Okay, it's finally here! Chapter Two! I apologize that I couldn't have it up sooner - Dell sent out their automatic updates and restarted my computer while I was away from it; I lost a page and a half of work. Rrrr! I was almost as angry as the Houndour pack. Some of you have been wondering why they were so far from their regular home; that's explained in this chapter. Hmm... I think that's all I have to say. When you finish reading, if you have the time, I'd really, really appreciate it if you'd review! So, Happy Reading! :)
The Shadow of Fame, Chapter Two
Hannah shook with fear and tension at the pack of Houndour facing her – and the two Ralts. Her nerves – which had somehow disappeared while she had been wracking her brain for the identity of the two Ralts – were now back with aplomb. How Hannah was going to get out of this one was beyond her – she certainly hadn't packed enough Pokéfood to feed twelve hungry Houndour at once, much less even one, much less even still the one who was hungry enough to consider hunting for human!
"Um… Guys, guys, calm down," Hannah said to the Houndour pack, trying to sound a lot more confident than she felt – and if she wasn't convincing herself, she rather doubted she was convincing anyone else… "Guys, I'm not food! Neither are these two Ralts – none of us taste good at all!" she exclaimed. Slowly she reached around into her bag for some of the rest of the Pokéfood she had on her, to give it to the bloodthirsty pack. They growled at her. She glanced worriedly back to the two Ralts, who were clutching each other and muttering frantically to themselves.
Hannah held out the Pokéfood in one cautiously extended hand to the Houndour who looked to be the leader of the pack. "Look, see? This is food. I'm not." The Houndour sniffed the food, still growling, and Hannah held her hand steady while it did so. This is where instinct took over Hannah; steadying her hand further and subconsciously changing her posture from one of frightened child to experienced, mature feeder-of-Pokémon. "There, see? It's good, isn't it?" Hannah cooed to it.
As the Houndour sniffed her hand it also started licking the Pokéfood into its mouth. Reassured by this, Hannah took out the remainder of the Pokéfood she had on her and started sprinkling it on the ground around her. She deliberately tried to avoid spreading it around the area where the Ralts were, in case the Houndour mixed up what was food and what wasn't. She wanted to see how the Ralts were faring, actually, but she daren't look away from the Houndour in case it try to pull something. Like biting her hand off, perhaps. Hannah was rather fond of her hands. She wrote with them, among other things.
After the Houndour had licked the last bit of Pokéfood from her hand, Hannah smiled amiably at it. "There's a good Houndour. Now, I know the rest of your pack is still hungry, but I haven't got enough Pokéfood to feed the lot of you. If you all stay here, I'll go and get some more Pokéfood for you all and come back to make you so full you could just drop dead! Now, I'll take these Ralts with me, and I'll be right back with the food, okay, Houndour?"
Hannah was never really sure if the Pokémon she talked to completely or even partially understood what she said to them, but in general they seemed to get the idea. This Houndour was different, though – it did not seem to get the idea at all. In fact it tilted its head as if it were confused about what she had said, as if it had no idea, in fact, if she'd said anything of merit at all. This was odd.
This was not normal.
And not normal was not good, in Hannah's book. Her nerves came rushing back – bringing terror and fear and uncertainty with them.
:Brother, this is what we were hurrying for!: the sister Ralts exclaimed. :This is what my Feeling was! We need to help that big-walker. You surely have sensed by now that the energy of this pack of Houndour is not normal – and I think the big-walker has just realized this for herself, though how she did this I have no idea. But look at her, this big-walker – see how she fed the Houndour without fear, even though they are bloodthirsty and not-right. She may be young in years, but in experience with things like this she is very old. Her spirit-energies are pure even from the physical plane, Brother. This is one big-walker worth helping. She is… special.: The sister Ralts paused. :Brother, if she moves very far from where she is now, the Houndour pack will attack her. Will you try to talk to her, and tell her this in case she does not already know it?:
:Yes, Sister, I will. If this is what your Feeling was, then I must.: the brother Ralts said solemnly.
