Journey to Another World 4
Ch. 14


I honestly couldn't believe my ears as I left the Pokemon center. 'I'd always wondered what had happened to me out there in the...' A lump slowly filled my throat as I tried to get out the last two words. 'Real World.' And just as I thought those two words, it seemed like a dark cloud slowly drifted overhead and started to pore freezing cold rain right down my back. I didn't realize it at first, but right then and there, I was having a panic attack.

I stumbled over to a tree on the outskirts of the town and placed a hand against it's trunk. The feel of the tree's bark felt as real as if I was touching a real tree. I looked up the trunk and gazed at the gently swaying leaves as they danced from the soft breeze that seemed delighted to put them into a happy dancing mood. As the leaves danced around they would periodically allow small beams of sunlight to cascade down on my face, and warm individual spots along it. The smell of clean fresh air assaulted my nose as I took in a long drawn out breath.

'Even though I know that this world is not real, I still can't get that realization through my thick head. Everything seems so real to me here.' I thought some more, then my hand slipped off the tree's bark and came into contact with one of the PokeBalls on my belt. Then thoughts of the girls quickly filled my mind. I pulled off their balls and held all four of them in my outstretched hands.

'If everything in this world is fake, then does that mean that my love for these girls is fake as well?' I thought as I slowly walked over to a nearby bench and sat down on it while still holding out the girls balls. That's when a thought or phrase came to my mind. 'If we all end up as ash one day, what's the point in living?' Or in my case. 'Once I leave this place to return to the real world, what's the point in keeping these girls with me?' I could feel the darkness within me start to rear it's ugly head. I remembered this feeling and it started to scare me. But just as I was about to yell out in anguish, I started to hear something.

At first the sound was sounded like it was coming from pretty far off in the distance, but as I listed further, the sound got louder and louder. Until I could start to make out that it wasn't a noise but some sort of song, and yet still it got louder and louder. "If your going through hell, keep on go-in. Don't slow down, if your scared don't show it. You might get out before the devil knows your there." The strange thing was that I couldn't see anybody around there playing a walkman or anything.

A smile slowly spread across my face as this reminded me about how people would say that people in a coma could still hear things. 'I guess it's true what they say.' Though I did wonder how I was hearing it here, until I looked around and saw a house nearby that had a speaker in on of it's open windowsill's blearing the country song. "Thanks." I said. 'It really doesn't matter about what the end result is, what matters is the journey.' I thought to myself.

Releasing Jenavee first, I pulled her into a long hug then did the same with the other girls once released. Now as your probably guessing, this caught Undine pretty off guard but she eventually got into it and hugged me back with her long ribbons and tail.

"What has gotten you into such a good mood Donovin?" Jenavee asked, which the other girls nodded.

"Isn't it enough to be happy that my girls are all healed up and none of you were really hurt all that bad when we went up against Saturn." I said as I pulled all the girls this time into a big hug.

*(Kit) Does anyone else get the impression that their's more going on here than what he's letting on?* She said in her own Ninetails speech.

'You do have a point Kit. In all the time that we have been together, he has never actually hugged us. Let alone all of use together.' Rena said in her own psychic voice to them all except me.

'Oh just quite down and enjoy the moment. He is happy, so why shouldn't we enjoy it too.' Jenavee said over a private link to the other girls. The girls each nodded in turn then gave me a quick hug back. 'You are going to have to tell me the real reason why you are so happy Donovin, when were alone.' Jenavee said privately to me

I didn't answer her as I could feel the warmth coming from each of the girls flowing into me. Eventually I let them all go and stood back from them, but then pulled Rena into a private hug and I began to squeeze her into a tighter embrace. "Oh Rena. I'm so glad that your ok. You wouldn't believe how worried I was when I awoke and learned that you'd been abducted by Saturn."

Rena finally out of her surprise of being hugged so tightly by me, finally hugged me back and nuzzled my neck. "And thank you Donovin, my savior. You do not know how much it means to me, knowing that you were the one that came and saved me from those awful people." Just then she surprised me when I started to hear her sniffle, then she broke down into a full on wailing sob. "They did...they did so many bad things to me." She said between sobs. This went on for a while, as I tried my best to comfort and console her grief of being captured and experimented upon. With a gentle hand that slowly rubbed her back and over her shoulders, she eventually calmed down and gave me a gentle lick on my cheek.

I slowly let her go and stepped back so that I could still see that she had tears running down her muzzle, which she was quick to wipe away. Jenavee came over and then placed a hand on her shoulder and then pulled her into a hug as well. "It is good to have you back sister. We would have been their sooner to rescue you, but we feared what Saturn might do to you if he knew of presence." Jenavee said, and when Rena cocked her head to the side in confusion, Jenavee went into a full blown explanation of Saturn's letter and my jail time.

"So that is why it took you all so long to come and..." A memory of her captivity must have surfaced as she began to shake and tears quickly started to flow from her eyes. Jenavee was there in an instant and quickly led Rena over to a bench and sat her down. I was about to go over and try and console her but Jenavee must have seen me moving over and subliminally waved me off. I only nodded to her and motioned for Kit and Undine to follow me.

"Ok, I must have missed something quite interesting since being put back in that ball." Undine said as we continued to walk/slither away from the two newly formed sisters. After a while I stopped and turned to look back at the sisters and could still see them talking to each other. "It is considered extreme rude to ignore someone when their talking to you, Donovin!" Undine said in a stern tone.

"What's that?" I said as I shook my head and looked up at the imposing water Pokemon as she scowled down at me. "Sorry about that Undine. I was just trying to figure out what had probably happened to Rena while she was in the hands of that Team Galactic, before we all rescued her."

