A/N:

Anica106: Too long, I know. (dodges flying objects) I apologize to those of you who are actually following this story. Life gets in the way. Particularly if you’re a college student. Anyway, though, chapter three’s finally up, so enjoy!

Disclaimer: We don’t own Pokemon. We promise.

Chapter 3

Probably it’s a game

It had been a long time since Ben had been through Viridian Forest. The first time had been about two weeks after he’d become a trainer, and he remembered how nervous and jumpy he’d been inside the endless maze of dark, sinister trees, keenly aware for the first time since the start of his journey of just how alone he was.

Now, after having crossed the forest several more times, he realized his initial panic had been rather silly. Yes, Viridian Forest was large and winding, and you might get lost if you didn’t know where you were going, but as natural obstacles went...The towering trees around them threw patches of shadow over the ground, but plenty of late afternoon sunlight still filtered down through their branches, and Ben felt himself enjoying the pleasant, shady walk down the forking dirt paths.

He stretched as he walked, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the other two were still within sight. He’d quickened his pace earlier that morning, preferring not to be the object of Seth’s seemingly inexhaustible desire for conversation, and was consequently several feet ahead. He still couldn’t help hearing, however: the forest was quiet apart from themselves, and Seth’s voice was rather piercing.

Sure enough, when he looked back at them Seth was finishing up a highly colored account of yet another gym battle, this one involving his own skarmory and his sister’s vileplume. Katie had been listening eagerly for the past two days, and would occasionally ask him a question about a type advantage or an attack’s effect, which he would answer with the air of a mountain guru educating a disciple.

Ben rolled his eyes and swerved to avoid stepping on a caterpie clinging to a tree root. If nothing else, the walk through the forest was bringing them closer to Pewter, where they could hopefully get rid of the other boy. It had been difficult even to get a moment alone to talk to Professor Oak during the time when they were waiting for Katie’s ankle to heal.

Ben flinched guiltily and gave his sister another quick look over his shoulder. Most of her bandages had come off and she no longer had any trouble walking, but a few bruises were still visible on her arms, and her hands and face still sported scratches that Nurse Joy had assured her would most likely fade with time.

He still vividly remembered feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach when he’d entered the pokemon center to see her covered in bruises and dressings, her leg swollen and stretched out on a footrest. He’d been so terribly sure she’d been attacked by their unknown enemy, that she’d had to fight alone with her low-level bulbasaur because he hadn’t been there. He couldn’t believe, even now, that he’d been stupid enough to let her go wandering around alone after Lance had warned him that she might be a target.

A cruel voice in the back of his head whispered that she would have been more careful if she’d known there was anything to be careful about. Professor Oak had asked during their first phone conversation if he had told her yet about Sabrina’s vision. He had received a sharp reply and had not mentioned it since, except to hint after the incident with the spearow at what Ben already knew: that every minute she didn’t know what was facing her was a minute she didn’t know to be on her guard.

He pushed those thoughts away. Knowing would only frighten her at this point, and he obviously couldn’t tell her now anyway, with Seth around. He would simply have to be more watchful from now on.

As if on cue, he heard movement in the trees ahead of him and halted, instantly alert, his head jerking up sharply to scan the tree line. The rustling continued. He heard the approaching footsteps of the other two and automatically held out a warning hand. They reached him and stopped, obviously uncertain.

“What is it?” Katie whispered, peering over his shoulder to get a better look. “Is it a pokemon?”

“No way,” Seth answered from his other side. Ben privately agreed. Nothing that lived in this forest was big enough to make that much noise. He reached instinctively for his pokeballs, hesitating at the last minute. Don’t battle if you can help it. Keep your head down.

Ben tilted his head toward Seth, who had stepped up to stand beside him. “Are you any good?” he said in a low voice.

Seth raised his eyebrows. “Have you not been listening at all?” he asked incredulously, crossing his arms and not bothering to keep his voice down. “I have fifteen—”

“That’s not what I asked,” Ben interrupted. “Can you fight, or does your sister do all the work?”

“What the hell is your--” Seth began angrily, but Katie suddenly gave a little gasp and pointed to the tree line. Ben jerked his head back around just in time to see a boy step out of the trees and onto the path, stopping as he reached them and shielding his eyes from the sun. He looked to be ten or eleven, and as they watched him he hoisted the large, floppy net he was carrying from one shoulder to the other.

