Chapter Three- The Goode Family's Incredible Hospitality
Alexi took two steps towards the daunting forest, stopped, and then sat down on the windy grass. If this was going to be the beginning of her pokemon journey, she wanted to make sure she did it right.
She grabbed her bag, unzipped it, and pulled out a belt for pokeballs. She found Celebi's apricorn ball and rolled it round in her hand for a minute. It was so beautiful, so precious. So dangerous. But however rare the pokemon, it was Alexi's only one, and she was keen to keep protection close at hand at the moment. She stood up, attached the belt to her faded jeans, and stuck the apricorn ball to it. Now she was ready for anything. She took up her backpack and suitcase once more and meandered through the first few trees of the forest.
As she wandered through wilderness, she listened to the sounds of the ocean hitting the cliff behind her getting more and more distant. And maybe it was the intimidating, curly trees blocking out the light but she distinctly felt the sun go down as the forest grew deeper- as if one was making way for the other. Alexi had never been in a forest that wasn't her home; if she had, she might have noticed the distinct lack of any common pokemon like Pidgey, or Rattata- or, indeed, any pokemon at all. As it was, she just assumed that that was how all "real" forests were.
What felt like night fell, and the Hoothoot came out of hiding. This forest was full of them, twooting and hooing in that ridiculous, comical, unnervingly humanesque way. There were hundreds of them; one on every tree, almost. Alexi kept on wandering through the trees. She didn't really know where she thought she was going to end up, but she had a vague idea that if she kept walking in the same direction, she might reach what she had previously recognised as a town. It wasn't until the dark was pitch and thick, and the Hoothoot had completely stopped, that she realised how lost she was. Hindsight now came to her. What Alexi needed now, more than anything else, was another pokemon. Celebi wasn't going to be much use to her if she couldn't let anyone see it, and sooner or later she was going to run into someone who would want to know what pokemon she had. She could use Celebi to catch one, althought she wasn't sure how; if she was smart, she would have caught the very first Hoothoot she had seen, put Celebi away in her bag, taken for the town and pretended that the legendary pokemon she had possession of didn't exist. Hindsight, she realised, was never a good thing for positive reinforcement. Defeated and blinded by the darkness, she fell to the forest floor clumsily.
She sat there for a minute or two, listening to the creaking and shivering of the trees, combing the night sounds for something that resembled a pokemon she could catch and pretend was her first. Then she heard it. A great, deep howling from somewhere else in the forest. A Mightyena call- enough to kill every flicker of hope in any person unlucky enough to catch a note of it. Not the most consoling thing for Alexi to hear at the moment. She groaned in response, feeling that everything that could be going wrong right now was, and Mightyena howled again in reply. The sound had moved to the other end of the forest, which meant another pokemon. Alexi quickly deducted that there was a pack nearby. Slowly but surely, the creaking of the trees became low, grumbling growls of warning from the wolf pokemon that had put her on edge. The sounds were closer this time, and seemed to surround her.
Suddenly, there was a kind of splattery smack from a pile of leaves near her left foot and she retreated it immediately. She peered closer to the source of the noise, a completely useless action in utter blackness. The leaves were rustling, unmistakeably. There was something in them.
Alexi extended her trembling hand, covering her eyes with the other. Somehow she had forgotten she was sitting in the dark. When she realised that covering her hand had achieved nothing, she stopped and laughed aloud to herself.
"I'm so stupi-AAAARGH!" her voicebox croaked. Her fingers had just curled around something thick and slimy, and she had thrown it into the trees instantly as a reflex. As soon as she'd done it, she realised she'd just thrown away the pokemon she was looking to catch, and hit herself hard on the forehead as punishment with the slime-covered hand, coating her face in the stuff. It wasn't even worth a second groan; things like that always happened when there was nobody around to laugh with you.
"Right then, slimey thing. Prepare to meet your master. Celebi, appear!" Alexi grabbed the apricorn ball and held it at arms length apprehensively, her eyes shut tight in anticipation, waiting for her pokemon to appear. Nothing happened.
"Um…Celebi…come out now," Alexi tried. "Now! Appear….now! Appear….now!" She stopped and sighed, thinking over what she was saying and, as she couldn't be bothered thinking of anything else to say, she began again. Something would work eventually, surely. "Come on, Celebi, you know you want to. Come on Celebi, go!"
