Chapter 16: Ace

The next four days were the same as the past two. We switched trainers, then trained and caught two more Pokémon one day, and came back to Viridian and battled it out the next. Maria won one, Justin won the other, but I did manage to beat him in the first round once. All of us had exactly six Pokémon, and my team had become a very spirited Dewgong, Dragonite, Vileplume, Hypno, Amphardos and Flareon. We had all mastered the technique of giving mental orders, and it actually wasn't that difficult. The guy that had attacked Maria and I hadn't shown up again. Our seventh day in the world of Pokémon was mostly spending time with each other and saying our goodbyes in Viridian Forest. When evening drew near, Yellow fell asleep, reminding us of the young girl she still looked like, although she had confessed that she really was twenty-three years old.

"How do we get home?" Justin asked no one in particular. "I mean, they didn't exactly tell us what to do when we were done. They didn't even tell us what to do when we got here!"

Red looked at us with a funny expression. "You go back the same way you came, of course. You gotta find the device that brought you here."

"We have to find a device in a dark forest at night? Of course we do!" I flung my hands up in exasperation.

"I have an idea," Maria said quietly as a Pokéball flew from the little bag Red had given each of us on the 4th day. Her Gardevoir that had evolved from her Ralts appeared elegantly next to her side. The Pokémon's eyes glowed and she began gliding around us in widening circles. "She's going to search for the device using psychic. I'm going with her."

"Okay, a tracking Pokémon. I have one of those! Go Hypno!" Hypno had evolved from my Drowzee a few days back, and I liked it much better this way. I mentally showed it what I wanted it to search for, the triangular metal shape with handles on the points.

"Don't go too far!" Justin called out to us, standing on the edge of our campfire light. I could tell he wanted to come, but none of his Pokémon could use pyschic, so I left him behind, promising to stay within shouting range. I heard Maria echoing me from the other side of the fire. I followed Hypno quietly, on the lookout for any possible enemies. Suddenly, I heard rustling. My hands went up into the fighting position and I slowly turned around 360 degrees just to hear more rustling. After a couple of minutes, it finally occurred to me that I was the one making the noises. I let out Flareon to help me see better, and there it was, glinting in the fire of Flareon's fur, under a piece of paper and a pen. I snatched it all up, just to prove I could hold it and that I wasn't asleep.

"I found it!" I yelled, starting back and returning Hypno to its Pokéball, and allowing Flareon be my walking flashlight.

Maria, Justin, and I looked at the transporter, as I had decided to call it. "How are we supposed to work this thing?" Justin so brilliantly asked.

"You'll ask Dialga and Palkia of course," Yellow said. We jumped as she sat up and stretched, giggling at our faces. "They moved in here somewhere just to help you Jedi travel through space and time to get home as we set up the first round of training. They don't particularly like humans, but they agree that it's best to help the good humans against the bad ones, so they came."

"Well, that was nice of them…" I muttered. I didn't like the fact that they didn't like humans.

"What about Giratina?" Maria's face was pale in the firelight.

Red scratched his head and looked at Blue. "As far as we know, Giratina's still in his own dimension. We shouldn't have any problems."

"Besides," Blue added, not looking up from the ground next to the tree he leaned against, "you've trained under the best in the Kanto region. You should be able to handle yourselves."

"Thanks, I guess…" Justin said. "But how are we going to find them?"

"Oh, um… Well, I guess you could ask them to come nicely. Don't do anything to offend them, because they can do a lot of damage if they get angry, okay?"

Justin, Maria, and I all looked at each other and shrugged. "We don't have another choice."