Sometimes our aspirations appear to be oceans away from recognition, and the current seems to sway us in every way but the one leading to satisfaction. However, motivation is a storm that can split apart the most stagnant seas and lead to paradise. Let's stir the storm of progress together, you, me, and pokémon.
(Previously: According to the book, Bidoof weren't known for being critically hostile, but the critically had been italicized. This wild one dubbed in the handbook as the Simple Pokemon methodically clicked its sizable buck teeth, padded the dirt in front of with a tiny black paw, and then, before either of them could properly react, powerfully bounded in their direction as a white and forceful aura developed around its body as it unleashed a bizarre cry that would be etched into their minds from that day forward: DERP!)
If Lucas wasn't such an exemplary example of being dapper and level-minded in his youth, he would have soiled his formal slacks. Pain. Incoming pain. An imminent, singular force with intentions that equated to no less than kicking his sorry ass now barreled at him like a furious, buck-toothed bullet. He had to think of something to save both of their doomed hides, and fast. He had to think as quickly and decisively as his underdeveloped seven year old noggin would permit him, and finally formulated a razor-sharp plan of action that would rival some of the greatest strategic coups to ever be conceived by the world's most innovative and ingenious leaders; he stood paralyzed like a deer in headlights and shouted "Barry! Get the hell out of the way!"-THWUMP!
Too late. Barry took a speeding cannonball of Bidoof to his pelvis and was sent careening backwards in the dirt with his ankles over his ears until his skid was forcefully halted by his head meeting the base of a tree trunk.
"Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap!" Lucas grunted an expletive through his teeth with every step as he sprinted and then slid to kneel over to his prone friend, who looked comical and helpless with on the ground a face full of his own crotch. Not too far behind him, Lucas could detect the telltale shrip-shrip of a small paw treading the dirt once more. "Barry! Oh my god, can you even hear me?" After a sizable effort and quite a few painful sounding cracks and pops, Barry managed to lower his legs and dislodge his face from his crotch to wheeze, "N-now I can...". Lucas didn't know whether to nervously choke in laughter or sigh in bated relief.
Still on his back, Barry raised a quivering index finger towards the base of Lucas' neck and choked out "Th-the book...check the book!" Lucas' eyes widened in realization at his companion's demand and he swiftly withdrew The Official Pokémon Handbook: Sinnoh Region Category from his scarf and flipped to the page detailing Bidoof's prowess in battle. Scanning through an abridged paragraph of its typical movements and attack patterns, before laying eyes on a particularly bold section text. Lucas looked up from the pages and stared down Barry with wide and desperate eyes as he exclaimed, "This thing is an absolute monster! Its only weaknesses are fighting moves!"
Barry closed his eyes and nodded assent before an all-too-familiar smirk that likened to every bad idea ever crossed his lips. Not even attempting to arise from his sprawled position on the forest floor, he breathed in, gave Lucas a strong thumbs-up and said, "Then you know what you gotta do. Go get 'em, buddy."
Once again, if Lucas wasn't such an exemplary example of being dapper and level-minded in his youth, he would have slapped his already injured friend across the face. "A-are you daft?! Look what it did to you!" Lucas pleaded to Barry with all the reasonable power he could muster into his tone. Barry simply smiled and shook his head before stating matter-of-factually, "You gotta do this for our honor, bro. Look behind you."
Lucas craned his neck around to where the Bidoof was still standing and felt his jaw slightly drop at what it was doing; it was supporting itself on its hind legs, and had an upside down paw extended towards the both of them with one tiny black digit erected upwards to the trees that it pumped up and down. "Barry...is that thing..." Lucas slowly shook his head and made did rapid double-take. "Is that Bidoof flicking us off!? Where the heck did it learn to do that?!"
Barry's face took on a more serious hue as he raised his two fists in front his face and proclaimed, "Questions later." He made a few right and left hooks into the air in front of him, and he and Lucas both said "Butt kicking now." Lucas and Barry pounded a fist before Barry let his head hit the grass behind him and let his hand wander to massage his burning groin. Lucas was already standing at attention, shoulders braced, eyes aflame, and his face set into an intense and yet solemn scowl. He began to walk. The Bidoof no longer had them in its sight, as it was then preoccupied with swaying its tan-furred rear from left to right in their direction and punctuated each motion of its behind with a mocking "Derp!" Lucas was now sprinting harder than he ever had in his short life, perhaps because now he had a driving purpose to put energy into his strides. Only three yards now until the target would be within range. Ten feet..five...Lucas let loose a high, piercing howl that put the forest in near still-life as his right leg stretched out back behind him and froze in perfect form, parallel to his back, before it came whirling back in the opposite direction to make touchdown with its intended target. Barry beamed, still trying to ease the pain in his nether regions. A flock of Starly erupted from the trees and made off to parts unknown, as long as they were far from there. The Bidoof halted mockingly swaying its rear at the boys and made an effort get a view of what was causing the sudden drafty gust behind it and inquired to no one in particular, "Derp?". Lucas screamed "AAAAAAAIIIYAAAH!" and let his leg rip down to greet the impact.
