Integration
Slammin' Flower Child
- Joined
- May 13, 2010
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So after some encouraging words from the people that commented on my one-shot, Severance, I started writing more stuff. It's a Pokemon journey following a 61-year-old professor of Pokemon physiology. Or, to be more specific, following him as he restarts his journey from when he was a wee lad. However, they seem to have attracted the attention of a mysterious man with a penchant for smashing them on the head and vivisecting things.
Enjoy.
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Second Wind
The First: Smashed
“YAHOOOOOOOO! HANG ON, GUYS!”
“PICHUUUU!”
“HAHA, HOLD ON TO YOUR TAIL, PICHU! HERE WE GOOOO!’
An enormous block of ice hurtled off a cliff with its passengers yelling wildly, sailing through the air towards the forest hundreds of feet below. As they all began to separate in the air, the single human in the motley group pointed down towards their projected landing point, which seemed to be a clearing of dirt and rocks.
“Walrein, use Powder Snow! Espeon, get ready for Psychic!”
In an impressive show of power, a torrent of snow shot from the Walrein’s mouth and began building up on the quickly approaching ground—not only were they falling at an incredible speed, but also the snow from the attack was building up on the ground at an alarmingly fast rate as they fell. “Espeon, you ready?” the man said, laughing wildly as the Espeon seemed to grin in excitement. “All right! Psychic!”
An ethereal blue light engulfed the group as they grew dangerously close to the dangerously hard ground. With an explosion of snow and laughter, they landed in the pile that Walrein had created. The man and his Pokemon all laughed in mad delight as they rolled around in the snow once they recovered from the initial force of the landing. He hugged a Pichu and Roserade as he rolled, nearly getting flattened by his Walrein as he did so. A Staraptor and Mismagius flew about above them, both laughing in amusement at his narrow escape from Walrein’s girth.
“Good god, Gregory, when you said you were going to check something that looked interesting by the cliff, I didn’t know you meant flinging yourself off of it on a hunk of ice.”
A woman that looked to be in her late fifties emerged from the forest, her arms crossed irately and the corners of her mouth turned to a frown. A Crobat flapped idly in the air behind her, looking just as irritated as its trainer. Gregory got to his feet, a grin on his face as Pichu clambered onto his head and nestled itself in his short, graying hair. “Come now, Irene. It was great fun, wasn’t it, everyone?” he said, turning to his Pokemon and grinning. They replied back emphatically as Pichu happily wriggled about on his head.
“Honestly, Gregory. You’re like a little boy.” Irene shook her head disapprovingly as she turned on her heel to head back to their campsite.
“Don’t be like that, Irene,” said Gregory as he trotted along beside her, his Pokemon following in their wake. “It was only a little fun.”
Irene stopped in her tracks and turned to glare at him. He seemed a tad alarmed by it, before her expression softened and she turned away to continue walking. “I’m worried about what you’re doing. Really worried,” she said softly, looking down to the ground as her gray hair obscured her face.
“But I’m fine. I’m walking with you, aren’t I?” Gregory said brightly, stuffing his hands into his lab coat. Irene stopped again and fixed him with a livid glare.
“That’s not it, Gregory. This behavior of yours—it’s very self-destructive. Are you trying to die?”
Gregory rolled his eyes, but carefully avoided her gaze. “Why would you think something ridiculous like that?” he said, shrugging. He jumped in surprise when Irene grabbed his arm and pulled him down to glare at him face-to-face.
“I know it’s what you’re trying to do, Gregory Aspen,” she said scathingly. “Ever since the accident five years ago, you’ve been foolish and reckless and doing things that can kill you.”
“I’m not—“
“Exhibit A: your new motorcycle. You already crashed once,” said Irene, pointing her finger so close to his face that it threatened to go up his nose. “Exhibit B: you, a 61-year-old man, tried to wrestle a Hariyama. Remember the stitches? Exhibit C: your newfound penchant for BASE jumping. In the three weeks I’ve been traveling with you, you’ve flung yourself off cliffs into the ocean, down a waterfall, and more recently, off that cliff there.” She turned to point an accusatory finger at the cliff face, as though it was responsible for his actions.
