#3--Dream
Written by me and angellover89. Contains dirty humor and bodily functions.
Bashou stood in the shade cast by the overhanging open door. The back hatch of their shuttle was wide and looked like a yawning mouth. But then, he thought, anything would after two and a half days of nothing but mission. Nothing meaning no sleep and minimal food. Right now he could ignore those things and focus on his more important surroundings, such as the fact that it was hotter than he had ever experienced in the test field.
He heard a movement behind him and turned. Buson appeared by his side and slumped to the ground--only to jerk upright again. "God DAMN, that's hot!" he cried, frantically waving his hand in an attempt to cool it from the scalding metal.
"Remain standing. You'll expose yourself to the elements less that way, and get more breeze."
Buson sighed. "The only element present here is this damn heat. I'd give anything for some rain right now." A reminiscent look crossed his rugged features. "Back home we had the biggest thunderstorms you ever saw." He stretched his arms up over his head, then wiped his blue wristband over his dripping forehead.
"It hardly storms in Viridian. It rains constantly, but electrical output is rare." The smaller man leaned back against the wall of the machine. At least the metal was cool in the shade... comparatively speaking. "Usually I hate the rain, since people flock to Viridian to see the 'eternal green paradise' they hear so much about, and I detest those sorts."
"So why couldn't we get a mission in Viridian? Who knows -- maybe the thing eating your head is allergic to rain."
"You know he only assigns us to Johto except in special cases," Bashou replied shortly. "Although damned if I hear Hoenn isn't even hotter. But at least we took Rayquaza at night." Jabs at his hair were commonplace when the two were alone.
Buson groaned at the memory. "And even then, temperatures were hell." He ruffled his partner's thick silver hair almost experimentally. "You must be boilin' under that thing, man," he joked, then ran a hand through his own hair, which he gelled up and off his forehead. "Now me... this is what you'd call an aerodynamic hairstyle." He grinned.
"Don't touch the hair," Bashou scoffed. "And yours isn't so hot. It's not like it's bursting into flames."
Suddenly Buson looked out into the distance. He squinted through the tinted lenses of his sunglasses and focussed on a point far away.
Bashou looked at him curiously. "What are you looking at?" he asked. "Please tell me you actually see Entei so we can grab it and go home."
Buson shrugged. "Donno exactly what I see. Kinda hard to tell when the ground's all wiggly." He laughed suddenly. and ran around to the ladder on the side of the transport.
"Wiggly -- oh, yes." Bashou narrowed his eyes and watched the heat waves emanate from the steaming ground. Nearby, a steaming Ariados crawled out from underneath a steaming rock. Meanwhile, upon the transport's roof, Buson turned in a slow 360, staring as far as he could, and burst into halfhearted song: "I can see cleeearly now, the waave is goone..."
Bashou didn't hear him. He pushed himself off from the wall and wandered to the edge of the shaded area, watching the thick steam emanate from the bug.
Buson peered from the edge of the transport. "Like my singing?" he called down. Then, seeing his partner's fixed stare, he added, "What'chu see?"
It took Bashou a moment to realize he was being spoken to; Buson's normally loud voice was markedly quieter. "How can it survive like that?" he asked.
For a moment, Buson stared at him; then his gaze transferred to the rock from which the bug Pokemon crawled, and his eyes grew large in amazement. "Entei's gotta be around here somewhere, man," he said. "What kind of non-rare Pokemon can set a rock on fire??" More importantly, he thought, if it can set a rock on fire, what could it do to us?
"...A rock? Are you blind?" Bashou said indignantly. "Look at that Ar-- wait, the rock's on fire?" He stared at it for a moment. "Maybe it's the angle. I'll go up there, and you come down here..." He started to walk towards the ladder and wobbled.
Buson laughed halfheartedly. "Whatsamatter, li'l guy?" he teased. "Can't take the heat?" Although, he admittedly didn't feel too great either. "I'm tellin' ya, get rid of that mop that's eating your head, and you'll feel a whole lot better."
