All the Rebels were in the Poke’mon world. They were standing in the middle of main street in one of those, um, colorful cities. They didn’t really know which one at the moment, but that was mostly because they had just arrived. Well, they had actually arrived about 10 minutes ago, but they hadn’t gone anywhere for some strange reason. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so strange...

"He did it!"

"No, it was YOUR experiment!"

"You walked in, and kaBOOM! Doesn’t that tell you something?!"

"That you’re incompetent!"

"Look, you psychopathic--"

"Overgrown hairbrush of a--"

Tarantella decided she had enough of the arguing. Walking over to where Tarantulas and Artico were yelling at each other about Artico’s disaster, er, ‘experiment’, she grabbed them by the backs of their necks and lifted them up to eye level, where they were treated to an extremely close-up view of the contained I-Am-About-To-Kill-You-Stupid-Males-And-Be-Happy-About-It look in her eyes. "If you two don’t shut UP about it, I’ll lock you BOTH into Artico’s lab for however long it takes for the reek to go away!" she screamed into their faces.

"...yes, ma’am," the scientists chorused meekly. She dropped them back down to the ground and stalked away while they watched her go with wide eyes.

"...and you let her join the Rebels?" Tarantulas whispered finally. "Voluntarily?"

Artico smiled weakly. "Would you prefer that she was still with the Amazons and trying to enslave us all?" he whispered back.

Tarantulas gulped as he saw her pick up the end of Depth Charge’s leash again. "Point taken." He glanced around, trying to find Ivy without being TOO noticeable about it. After the row they had over being driven out of the Rebel base by something ‘mysteriously’ going wrong in Artico’s latest experiment right after Tarantulas had walked into the room (Ivy had guessed right when she backed him into a corner and accused him of sabotage, but he had honestly thought he had done a better job of covering up his work...), she had been avoiding him.

And he really didn’t think he wanted to know what she was thinking about him at the moment, so that left physically searching her out. He wasn’t about to do that until she calmed down about what the noxious-smelling gas had done to her hair. She had been walking behind him when he had opened the laboratory door and gotten the full blast of the accident. Poor Togepi had temporarily turned green, but Ivy’s hair...

...let’s just say hunters’ orange didn’t suit her.

"I still can’t believe we couldn’t get rooms at Relax E’ Hotel," Blacklight sighed. "They had the BEST chocolate sundaes, and their masseur is SO good..." Her optics misted over as Cheetor looked at her strangely.

"What’s a masseur?" he asked her. She was too dazed with dreamy thoughts about chocolate and ice cream to answer.

Arcana, who wasn’t talking to Artico because it was HIS fault they couldn’t go the Anime dimension and stay at Relax E’ Hotel (he just HAD to take apart Blacklight’s Anime machine, didn’t he...), sighed in similar longing for chocolate. "At least we could all find a place to stay here," she said in a disappointed but determined to be optimistic way. "Not like last time!"

"What’s a masseur?" Cheetor asked a bit more insistently. Arcana and Blacklight looked at each other for a moment...then ignored him.

Rampage blinked as Tarantella abruptly dragged Depth Charge by him down the street. "What the..?"

"We’re gonna go watch a movie or something!" she yelled over her shoulder. Depth Charge just stumbled along after her, figuring it was smarter to just go along than fight. It would be smarter to fight a tornado, really, since tornadoes usually had a limit on the amount of destruction they could wreak on the neighborhood...

"Riiiiiight..." The immortal crab watched them go with a sort of disturbed amusement. It was disturbing to see his worst enemy, who had never been even remotely afraid of HIM, cowed by his own girlfriend (although he had seen her on some of her bad days and had to admit that he would probably do whatever she told him to if she looked at him that way. Eek!). On the other hand, the ray’s instant obedience to Tarantella’s wishes was hilarious!