“It’s just—“
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were mimicking the antics of a pathetic girl from this novel series I once read.”
“Look, Irene,” Gregory said in exasperation as they reached their campsite. “I’m not doing anything like that. It was just something that looked fun.”
“If you’ll reflect on your life for a moment,” said Irene, taking a seat on a log as she grumpily pulled a towel out of her knapsack, “you’ll notice that you were a respectable professor until you started partaking in these…activities. Are you having some sort of mid-life crisis?” She thrust the towel at him, and he gingerly took it, worried that she might suddenly strangle him with it.
“I can still be a professor and enjoy myself…” he said, trailing off as he toweled Pichu off. It didn’t really seem that he was convinced of it himself. Once he finished with Pichu, he found Irene’s face screwed up in a bizarre mixture of anger, pity, and sorrow.
“Gregory…I know it was hard on you to lose all your family in that accident. I know it still is,” she said quietly. “But…you can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re not as young as you were; at this rate, you’ll kill yourself. I know that’s your brilliant idea…and it pains me to see you like this. I don’t want this for you, and I’m sure they don’t either.”
“I—well—” Gregory started, but he found he couldn’t bring himself to articulate his thoughts. Irene had hit it dead-on, just how she always did. He had been so incredibly distraught that his entire family—his wife, his only daughter, his son-in-law, and his two young grandchildren…their lives wiped out by a drunk driver trying to drive along a mountain road. And he had always hated the idea of suicide, but he felt so lonely—so thoroughly destroyed that they were gone—that he had taken to living with reckless abandon, with the tiniest hope that he might perhaps make one slipup and join his family. He was having tons of fun, of course, and he supposed it helped him get his mind off things and distract him from the void in his heart, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he had ulterior motives.
He hardly noticed when Irene led him to the log and coaxed him into sitting down. “It’s okay to hurt, Gregory. I just…don’t want you to hurt yourself in the process,” said Irene, taking a seat next to him and putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Right...right. Sorry.”
“Besides, didn’t you tell that lunatic Oak that you were going to win the Kanto League championships? Something about finishing that Pokemon journey?”
Gregory gave a dry laugh and smiled at her. “Yes…I did, didn’t I?” he said, grinning as he forced the thoughts of death and jumping from inordinately high places out of his mind.
“Won’t be too hard for you, though,” Irene said loftily, waving a hand in the air. “You’ll wipe the floor with all the Gym leaders.”
“Ah, gym leaders later, I’m afraid. We agreed to meet with Professor Oak and Professor Elm to examine a curious fossil that one of Oak’s students found, remember?” Irene balked at the mention of Elm’s name.
“That twit Elm is going to be there too? You didn’t tell me that when you invited me along,” she said, frowning. Gregory took Pichu from his head and placed it in his lap before throwing his head back and laughing.
“I find it amusing that you’re so irritated by poor Elm,” said Gregory as Irene bristled in annoyance.
“The man is a klutz and practically worships the ground that Samuel walks on,” said Irene huffily as she released the rest of her Pokemon to let them play with Gregory’s. Upon her Magby’s release, Pichu leapt off Gregory’s lap and they proceeded to chase each other around the campsite.
“You’re just exaggerating. Elm’s not nearly that bad,” he said, laughing when Pichu slammed face-first into Irene’s Milotic in its attempt to escape Magby. She didn’t seem to agree and instead irately stomped over to her Rampardos to rub mineral oil on its skin, as it had been suffering from extremely dry skin for some time. Gregory could hear her grumbling to herself as she rubbed the oil in, and it seemed she was being a little too rough if Rampardos’s intermittent flinching was anything to go by.
