Forest of Secrets; A Pokemon Fanfiction

Chapter 2, Part 8

Joy-Joy
My dream is pleasant enough, at first. I am at a battle stadium, ready for a mysterious challenger whom is to battle me for my title as Grand World Champion. There is no doubt on my mind that I cannot, and will not fail to win. I haven't for seven years, and I was not about to break that streak.
I step out into the harsh light of the stadium battlefield, and prepare to make my spectacular entrance. What I'm expecting is one of the usual, serious grown types who have been training for years to conquer challenges such as myself. Instead, a shorts-wearing youngster with an outrageous attitude of arrogance is in the spotlight on the other side of the arena. He has but a singular Pokeball on his belt, and it looks shiny new. You would think he had just began his journey.

"My name is Joey!" he shouts fiercely. There's something about him that grates up against my nerves. "Go home kid," I say, not unkindly. "there's no way you're ready to face a Gym Leader yet, let alone a Champion. Try when both you and your Pokemon have more experience."
He contorts his face into a frightful scowl. "My Rattata is the top percentage of Rattata!" bellows the boy, and he tosses his Pokeball onto the arena. A Rattata emerges from the red light of the Pokeball, and it looks no different from any other Rattata. "Rat-tat-tat-tat-tata!" it cries voraciously. "You will never beat us, Champion Joy-Joy! I and Rattata have been training long and hard to reach our dream of being champion, and not even you will stand in our way!"

"Lets get this over with." I declare. With an expert flick of my wrist, I toss Lotus's Pokeball out onto the field. He is conjured from the Pokeball with an eloquent twirl, and a striking pose characteristic of him. How can I lose this?
"Three, Two, One, and GO!" Shouts the referee, and we begin.
I switch to speaking telepathically from this point on. The greatest advantage I have over any opponent, is that they never know what we will do next. The downside is that I can only do this with the Five, whom I love more than anyone else.
I am ready, Lotus tells me.

So am I, I reply. Don't hold back on this kid, because this novice is in need of a lesson in humility. Even I don't declaim so to my opponents, and especially not with a neophyte Rattata of all things.

Agreed. He is much more serious in battle than real life. Battles are fun, Lotus knows, but they are not games.
And so the battle starts. Rattata makes a few tackles for Lotus, and misses. Lotus leaps aside with ease. Gracefully as he executes this, I instruct him to use Energy Ball to finish Rattata off.
The second Lotus slows down, the Rattata digs in and really leaps to Lotus in an astounding blur of speed. "Rattata, use Bite!" screams the youngster, and Rattata sinks it's teeth into Lotus's shoulder. With a gasp, my Roserade falls to the ground unconscious. The instantaneous knockout shocks me out of my air of confidence.
"ROUND ONE GOES TO JOEY!" announces the judge.
I begin to tremble, and fumble for Lotus's pokeball. "You did your best Lotus."

"MY RATTATA IS THE TOP PERCENTAGE OF RATTATA!" declares Joey arrogantly. "YOU CANNOT BEAT IT!"
And so it seems. One after another, my Five succumb to the freaky mouse. Spark missed her Iron Tail and walloped her self rather well, inducing a self-inflicted KO. Bright's Close Combat is aimed poorly, and Rattata takes advantage of his lowered defense with a risky Tackle that looks more like a Giga Impact. Rascal is bested by a Hyper Fang, despite being strong against Normal Type moves.
I am down to Twirla. My breathing is harsh. I haven't gotten schooled like this since my rival Gavin evolved his Empoleon. The crowd only makes this worse, jeering and laughing at my incompetence. My world seems to be spinning around and around. How could this happen? I have failed the Five, whom devote every cell in their body to me, and whom I devote upon in turn.
Twirla spins and teleports to avoid a Hyper Fang, but just barely. Perhaps I can turn this around still... but then Rattata makes a spectacular u-turn mid-jump and dives right for Twirla, who has materialized right behind it. Just as the sharp teeth are about to close in on her delicate arm-

A shattering sound in the air wakes me up from my troubled dream, and I sit up in bed. Spark wakes up with me, and looks about frightenly for the source of the noise.

