No real title for this yet xD; Just a little thing I'm typing up for fun. So, Mina, this is Molly and Li xD This is all I have done, will post the rest when I finish it.
For some weird reason, I always picture Li with some kind of southern accent. I have no idea why, so I just went with it.
This, she concluded, was how it felt to be a Metepod. She wasn’t sure if she could move now, even if she had wanted to. Crouched motionlessly, and as inconspicuously as she could manage, every motion slow, and controlled, her breath forced to a steady crawl, she sat, and she watched. She kicked herself internally for all the time she had wasted inadvertently over the last week, hidden in the underbrush. They’d known she was there the whole time– of course they had– and it had only made them more wary.
Molly was almost certain that she’d forgotten how to blink. Slowly, over the past few days, the researcher had been creeping closer, and closer to the firmly huddled herd of Kangaskhan, and now, finally close enough to survey them without binoculars, she couldn’t bear to look away. Night was falling over the grassy plains of Kanto’s Safari Zone, and it would soon be too dark to read the notebook in her lap, filled with hastily jotted notes on any and every tiny observation. Reluctantly, the young woman would have to concede, and admit that it was time to call it a night– but not quite yet. One of the adults had let her baby clamber out of her pouch, and Molly watched, a tiny smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, as it plopped gracelessly to the ground on stumpy, unpracticed legs.
Her first days at the park had been spent glancing continuously through her binoculars to the Pokemon, to the identification sheet she’d stapled into the cover of her notebook, and then back again. Now, she’d committed them to memory. The kangaskhan had been assigned identification numbers as they’d hatched by the researchers present last breeding season, and the season before that, and before that. She recognized the mother now watching warily as her baby stumbled gleefully around her feet, chirping a shrill imitation of what would one day be a bloodcurdling roar. M-12 was a young adult, hatched six years earlier, and this season, Molly had dubbed her newly hatched joey M-13.
It was safe to assume that such close proximity to a mother kangaskhan’s newly hatched baby, and the mother’s potentially deadly fury would set anyone in their right mind to trembling; nevertheless, Molly was perhaps now the picture of contentment– and if that made her insane, so be it. She couldn’t recall a scientist worth her salt who wasn’t at least a touch loopy.
She tore her eyes away from her research subjects as something nipped at the sleeve of her mud streaked lab coat. Molly had begun to speculate that it was really to her companion that she owed her recent success approaching the herd. It was only a hypothesis, but perhaps they’d noticed the harmless doduo willingly sharing her space, and that had helped to calm them. The head on the right, Dexter, was nipping at the pocket of her coat. “I don’t have anything in there for you right now,” she replied under her breath, with as quiet a giggle as she could manage. Not a particularly creative name, she’d admit, but infinitely better than his counterpart’s. At the time, it had seemed an excellent way for her to identify them for study; of course, she’d soon grown to adore him as a companion rather than a research subject, and ‘Sinister’ simply would not do. ‘Sinny’ had somehow deteriorated into ‘Sunny’ and the name had stuck. While Dexter pecked idly at the ground beneath them, Sunny slept, his long neck curved to bury his head into their shared coat of fluffy feathers. Suddenly, the left bird’s eyes opened, and he raised his head, both halves staring intently at something behind her.
Molly blinked, and looked up. The herd had paused, sniffing the air, and a glance over her shoulder revealed the draw. A thin wisp of smoke rose into the darkened sky through a thick cluster of trees in the distance, nearing the outskirts of the park.
The red head strangled a cry, scrambling to her feet as she hastily shoved her notebook into a pocket. “No, no, no, damn it!” She squeaked, hopping onto the doduo’s back. There were no fire types native to the area, and no sign of any lightning that could have explained the smoke. Her panic only mounted as the dried grass crunched underfoot as the bird pokemon dashed towards the source. It had been dry for weeks. She grit her teeth, and held tight to Dex’s neck. Hopefully, it was simply a lost charmander, or a wild vulpix, and nothing more malicious. She’d been warned that poachers were rampant, and while there were indeed rangers patrolling, the park was huge... M-12 hurried her baby back frantically into her pouch, growling at the parting researcher and Doduo. She’d spooked them. Molly sighed and kicked herself internally, choking back the painful lump of disappointment blocking her throat and blurring her vision.