“You guys trainers?” he asked in a high, rather nasal voice, wiping his forehead with his free hand and leaving a streak of dirt across his face. “Someone wanna battle?”

The tension left Ben’s body in a rush, and he put the pokeball he’d grabbed back onto his belt, slightly annoyed that he’d panicked for no reason. There were always amateur trainers crawling around Viridian Forest looking for bug pokemon. Ben guessed this boy had only been training for a few days at most; young trainers were often so eager to battle that they didn’t stop to think about their opponent’s age before they made a challenge.

Then there were those who would take advantage of that, Ben thought, his irritation deepening as Seth smirked and shoved past him to stand opposite the boy. Without preamble, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pokeball, grinning over his shoulder as he tossed it a few feet in front of him. It opened with a flash and a dull green pokemon Ben had never seen before appeared, cocking its lizard-like head as it regarded its opponent with tiny black eyes. The boy trainer stared back, then looked up at Seth, obviously a little taken aback.

“Oh,” Katie said softly at Ben’s elbow. “That’s his kecleon. He showed me in his pokedex. That was his starting one, him and his sister both.”

Ben reached out and grasped Seth’s arm. “Why don’t we let Katie battle?” he asked pointedly as Seth turned and scowled at him. Behind him, Katie jerked and looked at him in alarm. He smiled encouragingly at her. “She should probably find out how trainer battles work before we get to Pewter.”

Seth shrugged and recalled his pokemon. “Whatever,” he said indifferently, turning and making his way off the dirt path to sit down on a tree trunk. He stretched and rested his chin on his fist, grinning at the other two. Ben rolled his eyes and turned back the young trainer.

“That’s okay, right?” he asked. “My sister’s never battled before.”

The boy nodded forcefully, looking immensely relieved. “I’m Doug,” he informed them, setting his net down and stuffing his hands into his pockets as he gave Katie an appraising look. “Started last weekend. I already have a bunch of pokemon, though.”

“Oh,” Katie answered, looking a little startled. “Well…I only have two so far, is that okay? I’m Katie,” she added as she stepped forward nervously. Ben backed up to give them more room and wound up standing next to Seth. Doug, looking more confident, stooped down to reach into his net and drew out a pokeball.

“No problem,” he answered, straightening up and grinning at her. “We’ll do your two against two of mine. Go!” he yelled suddenly, and hurled his pokeball at the ground between them. It burst open to reveal a weedle, who drew itself up to stare curiously around at them all.

Ben relaxed. This was nothing, especially since Katie had a flying type. He slid his backpack off his shoulders and settled himself cross-legged on the ground, watching Katie reach for a pokeball. Beside him, Seth had opened his own backpack and was eating some sort of fruit bar as he watched the battle unconcernedly.

“Go,” Katie called rather timidly, tossing her pokeball toward the weedle. Ben grinned into his lap; he’d have to let her know that despite what she’d seen in movies, trainers weren’t obligated to yell dramatically at their pokemon. His smile faded as Raptor materialized on the grass, staring around at the trees and scuffling his feet. He frowned slightly at Katie, who determinedly ignored him as she clenched her fists nervously.

“Spike! Use poison sting!” Doug commanded loudly, and the weedle sped across the ground and rammed headfirst into Raptor’s leg. He bounced off at once and lurched back, apparently struggling not to tip over backward. Raptor gave Spike a somewhat withering look and didn’t so much slam into him as step on him when Katie ordered a tackle attack, making Seth laugh and causing Ben to wonder if Spike had ever even been in a battle before.

“Fine!” Doug called irritably after two more tackles and a vine whip. “Spike! Return!”

The exhausted weedle disappeared into his pokeball, and Doug shoved his hand into his net and pulled out another one, flinging it to the ground with even more force than before. “Go! Caterpie!”

“Raptor, hit it with another vine whip,” Katie called, but stopped as Doug waved his arms in outrage.

“No way!” he yelled. “You have to use your other one! Two against two, remember? You can only use him for one battle!”

Seth rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t matt—” he began, but Ben elbowed him and hissed, “She needs to fight with her spearow” and he broke off, looking grumpy.

