Dexter (Bold letters)
Dextette (Bold and Italics)
Ch. 18: Abra Kadabra: Psyduck Gains A Nickname
Stormie stomped her foot in frustration as the Psyduck sat in front of the tree with a confused look on his face, its claws holding its aching head.
"C'mon Psyduck! I know you know it! Now Water Pulse!"
To her surprise, the Psyduck stood up and opened its mouth. After a breath moment of suspense, it yawned, tilted its head to the side and uttered yet another confused, 'Psy?' Stormie smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand leaving a faint pink mark while Bryce watched on with amusement, his newly obtained Murkrow perched on his shoulder.
"Maybe you can call him Dopey?"
'Murkrow!'
Bryce figured he needed to get on Omen's good side if he planned to use her as a guide out of the dense forest. He had found the one thing they held in common was teasing the new Psyduck, after that, bonding with the Murkrow was easy. Stormie frowned and turned around pointing at the both of them.
"You two aren't helping!"
They were still in Eterna Forest, under the tree in which they slept and Stormie was attempting to use it as target practice for the Psyduck to reveal its attacks. But at this point, she wondered if Bryce had been lying when he told her it knew any attacks because every time she ordered an attack, she always got the same response.
'Psy?'
Bryce shrugged and stroked Omen on the head behind her hat feathers. "Just get rid of him, simple as that."
Stormie sighed and crouched down to pick up the round pokemon, keeping it close to her chest where it instinctively nuzzled her in the chest and went to sleep in less than five seconds.
"No, I caught him, he's my responsibility. I can't just abandon him."
As he started snoring, he put him down next to the slumbering Abra and raised an eyebrow.
"But I wonder how its managed to survive on its own for so long when he's so... So..."
"Useless?"
"Well I wouldn't use that word, but yeah pretty much."
"I wouldn't dwell on it. We should probably go, we've been training all morning."
Stormie nodded and pulled out a single pokeball, returning Psyduck and scooped up Psy. She then walked under the branches and looked up into the dense and complicated series of branches and leaves before calling out,
"Haunter! Time to wake up!"
Haunter floated down almost immediately at his trainer's call, but the three spectators couldn't help but notice that something was off. Something was squirming around inside of Haunter's mouth. Stormie sighed and tried to pry Haunter's mouth open. When this didn't work she took a step back and motioned with her finger.
"C'mon Haunter, let it go."
Haunter shook his head and grinned despite of himself.
"Open."
Once again he shook his head before Stormie smacked him in the back of the head. Surprised, the ghost spat out a wet and very much terrified Wurmple that inched away as fast as it could. Horrified, Bryce asked, "Haunter eats other pokemon?"
"Pssh, no. It's just a lame joke."
Noticing Omen staring at the worm while licking its beak, Bryce smacked her in the back of the head to mirror Stormie and said,
"Don't even think about it."
Omen instantly shot him a look that clearly read, "I don't know you that well."
Reminded of her wickedly sharp curved beak, he flinched. "S-Sorry Omen. You mind helping us out here?"
Omen looked at him for a moment before flapping her wings and taking off in front of Bryce and Stormie, just slowly enough for them to follow. Shouldering their packs, they followed after the Murkrow into the woods.
"Are you sure this is right?"
Both Stormie and Bryce stared with disbelief at the area Omen had led them. In front of them were twisted roots that barred their way into an area that was so dark, it could have been midnight. The trees were dead, there was tall brown grass that was as tall as their knees, and a dense haze hung around the trees like a thief in the night. Naturally, Haunter was delighted.
'Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Haunter!' He cried in delight as he floated in and out between the trees, vanishing every once and a while, but whether this was because of the haze or the ghost's abilities was unknown. Omen was perched in the nearest tree next to the roots, cleaning a raised wing with her crooked beak. Stormie looked nervously to the side where the sun was shining brighter than it was in the other areas of the forest and tapped Bryce on the shoulder.
"Are you sure this is right?" She repeated.
Bryce brushed the hand off a bit distracted before mumbling, "Yeah. Omen lives around here, she must know what she's doing."
Stormie could only shake her hand and started muttering her good luck prayer again while Bryce enlarged a pokeball off his belt and hurled it in front of him.
"Grotle, Razor Leaf on the roots!"
