'Melemele Island' the large sign near the northern gate of Hau'oli city read. The sign bore an overhead map of the island, with a selection of little dots representing points of interest. 'Hau'oli city' was a large red dot with small text under its title, simply reading 'You are here'. Northward were 'Melemele Motel', 'Hau'oli Cemetary', 'Big wave beach' and around the north side was a small dot labelled 'Verdant Cavern'. As Kaili's finger touched the point to trace the shortest path to Hau'oli City, suddenly the sign was bathed in flickering red and orange light. He could hear screaming behind him and gunshots. Slowly, so as not to draw attention if he was just imagining it, the young man turned his head to look at the carnage behind him. Pokemon were fighting in the street and men in black clothes were waving guns at those who were trying to hide in alleys. A helicopter overhead drew his attention up, and to a massive white funnel of light in the sky... and as suddenly as it had begun, it ended, and everything was normal again. No guns, no helicopters, no fire or strange lights. People were happily walking around talking in the cool night air. Taking a quick breath, Kaili lifted his bag and immediately set off past the sign, not daring turn around. Afraid people had seen him looking at things that were not there. The bitumen gave way at a hard seem to a well trodden dirt road. The tiretracks were hardened mud and didn't go far on the even ground before they were forced to take up a mudslide ramp. A drunk girl was passed out at the base of the ramp on the right hand side, and a worried, very inebriated man was standing on the left looking into the small grassy yard to the left of the ramp. The section was bordered on all sides by cliffs, some leading up to the top of the ramp, and some down to the sea. The only way for something to enter or leave the small area was the space where the man stood, glancing quickly from the girl to the grass. "Not a good place to hide a corpse" Kaili scoffed jokingly at the man, before laughing harder at the confused and terrified expression.
"D'a See th?" The man pointed into the grass. Glancing past him, Kaili couldn't see much but slightly rustling grass at the other end of the area. "Is a pkmn!" The man whispered, glancing from the young man to the unconcious woman. "Thnk itll tack us if I mv?" The voice was slurred and seemed to echo very slightly in the young man's head, but he could make out the nervousness and genuine worry.
"I'll keep an eye on it" Kaili nodded, the man thanked him profusely before stumbling away slightly. When Kaili turned back to glance at the grass, the rustling had moved half the distance to the edge in the short time, and it was still racing toward him. As quick as he could, the young man ran his fingers across the three pokeballs in one swift motion. Kladenets in hand, he planted his back foot and stood ready as the small creature leaped out of the grass at him. It looked maybe like a large yellow dumpling with arms. Its eyes were triangles and its lips pursed tight as it writhed in the air. It arms and two tiny feet flailed wildly. Wrapped around the creature's shoulders were a pair of long purple-black vines. In the air above the yellow thing, sat a grinning balloon, which bobbed occassionally, shaking the poor creature it clung to. Another small flying creature was making itself known as well, a blur of red and white in the black of the night, 'Bird' pecked furiously around the creatures face as it struggled to swat it away. "That'll do you two" The young man chuckled to himself, waving his left hand so the fingers went up faster than down but not side to side. "Drop him back off at the other end of the grass" Bird landed on Kaili's shoulder with a metallic clunk, while Mr. Balloon happily just drifted away and let go of the struggling yellow thing a full two and a half meters off the ground. "Come on." He nodded up the hardened mud ramp. "Onwards!" Bird fluttered ahead, sitting on a railing at the top of the cliff beside the ramp, its head tilted to the side as it watched the trainer slowly working his way up. Kaili's legs struggled to move that far, and the creaking of his scales made the movement painful to both his legs and his ears.
Up the ramp the road continued. A smaller road, maybe just a path, rejoined the road on the right, coming down from a small forest. Along this right path, Mr. Balloon bobbed happily. "Oh? What's that? Little timmy fell down a well?" the young man teased as the purple pokemon turned. It opened its mouth and let out a short squeal, like when the neck of a balloon lets the air escape. "Were you the one that dropped him down there?"Kaili's head tilted with a smirk, almost laughing at the next squeal before Mr. Balloon turned himself upside down with his tendrils hanging on either side of its body. "Okay okay. Lead the way." The Balloon righted itself and squealed in a more excited tone, before bobbing up the right path into the forest. Shaking his head, Kaili returned Kladenets to its pokeball and followed, Bird sitting on his shoulder chirping along the way. It turned out, in fact, that the path led to Hau'oli Cemetery. A section of the forest clearing was opened up, filled with rows of gravestones that led down a gentle slope into a large cave in the mountainside. "Oh I get it" The young man nodded, watching the Balloon charge and bump into another, slightly smaller balloon before both bobbed and whistled at each other. "Wait, did you really float all the way over the mountain to the other side of the island?" The balloon ignored him, instead bouncing off the sides of several more of its brethren who had drifted up out of the cave. After a minute of the purple creature simply playing with its fellows, it finally bobbed back to the young man, who'se shoulder it once again wrapped tendrils around before letting out another small squeal. The responding squeal of at least fifteen of these bobbing balloons echoed painfully in the young man's ear, but once it died down, they thankfully drifted away to do whatever it is they wanted to do.
