Chapter 2 - Among the Pines
After she bid goodbye to Rose, Chelsea walked home next to her twin. Twin - and yet, it was only in a few things that they could 'feel' each other. And at the moment, she didn't know what Chester was thinking. Her brother was just as silent as ever, walking with both hands in his pockets and sporting the same bored, placid look on his face. It used to annoy her a lot, but now it annoyed her just a tiny bit. It was, half the time, his natural apathetic expression.
"Are you even excited?" She asked, because she couldn't help it anymore. He just looked so... not excited. Like nothing. Like, nothing happened at all. At her question, he just looked at her. A bit surprised, with that left-eyebrow-raised face of his.
"What?" Chester asked, "Oh, you mean about our Pokémon," he realized; his tone indicated that he was thinking of something else. "Of course I am. I mean, this is what we've studied a lot for. Mom and Dad are also excited for us, and it's kinda funny. But yeah, I'm excited. We prepared for this, you know," he pointed out, yawning for a bit. Gastly's pokeball was in his other pocket, his hand still holding it.
Chelsea seemed to accept his answer, and just hummed in response. They walked until they got home, and evidently, Mrs. Moon really was as excited as they were. "A togepi, oh my!" She excitedly hurried them in, hugging and huddling them into their home.
"I got into a battle, and my gastly fainted. Can you heal him for me, mom?" Chester asked immediately, sitting in a chair. They were all in the living room, and Chester was already drinking a glass of cold, refreshing water by the time he handed Gastly's pokeball to his mom. Chelsea talked, in the background, about what happened in the lab.
"A gastly, eh? Good for you." Mrs. Moon said pleasantly, smiling and glad. "My son always did love the odd Pokémon." She muttered to herself as she smiled, walking fast around the house. Gastly's pokeball vanished into Mrs. Moon custody, but Chester didn't mind. The ghost Pokémon needed the rest.
By the time Mrs. Moon got back into the living room, she had a plate of warm chocolate cookies.
"I am very proud of you two." She said, placing the plate of gooey goodness on the living room's table. "I'm going to call your dad and tell him about your new Pokémon. Eat cookies. Mommy will be back."
The twins found it very silly, the way Mrs. Moon talked and behaved with them, but Chester and Chelsea did what she told to anyway.
Rose spent the afternoon tidying up the house. She was anxious. Cleaning usually helped her calm down, except she spilled the bucket when she was mopping the floor, and broke a dish while doing the dishes, and she overloaded the washing machine and that was a whole huge mess.
"With the way my luck is today, it's amazing that you won that battle." she told Swinub. He had released himself and was stretched out on the sofa, scratching himself and shedding indulgently while she cleaned. He seemed to shed a lot.
At that point Rose decided to give him a bath, which he did not like at all: possibly due to his ground typing, it was hard to say. She had to wrestle him into the tub and he was quite strong; when she was done he was very poofy and smelled wonderful. Swinub looked about as murderous as he could manage.
Her dad came home around 6:00 with a big paper bag. Swinub immediately ran to great him and jumped at his legs like a puppy, grunting eagerly.
"Well hello there, little fella!" Rose's father said enthusiastically.
He set the bag on the coffee table in order to pet her new Pokémon, but it suddenly lost interest in him. Rose sighed dramatically. "Dad, do you have food in that bag?"
Rose explained the day's events while her dad fed Swinub leftovers from his dinner.
"It's good that your traveling with the Moon kids, I worry 'bout you out there on your own, you know."
She rolled her eyes, but secretly she was glad too. Mostly Rose worried about how much money it was going to cost to bribe her Pokémon for every battle. Probably a lot... Let's hope he keeps winning, she thought.
They spent the evening watching TV together (they were both fans of a period drama called "Blade and Apricorn"), and they talked about inconsequential things. Rose's excitement for her journey was building steadily, it didn't feel real somehow. Tomorrow she would leave home, but tonight just felt so normal... even with Swinub. Of course, besides being big, hairy, and in the way, he did not contribute much of a presence to the room.
