A/N: Yet aother update for SS and not a sign of AOTCS. I'm really sorry, people. Anyway, in response to Ri2's valid comment, the other Pokémon mentioned (Sparky, Sarah, Onett, etc)might appear at the end, but they are all in my other fic, Adventures of the Clinically Strange.
Also, "What exactly IS Siann'e Story?". This is an very good question. I'm not sure yet. But doesn't it sound good? XD Seriously, it'll probably come in either the next chapter or the one after that.

Dedication: To Terajin, Sephychan, Flibblekins, Bob, Fleecy, Huffleduffinand Shnugglepoo. As my way of an apology for your nicknames. Mwaha.

Disclaimer: If you can access the official Pokémon site and not see a string of pies following your cursor around the screen, it's a sure sign that I have not yet taken ownership of Pokémon. Yet…

Sianne's Story

By Dannichu

Chapter 8

"Guys!" came an excited but slightly muffled shout from about three dunes away, "Guys! Wook at dish!"

We all looked to the source of the voice and saw Russell dashing over to us, something yellow in his mouth, restricting his speech.

"What is it?" I shouted to him, while Terra darted over to him, fast as blinking.

"I don't know! I think it's a piece of porcelain!" he said excitedly, putting it on the sand for us all to look at. "But look at it! It's so pretty! And it looks so old as well!"

I looked down at the old relic with awe. It was pretty big, about the size of a small plate, and appeared to be a fragment off something like a vase, since it was concave-shaped. The edges looked like they were once jagged, but time had sanded off the points, making it lose some of its serrated appearance. But it was what was depicted on the large shard that was so amazing. There was a large yellow and black catlike creature racing across the land, thunderbolts hitting the land behind it. In the sky was a bird about the same size, also shooting electricity. All of the painting was done in black, painted over the yellow of the porcelain. It was painted in an odd style, as if it were painted by someone who had only a vague idea of what the two creatures looked like, for example if he had only seen glimpses of them, or had been told sketchy details by someone who had seen them.

"This is… just incredible!" I said, transfixed by Russell's find.

"It certainly is…" agreed Luke, gazing upon it in wonderment.

"What are we gonna do with it?" asked Sarah, after looking at it. "We can't carry it around in Danni's bag, it'll get broken."

"What do you think, Russell?" I asked. "You should decide, you were the one that found it."

"Well... Sarah has a point, we can't just carry it around since it'll get broken or stolen or something. We also don't have any use for it, since we can't eat it, sleep on it or catch Pokémon with it. So what I was thinking is maybe we could sell or give it to the museum, so everybody could see it!"

"That's a great idea!" I exclaimed. "Especially if we could sell it; we're in dire need of some money about now, especially with two extra mouths to feed. Not that I mind, of course." I added hastily, seeing the expression on Souriee's face.

"So shall we take it there now?" Sarah asked.

"Well," Terra pointed out, "we could take it back to a room in the Pokémon Center and clean it up a bit first. I think that the hundreds of years or whatever that it's been buried for probably didn't do wonders for its appearance, so we could make it look nice if we're going to sell it."

I nodded, "That okay?" I asked Russell and the others.

"Sure," Russell agreed, "It's a good plan."

"Shall I take it?" I asked, "I promise I won't drop it."

"You sure?" Sarah asked, grinning at me.

"With something this precious? You've gotta be kidding."

After getting back to the room, I took out my washing-up stuff, which basically consisted of an old piece of flannel and some soapy liquid. Not the best by any means, but it worked. I was a little apprehensive about weather or not using the soap on the artifact was a good idea, but in the end we decided to use it only on the front, where the picture was. We washed the rest of it extremely carefully, that is, getting out my bundle of pencils and so on, taking my two paintbrushes and dipping them in water before brushing away the numerous pieces of dirt that had collected on it over the ages.

"D'you reckon they'll buy it?" asked Souriee curiously, sitting with Sianne, Terra and Luke on the bed, while Sarah and I brushed at the fragment, Russell watching so closely I would brush his nose on occasions.

"I'm not sure. They might, but even if they don't, they can have it, since we don't have any use for it," said Russell, not looking up.

"It'd be a nice addition to that Relics display they have there." Terra said quickly, "I wonder if they have any of the other pieces?"

"What?" Souriee asked, tilting his head to the side.

"I mean the other bits that fit with this. It must've been a vase or something once upon a time. And if we found this intact, I'm sure there are other bits of it somewhere."

"That's true." said Russell, "But there weren't any other pieces of this when I looked. This was buried and all. I had to dig it up."

"How did you know it was there?" Sianne inquired.

"I smelt it." said Russell proudly.

"But," I said, looking down at the artifact, "even if they did have all the other pieces, they wouldn't fit."

"Why?" asked Luke, squinting at the fragment.

"Because, look, all the edges are smooth. It would be like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces circle-shaped."

"That's true," said Russell, "but it could still be glued together, even if it didn't fit exactly right."

"Mmm." I agreed, before putting my brush down and taking a step back to admire my work. "I think… I think that it's about ready. What do you think, Russell?"

"It looks great! Sheesh, I really hope they'll buy it off us!"

"Me too!" shouted Sarah happily, putting her brush down also, "It would be great if it was worth loads. We wouldn't have to worry about food or anything!"

"Yes, but don't get your hopes too high." I said before getting my towel out of my bag, wrapping it around the now clean piece of ancient china and holding it to my chest, before motioning for Sarah to open the door. "Let's go see, shall we?"

