FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Surprisingly, they went through the night without being attacked. Glen checked everything he knew to see if it had been stolen, but it all appeared to be present. Including Zach, of course, who had somehow again wound up sleeping curled around Syn. Apparently, the chu was not about to give this up. Glen took an opportunity when he had to relieve himself during the day to ask Al to give the rodent a talking-to about that, and the abra complied easily, glad to be given a reason to openly chastize the animal. Syn's odd ears flushed, and through his translation patch, Glen could hear a sheepish apology. He patted Syn's head forgivingly, and that was that, at least for the moment, which was good enough for Glen.

During lunch, Zach decided that if Glen could endure the sunlight, so could he. The older boy gave him a look and warned him that his younger skin probably could not take the beating, but Zach, being a small child, would have none of it. He took off his shirt. Glen just sighed and decided to let him learn his lesson. This was why he always carried seventeen different salves with him, anyway.

They were about a day away from the nearest town when the Rocketeers finally caught up to them. In the middle of an open road, in the middle of the day, six goons of various body shapes, postures, and genders approached the small party, all apparently carrying master balls and with obvious sidearms. Their light, purplish clothing swayed in the gentle wind, and they were all grinning. They had arrived in a black van with the classic, stylized R' on the side, accompanied by a rose.

Glen gave them his most uninterested look. As it became clear that they were waiting for him to speak first, he rolled his eyes, got down on one knee, and gestured romantically at them all, trying not to choke on the dust their van had kicked up or the nasty gasoline it was using. He closed his eyes and sang, "Prepare for trouble make it double!" That got the team in front of them to wince.

"He knows!" they whispered. "Is he one of ours? What's going on?" This was not the clandestine practice of the Rocketeer gang.

"To protect the world from devastation! To unite all people within our nation!" By this time, at least two of the opposition had joined in, their appropriately sinister voices far more attuned to the song than Glen's more refined, elegaic tone. "To denounce the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the stars above!" And now they were all in on it. Eyes closed, hands over their hearts like it was a national anthem: "Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light! Surrender now, or prepare to

"get all your pansy asses whooped by us two, you low-down weasels sucking the tits of an evil conglomerate." Glen got up while they flinched. Ambrosia and Synapse had come to stand beside him, and at some point, Allanon had gotten out of his carrier and sat on Glen's head, wearing his hat. It would have been funny to anyone who didn't know how deadly the four of them were. That was perhaps why a few of the enemy were smirking at the psychic type. Zach was standing off to the side, somewhat behind Glen, with Sam on his shoulder and Jerome by his side. Needless to say, he was far less imposing.

One of the Rocketeers stepped forward. He had a red armband wrapped around his uniform and was trying not to sweat. Also, his hair was lilac. "You've caused us some trouble, Glen. And we're not fans of trouble, are we?" he asked his compatriots in a voice like a cheesegrater over rusty sheet metal. They snickered on cue.

Glen tapped his chin, trying to remember something. He murmured the words, "Prepare for trouble... huh."

"And the boss has offered a handsome price on your head and the kid."

"I am a pretty handsome fellow," Glen grinned suddenly, then looked back at Zach. "That's two compliments from two people who want me dead in two days. What are the odds?" The boy giggled.

Lilac-hair was easily frustrated, apparently. He pulled his pistol out of its holster and undid the safety immediately. "You little bitch!" He cocked and fired.

Or tried to. The safety slid back into place and all that happened was a click. Glen raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Try the safety."

This just made Lilac-man angrier. "Hmph!" He slid it off again and tried firing. It just went right back into place. "Bastard!"

"Did you check the safety?" Glen asked, concerned. "You want me to try it?"

"Damn it! Someone shoot him! And don't hit the kid!" The other five all pulled out their guns while the leader tried desperately to get his safety to turn off. Abruptly, Siber was behind said leader and had a knife at his throat while Allanon drifted peacefully to the ground, still wearing the hat. "Hold your fire!" he shouted, and dropped his gun, holding his hands in the air, clearly afraid for his life.

Which was good, because the five people with him were not nearly as loyal to him as they were to the money they'd be paid if they could take his rank. While Glen hid behind him, his underlings riddled his body with bullets. Zach's countenance paled at the sound of the shots and he crouched backwards, watching fearfully. Syn touched his hand, and he looked down. The chu pointed at Amber, who was by no means pleased by the number of weapons levelled at his master.

