Forest of Secrets; A Pokemon Fanfiction

Chapter 2, Part 1

Chapter Two

Joy-Joy
I gather the scattered pages into a single pile, as best as I can, and begin to flip through them. The pages are all out of order, and I can't manage to sort them back to the order they were in before. It's just one big jumbled mess! Even worse, the pages are rubbing against each other as I pick them up, and smearing the letters further. It's a lucky occurrence to find a halfway readable page.
Loppily comes over to help after a minute. We work in silence, trying to find decipherable pages and sort them by date. After a little bit of futile work, Loppily speaks. Usually, she would be talking non-stop, but I guess she's a bit overwhelmed by what has happened today.
"Joy-joy?" she begins.
"Yes, Lopy?"
"Is Bright going to be alright?" Her ears twitch in agitation, and she stares at me with pleading eyes.
I consider the question. As of the current moment, I have no idea what is happening with Bright and Psycho and everyone else. Chewing my lip, I inspect a page for intact letters and decide upon the best answer.
"I don't really know, but I hope so. You shouldn't worry too much, Lopy. Spark's out there looking, and you know how strong she is. If there's anyone who can help him, it's her."
Loppily breathes deeply and appears to be trying to force herself to relax.
Queenie buzzes back into the room, jolting Lopy back into a state of agitation. "Dazzzher out theeere, only one cooonzzzciouzzz, otherzzz knocked out, Bright there, Pzzzychooo there, bad baaad bad! Neeed heeelp Joy-joy. Heeelp!" She looks down at what's left of the journal. "YOU RUUUIIINED IT! BAD BAAAD BAD!"
"Forget that Queenie! Lets go see what needs to be done out there." Twirla glances back over the back of the computer chair. "Whats going on?"
"Nothing Twirla, you continue looking." She shrugs and gives me a funny look before going back to the computer. "Okey-doke. If you need help with anything else, I'm there."

Me, Loppily, and Queenie hastily pile up the papers in the center of the table, since they're all useless anyways. We make a quick exit to the back yard, where I am greeted by a jittery, perhaps even excited Dasher and unconscious Psycho, Sparkle, Roku, Bright, and Spark.
"How did this happen Dasher?" I question as I walk over to Psycho. He has a leaf bandage on his arm, but it's coming off. There are various tears in the wrap, and it's wrinkled together in some spots. From close inspection, it appears to have been pummeled by a strong, perhaps-close range move.
Dasher shrugs and gives a nervous chuckle. "Would you believe me if I said I have awesome battle skills?"
I examine Psycho for other injuries. He seems fine, other than that nasty-looking arm. His head lolls limply when I pick him up to carry him inside. "Uh, no, not really."
"Pfft. Ok, you're right not to believe me. It's a really long story though, Joy. You sure you want to hear it right now?"
I turn my gaze to the rest of the injured Pokemon. Queenie is carrying Roku into the house, and Loppily is frantically searching Bright for injury. Sparkle is rolling and shivering. Spark breathes slowly in and out. Her fur is singed, and I can see a black streak of soot on the metal of her tail-tip.
"I think we got time, Dasher. Lots of it."

Dasher
"You say WHAT now?!?"
Joy-joy grills me for details, wants me to tell her all about the encounter with Psycho and the battle with Bright, blow for blow. She herself ties a fresh bandage onto Psycho's arm. Luckily for him, he's unconscious, so he doesn't feel a thing. You know, I never knew Joy was that good at patching up injuries. I suppose if she had traveled the world and challenged everyone she could, that she would need the skill. What surprises me, is how quickly her hands move to position and tie the bandage up. It's a curt, brisk motion, like she's used to it.

"Dasher! Please pay attention! I just asked you what happened after Bright knocked Psy out... twice."
Oh. Oops.
I shrug apologetically, and lavish upon her the final details. "Sparkle lost her head, and used a Dream Eater on Bright. Somehow, they both conked out, and I was the only one left up. That's that."
As I wait for Joy to ask for more detail, I turn my gaze about the living room. Hasty sickbeds have been prepared for the others from tablecloths spread on the floor. Psycho's propped up against the couch, looking worse than I've ever seen him before, not to mention covered in dirt. It rather makes me regret dragging him instead of using Psychic, but using Psychic was more werrisome in his case. Sparkle and Bright seem fine, snoozing away the hour. Well, except that it seems more like Sparkle is trapped in a nightmare than snoozing. I notice Loppily hasn't budged an inch since we've brought Bright in. She's just sat and stared at him. For some reason, it occurs to me that she might want to be more than friends with Bright...
The ones we're really worried about are Spark and Roku. Spark's got some bad burns, and some of her fluffy mane is burned away. It's almost hilarious, how lopsided her head looks with shortened, charred hair on her left side, and normal mane on the other. She's sort of almost sleeping otherwise. Probably just passed out. Queenie's putting ice on the burns.
Roku's harder to judge. I'm not sure what kind of damage a single Aura Sphere can do, but he isn't waking up anytime soon. I wonder if he's just clean knocked out cold, or if Bright might have broken something, since that Aura Sphere looked pretty nasty. Lotus and Rascal tend to him. Lotus holds a Pecha berry in each vine, and is insisting to Rascal that Pecha berries ought to work. Rascal patiently tries to convince Lotus that he is mistaken, and Oran berries will help. Obviously, Pecha berries cure poison, not help with strength. Thus, Lotus is wrong.

