Can I just say that I adore my reviewers? You guys rock :) I would be normal and thank you at the bottom, but it drives me crazy if I don't have something here because then my chapter title isn't centered. Crazy formatting doesn't mix well with my OCD!
Chapter 4: Rough on the Road
"Ugh!" May exclaimed, crinkling the map in her hands. She had a burning desire to rip it into shreds. "I can't tell up from down on this stupid thing! How do people do this?!"
"Treecko, treecko tree!" Soren said into her ear.
May couldn't understand him, but she knew it was something snide and unhelpful. Fuming, she smacked him on the nose with the paper and chose to block out his outraged jabbering. Soren, realizing he was being ignored, jumped from May's head and rubbed at his snout. Unfortunately for the treecko, his trainer further avoided his hateful looks and crumpled the map back into the side pocket of her bag.
After leaving Oldale, their journey had become progressively more difficult and all around stressful. May had seen no reason to remain in the small town, so they had set out onto Route 102 early that morning (And managed to avoid the peculiar locals in the process). However, she had quickly found the path to be much longer and more confusing than the one to Oldale. The sun was setting in a few hours, and there was no way she would make it to Petalburg for another night in the pokemon center.
May was tired, she was hungry, and she couldn't even find a suitable way to train Soren! For some reason, she had always overlooked the actual training part of being a trainer, instead thinking ahead to the glamorous battle victories. But now that she had reached that obstacle, she wasn't quite sure how to even go about it.
Her father, she knew, trained constantly. He had his pokemon lift weights, exercise, practice accuracy, and spar with one another in order to hone their skills in the most balanced way possible. Meanwhile, May had no professionally ordered weights, no other pokemon, and not a single range attack for Soren to practice his aim with! She couldn't even find another trainer to battle if she wanted to, and hunting down random wild pokemon to fight was simply a bigger hassle than it was worth.
May forced herself to stop and take a deep breath. "Okay, Soren. We're going to stop at the next good place we find, and we're going to get something done," she said, more for her own benefit than his.
She started walking in the general southwestern direction she knew she was supposed to head for, but Soren didn't budge. Feeling ticked, she spun back around, hands on her hip. Her lips pursed in her effort not to scowl.
"What's your problem?" May asked, trying to remain cool and collected. "Come on!"
"Tree," Soren grumbled, crossing his arms and turning his nose up at her.
"Soren!" May began to threaten to just put him in his pokeball, but she made herself stop. She reminded herself that a trainer had to get along with her pokemon, that everything was a two way street. With effort, she said, "Ugh. I'm sorry that I got mad at you. Will you please come with me?"
Soren turned one eye to her lazily and stared at her for a long moment. Finally, he inclined his head in agreement. May sighed in relief and began walking again, this time with Soren on her heels.
For the first time all day, luck was shining on their side, for the winding road May was following abruptly opened to a small clearing. Grass grew across the area in feather light tuffs, and a bubbling brook expanded to form a tiny pond off to the right. A few green, leaf like shapes floated idly across the water, and up close, it was clear that they were lotad.
May smiled, allowing her backpack to fall off her shoulders and onto the ground. "This is perfect! Thank goodness."
Happily, Soren ran over to lap up a few gulps of water from the pond. The lotad cried out in alarm at the sight of the strange pokemon and immediately dove underwater, sending a series of ripples across its surface. Soren sniggered lightly to himself and splashed some water in their general direction.
May rolled her eyes at the reemergence of her treecko's mean streak and began to observe the surroundings more critically. There were many trees perfect for target practice, but Soren had only learned physical attacks so far. Disappointed, she moved her attention elsewhere and found that several medium sized to large rocks lay around the pond.
Feeling the sparking of an idea, May gathered one in her arms and tossed it in front of Soren. He blinked at it questioningly, now thoroughly done tormenting the lotad.
"Can you break this with your pound attack?" May asked, pointing to the rock. It was about the size of a basketball, making it one of the larger ones.
"Treecko, tree!" Soren said, in a way that clearing meant "Of course I can, are you crazy?"
He reared back, muscles tensed in the way they always did before he performed a pound attack. His legs sprung slightly off the ground and he slammed his tail down, hard, into the rock. However, it didn't even budge, and Soren froze. His tail quivered.
Letting out a whimper, Soren abruptly stepped back to nurse his tail. He glared at the rock, at May, and even at the peaceful creek in the background. May bent down to peer more closely at him, eyebrows pushed together in concern.
"Oh my gosh, are you okay! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you do that!" she said, fearfully. She reached out a hand as if to touch Soren's tail, but he quickly warded her away.
