Anonymous Review Replies!
LoneGarurumon: Yeeeeeeah, tinfoil hat theories! That...that is what those are. Yes. ;p Glad you enjoyed their reunion! :D (I love it when I can write one of those^^) Now, let's see how fast they can manage to reunite...
Shadow Huntress: Hahah, knew you'd be happy to see that particular hedgehog around ;) And so glad you like Knuckles! (and good gods, yes. That scene with his dead sister in JudasFm fics was almost as bad as Sonic's waterboarding scene, I think I'm still traumatized by that.^^°) But yeah, his methods are different from Sonic's, but no less effective! I enjoy writing all characters as competent when it counts and Amy is of course no exception:) Thanks for that wonderful review!
Chapter Eleven: Lost and Found
"So, you're looking for two unregistered-"
"No, no, three unregistered-"
"Sorry, three unregistered Pokémon, that belong to you, but haven't been entered into the central database yet and you're looking for a notification in case of their capture. And they are also a not-yet-discovered kind."
"Yes."
"Okay, then I'm going to need their descriptions one more time..."
"Again?"
"Yes, please. Sub-species?"
"Uh, two hedgehogs and..." Ash briefly looked at the paper again he was reading from - "...and an echidna."
"Excuse me? A what?"
There was a collective groan from the group as the blue-haired police woman at the counter blinked her large amber eyes in confusion.
"It is a kind of ant-eater? I think?" Ash tried to explain, "Here, we have a picture-"
"I'm sorry, but I'll need to hear your description verbally, otherwise I can't take it down,"
"Alright, alright. So, the fur colour of the first hedgehog is pink and peach..."
Sonic, meanwhile, was wondering if it was possible to die from sheer boredom, or turn into a potted plant. They had been at the police station for over half an hour by now, trying to describe their case. The officers were friendly, but just seemed a little ditzy, so it had been taking its time – Ash doing most of the talking, while Sonic and Tails had mostly been busy being cooed at.
Privately, for Sonic this was actually the first time the young, black-haired boy had risen a notch in his estimation, mostly for bringing up the patience Sonic would have had trouble having. It seemed like the kid genuinely wanted to help.
Currently, the words of the humans were also buzzing in and out of comprehension again for the two Mobians, since Tails had eventually taken the boredom to mean 'taking-apart-the-translator-time', and was happily fiddling with the watch-like device he had unbuckled from Sonic's wrist.
"And she's also wearing a red dress and is approximately three feet tall..."
"Tails, if you break this thing, we're going to have a problem."
"I'm not gonna break it, Sonic!" the little fox protested immediately, albeit under his breath and as quietly as Sonic had spoken so as to not attract attention to their talking. "I just want to see whether I can replicate it so each one of us can have their own when we find the others."
"Well, mine has a sending range. That should be enough."
"Yeah, but you're also running off half of the time," Tails pointed out sagely, and Sonic made a little noise in his throat, knowing the fox kit was right. Not that he was planning on running off any time soon, but if this game of Twenty Questions in here continued much longer...
"Alright, then." The officer smiled. "We will notify you as soon as -" there was a beep from her computer and she blinked. "Oh. Seems like you won't have to wait long, after all. Someone in Cerulean City has just submitted a 'found Pokémon' report for one of yours."
"Really?" All four of them asked the question simultaneously, staring up at her.
"Yes, indeed. Let me just call the station, maybe they're still inside..." She turned a screen from her desk toward them, which turned out to be for a video phone call as a window popped up and the head of another (again exactly alike) blue-haired police official blinked into existence.
"Yes, hello, Officer Jenny here?" the woman on the screen asked.
"Officer Jenny, this is Officer Jenny," the local officer with them replied cheerfully (Sonic at this point wondering whether Tails had, perhaps, indeed messed up the translator). "We're calling about that 'found Pokémon' report you just submitted? Are the people who turned it in and the Pokémon still in the station?"
"Why yes, they are, they're just about to leave," the woman on the screen said. "Shall I stop them?"
"Yes, please!" the police officer with them said quickly. "We have the people here who have claimed it as missing. If you could put the finder and the Pokémon on the vidphone...?"
"Sure! One moment, please..." the woman vanished from the screen, briefly revealing the surroundings of another police station looking much like the one they were currently in, right until it was replaced by a blonde girl suddenly entering the window and gasping.
