A/N: Hey hey! Doing pretty good here guys! Just got back from a school camping trip here, which sucked like hell since it was so... boring. Bah. Anyway, been a while since I last updated this fic. I was pretty pleased with the reviews too, thanks to you guys all! Kudos man! On a side note, Happy Halloween to you guys and girls out there who celebrated. -Unlike me, I am holled up in my room... So sad..

Anyhow, sorry that I couldn't make a Halloween special chapter or something like that since my mind just went on a nosedive to hell after all the camping bullsit that happened to me on the past two weeks. Ugh, going on an internet withdrawal was just torture.

GirlFish: They'll meet the lake trio. I think. Haven't planned that far ahead yet.

Zeedmillionmon: Nope. Leo's pairing is, if that's not obvious enough, Lily. LxD shipping is closed forever, unfortunately.

Owldusk: Hehe. That moment was heavily anime-influenced. Btw, I was expecting that question. Here's my thought, well, imagine that there's a normal animal there, like say, chicken, and then there's something like Ariados (A spider the size of a small bike), Mightyena (A wild mutt, if there're any), etc etc. Did you honestly think that the chicken population would survive even a week with all these things, which could shot out lightning and fire and stuff, roaming around.

So, I improvise a bit. Why not just eat the over-abundant Pokemon? They eat each other so might as well join the food-chain.

Jewel moonstone: Nah, that's fine. Just slightly confused of what you mean. Thanks for the review, bro!

Phantomspirit12: The cover story, yeah. Seafood is like, the tastiest. Goddamn, I'm getting hungry. XD

Guest: 0-0 I forgot about that guy! OMG.

Hellllllppp: Bah. He unknowingly wanted to hunt and experiment on his own son, so I say fuck it and there you go!

DragonStar7Queen: Yep. Leo's gonna get a tough time handling her Roserade. The other two is pretty useless, so I wasn't too worried about our resident favourite OC. And D, you really humble me! No one has ever said that I was inspirating. More like gloomy. Lol. Thx, gal!

And that's that. Gotta cut this chapter short at the end but I hope you guys like it! Don't forget the usual stuff guys! Leave me lots of REVIEW. Click that FAV and FOLLOW button while you're at it. They're LOVE!

Chapter 16

After thirty minutes of walking through the rose maze, Danny was honestly feeling sick of it. Both the maze and the roses looked like they were howling with mocking laughter at him and Leo. It doesn't help that there were several CCTV camera set all over the place to watch their progress, which was abysmal so far. As if it wasn't enough, Leo kept walking in circles around the dead-ends, never realizing that he was just wandering in place for over twenty minutes.

It made the temptation to just phase through all these infernal bushes all that harder to resist. That or the urge to eradicate them all with a full-powered Ghostly Wail. Either works just fine for him.

"Leo." The raven-haired Trainer began, releasing a sigh filled with all the stress and fatigue not any fourteen year old could possibly bear. "We've been running around in circle for the past twenty minutes! Look! I even stacked all those stones to count!" Danny pointed to a stack of rocks in the corner where approximately twenty eight rocks stood erect on top of each other.

"So you were the one who made it!" Leo said, pointing at him with an accusatory tone, golden eyes darkening in annoyance.

"What's with the It's-your-fault vibe around you?" Danny asked, taking a shaky step back.

"I was looking for the difference in each path we took!" The redhead roared, hands on his head as he started to mess up his already messy, spiky red hair in obvious frustration. "Each time I walked through here, the number of rocks on that stack always increase by one, so I assumed that this was a completely different path from the previous one!" He reasoned.

Well, when you put it that way..

"Just how stupid can you be?" Nope. Wasn't his fault. Honestly, even a three-year old could probably tell something that obvious. "Admit it! You're just bad with directions, aren't you?" Danny accused, jabbing a finger to the shorter boy's chest.

"I-I'm not!" He denied, blushing.

