**Author's Note: Hehe…sorry about not putting this chapter up so late. It's been what…over a month since I last updated this story? Wow, that long!? It doesn't seem that long. Well, anyways, I had a very busy February, but I don't you wanna hear me whining about that. ^_^ So here is chapter five of CAAC!
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*Clear as a Crystal-Chapter Five: Oh, starry night!*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
The soft, chanting voices of her pokemon woke Crystal up that night. Slowly opening her eyes, she began to look for the source of the noise without moving a muscle. She didn't have to look far as she spots three figures sitting several feet away in front of her. Each of them was not facing her, giving her the avenged to watch them without being noticed. She watched curiously as her pokemon began, what looked like, a conversation. She kept her breathing low so she could hear them, even though she couldn't understand them. It wasn't the words that she was listening to, but the emotion in their voices. She wanted to know what emotions they were going through as they speak, how they felt a towards each other by the way they spoke to each other. There was more to language than just words.
As she slowly lifted her head so she could hear better, she could hear Rattata began to talk. As he began, Crystal notice pride and cockiness was mixed in his voice. These two emotions were not hard to notice in any voices, human or pokemon, for her anyways. Her father must be the king of cockiness. He would go around in their town, his chest held up high, and challenge any trainer to battle him. He would say that he was the best in town and that he could beat them less than five minutes. Often, he would win, but there were those times where he would lose. If he loses, he would tell the poor trainer that he cheated and chase after him with his pokemon right behind him.
Crystal almost giggled, remembering a time when her father lost to a teenager. The teenager told her father to go back home and retried from being a trainer because he was getting too old. The poor boy got slapped by a pokeball that her father threw. The boy ran back to his home with tears in his eyes and crying out for his mother. Her father laughed at the boy's tears and yelled at him to grow up and be a man. Even though her father eventually stopped training, he had given his passion of being a great trainer to her. She also gained the feeling of seeing great trainers and thinking that she had to be better.
As Rattata was talking, Crystal turned her attention to Totodile and Pidgey. Both seemed to be listening to Rattata, but they also had different expression on their faces. Totodile listened to Rattata with a big grin on her face, her eyes lit up as Rattata would sometimes do silly motions as he talk. She seemed to enjoy listening to Rattata. Pidgey, however, seem to differ. She looked bored. After a while, she quit listening to him and began to play with a small mud ball that was lying on the dirty ground.
After he was done talking, Pidgey must have said something to upset him because they began what looked like an argument. When their argument finally died down, Pidgey began to talk. The mood around them suddenly changed. Totodile's and Rattata's face expressions changed from being happy and cocky, to pity and horror. Pidgey's voice suddenly became depressed and quiet. Crystal closed her eyes, wishing just for one moment, she could understand what her pokemon was saying.
After what seemed like forever, Pidgey finally finished her talking. All three pokemon sat there in silence for a moment, as though in awe, before going their serpent ways. Hearing the footstep of her Totodile, Crystal closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. She didn't know why she did this, it wasn't really a big deal if Totodile knew that she was listening to their conversation, but she did it anyways.
Crystal suddenly felt something lying next to her. Knowing that it was Totodile, she raised her arm slowly and put it gently around the water pokemon. Totodile jerked with shock, but relax when she realized it was her master's arm. Crystal dragged the blue pokemon near her and cuddled for warmth. Together, Crystal and Totodile fell asleep on the soft, green grass under the bright full moon.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Another noise woke Crystal up for the second time that night. Crystal wasn't really a deep sleeper. She would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night for no reason at all.
Moaning softly, Crystal turned her head over her shoulder to see what was making the noise. Even though there was a full moon out that night, it was still very dark. She could only see the outlines of Max lying on his back, his arms behind his head, and his head looking up at the heavens above.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." He said, not looking at her.
Crystal rubbed her eyes and yawned. "It's all right. If you didn't wake me, something else would have."
He nodded slowly, "light sleeper?"
"Huh?"
"Are you a light sleeper?" He repeated.