When the, uh, ‘happy couple’ turned a corner and walked out of sight, Rampage turned back to watching the other Rebels. He had nothing else to do. After Tsunami’s mind trick (*shudder*), he wasn’t into killing or even hurting others (much) anymore, so that left him rather bored. Usually Tsunami was around to talk to (which he was doing a lot lately, and he was starting to feel kinda weird about her whenever he thought of her...), but she had volunteered to stay behind while the rest of the Rebels evacuated the base. She was going to keep the fumes away from the lemmings while they cleaned up the place, since the gas made them even loonier than normal and no one was quite sure WHAT they would come back to if they didn’t find some way to keep the lemmings semi-normal.

The Poke’mon had all stayed behind to help, too, since the gas didn’t affect them either. Some of them had been kind of disappointed when they found out where their friends were going, but they decided to stay behind and help anyway.

Which left Rampage in the Poke’mon dimension. Bored. With nothing to do but think up things to say to Tsunami the next time he saw her...

"Kada..."

Tarantulas looked down and chuckled a little involuntarily. The sole Rebel Poke’mon who had come with them was curled up next to his feet, sleeping off her exertions. She had predicted that she would sleep for a couple days after making sure Artico’s Poke’ machine didn’t scatter them across the dimensional landscape like last time (good for catching more Poke’mon, but no one really felt like doing much after inhaling some of the fumes). Her master just thought it was funny how happy she looked in her sleep.

He vaguely wondered what Kadabra was dreaming about as he picked her up and walked inside the rented building the Rebels had picked out for their stay in the Poke’mon dimension.

He stood in the middle of her world, chuckling like he always did, and completely oblivious to where he stood. Didn’t he realize that she loved him?

No. All he ever saw was HER. Ivyna. The cute little spider.

Well, not anymore. Not in THIS dream. This dreamscape was HERS.

Kadabra smiled as she began to manipulate what she saw as her dream. Thoughts of Ivy were in Tarantulas’s mind. She had to go. Hmmm, Kadabra didn’t really mean the spider any harm, but she wanted Tarantulas all to herself. So, how to keep her happy?

Oh! Another mind! Kadabra liked this dream. How convenient that another mind came into her dream just when she needed one. She smiled and set up a connection between Ivy and the other mind. Ooo, this mind had a slight psychic ability that she could use to fuel the connection...

There. Now Ivy and the other mind loved each other. Perfect. Ivy was happy, and Tarry was HERS! Well...not quite. He didn’t love her.

Yet.

Hey, it was just a dream. A good dream!

*nudgenudge*

There. Now Tarantulas loved her!

Kadabra smiled in her sleep as her dream played out around her. Tarantulas loved her. Ivyna was happy with the other mind. What more could this dream hold? It made her not want to wake up...

Rampage shook his head as a fuzzy feeling passed through him like a waking dream. Reality blurred around the edges for a moment, and the room he had been looking over as his own shifted a tiny bit. When all the movement stopped, he glanced around the room in puzzlement. Why, in all his pacing around here, hadn’t he set up a place for Ivy to sleep?

"My memory must be going," he muttered to himself as he went to do this obvious thing. After all, she WAS going to stay with him...

Ivy knocked on the door and smiled in confusion when he opened it. "Um...why was I in a different room?" She walked in as he invited her in with a gesture of his arm.

Rampage shook his head. "I have no idea. I thought you were staying here with me, but you know what?" He closed the door behind her and turned to shake his head in humorous thought. "I hadn’t even thought to set a spot up for you until a minute ago."

Her smile flashed brightly again. "Yeah, you too? It was like I woke up from a dream saying ‘What am I doing over HERE?’" She moved closer at his understanding nod. "But now that I AM here..."

Tarantulas wandered around the room until he reached his starting point. He stopped there and looked down affectionately. Kadabra was smiling in her sleep again, and it struck him for what seemed the millionth time in ten minutes that she was so adorable when she did that.

