Author's Note: I know it's been a while since I last updated, but it's been hard sorting through the present when your thoughts are on the future. More specifically, I've been having ideas about what's going to happen to Felix in the future, and that sort of bogged down the work of the present. Anyways I was struck by an idea (and for me, ideas hit pretty hard), and so I renamed the chapters so they would sort of fit together.
"Where No Pokemon Trainer Has Gone Before"
Chapter 6: The Harper
It had been two days since the battle at the cliff, and Felix was making steady progress away from the bad men and evil monsters. Felix, after a very long and confusing talk with her pokemon, had come to the conclusion that she was no longer in her world.
{That giant vacuum cleaner must have been some sort of portal or doorway to another world, this world, whatever this world is.}
Her pokemon had agreed with her when she told them what she thought had happened. They felt something was different about where they were, and now they knew why.
Felix trudged on towards the mountains, away from the bad men, the dog-faced monsters, and evil wizards. For apparently, she concluded, there was magic in this world, or at least people who could use magic. And it was best to stay away from wizards, especially since that wizard probably had a grudge against her and her pokemon for beating up his men.
It had been four days since the battle at the cliff, and two days since she started following a group of suspicious people, who, judging from the scars and wounds on their bodies, and taking in the ragged condition of their clothing, Felix had first come to the conclusion that they were escaped prisoners. She employed her skills as a pokemon trainer to stealthily follow these people and try to find out more about this world she was in. After listening to their quiet talk and fearful mutterings, Felix found out that they weren't escaped prisoners.
They were escaped slaves.
There were half a dozen of them, all human, one female, five male, and all but one of them was completely terrified of being recaptured. This last one's name was Rowryn, but he was also called "Harper," which seemed to be some sort of title. From overhearing bits and pieces of conversation, the harpers sounded to Felix like a group of vigilantes who try to help people by giving them safe places to stay when hunted, fight evil men and monsters, pass along money and food to those in need, and in this case, free slaves.
Felix also found out that she was currently in a country called Thay, and the world she was on was called Faerun, or maybe Toril. She wasn't too clear about that, and she didn't want to go up and ask, for fear that they would attack her since she was an alien. {Anyways, these Thayans were a bunch of bullies. Powerful bullies, but still bullies,} Felix decided. Thay was ruled by evil wizards and most of the population of Thay was made up of slaves, who were made to do whatever the wizards wanted them to do for them, including being part of some sinister and truly horrific sounding experiments. Felix was sure some of these tales were going to give her nightmares.
At night Felix would climb up a tree and listen to the escaped slaves talk about following the Sunrise Mountains (the mountains that they were headed towards) down to Mulhorand. Mulhorand sounded like heaven from how the escaped slaves talked about it, and how they would be out of the reach of the Red Wizards of Thay.
This continued on for five more days, and Felix and her pokemon became used to the sneaking around like shadows, learning all they could about this strange world they were now in. Felix was also growing use to her smell, since she hadn't changed her clothes in about a week, and the only bathes she had taken lately were showers in the rain.
It seemed to Felix that since magic was probably the cause of her arrival in this world that magic could also be the way back home, provided she could find a wizard who wasn't evil. Maybe she could find one in this Mulhorand place...
But now it was nearing night time and the escapees found a small open spot between massive trees and quickly sent out two people to look for berries, nuts, and other such foods before the sun sank below the tree line and things became dark.
When the gathers returned with a pair of small furry creature with long ears and white fluffy tails, the escaped slaves decided to make a small fire to cook, judging they were close enough to the Sunrise Mountains to avoid any patrols spotting the camp fire. Besides, they were hungry for some meat and some change from the plants they had been eating.
Felix settled down about ten feet off the ground about twenty feet away from the fire, out of any direct sight, but close enough to hear at least some of the conversations. Caterpie was a couple feet above Felix, Wooper and Eevee were hiding in the underbrush, and Charmeleon and Magneton were in their pokeballs. Magneton, in addition to being to big to hide, was also conserving his energy, for while there had been a few storms since Magneton's evolution, there hadn't been any lightning strikes, and without electricity, Magneton was getting hungry. While Magneton could go several more weeks without electricity, he would have to rest in his pokeball during that time. {Hopefully, it will lightning and thunder before that,} Felix thought, staring up at the patches of moonlight that broke through the canopy.
She must have been tired, or she must have thought that the campfire would provide some sort of protection, for it wasn't long before she drifted off to sleep. Her pokemon soon followed, suddenly overcome with weariness after skulking and hiking through the woods for days on end.