"Treecko!" he yelled, defensively. Obviously, his ego had sustained bruises far worse than his tail.
Soren shifted as if to try the technique again, but May stopped him. She tried to convince him that maybe they should move on to a different training exercise, that the rocks had been a bad idea, yet he would have none of it. Her stress level was quickly climbing again, and she made a mental note that she needed to capture another pokemon soon so Soren could just practice battle with it.
"But if you tire yourself out too much, I won't have anyone to protect me," May tried finally, after much arguing. If he didn't have to sacrifice his pride, then maybe she could talk some sense into him.
Soren hesitated, still not completely convinced.
"Why don't you at least practice on a smaller rock, just to be safe?" May pleaded.
He reluctantly agreed, settling on hitting a rock that was only half the size of the first one. With Soren hopefully no longer in danger of breaking any bones, May allowed herself to breathe a little easier. She shuffled through her backpack and pulled out a foot long package labeled "capsule tent". To her knowledge, the device worked rather like a pokeball, except that it obviously contained a tent instead of a live creature.
May hit another brick wall with the tent. Why were there so many pieces, everywhere? She struggled to find poles that went together, scarcely able to keep everything she built from falling over as soon as she let go of it. She had been camping before, so she should be able to do this!
Okay, so it had been once in her backyard when she was seven, and her dad had sort of pitched the tent. But she had watched!
May battled with the tent for nearly an hour, grumbling under her breath all the while. Occasionally, she would stop and watch Soren for a moment so that she could suggest a new angle or a way for him to get more momentum. By the time she finally managed to assemble all the pieces of her troublesome tent, Soren's rock was practically in fragments.
"Good job," May mumbled tiredly as she collected several sticks to build a fire with. Temporarily done practicing his pound attack, Soren tried to help. His efforts weren't very beneficial, for his arms were too tiny to carry any significant amount of wood, but May didn't have the heart to tell him so.
Soren watched May expectantly as she aligned the branches just the way she wanted. To give him something else to work on, she grabbed some of the smaller sticks and jabbed them in the ground in a straight line, leaving a bit of space in between them. They roughly resembled the weaving poles present in pokemon agility competitions back in Johto.
"See how fast you can run through those," she suggested, grabbing some matches.
Soren took on his new task, and it proved to be much more natural to him than the first. He wove through the sticks with ease, and then went back to repeatedly try to increase his speed through them. After he finished a particularly fast round, May would smile and give him a thumbs up as she worked with the matches.
She managed to get a fire going with less difficulty than she had pitched the tent, and she then filled her small cooking pot up with water from the pond. The liquid sloshed about on her clothes as she walked, May being the klutz she was. She eventually got it boiling over the fire, and she stirred some rice around in it experimentally.
When May thought it might possibly be done, she called Soren over from his training to feed him a few scoops of Pokechow for supper. For herself, she poured the steaming rice into the cheap plastic bowl her mother had packed for her. Stomach rumbling impatiently, she blew on it before taking an eager bite.
"Oh…" May said, chewing on the rice slowly. It was kind of hard and dry, and just not at all like what her mom made. She glumly downed half the bowl before giving in and offering it to Soren.
"Treecko!" He shook his head vehemently at the food, and May narrowed her eyes at him.
"Ha ha, very funny," she said, dumping the rice into some nearby bushes. She spilt a bit along the way, paying little mind to it. Her hunger still wasn't fully sated, so she dug out a granola bar, her third of the day, and munched on it instead.
Darkness was quickly descending upon them, so May stood and stretched. The fire had fizzled out into only a few tiny glowing embers, which May knew would also grow cold within minutes. She rolled her sleeping bag out in her tent and padded the ground beneath it. It was distinctly hard, and she could feel several prominent pebbles in places that definitely wouldn't be feeling good on her back.
"Come on, Soren," May said uncertainly.
Soren scampered into the tent, curling into a ball next to where May's head would be resting shortly. She zipped the flap up after him and hesitantly lay down in her sleeping bag. Predictably, the ground was uneven and completely rough underneath her. It was even worse than the bed in the Oldale Pokemon Center!
Worse still were the noises of the night that fell upon the clearing. The creepy stillness caused memories to arise in May, memories she would much rather cast away into the deepest depths of her mind. All she could do was stare up at the colorless wall of the tent and clutch her flashlight tightly in her grip, ready to point it at anything that should manifest itself to her.
Soren lifted his head up, sensing her fear in the way that only a pokemon could. Humming quietly, he shifted himself more closely to May so that his reassuring warmth pressed up against her. She gratefully wrapped her arms around him and shut her eyes tightly, hoping for morning to come soon.
