FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 15

"This is quite the sight to behold," The human adult states as he walks closer and more into view. Allen steps up in front of all of us to put himself closest to the human. "I must admit this is quite a few first for me here. Not only have I never seen such a small pokemon being used to carry the backpack but to have so many normal pokemon being left outside of their balls. And no trainer in sight," he rambles on to no one in particular before leaning down towards Allen and raising the pitch of his voice. "So little guy, where's your trainer at? He should be close shouldn't he?"

I can sort of understand enough of what this human is saying to know that he's acting like we are all completely stupid or inferior to himself by the way he is all but dismissing us casually. Allen doesn't blink but merely gestures in my direction with a slight bow.

"What, are you playing me or something? Do you really expect me to think that a vulpix that isn't even fully grown yet is acting as a trainer? Or did you all just steal a backpack?"

Allen responds by plucking the device off its cord attached to the bag and then hands it to the other human. This human looks through it a moment before laughing.

"Well I'll be. Now I've definitely seen it all," he laughs before handing the device back to Allen. "Wait till the other boys hear about this. Poune the Vulpix, a certified trainer of a bunch of pokemon. Well seeing as you are still here and all how about we see just how skilled you are at playing trainer, Mr. Vulpix. If nothing else it would be a great story to tell regardless how it turns out and could help train these bugs. How about a two on two battle?"

"What's he want?" I ask.

"He wants to battle us. I don't quite think that he'll let us go easily without much of a fight. Two of his pokemon against two of our own," Shoul interprets.

"Well I'm going to be one of them. I don't care what you say," Sanaline demands.

"If we're going to do this I'll need help getting this thing off me again."

"Oh, right," Allen remarks before he begins moving over to me and starts removing the straps so that I can potentially get out. Shoul comes over and after a sideways glance at Allen begins working at some of the straps as well.

Within a moment all of the straps are loosened and I'm able to duck out of the straps. I look up and find that the human half expecting an almost impatient look. Instead he looks quite amused by the situation. But once done he moves one of his hands to his side and steps to the side of us before tossing one of his balls off away from us. The ball spits out the reddish light and I see one of the little bugs we've been fighting quite a bit today. More as a measure of reminding myself who all is going in I grab Shoul's ball as he is the next one that was slotted to go in for the rotation and place it a foot or two in front of me. I then go and grab Sanaline's ball next to Shoul's. Not knowing how I'm supposed to do this I decide to turn and bow towards the human and with a rather large chuckle to himself again he returns a small bow back to me. I roll Shoul's ball forward a few inches to indicate that he's up. For some reason both Shoul and Sanaline also follow my example and bow slightly to the human. Shoul then begins walking forward.

"Since we've fought these before your best strategy is just stay away from him as best you can," I comment, eliciting a shrug from Shoul.

Shoul shoots out a blast of electricity from his cheeks before he turns and tries to run to the side so that he can keep as far away from the Weedle's retaliation that he can. The Weedle leaps at him and tries to turn around enough to stab at Shoul with his tail but Shoul is much too far away and too fast for the attack to have any chance of connecting. As I wait for the device to say I can have Shoul attack again the human begins talking.

"Don't worry about pulling any punches on me," the human replies. "It'll be good for them to be beaten up. One thing about bugs is that they have an exoskeleton. But normal exoskeletons would weigh too much for bugs that are the size of almost any bug pokemon. Not to mention it'd be very difficult for them to grow normally. Every now and then bug pokemon go through a process by which they basically weaken parts of their exoskeletons so that they can continue to grow. Sort of like how snakes will go over rocks to loosen their skin before shedding bug pokemon will typically need to have their current exoskeletons beaten up and made looser so that they can shed it for a much more healthy layer. So if I win they get the experience and benefits of such. If I lose then they get some more help keeping them healthy, so I make out ahead either way. And before you ask, no, the balls don't seem to fix this issue. I asked once and was told that the balls and the healers are designed to not interrupt anything in a pokemon's normal life cycle. Something about it being unhealthy to interrupt what the body wants to normally do. As this is considered a part of any bug pokemon's life cycle the balls and healers won't fix this problem."

I don't really understand much of what he's saying though I'm definitely sort of beginning to wonder if it's a human thing to either want to be touching me all over or to go on and on about something or other when they have no way of knowing how much I'm saying. I'm not exactly annoyed by this as I'm sure they're probably telling me things that would be interesting if not useful to know, I just find it very strange that humans seem to like to talk a great deal when I have no way of talking back.

