I reached Cerulean City somewhere near the noon. This city still amazes me when it comes to the progress – I can`t even recognize my own city.

The first my point of interest was the Pokemon Center. I gave them more than enough time to see to my Dumpling. He definitely misses me after these days.

My first thought while approaching the PokeCenter was that it`s still there. I could expect my Dumpling to burn it down to ashes in searches for me, but he didn`t. That`s better. Why the heck would I expect him do that?

The same place, the same interior. I think, it`s even the same nurse that was treating our pokemon with Misty. Lily, if I`m correct.

"Welcome to Pokemon Center! Would you like me to heal your pokemon?" She greeted me with a nice smile.

"Partly. My friend left my Charizard there some days ago. It is… order 197. A really hard flying training, is he ready?"

"Let me see…" She quickly browsed the computer before her. "Oh, THAT Charizard…" Nurse exclaimed shockingly when she seemed to find something. I guess my Dumpling DID do something.

"Oh… What has he done?"

"Well… Let`s say… He practiced his Wing Attack on our equipment." She carefully explained.

"But he doesn`t know Wing Attack!" I was surprised by that.

"Now he does." Nurse smiled confusedly. "Actually, all Charizards learn this move when they finally evolve."

"Okay, okay, I will remember that… And what now? Do I need to pay now?"

"Um… No. A woman paid for you already. She said you know her, a nurse from Viridian city."

That was a shock. What`s Jane doing here? And why the heck she paid for the broken equipment? Where the heck did she learn about that?

This woman... She must have been not pleased with the fact that I didn`t use her card. So she paid for this and left me in the debt anyway.

"And so what? Do I owe you anything? Can I get my pokemon back?" I carefully asked the nurse.

"No, you owe us nothing. I will get your pokemon right now."

She dialed some numbers on a panel and soon the pokeball moved on a line in the wall behind her.

"Here you are. Your pokemon was healed to full health. Come back again!"

I grabbed the pokeball and felt the familiar heat coming from it. My Dumpling… Oh, why did you do that, my Dumpling?

There were no more time to waste. I fixed pokeball on my shoulder belt and headed outside from the PokeCenter.

Right outside the building I decided to see my partner again. I wanted him immediately.

"Come out, you hooligan!" I released him to the floor, and the mighty Charizard appeared before me. I just couldn`t believe this is actually my Dumpling. He grew so much…

And he bitched so much.

But when he formed right before me, looked into my eyes and then rushed to hug his old trainer I just couldn`t find courage to scold him right now.

"Oh, Dumpling, Dumpling… You scared me back there." I carefully hugged my flame pokemon to for some seconds. He was glad to see me and growled in reply. "Why did you suddenly riot in the Pokemon Center? They healed you!"

Dumpling released me and made a very guilty look. I don`t know why that actually happened, maybe it`s just a part of his nature.

And I know what can tell me about it. I took out the PokeDex and scanned Dumpling`s capsule to get his final entry.

Charizard, the flame pokemon.

Flies around the sky in search of powerful opponents. Breathes fire of such great heat that it melts anything. However, it never turns its fiery breath on any opponent weaker than itself.

Well, this told me nothing about destroying the expensive PokeCenter equipment. Maybe he was just scared – many things happened that night. I would get him to a pokemon psychologist if such exist. I have no other idea.

"Okay, I`m glad you`re fine. Have a rest until the next training."

I returned pokemon into pokeball and sighed. I feel that something else happened causing my Dumpling`s behavior. But I may never know it. The strange things keep happening around me, and I can`t even understand how they do it so quickly and so suddenly…

"Oh, hello, sweetie!"

…especially when people keep distracting me.

"Jane."

I turned to face her and saw my good but strange, cunning and suspicious friend Jane.

"I know what you`re thinking about now." The smiled and winked.

"About how the heck did you know about my Dumpling crushing PokeCenter`s equipment and paying for it even before ME?" I questioned her seriously showing as much mistrust as I can. "And what`s more important – WHY did you do that?"

"Does it matter?" She approached me and gently petted my chin. I angrily stared at her while she slowly moving around me. "Maybe I like to keep you interested in your… investigation… and in me?"

"Nothing interests me more than my investigation now." I replied. "And as long as you keep being a married woman and lying to me at the same time, I`m not interested in you at all."

"Oh, really?" Jane stopped and looked in my eyes. "Then you should be interested in repaying your debt to me, don`t you think?"

