Chapter Text
The officers had an aura of seriousness around them, despite their obvious exhaustion. Being sent to deal with reanimated fossil monstrosities would do that to a person.
The woman that had spoken introduced herself as Jenny; she held herself in a no nonsense manner. She had her brown hair tied back in a bun, and her uniform and hat were a very dark grey.
Cody tried his best to appear calm, but he was sure that he failed in that regard. But what else could he expect? His entire day had gone from one to one hundred in a mere moment and he hadn't been even remotely prepared for it.
He was also nervous because they were police officers. An irrational part of his mind was terrified of being blamed for the events at the museum. It was with those fears clouding his mind that he asked. "Shouldn't we have lawyers present before answering any questions?"
As soon as he said it he wished he could go back in time and slap himself silly.
Jenny didn't seem to take offence to the question, though, beyond rolling her eyes. "Generally, yes. But you're not a suspect. We've had other witnesses confirm that you three weren't anywhere near the fossil when things started. We're only here to get your insights into the situation since you three got quite involved."
Cody felt light-headed from relief. He nodded his agreement. "Well, fine then. I'm not sure if we can be any help though…"
Jenny took out a small notepad and a pen. "Well, I'll be the judge of that."
The questioning process took longer than Cody expected. The officer asked them who there were and what they had been doing in the museum at that time. Penborg was a guest lecturer and was only involved because he had reacted to the alarm. Jenny spent a good ten minutes cross-examining that statement.
Eventually, the officer moved onto the boys. She asked them why they had been in the museum leading up to the event. Cody told her that he was just sightseeing, and Zebby was only there to show him around as the bug catcher was a local.
Jenny hummed in thought as she wrote that down. "And why did you two decide to fight that thing?"
Zebby snorted. "I didn't decide anything. I was dragged along on this 'side-quest' against my will."
Jenny raised a brow in question. "Side-quest?"
"That's what I called it when I was dragging him along," Cody's voice took on a monotonous quality. "To clarify, I followed Penborg because Blitz told me to."
Jenny sighed and wrote something down. "Blitz?"
"Oh, that's the pikachu over there." Cody gestured to the bed with the unconscious electric pokémon with his head. "He got sliced open fighting that fossil thing. There was blood everywhere…" Cody trailed off; his eyes became glazed as if he were thousands of miles away.
Penborg laughed nervously. "Your pikachu told you to follow me?"
Cody's eyes snapped back into focus. "Oh, I meant that your pikachu and Blitz seemed to be getting along, and when you ran off with her, Blitz seemed like he wanted to follow her. So, we did." The boy let out a nervous chuckle. "Not one of my best ideas…"
"So, none of you have any idea what animated the fossil, to begin with?" Jenny deflated slightly when she was met with three heads shaking in the negative. She tapped her notepad with a pen as she thought. "It's just… really odd."
Odd it was. Jenny didn't have any more questions after that. She stayed a while longer to clarify some of their statements, but she quickly concluded that the group couldn't tell her much that she didn't already know.
Just as she was getting up to leave her eyes light up as if something important had occurred to her. She returned her gaze to Cody, looking the boy in the eye. "You mentioned earlier that you were travelling, right?"
Cody raised an eyebrow. "That was the plan, yes."
Jenny rolled her eyes. "Well then, fair warning, you won't be able to leave the city at the moment." Jenny's voice took on a gentle quality as if she were expecting an explosive response.
The boy wasn't happy about the situation, not in the least, but he managed to keep his voice level. "What? Why not? Does this have something to do with the museum incident, because I swear-?"
"No, it's unrelated." She cut him off with a sigh. "There's been reports of Team Rocket activity in Route 3, Mt. Moon, and Cerulean City."
Zebby sighed. "Okay, I get that that's an issue, but what's it got to do with us?"
Jenny huffed; she was clearly exasperated. "You're minors. We're restricting your movements for your own safety; there's no telling what a group like Team Rocket would do to a pair of kids like you."