Katie glanced over at Ben, looking a little frightened, but at a nod from him swallowed and withdrew Raptor. She reached into her bag and drew out her other pokeball, biting her lip and hesitating. Only after an impatient gesture from Doug did she carefully throw the ball into the battle field, where it burst open in a flash of light. Charon shot into the air immediately, jerking her head around at them all and looking furious.

Doug, looking as though he couldn’t believe his bad luck, glared at Katie and yelled, “Caterpie! Hit it with a string shot!”

The small pokemon took a deep breath and blew a steady stream of webbing into the air in Charon’s direction. Charon, who had been eyeing Katie maliciously, was caught by surprise and squawked in protest as the sticky string hit her from behind, coating her back and wings with white goop. She flapped her wings wildly to keep her balance as she whirled around and shrieked abuse at the caterpie, who watched her warily from the ground.

Katie, obviously feeling that she ought to regain some semblance of control, but just as obviously reluctant to draw the spearow’s attention back to her, licked her lips nervously and called, “Charon…try a peck attack.”

Charon ignored this completely, and Ben couldn’t really blame her: The spearow’s violent struggle to stay airborne was causing the gooey strings that covered her back to become tangled worse and worse in her wings and tail feathers, and it was obvious to Ben that she would have to land soon or risk falling. She thrashed about for a few more moments before she finally gave in and came down to rest a few feet away from Katie, hissing softly and glaring daggers at the caterpie.

Doug pumped his fist triumphantly. “Yes! Get it, Caterpie! Tackle!”

The caterpie hesitated and gave his trainer a pleading look. It was obvious that he was reluctant to approach Charon even if she couldn’t fly. Doug, looking extremely put out, shouted, “Come on! We can win, okay? Just…just go smack it!”

The caterpie didn’t move. Seth shrugged at Ben. “I wouldn’t do it either, and I’m about ten times that thing’s size.” Ben, staring into Charon’s murderous black eyes, almost agreed.

All this time Katie had been hovering anxiously a few feet away from her crippled spearow, apparently unsure what to do. She looked over at Doug and opened her mouth as if to speak, but a soft tearing sound drew all of their attention back to the ground. Charon, who had been working her shoulders furiously during Doug’s conversation with his caterpie, seemed to have finally made some progress. The string shot tangled in her wings had almost completely dried, and with repeated effort she was managing to slowly detach her wings from her sides.

“Get it now!” Doug shrieked as, with two sharp ripping noises, Charon’s wings came loose. “Come on! Before it starts flying ag—!”

Charon shot into the air and hovered ten feet off the ground, bits of dried string hanging from her furiously flapping wings. Katie, shielding her eyes and looking rather fearfully up at her pokemon, called softly, “…Charon?...Um, pe—”

“Return it,” Ben said sharply to Doug as Charon dived, talons outstretched, toward Caterpie (Katie threw her hands over her head in fright). Doug, however, was watching Charon with his mouth slightly open, seemingly frozen. Ben winced involuntarily as he envisioned the damage Charon’s claws would do to the bug pokemon’s soft flesh, and Katie clapped her hands to her mouth, evidently horrorstruck. Charon, however, flared her wings as she neared the ground and grasped the quivering caterpie with her outstretched talons. Doug, who had snapped out of his trance and was fumbling for his pokeball, yelped in surprise as Charon lifted the smaller pokemon off the ground and struggled upward again, flapping her wings rapidly and making for the tree line to their right.

“Wh—hey!” Doug yelled, outraged. “You stupid—call it back!” he demanded furiously, whirling to face a completely bewildered Katie. “It’s gonna—it’s gonna eat him or something!”

Katie jerked and grabbed her pokeball. She took off at a run, Doug at her heels, trying desperately to head Charon off as she flew around the clearing with her squirming passenger. Ben, watching the mad pursuit of the spearow with a kind of helpless amazement and starting to feel a painful throb behind his eyes, sighed and leaned back to lie down in the grass, throwing his arms out beside him. Seth, who was sitting on the tree trunk wearing a similar expression of resignation, popped the last of his snack bar into his mouth and offered another one to Ben, who took it without much grace and unwrapped it, realizing as he did how hungry he was. He took a bite as he continued to watch Charon dodge the jets of red light being fired by Doug (“Dammit! Hang on, Caterpie!”) and Katie (“Charon—please! Charon, just put it down!”). It was quite sweet, and he vaguely remembered tasting something like it somewhere before.

