Well, since I couldn't quite figure out how to make a page break... If anyone knows how to make one of them show up on a fanfic, could you please tell me?

Chapter 7

"Umbreon!" The call went unanswered, for the first time since Noric had met his Umbreon friend. Umbreon had slipped on the blood from Noric's mouth. The Eevee watched with wide eyes as he friend fell off the exhaust pipe; to what would most probably be his doom. All for an Eevee. All for Fern.

Riken back stepped and grunted in effort as he pulled Fern up by two tails. "That was very brave of him." A male Ninetales grunted from inside the net. Noric turned to see that most of the Pokemon inside the net had all their eyes on the tyros, and most of them were high enough to have see Umbreon save Fern.

"Yes… but…" He began to stammer, but was stopped when he felt the full weight of Fern, being an older and stronger Eevee, bear down on him. Noric stumbled and fell over, just to feel her sharp teeth in his flank.

He squirmed under her, but by the fire burning in Fern's eyes, Noric saw that she was not going to let go that easily. He wanted to yowl, but that would have only brought attention to them all if more noise then just the normal growling when on. Finally, though, after she had made very sure that the wounds were good enough, Fern released him, just to roar, "You… you… imbecile! How in the world could you have let him fall like that?" There was a tone of infinite sadness in her voice, one that made Noric think that she might actually have liked Umbreon, in the strange, girlish way that he as a male would never understand.

"He slipped!" Noric replied softly, finding that his own eyes were welling up with new tears. The Eevee found that now he could not meet the gaze of any of the tyros, not even Riken.

"It's true." Came yet another voice, this one Noric had never heard before. It had come from the Houndoom, the single one of his kind, inside the net. His body had been scarred, probably by the many battles a Houndour and Houndoom pack went through all the time, and his ears had been raked back sharply. From his mum, Noric remembered her telling him that the dog with his ears back the most would be the leader.

"He's right." Yet another, a female Manectric, came to agree. "You cannot really put the blame on anyone of us here for what had happened."

"Well, what do you know?" Fern exploded, and was tackled by the male, muscular Eevee who had made in into the truck, the one called Terros.

"Calm down Fern! The only thing anger will get us now is exposure! Do you really want that?" Terros growled, in his no-nonsense tone of voice.

Fern snorted to herself as she turned on the tips of her paws, making sure to slap Noric on more time across the head, before stomping over to the net full of Pokemon when she began to whisper to the poor Houndour that was stuck there. Noric hadn't gotten up, he decided against it, and stroked his pink tongue against the wound Fern had made. It wasn't bad, not in the least bit, just a couple of scratches. And in the back of Noric's mind, as the truck began to come to its last spot and he and the other tyros positioned themselves at the back of the net, a little voice mewed to him, one that made him feel infinitely guilty. Just a couple of scratches, compared to the hurt Umbreon must be feeling. At least he hadn't thought what most everyone believed was true by now…

(Meanwhile...)

Umbreon's night had been full of pain. It had kept him awake; it had been his only company in the lonely hours of the night. Whatever he had done to deserve this, Umbreon did not know.

When finally the first rays of day arrived, Nurse Joy appeared, looking exactly like the human he remembered from early visits to Pokemon Centers. Her loopy pink hair had once been a source of infinite amusement to the Eevee kit that Umbreon had once been, he had once had the energy to attack her hair and pull at it. That was before his injuries.

She offered him food, which were the normal crunchy pellets he had once thought of as food. They now seemed alien to him, and tasted horrible compared to freshly caught Pidgey, even if they were getting older and stringier as the colder moons set in. He went without food then, for the pellets also hurt the one place he had thought would be safe from pain, his mouth. The two teeth he had lost yesterday had left horribly raw patches in the back of his mouth.

By midday of just staring at the ceiling, sort of wallowing in his own self-pity, Myra returned with a kit in tow. The kit had scarcely opened her eyes, by the cloudy look that she still had in them. Myra made a bee-line for Umbreon's box and jumped in, making herself comfortable before looking up at Umbreon himself. "You don't look all too happy." She stated matter-of-factly as she curled her forked tail around the kit.

"No kidding." Umbreon spluttered sarcastically, "Your kit?"

