"So what exactly are we doing?" I asked. We were in the contest hall, standing on the battlefield, all looking at how ruined it was. Wood had fallen, some seats were rusted. Lilly seemed to be the only one who knew what was going on.

"We are doing probably the simplest thing to increase group compatibility."

"Wait, all of it?" Auroc asked. He seemed to have figured something out while the rest of us were still clueless.

"Not all of it. Just the battlefield area. The bleachers will be for someone else to do."

"Would one of you like to explain?" I asked.

"We'll be fixing up the contest hall," Lilly said happily.

This of course was met by confused silence.

KY was the one to break it. "Uh, why are we cleaning, exactly?"

"The tournament is going to be held here. Now, we have been given probably the most important task, which is getting this area clean. If we don't fix it up, then we won't be able to have the tournament. It sucks, but it has to be done."

"Well what are we going to do?" Ore asked.

She winked at him. "Well it actually starts with you. Feel the ground."

He knelt down and put his hand on the ground. "It's rock hard all the way down to the bedrock."

"Exactly. We do need a bit of durability from the battlefield, but we don't need it to be so hard we break bones on it. Our main job is going to be softening the ground."

"I could do it, but it's simply too big of an area," Ore said. "The most I can do is turn the thing to rubble."

"Make it a fine rubble, and you'll be done for a while."

He didn't really see the point in this, but he nodded. He paused for a moment, then lifted his hands into the air. There was a huge shockwave through the ground, and the battlefield was reduced to rubble, just as he said. Then he slumped against the wall, exhausted.

"Perfect. Now, we are going to be making a circle of attacks designed to soften the dirt. We will do this by a process of breaking it into smaller pieces then pressurizing it until we have the right consistency. I will start by making it wet with my water. KY and Auroc, I want you two to freeze it, making the stone very brittle. Then I want Kykis, Hydra, and Absolum to break it up into smaller pieces. Once that has happened, I want Eriff, Mark, and Elric to trample it down."

We all nodded, and set to work. Lilly, using her hydro pump, started dowsing the field in water. It took her a minute, but then the entire area was wet. To freeze it, Kykis used his tri attack while Auroc simply made ice spread from his hands.

Now it was my turn. I used swift while Kykis used confusion and Absolum used his destruction abilities. Soon we had a finer layer of dirt.

Eriff and Mark both used fire attacks, flying across the field and heating it. Mark was using flame wheel while Eriff was using flame charge. Elric was the most interesting to watch. All we would see was a yellow blur and steam rise from his tracks. After about 45 minutes, we had reconstructed the ground.

"Nice work, everyone," Lilly said. "Now all we have to do is test to see if it's soft enough." She leapt up to the stands with a big jump, and faced us. I realized what she was doing, but before I could object, she leapt up into the air, and dove headfirst into the ground.

When the smoke cleared, she was lying in the middle of a small dented area. "Maybe just a little softer," she said.

And with this, we repeated the process. It only took us a few more tries, but it still took us about three hours. We weren't really in a rush to be done. Once we were done, we admired our handiwork. We did really good. Auroc found some paint for the lines, and after redrawing them, we were finished.

"So now what?" I asked.

Lilly shrugged. "I didn't really have anything planned for today. What do you guys want to do?"

"We still haven't found a black market dealer," Elric said.

"True, and we need one. Shall we go check out a few of the Freelands?" We all agreed, and set off. It had started raining. We probably didn't have a real chance of finding one since our group was huge, but we didn't really care.

As we were walking around the Freelands, I felt something odd. I couldn't really explain what it was, but I knew something wrong was happening. I couldn't really mention this to anyone, but I just had a bad feeling.

Soon it got unbearable. I took off down the street, back where we had come from. "Hydra, where are you going?" Lilly called to me. I ignored her. Something bad was happening, and if I didn't at least see what was going on, I would feel like it was my fault.

I turned the corner to see a pokemon running. It was a Zoroark. I could hear her sobbing. She tripped, flew forward, and hit the ground hard, skidding forward at least three feet. She didn't get back up. She just stayed there and cried, being drenched by the rain.

