"Ha! I can't believe I'm actually walking with a legendary!" Even when in a pitch black tunnel with only a torchlight beam lighting the way ahead, Sam's voice is overflowing with cheeriness, and her unique blue eyes sparkle with enthusiasm as she turns back to look at us. "I may be a weird Eevee with blue eyes but, travelling with a legend! Who would've thought this day would come!"
"Trust me, I had no idea this whole journey would come either." Pip's eyes barely leave the glowing screen of his Pokédex device as he gives a tact reply. He's engrossed in checking some stuff on the Pokédex, but Sam has the sort of voice that makes you listen. Doesn't stop Pip from being all grumbly though. I guess he's not used to the sudden change in plans.
"Huh, that's right. How did you guys meet Mesprit? Sure isn't your everyday coincidence."
Her question sends the memories of the past few days rushing through my mind, and with them all the emotions that I've felt: worry, excitement, pain, awe... Each memory has an emotion associated so strongly with it, every time I remember something, it feels as if I'm living it all over again. Strange... I don't think I ever remembered emotions so strongly before...
A tinkly voice, much calmer than it was before, interrupts my thoughts. "Feeling nostalgic, Ralf?" Mesprit gives me a slightly bittersweet smile. Seems like she's gotten over the initial shock of learning about the Azelf Wildlife Fund, and is back to reading my emotions again...
"Hey, I asked a question here! If you're feeling nostalgic then it must be good! Tell me about it!" Sam exclaims, tilting her ears in my direction.
"Well..." For some reason, I start at the very beginning: me meeting Ty and finding that I'd "turned" into a human, who could even "speak" the human language. Sam laughs when she hears how I mistook the Pokémon Lab for the Pokémon Centre and laughs some more as I describe how I tried to escape from the well-intentioned Professor. But just as I'm about to move on to the Misdreavus' mass attack on the lab – the event that had really gotten me, Pip and Delia together as well as involving me in this Association that I'd never have met if not for it – a voice that's kept silent for a long while finally speaks.
"You sure it's such a good idea to tell everything we've done to some random stranger?" Delia's voice is cold, but I sense a strange uneasiness from her. Her sudden interjection makes me a little unsure whether I should continue. I don't really want to anger Delia...
"Sam, you do know more about the Wildlife Fund and the Association, don't you? What about you tell us everything you know if we tell you our story," Mesprit offers, as if rebutting Delia's question. The Midreavus glares at her but doesn't say anything, while the Eevee brightly agrees and urges me to continue the story.
Information exchange, huh? I guess no one can argue with that. I starting talking again: about the attack, accidentally catching Delia, the attack again at the Centre, going back to the lab and finally Professor Rowan being kidnapped. Pip hasn't been giving the impression that he's listening but when I bring up the Professor, I feel a flare of anger and anxiety from behind. The Professor's the reason why he's travelling, after all.
After the attack on the Pokémon Lab comes meeting Mesprit and our second encounter with the Association at Lake Verity. Then teleporting to Hearthome, meeting the Fan Club President... I have no idea how much time has passed when I finally finish, ending with our encounter with the photographer earlier (but of course, leaving battle with Kira out. Nobody needs to know that.) It feels like we've been walking these tunnels for hours, but maybe that's just because I can't see the sun.
"..." Meanwhile, I can feel the amazement ebbing off the momentarily speechless Eevee leading us. "That. Is. Awesome! And you've only been travelling for like, what, three days?! You've experienced more drama than I have in like, a year! And..." Sam's voice loses a little of its cheeriness as she glances at the Misdreavus above, "...you even have an ex-Association member with you guys, huh..."
Delia glares back with a piercing crimson stare, as if daring her to say more so that she could kill... or grievously injure her. "What I did is none of your business. You know what Ralf has gone through to meet Mesprit. That's all you need to know."
"That's right." Said legendary breaks the tense atmosphere as she turns to the blue-eyed Eevee, "It's your turn to tell us what you know now."