Irene certainly had an irascible personality and she was often rather abrasive at times, but Gregory enjoyed her company. She was a paleontologist currently studying the types of fossils found around Sinnoh, and he was a leading expert on Pokemon physiology, so most of the time their interests overlapped. They’d been acquaintances back when they were young and hot-headed—or in her case, more hot-headed. He had been a trainer that had aspired to win at the Hoenn League championships, but he had been drawn to Pokemon physiology after helping an understaffed Pokemon Center treat a herd of sick Beldum. Irene had been an almost unbearably intense trainer who could neither sit still nor tolerate anyone talking perceived smack about her, which got her into quite a bit of trouble at times. When she had gotten a Cranidos revived from a skull fossil she found in the Sinnoh Underground, so enamored was she with fossils and paleontology that most of her training intensity had transferred over to it.
He had invited her to travel with him to Kanto after Professors Oak and Elm suggested that she would be a great help in unlocking the fossil’s secrets. It was true that Irene had incredible knowledge of Pokemon paleontology that would no doubt be extremely useful, but Gregory wasn’t stupid; it was obvious from the wide grin on Elm’s normally unassuming face and the slightest of eyebrow-wiggles from Oak that they had been plotting to get him together with Irene. While he thought it was a touching gesture, it just wasn’t realistic—he and Irene got along well enough, but he didn’t love her and she didn’t love him. In fact, just thinking about what Irene would do to him if they were in bed together terrified him…no, it was best for his physical well-being that their friendship remain platonic.
“We’re almost to Pallet Town, aren’t we?” Irene called as she massaged oil onto Rampardos’s spikes.
“We’re close to the southern end of Viridian Forest. We should arrive in Pallet Town sometime before nightfall if we leave now and go on straight through Viridian City,” said Gregory as he squinted at the map in his pokegear. Reading glasses or no, he could hardly read the tiny displays.
“You’re not going to take any more cliff-jumping detours, are you?” said Irene sarcastically, giving him a dirty look from over her shoulder.
“I can’t make any promises if I see a particularly attractive cliff,” Gregory replied, giving her a cheeky grin.
“Oh, great, now you sound like you have a cliff fetish.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“Shut up, you old fart.”
“You first, you slightly less-old fart.”
“Hmph.”
Shortly after Irene silently finished with Rampardos, neither of them wanting to be the first to break the silence of their “shut up” exchange, they packed up and headed for Viridian City. They encountered a young boy with a Squirtle, who was rejoicing over his capture of a Kakuna, and had hid their grins of amusement as they passed. And as they made their way through the city of Viridian, they reminisced about their first captures. Irene went into an extended rant about how the Feebas she’d found flopping helplessly around on a beach had looked so pathetic that she hated to capture it. Gregory had heard the story countless times over the years, but he supposed that was because she had loved that Feebas so much, and he hoped that boy in the forest would do the same for his Kakuna. As Irene went through her story, he wondered how his old Dustox had done in its life. His first capture all those years ago was a Wurmple, and several years after it had become a Dustox, he released it to let it join a group of other Dustox since it had looked so enamored with them.
By the time they reached Pallet Town, the sun had already set, allowing the moonlight to bathe the town in a beautiful night glow. It had been quite some time since Gregory was last there—not since he was in his mid-twenties. The town had been sparsely populated then, but even after thirty years, it still had the look of a pleasant rural community with homes spaced far apart among the rolling hills. He could see why Oak liked living there and even felt a little jealous that he did. Perhaps if he—or rather, when he got back to Hoenn—he’d look into moving to Verdanturf Town or maybe Petalburg City.
“Samuel’s lab should be the big one with a wind turbine,” Gregory murmured as they both surveyed the landscape.
“Look at that hill. Must be that one,” said Irene, squinting up at a hill in the distance and pointing toward it. Gregory glanced at it and arched an eyebrow.
“That’s odd…all the lights are off.” He glanced down at his watch.
8:21 PM.
“Samuel doesn’t seem to be the type to go to bed early. Do you think he went somewhere?” Irene said, frowning.
“Let me call him. Maybe the lights just happen to be off,” Gregory said, pulling out his pokegear. He dialed the number, expecting it to ring a few times before seeing Oak’s face, but instead found that it went straight to the videomail prompt. “That’s definitely strange. It’s not a pokegear number, so it should’ve at least rung a few times…”
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Irene said, giving him a grave look. “We should go check it out.” Without waiting for an answer, she began trotting towards the hill.