Just then Kit started to whine quite loudly and Undine looked from me down to her. Kit started speaking to Undine for a while, and I was starting to feel a little uneasy as a thought started to surface from the back of my mind. "You have to be kidding me Kit. Do you really think that they might have been doing those things like that to her?"

I looked up at Undine, down at Kit, and then back up at Undine again. "What?" I asked Undine. "I don't understand Pokemon speech. Could you tell me what she just said Undine." But when she turned from Kit to look down at me, she had a rather disturbed look on her face. "You know what..." I waved my hands at her, "I don't think I want to know." I said as thoughts of a black silhouetted scientist with a green mask on, leaning over me with a needle within full view of my eyesight filled with some kind of black swirling liquid.

Just then I started to hear feet crunching over gravel and turned to see that both Jenavee and Rena coming back over to the three of us. I was just about to smile at the two and welcome them back with open arms but stopped when I saw their faces and their expressions said everything. 'It looks like something really did happen to her while she was held captive by those Galactic people. And by the look on their faces, it looks like it was something that might take a while to get over.' I walked over to them and was about to talk, but Rena held up a hand.

"I know that you want to say that your sorry for not coming sooner to rescue me, but I understand what kept you and thank you for it. I just want to put this whole business behind us and just get away from this town." She looked at the rest of the girls and they all nodded to her.

A smirk slowly spread across my face as I saw Jenavee smile up at me. 'I had a little chat with her and she is not mad at you or anything. If she were mad, it would be at that Saturn person for what they/he did to her.' Jenavee said to me over our link. "Now that I think about it, you did say that once we left that town back there that it would pretty much be a strait shot to the beech. Is that not right?" She said aloud.

I pulled out the town map and pinpointed our location. "That's right. All we have to do is just head strait south from this point, and we'll hit the beach." My thoughts started to drift back to the only once or twice that I'd actually gone to the beach myself. (After all, living up in the mountains you don't really get a chance to travel all the way to the coast to enjoy some fun in the sun and sand.) "The only thing we have to worry about right now, is a few trainers and a wild Pokemon or two and we should be there by tomorrow night at the latest. With that, the five of us quickly head out and moved on down South.

Though, when we passed the first trainer, he didn't even look up to challenge me to a battle. 'Well that's strange.' I thought as I continued to watch him as we passed him by and continued to move south. This seemed to be the norm for the majority of the trainers. 'Now this is starting to get a little weird. You'd think that by now that at least one of the trainers would have at least come over to talk to me about my Pokemon or at least challenge me to a one on one battle." But no. All they seemed to do was to try and count how many blades of grass they could flatten or push with their shoes.

'I have to agree.' Jenavee said to me over the link. 'This is indeed strange. Do you think something happened to these trainers before we got here?'

'The only thing I can think of is that their was a really strong trainer who'd come through before us and thoroughly flattened each of these trainers and their Pokemon. After all, you have to meet the gaze of a trainer in order to challenge them to a Pokemon battle. This way, they can't challenge me or I them.' I said back to her. "Hold up girls. I want to talk to one of these trainers." Once they'd stopped I walked over to one of the kids on the side of the road and stopped in front of him.

"I'm not here to challenge you, but could you tell me why all of you are trying to avoid a battle?" I asked a kid who looked no older than ten years old.

The little boy had on a pair of green overalls that strapped over his long sleeved light blue shirt. Most of his outfit was covered in dirt that matched the color of his hair. "You wont challenge me to a battle?" The boy asked me in a disbelieving tone.

"I said I wouldn't and I also give you my word that I wont." When I said this, the boy slowly raised his head and I could see a few tears running down his cheeks. I quickly went to a knee and pulled out a small handkerchief and wiped up his tears. "Hay now little man. What's all the water works for?"

He sniffled a little then wiped his nose on the end of his shirt. "A trainer came through here..." Sniff, sniff, slurp (Author: The sound when a kid sniffs up something wet in his nose.) "He was really mean. His Blaziken mercilessly went right through all my Pokemon..." Just then the water works really started to flow as he buried his eyes in his other sleeve and bawled. When I looked down, I saw that their were two Pokeballs lying on the ground, that had turned from a red top to a ashy gray top. Meaning that the Pokemon within was/had passed away.

I looked up from the boy and looked at each of the trainers. 'Was it the same with all these other trainers?' I thought to myself, then turned back to the boy. He seemed to be over the worst of it then wiped his face with the other sleeve. "I don't mean to really bring this up, but how long ago was this, an where is that trainer now?"

The boy simply pointed south and then looked back up at me. "He was heading for the beach and passed me by less then twenty minutes ago. But please mister, you don't want to battle him. He will probably do the same thing to your Pokemon that he did to mine."

I simply reached up and ruffled his hair. "I think I know this trainer that your talking about. I've battled him in the past, and I'm very confident in all my Pokemon's abilities." I looked down the road and then back at him. "Before I go though. Why don't we give your Pokemon a proper burial." To which the kid nodded. A few minutes later, we all looked down at two small mounds of raised dirt with two upturned white stones we found for tombstones. After a quick prayer by me and the kid, I sent him on home and slowly turned to the girls.

"I'm pretty sure you all know what I'm about to do. So if you don't want to help me battle this trainer, then please tell me now." Each of the girls looked at each other, then nodded to me as Jenavee stepped forward.

"I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'This trainer is going down." She raised up her fist which was mimicked by the other girls, then clenched into a fist.

A quick grin spread across my face as I turned and looked down the path. "Then lets find this trainer and take him down."Chapter End Notes:Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended