Against all Odds

Chasing a Shadow

"Are you absolutely sure he said this route?"

Brendan's eye started to twitch at Tyler's question, the same one he asked about ten times previously in the past ten minutes. He turned to glare at him as they reached a clearing, stopping as he realized they had reached the end of the route.

The gates of the Indigo Plateau stood in front of them, menacing and shut tight. Brenden walked closer to them, Tyler following behind, and they both stood silent, staring up at the gates.

"If we get here, make a promise to me." Tyler's voice rang out, dragging Brenden out of his gaze. As he looked over, Tyler put up his fist.

"We won't stop being friends, even if it comes down to us." he said with a smile that Brenden returned, before raising his fist and bumping it against Tyler's.

"Deal." As he said that he turned, and glanced towards the forested way they came, his head shooting to the left as a flash of green bolted across the path they had followed, and then deep into the trees. Tyler took notice and looked toward the spot that Brenden was, advancing slightly as a shadow flitted through the trees, just barely in his line of sight.

"Tank. Come on out." Tyler said cautiously, and he clicked the pokeball, his Beldum making an appearance. Brenden said something similar and with a flash, Blaine the Abra was floating beside him.

"Blaine, can you sense anything in there?" he asked and the Abra put his hands to his head, turning his head ever so slightly in the direction. suddenly his arm shot out and pointed at something they couldn't see, moving his arm with the movements of whatever was running around just out of their field of view.

"What should we do Brenden? we have to go back through that way." Tyler stated and Brenden shrugged, before relaxing slightly.

"Nothing of it, we need to go back through there, and so far it has made no threatening moves." he gestured to his Abra. "Blaine will keep track of its movements, and will warn us if it gets too close." he finished, smiling slightly as Tyler nodded. Soon after they set out, the shadow seemingly gone for a awhile.

It had been going well, they still had found no bandits, but the shadow had kept its distance, ever so often making an appearance, but quickly disappearing again, only being detected by Blaine's psychic abilities. While Brendan's pokemon did that, Tyler's Beldum had started making a perimeter around its master, scanning the forest in case of attack, while Tyler's Nidoran, Bruno, had appeared on his shoulder, nipping his ear before slipping into Tyler's hood, its soft snores indicating that it had fallen asleep, making Tyler smile.

"AAABBBRAAA!" with a growl, Blaine suddenly floated in front of them as a large green figure bolted in front of them with a loud screech before they could blink, and the Abra held its hands out to stop them as a massive tree fell across the path.

As the dust cleared both Brenden and Tyler coughed and waved their hands, Bruno and Tank respectively in the front and back of Tyler, protecting him, and Blaine floated above Brenden's head, slowly twirling and growling as he scanned the area, his hand raising again as he started to track the extremely fast presence that was stalking them.

"I don't understand, it leaves us alone completely for hours, and then just randomly tries to drop a tree on us? That makes no sense!" Tyler exclaimed, scanning the darkness of the forest that Blaine was pointing to.

"I don't think it was dropping the tree on us, I think it's trying to tell us something." Brenden stated, scanning the darkness again. Tyler shrugged, and then looked at the tree, taking in the smooth surface, and the surprising height.

"Well in any case, we are going to have to go through the forest now, the path is completely blocked, and we don't have a way to get over this, it's too high, and the bark is too smooth." Tyler explained, feeling the tree, and his shoulders fell as he looked back towards Brenden, who had immediately started walking in the direction that the presence had gone, Blaine quickly following.