* The Thief Game *
* Chapter Seven *
* The Boy Who Almost Made Friends *
"If you step any closer to me, I will hit you," Isaac sneered. The black haired teen was just as mean and intimidating as his first impression. He glared at the redhead who was currently trying to clean and patch up a gash in the boy's leg.
"Isaac, stop being such a fart!" Unlike Isaac, Hayden did manage to surprise me. He was actually not a he. She was a girl, which confused me to no end. Apparently, I had a problem with assuming everyone was a boy. (To be fair, they all had boy names…)
"I'll be a fart as long as you keep trying to get near me, you annoying insect!" He snapped, practically growling at the girl. "I don't need any help from a little girl!"
Hayden scowled. "Fine then, I guess you don't need any of Colton's bandages either!" She threw the bandages in-between the brown-haired older boy and me.
The 16-year-old turned from where he was pitching up a tent to cut short their argument. "Break it up you two!" he said, rather annoyed. He picked up the bandages and tossed them back to Hayden. "You don't want to attract any ursaring."
The two grumbled and after a while, finally allowed his leg to be cleaned and patched up. I suddenly remembered my encounter earlier and attempted to hide my guilt by pulling my bag close to my face.
We had stopped for the night, deciding on a small clearing—though it was just big enough for the three of us. Colton was setting up the tents while it was my job to collect some wood for the fire. As Isaac I found out was a fire-type trainer, it should have been him taking care of everything fire related. But the stupid butt had to trip and cut open his leg before he got far from our temporary camp. Now I was stuck doing his chores.
The good news was I finally figured out how to use my trainer bag. I now had several empty poké balls and one of the latest models of the pokéDex. The bad news is that almost the food in it had since gone bad. Moldy cheese and curdled milk. I had to hold my nose to keep myself from gagging as I emptied those and a number of other food items onto the forest floor earlier. There were however, some dried meats and berries. The berries had been grown for human consumption and they had somehow survived becoming rotten. At least most of them did. (Berries grown for pokémon tended to have bugs and the like in them, and that's why earlier I had offered some to Devin, instead of eating them myself.)
Speaking of the green bug, I hadn't seen her in some time. She usually appeared in the trees, silently sulking as she followed me out of sight. The others never seemed to notice her because of that. But after three days of traveling together, it would probably happen soon. After all, they—Isaac especially— seemed highly doubtful that I even had a pokémon. I hope she scared him.
"Shit," the evil boy cursed. Glancing over I saw that he was rubbing his injured leg carefully. Blood was seeping through the bandages already and I had to turn away to avoid getting sick. "How far until Pewter again?"
"We should be able to get there tomorrow if we make good time," Colton answered, looking at some mapping app on his own pokéDex.
"The sooner I get away from you people the better," Isaac mumbled. His hand clutched a poké ball I knew contained his ponyta. I wondered if it was his starter. He seemed to favor it over his growlithe and magmar after all.
"Okay then! I'm done with my tent." Hayden announced. She had begun to set up her own special 'girl' tent after finishing with Isaac's wound. "So why don't we let our pokémon out and eat?" Now that the fire was roaring, we had been able to prepare a few cans of soup we threw together in a pot. It was one of the few things that didn't go bad in my pack, and what we had been eating the last few nights.
Isaac ignored her and entered the tent meant for him, Colton and me, I assumed to go to sleep. It seemed to be his routine the past few days so we all disregarded it.
Colton, however, released his whole team of six. Scowl, an inappropriately named breloom, hopped over to him and snuggled against his leg, while a blue and red bird flew overhead into the trees. The rest of his team I was unfamiliar with as he only let Scowl or Caw out to fend off the wild pokémon we ran into on our trek through the forest. He had explained he was originally from Hoenn, but truthfully, I didn't care. I was jealous of his full team though.
Hayden was a newbie like myself and let out her two Pokémon, a cherry thing that I still hadn't gotten a species name, and a pikachu she had caught here. "Come on, Jeremy and Lola. There's plenty for all of us." The thing squealed in delight as Hayden fed it spoonfuls of her own meal. Lola the pikachu seemed a bit more cautious of her new trainer but that went away with a happy 'Pikaaa!' when she had a bowl handed to her.
I looked down at my own bowl feeling a bit lonely without a pokémon. Devin was still MIA, though she usually appeared after everyone else had gone to bed to sneak a free meal of her own. Scowl seemed to notice my misery and came over to cheer me up—or at least I thought he did until he started stealing from my bowl. "No, you have your own food, this is mine!" The breloom giggled but left me alone after that. I looked over at Colton to see if he had seen his pokémon misbehave, but it looked like he had his hands full with a particularly evil looking pokémon with a wide smile and large sharp teeth that was chewing on my bag—hey wait a minute! "My bag!"
"Sorry," Colton grunted successfully (and thankfully) holding my bag over the small evil thing's head as it attempted to jump and grab it. "Chi-Chi must have smelled some gems or something in your bag… what do you have in this thing, anyway?"