The saur barked out his war cry and gallumphed as smoothly as a bulbasaur can gallumph towards the five trainers, who all laughed at him and drew pokeballs while they kept their guns pointed at Glen, who was struggling to hold up the corpse he was using as a shield. Three of the balls that dropped were whipped into their casters' heads, one of whom slumped to the ground. Amber's vines were out and ready to strike as he growled at the two pokémon who were released: a beedrill and a grimer. Knowing he couldn't deal with the grimer on his own, he fired a burst of pollen at the bug, who had just barely gotten out of the ball and went to sleep without making a move. Amber tore its head off with a twisting vine, to the horror of its master. An electric crackle swept through the air, blackening and melting the grimer into a puddle of steaming goo on the ground. Synapse had entered the fray.

From there on out, it was less organized. The Rocketeers loosed nearly all of their pokémon to deal with the threat, and Allanon didn't make a single move, counting on Zach, who had moved close to thim, for protection while he teleported Glen from place to place.

For Glen, this was alien territory, even though he knew what Allanon was doing. Glen could swipe at nothing, and then be slashing open a uniform in the next second. He had to trust the psychic pokémon and he did, but it was hard. He moved with an odd kind of grace while Zach watched, mesmerized by the one man and his three pokémon who were beating the tar out of five thugs and their multiple minions. Glen's pokémon didn't go unscathed, of course. Amber and Syn both took bullets, but they kept fighting, seemingly unperturbed by the wounds. Zach had never seen that before. pokémon who were hurt often at the very least winced or limped where they were wounded, but the two who were out there seemed just as stoic and versatile as Glen. The way they moved, with Syn's darting charges and deflective bolts of electricity in the close quarters and with Amber's blinding vines, seeds, leaves, and pollen, made them seem as though they just preferred the uninjured limbs; not that they were in pain at all.

Eventually, Syn was worn out and had to retire. Glen pulled him into his pokeball to rest, but took a blow to the head from a flailing Rocketeer as he did. Sam rushed in at Zach's command and clawed at the man's face, then dove from his shoulder and stabbed an enemy growlithe before Zach flicked a well-aimed pokeball at him and withdrew him from battle. Zach wanted to turn away from the amount of blood that was being spilled, but he also wanted to be able to help Glen. He had never seen so many actual wounds in a fight before. It was always just creatures getting knocked back and forth across a battlefield; never this... violence.

There were still two Rocketeers standing when Syn retreated. One had a fearow and an ekans out while the other had released a nidorino and a xatu. The battle had clearly been taxing on Amber, but he was still going strong, despite the blue blood leaking from the various wounds on his body. Glen was likewise painted red, both his and others', and he held his teeth clenched behind his lips as tight as the knife in his hands, no longer smiling or seeing this as a customary conflict. Zach had not realized how scared he must have been; he had just assumed this was normal for the older boy, the way he was grinning and joking around. But now, it was clear; Glen didn't know if he could win this or not, even though both Rocketeers appeared to be out of bullets. They had both unsheathed thick daggers and were trying not to stab one another as Glen vanished and reappeared over and over again while Amber bravely held the other four at bay. He slit the ekans' throat with a leaf as Zach watched.

Suddenly, Glen's image shifted, then stayed where it was. Zach looked over at Allanon. He had falled over on his side, exhausted. It hadn't occurred to the younger boy that these four were not infallible. "Jerome! Go in there!" He repressed the urge to say "Quick attack!" The rattata reacted on instinct. He bounded into the fray and immediately brought the nidorino to the ground, his teeth sheathed in the back of its neck. Even so, that wasn't what Zach had meant. He wanted Jerome to go after the humans, but that wasn't what had happened, and now, Glen was dancing and dodging out of the way of the two Rocketeers. Zach considered sending out Sam again, but she was probably even less reliable, regardless of how well she had performed, and besides, the fearow would probably take her down in a second.

With no movement from Allanon, Glen teleported again. He and the two in front of him looked around in bewilderment for a moment, but he recovered faster and with an animal roar, he slashed open their backs in two quick strokes, sending them to the ground. One issued a command to the fearow, which immediately took flight as the three remaining enemy pokémon were suddenly paralyzed. A movement faster than the human eye swept through those combatants, and all of the attackers were dead. Amber and Jerome looked around, bewildered, but Glen didn't give them time.