She was surprised when he climbed into her bed and curled up next to her that night. His bristly hair was all over her the next day.
Rose woke up early and Swinub, still lazing in her bed, allowed himself to be placed in a pokeball after she fed him some carrots. She got on her bike as the sun was climbing into a cool spring sky and pedaled through the sleepy Saturday town and up to the big, pretty house where the Moons lived.
"Hey!" she called out. "You guys ready?"
As usual, it was Chelsea who had woken up first, before Chester. They had spent the night before doing nothing but preparing for their journey. Well, mostly it was Chelsea who did so, since Chester just walked around looking at what she was doing. Begrudgingly, he did help pack his things as well as hers, so it was okay for him to laze around a little. She was just anxious, so she double checked. They had potions and everything. She, for the most part, was pretty sure Chester had a bigger backpack. Food, probably. Her twin doesn't eat much but he was a picky eater so her brother probably packed his favorite food, along with some for his Pokémon.
Togepi, whom she probably would not give a nickname, slept beside her all night. The Pokémon absolutely loved her room, especially her bed. She hugged Togepi a lot, and thankfully she didn't really lose much sleep because of the excitement.
Chester, on the other hand, wasn't that enthusiastic when sometime that night, Gastly came into his room and roamed around. He could hear the ethereal sound of the ghost Pokémon moving around, and if he had been Chelsea, he would have been thoroughly scared and creeped out. He was mostly just annoyed. It seemed, despite losing, Gastly still liked him... for some odd reason.
Mr. Moon, of course, was still on a business trip. But, he did call, a lengthy call at that, and talked to them a lot. The breadwinner of the family was much more emotional and worried-filled compared to the proud, untroubled Mrs. Moon who was certain that their babies would be fine.
It was after their breakfast – Chester with his usual warm milk and lemon muffins and Chelsea with her sweet chocolate pancakes - that they heard Rose calling for them. They were ready, of course. They both hugged their mother, who embarrassingly kissed them on their cheeks, before they were let out of the house. Both Pokémon were in their respective pokeballs.
Chelsea looked at Rose' bike, before telling Chester that yes, they would need their bikes. It took a few minutes before they were out again, with their own bikes. Both were black in color, and the only distinguishing markings were their own names engraved on the metal between the handles.
"We're ready!" Chelsea sang.
Rose looked longingly at their shiny new bikes. The tires still had long tread hairs and clean black rubber. Her own cycle had a rusty red frame and some rather dusty whitewalls; it had given her almost as many scrapes and cuts as she had given it. Rose was a menace on her bike, consequently every motorist and pedestrian in their small town was wary of the clumsy red bicyclist.
After exchanging greetings with the twins, she pulled up the map on her pokedex, and they discussed their route. She explained that there was a short road up through the hills to the south, by this path they could easily reach Fallarbor by nightfall if they didn't have to stop too much. There were a few Pokémon in the forest of pine trees leading up to the mostly bare and dusty plateau at the foot of Hoenn's central volcano. Most of them were not particularly dangerous, although they should definitely be wary of skarmory.
"If we don't get jumped by wild Pokémon much." Chester pointed out, "Then nightfall it is." Truth be told he was looking forward to spending the night outside, underneath stars. Chelsea is squeamish when it comes to things like that, but he wasn't. In fact, he actually looks forward to any 'unfortunate' event that will force them to do things like camping out. It would be a nice experience.
"Let's start." Chelsea proclaimed, cutting off her twin's musings. She rode her bike, and pedaled off, moderately quickly, towards the road leading out of town. Chester and Rose followed suit, of course.
"You're not planning on catching any Pokémon nearby, are you?" Chester asked Rose, choosing to pedal a bit slower compared to Chelsea. "Training our Pokémon would be nice, but I guess being nearer to the city for the pokecenter would be convenient as well."
"I don't think so," She replied, trying to sound casual. "I just want to get a little better with the one I have now." Rose thought about her swinub in its pokeball, fearing that it would embarrass her somehow. Her backpack was practically bulging with food. "If we get into any bad scrapes before we get too far, we can just go back to the Doc's lab. He's got the equipment there to heal Pokémon, but he might be busy; you know how he is."
