For a moment, I didn't know what to say or do. Dad was standing there, right in front of me, bleeding heavily but looking otherwise okay. I couldn't see any other signs of injuries. His training outfit, however, was spattered with drops of crimson blood that contrasted painfully with the crisp white material. As my horrified call echoed out into the devastated room, Dad stopped mid-stride, looking at me in sheer astonishment, almost losing his grip on several of the healing instruments he was clutching.

"Sienna…?" His voice was soft, tinged with a hushed shock. "You… you came?"

His mild response took me by surprise and I floundered for a moment, but then all of a sudden, I came to my senses. "Of course I came!" I snapped. "Na…Nathan called me from the dojo! Called me! I wasn't gonna—" I stopped straight in my tracks, another horrifying thought pushing itself to the forefront of my mind. "Oh my God…" I breathed out, feeling a suffocating panic rise up in my body. My palms instantly became sweaty and I found it difficult to spit out my words. "N…Nathan! Where is he?!"

"Not here." Dad said at once, very matter-of-factly and calmly. "It's safe. For now." He added, an ominous sense of foreboding hanging onto his final words.

"What…? He's… he's not here? But he—"

Dad suddenly grunted, cutting me off mid-sentence. He then reached out and dumped one of the many medical kits he had been holding into my hands. I stared at the offering rather dumbly, looking up to him for an explanation.

"Enough talk." He told me firmly. "Now that you're here, you might as well make yourself useful and help me heal the Pokemon first."

My mouth opened in a vague protest, my eyes fixed firmly on what looked like a puncture wound still leaking crimson blood all over my father's face. "But… you're hurt too!"

"I can wait. The Pokemon can't." Dad said, his voice hardening.

"But Dad—!"

"The Pokemon first!" He barked with such ferocity I instinctively flinched away from him, like a cat expecting a blow. As I stood there, my body torn between staying where I was and running away, he looked down at me fiercely, his eyes burning with such a vicious intensity that it sent a shot of fear stabbing at my heart.

At that point, my resolve broke in an all too familiar experience of déjà vu. It had always been the same. I had always been so defiant of my father in my youth, but one harsh word from him always sent me crumbling, my fear of him proving too great a wall to overcome. Even now, it was the same. "Y...yes!" I stammered, turning on my heel and obediently heading towards the nearest injured Pokemon to me. The Bronzong.

Some part of me was glad to treat the Bronzong. It wasn't a Pokemon my dad ordinarily favoured, but it was big and bulky, built like an absolute tank, possessing many of the qualities I knew he admired in his Pokemon. But there was something a little different about this particular Steel type. It seemed gentler than several of the other Pokemon Dad owned, and as I swept the rubble from its bell-shaped body, it murmured appreciatively as I freed its trapped limbs. Had this been the Golem, the Machamp or the Tyranitar, I had a feeling I would have been thrown halfway across the room no sooner had I even touched one of them. The Bronzong seemed fairly calm even in the face of being so badly injured and responded well as I applied a spritz of Super Potion over the wounds and tickled the Hyper Potion into its mouth, eventually reviving it.

As the Bronzong rose up again, its strength fully restored, I heard the door to the dojo open again. Panicked, I looked up, but it was only Nikki. Her chest was heaving, her face flushed and she was panting heavily. As her widened eyes touched on me, I saw a look of relief pass over her.

"Sienna!"

At that moment, I wanted to say so much to her. But seeing someone so familiar in such an unfamiliar and horrifying situation made inexplicable tears spring in my eyes. At that moment, I was so glad to see her. I needed some manner of normality and of security in a situation that was totally alien and terrifying to me.

"Are you okay?" she called.

It was with a start I remembered my dad's instructions, and out of a strange, primitive fear, I found myself choking out "He…help me with the Pokemon, quickly!"

Nikki faltered for a moment, but snapped her mouth shut and ran up to me, helping herself to some remaining potions. She quickly set to work at the injured Tyranitar that was lying close to her and I couldn't help but feel relieved I wouldn't have to deal with that monster. Remembering my own duties, I got to my feet and checked over the giant Bronzong one last time. It roared satisfyingly as I inspected it, spinning around in a circle in a childlike happiness. I patted it gingerly and looked around, intending to decide which Pokemon to attend to next. I half-expected to see several of them righted and back on their feet, but I was stunned to see that the Golem, Machamp and Steelix still remained unconscious on the floor, while the Empoleon and Poliwrath circled them worriedly. I blinked slowly.