“Shouldn’t we call Officer Jenny first?” Gregory asked as he tried to keep up with her, Pichu clinging to his head as his movement buffeted it about.
“Call while we’re moving. If something happened to him, we can’t wait around for the police.”
Gregory tried dialing the emergency number, but to his dismay, it rang once before getting cut off. He listened to the sound of the dial tone for a moment, as though hoping it might suddenly be answered, before hanging up and trying again. He frowned when he got the same result. “Something is definitely not right, Irene. Let’s hurry,” he said worriedly.
When the reached the gate leading up to Oak’s laboratory, they found it hanging ominously open. No lights could be seen anywhere around the facility, and it was only because of the moonlight that they could make out any of its features. “Do you hear that?” said Irene, turning her head toward the lab. Gregory listened a moment and heard the faint cries of what might have been Pokemon. He couldn’t hear anything distinct—the sounds were all running together as though they were all talking at once—but it was clear that it was far from normal.
“Sounds like Pokemon…upset ones. We should be careful going up there,” Gregory said, his voice low. He made to creep up the stairs in the shadows of the surrounding foliage with Pichu riding in his polo shirt, but Irene stopped him.
“Put one of your pokeballs where nobody can find them,” she said as she took one of her own and, to Gregory’s immense confusion, stuffed it into her cleavage.
“Er…so you’re putting it in your shirt? Won’t people find it?” he said nervously as Pichu made a similar noise of confusion. She gave a derisive snort.
“You think anyone is going to want to grope around a fifty-nine-year-old woman’s chest?”
“Well…”
“There you go. Now put one of yours somewhere.”
Gregory nervously held Walrein’s pokeball in its small form, at a loss as to where to hide it. “If I put it in my pocket, they’ll find it,” he said.
“Where else do you have balls, Gregory? Put it there—it’ll feel right at home.” His mouth fell open in horror.
“I can’t do that…”
“For the love of—think of it this way, Gregory,” Irene said impatiently, crossing her arms. “We go up there, slink around, run into some unsavory guys that’ll be only too happy to bash you in the face and take your pokeballs. Normally, I would say that we would be helpless in that situation because we’re two old geezers that just got bashed in the face, but if you have a pokeball, then our chances become significantly better. Where that pokeball comes from doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I understand that, but…”
“And you were the one jumping off cliffs earlier. Just do it, or I’ll do it for you,” Irene hissed, glaring at him. He gave Walrein’s pokeball an apologetic look before slowly sliding it into his underwear.
“Sorry, Walrein…I hope you won’t need a therapist after this,” he murmured once he got it settled.
Irene gave him a curt nod and, relieved that she was finally satisfied, he began leading the way up the staircase. They slowly made their way up the steps and as they drew closer, the sounds of Pokemon cries became clearer and clearer. By the time they were within sight of the door, they could hear what sounded like a whole mob of Pokemon crying out for something or someone. However, the door soon proved to be more troubling than the loud cries from behind the building; the door was cracked open, as though someone had come through in a hurry and forgotten to shut it, and there was no sign of lights anywhere inside. Gregory could feel the hairs on his neck beginning to stand as Pichu tensed up in his shirt, and a feeling of dread began churning in the pit of his stomach.
“Something happened here,” he whispered, unconsciously pressing Pichu closer to his chest. “Something bad. That’s why the Pokemon are upset.”
“We should go in,” he heard Irene whisper back. “But not through the front door…”
They continued on and crept around towards the back of the building, that feeling of dread growing with each step they took. When they managed to get around the corner of the building, still hugging the shadows, both Gregory’s and Irene’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight before them. A throng of Pokemon was surrounding what looked to be a Mr. Mime lying on the ground and some others that Gregory could not easily identify. They all seemed anxious and agitated, as though they lost their trainer…
“Samuel’s in trouble,” Gregory said urgently, straightening up from his crouching position.
“I think you’re in trouble too, Professor Aspen.”
And before Gregory even had time to be surprised at the sudden voice, he felt a crushing blow to his face before everything went dark.
