14

Attack of the Loud Hiker... Kicked Off the Bus... The Spirit Guides Set Out

Moon Child had been quite intent on not hanging out with Youngster Joey and Officer Jenny before she realized what a problem the desert surrounding the Ruins of Abundance was going to be.

At first she had simply charged in on Tauros, blasting through the dunes at ninety miles an hour, trampling wild Pokémon and scaring people who were hiking around or trying to study the flora and fauna of the region. But before too long, she realized that she kept seeing the same stack of four round rocks and the same blonde hiker picking his teeth with a cactus needle. No matter which way she made Tauros run, she kept returning to these two landmarks. It was like the desert was warping around itself to keep her in one spot.

"What the dick," she complained.

"You need a spirit guide, little girl!" the blonde hiker shouted. His voice was ridiculously loud—inappropriate even for an outdoor area such as a windy desert. Moon Child clamped her hands over her ears.

"Yep!" the hiker bellowed. "A spirit guide! That's what you need!"

"I got it," Moon Child told him.

"Reckon you can't get through here at all without a spirit guide!"

"Be quiet," Moon Child ordered.

"Desert's too tough to navigate without someone who can listen to the whispers of the earth!"

"Shut up!"

The hiker advanced on Moon Child, jovially picking at a canine tooth and speaking louder still. "Did you know that?" he asked.

"You idiot!" Moon Child screamed. "Yes, I know it!"

"That's why you need a spirit guide!" Spittle flew from the hiker's mouth and hit Moon Child on the collarbone. She heeled Tauros around and charged away from the hiker. But less than a minute later, there he was again, in front of her, next to the pile of four stones.

"Hi again, little girl!" he roared, waving with both hands. "Hey, did you find a spirit guide yet?"

"You mother fucker," Moon Child cried in despair.

"Listen!" the hiker yelled. "I'm telling you: spirit guide! That's what you need, for sure!"

"I'm going to kill you," Moon Child said.

"What?" the hiker's voice blasted.

"I'm going to murder you in the desert," Moon Child told him.

"I couldn't hear you!" the hiker yelled friendlily.

"You're dead," Moon Child said. "You're finished."

"Hey," the hiker pointed out, "you should think about finding a spirit guide!"

Moon Child bit her heels into Tauros' sides and the Pokémon charged forward with a brutal roar. The hiker's eyes widened and he dove out of the way. Moon Child's Tauros missed him by mere inches.

"That's not the way to find a spirit guide!" the hiker yelled. Moon Child circled back around and came at him again.

"Hey, cut it out!" the hiker's incredible voice cried. "That's dangerous!"

"Hya!" Moon Child shrieked victoriously as she came back around. One of Tauros' horns hooked the hiker under an arm and spun him into the air.

"Whoa there!" he shouted. "Ouch!"

Moon Child charged off, back toward Tapu Village. "If I come back and see you again, you're getting trampled," she warned the hiker.

"You should bring a spirit guide when you come back!" the hiker shouted to her, waving goodbye.

Moon Child decided that, even though she hated the loud hiker with every fiber of her being, he was correct about spirit guides, and that she wanted to hang out with him again even less than she wanted to hang out with Youngster Joey and Officer Jenny, who both happened to be renowned for their ability to navigate the spirit realm.

"She just thought about us, and how much she wants to see us!" Officer Jenny exclaimed happily, still aboard the Desert Bus. "I smelled it!" She planted both boots against the back of the seat in front of them and kicked merrily. The old woman sitting in the seat spun around with murderous rage in her eyes.

"Stop it!" she screamed. "This bus ride is awful enough without you kicking the seat every ten seconds!"

"You wanna go downtown?" Jenny asked.

"I'll get you thrown off the bus! I don't care if you are a police officer!"

"Police officer?!" Youngster Joey cried, suddenly finding himself whipped into a paranoid frenzy. Then he realized the old woman was just talking about Officer Jenny, and he relaxed again. Jenny had fallen into a habit of kicking the seat each time she had a new thought, and with the amount of psychedelic drugs she had eaten in the past ten hours or so, the thoughts were coming fast and furious. She and Youngster Joey had already been ejected from several different seats by angry passengers, and it looked like the old woman might exile them again, to yet another part of the bus.

"Jenny, shhhhhh," Youngster Joey pleaded. "Make your legs be quiet and stop kicking."

"No can do, mi amour," she told him apologetically, and rammed her heels into the seat again. "They're sovereign legs now. I lost any influence I had over their warlike nature almost an hour ago."

"Stop it!" the old woman screamed again, and whipped her purse over the back of the seat at Officer Jenny. The purse flapped in her face, spilling old lady things all over the place. Purple lipstick, a bleary clamshell mirror, and a packet of tissues rained down into Jenny's lap.

"Quit kicking, quit yelling, and quit fighting," the bus driver suddenly ordered everyone over the PA system. "If I hear one more kick or yell, I'm gonna throw everyone out into the desert. Even myself."

Jenny kicked the seat and loosed a victory yell.

Ten minutes later, after the bus driver had finished bodily hurling each and every one of the passengers out the door and into the sand, he took a running leap himself and joined them in the heap. "Ouuugh," he moaned.

"You fools! You got us all kicked out!" the old woman yelled.

"Moon Child! She's near!" Youngster Joey suddenly realized. His eyeballs flicked nervously around before settling in an eastward direction. "Over there!"

Officer Jenny crawled out from underneath the old woman. She was sweating furiously. "You're right! She's in need of us! Her spirit guides!"

"That's what I kept telling her," the blonde hiker yelled. The place the bus driver had stopped to throw everyone out happened to be within the endless loop where the hiker had spoken so loudly to Moon Child. "She needs spirit guides!"

Youngster Joey and Officer Jenny started happily off for Tapu Village, grateful for this newest objective.