Cody pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to stop himself from sighing. His patience with the world was consistently being chipped away and it was becoming a challenge not to snap at anyone. He tried to calm down or at least attempted to mould his features into something that resembled calm, before responding. "So, what, do we just wait for the police to deal with the situation, or is there a way for us to be allowed to leave the city?"
Cody noticed that the way Jenny was looking at him had changed. Her eyes seemed to scan him; as if she were sizing him up for potential threats. She must not have been too concerned with what she found since she eventually sighed, and proceeded to answer his question.
"We're collaborating with the local gym leaders. They've being harsher in their challenges, and if you pass, we assume you're skilled enough to deal with Team Rocket if you should cross them."
Cody grit his teeth. He really had no interest in the gym challenge; he would have been perfectly happy to not get involved with it at all, but it seemed like circumstances were going to force him if he wanted to keep travelling. 'That, of course, assumes that I even still want to at this point…' The boy gulped, overcome with uncertain thoughts. He looked towards Zebby, who was still distressed by the events at the museum. Then his focus shifted to Blitz, who was still unconscious.
Would either of them still want to travel with him? He didn't have an answer; Zebby might blame him for dragging him to the museum, and that might have soured the desire to travel together. And Blitz had made it quite clear early on that he would leave if things weren't 'working out'. If the electric type decided to leave Cody wouldn't even be able to argue.
The police officers left shortly after that. Cody felt ridiculously awkward; Zebby had stood up and started pacing back and forth with a faraway look in his eyes, Penborg was sitting in a chair on the other side of Blitz's bed and seemed to be watching the pokémon whisperer, the Alolan pikachu was sitting on the bed and watching Blitz with an expression that Cody couldn't read, and Izzy had started his monologue up again now that the police had left.
"He's not going to be mad at you." Izzy looked up at Cody from the boy's lap. "You do know that, right? It's not your fault that this happened."
Cody blinked away the tears that came to his eyes. He didn't want to respond to Izzy's words with Penborg still in the room, so he decided to show his thanks by hugging the bug pokémon.
That's how the pokémon whisperer stayed. Hours passed by, and Cody merely sat there and looked up into space. Penborg retired to another room as the sunset, leaving the Alolan pikachu behind to guard the unconscious pokémon. Zebby eventually nodded off in a sitting position on the couch; it took him a long time to calm down enough to actually let sleep claim him. Izzy ended up sleeping on the end of Blitz's hospital bed since the electric mouse didn't take up that much room.
Cody didn't know how long he sat there, staring into space as his mind raced with all sorts of doubts.
The sound of groaning cut through Cody's thoughts in an instant. His eyes snapped to the source of the sound; it was Blitz. Cody was by the bed in an instance. His limbs burned from the sudden movement after hours of inaction, but Cody barely noticed.
Blitz came to consciousness slowly; his eyes blinked repeatedly, though it was clear that the electric mouse wasn't actually aware of his surroundings at the moment. Eventually, his eyes focused, the gleam of intelligent that Cody had come to expect returned and the white-furred pokémon's nervous energy caused his attention to flicker around the room before resting back on Cody.
Blitz gave the boy a lazy grin. "We really need to stop meeting like this."
Cody couldn't help himself; the stress and worry and the lack of sleep had pushed him to his last nerve. The boy laughed hysterically as tears came to his eyes. His voice trembled as he responded. "You're telling me."
Blitz's grin fell away and he stared at the pokémon whisperer in confusion. Before he could say anything he was assaulted by a blur of yellow.
"I'm glad you're okay." The Alolan pikachu beamed at Blitz, rubbing her face against his. Cody was momentarily confused, before noticing the sparks that appeared when the two pikachu's cheek pouches touched. Before Cody could react, negatively or positively he couldn't be sure, the foreign pikachu pulled back. She hopped off the hospital bed and left the room.
There was silence between them for a moment. Cody could not find the words; he merely raised a brow in a bemusement.