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Not sure if Elm acts anything like Irene describes in the anime...I missed most of the Johto episodes. But she was exaggerating anyway. Maybe she's hiding something. o__o; ?
Enjoy.
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Second Wind
The First: Smashed
“YAHOOOOOOOO! HANG ON, GUYS!”
“PICHUUUU!”
“HAHA, HOLD ON TO YOUR TAIL, PICHU! HERE WE GOOOO!’
An enormous block of ice hurtled off a cliff with its passengers yelling wildly, sailing through the air towards the forest hundreds of feet below. As they all began to separate in the air, the single human in the motley group pointed down towards their projected landing point, which seemed to be a clearing of dirt and rocks.
“Walrein, use Powder Snow! Espeon, get ready for Psychic!”
In an impressive show of power, a torrent of snow shot from the Walrein’s mouth and began building up on the quickly approaching ground—not only were they falling at an incredible speed, but also the snow from the attack was building up on the ground at an alarmingly fast rate as they fell. “Espeon, you ready?” the man said, laughing wildly as the Espeon seemed to grin in excitement. “All right! Psychic!”
An ethereal blue light engulfed the group as they grew dangerously close to the dangerously hard ground. With an explosion of snow and laughter, they landed in the pile that Walrein had created. The man and his Pokemon all laughed in mad delight as they rolled around in the snow once they recovered from the initial force of the landing. He hugged a Pichu and Roserade as he rolled, nearly getting flattened by his Walrein as he did so. A Staraptor and Mismagius flew about above them, both laughing in amusement at his narrow escape from Walrein’s girth.
“Good god, Gregory, when you said you were going to check something that looked interesting by the cliff, I didn’t know you meant flinging yourself off of it on a hunk of ice.”
A woman that looked to be in her late fifties emerged from the forest, her arms crossed irately and the corners of her mouth turned to a frown. A Crobat flapped idly in the air behind her, looking just as irritated as its trainer. Gregory got to his feet, a grin on his face as Pichu clambered onto his head and nestled itself in his short, graying hair. “Come now, Irene. It was great fun, wasn’t it, everyone?” he said, turning to his Pokemon and grinning. They replied back emphatically as Pichu happily wriggled about on his head.
“Honestly, Gregory. You’re like a little boy.” Irene shook her head disapprovingly as she turned on her heel to head back to their campsite.
“Don’t be like that, Irene,” said Gregory as he trotted along beside her, his Pokemon following in their wake. “It was only a little fun.”
Irene stopped in her tracks and turned to glare at him. He seemed a tad alarmed by it, before her expression softened and she turned away to continue walking. “I’m worried about what you’re doing. Really worried,” she said softly, looking down to the ground as her gray hair obscured her face.
“But I’m fine. I’m walking with you, aren’t I?” Gregory said brightly, stuffing his hands into his lab coat. Irene stopped again and fixed him with a livid glare.
“That’s not it, Gregory. This behavior of yours—it’s very self-destructive. Are you trying to die?”
Gregory rolled his eyes, but carefully avoided her gaze. “Why would you think something ridiculous like that?” he said, shrugging. He jumped in surprise when Irene grabbed his arm and pulled him down to glare at him face-to-face.
“I know it’s what you’re trying to do, Gregory Aspen,” she said scathingly. “Ever since the accident five years ago, you’ve been foolish and reckless and doing things that can kill you.”
“I’m not—“
“Exhibit A: your new motorcycle. You already crashed once,” said Irene, pointing her finger so close to his face that it threatened to go up his nose. “Exhibit B: you, a 61-year-old man, tried to wrestle a Hariyama. Remember the stitches? Exhibit C: your newfound penchant for BASE jumping. In the three weeks I’ve been traveling with you, you’ve flung yourself off cliffs into the ocean, down a waterfall, and more recently, off that cliff there.” She turned to point an accusatory finger at the cliff face, as though it was responsible for his actions.
“It’s just—“
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were mimicking the antics of a pathetic girl from this novel series I once read.”
