FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 1

There it is, the little birdy. Just sitting there; completely oblivious to my location. I crouch a little bit closer, making sure to stay as low to the ground as I can. Still it doesn't see me; doesn't move. I lick my chops briefly as I bunch myself tightly, my hind legs right next to my forelegs. I can hear something running to the side of me but that doesn't matter now. All that matters is the little birdy in front of me. I tense up all of my muscles and then with a small grin begin to uncoil myself and leap into the air. Before I even leave the ground, though, some blue object comes bursting through the grass to my side and bowls right over me. We turn over each other once or twice before we separate, the blue thing spinning off farther into the tall grass. I look quickly and find that the birdy has left its location, startled by the sound. Quickly I look up to try and find it and see the birdy flying off, becoming a smaller and smaller dot.

"Come back birdy! I wanna eat you. Aww, no food for me this time." I speak dejectedly as I sit down and watch it fly away.

My leg raises to scratch an itch behind an ear and my head tilts towards it to give the foot a better access, the relief from removing the itch instantaneous. Finally I stand up and seeing no other birds in the area to try and eat stick my nose down on the ground to try and figure out what hit me. As my nose absorbs all of the scents my ears are constantly moving, half in an attempt to find something else to eat and half to see if the thing that hit me would cry out or something. Finally I filter out his scent and my mind translates everything that scent tells me about him.

"Male, about ten to thirteen years old, a water pokemon," I frown, "definite traces of fear and adrenaline."

My feet start moving on their own towards this new individual, my curiosity peaked. As I move through the tall grass I make almost no sound at all, and my ears are still paying quite a bit of attention to my surroundings since my nose is focused on the thing in front of me and my eyes can't see all that much in the golden, tall grass. Finally my feet stop and right in front of me is a blue turtle thing, still sprawled onto its back and trying to turn itself over and not having all that much luck in that regard. I move over to where his head is and look down, my head slightly cocked to one side.

"Hello there," I greet him, amused by his situation.

"Are you gonna help me up there Sunshine or are you just gonna stare at me like an idiot?" The turtle retorts.

Half shrugging I pad over to his side and stick my nose beneath one edge of his shell and then try to push it both forwards and upwards with my nose. The first attempt doesn't get far as he was not expecting it. As it reaches the small peak where it would not easily turn anymore I drop my nose and let it fall back the other way. As it slows down to a stop in this way I push my nose in and push up again, my tails starting to move in almost a mock fashion of how the turtle is moving. This second attempt got much further and he started to help by trying to turn his body with the rocking motion. But it was still not enough as his turning stopped once again. I drop my nose and wait for it to come back but this time actually had to pull my nose out a bit as he started to rock towards me instead. But he still doesn't turn over, however close he gets this time. As he starts rocking back away I drive my nose in again and this time he does flip over. Happy at having accomplished something I sit down, my tails wagging enough to make my rear end shift left and right slightly with each oscillation. But even with that, my mind is already telling me that because he is a water pokemon and I a fire one that I should not trust him and what little experience I have with encounters with water types is that they tend to deserve that mistrust. As such as the blue turtle begins to stand up I allow my body to tense up ever so slightly, making it so that at any given time I could try and attack him or burst out and flee.

"So," The turtle speaks in its gruff little voice, almost sounding as if he's half gurgling some water as he speaks, his frame moving a step closer. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"What?" I ask, rather confused as to the odd nature of the question. "You ran over me."

"Well if you weren't there then I would not have run into you, now would I, Fluffy?"

"My name isn't Fluffly," I protest.

"Oh, I'm so sorry your majesty," he responds in a liquid and mocking tone, "I implore you to forgive my heinous behavior. How could I ever make it up to you, Sunshine?" He walks over to me and pushes me to the side as he walks past me and continues onward into the tall grass, "Out of my way there Yellow."

With his push my body naturally backs off so that he couldn't attack me right after the push as well as to keep him from knocking me off balance. As I stand and face him my nose starts to pick up a new scent and my nose naturally starts to lift into the air to try to pick up more of the scent.

"Where are you going, Blue?" I ask, curious at his direction.

He stops and faces me again, looking very annoyed.

"Blue? Who gave you permission to call me Blue?"

"Well if you call me Yellow I have every right to call you Blue, don't I?"

"Whatever," He waves one of his arms in my direction and my body jumps a foot backwards. "I'm getting out of here, so I figure I'd continue the way I started."

"Um, the way you were going before you ran into me was that way," I incline my head to the left.

"Why didn't you say that before I started going this way, you idiot! Are you trying to make me look like a fool?" He complains before turning and starting to walk again.

His statement confuses me even more since the fact I was asking where he was going sort of implied that I didn't know that he wanted to go the same way he did before the collision. My ears twitch a bit as they start to hear the faint thuds of a footstep off in the distance and the fact they're getting slightly louder with each step tells me the direction they're going.

"Someone's coming," I state absentmindedly to myself.

"What?" The blue turtle stops and faces me, a slight look of panic on his face.

Of course I don't even notice this since I'm not even facing him anymore. Instead I'm facing toward this new individual with my head inclined upwards and my eyes closed so that I could focus better on what my ears and nose are telling me. But since I can still tell he's near and since he did ask a question I have no problem with saying what I can figure out about this new person.

"Well it's male and from the sound of his steps he's somewhere around seven to eight times your weight. Rather old too. I can smell the old guy scent from all this distance even with his scent being masked by a tree-like fragrance," I state and ponder a moment, the panic in the turtle's face even more obvious, if I actually was looking at him. I could, however, smell his fear. "Hard to tell with the reek of your fear and his oderant but he seems to be somewhat angry or annoyed and in somewhat of a hurry."

