Mike wasn't transformed or anything, but he was still able to haul the enormous ice boulders off… more… enormous ice boulders.

"Mike, stop showing off," Kyle told him. He went into psychic mode and lifted the entire pile with psychic.

"And that's not showing off?" pointed out Mike. He looked down. "It's a draw."

Ashley and Aj were both on the ground, unconscious.

Ashley's eyes flew open. "Was not! I stayed conscious longer than her in there."

"No you didn't," Aj argued, sitting up. "I won that."

"Did not."

"You did!"

"This is already getting nowhere," groaned Mike. "Our turn yet?"

"Finally!" Kyle whooped (even though I can't imagine him whooping).

"And if Ashley tries to help you, I'll stop her," Aj said to Kyle.

"Um… thanks?" Kyle replied, looking at Ashley.

Ashley reached back.

SMACK!

Another epic win!

"What was that all about?" Kyle wondered.


"One."

"Two."

"THREE!"

On Kyle's side, a ripple of orange-brown energy appeared. On Mike's, the ripple was bright yellow.

"Darn it," Mike muttered as soon as he saw Kyle in his fighting form. "I knew I should have gone with flying."

"It's more interesting this way," Kyle said, drawing his sword. It was long and slim, curved only slightly and very light. "Ready, set, go." He swung the sword through the air, launching a vacuum wave at Mike. Mike thrust his arms forward, returning with a charge beam. The moves collided and exploded, neither one actually touching the opponent.

"Nice power there," Kyle commented.

"You worked on that vacuum wave behind my back, huh?" Mike yelled back across the field. "Just for that…" He pointed at Kyle, who grimaced. Ashley frowned on the sidelines. It hadn't seemed to do anything…

"Don't worry. I won't beat you up too bad," Mike "reassured" him, charging himself with electricity. Kyle could have attacked, Ashley thought, but he's just standing there. WTF?

Kyle's hands shook as he raised his sword above his head. The look on his face showed it was a huge effort. Mike thunderpunched him. Kyle swung the sword down, using sacred sword.

Ashley finally saw the small electric shocks coursing through him. Duh, she thought, Mike paralyzed him. Kyle whirled the sword at Mike, this time using secret sword, which hit Mike on the shoulder. Mike finished their battle with thunderbolt, knocking Kyle to the ground. The fighting-type's eyes were closed.

Mike turned and looked at the girls. "I probably didn't need to take it that far, huh?" he admitted.

"You did great," confirmed Aj. "Paralyzing him at the right moment…"

"Ow," said Ashley, "I think he's still paralyzed." Even though Kyle was on the ground, he was oddly stiff. Aj watched her walk over, bend down, and hand him a berry. She couldn't help smiling to herself as Ashley helped Kyle up. Ashley said something to Kyle and started walking over to Aj. She raised her hand.

WHACK!

"What!"

WHACK!

"Is!"

WHACK!

"Your!"

WHACK!

"Problem!"


When Aj had recovered a little, they headed back to the pokemon center.

"Are you the arcade star?" Nurse Joy asked Aj. Aj nodded.

"You have ten challengers waiting for you at the arcade."

"Cr*p," Aj said under her breath. She looked at them. "I gotta go." She walked back out the door.

Nurse Joy recognized who her companions were and checked for their messages. "Let's see… Ashley, you have five at the battle castle, and the champions… There's two trainers trying to get through."

"Thanks," Mike said. They all headed back out again.

"See you guys later," Ashley said, tossing out Sagitta's pokeball.

"Bye," Kyle yelled up. The guys watched the latias and trainer fly away.

Ashley looked back just in time to see the co-champions leave on a togekiss and latios. Her thoughts were interrupted by –

"Pleeeeeeeeeease?" Sagitta wheedled.

Ashley gripped Sagitta's wings. "Yes."

Sagitta broke the sound barrier.


several days later…

Aj sighed tiredly. She'd finally beaten the tenth challenger. Not a single one had gotten past the Arcade Star. She placed Luoir's ultraball on the healing machine. Only Luoir had been needed for the last battle.

A knock sounded from behind her. Aj turned around and found herself face to face with Candice. "Hey there. Could you help me with something?"

"Depends. Luoir is healing right now."

"Oh. It's in Snowpoint," Candice told her. "How long will the healing take?"

Aj examined the ultraball. "She doesn't have much damage on her. She'll be done within five minutes. So what's going on?"

Candice leaned against the doorframe. "Well, have you heard how Roark and I are going out?"