"Dasher! Why do you keep spacing off all of a sudden?"
"What?"
"I just said, since you're done telling me what happened, can you check on Twirla, see if she's found anything new on Full Moon?"
"Sure, I guess. But Joy..."
She ties the final knot of the bandage and looks up at me. An impatient huff escapes her as she stands up. Sharp glares from her seem to cut through me, which means she's really at the end of her rope, because she almost never gives dirty looks.
I chuckle nervously and point in Sparkle's direction. "Twirla abandoned the computer in favor of Sleepy." And, she had. Twirla kneels down and holds Sparkle's hand, even though Sparkle's sleeping and not in any danger of dying.
Joy looks sympathetically over at them. "It's kind of hard on all of us, isn't it?'

This takes me by surprise. Joy's never mean to me, and doesn't harbor any ill-will, but she's never really bothered with me, Sparkle, or Psycho since we evolved. She's always talking to the Five like that, like adults who understand what needs to be understood. Even Lotus, and he's like a little kid at heart. I can't help but wonder if coming home in one piece when two of the Five didn't has given her a higher opinion of me. Maybe, maybe not.
"Yeah, it's hard." I reply, surprisingly without sarcasm. Sarcasm is too hard to summon, when I look back at Psycho.
"It's hard."

Spark
I'm ali-i-i-ittle bit confused right now. I was hot, and now I'm cold. Will whoever's in charge of the pain in the world just stick with one thing? 'Cause I really hate these Dialga-be-darned temperature changes.
Finally I have enough feeling in me to know that someone's piling cold stuff on me with similarly cold hands. I wrinkle my my nose at the twinge the feeling sends up my spine. Maybe numbness was better.
The selfsame someone reacts to the twitch of my fur I give when that blasted cold starts to sink in. "Icezzz helped, icezzz helpzzz!" they warble. The voice buzzes like a chainsaw. Or like a vespiquen speaking.
I pry open my cool eyes and see Queenie towering over me. "Queenie!" I yelp. "You the one putting the cold stuff on?"
"Icezzz helped Zzzpark!" She vibrates her wings and pulls her mandibles apart in what pases for a buggy smile. "It workzzz!"
"Great Queenie. But look here, it's getting too cold fo me. Mind taking it off?"

"But Zzzpark, Joy zzaid-"
Joy-joy appears from behind Queenie's frantic hovering figure. "Spark! You're ok!" I grin up at her. Dasher also steps out from behind Queenie. I scowl at him in my most menacing way. "Great to see you, Joy. DASHER, YOU COWARD, YOU AND YOUR NO-GOOD SIBLINGS BETTER HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS!"
To my satisfaction, the rotten scaredy-pants flinches and takes a step back. "Auntie Spark-"
"DON'T YOU AUNTIE SPARK ME! YOU COWARDS DIDN'T EVEN ATTEMPT TO FIGHT! WHY, YOU JUST LET ROKU GET HIS BRAINS BASHED OUT!" In a lower tone, I say, "I saw that Sparkle didn't hesitate to Protect YOU two. Why not help me and Roku out? I bet you just hid and let Bright wander off again."

Dasher's shaking by this point. I feel no pity whatsoever for him and his siblings. All of them are just obnoxious scoundrels who are too uppity to bother battling, except a defensive Protect or fleeting Teleport every now-and-then. None of them even want to get stronger, and on top of it, they think I'm some evil loony or something.

"Spark. Calm. Down. We have Bright right here. Sparkle knocked him out with a Dream Eater." Joy assures me.
Oh, so now they steal my credit? Did poor old Auntie Spark just faint, and they supposedly do all the work?
"They didn't do hardly nothing. I-"
Joy shushes me, holding a finger to her mouth. She steps back and gestures around the room. When I bother to look around, what I see tells me a different story from what I first assumed.
Sparkle is lying beside me on a tablecloth spread on the floor. She doesn't look so hot, shuddering a little and shivering. I'd almost take her for a sweet, innocent little thing.
On my other side, Roku and Bright lay. Roku is curled up around his stomach, and Bright's just snoring. Lotus, Loppily, and Rascal give a little wave at me. Silly Lotus is holding Pecha berries. He must have gotten mixed, as is typical. Never really did bother to learn his berries.
When I look past Joy and Dasher to the couch, I do a double-take. I'd figured that both Psycho and Dasher would be cowards still standing. Of course, Dasher's still fine, but Psy's dirtied up and his arm looks rather sorry. I wonder if I was too quick to judge him after all.