Part 1

"Yes, the bloating should go down eventually." Professor Oak eased over an answer to a rather cross brute of a man visually inclined to throttle the cornered Professor. While Oak spoke, a small personal craft docked into the narrow waterway near the Professor's laboratory and bobbed in the waves as it bumped against the land with hollow thud. "I perfectly understand your concern, Mr. Elm. Just be glad your son isn't an Electric-type Pokémon ri- Oh my…" The Professor tried to take a stab at some light humor, but wound up with a meaty mitt of a hand clutching the neck of his lab coat instead. Face to face with a large square head and an excessive amount of a tawny brown beard, the young Professor had profusely lost his nerve and degenerated to a blabbering buffoon before Cyprus took any notice of the detraction.

The young boy cocked an eyebrow at the sudden interruption in his departure not only due to the fact it had just occurred over the span of the past few minutes, but also because he had to consciously remind himself of who the man was; father and son in this particular branch of Elms couldn't have been any more on different sides of the spectrum, since the junior that was the aid in question was a gangly string bean of a child. Somehow Hogarth the Lumberjack Viking who played Linebacker, as Cyprus compared Mister Hogan Elm in his mind, had a reasonable way to spawn the scarecrow point Dexter that the colleague of Caesar was. Either way, Caesar displaced diverting thoughts as such to tackle the situation at hand. He knew he'd have to rush in; Professor Oak seemed likely to have his head chewed off at any moment. He walked cautiously towards the tense pair and raised his voice. "Professor, the boat has arrived." Cyprus tried to defuse the situation with an obvious fact, hoping that the attention the Professor was receiving would be directed toward the small white fishing boat. Fortunately, though unexpectedly, the diversion worked. In the next instant, Hogan Elm let loose his vice grip of Professor Oak before the hulking figure shoved the Pokémon Expert onto his lab-coat covered rump. Without fanfare the brutish patriarch of the Elm line then left without another word, but all the same was audibly fuming as he made his way back towards town; a storm to be reckoned with. Nervously checking to make sure Hogan Elm was not turning back, Cyprus assisted Samuel Oak back to a standing position as the elder of the two dusted himself off.

"Honestly, I do feel bad about young Elm,… really such a talent; so much potential and a brain to boot…" He took a moment and looked over his shoulder before leaning over to whisper to Cyprus smugly, "Not a bit like his father. Never showed an ounce of what Elm has throughout his entire life, and I should know; we went to school together." He nudged Cyprus in the rib and chuckled a little bit to himself. "Well, enough about that." He coughed, resuming a more serious tone. "I suppose we should see you off soon, because it's a long trip to Cinnabar, you know." Professor Oak slapped Cyprus on the back and began walking him towards the boat. "I wouldn't want to ask its captain to have to sail through the night. Then again, I trust in the captain's abilities in any sort of weather. In fact, you should see Captain Oblique in a hail storm;. All the same, you two will want to have reached Cinnabar's main island before sunset so that you can both be given rooms at the Pokémon Center at a reasonable hour."

Here, between the conversation and his path, Cyprus noticed the words "The Letter" written in a big, fancy red font on the rear of the pristinely painted craft. "Only two? Aren't you coming along?" Cyprus inquired curiously as he hopped into the boat floating evenly enough on the calm waters.

"I considered a one way trip for myself to make sure Blaine would be there, to get everything settled about finances, but with all the problems arising with Elm and whatnot… Well, I'm sure you understand."

"Professor, I would understand if you simply said you didn't feel like getting your feet wet today; I can more than understand the reasons you have." Cyprus admitted his admiration for his mentor in a short, slightly poetic phrase. He had an abounding respect for the local Professor, but rarely had a one on one discussion in order to display it.

Professor Oak hopped into the boat and grabbed the solid wooden side rail to prepare an exit soon after. "I certainly appreciate that, Cyprus." The nod he gave Cyprus was the first real taste of feeling close to a mutual respect the young boy had yet to receive. The fact the cue came from one of the men Cyprus looked up to most produced an elation Cyprus managed to subdue with a curt nod back. The return nod caused Samuel Oak to bark with laughter. "You, I must admit, also have a great deal of talent and brains; otherwise, you wouldn't be here right now." Oak laughed heartily as a new presence entered from an opening hatch leading below deck. The pair of chatting males turned to look as the presence stepped out towards them; a female presence.

