Chapter 12: Return Fire

Risa stood inside her Pokemon Center room, repacking everything into her backpack. During her week there, she'd sort of strewn all her clothes and things everywhere. It wasn't like anybody minded - the room would be cleaned once she left, and her various roommates were usually just as messy.

She stared at a few things she'd put on the bed, trying to find their respective item capsules (or at least empty ones to stuff them in), while she ordered Heat to look around the room to make she hadn't forgotten anything. He didn't take her orders all that seriously; mostly he just waddled around and muttered to himself.

Although he did find one of Risa's stray socks. That was nice of him.

Pseudo, on the other hand, stood near the doorway, pretending to be a tree.

Apparently, as he told her over breakfast, pretending to be a tree was his way of relaxing and meditating, and if he didn't take a certain amount of time out of each day to pretend he was some sort of plant life, bad things would happen.

Considering how short a time it took for him to wipe the floor with Faulkner's pidgeotto and how he probably wouldn't take much longer with Heat, Risa decided it would be better to avoid these "bad things".

So, basically, Risa was doing all the packing herself.

She finally got all her clothes and pokemon-related items put away, and all she had left lying on her bed were a few things that she didn't want to minimize or didn't have item capsules for:

Two of those items were Heat and Pseudo's respective pokeballs, since, after all, there really was no point in putting them in item capsules when minimized pokeballs were the exact size of the capsules. Plus, it would just mean taking longer to release one of her pokemon, which in the case of Pseudo's "bad things" (or something else along those lines), would not be a good thing.

Another was her Pokegear-brand cell phone, which she kept out in case anybody called her. Her mother and father liked calling her at odd times during the evenings and always seemed rather irritated when she didn't pick up, so Risa kept the phone out at all times so she could hear it ring.

The fourth item was her zephyr badge, shining brightly in the sunlight from the window. Risa heard that item capsules could sometimes degrade the quality of metal items, such as jewelry, and she didn't want to take that chance with her precious badge. Plus, the badge was pretty, and she wanted to keep it that way. She also had out a blue velvet pin box she bought at the PokeMart to hold badges and keep them from getting nicked or scratched, and she didn't feel like putting that in an item capsule, either.

The final object was the strange book she bought at the book sale. For some reason, Risa couldn't bring herself to put the book in an item capsule. It just didn't seem...right. Of course it was ridiculous to think that way, but a voice at the back of Risa's mind told her the book was important somehow.

But that was nonsense.

"One sec, you guys," Risa said as she stuffed the book and her cell phone into her backpack's main compartment, pinned the badge inside the new velvet box and put that next to the book, and picked up the two pokeballs. "Okay, I'm all done. Ready to go?"

Heat groaned. "Fiiiiinally! Ugh, you were taking foreeeever."

Pseudo didn't say anything. He was still pretending to be a tree.

---

It had been more than an hour and a half since they had set foot on Route 32, and already things were going well, and for Risa, this was unusual but welcome.

For one thing, Pseudo seemed to be much more powerful than any of the wild pokemon they encountered, taking no more than three attacks to dispatch any of them. Heat wasn't doing too badly, either, and hadn't lost a single wild pokemon battle.

Then again, whenever a wild pokemon seemed to be getting the upper hand, he would just yell, "Pseudooooo!" at the top of his lungs and let the rock-type fake tree take care of it. This only happened a couple times, though, whenever he ran into a wooper or an ekans. (Heat didn't like snakes because he somewhat resembled a mouse, and snakes literally ate mice for breakfast. He told Risa that when he evolved into a quilava he would beat up ten ekans at once with his eyes closed and his front paws tied behind his back, but until then: "Pseudooooo!")

Risa's spirits were high. The sun was in the sky with only a few wispy clouds, a pleasant breeze kept the temperature warm but not hot, and her pokemon seemed to be doing unusually well in getting her through the route. Why didn't she catch a super powerful rock-type sooner?

Then her whole day fell apart when she heard somebody that wasn't Heat yell, "Pseudo!"

