FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 9

As I start to walk back to Allen and the bag I see a large bipedal pokemon come down the stairs. He is somewhat strange looking. His skin seems to be the same color as my fur and he has some weird looking whiskers coming out of his face and for some strange reason seems to be carrying two spoons.

"Hey, vulpix," He calls at me while nodding in my direction.

My little device beeps while I'm looking at him in response to hearing my species name. I put it down and look at the device. On the display it has a picture of the person in front of me and a bunch of symbols on it but not being able to make out much of anything the symbols are supposed to mean I stare at the other pokemon.

"One of the features of the pokedex is to give the trainer a snippet of information about any pokemon you come across. So that thing was just telling you a little bit about my species," he informs.

"I can't read," I reply before picking it up and starting to walk past him, not sensing any hostility from him.

"Basically it was just talking about how my IQ is over 5000. Though that isn't what I approached you for. I would like to play you in a game of chess to pass the time. You interested?"

"I've never played it before," I reply after putting the device down again out of politeness.

"I'll teach you. Trust me, I think that game is just the kind of thing you'd probably enjoy," he states with a rather suspicious grin on his face.

"I have to go put this back," I reply before picking up the device again and walking away.

"You do that then meet me over at the table."

I walk back to Allen and place the box back in front of him, "See? Told you she only wanted to check it out. No harm done," I state cheerfully.

"This time perhaps. Can you do me a favor and stay out of trouble the rest of the night?"

"Well some yellow pokemon wanted to play me in chess, even offered to teach me how to play."

"So long as you stay out of trouble do whatever you want."

"Where are Caleb and Sanaline?"

"Upstairs, I think they've probably gone to bed by now."

"Okay, I guess. I'm not tired right now so I guess I'll go play with that yellow creature for a little while," I state before walking off.

"If you get us into any more trouble tonight I will make your life more miserable than you can imagine. Remember that," Allen threatens while checking the device briefly and then putting it away.

I choose to refuse to answer him and as I'm far enough from him I can feel certain he won't hit me if I don't answer and won't chase after me as it might create the very problems he's trying to get me to avoid. I find the yellow thing over at one of the tables and I hop up onto the soft thing across from where he's sitting but find that it is far too thin for me to be able to adequately look at the flat board with a lot of rather thin and tall objects placed on that board thing in some kind of order.

"So glad of you to decide to join me. Here, let me," the yellow thing remarks before I find myself enveloped in a sort of blue glow.

I emit a rather startled yelp as I find myself being lifted up from the ground and at first I try to run or try and get some sort of footing but once it is very clear that I'm stuck up here until he lets me down I just allow for my limbs to go rather limp. While I'm up in the air I see the board and all of the pieces start to move towards him on one side of the table, leaving a larger area on the other side. I then find myself being slowly lowered onto the portion of the table now vacant and once on the table I am very relieved to finally be under my own power again.

"I'm an Alakazam. Name's Averik," he nods at me.

"Averik the Alachasm? That's a rather funny sounding name," I reply, watching his expression carefully. For the most part it seems he to be taking that I mispronounced his species name more personally than that I made fun of it. "I think my name is Poune. So what do all the little things do?"

"The 'little things' are the pieces that are used when playing chess. Each has its own set of rules dictating how it can move and how it can capture other pieces, I'll explain them all more fully to you before we begin."

He gestures me to move closer to get a better look which I do so since I know if he wanted he could probably just have picked me up and moved me that way if he wanted to. My head tilts slightly to the side as I watch a blue aura form around one of the pieces and he begins to talk about what it is and how it behaves. I pay close attention to everything he states and also watch him very closely the entire time. He even goes about telling some of the more complicated and advanced uses for some pieces and how best to set them up to attack. The strange thing is throughout all of this I cannot pick up the slightest sign of deception about what he's saying though I can pick up that he's hiding something. It is almost like he's intentionally telling me everything he knows about all of the pieces so that he can use that information against me somehow.

