Ievan Polkka

It was a cool, overcast day, but despite the dull greyness of the clouds the sun still managed to peek through occasion, bringing it's warmth to Sable Forest. The twins had ended up near a rather dark and dangerous looking forest quite by accident in their wanderings, but had discovered that the locals preferred to stay away from it as they thought it to be haunted. Sophia didn't really know if there was such a thing as real ghosts or not, but she figured it would be interesting enough to explore after all.

As they neared the edge of the forest, they came upon a young girl. She was picking flowers by the edge of the forest, but like the locals appeared the avoid stepping within it's boundaries, the outside being quite enough forest for her.
"Do you reckon there are actually ghosts in the forest?" Sophia asked her twin sister, curious to what she thought of the matter. Mimi, who was currently holding onto Sophia's shoulder glanced at the girl who had raised her before turning her attention to the forest itself, her young curiosity piqued.

Coraline was looking around at the strangely dark forest, its atmosphere seemed as if it were ripped straight from a five star horror movie. It was ominous, but Cora was still rather peppy. This was the real world, not some fictional movie! It wasn't like a tree was just going to come alive and grab their shoulders, or a strange monster with a mouth for a stomach was going to snatch her with large hands and drag her to the other side.

"Heh, nah! Ghosts are just movie flicks, even if they were here they'd be more likely to be in some rickety abandoned house haunting it rather than in a large forest filled with life like this," she laughed, her head throwing back a little and nearly upsetting the farfetch'd nestled upon her head.

Kendo gave an irritated quack before clinging to his stick and closing his eyes to continue to relax. He looked almost like a fake hat upon Cora's head, but it was really just a place he preferred when his feet were tired of marching along beside Cora, he didn't quite like to be picked up. One of the farfetch'd eyes were slightly open though, as he stared deep into the forest, curious of the place himself, but not desiring to make it obvious.

Sophia couldn't help but join in with her twin sister's laughter, though not to the point where she threw her head back to do so.
"I guess you're right. It does look a bit creepy though," she grinned, as if the overall creepiness of the place made it all that more interesting to see, "Maybe we should check it out."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," another voice commented. It was the girl who had been skirting the forest's edge for flowers. Having heard the conversation the fiery haired twins were having, she'd come over to give them a piece of advice.
"You'd be better to leave it alone. There really are ghosts in the forest," she revealed to them ominously, her tone full of seriousness as she denied what Cora had claimed. She definitely didn't seem to be joking around.

Cora turned to see the girl from earlier who had been picking flowers, she responded, "I'm sure there isn't, its probably just some story some kid told you to scare you or your mother told you so you would stay out of it and not get lost."

She seemed to dismiss what the girl said with ease, not at all haunted by it. In her eyes this was just some little girl, she did not quite have much credibility to Coraline. The young girl was rather amused by this, it was rather cute that the girl was trying to warn them, but she was confident that this was just some made up story meant to scare the little girl.

"Right Soap?" she spoke to her twin.

"Sure thing Corn Dog," replied Sophia with another chuckle, using her own less then desirable nickname for her twin in response to her confidence. She flicked a small section of her flyaway auburn hair out of her eyes as she spoke.

"I've seen them!" the girl claimed, still clutching the flowers she had parted from their roots in one hand, trying desperately to get the nearly identical twins to believe her.

Sophia blinked at the girl, "Are you really that sure about it?"
The most logical explanation was that the ghosts of the forest really were some sort of story, made up by other kids or their parents to keep others away from the tangled branches of the forest, where they might get lost.
"I mean, the ghost you think you saw could have been one of your friends playing a trick on you or something."

"Yeah," Coraline agreed with her sister. She sighed as the little girl seemed to stare at them as if they were idiots for not believing her. Coraline knelt down on a knee to get to the same eye level with the girl, "Look, how about we go in there and prove that there are no ghosts, we'll come back and tell you. If we don't come back then we've probably been dragged off to some 'ghost world'" Coraline didn't mean for the comment of the ghost world to be taken seriously, but more as some exaggerated joke.

