Chapter 2: An everyday peaceful sea voyage

(From the perspective of the Ninetales, Kitsune)

It had been over an hour since we left the valley, altered her mind so she could understand pokemon, and Lilac had last said anything to anyone, let alone me. Talking to her might scare her, and if I scare her too much I would risk losing my chance to use her later on, so I had to stay silent and not let myself lose this chance to set humanity on the right path.

I watched as Lilac push some of what I assume was money across to some other human as an offering for us to travel on their large sea vessel, it would be a bad time to try to talk to her so I just tried to act like a loyal pokemon following her master, my mind refused to remember what I was going through, it was better that way or else I would certainly go insane. Knowing that we would soon get to Hoenn, which apparently was the birthplace of N'med, was all I needed to give me hope of enjoyment later.

A moment in time is meant to be short, but the moments are meant to add up to make a period of time noticeable. But the way I drifted through thoughts without paying attention to what they were had made my whole time with Lilac seem like only a few seconds. It was not like the thoughts were unimportant, it was just that wandering through human territory without conflict was a bit unnerving; I always knew I deliberately caused the conflicts myself but deep down inside I never really believed such things were my fault till now.

"Kitsune, you've been too quite lately," Lilac sighed, snapping me out of my thoughts. We were now on some flat white-painted metal surface on top of the vessel; Lilac was leaning on the railing looking out at the shimmering ocean, "I know something is bothering you, I may not know you very well but your body language is all too clear: all nine of your tails have been dragging on the ground for quite some time; you ears were also flattened against your head, and you seemed to not be paying attention to anything that was happening around you. Look, I know that you feel hopeless for some reason, I just don't like seeing others like that."

"Even though you hated seeing me like that you still took so long to try to help…" I growled softly preparing to lunge at her, and Lilac turned to look at me, tears were running down her cheeks even though her full sadness hadn't shown in her voice. Tears couldn't have had any effect on me, could they? "I don't blame you, I know you are a bit scared of me and I don't blame you for that either… You are helpless if I attack, I do not have a pokeball you can just put me in and there is no one else around to defend you… I am the one at fault; I let my problems overcome me because I just didn't want to frighten you."

"I know you are deliberately not saying everything, but I know you are doing so to be nice," Lilac said, wiping the tears from her eyes and I could barely notice that she was trembling but I could clearly smell her fear of me because of what I had said, "It's just that I know you enjoyed seeing me scared, I could see it when we met. I know no one could change so quickly… it is nice to know you will try to change, but mentally isolating yourself from everyone around you isn't going to help…"

She cautiously moved closer to me, beginning to extend her arms as if to hug me. She kneeled down more than needed to put her arms around my neck. I know she only wanted to hug me to make me more comfortable but I could smell her fear, and she was trembling slightly. But she was right, I should just be myself, at least I assume that was what she was trying to say. But she was making herself an easy target; it would have been quite hard to resist if I actually wanted to stop myself.

I leapt at her, though it was hardly worth calling a leap because of how little distance was involved, my front paws landing on her shoulders pushing her over though I made sure that they quickly slipped off so I didn't risk crushing her shoulders when she hit the ground. She hit the ground with a slight thump, my paws landing just above her shoulders making me in a position where I could watch her very well.

I could have quickly moved backwards and pinned her to the ground with ease but toying with her for a while would be a lot more fun. I could feel that all nine of my tails were wagging viciously, at least Lilac could take comfort in the fact she had cheered me up all ready even though I doubt she had any concern for my emotional well being at the moment.

I felt her head move up from between my front paws, allowing her to quickly roll out from under me, her fear must of been clouding her judgment otherwise she would of noticed that I was not reacting as fast as I could have.

She rolled out from under me, clearly intending to be back on her feet as quickly as possible as it showed in her roll, and instead of turning straight to her to attack I spun round the other way whacking her with my tails. I heard her hit the ground before I finished turn round so naturally I jumped into the air with full confidence she would just roll out of the way…

She didn't, something seemed to catch her eye that was more important than I was. I barely managed to stop my front paws impacting on to her, with the full weight of my body behind them, and they hit the metal surface just on the other side of her with a thud and the paint cracked a bit as the metal underneath was dented slightly. Playing with my new toy Lilac was certainly not important enough for me to not pay attention to the fact something distracted her; I merely slowed down the decent of the rest of my body when my back legs reached the ground and I gently lay my head between my front paws, with the rest of both my front legs stretched across her chest.

"Look what we have here," an unfamiliar female human voice said, clearly originating from whomever distracted Lilac, "a pathetic trainer playing with their pokemon…it's really a horrible sight, pokemon are not meant to be one's friend, they are meant only for battling against each other. Playing with them is more of a waste of time than teaching to do tricks for contest halls."

I looked towards the human, she was about the same height as Lilac though she did sound older, her hair was a pale cream colour much like members of my species are meant to have and it stretched halfway down her back. Her eyes were yellow, which surprised me. I had seen yellow eyes before, but I had never seen them on a human.

Her clothing was all made of a light blue fabric, probably a form of silk, though I couldn't really be sure. She wore a dress long enough to touch the ground and seemed to be part of the same piece of clothing as her shirt whose arms covered her arms quite well, amazingly it didn't seem to be loose at all, I heard humans regularly change their clothing but I could not see how she could of possibly done so when it was like that. Maybe she grew too much while she wore it.