"It was a polite gesture." Blitz rolled his eyes, a small grin on his face. "Us pikachu can pass electricity between one another through our cheek pouches. It's supposed to help the healing process…" The electric mouse trailed off, seemingly embarrassed by sharing this information.
Despite his worries, Cody smiled coyly. "Oh, so not something done between strangers or acquaintances, eh?"
The boy couldn't be sure on account of the pokémon's fur, but he got the impression that Blitz was blushing. Blitz nervously looked around the room, looking for a distraction. His gaze soon found the unconscious form of Izzy laying at the end of the bed.
Blitz cocked his head to the side in confusion. "Is that Izzy? When did he evolve again?"
"It happened after you were injured." Cody couldn't look the electric type in the eye. "He sort of… threw himself in front of that creature to project me. Broke his cocoon, and he evolved."
Blitz blinked twice in rapid succession, before shrugging his shoulders. "A silver lining, I suppose."
Cody didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't. The silence between them stretched on for a moment until Blitz let out a sigh.
"Okay, whatever you're panicking about, could you just tell me so that we can move on?"
Cody's hands twitched and he continued to avoid the electric pokémon's eye. "Are you upset with me because you got hurt, and do you want to stop travelling with me?"
Blitz was silent, and Cody's nerves got worse. Eventually, the boy dared to look at the bedridden pokémon, only to find Blitz staring back at him with disbelief.
"Wow, okay. No, I'm not mad at because of event you couldn't possibly have predicted, and yes I want to keep travelling with you." Blitz shook his head clearly quite exasperated. "You have something of a guilt complex, don't you?"
Cody blinked. He considered it for a moment, before nodding. "There's a strong possibility. Do you think Zebby will still want to travel with us?"
"Don't worry about it at the moment." Blitz shrugged a shoulder and yawned. "Either he will or he won't. Just have a nap and we'll deal with it later."
Cody let out a yawn. "Sounds good." And without another word Cody went back to the couch and rested his head against a cushion. He was unconscious soon after.
The following day the resident Nurse Joy came back to examine Blitz's condition. Despite the different hair and uniform colours, Blitz reacted to the nurse as if she were the one from Viridian City. Cody had to get involved to keep Blitz from electrocuting her. She took it in good stride, and eventually decreed Blitz healthy enough to leave, but she took Cody aside and cautioned him to take it easy on the electric type. Cody could only nod his head, and the group left the pokémon centre.
Penborg caught up with them and handed Cody a piece of paper. He examined the paper and found a phone number. The boy looked at Penborg and raised an eyebrow in response, waiting for the doctor to explain.
Penborg shrugged his shoulder. "Susanna seemed quite taken with your Blitz. I'm going to be in Kanto for quite some time yet, so if we happen to be in the same place, and your pikachu desires some socialization, contact me."
'Susanna, huh? Interesting…' 'Cody smirked. "I'm sure we'll take you up on that."
The boy was rewarded for this comment with a mild static shock, courtesy of an annoyed Blitz ridding his shoulder.
Penborg laughed good-naturedly, before turning away and walking off in the direction of the museum.
Cody and Zebby walked a little to the side so that they wouldn't block the entrance to the pokémon centre. A lot of people passing by threw glances in their direction, though Cody supposed it wasn't very often that people saw someone with a pikachu on their heads and a butterfree hanging off their back like a backpack. Cody sighed. 'Lazy so-and-sos…'
"So, what's the plan?" Zebby looked at the pokémon whisperer out the corner of his eye. "I mean, we're basically stuck here unless one of us gets a badge, right?"
Cody blinked thrice in rapid succession. Were his fears unfounded? Quite possibly. He could practically feel Blitz's smugness radiate off of him. A moment passed and Cody recovered enough from the surprise to ponder the question. The local gym was focused on rock type pokémon, but it was common knowledge that leader Brock generally used dual rock and ground type pokémon, which had a truly crippling weakness to water types. Which would be useful, if it weren't for the fact that none of Cody's team could perform a water type move. Blitz wouldn't be much help at the moment, between the recent injury and ground type pokémon's complete immunity to electricity.
