Welcome to Camp Pikachu

by Alex Polan

  Marco wished he could make her feel better. But they hadn’t captured Team Fennekin’s flag, and Sam wasn’t here to fling a thousand walnuts at. After a moment, he asked, “Maddy, how’s your mouse doing?”

  That perked her up. “He’s okay. I fed him a nut. I’m going to bring him more food and water later.”

  “Good idea,” said Marco. “We’ll bring some rags and get rid of that ugly drawing.” He pointed at the baby Treecko. “It’s just chalk. It’ll wash right off.”

  Maddy sniffled and smiled. She seemed happier as Team Treecko walked back to camp. But Nisha and Logan were quiet and gloomy. Marco wished he knew how to make his friends feel better—and himself.

  “That was only the first round of capture the flag,” he reminded them. “We’ll do better tomorrow. We just have to try harder.”

  “And play smarter,” said Nisha. Her eyes had that faraway look, as if she was working on a new invention.

  “And aim better,” said Logan, “so we don’t waste as many balloons.”

  Maddy stayed silent, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She must have been thinking about Dedenne the mouse.

  “That’s the spirit,” said Marco. “We’ll get more flags. Tomorrow.” But inside his chest, worry niggled. I sure hope I don’t let them down again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Where’s the Moo-Moo Milk?” Maddy asked at the counter.

  “In the refrigerated section, sweetie,” said the cashier, a teenage girl wearing a red apron.

  Marco chuckled. “I can’t believe they actually have Moo-Moo Milk.”

  Logan shrugged. “Why not? This is a Poké Mart. I’m hoping they sell Mud Balls and Pitfall Mats, too.”

  Team Treecko had just finished lunch in the Dining Hall. Now they were hoping to buy some things at the Poké Mart to help them do better in tomorrow’s round of capture the flag.

  But what? thought Marco, scanning the shelves.

  “Do you have any Mud Balls?” Logan asked the cashier.

  “Mud Balls?” she repeated, raising her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, you know, like the secret base decorations in the video game. They burst if you step on them,” Logan explained.

  When the cashier shook her head, Logan’s face fell. “How about Pitfall Mats, the ones that trap you in a pit if you walk on them?” he asked. But he struck out again.

  “I can’t believe they don’t sell Mud Balls or Pitfall Mats,” he muttered to Marco. “What kind of a Poké Mart is this?”

  Marco could believe it, but he didn’t say so. He tried not to laugh.

  Nisha stepped up behind them. “We can make our own Mud Balls, Logan. Just buy a bag of water balloons.” Then she headed toward the craft section of the store.

  When she picked up a long wooden dowel, Marco said, “Nisha must be making something else—some new gadget.”

  But Logan wasn’t even half-listening. “Ooh, Poké Flutes!” he said, grabbing a yellow flute off the shelf. “These are almost as good as Mud Balls. We can use them to lure the enemy away from our base.”

  “Good idea,” said Marco, nodding. He wished he could think of something to buy, too. Nisha had ideas and so did Logan. What about Maddy?

  He spotted her blonde pigtails over by the Lava Cookies. Figures, he thought, smiling. While Nisha and Logan were preparing for battle, Maddy was buying sweets. Is she going to fight Team Fennekin with sugar? Rot out their teeth? Give them killer stomachaches? He laughed out loud.

  He didn’t have any big ideas for how to win the next round of capture the flag, but at least Maddy didn’t either. And that made him feel better—until he saw Sam’s red spiky hair bobbing down the aisle toward Maddy.

  “Need a boddle for your Moo-Moo Milk, widdle baby?”

  Maddy ignored him, marching past to carry her Lava Cookies to the cash register. Her face was lobster red.

  Marco’s hands balled into fists. Focus on the game, he reminded himself. But the truth was, he wanted to take Sam down almost as much as he wanted to capture flags. He wiggled his fingers, trying to shake off the anger. Then he sighed and turned back toward the Poké Flutes, hoping his own good idea would come.

  “Am I doing it right?” asked Logan, squirting mud into a balloon.

  “Yup,” said Nisha. “Half mud, half water. Team Fennekin will never know what hit them.”

  They were squatting near a puddle by the door of Logan and Marco’s cabin. “Making Mud Balls is actually pretty easy,” said Logan, passing his mud-filled balloon to Marco.

