Chapter 9: The Clefairy Invasion of Earth (Part 1)

So, Route 3 was an interesting place.

Forrest and I had been travelling all day on our way to Mt Moon. We started out early, which admittedly was more his choice than mine. He was up and knocking on my door at six o'clock in the morning! Six o'clock! My goodness, I am never going to get a full night's sleep on this journey.

It wasn't the worst thing in the world actually, we had made decent time thanks to the early start. Thankfully, Metapod was back to full health after my disaster of a Gym Battle, also thankfully, Forrest hadn't made any mention of my disaster of a Gym Battle. Ugh, it's gonna take me a long time to get over that one...

Forrest was an impressive young man. He was definitely made for battles. We had had a few Pokémon Trainers come up to us asking if they could get a battle and he fought off all comers. One by one they came and one by one he knocked them down. He had a Rhyhorn. A Rhyhorn! It was probably one of the coolest things I had seen so far. It was a huge grey beasty thing with rocky side plate covering his whole body. It just looked so cool and tough, nothing on this Route had even made it flinch!

Metapod and I took a little less of a combative stance as we traversed the Route. Metapod was more than content to hang out with me on the side-lines and watch as Forrest picked off all the trainers here. She was watching everything in great detail, Rhyhorn was battling a lot of Bug Types, so maybe that was what had piqued her interest. Forrest's Rhyhorn was battling this Beedrill one time, and Metapod eyes never left Beedrill the whole time. As the flying Bug Type danced and weaved through the air, Metapod seemed to have a wonder in her eyes and she followed Beedrill's path at every turn. Though she didn't seem all that disappointed when Rhyhorn squished the bug with ease. I was glad at least that she was taking an interesting in battling. Thankfully the Gym battle hadn't traumatised her.

"You two are unstoppable!" I said to Forrest when he had dispatched his fifth battle in a row.

"Thank you very much. We have worked very hard. My dad gave Rhyhorn to me when I was younger." He told me. "He gave a Rhyhorn to me, my older brother was given an Onix and my younger brother is going to get a Geodude when he is old enough. My family loves Rock Types. Ha!"

No kidding. There are a lot of children in that family, one day they are gonna run out of Rock Type Pokémon….

While he was speaking I started to think of my own father. He had gotten me a Pokémon, just like Forrest's dad did. I felt a pang of guilt when I realised I would probably never be able to get that Pokémon back, not now, it had been too long since it was stolen. Whatever it was. It made me realised I hadn't even contacted my father since I started out. But how could I contact him? What would I say? I couldn't let him know I had lost his Pokémon.

On the other hand, I was very happy with the Pokémon I now own. Metapod was having the time of her life here. I had placed her on the back of Rhyhorn as we walked through Route 3 and she was having a whale of a time. I am guessing she had never moved at walking speed before, she must have felt like she was on a rollercoaster. She and Rhyhorn were becoming fast friends as well, they had been chirping and growling amongst themselves all day long. Forrest suggested there was a blossoming romance on the cards. My biology isn't great, so I don't know how exactly that would work…

"So, what are you going to do after this? Are you going to continue on to Cerulean or double back to Pewter and challenge my dad again?" Forrest asked.

That, I hadn't thought about. I didn't seem at all ready to be a match for Flint at the moment. So maybe going to Cerulean would be a much better bet. But then why would the Cerulean Gym be any easier than Flint? "Err… I think I am going to continue on. Cerulean is the next place? Yeah, that sounded better. I can't even lace Flints boots at the moment, challenging him again in my current state would be a waste of time." If I was honest, Flint scared me a little. Even seeing him again so soon after the disaster made me a little nervous. Yeah, Cerulean sounded like a much better option.

"Hey, maybe by the time you reach Cerulean you will have caught another Pokémon. Then you will be, err, less b-bad."

Oh great, he still thinks I am a wimp…

"There it is…"

We stopped in our tracks to take in the epic visual. Far out in front of us, climbing high above the clouds we saw the mountain. Mt Moon rose above us on the horizon, sheer rocks striking down from a snowy peak. I held out my finger and thumb to make a 'picture frame.' It fitted right in, a perfect photograph, from here it even looked two dimensional. "So that's Mt Moon, huh?" I had no idea how huge it would be. I suddenly felt a little intimidated. "You wanna climb to the top?"

"No, no, nothing like that. There is a network of tunnels right at the base. That's where the Rock Pokémon will be." He seemed to have a glint in his eye as he picked up the pace and we headed towards the mountain.