I ran over to her as fast as I could. "Hey, are you okay?" I asked. "Are you hurt? What's wrong?"

She just shook her head. After a few breaths, she stopped crying and spoke. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? You fell really hard."

she picked herself up. "I'm fine." She most certainly was not fine. There was a long cut across her cheek and her arm looked like it had been rubbed by a cheese grater.

I looked behind me. The rest of the gang was there. "Why don't you come with us. You look really tired. What's your name?"

She took another deep breath. "Most people just call me X."

"Well then, X, we better get moving." I led her back to the group. "Hey, Lilly, this is X. She's looking pretty bad. Can we get her back to base and see if we can't help her."

"Sure. Those are some nasty looking cuts. Kykis." Kykis nodded, and in a flash, we were in the base. There was medical supplies down here since we felt like it was needed after the Absolum and Auroc incidents. Eriff started tending to her wounds.

"Hey X," Lilly said, "You wouldn't happen to be a black market dealer would you?"

She shook her head. "No, but I know where you can find one. There's an untied one in the Eastern Freelands. He's a banette, I believe."

Eriff finished wrapping her arm and then stuck a band-aid over the cut on her cheek. "There. All done." He arched his back. "Well, there's no point in going right this minute. Why don't we have some lunch?"

We all nodded, and KY, Kykis, and I went and brought down a bunch of food. We even found a box of ramen noodles, which we cooked using Lilly's water and Mark's fire. We were all having a lot of fun experimenting with what to put in the noodles.

X seemed very uncomfortable. She picked at her food, but didn't really eat. I had to ask. "Something wrong? Are you not hungry?"

"No, it's just..." She paused for a minute. "I don't get why you all are being so nice."

"Well why not?" Lilly asked.

"Yeah, wouldn't you have helped if it was one of us?" Eriff said

She just stared at her bowl, then put it down. "I think I'll be leaving now."

"Aw, do you have to?" Ore asked.

"Yeah, you should stay a bit longer," KY insisted.

"Why don't you join our gang?" Lilly said.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. But I do need to go." With that, she left without another word.

"Well that was odd," Mark said.

"I hope she'll be okay," I said. I hadn't gotten the chance to ask her why she was running or why she was crying.

"Well, we can't worry about that right now," Lilly said. "I think we will go check out this Freeland. I, Auroc, and Hydra will go."

We nodded, and set off towards where our destination. The Freeland we were headed for was Wodash. It was a relatively dark part of town, full of shady pokemon. I did my best to avoid this area. It scared me.

Lilly asked around, and we found out where the pokemon was. His name was Kannin. He lived in an abandoned electronics store.

We went inside. "Hello?" Lilly said. "Is anyone here?"

I got a feeling a bit like when we met X, but it was much fainter. I didn't really pay attention to it this time. I looked around, wondering where the pokemon was hiding. I took one more step, and something flew through the air and sunk into the ground in front of me. I stood perfectly still. It was a shuriken made of water.

"Everyone stop moving," I said, trying to stay calm. They all froze. I looked upward. "Are you going to attack again?"

There was no reply. "Look, we aren't here to attack or anything. We are a part of the gang the Unnaturals. We're here looking for Kannin. We heard that he was a black market dealer."

There was another pause. "Please?" I said. "If he isn't here, we can leave?"

"He doesn't wish to speak with you," a voice said. "Please leave."

I nodded. "Okay, but can you at least tell us your name?"

Another pause. I could tell it was an awkward one. "What's wrong?"

"I don't have a name," he said.

I frowned. "Well that's not good. Why don't you give yourself one?"

More silence. "I don't know."

"It's sad, isn't it?" a voice from behind me said. I forced myself not to jump, and turned to see a banette, which was probably Kannin. "He came around here, not with a penny or a name. He had been sick and tired, so I let him crash here. He decided to stay and help me with my work."

I nodded. "What kind of pokemon are you?" I asked the shadows.

A tall, blue frog pokemon creeped from the shadows. He had a long pink tongue which he wore like a scarf. "I'm a greninja, final evolution of the water starter of Kalos."

