No Silver Lining - Part 1: The Foundling

Chapter 1: Something Amiss

Something… there was something there. Hovering on the bare fringes of understanding. What was it ? Not something good. No… not at all. Fear. Fear ? More than fear. Almost, almost… Where ?

Pikachu came awake knowing only that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Immediately, he sat upright on the bed and looked around for the disturbance, his tail erect and his ears twitching. The clock on the wall had progressed several hours since he'd fallen asleep; it was, literally, the dead of night. But he didn't see anything wrong. The room was dark, and the rhythmic rise and fall of the blankets told the Pokémon that Ash was sleeping peacefully.

So what had woken him ?

Pikachu jumped down from the bed and went to the window. He nosed the curtains aside and looked out. The storm had passed, leaving only a steady but soft rain to mark it's passing. He could see nothing wrong outside, either. Yet there had to be something, something that had…

"Pika-pi." He said, bounding back over to Ash's bed, distressed. He released an extremely mild, crackling shock over the teen, and Ash woke, blinking rapidly.

"Pikachu ? What's wrong ?" Ash said, groggily.

"Pika-pi. Pikachu." The electric Pokémon said, anxiously. He still didn't know what was wrong, but he had to find out -- and that meant going to look for it… whatever 'it' was.

"Something outside ?" he repeated, disoriented. He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Did you hear something, Pikachu ?" He listened, but he couldn't hear anything, other than the now-gentle tap of rain against the windows. The wind had all but died off and the storm had either dissipated or moved farther inland. He reached for the flashlight and turned it on again. The room was empty. He shined the beam to the clock on the wall.

Pikachu wished he could share the feeling he'd felt while he'd been asleep with Ash. It had been… so… so…

Ash seemed to know anyway. There were times when Pikachu thought that Ash must be part Pokémon. Some trainers never even learned how to understand and talk to their Pokémon, except for yelling orders in battle. Ash thought like a Pokémon sometimes. He was already reaching for his belt lined with his PokéBalls.

----------

I don't think I've seen seen Pikachu this upset before, Ash thought as he pulled on his jacket and shoes. He was still sleepy, but it was rapidly fading. An extremely faint rumble of thunder reached his ears as he tied up the shoelaces and slipped the flashlight into his pocket. He didn't want Joy to know he was going outside in the middle of the night, in the rain, to look for something he wasn't sure was even there.

So he didn't click the light on until they had passed the front doors of the PokéCenter. His hat protected his face from getting wet, but the rain was warm and soft anyway, almost like an apology for its earlier ferocity. Pikachu was sitting on his back legs, looking around. Finally, appearing to make up his mind, bounded across the tiny town square and into the woods. Ash chased after him, the flashlight beam bouncing as he ran.

"Pikachu, wait up !" he called. He didn't want to get too far into the woods, because with the power in the town out, he couldn't follow the light back to the PokéCenter, and he didn't relish the thought of sleeping the rest of the night outside in the rain when there was a perfectly comfortable Center around.

Pikachu led him deeper and deeper into the woods, and finally stopped and began sniffing at something on the ground. Ash lifted the flashlight. The area was covered in footprints, and they looked lost, like they'd wandered around. They certainly weren't his prints; they looked a lot more like they had been made by boots. Adult sized boots. Pikachu was sniffing at the edge of the stream, which had swollen to nearly double its size with the heavy rain.

Ash began to feel uneasy.

He wasn't sure why; maybe he was picking up on whatever was making Pikachu so upset. In any case, there had to be something more. Pikachu wouldn't have zapped Ash out of sleep and bed to look at a stream. He left the electric Pokémon at the water's edge and followed the footprints. One set stayed by the water's edge, and one pair, considerably smaller, wandered around a bit. He was about to turn and walk back to Pikachu when the beam of the flashlight caught something light coloured. He walked over to it and picked it up; it was a scrap of wet material, and it felt coarse and dirty, like a sack used for hauling garbage.