Once done he resets all of the pieces back to their original position and makes his first move. I stand up and hover my head over all of the pieces and decide to start things off by moving one of the pawn things. He begins his next move and our little game begins. Each of his moves are very decisive and prompt while every time I move I stare at the board trying to figure out what can do what in that situation and then asking whether the move I want to make is legal or not. When I cannot he is gracious enough to tell me why it can't move there and when I can I pick it up and move it forward. The entire time I'm also keeping track of everything about the Alakazam, trying to get a handle of what it is he's after. As it is my first time playing this game I find it not the least bit surprising when he starts forcing me on the defensive and stopping attacks against my king and only a few turns later I end up losing.

"Good game, want to play another now that you know how to play?" he asks while all of the pieces seem to glow with the same blue aura and move back to their original places.

"Sure, why not."

"Though before we begin how about we drop the act?"

"I don't know what you mean," I reply while my head cocks slightly to the side.

"I saw what you actually wrote down on that paper and that it was not what your blue friend wrote on it. I have an IQ of 5000, you underestimate my intelligence to think I couldn't figure it out. I know for a fact that you are a lot more intelligent than your friends seem to realize. I care not for a game with an idiot but with the real you."

I half stumble back off the table before regaining my composure. I'm sure that I've gone through every precaution to try and keep anyone learning things about me I don't want them to know and for a pokemon who had just met me to catch on I intentionally act what I assume someone of my age would act would lead me to assume I'm slipping. I've worked it to an art to keep myself from acting like I'm smarter than I should be so for this pokemon to learn so quickly seems... unless...

"Very well. I accept your challenge on the condition that you drop your own act."

"And what act might that be?" The Averik asks before taking his first move.

"That you are as smart as you portray yourself out to be. I know that the number you gave me to describe your intelligence is nonsense," I reply while moving. "For starters it would have been impossible for you to have seen what was written on that page. You were upstairs the entire time and even if you were looking over the edge waiting for me there is still the issue that the words written were never face up. Unless you saw me write them on the computer, which I was very diligent about ensuring no one was, it would have been impossible for you to have read what was actually on that paper. Which is actually how I figured your secret out. If you hadn't let that bit slip I might have at least given you the benefit of the doubt. No, you didn't read the paper itself but you read the sentence I wrote from either my mind or that nice human at that table over there. Am I right?"

He scowls at me a moment and then moves, positioning a piece to attack. I grin as I pick up one of the weird moving pieces and place it in a location that makes him frown.

"For all I know you could be in my head right now and I'd probably never even notice," I chide all the while keeping every one of my senses completely focused on every aspect of him that I can. "You said your intelligence thingy was five thousand correct? So wouldn't that make you fifty times smarter than a human? Now I know enough about how humans seem to treat pokemon to know that they'll never give any one of you a question that they are actually still working out, they would not allow such an important task be given to us lowly pokemon. Which means any question they'd ask they'd already know the answer to. If you were looking in their heads then you'd know the answer right away."

"Is that so, then how do you explain my psychic powers?" Averik moves after staring at the board a good moment.

I think about it a bit and grab one of my pointy hat people and move it to take one of his other pieces which makes him leer at me for what must have been a rather good move.

"Well, I would imagine that psychic abilities function in the same manner that my fire abilities would, that our bodies have simply adapted to use certain organs to their fullest. I have my fire pouch in my body and I'm guessing your brain is different and allows you to use your psychic powers. But those psychic powers are not related to your intelligence. Though how we make a little wager on this game. If I win you have to admit that I am smarter than you."

"And if I win?"

"Then we are of similar intelligence," I smirk while trying my best to keep my tails still to prevent them from giving away too much of my mood.

"That hardly seems fair."

"Well we are not in a fair situation. With you in my mind you'll know every move I'm going to make before I make it and even every strategy I may come up with. As I would not be able to tell the difference I couldn't just take your word you'd stay out. And if someone who knows the game cannot beat someone new to the game even with knowing everything going on in their mind would that not mean the newcomer is smarter?"

