Chapter 3

Breeze-That-Sways-The-Leaves glared at his opponent, fluttering his wings menacingly as he trilled low in his throat. He waited patiently for his Perch to issue the command, the one he had been waiting for. The small purple mouse in front of him tensed, the beady eyes shifting back and forth, calculating. Suddenly, Breeze's Perch made a perch sound, which sounded like the order for the "painful gust of wind" attack. Breeze flexed his mighty thews, flapping his magnificently powerful wings, and a hurricane span from him, to slam into the purple mouse. Ha! This was true joy! This was combat! Never had he been so glad to be traveling with a perch!

The mouse shook off Breeze's mighty winds, and glared at him. What ho? How powerful is this mouse, to shake off such a mighty blow? Breeze bellowed out his barbaric yawp, before charging back into the fray. "Have at thee!!!!"

As pidgey's small little puff of a gust impacted the rattata, I watched him transform from a timid bird into a possessed warrior. It was almost as if the attack gave him the confidence he needed to actually fight well. After the first gust, pidgey stood there in shock for a split second, before trilling loudly and bombarding the unfortunate rodent with gust after gust after gust. The rattata fell quickly, and I called for pidgey to lay off. I reached down to my belt for an empty pokeball, enlarging it in seconds and winging it in an overhand throw straight towards the downed rattata.

Within seconds, I had my third Pokémon captured. The three of us, Pidgey, Ralts and I, had spent the better part of the afternoon roaming around route 1, searching for Pokémon. But now, looking around me, I could see the sun starting to go down.

I found a spot in view of the road and pitched a tent, starting a small campfire. I let out my three Pokémon as I started cooking us a small dinner. I suppressed a chuckle at Ralts' antics, she was an interesting one. In many ways, she behaved like a young child, energetic, precocious, innocent. In other ways she was all too mature. She had a healthy fear of being alone, she didn't like the dark, and whenever a new sudden noise happened, she was immediately on the alert. She had spent an extended period fending for herself, alone.

I wondered at that. Ralts weren't native to Kanto, and they were almost always in the company of Gardevoir. Where was this one's family? It was one of the many things encouraging me to train her telepathic capabilities, one day she could just tell me.

Pidgey was a whole other ball of fish. He was driven, dedicated, almost obsessed with getting stronger. And it showed! Even with the scant day or two that I'd had him, he had grown significantly in size and power. At this rate, he'd evolve very soon.

And then Rattata, the new kid. I had checked, she was female, but she seemed timid, almost shy. To a certain extent, that made sense for a rodent, but if I was learning anything, it was that pokemon here were more than mere animals. They had personalities, sentience even. Still, Rattata had been very wary of me up until the moment I had given her food.

Once I fed her, I had apparently gained a steadfast friend for life. She had immediately eaten everything I gave her and then curled up in my lap for a nap, cooing gently as I scratched between her shoulders.

The four of us simply… existed like that for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying the company but talking little. Before long, I unrolled my sleeping bag and crawled inside. I smiled as Rattata burrowed in next to my feet, Pidgey tucked himself next to my shoulder, and Ralts sprawled out across my chest on her back, mouth open, snoring gently. I could get used to this.

Joy-of-the-Spring-Dawning slept restlessly. There was something she wanted, desperately needed, to do. But the question was, was it allowed? Her human, her Scott, was frustrated by the communication gap. She knew this. Truth be told, they both wanted to be able to communicate better. And she knew how to bridge that gap. But it was an invasion.

She couldn't convey the request with the limited rapport they had, so she had no way of properly asking. To build that rapport would require her to do the very thing she was asking permission for.

In the end, it was simple necessity that spurred her on. Scott was asleep, and his mind was vulnerable. She reached out with the sense and gently caressed the outer edges of his psyche. And then, like a delicate rose petal falling into the still waters of a pond, she slipped beneath.

His memories flashed before her third eye, and she wept. A lifetime of pain, sickness, of a cure almost worse than the disease, flew through her. And then it was over. She had progressed past his memories into his inner mind.

Blindly groping, instinctively searching for she knew not what, she continued on. After an infinitesimal eternity, an eternal moment, she found that spark of the gift deep within, that selfsame spark that all living things had. With telepathic hands she gripped it in an iron clutch, then wrenched it on all sides, forcing the sides apart, slowly. Instead of breaking like anything else would, the spark expanded, growing in size until it matched her own, but far, far less dense. Her own spark was a sun, blazing inside her mind, this one was an ethereal orb, a ghost sun. But only for now.

In time, given the new size, the spark would fill in and become just as powerful as her own. In time, scot would learn to bridge the gap himself.

Joy relaxed her grip, and slipped into a restful slumber, a smile on her face.

What she didn't realize, however, was that she had increased Scott's gift far beyond what any other psychic pokemon ever had for their human.

Far away, on Cinnabar Island, eight glowing tubes stood in two gleaming rows. Each was occupied, the occupants dreaming the infinite dreams of those who have yet to be born. In one of the pods, however, a pair of blues eyes open wide, the mind behind them sensing something new, something almost irresistible.