It was odd that he had never really noticed that before. She was just so, so...perfect. Lovable. Why had he never noticed that before? It was so obvious. He could hardly wait to tell her how he felt when she woke up, but he wouldn’t disturb her when she needed her rest. Sleeping Beauty could wake when she felt properly rested.

The thought never even crossed him mind that he usually would NEVER think anything like this of ANYONE. Well, maybe Ivyna. But...who was Ivy? Some spider. Wasn’t she in love with Rampage? Yeah, that must be it. Tarantulas was quite happy with Kadabra, thank you very much.

Kadabra purred and preened under the attention being showered on her by Tarantulas. Not that she was actually awake to appreciate it, but it was a nice dream. It made her feel good to know that Ivy and the other mind were happy with each other so Ivy didn’t even want to come near Tarry. ‘Cause Tarantulas was HERS! ALL hers!

"I still think the plot was corny," Depth Charge mumbled.

"What was that, Fish Boy?" Tarantella yanked him closer to the bench she was sitting on and eyed him suspiciously. "Did you say something?"

He held up his hands in a placating gesture as he sat down next to her. "Uh...just that I liked the movie," he lied nervously.

She relaxed. "Oh. Well, I’m glad you did." A smile lit up her face and her eyes softened from their normal hard look. "I thought it was one of the better movies I’ve ever seen."

He looked at her consideringly as she smiled peacefully, caught up in her memories of the movie. It was times like this when she stopped acting like she wanted to kill every male in sight that made being around her worth it. Maybe that movie hadn’t been as bad as he had thought...

Depth Charge cautiously reached out and tentatively brushed her hand with his own, but she didn’t snarl at him like he had thought she might. Instead, she moved closer and snuggled up against his side, blinking a little sleepily as she looked up at the night sky above the city. He relaxed and put his arm around her, leaning back to look up with her.

Not bad at all.

Cheetor crept up behind Blacklight and stifled a laugh. After some careful research and the occasional casual question over the last couple of hours, he thought he had come up with a way to make her forget her moping over chocolate withdrawal...at least temporarily. She NEVER seemed to forget sugary things for very long, much less chocolate.

Still, this might work!

Blacklight jumped as hands suddenly clamped down on her shoulders. Twisting around as much as she could against the grip, she caught a glimpse of a familiar grin filled with delight at her surprise. "Cheetor, what--?"

Then the hands dug their fingers in slightly and rubbed slowly in an astonishingly pleasant sensation on poor, chocolate-deprived Blacklight’s tense shoulders. She groaned and let her head slump forward in surrender to the soothing motions as the fingers walked up and down her neck.

"Oooh...nice..."

Cheetor leaned forward. "I found out what a masseur is," he purred in her ear.

"Dracula!?"

"Puffkins Adventure Tales?!"

The other video store shoppers briefly looked up in shock at the loud volume of the revolted-sounding questions. They sighed and turned back to picking out their own videos as Ivyna and Rampage noticed the staring and lowered their arguing back down to normal conversation level.

"I am NOT watching Dracula," Ivy insisted, shoving it back onto the shelves.

"And I’m not watching Puffkins Adventure Tales! Even the name makes me feel nauseous..." Rampage waited until Ivy turned back around to look for another movie choice to present to him before kneeling and stuffing ‘Puffkins Adventure Tales’ UNDER the shelves, where any remotely sane person (in Rampage’s mind, that meant ‘doesn’t like watching cute movies’) knew it really belonged. Just as he stood up again, Ivy turned back around with another movie, and he quickly snatched a convenient movie off a nearby shelf labeled ‘Horror’.

"Ugh! This cover is so gross!" Ivy held Rampage’s movie choice away from her using the tips of her fingers. The slime depicted so elaborately on the movie’s cover almost seemed about to come off on her, so she stacked it on the shelf next to the other movies she had already rejected.

"Ugh! This cover is so gross!" Rampage held back the urge to throw up with difficulty and managed to hold onto the movie until Ivy’s back was turned again. Then he knelt and chucked the disgustingly cute movie under the shelves to join the other rejects. He hoped no one ever found them again.

