Person32100– Yes, that does make it sound less professional, doesn't it? To be honest, I completely forgot that I even put that there. ^^' I'll get to working on that. Thanks for your input!

Soaren's view

Soaren watched a tiny, brown mouse scuffle among the leaves, unaware of the nearby Eevee hiding midst the thick fronds of fern. Bracken slowly crept forward, carefully stalking the prey creature. Soaren nodded, he was doing well so far.

For the past week, Soaren had been teaching Bracken how to hunt. The Eevee had finished all of his training, and now he was out on his first, actual hunt. Two weeks earlier, Bracken had learned to climb trees from Akira-which was during the same time as the Steel Searchers battle.

Suddenly, Bracken's hind paw snapped a stick lying on the ground. The mouse immediately scrambled away. Bracken hurled himself at the fleeing creature, but it was already lost among the thick forest overgrowth. "AARRGHH!" the Eevee growled with an impatient stomp. "Stupid stick!"

Soaren twitched his ear in amusement. "It's ok," the Jolteon called, "Not everybody gets it on the first try. But you probably just scared all the prey off in this area, so we should probably head somewhere else. Oh, and you might want to consider watching for sticks from now on."

Bracken flattened his ears. "Thanks for telling me that," he sarcastically grumbled. "AFTER I've already stepped on one!"

'So you want to play it that way, do you?' Suppressing an amused grin, Soaren tilted his head to the side. "That's a lot, coming from the same pokémon who forgot to tell me about a certain meeting I was supposed to attend until it was completely over."

Bracken blankly stared back at him, and then shrugged. "Well, nobody's perfect," the Eevee finally replied.

A light brown songbird scratched at the ground with its skinny, grey, black-taloned foot. Its beady, black eyes intently watched the ground in search of worms. Suddenly, the shadows around it lengthened. Looking up, it saw a brown weight dropping down towards it with outstretched paws. The brown bird gave a panicked chirp and quickly fluttered its wings. It was scarcely off the ground before the bird was slammed back onto the ground. Then, jaws locked around the bird's neck and its life ended with a snap.

Bracken quickly shot up. "YEAH! I did it! I got one! I really caught one this time!" The Eevee proudly picked his catch and brought it over to Soaren. After setting it down, he asked, "What did I catch?"

Soaren looked down at the lifeless bird. "It's a baby Pidgey," he answered.

"WHAT?!" Bracken exclaimed. The Eevee jumped back, his face stricken with horror.

Soaren chuckled, "Take it easy! I was only kidding! It's just a sparrow, and a fully grown one, too."

Bracken narrowed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. "It's NOT funny! What did you do that for?" he scowled.

"Just giving you a taste of your own medicine," Soaren replied. "You did the same thing to me."

"What are you talking about?" Bracken snorted. "I NEVER did that to you!"

"Oh yes you did," Soaren quickly corrected him. "Remember that time when we were play-fighting and you pretended to be DEAD?"

"I was acting," Bracken justified himself. Grinning, he added, "And that WAS funny!"

"It wasn't back then," Soaren muttered. Sure, he could laugh at it now, but it was far from funny back then. He still remembered how terrible he had felt-the terrifying fear when Bracken didn't respond, the horror and guilt greater than anything he had ever felt before, and the immense grief. 'I thought I killed him.'

Bracken observed the Jolteon for a moment and then looked down at the sparrow. "Soooo...are we done?" the Eevee broke the silence.

"Well, I guess we could go hunt for one more," Soaren replied."But we don't want to catch too much because the others might have already hunted, and we don't need to waste prey."

"Awesome! Do I need to take this with me?" Bracken asked while prodding the sparrow with a paw.

"I would," Soaren answered. "You don't want anything else to get it." After Bracken collected his prey, the two set off. They headed for all of the places that Soaren usually found seething with prey, but strangely there was scarcely any. They finally resorted to going to a darker, more dense part of the forest. Soaren pushed back the thick growing fronds of fern, sighing at the loud rustling. 'With this much noise, the prey will get plenty of warning and run off long before we get to it!'

Soaren pushed through the undergrowth and found himself in a small clearing. Looking down, he saw the ground was churned up and covered with tracks. The fur rose on his neck as he saw that some of the tracks were bloodied. In some places, the ground was charred and deep claw marks scored into the dirt. A tuft of slightly pink tinted white fur was caught on the brambles. "Did you find anything?" Bracken suddenly asked.

Soaren jumped at his voice and turned around. Bracken really didn't need to see this. "Uh...no, I don't think there's any prey here," he stammered. "Hey, why don't we head back? It's starting to get late, and I doubt we'll see anything else."

Bracken stared back at Soaren. "Ok," he responded. Then, picked up his sparrow and started to trot off. Soaren padded after him, and cast one last glance behind him. He felt uneasy looking back; it didn't feel safe, and there was some ominous feeling of being watched at this place. 'There was definitely a bad struggle here. I'll have to come back later and check things out...'