His spirits soaring in the sunset orange sky above him, Ash walked out of Stadium Forty-Six with his head held high, soaking in the stares and exclamations of recognition that were thrown his way by the spectators leaving around him. Riding merrily on his shoulder, Pikachu gave Ash a stern tap on the side of the neck that clearly warned him not to get a swell head, but the latter couldn't help it; not only had he won his first battle of the tournament, but he'd done so two-nil: the best possible outcome for him.
"So I heard you cleaned up nicely for yourself today…" said a voice that mirrored his thoughts.
Surprised, Ash swung around – almost dislodging a disdainful Pikachu in the process – to spot Leoric leaning against one of the streetlights placed around the stadium's main entrance, a knowing smirk on his face. "Hey, Leoric!" he called out, jogging over. "Yeah, I didn't go too badly," he said modestly, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, but the satisfaction was written all over his face, and Leoric could see it plain as day.
"Not too badly, he says," he laughed, pushing himself off and clapping a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Congratulations, though. Looks like Gin and I can't make fun of you later on," he added cheekily, and Ash laughed along before he realised the meaning behind those words.
"Wait—so you two both made it through as well?" he asked, and Leoric gave an affirmative nod. "That's great!" he cheered. "Did you win two-one, or two-nothing?"
Leoric gave Ash a slight grimace. "Two-one," he answered, but he quickly waved Ash's next question away with a hand. "I was a bit too rusty in the opening battle, and I made some careless mistakes that cost me the first point. Managed to come back from behind and take out the gold, though!"
Ash laughed heartily at Leoric's comment, casting a thumbs-up his way, but a curious thought popped into his head. "I just realised…" he began, scratching his cheek with a lone finger, "I don't actually know what kind of Pokémon you use! Do you think you could show me one?" he inquired. "Please?" he added politely.
"Well…" said Leoric in a drawn-out sigh, giving the thought a lot of consideration. A moment later, though, he cracked another toothy smile and hit Ash in the chest with a soft flick of the wrist. "Of course I'll show you! Apache, come on down!" he called out, giving a Poké Ball on his belt a firm tap with his finger, and an enormous shape burst out of the ball with a white flash.
As the shape solidified from the molten light, Ash stared in awe as a pair of crimson wings unfolded themselves, a red canopy that put both Trainers under their shadow. A long, slender neck stretched out from its body, a long stripe of red sliding up the underside before giving way to a fearsome and serpentine face. A pair of sharp black eyes gazed out from under thick red brows, framed by three blue spikes jutting out from each side of its jaw, and its mouth split wide open to show a set of razor fangs, the Pokémon giving a booming roar as it trashed its tail, thick as a tree trunk, around in the air behind it.
"Wow…" gasped Ash, instantly recognising the draconian Pokémon as a Salamence. He knew that a Salamence was a rare species to come across, let alone train, and this was one of the few, if not the only one, that he'd met in friendly conditions; like Antoine's Drapion, his memories of the Pokémon weren't altogether happy ones.
This one, though, seemed to be just as jolly as its Trainer, a hint of a smile peeking through its intimidating features. It planted its four feet onto the ground to bow its head for a loving pat from its Trainer, growling contentedly under Leoric's touch, and a smile lit up on the latter's face in return before turning back to Ash and Pikachu.
"Ash, Pikachu, meet my Salamence, Apache," he said formally, motioning between the two pairs of Trainer and Pokémon. "Apache, this is my new roommate, Ash Ketchum, and his Pikachu."
"Pii pika!" said Pikachu, waving a hand at the Dragon-type.
"Bugohhh…" Salamence replied, nodding its head on its long neck. Taking the reply as a show of good faith, Pikachu hopped off his post on Ash's shoulder and scampered over to Salamence, jumping up onto the latter's back and tiptoeing his way up its neck, which didn't seem to faze it in the least.
"Hey, let's head over to the Pokémon Center, yeah?" Leoric suggested. "I need to heal my Pokémon, and I daresay you need to too."
"Yeah, you're right," nodded Ash.
With that, the Trainer duo strolled down the street, headed towards the familiar red roof. A few paces behind them, Pikachu stood atop Salamence's head like the captain of a ship at sea, and Salamence was more than happy to let the Electric-type as it plodded along behind its Trainer.
