Preface: This is a short story I decded to write, trying to practice my skills a bit. I apologize if there are any spelling or grammatical errors in advance.

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A sunny day in Kalos, perfect for any trainer who would be exploring the vast land, a vast land containing many creatures called Pokemon. They spread their wings and soar in the sky, stretch their fins and swim swiftly through the seas. Many more inhabit the trees and tall grass, green with the light of the daytime sun.


Yet on this particularly nice day, a young trainer, Luke, would be searching the inside of a cave. Glittering Cave, the home of many precious stones and gems. Wearing a red cap and a blue jacket, the boy was opening a bag strapped across his body, retrieving a flashlight and PDA device from it. Lighting up the walls of the cave, but also marking on the screen of the small PDA, he would work his way through the cave, one path at a time.


Most of the paths ended with an abrupt stop. The walls decorated with gems that could not easily be mined from the walls were beautiful, but Luke wasn’t in search for those. Even if he was, he had no Pokemon or tools with which to collect them. Instead, he was looking for signs of humans. Perhaps a bit of an odd sight for a cave where wild Pokemon would reside, but there had been indications of a struggle inside. This boy was not looking for Pokemon, but instead hints as to why a group of people were harassing a researcher, who had contacted his recruiter for this job, a mysterious man only known as Looker.


Luke had worked his way down several paths, nothing of note in any of them, not even signs of anyone attempting to retrieve gems from the walls. That would be until he found something at the end of a path. Something sitting on the ground, which he would accidentally kick as he was focused more on the walls of the cave.


This kick resulted in a clang. The boy would lower his flashlight and focus, finding a Chespin sitting against a wall. It seemed… fainted, but also not harmed or hurt. In fact, other than some dirt, it seemed fine. He lowered a hand down to its shoulder and shook it, but instantly knew that something was very odd.


Luke would kneel to the ground, using the flashlight in one hand to illuminate the Chespin, the other hand moving to its body. A bandaana of soft material, blue and green in color, covered its chest area. The dim light of the flashlight identified it as a shiny color - one not normally found in the wild at all. Most interesting of this Chespin though was the light brown belly, which wasn’t visibly moving. Luke would lower his hand to the belly of the Chespin, and nodded, confirming his suspicion.


Entering his bag once again, he was taking out a phone. A smart phone with a low signal, but a camera good enough to take a picture of his finding. Navigating the apps on his phone, Luke would send a text message, perhaps to the one who recruited him to the job.


“Found something. Looks like a machine they left behind,” he would say as he typed away. Finishing his message, he would put the phone in his pocket, ready for a reply as a signal could be found. Reaching back to the Chespin, he lifted up the bandanna, revealing a gray control panel underneath. Some of the buttons on it were clearly labelled, others were not. A screen was present on the panel, as well as two USB ports and a memory card reader. A small Team Flare logo would display, next to a serial number sticker.


Unable to resist the urge, Luke would push a button that was labelled Power. As he did so, the Chespin would let out a beep, the button lit up green, and suddenly, the Chespin was starting to come to life.


As he waited for the Chespin to start moving, he stepped back, allowing the bandanna to cover up the chest once again. A few minutes would pass before the Chespin’s eyes appeared to light up slightly, and the head started to move.


“Systems online. Maple online.” It spoke with a female sounding voice. It was looking at Luke, but also looking around at its location.


“Oh good, you do work, not that it would matter,” said Luke, smiling briefly before returning to a stoic look. “Your owners appear to have left you.”


“My… owners?” The voice was synthetic, clearly coming from a speaker, located in its chest. The Chespin was starting to stand up, and when upright, was starting to walk, trying to get past Luke, who had held a hand out to prevent it from moving.


“I don’t think so. You’re not a real Chespin, are you?”


With this statement, the Chespin did stop. Realizing that this was probably the human that had reactivated it, the machine looked up and shook its head. “No, you’re right, I am not.”


Luke nodded in confirmation, then proceeded to look in his bag once again. “There were rumors of your existence. Stories really. Nobody had even seen you.”


“Seen me?” The Chespin tilted its head gently and backed up slightly.


Luke would finally pull a flash drive from out of his bag. The phone he had in his pocket would finally see a signal, and a notification tone signaled that he had received a response. He turned on the phone, the screen lighting up his face as he read it, then he nodded. “You really won’t have to worry about them.”


“What do you mean by that?” Said the Chespin, backing up again, with its back now against the wall.


The boy turned to show his phone’s screen to the Chespin, the message on it reading “Do not allow it to be activated until we get its data.” The Chespin would realize what the flash drive was that the boy had.


“Heh heh. No hard feelings Maple. It’s not as if you have those anyway.” Luke would begin to lift the bandanna again after putting his cell phone down, the other hand reaching for the flash drive. Maple had begun to look for an escape, finding a way to send out vines from the quills on the lower part of its head to try and reach a gem above that was sticking out. Lifting itself up and swinging to move over Luke’s head, Maple was activating a set of wheels in its feet, which made it move faster through the cave.


Luke was taken aback by this, not knowing what features Team Flare’s creation had available to it. He quickly stood up, making sure he had all of his supplies, mostly in his pockets, and started to give chase.


Maple had gotten far enough away to start traversing the caves once again, but was quickly hampered by the lack of a map. Luke would soon hear the sound of a crash at one of the dead ends, and jogged to it quickly, chuckling.


As he entered the path, he saw that Maple had indeed crashed, and was lying on its side at the end of the path. He would approach it and smirk.


“Well, your escape didn’t last long did it?” He said, leaning down to pick up the robot and hold it up so his eyes were facing it.


“You got me. But whatever you have planned won’t keep us down.” Maple replied, squirming slightly as it was lifted up.


“Unlike a normal Chespin, you’ll give your secrets up pretty easily won’t you, Maple?” Luke snickered and started to lift the bandanna again, using his free hand to retrieve the flash drive from his pocket.


“If you find any in me.” Maple responded.


“As I’ve said, no hard feelings. Record this into your database.” As he finished, Luke had inserted the flash drive into one of Maple’s USB ports. Almost suddenly there was a shudder from the robot’s body as the drive charged itself up and sent a surge of electricity through its circuits, overloading whatever it could as it repeated this procedure several times.


Almost as quickly as it started, Maple would fall limp in Luke’s hands, a puff of smoke from its back indicating it wouldn’t be turning on for a while.

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Maple is an original character of mine.
Chespin is copyright Game Freak/The Pokémon Company/Nintendo/Creatures.


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