"Captain Oblique." Professor Oak nodded formally to the approaching person. On the other hand, Cyprus did more than merely look at the captain of the small vessel, Cyprus gawked at her; jaw-dropped and eyes wide. She obviously was Caucasian, but with sun-roasted skin that glistened where it showed in the bright afternoon rays. She was nearly at eye level with the Professor, but at the same time very youthful in appearance. She surely must have just been tall for her age, Cyprus assumed, because she barely looked seventeen. Adorned in denim shorts and a blue spaghetti strap bikini top, she was sparely built, but with a look that further suggested she was young and growing into an hourglass figure. Most of all what kept his attention was that she was uncommonly pretty; much in a way that she was not drop dead gorgeous, but had a beauty that was apparent and unspoken all at once. She possessed a fair countenance with an oval shaped face and bright brown eyes under black eyebrows with a thickness not altogether thin, but not extremely thick either. Her wavy black hair fell slightly below her shoulders and cascaded her negligibly brachycephalic head perfectly. Cyprus could see the drapery of the locks, but most of her skull was concealed under a bandanna that had a print identical to the shell of a Lapras, which was blackened with grease. Every detail about her, from her determined and hard-working expression to her instant charm, was immediately soaked into the twelve year old's mind. Granted, Cyprus was mature for his age. He had been told so numerous times by adults he knew and had observed so himself by the displaced way he felt around children his own age and the normalcy he felt around adults. He didn't have time nor the capacity for crushes, but… something about this young woman walking toward them with an intoxicatingly bright smile lit his head on fire and removed his ability to think.

"Professor Oak." She nodded back, taking off her bandanna to wipe grease off of her hands, which were surprisingly frail-looking for what work it was suggested she did by herself; managing a fishing boat. Her raven hair was glossy and flowed in the wind with a bountiful grace that-

"And you must be Cyprus." Cyprus was thrown from studying her features back into the world of communication. The truth was: he never felt so far off in unknown territory before in his life as when Captain Oblique turned her attention towards him, and he immediately had to think of how interesting eyes were more than anything in the world as hers locked in on his. "We'd go to school together, I think. Ligeia Oblique; but everyone calls me Gia. Wait… I [i]think[/i] we'd go to school together; it's hard to say." She crossed her arms and stuck out one hip to the side as she surveyed him. "You're around fourteen, fifteen, right?"

'This girl is around my age?!' Cyprus thought to himself as he tried not to gulp and make his uneasiness obvious. "I'm twelve." Cyprus admitted sheepishly.

The answer came as a bit of a surprise to the young captain. The evidence was clearly there in her eyes. "No kidding? Wow. Kind of tall, aren'cha?" She looked at Cyprus, then down to her own feet and laughed. "I guess I'm one to talk." Her laugh was music to his ears and even went so far as to actually make Caesar Cade Cyprus crack an actual smile; a purely unsuppressed and infectious smile.

"Once you two grow up, I think you're both going to make me feel very short." Professor Oak joked casually. Oddly enough though, Cyprus noted, this prompted in Gia the strangest response: she stopped laughing on the spot. It was there that Cyprus began to connect dots as he looked at the way Gia bit her lip and looked at the Professor, whom, in turn, remained oblivious of the somewhat hurt look. Everything from the outfit to the outright initial confidence told Cyprus that young Ligeia Oblique was a teen with a noticeable crush on a slightly older man; noticeable to everyone except Oak though, and it was apparent she saw her failure clearly. Cyprus supposed he couldn't blame the girl, because, after all, young women were always coming to the labs to see if Professor Oak was around. If he wasn't, they'd leave often enough close to tears, but would swoon and demand to see him for whatever an array of tailored reasons they could think up when he was in. There was even one young beauty that favored ghost Pokémon heavily, but had shown up less and less since Professor Oak started focusing more on studying Pokémon than battling them; "Agatha", Cyprus recalled her name after a reprieve. All the same, the more Cyprus looked at Gia's impromptu expression that she was growing self-aware of, read a different way than what Oak had actually said. "When you grow up" turned into: 'neither of you are grown up' or 'I'm out of your league, kid' and still yet 'Shouldn't you be playing with dolls?' Actually, Cyprus thought, the youngest of the trio was thinking of more translations of the phrase than he felt he should have, so he tried to divert his attention somewhere else. In trying to avert his attention, however, he looked off to the side and accidentally looked down towards Gia's torso of all places. The instant the mistake was noticed by the perpetrator was the same moment the torso fell back as Gia crouched over so that her face took the place her chest had been while standing up. The stare she gave him for an honest mistake caused Cyprus to try to find a spot completely off to the side where he hoped he wouldn't see anything that would- And he saw his mother running towards the boat from the grass patch leading to town. Cyprus' heart sank when he spotted that his mother was sobbing and screaming that she had changed her mind… again. In reality, this was the sixth time since this morning she had, but this time she looked as though she was ready to pull Cyprus back into the house and never let him go.

