"But please? Come on Ree! You know I've been dying to see that movie ever since it was a blip on his website!" Maya demanded, all but hanging off of her sister. "I'm only home for another week, and I won't have time later, and I hate going to movies alone, and no one else is free, and please!"
Ree tried in vain to detach her. "Maya, c'mon. Let go. It's a date, and third wheels are awkward, and—"
"Don't use that excuse! I've been to plenty of movies with you and Scottie before," she huffed, clinging harder.
"There's a sex scene! And Scott's gonna get all grabby and kissy and I don't want my sister to be there, that'd be too fucking creepy. Ew."
"That's why I want to go! Sex scene! Come on, please! It can be my birthday present! And Christmas present! I'll pay for your ticket! I have to see Cal Knox naked, Ree, you don't even know—"
"Then look on the internet like everyone else does," she growled, finally freeing an arm. She grabbed hold of one of Maya's pigtails and pried her away, though it was disturbing how even that barely worked. She was desperate. Sure, that was her favorite actor, and sure, she liked seeing chick flicks with her sister. But she'd already made the mistake of seeing one with Scott and Maya, and the obligatory borderline porn 'romantic making love' scene had been more awkwardness than even she had bargained for.
"I will be the last person to see this movie. And there will be spoilers on the internet! Just like that time you found out that Al Mualim—"
"Fine you can come," Ree burst out. "But you're paying for snacks, and you don't get to tattle on me if Scott and I start making out in the theater. And no awkwardness."
Though it turned out to be even more embarrassing (and explicit) than either of them had anticipated, and even though Scott did in fact get pretty grabby, Maya's grin afterward was worth it.
-.-.-
Chapter Four: Ree Majors' Wonderful Journey Of Crime
-.-.-
"I have money again," Ree said with a greedy smile, looking at the fistful she'd earned from the gym battle. Whippy stuck his forked tongue out at her, playing with the bandages around his middle. "Stop that. I don't care if it itches—you need to keep those on to stop those burns from getting infected."
"Si-si-si," Lala giggled, pressing her stubby paws up against her mouth, though she failed to stifle the noise.
"And you. How the fuck does your fluff grow back so fast?" Once again, her pokédex was useless to her. They had spent the night in Striaton, figuring it was okay to take a break and heal up a bit. Ree valiantly resisted shopping for the rest of the day, and actually added to her meager money pile by picking out a couple of trainers in the city and beating them (though they lost once), figuring it'd be safer to shop the next day. That way, she'd be more aware of what she had to carry on her back.
And, of course, Lala's burnt and missing fluff had, again, just about completely grown back overnight. There were getting to be quite a few dents and bumps, obvious places where chunks had been ripped out, but the fluff itself was as thick as ever. It had to be a grass thing. Whippy healed pretty quick, too, though his scales took a bit longer to grow back. Though when the nurse had changed his bandages that morning, she could see shiny little nubs starting to poke through his skin. Either all pokémon healed fast, or it was a grass thing.
"Okay, so, list." She pulled it out of her book—and then realized she had just removed her bookmark. "Well shit." She flipped through again until she found the rough area where she'd been, and folded the corner down. Normally not her favorite method of keeping place, but it'd have to do. "Dishes, training book, and a proper bookmark. I guess since we're here, it wouldn't help to get a couple more food things and some healing things..." It was walking a precarious line. She didn't want to carry more than she had to, but she didn't want to run out of something vital in the middle of nowhere.
"Sni?" Whippy leaned over into her lap, struggling to look at the list. She lowered it so he could see it as well. "Snivy-sni?"
"I don't think you can read, mister. Nice try, though."
They packed up what little they had, though Ree then unpacked again when she decided to grab a quick shower. May as well bathe when she had the chance.
Naturally, it quickly evolved into a debacle. Lala, though a lot of her charred and blackened fluff had been cut out or had fallen out, was still filthy from her battle. Whippy had decided if she was getting in on it—and she was keen on getting in on it—he had to, too. Ree was literally caught with her pants down as her pokémon barreled into the bathroom. She tried kicking them out (literally) but wasn't terribly successful. It was easier to give in.
It was two against one on the water temperature; it was evidently a rule that grass pokémon didn't like anything but the most lukewarm of temperatures. Ree wrapped her arms around herself, freezing, as the two danced around her legs in the shower. She tried, she really did. She just couldn't handle so many cold showers.
"Okay, both of you, out! You've had your fun! And Lala, you look like a drowned patrat!" Just to make her point clear, she cranked up the temperature to scalding. They squealed and quickly fled, dripping onto the tile and staring plaintively at her through the curtain.
"Vee-vee..."