Seth turned back around and rested his chin in his hands, and Ben closed his eyes without really meaning to. The sweet smell of summer grass was all around him, and he was faintly aware, as he fought halfheartedly to stay awake, of the familiar feeling of earth underneath his back. His hand twitched slightly as though searching—but there was nothing there, and although it was warm he shivered faintly as the world around him faded into nothingness.

…

“Wow! How cool! How cool!” Tyler yelled, bouncing up and down in his seat as the Gym Leader’s magnemite sent shock waves flying at its opponent’s ponyta. He turned around and grinned at the two girls sitting behind him, barely containing his excitement. “Come on! Don’t you think it’s awesome? I wish I could do that!”

Katie grinned back. “Battle pokemon or shoot lightning?”

“Both!” Tyler said happily, beaming at the battle arena, where the magnemite was now trying to dodge a fire spin. “But battling must be so much fun, like with the fire and the electrics and the ice—”

“Oh, shut up,” Vicky snapped, looking up from her textbook to glare at him. “Quit being so loud. Have you even got all your work done?”

Tyler stuck his tongue out at her and turned back to Katie. “But like superheroes, you know? Trainers are like superheroes! Maybe after school I can be one too, right? Do you think?”

“Yes, definitely,” Katie agreed, giggling at his enthusiasm. “I think you’d make a great trainer. You should do it if you still want to.”

“And you can come too and we’ll go everywhere and have adventures and cool stuff like that! Like on TV!”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Katie said with a nervous laugh. “I think I’d rather just watch you. I’d be your biggest fan.”

“Aww,” Tyler said. “But I’ll get lonely. And I’m sure not gonna take Vicky,” he added, glaring at the other girl.

“Like I’d want to come,” Vicky said irritably, squinting at the page of her book. “It’s stupid anyway. Trainers that old are just overgrown children who don’t want to admit they’re adults. And then when they finally wake up they realize they don’t know how to do anything else. ”

Seeing Tyler’s crestfallen expression, Katie said quickly, “I—don’t think that’s how it is…there are…my dad, he—”

“My point is that Tyler ought to be glad he’s actually going to do something worthwhile with his life instead of just running around playing,” Vicky snapped. “Trainers don’t give anything back to society; they don’t accomplish anything, they just selfishly—oh for God’s SAKE!” she yelled, dropping her pencil and clapping her hands to her ears as the magnemite let out a screech attack that halted the ponyta in its tracks.

“I’m going back to the dorm,” she yelled over the noise, shutting her book and stuffing it violently into her bag. “You two can keep wasting your time. We have a chemistry test tomorrow, you know.” She climbed awkwardly off the bleachers, still wincing even though the screech attack had faded.

Tyler made a face at her as she left the gym and turned to Katie. “It‘s okay, I‘ve already studied. I can help you tonight if you want,” he said, misinterpreting the troubled look on her face. “You know, I don’t think she’s right though. I think having fun’s worthwhile too.”

There was another flash of fire, and the magnemite shuddered and dropped like a stone. The Leader recalled it before it hit the ground, and the challenging trainer grinned in an almost predatory way, his eyes glinting with excitement.

As if he’d accomplished something.

…

Katie stared into the remains of the fire, her chin resting in the crook of her elbow. It was a warm night, and Seth hadn’t bothered to ensure that the fire would last. Ben had fallen asleep shortly after dinner and hadn’t stirred since, and Katie had followed suit, with the reasoning that the sooner she fell asleep the sooner it would be morning, and the sooner they could leave Viridian Forest. Ben had estimated that they would reach the forest’s edge within the next couple of days, and Katie was eager to see civilization again.

It had been frustrating, therefore, to discover that she was somehow completely unable to sleep, no matter how comfortable she made herself. She couldn’t understand why. There was little noise to distract her (neither of the boys snored, and the chirping of the bugs had seeped into her brain over the past few days so that she barely noticed it anymore) and it wasn’t as if she had anything particularly upsetting to think about. Her body simply did not seem to want to shut down for the night, and so she’d been turning restless circles in her sleeping bag for the past hour and a half, feeling troubled and dispirited without really knowing why.

