A semi-cool breeze swept past the roadside, indicating that summer had not yet come. It was April on the island and as it was in the Northern Hemisphere, it was springtime. The scenery was beautiful. Plants had already started to sport flowers and many more had unopened buds that would surely add even more colour to the place in the coming months. The temperature was less than what it would be in summer, though it was warmer than what I have become accustomed to back home. I could only imagine how hot it would be soon.

We had been walking for an hour or two in this weather towards Jubilife City and the Polytechnic. The journey so far had been uneventful and the only thing major that occurred was us spotting a few pokemon on the sides of the road. Jake assured me that they were just common rats and such, but something about them fascinated me. To Jake it was like being fascinated over a refrigerator.

That intrigue made me think more about the pokemon that I had just received earlier in the day. I remember the nurse calling it a Natu. I had asked Jake what it was but he didn't know. Apparently it was endemic to one of the other islands that he had not visited. I was tempted to open the container that was holding the pokemon but the high number of people who kept coming out of nowhere and asking us to battle with our pokemon kept me from doing so. Due to Jake not wanting to endanger his Dad's Lapras and I not wanting to risk sending in my sure-to-be-weak pokemon, we had to keep our pokeballs hidden from potential challengers.

After walking for several minutes without seeing anyone else, I decided to finally open my pokeball. I removed it from my pocket. "Do you think that it's safe to let my pokemon out here?" I asked.

Jake looked around. We were in an open field to the side of the road. The short, almost trimmed-looking grass allowed us to see for kilometres. He nodded. "Sure, why not?"

There had to be a reason for it to empty at a time of day like this. It was somewhere halfway to Jubilife and right in the middle of route 218. All day, we had passed tons of travellers just like us on the road and now there was this huge empty space with no one other than us in it. Something seemed awry.

"Okay then." I said, pulling the ball out of my pack.

Now, just to figure out how to open the damn thing.

I studied the sphere, holding it up to the sun to try to figure out if there was any writing on it that would indicate how to use it. I wondered why they didn't hand out an instruction manual along with the ball for first time users, but then again, I hadn't grown up surrounded by the culture of using them. It might have been like using a computer mouse. Knowledge of its operation must have been common knowledge.

Wait, there was writing on it!

There was small, size six print written on the bottom red section of the ball. Straining to read what was written, I recognized the word "Release", with a small indent where there was small button embedded on the orb. Normally, it would have been not out of place on a calculator or Mp3 player to reset the device. Here it was probably not used for its normal function.

I took a pen out of my pocket and was about to insert it into the indent, thinking that I would let out the pocket monster when Jake interrupted my action.

"Wait! What the hell are you doing?" Jake grabbed the pen out of my hand with ease.

"What was that for?" I asked, kind of agitated.

"Well, why were you going to get rid of your pokemon? Numbskull!"

"I wasn't." I answered.

Jake looked at me for a second in a moment of disbelief. I didn't know what I was doing wrong, and him standing like that mad my ignorance of what was going on just made the situation worse. I thought he was just going to look at me forever before he surrendered his face to his palm.

"You don't know how to use a pokeball... do you?" he muttered through his fingers.

"No." I admitted. I really didn't want to show myself being ignorant of any pieces of the guidebook that I had neglected to read to completion.

"Sorry, then." Jake said with a sigh. "It's just when you press that button, the pokemon is released for good. Forever! You won't be able to recapture it."

"Oh..." I mumbled, just realizing then how close I was to doing something really stupid.

"Here, you just press the white button down once to expand it." he explained, taking the ball and pressing the center button and allowing it to expand to its full size, before handing the ball right back to me. "You just push the center button again to open the ball."

"Thanks." I said, accepting both the advice and the pokeball back from him.

I was afraid to open the pokeball, unsure of what would come out of it. Would it be some sort of juvenile of the Natu species and I would have to take care of it? I doubted that I would know how to care for it. Would it be some sort of hideous beast and would it try to kill us? A dozen thoughts ran through my mind.

"Now is as good a time as any!" Jake said half sarcastically and half jokingly, breaking the silence that my thoughts left on the conversation.

I pressed the button.

The ball began to shudder in my hands, giving off a slight electric charge that I could feel flowing through my fingers. It began to open forcefully, the top part folding back and hitting the palm of my hand. A red light that came from inside the device blinded me for a moment, which made me rely on my other senses to understand what was going on in my hands.