The young man glaced around, mentally counting the few people nearby. Before he turned right he heard a familiar voice, a quiet voice far off, repeating the same words a thousand times. A garbled mess of laughs and jumbled words. And deep in the recessess of the voices, the young man could almost hear screaming. But he forced himself not to listen, forcing the voices down into the quiet of the lingering effect of the pill as he finally noticed Ivy. She was sitting on the grass not far away, not even looking up at him, simply smiling at a gravestone. "I should go now. Everyone will be finished shopping" She smiled, hand outstreched to almost pat the stone. "I'll be back again next week, okay! I'll make sure Flint comes too" She dug around in her pocket, pulling out some small brown biscuits shaped like tiny, flat, cartoony bones. "We all miss you" She quietly lay the biscuits at the base of the stone. While they didn't look particularly impressive, Kaili could smell the treats even ten meters away. He didn't move, if he walked away it might insult her, if he spoke up it might embarress her. So he waited silently, seven times prior he had walked into such a hornets nest, and nothing worked better than waiting. "Hi Kaili" She smiled, hopping up onto her feet easily "Sorry about that, I did see you come in" She smiled, tears simply sitting on her gentle cheeks. She smiled and poked the balloon which swung rhythmically, happily tethered to Kaili's shoulder.
"Are you off to the trial at Verdant Cavern?" Kaili nodded, wondering to himself how she knew where the trial was. "Oh! Can I come watch?" Strange thing to ask, but he shrugged, seeing no problem in it. "Oh, but I have to get back, Mom and Daddy will be wondering whats keeping me." Her lower lip crept up as her head hung low. "I want to be a trainer" She sighed, before perking up again. "Only two years until I'm 18 though!" The young man couldn't stop his eyebrow raising. "I wanna catch and play with lots of pokemon. Puffles is so much fun to play with" Kaili had to conciously keep himself from smirking, her grin was so adorably infectious. "Oh!"Her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed a simple circle of suprise. "I caught a fish earlier" Kaili couldn't help himself.
"Fishing line or pokeball?" She laughed, patting her pockets, searching for a small lump. The young man had to keep reminding himself that she wasn't trying to show him her curves. She was just checking her pockets.
"Both!" her hand came to rest on her back pocket, pulling out a small red and white ball, that expanded once out of the fabric. "Ah, here it is!" She held the ball out to him. "I want you to have it" She beamed. "I want it to get to grow big and strong in battles. Like Mum and Dad's pokemon!" Kaili slowly stowed his own hands in his pockets. "Don't you want it." She pouted, those big eyes seeming to burn into him. He looked away, but the eyes were always there, heartbroken.
"Yeah, I uhh" He turned back, pulling his right hand from his pocket and holding it out. She squealed happily and pushed the ball into his hand. "I'll see you later. Good luck at the trial!" She smiled, skipping off down the path back to Hau'oli city.
As she skipped away, Kaili's hand closed around the pokeball slowly. As it did, his mind was pulled away and instead he was sitting with his back to the cliff, a pokeball in hand with two big glowing gold eyes floating an inch off it, the eyes were the only thing in the world that moved, and they looked directly at him, Kaili felt an uneasiness sweep through him, which pulled him to another image. He knelt in the dark recesses of the cave, looking up at the open graveyard ahead, pokeball in hand. The next image was Kaili sitting on the cliff near the two drunkards, fishing rod beside him and pokeball in hand. Another image, Kaili could feel handcuffs around him, and a chain led from them to the person infront, and one to the person behind as he was being led by people in black clothes, and holding guns. Kaili's hand was in one of the men's pockets, gripping a pokeball he had half pulled to freedom. Sitting outside a cave covered with grass and ivy, looking at two large totem-like pillars of wood framing the cave entrance, and holding a pokeball. Kneeling in the grass near Kukui's beach, hand simultaneously on a pokeball and in the jaws of what at first looked like a silver crocodile, until he followed it with his eyes and found a small black head atop a stout yellow body. Again he was fishing. And then finally, he was standing back in the graveyard. He shook his head, blinked twice and let the pokemon out of its ball. It was a pink fish, the shape of a cartoon heart. It flopped around on the dirt. The young man knelt beside it, only to get slapped as it jumped up and hit him in the left cheek with a fin. "Right then!" He withdrew the pokemon, thinking for a second before he began typing into the pokeball; 'dIVeY' He looked at it a moment, the pun was good, but the typesetting made it too obvious. 'Divey' He fixed it to, before adding the pokeball to his array.
Kaili looked up and noticed the grave Ivy had been sitting at. He did not need to pry into who lay there, so he stepped back, turning on his heel, and set off back to the road.