May had been drifting in and out of a fitful sleep all night, and at first, she thought she had merely woken again because of that. However, her ears picked up on something moving outside. She stiffened, suddenly wide-awake.
Beside her, she could see that Soren was already up and focused on the front side of the tent. Leaves and grass crunched as whatever it was outside moved about, and his eyes followed the sound. At once, the crunching stopped, and snuffling could be heard.
Instinctively, May realized that it was still night (Or very early in the morning). She groped about blindly for her flashlight, praying she didn't alert the strange creature or person that she knew it was there. Her fingers managed to latch onto the cylindrical body of the light, and she motioned subtly to Soren.
"Ko," he whispered, nodding.
Carefully, May peeled back the tent flap so that they could peek outside. Pure blackness met her vision, preventing her from seeing even a foot in front of her. Even so, the snuffling continued obliviously, seemingly coming from the general direction of where she had built her fire.
She flicked on her flashlight, swinging the beam of light in a wide arc around her. Her heart leapt into her throat when two spheres of light flashed back at her from the darkness, low to the ground. Eyes.
The owner of the eyes stopped moving and snarled at her. Soren pushed in front of her, yelling angrily, but May's mind was running a mile a minute. She recognized that sound by this point, and she was ready to capture the culprit! In her haste to get to her bag, she practically tripped over her own feet, but she soon found what she was looking for. Holding the pokeball tightly in one hand and the flashlight in another, May pointed her light directly at the aggressor.
The poochyena's fangs gleamed, and she could see white specks dotting the edges of its mouth; bits of rice. Its body was thin and scarred, overall in much worse shape than any of the other ones she had seen. Obviously, this poochyena had no pack and had resorted to pillaging human food any chance it got.
The pokemon quieted then, catching sight of the pokeball in May's grip. It yipped and quickly darted off into the darkness.
"Hey, wait!" May cried, stumbling halfway out of her tent after it. "I want to battle you!"
But her pleas fell uselessly to no response. Frustrated, May huffed and stomped back into her tent. After waking them up so rudely, the least that stupid poochyena could've done was let Soren get in a good whack or two!
The next time May woke, it was to the pleasant chirps of taillow and the heat of the midmorning sun. Soren sat beside her, bored and flicking specks of dirt across the bottom of her tent. She had overslept, and judging by the sluggish feeling in her limbs, it was at least 10 a.m.
"Tree, tree," Soren said accusingly. He walked pointedly towards the door of the tent and reached up to yank on the zipper. His three fingered hands struggled to grasp it briefly, but after a moment he managed to pull it down so that he could crawl outside.
May tiredly sat up, staring into space. Her brain was still slow from sleep, so she struggled to process the fact that maybe she should say something catty back to Soren. Just as she was beginning to think of an appropriate comeback, her pokemon's outraged voice floated into the tent.
Suddenly more aware of her surroundings, May shot up out of her sleeping bag and into the outside world. The sun blinded her briefly, so she shielded her eyes. However, even the abundance of light didn't prevent her from noticing what had gotten Soren so agitated.
Her treecko stood just a bit ahead of her, waving his arms wildly at a swarm of wurmple. The bug types were everywhere, crawling across the grass and sniffing around the singed wood from the night before. There was even a wurmple lounging halfway up the side of her tent.
May shrieked, loudly and uncharacteristically.
"Ohmygod, Soren, get them out of here!" she screamed, tripping and landing smack on her behind in her effort to flee from the bugs.
She was unfortunately near her tent, and the closest wurmple peered down curiously at her. "Wur?" it said, smiling in welcome.
"Ahhh!" May half leapt, half crawled away. She ended up near the center of her campsite, surrounded on all sides by the wurmple but not too close to any single one of them. Rocks scraped her legs, her pajamas were dirt stained, and her hair was everywhere, but she didn't care!
Soren stared at her in puzzlement, almost like he was worried his trainer had gone insane. He shook his head, doubtful, and he began talking loudly to the wurmple. They ignored him, happily nibbling at the leftover bits of rice May had left on the ground and chatting with one another.
Something pushed its way through the bushes then, and through her haze of fear, May made out the panting form of a boy.
"Are you okay?!" he questioned, panicked and completely short of breath. "May?"
It was Brendan. A sweatier, frightened looking Brendan with a pokeball ready in hand. However, as he took time to take in his surroundings, his posture relaxed. He stood up straighter, and his mouth dropped open in annoyed disbelief.
"Seriously?" Brendan said, but she could sense his relief even through his irritation. "I thought you were being mauled or something!"
"But-" May stuttered, pointing a shaky finger at the wurmple. She looked at Brendan with crazed sapphire eyes. "Pokemon keep attacking me!"