"It's not a mop!!" Bashou shouted angrily. The Ariados skittered back under the rock.
"The--well, whatever it is. It's still eating your head. Don't you feel it sometimes at night, clawing and biting its way into your head, making you see a bug that's on fire--"
"Are you talking about anything I should know about?" Bashou ran a hand through his hair quickly, both to dislodge the accumulated sweat and to make certain that it was just hair. Buson gasped, his jaw agape. "Goddamn -- I saw it move!!" He skittered away from the edge of the transport, peeking his head out to where he could only just see Bashou. "Stay away from me!!"
"Big baby," Bashou scoffed. "Now come down here; I want to see this flaming rock."
Buson scuttled down the ladder, tripped, and landed facedown in the hot sand. He stared dubiously up at Bashou, and gestured with one hand towards the ladder. "Roof's all yours," he mumbled.
"All right." Bashou grabbed on to the rail, but stopped on the first rung. "How did you prepare for this journey?" he asked his partner.
"Slept a lot," Buson said, after thinking for a moment. "Knew it was gonna be hot, so I drank a lot of water."
"And it prepared you for this ladder? I don't know what kind of tricks the mech department is pulling now, but this ladder is longer than the ship."
Buson stared at him. "What are you talking about? It don't even reach the top!" He glanced at his partner. "Maybe you should have drank more water, Bash. The heat's gettin' to you. Or it could be--"
It took a moment before Bashou turned around. "It could be..."
Buson shrugged. "That godawful Zigzagoon on your head. Ya know, if Zigzagoons were rare, you'd have some trouble coming. I'd hafta shave your head, maybe."
"It can't be a Zigzagoon. Zigzagoons don't eat people's heads. And it's not eating my head, either."
"Oh yeah? Then why's your sweat red?" Buson jabbed an accusing finger at Bashou.
Bashou raised a hand to his forehead, causing him to slip partway off the ladder. "I don't feel anything. I just -- hmm.... It looks like there's some sort of ... oh, iced tea. Only, it's been left out in the sun too long, so I guess it's just regular tea by now."
"Looks more like apple juice to me." Buson lurched towards his partner, nearly colliding with Bashou's neck. "Smells like apple juice too."
"Apple tea, then. Unless you're telling me something took a piss on me." Bashou normally avoided such blunt language, but in these circumstances he felt it appropriate.
Buson giggled deviously. "Don't leave your clothes in the bathroom and maybe I won't."
"But this is my hair. I don't wear clothes in my hair. Unless you're saying I should start." Bashou peeled off his jacket and wrapped it around his head. "Will I smell like apples now?"
"No, but you look like an Arabian vampire. Besides, whose piss, besides mine, smells like apple tea?"
"Yours smells like... dammit, it smells like what I have to clean up when you miss the fucking bowl."
"My aim is perfect!" Buson declared. "You wish you had the urinal skills I do! I practically have to wade through an ocean of your liquid leftovers when I want to use the bathroom."
"That's water from the sink, you freak. You know very well I don't have to grab myself to use the facilities." Although the mention of water was tempting, it only caused a slight catch in his voice.
Buson smirked. "'Course you don't have to grab yourself," he retorted. "Ain't nothin' to grab!"
"So then if I were to push you down and do what I did to you the night before we left, you wouldn't react by screaming my name until the neighbors complained again?" Bashou glanced down. "Unless it vanished. I seem to be losing body parts all the time."
"The lack of a brain would explain that godawful hairstyle. Why someone would do that to themselves, I just don't know..." Buson shook his head.
"Then again, you can't tell, can you?" Bashou returned to ground level and stared up at his partner. "That Ariados stole your eyes."