"Ambrosia! The fearow! It's... don't let it live!" He limped over and sat down heavily by his pokémon, looking in its eyes. "I know you can do this. Hit it. Kill that thing dead. One shot, not ten, and you'll have the range." The saur nodded, deathly determination in his eyes. He looked at the bird that was winging its way out of sight, aimed, and fired. A miss. "It's fine. Again." Shot. "Again. I believe in you, Amber." Glen kept one hand on the pokémon the whole time. Shot, shot, shot, thwack! The bird plumetted to the ground, a seed through its eye.

The boy still didn't give himself time to rest. He heaved himself to his feet, holding Amber tightly in his arms. Walking to Allanon, he called out, "Alright, Rachel. Come on out. I know you're behind that van; give me Zach back and I won't have my boys rip your head off." He wiped blood out of his eyes as Amber blasted a puff of polled over the boy's shoulder. The scyther that appeared there and was prepared to cut his throat choked and stood paralyzed where he was while Glen very calmly jammed his knife into the giant bug's side. "And if you try any more crap like that, I will gut this thing. Are we clear?"

Rachel emerged from behind the van glowering at him, trailing Zach, who was wrapped in vines issuing from her bellsprout. It really was incredible how far-reaching those small little flowers were. "I could have just had Ceres here override the teleports earlier and made you slit your own pokémons' throats, but I didn't do that."

"I assume that's because you wanted to live to see another day. Also because a teleport doesn't come nearly as easily to a drowzee as an abra. I do appreciate your help dispatching those morons." His voice was full of barely-contained acid. He left the knife embedded in Heracles and returned to petting Amber, who was shuddering to draw breath. The saur had taken a pretty hefty beating. "I suppose I should have expected an assassin to try to kick me while I was down."

"You're good at what you do, no doubt about that," she simmered as Demetre, the bellsprout, slowly let Zach free. The boy fell asleep and Ceres stepped over and sat on him, holding a similarly prone Jerome in her hands. "But you have to concede that I have the upper hand, here."

"The gas tank, Syn," he said quietly, and tossed the chu's pokeball. With a guttural cry, the electric type loosed a torrent of electricity into the van. It should have detonated with that force, but as Syn slumped to a knee, it just shook a little bit and settled back on its wheels.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "You think I'm dumb enough to think you're dumb enough to think you can get past the fact that this thing's grounded?" She patted the side. Glen seethed and took another look under than van. The spare tire was insulating the gas cap that Syn's perfect accuracy had targetted. Damn it.

"Your brain is clearly far sexier than mine can deal with right now." He took a knee.

"So I assume that means you accede the physical and we're gonna start with the psychological now?" Synapse, who had tried to crawl over to Glen, collapsed, asleep. That damn drowzee.

"Sure. Why not?" he sighed, and sat down, stroking the tremoring saur in his arms. "I'm about out of options, here. I suppose I could tell you what I learned about our little test subject over there. Or, you know," he corrected himself, "use it as a bargaining chip somehow. Mostly, though, I'm going to try to convince you that you should be on my side and that I'm not a bad guy."

She teleported over to her scyther and removed the knife from his side, then poured some potion on the hole left there. The wound healed almost immediately. Rachel pocketed the weapon, then sat down in front of Glen, brushed her purple hair out of her face, and stared at him. "So. Convince me."

He just looked at her. "I already have." Just by virtue of her sitting next to him with that complacency and those words, she had proved to him that she had enough doubt of her own motives to be willing to accept his.

She shot him a glare. "Do it anyway." She was younger than he, he realized. Or at the very least, slightly less experienced.

"Zach is innocent. I'm protecting him from an evil corporation. If I go get an absol, one of my choosing, we can break into Pokenomics and you can freaking steal any of the money you want from them. It'll be more satisfying, anyway, because you know they killed your brother. Otherwise, I wouldn't have told you he died while in their service."

She shrugged. "Fine. So shall we shake and be on our way?"

"First, give me my knife. That knife is very important to me."

"Any particular reason?"

"It's the only knife I have for which I can't remember the number of people and pokémon I've killed with it."

"Fair enough." She handed it back, watching him carefully as he put it away and withdrew his hands, showing them to her palms outward to get her goodwill. Then, watching each other with no modicum of trust, they clasped their hands together. Both sighed at the same time.

"Which poison was it?" Glen asked exasperatedly. "Do I need to get out my fancy antidotes?"