Between the two boys that left Izzy, a recently evolved butterfree who lacks experience controlling his new body, and… Zebby's kakuna.
The boy pokémon whisperer pinched the bridge of his nose. 'It's never simple, is it?'
"I've got nothing." Cody shrugged. He gave Zebby a hopeful look. "How would you go about getting a badge from Brock?"
"What, with only the pokémon we've got with us?" Zebby tilted his head to the side as he considered the question. "I'd probably focus on the butterfree."
Izzy leaned around Cody's shoulder to look at the bug catcher. "I like this plan. All plans should involve focusing on me, in my humble opinion."
"Humble, he says." Blitz scoffed.
Zebby looked at the butterfree and pikachu with great curiosity. Not for the first time, Cody pondered to himself what normal people heard when pokémon spoke.
Cody sighed. "Izzy's on board with the plan. But, wouldn't that be dangerous? I thought bug types were weak to rock."
"Oh, they are. Well, generally they are." Zebby made a so-so gesture with his hand. "That's not relevant. The average rock and ground type pokémon are usually quite slow and have a focus on physically attacking and defending. Butterfree, however, are decently fast and have access to psychic abilities which gets around a rock types defence."
The pokémon whisperer's thoughts briefly flashed back to Izzy fighting the fossil. How it had been thrown back and seemed to be confused…
"Okay, I guess that makes sense." Cody turned his head to look Izzy in the eye; the position was awkward and the boy couldn't keep it up for long. "We'll just run through some exercises to make sure you're used to your new form, and then we'll challenge the gym." Cody let out a weary sigh. "I really hope this doesn't become a common thing."
"Sounds good!" Izzy was practically bouncing with excitement. "I can't wait!"
With a plan in hand, Zebby led the group towards a local park for Izzy's training. It mostly consisted of Izzy flying around them at various speeds and practising changing direction. This all came naturally to Izzy, and his progress was helped along by his enthusiasm for flight. Eventually, when flying became second nature and Izzy got bored, they moved onto practising Izzy's psychic abilities.
This proved to be much more challenging for Izzy to grasp. The flying pokémon's face scrunched up as he threw all of his focus onto a random rock. They waited, but nothing seemed to happen.
Cody turned to the resident bug catcher and raised an eyebrow. "So, what's average for a butterfree, in your opinion?"
Zebby glanced towards the sky for a moment in thought. "Well, butterfree aren't true psychic-type pokémon, so their abilities are a bit limited. From what I can remember reading, butterfree can learn how to project a weak telekinetic force at a target that can make them confused, they can then fold that weak force into a more powerful beam of psychic energy, and some particularly skilled ones can even lift objects…" The bug catcher trailed off in thought. "Oh, and I remember reading some discredited report by some scientists in Sinnoh that claimed that butterfree, amongst others, could use telepathic abilities to eat dreams."
"Wait, what?" Cody's focus snapped to the other boy. "Eating dreams? Is that… actually a thing?"
Zebby let out an affirmative hum. "Eating dreams is mostly practised by drowzee and hypno, and apparently they can live off of them, but I've no idea if other pokémon can."
Before Cody could respond both boys' attention was drawn to sound of a small explosion. What they saw was Izzy, looking exhausted and four small steaming rocks where there once was one.
Cody blinked twice in rapid succession, before turning to look at Blitz for an explanation.
The white-furred pokémon shook his head in disbelief. "I think he was trying to confuse the rocks. Since there wasn't a mind to confuse, there was no visible result. So, he just kept up the force until boom."
The pokémon whisperer pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't want to imagine what that kind of force would to do someone's mind.
"Okay, good job Izzy, you're very powerful." The pitch-black pokémon smiled at the praise. "Just… just try not to use that much force against an actual pokémon, alright?"