“Look, Irene,” Gregory said in exasperation as they reached their campsite. “I’m not doing anything like that. It was just something that looked fun.”
“If you’ll reflect on your life for a moment,” said Irene, taking a seat on a log as she grumpily pulled a towel out of her knapsack, “you’ll notice that you were a respectable professor until you started partaking in these…activities. Are you having some sort of mid-life crisis?” She thrust the towel at him, and he gingerly took it, worried that she might suddenly strangle him with it.
“I can still be a professor and enjoy myself…” he said, trailing off as he toweled Pichu off. It didn’t really seem that he was convinced of it himself. Once he finished with Pichu, he found Irene’s face screwed up in a bizarre mixture of anger, pity, and sorrow.
“Gregory…I know it was hard on you to lose all your family in that accident. I know it still is,” she said quietly. “But…you can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re not as young as you were; at this rate, you’ll kill yourself. I know that’s your brilliant idea…and it pains me to see you like this. I don’t want this for you, and I’m sure they don’t either.”
“I—well—” Gregory started, but he found he couldn’t bring himself to articulate his thoughts. Irene had hit it dead-on, just how she always did. He had been so incredibly distraught that his entire family—his wife, his only daughter, his son-in-law, and his two young grandchildren…their lives wiped out by a drunk driver trying to drive along a mountain road. And he had always hated the idea of suicide, but he felt so lonely—so thoroughly destroyed that they were gone—that he had taken to living with reckless abandon, with the tiniest hope that he might perhaps make one slipup and join his family. He was having tons of fun, of course, and he supposed it helped him get his mind off things and distract him from the void in his heart, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he had ulterior motives.
He hardly noticed when Irene led him to the log and coaxed him into sitting down. “It’s okay to hurt, Gregory. I just…don’t want you to hurt yourself in the process,” said Irene, taking a seat next to him and putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Right...right. Sorry.”
“Besides, didn’t you tell that lunatic Oak that you were going to win the Kanto League championships? Something about finishing that Pokemon journey?”
Gregory gave a dry laugh and smiled at her. “Yes…I did, didn’t I?” he said, grinning as he forced the thoughts of death and jumping from inordinately high places out of his mind.
“Won’t be too hard for you, though,” Irene said loftily, waving a hand in the air. “You’ll wipe the floor with all the Gym leaders.”
“Ah, gym leaders later, I’m afraid. We agreed to meet with Professor Oak and Professor Elm to examine a curious fossil that one of Oak’s students found, remember?” Irene balked at the mention of Elm’s name.
“That twit Elm is going to be there too? You didn’t tell me that when you invited me along,” she said, frowning. Gregory took Pichu from his head and placed it in his lap before throwing his head back and laughing.
“I find it amusing that you’re so irritated by poor Elm,” said Gregory as Irene bristled in annoyance.
“The man is a klutz and practically worships the ground that Samuel walks on,” said Irene huffily as she released the rest of her Pokemon to let them play with Gregory’s. Upon her Magby’s release, Pichu leapt off Gregory’s lap and they proceeded to chase each other around the campsite.
“You’re just exaggerating. Elm’s not nearly that bad,” he said, laughing when Pichu slammed face-first into Irene’s Milotic in its attempt to escape Magby. She didn’t seem to agree and instead irately stomped over to her Rampardos to rub mineral oil on its skin, as it had been suffering from extremely dry skin for some time. Gregory could hear her grumbling to herself as she rubbed the oil in, and it seemed she was being a little too rough if Rampardos’s intermittent flinching was anything to go by.
Irene certainly had an irascible personality and she was often rather abrasive at times, but Gregory enjoyed her company. She was a paleontologist currently studying the types of fossils found around Sinnoh, and he was a leading expert on Pokemon physiology, so most of the time their interests overlapped. They’d been acquaintances back when they were young and hot-headed—or in her case, more hot-headed. He had been a trainer that had aspired to win at the Hoenn League championships, but he had been drawn to Pokemon physiology after helping an understaffed Pokemon Center treat a herd of sick Beldum. Irene had been an almost unbearably intense trainer who could neither sit still nor tolerate anyone talking perceived smack about her, which got her into quite a bit of trouble at times. When she had gotten a Cranidos revived from a skull fossil she found in the Sinnoh Underground, so enamored was she with fossils and paleontology that most of her training intensity had transferred over to it.
