Forbidden Fusion

by killalao

explicit multiversal adventure with lots of cute girls.

33. a really useful pokemon

-chapter 33, A really useful pokemon-

I woke up early the next morning with my baby girl in my arms in a position that made it nearly impossible for me to do anything without waking her, so I just let her sleep for a bit, eventually I fell back to sleep myself, only to be woken up again when she started to wiggle around.

"Goodmorning." She said very softly as she slowly turned to face me, not even a second after I was aware enough to understand her.

"Goodmorning baby girl." I replied as I opened my eyes again.

We shared a kiss and then we took a moment to stretch and wake up our bodies, then she got out of bed and went over to the window.

"What time is it?" She asked. "It's still dark outside."

"I don't know." I replied. "Why you looking out of a window with your boobs out?"

I don't know why I happened to notice it right then, but she was peeking through the curtains while only wearing her panties.

"We're so high up nobody can see us anyway." She said as she retreated from the window. "And it's dark out."

"Mhm." I said, with some sarcasm, though she wasn't aroused at the moment so her breasts were nearly flat and, well, we were pretty high up.

She retrieved her new dress she bought yesterday from a shopping bag on the floor and headed into the bathroom, embarrassed and a bit drousy, while I turned on the tv.

A few minutes later we were dressed and ready to go. We took the elevator down to the lobby to see if they were serving breakfast yet, hoping Henry and Claire would show up on their own, if not we would have to go back up to get them.

"How long do you think it will be until we get to another pokemon world like this one? " Phoebe asked as we sat down in a booth in the hotel restaurant.

"I don't know, how many more worlds can we take the bus through before we come across a portal that's too small for it?" I asked.

"I don't know." Phoebe replied.

"There's no telling where we'll end up next, we'll just have to wait and see."

"What if we get split up?" She asked.

"What do you mean?" I replied, wondering how that could happen.

"Remember Crazytown? The portal spat us out in different places, what if it happens again and we all get split up?"

"Then we'll just have to find eachother again." I replied. "We've done it before."

"And what about Henry and Claire?" Phoebe asked.

"Henry has military training, he'll be fine, Claire, I don't know." I replied.

"If we can get their pokemon trained up they'll be more able to defend themselves." I said.

"I don't think we have time for that." Phoebe replied.

"Well I don't know Pheebles, there's a lot of dimensions out there, we could be at this for months."

"Also we never got our clothes washed did we?" I asked as soon as I realized.

"No we didn't, I forgot all about that." Phoebe replied.

"Awe well." I said after letting out a sigh.

"Maybe we should stay here for another day then, I can get our clothes washed and my nails repainted and then it'll be like we just started." She said.

"Yeah, maybe we should." I replied.

"You can shave too." She insisted. "I got you a razor."

"How much stuff did you buy without telling me?"

"Not much, I promise." She replied.

"How much money do we have then?" I asked, trusting her completely.

"Enough to pay for another night here and that's about it." She said. "And we can still be out of here by the afternoon."

"Allright then, we'll stay here for a few hours then we'll head to the lab. Now we just need to wait for Claire and Henry."

"Ok." She agreed.

"Ok now that that's settled, any thing else you want to talk about?" I asked.

"What do you think the next world will be like?" She asked.

"Hopefully no space police, aside from that and being able to breath, i'm ok with wherever we end up." I replied. "Maybe they'll have multiple portals and we'll actually get to choose where we want to go this time."

"What if one goes to a beach?" She asked.

"We'll just have to see." I replied.

"Wait a minute there's a beach like three blocks away from here." I said as soon as I realized.

"A busy beach." She replied. "I want one that's not."

We had quite a bit of time to talk about things before Henry and Claire arrived. For the first time in awhile she was in a good mood, we were alone, and she wasn't crazy for sex at the moment so it was quite enjoyable.

When Henry and Claire finally showed up, we simply informed them that we were going to stay here for a little bit longer, and then we all had breakfast shortly after that.

"It's been so long since I've had clothes this nice." Henry said as he sat down across from us, apparently wearing the new clothes he bought yesterday for the first time. "No holes, no oil stains."

"So how are your pokemon?" Phoebe asked in a way that I could tell she already knew something had happened.

" Mine's ok." Claire replied. "It's Henry's that's the problem."

" We lost a few battles, then we went to the pokemon center, after we got back. His pokemon ran away, fell down the stairs and hurt itself."

"Oh no, poor thing." Phoebe replied.

"He did it to himself." Henry defended, while both Claire and Phoebe gazed at him with eyes full of doubt.

"How many battles did you lose?" I asked, trying to further the conversation.

"We couldn't win a single one yesterday." Claire replied.

"Out of?" I continued.

"10 or so." Claire replied.

"12." Henry corrected.

"And you only went to the pokemon center once?" Phoebe asked. "You know they can't battle when they're unconcious."

"That's not what happened, most of the time they didn't get hurt that bad, our opponent just pinned our pokemon down to where they couldn't move and then we gave up." Claire replied. "Until we battled that guy with the cycloptic crab thing."

"Who are you battling?" I asked her while trying to remember a cycloptic crab pokemon, only to realize there were none that I knew about.

"Just some people we met in the arena." She answered, to which I responded with "Look you two both just started out, you need to battle other people that just started, ok?"

"We can't even convince our pokemon to fight another battle." Claire replied. "And Henry's wants to run away."

"You made it fight too many battles it couldn't win, it doesn't have any confidence in you as a trainer. " Phoebe said to Henry. "We're going to have to work with you more closely, or else it might never listen to you again."

"You wanna do that now or wait till the next world?" I asked my beloved.

"Till the next world Cj, we still have other things to do." She replied.

"So I can't let him out until then?" Henry asked.

"Unless you want him to try to run away again." Phoebe said.

"So what are we supposed to do here then?" Claire asked.

"We're on an island, go to the beach for a few hours and enjoy it." I said. "It's like 3 blocks from this hotel."

"Or you could stay here and get your clothes washed while you can." Phoebe insisted.

"Yeah she's right, we might have to go through a few worlds before we get another opportunity." I said.

"Or go to the beach?" She asked, undetered. Her clothes weren't nearly as bad as ours.

"You can if you want to, we have time." Phoebe replied.

"Ok then, I'm going." She replied.

"I could wash yours for you." Henry suggested.

"Yeah and let you mess around with my underwear? No way." Claire replied as she headed for the elevator, I'm going to get my swimsuit and them I'm going to go to the beach, I'll see the rest of you later."

"What if I did?" Phoebe asked.

"Ok fine, I'll just set them on the bed for you." She replied.

Ok, the, just be back by this afternoon." Phoebe said.

'If you're not back by the time we're ready to leave we'll leave without you." I added.

"No we won't!" Phoebe replied while weakly punching my shoulder in disapproval.

"What?" I asked.

"She's part of our group now, besides we can't just leave her here in this world by herself." Phoebe insisted.

"She has a pokemon." I replied.

"Yes she does, but it isn't trained very well yet." Phoebe replied.

"Whatever, let's just get this all set straight so we can get out of here." Henry interjected. "That way I can get my pokemon sorted out."

"Ok if that's what you want." Phoebe said. "Come on Cj, let's get started on the laundry."

"Right now? " I asked, not feeling up to it at all. It's weird how the simplest of jobs seems impossible to do if you don't feel like doing it.

"Yes, the sooner we get it in the machine the faster it will be done." Phoebe replied.

"What about Claire's stuff? " Henry asked.

"Just wait till she leaves and bring it to the laundry room along with yours." Phoebe replied. "What she don't know won't hurt her."

A few minutes later we were all hanging around the laundry room, except for Claire who went to the beach. Henry eventually volunteered to stay behind and make sure nobody stole our things, leaving Phoebe and I free for an hour to go on a walk around the hotel, or so I thought, it turned out she just led me back to the room so she could do her nails, in the bathroom, by herself, essentially leaving me on my own. So I ended up watching tv by myself for a few minutes. For a few minutes, I found an episode of Torch the Growlithe , except all the characters were altered to reflect the different pokemon of this world. Some, like Torch himself, just had some slight alterations and a color swap, while other characters were changed completely, becomming a different pokemon species entirely and gaining a different, alliterative name, despite basically filling the same role. The show had odd-colored pokemon characters before, the golden wartortle being an example, but they were usually still on-model, alot of the characters were based on the same pokemon but still looked completely different.

I watched the show for a few minutes just to see what all the alterations were, but it was at the tail end of the episode so I didn't get to see much, after the credits began to roll, I surfed channels until I got to the news.

"Chaos erupted in a Johto region town last night as buildings are destroyed by a robotic lifeform made of tanks. This same town has suffered an attack on it's police station by a group of strange men wearing spacesuits. The tanks were spotted driving into the forrest earlier this morning, and despite the efforts of several police skarmory teams, haven't been seen since."

"Hours away from the town, the Southern Johto Correctional facility has seen it's first break out in years since the prison reform act of 1983."

"Oh great, what are they up to now?" I asked the tv as if it could hear me.

"The facilitys head of security is not available for comment, but many are speculating these mysterious gun-toting spacemen are to blame."

"Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available, this is JK National News Network, your number one source for news in the Johto-Kanto Region."

"I guess we didn't get them all." I said as the news shifted to a story about a cat-like pokemon that was attempting to speak.

"Pheebles are you done yet? " I asked, bored and wanting to spend time with her.

"No, they need to dry." She said from the bathroom. "Be patient Cj, you know I do this for you."

"I know baby." I replied.

"Are you going to shave?"

"If you want me too."

"I do."

"Well ok then I will." I replied. "After you're done in there so I can use the mirror."

"I'll be out in about 3 and a quarter minutes."

"3 and a quarter? " I asked.

"More like 3 and a eighth now."

"Hehe, ok." I replied, wondering why she was being so oddly specific.

I wasn't keeping track of time, so I don't know if she was being serious or not, but a few minutes later she emerged from the bathroom. Then she came over to the bed and crawled on top of me.

"Hey baby." I said before she gave me a playful kiss.

"Now it's your turn." She playfully said.

"Yeah, I guess it is." I replied.

A few awkward seconds of silence.

"You going to get off me so I can get up?" I asked.

"No." She playfully replied.

"Hehe, you just want to play don't you?"

"Mhm." She replied. "Watcha gonna do?"

I thought about that for a moment as I looked into her eyes, then I decided that the only solution was to tickle her. So I did, and then we had a tickle fight, and moments later I had turned the tables on her, then I gave her a kiss, got up and went to the bathroom.

"The razor is by the sink." She said as I walked away.

So anyway, I shaved for the first time in what was probably three or four weeks since we started our journey. I came out of that bathroom feeling better than I had in awhile, and my beloved was patiently waiting for me on the bed.

"No more beard!" She proudly proclaimed.

"It was getting itchy anyway." I replied.

"Now what should we do?" She cutely asked.

"You want to go for a walk?" I asked in return.

"Where to?"

"I dunno, maybe we can go spy on Claire at the beech. "

"That's kind of creepy. "

"I didn't mean it that way. "

" But if that's what you want, we have time. " She said, refering to sex.

"I thought we were going to go on a walk to get away from that. "

At this she sat up.

"Cj we're not tired right now are we? The potion bath took care of our, related injuries, so what's wrong?"

I thought about this for a moment as I gazed at her freshly painted toes.

"Are you using it to cope with your worrying over Charley?" I asked when the words came to me.

"Not right now, I just want to use it to kill some time, for our laundry."

"Let's just go for a walk Pheebles, maybe tonight we can." I said as I slipped my shoes on and prepared to leave.

"You're just going to go on your own? "

"If you're not comming then I guess I am."

"Baby girl you know this is one of the few cities you can walk around without having to hide, people here are used to pokemon, so, they think you're just one of them."

"I am one of them."

"Right."

"Now, last chance are you comming or not?" I asked as I headed for the door.

"Fine, I'll come." She said as she got out of bed and slipped on her shoes. Then she followed me out the door. We took the elevator down to the lobby and soon we were out of the hotel, walking along the city street towards the beach about 3 blocks away, about a 20 minute walk. We couldn't go swimming of course, but we could watch the waves for awhile. There were so many people and pokemon there we had no chance of finding Claire in the crowd, so many people that not even Phoebe's powers could help. In fact it was more people than we had ever seen in one place in quite awhile, but that was ok, as we were here for ourselves. Cinnabar was warm all year round, so the weather was great for it, if maybe a bit overly warm.

"What kinda of pokemon do you think these shells belong to?" I asked as we walked along a sidewalk that ran parralel to the beach. Bordered on one side by sand and the other by various shops selling all sorts of touristy things like sunglasses, swimwear, and shells from sadly deceased ocean dwelling pokemon. There was a large wooden box full of what resembled omanyte shells. I thought those were supposed to be extinct, but maybe they weren't in this world. I had no way of knowing, and we had nowhere near enough time to find out.

"I don't know." She replied. "How do you think they got them? Did they kill the pokemon inside?"

"Wouldn't that be illegal?" I asked.

"In our world yes, in this one, I don't know." She replied.

"We could use a souvenir." I said. "I'm sure the lab would love to investigate it."

"Yes, but it's fragile Cj, I don't know how long it would keep."

"Here, I got my phone working again I'll take a picture." She said as she pulled her phone out of her purse, she recharged it in the hotel.

"You should really start taking more pictures baby. We need to document this adventure somehow."

"I guess you're right." She replied. "What else should I get pictures of?"

"The different pokemon, the buildings, cars, our bus, everything."

"What if my battery dies?"

"We'll find a way to splice a charger together, it's not that hard as long as the outlets have the same voltage."

"Ok." She said as she excitedly set to work photographing various things. The happiness it brought her made it seem like she had found another outlet for now.

A few minutes of helping her take pictures and posing for pictures later we decided to head back to the hotel as our laundry cycle was about done. Claire found us as we were heading back. It was easier for her to spot us on the sidewalk then it was for us to spot her in the crowded sands of the beach.

"Awe that swimsuit looks adorable on you." Phoebe said while I basically thought the same.

"Awe thanks, what are you doing out here?"

"We're about to head back, laundry should be about done by now."

"You just left it on it's own?" She asked, looking quite concerned.

"No, Henry is watching it, while we took care of other things." I explained.

"Like walking along the beach?" She asked.

"No! Documenting our trip!" Phoebe excitedly replied while holding up her phone. "Now hold still." She said as she took a picture of her.

"Oh, ok." Claire replied as she posed for a quick picture.

A few minutes later we were all back at the hotel in the laundry room, with Phoebe stopping to take more pictures on the way as she saw fit. We arrived a few minutes late after the wash cycle had already ended. Henry was already moving his clothes to the dryer, and after the rest of us realized the timer had run out, we did the same with ours as well, then we found ourselves with another 30 minutes to kill while the dryer did it's work. This wasn't enough time to accomplish anything important, so Phoebe and I simply strolled back outside so she could look for more things to take pictures of. Eventually our laundry was finished and it was time to head to the lab in order to leave this world. Phoebe took a picture of the sign out front of the lab, Rocket Lab, it said in bright red letters with an emboldened red "R" to emphasize the rocket logo. In our world, such a lab would be run by one of Team Rocket's shadow companies, but here they didn't need to hide who really owned the facility. Once we arrived we were shown into a garage area, that had about a half dozen portal machines inside, nowhere near the amount at the Devon Co. Experiment Facility. In this world, portals were still being experimented with the ones that Rocket co had developed were similiar to Devon's, but there weren't nearly as many.. That said, their portal system hadn't started to act crazy yet, like Devon's did for mysterious reasons. There were alot of things about the portal machines that few people understood, and even more things that nobody understood.