"Li'l sis?!"
The exclamation had obviously been directed at Misty, because all at once, her eyes had widened to the exact same size of those of the blonde girl on the screen. "Daisy?"
"No way! Misty is the owner?!" A second girl pushed her way into the screen, this one pink-haired, and both she and a third girl were greeted by Misty's exclamations of 'Violet!' and 'Lily!', but of course, nothing could compare to the sheer volume that followed the last head's appearance – a head that was slightly lower than those of the humans, but also one whose green eyes had focused immediately on the single other hedgehog in the other police station.
"SONIC!"
xxx
"Hello, good morning, little one! Look, your dress has dried!"
Amy blinked as she was gently petted awake by a human hand, her eyes blearily adjusting to the bright morning light flooding the living room she was in.
"Huh? What...?" she mumbled, before abruptly lifting herself up with a small gasp as last day's memories gleefully jumped her like a sadistic housecat in the morning, and she remembered with a jolt just where she was and in how much trouble she was potentially in.
"Woah, sorry, didn't mean to startle you! Here, would you like your dress and things back?" One of the girls – Daisy, Amy remembered, if the flower the pink-haired girl had drawn while pointing at her probably-sister had been an indication for her name – said something still incomprehensible, but was holding out Amy's dried clothing, so at least her intention was obvious.
"...thank you," Amy said, giving her a tentative smile and reaching for the clothes, the pile thankfully containing also her much-missed underwear, socks, gloves, hairband and boots. A blanket slid off her body – apparently she had fallen asleep on the sofa last night and they had simply let her be – and the girl laughed a little.
"Fank you," she imitated Amy's words with a giggle as the hedgehog took the garments. Her sisters chose that moment to also enter the living room, carrying a breakfast tray with mugs and glasses, containing (what Amy hoped was) coffee and orange juice.
"Hey guys," the blue-haired one (Violet?) said. "So I called the police station about a missing Pokémon, but they didn't have any claims that even remotely fit her. They suggested we bring her in so they can take a proper picture for a report."
"Well, let's have breakfast and then let's go," Daisy shrugged. "There's no challengers and no shows scheduled for today, so we have the day off anyway."
"Right," Lily agreed, "Now, which one of you feels up to drawing her a sketch of the concept of 'going to the police for a lost-property-report'...?"
xxx
"Uh...hey...Amy..."
Sonic at the moment wore an expression remarkably similar to the one Brock, Oak and Pikachu had had when Misty had unloaded her wrath onto Ash last night.
The pink hedgehog Sonic's slightly forced smile was directed at, however, was less angry and more...enthusiastic.
"SONIC! THERE YOU ARE! WHERE ARE YOU!"
"Amy, you're probably about to knock the screen over," Sonic pointed out with a bit of a sweat drop. "Maybe step back a little so we can also talk to the people with you?"
"Hey, this is your friend? She looks like a girl! Is she your girlfriend?" Misty poked her head over Sonic's shoulder with a smile, waving at Amy. "Hi!"
"Wait, what?" Amy blinked, suddenly looking suspicious. "Sonic, who is this?"
"That's er, Misty," Sonic floundered. "She's a friend. Amy-"
"Oh hey, look, Misty's got one of the new Pokémon, too!" One of the human girls on Amy's side of the call suddenly piped up and gestured excitedly at her companions. "Look, look, this one is blue!"
"Oh my gosh, they look like they're talking to each other! That is SO CUTE!" The pink-haired one squeaked, and then all three of them started squealing.
Sonic shot their human friends a very long look.
"They...don't understand much of what I'm saying, do they," he asked, flatly.
"I think the translator only works for those in its sending range," Tails said with a little grimace, ears folded flat against the shrill threat to his ear drums. "That is why we can understand them, but they can't understand us – I mean, Amy can understand us because we're talking New Mobian, and the girls over there can understand Ash and the others because they're talking, uh, Pokémonese or something, but -"
"Thanks, li'l bro, I think I get it," Sonic cut off the fox kid with a small smile, before turning back to Ash and his friends. "Say, could you maybe tell them that -"
"Oh my gosh, I just realized!" The pink-haired girl gasped. "If ours is pink, and theirs is blue, they're totally a girl and a boy Pokémon! Like a male and female Nidoran!"
