ears. "So…what do you say?"
(End of Flashback/Memory)
Taking an unenthused glance back at the bumbling female behind him—who had just now fallen backwards onto her bike and into a patch of wet mud—Houndour realized he should have "said no".
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"I am so sick of this crap," cried out Evelyn in frustration. Leaving nothing but the squishing and squashing sounds from her boots in her wake, she tiredly followed on after Houndour carrying her bike over her head, damp, dirty, and damn well past the point of simple annoyance.
Contemplating horrid scenes of the boy who'd vexed her in various states of pain and torture, Eve failed to notice that Houndour had completely halted his movements with his small frame was completely pointed towards the right. With as much difficulty as it took for most people to breath, Eve fell over Houndour, bike and all, and landed hard on her shoulder. Houndour pointedly ignored her.
"Damn it!"
Choosing to completely forgo the seemingly pointless act of picking up her mud-ridden heap of a bike off the forest floor, Eve instead decided on finding out why her Houndour would simply pause as it had.
There was something about the look in its eyes; an almost dull, "bored to tears" look. A rather odd expression in Eve's opinion, given the Pokémon's rather dark demeanor. Eve took a quick glance in the direction of Houndour's gaze, and spotted a small wooden shack, in a sizeable clearing straight ahead of her. The shack's oak wood frame, windows, and brick chimney all seemed to be in a rather clean and well-kept state, regardless of the seclusion.
It was what lay inside of the shack however, standing in front of the window to the left of the front door, which really captured Eve's attentions. She could see the boy, his Swellow resting on his right shoulder, calmly going through the large quantity of pockets on the outside of her backpack. Slipping his hand into each one, he briefly examined what he found in each, tossing away objects that didn't interest him, and placing what did onto the surface of something she couldn't see.
Pulling out a small package of dark chocolate-coated cookies, the boy hastily tore open the wrapper, stuffing in as many of the sugary treats as he could. Swellow also partook of the sweets, its beak pecking at the chunks of cookie left behind by the greedy child.
Watching this event take place, Eve's anger immediately doubled. With a voice and tone darker then the fur of any Houndour, Eve growled.
"That boy, is dead! Nobody eats my COOKIES!"
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Sorry. Really. I'm truly sorry. I promise that this was gonna be longer, but you see…well. I'll explain.
Okay. SOOOOO. First off. Yes, I'm still alive.
Unlike for my last (and first) story, I have an excuse for why I haven't updated in a very long time. My mother and I recently moved back in with my grandparents. Between the time that we last lived with them and now, they got rid of the cable and internet connections. Meaning, I'm stuck with Word Document, pictures, and previously read fan fic stories that I saved to my laptop a while back. I am now weeping openly about this, yet again…ok not really, but yeah. NO INTERNET.
Seeing as how I'm at my Aunt's house, (and she has a wireless connection that my laptop seems to enjoy using) I'm able to update now, but maybe not for a long while. This is why I wanted to make sure I at least got this much in, before I blew any chances for a recent (ish) review.
ANYWAY! I really, honestly do hope that anyone who reads this likes it. I really tried very hard on making it all work, so I truly hope it paid off. Promise that the next chapter is already on the way. I can't really give any sort of date for release, but I am gonna make sure that I get it in before next weekend is over
Just remember.
Reviews LOVE, for fanfic writers.
So send me some love please, or even criticism (they're both always appreciated), and I promise to reply. (It's just what I do). So, to anyone who reads this, have a nice day.
