Some Days

By Kimira Ketchum

A/N- This is just a little bit with some of the characters from Never Quite Gone. It takes place a few months or so before NQG’s prologue, and it focuses on someone other than the main character of NQG, Hunter.

“Daddy? Can I come with you?” a little girl with long sandy-blonde hair in high pigtails on either side of her head said. She looked up at her father, who was sitting on the back of a Rapidash. He looked down at her, his dark eyes meeting her bright blue ones.

“Maybe next time, sweetie…” he said, running a tanned hand through his short, spiked sand-colored hair. “Daddy’s got to go to help his friend Blake now, okay, Sarah?” he added with a smile. The little girl nodded, grinning back at him as he rode off on his Rapidash. She knew he’d take her for a ride on Dashblaze someday. He always kept his promises to her.

----

He rode, fast and hard- Blake and Hunter had encountered Team Rocket, and there was going to be trouble if he didn’t save their foolish tails this time. Those two were so much alike, there was no mistaking they were twins. He knew Seoh and Pikachu were a match for anything Team Rocket had, but Shadow Team couldn’t be exposed yet- not when they were nowhere near their goal.

He reached the young men much faster than he’d expected to, and dismounted, recalling Dashblaze and stepping between the pair and the foolish Rockets they’d encountered. He looked closely at the Rockets, frowning for a moment. “Oh, great. It’s you two….” he groaned. He reached for a Pokeball at his belt. “Teisu, this’ll be an easy one… Go!”

A Spiritomb came out of the small red and white ball. “Teisu, you know the drill! Use that new move we perfected!”

Teisu grinned, floating toward the two Rockets.

“Oh, no, Jessie!” the first squealed. “What’s it going to do to us?!”

“Nothing, you idiot, we’ll steal it!” the other replied. She leapt forward with a butterfly net, trying to catch the ghost Pokemon in it. The Pokemon dodged, still grinning, and glowed blue.

“Memory Blocker, Teisu!!” the man cried gleefully. He loved this move- it had saved the Team more times than he could count, especially since they found Hunter. He was often more trouble than he was worth, since he’d had a life prior to Shadow Team that he wasn’t supposed to deal with, not yet.

The Pokemon’s blue glow extended, surrounding the two Rockets and freezing them in their tracks. Their expressions blanked, and they stared into space as Teisu modified their memories, making them forget seeing Hunter there that day.

While Teisu blocked their memories, the man turned to the two black-haired young men he’d come after. “You two are going to be the death of me, you know,” he murmured. “Get back to the base in Pewter. We’ve got things to do, and you two are going to have to see the boss about all this wandering off on missions. What if I can’t get there before we’re exposed? You two would be out on your frustratingly foolish tails in an instant. You don’t want that, do you? Not to mention, the boss’d probably find a way to blame me, too, and I’d be fired, and my little girl wouldn’t have anything to eat. I need this job, so you two need to learn to be more careful. Got it, Hunter?” He looked pointedly at the spiky-haired young man, who nodded, his brown eyes watching the ground out of shame.

“Syke, it really wasn’t Hunter’s fault this time. He warned me not to let Seoh wander while we looked for herbs for Sylla, but… I wasn’t paying attention to her, as usual. I’m sorry,” Blake said, taking the blame for his brother as usual. “I should’ve been watching her, but I wasn’t, and when Team Rocket saw her… well, I couldn’t let them steal her, and Hunter was just trying to help me out…”

“Alright,” Syke said quietly, nodding. “I’ll make sure the boss knows it wasn’t Hunter’s fault.” He turned away from them as they ran off into the bushes to go back to the base. He called back Teisu and sighed. “Some days, I hate this job…. But with teammates like those two… Some days it’s worth it, too…” he murmured as he called out his Rapidash. “Time to go home, Dashblaze…” He got on the horse-like Pokemon, and they rode off, back to his home outside Viridian City.

The End