"Aha! You stuttered!" Danny smirked. "Now, you will follow me. Don't run on your own, you got that?" Danny said in a tone that strangely reminded Leo of a parent who was teaching their particularly dimwitted son about safety protocols on a busy street, which was basically just common sense.

"What am I, a kid?" Leo grumbled.

"Got it?"

"Aye, aye cap'n" Leo rolled his eyes.

The two Trainer once again steadily made their way through the maze, this time making sure to pay extra attention on differences and making use of common sense in the case of Leo. Quickly, with Danny's superior sense of direction, the two were able to reach what appeared to be the end of the maze, a large automatic sliding metal gate.

"Well, that didn't took us too long." He said, slightly smug.

Leo just grumbled something inaudible under his breath, too low for even Danny's enhanced hearing to pick up before quickly brightening at the sight of the metal gate. Danny just shook his head at the younger Trainer, slightly baffled at his quick change of mood. He quickly catched up to the redhead just in time to see him press the red button with a large, yellow OPEN on top of it.

The gate slid open with a mechanical whirl and what greeted them was something that Danny would probably call nothing less than traumatic.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Danny and Leo threw their hands up and screamed bloody murder as they ran away from the group of Tangelas coming for them with almost an uncountable amount of tentacles and, disturbingly enough, manic perverted eyes. "Just what the hell is this!?" Danny screamed, turning his head to look at the gate one more time for clues.

And a clue he found. Above the gate was a large screen where the word ZONK blinked in red.

The halfa turned to the nearest camera he could find and scowled at it before flipping the middle finger at it. The camera clicked, signifying that it had snapped a photo of him and his awesome middle finger.

He could only scowl deeper.

A long while later..

"Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!" Gardenia chortled loudly as she eyed the pair of huffing Trainers in front of her. Pointing a finger, the auburn haired woman tried to make a comment on how amusing their journey was when another wave of euphoric laughter made its way out of her mouth, silencing whatever comment she could've make. "That- Hahaha- was the- Pfftt- most funny attempt I've ever viewed! Ahahahahaha!" The Gym Leader fell to her knees, banging her fist on the floor as she laughed.

Danny could only give her a half-hearted glare filled with unbridled irritation, too tired to give anything more from all the running he did from the horrible, traumatizing mass of perverted Tangelas.

Ugh.

Gardenia slowly gathered her cool and suppressed her amusement, switching to her more serious persona to address the challengers in front of her. "Well, I'll have to congratulate you on successfully making your way through my Rose Maze MK II." She began proudly.

'There's more than one version to it?' Danny thought with a sweatdrop trailling down the back of his head.

"So then, who's going to be the first challenger?" She asked, brown eyes sparkling in excitement. Leo happily raised his hand up and jumped up and down, declaring that he will be first. Gardenia nodded with a smile and led them to the arena where they will do the Gym Battle which was just the traditional soil covered arena.

The referee stepped to the side of the arena and raised both his flags. "This will be a three on three battle between Gym Leader Gardenia and Challenger Leo Hashiri. You may switch Pokemon in battle. Is there any questions?" Both Trainers shook their head negatives and the referee nodded. With the rules laid out, both Leo and Gardenia pulled out their respective Pokeball and released their first.

"Come on out, Starly!"

"Bloom, Cherubi!"

'There goes the quips.' Danny thought to himself as Starly appeared in the air from his Pokeball while a cute, pink, cherry-like Pokemon appeared on the ground. Danny looked at the admittedly cute looking Pokemon with interest before fishin out his Pokedex for a quick scan of it.

"Cherubi, the Cherry Pokemon. All of the nutrients needed for evolution are contained in its small ball. Cherubi becomes redder as it is exposed to sunlight, and is almost ready to evolve once the smaller ball buds." The Pokedex's synthetic voice droned, a picture of Cherubi displayed on its screen. In terms of battle advantages, Leo's Starly definitely trumps over the Cherubi but Danny decided to hold his judgement and see what would happen.

"Begin!" The referee cried out, bringing his flags down.

Almost immediately, Gardenia began her attack. "Cherubi, start things off with Lucky Chant, follow it up with Magical Leaf and Leech Seed on Starly!" Cherubi hastened to do as she was tasked and began chanting something under her breath, a blue glow surrounding her body as she did.

"Starly, dodge and counter-attack when there's a chance with Air Cutter!" Starly nodded and quickly flew away from the Cherry Pokemon's direct line of sight, just in time to dodge several sharp-edged, multicolored leaves. Numerous other glowing leaves quickly followed their predessors, flying through the air and lodging themselves on the wall as Starly nimbly dodged each and everyone of them, even throwing in his own Air Cutter every once in a while.

Cherubi suddenly spun its ball around, making it look like a spining wheel of pink with how fast she was spinning it before flinging out numerous green seed in a way that reminded Danny of a machine gun. The Seed joined the Magical Leaves ontheir journey towards Starly, who struggled to dodge the two different kind of ammunition shot at him.

"Make a nosedive and give her an Air Cutter when you're low enough!" Leo ordered. Starly gave a brief nod at the order before quickly performing a rear flap and nosediving down to the ground, momentarily surprising Cherubi with the highly trained aerobatic skill he possessed. With one flap of his wings, Starly released an Air Cutter towards the stunned Cherubi.

"Cherubi, dodge now!"

Cherubi attempted to dodge but it was too late, the Air Cutter was too close now for her to dive to the side. And then, when things looked so bleak and hopeless, a blue glow appeared around her and Cherubi, miraculously, slipped from a small pebble behind her feet, just in time to dodge the Air Cutter which was just milimeters away from her face and let the Flying-type move fly over her and into the another wall.

"WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT!?" Leo roared, pointing at the lucky dodge the Cherubi just performed.

Gardenia smirked and put her hands on a victory sign. "Lucky Chant, success!" She winked at Leo, causing the boy to gape at her. "This is why rookies are so predictable! They never bother to train their Pokemon on support moves." She complained, unknowingly hitting Leo with an arrow to the heart.

Leo turned his head to face Danny with an expression that loosely fit with his in the middle of science class, which was to say: confused and lost. With a sigh, Danny began his explanation. "Lucky Charm prevents critical hits to reach the user." He said.

"What!?" Leo screamed, shocked. "That's so hax!"

In the blink of an eye, Gardenia had somehow changed into a samurai costume, complete with two-horned helmet and Katana. "All is fair in love and war!" She quotted with a distinctive fake masculine voice.

'She's like a bad combination of Gale and Leo..' Danny thought with a sweatdrop before a horrified expression appeared on his face. '..Oh god! There are two of them!?'

"Cherubi! Fire!" And then, another barrage of Magical Leaf and Leech Seed took off into the air towards the airborn Starly who once again dodged them all as best as he possibly could. However, no matter how nimble and agile the Starling Pokemon is in the air, it was just impossible for him to dodge hundreds of Magical leaf and Leech Seed all at once and started to take damage.

Stray Magical Leaves bite into him, drawing a thin bloody line on his body while some Leech Seeds managed to land and pop on him, covering him in what looked like a cross between mold and weed.

"Starly!" The bird turned to his trainer. "Get in close and hit her with Wing Attack!"

Starly nodded, holding back a wince as several pair of Magical Leaf lodged themselves onto his back and sides before swerving to the side, wings glowing white with power as he plowed through the storm of leaves. Starly quickly appeared in front of the Grass-type pokemon and slashed his wings down to attack. Cherubi though, with a surprising speed, dodged the attack by jumping back forcing Starly to use a standard Tackle just so he could land a damage to her.

"Gust!" Starly quickly spun and brought his wings together for a mighty flap, summoning a gust of wind strong enough to throw Cherubi back and slamming into a wall.

::Kyah!:: Cherubi cried out in pain.

"Cherubi!" Gardenia hurried over to her Pokemon, concerned for her well being. Leo politely held Starly back from continuing his assault. "Are you okay?" The orange haired girl asked concernedly, holding the small Cherry-like Pokemon in her arms.