With these last words, Celebi appeared from the apricorn ball in a flash of blinding white light. A kind of green glow which surrounded Celebi half lit up the forest floor in front of her, and Alexi identified the bug pokemon she had thrown, which was now crawling away sheepishly, as a Wurmple. She silently thanked her somewhat laidback lucky stars that she hadn't grabbed the pokemon's spiky head or tail, but instead its slimy belly.
"Right then Celebi, I want you to catch Wurmple for me! Here, take this pokeball."
Celebi turned at looked at Alexi in disbelief. There was an awkward pause as Alexi waited for her pokemon to respond to her outrageous command. Celebi blinked sarcastically.
"Ok then…attack it…so I can catch it myself. But don't use any attacks that might kill it, or hurt it too much. Just weaken it a little bit, kinda. Sort of. Ok then, don't."
The overpowerful legendary hadn't changed its blank expression, much to Alexi's dismay.
"Oh, well what the hell am I supposed to do then, eh?" Alexi spurted at her. "If you're so clever, why don't you just show me how it's done? As you've probably guessed, I haven't had much practice at this whole 'catch the pokemon, make them yours' thing. I could use a little help." Celebi blinked again. "Alright then, fine. Move out of the way, and let me handle this myself."
Alexi pushed Celebi aside with one hand and reached for a pokeball in her pack with the other. She found one, took aim in the soft green light and threw it.
"Pokeball, go!" she shouted, mimicking her father. It missed Wurmple completely, and hit the mushy forest floor with an anticlimax you could cut with a knife. Alexi took to her feet in a rage, stumbled angrily over to the pokeball, brushed rotten leaves and mud off it and turned to face the Wurmple, which was now making its way slowly, as fast as it could, up a tree trunk.
"Right, slug-guts. I've had just about all I can take from you. Get in my pokeball! NOW! OR ELSE!" Alexi's shouts echoed around the trees. Wurmple seemed not to notice Alexi's screaming too much, although it changed its direction on the tree and started wriggling round it, presumably to get away from the uncomfortable noise emitting from the human that was pursuing her.
With a deep breath, Alexi raised the pokeball she had picked up off the ground and touched its top, very gently, to Wurmple's wiggling nose. The weak pokemon disappeared inside at once, with a flash of light.
"There. That's better," Alexi said softly and dangerously. "I'm glad we've gotten over that precarious first hurdle, Celebi, it' so nice to know you're here watching over me, guiding me every step of the way."
She turned to face Celebi, who was grinning hysterically.
"Oh, stop it," Alexi growled half-heartedly, defeated. Celebi's sing continued, but the humour in the situation quickly extinguished. Something menacing had just barked loudly, very nearby.
"Celebi…" Alexi whimpered. "What was that?" Celebi raised a trembling finger and pointed to the tree behind Alexi.
The Poochyena had its teeth bared and advanced slowly on Alexi, its eyes glowing with the anticipation of a fight. Alexi turned to run, and saw a second Poochyena appear from the trees- and another, and another. Celebi and Alexi backed away simultaneously, closing in on themselves.
The Poochyena barked and snapped viciously, and lunged at Alexi, pushing her to the ground with lots of little, sharp, pointy claws. She threw one off her and it hit a tree and whimpered; another one bit her arm and she roared at it, madly trying to shake it off. She jumped onto her feet and swung the Poochyena on her arm into another tree, and as she did so, two more attached themselves to her ankles. Four Poochyena bashed into Alexi's back, and she fell forward, throwing her arms in front of her and landing on the muddy ground with a slap. She felt teeth snapping at her ears and rolled over, kicking her legs out helplessly, trying to catch her opponents off guard and hitting one in the jaw. More Poochyena piled onto her stomach. Alexi tried to catch a glimpse of Celebi as she wrestled, but she couldn't lift her arms from in front of her face- two Poochyena were standing on them, ripping at her hair with their back legs. She screamed for help through a mouthful of dirt and doghair; she could still hear Celebi's sweet song as she felt herself grow faint. Her head was throbbing- the barking, stinking jaws that snapped at her face felt a million miles away. Alexi's eyes rolled back into her skull and she blacked out, the putrid stench of Poochyena slobber still fresh in her mind.
-------------------------------------------------------
Refusing to give up the fight, Alexi pushed her eyelids open. She was upright, and the Poochyena had gone. The darkness had returned; this time more sinister, more alive than the forest had been. Alexi sensed that she was in danger, and needed help. She searched her jeans for her apricorn ball, for Celebi to light the darkness and show her what she couldn't see, but there was nothing there. The belt was gone. She was alone.
