Chapter 9: Stalk


Point of view: Black

We finally arrived in Luminose city some time in the afternoon. It was raining really hard today, and we were all soaked and freezing from the cold rain. There was thunder here and there, along with occasional lightning off in the distance. The city looked fairly normal. Just like most others, it had a relatively nice side, and a completely ghetto side.

We walked down the busy streets of the city along with a few other people who were smart enough to bring umbrellas. The place already looked kind of gloomy, and the rain certainly didn't help. There was a lot of cafés and restaurants along with a few other miscellaneous stores for stuff such as clothes, groceries and all that boring junk. After a couple hours or so of walking in the freezing rain, we ended up in a suburban area made up of a bunch of worn down condos. Most of them were in okay shape, but they looked fairly old, and definitely lacked proper maintenance. Most of their lawns were overgrown in some areas and brown and dead in others, while the condos themselves showed worn red bricks, broken siding, and peeling paint.

We walked pretty deep into the suburbs and then Alex walked up to a condo.

"Well, we're home. Black, you haven't been here yet, but everyone else has." He sounded a little nervous about being home. I would be too if I lived in this dump. Every time he comes home, he probably finds out his house was broken into or something fell apart inside.

"He lives in this dumpy crap hole?" I asked out loud.

Flare looked at me looking insulted for his trainer. "It's not that bad once you go inside. His dad just didn't want to pay for a big house when it's just the two of them." Flare stated.

'Wait, what about his mom?' I asked myself in my head.

We walked into the condo. Flare was completely wrong. The inside made the outside look upper-class. There was random junk lying around everywhere, random holes in the wall, stains on the carpet, and even half eaten food lying around. On top of all this, there was also probably the worlds largest tower of pizza boxes stacked up so high it leaned to one side sitting on the kitchen counter. On the topic of the kitchen, the refrigerator looked like it would turn anything inside radioactive too. There were other rooms that I couldn't see into, but I assumed they would probably look pretty similar.

If you can somehow look past how disgusting the place was, It had some nice features to it too. It had a couch (with dishes on it) and a flat screen TV (with half eaten pizza in front of it) in the main room, and the kitchen had a gas stove (with used pots still on it) and a granite countertop (that was worn down and hosted the pizza box tower). In other words, the place was totally unfit for living.

"Dad I'm home!" Alex yelled across the house.

One of the doors in the hall then opened up, and a middle aged man walked out. He was tall and wore light blue jeans and a white t-shirt with a nice stain on it. He had long dark brown hair that was unmaintained along with a small beard that needed a little trimming.

"Oh, welcome home, I guess." The man looked like he didn't really care and he hadn't slept since he was born.

"That's his dad? This guy looks like a filthy hobo." I whispered to Flare.

"I wouldn't judge him so fast Black. Believe it or not, but he is actually a scientist. He just works a lot and barely has time to sleep, let alone keep up on appearance." Flare whispered back towards me.

Then a female jolteon walked out of the room and sat by the hobo's feet. She looked like a normal jolteon. "Oh, it's good to see you guys are back. How did the first gym battle go?" She asked in cheerful voice.

"Wonderful," Gray replied in an annoyed voice.

"It went great Kana. We also got a new friend. His name was Kaz, but Alex renamed him to Black." Flare said while gesturing to me.

"Oh, umm... Hi." I replied awkwardly. My personality may have become less hostile lately, but I still felt socially awkward around pokemon or humans I didn't know.

"You are not too talkative are you Kaz, or was it Black?" She replied still confused on what to call me, which was actually a little amusing.

"Just call me what you want, it doesn't really matter to me honestly."

"I'm going to try to call you Kaz since that is your real name, no one should ever discard their real name no matter what, it is a part of who you are." Kana had a real happy tone to her voice which was sort of similar to Flare. I just hope she wouldn't be as much of a hand full.

"Whatever works for you," I replied yawning at the end of my sentence. I wasn't trying to be rude, it was just between the gloomy weather and my lack of sleep, it was a sleepy day for me.

