Latias' Journey

by Ri2

With her home destroyed, Latias sets out on a journey to protect herself from the mysterious Ghost King. On the way, she encounters new friends and adventures, and wonders if perhaps the one who destroyed her city is really all that he seems.

36. Wobbuffet's Revelation

All of you were shocked and disturbed by the graphic torture in the last chapter. Good! That's exactly what I was aiming for! This chapter will be much less horrific, but not quite as light-hearted as you might hope for. We'll see.

Yamimaru, I feel slightly disappointed in you. I'm not the biggest fan of couples like Sorato or Michi, but you don't see me attacking Advanceshipping conventions, do you? Dislike of a couple isn't a good enough reason to bash it. Just avoid it in the future.

Ratiasu, that sounds like a reasonable reason for Charla to come after Charizard. That, and she misses him of course. And you live in Canada? I've been there a few times. Does anyone deserve the fate Suicune and the others got? No, I don't think so either. And no, it wasn't a dream. It was a hundred percent real. Ho-Oh had nightmares about it because she has a bond of sort with her minions, so the severing of such bond caused trauma in the form of those nightmares of how it happened. Beauty and power is definitely not worth that much. Thanks for the idea for Latias and Rayquaza, but didn't Sr. say they were descended right from the first Latias? And if they came from Latios' line, what happened to the eggs Latias the First and Rayquaza had? And in the dub, they never talked about an old couple and Latias and Latios or a bunch of their friends, sorry. And in this story, there's only two Latias left, our heroine and her evil mother. I never understood why there were two new Latios at the end of the fifth movie (unless they were the ghosts of her dad and brother), so I disregarded it. I looked at DA and liked your artwork. Ho-Oh has no choice but to team up with the good guys eventually, she is Chosen after all. Feebas and Wobbuffet's babies would probably be perfectly normal Feebas and Wynaut. People think Misty and May would fight because of their mutual "feelings" over Ash, leading to a natural rivalry AKA cat fight. I think otherwise, but that's because I believe May doesn't love Ash at all. And Misty probably would like Skitty, you're right. Now that you have an account, will you write any stories?

Sir Pudding, the human servitors were either paid off by Hanson or were completely unaware of what had happened to their rightful master. Yes, Suicune was a hypocrite of sorts, but then despots usually are. Was Bloodbath really more warped that this?

Eaglefox, all three legendary dogs/cats/hamsters/mutant biting things all serve the true evil now. May and the rest will appear over a length of time once the gang reaches Ever Grande City. Brendan will show up, but not for long. I have no idea how many more chapters there are to go, but I'm sure there will be more than twenty. I might even write over fifty total chapters, I think it's very probable.

Alex, yes that was the evil being who was banished from earth thousands of years ago, if everyone hasn't already guessed. (Which they have) And sorry, Alex, but all that horrible stuff really happened. Every graphic moment of it. Including the spined, living penis (which is what it was, just in case nobody understood). Three legendaries are indeed dead, and more will follow. And no, Wes didn't teach them humility. It's not always that easy. And who's to say Celebi even saw this coming? She didn't see the meteor carrying the original virus or the virus' evolution into a sentient being, did she? Two of the golems are too focused on waking up their brother and establishing a new world order to notice the legendary beasts (whom they didn't know of, since they existed before Ho-Oh created the trio) and Registeel's still asleep, so he knows nothing.

Lord Karkon, in a very real sense this villain is the Devil. What was unimaginative about the corruption of wishes?

HVK, I enjoyed the third chapter immensely, as my review stated. And yes, I think Zim is nuts enough to take this guy's offer. The beasts aren't like this on the show, I made up their personalities on my own. Damn, Zim has a lot of enemies…are the Tallest and Control Brains on that list too?

Inukagfan159, the legends will reappear later on.

Oh, and just so you know, if Suicune had refused to serve the evil one, he would have done all that to her anyway. He only presented her with an offer so she would think that all the horrible things that happened to her were caused by her foolish vanity and greed, making her feel worse. He's just that evil. J

…

A tear rolled down the little girl's cheek. "Why?" she asked mournfully. "Why did that happen?"

Because the evil one is consolidating his power, explained the letter-shaped eyeball creatures floating around her. Suicune and her fellow beasts will serve him quite adequately as minions and generals of his army of evil. They will poison water supplies, disrupt communications and electrical systems, and burn down cities and forests. They will serve him well indeed.

"But why didn't we do something!" the girl protested. "We could have teleported them away, like Mewtwo did with Princess Kasumi, so we could put her where she belonged!"

Kasumi's presence in Misty's mind, where she belongs, is vital to the girl's survival. She would be incomplete and defective without her. That would have a negative impact on the future, and so we intervened to ensure the timeline would flow the way we wished it to. Suicune, Entei, and Raikou's perversion operates in the same vein. If we saved them, it would impact negatively on the future. Letting them be corrupted will, in its small way, guide the future we want into place.

"But how can that be!' she cried. "How can saving three lives have a negative impact? If we could have saved even one of them, wouldn't that have been a good thing?"

Saving a life is meaningful only if that life is the right one, her friends replied. What would happen if you saved a baby from a burning building, and that baby grew up to become the most feared tyrant the world has ever known? Wouldn't letting the baby die in that case be justified as a 'good' thing?

"But how would you know that baby would become a tyrant? It might not!" the girl pointed out. "People can choose what they want to become, or they're influenced by events around them. Who's to say that the baby's life would be so bad that it would want to destroy the world?"

The baby's life might not be bad. But it might be born with a defect in its brain leading to schizophrenia and untreatable delusions of grandeur. Such things have happened many times in the past. The mothers of those people always wish they had strangled the children when they were still young, before they could have grown up into the monsters they became. But then again, you would not know that the baby would be born with schizophrenia. You cannot peer into the future and see what it might become. But we can. And because we can, we know that if Entei, Suicune, and Raikou had been allowed to live, the future we have plotted out, the one we have been working for all this time, will be ruined.

"But how?" she asked. "How can that be?"

If we had saved any of the three beasts, the evil one would have realized we were actively interfering with his plans (which we are trying not to do) and would have changed his plans so that the future we are planning would not come to pass. He would also hunt down the three beasts and take them by himself, laying waste to everything in his path. Even if we had kept the three here so that the evil one couldn't get them, his plans would still have been changed, and Ho-Oh would not be as paranoid and on edge as she is now due to the visions she has been having of Suicune's nightmarish demise. That mental state is necessary if she is to show up at the destined battlefield at exactly the right time based on her fears and insecurities concerning the Chosen business to begin with. Too early, or too late, and all would be lost. So the death and corruption of the three beasts, and countless others, is necessary so that countless more can be born.

"…It still doesn't seem right," she whispered, wiping a tear away.

You are still young and naive. You hold on too tightly to the emotions that cloud your logic. They obscure your eyes from seeing the truth and prevent you from perceiving the future beyond what you believe should be done and what is, by your definition, 'right.' We evolved past such concerns and feelings long ago. We lost our hearts, but gained the ability to see so much more. Without that sight, the world would not have the chance it has now for survival. Without that chance, Earth, and the entire universe, would be utterly and hopelessly doomed. If Entei, Raikou, and Suicune lived, that chance would without a doubt be lost forever.

Isn't the loss of three lives worth the salvation of all?

She said nothing, trying to halt her tears. You have much to learn, young Molly.

…

"Pikachu, Latias, use Thunderbolt!" cried Ash.

"Togetic, Gyarados, use Hyper Beam!" ordered Misty.

The electric mouse and psychic dragon fired powerful bolts of electricity at their target. Latias still hadn't quite mastered the technique yet, so her bolt fizzled out before it could strike to her embarrassment, but Pikachu's hit dead on. Togetic and Gyarados were both a bit more skilled in their attacks and fired differently sized golden lasers at the same target Pikachu had hit. Togetic's was considerably weaker than Gyarados' since she was still working on the technique, but it still did the job.

The giant robot Corsola the three Pokemon blasted was flung backwards in the water by the ensuing explosion, smashing through hundreds of year's worth of shed Corsola shells as they crashed down. "How DARE they treat the great and beautiful Corsola Queen like that!" Jessie ranted in the robot's command center, pushing her lovely pink coral crown back up on her forehead. She was decked out in tons of jewelry: rings, necklaces, bracelets, bangles, anklets, earrings, nose drops; all made from coral shed by Corsola and carved up by jewelers. "Return fire at once! Your queen commands you!"

James sighed, fed up with Jessie's megalomania but too much of a wimp to stand up to her. "Yes Jessie." The robot's horns swiveled to face the two trainers and their Pokemon and fired several dozen giant spikes at them.

"SAFEGUARD!" Ash and Misty commanded simultaneously. Togetic and Latias joined hands, combining their powers and surrounding the group in a giant blue bubble of energy, which deflected all the spikes harmlessly.

"Now, let's hit em' again!" shouted Ash, pointing at the mecha. "Charizard, Dragon Rage! Pikachu, Thunderbolt! Latias, Dragonbreath! Bayleef, Razor Leaf! Phanphy…oh, wait, Phanphy doesn't have any projectile attacks. Sorry Phanphy."

"Aw man," complained Phanphy, kicking away some dirt unhappily.

"Let's hit them too, guys! Togetic, Gyarados, another double Hyper Beam! Politoed, Kasurin, Water Gun! Corsola, Spike Cannon! Psyduck…wait, when did I let you out of your Pokeball!" Misty cried.

Psyduck, who was thrashing around in the water, screamed. "Help drowning! Help drowning! Help drowning!"

Everyone facefaulted. "PSYDUCK!" Misty yelled angrily. "Return!" She called the idiot duck back to his Pokeball. "Now, attack already!"

The Pokemon fired an energy ball, a lightning bolt, a stream of white flame, razor leaves, twin lasers, twin water streams, and dozens of glowing spikes at the robot with enough force to blast it out of the water and send it arcing several feet through the air, causing it to crash down in the water with a tremendous splash, sending a large wave out in all directions.

Charizard panicked and took to the air before the wave could hit them, fearing it would snuff out his flame, but Togetic and Latias already seemed to have his welfare in mind (as well as wanting to keep dry) and set up a Safeguard to deflect the wave away from their party and keep everyone from getting wet. He sighed in relief and landed back on the wooden pier they were standing on.

In the Corsola robot, lots of lights flashed a glaring red and warning sirens were wooping, letting the evil Ciphers know their vehicle was severely damaged. Chimecho was the only one not distressed by the robot's imminent destruction and was flying about the cockpit, dazzled by the flashing lights. Well, Wobbuffet wasn't distressed either, he was already resigned to their inevitable blasting-off. It was only a matter of time, really.

Jessie angrily pounded a control panel. "Stupid machine! Why didn't we get the one with the Mirror Coating that deflected attacks?"

"Because then we couldn't have afforded the Corsola Capture Claw," said James, referring to the large attack-proof crane attached to the back of the robot with several dozen helpless Corsola (and Crawdaunt, who had been hitting on them when the Ciphers had attacked) dangling from it in a strong net.