Rowryn Heartblazer stared into the fire, thinking, hoping, and keeping an ear out for anything. So far his plan was going well: he had rescued some slaves from Thay and they were on their way to Mulhorand, where other harpers were there to move the slaves farther away from the slave-trading countries. Only one more day to the mountains, then they would be out of the reach of the patrols. The patrols didn't go too near the mountains in the interest of not becoming dragon food. A small group such as Rowryn's could easily avoid the dragons, though it would still be a long journey following the mountains south to Mulhorand. {But it will be worth it,} Rowryn thought. {Helping the helpless is what we harpers do,} and then he snorted at poetic wording his thoughts had taken. He didn't much care for poetry.
Stretching, his bones popped from staying in one place for too long. Rowryn nodded to the other one standing guard, Tory, and indicated that he was going to find a tree to water.
On his way back from taking a leak, Rowryn was looking up at the stars he could see through the canopy and tried to fit constellations to the ones he could spot. The past few nights had been cloudy, and so Rowryn had been unable to fill one of his hobbies: stargazing.
Rowryn stopped when he noticed something in a tree not far from the campfire. He wouldn't have noticed the person sleeping in the tree had it not been for the campfire. They would have been deep in shadows and just another dark spot against the stars, the perfect place for a spy.
{Could it be a Thayan wizard?} Rowryn thought, confused. While the Red Wizards of Thay would be annoyed enough with anyone "stealing" their slaves, they wouldn't have bothered with putting a spy in a tree where they might accidentally be spotted. A Red Wizard would just use divination magic to find the escaped slaves, teleport in, and charm or kill everyone there. Or a Red Wizard would sneak around invisible and silent.
{In any case,} Rowryn decided, {I need to see who or what that is.} Rowryn looked back towards the campsite, wondering if he should warn the other guard. The being in the tree would certainly see the two of them talking, even if it couldn't hear them, and it would make the being suspicious if the two of them were whispering. {Better to sneak up on him,} and Rowryn found a nearby tree and slowly climbed it with all the sound of swooping owl.
Nearing about the same height as the spy, Rowryn studied the intruder. It was a little human girl, looking about ten or eleven years old, using a pack as a pillow, her eyes closed and her chest moving up and down as she slept. Her clothing was definitely unusual, and Rowryn certainly had never seen boots like hers before.
{She could be a spy, or she could come from a different world or plane of existence.} Rowryn had heard of people traveling between the stars and coming from different planets. Rowryn also had heard a little bit about the many planes of existence, and it could explain her strange clothing. {Though that doesn't explain why she is sleeping in a tree, not far from our campsite, in the borders of Thay, where anybody walking around carelessly could (or rather would) end up as a slave.} Rowryn tossed ideas back and forth in his head, trying to come to some sort of logic, but in the end he decided that he would have to wake her up and question her. {But should I warn the others? If I warn the others, they might make such a big fuss out of it that they wake her up and she runs off before we can surround her. But if I don't and this girl turns out to be something more dangerous than a little girl...}
Rowryn climbed back down the tree, and crept back to the campfire and Tory, the other one who was guarding for this stretch of the night.
"'Took a while," Tory spoke in an undertone to Rowryn, not wishing to wake the others.
"I found something strange," Rowryn replied, concerned.
"Wha?"
"A little girl, sleeping."
Tory drew a startled breath and his eyes widened with surprise, and then narrowed with suspicion and he looked around quickly. Moving closer to Rowryn he whispered, "A trap?"
"Possibly, but if it's a trap, it's a weird one. I'll show you her and maybe you'll have an idea."
Tory followed Rowryn to the girl's tree and looked up at her. Tory studied her for several moments and then looked back to Rowryn and shrugged. "Like yew said, if it's a trap, it's kind of obvious."
Rowryn nodded, and after a few moments of consideration, drew a blade and indicated for Tory to do so as well, and crept up the tree. Reaching the girl, he poked her in the stomach with his finger.
The girl squirmed a little, but settled back down.
He poked her again.
"I'm sleeping, Caterpie," the girl mumbled, then drifted back to sleep again.
{Is Caterpie a friend of hers, a pet? Maybe it's nearby?} Rowryn looked at the nearby trees and looked down at the ground, hoping to spot someone else, but he saw only Tory. He poked her again in the stomach.
