The talking Kimori returns in this chapter. You get to learn more about him, like the fact that he has a name, and just how good he is at battling without a trainer to command him. At the end, there're also some hints at what's to come in the future.
CHAPTER 7: KIRYUU'S REVENGE BATTLE
In a dark cave, we see 4 figures walking along a path. A narration box notifies that this cave is the Tsunaragi no Doukutsu as we see the 3 figures closer up. One is a Kimori, the same one from the airplane. The other 3 are Rocket Dan members, none of which look similar to the 2 members that were on the plane before. They stop in front of an underground lake.
One of the Rocket Dan members says "Kiryuu-sama, could you tell us how we're going to find Lapras here?"
A bit of text saying "The talking Kimori named himself 'Kiryuu'" has an arrow that points to the Kimori as he begins talking. "Not long ago, a Rocket scientist discovered that Lapras come here every so often. Apparently, they have a huge craving for the blind cave fish, but they can't get in here most of the time."
Kiryuu points to a cave entrance and continues, "Outside that cave is a ledge next to the sea. The Lapras can't reach that cave until once every month, when the moon's gravity causes the tide to reach its highest point, which would be tonight. Do you understand now?"
"Yes!" replies the Rocket Dan member who asked him. The other two members walk off to a distance and start conversing in whispers.
"How is it we're taking orders from a Pokemon?"
"Be quiet. Don't you know anything about Kiryuu-sama?"
"No."
"Despite being just a Pokemon, he managed to get very strong and very far within Rocket Dan rankings without the use of a trainer. He's very good without one, because alone, he makes up very good battle strategies. Despite being in Rocket Dan, he seems to dispise us humans for some unknown reason, and he'll do whatever possible to avoid being captured."
"Really? I'll just have to check this out for myself."
"Wait, don't!"
"Go, Buupig!"
He tosses a Monster Ball and releases a Buupig, which Kiryuu almost immediately knocks out with a single punch. This puts the Rocket Dan member in shock.
"Oh my god, it's true. You really are strong."
Kiryuu remarks "I won't truly be strong until I evolve, but for now, I'm strong enough for you lower rank members, so I advise you not trouble me, understand, human?"
"U... understood!"
After that little incident, the 3rd member, who asked Kiryuu the question earlier, shouts "Hey, the Lapras are coming!"
They look at the entrance and it's true, the Lapras are indeed just a little ways away.
"Humans, get your Monster Balls ready!" says Kiryuu as he cracks he knuckles. After a minute or two, the Lapras swim up to the cave entrance, drag themselves across the entrance ground since it's so shallow, and are about to dive under the lake when Kiryuu leaps on top of one of the Lapras's heads.
"Your Buupig was pathetic, but this large group of Lapras might provide a challenge for me! Suitoru!" Kiryuu bites into the Lapras's head, causing the thing to scream as a green aura emits from Lapras and moves over onto Kiryuu. Two other Lapras shoot bright blue beams from their mouths at Kimori. He jumps up to avoid them, and while in the air, he shouts "Tane Machine Gun!" and begins firing glowing seeds from his mouth, which pummel the two Lapras. They shout in pain as the Rocket Dan members throw balls from the shore and capture them. While he's still in the air, he says Kiryuu lands on a rock sticking out of the middle of the lake.
He shouts "Ryuu no Ibuki" as some flames jut out of his mouth and hit the Lapras he used Suitoru on earlier, and it too gets captured. He looks ahead and sees a Lapras with a purple glow forming on its horn. Kiryuu looks behind him, then jumps up right as the Lapras shoots a purple beam from its horn, missing him and hitting another Lapras that was behind him. The Lapras that was hit looks around, looks at all the other Lapras, then screams frighteningly as it tries swimming at full speed to ram into them.
Kiryuu lands on a nearby ledge, shouts "Nirami Tsukeru", his eyes then flash and all the Lapras before him glow and then stop glowing. "Lowering your endurance should make it easier for your old friend to defeat you" says Kiryuu with a devilish smirk on his face. The confused Lapras slams into its companions at full force, causing them to take heavy damage before they get caught in more Monster Balls being thrown. While most are being caught, many of the other Lapras decide to retreat out of the cave, until all that remains is the confused Lapras, who now is slamming into the cave walls, causing some rocks to fall from the ceiling. The Rocket Dan members are avoiding them on shore, while Kiryuu jumps away as the ledge he's standing on begins to break away. As he jumps away, the Lapras seems to have regained its senses, notices Kiryuu jumping and starts to look really pissed off now. As Kiryuu lands on the rock in the middle of the lake, his minds seems to fully be on the rubble falling at the moment, but just as he remembers the confused Lapras, he turns around to see it's too late, the Lapras is about to strike him with its horn. He manages to jump out of the way at the last second, but the horn grazes his side, causing him to bleed a little bit from the newly formed scratch. Since he was jumping, he needed to grab onto Lapras's neck to propel himself the opposite way so he could whack Lapras with his tail. Lapras falls over, and a Rocket Dan member throws a ball. Just before it hits, we see Lapras get caught into a ball from a different direction. The ball sucks up Lapras and seemingly floats itself back to a hand that grabs it.
