We leave Agate Village behind with this chapter and set out on the road again, headed for another part of the Orre Region! But before we catch up with the other groups, there are still some questions to be raised, namely those about Maddi and her strange DNA, as well as what that has to do with her headaches and her eye issues! What will we figure out about her strange condition?

The Elimination Round of the Pokemon Academy Best Girl Contest 3 has started! Make sure to get those votes in, we've only got a couple of people who have voted so far! Please, make sure to get those votes in! You can vote for up to 5 girls, so make sure your favorites have a chance to shine!

Nominated: Ange, Ayame, Caelia, Chloe, Cynthia, Donoma, Elaina, Kate, Maddi, Marion, Misato, Ryoko, Sango, Satsuki, Sylvia, Vic

KedharS: Well, we're about to find out!

Hyphenman: Well, the doctors Whitmore were involved in the creation of Mewtwo, I don't know if I'd put anything past them at this point, not until we find out more.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 969

As the morning sun rose, the roar of a high-powered engine cut through the silence of the Orre Region desert.

Maddi shifted uncomfortably, her butt was starting to get sore. She was strapped into the passenger seat of Wes's… well, it wasn't exactly a motorcycle. It was designed like one, but it only had one wheel, on the back. At the front, where the second wheel should be, he'd installed a massive engine that was apparently strong enough to keep the twisted metal monstrosity suspended over the sand like a hover bike.

She had to grin in spite of the discomfort. This thing was freaking cool!

A throb of pain shot through her eye and she wince, her hand shooting up unconsciously before stopping against plastic and glass.

Maddi could barely see through the dusty goggles wrapped over her face (a necessary precaution for the speed they were going at) but it wasn't like she was missing the sights. Just sand, sand, and more sand, as far as the eye could see.

Yeah, as cool as the bike might have been, as awesome as it was to move this fast, Maddi was still bored, and not only bored, but in pain.

She'd been having headaches and eye problems since around the start of winter, but they didn't get really serious until the Phantom Cup and her battle against the Phantom himself. After that, it was like a switch had been flipped in her brain and now she couldn't do anything but feel serious pain surging through her skull.

It wasn't like it was constant, though. She'd get the occasional reprieve. A few days. A week, if she was lucky. But it would always come back. Just as she was convinced she'd moved past it and didn't have to worry anymore, it would feel like a knife had been jammed into her eye again.

Then came the attack on Agate Village. Maddi had nearly lost her lunch seeing that girl again. Gwen. Blake's sister. It was like someone had stabbed THROUGH her eye and into her brain, and was twisting around in there. It was agony. And when she'd lost against Val, the shock had just knocked her unconscious.

When she woke up, it had just been worse. Her eye wouldn't stop hurting now, and there was a pounding in her skull that was drowning everything else out. So when Wes had told her that he would take her to see a specialist to get her eye looked at, she didn't care that she was going off alone with a man she'd known for a day. She just wanted to get better.

Maddi would put up with a lot of boredom and discomfort if it meant that she could fix whatever was wrong with her.

A flash of blue caught the corner of her eye just as another stab of pain shot through it. She stretched and turned to the left, looking up past Wes and squinting. She could just barely make out the shape of Phenac City. Was the doctor they were going to located there?

…No, apparently not. Wes didn't adjust his course even slightly, shooting right past the oasis and heading further out into the desert.

Maddi slumped back in her seat and sighed. No use worrying. They'd been traveling for over a day at this point, stopping off at crappy diners, and as tired as she was, she didn't bother asking how much longer they'd be on the road.

Wherever they were going, they'd get there when they got there.

It was another hour yet before Maddi felt the bike start to slow down. She perked up at the engine's roar began to lower and soon enough, they pulled to a stop with a screech of sand. She pulled up the goggles and squinted, letting her eyes adjust to the sunlight.

…Surely this wasn't the right place?

