Chapter 6: Celebrity
As her roselia lunged, Priscilla closed her eyes and waited to die. She had no experience with (apparently) rabid roselias, especially shiny ones that were suffering from some amount of immediate post-capture trauma (or something – Priscilla knew there was a term for it, but she couldn't remember it). She assumed that because the roselia beat her yanma in a shutout rematch and was now turning on their trainer, it meant that the roselia was homicidal and that she would die.
At the time, it seemed like a pretty good, solid, logical conclusion, and that, along with Priscilla's adrenaline and overblown panic, kept her from feeling much fear.
At least, she thought, that meant a somewhat painless death.
Luckily for her, that death never came – or, at least, an uncharacteristically morbid voice told her in the back of her mind, it didn't come from the newly captured shiny roselia.
Instead, a large orange form slammed into the roselia, knocking her to the other side of the road and pinning her down.
Priscilla opened her eyes and turned her head slightly, still cowering near the ground.
What she saw was a large, flaming ape with golden plates adorning its body towering over her roselia. Next to the fire-type, her grass-type paled in luster, despite her golden sheen.
"Inna," a male voice ordered from out of Priscilla's visual field, "knock it out with a flame wheel."
The ape, Inna, growled a bit, then swiped her (Priscilla assumed it was a "her" from the name) hands down, creating a burst of wheeling flames that slapped her roselia across the face.
Priscilla's crazed roselia fainted on the spot, of course, overwhelmed by the sheer firepower of the ape. Even if she managed to take out Jet a second time despite type disadvantages, even the strongest of grass-types didn't generally last long against fully evolved fire apes.
"Are you okay?" Priscilla squinted up at a tall young man whose head blocked the overhead sun, his hand outstretched to help her up.
"I think so," she replied, gladly taking his right hand with hers. The second he tugged on it to help her up, though, a blinding white flash of pain shot through her body from her shoulder. She screamed and let go of his hand, grabbing at her shoulder and falling back to the ground, rolling and screaming and crying.
Immediately, the man was down next to her, telling her to calm down and stop thrashing around. When she didn't, Priscilla suddenly found herself pinned face-down to the ground by something furry and warm – the very fire ape that had taken out her roselia.
"You need to calm down," the ape's trainer told her. "You have a poison stinger in your shoulder. I'm going to take it out, okay?"
Priscilla whimpered, but couldn't really do much other than let him yank the barb out of her skin. When he did, it sent another painful flash through her body, causing her to shriek and writhe in Inna's grip.
"I'm going to spray an antidote on it now, okay?"
She didn't have time to respond before she felt a cold spray hit her tingling shoulder, causing it to feel warm and dull. After a little while, Inna let her stand up and lift her face off the dirt road, and when Priscilla went to rub her cheeks, she felt the dirt sticking to the tear tracks.
This wouldn't have been much of a big deal normally, as Priscilla had thrown tantrums in front of random people before and this "tantrum" sort of had a real rhyme and reason to it, but the second she saw the young man's face, she felt a hot wave of embarrassment wash over her.
"You're – you're Lucas!" Priscilla gasped, temporarily forgetting about the pain in her shoulder and the fact that she probably had some amount of roselia venom in her bloodstream.
The young man, one of the famous Pokedex holders of Sinnoh, nodded and handed her a fistful of berries. "Pecha berries. Eat."
Priscilla grabbed the berries and ate them one by one as she stared at Lucas. He was Professor Rowan's assistant, always had been, and was one of the three kids – they were just kids at the time! – who overthrew Team Galactic during the Galactic Incident five years ago. "You're…Lucas…" she mumbled between mouthfuls.
Lucas chuckled. "And you just almost died from roselia venom."
Priscilla blushed, suddenly wishing the roselia venom really had killed her. This was a famous trainer! How hadn't she recognized Inna before? Inna! The infernape that was Lucas's starter, back when Professor Rowan began to sponsor Pokedex-based field research with nonaffiliated child trainers…like the other two, the ones from Twinleaf Town, the ones that he met by chance.
The ones that got the turtwig and, more importantly, the piplup.
Dawn and her piplup, Kal and his turtwig, and Lucas and his chimchar. They were, for all intent and purpose, the face of the "good guys" in the Galactic Incident.
And Priscilla, just barely into her second week of training with a silly old yanma starter, was meeting one of them!
At that, the color drained from Priscilla's face. "Jet!" she shrieked, suddenly realizing she didn't know where her unconscious bug was. "Where is he? Jet?!"
Lucas looked worried. "Are you talking about your roselia?" he asked. The roselia lay unconscious only a meter or two away.
"No, no! My yanma, where is he?"
Lucas thought for a moment, then dropped a great ball on the ground. It opened to reveal a chatot, one that hopped around a bit before stopping to stare at the roselia on the ground.
"Do you have your yanma's pokeball?" Lucas asked. Priscilla dug around in her pockets before withdrawing the empty safari ball. The chatot jumped into the air, then flew over to snatch the ball out of her hands.
She started to protest, but then the bird zoomed off in the assumed direction of her fallen yanma. "Is he gonna get Jet back for me?" she asked.
"She, and yes." Lucas glanced over to the crumpled, singed shiny roselia. "That was some roselia you caught."
"What? Oh, uh, yeah." Priscilla wrinkled her nose. "I don't like how she attacked me like that."
The young man got up and walked over to examine the roselia, squatting next to it. "How'd you get her from attacking you directly? You only had one stinger in your shoulder, and roselias can shoot out up to twenty at once."
