Because some bridges just aren't worth crossing.

"And we are out of Pinwheel Forest!" Hilda cheered, doing a little victory dance in the light of the gate's electric billboard, paying no attention to the strange looks she was getting. "We are free!"

"But the billboard says there's a bridge here," Hilbert pointed out. His sister's series of cartwheels ground to a halt, and she fell over onto the floor. "Don't worry! There might be a bathroom in here!"

"I could be so lucky," she grumbled, standing up and brushing dust off her white top. "I don't need a toilet half as much as I need a bed."

"Well, there's probably both in Castelia City. Come on, the bridge is this way!"

Of course, said bridge was about seventeen miles long, and though neither twin was completely out of shape, neither was what you'd call athletic. That was probably the reason their mom joined forces with Cheren and Bianca's moms when they convinced Professor Juniper to let them start a journey.

"So, this is Skyarrow Bridge?" Hilda asked.

Hilbert nodded. "Looks like it."

"I hate it."

And so the two began their long, long journey across the bridge, each of them hoping for a miracle.

Their miracle came, and it came in the form of finally reaching Castelia City, and the warm, restful Pokémon Center.

"We made it," Hilda whimpered as she collapsed in a chair after handing her Pokémon to the nurse. "I never want to look at another bridge again."

"Too bad," a familiar male voice interrupted, and Hilda looked up to see Cheren standing behind her. He smiled. "Unova's full of them, so you'll just have to deal with it."

"Hi, Cheren," she mumbled, before resting her head on the table. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Oh, don't be like that!" Bianca's voice cut through her mental fog. So the gang was all here...

"When did you guys get here?" Hilbert asked, much less sleepy than Hilda was.

"Two hours ago. What took you guys?"

"Big. Stupid. Bridge," Hilda said to the table, unable to lift her head to talk to her friends.

"Get your head off the table," Bianca advised. "And Hilbert, share your caffeine supply."

"Gosh, Bianca," Hilbert said, putting the can of soda he was drinking next to his sister's head. "You sound just like my mom. 'Hilbert, clean your room. Hilbert, eat your vegetables. Get the straws out of your nose, you're not a Walrein.' Are you sure you're not a parent?"

"Yeah. I'm sure." Bianca glanced back at Cheren. "Why don't we all go to bed? It's almost midnight, anyway. Everything else is closed."

Cheren called out his Pignite and instructed it to carry Hilda to the room she'd share with Bianca for the night, since the pair had thought ahead. He'd even planned for Hilda to be incredibly reluctant to even move after such an exhausting experience at the hand of the Skyarrow Bridge. "Come on, Hilbert. Try not to talk about weird things all night, will you?"

"No promises," Hilbert laughed, following his friend to their own room.

"I didn't expect any."

It was harder to tell if Cheren was more disappointed with the truth of the statement or how casually Hilbert seemed to take it.

Cheren had called dibs on the gym the next morning, and that left the twins and Bianca to attempt to entertain themselves as he tried to defeat Burgh. After about an hour, though, Hilbert grew bored. And when Hilbert grows bored, he takes others down with him.

"I spy with my little eye...something yellow."

"Wallpaper," the girls said together, neither looking up from the magazine they were sharing.

"How did you know?" He was impressed by the lack of attention they were paying, but that refused to stop him. "Ok. I spy something...yellow."

"Wallpaper."

"Yellow."

"Wallpaper."

"Blue."

"Tommy."

"Aha!" he cheered, confiscating their magazine. "I wasn't spying Tommy at all! It was Bianca's Dewott!"

"Dew?" said Pokémon said, surprised that the boy mentioned it.

Hilda sighed and stood up as Bianca recalled her otter. "I'm going to check on Burgh and Cheren. You coming?"

"No, thanks," Bianca sighed, putting the magazine away. "I'm taking on a Gym Leader. I've got to train harder."

"I'll come with you," Hilbert offered, and neither was sure how, but he was the one that ended up leading the way to the gym.

There they found Cheren, clicking his new Insect Badge into his badge case. He seemed surprised to see his friends, but quickly realized that he should have expected it.

"That guy's tough," he informed them, putting the case back in his bag. "He doesn't like to be taken seriously, but it's better if you do anyway. He deserves his position."

"I'll keep that in mind," Hilda mumbled, but she wasn't thinking clearly as Cheren took off toward the Pokémon Center. Not one of her Pokémon had an advantage over Bug-types. How was she going to beat Burgh without a type advantage?

The man in question followed his previous challenger out of the gym, spotted the twins, and sighed. "Of course," he said with a facepalm, before turning his furious green eyes on Hilbert and Hilda. "I get a notice that Team Plasma is in town, and who do I find waiting outside but the kids from Pinwheel Forest. You two are magnets for trouble, do you know that? I'm starting to think that I should just ban you both from my gym to keep it from burning down."

"Team Plasma didn't follow us here," Hilda objected. "If they're here, they must have a base. Bases take time, and we got here last night. Therefore, we are not Team Plasma."

"I never said you were," he pointed out, but then suppressed any irritation with the 'trouble magnets.' "It's no good to point fingers, anyway. And, as likely as it is that you attract danger of all kinds, if you've survived this long you have to have experience in preventing said danger. Help me take out PETA, and I will not ban you from my gym. Deal?"

"Team Plasma's not PETA," Hilbert said simply. "That guy in the Dreamyard told us that they have completely different goals."

Burgh waved it away. "If you say so."

And he was gone, leaving the teenagers behind him as he went to find the Pokémon rights activists. Hilda waited until she was positive he was out of earshot, which didn't take that long in a city as big as Castelia, before turning to Hilbert with a half-hopeful smile. "Want to ditch him here and head off to the next gym?" she suggested. "We can come back later."