The heroes and would-be villains were in Pacifidlog Town, on the evening of the first day of the cruise to Ever Grande City. Corsola had been especially happy to come here, because of all the other Corsola hereabouts. She had, astonishingly, run into the group she had lived with before going off on her own to the Whirl Islands where she had met Misty, and spent her afternoon catching up with them. Smitten by all the pink beauties, Crawdaunt had started hitting on several of the Corsola, and many of them were much more receptive than Misty's and so our favorite lobster was very busy that day. Misty had been dazzled by the coral jewelry, which was finer than the ones made in the Whirl islands, and wanted Ash to get some for her. But Jessie was even more so fascinated and she and her teammates stole all the coral jewelry in town for themselves, and captured the Corsola (and the unlucky Crawdaunt) who they planned to give to the boss so he could have his own coral jewelry factory.

"Well, we need to do something to fend off their attacks, a few more hits like that and we're bottoms up!" cried Meowth, frantically glancing at all the flashing displays and alarms.

Jessie suddenly got a wonderfully evil idea. "Wobbuffet! Go out there and use your own Mirror Coat and Counter attacks to protect the Corsola Crusher!"

Wobbuffet looked at her in surprise, hoping she wasn't serious. She was. He sagged and sighed unhappily. "Okay." With his by-now-usual expression of depression and hopelessness, he headed up the ladder in the back of the cockpit, which lead up to the robot's exit hatch.

The group of heroes tensed when they saw a hatch open atop the Corsola robot. "Hey, someone's coming out!" observed Pikachu.

"Don't suppose they're going to surrender?" joked Bayleef.

"Or maybe they're out of ammo and are going to attack us by reciting their god-awful motto until we beg for mercy!" Latias suggested with a straight face.

They all laughed at that. "Good one, Latias!" remarked Charizard, slapping her on the back.

A blue blob climbed out of the hatch and stood atop the large pink machine, waving a flipper at the heroes. "Hey!"

"Oh, it's just Wobbuffet," said the disinterested Politoed.

"Why'd they send him up?" wondered Misty.

Wobbuffet looked out at the heroes and sighed, knowing any minute now they were going to start flinging attacks at him. Poor old Wobbuffet, who just wanted to please his bitch of a trainer and make her like him. His bitch of a trainer who treated him badly, left him alone in a dungeon to hold down a pressure switch, didn't bother giving him weights to keep him from getting swept away in a strong current, and had on several occasions ever since he had learned Destiny Bond tried to beat him up so that Pikachu or Latias would be weakened and more susceptible to capture and now wanted him to act as a shield since she had been too cheap to get better coating for the robot. Not to mention he got blasted into the air every damn day, which hurt quite a lot.

He gritted his teeth. For days now, he had been pushed closer and closer to the breaking point. This was the last straw.

Wobbuffet snapped. "I'm supposed to be deflecting any attacks you shoot at the robot," he yelled at them impulsively. "But instead of letting myself get needlessly hurt, I'm gonna make this quick and tell you how to destroy the Corsola Crusher as fast as possible!"

Ash sweatdropped. "Is he for real?"

"He must be lying," Misty said, hearing Wobbuffet through Latias' telepathic net.

Pikachu shrugged. "Well, he's on the other side, but he is Chosen, and he's seemed kind of resentful and unhappy about being a Cipher for a while now…maybe he's finally decided to help us out?"

"What you gotta do is-" Wobbuffet started.

"SHUT UP!" Meowth tackled Wobbuffet from behind and clamped his paws over the blob's mouth. "You'll ruin everything!"

James' head, with Chimecho wrapped around it, popped up from the hatch. "Meowth, what's going on?"

While keeping Wobbuffet pinned to the ground, Meowth looked back at his partner. "He's trying to cheat! He was about to tell them about the you-know-what!"

James looked confused. "The what?"

"You know, THAT!" Meowth said, gesturing with his head towards the back of the robot.

Perplexed, James turned his head around to see what Meowth was indicating. "Oh, you mean the giant button labeled SELF-DESTRUCT on the backside of the Corsola Crusher, right underneath the Corsola Capture Claw?"

Meowth howled in rage and leaped off of Wobbuffet, lashing out at James with his claws. "You IDIOT!"

The heroes sweatdropped. "They can't be serious," said Charizard in disbelief.

"They don't really have a giant self-destruct button on the back, do they?" asked Corsola. "I'd think we'd have noticed by now."

Crawdaunt had heard James' thoughtless proclamation and wriggled his way through the mass of Corsola surrounding him and peered out through the holes of the net. "Yes, there really is a giant self-destruct button!" he said in amazement. "What kind of idiot installs a self-destruct button right in plain sight!"

…

Dr. Robotnik sneezed. "Ah-choo! Was someone just talking about me?"

…

"James, why does our robot have a giant self-destruct switch on the back?" Jessie asked in a very quiet and calm voice that conveyed the sense that she was about to explode.

"If we got the model without the giant self-destruct button, it wouldn't have had air-conditioning!" James called back down to her. "And you know how hot it can get inside a cockpit! Besides, since it's so big, that means Chimecho can't accidentally press it and blow us up because his body mass is too light. Isn't that right, Chimecho?"

"Chi!" chimed Chimecho, who was stupidly ramming his head repeatedly into the giant switch in an ineffectual attempt to push it in.

"…This is just sad," said Togetic, shaking her head in disgust.

Ash sighed. "Well, I suppose now that we know it's there we should push it in. Charizard, go push that button in!"

Charizard's face paled. "Uh, I don't think so."

Ash blinked. "What do you mean, you don't think so?"

Charizard swallowed. "Well, uh, the waves out there are getting pretty high, and the explosion might splash water all over the place, and since the switch is on the back it must be pretty close to the water so…I'd probably be safer right here," he said meekly.

"…Charizard, the robot's only a few dozen yards away!" Ash snapped. "You can fly there and back easily!"

"But there's so much water!" he cried, bursting into frightened tears.

Ash's eye twitched. "You were never this scared of water back in the Orange Islands!"

"That's because I had a nice dry Pokeball to be called back into if something caused me to lose control of my wings and fall towards the water. Here I've got nothing!" He started trembling and sweating as all sorts of horrible scenarios ran through his head. "Wh-what if I get a wing cramp on the way over there? I had a big meal at lunch, I don't think I've fully digested it yet…or what about those Wingull and Pelipper over there?" he asked, pointing to some birds flying in their direction. "Wingull are pretty stupid. They might mistake me for a winged hamburger. That actually happened to me once before…"

Everyone sweatdropped. "O..kaayyyy…" Pikachu said slowly. "Latias, why don't you go push the button instead. I'll stay here and use everything I've learned from the Psychology channel to try and treat Charizard's severe aquaphobia before it can get any worse."

"Um…okay." Latias flew away from the pier and towards the robot.

"James, they're going for the switch! Do something!" Jessie cried.

"Jessie, you're at the controls. The spike cannon button's right in front of you," James pointed out.

She sweatdropped. "…Oh." She activated the cannons, which started firing spikes at Latias.

"Latias, Safeguard!" commanded Ash.

Latias surrounded herself with a blue force field that caused the large spikes fired at her to bounce off harmlessly as she flew around to the back of the Corsola Crusher, where Chimecho was still stupidly ramming his head into the self-destruct button. "Nooo! Don't push that button! Chimecho, Shadow Ball!" James begged.

Chimecho stared at him blankly, then smiled happily. "Chiiii!" he squealed, exploding.

James blinked. "…Not only was that the completely wrong attack, Chimecho aren't capable of learning Explosion!" he protested in disbelief.

"He's so stupid, I guess it don't matter," said Meowth, pulling off his charm. "Pay Day Attack!" He threw the charm at Latias, which harmlessly bounced off her Safeguard force field and fell into the water. He gasped. "Nooooo! My charm!" He dove into the water after it.

James sweatdropped and looked up at Latias. "Er, I'd use one of my other Pokemon against you, but Feebas is virtually useless and Cacnea will just beat me up. I don't suppose you'd just go away if I asked you nicely?"

Latias stared at him blankly. "…No, no I don't think I would." She backed up, then rammed into the self-destruct button, pushing it forward with all her might. The button slowly ground into its slot on the back of the robot until it was flush with the mecha's hull, and clicked. Then the entire robot exploded, flinging the Ciphers and everything on board the destroyed machine into the air.

"Nooooo, my jewelry!" Jessie cried as all her accoutrements as well as the other pieces of coral jewelry they had stolen fell away from her, splashing down in the water or landing on the pier, where the heroes collected them as they fell from the sky

"Try this on, Mom!" suggested Togetic, offering the crown Jessie had been wearing to her mother.

Misty put it on her head. "Hey Ash, how do I look?" she asked.

He shrugged. "You look like yourself wearing a crown."

She sweatdropped. "That's not really what I was looking for."

"What? I was being honest," he said, looking confused.

She sighed. "Oh, never mind," she said, taking the crown off.

The net the robot had been carrying fell into the water and burst open as dozens of frantic Corsola shoved their way out of it and into the nice, refreshing water and coral reefs, where they instinctively knew they would be safe. A dazed and extremely happy Crawdaunt crawled on top of a piece of coral jutting out of the water and waved a hickey-covered claw at the retreating Coral Pokemon. "So long, ladies! It was a pleasure servicing you!"

In the meantime, Pikachu was writing in a notepad with a fake pair of glasses and a Freudian beard on his face. "Zo tell me, when did you firzt become zo zcared of water?" he asked in a cheesy accent.

Charizard, who was lying on his back beside Pikachu, said, "Well doctor, it all started when my no-good deadbeat trainer Damien abandoned me in a clearing and it started to rain very heavily…"

"This is so unfair! I'm the Corsola Queen! That crown should be mine, not hers!" screamed Jessie as she saw Misty try on the coral crown while being flung away at high speeds.

"I don't know, I think she looks better in it than you…" Meowth murmured to himself.

"I wonder how Chimecho learned Explosion? Surely just because he's incredibly stupid doesn't mean he can perform attacks Chimecho aren't capable of learning…" James pondered to himself. Cacnea spontaneously popped out of her Pokeball and started beating James up mercilessly, because she had been denied a chance to do so yet this chapter.

Wobbuffet, oddly enough, felt a smile creep onto his face. What was this strange feeling? He had recently found happiness again in James' Feebas, but this felt like a different happiness, something he had not felt in ages and ages…something that made him feel full of joy, like he was flying through the air on his own power instead of being propelled away by a terrific explosion.

It felt like…freedom. Yes, that was it, freedom. All of the put-downs and cruel things Miss Jessie had done to him had built up to that one moment, that final breaking point atop the robot, where he could take no more. And so he deliberately defied her, not by running away from her as he had so many times before, but indirectly leading to the defeat of her evil plan. (Admittedly, in another few moments it would have been defeated anyway, but the fact that he had helped it end quicker by finally growing a spine, unlike poor James, felt like a significant achievement to the blue blob.) He no longer craved Miss Jessie's attention, he knew, had always known really, that she could never be the kind of trainer he could find acceptance from. Not like Benny had been.