"I thought Dad was healing them…" I thought, craning my neck to look around the entire of the main room. Dad was nowhere to be seen. My heart thudded hard against my ribcage and my lips instantly ran dry. "…Dad?" I ventured into the muffled silence of the room.

I was distracted once again by the door banging open. I turned around and saw Elliot, Jasmine, Scott and Bailey come bursting into the main room. No sooner had my eyes touched on them; a shock of adrenaline hit me as I finally seemed to process the fact my father had mysteriously disappeared. Suspicions and fears sprang up in the back of my mind, sending my panic into overdrive. Something wasn't right here. I barked the same order at my friends my father had given me, to look after the Pokemon, and immediately turned on my heel and ran out the first door I saw.

As I emerged into another hallway, I heard the noises of shattering, crashing and banging come from somewhere nearby. I breathed in sharply. This didn't sound good in the slightest.

Without hesitation, I tore towards the kitchen where I had pinpointed the noise was coming from.I stopped in my tracks no sooner had I wrenched the door open and stepped into a room that looked like a tornado had ravaged straight through it. Plates of every colour and pattern lay smashed into a million pieces on the floor, the bright jagged edges of the ceramic covering the tiled floor like a thick carpet. Drawers containing cutlery, kitchen utensils, towels and everything imaginable had been ripped out, their contents spilled like blood. And there, right in the centre of all the chaos, was my father, beating his fists upon the wall, tearing through every appliance and fixture, throwing anything his hands touched either across the room or on the floor. He looked like a crazed madman, encompassed in the burning fury of rage.

"Dad!" I cried out in fright.

As my voice sounded out, he whipped round, his eyes blazing and clenching a fistful of cutlery. I saw a glimpse of a perfectly sharpened chef's knife amongst the harmless spoons, forks and one unsuspecting potato peeler, I screamed. My hands flew to my face defensively, my mind suddenly conjuring images of being attacked. Phantom knives danced in the panicked depths of my mind's eye, and I flinched away so violently my back slammed into the kitchen wall. For a moment, fuelled by sheer blind panic, I wanted to simply run. This primitive instinct was all-consuming. But as I shied away, trying to make my legs move, I heard the clatter of the cutlery as it crashed to the floor. The noise of rushed footfalls and the crunch of ceramic sounded like gunshots, only serving to terrify me even further. But all of a sudden, someone stood in front of me and I felt close, warm contact, and the unmistakable feeling of arms draped rather awkwardly around me.

A soft whisper reached the whorls of my ear. "Sienna…?"

I was trembling. Every inch of my body quivered. Deep down, I knew what my father was doing, but I fervently denied it. I wrestled with the confusing tendrils of my consciousness. I didn't want this to be happening, but at the same time, I did.

I forced my reluctant eyes open. Dad was right there, standing over me. He was holding me, his hands resting gently on my back. I inhaled deeply, breathing in a scent that was both familiar and unfamiliar. The familiar smell of the thick, starchy material that made up the uniform he wore and the smell of slightly stale sweat from the constant training he put himself under, but those familiar scents I associated with him were masked by a scent of strong citrus that I simply couldn't identify. A bizarre clash of old, bitter memories and the strangeness of this new situation collided in my mind, making me feel dizzy and emotionally spent.

As Dad's hands rested on me in a strange sort of embrace, the tremor echoing over my body seemed to intensify. As I stood there, pulled into the closest contact I had had with my father in what felt like a lifetime, my head was spinning. Never in my adolescent life had I ever hugged my father. I had hazy memories of awkward hugs that barely lasted a second in my childhood, ghosts of embraces that melted into nothingness and feelings of emptiness and longing for comfort and verification, yearning for that typical father-daughter relationship I had been so ardently denied. And now, after ten years, here I was in a situation I never thought I'd be in again. As I stood there, a strange thought invaded my head. Dad had always seemed so huge, so intimidating, so broad and powerful. But now, standing before him, being held in his arms, he seemed smaller, more diminished, and not as strong as I remembered him...

"Dad?" I croaked out.

"I'm sorry, Sienna..." He said. His voice sounded choked.

"It's okay!" I said, perhaps a little more hysterically than I meant to. With little else I could do, my arms, although restrained by the hug, flailed uselessly up and down a few times. "Dad, what... What's happened here?"