With a loud thud that shook the ground under their feet, Grotle appeared in front of the two trainers. With a couple of rustles from her bushes, razor sharp leaves flew from her back and shredded the roots into pieces. Bryce lifted the pokeball and recalled the tortoise before stepping through the gap. As he entered the haze, he felt a pair of hands grip his shoulder and a warm body against his back. His face growing hot and turning beet red, he turned around to find Stormie hanging onto him as if her very life depended on him with an Abra tail hanging out of her backpack.
"I want to remind you," She started. "That Murkrows are called bad luck for a reason. It may be Omen's instinct that brought her here."
Bryce swallowed, she might have been right but it was too late to go back on his word now if he wanted to preserve his macho image.
"Relax, I'm sure it's nothing."
With these words, he lead her deeper into the haze, following the Murkrow who was hopping branch from branch into the darkness and away from the light.
'Murkrow!'
Omen was perched on the rooftop of an old house. The windows were broken and dusty while the wooden planks that formed the house were rotting and falling out of the foundation of the old building. On the ground in front of Bryce's feet was a stone path that was missing a few stones and had a fallen rusted bronze plaque that read, "Old Chateau" Bryce blinked for a moment before kicking the plaque out of the way. He yelped when he felt Stormie's fingers grip to his shoulders even tighter.
"C'mon, this place is obviously fake. I mean it couldn't have been the 'Old Chateau' when this place was built."
Even with these words, the preteen refused to let go of his shoulders, keeping him firmly in place. Grunting he took one step after another until he finally reached the front door. Reluctantly, he pried Stormie's hands from his shoulders and rapped on the door with a firm hand. A hollow knock boomed and echoed throughout the house and with a long drawn out creak, the door opened by itself. Surprised that he didn't feel the familiar pain in his shoulders caused by her clinging fingers, Bryce turned around to find her being comforted by none other than Haunter. She clung to him like a stuffed animal while the phantom grinned at the boy.
'Krow!'
A rush of wind blew over Bryce's head and it took him a moment before he realized that it was only Omen gliding in with a single flap of her wings. Without a second glance at their surroundings, she swooped in up the stairs and disappeared around a corner. With a few hesitant steps as if to make sure the floorboards were steady, Bryce walked in and started up the steps before hearing a sort of groan from behind him. Turning around he saw Stormie pointing with a shaky finger at the wall, Bryce turned to look in her finger's direction.
"It's a wall." Bryce stated plainly, walking up to it and knocking on it as though testing to see if something was living in it.
"B-B-But!"
"Calm down Stormie, there's nothing wrong with this house."
With those words spoken, he continued up the stairs and followed the corridor Omen flew down. He heard the chink of metal against metal and followed the sound down the corridors, each one of the rooms looked like old hotel rooms complete with a yellowing mattress and a bookcase. Finally, in the second to last room, Bryce found Omen with a cloth bag by her side on a shelf in a bookcase. This room was different whereas it had a tv that lit the room with static. On her right was the bag, and on her left was a pile of shiny objects. Pokes, earrings, bangles, bracelets, and even a doorknob. Each one she placed one by one into the cloth sack.
"Omen, what are you doing?" Bryce asked with a raised eyebrow when he suddenly heard a chime along with a new feminine voice.
Hello, my name is Dextette, the counterpart to Dexter. My primary function is to provide additional information whenever you should need it in your pokemon journey.
Sliding the red pokedex out of his pocket, he blinked and stared at the device before shrugging. "Alright then Dextette, can you explain what Omen's doing?"
Another chime emitted from the pokedex before Murkrow's screen came up with all of its stats.
Murkrow shows strong interest in anything that sparkles or glitters. It hides any shiny object it finds in a secret location and will even try to steal rings from women. Once a Murkrow has collected its treasures, it will guard it with its life, even going so far as to turn it into its nest.
Bryce groaned when he realized what this meant, Omen wasn't trying to lead them out of the woods, all she cared about at the moment was collecting her hoard. He put down his pokedex on top of the flickering television and started to help the Murkrow collect its items.
While all of this went on, Stormie stood quietly in the background, clinging to Haunter for nothing. She knew she had seen something, large red eyes staring at them through a wall, not unlike Haunter. The only problem was, Haunter was right there with her. Every muscle in her body told her to go out the door, but he didn't want to leave Bryce (AKA her back-up) behind. She watched silently as Bryce put the pokedex on the television, her eyes flickering around the room for any sign of the red eyes when her eyes happened to waver across the television screen.
