FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 5

The four of us continue walking through these grasses for a good while. I don't know how to tell time but I do know the sun has really started to move. Currently it's about halfway between directly above us and the ground. Allen wordlessly leads us onward and we follow. The Pidgey Caleb seems quite content sitting on my back, an arrangement I reluctantly allowed so that we wouldn't have to deal with how slow he'd walk considering his wing was bruised by Allen before we caught him. The second pokemon we have managed to catch, the Ratatta Sanaline seems to be getting more and more impatient all the time. I can still smell quite a bit of emotion coming from her but it is thankfully not so much anger than frustration and annoyance. For most of the time as we walk I have found an interest just watching the clouds above us move along, almost salivating each time I see a bird in the sky. An itch starts to grow behind one of my ears and I twitch my ear to try and see if I can get at it without having to scratch but all that act seems to do is make the itch all the worse.

"My ear itches," I complain, knowing that I wouldn't be allowed to stop, let Caleb off, scratch it and then let Caleb back on my back.

Sanaline huffs at me a moment but then I feel Caleb moving up to almost being on top of my head before a wonderful sensation emanates from my ear as he scratches at the itch for me. My eyes half close and I moan softly at the Pidgey's administrations, wanting him to continue.

"So where are we going, anyway?" Sanaline finally asks as Caleb stops scratching and moves back down onto my back. "Most people I've seen are going the other way down this area. Or is this group so backwards we're trying to go forwards by going in the wrong direction?"

"We are heading back to Professor Oak's Lab so I can return his ring," Allen replies casually.

"What's a ring? Is it that shiny thing you had me give to that lady?" I ask, managing to take my eyes away from just watching the scenery.

"Yes. That would be a ring. It's an object humans put on their fingers."

"Fingers?" I ask while my gaze drifts upwards again to see if there might be any birdies coming down to land so I can find something to snack on. "I'm hungry, when do we eat next?"

Out of nowhere a punch hits me in the jaw and I jump back, almost throwing Caleb off in the process. I raise a paw to rub at the area that Allen had hit and then stare at him guardedly in case he decides to follow up on it.

"Is food the only thing you can think of? You just ate a whole hotdog only a couple of hours ago. And where do you expect me to come up with all of this magical food?"

"It would do us all some good to find some place to rest and recover from our own injuries if we are to make it all the way back to the town by day's end," Caleb speaks up to try and ease Allen's apparent anger.

"I suppose if I'm going to have any chance of a piece of mind I might as well see about taking care of it. Odds are you'd probably end up begging the Professor for food anyway, assuming you don't just go and steal it. So see if you can wait till after we return the ring and I'll see what I can do. Okay?" Allen submits.

"Those clouds are pretty," I observe while staring at the sky again, not seeing a single bird in the sky and finding it a little bit odd.

"You're hopeless," Allen swings at me again but I had made sure to move outside his punching range before going back to my sky gazing.

"Well what did you expect from the dimwit? I'm surprised he hasn't gotten you killed yet," Sanaline snides.

"I wonder how soft those clouds must feel," I state idly, ignoring Sanaline's comment.

"Well, my cute little friend," Caleb begins, his calling me cute again makes me tense up a bit and duck my head for a second. "I have personally flown through quite a few clouds and I can say with utmost certainty that your fur is by far softer than any cloud."

I keep an eye on Allen in case he tries to attack me again and in the process notice Sanaline's limp. It isn't noticeable from a casual glance but every so often there's a slight change in the tempo of one of her feet just enough to show some difficulty in her ability to move it in relation to the other three though she must be trying not to show it. Still, my thoughts drift elsewhere, to Caleb's comment. I know for a fact that my fur is solid. I can touch it easily enough. The softness of a thing has something to do with how smooth it is and how much air is in it. The clouds are in the air so they probably have quite a bit of air in them, far more than my fur ever could. So that would mean that clouds would have to be not as smooth as my fur. But the only thing I ever see come out of clouds is water. Even though it hurts to touch the water from the sky or on the ground it feels smooth enough. Probably as smooth as my fur is if not smoother. How can that thing stay in the sky anyway? If water is the only thing that comes out then it must be made of water and air, but water falls. Then again so do solids, but birds fly. Bird wings are rather thin and their bones are rather hollow. Maybe flat, hollow things fly and thick things fall. Then wouldn't that mean clouds are very thin? They don't look thin and Caleb said he's flown through some. And then if it is made of water how come it doesn't all come down at once as soon as some of it escapes?

"I'm confused," I admit after a few more seconds thought.

"You would be. Just try not to think about it. It's better off that you didn't get his comment," Allen shrugs.

The rest of the walk goes by rather uneventfully and we eventually leave the tall grasses and move into what seems like a smaller version of the place we were at where we became our own trainers. At first glance I don't seem to be able to see any of the little block thingies that are supposed to tell everyone where to go but Allen seems to know the way and leads us towards the one big building in this place. When we arrive he doesn't guide us to the front door as I thought he would but rather starts walking around. I start to speak up to ask where we're going since I don't see any building behind it but he rushes as fast as he can and clamps my mouth shut painfully and makes some sort of noise that sounds like he's trying to say something but doesn't seem to do anything else. He then turns around and moves us to the side entrance to this place. We come to a door on the side and he tries turning the round thing and after finding that it turns smiles briefly before turning it more and then pushing it all the way open. He guides us inside the building and starts taking us to the back of the building until he finds a machine that sort of looks similar to one that we saw in that other building with the female human.