"What is it?" The girl finally opened her eyes to look into Rowryn's face, and she squealed in alarm, and almost fell out of the tree. Luckily she grabbed onto the branch she had been sleeping on, but her backpack hit the ground with a small *thud*.
Hanging in midair, her breath coming in quick and shallow, eyes wide with fear and staring intently at the dagger in Rowryn's hand, the girl did not seem like much of a threat. In fact, she seemed to be acting quite normally when awakened in the middle of the night by a man with a weapon in his hand. Rowryn was beginning to feel ashamed of scaring the little girl half to death when something began growling at him, not too far up the tree.
Turning his head as little as possible, Rowryn saw out of the corner of his eye a small green creature, vaguely resembling a caterpillar. In any other situation, Rowryn would have laughed off this monster. But at night, up a tree, and with the creature only a few feet away from his head, this creature was as frightening as any monster or demon the Red Wizards of Thay could conjure up.
The little girl looked at the creature and stuttered, "C-caterpie! D-don't attack! I'm fine, I'm okay, just calm down, okay?" The girl stared into Caterpie's eyes, trying to let Caterpie know that everything was alright.
The creature stopped growling, and settled down, staring at Rowryn.
"Your protector, I assume?"
"Ummmm, yeah. He's my friend."
"Right." Rowryn sheathed his blade and grabbed the girl by her arm and pulled her back to her feet. After seeing the creature stand up for the girl, Rowryn truly doubted that the girl was aligned with any evil beings; she just seemed too innocent.
They climbed down the tree, where Tory watched with suspicious eyes the small green creature that crawled down the side of the tree after them, and then jumped onto the shoulder of the girl, keeping its eyes. Now that they were on the ground, Rowryn realized that the girl wasn't as young as he had thought. She was at least eleven winters old, and somewhat athletic, apparently well-fed for most her life, and seemed to have been living in the woods for a while judging by the state of her clothing. Rowryn changed his assessment of her as a "little girl" to "young girl."
"What're you called, girl?" Tory asked gruffly.
"I'm Felix Johnson," she answered, much more calmly than she had been a few moments ago.
Tory continued the interrogation, "Why're you up that tree?"
"I'm... lost. I've been looking for a way home for..." Felix quickly added up the days in her head, "about eight, no, nine days. I saw your group and figured you probably knew where you were going, so I followed you," Felix shrugged.
"How'd you get 'lost?'" Disbelief and suspicion occupied Tory's voice.
"I, uh, fell through a portal, gate, hole in space, rip in reality, whatever you call it, and ended up here. Look," Felix announced, fed up with Tory's obvious belief that she was lying, "I'm not lying! I never wanted to come to this crazy world anyways. I'm supposed to be in Cerulean City right now, challenging the Gym Leader to a pokemon battle. Actually, I'm supposed to already be on the road to Saffron City or Lavender Town to challenge the Gym Leaders of those places. I really don't want to be some messed world where everyone thinks I'm a freak of nature and that my pokemon are too!"
Felix was half-shouting at this point, her face red, and her body trembling with anger and rage. Caterpie was stroking her cheek with its antennae, trying to calm her down with soothing noises. It helped, somewhat.
Rowryn blinked, stunned by the how openly Felix had told them everything about her, and also confused because a quarter of what she had said made no sense to him. Hesitantly, not really wanting her to explode on him just like she had exploded on Tory, he asked, "What's a pokemon?"
Drawing a deep breath, she swallowed some of the anger, and replied, "Pokemon are all the animals on my world that aren't human. They have different types, like fire, ice, water, grass, rock, psychic, and they have powers that go with these types. Caterpie," she pointed at her friend who was still on her shoulder, "is a grass and bug type pokemon. As pokemon learn and gain experience, they evolve, which means they turn into new pokemon, sometimes with different types and powers. Some of our scientists believe they are as smart as us, though others disagree. Most of them believe that pokemon originated from outer space."
Felix drew in another deep breath and continued.
"I don't know anything about the theories, and I just accept pokemon as what they seem to be: our friends. There are some people in my world who use pokemon for their own gains. It is said that no pokemon is born evil, it is only the trainer of the pokemon who makes the pokemon become evil."
Rowryn asked, "Trainer?"
"I am a pokemon trainer. That means that I go around catching pokemon with pokeballs." Felix pulled something off her belt that Rowryn hadn't noticed because her jacket covered the belt. In her hand was a red and white sphere, about the size of a gold coin, with what looked like a button between the red layer and white layer. Rowryn noticed five other spheres attached to her belt in addition to the one in her hand. "After catching pokemon, I train them for competitions that are held all around the world. We don't battle to the death, only till one pokemon is knocked out or surrenders. Trainers that force their pokemon to fight to the death, or who abuse their pokemon can be thrown in jail. Most pokemon enjoy battling, testing their skills, and making their trainers happy about having a good fight. There's also a lot of fame and fortune involved for those who win the competitions."
Rowryn continued, "Aren't you a bit young for this sort of thing?"
"Not really. I'll turn eleven in a month and a half, and most trainers start on their journeys to become master pokemon trainers on their tenth birthday. My parents had me wait till I finished the school year before I started my pokemon journey."
Tory crossed his arms over his chest and said with eyes still full of disbelief, "Seems a bit far fetched ta me."
Felix smiled, "I was hoping someone would say that," and she pulled a red rectangular device out of a pocket.
Tory began to draw a blade, but Rowryn waved him down. {I don't think she's about to attack us after she told us about herself and her world.}
Opening up the device, Felix revealed many buttons on the inside of it of which she pushed a few. Then she held it out for Rowryn and Tory to look at. Among all the buttons was a square with a picture in it of some sort of bird holding something green in its beak. Felix pressed one of the buttons and suddenly a voice sprang out of the device.
"Farfetch'd, the Wild Duck pokemon. This flying type pokemon fights with a sprig of green onions to use as a sword."
The voice sounded like a teacher reciting information to a class, an unwilling class.
Tory had jumped at the voice, while Rowryn only looked surprised and impressed, and amused. "'Far fetch' and 'Farfetch'd', huh?" He chuckled. "The people of your world must have a sense of humor to call an animal that. I take it there are a lot of different kinds of these 'pokemon?'"
Felix nodded. "Yep, several hundred, and more are discovered each year. And I'd heard the joke from a friend and I wanted to try it out on somebody. This," she tapped the red device in her hand, "is a pokedex. It's contains all of the current information on all known pokemon." She pushed some of the buttons, and the picture changed.
"Caterpie, the Worm pokemon. This bug type pokemon often crawls into foliage where it camouflages itself."
Rowryn compared the picture with the pokemon sitting on Felix's shoulder. They were fairly similar, though the real Caterpie's antennae were a much more brilliant pink than the one in the picture.
Felix closed the pokedex and put it back into her pant's pocket. She looked up earnestly at Rowryn, and Tory. "So, you believe me yet?"
Rowryn grinned, and held out his hand. Felix took it and Rowryn finally introduced himself, "I am Rowryn. Rowryn Heartblazer."
Rortizathistlypemtuin, whose name to mere mortals was simply Rort, was getting hungry. Those stringy goats he had eaten a week ago weren't exactly high on Rort's list of "good food to eat." It was time to go hunt something that walked on two legs, Rort decided. Even though intelligent food sometimes was able to injure Rort, the blue dragon figured that the meat was a much higher quality and the screams they put off certainly were worth it, as long as he didn't annoy any Red Wizards of Thay. Those spell casters could be particularly annoying to the great beast, and they were best either avoided or eaten quickly before they could throw any of their spells at Rort.
Rort, with a glance back towards his pile of treasure, not very big considering that he had to limit what he stole from Thayans, walked to the entrance of his cave.
Once he was outside of the confining cave, Rort was able to fully extend his wings, out to their eighty foot wingspan. Not quite an adult, Rort was more than sixty years old and quite impressive with his sharp teeth and claws, a brilliant white thanks to the dragon's meticulous care of his body. Looking at his best was something that Rort's long forgotten parents had taught him before they kicked him out of the test along with the rest of his siblings when he had grown old enough to fly. His parents had told him that looking in tip-top shape made him much more frightening than looking dirty and scraggily, or having rotting yellow teeth. More minions are gained out fear than disgust: that was the lesson his parents had taught him.
Hunger soon overcame his reminiscing, and the blue dragon Rortizathistlypemtuin took flight, looking for intelligent humanoids to eat... and pokemon trainers certainly filled that description.
[Ending Notes: The encounter between Felix and Rowryn is something I hadn't really thought out in advance, but now that I have written it out, I am thinking about giving Rowryn a much bigger part in the story ahead. Oh, and the joke about 'far fetched' and 'Farfetch'd' belongs to Patrick O'Shea. I just borrowed it from him, so all the credit for the laughter (or not) created by joke belong to Patrick. The confrontation between Felix and Tory was also inspired by the Digicross story by Patrick O'Shea.]
