Author's Notes
Sorry for the long delay between getting the next dang chapter up. I don't normally have internet access, so updates may occasionally be infrequent. I'll try to make sure to make up for any delays whenever they occur.
Farla brought up a few points in her...review. I'm just going to touch on two of them here; Farla, I'm PM'ing you a full responce which will hopefully address all your points.
1) Yeah...dialogue and the proper organization thereof is my Achilles Heal. Also, as of writing this I currently have just about eight chapters done, so that's eight chapters of disorganized dialogue. At an average of six pages per chapter, that is a LOT of tedium to try and correct it all. So, I'm going to post chapters 1-8 as is. From chapter 9 onwards, I'll be using correct dialogue organization. It doesn't help that NONE of my Creative Writing or English teachers ever called me out on it.
2) On the subject of pokemon names always being initially capitalized. I have the official Nintendo Guide to Pokemon Crystal Version right next to me as I type. Every instance of a pokemon name in there, be it refering to a single pokemon or a group of them, has the initial letter of the pokemon's name capitalized. So, Ash's pokemon is named Pikachu, but a bunch of generic pokemon of that species are also Pikachu, and not pikachu. I don't pretend to understand that standard, I'm just following it. I suspect the fact that all pokemon names are copyrighted may enter into it at some point.

Anyway.

Chapter Two: Kitsu

Crystal rubbed her nose. Kitsu hadn't bitten it hard enough to make her bleed, but it had hurt. She glared daggers at the small pokémon now in her house, though the daggers were blunt because there was a pokémon in her house, which had never happened before.

Well, except when they had that Rattata infestation, but that had been taken care of by a trainer with a Gloom.

After her mother had dragged her home, not-so-subtly implying that Crystal was never going to leave the house again until she was eighty and was certainly not going to trek across the wilderness for days in order to get to Cherrygrove City, Crystal had simply moped in her room. However, a few hours later, Professor Elm had shown up at the house, a cage in hand containing a very irate Eevee. He wasn't unhappy with what Crystal had done - far from it, in fact - but now the Eevee seemed to have imprinted on the young girl. She certainly calmed down a lot when it saw her, as though certain she could handle Crystal, having already proven to herself that she could bite the human's nose if need be.

Crystal's mother had not been pleased with her, on the other hand. Mrs. Tsubaki hadn't grown up in the old days, when humans had few defenses against pokémon - that was centuries ago - but she probably would have fit right into those days of fear and worry. Fortunately, her mother's sense of responsibility outstripped her fear of pokémon. Crystal had started tending to it, so she had to finish it.

"Does it have to be down here?" Mrs. Tsubaki asked. She was behind the counter of their kitchenette, cutting up food for their lunch.

Crystal shrugged, crossing her arms and looking down at Kitsu. "Do you have to be down here?" She asked her. The Eevee responded by deftly hopping up onto their living room couch. She winced a little, her broken leg apparently hurting for that stunt, but didn't squeal in pain, either because she was already getting better or else through a deliberate act of will. The Eevee settled down on the couch, watching the two humans.

Crystal looked to her mother. "Kitsu says yes. And she's a she, mom, not an it." Crystal had been sure to double-check that fact with Professor Elm, and was pleased to be told that she had guessed right.

"She's a pokémon," Mrs. Tsubaki commented, as her knife worked through tomatoes. "Honestly, I don't understand how anyone could want to keep one…much less how someone might want to collect them…"

Crystal shuddered a little at that. New Bark Town, and most of the surrounding area, had weak, docile pokémon, for the most part - Rattatas, Sentrets, Pidgeys, and the occasional Geodude from the nearby mountains. For whatever reason, the pokémon here simply never became very strong.

But further inland, or out to sea, there were real monsters - the Onix serpents, the Tyranitar nightmares, the dreaded Houndooms, and most fearsome of all, the Gyrados dragons, monsters that could unmake entire cities on a whim. Human civilization existed in a very narrow band along the coastline, in either large, well-defended cities like Goldenrod or Olivine, or else in small, isolated villages like New Bark Town or Azalea Town in areas populated by weak, easy-to-manage pokémon. The thought of actually seeking out the most monstrous pokémon, trying to catch them, seemed like suicide to Crystal. For many trainers who overestimated their own abilities, it was.

"But this isn't a Gyrados," Crystal said, getting down onto her knees in front of the couch and putting her head on its cushion, staring into Kitsu's eyes. "She's just an Eevee."

Kitsu yawned, then began licking at her burn. Fur was already growing back across the exposed skin.

"See?" Crystal asked, looking at her mother.

Mrs. Tsubaki had slowed down cutting the tomatoes, watching the Eevee as closely as she had been watching her a few moments earlier. "Please don't get that close to it," She begged. "Look what it did to your hand!"