"I need to get clean, too! And I need to shave. Humans can't do cold temperatures like that. We're warm-blooded," Ree told them as primly as she could manage, then pulled the curtain closed once more. She ducked out once more to actually grab her razor, but then she shut it on them for good. Lala humphed at her. Whippy, however, tugged back the curtain and sat down in the water again, trembling a bit but looking up at his trainer with big eyes.
"Vee-vee, snivy-sni, sni?"
"..." She didn't understand him, but he was putting up with hot water. For some reason. She crouched down in front of him—and then hastily closed her legs and knelt instead—and picked him up. His scales were already warmer than usual and they'd have to change his bandages again after this. "Hey, it's okay. I can shower on my own. And shaving—it's not dangerous, I promise. I'm just getting rid of prickly little hairs." She shifted him so he could feel her leg. He seemed unimpressed.
"Vee-vee snivy," he grumbled and shivered violently, tail quivering.
"Okay, out of this hot water. It's obviously not good for you." She set him outside again, but he just clambered back in. This repeated a couple times until she gave up again. She turned the water down to something a bit cooler for sympathy's sake. "Whippy," Ree sighed and reached for the shampoo, "You are getting to be a handful."
She lathered up her hair, making sure she scrubbed hard since she wouldn't be getting another shower for awhile, and then promptly freaked out as he skittered up her bare leg. Ree screamed and shook him off, earning scratches for it, and pressed herself up against the cool wall while she tried to get bubbles out of her eyes.
Whippy stared at her with huge eyes, tail quivering with tension. Ree stared back at him, slightly afraid. He pointed up at her. She shook her head, splattering bubbles against the curtain.
He pounced upon them with glee as they slid down the curtain, scrabbling at it for purchase.
He wanted the lather in her hair. He thought it was more bubbles.
"...That's why you're in here?" Ree groaned, pressing a hand against her breast to try to get her heart rate back to normal. And here she thought it had been some sort of chivalrous loyalty or something. "...Whatever, ya little shit." She rinsed out her hair over him, showering him in warm lather. "Guess you'll get clean too this way."
He was less impressed with the conditioner, since it didn't produce as much, and got bored entirely when she set about to shaving her legs. She gave him the cheap bar of soap that came with the room to play with, but he ended up trying to eat it. After that she kicked him out for good and shut the door behind him.
Ree idly wondered if she'd ever get a normal shower again.
-.-.-
Bushy hair drying in its ponytail, and with Whippy in a new set of bandages, they finally set out. "Okay, next town's a bit farther away, so it'll be a longer journey. Gotta get that cookbook thing. And cooking supplies..." There wasn't an outdoor marketplace like in Accumula, but there was the pokémon mart in the center's building, as well as several department stores elsewhere in the town. It was a bit bigger city than Accumula thanks to the gym, so it wasn't that hard to find things to buy.
Ree picked up a rather nice hardcover copy of A Trainer's Guidebook To Unova, which, to her glee, contained a chapter about cooking. She wasn't going to get fancy with the cooking without a kitchen, so she figured a chapter would be just perfect. And it contained a pretty good field guide to the rest of the region and aspects of training. She was actually pretty excited to read it.
She also picked up a camping set of dishes, and a better knife. She had a multipurpose tool which did have a decent knife, but the new one was bigger. And sharper. Cooking and... maybe self-defense. Just in case.
She blew the rest of her money on a new pair of jeans, since denim was the best for the routes and it still made her ass look good. Just because she was a trainer didn't mean she didn't have standards. To her great surprise, her two pokémon behaved themselves pretty well while out shopping, mostly just looking at random things. Whippy, she could tell, was a little drowsy from the warm shower, and stuck closer to her. Lala flitted from display to display as she pleased.
"Ready guys?" Ree asked, hugging her new guidebook to her chest.
Whippy yawned. "Whimsi!" Lala said and raced off out of the in-between building without further warning. Ree sighed.
"...Well, go on, get. You need to be out there training, too. Lala is a lot stronger than you, and you need to catch up. Otherwise, what kind of baby daddy are you gonna be?" Ree said, nudging him with her foot. He perked up considerably and ran off after the whimsicott.
Ree walked along the main path at a leisurely pace, already flipping through her book. There was a chapter for cooking, history, crimes, sickness, first aid, common problems, and even on the behavior of trainers, as well as others. It was perfect. She glanced up every so often to make sure she didn't trip or run into anyone, but she was walking slowly enough that she was pretty safe. Ree decided to forgo the cooking chapter; when she was hungry, she'd be ready to go over food. History didn't sound all that interesting right then, either.