Averik scowls at me but I simply respond by smiling at him. I know very well that if he wanted to he could easily just take out his frustration by picking me up and throwing me against a wall and there'd be nothing I could do to stop him but it'd be a matter of pride for him. Though no one is really watching us play if he threw me from the game then the humans upstairs would come down to investigate and the female human near the front would likely tell the truth and say that we were playing chess and in a fit of rage he used his psychic abilities to throw me across the room. Even if he managed to alter the board there'd still be the problem of people becoming suspicious as to why he'd throw me. To them I'm just some dumb animal and he's supposedly fifty times smarter than the average human. Unless some of the pieces looked slightly melted which I doubt he could do without making it look obvious so the easiest conclusion would be that he's a sore loser and was losing at a game of thought to a dumb animal. And then he wouldn't be able to do anything to stop the rumors that I outsmarted him.

Averik's frown intensifies at my last thought, which confirms that he is reading my own thoughts and either he didn't realize that before or found out that I too know, either option definitely giving me the upper hand. I stay perfectly quiet as we continue to make moves. I don't even bother really looking at the board but instead simply watch him very closely while he makes his move and then slowly move to a piece of my color and make my move. With each move I make he gets more anxious, more agitated and he's even starting to make some mistakes. But after one of his mistakes that he curses to himself over I have to stifle a yawn as my body is starting to tell me I should go and get some sleep. I could easily keep at him like this for a long time but knowing Allen is likely going to have me do just as much if not more than I did today I'll need my sleep. I decide to put an end to the game and take my eyes off him and get a good look at the board. I think long and hard about each single piece I have at my command and then after thinking about all of them I make my move, picking up the queen and hovering it a moment over a position that would give me a very large advantage in our game before moving it to a different location, one that will lead to an obvious series of exchanges that will leave me with a few minor pieces more than he does and nothing else. I'm not even sure I can even win with such few pieces left.

"Okay, I give up," I shrug before standing up again and heading towards the edge of the table. "You are smarter than I am."

Averik's face shifts to that of confusion, "I don't understand, you said."

"I lied. Truth be told I had an unfair advantage over you," I sit down, still facing away from him. "You are obviously only used to being in the heads of humans and didn't know how to watch me correctly. Your focus was only in my thoughts which only would have worked if I was actually able to come up with some sort of strategy. But that was why you were likely getting so frustrated. I did not know how to play, but you did. And since I was in your head as much as you were in mine."

"You do not possess the telepathic abilities to read my thoughts," Averik states plainly.

"No, I did not need to. If you hadn't been so confident in your own superiority in the first game and too preoccupied with what I was saying you might have noticed what I was really doing. I don't know how to play this game. It would take me a lot longer than just my first game to get a strong enough handle of what this game is about to get any strategies of my own. So while I was learning what piece does what I was also learning every nuance about you I could. If you hadn't been so preoccupied trying to figure out what strategies I was thinking of or what my next move would be and hadn't been so used to being in the heads of humans you might have noticed how much attention I was putting onto your scent and the sound of your body. Your body is very predictable; it only took me that first game to learn what emotion and general thought went through your body with each change of your scent and heartbeat. So in the second game all I had to do was simply carefully pay attention to you and let you tell me which piece you did not want me to pick up and where you did not want me to put it. Like I said, I was in your mind the entire time," I comment before hopping off the table.

Averik remains quiet for a moment before, absorbing everything I said. Finally as I was starting to walk off he speaks up again, "You know, if you're ever in Saffron City you should come find me. My master would be more than interested in examining that head of yours."

"Sure," I shrug before walking back over to Allen.

"So did you get us into any more trouble?" He accuses.

"Nope, lost both games."

"Well what did you expect, moron?"

"Well I'm going up those things over there to the place above us to go get some sleep," I walk off towards the stairs, a small grin on my face once Allen can no longer see the front of my head.