"No."

"Right. Well... we are. So he came to Snowpoint and naturally started excavating I don't know what –"

"Is digging that interesting?" Aj said in disbelief.

"No, but no one's around, so Snowpoint's boring. ANYWAYS, he found an underground building that was totally off the radar, and he thinks you might have something to do with it."

"He thinks I did it?"

"Just passing on the message."

"I'm coming."

"You'll investigate?"

"No." Aj took Luoir's ultraball off the machine. "I need to beat up your boyfriend."


It was her last battle for the day, and Ashley was starting to think that not healing any of her pokemon had been a bad idea. Both her and the girl across from her were down to one, Sola versus ludicolo.

"Stone edge," she said out loud.

"Water gun," the girl called.

"Are you expecting a head on attack?" Ashley scoffed.

"Huh…?"

Sola manually dodged the water gun rather than let the stone edge hit it. Instead, her stone edge careened around and hit the ludicolo.

"This is it! Solarbeam!" shouted the girl.

"Head on attack it is," Ashley murmured. Sola smirked and got ready for stone edge. She released it the moment the ludicolo let go of his solarbeam. A massive explosion filled the air, creating a cloud of dust.

Sola knew what to do.

"WHAT THE –" the girl shouted. The blizzard that her opponent's absol started was mixed with the dust?

"Finish with fire blast," Ashley said above the wind.

CRASH!

Ludicolo is unable to battle!

"You're not bad, really," Ashley told her. "What you need is a real strategy. Not just launch moves left and right."

"Sure," the girl said, sounding depressed. Ashley noticed for the first time that she had silver hair streaked with red. "Thanks anyways."

The double doors crashed open.

"Sorry I'm late," a girl around eleven years old panted. "Did you just finish your battle? Is it my turn?"

Ashley and the other girl looked at her blankly.

The smaller girl continued. "I told the guys at the battle frontier that I'd be late, so they said, 'you can be last challenger,' and I was so relieved –"

"Weren't you the last challenger?" Ashley interrupted.

"Oops." Her previous challenger's face twisted into a grin. "There goes my cover."

She casually tossed a pokeball with a caterpie inside. The caterpie was so tiny, Ashley wasn't afraid at all that he was inching up to her. She saved him the trouble of going another ten feet and walked right up to him. The caterpie smiled up at her and used string shot on her bare feet.

"Oh, cr*p!" Ashley yelled. The caterpie's trainer performed an action familiar to Ashley. Energy swirled around her body, shimmering with orange flames. She emerged from the cocoon wearing a blazing red cloak and radiating heat. Ashley was still struggling to get the silk off her feet.

"How's it going?" the girl asked calmly.

"Really well, thanks," Ashley snarled. "Who are you, anyways?"

"Fyr. A Lynch."

"What sort of name is that?"

"Lynch is more of a title. You're one too."

Ashley's eyes bugged out. "There's a name for it? And you're one too?"

"Duh. Now can I please pwn you?"

Ashley had gotten the threads off her feet. She quickly and efficiently became a dragon, taking off into the air above Fyr. "You're not supposed to ask someone if you can pwn them," she said. "You're supposed to just pwn them. No asking involved."

Fyr spun her hands in all directions, shooting fire wherever they pointed. The battlefield lit up like a torch.

"IDIOT! WHAT KIND OF PWNING INVOLVES DESTROYING THE BUILDING?"

"I wasn't going to tell you, but the only form you have to stop the fire is ice, where you ice it over and it melts into water. You'd be in ice, which is my advantage," Fyr explained.

"Cr*p," said Ashley. The battle castle was getting burnt… she had no other choice.

So she turned into ice form, saved the castle, and got pwned.

JUST KIDDING!

What really happened was she used draco meteor.

"Oh! So it's defeat me and destroy the castle, huh?" Fyr jeered. The grin was wiped off her face when the draco meteor rocketed through the ceiling. "Uh, you have a different plan in mind, don't you?"

"No, DUH."

The draco meteor activated the sprinkler system.

"Who was supposed to pwn the other, again?" Ashley asked Fyr.

She facepalmed when she realized Fyr was already gone.

"Can we battle now?" The other girl had been standing on the side the whole time.

"Yeah. Three on three."

" 'Kay."


Candice and Aj arrived in Snowpoint later that afternoon. "All right, where's Roark?" Aj immediately wanted to know.

"Over here," Candice said, directing her to a spot behind the gym, where there was a giant hole. A ladder sank into the darkness. "Hey Roark!"