He also realized at last what had driven him to stick with Miss Jessie, what had kept him from breaking and running so many times in the past: his stubborn desire for acceptance from those around him. He had found it in Feebas, who like him was disliked for many reasons, but he had still sought it in Jessie as well, and he realized now he had been asking for too much. You can't be accepted by everybody, there will always be people who will dislike you. A person has to treasure the people that care about them, and if they can't make those who hate them think otherwise, then who needs them anyway? You should be thankful for the people who love you already, and cherish them in return.

He smiled then, thinking of the other two people who had truly cared about him, and for the first time in years truly felt guilty for leaving them. He should never have let the pressure from Benny's parents get to him and lead to his asking to be traded away, or how he had so thoughtlessly abandoned-

WHAM! His train of thought was halted when the Ciphers slammed into something. But it wasn't the ground. From Wobbuffet's perspective, which felt like a bug squished against a windshield, they had hit some big, curved invisible wall in the air. "Ow," he moaned.

Jessie groaned and with some difficulty, peeled her face off from where she had hit the barrier. "Ohhh…what happened? What did we hit?"

James pushed the stunned Cacnea off of him and pressed his hands and face in various positions on whatever surface they had landed on. "It seems to be some kind of invisible force field," he deduced.

Wobbuffet blinked. Something about that sounded oddly familiar. "Force field? What would a force field be doing all the way out here in the middle of no-" Meowth stated before suddenly the hard, invisible barrier became penetrable and they fell through it, vanishing from the sight of any who might have been watching them.

As they were once more falling the villains (and one blob who intended to finally leave them with his fishy soul-mate the instant they got back to dry land) they saw what the force field had been hiding from them: a small island, covered in hills and trees, completely untouched by civilization. "Hey, what's this?" screamed James as they hurtled towards the island.

"It looks like an island!" Jessie yelled.

"I didn't see no island beneath us a second ago!" Meowth cried.

"Murder!" cried Cacnea, so startled by this aberration that she had forgotten about beating up James.

"Chiiii!" cried Chimecho for no reason.

Wobbuffet's face paled. He knew this place. He had hoped and prayed this wasn't it, but it was. After all, how many islands hidden by invisible force fields could there be? (There were actually three others around the world, but Wobbuffet didn't know that.)

They crashed down into a forested area midway between the center of the island and the beach, their fall slowed by the numerous thick and very painful branches they smashed through on the way down, collecting leaves and vines around their bodies as they finally broke through the tree canopy and crashed down on the forest floor, leaving a small crater.

They lay there for a few moments, recovering. They were Team Cipher after all, and they crashed somewhere every day, so they were used to this by now. Jessie groaned, getting up first. "Well, at least it hurt a little less than usual," she commented. "Usually the fall's a lot harder, but that force field and the tree branches helped slow us down a little."

"A very little," James moaned, staggering to his feet. He sighed. "Well, I guess you won, Wobbuffet."

Jessie and Wobbuffet looked at James in confusion, while Meowth sulked. "What do you mean he won? We got blasted off!" the bewildered Jessie pointed out.

"Yes, but he won the bet Meowth, myself, Wobbuffet, Cacnea, and Chimecho, all set up earlier today while we were drifting behind the ferry," James explained. "We would have included you too, but your hair was being eaten by that hungry Sharpedo and we really didn't want to bother you while you were in a mood to kill someone."

Jessie blinked. "What did you bet on?"

"How long it would take for the twerps to beat us," James said cheerfully. "I bet five minutes, Meowth seven, Wobbuffet guessed three minutes, Cacnea tried to beat me to death, and Chimecho guessed Kitty. A poorly drawn crayon picture of a kitty anyway. It wasn't really a good bet, but it was so adorable we accepted it anyway."

Jessie exploded. "JAMES! You mean you actually bet on how quickly we'd lose to the twerps!"

James shrugged. "Well sure Jessie, I mean it was inevitable wasn't it?"

Jessie blinked. "…Do you really have that little faith in our own abilities?"

"Yes," he said flatly. "Jessie, we suck. You know that. I know that. Chimecho knows that, and he doesn't know anything."

"Chiii!" Chimecho squeaked, licking his eyeballs clean.

Jessie sagged. "How depressing…"

James nodded. "Yes. Anyway, Wobbuffet, you won the bet!"

Wobbuffet sweatdropped. He had actually forgotten all about the bet. "Uh, thanks."

"He only won because he cheated!" Meowth snapped. "He told the twerps where our weak spot was so that we'd lose!"

"Well, technically Meowth, I told them," James corrected sheepishly. "And you prevented Wobbuffet from telling, which led to me telling, so in a way it's both of our faults for letting it slip."

"But even if he didn't tell it, he meant to!" Meowth protested. "And that's dirty rotten cheating!"

"Which is exactly what a good villain is expected to do," James pointed out proudly. "He's at long last gotten that inner meanness and lack of respect for fairness and rules he needs to be evil. Congratulations, Wobbuffet! You're finally one of us!"

Jessie blinked in surprise, and then smiled. "Hey, that is good! Nice job, Wobbuffet! Very well done!" Wobbuffet sweatdropped. Not too long ago, he would have been ecstatic to receive this morsel of praise from her. Now, it sickened him. He was ashamed at himself for wanting acceptance from such a vile woman.

"And to commemorate your transition from semi-annoying neutral evil to full-blown chaotic evil, here's what you've won from the bet!" James handed Wobbuffet a half-cube so dirty its color was indistinguishable. "I think this is a piece of a Pokeblock. I found it on the ground back in Sootopolis. I bet it because I didn't want to lose any of my precious bottlecaps."

"A Pokeblock? Quick, give me that! I could use it on Dustox or your Feebas to improve them for Pokemon Contests!" Jessie cried desperately, reaching for the Pokeblock.

James held it away from her. "Jessie, it's just half a Pokeblock! And dirty, too! It's probably expired! Do you really want Dustox to eat it? And I seriously doubt half a Pokeblock will do anything to make Feebas less ugly, there's too little of it!"

Jessie sighed unhappily. "You're right. Never mind, Wobbuffet, you can keep it."

Wobbuffet rolled his eyes. "Gee, thanks." He took the proffered piece of Pokeblock. He considered eating it (he had not had lunch or breakfast that day) but decided he would offer it to Feebas later. Who knows? He might be able to prove James wrong, and that would make him feel even better when the two of them ran away!

"I ain't giving you nothing!" Meowth snapped angrily, turning away.

Wobbuffet shrugged. "That's okay, I don't want your tarnished old charm anyway."

"It is not tarnished!" Meowth declared. "I spend hours polishing this thing every day, carefully cleaning it with tongue and handkerchief!"

"All the more reason for you to keep it," Wobbuffet muttered under his breath.

"Now it's your turn, Chimecho, give Wobbuffet what he's won!" James ordered his idiot Pokemon.

Chimecho stared at him blankly. "Chiii?"

"Come on Chimecho, you owe Wobbuffet a crayon! Give it to me!" James commanded, holding out an outstretched palm.

Chimecho stared at him, then smiled and squealed, "Chimecho!" belching out what looked like red-colored dust.

James put his hands on his hips. "Chimecho! You ate the crayon?" Chimecho nodded happily. James scowled. "How many times have I told you, if you're going to eat a crayon, eat the blue ones! They taste like strawberries, and I know how much you like strawberries!"

Jessie gave him a confused look. "Wait, shouldn't blue crayons taste like blueberries?"

James scoffed. "Don't be silly, Jessie! If blue crayons tasted like blueberries, then what would the red ones taste like?"

Jessie stared at him, as did everyone else. Wobbuffet sighed, thinking to himself how glad he'd be to get away from their moronic antics once and for all. "Anyway," said James, breaking the awkward silence. "Cacnea, please give Wobbuffet what you bet!" Cacnea glared at him, but, since he had asked politely, had no choice but to comply. Grumbling, she waddled over to Wobbuffet. James grinned evilly. Heehee, this'll teach her a lesson! Let's see if she likes getting a fist full of needles in her face!

Cacnea stood in front of Wobbuffet, reeled back her glowing arm in preparation for a Needle Arm…and paused. Something flashed through her mind, something that was not a part of her defective Shadow Pokemon programming. Something that had been broken loose when she had gotten struck by the illusory Celebi in Mewgle's dungeon, and had been slowly growing in strength ever since. It was the element of free will. She blinked, narrowed her eyes, and drove her fist forward at Wobbuffet.

He automatically Countered the attack, but when the spiky fist came right back at it's owner's face, Cacnea made use of the recoil to spin around and drive the reflected punch right into James' crotch!

The blue-haired man howled in agony and fell to the ground, clutching his private parts while Cacnea loomed over him, laughing malevolently. "Mur-hur-hur-der! Mur-hur-hur-hur-der!"

Jessie sweatdropped and decided they should finally get back on track. "So, um…where are we anyway? I didn't see this island when we hit that barrier. Is it invisible?" Wobbuffet swallowed, for he too had just remembered where they were.

Meowth whipped out a GPS system (standard for all agents of Team Rocket who joined Team Cipher) and checked their location. He blinked. "That's funny. According to satellite, we're floating somewhere in the middle of the ocean."

Jessie frowned. "That's impossible, we're on an island. Give me that!" She snatched the GPS from Meowth and fiddled around with it for a moment, thinking Meowth must have been mistaken. He wasn't.

"This is amazing!" cried James ecstatically when Jessie conceded defeat and he had recovered from Cacnea's surprisingly innovative attack which no Shadow Pokemon should have been able to conceive on their own. "We've found a completely uncharted and undiscovered island! We may be the first humans who've ever been here before, thanks to that force field! It'll be a perfect place to build the secret base for the Hoenn branch of Team Rocket!"

They all sweatdropped. "James, Team Rocket's kaput. We're part of Team Cipher now, and we don't need no Hoenn base," Meowth corrected.

James blinked. "Oh, right. I got a little caught up in the excitement of finding a new island."

"Murder!" screamed Cacnea, tired of this chatter. She pounced on James and started beating him to a pulp again.

Jessie ignored James' cries for help and got a sparkly look in her eyes. "This island is still a perfect place for us! Since nobody's discovered it, that means nobody owns it! We can turn it into our own private retreat and secret hideout! Not even the boss will need to know about it! I can just see it now…we'll have a mansion facing the north side of the island, with hot spring in the south and a luxurious spa maintained by loyal and burly slave boys…" she fantasized.

"Uh, Jessie, I think you'll have to reconsider that plan," said Meowth, looking wide-eyed to the edge of the small clearing they had made by smashing through the leafy canopy above them. Wobbuffet had seen the same thing as him, and had gone ramrod straight, looking stiffer than a board of petrified wood.

"What do you mean?" Jessie asked, snapping out of her fantasies.

"I mean that you'll have to ask the people who already live here if it's all right to build on their property," Meowth clarified, pointing to the large group of Pokemon that had surrounded them.

