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(alright no problem)

Chari reached out and delicately grasped the talkative young gentleman's hand, hesitantly.
She trusted her seamed, ancient face to hide her mild distaste.
"Oh, you think so? Well, that's very sweet of you."
Coming from a tactical genius such as yourself, of course, whippersnapper.

Her eyes, not quite focusing on her fellow-conversant, flicked around the park.
There was the gentleman from earlier...a young couple walking slowly...a coquette on the fountain's rim...a young boy gamboling, carefree.
Full of life, full of motion.

She glanced back at the scene of the battle, a livid scar on the landscape, although even now healing back over to brown-green solidity.
Such an ugly thing we've made, old friend.
Her fingers sought the comfort of Friar Sand's shell, resting her weight on it.

((Sorry for the absenteeism there; had a hard time seeing a solid interaction opportunity.))

It took Takamaru a few seconds to calculate his response, but N could see his mind was hard at work. "You have a very ambitious idea of what you want. It's noble, though. And I commend you for it."

It's a future he gave up on long ago. In a way, he envied Takamaru's optimism for that reason. Perhaps it would take age for the boy to see the way the world really was.

But he had heart. He wasn't like the criminals N had met in the past. His intentions were pure.

"I've met a pokemon who's been looking for his trainer. He says the trainer's name is TK. Would that happen to be a nickname of yours?"

Robby looked at the boy. "What, are they dyin'? You let 'em get fatally wounded or damaged in a fatal-if-not-dealt-with way? Hm?" He asked, getting in AJ's face. And then their eyes met. "Our eyes met. You gotta fight now." He said, jabbing at AJ's collar bone with his finger enough to hurt normal people Robby's size.

Reid chose to ignore Fleya's question. She fell down twice. Now she just looked clumsy, possibly drunk to the untrained eye. All credibility was lost. Perfect.

Still, it didn't benefit him to stick around the battle any longer. Jaiden was the one who was supposed to gather data on Henrietta, anyway. This was just a bonus.

A faint smirk played across his lips as he flipped the coin to her. It spun in the air in front of her eyes. By the time it would land in her lap he would be gone, melting away from the crowd to converge into the busy traffic of the sidewalk.

It was time to continue working.

****


After she healed Salem, Salieri walked over to the wharf and let out her Eevee to sit with her. Sal took off her kung fu sandals and let her toes catch the edges of the waves crashing onto the docks.

She rested her elbows on her legs and held her head in her hands. The Battle Girl looked across the stretch of water to the distant Pinwheel Forest. It looked a lot smaller from far away.

Cities are stuffy. When I get my own gym, I’m putting it somewhere else. Somewhere nice. Somewhere….

….

Sal couldn’t come to a conclusion. If she had her own gym, where would she put it? Of course, she had a lot to learn before she would even have to start worrying about that. That much she figured out by battling Chari. She took out her journal to jot down a note:

Remember for later: Old people are full of experience. Sift through the senility to find it.

As she wrote, Salem looked up at her. Her trainer hadn’t said one word since letting her out of the pokeball. Was she mad that she lost? The Battle Girl was known to get in a funk after a setback. The Eevee bowed her head down to hide her shame.

As if a radar went off in her head, Salieri looked up from her writing. “Hold your head up higher than that. Why are you upset? Do you think that I’m mad at you or something?”

Salem’s ear perked up as she met her trainer’s eyes. It was pretty obvious how the Eevee felt. Sal snapped her journal shut and put it back into her bag. “Relax, I’m not angry or anything. I’ve just got a lot on my mind lately.”

Yesterday she had almost killed an enemy over a misunderstanding. The word around her was growing more tense, and big events were entirely out of her hands. It was a lot to keep up with. And it hadn’t even been one week yet.

“So don’t worry about me, okay? Salem, you gave it your best, and I’m proud of you for it.”

Something lit up in the Eevee’s eyes as she sat down. Salieri swiveled to face her.

“You’ve come so far from not even being able to take a hit. Now you can fight in league with experienced opponents. Salem, you’re tough as nails. I don’t just choose anybody to be on my team. The reason you’re here is because you’ve got guts.”

The Battle Girl smiled, and so did her Eevee. “I don’t care if you lose, as long as you tried. I wouldn’t have had that battle any other way.”

“Vee!” Salieri held out her arms, and her Eevee jumped into them. Salem snuggled up against her and Salieri hugged her pokemon.

Until she started glowing.

Huh? Salieri shielded her eyes, letting go of Salem in the process. The shape of her body was morphing, get longer and more slender. Her tail grew forked, and her features were more cat like. At last, color returned, only it wasn’t brown. Her fur was a shade of lavender, and in between her bewitching purple ears was a small red jewel.

Salieri blinked a few times. She knew which Eeveelution this was. This was Espeon. The Psychic one. There was a long pause between them.

“Peo?”
“I didn’t-“

Salem’s red jewel flashed. And then all hell broke loose.

The two of them flinched, and Salieri clutched her head in pain. A whole new feeling just dropped into her mind, like a new entity was sharing her thinking space and forcing her to move over.

It was Salem. They had been synchronized.

The Battle Girl grit her teeth. “Salem, stop!”

They shared each other brains for an instant, but it felt like hours. Salem learned from Salieri’s shifting thoughts what had just happened to her. She also saw glimpses of Salieri past dealings with her Psychic neighbors. And her feelings towards them.