Crystal looked at her bandages. "Mom, she barely broke skin, and it was only 'cause I was setting the bones in her leg. Besides, Tyrogue was there to stop her if she tried anything."

She held out her bandaged hand to Kitsu, who stopped licking her fur and leaned forward to sniff Crystal's hand. Much to Crystal's own surprise, she licked the bandages a few times before returning to tending her own burn.

Crystal giggled a little. "See? She even apologized," She said, pulling her hand away and going over to the kitchenette, retrieving one of the cans of food that Professor Elm had brought for Kitsu and opening it. The pokémon, still only newly caught, didn't yet associate the sound of a can opening with food - but after a few moments, she could smell something that seemed to be delicious, her ears perking up and tail raised high at the smell. Crystal presented the Eevee with the food a few minutes later, as she and her mother sat down at the table. Kitsu sniffed the food experimentally, nibbled for a few moments, then dove straight in, making contented cooing noises every few moments.

"You're not keeping it," Mrs. Tsubaki said after a few minutes of eating their lunch - simple sandwiches, rice, and lemonade - in silence.

Crystal looked to her mother. "But…!" She began. She suddenly realized that she'd simply assumed that she was keeping Kitsu, that the Eevee was now hers, despite no one - not even Professor Elm - even implying that. Crystal wondered for a moment whom had imprinted on whom.

Her mother made a cutting motion with her hand. "No. I realize you're an adult, but this is still my house. I'm not having a pokémon in it."

Crystal crossed her arms. "That's not fair. I help out around here and work my butt off over at Elm Labs. I never ask for anything!"

"Well, then the last thing we want to do is ruin that trend," Mrs. Tsubaki said, pointing with her chopsticks at Crystal. "Though I seem to remember last year, you begging me to get you that computer in your room…"

Crystal's mouth hung open. "I just needed you to order it, 'cause you have to be seventeen to make inter-city orders! I paid for it!" She reminded her mother. In fact, that had been the whole reason she had gone to work for Elm labs: to make money for the computer, something she wasn't going to accomplish by running the tiny mart in New Bark Town that didn't even sell pokéballs, like her mother.

"Yes, well," Her mother said, crossing her arms. "My house, my rules."

Crystal felt something against her leg, and looked down. Kitsu was rubbing against her, cooing softly in appreciation for the food that she had finished. Her eyes were closed, ears high and tail swishing around eagerly.

Crystal felt something tug in her heart. "Mom…" She said, reaching down to Kitsu and picking the pokémon up, setting her on her lap. Much to her surprise, Kitsu didn't object at all, rubbing her head against her stomach now. "Come on, look at her…"

The Eevee stopped, looking down the table at Mrs. Tsubaki, before letting out a slight squeal, the eev-eev sound that gave the pokémon its name, eyes closed again. She spun around on Crystal's lap a few times before sitting down, clearly intent on falling asleep after what must have been a long, tiring, and often frightening and painful day for her.

"No," Mrs. Tsubaki said, unmoved. "Crystal, I'm not saying that you can't work at Elm Labs, or that you can't see that Eevee whenever you work there, or even just to visit it. But it is not living with you."

Her mother was wrong, Crystal knew. Even if she had been right before, Kitsu curling up on her lap simply made it painfully obvious to the young girl: This was her Eevee, and Kitsu clearly thought of Crystal as her human. Wherever one went, from now on, so would the other. She just knew it.

But her mother was right about this being her house, and her making the rules as a result. She stroked the Eevee on her lap, biting her lip as she did. How could she make this a reality? How could she stay with Kitsu?

"I'm sorry about yesterday," Crystal said to Professor Elm, as she distracted Kitsu with a stuffed Tentacruel doll, which she waved in front of the Eevee while Elm used various machines to analyze her. Crystal's work shift, today consisting of just cleaning up a few pens and feeding some pokémon, was done. Kitsu had tagged long, not getting far from Crystal in this strange place full of strange smells. "My mom had bad experience with pokémon when she was young."

"Most people do, when you live out here," Elm noted, pulling away from Kitsu. They were in his private lab, and though Elm had Tyrogue's pokéball at the ready, just in case Kitsu reacted poorly to anything he was doing, the Vulpix-like pokémon was behaving admirably well. "I was chased halfway to Blackthorn by a flock of Pidgey-line pokémon when I was eight."

Crystal paused a moment, thinking - a tactical error, Kitsu supposed, for she used Crystal's pause to begin batting at the Tentacruel doll with her good leg. "Pidgey-lines don't flock," She commented.

"I know. Still haven't figured out why so many were in one place," Elm said. "In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have thrown that rock at the one Pidgeot and instead been gathering data. But then again, I wasn't a scientist then, I was an eight-year-old."