"Yup, she's mine." Myra responded with a fond glitter in her eyes as she gazed down at the puffed-up, round fur-ball. She then returned Umbreon's gaze with a level one that emitted a kind of seriousness. "You told me that you didn't know your mother yesterday. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

A pain that was nothing, not even a tiny bit close to what he was feeling now, came over Umbreon. He mother… how he always had avoided that subject when asked about it, throughout his short stay at the Whitefang Pack, even with Noric and the scant other friends he had made. Umbreon had kept the details in when Myra had asked about her, and his mouth opened to tell her that he would not like the say anything about the subject, when the beginning of the story about his trainer came out instead.

"My mum was an Eevee…" He began, and his heart continued where his voice left off.

Umbreon's mom was indeed an Eevee, one that had seen many moons and survived through them all, not being afraid of anything the forest she had raised him in. The forest itself had been many, many miles away from the Whitefang Pack…

His mom was, literally, the leader of her own little forest. There were no other Eevee there, not even his father. He father was said to have been from the big city, a trainer's Eevee. But Umbreon neither knew nor cared were his father came from, since his mother had assured him many times that he was a full-blooded Eevee from birth. Her name had been Kasha; her voice had been almost as rough as her tongue.

Kasha had been a wonderful mother, when he was with her before and even after his eyes opened for the first time, the little kit had always felt protected by her. But the first moon of his life was barely remembered now, even at eight moons it wasn't. Umbreon's memory came full blast at the end of his second moon, when his narration fell into detail. That was when his mind plunged into that day, the one that had happened so long ago, yet he remembered it like it had happened yesterday.

His mother had been leading him away from the den they had lived in from since the Eevee kit could remember. Kasha's worry had led him to worry and whine at her for comfort. At the tender age of three moons, he had not shaken off the want to keep his mommy happy no matter what.

"It's alright, little one, it's alright." He heard her whisper delicately, nuzzling his side, which even now he might have felt.

"Mommy…" Umbreon's little kit-self mewed, that was the first word he had ever said, mommy.

Kasha bent to touch her kit's nose when an ear-shattering sound came from behind her. A fear, one like no other, came over the kit as he dashed away and his mother stayed where she was, to hiss at the two bright eyes that had appeared.

How he had whimpered, oh how he had cried, when his good mother had stepped up the attack what was actually a car, fearlessly protecting her kit from what she found as danger. But, as he had came to know now, Eevee were no match for cars at all. As his mother's cries died down, the kit knew something was wrong, so wrong with his mom.

They had ventured out of the forest, a big mistake. For in the world they all lived in, there was no going back. Umbreon's mother, the kind Kasha, had been run over by that car, and lay dying on the road that the humans built to decrease the time it took for them to get to one place to another.

The car continued on, not even sure if that bump had just been some can in the street. The kit, that would eventually grow into Umbreon himself, bounded back to his mom and nuzzled her, not sure of what had happened. "My kit… my beautiful kit…" She had whispered, her voice jerky at best.

"Mommy?" The kit replied, nuzzling his mother anxiously, unaware of what had happened and unsure of what was going on now. His little mind didn't know anything about death and killing, until now.

"My kit…" Kasha replied, her voice growing more and more faint, "Promise me you'll grow into a fine warrior… promise me you'll succeed were you're old mother left off… promise me…" The kit didn't have any time to ask questions, for Kasha's eyes went dull, and her eyelids closed for the very last time.

He had bawled when he realized what had happened…

"That's enough Umbreon." Myra said, her own eyes nearly bursting with tears as she placed a paw on his chest, to get his attention away from his crying. "You've said enough."

Umbreon nodded through his tears, and said nothing more while Myra took up a motherly pose closer to him and purred gently. "Did she ever name you? Kasha, I mean."

"No. I never knew that." Umbreon replied sullenly. He hiccupped slightly, but managed to stop bawling and cut his tears back a bit.

He was surprised when Myra touched noses with him, "You're fulfilling her promise though. Look, you're in the Whitefang Pack!"

"Yeah." Umbreon responded, but his mind was elsewhere, "The car came back. And in the car was my future trainer, Laura. She got to keep me while her parents buried my mum next to the road… I wasn't happy to let her go."

"I don't think any of us would be." Myra responded quietly, "You weren't very old either, still had the sense to stick with your mother."

"And I fought to the end against those monsters that had done that to my mum. Until they had tamed me down, I was a real wild thing."

"Good." Myra responded, and began to lick Umbreon over as a mother would. Umbreon was not complaining at all…