The little girl frowned, a pout forming on her lips as she clutched her flowers closer and looked at Coraline, her eyes trailing up to Kendo who merely quaked as if to ask, "What are you looking at it?" before she looked to Sophia again and speaking, "Fine."

"Don't look so worried," chuckled Sophia, trying to ease the girl's frown.
"We have our Pokémon friends to protect us if these ghosties really do exist," she reassured her, not really believing that the ghosts did exist though.
Cora's suggestion seemed like a good one. If they could prove that there were no ghosts in the forest and thus nothing to fear, perhaps the locals would be better off. After all a forest as thick as this would probably prove an abundant source of fruit and berries at the very least.

Shrugging as the little girl seemed to regard them with a look of almost pity at their decision to go into the forest, Sophia turned to Coraline.
"Well I guess we should get going then! See you later," she waved to the young girl with the flowers before jogging of towards the forest, not even waiting for Cora.
Somewhere the locals didn't go was also a prime place for exploration. Who knows what sort of Pokémon could be found within if no one had ever really been there?

"Good luck...." blinked the little girl with a small wave of farewell before she went back to her flower picking. She fully expected the two to be back before long, not with news of their success, but of their discovery of the ghosts she spoke of.

"See ya," Cora sang before dashing after Sophia, the farfetch'd keeping its spot on her cranium with ease. Her footsteps turned from soft thuds of grass and flowers change to the cracks and snaps of sticks that had fallen from the trees. She slowed down once she caught up with Sophia, stopping when they were quite a ways into the forest.

Kendo suddenly took off from her head and landed on the forest floor. He examined the sticks on the floor, as if studying them, but kept his wing on his stick as if that was the only weapon he could ever wield.

"So, where should we look for these so called 'Ghosts'?" The older twin asked the younger, not paying much attention to Kendo since his more mature nature did not quite require her to despite his young age.

Sophia has stopped jogging and had slowed to more of a wander as she got deeper into the forest. Though it was dark, sunlight still crept through the canopy even on an overcast day like today. It was hard to be scared of a place so abundant with nature. It was beautiful more than anything, at least in Sophia's opinion.

Mimi watched the Farfetch'd with a mischievous smile from her position on Sophia's shoulder as the twins discussed how to progress.
"I guess we should just pick a random direction, see how much of the forest we can explore and head back before it gets dark," replied Sophia, turning to Coraline as she caught up.

The Buneary meanwhile wondered why Kendo seemed to look at the sticks on the ground. They weren't that interesting. In fact other than being unusually dark this forest was pretty boring too. When the girl had mentioned ghosts she'd assumed it would be more fun. It didn't occur to Mimi that perhaps nothing had happened yet because they hadn't been here for more than five minutes. Hopping down from Sophia's shoulder, the young Buneary decided to sneak up on the Farfetch'd from behind.

"Yeah..." Coraline spoke, her voice trailing off as she looked up to the tall trees above them. She was amazed at how the canopy of leaves seemed to cut off the light so much, beams of light that reach the forest floor were few, and provided little light. The teen's hair that looked as if it were on fire in the sunlight had been extinguished in the darkness as the branches had crept forth over their years to darken the floor below them.

Kendo was too busy examining the potential weapons below him to notice the bunny that was his half sister creeping up on him. He gave a surprised quack when the rabbit suddenly jumped on his back, clinging to him like a parasite. He flailed about, frightened for his life that something was attacking him. He darted about with the buneary on his back, his loud quacking seemed to be enough to wake even the dead from their eternal slumber as he fled from the trainers, not realizing he was putting a distance between them.

Mimi clung on for dear life as Kendo darted off, running in a random direction. This was more like it! As she was enjoying the exhilarating feeling of having to cling on or be thrown off, the young Buneary did not realise how far away they had gone from the twins. Instead she had a broad grin on her face.