"Huh? I have eyes, they're right behind my--" Buson inserted his fingers behind his sunglasses, and let out a shriek. "Ohmygod!! You're right, I don't have eyes! It's -- all squishy and -- gross!" He patted around his empty eye sockets, then paused. "Wonder if I could touch my brain..." He took off his sunglasses and lifted a lid. "Do you see it?"
"It's...it's white and blue. And it's got black in it. But mostly it's white. And really moist. Maybe you have water on the brain."
Buson moaned. "Can you please not mention water?" He dropped the lid and squinted at his partner. "Your hair... looks like ice..." He reached out a hand. "Ice..."
Bashou raised a hand protectively. "You're not getting my ice! Grow your own!!"
"But... but it's right there," Buson whined plaintively. "Ice takes time to grow, don't you know that?"
"Well, okay. But one branch." Bashou offered one of the sweeps of hair that fell past his ears. "You have to learn some responsibility, I can't do everything for you."
Buson recoiled from Bashou's suddenly-sharp-and-pointy hair. "All right, back off!" he cried. "Next time I'll just trade for someone else's cards..."
"The cards... I can't believe you still have those things. But then we made his card super-rare by buying all of them in Viridian and the outlying areas." Bashou shook his head. "Why he agreed to pose for those is beyond me. It compromised security."
"Maybe he figured he was too sexy for his security, too sexy for his security..." Buson danced, then decided it was too hot, and stopped and wiped his forehead again. "...Hey! My wristband's melting!" he cried.
"Idiot, it's not melting." Bashou grabbed the object in question. "It's just made of water. But it smells like it's gone off."
"Water doesn't 'go off,'" Buson snorted. "Other crap does, like ... milk and honey." He sighed. "Milk and honey.... you remember that? That was great..."
"It was sticky. Took me forever to wash it off."
Buson jabbed his partner playfully. "Aww, come on, you know you had fun. I only wish some of the girls were there to see it. Come to think of it... I think Domino did show that pretty blonde head of hers..."
"She wanted to know if we were killing something." Bashou paused, leaning against the transport. "And she seemed disappointed that we weren't."
Buson snickered. "We may have killed something," he said slyly. "You haven't been the same since."
"I've been the same. I'm been stalwart as a rock. You're the one who's ever-changing, like ... like fire. Or water that's on fire."
"I believe they call that whiskey. --Well, firewater, at any rate." Buson leaned close to Bashou until their noses were about an inch apart. "Don't. Mention. Water. Again. Or. I. Will. Kill. Something. And it might be you."
Bashou sneered. "You can't kill me. And...water."
"They say blood's thicker than water," Buson whispered, pressing dangerously close to Bashou's neck. "But if it's liquid, I'll take a drink. Besides... how many times have you said you have icewater in your veins?"
"You'll have to be quicker than that," Bashou hissed before ducking his head down and grabbing a mouthful of Buson's throat.
Startled, Bashou bit down on reflex before breaking off and laughing hysterically, grinding his hair into the hot sand. "We're going to be so messed up when they call for us...I mean look at that, I'm seeing things!" He pointed to something not twenty feet away. "That pile of rocks looks just like Entei! But it can't be Entei, or we'd be on fire..."
Buson stared dumbly, at first not grasping the meaning of his partner's words. "Why would we be on fire?" he mumbled. "Somethin's wrong with you."
"Because Entei sets things on fire. Or turns them into crystal, you saw what happened in that ... that town, a few years ago. It was all over the news." Bashou shook his head again. "But you don't look like fire, and you don't look like crystal. But that still looks like Entei."
A wide grin split Buson's face in two; mad hysterical laughter bubbled from his mouth. He rolled off his partner and the two of them lay laughing at the mirage. "It's so cool," Buson wheezed, "here in the shade... Fire, no sir, not here..."
"Haha... you're bleeding, you idiot, you're getting sand in it." Bashou looked up at the sky. "You think we'll find the real Entei before we lose it completely?"
