FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 3

"That was a very scary place in that ball. I don't know how some could handle it," I finally state, breaking the silence.

Allen doesn't immediately respond but instead starts walking into the town. "They don't really have much of a choice. Most are too weak or too young to really fight it when they're first placed inside a ball and after that they slaves without any will."

I follow behind him after picking my ball up from the ground; very much nervous about being so out in the open and in front of so many that had they seen me they might have tried to chase me out of the town for being a pest or something. They have before.

"Have you ever had to go through that?" I ask as we round the corner of one block and start walking past another row of buildings, each one looking almost the exact same.

"I did, when I was two years old. That was a long time ago, I don't really remember all that much of it, most of it has been blocked out. By now I've gotten used to being inside the ball. But if you think that being trapped in there is bad, imagine having to do it when you're only two."

"I am only two years old," I protest, not finding the comment the least bit amusing.

"You're two?" He asks, staring at me incredulously.

I don't bother to give a direct response and instead simply look around at all the tall buildings, the smallest of which seem to be easily six or seven times taller than I am and the larger ones beyond my ability to count, making me wonder just how tall these humans get.

"I suppose that explains why you couldn't understand what I was telling you earlier," He comments, guiding me to turn slightly by essentially just cutting across my path.

I snort and follow him, moving from the rough white ground to the rough black ground with little strips of white stuff on it though it feels the same as the rest of the black stuff. Sniffing it and finding it the same stuff I look ahead of where I am and see that the white areas are evenly spaced and are separated by only a moderately small distance. When we reach the next white space I stay on it and as Allen continues walking onwards across this area I bunch up at the end of the white space and then uncoil, springing forward and landing in the next white space, completely jumping over the black part. Finding it a fun game I quickly rush over to the end of this little white segment and wait, letting Allen move through the black area to being on the white again before pouncing on the next one again.

"Would you cut that out?" Allen growls at me, swinging his arm at my head.

I barely manage to duck the blow in time and jump back a bit, landing in the black area. I walk back over to him with as sad a face as I could manage. Allen doesn't really seem to be much interested in even bothering to look at me however and the result is we finish walking across the road in silence. But after that point I feel I have to ask since I have no clue as to the layout of this place.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"We are going to get our Trainer's license. Duh!"

"Well how do you know where that is?" I speak up, pushing forward enough so that I am standing in front of him.

"Take that thing out of your mouth when you speak," He growls, swatting the ball still in my mouth and forcing it to fall out and roll a rather small distance before I can get at it again. I don't put it immediately back into my mouth, however.

"But then I wouldn't be able to walk and talk at the same time without losing it." I complain.

"Not my fault that you were born into such a useless body," he quips, then points at some stone thing placed on the corner of the wall. "You see this? This is how I know where I'm going. Every town on a Trainer's pilgrimage has plenty of these things placed around town so that any trainer entering it would know where everything is. Or at least everything they'll need to know."

I pick up my ball again and move closer, making sure to position myself in such a way so that he can't swing at it again. I look at the little stone thing and see it divided up into three parts, each separated by a horizontal line. The top one has some sort of picture of an egg or something. Second line has some sort of container that looks like it'd hold some sort of liquid on it and final line just has a pokeball. Next to each of the three symbols is an arrow that's pointing in some direction or other.

"The top one leads to the pokecenter. This is important for you to remember since if I get knocked out in battle you'll have to take me here to revive me. Second is the item shop where you can buy things, last one is the gym. If there were other things of importance in the town that would also be placed here. Now enough talk we're almost there," He states as he raises an arm and points ahead of us.

I turn to take a look at what it is he's pointing at and I see some sort of building. The size of it is nowhere nearly as impressive as some of the others ones in this place, being only the height of three to four humans. The main feature of this building seems to be its sign, which is a rather large fat, pink, round thing with an overly cheerful look on its face and holding up a large pokeball. When we get close to the building I start to wonder how we're supposed to get in since I don't see anything that's low enough for either of us to reach it. But these thoughts turn out unwarranted as the doors open up all by themselves, causing me to jump back a foot or two in surprise. Allen seems primarily just amused so I quickly move back over to him and act as if it didn't happen though I can hear him fighting to keep himself from laughing.

"You could have warned me about that," I quip.

"And miss your expression? Anyways, leave me alone for a moment. I need to think about how we're going to do this," he orders while moving away from the entrance and into the building but off to the side so that people wouldn't run over him.