A slight disturbance in the air pressure pushed against my arm, trying to force it down, but I held it steady. When the force eased on my arm, the light also died down, focusing on a single point in the field which allowed my vision to return. On the place where the light focused, a figure began to appear, however small. It looked like we were on one of those old Star Trek television shows where people were beamed aboard the Enterprise.

I can't believe I just made that reference.

When the light cleared from view, what I saw was a small bird pokemon. It was around fifteen centimetres tall and reminded me of a tropical finch. It was one of those birds that would appear in National Geographic nature specials except the one that I had was a species that I had never seen before.

The bird was of a round shape, with a short beak and stubby wings. It had green plumage with a singular red feather protruding from its head. Its wings and tail were of the same crimson hue as its head feather was.

After seeing what looked to be a sea serpent at the pokemon center, I was glad that I wasn't looking into the eyes of some vicious beast but instead those of a small animal that by no means could eat me.

Those eyes... The Natu's eyes had an odd quality to them. Unlike other bird's eyes, they were oddly human looking with large blue irises. They kept staring at me in an almost trance-like state. The effect wasn't on me, as I myself was not hypnotised by them, but rather on the bird itself. It was fixated on me, and I on it.

"Well, that pokemon is really useful. I can't imagine why it was left at the Pokecenter." Jake broke the silence, with a touch of sarcasm. "You two can stare at each other while I figure out where to go from here." He sat down on a nearby log, took a large city map out of his backpack and unfolded it, locating where we were.

"Now, why are you doing this?" I quietly said to myself, in reference to the bird. Upon hearing this, it shook its head side to side. Its eyes refocused afterwards, not locked onto me but into a more tranquil state. It blinked a few times, which was a good sign. At least it wasn't blind.

...

What was that? Did someone say something?

...

I actually couldn't hear anything in particular but I was able to sense things sent almost telepathically to me. What I felt was a feeling of warmness, of kindness and of happiness. It was odd, as it also felt as though it was transplanted in me like a horticulturist branding a branch of a tree to another tree in order to produce a new type of fruit.

While this was going on, the little finch had managed to hop the few yards between myself and the place where he had been beamed from the pokeball and in a few jumps he had carefully climbed up my khakis and onto my shoulder. He managed to grasp my shirt without even making the smallest of scratches on my skin underneath.

...

He nuzzled his beak against the side of my neck lovingly as if saying thank you. I gave it a small pat on the head, and turned to face the bird. "I don't know if you can understand me." I began. "But, I just wanted you to know that I won't do the same thing your old owner did. I won't make to go back into that ball."

...

The feeling this time was much stronger, more powerful. It was strong enough almost to make me lose my balance and fall over. I wondered if it were normal or not for me to be picking up on these signals, which were obviously coming from the Natu. I could certainly tell that he understood what I was saying, even though he was unable to speak himself.

The emotional barrage began to die down after a few seconds. I think that he must have thoroughly thanked me. "Do you want to stay on my shoulder?" I asked. I don't believe that he was able to control what he had just done, as he couldn't answer with an affirmative or negative. He however answered with actions and kept his claws deeply dug into my t-shirt. "Fine by me."

I walked over to Jake, the Natu keeping its balance on my shoulder.

"So, did you win the staring contest?" We both laughed. The Natu gave off another one of its psychic bursts, almost as if it was laughing as well.

"Did you just feel that?" Jake asked, rubbing his forehead.

"Yeah, I think I did too. Is that normal for a pokemon to do something like that?" I asked. Jake was now studying the bird, looking at it to try to determine why it was able to cause such a disturbance in his thought patterns. The bird simply stared at him.

"If you try..." I began but was cut off by a loud noise. It truly sounded like the felling of trees, the sound they made when they hit the ground. I was stunned for a second, trying to figure out where it came from. Looking left to right, I found that there were in fact no logging operations in the area.

"What was that?" Jake turned to me, unknowing of what was going on. The sound occurred again but this time it was much louder, much closer. Jake looked at me with pleading in his eyes, scared. At that moment, I realized what the noise was. Damn it, why didn't I recognize it sooner.

"Get down, right now." I yelled at Jake, physically dragging him down with me as I hit the deck. Crack! A scream, which could have only been Jake, followed the last noise. His body hit the ground with a thud. Why didn't I catch on sooner?

"Jake, Jake are you alright?" I desperately asked, trying to get him to answer a response as he lay face down in the grass. For a moment, I thought he was dead, but he slowly turned to face the sky again. Crack! The shooter fired again, but missed.

