CHAPTER EIGHT:
It was another cold morning as Yugo woke up and stretched himself out. He kept inside his sleeping bag and pulled out the laptop, hopefully going to find something else that his grandpa put in the device other than old games and useless crap. Of course, there was the music files. Italy packed in a whole folder of around 40 songs, most of them being old, and they were more or less the songs that Franco's group sang.
Yugo had nothing better and was going to wait patiently for the other three to wake up, so he began by playing "It ain't got no swing".
(Several songs later)
Half way through the list and they weren't awake. First to wake up was Reeka, yawning cutely, then her attention turned to Yugo playing the list as she grumbled, "Really?"
Yugo shrugged, "Well, it's too cold outside and I was waiting for everyone to wake up so… yeah."
As time passed, the section was three songs till the end when Judas woke up, finding himself facing Rebecca. He carefully maneuvered out of the bag, only to get caught as Rebecca hugged him in her sleep. Quickly he escaped and looked to see Yugo on his laptop. He asked, "What are you doing now?"
Yugo answered, "Just waiting for it to warm up outside."
"It can't be that cold."
"Really? Go check."
Judas rolled his eyes, assuming Yugo was being lazy, and went out to check, only to come back in, "Ok, it's too cold out 'der."
"Point concluded."
So they continued sitting there, only for Yugo to pull out another song list he found in some obscure file folder, and then as they sat there looking bored, Rebecca finally woke up, only for her head to turn to the bored group, "Morning boys."
Both of the guys nodded, "Morning."
"What's everyone doing?"
Yugo said, "Eh, looking at what songs grandpa crammed in this piece of junk."
"Really? Any good ones?"
"More or less the old ones; Kinda what Franco sings."
"Franco? Wait, you mean like Franco Italy?"
"Yeah."
"Ooh, I wanna hear them!"
Yugo shrugged and passed the headphones, then clicked on the song label "Jungle Fever".
Right at the beginning of the song, Rebecca was confused, and when they began to sing, it wasn't the group. Rebecca asked, "Hold on… why isn't it…"
Yugo sighed, figuring that it might as well be said, "Literally every song that the group ever sang, from this year only, that made them literally top ranked singers was never theirs in the first place."
"Are you telling me… their frauds?"
"Not really. Nobody knows the song's origin or the original singer."
Rebecca took off the head phones and laid on her back, head on Judas's leg as she blew out some air in annoyance. Judas asked, "Can you get off my legs?"
She shook her head as Yugo asked, "Well, seeing that we can't exactly train in a tent, what can we do?"
"I don't know, I don't care."
Of course, Rebecca suggested, "How about truth or dare?"
Yugo cringed as Judas flat out refused, "There is no way in hell I'm playing that."
Reeka asked, "What is it?"
Yugo explained, "Basically, when you get asked truth or dare, if you choose truth, you have to answer whatever question you're given as the truth, no lies. If its dare, that shit gets messy real fast."
Rebecca taunted, "What's wrong? Kissed your sister?"
"Uhhh… let's go with that, yeah."
Judas made a really warped face, "What da fuck do you even do?"
Reeka cheered, "I wanna play the game!"
The guys grumbled as they began, with Rebecca heading off. She cracked her fingers and asked, "Alright then, who wants to begin?"
Nobody raised their hands as she sighed, "Ok, I'll go first. Truth."
Yugo went, "Have you ever been on a journey before?"
"Nope."
Seeing he was next, he went, "Truth."
Judas asked, "Did you go and have sex with your…"
"I'M NOT ANSWERING THAT QUESTION!"
"That means you…"
Yugo slapped him as Judas wanted revenge. But right now, it was his turn, "*sigh*, truth."
Rebecca asked, "Do you have a crush?"
"A crush? Uh, no."
She smiled, then said, "Alright Reeka, what do you want?"
Reeka thought and said, "Um, truth?"
"Do you like Yugo?"
She began to give a tinted red, only to deny, "No."
Yugo took light offense, but Judas knew it was a lie from her look. Reeka took revenge by saying, "Do YOU like Judas?"
Rebecca turned red from nothing to a second pretty fast as Judas scooched away a little. She denied, "N-no, I just like him as a friend."
Another lie. Yugo went, "Truth."
Reeka went, "Would you like to him again?"
"Sort of."
