The Pallet Ranger

"Capture Styler, go!" the 16 year old Pokemon Ranger shouted, as a disc shot out of her styler, leading a spiral line of blue light. The Capture Disc formed a spiral around the almost fainted Geodude. She watched the disc, as it completed a round around the pokemon. "Capture complete!" she exclaimed, when the disc returned to her Styler.

"Zroa..!" the monstrous dark-type smirked from the background. Zoroark, the monster fox pokemon with a wildest reddish mane, tied into a pony on its far back, walked to his trainer. He looked at the Geodude, whom he had defeated, and was barely conscious. "Hey Arkie, ask that rock what happened around this place, while I return to the capsule that we found." his partner told him. Taking a few weak steps, she broke into a trot, soon vanishing into the forest.

A treasure cove of evidences awaited both her and her Pokémon…
---

"..Ark!" Zoroark obeyed his master's commands, and walked up to the Geodude in front of him. "Hey you…" he asked it in Poketongue, trying to look as threatening as possible, "You pebble, just start talking. I don't have patience, and my trainer doesn't have all day." He locked his eyes onto the Geodude, transmitting all his terror to the rock pokemon. This is Leer!

The Geodude quickly shut his own eyes. "You…you are not…at ALL…getting a thing…from me," the Geodude forced itself to reply, "Not after…you…r…merciless…assault! Do you understand, you freaking, POSING PONY?!" To any random person, the Monster Fox would have seemed scary. If it was anything that made him terrifying, it was not his built, but his eyes. Eyes with blue pupils bordered by red eyelashes stared at him. The dreadful look on Zoroark's face was magnified because of the location of his eye sockets in his skull. Leer made his eyes shine with a blue aura, adding to his terror.

Geodude looked from a corner of his shut left eye, and saw the blue ellipse of the Zoroark's iris staring right at him. "Oh Shit!!" the rock pokemon shouted dreadfully, and shut his eyes tightly. He turned back, rolled into a ball and shot out to escape using Roll Out. When did that Posing Pony creep so much closer? Sorry Leader, he thought, this massive Pokémon is too much! That Fearow was already a bore! He rolled along for quite a distance without being obstructed, except for the occasional bumps. Escaping from the giant was so easy; he felt he was rolling into a trap. What is that fiend planning to do?

Zoroark shook his head, eyeing the hapless Rock Pokémon which was rolling away. "A Posing Pony? Sheesh," he wondered. Now, a rock is calling my pony a fake one? Perhaps my species is really very, very little known. "Hey, rolling stone, stop. NOW!!!" He concentrated all his energy onto his feet, bent down on all fours and shouted, "Quick Attack!" With unrealistic speed, he sped across the field, avoiding the unconscious Geodudes which had been defeated by him just a few seconds ago. In one second, he closed the gap between him and the escaping pokemon.

He screeched, "Metal Claw!" In the next split second, the steel hard claws scooped the rolling Geodude into the air. The Geodude was now flying in the air; he opened his eyes, and was amazed at the beauty of the evening sun…before falling down again. "Help me!" exclaimed the supposedly ill-fated pokemon. Hey, I am a rock, he thought, falling from this height cannot even dent me! That monster is all muscles and no brains!!

Relatively luckily, or relatively unluckily, the rock felt a pair of claws catch itself. It opened its eyes, and saw the same blue iris staring at itself! Gulping hard, he shut his eyes yet again. He felt Zoroark's hand pulling him, then hurling him into the air. His small body slammed against a branch, and fell down.

"Ugh…I am NOT telling you anything! Just go away!" the rock pokemon shouted, lying by the roots of the tree.

"And may you be kind enough to tell me why are you not going to say?" The Monster Fox blankly asked.

"I am not answerable," Geodude replied, "to creatures I don't know. And definitely not to those who attack us for no reason. This is the second time such a thing has happened today." It was literally fighting against his slipping consciousness to keep its eyes open.

Zoroark smacked his head in boredom. He whispered to himself, "Man, this rock is really bugging me. Now I have some idea about facing stubborn opponents. Is it really this tiresome?" He shook his head, remembering his amateur Zorua days. He simply never knew when to give up! Is there a need to terrorize him some more? Perhaps just one more time.

He opened his mouth, simultaneously thinking of an attack to utilize, but Geodude started babbling just after seeing his open mouth. "Hey, are you insane? Don't you have any sense of pity?" He cried out, "Oh posi –I mean beautiful- Pony, you are too much stronger than me! You have already defeated me! There is no reason for you to incinerate me!" The poor Geodude was now reduced to tears. "And this has not been the first time this day! First, a human runs into this patch, then a Fearow attacks and seriously wounds our leader, and then a Pony like you shows up. There's a limit to what we can tolerate! Please leave us alone!"