KATHWAM!
Polished, size six leather dress shoe slammed into furry Bidoof rump.
Johanna was a woman of immeasurable patience and tact in the face of all hell breaking loose. She had a singular, brilliant aura about her that could charm the very sun to tip its burning golden hat to her and shine into the wee hours of twilight; however, right then and there, that facade of coolness was melting like an ice cube on a sweltering sidewalk. She could deal with pressure fairly easily, given surmountable circumstances. Persistent bill collectors? No problem; financial instability was just one of those things a single mother had to be prepared to combat with whatever she could find in her life's utility belt. Her rank as a master pokémon coordinator being challenged? For naught; she could make a Rhydon pirouette on cue before smashing in the head of a Pikachu or Clefairy belonging to some no-name hopeful kid in a suit, all the while making it look fabulous.
Her only son, Lucas, disappearing from not only the house, but from Twinleaf altogether? Off to parts unknown on his seventh birthday, along with the boy from next door who, according to his mother, had to take his Ritalin through a blowgun? She moaned morosely. Her flushing, stress-bitten face was buried in the palm of her hand as she rose from the loveseat opposite the open patio screen door and glanced through her fingers once again at the spectacle that had greeted her when she had emerged from the kitchen. Two potato sacks had been propped up in the chairs where they boys had been ever so "patiently" waiting, with a hastily scribbled crayon message on a napkin between them saying, "WERE ARE OFF TO GET POKEYMON. SSAVE THE CAEK". Johanna shook her head in disbelief for the umpteenth time.
"Idiots..."
BAP!
"Derp!"
THWUMP!
"Derp!"
WHAM!
"DERP!"
The Bidoof close to zero time to react before it got another steel-toed shoe jabbed in its side that sent it reeling. Lucas had watched a mighty decent amount of television in his day, and one of his favorite programs had been an interactive sort stationed in Veilstone City; it was called "Eye of the Raikou", sponsored by the Jubilife television station and hosted by none other than the sparky, hot-pink haired gym leader Maylene. She was relatively young for one to be in charge of a gym facility, but prestigious for her size-belying strength in and out of battle and startling dexterity. The show centered on various methods of up and coming youngsters and adults alike to practice practical self-defense, aided by her willing pokémon and a plethora of experience to boot. A show to bring people and pokémon together through the medium of protecting oneself and one another was quite the admirable picture.
Now, beating the living daylights out of pokémon probably wasn't the kind of picture the producers had envisioned, but Lucas was far too consumed by adrenaline to worry about that then; beneath the distinguished and snappily-dressed lad there beat the heart of a zealous fighter, and that was the kind of spirit he had hoped to suppress in light of his familial situation. Adamant natured Bidoof were rapidly moving up tiers on his list of "exceptions" to the rule of never fighting, and that must have been why he had captured it in a Crasher Wake headlock and was giving it his worst noogie; Crasher Wake of the Pastoria Marsh had made guest appearances on "Eye of the Raikou" to cover grappling techniques now and then, after all.
"Lucas!" Lucas whipped around to the sound of Barry signaling him and waving arms above his head, not ceasing grinding the squirming Bidoof's head with his middle and index knuckles. "We've got company, bro!" Lucas raised an eyebrow in a mixture of confusion and silent rebuttal of 'what, you want me to stop now?'. "Why do you say that?" Barry bit his lip and extended a finger at the shadowy foreground beyond Lucas and his victim; he had been so occupied with the Bidoof that he failed to detect a muffled rustle of activity that radiated from the apex of a gnarled greatwood tree.
The noise was filtered through an ominous wind rattling the leaves, and grew steadily more violent until it developed into an unrecognizable cacophony of clicks, scuttling, and guttural, animalistic exclamations.
And that was when Lucas nearly soiled himself for the second time in the day.
DEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRP!