The blue turtle pokemon walks up slowly until his head is right next to my own. As I can feel his proximity my eyes open up on their own and watch him wearily, cautious if he makes any move that could be considered an attack.

"So, um," He whispers into my ear, trying to sound as non-threatening as possible. "About how much time do you think it will take him to reach us?"

I look at him briefly and shift myself away from him a foot or two since he's making me very uncomfortable being that close to me. But once I am in a semblance of a comfort zone again I twitch my ears quite a bit and listen intently on the sound of his footsteps and the intensity of his scent and spend a moment with an intense look on my face, as if I'm using all of my brain power just trying to calculate an approximate distance. Finally I lower my head to the ground and rub one of my forelegs over my ears and forehead.

"I'm not all that good at doing things like this," I complain, "It's too difficult to do from just sound or smell. If I could look then I could easily tell."

I start to raise my head to do just that but he rushes over and pushes my head down quickly and forcefully.

"Keep your head down, you idiot!" He growls at me while still talking in a whisper-like tone. "Do you want us to be seen?"

My head ducks out of his reach and I jump away from him a foot or two and face him, growling slightly. My back also seems to arch up slightly and my tails raise a little bit before I raise them even more just to irritate this aggravating turtle that keeps pushing me around.

"Would you stop that?" I complain, not restricting my voice to a whisper, "I don't have to help you, you know. I could just as easily have made up some fake time estimate and made you think you had a lot more time than you really did. Me, I don't need to be afraid of him. He's not after me. In fact I'm somewhat curious as to what he looks like."

I smirk briefly and then turn away from him and start moving towards the approaching individual, one ear trained on the turtle to make sure he doesn't try something while my back is turned. The sound of the person in front of me is getting closer and his steps through the tall grass is probably loud enough that even the turtle can hear it. But since I have no clue what the turtle or the person in front will do I start building up pressure in my mouth in case I need to fight. Just before I might be able to start to see part of this individual over the tall grass I hear movement from behind me and then suddenly something grabs at one of my tails and tries to pull me backwards; the act of which sending pain coursing through my body. I retaliate by turning around towards the offender and opening my mouth, unleashing all of the flame I had built up onto the chest of the blue turtle. The attack catches him off guard enough that he lets go of my tail but doesn't seem at all hurt. I move my rear end and at the same time my tails as far away from the turtle as I can and start slowly stepping backwards, seeing if I could get away from him. His face at first is one primarily of shock than anything else but it quickly fades away into anger and he begins to approach me again.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I plead, apologizing for attacking him and hoping he'll let me go.

Just as I'm about to try and turn and dash away to safety he rushes forwards and grabs my face and holds it tightly enough that not only can I not move much at all but also that it hurts a little bit. His eyes stare down at my own, the anger very evident.

"Listen here, Fuzzbutt! Now either you are going to do exactly what I say or I'm going to use my strongest water attack on your face. Got it?"

I don't bother making any sort of verbal response, my mouth clenched tightly in fear though my response is evident in how my tails suddenly drop and hide between my hind legs. He continues to stare at me a moment before finally letting go of my head, apparently satisfied I won't do anything. I sit down and thump my ear with a foot as I try and calm myself down, watching him intently all the while. I may have submitted for the moment and I now know better than to try and attack him again but that doesn't mean I could escape the moment his attention has waned enough that I could get a moment or two head start.

Before I can find that moment a human comes into view, towering only barely over the tall grass. The turtle looks at me and places a finger to his mouth, gesturing me to silence. He then points at the human, probably wanting me to watch what happens. I move a little closer to get a better look and when I get close enough that I can somewhat make out this human's legs but not nearly close enough that he could see me I see a small ratatta move close to him. The human throws some sort of white and red ball and a grass pokemon comes out of it. Without even given any warning the grass pokemon then attacks the small rat and quickly beats it down. But before it's beaten the human reaches into some sort of pack and pulls out two more of the red little balls, one of which dropping harmlessly to the ground at his feet. The other one he throws at the ratatta and once it hits the rat the ratatta dissolves into a reddish light and disappears into the ball. Curious as to what these balls might possibly be while the human is kneeling down to pick up the now full ball I quickly move in and snatch up the ball that he had dropped and then retreat to where he cannot see me again.

The human stands up and moves to where he had dropped the ball and after not having found the ball anywhere near there he takes a step towards me and then pauses. He stands like this a good moment, as if he's trying to decide what to do. I hold my breath and slowly move further away as well as off to the side so that if he did decide to keep walking he would hopefully never see me. But it doesn't come to that as after a moment of standing there he turns around, pauses another small moment and then continues onward. Finally allowing myself to breathe again I move back and find that the turtle hasn't run off yet. I walk up to him and sit down, placing my prize between my legs gently.

"You're still here? I thought you would have bolted when he got close." I remark.

"If I did that I would have stirred up the grass and he would have seen me for sure, idiot. What is that?" He prods.

"He dropped it, so I picked it up. It's a weird thing."

"It's called a pokeball. You throw it at a pokemon and it'll capture and enslave them."

"I could do that. Watching him didn't make it look all that hard."

"You know, we could actually."

"We could what?" I ask, cocking my head to one side.

The turtle looks thoughtful a moment, as if think it over before speaking up, "We could become our own trainer. There's nothing in the rules that explicitly say that a pokemon cannot be a trainer so we probably could make a team together would a trainer and pokemon. Name's Allen, by the way."

The turtle seems cheerful enough but the only thought crossing my mind is what all I have just been volunteered to do.