"Okay you two, get into your balls, this thing will have you two healed up in a few moments," Allen addresses Sanaline and Caleb.

Both seem reluctant to do so but do obey and push the button that sucks them up in that red ray of light.

"Do I have to get into mine as well?" I ask, really not wanting to have to go through the nothingness inside that place.

"No, there isn't any need for that," he states as he puts both on the machine and then turns it on. "Now let's put this ring back and then get something to eat."

Allen starts walking again but before I can go again I shake myself off for a good few seconds. Though Caleb was light I could still feel him and so I can easily notice his absence and need to shake out the fur on my back back to the way it should lie instead of however matted it had become while the bird was on it.

"How is that thing supposed to heal them when they're in their balls?" I ask, completely confused how whatever happens to us can be placed on something and heal us.

"The ball operates under the law of conservation of mass and energy," he responds as we enter a place the smells very strongly of various edible things. "The ball converts you into energy and a matrix records what mass goes where. However, the balls do still have to obey the laws of thermodynamics. The balls are very efficient but not perfect and some energy is lost, especially when coming into and out of the ball. To help with the energy loss the balls all have a capacitor but even that has its limits. Now the capacitor can be recharged by any of the devices like Sanaline and Caleb are in or if they're in the storage unit. As they are just energy it is a fairly simple matter to heal just about any injuries they have but it takes energy to do this. But once the capacitor is depleted all energy that is lost will come from that pokemon, causing them to get weaker and weaker until that pokemon dies."

"These things can kill us?" I shout. "And you let me get in one of those things?'

"Relax," Allen comments as he starts rummaging through something before pulling out a couple of objects that have an indentation that looks like it's meant to hold something. "So long as your ball isn't damaged it'll take weeks if not months before such a thing could happen. Besides, that's what the professor has been working on; trying to work on the algorithm that determines what is removed. He's trying to find out the process that will allow a pokemon to continue to live with the least amount of energy left."

I try to process what he's told me while he takes off our bag before grabbing some other one and proceeding to turn it over the two indented objects, causing brownish pellets to start coming out of it.

"Wouldn't it just be better to make it lose as much energy or get more from stuff that isn't me?" I ask, moving close to sniff at the pellets and finding that they smell somewhat sweet if bland and definitely have no meat in them.

"Probably. I think that I remember the professor talking about a few other scientists working on something like that but I haven't heard of any progress. I only really know what the professor has been doing."

"How do you know so much about all this anyway?" I ask before nibbling a bit on one of the pellets in the indented object Allen pushes my way. "These things don't really have a taste."

"For starters," Allen pops a few into his own mouth, "they are not really designed to have all that much taste. They're designed to be as close to an all-purpose pokemon food as possible. Unless you get the more expensive brands which add artificial flavors on top of it all the people making them were not concerned about the taste since no human was going to eat it. Instead they just loaded them with all sorts of nutrients. As for how I know what I know, I was a sort of assistant to the professor for all these years. He'd talk to the other human assistants about what he was doing or he'd talk to himself and I'd pay attention. He never once actually asked me if I understood any of it or not. I'm pretty sure he doesn't think that pokemon are intelligent enough to handle such complicated subjects."

"So why doesn't it have any taste?" I ask again, not satisfied with that answer.

"Well if you want I can always take it away and then you won't have to worry about the taste," Allen threatens.

"No, no. It's good enough!" I quickly apologize, figuring that enduring a bland meal is much more preferable to enduring an empty stomach.

Not wanting to give him any more reason to try and take my food away I eat in silence. Once finished he takes the little indented thing and puts it away. I start to look around the place and all the curious looking things that are scattered all over the place until Allen pulls on one of my ears.

"Ow, that hurt!" I complain.

"Well if you paid attention I wouldn't have had to do that. I'm really starting to regret choosing you for a traveling companion."

He takes me to a door near the far back of the building. He drops the bag and picks up the metal thing and opens the door. He starts to move in but stops and turns around on my and grabs my head, pulling it forward until it is just a few inches from his own. This close I can not only smell what he's eaten in the past few days but can almost feel the sheer volume of water that resides within him.

"Now you stay right here. If I find you have moved from this spot for any reason I'm going to tear off those tails of yours and wear them as a hat. Is that understood?" He threatens.

I'm not sure if it is a threat he'd be able to carry out or not but with all of these things around here if he is serious it probably wouldn't be too hard for him to find something to do just that. I swallow hard, still trying to get away and too fearful of what he'd do if I tried to use some of my fire on him. I half try to nod but with the grip he has on my head I can't really move it much. He half pushes my head away from him as he turns around and moves into that smaller area on the other side of the door. I can hear the sound of something moving near the front of the building as well as the sounds and scents of two humans. One seems to be a young female while the other seems rather old. Both seem to be coming closer but with all the big things that do whatever they do I cannot see them specifically. I'm half tempted to try and investigate and either get a better look at them or find a more secure place to observe them when they come here. Right in front of a door is not nearly all that good a location to remain undetected nor is this place very secure in that the only way to run is either into the other room with Allen or to the strange individuals. And since I don't want to have to deal with whatever punishment Allen will have in store for me if I move I whine softly as my tails dip down, only one of them managing to come between my legs.

"Allen, someone's coming!" I call into the other room as loudly as I dare without them being made aware of me all the sooner.

"I'll be there in a moment, no need to be such a scaredy-cat about it," Allen calls back from the other room, giving the impression he either didn't hear me or wasn't paying attention.

I'm about to try again and speak up a bit louder when they come into view, my ears pulling back in fear of what they might do to me.