"Well, trainer crime is always in the news," she mused, flipping through to chapter two. Predictably, the chapter turned into a cautionary tale, advising pretty basic things. Keep pokémon out at night for protection, never approach an unknown wild pokémon, travel with partners or in small groups for safety, don't accept rare candy from strangers, and so on, and so forth. Team Plasma had its own little section, but since they'd been all but vanquished, they were hardly more than a footnote those days.
The chapter did feature a neat graph about crime rates in the training versus civilian populations over the last decade, though.
Assault among trainers was almost triple the rate of the civilian population, but she supposed that was sort of to be expected. Battles did get pretty heated. And plus, Ree knew that 'assault' could even mean a punch thrown in the heat of the moment, or even half an accident. It was still on her record.
As her eyes scanned down the list, it got more and more depressing. Murder was just a little higher than the civilians, and had an asterisk next to it, but attempted murder was double the other rate. Robbery and rape, the other two with asterisks, also had about the same figures, and they were high to begin with. Ree looked down at the grim little asterisk, reading the footnote.
"Attempted crimes are higher amongst the training population, but actual occurrences of the crimes are about average for that of the rest of the country. This is believed to be due to the fact that many trainers have pokémon to defend themselves with and can, in many cases, prevent the full crime from being carried out."
That explained the assault numbers, as well as just about the rest of the chart. "Fucking shit... That is depressing," Ree said, unable to help reading the rest of the chapter in morbid fascination. One in two trainers would get assaulted or physically attacked at some point in their career. One in four would have some sort of sexual crime attempted on them. One in seven would be almost killed.
And here she was, pregnant, about to go out and do what this book was telling her was so dangerous.
"This is what Maya's had to deal with all these years...?" Ree mumbled with a frown. The thought of her little sister out there, fighting back big hulking men with ski masks and guns, was more than a little disturbing. Yeah, Maya was a very talented trainer, and her team was really strong. But she was only fifteen. And she had been ten when she'd started out, and she had been weak and inexperienced then.
The chapter continued on to a section about the black market. Due to Unova's isolationist policies, smuggling pokémon in and out of the country was very commonplace and profitable. Pokémon poaching was also mentioned and warned against, again because Unovan pokémon were so rare on the worldwide market. They were valuable, dead or alive. It gave a couple tips on buying pokémon from breeders, the main thing of which was asking for and inspecting their license, and being suspicious of all trainers with a non-Unovan pokémon on their team. Hunting wild pokémon was legal, of course, with the proper permits. But there were illegal hunters as well as poachers. Ree wasn't quite sure what the difference was, but neither were good.
So it's not just me that's in danger, it's my team, too, Ree thought, looking up to see Lala and Whippy running away from an angry tranquill and a pidove. Wild pokémon themselves were a threat, especially when she had two pokémon of the same type. Fire pokémon weren't that rare in the wild, sure, but there were bugs and birds to watch out for, too. Not to mention just anything larger or stronger than they were.
The sudden image of Whippy torn apart, a wild liepard carrying off bits of his flesh, sprang into her mind.
Her stomach churned and she nearly dropped the book. "This... isn't..." No, of course not. Whippy was fine. He was pretty strong, for a snivy, though he had that burn to deal with. He was temporarily slowed and hurt. He was already small and hadn't evolved yet. He'd be an easy target. Lala was only a bit better, larger and appearing even bigger thanks to her fluff. She was also evolved and vastly more experienced, but... They'd lost battles before. It wasn't as if either of them were invincible.
"I... I don't want to do this," Ree whispered, looking back at the chart with the gruesome numbers in it. She couldn't have her pokémon dying. She couldn't have her baby dying. She was pregnant; she was vulnerable. Even if she was fine... What if she got punched in the stomach? Or stabbed there? She felt so fragile, but all it took was a bad hit and there went her pregnancy problem.
Ree, for the first time in her journey and not a week in, seriously considered quitting.
She could go home. There'd be embarrassment and apologies and a lot of explaining to do, but she wouldn't be turned away. She'd have the support of her family. Hell, Maya would probably love to be an aunt. Scott... He'd be a good dad. She hadn't wanted to tell him, but he would support her. He wouldn't leave her for that. ...Would he?
She could keep Whippy and Lala. Aubie wouldn't like them, but they'd get used to each other. She could battle trainers in town, but they weren't that strong yet. They could adjust to being pets, right? If not, they could always spar with Scott's team or Maya's when she visited home. She could have a comfortable (comparatively speaking) and safe pregnancy, with the help of her family and friends, and she wouldn't have to be on her own.
Ree's phone rang.
She jumped, finally dropping her book, and quickly fished it out of her pocket. She stooped to pick up the book, but nearly dropped it again when she saw the caller ID. It was Scott.