Anyway, we had a choice of 6 portals, that presumably went to different worlds . One of the scientists that worked there went over what each one led to. 3 led to some sort of forrest, with one of them in particular leading to an abandoned cabin in the middle of said forrest. a fourth one led to the middle of a desert, another to some sort of ghost town, and another one led to a small, rocky beach near a presumably active railway line. The scientist mentioned that they had other portals, but these 6 seemed to be the safest. We ended up going with the beach, even though it was a rocky one, which was not what Phoebe wanted, I thought that perhaps the railway line would easilly lead us towards civilization. Once we had our vehicles through, we got out to do some scouting to find where the best place to take them would be. Would it be best to continue along the beach, or was there a road on the other side of the train tracks? What was the best way to get up there if we could?

"This stinks, I wanted a real beach, with sand." Phoebe complained.

"There was one in the last world, you were there." Claire defended in vain.

"It had too many people." Phoebe continued.

"They said one led to a desert, there probably would've been plenty of sand there, and no people." Henry joked.

"After what we went through in your world, I don't want to go back to another desert." I replied.

"I agree, that was terrible." Phoebe said.

"What happened? " Claire asked.

"We went several hours without seeing anything, the portal litterally went to the middle of nowhere." I said.

"Where were you before that?" Claire asked.

"Some world that was still in the 1940s." I replied.

"Did you kill Hitler? " Henry asked.

"We don't know if he existed in that world." I replied. "Really that's the first question you're going to ask?"

"What is he like a hero in your world?" Henry asked out of concern.

"Oh hell no." I replied. "He's probably one of the most evil people in all of history, a real world supervillain, of sorts."

"He must be evil in every world." Claire replied.

"Not mine. " Phoebe interjected.

"What really?" Henry asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, he doesn't exist in her version of the pokemon world atleast." I agreed. "Then again the pokemon world also has team galactic that basically want to kill everyone but themselves, teams aqua and magma, that want to flood the world, or cause an extreme drought, respectively, and Team Rocket, a giant organized crime syndicate that didn't really have an overall goal, but just wanted to make money at any cost, with little regard for the law, or other people's property rights. We took care of them, but the others are still out there. "

"Anyway . . . ." I began to say before I was interupted by the distant sound of a train whistle.

"Hey a train is comming." I said, as soon as I realized.

"What do we do?" Henry asked.

"Let's see what kind of train it is first." I replied. "Maybe that could tell us where we are."

"And how does that work? " Henry asked.

"Certain trains operate in certain countries, and on certain railroads and certain railroads also operate only in certain regions." I said as the train's headlight and a cloud of billowing smoke was barely visible on the horizon.

"Cj knows everything about trains!" Phoebe chimed in.

Whatever it was, it was some kind of steam locomotive, which meant we were likely somewhere before the 1960s. In america atleast, most steam locomotives were phased out in 1963, but in some other places they continued to be used into the 70s, and in China they were used in coal mines clear up to modern times, but this didn't look like a chinese coal mine.

As the train got closer over the following seconds, I realized something even more bizare, it had a face. In disbelief, as it came closer I realized it was none other than Henry from Thomas the Tank engine.

"What the hell it has a face!" Our Henry said, utterly surprised as he was not familiar with the series, as Henry the green engine passed by paying no attention to us.

"It has thoughts too, how strange, and I can hear them, even though it would undoubtly be a steel type" Phoebe added as she was busy taking pictures.

"Um Pheebles, it's a train, not a pokemon." I replied.

"It's still made out of steel." She defended.

"So where are we then?" Our Henry asked with confidence that I wouldn't know.

"The Island of Sodor." I replied as van after van passed by. I couldn't help but think that those british styled freight cars looked so much bigger in person. Now, they were nowhere near as big as their american counterparts, but they were still bigger than you'd think they'd be.

"What?" He asked, not expecting an actual answer.

"We're in Thomas the Tank engine somehow." I replied.

"What's that?" Henry asked.

"It's a children's tv series featuring trains with faces." I replied.

"Well this world might be interesting." Phoebe said.

"It would be if we weren't in the middle of nowhere." Claire replied.

"Yeah well, that's where most portals lead." I said.

"We could hitch a ride on the train." Phoebe said. "I could teleport us on board."

"Yeah, but then we'll leave our vehicles behind." I replied." We don't know how far away the next town is."

Eventually the train passed by in its entirety and dissapeared into the horizon.

"Ok Pheebles, why don't you teleport to up there to the other side of the tracks and tell us what you see? " I said.

"Ok." Phoebe replied before teleporting away.

She came back about 30 seconds later.

"There's a dirt road, some trees." Phoebe replied. "No houses or people or anything."

"Ok so we need to try to get to the road." I replied.

Surprisingly getting off the beach wasn't too much of a problem, while it was a rough ride, the slope was very slight and there weren't any big rocks to give us problems, Rhyhorn and Rocky proved invaluable in carving a useable ramp out of the cliff face, if that's what it could be called, it was about a 3ft high wall of mud, rock, and dirt that was impossible for our vehicles to climb. It took a few minutes, but eventually, thanks to the efforts of my ground type pokemon, we managed to carve a small section into a ramp we could use to drive our vehicles off of the beach, without them they would likely be stranded there for eternity, or until a huge rainstorm flooded the beach and carried them into the river.

Once we got off the beach, we then had to construct a crude ramp out of rocks and dirt in order to get over the train tracks, getting either of our vehicles stuck on the tracks and then obliterated by an oncomming train, wasn't an ideal situation. Once they were both across the tracks we cleared the ramp from the tracks so we wouldn't accidently cause a derailment, in hindsight, we were very lucky another train didn't come while we were in the middle of all this. I did not want to be known as the person that accidently killed Thomas the Tank engine.

After that exercise in amateur offroading was done, we found ourselves on a dirt road bordered by the train tracks on one side, and a seemingly endless forrest on the other, there wasn't another vehicle in site, from then on we were able to make a lot more progress. Heading the opposite direction the train had come. The road eventually led to a bridge over a creek, and not long after that we reached a small town named Crosby with a train station. On the way we passed a Rover from the 1930s, an old british car.

"Why do the trains have faces but the cars don't?" Henry asked after we parked at the station.

"I don't know, why do the trains have faces?" I replied. "Not all of these worlds make sense we've just been pretty lucky so far."

"We've seen weirder places." Phoebe added.

"There, now we have the time." She said.

"How are we going to find a portal here?" Claire asked.

"I have no idea." I replied. "I guess we could ask the trains."

"What do they know?" Henry asked.

"I don't know, according to the series a lot of them act like children." I said. "Maybe Sir Topham Hat would know, but he only shows up if someone derails or otherwise screws up."

"Who is that?" Henry asked.

"He's the guy in charge of the railway, presumably." I replied. "If this is the Island of Sodor."

A few moments later we heard another whistle in the distance, another train was comming.

"Allright, let's see who this is."

We headed into the station.

"Would you like to buy some tickets for a train to Wellsworth? James is due to arrive in about five minutes." The man behind the ticket booth kindly asked in a British accent.

I don't know why, but that seemed weird to me, being a world from a kid's show, it just seemed like everything would be free if you asked really nicely.

"That sounds nice, but we don't have any money." Phoebe replied.

"Is this your first time riding with us?" The man asked.

"We don't have any money." Phoebe replied.

"But if you did would it be your first time?" The man continued to ask.

"Look we're not here to go on a train ride, we're here to talk to the train." Phoebe replied, seemingly annoyed.

"About what?" The man asked. "Are you ok dear? You look awfully pale." He asked out of concern, not knowing that was her normal appearence.

"Those are some strange vehicles you have there." He commented. Not being far from the truth considering every other vehicle in this world was at most from the 1930s and british.

"Where are you from?" He asked, realizing something was amiss.

"You wouldn't believe us if we told you." I replied. "It's probably best you don't know, now, we need to see Sir Topham Hatt as soon as possible."

"I don't know where he is." The man replied." Hold on a second maybe James knows, he'll be arriving shortly."

About two minutes later James pulled into the station with a local passenger train, while people prepared to board and Phoebe took pictures. It wasn't a particularly big station, but there were two platforms and quite a few people here.

"James have you seen Sir Topham Hat recently?" The station master asked the bright red engine.

"Not since this morning sir. Why?" The engine asked, as several ordinary looking people emerged from his coaches and continued about their daily business.

"No particular reason, just some people over here wanted to speak with him."

"I think he's usually in his office at Knapford." James' driver replied.

"Well there you have it, he's at Knapford." The station master said to us.

"And where is that?" I asked, not knowing anything about Sodor's geography.

"It's the next station up the line in the opposite direction, you'll have to drive there. There's no train heading there from here today. " He replied.

So we returned to our vehicles to find a bunch of people gathered around our bus.

"What are you all doing?" Phoebe asked.

"Isn't this the bus to the hotel?" A random stranger asked.

"No it's our bus." I replied.

"Oh, ok." He said.

"Where did you get it?" He asked.

"From the far away Island of Cinnabar." I replied.

"And where's that?" He asked.

"A long long ways away." I answered, truthfully.

It took about a minute, but eventually we managed to convince the crowd that this was not in fact the bus to the hotel and they disperese, leaving us free to go. While Henry wondered why more people were drawn to our bus than his Camaro, which was pretty much equally out of place.

Driving through sodor was peaceful, none of the episodes ever showed the part of the island we were driving through, the part nowhere near the railway so nothing was recognizable from the episodes, though the countryside was quite beautiful. The roads were rough, there were no highways here, just narrow dirt roads that followed the contours of the land, passing by fields and a few farmhouses and maybe a village or two. So it took awhile to reach Knapford, honestly the railway was probably faster.

"So Cj, it looks like tv shows do have their own worlds." Phoebe said from the comfort of the bed as the bus rumbled over the rough surface of the road.

"Or maybe this is a world that inspired the tv shows." I replied. "Actually I think it was a book series before it was a tv series."

"I just hope we don't end up in a horror movie." She said.

"Yeah, I hope so too." I replied. "That would be bad."

"The trains are living things, that's what I don't get." Phoebe said. "Their thoughts match that of a human, but they're trains."

"Mhm." I agreed to the obvious, they were trains and they were in fact sentient. How they were sentient was something that would never be answered. That said it was normal in this world, and nobody here thought it strange aside from us. Henry was by far the most disturbed, as he hadn't even heard of Thomas the Tank engine.

"I bet Charley will love these pictures though." Phoebe commented as she went over the latest additions to her gallery.

"Yeah, either that or they'll freak him out." I replied.

"Oh don't be silly, he'll love them." She insisted.

-an hour later-

We still hadn't reached Knapford. The "network" of dirt roads was vast and confusing, and there really wasn't a way to get a map. We had to take several detours as some bridges had collapsed and others were non-existent, and some roads abruptly ended without warning at the edge of a field. With a road system this bad, it's no wonder sodor's railway system thrived. Not that it was a bad thing, as the people didn't seem to mind, and the locals of course knew the roads well enough that getting lost wasn't a problem for them. Much like the 1940s world, we were taken back to another time, as the fields were worked by early tractors or horses, and eventually the harvesting would be done by hand, though it was spring here by the looks of things, so that would be a while. Eventually we ended up in a small village called Toryreck, not where we were trying to go, but it was the first town we had seen in an hour. Town might have been a stretch, it was basically about a mile of nice, paved street, maybe a dozen houses, a small railway station, that still seemed out of place in a town this small, and a shed. The tracks ran right alongside the street with a small wooden fence offering some protection. We ended up stopping at the small station here in order to as for directions to Knapford, It didn't have a parking lot so we just parked off to the side of the street. Then we walked across the tracks and wondered why the station was on the opposite side of the tracks from the street. The station was practically empty except for the man selling tickets.

"Excuse me we're trying to get to Knapford." Claire asked as she approached the ticket booth. They seemed to think Phoebe was extremely sick here, so we elected Claire to do the talking instead.

"Thomas will be comming through in about twenty minutes, he is scheduled to stop at Knapford today, tickets are 20 pounds each." The station master replied.

"We don't have any money, I was hoping you had some road directions, or maybe a map?" Claire asked.

"You're not from around here are you?" The man replied.

"Nope." Claire simply replied.

"Just stay close to the railway and follow it in this direction, it should take you to Knapford eventually. The road will separate from the railway, but if you keep in mind what direction you were going when that happens and keep heading that way when you are able, you should be fine. It should take you about two hours at most to reach the city." The man replied. "Bring money next time and Thomas can get you there much faster."

"I'll try to remember." Claire said before walking away to inform the rest of us.

Minutes later we were back on the road, for about 20 minutes or so, it was about the same as before, but after the road separated from the railway, we found ourselves traveling through a part of Sodor that was unsettled and heavilly forrested. It reminded Phoebe of her childhood home in the forrests of Hearthome, a place I promised to take her when we made it back home, but for now, there was driving, driving, driving, and more driving to be done, while she made herself comfortable on the bed in the back.

Just as the stationmaster had said, we reached Knapford about 2 hours later. Unlike the last two towns, it was a fully fledged city, so big we couldn't find the station right away. In addition to being a bigger city there was also more traffic to deal with, even some of the cars, busses, trucks, and other assorted vehicles had faces.

After travelling many city blocks, we considered stopping again to ask for directions to the station, Claire and Henry seemed just as lost as we were.

"Cj how come all these old cars are so slow?" Phoebe asked as we were stuck in traffic that seemed to be moving at a glacial pace of around 20mph.

"A large number of reasons, lack of power, aerodynamics, weight. " I replied. "That and they mostly have cobblestone roads, they're rough even for this bus, and with their out dated suspension."

"I see." She replied.

Sodor seemed to be a pretty safe world so far, with no real antagonistic faction to speak of, however, in the previous world,Volkheim had been freed from prison and was already trying to track us down again, albeit this time a bit more covertly. He was obsessed with finding us at this point, partly because of revenge, and partly because he still thought we were extradimensional beings with powers that would presumably rival Palkia's.

Information gained during the breakout and Bergman's raid on the police station, and a somewhat dodgy alliance with Team Devon (after freeing several of their members from prison) led him and just a handful of his followers to the facility on Cinnabar Island. They wore giant trenchcoats over their suits in a somewhat vain attempt to disguise themselves as abnormally large people. Despite the information they gained, they didn't learn anything about Palkia. Which is a shame considering it was essentially what they were trying to find. Not that it wouldn't be any easier, but they probably wouldn't be as dissapointed if they ever managed to catch him.

A few hours behind us, when they arrived on Cinnabar, they quickly infiltrated the lab with the assistance of Team Devon, who were in it for their own reasons, and within the hour Volkheim, Lt. Jeffries, Dr. Rimmers, and a small accompanyment of faceless goons, had made it to Sodor as well. The goons were basically the guys who, along with Jeffries, Bergman felt he could afford to lose. Not very high ranked and not very experienced.

Bergman was still not excited about the Lord Doctor's plan, especially after the damage he had caused to the Behemoth. If he knew it was defeated simply by the fact that somebody left the door wide open, he'd be angrier still.

When we did find Knapford Station, we were told that Sir Topham Hat had taken the afternoon off to spend time with his family. So, with no useable money for a hotel, and no easy why to aquire money, we left Knapford for the day and went to find somewhere quiet to spend the remainder of the afternoon, and possibly the night. We ended up driving around for several hours, just trying to kill time before finding somewhere to settle down, I was halfway attempting to find the scenes from the tv series, so Phoebe could get some interesting pictures and we could later make comparisons, the only one we had seen so far was Knapford Station along with the other stations we had visited to get directions. We tried to get to Knapford Harbor, but access was restricted to business traffic only (as in only trucks with or without cargo could enter), so we could only see it from a distance. It probably would have been better if our vehicles didn't draw so much attention and were obviously not trucks. Duck and Percy were at the Harbour, although they appeared to be busy sorting freight cars and couldn't stop to chat. That and they had no idea who we were, so they probably wouldn't anyway, if we could even get into the harbour to see them up close.