They were small and blue, with long ear flaps that doubled as arms, two short legs, a black paddle-like tail, a large bump growing from their forehead, and a pair of up-turned eyes and a smile, in contrast to Wobbuffet's usual default clenched eyes and borderline frown. They were Wynaut, Wobbuffet's pre-evolved form, and there were a lot of them, and they did not look happy to see the Ciphers and soon-to-drop out Wobbuffet. "Crap," Wobbuffet muttered under his breath.

Jesse blinked. "Um…you don't suppose they're friendly, do you?" she whispered.

"Well, it's not like they can attack us," James pointed out. "The only techniques Wynaut can use are defensive ones. Except for Splash, but everyone knows that attack is completely and totally useless. So as long as we don't attack them, we should be fine."

"Great!" said Jessie brightly, flexing her left arm, which held her Snag Device. "Then let's capture them and give them to the boss!"

"We can't, we're all outta Pokeballs. Again," Meowth reminded her.

Jessie sweatdropped. "Oh yeah…"

An elderly dark blue Wynaut, with blue whiskers and a long stick held in one earflap, stepped forward, glaring at Wobbuffet. "So, after all these years you have returned…we believed and hoped you had died out in the great open seas as your father did…but it seems you were more resilient than we thought." He snorted. "You are not as you were when you left this place, but even a blind Wynaut can recognize you for who you are, son of the Runaway!"

Wobbuffet growled. "It's good to see you too, Elder," he said with gritted teeth.

The old Wynaut smirked. "And tell me boy, did you find what you were looking for? Did you find your father, as you had hoped? I can see from the looks of your hideous and foreign companions the answer is no." He shook his head. "How disappointing! You leave the island, the only safe haven in all the world, ABANDONING your dearest sister behind," he said, gesturing with one flap to a downcast Wynaut who shuffled out of the crowd. A little red bow was tied around her bump, and she looked both ecstatic and at the same time upset to see Wobbuffet. The blue blob felt a sharp pang of guilt in his heart for leaving her behind. "And now you come back with outsiders, breaking all of our oldest laws and traditions! You shame us all, son of the Runaway!"

"Like that's anything new," Wobbuffet grumbled. "I'm always a shame to you jerks." He paused, then gave a brief nod to the ribboned Wynaut, an anxious and uncertain smile on his face. "Except…to you, sis. I'm sorry I left without you. Sorry I left you here."

The Wynaut sniffed. "B-brother…" Her body trembled and her eyes started tearing, and it looked as if she wanted to run to the larger yet still familiar form of her older brother.

But the elder pushed himself in front of her before she could move. "And now look! You've made your dearest sister, whom you left all alone here, cry! What kind of brother are you?"

"A better one to her than you were a grandfather to us!" Wobbuffet retaliated angrily as years of bad childhood memories rose from where he had buried them in the depths of his subconscious, raising a gasp of shock from the other Wynaut, who could not believe he had the audacity to talk to their leader in this manner.

"How DARE you-" the elder started.

Wobbuffet laughed bitterly. "What are you gonna do, banish me? I've been to the outside world and back! But if you want to send me back there with these losers, go ahead. I'll be glad to leave. I never wanted to come back here anyway! As soon as I can, I'm leaving!"

"Good! Because we don't want you here anyway!" the elder yelled furiously, riling up the other Wynaut, who seemed to agree with him. Behind him, Wobbuffet's sister cowered in fear. "You are officially banished from this island forever! Take your outsider friends and never come back here, understand!"

"FINE! I WILL!" Wobbuffet shouted.

The Ciphers were completely and totally confused. "What's going on?" asked the bewildered James.

"From what those two are shouting about," said an amazed Meowth, "I think that old Wynaut is Wobbuffet's grandpa! I guess he musta lived on this island long ago…we never did ask about his past, come to think about it."

"We've never cared before now. And I still don't," Jessie said. "I want to get off this island so we can tell everyone about it and come back with Snag Balls and capture all these Wynaut!" she said quietly, so that Wobbuffet or the Wynaut wouldn't hear her.

"Why?" James asked.

"Because they're rare Pokemon!" Jessie whispered back. "And the boss would love them! They're the perfect defense Pokemon, he could use them as bodyguards or something!"

James was alarmed. "But Jessie, we can't! This is where Wobbuffet came from! These Wynaut are his pre-evolved forms!"

Jessie stared at him blankly. "So?"

"Well…don't you remember that bunch of Koffing and Ekans we saved from that poacher a while back? We let them go, even though we could have made a lot of money by selling them! Why can't we do the same thing here?" James begged.

Jessie thought about that for a moment. "Well for one thing, Ekans and Koffing are rather common so wouldn't sell for very much. Wynaut, on the other hand, are much rarer and would be worth a lot more on the black market. And in any case, we also helped those Ekans and Koffing because they reminded us of our dearest friends and partners, Arbok and Weezing, and we knew we owed it to them to help their fellows out. I feel no such attachment to Wobbuffet."

James looked appalled. "I don't know Jessie, that seems awfully cold-hearted, even for us!"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, grow up! We need to make a profit here, we're much deeper in debt now than we were when we let Arbok and Weezing go. And besides, from all the yelling he's doing I doubt he'd really care so much for these Wynaut's well being, he hates them. He might even be glad to see them captured and sold. You said it yourself, he's officially become evil now." James still looked doubtful, but nodded, agreeing with his partner.

In the meantime, the elder Wynaut was about to respond to a particularly scathing insult about his whiskers from Wobbuffet when the sound of a gong being rung echoed throughout the forests. Almost all of the Wynaut automatically started filing out of the clearing, and Wobbuffet almost went with them before catching himself. The elder blinked. "Oh, is it dinner time already? And we go to sleep right after that…hmmph, in that case we'll finish this tomorrow! You and your friends must leave this place in the morning, and never return!"

"I don't plan to!" Wobbuffet spat at the elder. "I never wanted to come back here anyway! This place holds nothing but bad memories! There's nothing here for me, never has been!"

This elicited a hurt sob from the ribboned Wynaut, startling Wobbuffet. "B-brother!" she cried, before bursting into tears and running off into the woods.

"NOW look what you've done!" the elder accused.

Wobbuffet was shocked. He had gotten so caught up in his hatred for the old Pokemon that he had forgotten that there had indeed been one bright spot to his existence on this miserable island, the only person here who had ever cared about him: his sister. "W-wait, that's not what I meant! I-I didn't mean I hated you, sis! Come back!" He ran off into the forest after her.

Meowth blinked. "Well, how's that for drama?"

A second later Wobbuffet burst back into the clearing, grabbed Feebas' Pokeball from James' belt, mumbled a quick apology, and ran off again. James frowned. "Why does he keep doing that!"

"Oh, he's welcome to her," said Jessie uncaringly. "The both of them are so ugly they're practically made for each other. Meowth, why did those Wynaut all head off?"

"Because it's their dinner time, I think," recalled the cat Pokemon. His stomach rumbled. "Hey, I could use something in my belly too! Let's go join em'!"

This sounded good to the other two founding members of the infamous trio and they headed in the direction the other Wynaut had left in, Chimecho happily trailing behind. None of them noticed that Cacnea had stayed behind in the clearing, feeling strange.

Watching Wobbuffet and his grandfather yell at each other, and Wobbuffet's sister in tears, made her feel strange. Something other than the very small list of sensations she was programmed to feel, which basically boiled down to hunger, pain, and anger. It felt like…like her heart had been chained to a rock and dropped into the ocean, where it sank to the bottom of the deepest sea trench and drowned there, in darkness so thick no light or hope could penetrate it.

She furrowed her brow in confusion. The emotion she had felt just a moment ago was similar to that feeling, but maybe not that extreme. And yet it still felt oddly familiar…like she had felt that…"sad" recently. She suddenly recalled her last clear memory from before she had become a Shadow Pokemon. She could remember everything that had happened before and after that, but all her past memories had seemed like scenes viewed from a distance to her after her transformation. But this memory felt more vivid, much closer.

She had been released from her Pokeball and eagerly leapt forward to tackle her trainer in a hug…only to find he wasn't there, and she was in a place with blinding lights and cold floors and harsh, staring faces all glaring at her in scorn. They had done…things to her, she couldn't quite remember what, but they had made her feel this "sadness", this deep and truthful knowledge that her trainer whom she loved had willingly sent her off to this place of harsh people and blinding lights without concern for her own feelings. It had hurt in a manner she did not now understand, for she had not been really wounded in any way, but it was a deeper hurt…something inside of her that she could not see…and then they had put her in this strange machine with a glowing purple eye…

And then all she felt after that was pain, and then she was as she was now.

Cacnea blinked in confusion. She did not like this feeling of "sadness". But it felt good to her in some strange way. It was different from the endless anger she felt every moment of her existence, boiling through her blood, tensing her muscles, tearing her apart from the inside. The "sadness" hurt, but it was not the burning, painful anger she was used to. It spoke of something different, something she had forgotten. It seemed to her Wobbuffet had somehow triggered this feeling in her, though the tiny portion of her original mind that had been freed in the game world whispered that perhaps the virtual Celebi she had encountered had unlocked a door, and now she was pushing it open bit by bit all by herself.

Ignoring her own grumbling stomach, she trod off after Wobbuffet, feeling that if he had managed to make her feel "sad" he could make her feel other things too. And she wanted to feel something else, something other than this burning anger and hatred, more than anything else, even the prospect of beating her trainer who had betrayed her to death.

…

Wobbuffet burst out of the brush and trees and found himself on a rocky beach that felt eerily familiar. The sound of the waves washing over the stones and moving back out to sea calmed the feeling of panic and fear he had felt when his sister had ran from him a little, and he recalled that he too had come to this place many times in his childhood to cry. It seemed fitting that his sister would come here for the same reason.

He found his sister sitting on a large pile of rocks that he too had once sat on, crying her eyes out just as he too had once done. "Hey…" he said quietly, trying to put an arm around her.

She shoved his arm off and turned her back to him. "Go away!" she sobbed. "You're not my brother anymore!"

He pulled his arm back. "I'm not?" he asked sadly.

"No!" she cried. "My brother wouldn't have done that! He wouldn't have said so many mean things, or been such a jerk!"

Sighing, the blue blob sat down next to his sister. "In a way, you're right. I'm not the brother you remember. I've changed. I've had to change, out in the real world…the world outside this stagnant place…" He smiled faintly. "You've changed, too…" he said softly. "The sister I remember wouldn't have run off crying just because her brother said some cruel things without taking his precious little sister into consideration."

She sniffed and reluctantly looked up at him, trying to wipe away her tears. "It's been hard without you," she said quietly. "There was nobody to stand up to the bullies for me, or protect me from grandpa and the other's mean words and insults…" She sobbed and hugged the big blob. "Why'd you leave me behind, brother? Why didn't you take me with you?"