Sophia meanwhile whipped around at the surprised quack made by Kendo. However by that point the two Pokémon were quite a distance away through the twisted undergrowth and almost as an instinctual reaction, Sophia tossed Tsuyomi's Pokéball out, the Mawile materialising just as the two younger Pokémon disappeared through the undergrowth.
"Mimi!" Sophia yelled after them, feeling somehow that it was the Buneary's doing. It usually was after all.

With Tsuyomi there to take the calm approach to the situation, she prevented Sophia from charging wildly through the undergrowth to catch up with them. Logically they could be anywhere as the Farfetch'd had hardly been running in a straight line.

Cora turned at the sudden noise to see her that her tan leek carrying duck has been mounted by the buneary and taken for a ride, "Kendo!" she called out. She dashed after her young farfetch'd, who may have acted mature but was still young and not very powerful despite his wide variety of attacks. Coraline didn't have her calm thinking pokemon out upon reaction like her sister, since her own was a pokemon of the water and was unable to come onto the land without only being able to flop around like fish normally do, and made the rash decision to chase after them.

Kendo continued his loud, enraged, and scared to death noise from his bill. He finally stopped by a river when he began to recognize that nothing was really happening to him. He began to growl, as he turned his head to see a brown puffy ear out of the corner of his eye, "Mimi!" he growled, angry with the buneary for riding him and scaring him so much. He held out his leek and attempted to whack the buneary multiple times with it, trying to knock her off and get revenge for doing this to him.

Despite Tsuyomi preventing Sophia from running off wildly, it appeared that her twin sister had done so anyway, and so begrudgingly the Mawile dashed after her alongside Sophia, attempting to catch up before she got too far and they lost her in the dark undergrowth of the forest.

Mimi meanwhile clung onto the Farfetch'd as well as she could until he finally came to a stop near a river within the forest. Amused, her boredom thoroughly appeased temporarily, she nimbly hopped off of Kendo's back as he attempted to whack her with his leek.
"Whaaaaat," she complained, a mock look of innocence on her face as she used Copycat. A leek materialised in the Buneary's hands, first bright white before it faded into a more natural colour, the move seemingly copying the Farfetch'd's signature utensil as he hadn't actually used a move in the recent past.

Kendo seemed to only become more enraged as the buneary created a knock off of his most prized possession. He gave a loud and angry quack before making a wide slash in attempt to whack the buneary's side of her head. He gave his leek a twirl before grabbing it and beginning the wide slash. The leek whistled in the wind as it sped through the air, ready to meet the buneary's skull. It it actually struck it would not do serious damage though, he merely wanted to teach the buneary a lesson is all.

Cora had managed to keep up with the duo, but the farfetch'd adrenaline and fear had made him speed up and she soon lost sight of him. She finally stopped, her breath heavy from running, "Where did they go?" she panted, looking around. She didn't quite think about sending a flying type to look for them, since her only flying type was the Farfetch'd and he was the one they needed to find. Sophia's Caden had slipped from her mind.

Mimi deftly ducked the Farfetch'd's wide slash, a broad smile still etched upon her face as the exhilaration she felt, despite it only being intended as a small hit to teach her a lesson. She retaliated by attempting to whack Kendo with the copy she had made of his signature leek, thrusting forward like one would do during a fencing match.

Sophia ran through the forest after her twin sister. It felt likt they'd run quite the distance when Coraline finally stopped to catch her breath, the two Pokémon they were after now out of sight.
"Does it matter?" asked Sophia, taking the moment to catch her breath before continuing, "There's no way we'd catch up to them."
After catching her breath she turned to Cora again with a small shake of her head and a smile of almost irony, "If you hadn't have run off I could have had Caden carry us. We'll be more likely to find them from the sky anyway."

Meanwhile, Tsuyomi was examining the undergrowth through which they had ran, trying to figure out the direction Kendo and Mimi had taken. However the Mawile was struggling due to the interruption of Cora's own running that had disturbed the undergrowth and masked the trail somewhat.

Tracking in caves was so much easier, she decided.