She would talk to him in real time, if she picked up. It had been several days since she had seen him. He'd left a couple messages, and she had given him a vague text in the dead of night to be sure he wouldn't be able to reply right away. He didn't know—not any of it.
But, if she was being honest with herself, she missed him. Already. That didn't bode well for her determination. But it was the deciding factor. She very hesitantly flipped her phone open. "H-Hello?"
"There's only one thing, to do—" She was not surprised that he was singing to her. She had definitely missed that part. "—three words, for yooooooou! I love you!" She could make out too-loud guitar in the background, which was new. Usually it was video games in the background or that crazy team of his. "Heeeeey, love. Like it? We decided we're gonna do a cover of it, or try to."
"Sounds pretty good so far," Ree said. Tucking the book under her arm, she began walking again, scanning the area for her pokémon. Whippy darted across the path a little ways in front of her, a squirming patrat in his mouth. "...I thought you quit the band."
"Well, we got back together." No surprise there. There was some static as he sighed and shifted the phone. "So, haven't seen you for a few days now. Are you avoiding me or something? This is the first time we've talked since you were over."
"Nah, I'm not avoiding you," she lied uneasily. "I just got caught up. Doin' stuff."
"What sort of stuff?" Scott asked, amused.
"...Video game stuff." That was a safe lie. True, there hadn't been any new releases for awhile, but replaying was a valid excuse. Quickly changing the subject, she asked, "Why'd you call? Normally you call more towards the afternoon or evening."
"I do have to admit that I'm surprised you're up this early." Ree glanced at the phone's clock, and just then remembered she was an hour ahead of him. So while it was true she had been up for awhile, it would've seemed like even longer to him. Pretty suspicious. "...But seriously, did I scare you off with the pancakes or something?"
"No, it's just..." She groaned and wished she was close enough to a tree to bang her head against it. She was too lazy to walk across the path to get to one. "Scottie, I'm just not feeling well lately. Uh—that time of the month. So I've been sorta bitchy and I don't want to take that out on you." Perfect! The best excuse ever. The time wasn't even that far off, so he wouldn't be able to call her out on it. It'd buy her a couple days' more time, too.
"Oh." Yes, she had thrown him off the scent. And hopefully scared him off for a little while longer.
Though really—what was she going to tell him? Nine months was a long time to randomly be away from home.
"Do you want me to come over and watch Titanic with you?"
"No! I mean—I don't want to cry. Why would you want to make me cry? You asshole. I just sorta wanna... stay in and nap and play video games. Not do much of anything. Not leave the house." It felt all the more blatant with the sun shining overhead and a slight breeze blowing at her face.
"Oh. ...Okay then." He sounded a little dejected at the rejection, but what else was she supposed to do? It was a minor miracle he hadn't spontaneously dropped by her house yet anyway. "Well... Call me when you're feeling better? I'll be home for most of the weekend, looks like. Or if you wanna hang out. Just, call or text. ...I miss you."
"I miss you too." And that was going to get a whole hell of a lot worse. Ree stared down at her feet, mood even darker. "...Hey, Scottie?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you ever get beat up or assaulted when you were a trainer?"
The other line went suspiciously silent. She could understand a pause, but it went on and on. She checked to make sure she hadn't been disconnected; she was still on the line with him.
"...Uh, Scott? You there?"
"I'm here. ...Why do you ask?" She knew that tone. That was his guarded, 'I was a trainer and saw things' tone. He used it when he didn't want to discuss certain facets of his training journey, even though that had been years ago.
"...No reason, I guess." Ree had a sinking feeling that she'd gotten her answer, anyway. "...I'm gonna go. Bye, Scottie."
"I love you."
"...Love you too. Bye."
That had been even more depressing than she had thought. She'd managed to buy herself a little time, but just that. Her parents were mostly okay with it. Maya would be due back in a couple days, and that would entail a visit back home... to where she wasn't. Then Maya would know. At the very least, Scott would have to find out she'd taken up training again, and pretty soon. Especially if she didn't want him hearing it from another source.
Assuming she even kept with it.
Ree kept her phone open and mechanically scrolled down to Maya's number. Surely it was still daylight over in Sinnoh, right? One out of two trainers. So if Scott had been... Somehow, it'd be worse knowing her little sister had gotten hurt on the job, so to speak. Not that she had been a trainer for five years without various injuries, but they had always been from a wild pokémon or a battle gone wrong or an accident or once, falling down a steep incline. Having another person do it would be worse.
The phone rang and rang, but her sister didn't answer. It eventually went to voice mail. That didn't help at all; feeling perturbed, Ree hung up without leaving a message.