"Got it!" Izzy got back to his feet was back in the air shortly after.
Cody paid more attention to the training from that point on; he really didn't want to be responsible for Izzy accidentally causing something's head to explode.
They kept training Izzy's psychic abilities until long after the sun had set and the moon was high in the sky. Eventually, Zebby put a stop to the training; the bug catcher was losing the will to stay conscious. He ended up dragging Cody back to his home, and that was that.
They woke up early the next day and set off for the gym imminently after breakfast. From the outside, the building had looked normal, but when walking inside it felt like entering a cave.
In the end, the battle with Brock wasn't that difficult. Despite his claims of a "rock hard defence and determination!" Izzy dealt with the challenge rather quickly.
Brock sent out a geodude first and directed it to throw a giant rock at Izzy. The butterfree dodged the rock gracefully, and focused on the geodude intently, merely hovering in place. A moment passed, no longer than a breath, before Izzy's eyes started to glow a brilliant blue.
Shortly after the geodude let out a screech of pain, and started bashing its fists against the top of its head. Brock quickly recalled the geodude and declared Cody and Izzy the winners of that round.
Then Brock sent out an onix.
The pokémon had a resemblance to a serpent that was made out of segmented boulders. It had a large horn jutting out from its forehead, and its eyes were sharp and unfeeling. Cody didn't have the words to describe how unnerving he had found the rock snake pokémon.
The battle with onix wasn't as quick as with the geodude. Brock had noticed that Izzy needed a couple of seconds to focus his psychic abilities, so he had the onix set forth a heavy offensive. It attempted to tackle Izzy, who as expected, would swiftly fly out of the way.
But then the onix would twist and wrap around itself, and set off for Izzy again and the cycle would continue. This led to the onix being heavily tangled by its own body. Cody and Izzy didn't understand what the onix was doing until it was too late.
"Now, Onix, restrict!" Brock had ordered, and the onix did. The onix moved swiftly, and all of the knots that it created on its body went too. The knots made a horrible grinding sound, which distracted Izzy enough that he didn't move.
It became clear at this point what Brock's plan had been; the onix had contorted its body into a cage, which closed around Izzy, trapping him within.
Before Cody could begin to panic, Brock had held up a hand. "Don't worry, onix hasn't crushed him. He's just going to shake him around a bit."
The next five minutes involved the onix rapidly rocking its body and tunnelling through the ground at rapid speeds.
Eventually, the onix's tight grip loosened, and Izzy was able to escape the cage. The butterfree was quite wobbly in the air and clearly looked quite battered.
"You okay to continue?" Cody called.
"I- I'm gonna…" Izzy stumbled, clearly quite dizzy. "Gonna end him."
Izzy's came through on his threat in short order. His eyes shone so bright that were like stars, and then the onix let out a bone-rattling screeched. The rock snake pokémon smashed its head again the wall at full force; the resulting shockwave felt like mini-earthquakes to all present that were land-bound.
Brock declared it a win for Cody when the onix finally stopped banging its head having knocked itself unconscious. The rock type gym leader returned the onix to its two-toned grey pokéball, before making his way towards Cody with a Boulder Badge in hand.
"Your butterfree is quite strong." Brock had said after handing Cody the badge. "But I noticed that you weren't very involved in the fight. Pokémon rely on their trainers for direction, ya know?"
Cody had raised an eyebrow. "Izzy knew the plan and I trust his judgement. The only time I would've given him instruction is when your onix had him trapped, but really, what could I have told him?"
Cody hadn't given Brock a chance to respond.
He left the gym quickly; Blitz was on his head, Izzy was hanging on his back mumbling nonsense, and Zebby was at his side with a skip to his step. The bug catcher was excited about getting to Mt Moon.
Cody found his own excitement for Mt Moon increasing as they got closer and closer to the boundary line between Pewter City and Route 3.