A Thread by Bri: Part 2

Consciousness returned slowly. *Way* too slowly. Something in his mind was screaming at him, and he had a feeling it was about some danger....but he just couldn't find the energy to care.

"Merph," he muttered unntelligently. The sound reached his long ears, but it sounded like it was coming from somewhere very far away. He tried again. "Mumph." Oh, much better. His fuzzy thoughts somehow were able to retain their sarcasm.

Now his senses were waking up and slowly feeding him input. Sounds. The wind, a small creature chirping nearby. There was something wrong with those sounds.....shouldn't there be?.....he couldn't remember.

A breeze blew past his face, bringing with it the smell of the sun and growing things. Now he knew that wasn't right, but why?

Try opening your eyes and finding out, you idiot, his mind snapped. Oh, are we fully functioning again? he retaliated. His mind failed to find a comeback. That worried him more than anything else.

Okay, time to wake up, Tigen, he ordered. His eyes slowly cracked open, then slammed shut again as the bright daylight assaulted his sight. Damn! That hurt! Was he flying into a sun or what?

With a gasp he bolted upright. The thought had broken the dam of his memories, and they came floating back:

Space. The darkness. The silence. The cold. Autopilot. Yeah, and then passing too close to that unstable wormhole. Shoulda backed off, shoulda played it safe, you idiot, he berated himself. But it was a little late now. Then he remembered the klaxon going off. Autopilot wasn't responding, but he couldn't turn it off. The lifepod was jammed in one direction, and he couldn't steer her out of it.

Then the planet. The big blue and green one, looming in his vision, filling the entire "window" of the lifepod.

And he was heading straight for it.

The rest of the memories were a blurred jumble. The outside of the pod glowing red hot as he hit the atmosphere, then catching fire. The clouds wisking by in little puffs of fluff. The ocean below, and the panic that he was going to hit. But the pod struck a dark, heavy raincloud and was knocked toward land. Panic again, the buck of the entire pod as the thrusters cut in rather late. Then the impact on the back of his head, the pain, and the darkness blacker than the expanse of space.

Well. He blinked a few times, decided he wasn't blind as everything came into focus. Instead of ebony space dotted with the diamonds of stars, he saw a big tree trunk taking up the view of the front window. It had cracked open, a testament to just how hard he had really landed.

"Gotta get outta here*," he muttered to himself. His voice sounded wrong, like it belonged to someone else, and that someone else hadn't used it in a long time, and a bit slurred. "Gotta find out where I am, and get back on course. No way am I gonna be stuck on this miserable rock for longer'n I possibly have to."

He fumbled with his webbing harness, finally got it off him, and pushed himself out of the only seat in the small vehicle. He winced as his head protested. Reaching back, he found a large lump at the base of his skull. Great, just swell.

Stmbling over to the hatch, he soon discovered the metal was so bent and twisted there was no way he was going to gt it open. This alarmed him--how was he going to get this thing back in the air?--but he pushed the thought away. Right now, he had to focus on one thing at a time. Get out of the pod.

With a few well placed kicks of the strong legs his adopted family had marveled over for so long, the crack in the front window widened and eventually broke the window in half. One part fell outside the pod, while the other remaind stubbornly in place. Hell with it. He flung himself out the open space, landing on his feet in tall, lush grass.

Good job, Tigen, he snarled. You just landed yourself in the middle of Nowhere, Plant Who-Gives-A-Rat's-Ass! Surrounding the tree and the junked lifepod, the grassy field stretched on for miles. There was nothing, nobody, in sight.

"Pidgey!" The small animal cooed again. Raising his aching head, he spied a small brown and tan avis-type creature in the tree he had crashed into. A bird. "Pidgey!" it called down to him. "Pidgey!"

It obviously didn't speak his language, but he tried anyway. "Hey, can you tell me where I am?"

"Pidgey! Pidgey!"

"Uh, is there someone in command I can speak to? Can you take me to your leader?" (OOC: Sorry, but I had to put that in ;P)

"Pidgey!"

He growled, his right ear standing up straight. It rarely did that; usually it flopped over his face and into his eyes, giving him a roughish look. "Look, is that all you can say?"

"Pidgey pidgey pidgey!"

He bit off a rude comment, since the bird wouldn't be able to understand anyway. Heaving a long-suffering sigh, he knew what he would have to do. He should have tried it first anyway.

Settling down on the soft grass, he got into a comfortable position; one that he could keep for hours if need be. Allowing his eyes to close, he relaxed every muscles, feeling the tension flow out of him in waves. His headache diminished, as did the sounds and smells of the new world. The light shining beyond his eyelids seemed to dim as his gaze turned inward, searching for his Core. Even with years of practice, it took him a long time to find it. It always did. Nothing ever came naturally to him, not like it did to his foster family. Well, it was there magic, after all. Why shouldn't it come easy to them, and difficult to him, the outsider? The orphan?

There, the Core. The burning gold and while light in the center of his being beamed outward, responding to his mental summons. He fashioned a lasso of sorts with it, then mentally cast it upward, at the Pidgey sitting in the tree above his head. It snared the animal and pulled its sprirt into his Core before the creature could resist.

*Wha-where am I?* the startled Pidgey thought, looking around and blinking its eyes. Neither of these actions really happened, the bird had gone just as dormant as he now was in reality. But in his Core the Pidgey's spirit took the only shape it knew as itself--a Pidgey.