The Bubblemen arrived on Sodor about an hour till sunset. With a few jeep-like vehicles stolen from the Cinnabar Lab. They were in time to see Henry the locomotive return from delivering the freight train we saw him with earlier. He was now traveling in the opposite direction with a different line of freight cars. That said, the Bubblemen were still amazed by his appearence as he passed by. Volkheim himself thought his face was some kind of strange decoration, of the elaborate sort like the kind found on steam locomotives in India, or even certain Japanese trains. Just like our Henry, Volkheim was not familiar with the Thomas the Tank engine series, nor with it's appeal towards children. Which, thanks to the Bubblemen, was about to be violated in a manner not seen on Sodor before or since.

By night fall they ended up in Crossby, their stolen vehicles, that were more suited to the rough terrain made it alot easier for them to navigate the rough country roads. Once in Crossby, they found an isolated hotel, tied up the manager, and basically hi-jacked the place for the night.

It's important to note that even though Sodor did indeed have law enforcement, the police here were greatly limited by the technology available to them. No cellphones, helicopters existed but police had not yet employed them, Even the jeeps the Bubblemen had stolen from the pokemon world were faster than their best patrol cars. For comparison, just a decade or so prior, the Ford V8, with it's rather mild 85hp, was able to outrun most of the police in the states. The jeep-like vehicles the Bubblemen had stolen, while not particularly fast compared to other cars from the pokemon world, had more than twice that much power, from a hydro-converted four cylinder at slightly more than half the size. Even our bus, which by no means could be considered sporty, could give the average car on sodor a run for its money if it had enough straight away, no contest if it was compared to buses of the era.

Anyway, the bubblemen had it better than Henry and Claire did, they had to sleep in their car, or atleast it seemed that way before Henry decided to sleep on the ground with little more than a towel for comfort. It wasn't much of a problem for him, he was used to adverse conditions. Even more so than Phoebe and I were. The bubblemen had comfortable hotel bedrooms that they ironically couldn't appreciate because of their suits.

As for the two of us, it was just another time where bringing a large vehicle along with us was starting to pay off, despite the difficulty it had navigating rough terrain. When the time came we were snug in bed, ready to fall asleep.

"The people here are so nice." Phoebe said as I pulled her close.

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"Their thoughts, while we were driving around earlier. They're so kind." She answered.

"Well this is a world a kid's show was based on." I replied. "They're not all nice though, if I remember right the diesels were pretty mean, and I could imagine there would be some pretty mean people around too, somewhere."

"I haven't heard of any." She replied. "Goodnight." She said as she slowly closed her eyes.

"Good night baby girl." I said before gently kissing her goodnight and then trying to get to sleep myself.

It turned out that Phoebe was a bit restless tonight. After all she'd been pretty much lying in bed most of the day. So she was moving around a lot and making it hard for me to get to sleep. She would get comfortable, then I would be close to sleep and then she would start to move again. This went on for atleast an hour or so in silence before she finally said something.

"I can't sleep Cj." Was what she said shortly after jarring me awake for the fifth time, at this rate she was going to set a new record.

"Yeah?" Was all I could say in return. "What's wrong?" I asked once I was awake enough to grasp the situation.

"I just don't feel tired." She replied. "I've barely done anything all day."

"Yeah well I've been driving all day." I replied. "Maybe you can drive tomorrow."

"That really doesn't help me right now." She said.

"I know, but I can't really help you right now can I?"

"You want to go on a walk with me?" She asked as she sat up.

"Outside? In the dark?" I asked in return.

"Where else are we supposed to go?" She asked.

"Ok, fine, for a little bit." I said, not really wanting to, but I knew she was going to go no matter what, so we both got up, got dressed, again, and then we went for a walk in the wilderness outside. Henry and Claire were both fast asleep at this point, so we did our best not to wake them up as we wondered into the forrest under a huge white moon that almost didn't seem natural. It was litterally like ten times the size it would normally be. That said, it didn't give off too much light, and once we were under the shade of the trees, visibility became extremely poor outside of the glow of Phoebe's hands.

"So where we going Pheebles?" I asked as we seemed to just be wandering aimlessly.

"I don't know." She replied.

"Try not to get us lost." I requested, too tired to keep track of where we were.

"I won't, as long as Henry and Claire stay where they are and we don't get too far away I can teleport us back." She reassured me.

"If you say so." I replied. "Just don't get us lost."

"I said I won't." She insisted.

I proceeded to follow her around for awhile, too tired to think to ask anything else.

"Oh Cj, you look so tired." She said.

"I am tired." I truthfully replied. "But you wanted to come out here so I came with you."

"Well, we won't be long, I promise."

"How you going to get yourself to sleep?" I asked. "Walking for twenty minutes isn't going to make you tired enough is it?"

"No, but, I'll think of something." She replied.

"Like what?" I asked.

"I don't know." She innocently replied. "But thanks for comming with me."

"I need to find an animal." She said.

"Why? "I asked.

"Because Cj, they might know something useful." She replied.

"Like what?" I asked.

"What plants around here help with sleep." She confidently replied.

"Why would they know that? They're animals, they only care about what plants are good for eating." I replied, knowing animals weren't as smart as pokemon.

"Not true Cj." She replied. "Just watch."

"Not much to watch." I replied. "It's too dark."

"Oh don't be silly." She replied. "There's enough for you to tell what's going on. Now quiet, I need to listen." She commanded as her ears cutely perked up. We stood there in silence for a moment waiting. I about fell asleep without meaning too when she suddenly started to move.

"Over this way." She said telepathically to avoid spooking whatever creature she had "heard".

Once she was close enough to her target, she simply used her powers to pick it up off of the ground.

Of all things, it was a wild fox. Like most wild animals she "captured" in this way, it was a bit confused by its sudden levitation.

"Hello there." She kindly said, which caused the fox to immediately notice her which in turn caused it to become a bit scared. It tried to get away, but as it was suspended about 3 feet in the air it was no use.

"How are you going to ask it anything? " I asked.

"Well, I can't, but I can read it's mind. " She replied.

I waited for a few moments while she went through the fox's brain.

"Well ? "

"I know where it burried a squirrel, and that's it." Phoebe replied." It doesn't know anything useful. "

She carefully set the beast back down and released it from her grasps, once it realized it could move again, it took off and quickly dissapeared into the forrest.

"I guess I'm just not going to sleep tonight." She said after letting out a sigh.

"Would sex help?" I asked.

"No, and besides I thought you said I should stop." She replied.

"Just wondering." I replied, surprised she said no, but also somewhat proud of her for being able to exercise such control. Really, I was too tired anyway.

"You want to just go back to the bus and snuggle?" I asked.

"But you won't be able to sleep then." She replied.

"Why don't you go back? I'm going to go exploring. I'll be back by morning I promise."

"You promise you won't get in any trouble?" I asked.

"I promise." She replied.

"Ok." I agreed.

A few awkward moments of silence later.

"Why are you leaving?" She asked.

"Um, I don't know the way back." I truthfully replied. "And you're the only source of light out here."

"Oh, right, I forgot, ok, I'll lead you back."

She led me back to the bus, and then she went off into the forrest on her own. I knew she would be ok, she grew up in a forrest after all. So I went back to the bus and went to bed, it didn't take me long to fall asleep, and I must have slept for a few hours before she returned and woke me up so she could snuggle up next to me, apparently by then I had somehow taken over the entire bed, so she had to wake me up.

"You done squirming around baby girl?" I tiredly asked before she got in bed.

"Mhm, I did some training, I'm really tired now." She replied.

"Hehe, what did you do?" I asked.

"I found a big, dead, tree, and I broke it into pieces with my powers."

"How big?" I asked as she snuggled up next me.

"Maybe about a foot or so in diameter." She replied.

"That's pretty big." I replied. "Wow, you're warm."

"I told you I was training."

" But wait a minute, I thought you didn't know psycho cut?"

"I don't" She replied. "I snapped it in half."

"How?"

"Just have to concentrate." She replied. "It didn't break right away, it took me almost 30 minutes to break it once and that took most of my energy, by the time I snapped off the branches and had it broken into four pieces I was exhausted." "It would almost be just as fast for you to use an axe.

"I didn't think your powers worked like that." I replied.

"Well that's one of the ways." She replied. "I can do short bursts of energy or I can build up a lot of energy over an extended period of time, but it takes awhile and I can't really defend myself because whatever I'm trying to do takes all of my concentration. Now, I am just as tired as you now, so I need to sleep ok? If you have anymore questions, well, there's tomorrow morning."

"Of course baby girl."

"Now kiss me." She playfully demanded.

We kissed eachother good night, then we fell asleep something later.

It was an awkward night but we woke up the next morning in good spirits, while the Bubblemen had been causing trouble elsewhere, they were trying to track us down but they didn't really know where to start. With so little to work with, Volkheim was having a hard time controlling the men he had brought along with him, who were bent on taking full advantage of Sodor's primitive law enforcement. Early in the morning they robbed the bank of Crossby, stealing a few thousand pounds and escaping with ease. Volkheim had very little to do with it, but he didn't care either way, perhaps they could find a use for the money.

This world was set somewhere in 40s or 50s long before people even knew what a spaceman was, so they instead thought the bubblemen were wearing some sort of diving suit, or even some device similiar to a gas mask from world war one. Even the news travelled slower, so it was atleast an hour before police in the neighboring towns even heard of the robbery. Once they heard about it, all they could really do was search, but by then the Bubblemen had made it past their towns to another part of the island.

Sometime later in the morning we were on our way back to Knapford to speak to Sir Topham Hat about the possible location of a portal. Today Phoebe was driving while I relaxed on the bed just to change things up for once.

"Hey Pheebles can we stop and get some ice cream?" I asked from the comfort of the bed, mostly just to annoy her.

"No." She replied.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because." She replied. "Do they even have ice cream shops here?"

"I don't know, do they?" I asked in return.

"I haven't seen one." She cutely replied."And besides, we can't just stop without telling Henry and Claire."

"Do you remember the way back to Knapford Station?" I asked.

"Yes, of course." Phoebe replied. " We're not that far away."

"I really hope you're not lying." I replied.

"Why would I lie?" She asked as she cutely began to get defensive. "I don't lie anymore Cj, I told you."

"I believe you, don't worry." I replied. "But you might not know what you think you know."

"Yeah, well, I do, so don't worry about it, we'll get to Knapford." She replied.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"As sure as I am that you're only asking that to annoy me." She smugly answered.

"Hehehehe, fair enough." I replied.

"You big goofball." She playfully commented.

"Just trying to make this trip more interesting." I defended.

"There's better ways." She replied.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like, well, um, what do you think Sir Topham hat will be like?" She asked in return.

" Well in the tv series, he was generaly a no-nonsense authority figure, stern, but merciful."

"He's the type that might throw us out of his office for wasting his time, but he'll help us if he doesn't think we're crazy."

"Why would he think that?"

"Because we're asking questions about interdimensional portals, baby girl, it's not that hard to figure out."

"What if he doesn't know what we're talking about?"

"Then we're screwed, plain and simple. There was absolutely nothing in the series to suggest interdimensional travel. "

"There isn't anyone else that might know?"

"Well the show's character list for the most part consists of trains. Sir Topham Hat is basically the only regular named human."

Eventually we reached Knapford, where we received our first impression of Sir Topham Hat via the overhearing of a telephone call outside his office. They did have phones here, but they were of the vintage 1920s candlestick style.

"You say the bank of Crosby was robbed this morning? By whom?" He spoke into the old style phone in a deep voice with only the slightest accent.

We couldn't hear who was on the other side, but they didn't seem to have any good news.

"Preposterous, who would rob a bank in a diving suit?"

"Multiple men wearing diving suits? More preposterous still."

"Yes, we'll still keep an eye out for them of course, but we can't make any promises, now if you'll excuse me, I have another meeting to attend. " He hanged up his phone shortly after he finished speaking, then he looked towards the entry and called us in.

"This musn't be an everyday occurence. It's not often I have time to meet with people that have nothing to do with my railway." He said as he invited us into his office.

"What were you talking about earlier with the diving suits?" Phoebe blurted out without thinking, despite revealing our eavesdropping, Hat decided to give us an honest answer anyway.

"Well the bank of Crosby was robbed this morning, supposedly by men wearing diving suits, it's strange really, Sodor hasn't seen a crime like that in a long time."

"That's not why you came here is it?" He asked.

"No, you see um, Mister hatt, we're looking for a portal." Phoebe continued to speak for us.

"Ah what now?"

" It's a long story." I replied. "It's extremely complicated."

"We're from another world, and we're traveling the multiverse so we can get back to our children." Phoebe blurted out again.

"Pheebles?" I said out of annoyance, thinking she was going to get us kicked out of Hatt's office for sure.

"It's the truth."

"See how red my eyes are, how pale my skin is, it's because I'm not human." Phoebe continued.

"I'm a gardevoir."

"Don't forget your ears and your hair." I added as I quickly pulled her hood down.

"Oh my! " Sir Hat replied, loosing his composure for a moment. "You're some kind of m-monster."

"Please don't freak out." I said, trying to keep him from panicking or doing something stupid. "If we were here to cause problems we would have already."
He stared at her for a bit, but as many moments of awkward silence passed he began to regain his composure.

"I see, so you really are not from here." He replied. "I was wondering why you were wearing such a heavy coat in the summer."

"A portal is what you are looking for correct?" He said as he went looking through some files stacked on some shelves behind his desk.

"Well, there is the magic railroad." He said as he found whatever file he was looking for, he set it on his desk and opened it up.

"The magic railroad?" I asked, never expecting that to come up. Yes, there was a movie about it but really? It was real? I mean the movie had very little to do with the series, what?

"Yes, it's a very strange phenomenon, almost a decade ago we discovered it when some trucks went missing, we don't know who built it or why it exist, but since the Diesel Ten incident the Sodrian Government forced us to abandon the siding that leads to it, and everyone that knows about it has sworn to keep it a secret ever since, because we just don't know where it leads. The only reason I'm telling you anything about it, is because I know you're not from here."

"To muffle mountain?" I asked, remembering the movie.

" Yes, that is one stop, but like my very own railway, there's switches, multiple tracks, and multiple destinations, on the magic railroad in particular, all the destinations lead to different worlds."

"What's the diesel ten incident?" Claire asked.

"That's another story in itself, but that said, I have the next hour off, so where do I begin? I wasn't here at the time, I was on vacation in England, but it was shortly after the magic railroad was discovered, locomotives started to come out of the siding that leads to it. Two of these were Lady and Diesel Ten. Now, normally free locomotives wouldn't be such a bad thing, and these two resembled british locomotives so well they were practically indistinguishable, but they were the embodiment of the bitter rivalry between Steam and Diesel locomotives. Lady was peaceful enough, but Diesel 10, in particular was pure evil. He chased Lady around the island, causing confusion and delay wherever he went, until he finally derailed and plunged off a bridge, taking a barge full of garbage down to the bottom of the ocean with him. Normally we'd try to recover a locomotive from an accident, but considering all the trouble he had caused, and the circumstances of his sudden appearence meaning we litterally hadn't invested even a single pence into him, he's still down there, to this day.

