Ep 4: Eavesdropping

I’m lost in the forest trying to find Galaxy. Finding her is a chore. You never know where she is. You would think she’s easy to find because she’s purple, but that’s not the case with her. But I’m thinking about something while I’m looking for her. If the machines do explode, how severe would the explosion be? Maybe if there were more than two of the same machine and they were all emitting pulses, it would be bigger. But if it’s only two, it shouldn’t be that big, right?

I see Shadow up ahead. She’s out of breath.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Galaxy is being controlled,” she says.

We’re losing all of our friends, one by one. Earlier, Spider and Wave started being controlled again. We still don’t know who’s doing this or where they are. And since Galaxy’s part of it now, there’s a much bigger chance they’re going to find us now. But then I remember something.

“When you were fighting the Charmeleon, how come you didn’t become controlled too?”

Shadow looks up at me. “I don’t know,” she says. “The mind control spreads through contact, and I know I touched him. Maybe we’re immune somehow?”

But that doesn’t make sense. How would we be immune to something everyone else is affected by? Being totally immune to something isn’t realistic. I look at Shadow. She looks like she’s thought of something.

“What if one person isn’t enough? What if more people need to be around us for us to be affected?”

“I don’t understand it, though,” I say. “Why are we different from everyone else?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Remember, I’ve never really been into mind control so I have no idea what’s going on.”

The sun is setting and I’m starting to get scared. The forest is very creepy at night. “Can we get out of here, please?” I ask.

She knew I was scared. She nods and we find our way out of the forest before it gets too dark.

When we get out of the forest, we head to the town. Shadow stops me just before we get there.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“We don’t know how many people are being controlled.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “But again, there could be almost nobody affected at all. What if we sneak?”

“I guess we could do that,” Shadow says, reluctantly.

We start sneaking, looking in every direction for green eyes. The town is big, so we don’t know if there are a lot of Pokémon or almost none at all. After a while, I realize that this is different from usual. The town has never been like this before. It’s always been crowded and busy with Pokémon going every which way, even at night. But there isn’t anyone in sight.

We get close to the center of town and we hear noise. Not just the fountain, though. There’s a female voice talking. I look around the corner and see a huge mob of Pokémon with green eyes crowding around someone. I can’t see close enough to know who it is. I can only see the tail, but it’s still hard to tell just by that alone. My guess is this is who’s controlling everyone.

“What’s going on?” Shadow peeks behind me, trying to look. “Oh, my goodness,” she gasps. “I didn’t expect there to be this many.”

“Do you know who’s speaking?” I ask.

“I don’t think so. It’s kind of hard to tell when it’s all muffled.”

I sigh quietly. I hide behind the building. Shadow keeps looking. My heart starts pounding, knowing we’re going to get caught if she keeps this up. She stops looking and hides behind the building with me. She’s breathing very fast.

“Shadow, are you ok?”

“No, I’m not,” she says. “I was listening to the voice of whoever was talking and…”

“And what? Do you know who it is?” I’ve never heard this voice before, but there are clear signs Shadow does.

Shadow gulps. She looks like all the life was taken out of her. “Yes, and I don’t like it.”

“Well, who is it?”

To my surprise, she starts crying. I don’t know what to do at this point, so I just let her cry. A few minutes pass and she finishes.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like this, Comet,” she says, her voice breaking. “I’m feeling mixed emotions right now.”

“What are you feeling?”

“I feel happy, sad, and scared all at the same time.”

“Wait, you’re happy? Why?”

“I’m happy she’s alive.”

I don’t know who she’s talking about, but I guess it’s someone very close to her. I think about it for a second, then I realize who she’s talking about.

“Wait, it’s not who I think it is, is it?”

“Yeah, it is,” she says. “It’s my sister.”