"Fine," Zoroark closed his mouth. After going through all this, he finally gives me the data I need. He searched for something in his mane, and withdrew a few fruits. His mane was multipurpose. Apart from acting as a mobile storage space, it was like horse's saddle; his trainer had ridden on him by clutching his mane numerous times. "Here, take this Oran berry, it aids in restoring some health. And distribute the remaining ones to the others, and also to your injured leader."

Geodude looked questioningly at the Zoroark. "Why the hell are you being two sided?"

The Fox glared at him. "Do you want the berries or not?"

"No, I want them…" Geodude said weakly.

"Then gobble up. These are the last bunch I have. There is no way I can waste those, unless the situation demands it."

"…well, if that's it, then its fine with me," the rock pokemon stated, gobbling a fruit.

"Well, thanks for believing in me," Zoroark continued, "Consider it as a compensation for the damage I have caused." He got up

"No problem," the Geodude reassured him, now took the last bite off the berry. Hmm, not a bad fruit!

The Monster Fox got up. Before this rock asks anything more, let me get lost from here. The Geodude seeing this, asked loudly, "Hey, but why did you come here if it was not to fight us?"

Zoroark stopped short. He was amazed that Geodude caught his motion in spite of being injured, and busy in his gobbling up the fruit. He placed his foot on a log in front of him. Now what or rather how do I tell him? Oh yeah! "I am not answerable to strangers who attack ME for no reason. And definitely not to the ones who call me a pony." The Fox jumped over the log and sprinted off into the forest.
---

Sayuri was utterly surprised at the black capsule, made up of some sticky substance. The whole area surrounding the capsule, starting from the large tree near it to the crumpled grass a few yards away, was littered with clues and hints, perhaps to a certain collapsed hill, a sandy fog, and a settlement of unsettled Geodude.

She had been sent by the Viridian City Ranger Union to the forest. She knew Viridian forest like the back of her hand, but never had she seen a capsule spacious enough for any average person to spend his life from the cradle to the grave. What is this thing?

The capsule was ruptured at all places, and it had a huge, gaping hole on its top side. Fragments due to the rupturing had fallen all around. She picked up one such large fragment with gloved hands. Through her encyclopedic knowledge gained through nothing but experience, she knew that it was nothing but the hardened String Shot attack of a bug Pokémon. "The volume of this capsule is twenty times that of an average Butterfree or a Beedrill. It's absolutely impossible for any of them to be this huge!" she concluded. There were records of Pokémon being abnormally big when compared to their average size, but twenty times larger? And for it to go unnoticed by her Zoroark? "No, it is impossible for it to go undetected with Arkie on my side. His nose is more powerful than an untrained Growlithe's. Of course, there are exceptions, like the idiotic Fearow, but still…" She chucked the fragment into a plastic zip lock bag, and buried it deep into her backpack. Confirming that her investigation was complete, she turned to look at the crumpled grass a few feet away.

The grass looked definitely crumpled. The patterns of the crumpled grass reminded her of the footprints human or pokemon. The steps of this organism had led her to a trail of broken branches, trees and other vegetation that had continued surprisingly deep into the forest, passing through a Geodude settlement that looked quite mad for some reason. "Was it because of this being?" she wondered. Her Zoroark, Arkie, had defeated the uncoordinated assault of the fifteen-something rock pokemon with little to no effort. An uncoordinated attack from the most civilized Pokémon? It is something you don't see every day.

"That Geodude colony has always been a harmless one," the sixteen year old concluded, "Whatever was the creature, it was definitely not friendly." In the two years of her career, this area in the Viridian Forest was amongst the one that needed the least patrolling. Never once had she, or for that matter any of her Pokémon, registered any serious disturbance.

Two years ago, at the tender age of fourteen, Sayuri had graduated from the Ranger College in Viridian. She was chosen because of her Zoroark, for being a native of the Pallet, and 'for being efficient, resourceful, and ruthless at the same time,' as was printed on her Certificate of Merit. She was now qualified to be an Area ranger, but the actual assignment of areas was done after another test, an actual demonstration of your abilities that is tested by senior Rangers. After going through a rough exam, she was chosen to handle the area of the Viridian Forest and Pallet town, which gave her the advantage of being a 'Local Girl', she being well-versed with the geography and climate of the Viridian.

The Area Ranger began to search her bag for a very special device which was given only to higher Rangers. "Now, for the Pug Marker to do its thing…where is it? Oh yeah, got it!" she exclaimed, as she took out a handheld device, The Pug Marker, which opened like a laptop. The Pug Marker was a mobile database of the footprints of all the pokemon ever discovered, and displayed a 3-D image of the required pugmark. But what made this device more useful than the Ranger Browser was the camera fixed onto the back of the screen. The Pug Marker could analyze, store, and then recognize any footprint that the camera saw. It could also identify the magnetic waves of any magnet-based Pokémon, with the help of a sensor beneath the camera. Thus, there was no pokemon that could escape the memory of the device.