She giggled, with her hand to her mouth and her eyes closed, "That's what you would've heard if it wasn't for the fact that we are the only passengers on this ship," her voice was a bit softer than before; she must not have meant any of what she said earlier and said it only to give us a fright, "few trainers travel this time of year as most of the major tournaments are on this month are either just finished, part way through, or going to start within a few weeks. Most trainers are jealous of those who can trust there pokemon enough to play with them, really it's their own fault they can't trust their pokemon because of how mean they are to them and how they feel that only fully evolved pokemon are worth using in battles… I must say it is impressive that you are not afraid to play with such a large pokemon, you wouldn't last very long if it wanted to hurt you and it might even hurt you by accident."

"Yes, it is hard to learn to trust a powerful pokemon such as Kitsune," Lilac replied, it was clear by the way she spoke she was uncomfortable with me on her but the little fear in her voice was enough to keep me there, "but one could never hope to earn trust without giving it, so it is well worth the risk allowing a pokemon enough freedom to cause harm as that way you'll quickly know for sure… By the way my name is Lilac Blossom All-Weather."

I growled quietly so Lilac would hear but not the other girl, I had to make it clear she should imply she owned me as it was the other way round…

"Sorry I forgot to introduce myself, I'm Ingénuo Muchacha," the girl answered, she looked relieved that nothing worse happened when she didn't introduce herself right away. I felt uncomfortable with the way she was looking at me as she crouched down and tilted her head a bit, "I have heard some interesting rumours about Ninetales, maybe since you own on you could tell me if they are true, I've been told that powerful ones can use telekinetic abilities, and that if you grab one of their tails you would get a powerful curse put on you… you do know if the rumours are true, don't you?"

I shifted off Lilac, and began to circle Ingénuo… All she had ever done to annoy me so far was to show up but that was no reason for me to try to be friendly, odd how there was little pokemon scent on her, it is as if she hadn't been in contact with any pokemon for a few days meaning she couldn't have any pokemon of her own… One big advantage to me, but she seemed too calm, how could she not be panicked by how defenseless she was?

"I have never heard of either of those rumours before," Lilac said nervously, I gave her a quick glance to find that she was already back on her feet, her fear now had a different texture, uncertainty of past events was now probably a major aspect of the fear, she knew she had touched my tails but was uncertain as to whether it counted, "is there some way to check, maybe Kitsune would be happy to try levitating a small object, at least we have a chance of finding out for sure."

Lilac had produced a pocketknife and slid it across the ground so it stopped at my feet; clearly she wanted me to try to move it with my mind. I sat down, closed my eyes and focused my energy on the knife, even though this was my first time trying such an application of mental energies I could feel the position of the object in the universe, I could feel it moving under the pressure of my mind…

…Laughter. that is what I heard from Ingénuo, she was laughing hysterically at me, which was really making it hard to concentrate. I opened my eyes and before me was the knife; it had been still where it was when I had started. I really hadn't moved it at all.

A giggle came from Lilac; I couldn't see what was funny and the gaze I gave her would certainly make not only that clear but also that I wasn't very happy with it, "Look Kitsune, your fur just fluffed up when you were trying to levitate the knife, though the blue glow was a bit cool," she said, only then I realize how close she had gotten as she reached to grab one of my tails, "sorry, curiosity got the better of me, it's just so tempting to find out whether you would put a curse on me."

"You're certainly no normal trainer," Ingénuo continued, still giggling a bit, now at both me and Lilac, and most certainly it seemed quite disrespectful, "trusting a pokemon not to hurt you when playing can be considered extremely brave, but trying to grab a tail of a Ninetales is just crazy. Even if she couldn't put a curse on you, she would still hate it and she could quite easily kill you before you had a chance to return her to her pokeball."

My fur puffing out was no excuse for her laughing at me, and I certainly didn't like what she said to Lilac, even though there was no way for her to have known I still hated how she suggested that Lilac could contain me, I could feel the fire building up in my throat ready to roar out, I open my mouth and aimed it straight at her. It was merely a small puff of fire, barely reaching a meter, though my tails wagged more violent than they had been for a while when I saw stupid fall backwards in fright of the flames. It was a lot more enjoyable than watching her burn, though I did try my best to fry her anyway, all I got was a pain in my throat.

I never could breath fire properly, it always hurt, but the instincts to just burn anything that annoyed me too much remained.

"For a moment there I actually thought she was actually going use a flamethrower on me," Ingénuo said nervously, as she sat on the ground with her arms holding stopping her from completely falling over, "I can see now she is really well trained but I would still be more comfortable with her keeping her distance from me, I don't have any pokemon of my own yet but tomorrow Professor Birch is going to give me my first one and I would love to travel with you if you can keep your Ninetales under control… Lilac do you have any idea why her fur went like that?"

"Well the use of psychic powers do produce electromagnetic fields, and static electricity would make fur puff out like that… though I can't see how it works, really it should do this," Lilac said, confusion showed in her voice but also a little smugness that comes with knowing more than someone else, "all I know is that it will be impossible to channel that electrical energy that made her fur fluff up into a successful attack for two basic reasons: Her body isn't made for storing any decent amount of electric energy so it'd be far too weak to do any harm; and her body doesn't have any way to stop the energy just dispersing straight into the ground when it stops building up."

I sighed and slowly got off Lilac. This was going to be a long boat ride if we had to deal with this girl the whole way, she doesn't even give Lilac a chance to correct her mistakes, but it'll be easy to get rid of her once we are back on land…