"What?!" questions one of the Rocket Dan members.
"I am saving at least this one from your harm, Rocket Dan!" shouts a voice from the hand. The Rocket Dan members look to see Hiro and Ibui standing on another end of the shore, likely having watched the last part of that battle. He puts Lapras's ball onto his belt and runs away into a tunnel.
"You bastard!!" yells one of the members. They start to run after him when Kiryuu stops them.
"Stop. Go on ahead to the base while I deal with him. I've got a score to settle with that kid anyway!"
The Rocket Dan members run back the way they came, while Kiryuu hops onto the shore and runs into the tunnel Hiro went into. Later, Hiro and Ibui stop running. "I think we lost him by now!" remarks Hiro as he finishes catching his breath. Ibui catches its breath too before it picks up the sound of running water with its long ear. It runs into a nearby tunnel, Hiro chases after it, and after a while, they stop, and Hiro gets glittery eyes and a big smile as he sees what Ibui discovered: a natural hot spring.
Kiryuu's seen running along the tunnel path that Hiro took. He eventually comes to a fork in the tunnel, takes one path, runs only to find it's a dead end, runs all the way back, and takes the other tunnel. "Damn, I hope I can find that lousy human before he gets away!" he says as he runs down the path.
We see a steamy cave ceiling as we hear "That Kimori sure did seem very powerful, and it scares me to have it as a foe. I don't know where to go to get out of this cave, so I guess all we can do is relax and hope it doesn't find us." We now see Hiro and Ibui enjoying the hot spring they stumbled upon. Hiro sits relaxed looking with his back against the edge of the spring, the water covering up to his neck. Ibui doggie paddles through the spring, while Tattsuu squirts water at Kakureon, who takes out a marker ready to chase after Tattsuu when Hiro holds up his Monster Ball threateningly, and Kakureon puts the marker away under his tongue, not wanting to be tooken out of the spring. Mareep sits over in a distant seperate pool. Lapras, who can barely submerge its fins all the way due to the shallow water, looks depressed.
"You think it's your fault that Rocket Dan captured most of your heard, don't you?" Hiro asks. Lapras nods.
"It's alright. You realize you didn't have any control over yourself in your state, it was just the result of a technique that hit you, so there's no need to be blaming yourself." Lapras still looks depressed.
"Not all of your herd got captured. While you were confused, the rest of your herd escaped through the cave entrance." Lapras looks reassured by this and begins to enjoy itself in the springs.
Mareep, who was sitting over in a seperate pool, opens its eyes after closing them relaxedly for so long and notices an egg on the ground. "MAREEEEEP!!" It tries to call Hiro. It then jumps out of its pool and jumps into the pool everyone else is in to try to get him.
"NOOOOO!!! MAREEP!!!" Hiro tries to stop him, but it's too late. Mareep jumps into the pool, and its static wool conducts all of the water, shocking everyone in it.
"Mareep, we need to learn to keep your static under control," Hiro's now fully clothed, and all his Pokemon are recalled except for Ibui and Mareep, who they follow. Mareep stops at the egg and Hiro picks it up.
"What's this egg doing here? Was it abandoned?" Hiro asks himself as he notices a tunnel glowing red. He, Mareep, and Ibui walk into it to see a pool of lava, and are then instantly shocked to see what they find next to the pool.
"Those.... those are the parents?!" Hiro points to a pile of collapsed rock that covers a pair of Boober corpses. Hiro walks up to the rubble, examines the Boober, and the body flames look to be long-since gone out, surely they're dead.
Hiro looks down at them for a moment, and then he hears a familiar voice from behind him, "There you are, human!"
Hiro turns around and sees Kiryuu, "Ki... Kimori?!"
"Human, I have a name, and it's Kiryuu!" Kiryuu corrects him.
"I have a name too. I'm Enju City's Kimono Hiro!"
"So if I stop calling you 'human', you'll stop calling me 'Kimori'? This doesn't matter anyway, I'll defeat you quickly enough and never encounter you again. Hiro, I demand you take out your Kakureon!"
"Why?" asks Hiro.
"I have to defeat it for ruining my heist on the airplane. You might as well do it instead of trouble any of your other Pokemon."
"I understand that" Hiro releases Kakureon. Kakureon just sits there for moment, looks at Kiryuu, then it takes out a marker and runs towards Kiryuu with it. Kiryuu dodges out of the way and trips Kakureon with his foot, causing Kakureon to fall face down.
