Valley dashed around, snaking around jets of water from the Lombre.

  “Trailblaze,” I said. The Minccino’s paws shone green, and she accelerated across the grass field. The grass and water pokemon tried to keep up with his Water Gun, but gave up and just stared as the grey blur got closer and closer. His trainer opened his mouth, but I beat him to it.

  “Thunder Wave and Pound.” Valley grinned as her body sparked with yellow energy before the electricity boomed forward and almost smashed the Lombre, who dived to the side at the last second. His tired eyes looked up just in time to see Valley as she smashed his face with a glowing fist, the impact rippled from his cheek, and his elastic body slapped into the ground and bounced up. He’d fainted before his body had landed the second time.

  His trainer groaned but didn’t seem angry at all, and after the money transfer between Pokedex, just one hundred pokedollars, and a small talk on where they could improve–which just boiled down to staying focused on the fight and preserving stamina–he left, going down the road to Goldenrod.

  “Nice job, Valley,” I said to the grey blur climbing my body like a tree.

  “Minccino,” the pokemon chirped in displeasure as she settled on my shoulder, her small hand holding the brim of my waterproof hat for balance.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know you want to fight stronger opponents, but that was a starter, you know,” I said as I walked back towards the others. The small and grey pokemon turned her head away, but I could see a small smile on her face. “Come on, don’t be like that.” I poked where I knew she was tickish. The pokemon let out a small laugh and stared down at me.

  “Are you guys done?” Jess asked loudly from the rock she was sitting on.

  “Yep.”

  “Great.” She got up and slapped the dirt away. “Dendra said that we can be there by noon if we pick up the pace.”

  “If we go at my pace,” Dendra said, clarifying.

  “Same thing,” Jess snapped back.

  Aiden just sighed and stared at the cloudy sky.

  I picked up my bag from another rock and we started walking on the muddy road, descending the hill where the battle took place.

  The last few days were… not good. The first problem was Gible, the ground dragon was aggressive, which wasn’t unheard of for its line, or a big problem right now, since almost every single one of our pokemon could easily put him in his place, but it did give us a bit of friction. The second thing was the bad weather. We’d spent more time under the rain these last five days than almost the entire two months I’d spent traveling through the south of the region, needless to say, we hated everything about it, the water and mud in our clothes, bags and things, the pressure to find a better location to camp, the difficulty of walking on slippery and dragging surfaces, and the gloomy mood that the rain brought of course.

  Those things made Jess snappier and meaner, Aiden quieter and more withdrawn, and Dendra a lot less lively, which brought the mood down even more since she was the one who normally brightens things up. I also couldn’t deny that I was more distant, but things should improve once we get to Sumo Village and have a good meal, a shower, and a bed.

  The only ones a little happier with this situation were the grass and water pokemon, but even they felt the heavier mood.

  The rest of the morning was a lot of walking, faster and harder than before, but we didn’t complain or ask for a break; everyone just wanted to get this last leg of the trip over with as fast as possible. And soon enough, we climbed another muddy hill and watched in relief as a small collection of houses and other buildings grew over the horizon line.

  “Finally!” Dendra screamed as she ran towards the town. We followed her down the hill at a more sedated pace.

  After a few more minutes, we were inside the only Pokemon Center in the village, checking into our rooms. The rest of the day was just cleaning our stuff and then relax in our own ways; Dendra went to train on an indoor gym, Jess decided to eat on the only restaurant in the village, which specialized in curry, Aiden said he was going to sleep, and me and my team ended up huddled in the bed on the Pokemon Center to watch a couple of movies on my laptop.

  The next day, we met in the morning at a table in the cafeteria. Jess, Aiden, and I were already sitting when Dendra entered and took her own seat.

  “Hi guys,” Dendra greeted in the cheerful voice last seen two days ago, just before another rain, and we greeted her back.

  “Look, guys, I’m sorry for how I was acting these last days,” Jess said, eyes looking down at the table.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Everyone was on the edge because of all that rain.”

  “That doesn’t excuse much, you guys were alright,” she sighed. “I should’ve just stayed quiet instead of being my unpleasant self.”

