The Christmas holiday (which was awesome BTW) gave me a lot of time to brainstorm new ideas. As far as the story is goes, its finished, but its finished in my head, all I need to do is put it on paper... Well, you know what I mean.

Chapter 17: Can anybody hear me?

Rita woke up, still tired from sleeping. She wasn't feeling that great, but she was sure she would feel better if she got out of bed and got active.

She inched her way to the edge of the bed and dropped down to the floor as gracefully as her stiff body could muster. She yawned loud and wide, stopping mid yawn when she realized there were other people sleeping, she didn't want to accidentally wake them.

She looked at the bed where Isaac slept, it was empty and already made, but she wasn't worried, she figured he was eating in the cafeteria or something.

Lloyd on the other hand, as far as Rita could tell, was in his bed, the covers over his head, hiding his entire body. He didn't make a single noise as he slept.

"Better not wake him." She wasn't being concerned about Lloyd at all, she just was remembering the first time she woke him up, and how much worse it would be now that he'd evolved. If he was still asleep when she got back, she would just throw a book at him or something.

She left the room, heading for the cafeteria for some breakfast. Unlike what she had thought, Lloyd wasn't in bed at all, if she had looked closer, she would have seen that the lump was merely a pillow that had happened to have the covers thrown over it, making it look like Lloyd was still asleep.

---

Lloyd wandered the halls of the brotherhood, confused and desperate for help. He tried to wake Rita, but his tiny body couldn't even reach the top of the bed, and Isaac was gone.

Luckily for Lloyd, Isaac didn't close the door tightly behind him, so he managed to push the door open by using all his strength.

As usual, the hall was frantic with pokemon going in every direction, none of them stopping to even look at Lloyd, as if he was invisible.

"Hey, could someone help me!" He tried to say, but all that came out of his mouth was a strange squeak, it sounded like baby talk.

What happened to my voice! Lloyd thought to himself. This cant be... Am I gonna be like this forever? I need to find help.

Lloyd figured the best place to look would be the cafeteria, since that seemed to be where most people went this early in the morning. Hopefully there he would find Ewan or Isaac, and that they would help him.

Lloyd didn't notice, but two brotherhood members had stopped to take notice of him, a Houndour and Rhydon.

"Where do you think he came from?" Asked the Rhydon, referring to the confused looking Lloyd.

"Probably a run away from the nursery, its not that far from here. Lets go get him and bring him back before he gets hurt."

"Ok, but lets hurry, breakfast is almost over."

---

Despite his hunger, Isaac didn't go to the cafeteria right away. Instead he went straight to the mail room, hoping to talk to Jennifer before she got to busy. He didn't see her at all in the front room, so he went back to look for her, he didn't find her until he went down to the database room, she was right where she was last time he saw her, asleep in front of the computer.

Isaac didn't realize it at first, but this meant that nobody got their mail yet, and anytime now pokemon would be marching here in herds in search of their daily mission.

Oh no, Jennifer is gonna get in trouble. I should have woke her up last night... I gotta make this up for her. Isaac thought hard about what to do, his little Piplup brain working a mile a minute. I got it! I'll do the mail for her! How hard could it be?

---

Rita was in the cafeteria, alone, sitting at a table eating nothing except a single fruit, a tropius banana, her favourite food in the whole world.

She wondered to herself where Isaac went, ever since coming here he has been acting weird. She had to go look for him as soon as she was finished eating.

Then she thought about Lloyd, and his new evolved form. Rita was always a little afraid of evolving, she had seen the size of her evolutions, Bayleaf and Meganium, and she thought she would never get used to the difference. But even since Lloyd evolved, she'd been thinking it might not be a bad idea to train so she could evolve, and maybe become even stronger then Lloyd had become.

"Excuse me."

The voice surprised Rita, who wasn't paying attention. She turned and saw the voice came from a charmander, at first she had thought, despite his capture, it was Zar coming to get her, but this one looked incredibly nervous, he was even chewing on the tip of his claw, making look even more nervous.

"What do you want?" Rita asked, a bit more rudely then she intended.

The charmander, looking very shy all the sudden, didn't say anything.

"Come on, hurry up, what?"

"I'm sorry." Was all he said, then he turned tail and ran out of the cafeteria, leaving Rita in a state of bewilderment.

"Who the heck was that guy?"

She thought for a moment whether or not to follow the charmander out of the cafeteria, she figured it would be a good idea, and Isaac wasn't here anyways. She got up, threw away her empty banana peal in a nearby trash can, and ran out the door to follow the Charmander.

Rita looked left and right down the hallways, at the last moment she saw the charmanders fire lit tail disappearing around the corner. The charmander was moving fast, so she had to run fast as well, other wise she would lose him.

When she went round the next corner, she saw the charmander flee around the next corner. But luckily for Rita, the area he went in had no exit, so he would have to run past her to escape. No longer needing to run, she walked slowly and quietly to the dead-end hallway the charmander went into.

She peaked around the corner to see if he was there, and stopped looking when she saw him, as well as two other pokemon, a Bulbasaur and an Eevee. She listened closely to them talk, trying to not breath too loud.

"That was definitely her!" Said the charmander, sounding like he just escaped some kind of killer pokemon. It was obvious to Rita this Charmander was a very anxious pokemon.