"Is this really the same thing that foiled me?"
Hiro says with a sweatdrop on his head "It does other attacks when it's provoked."
Kimori looks down at the Kakureon and starts pummeling its head a bit with Tane Machine Gun. Kakureon's head keeps recoiling in pain with each hit before it gets up, stares at Kiryuu angrily and then lashes out its tongue. Kiryuu dodges without any effort, and the tongue sticks to a cavern wall.
Hiro, in awe, thinks "He's got such great speed". Kiryuu runs up to the wall, punches the wall a few times around the tongue, and a chunk of rock cracks out of the wall and the tongue snaps it back into Kakureon's mouth, and Kakureon falls over from the impact. Kakureon gets up and spits the rock out of its mouth, a bit of blood now leaking down his lip and nose. Kiryuu dashes past Kakureon at lightning-fast speed and slams it down to the ground from behind his back. Kakureon's fainted and has to be recalled.
"Hey Kiryuu, I saw you fight all those Lapras, but I want to ask you how you couldn't battle those Pokemon on the plane."
"I was a bit weaker than I am now and there were too many humans and Pokemon in a small space, but with some more training, I should be able to handle a situation like that. Now, give me all your Pokemon."
"You're not taking them! Ibui, Mareep, use Taiatari!" Both Ibui and Mareep try ramming Kiryuu, but he dodges both of them. Kiryuu whacks Ibui with his tail, picks up Ibui, and tosses him hard into Mareep, the impact and static knocking both of them out. Hiro recalls Mareep. Kiryuu is then seen holding his still bleeding side thinking "Shit, I hope I can hold out long enough to defeat the rest of his Pokemon".
Hiro looks at Lapras and Tattsuu's ball, "Water vs. grass. I have no other option." Hiro tosses out Lapras and Tattsuu. Tattsuu uses Enmaku to blind Kiryuu in black smoke, and Lapras uses Reitou Beam, that blue beam attack we saw the Lapras herd using earlier. Much to Hiro's surprise, though, when the smoke cleared, Kiryuu wasn't there. Instead, he was right behind Lapras and Tattsuu using Tane Machine Gun to knock them both out.
"How?" Hiro's stunned.
"I used Mikiri right before Tattsuu was about to blind me."
"Oh no! I don't have anymore Pokemon with me!"
Kiryuu then starts walking towards Hiro, "So I've defeated them all, eh? That means you have nothing left to defend yourself with, so hand them all over now!"
Hiro now starts thinking to himself, "No! My journey as a trainer can't be over now, can it? I didn't know Ibui for so long, but we're already best of friends, I don't want to lose it. And Lapras, I just calmed it down over its herd's imprisonment only for it to be captured as well. I can't let it just end like this!" As Hiro's thinking this, he's clinging onto the egg, which he forgot he was holding during the battle, and it suddenly glows.
"Huh! What?!" Kiryuu looks at the egg. The glowing stops, the egg cracks, and a fragment of the egg breaks off, and a fire shoots out of the hole and hits Kiryuu.
"UWAAAA!!!!" Kiryuu shouts in pain as some of the flames stick on his body. The rest of the egg shell eventually breaks off and reveals a Booby.
"Alright! I still have one Pokemon afterall!"
Kiryuu thinks "Damn. I'm getting badly burnt by a newborn, the weakest that a Pokemon can be. I must be really badly worn out for this to happen. While I still can, I have to run away."
Kiryuu clutches his side still and Hiro notices, he thinks "He was injured this whole time? I don't know how much longer someone like this will hold out, but since he's exhausted, I better just end it all by capturing him." Hiro takes out a Monster Ball and tosses it at Kiryuu. Kiryuu looks up and notices the ball flying at him. As fast as he can, he flicks the ball away with his wrist, and it gets redirected to the Booby who gets captured instead.
"No matter how weak I am, I refuse to be captured by a human. I want to be above humans, these horrible yet powerful enemies. I will not allow myself to become their slave!" Kiryuu shouts as Hiro looks at him.
"As a great strategist, I know when to quit, so I'll retreat for now," Kiryuu turns around.
Hiro looks at him momentarily when Kiryuu says "Kimono Hiro.... this will not be our last encounter. I will keep pursuing you until you are defeated!" He looks back at him before running away around a tunnel's corner. Hiro recalls Lapras and Tattsuu and goes over to pick up Ibui. As he holds up the slowly recovering Ibui, Kiryuu's seen around the corner taking a small camera out that was being held between his tails. He peeks around and snaps a few shots of Hiro and Ibui, and then runs away.
