Episode 15: Motel Trouble
"Too bad we aren't going to be passing by Meteor Falls," Laura said as the humans walked down the craggy road down the hills. Chris and Gale had gone down south towards Rustboro along with Nikki's family, bringing us back to the normal group.
"It would take too long," Nikki explained as I rode on his shoulders. "Meteor falls proper is behind us. We would have to head back and then come back,"
"Well, that's a letdown. I was looking forward to seeing the falls again," Laura groaned.
"We can always come back some other time," I pointed out. "Plus we have to make it to Fallarbor to meet with Brendan anyway,"
Nikki translated for me and soon Laura gave a hesitant nod.
"Guess you have a point Brook," She said as I flashed her a smug grin.
"Why do you even want to go a second time?" Nikki asked. "It's not like there's much to see,"
"I rushed past it the first time around. After I made it to the other side, one of the people coming in from the other side told me that I had missed out on seeing wild Bagon," She looked back down at Nikki and gave him a questioning look. "By the way, do you have any idea about what it was that Brendan wanted to talk to you about?"
"Not a clue," Nikki admitted. "All he said was that he really needed to see me in person in Fallarbor before a certain date,"
"That's weird, I wonder what it could be," Laura added as the ground around us started to soften up and turn into dirt. It looked like we were almost out of the hills and back onto steady ground.
"Don't mind me," I said as I got up from my spot on Nikki's shoulders and jumped down onto the ground.
"You alright?" Nikki asked.
"I'm fine, just figured that I would get a bit of walking in," I told him as a pokéball on his chest opened and Khesen emerged. I gave the Breloom a quick wave. "Hey there big mushroom buddy, what's brings you out today?"
"Khesen, everything alright?" Nikki said before Khesen looked down at me.
"Felt like stretching my legs out a bit while the sun was still out," He explained before leaving me to translate to Nikki.
Our trainer gave Khesen a quick nod after I explained things.
"I don't see why not," Nikki said before turning back towards the path, Khesen and I following behind him.
We walked in relative silence for a while after that, the ground beneath us getting even softer as we started seeing more grass.
"So my project is coming along pretty well," I told Khesen who gave a vague hum. "I think that I have it almost figured out,"
"You deserve it, Vimilky and I have helped you enough to know how much work you've put into it," He explained while walking forward.
"Oh, thank you," I said with a mild blush hand rubbing the back of my head.
We fell back into a comfortable silence after that, not a word being said by anyone until we passed by a small tree that caught Khesen's eye.
"Brook," Khesen finally said breaking the silence after we passed it.
"Yeah?" I said as I glanced up at him before keeping my eyes on the path in front of me. The ground was getting easy to travel on, but I still needed to keep an eye out for the stray rock.
"I wanted to thank you," He explained as I tried to figure out that he was talking about.
"About what?" I asked, nothing in particular coming to mind.
He paused before stretching his arms out just enough that he could hold them in front of his face for a close look. "For bringing me with you on this journey," He explained.
"Oh, right. I was the one who did that," I said as I remembered that day and the headache that had come with it.
"If I had never come with you, I don't think I would have ever have made it this far," He explained as he opened and closed his little red pincers. "I probably would have still been a little Shroomish out in the middle of nowhere,"
"Wouldn't you be a little Shroomish working for one of those dumb neo-teams?" I pointed out as Khesen winced.
"Oh, right. I almost forgot about that part," He said as he placed his arms down. "Or rather, I was trying to forget,"
"I wouldn't blame you. Those guys were idiots," I said as a laugh forced its way out of my mouth.
"Like I said, I'm thankful you managed to convince me into that pokéball," He said with a small grin.
"Yeah, you're right," I told him as we walked for a bit longer. I looked up at Khesen suddenly and said the first thing on my mind. "Have you noticed that Nikki's never caught a pokémon?"
"Didn't he catch you?" He asked me with a raised eyebrow.
"Not really. I would say that it was more like we came to an agreement and then we started traveling together," I explained, slimming over most of what happened.
"So you agreed to go with him without a fight, you convinced me to come with you guys, and Vimilky smuggled herself onto the team," He summed up. "So he's never actually caught a pokémon then,"
"You know how humans tend to keep pokémon in teams of six?" I asked Khesen who gave me a quick nod. "I wonder how many more teammates we'll get before he actually catches one of them,"
"The fifth," Khesen said without even thinking about it. "Our fifth will be his first catch,"
"Wow, you think that the next one will be a non-catch too?" I asked as I leaned forward and started giggling.
"What are you two talking about back there?" The trainer in question asked as he glanced back at us.
"Oh nothing," I messaged him as I smiled at Khesen who responded back with his own small smile.
I wondered what Milky was up to when both of the humans of the group came to a stop. I tiled my head to the side before Khesen and I ran up to see what was going on.
"Oh wow," I let out as I looked at the gigantic, pristine lake in front of us. The water shone in the sun, reflecting the light and making the whole thing glow. I took a moment to take it all in… and then immediately remembered that we would have to somehow cross this thing.
"So Nikki my wonderful trainer… how we getting to the other side of this place?" I asked, hoping that the answer wasn't what it had been last time we had found a lake like this. I was in no mood to walk around this one.
