A/N: :dodges thrown fruit: I'm sorry! I've been so unbelievably bust it's unimaginable. Seriously. I could hardly breathe. But I finally updated, so you can enjoy! Whee!

Here it is… the actual Sianne's story! It only took about nine chapters… ¬.¬ Anyway, thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far; you've made my day!

Dedication: To everyone who voted in TPT's BIC awards... you poeple rock!

Disclaimer: Did you know that if Nintendo ever did sue me for claiming to own their concept, whatever money they won would have gone to them anyway, through me buying games, cards, plushies, etcetera? And what a wonderful bit of warped, pointless of reverse-psychology that is.

Sianne's Story

By Dannichu

Chapter 9

A little later, we ate our meal of two cans of tinned vegetables on the beach, watching the sun go down, making the sky turn into a breathtaking, near-perfect scene. It was difficult to tell which it looked more like; a masterpiece drawn by the most skilled artist in the world, or a mess made by a three-year-old who had been left to run riot with red, orange and pink watercolors on a perfect dark blue piece of paper. Either way, it was a magnificent spectacle. Even Russell commented on how beautiful it was. After that, I recalled my Pokémon since it was getting late, dark and cold, and made my way back to the room in the Pokémon Center. Once there, I changed into my pajamas, took another look at the Thunderstone and fell asleep.

I awoke far earlier in the morning than I thought I would have, but I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes before stumbling into the bathroom where I splashed some water on my face and then ran my old brush though my hair a few times before getting it caught on a large tangle at the back. I pulled out the tangle using my hands and shoved my hair into a haphazard ponytail. I then half-heartedly squeezed some toothpaste in my silvery Totodile toothbrush and brushed my teeth quickly. Once I felt clean enough, I went back into the bedroom and took out a Safari Ball from my Pokébelt, which was lying in a pile of random clothing at the foot of the bed.

I took the ball and held it in my hands for a few minutes, wondering how to ask the question I wanted to ask. After releasing the Pikachu inside, which turned out to be Sianne, I asked her.

"Hey Sianne."

"Morning Danni."

"Hey Sianne… I was thinking… you know yesterday?"

"Don't worry; I've thought about it enough already." she said, smiling.

"Wha?" I said, nonplussed.

"About evolving."

"Ah." I said sheepishly. "How did you-"

"You got a Thunderstone. I'm a Pikachu. And you were so nervous; it was pretty obvious."

"Ehe." I muttered. "So, erm… what do you think?"

"Well," Sianne said in a way that made it obvious that she'd thought about it thoroughly, "I spent almost all of last night thinking about it. I'm not really a battling Pokémon. When I was little I was bullied a lot by my brothers and sisters, but-"

"You were?" I interrupted.

"Was what?"

"Bullied."

"Oh sure. Most wild Pokémon live for battling. Since most of them live in groups, they all battle on a regular basis for domination. So when I lived with my family, I was always shoved to the bottom of the pile."

"That's terrible… so where did you live before coming to the Safari Zone?" I asked, realizing that I should have asked that much earlier.

"Me? Oh, I was born in an old abandoned Power Plant. I don't know whether you'll have heard of it, it's just by Cerulean. It wasn't too pleasant there; whenever there was a huge thunderstorm, we could see Zapdos flying around, draining electrical energy from us and the other Pokémon in there. See, it isn't the collection of Pikachu that causes lightning storms, mostly it's Zapdos that detects a lot of energy, and it'll come along and drain it before unleashing bolts of lighting and so on." Sianne said bitterly. "After my energy had been taken by that stupid thing, I was left sick and dazed. Everyone else suffered a bit too, obviously, but I was just so ill after being drained of some of my electrical energy."

"I never knew that." I said, "I just thought that it was Pikachu gathering that caused lightning storms. So when were you captured?"

"When I was about two years old. I'm about three now." Sianne said clearing her throat, "A bunch of men in electricity-proof gear came in and caught every Pikachu they saw. Most of my brothers and sisters escaped, but I was the first to be captured. I can remember the look of disgust on my mothers' face when I was taken."

"Hold up." I interrupted. "Your mother?"

