Chapter 5:
Trevor and Shauna wait on dry land as I scour the marsh for Pokémon. None of them seem to want to come near me. I can hear them all voicing suspicions of me. Except one. One of them is off in its own little world.
"Goomy, Goomy, Goo-my! Goomy, Goomy, Goo-my!" sings a little voice.
Alphonse comes out of his PokéBall.
"Hand me the Water Stone and send May out, please," he says.
I do as he asks. He clutches the Water Stone tightly within his right paw. I send May out. She begins to walk toward Alphonse but retreats.
"I know what you're holding," she says. "The answer is still no, Alphonse, I won't evolve. Besides, you're in no position to talk about evolving. You've been holding your own evolution back too."
"I was waiting for you. Come on, Riza, let's go catch that guy. His song's going to get on my nerves if he doesn't stop soon. May can just watch. It's not that I don't want to evolve…it's that I haven't needed to."
We approach the singing Goomy. It takes notice of us and stops singing.
"Friends?" asks the Goomy.
"We can be, if you want to journey with us," I say.
"Cool! A human that can speak our language! That means you can hear my song, right?"
"Well, yeah, but other humans could hear that song too since you're just saying your name over and over. You might want to think up some more lyrics."
"And you'd help me with that?"
"Uh, well.."
"Then I'll go with you! I can even battle against that Quilladin or Panpour there if you want an easy time catching me."
"I'm trying to prove something to this Panpour, so I'll fight you. My name is Alphonse, and the Panpour is May. The human is Riza. She's a very nice Trainer and very dedicated to raising strong, healthy Pokémon. You'll be in good hands with her. Let's go!"
Goomy and Alphonse begin battling. Alphonse's uses his Needle Arm attack to get in a few good hits, though since they are with his left paw, they are weaker than normal. Goomy spends quite a bit of the battle using Protect with a few Dragonbreaths thrown in for good measure. Alhponse uses bulk Up when Goomy begins to store its energy in preparation for a Bide. It is now that I decide to throw a PokéBall. One, two, three shakes and a ding. Goomy is caught.
"Good job, Riza!" shouts Shauna from further away then I remember getting.
Alphonse's body begins to glow white. I nearly instinctively attempt to stop him. He smirks at May.
"I'm going to leave you in the dust, May. You'll never catch up to a fully-evolved Pokémon as you are now."
"Alphonse, you inconsiderate little…Fine, throw it to me!"
Alphonse launches the Water Stone from his paw just as the white light completely consumes his body. May catches the soaring rock with her two paws.
"I'm going to get him back for this someday," she says as the white light also takes over her body.
The bright light eventually fades and reveals two new evolved Pokémon. Alphonse has become a towering Chesnaught, his outer shell having become a spiked back plate. He has also gained spikes on both of his arms and his tail has grown quite a bit larger. May has also grown larger, though not nearly to the extent that Alphonse has. The fur that resembled a geyser on the top of her head now looks more like rivers running down from an overflowing lake. Her tail is tipped in ice-blue fur that looks like an erupting geyser. Her arms and legs have grown longer and she has more pronounced hands and feet. Her collar of blue fur has extended downward and is now topped with white like a breaking wave. The two newly-evolved Pokémon meet each other's eyes. They both seem angry. Then they begin to laugh.
"Oh, man, Alphonse, look at you. You're gigantic."
"You're not so tiny yourself anymore."
May blasts him with a stream of water.
"Hey now, stop it…that burns?"
Steam is rising off Alphonse's arm.
"I don't believe it…I can use Scald now! I may have to actually thank you for forcing evolution on me."
"You'd always wanted it before what happened with Maes anyway. I figured this was my only shot at getting you to listen."
"Looks like Maes may have just always been headed that way all along. Come on, let's go check out our reflections. I want to see what I look like."
The two head off toward a deep puddle. The sun has come out from behind the clouds for a bit so the reflections can be seen a bit more clearly than normal. The two are staring at the reflections.
"Look at us now," whispers May.
"No one in Santalune Forest would've bet we'd get this far," replies Alphonse.
"It's all thanks to Riza. Without her, we'd probably never have seen each other again."
"The, let's do our best to make her proud."
"OK, you two. I've heard enough of my own praises for one day. We need to get going."
I recall them to their PokeBalls and head back to Shauna and Trevor.
"Wow, that was the first time I've ever seen a double evolution," says Shauna.
"Me too," replies Trevor. "And you even caught a Goomy, another of my personal favorite Pokémon."
"You like Dragon-type Pokémon, then?" I ask him.
"I'll admit I've got a bit of a soft spot for them but what I really like are Fossil Pokémon. Kalos' has some of the coolest Fossil Pokémon around and in the modern day, we can even revive them!"
"Oh, really? Technology sure is amazing. Now where were we headed again?"
"We're going to Laverre City!" says Shauna. "Tierny should be there already but I don't know if we'll run into him. What do you guys want to do when we get there? There's tons to do."
"I don't know," says Trevor.
"Why don't you decide, Shauna?" I ask.
"All right, let me think, hmmmmmmm….ah, I got it!" exclaims Shauna.
"So where are we headed?" I ask.
"That's a secret! You'll see when we get there. It's someplace pretty amazing."
And so we walk out of the marsh and toward Laverre City.