"Right now?"

"No, not right now. When the time comes." She finally moved her hand away from my face and slowly walked back. "Don`t worry about this repayment. I`ll count only the card I gave you in the beginning and nothing more."

This is getting weirder and I don`t even actually know what to say.

"Who told you about my pokemon here?" I interrogated her.

Firstly she just smiled and turned away from me.

"You`re not the only one who owes me, dear."

"Then who is it? Leaf? Bill? Douchebag? Erika?"

"Keep guessing. You have the time." She mysteriously answered and disappeared around the corner.

I was so confused I didn`t even try to follow her.

"Get lost!" I shouted behind her and walked away too heading for the bus.

And because of the bus coming just in a couple of hours I didn`t waste my time. I headed to the nearest forest to train a little and released all my team at once. The last days were pretty boring for them hanging out on Bill`s residence with his pokemon. They all missed good battles for quite a while and now all are eager for it.

"So, guys…" I attracted their attention to make a small briefing. "I know you have been waiting for it. The next gym battle. This is going to be really tough, so we need to train a lot more. And right now is the last chance to do it, because I`m heading straight to gym when we arrive in Fuchsia City… If we arrive in the daytime, of course."

The team greeted me with joyful roars. All of them looked really eager to begin, even the stranger Loser. He looked like… got used to our gang. I just need to make Magikarp get used to us too.

Dumpling`s training program for today was the slow and careful practice of his Flamethrower. I also checked his moves through the TM Case and fixed the troublesome Wing Attack instead of old Scratch, but this one we`re going to train a little bit later.

Suddenly, during the special practice of Reaper`s Fury Attack, he began to launch especially powerful hits powered by his green mystic bug power. TM Case doesn`t tell anything about it, but maybe we are almost ready to learn something new too.

Moment was flying around again, almost succeeding in performing the side flying. This will be very useful later.

As for Harry, I decided to keep him as Weepinbell for some more. When he becomes big and powerful Victreebel he will be also slower and less agile. And this is what I`m counting on during the dangerous poison battle.

Loser was just training his Shadow Punch, trying the maximize the power. Poor stones didn`t stand a chance against him. Also I spent some time on teaching him to speak. Still without the result.

But my full personal attention was got by Magikarp again. Previous trainings with him were… not as successful as I thought them to be. Training on ground with a fish pokemon is quite hard despite this is not impossible, but all he does is just splashing around. It`s rather pitiful look. But we won`t give up, no matter what!

So the hours passed, the bus came and signaled from behind the trees. We quickly packed up and headed to it. The long and boring road begins here…

I actually had the naïve hope to reach Fuchsia City earlier. Instead of it, the road took almost three days. The bus broke twice in the middle of dark forest and just I was able to repel an attack of wild hostile pokemon. The boy with Rattata doesn`t count because he lost pretty quickly and ran back inside the vehicle to cover in fear.

At least, in the end the transport company was grateful to me for saving their bus and its passengers. I was too naïve again to expect a reward for that, but everything was limited to just a miserly 'thanks'.

So, at the end of the day I finally reached the PokeCenter and looked around to see the results of our operation here. The funniest part was when I passed the right wing of PokeCenter and noticed the broken trading machine. Somehow Bill managed to return it back.

As for the rest – the ceiling window was replaced to the new. The nurse changed too, and the new told me that the pervious one took the vacation. Well, that made me worry a bit less for her mental health and be sorry about my overplay that night. And also that meant I can easily leave my suspicious Dumpling and even more suspicious Reaper here to heal and be sure that no one will recognize them. The sudden reappearance of stolen trading machine the nurse described as 'magical prank'. This actually looks like it, and, of course, the police doesn`t hurry to investigate this. I think they never will…

After that I headed to my room to have a rest and – what a surprise – met Douchebag on the second floor.

"You had a very long road from Route 13, yeah?" He asked mockingly. "Got lost in the ma-a-a-ze?"

"Yes." I seriously and shortly replied. "You did what I asked, didn`t you?"

"Pffft… I was busy. Earning my new shiny fifth badge!" He grabbed the badge case to show me his latest prize.

I gave a cold look on his badges and then on himself.

"Do you think I care? Get me that info. I won it, in the end." I had to remind him again.