"Sure. In the wild, pretty much only the strong survives. And since I was weak, I would probably have been picked off when I was small,. But since the only other Pokémon who lived in the Plant left us Pikachu alone, I survived. But the quality of life wasn't all that great, shall I say." I looked at her, wordlessly asking her to go on. "Anyway, a weakling like me living for so long, and getting bigger but not stronger was a bit of a disgrace to the family. My oldest sister, Daeler, was the strongest of us all, and she just loved beating me up. She was captured too, mind. She tried to attack the humans invading our home, but got taken doing so."

"Wow… so were they taking you away to put in the Safari Zone?"

"Yup." Sianne nodded. "We had an attack-breaker put in us, right there," she pointed to the scruff of her neck, "which prevented us from using any of our special attacks. We were then shipped over to Hoenn, put into a kind of quarantine for a while before being released into the Zone."

"That's so cruel!" I protested.

"Not for me. It was good because I wasn't so weak. Sure, I couldn't use my attacks, but nobody else could either. And there were no Pokémon in the Zone that could kill, so I was pretty much safe. Didn't stop me from being friendless though. It was so lonely. One would think that in a space over three square kilometers-"

"What?"

"Oh yeah, you wouldn't know. The Zone is way bigger than what you humans think it is. There's three parts to it: the entrance, the part where the trainers hunt, and then the wild place. It's basically where we sleep and so on."

"I never knew that. So what did you do in there?"

"Anyway, like I said, in that huge space, I couldn't find anyone who I could make friends with. I never wanted to be captured, since I thought that every trainer used their Pokémon as battling machines, and since I couldn't fight all that well, I didn't want to be taken by someone who would deem me useless and leave me in a computer somewhere …" she trailed off, realizing what she had said. "Sorry! I didn't mean that-"

"Relax." I said, patting her on the back. "It's fine.

"Where was I? Oh yeah. So I had no friends. Then a bunch of Rhyhorn moved in to the place where I normally slept…" she trailed off, noticing a change of expression on my face. "What is it?"

"A… a Rhydon killed my parents." I said slowly, as the words were painful to say.

"That's terrible! How did that happen?" Sianne asked, a look of horror on her face.

"I… I don't really know. One day they went out and never came back. They had apparently been attacked or trampled or something by one that was dangerous and had, until then, been kept restrained to prevent it from attacking people."

"That's…horrible…" Sianne said, her face still aghast.

"Don't worry too much about it; I can't remember them all that well. They left the house to me, and I wasn't taken away since I had a Pokémon. Only people without a parent, guardian or Pokémon can be taken away. So I continued to live there, and when I was nine I left to become a trainer."

"Who was your Pokémon?" Sianne asked curiously.

"A Pikachu, Sparky."

"So you have three Pikachu?"

"Yup."

"And you're thinking of evolving one of us?"

"Only if you want to. Hang on; you haven't finished your story! So these Rhyhorn moved into your place. What did you do?"

"Well what could I do? I didn't want them taking away my little home, but there were four of them and one of me. And I didn't want to be trampled by them. So what could I do but move to another place in the Zone? The thing was that pretty much everywhere had been taken. There was nowhere to sleep without invading the territory of some Pinsir, Girafarig or Dodrio, and even the trees were full of Natu and Heracross. And, trust me, you don't want to disturb a sleeping Heracross." she added grimly, pointing to the chunk taken out of her right cheek.

"How long was that before I caught you?" I asked.

"I think it must have been a couple of months, about two or so. It was hell. There was nowhere to sleep but a small patch of grass right by the Entrance. I had to wake up at the crack of dawn and go to the back before any trainers came in. If they found a Pikachu fight by the entrance, they'd catch me for sure."

I considered this. "Hang on. If you didn't want to be captured, ten why did you let me catch you? I mean, you didn't know that I wasn't going to be horrible, did you?"

"Well…" Sianne began slowly, thinking deeply. "I'm not sure, really. It was a mixture of things. One of them was, obviously, that another day of being shoved around and another night of nowhere to sleep and another morning at which I had to wake up at the crack of dawn. It was just terrible… and being crammed together with those Pokémon capable of hurting you, with not a friend in the world…" she broke off, unable to continue. I went over and gave her a hug, one that I used to give Sparky, which involved picking her up from underneath the arms putting her on my shoulder and then wrapping my arms around her small form. Not as small as in naturally tiny like Sparky was, but small as in she had the capacity to be normal-sized, but she was so skinny, and her fur was totally unlike Sparky's; where his was sleek and soft to touch, Sianne's was coarse and matted. I hugged her close, thinking about her terrible past while she cried quietly on my shoulder.

