Marion has finally returned! What does that mean for Sango? Fishing, certainly, but will Marion be able to help them find Blake? Or will she just spend the time fishing? Probably both. We'll have to find out though, the search for Blake continues! Hopefully we can find him soon. 600 chapters in, and our protagonist has disappeared! Where could he have gone?

Rowlets and Oshawotts: Hopefully so!

Just a Bad Writer for Fun: Blake is probably having a very bad time.

Pokemonking0924: It's not something as simple as just a pokemon. It's much more complicated than that.

KedharS: And we're quite happy about it!

Guest: That's an interesting interpretation. Maybe she'll hold him responsible for whatever ends up happening to them. Poor Blake just can't catch a break.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 600

"Marion!" Sango cried, hugging her friend tightly.

"Sango! Hey come on now, I'm getting you all wet!" Marion laughed, patting the back of Sango's head as the ranger in training hugged her.

"I don't care," Sango said, shaking her head and hugging Marion tighter. "I'm just glad you're back! You've been gone for so long!"

"Come on, come on, it hasn't even been a month since we last saw each other," Marion laughed, finally managing to pry herself free of Sango's tight grip. Her eyes dropped to see the fishing pole Sango wore on her back, her face lighting up with delight. "But it looks like a lot has changed since then, that's for sure!"

"What? Oh, this?" Sango reached over her shoulder and lowered her head, blushing. "It's um…"

"You're fishing now?!" Marion cheered, this time being the one to pull Sango into a hug. "That's the most absolutest splendiferous thing I've ever heard! Can my girl get any better?! Absolutely not, we gotta go right now!"

"Go? Huh? What-"

Marion grabbed her by the wrist and tugged, and Sango soon found herself being pulled down the bank and towards the docks.

"Hey, Marion, come on!" Sango laughed. She was too happy to see her friend to really resist. They stopped at the docks and before Sango even knew what was happening she and Marion were fishing together.

"Hey, Silver!" Marion waved to the Castform with one hand as she skillfully held her pole with the other. "How're things?"

"Castform!" Silver chirped.

"That's the tops!" Marion grinned. "Hey, can you do me a favor? I'm a little shivery right now, mind a gust of warm air headed my way?"

"Cast!" Silver nodded in agreement, releasing a ray of light up into the air, the sun on the horizon beginning to grow more intense, heating up the air and helping Marion dry up.

"Thanks a million!" Marion winked. "Now then, let's get back to it, Sango! We never get to fish anymore, this is gonna be a blast!"

Marion hummed, staring out over the water. Sango smiled warmly, looking at her friend out of the corner of her eye. Her concern for Blake was put aside for now, completely blown from her mind by the warm ocean breeze that was Marion Rivers. So with laughter in her heart, she cast out her line and relaxed into the feeling of fishing at her friend's side.

Back at the Bulbasaur House, things were not nearly as relaxed and pleasant.

"I'll kill her, I swear to god, I'll kill her," Ayame rasped, storming around the room. Everyone was happy that she wasn't throwing things, at least.

"Ayame, calm down," Cynthia said. "Look, I'm sure that Sylvia didn't abduct Blake."

"Really? Well, I'm not," Ayame growled. "That little Purrloin has always been doing shifty stuff like this, she's been aiming at Blake from the start!"

"I hate to say this, but Ayame might be right," Reiner said. "Sylvia Driscoll, from what I've heard of her she's definitely a little…"

Everyone had spent enough time around the girl to acknowledge that Ayame's fears weren't exactly unfounded.

"Okay, but, like, there's annoying, and then there's criminal," Nikita said. "Sure, I can definitely imagine that Sylvia DID do this, but… right now? I don't know if she would do it after all that heat that the Phantom must be under due to this whole Shadow Pokemon mess…"

"I'm leaving," Ayame growled. She stormed out of the room, leaving a cloud of tension in her wake.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Cynthia demanded, chasing after Ayame. She didn't like the look on her face, and was rather worried about what the older girl was going to do.

"There's nothing we can do sitting around on our hands and fucking talking," Ayame said. "I'm going to go get some help."

"Help?" Cynthia asked, frowning. "Help from who?"

"If Sylvia's involved in this, if she took Blake, then that's the same thing as a declaration of war," Ayame replied, pausing and turning back to give Cynthia a sharp look that made her shiver. "And if that's what the Phantom wants, then I'm going to give it to him."