"Ah, what happened to my leg?" he gasped, clutching his leg in one hand and supporting his body off of the ground in the other. Blood trickled out of the wound on his body.

"Oh no." I muttered, looking closer at the injury. It was definitely a gunshot wound, one that had hit right in the thigh. The pain must have been immense, but Jake just squinted his eyes and smirked to try to bear the pain. "Just keep quiet." he stated, trying to keep his message short to not break the concentration it took to keep himself from not passing out.

I nodded in agreement; whatever was out there was out there to kill us. It would probably be a good idea to keep a low profile on the grass to attempt to conceal ourselves from our assailant. Jake was probably thinking the same thing and made no attempt to move from where he had fallen.

The gunfire stopped abruptly.

Great, now they're coming to look for us.

For a moment there, we lay still on the ground. The Natu had hopped off of my shoulder and was trying to calm down Jake who was now able to restrain himself a bit. His breathing had become quieter; now allowing me to hear what was around us.

I could hear no one approach us, but I didn't want to risk my hide and look to see if there was anyone actually coming nearer to us. So we lay up against the fallen tree, waiting, hoping for a way out. Not wanting to make a sound, we remained silent and only our heavy breathing was an indication of anyone being in the clearing. It was like that until I heard something in the distance. A slow painful moan, of a person injured. The voice was recognisably female and for sure human, not an animal. The sound was spread by the acoustics of the field, being open echoed the quietest sound.

I looked over to Jake, who looked back at me with a face that acknowledged that he heard the voice too. "Whoever that is, they're in the same boat as us." he managed to whisper through gritted teeth.

"I know." I replied, quietly. I could tell where the person was, due to the first place where the echo bounced, so I could definitely find her. If I went and ran across the field, I risked myself getting shot at again. An Imaginary debate raged in my head.

But if I was in that position...

If I left, Jake would be defenceless if they discovered where we were.

And what would I do if I stayed?

What would I do once I reached the person?

What could I do from here?

"I know what you're thinking, and I'd advise against it." He seized for a second. The Natu sent out another calming emotion, attempting to stop Jake's pain. It subsided and he gained control of his voice "But, since I need a diversion anyways to call the police department."

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to keep my voice down.

"I need you to draw their attention while I crawl over and grab my cell phone out of my backpack."

I nodded, more wanting to help out the person stranded on the other side of the road than create a distraction. It felt as though I had to. I made up my mind; I was going to run for it. And I did.

I bolted down the most direct line to where I thought the person was. I didn't know I could move as fast as I could then, but then again I had never been shot at before. In fact, just as I thought that, the shooting picked up again.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Bullets whizzed by at supersonic speeds, nearly missing me on multiple occasions. There was no way for me to protect myself from the hail but to run as fast as I could, and pray that the person firing at me kept missing.

The final few steps were agony as my body was telling my brain that it could not keep up the pace I was at, while my brain was telling my muscles that if I didn't keep it up, I would be killed. Naturally, it was not pleasant. I actually lost my footing in one of my last strides to the other side of the road and flew face first into a ravine. After cart wheeling a few times, I came to rest against a tree in what appeared to be a drainage ditch, used to collect water that had run off of the road. I had found the third victim.

I tried to refocus my eyes, after they were clouded by the force my fall. When my eyes began to see properly, I looked over to the person I had ran to.

Whoa, wasn't expecting that!

When you least expect it, the most odd turn of events can occur. Even though what had already occurred was a shock, what stunned me even more was the sight of who was sitting across from me. She was propped up against the muddy flank of the gravel road, clutching an arm. Blood seemed to stain her blue fur, giving it a purple colour.

A bipedal fox? How strange.

What gave away what type of creature she was were the spikes on both of her arms which were identical to the ones that protruded from the bracers that I had received earlier in the day. The only difference was that hers' were a white colour while the artificial ones were of some metallic substance like steel. I could have taken in more of what she looked like, but at the time I was too concerned about how she was doing. The Lucario looked like a mess; she had a mud stain across her chest. She was wearing a torn-up shirt and an old pair of jeans with the knees ripped through them. She had what looked like two bullet wounds in her upper arm, and one in the upper leg. The creature was losing a lot of blood.

The Lucario saw me and tried to move away, shifting her body weight onto her legs and trying to stand and failed miserably. She was definitely scared of me. I tried to calm her down.

