Sleepless in Saffron City

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Shay Miniwa was out very early that morning. Normally she wasn't allowed out this early in the morning, but today the tiny pre-teen had a train to catch. Apparently, it wasn't safe for her in Saffron City anymore, and Shay was honestly fine with the move to the Johto region. Specifically, the much healthier town of Azalea Town. Good riddance to this smelly city, Shay wanted to have some fresh air for once. Air that didn't make her randomly explode.

The line for ticketing stretched out into the streets of Saffron, meaning the tiny green-haired girl with the white dress and white sunhat could be very easily picked out among the not-so-colorful full-time city dwellers around her. She had been using the "I'm just a pokemon cosplay fanatic" for as long as she could remember, and people had been eating it up for just as long. No one ever seemed to question her, although the funny looks never seemed to go away.

He stood up as well, not offering any help as he looked down at her, watching her get up to her feet. Good, at least we have some sort of cooperation. Minimal from what it looks like, but some/ Showing a small smirk, Ori nodded his head, chuckling somewhat at the girl.

"Alright, there we go. Now come on, we should get moving." Orion moved beside her as he spoke, deciding it would be better to go that way. He wouldn't be behind her and completely suspicious, but he could still keep an eye on her this way. I'm definitely going to have to renegotiate a price on this job. He thought to himself, taking a few steps and glancing back, waiting to make sure she would be going with him.

Shay hesitated a moment. She eventually lifted her head and suddenly her large, green eyes were absorbing every detail of the guy in front of her. Her eyes were dry now, but still sad. They showed no hint of helplessness, no speck of defeat; only the immense questioning spiraling around inside her mind was evident along with the sadness. Her eyes themselves just seemed to wonder out loud, "Why?"

Even the seabirds above their heads seemed to drift away from the storm of pure innocence awkwardly.

Shay stared at him for what seemed like an age (although it was only a few minutes), then let her head drop back down to it's original position. She walked up to the guy, making sure to not waste time dragging her feet, again so to not get him mad with her. Her shoes made an uncomfortable sloshing sound as she walked, as she was still drenched. And rather cold. She shivered slightly.

Shay felt really awkward about staring, but she knew she wasn't going to get very far without knowing what the guy looked like. She mumbled a very, very, very faint "Sorry" under her breath, daring to speak for the first time. For some reason, he kind of reminded her of one of her neighbors.

As Shay lifted her head and stared at him, he stared back, his red eyes watching carefully and cautiously. The length of time at which she was looking at him was a bit uncomfortable, and he kept his muscles tensed, ready to act if she tried anything with him. Watching her walk over to him, he relaxed somewhat.

"Sorry." His ears twitched, blinking as he glanced over at her, surprised to hear her speak. A look of mild surprise made its way across his face, before he brushed it off.
"It's fine. Just keep going." Orion responded, continuing to walk into the wilderness that was Mount Silver.

After a number of steps were taken by both girl and creepy kidnapper, a faint rustling in the nearby trees suddenly produced a random Arcanine. Actually, he was more likely than not a tracking dog for the police. The things of Shay's that had been left behind had apparently been distributed to various canine units, and they had already begun to blaze the scent trails.

The Arcanine took one look at Orion and Shay and released a very loud, angry snarl. He could obviously tell what was going on here and was planning on stopping it.

Shay was unaware of this. She was more attune to the fact that there was a large, angry-looking FIRE type of all things standing within frying distance of her, and the angry noises it was making weren't all that inviting. In fact, they weren't in the least. Shay was at a horrid disadvantage in this situation. She instinctually moved behind the stranger out of fear, hoping that he might be able to fend off the attacker so that she wouldn't be turned into a baked salad.

He debated speaking to the girl as they walked, to try and lessen the tension between the two, but decided against it. Talking would attract attention, and if he said the wrong thing it could prove worse then had he never spoken at all. So, taking the safer route, he didn't speak. At least, not until trouble appeared in the form of an Arcanine.

They've gotten better, already caught up? Somebody up there either really hates me, or they're trying to help out. He thought to himself as Shay moved behind him. On one hand, it would probably be a bit of a hassle to battle a Pokemon like the one in front of them that was working with the police. On the other hand though, the girl seemed to not realize that important last fact, and saw it as a random attacker. Which meant if he kept her safe from it, it could help build up a little bit more trust between them.