It took us a couple of hours and it was getting later in the day when we started closing in on the mountain. I hadn't been able to stop Forrest talking about all the Rock Pokémon that could be inside. "Geodude will be in there for sure! And if there are Geodude, there might be Graveller! Or Golem!"

"Really?" I let him keep talking as I watched the spectacle unfold as Mt Moon grew bigger and bigger as we gradually got closer and closer.

"The tunnels inside the mountain were probably create by Onix burrowing through. Can you imagine if we see one? I could catch one like my dad! You could catch one too!"

"Yeah. That would be something…" Me controlling an Onix? It didn't seem likely at this point.

"Oh, look! There's a tunnel! C'mon, let's go!"

We both ran down the final stretch of Route 3 before coming face to face with the largest mountain in the Kanto region. "You know, my dad says you can never truly see how big a mountain is until you rub noses with it." Forrest said as we ran right up to the rock face of Mt Moon and looked all the way up to see just how high Mt Moon actually was. It was astonishing, we couldn't even see the top from here, the rock face just ascended high up into the clouds.

I had to say, I was impressed. "I am so glad I came here, this is incredible! Seeing sights like this is exactly one of the reasons I wanted to go on a Pokémon journey in the first place." It was so exciting to see visions like this while being in relatively little danger. Viridian Forrest was also a huge thing to see but since I was in danger for most of my time in there, it did take a little of the shine off.

"Oh man, this is so cool! I am so glad I finally got to come here." Forrest was beaming. I don't think I had ever been that happy in my whole life! In front of us were a series of tunnels burrowed into the rock face which stretched up for seemingly miles. I was just about to ask which one we should go in first when I heard a squeal.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Ritchie! There's a Geodude! Look! Look! A Geodude!" Forrest was tugging on my sleeve and literally bouncing as he spotted one of the Rock Types he was looking for.

Not inside the tunnels(as Forrest had guessed) but the Rock Pokémon was high up on a ledge of the rock face, about 20 or 30 feet up in the air, looking down at the high pitched squeals coming from Forrest.

It was a strange looking thing in person, just a rock with a face and arms. Its arms were quite muscular with five-fingers on each hands. Its rock body was maybe a perfect circle at one point, but assumedly after years of living here its body looked chipped and worn. I scanned it.

"Geodude, the Rock Pokémon. Commonly found near mountain trails. If you step on one by accident, it gets angry."

"I'm gonna catch it! Rhyhorn, go!" Forrest cried.

The huge beast had been walking with us the whole way, as well as battling all comers from Route 3, so it was starting to look a little worn out. But nevertheless the Rock Pokémon dutifully marched out in front of Forrest and looked up at the Geodude high on the mountain wall.

Forests energy to catch the Pokémon seemed to slip a little as he realised a small problem. "Errr... How should I get it down?"

"Doesn't Rhyhorn know any long range attack?" Now that I think about it, Rhyhorn didn't have much of a range battle wise. From what I saw he knew Take Down and Horn Attack. Not much use right now.

Forrest decided to throw caution to the wind. "Oh, what the hell, Rhyhorn, use Take Down!"

"Umm, I don't think he can jump that high..." I hated to point out the obvious.

"I know, Captain Obvious." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Rhyhorn, tackle the rock face!"

Forrest's Pokémon was on the large size, and seeing it slowly pick up momentum as it started to career towards the rock face was a sight to behold in itself. It ran towards the rock wall with reckless abandon, I had heard these Pokémon don't have very big brains, and surely a more intelligent Pokémon would have stopped to question why they were running straight towards a wall. Either way, Rhyhorn ran and slammed into rock wall with a sickening thud. For a moment nothing happened, but then Forrest and I started to hear rumbling, it was quiet at first, and a few stones started falling from the rock face, then some bigger ones, then whole sections of the wall were starting to come loose and came crashing to the ground. Before long Rhyhorn's Take Down attack damn near demolished a whole section of Mt Moon's rock face!

The rock wall was coming apart in huge clusters and it was shaking and now there was a huge rock avalanche falling down around us and the Rhyhorn. While Forrest and I turned on our heels backed away, Rhyhorn stood its ground, whether through toughness or stupidity, I'll never know, the Pokémon held steady as rocks fell all around him until he was almost buried in dust and rocks.

"What on earth are you doing?" I asked as we backed up as quickly as possible, trying to get a safe distance away. I was a little freaked out that my younger friend seemed perfectly content with what he has just done. "You're gonna bring the whole mountain down on us!"