Wes had taken them to a boat. A big freaking boat. In the middle of the desert. The wrecked hull of the ship had been pierced by rocks and lay scattered across the sand, but the size of the ship was still an impressive sight.

"Where the fuck are we?" Maddi asked in spite of herself.

"This is the S.S. Libra," Wes calmly replied, as if it was totally normal to see a cruise liner in the middle of the desert. "It was a cargo ship used to carry pokemon to the Orre Region, before it was attacked by Team Cipher."

"…And it ended up in the desert?" Maddi asked. That was the part she didn't get.

"It's a long story," Wes replied.

"Okay, so why are we here, then?" Maddi demanded. "Is this where your doctor friend is located? Because it doesn't look like the sort of place that a person with a good reputation would be hanging out, no offense."

"The professor is an eccentric," Wes replied. He walked over to the hull of the ship. "Originally, the authorities were going to salvage the ship, but the professor intervened with an order proclaiming it a 'cultural landmark' and requested its preservation as a tourist attraction. He purchased the land around it and was authorized to build on it, so long as he kept the structure intact."

"…And he lives in a ship. On land." Maddi wasn't going to let that one go.

"Of course not, he lives in a house just like everyone else does." To Maddi's surprise, Wes led her away from the shipwreck and over to a tiny metal house that was built right next to it. Maddi did a double-take.

"No way he lives in there," she said, shaking her head. "It's smaller than my room back at the Pokemon Academy!"

"That's just the elevator," Wes replied. "The professor's laboratory is installed underground. Building in the desert can be hazardous, so it's safer to install facilities underground, to prevent wear from the elements."

As they got closer to the metal structure, Maddi saw that it looked pretty worn down from constant sandstorms. She admitted that Wes might have a point.

Wes knocked on the door. A voice buzzed over the intercom and Maddi froze. She recognized that voice!

"Who is it?" The thick accent asked.

"Professor Decker, it's me, Wes," Wes greeted him. Maddi gasped. Professor Decker! From school? She'd heard he was on sabbatical, but he was actually here, in the Orre Region? It was too much to be a coincidence…

"Wes! Good to see you!" The professor's tone improved. "What are you doing here?"

"Sorry for the sudden intrusion, professor, but it's an emergency," Wes replied. "I need to talk with you about a friend of mine, she's having some medical problems."

"Wes… you know I'm not that sort of doctor."

Wes scowled, and glanced at Maddi. This was rather tricky. He didn't want to give everything away to Maddi, but he also needed to convince the professor to let them in. "Believe me, professor, this is something that I think will interest you quite a lot."

Maddi also wasn't sure how the professor was supposed to help her. He was a geneticist, after all, if she remembered correctly. But she didn't want to say anything. She wasn't one for trusting grownups blindly, but Wes was a trustworthy person, and if he thought that the professor could help her, then there was a good chance he could.

Now if only the professor would just let them inside.

There was a long, pregnant pause hanging over the air, and Maddi could swear she heard the desert wind like in an old western to show an empty desert.

Then, finally, the professor replied with a very tired voice. "Very well… I'll take a look." With a rumble, the doors opened up, and the two of them stepped inside.

Maddi was surprised when she exited the elevator. Compared to the rundown shack on the surface, the inside of the professor's facility was spectacular. It was pristine, colored white and silver with blue lights glowing overhead, and electricity running through panels on the walls. It looked like something out of a science fiction show, like a starship, or a special lab. It was the most advanced stuff she'd seen since Silph Co. when she was a little girl. She didn't even want to think about how expensive all this must have been to install.

Professor Decker walked up to greet them, confirming her suspicions. Yeah, it really was their school professor, what a strange coincidence.

Maddi stared evenly at him. She didn't know if he'd recognize her or not. She was in his Pokemon Genealogy class, but she hardly ever spoke up. Maybe he wouldn't even notice…

He certainly didn't seem to recognize her, that was for sure.

