<div class="floatleft">(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42499880/Elliquiy/Reilly01h.gif)   </div><div class="floatright">(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42499880/Elliquiy/Echo_zubat.gif)</div><div align="center"><strong>[ Fuchsia City - &gt; Route 15 ]<br/>[ Reilly &amp; Echo ]</strong></div><br/><hr/><br/>The dull grind of rocks and dirt beneath her bike wheels and the occasional shrill cry of the little blue Zubat swooping through the trees above her accompanied Reilly as she sang along, slightly of key, with the latest obnoxious pop song on the radio. The station selection was limited and the speakers in her pokégear were, to put it bluntly, complete crap but saccharine pop music was still preferable to the eerie quiet that pervaded the wilderness of Kanto in the wake of the Purge. It was strange to think that when her parents had traveled these roads a generation earlier they'd been bustling with trainers and wild pokemon alike. Nowadays Reilly rarely saw another traveler on her monthly visits to Lavender Town, and very few of them had pokemon companions. It was a relief in a way; she'd never been terribly fond of battling, the few times she'd had to send Echo up against another trainer she'd been a nervous wreck though the entire ordeal. Still worse, with the wild pokemon populations so diminished even the forest itself sounded abandoned. Occationally Echo would swoop up into the canopy and frighten away a scrawny pidgey, but even on the remote backroads the trip was usually quite uneventful if she could make it to town before nightfall.<br/><br/><em>"Hello, are you there? Hello...can you hear me?"</em>The sudden staticy interruption of the music caught Reilly off guard. She let out a frightened eep! and toppled off her bike and into a dense patch of brush on the side of the road. As she extracted herself the message continued and Echo glided down to hang from a branch above his master's disheveled, leaf-covered head.<em>"Ok, good. This is Prof. Elm. We have a bit of a situation at the Power Plant on Kanto Route 10.The refurbished and updated Power Plant is already facing a problem. The Elekids and Magnemite have been siphoning energy from the Power Plant and consuming it. The Magnemite acquire a negative electrical charge and shock the Power Plant employees. Several employees had to be rushed to the infirmary after a Magnemite attack. <br/><br/>Voltorb swarms have been clustering around circuit boards and cables and altering the flow of energy throughout Kanto. Daily black-outs have been interrupting the life and power supply of Kanto citizens. The power Saffron City has been down for 3 hours and the economy may fuck up if someone doesn't do something. Team Rocket via the Silph Corporation are stationed in Saffron. Could they be responsible?..."</em><br/><br/>"Huh...wonder who that message was s'pose to be for..." the girl murmured as she brushed bits of leaf and twig from her clothes. She had a few nicks and scrapes but no particularly worrying injuries apart from a dull ache in her left shoulder, which she was sure would be bruised and sore tomorrow. Righting her bike, Reilly motioned for the Zubat to come down from his perch, but the stubborn creature just wrapped his wings around himself. "Come on, you heard the radio! If we don't make it to town before dark I'll let you back out after sunset, but I don't want you flying around durring the day if there's Rocket creeps lurking about."<br/><br/>"Zuuuuuuu" hissed the pokemon, but reluctantly he drifted down from the tree and re-entered the pokéball Reilly pulled from her pocket.<br/><br/>After stashing Echo's now occupied pokéball along with her pokégear in the little basket attached to her bike handles Reilly re-mounted and took off down the road once more.