Chapter 61: A Cool- wait, what the hell is going on over there?

Important characters

Jessie (Male Tentacool/Ex-Human)

Alakazam (Male, Abra's dad)

Abra (Male, despite what anybody says!)

Emperor (Male Seaking, old fish)

Aurum (Male Gyrados, young fish)

-"Well, speak."

"Sure, sure. I just wanted to start out by saying, I really think you need to have a word with your son."

Alakazam is silent for a few seconds, processing something.

-"I see. I will do that. Now, stop stalling."

"Alright. As you know, probably from reading my mind-"

He nods.

"I was asked to come to this city to help out the pokemon rangers on an important mission. It had to do with all of those Chimera pokemon, the shadowy turtle guys that keep eating pokemon and humans and transforming into some gross combination of the two."

-"I do know this."

"Right, so after I met up with the rangers, they tasked us with seeking out local pokemon that might know something about their movements. We already know that they cluster near, but rarely inside, of important places. Huge cities, ruins, etc."

-"Get to the point."

"I am! Jeez, have a little patience. This is important background information that I'm giving context to!"

The elder takes this in for a few moments, then nods again.

-"Very well, continue."

"Well Abra was a big help tracking down one of them. Because it was chasing him, trying to turn him into part of that big chimera monster, my friends were able to find it and take it down pretty easy." Jessie motions to something unseen, Alakazam takes the hint and produces an image of the creature. A floating shadow, half man half Wartortle hangs in the air.

"But the strange thing is, it was way weaker than any of the chimeras I or the rangers have seen so far."

-"Weaker?"

"Yeah, I know it wasn't 'finished' yet. It only had a human, not a pokemon inside it. But according to the rangers, that doesn't matter much in terms of power. It's at it's strongest with both a human and a pokemon, and while it may be a total pushover if it's without either a human or pokemon, as long as it has one of those two it should be way tougher than what we encountered in the city."

-"I see. Then your assumption is that because it was 'inside' an important place rather than 'near' it, it was far weaker?"

"That's half right, good guess though!" Strangely, this seems to make the old pokemon quite happy to hear.

"See, before coming here I fought against a really powerful chimera. I mean crazy powerful! It was inside a sunken ship and seems to have partially merged with it to gain way more power!" Taking another cue, it produces an image of the ship chimera which gave Jessie and his friends such trouble. Comparing the two images, Alakazam gets a troubled expression.

-"Curious. Then why do you believe this chimera was so weak?"

"My personal belief is that the reason these guys appear 'near' important places is because they're traveling 'to' those important places."

-"And the reason there are none sighted within those places is because?"

"Because they already 'went' there and did 'something' so that there were no more left." Once more, Alakazam erases the former images and forms an illusory map of the city and surrounding areas.

"See, if we look at the sighting map, we can see that they gather in greatest density in the area near the city and progressively become less common the farther away we get. It looks like they're traveling into the city and then disappearing." The dots on the map get closer to the city and new ones are added on the outskirts, traveling inwards before fading away as they reach their destination.

"Chimeras join up to become stronger when they find a human and a pokemon that matches well with them, so we know that it's possible for them to combine with other living things. But we've never seen two chimeras right next to one another, always some space or time apart from one another. Why do you think that is if there's so many?"

A single large dot appears within the city itself.

-"You believe that the chimeras are fusing into a more powerful being."

-"They've been in there for too long. Dad doesn't really do 'mercy' for anyone who wanders into our territory. Are you sure we shouldn't have followed him in there?"

Abra, Emperor, Aurum, and the rangers were waiting outside the grotto hidden in the trees near the pokemon daycare. Jessie had gone in alone... looking pretty hilarious as he scooted along with his bucket carefully perched on top of a skateboard. That was almost 30 minutes ago.

-"Sea. Seaking." The old fish assured him in a calm tone.

-"Well, if you're certain..." Abra sat back down and sipped on his (Jessie's) decaff late.

-"Damn these things are good. So there's really no caffeine in these things?"

The old man shrugs... as best one can without shoulders.

-"King?"

-"Right, I keep forgetting. How about you, big guy? You ever drink coffee?"

-"GYAAAAA?"

-"Some kind of hot bean juice."

-"GYAAAA!"

-"Who's Cyan?"

-"GYA, GYAAAAA!"

-"Oh, okay. Alola huh? Don't think I've ever... Oh wait! That's the place with the weird stump pokemon! Yeah, I teleported there by accident once! Damn those things were creepy, taking control of whatever those blue animals were and making them sleep their entire lives. Nasty stuff."

-"G-gya?"

-"Yeah, some kind of parasitic wood or something. I got the hell out of there before they could latch onto me! I've already got enough problems!"

The huge dragon shivers in his scales as the nearby rangers wonder what it was that reduced such a terrifying beast into such a scardey snake.

But before this conversation could get even more derailed, Jessie appeared, bucket hovering and faintly glowing with a pale pink light.

Following close behind was Alakazam.

"Hey guys, negotiation successful!"