Twenty minutes later the Horror section was in disarray and the sole employee working at C-Me Movie Store was struggling to fit under the shelves in a valiant effort at retrieving the dozens of movies that had somehow found their way under there. Rampage and Ivyna had walked out of the store about three minutes earlier, happily agreed upon the smash Horror hit, ‘Chibi Chimeras With Chainsaws III: The Cute Carnage Continues’.

"Man, Artico!" Eagalor laughed. "Arcana’s sure got you wrapped around her finger!"

Artico glared as his friend folded up with giggles again. The laughter wasn’t just confined to one ‘bot, though. Jerro and Crow were also snickering at their ‘leader’. "Just because I have a girlfriend," he growled at them all.

Eagalor stopped in mid-chuckle. "Hey, that’s not fair! It’s not MY fault I haven’t found someone yet!" Artico smirked. "It’s not!"

"Aw, don’t worry about it," Jerro said before the fox could say anything more. "You don’t want to be as leashed as him, do you?" He grinned evilly. "Yeah, that’s it!"

"Hmm?" Crow added to the conversation as Artico simmered. "What?"

"THAT’S why Depth Charge’s situation seems so familiar!" Jerro crowed. "We saw it with Arcana and Artico LONG before Tarantella thought of it!"

Arcana propped herself up against the wall and giggled silently at the outburst of insults that brought from Artico. She was around the corner and slightly down the street from where the males had gathered on the opposite side of the street from the building they were staying in. She wasn’t really eavesdropping. She was, er, well, okay, so she was. Still, she had to feel a bit offended by the mockery her boyfriend was getting just because he was trying to come up with a brilliant way to apology to her. It HAD been his fault they couldn’t go to the Anime dimension. He DID owe her an apology.

Well, he obviously knew he did, and she appreciated the effort. It was almost as good as an actual apology. Now if she could just come up with something that would show the local bachelors that a guy apologizing to his girlfriend was a GOOD thing...

Eagalor stopped in mid-laugh again as something over Artico’s shoulder caught his eye. "Gah..." he said vaguely.

Jerro turned out of puzzlement at the expression on Eagalor’s face. His jaw dropped. "Wha..?"

Crow’s eyes threatened to take over his face.

"What are you guys looking...at...now..." Artico turned around to see Arcana walking towards them. Not just walking: swaying.

It was that slightly exaggerated sway that showed off what a girl was made of and proud of. The mischievous smile and sparkling eyes only added to the image.

"...wow..." His witty apology had deserted him. Actually, his WITS had deserted him. When she stopped in front of him, he could only stare and work his jaw futilely, trying to say something, ANYTHING. "Er...sorry?"

The glowing goddess (or so it seemed to Artico; the others only saw a REALLY beautiful femme) turned and swayed away from her appreciative audience of males. When she reached the door to the Rebels’ temporary base, she looked over her shoulder and tilted her head with a ‘Come-Hither’ look.

Artico RAN after her as she disappeared inside.

Jerro, Crow, and Eagalor were left looking at each other and silently thinking.

"I wonder where I can buy a leash around here..." Jerro said quietly.

"Yeah," Eagalor agreed wistfully.

Crow just nodded.

Kadabra liked this dream. A lot. A LOT.

Tarantulas was hovering over her constantly with lovesick thoughts foremost in his mind. They almost matched the thoughts she had about him ALL the time, not just during a dream.

Ivy was happily off somewhere else. Kadabra wished she’d do that more often in real life.

But Tarantulas was hers for now.

Kadabra didn’t want to wake up.

Tsunami looked around as the portal closed. So this was the Poke’mon dimension? From the way Rampage had described it, she had expected something...more...

"Chancy! Chancy!" A pink ball with a nurse’s hat suddenly waddled by swiftly rolling a stretcher with some sort of strange animal on it. A woman in a nurse’s uniform with red loops of hair was running at its side next to another woman with a upswept blue hairdo.