Next chapter will be out before school starts up again.
"Where No Pokemon Trainer Has Gone Before"
Chapter 6: The Harper
It had been two days since the battle at the cliff, and Felix was making steady progress away from the bad men and evil monsters. Felix, after a very long and confusing talk with her pokemon, had come to the conclusion that she was no longer in her world.
{That giant vacuum cleaner must have been some sort of portal or doorway to another world, this world, whatever this world is.}
Her pokemon had agreed with her when she told them what she thought had happened. They felt something was different about where they were, and now they knew why.
Felix trudged on towards the mountains, away from the bad men, the dog-faced monsters, and evil wizards. For apparently, she concluded, there was magic in this world, or at least people who could use magic. And it was best to stay away from wizards, especially since that wizard probably had a grudge against her and her pokemon for beating up his men.
It had been four days since the battle at the cliff, and two days since she started following a group of suspicious people, who, judging from the scars and wounds on their bodies, and taking in the ragged condition of their clothing, Felix had first come to the conclusion that they were escaped prisoners. She employed her skills as a pokemon trainer to stealthily follow these people and try to find out more about this world she was in. After listening to their quiet talk and fearful mutterings, Felix found out that they weren't escaped prisoners.
They were escaped slaves.
There were half a dozen of them, all human, one female, five male, and all but one of them was completely terrified of being recaptured. This last one's name was Rowryn, but he was also called "Harper," which seemed to be some sort of title. From overhearing bits and pieces of conversation, the harpers sounded to Felix like a group of vigilantes who try to help people by giving them safe places to stay when hunted, fight evil men and monsters, pass along money and food to those in need, and in this case, free slaves.
Felix also found out that she was currently in a country called Thay, and the world she was on was called Faerun, or maybe Toril. She wasn't too clear about that, and she didn't want to go up and ask, for fear that they would attack her since she was an alien. {Anyways, these Thayans were a bunch of bullies. Powerful bullies, but still bullies,} Felix decided. Thay was ruled by evil wizards and most of the population of Thay was made up of slaves, who were made to do whatever the wizards wanted them to do for them, including being part of some sinister and truly horrific sounding experiments. Felix was sure some of these tales were going to give her nightmares.
At night Felix would climb up a tree and listen to the escaped slaves talk about following the Sunrise Mountains (the mountains that they were headed towards) down to Mulhorand. Mulhorand sounded like heaven from how the escaped slaves talked about it, and how they would be out of the reach of the Red Wizards of Thay.
This continued on for five more days, and Felix and her pokemon became used to the sneaking around like shadows, learning all they could about this strange world they were now in. Felix was also growing use to her smell, since she hadn't changed her clothes in about a week, and the only bathes she had taken lately were showers in the rain.
It seemed to Felix that since magic was probably the cause of her arrival in this world that magic could also be the way back home, provided she could find a wizard who wasn't evil. Maybe she could find one in this Mulhorand place...
But now it was nearing night time and the escapees found a small open spot between massive trees and quickly sent out two people to look for berries, nuts, and other such foods before the sun sank below the tree line and things became dark.
When the gathers returned with a pair of small furry creature with long ears and white fluffy tails, the escaped slaves decided to make a small fire to cook, judging they were close enough to the Sunrise Mountains to avoid any patrols spotting the camp fire. Besides, they were hungry for some meat and some change from the plants they had been eating.
Felix settled down about ten feet off the ground about twenty feet away from the fire, out of any direct sight, but close enough to hear at least some of the conversations. Caterpie was a couple feet above Felix, Wooper and Eevee were hiding in the underbrush, and Charmeleon and Magneton were in their pokeballs. Magneton, in addition to being to big to hide, was also conserving his energy, for while there had been a few storms since Magneton's evolution, there hadn't been any lightning strikes, and without electricity, Magneton was getting hungry. While Magneton could go several more weeks without electricity, he would have to rest in his pokeball during that time. {Hopefully, it will lightning and thunder before that,} Felix thought, staring up at the patches of moonlight that broke through the canopy.
She must have been tired, or she must have thought that the campfire would provide some sort of protection, for it wasn't long before she drifted off to sleep. Her pokemon soon followed, suddenly overcome with weariness after skulking and hiking through the woods for days on end.