Crystal nodded. "I was bitten by an Ekans when I was ten," She said. "It didn't use its fangs, just its normal teeth, but I didn't realize that. I thought I was dying. And there was that Rattata infestation in my house when I was four…"

Elm laughed a little. "What happened to your mother?" He asked.

Crystal leaned forward, touching her nose to Kitsu's own. The Eevee clamped her mouth on Crystal's nose - not actually biting, just grabbing, something that had become a sign of affection between the two. After a second, she pulled away, and made her eev-eev sound, before biting the Tentacruel doll and tugging. Crystal let her have it.

"She got lost in the Ilex Forest at night," Crystal said, rubbing her nose. "Lived in Azalea Town at the time. She was paralyzed by Venomoth dust when she startled it, then nearly eaten by a Houndour-"

"Yikes," Elm said, eyes wide.

"But," Crystal continued, "The Houndour was killed by an Ursaring that had somehow ended up in Ilex Forest. The Ursaring ate the Houndour in front of my mom."

Elm was quiet for a moment, taking this in. "Huh," He said.

"Yeah," Crystal said. "The paralysis wore off around then, so she bolted and happened to run in a direction that took her back to Azalea. Her parents moved to New Bark town, and she's lived here ever since."

"Why not move to Goldenrod or Olivine?" Elm asked. The cities were well-defended against pokémon, and theoretically one could live their entire life in one of those two without ever seeing a wild creature.

Crystal shrugged. "I think she'd hate city life, or she thinks she'd hate it." She reached forward, grabbing two of the Tentacruel doll's tentacles and tugging. Kitsu tugged back, and the two engaged in a lighthearted tug-of-war for the doll for the next few minutes as Elm examined Kitsu's leg.

"Bones are mending nicely," He commented. "We'll probably be able to take the cast off later today."

Crystal let out a whistle. "Pokémon heal fast," She said, looking at one arm. If she had broken an arm as badly as Kitsu had broken her leg - or had it broken, Crystal supposed - then she'd be in a cast for weeks or even months.

"Eevees heal even faster than some other pokémon," Elm commented, moving away and to a counter. "I imagine it has something to do with their unique genetic structure. We've got three distinct evolutions for them in the pokédex we imported from Kanto."

"Flareon, Jolteon, and Vaporeon," Crystal said. "Plus Espeon and Umbreon from our own pokédex. I'm surprised the Kanto didn't have those two."

Elm paused a moment, and turned around, crossing his arms. "The Kanto are very…utilitarian…with their pokémon, from what we've learned. Pokémon in the Johto region are much less aggressive, at least when compared to Kanto. Hence why they have an active army that's been expanding Kanto for years against the inland pokémon, whereas we've simply moved in where we see opportunity and defended our holdings."

Crystal stopped pulling at the Tentacruel doll, sitting down in a chair next to the table that Kitsu was on and crossing her arms. The Eevee pulled the Tentacruel close and began kicking at it with her back legs. "So the Kanto just use pokémon as weapons, for the most part."

Elm shrugged. "Can't say that some pokémon aren't weapons, like Voltorb."

Crystal shrugged, more or less conceding the point. She looked at Kitsu. "Plus, I hear fire stones and such are more common over there. I imagine a lot of Eevees are evolved as soon as they're found, and they're not very common to begin with…"

The professor nodded. It was a known fact that Espeon and Umbreon resulted only if an Eevee was tightly attached to its chosen human, although how was still a mystery. With less of a history of constant war against the inland pokémon, and with evolutionary stones being so rare in this part of the world, the Johto could form closer bonds with their Eevees than the Kanto and so were aware of Espeon and Umbreon, which couldn't be achieved if the Eevee had already been evolved into one of the other three or didn't closely associate with the trainer.

Kitsu sat down on top of the Tentacruel, having decided that she was victorious over her worthy toy foe. She looked about ready to doze off, when her ears perked up and she stared at the door to Elm's private lab. A few moments later, the door opened, and another man in a white lab coat, this one with black hair and younger-looking than Professor Elm, came in.

Crystal recognized him, of course, as Dr. Henry Pine, one of Professor Elm's aides. She smiled and waved, and he waved back before turning to Elm. "You called for me?" He asked.

Elm nodded, grabbing Tyrogue's pokéball from his belt. "I had hoped to send Crystal to Cherrygrove," He said, "To meet with Mr. Pokémon, but her mother's sternly objected. So I need you to go instead, Henry."

Pine let out a sigh, looking to Crystal. "Your mom's afraid of Ledybas?" He asked. It was a Johto phrase, meaning that one was afraid of something that one shouldn't be. But Crystal nodded vigorously. "Yes," She responded. "Most pokémon, in fact."

Pine whistled a little in surprise, then looked back to Elm. "So I'm going to meet Mr. Pokémon, then?" He asked.