A holographic screen displays KIMORI in huge English letters with the Kana symbols below it ƒLƒ‚ƒŠ . It also displays Length: .51 M, Weight: 4.99 KG, and then a voice begins. "Kimori protect their homes from predators. Most Kimori are very prideful, so if one loses against an enemy, it will constantly pursue it until it's finally capable of defeating it."
"So that's why Kiryuu's after me." Hiro puts away his Pokemon Zukan and looks over at the Boober corpses, goes over to them, and starts to lift the rocks off of them.
Scene shifts to an old, rustic shack in the middle of a field, where inside we see Kiryuu grinding some herbs into a fine paste and putting it over his wound. It stings him a bit, but he manages. He goes to a trapdoor, climbs a ladder underneath, and we see that the shack actually hides a small technological base. Kiryuu goes up to a monitor and turns it on, types a few buttons, and a silhouetted face comes on. He says "Sakaki-sama...."
Scene shifts back to Hiro, who just finished erecting a couple of stones at the end of some mounds of dirt, likely the Boober's burial mounds, and Booby was out of its ball the whole time to watch its parents burial, curious instead of sad because the newborn doesn't know what's going on. Hiro then kneals down in front of the graves and claps his hands together, and sits there in silence. Booby decides to do the same. Ibui sits there and lowers its head in front of the tomb, and the scene leaves them with that moment of silence.
"Kiryuu, you have to stop going after one opponent just because you lose!" says the voice on the monitor.
"Sakaki, if it'll interest you to know, this kid has some rare Pokemon. He has a shiny Kakureon, a Booby, and I have photographic evidence of him with an Ibui." Kiryuu says as he plugs the camera, which turns out to be digital, into a slot near the monitor.
"Still, you shouldn't trouble yourself with one trainer alone. You should wait until he's in a large crowd to steal...." One of the pictures Kiryuu took comes up on Sakaki's monitor on the other side. Sakaki notices the picture of Hiro and the Ibui and freaks out.
"Is something wrong, sir?"
"Inside the ear, it looks like.... Kiryuu, do you have a picture from a different angle, one with a better glimpse within the ear?" On Kiryuu's screen, there's a variety of pictures. He selects one of them by typing a few keys and brings it up on Sakaki's monitor.
"It is.... it's a ring of circles pattern in its ear. Kiryuu, did you hear where this kid was from?" asks Sakaki.
"He said his name was Kimono Hiro from Enju City."
"Lab 14.... that was near.... Kiryuu, I advise you to stay away from this kid?"
"Huh!? Why?"
"That Ibui is too dangerous. It needs to be illiminated, and I only know one member capable of doing it" Sakaki says as he dials up on his phone.
"Illiminate?" questions Kiryuu.
A guy shrouded in shadows picks up a phone "Hello?"
"Agent #6038," Kiryuu cringes from hearing Sakaki say that name on the phone, "I want you to be stationed in Enju City. I'm going to send you a fax" Sakaki says as he prints out the picture of Hiro and Ibui and puts it through a fax machine.
"This kid goes by the name of Kimono Hiro. By any means possible, illiminate the Ibui he has with him, understand?"
"I understand. I'll go over there right away," says the mysterious man as he hangs up the phone.
"Sakaki-sama, are you sure you want to send that psychopath to deal with Hiro?" asks Kiryuu.
"He's the only one I'm certain of being capable to do the job," replies Sakaki.
"I just hope the freak doesn't kill Hiro's other Pokemon, I still want to battle with that guy. Hey, why send him to Enju?"
"He's a travelling trainer. While we can't be exactly sure which gyms he'll be aiming for, we can be certain he'll stop by his home town sooner or later."
I see. Hey, how dangerous can that Ibui possibly be anyway? I just defeated it in battle not too long ago."
"What? Kiryuu, whatever you do, do not do that again. You do not know what kind of a force this Ibui really is!" Sakaki demands.
"Really? Well if that's so, this Ibui sounds like a perfect challenge to test my skills against. Kiryuu, out!"
"WAIT, KIRYUU!!!" Sakaki says, but it's too late, Kiryuu cut off the connection.
"Dammit!" Sakaki shouts as he bangs his fist on the desk.
For the last scene, we see the mysterious shaded guy look at the picture of Hiro and Ibui that's in his hand as we see a close-up of his partly shaded evil half grin.
END OF CHAPTER
POKEMON NAME CHART
Buupig=Grumpig
Suitoru=Absorb
Tane Machine Gun=Bullet Seed
Ryuu no Ibuki=Dragonbreath
Boober=Magmar
Reitou Beam=Ice Beam
Mikiri=Detect
Booby=Magby
Sakaki=Giovanni
JAPANESE CULTURAL NOTES
-'sama' is another name suffix. It's used to indicate respect, usually used for royalty or someone of higher authority, like our equivalent to 'lord'. It'd appear that Kiryuu is a high-ranking official.
