Waking up the next morning was not nice. At all. I just opened my eyes and groaned, the sudden rush of memory and feeling overwhelming me. I stuffed my head into the Pokémon Centre pillow before sitting up, trying to shake off what was going around in my head.

The room was perfectly quiet, as it usually was in the morning. Warmth and sunlight fell through the thin curtains. But my bed felt surprisingly bare. I felt the top of the sheets almost in disbelief. To the side I should have been seeing a tiny curled up cat-ball, breathing slowly and flicking his ears. I’d always have to prod him awake and he’d be grouchy… once or twice I’d had to carry his limp, half-asleep form down the stairs, too.

I had to stop reminiscing, and let out a sigh. The noise of my breath alerted me to how incredibly silent the room was – Gary’s quiet breaths (or snores, if he was still asleep) were not there. I quickly got out of bed, stooping to avoid banging my head on the upper bunk, and looked up at it. Gary wasn’t there. That was unlike him – usually he’d stay some where close by, reading, until I was ready.

I walked hastily towards Gary from behind. Down on the beach, just outside the pokémon centre, I could clearly see his head on one of the deckchairs from a window. I was jogging briskly up to him now, and feeling quite warm on the way. The whole beach was covered in pale yellow sand and excited holiday-makers. It looked like the perfect place to be on a warm summer morning. As I approached Gary I could see he was wearing nothing but swimming trunks and sunglasses.

I finally came up to him, casting a shadow over the deck chair.

‘Well, thanks for telling me where you were going,’ I said with a sarcastic tone.

‘What?’ he replied with a nonchalant air, ‘I didn’t want to wake you… you seemed pretty worn out after yesterday.’

‘Well…’ I held a helpless tone while trying to salvage my side of the argument. ‘I had no way of knowing where’d you’d run off to…’

‘Yeah, but you found me, didn’t you? So why worry?’ He turned his head away from me and back to face the shimmering sea. I took a moment to glance around, and saw two older teenage girls walking up, both clad in small swimsuits. They saw Gary as they passed, and he gave them a quick smile and a nod. One girl rolled her eyes, the other giggled in a girlish way, and they went on their way.

‘That’s it,’ I said firmly, grabbing Gary’s arm. ‘We’re getting out of here…’

I pulled him away from the beach, towards toe pokémon centre and the other buildings in Olivine City. He attempted to resist, but only half-heartedly.

‘Gary…’ I said with a sigh, coming to a stop, ‘we came here to get a badge, not to play around on a beach…’

‘I know. Why don’t we do both? We’re on the best vacation spot in Johto at the perfect time of year! Let’s just relax!’

I sighed again. ‘I can’t relax… I’ve never been good at that sort of thing. Can we just head over to the Gym now?’

‘All right… but later, I’m gonna make sure you spend some time sunbathing…’

We headed inside the pokémon centre so that I could get some breakfast while Gary dressed in something more suitable. As usual, all my pokémon came out at mealtimes so that they could eat too. At that point, I had to explain to them that Meowth was no longer with us.

All my pokémon were huddled up by their little food bowls, on the floor by my table in the cafeteria. A Lapras, Quilava, Trapinch, and golden Growlithe, these were the only pokémon I had. I closed my eyes for a moment and sat back in the soft seat of the booth. After being a pokémon trainer for 5 months, I had 4 badges, but only 4 pokémon to show for it. A part of me knew that I needed to catch some more pokémon soon, after all, with only 4 I had a very limited team. But a different part kept telling me that I could go out catching more, and it still wouldn’t replace the ones I’d lost.

I was brought out of thinking as something brushed my hand. I opened my eyes to find Spike, the Quilava, nuzzling my hand with his head.

‘Quil?’ ‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Spike,’ I replied, ruffling the top of his head with my fingers.

Just then Gary came back in. ‘Everybody ready?’

My pokémon called various cries of agreement.

‘Okay, you lot,’ I said to my pokémon, ‘we’re all ready to take on the next Gym Leader, aren’t we?’

More shouts of agreement. I called them back into their pokéballs with a grin. And we set off.

Olivine City itself wasn’t how I’d expected it to be. It was a lot like many of the other places we’d been, but all the streets were practically deserted. It seemed that everybody was having fun at the beach, so we hardly encountered anyone on the way to the Gym.

The huge entrance doors to the Gym were quite off-putting. The whole building was huge, and the heavy metal doors were a pain to get open. However, the inside was not what we had been expecting. There was a large battlefield, covered with sand and boulders, but no humans whatsoever.