Buson sighed contentedly; the laughter was gone for now, but the rictus grin remained painted onto his features. "Nope."
"If we don't report in, they'll look for us. It's not like they don't know where we are, at least." Bashou sighed. "Sun's going down anyway. Think anyone would believe us if we said we fainted?"
Buson snorted derisively. "Us? Faint? Hell no. The chances of anyone believing that are as little as the chances that we did see the real Entei."
"Then sleeping would make us traitors. Or is self-preservation more important? We can always find Entei later," Bashou mused. "It's not like someone can get to it before we do."
"Depends on if that green-haired wacko's still around," Buson muttered. "Remember? That one guy that tried to get all the legendary birds?"
"Oh yeah... or that little girl who everyone said controlled Entei. She's supposed to be a little freak." Bashou laughed, a full octave higher than he normally would. "Although, you have to wonder..."
Buson waited a few moments for Bashou to continue. When he didn't, Buson nudged him in the ribs. "Wonder what?" He sat up suddenly as an insane idea struck him, then nearly fainted. When the vertigo passed, he declared, "You think she's your daughter or somethin'? Cuz.. if she's supposedly a little freak, then her genes would be right up your alley!"
"I think she'd be interesting to have on our side. Both of them, really. But we'd have to... I don't know, put anti-crazy pills in their water or something." After a moment he shouted, "I said it again!!"
"Like a father-daughter team?" asked Buson. "And you're gonna be hurtin' later on. You better hope you don't fall asleep, or else you might not wake up again."
"Nonsense! We're under the watchful eye of that...thing that looks like Entei... Oh, it's back to being a pile of rocks again." He sounded disappointed.
Thus deflated, Buson fell back into silence.
* * *
Later on, as the bone-white moon rose high in the velvet sky, the legendary volcano Pokemon appeared again, this time upon a plateau overlooking the dusty plain where the humans -- and their machine -- lay. It stared down at the two still, sleeping forms for a moment, and then disappeared again.
Perhaps it was for the best that temperatures were so hot that day.
Bashou stood in the shade cast by the overhanging open door. The back hatch of their shuttle was wide and looked like a yawning mouth. But then, he thought, anything would after two and a half days of nothing but mission. Nothing meaning no sleep and minimal food. Right now he could ignore those things and focus on his more important surroundings, such as the fact that it was hotter than he had ever experienced in the test field.
He heard a movement behind him and turned. Buson appeared by his side and slumped to the ground--only to jerk upright again. "God DAMN, that's hot!" he cried, frantically waving his hand in an attempt to cool it from the scalding metal.
"Remain standing. You'll expose yourself to the elements less that way, and get more breeze."
Buson sighed. "The only element present here is this damn heat. I'd give anything for some rain right now." A reminiscent look crossed his rugged features. "Back home we had the biggest thunderstorms you ever saw." He stretched his arms up over his head, then wiped his blue wristband over his dripping forehead.
"It hardly storms in Viridian. It rains constantly, but electrical output is rare." The smaller man leaned back against the wall of the machine. At least the metal was cool in the shade... comparatively speaking. "Usually I hate the rain, since people flock to Viridian to see the 'eternal green paradise' they hear so much about, and I detest those sorts."
"So why couldn't we get a mission in Viridian? Who knows -- maybe the thing eating your head is allergic to rain."
"You know he only assigns us to Johto except in special cases," Bashou replied shortly. "Although damned if I hear Hoenn isn't even hotter. But at least we took Rayquaza at night." Jabs at his hair were commonplace when the two were alone.
Buson groaned at the memory. "And even then, temperatures were hell." He ruffled his partner's thick silver hair almost experimentally. "You must be boilin' under that thing, man," he joked, then ran a hand through his own hair, which he gelled up and off his forehead. "Now me... this is what you'd call an aerodynamic hairstyle." He grinned.
"Don't touch the hair," Bashou scoffed. "And yours isn't so hot. It's not like it's bursting into flames."