CHAPTER 7: KIRYUU'S REVENGE BATTLE
In a dark cave, we see 4 figures walking along a path. A narration box notifies that this cave is the Tsunaragi no Doukutsu as we see the 3 figures closer up. One is a Kimori, the same one from the airplane. The other 3 are Rocket Dan members, none of which look similar to the 2 members that were on the plane before. They stop in front of an underground lake.
One of the Rocket Dan members says "Kiryuu-sama, could you tell us how we're going to find Lapras here?"
A bit of text saying "The talking Kimori named himself 'Kiryuu'" has an arrow that points to the Kimori as he begins talking. "Not long ago, a Rocket scientist discovered that Lapras come here every so often. Apparently, they have a huge craving for the blind cave fish, but they can't get in here most of the time."
Kiryuu points to a cave entrance and continues, "Outside that cave is a ledge next to the sea. The Lapras can't reach that cave until once every month, when the moon's gravity causes the tide to reach its highest point, which would be tonight. Do you understand now?"
"Yes!" replies the Rocket Dan member who asked him. The other two members walk off to a distance and start conversing in whispers.
"How is it we're taking orders from a Pokemon?"
"Be quiet. Don't you know anything about Kiryuu-sama?"
"No."
"Despite being just a Pokemon, he managed to get very strong and very far within Rocket Dan rankings without the use of a trainer. He's very good without one, because alone, he makes up very good battle strategies. Despite being in Rocket Dan, he seems to dispise us humans for some unknown reason, and he'll do whatever possible to avoid being captured."
"Really? I'll just have to check this out for myself."
"Wait, don't!"
"Go, Buupig!"
He tosses a Monster Ball and releases a Buupig, which Kiryuu almost immediately knocks out with a single punch. This puts the Rocket Dan member in shock.
"Oh my god, it's true. You really are strong."
Kiryuu remarks "I won't truly be strong until I evolve, but for now, I'm strong enough for you lower rank members, so I advise you not trouble me, understand, human?"
"U... understood!"
After that little incident, the 3rd member, who asked Kiryuu the question earlier, shouts "Hey, the Lapras are coming!"
They look at the entrance and it's true, the Lapras are indeed just a little ways away.
"Humans, get your Monster Balls ready!" says Kiryuu as he cracks he knuckles. After a minute or two, the Lapras swim up to the cave entrance, drag themselves across the entrance ground since it's so shallow, and are about to dive under the lake when Kiryuu leaps on top of one of the Lapras's heads.
"Your Buupig was pathetic, but this large group of Lapras might provide a challenge for me! Suitoru!" Kiryuu bites into the Lapras's head, causing the thing to scream as a green aura emits from Lapras and moves over onto Kiryuu. Two other Lapras shoot bright blue beams from their mouths at Kimori. He jumps up to avoid them, and while in the air, he shouts "Tane Machine Gun!" and begins firing glowing seeds from his mouth, which pummel the two Lapras. They shout in pain as the Rocket Dan members throw balls from the shore and capture them. While he's still in the air, he says Kiryuu lands on a rock sticking out of the middle of the lake.
He shouts "Ryuu no Ibuki" as some flames jut out of his mouth and hit the Lapras he used Suitoru on earlier, and it too gets captured. He looks ahead and sees a Lapras with a purple glow forming on its horn. Kiryuu looks behind him, then jumps up right as the Lapras shoots a purple beam from its horn, missing him and hitting another Lapras that was behind him. The Lapras that was hit looks around, looks at all the other Lapras, then screams frighteningly as it tries swimming at full speed to ram into them.
Kiryuu lands on a nearby ledge, shouts "Nirami Tsukeru", his eyes then flash and all the Lapras before him glow and then stop glowing. "Lowering your endurance should make it easier for your old friend to defeat you" says Kiryuu with a devilish smirk on his face. The confused Lapras slams into its companions at full force, causing them to take heavy damage before they get caught in more Monster Balls being thrown. While most are being caught, many of the other Lapras decide to retreat out of the cave, until all that remains is the confused Lapras, who now is slamming into the cave walls, causing some rocks to fall from the ceiling. The Rocket Dan members are avoiding them on shore, while Kiryuu jumps away as the ledge he's standing on begins to break away. As he jumps away, the Lapras seems to have regained its senses, notices Kiryuu jumping and starts to look really pissed off now. As Kiryuu lands on the rock in the middle of the lake, his minds seems to fully be on the rubble falling at the moment, but just as he remembers the confused Lapras, he turns around to see it's too late, the Lapras is about to strike him with its horn. He manages to jump out of the way at the last second, but the horn grazes his side, causing him to bleed a little bit from the newly formed scratch. Since he was jumping, he needed to grab onto Lapras's neck to propel himself the opposite way so he could whack Lapras with his tail. Lapras falls over, and a Rocket Dan member throws a ball. Just before it hits, we see Lapras get caught into a ball from a different direction. The ball sucks up Lapras and seemingly floats itself back to a hand that grabs it.