"Why would we want to backtrack?" Hilbert asked. "You can get the Insect Badge before going to the next town and save us all the trouble. It'll cut down your time before you get to meet Grimsley, too."

Hilda ground her teeth together. That was the second time he'd mentioned it in the past two days. She'd have to look up that contract to see what punishment she'd chosen for breaking it. But, instead of saying things now, she adjusted her bag and started off, leaving Hilbert in the dust.

They found Burgh on one of Castelia's many piers, accompanied by a sobbing Bianca and a girl with the most ridiculous hair Hilda had ever seen, giving even Lenora a run for her money. Big and purple, two pigtails shaped like fish while the rest of it hung down to her knees. This girl was trying to explain things to the artist, who looked more concerned than before.

"So, you're saying that Team Plasma actually stole this girl's Pokémon?"

"I tried to find them," the mysterious dark-skinned girl said, staring down at her pink shoes. "But they're just too fast, and the city's so big..."

Burgh glanced back at the kids. "Well, then, our search just got more desperate, didn't it? All right, let's start. Iris, you help this girl."

"I have a very important question," Hilbert said, waving his hand in the air like he was in school. "Where is Team Plasma?"

"If we knew that, we wouldn't be standing around here, would we?" Burgh said, hanging his head in defeat. "Iris is right. Finding Team Plasma in this city would be like finding a needle in a haystack."

As he spoke, a person wearing a costume closely resembling a medieval knight approached the group. The look of surprise on the man's face was a clear indicator that he had not expected to run into a Gym Leader, and definitely not one surrounded by four children who looked as though they might have at least some battle experience.

"I just came to take...uh, save...another Pokémon," he choked out. "But, since there's a Gym Leader here, I suppose I should just..."

And he turned and ran, much to Burgh's amusement. "Perhaps a bright red knitting needle," Burgh corrected himself. "And an invisible haystack."

Burgh ran around town, peeking down every alley as he searched for the thieves, occasionally forgetting that he had assistants and taking off without them. Hilbert and Hilda watched as the man skidded to a halt and stared at something down one road in particular. Then the twins saw him charge, yelling something about the gym.

Hilbert grinned. "I think we found them."

And he took off after the gym leader with the ridiculous pants, Hilda the caboose of this little train. They found Burgh across the street from the gym, speaking with three Team Plasma grunts.

"It's no good," Burgh said once the teenagers had caught up to him. "We'll have to battle them."

A grunt seemed to recognize the twins even as he said it, and turned to his own friends. "That's the girl we saw in Accumula Town," he whispered rather loudly. "Our king has his eye on her."

"But he can't be allowed to go near her himself and get his hands dirty," another grunt whispered back. "So, here's the plan. I'll test her strength for the king, and you two can show off by taking on the Gym Leader."

"And the boy?"

"He's fair game."

Burgh and the twins didn't even bother to point out that they could hear every word.

The grunts were quickly defeated, Burgh taking on two of them with only his Dwebble and taking both of them out in about two and a half minutes. Cheren hadn't lied: despite his personality and crazy pants, he was very, very deserving of his position. The grunts ran into the building, leaving the door wide open for the others to follow, including Iris and Bianca, who seemed to show up out of nowhere. There they found an old man with a huge mustache talking to a man in a castle robe, both looking reasonably irritated at the arrival of the guests.

"Tell me, Bronius," Ghetsis said slowly, and the mustached man coughed nervously under his stare. "What possessed you to set up a base of operations right in front of a Pokémon Gym?"

"There is a perfectly good explanation," Bronius began, but the silence went on for so long that the intruders were all struggling to keep straight faces. Eventually the old man gave up and chuckled. "All right, there wasn't. I just thought it would be funny."

Ghetsis facepalmed before turning to the non-Plasma group. "I suppose you're the Gym Leader in this City. Burgh, is it?"

"Don't try to talk your way out of this," Burgh snapped, shocking all four children with just how dangerous he looked. "You took that girl's Pokémon. Explanations are necessary."

"It seems you misunderstand," Ghetsis said. "You have minor trainers in your gym, correct? People who wish to work with Bug-types like yourself. Surely you would understand how difficult dealing with new recruits can be."

"I do understand," Burgh agreed. "But I don't understand is how instructions from one's boss could be misunderstood as 'Take any Pokémon you see.' That was a misunderstanding, right?"

"Of course," said Ghetsis, clearly offended. "Our only mission is to free Pokémon from foolish people."

"Is it now? I was there when you gave your speech at Accumula Town, and it struck me as if you were trying to strengthen the bonds between Pokémon and trainers even more...or free everybody's Pokémon, one or the other. Of course, I have been known to be wrong now and then, but you were responsible for making me rethink my relationship with my Pokémon."

Ghetsis stared at him. "You enjoy listening to yourself talk, don't you? But, I'll admit, you are a bit more intelligent than I expected." He turned to the grunts. "Well? What are you waiting for? Return the girl's Pokémon."

The grunt let go of the Munna, which floated up happily to Bianca. She threw her arms around it in joy.

"You never told me you caught a floating piggy bank," Hilbert whined, but he, like the others, were distracted as Team Plasma left.

Iris turned to Burgh, fury in her pretty brown eyes. "You're just letting them go?" she demanded. "Why?"

"Well...we got Bianca's Pokémon back, didn't we? There's no need to chase them now." He squirmed a little under her stare, and turned to the twins and their friend. "Now that that's over, I see no reason to continue it. As I promised, you are allowed in my gym. I'll see you later."

And he fled like a scared little Pidove, crossing the street as fast as he could.

And Hilbert spoke the sentence that was on everybody's mind: "That was weird."