Computer problems. 0~0
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"Electrinz!" Alena screeched, smacking another Magikarp away with her tail. "How much longer?! I've been at this for at least two hours!" By this point, tears were streaming down her face. The cheerfully oblivious Magikarp just kept coming, swarming Alena to the point that she thought she would be a pancake if any more of them tried to pile up on top of her.
"You're doing well!" Electrinz called from a nearby stump. He was busily marking the sketchpad with a variety of tally marks. Well, at least the top part. The bottom part, on the other hand, was a long list of cheeses. Electrinz had a weird thing for cheese. "You've been going for about twenty minutes. Five more should do it!" he proclaimed, glancing down at a stopwatch hanging around his neck. Taking the time to scratch down three more tallies and the name of some rare goat cheese, the Pikachu seemed oblivious to his trainer's woes.
"I am going to EV-train you when I'm back to normal!" Alena screamed at her Pokémon. "You never had to go through this, you lazy bum! You have no idea of how hard this is! I think my tail is going to fall off!"
"You can't EV-train me," Electrinz reminded her. "They don't go through if you're at maximum level."
"I will shove the berries down your throat and watch you choke on them!" Alena screamed, finally having enough of smacking the Magikarp away fairly. She stuck her tail in the water and gave the poor Water-types a shock that would have been powerful enough to take the average person down.
"Hey!" Electrinz chirped cheerfully. "That takes you up to Lv. 27! Now that the speed portion is complete, we'll just have to wait until nightfall when the Gastly come out into the woods!" Alena walked over to his stump, noticeably tired. He started to giggle at how ragged she looked, but the laugh cut off abruptly as she fell to the ground in a dead faint in front of him.
With a terrified gasp, Electrinz lept down and gently prodded Alena's side. "H-hey. Wake up, Alena."
Slowly, she groaned and rolled herself onto her side. "I think… that was Struggle." With a weak cough, she went limp on the ground. "You're carrying me," she told him in a quieter voice than usual.
To her surprise, Electrinz didn't even protest. Then again, she reminded herself, he wouldn't normally be able to carry her. He probably just wanted an excuse to show her how strong he was. Men. All the same.
Within minutes, Electrinz had created some sort of sled out of leaves and twigs. Rolling Alena onto the contraption, he made sure that she wasn't too hurt to last the trip without medicine. After a quick check of the trail ahead, Electrinz took a loop of grass in his mouth and set off for Ever Grande City at the fastest pace he could manage without Alena falling off the sled.
The trip to the city was far different than what the Electric-type had recalled from training there. For one thing, there were no trainers walking down the road – well, that was to be expected. Without the loud, plodding footsteps of humans, the path seemed eerily quiet. There was something else in the air – a smell. Something like… an electrical fire, only colder. As they traversed the long, winding path down the cliff face to the city below, Alena suddenly spoke up.
"That smell… it seems strangely familiar."
"It's some kind of fire, that's for sure," Electrinz informed her.
"I thought so," she cut in. "But it's weird. It's not hot like fire – it's cold. Also, it's wispier than fire should be."
Electrinz stopped his trot and turned around to face his trainer with a bemused look on his face. "How do you know how to smell if an object is hot or cold? Or if it's hard or soft?! Humans shouldn't know the difference! You may look and attack like a Pikachu, but your personality is still the same. Your mind couldn't have been changed!"
Alena frowned. "If that was the case, then the other humans wouldn't be able to understand their Pokémon, but they were talking to them just fine the last we saw. On top of that, I can sort of feel what my senses are telling me – which is probably only natural. If my brain was completely the same, it might not understand the signals at all. I'd just be floating in a void…" She shuddered at the thought. "How much longer? My back is starting to really hurt."
"Ten more minutes, give or take,"Electrinz responded. He picked up the rope again and began to pull his partner down the street. The duo received a few odd looks from other pairs – a group of Ponyta crossed to the other side of the street, snorting in a confused way – but for the most part, they were ignored. It seemed as though the others in town had some problems of their own. A Snorlax had gotten himself wedged in between two pine trees, as a huge group of Pokémon tried to push him out. In a nearby park, a Flareon was adjusting to the weaknesses of the species. He would jump into the pond, only to yelp and jump back out. As his partner laughed at him, he would shake himself off and prepare to try the feat again, determined not to let type-advantages get in the way of his love of swimming. On a similar note, a Taillow at the other side of the park was trying, unsuccessfully, to get his partner to fly. Every time the cursed human would get close to the edge, he would cling to the branch with his talons and refuse to let go.
Stifling laughter, the Electric-type duo finally made it to the doors of the Pokémon center. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to get the automatic door to open – which, of course, ended in failure due to their grand total of thirty pounds – a pack of Houndoom left the building, allowing the two to get in.
At first, Alena thought that they must have walked into the wrong building. Surely, someone must have mixed up the labels for "Pokémon Center" and "Zoo." At least two hundred monsters were all crowded into the one tiny room, all of them shouting and running around the building as if they had down four cans of Red Bull.
Then it hit her.
"This is where all of the trainers who are confused out of their minds are going, isn't it?
"It's the apocalypse!" a nearby Croconaw sobbed, running straight into a wall.
"I really don't need to answer, do I?" Electrinz stated.