  “It’s okay, Jess,” Dendra hugged the other girls in an awkward hug since they were both sitting side by side.

  “I also have to apologize, Gible has been a handful for more than just my team,” he said, and I winced at the flashback of him diving into the food of the others and tearing a few clothes and fabrics apart.

  “That was nothing really. And the Gible is a cutie,” Dendra said, and we nodded.

  “I’m sure he will adapt really soon,” I added.

  I turned to Dendra in the middle of breakfast, “So how does the Sumo thing work?”

  “I talked with someone at the gym. Basically, in the town square there’s a raised platform with a Sumo Circle. Pokemon can fight there, but only Sumo. Normally, they don’t use moves, but there’s another modality that allows physical moves, only on weekends though.”

  After the meal ended, we stood up and left for the town square, Dendra to fight and the three of us to support her. The girls were walking in front of us as we moved through the city when I felt Aiden tense up by my side.

  I raised an eyebrow at him and looked around to see what might have caused that, and saw three trainers near the back of a street we were passing by. They were staring at Aiden while speaking between them. The group wore mostly beige and dark clothes but had a few pink trinkets here and there on their shoulders and belts, which signaled their affiliation with the Joy clan.

  “Just ignore them,” I whispered to him. “If they try anything, we’re here to back you up.”

  That seemed to ease him a bit, and he nodded back.

  The four of us entered the town square and saw the Sumo Circle, which was a large rectangular space made of stone, raised by a couple of meters with a circle carved in the very middle. The place wasn’t packed, but there was a crowd of people that seemed to be local trainers, and there was already a fight going on: a Poliwrath against a Piloswine. The only interesting thing about them was that they looked way heavier than they should be, and not in a powerful kind of way like some pokemon we’ve met, like the Charicific Valley’s Charizard, just heavier in weight, at least at first glance.

  “They look like Chopper,” Jess said unconsciously, and we couldn’t deny it.

  “Chopper is a little on the light side for a trained Hariyama still, but I’m sure he’ll grow until the Conference!” Dendra said as she released her entire team. The Hariyama and the Krokorok made heads turn from the fight for a moment before they turned back.

  There was a long stone bench away from the circle, so we sat there to watch the rest of the fight, not that there was a lot of it. The Piloswine was clearly tired and almost giving up, while the Poliwrath stood straight like a blue wall, chest puffed and ready for another five rounds. The ground type spun his entire body suddenly and fully rammed into the Poliwrath, who put his hands into the furred body, absorbed the contact, and pushed him back closer to the line, almost falling out.

  Dendra was tapping her feet, ready to bolt through the crowd to ask for a fight when the pokemon somehow stabilized itself almost on top of the line, and an explosion of white made me close my eyes. Three minutes later, I opened them and through now familiar blind spots I could see a newly evolved Mamoswine now towering over the smirking Poliwrath.

  The huge four-legged pokemon reared back and ran forward, trotting towards the now crouched water and fighting pokemon, to the dismay of his formerly euphoric trainer. The Poliwrath leaned down and held the chest while snatching a leg, and brought the pokemon up over his shoulder, his muscles bulging at the effort.

  Mamoswile floated over the carved line and crashed into the ground outside the ring. The sound echoed through the square as if a stone had been dropped from a skyscraper, but the stone platform held up somehow.

  The two pokemon were returned, and the two trainers walked to the middle with smiles on their faces, shook hands, and hugged each other to the cheers of the people on the ground level.

  “Why they’re huggin'?” Dendra murmured.

  I quickly noticed that the older man shared the exact same hair and build as the younger, “They have the same features, probably father and son.”

  Dendra made an ‘ah’ sound before running forward to talk to the person who seemed in charge of the ring, a large and bald man who stood by a tent near the stairs. Chopper and Ress followed their trainer, and while the nimble twelve-year-old danced around people, the two pokemon parted them with just the sound of their steps.

  After a few minutes of talk, the organizer nodded, and Ress climbed the stone steps while Dendra stayed on the ground level. The announcer then did his job, “We have here a fighting type trainer, a traveler that just arrived in the city,” that caught the crowd’s attention, if because Dendra was a fighting trainer or because there weren’t many new people this time of the year, I could only guess. “She will fight two successive fights to show the level of her strength, first with her Krokorok and then with her Hariyama. After you’ve judged her and her pokemon, you might challenge her later in moderation.” In other words, don’t let her ball hog the ring.

  The same young man who had just evolved his Piloswine took the stage, and an overview of the people showed that he was the youngest despite looking twenty years old, so he was probably the one who tested newcomers.

  He raised a pokeball and threw it into the stage, energy condensed into a bark-skinned pokemon, Sudowoodo. Normally, that would look ridiculous, a twig-like pokemon against Ress, an already abnormally big Krokorok, but the twig stood out more like a tree, almost double the size of a normal Sudowoodo and also looking twice as heavy. Ress stared up at him with his jaw slack, which made the rock type grin and flex his muscles.

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  They walked forward near each other and crouched down. The gong of the bell hit by the announcer spurred them forward. The two heavy pokemon smashed into each other right in the middle. Ress, already recognizing that the difference in size would be an issue, leaned down and attacked the lower body while the Sudowoodo went for a grab.

  They pulled and pushed for a few seconds, but it became clear that Ress was not just outmatched in size and weight, but also in technique. Sudowoodo grabbed the arm and neck of the pokemon and timed a perfect pull that dragged Ress around and threw the pokemon outside the ring. The Krokorok raged for a second, but got up and walked back to Dendra while passing by a smirking Chopper.

  The Hariyama climbed the steps and stood in front of Sudowoodo, eyes narrowed as he searched for revenge against his junior. They crouched down once again, Chopper’s giant hand almost touching the three green spheres that acted as fingers for the rock type.

  The gong went off, and the giant tree went flying like a trunk falling into a waterfall. Chopper had pushed against the ground like a rocket and slapped the tree like pokemon up before he could stabilize himself.

  Sudowoodo lay down on the stop, back to the ground as he raised his stare down at the giant and unimpressed pokemon. There was silence for a few seconds before Sudowoodo got back up and clapped twice, which startled the crowd into clapping.

  The rest of the morning was mostly the same. Dendra watched more than fought, but Chopper and his teammates were more than comfortable just analyzing the fights, even Mawile, who spent a lot of time inquiring Chopper about Sumo. We rotated our pokemon so that they could also see the fights without taking over the square. I was expecting Cape to want to fight, but when he learned that moves couldn’t be used, he lost all interest; still had a blast photographing them though.

  Near lunch, more people filled the square and street food vendors started to set up and open stalls. There were mostly elderly and adults enjoying each other's company in small groups, very few children or teenagers, and there was also the Joy. That group of people staring at Aiden and others similar to them showed up. They didn’t do much besides sometimes stare or glance at the dragon trainer, so we ignored them.

  We were eating while watching Chopper battle a Vigoroth when a shrill-like sound echoed through the city, like a weaker version of the alarm in Azalea during the incident, and then it was replayed over and over again. Many individuals who were clearly trainers tied to the Joy clan started to get messages through their Pokedex or the Pokegear, an expensive communications device that started to be sold in Johto three years ago by Silph Co. Those trainers looked at their screens and started to release their pokemon, most were fairy like Gardevoir, Altaria and Togekiss, but there were also other flying or psychic mons. They got up on them to fly or simply teleport away.

  The crowd, in the confusion of dozens of pokemon released, started to disperse, worried that something was wrong. We waited until Dendra’s fight ended and talked between us. The group decided to go back to the Pokemon Center, and thankfully, nothing happened that day.

  -

  CaCL

  -

  After the freaky stampede of the fairy type trainers, I searched in the Pokenet and in traditional media but nothing came up, but after what was happening across the region, the Salamander invasion, the Coalossal in Azalea, and what Brian let escape, a possible fight against leftovers from Team Rocket, I convinced the others to leave as quickly as possible to Olivine. After all, there was no place safer in the entire region other than the main HQ of the Johto Army and a dozen other government organizations.

  We left the following day through the south road and walked hard for two days before things started to become familiar again. We walked as always, trained as always, camped as always, and the next day we did it all again, relaxed with the knowledge that we were as far away from Joy Clan’s territory and whatever made them freak out.

  But just as we were coming up to a wooden bridge over a short river, a small wind ruffled my hair, too strong on an otherwise windless day to ignore. I stopped and waited for a second, and that was enough for Dendra to notice.

  “Scott?” she said, looking back from where she was in the front of the group, which made Aiden and Jess also stop.

  “I think I felt something?” I said to the air.

  Jess’ face was twisting in confusion when another strong wind ruffled my hair, and only my hair. The three other trainers and their pokemon froze.

  “What is that?” Dendra asked, voice low as she stared at my hair.

  I sighed, “It’s probably the ghost pokemon that’s been following me.”

  “What!?” Dendra asked, and after a few minutes of silent panicking, Jess took the lead.

  “What do you mean, ghost?” I shrugged. “Why haven’t you told us about that until now?!”

  “It’s just a bored ghost,” I said, raising my hands in defense. “You know, they haunt people all the time, for months sometimes."

  “Since when?!”

  “Since the beginning of time?”

  “Since when is the ghost haunting us?!”

  “It’s just me, actually, but the first time I felt him was in that Charmander situation, in that cave we entered to get away from the Charizard.” And now that I think about that, we could probably beat that Charizard easily now.

  “And what ghost is it?” Aiden asked.

  I shrugged, “I never asked. I always just assumed it would show itself when it wants to.” Another wind ruffled my hair.

  “It's not random,” Aiden noticed. “The ghost is pointing to somewhere with your hair… that direction, I think.” The dragon master began to walk in that direction, away from the road and down towards the river.

  “Wait!” Jess asked, and he stopped. “We didn’t even decide if we’re going to go where the ghost wants us to go!”

  “Ghosts sometimes guide people towards individuals who need help,” he explained. “In one of the old stories, that’s how one of my ancestors saved a bunch of clan members from certain death.”

  Jess raised her hands and scratched her head, looking like she was about to pull out her hair, while Dendra just turned to me. I was about to shrug, but then remembered Professor Oak’s words in front of the bell tower; ‘If you see someone in need of help or in danger, I hope that you, with all the power you’ve accumulated as of right now, will extend a hand. It’s the duty of a pokemon trainer after all'.

  “... It might be someone who needs help.”

  “Then we’re going to help.” Dendra nodded and followed Aiden, and I was right behind her.

  “Scott!” I looked back at Jess, standing there in the road, her face red in frustration. “What is happening with you! What about keeping to the routes?! Are you the same guy who scolded me for saving a Minccino from a Seviper?”

  “I am,” I said, the words coming easily. “There’s one big difference between then and now–”

  “Which is!?”

  “We're a lot stronger now,” I said and released my team. Heracross, Baltoy, Ivysaur, Minccino, and Cryogonal were suddenly at my side, all of them were curious about the surroundings, but that didn’t take away the presence that all of them standing side by side emitted. My four-badged team that fought way above their weight class. “And your team sure are too.”

  Jess' mouth shook open, but then she closed it and followed the three of us down the small hill. The others also followed my lead and released their own teams–excluding Dendra’s Teddiursa and Jess’ Mantyke. To no one’s surprise, Cape took the lead, followed by Chopper and Quake. Aiden released most of his team except Gyarados, but kept the pokeball on hand. There was a quick explanation of what was happening to the pokemon as we moved.

  The four trainers and our almost twenty pokemon descended the road and followed the river for five minutes until the bank lengthened and grew into a small mountain of earth and sand. My hair was ruffled again, and we followed the ghost’s tip towards a small cave that looked recently made.

  I looked at Cape, and he nodded back before entering the cave. We assumed he would be going deeper than a couple of steps, and were surprised to see something pink smashing into him and throwing him back from the entrance. He flipped in the air and landed on his feet as we stared at the pokemon in front of the hole.

