-From the Perspective of Percy Powers the Pikachu-

"Doom! Doom! Doom! DOOM!" chanted the very tiny and honestly cute suck-ups of the biggest bully in school, Lairon.

"IT'S THE DOOM Percy! How many times have I told you? You dumb Pikachu!" he shouted. Somehow he must have heard me. Can he read minds?

"Uh dude, you're thinking out loud," said a Chatot standing next to me. His actual name is Kaleb. He is one of my best friends and got caught in this whole mess with me. (He started it, not me. (Wait . . . why am I using parentheses if this is all in my head? Why are there parentheses inside of parentheses?)) Well I needed to get out of this somehow. It was the last week of school and I wanted to finish eighth grade in one piece. The Doom (see . . . I'm using the nickname) was a Senior who literally skipped school to pick on us middle school folk. He was mad at us because Kaleb and I accidentally dented his car. Now the guy wants us to fix it, but we can't fix things. Time for my pika negotiating skills.

"Look Doom," I was instantly cut off.

"It's The Doom."

"You've made that pretty clear Mr. The Doom. Now I'd like to know how we can make up and go home. I'm sorry about your car. I told Kaleb not to use the fire extinguisher as a rocket, but what are you gonna do, eh?"

"Thanks for throwing me under the bus," Kaleb whispered into my ear.

"I want you to repay me for damages!" The Doom demanded.

"Sure! How much? Twenty? Thirty?" I asked.

"Six hundred!" Kaleb and I went rigid. Six hundred dollars is a lot of money when you don't have a job you know.

"We'll have it to you by the end of the week," I assured. Would we? The Doom nodded in agreement and left. Why Percy? Just why?

Well, six hundred dollars isn't as easy as it sounds (does it even sound easy?) because apparently, parents call that too much money and told us to resolve the conflict ourselves. Classic. I had one more option that I knew of.

"Why would I have six hundred dollars on me?" asked a Starly named Ariel, while we were waiting outside for the bus. Ariel was always the one putting a damper on things.

"Why wouldn't you?" asked the very strange Jirachi named Lizzie that I called my friend.

"Because I'm not a walking wallet!"

"And you don't have wishes either," said another one of my friends who was mostly emotionless, a Munna named Scarlet. Introductions! Pika joy! I jumped out to the little hope I had.

"LIZZIE! Wish for six hundred dollars! Please!" I begged.

"Sorry. I can't wish for money for other Pokémon. It's against dem Arceus rules," she said.

"Just counterfeit the money! I'm sure he wouldn't know the difference." My friend, a Minccino named Macy suggested.

"Because it's illegal," I said. Ariel tried to steer the conversation away from our little pika problem.

"Anyway. Time to go off topic for a bit. Don't forget that next week we're using all the money that we've saved all year to be the some of the first to go to the world's biggest theme park, Victory Road! I've managed to keep the money safe in my bedroom and it will be safe there until next week," she said. That was the pika realization. I shut down the conversation and told Kaleb to follow me behind a tree.

"I gots us a plan Stan!" I said.

"It's Kaleb."

"Blah blah yeah. Goodness. You're so sarcastic. Anyway, here's my pika plan," I was interrupted again.

"Why do you always put pika in front of everything?" Kaleb asked.

"Pika what? I don't pika do that?"

"You just did it!"

"Oh. I guess I do. Does it matter?"

"I don't put Chat in front of everything!"

"On paper, you did. In that sentence, chat went before everything because it was in front,"

"I think we've got off track here Percy," Kaleb said

"Oh yeah sorry! Bunny trail," I said.

"What's that?" Kaleb asked.

"Oh, it's when you go off track from the original conversation you had into another subject," I said.

"So like this,"

"Yes."

"Idiot."

"Agree to disagree! Once again, my plan is very simple. There's six of us in our group! Tickets to Victory Road cost a hundred dollars each. That means our ticket funds must have at least six hundred dollars in there! We can sneak into Ariel's house and steal the money. Then we blame Ariel's older brother on it all. Duhh! Solution to our problems. Ariel even gave me a spare key because we're neighbors," I explained.

"Why would they give you a spare key?" Kaleb asked.

"In case of an emergency. What if they're being robbed? I pika come in to save the day," I said.

"I think it's just because you're neighbors,"

"What?!" I was astonished.

"You sound good on paper, but you work terrible under pressure. Remember that time when we were four and we had to diffuse a fake bomb as part of a game?" Kaleb said.

"Punching you in the face was a logical option! Plus, that was a long time ago!" I said, "Now do you like my plan?"

"It's not that bad . Welcome to the dark side," Kaleb said.

"Great! Now we just need to wait for tonight and sneak in and out without making any noise at all!"

Several things we did not plan for that night:

1. Ariel was sleeping in the room. If she was a light sleeper, she'd think we were some creeps or something.

2. It was dark. If we used a flashlight, somebody was bound to wake up.

3. We did not know where she kept the money. We just gave our money to her to keep safe because she was the most trustworthy.

