**Again, I must thank everyone who made the creation of this beautiful story possible, especially Joe P. and Sam S. Also, I have to thank Nicole V. for correcting a few minor problems with this chapter. In other news, KF now has a fan page on FaceBook! If you're a member, stop by and show your support! Return to the Karp Fest!**
"Karp." Magikarp gazed at the passing scenery lazily as it rode in Tom's backpack along Route f(x) = 69^x. He had been working on training Beldum along the way so that he would not have to spend much time doing so when they finally reached Mudcumber City. He thought this was a grand idea, seeing as how the city was several days away by foot. He began to doubt his abilities when, twelve days later, he had neither managed to reach the city nor evolve his Beldum. Things seemed hopeless, especially since the Pokemon couldn't even learn a new move until it evolved.
"Psyduck, use Water Gun! Bee Bee, Drill! Kadabra, Confusion! Vigoroth, Slash! Magikarp, stop doing the fucking Macarena and use Flail already! Beldum, use Take Down on everyone until they all faint, or until you do!"
"Karp karp karp, karp karp karp!"
"Magikarp! Stop singing Christmas carols and…!"
"Beldum fell asleep! Kadabra used Confusion! Beldum fainted! Use next Pokemon?" The mystical male voice had returned, and Tom still hadn't managed to find out where it was coming from, even though he'd been on his adventure for over a month now. Tom fished a half bottle of Revive out of his backpack and poured it on top of Beldum, which regained consciousness almost immediately.
"Are you any stronger?"
"…."
"Whatever. This isn't going anywhere, and I'm sick of trying to push my rotten luck in the right direction. Are you ever going to evolve? Can you at least tell me that?"
"…."
"Karp."
"What, is this some kind of adolescent revolt? Well, I'll tell you right now, Mr. Man, if you think you're in charge…!"
"KARP! Magi-Magi-karp!"
"How many times do I have to tell you to shut up and let me scream at others? I don't care what my stupid psychiatrist said! You weren't there and you don't know anything, you stupid Karp!"
"Karp! Karp!" Tom looked and spotted a wooden sign in the distance. He ran up to it and bowed down to its royal highness before reading what it said: 'Beware! Route ∞ begins up ahead!'
"Big freakin' deal. Unless there's another road around here, they can BEWARE all they want! I'm going straight, and if any of you losers disagree with my decision, you can go fly or trot or flop your way back to Periwinkle Town and wait for Team Microscopic to find and kidnap you. Any takers?" All of the Pokemon completely ignored Tom and listened to Magikarp's complex explanation of the properties of infinity.
Despite Tom's initial disbelief, Beldum finally learned Confusion two days later, although it went against the fundamentals of Pokemon evolution. Thinking back on Butterfree's freaky de-evolution a few weeks prior, he just shrugged it off and decided to consider it a lucky training session.
"Well, now I have two Pokemon with the same move. It's better than Tackle, but it's not much of a strategy. But on the bright side, I guess you're getting better. Good job, Beldum!"
"…"
"Karp." The word sounded strange as it left Magikarp's mouth, and for a quick second, Tom hoped with all of his being that the useless fish was finally evolving. Nope.
"Did you just bark at me?"
"Karp? Magi-karp. Magi-karp-karp." Behind Magikarp, a fluffy Vulpix strutted out of the tall grass and looked at Tom carelessly.
"Cool, a fire Pokemon! Go, Psyduck! Use Water Gun, but don't knock it out! Please don't knock it out!"
"Duck *cough* duck." Startled, the Vulpix let out a stream of fire in Psyduck's direction. At first it didn't even notice, then its eyes began to tear up.
"The wild Vulpix used Ember! Psyduck is hurt by its burn!"
"Hey, Psyduck! You're on fire! Use Water Gun to put out the flames! No, stop! Don't go by that… tree. Great, now look what you did! The tree's on fire!"
"DUUUUUUUUCKKKK!"
"Don't cuss, you idiot! Use Water Gun!"
"Psy-aii-aii-aii-aii!" The Pokemon continued to ignore Tom and ran back and forth across the clearing, making the flames grow taller and stronger. Eventually, it fell head-over-heels in the dirt and managed to extinguish the fire through sheer luck. At that point, its eyebrows and three hairs had been singed off.
"Psyduck is unable to battle!" the stalker voice announced as Tom gritted his teeth. The Vulpix, seeing the vein popping out of the boy's forehead and hearing the disembodied voice coming from the sky, fled for its life. Tom turned a brilliant shade of maroon before falling to his knees (again). He pounded the ground with his fists until he couldn't feel his hands anymore. Just when Magikarp thought his temper tantrum had ended, the boy got to his feet and jumped up and down in a circle as fast as he could.
All of the motion caused seven PokeBalls to roll out of the hole Butterfree's knife had made in the backpack. They all rolled down the steep hill Tom had just climbed, and into a small pond. There, in several great flashes of light, the PokeBalls opened and every one captured a Pokemon. Each floated back to the surface to wait for retrieval. Tom, who had flopped onto the ground when the lights from the PokeBalls had gone off, looked down the hill cautiously in the direction of the miniature atomic explosions. Somewhere deep inside his mind he knew what had just happened, and he briefly thought of just walking away. After a moment of thought and hoping that his gut feeling was wrong, he slowly walked over to the pond and grabbed all seven PokeBalls.