All three turned their heads around to see a dark-haired girl running towards them, a ledian following in the air behind her. The girl looked a couple years older than Risa and her ledian looked pretty strong because of that.

Risa suddenly felt nervous. A strong trainer that had been training for years? She'd only been out for a couple of weeks!

As she approached, Pseudo neatly finished off a nearby wooper with a rock throw, then turned to the newcomer with a huge smile on his smooth, rocky face. "Crys!"

Risa didn't know whether to feel relieved or really worried. This girl was Pseudo's real trainer? While it did mean the girl wouldn't be attacking them...it did mean that she probably wanted Pseudo back.

If Pseudo went back with the girl, then it meant saying goodbye to beating every pokemon they came across in three attacks or fewer, and Risa wasn't sure if she wanted to say goodbye to that.

"Hey," the girl said as she and her ledian came up to Risa and her group. "Ohmigod, I can't believe you found Pseudo!"

Risa shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Um, yeah. So, um, you're...Crys?"

"Yes! Yes, this is Crys!" Pseudo said, running (slowly, and sort of wiggling "like a tree" as he did) to his old trainer. "Crys, you're here, you're here!"

The girl threw her arms around the rock tree and hugged it while Risa looked on uncomfortably. When the girl withdrew her arms and turned around to face Risa, Risa repeated her question: "So, you're Crys?"

"Yeah," the girl, Crys, said with a smile. "I mean, well, my name is actually Mariko Amaiwa - I'm from Blackthorn - but I usually have people call me Crystal. Or Crys, for short." She bowed. "So, what's your name?"

"Um, it's Risa. Risa Miyamoto. I'm, um, from New Bark Town."

"Ooooh, right right," Crys said, still grinning. "You were one of the other people getting a Pokedex from Professor Elm, right?"

Risa frowned. "Um, yeah."

"I remember now! You and a kid from Cherrygrove - kids of Professor Elm's friends from college, right?"

"Yeah. Uh, I mean, that's what my mom said, at least."

"Cool, cool." Crys shifted her weight and looked at Pseudo, causing Risa to feel even more uncomfortable than she had before. "So, uh, I'm really happy you found Pseudo, and stuff - I mean, especially since you also got a Pokedex, so that kind of makes us, like, friends already! - but I was wondering...could I have him back?"

Risa's immediate response was to say something along the lines of, "no way!" but from the way Pseudo was glaring daggers at her, she could only agree.

Two seconds later, it seemed, Crys's ledian was comet punching Pseudo's pokeball, and only a second after that, Pseudo was disappearing into a luxury ball that Crys had taken out.

She grinned, holding up the luxury ball. "All done! I got this ball imported from Hoenn - apparently there's been a lot of recall stuff going on with pokeballs produced in Kanto-Johto, so I thought it would be good to import from somewhere else."

The thought of buying capture devices, or anything, from out of the country caused Risa's eyes to bug out. "You can afford to import? All the way from Hoenn?"

Crys shrugged sheepishly. "I've, um, been making a lot of money...you know, winning battles, and stuff."

Heat stepped forward, making his presence known for the first time. "How many badges?"

Before Crys could answer, her up-until-then silent ledian sneered and said, "Six. How many do you have?"

"...One. But it's a super awesome one. The FLYING badge. Bet you couldn't get that one."

"Actually," the ledian replied, stretching her wing-cover nonchalantly. "I helped Crys get that one. I was her starter, so I'm her strongest pokemon, and even then, I was able to beat Faulkner's pidgey."

"Sorry," Cry said, elbowing her ledian lightly. "That win kind of got to Lady's head. But seriously, I'm fourteen, and I've had her since I was ten, so she's actually pretty good."

"You've been training since you were ten, but only have six badges?" Risa asked, confused. Most serious trainers could get eight badges within a couple years.

The ledian, Lady, shot Crys a crippling glare. "Heh, well, um, no, not exactly. I got one badge when I was ten, back when my brother caught me a ledyba and I caught a gastly," she dropped a pokeball, causing a haunter to appear. She grinned, and Risa and Heat backed up. Ghosts were never fun to run into, even trained ones. "And she - oh, her name's Obake - and Lady got me the first badge. But I didn't really like training, so I quit and did the whole school-thing at Nishihara Private Middle School in Blackthorn."

