* The Thief Game *
* Interlude One *
* The Girl Who Took A Phone Call *

Izzy Caruso never thought that she would get this far. Usually, she rage quit videogames halfway through. "Fuck!" she screeched, as her in-game blastoise was defeated. Her avatar woke up in the pokémon center after telling her she had blacked out. "If only that happened in real life…," she muttered.

"Izzy?" It was her dad. He poked his head into her open doorway. "You have a phone call."

She put her game-boy down on her old wooden desk. "Who is it?"

Her dad grimaced. Izzy knew that could only mean one thing. Well two actually, and she could only hope it was her cheating ex…

"It's your mother."

Not who she expected.

"Oh."

"She said your brother is missing, she wondered if you knew something about it."

Izzy's eyes narrowed. "Maybe Meowstic ran away. He'd be better off anywhere than with her." Meowstic was of course, her little brother's nickname. Their dad's family had an uncanny resemblance to the psychic type. She and her brother shared the same navy blue hair and white silver eyes. It didn't help that her brother often pretended to be one when he was younger.

"Izzy seriously, I'm worried too. And you know she won't talk to me." Her dad sighed, obviously tired of Kate's stubbornness.

"Yeah well, she doesn't exactly talk to me either…" Unpleasant memories of her mother drifted across her mind's eye. "She didn't even let me send Meowstic a starter. I could have sent him with Roomba." The little eevee was nowhere in sight. His dad was probably taking care of him somewhere. (Likely, in the Caruso's freezer as Rainbow was always trying to get his son to try to evolve into a glaceon like himself)

"Could have, but you weren't going to anyway."

"True. I wanted an electric type. It would be a waste of his energy to evolve him into anything else." He was named after a robot vacuum for a reason.

"He and Meowstic would have been a perfect match then."

Izzy pursed her lips, knowing it was likely true.

"Hey, isn't it around eleven in Kanto?" Izzy said suddenly, looking over at her clock.

"Yeah, I think so. She must be desperate to call us."

"I'll go talk to her," Izzy said, liking the idea.

Her dad didn't say anything else as she slipped by him and walked towards the kitchen. The Caruso's were many things, but poor was not one of them. The kitchen was half as large as the family's indoor battlefield in the basement, and the large archway windows made it appear even bigger. She could see the large field of empty grass and a sparse few trees behind the mansion stretch a ways back. Izzy almost bumped into the island counter, again, as she never got used to some of the renovations her dad had installed while she was away on her journey.

Wanting to prolong her talk with her mother, she twirled around on the black and white tiled floor and faced the large steel doors of the freezer. She opened them and sure enough, Rainbow was attempting to get a frozen-looking Roomba used to the cold. The little eevee's teeth were chattering. How the two managed to get in there in the first place was a mystery. "Out." She spoke sternly to her pokémon. Roomba was the first to dash out. Rainbow was a little more than annoyed to leave the nice and cold freezer into the heat of the kitchen, but her starter pokémon sauntered out anyway. (As slow as he wanted)

"Isabella?"

Izzy scowled at the sound of her full name. Nonetheless, she sat down on a red-seated stool in front of the video chat phone. "Here," she said somewhat annoyed. Roomba, clearly grateful from being freed, sat by her leg and began grooming himself.

Kate rolled her eyes—crystal clear on the latest model—and frowned. Despite her uptight stance, she did look genuinely worried. It almost made her feel bad for making her mother wait so long. Almost.

"Did he talk to you at all before he left?" About Meowstic right away of course, as Kate was all business. It made Izzy grateful she wasn't forced into small talk with her mother.

"No, I haven't talked to him in over a week. He was upset with me because I wouldn't give him Roomba." The eevee stopped mid lick to glance up at the sound of his name.

"It would have been a lot easier for everyone if you simply had given him a freshly caught pokémon. Aren't furfrou common in Kalos?"

Izzy suppressed a glare. She had suggested she just go capture a pokémon for him, but Kate wouldn't allow any pokémon that she had ever owned to go with her son. (She had to be ridiculously difficult.) A dozen arguments raced angrily around in her head, but she took a deep breath and forced them all away. "Fairly common," Izzy said instead. "Does he have a starter now?"