Sayuri analyzed a part crumpled grass, focusing the camera on it. To record a 3-D image, she moved in a circle around the grass, while taking care that the camera was still focused. The screen of the Pug Marker displayed the section of the grass in 3-D that the camera had finished analyzing. For a complete analysis of the print, it was necessary to hold the camera at a fixed angle for at least 3 seconds, without changing its height from the ground. For a very accurate image, the device should be moved around the object in a perfect circle of a constant radius and for whole 360 degrees. Holding anything in such a position for even a few minutes is quite tiresome, and only the top rangers can utilize the Pug Marker to its fullest extent. Hence, it is quite an achievement for a simple Area Ranger like Sayuri to master the utility of such a device

After a few minutes, Sayuri had finished analyzing whole 360 degrees around the crumpled grass. The screen had almost completed displaying the recorded foot print. "Hey," she exclaimed, "I don't remember seeing a footprint like that before. But I may be mistaken." When the print was completely displayed, the young ranger pressed the 'Search' button. The device searched its memory, and what the result it displayed utterly surprised her:

"There is no record of the footprint of this pokemon."

"What the HELL!" went the girl, "Just what the hell is this! A freaking large, unknown bug type with footprints like a humanoid pokemon bursts out of a shell and spreads chaos throughout the forest? Just what is this creature?" The young ranger supported her head in her confusion, as her eyes focused onto the footprint in front of her.

The whole situation had amazingly stumped her. She set into a silent thought process, trying to take her mind away from the result of the Pug Marker. The shell is directly behind me. The footprint is directly in front of me. The distance between the footprint and the shell was around five meters. I have observed the area thoroughly, and there is no sign of any footprint in those five meters. So, did this weird creature jump only five meters? This sounds even more idiotic for a creature twenty times the size of a Butterfree. She walked a few steps away from the site, to catch a larger view of the area, trying to make an imaginative overview of the whole situation.

"Okay," She began, "bugs hang by trees, so this capsule must have been hanging by this huge tree." She scanned the tree from roots to the apex. "After losing its hold, it must have fallen down, bumping with the branches before colliding with the ground. This explains the ruptures and fallen fragments on it." She started walking towards the center of the capsule and the footprint. Sayuri continued, "At this stage, the creature burst out of the capsule," and imagined a large Butterfree coming out of the capsule, "sprouted longish legs," picturing 'her' Butterfree sprouting legs of a man, "and landed on the grass five meters away, and ran into the forest," finally envisaging the Butterfree landing on the grass. She congratulated herself for developing a successful theory, before crying, "Nah!!"
---

Zoroark stood amidst the settled dust. The area that he was observing had the scars of a rough battle.

'What do a collapsed mound, destroyed vegetation, a capsule, a Fearow, a stubborn rock settlement, and a Nanab tree have in common?' He asked himself. Answer: the scent of a Butterfree which reeks of human blood and sweat!

He had followed a peculiar scent that had intrigued him back the first time he had seen the capsule, with Sayuri. The same he had experienced at the Geodude colony, after following the trail of destroyed vegetation. Though Sayuri had been following the vegetation, he had been following the scent. He followed the scent again, and it had led him to the place that they were ordered to investigate in the first place.

He had got his first lead when the Geodude mentioned a human and a Fearow. "Hey, but the Fearow's smell has seemingly vanished. And wait, what is this? A third scent?" he observed.

He jogged briskly into the mound, following the third odor. Once well into the mound, his senses were overwhelmed by the strength of the new smell that it made him sneeze. He blocked his nose and now used Agility to move around, relying on his eyes to analyze the area. The mass of loose rocks around him made it a little difficult to move around.

He came at a place where the loose rocks were replaced by bare land. He released his nose and panted slightly, while observing every shift in the pattern of the scents. First, the deduction from the scent pattern led to an initial hypothetical suspicion. Hmm, why can't I still smell the Fearow? "Wait, what if it is just in this position that the scent is absent? Let me move around a bit," he said. Hence, he moved around.

With each step, his hypothetical suspicion was evolving into a fact. "No, I need to be a bit more confident…" the shocked Monster Fox concluded, "Till now, he had only been just looking around with my intuition, now I need to look for material evidence. There is no way that a Pokémon can die from another Pokémon's attack! Perhaps he is just buried inside!"

He then started with digging the mound and looking for the only evidence that was the Fearow's body. After a few minutes, he was done digging; but found no body. "Nn….no body…no Fearow…no odor…" he murmured. "A strong odor appearing out of nowhere…A Butterfree smelling of human…a human smelling of a Butterfree…Mon, this is getting complicated."

"How much powerful an attack can be? It destroyed a small hillock and charred that Fearow to death? The Fearow, who gave me nightmares? I gotta find the pokemon with this attack, and tell Sayuri about all this." Zoroark wondered, and returned to his trainer's spot.
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Whoosh.....the new chapter is up. The introduction of the three characters is over, and I am sorry: I won't be touching Misty's case for quite sometime.

In the next chapter, I will be dealing with the investigating skills of both Sayuri and Zoroark, and it is going to be awesome! So please R&R!!