"We need to go. Now." Cyprus sputtered nervously, while keeping an eye off to the side. She still had some distance left in the fields to the clear spot near the land port and even yet had the barrier blocks to contend with.

"Hmm?" Oak replied to the haste with a raised eyebrow at Caesar Cyprus, and didn't speak again until shortly thereafter when Caesar nudged him briskly in the ribs. A sharp glare from Caesar indicated Professor Oak towards the swiftly racing Lily Cyprus, and resulted in the Professor to merely nod to Caesar dutifully.

Meanwhile, Gia remained oblivious to the pair's secret understanding. "I was about to say we should hurry. My engine has been giving me a headache lately and I don't want to test The Letter out at night, since we might already run the risk of her stalling out anywhere."

"I'll leave you two to it then. Good luck to you both, and especially you, Caesar; be sure to write!" Professor Oak feigned peacefulness as words simply fell out of his mouth. Before anyone could reply, he quickly lifted himself over the railing to set foot back on solid ground as he waved a farewell to them both. "I'll be in my lab should departures be delayed. I really must thank you, Captain Oblique for the assistance." With that, he turned and proceeded to run to block Lily's war path discreetly.

Before speaking, Gia quietly gave a subtle look that she was screaming internally. The fact that Professor Oak wasn't riding as a passenger became all too evident for her to process at first, apparently. Before she did speak, she simply wheeled around to face the helm with a bottled up fury. "I'm going to go start us up. Got any luggage?" The way Gia spoke was oddly a mix of hospitality meeting dismay that she didn't want to show, so she turned her back to Caesar.

"It's stored in the Pokéballs on my belt." Caesar managed to say past the doubt she was really listening, but he was secretly proud of knowing the trick of storing items in the devices designed to capture wild Pokémon. This was despite the fact pretty much everyone did and it was popular to keep bulky items like bikes in them on long trips so the bike and other items could easily fit into a single sturdy bag with plenty of pockets. Caesar Cyprus did not have a bag however; only six Pokéballs, containing clothes, bed sheets, and tenting supplies, attached to his belt.

"Hey," Gia turned back and gave Cyprus a genuine smile that made him go fuzzy and hardly realize as his mother tackled his mentor with animalistic ferocity, "You might make a pretty good Pokémon Trainer when you grow up. Might want a back"

'Ouch.' Cyprus wasn't sure if she really meant that or she was retaliating in response to a similar line. 'Can't I technically be a Pokémon trainer now?' Cyprus self-reflected, but knew that either way the message was clear, and Cyprus suspected he was starting to feel what she might have been when Professor Oak had said a similar phrase the way he did to her. Sheer disappointment, that he didn't know how to explain why it happened in the first place, bubbled up inside him. He quickly turned away and watched his last view of Palette town up close before he heard the roar of an engine and felt the boat lurch forward. Just at that moment, Caesar Cyprus took note of, Misses Cyprus was too occupied with slapping Professor Oak upside the head to notice that her son was already speeding away. Rapidly, his town, his mother, and Professor Oak began to diminish as a deep blue sea began to dominate the scenery. Carefully, he leaned on the railway and watched as all around became one big body of blue waters as the boat hummed noisily along. All the churning up of the water on the sides of the boat