Training statistics were sad and a little scary. But Ree was tough. Her pokémon were getting tough. She'd gotten into more than one fight in a basketball game or while drunk, so it wasn't as if she was some wilting flower terrified of all physical force. And did she really want to go back home and say "hey, I'm knocked the fuck up and gave up on training for stupid journey number five!"?
No. No she did not.
Ree pressed her mouth into a thin line and soldiered on.
-.-.-
"Okay, so you remove the digestive system... That means the stomach and the intestines and oh fuck, that's disgusting." Ree held the book away from her. There was a diagram. Whippy looked up at her, little claws coated in blood. "Urp... Ew. Cut out like... the bottom half. Everything that might've touched that sort of stuff. And the organs..." The remains of breakfast rose in her throat again. Ree clamped a hand over her mouth and merely held the book open for Whippy. He couldn't read, but hey, there was a diagram.
Lala put her nose in the air and turned from them and their dirty work. She had already gathered several small fistfuls of various plants, and while that was helpful, Ree and Whippy probably wouldn't be able to survive long on just vegetarian stuff. Maybe with a proper diet and access to lots of different foods, but they didn't get that luxury.
"Snivy-sni?" Whippy held up the patrat corpse. Skinned, drained, and pretty much a mess. But she couldn't deny that he had gotten the organs out of it.
"Okay, the liver is edible... Whippy, you can have that part." He needed little more than a point before he dove into it.
Ree turned and finally threw up.
"Si-si-si," Lala snickered.
"Next time, it'll be on you," her trainer said weakly and wiped her chin. She managed to stick a stick in the meat and put it over their fire. Her stomach was already letting her know it was empty again and demanded food, and she munched on a couple berries, but she was lucky to have gotten this far. Apparently, butchering pokémon was a very in-depth and delicate procedure. It didn't help when she had to stare at a generic mammal's corpse in the book and try to figure out what organ was what while having a fresh and smelly corpse sitting in front of her.
Ree looked down at Whippy. He had red streaked all over him, along with little tufts of brown fur.
"You need a bath. There was a stream back that way, wasn't there?" Lala nodded and sat next to Ree's rock, crossing one leg delicately over the other. She used her fluff—now even bigger—as a sort of chair. "Whippy, do you remember where the stream was?"
He shook his head, licking blood off his claws.
"Lala, take him back to the stream, make sure he washes his paws and face. Try not to soak through his bandages too bad. Please?"
She could trust her pokémon to follow her orders like that. It was just the battles they had problems with. Ree watched them as they disappeared into the darkening night.
It wasn't that far away. If she hadn't had the fire right in front of her, merrily crackling, she probably could've even heard it. They were definitely within earshot. Still, Ree grabbed her knife and pulled it out, resting it on her lap. Whippy had been the one to clean the patrat corpse, so the knife supposedly for cooking hadn't seen use yet.
"Ugh, why can't I just get a cooking skill to level up." She rotated the stick with the meat on it, wondering just how well done it was supposed to look. She knew cooking over an open fire charred the skin even when the inside wasn't done, but without taking it off and cutting into it, she didn't know. Though it'd be a good start to cook it on all sides. "That sort of thing had better come with experience..."
When her pokémon returned, slightly cleaner (mostly having just swapped out blood for mud), Ree decided to test the 'meal'. With her knife, she cut into it, wedging it open to look at it inside. Still pretty pink, but the outside was cooked. She pried a little strip off and offered it to Whippy.
"Vee-vee, sni snivy-vee?"
"I'll eat when it's done. I think you can handle things a little rawer than I can, anyway." She set her chin in her hand and thrust the meal back over the fire. It looked so small. Patrat were small to begin with, of course, but after removing fur and skin and organs, it was even tinier. Lala wasn't going to eat any, but would that be enough for her and Whippy? Would that be enough for even one of them?
Lala stuffed a pawful of leaves and shoots of something grass-like into her mouth, chewing loudly. At least they had other things to eat, too. It was getting too late to go out again; Ree didn't want them running around in the dark. Whippy seemed to have excellent night vision, but Lala less so. Ree even less.
The food ended up burnt, but it was better than raw, she supposed. She hacked off a good chunk for Whippy and delicately made little strips for herself, trying not think that that had been a pokémon at one point. It was perfectly legal and even expected of trainers to live off the land like that. It was just going to take a little getting used to.
Ree chewed. It was bland and overcooked, but not terrible. "...Might as well make the best of it." She flipped her book open again, squinting in the firelight to try to read it. The words were mostly beyond her, but she could see the pictures just fine. There were several of various edible and common plants, one of which was the leaves Lala had been munching on. This wasn't so hard. She'd get used to it—they all would. Training wasn't hard.