Wobbuffet shuddered, thinking back to that day long ago, when he had still been Wynaut, when he had snapped, just as he had only a short while ago. Fed up with the disparaging words and jeers from his grandfather and peers, he had made good on his promise to leave this rotten island behind and make something of himself in the real world. He sailed out to sea on a raft constructed from designs left behind by his father before the older Wynaut had himself left the island for places unknown, never to return. "I thought you'd be better off without me," he explained. "I figured that with me gone, everyone would stop using our father's name as a curse and use us as scapegoats. I figured that you could finally be the happy little girl dad always wanted you to be, and everybody'd like you again without dad or my shadow hanging over you. Besides," he added. "I thought you didn't want to leave the island. I thought you were happier here."

From the edge of the beach, hidden behind a bush, Cacnea observed the exchange between brother and sister, the feeling of "sadness" swelling in her heart as she listened to the two siblings.

The little Wynaut shook her head. "No, brother. I hated it here. I've always hated it, just like you and father did. But I was terrified even more of the outside world. It took dad and I thought if you went, it would take your life too. That's what I thought happened for all these years, that you were dead just like him." She looked away. "The only thing that made life bearable here was you, big brother. If you had asked me to come with you, I would have. Not because I wasn't scared of the outside, but because you were the only thing I have left that feels like 'home.'"

Wobbuffet bit his lip, trying to hold back his own tears. "Sis…I had no idea you felt that way. If I had know you wanted to come so badly, I would have asked you, I swear!"

"It's too late to matter now though, isn't it?" she said bitterly. "I even built my own raft, just like yours and dad's, thinking I'd sail after you…but I couldn't!" she cried. "I was too afraid! I was so scared that I stayed where I was lonely and miserable instead of going out where I might find something wonderful, like you! I'm such a coward!"

"No!" Wobbuffet protested. "You're no coward! A real coward would have killed herself long ago! You stayed alive even when everyone else wanted you dead…that's not what a coward does!" He shook his head. "Sis, the real world isn't so different from in here. Sure, it's bigger and more beautiful and there's tons of things to see that you'd never imagine on this place…but just like here, there are people who'll hate you. But there are also people who'll care about you." The images of Benny and Feebas flashed through his mind. "In my own quest to find acceptance from the world, I've neglected and taken for granted the people who already accepted me…the only people who really mattered! I left you here without thinking! I convinced my trainer to give me away because I couldn't get his parents to like me, and I could see that was causing familial strife! And when I finally found someone to love, I stuck with my heartless bitch of a new trainer in the hopes I could make her love me too instead of heading for the hills with my love like I should have! Oh sis!" Finally breaking open a dam of walled-up sorrows, Wobbuffet hugged his little sister as tears streamed down his face.

In the bushes where she was hiding, Cacnea plopped down on her rear, feeling more strange sensations flowing through her. Memories that had seemed so distant flashed right before her eyes as the door to her heart widened a little more, releasing some of what was trapped inside. She recalled how she too had left her home in the deserts to find acceptance. Her exuberant and enthusiastic nature had been too much for the other Pokemon of the Cacnea Nation to handle, and they had kicked her out so they could continue their dull, almost motionless lives of standing around and absorbing sunlight in peace. She had found her path crossing that of James, and had instantly fallen in love with the blue-haired human, who did not seem to mind her nature at all (other than her constant spiky hugs). And then he turned around and betrayed her, sending her away to be transformed into a monster without thinking about what the consequences might be! All so he could try yet again to capture that one Pikachu, who had a truly understanding and accepting trainer, one she would be proud to be the Pokemon of!

Cacnea felt her face dampen, and rubbed at it with her arm, her thick green skin too strong to be scratched by her own spikes. She lightly touched her eyeholes, and found to her amazement that they were the source of the dampness. Water was leaking from her eyes. It took her a moment, even with her newly recovered emotions and closer memories, to recall that these were called 'tears', and were the result of sadness. And as she cried from the deep, heartfelt sadness of being cast out by her family and having her heart broken, the growing free-thinking part of her also rejoiced…for if she could experience sadness of such magnitude, she could feel other emotions too! She was coming alive again, becoming more than a wrathful puppet, more than just a Shadow of a Pokemon!

The three cried, and in doing so they became more whole, healing or patching up the cracks in their hearts as they purged it of the waters of misery that had been dammed up inside for all this time.

…

There were approximately a total of fifty Wynaut on the island, and all of them gathered together as the moon began to rise over the horizon and the stars started coming out one by one, meeting in a large clearing with a very long table formed of rocks that had been piled together ages ago. The table was covered with succulent fruits, which the Wynaut freely gorged on to sate their voracious appetites. Atop a hill at the foot of the table was a ten-foot statue of a Wobbuffet in its usual saluting pose, with a sagely beard and a pair of what looked like spectacles. It was set on a wide stone base with glowing sigils carved into it. The gong that had sounded to signal dinner sat just in front of the base, lit from behind by the glowing sigils.

Although Jessie, James, and Meowth were starving, they were cruelly excluded from the gathering of Wynaut on the grounds that they were dangerous invaders, which in fact they were. They would have tried to steal the food, but the prospect of having their attacks bounced back at them by fifty little blue defense Pokemon did not appeal to them. Chimecho was the only one who was happy, because he was munching on bark he licked off the trees. The fact that Chimechos don't eat bark did not seem to cause a problem for the brainless one.

"Jessie, I'm hungry," whined James.

"Then why don't you go out there and get some!" she snapped at him, her usual bitchiness increased by her hunger.

"If I try to steal it, all my attempts will get launched back at me!" he pointed out. "And Chimecho's the only Pokemon I have since Cacnea vanished and Wobbuffet ran off with Feebas, and you know how unreliable he is!"

"Chiiiii!" Chimecho chimed, spitting out splinters of wood.

"Then just walk over there and grab some! They can't deflect attacks if you don't fire any in the first place!" Meowth said in frustration.

"Just because they don't attack normally doesn't mean they can't overwhelm me in sheer numbers," James defended. "They hate us. If I walk over there, they'll all probably jump on me, force me to the ground with their weight, and slap me around with those ear flaps of theirs until I beg for mercy."

"All you're doing is putting roadblocks in front of yourself!" Jessie growled. "Either shut up or do something, just quit your whining!"

The gong rang suddenly, getting their attention. They looked back at the dining Wynaut and saw they had all stopped eating and were gazing up at the hilltop, where the elder had just rung the gong with his staff to get everyone's eyes on him. "My friends, our island has entered dark times! Foul invaders, including one of our very own who turned his back on everything we stand for, have infiltrated our paradise! But fear not, for soon enough the outsiders will be cast back into the heartless winds that brought them here, where hopefully they shall drown in the sea of nothingness that awaits them!"

"Here, here!" chorused the Wynaut.

"Wow, he really doesn't want us here," muttered Meowth, translating what the elder had said to his teammates.

"We don't smell that bad, do we?" asked James, sniffing his armpits. He made a face of disgust.

"We shall pray to Lord Wobbaku for the strength to survive these trespasses!" the elder announced, pounding his staff's butt on the ground. He turned to face the Wobbuffet statue, as did all the Wynaut.

"This looks interesting…" Meowth muttered.

"Lord Wobbaku!" cried the elder to the statue. "Ages ago, you saw the world was on the brink of war! You gathered your people and brought them here to this island, so that they could be kept out of the coming struggle! To keep us safe, you erected this magnificent statue of yourself, and infused it and the base it stood on with your powers! As long as the statue is set in its base, our paradise will be protected by an impenetrable shield that also hides our island from the greedy eyes of those who dwell in the outside world, who feed on the shattered remnants of civilization left by the war!"

"Hey, that must be how come we didn't see the island when he got here!" James exclaimed. "And why it doesn't show up on any maps or even using GPS!"

"Hmm…" Jessie pondered, deep in thought.

"Only those of our lineage, who share the blood of the Wynaut and Wobbuffet, can pass through the shield! But only fools would wish to do so, for nothing lies outside but death and desolation!" the elder continued.

"Brother, does this guy need to get a clue," Meowth muttered. "But that explains how we got in here. Wobbuffet could pass through the shield, and since we were with him we must have too."

"But fear not, my friends! For no matter how many fools we have in our midst who wish to leave our sacred paradise, we shall always be safe here, as long as the statue is set in its base! For if it were somehow removed, the shield of protection and invisibility protecting our island would dissipate, leaving us completely wide-open to the dangers of the outside world! And the statue will then be much like any other Wobbuffet, repelling attacks with the same impenetrable field it surrounds our island with, only it won't make anything invisible and will have a much shorter radius of protection. Only if the statue is returned to its base would our island be saved! But all this is purely hypothetical conjecture, for your statue, my great lord, is far too heavy to be lifted by any of us Wynaut, and those invaders look far too weak to be able to lift the statue, so there's absolutely nothing to worry about at all. Yep, not like they could somehow get some magic device capable of lifting heavy objects that could move the statue from its base and somehow carry it away. Ha, as if something like that could ever happen." He smiled and nodded vacantly for a minute before stopping. "…Where was I?" A Wynaut ran up and whispered something into his ear. "Huh? Oh, yeah, that's right. Ahem. All praise Lord Wobbaku!"

"Wobbaku! Wobbaku! Wobbaku!" cheered the Wynaut fervently. And in the bushes, cogs were turning in the heads of two of the Ciphers. The third was too busy feeling hungry to make his cogs turn, and the fourth didn't have cogs in his head at all, but a windup toy Aipom that was constantly clapping a pair of cymbals together.

…

Wobbuffet and his sister sat side by side on the beach, gazing up at the stars. Their cheeks were still damp from tears, but the crying had stopped for now. The sadness and bitter feelings remained, but they had lessened now that they had been brought to the surface. For the moment, there was now just a brother and his sister, enjoying the night air and each other's company, happy to be reunited after so many years apart. "Big brother?" the little Wynaut asked.

"Yes?"

"You mentioned other people like me, who cared about you. People you neglected," she said. "Tell me about them."

Wobbuffet sighed, looking back into his past, filtering through memories that he had not truly forgotten, simply neglected for too long a time. "When I left to find a place where I felt I belonged, I had no idea how big the world was. I got lost at sea and drifted about, baked by the sun and held at mercy by the waves. I washed up on the shore of a distant land called Johto, where a young boy named Benny was on vacation with his parents. He found me, took me to a Pokemon Center (that's a place where creatures like us, called Pokemon by other people in the outside world go to get healed) and officially adopted me as his very first Pokemon. I wasn't pleased by this, and neither were his parents.

"I had never met a human before that point, so I was scared of them. Grandpa always told us stories of how nasty the people outside the island were, but Benny was nice and kind and gentle. I was scared of his pink skin and brown hair at first, and 'cause he was bigger than me, but I quickly realized I could trust him. He reminded me a little of you sis, he was someone who I knew could generally care about me," Wobbuffet said, rubbing his sister's head affectionately. "He used me in Pokemon battles (that's something where humans and Pokemon on the outside work together to fight other humans and Pokemon for fun and profit…well, for the most part anyway) to fend off all the kids who picked on him, just like all the bullies who picked on us when we were younger. I gained enough experience to evolve into Wobbuffet. But his parents, for some reason or another, hated me. They didn't want their son to keep relying on a Pokemon who couldn't even attack properly. They didn't think that going through life defensively was any way to grow up, and they kept pressuring him to get rid of me.