"We're taking a boat," He said as he pointed off to the side towards a small dock that I hadn't noticed before. Around the dock where a small collection of buildings. In fact from here it looked like they didn't even have a pokécenter.
"A small boat leaves from that dock and crosses the lake once a day," Nikki explained further as I noticed something move off in the distance. "We have to hurry though, the boat only leaves once a day and we don't want to…,"
"Is it that one?" I said both mentally and aloud as I pointed out a small ship leaving from the port and quickly making its way across the water.
"Yeah, that the one," Nikki said carefully before letting out a sigh. "That's the one we needed,"
"It's going pretty fast, why does it only leave once a day?" Laura brought up. As I watched the ship speed up across the not-that-large lake, I had the same question. "When I took it, I was too excited to really question it,"
"Low demand from what I've heard," Nikki explained in a tired tone as he watched the boat speed away. "Not enough people cross the lake when it's easier to just take a ship across the sea form Fallarbor and Rustboro. That's why we're going to have wait until tomorrow to get to that town," He pointed towards the other side of the lake where I could see some vague outlines in the distance that might have been buildings.
I guess that was Fallarbor town.
"So what's the plan?" Laura asked as Nikki groaned and searched his pocket for his wallet.
"You up for a night in a hotel?" He said before jutting his thumb towards the small outpost around the port.
We soon came to a bit of an issue on the hotel front.
"I can believe that it's come to this," Laura said from right next to me as we stood in the center of the street and looked at the two buildings which were across said street from each other.
The first was a tiny looking motel that looked more like a place for catching bug type pokémon then a place to sleep for the night. It was a long building with a single floor. The roof was covered in cheap-looking tile that had seen better days and the walls were painted in an ugly beige that seemed to be peeling off anyway. Right outside the lot was a big sign that screamed 'cheap rooms' like it was the only positive part of staying here.
Option two was a much taller building with a fresh coat of paint. I could hear people playing in a pool from all the way over here, and all-in-all, it looked like a nice place to stay the night. The only issue was the big guy at the door that had let us know that they were full.
"So what do we do?" Laura asked. I looked at both of them again and find myself tongue-tied.
"Well, I guess we don't have much of a choice," I finally admitted. "What do you think Brook?" I glanced downwards expecting to see the Kirlia next to me. Khesen had gone back into his pokéball once we had reached the buildings, but Brook has decided to stay by my side.
Or at least she had since she wasn't there anymore. Instead, she was standing at the edge of the lake looking over the water. "Brook?" I asked as I got closer.
"Do you think we could just swim across?" She asked without a hint of humor to her question. "I think we would make it,"
"I don't think that's such a good idea Brook," I told her as she turned back towards the water.
"I don't want to go into that place," She explained as she glanced back at the hotel. "But I don't want to just hide in my pokéball and leave you alone in their either,"
"Why, what's wrong with the place… besides the obvious?" I asked as I looked back at the motel.
"Well, I don't really bring it up too often, but I've been practicing a bit with my empathy sense," She explained as my eyes widened. "I have to force myself to remember to use it, and I can't use it for very long… but I used it while we were standing in front of the motel,"
"What did you see?" I asked as I started feeling a pit in my stomach.
"I'm… not really sure. I tried to use my empathy sense cause the place looked 'weird' and I felt… bad," She said like she had trouble coming to that last word. "I think that someone with more practice with their empathy sense would be able to tell you more, but that was all I was able to get off the place,"
"Because we don't have enough trouble," I muttered as I felt juts how light my pocket felt. "And you have no idea what this bad feeling could be, right?"
Brook just gave me a head shake.
"Well it's either this or we try to find a place to camp outside for the night," I explained as the latter started sounding better and better. But as much as I wanted to argue with myself, I had to admit that even the worst motel would be better than camping out.
"How about this," I finally came to decision. "We stay in the motel, but we keep an eye open for anything… weird,"
Brook put her hand to her chin and tilted her head to the side a bit as she thought it over.
"I guess that can work," She finally said. "But how exactly would that work? Would we sleep in shifts or something?"
"We'll figure it out if Laura agrees with us," I told her as we started walking back to the girl in question was still waiting for us in front of the motel.
"So what was that all about," She demanded as I let out a nervous chuckle and rubbed the back of my head.
"Brook got a bad feeling off this place," I explained as Brook gave Laura a quick nod before glaring at the building in question.
"Well that's worrying," She said as gave the motel an apprehensive look.
"Yeah, I had the idea of keeping an eye open, just in case,' I explained. "We're only going to stay for a night anyway. Once we make it across, we'll be able to stay the night in a proper pokécenter,"
"I guess you have a point… But maybe we should at least check the place out before we make a decision," She pointed out before walking towards the door to the main office.
The inside of the motel was just as sketchy as the outside. The walls were made of old wood that looked slightly moldy in certain areas. The building itself creaked a bit from time to time, and worst of all, there was a slight layer of dust on just… everything.
The room itself was pretty simple looking. The floor had a checkerboard pattern with a single rub near the entrance. Off to the side, there was a single table with some chairs around it. Next to that was a water dispenser that had run out of water. To the other side of the room was a tall desk with no chair as well as a simple PC.
At the very back of the room, across from the door, was the main desk where two people were speaking.