"I suppose… He went missing earlier today but he was only with Brent…" Kate bit her bottom lip and looked as if she were deep in thought. "He left a note in his room saying he started his journey, but this is entirely unlike him."

"Can I see the note?" Izzy asked.

Kate looked apprehensive at the question at first, but she eventually nodded, although reluctantly. "I'll send it over the system." Kate placed a slip of lined paper over her computer's transport device—much cheaper than the one on Izzy's side—and a notification popped up asking if she would like to receive the item. Izzy clicked the 'yes' option on the screen and the paper disappeared from her mother's side.

Izzy read the paper carefully while her mother watched expectantly. After a few minutes of rereading the paper, she spoke up. "You're right," Izzy said, irritated at the fact. She brushed some short navy blue hair out of her face. "this doesn't seem like something he'd say, at least." She thought over her next words carefully. "He would have called me before he left…"

Also, there was another fact bothering her. "Not sure why he'd name a pokémon Devin. It doesn't seem like his style."

Kate sighed. "Maybe he did get too excited. He's always rushing into things."

"It's a possibility," Izzy admitted. She bit her cheek thoughtfully. "Maybe it was this guy that convinced him to leave. I'm a little worried about that, but he's always been really good about stranger danger—especially when that boy went missing near where you guys live. You tried calling him?"

"Tried. He left his phone home. But that's not unusual of him."

"You know what, I'm going to Kanto. I'll see if Roy or Nightly can sense him." Izzy braced herself for her mother's response. But to her surprise, her mother only glared a little bit.

"Okay, but with my son, the same damn rules apply. Whenever you're around my boy, I don't want you talking about you-know-what or anything of the sort. Don't wear anything strange around him, don't swear; don't influence him in any way because if he turns out anything like you, I swear by every god I will make you pay."

Izzy gulped knowing her mother's words rang true.

* T * T * G *

Izzy packed what she needed into her very expensive brown leather bag. A tent, with all the luxuries a tent could have, including a sleeping bag and a nice mat that could be put under it to cushion the ground. Some repel, extra ultra balls, matches—not too many though, as she had Sweetheart for fires—and some more repel, more random assortments of pokéballs, special knifes just for skinning kills, and a helluva lot of dried food with pots and pans to go with it. It was a trainer's bag of course. It could fit all of that and more.

Roy helped pack, reminding her of little things here and there to throw in—even about the vulpix plush that she couldn't sleep without. She truthfully didn't know what she would do without the gardevoir helping her. Rainbow, as lazy as ever, was napping right next to a fan going full blast. Roomba, just the opposite, was busy chasing a bottle cap across the wooden floor. She wondered what she would do with him for a moment, but then decided she could handle seven pokémon in the wilderness.

"Do you have everything?" her dad asked, looking over her room. He eyed the posters she had yet to remove upon coming back, most likely reminding him of when Izzy was a young child, just starting out. Roy continued to put supplies into her bag.

"Yeah I think so. It should only take a day by plane to get to Kanto. But then there's the jet lag."

Her dad's brow creased. "What about your school? Isn't that why you came home in the first place?"

"We went over this, Dad," Izzy laughed. Her dad worried about her future so much. "And I told you, I came home early because I missed you and Meowstic. There's no trouble with me picking up in a few years when I'm eighteen or something."

"I'll miss you," He said miserably. Izzy noticed he was beginning to get tear up.

"H-hey, don't worry! I'll call you just like I did before. I have a satellite phone this time so I can call you even more." She rambled on to try to cheer him up but he just gave her a sad smile. "…I'll miss you too dad," she said, beginning to cry too.

Her dad reached out to his daughter and she rushed into his arms. "Thank you," he said, holding her tight.

"No, Dad, thank you. I couldn't be doing this at all without you."

* T * T * G *

The next morning, Izzy hoisted her bag onto her back, which was incredibly light thanks to advanced technology. Every one of her pokémon were returned to their balls except for Rainbow, who yipped excitedly at her feet. "Okay guys, lets do this," she said, heading onto the plane. Her pokémon's shimmery tail wagged with delight as he followed her.