(A/N): Apart from my OC's, I do not own pokémon
The girl watched the events unfold before her eyes. After Ash and his friends, Dawn and Brock, had set off to find their hyper-active friend Barry, she had followed quietly at a distance. After all, Ash was amazingly rash and she couldn't let him get beaten up too much. He was important after all.
Then she had witnessed things she had previously thought impossible. After Ash had recklessly tried to tell a bunch of crazed steel-types to stop attacking everything in sight (really? Since when would that ever work?) he was saved from a sticky situation involving a crazed Aggron who wanted to Flash Cannon him by Riley (Seriously? How weird do things get? What are the chances eh?) and our brave and innocent heroes decided to help him solve the Iron Island crisis at hand.
She had then received a call from headquarters (via laptop) that they tracked Barry's location, that all she had to do now was to keep an eye on the target.
After what felt like an age and a day of tailing the group around the barren landscape of Iron Island, the finally picked up and found Team Galactic. It seemed Team Galactic wanted to use the Iron Ruins to find Spear Pillar for their evil purposes and some machine they were using was sending a sound wave over the island, making the steel-types go crazy. And apparently, finding Spear Pillar involved sending a blinding pillar of light into the sky, making the whole 'crazy steel-type' even worse. Unfortunately, Riley's Lucario got too close and went crazy, causing him to attack everything in sight. Not good.
After a demonstration that the power of Aura is awesome (yay!), Thunderbolt solves everything, Barry and Team Rocket are nothing but trouble (really, they are), crazed Steelix's are bad news, Ash finally puts an end to the Iron Island crisis by destroying Team Galactic's infernal machine with Pikachu's Thunderbolt (again, Thunderbolt solves everything) causing Team Galactic to retreat. But they weren't done yet.
She watched Team Galactic closely as they retreated, ready for any attack. But grunts were running into the Iron Ruins holding cases. Suspicious. She decided to follow them in.
From the shadows, she could see them take black devices from the cases and clip them to the wall. (Bombs maybe?) The grunts then pressed a button on these devices which blinked blue and started beeping as the grunts ran out. Her eyes widened. Definitely bombs. She ran out quickly.
After she was a safe distance from the ruins, she released Lucario from his pokéball and explained the desperate situation, Lucario's eyes widening the more she recounted. They both knew that they had to formulate a plan and fast, even if it did involve intervening, or the whole island would blow, target and innocent citizens included. She then looked to the target, who had run over to help his friends (and Team Rocket) who were stuck in the hole. No chance of him leaving any time soon. She also noticed that Riley and Lucario had disappeared to stop the bombs. She wished him good luck with that.
It seemed there was no other choice but to intervene. But first, a phone call.
She opened up her laptop, and opened the webcam tool. She dialled a number, which she had put into the contacts list for moments like these. The face of an aged man with silver hair and wise, foreboding and stern eyes that from under eyebrows that darkened his whole face.
'What is it?' he asked, with something that sounded like concern in his voice.
'Sir, I'm intervening now, this is it, the perfect time.' The girl stated, absolute certainty in her voice and expression.
'Yes, it had to happen sometime soon. Now I should explain what will happen next.' The man grunted.
'Err, can you make it quick?' the girl asked, nervously looking over her shoulder to the Iron Ruins, drumming her fingers on her thigh.
The man peered over her shoulder from over the camera and saw some extent of the crisis. 'Ah, I see. Well, to put it simply, after you intervene, I need you to travel with Ash and his friends.'
'W-what?' she stuttered. She wasn't expecting this.
'You could help him more that way and everything will easier. Plus, you always wanted to travel on a journey, right?'
'Yes, you've got a point…' she said thoughtfully. 'Ok.' She agreed with a nod of her head. 'I'll see how it goes.'
'Good.' Said the man and hung up.
The girl sighed. Typical, something like this happening. But it couldn't be helped.
She remembered the urgency of the situation and sprinted off with Lucario.
It seemed that Ash and co.'s plans had failed and they were stuck for ideas to rescue their friends. It seemed as though none of them had rope. Typical.
The group looked up at her approach.
'Are you okay? What's wrong?' she asked, even though she knew the answer perfectly well already.
'Well, we're trying our best to rescue our friends, who fell down this hole.' Stated Ash immediately. 'But we don't know how!'
'Well, I have some rope you could use.' She said, as she rummaged through the contents of her bag. Her face brightened as she found what she was looking for. 'Ah, here it is!'
She held on to one end of the rope while she threw the other down to the group below. 'Grab on, quick!'
Team Rocket were first off the mark, running over and speeding up the rope. Upon reaching the top, they sprinted off towards their Magikarp sub as if their lives depended on it (which, if fact, they did).
Barry rushed up the rope afterwards, shortly followed by Dawn, both of which thanked her greatly for her help. Ash and Brock followed suit.