"But Benny said no. He loved me. I was his best friend, almost a brother. We played games together, went to school together, fought together…we were great. But…I saw the stress that I was causing between him and his folks. I didn't want him to have a relationship like our dad did with grandpa, with both of them hating each other because they couldn't agree on what was important. So, I figured to make things better between Benny and his parents, I had to take the fall. When the chance came up for humans to swap Pokemon with each other, I told Benny I wanted to get traded. It meant I'd end up with a different human friend and he'd end up with a different Pokemon, but hopefully we'd all be able to get stronger and become better friends and all.

He didn't want me to go. He cried, we argued for hours. But eventually, I managed to convince him to let me go. I wasn't worth him estranging his parents. And so, reluctantly, he agreed he'd trade me with somebody else." Wobbuffet shook his head. "Looking back, that was one of the stupidest things I've ever done. Then again…if I hadn't, would I have ever found you again?" He shrugged. "Who knows?"

"If it allowed you to come back here, was it really so stupid?" she questioned.

"Like I said, who knows? If I had found another trainer, I still might have found another way back here. Then again, the events leading up to this moment would have been completely different and I doubt I would have met the love of my life," he pondered, glancing at the Pokeball he was still holding. "Wondering what might have been is confusing, makes your head hurt, and is in the end a big waste of time. What happened happened, and there's no changing it." He paused. "Where was I? Ah, yes. I was hoping for a kind, loving trainer with whom I could have a relationship like I had with Benny. At the very least, I was hoping for a trainer who at least respected their Pokemon and didn't think of them as tools or abuse them. What I got…was Jessie." He sighed. "You saw her back in the clearing. Tall, pale, ugly thing with way too much red hair? That's her."

"What's so bad about her?" asked the Wynaut. "Did she hurt you?"

"Physically? Well, maybe a little," he said, thinking of the few times she had hit him with a fan or mallet out of frustration. "Most of it was emotional. I wanted to make a good impression on her, so I was always popping out of my…um, not sure how to explain a Pokeball…it's this little thing that Pokemon like us are kept in by humans in the outside world."

"That sounds awful!" she cried in shock. "Stuffed up into such a little ball!"

"Yeah, that's what the annoying Pokemon rights activists say. It's not that bad actually, kind of nice and warm and cozy…but that's not important. I kept popping out of my Pokeball so I could get her attention and try to bond with her, but she kept putting me back in it. The only times she seemed to want me around were when she was fighting, so she could use me as a shield…and that wasn't really as often as I would have liked. It didn't help that most of the times we were fighting someone, it was because we were trying to steal from them. Yes," he explained to the look of horror on his sister's face. "I had joined a band of thieves without knowing it. I could have run away, but I doubted I'd last long on my own in the wild. And besides…I kind of liked Ms. Jessie. She's bad, but she's had her good moments now and then. I wanted her to like me back, to bring out that tiny scrap of good in her. To treat me with the same kind of respect and caring she had for her favorite Pokemon, Arbok. But she didn't. Even after she let Arbok go, she still didn't care about me as any more than just that annoying blob Pokemon who keeps popping out of his Pokeball and never did anything useful." He sighed.

"I can't believe you're a thief," Wynaut said, amazed.

"Ah, I never really stole anything, I was just there," he said quickly to her. "And besides, Miss Jessie and James and Meowth are so incompetent they inevitably bungle every robbery or scam they're trying to pull off by getting overconfident or running into this group of heroes we're always chasing. (They're pretty nice guys actually, I don't hold it against them at all for always beating us up for trying to do stuff, it's just the kind of thing they're supposed to do.) But in any case…no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, I couldn't make Miss Jessie like me like Benny had. I was always just Wobbuffet, the annoying blob who either was supposed to stay in his Pokeball where he couldn't bother anyone or just stay out of the way because I really wasn't much help at all to the team. They never really liked me…" He sighed. "But I stuck with them anyway, because I didn't know what I 'd do without them, and I desperately wanted Miss Jessie to like me. And that's pretty much how it's been for me for the last couple of years…until I met Feebas," he said, holding up the Pokeball. "James-he's the wimpy guy with blue hair you saw earlier-won her in a contest I won't go into details for. He wanted to give it to Miss Jessie, but she thought Feebas was too ugly and didn't want anything to do with her. She and I hit it off right away, we were both somewhat disliked and thought of as ugly by our human trainers. We had nobody else, really, except each other to befriend, so we did. And…well, things took off from there." He flushed and shook his head. "It never occurred to me then that now that I had found another someone to love who loved me, we could have taken off on our own and maybe found another trainer…but I was too attached to Miss Jessie, even with all the mean things she'd done to me in recent times, so I stuck with her. And I ended up here."

Wynaut took the Pokeball from her brother and held it in her flaps. "She's really inside this little thing? How does she fit?" she asked, turning the sphere over in her hands.

"…I'm not sure," Wobbuffet said in surprise. The question had never really occurred to him. "It just…does. I've been in one plenty of times, so I know you can fit, somehow."

"Can I see her?" Wynaut asked. "I'd like to meet the person who can make my big brother feel happy."

Wobbuffet smiled, his somewhat melancholy feeling residing at the thought of talking to Feebas. "Sure. To open the ball, you have to press that white round thing on the sides."

"You mean this?" she asked, pressing the button. She gasped and dropped the ball in shock as it split open and a beam of energy shot out of it, solidifying when it hit the ground and forming the familiar oblong brown shape of Feebas. "Amazing!" she said in awe.

"I guess it is, isn't it?" Wobbuffet agreed. "Hello, Feebas."

The brown fish blinked and looked around. "Huh? Wobbuffet? Where are we? Who's that cute little girl?"

The Wynaut blushed and Wobbuffet smiled, seeing the two girls were already off to a good start. He quickly explained how they had been blasted off to this island, secluded from the rest of the world, that had once been the place he had reluctantly called home. He then introduced Feebas to his sister. "Feebas, this is my sister. Sis, this is Feebas, who I've been telling you about."

"Oh! I didn't know you had a sister!" cried the surprised fish. "It's nice to meet you, Wynaut!"

"It's nice to meet you too, Miss Feebas!" said the little Wynaut happily. "My brother told me about you! I'm glad he could find somebody who could make him happy, he was always depressed when he lived here!"

"Really?" asked Feebas in surprise. "Wobbuffet, you never told me about any of this island stuff!" She frowned. "You never told me you had a sister, either!"

Wobbuffet grunted. "I left this place a long time ago. I thought my sister would be better off without me here. I didn't see any reason to bring it up…didn't want to dig up painful memories," he said bitterly. "Heh. Guess it's too late for that, huh?"

The fish's eyes softened. "Tell me what happened. If it doesn't hurt too much, that is."

Wobbuffet said nothing. He looked into the distance, up at the stars, for what seemed like hours. Eventually, Feebas thought she had hurt his feelings and felt guilty, but then he surprised her by starting his story. "This island has been removed from the rest of the world for thousands of years, supposedly to protect the Wynaut here from a big global war. I have no idea if the war ever happened or not, but fear of it and what it may have done to the outside world has kept us all trapped here ever since.

"This place is stagnant, unchanging. The things every Wynaut does on the island are the same exact things their ancestors have done for thousands of years. They've never imagined what the world outside was like. Never looked up at the stars and wondered what was out there.

"My dad did.

"His dad, who's the elder and leader of our tribe, was disgusted about how his son was always thinking about things instead of helping out around the island like he was supposed to, and was wasting his time dreaming and asking questions about the world around him. The other Wynaut ridiculed him for his different ideals, but he stayed true to them, and eventually found a female Wynaut who agreed with him and they fell in love. Soon he had a son-me-and a daughter, but mom died laying the egg containing my sister. Dad was never the same after that…

"He started neglecting us a little. The other kids started teasing us because our dad was crazy, and we started to believe them, because what dad was planning to do was unthinkable. He wanted to escape the island, see the world outside our barrier! He claimed that what everyone said was wrong, that the world couldn't possibly be as desolate as they believed it was, and it had to be better than being stuck here forever. I think what he was really trying to do was find my mom. I think he thought that her soul, wherever it was, had gone somewhere outside the island…and he wanted to find wherever that somewhere was.

"One day, we woke up and he was gone. The raft he had spent years designing was gone too. Grampa openly ridiculed his son for his foolish actions, saying he had most certainly died because he hadn't listened to him or heeded the warnings of Wobbaku, who made the barrier protecting us on this island. We had a funeral for him without a body. Barely anyone came to pay respects to his spirit, saying he'd gone to Hell for his wanderlust and wasn't worth mourning, except my sister and me.

"The elder took us in then, but it was clear he disliked us as much as everyone else did, thinking that we would wind up being as crazy as our dad. Sis didn't get quite as much flack since she was a girl and would never rise to any important position in the tribe, but it was unlikely she'd ever be courted for fear the child would be crazy too. I got the worst of it, because I was supposed to be the leader once gramps died. He was always lecturing me about what a good leader did, and how important it was to ignore your dreams and stay on this damn island where it's nice and safe and STAGNANT and nothing ever changes! He was always yelling about how horrible dad had been, and saying how I'd wind up dead like him if I did what he had done and questioned our beliefs and left the island. And he's not the only one who told me that-all the other kids my age, even the adults, were always lecturing me and telling me I'd better not do what my father did or I'd go to Hell just like him.

"That didn't bother me. For me, the island already was hell. Everyone hated me and thought I should die. How could the outside possibly be worse?" He smiled ruefully. "If only I had known then what it felt like to be blown up and hurtled through the air at a minimum of once a day…" He chuckled. "Anyway, after one day where grampa got so worked up he actually hit me with his stick…I couldn't take it anymore. I built a raft from the designs dad had left behind before he vanished and sailed away, figuring it had to better on the outside than it was here."

"And you left me behind," said Wynaut sadly.

"…I said I was sorry," Wobbuffet said with a wince. "I thought-"

She nodded. "I know, you thought I would be better off because they always treated me a little better than you because nothing was ever expected of me. But with you gone, there was nobody for me to turn to. I was all alone."

Wobbuffet put his arm around her. "I'm sorry, sis. If it's any consolation…when we leave in the morning, would you like to come with us?"

Wynaut looked up at him in surprise. "Y-you'd take me?"

He nodded. "Of course! Now that I've finally got you back, I'm not going to leave you here where you're unhappy! You can come with us! That would be okay, wouldn't it, Feebas?"

"Uh…" Feebas looked uncertain. "Do you think Jessie and James would approve?"

"Screw them!" he cried with a grin. "I'm done with trying to make them like me! I already have the people I need with me…you and my sister! You're all I ever really needed!"

"Then…then we're finally leaving them?" Feebas asked hopefully.

"Yes!" Wobbuffet cried, thrusting an arm in the air. The half-Pokeblock, which he had forgotten he was still holding on to, was flung above them by this act. "I hereby tender my resignation from Team Cipher! From now on, I'm flying free, with my friends beside me!"

