Pokemón : The Price of caution

'Wait. Vulpix?'

Lee wipes his eyes and filth-smeared mouth on his sleeve with a grimace and sits up, opening his mind to the psychic poke.

All his thoughts are drowned out by a frantic wave of terror and relief, not his own so intense that Lee almost jumps. He looks down to his lap to see his shaking vixen hugged to his middle. She looks up at him and Lee's heart drops.

Her chocolate eyes are wide and filled with tears, some of them escaping and running down her cheeks to be caught and absorbed by her fur. Her teeth are gritted in a canine parody of a grimace, and a wounded whine that stabs at his heart comes from her throat. She presses her head to his stomach and her whines grow in volume.

'I had to let her back in, so I shut her out before she felt or even saw too much, right?' Lee hopes to himself as he hugs Vulpix a little tighter and curls around her. He gulps and turns his thoughts outward to her. 'Vulpix? Love? Are you okay?'

Vulpix's looks hit him, her clenched jaw slackening as her disbelief bleeds over the psychic channel. She then lets out a shaky sigh and nods her head.

"You certain?" Lee continues verbally, stroking her gently across her back. "I didn't mean for you to see any of that. I'm sorry for putting you through that," he murmurs, bowing his head enough to rest on hers.

Exasperation leaks across the link, and Vulpix nods into his chest again.

"If you're certain..." he sighs, looking at the mark on his hand where Vulpix bit him. The skin is red but not broken, despite how her teeth could have easily sheared through flesh and bone. "Now, let's go see what the fuck just happened."

Man and fox untangle themselves and stand, with Lee needing to fight off a sudden bout of exhaustion. He stands for a moment, vertigo threatening to take hold, before he takes a deep breath and forces it down. The pair circle around the front of the lab just in time to see a young brunette girl in red pedal away down the lab trail on a bike.

'May Maple?'

"Hey, wait!" one of the lab aides, a green-haired man (Joshua, Lee dully remembers), calls after the girl. "Sorry!" she calls over her shoulder. "I've never been good at waiting!"

Joshua slumps with a sigh as the girl disappears in the distance. Then he looks up and spies Lee and Vulpix. "Oh. Lee!"

"Joshua," Lee nods back. "What happened? And what was that explosion?" The young aide sighs again and adjusts his glasses. "Professor Birch brought this young trainer, Ash, to the lab to treat his Pikachu, who was suffering from electric overcharge-"

'Wait. This is it. This is the start of Pokemon Advanced.'Lee's sluggish brain finally connects the dots. 'The explosion was Pikachu overloading that... that... whatever that very specific electric-draining machine was.'

"-achu then ran away in his confusion," Joshua finishes. "The girl you ran off after them was May Maple, Gym Leader Norman's daughter. We need to go after her!"

"By 'we,' you mean Vulpix and me, right?" Lee asks dryly, fingering one of the shoulder straps of his bag.

Joshua has the decency to blush and look away. "My pokemon aren't the battling type... But either way, if something happens to May on our watch, the whole lab could be in hot water. Since you're one of the lab's trainers, can you..?" Lee looks down at Vulpix, who just rolls her eyes and nods.

"Alrighty, looks like we have to play hero," Lee grumbles. "Stay put, Josh. And tell Brendan not to come running after us, okay?"

"Got it," Joshua says with a nod. "Good luck." Both Lee and Vulpix turn and take off down the forest trail May rode down.

Lee's feet pound heavily on the ground in sharp contrast to the feather line steps of the vixen beside him. The man huffs and tries to keep his breathing steady as he runs, but he can already feel an ache forming in his legs that will only be worse tomorrow. The feeling of lead in his limbs from his earlier... vivid memory only worsens the experience.

'At least the forest trail keeps us out of the sun,' He relays to Vulpix, pulling at the collar of his shirt with a finger. 'I can still feel sweat starting to soak my shirt, though. Eck. Why couldn't we have been dropped in Sinnoh and their more agreeable temperature?'

Vulpix looks up at him and gives him the mental equivalent of a shrug, her easy stride not faltering at all. A human's pace isn't much to her.

The trees begin to thin as the pair run, and the yowls and yips of angry canines and the fearful yelling of Birch becomes audible. Lee and Vulpix lock eyes for a moment before speeding up.

"Get a pokeball from my bag and chase off the Poochyena!" Birch's faint voice yells.

"In here?!" Returns the voice of a young girl.

The man and fox burst from the trail and skid to a stop right at a short, grassy cliff. Fifteen feet below, a trio of Poochyena bark and yap up a tree where Birch fearfully clutches a high branch. Just to their right, a panicking May digs in the brown field bag that Birch dropped before presumably falling down the cliff May looks exactly as Lee expected. Her red attire, bandanna, distinctive hairstyle, and all. 'Let's hold back and see how this plays out. We'll step in if needed.' Lee thinks to Vulpix as he catches his breath.

"Vul..." Vulpix verbalizes her affirmative.

"Which one do I pick!?" May asks, looking between the three pokeballs in her hand with growing uncertainty. "Anyone! All of them are fine! Just throw the ball and call an attack!" Birch yells back.