abandon hope-
Emotion is a fickle thing, and it was only in her nature to flit from place to place, like a leaf caught on the wind.
She had been in Eastern Hoenn just half a day prior; now she found herself wandering about the deck of a magnificent passenger ship - strangely enough, named after desert flora - crossing the ocean to Johto. A soft, saline breeze brought some welcome respite from her weariness. She didn't know why she had hopped aboard the ship, acting on a whim long since faded. There was a time when she traveled with guided, sincere purpose, but now, without anyone to steady her, she roamed to-and-fro, with decaying purpose and no direction, living up to her carefree nature. She barely felt perturbed when the wind grew stronger and the seas started hurling ever-larger waves against the ship.
There was a storm coming, but she simply embraced the wind.
On the bridge, the captain of the vessel was feeling nervous. Far more nervous than he should have been - he felt like he was once again a twenty five year-old rookie, commanding his first ship against the onslaught of what had been his first storm, not a veteran sailor of some thirty years. As storms went, this one wasn't even that large. To a ship as large as his current command, the choppier seas were simply a nuisance. He reassured himself of this fact. But it was futile. Try as he might, he simply couldn't shake the growing feeling of dread.
The storm was markedly unremarkable. Rain and the heaving deck had driven all but the hardiest of passengers indoors, but such an insignificant battering hardly presented a threat to the ship. The captain, however, had other ideas.
"Divert heading by fifteen degrees to the east," he called. This would hopefully swing the ship into the waves and alleviate the slight - but worrying - rolling the ship was presently experiencing.
"Aye, sir."
It worked; the ship stabilized. The captain allowed himself a small smile and felt his confidence flowing back. He relaxed onto a chair, and was still feeling fairly confident when a tremendous grating sound filled the entire ship. Briefly startled and confused, he soon realised what had happened and cursed his own stupidity. In his anxious haste to avoid damage to the ship, he had forgotten to consult the navigation charts when correcting the ship's course - instead of safeguarding his ship, he'd set it on a course to doom. Now it had run aground on a dangerously rocky patch, while still being battered by the wind and rain. Riding high out of the water, there was no telling if the ship would capsize.
He turned to his stunned crew. "Send out a distress signal. We need to evacuate, now!"
She was still feeling the wind in her rain-soaked hair when the ship's PA system crackled to life, asking passengers to come on deck to prepare for evacuation; they were abandoning the ship. Immediately after the address, she felt a surge of panic wash over her. But it wasn't her own fear. Rather, she felt the fear of the passengers aboard the ship, amplified a thousand times by their sheer number. As she turned to comply with the direction, she shivered and stumbled slightly, her usual serene facade shattered. The foreign fear continued to eat away at her very being.
No, no, no. She couldn't give up now - not now, she couldn't, she musn't - for the sake of every soul aboard. She was their very hope itself. If she faltered…
But for all her efforts, slowly, inevitably, as hope clashed with fear, the more primal emotion triumphed. Eventually exhausted, she fell to the soaked ground with scarcely a whimper, lost in terror. An all-encompassing darkness gradually overtook the entire vessel.
Ash woke with a start. Something distinctly… horrible had happened. He stood and peered out the window, where Pikachu joined him. Dawn had just broken over the land; the sun's first rays were barely spilling over the ocean. Yet, despite the tranquility that surrounded him, Ash felt a sense of unease - as well as a strange urge to move. He walked over to where Latias was sleeping. Her sensitive ears picked up the sound of his agitated steps, and she looked up, blinking.
"Latias. I need your help. Can you take me, um… somewhere in Alto Mare."
Latias stared blankly at him, confused.
"Please." He knelt and held one of her claws. "It'll make sense once we get out there, I promise."
With some reluctance, she levitated off the ground and shifted into her human form. Ash nodded. "Let's get going, then."
The ship was now an abandoned, desolate wreck. At some point in the night, the wind had indeed toppled the vessel onto its side. The once majestic, now shattered, hulk lay there lifelessly, mostly submerged, a titanic testament to the savagery of nature. Most of the occupants had managed to evacuate onto lifeboats before the ship had partially capsized. But by the time the first responders from Alto Mare's Port Authority - where the closest ships were located - arrived, there just two, partially filled lifeboats left drifting in the wake of the storm.
Airborne search turned up no evidence of the remaining eighteen in the vicinity.
When she opened her eyes again, the world had turned from black to white. Even the sky - a pure, utterly featureless, white. On closer inspection, she realised it was just a ceiling. She looked around. Her clothes were featureless and white. The bed she lay in - featureless and white. The walls imprisoning her - featureless, white.
Oh, but there was a window!
She hopped off the bed, ignoring the sharp pain that coursed through her body - she'd be fine before long, she knew. Walking over to the window, she saw a large, seaside city. It didn't look familiar at all. The sky was certainly not white, however. The rising sun painted streaks of orange across the cloudless azure expanse.
Turning away from her cursory inspection of the city, she noticed that the small table by the bed wasn't quite as white or featureless as her preliminary inspection indicated. There were drawers. Driven now by a sense of curiosity, she hurried over and pulled them open one by one. All three were filled with official looking documents, but what drew her attention was the seal near the top of each page. General Hospital of Alto Mare, they read.
Alto Mare… while she didn't know the city, she knew the name. She'd heard it somewhere before. Probably a story someone had told her - she used to love stories - long ago. But what mattered now was that she was registered in a hospital. This was unfortunate, and would probably lead to some fairly interesting questions once the authorities turned up. But there was no need to worry - she would just disappear again, like she had always done. Then, maybe she would go find some nicer clothes again.
She gave an involuntary cry of surprise when she heard the door open, and spun around, ready to flee. But it wasn't a doctor or a nurse at the door. Or even a sailor.
It was a familiar dark-haired boy. Just looking at him, she felt her exhaustion fade away, replaced by sensation she hadn't felt for a long time. Resolution.
"Hello," he said emotionlessly. "What brings you to Alto Mare, Dawn?"
Changelog
4/14/17: ch.4 is up, minute syntactic edits to ch.3; updated summary
AN: discovered that it's hard to make chapters long (but properly aerilated) without sufficient sources of dialogue. one sided conversation hardly counts.