"So you are an umbreon. I have not seen one of you in a very long time," Flare then whispered something into her ear and then glanced an eye towards me and Gray.

"Oh," She said out loud awkwardly. I had a few good guess on what Flare said and I'm sure it had to do with the wonderful friendship between me and Gray.

"Alex, I'm going to order a pizza. Maybe while I'm doing that you can run down town and get some food for your pokemon," his dad said as he was picking up the phone.

"No, its fine Dad. I actually have some in my bag. I'll just help clean up around the house if that's fine." Alex would dare even attempt to clean the un-cleanable. That almost seemed braver than me going against that scyther, almost.

"If you want to do that, I won't stop you," His dad was now entering in the number for the pizza place which he apparently had memorized. Alex then began picking up dishes and doing other stuff to help at least make this place remotely presentable. I just decided to go into the living room and lay on the couch, but once I got to it, I then couldn't help but notice there was dishes all over the damn thing.

"Oh sorry about that buddy," Alex then picked up all the dishes so there would be room for me.

"On second thought, I think I'll just stand for now," Mew knows how long those dishes where on the couch. I wouldn't even poke that couch with a ten foot pole.

"Yeah, I know this place is a disaster," Flare said in embarrassment for Alex's dad. I don't even know if I could tell him that I didn't care with a straight face, because this was just repulsive, and that's coming from a wild pokemon. Since I didn't take the couch, Gray gladly took it without even thinking twice. I was just waiting for him to start mutating from contact with that couch.

Kana then walked up to me. "So, have you been to this city before?" Kana asked me curiously in an attempt to get to know me.

"Actually, funny that you ask. This is actually where I was before Alex abducted me. But I did spend very little time here and I was just passing through here at the time. So I really don't know a lot about this city."

"Well, I assure you the whole city isn't as dirty as this home," she jokingly said.

The doorbell rang indicating that the pizza arrived. Alex walked to the door with the money his Dad had given to him earlier. The pizza man was holding around five large pizza boxes that could feed a family for the rest of the month.

"Holy mother of Mew! How much pizza do you two need!" I yelled in surprise to the quantity of pizza Alex's dad ordered.

"That pizza is what Mr. Hayter eats all week. Although, I don't think a better diet would kill him though," Kana said to me defending Alex's father. Why she decided to formally call him MR. Hayter I don't know.

Alex then brought in the five pizza boxes and set one on the table and put the other four in the fridge. The fridge had absolutely nothing in it except for pizza and beer. Alex then pulled a few cans out from his bag and each of us a decent sized meal of poke puffs and berries.

Alex and his dad then sat down next to Gray on the couch and began watching TV. They were watching some show about the world's dumbest criminals. I have to say, it was pretty funny seeing how dumb humans could be, but that is when I realized that the human race was doomed.

Alex's father passed out on the couch after a few hours of sitting on the couch. Alex then got up and took his dishes and put them in the sink to clean later. He then put a blanket on his now sleeping dad and started heading towards his room.

Everyone was now asleep besides me. I was still scared to go to bed. What if I had that nightmare again? I couldn't take it anymore, but I was so tired from getting so little sleep. I decided to stay awake the rest of the night because I was not going to risk it again.

It was now about five o'clock and an alarm started going off really loudly. It scared me half to death since I was barely awake, and I was drifting in and out of sleep. My heart was now pounding really hard from the jump scare I just experienced. Alex's Dad then got off the couch he fell asleep on and gave a frustrated sleepy groan. He then dragged his body off of the couch and went into his room and turned off the cursed alarm clock.

Alex's Dad remained in the room for around five minutes until he came out. He was now in a white scientist uniform, and actually looked clean for once. He even took the time to brush his hair. He then noticed I was awake, but he paid little to no attention to me since he probably had better things on his mind. He then got a cup of coffee and walked out the door and left to go to his job.

About three more hours passed and then the house started coming to life as the sun completely came out and everybody started waking up. Everybody just lied down lazily trying to get a few more minutes of sleep except for Alex who was now back to cleaning.

"Morning guys," Alex said in a tired voice.

