CHAPTER 11: Training from Scratch
V - June 20th 341- Saturday
Ann kicked Valeria awake. By accident. She did say sorry. Then, though, she rolled out of double bed, turned on the lights, skipped back to the bed, and pulled off both sheets and covers.
"We should wash those, no? It's been two weeks."
It would have been more of a question if Ann had asked before stripping the bed.
It also was super early. Valeria groaned and grabbed her pillow before Ann could take it too.
"Well, come on," Ann exclaimed with a blinding grin. "The eevee are waiting for us!"
Probably sleeping, actually. Valeria bit her tongue, warmth replacing her grumpiness. She couldn't say it. She'd break Ann's heart.
Ann was bouncing.
Soft laughter built in Valeria's chest. She pushed herself upright and rubbed her eyes awake.
"You battle Tangela. I'll put those in the wash," Ann said, dashing for the kitchen/laundry in her pajamas.
Valeria reached for her brush with a groan. 'Battling Tangela' did sound better than 'brush your hair'. She winced when she pulled on the first locks. Battling alright.
"Come on, come on, come on!"
"Ann, your shirt's not on right."
Ann could bounce and flip her shirt. Valeria grinned.
For one month, they'd visited the eevee in their cages and then later watched them take ownership of the terrace. Their clumsy steps had become steady, their fear of everything not within three feet of Foxy had led way to playful curiosity, and the soft white fur around their necks had grown into a lush collar. Babies no more.
As of today, she and Ann were allowed to play with the eevee, away from Foxy, in Mr. Cinders' garden.
"Eeveea, Eeveevee, first let's see how fast you can run." Ann wasn't even out of the house, and she was already shouting orders, her vidphone set on stopwatch. "Go to that tree there and back. Give it your best shot!"
The eevee broke into a breakneck run when they realized that Ann meant they had to go now.
A hundred and thirty-four seconds later, Eeveea all but knocked Ann over, jumping around and tugging at her clothes with her front paws. The pokemon's rasped 'Veh's had a distinct ring of pride in them.
A whole twenty yards behind, Eeveevee raised puffs of dust. She bounced up to Valeria, her huge brown eyes glittering with a perpetual awe that her sharper sister couldn't mimic.
She wagged her fluffy tail wildly upon hearing Valeria's laugh.
Valeria crouched and pressed her nose against her kit's. "The whole point is to run fast."
"Eev eevee." That didn't sound like 'sorry'. More like 'I'm running for you already, be grateful'.
Valeria shoved her face in Eeveevee's fur, pretending to bite her, and earning herself a gooey mess of tongue licks, all nicely spread over her face and neck by the kit's flailing paws.
"I forgot to make them warm up!"
Ann's horrified face was just too funny. "Ann, they made an unbelievable racket when we went to get them. Ninetales was about to turn them to ash. They were born warmed up. What's next?"
After an hour of leaps, sprint runs, go fetch, and 'swipe the dangling yoyo'. Ann frowned at the panting eevee.
"How can we see if they already know any moves?"
Huh. "Eeveevee, tackle your sister."
"Ee?"
"Would you tackle me, V?" Ann challenged, hands on her hips.
"If it helped me evolve and get dragon wings, you'd be on the ground already. Pokemon put up with us trainers because battling makes them stronger every time."
Ann's eyes narrowed to slits. "You'd test that theory on our baby eevee?"
Valeria nodded. It was no theory. The babies were growing fast.
"Vee, eevee, eh-veh," Eeveea suddenly said, moving a few steps away from her slightly bigger sister.
"Vee?"
"Veh!"
Her furry face full of questions, Eeveevee took a few leaps and bounced, paws extended awkwardly.
The eevee crashed together into the grass.
"A fledgling tackle move, brilliant."
She should have watched her teasing tone. Ann glowered. "They're kits. They have to keep at it to learn. Don't discourage them."
Valeria took a dutifully chastised look, holding back a grin. Look at her, four-feet-two of protectiveness.