He brushed me off. "Oh, stop worrying so much. Look!" He pointed up at where the Geodude once was and I saw that it was now falling down along with hundreds of smaller rocks, the Geodude was probably looking as freaked out as I was. Someone who wasn't freaked out, and looking infinitely pleased with himself that his reckless plan worked, Forrest saw that the Geodude was now down on the floor alongside us and Rhyhorn. "Haha, now who's too high?" He taunted me.

"It was still reckless..."

"Who cares? Rhyhorn, use Take Down on Geodude, now." Forrest focused his attention on the Geodude and the battle, now on a level playing field. Well, relatively level if you ignore the rocky debris.

We heard a growl coming from where Rhyhorn was buried underneath all the rocks and debris. The large Pokémon rose out from underneath the rocks and he shook off the dust and rubble, he was unscathed, it was amazing, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. With another growl He rose on his two back legs and slammed down hard with its whole body, the earth literally shook from the impact.

"Your Rhyhorn is a force of nature..." I wasn't completely sure if I was saying it as a compliment or an insult, either way Forrest seemed pleased with the comment.

Running through the rocks and the rubble, Rhyhorn made a beeline for the smaller Rock Pokémon. Geodude already seemed quite injured from the fall it took, but once it was slammed by another Take Down attack, the Geodude was down and out.

"Haha, I did it! I did it! I beat it!" He exclaimed, jumping around like a little kid at Christmas. "And now, I will catch it."

He reached down around his waist and suddenly all the colour drained from his cheeks. "Oh, no... No, no, no! I forgot to bring a Pokémon Ball! Damn it, I am so stupid! Stupid! Stupid, stupid!"

I shook my head before deciding to intervene. "Hey, hey, calm down." I put a hand on his shoulder, "Here, use one of mine." Thankfully I stocked up the night before, "Go get it!" I said with a smile.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Forrest hugged me before he took the Poké Ball and raced toward the Geodude until it was literally standing over the Pokémon and he threw the Poke ball down with probably a little too much force, but either way, it did the job and Geodude was engulfed in red energy and sucked up into empty Poké Ball. The Poké Ball pinged almost immediately and Forrest was now the proud, and slightly giddy, owner of a Geodude.

My vision of Forrest celebrating was disrupted when we heard a shout come from one of the tunnels in the rock face.

"What the hell is going on?!"

We heard a screaming man come running out of one of the tunnels in the now destroyed rock face. He literally had to climb up and over the debris to get out of the cave. The man definitely wasn't happy when he saw the state of the side of the mountain after Rhyhorn battering rammed the whole thing.

While he was shouting, he didn't seem to be an aggressive person, he was quite tall and lanky, wearing a dust stained white lab coat over a cheap brown suit. The man was holding several rolls of paper under each arm which all fell to the ground as he was running towards me and Forrest.

Forrest spoke up, "Err, sorry, sir, that was my fault, I was trying to catch a Geodude."

"A Geodude? All this for a Geodude?" He motioned towards the rubble. "There are hundreds of them in this place! You didn't need to cause a damn avalanche! What if the rocks had fallen and trapped me inside? I'd be a dead man!"

I made my way to the man to make peace and started to pick up his papers. "I am sorry, sir. Are you alright? My friend is just a little excited to be here."

He dusted himself off and took a deep breathe. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. Are any of the papers damaged?"

"Um, no, I don't think so? What are they? Were you drawing the inside of the cave?"

He scoffed. "No, not exactly, they are translations."

Before I could ask translations of what, Forrest held out his hands to the man, with his head hung in shame. "I am so sorry, sir, please forgive me."

Once the man had realised he and his stuff were all ok he seemed to calm down a bit. "Don't worry about it, young man. Are you alright? That avalanche could have been dangerous."

"Yes, I'm fine. My name is Forrest."

I chimed in, "And I'm Ritchie."

"Hello, hello, yes, yes, I am Seymour. I live here on Mt Moon." He started to organise his papers on the floor, putting small rocks on each corner so they wouldn't blow away. I tried to get a look at them but they really didn't seem to make much sense, at least to my eyes.

Forrest seem to find that the most captivating thing in the world. "You live here, inside Mt Moon? Oh, wow! How many Rock Pokémon have you seen?"

"Oh, I have seen many. They always get in the way when I am searching for the Clefairy. Damn things…" He was fixing his glasses while organising the papers in some kind of order.

I butted in before Forrest could get offended by Seymour's dismissal of Rock Types. "Clefairy? There are Clefairy in the mountain?"

Seymour perked up at the mention of Clefairy. "Oh, that my boy, I can confirm. I have spent most of my adult life researching these Pokémon."