Judas screamed, "TA HELL WITH IT, I'll fuckin' dare."
Rebecca went, "Kiss Reeka."
A sweatdrop appeared as he looked at the Riolu as she was in no mood to do that. Judas asked, "Uh… something else?"
A slightly creepy smile appeared, "Ok, either her or Yugo, that's the dare."
Obviously not going with option two, he closed his eyes and bent down, only for Reeka to kick his face. In the process, he barely managed to kiss her foot, which of course counted and was not what he was going to do. Reeka laughed her ass off, only then to laugh out, "Tr-u-u-uth."
Yugo asked, "Do you think you'll actually behave at all."
"No."
"Figures."
This mess went on for around thirty minutes until it finally warmed up outside. Yugo threw Reeka out and training was started as soon as possible.
At lunch time, Yugo took Keir for his training and hopefully to understand him better. The training was mainly stamina training, trying to keep up dodging the embers. He left Reeka to be with the other two as Yugo wanted to train in a further and secluded area. The choice he got: a rather steep cliff and flat area below.
This gave a more interesting challenge for Keir of facing an opponent who's got the higher ground. Yugo climbed the cliff and left Keir at the bottom. He told Keir, "Now, this is training on your stamina, making you hold out longer and longer every time, until either you pass my stamina of attacking you from here, or I knock you out, or both."
Keir barked, "Can't I attack you from here?!"
"Try, but the biggest thing here is for you to dodge everything. Dodge!"
Yugo flung down an ember as Keir passed it easily. Yugo threw one up in the air and another at Keir, easy dodges. Yugo fired three more, getting more and more complex every time. Keir's speed was pretty good considering that he wasn't a Houndoom, but Yugo began to spill out more and more obstacles, causing a dust cloud to slowly form over the area.
Yugo three ten embers up, several down, and a weak psybeam in a circle. Yugo was getting tired, but wanted to make sure that Keir was tired as well, but when the cloud settled, Keir was nowhere to be found, Yugo screamed, "Keir, you little…"
Then Keir jumped and tackled Yugo, then sent and ember into his pants, scorching his backside, and sending him down the cliff, plunging into the dirt. Yugo was majorly hurt, but he was in pain. Keir jumped down, and from the looks of it, he must've just realized about the cliff's hiding spot. Yugo grunted, "Ok… since you seemed to make it through most of it… let's finish the rest with good ol' fighting."
Keir jumped at Yugo and Yugo since a blaze of sparks at him, doing nothing but igniting a much larger flame, then he kicked Keir upwards, sending the Houndour into the air, and on top of the cliff. He took that higher ground advantage and sent a flaming firestorm down to Yugo, except he just walked around and snuck behind the naïve pup and then kicked off back to the start. Yugo announced, "And the winner is me, yay, and seeing that you haven't fainted, I guess we can stop."
Keri grumbled and laid there on his stomach while Yugo walked his way down. Once at the bottom, Yugo sat next to Keir, "So, seeing that we're on break, how 'bout you tell a little about yourself?"
Keir looked at him, "What?"
"You know, past life, family, things like that."
"I got no family."
"Oh… any friends?"
"No."
"Anything at all?"
"*Humph*."
Keir just laid down as Yugo asked, "Well, you didn't just appear right in front of us as your starting existence, you must have had some kind of past."
"No."
Yugo pushed, "Well… were you born here?"
Silence. Yugo asked, "Somewhere?"
Keir whsiepred, "A lab."
Yugo was a bit surprised, but got angry pretty quick, but then asked, "Whose lab?"
"Some weird group."
Doesn't sound like Italy, so Yugo's anger dulled, "Anything that could be used to… identify them?"
Keir sat there silently, "A big human letter."
"That… doesn't tell too much. Could you draw it out?"
What Keir drew in the mud was a big "R". Team Rocket; they never learned. Yugo sighed heavily and said, "Alright, and how did you escape?"
"They threw me out into the dirt and closed the doors behind."
"Oh… you didn't do any brave escaping with taking out guards… doing hero things?"
"No."
After the silence of the talk, Yugo led Keir back to the original three and there they were still in one piece… well, mostly. Judas was a distance away from the girls as Jenna and Reeka were doing a little training. Yugo went up to him and asked, "Something wrong?"
Judas replied, "Not really, but more of something I'll have to work on later."
"Which is what, and who?"