"No," she drolled with a roll of her eyes. Both of them were speaking very quietly so the microphones no doubt sewn into the Rocketeers' jackets couldn't pick up on their mistakes. "It's just some sleeping powder from Demetre over there. I can guess yours is stun powder, but how the heck did you get it that fast?"

Glen watched her body seizing up as he felt his own muscles relaxing into sleep. "Ambrosia always... keeps one or two... in his bulb..." He fell off to sleep, letting her hand go so that the metal barbs in each of their palms was clearly visible to the midday sun. "Syn... disarm their cameras," he whispered. The raichu struggled weakly to his feet and pulsed just enough electricity through each body to short the wiring and confirm that the ones who were alive wouldn't be getting up any time soon.

"Fuck you, Glen," he heard as he lay on the ground. He managed to flip her a bird before everything went black.

He woke up with a groan. Everything hurt. He experienced a moment of fear as he tried to open his eyes and one wouldn't comply, then realized it was because dried blood had caked over it while he slept. He scratched it off tiredly. It seemed to be about three in the morning, from the light.

A second, female groan sounded from above and in front of him. Right; Rachel would be unstiffening about now. A series of slurred syllables grated by her lips, but without full control over her tongue or jaws, she couldn't get much out. Glen managed to sit up, but it made him dizzy enough to almost fall down again. Surprisingly, Amber wasn't there behind him to lend a vine and support him. He looked around for the bulbasaur. "Amber?" he croaked into the darkness. A series of vague shapes very slowly came into focus. All of them were strewn around on the ground. From the looks of things, there were four creatures awake Allanon, Ceres, Glen, and Rachel.

This bitch is strong, a voice hissed through Glen's mind. It was angry, and he winced at the noise. I managed to get some strength back, but she's been holding me back and keeping the boy asleep this whole time.

"Well, keep it up," Glen mumbled. "I'm'a go find Amber. Did you see where he wandered off to?"

No, I did not see off to where he wandered. This is supposed to be your language, cur. He couldn't have been too tired if he was still that snarky.

With another groan, the boy shoved himself off the ground and immediately stumbled and fell. He forgot about the various bruises he had endured, and snorted frustratedly as he felt a recent scab open on his hand as he hit the dirt. It wasn't about to stop him, though, as he pushed himself to his feet again and swayed there for almost a minute before deciding he had enough balance to walk. "Amber?" he called again. "Where'd you go?"

The saur hadn't gotten very far away. It was the simple fact that he had left that made Glen worry. A lot of pokémon liked to be alone to die, and they had all suffered severe wounds in the previous day's battle. He was still shivering, even after so many hours, and was crouching by a tree. He looked at Glen as he approached. "Saur." "Freaking took you long enough."

"Amber," Glen smiled in relief and fell to his knees, hugging the creature and ignoring the bruises that shouted at him to stop this idiocy of movement. He realized as he did why Amber had been shaking for so long. With a gasp, he pulled away and looked in the saur's eyes. "You're about to evolve, aren't you?"

A nod.

"Oh, Amber, I'm so sorry I didn't realize it; I thought you were just hurt. Do you... do you want to evolve yet? I mean..." he grinned, "you didn't pip an ace, but I think it was close enough, and believe it or not, I caught it on the pokedex. You'll go down in history as the only sharpshooting bulbasaur in history."

"Bulb..." "I'm scared."

Glen started stroking his head. "You don't have to if you don't want to. You can supress it again, and it won't matter to me. I love you, Amber."

The bulbasaut nuzzled against his hand, clearly still afraid. He trusted Glen, though. He had always trusted Glen, ever since first meeting him. Something in the way the boy ten years old, then had greeted him, something in the way he spoke and moved, told Amber that Glen would never betray him, for any reason, ever. Glen taught him things and taught him how to think and they grew up together, linked inextricably one to the other. It was true that Glen had that wall Ambrosia had to wear down, but once inside, he learned that Glen was willing to share his whole life with the creature, and Ambrosia basked in that love, day in and day out. It made sense that they would never be taken from one another; Amber had been Glen's first successful, solo, unorthodox experiment.

Amber was a year old when Glen's parents bought him for the boy. It was how things were done. If a child had any interest in ever being a trainer and his parents could afford it, they bought him an elemental pokémon, because regardless of whether or not he would really be a trainer, it was accepted that people generally have at least one pokémon. If one of the domesticated, elemental pokémon was unavailable, a skilled and somewhat off-the-mold kid might catch a wild pokémon, but it was just as odd as someone catching their own dog or snake.