A glorious bronze explosion erupted from the zenith of the tree, roared bloody murder to the high heavens and rocked the epicenter of the lakefront right down to the quaking earth. Bidoofs. Thousands of them seemed to blot out even the darkness of the forest and descend upon all below from the tree like thick precipitation from an emerald cloud. The force of them making impact with the ground sent sparks of pressure through Lucas and Barry's bones, and when they settled, it seemed as if the soil beneath them had ceased to exist. It appeared as if the land itself was but a cascade of brown, frilled fur and occasional ivory flashes of bared buck teeth.
The great, dusty vapor that had arisen from underground at the heart of them all crashing to the forest floor now settled, and an unearthly silence seemed to consume not only Lucas and Barry's positions, but this world and the next. Thousands of soulless, beady eyes scrutinized Lucas like an objective council, and did so for what seemed like an eternity before an painfully high-pitched squeal of distress pierced his ears and he looked down to see it emanating from the Bidoof locked in his white arms, which were nearly flush to his chest; in that instance, he had forgotten all about his small opponent and hadn't realized how tightly he had been clutching it out of reflex. That would prove to be a grave mistake, as every one of the thousand, judging black orbs in the crowd seemed to narrow in what was...indignation? Fury? Feeling his heartbeat begin to intensify, he ripped the Bidoof from his chest and strongly hurled it in an arc to send it sailing above the bristling mosh of pokémon and down onto an undisclosed, swiftly cleared patch of empty ground with a 'thwap'.
There was silence. There as a god awful silence. Such an unnerving silence that Lucas had forgotten about his 'other' little friend, who wasted no time in making himself known.
"CHAAAAW! WE'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!"
The quiet didn't last another five seconds before an unholy alliance of a thousand differently pitched cries of "DERRRP!" shattered the calm like a steamroller through a glass house on a hill, and a wrathful bronze-golden wave of Bidoof, each one indistinguishable from the next, closed in on the two seven year olds at a threateningly rapid pace.
Barry slapped a strong hand Lucas' shoulder, flashed him a zealous smile and chirped, "You got this, right?".
Lucas slowly cranked his neck towards Barry with a terminally ill-looking expression before his eyes bursts open into navy, white pools of madness and he breathed, "Maylene's television show did NOT teach CROWD CONTROL, you idiot!" Barry's face froze as if he had just been informed he himself was a woman. He made a wide "O" with his mouth and nodded understandingly before he began to hyperventilate and scream "OH, SHIII..!" before the hellish, gigantic careening force of a tanned fur freight train hit them both with the energy of a supernova.
What sounded like an insanely massive collision rang throughout the treelines that guarded the perimeter of the lakefront. A petite girl standing knee-deep in clear water intently holding a handicraft fishing rod made of oak and string was forced to snap her eyes open at the abrasively loud shock; she nearly toppled headfirst into the shallow shore current.
A sizable, golden Magikarp then darted by and forcefully snapped the pokéball lure off of the end of her handicraft, and in her upset balance and disrupted attention, she felt her face sting when it slapped the bitterly cold surface of the lake. A swift trail of filthy, freezing water snaked into her nostrils and could just only see the satisfied, shining fish flail and leap about into the distance upstream. Her face wrinkled and twisted into one of despair and uncountable indignation. Just as she was about to kick at a wave that offended her sensibility, she heard shuffling grass manipulated in her direction and saw a crouching, sandy-orange primate pokémon frantically raking the ground with its nails, bouncing on its knuckles and exclaiming "Ook ook!" acquire her attention.
"Hnn. That racket got your fur in a bunch, Chimchar?" The girl half-teased. The Chimchar snorted and shuddered in disapproval. The girl noticed its flame was crackling and rising at an unusual fervor; grass blades behind it were browning swiftly "I see. It's got your fire in a bunch too. Right. Let's check it out." The Chimchar snorted again, this time in assent, and jerked around in the opposite direction to lead the way by means of natural intuition.
The girl tenderly crept up onto the shore to don her relatively dry, maroon overcoat and hastily slipped it over her exposed pale chest that was beginning to break out in goosebumps at the rolling beads of frosty water on her skin. She grimaced at how her navy hair, chilled and soaked soggy by the lakefront, managed to mat uncomfortably against the flat of her back and shoulder blades before an urgent "Ook!" echoed in the distance and she assured herself with another "Right." She was now quickly urging her way through man-high grass that she had grown accustomed to navigating through from exposure as a child, following the occasional distant howl of her Chimchar. She noticed there wasn't even the hint of a pokémon besides her own that was leaping and clawing through the tall damp field. "What the heck is going on?"
--------Part Three coming soon--------
