They reached the city of Vermillion at ten to one, so took the time to heal their pokemon at the centre, and buy a few items that could be useful. When the clock at the port chimed a single deep ring, Heron concluded there was half an hour left until they had to get through Customs on the ferry.
"Why don't we go into the route East from here, and you can catch yourself a second pokemon?" she asked.
"Do you think they'll be any dogs?" he asked.
She shrugged. "I don't know, but you'll never find out until we go. Trainers release pokemon all the time or they migrate, so you find all sorts of types. Let's give it twenty minutes."
Mirus agreed, and the two of them set out to the route, past a dark cave, and into another massive field of drying grasses. Grim walked ahead, tail held high. Immediately he began sniffing in the long grass, and only a rustling and a parting in them allowed Mirus to see where his pokemon was.
"Hey! Grim!" he yelled. "Come back here; I don't want you to get caught or anything."
Heron pointed. "There he is."
As if to confirm her pointing, Grim barked sharply. Mirus might not have realised it, but he already knew his pokemon's bark so well, that if another poochyena had been there, he would have known. But as it was, he knew it, and they both ran to catch up with the sound.
There, in the middle of the path, stood a vulpix, tails held spread out like an exotic fan, its crimson fur glowing. Grim was snarling, and the opponent was just staring. The amber-eyed gaze was too strong to be mistaken for terror, and Mirus could see the vulpix's muscles tensing beneath the thick fur. He had to strike it first.
"Howl and Tackle, Grim," Mirus said, trying to catch his breath as he stopped.
The dog gave a wailing war cry-like howl, and jumped up to its opponent, skidding a little on the ground.
"Vul!" barked the fox, and it sprang to the side, making Grim have to dig his claws into the ground to stop. It tossed its head and spewed out a veil of orange flame, blackening a sheet of the poochyena's fur as it leapt aside in turn.
"Howl and Tackle again, Grim," Mirus said. If he kept getting his attacking power up, just one Tackle should be enough...
Another screeching wail and Grim started off towards the fox, which was breathing fire to try and head him off. But the dog hurtled face-first through the flames and slammed its shoulders and side straight into it.
The impact was strong; driven by fear and attack power, and the vulpix was hit full on. It staggered back, but used the momentum to push off from a stone and spring back.
A tough one, Mirus thought. Perfect for a dog team.
He watched the two pokemon tearing at each other's ears and fur, looking like puppies at play, but snarling as they tried desperatly to win.
"Pull back and another Tackle, Grim!" Mirus cried out, and suddenly it was all over. Grim had knocked the opponent head-over-heels until it collapsed in an exhausted heap.
Mirus did not say anything, but he tapped the front button of a pokeball he had placed in his hand, and threw it, maximized, at the unconscious fox. It sprang open on contact, and steadily absorbed the vulpix in waves of crackling red light. Finally the sphere clicked shut, and the button locked itself with barely a struggle from the creature within.
Grim picked up the pokeball in his mouth, and, tail wagging slowly, brought it to his trainer. Mirus took it and gave Grim a hug, before calling him back too.
"You did it!" she said. "I'm sorry to rush you, though, but we've only got enough time to run to the port so we don't miss the ferry."
He jolted back to earth and clicked the two balls onto his belt. He started running after the already sprinting Heron, grass thrashing their jeans.
Customs took some time; with them handing in their tickets temporarily, getting paper labels strapped around their bag handles, and Heron and Mirus waiting in a long cue amongst other pokemon trainers, underneath a giant billboard stamped "Tyoke". When that cue finally ended, both trainers waited to get their bags X-rayed, and let out their pokemon to be examined while the empty pokeballs were run through the X-ray machine also.
A notice plastered to a nearby wall talked about items that were illegal to bring into Tyoke, and explained that pokemon had to be examined to check for any drugs in their bloodstream that might give them an unfair advantage in the league, though they were tested at Tyoke as well. Larger pokemon remained in their pokeballs and they were passed through a harmless scanner to check for anything inside the pokeballs as well as checking for drugs.
Mirus read the notice for a few minutes while Grim and his newly captured and healed vulpix were examined and run over with a miniature hand-scanner. It reminded him of the ones they used to check baby pokemon inside eggs. Heron's Onix had to go through the scanner still in its pokeball.
Finally they were ushered out of the building, passed a nice lady who smiled at everyone and tore bits of their tickets and climbed up a ramp to the SS Horizon. Then they were shown to their cabins (Mirus's father had booked two, side by side) and Mirus let himself fall back on his bed, relieved.
A knock on the door suggested that Heron was outside, and he gladly opened the door to let her in. The window opened up to a view of Kanto's landscape, with mountains in the distance, and she ran to it.
"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked, nose practically pressed to the glass. "Still, Tyoke's stunning too. Wait till you see it!" She looked around Mirus's cabin.
"What's your room like?" Mirus asked.
"Nice. Like yours, but a little dustier." She wrinkled her nose. "Come on, I want to have a look at the battlefields. They've got some really good..."
A tannoy announcement crackled into life. "Type three trainers, please report to main foyer for trainer license checkup. Repeated: Type three trainers please report to main foyer. Thank you."
Heron looked at him. "I don't have a license," she said, looking stricken.