‘Hello?’ I called hesitantly. ‘Is anyone here?’

From a side door, a small girl emerged. She was quite small with styled green hair, and seemed annoyed.

‘What? Challengers?’ she said in a shrill voice. ‘Didn’t you get the notice?’

‘What notice?’ I asked back.

‘Hmph,’ she sniffed exasperatedly. ‘The Olivine Gym isn’t accepting challengers right now. The Gym Leader has much more important matters to attend to. So you might as well leave now.’ She turned and flounced off.

Back outside, Gary and I walked slowly in the direction we had come.

‘I don’t get it,’ Gary said, scratching his head. ‘What’s more important for a Gym Leader than taking care of their challengers? That’s their job.’

‘I don’t know, I say we should just accept the fact that the Olivine Gym is out of order and get on with… whatever,’ I said lazily.

‘You’re right,’ said Gary with a strange smirk, ‘We need to get on with your relaxation time at the beach!’

‘Hey- no- wait…’ I was grabbed and pulled back up to the sand.

Back at the beach, the midday sun was forcing everyone under parasols and tents to apply sun-tan lotion. Gary was back on his chair, apparently working on his tan, and I sat nearby on the warm sand. It was getting hot, but I still didn’t want to get up and change into a swimming costume. The beautiful sea was sparkling and shimmering in a bright aquamarine, and everybody who had water pokémon had let them out to play. All across the bay, water types were running into the waves, making new friends and spraying each other with friendly water guns. I could recognise a few of Gary’s pokémon among them: his Blastoise and Seadra were taking it easy and relaxing in the warm sea water.

I felt a curious sensation for a moment, and realised that one of the pokéballs at the belt on my waist was wiggling. A second later the ball burst open, and the white light formed Quilava’s shape on the sand. He looked up at me.

‘Quil, Quilava Quilava,’ ‘I was wondering… could we come out to play?’

‘Oh…’ I pulled all the pokéballs from my belt and said, ‘Sure thing, you guys can all come out now.’

The balls snapped open and their respective pokémon jumped out. Lapras’ sudden appearance alerted the attention of a few nearby families, but she quickly found some room.

‘You guys can have some time to yourselves, to have fun,’ said to them, ‘just don’t go too far, okay?’

A few celebratory pokémon cries later, and they were off. Spike bounced away to explore. Mystik the Trapinch quickly dug a hole in the sand and tunnelled around. Charlie shook himself after being cooped up, his brilliant golden fur flashing beautifully in the sunlight, and he was content to lie down beside me on the warm sand for a nap.

Lapras looked longingly at the sea, and turned to me with a whine. ‘It’s very crowded… could I go to the water?’

‘Um… okay…’ I replied cautiously. ‘Just stay where you can see us, alright?’

She whined happily and scooted off into the waves.

‘See? That wasn’t too hard,’ I heard Gary saying. ‘You don’t have to be with them all the time.’

I didn’t disagree, I just lay back with my head on my arms and closed my eyes.

We didn’t stay there for long, perhaps close to an hour or so, before my consciousness got the better of me. All I could think about was the whereabouts of my pokémon, if they were safe, what they were doing… plus I was looking out at the bay, with pokémon playing, running and swimming about… it looked like the kind of opportunity Team Rocket would love. All these pokémon out and about, they would probably find it easy to take some and get away before anyone noticed, even the incompetent Jessie and James.

I couldn’t just sit around any longer. I made Gary get up and get ready, and went to bring back Spike and Mystik so we could get on with planning what we should do next.

‘What do you suggest we do from here?’ I said to him. ‘If the Gym is closed…’

‘From here, the next Gym is in Cianwood City, which is on an island waaaaaaay out that way,’ he indicated the ocean. ‘And after we’ve been to the Cianwood Gym, we have to double back and come to Olivine again, then back to Ecruteak, and on to the East. So…’

‘You’re saying that we’d have to come back to Olivine anyway,’ I finished. ‘So let’s go off to Cianwood, get the badge, come back to Olivine and see if the Gym’s open when we return.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Great,’ I concluded. ‘How do we get there?’

‘We ask our pokémon to give us a lift.’

Seconds later I was down at the edge of the water, trying to spot Marina among all the other water pokémon. I had my hand up to cast a shadow over my eyes, since the sun was only just past its peak. Finally I saw her, and waved a hand to get her attention, so she swam over.

