Dun dun dun! Another chappie ready for you guys!
As always, I do not own Pokemon.
An Abnormal Adventure
Chapter Four: Striaton City
"Listen to me, Ayami." Professor Juniper said, in astern tone. "You must be very careful on your journey. Very bad guys will try to kidnap you- for what exactly, I have no idea. We don't know who these people are, so watch your guard."
"H-hey!" Ayami exclaimed, jumping out of the way as the flying rodent Pokemon sped right through where the girl was a nanosecond ago. "Calm down! I won't hurt you!"
The Emolga stopped for a moment and stared at the brown-eyed girl, looking a tiny bit more relieved but was still tense. It ran around in circles and spun a bit, obviously preparing for another attack.
"Did I do something to bother you? Did I hurt you? If I did, I'm really sorry!" Ayami covered her face with her hands and closed her eyes, knowing that she wouldn't be able to dodge this attack.
The attack never came. Ayami lowered her hands and opened her eyes to find the Emolga staring at her with expectant eyes, not attacking, not tense. Ayami held out a shaky finger to touch it. It didn't flinch away, to her surprise. The Emolga took her finger and started leading the girl towards the forest. Ayami obliged, much to her brain screaming, 'THIS ISN'T SAFE! GO BACK!'
The Emolga stopped in front of a tree and looked up, causing Ayami to also look up. The tree was full of berries- ones that Ayami didn't know off the top of her head.
"You want those berries?" Ayami asked the Emolga, who nodded and flapped her arms.
"Why can't you fly?" Ayami tilted her head, gazing at the Electric-type's wings. Emolga spread them out, revealing a huge crack in one of them. Since no one had gone around healing it, it was red and green, with some white spots. Ayami cringed. "Okay… I'll try to get those berries for you." She looked up at the tree and sighed. The girl found a small ledge and pulled herself up, and looked around for another small ledge to climb on. Eventually she reached the lowest branch that had berries growing on the side. Carefully, she crawled along the branch and grabbed as many berries as she could reach. Then she climbed down, which felt like forever to Ayami.
"Here." Ayami knelt down and dropped the armful of berries she was carrying. The Emolga smiled at her and started eating them ravenously. Ayami watched it eat, feeling a slight sensation of happiness rush through her. The raven-haired girl crawled up to the Emolga, making sound so that it knew that she was coming.
"Why don't we check that wing out later?" Ayami said, sitting down close to the rodent Pokemon. It looked up at her, mouth full of berries. It then looked at its injured wing, then waddled in close to Ayami and sat in her lap. Ayami smiled and picked it up, taking note of the injured wing. She ran back to her house, knowing exactly how she came in.
As she was running, the Emolga suddenly squirmed, causing Ayami to stop. "What is it?" she asked, worried about what it might want.
It opened its mouth, but what came out wasn't part of the Pokemon's name. Instead, it was Ayami's. "Ayami!"
Ayami stared at the Pokemon. It kept on saying her name in a surprisingly male voice. "Ayami! Ayami!"
"W-wh- how!?" Ayami widened her eyes, and blinked.
When she opened her eyes again, Jackson was right in her face, tapping her nose. "Ayami! Ayami!"
"I'm up!" Ayami exclaimed, sitting up suddenly. It was late morning- she knew that by the sunlight coming in from the window. She looked at Jackson- he was already dressed.
"Wh- where's Reyna?" Ayami asked, standing up and yawning.
"In the shower. We tried to wake up earlier, but you were dead asleep." Jackson said, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. "Did you have a dream or something?"
"Yeah." Ayami nodded, looking in her bag for extra clothes. "It was when I first found Emolga." She noticed that Emolga was nowhere to be seen. "Jackson- have you seen Emolga?"
"Did you see anything weird in your dream?" Jackson asked.
Ayami thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Not really… except for the fact that Emolga said my name in your voice. That's how I woke up." Was it just her, or did she see a look of relief in Jackson's face? "Also… where's Emolga?"
"I think it went back to its Pokeball as soon as you fell asleep." Jackson pointed to her bag, then turned away, stopping any further thoughts in Ayami's mind.
"Okay." Ayami turned to her own bag and arranged her clothes for the day, as well as searching for her Pokeball.
As soon as she had her clothes neatly folded and in her hands, a loud screeching noise came from the bathroom. Reyna came out of the door, all dressed, her hair dripping wet, and her fingers plugged in her ears.
"I hate that you added a time limit for showering." Reyna scoffed, narrowing her eyes at Jackson.