"For the last time, there's nothing wrong with my PC," The red-faced older man behind the desk argued. He was wearing a cheap-looking purple and brown pinstripe suit. He had an ugly mustache that looked like a small fuzzy pokémon had crawled above his lips and had decided to just stay there. Atop his head was a full set of brown hair with streaks of lighter brown that seemed… off for some reason.
"I'm telling you that I only need to check for a few seconds," The woman he was arguing with muttered angrily as she placed her hands on the desk with a loud smack.
She looked a bit out of place in the cheap building. She wore a green dress with black leggings underneath. She wore a black bandanna over her head and her red hair, most of which was in a pair of pigtails. On her currently, irritated face were a pair of simple glasses that looked ready to fall off.
"And I'm telling you that the PC is for customers only," The man behind the counter argued back. "Besides, I just had some people come in and check out a few days ago. They said it was fine," His eyes narrowed as he noticed us. He turned back to the lady who he pointed at. "Now get out, I have customers,"
"This isn't over," She said before she got up and adjusted her glasses. She turned around and started walking towards us. She glanced over at us as she passed. "Don't use the PC storage system here," She muttered before leaving out the door we had come in through.
"Trainers!" The purple suited man said with a toothy grin as he got out of his chair and held his arms out at us. "It's always good to see travelers passing through old Rason's motel,"
"Um… hello?" I told the man as both Laura and Brook slightly shifted around so that I was in front of both of them. I took a second glance at Brook whose eye twitched a bit before she took a deep, calming breath. "How much for a room with two beds for the night?"
"For two trainers in the middle of a pretty dead season? Low rates my young friends, low rated indeed," He said before giving us some numbers that would have sounded amazing if the rest of the motel didn't look like… what it looked like.
"I think that sounds pretty good," I said before turning to Laura. "What do you think?"
"Sounds fine," She said before a bit of nervous laughter escaped her lips. "But, um… Mr. Rason, what was that lady from before talking about?"
The man's face immediately soured, his faces scrunching up like he had just bit into an Aspear berry that someone had told him tasted like a Pecha berry.
"Oh don't you worry about that," He barked. "Crazy girl thinks just because she knows her way around a computer she has the right to just snoop around other people's systems. Don't you worry about a thing my young friends, my PC is safe and secure for all your pokémon swapping needs,"
"Well I only have three pokémon on me so that won't be much of an issue for me anyway, but thanks," I explained to the man as I glanced at the dusty old machine in the corner of the room. "So about that room,"
"I don't like that human," I sent Nikki as we sat at a bench as far from the motel as we could get. Well, Laura was sitting. I was standing on the bench to make up for my short height and Nikki was standing in front of us. "He gives me the creeps and if he had gotten even a bit closer, I would have blasted that fake hair off his head,"
"Yes, all true," Nikki said with a solemn nod. "But is he the source of the bad feeling you got when you used your empathy sense?"
I let out a sigh and felt the sweet temptation to lie. As fun as that might have been, I had to admit that it would cause way too many problems if I did that now.
"I don't know," I admitted while sighing.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Laura asked after Nikki translated for me.
"I mean that when I looked around with my empathy sense, I felt that bad feeling everywhere," I explained as I shivered a bit at the memory of what I felt. "It was kind of like… a smell so bad that it covers everything so you can't tell where it's coming from,"
"Well there's a mental picture that I didn't need," Laura said with a shiver. "So it could be him, or it could not be him?"
"That's pretty much it," I confirmed for her before we all turned towards the motel. "Anyone else super suspicious about that PC though?"
"Same," Nikki added as he placed his hand to his brow and scrunched his eyes closed. "Why did that lady in the green dress look so familiar?"
"You think?" Laura asked. "She didn't look too special to me,"
I don't think I've ever seen her either," I added. "So either you were imagining it or you're the only one who knows who she is,"
"True, But I'm sure that I know who she is," He said before humming. He opened his eyes again and muttered to himself. "But besides that… I wonder what it was about that PC that worried…"
Nikki's muttering cut off as his eyes went wide.
"The PC, that's it," He said before suddenly punching his palm. He turned towards us with a wild grin. "I know who she is,"
"Well, go on," I told him as he kept smiling at us while digging into his Pokénav. He turned the screen on and went through it for a while before finding what he was looking for.
"It's her," He said as he turned the pokénav towards us at such a height that both Laura and I could see the screen.
"Nikki, as smart as you probably feel, I have to point out that I still can't read," I pointed out as I saw a picture of the lady in green surrounded by useless text.
"Oh right," He said wincing. "We should really get around to doing something about that…" He trailed off a bit.
"But not right now right?" I asked for clarification.
"No not right now," He said maybe a bit… too quickly. "No this is Lanette. She's one of the people who helped set up the pokémon storage system here in Hoenn," He explained before pausing. "Well I say 'helped' but from what I read, most of the work was either her or Bill himself,"
"Oh she worked with Bill?" Laura said as her eyes widened in surprise. "Now that's one famous person that even I know about,"
"What do you mean?" Nikki asked as I looked at the photo again. I might have been new to the human world, but I understood the pokémon transfer system. Warmth did a pretty good job of describing it to me in case it ever came up.