Suddenly Buson looked out into the distance. He squinted through the tinted lenses of his sunglasses and focussed on a point far away.
Bashou looked at him curiously. "What are you looking at?" he asked. "Please tell me you actually see Entei so we can grab it and go home."
Buson shrugged. "Donno exactly what I see. Kinda hard to tell when the ground's all wiggly." He laughed suddenly. and ran around to the ladder on the side of the transport.
"Wiggly -- oh, yes." Bashou narrowed his eyes and watched the heat waves emanate from the steaming ground. Nearby, a steaming Ariados crawled out from underneath a steaming rock. Meanwhile, upon the transport's roof, Buson turned in a slow 360, staring as far as he could, and burst into halfhearted song: "I can see cleeearly now, the waave is goone..."
Bashou didn't hear him. He pushed himself off from the wall and wandered to the edge of the shaded area, watching the thick steam emanate from the bug.
Buson peered from the edge of the transport. "Like my singing?" he called down. Then, seeing his partner's fixed stare, he added, "What'chu see?"
It took Bashou a moment to realize he was being spoken to; Buson's normally loud voice was markedly quieter. "How can it survive like that?" he asked.
For a moment, Buson stared at him; then his gaze transferred to the rock from which the bug Pokemon crawled, and his eyes grew large in amazement. "Entei's gotta be around here somewhere, man," he said. "What kind of non-rare Pokemon can set a rock on fire??" More importantly, he thought, if it can set a rock on fire, what could it do to us?
"...A rock? Are you blind?" Bashou said indignantly. "Look at that Ar-- wait, the rock's on fire?" He stared at it for a moment. "Maybe it's the angle. I'll go up there, and you come down here..." He started to walk towards the ladder and wobbled.
Buson laughed halfheartedly. "Whatsamatter, li'l guy?" he teased. "Can't take the heat?" Although, he admittedly didn't feel too great either. "I'm tellin' ya, get rid of that mop that's eating your head, and you'll feel a whole lot better."
"It's not a mop!!" Bashou shouted angrily. The Ariados skittered back under the rock.
"The--well, whatever it is. It's still eating your head. Don't you feel it sometimes at night, clawing and biting its way into your head, making you see a bug that's on fire--"
"Are you talking about anything I should know about?" Bashou ran a hand through his hair quickly, both to dislodge the accumulated sweat and to make certain that it was just hair. Buson gasped, his jaw agape. "Goddamn -- I saw it move!!" He skittered away from the edge of the transport, peeking his head out to where he could only just see Bashou. "Stay away from me!!"
"Big baby," Bashou scoffed. "Now come down here; I want to see this flaming rock."
Buson scuttled down the ladder, tripped, and landed facedown in the hot sand. He stared dubiously up at Bashou, and gestured with one hand towards the ladder. "Roof's all yours," he mumbled.
"All right." Bashou grabbed on to the rail, but stopped on the first rung. "How did you prepare for this journey?" he asked his partner.
"Slept a lot," Buson said, after thinking for a moment. "Knew it was gonna be hot, so I drank a lot of water."
"And it prepared you for this ladder? I don't know what kind of tricks the mech department is pulling now, but this ladder is longer than the ship."
Buson stared at him. "What are you talking about? It don't even reach the top!" He glanced at his partner. "Maybe you should have drank more water, Bash. The heat's gettin' to you. Or it could be--"
It took a moment before Bashou turned around. "It could be..."
Buson shrugged. "That godawful Zigzagoon on your head. Ya know, if Zigzagoons were rare, you'd have some trouble coming. I'd hafta shave your head, maybe."
"It can't be a Zigzagoon. Zigzagoons don't eat people's heads. And it's not eating my head, either."
"Oh yeah? Then why's your sweat red?" Buson jabbed an accusing finger at Bashou.