"Switch to a string shot for a little while Weedle," the human orders.

My head cocks to the side a bit as I notice that now each time the bug attacks instead of trying to leap after Shoul and stab him with its butt it starts shooting a rather sticky looking substance onto Shoul, who seems to be getting more and more grossed out by the instant. After a minute or two of doing this the Weedle charges in after Shoul again but this time Shoul's movements have been slowed enough by the substance that the bug connects. Shoul grunts a bit before unleashing another shock at the bug who then finally succumbs to all the blows that Shoul had been giving it. The trainer points a ball at the bug and it's quickly sucked in by the red light that shoots out of it. Shoul sort of hobbles over, an amusing look of disgust all over his face.

"Let me out right after, okay?" he states before touching the button on his own ball and getting sucked in as well.

Shrugging slightly I lean over and hit the button again and Shoul comes right out again, though now he seems to have been cleaned off completely from the sticky substance.

"And I don't want to even think about where that webbing went," he retorts.

"My turn," Sanaline almost cheerfully states as she moves forward into the area that Shoul and that Weedle had fought, giving the areas of the grass that were still covered with the webbing a wide berth.

I move forward and to further this point I push Sanaline's ball while Allen grabs the device from below me and types in a few buttons, probably to make it so that the device knows that it will be Sanaline attacking and not Shoul. I have to stifle a small snicker on the thought of Shoul's reaction if I had pressed the button for the main attack and Shoul suddenly attacked from way over here.

"So since that human had his bug use that second attack which seemed to slow Shoul down, what does Sanaline's second thing do?" I ask as Allen places the device in front of me.

"It's called 'Tail Whip.' It's an attack that doesn't actually do any damage it just make any physical attack used afterwards hurt a lot more."

I nod somewhat and thinking that it might be a good idea to at least see how effective it is when it becomes my turn to press the buttons I move and press the second one instead. As I was getting to push the button Sanaline had already begun charging towards the other bug, assuming that it was going to be like other battles. However as I chose the tail attack thing instead of her charging into the bug her body forces her to spin around slightly as her rat-like tail slaps against the bug's face. Having not expected the sudden turn she ends up falling over herself. She stands up and turns her head at me before expressing her discontent.

"Tell me the next time you're going to be doing something like that you idiot!" she shouts before trying to roll in such a way to avoid being hit by the bug.

The bug's attack does connect but she manages to stand up and stay standing up when he hits.

"I'm going to use that tail thing again," I state casually towards Sanaline.

She braces herself slightly before feeling the compulsion to charge at the bug and this time when she suddenly turns to whip the bug with her tail she doesn't fall over right afterwards. The Caterpie responds by throwing more of the sticky substance onto her, eliciting a look of disgust on her face.

"Next one will be an attack," I comment so that she would know what I'm doing.

"About time."

When I press the button I notice that she charges at the bug pokemon like normal but when she hits her opponent he seems to take it quite hard. He rolls back a good foot or two and seems to take a moment or two before he manages to get back. He tries to attack at her but by the time he rights himself enough to even try and charge at her she's gotten far enough away that his leap is useless. Figuring that there is no reason to keep using that tail attack thing I press the button to attack as she starts running towards him again. When she hits the bug falls back like before but doesn't get back up again, which surprises me. I know that the tail attack thing was supposed to make it weaker but I would have thought it would still take her more than just a couple of hits considering how many hits it normally takes. I half wonder if perhaps I had underestimated how strong that bug was and thus didn't even need to bother but shrug it off for the time being.

The human grabs the ball and the red light bursts forth and sucks in the unconscious bug pokemon.

"Well that was fun while it lasted," the human responds before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a few flat pieces of paper. He holds the paper bits out to me and not really knowing what else to do I reach forward and gingerly grab the papers with my mouth. He lets the papers go and nods a few times with a rather amused look on his face.

"Welp, this aught to cover it all. Be seeing you," he states before walking off back towards town.

"That was strange," I comment as he walks away. "Are all battles between trainers going to be that way?"

"Who knows, now get over here," Allen responds as he grabs the backpack again.