Elm nodded, tossing Tyrogue's pokéball to Pine, who caught it easily. "Tyrogue'll be able to keep anything you come across at bay on your way to Cherrygrove," Elm said. "I was going to loan him to Crystal, but the Eevee she helped seems to have taken more of a liking to her."

"Thanks, Professor," Pine said, putting the pokéball in his pocket. "Well, it's a three-day walk to Cherrygrove. Better get going." He pointed at Crystal as he left. "You be good now." He said.

Crystal watched him go, then looked back to Elm. "About Kitsu and me…" She said.

"You gave her a nickname?" Elm asked.

Crystal nodded, then continued. "I know you'll want her back, but…"

Elm shook his head, holding up his hand. "Actually," he said, "I was planning on giving you that Tyrogue, as a thanks for running up to Cherrygrove and for the help you've been since Gold and Silver left. But why don't you keep Kitsu instead?"

Crystal brightened at that, but shook her head after a moment. "My mom won't let me keep a pokémon," She said, reaching over to Kitsu and scratching her between her ears. The Eevee cooed, getting up and hopping from the table onto her lap. Again, she felt a tug at her heartstrings. "I'd really, really love to keep Kitsu, but…"

Elm let out a sigh. "Well," He said. "That's unfortunate. We could certainly keep Kitsu here, but that's a great way to make sure she rarely leaves a pokéball."

Crystal nodded, scratching Kitsu under her chin now. The pokémon cooed contentedly. "I'm practically thinking of taking the Gym challenge," Crystal said.

Elm looked sternly at her. "Crystal, don't even joke about that," He said. "Only very serious trainers should ever attempt that. The Gym leaders are dangerous opponents."

"I know," Crystal sighed. "But I don't want Kitsu to just spend her life in a pokéball…" She laughed a little. "Who imprinted on who?"

"I'd talk about scientific detachment, but you're not a scientist," Elm said. "Why don't you just give your mom some time? Kitsu seems to be docile enough. Maybe she'll come around."

"Maybe," Crystal hoped, leaning down and rubbing her nose against the Eevee's own. Kitsu mimicked the move, eev-eev-ing when Crystal pulled away.

Then the door to the lab was almost thrown off of its hinges. The two humans and one pokémon nearly leapt out of their collective skins, looking to the door. A junior aide, a girl only a little older than Crystal, was standing in the door frame, as well as one of the guards for Elm Labs and his Growlithe pokémon companion.

"P-Professor!" The aide cried out. "Dr. Pine was attacked!"

"What?" Elm demanded, moving to the door as Crystal stroked Kitsu, trying to get the pokémon to calm down. "Where? By who?"

"Outside, at the end of the street," The guard said, "On the way to his house. It happened so suddenly, the guards on duty weren't able to respond…"

Elm rushed from the lab, and Crystal picked up Kitsu and followed. Outside, Pine was lying at the end of the dirt road that lead up to Elm Labs, conscious and rubbing his head. His hand came away with a little blood - not enough to worry him, apparently, but enough to make Crystal gasp. One of the lab's medics was already on the scene, his coat acting as a makeshift pillow and telling Pine to remain still, while several guards were keeping back any passer-bys. Growlithe had already been released from pokéballs, most acting as guards but one or two sniffing around for something.

"He'll be fine," The medic said when Elm and Crystal got near, forcing Pine to lay back down. "Clubbed from behind by a tree branch, enough to stun but I doubt he'll have a concussion."

"Who did this?" Elm asked, looking to the guards which were even now setting up a formal perimeter. At his words, one detached from the rest. His belt had three pokéballs on it, two of which indicated that their pokémon were still within and one of which was empty. He was the head of guards for Elm Labs, which meant he also doubled as the chief of police for the village, much as how Elm doubled as New Bark Town's leader in crisis situations like this.

"We don't know, sir," The man said, standing ramrod straight when he reached Elm. "We have one witness now, says he saw a young kid with red hair attack Dr. Pine. We're looking into motives now."

"Don't look too far," Pine said from where he lay. Elm turned around, getting down onto a knee.

"What?" The older scientist asked. In response, Pine reached into one pocket, turning it inside-out. Nothing was inside.

"He took Tyrogue," he said, rubbing his head again. "Damn kid…"

Crystal gasped again, as Kitsu pressed close to her chest, clearly uncomfortable with the number of Growlithe around even if none of them were paying any attention to her. Much as Crystal felt attached to Kitsu even after knowing her for less than a day, she'd known Tyrogue for years. She hugged the Eevee close to her and started glancing around, feeling as though she could be attacked at any moment by someone intent on taking Kitsu.

Elm looked to Crystal, sensing her reaction and knowing she couldn't be very useful right now anyway. "Crystal, go home," He said, in a voice that brooked no argument. Crystal nodded, not feeling like giving any. She cast a last glance at Dr. Pine, who gave her a half-hearted thumbs up before beginning to answer more questions from Elm.