No. She wasn't alone at all. As she stood there, unblinking in the dark, she felt the beast behind her sniff her hair with its velvet nose. She felt her mind being snatched and squeezed, and something threw her onto her knees, grazing them on the hard floor. Alexi threw her hands over her head, cowering, pushing all the effort in her body into her mind, willing it to close itself to the horrible dream. Her ears picked up what her mind could not. The beast roared, and Alexi's eardrums burst and bled. She screamed as she covered them, trying to shut out every part of her body from the monster. Her forehead ached from the effort she was putting into keeping her eyes shut. And in the darkness in the back of her eyelids, she saw a light- not a purple haze as she had feared, but a flickering, flittering flame, only just visible through the trees. Her mind sucked itself through to real life again, and she woke up.
-------------------------------------------------
A stick had stuck itself into Alexi's hair uncomfortably. It pointed into her scalp and worsened the throbbing that spread through her head. She pulled herself up from the ground painfully, leaving imprints of pebbles and twigs in the cheek she had landed on. As she rose, dead leaves and dirt fell off her face. The blurry scene in front of her spinning eyes came into focus, and the cogs in her head slowly started turning.
On the ground around her, several Poochyenas lay limp and unconscious. Celebi was hovering above her, and Alexi spotted bigger bodies further into the woods that could have been defeated Mightyena. Alexi smiled. How could she have been so worried about her safety with a legendary pokemon here to protect her? She spotted the light she had seen in her dream, and her braincogs clicked. People were coming! Celebi would be spotted! Alexi grabbed at her belt, fumbled clumsily with the apricorn ball and quickly called Celebi inside. The last flash of green light faded as the strangers burst in through the bush.
It occurred to Alexi that it might be a good idea to pretend she was still unconscious, but as she was laying down, she caught eye contact with one of the newcomers and they rushed over to help her.
The girl had her boring brown hair in pigtails, and a cute innocent face that matched her puppy-brown eyes.
"Are you alright?" she asked, pushing Alexi's hair out of her face to see her properly. "Did they hurt you?"
Alexi spat fine pebbles from her mouth onto the ground and looked at the girl. "I'm fine, thankyou. Thankyou. I'm completely fine. Who are you?" she groaned, slowly waking up, repeating sentences as the meaning of them became clearer.
"I'm Mary," the girl responded. "And this is my father, William. We saved you."
Alexi took in what Mary had said, spotting the chance to cover up for Celebi's presence. She turned to the girl's father, who was surveying her from above. He had broad shoulders and deep wrinkles in his forehead. The muscles on his arms bulged through the red flannelette shirt he was wearing. He was wielding an axe, and a Machoke stood dutifully beside him, holding the torch that Alexi had seen coming through the trees.
"Although it looks like you were doing a pretty good job of saving yourself," the man called William said. "You fight off all these Poochyena yourself?" he asked, motioning to the fainted pokemon.
"Uhh…yeah," Alexi said stupidly, her mind still groggy with sleep. She looked around and grabbed a thick stick from the ground beside her. "With this," she added, trying to make her story sound more plausible, but failing. She felt for the pokeballs round her belt and found the newly filled one. "Wurmple helped," she said, and Wurmple appeared from its pokeball, immediately wriggling away from its trainer and up the nearest tree, slowly, in steady panic. Alexi recalled it quickly, with an embarrassed grin plastered across her face.
"Bit of a tomboy, are you?" William concluded, confused, and Alexi nodded in thankful agreement. "Well, it's lucky we were here to hear you screaming. I was just about to start heading home. My woodpile's over there." He pointed. "Come on, we'd better get you home to rest. You look like you could do with a sit down."
William extended his thick, muscled hand and Alexi took it. She was hoisted up onto her feet easily, and Mary and the Machoke started back for the woods, back through the way they had come. William gestured for Alexi to join them, and she followed, grateful that her bad luck seemed to have finally come to an end.
William's woodpile, it turned out, was about thirty or forty chunks of log he had chopped from a newly timbered tree- William was a lumberjack. When they reached the pile, William swung his axe into the lonely trunk and it stuck. He and Machoke hoisted the heavy load of wood onto their shoulders and started through the forest, to an old, windy road which lay nearby. Alexi stumbled along after them, thinking heavily as they made their way out of the forest and to the town Mary, William and Machoke all lived. As they walked, Alexi realised the seemingly pitch black of the forest was almost entirely due to the trees- when they emerged into the light again, it was nearly dusk.