Not wanting my tail pulled I half sigh before walking over to him. Once I've reached him I automatically adopt the posture that best helps him get this big thing onto my back again. We continue walking and manage to not encounter another human though we do run into a few more encounters with the random bug. After another hour the sun begins to fall and with it I find it quickly becoming much harder to see anything in front of me. Eventually I feel the need to speak up about it when the sun has completely set.

"Can we stop here for the night, please?" I plead.

"Why should we? We should be able to make it to the checkpoint well before midnight."

"I can't see anymore," I complain.

"You're exaggerating. It's not that dark yet. I can see just fine."

"Well I can't," I stop and half pound the ground with one paw just to further illustrate the point. "My eyes don't work so good when it gets dark. None of my kind could see well in the dark either."

"Well how is it that you could survive without being able to see anything in the dark?" Allen asks.

"I'm a fire type. Why would I need to see in the dark? If I wanted to walk around at night I'd simply light a stick on fire and carry that around and there you go, I got plenty of light."

"To be fair," Caleb interjects, "my kind are not really known all that well for our ability to well with travel at night either."

Allen turns and gives me what I assume is a strange look. Since I can't read his expression at this range I don't know whether or not I should back away to avoid being hit again. One of my ears twitch to the side. There is a pokemon following us just outside of view trying to be very quiet. If it wasn't for the odd rustling that is offset with the rhythm of the wind I would not have noticed it. The only reason I can hear it at all is that with my ability to see gone I'm focusing a lot more of my attention to what I hear and smell and feel. From the steps it sounds like the one that was examining us a long time ago. It's closer now but it still isn't making any move. It mainly just seems to be walking alongside us just out of range of what we'd normally pick up. Which of course means that it is likely something whose senses are far stronger than my own.

"Well as effective that may be," Shoul comments, "I don't really like the thought of running around the forest with a burning stick. Probably several burning sticks by the time we get there. Not so much for the sake of the forest as it would make us stand out very much."

"And it might attract that rogue thing that human was talking about," Sanaline adds.

"I suppose you might be right. And I definitely would not want to have the little firestarter having open flames around our bag," Allen responds, raising his hands up to his face. "Let's find the nearest clearing and then settle down for the night. We'll have to take turns being on watch just in case and I'll probably need a small fire so that we can see."

"We don't need to do that," I comment.

"And why is that, Sunshine?" Allen inquires.

"Well if I can't see, then odds are he won't be able to see at night either, right?"

"Not necessarily," Sanaline responds.

"I would have to agree with six tail here. Since I used to live in this forest I have actually heard about this so called rogue pokemon. I don't know much about him other than that he considers what he's doing as an act of justice rather than vengeance. And I don't know about you but if I was justifying my actions as carrying out some sense of justice I wouldn't attack someone who cannot defend themselves, least of all attack them in their sleep when they are doing no more harm to this place. We'll be safe until tomorrow morning at the very least."

"How comforting a notion," Sanaline retorts. "Taking shifts doesn't really seem all that fair anyway. The idiot won't be of any use unless he's running around with a burning stick without supervision and Caleb probably wouldn't fare much better. Meaning that it'd only be between us three."

"Fine, we won't make a fire and if you're all going to turn on me we won't take shifts either. Just let it be known that if anything, however slight, happens to us because of this I will take it out on you, you got that sunshine?"

"Um, sure," I nod. "But can we take this thing off me when we get there? I don't know how well I'd be able to sleep with this thing on top of me."

"Not until we get to the clearing. Just try to keep up until then," Allen affirms.

I trot behind, using my ears to follow where they were going though I do end up weaving back and forth a bit and am very much grateful when Caleb starts whistling some tune or another to help me keep track of where everyone is. I definitely felt a little guilty that my lack of being able to see anything put us at such a disadvantage. It doesn't take long before we find some sort of place to stop. I cannot tell where we are though from the direction we were walking I'm guessing it's even more off the path which is probably a good idea so that we don't have to be woken up be some random trainer passing through.

Allen moves over to me and begins to help me take off the backpack which I'm grateful for. Once it's off I can hear Allen literally drag the bag away from me to some other nearby location a few feet away before putting it down and lying down near it. Not knowing the lay of the land near me and not wanting to risk being hit by Allen by using my fire just enough to see long enough to find a place to sleep I place my nose to the ground and begin sniffing around for a moment. Finding what seems to be a safe enough and comfortable enough location to sleep I turn around a few times to slightly smooth out the ground before sliding down and lying down curled up in a ball, using my tails as rather thick and fluffy pillows.