At my question, Dad moved away from me swiftly. He turned his back, looking out the window. I saw his hand rub at his face, just momentarily. "Nathan. He was here."

"I know..." I whispered, instantly remembering the phonecall from earlier. Just at the mere thought of his smooth, slippery, self-assured voice, goosebumps sprang up all over my skin. "He... He told me."

"That bastard." Dad said coarsely. "That cocky, arrogant, slimy bastard…" he aimed a fierce kick at the cupboard next to us, the dull thud reverberating all around us. "I can't believe I let him get away…"

"So… so… he's gone?"

"Yes." Dad said with a defiant nod. "Nathan's a strong trainer, but two years cooped up in jail has made him rusty. And he has a habit of grossly under-estimating his opponents…"

A shock went through me. "Wait… so, you beat him? And then he ran away?"

Dad nodded.

"No way!" I said weakly, feeling like I had been hit with a brick. "But...when he was on the phone to me, he sounded so sure that he was gonna..."

"Take his revenge on me?" Dad laughed. "Please. If Nathan wanted even so much as a hope of beating me in a battle, he should know better than to challenge me in my own dojo where I keep all my best Pokemon on hand."

"So... He just... got beaten? And he left?!"

"Left with his tail between his legs. He promised he'd be back, though. No surprises there." He added, somewhat darkly. "Though he won't be alone next time. He says he's going to bring Helene…"

"Helene?" I wrinkled my nose in confusion. "You mean… she wasn't with him when he was here…?"

At that moment however, there came a soft knock at the door, so light it was almost unnoticeable. I turned in direction of the knock to see Bailey sidle inside, looking highly uncomfortable. "Master Volbeda, umm… Sir, we've healed all the Pokemon."

Dad twisted around to see Bailey. A look of abject confusion touched on his face. "Bailey… you're here too?"

"I brought everyone with me." I said quickly.

"Oh." Dad still looked a little perplexed, and I caught a flash of some emotion I couldn't quite recognise pass over him. "Th…thank you, Bailey. Let's go through."

Without another word, Dad strode through into the main room, Bailey following him obediently. I watched them leave, feeling a little overwhelmed. I looked once more around the wrecked kitchen, my heart twisting as I thought of the crazed look in my father's eyes. Snippets of Nathan's words over the phone chimed through my head.

"Your father is a monster, Sienna! Abusive. Power-hungry... He hides his true persona! ...one slight temptation, one slight push in the wrong direction, he'll go right back to where he started! ...at the first sniff of a chance to gain power, he'll go running back to his old ways!"

As these words returned to me, I wanted to throw my head into my hands and weep. I tried to fight the feeling, part of me knowing better than to believe Nathan or anything that came out of his mouth. I knew he was nothing more than a horrible, villainous man who found pleasure in cruelty and sadistic acts. It had of course occurred to me that Nathan was just trying to get in my head, push my buttons and hit me where it hurt. But seeing Dad in such a primitive, angered state, it had stirred an unshakeable worry in me. Had this been the push in the wrong direction Nathan had mentioned? It had been a long time since I had seen Dad this angry. He had seemed so mild-mannered and almost easy-going when I first came to Goldenrod. He had seemed like a different person. I began trembling. Had I been wrong to trust him so readily? Seeing him now was like seeing an ominous flashback to his old ways...

"Sienna!"

I jumped as Bailey popped his head around the door again.

"H...huh?"

"Come on!" He gestured for me to follow.

I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, try and make some kind of semblance of sense out of my worries, but I knew I couldn't. I had little option but to follow Bailey into the other room. As I entered, I saw my father standing in the middle of the room, recalling each of the monstrous Pokemon in turn. Nikki, Jasmine, Elliot and Scott were standing in one corner of the room, eyeing my father nervously. Dad turned to look at Bailey and I as we came through in the main room. He nodded approvingly at us as we stepped forward.

"I suppose you all want to know what's going on." He began slowly.

"Yes!" Elliot said at once, stepping forward, an unusually hard look in his green eyes. "Sienna's in danger, isn't she? Isn't she?!" he demanded, his voice low and tinged with an unsual aggressiveness. "Nathan is dangerous! What if he goes after her next? She shouldn't even have come here!" He suddenly looked towards me and addressed me. "You shouldn't have come here."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Dad cut cleanly across me. "Sienna is in danger, I won't dispute that. Nathan is dangerous, and partnered with Helene, even more so."