"Well, I'm not that good with famous people, like at all," Laura explained as my eyes narrowed at the photo. If this was the lady who helped create that system, and she was saying that there was something wrong with it… "I can't even tell you who the Kanto champion right now,"
"Isn't the current Kanto champion…?"
"Do you guys think we should go and talk to her?" I cut Nikki off while pointing at the screen. "Maybe finding out what her problem with the motel's PC is will be a clue,"
"Oh, right," Nikki said sheepishly as he put is pokénav away. "I think she lives close by too. Why don't we stop by for a visit?"
"What are you two talking about?" Laura asked before Nikki translated what I had said to her. By the time he was done, Laura was nodding along and ready to head out as well.
I jumped off the bench and looked up at Nikki. "So where does this… you said Lanette right?" I waited for Nikki to give me a quick nod to make sure that I had gotten the lady's name right. "Where does she live?"
"I'm pretty sure she lives just a few minutes southeast in a lone building over by the cliffs," He explained as he pointed over in that general direction.
"Well, what are we waiting for, let's go," I declared as I started walking in that direction, Nikki and Laura following after me.
The trip to Lanette's house was easy enough. Once we made it out of the more urban area, we quickly found ourselves back on rocky terrain. One thing I noticed, was that the further east we got, the higher the cliffs got. Once we started seeing some really nasty drops, I suddenly became thankful that we had taken the long way around through the flatter parts of the hills.
As we got closer, the forest also started thickening up. The loose collections of tiny trees and shrubs that we had seen on our trip through the hills quickly morphed into a full forest filled with thick trunked trees that were hard to see past.
Before we knew it, we were in the middle of dense woodland, the sounds of nature and wild pokémon coming from all around us.
"Hey I think I see it up ahead," Laura said as she jumped up a bit and squinted her eyes through the crowded woods. I followed her eyes and squinted the best I could. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see what Laura was seeing.
This called for drastic measures.
I searched around for a tree with low enough branches for this to work. Once I had spotted one, I angled my arms downwards and made some quick calculations. I reached deep inside me for the power I needed.
"Here I go," I announced to Nikki before I let loose a boost that sent me flying into the air. I smirked even as Nikki and Laura both jumped. I cut it early on, leaving me freely sailing through the air. I took the best of what Gale taught me and angled myself so that my feet would hit the branch.
I winced in pain as my feet landed right on the rough wood, and then smiled as I put my hands on my hips and let out a triumphant laugh.
"I did it," I announced both mentally and aloud before letting out another laugh.
"Yeah you did it alright," I heard Nikki say from below as I scanned the area around us for Lanette's place. My eyes quickly locked onto a small wooden building covered in solar panels and covered in wires and a gigantic dish on the top.
Based on my astute and genius observations, I came to the conclusion that this was Lanette's house.
It also helped that the lady in question was bursting out of the house and looking around franticly. She stopped upon spotting us, giving us a confused look as I waved at her from my branch.
"And that' why we're here," I explained to Lanette who still looked slightly annoyed. Well, she looked annoyed at Brook, which I guess was an improvement from when she was annoyed at all of us. "And let me say again that I am so sorry about Brook letting out a psychic blast while you were working,"
The Kirlia in question was currently sitting to my right with a cup of hot tea in her hand and a satisfied smile on her face. We had gotten lucky that Lanette was nice enough to let us into her home and sit on her couch to hear us out instead of just slamming the door in our faces.
The extremely patient women in question sighed as she rubbed her temples.
"I guess I do owe you all a bit of explanation after being so cryptic earlier," she said before glancing over to a computer on the other side of a sea of cluttered metal, stacked books, and machine parts. "A few days ago I started seeing some suspicious activity in the network. Now a little bit of weirdness now and again is always there. Most of it is pokédex modders using the network in new ways," She explained as I tried not to think about the modded pokédex in my pocket.
"There's pokédex modders?" I coughed in what I hoped was a good acting performance. Based on the way that both Laura and Brook were looking away from me, I guess it wasn't.
"Yeah, they're not that common, and most of what they do is pretty harmless," She explained like there was nothing off about our conversation. Maybe I was a better actor then I thought. "Not only that but they know that they walk a fine line. Any of them that start messing with the important stuff and the rest will turn on them,"
"So modded pokédexes are okay then?" Laura asked as she glanced over at me.
"As long as you don't use them for anything illegal, I don't really see any problem with them," Lanette said before taking a quick sip of her own tea. "Of course you would have to find a pokédex modder in the first place, and those guys like to stay underground,"
"I see," I said carefully before attempting to change the topic. "So you were talking about some weird activity right?"
"Oh right," Lanette said as though she had almost forgotten the reason we were all talking in the first place. "Well like I said, a few days ago I spotted something… weird. A whole bunch of files circulating around the network. I took a closer look and figured out that all of the files had software on them that reordered a list of every account number that it came in contact with. After that, it would send that list back to a particular account,"
"So who does the account belong too?" I asked as I tried to figure out what someone could do with a list of account numbers and nothing else.
"That's just the thing. The account number is of a trainer who started their journey three years ago, got two badges, and then retired," She explained as she swirled the tea in her cup around. "He used the account for the few weeks that he was traveling then it was never used again. Until that is, someone logged into it from the motel PC,"
"Let me guess," Laura said while looking like she was holding back a groan. "When you called the guy, he said he didn't use it?"