"What?!" questions one of the Rocket Dan members.
"I am saving at least this one from your harm, Rocket Dan!" shouts a voice from the hand. The Rocket Dan members look to see Hiro and Ibui standing on another end of the shore, likely having watched the last part of that battle. He puts Lapras's ball onto his belt and runs away into a tunnel.
"You bastard!!" yells one of the members. They start to run after him when Kiryuu stops them.
"Stop. Go on ahead to the base while I deal with him. I've got a score to settle with that kid anyway!"
The Rocket Dan members run back the way they came, while Kiryuu hops onto the shore and runs into the tunnel Hiro went into. Later, Hiro and Ibui stop running. "I think we lost him by now!" remarks Hiro as he finishes catching his breath. Ibui catches its breath too before it picks up the sound of running water with its long ear. It runs into a nearby tunnel, Hiro chases after it, and after a while, they stop, and Hiro gets glittery eyes and a big smile as he sees what Ibui discovered: a natural hot spring.
Kiryuu's seen running along the tunnel path that Hiro took. He eventually comes to a fork in the tunnel, takes one path, runs only to find it's a dead end, runs all the way back, and takes the other tunnel. "Damn, I hope I can find that lousy human before he gets away!" he says as he runs down the path.
We see a steamy cave ceiling as we hear "That Kimori sure did seem very powerful, and it scares me to have it as a foe. I don't know where to go to get out of this cave, so I guess all we can do is relax and hope it doesn't find us." We now see Hiro and Ibui enjoying the hot spring they stumbled upon. Hiro sits relaxed looking with his back against the edge of the spring, the water covering up to his neck. Ibui doggie paddles through the spring, while Tattsuu squirts water at Kakureon, who takes out a marker ready to chase after Tattsuu when Hiro holds up his Monster Ball threateningly, and Kakureon puts the marker away under his tongue, not wanting to be tooken out of the spring. Mareep sits over in a distant seperate pool. Lapras, who can barely submerge its fins all the way due to the shallow water, looks depressed.
"You think it's your fault that Rocket Dan captured most of your heard, don't you?" Hiro asks. Lapras nods.
"It's alright. You realize you didn't have any control over yourself in your state, it was just the result of a technique that hit you, so there's no need to be blaming yourself." Lapras still looks depressed.
"Not all of your herd got captured. While you were confused, the rest of your herd escaped through the cave entrance." Lapras looks reassured by this and begins to enjoy itself in the springs.
Mareep, who was sitting over in a seperate pool, opens its eyes after closing them relaxedly for so long and notices an egg on the ground. "MAREEEEEP!!" It tries to call Hiro. It then jumps out of its pool and jumps into the pool everyone else is in to try to get him.
"NOOOOO!!! MAREEP!!!" Hiro tries to stop him, but it's too late. Mareep jumps into the pool, and its static wool conducts all of the water, shocking everyone in it.
"Mareep, we need to learn to keep your static under control," Hiro's now fully clothed, and all his Pokemon are recalled except for Ibui and Mareep, who they follow. Mareep stops at the egg and Hiro picks it up.
"What's this egg doing here? Was it abandoned?" Hiro asks himself as he notices a tunnel glowing red. He, Mareep, and Ibui walk into it to see a pool of lava, and are then instantly shocked to see what they find next to the pool.
"Those.... those are the parents?!" Hiro points to a pile of collapsed rock that covers a pair of Boober corpses. Hiro walks up to the rubble, examines the Boober, and the body flames look to be long-since gone out, surely they're dead.
Hiro looks down at them for a moment, and then he hears a familiar voice from behind him, "There you are, human!"
Hiro turns around and sees Kiryuu, "Ki... Kimori?!"
"Human, I have a name, and it's Kiryuu!" Kiryuu corrects him.
"I have a name too. I'm Enju City's Kimono Hiro!"
"So if I stop calling you 'human', you'll stop calling me 'Kimori'? This doesn't matter anyway, I'll defeat you quickly enough and never encounter you again. Hiro, I demand you take out your Kakureon!"
"Why?" asks Hiro.
"I have to defeat it for ruining my heist on the airplane. You might as well do it instead of trouble any of your other Pokemon."
"I understand that" Hiro releases Kakureon. Kakureon just sits there for moment, looks at Kiryuu, then it takes out a marker and runs towards Kiryuu with it. Kiryuu dodges out of the way and trips Kakureon with his foot, causing Kakureon to fall face down.