"Now didn't I tell you not to be on guard duty today?" Kannin said. "You know you've been sick lately."

"I'm fine," he said. This was a lie. He looked pale and had sweat all over his face.

"No you aren't." He turned to me. "Well I heard you were looking for a black market dealer? I suppose I could fill that job for you. If you have a list of supplies for me, then I will gladly stop by and see what you have to trade. If I like doing business with you, I'll become your permanent black market dealer."

"Perfect," Lilly said. She named off a bunch of supplies we needed, and Kannin wrote it all down.

Once he was done, he looked at us all. "So why do you call yourselves the Unnaturals?"

"We all have some unnatural skill," Auroc said. "I can control ice, Hydra can control people, and Lilly has amazing jumping abilities. The others in the gang have strange things they can do as well."

"Well then Mr. Nameless over here would fit right in. Show them what you can do."

He looked down. "I don't like to."

"Ah, come on. Give it a whirl."

He sighed. Concentrating, he held his hands out in front of him. Water formed into the shape of a samurai sword.

"Woah," Lilly said, "that's pretty neat. I know you can make shuriken out of water, but I've never heard of someone making a sword."

"And he's made other weapons too," Kannin said. "Why don't you take him with you? He never get's to do anything here anyway."

"Do you want to come?" I asked.

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Well that settles it. Let's head back now. Thanks, Kannin."

We walked back outside. It was still raining. "So we're going to need to give you a name. Have any ideas?"

"Maybe we should name him after a ninja," Auroc said.

"Or we could name him a normal name, should he want one," Lilly said. We all were discussing names, constantly asking whether or not he liked them. None of them really seemed to fit. He didn't seem to thrilled about name picking, and walked behind us.

"How about Kanuki?" Lilly asked.

"Too girly," I said. "What do you think?" We turned around to see that he was no longer walking right behind us. he had fallen a distance back. We hurried over to him. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, shakily trying to get up. He had gotten paler. "I just don't feel very good."

Lilly put her paw on his forehead. "Your head is burning up. We have to get you out of this rain. Auroc, do you think you can carry him?"

He nodded, and picked up the pokemon, carrying him gently. We weren't too far away from the base. Everyone was waiting for us when we got there. Surprisingly enough, Fort and Hana where here as well. "Hey Eriff," Lilly said. "This guy's got a fever. Do we still have any medicine left?"

"I think a bit. Let's get him upstairs." They lowered the panel, and we all went up. I found it kind of funny how unfazed we were by harmed pokemon. We just explained the situation, and dealt with it.

Auroc laid him down on one of the beds in the infirmary, pulling the covers over him. He was shivering slightly. Eriff came back with a thermometer, an ice pack, and some herbs. "First I'm going to take your tempurature." The greninja put the thermometer in his mouth. He was at a hundred and four degrees.

"You're really sick," Eriff said. "How long have you been feeling bad."

"Not that long."

"No," I said. "That's a lie. I can tell."

He sighed. "I've felt this bad for the past two months."

"And you haven't said anything?" Absolum said.

He shook his head. Eriff sighed. "This isn't the thing you keep quiet about. Eat these." He gave him the herbs, which he ate slowly. "Now I want you to sleep and I'll have more medicine when you wake up." The greninja nodded, then was asleep.

"Nice to see you again," Lilly said to Hana and Fort. "Is Fort going to be able to join us?"

"Sort of," Hana said. "We talked it over, and I have decided I'm joining to."

We all stared. "But don't you have a Freeland to run?" Ore asked.

"I don't want to sit around, waiting to see who will take over the city from this contest. I will help who I want to win, which is this group."

"Well it's nice that you could join." She yawned. "I think I'll get a little bit of food and sleep for a while. Wake me up if something interesting happens." She left, soon followed by all the others. I looked at the pokemon. I wonder what he would want his name to be. I just mostly hoped he felt better soon. Something was nagging at me, but I didn't know what it was. I brushed it off and went to sleep, awaiting our next mission.