Alexi swung her arms against her sides as she walked, her jeans and plain black top torn and stained with Poochyena saliva. Mary ambled along beside her, occasionally glancing at her, and soon began an awkward attempt at conversation.
"Gee. You were real lucky my daddy and I were in the forest to hear you. If we hadn't been there…well…gee…I don't know how long you and Wurmple could have held off those Poochyena for. They're particularly vicious, you know, the ones in Blackwood."
"Is that what this place is called? Blackwood Forest?" Alexi responded, keen to finally find out her mysterious location's title, less keen to continue the conversation with Mary.
"Yeah. Only we just call it Blackwood. You're not from around here, are you?"
Alexi mentally kicked herself for asking the name of the forest and at the same time, started frantically weaving a cover story while trying hard not to show any panicking in her face.
"No, I'm…not. I'm from…somewhere else. Over there." She pointed in a random direction, and Mary smiled.
"You're from Kanto? That's a long way away, that is. Did you come here to study?"
"Um, no. I came here…to be a pokemon trainer," Alexi responded truthfully.
Mary gasped. "Gosh. That's odd. We don't get many trainers round here any more. Not many at all. What made you…"
Alexi's heart fell as she realised she had dug herself a trap.
"Oh!" At Alexi's amazement, realisation dawned over Mary's face. "You must be here for the Nouvella Gym Tournament."
"Yeah. Yep, that's exactly right," Alexi quickly agreed.
"Yeah, we're all pretty excited about it. I've been training my Seedot for weeks now. Me and daddy are heading over there tomorrow, so I can compete. You can come with us, if you want."
Before Alexi could answer, Mary was tugging on her father's shirt.
"Daddy, can the new girl come with us to Nouvella for the tournament tomorrow?" she pleaded.
"Of course she can, sweetie." Her father replied, and Mary smiled in rapturous joy.
"My name's Alexi, by the way," Alexi said to her grinning companion. She figured it was safe enough to give her real name- her parents had said nothing about having to hide her own identity, only theirs, and this whole making-up-a-fake-other-life thing was getting tiring, especially since she didn't even fully understand why her parents were hiding, or who they were hiding from, or what she was even doing here. Better to stick to the truth, sometimes- if anything, it made conversation much less prickly.
"Well, hello Alexi. Nice to meet you," Mary replied enthusiastically. She slipped her hand into Alexi's before she could object and they walked along the windy forest path together.
"Wanna be best friends?" Mary asked eagerly, and before Alexi could think about a response, Mary's puppy dog eyes took hold of her heart. "Um…okay then," she said, and Mary started skipping.
Besides, Alexi convinced herself silently, what with hiding her family, her past and the only pokemon she liked from the world, it felt nice to finally have someone to talk to, someone to share her life with. She had a friend, and she was happy. And that's all anyone ever needs, isn't it?
Alexi laughed at Mary, pigtails bouncing in the wind, and began skipping along beside her.
The winding, crooked forest path turned another sharp corner and rose over a small hill and when Alexi got to the top, she spotted her destination. The hill descended into a small plateau, which fell away into the air and became the jagged cliffs that bordered the area. The town was small- houses dotted themselves across the landscape, windows lit and chimneys smoking. Smoke curled its way up into the sky, and mixed with the clouds. Past the town, Alexi could see the vast, choppy ocean she had come across, stretching to the horizon, carrying small fishing boats back to shore.
Alexi made her way down into the township and when they reached an old wooden sign, the troupe stopped and William took his daughter in his arms and stood valiantly, chest high, taking in his hometown.
"Welcome to Goodeview," he said to Alexi. "My home, and yours. You're lucky enough to be staying with descendants of the original founders of this town- the Goode name is as impressive as any medal around here. My great grandfather, Jacob Goode, battled through the very forest we jut rescued you from, Blackwood, to build this town. We don't get many visitors, because the only way to reach Goodeview by land is through Blackwood, and most people don't attempt to sail round the Chalky Cliffs- too dangerous, you see. But the few visitors we do get appreciate the bravery and ruggedness the people here have developed to live in such a harsh environment and throughout Xela, we are respected and looked up to. I think you'll find yourself right at home here."