"And what happened to Lady?" Phoebe asked.

"Well, after the bridge was repaired, the government demanded she be sent back through the portal, so she was." Sir Hat replied.

"So how do we get to this magic railroad?" I asked.

"By train of course." Sir Hat quickly replied.

"But we don't have any money for tickets." Claire replied.

"That's allright." Sir Hat replied "How would you like to help with the exploration?"

"I'll supply you with the locomotive and crew, we'll transport you and your, um, wheeled vehicles, all you have to do, is send them back with everything you've learned. "

"Which locomotive?" I asked.

"One of the ones that came through the portal, we've been hiding him in the sheds for quite some time, waiting for the right moment to introduce him to the others."

"Thomas?" I asked.

"Oh no no no no boy, we can't send Thomas, they'll know he's missing." Sir Hat replied. "Now, If you're going to do this, I have some calls to make and schedules to, um, schedule, so if you want to do this, come back tomorrow morning and your train off of Sodor should be waiting for you."

"Really? " Claire asked.

"He's telling the truth." Phoebe said.

"Well allright then, thanks alot, we'll be back tomorrow." I said.

"Yes thanks very much." Phoebe added.

"4:00AM sharp and you're welcome" Sir Hat replied.

"4:00AM?" I questioned.

"Yes, if you haven't realized, this needs to be a secret operation." He added.

"Allright, fine." I agreed "Come on everyone, let's find some way to spend the rest of the day."

-once we were out of his office.-

"Does it bother you that that guy is totally corrupt?" Henry asked, after not saying anything through the entire meeting.

"How?" I asked.

"This operation he's suggesting is illegal here, the Sodrian government or whatever clearly doesn't want anybody near that portal." He replied.

"Yeah, but we're not anybody, here atleast, and the locomotive he's sending us with would likely just be sent back through the portal anyway." I replied.

"He's a nice man, I can tell." Phoebe replied. "Maybe a bit business-minded, but he's still nice."

"How can you be so sure?" Henry asked.

"Seriously? " I asked in return before giving the obvious answer. "She's psychic, she can read people a lot better than we can, if she says he's a nice man, I believe her."

"Thankyou Cj! " Phoebe chimed.

"Yeah yeah." I said, a bit embarrassed.

"So what do we do now? " Claire asked.

"We could head back to where we spent last night, and then we can work on training your pokemon in the forrest." Phoebe suggested.

"Sounds good to me." I agreed.

"Ok." Claire agreed as well.

"What if mine runs away again?" Henry asked.

"Phoebe can keep up with it, right baby girl?" I said.

"Mhm." She agreed.

"Wait, what time is it anyway?" Claire asked.

"Um I don't know, every world is different." Phoebe replied.

"There should be a clock on the station platform or something." I said.

"Ok then I'll be right back." Phoebe said before teleporting away.

She came back about a minute later.

"Ok, I got the time." She said as she held out her cellphone, apparently she had set it's clock to the time on the station's clock. "It's 11:30am."

"Ok, let me set my phone too." Claire said. "Oh wait it's dead, I forgot."

"That's ok, mine's still at 80%" Phoebe replied.

"The bus has a clock on the radio we could set too, in case that runs out." I added.

"Mhm." Phoebe replied.

"Allright then, now that that's sorted out, let's go." I said as I left the group and continued to head towards the bus.

So we got back into our vehicles and headed back to where we spent the night before, an isolated road out in the countryside, actually most of the roads in Sodor were pretty isolated. Occasionally a truck or a bus would pass by, maybe even a car or a horse-drawn wagon, but it was clear that travel by rail was dominant here. Most of the roads here were the equivalent of what would happen if a typical gravel road was left abandoned for several years. They were basically glorified dirt trails. Anyway, we chose to spend the night on this particular road because it wasn't right next to the tree line, or some type of agricultural field, there was a little clearing between the road and the forrest where our vehicles could fit so the occasional road vehicle could pass by. Knapford of course was a much busier place, with regular traffic, and paved roads that were about as good as any modern ones, and a fairly expansive railyard where if you watched it long enough you'd probably meet almost every character from the series.

Once we got back, we headed into the forrest to begin training Henry and Claire's pokemon, along with the odd-colored Cyndaquil Phoebe and I had recieved.

The first thing we realized, was that, like our Cyndaquil, and practically every other pokemon in the world they came from, Claire and Henry's pokemon were strangely colored. Henry's totodile had olive green skin, as opposed to blue, and instead of multiple red fins down it's back, it had a single, cyan colored fin that was almost bladelike. Claire's chikorita, while it's color wasn't much different, maybe it was slightly more yellow than green, like a bayleef would normally be, but the most startling difference was that the leaf on it's head was very long and thin, like a ribbon. Neither Henry nor Claire were aware of these differences, but they were very clear to us.

Anyway trying to teach people that a few weeks ago had no idea what pokemon even were turned out to be an awkward experience. Their pokemon had lost so many battles at this point, that they were reluctant to even battle eachother. So today we weren't even battling, just practicing, which would help us conserve potions as well. Our Cyndaquil had never battled before up to this point, and we used this to our advantage to eventually talk Claire's Chikorita into practicing against it.

Henry's totodile was still being extremely stubborn, and Phoebe had her hands full simply trying to keep it from running off into the forrest, never to be seen again. It was probably the most out of control pokemon I had ever seen, aside from the rogues during the disaster, thankfully it wasn't evolved or it would be a real problem. We've had problems controling pokemon before, but this little guy was as stubborn as they come.

Eventually, Phoebe became fed up with chasing it around and decided to just trap it in a bubble of psychic energy, a thing she had said before was done to misbehaving ralts all the time. Though she had never done it to Charley herself. Though Charley really hadn't done anything too bad so far. In a weird way, seeing Henry's totodile throw a fit because it couldn't get out of it's bubble, reminded me of him and even though that wasn't exactly his most amazing quality, it made me miss him all the same.

"You miss him don't you?" I heard my beloved's voice in my head as I got drawn away from my battle with Claire for a moment.

"Why you using telepathy right now?" I asked.

"Cynda?" Our Cyndaquil got distracted as well.

"Cause, I didn't want to distract you too much." She replied.

"Of course I miss him baby girl, I've said that before haven't I?" I asked in return.

"I know but, pay attention to your battle, don't get Cyndaquil hurt." She hesitantly cut short her explanation. While Claire's Chikorita and our Cyndaquil were basically wrestling. Cyndaquil released a small bit of fire, whih caused Chikorita to back off just a little bit.

"Easy Cyndaquil, try not to get hurt too much, there's no pokemon centers out here, this is more of a mock battle than a real one." I said before he managed to burn chikorita.

"Just keep tackling it Chica."

"Chico chico!" Her chikorita said in agreement, while off to the side, Henry's totodile was still trying to get out of it's bubble.

"Toto, totodile!" It cried.

"No you're not getting out." Phoebe replied. "Not until you stop trying to run away."

"Please just calm down." Henry begged. "Just watch the others play."

He was desperate to regain control of his pokemon.

"Totodile!" It continued to claw at the sides of it's bubble while throwing a fit. So far it seemed to be a total cry baby. By the time Chikorita and Cyndaquil were ready for a break, it had finally calmed down, mostly because it was tired too. Phoebe let him out shortly after that.

"Are you done now?" Phoebe asked.

The small reptillian creature just glared at her with content.

"Trying to scare me isn't going to work." Phoebe replied. "Henry is your trainer, you must treat him as such, or you'll never get any stronger than you are now."

"It's no use, he's too stupid to understand. I knew I should have picked the fire one." Henry lamented.

"He's smarter than you think." Phoebe replied. "He just doesn't trust you because you put him up against pokemon he couldn't possibly defeat. Losing one battle is hard enough, but do you know how humiliating it is for a pokemon to lose so many in a row? Especially young ones like this."

"So what do I do then?" Henry asked.

"Well, you need to apologize, and you need to find a way to get it to trust you again." Phoebe insisted.

"Ok." Henry replied.

"I'll leave you two alone for a bit, as tired as he is now he shouldn't try to run away anytime soon, it's a great time for you to come up with an apology." She said as she turned her attention towards me to say "Cj is Cyndaquil ok?"

"Yeah, he'll be allright, he just needs some rest."

"I bet you would like to rest too wouldn't you?" Claire said as she picked her tired chikorita up off of the ground.

"Chika chiko." It replied in a voice that was both tired and satisfied with how things were going. It seemed that it was going to get along with its new trainer just fine.

"You doing great Claire, your pokemon is starting to like you." Phoebe said.

"Guess that movie the other day really helped." Claire replied.

"Chika-chi." Her pokemon happily chirped in agreement.

"Quil."

"Did you have fun too Mr. Fwuffy?" Phoebe playfully asked.

"Pheebles we're not calling him Mr. Fwuffy." I said.

"You named your wigglytuff Mr. Jiggles, why can't we have a Cyndaquil named Mr. Fwuffy?"

"Because, he evolved from a jigglypuff, it made more sense then."

"Well then shouldn't he be Mr. Wiggles now?" She asked as we went completely off the tracks.

"But that would just confuse him now, besides he likes his name."

"Oh does he?" She asked in return.

"Alot more than nightblade will like being Mr. Fwuffy."

"Isn't that right nightblade?"

"Cindaquil." It nervously replied.

"It said no." Phoebe translated, presumably, she could have just been making it up to push for Mr. Fwuffy.

"What about Torch? He's a fire type isn't he? " Claire suggested.

"No." Phoebe and I both said simultaneously.

"Why not?" Claire asked.

"I have a nephew named Torch, and there's also a tv character named Torch, that's enough Torches." Phoebe replied.

"Yep, and that's exactly why we're calling him Nightblade."

"Why Nightblade, why not Fireblade?' Claire asked.

"Yeah, Cj, he's a fire type, not a dark type." Phoebe agreed.

"There's a dark type?" Claire asked.

"What about Flamebro?" Henry suggested.

"That sounds like an enemy in a videogame." I replied.

"Don't you guys have your own pokemon to name?" Phoebe suggested.

"I'm not naming mine until he earns a name." Henry replied. "If I gave him a name he deserved right now, I don't think it would be very nice."

"It's your fault he doesn't listen Henry, you pushed him too hard." Phoebe insisted. "You need to apologize or it's going to keep hating you."

"So are we naming him FireBlade or what?" I asked.

"Oh so it's FireBlade now." Phoebe replied. "I'm still voting for Mr. Fwuffy."

"He's not even that fluffy, I have more hair on my arm than he has on his back." I defended.

"Yeah, but his bewys all white and fwuffy, actually I'm changing my vote to Mr. Fwuffy Belly."

She replied.

"Oh good god Pheebles, what are you five?" I asked.

"Cj?" She said.

"Yeah?" I replied.

"His belly is fluffy, it makes sense." She reasoned.

"Cynnnda, cynnndaquil." Our Cyndaquil chimed in.

"It's not girly, it starts with Mr., how can it be girly?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, well, see, he doesn't like it." I said.

"Cyndaquiiil Cynnda." Cyndaquil continued.

"He doesn't like FireBlade either he says." Phoebe translated.

"Awwwe well, we'll think of something eventually." I replied.

Henry's totodile was now lying on the ground, half asleep, looking completely defeated despite not training at all today. Unpleasant thoughts were circling it's mind as it tried to grasp it's new reality. As a basic stage evolution, totodiles are not very complex pokemon. They're simple, aggresively-minded pokemon that really hate to lose, of course age grants wisdom, and by the time they evolve into croconaw they are a lot more manageable, if the trainer has managed to gain their trust by then, if not then, well, more power, more problems. But now the only thing running through it's mind was shear contempt for it's trainer.

"Look I uh, I was told I should apologize to you, so I'm sorry, I overestimated your abilities and I pushed you too hard. I'm sorry." Henry said out of earshot from the rest of us with about half as much sincerity as awkwardness.

Totodile looked up at him for a moment, let out an angry hiss, then layed back down.

"Yeah well, I might as well put you back in your ball if you're just going to lie there." Henry replied as he returned his pokemon.

"Did you say it? " Phoebe asked as he returned to us.

"All he did was hiss at me." Henry replied.

"Well, these things take time." Phoebe replied.

"Ok so what are we going to do for lunch?" I asked.

"I don't know Cj." Phoebe replied. "We don't have any money here."

"I told you we should have bought some food while we had money." Claire said.

"We're going to have to go hunting. " Henry said.

"Yeah, probably. " Phoebe agreed.

"You mean we're going to have to kill something? " Claire asked.

" It's no big deal really, when we first started this adventure we were on a deserted island for several days, we ate nothing but birds cause that was the only thing we could find. " I replied.

"And we'll need to start a fire to cook whatever we find on." Henry added.

"Easy, I got a pokemon that can help with that." I replied, refering to HellBlade."And Phoebe can take care of the hunting."

"Mhm." She agreed.

"Allright go out and find what you can baby girl, everyone else, well, we need firewood."

"Ok." Claire replied.

"We can use the bits of the tree I cut down last night." Phoebe suggested.

"Good Idea, why don't you go show us where it is, then start hunting." I replied.

"Ok, come on then." She said as she headed off towards the forrest.

"Why'd she cut down a tree?" Claire asked.

"She was training last night." I replied. "She couldn't sleep."

"So she murdered a tree?" Claire asked.

"It was already dead." Phoebe replied. "I specifically picked one that was."

"That's why it will make good firewood." I added.

Eventually we arrived at her tree, it was quite a mess, chunks of wood were everywhere, many were too big to carry.

"We're going to need to cut some of this up a bit more." I said, while Claire and Henry were gathering up sticks.

"Right, come on out Bulby, we need your help." She said as she sent out her pokemon.

"Venusaur!" It called out.

"I need you to listen to Cj for a little while, help him collect some fire wood. I need to go find some lunch." She said as she came over to me, wrapped her arms around me and kissed me.

"Love you too baby girl." I said shortly after she let go.

"See you in a little while." She replied.

"See you." I replied. "Be safe."

"You too." She replied as she headed into the forrest.

"See I told you, they're so cute together." I overheard Claire in the background as Phoebe dissapeared behind the trees.

"Allright, get what you can carry, Bulby I need you to cut these two logs here in half, and then carry them back too if you can. Then you can just hang out until Phoebe comes back with lunch." I said as I began to gather some sticks myself.

We ended up bringing back more than enough. We didn't need much as it was a warm day on Sodor so there wasn't much benefit in keeping the fire alive longer than what we needed to cook lunch.

By the time we had a fire going that didn't need HellBlade's assistance to keep it alive, Phoebe returned from the forrest with a bunch of unconscious squirrels, which Henry was able to dress, as none of the rest of us knew how, at some point while they were on their own he had purchased a pocket knife on Cinnabar Island, which was now comming in handy. It took a bit of effort, but eventually we had a decent lunch, by decent I meant it was edible, and it kept us from feeling hungry. HellBlade liked it, but that's just him. We didn't need to feed him, but we had some extras, so, he ended up having lunch with us anyway. We also offered one to Bulby, but he refused as the bulbasaur line is predominantly herbivorous. Instead, he just layed down in the grass and enjoyed the nice summer sun, quite a bit away from the fire the rest of us were gathered around. At this time our Cyndaquil and Claire's Chikorita were taking a break outside their balls, that way they would both have time to relax and to prepare for more training later. Henry refused to let his Totodile back out, and it was starting to become clear that it wouldn't be ready to train today.

So while we had lunch it was basically a little pokemon party out in the forrests of Sodor, far enough away from the road that nobody driving by could see. Of course, as Nina would say, if they could see us their brains would probably bubble out of their skulls like a river of pink slime.

