"Y'know, I always wished pokémon would appear in the real world..." Andrew said thoughtfully. "Now I'm not so sure."
"Agreed." Said Callan with feeling.
"Maybe we should see whether there are any other pokémon in the house." Callan said slowly. "I don't think we want it to burn down."
"Okay. You go that way." Andrew went and searched the other side of the house.
"Hmmm..." Callan moved silently around the house, half-running into his mother, who had come out to see what the noise outside was.
"What's going on?" She asked around a yawn.
"You'd never beleive me if I told you. Pokémon."
"What?" She asked, but Callan had moved on. She looked out of a window, and fainted.
It was a small circle of metal, slightly thinner than his finger and fit into his palm comfortably. It was a silvery-gold colour, with the slightest hint of deep blue in the right light. It was heavy, and very cold, but somehow comforted him. He was still examining it when Andrew walked in.
"Chased a couple of Rattatas out of the attic but..." He started, then noticed what Callan was holding. "What's that?"
"I dunno, I just found it next to my bed. I guess we were so suprised by this pokemon thing we didn't notice it."
Andrew reached out to hold it, and Callan felt a sudden urge to keep it away from him. He didn't have to, however. Andrew recoiled from it after just one touch.
"Yeeeooow! How cold is that thing?" He said, blowing on his fingers. A layer of skin had been taken off. The thing was glowing, ever so slightly, a deep blue.
"Hey, there's some sort of scratches on it." Callan observed. He looked at it from every direction. Andrew did too, but careful not to touch it.
"How come you can touch it and I can't?" Andrew asked. "It's bloody freezing, and you're holding it like it was like any ordinary piece of metal."
"It's very cold..." Callan admitted. "But not freezing."
"Not fair." Andrew muttered. "Hey, what's this?" He pointed to another object, half hidden in the clutter of the desk.
"Hey, it's a pokeball." Callan said. He was about to pick it up, but Andrew snatched it away first.
"You get that thing, I'll take this pokeball." Andrew said. "That's fair."
"How about this: You give me the pokeball or this gets pressed into your face." Callan held up the object threateningly.
"D'y'reckon there might be a pokemon inside?" Asked Andrew, almost ignoring the deadly threat. "Let's see. Pokeball go!"
He dropped the pokeball. A beam of red electricity shot out and solidified into a Squirtle, and the ball flew back to Andrew's hand.
"Hey, it worked! I would have preferred a Charmander though..."
The Squirtle spun around, Watergunned Andrew to the floor, grabbed the pokeball from his hands and gave it to Callan, who laughed.
"Not your day, eh Andrew?"
Andrew's muttered curses were cut off by a loud scream from the next room. Both of them jumped up.
"You didn't check your sisters' rooms, did you?" Andrew asked dryly.
"Nup. Come on, Squirtle!"
"Squirtle!" It waddled after them.
Callan's younger sister Angela, who was only six, was cowering, her head under her pillow. An enraged Scyther was tearing her room to shreds.
"Oh crap." Both of them commented together. Squirtle cried out in fear and withdrew into it's shell. Callan got an idea, waited until Scyther was distracted by a hard-to-cut object and ran across the room. He pulled open the curtains, grabbed the nearest thing (A softball bat) and hit the window with it.
It smashed. Hard.
The noise was deafening, and Callan was cut by the glass several times on the way to the floor. The Scyther saw the opening and flew straight for it, accidentally kicking Callan in the head as it flew out. He groaned.
"Quick thinking, Callan." Andrew commented. "You OK?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Andrew helped him up. He looked at the scratches. "They're not that bad."
"Stands to reason, right?" Andrew said. "Think about it. In the pokemon world, they never get hurt as badly as they do here. And heal quicker. If the pokemon are here, maybe it works like that here too."
"If this didn't hurt so much I'd say this was a dream." Callan said, rubbing one of his cuts. "Hey, it's a cartoon, of course they don't get hurt as much."
"Yes, it's a cartoon." Andrew said dryly. "Which is also why little yellow mice can throw electricity, fire-breathing dragons exist, tiny birds call forth huge tornadoes..."
"Yeah, yeah, I get the picture." Callan said, then looked to his sister, still shivering uncontrollably. "Hey, sis..."