effectively castoff small waves to the sides as the carrier lolled forward. In little time at all, while Cyprus took in the sights, Gia was back on deck and had gone up to the second floor towards the front of the boat where the helm was located. It didn't take Cyprus very long to notice a few changes and grimaced while he chuckled because the feeling he received from the visible differences was certainly mixed. He noticed right off the bat that Gia was now sporting a dry white t-shirt and had rolled down her denim shorts, which lengthened them more than Cyprus had realized they had been made shorter before. He noticed how much it was apparent the young teen had a crush on the Professor and chuckled, but the grimace was from the fact he knew she changed even though he was there, and that meant there wasn't much interest towards him either. Another point made him feel abysmally worse as they ventured further out to see: Professor Oak was occasionally oblivious, so the interest going unnoticed didn't surprise Cyprus; but Cyprus knew even though he had tried to avoid it earlier, his taking notes on the fair Captain had been more than obvious. She didn't seem like the dense or absent-minded type, which proved in assuring Cyprus of his thoughts. Trying not to upset his stomach as the boat rocked to and fro and bobbed left and right, Cyprus sighed out a heavy breath of oppressive air caught in his lungs. He tried to remove all the thoughts, but found them locked too safely in his brain for him to move them out. He could only stare and think; two things he did not wish to do.

At that point he already knew his plan for the trip: try to stay to himself for the entirety and not turn into a love sick puppy over a girl he just met and barely knew. The funny thing about knowing about hormones was that knowing about them did absolutely nothing for controlling so that each occasional look she shot back every now and again resulted in a shift of perspective that Cyprus undertook each time to avoid eye contact. This was a constant challenge, but one he didn't entirely feel he needed to undertake. What he didn't yet know was that the best part of the effort was its eventual demise the one time Gia managed to catch Cyprus' eyes. This occurred when they were sufficiently out to sea and far out of sight of any visible land mass on a bright and clear day. He didn't even have so much as time to look away before she silently beckoned for him to come to the helm with what looked like a cat call. A coy, but meaningless, contraction of her index finger which pointed at him and pulled into her upright palm was all she gave as a sign. Again, Cyprus sighed, but this time around, he couldn't suppress the gulp of dry air he had managed to keep at bay before in his throat. Slowly, and meticulously, Cyprus made his way to the front of the boat, and to the helm. 'She's just a girl', he told himself, but he couldn't convince himself whatsoever. Worse yet: he knew exactly why this was: being human. She had him already.

Part 2

Gia casually leaned on the dashboard, crossing her legs where she stood, nonchalant. "So, you work for the Professor, right? Caesar Cyprus?" Gia asked once Cyprus had climbed the ladder up.

"Professor Oak. There are a few Professors out there; can't really name any off the top of my head though. Actually, I plan on becoming a Pokémon Professor someday." Cyprus felt he was saying these things, but the flood of words was largely unlike him.

"Oh? What do you plan to study?" Gia seemed half interested in the subject as they cruised along at a moderate speed. The slightest glimmer of interest in the conversation melted Cyprus' brain into mush and made his tongue feel gooey; her voice was alone intoxicating to him.

"I do not really know." He admitted sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders. "I never really gave the future that much thought."

"Well, be happy you can have a future you can figure out on your own. I took full advantage of the fact I could when I was thirteen. I started entering my Pokemon in official matches and I saved most of the money I earned up from Pokémon tournaments, until I bought this boat and now I've been sailing for a year; almost non-stop." Gia stated proudly, gripping the fancy-looking wheel and stroking the button-bedazzled and meter-strewn dashboard with glee.

"Nice boat." Was all Cyprus managed to sputter out with as much faked bravery as possible. "You must be very good with your Pokémon to have been able to afford a topline craft like this."

His complimenting worked like a charm and Gia lit up; even blushed, noticeable even under all that tan. "Yeah, I am. I can't tell you how few kids were there at most of the tournaments I went to, and that was because I was in a totally different league. Motorcycle enthusiasts cried after going up against me. I kind of retired from battling when I bought the [i]The Letter[/i], but of course I still keep around my old team."

"Really? What do you have?"