It might have been washed downstream from another town, Ash thought. He found another piece. And another. It looked as though someone had cut it with scissors and thrown chunks of it around the area.

The rain had stopped, leaving everything quiet except for the rushing of the stream, which was no doubt fed from the sea a short distance away. Pikachu came over, and when he saw the material, he bristled. Electricity crackled around the sensitive spots on his cheeks. Now Ash knew for sure there was something wrong.

...Fearangerhurtrageterror...

Raw emotions flooded through him. Ash blinked, and shook his head. Those weren't Pikachu's feelings. Pokémon, he'd learned, could project their feelings or emotions onto their trainers in extreme situations. He and Pikachu had shared several times, the last time being when he'd advanced to Third Level at the Pokémon League. It had been like being completely ecstatic two times over. But this, this was…

...Fear-anger-hurt-rage-terror...

Pikachu darted past him, over to a huge tree on the edge of the stream. The water had washed a large part of the bank away, leaving the root system exposed. He wiggled into the roots and Ash lost sight of him for a moment. "Pikachu ?" he called, worried, getting on his hands and knees and shining the light into the tree's underside maze.

There, near the back, were two light-coloured Pokémon. One, easily identified, was Pikachu. The other he couldn't see that well. The rest of the shredded sack was tucked in the back. He stretched out his arm to pull them both out of the tree roots -- and yelped as a very sharp set of teeth sank into his hand. He pulled back, and Pikachu instantly crackled with powerful electricity, but he didn't shock the other Pokémon in defense of Ash. The trainer examined his hand, which was now hurting but not serious. He could hear Pikachu talking to the other Pokémon, but the other Pokémon's answers were too quiet for him to hear, so he still didn't know what kind it was.

As if Pikachu's coaxing had worked, Ash reached in again, and this time, got his hand around the other Pokémon. "Come on." He said, "That's a bad place to hide. The stream's getting higher, and this place will be underwater soon." Stretching out his fingers, he was able to wrap them around the other Pokémon. Fur, he noticed, soft fur. He bit down on the end of the flashlight and held it in his mouth so he had both hands free. He navigated the tree roots with the Pokémon in his hands, and pulled it free. Pikachu came scampering out seconds later.

The flashlight dropped and rolled into the stream as Ash's mouth dropped open in shock.

It was a Meowth, which explained the sharp teeth and the fur, but even without the flashlight Ash could see this Pokémon had been hurt badly, like it had been on the loosing end of many battles. It was covered in bites and scratches, was soaked right through and shivering violently. Still in shock, Ash shrugged out of his jacket and attempted to dry the poor thing off. So this was what had been upsetting Pikachu. Ash realized that, being a Pokémon, Pikachu had picked up on the Meowth's distress, and, inadvertently, passed it to Ash.

He didn't know a lot about Meowths -- mostly just what Dexter, his PokéDex, had told him. The only one he'd really seen up close was Team Rocket's Meowth, who walked, talked and generally tried to cause trouble and definitely didn't act like a normal Pokémon. In light of that, he'd never really felt inclined to catch a Meowth.

With a good deal of muddy water cleaned off the Meowth, (and soaked into Ash's jacket) he got a better look at the Pokémon… and realized it looked an awful lot like Team Rocket's Meowth. Ash looked around, wondering if this was a trap. But there was no one in sight, and no sound except for the rushing stream. Still…

"Pi-pi-pi !" Pikachu said, nosing the Meowth. "Pikachu !"

"Me-owth." Answered the Pokémon weakly, and Ash felt a guilty flash of relief. If it had been the Rocket's Meowth, it would have said something like, "Gotcha" or "Twerp" or something like that. Not that he wouldn't have helped that particular Meowth or anything -- he'd just be a lot more careful how he did it. He wrapped the Meowth in his jacket and stood up. Nurse Joy would take care of everything.