As soon as we were done cooking the fire was put out, and as soon as we were done eating we went back to training. While I went back to mock battling Claire, Phoebe attempted to convince Henry to send out his totodile again.

"Come on Henry, send your pokemon out, let's try to talk him into battling again." Phoebe suggested.

"I'm not sending him out again, hell knows what he'll do."

"I know he's a mess Henry, but you need to gain his trust eventually or you'll never be a good trainer, if you can't get your starter to obey you, no pokemon will."

"Well, he should still be pretty tired so he probably won't do much of anything." Phoebe replied.

"Now go on, let him out, or I will for you." She said as her eyes gave off a menacing purple glow.

"Ok fine, but I don't see what this is going to accomplish." Henry reluctantly agreed.

He let totodile out, who was now standing but still very tired from trying to escape earlier, he wasn't allowed to rest over lunch like Cyndaquil and Chikorita were because Henry did not trust him.

"Ok, good." Phoebe began. " Now totodile, are you ready to listen to your trainer?"

"Totodile!" It vehemently shook its head in refusal.

"Come on, you have too." Phoebe insisted.

"Dile Dile Dile." It continued to refuse.

"Why don't you try that glowy eye thing again?" Henry asked. "That might work."

"Because scaring him into submission isn't a good idea." Phoebe insisted. "He needs to trust you, not fear you, or me, or anyone else, actually that gives me an idea."

"What idea?" Henry asked.

"I challenge you to a battle." Phoebe continued.

"Right now, but he won't listen." Henry objected. "And he's tired, it's not fair."

"So?" Phoebe asked. "I'll go easy on him."

"Come on out Polli, this should be easy." She said as she sent out her politoed, she had been looking for an excuse to send him out, and now was a great time. He was stronger than totodile, but as a fellow water type, his attacks wouldn't hurt too bad.

"That is the biggest frog I have ever seen." Henry said as he analyzed her pokemon.

"That's because it's not a frog, it's a politoed." Phoebe replied. "Only pokemon can fit in pokeballs, nothing else can."

"Why not? " Henry asked.

"I don't remember, I think there's some sort of dna scanner thingy." Phoebe replied." Ok Polli, use water gun on his totodile."

"Pollitoed!" Her pokemon happily chirped before realeasing a somewhat powerfil stream of water from its mouth. It hit totodile, who wasn't really paying attention, and knocked him back quite a few feet.

"I thought you said you were going to go easy on him." Henry objected.

"To-totodile kckckc." It got back up and started to choke on the water.

"Totodile!" It stopped choking and just layed down, it was still conscious, but had no will to fight whatsoever.

"Don't hit it so hard next time Polli, we don't want to knock it out." Phoebe communicated with her pokemon telepathically, not wanting either Henry or Totodile to hear. "It probably won't strike back so don't worry about that."

"Another water gun, Polli." She commanded.

Polli lined up another shot and used water gun once again. It was a weaker attack than the first, but it still hit hard.

"Totodile!" It helplessly cried, too weak to even stand up.

"Stop it! You're going to kill him." Henry demanded.

"Only if he doesn't get back up." Phoebe replied.

"This is ridiculous, I'll just return him." Henry declared as he reach for it's ball, only to discover that it wasn't in his pocket anymore.

"You can't just walk away from a battle Henry, you should know that." Phoebe said as totodile's pokeball hovered behind her.

"You what? Why?" Henry asked when he realized what had happened.

"Hehehe, Polli, another water gun." Phoebe commanded. Totodile was exhausted, short of breath, and suffering a piercing headache, but Polli was being careful not to hurt it too seriously. That said neither it nor Henry was aware of that. Totodile felt as if death was near, and was too exhausted to do anything about it, and Henry was deftly afraid that Phoebe was trying to kill his first and only pokemon. Another water gun hit him dead-on. He braced the ground as hard as he could, but the force from the blast still pushed him back a few inches, he closed his eyes tight and held his breath as the water stung against his head, stinging like a needle, when the attack finally ended he opened his eyes, and wondered how he survived, but he knew by now it was only another moment before another one came, and at this point he could only hope it was the last one, the one that would end everything.

"Stop." Henry pleaded.

"I'll stop when Polli is unconcious." Phoebe replied. "When you win."

"Can't you see that that's not possible? He's too weak, he can't fight back and even if he could he wouldn't listen to me." He said as he walked in front of his clearly defeated pokemon in order to deter any more attacks.

"Just stop. " He said, trying to look fierce and angry, but really he was genuinely scared for his pokemon's life.

"Polli?" Her pokemon seemed unsure.

"Just one more, aim for his stomach, turn it up just a bit, but not too much, wait till I say it." Phoebe telepathically commanded.

"Move." She commanded as Polli regained his composure and stared at Henry with an oddly contemptuous look, a very strange look for a normally jolly Pollitoed.

"You're going to kill him." Henry replied. "I can't."

"Ok then, I guess you'll just have to take the shot for him." Phoebe replied."Go Polli, another water gun!"

The stream hit Henry in the stomach, as per Phoebe's instructions, and basically laid him out flat on the ground, next to his exhausted pokemon, it didn't hurt him that much but he was soaking wet.

"What the hell?" Henry asked, not expecting to be hit at all.

"Hehehe, and that concludes today's lesson, you passed, congratulations." Phoebe cheerfully declared.

"Politoed Poli." Polli cheered, returning to its normal, jolly self.

"What?" Henry asked out of confusion as he got back up.

"Dile." Totodile moaned, barely conscious, but greatful that it was over.

"Dry yourself off, let your totodile rest for a bit, he should be fine in a few hours."

"You just attacked me." Henry said.

"I told you, you got in the way." Phoebe replied as she gave back totodile's pokeball.

"But why?" Henry asked, still confused.

"Well let's get back to the others and I'll tell you." Phoebe replied.

"Actually, I kinda, just want to rest for a bit too." Henry said, as the pain from the attack began to set in.

"Well ok, I'll see you later then, come on Polli." Phoebe replied as she walked over to Claire and I just as we were finishing.

"Where's Henry, and who's this guy?" Claire asked, pointing to Polli.

"That's her politoed, I haven't seen him in awhile." I replied.

"His name is Polli." Phoebe added before answering her first question. "Henry is resting. he should be able to battle you tomorrow."

"What did you do?" I asked. "I could hear his totodile crying from here."

"I did what needed to be done, I planted the seeds of trust." She replied. "Why don't you go see him Claire and make sure he's ok?"

"Um why? Is he hurt?" Claire asked.

"No he should be fine." Phoebe replied.

"Should be? What did you do?" I asked.

"Trust me." She said as she gave me a hug. Even without her powers she could be extremely manipulative.

"I trust you, but I still wanna know." I said.

"Well I kind of put him in a situation that would allow him to gain the trust of his pokemon, which also led to Polli having to attack him with watergun." Phoebe replied.

"Eh it's just water right?" I asked.

"Hardly, it knocked him to the ground." Phoebe replied.

"But he'll be ok?" I asked.

"He should be, and hopefully it will be enough for his totodile to trust him." Phoebe added.

"Wait how does that work?" I asked.

"Because he took the shot that was intended for his totodile." Phoebe replied.

"Oh, I see." I replied.

"So now what do you wanna do?" I asked.

"Go into the forrest where they can't find us and have some fun? That's why I sent Claire to Henry so we could be alone."

"In the middle of the afternoon?" I asked.

"We've done it before, actually thats one of the best times cause Charley's asleep and Nina's at school." Phoebe replied. "Awwwe, I miss them both so much."

"Easy baby girl." I replied. "Don't let it drag you down."

"Can we go have some fun then? Pwease?" She cutely asked.

"You sure you don't want to wait until tonight?" I replied.

"Yep." She quickly answered. "But if you want to wait that's fine."

"Well, we can find some other way to have fun, you know?" I suggested.

"Like what?" She asked.

"Well, we could, umm, allright fine, come on, let's go." I said as I took her hand and led her into the forrest.

"Yay! Let me lead, I'll find the best spot." She replied as she took the lead.

"What makes a spot the best?" I asked.

"Well, one that doesn't have any poisonous plants, or bugs for starters." she began.

"No bugs, in a forrest, in the summer? Good luck with that." I replied.

"I'll handle it, don't worry." She replied. "A psychic pulse should easilly take down all the bugs in the area."

"And then more will come in." I argued. "They're everywhere Pheebles."

"Well then, I don't know, what's a few bug bites, we have potions." She defended.

"Kind of a waste of potions, don't you think?" I argued.

"Cj." She replied.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Stop being a wussy." She said.

"I'm not, potions are valuable." I replied. "Stop being such a nymphomaniac."

"Don't you get it? If we get naked in the forrest we'll get covered with bugbites." I replied. "Yes, we have potions, but why waste them on injuries we never needed to get in the first place?"

Bugbites in places where you really don't want them.

"I understand, but I just." She began to explain.

"Baby girl, let's just, wait till tonight ok?" I grabbed both her hands as I interupted and looked into her eyes.

She seemed surprised for a moment, but then she responded with a sigh and a hug.

"Then what are we going to do now?" She softly asked as she held me.

"I don't know, we can just hang out, or do some exploring." I replied.

"Ok." She solemnly agreed.

"I really wish you would just let us have some fun though." She replied.

"We had fun a couple nights ago, and I'm pretty damned sure the next time we run into another attractive girl that we aren't going to be with for more than a day, you'll find someway to start another threesome. You know that will backfire someday, it has before. Maybe not last time, but one of these times."

"I promised I wouldn't Cj." She insisted.

"In any other subject I would trust you, but this is your weakness." I continued.

"But I'm serious." She replied.

"Now you are, sure, but when we get into another situation like that." I insisted.

"Ok, you have a point. I'm sorry." She agreed.

"It's allright baby. You're not in the best position, I understand." I replied.

"What happened to taking pictures?" I asked.

"I don't know, I forgot about it." She replied.

"Well then, come on, let's go find something to take pictures of." I suggested.

"Ok." She agreed.

And so we continued our expedition into the forrest, for different reasons.

-not even five minutes later-

"We could keep most of our clothes on." She suggested.

"Eh, it's not as fun that way. If you wait till tonight we won't have to worry about any of that." I replied.

"eeeehhhhh you're right." She replied.

-once again not even five minutes later-

"Maybe if we were out of the grass the bugs wouldn't bother us as much." She suggested.

"Um baby girl? Trees are usually uncomfortable when you're not naked or trying to have sex, also that would have to be a huge tree."

"Not if we hold eachother tight." She replied.

"I'd rather not have to explain how I fell out of a tree while trying to have sex with you. I love you baby girl, but seriously, give it a break." I insisted.

"There's nothing to take pictures of out here. " She grumpily replied.

"Of course there is, what about birds and maybe some other wildlife? " I asked.

"They're no different than the ones back home." She insisted.

" We're in europe. This isn't America Pheebles, this is, uh, I think it's close to Britain actually. " I argued.

"All this pretty much looks like the timber at home." She stubbornly continued.

"Well then we need to find something that doesn't, and it's not like the timber at home, we don't have mountains at home." I replied.

"Jeeze, you love the forrest baby girl, how horny are you?" I asked out of curiousity.

"Do you really have to ask?" She asked in return.

"Oh just wait till tonight ok? Come on, let's climb up this hill." I said as I attempted to get her mind off of things.

"I'd rather you climb something else." She suggested.

"You're just not gonna stop are you?" I asked.

"Nope." She replied. "Not until we have some fun."

"Well, if you'd get your mind out of the gutter for a moment, we might." I continued to resist.

"You know that's not the kind of fun I meant." She insisted.

"I just want you to wait for a few hours, why are you being so stubborn?" I asked.

"Why are you being so stubborn? " She replied.

"I asked you first." I insisted. "Are you in heat again?"

"No!" She denounced. "I'm just bored and I want to pway with you." She answered.

"You just wanna go back to the bus and snuggle?" I asked, seeing that she was likely to keep bringing this up every five minutes if we continued further into the forrest.

"Ok." She agreed.

And so we headed back to the bus, but things didn't really change once we got there. I don't know why I thought they would.

"Cj, my feet are hot, can you rub them?" She said moments after we climbed onto the bus.

"Like I don't know what you're trying to do." I replied.

"They still hurt." She insisted as she sat down and slipped off her shoes.

"eh heh, sure they do." I replied.

"But you love me." She said

"Which is exactly why this isn't working." I replied.

"That doesn't make any sense." She defended.

"Of course it does, I love you enough to attempt to force you to find another way to deal with your emotions, I know you miss our children baby girl, but we can't just have sex everytime you feel sad about them." I paused for a moment as I sat down beside her and wrapped my arms around her. "I will hold you as much as you want, but you need to find a better way, because this kind of sex, that isn't love, it's just trying to escape."

"I can't stop worrying." she said as she slowly wrapped her arms around me, trying to hold back the tears.

"Nobody said you had to stop." I said as I drew her into a kiss. "And I know you're not going to stop cause you're the best mother those kids could ask for."

"You just have to learn to deal with it more constructively, because baby girl, we seriously can't have sex everytime you're about to get upset."

"I know." She replied.

"I love you Cj." She added.

"Love you too baby." I said in return.

"Can you show me?" She asked.

"Really?" I asked in return.

"You know Claire and Henry could come back at any time." I said.

"They can tell when they shouldn't come in." She replied. "I'll let you play with my soft little feet, I know you like to,"

"You know what? I should just get up and walk out." I said.

"And leave me all alone?" Phoebe replied.

"Yeah, cause you're either playing a game with me, or you didn't even hear a single word I just said." I said as I got up and prepared to leave the bus for a marvelous land full of trees.

"I'm not playing." She replied."I just thought that maybe we could have some fun. Just to have fun." She awkwardly insisted.

"Yeah, well you picked a hell of a time to ask." I replied.

"Don't leave, I'll stop trying to tempt you, I promise." She said with all the sincerity she could manage.

"Ok, but you better keep that promise." I replied.

"I'll try." She murmured.

"But why can't we?" She asked.

"Why can't you wait for tonight?" I asked.

What's so special about tonight?" She asked in return.

"What's so special about right now?" I asked.

"Because I really want too right now."

"Why would things change by tonight?"

"Because I'll be tired by then."

"Not that tired, baby girl just relax, I made up my mind, we're not doing it now, just forget about it." I insisted.

"Fine, then we're not going to do it for the entire week." She threatened.

"If you can make it half a week I'll applaud you." I replied.

"You're right? What am I saying? " She admitted.

"There's my baby girl." I replied while she began to look very distraught.

"Awwwwe, baby girl, I've been through worse before I met you." I said, trying to lift her spirits a bit. "We're still in this together."

"Then why are you doing this?" She asked.

"Because you know you need to stop this before it gets out of control." I replied.

I looked her in the eyes for a moment before her gaze turned towards the nearest window.

"What's going on?" I asked, as her attention turned to something outside.

"Henry and Claire are comming back." She replied.

"See? We didn't have time anyway." I said.

"Yeah, well, if we stayed in the forrest. . . " She began.

"Then we would have to waste potions on bugbites." I interjected.

"That's it, next pokemon world, I'm buying repels." She replied.

"But, you are a pokemon, and would that even work on regular bugs?"

"Well still." She stubbornly replied. "It's worth it, even if that stuff smells like a gulpin ate a koffing and threw it up onto a muk."

"Do you remember when Nina's Gulpin threw in the house? That was awful." She said.

"Yeah, I remember, her room still smells like bleach." I replied.

"It was a lot worse before that, way worse than bleach." She insisted.