Just perhaps dangerous.
She slept fitfully, every noise in the dark clearing turning itself into a rogue pokémon or serial killer, and her dreams weren't much better. Whippy flailed once during the night, causing her to wake up with a scream and roll over onto Lala. It took even longer for them all to fall back asleep after that.
The days passed and lulled Ree back into a sense of security. The older, experienced wild pokémon kept to themselves. The younger, inexperienced ones were even or easy battles. Or a meal. There were more trainers near the beginning and the end of the route, so out in the middle, they only saw a couple people a day. If that. And not even half of them would actually want to battle; teams would be tired, injured, or worse. Earning money came second to survival.
Ree avidly continued through her book. Crime rates were less scary after awhile. So was cooking, but she was fairly certain she wasn't getting all of the nutrients she needed. She felt tired, but it wasn't that hard. Most of her journey was walking, or at least it was walking until Whippy or Lala brought hell back with them. A couple of trainers gave her weird looks for letting her pokémon roam like that, but she was on the main path, and they were always within earshot, if not sight. It wasn't as if she was cutting through dense jungle with a machete and nothing but the clothes on her back.
After about three or four days, Ree realized that time was beginning to blur a little. If she hadn't had her phone or the pokédex with her, she was fairly certain that she would have lost track of time entirely. Still, there was only so much that happened. Whippy pissed off a watchog. Lala created a small forest fire with her stun spore trick on a pansear. They won battles. They lost two. Ree spent a harrowing two hours running towards the nearest river, unconscious snivy in her arms, a pair of angry whirlipede on her heels. Still, aside from bursts of adrenaline, it was pretty repetitive. Battle, fight, win. Repeat.
"At least we're getting closer to Nacrene," Ree mumbled, wringing out her hair over the shore. Her blinking icon on the map—she just figured out how to customize it, and it was currently a purple star—was just pixels away from the little box that was Nacrene City. "Tomorrow, I think. Do you guys think you've gotten any stronger?"
Lala paused in her chasing of a pidove and flexed her small arms, giving Ree a sharp grin. "Scott."
"Hmm... I dunno how many pokémon the gym leader has, but that kid said she was pretty tough. I could ask Maya about her... She should be coming home soon," Ree realized and perked up. She could talk to Maya again! She hadn't been able to get service on anything but her pokédex's GPS function for the last several days, which was a blessing since she could further ignore the Scott problem as well as her parents wondering when she'd quit and go home. But Maya was a different story. Mostly.
Sure, it meant Maya would be in on her little training secret, but that was a given anyway. Her parents wouldn't keep that from her, and even if they did for some bizarre reason, Ree would be very obviously missing. Granted, that may not immediately point to 'training journey'. Ree had done far weirder and far stupider things on random whims.
Whippy and Lala ran past, splashing up water in the shallows. The pidove squawked and narrowly missed flying into Ree's head. She growled at them all and rinsed off her legs again. It was bad enough they were well on their way to fuzzy, but she didn't need mud splattered on them to highlight her point. "If you hadn't killed that venipede on my jeans I could be wearing pants right now!" she snapped at their retreating figures.
It wasn't as if every other girl she'd run into wasn't conspicuously wearing pants and sleeves despite the heat. And it wasn't as if she was the only one wearing shorts while on the road to evolving into a beartic, either. Shaving just wasn't practical en route. It just didn't make for pretty girls. Or boys, for that matter; there were enough awkward teens in the training population that proved to Ree that scruff did not look good on everyone.
The two grass pokémon and the bird flew past again. Whippy and Lala were bouncing after it, trying to catch it. Due to the trees, it couldn't fly much higher without getting slowed. It didn't look injured, so it seemed as if they hadn't caught it yet. Lala was as fast as it was, but she couldn't jump that high that fast. And it looked as Whippy hadn't been able to get the drop on it.
Ree watched them go back and forth in the clearing. Lala was just fast enough to cut it off if it tried to escape too far, and they also outnumbered it. It was a step above playing with it, but a step below a battle. She felt sorry for it.
As it wheeled around to avoid flying into a tree, Whippy took the chance to leap upward. He was made of muscle and quite strong, but he was still small. He barely covered half of the distance. Lala, however, turned it into an opening for her; she jumped onto him and used him as a springboard. With the added height and her fluff acting like a sail, she floated up towards the pidove, little arms outstretched to grab hold of it... And it slipped just out of her grasp.
As her two pokémon fell, defeated, Ree stood up and smacked the pidove out of the air with a hand.