The streaks of green as they flew over the plain melted back into focus as doduo halted at the tree line, and changed his pace, picking more carefully between the roots and trees now littering the way. Molly let out a sharp breath, raising her downcast eyes from the warm brown feathers around her to the forest ahead. She, and her companions noted the deviation at the same time, and stopped dead, brows furrowing.
The cluster of trees had formed around a craggy sort of plateau. Snaking its way through the boulders littering the ground lay an enormous anomaly. There certainly weren’t any onix native to this area, but there it was, chomping away contentedly at the stones. It paused, and slowly lifted it’s head to eye the pokemon and human gaping at it. Molly braced herself against Dex and Sunny, in preparation for a necessary bolt, but the thing never charged, and instead returned to it’s snacking with a groan. “A domesticated onix,” the young woman puzzled, her ginger eyebrows knitting together in confusion.
Her companions raised their heads simultaneously, catching a sound in the distance, and setting off at a trot towards the noise, which grew to a crackling that she could hear as well. “Ah,” she frowned, though the panicked knotting in her chest eased when she caught sight of a well made fire pit, and not the attempted arson she’d been dreading. The forest thinned out alongside a large, deep pond, and a tiny pot had been set up over it, a warm, inviting smell of cooking food wafting over the clearing. Molly grit her teeth. This was a pokemon sanctuary– if there was anything like a goldeen in that pot, someone was about to pay.
Molly dismounted, and set to examining the camp more closely. She caught sight of someone seated behind a boulder, obscured by a worn duffle bag. “Excuse me–” she began, trailing off as she rounded on the set of legs that wasn’t. It was just a pair of pants– white pajamas, or something similar, discarded haphazardly beside a grey shirt. She scowled at them, vexed, and glanced up suddenly as a screech tore through the air, and a Mankey hopped atop the boulder chattering at her furiously.
“Uh, ‘scuse me miss...? What’r you doing with my stuff...?” Molly whirled on her heel, gaze dropping to the surface of the water. The young man, perhaps in his early twenties, had apparently just surfaced, voice inhibited by gasps for air, black hair plastered to his face. “Aw, knock it off,” he called over her shoulder, to the Mankey who skulked away from the scientist with one last scathing glare over his shoulder at her.
“I’m sorry,” she informed him, as her Doduo trotted closer to her, wary of the massive Machoke wandering back towards the camp with an armful of apples. “This section of the park is closed to the public until further notice, and besides, you’re required to keep your pokemon inside their pokeballs while in the park. You’re going to have to leave now.”
“‘Park,’ miss?” he replied, tilting his head to the side, and quirked a muddled little smile. “I’m real sorry, but I don’t follow.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No ma’am.” The man shook his head wet hair sticking across his face, and he dunked himself momentarily to push it away. “I’m from Cianwood, miss,” he said brightly. “This is my first time off the island. So far so good! ‘Cept, uuuhh... Well, I got off the boat in Vermillion....”
“And then?”
“I was looking for somewhere for me and my pokemon to train. You know, some awesome waterfalls to meditate under or something. And well.... I got lost, and now I’m here. Where’s ‘here’ exactly?”
She folded her arms across her chest, expression softening slightly. “This is the Safari Zone– a pokemon reserve. It’s illegal to catch pokemon here without registering and using the approved methods and equipment. Right now, the park’s closed, so you really can’t be here right now. Fuchsia City’s just south of here, you can definitely find somewhere to spend the night over there.” He said nothing, and refused to budge from where he was treading water. “I’m sorry, but the park is closed to the public. You have to leave now.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Uh...” he sank lower in the water, and with a bashful grimace, pointed to the pile of clothes abandoned behind her.
“Oh.” She made a face and turned away, pale hands clasped firmly over her eyes as she wandered away from the pond.
“Much obliged,” he replied with a grateful sigh, and she could hear him move through the water, and pull himself back up onto the shore. “Uh, so doctor...? Professor...?”
“Neither yet,” she corrected.
“Alright then. Miss, why is the park closed, anyhow?” he asked, hopping hurriedly into his gi bottoms.
“The herd of Kangaskhan here laid eggs that hatched a while ago. The babies are just getting old enough to leave their mothers’ pouches, so this is when they’re at their most aggressive,” she replied. “They can’t have people running around here right now throwing rocks.”
“Ma’am,” he replied sheepishly, “I reckon anybody who throws a rock at an angry Kangaskhan deserves whatever they get.”
Despite herself, she let out a airy chuckle. “It’s the babies they’re worried about.”
No comments:
Post a Comment