"How do you know? What did you ask her? Did you actually ask?" The Bulbasaur sent question after question to charmander, but he didn't answer any of them, he only shook his head telling them that he didn't.

"Should have known better then to send you, you always screw up everything!" The Eevee was being awfully mean, but Rita figured this wasn't the first time Charmander ran off like that.

"I'm sorry..."

"Listen." Said Eevee. "We gotta be discreet about this, if she doesn't wanna go, we gotta be ready to nab her!"

"Right, right. But what if she puts up a fight? She is in Brotherhood to and we would get kicked out for fighting another member."

"Both of you, quit worrying, if we do this we'll get paid enough poke that we wont need the Brotherhood anymore, we'll have enough money to live like kings and queens for the rest of our lives!"

What's going on? Who wants me so bad? And who are these three?

Rita wasn't one to stand back and let things happen, especially when it involved her. She made herself look as tough as she could and went around the corner to confront the trio.

"So, I heard you guys were looking for me?"

"Oh no its her!" The charmander turned to run, but went nose first into the wall, causing him to fall backwards onto his butt. He rubbed his nose and said quietly to himself. "Oh yeah."

"Listen." Continued Rita. "I wanna know what you want with me, and I wanna know now!"

The three pokemon all looked at each other, wordlessly deciding who, if anyone, was going to explain their actions.

Finally the Eevee began to speak.

"We are Team Destiny, I'm the leader Marie. The charmander you met not long ago is Alistair, and Bulbasaur is named Ivan."

"Ivan? Then you must be related to that Ivysaur I met."

"You mean father? Yes. We share name. All members of my family share names."

"Ok, so I know who you are. But what are you doing? Why do you wanna 'Nab' me?"

Marie continued to explain. "We got a mission a few days ago, it would be easier if you just read it." Ivan and Marie looked in Alistair's direction, it took him a minute to figure out why they wanted the mission letter from him, he just remembered he was holding there bag. Still rubbing his injured nose with one hand, he dug inside the bag until he found and pulled out the letter.

Rita went over and grabbed it from him Alistair, who flinched slightly when she did, and Rita immediately began to read the letter. Rita noticed that the paper it was written on was quite fancy.

Dear Brotherhood of Havok City

A few days ago, one of my servants, who happened to be in your town less then a week ago, had informed me that a young Chikorita had entered the city that very day. It is a great importance to us that you have this Chikorita escorted here so we may question her. Any further details cannot be discussed now, only know that this is an important task, and that you will be greatly rewarded with a sum of 10,000,000 poke.

The Royal Family of Oasis Island

Rita couldn't believe what she just read, none of it made sense. She decided to question Team Destiny further.

"Ok, first of all, this mission couldn't have been approved by the Brotherhood. Where did you get it? Tell me or I'll get Ewan involved, and he'll probably bring this up with his friend, the captain."

At the mention of their superiors getting involved in the situation, all three of them, especially Alistair, looked very worried.

"Please don't!" Said Marie, sounding both flustrated and scared. "We only... We kinda FOUND this mission. Our mail didn't come a few days ago, so I personally went in the back room to yell at that incompetent buneary who works there, but when I went looking for her, I found a discarded letter on the ground. I knew it was wrong to look inside, but I did so anyways, out of curiosity. When I saw the reward, I knew we couldn't let this opportunity pass up."

Rita sighed to herself, the story sounded true enough. "Ok, I can understand that I guess, just tell me who this Royal Family is and you guys can go."

Marie shrugged, Alistair continued to sit there, rubbing his nose. It was Ivan who started to speak.

"The Royal Family, they rule Oasis Island, as you just read. The Island is to the west, at least a few days travel over ocean. I don't believe it myself, but I heard that this Island is the last place in the world with... Trees. Not just one or two, and not just little twigs poking out of the ground with barely a leaf to call its own, real, and numerous, trees. The whole island is said to be thick with plants, grass, trees, plant pokemon, all that stuff. I've never been, my family comes from north, not west."

Rita took a second to absorb the information, she nodded and said one last thing to the trio of pokemon.

"I'm gonna let you go, as long as you promise not to read any more letters you find, and keep your noses clean. All right?"

"Yeah..."

"Yes. We will be good."

Alistair just nodded, rubbed his nose one last time and stood up. The three of them walked by Rita, all looking sad at their missed opportunity.

Rita still had the mission with her, she looked at it again and thought to herself. I think it would be a good idea to go see this royal family, Isaac might be in our room by now.

---

Lloyd was beginning to think nobody was going to help him. Every pokemon just kept going by, no matter what he did. He even tried using an electric attack to get some attention, but like his voice, his ability to create a thunder shock was also gone.

Suddenly, something grabbed him by the back of the neck and lifted him into the air, he felt teeth poking him slightly.

Is someone trying to eat me? Right here in the middle of the Brotherhood HQ? Heeeeeelp!

But the pokemon didn't bite or chew at all, he just held him up in the air, he wiggled his feet and arms to get free, but that didn't do a thing.

Another pokemon appeared, a Rhydon, towering over both him and the pokemon that had him caught. He smiled pleasantly at him, despite Lloyds obvious desire to get away.

"Don't worry little guy. We'll take you back to your home safe and sound!"

Home? Where could that possibly be? Let me down!

Lloyd continued to wiggle his feet and arms to free himself, but his efforts were futile, where ever these guys were bringing him, he was definitely going.