"We'll have to see about that when we get there, then," he told her, grabbing a key off a nearby hook that was presumably meant for him. "Let's go."
He gave Heron a minute to lock her own door, before they set off down the corridors and down two flights of steps to the main foyer. A line of trainers was already queued up, but it was declining before their eyes, and they ran to catch up.
The last person left just as they reached the desk. "Type three license checkup?" a lady behind it asked them.
"Yes, but we don't have licenses," Heron said, worried.
She looked at them and reached for something underneath the desk. "Your names?"
Mirus gave his, but Heron, apparently terrified that this was for the police and she'd have to go home after all, remained silent.
She smiled down at her. "We get many people on their first journey here. This is for your license."
Heron let out a breath. "Heron Stevens," she said.
The lady wrote their names down. "Room numbers?"
They told her and she wrote those down too. "And type three trainer. Right, we'll have your licenses delivered to your rooms at the end of the day. For now, take these to ensure you can use the facilities." She handed them two laminated cards, each with a number in the top corner, and started writing their names and card numbers on another piece of paper. "Please return those by this evening. That's all. Thank you." She smiled at them in a robot-like way and the two of them walked off.
"I thought she was going to arrest us!" Heron said, half-laughing, hand to her heart.
"Come on, let's see about those battlefields," Mirus said, smiling as well.
Behind them, another announcements rang the ceilings. "Type four trainers, please report to main foyer for trainer license checkup. Repeated: Type four trainers please report to main foyer. Thank you."
Heron pushed open the door to Battle Room Six they'd been given and gasped. It was huge- massive with a high ceiling and two proper league-sized trainer boxes, red and green, at each end. The battlefield looked relatively normal, so a part of the wall near them drew their attention. It had a wire and glass casing over it, and Heron moved towards it for a closer look. Mirus followed.
"Look at this!" she said, pulling back the casing like a lid, and gazing out onto a volley of switches. She flicked one saying "Unlock" but only a small amount of buttons and switches lit up.
"Wow," he answered in reply. There was nothing else to say. Heron grabbed a large switch that had a tiny window next to it saying "Plain". She pushed it upwards, and a grating sound rang out from the centre of the battlefield. Mirus pointed as a section near the centre of the field slid back to reveal a pokemon battle-style lake.
The tiny window near the switch now said, "Water". A whole row of lights now blinked at them, and Heron turned her attention to those. A sign said "0% chlorinated, 0% salt."
Two digital LED screens seemed to be controlling water temperature. One had up and down buttons next to it, like lift call buttons, and had a label saying "desired water temperature". The other said "current water temperature". Both read 15°C.
Heron grabbed another switch, and Mirus just had time to see what it said ("islands- none, one, two, three...") before another grating sound scraped out and three rounded league-style islands rose out of the water, one large one centred between the two trainers, and the others in front of each trainer box.
By this time, Heron was flicking switches with a speed Mirus had never seen. She pushed the lever that currently read water upwards until it read "Rock". The doors closed over the water and there were some groaning noises, like a CD being switched in a car but much louder, and the doors opened again, expelling a marvelous rocky terrain, perfect for rock pokemon; or a flying type could perch on those high peaks.
Again Heron pushed the lever, until it read "Sand". This time the groaning terrain was like a giant sand pit. Mirus noticed a notice next to the lever about the sand. "Sand depth is only 5m deep- please bear this is mind and do not use larger digging pokemon. The rest of the battlefield is not to be dug upon; it is solid under that solid layer."
The lever refused to be pushed any higher, so a disappointed Heron pulled it back to "Plain" and turned on the other switches.
"Let me have a go," Mirus asked, but she wouldn't let him.
"Come on, let me try these out first. I love stuff like this."
There were only two switches and two dials left. Heron tried the nearest dial, but it wouldn't budge, so she flicked the switch next to it into the "on" position and tried again to turn it again.
"Woah!" she said, as fire erupted from hidden holes on the pitch. They had risen out of the ground when she'd flicked the switch, and now the further she turned the dial, the more intense the flames became. Heron left them burning, and flicked the switch so it read "random".
As flames blasted randomly from the holes in the pitch, Mirus turned back to the notices and read the one about fire aloud. "Please do not leave the flames burning on full for too long as it can melt the pitch... recommended only for fire-type or fire-resistant pokemon... the power of 'random' fire spurts depends again on the dial... same rules apply again for Lightning."
"Fascinating," Heron said, turning off "fire" and moving to "Lightning" instead. Tall poles rose out of the ground, and as Heron turned the dial, the crackled with power. She flicked the random, and immediately several poles began exchanging electricity in long strings or ribbons, then letting go to crackle on their own, and starting up again.
There were no more dials, switches of buttons, so Heron flicked Lightning "off", and turned to Mirus.
"How about that rematch?" she asked.
E/N: I have a feeling this is going to be a long one. Please tell me in your review whether I should continue making it long, or whether I should cut it in some way. If I do make Mirus and Heron toil around Tyoke, it won't just be the pokemon journey routine again- I'll be including more hidden plotlines and such...
Anyway, please review! You only have to click that little button down there and say what you thought... if you bothered to read this, could you at least tell me whether it was good or bad? Thanks!