Short chapter this week. It's maintaining plotlines but not really doing much else. Next week's chapter will have some disturbing new stuff involving…well, you'll find out.

Negrek – Well, murkrow can learn icy wind by TM, so that's normal, and all jigglypuff are born knowing sing, so Discord must as well, right? Being a jigglypuff and all. But murkrow can't learn hypnosis. And Caw said it wasn't hypnosis and I'm sure he wouldn't lie about that. That would be deceitful.

Act – Prowler's not going to crack, but I'll leave you to decide if she's sane to start. (She does have a head injury…) And yeah, Elliot's still unaware of what's up. But putting pieces together can be a lot harder than it looks, and he is just ten. He'll learn most of it in the end. Until then…

Keleri – I like trying to break brains, that's why. This chapter'll be somewhat normalish, but watch out for the next…

Light Blue Rumors

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Elliot hadn't been in Cerulean since the very start of his journey, back when he was still almost a kid. Now he was nearly eleven – just four more months! - so he wasn't so awed anymore. He'd seen plenty of cities.

He was just a little impressed. It was always sort of stunning to walk over the invisible barrier separating City and Wilderness. Although Elliot didn't think it was odd, it was still a bit striking how self-contained the cities were, how sharp the divide was.

And cars, and buildings, and electric lights, and flat asphalt, and identical cement squares on the sidewalks…it was still somewhat impressive, just by itself, after the forest.

Elliot passed the gym as he wandered around looking for the Pokemon Center. A large sign on the door proclaimed it temporarily closed.

Sorry for the inconvenience, added a smiling cartoon version of the gym leader's head.

Another one? First at Viridian, then Surge was a day late, then the Saffron gym being run by an undertrainer…it was a good thing he already had this badge. Gym leaders should be more responsible, he thought.

"Hey kid," a man said. Elliot jumped. An adult, thirty years or older, was staring at him. "You want to buy something good? Pokemon love it."

"Um, I –"

The man held out something white. It was pointed, a fat cone shape, with a raggedly pink edge at the bottom. "Just five hundred. A bargain! What'd you say?"

"No thanks," Elliot said uncertainly, wondering if it had been a good idea to leave Prowler outside of the city. He started to walk past. The man quickly stepped into the way.

"C'mon, I'm telling you, this is a great deal. Good for a happy, healthy pokemon. Not too shabby for people, either."

"I – I don't –" Elliot stammered.

"Really, kid," the man said, stepping closer. "You want to buy this."

"Um, I really…" Elliot trailed off. The man was staring Elliot's shoulder. He looked scared, or angry. Elliot turned as well as the man walked away quickly.

An Officer Jenny was there, looking in their direction and talking inaudibly into a radio.

-

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Inside the Pokecenter, it took a minute for the Nurse Joy to remedy the problem, replacing the destroyed Ultraball with another one by machine. She chastised him for being careless for another minute, telling him repeatedly he should be more careful with his pokeballs. Elliot nodded and agreed with what she said, not knowing what else to say, then took the Ultraball and headed back out to get Prowler.

When he returned, he saw a girl handing the Nurse Joy a single pokeball. "How long will it be?" she asked.

"You can pick it up in two days," the Nurse Joy said. "But you should avoid battling with it for a few days afterward."

Elliot handed over all six of his pokeballs next, then sat down. Nearby, Elliot heard a clutch of trainers discussing rumors they'd heard about the gym leader, with bursts of laughter whenever one giggling trainer finished relating the compete story.

"…eloped with Koga!" The group dissolved into laughter.

"Koga? Come on, everyone knows she's off on a honeymoon with Lorelei," said another, managing to hold her serious, knowing look for a fraction of a second after finishing before breaking into hysterics.

The Nurse Joy looked at them disapprovingly.

A boy on the left took a gulp from a bottle they were passing around. "I heard she left to bring her dewgong to Seafoam."

"To elope!"

"No, to mine it for diamonds!" Giggles. "Magic ones that can evolve any pokemon!"

"Yeah, because they're dangerous!"

"No, because they make pokemon super strong!"