"Apache and I have been together ever since I started my Pokémon journey out of Fallarbor Town," Leoric told Ash, and Ash could see that he was reminiscing about his past as he spoke. "We're pretty much like you and Pikachu are," he added, demonstrating what he meant by crossing two fingers together and holding them up. "Of course, he was just a Bagon way back then. Was Pikachu a Pikachu when you met him, or was he a Pichu—?"
"Huh?" grunted Ash, glancing over at Pikachu. "Oh! No, no-no-no, he's always been a Pikachu as long as I've known him," he replied, shaking his head vigorously.
As the two boys rounded a bend in the street, the Pokémon Center loomed large down the block on their left-hand side. Unfortunately for them, a gaggle of schoolgirls had come into view from a road to the right, and they spotted Ash and Leoric. After a brief moment of silence, in which the two Trainers looked nervously between themselves, the girls charged forwards in a squealing pack, hands plunging into backpacks to pull out markers for them to put signatures to whatever they could.
"Uh-oh…" Leoric groaned, backing away. "Apache… crowd control!"
At once, Salamence launched itself forward, unceremoniously unseating Pikachu in the process, and belched a wide spray of orange flames into the air between itself and the fan-girls. The girls shrank back, screaming hysterically as the fearsome dragon beat its mighty wings and hovered a few feet above the ground, snarling savagely towards them.
"Quick!" Leoric barked, snatching at Ash's sleeve while Salamence continued to distract the young horde. "Leg it!" he roared.
Ash looked at his companion in confusion but, looking at his alternative, didn't need to be told twice. Together, they bolted down the paved road as quickly as their feet would allow them, hoping that a fire-spewing Salamence would be enough to keep the girls from spotting their mad dash to the Pokémon Center. Thankfully for them, it was, and they almost crashed through the sliding double doors, bending over double as they made it into the Center's lobby, sides flaring in pain.
"What…" wheezed Ash, clutching his ribs as Pikachu darted around to stand in front of him, having caught up after being knocked onto the ground by Apache. "What—"
"Sorry about that, Ash—" said Leoric, in between gasps of air. "I went through a whole autographing, Q&A-ing, advice-giving session right outside the stadium where I had my battle—I'm not going through two of them in the same day—whew…!"
Unbeknownst to them, a young nurse approached the boys, a white envelope held in her small hands. She wasn't a Nurse Joy – her short, spiky orange hair was a testament to that – but one of the many casual nurses that had been hired to cope with the massive demand that the World Pokémon Championships brought to the island's Pokémon Center.
"Excuse me," she said, trying to get their attention. When she had it, she held out the envelope to Ash, who looked at it suspiciously. "Someone dropped this off for you—Ash," she informed him, reading his name from the envelope's addressee.
Ash reached out a hand to take the letter, but drew back. "How do you know I'm Ash?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the nurse.
"The woman who gave this to the front desk told me what to look for," she answered. Her eyes darted up to his distinctive hat, to his short-sleeved jacket, and then to Pikachu on the lobby floor. "She seemed to know you personally," she added with a small smile.
Ash turned to look at Leoric, who did nothing helpful and instead shrugged his shoulders, a bemused expression on his face. Still uncertain, Ash nevertheless took the envelope from the nurse, who bowed politely before hurrying off to attend to her usual duties.
"A letter from a woman who knows me…?" Ash wondered aloud, turning the envelope over in his hands. "Who could it be?"
"Yeah, sure…" said Gin, muttering into the phone tucked against his ear. Looking around – and seeing nothing but bystanders and stray bird Pokémon, he set off down a cobbled street, heading towards the sprawling metropolis of apartment buildings to the west, the shadow of a stadium stretching down the path ahead of him as he walked.
The person on the other end of the line gave a quiet laugh. "Okay then. Get back to me when you can, and stay gorgeous."
Gin rolled his eyes, and held back from a sarcastic reply before hanging up and slipping the phone into his jacket pocket. 'What a dope,' he thought, eyes shifting downwards to the lush red apple in his other hand. He allowed himself a shadowy smile, which soon turned into a raspy laugh.
With his gaze slowly wandering from left to right to take in his surroundings, Gin tossed the apple lightly upwards, watching it tumble about through the air before snatching it up. Thoughts of the day's battle ran through his head as he sank his teeth into the fruit's soft flesh.