The troupe descended on the town as night descended on the sky. While Alexi walked through the cobbled Goodeview streets, she spotted more than a few fishermen making their way home with the day's catch. The town was built right on the cliffs- the ones William had called the Chalky Cliffs- and Alexi supposed that most of the villagers were fishermen, and climbed down the steep slopes to the ocean each day. When she had asked Mary about this, she had told her that the cliffs near Goodeview were decorated with rope ladders which led to the ocean, and steps carved into the land wound their way down to the beach as well, which meant the fishermen could quite easily come and go, up and down the cliffs on a daily basis, to earn enough to stay alive. The town was quiet and charming, in a quaint, touristy kind of way. They reached the Goode residence earlier than Alexi had expected- it was a little way up another hill, closer to the forest than the rest of the town, and was made of logs and bricks. It looked very cosy, but also very grand. The front door was decorated with a large, iron knocker which William banged against it three times before it opened with a creak and a short, fat woman appeared in the hallway.
"Come in," said Mrs Goode. "Oh, I see we have a visitor. I'll set an extra plate on the table, and we'll sit down for dinner shortly." The woman smiled at Alexi lovingly. "What brings you to our humble home, dear?"
"We found her in the forest!" Mary cried gleefully. "She's my new best friend- she's staying with us, and going to the Tournament tomorrow!"
"Oh, how wonderful," Mary's mother exclaimed. "They found you in the forest? I'm sure you can tell us all about it over dinner. Make yourself at home, dear, Mary will show you where everything is."
Mary grabbed Alexi's hand and nearly pulled her arm out of its socket as she dragged her along the hallway. "Come to my room!" she shouted, overjoyed.
Alexi liked the Goode family very, very much so far. Mary was wonderful, in a bounding, excited, enthusiastic way and her father, William was so impressive- strong and brave, yet calm and collected. Mrs Goode, whose name Alexi found out was Jill, was so incredibly warm and inviting that it was hard not to feel as if she had been taken in as one of the family. The whole experience was almost too happy, almost too friendly and polite and lovely, although Alexi had never experienced hospitality at all before, and so such an extravagant display of the sort did not rouse any suspicions. Alexi had a lot to learn about people; at the moment, she was blissfully innocent, and enjoying her life immensely.
Conversation over dinner was drab. The same, polite, careful questions got posed at Alexi again and again, and she kept on having to make up more and more story to get herself out of it. They already knew her real first name, but instead of giving them her true last name, Skendr, which would have connected her to her parents, she told the Goode family that her family name was True, which, of course, it wasn't. She had come here from Lavender Town, which, apparently, was some small place in Kanto, with only one pokemon, in order to begin what Mary's parents kept calling a 'pokemon journey.' Jill obviously disapproved with Alexi's parents' method of dropping her in the middle of a dangerous wood in an unknown land in order to begin Alexi's life as a trainer, but she didn't voice her concerns- each to her own, she thought to herself. At least the girl would learn to be tough from early on. However, it was obvious that Jill and William took pity on Alexi- they obviously thought she had been abandoned, or something similar, by her parents in an attempt to get her to be great. They fed Alexi extra servings of everything, and kept patting her on the back sympathetically whenever she mentioned anything about herself at all.
"Do you miss your mother?" Jill asked at one point,
and before Alexi could respond, Jill took from her seat and wrapped
her arms around her newfound surrogate daughter, hugging her tight,
tears in her eyes.
"Of course you do," she continued. "Don't
worry- you'll have a wonderful life here in Goodeview."
When the conversation wasn't uncomfortably turned towards Alexi and her past, it was seated comfortably on the hot topic of the upcoming Nouvella Gym Tournament. Without asking too many unusual questions, and while still managing to pretend that she had planned to compete all along, Alexi managed to discover what it was.
"Nouvella's a wonderful place to build a gym, don't you think? Everyone who lives round the Chalky Cliffs area is very excited about it- it's the first time we've had this kind of exposure to the Pokemon League," Jill spoke of the tournament. "And isn't it a wonderful idea to hold a contest to see who the gym leader is? I think it's a marvellous idea- encouraging people to really get involved in pokemon again, it's like living in the old days. Me and William are very glad our daughter Mary has got this opportunity, of course. Small towns like Goodeview and Nouvella don't often get the chance to compete in large tournaments like this, but as it's so close by, we enrolled Mary in it as soon as the news reached us."