::I-I'm fine.. I can still fight!:: Pumping her arms, Cherubi spoke determinedly.

"Alright, if you say so." Gardenia smiled before letting her off of her. "Right. Let's kick their butts!" Cherubi nodded before hopping off back to the arena, face to face with Starly who had decided that the break was better used to pluck off the annoying leaves on his body rather than dilly-dalying.

"Righty then. Starly, Wing Attack!" Starly shot forward, wings stretched out and glowing with the intent to ram into the Cherry Pokemon with all the force of a marching Tauros.

"Jump up and Take Down!" Cherubi leapt up into the air, just seconds before the glowing wings would crash onto her tiny body, before rocketing down to Starly's back, eliciting a cry of surprise and pain from the Starling Pokemon as he slammed face-first to the ground. Starly groaned, shaking his head to numb the pain of getting sandwhiched into the ground before using his wings to shakily stand back to his feet.

"Starly, Trick Star Combo!" Starly nodded at him and started to produce copies of himself using Double Team, encircling Cherubi inside a circle made out of the Starling Pokemon's afterimages. All the copies stretched their wings wide simultaneously before flapping them rapidly, producing the star-shaped attack that was easily identified as the Normal-type move, Swift.

::Try dodging this. Only 30% of all these Swift are real, can you dodge the real ones?::

Cherubi glowed several times at the start of the attack, managing to dodge the real Swift by a hair's breath or by some extremely dumb luck, courtesy of the previously used Lucky Chant. Unfortunately for her, it seems that her luck couldn't save her from all the real Swift as she was quickly getting hurt from several of the real ones, mistaking the false images for the true attack.

"Cherubi, use Petal Blizzard to destroy the Double Team and find the real one!" Gardenia ordered hastily, worried for her Pokemon's health.

Cherubi cried out an affirmative before spinning her ball above her head so quick it looked like a pink, blurry halo on top of her head. Then, glowing petals shot out by the hundreds from the blurry halo, quickly dispatching all of the gathered Double images while simultaneously countering some of the incoming Swifts. The images dissipated, like a blown smoke, before disappearing as if they were never there. Starly was nowhere to be found.

"Huh? Where?" A shape appeared above her head. "Look up!" Cherubi and Gardenia looked up, only to fine one misfired swift. "Eh?"

::You're wide open!:: Starly appeared from behind one particularly large rock formation in the arena and quickly shot forward, ramming a pair of super-powered Wing Attack to Cherubi's abdomen before throwing her into another rock formation.

"Cherubi!" Gardenia called out. When the dust cleared, Cherubi was seen laying unconscious one the rubble.

The ref raised the red flag on his left hand, Leo's flag, and loudly declared the first win of the match. "Cherubi is unconscious and unable to battle! Leo and Starly wins!" Leo cheered and Starly broke into a proud grin, raising his wings to the air in celebration. "Your next Pokemon please."

"Starly, let's switch you out." Starly nodded and heaved a sigh as the red beam of his Pokeball sucked him back into its confines. Leo pulled out another one of his Pokeball and threw it to the air, where it popped open and released his Ponyta in all of her flaming glory. "Hiya, girl!" He greeted the Fire Horse Pokemon, who whined back in greeting.

Leo gently stroked the mare's burning mane, mildly surprised that it didn't burn him in the least as he inspected her healed leg. "How's your leg?" He asked.

Ponyta whined at him. ::It's doing fine. It doesn't hurt anymore so I'm doing pretty good.:: The Fire Horse gently smiled at her trainer, secretly happy that he cared enough to ask her of her condition before battling instead of sending her charging blindly to a fight. That was another good point for the excitable, happy-go-lucky trainer in her eyes.

"Good." He smiled at her. "That's really good." Leo then broke into an excited grin as he pointed towards the arena where Gardenia's next Pokemon, a Turtwig, was standing. "Right. Let's go kick some ass! This'll be our first official battle-" He refused to accept that his first battle with Ponyta was with those ghosts. Nope. Forget it. "-and we're gonna go with a bang!"