"Will he be all right, Nurse Joy? Will he?" the blue-haired woman asked anxiously.

"Right now we just need to get back to the Poke’mon Center," Nurse Joy said calmly as they ran around a corner.

Tsunami looked after them with an bemused smile on her lips. Or maybe Rampage’s description had been right after all! And speaking of Rampage...

She extended her psychic abilities in a quest for a certain group of robots. The Rebel base was FINALLY clear (after a couple incidents involving lemming attacks on the Queen Ant, which Tsunami had broken up and explained about how the gas affected the lemmings to the confused ants) Poke’mon, Poke’mon, Team Rocket (what the slag?!), human, another Poke’mon, yet ANOTHER Poke’mon, and--

--wait a nano, she knew that Poke’mon.

Kadabra. Time to wake up.

She shifted uncomfortably at the voice in her head, but she knew it was right. It was time to get up .

A sigh swept through her sadly as she touched her dream’s minds. The other mind and Ivy were happy, and FAR AWAY.

TARANTULAS WAS HERS!

...but now she had to wake up.

Kadabra reluctantly stopped controlling her dream.

Tarantulas blinked and looked around in confusion. Why was he sitting on the floor like this looking up at Kadabra? Why was Kadabra on his bed, anyway?

Where was Ivy?

He looked around warily. He seemed to remember doting on Kadabra for the last day or so, but that couldn’t be right. It was one thing to care for his Poke’mon; another thing completely to love her.

Besides, he owed Ivy an apology...

Depth Charge and Tarantella were walking down the hall hand-in-hand when Ivy sprinted out of a door in front of them and cowered against the opposite wall with a disgusted look on her face as she glared back the way she had come from.

"Ew! What was I doing with YOU?!"

Rampage poked his head out of the door. His face was wearing a rather dazed and puzzled look, along with a vivid handprint where Ivy had apparently slapped him. "I have NO idea!" he growled at her now.

"Well, you were--"

"--ME? You were the one who--"

"--had your hand on my--"

"--don’t know how the slag you--"

Depth Charge hesitantly raised his hand to catch their attention.

They both turned towards him with identical angry looks. "WHAT?!"

"Uh...what’s going on?"

Rampage looked at Ivy. Ivy looked at Rampage. Together, they turned to stare at Tarantella and Depth Charge, who were looking startled and REALLY confused.

Ivy turned back to Rampage. "Never speak of this again?"

Rampage nodded. "Deal." He immediately slammed the door as she ran away down the hall.

...leaving the manta ray and tarantula staring after them. "Did we miss something?"

"Cheets?"

The cat mostly curled up on her lap opened one eye to look up at her. "Mmm?" The slight motion of an eyelid opening caused his precariously balanced bulk to start sliding off, and Blacklight scooped him back on.

She smiled and scratched behind one of Cheetor’s ears. "You know I like you..." He purred and twisted around, almost falling off again, until she could reach the soft fur of his stomach. "...but there’s a problem."

Distracted by the petting, his purr merely took on an inquiring tone.

She sighed. "You’re too slagging heavy to do this for very long. Get off of me!"

Tsunami knocked on the door to Artico and Arcana’s shared room. "Are you two coming--" A brief mental touch made her eyes widen with amused startlement. "--nevermind," she laughed.

Jerro, Eagalor, and Crow looked at each other mournfully as the tall femme moved down the hall.

"What’s he got--" Eagalor started.

"--that we don’t?" Jerro finished. He shook his head and walked after Tsunami with the eagle Rebel. They didn’t notice that Crow, silent as ever, had stayed behind and was creeping towards the door.

They did eventually notice a couple minutes later when Eagalor turned to ask him a question...and he wasn’t there.

Jerro glanced around. "Hey, where’d he--"

Crow seemed to fade out of the very wall they were leaning against.