"My main choice is my Lass, a Lapras; she's gotten me out of so many scrapes in-battle and in the real world than I can count. Behind her is Blu, my Golduck, Whomp, my Poliwrath, Cutter, my Meowth that I mainly use for utility and is more of a pet, but is probably close to becoming a Persian at this point, oh! And Vapor. Guess what she is." After her explanation, she began to giggle at her own challenge and stuck her tongue out at Cyprus.

"Ummm." Cyprus scanned his brain for known Pokémon and tried to think. "It looks like you favor Water Pokémon save for one normal, so I'm going to guess that Vapor is a Water-type." He was stalling; trying to buy time. He only knew of the wild Pokémon in the area around Pallet and the occasional imported specimen in the labs.

"Uh huh" Gia nodded her head and giggled infectiously. Cyprus figured because she likely could tell he couldn't guess. "Come on, Lab boy: Who's that Pokémon?" She took on a much more histrionic tone and did all she could to not explode into a giggle fit.

It took a second more, but, at last, he had it. "Oh! Vaporeon?"

"Yup." She giggled again and rolled her eyes. "I know. Kind of obvious, right?" She sighed, while he kept silent. The thing was that he hadn't seen the matter as apparent, but he didn't want to say so. She continued with an uplifted tone. "I got her for my sixth birthday as an Eevee and, of course, I was already infatuated with Water Pokémon by then. When my Uncle and Aunt, who basically raised me and got me the Eevee, asked what I wanted to name her, I said "Vapor", because I already knew what I wanted her to be."

"That's cu-" Cyprus coughed when he realized his tone had waivered, so he tried to same words again with more confidence the second time around. "That's cute."

"Thanks. But I actually didn't evolve her until I was ten and started battling. For four years I ran around with a brown little puffball at my side called Vapor and everyone I knew would ask when I found a Water Stone." She laughed. "I wasn't really ever looking for one. As much as I wanted a Vaporeon, I didn't want to say goodbye to Eevee, even though they'd still be the same Pokémon after everything was said and done. Ever feel the same way?"

"We just have a pet Oddish in our front yard. Well, it sort of just appeared in our yard one day and my mom got attached to it, so she started treating it like a pet so it stays in her garden. That and the Pokémon I study under Professor Oak are the only Pokémon I ever really deal with."

"That's weird."

"What?"

She laughed, but not cruelly. "Just that you're twelve and you don't have any Pokémon of your own yet. Let me enlighten you to another worry some trainers have then, so you know if you ever start and you get a Pokémon with more than one evolution. By some point, can't tell you when though, I had started to worry that Vapor didn't want to be anything or wanted to be something else entirely." She stopped laughing and just smiled as she continued her story, a warm hearted smile that spoke of a sweet memory. "So, one day, I bought three stones: Fire, Water, and Lightning. I sat down in a calm little field with my Eevee and I told her "Vapor, I want you to pick what you want to be. I don't want you to think about what I want; just what you want." And it wasn't right away that she picked; I had to educate her in which Pokémon she'd become if she picked a certain stone, heck, I even brought pictures. She'd never seen a Vaporeon in her life, and I'll be honest, I showed her the pictures, but didn't give her the names. When she saw a picture of a Vaporeon swimming gracefully in the water, her little face lit up and she pulled the Water stone out of the group and towards her. She made her choice, instead of me making one for her. In the end, we both got what we wanted, but it was more important she got what she wanted."

Cyprus stood in awe of how peacefully Gia was looking at the horizon, a blanket of softly rolling waves, and truly felt his heart melt; not just because he felt attracted to the girl, but because she had seriously left an impression on him personally. His throat felt dry as he spoke. "You must really care about your Pokémon."

"I do. I really do." She sighed. "They're my world, especially nowadays when they're all I have for company for days without end." Her voice waivered and she seemed to sadden significantly. "I don't know if I should say this, because it'll probably make you feel bad, but I feel like since I started my story I should give you the biggest part of it. Remember how I said my Uncle and Aunt pretty much raised me?"

"Yeah. Not unusual."