Bashou raised a hand to his forehead, causing him to slip partway off the ladder. "I don't feel anything. I just -- hmm.... It looks like there's some sort of ... oh, iced tea. Only, it's been left out in the sun too long, so I guess it's just regular tea by now."
"Looks more like apple juice to me." Buson lurched towards his partner, nearly colliding with Bashou's neck. "Smells like apple juice too."
"Apple tea, then. Unless you're telling me something took a piss on me." Bashou normally avoided such blunt language, but in these circumstances he felt it appropriate.
Buson giggled deviously. "Don't leave your clothes in the bathroom and maybe I won't."
"But this is my hair. I don't wear clothes in my hair. Unless you're saying I should start." Bashou peeled off his jacket and wrapped it around his head. "Will I smell like apples now?"
"No, but you look like an Arabian vampire. Besides, whose piss, besides mine, smells like apple tea?"
"Yours smells like... dammit, it smells like what I have to clean up when you miss the fucking bowl."
"My aim is perfect!" Buson declared. "You wish you had the urinal skills I do! I practically have to wade through an ocean of your liquid leftovers when I want to use the bathroom."
"That's water from the sink, you freak. You know very well I don't have to grab myself to use the facilities." Although the mention of water was tempting, it only caused a slight catch in his voice.
Buson smirked. "'Course you don't have to grab yourself," he retorted. "Ain't nothin' to grab!"
"So then if I were to push you down and do what I did to you the night before we left, you wouldn't react by screaming my name until the neighbors complained again?" Bashou glanced down. "Unless it vanished. I seem to be losing body parts all the time."
"The lack of a brain would explain that godawful hairstyle. Why someone would do that to themselves, I just don't know..." Buson shook his head.
"Then again, you can't tell, can you?" Bashou returned to ground level and stared up at his partner. "That Ariados stole your eyes."
"Huh? I have eyes, they're right behind my--" Buson inserted his fingers behind his sunglasses, and let out a shriek. "Ohmygod!! You're right, I don't have eyes! It's -- all squishy and -- gross!" He patted around his empty eye sockets, then paused. "Wonder if I could touch my brain..." He took off his sunglasses and lifted a lid. "Do you see it?"
"It's...it's white and blue. And it's got black in it. But mostly it's white. And really moist. Maybe you have water on the brain."
Buson moaned. "Can you please not mention water?" He dropped the lid and squinted at his partner. "Your hair... looks like ice..." He reached out a hand. "Ice..."
Bashou raised a hand protectively. "You're not getting my ice! Grow your own!!"
"But... but it's right there," Buson whined plaintively. "Ice takes time to grow, don't you know that?"
"Well, okay. But one branch." Bashou offered one of the sweeps of hair that fell past his ears. "You have to learn some responsibility, I can't do everything for you."
Buson recoiled from Bashou's suddenly-sharp-and-pointy hair. "All right, back off!" he cried. "Next time I'll just trade for someone else's cards..."
"The cards... I can't believe you still have those things. But then we made his card super-rare by buying all of them in Viridian and the outlying areas." Bashou shook his head. "Why he agreed to pose for those is beyond me. It compromised security."
"Maybe he figured he was too sexy for his security, too sexy for his security..." Buson danced, then decided it was too hot, and stopped and wiped his forehead again. "...Hey! My wristband's melting!" he cried.
"Idiot, it's not melting." Bashou grabbed the object in question. "It's just made of water. But it smells like it's gone off."
"Water doesn't 'go off,'" Buson snorted. "Other crap does, like ... milk and honey." He sighed. "Milk and honey.... you remember that? That was great..."
"It was sticky. Took me forever to wash it off."
Buson jabbed his partner playfully. "Aww, come on, you know you had fun. I only wish some of the girls were there to see it. Come to think of it... I think Domino did show that pretty blonde head of hers..."
"She wanted to know if we were killing something." Bashou paused, leaning against the transport. "And she seemed disappointed that we weren't."