Brendan rolled his eyes. He exchanged the pokeball he had been holding for a different one, and tossed it in front of him. Orion's striking form materialized in a flash of white, and he cawed happily at May when he saw her.
"Get rid of these wurmple, will you?" Brendan grumbled to his pokemon.
Orion seemed perplexed by the entire situation, but he shrugged and held out his palm, which abruptly caught aflame. He roared threateningly at the wurmple, and they screamed and crawled away as speedily as their many legs would carry them. As soon as they disappeared, Orion's mean demeanor melted away to one of a happy-go-lucky schoolboy.
"Kin," the blaziken said, greeting Soren.
Instead of saying hello back, Soren crossed his arms and stared at the ground sulkily.
May wasn't very concerned with her pokemon's pride at the moment. Now that the wurmple had gone, embarrassment was beginning to seep in. She looked absolutely ridiculous, and of course, out of all the people in Hoenn, it was Brendan Birch to discover her that way.
Slowly, she climbed to her feet and attempted to fluff her hair into an acceptable position. Mustering all the remaining dignity she possessed, she said, "So. Um, thanks."
"No problem," Brendan said, a small smirk forming on his face. His annoyance was rapidly being replaced with an obvious amusement, and May didn't like it, not one bit.
"You've been on your own for what, two days?"
May's face reddened with both humiliation and anger. Thoughtlessly, she blurted, "Who said I was thanking you? Orion was the one who helped me out!"
She pointed her finger at Orion, who blinked at her, bewildered. Soren's face soured even more.
Brendan raised his hands in something akin to surrender, although she could still clearly see laughter in his eyes. "Sure he was. I was just gonna say that maybe you should, I don't know, not throw out a feast for the all the wild pokemon next time?"
May scowled, because she couldn't really argue with that. It should've been common sense that scavengers would smell the leftovers and roam into her campsite. She was lucky it wasn't anything more dangerous, although she still shivered when she remembered the wurmple.
"Why are you even here, anyway? Are you stalking me, now?" May accused, in an effort to shift the harassment to him. What she was saying didn't even make sense, because hadn't she been the one who had invited him to come with her in the first place?
Brendan coughed uncomfortably into his hand. "I was gonna look for you in Petalburg. I was… Maybe reconsidering your offer."
Seeing the pleased, faintly knowing look growing on May's face, he straightened. "Of course, I ran off the road when I heard you shrieking like an angry zubat. Better be careful, or that treecko might go deaf!"
May fumed, struggling to come up with a clever comeback, and both pokemon watched with wide eyes in the background. Finally, she growled, "Oh, shut up!"
Awkward silence met them for a moment, but Brendan broke it with a sigh. "So does your offer still stand, or what?"
May stared at him for a while, eyebrows slightly raised. "Oh, I hope he's sweating," she thought gleefully, noticing an uncertain edge becoming his expression. Unfortunately, she could only keep her cool for a small amount of time, and her face cracked into a smile tinted with laughter.
"Hmm," she said, grinning. "I guess so. If I have too."
"I'm glad you're so thrilled to have me," Brendan remarked, sounding exasperated.
Brendan never said what made him change his mind, but life with him was vastly different than life alone. Although May would rather bite her tongue off than admit it to him, it was a very good sort of different.
Unlike May, who could hardly tell left from right, Brendan actually seemed to have a vague idea of where he was going. After throwing out a snide comment here or there about her lack of sense of direction, Brendan pulled out a high tech device (A Pokenav, he called it) with a map programmed on it. With only the occasional glance at it, he confidently chose a new path that he claimed would lead them strait to Petalburg within two days time at the most.
He also knew how to pitch a tent, although he didn't use one for himself, but he pointedly refused to set May's up for her at first. However, watching her struggle quickly became too painful for him to watch, and he strode over to her, yanking the poles from her hands.
"Just this once," he snapped after he had finished, tossing his own sleeping bag right onto the ground across the fire.
The fire was another hassle made easier with the addition of Brendan, because not only was he an experienced traveler, but his pokemon had their benefits as well. When she finally met his entire team, she couldn't help but feel a bit envious.
Orion was one of the most useful, or at least, he was when he wasn't wasting his time goofing off. Between taste testing the most suspicious looking fruits he could find and outrageously cartwheeling around May and Brendan, Orion would relent and help gather firewood in his strong arms. Best of all was the fact that May no longer had to bother with matches; Orion could get an inferno going with the laziest of flicks from his finger, which made May long for a fire type of her own.
