New Beginning Chapter 8: You Can Never Be Too Careful
#8 of Old Stories
After the discovery of a fellow Hybrid, Dan reconnects with one of his old Poke'mon and tries to find Sara
The next chapter of my old Pokemon story, edited and updated for your viewing pleasure. Hope everyone enjoys, and as always, all constructive criticism is welcome.
"Joy, Rai...Rai..." I was at a total loss for words. Of every kind of Hybrid there could be, I'd have to find a Chansey Hybrid! There was nothing wrong with that, of course, but...you just don't think it could ever happen!
"Can you give me a second?" Joy asked. "I'd be a little more comfortable in something else."
"Chu, yeah, sure..." I nodded as Joy went to her room, still shell-shocked at what I had just seen.
I couldn't tell much at the time, but there were definitely some obvious things about Joy. One was that she must have had one heck of a time trying to hide that and keep up her job! Another was that this must have started a while ago. Joy was able to hold her human form for more than half a day, and like I'd learned from Misty, she had to have a lot of experience with this.
I wondered what exactly her special abilities were. I mean, Sara can cough fire like a Vulpix, I can use electricity like a Raichu, but what exactly do Chanseys do, anyway? They're good nurses, but that's about all I really know about them.
Joy came out of her room, wearing a large sweater, jeans and gently carrying in her arms an egg that looked like it came from a man-sized Pidgeot. Without elbows or hands, she couldn't really grab or cradle it in her arms.
"Can you put this over there?" She motioned over to the couch. " I don't want to lose this, but it's awkward to carry around."
"O.K." I gently took the giant egg, noticing that what was once a large bulge in her stomach was now down to a small bump. A pouch, I realized. That was the egg in a pouch. I handled the egg very carefully; if Joy had nearly lost it over a couple of Faberge eggs, I could only imagine what would happen if I dropped this one. I let out a little sigh of relief as I gently laid the egg on the couch.
"Thank you. If anything ever happened to my baby..."
"Rai, Joy. That egg won't Chu hatch, like all Raichu other eggs Chu bought." I said. "If Chu don't mind me asking, why do Chu think of eggs as Chu babies?"
"To be honest..." Joy looked like a little kid who'd just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar when it wasn't supposed to be, "I don't really know. They're just so beautiful... when I think about what it must be like, safe and sound inside an egg, it just makes me feel good. I know that must sound really silly to you..."
Yeah!
"Not really." I lied. Now was not the best time to get on Joy's case. We stood in silence for a minute before I asked. "When did it start for..."
"Years ago. Out of the blue, I was taking care of a really fussy Raticate that just wouldn't sit still long enough for me to give it a check-up, and it was really frustrating. Just when I thought I'd pop, this happened."
"Rai. Listen, were Chu ever hurt by an odd Poke'mon? One Rai might have looked sick?"
"Hurt? Sure, plenty of times, but never anything out of the ordinary."
Hmm, just like Sara. No weird injuries like me or Misty, just pure anger. Man, if I could only get a common link between us, maybe I could get some way to find a cure. So far, though, nothing.
"So, Joy...why'd Chu lie? Why didn't Chu just tell me Chu were a Hybrid?" I asked.
"Hybrid?" I explained to Joy that what I called people who were part human and part Poke'mon. "I'm sorry. It's just that...well, this isn't exactly normal, and it's a bit embarrassing. I never really thought you'd find out."
"That Raichu thing. How did Chu find out about me?"
"A tabloid paper. The front page had a sketch of what you looked like, and there was a two page story about the entire incident. Hold on a second, I might still have it." She disappeared into the kitchen for a minute, then came back with it laid out across her arm. "Here it is."
I took the paper and looked at it. The sketch was accurate, and may have even been a mirror image of myself, if it weren't for the five-inch fangs coming out of my mouth. Finding the page of the story, I flipped to it and skimmed it. Basically, it outlined everything that had happened from the point of view of the police, from my "attack" on the woman to my escape. When asked why the police couldn't just bring out a picture of me, they had this to say.
"The creature we had in custody hated bright lights, and when exposed to the sun, he went ballistic. We feared for the public's safety, so we never got any pictures."