She supposed it had something to do with her poor performance in her first trainer battle. She’d been too frantic at the time to register embarrassment, but now her cheeks reddened when she thought of herself chasing her own pokemon around in circles trying desperately to return her to her pokeball. She had, after some time, managed to catch Charon in one of the jets of red light she’d been randomly firing from the ground, after which they’d all endured five or six seconds of horror as they’d watched Doug’s caterpie plummet toward the forest floor. Fortunately, Seth had pulled off a spectacular catch that he’d been crowing about ever since, and the affair had ended with no real injury to anyone, unless you counted pride.

Katie felt guilty about not being able to apologize to Doug; mute fury had made him deaf to her stammered attempts, and after the fiasco had ended he’d snatched his pokemon out of Seth’s arms and fled back into the trees without a word to any of them. Seth openly found the entire thing hilarious; he’d been teasing Katie and making jokes at Doug’s expense over the past four days, trying to get her to laugh too. Ben, who knew her better, had refrained from mentioning it at all, except to point out as they made camp that night that Katie had clearly won the first fight against the weedle.

Katie knew this, and besides, they’d met more trainers wandering around in the forest since that day and she’d won several of those battles. It was just that she probably would have won more of them if Charon hadn’t consistently tried to attack the trainers, or go after some random wild pokemon instead of her opponent, or fly off out of the battle arena, whenever she was let out of her pokeball. Ben still encouraged her to fight with Charon often (to which she generally pointed out that whenever she did so the boys would discreetly retreat into the tree line), but it was to the point now where using Charon basically meant an automatic forfeit, and Katie couldn’t help being a bit discouraged.

She harbored immense gratitude toward Raptor. Trainers in books and movies invariably had one pokemon that they couldn’t control in battle, but none of the stories had managed to convey how really embarrassing that was. Besides, Katie thought glumly, you always knew in movies that the trainer would eventually win the pokemon over with how good he was or how much he cared about it or something else like that. She wondered about herself.

I think having fun’s worthwhile, too…

She closed her eyes.

Flash.

--And they flew open, her pupils dilating just in time to register the last of the brilliant white light that had seared through her eyelids. It faded completely, and the moon and stars and campfire embers came slowly back into existence.

Katie lay very still for a moment, then moved her gaze slowly over toward the other two sleeping bags. Ben lay on his stomach, clearly still sleeping, and although Seth had his back to her his hair was visible from under his blanket and she doubted he was awake either. She waited nervously.

Flash.

This time she sat bolt upright, gripping her sleeping bag painfully hard as the light steadily intensified and receded, as if taking in a deep, terrible breath and slowly releasing it. Katie gasped for breath as the light left, looking around desperately through her temporary blindness for a possible cause, becoming aware of how suddenly, completely silent the forest was. The boys didn’t stir and she was struck with the sudden certainty that they wouldn’t, that this was some sort of private nightmare just for her.

Flash.

She jerked to her feet, stumbling as her sleeping bag shifted under her, and staggered a few paces away from the dying fire, her hands over her face, her breath harsh and uneven. She didn’t even think about the pokemon on her belt; there was no room in her head for thinking. There was only the heartbeat of the light, and an overpowering desire to move, to not be still, to escape it. She lurched into the trees, eyes shut desperately, throwing a hand out for balance.

Flash.

She whimpered and ran, reeling as if drunk, eyes half-open to see, sticks cutting painfully into her bare feet. Her hair caught on a low branch; she struggled frantically and felt several strands tear loose. She stumbled on, not caring where she went, clutching her head in agony—the light was in her, inside her brain, it was surely driving her mad—

Flash.

She moaned this time as the light reached its awful climax; overwhelmed, unable to go any farther, she fell to her hands and knees, keening and gasping for air. I’m going to die, she thought giddily, and I’m not even that far from home, I didn’t need to be so scared of leaving after all—laughter bubbled up out of her mouth—

Nothing. Silence. Darkness.

Her eyes opened automatically, before she could resist.

Nothing. Silence. Darkness.

No, not quite darkness—she tensed in fear, but this wasn’t the same, the light was—restrained, muted. Her vision cleared as she lifted her head slightly, still trembling. She had come upon a clearing, similar to the one she and the others had made camp in, only much larger. The trees rose up on all sides, making the place vaguely circular, and the stars shone down on the warm grass, giving it a strange, surreal glow.

