Journeys: Red, Green and Blue//ON HOLD//

Chapter 11

It was day two of Red's trek through Viridian Forest, and everything looked exactly the same as before. If it weren't for the existence of the path he was walking on, he would've been sure they were all walking in circles. Actually, he still wasn't entirely sold on the idea that they weren't walking in circles. All of the path looked the same too.

"This is taking forever," he grumbled, annoyed with the whole situation. The three Pokemon with him as well seemed bored and restless, except for Piyo, who was probably asleep. Their last battle with pretty much anything had been ages ago. Even though he had known coming in that the walk through Viridian Forest would take a few days, he hadn't really gotten it until he had to experience it himself. He really hoped that the rest of his journey wouldn't be like this, though he had no reason to think it wouldn't. He found himself wishing for something to break the endless expanse of green and brown. As if in response to that, he felt a buzzing in his pocket. Not exactly what he'd been hoping for, but he'd take it. A quick look at his Pokegear showed that someone had messaged him. He vaguely wondered for a second if it had been Kendrah, the girl from yesterday. After all, he hadn't found the strange missing friend yet, so maybe they'd done it without his help. He clicked open the message to read.

"Rampaging Kangaskhan in the area? Looks like we'd better be careful," he muttered, looking at who the sender might be, which wasn't a person but rather the emergency alert system run by the Pokemon Rangers, which meant that it was a reliable source too. The emergency alert system was actually a surprisingly recent development, created by the Pokemon Rangers as a response to rising numbers of accidents caused by dangerous conditions in the wild. If something happened in a particular area, like a rock slide or an overly aggressive Pokemon, the Rangers would send out a message to everyone with a Pokegear who was located in that particular area. It had quickly become useful, though some trainers didn't like the idea of the Rangers keeping track of their locations. It had been awhile since Red had gotten one of those sorts of messages, since not much really happened in Pallet Town, though he vaguely remembered seeing a missed message about the severe thunderstorm where Green had been injured after he'd gotten to Viridian City. That had taught him to pay better attention to his messages.

Riza looked at Red with a questioning look right after he said his words. Knowing her, she was probably wondering why they would pass up a good opportunity to battle or something along those lines. It was tough to tell with Pokemon since they couldn't talk.

"Well, Kangaskhan is usually a pretty strong Pokemon, even at low levels. I'm not entirely sure you guys have enough experience to handle something like that," Red explained to her. She lowered her head in disappointment at the reason, but at least she seemed to accept it. He'd heard too many stories of Kangaskhan mothers dangerously injuring trainers to protect their children. Even Professor Oak warned not to make a mother Kangaskhan think their baby was in danger, and for some reason, every picture of one he'd ever seen showed them with a baby in their pouch. It seemed odd that a Kangaskhan would even be in Viridian Forest, since they were mostly found in other parts of Kanto, but that didn't make the danger any less. In fact, that probably made the danger greater. They'd have to be more careful. Red sighed in disappointment before going on, slightly more quickly than before. He'd been thinking of going back off the path for some more battles, but now it was probably safer to just keep going on the path until the Kangaskhan calmed down again. Red knew that once the Rangers knew the threat had been ended, they would send another message to say something about it.

"Piyo, why don't you scout around? Just to make sure we don't run into it," Red said to his bird Pokemon. She took a few seconds before taking off, probably sad to be displaced from the nest she'd made out of Red's hair.

"Thank you," he said as she flew away through the trees. He wasn't majorly concerned about her not being able to find him again, since the path was pretty obvious to anyone who went over it. Riza and Furi would be able to handle wild battles until she got back.