I actually meant to have this chapter up two days before Christmas, but I had other things come up that led me away from updating. But this seems to be even better updating on New Year's Eve. This past month has been very busy and somewhat stressful for me. First of all, my truck finally began quitting on me. The first Wednesday of the month was very horrible. The truck wouldn't start at all and when it did, it would sputter. I sat there for ten minutes trying to keep it going, even had the gas pedal all the way to the floor, but the truck still sputtered and finally shut off on me. Later on that night, it was discovered that the heat sensor clogged up, preventing the truck from starting.

The bad thing about it was that my parents were going on a cruise the following week, so I had to spend the weeked searchign for a new car. Low and behold I found one, an 04 Ford Taurus. Of course, after my parents left for the cruise, I found out that the catalytic converter on my car needed to be replaced as well as getting an inspection sticker. So I spent another week worrying over that until my parents returned and everything seemed to work out right before Christmas.

So now I have a running car that works great and had a splendid Christmas. I'm ready for this month to so be over! So I think that's enough of my problems for now. In fact, you could have just saved yourselves some time and skipped all this. But by that time, you'd be here. So on with the story.

Chapter 21: A Clefairy's Rage

"Zack! Look out!" my trainer yelled as the Clefairy leapt at me, claws bared, ready to pummel me while I could only do was stand there. Why I was standing in the path of a rampaging Clefairy was totally beyond me. Luckily, however, just as the Clefairy was about to swipe her claws, Charcoal suddenly side-tackled the Clefairy, both rolling around in the dirt before Charcoal managed to push her off him.

"You just going to stand there and let yourself be killed?" he asked as he spat out a fireball, only to have it swatted away. I took that opportunity to hit the Clefairy with a Psy Beam, which only made things worse as it turned its attention to me. Yeah. Real smart. The Clefairy began to swing her claws wildly, leaving me with the option to dodge.

"Hey!" I said, dodging her wild clawing. "Calm down. What have we done to you?"

"You're going to pay for destroying my home!" the Clefairy yelled. "Die!" Wait. Destroying her home? What was she talking about? I couldn't think much due to her wild swinging. What was worst that all this time, I failed to realize that she had back me up against the cliff wall. By the time I had taken notice of this, her claw was aiming straight for my muzzle. It would have connected too if Charcoal had not intervened with a Metal Claw, blocking the attack.

"You need to calm down," he said. The Clefairy only turned her attention to Charcoal and began swiping at him, Charcoal having to evade the attacks at such close range. I don't know why I thought about it at that moment, but an idea formed up in my head. Being that the Clefairy had her back turned toward me, I had planned to leap over the Clefairy, grabbing her shoulders and flipping her over Charcoal who was now on the ground after tripping backwards on a pebble and receiving endless blows to his face. Propelling myself off the cliff wall, I managed to grab the Clefairy by her shoulders and that was pretty much how far I got. I wasn't sure what happened next. All I knew was that I somehow landed on my own back. Obviously I went wrong somewhere. That or I was so totally weak. But it didn't matter what happened for the next thing I knew, pain was shooting through my ears and the world began spinning. It went on for about a minute or so before I was sent spinning straight into yet another cliff wall.

"I'm okay," I said woozily as I tried standing again, only to trip over my own paws. I then received a rather nasty blow to my face, which somehow got the world to stop spinning. I shook my head and looked up to see Charcoal being spun by his tail before he went spinning into a cliff wall. If it weren't for the fact that we were being pummeled by a Cleafiry, I would have most definitely laughed my tail off. As it was, the Clefairy turned her attention to me and began rushing at me again. I did the only thing I could think of at that moment and yelped out a cry, trying to back away as far as possible from the Clefairy. However, my legs failed to comply with running away.

Just as the Clefairy neared to beat me to an even more bloody pulp, Ted miraculously materialized out of nowhere in front of the Clefairy and poked her in various spots on her body before spinning around back to back with her. The Clefairy actually stopped moving and stood there for about a minute before she fell to her knees and then her body crashed onto the ground. Everyone seemed to just stand there for a little while, all of us expecting the Clefairy to just get up and resume her attack, but as the minutes passed, the more everyone began to relax upon realizing that the Clefairy was most likely not going to get back up.