Wynaut stood up. "Yeah, big brother!" she cheered.

"Freedom at last!" Feebas cried happily, hopping into the air…where the half-Pokeblock fell into her open mouth and slid down her throat. She fell back to the ground and started coughing and choking.

"Feebas, what's wrong?" Wobbuffet cried out in alarm.

"cough Something in my throat-" the brown fish wheezed, flopping about.

"Hang on, I know the Heimlich maneuver!" Wobbuffet cried, hopping off the rock.

But as he reached her side, Feebas started glowing with a radiant white light, causing the beach around them to go dark in comparison. Wobbuffet gaped at the sight as the oblong form in the light started lengthening and growing, her body going through a series of radical changes. "Big brother, what's happening to her!" Wynaut screamed.

"She's…she's evolving!" Wobbuffet said in disbelief.

"Evolving?" Wynaut asked in confusion.

"Like how I changed from a Wynaut into a Wobbuffet! That's called evolution!" Wobbuffet explained. "And Feebas is evolving into…"

The light faded as Feebas finished her transformation, revealing her new form for the brother and sister to gaze upon with awe. She had changed from a large brown fish with blue fins into a gorgeous serpentine figure, with half of her body starting from her head and going to her midpoint a pale yellow in color, with the rest covered in large scale plates that glistened like sapphires and rubies, ending in a tail formed from a fan of four blue fins with red ovals on them. A tall horn grew from the top of her head and from either side of that horn beautiful long pink tresses fell down to the ground. Her eyes opened, revealing a pair of elegant crimson and black orbs with a pair of delicate pink antenna curling out from her eyebrows, curving as they extended and would have formed a heart shape if their ends touched. She arced her head back and cried to the moon, "Miloooootiiiiic!"

"Milotic," Wobbuffet repeated, stunned.

"…She's beautiful, big brother," Wynaut whispered in amazement.

"She was always beautiful, little sister," Wobbuffet corrected. "Her evolution changed nothing. Her exterior changed, but inside she is still the fish that I fell in love with."

"Wobby…oh, Wobby…" Milotic crooned, her voice a melodious tune carrying the echoes of the tender feelings she held for the blob in her gentle soul, swaying her head from side to side as she got accustomed to her much larger new form.

"Fee-Milotic," he corrected himself as he said her name. "How do you…how do you feel?"

"I feel…wonderful!" she cried, her voice conveying such a sense of joy that even the hardest heart could not help but be touched by it. "My impurities, my insecurities, every little thing that made me feel inferior and disgusting and filled my heart with self-loathing…are all gone! I am Myself now! I am truly, once and for all, Me! Milotic!"

"That's…that's great, Milotic," Wobbuffet said, unable to express with clumsy, incommunicable words just how happy he was that she was truly happy now. A tear of joy ran down his cheek.

"Big brother?" Wynaut asked hopefully. "When I evolve, will I be as pretty as she is?"

Wobbuffet blinked. "Uh…actually, you'll look pretty much just like me."

"…" Wynaut scowled and slapped him. "You didn't have to be honest!"

"Sorry," Wobbuffet apologized. Milotic laughed, the sound ringing like the clear crystal bells atop the majestic Tin Tower. And the two blobs soon joined in with chuckles of their own.

In the bushes, Cacnea felt a new emotion welling up from the opening door in her heart. It was the opposite of sadness, like…like she was being lifted upwards by soft, shiny tingling bubbles that didn't pop when pricked by her spines, as laughter that had nothing to do with being cruel to James burst from her dry lips, marveling at the sheer novelty of being alive.

Well…okay, maybe it wasn't quite that extreme, and it didn't bring forth any memories of ever being at that extreme, but she felt somewhat close to that giddy high now. It was…"happiness", she recalled. Yes, that was the word for this sensation. Happiness. She had felt it many times in the past, but not since she had become a Shadow Pokemon. Not until this very moment. She realized how incomplete and empty she had felt without that happiness, without that joy and laughter rising up from her heart of hearts.

She looked out at the unlikely trio of Wobbuffet, Wynaut, and Milotic, and realized all of a sudden that she wanted to be like them. She wanted to be able to laugh as freely and happily as they were now, and be a part of the camaraderie they all shared. She wanted to join them on their upcoming journey, and be free of Team Cipher too.

Less than an hour ago, this idea would never have occurred to her. It went against all of her Shadow Pokemon programming. But less than an hour ago, she was still an angry, twisted soul, filled with hate for everything, especially a particular blue-haired man. That hate was still there, but lessened now as more emotions and memories started slipping through the widening crack in her sealed heart. On an impulse, she stood up, intending to go out there and join the three in their happiness.

Before she could take a step though, the sound of a gong ringing several times echoed across the island. Wobbuffet blinked. "That's odd. They usually don't ring the gong more than once at a time, do they?" he asked, looking confused.

A distressed look appeared on Wynaut's face. "No, they don't! I think something's wrong!"

"What? What could possibly be-" Wobbuffet stopped mid-sentence, suddenly realizing that he had left Jessie, James and Meowth by themselves on an island that happened to have a magic statue capable of generating unbreakable force fields on it. "Oh CRAP! Come on, we gotta get to the Wobbaku statue, I think it's being stolen!"

"What! Who would want to do that?" cried Wynaut in disbelief.

"The very team we have just severed our ties with," Milotic said gravely. "We must not allow them to succeed in their endeavors!"

All of one mind, the trio rushed towards the forest, where Cacnea happened to be hiding. Startled, she dived out of the way as they pushed their way through the bushes, leaving a trail of dislodged leaves and broken branches as they headed for the middle of the island. Cacnea got up from where she was hiding and ran after them. If these three were making a stand against Team Cipher, then so would she! She would prove herself to be evil no more!

…

Only minutes ago, the island's population of Wynaut had been gathered around their stone table, happily eating dinner from the big heap of fruit laid out before them. Now, all of them were fast asleep, snoring loudly and drooling all over the ground. The sound of the gong had been made by the frantic elder when he had noticed what the outsiders were doing to his people, and he was desperately trying to signal for help, any help at all, before he too had succumbed to deep slumber.

The Meowth balloon was hovering above the statue of Lord Wobbaku, and had been outfitted with a metal frame attached to several rocket engines that gave the balloon extra speed and lifting power. This power would be needed to move the heavy stone masterpiece off its base.

Jessie laughed. "Wahahaha! I can't believe we're actually doing it! We're pulling off a heist, and the twerp's nowhere near here, so nobody will stop us!"

"Don't count your Torchic before they hatch, Jess, we haven't gotten the statue off the ground yet," James pointed out.

"Not to worry! We won't have a problem, thanks to you and your Chimecho," Meowth said, pointing to the tired-looking Wind Chime Pokemon. "It's a good thing it got sleepy and started using Yawn attack, otherwise we might not have been able to put all those Wynaut to sleep so they wouldn't get in the way!"

"Chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" Chimecho yawned, opening his mouth wide. A large pink bubble floated out of his mouth and popped in Meowth's face, causing the pale feline to instantly fall asleep.

"All right! James, activate the grappler claw!" Jessie commanded.

"Yes ma'am!" James pulled a lever. The bottom of the balloon opened up and a large metal claw attached to a long metallic cable lowered from it. The claw closed over the dome-shaped head of Wobbaku, using pneumatics to get a firm grip on the statue. "The statue is secured!"

"All right, time to take off!" Jessie pulled a cord dangling from the balloon's igniter, increasing the amount of flame it expelled into the balloon's canvas as well as increasing the output of the rocket engines, causing them to move steadily upward, unreeling the cable attached to the claw below them…

Until they stopped with a jerk in the air, throwing the humans off balance. "What happened? Why'd we stop moving?" Jessie cried.

James looked over the side of the basket and saw that the cable attached to the statue was stretched taught, and the statue itself was still stuck in its base. "Jessie, we don't have enough lifting power to pull that statue out of its base!"

"Then we'll get more power!" She pulled the cord again, causing the flames streaming out of the engines to grow in size exponentially. The statue below them trembled as they continued pulling on it. Small cracks started to appear in its base as ever so slowly, it started to move.

Wobbuffet, Wynaut, and Milotic ran into the clearing at that point, just in time to see the Ciphers increase their rocket outputs. "What is that?" Wynaut cried.

"It's a flying machine that they use all the time. They're trying to use it to pull the statue up!" Wobbuffet explained.

Wynaut gasped. "But if they do that, the barrier will drop! And our island will be visible to the outside world!"

"That would be a most awful thing," agreed Milotic. "Wobbuffet, your people have lived here without contact from outsiders for thousands of years. If people were to find this island out of the blue, the consequences would be terrible!"

Wobbuffet nodded reluctantly. "I hate to say it, but you're right. People would come from all over and try to capture the Wynaut here, because they're pretty rare Pokemon. I hate all the people here, but that doesn't mean I want them to get captured by jerks like Team Cipher! We've gotta stop them!" He started running up the hill toward the statue, which was beginning to rise out of its base.

As Jessie laughed triumphantly in anticipation of their victory, James blinked and rubbed his eyes, not believing what he was seeing. "Jessie, look! It's Wobbuffet and one of those Wynaut from before, coming right towards us! And…omigosh! Is that a Milotic I see?"

"Milotic? Where!" Jessie glanced around anxiously before spotting the trio of Pokemon. She gasped. "It's beautiful!…Not as beautiful as me, of course. But where did that Milotic come from?"

"It must be mine!" James deduced. "Wobbuffet must have fed it that Pokeblock piece and it must have maxxed out its Beauty stats and made it evolve! Great job, Wobbuffet!" James called.

"Yes, thank you!" Jessie added. "Now I'll win those Pokemon contests for sure!"

"I refuse to aid a villain like you in any contest!" Milotic cried, spitting a powerful Water Gun at Jessie.

Jessie yelped and quickly dodged the water jet. "Wh-what do you think you're doing!"

"Milotic, fire a stronger Water Gun at the base of the claw, where it connects to the cable! A strong enough burst should break it!" Wobbuffet suggested to the Tender Pokemon.

Milotic nodded and fired a much stronger Water Gun at the claw's base, causing the cable to tremble. "Hey, I think they're trying to stop us from taking the statue!" James realized all of a sudden.

"What! How could they!" Jessie shrieked in disbelief.

"Well, this is Wobbuffet's home," James pointed out. "And by stealing the statue we are leaving it vulnerable to the outside world, so I sort of see why he would…"

"Oh shut up!" she snapped. "Wobbuffet, how could you! After all the love and care I gave you, how could you turn on me?"

Wobbuffet's blood boiled. "Love and care! You were cruel to me and hated my guts! Milotic, forget Water Gun, use Hydro Pump!"

"Right!" Milotic stopped her stream, inhaled, then spat an even more powerful water jet at the claw, causing it to shake and spark as water seeped into its joints, making the Wobbaku statue wobble in its grasp. The grip the claw had on the statue started loosening as its joints malfunctioned and flexed slightly.