She flinched away from his touch, shivering harder.
"Don't worry, it's gone now." He said softly. Angela looked up slowly, raw terror in her eyes.
"Shhh... It's okay."
"What... was that?" She managed to say.
"What's going on here?" Callan's dad poked his head around the corner. "Oh my god! What have you done here?"
"There was a big scary monster!" Angela said. "Callan made it go away." She again regressed into the shivers, curled into a ball.
"Callan, what happened?"
"She's right." He said simply. "There was a Scyther in here. It was tearing up the place, so I broke the window and it flew out."
"A Scyther? Isn't that one of those pokemon whatchimacallits you're so obsessed with?"
"Uh-huh."
"Yep."
"What? I'm completely confused." He said, holding his head. "Oh, and why is my wife unconsious in the hallway?"
Callan and Andrew stood aside, giving him a good view of the outside world through the window. Just like his wife, he fainted.
"I think that makes life a lot easier." Commented Andrew.
"What, both my parents lying fainted on the ground, my sister in shock and pokémon running around destroying the city? Just great."
"Well..." Andrew couldn't think of a good answer.
"Come on, let's get moving." Callan said. "I think we should check out your house."
After propping Callan's family on the couch and leaving a note, the duo set off to Andrew's house. It wasn't hugely far, about five or ten minutes' walk, but they wanted to get there fast. They ran as fast as possible, and got there within three minutes.
Or at least where there used to be.
"Oh no..." Andrew moaned.
Andrew's house appeared to have been in an area where an Articuno had appeared.
They surveyed the devastation. More than an entire block had been reduced to rubble, and the rubble frozen solid. Several bodies, human and pokemon, blue through the solid ice, could be seen. Callan spotted one of Andrew's sisters among them.
"H...how could this have happened?" Andrew managed to say. The temperature was well below zero, but it seemed to be affecting Andrew more than Callan.
"This is really not good." Callan pointed out the bleeding obvious.
"Artiiicuuuuuuu!" Called a voice from further on in the block. They exchanged a glance, and ran.
Most of the gunshots missed due to sheer fear, but red blotches growing on it's wings showed it had been hit at least five times. It's intimidative stance began to flop, and it was beginning to weaken.
"Quick, Squirtle, go!" Callan said, thinking quickly. If Squirtle wasn't in the ball...
"Pokéball go!"
The legendary 'god of ice' heard the call, taking it's attention from the gun-firing policemen to glare hatefully at Callan. It caught the flying pokéball in it's beak, and with one quick movement crushed it in half. Callan stood in shock.
"Stupid!" Andrew hit him over the head lightly. "You think you're gonna catch an Articuno with a regular pokeball?"
"It was worth a try..."
"Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"
The cry was incredibly shrill and loud, catching everyone off guard. While the Articuno had been distracted by Callan's pokeball, the two policemen had taken the initiative to shoot the damn thing carefully. It's almost-white chest plumage stained red, a suprised look in it's eyes, the graceful ice bird flopped to the ground, dead, in the middle of the frozen ruin it had created.
Andrew wasn't interested in the fate of the bird, however. He ran back to the ruins of his house, clearing away the frozen rubble, looking for his family, unaware of the damage he was doing to his hands. They were red, raw, and brutally scratched after only a couple of minutes of digging.
"Andrew?" Said a timid voice behind him. He spun around.
"Jenny!" He cried. His other sister, seven years old and a good friend of Callan's sister Angela, was looking at them like they were angels come to save them all.
"What happened here?" Andrew asked.
"It was awful!" She cried. "I heard some sort of screeching from outside, so I went out and saw the Articuno! I thought it was really cool at first but then it saw me and looked at me really nasty so I just screamed and ran away as fast as I could and I heard some crashing and screaming and saw it knocking down houses and..." She stopped, and burst into tears.
Andrew just stood there, dumbfounded. Callan tried to calm Jenny down a bit, but couldn't think of anything to say. Her entire family had just been killed, and there is very little that could compensate for that.
"Come on. Let's go back to my house." He said sadly. They turned away from the horrible destruction and walked slowly back to a place of relative safety.