"Wes, it's good to see you again," the professor said, a smile wrapping across his weathered face. He shook Wes's hand. "And this must be your daughter, Victoria? My, she's certainly grown up, hasn't she?"

Wes laughed and shook his head. "No, no, professor, she's just a classmate of my daughter's, from the Pokemon Academy."

"Ah, yes, I heard that some of the students were on a field trip from there, before I left," the professor mused.

Wes was surprised. "You were working at the Pokemon Academy, professor? I had no idea!"

"Ah, yes, well, I had to take a sabbatical, you see, there was a breakthrough in my research that required my immediate attention," the professor waved it off, like his sudden sabbatical hadn't been a major roadbump in Maddi's GPA. She scowled.

"Ah, yes, I understand," Wes said, nodding. "What was it you were working on, again? The evolution variance enhancement, was it?"

"Yes, yes," the professor muttered. For all his supposed enthusiasm about his work, he didn't seem very interested in talking about it, which made Maddi suspicious. He was acting kind of sketchy. But Wes didn't seem to notice.

"Now then, what is it you wanted to see me about? Who's this?" The professor turned to Maddi, looking at her directly for the first time. She stared back at him. Professor Decker stroked his beard thoughtfully, trying to place where he'd seen the girl before. She certainly looked familiar, and those eyes, one red and one blue, were definitely unique.

"This is Madison Whitmore," Wes introduced her, and she caught the way the professor's eyes lit up hearing that.

"…Whitmore… can't be…" He murmured, and the dawning realization faded away. He cleared his throat and returned his focus to her. "I see, I see, now, what can I do for the two of you? If this is some medical issue, like I said before, I'm not-"

"My eye hurts," Maddi cut him off, narrowing her eyes. "It hurts all the time, and I have severe headaches, too."

The professor cleared his throat again, a little shaken. "Yes, well, I'm sorry to hear that, but as I said before, I'm not a medical doctor, so-"

"You're a geneticist," she cut him off again. "I know that because I'm a student in one of your classes, professor."

That was a surprising revelation to Professor Decker, proving to Maddi what she'd already suspected, that he wasn't a very engaged teacher. "Ah, yes, I remember now… you are in my class, sorry, I've been so caught up in my work that it must have slipped my mind."

"No problem," she icily muttered. Then she turned to Wes. "Okay, what's going on here?"

Wes flinched. "What do you mean?" He asked, returning her glare with a stoic look. He did that quite well.

"Why are you taking me to a pokemon geneticist for my eye problem?" Maddi demanded. That wasn't normal, not by a long shot. She may not have known a lot about her parents' research, but she knew enough about pokemon genealogy to know that if Wes went to Professor Decker, then there was something else wrong, not just headaches.

Wes scowled, realizing that he needed to come clean. He sighed. "Madison… while you were asleep, the doctors took your bloodwork, and what they found, well…"

He turned to Professor Decker and took some papers out of his coat. He showed them to the old man, who ran his eyes over them with obvious disinterest, and then froze. The professor gasped, his eyes widening, and he looked through the sheet again.

"This… this is… I see. So that's why…"

"What?!" Maddi demanded impatiently. "What is it?"

"Come with me, young lady," the professor said, turning and walking down the hall. He didn't even stop to see if she was following him or not.

Maddi looked back at Wes, who shrugged his shoulders. With a groan, Maddi followed after the professor. At least that way, she'd get some answers.

Not that it was going to stop her now.

"What's going on?" She asked Wes again. "Tell me what's wrong with me."

"It's your DNA," Wes replied. Maddi stared at him in shock. Her DNA? What the fuck was wrong with her DNA?

"What do you mean?" She asked again. He just wasn't making any sense!

"When the doctors did your bloodwork, they found that… your DNA apparently… isn't fully human," Wes confessed.

Maddi stopped, letting that sink in.

"What do you mean I'm 'not fully human'?" She coldly demanded.