For the next instant, they shared each other’s emotions. Salem could feel Salieri anxiety about Salem’s future, her excitement over the evolution, her fapprehension of the potential uses of her power. And the sensation of having her mind invaded, which for Salieri was one of her biggest fears.

Salem stumbled backwards, wincing. There were too many emotions going on at once. Salieri fell to her side, curling up in a fetal position.

“SALEM, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”

And once the screaming stopped, so did the Synchronize. Salieri didn’t move. Neither did Salem. They both knew exactly what the other one was just thinking, anyway. Nothing had to be exchanged.

Salem began to walk backwards. Her purple eyes welled up with tears, but they didn’t fall until she spun around, sprinting away from the wharf in silence.

Salieri scrambled to her feet and ran after her Espeon, but the evolved pokemon was too quick to keep up with. “Salem, wait! I’m sorry! SALEM!”

She stumbled to a stop as Salem faded in the distance. Her lips quivered. Sal knew the tears streaming down her face weren't her own. Just a residual effect from the newly born Synchronize. But the events that conspired still stung. She wiped the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Damnit Salem…I’m sorry…”

The Pokéball arced through the air towards the Sandile and hit it on the head. Luka was now sliding down the hill after the Pokéball to grab it when he rammed into the Ranger. Luka had seen the man shout to him, but, it was a little too late by that point and Luka had already started his decent.

The Pokéball shook once, then twice and then the Sandile leapt out. It turned to face the tangled mess that Luka was in and glowered at him. It delved into the sand and used Mud-Slap in annoyance. Luka shouted to Squirt who had just followed him down the hill. "Aqua Jet!"

The Tirtouga launched itself into the air and charged at the Sandile with a great deal of force. The Sandile then chomped down tightly on one of Squirt's fins, preventing him from moving.

Luka had now untangled himself from the Ranger and said, "Squirt, shake it off with Rollout and then try a Water Gun."

As Squirt started to spin, so did the Sandile but it would not let go for now.

Luka looked at the Ranger, "Sorry about that. If you could just give me a minute and then I'll be off back to Castelia."

Squirt span faster and faster to the point that the Sandile was so dizzy that it had to let go. Then, Squirt turned on it and shot the Water Gun in its face.

"Don't let it bite you again. Use Crunch if you can!"

Squirt nodded and opened his jaws with his freshly sharpened teeth wide and clamped down on the Sandiles long mouth. The Sandile couldn't open its mouth nor could it use any moves because it was still suffering from the dizziness.

"Water Gun just as you let go and that should be enough."

Squirt nodded as best he could and started to bring the water up into his mouth and launched it just as he let go of the Crunch. The effects were devastating to the Sandile. It looked at the Tirtouga, panting. It felt extraodinarily tired and its pride hurt that this blue thing in a shell had a stronger grip than it did. It was really pissed off too, but, it was too tired to act on that.

Luka threw another Pokéball at the Sandile. It hit, shook once, then twice, then thrice and the clicked. The Sandile was captured and Luka's job was done. He grabbed the Pokéball, returned Squirt with a "Ya did good buddy" and then went over to the Ranger. "I know the terrain here and I know about the deeper sand, but, I was never going to go too far from the hill y'know. Anyhoo. I best be off to heal my Pokémon and get out of this desert."

Luka seriously wanted to get back to Castelia now because, in all honesty, he was kinda worried about the lecture he was probably about to get from the Ranger.

Luka recoiled in horror at the Ranger's hyperbolaic speech and ran away from the weirdo so fast that there was probably a cloud of sand as he scarpered. There was no way he was sticking around to see what would happen. He had already been offered a ride by a lunatic before and he hadn't gone with it. Sure it was due to circumstance, but, the Ranger seemed like even more of a nutjob than Jump and there was no way Luka was letting some random bloke take him far out into the desert where anything could happen. You had to be careful about these things.

Luka arrived at Castelia's Northern Gate with a sigh of relief. He had escaped the crazy Ranger. He just prayed to Arceus that he could get through the Gate before the Ranger contacted the teachers in the classroom if he could do that. Luka just wanted to get to the Pokémon Centre, go back to his hotel, shower and then chill out around Castelia. The shower was particularly important. He was coated in sand and he felt really filthy. He hadn't expected to attract so much sand. Then again, he hadn't expected to be sliding down the side of a sand hill to catch a Sandile.

Crimson saw the smog cloud coming closer to Zeus who was still doing the counter shield. He knew that if the electricity touched the smog, it would explode enough to the point of throwing Zeus off balance and leaving him open, but that was only if the Pikachu didn't expect it. Crimson didn't want to give a command just yet, not until he knew for sure that Zeus needed help.

"Alright Zeus, its up to you to figure out what to do."

Crimson had a few ideas on how to get out of the situation. He looked around the battle field to get an idea of what Zeus could do to escape.

The smog cloud continued getting closer and Zeus was still spinning around with the discharge. The cloud was almost to its target however, one of the lighting bolts from discharge went towards the cloud, igniting it and exploding a tad bit earlier than expected. Zeus still was blown off his feet and out of Fire Spin towards a lamp post. Immediately after, Zeus flipped itself in the air so that it could use the lamp post to jump off of and go towards Melty. After launching itself off of the post, it landed back on the ground and charged straight for Melty with Volt Tackle.

"Pika,,,Pika, Pika, Pika Pika Pika Pika!"

Zeus covered itself with its blue electricity, and dashed at the Litwik at full speed, not hesitating. He closed in on Melty fast and jumped at him with full force.

Crimson waited to see what should happen next, while Zeus was still ready to with another attack after Volt Tackle.