'That's okay, just glad you're okay.' She answered, feeling rather nervous at all the attention she was getting.
With a swift movement she plucked the rope from the ground where it lay and stuffed it in her bag.
'See you around, I guess.' She said finally, before turning on her heel and running towards the Iron Ruins. There was something she just had to see.
'Wait! We don't even know who you are!' Ash shouted after her, but in vain. She was already out of earshot.
'Why would she be running towards the ruins, out of all places?' asked Brock, mostly to himself, as he was sure no one would really have the answer. With lost of different thoughts running through his head, Ash was silent. He was sure he had heard her voice before, but it was probably nothing. What were the odds that she was that voice? So he simply watched her run.
The girl reached the Iron Ruins, and proceeded to hide behind and stone pillar, safe in the shadows. Lucario silently joined her.
'Are you sure this is safe? Those bombs could blow any minute!' he gestured frantically.
'Have faith, Lucario. If he can't do it, we'll take over.' She answered, readying the video webcam on her laptop. From the safety of the darkness, she silently watched Riley's idea of bomb diffusion.
What she saw was staggeringly impressive.
He'd tried everything he could think of to stop the bombs, even resorting to just pulling them off the pillars, but nothing seemed to work.
Then the bombs blinked red.
He knew this was his last chance to save the island and everything on it, so he fought against the shockwave of the blast and summoned all of his strength. He was going to need it.
From the shadows, the girl and her Lucario braced themselves against the blast to come. But it never came.
The girl watched in utter shock, horror, and amazement as Riley stopped the blast with his and his Lucario's aura. Even she wouldn't dare try that (then again, she probably wouldn't even let the bombs come to that stage anyway.)
With shaking hands, she held up her laptop and clicked RECORD. She recorded in awe until the island was safe from exploding once more. Even as Riley left, she still stood there, trying to process what happened. After a few moments, she pulled herself together and sent the video to HQ. Almost she a phone call from the same man as before.
'When did this happen?' he inquired.
'Just now.' She replied.
The man thought in silence on the other end. At last, he came up with an answer.
'I want you to keep tabs on him too. See if you can get him to travel as we need to watch him too.'
'Right. I'll see what I can do.' She replied back.
After a moment of neither hanging up, she asked, 'Sir, if three are already confirmed and the target possibly being one too, do you think Riley is the last?'
'I don't know to be honest. We'll just have to see. But it is possible.' He stated, before hanging up.
The girl contemplated this for a moment.
'This could get interesting.' She said finally, with a hint of determination in her voice. Lucario couldn't agree more with that.
'Come on, Lucario, let's go see some ruins!' she said, before walking away in a good mood. Lucario followed, wondering why ruins always looked the same; dark, dank and boring.
A while later, Lucario was thinking the same thoughts as he and the girl sat atop part of the ruins unnoticed while down below, Professor Carolina, who had arrived at the island shortly after the near death experience, was giving the group a lecture on how the ruins fitted in with the Sinnoh time-space legend. The girl was casually listening in because she thought it was interesting. This went on for a while. She then suddenly perked up as if she had been electrocuted.
Professor Carolina had asked Riley whether he wanted to assist her in her research of the Iron Ruins and the girl knew that it would be bad news if he said yes. She knew she somehow had to get him to tag along with the trio if the big plans were to succeed. She quickly formulated a plan and put it into action. Fortunately, the professor hadn't stopped talking yet so she still had time.
She decided to send him a message through the power of Aura, as he could use it. She just hoped it wouldn't startle him too much.
'You mustn't say yes, just don't,' she began, 'Tell her anything, I dunno, maybe you're going to visit relatives for a while, yeah, that'll do!' She sent him. If he was startled by this sudden outburst, he didn't show it, thankfully.
And thankfully, he did decline the offer with a very shaky and poor excuse of visiting relatives. But at least everything bought the poor excuse.
Once they were starting to exit the ruins she got up and silently padded across the ruins with anyone noticing, Lucario in tow.
She jumped down from the top of the ruins in time to see Professor Carolina split from the group, then Barry, who rushed to the pokémon centre to check up on Empoleon. The girl ran after the remainder of the group.
She noticed Ash had fallen behind the group and was talking with Pikachu (if you could call it talking) so when she was within earshot she called out.
'Hey!' she said. 'Are you okay?'
He turned round to greet her. 'Hi!' he started, 'Where did you go?'
'Oh, there was something I urgently needed to do, sorry about that.' She replied with a hint of laughter in her voice.
The two walked on behind the rest of the group, who were too deep in conversation (they were too far away to know what they were talking about) to notice her arrival. Finally, Ash spoke up.
'You know, we never got round to introducing ourselves, so, I'm Ash and this is my partner Pikachu.' Pikachu chimed in with a 'Pika pika!'
Hi. I'm Jasmine and this is Lucario.' She said.