"…Oh!" Cynthia gasped in realization. "You're going to talk to the Empress?"

"Olivia adores Blake," Ayame said. "If Sylvia's behind this, there's no way she's going to let this stand. If she talks with the Phantom, she'll make him give Blake back. I'm sure."

To Ayame, Olivia was the newest bastion of hope that she would find Blake as soon as possible. She wasn't sure what she wanted at this point, though. Her heart was splintered. If Sylvia had Blake and they tracked her down, then they would find Blake. But if that was the case… then that meant Sylvia had Blake, and Ayame didn't want him to have to go through whatever it was that Sylvia had no-doubt put him through. Which was why even as she seethed at Sylvia, a large part of her was hoping that this was another misunderstanding, and that Sylvia had nothing to do with it, even if that meant that Blake was gone for a different reason.

While Ayame concerned herself with what Sylvia might be doing, Cynthia had concerns of her own, not sure if this was the right step, equally hoping that Sylvia wasn't doing anything bad to her friend. But at the same time, she wanted to believe that, at least, Olivia would be able to help.

The problem was, she couldn't bring herself to believe that Sylvia would actually do something like that to Blake. Abduct him so that she could keep him prisoner and… no, that just wasn't something she could accept.

Certainly, Sylvia was a twisted person, and she'd done some bad things to people. But Cynthia found it very difficult to hate people (although Sylvia was up there) and tried very hard to see the good in them if she could.

And for Sylvia, every time she tried to hate the girl, she found herself reminded of her first real interaction with the other girl, at the Empress's Pokemon Day party. She didn't remember much of that night, but what she did had made a serious impression. Her being intoxicated, barely standing on her own. And a bunch of guys trying to lead her away to do god-knows what. She still had the occasional nightmare about how that night might have gone if not for Sylvia Driscoll stepping in and saving her before things could go badly.

Sylvia had saved her. Sylvia had saved Caelia, as well. Yeah, Sylvia was a bad person. She couldn't defend most of the things that the other girl had done. But at the same time, weighing that against the good things she'd done…

…

Okay, yeah, Sylvia still came up way too short in that aspect, but still. Cynthia didn't believe that a girl who would save her from something like that would turn around and do something to Blake, even if she was a pretty wicked girl. Ayame was seeing red, but Cynthia was trying really, really hard to keep a level head about all this.

But she was still worried about Blake after all. She was about to say something, when her phone beeped. Maybe it was Blake? She quickly pulled it out of her jacket pocket to check… no, it was Maddi. Right, she'd almost forgotten in the commotion. The Commander was having his match against Anabel tonight, and she was supposed to come watch. But… she couldn't just leave, not when they still hadn't found Blake, right?

Cynthia glanced up from her phone at Ayame, who was staring at her quietly. She knew how much this meant, finding Blake. She was as worried about him as Ayame was, and she didn't want to go either. How horrible would that be? Abandoning her best friend, the boy she liked, so she could go watch a pokemon match? She was about to tell Maddi that she couldn't make it when she had a brilliant idea of her own.

"What's up?" Ayame asked. The way Cynthia's face had lit up as she was typing into her phone had gotten her a little excited too. She'd seen that face a few times from the redhead, it was Cynthia's evil plan face.

"I just had a great idea," Cynthia said. "But I have to go."

"Go? Go where? We have to find Blake!" Ayame said. She glanced at the door to Blake's room and saw no one else was coming to join them. Cynthia was the only one who had come with, and now she was abandoning her, too? "Aren't you worried?"

"Of course I'm worried!" Cynthia assured her. "But I had a great idea. You wanted to go get the Empress's help with putting pressure on the Phantom to find Sylvia and Blake, right? Assuming that they actually left together?"

"Yeah, that's why-"

"So I'm going to do the exact same thing!" Cynthia explained. "See, I was supposed to go to this meeting tonight with the Commander, but this whole thing with Blake totally distracted me until Maddi texted me just now! But I was thinking, instead of just one of the Daevas, why don't we get two of them? See if the Commander is willing to help, too! So I'll go to the meeting tonight and tell him what happened, explain that Blake is missing, and ask him to help find him! What do you think? Brilliant idea, right? With both the Commander and the Empress, the Phantom is definitely going to give up Sylvia! Considering that the Commander totally kicked his ass last night and everything!"

Ayame's face brightened. "Yeah! Nice thinking, Cynthia! That's a great idea! But do you really think he'll go along with it?"