I almost stop to try and confront him on the fact he waited until we got here before trying to figure out how we're going to do the thing he made out as to being easy. But my thoughts are interrupted by the smell of food nearby and my stomach growling since I hadn't eaten anything at all today. Figuring that leaving it with Allen is as safe as it will be I drop my ball a foot or two from Allen and then turn and start following my nose to where the smell is. Even before I can get close I can smell the fact that there is meat available and it makes me start to salivate a bit. But I keep it under control since I don't yet have the food yet and if I let myself carried away I might not get it. But when I find the food I frown a bit. Instead of placing it where anyone can reach it they put it on some large flat thing that is a good foot or two above my head. Quickly checking to see that what few people that are also here are not paying attention to the food I jump up onto a chair and then onto the table with all of the food. Looking around I see quite a bit of fruit and other food products. I lean over and quickly grab and gobble up a strawberry since it happens to be taunting me with how close the plateful of it is placed to where I stand. With that I can feel assured that even if caught now this trip isn't completely a wasted effort I start to look around and see where the meat is. Some of these things make me question the sanity of these humans for putting this stuff in their bodies. I see a few items that practically reek of fat though having almost no meat, some stuff that looks and smells unpalatable sitting among the rest of the food and some fluffy light brown stuff that smells like it wouldn't have much taste at all. Finally I find what I'm looking for when I find a small tub of nearly boiling water filled with long, cylindrical strips of some meat product.

Thinking it an odd place to put them I quickly dip my head into the tub and grab one of them in my mouth and then after rearranging it so that my mouth is holding the middle of it and the sides are pointing out the sides of my muzzle I jump off the table and land lightly on the ground. Once on the ground I shake myself a bit to try and get as much of the water off as I can before it cools and then walk back over to where Allen and my ball are located, my head held high, showing off my little prize. He doesn't seem to notice my return right away and so I lie down and prop up the thing of meat with my paws so that one part is pointing up in the air. I then wrap my mouth around the other end and then bite it. The thing gives some resistance at first and then my teeth go right through it. I happily start to chew the part I bit off and my eyes close by themselves as I savor my meal. Though tasting rather good I find it odd that this meat doesn't have any blood in it, though it is still warm. After chewing it up a bit I swallow and then open my eyes to get a second bite, noticing Allen staring at me.

"What?" I ask before biting off another piece of the meat.

"What is that?" He asks, his voice sounding like he's almost angry at me.

Knowing that it is not polite to talk with food in ones' mouth I wait until I've finished chewing and swallow before even trying to answer him.

"It's food. You did interrupt me earlier today when I was trying to get something to eat then. There's a tall thing back there full of food if you want some yourself." I incline my head towards where I found all the food before biting off another piece and have to adjust the positioning of it in my paws since I've eaten half of it so far.

"That's human food. How did you get that? Did someone give it to you?"

"Nope," I state after swallowing again, slightly amused by his reaction to me having food as if it is a surprise that I need food at all. "No one seemed to be paying attention so I just hopped up there and grabbed it."

"And they let you?" He practically shouts at me, which makes me start to wonder if I should have found somewhere else to eat before going back to where my ball was. Either way I wasn't going to let him take my food from me now that I have it, even if he is stronger than me.

"They didn't seem to notice," I state with an aggressive tone as I take a large bit of my meal and keep a wary eye on him in case he tries to snatch it away from me.

Though I am now more protective of my food and trying to eat it up faster than I would have in a more casual setting I do still take the time to relish in the taste, savoring each bite. He seems quiet for a bit but doesn't look like he's going to interrupt my meal. I finish up the last bite before he speaks up.

"I wonder if we could use that. Can you read human?" He asks.

"I'm two. What do you think? I don't think I've even seen humans words before," I state while licking my chops to get anything that might have gotten stuck to the fur around it.

"Well... if I wrote what you needed to get would you be able to recognize the words and grab it from a bunch of others?"

"Yeah, probably," I shrug as I watch the last of the humans in this building leave.

"First I need something to write on," he states and from his expression it seems like he isn't really noticing me, instead is fully focused on working something out in his head. "Can you grab me a piece of paper and a pencil?"

"I don't know what those are," I respond.

"A paper is a flat white thing. Make sure one side is completely white without anything on it. The other thing I need looks like a narrow stick with a sharp, black tip on one end. You might be able to find one up there," he points at the main desk.