There was a reason, of course, that the brother Ralts had accompanied his sister on her adventure – or exile. Although they had not known it at the start, the brother Ralts also had a special ability that was even rarer than his sister's Feelings. The brother Ralts could speak to the big-walkers almost as naturally as a Budew could talk to another Budew.
They had not known about the brother Ralts's ability until a few moons ago, when one of the obnoxious big-walkers with tame Pokémon had tried to catch the sister Ralts. Anger, fury, and fear had spurred on the brother Ralts to try and stop the yellow-haired trainer, and he had accidentally spoken (screamed might be a better word) into the very depths of its mind. The trainer had jumped about a foot into the air, then set its Pokémon onto the brother Ralts! Luckily the sibling Ralts were able to work in tandem and defeat the Pokémon that the trainer sent out at them. Huffing and puffing, the obnoxious yellow-haired trainer had run off, leaving the two collapsed in a heap under some bushes, battered and bruised but laughing for some strange reason.
Turning his mind from past to present, the brother Ralts tentatively started speaking to the big-walker. :Big-walker!: he called to her. She flinched and stood ramrod straight for a moment, head whirling about rather wildly to see who had been talking to her. :Big-walker, it is the Ralts down here talking to you. Usually Ralts can't talk to big-walkers like you, but I am… somewhat special among my kin, as is my sister. This is why we are so far from our homing-area. But that is not important right now; what is important is that this pack of Houndour's energy is not right – it is dark, tinted; I would even go so far as to say it is evil. This is why they are so far from their homing-areas, it is because this dark energy has forced them to do things they never would if they were right. This is not normal, for nothing is evil unless influenced by something else, and so my sister has asked me to tell you that if you move very far from where you are now, the Houndour will probably attack you. She wants to help you, and so do I, so just – be careful. Sudden moves are bad, but you probably knew that. My sister and I will work things out, we promise.:
Without waiting to see if the big-walker was gaping or staring or whatever, the brother Ralts resolutely turned to his sister and joined hands with her. They turned within themselves and opened their inner eyes, which allowed them to see the energy fluctuations around them. The energy surrounding the twelve Houndour was indeed dark, tinted, and most definitely evil. A sense of foreboding sprung up in the two Ralts, and it was not just their sensor-plates picking up on the terror of the big-walker.
:Sister, what will we do about the energies of these Houndour? This is far worse than anything I've ever seen! The dark-energies are almost literally sucking the life-energy of the Houndour!: the brother Ralts cried despairingly.
:Brother, we must not lose sight of ourselves and our goal to this evil. I think it would be unwise to handle the energies directly, lest it taint us, so perhaps we should work with the energies around us – the light-energy from the stars and water-energy from a nearby natural body of water, perhaps? Those would be the best elements to use to deal with them, I think.: the sister Ralts asserted.
With a mental nod, the brother Ralts agreed, and with a momentary melding-of-minds to smooth out the rest of the plan, the two got to work.
The sister Ralts reached her mental hands up to the energies of the stars, drawing on their great energy and wrapping them around those hands. At the same time, the brother Ralts reached out to the nearest source of flowing water, coaxing the energy created from waterfalls and the currents Magikarp and Tentacool and Psyduck made as they moved through the waters to follow him back to where the energies were needed. If the energy had a mind of its own it would have complied anyways, but as it did not – well, it was still best to be kind to the hand which fed all of nature. Abusing it had unknown and probably not positive outcomes.
After the two had gathered the agreed-upon amount of energy, the two Ralts prepared their "attack" – closer to the physical plane, the brother Ralts surrounded each Houndour with a cocoon of his water-energies, while immediately after that the sister Ralts, still on the energy-plane, roped varying thicknesses of light-energies around the tinted energy that was sucking the life-energy from the Houndour.