It seemed like a little town nearby- Nouvella- had recently been chosen as the home for a new gym for the region Alexi was in, which she remembered William refer to as Xela. There had been some kind of dip in people's interest in training pokemon in Xela, and so the new gym was very exciting and was generating a lot of interest from across the region, and in other regions too; it didn't seem at all unusual that a trainer like Alexi had travelled all the way from Lavender Town to compete. The contest started tomorrow, was held in the just-built Gym quarters in Nouvella, and would run for almost three months. Beginning trainers were to battle up to two pokemon of their choice against each other, and the winners of each battle would go on to battle each other, until there were only twenty finalists. Then these finalists needed to choose the pokemon they thought was their strongest, and go out and catch five more pokemon of the same type. In three months time, the finals were held, where the twenty gym finalists would compete against each other again, with their new team of one-type pokemon, and the winner of that contest would become the new Nouvella Gym Leader, and part of the Xela Pokemon League. Mary had been talking about the contest for months, it seemed, and had been training her Seedot non-stop especially. Her only other pokemon, a Nidoran male, had also received regular weekly training exercises, complimentary of Mary's dad, who had his heart set on his only daughter winning the contest.
"It's gonna be so fun!" Mary exclaimed later that evening, after dinner, when the two girls were curled up in bed. Alexi was sleeping on a spare mattress, next to Mary's bed, which made the small room seem rather cramped.
"I'm gonna be the next Xela Gym Leader, I can just feel it. I just know, you know sometimes when you get that kind of funny feeling? It's like that, I can just tell I'm gonna be the winner. I've worked so hard for it, it's gonna be awesome!" Mary whispered excitedly in the dark, sitting up in bed and clutching her blanket tight. Alexi lay with her eyes open, staring at the light under the bedroom door, pretending to be equally obsessed. The truth was, she was getting kind of bored of the topic- Mary had talked of nothing else for almost two hours now, and Alexi wanted to get to sleep.
"What are you going to wear tomorrow?" Mary said with a gasp, finally able to come up with something new, relating to the topic to talk about. Alexi sighed silently to herself and thought about her answer for a few minutes in the silence. Back on the Sanctuary, what clothes you wore from day to day had never seemed to matter. Alexi wore the same boring blue jeans and boring black t-shirt every day of the week- her suitcase was packed with similar attire. She had, in her possession, a warm brown jacket in case it got cold, but apart from that, her clothes were exact clones of one another. Mary, on the other hand, seemed obsessed with her daily appearance. Earlier that evening, she had proudly showed Alexi her wardrobe- neatly packed with pretty dresses, skirts and sequined, frilly tops and arranged in order, with a different outfit for every day of the month. Her hair and face was styled with similar attention to detail- Mary's drawers were packed with different coloured ribbons and bows, and different flavours of lip-gloss and lipstick. Blush and eyeshadow of every colour was arranged neatly in a separate drawer in the bathroom, and Alexi had spotted, among other things, five different nail clippers and an elaborate-looking machine used for curling hair. Alexi was amazed at her new best friend's sheer stubbornness to give in to nature and let herself reveal the normal, boring face she had been given at birth; she had never encountered a person who was aware of their appearance to this degree and, although Alexi knew she retained lots of her mother's natural beauty and so looked fine without any of the makeup or accessories Mary coated her face with every morning, she found it hard to conceive how someone could find that much time to worry about what they looked like in their waking life. She hadn't encountered many people apart from her mother and father, as of yet, and although Mary's parents were sometimes patronisingly caring, and Mary herself a little too preoccupied with her personal appearance, Alexi forgave her new family these flaws. She was having a wonderful time with her new companions in what she had first assumed was going to be a lonely journey.
"Alexi?" Mary pushed. "What are you going to wear to the Tournament tomorrow?"
At long last, Alexi gave in to her guilty conscience. "I reckon it's probably time to get some sleep now, don't you think? We'll talk about the Tournament tomorrow- we've got an early start, so we'd better go to sleep early."
Mary seemed a little taken aback by this response, but if she was, she revealed little of it in her voice. "Oh. Alright then. Goodnight, Alexi. Have a good sleep."
"Goodnight, Mary," Alexi replied, and snuggled into her pillow. "You sleep well too."
