Well, this one won't be too hard to improve on, as it was one of my leasy coherent chapters, in my opinion at least. I don't own Pokemon, only my characters, and I have changed pants since the last rewrite, so I own both pairs. Brackets indicate translation from Pokemon {} Cray Wow. What a weird ream... it had to be a dream, right? I certainly wasn't myself. Of course, it's a dream. I was, or dreamed that I was walking down a shady path, a sword at my side, and the wind blowing gently on a beautiful day. I was in a place I had never seen before, a short distance away from a dark, ominous forest. For some reason I was walking towards the forest. I got closer and closer, the path darkening along the way, until I finally reached the edge of the wood. There seemed to be a shadowy figure there, right behind one of the trees... suddenly there was an unearthly wail! " Cara-ay, Cara-ay, come in, we have a task for you!" the voice screamed. I immediately turned around and bolted, running for my life. "Come back! Come back, we have a task for you! You shall be cursed if you do not come back!" the eerie voice cried. But I was already long gone. I woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed, in a cold sweat. I felt a lancing pain in my right arm and ankle, but I ignored it for the moment. I had been in the hospital for two days after the incident with the Eevee, and besides having my right arm broken in about thirteen different places, I had also hurt my leg as I fell. And for the whipped cream on top of the manure, I kept having these weird reams... "Time for your evening medication Mr. Jacobs." Well, at least the nurses were cute... ******************************************************************************** Isaac "What do you think Kaiyen? Has he progressed enough to be...informed?" The little Eevee looked over at me. {Well, you're the one who has to deal with the council, not me. I personally think that he's ready. If he'll stand up to a raging Pokemon, especially one so powerful as myself, well, there's no telling what he could do!} I chuckled. "Ego must've grown since I last saw it, eh shorty? Anyway, I think you're right. I'll tell him soon. We can't allow him to be corrupted, not with all the effort the council has put into this experiment." ******************************************************************************** Dakk Well, the council isn't really all that worried about it they're not all that worried about anything anymore, really. It's mostly just a bunch of old bureaucrats, with a liberal dosage of inexplicable powers thrown in. Most of them can't even do their jobs competently, which is the only reason I ever even had a chance of joining. You see, I'm probably the most timid person you'll ever meet. I'd be very well suited to a position as a scholar, or maybe a file clerk, but unfortunately, I was the most (relatively) competent student in my class. And my family line had the potential for the Powers. So, I got dragged into the council. The problem came in, where I suppose it had to, in that I was somewhat idealistic besides being afraid of my own shadow. So I always had my conscience throwing me into the middle of the deep end when I'd much rather stay in the wading pool. Well, that's not always true. It's not all my consciences fault, it's also my mouth. Gotta get a lock for it sometime. Like now... " Would council leader Darius please consider that using Fire abilities to destroy an army of misguided but harmless rebels is like shooting a three-year- old for throwing a temper tantrum? The punishment must fit the crime. Sure, if you burn them all to a crisp, they'll never do it again, but they'll never do ANYTHING again. Do you really think that's appropriate?" That was going to get me killed, I just knew it. It was gonna get my head handed to me on a silver platter without even asking my permission. You see, my mind does that to me sometimes. My subconscious will take over my mind completely for a moment, then hand it back over to me when it's done. It's like a reflex, but only much, much more powerful. And it happened all too often. " Please refrain from using colorful analogies council member Dakkarn. If you do it again, I'll have to actually respond, and it would be a waste of everyone's time if I addressed YOUR concerns. So if you'd kindly be quiet..." The problem with Darius is that he knew about this little problem of mine. He knew that I'd sometimes reflexively do things that I wouldn't have the guts to back up afterwards. So I ended up presenting a valuable point just about every time I opened my mouth, but looking like a fool every time I didn't. And the rest of the council was more or less under his thumb, with the exception of a few radicals that were kept around only for their fighting ability. There was only one who actually had any chance of standing up to Darius, and that was Miranda. She was a very striking woman, in her early twenties, with long white hair, and the lightest blue eyes I'd ever seen. She was also one of the strongest fighters in the council, both in and out of debate. But much of the council refused to support a woman, being rather old-fashioned, and the rest were afraid of Darius, so there really wasn't much of a chance. Unless of course someone would join forces with her, someone powerful... but that wasn't going to happen if there WAS no one powerful. So, no hope, no help, and no chance to improve the odds...the story of my life. ******************************************************************************** Cray I woke up just in time to see Isaac and...oh no. The little furball that put me in the hospital in the first place. But considering that Isaac was holding him, I thought I smelled something Magikarpy...oh man, that's an idiotic word! Suppose it fits though, stupid word to denote likeness to a stupid Pokemon...and then there's the word Gyradosian, meaning something similar to ferocious, that really sounds cool. So it's a trade off. Anyway, the furball and the Eevee came into the hospital room. (I call him a furball because he's a rat trying to palm off a little terror like that on a beginning trainer!) " Hi Isaac. Hi little furball that almost killed me and injured me so severely that I haven't been able to get out of bed for five days and may never recover the use of my right arm." To my surprise, the Eevee winced. {I apologize. I did not mean to hit you that hard, and it was only supposed to hurt your arm, not your ankle. And I also apologize for the deception. It was not very honorable, but very necessary. I believe Isaac has something to tell you.} Right at that predictable moment, a commotion started outside the room. A couple seconds later, a few burly men barged in, brandishing knives and bludgeons of all bloody kinds. It was actually kind of boring, in the sense that I was just expecting it to happen (Call me a psychic, or call me a paranoid pessimist, but either way, I'm usually right when I predict bad things.) Anyway, one clubbed Isaac, another clubbed the Eevee, Isaac shouted out because he was still awake and saw the Eevee being ko'd. "Kaiyen! No!!" He jumped up, rushed the guys, and got knocked back into the wall, out cold. Then the thugs began to approach my bed...now that's just wrong!! I suddenly felt an odd sensation in my left hand... and all five of the thugs fell over, writhing, one with electricity arcing all over his body, another with ice shards through his throat in a shotgun-like pattern, and other strange deaths, involving fire, water, and something I couldn't identify. Then I suddenly felt very light... oh yeah, that was my head. I blacked out. ******************************************************************************** ******************************************************************************** Any better this time around? If you haven't read this before, I apologize for any confusion you may have, this is not the original copy of this chapter, or the first two either. But don't worry, they were horrible before, hopefully they're readable now. And to those who read the first ones, all five of you, I apologize to you as well. I had no idea my writing could get that bad. If you think that this still stinks, please tell me via review at riyn2799@yahoo.com Thank you Riyn