"Ahhh! Jessie, we're losing our grip on the statue!" James cried. "Quick, Chimecho, Yawn at them!" Nothing happened. "Chimecho?" James rolled his eyes up and saw Chimecho was curled up on his head, sleeping like a baby.

"Never mind Chimecho, I'll take care of this!" Jessie declared. "Dustox, Seviper, go and stop them!" she cried, hurling out two Pokeballs.

They popped open in midair, releasing the poisonous moth and the dark serpent. "Blood!" Dustox shrieked.

"DEATH!" hissed Seviper.

Wynaut cried and hid behind Wobbuffet. "Big Brother, what are they?"

"Shadow Pokemon," he explained. "Pokemon whose hearts have been closed. Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you!"

"Attack the traitors! And James," Jessie said, tossing her partner a hair dryer. "Go down there and dry off the claw so it doesn't lose its grip!"

"Why do I have to do it!" James cried.

"Because Meowth's asleep," she said, pointing to the snoozing feline.

James sweatdropped. "Oh." He sighed, carefully removed Chimecho from his head, then climbed out of the basket so he could go dry off the claw.

"Now…Dustox! Seviper! Shadow Rush that Milotic!"

"Blood!"

"Death!"

The two Shadow Pokemon were surrounded with a blue-black aura as they lunged forward at the serpentine Milotic. Wobbuffet leaped in front of them. "I won't let you hurt her!" he cried, surrounding himself with the red aura of a Counter attack. The two Pokemon slammed into it, their Shadow aura clashing with the Counter aura. The double Shadow Rush, sad to say, proved to be too much for Wobbuffet's shield to take, and they smashed through it, striking the blue blob and hurling him back into Milotic, knocking both of them over. "Ugh…"

"Big brother!" cried Wynaut in horror.

Jessie cackled. "Haha! That's how Team Cipher deals with traitors! Now, use Shadow Rush again! Finish them off!"

The moth and serpent lunged forward in another double Shadow Rush at the blob. He clenched his eyes shut (well, technically they were already clenched shut) in preparation for the crushing blow, but it never came.

"Murderrrrrr!" A green blur surrounded by a blue-black aura slammed into Seviper, causing him to collide into Dustox with his Shadow Rush, instantly knocking out the moth.

"Blooood…" Dustox moaned as he fainted.

"What! Who did that!" Jessie cried.

Wobbuffet grunted and got to his feet, staring in disbelief at their savior. "No way…"

Milotic gathered her strength and looked up. "Well, this is an unexpected twist!"

"Cacnea, what are you doing!" cried James, who had climbed down to the claw and was blow-drying it with the hair dryer. "You're betraying us too!"

"Don't-murder-talk to-murder-me about-murder-betrayal!" Cacnea screamed, pointing at James with a spiked fist.

Wobbuffet's jaw dropped. "She's talking! Sort of."

"The door to her heart is opening…" Milotic observed. "Her thoughts and feelings are rushing out! Cacnea is breaking free from her Shadow Pokemon programming!"

Wynaut sweatdropped. "Huh? Hang on, I'm so confused."

"The door to her heart was closed, but it's opening! And she's on our side!" Wobbuffet explained. "She's actually helping us out! That's awesome!"

"YOU be-murder-trayed me!" Cacnea shouted, pointing at James. "I-mur-love-der-ed you! And-murder-you sent me away-murder-to be transformed into-murder-THIS!" she screamed, pounding her chest.

"Seviper, get her!" cried Jessie.

"Death!" the serpent roared, lunging at the cactus from behind.

"Cacnea, watch out!" warned Wobbuffet.

Milotic quickly fired a Water Gun at the Fang Snake, knocking his attack off course and causing him to drive his snout into the ground next to Cacnea. The cactus hopped out of the way as the dazed snake's barbed tail fell towards her, charged up a Needle Arm, and delivered a crushing uppercut to the snake's jaw, knocking Seviper's head upwards, carrying most of his body with him as he flew back through the air and smashed into a tree, knocking him out. "Now-murder-I'm gonna fucking MURDER YOOOUUU!" Bellowing, she surrounded herself with the aura of a Shadow Rush and leaped at James, who was so terrified that he almost slipped and fell off the statue and only managed to save himself by grabbing onto one of the fingers of the claw.

"C-Cacnea, return!" he cried in fear, whipping out his Pokeball and firing a red beam of light at her.

"What? Nooo-murder-ooooo!" She screamed as the beam broke through her aura and touched her, causing her to dissolve into a cloud of red energy and get sucked back into the Pokeball. He trembled, glancing at it with fear, and wondered what he had done wrong.

"Cacnea!" Wobbuffet cried. "No! She was helping us out!"

"Dustox, Seviper, return!" Jessie called out, returning her fallen Pokemon to their Pokeballs. "We'll deal with her later!" Jessie decided. "James, are you done?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah," he shouted up to her. "It's done! The claw's dry, it should work now!"

"Excellent!" Jessie pulled the lever that controlled the claw, causing it to tighten its grip again around the statue. "Hahahaha! Nice try, Wobbuffet, but what can a pair of blobs and a helpless beauty do against the mighty Team Cipher!" She yanked on the engine control cord, causing the rocket engines to increase their power to maximum, giving the balloon the power to rip the statue right out of the ground, cracking the base and sending little chips of stone flying everywhere!

"Oh no!" cried Wynaut as the sigils on the base died out. "The shield's down! The island is visible to all the world!"

James had almost lost his grip on the claw when Jessie had activated the rockets so suddenly. "Jessie, you could have waited for me to climb up before blasting off!" he cried.

"If I had, they would have gotten the opportunity to make it malfunction again," she pointed out as the balloon continued to rise into the air, supported by the flames belched from the numerous rocket engines attached to the basket. "But now they're too late! If they make the claw let go now, the statue will break when it hits the ground and it'll be useless to everyone!" She laughed as the balloon started drifting away from the clearing, hampered somewhat by the weight of the statue it carried, but still moving at a brisk pace.

"She's right," Milotic said apologetically. "I'm sorry. I couldn't attack. If I did, your people will be left with no defense."

"Yeah…" said Wobbuffet sadly. "But if the Ciphers use it, then the Wynaut will still be left with no defense!"

"Then why don't we go after them and get it back?" Wynaut suggested.

"Ohhh…how are we gonna do that? There's no way we'll catch up to it on foot, and it'll be gone for good once they make it out to sea!" he asked anxiously as the balloon retreated from them, disappearing from view as it passed behind some tall trees in the distance.

…

"THIS is how!" Wynaut said proudly, gesturing to a large square raft fashioned from well-trimmed logs, tied together by sturdy vines. It had a rudder attached to the raft by a pole driven through one of the logs on its back end, and had a sail made from trimmed palm leaves held together by vines and a mast sprouting from its center. It sat in a secret grotto dug into a cliff on the side of the island that was invisible from above, and could only be accessed through a secret tunnel concealed beneath a rock. Wobbuffet had constructed a raft and escaped the island from it in this very same grotto years ago, as had his father before him.

"Wow!" said Wobbuffet in amazement. "It looks just like the one I made! And the one Dad designed before he left!"

Wynaut nodded. "Yeah, I used the same plans you guys did. It's a good thing you hid them where gramps couldn't find them, or I'd never have been able to make it!" She glanced at the raft. "Do you think we can use it to chase that balloon thing?"

Wobbuffet glanced out through the hole in the cliff wall that opened onto the sea. The balloon could be seen moving away from the island several dozen yards away, heading to the east. "I think we can at least follow it, as long as the wind and tide hold out."

"I can handle the tide part," Milotic offered, sliding gracefully into the water. Her head poked out a second later. "Get on the raft and hold on tight!"

Wobbuffet and Wynaut hopped onto the raft and grabbed onto the mast. "What's she gonna do?" Wynaut asked.

"I'm not sure…but she said to hold on tight, so that's what we're gonna do!" Wobbuffet said firmly.

Milotic's eyes started glowing blue as she dove back into the water. The water around the raft started to ripple and swell up, pushing the raft out of the grotto atop a large wave! The siblings cried out as the raft rocked on top of the wave before being flung into the air, crashing down into the water some distance away as the wave subsided. The raft kept going for several feet before slowing down, propelled from the momentum by the wave. "Wh-what was that?" gasped the frightened Wynaut.

Wobbuffet started to answer but stopped, seeing the silhouette of a long and elegant serpentine figure swim by them in the water. Then the sea started to bulge up beneath them again. "I think this is a Surf attack!" he cried. "Hang on, we're going flying again!"

They held on tightly to the mast as the water swelled beneath them, forming another, larger wave which carried them quite a distance before collapsing again, sending the raft flying and causing it to skip over the water a few times before it started to slow again. But then Milotic swam past them again, creating another Surf attack. The resulting wave was bigger by far than the last two, and it rose from the sea, towering at least fifteen feet into the air as the raft bobbed dangerously atop its crest.

Even though they were in a pretty dangerous position at the moment, Wobbuffet couldn't help laughing from the rush of adrenaline he felt. This was what he had wanted! This was freedom! Flying without having to be sent through the air by a horrible explosion! It was wonderful! "Big brother, this is kind of fuuuuun!" Wynaut cried as the wave collapsed and the raft was launched through the air.

"This is what being alive is all about!" Wobbuffet yelled as they splashed down, skipping forward violently, the water craft bouncing a few inches off the water with each skid, but they were moving faster than ever! "Action! Excitement! Freedom! We were dead back on that island, little sister," he said as the sail inflated, catching an easterly wind. "But now that we're leaving…now we are truly born into the world!"

Milotic's head surfaced from the water to their side as the wind and the momentum from the Surf attacks propelled them through the ocean, racing after the balloon, cutting a white V of foam through the water. "At this rate, there's no way we'll lose them!" she cried happily.

"But what will we do when we catch up to them?" Wynaut asked.

Wobbuffet grinned and shrugged. "I don't have a clue! But we'll deal with it when it happens! That's how life works, you know, there's no telling what the future holds, so the best thing you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride!"

Wynaut laughed. "If that's how life works, then I think I'll enjoy it!"

"So do I!" agreed Wobbuffet with a laugh. "So do I!"

The first hints of dawn appeared as the sun started to rise over the horizon, its rays surrounding the silhouetted Meowth balloon and the captive statue in the distance and making it look wreathed in glorious, glorious light as it shone. To the side of the raft, a group of Wailmer arced through the air as they leaped out of the water to greet the dawn, the droplets of water thrown up by the passage sparkling like diamonds as the rising sun shone on them. The Wailmer were soon followed by an enormous Wailord, which elicited a gasp of awe from Wynaut as it flew over their little raft and splashed down behind them, the ripples from its submergence carrying their raft for a distance just as Milotic's Surfs had. A group of Wingull flew overhead, squawking happily at the travelers below them.

There was no telling what lay in store for the trio as they pursued the statue thieves, but in all three of their minds they shared a single thought: it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.

…

Wow, I didn't expect this chapter to be this long. I hope that not all of my future chapters will be this long, otherwise it's going to take forever to finish this story! (And my hands will hurt like hell.) Please review!