It was heavily questioned when Glen decided to name him Ambrosia, despite not knowing the saur's gender. The two available names from that were both female Amber and Rose. Being a boy, though, Glen referred to the saur as male. When asked directly, he said that the name fit. Ambrosia was a drink of the gods, a perfect posession. Amber is fossilized sap; fitting for a plant, but also a symbol of the everlasting. And roses, of course, are beautiful, and even at ten, he said, "Beauty surpasses gender." After the initial shock: "But Rose? Roses are symbols of romance, Glen."

"Dad says romance and fantasy mean the same thing." And the conversation had devolved into "Oh you know your words so well!" Years later, someone less concerned for Glen's ego asked him the same question. "Why Ambrosia?"

"Look, it's a pretty name. Whether he's a guy or a girl really doesn't matter to me. He's beautiful. The way he his veins are so dark and mysterious and the way he moves... I don't know if you've noticed this, it's a very subtle thing: he walks fluidly. Most saurs bumble along like idiots, like they're gonna run into a wall at any moment. He has coordinated himself to move with a proper gait and really, he has become more than any saur could hope to be."

"But that's after a few years. You named him Ambrosia when he was tripping over his own vines."

"That's true. Look at his eyes, though. They're golden."

"So name him Auron. Manly, stems from gold'; it works."

"Auron is a lion's name. Amber is quiet and calm. I looked into his eyes when we were picking him out and I knew that I could bond with him better than any other creature, maybe even human beings. He is a blessing to everything about me."

"But-"

"I now invoke the rule of it's my pokémon, I can name him whatever I want.' Drop it, okay?"

But none of those reasons would have made it through Allanon's lie detector unscathed. Sure, they were applicable when he came up with them, especially the initial ones. However, Glen was obsessively aesthetic. The name sounded nice. He liked the word "amber" and when he discovered it fit so nicely into "ambrosia," he immediately knew he had a name for his pokémon. Kids don't think about things that deeply. He stole the "beauty surpasses gender" quote from a list of online quotes he had been browsing one day. He was really just lucky that he had so many reasons to choose from for that name.

After a month of raising and bonding with the saur, he and it were sitting peacefully on top of a grassy knoll one night. Glen had stolen away out of his bedroom window, had brought the saur via pokeball, and was reading a book by the light of a flashlight. Normally, his parents would not have minded this in the house, but he was reading out loud, to Amber. He could never quite tell if the saur understood the words he was saying. It was his greatest concern would the mind of an animal ever be capable of communicating with him? In general, pokémon displayed about equivalent intelligence to dogs, and that was not enough for Glen. He wanted something for which when he said even something simple like "Go grab that tennis ball," he wouldn't have to point to get his message across.

He had closed the book after a while and turned to face the creature, looking into its eyes. Amber had looked right back, already in the knowledge that he would never leave Glen as long as they both lived. The black-haired boy had held those golden eyes in his sight and said, "Amber, my only goal with you is for you to be able to talk back to me when I talk to you. I want to make it so you can do that. Do you understand me?" Unable to convey emotions very well without eyebrows, the saur had nodded fervently. That had been the moment that sealed their relationship, small and quick as it was. Glen had let out a tremendous sigh of relief and covered him in a hug, which turned into an impromptu battle as they rolled down the hill together, laughing the whole way.

"I'm here for you," he gently cooed. "I'll tell you what if you decide to evolve and we don't like it, I'll buy a devolution thing at the next stop. No questions asked you just say the word."

"Saur, saur!" "You don't have that kind of money! Besides, only the enemy makes the spray. I won't support them."

Glen thought about this. "Well, I can agree with that. So you're not going to evolve, then?"

"Bulba!" "Of course I'm going to evolve, douchebag! Just if I start complaining, smack me upside the head or something instead of wasting your money. If I could sharpshoot as a bulbasaur, I can sure as Hell thread a needle at two hundred feet as an ivysaur. I'm just... nervous, is all. Say something comforting; I'm a pansy, I know."

Glen smirked. "Your ego is the size of a venusaur and you look like mother Nature threw up one day, saw that it was good enough, and said Give it breath.'"