"Awww. Anything I say won't even be interesting any more, compared to the epic adventure you just told me!" Sam whines jokingly, but I can feel her getting a little more serious now. "Well... I'm not from Sinnoh. I'm from a region called Kalos. You don't need to know why, so don't ask-" she gives Delia an annoyed look, probably reminded of the Misdreavus' hostility a few seconds ago- "but anyway, I ended up in Hearthome, and met Gloom there."
She laughs at the memory: "Did you know that guy pulls pranks on humans? That's what I first saw him doing. He sneaked behind one of those whiny human children who was crying really annoyingly – and standing a bit too close to the tree Gloom was behind - and then he let out that foul odour that Glooms are known for! It totally shut the kid up, though!"
"PFFFTT WHAT?! P-PI PI PI! HE DID THAT?!" I almost jump out of my skin at the sudden burst of laughter behind me and find Pip cracking up really hard, almost losing his grip on his precious Pokédex as he practically bends over double in laughter. "PI PI PI... That drooly flower-head... Stink-bombed random humans? PI PI PI!"
"It wasn't exactly random, though!" Sam grins and I can tell she's pleased with the reaction her words have gotten out of Pip. "He later told me that he can't stand it when humans disturb his cooking and them breaking his concentration is why his cooking ends up half bad most of the time... Also, he's totally lying. He enjoys doing it, I can tell."
"Remind me why Gloom's pranking is important again? Aren't you supposed to be giving us information?" An icy voice cuts through the jolly atmosphere. Pip doesn't stop laughing (too used to Delia, anyway her voice isn't as scary as her attacks) but Sam is instantly subdued, the smile leaving her face as she mutters softly so the Misdreavus above can't hear, "Spoilsport..."
"Well, so back to the point, Gloom almost got caught by that human kid's mother-" I can hear Pip laughing even louder now "-if I hadn't went and distracted her with my cuteness!" She proudly waves her tail with a flourish. "Only bad thing is, I caught the attention of that crazy photographer too. Then it was Gloom's turn to save me. He hustled me down these tunnels before that human could take a photo of my eyes."
"Right... what was that person trying to do anyway? He kept on asking for a photo of my 'pink Drifloon'..."
"...He's one of those Pokémon poachers, isn't he?" Delia quietly speaks up, this time to contribute to the conversation instead of cutting into it, but her voice is colder than ever. "The kind that are always looking for rare Pokémon to catch and sell to collectors... Bastards!"
"Exactly. The Azelf Wildlife Fund's been taking note of them, apparently... Gloom told me they're part of a relatively powerful syndicate in the Pokémon black market. That photographer is one of their lackeys that have been appearing around the Hearthome area lately to look for rare Pokèmon. He takes photos of them and gets poachers to catch them... You see why Gloom saving me from having my eyes taken by him was a real life-saver." Sam's solemn explanation sends a chill through me- and dredges up some unpleasant memories. The time I was captured by Pokémon hunters in that cage... even that oddly-coloured Starly I'd seen that night in the lab, who had told us that she had been captured and displayed due to her rarity. I may like humans but... it seemed that for every good one out there (like Ty, or Fantina) there were also ones that were out to hurt Pokémon.
I feel a similar chill next to me- but this one is different, not only fear but also anger... I can feel her rage, her need to protect the Pokémon of Sinnoh- and the guilt that she had failed to do so. Obviously, Sam can't detect Mesprit's emotions the way I can, and continues oblivious to what the Emotion legendary is feeling. "After that, Gloom brought me to meet the Fund members. They said I had potential" – I feel a twinge of pride from her – "and offered to let me join. I asked them to give me time to decide. So I've stayed for about a week now... but yesterday I turned down their offer."
"Why not?" I'm as curious as the others.
"Hmm, well, I'll just say that I have something else I decided to do!" Sam grins, and I can feel the tension from the earlier mention of the Pokémon poachers starting to break at the cheerful Eevee's infectious enthusiasm. "Now... to pass the time, you wanna hear some interesting stuff I learnt about Gloom the past week?"