She looked very happy – her eyes were bright and shining, her skin was bursting with colour, and she just looked as if she was at the peak of health.

After a brief smile I spoke to her. ‘Listen, the next Gym we’re heading to is over that way – across the ocean. And so far, our best way to get there is… to be carried by our pokémon. So, would you mind taking us there?’

Marina squealed joyfully and nodded.

Just then, Gary came up. ‘Where have mine got to…’ he mumbled, trying to locate his pokémon among all those capering in the waves. ‘Well, if we’re all set, I reckon Blastoise will have no trouble getting me there,’ he said to me.

I immediately didn’t like the idea. I would definitely feel more comfortable if Gary and I went together, in case we were separated or something.

‘Oh, I’m sure Marina can carry us both. You don’t mind, do you Marina?’

She whined with agreement and looked at Gary happily.

Having collected our belongings from the pokémon centre and dressed back in our normal clothing, Gary and I prepared to leave. I pulled on my backpack as Marina pulled herself closer to the water. I got onto her first, using the irregular spikes on her shell to pull myself up. Then I managed to sit down on the hard, curved shell, still holding a couple of spikes to keep myself up. Next Gary got on behind me, and also sat down.

‘Okay… I said, trying to make sure we were secure, ‘We’re ready for take off!’

Marina pulled herself into the water with her fins, which was terribly bumpy. But as soon as she was fully in the water she started to use her fins to propel herself, and the ride became as smooth as riding on air.

The only movement I could feel was slowly bobbing up and down, but apart from that it was as if we were hardly moving at all. We pulled away from the bay, rising and falling with the waves, moving towards the nothingness on the horizon.

I looked back at Gary; he seemed fine, and was attempting to look down into the water to see what we were passing over. And probably looking for new pokémon, I thought.

Marina swam on, and behind us the bay started to get smaller.

‘So… which way are we going?’

‘Straight on for now,’ Gary replied, bringing a compass out of his pocket. ‘We just have to keep going until we catch sight of this other small island, which shouldn’t be long. We’ll spend the night in the pokémon centre there. I’ve planned our course, and we have to stop at a few islands on the way to Cianwood, so it’ll take us a few days to make the complete journey. Some of these islands have lots of wild areas though, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities to catch pokémon.’

We sat for a minute in silence, just listening to the calming sound of the lapping water as it touched Marina. I was glad I wasn’t the type to get seasick – it felt incredible to sit surrounded by the sea, listening to the water and feeling the breeze wash over your face. I reached out my hand and absent-mindedly stroked Marina’s beautiful long neck.

By now the Olivine bay was just a line sitting on the vast expanse of ocean, so I turned to the horizon to see if I could catch a glimpse of this island we were heading towards. But instead of seeing a bulk of land rising out of the water, a little further on there was a strange sort of... light, coming up from under the water.

In indicated what I could see to Marina. ‘Could you slow up when we get close to it? I want to see what it is.’

By this time Gary was interested, and tried to sit up a little to look over my shoulder at the odd phenomenon we were approaching. We pulled up to it and Marina stopped as I had asked her to. Right next to us, a fantastic light show was dancing on the water, and it seemed to be coming from underneath us. We all just watched it for a while, entranced by the swaying colours. Then the circular light pattern started moving, drifting away from us. Realising it was over, I tried to sit back down, but my feet slipped from underneath me and I started to fall off Lapras. I managed to grab the spikes of her shell while my arms were flailing wildly, and stopped my body falling off, but one of my feet hit the water with a loud splash. I pulled myself back onto Marina, pulled up my foot, and looked my sopping wet shoe with distaste.

When I looked back at the lights, they were fading into the distance, but something else had happened. A smaller circle of light was coming right towards us.

‘Oh great,’ said Gary, ‘now you’ve done it.’

I watched this little light breakaway as it came closer, and it stopped just before it reached us. The light suddenly got brighter, and then something broke the surface – a pokémon. A round, blue pokémon, with light yellow markings and large yellow bulbs on the end of two long antennae.

‘You mean all that time, that light was a school of Chinchou?’ said Gary, sounding incredulous.

I recognised the Chinchou, but clarified its identity with my pokédex all the same. Already by mind was trying to work out how I could fight it. I needed more pokémon, and this was an excellent chance. Marina was no good, she couldn’t battle with us riding her. Growlithe and Quilava had nowhere to battle, we were completely surrounded by water. Trapinch wouldn’t work either, even if it was a ground type, it wouldn’t make any difference with all this water everywhere.

