Chapter Two

Cyril.

Two days later, Mrs Lugia and Rachel awoke to the sun streaming through the small windows of the man's hut. Neither had much appetite for the pokéchow in front of them. Mrs Lugia had had to listen to Lu's cries when he realised his mum wasn't coming back. It had taken hours for him to mentally sob himself to sleep. It had then been Rachel who'd had to comfort Mrs Lugia, who had started to feel guilty. "At least he's not in here, alone except for me. He's got his Dad, you did nothing wrong, giving yourself up for the sake of your son!"

The man came in, and got them both to stand up. He had a big bottle of some sort of clear fluid, and a pot of gooey white paste. He dipped a cloth into the clear bottle, and started wiping it down Mrs Lugia's wing. "Feather-shine will make you look good for my friend." He said. He put it all over Mrs Lugia's feathers, and then smeared it on Rachel's wings, front, back, upper legs and tail. It was sticky and smelled of chemicals. When it dried, it was hard and shiny. The man went out, returning with a pair of scissors. "Turn around." he told Rachel. "Any struggles or protests, and I go after the little Lugia." Rachel turned around so her back was to the man. The man took up her hair into a tail in his hand, twisted it tight against the back of Rachel's head, and cut it all off at nape-of-neck level. Rachel opened her mouth, remembered the man's threat, and closed her mouth again, her protest unsaid. Her trimmed her hair neatly, and then started smearing handfuls of the white paste on her hair, working it in, and then smoothing it down. When he had finished, Rachel's hair was white and slicked down close to the head, and didn't really look like hair at all anymore.

"That looks better." he said. He went through to the back, where the Articuno-girl was housed. The heated cage treatment had made her more submissive. She meekly submitted to feather-shining.

"This Lawrence the Third guy-does he still collect?" she asked.

"Well, as far as I know, yes." he said. She began to shake.

"I don't want to be put in a force-field!" she said.

"What's the problem? You won't feel it, you'll just go to sleep." He said.

"But I'll still age in there! What if I come out years later, old, or even die in there?"

"Don't worry. As long as he pays plenty of money for you, everything will be all right." He left her, shaking, to stand by Ash's cage. He assumed a relaxed pose, and used a conversational tone of voice.

"Now, do I sell you to Lawrence the Third, or no?" he asked. He saw a look of apprehension cross Ash's face.

"Do you have a problem with that? Why are you so worried?" he asked.

"Last year, I released Moltres and Zapdos from the force-fields they were in. They escaped by attacking the walls of his machine to make a hole they could get out of. The damage was so great the machine crash-landed on Lightning Island, and was later sliced in half by Lugia's aeroblast. I figure he'd be kind of upset by that."

"Sounds like he would definitely be interested in getting his hands on you then!" the man said. "I'd be pretty sore in his position myself. I'll make sure he gets to see you." He left, leaving a worried Ash in his wake.

Going back through, he got out the one force-field mechanism he possessed. It was several years out of date and in a bad state of repair. He set it up, and put it just opposite the doorway into the back room. He then slipped back in, closing the door 'to' to conceal its presence. He went over to the cage of the Articuno-girl, and opened the door. "Come on, I've got to finish getting you ready for Lawrence." he said. He took her by the wing, pushing her slightly ahead of him. When he opened the door in front of her, she barely had time to register the frame of the force-field mechanism before the man gave her a hard shove between the shoulder-blades. With a cry of terror, she was propelled forward, both her headlong flight and her cry being cut short as the force-field caught her and held her. A blizzard exited her mouth, but only extended a few inches before being held static by the field. The man smiled nastily, and pushed the force-field containing the Articuno-girl back into the back room. Then he picked up the cage containing Pikachu and carried it through to the front room, ignoring Ash's cries of "Give me my Pikachu! What are you going to do with him?"

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and the man welcomed in the most brightly-dressed person Rachel had ever had the misfortune to clap eyes upon.

He was wearing florescent lime-green trousers and an orange shirt patterned with blue, red, and purple. A saffron-coloured belt encircled his waist. His hair was black and spiky, and he was wearing electric-blue soft shoes. A black cloak with a bright cerise lining finished off his outfit. But his eyes were kind, and he had an infectious smile, which changed from just friendly to boyish excitement as he caught sight of Mrs Lugia and Rachel, in spite of the sprinkling of snow on him which suggested the weather was no longer clement outside.

"How much are they?" he exclaimed, rushing over, and caressing their feathers as if he couldn't believe they were real, which may have been the case.

"Well, I would give you them for free, but they were a dreadful trouble to catch." He then launched into a dreadful cock-and-bull story that, judging by the look on the other man's face, he didn't quite believe the half of. "So I'm afraid I must charge for them. I also have this." He said, holding up Pikachu's cage. The brightly-dressed man looked at Pikachu. "It looks a bit sad." He said. "How much do you want for it-I've got a Pikachu environment, plenty of members of the opposite gender for it-that should cheer it up!" He gave the man a wink.