"Yeah, and the stone-sellers don't wanna go out of business."

"No, 'cuz the League doesn't want normal trainers to get them!"

"You guys've got it all wrong. She's collecting them for Bill, who proposed marriage!"

"Yeah, and he did it because she's the only one with the pokemon for it."

"'Cept Lorelei. So he proposed to her too, so they both went, and neither knew, but then they met and decided to run off together!"

They all laughed loudly.

"Don't be ridiculous, guys," said the first trainer to get his breath back. "Everyone knows she got abducted by clefairy."

-

-

Elliot had missed the midday meal, so he left the Center after getting his pokemon back. He headed to one of the many restaurants and ordered two slices of pizza.

The booth next to him held a gaggle of barely teenaged girls. They were discussing, apparently quite seriously, the same rumors he'd heard earlier. Although some of the more extreme embellishments the other trainers had made up on the spot were missing, many of the things Elliot had thought were just jokes appeared to actually be real rumors. One of them mentioned the clefairy flying saucer, and the others considered it gravely.

The girls quickly focused on the rumors of eloping, then digressed to who they would elope with. They spent a good fifteen minutes discussing the merits of Giovanni versus Brock alone. They seemed to have decided she must have left with Bill because he was the most elope-worthy by the time Elliot was done.

Girls were weird.

-

-

Elliot headed north. He'd wanted to see the pokemon researcher Bill and maybe find out what had happened to Gabrielle and her ponyta, but heard he was missing. Maybe that had been one of the real reasons behind rumors about the two. If they were both missing, maybe they really did run off together.

There wasn't really any other purpose to going to the cape, but since it was mid-afternoon and he didn't intend to leave late in the day, he had time to explore.

When he started to cross the bridge to the cape, a group of trainers accosted him. The leader told him he'd get a prize if he could beat five in a row. Elliot accepted the challenge.

"Go, Discord!" he yelled, tossing the Safariball.

"Go, Dainight!" the other boy said, throwing a Greatball that released an oddish. "Razor leaf!"

"Try roll out!"

Discord spun, then rolled along the ground, plowing through the leaves. Dainight managed to twist out of his path, though, and the attack missed.

"Now pound!"

"Poisonpowder!"

Discord punched the oddish, who shook its leaves and released a purple dust in retaliation. Discord shuddered.

"Doubleslap!"

Discord slapped the oddish rapidly. When he stopped, Dainight looked nearly beaten.

"Synthesis, Dainight!"

The oddish spread its leaves and glowed. It perked up, looking as healthy as at the start of the fight. Discord, on the other hand, had nicks from the leaves and was trembling as the poison worked through his system.

"Pound!"

"Acid!"

Discord hit the oddish again, doing only moderate damage, and then took the acid attack full in the face. He screamed in pain, tiny arms ineffectively trying to get the burning liquid off, then fainted.

Elliot recalled him and sent out Howler. "Flamethrower!"

When the attack ended, Elliot saw that one of the oddish's leaves had caught fire. It ran around wailing. After a moment, the other boy recalled it. He picked another pokeball. "Aquesis!"

A psyduck appeared, the helmet shining in the sunlight.

"Confusion!"

The air rippled. Howler's body contorted as if a wall had slammed into him, then collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Elliot recalled the growlithe.

Having lost, Elliot continued on. He met other trainers on the cape, some hanging around in the long grass. It seemed that abra had been seen in the area, and they were trying to find some. Elliot fought a few, sometimes winning and sometimes losing.

He headed back to the Pokecenter before it got dark. He ate supper and headed to a room, falling asleep quickly.

He woke once in the middle of the night. In his dream, he had been fighting the boy on the bridge again. But the psyduck had been rotting, eyes rolling in open sockets below the uncorrupted metal helmet as he watched. The other boy's skin was a strange white color, and there was a red line across his cheek where the beak of a spearow had torn off a strip. When Elliot raised one hand to recall Howler, he had seen tattered flesh and stained bone holding the shiny pokeball. He fell asleep again and did not remember the nightmare when morning came.

Next chapter: Kin.