"Oh, uh, Zenith told me to use the ground so I –" Priscilla stopped.
Lucas turned to stare at her. "Did you say 'Zenith'?"
The girl shifted uncomfortably. Did she mess up? She hadn't mentioned him to anyone yet. "Uh-huh…he told me to, so I kicked a rock in her face when I fell down."
The young man stared at her for a moment, pondering something. Before he could say anything, though, the parrot pokemon he'd sent out swooped down, dropping a filled pokeball into Priscilla's lap. "Yanma! Yanma!" the chatot crowed in a twisted rendition of Priscilla's voice. "Yanma! Yanma!"
Half ignoring the return of his chatot, Lucas turned around and opened his backpack, withdrawing a flat red object and a pokeball. "Professor Rowan mentioned something about a 'Zenith'…"
Priscilla stared at him for a minute, then tried to stand up. The antidote and pecha berries were taking effect, and she wasn't so stunned anymore from the fall and the attack. Her shoulder still felt sore and her stomach seemed to be gurgling strangely, but she could walk. She made it to her feet, then started to walk over to him. "Whad'you mean?"
"Shiny roselias are pretty rare, especially around here," Lucas explained, gesturing to the roselia with his head. "I was wondering if you'd like to trade with me? I have a grass-type I think you might like, and he's a lot better with beginners than a violent roselia."
The girl wrinkled her nose. "I dunno. That roselia's mine, and I caught it, and it's really rare," she repeated, her stubborn side kicking in.
Lucas smiled. "I have a turtwig, that's the grass-type I'm offering. They're pretty good right away, and this guy's already been trained a bit, so he's not exactly a first-day starter pokemon. I was going to bring him to Eterna City for some training with Gardenia, since that's one of her specialties, but since her other specialty is the roselia line…"
"I dunno. That's not a fair trade," Priscilla said, digging out her heal ball and returning her shiny roselia in a pink flash of light.
"I'd also offer a Sinnoh Pokedex," Lucas added, holding up the flat red object.
Priscilla's eyes bugged out – Professor Rowan didn't just give those away! "Why?" she asked, suspicious. "Why are you giving me one of those?"
"Professor Rowan told me to," he replied with a nonchalant shrug. "If I met someone who was affiliated with a 'Zenith' or some others he mentioned, I was supposed to make sure they had a solid pokemon by their side, for one thing - and when Professor Rowan says a "solid pokemon", he means a turtwig, piplup, or chimchar. He also wants this Pokedex field tested by someone who's got that affiliation, too," he explained. "Plus, I'd like to point out that if I hadn't gotten here in time, you might have gotten shot again by your roselia, and too much of that venom can be toxic. Sometimes lethal."
"Whazzat mean?"
"Deadly."
"Oh." Priscilla looked down at her heal ball. Shiny pokemon were so rare, though, and a grass/poison-type was kind of what she wanted.
But turtwigs were also somewhat rare and sought-after, and, like the Pokedexes, they weren't generally just given away. You had to be in good with Professor Rowan or the Eterna City Gym, and that was a very selective bunch.
"You said that guy, um, 'Zenith'," Lucas began, "he said you should 'use the ground', right? Something like that?"
"Yeah. That's why I kicked the rock."
"Turtwig's final evolution is torterra, and they're part ground-type. Grass and ground," he said, "that's pretty much like, you know, the ground."
Priscilla looked up at him, then down at her heal ball, then sighed. "Fine. My roselia for your turtwig and the Pokedex," she said, half-disappointed she couldn't stand her ground and keep what she'd rightfully captured.
But then again, she didn't want to end up dead because Jet couldn't protect her from her own venomous pokemon, and Inna certainly could do that for Lucas…
Plus, now she could be a Pokedex holder. A real Pokedex holder! And this was a different kind of Pokedex, a new one that had to be field-tested. And she would be the field tester!
"It's a deal, then."
A bonus to trading with Lucas was the free teleportation to Floaroma Town via his alakazam, so Priscilla ended up instantly one town closer to her Eterna City destination.
They parted ways pretty quickly after that, as Lucas wanted to keep moving whereas Priscilla wanted to spend the night (and look at all the pretty flowers).
Once she healed up Jet and made sure her new turtwig was healthy – and seeing that he already had a name, and it was Tor – she took out her Pokedex to test it out. After all, depending on how soon it took its inventory on her team, she either owned two or three pokemon.
She released Tor in the flowers outside the Floaroma Pokemon Center, then held out her Pokedex, opening it up.
Tor looked up, curious, as the Pokedex screen flickered for a moment.
Priscilla shrieked when the picture came up, and almost dropped the Pokedex in a bed of flowers.
The picture on the screen wasn't a normal turtwig – it was a grotesque, dark-gray-and-red monster of a turtwig, one that had been pulled and twisted and deformed until it was almost unrecognizable.
"TURTWIG," the garbled text below read. "TTTTTHHHHHEEEEEEE tiny-leaf POKE ----" Beyond that, it was unreadable.
"What's…what's going on?" Priscilla said, shivering, as Tor looked up. "What is this?"
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't one of the Sinnoh Pokedexes from the Galactic Incident.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon, but I do own this story and all the original characters, storylines, and events it contains.
Author's note: This story takes place a few years after the events of the DPP series (ideally I'd say after a Platinum game in which the player chose the female character, picked piplup, and named her rival "Kal", but I've never played Platinum). I couldn't find the generic name for the rival, so I named him "Kal", since that's what I named him in Pearl. Yeah...