There was no answer.

Candice stuck her head in. "Hellooooo? Aj's here and she's ready to beat you up – uh, I mean…"

"Good save," commented Aj.

"Shut up. Just go on down, he's in there somewhere."

Aj climbed down the ladder. Roark hadn't put any light sources in the tunnel; she lit a softball-sized aurasphere to brighten it. Partly from her aura training and partly from Candice breathing down her neck, she could tell the Snowpoint gym leader was curious about the blue light. But she kept it hidden.

Soon Aj was heard footsteps. Roark came around the corner with papers in his hands. He was a lot dirtier than when Aj had challenged him in Oreburgh when she was ten.

"Oh, hey," he said, shining his flashlight on them. "Glad you could make it, Aj."

Aj smiled sweetly at him, reached back, and –

SMACK!

"Okay, why the h*ll do you think I did this?"

Roark looked startled. "I never said that. I just thought you might know who did make this place."

"Why, exactly?" Aj said in a dangerous tone.

"Because of this!" Roark peeled a spiralbound notebook off the pile of papers in his arms and gave it to her. "It's a journal."

Aj opened to a page with a tab on it.

We created new Lynches today. Fyr, the female, is part fire, part rock, and the male, Iro, is metal and bug. The amazing thing is, while Iro –

"Iro what?" Aj asked Roark.

"They left off writing there," Roark said, "but aren't you a…" He looked at the entry. "Lynch?"

"What the heck is a –"

"Haven't you ever done the 'making inferences' thing in your English class?" Roark asked her. "It looks like a Lynch is someone with elemental pieces coded into their genes."

"Elemental pieces?"

"I made it up, it's bits of DNA with the coding for one or more elements…"

"No, I mean you couldn't come up with a better term for it?" (Roark whacked her over the head) "But anyways, it looks like you know I am one –"

"Bingo!" Roark shouted, looking pleased. "I knew you'd get it…eventually."

"Does everyone know?"

"Just the gym leaders, elite four, et cetera. Only the ones who see you and your friends enough to know something's funny."

"Wow. You guys even know that they're elementally genetic?"

"Mike, Kyle, and Ashley, right?" Aj nodded. "Yep."

Aj thought this over. "But why are we like that?" she mused.

"First of all, do you know who made this place?" Roark reminded her.

"Probably the same guys who (she referred back to the journal) created these Lynches."

"No, duh."

"I have an idea, but it might not be related!" Aj said defensively.

"Yes?"

"Some random guys who were stealing the Sunyshore and Veilstone energy."

"I heard about that from Volkner," Roark admitted. "All right. And your other question – I was hoping to look into that."

"You know how to look into genes?"

Roark looked annoyed. "Just because I'm the first gym leader doesn't mean I can't do anything. Fossils. Radioactive dating. Chemistry. Genetics."

"Okay. Lemme guess, skin test?"

"Yeah."

"Sure. I really want to know what the h*ll I am."


Ashley handed over the only symbol of the day; she'd been too distracted to pay attention to the battle. She almost put her pokeballs in the sink afterwards (On top of an Ace Trainer's moldy pepperoni. EW!). The pokeballs did end up on the healing tray – eventually.

I need to get to the battle arcade, Ashley thought. Aj will want to know this.

She went for a walk, leaving her pokeballs locked inside the room. A breeze stirred the leaves in swirls. The sky was deep blue, and orange along one edge. No one was at the battle frontier anymore: everyone had gone home.

As she walked toward the arcade, she thought about Fyr. Was she one of the ones who were trying to kidnap them? How many of them were there anyways? She snorted at her next thought: Would Mike ever see one of them? But why did she have the same sort of power as the rest of them?

TOO MANY QUESTIONS!

"She's not here," an Ace Trainer told her as she approached the arcade. "Aj went to Snowpoint."

"Oh," Ashley was surprised. "Did she tell you why?"

The trainer laughed. "I work at the battle tower." She walked away.

Ashley headed back towards the battle castle. Darn… why'd I have to leave my pokeballs back there? She got them quickly and flew away on Sagitta.

And yes, Sagitta immediately broke the sound barrier.


Finally done! As always, please review.

I was thinking about this yesterday: I ought to sort of "thank" the people whose names I borrowed. So thanks to Ashley Z, Michael T, AJ D, Kyle S, and Kevin E for "letting" me use your names.

I need a ghost pokemon to hypnotize you into reviewing.

Ehh... Just review.