"Bulbasaur!" "I'd have been your dad if that growlithe hadn't beat me to your mom!" He stopped shivering and started pulsing like a heart as his body began producing alarming quantities of ether. His form glowed with a white sheen as his muscles and bone began to grow, and Glen could hear the others in the area walk toward them, though he didn't react. Amber looked like he was in pain. The boy put a loving hand on his cheek and looked into his eyes, holding his gaze even as he flipped out a pokedex, from where, Rachel could "only guess" when she recognized the silver color. The saur continued to grow as the bulb on his back smoothly opened up and revealed a gorgeous, white flower with subtle, green highlights at its base.

When it was complete, Glen gave him a fierce hug and stood up to check the bulb. It was still seated directly on Amber's back, meaning he had been right about the gender. Females would have needed a place to store fertilized seeds. Also, the top of the flower reached up to about Glen's chest. Unlike many pokon, the size difference between saur stages are fairly significant. "You did it!" he whispered excitedly, examining him all over, massaging his new musculature, and finally pushing his forehead against the saur's with a happy grin. "You wanna dance?"

"Saur!" the pokémon answered gleefully. The two got right next to one another and, in front of Rachel, Zach (who had been allowed to wake up), and all of the pokémon present, initiated a dance that mostly involved wiggling their hips to make Amber's leaves swish back and forth and a lot of arm/vine/jazz hands action*. They even clapped, except that the ivysaur made a whipcrack instead. They hadn't had a chance to use it in years, but they both knew it perfectly. This was obviously of tremendous import to them, given the excessive attempts not to giggle from both. Finally, they faced one another, got down like football players, and headbutted. Obviously, this knocked Glen several feet away so that he stumbled and fell flat on his back, but Amber still wasted no time in jumping on his chest and tickling his sides with vines. "Gaaack! Ack, Amber, I'm suffocating! You so fat!"

This did not deter the creature at all. "Saur!"

Zach was laughing ecstatically at the display of childishness from this twenty-something researcher, and Rachel was seen frequently turning to her drowzee as both of them did their very, very best not to laugh with him. The dirt held great interest for her during this time.

After a while, Glen rolled his head backwards and saw Rachel and Zach behind him. His face was bright red from the attack and he was grinning like an idiot. "Hi, Rachel. Hi, Zach. I see you're both awake."

Zach waved, but Rachel just raised an eyebrow. "I figured I couldn't miss an opportunity to let him see his guardian making a fool of himself."

"You two should take some time to get some actual sleep. We can take first watch." He acted as though the girl he was looking at hadn't tried to drug him so she could steal everything he owned. Niether one of them had been able to establish dominance, but Glen knew he had more experience. Not only was he older, but he was very slightly more willing to enjoy himself, meaning he had comic relief and wasn't tense all the time, whereas if she screwed up her face any more, she'd look constipated.

"Why should I trust you?"

"Because I'm sexy?" He wiggled under Amber, who almost fell off. Zach giggled.

"Flamboyantly so. I think you mostly don't want me to see what your raichu has been doing with Zach every night since the last time I saw you." Zach's entire face and probably the rest of his body flushed a deep red color that was visible even in the night and he started to make defensive noises. "Little kids are so cute," she said demeaningly. He sighed and bowed his head.

Glen rolled his eyes. "I tried, kid. And honestly, even if you are turning into an eevee, you still need to be chasing human tail. Female tail, more specifically, excepting some fairly exceptional talent dealing with bullies. Niether one at this age, though."

"Oh, why not?" Rachel asked innocently. "With the transformation, he'll probably be sexually mature in about a month."

The older boy stifled a laugh. "Oh, don't be mean! He's mortified as it is. I'm still taking first watch, by the way."

She snorted. "How about this? You and Ceres take first watch."

"You really think I'm stupid, don't you?"

"Yes, but fine. You and Heracles."

He glared at her and finally pushed himself out from under Amber, who was also no longer amused. "Look, little girl," he said as he got up, using his most scathing tone, "don't insult me. You may be a trained assassin, but that has clearly not prepared you for me. I know what scythers are capable of, both those without training and those with it. If he so much as touches me, I will crush him. Am I clear?"

She practically hissed at him. "If you hurt him in the least, I will rip your head off and spit down your throat!" She took a few moments to quell her heaving breast. She clearly cared for her pokémon, if she had chosen that line rather than the more readily available "If he touches you, you're probably already dead," reminder. Glen couldn't tell if she was still acting, and Allanon seemed not to care for the moment. Rachel tapped her fingers agitatedly on the ground. "Okay. Will you stay up with Demetre, then? I feel like there'll be less tension."