"Well they were my Great Uncle and Aunt, an elderly couple who retired to Celadon City where I was sent when I was four. I can't tell you what happened to my parents because my Uncle and Aunt never told me; all I know is that they didn't decide to just leave me. Anyway, life was pretty normal until I was eleven and all of a sudden it was just me and my Aunt after Uncle Jim went for his morning jog. My aunt had to be told that he had collapsed in the Celdadon Center on his return trip and was already gone when paramedics arrived." She started to tear up. "Flowers. He was buying flowers. Always got her flowers every Tuesday. Those Pokémon tournaments I competed in were to support the both of us, then she got sick and it was just me."

As heartfelt as it surely was, the story had come at him when he wasn't prepared, so Cyprus was confused on how to follow up. His lengthy silence did not go unnoticed.

"That's one clue I don't spend too much time around people anymore; I talk way too much now." She laughed dimly, not nearly as whole heartedly as before.

"I live in a small town. I don't really get to meet new people a lot. I'm glad I got to learn something today; especially that it was about you. I think you're very… interesting." Cyprus strung a few sentences together in a rush just to make Gia feel better, and fortunately, it worked as she smiled at him. Before she could say anything, however, the boat rocked violently and threw the two passengers to their knees.

"What was that?!" Cyprus shouted, staying on the floor as Gia hopped to her feet. In no time at all, he noticed the boat had come to an abrupt halt.

"Not good. Not good, not good." Gia was in an all-out flurry of panic as she flew to the hatch that went below deck. Cyprus wasn't sure if she was answering him or if she felt compelled to voice her discontent, but either way, Cyprus tried to reason out the occurrence. Gia had said that the engine had been having trouble so the only logical explanation was- Bam! An audible knock echoed throughout the boat as the vessel gave another violent rock, and this time, much more violently. His logical solution had been debunked by the situation, and led him to follow Gia below deck just as a massive blue head broke the surface of the blue water, and scanned the empty deck with hungry, savage eyes as the Gyrados towered from out of the water, most of it still below the surface. Cyprus had been hit with spray from the surfacing as he went below deck, but the only evidence either of the two had of the culprit was a mighty, ear-splitting roar that rocked the boat and the surrounding waters by sheer force of the expulsion of the sound. Having both heard the roar, Cyprus looked to Gia who looked unsure of what to do next.

"The engine needs to be fixed; that thing out there knocked it out of alignment." Gia whispered. "That out there… I know that cry; Gyrados, and a big one, even for its species. I didn't think they swam in these waters! I've never come across one around here. Any time I have, I was fishing and prepared for them." She was hyperventilating as she spoke. It seemed to Cyprus the fact the occurrence was odd worried her more than the actual occurrence itself, so this amplified his own nervousness under the pressure.

"What do you intend we do? Will the Gyrados just leave?" Cyprus was not better off, since he'd never been in such dire straits before with wild Pokémon. All he knew was that this was an exceptional opponent for even seasoned survivalists; he wasn't entirely sure if he'd be alive in the next hour, and even Gia for that matter seemed to set the seed of doubt of her survival by her actions alone.

It took her a moment for Gia to say anything as she quickly looked to a door to the side in the narrow wooden hallway. "How well do you think you could handle a Lapras if I told you all her moves?"

He wanted to say "I highly doubt it.", but could not because the words would not form. "I don't have any badges." He said instead, anxious. This much should have been obvious though, since he'd already said he'd never had any Pokémon of his own.

"Unless you figure out how to fix a complicated piece of machinery that took me a month to just read the manual for, I don't think we have much of a choice." Swiftly, she dashed into what had to be her cabin and came out with a Pokéball that was grey on the top half and crème-colored on the bottom. The blue button in the middle clicked as she touched it and made the ball suddenly expand to it functional size as she handed Cyprus the ball. "Is it going to be you or me?" Her eyes met his with a dareful expression.

Cyprus merely nodded and choked back the doubt that had been straining him. He took the ball in hand and tried to stand tall, only to be thrown again as the boat gave another forceful lock. Worst yet, or best yet (he couldn't be sure), he was thrown against Gia accidentally as the pair hit a wall when the boat again suddenly rocked; more violently than before. He didn't have to say anything, even though he tried to say the words necessary for an apology. All she did was look him dead in the eye as she helped him and herself back up.

"Good luck." She said, and she kissed him on the cheek.