"Ah, so you're a Pokémon researcher?"

"Yes and no, I research Clefairy, but nothing else. I used to work at the Pewter Museum of Science, but my work with the Clefairy just became too engrossing, I had to quit. You see these drawings?" He gestured towards the papers on the ground. "These are hieroglyphs. They were made by the Clefairy inside Mt Moon."

Forrest didn't seem too impressed. "Your whole life looking at one Pokémon? Doesn't that get boring?"

He let out a little laugh. "No, not lately. Did you know that Clefairy have been living in this mountain for over one million years? And this is the only place on Earth, in all the regions, where you can find this species?"

"Really? The only place on Earth?"

"Yes," He seemed pleased about being able to share his knowledge. "As I best understand it, Clefairy are originally native to the Moon. Up until a million years ago there were absolutely no Clefairy on Earth! And this is the only place where you can find them."

Fascinating! "How did they get here?"

"They came to Earth inside a meteorite from the Moon." Seymour looked up towards the sky, but it was still a little too early for the Moon to be visible. "Every month when there is a full Moon, the colonised Clefairy here dance around this meteorite, which would come to be known as a Moon Stone. And with their dancing, they are sending messages up to the rest of their species, who currently live on the Moon."

"What do they say in their messages?" Forrest asked.

He sighed, "That has been the great mystery that has been eluding me for years. For the longest time, I have believed their messages correlated to the drawings inside the cave. And, now, after all these years, I think I understand it." He pointed to his drawings. "Look at these."

He went into a very long and complicated explanation about where he found all the hieroglyphs and his struggle to find a way to translate them. I honestly couldn't keep up with him, once he explained one he went onto the next before we could even take in what he was saying. "Are they difficult to translate?" I asked, lamely.

"Yes, they are very difficult to decipher, and there are so many of them! They are all over the caves inside, I can't even begin to imagine how many there are in there."

Forrest and I got right up close to the paper drawings filled with Seymour's handwriting next to each symbol, and tried to get a look at what Seymour was showing us. The 'drawings' were quite illegible. I could barely see anything at all. They certainly didn't look like any hieroglyphs I had ever seen.

"Can you understand these?" Forrest asked Seymour.

"Some of them. Not many, but some. The translation of these symbols has been my main area of study for the past few years. It isn't easy to decipher an alien language you know?"

"Alien?"

"Yes, alien. Anything that is not of this Earth is alien."

As he was talking, I decided to look up these 'alien' Pokémon on Dexter.

"Clefairy. This impish Pokémon is friendly and peaceful. It is believed to live inside Mt. Moon, although very few have ever been seen by humans."

As Seymour listened to the description, he looked troubled. "I wouldn't pay too much attention to the Pokédex's description of these Pokémon. I see it erroneously describe them as a Normal Type, as I look deeper into their species, I'm starting to think that is false."

"Really? Are they Psychic?" They kinda looked like they could be Psychic to me.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I believe they do have some Psychic characteristics, but I am not so sure. Maybe they can't be defined on the type scale as it currently stands. They are not native to this planet, our laws and rules don't apply to them."

I tried to get a better understand of what Seymour was saying, I found it all very interesting. This kind of alien stuff was the exact reason I wanted to come here. "So they dance around a Moon Stone to communicate with the rest of their species?"

"Correct."

"On the Moon?"

"Exactly. The Moon Stone seems to act as a transmitter. Their chanting is being beamed up to their home."

"That is so cool!"

"Yes, it is. From an engineering standpoint it is incredible! Communication with other worlds has never been done before. But there is one thing I worry about."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," He sighed and ran his hands thought is hair, he looked like he suddenly had the weight of the world on his shoulders. "Don't you worry about what they are saying in these messages?"

"Should we?" What could they possibly be saying that would worry Seymour?

"The Clefairy have been here for a long time, a millions years, is my best guess. Back then I would say there must have been, oh, maybe thousands of them who made the trip to Earth. In the time since they have come here, a lot has changed on this Earth. A million years ago humans were little more than apes. Pokémon ruled the land and were perfectly happy with that fact. As time goes one, Humans became more powerful, and they started to tame these Pokémon, all kinds of Pokémon, which turned the balance of power on Earth in our scale. Since then, as you know, we started battling them for sport and then the Pokémon League was formed and then Trainers began travelling and in all of this time, the most important invention in Earth's history disrupted the natural evolution of this world. The invention of Poké Balls."

Forrest held in his hand the Poké Ball he had just used to catch Geodude. "Poké Balls? What have they got to do with anything?"