With a surety of herself that the brother Ralts had not realized his sister possessed, she effectively severed the link – or links, the brother Ralts saw – that was drawing energy from the Houndour pack. Once the dark-energies were free, both of the sibling Ralts "pounced" on them with their respective element-energies; water-energy to hold, light-energy to destroy. The sister Ralts created a kind of blanket of her light-energies with which to smother the dark-energy, and the tactic worked beautifully.
Neither of the two Ralts were aware of how much time had passed in the physical plane, but when they returned to their physical bodies the moon was still high in the sky and the Houndour pack was collapsed on the earth, snoring loudly. For some reason this made the two Ralts want to burst out laughing, and promptly, they did.
Hannah had been first scared witless, then sure she was going mad or delusional, and then stunned when the Ralts had first "spoken" to her. The she had slowly turned and watched in fascination as the two of them – siblings, if what the Ralts had said was true (though Hannah failed to see what reason they would have to lie) – had joined hands and started radiating energy. It had started first with their red sensor-horns, which shimmered in the starlit night. Then the shimmer had begun to glow, and then the glow had evolved into the shining radiance of energy that Hannah had felt.
She was awestruck.
But this was Sinnoh. She shouldn't be surprised – tiny, miraculous, unbelievable things like this happened nearly every day. Right?
Well, Hannah didn't have an answer to that.
Hannah blinked and by the time she opened her eyes, the Ralts had stopped glowing and somehow or other the Houndour were all on their forepaws, snoring very loudly. A soft sonic chime rang out and it took Hannah a moment to realize that it was actually the two Ralts laughing.
This day was getting weirder and weirder by the second, Hannah thought.
"Uh – okay, so, you two – uh, would you mind telling me what just happened?" Hannah asked incredulously. One of the Ralts flashed a small, cute grin at her.
:Big-walker, we've succeeded in severing and destroying the dark-energies surrounding the Houndour pack. We took element-energy from around us – my sister from the light of the stars, and I from the water of the nearest flowing river – and collaborated our attacks so that the Houndour could not move to hurt either us, yourself, or themselves, and then cut off the dark-energy that was sucking their pure-energy.: the Ralts that was grinning spoke to her. The fact that the words were forming in her mind somehow did not perturb her as she thought it should have.
"My name is Hannah, so you can call me that. 'Big-walker' just seems a bit odd to me. But anyways, good job. I bet you guys are hungry – if you don't mind waiting here or coming home with me, I can get you some more Pokéfood. Really high quality. I also have berries and human food and water and all that jazz – you can take your pick; you're more than able to, I suppose."
:Ha-nah,: the Ralts tasted her name in his mind-tongue. :I see. We will call you this from now on, Ha-nah. We have been traveling for many moons through this land, and though she has not been… stingy in her gifts to us, she has not been as free-handed as we would have liked, some days. We appreciate your offer, Ha-nah. I speak for both myself and my sister when we say that we should opt to join you in your homing-area, if your fellow homing-members would not mind it.:
Hannah tilted her head at the odd pronunciation of her name, but shrugged it off. Pokémon would be Pokémon, she figured. But… "Homing-members?" Hannah asked. "You mean… like, my family? No, they would be overjoyed if you came home with me. They'd think I caught you or something, and made my first step to following my sister in her epic quest to beat ever trainer in Sinnoh in four years flat." Hannah scoffed bitterly, narrowing her eyes in something that she would have called disgust just imagining the scene playing through in her mind. "That's not necessarily what I want to do, anyways. Unless there was a special reason for it, I would want to be a Coordinator, not a Trainer. Maybe I could pull off being a Breeder, but… I don't know. I suppose I should leave as many options as possible open."
Hannah paused, shifting her weight from foot to foot a few times, looking nervously around her and the two Ralts at the sleeping pack of Houndour. "But whatever we do… I think I'd like to do it before these Houndour wake up. Evil or not, now, I don't want to take any chances. I mean, look at those teeth!" Hannah exclaimed, gesturing for the two Ralts to follow her as she started walking home again.
Well, maybe Hannah's mother wouldn't be quite so upset now.