"Too easy," he muttered, his voice inaudible to even the people moving past him. It hadn't taken Gin long to dismantle his opponent, winning the battle within the first two rounds; his distraught opponent had been reduced to tears as his Pokémon had been near-effortlessly dispatched.
'I'm not even sure how that lad managed to get an invitation in the first place,' he wondered, but he shrugged off the curious thought as he ducked off the main road, opting to cut through an alleyway and pop out near a few shops. It was then, though, that the sounds of a heated argument reached his ears. Stiffening up, Gin's normally narrow eyes thinned even further as he searched for the source of the commotion, and he found it right in the alleyway he was intending to use.
A young woman was backing away from a hulking mountain of a man, her eyes wide as her hands reached behind her, trying to clear any potential obstacles that would stop her. The man, however, had the advantage of superior numbers; he was joined by a quartet of Pokémon that advanced with him, jaws opening wide and eyes glinting malevolently. Quickly, the damsel found herself trapped against the wall as two of the Pokémon ran past her and cut off her escape.
"Now, now, pretty… don't make it any harder fer yerself," sneered the man, flashing a wide smile that showed several missing and blackened teeth.
The woman shrank back from his towering form as much as she could, her face contorting in disgust as his hands reached for her. In a flash, her leg flew up from the ground and kicked one of them away with a sharp smack, causing the man to hiss and recoil. One of his Pokémon, a grotesque creature that looked like a fusion between bullfrog and man, gave a terrible croak of anger and pinned her against the wall with a forearm, aiming the sharp red spike mounted on its knuckles at her slender throat in reply to her outburst.
"Ow…!" she groaned, struggling vainly against her captor.
The man recovered from the surprise kick, giving his hand a slight rub before throwing his head back for a loud cackle. "It's gonna take more 'n that ta worm yer way outta this!" he taunted, looking between her and his group of Pokémon.
Gin had seen enough. In one fluid motion, he unclipped two of his Poké Balls and threw them into the alleyway. One of the balls flew straight and true, colliding with the Toxicroak holding her to the wall and knocking it sideways, blinding the group with a bright flash of light as it opened.
The other Poké Ball landed on the ground just behind the brutish man, and a horrific Pokémon burst forth in a flash. From the outside, it resembled a solid gold coffin, but the headpiece slid smoothly open to reveal a pair of devilish red eyes and a set of razor-sharp teeth. Four ghostly appendages slid out from the sarcophagus' sides like smoke, forming hands of darkness that wrapped themselves around the thug's face and covered it before he had a chance to react, still blinded from the first Poké Ball.
The Pokémon that Gin had called out before appeared on the ground, a giant ant encased in a shell of solid steel. "Duiiiih!" it hissed, a hideous screeching noise that scraped at everyone's eardrums, and its enormous mandibles shone a pale shade of blue. With unbelievable speed it thrust itself forwards, making a beeline for the closest enemy – a leonine Pokémon covered with spiky, gold-and-blue fur.
"Do it!" roared Gin, and his Durant fired a pincer-shaped blast of energy at the unfortunate Manectric, clamping down around its midsection. Manectric gave a pained howl as the attack connected, and its eyes went blank as it crashed limply onto the ground. "Keep going!" he ordered.
"Duiii!" screeched Durant, and within seconds it had eliminated the man's three other Pokémon with successive and pinpoint-accurate Guillotine attacks, each victim falling down in a heap as a wave of light sliced into it.
Wiping a hand across his brow in relief, Gin strode forwards to stand in front of the would-be attacker, unmoved by the latter's enormous stature. Hovering behind him, the Cofagrigus giggled maniacally as it continued to forcibly restrain the man, and with a nod from its Trainer, the Ghost-type moved its spectral hands away from his mouth, keeping sure to encircle his body instead.
"You fink yer so clever…" the man spat.
Gin gave him a doubtful 'hmph'. "Yeah, I do," he said unabashedly. "But that's only because you don't strike me as the educated type."
"Why you—!"
"Shut up!" Gin barked, and the man quaked under his heavy glare.
A tiny squeak behind him got his attention, and he suddenly remembered that the poor woman was still standing against the wall. Whirling around, he saw her looking at both he and her attacker, a hand over her heaving chest.
"Are you alright?" he asked worriedly. "Because it'd be a shame for me to go through all this for you to not be, Miss…?" he inquired.