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It was still sunrise when Alexi started out with Mary and her father to Nouvella the following morning. Shoots of sunshine threw themselves across the ocean and sparkled on the waves. Sails on little fishing boats glowed with sun reflected off the water. Goodeview was a beautiful place to be. However, William and his dutiful Machoke did not head down to Goodeview and the pier, to catch a boat to Nouvella as Alexi had assumed. Instead, they headed back towards Blackwood, which was a dark grey colour, and misty in early morning fog.
"Come on, Alexi," Mary called. "Nouvella's on the other side of Blackwood, we'll have to walk quickly if we're gonna make it on time."
Alexi quickened her pace as the troupe started up the little hill to the beginning of the forest. It was beautiful in the morning light; specks of sun shot through at odd angles through the trees and lit up sparkly fog that rose from the ground. The smell was fresh and new- dead leaves and bark littered the air with their scent. Little twigs crunched underfoot as Alexi began trudging through the forest, her jacket wrapped around her tightly.
It was odd to return to the forest that had seemed so dangerous the evening before. The Poochyena had gone, the Hoothoot nonexistent. Alexi and the group were travelling along the dirt track which they had followed out of the forest yesterday; evidently, it led to Nouvella, wherever that was. Mary had let her Seedot out of its pokeball, and it trundled along beside her, muttering "dot, dot, dot" to itself as it went, happy to be out in the morning air. Alexi had neglected to let Wurmple out for fresh air- she had a hunch that as soon as Wurmple had the chance, it would start climbing up the nearest tree. Alexi felt better off walking pokemon-free, and saving herself the embarrassment of explaining how she had only caught Wurmple yesterday. Celebi's ball was no longer round her waist- it was back in her bag, safe in secrecy.
"It's good to walk through the forest in the daytime. It's much safer when it's light- Blackwood gets very dangerous when the sun sets," Mary told Alexi as they walked.
"Yeah, I figured, after being attacked by a pack of savage Poochyena last night," Alexi replied, half sarcastic, half curious about the true nature of the forest- she distinctly remembered her father saying that Poochyena, although temperamental, are usually not very powerful pokemon and so do not pose much of a threat to a trainer who happens to be wandering through their territory. The Poochyena she met last night seemed far from that description.
"No, more than that," Mary continued. " Blackwood is dangerous. Very dangerous. Once night falls, hardly anyone gets out of it alive. That's why, whenever we go through, Dad always brings Machoke with him. This forest has some kind of dark power. It's very scary."
"Dark power?" Alexi scoffed. "How much harm can trees do?"
"More than you think," Mary replied. "At night, over the Mightyena howls and the Murkrow screeches, you can hear the forest breathing. Fierce winds often hit Goodeview- not from the ocean, but from inside the forest. Something in here, some huge pokemon, is making the wind on its own. They say that the terrifying gusts are the forests warnings to intruders, not to stray from the path."
Alexi took a second glance at the trees surrounding her and noticed their grey, old, dead appearance for the first time. The bark was a very dark colour, almost black. Hence the name Blackwood, she concluded. That's nothing too unusual. Just funny coloured wood. This place can't possibly be as evil as Mary makes it out to be. It's a forest, for God's sakes.
"That's not all," Mary continued with her story, as if reading Alexi's mind. "They say that at night, it gets so dark that it's impossible to see, and so any traveller that finds themselves still in it becomes utterly lost. They say that, if you stray from the path and lose your way, a voice will call to you, telling you to follow the Murkrow calls. And then, if you do, the Murkrow leads you so deep into the forest that you'll never get out again, and when you're right in the heart, so deep inside that there's never any escape, you'll find a little house. And if you knock on the door to ask for shelter, a witch will appear, and take you inside, and drug you and put you in a cage and eat you alive."
"A witch?" Alexi repeated, unbelieving. She could still remember stories like this that her mother read to her before she went to sleep.
"She's not a witch, she's a crazy old woman, and her name's Demelza," William butted in. "She used to live in Goodeview, but she hated the place so much she went to live in the forest instead. Most people think she got lost and died, others think she still lives there, driven insane by the Murkrow and the Mightyena." Alexi suddenly had new faith in Mary's story. William recounting it somehow made it seem a lot more believable. "Some pokemon are cruel," William added. "It's one thing you need to learn about real life, Alexi. You can trust a person, but you can never trust a pokemon. Unless it's a brilliant Machoke like this one, of course," he said, and patted Machoke lovingly on the head as he spoke. "Untrained pokemon are plain dangerous," he warned.