Ann had turned to the eevee, beaming with pride. "That was very brave of you."
Valeria met her pokemon's expectant eyes. "I'm proud of you too, Eeveevee. Just because don't go all mushy like Ann does, it doesn't mean I love you any less."
Adoring dark eyes gazed back at her. No wonder Mr. Cinders had given them the kits. Nobody cared about strange and having to make up stories when they had eevee.
Strange also had its perks. Every week, new rare pokemon settled in the farm. Valeria couldn't wait to hear one of them talk.
The cold hollow voice was branded in her mind. 'You overestimate yourself, Valeria.'
She crossed her arms at the memory. She'd have found a way to help him, she would have!
"We're going to try something for every move you might have!" Ann was bouncing again. "Right, V?"
Valeria laughed. Ann was so excited, so… serious. "Go for it."
Many eevee could growl and frighten their opponents, while others used their tails like a whip to cut through their enemy's defense. Others shared their energy with allies to help them attack faster. Also – Valeria's mind came up blank.
She winced. Ann had made her memorize this like a hundred times and wouldn't hesitate one second to make it one hundred and one. Sandstorms! Yup, that fourth common move was a storm of sand. More of the blinding than painful kind. Pretty cool, nonetheless.
Ann tried to explain to the eevee how to run and gather energy to make moving into actual moves, but they didn't look any closer to getting anything done.
They were super cute, though.
Ann straightened. "Eeveea, imagine that tree is evil. Really, really, evil," she said, her eyes narrowing at the evil tree. "Now if you growl hard enough, the tree won't be able to harm us."
Eeveea lifted herself clumsily on her two hind feet and yapped, a high sound full of conviction. Valeria couldn't help it: she burst into giggles.
Ann's glare and Eeveea's mortified expression made her serious again. Luckily Eeveevee seemed happy to see her laughing.
"Only little people criticize others for trying," Ann said, still glaring.
Oh, come on!
"See that tree over there, girls?" Ann said, pointing at a sapling. "If you shake the biggest root hard enough it'll shake the whole tree."
Eeveea promptly sped off, her step light and purposeful.
Valeria crouched to scratch her pokemon's neck. "If Ann tells you both to do something, you should listen too, Eeveevee. What do you want to do?"
The kit turned upon herself a few times, as if looking for something on the ground. Valeria almost lost her balance when Eeveevee sped between her legs, making odd quick movements with her paws. A grasshopper bouced out from between Eeveevee's paws and the kit tromped after it –yeah, Eeveea was the graceful one-, ears quivering in excitement.
"You catch it, Eevee!"
It was well past midday –as their rumbling stomachs chorused pointedly- when they carried the eevee back to the terrace. Eeveea dragged herself halfway to Foxy before crashing, asleep before she'd hit the ground. Eeveevee dashed for the outdoor air conditioning unit, flattening herself right in front of the fan and turning her belly upwards to paw at the hot air blowing out.
Valeria's smile faded when she saw the tightness around Ann's eyes.
"What's wrong? We had loads of fun."
She was exhausted. She hoped Ann wouldn't make them go back to the library and research eevee again. She'd rather battle with Azu. She had to convince Ann to stop taking people's taunts so seriously.
"We did, but..." A blush crept on Ann's cheeks. "Well, trainer-wise it was… We need them to be good for -"
Valeria grasped her best friend's shoulder. "Ann, Torchic and Treecko were grown pokemon raised for Journeys by the Professor's assistants. The eevee are still kits, give it one more month."
She barely missed Treecko anymore. Did it make her bad, to not miss him?
"They love us," Valeria insisted when Ann still looked down. "That's the hardest part, and we're doing great."
"I can't tell... pokemon are just…" Anabel shook her head. "Sometimes I think I sense something, but it's so low. I know they have feelings, but it's like I don't know how-"
"Ann, just by looking at them. They love us."
"Did we deserve it? Or is just because they're little and we've been taking care of them?"