Judas gave an unimpressed face, "Our new travelling girl."
"What's wrong with her? If anything she actually enjoys training with Reeka."
"Yes, and once in a bit, she comes by me and I get unusual vibes from her and I'd rather back off by several feet than be close to her."
"Mhm, what religion you in again?"
"Uh, sort of Catholic."
"Figures."
As time continued, the day flew by with training, laughter, and pain as the team worked their way through. Evening was above and one thing was on everyone's mind: food. Yugo quickly whipped up some salad sandwiches with cold cuts and some juice, which satisfied everyone for once.
As the darkness crept over and drowned the sunlight, the tent was lit up as the four of them were still awake. Yugo got on his phone in order to call up his grandfather on another series of complaints. After it rang, he got his grandfather's typical "Hello" pickup, "Italy labs, can I not help you?"
Yugo began, "Yeah, this is Yugo."
"Oh shit, you want something. What is it?"
"Complaints."
"Mhm, what is it?"
"First off, do those Teams do any kind of genetic experimenting or something?"
"For the most part Rocket has it. Everyone else has to buy it from me."
"You can't seriously be telling me you let them actually get their hands on this. Didn't Mewtwo tell them not to do this stuff?"
"If I recall, he blew the mother fuckers up and continued a rampage. He didn't say…"
"No, no, I meant didn't that event teach them not to do genetic testing and experimentation?"
"Let me look."
Italy checked several files on the computer which showed secret genetic manipulation of Mew DNA and Darkrai DNA. He said, "Well… it's not that bad like before."
"Oh really? And how so?"
"Well, it's not Mew DNA."
"What DNA is it?"
Italy lied, "I don't know, it's something relating to Dark Type DNA, nothing bad."
"Ok, this went off topic. You're saying that they are doing this, along with smaller experiments, and they're getting away with it?"
Italy nodded, "Yeah, they are."
"How the hell are they anyway?"
"Well, they got three islands around the Orange Islands and then they got some US property through me in the Antarctic so if they blow shit up there, nobody would know until the snow storm went away."
"Grandpa, you can't go let these criminals into your own world if they can't be responsible enough in this one."
"That's why the US is handling them. If they eff up, Uncle Sam gonna destroy their shit."
"Ok, you know what, next complaint. I need to come by the lab and get a third Pokémon."
Italy questioned, "How is that a complaint?"
"I don't want another hybrid, genetic experiment, or something that you decided to unfreeze out of the fridge and put in an instant embryo. An actual, natural Pokémon would be great."
"Fine, fine, but it'll be expensive."
"Wait… you're charging me?"
"Yeeeeee-eeeep, it's all about the money. You're a trainer, time to start getting treated like one."
"But Grandpa…"
"Shut it, you want a Pokémon, you pay for it, if not, find one yourself."
Yugo yelled, "You cheapskate!"
And closed the phone as Italy shrugged.
In the tent, Yugo laid on his back as Rebecca asked, "So, I take it we're not going to the city."
Yugo nodded, "Yes, we're not."
Afterwards, they went to bed. Aside all the problems, everyone went to bed with no issues whatsoever. Yugo did have one thing… there was a noise keeping him up. He got out of his bag, sluggishly going out of the tent into the cold and asked, "What the hell is…"
He stopped as soon as he saw a quick flick of something move. He went over and looked to see some white fur. He asked, "Who's there?"
It disappeared and when he got around he was pounced onto the ground by an… Absol?
(At Italy's lab)
Italy was going to bed as well as he put on his coat. Midori came in with her own coat on, knowing how cold it was, and asked, "Do you really need to go and price tag everything on Yugo like that?"
Italy shrugged, "Can't give everything for free."
"Yeah but… aren't you supposed to be a loving grandfather who spoils their grandchildren?"
He smirked, "You wish, the only part that is me is being loving guy."
He kissed on the cheek, "Can't say your wrong there."
Midori smiled as well, "Yeah, but…"
She made a smile that Frank raised a brow. "How loving are you exactly?"
Frank smiled on, "Depends. How much you want?"
"Tonight?"
"Protection?"
"Don't worry, I got protection."
"Then tonight it is."
The couple walked out as Frank locked the door and they went off to their apartment.
Rate and Review, and suggest any ideas.
If I threw in a game of truth and dare... you know I was getting a bit pathetic.