'Why aren't they disappearing and going to the storage PC?' he thought as he tossed each PokeBall in turn.
"Karp."
"Magi-karp."
"KARP!"
"Karp, karp!"
"Magi-Magi-karp!"
"Karp. Karp!"
"KARP!"
"NOOOOOO!" Tom howled as he collapsed onto the ground again, staring wide-eyed in terror at his new collection of Magikarps.
"Karp, karp! Magi-Magi-karp!" Magikarp rolled out of the backpack and looked at Tom in concern. "Karp?"
"Karp… k-karp. M-Magikarp," Tom whispered as his left eye twitched dangerously. He was seeing orange fish everywhere: in the sky, on the grass, in a tree, on his hand…. But why was his first Magikarp more yellow than the others? And why was it sparkling in the sunlight? "Omigod…. YOU'RE SHINY, MAGIKARP!"
"Karp?"
"Karp, karp, karp, karp, karp-karp, karp, karp!" the crowd of Karps ranted and complained on their slow journey back to their pond when they finally realized that Tom wasn't talking to any of them. In contrast to Magikarp, the rest of the Magikarps needed to stay in the water in order to stay alive.
With a backpack full of stored Magikarps, Tom slowly continued the trek to Psychobabble Town. After ten full days on the road, he and his team finally arrived, mostly in good health, although Tom's eye still hadn't stopped twitching. After moping around his room for a while like a little emo boy, Tom began to see a little light in the near future. With a sudden spark of brilliance, Tom jolted himself out of his semi-stupor with a plan to rid himself of the annoying, money-wasting Pokemon in his bag. He marched to the city's PokeMart and purchased seven Air Mails. One by one he filled out the address labels, first his name then his "father's", and attached each one to a captured Karp. Then for the last step…. He carried the armful of packages back to the PokeMart and deposited them in the mail drop, and watched with a satisfied smirk on his face as a Delibird loaded them into its tail-bag. At last his problem was solved. Magikarp turned to face the inside of the backpack and waved goodbye to the other Karps with its tail fin as Tom exited the store.
The next morning, after a long rest, Tom returned to the PokeMart to buy ten new PokeBalls for the trip ahead. The cashier cheerfully informed him that he would receive a free Premier Ball with his order, then assured him that she was unaware that they were currently out of stock. He grumbled under his breath on his way out the door and onto Route ∞. The path was long and rugged, full of powerful psychic-type and noxious poison-type Pokemon that seemed to enjoy using Tom for target practice. (Magikarp sticking its tongue out and doing bad imitations of the wild Pokemon didn't seem to be helping.) Although Tom quickly burned through his store of Antidotes and quickly resorted to threats and attempts to use his imaginary store of magical energy, he was content with the fact that Beldum eventually evolved and learned Headbutt.
"It's better than Takedown, amirite?"
"… Karp."
"Lighten up, you Karp! You're no fun to be around when you're in these bad moods of yours!"
"KARP? Magi-Magi-Magi-karp!"
"Hey, watch it, Magikarp! I'm tired of this repeating cycle!" An awkward silence followed, and Tom realized what he had just said. "Wait, are you… a Magikarp ?"
"… Karp." An expression of relief spread across Tom's face, like food coloring in a green, watery egg-and-ham concoction.
"Good. That's good to hear."
Tom lost track of the days as they slowly crawled past. Several times he thought that he'd passed the same landmarks, but it turned out that there were a few subtle differences. Magikarp tried twice to tell him to turn back, using the theories of infinity to back up its case, but Tom wouldn't hear a word of it. Seventeen days passed before they reached the mythical Pokemon Center that was supposed to be located along Route ∞. (Obviously it did exist. Or perhaps they'd died somewhere along the route and this was simply Pokemon Heaven.) Tom stayed there for two days before he decided to continue on the path that he believed would lead him to Psychobabble Town. Another week passed on the path before he finally reached the… same Pokemon Center as before. As he waited for his badly beaten team to make a recovery, he spotted a tall, blond girl with a denim miniskirt and a skin-tight fluorescent pink t-shirt in the corner. She had long, green and pink fishnets that extended from her hands up to her elbows, where they joined with the shirt. She collected a PokeBall from the storage system PC and punched Tom in the shoulder on her way past him.
"So Shorty, I heard you were trying to find a way out of Route ∞."
"Don't call me Shorty!"
"I can help you out…."
"Really? You know how to get out of here?"
"….For a price. For a little bit of cash, I know how to do anything." As Tom's feeble brain tried to process all of the meanings of what she'd just said, she grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket. "You know, ¥5,000 ought to cover it. What do ya say, Shorty?"
"You're kidding, right? You want ¥5,000?"
"Yes, I want the money, no, I'm not kidding. Hand it over, and you'll be strollin' right on out of here this time next week. Come on, Shorty. You're not going to have another chance to get out of here for a while. Let's see that cash!"
"Fine, whatever, I'll pay. But no more than that. I'll ¥2,000 now, and the rest when I make it to the Pokemon Center in Psychobabble Town."
"'Kay. Gimme your name so I can sue you for all you're worth if something happens or you refuse to pay up when we get there."
"Tom Ato."
"Thank y-ou, Tom. Nice to meet ya. My name's Jenny Talls."
'She's kidding, right?'