Valeria stared. "Did they deserve it or is it just because they're cute and we need pokemon so bad?" Ann opened her mouth. "No, Ann, my question's just as dumb as yours. They love us. We love them back and do our best by them. Don't let dark thoughts ruin that."
"But what if they don't learn moves? We -" Ann took a sharp breath. "We have to make the other pokemon show them."
June 26th 341 – Friday.
The girls crept down the stairs, their hearts hammering. The air grew colder with every step they took towards the cold room.
They'd never been inside since their visit the first day: Mr. Cinders took care of the ice-type eggs. But V had whispered about secret rooms and hidden dens, and Anabel had remembered there had been two doors in the cold room.
Two doors they had never opened.
The key clicked in the lock. Anabel wasn't sure she was supposed to know where the key was kept, but Mr. Cinders hadn't exactly hidden it.
Anabel had gobbled down her lunch way too fast and her stomach was making her pay for it, but there was no time to waste.
The chill swallowed them whole as soon as they pushed the thick door.
"We're dragons," V whispered, breathing out white clouds and looking real proud about it.
Anabel grinned but she hurried to close the door behind them. "We don't know how long he'll be out, and Azu might find us. Hurry!" She was proud for thinking to grab a jumper, but she still had to rub her hands on her arms to warm them.
Sealeo eggs took ages to hatch, and the eggs from last month were still there. A single other egg rested in one of the cosy nests: swinub, from the furry piloswine who'd spent her four days at the farm following V around (because V was a big softie who sneaked her food).
The ice-covered room had already looked empty the first time, but Anabel hadn't noticed then how the dim overhead lights made everything a weird yellow. The windowless walls, the low ceiling… nothing about this place was friendly.
"It's locked." Even hushed, V's voice bounced around, gathering into an almost-shout.
Jirachi, don't let anyone hear us.
The other mysterious door was boring storage, so they were left to stare at the locked gray door.
Fingers trembling, Anabel tried the first of the five keys of the key-ring she was clutching. The metal was freezing now, and stuck to her fingers.
Click. The second key slid easily inside and twisted with barely any pressure from Anabel.
"If it's a secret, why didn't he put a lock with a code or something?" V whispered, a hand clutching Anabel's arm.
Anabel pushed the heavy door with a groan, and inside they went. The buzz of air conditioning grew louder and suddenly Anabel thought of home. Her chest constricted. Home that wasn't haunted. Home that had once been a breeding farm full of dark dark secrets.
The new room was warmer but just as windowless, with light gray walls. It was full.
Anabel's eyes swept over the 'incubators' –which did really look like goldeen-tanks -. There were a dozen of them. It all looked very… technological. The incubators were plugged in, with lights and monitors and… eggs.
Seven big eggs in seven of the incubators.
"This could be sick bay." Anabel whispered as they crept closer, careful not to bump in anything. "He said he only put eggs in the incubators when something went wrong and the babies need help. What if we get them sick by being here?" She froze. "What if they get us sick?"
V had frozen by her side and now they both held their breaths and stared.
Four of the eggs were the same, big and brown with small spikes that curled like claws. Did some species need more help than others? Was that why they were all in here? Two others looked like stretched-out amber rocks, and the last was so pretty, light-blue with iridescent freckles the size of her palm. They all were so big, as big as an onix egg and maybe even bigger.
Anabel took out her pokedex, glad now that she always kept it with her. She turned on the egg-identifier app, EggID, and began to check the criteria. 'Very large.' 'Rocky texture.' 'Markings.' '3D Markings.'
"It's brown, not black, right?" V slowly nodded. 'Dark brown.'
The pokedex had narrowed it down to a single egg picture, and it was exactly theirs. Anabel sucked in a breath.
Tyrunt. Rock/Dragon. Fossil pokemon. Egg location: museums. Breeding: Restricted - scientists only.
Next to the egg picture was a dinosaur with spiky teeth and sharp claws.
"Mr. Cinders' a secret scientist," V whispered. "Huh."
The amber eggs were aerodactyl. The iridescent blue ones amaura. All fossil, all 'scientists only'.