"Well, Seedot's from the forest, and it's not dangerous," Mary said, clearly as new to advice like this as Alexi was. "And so's my Nidoran. And they're both lovely pokemon, and they were both untrained before you caught them. So you're wrong, untrained pokemon aren't all bad."
"There are some exceptions, I've already stated that," William retorted, but Alexi sensed that William didn't have much faith in Mary's little Seedot or Nidoran. They might have been the strongest pokemon William could find round here, but Alexi suspected that Mary's father hoped she would grow to love pokemon from other places more. He didn't seem to be able to put much trust in pokemon from the wild, for some reason.
After that, the conversation subsided, and Alexi, Mary, seedot, William and Machoke continued their journey in silence. Alexi saw almost no pokemon in or around the trail, although she thought she might have spotted an Oddish take flight as they turned a corner. The pokemon didn't seem to be very keen to get too near them- maybe they were as scared of trainers as the people of Goodeview were of them.
After they had journeyed for quite a while, Alexi was startled by a piercing scream Mary had let out spontaneously. William, who was ahead of Alexi, turned to see the source of his daughter's fear. It wasn't hard to spot. Dangling from an overhanging tree on a thin thread was a Spinarak. It had descended directly in front of Mary's face, and Mary had retreated back down the path, her head in her hands.
"Make it go away, Daddy, it's scary!" Mary squealed. The Spinarak clicked its fangs together and wriggled its little, furry legs.
"Don't worry darling, Daddy's here," William called protectively, and he ushered Alexi behind his arm as he approached the bug pokemon. "Stand back, Alexi. Machoke, fight!"
On command, Machoke walked forwards towards Spinarak and growled at it menacingly "Machoke, choke!"
"Kill it!" William shouted, and Machoke raised a fist.
The fighting pokemon hit Spinarak like a punching bag and it flew into a tree, smacking against the bark and sliding to the ground, its thread snapping and flailing about in the air. Machoke advanced on the bug pokemon as it lay on its back, squirming helplessly. Machoke raised a chunky foot and slammed it down into Spinarak- its stomach exploded through its head, and its guts splattered across the forest floor.
"Ewwww…" Mary said, as she took her hands away from her eyes.
"Good job, Machoke," William complimented, and Machoke returned to its master's side. "Choke, choke."
The party continued through the forest, the silence returned. Alexi couldn't help feeling a little sorry for the poor bug pokemon that had just gotten squashed under Machoke's huge foot. Surely, it didn't deserve that? But the feelings of doubt for William's judgement faded as they came through the other side of the forest, and the dirt path melded into grass. They had reached Nouvella.
Nouvella was a truly beautiful town. Its walls were built with elegant sandstone, and decorated with curly iron. The city gates looked magnificent, and were swung open to welcome the Tournament competitors. The buildings were ancient and precious, and shone in the sun, which was now high in the sky. This town, too, was built on the edge of the Chalky Cliffs, and Alexi was amazed to find that the town buildings continued down the cliff-face, shops and houses carved into the cliff itself. If Alexi had ever been to Italy, it would remind her of somewhere on the Adriatic coast- rustic and rugged, elegant and mysterious. Nouvella was a wonderful place, and it was now clear to Alexi why it was chosen as the home of the newest gym.
Nouvella Town Gym sat on the outskirts of town, facing towards the city centre, and behind it lush plains blanketed the hills. The gym looked almost out of place in the beautiful old town- it was brand new and sparkling, its bright white walls were almost hard to look at, and shining metal framed the doorway, the rooftop and the path that led to it. Clear, new glass twinkled in the automatic sliding doors at the entrance. The place was teeming with trainers- young and old, some with confident looks on their faces, some with nervous smiles. There were lots of parents there too, holding their anxious child's hand. All of them were bee-lining towards the glass double doors, which had not yet opened. A large clock sat above the entrance, its hands ticking monotonously. The small hand was at the twelve, and the larger hand was making its way round to join it.
"Come on Dad, this is it! It's nearly time to go in!" Mary shouted, full of excitement. She grabbed her fathers hand and dragged him up towards the gym, joining the mass of trainers already gathered there.
The clock struck midday with a tremendous dong; sirens went off, whistles started blowing and lights around the edge of the clock began flashing. The crowd let out an inspiring, heart lifting cheer and hats were thrown into the air. This was the moment they had all been waiting for. The glass doors opened smoothly, like clockwork, and the trainers flooded in.