"Is this really the same thing that foiled me?"
Hiro says with a sweatdrop on his head "It does other attacks when it's provoked."
Kimori looks down at the Kakureon and starts pummeling its head a bit with Tane Machine Gun. Kakureon's head keeps recoiling in pain with each hit before it gets up, stares at Kiryuu angrily and then lashes out its tongue. Kiryuu dodges without any effort, and the tongue sticks to a cavern wall.
Hiro, in awe, thinks "He's got such great speed". Kiryuu runs up to the wall, punches the wall a few times around the tongue, and a chunk of rock cracks out of the wall and the tongue snaps it back into Kakureon's mouth, and Kakureon falls over from the impact. Kakureon gets up and spits the rock out of its mouth, a bit of blood now leaking down his lip and nose. Kiryuu dashes past Kakureon at lightning-fast speed and slams it down to the ground from behind his back. Kakureon's fainted and has to be recalled.
"Hey Kiryuu, I saw you fight all those Lapras, but I want to ask you how you couldn't battle those Pokemon on the plane."
"I was a bit weaker than I am now and there were too many humans and Pokemon in a small space, but with some more training, I should be able to handle a situation like that. Now, give me all your Pokemon."
"You're not taking them! Ibui, Mareep, use Taiatari!" Both Ibui and Mareep try ramming Kiryuu, but he dodges both of them. Kiryuu whacks Ibui with his tail, picks up Ibui, and tosses him hard into Mareep, the impact and static knocking both of them out. Hiro recalls Mareep. Kiryuu is then seen holding his still bleeding side thinking "Shit, I hope I can hold out long enough to defeat the rest of his Pokemon".
Hiro looks at Lapras and Tattsuu's ball, "Water vs. grass. I have no other option." Hiro tosses out Lapras and Tattsuu. Tattsuu uses Enmaku to blind Kiryuu in black smoke, and Lapras uses Reitou Beam, that blue beam attack we saw the Lapras herd using earlier. Much to Hiro's surprise, though, when the smoke cleared, Kiryuu wasn't there. Instead, he was right behind Lapras and Tattsuu using Tane Machine Gun to knock them both out.
"How?" Hiro's stunned.
"I used Mikiri right before Tattsuu was about to blind me."
"Oh no! I don't have anymore Pokemon with me!"
Kiryuu then starts walking towards Hiro, "So I've defeated them all, eh? That means you have nothing left to defend yourself with, so hand them all over now!"
Hiro now starts thinking to himself, "No! My journey as a trainer can't be over now, can it? I didn't know Ibui for so long, but we're already best of friends, I don't want to lose it. And Lapras, I just calmed it down over its herd's imprisonment only for it to be captured as well. I can't let it just end like this!" As Hiro's thinking this, he's clinging onto the egg, which he forgot he was holding during the battle, and it suddenly glows.
"Huh! What?!" Kiryuu looks at the egg. The glowing stops, the egg cracks, and a fragment of the egg breaks off, and a fire shoots out of the hole and hits Kiryuu.
"UWAAAA!!!!" Kiryuu shouts in pain as some of the flames stick on his body. The rest of the egg shell eventually breaks off and reveals a Booby.
"Alright! I still have one Pokemon afterall!"
Kiryuu thinks "Damn. I'm getting badly burnt by a newborn, the weakest that a Pokemon can be. I must be really badly worn out for this to happen. While I still can, I have to run away."
Kiryuu clutches his side still and Hiro notices, he thinks "He was injured this whole time? I don't know how much longer someone like this will hold out, but since he's exhausted, I better just end it all by capturing him." Hiro takes out a Monster Ball and tosses it at Kiryuu. Kiryuu looks up and notices the ball flying at him. As fast as he can, he flicks the ball away with his wrist, and it gets redirected to the Booby who gets captured instead.
"No matter how weak I am, I refuse to be captured by a human. I want to be above humans, these horrible yet powerful enemies. I will not allow myself to become their slave!" Kiryuu shouts as Hiro looks at him.
"As a great strategist, I know when to quit, so I'll retreat for now," Kiryuu turns around.
Hiro looks at him momentarily when Kiryuu says "Kimono Hiro.... this will not be our last encounter. I will keep pursuing you until you are defeated!" He looks back at him before running away around a tunnel's corner. Hiro recalls Lapras and Tattsuu and goes over to pick up Ibui. As he holds up the slowly recovering Ibui, Kiryuu's seen around the corner taking a small camera out that was being held between his tails. He peeks around and snaps a few shots of Hiro and Ibui, and then runs away.