"Bryce..." she mumbled, unsure of what she had seen, but there was no mistaken it. Between every flicker of the static on the TV screen, there was a red face with electric blue eyes. After the face had appeared five times, the TV shut off and a spark subtly leapt from it onto Bryce's pokedex.
Ro...RoRoRoRo...
The pokedex flickered for a moment with the same face before the screen disappeared and a pixilated version of the pokemon's face she'd seen earlier appeared, grinning mischievously at Stormie before disappearing and replacing it with a different pokemon.
Gengar, the Shadow Pokemon and the evolved form of Haunter. A Gengar is close by if you feel a sudden chill, it may be trying to lay a curse on you.
Bryce blinked, he had just finished putting Omen's bag into his pack when he heard the information, he turned around to beam at Stormie.
"Did Haunter evolve?"
His cheerful expression quickly diminished when he saw how pale Stormie was. She was white as if she'd seen death itself and was pointing shakily in the direction of his pokedex. At first, Bryce thought she was pointing at the device, until he saw the red eyes on the wall. Taking action, Bryce quickly snatched up his pokedex and leaped back.
"B-B-But,"
"Ok ok you were right!" Bryce shouted as everything in the room started to rise into the air and spun around them in a phantasmal dance. The bookcase dropped all its books on the floor and the television's cord was yanked out of the wall.
"Go Omen! Night Shade!"
The Murkrow flapped its wings and flew over to her trainer before stalling in mid-air and landing on his shoulder. Turning to face the eyes, she opened her wings and let out twin beams of jagged black and violet energy. The beams hit both eyes and with a ghastly cry, the eyes disappeared and everything in the room fell to the ground with a resounding crash. Bryce started to dash out of the room and was pleased to find Stormie close on his heels. Being the owner of a ghost pokemon, she couldn't have been in shock for that long. She held a pokeball in her hand as if prepared for action while Haunter floated behind her.
"We're almost there!" Bryce called behind him. But as he neared the door, with a slam, it closed leaving Bryce to tug at the unyielding doorknob.
"It won't open!" He shouted over the noise that was starting to emerge from the house, ghostly wails and malevolent cackles of unseen spirits. The group turned around to find an army of ghost pokemon in front of them. A large group of Gastly, a couple of Haunters, all led by a Gengar who was frowning at the Murkrow with harm evidently written in its eyes as it cracked its knuckles.
"Go Combusken!" Stormie cried out, hurling the pokeball she was holding in front of them. But rather than the humanoid fowl emerging, a round figure came out. Its clawed hands holding both sides of its head as it let out a confused, 'Psy?'
"That's not Combusken!"
"I panicked! Psy, get Psyduck out of there!" Stormie cried as the ghosts all dove towards the duck. With a blue flash, the Abra appeared on top of the Psyduck with a rectangular pink object in its hands, but as soon as the pink object touched the duck, something happened. A pulse repelled every pokemon that was near Psyduck. Psy teleported into Stormie's arms with a surprised look on his face. The Psyduck was standing up, its claws off of the sides of its head, the pink plate was on its forehead and its eyes were glowing blue.
"What's going on?" Bryce asked as he yanked out his pokedex hoping Dextette would have some answers.
While lulling its enemies with its vacant look, Psyduck will use psychokinetic powers. However, it never remembers using its odd powers so it always has its head tilted in confusion.
As these words were said, Psyduck put its claws together, forming an orb of concentrated water before pushing it towards the ghosts. The orb flew towards the water and hit the Gastly army with a boom that sent them all flying through the wall.
'Gengar! Gen Gengar!' The Gengar cried out as it pointed at its claws at the duck. Both Haunters flew towards Psyduck, one coming from the left, and the other from the right, each with a fist emitted in dark energy. Psyduck's eyes suddenly flashed, freezing the ghosts in their place before it pointed a single claw at them and made a flicking motion, sending them off in the distance. This last bit of psychic energy however seemed to be so powerful that the plate fell to the ground with a rattle. Blinking, Psyduck gripped its head, staring at a cowering Gengar before saying, 'Psy?'
This was all the poor Gengar could take before it flew away into the other room. Bryce and Murkrow stared at the yellow duck in amazement.
"I think I have the perfect nickname for him," Bryce said, and with a laugh he said, "Psych!"