  “Yeah,” said Marco, attaching the balloon to the end of the water faucet. “Good thing you didn’t pay money for them!”

  “And good thing Maddy helped us figure out a way to get the mud into the balloons,” said Nisha.

  Maddy was sitting on the step eating a Lava Cookie and drinking Moo-Moo Milk. She nodded as she wiped off her milk mustache. “We use pastry bags to decorate Poké Puffs in Professor Sycamore’s lab,” she said, pointing to the cone-shaped bag in Nisha’s hand.

  Nisha had filled the pastry bag with mud. The bottom had a pointed metal tip. When she squeezed the bag, mud came out the tip.

  This time Nisha didn’t argue with the word lab. Instead, she handed the full bag to Logan, then stood up and brushed her hands together. “Okay,” she said, “I’d better get working on my other idea.”

  She wouldn’t tell them what it was, but as she was leaving, she asked, “Hey, Maddy, can I have the cap to your Moo-Moo Milk?”

  Maddy picked up the metal cap. “This thing? Sure.”

  Nisha stared at the cap as if it were made of solid gold. Then she tucked it safely into her pocket. “See you later,” she said, hurrying off toward the cabin she shared with Maddy. A curious Maddy trailed after her, still munching on her Lava Cookie.

  After Marco tied off a few more balloons, Logan said, “Well, I guess we should try these out.” He reached for a Mud Ball and stood up.

  Marco ducked and held his arm over his face. “You’re not going to throw that at me, are you?” He was still having flashbacks from being attacked by water bombs.

  Logan laughed. “No!” he said. “Although … we could play a game of catch with it.”

  Pretty soon, the boys were tossing the Mud Ball back and forth—gently—behind the cabin.

  “Here’s the pitch!” said Logan, tossing the balloon underhand toward Marco.

  “It’s a fly ball!” called Marco, backing up to catch the balloon in his hands. He flinched, hoping it wouldn’t burst in his face.

  “Curveball!” he called next, throwing the Mud Ball to Logan. It didn’t exactly curve down, though. It was heading straight for Logan’s head.

  Somehow, Logan caught the Mud Ball without it popping. He set his jaw and sent the balloon right back. “Fastball!” he announced.

  Uh-oh, thought Marco. This isn’t going to be good. Instead of catching the Mud Ball, he dodged out of its path. The balloon looked like it was going to hit the side of the cabin, but it didn’t. It plunked straight into a trashcan.

  “Yes!” said Logan, pumping his fist. “T hree points!”

  Marco was about to argue that they were playing baseball, not basketball. But then something strange happened. The garbage can started to shimmy and shake. Both boys stared.

  “No way,” said Logan.

  Marco knew they were both thinking the same thing. In Pokémon games, a shaking trashcan was a sign. It meant that something was hiding inside the can—usually a Pokémon.

  Am I dreaming? Marco wondered. This can’t be real! His heart pounded in his ears.

  Logan tiptoed slowly toward the trashcan, but Marco’s feet felt like they were stuck in the dirt. Be careful! he wanted to holler to Logan. But his throat felt tight and dry.

  When Logan was only a foot away, something exploded out of the can.

  A flash of yellow fur.

  Logan stumbled backward, squealing.

  And a muddy Meowth disappeared around the corner with a yeowl.

>   “Oh, man!” said Logan, half-laughing, half-crying. “That crummy cat! He just gave me a heart attack!”

  Marco started laughing, too, and he couldn’t stop. Every time he tried to breathe, a new wave of giggles rolled over him. “You should … have seen … your face!”

  Logan fell backward onto the grass and laughed and laughed.

  By the time they had both caught their breath, Logan’s face was beet red and Marco had the hiccups. He held the side of his stomach, which kind of hurt.

  Logan sighed deeply and said, “I’m pretty sure Meowth was spying on us.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Marco, nodding. “He’s reporting back to Team Fennekin at this very second. He’s telling them all about our Mud Ball plan.”

  “Because he can talk human, you know,” Logan pointed out. “He does it all the time in the cartoons.”

  “Definitely,” said Marco. And then they started laughing all over again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mud Balls are just as heavy as water balloons. Maybe heavier.