Rowryn Heartblazer stared into the fire, thinking, hoping, and keeping an ear out for anything. So far his plan was going well: he had rescued some slaves from Thay and they were on their way to Mulhorand, where other harpers were there to move the slaves farther away from the slave-trading countries. Only one more day to the mountains, then they would be out of the reach of the patrols. The patrols didn't go too near the mountains in the interest of not becoming dragon food. A small group such as Rowryn's could easily avoid the dragons, though it would still be a long journey following the mountains south to Mulhorand. {But it will be worth it,} Rowryn thought. {Helping the helpless is what we harpers do,} and then he snorted at poetic wording his thoughts had taken. He didn't much care for poetry.
Stretching, his bones popped from staying in one place for too long. Rowryn nodded to the other one standing guard, Tory, and indicated that he was going to find a tree to water.
On his way back from taking a leak, Rowryn was looking up at the stars he could see through the canopy and tried to fit constellations to the ones he could spot. The past few nights had been cloudy, and so Rowryn had been unable to fill one of his hobbies: stargazing.
Rowryn stopped when he noticed something in a tree not far from the campfire. He wouldn't have noticed the person sleeping in the tree had it not been for the campfire. They would have been deep in shadows and just another dark spot against the stars, the perfect place for a spy.
{Could it be a Thayan wizard?} Rowryn thought, confused. While the Red Wizards of Thay would be annoyed enough with anyone "stealing" their slaves, they wouldn't have bothered with putting a spy in a tree where they might accidentally be spotted. A Red Wizard would just use divination magic to find the escaped slaves, teleport in, and charm or kill everyone there. Or a Red Wizard would sneak around invisible and silent.
{In any case,} Rowryn decided, {I need to see who or what that is.} Rowryn looked back towards the campsite, wondering if he should warn the other guard. The being in the tree would certainly see the two of them talking, even if it couldn't hear them, and it would make the being suspicious if the two of them were whispering. {Better to sneak up on him,} and Rowryn found a nearby tree and slowly climbed it with all the sound of swooping owl.
Nearing about the same height as the spy, Rowryn studied the intruder. It was a little human girl, looking about ten or eleven years old, using a pack as a pillow, her eyes closed and her chest moving up and down as she slept. Her clothing was definitely unusual, and Rowryn certainly had never seen boots like hers before.
{She could be a spy, or she could come from a different world or plane of existence.} Rowryn had heard of people traveling between the stars and coming from different planets. Rowryn also had heard a little bit about the many planes of existence, and it could explain her strange clothing. {Though that doesn't explain why she is sleeping in a tree, not far from our campsite, in the borders of Thay, where anybody walking around carelessly could (or rather would) end up as a slave.} Rowryn tossed ideas back and forth in his head, trying to come to some sort of logic, but in the end he decided that he would have to wake her up and question her. {But should I warn the others? If I warn the others, they might make such a big fuss out of it that they wake her up and she runs off before we can surround her. But if I don't and this girl turns out to be something more dangerous than a little girl...}
Rowryn climbed back down the tree, and crept back to the campfire and Tory, the other one who was guarding for this stretch of the night.
"'Took a while," Tory spoke in an undertone to Rowryn, not wishing to wake the others.
"I found something strange," Rowryn replied, concerned.
"Wha?"
"A little girl, sleeping."
Tory drew a startled breath and his eyes widened with surprise, and then narrowed with suspicion and he looked around quickly. Moving closer to Rowryn he whispered, "A trap?"
"Possibly, but if it's a trap, it's a weird one. I'll show you her and maybe you'll have an idea."
Tory followed Rowryn to the girl's tree and looked up at her. Tory studied her for several moments and then looked back to Rowryn and shrugged. "Like yew said, if it's a trap, it's kind of obvious."
Rowryn nodded, and after a few moments of consideration, drew a blade and indicated for Tory to do so as well, and crept up the tree. Reaching the girl, he poked her in the stomach with his finger.
The girl squirmed a little, but settled back down.
He poked her again.
"I'm sleeping, Caterpie," the girl mumbled, then drifted back to sleep again.
{Is Caterpie a friend of hers, a pet? Maybe it's nearby?} Rowryn looked at the nearby trees and looked down at the ground, hoping to spot someone else, but he saw only Tory. He poked her again in the stomach.
"What is it?" The girl finally opened her eyes to look into Rowryn's face, and she squealed in alarm, and almost fell out of the tree. Luckily she grabbed onto the branch she had been sleeping on, but her backpack hit the ground with a small *thud*.