Cynthia paused. That was certainly true. The Commander didn't know Blake that well, heck, they hadn't even spoken. So maybe not.

"We won't know until we try," Cynthia said. "But Maddi will definitely be in, and if we both ask, then he's gotta, I'm sure."

Ayame was less sure, but every little bit helped. "Sounds good. Call me later, tell me how it goes. I'll head out to Olivia's."

Ayame and Cynthia headed downstairs as the others continued looking in Blake's room, searching for clues to where he might have gone. Most of them were searching, anyway. Kitty was engaged in a task that she felt would be a little less helpful to the overall effort to find him. She was letting Blake's pokemon out of their pokeballs, and using her harmonia to connect to each of them, one at a time, and see if they knew anything.

It was a very slow process. The problem was, Kitty was still a novice when it came to her harmonia, even if she had a better grasp of it than she used to. It was difficult for her to establish a connection with a pokemon that wasn't hers. She had raised all of her pokemon for some time now, and even her newest, Pearl, was still not fully connected to her. So to try and establish a bond with a pokemon that she barely knew was difficult, to say the least.

But she was still going to try.

"How's it going, Kitty?" Julia asked. Rather than help the others look through the room, she was standing over Kitty as the short girl sat on the bed, sending out pokemon to ask.

"I've connected with most of them…" Kitty said, looking down glumly. "But none of his pokemon know anything. They're all worried, though. And there's nothing I can do to make them feel better, either. I'm just… I'm worried too, Julia."

A dull throbbing in Kitty's head told her that her harmonia was starting to be taxing on her, much to Julia's concern. She could see that Kitty was starting to get tired. This had been going on for nearly an hour, now, and the others were starting to get a little exhausted too. They hadn't found anything that they could use to clue them in about-

"Hey, what about this?" Nick interrupted Julia's line of thought. She turned and glanced in his direction along with Kitty. He stepped out of the closet, and presented a strange object for everybody to take a look at.

"It's weird," Nikita mused, taking a step closer to him, her analytical mind already assessing the object. It was strange, a bizarrely twisted piece of wood in relatively the shape of a tube. And it looked old, too, and smelled old. Everything about it looked ancient, much to everyone's surprise.

"What is it?" Kitty asked. She couldn't see over everyone.

"Let me take a look," Reiner said, Nick handing over the object. He leaned in closer, studying it, turning it over between his fingers. Reiner had a decent amount of experience with stuff like this, it definitely was old. As he ran his fingers across the surface he felt some grooves, studying it closer with his appraising eyes. He spotted some holes, knots in the wood, lined along the twisted surface of the old thing. His eyes widened, he suddenly realized what it was. "It's a flute!"

"Huh?" Nick asked, surprised.

"I think this is a really old flute," Reiner explained. "You know, mouth hole and finger holes. It looks like it's carved out of a tree branch, but… it's old. Really old."

"Wow, that's amazing," Nikita breathed. She knew better than to argue with Reiner, who was pretty close to an expert at stuff like this.

"You sure?" Julia asked, raising her eyebrow. "I know it looks pretty old, but why would Blake have something like that tucked away in his closet?"

"Don't ask me," Reiner replied, turning it over in his hands again. "But my eyes don't lie. This has gotta be a few hundred years old, at least."

"But again, what is BLAKE doing with an ancient relic like this?" Julia demanded. "Isn't this, like, you know, something that should be in a museum?"

Reiner shrugged, taking another look. "I can definitely imagine it. But you're right, it is weird."

"Do you think this might have something to do with Blake's disappearance?" Nikita inquired. "I mean, think about it. Blake goes missing, and we find this ancient relic… where did you find it, Nick?"

"It was buried in the back of the closet, wrapped around his shirt," Nick explained.

"I don't think there's much of a connection there," Julia said. "For all we know, he could have had this for months."

Nikita took a moment to consider that, before nodding. "Good point. There isn't really any correlation between the two. I've been spending too much time around you guys, I need to start making my theories based on evidence."

She laughed a little at that, but everyone else thought it was kind of a weird thing to say. Before anyone could speak up, a knock on the door startled them.

"Hey! It's me, Callie!" Callie's muffled voice came from the door. "I came as soon as we finished everything! How are you guys holding up?! Let me in!"

Nick was already moving to go let her inside, but Julia caught him with a hand on his shoulder, shaking her head.