"Happy now?" The two grass pokémon looked between her and the dazed bird with awe. Ree couldn't help but feel the stirrings of pride. She was already a lot taller than them, and she'd been in basketball. A moving target wasn't terribly hard, especially since it had been zooming around about chin-height to her.
Ree looked down at the bird as it struggled back to its feet, swaying. Lala cackled and said something to Whippy, puffing out her chest, probably taking claim of it. He hissed and swiped at her. While the pair bickered, the pidove cast a suspicious look at them as it regained its bearings and threw out its wings again.
Her heart hurt a bit and Ree crouched down, capturing the surprised bird in her hands. It pecked and struggled, tweeting, as she dug a pokeball out of her backpack. She wasn't squeezing hard enough to hurt it, knowing full well that birds were pretty fragile creatures, even for pokémon, and pressed the ball against it.
It had been tired from running around, and possibly injured a bit from the smack. Mostly, Ree clamped the ball shut with her hands. She wasn't sure if that helped or not—but made a mental note to continue the tactic whenever available. The ball dinged and in the most anticlimactic capture yet, they got themselves a new teammate.
"I was basically the one battling for that. I feel as if I should level up," Ree mumbled to no one, sitting back down on her rock and stuck her feet back in the shallow, muddy water. She ignored the outraged cries of Whippy and Lala behind her as she plugged the pokeball into the pokédex. She maintained her silence as it gave her the information about the bird. Female, fairly young, only minor injuries. It asked for a nickname for the newly captured pokémon.
Ree didn't have to think about that one.
"Okay guys, we have another new teammate. And she's not a grass pokémon! This'll definitely help with the bugs and stuff. Meet Harper," she declared, a little subdued, as she released the pidove into the air. It circled around her head, eying them all, before settling down on Ree's shoulder.
"Pi," she tweeted and rested her downy cheek against Ree's.
"Well aren't you the sweetie!" Ree cooed, petting her with a finger. "Look at how cute she is! Not like a certain impish whimsicott or money-eating snivy I could mention. Harper, you are just the cutest!" Resorting to baby talk was about as embarrassing as her hairy legs, but she didn't mind. And they were alone, anyway.
Lala humphed and crossed her arms, brown skin darkening further in a blush. Whippy gave Ree a pathetic look, eyes huge, tail quivering.
Ree beckoned him into her arms and cradled him against her breast, much to the dismay of Lala. "Wh-Whim! Whimsi, whimsicott!" Whippy stuck out his tongue at her. Her ensuing inner debate was obvious: lose dignity and belong in the group, or maintain dignity and be alone? Lala shuffled over and tugged on Ree's shorts, hiding her face with her fluff.
"I'm going to get cavities with how sweet this is." It was also difficult to hold the two without Lala's fluff getting in Harper's way, but at least it was cute while it lasted.
Until Lala punched Harper off Ree's shoulder.
-.-.-
Just when she had been used to her dynamic duo, she'd added a third wheel. Entirely voluntarily, but sort of half on accident. She hadn't been actively prowling for another. Though really, she was glad it wasn't another grass pokémon. She'd have to have words with her karma if that had happened. Violent words.
Ree got used to the pidove addition very quickly. Lala and Whippy, however, acted almost jealous of her. She could fly, for starters, and rivaled Lala's speed. Smaller and weaker and younger, sure, but faster. Harper surprisingly wasn't the type to rub this in, and usually acted fairly level-headed, which was a pleasant change of pace. While Lala and Whippy would run off and antagonize wild pokémon and trainers alike, Harper didn't venture as far and instead acted as a sort of scout. Ree wasn't complaining.
"Okay, three pokémon. Not bad, if I do say so myself. A little training up, and we can take down Lenora, no problem. She'd have three at the most, being the second gym leader... Right?" Ree craned her head back to see Harper cutting across the bright sky. "Hell yeah. We can so do this."
The closer they got to Nacrene City, the more Ree's signal started to return. Mostly in short bursts, but eventually, she got it long enough to start receiving actual information. A lot of missed calls, though they came in batches of two or three. Which wasn't weird, until those batches of two or three started to hit the double digits.
"What the fuck?" Her pokédex beeped as it got signal back in her pocket. Her phone finally grasped onto a stable signal, even if it was just a single bar, and started informing her of everything she'd missed in the past several days. Five missed calls from Scott, four from one other friend, and twenty-one from her parents. Thirty-seven text messages from a wider array, though her parents once again dominated. Eight voice mails, all but one from her parents. "What the fuck happened."