"And then she failed the high school entrance test, so her dad swung her a deal with Professor Elm to do field studies with the Pokedex," the ghost, Obake, said lazily.

"You failed the test?" Risa asked, aghast. Johto's high school entrance exams were probably scarier than training, but Risa didn't even want to think of failing. She wanted to be the half of the population that actually got to continue their education, not go to trade school or resort to professional training.

Crys glared at her ghost. "Um, yeah, I did. So, like Obake said, I decided to gather field data with this," she held up her Pokedex, "since my dad knows Professor Elm. And I got back into training, and I'm actually doing pretty well."

Risa sighed. "Yeah...guess you are. We were, too," she mumbled, scuffing her foot against the dirt. "Until you took away our best fighter."

"Wait! I know!"

"What?"

"Let's do temporary trading!" Crys exclaimed, eying Risa's cyndaquil. "I want a cyndaquil for my Pokedex, and you can get my ledian, haunter and bayleef - oh, I chose the chikorita! He's so cute! Oh, and for your trouble..." She turned around and dug through her bag. "I'll give you these!"

She held two items in her hand - one was a piece of charcoal cut in a rough diamond and strung on a necklace, and the other was an enhanced CD-like machine labeled "Solarbeam".

Risa looked at the items. "Um, what-?"

"Okay, so," Crys began, not waiting for Risa's question. "The charcoal boosts fire-type attack power if you wear it, so I thought your cyndaquil could use it better than I could, since I don't have any fire-type pokemon on my team. And I don't think that cyndaquils can learn to use solarbeam, but I know that typhlosions can, so I guess you could save this for later." She smiled at Risa. "You know, for when you have to, like, surprise people at the league. People usually don't expect fire-types to know grass-type moves. It could help against water-types, if you're brave enough, or, like, if you teach him to use sunny day." When Risa didn't answer, Crys looked down and added, "I'd give you a pokemon in exchange for Pseudo, since that is kind of the fair thing to do, but I usually do catch-and-release or send them back to Professor Elm if it's something he wants, so I don't have any pokemon with me that I'd give away. And I can't catch you anything, because the luxury ball I just used to recatch Pseudo was my last pokeball, so...sorry, but these items are all I can give you." Then she brightened. "But I can help you train, too! How 'bout that?"

Under Crys's incessant chatter, Risa somehow found herself agreeing to the temporary trades and exchange of the two items for returning Pseudo. Heat ended up convincing himself that Crys was going to be the future Johto champion, not only by beating the current champion, Lance, but by going the extra mile and actually taking his job. This meant that she was his new idol, and that her bayleef, Mega, became his new best friend. (Apparently, he hadn't met any of the other "starter" pokemon back at the lab.)

Risa wanted to explain to him that actually taking the job of the Johto champion involved more than just defeating the reigning champion, since there was a significant amount of paperwork and tests involved, but he wouldn't listen.

Crys ended up being pretty nice about the whole thing, too, spending the day with Risa and helping her train against her bayleef (who took the constant embers pretty well, considering his head-leaf almost got burnt off).

It wasn't until the end of the day, when Crys was packing up to leave north and Risa ready to go south, that something else happened.

At the very last second, Crys's haunter, Obake, floated away from her team and over to Risa. "Risa," she said in a soft voice unlike the hateful snarl she seemed to have used the entire day. "What are you doing with that book?"

"W-what book?" she asked, looking around to see if anybody was listening. Heat, apparently, had dashed over to talk to Crys, Lady, and Mega, and they were so engrossed in their conversation that none of them noticed Risa talking to Obake. "I-I don't -"

"I know you know what I'm talking about. The black one in your bag," she snapped. "Look, I don't know what you're doing with it or how you got it, and I'm not exactly sure what it is myself, but I'm going to say this: be careful."

The trainer in question pulled on her backpack straps extra tightly, feeling the weight of the tome. "Um, o-okay."

"Can you read it?"