A holographic screen displays KIMORI in huge English letters with the Kana symbols below it ƒLƒ‚ƒŠ . It also displays Length: .51 M, Weight: 4.99 KG, and then a voice begins. "Kimori protect their homes from predators. Most Kimori are very prideful, so if one loses against an enemy, it will constantly pursue it until it's finally capable of defeating it."
"So that's why Kiryuu's after me." Hiro puts away his Pokemon Zukan and looks over at the Boober corpses, goes over to them, and starts to lift the rocks off of them.
Scene shifts to an old, rustic shack in the middle of a field, where inside we see Kiryuu grinding some herbs into a fine paste and putting it over his wound. It stings him a bit, but he manages. He goes to a trapdoor, climbs a ladder underneath, and we see that the shack actually hides a small technological base. Kiryuu goes up to a monitor and turns it on, types a few buttons, and a silhouetted face comes on. He says "Sakaki-sama...."
Scene shifts back to Hiro, who just finished erecting a couple of stones at the end of some mounds of dirt, likely the Boober's burial mounds, and Booby was out of its ball the whole time to watch its parents burial, curious instead of sad because the newborn doesn't know what's going on. Hiro then kneals down in front of the graves and claps his hands together, and sits there in silence. Booby decides to do the same. Ibui sits there and lowers its head in front of the tomb, and the scene leaves them with that moment of silence.
"Kiryuu, you have to stop going after one opponent just because you lose!" says the voice on the monitor.
"Sakaki, if it'll interest you to know, this kid has some rare Pokemon. He has a shiny Kakureon, a Booby, and I have photographic evidence of him with an Ibui." Kiryuu says as he plugs the camera, which turns out to be digital, into a slot near the monitor.
"Still, you shouldn't trouble yourself with one trainer alone. You should wait until he's in a large crowd to steal...." One of the pictures Kiryuu took comes up on Sakaki's monitor on the other side. Sakaki notices the picture of Hiro and the Ibui and freaks out.
"Is something wrong, sir?"
"Inside the ear, it looks like.... Kiryuu, do you have a picture from a different angle, one with a better glimpse within the ear?" On Kiryuu's screen, there's a variety of pictures. He selects one of them by typing a few keys and brings it up on Sakaki's monitor.
"It is.... it's a ring of circles pattern in its ear. Kiryuu, did you hear where this kid was from?" asks Sakaki.
"He said his name was Kimono Hiro from Enju City."
"Lab 14.... that was near.... Kiryuu, I advise you to stay away from this kid?"
"Huh!? Why?"
"That Ibui is too dangerous. It needs to be illiminated, and I only know one member capable of doing it" Sakaki says as he dials up on his phone.
"Illiminate?" questions Kiryuu.
A guy shrouded in shadows picks up a phone "Hello?"
"Agent #6038," Kiryuu cringes from hearing Sakaki say that name on the phone, "I want you to be stationed in Enju City. I'm going to send you a fax" Sakaki says as he prints out the picture of Hiro and Ibui and puts it through a fax machine.
"This kid goes by the name of Kimono Hiro. By any means possible, illiminate the Ibui he has with him, understand?"
"I understand. I'll go over there right away," says the mysterious man as he hangs up the phone.
"Sakaki-sama, are you sure you want to send that psychopath to deal with Hiro?" asks Kiryuu.
"He's the only one I'm certain of being capable to do the job," replies Sakaki.
"I just hope the freak doesn't kill Hiro's other Pokemon, I still want to battle with that guy. Hey, why send him to Enju?"
"He's a travelling trainer. While we can't be exactly sure which gyms he'll be aiming for, we can be certain he'll stop by his home town sooner or later."
I see. Hey, how dangerous can that Ibui possibly be anyway? I just defeated it in battle not too long ago."
"What? Kiryuu, whatever you do, do not do that again. You do not know what kind of a force this Ibui really is!" Sakaki demands.
"Really? Well if that's so, this Ibui sounds like a perfect challenge to test my skills against. Kiryuu, out!"
"WAIT, KIRYUU!!!" Sakaki says, but it's too late, Kiryuu cut off the connection.
"Dammit!" Sakaki shouts as he bangs his fist on the desk.
For the last scene, we see the mysterious shaded guy look at the picture of Hiro and Ibui that's in his hand as we see a close-up of his partly shaded evil half grin.
END OF CHAPTER
POKEMON NAME CHART
Buupig=Grumpig
Suitoru=Absorb
Tane Machine Gun=Bullet Seed
Ryuu no Ibuki=Dragonbreath
Boober=Magmar
Reitou Beam=Ice Beam
Mikiri=Detect
Booby=Magby
Sakaki=Giovanni
JAPANESE CULTURAL NOTES
-'sama' is another name suffix. It's used to indicate respect, usually used for royalty or someone of higher authority, like our equivalent to 'lord'. It'd appear that Kiryuu is a high-ranking official.