The next day my bones ached. My bruises hadn't gotten any better, and Ulric and Cupid seemed stiff. Still, we did some morning training. Cupid's fire-breathing improved enough where she could let out a steady stream for a couple seconds at a time.
"It looks like you're understanding them more," Luca said. He'd been filming us to track our growth. According to him, we'd progressed rapidly.
"It's been getting easier," I said.
I didn't want to sound strange, so I didn't tell him my pokemon's noises had begun to sound like English to me. It might've been from hitting my head on the ground and is just a side effect from a serious brain injury, or I could truly be understanding how to communicate with my pokemon. I preferred the latter. Understanding my pokemon made training a lot better.
What's that? Ulric bleated. He pointed to the sky with his vine.
A big railway cast a shadow overhead. It looked like it was suspended in the air. The thick trees covered the poles lifting it above us. "That must be the railway," I said.
"The one that goes from Goldenrod to Saffron City?" Luca said.
As if on cue, the train shot past us. Aside from the metal whistling in the wind, it was almost soundless. "The really expensive one," I said.
"What's that?" Luca said.
He pointed to the tops of the trees. In the next moment, the train disappeared from view. I squinted. There was a small, white flag near the top of one of the trees.
"I'm gonna get it," Luca said.
"Don't be ridiculous." But Luca was already scaling the tree. He grabbed the next big branch he saw and pulled himself up a couple more feet. He gave me a goofy grin as I scowled at him. He was just doing this to make me angry.
"Luca wait! Don't get yourself hurt –"
"I'm fine!" He laughed at me when I tried to reach the limb he'd used to start off. I was too short to grab it. "I can see it from where I'm at. It's a box tied to a branch."
"If he falls," I said under my breath to Ulric, "try to grab him."
But Luca returned safely with the box under his arm. A plastic bag covered the outside, coated with splatters of bird pokemon poop and leaves. The tie, a piece of twisted wire, was rusted. Luca ripped open the plastic bag. "Wait a second!" I said. "That's not ours!"
"It's not anyone else's either." He pried open the lid to the tin box.
Buddy twitched his nose. Inside the box was a pokeball and notepad. Luca handed me the tin to hold and flipped open the notepad to the first page. "Congratulations," he read. "For finding this geocache. What's a geocache?"
I took the notepad from him and saw a number of names signed on the first page. I felt a thrill. "This is exciting!" I said. "Geocaching is like a worldwide scavenger hunt. You use latitude and longitude lines to–"
"Okay okay, the point being?" Luca said.
I huffed. "The point being you look for a cache, find it, take the goody inside and replace it with something of yours."
"What's the goody in this one?" Luca said.
"Probably this pokeball," I said. I signed Luca's and my name under the list of finders and dated it. It had been a very long time since someone had last found it. "Trainers often like geocaching, so spare pokeballs are a good gift."
I put in a couple potions to replace the pokeball. Luca closed the tin, retied the bag around it, and when I eyeballed him he resigned himself and put the bag underneath the roots of the tree instead of in it again. Ulric sniffed the air. There's something in it, he bleated.
I frowned. "What's wrong?" Luca said.
"I…" I rolled the pokeball in my hand. It felt… heavy. A pokeball's weight didn't change whether a pokemon was in it or not, but for some reason, a strange, ominous pressure weighed in my palm. If a pokemon were really inside, that would mean its previous trainer had left it here. Abandoned it until someone found it again.
Release it, Ulric said, his voice dark.
I pressed the button on the capsule. To my horror, it exploded with light and a pokemon materialized before me. It was a pokemon I'd never seen before. It was a purple balloon with a yellow X taped under its eyes. Two strings dangled from its body, and a white, wispy cloud hovered on the top of its head. "What in the world…" Luca said.
It stared at me with dark, soulful eyes. "H-hello," I said. "Who-who are you?"
It made a noise like a piece of plastic being shook.
Faye.
I was transfixed. Luca broke the silence. "We need to call Professor Elm," he said. "This isn't our pokemon, and I'm sure he'll know what we should do with it."
I nodded. The balloon pokemon extended a string toward me and took my hand with a feathery tuft. The pokemon's tuft was almost hand-like, and felt tingly, like it held a strange power within.
My name is Ulric! Ulric blurted. And this is Cupid!
Faye looked at them to acknowledge them. "You're right, Luca," I said. "Give me a second to pull out my pokegear."