A/N: part two, in which our heroes discover the joys of friendship and paperwork... dun Dun DUUUUNNN!

Chapter Two: Hilbert

Remind me to keep my mouth shut next time.

Oh sure Bianca, the pokémon are small and cute. They would never be able to ruin the room. Ha ha. We were wrong. Plus my brand new, untrained tepig decided that it would be lovely to take a crap right on my left boot.

At first it was two separate battles going on; me and Bianca versus Hilda and Cheren. Then Bianca's snivy dodged one of my tackles and I hit Cheren's oshawott by accident. Hilda got mad and she and Cheren ganged up on me. Bianca didn't like that and it then became a four-way battle. The battle ended with all of our pokémon exhausted and Mom's study and the hallway destroyed.

"So we really are sorry Mom," I said as I finished our story. "It's just that we got a little carried away."

"And how much got broken?" she asked. "I could hear the battle from down here."

"Four vases and some of your books," Cheren said quickly, trying to cover.

"One of the bookshelves," Bianca added also. I agreed on that. You can't destroy books in the study without obliterating the bookshelves, but Mom didn't need to know more.

"My Wii," Hilda said in a huff. I rolled my eyes... Hilda and that stupid Wii.

Mom's eyes shifted from person to person among the four of us. She could tell there was something we weren't telling her. Her stare focused on me until I cracked. "Dad's Order of Dragons got smashed," I said quietly. Mom's eyes expanded to twice their normal size.

The Order of Dragons, the highest honor any Unovan can receive, is for extreme heroism in the face of Danger. Years ago, when Dad was still a ranger, he was the only one who volunteered to head over to another faraway region to deal with a problem they were having. He didn't make it home.

The medal- two swirled teardrops, one pearl and one jet, hung on a crimson cord- was mostly an apology from the government for sending him over there. The situation had been far more dangerous than anyone expected. The result: no dad and each of his surviving family members got a stipend to live off of for the rest of their life.

I would have preferred that Dad had survived.

To be blunt, Mom was pissed. She tossed the four of us out of the house and 'suggested' that we get on our way as soon as possible. Bianca went to her house to grab some potions for our exhausted pokémon and Cheren, Hilda and I waited for her at the front of professor Juniper's lab.

When she was beyond late again, I began to get nervous. Hopefully nothing had distracted her from grabbing the potions and getting out of there.

When she still didn't show up, I became worried. "I'm going to head over to her house," I told the others. See what happened."

"Okay," Cheren said.

I started down the path then stopped. The bag and jacket I was carrying were heavily laden for travel. I shucked them off and left them in a pile next to Hilda. "Watch my stuff," I said.

I took off at a jog down the lane to Bianca's house. I had just passed Mister Renfrew's guano covered house as Bianca let herself out of the front gate to her house. I went up next to her and saw that she was close to crying.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She sniffed. "Papa doesn't want me to go." Her welling tears began to fall. "He doesn't think I can do it."

I scoffed. "You totally can!" I reassured. "Who was the best in identification at school?"

"I was," she said through a sniff.

"Yeah! And no one is supposed to be awesome when they first start out. That's why they call it a journey," interrupted Mister Renfrew from his garden.

There. A hit of a smile. My ingenious plan was working. I rutched around in my pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to her. She used it to wipe her eyes and then loudly blow her nose.

"Thank you, Hilbert," she said. She resat her hat on her head and set her shoulders.

"You're welcome," I said. We began to walk back to the lab. I caught a glance of Bianca's father glaring at us through one of the front windows of her house. The message was clear: 'Hurt her and die.'

We made it back to the lab without any more incidents. The lab was more of an add-on to her house than an actual laboratory. The first floor was one giant room subdivided by bookshelves and stainless steel tables piles with books of every sort. In one corner, where the professor did most of her research, the books spilled onto the floor. I spied a treatise on the origination of the pokeball and its role in domestication and Kick-It! A Modern Guide to Fighting Types autographed by the author among the mess.

Professor Juniper is pokémon historian. She is also the league distributor in the area. Her smile was bright and her light brown hair had been swept up into a clip formed from two halves of a pokeball.

I smiled back. I knew that one of her favorite things was giving pokémon to new trainers and sending them off on their adventures.

"Are all of you ready?" she asked in a cheery voice.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Bianca. The rest of us nodded.

"I have your pokedices on the table over there." She pointed to a table with slightly less books than the rest. In a tiny cleared area, four electronic devices waited, powered off.

I was first over there and snagged the darker red one. "Hilda," I called out, "what color do you want?"

"Does she have pink?" Hilda asked as she made her way around a particularly precarious pile. I glanced at the other ones. There was a blue one, a green one and one that was red, but had a slight opalescent sheen to the enamel.

"Yeah," I said.

"Cool, I'll take it." I tossed the pink dex over to her. It sailed in an arc past Cheren and over the professor's head.

"GAH!" Juniper cried. "Hilbert, do be careful with those devices. You only get one." I wasn't worried. A pokedex can survive being run over by a gigalith and remain unscathed. Still she was the league representative.

"Sorry, Professor."

Cheren grabbed the blue-grey pokedex and Bianca the spring green.

"If all of you come here, I can officially register you and chip your starters," the professor said.

"Bianca, you're first."