Hanging in midair, her breath coming in quick and shallow, eyes wide with fear and staring intently at the dagger in Rowryn's hand, the girl did not seem like much of a threat. In fact, she seemed to be acting quite normally when awakened in the middle of the night by a man with a weapon in his hand. Rowryn was beginning to feel ashamed of scaring the little girl half to death when something began growling at him, not too far up the tree.
Turning his head as little as possible, Rowryn saw out of the corner of his eye a small green creature, vaguely resembling a caterpillar. In any other situation, Rowryn would have laughed off this monster. But at night, up a tree, and with the creature only a few feet away from his head, this creature was as frightening as any monster or demon the Red Wizards of Thay could conjure up.
The little girl looked at the creature and stuttered, "C-caterpie! D-don't attack! I'm fine, I'm okay, just calm down, okay?" The girl stared into Caterpie's eyes, trying to let Caterpie know that everything was alright.
The creature stopped growling, and settled down, staring at Rowryn.
"Your protector, I assume?"
"Ummmm, yeah. He's my friend."
"Right." Rowryn sheathed his blade and grabbed the girl by her arm and pulled her back to her feet. After seeing the creature stand up for the girl, Rowryn truly doubted that the girl was aligned with any evil beings; she just seemed too innocent.
They climbed down the tree, where Tory watched with suspicious eyes the small green creature that crawled down the side of the tree after them, and then jumped onto the shoulder of the girl, keeping its eyes. Now that they were on the ground, Rowryn realized that the girl wasn't as young as he had thought. She was at least eleven winters old, and somewhat athletic, apparently well-fed for most her life, and seemed to have been living in the woods for a while judging by the state of her clothing. Rowryn changed his assessment of her as a "little girl" to "young girl."
"What're you called, girl?" Tory asked gruffly.
"I'm Felix Johnson," she answered, much more calmly than she had been a few moments ago.
Tory continued the interrogation, "Why're you up that tree?"
"I'm... lost. I've been looking for a way home for..." Felix quickly added up the days in her head, "about eight, no, nine days. I saw your group and figured you probably knew where you were going, so I followed you," Felix shrugged.
"How'd you get 'lost?'" Disbelief and suspicion occupied Tory's voice.
"I, uh, fell through a portal, gate, hole in space, rip in reality, whatever you call it, and ended up here. Look," Felix announced, fed up with Tory's obvious belief that she was lying, "I'm not lying! I never wanted to come to this crazy world anyways. I'm supposed to be in Cerulean City right now, challenging the Gym Leader to a pokemon battle. Actually, I'm supposed to already be on the road to Saffron City or Lavender Town to challenge the Gym Leaders of those places. I really don't want to be some messed world where everyone thinks I'm a freak of nature and that my pokemon are too!"
Felix was half-shouting at this point, her face red, and her body trembling with anger and rage. Caterpie was stroking her cheek with its antennae, trying to calm her down with soothing noises. It helped, somewhat.
Rowryn blinked, stunned by the how openly Felix had told them everything about her, and also confused because a quarter of what she had said made no sense to him. Hesitantly, not really wanting her to explode on him just like she had exploded on Tory, he asked, "What's a pokemon?"
Drawing a deep breath, she swallowed some of the anger, and replied, "Pokemon are all the animals on my world that aren't human. They have different types, like fire, ice, water, grass, rock, psychic, and they have powers that go with these types. Caterpie," she pointed at her friend who was still on her shoulder, "is a grass and bug type pokemon. As pokemon learn and gain experience, they evolve, which means they turn into new pokemon, sometimes with different types and powers. Some of our scientists believe they are as smart as us, though others disagree. Most of them believe that pokemon originated from outer space."
Felix drew in another deep breath and continued.
"I don't know anything about the theories, and I just accept pokemon as what they seem to be: our friends. There are some people in my world who use pokemon for their own gains. It is said that no pokemon is born evil, it is only the trainer of the pokemon who makes the pokemon become evil."
Rowryn asked, "Trainer?"
"I am a pokemon trainer. That means that I go around catching pokemon with pokeballs." Felix pulled something off her belt that Rowryn hadn't noticed because her jacket covered the belt. In her hand was a red and white sphere, about the size of a gold coin, with what looked like a button between the red layer and white layer. Rowryn noticed five other spheres attached to her belt in addition to the one in her hand. "After catching pokemon, I train them for competitions that are held all around the world. We don't battle to the death, only till one pokemon is knocked out or surrenders. Trainers that force their pokemon to fight to the death, or who abuse their pokemon can be thrown in jail. Most pokemon enjoy battling, testing their skills, and making their trainers happy about having a good fight. There's also a lot of fame and fortune involved for those who win the competitions."