The rest of the walk through the tunnels, Sam makes us laugh so hard with tales of Gloom's frequent failures as a poffin cook in the Fund (it certainly explains why he was angry when we ruined one of his only good batches and wanted us to replace it – the poffins were for the Fund members) that I have to carry Pip's bag after he almost drops it and his Pokédex while laughing. Even Delia breaks out a chuckle every once in a while... but inside, I feel a strange uneasiness, like this is just the calm before the storm.
"We're here!" Sam runs ahead the last few metres, while the rest of us hang behind and wonder why she's just run up to a dead end. A few seconds later, our confusion turns to awe and relief as Sam flips a barely visible latch and pushes at a completely random patch of wall to reveal a trapdoor swinging open. Light, tinged a slight reddish-gold, floods the exit, causing us to squint to look at the silhouette of the Eevee eagerly waving her paw towards us. "Come on, we're here! Let's get out already!"
"What the..." As I step out into the sunlight, switching off the torch in my hand and placing it in Pip's bag as I do so, I realise that the reddish hue of the light is because it's already nearing sunset. "No way... it's already evening?!" I hadn't realised we had been walking THAT long! Didn't we set off in the morning?!
"What did you expect? It takes you at least a day and a half to get here by route if we're not flying. This is already a shortcut, plus we didn't use up any of Mesprit's energy to teleport." Sam replies, and the way she says "at least" makes me think that we definitely wouldn't have been able to travel at such a pace anyway.
"Well at least I know why I was so hungry now," Pip grumbles, apparently forgetting that he was laughing so hard he probably forgot about being hungry anyway. "Let's eat something before we go meet that damned Association. You did mention that they've being hanging around here so I wouldn't be surprised if they attack us once we get close..."
Something in Pip's words make my uneasiness start up again for some reason, and I can't shake off the feeling that something's wrong. Mesprit glances at me with a look of concern, and Sam, who's closing and -locking, I think?- the entryway of the tunnel, looks at me and her a few times in confusion. "Hey, Mesprit, why're you always looking at Ralf like that? Is there something wrong with him?"
"Is there something wrong?" Mesprit echoes the question to me, but I don't reply. Something just feels a bit off, different from when I came to Lake Verity to rescue Mesprit. Sam said this tunnel led directly to the lake, right? That means... "Hey, Delia?"
Delia, floating in the air high above us, visibly starts at my calling her name. "Y-yeah?"
"Can you see the lake from here?"
"Uh-huh. Right that way. It's pretty close to here." She motions to the right. "Why?"
I start running in that direction, feeling everybody's stares on me but not caring. I have a strange hunch and I'm running, running to see if it's true, hoping that it's not true. In a few seconds, the lake spreads out before me in all it glimmering, cerulean blue glory, and I'm transported back that fateful day I heard Mesprit calling for help... but there it is, that difference. My heart sinks as I stare out at the island in the middle of the lake, the same sparsely tree-covered rock as the one in Lake Verity, with the cave entrance only visible as a shadow. But different.
There's no hovercraft, no machinery, no Pokèmon, no equipment… nothing. Finally, I find my voice again, and in a whisper I tell the others who have gathered around me:
"We're too late to save Azelf. The Association's already done and left."
Ha ha well Ralf and his friends have already failed in their mission before they started. Oops. I guess the only thing left is to wait patiently for the next chapter.
It was fun introducing Sam in this chapter! Y'all may be seeing her much more from now on... Anyway, this chapter was short and was mostly dialogue (again). When will Ralf and co. get into some fun battles again? I don't know.
Thanks to Yyveltan for your review last chapter! I wanted to reply but it seems you have pm switched off :( to answer your question, I don't have the time nowadays to look around the site for good fanfictions, so I don't have much to recommend, and the one or two that I found about "Pokèmon being trainers" seem to be discontinued... sorry to disappoint.
And of course, thanks to all that are actually bothering to read this thing! I'm super grateful to all you readers/followers! :D