"What?" Nick asked.

"Not right now," she whispered. "We should hide that flute. Even if it's not connected to Blake, he hid it for a reason, and the less people who know about it, the better."

"She's my girlfriend, and she's here to help," Blake replied, shaking free of her and going over to the door to let Callie in.

"What's up?" Callie asked, giving him a quick hug before joining the others. "Did you guys find anything since we talked?"

Callie looked around. "Weird. Ayame isn't here?"

"She ran off somewhere," Reiner explained, coolly passing the flute over to Nikita, who hid it in a drawer. "Think she's going to comb the forest looking for him."

"That's never going to work," Callie said, rolling her eyes. "What, did he fall in a big hole in the woods or something? Please."

"Hey, crazier things have happened!" Nikita protested. "Maybe someone dug a big hole to trap a pokemon and Blake fell in, and now he can't climb back out!"

"Only an idiot would do something stupid like dig a pitfall trap that he couldn't climb out of," Callie said, laughing harshly. Nikita scowled. Reiner resisted the urge to burst out laughing. Changing the subject, Callie tossed her coat on Nick's bed and looked around some more. "Wow, you guys have really worked hard cleaning this place up. Found anything?"

"Unfortunately not," Julia sighed, shooting Nick a look that made him shut his mouth. "Right now, our best bet is getting Kitty to use her harmonia to ask Blake's pokemon, so that should tell you just about everything we know about this whole mess."

Kitty nodded glumly. She only had one pokemon left, besides Blake's Salamence. And that was his Solosis, Uni.

"I heard you guys saying something about Sylvia, too?" Callie inquired. "You thought she might be connected."

"…It's possible," Reiner admitted, scratching his chin.

"She's definitely suspicious," Nikita agreed.

"Well, I hate to say this, but you guys might have a point," Callie admitted. "Sylvia never did show up. We can't get in contact with her, either. So she might be involved after all. Maybe they're both missing. We already reported both to campus security, so they're officially being declared as missing. Expect them to come by sometime tomorrow to take you guys' statements, since you're his roommates and friends."

"Oh, great, that's gonna suck," Reiner sighed. "We've gone over this a ton already, we don't know what happened."

"Hey, as long as it helps us find Blake, it's fine," Nick replied. Reiner shrugged.

"Fair enough," he admitted.

Meanwhile, Kitty had let Uni out of her pokeball, the squishy green pokemon staring up at her with big eyes, sitting on the bed. Kitty closed her eyes and began to focus, trying to feel the pokemon's feelings, to connect with her, to-

"Sol." Kitty's eyes snapped open. It… it was so easy. While the other pokemon of Blake's she'd tried to connect with had all been eager to help, it had been difficult for her to connect with them, to feel them reacting against her. But Blake's Solosis… no. That was the wrong way to think of her, she understood that now.

Uni wasn't Blake's pokemon.

She was Guinevere's.

That was why it was so easy to connect with her, Kitty realized. Why it was like connecting with her own pokemon. Not because she had some special bond with Uni, but because Uni had bonded with people who used harmonia before.

Hello there, remember me? Kitty asked with her harmonia. We've met before, haven't we? A few times now. I'm Blake's friend. I wanted to talk with you about him. It's okay, I'm nice. Don't worry, Uni. You can feel it, right? Can you let me feel?

Uni bubbled up with a wave of feelings that Kitty responded to, but she gasped. Fear and sadness were at the surface. Was it because of Gwen? No, that… wait, what was this?

Are you saying that Blake… Blake is…? No, no that can't be! No!

"No!" Kitty cried, breaking her connection with Uni and clutching at her hair, shaking her head furiously. "No!"

"Kitty!" Julia gasped, running to her friend's side and sliding next to her on the bed. "What is it, what's wrong? Is your harmonia hurting you?"

"It's Blake," Kitty whimpered, shaking her head. "I tried connecting with Uni, to ask her… the same as the others…"

"Does she know where Blake is?" Julia asked.

"No… she… she has a connection with him…" Kitty said. "Because she's a Psychic type, she can feel him, even if he's far away… and she said… she can't feel him anymore…!"

Kitty sobbed, as everyone let that news sink in. If Uni couldn't feel Blake anymore… then what did that mean?

That's not good. Blake couldn't be dead, could he? Doubtful. But they don't know that, of course. At the end of the day, though, this is clearly not good.