  That’s what Marco decided as he and Logan lugged them to the secret base in their backpacks. Marco stepped carefully on the trail. If he tripped, he’d fall backward and be trapped like a turtle—a turtle with a very muddy back.

  When they reached the ladder to the tree house, he stopped short. “Good thing we brought a few extra balloons,” he said, staring down at the ground.

  “Why?” asked Logan.

  “Because I just found a fresh patch of mud.” Marco pointed to the base of the ladder. The ground was still wet from where all the water balloons had exploded that morning. Colorful bits of balloon mixed with rocks and walnuts to make a speckled mud collage. It was actually kind of pretty.

  “Yes!” said Logan. “We still have those cone thingies to fill them, too. But, wait … how will we add water?”

  Marco unzipped his backpack and pushed past the bag full of Mud Balls. “We’ll use this!” he said, pulling out a spray bottle. He had packed the bottle and a rag to wash the Treecko picture off the tree. But there was enough water in it to fill a few Mud Balls.

  Logan opened his own backpack to get the pastry bag, and the boys used sticks to scoop fresh mud into it. A few rocks dropped in accidentally.

  “Oops,” said Logan. “Should we pick them out?”

  Marco thought about it. “Rocks would make the Mud Balls heavier,” he said. “And maybe they’d fly faster, like that fastball you threw back at the cabin.”

  Logan grinned. “That was a fastball,” he said.

  “But rocks are pretty dangerous, too,” said Marco with a sigh. “Someone could get hurt.”

  “Right,” said Logan. He looked sort of disappointed, but he carefully picked the rocks out of the pastry bag.

  After the boys had filled a few balloons, they stared at the muddy hole left in the ground. “Should we try to fill it in?” asked Marco. “Someone might step in it.”

  Logan shrugged. “Maybe Sam will fall into it,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could trap him there? Oh, man … I wish they sold Pitfall Mats at the Poké Mart!”

  Marco laughed. Then he had an idea—an idea that Nisha would be proud of. “We could use this!” he said, pulling the rag out of his backpack. He spread it carefully over the hole like a welcome mat.

  “Cool!” said Logan. “I’d fall for that.” He stepped beside the rag and did a fake fall, spinning in a circle and landing on his back in the grass. “Ugh,” he said in a raspy voice. “Team Treecko wins again.”

  When the boys heard the snap of a twig in the woods, they both sprang to attention. Team Fennekin? Marco wondered.

  Nope. It was Maddy hurrying along the trail with a brown paper lunch bag.

  “Whatcha guys doing?” she asked.

  Marco stepped quickly in front of the Pitfall Mat. “We made a secret trap,” he said. “But you have to be careful so that you don’t fall into it.”

  Maddy watched with wide eyes as Marco lifted a corner of the rag, showing her the hole underneath. She clamped her hand to her mouth, giggling. “Oh, they’ll fall for that, for sure,” she said.

  At the words fall for that, Logan performed another fake fall. Only Maddy thought it was a real one. “Are you hurt?” she asked, running over to his side.

  Logan jumped up and away from her even more quickly than he had fallen down. “No,” he said, his cheeks pink. “I was just kidding. Nothing to see here, folks. I’m all good.” He brushed off his shorts and changed the subject. “Where’s Nisha?”

  Maddy craned her neck to search the trail. “She’s behind me somewhere. She’s carrying something really heavy.”

  Sure enough, when Nisha showed up, she had a brown paper bag, too—but hers was supersized.

  “Can you help me get it up to the deck?” she asked.

  The boys climbed up the ladder, carefully avoiding the Pitfall Mat. Then they passed the brown bag up the ladder from Nisha to Marco and Marco to Logan. When they were inside the tree house, Nisha slid out her new invention.

  “It’s a tiny tent!” blurted out Logan.

  Nisha had attached wooden dowels together with rubber bands. One dowel stuck up above the rest, and she had glued the cap of Maddy’s Moo-Moo Milk upside-down to that dowel.

  “Is it a house for Dedenne?” Maddy asked hopefully.

  Nisha smiled. “No, silly,” she said. “It’s a catapult—a Mud Ball Launcher.” She pointed toward the upside-down milk bottle cap. “This is the ammo basket, where you put the Mud Ball. Then you pull the arm back and let it go.” She pulled back the top dowel, and when she released it, it snapped and sprang forward.