"Well, as I owe you a favour, you can have all three for ninety per cent of your monthly allowance. The two Lugia-types will cause you no trouble-they'll come with you on leg-ropes. They're very docile and obedient." the man said. The look he threw Rachel and Mrs Lugia said that they'd better be, or they knew what would happen. "Oh, and Cyril, could you tell Lawrence I have a couple of things for him?" From one of his pockets, he took a brilliant blue wing-feather he'd plucked from Julie's wing two days previously. He handed it to Cyril, whose eyes widened.

"Okay, I will." He said. The man moved to put leg-ropes on Rachel and Mrs Lugia, but Cyril put up a restraining hand.

"If they're as docile as you suggest, they shouldn't need leg-ropes. They should just come with me, right?" He went over to Rachel, and stroked her down a wing. "Do you want to come with me?" He turned to Mrs Lugia, reaching up to stroke her chest. "I have a special environment for you both, with Brock's pokéchow, water, flying, and psychic type, conforming bedding, an underground lair-cave with an entrance into the water and an entrance onto the land, a big swimming area, and bushes and plants. If you're as docile as he says, I can take you out sometimes into the human area or the open part of the exhibition hall. I can even take you into the sea with me to dive!"

"Bad idea." interjected the man. "The open sea might be too much temptation, docile though they be, and they might just swim away."

"I'll train them first, and if they don't come back, then I'm not as good and kind a trainer as I think I am." Cyril shot back. "Pokémon stay with good trainers. However, you sound like you're speaking from experience. Tell me about it."

"I had a Mantine I was trying to train. I wanted it to get some good skills so I could sell it for a decent sum." said the man. "But when I tried to train it in the sea, it attacked me and swam off."

"Is that the same Mantine that's terrorising the island fishermen and Lawrence has warned me about?" Cyril asked. Mrs Lugia blinked, and looked at Cyril.

"Erm-probably," said the man.

"What did you do to it to make it attack people?" Cyril asked.

"Well, it wasn't obeying, so I gave it a couple of taps with this." He said, indicating the cane he had on his belt.

"You gave it more than 'a couple of taps.' if it's doing half of what Lawrence has told me." he said. "You shouldn't hit Pokémon like that. You should raise them with trust and love. Show them the carrot rather than the stick. If they love and trust you, Pokémon will try harder for you. My sister may be coming here to inspect you, so I'd put your other Pokémon in bigger cages if I were you." Cyril handed the man some enhancers, potions, and healing items, as well as some pokéchow samples. "If you can show my sister that you can treat Pokémon right, she might approve you setting up a mart. Try training a Pokémon; you can get money from Pokémon battles, and you'll understand more what I'm talking about.

He indicated Mrs Lugia. "Is this one male of female?"

"Female." The man said. Cyril took a handful of Brock's Pokéchow and offered it to Mrs Lugia. "Here you are." She dipped her head down to eat, glad to have something more appetising than the cheap junk the man had offered. Cyril reached up with his other hand, and stroked her head as she gently ate the pokéchow. "Good girl, isn't that nice?" he said. He offered another handful to Rachel, who ate it with enthusiasm. "There, that's nicer than that stuff he's given you." he said.

He handed the man his card to pay for them, and carefully strapped Pikachu's cage to his back. He turned back to Rachel and Mrs Lugia. "Come with me, both of you." He gently took one of Rachel's wings in one hand, at the top, near the shoulder, and used the other to carefully take the tip of Mrs Lugia's wing. He gave a small tug to indicate which way he wanted them to move. Getting Mrs Lugia out of the door involved as many ominous creaks as getting her in had. The Pikachu got very upset at this point. "Pikash! Pikash!" it cried. Cyril didn't know what to do, so decided to get it back to his Pikachu environment, to see if that would help.

Walking them to the Slowking's Shrine, where his machine was parked didn't take long, and Cyril took them up in the lift and showed them his specially made Lugia-environment. It was a 30ft long enclosure with a 10-foot piece of land and a 20-foot piece of water. The enclosure was 10 foot wide. He unstrapped the Pikachu's cage from his back, and put the very upset-looking Pikachu in his Pikachu enclosure. "Pikash." it said miserably.

Cyril then attended to Mrs Lugia and Rachel. Taking them into the Lugia enclosure, he found that there was only just about enough room in the underground lair-cave section for both Mrs Lugia and Rachel. They managed to get in, with a bit of wriggling, and both get comfortable. Cyril also managed to squeeze in between them, to settle them in with much patting and stroking and gentle talking. The conforming bedding was more comfortable than Cyril had realised. So comfortable, in fact, that within the hour, all three of them were curled up together, asleep.