Crystal nodded, but realized that he couldn't see her nodded. "Yeah." She said quietly. Crystal slowly and quietly turned her body towards Max's direction and trying not to wake up Totodile at the same time. When she finally successful, she looked back at Max, realizing that he hasn't moved at all. Crystal raised her head towards the black and white sky, trying to think of why the night sky was so interesting. She never really looked at the stars, never wonder if there was a creator, a god, that made them or if there really was a 'Big Bang' that made them. She never wonder if there was other life out there or wonder where she would go if she died. She just thought that they were pretty and was just there to lure lovesick girls to guys who were trying to get lucky.
None of them spoken for several minutes, they were just looking at the stars. Finally, Crystal lowered her head back to Earth and looked over at Max. He was laying still, his head still in the same position as before. If she didn't know better, she would have thought that he was asleep.
Getting impatient, Crystal finally spoke. "Pretty stars, huh?"
"Huh?"
He had finally snapped of his trance and looked towards her direction. He stared at her for a moment before speaking. "Yes, they are pretty. Beautiful." He added.
Crystal gave the starry night sky a sideways glance. "Yeah, I guess they are."
"You guess?"
Crystal turned her full attention back to Max. To her surprise, he was moving. He was getting into a sitting position, facing directly at her. Crystal cocked her head a bit, out of habit, as she watched him as he pulled out two pokeballs.
"Why are you taking those out?" She asked.
Max threw the two balls towards the ground, a bright crimson light shine away the darkness for a couple of seconds before becoming dark again. Before the light died down, Crystal could see the two pokemon perfectly. She didn't know what kind of pokemon they were. One looked like a color mixture of a pale pink to lavender. The other one was as black as night, with a couple of golden rings around its body. Both species seem to be related in a way, both looked like foxes. Both fox-like pokemon were very beautiful and very healthy.
"I was going to show you my two prize pokemon." He said, smiling. The two fox-like pokemon walked towards her, each step could barely be heard. Crystal noticed how graceful they walked. It was as though they were walking in mid-air. As they reach her, Crystal held out her hand, petting the dark pokemon.
"What kind of pokemon are they?" She asked, her voice was full of curiosity and awe. Hearing these emotions in her voice made Max chuckle a bit. He quickly got up on his feet and walked towards her, but Crystal didn't notice. Her attention was fully on the beautiful pokemon she was petting. The pink/purple one squeak with jealously and gently shoved the dark pokemon aside so that it would have its turn to be petted. Crystal couldn't help but to giggle as she petted the pretty pink/purple pokemon.
When Crystal finally looked away from the two pokemon, she noticed a figure standing beside her. It was, of course, Max.
"What kind of pokemon are they?" Crystal repeated, looking back at the two fox pokemon.
"The dark one is an Umbreon. The one with the mixture of purple and pink fur is an Espeon. They are the evolved form of Eevee."
"Umbreon and Espeon…." Crystal murmured to herself. She had only heard the names of these pokemon, but never really seen them before. She also heard that they were the more powerful evolved form of Eevee and very hard to evolve.
Crystal's trance was broken when Espeon began to rub its head on her shoulder.
"Essssp…." It growled, not in a way of threaten, but in almost a purring way. Crystal immediately felt her heart melt. Max looked like he was in shock.
"Whoa…," he said, his eyes were as wide as the full moon. "Espeon never treated anyone like that but me."
Crystal looked up at him. "Really? Why?"
Max sat down next to her and began to pet Umbreon, who looked irritated by the way Espeon was acting. "They…just don't like people that much. And I don't blame them one bit."
"Why do they hate people?" Crystal asked, her curiosity was beginning to take over her.
It took Max a moment before answering and it took that moment for Crystal to realize that whatever happened to Espeon and Umbreon was bad.
"It was a rainy day in the month of September," He began, his voice grew deep. "I will never forget that day. The date was September eleventh, two-thousand-two; my birthday. I had turned five years old that day and was getting a birthday present for myself."
"Why were you buying your own birthday present?" Crystal asked. It was kind of unusual for a kid to buy his own birthday present. Wasn't that the parent's job to do that?
"My mother had to work that day. She's a Pokemon Researcher at Goldenrod City, my hometown. I hardly ever see her, she works even on weekends. My father died when I was a baby."
"Oh." She said, quietly. It must be awful not having a father, especially since he's a guy.