"Don't worry, I've got this." Orion said calmly to Shay, his arms beginning to spark with electricity. Not being one to wait for someone else to move first, he kept his right arm pointed at the Arcanine, a decent sized bolt of electricity moving quickly through the air and towards the fire type.

Suddenly, without any warning, the attacker Arcanine charged forward at a speed that made him completely invisible. Extremespeed was a common tactic among many different police squads all across the world; it was preferable to end fights quickly and not draw attention. The Arcanine didn't attack Orion head-on, however. Instead, he put himself directly behind Orion and grabbed Shay by the back of her dress.

"Huh- YaaaAAA!!! B-bad doggie!!" Shay squealed, thrashing about as much as possible to try and break free. None of the offensive attacks that Shay knew would even leave a scratch on such a large fire-type. She sure could flail her limbs, though. The Arcanine found itself having trouble keeping a grip on her.

Without even a second glance, the fire dog jumped back and started to run the other way. Presumably, he was planning on taking Shay to the forces on the bridge. It was obvious that his orders had given priority to retrieving the missing child; suspicious would play second fiddle for the time being.

Shay continued squirming and screeching, "NOOO! I don't taste good, stupid doggy!!! Nobody likes vegtables doggy, and I'm basically just a side salad!!!!"

Ori blinked and held his arms up to his head, protecting his head and neck as the Arcanine charged forward. Instead, he seemed to go right past the bounty hunter, getting ahold of Shay before running off with her before he could react. Her yelling out backed up his idea that she had no idea the Arcanine was with the police unit, but it also presented the problem that, well, his target was getting carried away.

Without hesitation, he started to shift down, moving onto his arms and legs and changing shape, taking the form of a full-blown Luxray. Orion dashed off, running at a good speed behind the Arcanine. He tried to go quietly, hoping that the police pokemon wouldn't think he was coming as he began to catch up a bit. Any electricity will probably zap Shay too, and I'd rather have her undamaged. Better keep away from that... Deciding on another course of action, he pushed off and pounced, aiming to bite onto either of the Arcanine's hind legs with a simple Bite attack to try and trip him up.

The bite successfully stalled one of the Arcanine's hind legs, sending the heavy-built dog tumbling forward. He lost his grip on Shay, who tumbled a little farther forward and just nearly missed being crushed by the huge creature that had just been carrying her to her certain doom in it's jaws. She got scraped up pretty good in a few places, a stream of blood trickling down her forehead as proof, but she came out otherwise unscathed. She tried to crawl away from the big dog, but she was rather dizzy from tumbling around so much and ended up falling over two or three times. She persisted despite this.

The Arcanine staggered back to it's feet; taking a few seconds to regain himself after the fall he had just taken. Enraged, he launched a warning Heat Wave from his gaping jaws at the foe Luxray, not quite ready to abandon protocol and attack the interference just yet. After issuing the warning, he started to approach the struggling Shay as she fled, just inches from grabbing her by the back of her dress again. Shay really wasn't a fan of taking her pokemon form; she was pretty useless in that state. Instead, she pushed herself to struggle faster, even if it was a pretty futile action. She definitely wasn't liking the idea of going out as someone's mid-day snack.

As the Arcanine was sent tumbling, so was Orion, falling forward and hitting the ground roughly, loosing his grip. Pushing himself back up, he decided to they and ignore the slight pain from the fall, watching as the police pokemon recovered and preparing to attack. Instead, he found the Arcanine sending a Heat Wave his way, the hot attack staggering him somewhat, making him flinch.

Despite this, he managed to regain himself, still having been stalled for too much time to catch up with Shay and the other Pokemon. His front legs crackling with electricity, a large bolt flashed through the air, heading right towards the Arcanine as the Luxray ran to catch up with the two, hoping he didn't manage to fry the girl instead and that it either bought them more time, or put the Arcanine's attention on him. Either of those would be helpful in the situation.

The Arcanine senses the other Pokemon and used it's Agility move to get away from the lightning. Now seeing that his warning was clearly being disregarded, he reared up and launched himself at Orion with a crushing Flare Blitz. The heat from the move was so potent that it could be felt a good fifteen feet away. A few camouflaged Oddish nearby felt it and panicked, uprooting themselves and disappearing into the undergrowth. A few more on the opposite side, near where Shay was laying, also felt the intense heat and panicked, sending out clouds of poisonous spores as they fled.