"He doesn't even live in Hoenn anymore," Lanette shook her head sadly. "And since he has no access to any pokémon able to teleport him that far, I don't think it was him,"
"I can see why you wanted to check the PC," I added as Brook nodded along with me.
"I knew that Motel guy looked sketchy," Brook messaged me as she crossed her legs glared her eyes. "So know the question is what do we do about it?"
"That is a good question," I told her as she smirked at me and punched her hand into her palm.
"I say we stake out the PC at night and wait for someone to use it," Brook grinned as I let out a sigh.
"Who is he talking too?" I heard Lanette ask Laura. The system administrator was watching me with a worried look.
"Oh, Brook can talk to him psychically," Laura quickly explained. "You get used to it after a while,"
"And the Kirlia in question was asking what we're going to do about the problem in the system, and then suggested a stakeout for whoever used the PC,"
"Considering the fact that the guy wouldn't even let me touch the PC, I don't think that will…" Lanette trailed off before holding up her finger at us and putting her tea down on the table in front of us. I watched her get up and then almost dance through the field of clutter towards a PC.
"While we can't do a physical stakeout for obvious reasons, there's no reason we can't do a virtual one," She explained as she typed away. "I can set it up so that the system will alert me if anyone logs onto that account from that PC,"
"And then what?" Laura asked as Lanette's fingers stopped mid-type. The system administrator slowly turned towards Laura, the light hitting her glasses in such a way that we couldn't see her eyes.
"I have no idea," She confessed. "Honestly, I already alerted the Police. Even if the person who did this had no bad intentions, both this kind of software and using someone else's account like this is already pretty illegal,"
"But you said that you found out about this three days ago?" Brook asked which I helpfully translated for her.
"Well it's illegal, but it's not 'major crime, go to jail' kind of illegal," She explained as she scratched the side of her face. "More of 'Get caught, pay a fine, and get a warning' kind of crime. It's such a low priority that Fallarbor police already told me that they wouldn't be able to send anyone until the contest they're holding there tomorrow ends,"
"You guys take contests really seriously in this region," Laura commented as she gave me a pointed look.
"What can I say, they're a regional pastime," I said with a nervous laugh.
I mean, I wasn't so naïve that I was unaware that the popular view of contests outside of Hoenn was 'that weird thing that people from Hoenn like'. And while I liked watching contests as much as any other native-born child of the tropical region… even I had to admit that it was a little weird.
Not that I would ever let that slip through my lips. I liked not being disowned by my family, thank you very much.
"Yeah, a regional pastime that's keeping the police too busy to come help with this," Lanette sighed. "They said to contact them again if thing escalates to a major crime. The problem with that is that my main goal is avoiding the damage that said escalation would entail,"
"Well then," Brook said as she leaned back and stretched her hands out over the couch. "Sounds like she could use some help. She already has a way to warn her if someone accesses the account right?"
She waited for me to translate and to get a full set of nods from the three of us.
"Well, why don't we just do the stakeout anyway?" She proposed. "We'll wait in our room and if the account activates, she can call you on your pokénav,"
"That… sounds like a plan," Lanette said, noticeable avoiding using any qualifier before the word plan. "I mean, I guess I can give you guys my number and call you if anything comes up if you don't mind,"
"We were planning on doing something like this because the place felt off to my empathy sense remember?" Brook pointed out which I then translated.
"That's right. We were talking about that, weren't we?" Laura added. "Might as well lend Lanette a hand while we're at it, right?"
I winced at the apparent plan coming together. I glanced between Brook, Laura, and Lanette before letting out a sigh. I placed my hand on my hip and gave in to where this was going.
"Looks like we're doing a stakeout,"
"I hate this so much," I said to myself as I sat on the weirdly uncomfortable bed that the motel had provided. It was weirdly spongy in places and then too hard in other places, and the places in-between were almost nonexistent. I had even checked the other bed in case it had been any different, and it hadn't been.
It was enough to make me feel bad for the two humans that would have to sleep on the things.
Said humans in question were currently out shopping at a nearby convenience store for some food. The motel hadn't offered us anything, and we were a bit low on supplies so it had been the best plan. Of course, I had offered to stay behind and keep an eye out on everyone's stuff.
It had been my idea, staying behind. I wanted to go and grab a few treats for myself, but I didn't trust the motel owner one bit. Was he the kind of person to rob his costumers? I had no clue but that was a risk I wasn't going to take.
I glanced at the two backpacks laid down on the other bed and smiled smugly. No one was going to be taking any of our stuff. Or at least, no one would be taking Nikki's and Laura's stuff. I didn't really have stuff besides my bandana and hair ties.
"I should get more stuff," I pondered as I rocked back and forth with a small frown on my face. "But what kind of stuff?"
I thought it over for a while, but by the time Nikki and Laura got back from the store, I had nothing.
"So I think our best bet is to sleep in shifts," Nikki said as the three of us sat around in a somewhat circle, the food heating up off to the side. "That way all three of us get some sleep in and we'll still be ready to react if something happens,"
"Sounds like a plan," Laura said as we heard a ding from the old microwave that came with the room.