*I just want you to answer a few questions, then I'll send you back* he responded. He appeared before the creature (mentally) in his own shape, so the bird would realize it was he who was conversing with her.

*Oh!* gasped the creature. *The being from the sky! B-but, send me back where?*

*To your body* The Pidgey didn't respond. It didn't understand. To it, its body was with its spirit, in a strange land of gold and white. Sighing, he continued. *Where am I? What planet?*

Again there was no response, and he realized the Pidgey's spirit didn't understand the meaning behind the word "planet." It didn't know about space travel, or other worlds, or beings from those worlds. Finally it gave the only answer it had. *You are in the field near the Fantasy Gym, owned by Gobrianna the Pokemon trainer, under my tree and by your metal star from the sky.*

He assimilated this information and pressed on for more. And more. And more. He demanded everything the Pidgey knew, every fact, every emotion, every event in its lifetime. Time had no meaning in his Core. It would have taken days, weeks, to tell all the Pidgey told him in an instant. And when he awoke from his trace--so swiftly the Pidgey's spirit shot back into its own body and took off in panic--he jumped to his feet, his eyes blazing, his ear upright once again.

"Humans!" he snarled in a fury. "In the name of the Lord and the Lady! Of all the places to end up, I had to crash into a planet of *humans*!" A shudder ran up his spine. "Well, we'll just see what this Gobrianna knows when *I* get me hands on her." He grinned, and it wasn't a nice expression. Without thinking of his lifepod, his injuries, or the fact that he was on a dangerous world--one populated by *humans*!--he bounded off in the direction of the closest human dwelling: The Fantasy Gym.

Gobrianna was trying really hard *not* to think as she followed Blu across one of the grassy fields dotted with the occational tree. The blue-haired girl was so lost in thought she didn't even noticed she was being followed.

*What will I say when I catch up to her?* Gobrianna wondered. She could just imagine the conversation. "Oh, hi Blu. I happened to overhear you talking into that thing in your hair. Mind explaining what an 'Aliroo' is?" Yeah, right.

"Char?"

Gobrianna shrieked and twirled around, coming face-to-face with her first Pokemon (they happened to be the same height). "CHARIZARD! Give a girl a heart attack! Don't do that!"

"Char, charizard char," chided her Pokemon.

"Oh, I was going to tell her I was following her!" she snapped. "You don't know what just happened. I heard Blu saying--" Suddenly reminded of her friend, the Pokemon trianer whirled around again.

Blu was gone.

"What?" she muttered, looking around. "Who, why...where?" She looked at Charizard in confusion.

"Char," it shrugged. There was no sign of the girl. "Charizard, zard char char."

Gobrianna's shoulders slumped, disappointed. Blu could lose herself in herd of Caterpie. Actually, there wasn't much of anything Blu *couldn't* do. Not that Gobrianna had seen anyway. How was she going to ask her now?

"Char char zard," her Pokemon spoke up, which basically translated to: Don't pout, you're acting like a Charmander.

"Oh yeah? Charizard, return!" A look of surprised affront played over the winged lizard's face as it became a glowing red light and was sucked inside its Pokeball. Gobrianna smirked triumphantly (it wasn't often she won an argument with her first Pokemon) and tucked the Pokeball in her belt. Briskly whiping her hands, she strolled back to the pool in back of her Gym. There she checked on Lapras and Vaporeon, found them both swimming happily in the cool water, and strided through the back door of the Fantasy Gym. She would just have to wait until Blu returned home, then she'd give her a ring and get to the bottom of this! But for now, Gobrianna was going to take a nap. There was a challenger coming tomorrow, and she'd stayed up late last night training with her weaker Pokemon. After the adreniline left her system, she realized just how tired she really was....

* * *

"....so when you get in, just give me a call, all rihgt? I really need to talk to you...see ya." Gobrianna finished talking to the answering machine at Blu's place and hung up, stretching after her rest. She felt revitalzed and was ready for another bout of training for her charges. Hmm, maybe Charizard would like to warm up with Raichu....

"I'll take a shower first," the girl decided out loud, and stood up to put action to words. Exiting her bedroom in the Fantasy Gym, she took a quick detour to the linen closet to grab a clean towel before heading for the bathroom. The halls and rooms of her personal part of the Gym where she lived were such a part of her that she didn't even think about what she was doing and where she was going; it was instinctive. Instead, her mind again turned to the conversation Blu had been having with the small device under the tree.

Maybe it was all a game she was playing with the neighborhood kids. Gobrianna smiled at the thought. Blu was never too busy to play with the kids that hung around. Though there weren't many, and the town was a good hour's bikeride away. The Fantasy Gym was really the only man-made building for a couple of miles in any direction. Gobrianna liked it that way. She was a loner, pure and simple.

*I'll bet that's what it was,* she thought to herself with relief. *I'll tell Blu and she'll say it was just a game of make-believe and we'll both laugh about it ourselves sick. Aliroo...right.*

Gobrianna was so lost in thought--convincing herself that all her worries were for nothing--that she didn't even notice the tall figure standing in the doorway of the room she was passing by. Didn't notice, that is, until a blur of a hand shot out like lightning, tightened around her throat, and pulled her inside the room. It slammed her against the wall hard enough to leave her breathless. An ungodly sound, a quick stream of low hisses and roars that cut itself off almost immediately, sounded like it was right next to her ear.

Yeah, it was kinda hard not to notice.