He had invited her to travel with him to Kanto after Professors Oak and Elm suggested that she would be a great help in unlocking the fossil’s secrets. It was true that Irene had incredible knowledge of Pokemon paleontology that would no doubt be extremely useful, but Gregory wasn’t stupid; it was obvious from the wide grin on Elm’s normally unassuming face and the slightest of eyebrow-wiggles from Oak that they had been plotting to get him together with Irene. While he thought it was a touching gesture, it just wasn’t realistic—he and Irene got along well enough, but he didn’t love her and she didn’t love him. In fact, just thinking about what Irene would do to him if they were in bed together terrified him…no, it was best for his physical well-being that their friendship remain platonic.
“We’re almost to Pallet Town, aren’t we?” Irene called as she massaged oil onto Rampardos’s spikes.
“We’re close to the southern end of Viridian Forest. We should arrive in Pallet Town sometime before nightfall if we leave now and go on straight through Viridian City,” said Gregory as he squinted at the map in his pokegear. Reading glasses or no, he could hardly read the tiny displays.
“You’re not going to take any more cliff-jumping detours, are you?” said Irene sarcastically, giving him a dirty look from over her shoulder.
“I can’t make any promises if I see a particularly attractive cliff,” Gregory replied, giving her a cheeky grin.
“Oh, great, now you sound like you have a cliff fetish.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“Shut up, you old fart.”
“You first, you slightly less-old fart.”
“Hmph.”
Shortly after Irene silently finished with Rampardos, neither of them wanting to be the first to break the silence of their “shut up” exchange, they packed up and headed for Viridian City. They encountered a young boy with a Squirtle, who was rejoicing over his capture of a Kakuna, and had hid their grins of amusement as they passed. And as they made their way through the city of Viridian, they reminisced about their first captures. Irene went into an extended rant about how the Feebas she’d found flopping helplessly around on a beach had looked so pathetic that she hated to capture it. Gregory had heard the story countless times over the years, but he supposed that was because she had loved that Feebas so much, and he hoped that boy in the forest would do the same for his Kakuna. As Irene went through her story, he wondered how his old Dustox had done in its life. His first capture all those years ago was a Wurmple, and several years after it had become a Dustox, he released it to let it join a group of other Dustox since it had looked so enamored with them.
By the time they reached Pallet Town, the sun had already set, allowing the moonlight to bathe the town in a beautiful night glow. It had been quite some time since Gregory was last there—not since he was in his mid-twenties. The town had been sparsely populated then, but even after thirty years, it still had the look of a pleasant rural community with homes spaced far apart among the rolling hills. He could see why Oak liked living there and even felt a little jealous that he did. Perhaps if he—or rather, when he got back to Hoenn—he’d look into moving to Verdanturf Town or maybe Petalburg City.
“Samuel’s lab should be the big one with a wind turbine,” Gregory murmured as they both surveyed the landscape.
“Look at that hill. Must be that one,” said Irene, squinting up at a hill in the distance and pointing toward it. Gregory glanced at it and arched an eyebrow.
“That’s odd…all the lights are off.” He glanced down at his watch.
8:21 PM.
“Samuel doesn’t seem to be the type to go to bed early. Do you think he went somewhere?” Irene said, frowning.
“Let me call him. Maybe the lights just happen to be off,” Gregory said, pulling out his pokegear. He dialed the number, expecting it to ring a few times before seeing Oak’s face, but instead found that it went straight to the videomail prompt. “That’s definitely strange. It’s not a pokegear number, so it should’ve at least rung a few times…”
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Irene said, giving him a grave look. “We should go check it out.” Without waiting for an answer, she began trotting towards the hill.
“Shouldn’t we call Officer Jenny first?” Gregory asked as he tried to keep up with her, Pichu clinging to his head as his movement buffeted it about.