"It'll make you go faster so that we can leave quicker. It's a good addition." Jackson smirked.
"What in the world are you guys talking about?" Ayami asked, finding her Pokeball and managing to balance it on top of the pile of clothes.
Reyna reluctantly took out a stopwatch-like object from her pocket. "He hid it somewhere in the bathroom so that I couldn't snooze the dang thing." She sighed, throwing it at Jackson. The boy caught it easily in his hands.
Ayami laughed, then rushed to the bathroom. "You guys wait for me, okay?" she smiled, shutting the door.
"Finally! We're here!" Ayami spread her arms out, breathing in the city air. "This is Striaton City, correct?"
Reyna nodded, reading information on her digital map. "This is where the Gym Leaders Chili, Cilan and Cress reside in."
"Gym Leaders? There are three of them?" Ayami asked in shock.
"You only battle one- the Gym Leader affects which starter you chose. For example, I have a Water-type starter. Therefore the one that I fight against is Cilan, a Grass-type user." Jackson informed.
"Oh… so grass is strong against water." Ayami murmured.
"Wait… you didn't know about type advantages?" Jackson asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Uh… of course I do! It just slipped out of my mind… that's all." Ayami retorted. "Anyways, should we go and battle the Gym Leaders now?"
"We should!" Reyna exclaimed, putting herself in the conversation. "That way, if we lose, we can take what they do and learn from it!"
"Good idea." Jackson agreed.
"Okay then, Gym Leader it is." Ayami smiled, then let Reyna take over as she led the two around the city.
"This building's quite huge." Jackson looked up.
"Well, it's supposed to have a café as well…" Reyna educated.
"I wonder if there are other trainers here that want to battle the Gym Leaders…" Ayami looked around, trying to find anyone who could be recognized as a trainer.
Just then, they heard screams.
"Oh no!" Reyna widened her eyes. "Something's happened in there!" she ran up the stairs and went through the doors.
"Reyna!" Ayami and Jackson said together as they ran up the steps and opened the doors, unsure of what was inside.
What they found were a bunch of screaming girls around three waiters with odd-colored hair. They also found Reyna standing there, confused and baffled.
"Reyna?" Ayami walked up to her slowly and poked her in the shoulder.
"So it wasn't the person from before harassing people. It's- it's just two apparently good-looking guys giving them eye candy." Reyna mumbled, then walked out slowly. Ayami and Jackson looked at each other and laughed nervously.
One of the three waiters gazed at the two trainers and walked up to them. "So a couple has come to challenge us, I presume?"
"What?" Ayami and Jackson looked at the blue-haired waiter weirdly, then laughed out loud.
"Good one!" Ayami choked, still laughing hard from the apparent joke. Jackson was on the floor, holding his gut.
"Ah, you might be surprised to find out that the flower of love is blooming between you both," the waiter said, smiling mischievously.
"Do we have challengers?" a voice called out from amidst the screams. The green-haired waiter went up to them and smiled at the two trainers.
Ayami wiped her eyes clean of tears and nodded. "Yeah, we've come for a challenge." She said, before busting out into round two of laughter.
"I believe there was also a brunette that was right here a moment ago." The blue-haired waiter piped up. "I wonder where she might have gone."
"That brunette is right here!" Reyna walked through the doors again, holding out her hand. "My name's Reyna, by the way. And those two over there are Ayami and Jackson."
"Very beautiful names, I must say." The green-haired waiter closed his eyes. "It's like being in an unexplored area where everything is untainted by the hands of the modern era and where everything has a historic feel to it." He finished, earning himself screams of delight from the girls.
"Thanks…?" Jackson managed to say, still trying to breathe from laughing so hard.
"And our names are Cress," the blue-haired waiter started,
"Cilan," the green-haired waiter bowed his head,
"And Chili!" the red-haired spoke up, trying to fight his way to his two counterparts.
Ayami stepped up, her goofy mood tired out and her determined mood shining in its place. "We want to challenge you to a Gym battle."
"Challenge accepted," Cress bowed. "But I warn you…"
"… we're stronger…" Cilan popped in.
"… than you think!" Chili finished.
Much words. Wow.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting this chapter being over my 1,500 word limit. But since it is, I've decided to save the battle for next chapter.
-gets hit by tomatoes- Okay! Okay! I promise I'll make the battles just as long and interesting! (well, maybe not the long part.)
Thanks for reading, as always!
-EarthSpell