----------

Finding the Pokémon Center in the dark was hard enough, finding it without Pikachu would have been impossible. As it was, it took the pair a lot longer to get back than it had to venture into the woods, and to make matters worse, the Meowth had fainted somewhere along the line.

"Nurse Joy, wake up !" Ash shouted as he burst through the front doors of the PokéCenter. Outside, the streetlights were still dark in the square, which meant the power was still off. A flashlight, similar to the one he had lost, beamed out of the back room.

"Ash ? What's wrong ?" came the sleepy voice of Joy. It was, after all, the middle of the night. "What are you doing up ?"

"There's a hurt Pokémon here." Ash said, "Where are the extra blankets ?"

"A hurt Pokémon ?" Nurse Joy repeated, suddenly wide awake. "Under the counter."

Ash got out some fresh blankets and untangled the Meowth from his jacket, which was soaking wet and covered in mud. He laid the blanket on top of the shivering Pokémon just as Nurse Joy came bustling out of her bedroom in the back, clothed in a fresh uniform. "Oh, my !" she said, shaken. "What happened ? He's not one of your Pokémon, is he ?"

"No." Ash said, "Pikachu and I found him in the woods."

Joy didn't ask what they'd been doing in the woods in the rain and the middle of the night, for which Ash was glad. He didn't think he could give her an answer she'd believe. Instead, he watched as she pulled out a roll of bandages and began treating the bites and scratches. "He might be wild," Joy said after a moment. "No identification, and I'm assuming no PokéBall ?"

When Ash shook his head, she continued, "A lot of these look like injuries that a Meowth would MAKE, or maybe a Persian." She pointed as she worked. Ash looked; she was right, all the scratches were in sets of three, the bite marks round and deep. "They're already starting to heal, but I can't treat him here very well without power," she said. "Our best choice would be to put him in a temporary PokéBall and ---"

The Meowth, who had woken so quietly as to be unnoticed, started flailing around at the mention of a PokéBall. Clearly, that was one word it understood and didn't appreciate. Maybe, thought Ash, it wasn't wild after all -- and he still couldn't get over how much he looked liked the Rocket's Meowth in the glow of the flashlight, albeit scruffy, injured, and muddy. Pikachu, who had leapt up onto the counter, was nearly knocked off by the cat's thrashing.

"All right, all right !" Nurse Joy said, keeping out of the way in case the Pokémon decided to use Fury Swipes. "No PokéBall !"

"Pika-pi !" Pikachu added, balancing on the edge of the counter. Almost sullenly, the Meowth stopped its struggles and quieted, half hiding under the blanket and glaring out at them as if daring one of them to be stupid enough to reach out a finger. Neither Ash nor Joy was enticed to do so.

"What is a temporary PokéBall, anyway ?" Ash asked.

"Sometimes they're called a TempBall." Joy said, but when Ash still looked lost, she continued. "A TempBall is a special kind of PokéBall that allows you to 'catch' a Pokémon without really 'catching' them. Veterinarians use them to keep Pokémon in for safety."

"So... catching a Pokémon successfully without becoming their trainer." Ash said slowly.

"Exactly. I should give you one, just in case you ever need it." Joy said. Letting the Meowth calm down for a moment, Joy found one and handed Ash a shiny new TempBall. Instead of the standard red top, it was grey on top and the usual white on the bottom. He examined it for a moment, then tucked it in his backpack.

Nurse Joy approached the Meowth again, but continued talking to Ash. "We'll take him to the Pokémon Hospital in my truck. That way," she directed towards the Meowth, "There will be no PokéBalls involved. Sound alright ?"

The Pokémon looked at Ash and opened his mouth, and that funny feeling tingled the teen again. But all the cat said was, "Mrrr-eowth." Just like a perfectly normal Pokémon.

As Nurse Joy wrapped the blanket nicely around the Meowth and handed a second to Ash to replace the soaked jacket, Ash wished that he could shake the uneasy feeling. He looked down, and Pikachu didn't need to say anything to let his trainer know he felt the same way.

The feeling just... stayed.