"Hmm… Interesting. Very interesting indeed." said the shriveled man who was inspecting our fragment of vase or whatever. He looked old enough to be put in a museum, not just to work there. He was hunched over and squinting at the large fragment through what looked like a monocle, his bushy moustache almost touching it, occasionally muttering words like "fascinating…" or "remarkable!". I took this as a good sign.

We were in one of the museum's back rooms. This one was very tidy and free of clutter, with only a few filing cabinets and a table with a desk lamp to show that someone ever entered it at all. It was a small room, painted white with a "paint" smell about it, and there was a window about halfway up one of the small walls.

"Yes…" he muttered before straitening up, giving us a scary view of one eye magnified to look twice as large as the other, as he was still wearing his magnifier-monocle-thingy. He must have not noticed us all recoil a little because he just kept it there.

"Yes, yes." he said, glancing down at the relic, "this is very interesting. It appears to be from the late Neptiarian age, when the humans were fascinated by the legendary Pokémon and hailed them as gods. This isn't exactly from the very primitive era, for example, it is not as old as the cave paintings, and definitely after the Octerassic period, as most Pokémon around today were there back then, but between that stage and when humans and Pokémon began coexisting together. This is shown by the technique of the vase making, it is made very much in the style of this era, as can be seen by…"

He droned on about the history of the vase for about fifteen minutes. I would probably have been vaguely interested were his voice not so boring and if I was able to sit down or something. I subconsciously yawned and looked at my friends, who were, with the exceptions of Russell and Luke, staring at him with glazed-over eyes.

"Um, excuse me?" I asked, breaking him out of his uninteresting tirade.

"Yes?" he said, looking, I was relived to notice, not the least bit angry that I had interrupted him.

"I was wondering that… um… does the museum buy things like this?" I mumbled, pointing at the vase fragment.

"Buy? Oh no, dear. It all runs off kind donations from people who one day stumble across wondrous finds as you yourself have done! Why, just the other week, I had a woman in here who had found the most fascinating piece of fossil I've seen in a long time! Now that dated back to…"

I sighed. Not because the museum didn't buy things from people, but because this old man was just so… boring. I decided to be polite and just stare blankly at him for a while as he droned on and on about fossilized Tropius eggs and old pieces of amber. I was noticing how heavy my eyelids were getting before Sarah interrupted his nonsensical ramble. "So you wouldn't buy it from us?"
"No, sorry. I'm not in a position to put a price on it. See, this museum is in the same chain as the one in Pewter in Kanto and the new one situated outside the Ruins of Alph in Johto, and the same man owns them all and he is adamant that the museums should be run solely by donations. And a very nice man he is too. He once showed me an extremely rare piece of cloth which was made about a thousand years ago and was made entirely from Spinarak thread! Imagine! It survived all the weather, all the wars, and you could still see what it depicted! And then-"

"Could you trade it?" Sianne asked suddenly.

"Could I trade it?" he repeated, a bit baffled by the question.

"Yeah." I said before he could go off on a long spiel about something random that nobody cared about, "We give you this, and you give us something. It doesn't have to be valuable, but-"

"It's just that we're enthralled by things from ancient times." Interrupted Sarah. "I mean, all those things you mentioned, they're just amazing. We love looking at the things left behind from past times, things that show us how humans and Pokémon used to live."

I stared at her. Sarah was lying through her teeth; she couldn't really care less about the past; all she lived for was the here and the now. She did seem to have the old guy's attention though.

"And since we found this for the museum, we thought that we could maybe have something in return, as I'm sure you'll want to add this fine piece of ancient art to your wonderful and extensive collection of unique artifacts."

"But of course!" he said, grinning. I really wished he hadn't, since the few teeth he did have were yellow and horrible. "You should have said something sooner! I think I have just the thing for you!"

He hobbled out of the room, giving us enough time to exchange glances and breathe a sigh of relief before he reappeared, looking very triumphant.

"Here we are!" he declared, putting something down on the table. I glanced at it. It was a translucent medium-sized greenish stone with a shape inside. It looked familiar, but I couldn't remember what it was.

"A Thunderstone!" he cried exultantly, grinning again. "One of the very few in Hoenn. They are rare and exquisite stones which possess and energy field depending on their type. A Thunderstone such as this will have an electrical cell-altering field around it, causing the cell structure of a compatible Pokémon to mutate, changing in not only terms of its appearance, but mentally, most commonly trading the ability to learn attacks for extra power, and then being able to wield the attacks learned in its previous form or forms with the power given to it in its new one. For example, an Arcanine will be virtually unable to learn any new techniques without the aid of a man-made machine, but its ability to use the attacks it knows from pre-evolution will be enhanced greatly, meaning that were it to use a Fire-type attack, its power would be greater than that with which it could perform it in the Growlithe stage owing to the expanded flame chamber and-"

I was very proud of myself – I actually listed to part of his incessant rambling, before getting bored and staring at a fascinating dust particle that was floating around my nose. But a Thunderstone… I could use one of those to evolve either Sianne or Souriee! I began thinking about it, and the more I did so, the more I like the idea. It would be the best of both worlds, I would have a light, speedy and cute Pikachu and a big, tough and powerful Raichu.

"Of course, as is with the same of any evolution, the effects cannot be reversed, that is if you decide not to count a Ditto's transformations as evolutions, because even though the cell structure and DNA of the original Pokémon changes-"

"This is great!" I said loudly, breaking him out of his tangent. "We'll take it! Thank you very much!"

"Yeah!" agreed Sarah quickly, before the man could get a word in, "It's been great talking to you, and we hope you continue sharing your knowledge of the past with others!"

"See ya!" waved Souriee. I picked up the Thunderstone, shook the man's hand and we all exited probably more quickly than was polite, but we agreed that another rant from him would most probably drive us insane.