"I think we both know well enough that our pokémon have an advantage over humans that is misnomerically ethereal." Stop making up words. Allanon was a jerk about language. I also caught the dropped preposition earlier, but decided not to point it out. "You and I will take first watch, if you're so intent on it being one from each party. For the other nights, I'm sure we can arrange some kind of pairing. I'm going to try to convince you I won't kill you in your sleep, though."

"That may take a while. As I recall, all the animals you euthenized were asleep when it happened."

Glen quirked an eyebrow at her, but let the insult slide off. "You're an interesting blend of stupid and retentive." Almost slide off. Let's say it left a residue. "The rest of you people get some rest. Rachel, you and I need to go get that fearow and see what was up with it, for starters. More accurately, you do."

Even though Zach was somewhat hyper from his excitement and not happy that he had to go to sleep again even after having been put to sleep by Ceres, he complied with minimal grumbling. Syn slept curled in his arms after a significant talking-to from Allanon. The seven of them slept in the same general area while Rachel went off, for the first time compliant, to retrieve the body.

When she got back, she handed it to Glen and stood behind him while he plucked the bird and used his knife to gut it. The moon and stars shone brightly down on them in the cool night air and a slight breeze kept things fresh. He worked in silence for a while, but then tried to be amiable. "We should cook this. Could have a really great breakfast tomorrow morning."

"Eating pokémon? You're worse than I thought."

"Why not?" he returned mildly. "We eat animals and plants. pokémon really aren't that far removed."

"They're practically sentient."

He positioned his hands to snap the neck, changed his mind, snapped his fingers instead, and went to his satchel. "You think spearows and farfetch'd are sentient? Caterpies, beedrills, tauri, staryus? Come on, don't kid with me. Pinecos?" He pulled out a bone saw.

"But every species can be trained. They're not like-"

"Pigs? Pigs are the fourth smartest animals on the planet, not counting humans. Smarter than dogs. That reminds me how long it's been since I've had bacon..." He licked his lips and started sawing off the fearow's head, not at all concerned with the blood getting on his arms. It had mostly bled out by that time, anyway. The fearow was a pathetic sight, with its mutilated eye and naked body. They were lucky ants hadn't found it.

"I was going to say cows."

"Also quite trainable, although they've had most of their smarts bred out of them. And you're wrong on the sentience. The only sentient pokémon I've met are my three, and I have a feeling your three are also pretty intelligent, given how Ceres has been helping you with your emotional state."

"Hmph." She was not about to be driven off-topic. "What about an ivysaur?"

"Would you eat a dog?"

"They do in some cultures." He started searching for a grip on the back of the bird's head with his thumb.

"Only when they're desperate. I think I've told Amber that saur steak is probably pretty succulent before... and I've eaten venison, which is like horse. Be justifiable in your prejudices. We don't eat pets."

"But that was somebody's pet!" she pointed angrily at the bird whose skull cap he popped off with a sickening crunch. He started digging around the edges of the gray matter.

"So were all the horses people turned into glue. And you can make an argument that sheep are pets. Actually, my mother used to raise farm animals like pets, and then her mother would cook them. Chickens and ducks and whatever."

"It had a name!"

"Not one I knew." He pulled out the brain and examined it. "I've heard these are delicacies in Hawaii."

She welcomed the subject change this time and put a hand on her head in frustration. "Where's Hawaii?"

"... nevermind. Aha." His fingers squelched around in the grayish-purple organ for a moment before he managed to remove a tiny, green rectangle with silver wires striping its surface. "You think we should look for others? This could be a decoy. In fact, I have this sneaking suspicion that this entire bird was a decoy." Rachel whirled around to check on their charges. "Oh, don't worry, I asked Al to stay awake until we got back."

"He's an abra he has to sleep, you idiot." She started to go back, but Glen stopped her with a hiss.

"Abras are the only pokémon capable of unconscious teleportation he's set up a field that will only accept the two of us, and only if I enter first. If it's anyone else, he and the rest of them end up a few hundred yards away."

"You still already violated our-!" She was livid.