“Call while we’re moving. If something happened to him, we can’t wait around for the police.”
Gregory tried dialing the emergency number, but to his dismay, it rang once before getting cut off. He listened to the sound of the dial tone for a moment, as though hoping it might suddenly be answered, before hanging up and trying again. He frowned when he got the same result. “Something is definitely not right, Irene. Let’s hurry,” he said worriedly.
When the reached the gate leading up to Oak’s laboratory, they found it hanging ominously open. No lights could be seen anywhere around the facility, and it was only because of the moonlight that they could make out any of its features. “Do you hear that?” said Irene, turning her head toward the lab. Gregory listened a moment and heard the faint cries of what might have been Pokemon. He couldn’t hear anything distinct—the sounds were all running together as though they were all talking at once—but it was clear that it was far from normal.
“Sounds like Pokemon…upset ones. We should be careful going up there,” Gregory said, his voice low. He made to creep up the stairs in the shadows of the surrounding foliage with Pichu riding in his polo shirt, but Irene stopped him.
“Put one of your pokeballs where nobody can find them,” she said as she took one of her own and, to Gregory’s immense confusion, stuffed it into her cleavage.
“Er…so you’re putting it in your shirt? Won’t people find it?” he said nervously as Pichu made a similar noise of confusion. She gave a derisive snort.
“You think anyone is going to want to grope around a fifty-nine-year-old woman’s chest?”
“Well…”
“There you go. Now put one of yours somewhere.”
Gregory nervously held Walrein’s pokeball in its small form, at a loss as to where to hide it. “If I put it in my pocket, they’ll find it,” he said.
“Where else do you have balls, Gregory? Put it there—it’ll feel right at home.” His mouth fell open in horror.
“I can’t do that…”
“For the love of—think of it this way, Gregory,” Irene said impatiently, crossing her arms. “We go up there, slink around, run into some unsavory guys that’ll be only too happy to bash you in the face and take your pokeballs. Normally, I would say that we would be helpless in that situation because we’re two old geezers that just got bashed in the face, but if you have a pokeball, then our chances become significantly better. Where that pokeball comes from doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I understand that, but…”
“And you were the one jumping off cliffs earlier. Just do it, or I’ll do it for you,” Irene hissed, glaring at him. He gave Walrein’s pokeball an apologetic look before slowly sliding it into his underwear.
“Sorry, Walrein…I hope you won’t need a therapist after this,” he murmured once he got it settled.
Irene gave him a curt nod and, relieved that she was finally satisfied, he began leading the way up the staircase. They slowly made their way up the steps and as they drew closer, the sounds of Pokemon cries became clearer and clearer. By the time they were within sight of the door, they could hear what sounded like a whole mob of Pokemon crying out for something or someone. However, the door soon proved to be more troubling than the loud cries from behind the building; the door was cracked open, as though someone had come through in a hurry and forgotten to shut it, and there was no sign of lights anywhere inside. Gregory could feel the hairs on his neck beginning to stand as Pichu tensed up in his shirt, and a feeling of dread began churning in the pit of his stomach.
“Something happened here,” he whispered, unconsciously pressing Pichu closer to his chest. “Something bad. That’s why the Pokemon are upset.”
“We should go in,” he heard Irene whisper back. “But not through the front door…”
They continued on and crept around towards the back of the building, that feeling of dread growing with each step they took. When they managed to get around the corner of the building, still hugging the shadows, both Gregory’s and Irene’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight before them. A throng of Pokemon was surrounding what looked to be a Mr. Mime lying on the ground and some others that Gregory could not easily identify. They all seemed anxious and agitated, as though they lost their trainer…
“Samuel’s in trouble,” Gregory said urgently, straightening up from his crouching position.
“I think you’re in trouble too, Professor Aspen.”
And before Gregory even had time to be surprised at the sudden voice, he felt a crushing blow to his face before everything went dark.
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Not sure if Elm acts anything like Irene describes in the anime...I missed most of the Johto episodes. But she was exaggerating anyway. Maybe she's hiding something. o__o; ?
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