"It's okay. I'm here to help." I said, hoping that she could understand me. "Where are you hurt?"

The creature looked at me for a few moments, as if to determine if I was actually meaning what I said or if I was associated with the ones that had caused her harm. I tried to look the part of a good guy.

"On my arm here and here, as well as on my leg." She weakly replied. I could tell she had lost a lot of blood volume, leading to muscle weakness and almost the inability to speak. It was expected, as the Lucario could only cover two of her wounds with her paws.

"Here, you need to keep pressure on those wounds, or you will bleed out." I reached for my backpack, which I had unknowingly carried with me on my dash to the ravine.

It actually turned out better that I had brought it along, as I had some water and some clothes, which in a pinch could be turned into makeshift bandages. "Can you hold still for a second? This may hurt a bit." I asked, getting a bottle of water out of my pack and ripping one of my shirts into strips.

"How can I really trust you?" She asked, with a touch of fear but was too tired to make much of an effort to object.

"Well," I said, pouring some water on one of the cloth strips. "I just ran all the way over here from the centre of the field over there, through gunfire just to help the person over here."

"But you didn't find a human over here." She winced as I wrapped the bandage around one of the wounds in her arm.

"I found you, and you still needed help."

She was about to open her mouth to object to my last statement, probably not used to needing help from weak humans like myself. She caught herself from saying what she was about to say. "True."

"So, why would you need to be untrusting of me then?" I asked, attending to the other section of arm and trying to look as kind as I could.

"Well, don't you want to capture me?" she asked seriously. "Most humans would want to."

"Now why would I do that?"

"To make Lucarios like me fight in competitions. Or more specifically, since I am a female, to breed. Are you just helping me so you can force me to do that?"

"That's terrible." I exclaimed. "Why would anyone want to do that?" I was really shocked by what she said and also troubled. Was it legal for that stuff to happen here? I could understand dog breeders but this creature was intelligent. It made me sick to think that people could do something like that to something that could keep up an active conversation with them.

"Most people want to." She said, keeping pressure on the last bullet wound that I had not yet cleaned yet. "I find it strange that you wouldn't want to."

"I think you will find that I am different from all the people around here." I replied, placing the last of the bandages on her leg. "I could not force a sentient person to do something like that."

"Thanks for the complement."

"Which complement?"

"You just called me sentient, free thinking. It's the general belief that pokemon are just dumb animals that only talk for getting what they need. A lot of humans think it's some instinctual survival thing. Thanks for not believing what they say." she explained with a smile, as large as she could muster while under the pain of her injuries.

"You're welcome then." I replied, smiling myself.

"Hey David!" I heard someone yell, over in our direction. I could tell that the voice was Jake. "Are you still okay over there? The police are here." I hadn't noticed, but the gunfire had completely stopped.

That was quick.

"Yes, I'm okay. There's someone else here too. I think she needs to get to a hospital." I turned back to face the Lucario.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to come with you." she stated.

"Nonsense, you need to see a doctor." I replied. I knew that out here, she would not live long with her extensive injuries. "Do you not trust me?"

She mumbled something under her breath. I could tell she was weighing out her options, until she eventually and slowly answered my question. "It's very hard for me to say yes. I know that I need medical attention, but I swore that I would never..." she trailed off. I think somehow I inadvertently brought up something that really did not need to be brought up.

I remembered what she had said earlier about people using pokemon like her for inhumane purposes. "If you're worried about anything happening, I can assure you that it won't happen."

"Sure. As if I needed you to protect me, that'd be the day." she scoffed. "But right now, I do need your help."

"So is that a yes?"

"I guess so." she answered, pulling herself up and grasping my shoulder for support instead of her left leg. I put my arm around her shoulder to help her keep her balance, like an athlete helping a teammate off of a pitch. "But, if you try to capture me, I'll beat you into a pulp." she whispered, inches away from my ear.

"In your condition..." I teased.

"What are you trying to say, that you are going to capture me or that I am weak?" she asked, half jokingly.

"I'm saying that you need to get to get medical treatment." I replied, caringly.

The evening sky was a welcome sight, from the tree covered ditch that I had been stuck in. The birds had begun to sing and for all that I knew, they could be talking some comprehensible language that I could not understand. My ideas as to how the universe was structured had been rattled by the day's events. Humans weren't alone at the top of the intelligence scale any longer.