Shrugging I walk over to that desk and size it up. It seems about three times my height. I take a step back and then bunch up before unleashing a full jump and land neatly on top of the thing. If it were any much higher I would probably have a lot of difficulty in making the jump but as it was I can manage to get up without too much difficulty. I find a container full with long sticks and I pull one out gingerly with my teeth and then put it down and look at it. It seems to match the description Allen had given me so I look for the other thing he wanted and find a bunch of the white stuff and use one of my paws to pull one up and separate it from the rest. I then grab both the stick and the white thing and hop off the desk and drop them at Allen's feet. He nods a sort of thanks and then takes the stick and starts moving it around on the white thing and then after a moment puts it down and hands me the white thing again, only now there are a bunch of symbols on it.

"Here, I need you to go back up there and find a paper that has these words on the top. Do you think you can do that?"

I nod and then grab the white thing in my mouth and then move back over to the next desk. Knowing that I can make the jump I don't hesitate. Once there I drop the white thing and then grab a bunch of other white things nearby and place them nearby and start moving through them trying to find what I need. I don't seem to be making too much progress when my ears perk up and I hear motion coming through the door coming towards me. I quickly pick up the large stack of white things and quickly place them all back where I found them and then quickly adjust them to try and make it look like I wasn't here then grab the one Allen wrote on then jump of and hide near the desk as someone comes through the door behind the desk and stands next to it, waving off someone else who came through the door. Once that person has left and the person behind the desk not seeming to be in any rush to leave I back up a bit and then jump back on, startling the poor woman. She sees the paper in my mouth and reaches for it. Figuring she'll probably be able to find whatever is written on it a lot faster than I can I let her take it. She looks at it briefly before turning to me and speaking in a soft, yet deliberately slow voice. Even still I couldn't make out what much of what she's saying.

"Do you want the form that's written on this paper?" She asks but the only words I can make out were want, form and paper and even then only barely.

Guessing at what she was saying I make a nodding motion. She then places the white thing down out of my reach and then reaches in a drawer and pulls out a slip of blue paper. She hands this to me and I gingerly take it, give a nod to her and then hop back off and head back over to Allen, fully aware she's still watching me closely. Allen grabs it and starts filling in some of the data. Most of which I can't even understand how he can make sense of all those tiny symbols. After a moment he stops.

"It needs a name for you. Guess Poune is as good as any," he states before writing again on the blue thing.

"Life?" I ask, my head cocked to one side.

"Not quite. More the fact that when we met you were in mid pounce and didn't see me, so pounce without a c," he chuckles. "All that's left is a trainer name."

"What species are you?" I ask.

"Squirtle, duh."

"Now my fault I don't have every species name memorized in the two years I've been alive. But how about Squivul?"

"Squivul?"

"Yeah. It's the first part of Squirtle and Vulpix."

"Fine enough," he shrugs before writing it down. He then pulls out a small little thing of metal with a hole through it and hands it and the blue thing back to me. "Can you bring these two things back over to her?"

I take both and then hop up, the metal thing feeling odd in my mouth. She grabs the blue thing and then I place the small metal thing down onto the desk as well. She picks it up and some sort of shocked expression crosses her head as some sort of realization strikes her. She then starts hitting a bunch of keys on a flat thing in front of a box-like thing and then after doing so stops and then goes into the back and grabs a large bag and a few other things. She then shows me them as she puts them in the bag. What she seems to put in there are just five balls and then a small little thing containing some sort of liquid inside of a different pocket than the balls. She then puts a thick little rectangular thing into it as well and finally the metal thing Allen had given me into the bag then hands the bag to me as well. Seeing her pull all of the stuff up Allen starts moving towards the desk as well.

"It's so nice to see two pokemon that would normally be rather killing each other than look at each other decide to work with each other in such a long-lasting relationship. You're all set and good luck," she states before sitting back down, giving a pushing motion at the bag, which makes me think that it might be ours.

Not being able to understand a word she said since she was talking too fast I move over and step through the straps to try and help carry it since it is easily as large as I am if not slightly more. I then drag it to the edge of the desk and then leap off it over to Allen. But I underestimate just how heavy it is and instead of landing softly on my feet I end up landing face-down on the ground with the bag on top of me. Allen starts laughing at me as I try and extract myself from the bag and then snort at him, a small fluff of fire coming out of my mouth. He then moves and places both my ball and I'm guessing his ball as well into the bag.

"You're carrying it then." I state, still somewhat offended at him laughing at me.

He continues to laugh as he picks it up, puts it on with a strap around each arm and then we move through the door, apparently now our own trainers.