"They look fine, Ann." V's teeth were chattering. She tugged on Anabel's arm. "He's got the machines and everything."
"I don't know..." Whatever Anabel had expected to find, this wasn't it.
"This is so not worth losing the eevee over. We've got to go."
Anabel shoved her pokedex back in her beltpouch. V was right.
Crr-ccrrrrrk.
The girls turned as one. One of the amber eggs had twitched. That crack had not been there before.
CrRK!
The egg twitched, small cracks snaking down from the first, and the blue lights around the incubator began to flicker red.
"Come to give a hand?"
Anabel screamed.
"Shh, you'll scare the eggs," Mr. Cinders said with a chuckle. He put his hand out, palm up. "My keys, please." Anabel shakily gave them back and Mr. Cinders crouched next to her at pointed at the cluster of detectors in the wall. "Temperature and humidity sensors, but also an alarm. Glad it's just you sneaky things."
Anabel couldn't move and just kept staring at Mr. Cinders. His spiky hair. His face that didn't look furious.
He'd turned to the egg and was doing stuff on the incubator's control screen. "Bigwigs in the paleontology department are very eager for this little one. Should be female. Listen close, you can't fool around with fossils." He turned expectantly back at them when they didn't move. "You can go if you don't want to help…"
"No, we do!" Anabel said breathlessly. "What do we do?"
"First, you run back up and put on real coats."
It took hours. Baby aerodactyl had –slowly- punched a hole through the egg but then she had gotten stuck. She had been filthy with fluids. They had to wear gloves and masks and use the openings in the incubators to touch her. Any germs could kill her and she had to adapt first.
It was scary and disgusting. It was awesome.
"Scientists restored the species through fossils, but those fossil pokemon… they're all wonky," Mr. Cinders explained when V snickered at how terrible the bony dinosaur-bird was at breaking its own egg. "No real way to know if that's even what aerodactyl looked like millions of years ago." He shrugged and made a funny 'who knows?' face. "Smarter people than me say we're close, but…"
Anabel's smile fell when Mr. Cinders went very serious.
"Every single one of these eggs, that's millions. That's a big secret for little girls, but you decided to snoop, so now you've got to grow big shoulders and not run your mouths. Understood?"
She nodded quickly. "But…Boss, don't some trainers have fossil pokemon?"
"Trainers don't catch them wild. Scientists want to know how fossils learn and behave, so they lend them out." Mr. Cinders stretched his arms before him, cracking his knuckles. He grinned. "Worth it, no? To see this, even if you can't tell."
Yes. Yes it was.
Anabel took a deep breath to chase away the guilt in her stomach. Mr. Cinders was so busy, working earlier than them and staying up after they went to bed, but he still took so much time to teach them and answer all their questions…
It wasn't right to think bad thoughts about him.
Oo*oOo*oO
"That's enough, Eeveea! Stop making such a fuss and eat your meal. I know you're hungry and I know you like it."
Anabel balled her fists as the small pokemon stubbornly ignored the full plate. Anabel had cut up fresh mushrooms and everything.
Why wasn't Eeveea listening!
"I said I was sorry for coming in late this afternoon. I was with Mr. Cinders and it was important!"
Eeveevee munched happily at her own dinner. It wasn't fair.
Anabel wracked her brain for reasons. The other pokemon hadn't bothered her, right?
"Do you have a stomach ache, anything that hurts?"
But Eeveea wouldn't answer. Anabel's eyes narrowed.
'A pokemon will act out to test its trainer,' they'd told at camp. 'Kindness will get you loyalty, but strength will get you respect.'
"Eeveea, eat your food. If you don't you won't be playing outside with us tomorrow and you'll be spending the night in the cage instead of with me," she said, struggling to conceal how much the defiance upset her.
Some of the other pokemon eating on the terrace edged back at Anabel's tone, but Eeveea wasn't even looking at her.
"Fine! V, let's go to bed."
"Vee-ee," Eeveevee plaintively inquired.