  The hateful scowl and stare jumped between us and our pokemon. It looked so strange on that pink and round body, after all, whenever we saw it on the media or even face to face on the rare occasions they were needed–like after the Coalossal incident–, we always saw them with kind and compassionate expressions, and its stance also wasn’t better. Instead of the open and welcoming posture, it was guarded, wary, and sported a little bit of fear hidden in it.

  I crossed eyes with the others, and so far, only Aiden seemed to connect the points on what might’ve been happening here; he was a clan’s scion after all. Dendra and Jess were just confused.

  “Clefairy?” Jess murmured as she took in the literal Fairy Pokemon.

  “Hey, hello,” I said, trying to calm her down. “Are you a Joy pokemon?”

  “Clefairy!” The pokemon glare hardened, and she pointed away from where we came from, as if to signal us to walk away.

  “Okay. Let me guess, you were captured or stolen from where you lived by some bad guys, correct?”

  The Clefairy decided that since we weren’t leaving, the time to talk was over. She puffed her chest and heaved out a giant high-speed cloud of ice particles at all of us. Mesa, Quake, and Ress were more than enough to raise rock barriers for everyone, and Cape went in to attack.

  His deceptively slow and weak first punch was dodged by a dive down, and the Clefairy used Pound and struck Cape in his right side with a comeback punch. It naturally did nothing, and Cape accelerated to his normal speed, easily grabbed both arms and restrained them on her back. She tried to use Metronome to escape, but Cape’s hold was so firm that it followed the body as it became smaller.

  “Okay, okay, calm down,” I asked her, but didn’t approach, and held Dendra back when she made to. “We’re not the ones that tried to kidnap you, believe me. But I can see how the situation can be frustrating and terrifying, alright, so how about a deal?”

  She stopped struggling against Cape and listened, even though her glare didn’t fade away.

  “How about we take you to Olivine? You know Olivine, the second most protected place in the entire region?”

  The Clefairy, eyes still fuming, gave out a curt nod.

  Aiden nodded in approval as he caught on to my idea, “Olivine is only a day away from here at most, and is a place where we can get all of this sorted out. And every clan in Johto has a residence there, including the Joy.”

  I could feel her interest grow as she became less violent in Cape’s grasp, “We can take you there, no pokeball, no restraints, you’ll just walk with us. We’ll call the police as soon as we set foot in the city and they’ll escort you to the Joy compound, how about that? We won’t catch you and this way you can have four powerful teams escorting you, how about that?”

  The pokemon looked around and analyzed our pokemon one last time before nodding. I nodded to Cape, and he released her. She grew to her normal size and rubbed her wrists while glaring over her shoulder at the Heracross. The first fairy type then looked back at the cave and whistled, and from the cave emerged more fairy pokemon, a lot more.

  Three Snubbull, four Togepi, three Ralts, three Igglybuff, two Mime Jr., and two Cleffa. All of these pokemon were in a state of panic, crying or very shocked, some in terror, and even had to be pulled out of the cave by others.

  “Dendra,” I said, and the unusually quiet girl got out of her own shock at seeing the large group of fairy pokemon that would give a Joy trainer a heart attack. “Can you calm them down?”

  She instantly walked forward and knelt in front of three crying pokemon, a Snubbull and two Igglybuff, and hugged them tight, “Don’t worry, little ones. We are here, and we’re not going to let anyone hurt you guys, okay?”

  That seemed to break even the more well put together, and suddenly Dendra was swarmed by the rest of the pokemon who also wanted a hug.

  Dendra was calming them down as best as she could, but we were tight on time, especially if someone came looking for them. If we wanted to get to Olivine as fast as possible, we would need to move now. I looked at the Clefairy and opened my mouth when I noticed that now she was the one who seemed to be breaking down, her face was scrunched up as she watched the group hug, as if she would begin to cry.

  I already imagined that she was the one keeping them all together and safe, and I couldn’t even imagine what happened before. Maybe she’d been captured but then escaped with her friends, or maybe she couldn’t save all her friends and was only able to escape with this group, who knows?

  “You did good,” I said and squeezed her shoulder for a moment. “But the job’s still not over… I’ll assume you don’t want us to capture them in pokeballs, right?”

  She nodded firmly, shoulders still shaking a bit.