The girl nodded. "I'll be fine," she answered firmly. "And my name is—Bronte. Bronte Clemens," she added.
Her reply sparking something in Gin's mind, and he instantly rounded on his captive. "You're working for someone," he told the man, his voice a low rumble. "Tell me who."
"I ain't working fer nobody!" the man shouted quickly.
"Tell me who!" Gin repeated, his patience wearing thin. The man refused to say a word this time, and Gin's hand flew forward like a snake, closing around the former's throat and clamping down hard. "I'm going to give you five seconds," he explained, "and you're either going to be a good boy, and tell me who hired you to attack this young woman… or my assistant—" Cofagrigus giggled in the man's ear, "will show you what the inside of your tomb looks like. Understand?" he asked, mouth curling into a vicious grin.
Two seconds later, the man gave Gin the answer he was looking for.
"Good boy," he smirked, snapping his fingers. Cofagrigus promptly let go of the man, who bawled like a schoolgirl and fled as fast as he could, not even bothering to recall his Pokémon to their balls.
"Thank you," said the woman graciously.
Gin quickly recalled his Pokémon and turned around again. "It was nothing," he replied humbly.
With the dire situation behind them, he could now get a better look at her, and he had the faintest of double-takes when he realised she was quite the attractive lass, even for his age. She had a very petite frame, not even reaching up to his shoulders at full height, and a pair of pale purple eyes hidden under a bowl-shaped cut of caramel-coloured hair. His eyes darted for the briefest, unnoticeable fraction of a second to her chest, and he heard a groan of disappointment in his head when he found only a hint of bosom.
"Still," Bronte said, smiling up at her rescuer. "I feel like I should repay you for your help just now. I don't know what I would have done—oh no, where's my bag?" she gasped suddenly, whirling about on the spot in worry. "That man snatched it when he surprised me here in the alley, and he called out his Pokémon when I tried to get it back. It's got my Poké Balls and—well, all my other personal effects," she explained, a red flush creeping across her cheeks, and Gin wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or shame that had caused it.
"Okay, let's just think," he advised, gesturing for Bronte to calm herself. "He didn't have it on him when he ran off; my Pokémon and I would've spotted it. It should still be here somewhe—ah, that must be it over there!" he exclaimed. He pointed at several overturned trash bins that had spilled out over the alleyway, no doubt a result of the fleeing attacker, and a bright flash of crimson leather poked itself out from underneath a layer of garbage.
"Oh, no!" Bronte groaned, rushing over to fetch her unfortunate handbag. Wrinkling her nose at the foul smell, she gingerly reached out a hand and pinched the topmost part of the handle between thumb and forefinger. She held back a revolted retch as she lifted the bag clear, giving it a shake when a few stubborn pieces of detritus clung grimly to the sides.
In the midst of the shaking, a large square of paper came loose from its neat alcove in one of the outer pockets, fluttering down to sit on top of the pile of trash. Instinctively, Gin reached down to retrieve it, and was in the middle of handing it back to Bronte when he saw that it wasn't a piece of paper at all. It was a colour photograph, depicting a young boy with jet-black hair patting the Pikachu that sat atop his shoulder.
And now we begin the soul-crushing loneliness that is weekly updating with another chapter, another character, and another mystery. It's like a Tom Riddle wrapped in a Mystery Machine inside an Enigma Berry... yeah, enjoy that disturbing mental image. It's enough to make even Gene Shalit roll his eyes.
Give me your thoughts on the chapter, queries on past events, or predictions about the future, with that handy little button at the bottom of the page. You know the one, "review this chapter", that one. Get in while you can, because Billy's coming out of the basement in a few hours, and he is mighty hungry after that scrawny New Zealand girl.
Thanks to all those who reviewed the previous chapter, an earlier chapter, or, sometime in the future, a current chapter! They're all greatly appreciated, so know that you're giving me something to smile about when I see one pop up.
Chapter 9 continues the gratuitous Japanese with, "ウラギリモノトーリアス、隠れファンタズム", set for release on November 22nd. The change to the following Tuesday is due to a clash between the regular update time and the beginning of my university's final examination period. Unavoidable and unforeseeable at the same time, unfortunately. Despite that, believe me when I say that if you miss this chapter... you will catch chlamydia, and you will die.
So, until next time... Be sure to review and, as always,
Lest we forget.