"Just like you did when you had Demetre plant spores around Zach." He sighed tiredly. "Look, Rachel, I'm a scientist. You should understand that by now from the way I'm dissecting this thing." He dug out the other eye and picked up the head to peer through the sockets and check for other chips. "I used to make a living based entirely on my ability to rationalize more coldly than any other person in my classes. I mean, come on, I was in top-level research at age nineteen. It means I had about three friends through high school and college, but it also means that I know the moves that you can and might make. The only reason I even shook your hand was because I figured you had some other trick up your sleeve if I didn't call that one." He calmly began cutting apart the heart. "I really did expect another chip."

Rachel was finally silent. He couldn't see her face, but he didn't need to. She was furious. Her arms were crossed as she stood stiffly, trying not to betray her humiliation. When he finished with the heart, he grimaced and opened the stomach. "If there's a second one, this first one's a decoy I don't think they'd go for a double-cross. They were expecting me, but I don't think they set this guy up just for me. If there's just this one, there's no way for us to know. Is your pokex on a secure network?"

"Duh. Pokenomics set it up for me when they hired me."

"You're... a really special breed of retard. Give me your pokedex."

"What? No! You're gonna break it!"

"Of course I'm going to break it!" He held out a bloody hand. "I can preserve the hard drive, but I have every reason to believe they have a hardware tracking device in there. They know where we are, they know Amber evolved, and they know everything we said in the last twenty minutes. If you check, I'm absolutely certain the microphone is on right now."

With a pained look in her eyes, she took out the silver pokedex, flipped it open, and gasped as she noticed the mic was, indeed, functioning. "But wait, if they're listening, they would have turned it off to hide themselves. They can't be!"

He tried to snatch it out of her hands. "It's called a double-cross, idiot. They heard me talking a second ago and learned I think one more betrayal ahead, all the time. So they knew I'd anticipate them turning it off, so they went a step ahead and left it on."

"At least wipe off your hands somewhere, first!" she whispered fiercely. "I've had this for a long time; I won't have you defile it."

"Fine." He wiped his hands off on the grass, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. Once they were clean, he stood again and look hard in her eyes. "Give it over."

As soon as the device was in his hands, he used his knife to pry off the plastic covering. Inside, amidst the mess of wires and different chips, a tiny, red light was blinking. In one swift motion, Glen ripped out the square chunk of plastic that held the hard drive and hurled the rest of the device away from them. It detonated in mid-air, lighting up the night and sending both of them staggering backwards. Glen's hat fell off and onto the ground. As soon as they had recovered, Glen ran a hand through his hair and mumbled, "Well that was lucky."

"Lucky?" Rachel demanded.

"It should have exploded the instant I pried it open. Although it's possible that..." he lowered his eyelids and gazed at her purposefully. "You could have known. That would explain why you wanted the hard drive; so I'd have to take the time to pull it out. That blast wouldn't have killed you- maybe just knocked you down and out. But I'd be dead if I was any slower. And by now, you want me dead badly enough that you're willing to take a little punishment if it means you finish your mission."

"I swear, I didn't." Surprisingly, she was keeping her head. Glen believed her, for that reason only. "I've been involved in enough missions by now to know Pokenomics installs those when they want to eliminate their own people."

"Either that, or they want to ensure I connect that data chip in the fearow to my pokedex rather than yours. It could still be a virus. We should use Zach's; I gave it to him, anyway."

"Also possible."

"You've calmed down a lot."

"We're not talking about eating pokémon anymore; I feel that warrants a more reasonable mien."

He gave her one more calculating glance. "Anyway." He handed her the hard drive and sifted through the partially-digested contents of the bird's stomach with his knife, not wanting to deal with the acids on his hands. "Nothing here." He wiped his hands off again, just to be sure, and cleaned his blade on the grass. "I can hook up that chip to Zach's pokedex with some stuff in my bag."

A crack whipped into the night air. Glen fell to the ground, unconscious, blood trickling down the back of his neck. Under normal circumstances, Allanon would have noticed his switch out of consciousness, but he had been exhausted from all of his exertions. Unwilling to let Glen know when he was tired, he allowed his strength to be drained too much and was unable to uphold his field when Ceres woke up, somehow evolved, and crushed what strength he had left. The other pokémon didn't stand a chance against the hypno's psychic powers. Rachel walked stiffly back to their camp, put Demetre and Heracles in their pokeballs, grabbed Glen's bag, and knelt over Zach. She, Ceres, and the boy vanished into thin air, leaving the dawn to find Glen with nothing but his knife, his hat, and his nearly comatose pokémon.

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*details of this dance available upon request :D believe it or not