‘You’d better not be thinking of fighting it,’ Gary said in a threatening tone. ‘It’s part electric. If it attacks us back, which it almost certainly will, we’ll all get shocked.

I was about to give up hope of being able to fight with the Chinchou, but then another idea surfaced in my mind.

‘Hey Gary… you have an Electabuzz… don’t you?’

A moment went past as the idea clicked in his head too.

‘Oh, no! Don’t even go there! Not happening!’

‘Pleeeeease? It would really help me out.’

Gary had his arms folded over his chest, and turned his head away defiantly. But he slowly brought his head back to face me, and gave in.

‘You had better know what you’re doing.’

He plucked a pokéball from his belt and tossed it a small way into the air, thereby summoning the Electabuzz inside out of the ball. The yellow humanoid pokémon with jagged black stripes chose to form at the very back of Lapras’ shell.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ I said, preparing to brace myself. ‘Marina, get ready for battle.’

‘Electabuzz,’ Gary said, ‘get swimming.’

Electabuzz hopped right into the water and Marina turned about to face her opponent. Chinchou looked at us quizzically, but seemed to realise what was going on.

‘Okay,’ I started, ‘let’s begin with a water gun!’

On cue, Marina spurted a stream of water at Chinchou, who was hit. It was a good shot, although understandably not very effective. Chinchou seemed a little annoyed at the sudden hostility of the newcomers.

‘Well, let’s go for another one, Marina!’ Another shot of water gun headed straight for Chinchou. However, this time it better understood what was going on, and swam easily out of the way. Then it retaliated with a water gun of its own, aimed straight for us. The water managed to splash Marina and both of us sitting on her.

‘Marina’s manoeuvrability is limited while she’s got us sitting on her,’ Gary said through clenched teeth as he tried to shield himself from the incoming water with his arm. ‘You need a better tactic.’

‘Okay, okay… okay,’ I tried to think quickly before we were attacked again, ‘Try using confuse ray!’

Marina tried her best to send a wave of confuse ray at her opponent, but it failed. And then Chinchou decided to fight back again. Electrical waves flashed between its bulbs of antennae.

‘It’s gonna use spark!’ Gary said worriedly. ‘Electabuzz, get in there!’

I saw Electabuzz swim dutifully out into the line of fire, and a second later, there was a noise like a lightning bolt striking. The flash lit everything up and I had to cover my eyes, but when I looked again, we were still unharmed. Electabuzz seemed okay, although a little tired, after having taken the attack onto himself.

‘Let’s get this over with, Marina. Use… just a little ice beam.’

Unlike the usual ice beam, a stream of cold, Marina formed a small ball of the attack and fired it in Chinchou’s direction. Chinchou didn’t move in time, and it was just enough to freeze Chinchou and the water around it into a solid block of ice.

After seeing it work, I grinned. ‘Alright, Marina – go ahead and use body slam!’

Marina pushed herself through the water, quickly accelerating towards her adversary. I felt the wind blowing past us get stronger as we picked up speed.

‘Hold on!’ I yelled to Gary behind me.

There was a bump and a shattering crash as the ice broke into hundreds of pieces. I let my body relax and released my firm grip on Marina’s shell, looking up to see if the attack had worked. Chinchou was floating in the water, freed from the ice, but apparently defeated by the attack.

‘All right! Yeah!’ I cheered, unclipping a spare pokéball from the back of my belt. I took a second to aim and threw the ball straight for the floating Chinchou. It hit and bounced off, then opened and sucked the helpless pokémon inside. Marina quickly splashed over as the ball fell back down onto the water, so I could pick it up before it sank. As I pulled it up, the pokéball confirmed that it was closed as the Chinchou gave up fighting for its freedom.

‘Woohoo!’ I cried, tossing the pokéball up once before slipping it back into its holder on my belt. ‘I finally got one!’

‘That’s great,’ said Gary, who’d just finished recalling his Electabuzz. ‘But, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s getting late.’

He was right. The sun was starting to set on the horizon. I looked up, and finally saw the island we were supposed to be heading for.

‘Then, onward!’ I yelled, pointing at the land mass in the distance and Marina began to make her way towards it.

Author’s Note: Once again, I’d like to thank all of my reviewers, and I apologise for my chapters taking so long. You’re all brilliant for being so patient. ;)