V picked her up, whispering about her sister being bad.
Eeveea rushed towards her as she tried to close the door to the terrace. Anabel scowled at her pokemon, clicking the door shut. She winced as she heard little paws rasp the wood.
Valeria squeezed her arm in sympathy.
"Eevee! Ee-veee-ee," the punished kit wailed through the thin door.
"You need to do as you're told, Eeveea," Anabel called, forcing her voice to be firm. Why did she feel so horrible for doing the right thing?
"Veh, veh, vee-ee!"
CRACK!
Oh no.
A red-faced Anabel sprinted back upstairs. "Eeveea! Ghosts, you -"
She pulled the door open and checked the wood. A thin long crack marred the painted oak.
Wisps of silver energy were still sizzling down the kit's tail. "Eh…"
Upon seeing Anabel's blazing eyes, Eeveea flattened herself on the ground, her ears folded backwards. She slithered back to her food bowl and buried her nose into it.
Oh now she was eating.
"That's no tackle or tail whip," V said with a considering frown.
No, but Anabel had seen that move just yesterday. The dodrio mom had tried to rip at some of the mareep's shiny pink wool for her nest, and the bird had been so much bigger than Mareep that Anabel had been scared for him. She'd been wrong to be. Mareep had slammed Dodrio back in a flash of silver light that had had Mr. Cinders happily jot down stuff in his breeding files.
Mr. Cinders was going to be so mad. "Eeveea, get back here right now."
Nose touching the ground, Eeveea dragged herself before Anabel. She glanced up and abruptly hid her eyes behind her paw.
"They're picking up human mimics, it's so brilliant," V whispered.
I'm angry at her, I'm angry at her, I'm angry at her. Ghosts, this was hard.
"Tonight, you're still getting punished for not listening," Anabel said, feeling like the worst person in the world, "but tomorrow, you'll get a treat because learning a new move is awesome."
Anabel kissed Eeveea goodnight and left her with Foxy. The older eevee was always so calm and affectionate.
"Want to stay with her, Eeveevee?" V said. "We have to find a way to fix the door before we go to bed. It could be very long."
The eevee yawned and went to settle next to the others.
"She's really headstrong..." When Anabel had been jealous because two-months-old Mareep had managed a real Iron Tail, she hadn't meant she wanted this.
"She's obedient 99% of the time." V gave her a rueful smile. "I found Eeveevee on the terrace at eight in the morning again. I've got a door-opening, gutter-climbing kit with a ten minutes attention span. What are you complaining about?"
Anabel chuckled, and sighed again. "I think Eeveea wants to be the boss too sometimes..."
"Smile. Tomorrow, we help Eeveea become the Queen of Iron Tails."
A grin burst on her lips. Finally, a real move! "Eeveevee won't be jealous, right?"
"Bah, if she is, I'll teach her not to be."
Mr. Cinders didn't kill them. He double checked that Anabel had disciplined Eeveea properly, and then he'd said 'I'll show you how to fix it.'
He was nice. Really nice. It made Anabel not want to think about how a quarter of the pokemon had special colors –shiny, the pokedex said-. Or how the same teenagers had brought some pokemon to breed, and then left with babies and mothers others had brought. Teenagers she and V weren't supposed to have seen-.
"Maybe it's not so weird…" Anabel decided. "Nobody would think fossils are being bred here, so thieves won't think about it either."
"Mr. Cinders would live in a prettier place, and a bigger farm, if he sold them for millions," V agreed.
On TV, bad guys had masks, secret identities, but Mr. Cinders… His spiky red hair was terrible for hiding.
Jirachi, please, don't let us get in trouble.
"Maybe he's helping scientists who are out of luck, Ann. We'd not be here if he thought every rule was super important."
Mr. Cinders was such a great liar; how could they know he hadn't lied to them?
"V, hiring us, that… that's illegal."
Anabel had been avoiding that word like a curse, but now she couldn't shake it off.
Ch12 "Journey Tales" will be up on Sunday.
