"Wha—" Kevin quickly turned around upon hearing the shriek. Now what?

"Oh, for god's sake, Lana, could you stop making us go deaf every time you see a cute Pokémon?" Kari snapped irritably.

There was a Pachirisu in front of the trainer, and true to Kari's word, she was certainly cute. Not that… Not that she was cute cute, but cute in the generic way that small creatures were cute. Right.

Lana muttered some sort of apology before utterly fangirling over the squirrel Pokémon. "I've never seen one in person before, oh gosh, um, can I— Can I catch you? Please? You're just so adorable and I really want an electric type and oh gosh—"

The Pachirisu smiled. "Mais oui, but of course! I was looking for une fille adorable pour mon… capture," she replied, drawing out the last word.

Okay, Kevin didn't know much about languages, but he was pretty sure that Sinnoh wasn't a French region. That was the place with the humongous tower and the creepy professor. Then again, Sinnoh wasn't exactly a region that liked to stick to what was conventional. Whatever. Random French Pachirisu girl. Not exactly out of place.

"Oh! You speak French!" Lana remarked.

The Pachirisu continued. "Oui, oui. Je parle le français, et tu parles l'anglais. Et… um, how you say… I have an accent."

Kari laughed. "A fake accent."

"Non, non, c'est vrai!" she exclaimed. "Je m'appelle Cheri, sans un 'e'."

The turtle of sorrows rolled her eyes. "Yeesh. Look. We're nowhere near Kalos. Nobody here speaks a lick of French. You don't have to go around pretending that it's your first language, you know. It makes you sound super pretentious."

Kevin raised an eyebrow. Kari really seemed to like giving "advice" on how not to annoy her.

Cheri frowned. "Ah, tu es très malhereuse."

Kari narrowed her eyes. "Really. Your French is way too simplistic to be your real language, so stop pretending."

"Hm? I do not see you speaking French, mon amie, so I would not claim to know more about it than moi," Cheri smiled widely and hopped up into Lana's arms. "Est-ce-que pouvez-vous entraper moi?"

"Eh?"

"Can you capture me or something," Kari muttered bitterly. "It's not that hard to figure out from the context."

Upon hearing the translation, Lana happily pulled out a Pokéball – a special, pink and yellow one that Kevin did not know the name of – and captured Cheri without difficulty. The ball didn't even wiggle before clicking shut.

She grinned and decided to run over to the rest of the team who'd lagged behind. After Cheri was released from her Pokéball and everyone else saw her, the group began to chat animatedly, leaving Kari and Kevin alone.

Kevin furrowed his eyebrows. It was nice that a new team member didn't like Kari for once, but judging by the conversation they'd had he didn't think that Cheri was somebody that he'd like, either. (Then again, he only really understood half of her sentences, what with him not knowing an ounce of French and all.)

Kari focused her attention back to him. "Do you like her?"

"What?" By now, he really should have been used to her bluntness.

"I was just thinking that we could form a temporary alliance to get her to cut the crap. That is, if you think she's annoying, too," the Turtwig replied.

"Again with the working together? I still don't understand what makes you think that a tag team would be beneficial, or whatever you said," Kevin crossed his arms.

"You're obviously still unfamiliar with your surroundings, and I think I know why." She closed her eyes before continuing. "You… Something happened to you, and you wound up here with no clue that anything out of the ordinary even happened. And the only reason you haven't taken off already is because you want to figure out why you're here. Right?"

Kevin raised an eyebrow. "That's a pretty vague deduction, Sherlock."

"So I'm right," Kari pressed.

"I don't think I trust you enough to say, sorry." In truth, Kevin just thought she was nuts. A nutter who'd paid enough attention to him to deduce what was going on…

Kari nodded. "Let's try something else. I know someone a lot like you. He didn't know very much about Sinnoh either until he started to trust me. Once we became friends, he became a lot happier and got what he wanted. Granted, it wasn't what he intended to do, but it was still something he wanted. Sound familiar at all?"

"…No. It really doesn't." If she thought that she had him figured out—

"Right, it wouldn't. You were missing then. Nobody knew how to contact you, so you never would have known," Kari stared at him intently.

Kevin blinked. "Just what are you trying to tell me?"

She sighed, shaking your head. "You're quite dense, Kevin."

Whoa there. "How the hell do you know my name?!" Kevin clenched his fists.

"Just look at all the clues and put the pieces together, you moron! I'll spell them out for you again! The Shades! Lana! Her phone! Society! Talking Pokémon!" Kari was staring at him incredulously, and Lana had turned to watch them once she heard her name. "I mean… seriously! It's so obvious!"

"Well I'm sorry that I can't see what you're talking about! But has it ever occurred to you that what may seem obvious in Crazyland isn't so obvious for normal people to figure out?" Oh, that was it. She'd gotten him really pissed now.

"You're not the normal person here, Kevin! Deny it all you want, but you are not and never will be a normal Pokémon. You are Kevin Nicholas Holly, and you are—"

"Shut up! Just shut up! You know what? I don't have to take this. You're right, I can leave right now and nobody can do anything about it. Yeah, actually, that sounds nice. So I'm going to leave, you can keep your deluded conclusions to yourself and I'll never have to put up with any of this again. Goodbye."

Kevin turned and stalked off in some random direction, it didn't really matter. Nothing mattered, not now. He just needed to get away from that damn turtle and the rest of the insane population of Sinnoh forever. And that was precisely what he set out to do.

"I am such an idiot," Kevin said to himself. He hadn't actually wanted to leave. And Kari was this close to giving him the information he needed. But then he had to get mad, stomp away in a huff, and come back three hours later to discover that Kari and the rest of them were gone.

As in, they took him seriously and thought he actually intended to live the rest of his life in Sinnoh. In the wild. Without any idea where he was.

Well damn. "Now what?"