::Sure.:: Ponyta replied politely.

The ref nodded to the both of them and raised both his flags. "The second battle between Challenger Leo and Gym Leader Gardenia.. begins!" Simultaneously, both Pokemon shot into action, dashing towards each other for a very hands-on approach to their battle.

"Ponyta, Agility and Flame Charge!" Ponyta's speed rocketed tremendously as her body was soon engulfed in brilliant red flames, charging towards the incoming Tiny Leaf Pokemon.

"Counter her with Light Screen and Strength!" Gardenia ordered in response. Turtwig nodded and summoned a glass-like barrier in front of him while his body glowed white with Strength.

Both Pokemon clashed, burning fire pushing against adamantine glass wall. Ponyta pushed hard, using the momentum gained through her higher speed to push against the persistent defense standing between her and her opponent. Turtwig similarly struggled, trying to hold his ground against the bigger and faster opponent before him with the power boost from Strength to even the game.

"Ponyta, don't give up!" Leo cheered.

"Hang in there, Turtwig!" Gardenia followed Leo's example and gave her own moral support for her Pokemon.

Both pokemon gritted their teeth, trying their hardest to push the other back and assert dominance over one another. Ponyta took a slow step back as the Light screen pushed forward, the power Turtwig was gaining from Strength slowly overpowering her diminishing momentum.

It took nothing but several second for Leo to formulate a plan to turn the table and with an evil grin that would even frighten the unflappable Grovyle, Leo gave his order. "Ponyta, Bounce and then follow it with Flame Wheel and Stomp!" Ponyta hastily complied and using her back leg as a propeller, leapt up into the air, high above the ground.

"What?" Gardenia looked up in shock. To be fair, seeing a horse, let alone a flaming horse, jump up several feet into the air was pretty bizzare in and of itself, so we couldn't really blame her for her surprise.

Turtwig rocketed forward with the loss of an opposing force to hold him in place, tripping on his own feet before falling face first into the ground. The light screen, slightly cracked and battered, disappeared from view. Seeing her chance, Ponyta performed a salto in mid-air, flames burst from her hooves and forming a ring of burning fire around her body.

Meanwhile, Danny had to restraint himself from pointing out the fact that it was impossible for a horse, which was rather stiff in the back, to perform a move that bordered on acrobatic like Ponyta did.

With a ring of fire around her and a glowing hoove below her, Ponyta plummeted to the ground with the face-down Turtwig as her landing mattress.

"Dodge! Ohmygod, Turtwig dodge!" Gardenia screamed in panic. Pokemon Center or not, it doesn't look like the damage from this attack was something that could be repaired in a lifetime. Luckily, Turtwig, despite his slight confusion, managed to roll to the side and instead of having himself turn into a bloody pancake on the ground, he only got himself some pretty nasty burn and thrown off the the side from the shockwave behind the attack.

"Was that overkill?" Leo scratched the back of his head.

"That was overkill, alright." Danny deadpanned from his seat. "Luckily, the little dude managed to roll off and away."

After Gardenia managed to calm herself down from her mini-panic attack and making sure that she wasn't about to have a meltdown, she proceeded to march over to the red-haired Trainer and berate him, or more like scream at him, to learn some restraint, driving her point by some well aimed punch. Leo, naturally, apologized with an apologetic smile, promising to make it up to the Gym Leader by sharing his cookie supply.

Gardenia deadpanned at him.

"What?" Leo asked, bewildered. "Sharing cookies are a sign of good will! You shoudn't look down on them just because they aren't as large or fulfilling as some other two-bit, instant food!" Leo lectured.

Gardenia face palmed. Didn't he know that she's a vegan and on diet? Gee..

"Ehem!" The ref fake-coughed to his fist. "Shall we continue this?"

TBC

Aaand, cut! Well, what do you think guys? Good? Bad? Leave your comments on review!

See ya around! -Silvershark fang