Spark
"WHAT IN MEW'S LAME NAME IS GOING ON!?!" My voice resounds through the air. Dialga-darn-it! Another early-wake-up? If anyone wasn't awakened by the previous smash of a window, my roar probably did the trick.
Severe irritation causes me to look in the direction from which the noise originated from. I flinch inwardly as someone screams sharply. Now I'm on-edge, switching on my X-ray capability to look straight through the corner of the room into one of the upstairs ones. The slightly increased golden glow of my eyes lights up the bed. With a gasp, I see Dasher laying prone on the floor of his room. His window has broken outwards, and there's a Darkrai hovering over him. I continue to stare in confusion as the Darkrai seems to... I'm not sure what he's doing, but he grabs Dasher by his horn. I faintly recall Twirla saying something about a Gardevoir's horn amplifying their psychic power, but that's not relevant now. Transfixed, I watch as the Darkrai grips onto his horn, and pulls him to his feet. Dasher seems to regain consciousness. He looks kind of like a zombie though, not really comprehending of what's going on. The Darkrai floats out of the window, and Dasher jumps out behind him.
"Oh my Giratina," I whisper to myself. Joy is breathing hard at the head of the bed. She says nothing as I watch this scene, just watches me. She can probably guess that I saw something happen. Her face is blanched white, I see.
Of course, her face then turns red with the light that comes from Twirla's pokeball when it opens up. "What's wrong, who's getting attacked?" she vocalizes in a tone of barely-suppressed panic. For once, this isn't an overreaction.
Joy reaches over and turns on the lamp on her night table. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and shakes her head. "I don't know Twi-" Perplexed, she halts in the middle of her sentence.
"Lotus?" she calls. I look over on the other side of the bed, where Lotus ought to be sleeping. His pile of cushions is abandoned, barely dented. There's no way he slept very long in that. Twirla peeks over the bed as well. With a cool composure, she reaches out to touch Bright's pokeball. "They're gone."
"We gotta see what's going on the the rest of the place!" I declare hotly, leaping off the bed. What if something happened to Roku as well? It sickens me enough to realize that dear Lotus and Bright have been spirited away. Not him too! "Your Lunar Wing failed Joy. Dasher's been taken by a Darkrai, and I'm willing to guess that Psycho has too, if he, Lotus, and Bright have."
Right on cue, another window smashes. We all run to the door, and Joy-Joy yanks it open, smacking my tail aside in the process. We are greeted by another strange sight tonight. Sparkle leans incredulously out of the living room window, that one she and her siblings make mischief by. This one has been broken as well, and I see just in time that someone, a Gallade, is running off into the forest. Several other Pokemon swoop from over her head to follow him, and Sparkle ducks from the buffering wind they create. It was definitely Psycho out there, but I'm not sure who the other three who followed him were.
The Pokemon who were originally sleeping in the room woke up, and no one's happy. Lopy and to my relief, Roku, run from upstairs to see the commotion. Sparkle still stands at the window. Twirla and Joy are off asking the other Pokemon how this could have, and did, happen.
Roku and Lopy dash up to me. "Oh, Spark, something's gone and spirited away Dasher!" Lopy exclaims. "He's gone, and his window-"
"I saw, Lopy. You two alright?"
Roku nods, and the mildly annoying bunny speaks once more. "Is Bright fine, is what I'm wondering. If Dasher was taken-"
"He's gone too, along with Psycho and Lotus."
"Lotus?" Roku gasps. "He's gone?"
"Great Giratina, yes. I want my brothers back, and I want them now! Who's this Darkrai to take them from me?"
Twirla and Joy walk in and join the conversation. I notice Sparkle look back and listen in as well. "I don't know who this Darkrai thinks he is," my dear Twirla is almost bursting into tears, "But I want my mate, children, and my brothers back too."
"Gallant's gone too?"
"Along with Gust the Drifloon, Gli, and that one Staravia, Cosmo."
My jaw drops in surprise. "My Mew, that's a lot more Pokemon possessed than last time. Like, there's ten now? Dasher, Psy, Gallant, those three you said, Bright and Lotus? There's no way anyone can walk out of the house without getting attacked at this rate. Even I would be hard pressed to take on all of them at once."