We ate quickly before hunkering down for the night. Nikki and I practiced some more with his psychic abilities while Laura texted someone on her own pokénav.
"Are you sure you'll be able to handle this?" Nikki asked me as Laura laid down and fell asleep right away. After a quick discussion, I had gotten the first shift of the night.
"Don't you worry about a thing," I assured Nikki as I laid my hand down on his pokénav. He had set it down on the table that I had been sitting on, right next to me. "I'll let you know if Lanette calls or anything weird happens,"
"Okay then, Are you sure that you remember what time to wake me up to switch?" I rolled my eyes a bit at his nagging despite knowing that it was coming from a good place.
"Of course I do," I messaged him before telling him the exact time that I was supposed to wake him up. He wished me luck one last time before turning off the lights and drifting to sleep.
I felt my skin crawl as I glanced around the now dark room. This place was creepy enough without the extra level of creepiness the dark provided. Well, it was something that I was just going to have to power through. I had my mission, and there was nothing that was going to be able to distract me from it.
An hour later, I sat defeated and bored out of my mind. I thought stakeouts were supposed to be this exciting thing where the bad guys showed up right away? Why hadn't they come yet?
"I need to think of something to do to keep from losing my mind," I muttered to myself as I looked around the room. I searched for something, anything, that could distract me from how bored I was.
I let out a sigh as I failed to find anything in the room before I glanced down at the pokénav. Nikki had explained to me how it worked, for the most part. Not being able to read would normally complicate things a bit, but not for what I wanted to do.
I pressed the main screen and watched as it filled the room with a soft blue light that I quickly angled away from Nikki and Laura. Last thing I wanted to wake them up too early. I waited a bit before continuing, making sure that I hadn't accidentally woke them up.
When they failed to even turn in their sleep, a miracle considering how uncomfortable those beds were, I kept going. I pressed a button on the screen that looked like a folded up paper and watched as it grew and unfolded out into a map.
It was still so strange to see the world laid out like this, a flat image with everything laid out just like that.
I shook my head, trying to get my head back on track as my eyes went up to the upper left corner of the map.
I found the little marker that represented our location easily enough. It was right there, below the large blue blob that I figured was the lake. On the other side was another dot that I guessed was Fallarbor Town.
I wondered for a moment just what it was that Branden wanted to talk to Nikki about. Hopefully, it was good news. Who knew, maybe I would even get to talk to Warmth again. That would be nice.
I wondered for a moment if she had heard about what had happened with the battle with Flannery and its aftermath. I felt my cheeks flush a bit as I imagined her standing over me with a look of disappointment on her face.
Well, I would just have to hope that she hadn't heard about that.
I looked back at the map and followed the route that we were apparently going to take after leaving Fallarbor. From what Nikki had told me, we were leaving from Fallarbor eastwards, then going down south in order to go around the mountain, and then back to Lavaridge.
From there, I was pretty sure that Nikki was planning to cross the desert into the eastern half of Hoenn. There was apparently a small pass through the mountains that walled of the eastern border of the desert that we were going to pass through.
Maybe the stuff I should get should include sunblock and a hat? It would come in handy considered how hot the desert was supposed to be.
From there was Fortree city and from there… well, I wasn't actually sure. Nikki had never mentioned where he had been planning on going after that. I wasn't even sure if he knew where he was going after that. We would have four badges at that point, maybe it would be a good time to head back to Petalburg?
My musing was interrupted when the map in front of me faded away, only to be replaced with an image of Lanette with tow buttons below her, one green and the other red. I pressed the green button without wasting a second.
"Hello, anyone there?" She asked as she appeared on the screen. The light in her room was lit up, and I could see her stuff all over the place behind her. I picked up the pokénav and angled it so that she could see me better. She blinked at the screen as I became visible. "Oh it's the Kirlia,"
"Yeah, it's me," I chirped at her knowing full well that she couldn't understand me.
"Of course it goes down when the pokémon is on watch," She muttered as I tried to smile despite my annoyance. I was just as capable as the two humans I was traveling with, thank you very much. "Just go wake up Nicholas and Laura,"
I grumbled over as I jumped onto Nikki's bed and started shaking his shoulder. He woke surprisingly quickly. He must not have been as immune to the bad bed as I thought he was. He let out a yawn as he slowly got to his knees and started rubbing his eyes.
"Brook, why did you…" He started to ask before freezing in place. I was about to poke him to see if he was alright when his eyes flew open. "Brook, what's going on?"
"What's going on is that its ShowTime," Lanette explained from the pokénav as Nikki got up from the bed and rushed over to wake Laura up. "You two need to get up and handle this,"
"What's going on?" Laura asked as she got up, her eyes locking onto Lanette.
"Our little hacker just accessed the account and they're escalating," She explained in a hurried tone. "You have to get to that PC right now!"
"What's going on?" Nikki asked as he and Laura both put on their shoes as I jumped onto Nikki's shoulder, ready to ride along.
"They're uploading a program onto the network that does a lot worse than just give the user a bunch of account names," Lanette explained as Nikki grabbed the pokénav and ran out the door, me on his shoulder and Laura on his heels. "This new program is designed to intercept any pokémon that get moved around by the system. They've turned that PC into a pokémon stealing machine!"