"Um," I said, deciding to break the silence. "What just happened?"

"Pressure points," Ted replied. "I didn't hit anything vital. Just the parts of her body that immobilize an opponent for several minutes. He should recuperate, so I'd suggest we try and straighten this situation out with him."

"Well," Charcoal said as he stumbled his way over to us. "Now that we got that straightened out, Zack, what the heck was that?"

"What was what?" I asked.

"That little battle strategy you had going," Charcoal said. "Not even I would have ended up like you did."

"Oh! Yeah. That," I said, feeling a little embarrassed before I began laughing. "I actually thought it would work too!" Charcoal only placed a hand to his forehead while Ted chuckled.

"In any case, we should do something about this Clefairy before he wakes up and starts attacking us again," Charcoal said.

"Agreed," I said as I went to go help out. Suddenly, I stopped as something dawned on me. "Wait. He's a male?"

"I thought it'd be kind of obvious," Charcoal said a rather bit slowly.

"And here I thought all Clefairys were female due to how they look," I said.

"Ugh!" Charcoal said, smacking his paw to his face.

Sometime later, we got our trainers to move the Clefairy over to a better spot and propped her head up upon a rock. My trainer sprayed the Clefairy with some odd looking red stuff and just knealt there, kneeling. "So what do you think is going on here?" he asked, looking up at Laura.

"How should I know?" Laura asked. "I'm don't speak pokemon. And here I thought you called yourself a pokemon trainer."

"What!" my trainer yelled, turning to her as he stood up. I basically turned my attention away from the conversation, mainly because I just didn't frankly care what humans had to argue about.

"So what happens if the Clefairy wake up and starts attacking us again?" I asked. "You gonna immobilize him again, Ted?"

"Not so much as I did," Ted said. "Just enough for him to listen to what we have to say." As if on cue, the Clefairy began to come to, looking around at first before he began to stagger up. Luckily, Ted was quick enough to place a paw over the Clefairy's chest, the both of them becoming quite still. "Calm down now. We're not going to hurt you, but you will listen as to why we are here."

"We're not here for anything," Charcoal said. "We were only to pass through and be on our way, but you just randomly attacked us for no good reason. What was the deal with that?"

"I don't have to explain myself to you," the Clefairy growled. "Go ahead and strike me down. Others will come to avenge for what you did."

"You mean destroying your home?" I asked. "We only just arrived when you came stumbling out from the caves and attacked us."

"I just said that," Charcoal said.

"Oh," I said. "Well we're good people. We wouldn't go about destroying homes. We're just on our way to make it to the Pokemon League."

"Likely story," the Clefairy said.

"Look," Ted said while the trainers looked on with confusion. "You don't have to believe us if you don't want to. The only reason I immobilized you was to get you to calm down. You were pretty out of it after all." The Clefairy remained silent as Ted slowly removed his paw and turned it over, extending it toward the Clefairy. "But maybe we could help you out track down the ones who've destroyed your home. We don't mind going out of our way to help out fellow pokemon."

The Clefairy remained silent as he stayed glaring at Ted before reluctantly taking his paw and being helped up. "Fine," he said. "You can help if you want, but I still don't completely trust you."

"That's fine," Ted said with a smile. "You'll come to trusting us soon enough."

"Uh huh," the Clefairy said.

"It looks like they made up somewhat," I heard my trainer say to Laura.

"No duh," Laura whispered back.

"So," Ted said. "Why don't you lead us to the area your home has been destroyed and we'll take over from there to find out who did it? I'll make sure the others follow at a distance to ebb the suspiscion you have against us."

The Clefairy only glared, but lightened up a bit. Ted sure was one smooth talker. Finally, with a reluctant sigh the Clefairy said, "Better than nothing I guess. All right. We'll go. You better keep your word."

"Of course," Ted said as he motioned for us to follow. And so we did, though at a pace, as we all walked into the cave.