Nacrene was in view by the time she was halfway through the text messages. She was in an even fouler mood then; she had had to stop reading at one point because of an ass of a trainer who wanted to battle her and then talk her ear off, and most of the texts were incredibly vague and short things like "did u see the news?".
"omg did u c wat happened?"
"isn't your sister over there now"
"Ree shit have you seen what happened? get on a computer nw"
"Have u heard anything frm your sister?"
"try calling maya please!"
Needless to say, Ree got more and more nervous as she clicked through them. She deleted all of the missed calls without scrolling through them, and didn't bother replying to the stupidly cryptic texts, and finally got to the voice mails. She was jogging now, calling in Whippy and Lala as they reached the city limits. Pokémon center to heal them and get to a television with a news station. Heart thudding loudly in her chest, she listened as her father worriedly asked if she had heard what had happened in Sinnoh, and if she had heard from Maya, and to please call him back.
By the time she'd gotten through the messages, she gathered that there had been some sort of public killing in Sinnoh, followed by a massive, organized attack across the region. Including the city Maya had been staying in. It had been pulled by some celebrity, and her parents hadn't been able to reach Maya since the news had broke over the internet.
Ree burst into the pokémon center and had the grand plan of dramatically running across the room, throwing her pokémon at the nurse on duty, and commandeering the television. Instead, she burst into the building and found it absolutely packed with trainers and pokémon alike. The news was already playing, a grim reporter saying in a suave Castelian accent, "—may be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised."
She aggressively fought her way through the crowd and still managed to throw her pokémon at the nurse. She seemed busier keeping order with all of the people there than healing. The fact that so many trainers were holed up there was even more nerve-wracking; trainers usually didn't panic en masse. Not since Team Plasma, anyway.
"Someone turn the fucking TV up!" she screamed, cutting across the din. There was immediately an agreement on the other side of the room, towards the mart. Someone nearer the television obliged and Ree could finally hear it again.
It showed a middle-aged man in a suit interviewing a gothic girl. But as she watched, confused and worried, he pulled out a gun and shot her. The camera wobbled and spun around as a couple others entered into the scene, but it ended up with him putting a bullet through another boy's temple. "Mr. V, well-known Sinnohan training celebrity, has gone on a murderous rampage after revealing himself to be part of the movement following Nicholas Sayre." It took Ree a couple moments to place the name; it had happened over a year ago. "The attack has since spread across the region, and almost all of the country is in a black-out with no phone reception and very little access to internet. Famously, the leader of Sunyshore City, Zachary Jones, has already managed to record a couple messages and put them on the internet, but the conversation between he and Mr. V has since stopped as of yesterday afternoon..."
Maya was in Sunyshore. She had been telling her about the great beaches and the cute gym leaders. And a man had just become a serial killer on television and that was where her sister was.
Ree collapsed against a bookshelf, room spinning. Someone shouted something, but she couldn't process it. The reporter continued in his recap. It showed pictures of the two known victims, as well as grainy clips of the videos that had been put on the internet.
"Nothing is yet known about the foreign representatives that had been sent there in peace to congratulate Sinnoh on getting its gym circuit back up and running. Alder has reportedly tried to contact the Sinnohan champion, but no word on whether or not it was successful. Tensions are high among other regions, especially with the rash of copycats cropping up across the globe..."
A harried audino came back with three pokeballs and tugged on Ree's shirt. She tore her gaze away from the television. The audino bustled off, withdrawing another set of pokeballs from its apron as it hailed another trainer in the crowd. No wonder everyone was taking cover. Normally, Unova didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the problems of the other big regions, but symbolically, this was huge. It could even be a revolution in the making.
And Maya was in the middle of it.
Ree had to get some air.
"Maya can't... She's talented, she's not stupid, she wouldn't..." She fought her way back through the mass of people until she reached the sliding doors. Maya couldn't be hurt. No. Of course not. Not hurt or dead. She was probably just stuck in her hotel room, flirting with a bellboy or something. Yeah, that was it. "Maya's okay," she soothed herself.
Still, she needed a hug right then. She didn't have Scott. She didn't have her family. Ree suddenly felt overwhelmingly alone, and scared. She slid down against the center's wall and released Lala, clinging to her soft fluff. Whippy came out next and he immediately sensed her distress and wiggled in between her and the whimsicott, hissing lightly into her ear. Ree sniffed and released Harper, and looked up at her with a watery smile, about to apologize for how crazy her new trainer was.
Instead, Ree stared into two cyan eyes, a long, green scarf, and white on black.
That wasn't Harper.
-.-.-
Next Chapter: That isn't Harper. Ree, already upset over the news and her sister's unknown situation, panics and basically makes everything worse for everyone involved. At least she makes a new friend out of it. ...Right?