Henry and Claire approached the door.

"But wait? You'd rather cover yourself in repel and have sex with me than not?" I asked.

"Mhm." She replied. "Sometimes."

"You see this is exactly why we need to take a break." I declared. "You're not thinking rationally baby girl."

"Are you in there?" Claire asked from right outside the door, and just like that, this conversation was over.

"Yes." Phoebe replied as she used her powers to open the door. "Henry is your totodile ok?"

"He got up, but he stayed by me until Claire came." Henry replied.

"Well, that's good, it means he's starting to trust you. I can give you potions if you need them." Phoebe said. "Or you could just let him rest for a bit."

"You have a tv in here don't you?" Claire asked.

"Yeah." I replied.

"Can we watch a movie?"

"I don't know, what do we have for movies Pheebles?"

"Not much, Operation L.u.x.r.a.y, Johto Jolteon, Prince Piplup and the Wacky Walrein, and Torch the Growlithe: Morty's Mystic Manifest of Madness."

"Really? " I asked.

"I thought Nina would like to see it when we got back." Phoebe replied.

All these movies did not exist in the pokemon world we were familiar with, while the Torch the Growlithe franchise was familiar, the character designs, and even some of the characters were heavilly altered. The animation style was similiar though. Plus, while the franchise itself existed in both worlds, this movie had never been made in our own, atleast as far as I knew.

Claire: "Um, have you seen any of those before?"

"Nope." Phoebe quickly replied. "Go on and pick one." She replied.

"I'm gonna have to start the engine so the batterries don't die." I said as I got up and approached the front of the bus.

Both Claire and Henry boarded soon afterwards.

"This tv is so thin." Henry commented.

"Yeah it's like the one in my apartment remember?" Claire asked. "They haven't made those big box tvs for years."

"If we're going to watch a movie, you should let your pokemon out so they can see it to." Phoebe suggested.

"Allready on it." Claire replied as she let out her chikorita, while Phoebe let out our cyndaquil.

"Do you think I should?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, he shouldn't try to run away anymore, it's a good time for you to start bonding with him." Phoebe replied as I left the driver's seat to rejoin her on the bed as she held our cyndaquil in her arms.

"Quil?" It chirped.

"You want to watch a movie?"

"Cindaquillll." It replied.

"You don't know what a movie is?" Phoebe translated.

"Well you will soon, just watch the black rectangle up there." She said as she pointed to the screen.

"Quil!" It replied as it moved towards the front of the bus to get a better view.

"So what are we going to watch then?" Claire asked.

"The movies are over there, pick one and put it in the tv." Phoebe replied. "Remember your pokemon are still young, so they probably won't like anything too scary."

"I was thinking about this Torch the Growlithe one. It seems fun." Claire replied.

"Looks like a kid's movie." Henry said.

"It is, but, our pokemon won't mind." Phoebe replied.

"Cinda, cindaquiill." Our pokemon curiously looked at the screen, then back at us.

"Yep, just look at that." Phoebe replied as Claire got up to the put the video disc into the tv.

"You want to get off the bed?" I asked "It's kind of hard to see the tv from here."

"No, I want to lay here and snuggle. . . with you." Phoebe stubbornly replied as she pulled herself closer to me.

"Fine, I guess we won't see the movie." I said as some kind of studio logo came up on the tv screen with a little musical chime.

"Nope, but that's ok." Phoebe insisted as she wrapped us up in a blanket.

"Pheebles?"

"Mhm?" She asked.

"Get your hand off of my . . . . ." I said just quietly enough that our friends in the front seats could not hear us over the tv.

"Eh heh, sorry." She interrupted."Shhh."

"No shhh, you just stop." I quietly insisted.

"What's going on back there?" Henry teasingly called out.

"Nothing, we're just playing." Phoebe replied, just barely keeping control.

"Try to keep it Pg." Claire insisted.

"Yeah Pheebles." I agreed.

"You're driving me crazy." Phoebe said to me telepathically.

"Oh I'm driving you crazy? You can't wait till tonight, you try to touch my junk in front of our friends, and our pokemon, we just talked about this, before they even came here, for the millionth time, we're not doing it right now, as mad as you've made me, we might not tonight either, baby girl, you're starting to piss me off, you realize that right? " I replied.

"I am?" She said outloud.

"You already broke your promise after what? Five minutes?" I replied.

"Don't leave, I'm sorry." She asked.

"Are you though?" I asked.

"Yes, I am." She said as tears came to her eyes.

"I'm sorry Cj forgive me." She repeated as the waterworks went into business.

"What did you say to her?" Claire asked when she realized how upset she was.

"Nothing, she just gets really emotional sometimes." I replied.

"Just cry it out baby, I'll hold you." I softly replied, trying my best to comfort her, despite a part of me suspecting her of trying to manipulate me.

"I just don't know if he's going to be ok Cj, I just don't know." She sobbed.

"Is she going to be ok? Claire asked.

"Just watch the movie, she'll be fine, she just, well she's a mother that's been separated from her son, it's amazing she's been able to keep it together this long, I knew you were stressed baby girl, I didn't know you were in this much pain." I replied.

"Baby girl you can let it all out here ok? There's nothing chasing us, there's time now. Ok? Don't hold back, just let go." I said, softly as I held her tight, it had been a long time since I'd seen her so distraught.

" I love you, I'm here for you." I replied before I kissed her on the cheek.

"And I always . . . " I began to say before a sudden teleportation to the forrest outside the bus caught me off guard.

"So they don't have to see." She sobbed.

"Ok." I replied.

She proceeded to cry for several minutes while I just held her close, doing my best not to cry along with her. With nobody around to see, her sadness seemed a bit more genuine.

"I had no idea you were in so much pain." I said.

"You wouldn't let me escape." She sobbed.

"I thought there was a better way, I didn't know you had so much bottled up." I replied. "Honestly, I'm impressed, you hid it so well."

"Will you take me now? " She sobbed. "Now that you know."

"I really need it." She said. " I can't wait till tonight, I didn't think you'd be so opposed."

"Right now, please, it will feel so good." She said. "I love you so much Cj."

"Baby girl, just keep crying." I replied. "You don't need it, you just think you do."

"But Cj." She said.

"No, I'm here for you, but I'm not going to fuel your addiction." I replied. "So you cry as much as you need too, but I will not give in, and I will not let you give up."

"But Cj." She started to break into tears again.

"Why?" She replied.

"You know why, because if having to wait just a few hours is making you this upset, then something is seriously wrong." I replied.

"You promise tonight?" She asked.

"Yeah, I promise tonight, but not until tonight." I replied. "You feeling better now? Or are we going to have to talk about this again in five minutes? Have you got it through your head yet that I'm not doing this to hurt you?"

"I got it." She replied.

"No more breaking your promises?" I asked.

"No more. " She replied.

"OK then." I said. "Let's get back to the bus before they start looking for us."

"Ok." She replied.

"Unless you need to do some more crying." I said.

"No. " She replied. "I'll be fine."

"Ok then." I said.

I gave her a kiss before we got up and then we hugged for a moment.

"It's going to be ok baby, I keep telling you that, you just need to believe it."I said.

"I hope you're right." She solemnly replied.

"Are you sure you're done crying?" I asked.

"Mhm."She nervously replied.

"No more of this ok?" I said.

"I'll try."She replied.

"No, that's not good enough." I insisted. "Pheebles you need to remember this, we will get back and our children will be ok. I don't know what happened at the facility when we left, but I know we will get back in time to stop it. I don't want to have to remind you every few days after you break down, I want you to remember, so you don't break down."

"Ok."she replied as I took her hand.

"We're going to get back, I don't know how long it will take, but I promise we will, as long as you can keep it together."

"Ok." She replied.

"So come on, let's go and watch a children's movie with our friends and pokemon." I said as my little pep talk finally came to a close.

"Allright Cj."She agreed.

"Now are you still with me?" I asked.

"Always my love." She replied.

"Allright then." I said as I drew her into one more kiss.

We exchanged "I love yous" and then we headed back to the bus.

"Can I hold you all the way back?" She playfully asked.

"Yeah, sure." I replied.

So she had her arms around me the entire way back, it was awkward to move, but she was happy again, even without sex, and that was all that mattered for the moment. I was filled with hope that she'd be able to control herself until tonight, hope that was seemingly validated five minutes later, as by then we were back on the bus watching the Torch the Growlithe movie with Claire and Henry and our ensemble of Johto starters from another dimension, and, for the first time in atleast an hour, she didn't say or do anything, she was just snuggled up next to me on the cloth seats of the bus, enjoying the movie. All three of our starters were huddled up on the seat closest to the tv like children, trying to get as close to the screen as possible.

We missed the first few minutes or so of the movie, which wasn't much of a problem, we'd probably watch it again with our children whenever we got back to them, and depending how long we were out here, maybe even before then. Anyway, Phoebe was practicing how to deny me the use of my arms under the guise of snuggling, while Claire and Henry were keeping to themselves, they just weren't as close to eachother as we were, yet, though Henry seemed to be watching Claire more than the movie.

The movie ended just before sunset. Of our starters, Henry's totodile was the only one awake at that point so we quietly returned them for the night. Then Henry and Claire returned to their car, while Phoebe and I stayed on the bus and got ready for bed, since we would have to be up early tomorrow.

"Well Cj, you have a promise to keep." She said in a mischeivious tone, shortly after I closed the doors behind our friends who had just left.

"I don't know about that, you did break one earlier." I replied.

"But Cj you promised!" she said as she began to remove her dress.

"Pheebles our friends just left, could you atleast wait until they get in their car to take your clothes off? And if we're going to do it, atleast take it slow" I said as I got out of the driver's seat. "It makes no sense for you to want it so bad if you want to cheepen it in everyway possible."

"You're right, what am I doing?" She replied.

"Just come here baby, keep your clothes on for now." I said as I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close.

"Just relax, allright?" I asked as I slowly moved her towards the bed.

"You promised." She said.

"I know." I replied. "but you, my horny little princess, need to chill out. Look, we need to get up early tomorrow, so I think we should put it off until tomorrow? Ok. Besides, you owe me a promise, now we can be even again."

We just stood there in the aisle and held eachother tight for a bit.

"I can wait." She said, softly.

"Ok." I replied.

And so we went to bed that night without having any fun beforehand.

A few hours passed while we slept, and then Phoebe, who was using her phone to keep track of time, woke me up when it was time to go. So, still feeling extremely tired, we got dressed in almost total darkness, and then Phoebe went out to wake up Claire and Henry, and then, minutes later, we were on our way to Knapford.

On the way there Phoebe retreated to the comfort of the bed and was asleep once again by the time we arrived. It was 4:05 am and there was already a train waiting at an otherwise empty platform. It's ghostly gray smoke obscuring the moonlight, and there was nobody there but us, it's crew, and Sir Topham hatt. The train consisted of a standard van full of supplies, a salt van full of meat, a sentient truck full of coal, a tanker full of water, likely to extend the locomotive's fuel capacity, a single first class carriage, that seemed to be derived from an old LNER teak-bodied design, and a breakvan, all coupled behind a black 2-10-0 heavy freight locomotive of unknown class to me, but of obvious british design.

"Quite a train you got here." I commented as Sir Topham Hatt approached us.

"I've been planning this expedition for some time, we just needed the right volunteers." He replied. "Though it was quite a predicament to get volunteers without revealing the project.

"You're five minutes late." He nagged.

"I missed a turn, it's hard to drive when you're tired and not familiar with area." I defended.

"It's allright, your brakeman hasn't shown up yet, so it's no great loss, though you should really try to be more punctual in the future." He said.

"Anyway, your locomotive's name is Jack, though he sometimes goes by Big Jack due to his size, He's an austerity 2-10-0, formerly of the british railways of another world."

"What about our vehicles?" Henry asked.

"There is a siding just outside the station with two flatcars in it, just drive them up the ramp onto the cars." Hatt replied. "We will add them to the train once the brakeman gets here."

"Allright let's get that taken care of then." I said.

So we had to get back in our vehicles and circumnavigate the entire station to get to the siding, once there getting on the train was pretty easy, all we had to do was drive up a ramp onto the flatcars, then our vehicles were further attached to the train by several metal chains. The ramp was then moved and chained to the flatcars as well so they could be unloaded later. Then we had a short walk back to the station platform. By then the brakeman still hadn't arrived and Sir Topham Hatt was becomming very annoyed with him. A few more minutes passed, and Hatt eventually gave the orders to add the flat cars to the train in the absence of the brakeman, this operation took another twenty minutes, and required Henry and I to do the brakeman's work for him, including uncoupling the brakevan, changing the switch, guiding the train into the siding using lanterns to direct the driver, coupling up the flatcars, and then reattaching the brakevan. Thanks to Sir Topham Hatt's instructions, it wasn't very difficult, though neither of us had any experience working for a railway, and once that was done, the brakeman still hadn't shown up.

After that we boarded the coach, which basically had seven small, private passenger compartments and a corridor along one side to move between them. Quite a bit of space considering we were the only passengers. There were exits at each end, but one just led to the first flatcar, which was about a 3ft jump away, and the other to the insurmountable backend of the supply van, so there wasn't a very easy way to move between cars.

While everyone but Sir Topham Hatt was waiting patiently for the brakeman, some unwanted guests arrived. At this point Hatt had retreated to his office to make some calls, probably to find out where the brakeman was. Some jeeps pulled into the parking lot and the Bubblemen emerged from them, I don't know how they found out, but it probably had something to do with the missing brakeman. They ran onto the platform and tried to make it to the locomotive. Jack realized what was going on and began to accelerate on his own, out of the platform while the engineer and fireman tried to hold the cab by throwing hot embers from the firebox at them, which was surprisingly effective.

Henry had a pistol on him and tried to fire at them from the passenger car window. Which did very little to their bulletproof vests. They fired back, but by then Henry had already retreated into the corridor.

The gun fire got Sir Topham Hatt's attention, but he turned out the lights in his office, and stayed there, unarmed, and feeling as if he was too old to fight. Phoebe teleported off the train, then onto the flat car to retrieve some guns for me and our pokemon from the bus, by the time this happened, Jack was already out of the platform. and the bubblemen were still chasing him, they started to fire at him, which didn't accomplish much of anything. As the entire train eventually made it out of the station, and accelerated to a speed faster than they could run, which in turn caused them to stop firing, we thought we had lost them, but soon we realized that they had begun to chase us with their situation was looking grim until Phoebe returned to the passenger car with her purse, a pistol, and all of our pokemon .

"What took ya so long?" I asked.

"I was crawling on the floor so they wouldn't see me." She replied. "Or do you want me to get hurt?"

"No, I was just wondering." I replied.

"I need Magnum, we need to do something about those jeeps." I said.

I sent out Cap'n'Magnum , and had him use magnet bomb, which slowed the jeeps down quite a bit as they swerved to avoid, but as the train accelerated, it became clear we couldn't outrun them, so we had to take them down. They were firing at us, and the passenger car was getting pretty shot up, Magnum couldn't get a direct hit, they were either dodgeing the magnet bombs or shooting them in mid-air causing them to explode prematurely.

Jn the games it never misses, but in the games you aren't trying to hit jeeps at 30mph, which is faster than most pokemon can run, and even the ones that can exceed that, Magnum included, often can't get that fast in the confines of an arena.

So all we could do was slow them down. Rhyhorn could take out one of them, but then he probably wouldn't be able to catch back up to the train, and that was not a risk I wanted to take, the situation was the same or worse with my other pokemon.