Rose kept pace with the twins as best she could and managed to avoid crashing into them (narrowly). Together, they turned onto the dirt road that led between the tall trees. Here the woods loomed up around them and above them. The pines hissed anxiously at their approach, harmless but sinister. Among the dry needles at their feet laurels and rhododendrons budded and bloomed, giving wild Pokémon cover to lurk in. Volcanic boulders, dark gray-brown granite balls, were tumbled through the forest and overgrown with moss. It smelled crisp, and fresh, and heady.
The going was easy, and the morning was cool.
"We don't go out very often, Rose." Chelsea said loudly enough for the other girl to hear. She, unlike Chester, likes to talk a lot, most of the time. She pedaled fast, or fast for her taste anyway. "I mean, yeah, we travel a bit when Dad takes us out for vacations, but that's not counted 'cause we have a strict schedule and everything." Not to mention they were always explicitly forbidden to wander off... And Chester always stayed in the hotels, liking the soft beds and the room service.
"We probably won't encounter many bug types on our way, and I hope not to see any." Chelsea continued, making a sharp turn to avoid a steep embankment, "I'm not a fan of bug types." Like seriously, they looked weird and nasty. Most of them, anyway. Choru, Mrs. Moon's leavanny, was one of the few exceptions. She liked Choru.
"I've been to Fallarbor a couple times by myself. I've seen Pokémon in these woods before, but nothing big, and this time of year bug Pokémon are rare." They crested a small ridge and the expanse of the forest stretched out below them. The sun was directly above them, falling through the pine branches to make dappled shade where they rode.
"One time, I crashed into a spinda on my bike, not too hard but... I thought it was hurt because it kept walking funny, but when I told my dad about it he just laughed, and laughed. Apparently they always act like that. But I think if we want to fight, we have to go off-road." Rose paused to take a swig from a water bottle and then tucked it back into her backpack.
Since they were still a bit near to their own town, they couldn't see many wild Pokémon, but they could all sense the presence of creatures nearby. A flash of feathers between the trees, a lonesome cry in the distance, bushes shaking as something made tracks at the sound of their approach. Their town had always been a bit secluded and unknown. For all Chelsea knew, it probably wasn't even listed on maps or something. The one she and Chester had brought with them had their town in it. But... they had bought it at the local store there, so it was understandable.
The forest was really nice though. It provided enough cool shade to keep them from getting too sweaty. They were off to a smooth start.
"I'm planning on training my Pokémon against wild ones." Chester suddenly spoke, breaking the nice silence. By silence, it meant the absence of humans talking. The sound of rustling leaves and needles was ubiquitous among the pines, after all. "So I probably will branch out after we reach the city, or even before." He wasn't really planning on always sticking to his twin, after all, and Rose even less so.
"The sooner we get to Fallarbor town, the better." Chester continued, yawning a bit. It was only a bit tiring, having to bike for awhile. They passed by a pond or two, and he swore he saw a fearow somewhere, but it didn't pay them any mind so they continued on their merry way. Once or twice, already, he had paused and stopped biking to drink water from his pack.
"You're right." said Rose, who was beginning to feel tired from all the biking they'd done as the hours passed. "I could really use a shower and a nap," she sighed, thinking about how she wouldn't be able to take afternoon naps on her couch any more.
He wasn't a fan of fast pace, which would have been moderate for most other people. He preferred just going slow and taking in the forest... But maybe he was just lazy. The way the trees thickened when they were halfway was quite nice, but now the trees were once again thinning a bit. He took it as a sign that they were close to Fallarbor town.
They suddenly arrived at a fork in the road. A big dead tree stood right in the middle of the two paths. "I think we're supposed to go right here." Rose said cautiously.
Suddenly some dry bushes rustled at the foot of the dead tree. A small brown bear toddled out into the road. "Teddiursa!" Rose whispered reflexively, just loud enough for the twins to hear. She pointed at the Pokémon, but didn't move for the moment. Had it spotted them?