"How Raichu are these people?" I asked no one in particular. "Rai like the sun, and it was a cloudy day, anyway. Raichu no way for anyone to see the sun. The picture...the Raichu never took one. That's why they didn't Chu one!"
Joy nodded. "I thought that story was a bit of a stretch. They made it sound like you were more like a vampire than anything else."
"Rai..." If Sara saw that, I'd wondered what she'd think of me. Of course I'd never know if I didn't find her. Who knows what she do...
"Dan, are you alright? I sense your upset about something important."
"Rai...Wait, how'd Chu know Rai was upset?"
"Like I said, I just sensed it." Seeing my confused look, she shrugged(or at least tried to. It's kinda hard to do well without elbows). "It's just something I can do, like a radar. The more upset a person is or the closer they are, the easier it is for me to pick it up. I don't know any specifics about why they're upset, but I can usually get an idea."
"Rai almost afraid to ask who Chu got practice on."
"Poke'mon, mostly. Some of them are more comfortable seeing a half-human, half-Poke'mon being than a full human; maybe they thought I was just a really big Chansey." Joy shrugged. "I never really figured it out myself, but if it..."
"Wait, Chu can sense when people Rai upset?" She nodded. A plan slowly started to form in my head. It was a long shot, but also all I really had to work with.
"Joy, Rai need Raichu help."
"Why didn't you tell me you were looking for a Nidoran?" Joy asked after I finished my story.
"Rai,..."
"Someone bought one in two days ago. They said they'd found the ball lying on the ground, so they bought it to the Center."
"Raichu kidding? A male one?"
Joy nodded. "We can go over right now and get it."
"Thanks." Alright, one down, two to go! After I got the key to the Center, we went across the street to unlock it. We didn't bother to change forms considering how late and how dark it was. We went into the back in the Poke'Ball storage room. Joy pointed out Nidoran, then left to go check on the other Poke'mon who she hadn't gotten around to giving their check-ups. I opened it after Joy left, and Nidoran soon materialized in front of me.
"Nido..." he was growling the second he came out, looking rather unhappy and tense.
"Nidoran, calm down! Rai me!" I knelt down next to Nidoran and gently stroked the back of his head, trying to calm him down.
"Nido?" He seemed confused by my gentle approach, until he looked up to see who was stroking him. He smiled and quickly relaxed when he saw me. "Ran!"
"Hey, nice to see Chu too." I smiled gently as I felt the tension leaving his body. "Rai hope Chu didn't think Rai abandoned Chu."
"Nido." I let out a little sigh of relief as she shook his head. After what his last trainer did to him, I kinda worried that he'd loose his faith in me.
I explained to him what had happened since we last talked, which was around dinner the night Railina came into my tent. Nidoran seemed kinda surprised when I mentioned that I'd found another Hybrid, and even more surprised that I'd found a fourth. To prove it to him, I found Joy in the room where those incubators are kept. You've seen them; they look like the incubators a newborn baby is put in. After Nidoran got done gawking at Joy, I explained the rest of the story, and mentioned that I'd caught a Vaporeon. Nidoran seemed like he wanted to meet Vaporeon, so I asked Joy where he was.
"Dan, this is hard to explain." She looked over to one of the empty incubators before going on. "Your Vaporeon, is, well...missing."
"Missing? How could he be missing?!"
"I don't know! The police dusted and looked all over the place for clues, but they never found anything out of the ordinary that would mean someone broke in, besides the hole. As best as I can tell, your Vaporeon Chansey got out and ran away."
Dang! I knew I shouldn't have trusted him! After muttering a few choice words under my breath, I told Joy not to worry about it. I had bigger things to worry about, like finding Sara and Bulbasaur.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Joy asked after I explained my plan again to make sure that we had everything straight.
"Not really," I confessed, "but what else can Rai do?"
Depending on how you looked at it, my plan was either a stroke of brilliance or the stupidest thing you'd ever heard. Basically, me and Joy were going to go on a little tour of the city. If my guess was right, Sara would be feeling even worse about being a Hybrid now that she was alone in a giant city. Assuming that was true, I was going to have Joy try to pick up on where Sara was by her fear and worry about what was happening to her.