Eventually, nearly half an hour later, with Magnum fighting hard to keep them from boarding the train, the situation solved itself when we reached a small bridge that was too narrow for them to follow us. One of the jeeps tried to get on the tracks to do so, but one of the front tires disagreed with this and immediately popped after hitting the rail, blocking the way for the others. Another tried to go around, only to drive straight into the ditch that the bridge ran across and basically destroy itself.

It basically went airborne, hit the opposite bank of the ditch, and bent itself like a bannana.

After that, their headlights eventually vanished from the horizon, confirming that we had escaped. I returned Magnum, and then we made sure everyone was allright, even Jack's driver and fireman. It was difficult to navigate between the train cars, so Phoebe had to check on them by herself.

"They're allright, Jack is allright too, the bullets didn't hit anything important." Phoebe said after she teleported back into the passenger car.

"Ok, good, so we're good to go." I said.

"Except we don't have a brakeman." Phoebe replied.

"Eh so what?" I asked.

"So the train has very limited brakes." Phoebe replied. "They want somebody in the van to operate the brakes."

"Any volunteers?" I asked.

"I'll go." Henry Volunteered.

"Ok." Phoebe replied." I'll take you back there, and then you'll have to listen for the whistle, they told me that when they blow it twice, you need to turn the wheel, and then when they blow it twice again, you need to turn it back the other way."

"Ok, sounds simple enough." Henry understood.

He took her hand and they teleported away, Phoebe came back by herself about a minute later.

"Ok that's taken care of."Phoebe said.

"So now what?" Claire asked.

"Try to get some more sleep, though the sun will be up soon. You can take the compartment behind ours since yours has a broken window." Phoebe replied.

"That was Henry's fault." She explained.

"I know." Phoebe replied. "Cj and I are going to have some fun now, so please, just leave us alone for awhile." She said without any hesitation while my cheeks glowed red with embarassment.

"Pheebles." I exclaimed, thoroughly embarrassed.

"Well, ok, um...goodnight." Claire said as she awkwardly retreated into the corridor, while Phoebe closed the door behind her and used her powers to close the curtains over the windows.

"I've been waiting long enough Cj." She declared as she turned from the door.

"Well then you're going to have to wait a little more. I'm going to sleep." I replied as I layed across the bench in an attempt to get comfortable.

"Oh no you don't! I'll keep you awake." She scolded. I couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

"Really?" I chuckled.

"You're really that desperate?" I asked.

She stared at the floor for a moment.

"No, I just thought . . . "

"That you could completely embarass me and that would make me want to sleep with you?" I interupted.

"I'm sorry." She replied.

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close.

"We need to sleep. I don't know how the heck those spacemen found us, but it's clear that they're after us now. I love you baby girl. That's why I'm refusing. You know it's not working, you're still bottling it up. You're just using sex as a distraction, not a release." I said.

"Why?" She painfully asked.

"I keep telling you why, you won't believe me." I replied.

"You crazy boy, why can't you just take your clothes off and play with me? She asked as she began to sob."I just want some relief why can't you give me that?"

"You're hurting me Cj." She said, a bit more anxiously shortly before she bursted into tears.

"You're hurting yourself cause you won't let it go." I replied.

"You're really getting on my nerves. You used to be a lot stronger than this Pheebles and I don't mean your powers I mean your spirit. What the hell is . . . . god just . . . ugh . . . ." I struggled to speak out of frustration.

"Charley's going to be fine, ok? We will get back in time to save him. Stop worrying about it ok? I know it's hard, but god dammit I can't deal with this, Pheebles I just . . . "

She interupted me with a kiss, which felt really calming despite everything.

"Just stop Cj." She replied as I just gazed into her eyes, too dumbfounded to say anything. "I don't care if it works or not, we really need eachother right now."

"Is this some kind of trick? "I asked.

"No. Please don't get angry, just . . . hold me for awhile. I'm really sorry, I just miss him so much,I miss my little baby boy and I just wanna go back home, but we're so far away. I know you're trying to help me, but it still hurts, and it's really bothering me, and then if that wasn't enough, there's that explosion that happened before we lost radio contact." She sobbed, her tears staining my shirt.

"Just hold me, that's all I want right now." She insisted.

"That I can do." I replied as the train continued to head down the tracks.

"I don't need sex, I just need you." She said.

"There we go baby." I agreed.

"But maybe later we can?" She said with a glimmer of hope.

"We will eventually baby girl, let's just get you back to normal first though ok?" I replied, glad that she seemed to be getting a bit better.

Meanwhile, the bubblemen had found Sir Topham Hat hiding in his office at the station. Somehow none were killed in the firefight, but one was injured in the Jeep accident. Volkheim considered these things to be of little consequence, though the jeeps would be hard to replace in this world.

"Tell us where that train is going, and we will allow you to live." Volkheim demanded, this was a lie of course, Volkheim had every intent to kill him, but what they didn't know was that Sir Hatt had already contacted the police, who, because of the robbery earlier in Crossby, were comming en-masse. All he had to do was stall for time, and that's exactly what he did.

"Um yes, I, I think it's in this book over here maybe?" He said as he grabbed a book off the shelf behind him and hastily shuffled through it.

"Um no, my mistake, this is a book about sailing ships, pardon me, I'm an old man, I'm tired and I forget things." He apologized.

"Well hurry it up then, old man, come on, just give us the information." Volkheim insisted.

"Perhaps it was this book?" He said as he put the first book back on the shelf and picked out another.

"I need my glasses I can't see a dang this in this light." He said after opening the book and scanning one of it's pages for several seconds.

One of the bubblemen flipped the lightswitch.

"You know we'd probably find it faster if we tore this place apart." Lt. Jeffries reccomended.

"No please I'll find it, just wait." Sir Hatt insisted.

"No more stalling old man, you know where it's going." Volkheim demanded.

The sound of many sirens began to blair in the distance.

"That can't be for us can it?" One of Volkheim's lackey's asked.

"You called them didn't you fat man?" Volkheim asked.

"Hehehe." Sir Hatt chuckled. "Indeed, they're lock you up."

"rrrrr." Volkheim growled. "Let's get out of here, they're comming in numbers, it's not worth the risk."

"What about fatso?" Lt. Jeffries asked.

"Take him with us, let's go, take his car and the remaining jeeps." He commanded.

And so the bubblemen kidnapped Sir Topham Hatt, and called him fat, which, though true, with their suits they really didn't have much ground to stand on.

Anyway, as the bubblemen frantically left the station, inevitably starting an epic police chase. Once they managed to escape, like they always seem to do, they met up with a fraction of their group in a third jeep, the one that had it's tires eaten by the bridge was repaired by replacing the busted tires with those from the one that was turned into a bannana. From there they sought out yet another vehicle as it was kind of hard to fit more than four people in a jeep. In a time period where cars were just starting to become establish this did not give them many options. They ended up taking an AEC flatbed from a farm, a truck that, while slow, was better than walking and could take them offroad to an extent.

Back on the train Phoebe and I had no success finding comfort in the passenger car, so we made our way back to our bus, where we went back to our bed and tried to fall asleep even though sunrise was about an hour away.

Once we were comfortable we somehow managed to fall asleep, though I was later woken up because Phoebe was squirming around.

"Pheebles stop, what the heck?" I softly said after she kicked me quite hard, not wanting to open my eyes.

"Voir, devoir voir gar devoir." She muttered in pokemon. I don't know what she was saying but she sounded stressed.

"Pheebles?" I asked, confused.

"Wake up, you're dreaming." I said as I gave her a few solid taps on the head.

"Ow, what? Huh? Oh." She said, sounding very confused.

"Just thought I'd wake you up before you kicked me out of the bed again." I said as soon as I felt she was able to understand.

She replied with a kiss. "Thankyou, that was not a fun dream."

"I can't even sleep." I replied. "You know what? I'm thinking maybe now is a good time to play around like you've been wanting."

"You think so?" She asked.

"Mhm." I replied.

"Can I have a moment to wake up first?" She asked.

"Of course baby girl." I replied."I don't think we're in any hurry are we?"

"I don't think we are." She replied. "Unless you're planning on changing you mind in a few minutes just to be mean."

"Oh, don't be silly, how can I be mean to my baby girl?" I asked.

"By refusing to have sex for most of the day." She quickly replied in a playful manner.

"That was for your own good baby girl, needed to teach you a bit of perseverence." I insisted.

"You're my husband not my trainer." She playfully protested.

"I know that, but still, doesn't mean you can't learn anything." I replied. "Besides, you're gonna get what you want in a little bit, so what's it matter?"

"You kept me waiting!" She playfully replied.

"Well I'll make it up to you baby , just tell me when your ready." I promised.

"53 seconds." She said.

"Really?"I asked, wondering why she was being so specific.

"Well it's closer to 49 now." She replied.

Anyway, 49 seconds later, after a playful argument, we had some awkard morning sex and then we just layed there for awhile. It was satisfying, but not really worth going into detail about.

Anyway, a few minutes after that. Jack's whistle blew twice, indicating that we were about to head down a hill, sure enough, we felt this just a few seconds later. We could only hope that Henry was awake and able to figure out how to operate the brakes.

"Do you think the brakes are working?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know, we're still on the rails, so probably." I replied.

"I think it's about time we got dressed, don't you?" I asked.

"Not really." She replied. "It's gonna take awhile before we get to where we're going."

"So you just want to stay in bed until then?" I asked.

"Mhm." She replied.

"You know, Claire is in the coach all by herself." I said.

"So? She'll be fine." Phoebe defended.

"What about bed sores?" I asked.

"It won't be that long will it?" She asked in return.

"Come on, let's get dressed." I insisted. "I want to see what this magic railroad is like once we get to it."

She let out a sigh. "You're right, I want to see it to." She agreed as she pulled the blanket off of herself, exposing herself though she didn't really care that much cause I was the only one that could see. She grabbed her dress which had recently found a home on the floor next to the bed, and started to put it on. A few minutes later we were dressed and ready to go. So we left the bus and made it to the front edge of the flatcar.

"Ok now wait a moment this is kind of tricky." Phoebe said as she prepared to teleport us into the coach. "Stand behind me Cj." She commanded. "I don't want you to end up in a wall."

"Right." I replied as I got behind her and wrapped my arms around her waiste

She used her powers to open the rear door of the car so she could get a better look inside, and then she teleported us across the gap a few seconds later. Going from the coach to the flatcar was a lot easier by comparison.

Once we got back we found Claire, who was fast asleep in her own compartment, so we just left her alone for a moment.

"Ok Pheebles why don't you go up and ask how long it will be till we get to the magic railroad?"

"In a little bit, we just got here." She replied. "I want to experience all the fun of sitting down and looking out the window." She continued, with some sarcasm as she entered the compartment next to Claire's and took the seat closest to the window.

"Hehehe, oookay." I said.

"What do you see out the window? I asked as I sat down across from her.

"Some trees, and some grass, and, oh look there's some deer." She pointed out.

Jndeed there were some deer, just watching us go by.

"Hmm, well that's kind of interesting." I replied.

"Yeah, a wittle bit." She agreed before she stood up again. " I guess I'll go see how long it will be till we get to the magic railroad."

"Ok, look out for tunnels." I replied before she teleported away.

She came back about a minute later.

"So what did they say?" I asked.

"They said we should be in the siding in twenty minutes." She replied.

"Ok." I said.

"Is Claire awake yet?" She asked.

"It's only been a few minutes baby girl." I replied as she sat down next to the window, across from me.

"Do you remember when we rode the trains in Japan?" I asked.

"Mhm." She replied. "And Gengar's forces were everywhere and we pretty much just got lucky the tracks were still intact. We were so stupid then."

"That was only four years ago baby girl." I defended.

"But look how much has changed since then." She replied.

"Yeah. I see your point." I agreed. "But still."

"You remember the beach?" She asked before I could elaborate any further.

"Oh god, nothing is ever gonna compare to that is it?" I asked.
"Nope" she blatantly replied. "Except, maybe our first time."

"Or maybe that night we made Charley." She said.

"You mean that night you slipped me some pills and made me bang girls that weren't even there?" I replied.

"You enjoyed it." She defended. "I did that for you, you know, I can't have fun playing with illusions I created."

"You did that so I wouldn't noticed you slipped me some pills." I replied.

"Yeah, that . . . . was . . part of it . . . too." She awkwardly admitted while staring at the floor.

"Like winning the pokemon league hours before wasn't enough." I added.

"Well, I wanted a child." She replied. "I didn't think you wanted the same at that point." She defended.

"Let's just change the subject ok Pheebles? What you did was screwed up, but it worked out, I love our son so I don't want to hold it against you."

"That was still great sex though." She insisted.

"I wasn't even conscious." I argued.

"Ehehe, but you were Cj." She argued back. "Everything you did to those other girls you were really just doing to me, every time your thingy entered their thingy, it was really just entering mine, every time you fondled their breasts, your were really just fondling mine, or air if I couldn't move fast enough, everytime you licked their feet, you were licking mine."

"Oookay." I replied, before she could find a way to get more explicit.

"And yet, everytime they kissed you it was me, everytime they sucked your thingy like a lollipop, it was me, and every bit of love they gave you, was actually from me." She continued.

"Ok ok, I get it geez baby girl, tone it down a bit." I replied.

"And then you got me pregnant, thanks to those same pills." She continued. "And even though it wasn't what you intended you still took care of me and then Charley was born and you did your best to be as much of a father to him as you could."

"Mhm." I agreed as I started to wonder where she was going with this.

"I love you Cj." She said as lunged out of her seat to give me a hug.

"I love you too baby." I said in return.

"So, um, remember Lavender?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"That's where I met Cubey." She replied." And that's all I want to remember about that place, that stupid evil zombie man almost killed you."

"You mean burried alive?" I asked.

"I don't care what his name is, He almost killed you." She insisted. "Which reminds me, we still have to name our Cyndaquil."

"Yep." I agreed. As she turned around so she could sit on my lap. "You're just going to sit on my lap now?" I asked.

"Mhm." She replied." What's wrong? You love me don't you?"

"Nothing's wrong, baby, just curious."
"I'm curious about something too." She replied.

"What? "I asked.

"What are we going to name our Cyndaquil?" She asked, unexpectedly putting the conversation back on track when I was halfway expecting her to ask if we could have sex again.

"I don't know." I replied.

"What about Squiggles?" She cutely suggested.

"What about something that won't completely embarass him. He's gonna become a typhlosion someday. Do you really want to explain to people why we have a typhlosion named Squiggles?" I asked.

"Because he's just so squigalicious." She replied.

"I'm pretty sure that's not a thing." I argued.

"It is now." She argued back, willing the ridiculous word into existence.

"You're squigglalicous." I said.

"No you are, you're the squigalliciousnessiest." She replied.

"The what?" I asked as she apparently got lost in her own word.

"I don't know." She replied. "Let's just name him Squiggy."

"Sounds to much like piggy." I argued.

"So? Piggies are cute." She replied.

"You're cute." I said. "Have you even seen a piggy?"

"No I'm not." She blatantly refused to accept the truth.

"Yeah you are, you're just my cute little baby girl." I continued.

"No, you're wrong, I am not cute." She denied in an ironically cute manner. "I am sexy, and you're just a . . . Hey! Claire's awake." she said.

"Just a what?" I asked.

"Just my big loverboy." She answered.

"Yeah, that's totally what you were going to say." I replied in disbelief.

"Claire's awake now, let's talk to her." She replied as she got up off of my lap.

I didn't have much choice but to follow her over to Claire's compartment, she was halfway out the door before I even got up.

"Goodmorning." Phoebe kindly said as she slowly opened the door to her compartment.