I ran across the lot as quickly as my legs could move me. If Lanette was right about this program, and she had no reason to be, then this was huge. Tonight was the night before a contest, who knew how many people were switching around their team in preparation for it. If even a few of them got stolen…
I knew as much about the black market of Illegal pokémon selling as the next guy, and even I knew that contest pokémon would be worth a lot of money.
There was no way that I was about to let that happen. Lanette said that I needed to get to that PC and shut it down, and that's what I was going to do.
I grit my teeth and charged forward at the door to the lobby.
"Get ready," I told brook as I angled myself so that I would hit the door with the shoulder she wasn't ridding on.
I slammed into the door, wincing in pain as my shoulder opened the thing.
I stumbled into the room as Brook jumped off my shoulder, somersaulted in the air and landed on the floor, her arms stretched out and aimed towards the PC.
"Freeze dirtbags," She said mentally in a strangely echoey voice as the figures standing around the PC looked around the room.
"We didn't do anything!" They both said as they threw their hands into the air.
They were strangely short. I had been expecting someone a bit older to be doing this kind of crime. And why did their outline look a little familiar?
"Nikki, did you find them," I head Laura ask as the lights came on in the room.
Standing in front of us was a pair of young boys wearing…
Team Neo-Aqua uniforms, because of course, they were.
"It's you guys?" I ask as the pair glanced at me and then at each other.
"Hey wait, what are we doing?" One asked before turning to the other.
"Yeah what are we doing, this guy's just some punk kid like us," The other one said.
"We can totally take them," The first one said as he put his arms down and started reaching for his belt.
A blast of psychic energy fired off from Brook's hand before I could get a word out. The energy rushed right past the Neo-aqua grunt's head before it slammed into the wall behind him. We all slowly turned towards Brook who was still holding her arms out and had a dangerous looking grin on her face.
"I said to freeze," Brook messaged in the echoey voice as the two Neo-Aqua's starred at her.
"Did that pokémon just talk?" One asked the other.
"I think it did," The other replied as Brook clicked her tongue at them in annoyance.
"Considering what you just tried to do, a talking pokémon should be the least of your worries," She said, sounding noticeable tougher than normal.
"When did you learn how to mentally speak with other humans?" I asked her as she gave me a sheepish smile.
"Oh I've been practicing here and there," She explained, her voice back to normal. "The trick is that instead of trying to speak to one specific person, it's more like I'm sending out a general broadcast to everyone close to me,"
"So you still can't talk personally to anyone but me then," I said as I kept my eyes on the two Neo-Aqua guys.
"Yeah it also doesn't help that I can't control who hears the message," She explained. "If they're in range, they hear it, no matter what,"
"What do you kids think you're doing?" I heard someone yell from behind me. At the door was the suited man from before who was glaring at us.
"Mr. Ransom!" Both of the Neo-Aqua guys said at once.
"I told you two that you could use my PC for your plan if you didn't get caught," He barked at them. "And what do you all this?"
"It wasn't our fault," the first one said.
"Yeah, I don't know how they caught us," The other one argued.
"Wait, you knew what they were up to?" Laura demanded from the motel guy as she reached for a pokéball. "You're just as much of a criminal as those two,"
"Watch your mouth brat," He yelled as his hair started shifting around. "I knew you two were trouble when you walked in. Go Zigzagoon!"
We all kind of watched as the brown mop on the man's head jumped forward, revealing it to be a small pokémon.
"Go, Doduo," She called out, not even batting at an eye to the strange development. There was a flash of light in the room as the large bird appeared in the room and starred down the Zigzagoon.
This was then followed up by two more flashes coming from behind me. Brook and I turned back around towards the two Neo-Aqua grunts who each had a pokémon in front of them.
"Ugh, I got distracted," Brook old me while growling as she starred down the two pokémon in front of her.
To her left was a leafy-green pokémon with bright red lips and a flat disc on their head that I knew as a Lombre. To her right was a white monkey that I knew far too well to call it anything but a Vigoroth.
"This the best you got?" Brook demanded as she looked ready to fight both pokémon at once. As though I was really going to let her get away with that. I grabbed a second pokéball from my chest and tossed it forward. There was one last flash of light in the dark room and there was a large mushroom pokémon standing next to Brook.
"Brook, Khesen, get ready!"
"I got green, you get white," I told Khesen as he put up his claws while I aimed both arms at the green thing.
"Agreed," Khesen said as Nikki narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists.
"Brook, hit Lombre with a confusion. Khesen, hit Vigoroth with a mach punch,"
Khesen rushed forward as I took aim and opened fire with a confusion.
"Lombre, use Bubble beam,"
"Vigoroth, use fury swipes,"
The Lombre opened its mouth and let loose a blast of bubbles which my confusion cut through without issue. The Lombre freaked as the blast hit him right in the face, sending him flying back into the wall.
Khesen's fist reached the Vigoroth before he even had the chance to put up its claws. One good punch into its stomach was enough to send it flying back into the wall next to the Lombre.
"What are you two doing?" The first Neo-idiot demanded.
"Get back up and show them not to mess with us!" The other one demanded.
"You know, staying down is a completely valid option," I pointed out as the two pokémon struggled to their feet.
"Shut up, we know what we're doing," The Lombre wrongly stated.