"OMG, Lily, you're right! That is adorable!"
"I know, right?! Everyone, we need to get them together and dress them up!"
"YES!"
"TOTALLY!"
"- that I am going to murder them if they keep talking," a (twitching) Sonic briefly muttered to Tails (translator switched off), before he turned it on again and said, somewhat more loudly,
"- that I am going to go and get Amy if they could wait for a minute, okay?"
"Uh, sure – er, wait, what?" Ash (who, together with Misty, also right now looked as apologetic for the human race as was humanly possible) "I mean, sure we can go and fetch her, if you want-"
"Nah, it'll be faster if I just go on my own," Sonic waved him off. "Where is that police station where they are?"
"And it's soooooo typical that Misty got the dorky boy and we the cute girl!"
"Soooooo typical!"
"Ahahahahahah!"
"Um. It's a fair bit away," Ash pointed out quickly (also shuffling slightly away from Mt Misty who looked ready to explode).
In the background, Tails was 'uhm'-ing and 'ah'-ing at an ever more confused Amy on the screen, trying to figure out what bits of this he could safely repeat for her.
"What? Tails, you can understand them?" Amy blinked at him. "Did you somehow learn their language? What are they saying?"
"They, uh, they think you and Sonic are...cute...together...?"
"I KNEW it!"
A few metres away, not quite sure why Sonic was now also twitching, Ash reached into his jacket and flipped open the red gameboy-like thing again, bending down a little so Sonic could look at it more easily. It displayed a map of a continent, and Ash clicked on an area to enlarge it. "Here, see? This is my Pokédex. The blinking dot always shows where we are the moment – Viridian City – and this place here is Cerulean City, where your friend and Misty's sisters are. They police station is always right in the centre of a town. But it'll take time to get there, because we'll need to go via Mt. Moon-"
"Okay, Gotcha. Mind if I borrow this for a sec? Be right back."
Ash looked like he wanted to question that statement for a moment, but whatever he had meant to say in reply was abruptly drowned out by a loud WHOOOSH! and accompanying BANG! of the door of the police station. The blue hedgehog in front of him had suddenly been replaced by so much dust and fluttering papers.
Ash stared. "Wait, what?"
"Oh. Has he taken off?" Tails asked, noticing the commotion. "'cause in that case I'd cover my ears, because – oh, yeah, with him and the translator gone you can't really understand me any more, can y-?" Tails had started, his hands pressing his ears to his head as he noticed the questioning expressions of the humans around him, right as there was an explosion of sound outside, letting everyone in the building immediately jump in panic.
The fox kid sighed. "Because there's gonna be a sonic boom any minute. Great going, Sonic..."
"Woah, what was that?!"
"What just happened?"
"Is everyone alright?"
Immediately, the faces of the three human girls on the screen had changed from amused to surprised and worried, their tone still conveying their feelings well enough, even if their words had ceased to make sense for Tails.
"Uh, I don't actually know what just happened," Ash was apparently attempting to explain Sonic's sudden disappearance to his bewildered friends and the police officers staring at them, "I was just telling him where Cerulean City and their friend is, and he grabs the Pokedex and takes off, I don't know what he meant by 'Be right ba-'"
"What I meant," a very familiar voice suddenly piped up again, only now it sounded slightly distorted by a vidphone line as Sonic's face grinned at them from the computer screen (also accompanied by various shrieks of Misty's sisters at the second hedgehog suddenly in their midst...) "is that I will be right-"
"SONIC!"
And then there was a pink blur, a crash, a muffled cry of 'Amy! You're throwing off my timing!' from below the camera and Tails figured that from that point on, the humans could probably figure out what was going on on their own.
xxx
"...back." A (much more haggard-looking) Sonic screeched to a halt inside the police station a few minutes later, in his arms the pink hedgehog that just a few moments ago had still been two towns over. "Thank you very much for that GPS-thingy, by the way," he said, handing the Pokédex back to Ash. The three humans blinked.
"You just...you just really went to Cerulean City...?" Misty was the first to regain her composure, even if her eyes were still just as wide.