  Marco’s fingers itched to try the catapult, but Logan beat him to it. He reached for a Mud Ball and plopped it into the ammo basket.

  “Wait, we have to aim it first,” said Nisha. She put the catapult in the doorway of the tree house. Then Logan pulled back the arm as far as it would go and released it. The Mud Ball sailed over the deck, past the flag, and down to the ground below. Splat!

  “Awe-some!” said Logan, racing out the door to see where the Mud Ball had landed.

  Maddy seemed less impressed now that she knew the contraption wasn’t meant for Dedenne. She was already in the corner feeding her mouse a piece of apple.

  But Marco couldn’t take his eyes off the catapult. “How’d you come up with that?” he asked.

  Nisha shrugged. “I made one once for science class,” she said with a grin. “That one launched tomatoes, though.”

  She made it sound like her invention was no big deal, but Marco knew Nisha had worked hard on it. Her fingernails were chewed raw, and she had another Band-Aid on one of her fingertips.

  “Logan and I made more Mud Balls,” he said, wanting Nisha to know that he had been working hard, too. Then he remembered the Pitfall Mat. As he led Nisha outside to show her, Logan was scrambling back up the ladder.

  “Wow,” he said. “That catapult has power! Can you launch Team Rocket into space with that thing?”

  Marco chuckled. Just like the end of most Pokémon cartoons, he thought, imagining Team Rocket getting blasted into the stars. Then he pictured Sam and Stella blasting off instead with shocked looks on their faces, which was even funnier.

  Nisha didn’t laugh, though. For a second, it looked like she was actually considering building a bigger catapult. Then she shook her head. “Nope. Just Mud Balls.”

  “That’s okay,” said Logan. “We’ll still get to pummel Team Fennekin with mud.” His eyes danced, like he could hardly wait.

  Marco couldn’t, either. For the first time, he had a good feeling about tomorrow’s capture the flag game.

  With Mud Balls, a Mud Ball Launcher, and a Pitfall Mat, he wondered, what could possibly go wrong?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next morning, the girls were late—really late.

  “Did they forget about the game or something?” asked Marco, staring out the window.

  “Probably,” said Logan, sounding dis
gusted. He quickly stepped into his shoes. “Let’s go find them.”

  He and Marco locked their cabin door and ran past the Dining Hall toward the girls’ cabins. Nisha was just hurrying out of Cabin Eight.

  “Good, they’re ready,” said Marco, hoping to see Maddy stepping out behind Nisha. But she wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Maddy?” asked Logan.

  Nisha sighed. “She was off making Poké Puffs this morning. I thought she’d be back by now.”

  “Poké Puffs?” said Logan. “At a time like this?”

  Marco agreed. “Who has time for Poké Puffs when the next round of capture the flag is about to start?” For the first time, he felt annoyed with Maddy. She sure didn’t help out much in planning for the games. And today, she wasn’t even here to play the game.

  Great, he thought. The day is off to a terrible start.

  They headed to their secret base without Maddy. They didn’t have a choice—Professor Birch had already blown the whistle.

  When they got to the tree house, Logan hung the flag on the ladder while Nisha set up the Mud Ball Launcher.

  “Rock, Fire, Grass?” asked Logan, patting his fist into his palm. “We have to figure out who’s staying to defend the base and who’s going to grab flags.”

  Nisha shook her head. “Marco and I went last time, so you and Maddy can go out this time—if she shows up, I mean.”

  Marco was surprised to see disappointment creep across Logan’s face. Didn’t he want to capture flags? Then Marco saw him eyeing the catapult.

  Nisha saw it, too.

  “You’ll get your chance with the Mud Ball Launcher,” she reminded Logan. “There are three rounds of capture the flag, remember? Besides, you get to wear the Balloon Vest now.”

  “Ooh!” said Logan, rubbing his hands together. He raced into the tree house to find the camouflage vest.

  Marco was relieved to be staying back in the tree house this time, but he still felt nervous. “Maybe I should practice with that,” he said, pointing toward the catapult.

  “Sure,” said Nisha. “Just don’t waste too many Mud Balls.” She stepped back and let Marco load the Mud Ball Launcher. He pointed it straight out the door of the tree house and pulled back the launching arm.