I looked over to where Jake and I had taken cover from the gunfire some time ago. What I saw, I couldn't comprehend. Two large figures stood over the fallen tree, accompanied by around four smaller individuals.

The two of us hobbled over the grassland silently towards where the group had been clustered. When we got nearer to them, I could tell what the two larger objects were. They were birds! Not only were they birds, but they were around twenty feet tall. They looked similar to the ones that I had seen on the way here as they had the same markings, yet they were enormously larger. I knew that they were the smaller birds' evolutionary successor. It was kind of funny that the smaller birds could have fit inside the larger one's head without a problem.

As we approached them a person came running after us, I could tell he was a policeman. He was wearing an old timey type of a flying outfit, topped with a leather flying helm and goggles. He called back to the others, to signal that they had found us.

"Oi, guys, we found him." he hollered. He came running over to greet me, with great effort to see if I was alright.

"Charles Chamberlain, of the Sinnoh Air Guard." He introduced himself, arm outstretched. When he realized that I was using my arms in effort to keep the Lucario balanced against my shoulder while I continued forward, he lowered his hand. As he walked beside us at our slow speed. "We were relayed a message from Canalave City while transporting some freight to Jubilife that said there was some sort of shooting. I understand there was another victim with you, do you know where she is?" he asked. I could tell that he was totally ignoring the actual victim which was right next to me.

"You're looking right at her." replied the Lucario.

"Really, where?" he asked genuinely.

What, was this a joke or something. If it was it wasn't funny.

I caught on to what he was doing. "She's right beside me you blockhead."

"Oh," he looked confused. "It's a pokemon. Can't you just return it to its ball?"

"First of all, I'm not an it, I am just as intelligent as you are. Second of all, I'm not owned by anyone. Thirdly, I would appreciate it if you got me some antiseptic before I pass out." she spoke through gritted teeth. When she had finished she was decidedly out of breath and I could tell she wasn't kidding. What I couldn't tell was the look on the airman's face was outrage at someone not human giving him orders, or confusion about how a wild Lucario acquired information on medicine.

"Uh sure..." he sauntered off towards his compatriots.

I glanced over to the Lucario. I could tell she was in immense pain. "Are you going to be okay?" I asked, concerned.

"I just need to..." she trailed off, going limp.

Oh no...

I knew something major was wrong, if she went unconscious, she may not awaken. "Charles, get over here!" I yelled. I found it odd using his name even though I had only met him a few minutes ago.

The Lucario had barely any strength left in her. She was barely holding on to my body to keep upright. Sensing that I would not be able to support her whole body weight, I carefully lowered her to the ground, facing the sky. Right before I successfully placed her on the ground, the last of her strength was used up and slid to the ground, out of my arms.

Charles came running back to us. "We don't have much medicine for pokemon with us. We thought we were answering a call for people being injured." he stated exasperated, catching his breath from the sprint from their mobile camp. His eyes glanced from me to the Lucario which was now on the ground. "This is very bad, the Lucario has lost a lot of blood." he got on his hands and knees and began to inspect the creature.

Kneeling beside me, he looked over the wounds that I had managed to patch. "These are very deep."

"But you have some sort of medicine that can help the situation can you?" I asked, worriedly.

"Unfortunately not." he stated grimly.

WHAT?

"There is one way that you can possibly save its life." he began. I ignored his use of the word "it". I was getting as sick of the idea of him using that word as much as the Lucario probably was, but I ignored it. I had to; there was a life to be saved. Charles ended his sentence by holding a small ball up in his hand, so that I could see. I knew that a pokeball was necessary for people who used pokemon to fight as they could keep the creature in some form of stasis, while it could be brought to a Pokemon Centre. It would keep the Lucario alive, but it would also violate my promise.

"I'm sorry, I can't..." I began.

"If you don't, the pokemon dies." Charles cut me off. I disliked how he thought of pokemon, but I knew he cared about them, however oddly.

I took the pokeball and looked down at the Lucario. Her breathing was shallow and she very well could have been slipping in and out of consciousness. I had to act quickly.

My finger depressed the centre button on the device to expand it.

I took one last look at the creature to see if there was any way of her hearing what I had to say. She was already unconscious, so I kept my message short.

"Please forgive me..."

My finger clamped down on the centre button one more time. One more decisive time. The pokeball opened slightly, and the same red light that had come out to greet me when I sent out my Natu emanated from the device. It met up with the Lucario, changing her colour to match its brilliance.

And she was gone...