"That's not what I said," Wes quickly tried to explain, but she was having none of it.

"You said my DNA isn't fully human, right?" Maddi snapped. "So that means that I'm not fully human, that's what it means, isn't that the case?"

"Madison, it's a little more complicated than-"

"No, she's completely correct," Professor Decker called from down the hall. He was waiting outside a doorway.

Maddi wasn't exactly proud that she was correct. She quickly caught up to Professor Decker as Wes trudged behind her. But she stopped before the passed through the door.

There was something in the corner of her eye, and it was like a dagger. She whipped her head around to see massive door made of reinforced metal. It looked like a bank vault or an airlock, totally sealed by computers.

"What's that?" She asked in spite of herself. She wasn't the kind of person who would pry, but she couldn't resist.

"Don't go near that door," Professor Decker coldly ordered.

The shadow that crossed the professor's face made her realize that she was just a frail fifteen year-old girl. She flinched.

"Y-Yeah, sorry," Maddi said, gulping. "I was just curious, that's all."

Professor Decker waved it off, but it was clear that the atmosphere had changed. "No matter," he muttered. "Let's get you looked at, shall we?"

Maddi was no longer sure she could trust the professor. She glanced back at Wes, and saw that he was looking a little uncomfortable himself.

"Wes… I don't think…"

"You two are free to go if you like," Professor Decker said, turning and looking over his shoulder as he entered the lab. "But if you'd still like me to take a look at you and see if I can help you with those headaches of yours, then feel free to follow me."

Maddi swallowed. She was definitely feeling nervous, like she'd stepped into a horror movie. But at the same time, the throbbing feeling in her skull hadn't gone away, it had just gotten more intense since she'd arrived. If the professor had a way to make it stop, then she wanted to find out. She NEEDED to find out.

She ignored her bad feeling and followed him inside.

What she found in the professor's lab set her mind at ease. It wasn't some butcher shop of horrors with pokemon parts suspended in jars. In fact, it looked very much like a standard doctor's office, completely with an examining bed, although the massive computer on the wall was kind of an imposition.

"Please lay down on the table, Madison," the professor said, sliding on some latex gloves. "I need to draw some of your blood."

"More?" Maddi groaned. She'd been asleep the last time her blood was taken, but she didn't exactly LIKE feeling like a pincushion.

"It's necessary, if you want to find out for sure what's wrong with you," the professor assured her. And yet, for some reason, Maddi felt like the professor knew exactly what was wrong with her. But she did it anyway, hopping onto the examining bed and holding out her arm.

The professor drew out quite a bit of blood with the syringe, and took it over to a machine that Maddi guessed would be used to identify it. He put some of it in a little petri dish and slid it under the machine, looking at it through the lenses.

"Hm… I see… yes, that's quite fascinating…" the professor mumbled to himself. Maddi tapped the back of her foot against the table impatiently. He wasn't exactly the most reassuring person in the world, that was clear.

"Is anything wrong, professor?" Wes asked.

"It's as I suspected, that's all," the professor said, glancing up from the machine. He walked back over to them with a solemn expression on his face. "The doctors were right. This blood isn't normal human blood."

"Why do I get the feeling that isn't a surprise to you?" Wes narrowed his eyes at the professor. Professor Decker had been a lot of help in dealing with the Shadow Pokemon, but now Wes wasn't entirely sure he could trust him.

"I was only confirming what I already suspected… no, knew to be true," Professor Decker replied, turning to Maddi. "After all, I know why Madison's DNA is so… unusual."

"Why?" Maddi demanded.

The professor cleared his throat. "Because I was involved in the procedure, that's why," he replied. He quickly clarified, "with the full permission of your parents, of course."

It was like Maddi's entire world had come crashing down.

Oh, wow, that's quite a revelation! So Professor Decker is responsible for Maddi's DNA being so warped? What does it mean? And what do her parents have to do with all this? Where are things going to go from here?