"Are you two finished?" Claire asked with a tired voice.

"We were finished awhile ago." Phoebe replied.

"Ok." Claire replied. "Are we there yet?"

"I just checked, they said we'll be there in 20 minutes, though it's more like 15 now." Phoebe replied.

"Do you think we escaped those evil spacemen?" Claire asked.

"For now maybe, but they're definitely following us." I replied."There's no way that attack was a coincidence."

"But what do they want with us Cj?" Phoebe asked.

"I was hoping you'd know." I replied. "Might just be out of revenge, I guess."

"Maybe." Phoebe agreed while Claire silently nodded.

"They don't know where the magic railroad is do they?" Claire asked.

"I wouldn't be so sure, they found us at the station, they knew something was up with this train." I replied. "But it'll be fine, they don't have their tank friend with them, and once we get to the railroad, they don't know where we're gonna go after that."

"It's going to be allright, we've dealt with people like this before." Phoebe added.

It was clear that the spacemen were making Claire nervous, which, because everything was new to her, was understandable. Phoebe on the other hand wasn't afraid of them at all, despite everything else she was going through emotionally, to her they were more of a sidenote, and I felt the same way, now that they had abandoned their giant tank robot thing.

The spacemen were heavily divided now, Bergman was back on their original dead world, repairing project behemoth, meanwhile, another small group of about 10 was exploring the alternate pokemon world, trying to steal, capture, or otherwise obtain pokemon for further study. A few removed their suits to avoid suspicion, and were able to acquire trainer's licenses at that point, and then, painfully slip back into their suits, It took longer for them to change into normal clothes and back than take the trainer's exam.

Once that was done, they picked their starter like any other trainer, and then with the rest of their group, they robbed a pokemart for it's pokeballs, and they were now wandering the forrest, looking for wild pokemon to capture, semi-legally. That said, it would be awhile before any of them managed to get a respectable team of pokemon, even with the aid of illegal Team Devon technology, we would be far away from them at that point.

Anyway 15 minutes eventually passed, in the middle of which another whistle instructed Henry to shut off the brakes. Shortly after 15 minutes had passed, the rails began to get bumpy, as the trian entered a siding that had been disused for some time, then Jack, who had been making quite a bit of noise, as steam engines do, suddenly fell silent. Then everything went black and completely quiet for a few moments, which was strange because the coach didn't have a lighting system. Light came back a few seconds later, a faint green light. We were now in some kind of forrest where everything was illuminated by a strange grayish-green light, the train was still traveling down the tracks and we could once again hear Jack leading the way.

"Well I guess we're here." I said as normality returned.

"This is it? I thought we would be flying through space or something." Claire said, apparently feeling a bit dissapointed.

"In the movie it was like one long tunnel so, I wasn't even expecting this." I replied.

"What else did the movie say?" Phoebe asked.

"Pheebles I was like eight when I saw it, it's a kids movie. It didn't really say much of anything." I replied.

The train began to slow down, without signalling Henry to turn the brakes back on, of course Jack had his own brakes though, too.

In addition to the strange greenish light, the forrest outside the passenger car window was very foggy.

It was light enough outside to make out some very dark trees in all the greyish-green mist, but not much else could be seen. It kind of looked as if we had stumbled into some kind of ghost world.

A few more minutes down the track, the train came to a stop.

"Why aren't we moving?" Claire asked.

"I don't know. Let's wait for the crew, if something is wrong they'll come back for us." I replied.

"Not neccesarily Cj, they might be expecting me to go up their and talk to them again." Phoebe argued.

"Yeah, maybe. why don't you go see just in case?" I asked.

"Ok." She agreed as she used her powers to open the passenger car's door and stepped out.

"Well, I guess we might as well go too." I said to Claire as Phoebe left the coach. "Why don't you go make sure Henry is allright?"

"Ok." She agreed.

So we all left the coach, Claire went towards the brakevan and I followed Phoebe to the engine, by then she had already teleported up there, so I was quite far behind. The rails beneath the train looked normal enough, but there was so much fog, I couldn't see much off to either side, so much so that I didn't want to stray too far from the train. Phoebe up ahead, talking to the driver alongside Jack's cab. Ahead of Jack was a switch, which explained why we had stopped.

"This here is the rift, it's the nexus that makes up the magic railroad, we stopped to make sure the switch was set properly. The left goes to Muffle Mountain and the right goes to the mainline. Progress is going to slow down from here on out, we have to be really cautious out here and keep an eye out for other trains. "

"What happens if we meet another train?" I asked as I finally made it to Phoebe's side.

"Hi Cj." She said to me telepathically.

"Baby girl." I cheerfully replied as I put my arm around her.

"Well as thick as the fog is they should be running pretty slow as well, so we should be able to stop in time and figure out what to do from there. It's been awhile since we've been here, but we're familiar with the first few miles of the mainline." The engineer replied. "It's basically a long series of branches like this one, from what we heard, there's no end. In either direction, we could turn around and go the other way if we needed too, but we're going to keep pressing forward for now, if you don't mind.

"Yeah, I mean where else are we going to go?" I retorically asked.

"Ok switches are clear we can keep moving now." The fireman said as he approached the train.

"Are we going to visit home?" Jack asked his driver.

"I don't think it's a god idea Jack, it could be a warzone for all we know." His driver replied.

"We where in France when we found this place, running tanks into Paris, middle of world war 2, we were at full throttle, there was a ju-87 chasing us, when I realized we were running at full speed into a siding I thought we were dead, especially when everything went black, but we just ended up here.

"What year was that?" I asked.

"1944." He replied.

"The war usually ends in 45, if they didn't need those tanks." I replied. "It's probably safe to go back."

"We uncoupled the tanks as soon as we came to a stop, they're probably still back there if nobody else has discovered them." The engineer replied. "And it ends in 45? Really? Even in the pacific against the japanese?"

"Yes, cause nuclear weapons." I replied.

"What's that mean?" He asked.

"To be honest, it's probably best kept a secret." I replied. "It's a really big bomb, one that would later on become so powerful it would put the entire world at risk."

"So, anyway you basically abandoned the british army?" I asked.

"Could you blame us? We found out this place exists, we had to explore it, then it brought us to a world like our own, but away from the war." He replied. "Since then we never wanted to go back, afraid of the world that might exist on the other side. We got jobs working for Sir Hat for awhile, then when the time was right, he picked us to explore this place as we had the most experience with it."

"I don't know man, that's kinda heavy. "I replied. "Let's just keep going."

"Allright then, get back to your seats we'll be moving in a bit." The engineer replied.

"Allright, let's go Pheebles." I said.

"Right." She agreed.

"We should make sure Claire gets back on the train too." I said.

"She left too?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, I sent her to check on Henry, since he's been back there by himself for awhile." I replied.

"Ok." Phoebe replied.

A few moments later as we approached the coach.

"Um Cj?" Phoebe suddenly spoke up.

"Yeah baby girl?" I asked.

"You sent her to check on him right?" She asked in return

"I just said that awhile ago didn't I?" I asked, wondering how she forgot so quickly.

"Well I know but, they're um. They're having fun, in the caboose, hehe." She said.

"Really?" I asked.

"If I'm hearing this right." She replied. "I guess she can just stay back there then."

"I guess." I agreed.

"So are you ready for round two?" She asked.

"What are you jealous of them?" I asked.

"Of course I am, they're having sex and we're not." She shamelessly confirmed my suspicions.

"We just did like not even an hour ago." I replied.

"So?" She asked. "Come on Cj, just for fun, not to escape or anything."

"Ok, fine, but this is the last time today." I said.

"We'll just have to make it last awhile." She replied, accepting the challenge.

"We might have to drag out the foreplay a bit." I said not ready to go again since the last time.

"That's fine." She said as we climbed onto the coach.

The train started to move again shortly after we were both on the coach. We went to our compartment, she drew the curtains over the window.

"I'd rather just snuggle for a bit baby, like we were before."

"Well now we can do it naked." She replied.

"We still need to figure out what to name our new Cyndaquil." I said.

"We can figure that out later, now, we make love." She replied as she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a kiss.

"Oh allright, let's your clothes off you crazy girl." I said.

"Crazy for you." She replied as I helped her out of her dress.

-about an hour later-

We were both naked on the floor of the coach cause the benches weren't comfortable as they weren't intended to lay down on. Though they were comfortable enough to sit in.

"Ok Pheebles no more today."

"Ok, I'm fine with that." She replied. "I'm tired."

"Me too." I replied. "Let's just get dressed and then we can snuggle like we did before."

"Ok." She replied. "But we're tied right now."

"Oh, yeah, I guess we are aren't we?" I asked.

"How did you forget you big goofball?" She asked.

"I don't know." Was all I could say.

So we waited until the bond wore off to get dressed, and then we went back to snuggling with her on my lap, and talking about unimportant things until the discussion eventually returned to what we were going to name our cyndaquil.

"I still want his name to be Squiggles." Phoebe declared.

"No." I replied.

"What about Mr. Squiggles?" She suggested. "Then we can have Mr. Squiggles, and Mr. Jiggles."

"You're really starting to make me regret naming him that you know?" I said.

"But it's so cute, and it fits him so well." Phoebe argued.

Mr. Jiggles is a wigglytuff, in case you didn't know, he is also the last pokemon I transfered over from the game world, before Devon Co. made it so transfers wouldn't work anymore, since you could basically get infinite amounts of gold nuggets and other items that way, it would basically shatter the economy, which is part of the reason why they brought it to an end shortly after the portals began to appear post-disaster.

"Yes, but it doesn't fit cyndaquil." I argued back. "He's going to be a typhlosion someday, not a big fluffy bunny."

"I can pretend he'll be a big fluffy bunny." She cheerfully replied.

"That's not how it works Pheebles." I argued.

"Why not Cj?" She asked in return.

"I don't know. What about Fireblade?" I asked.

"No, that's terrible, I got a better Idea." She insisted.

"It better not be Squiggles." I replied.

"Mr. Flamey flame." She suggested.

"What about Mr. Fire? Or Mr. Burns?" I asked.

"Mr. Burns?" She asked. "Like the old guy on the simpsons?"

"Ok then what about Mr. Cinders?" I suggested.

"That's not terrible." She agreed. "We'll have to see how he likes it though."

"Right now?" I asked.

"Um, maybe we'll just keep snuggling for a bit." She said.

"Ok. I guess we could always let a few of our pokemon out in case we get bored, we got the whole coach to ourselves." I said.

"Yeah, we could." She agreed. "Maybe later." She said.

"They should have added a dining car or something." I said. "That way we could have a kitchen."

"That is silly, they gave us a car full of meat, but nowhere to cook it." She replied.

"Well, starting a fire shouldn't be a problem as long as we have some trees or something." I said.

"Yeah" Phoebe replied. "Do you think those trees will work?" She asked as she opened the curtains back up to look outside.

"I don't know, I don't even know if they're real trees." I replied.

"Why wouldn't they be?" She asked.

"I don't know, they just seem kind of ghostly." I replied.

"Do you think it's always foggy here?" She asked.

"I don't know Pheebles." Was all I could say, I couldn't tell if this was a real world with a real forrest or just some kind of, purgatory-like rift between worlds.

"We'll just have to see what happens ok?"

"Ok." She replied.

We didn't think about it much before we started, but we were in for a long ride with an unknown destination, every once in awhile the train would stop to check switches and we would use that time to communicate with the crew and with Claire and Henry in the brakevan. After the third stop though Claire and Henry both moved back to the coach, as the track was basically flat and combined with the cautiously low speeds, a brakeman wasn't needed. Sometime after they rejoined us, we eventually let some of our smaller pokemon out inside the coach so we could have more company.

As time passed and we made more progress down the line, the fog never lifted, nor did it get any lighter or darker, the strange greenish-gray light became the new normal, and we had yet to come across another train, or escape the ghostly forrest that seemed to exist outside the window. Our pokemon were just as confused by this as we were. Day or night, here there was no way to tell, just an endless track with an equally endless number of junctions, and a strange ghostly forrest that surrounds it.

After several hours of traveling, and roughly twenty junctions down the line, the train once again came to a stop, and upon speaking with the crew, and Jack himself, they said that they were tired, and we would be stopping in the next world to stay for the night. They backed the train down the junction and off of the "main line", so to speak, and they put out Jack's fire for the "night", so to speak.

Then we all headed towards the back of the train, into the next world, carrying some supplies with us, including a few pounds of meat from the salt van and a couple canteens of water from the tank car.

"How long will all that meat hold out?" I asked. The salt van was not a refrigerator, and basically relied purely on ice and salt to preserve things.

"As long as it doesn't leave the nexus, it won't age." The driver replied. "But we have to leave to build a camp fire, there's no resources out here and those trees won't burn."

"They won't?" I asked out of confusion.

"You can't even chop down the bloody things." The fireman added." It's like they're made of stone, nobody knows what they are or how they got there, but they're not normal trees. They don't even have foilage if you haven't noticed, like it was winter or something."

"Why are we walking there? " Claire asked.

"We have to, it's much harder to hide Jack than ourselves." The Driver said.

"Yeah, if we end up in a more modern world we will look extremely suspicious." I added.

"Or if we end up on a busy railway, we'll stick out like a sore thumb just like we did on Sodor when we first arrived." The fireman added. "They know the numbers on the locomotives you know, it wouldn't take your average yard manager long to figure out were're not supposed to be there.

"So where does this track go? " Phoebe asked.

"No idea, except for someplace with a railway." The driver replied. "Could end up in a big city, or the middle-o-nowhere."

We ended up in the later, a rusted out siding on a railway that had been abandoned for quite some time, the tracks were overgrown and almost completely unusable. We wasted little time setting up camp, gathering some firewood from some perfectly normal trees nearby and starting a fire with the usual help of our pokemon, then we had all had some steaks for dinner. We barely knew anything about this world, other than it was well forrested and this railway was built and abandoned for an unknown reason. We wouldn't be here long enough to learn anything more. We could tell it hadn't been used in a long time cause the surface of the rails was dull and rusted, the rails of a line that was in regular use would be shiny and nearly polished from the weight and wear of trains traveling over it.

Anyway, after dinner, Phoebe and I headed back to the bus so we could be alone.

"You think I should let Mouser out?" She asked.

Mouser is the name of her psychopathic bidoof that she had for god knows what reason, he was insanely jealous and everytime she left me alone with him he would always act up, one time he even jumped out of a moving car and got lost in the city where it took us several hours to find him. Another time he fell off a bridge, after all these incidents, Phoebe got the message and has hesitated to send him out ever since, she especially didn't want the mischeivous little rodent to be anywhere around Charley.

"No. Why did you even bring him? I thought you had him locked in the closet for good." I replied.

"Well I have to let him out again eventually, I don't want to be that mean." She said

"Why don't we just, cook him up?" I asked. "Your father said something about eating bidoofs once."

"NO! HE'S MY POKEMON!" She vehemently refused my gesture.

"Ok, ok, yeesh. " I replied." I just don't trust the little rat, you know how much trouble he's tried to get me into. You said it yourself you don't trust him around Charley."

"I know, but I don't want to kill him." She defended.

"I know, I was joking." I replied.

"It wasn't a very funny joke." She insisted.

"Oh lighten up." I insisted in return.

"You joked about killing my pokemon." She said.

"A pokemon we both wonder why you still have." I replied.

"Quiet Cj." She demanded.

"Fine, I'm sorry." I said.

"That's better." She replied. "It's ok Cj, but don't you dare say that again." She cutely scolded.

After a few minutes of walking we made it back to the bus, where we laid down in our bed and talked ourselves to sleep sometime later.