"Yeah, you may have gotten in a pair of lucky hits, but form here the fight…"
"Brook, use confusion," Nikki, said, cutting of the Vigoroth. I raised my arms up at blasted them both through the wall and into the room behind it.
The two Neo idiots watched the hole in the wall and let out a gulp. I aimed my arms back at them when I heard the sound of two sets of feet running around in the next room.
I glanced over to the door and watched as it swung open, revealing the Lombre and Vigoroth as they both tried to go through the door at once.
Did I even need to say that they got stuck in the door frame?
"This is just sad," I said as I raised my arm up and blasted them again.
They didn't get up this time. I pointed my arms back at the two Neo idiots while Khesen walked up to them and placed a claw on both of their shoulders.
"We surrender!" They both said as I tried to keep from sniggering.
"Nice work you two," Nikki said as he walked up to the PC and ejected the disc inside before shutting the thing down.
"I feel somewhat unneeded," Khesen muttered as he glanced at his fists and then to the holes in the wall. "This wasn't much of a fight,"
"Yeah, what's up with that?" I asked aloud as I heard a crashing sound coming from right behind us.
I turned around and why was there a brown blur coming right at my face?
"Ahh!" I yelped as I let loose the fastest confusion I could make. It exploded into the blur almost as soon as I made it, sending it straight into the ceiling.
We all watched as the poor Zigzagoon dropped to the floor, knocked out.
"Looks like you're done," Laura said as Doduo glared at the motel guy. "You want to give up now?"
The motel guy growled as Laura directed him to where the two Neo-Brats were sitting.
"I'm going to kill you two once we get out of this," He muttered to the two kids who both gulped.
"You mean if you get out of this," I added, knowing that it would just make him madder.
With how red his face was getting, I would say that I managed to pull that off with no trouble.
"Thank you all for the help," Lanette told us as we all stood in the courtyard of the motel. The motel guy was getting placed into a police car, yelling about 'How does dumb kids had ruined everything'.
Said dumb kids were sitting in the back of another police car. With the way the motel guy was yelling at the Neo Aqua kids, they wanted to take them to separate locations. They were apparently going to take the two to a facility in Rustboro.
The two were more than happy to get away from Lanette, as the woman in question had gone off on them when she had first arrived. The second she had shown up, she had marched up to the two and had demanded to know how they thought they could get away with it.
Apparently 'but we were in incognito mode' was not a satisfactory answer considering that Laura and I had to physically keep her from slapping the pair to death.
"If you two hadn't stepped in, the kind of damage would have catastrophic," Lanette explained as she glared at the police who tried not to look at her.
Apparently hearing that someone was trying to steal the contest pokémon had been enough for them to get in gear. They apparently even had their own private police boat.
Lucky them.
"Hey don't worry about that," I told her as I glanced over to the rest of the motel rooms. "I wonder why no one else has come out of their rooms with all this noise,"
"Were we the only people staying in this entire motel?" Laura asked as glanced over to one of the doors, half excepting it to open up.
It didn't of course. Business must not have been going well for the Motel guy.
Maybe that was why he had allowed the Neo-kids to do their thing? They were going to make a lot of money if they had pulled this off, had they promised him a cut?
"So what's going to happen to this place now?" Laura asked, changing the subject to another good question.
"No idea, maybe it'll get torn down," Lanette guessed as the wind blew past us, making the building creak loud enough to wake up a sleeping pokémon. "If the elements don't take care of that for us that is,"
"A more pressing question," Brook messaged me as she jumped up onto my shoulder. "Where exactly are we sleeping for the night? I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to step a toe back into that place,"
"Good point Brook," I said before quickly telling everyone she had said.
"I'm with Brook on this one," Laura admitted. "Maybe we should just set up camp close to here?"
"You know," Lanette said carefully as she rubbed her chin. "I think I have a few spare inflatable beds from the time Bill and the others stayed over and helped set up the network,"
"Does that mean what I think it does?" Laura asked, beaming with hope.
"If you guys want, I can set you up at my place," She offered before holding up her index finger. "But it's going to be crowded, so just be ready for that,"
"Sounds great, I'm in," Brook announced before swinging around and placing her hand her pokéball which was still on my chest.
"Well, there's that," I said as I looked at the pokéball where Brook was probably already sleeping. "Sounds good to me, lead the way Lanette,"
When I woke up the next morning, Nikki and Laura were running down a path in a hurry. I watched them run from the comfort of my pokéball, wondering what the hurry was.
"Maybe Milk know something?" I asked myself as I got up and walked over to the common room. I walked into the room and spotted both Khesen and Milk standing around and watching the two humans running for their life.
"Hey guys, what's going on?" I asked as both Milk and Khesen greeted me back.
"The boat leaves earlier than usual today," Milk explained. "If they didn't leave right now, they were going to miss it,"
"Oh," I said as I watched them run. "So no breakfast yet?"
"On the boat," Milk explained as I let out a sigh and sat down next to her and Khesen.
I had to admit, even with the no breakfast, all four of us sitting together like this was nice. I thought back to something that Warmth said, that a trainer normally carried around six pokémon. I glanced around and tried to imagine what this place would look like with three more pokémon standing around.
Despite my best attempts, I just couldn't see it.