Well crap.

The cop dog had temporarily forgotten about Shay in that split second, and she was knocked forward by the force of the ground breaking up from Orion's lightning as it struck the ground where the Arcanine had stood. She forcefully faceplanted into the dirt, then was showered with the millions of tiny poisonous spores the Oddish had released. Once again, the stamen of her flowers twitches. They began to glow and open up a bit more, and Shay could practically feel the poisonous spores getting pulled in.

"Uuugh," Shay groaned, but her inexperienced young body refused to listen.

The Luxray grinned somewhat as the Arcanine dodged his attack and turned to him. He was successful-which also lead to momentary thoughts of oh crap, also because he was successful. The Flare Blitz hit him directly, the intense heat doing nothing to help the already fairly damaging physical part of the blitz. Ori felt himself leave the ground, getting knocked back and hitting the dirt, attempting to roll back onto his paws. The result was a half stumble, managing to stand back up though obviously hurt by the attack.

Alright, that was an issue... He thought to himself, despite his injuries not giving up or letting the other pokemon go. Orion sped into a run, jumping to the side just as he was nearing the Arcanine to try and fake him out, before lunging at his left side, jaws open and ready to use a Thunder Fang. He didn't notice the Oddish or Shay absorbing their spores, oblivious to what was being set in motion.

Shay curled up into the fetal position as every spore was funneled into her body, clutching at her aching abdomen and sweating bullets once again. Her skin turned pasty pale; her hair started to turn grey. She clenched her eyes shut, although she noticed that she wasn't feeling quite as bad as she had when it had happened on the train. The already-fresh air didn't have much more to lose, it seemed.

Another explosion burst forth from Shay's now-glowing form, smacking the unsuspecting Arcanine sideways into a tree with concussion-causing force. The helpless dog looked like a rag doll as it was thrown into unconsciousness; splitting (although not knocking over) the equally-as-innocent tree with a sickening crack, which was partially due to the Arcanine's shoulder getting dislocated.

Something metallic and band-shaped fell out of the Arcanine's neck fur as it slumped to the ground. The hidden high-tech collar with an R-K-9 unit badge attached had been severed by one of the initial shock waves from the explosion. It came to a rest on the ground about a foot away from the unconscious police dog. No longer sensing the pulse from the Arcanine's neck, it began to make a strange pinging noise and send out a distress signal to the nearby units. It also generated an electromagnetic field beacon, which would allow it to be tracked with pinpoint accuracy.

The collar had no doubt been recording the encounter by way of some sort of small camera/microphone/computer chip combination; a function used to aid in investigations. This information would usually be transferred out via wireless communication, but Mt. Silver was more or less a dead zone for the non-electrically gifted.

Over yonder, Shay couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her head. She groaned; never before had she been forced to go through the ordeal of having a Seed Flare go off twice in a row. She couldn't even really think about it or anything at all though, because she was still rather weak.

Orion only had a split second to react, cutting off his Thunder Fang attack and ducking, crouching to the ground as the Arcanine was knocked above him, crashing into a nearby tree before slumping down. He had caught a glimpse of Shay's glowing, remembering it fairly well from the train. Before he went over to make sure she was alright, he had other things to take care of at the moment.

Softly and quietly padding over to the collar, the bounty hunter grimaced, looking down at it. Great, it has an electrical signal coming out of it, probably to alert everyone else. Wouldn't be surprised if it filmed it too, from what that officer told me before I'm pretty sure it does. The thought made him switch to a small smirk, remembering the police officer he had met on a job a short time ago. Oh, she would probably be looking into it.

So, leave it and go, but leave evidence that I'm involved, take it with me, but lead them back...or just zap the thing and take it with me. Quickly realizing his third option, Ori stomped down on the collar with his paw, sending a charge of electricity through it and frying the electronics. With that done, he changed back to his more human form, standing up and stumbling a bit, the prior fight having taken a lot out of him. He picked the badge up, placing it in the pocket of his jacket.

"Hey, you alright?" The boy walked over to Shay, holding his hand out to her. She looked weakened by whatever she had done, lying there on the ground, but they had no time to stick around.
"I know it might hurt, but there'll probably be more anytime now. We need to keep moving." He said to her, hoping she would get up. If not, he could always carry her in either form, though that would take a bit more effort and slow them down.