"I don't know…" I said truthfully. I had figured out many of the bags secrets in the past few days, but there were still so many others I had left to discover. When I got my bag back, a thought struck me. "Chi-Chi?" His naming theme seemed to be words that had little to do with the pokémon (Except maybe Caw) and I was particularly curious about this one.
"Chi-chi-chi-chi-chi!" the evil thing snickered. Oh.
"She's a sableye. They like to eat jewels and things so watch out if you have something like that in your bag," Colton said holding Chi-Chi close to him as she tried to get to my bag. Finally, he just returned her after a minute or two of struggling.
I looked questioningly at my bag. The sableye hadn't thought that my bag was so interesting yesterday. In fact, she seemed to hurry to eat so she could go out and explore the forest all night. Maybe she was bored of that. Or, maybe she ran into Devin.
* T * T * G *
It was a while later and everyone had gone to bed.
I wrapped my sleeping bag over my face and tried to sleep but it felt like the universe was shaking me awake every time I got close.
Eventually I sighed and got up, careful not to wake anyone as I grabbed my flashlight and unzipped the tent doors and stepped out into the crisp night. I was soon wishing I had more than my tan shorts as I walked passed the ashes of the fire. My not-white-anymore jacket could only do so much for me.
"Hoot." I swung around to see a noctowl watching me intently. My jaw (and flashlight) dropped in fright as it started melting in front of my eyes. "Oh my gods," I gasped. The noctowl seemed to smile as it melted—and promptly took another shape.
It soon took the form of a ditto.
"What."
At least that explained something. But, I had never seen a ditto in person outside of the zoo my parents took me to two months ago for my tenth birthday. But I did see them a lot in movies. And then something clicked.
"Oh my gods," I repeated. "Is this a prank TV show?"
The ditto didn't respond. It simply grinned and made a high bubbly sort of squeak I took to be its laugh. It began to change form again. The purple gunk turned into pink flesh and it grew larger and larger until the branch under it creaked a bit under its weight.
Some of its flesh turned to fabric and it grew navy blue hair similar to mine. No—it was mine. The ditto turned into me.
"Hello," the ditto spoke in my own voice.
I almost passed out.
"Spencer!" an all too familiar voice gleefully shouted. Mattias came rushing into view—or more accurately, he popped into view, as he appeared to have been hiding behind a bush. Somehow, I wasn't surprised he did, or that he was here for that matter. He was probably the reason I couldn't sleep either.
"Trainer, be quiet. You don't want to wake the other humans," the ditto chided. It seemed as gleeful as Mattias while it said it though.
"Right so, Hansel," Mattias whispered. "Hans," he corrected himself with a frown. "Which do you prefer again?"
"The first, Trainer. We don't have time to talk about that right now, though. Back to business. " The blond man nodded in agreement.
"Spencer, you're about to break a rule," Mattias announced. I only now noticed he held the same sparkly notebook in his hands from before.
"What rule? And is this a game show or not?"
"Spencer, Spencer," Mattias tisked. "I thought we went over this already. Save all questions until the end, and no, you are not in a TV show. I'm sorry. I know how much you wish you were in one. Maybe someday," Mattias said apologetically. I stood once again dumbfounded by his logic. "Anyways, you're about to break a rule. And, that rule is that you have to catch your first pokémon. Well, that's one of them. You're also about break the rule that says you can't travel with a large group for more than a few days."
"What? I'm not allowed to travel with people? You said I could treat it like a normal journey!" For that matter, he had also said I had to capture a pokémon. Shouldn't it be my own choice whether or not I wanted another one? (Not that I didn't, because I most certainly did)
"No, Spencer. You misunderstand me. I said a large group of people. You can travel with people, knowing the risk that they could turn you in at any moment and all that, but you can still travel with people. Just maybe one or two. I don't know. I haven't decided yet."
"Trainer, its Ansel. I can smell him coming," the not-me, Hansel, said.
I didn't know how that worked while he was in human form, as I couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary. Sure enough however, the psychic appeared, looking angry.
"Ansel!" Mattias cried happily, oblivious to his pokémon's obvious disdain as he walked over to hug him.
"Master, I am furious. You told me you would be waiting to see the boy until he arrived to the nearest human settlement," Ansel growled telepathically.
Mattias pouted, looking like growlithe that was just scolded by its master. "I'm sorry I couldn't wait, Ansel. I just had to see him before he broke any of my rules."
"You know you cannot be seen! Return with Hansel and I will take care of this…"
Mattias didn't seem troubled by the fact that his pokémon was ordering him around, and obediently complied, taking Hansel's hand and leading him into the forest.
"Child," Ansel said as soon as they were gone. His eyes started to glow a blue-white. "Go back to sleep. Your companions will wake soon with the dawn."
"But, what about-" My eyes grew impossibly heavy as I slumped to the ground, everything around me going dark.