"My mother lays out money for me to get groceries or lunch money for school. This time my mother had a note with the money saying that I can buy myself a birthday present and that I can stay home from school that day."
"Oh! Your mom is the coolest!" Crystal said, her eyes were shining bright. "My mom and dad never would have let me stay home from school, even if it was my birthday!"
Max smirked, but his face expression didn't change. It was still dark looking.
"Anyways," he continued. "I was walking a little ways out of Goldenrod in the rain, when I heard this cry. I could barely hear it, I even had to stop breathing at one point to even hear it. It sounded like the cry of a pokemon. I wanted to help it, so I followed the cry. It took me a while but I finally find where the cry was coming from. It was coming from the river, just outside of Goldenrod."
He stopped for a moment before going on. "I ran to the bank, just to find a big white cloth sack caught on a huge branch, which was stuck in-between two big rocks about twenty yards away from me. The river was flooded, branches and logs was being pulled way the current, making it dangerous for anyone to swim in it. But I wasn't really thinking. The pokemon's cries were getting louder and desperate. I just ran into the river and swam my hardest towards the white cloth bag."
Crystal was staring at him, her eyes were wide. Several thoughts went through her mind as she was listening to Max. Why was he outside of Goldenrod? How could someone put a couple of pokemon into a sack and throw them into the river like that?
"I don't know how I did it or what, but I finally reached the sack after spending minutes fighting the current. I remember that I grabbed the sack with one arm while hanging on the branch with the other. I also remember the branch breaking and something above me also broke and hit me in the head. I don't remember nothing after that."
Crystal couldn't help but to gasp. "How did you survive?" She asked.
"I don't really know. I remember waking up in a hospital room with my mother sleeping in a chair right beside me. I woke her up by saying her name. After all the hugging and kissing, she told me that a crazy fisherman that was fishing in a boat right in the middle of the river saw me and the sack floating by and grabbed me and the sack and pulled us into the boat. She also said that in the sack were two Eevee pups. They were wet but didn't have any injures."
Max looked down at Espeon, who was lying in Crystal's lap, and softly petted her. "After I was well, I went back home, where the Eevee pups were at. My mother told me that they were timid of humans, so I should give them time to get used to us. And she was right. The Eevee pups hid under the couch the first time they met me. But I did give them time to get used to me and it paid off. It took a month for them to let me pet them. It took another month for me to pick them up. It took a year before I could secretly train them. And it took them four year for them to evolve."
"Whoa…four years!" Crystal said, her eyes were even larger than before. Max chuckled softly before speaking.
"Four years for an Eevee to evolve into a Espeon or a Umbreon is actually quite a short time. Most people who tried to get an Eevee to evolve into either one of those two forms usually never do. And my two Eevees evolved on the same day. The first one to evolve was Mei."
He looked down at Espeon. "She evolved in the day. Meo evolved at night." Max looked at Umbreon. Meo looked back at Max, giving him a sideways glance.
Crystal giggled at the two. "Mei and Meo. Those are such cute names!"
He turned to Crystal and smiled. "Thanks. My mother thought that they were cute names also."
She smiled back and turned around. Totodile was fast asleep. Crystal stared at her pokemon with wonder. How could she sleep through the entire racket they were making? Max looked in the direction she was looking and saw Totodile.
"Maybe we should go back to bed." He said, smirking. Crystal turned to face him and smiled.
"Yeah we should."
Max quickly stood up and walked back to his spot where he was laying. "Come on, Mei! Meo! Let's go back to sleep."
Meo followed him, while Mei slowly stood up from Crystal's lap and yawned, before following Meo and Max. Crystal turned back around, facing Totodile, and lay down next to her. She was slowly closing her eyes, when she heard Max speak.
"It was nice talking to you, Crystal Kasmo.
She smiled, slightly blushing. "And it was nice talking to you, Max…Max…."
"Saki"
"Max Saki."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~End of Chapter five~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Soooo…how did you like that chapter? I hope it was good! ^_^ Oh! Just to let you know; Espeon, Umbreon, Rattata, Pidgey, and Totodile is my pokemon team on Pokemon Sliver! Just in case you wanted to know. And also, I'll try to make chapter six as soon as I can. Okay? Good! ^_^
See ya later!
----Junebug_182