Buson snickered. "We may have killed something," he said slyly. "You haven't been the same since."
"I've been the same. I'm been stalwart as a rock. You're the one who's ever-changing, like ... like fire. Or water that's on fire."
"I believe they call that whiskey. --Well, firewater, at any rate." Buson leaned close to Bashou until their noses were about an inch apart. "Don't. Mention. Water. Again. Or. I. Will. Kill. Something. And it might be you."
Bashou sneered. "You can't kill me. And...water."
"They say blood's thicker than water," Buson whispered, pressing dangerously close to Bashou's neck. "But if it's liquid, I'll take a drink. Besides... how many times have you said you have icewater in your veins?"
"You'll have to be quicker than that," Bashou hissed before ducking his head down and grabbing a mouthful of Buson's throat.
Startled, Bashou bit down on reflex before breaking off and laughing hysterically, grinding his hair into the hot sand. "We're going to be so messed up when they call for us...I mean look at that, I'm seeing things!" He pointed to something not twenty feet away. "That pile of rocks looks just like Entei! But it can't be Entei, or we'd be on fire..."
Buson stared dumbly, at first not grasping the meaning of his partner's words. "Why would we be on fire?" he mumbled. "Somethin's wrong with you."
"Because Entei sets things on fire. Or turns them into crystal, you saw what happened in that ... that town, a few years ago. It was all over the news." Bashou shook his head again. "But you don't look like fire, and you don't look like crystal. But that still looks like Entei."
A wide grin split Buson's face in two; mad hysterical laughter bubbled from his mouth. He rolled off his partner and the two of them lay laughing at the mirage. "It's so cool," Buson wheezed, "here in the shade... Fire, no sir, not here..."
"Haha... you're bleeding, you idiot, you're getting sand in it." Bashou looked up at the sky. "You think we'll find the real Entei before we lose it completely?"
Buson sighed contentedly; the laughter was gone for now, but the rictus grin remained painted onto his features. "Nope."
"If we don't report in, they'll look for us. It's not like they don't know where we are, at least." Bashou sighed. "Sun's going down anyway. Think anyone would believe us if we said we fainted?"
Buson snorted derisively. "Us? Faint? Hell no. The chances of anyone believing that are as little as the chances that we did see the real Entei."
"Then sleeping would make us traitors. Or is self-preservation more important? We can always find Entei later," Bashou mused. "It's not like someone can get to it before we do."
"Depends on if that green-haired wacko's still around," Buson muttered. "Remember? That one guy that tried to get all the legendary birds?"
"Oh yeah... or that little girl who everyone said controlled Entei. She's supposed to be a little freak." Bashou laughed, a full octave higher than he normally would. "Although, you have to wonder..."
Buson waited a few moments for Bashou to continue. When he didn't, Buson nudged him in the ribs. "Wonder what?" He sat up suddenly as an insane idea struck him, then nearly fainted. When the vertigo passed, he declared, "You think she's your daughter or somethin'? Cuz.. if she's supposedly a little freak, then her genes would be right up your alley!"
"I think she'd be interesting to have on our side. Both of them, really. But we'd have to... I don't know, put anti-crazy pills in their water or something." After a moment he shouted, "I said it again!!"
"Like a father-daughter team?" asked Buson. "And you're gonna be hurtin' later on. You better hope you don't fall asleep, or else you might not wake up again."
"Nonsense! We're under the watchful eye of that...thing that looks like Entei... Oh, it's back to being a pile of rocks again." He sounded disappointed.
Thus deflated, Buson fell back into silence.
* * *
Later on, as the bone-white moon rose high in the velvet sky, the legendary volcano Pokemon appeared again, this time upon a plateau overlooking the dusty plain where the humans -- and their machine -- lay. It stared down at the two still, sleeping forms for a moment, and then disappeared again.
Perhaps it was for the best that temperatures were so hot that day.