Neptune and Acumi, Brendan's golduck and tropius, respectively, were also fabulous contributors in their own right. Neptune had a knack for chopping large branches with his claws, and he could somehow sense a stream from a mile away if he simply closed his eyes and concentrated. According to Brendan, it was a talent that most water types could develop if they were well trained enough.
Acumi was a subject of fascination for May. Over seven feet tall and oozing grace, the tropius was one of the most exotic creatures that she had ever laid eyes on. They hailed from only the densest, most tropical forests of the world, and Brendan told her that they were no common find, even in the hot Hoenn region. Other than Orion, she was the most approachable of Brendan's pokemon, and she often found eatable berries in obscure bushes and then plopped them straight into either human's lap.
May was considerably less fond of the remaining two from Brendan's team. Iris, a shelgon, was quite obviously one of the things her trainer was most proud of, which was revealed by the faint gleam in Brendan's eye when he described the harsh weeks he spent searching for her. The dragon type would growl affectionately at her trainer when he spoke to her, but whenever May passed, Iris would glower moodily from deep within her shell. She doubted the pokemon would hesitate to have her for a snack if Brendan were to turn his back.
Knox, Brendan's dusknoir, didn't bother with glaring at May or being rude to her in any way. Actually, he didn't do much of anything, really. Most of his time was spent floating creepily in the corner, staring into empty space. He also had a nasty habit of materializing out of nowhere, which had already brought May close to a heart attack at least six times. She was certain to have nightmares about it in the near future.
Soren took a bit longer than May to adjust to the additions to their group, more so to Brendan's pokemon than the boy himself. He would cling to May's side and pout whenever any of the pokemon, particularly Orion, did something to help out his trainer. However, the ice was broken on their second night camping as a group.
"Blaze, blaziken!" Orion said eagerly, dancing across the ground in front of Brendan.
"What now?" Brendan scowled, glancing briefly up at his blaziken.
He was already moody from having to pitch May's tent all by himself (Again), and now he was attempting to heat up some ramen. His brief lapse in focus allowed for the boiling water to bubble and splash up onto his finger. Brendan cursed, shaking his hand as if the entire appendage had just been amputated, and then he grumbled something grouchily to himself, refusing to watch Orion any longer.
May tried to hide her smile. She had temporarily given up on cooking, and she was pleased to see that at least Brendan wasn't any better at that than her. Instead, she had been flipping through pages on her pokedex again, having settled for a supper of some Oran berries Acumi had given her.
"It's okay, Orion," May said sweetly, glancing up from her screen. "I'll watch you."
Orion perked up at once, looking at her with shining blue eyes. Brendan gave her a look of death from over his cooking pot, but he was unable to hold it for too long without risking getting burned again. Soren huffed from his place resting against May's thigh.
"Kin!" Orion said, ignoring both Brendan and Soren.
He waved his arms and performed a handstand in the center of the clearing, eager to be the center of someone's attention. Unfortunately, in his hurry, one of his elbows seized up, and the loss of support caused the blaziken to topple loudly onto his back. Soren sniggered obnoxiously.
Orion leapt to his feet, feathers ruffled with dirt from the ground. He clapped his beak at Soren. "Blaziken!"
"Treecko, tree!" Soren said, sounding oddly snooty.
He stood, allowing himself a leisurely stretch before he moved to stand beside Orion. Soren smirked, and he abruptly flipped himself over to perch on his hands, his tail positioned carefully to help him balance. Orion narrowed his eyes, straightened his feathers, and then lifted himself into a second handstand, with a much more reliable grip this time.
"How sweet," Brendan said dryly. His brown eyes, tinted more red than ever in the firelight, never left his noodles. "They're bonding."
Bonding, indeed.
AN: What? No new pokemon? I didn't SAY which chapter it was in. Just that it would be before Roxanne ;D
I know Brendan's other pokemon were introduced quickly, but I'll be sure to allow for plenty of scenes for them in the future (Orion already has some good ones coming up). The main focus will remain on May's team, however, because I already have a ton of characters as is. Anyway, this chapter was definitely fillerish, but these past couple of chapters have been important in cementing May's relationships with Soren and Brendan and for just setup in general. But rest assured, next chapter is much more eventful.
I'm officially on Christmas break, whoop whoop! Hopefully I'll get even further ahead on my chapters before next semester starts. Did anyone else notice that a TON of Hoenn fics were posted this week? It kind of makes me worried that I should've posted mine once ORAS had died down slightly, but it's too late now.
By the way, I'll be posting a holiday Kalosshipping oneshot within the week. Keep an eye out for it if you're interested! :) Reviews are nice, and I hope you all have a Merry Christmas! (If you celebrate it).
What's your all time favorite starter pokemon? (I'm a cliché loser, so mine's charmander)