The spider Rebel barely blinked. "--oh. Hi. Where were you?"

The quiet Rebel shrugged, but the other two could have sworn he was laughing behind his facemask. "Chocolate," he stated mysteriously.

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

Calm optics took in his friends’ puzzlement. "That’s what Artico has that you don’t," he explained. A tiny flicker of alarm flared in those optics at the looks of stunned revelation on his companions’ faces. "You guys aren’t--"

They turned and ran back down the hall towards the nearest exit, leaving Crow to stare after them and wonder what he'd done wrong...

Tsunami knocked on the door. A muffled voice asked an irritated question, and she smiled. "It’s Tsunami!" she called back.

There was a moment of scrambling sounds, and then the door was yanked open. "Tsunami!" Rampage exclaimed. "Slag, if I had known you were here I would have--" he caught himself. "Uh...what are you doing here, anyway?" he finished awkwardly.

She was tempted to find out what he had been about to say, but reluctantly decided against it. "Getting everyone ready to go back to the base," she said instead. Something behind him attracted her attention, and she tilted her head so she could see past him. "What are you watching?"

His eyes widened. He had been in such a hurry to open the door (all he could think of at that moment was seeing her...) that he had forgotten to turn off the movie! "Er, ‘Chibi Chimeras With Chainsaws III: The Cute Carnage Continues’."

Tsunami just stared at him with a look of total shock on her face.

"Tsunami?" He waved a hand in front of her face. "Hello?"

Then she started laughing helplessly. He stood there watching her and wondering what he had done while she giggled uncontrollably, but that was okay. He liked watching her. "I-I’m sorry," she got through her laughter. "B-but the thought of YOU watching ‘Chibi Chimeras’--" She collapsed back into incoherent giggles.

Eventually she recovered enough to stand back up straight. "Oh, that was funny...why are you watching it?" she asked curiously.

Rampage laughed nervously. "There’s a rather interesting story behind that. Want to come in and finish watching the movie while I tell you?"

"--already apologized, so what more do you want?! I mean, the color’s all gone now, isn’t it?!"

Kadabra woke up to Tarantulas’s words, and she sighed sadly as Ivyna’s voice answered him. No more dream world. Everything was back to normal.

"You shouldn’t have sabotaged Artico’s experiment like that in the first place!" she snapped back at him.

Tarantulas sulked and grumbled inaudibly. "He’s a stupid furball," he finally said in a louder voice as Ivy glared. "...but I guess I shouldn’t have done that," he admitted. "If only because it made the lemmings act crazier," he added immediately. Ivy raised an eyebrow, but he scowled. "Did I tell you that I found one of them tap dancing on my computer?"

Ivy eyed him for a moment, but decided to drop the issue. "No. Why was it doing that?"

"I don’t know. All I know is that Togepi started imitating it and almost fell off. I barely caught that egg in time!" He thought for a moment at Ivy’s amused expression. She wouldn’t have been amused if she had seen how much Togepi liked to dance in high places... "Didn’t you notice Togepi acting any differently when you were taking care of it today?" he asked.

Ivy froze. "What are you talking about? Togepi wasn’t with ME!"

"Well, it wasn’t with me, either!"

They stared at each other. "I thought YOU had it!" they yelled at the same time.

Kadabra sighed again as the panic started over finding Togepi. She could tell Tarantulas that it was safely back in his lab, happily wandering around the inside of one of his drawers where it had accidentally been shut in...but only if he asked. She was feeling moody for some reason. Probably over the fact that Tarantulas loved Ivy, and not his Poke’mon...

The ‘bots ran out of the room, intent on finding everyone and going back to their dimension to search for Togepi. Kadabra sensed that getting all of the other Rebels might not be very easy. Something about how some of them had shut themselves into their rooms...and also the fact that Jerro and Eagalor (and Crow, but he was trying to get them to stop) were busy buying all the chocolate in a one mile radius.

Yes, things were back to normal.

She missed her dream.

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