Needless to say, there were a few problems with my plan. Since Joy can't easily tell one persons emotions from another, it would be hard to pick out Sara in a area full of people. Plus, if she was unconscious, asleep, or in the worst case scenario, dead, she wouldn't be alert, and therefore Joy wouldn't be able to find her. Still, this was all I had to work with, so I had to at least try.
We searched the most obvious places to find Sara; hospitals, police stations, abandoned buildings, hotels and inns. We didn't get any really upset feelings anywhere except the hospital. However, Joy reminded me people don't go to a hospital to have fun, and considering how hard it would have been for us to try and get in as Hybrids, we had to pass on a close examination of the building.
The sun started to rise, so we headed back to Joy's house to recover and try to get some sleep. Along the way, we passed the Vermilion City Gym. Suddenly Joy stopped and stared at it, looking very concerned.
"What is Rai?" I asked.
"I just felt something. Someone in there is feeling really bad. It feels like they're in pain."
"Pain? What kind of pain?
As if on cue, a sudden scream penetrated the quiet of the night, the quickness and force of the yell so great that my ears started to hurt. You didn't need my super-sensitive ears to tell it was coming from the gym.
"I'd say pretty bad pain!" Joy yelped.
"Raichu!" I ran to the gym and tried all the doors. They were all locked tight, and there was no ladder to the roof like at the Cerulean gym. All of the windows were closed, and too high off the ground for me to reach.
"Hello?" I yelled. "Are Chu alright?!" Another scream told me no.
"Dan, I hate to rush you, but we have company!"
"Rai hear them." I said, listening to the wailing of sirens in the distance. I looked at the gym for a few more seconds before joining Joy in running to a nearby alleyway. I followed her through the confusing maze of back alleyways to her home. We were both totally out of breath by the time we made it back.
"What...was that?" Joy gasped as I unlocked the door to the house.
"Rai...don't know." was all I could say as we went in. I felt bad about leaving the person at the Gym, but Joy reminded me that the police were trained to handle emergencies like that, not us. Besides, if they'd found a pair of Hybrids on the scene of someone who'd been hurt or worse, we'd only confuse the police and get ourselves in trouble.
The Center had to be open in a few hours, and Joy was going to need me to keep the kids entertained so she could get her work done. With everything that had been happening lately on my mind, and the scream still echoing in my mind, I just couldn't fall asleep. After a few slow hours of watching early morning T.V., I released Nidoran so I'd have someone to talk to.
"Nido...Nido..."
Great, he was asleep too! Ah well, he deserved it. Thirsty, I went into the kitchen and found a large bottle of soda. I drank straight from the bottle, not wanting to waste time with a glass. About halfway through it, Nidoran started mumbling something in his sleep. Figuring it was just sleep talk, I ignored it at first and kept drinking. It slowly got louder and more frequent, until...
"NIDORAN!"
I almost drowned in soda, coughing it all over the place. Snorting once to clear out the soda that went into my nose, I rushed to check on Nidoran. He was looking around frantically, sweat pouring out all over his body. Someone or something must have scared the living daylights out of him.
"Nidoran, calm down! Rai was just a bad dream, that's all!" I knelt down and picked him up, holding him against my chest. He was shaking pretty badly...maybe one of my jokes will help break the tension?
"Nidoran, Rai glad to see Chu trying to learn Earthquake, but Chu supposed to make the quake Raichu outside of Chu body, not inside."
"Ran?" Apparently Nidoran didn't get it. Why doesn't anyone get my jokes?
I kept Nidoran against me for a better part of an hour before he wore himself out and drifted off to sleep again. Joy came out a few hours later, human and ready for work. She told me to stay, that she would be fine today. As the kids started to pour in, though, I quickly headed over to give Joy a hand. The kids were happy to see me again, though some were a little afraid of the sleeping Nidoran. I let him sleep on the couch, wanting to keep an eye on him after his bad dream.