"Then you should have stopped her coming!" Elliot snapped.

Instantly, my blood ran cold. I could only helplessly watch as Dad looked down at Elliot with disdain, his face eroding into a vicious frown. "I could say the same for you. I'm her father and her safety is and always will be paramount for me. But you are her... Boyfriend, correct? Anything you say should have far more weight than anything I could say. What seventeen year old girl listens to her father? None that I know. Seventeen year old girls listen to their friends and their boyfriends. You say I should have stopped her…? Well, I say you should have stopped her!"

Elliot visibly smarted, his face souring immediately. "How... How dare you?!" he snapped.

"I dare." My father said coolly. "I told Sienna not to come here, but in all honesty, I didn't expect her to listen to me."

"She wouldn't listen to me either!" Elliot looked in my direction again and I was shocked to see a look of fury adorning his face as he fixed his eyes on me. "She wouldn't listen to any of us!"

To my surprise, my father didn't yell at Elliot any further. Instead he chuckled humourlessly, bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That doesn't surprise me..."

Elliot stopped in his tracks. "It...doesn't?"

"No," Dad shook his head. "There's another reason I named this dojo "Free Spirits", Elliot. Because my own daughter is a free spirit. Just like her mother. Won't be tied down, won't do what she's told... Does what she wants when she wants. She's fiercely determined. Once she sets her mind on something, nothing or no-one will change her."

Elliot looked flummoxed.

"Dad..." I said softly, against my better reasoning, suddenly feeling mildly embarrassed.

"But you have to promise me you'll look after my daughter." Dad was speaking to only Elliot now. "She needs a man in her life. A good man."

Elliot's mouth hung open gormlessly.

"Promise me?"

The question hung heavily in the air.

"I haven't been a good father. I haven't been there to protect her when I should. I don't know if I will be able to protect here or even if I deserve to protect her any more. So, promise me you'll look after her?"

"I... I promise..." Elliot eventually stammered.

Dad nodded approvingly. He then turned to me and looked at me with such a saddened look that it sent a chill down my spine. For some reason, it almost felt like he was saying goodbye. My heart swelled with sadness and I found myself instinctively wanting to cry out. "D…dad!" I whimpered, suddenly feeling the threat of tears.

"Dad..." I ventured.

"Sienna," Dad once again interrupted me. "Nathan told me he'd be back. And next time he won't be coming alone."

I nodded, forcibly expelled from the depths of sadness I was currently struggling in. "Helene, right…?"

"Yes. Helene." Dad nodded. "She was the one who got him out of prison. And Nathan said that he'll be bringing her along next time."

"When...when is next time?" I dared to ask.

"I don't know." Dad admitted. "But if they do come here again, we have to be prepared. Helene's a dangerous woman working for Nathan. And I'm worried..."

"Me too..." I whispered.

"Not for the same reasons I am." Dad let out a vicious exhale. "Nathan was cryptic as ever when he came here, but I did manage to get some information out of him."

"Oh God..." My heart gave a painful twist. I already didn't like where this was going. "They're not... The Legendaries...? Surely...?"

The limited speech I did manage to push forth was broken and barely legible, but Dad seemed to understand what I was trying to say. "No," he said slowly. "I know he'd never admit it, but Nathan learned his lesson from what happened two years ago. He knows now not to mess with legendary Pokemon, the same as I do. They're not to be trifled with."

"I don't understand..." I whispered. "If he doesn't want legendary Pokemon... What does he want?"

Dad hesitated. "I don't know entirely. But I have a suspicion."

"Of what?!"

"I told you Helene is a very smart woman, yes? She's had more degrees and PhD's than I've had hot dinners. One of her particular interests and many fields of expertise is… Ne… na… naru… neura..." He began stumbling over a difficult sounding science-y word. "Brains!" He suddenly corrected himself with a flourish. "She interested in brains."

For one mad moment, I had an admittedly rather funny imagine of a zombie in my head, but I quickly drew a line under it and forced myself to be serious. "Brains?"

"Yeah. How they work, what happens if you poke around in there, all that science mumbo-jumbo that I don't understand. And she has a very specific interest in the neuro-thingy of Pokemon."