I nodded back at him to show I noticed him comment. Then Flare was the first one to give up on getting more sleep and then sprang to life and walked towards Alex in a tired motion. We all just kind of hung around, too tired to really do anything significant.

"Hey, I'm going to have to go out and run some errands as well as meet up with someone today. You guys can leave the house and do whatever you want as long as you don't get into trouble. Black since I know you probably don't know your way around this area too well, I am going to ask that you stick with someone you know if you do choose to go out." Alex was now giving us some freedom to actually enjoy ourselves for once.

Alex then grabbed a few things and left out the door to go run his errands.

"Flare, would you want to go out and explore the city or something? At least find something to do besides being cramped up in this house all day." I asked ready to get out of this condemned house.

"Sure, that sounds fun. I can show you some of the cool things around town." Flare actually did sound like he wanted to go.

"Would you two mind if I tagged along?" Kana asked us.

"Not at all, the more pokemon the better. What about you Gray? Do you want to come?" For some reason Flare found it necessary to ask him out of all pokemon to come with us.

"No," Gray replied really quickly. He was like a black hole and sucked the fun out of anything. In other words, he is no fun and really needs to do something besides lay on a couch all day.

We all walked outside the condo and went onto the streets. It was still cloudy out from the previous days rain, but it was not raining at the moment thankfully. We left the complex and went into the main part of the city that wasn't garbage. There were a lot of stores that held no personal interest to me or any of us on top of that.

"So where are we going?" I really wasn't in the mood to mindlessly wonder around the city all day since I got no sleep, and I had spent the previous days walking.

"How about I show you luminose tower or maybe we can go to a park and just relax and enjoy the… uh... semi-nice weather." Flare for some reason would consider a day where everything was gloomy nice weather.

"Let's show Kaz Luminose tower since the park will be really muddy because of all the rain we got," Kana decided to answer for all of us. I didn't really mind going to luminose tower though since I haven't been there yet. I've only heard that it was a cool place to check out.

So we then began making the very long journey towards Luminose tower.


Point of view: Charmander

I now found myself in the shadows watching the umbreon and his friends. They have been at luminose tower for about an hour now, just awkwardly talking about useless gibberish that was putting me to sleep with each passing second.

"Merrick, I have located the umbreon. Repeat I have located the umbreon," I whispered into a walkie-talkie that was given to me earlier that day by that white furred bastard.

"I hear ya, just hang tight there, we don't want to rush into this and cause bigger problems," Merrick responded from his radio set.

"One problem though. He's with some friends, and they won't shut the hell up."

There was a long silence until Merrick finally decided to respond, "Okay, we got a plan, and it should get Ryder to go somewhere a little more… private."

Merrick began to tell me the plan. As I listened, I kept nodding my head up and down, since it actually didn't sound too bad.

"Okay Merrick I can do that for you. After that though, I'm out, and I'm going back to my trainer, and we will never see each other again, are we clear?"

"Buddy, if you pull through, I will literally carry you to your trainer, and set up a five star sappy reunion for you two. Just know that I will not screw you as long as you pull through for us. Remember, we're doing this to make the world a better place. What you are doing is justified. Mandus will be pleased once we bring the umbreon to him." Merrick replied over the radio.

I could not believe what I was about to do. Celebi knows what they will do to that umbreon once they actually get him. The umbreon and his friends then all began leaving luminose tower. I followed them from a safe distance making sure to stay out of sight and not bring too much attention to myself.

They were all talking and laughing a lot. Except for the umbreon. He didn't look like he had the best humor or he was just mentally laughing. I kept following them down the main streets for what seemed like hours. They were oblivious to the fact that I was following them.

"Alright I am at the construction site. Proceed with the plan Charmander." Merrick said with a serious voice over the radio.

"Okay, I will do it once they are in a bit more of a secluded area." I didn't want to take any risks. I was not going to blow my one chance at seeing my trainer again. If one thing went wrong, it would not be too far-fetched at all to assume they would kill me and my trainer without a second thought.


Chapter End


Thanks to The pokemon Melody for editing this chapter.