Rowryn continued, "Aren't you a bit young for this sort of thing?"
"Not really. I'll turn eleven in a month and a half, and most trainers start on their journeys to become master pokemon trainers on their tenth birthday. My parents had me wait till I finished the school year before I started my pokemon journey."
Tory crossed his arms over his chest and said with eyes still full of disbelief, "Seems a bit far fetched ta me."
Felix smiled, "I was hoping someone would say that," and she pulled a red rectangular device out of a pocket.
Tory began to draw a blade, but Rowryn waved him down. {I don't think she's about to attack us after she told us about herself and her world.}
Opening up the device, Felix revealed many buttons on the inside of it of which she pushed a few. Then she held it out for Rowryn and Tory to look at. Among all the buttons was a square with a picture in it of some sort of bird holding something green in its beak. Felix pressed one of the buttons and suddenly a voice sprang out of the device.
"Farfetch'd, the Wild Duck pokemon. This flying type pokemon fights with a sprig of green onions to use as a sword."
The voice sounded like a teacher reciting information to a class, an unwilling class.
Tory had jumped at the voice, while Rowryn only looked surprised and impressed, and amused. "'Far fetch' and 'Farfetch'd', huh?" He chuckled. "The people of your world must have a sense of humor to call an animal that. I take it there are a lot of different kinds of these 'pokemon?'"
Felix nodded. "Yep, several hundred, and more are discovered each year. And I'd heard the joke from a friend and I wanted to try it out on somebody. This," she tapped the red device in her hand, "is a pokedex. It's contains all of the current information on all known pokemon." She pushed some of the buttons, and the picture changed.
"Caterpie, the Worm pokemon. This bug type pokemon often crawls into foliage where it camouflages itself."
Rowryn compared the picture with the pokemon sitting on Felix's shoulder. They were fairly similar, though the real Caterpie's antennae were a much more brilliant pink than the one in the picture.
Felix closed the pokedex and put it back into her pant's pocket. She looked up earnestly at Rowryn, and Tory. "So, you believe me yet?"
Rowryn grinned, and held out his hand. Felix took it and Rowryn finally introduced himself, "I am Rowryn. Rowryn Heartblazer."
Rortizathistlypemtuin, whose name to mere mortals was simply Rort, was getting hungry. Those stringy goats he had eaten a week ago weren't exactly high on Rort's list of "good food to eat." It was time to go hunt something that walked on two legs, Rort decided. Even though intelligent food sometimes was able to injure Rort, the blue dragon figured that the meat was a much higher quality and the screams they put off certainly were worth it, as long as he didn't annoy any Red Wizards of Thay. Those spell casters could be particularly annoying to the great beast, and they were best either avoided or eaten quickly before they could throw any of their spells at Rort.
Rort, with a glance back towards his pile of treasure, not very big considering that he had to limit what he stole from Thayans, walked to the entrance of his cave.
Once he was outside of the confining cave, Rort was able to fully extend his wings, out to their eighty foot wingspan. Not quite an adult, Rort was more than sixty years old and quite impressive with his sharp teeth and claws, a brilliant white thanks to the dragon's meticulous care of his body. Looking at his best was something that Rort's long forgotten parents had taught him before they kicked him out of the test along with the rest of his siblings when he had grown old enough to fly. His parents had told him that looking in tip-top shape made him much more frightening than looking dirty and scraggily, or having rotting yellow teeth. More minions are gained out fear than disgust: that was the lesson his parents had taught him.
Hunger soon overcame his reminiscing, and the blue dragon Rortizathistlypemtuin took flight, looking for intelligent humanoids to eat... and pokemon trainers certainly filled that description.
[Ending Notes: The encounter between Felix and Rowryn is something I hadn't really thought out in advance, but now that I have written it out, I am thinking about giving Rowryn a much bigger part in the story ahead. Oh, and the joke about 'far fetched' and 'Farfetch'd' belongs to Patrick O'Shea. I just borrowed it from him, so all the credit for the laughter (or not) created by joke belong to Patrick. The confrontation between Felix and Tory was also inspired by the Digicross story by Patrick O'Shea.]
Next chapter will be out before school starts up again.