  “Okay,” I said as I continued to pat her. It might be idiotic to walk in the open, but something told me that they would only accept our help like this; there was still no proof that we were speaking the truth after all. “Can you prepare them to walk? We need to start moving fast.”

  Clefairy straightened up, shook her head, and nodded. She took a very deep and shaky breath and walked forward like a mean teacher, and did as I asked, grabbing the pokemon from the pile and putting them in two lines.

  In three minutes, everything was ready. “Dendra, Aiden, and Clefairy, you three are in charge of defending the fairies if something happens. Jess and I are going to fight if someone tries to stop us, okay?”

  They nodded and we started to walk. We, the four trainers and our teams, the two lines of seventeen young pokemon behind us, and the Clefairy. Away from the cave we went, towards Olivine.

  Scott Wood:

  Cape/ Heracross: Tackle, Harden, Leer, Fury Attack, Endure, Arm Thrust, Aerial Ace, Horn Attack, Counter, Brick Break, Pin Missile, Rock Tomb, Vacuum Wave.

  Jungle/ Ivysaur: Growl, Tackle, Vine Whip, Razor Leaf, Bullet Seed, Leech Seed, Power Whip, Poison Powder, Sleep Powder, Sunny Day, Seed Bomb, Acid Spray, Trailblaze.

  Mesa/ Baltoy: Harden, Mud-Slap, Rapid Spin, Sand Attack, Confusion, Sand Tomb, Dig, Psybeam, Rock Tomb, Rock Slide, Double Team, Ancient Power.

  Valley/ Minccino: Pound, Baby-Doll Eyes, Echoed Voice, Charm, Sing, Play Rough, Swift, Mud-Slap, Dig, Bullet Seed, Trailblaze, Thunder Wave.

  Mountain/ Cryogonal: Bind, Ice Shard, Rapid Spin, Icy Wind, Mist, Slash, Body Slam. Take Down, Substitute, Night Slash.

  -

  Dendra Navarro:

  Chopper/ Hariyama: Tackle, Feint, Arm Thrust, Fake Out, Whirlwind, Detect, Force Palm, Focus Energy, Sand Attack, Bulk Up, Mud-Slap, Mud Shot, Swift.

  Cross/ Hawlucha: Tackle, Hone Claws, Wing Attack, Detect, Aerial Ace, Feather Dance, Encore, False Swipe, Swift,

  Ress/ Krokorok: Power Trip, Leer, Sand Attack, Hone Claws, Sand Tomb, Scary Face, Bite, Torment, Dig, Swagger, Sandstorm, Mud Shot, Mud-Slap, Rock Tomb

  Twirl/ Tyrogue: Rapid Spin, Tackle, Fake Out, Swift, Feint, Detect.

  Teddiursa: ?

  Mawile: ?

  -

  Jess Brin:

  Quake/ Hippopotas: Tackle, Sand Attack, Bite, Yawn, Sand Tomb, Dig, Crunch. Sandstorm, Take Down, Rock Smash, Mud-Slap, Rock Tomb, Bulldoze, Rock Slide,

  Velocity/ Staravia: Tackle, Growl, Quick Attack, Wing Attack, Swift, Aerial Ace, Whirlwind, Acrobatics, Air Cutter, Swift, Agility

  Blade/ Zangoose: Scratch, Leer, Fury Swipes, Quick Attack, Metal Claw, Hone Claw, Slash, Power Trip, Agility, Rock Tomb, Icy Wind

  Wave/ Mantyke: ?

  Soot/ Torkoal: ?

  -

  Aiden Hagashi:

  Gyarados: Splash, Tackle, Bite, Ice Fang, Crunch.

  Gyarados: Tackle, Twister, Whirlpool, Ice Fang, Brine, Scary Face, Waterfall, Crunch.

  Swablu: Peck, Growl, Fury Attack, Round, Take Down, Protect, Aerial Ace, Dragon Breath, Dragon Pulse, Agility.

  Horsea: Water Gun, Smokescreen, Focus Energy, Water Pulse, Twister, Agility, Dragon Breath, Agility.

  Gible: ?