"Ha! You won a lot. The evolution, for example… You still want to trade back? Too bad that exactly this PokeCenter was robbed some days ago." Douchebag told me a short story that I don`t know. "Guess what was stolen? The trading machine! How lucky of you… Aren`t you the biggest loser?"

One thing was really sudden in this – I broke my own plan. I can`t make Douchebag trade me my Caesar back now, because of the machine`s condition. But after these days with Loser… I began to feel I don`t really need it. I got used to the Gengar with an unfunny name his previous trainer gave him.

"You know what?" I gave a brutal look to Douchebag. "Screw this. I keep Loser with me. He`s a strong and proud pokemon. Idiot like you doesn`t deserve such pokemon."

"Yeah, losers must be sticked together!" He laughed at us.

"And you will see. What will you feel when LOSER defeats you? Farewell, douchebag." I waved at him and headed to my room.

I made my decision. Maybe this is not really what I expected from myself, but it`s this way. Douchebag will regret about that. He will regret about everything.

The night passed and the morning came. I woke up with a feeling that today something will change the course of history. Because that`s what exactly my plan is.

I dressed up, stretched carefully my pained shoulder and headed outside. The nice nurse returned my pokemon back and made a small note specially about Dumpling.

"We have noted a small trace of skin irritation on your Charizard`s wing." And she even showed me a couple of photos. That`s a thing I didn`t notice earlier.

"What is it? Is he sick?"

"Not exactly… But such thing could be caused by something acid of chemical origin, not a pokemon one." She switched the image on screen to some complex chemical formulas that I understand a bit more than in no way. "This can cause the really strong itch."

"What does that mean?" She made me worry a bit.

"Were you smearing your pokemon wings with anything… special?"

"No, I didn`t." I confusedly replied.

"Be careful with different salves. Charizard wings are really sensitive to it. Contact any nurse before using anything suspicious." The woman advised me.

"Thanks… I will." Still confusedly I said and quickly headed outside the PokeCenter.

This looks strange… The salve that causes strong itch? This can be connected to my Dumpling`s 'training' of Wing Attack. But who could smear his wings with some stuff?

Damnit. Someone broke inside the PokeCenter to spoil my pokemon. Does this mean I was uncovered? Or, maybe the nurse herself is involved in this? I must be very careful with PokeCenters from now on.

I can only hope this won`t affect our today battle – he is my main card there. I have absolutely nothing against poison-type pokemon – neither a psychic moves nor a ground ones – but the pure power of mighty Charizard is what I really need.

Full of confidence I headed straight to the large building relatively close to the Pokemon Center. After crossing some roads I reached the entrance and looked inside the window. It was a sad sight because all windows are darkened. Ninja secrets, all right.

So I approached the doors and opened them. The first thing that I noticed is the… emptiness of this gym. This is just a very large room with some trainers and their pokemon on small carpets. Most of them were sitting in lotus posture and staring at their pokemon before them. Those who weren`t sitting were standing and furiously swinging hands in the air. Interestingly that not all of them looked like the actual ninjas – a couple of trainers were dressed like… magic performers, I guess, or tricksters. Jugglers you could see in circuses. And some others looked like tamers, farmers… Someone like that.

And right in the middle of all this was a man sitting and meditating. This is a real ninja - the really dark shady suit with red scarf. Yep, this is a man you really wouldn`t mess with. No doubt this is the gym leader.

The gym leader I`m going to defeat today.

So I made a deep sigh and stepped inside. No one reacted to my appearance, though, despite the doors being pretty loud. Thus I looked around and headed straight to the leader.

"Greetings, noble ninja warriors. I am Vengeance, and I came here to challenge your…"

Sudden hit into my face interrupted me and made retreat. I looked in front of me and saw nothing but an empty space. The gym leader was still far away from me.

"What was that?" I asked shaking my head and recovering.

No one answered me but some strange echo. In a big empty room like this echo must sound a bit different…

Maybe they all are in their meditations and don`t notice me at all. Or this is some sort of a trick. I remember what crazy challenges I had before at gyms.

I made a careful step forward and banged against something solid.

"What the heck…" I was surprised. The quiet set of multiple echoes replied to me. This is strange…

There was something hard before me, but I couldn`t see it. I touched it with my hands and made a conclusion that the thing before me is a wall.

A wall that I can`t see.

And right after that I realized what is the main trick of this gym. A trick I would really expect from ninjas.

I thought it isn`t a maze. But it is a maze. And not a regular maze.

The invisible maze!