A call from Ryner for Steven

Steven looked up from the computer where he was viewing Giovanni's past Gym Battles when a paw touched his leg. Wagging his tails, Vulpix yipped at him earning a slight smile. Bending down, he picked up the fox, "Hey, Vulpix. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with Vali?"

"He decided to come on ahead of me," Vali said from the door way of the computer room, "How goes research?"

"Fairly well. Giovanni is definitely lining up to the ruler type of Gym Leaders," Steven eyed her taking in the dirt stained and slight ragged clothes, "Have a good training session?"

Vali nodded as Steven scratched underneath Vulpix's chin, "Everyone has made progress on their moves. Terra is having a bit of trouble controlling Sandstorm, but if we focus on it a bit more, she'll be able to have full control over it like she should soon enough," She walked over to him, "So do you want to eat dinner together?"

"Sure," Steven released Vulpix when the vulpine pokemon began struggling, "But shouldn't you take a shower first?"

"I'm going to. I just wanted to know if you'd like to try a place that I found on the way back," Vulpix barked at Vali earning a soft laugh and slight grin, "That Vulpix found on our way back. The food smelt really good and from what I could see of the menu prices, everything is fairly cheap. Basically one of those hole in the wall joints,"

Steven thought about it for a few moments before nodding, "Sure, any idea what kind of food they sell?"

"Sandwiches, pizza, and a couple others from what I saw through the menu," Vali bent down to pet Vulpix, "I'll go take a quick shower and change,"

"I'll finish up here," Steven nodded as he turned back to the computer.

Vali patted Steven's shoulder before heading off to her room. He pressed play on the video and resumed watching it while writing down notes. When he pokenav rang, he answered it without pausing the video, "Hello?"

"Hey, Steven," Ryner's voice came through, "What are you doing?"

"Looking through video's on Giovanni's past gym battles and making notes," Steven answered as he spotted a rather interesting maneuver one of the challenger's pokemon, a Fearow, pulled off to defeat the Golem Giovanni was using at the time, "I'm going out to dinner with Vali once she's done in her room. What's up?"

"Nothing too big, we just found a some weird data in the lab's system," Ryner sounded more tired than normal, "I've been trying to figure out where it came from, but I can't find anything save for a name,"

"What's the name?" Steven asked as he exited out of the videos.

"Fuji. Doctor John Fuji," Ryner's words made Steven frown.

"You mean the man that worked beside Gym Leader Blaine to create the fossil pokemon revival system? That Doctor John Fuji?" Steven couldn't keep the confusion from his voice, "What is the weird data?"

"We can't really decode anything about it save for the word clone," Ryner sounded a bit frustrated, "As best any of us can tell, it deals with the old way of referring to fossil pokemon, but that doesn't make sense considering the fact six years ago the term got thrown out,"

"How recent was the data put in?" Steven frowned as he listened to Ryner type on whatever computer he was using.

Ryner spoke after a few moments, "Five years and six months ago. Four months before Doctor Fuji left the lab to work with a private contractor," He paused after a moment, "Okay this is weird."

"What's going on?" Steven's frown deepened.

"A file was attached to the data," Ryner sounded annoyed, "Most of the file is encoded, the only things not encoded are a few news paper articles and some hospital reports. All of them on Doctor Fuji's daughter, Amber Fuji, who died around the time all this was entered into the system,"

Steven felt disbelief run through him, "Fuji wouldn't have tried what I think this is implying. Cloning humans has never been done before, no one has ever focused on humans only pokemon and fossils."

"I don't know, Steven," Ryner let out a low sigh, "What should I do with this?"

Steven leaned back against his chair, "Inform the League and leave it in their hands, it doesn't have anything to do with us and to be perfectly honest, I don't think anything's really going to come of it."

"Will do," Ryner replied as Steven began logging out of the computer, "Before I let you go, I did manage to contact the main fossil research lab in Kalos,"

Steven straightened up at that, "Oh? What did they say?"

"At the current moment, they only have Tyrunt fossils on hand," Ryner answered with a slight chuckle when Steven let out a low groan, "But they might be getting some Amaura fossils in a few months, they'll contact me when they do. They're open for negotiations, but it'll probably be for a fossil exchange," Ryner sounded a little amused, "So does Vali know you're trying to get her an Amaura?"

"No. It's a surprise," Steven finished logging off, "I also didn't tell her since it wasn't certain that I'd be able to get one. I still have to talk with Father and get his agreement which is going to be difficult,"

"He won't really protest once he actually meets Vali in person and sees how she treats pokemon," Ryner was grinning at him when he pulled his pokenav away from his ear.

Steven chuckled a bit, "Probably," He spotted Vali standing in the door way, "Ryner, I've got to go. Talk to you later."

"I'll keep you updated. Tell Vali I said hello," Ryner told him, "Bye,"

The call cut and Steven put his pokenav away before getting up from his chair. Vali looked at him curiously, "Who was that?"

"Ryner. He said to tell you hello," Steven collected his notes and walked over to the door, "Ready to eat?"

"Yup," Vali moved out of the way and they headed towards the entrance of the pokemon center, "What did he need?"

"Just wanted to keep me up to date on all the data they're looking through," Steven handed Vali his notes, "This is what I got from the videos,"

"Thanks," Vali began looking over the notes, "I'll probably watch them later and draw up my own notes so we can compare them,"

"Sounds good," Steven opened the door, "Though you might want to wait to go through those, you're the one leading us to this place Vulpix found,"

"Right," Vali's cheeks flushed in embarrassment as she looked up from the notes, "Follow me,"

Steven shook his head in amusement. Vali glared at him for a few moments before focusing on leading them to the restaurant she found. Leave it to Vali to find researching a Gym Leader more important than eating dinner.