Katie raised her eyes further, and they widened in shock as she suddenly understood what had been happening. In the middle of the clearing, perfectly still and silent, were—she tried to count—tens, dozens of pikachu, standing so close to each other that they seemed to form one huge, unified creature. It—they—were glowing softly, serenely, as if waiting to see what would happen next. A hundred little black eyes watched her, unblinking.

Katie rose shakily, still quite frightened. The silence felt unnatural, as though it was a result of the suppression of sound rather than its absence, and something about the calm, knowing gazes of the pikachu unsettled her. She felt she was in the presence of something immense and alien, something much older than herself. She half-imagined that she could see herself reflected in the blank black pools of their eyes, and realized that they could destroy her, they could crush her again with the light—her breath caught in her throat and she took a step backward—

Her back collided with something warm, and a pair of hands gripped her shoulders. A tremor ran through her body as she looked up into a pair of dark blue eyes—

“It’s dangerous to walk around alone at night,” Seth said, and Katie registered the words as if from a great distance. “You never know who else might be here.”

Katie stared at him, and the world came back into focus. She blinked and looked quickly back into the clearing. The spell seemed broken; the pikachu were no longer watching her and some had started to wander back into the trees. She was suddenly aware that she could hear the bugs again. She looked back up at Seth and started to shiver uncontrollably.

“Let’s go back,” she said faintly, thinking of Ben and warmth. Seth tightened his hold on her.

“They do that sometimes,” he said, tilting his head toward the clearing. “No one really knows why. It’s nothing to be scared of though,” he added, grinning down at her. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “I read somewhere that probably it’s a game for them.”

Katie stared at him. She couldn’t think how to respond to this, except to know with absolute certainty that it was not true. The silence lengthened between them.

“Hey,” Seth said brightly after a moment. “Watch this.” He released her suddenly and she stumbled, not realizing until then how strong his grip had been. She backed away slightly as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a black-and-yellow pokeball. He watched her do so, a slightly amused smile on his face. “They’re nothing to be that scared of,” he repeated. “They’re weak, see? Watch.” He tossed the ultraball carelessly at one of the pikachu that remained in the clearing. It disappeared in a flash of light. Katie flinched.

Seth walked over and picked up the still-quivering ball. “It can’t break out,” he assured Katie, who was watching uneasily. “It’s low-level. The ultraball’s too strong for it.” Sure enough, a second later the ball stopped shaking and Seth tossed it into the air and caught it, turning to Katie with a satisfied expression. He held out his hand toward her.

“Here,” he said, with the same disarming, fleeting smile he’d used when they had met. “Girls like pikachu, right?”

Katie stared at the ultraball, vaguely unsettled. She looked up at Seth. “I…don’t…I’d rather…” She cast her mind around, trying to come up with a convincing reason not to accept the little black ball. There wasn’t one, really…just a general feeling of wrongness about the situation, about the entire night. “I…thanks, but I…I think I’d rather catch my own,” she invented, not meeting his eyes.

Seth didn’t move for a few seconds, his gaze fixed on her. Then, looking faintly put out, he popped open the ultraball and the pikachu reappeared on the ground. “Get out of here,” he muttered, nudging it with his foot. The pokemon looked at him for a moment, then scampered off into the tall grass and out of sight. Seth returned the ball to his jacket pocket.

Katie chanced a look back up at Seth; he was smiling warmly again. “We’d better get back. Your brother’ll freak out if he wakes up and you’re not there. And somehow it would’ve been my fault, too, so I came after you.”

Katie smiled a little, but somehow it wasn’t that funny. She looked instinctively back into the clearing, where she could still see a few pikachu slinking through the grass. One of them turned to look at her.

The chirping of bugs was deafening. She turned around and allowed Seth to lead her back into the night.

…

A/N:

shadowsquirl: AAAARRRGGHH. I can’t stand it! I can’t wait till the plot really starts up! Right now my sister’s ideas are all we’re using. However, we will eventually start using some of mine. I work with villains. We’ve pretty much worked the story out, but we’re pacing slowly.

Good? Bad? Let us know. See you in Pewter. (grins)