"Hey, Sonic's the name, speed is my game," the hedgehog winked at them, at the same time gently setting the feet of the pink Mobian he'd picked up on the floor. Then he grimaced and added "And, uhm, Amy, you can really let go now because you're kiiiind of cutting off my air supply...?"
"Ugh. Fine." Amy grumbled, reluctantly releasing her hold on Sonic's neck, just as the voices of the girls from the video phone started up again, all of them confused.
"Misty? What just happened?"
"Are you okay? I thought I heard an explosion-!"
"Hey where are the two Pokémon suddenly gone?!"
There was another commotion on the screen as the three sisters of the Cerulean City Gym had started to realize that as soon as Sonic had whirled into their police station, he had as suddenly disappeared and taken the other hedgehog with him. Now all of them had rushed over to the camera, shouting questions.
"What was that? Did they teleport? I thought they might be psychic types!"
"Are they there with you?!"
"If they are, you need to try and breed them, the girl ones are insanely cute-!"
"Yeah, NO," Misty turned the screen abruptly away from her, looking slightly freaked-out (and hoping Sonic and his friends hadn't overheard that gem of that conversation...)
"Ex-excuse me, but what-?" the officer who had taken their report began, finally regaining her power of speech and now openly staring at them, and Misty quickly stepped in front.
"Ehehehe, yeah, thanks for your help, officer Jenny. We're fine now. Please call us if more Pokémon show up. C'mon, guys, let's go!" she said, imbuing the last word with an extra layer of command, and succeeded remarkably quickly in gathering up all of the other two humans and three aliens, ushering the entire group out of the station before more questions would inevitably have followed.
It was a very odd morning, she supposed, but after travelling around with Ash "Weirdness Magnet Extraordinaire" Ketchum, this still was hardly the most bizarre situation she had ever found herself in, so...
"Wait. Here they suddenly speak our language?" Amy asked as they left through the double doors, stepping onto the busy pavement of Viridian city. Her voice sounded indeed like a girl's, she was wearing a cute red dress, and she was smaller than Sonic, so Misty supposed that what her (still insane) sisters had observed about her being a female of Sonic's species had probably been right. Now Amy was glancing up at the humans in the group, looking somewhat surprised as well.
"Not...exactly," Tails tried to explain. "Sonic says we ended up on another planet thanks to Chaos Control, and the new friends he met gave him a translator. That's why we understand each other while we're close to him."
"Well, in that case I'll just never have to let him go, huh?" Amy asked brightly, at the same time closing a hand around Sonic's wrist with the certainty of a pink-painted parking clamp. Misty wasn't quite sure whether the dry stare and muttered, 'thanks, buddy' from the blue hedgehog to his fox brother had gone seemingly unnoticed by Amy by intention or not.
"Uhm...hey. Amy, wasn't it? I'm Ash," Ash introduced himself, bending forward a little with his hands on his knees. "Nice to meet you."
"Oh, yes! Hello!" Amy (deigning to let go of her captive) smiled in return. "I'm Amy Rose. I'm Sonic's girlfriend."
"She's not my-"
"SO his girlfriend," Amy continued on as if she hadn't even heard the protest. "So, anyway, you've helped Sonic and Tails find me? Thanks!"
"Yeah, they had the idea to go to the police station to file a report. Good thing the people you ran into thought of the same thing, huh?" Tails cocked his head. "Did you guys know them?" he asked, looking up at the three of them.
"I wish I didn't," Misty grumbled. "They're my good-for-nothing sisters."
"We, ah, met them once," Ash replied with a forced smile. "They run the Gym in Cerulean City. Well. Running it now again after they had been mainly using it just for shows, but yeah. "
"And they're absolutely marvellous," Brock replied, starry-eyed again (also disregarding the developing twitch in Misty's eye). "But, uh, I hope they treated you well, despite you not having a translator...?"
"Oh, yes, it was fine, they were all incredibly nice!" Amy smiled. "If we have a translator here, I need to call them before we go back to thank them for everything! Before going to the police station we even went to get our nails done!"
Sonic blinked. "Uh...how?"
"Duh, we speak girl!"
xxx
"Right..." Sonic looked somewhat confused, but then cleared his throat. "But, er, yeah, actually, about getting back-"
But then he fell silent. This was mostly because the small troupe had been walking along the street as this exchange had been taking place, but as they had been nearing a corner, suddenly, the voices coming from around it had let their human friends freeze on the spot.