"Like I say, the Clefairy have different rules. I have been trying to decipher their language for longer than I can remember, and what I have found so far has troubled me." He scratched the back of his head. "The Clefairy have been leaving drawings, hieroglyphs all around the inside of the caves inside Mt Moon. I have tried to get down as many as I can on these papers." He got down on his knees and pointed out a particular hieroglyph. "Look at this one, in particular." The symbol looked like a circle with another smaller circle inside. "I believe this one means 'Poke Ball.'"

"It does kinda look like a Poke Ball." Forrest said comparing his own with the drawing.

Seymour nodded. "Yes, this symbol is everywhere I look within the mountain. This is why I believe humans have had such a huge effect on Clefairy's evolution as a species here."

"Do a lot of trainers go inside the mountain? Where the Clefairy live?" I looked up towards the top of the mountain and then down inside one of the caves. It did seem like quite a daunting place, I could imagine a lot of trainer would relish the challenge of trying to conquer this mountain.

"Yes, plenty do come through. Though not all of them realise what exactly goes on around here. Most people especially don't notice the hieroglyphs. Most Pokémon Trainers come in, find a few Zubats and Geodude and get completely annoyed by not finding anything of interest, and then leave."

"Hey! Geodude are not boring!" Forrest complained.

Seymour was far too engrossed in his story to take any notice. "But some Pokémon Trainers get lucky. Once in a while, they'll find a Clefairy! The catch of a life time! And they catch them, in their Poké Balls of course, they thank their lucky stars at finding such a rare Pokémon and set off on their merry way to the next challenge. With no thought as to how the remaining Clefairy see what the Trainer has just done."

"And how do they see it?"

"Well, from what I have discovered about this species, all Clefairy see themselves as a family, they are all telepathic, with a kind of a hive mind. That's how I believe they can communicate from Earth to the Moon. It's fascinating, I don't believe any other species of Pokémon are the same way." He genuinely did seem passionate about his work as he was talking. "The trouble with this connection they all have with each other is that whenever a single Clefairy gets captured, within a Poké Ball, then that Clefairy's connection to the hive mind gets severed."

"And that's a bad thing?" Forrest asked.

"I believe it is. Look at it from the Clefairy's perspective, every time one of their family members is captured by the humans and their 'spherical orbs', then their connection to the hive mind is lost, and then the remaining Clefairy assume they are dead."

The weight of Seymour's argument was starting to dawn on me. "So they think we, Humans, have killed them?"

"But we haven't killed them. You need to tell them that!" Forrest spoke up also.

"Tell them how?" He was starting to sound more and more stressed as his story went on. I couldn't help but feel the same way. "I have no idea how to communicate with them. It would take years just to understand all these symbols. However, the Poké Ball isn't the only symbol I have managed to translate."

"What do the others say?"

"Well, I can't be 100% clear on this but, from what I have learned, the colonised Clefairy's numbers here on Earth have dwindled. Of course they have. They have had to put up with Pokémon Trainers for all of these years. While there was once thousands of them, from what I have seen with my own eyes there must only be a few dozen left. Up on the Moon I think there are a lot more of them, millions maybe. But the ones here on Earth are scared. Terrified that they are going to be wiped out completely. So recently the Clefairy that are left here have been communicating with the Moon. Contacting the hive mind…"

"What are they saying?"

"Well, boys, the answer is too terrifying to consider. I have been looking at these drawing for so long thinking that it couldn't possibly be true. But in the past few days it has started to dawn on me. I believe I have deciphered messages that will spell the end of the human race. For thousands of years, the Clefairy's numbers had dwindled. Humans had come and stolen and kidnaped them away for sport. And now the Clefairy have had enough. They had spoken to the rest of their species and they are going to summon them down. They are going to take revenge for all of the family that were taken away from them for no reason."

"What do you mean? Revenge?" Forrest was starting to sound a little scared. I had almost forgotten he was still pretty young to take in all of this.

"They are saying they are in trouble!" He shouted, not taking into consideration the fear that must be dwelling inside the younger boy. "They are saying that they are dying. That their species isn't going to survive here much longer. Their messages get transmitted at every full Moon, and once the hive mind becomes aware of these events there is only one way, I believe, they will act."

"How?" I spoke, Forrest was looking really frightened at this point.

"They are going to attack. That's how I believe they will act. They are going to launch an invasion. They will come down en masse, the whole population of the Moon, and take their revenge. To kill all humans. Like the humans had killed them."

"When?"

"At the next Full Moon."

"Buts that's-"

"Yes, Ritchie… it's tonight."

TO BE CONTINUED…