Sparkle gasps, and she steps onto the windowsill. "That's too bad. It's not like fighting any them would be safe anyways..." I barely catch her say. Then, she jumps out the window, and teleports into the night.

Loppily
Joy flops sullenly into the armchair. "How could this have gone so wrong?" She looks tormented. I can almost hear her telling herself she has failed. You see, Joy has this funny idea, that as a Champion she's not allowed to fail. Maybe part of the reason she's done so well is that she never blames anything on her Pokemon, or even her opponent. It's always pinned on herself.
Spark nudges her arm. "I don't know. Didn't you say that feather's supposed to keep away Darkrai?" Delicately, Spark scoops the Lunar Wing off of the table and onto the star of her tail. "Wow, that's pretty shiny for a feather."
Roku leans in closer, to inspect the feather. "Let me see that for a second..."
"It's all yours, Roku."
He picks it up, and peers at it intently. What's he supposed to see about it?
"This isn't a Lunar Wing."
"It's not?" I question. It certainly looks like a Lunar Wing, curved and yellow and glossy.
"When I look at it's aura, I can tell it doesn't belong to a legendary of any sort. It's just not that... well, it's hard to describe. Brilliant? Radiant? Powerful probably best describes it. But anyways, it didn't come from a Cresselia. This, is a Pidgey feather."
Joy sighs. "Just our luck. Why in the world would someone try to imitate a Lunar Wing with a Pidgey feather?"
Twirla goes encyclopedia on us. That girl is like a super computer, I tell ya. She even knows what the word, sesquipedalian means. I would know, because she described her own vocabulary like that once. "There was a famous scam about ten years ago, back in Canalave city, Sinnoh. People were suffering from bad dreams inflicted by a Darkrai, and bought fake Lunar Wings to try and stop them. A police officer and some kids stopped the criminals behind the scheme, and a Darkrai that popped up afterwards too, but the fake Lunar Wings continued to circulate. It wouldn't surprise me if some less ingenuous people took theirs and sold them to others whom hadn't heard about this event as, "genuine Lunar Wings". Effectively, that's most likely where this one comes from. What surprises me, is that it managed to come all the way to Unova."
A pensive mood settles in the air. We know what we're facing now, sort of, and now we don't have any way to counteract it.
I remember the funny rhyme that Bright gave Dasher:

Five days of searching have just begun.

"Hey," I start, "This probably won't last more than three more days. Remember that poem Bright gave Dasher? Maybe we'll just have to wait this out." My idea sound hopelessly optimistic, even to myself.
"What will happen to everyone after the five days?" Twirla asks. "We could still have a problem on our hands. They might be put into a sleep forever, die, or who knows whatby the end of this. For all we know, a nonsequireous thing like abduction into the Distortion World may occur." I'm not sure what nonsequireous means, but it sounds like Twirla's got a point. A pang of coldness takes my heart at the thought of Bright trapped forever with only Giratina for company, as unlikely as that is. Twirla turns to Joy-Joy. "What should we do?"
"I don't know. There's just..." trailing off miserably, she looks around the room. Perhaps she's hoping someone else will know what to do, or offer her consolation. Whatever the reason was, her gaze halts at the broken window.
"Hey, where's Sparkle?"
"Where's Rascal and everyone?" Spark points out. "Why not ask after them?"
"I know they went into the kitchen. Crisis or not, we need to eat. Sparkle on the other hand has magically disappeared on us."
"She teleported away," Spark says. "I'd assumed that she'd gone to cry in a corner or something."
"She did WHAT?!" Twirla yells.
"Teleported."
Their faces blanched, Twirla and Joy give Spark a shocked look. "You might want to know," Twirla say, "That Sparkle is a lot more like Dasher than you might think."
I consider what Dasher might do in a situation like this. Most likely go off into the forest without a though as to the consequences. He'd end up killing himself, because he can't keep his emotions in check. Dialga-darn the danger, he'd think. I'd better go in after my siblings... “Oh my Giratina," I gasp, "She's gone out after her brothers, hasn't she?"

Secretly, I wish I was brave enough to go after Bright like that...