I was originally going to make Gamma the only Porygon that floated, mostly due to what it said in the pokedex, but decided not to due to the fact that Porygons and Porygon 2s float in almost all the media I've seen them in (such as Pokemon Stadium and the anime).
Chapter 29: Play Time
I punched Ember right in the face and made him fly quite far away. Unfortunately, while I was distracted with Ember, Rocky head butted me from behind. I turned around and kicked him making him fly away too, but by that time Ember had gotten back up and torched me before I had a chance to react.
Luckily, Ziggy attacked him while he wasn't paying attention, so I thanked her by punching her as well. Rocky tried to sneak up behind me, but he still didn't understand that I could see his every move. Just as he was about to hit me over the head with a bat, I jumped over him, grabbed him, and threw him against the wall.
When he got up, he sent a bolt of thunder in my direction. I jumped and it hit Ziggy instead. Ember jumped back into the fray trying to shoot fire at all of us. His limited range only hit Ziggy and Rocky, so I was safe.
Scheming, I grabbed a bomb that was nearby and threw it at the three of them. Ember's fire detonated it, causing an explosion that threw the three of them sky high. They flew into the background where they disappeared into little stars.
"From where did you obtain the explosive, Private?!" Ember asked, in military mode from the battle in the game.
"Ember, do you even know what a private is?" I asked.
Ember thought about it for a while, "No, not really. My dad just told me to call my friends privates when in battle. Now seriously, where'd you get the bomb?"
"I thought I told you that items pop out at random. Look, Rocky's got it down already."
"I'm getting bored with this game. It's hard for me to use the control and Jonathan keeps winning," Rocky complained.
"Fine, let's do something else then."
"How about we go outside? I'm getting bored of being cooped up in this room!" Ziggy suggested.
"Hey, Jonathan, how about we go to that arcade thing you were talking about a few days ago?" Wow, I had completely forgotten about that. "This time we won't have to worry about a random trainer trying to catch us."
"Just in case, let's convince Mark to come with us this time."
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Pen and paper makes relaying messages to those who speak a different language, but read the same letters, a lot easier. It's hard when you don't have fingers, though. How can I pick up stick to battle, but not pens, spoons, nor bananas? I thought as I walked. Fate must hate me.
The reason Mark was taking us to the arcade and not Jenny was the fact that Jenny was at work. Jenny would've taken us with her, but looking after four pokemon is a little bit harder than looking after three. Looking after no pokemon was ten times easier, of course.
Mark had agreed to keep watch over us as she worked. He thought of it as extra training whiles his broken leg healed, mentioning something about having to look after six at once. I was grateful that he agreed to help, seeing as it was easy to keep up to someone with crutches.
Everyone seemed to be looking forward to the trip; I could feel it in my horns. Ember was impatient, having missed the opportunity to go before. Rocky wanted to learn something new, like he always did. Ziggy was just happy to get out of the house and into fresh air. Mark, he was eager too. He probably hadn't gone in a while due to his leg. I hadn't gone in a while either due to my current condition.
"So it's going to be like the games we were playing back at Mark's house, but bigger?" Rocky asked.
"You could put it that way," I answered, "Our time at play is going to be limited, though."
"Why?"
"We need quarters to play, and when Mark runs out we're gonna have to go home," Ember explained.
"How many quarters did he bring?"
"I think he brought enough for us too," Ziggy answered, "We were the ones to suggest going to the arcade, after all."
A car sped by and splashed me with water from a nearby puddle. The water caused me to flinch and take a few steps backwards. I bumped into Rocky, who had his back turned to me. Startled, he released a bit of his electricity, and due to the fact that I was wet, the damage meant for Rocky went for me. "Whoops," Rocky said.
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It was a good thing Mark always brought a spare potion with him everywhere he went, otherwise we would've had to go back home…. I think he was expecting something to happen to me (and so did Ember, and so did Ziggy, and so did Rocky… well, I'm not sure about Rocky).
Anyways, we made it to the arcade without more events to speak of. As expected, there were a lot of kids there playing already, as were some teenagers and a few adults. You could tell a couple of them were trainers by the poke balls they wore on their belts. A few of them had their pokemon out with them, some capable of playing games as well.
After looking around a bit, I found my favorite game. If you don't remember, it's one of those shooters with the plastic guns. And for once, there was no line!
I ran straight for it before anyone else got to it before me.
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"Jonathan, how long have you've been trying to reach the gun at the top of that game?" Rocky asked.
"Five minutes. It sucks to be a foot tall."
"Can I try going up there?"
"Sure, go ahead," at that moment, Rocky jumped onto my head, then jumped again to reach the top. A little warning wouldn't've hurt. "C'mon, Jonathan! It's easy!"
"For you it may be. You jump from branch to branch every day, while I just climb them. I'm not all that good at jumping, just so you know."
Rocky sat down to think for a moment. He looked to his side at the plastic gun connected to the game by a thick cord. "I've got an idea!" he said. He threw the gun to the floor. I saw where he was going with this and climbed the plastic gun's cord.
"Thanks Rocky," I said when I got up. I undid the bow on my bowtie and a few quarters dropped from the unraveled neckwear. I then retied my bowtie and gave a quarter to Rocky. "Wanna play?"
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At first, it was hard to hold onto the gun. The moment I tried to grab it I realized it was not going to be easy. After a while, I managed to wrap my arm around it and used my left arm to pull the trigger (think 'cute'). It was tricky, but it worked.
Rocky mimicked what I was doing, but it was harder for him due to his shorter height (that's cute too). He did well, though, and managed to hit some of his targets.
We managed to get pretty far, but I was sure we would need more practice before we would be able to beat the whole game.
"GAME OVER, TRY AGAIN." Maybe later, you money-eating machine.
"So what do we play now?" Rocky asked.
"Let's go see if Ember or Ziggy can think of anything," I suggested.
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We found Ember on a fighting game, playing as some army guy. Ziggy had just finished some game. I wasn't there to see what she was playing, so I didn't know what she played.
We discussed what kind of game we should play next. Most games here were for only one or two players, so we were pondering for a while. After a bit of discussing, I came up with a solution. I suggested we play a game designed for one person at a time, but if used right, we could play it at once.
I took them to the game and made them stand in specific locations. Ziggy was on the right, Rocky on the left, Ember at back, and me up front. I took four more quarters from my bowtie and placed them in the game. After a bit of arguing, we decided to take turns picking.
Ember picked first, and we found ourselves jumping up and down to hip-hop.
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The sun was setting and the arcade was closing. Even though Mark was limited to playing games that didn't involve physical movements, he was satisfied with what he played. Me and the other pokemon, however, were not limited, and worked up quite a sweat.
"We almost got a perfect!" Ember groaned.
"We would've, if that kid hadn't let go of the basketball in mid swing," I said. "I'm sure I would've gotten it right if it hadn't gone straight for me."
"That was funny!" Rocky stated, "You looked funny trying to get up in time to keep up!" Ember and Ziggy snickered at the memory of me scrambling to my feet.
Basketballs are a lot more painful when you're less than two feet tall.