"Uuugh... N.... No more explosions........" Shay mumbled softly. At least she could still feel her limbs this time. Still shaky, she pushed herself off the ground and into a kneeling position. With some effort, she made it all the way onto her feet, revealing the bloody, dirty mess her face had become. Shay was unaware of how she looked though; she was far too preoccupied with  a certain realization she had come to.

The air... It was just so naturally clean!

Shay wasn't sure what to think. The air around them tasted the slightest bit sweeter and cleaner from the Seed Flare, although Shay could hardly tell the difference now that she was being introduced to real fresh air that wasn't in her apartment for the first time. It was almost overwhelming, yet it was so rejuvenating... It felt so good to step out of the sea of never-ending city smog. So much better than Shay had ever dreamed...

Out of the corner of her eye, Shay noticed how banged-up the stranger guy was looking. Despite the whole train mess and the fact that he had kidnapped her, Shay was at least thankful to him for helping her get away from the Arcanine. She still had no clue what this guy was all about, but he had tried awful hard to help her get free from that Arcanine... she decided she owed him at least this much.

"Uh-! Wait..." Shay muttered shyly, unsure of how to approach the weirdo, "You, uh, your skin is singed pretty bad. First or second degree... I can take care of that." Shay closed her eyes and crossed her arms, holding her palms open to her flowers. A strange energy, although faint, formed in her hands. With a flick of her wrists, Shay sent the relaxing, flowery-smelling energy flying towards the stranger in the form of tiny breezes. She outstretched her arms and guided the energy telepathically so that it completely surrounded the stranger, setting into his senses and wounds. She couldn't completely heal him, but she could close up the burns and take care of the pain.

"Sorry I'm not very good with Aromatherapy yet; I only just learned I could do it," Shay explained apologetically. "I only knew how to heal myself directly with Synthesis until a few months ago..." She clammed up. It wasn't easy trying to talk to this guy. He most likely wouldn't even care about her little explanation; nor how much effort it had took her just to learn how to restore that little of health to other people. Granted, she couldn't really restore other people's energy with Aromatherapy, but healing burns wasn't exactly a simple task when you didn't have much instruction to rely on...

Shay kicked at the dirt a bit. It upset her the slightest bit. She still had no clue what an utter mess she looked, now with open scratches on her arms and legs that were bleeding, as well. She teetered on her feet a bit; she had been using a lot of energy she didn't have and there was no way she could pull off a Synthesis on herself now; not after two Seed Flares and Aromatherapy. Adrenaline was the only thing even keeping this kid running.

Pulling his hand away and taking a step back, he let Shay stand up on her own, watching her closely. She had taken a few tumbles, and she seemed to be in pretty bad shape herself. Still, apparently she had enough energy to use another one of those explosions. Seriously, what was up with that? Ori still had no idea where that was coming from, or what pokemon Shay...
Shay...Minawa. Shay Minawa. I'm a dumbass. Of course. Her name didn't exactly do a lot to hide that little detail, and with the flowers and hair color she had you'd have to be pretty distracted or just plain stupid to not realize what she was. It also explained how clean the air was, giving the area a pleasant feel to it. Obviously, the girl was a Shamin. But why did his clients want her then? There didn't seem to be much one would want to use from her, unless they had a personal connection. He couldn't tell, but he definitely would be asking questions, and renegotiating, when he got back.

"Uh-! Wait..." Her voice got his attention as she told him he was pretty banged up, burns she had said. Glancing down at himself, he winced, noting that she was correct about that. Of course, taking a fire type attack from an Arcanine would do that to you, but he hadn't noticed it until then other then some discomfort.

Before he could respond he felt a soothing rush of air, coming from Shay and wrapping around him, the energy helping to lessen the pain from his wounds he had taken. It worked wonders as Orion looked over himself, noting that the pain was definitely dulled. He shook his head as she apologized, closing his eyes for a moment and sighing.
"No, don't worry about it. Thanks, though. But really, we need to get going. It shouldn't be too much farther from here." He told her. While he was a bit thankful for the help, they were still spending too much time there, more time then he wanted to. The longer they took, the sooner more would be coming to interrupt. He began to take a few steps in the direction they had been going, looking back at Shay. Hopefully she would be a bit more agreeable after that whole incident.