I kept the kids entertained for a while, and when Nidoran woke, he helped with the kids that weren't afraid to go near him. The kids were less active today than yesterday, and I found out why. There was going to be a tournament tomorrow for Poke'mon trainers who couldn't get licenses yet because they were too young. When I learned that it was going to be held at the Vermilion Gym, I wondered again about whoever was screaming in there last night, and if they were alright.
Almost all of the kids were having their Poke'mon checked out for the tournament. One girl in particular caught my attention. In her arms, she held a squirming and very unhappy looking Raichu who looked like it'd just come out of a battle. The girl also wore rubber gloves, as if she was afraid of being attacked by her Poke'mon.
"Nurse Joy?" The little girl said, "My Raichu won't go in a ball. I'm worried something's wrong with it."
"Well, that's not right." Joy agreed. "Let me go get some gloves, and then I'll help you."
I wandered over as Joy left to get gloves, interested by this Raichu. When I asked her how she caught the Raichu, she admitted she didn't really. Her father had knocked it out with one of his Poke'mon, but when he went to catch it, the ball just bounced off it. Everyone of his Poke'Balls just bounced off it and did nothing, so he told his daughter to get her mothers dish washing gloves. From there, they drove over here to get it checked out.
"Raichu!" The Raichu seemed almost ecstatic to see me, fighting even harder to get away from the little girl. When I asked if I could hold it, the little girl agreed and held the Raichu out so I could take it. "Raichu!"
"Hey, Rai nice to see Chu too." I said. My nose started to tickle, and I sniffed to clear it. Great, the last thing I need is a cold...wait, that scent. It smelt familiar, but not just because it was a Raichu. I'd smelt this exact scent before. Where...uh-oh.
"Railina? Is that Chu?"
"Rai!" she said with a smile. I told the little girl I'd take her in the back to Joy, and while I did, I asked Railina how she got here. After about two minutes of arm waving and chatter I got very little of, I asked if she'd been teleported, since it occurred to me that if that weird guy had known about me and Sara, he'd probably know about Railina too. She nodded in response.
"Joy, Rai think Rai found the problem!" I called out, finding her in one of the exam rooms. "Rai know this Raichu personally. Rai trained."
"It's trained?" I set Railina down on the exam table. "How long ago was it last in a ball?"
"Rai don't know, a few days?"
"Hmm...it should still go in a ball, unless..." Joy went to a drawer, pulled out a pair of tweezers, and started to search through Railina's fur. She withdrew a small metal rod, no bigger than a pine needle, within thirty seconds.
"Chu is that?"
"A SafetyRod. It for when a Poke'mon gets separated from its trainer. Whenever a ball hits the Poke'mon, the rod lets out a small EMP to disable the ball. The ball it was originally in is set to a special frequency that keeps that from happening, so it can be recalled easily. As you might have guessed, there's a different frequency for each rod."
"Cool." Joy replaced the rod in Railina's fur, and I took out my empty Poke'ball. Giving it a little underhand toss, I bounced it gently off Railina's head. It hit her harmlessly and rolled off onto the floor.
"Hey, that...Rai?" I'd just started to think maybe I should get one for my own Poke'mon when I felt a weird tingling sensation around my foot. My Poke'ball had bounced off my foot and was now open, emitting a red beam that encased my foot and was slowly moving up my body. The glow continued to move rapidly up my body, and paralyzed wherever it touched. It rapidly spread until...
"JOY!!"
"Nido?!" I called out, hearing my trainers yelling. *Dan?!*
Ignoring the little humans who kept trying to bother me, I ran into the back. I quickly found Joy and a Raichu staring down in shock at a Poke'ball shaking on the floor. Hey, wasn't that mine?
"Nidoran, Nido Nido?" *What's going on, and where's my trainer?*
"Raichu..." *I don't believe it...*
"I...I never thought it could happen..." Joy said in something that sounded like a mix of fear and amazement.
"Nidoran?!" I demanded. *What happened?!*
"I thought the human DNA would keep that from happening..."
"NIDORAN?!" *WHAT FROM HAPPENING?!*
"Chu..." *Dan...*
"Nidoran..." Joy said slowly. "Your trainer...just captured himself."