I heard Nikki put forth the worth "neurology", but she went generally unheeded.

"She's interested in the brains of Pokemon?" I surmised.

"I believe so. And I believe she's attempting to mess around with Pokemon's brains, somehow."

I shuddered. "Why...?! What on earth would she want to do that for?"

"Nathan didn't disclose that information, but yet again, I think I have an idea why. I believe she may be trying to find some way to manipulate Pokemon behaviour through... changing their brain waves or something ridiculous. Load of rubbish, really..."

"Can people really do things like that?" Nikki spoke again, looking quite scared.

"Of course not!" Jasmine's foghorn voice rang out as if she was the expert on the matter. "Poking around in peoples' brains to get them to change their behaviour. That's stupid!"

"I don't know if there's any truth to it or not." Dad stepped in at once just as the first inklings of an argument started burgeoning on the horizon. "But the last experiment I heard Helene was undertaking had something to do with gaining some sort of control over Pokemon that already have trainers."

A chill went down my spine. "What…?"

"So… you're saying… this Helene woman wants to find ways to manipulate Pokemon that already have trainers?" Elliot surmised, taking a step forward.

"That is what I believe," Dad said with a nod. "And if my suspicions are right, we can't afford to be careless. We have to keep a constant watch for them." He let out a deep sigh, running his hand through his mane of hair. "If this is what Nathan and Helene have planned, I have to hand it to them… they came up with a decent plan. Any fool can stop someone from doing something with the help of their Pokemon. But take away Pokemon, what are we? Just ordinary people who can't put any sort of impact on the world. Take away Pokemon and we're stripped back to our bare bones. Helpless as the day we were brought into the world. Nathan and Helene know exactly where to strike now. We can't trifle with them anymore."

A thought suddenly struck me. "… 'we', dad? You… you shouldn't be getting involved. He's already tried to get at you once. Besides…" my voice suddenly cracked and seemed to dissipate into nothingness as I forced out my final words. "…we all know it's me he really wants revenge on.

"He'll have to go through me first." Dad said fiercely, before letting out a sigh. "But Sienna, we don't know for sure anything just now. The only thing that we can safely assume is that Nathan and Helene will be here another day. The best thing we can do is prepare for this."

"P…prepare?" I heard Nikki say worriedly as Dad turned on his heel and aimed a half-hearted kick at a piece of broken wood. "H…how exactly do we prepare for something like this?"

Dad turned to look at Nikki and then looked at me, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "This is a dojo after all. And how else do we prepare for something in a dojo?"

As several blank faces stared back at him, he shook his head and sighed, looking at me, raising an eyebrow expectantly. "What do we to prepare, Sienna?"

"We train…" the answer slipped from my mouth before I even realised what I was saying.

Dad nodded, a fiery determination suddenly beginning to burn in his eyes.

"We train."

Author's Note

Another chapter :P I will apologise for the lateness of this one as I was struck down with a virus that completely knocked me flat over the past week. Hopefully the next one won't be too long.

Oh! And I accidentally enabled 'moderate reviews' last time I was in my account, so apologies to anyone who may have tried to submit a guest review and it never showed. It's been disabled, so posting guest reviews should work again.

TCoBlackroses: Wow, so much praise! I don't deserve it haha! And Nathan with a Joker-esque voice? Now he speaks like that in my head too :D Thank you very much for your lovely review as always.

WarriorSwift: Nope, no-one's dead. Well, you know Sienna, she doesn't have that much common sense so trying to phone her father didn't even occur to her. I don't think it would've helped either. Thanks for the review!

Shadow-Wolf-Hikaru: Yes, darn that Nathan indeed. He's so mean! Thank you for the review!

TwewyReaperGirl: Cosplaying! I've always wanted to cosplay, unfortunately I lack the looks and figure to pull it off xP Ah, issues at school, huh? I know that feel… Well, the only interesting thing in my life is that I'm going back to university on Friday so that's quiet scary! Thank you for the review!

ArchXDeath: Haha! Sienna giving Nathan a punch in the face would be SO entertaining! Thank you for your dedicated reviews! :D

lmv16: Here's the update! Hope I don't disappoint! Thanks for reviewing :)

Shadow Serenity 57: Ah, reading the updates back to front? Never mind; so long as you get the gist of it :) And yeah, this is the end now… Thanks for reviewing!

That's it! Until next time!