"N-no, it's in some weird language. Only...er, well..."

"Only...?"

Risa bit her lip. "There's a word on the cover I can read. I think it's the title. It's called 'Grimoire', like a spell book."

The haunter visibly flinched. "Anything else?"

"Um...well..." Obake glared at her, daring her to trail off. Risa gulped, and didn't. "T-there was something inside. I wasn't reading the book, just flipping through, and I found, um, this list..."

"Do you know what it was listing?"

"N-no, but it was titled in letters I knew. It said something like 'Haelliad', but that's not a real word."

Obake frowned. "I don't know that word, either. How many items in the list?"

"There were two lists," Risa remembered aloud, "two lists of twelve items. So, um, I guess that would be twenty-four." She paused, then remembered something.

"Anything else about the list?"

"Not that I remember. Um, it looked pretty normal...just, like, a list. Or, um, two lists, I guess."

The haunter sighed, then glared at Risa again. "You look like a nice girl, not somebody who should be getting mixed up with anything like what this might be. But I'm going to tell you this the best I can: don't get too mixed up with ghosts."

Risa glanced at Crys, who was busy making hand motions and causing Heat to roll around with laughter. Obake's comment seemed strange coming from a ghost who had been with a trainer for four years. "Um, okay..."

A pair of narrowed eyes met hers when she turned back, making her shudder. "I should also tell you that if you wish to learn more about the book, you should go there." She held out one of her detached purple hands and pointed a claw to the west, towards the pale brown, crumbling stone towers poking out of the tree tops. "The Ruins of Alph. I would advise you against it, but it might be," she grinned, giving Risa another shiver up her spine, "interesting."

"Obake!" Crys called. "Time to go!"

"I bid you good evening, Risa Miyamoto of New Bark Town," Obake said with a grin. "And I wish you well on your journey, as well as pity you if what you have in your backpack brings you an early death."

And then she was gone, floating after her trainer and fellow teammates.

Heat looked up at Risa from the ground. "I like them. Let's invite them to watch when we take on the champion and become even more super awesome than we are now. They can see my future super awesome solarbeam attack! Pew, pew!" he shouted as he pretended to shoot off a solarbeam. It looked a bit more to Risa like he was having some sort of seizure, but Heat seemed to be having a good time pretending, so she didn't stop him.

"Hey, Heat, where do you think we should go next?" Risa asked, eyeing the path that lead to the Ruins of Alph. It stretched off at a ninety-degree angle to the path they were currently on, the one that connected Violet City to the eastern mouth of Union Cave.

Risa figured that Heat would probably choose to continue on to Union Cave, since he seemed anxious to get more badges so he could be just as cool as Mega the bayleef. That meant she wouldn't need to go to the Ruins of Alph, and that creepy ghost Crys had wouldn't have to affect her as much.

As long as Heat made the decision, she thought, everything would be fine. She wouldn't have to feel guilty about missing the chance to find out more about the book if she passed up on the Ruins of Alph, and she wouldn't have to feel guilty about possibly endangering their lives by making them take the detour.

Yes. As long as Heat decided, everything would be fine.

Heat pondered the decision for a moment, rising up on his hind legs as if to get a better view. Then he pointed. "That way! I wanna see what kind of pokemon live there, and then I can beat 'em, and then we can come back and then go the way we were going."

The pit of Risa's stomach plummeted.

He was pointing towards the tips of the Ruins of Alph towers, silhouetted neatly by the almost liquid-looking sunset.

Seventeen days left, and they were going to spend at least one of those days in a possibly life-threatening ruined city.

Either that, or Risa was just being paranoid because Crys's haunter freaked her out. Ghosts did that to people, after all.

But the seventeen days left part, that was certain.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own pokemon.

Author's note: I feel like this chapter doesn't hang together as well as other chapters have...oh well. Story's gotta move on, right? Oh, and Crys(tal) is the main character from the game Pokemon Crystal, in case that wasn't obvious enough. This whole story takes place during a game of Pokemon Crystal where the player chooses the female character and the chikorita. Risa and Ichiro are just "extras" that don't show up in the game. ;)