"Wait. Are you hearing what I'm hearing?" Ash asked, holding out a hand to stop Misty and Brock from walking further, his face suddenly becoming a lot more tense.
"Pika, Pikachuuu!" Pikachu, too, suddenly seemed more aggressive, electricity crackling on the red spots of its cheeks, tail erect as it perched on Ash's shoulder, little button eyes focused intently on the corner in front of them.
Amy gripped Sonic's arm somewhat more tightly. "Wait, what? What is going on?"
"Yeah, it sounds like them," Brock also said, "but...isn't what they're saying...a little bit strange?"
"Sounds like who?" Sonic asked, the Mobians' ears of course all already pricked up and opened wide, and then they heard it too. Voices, belonging to two men and a woman, only...well...
"Oh god...please make him stop...somebody needs to realize he is abducting is, why won't anybody help..."
"Please...we're so tired..."
"If you let us go, we pwomise to not ever do somefing like dat again, honest! I'm not a long-distance Pokémon..."
A little group turned the corner, and Sonic actually had to cast his mind back when he had last seen anyone looking this miserable, and wonder whether he should be concerned or impressed.
They were a human man and woman, both wearing strange uniforms that had probably once been white, but then been dragged through a little too much geography to still have that adjective applied to them. In front of them walked (read: dragged himself) a third member of the group who looked a bit like a sand-coloured Mobian cat, but in this world (like absolutely everything else) was probably a Pokémon as well.
It – he? – also looked like he had had a meeting with a sandstorm and a blender, large cattish eyes bloodshot and desperate. And behind the three of them followed...
"Sonic?!"
"Knuckles! Hey dude, long-!"
"DON'T say it-!"
"- time no see!" Sonic favoured the red echidna's absolutely pained expression with a bright grin, Tails and Amy also lighting up in happy surprise at the sight of the fourth Mobian.
The reactions of their human friends, however...did not seem quite as happy.
"Team Rocket!" Ash snarled.
"What on Earth are you doing here?! Did you think you could steal Pikachu again?" Misty snapped, immediately reaching for one of the red and white spheres at her belt. "Not today!"
"Pika-chuuuu!" Pikachu added threateningly from its perch, little sharp teeth bared. The two humans and cat Pokémon in front of them, for their part, seemed slightly dazed, their expressions composed of equal parts of sleep deprivation, trauma and what seemed to be primal fear.
"What...?"
"Alright. This ends here." Knuckles stepped neatly past the two humans and their Pokémon, turning around and facing them with a hand on his hip. "I found what I was looking for." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "So scram."
"Is...is he...?" the purple-haired man blinked, looking at his companions.
"Yeah, I can understand him suddenly, too," the woman said, staring. "Meowth, what...?"
"If you can understand me," Knuckles said, and he somehow managed to say the words without actually separating his teeth, "Then you better understand that I want you to beat it. NOW!"
"Uh, yes!"
"We're so sorry!"
"RUN!"
There was a general scrambling and then the three members of what apparently constituted 'Team Rocket' seemed to try and live up to their namesake by taking off like one.
Sonic glanced over at Ash and his friends. They seemed impressed.
"Oh. Uh," Ash managed. "Wow."
"Who were they?" Amy threw a glance at Ash and Knuckles, mystified.
"They were Team Rocket. They're Pokémon thieves," Misty said with a frown. "But, uh, I've never actually seen them that terrified of one. Is he another one of your-?"
"Hello. I'm Knuckles the Echidna," the red-furred Mobian cut into the conversation with a curt nod, right before turning to Sonic and actually grabbing the top of the blue hedgehog's skull with a single, large hand of his, violet eyes narrowing at abruptly very worried emerald, "And unless this joker tells me he has a way of getting all of us back home pronto, I will crush his useless head."
"...'another one of our friends', you mean?" Tails asked with a slightly pained smile. "Well. Sometimes, anyway..."
To be continued...
Well well, hope you all made it fine into the new year and hope you liked! :D I have to say I really love writing the dialogue and interactions in this fic. XD Enjoy as always, and if you read, please review! Fav lines, fav bits, fav character actions, I'll take them all :)