After about five minutes, she twitched a bit. "You okay?" I asked quietly.

"Yeah." She sniffed. "Sorry about that. It's just that…"

"It's fine." I said, "Look, you don't have to tell me if it makes you feel bad."

"No, I'm better now." she assured me, wiping tears from her eyes. She climbed off me and sat back down on the bed. "Where was I? Oh yes, I was just fed up with living what seemed like a nightmare, so I decided that I would be caught, and no matter how bad the trainer was, it wouldn't be any worse than I was then, since nothing could be."

"And was that when you found me?"

"Oh no; I was hiding by the entrance all day. It wasn't normally a risk I'd take, but even though I wanted to be caught, I wanted to be caught by the nicest person I could find."

"I'm flattered. What made you choose me?"

"Well, it was on appearance mostly." She admitted. My mouth fell open.

"On appearance? Me?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Look at me! I'm not fishing for complements, but I'm not exactly the best-looking person on the planet am I? I'm messy, untidy and my clothes nearly have holes in! Why on earth did you choose me?"

"Honestly. I didn't choose you on looks, the way humans chose their mates, I mean, you can tell a lot about a person from their looks. For example, it was obvious that your appearance wasn't the most important thing in your life. Correct?"

"Obviously"

"Also, the way you dressed was a giveaway. You dress far more sensibly than most other trainers, especially females, with their short skirts and so on, while you wear jeans and a t-shirt. Far more sensible, showing that you take practicality over looks."

"Wow, that's amazing!"

"There's more. I pieced together little bits about you from what I saw of you before deciding I wanted you to be my trainer."

"How? I wasn't exactly in there for a very long time."

"Well, for one thing, you weren't like other trainers who go around madly, catching everything in their path. For another, you didn't, like so many others did, just trample down the grass because it got in your way. You pushed it aside carefully. That's one of the best ways with which to endear yourself to any Pokémon; show respect to its territory, its home."

I thought about that. At the time I didn't realize I was even doing it. I guess I'd always held a certain respect for nature, but I didn't really think about it when I didn't trample flowers or put litter in my pocket, not on the floor.

"Then there was your patience in waiting for a certain Pokémon to appear. That was amazing, just sitting there, waiting."

"What was amazing about that?"

"Have you not seen the way most trainers act in the Zone?"

"Erm…no?"

"The run around like wild things, either catching everything that moves or, if they're looking for a specific Pokémon, they'll try and flush our everything, and if they don't find a Pinsir or whatever, they'll move on. So yes. After seeing that you seemed like the trainer that I wanted to be with, I went up to you. You have no idea how nervous I was."

"Yeah, you looked a little shaky."

"A little? Every fiber of me was telling me to either run away or fry you!"

"Really? I thought it was natural for Pokémon to trust humans, at least a little."

"It's natural for normal Pokémon. But normal Pokémon have friends, and haven't had pasts like mine. If you had been treated like I had by your brother and sisters, would you not be scared by going up to someone who could make you their slave so easily? Especially if I was weak…" she broke off again, partly because it seemed painful for her to continue, but also because I think she thought she was giving herself too much self-pity. So she swallowed it.

"So, um…" I looked around to try and change the subject, since it was obviously hurting her, and my eyes fell on the Thunderstone glinting on the bedside cabinet. "So, what about evolving? Remember, you don't have to at all, I like you just as you are and there's one Thunderstone and two of you at any rate."

"Well..." she said slowly, "I don't think so. While the extra power might seem like a blessing to other Pokémon, I just wouldn't want or need the power to attack others. I have Thunder Wave for defense, as well as my speed. And I don't think I'd want a personality change either. If it made me forget everything that had ever happened to me, fine, but my Raichu mind would be far too complicated, and I think I might focus on it too much. Now I'm with a brilliant trainer and in time I'll leave my past behind. I'll be all right in time. But I don't want to evolve."

"That's fine." I said genuinely, "That's perfectly okay with me. And it's good you got all that off your chest as well; keeping emotions bottled up is never a good thing."

Sianne nodded and gave me another hug.

"Now, I'm going to check the ferry times downstairs," I said, putting her back down on the bed and taking out her ball. "So can I recall you?"

"Sure," she said, smiling, as I held up her Safari ball, into which she disappeared.