My solutions to those problems:

1. We'll wear black hoodies. If she does wake up, she'll just think that she's seeing things because we'll blend in pretty well.

2. No solution.

3. Also no solution. I am beginning to wonder if this is the stuff going through the minds of master criminals, and if this is the first step they take into the world of theft and robbery. Off topic again. I must be pretty absent minded.

Kaleb met me in front of my house at about midnight. I told my parents that I was going to stay the night at Kaleb's. Kaleb said that he was going to spend the night at Percy's. Pretty good if I do say so myself.

"You ready? Time to fix a problem caused by stupidity with more stupidity," I said. We both put our black hoods up, and I quietly inserted the key into the door. The door creaked open. There were three different bedrooms upstairs. One for Ariel, one for her parents, and one for her brother, who would soon be the world's greatest thief. Kaleb and I opened the first door. Luckily her parents were heavy sleepers. The second one was Ariel's. We snuck in. I wanted to tuck and pika roll, but a certain Chatot rejected that idea saying that I could never pull it off so quietly. (Cough, cough, Kaleb, cough.) My breath seemed like the loudest thing at that point. We fumbled around the room for a bit. Goodnesse! She was obsessed with school. I began to think that she liked it more than summer. Where would she keep six hundred dollars? Well luckily, Ariel was one of those neat freaks who organized everything, and there was a small box up high on a shelf labeled, Victory Road money. I signaled Kaleb over and reached for the box. I couldn't reach it unless I jumped. Pikachus just had to have short legs. Thanks Arceus.

"Here . . . let me try," Kaleb whispered. He had his wing around it but slipped backwards. The box fell to the ground with a thud. I winced at the noise. Ariel woke up. She glanced over at the two figures that were currently robbing her.

"What? Who?" she asked. She was still drowsy from sleep. We made sure she couldn't see our faces and slowly backed out with the box. Unfortunately, Ariel snapped back to reality pretty quickly.

"Hey! Thief!" she shouted. She grabbed a large book. She approached us and raised the book to hit us. Kaleb made a break for it. I would of, but Kaleb was right about me being bad under pressure. He dashed away and dropped the box. I curled up in a ball and shivered on the floor. Kaleb looked back an face palmed.

"What the? Percy?" Ariel asked. I looked up.

"Oh wow. What am I doing here. That's not usual," I said.

"Yeah! It isn't! In fact: It's rude, creepy, and yes, unusual!" she scolds. We may have made her a little bit made. Ariel peeked over.

"Kaleb?"

"Oh no. I'm uhh, Qualeb," Kaleb said. This time I face palmed.

"You guys broke into my house!"

"I used a key!" I said.

"I'm taking your key away!" Ariel yelled.

"Let us explain," I said.

"Oh you're gonna talk," she demanded as she raised the book. I explained our situation to her. (See . . . that's a writer's excuse for leaving out dialogue.)

"So not only did you break in, you were going to ruin the thing we've been waiting for all year to fix some dumb mistake you've made?" Ariel yells.

"Hey! In our defense, Doom was pretty intense," Kaleb said.

A distant voice shouted, "It's The Doom!"

"What?"

"I don't care Kaleb. I just wish that you could fix your own problems every now and then," she said. At that point, what do you say. Sorry for breaking and entering? We left the awkard situation and apologized to Ariel's parents, though they did not seem convinced at all. School the next day was pretty eh. Ariel avoided us at lunch.

"What the heck did you do to her?" Lizzie asked.

"We told you already," I said.

"Hey, I'm just trying to start conversation." Lizzie said.

"So you broke into her house at night, and tried to steal money. Yet my idea was bad because it was illeagal." Macy said rolling her eyes.

"She has a point. Ariel could have you arrested. How are you going to fix this?" Scarlet asked.

"Well, The Doom agreed to have us pay him a monthly fee of fifty dollars until it's amounted up to six hundred, but I don't know about Ariel. It's kind of just hanging there," I said.

So the plan that Kaleb and I came up with wasn't a cliché. It was the best two idiots could do to be honest. We found Ariel after school. She ignored us as we followed her home from school.

"Ariel. We've come to resolve with the best way we could think of. Hit us in the face a hard as you can. Anything to get the anger out of you," I said. She turned around.

"Of course you don't have to you could just, Ow!" She hit me mid sentence. Then she smacked Kaleb.

"I didn't think she'd do it!" I said. She smacked us again and started laughing.

"You guys are a bunch of idiots you know," she said. She slapped us again.

"Yeah we know. Goodness. You hit pika hard," I said.

"I try. So, now that everything's resolved, you wanna come hang out. I can call Scarlet, Macy and Lizzie over. We can look at the park map for Victory Road and plan our route so that we're first in line for as much rides as we can be!" Ariel offered.

"Pika of course!" I shouted. We all continued walking to Ariel's house.

"Hey why do you put pika in front of everythin?" Ariel asked.

"I do that?" I asked. Kaleb face palmed.