Hey everyone. I want to discuss a few things. First, I'm debating whether or not Ash becomes a vigilante assassin or just someone who throws the criminals at the League's front door, and doesn't kill.
Second, in a few chapters I'm going to time skip. Just a heads up.
Lastly, with school coming up in two weeks and my getting ready, I won't be able to update as often. Just a heads up. For now, enjoy!
The search for Ash was rapidly growing. After he wasn't found anywhere near or in Pallet Town, the other cities police department's began searching in their area of jurisdiction, and the League was notified. The League issued a note to all Pokemon Centers about the situation and advised them to report any sighting of Ash. All this police activity had gotten the media's attention. Which led to reporters mercilessly questioning any officer in sight.
Delia and the group were returning to Pallet when a reported with a notepad and recorder approached them.
"Excuse me, but are you Delia Ketchum, mother of Ash Ketchum? She had been searching for her all day, and was slightly frustrated.
"Yes, I am. Do you know anything about where my son might be?" She asked hopefully.
"Unfortunately, I do not. But I was hoping you could give a quick interview?" She asked hopefully.
"Well, if you think it will help find him or make him come home, sure." She offered.
"Yes Ma'am, this will help tremendously." The reporter half lied. If anything, it could scare Ash off. But she didn't want to hurt Miss Ketchum. She turned on her recorder, and asked Delia some questions. Delia answered them truthfully, and the reporter scurried off to her headquarters to write the article. The gang headed back to the Ketchum residence for another long night.
"I can't believe he has the audacity to run off like that! We spent hours in the freezing cold looking for his sorry self." Misty snapped. She just wanted a nice hot shower, and some warm food.
"We really upset him..." Brock murmured. They all felt guilty when he said that, but they felt like it needed to be done anyways. Ash was wasting opportunities, he was only young for so long.
"Well, I think some hot dinner will raise our spirits. Who likes lasagna?" Delia asked while smiling. Everyone looked up hopefully. Her lasagna was LEGENDARY.
In Viridian City, the reporter was typing up her interview with Delia Ketchum. She knew it would make her look good to her bosses, so she didn't bat an eye when she switched a few of the details to make it more dramatic. Maybe she could get a relocation to somewhere nice...
An hour later it was ready, and she presented it to the station chief for approval. He read it twice, and then nodded. "Send it." He ordered.
In Sinnoh, Cynthia was visiting her grandmother in Celestic Town. They had come in after it had started to get dark to find the TV had been left on. They decided to watch a movie.
Cynthia typed in what she thought was the movies channel only to bring up the news. She was changing it when she heard the word "missing." She flipped back to the news to see a picture of Ash and the words 'MISSING IN KANTO' on it. Her grandma, walked over with a bucket of popcorn and looked to see what Cynthia was gaping at.
"Oh goodness, that's bad. Is he someone you know dear?" She asked in concern. She looked at Cynthia to see her quickly dialing a number to someone. She waited as it rang, but went pale as it disconnected instantly. A prerecorded voice said that the person was
"Is that his number?" Grandmother asked. She was really worried too. This "Ash" was either walking around in a no-signal zone, or his watch was disabled. Both were equally bad.
"Yes." Cynthia muttered. She was panicking, first Ash had an unusual conversation with her, and then he goes missing. Something didn't add up, and she was determined to find out. She went to her room, and started packing some clothes in a bag. Grandmother walked in and instantly knew what Cynthia was going to do.
"You like him don't you?" She asked, smiling. Cynthia looked at her with a slight blush.
"No! I mean- maybe. There's just...something different about him I've never seen in other people. Besides, they could use all the help they could get." Cynthia concluded. She hugged her grandmother and went outside, summoning her Garchomp. After explaining the situation, Garchomp and Cynthia flew for Canalave City.
Before nightfall Ash had gotten a basic setup going. He had placed small holders on the wall for the lights, and gotten Pikachu to charge the battery unit. The others had been allowed to go out into the forest- in pairs or as a large group- to bring back what they wanted for their room.
Ash decided to set up his makeshift bed in the main area. He knew they needed a water area, so Ash had Primeape rock smash a pool of sorts and filled it up with buckets he had bought from the store. Ash decided to use one of the campfire mounts as a large bowl for Pokemon food. As for him, he had a small outdoor cooking set. Nothing fancy.
As everyone went to their room to sleep- except for Pikachu, who slept next to Ash-Ash rolled out his mattress and the blankets. He rolled up a blanket to use as a makeshift pillow. He drifted off into what he hoped would be a peaceful sleep.
After flying all night, Cynthia and Garchomp reached Canalave City. Cynthia returned Garchomp, and walked off in search of a ticket stand for a ferry to Kanto. Luckily, she found one five minutes before the ferry left and made it on just in time with her bag. She decided to go sleep in her cabin, since everyone had realized she was on board. It would take two or three days to reach Kanto.
Delia woke up first, and got breakfast cooking before waking everyone else up. Soon they were all around the dining table, discussing their plan for searching for Ash.
"I don't think he is nearby guys." Gary announced. He had thought it over last night, and realized something.
"What do you mean?" Misty asked warily.
"I think he flew away on a Pokemon, or went by sea. We would have found him if he went by land. That got me thinking, what if we could trace his watch? I designed all my software to be tracked in case of a situation like this. So I'm going to go see if I can trace the signal to where he is." Gary stated. Everyone looked stunned. It was a good plan, and would save lots of precious time.
"What are we waiting for? Let's go now!" Max shouted. Everyone began to eat quickly, and after getting dressed ran to the Oak's lab. Gary unlocked the door and brought everyone inside. He told his grandpa about the idea, and they fired up the computer. A minute later, it had booted up.
"So what I've designed the tracking thing to do is send a signal once every hour. To save memory and for privacy reasons, it has to be activated here before it begins tracking. It's accurate to within a mile. So when I activate it, we just wait for an hour. Then it will emit a short pulse, and the computer will log it. Then we can view where it pulsed at, and that will give us his approximate location. It works even in no-signal areas." Gary explained.
Everyone was impressed. It was clear Gary had put a lot of work into designing it. What sucked was having to wait for another hour, but at the same time it gave them an opportunity to prepare to travel again. So they settled in to wait for the hour to come.
-An hour later.-
PING! A noise echoed throughout the lab, notifying everyone of the pulse. They rushed excitedly to the computer. Gary immediately went to work on collecting the information and pulled it up. The map showed the rough area of where Ash was on the region. In this case, a blue dot showed where Ash was. What had them reeling was Ash was on Mt. Silver. Mt. Silver.
"Are you serious right now? In all of the places, he runs to that freaking place? We can't go there!" Misty shouted while clenching her fists.
"How is he even surviving the cold?" May muttered.
"He must have found a cave or something." Max suggested.
"That seems to be the only way he could be there. It gets to the negatives at night there, so if there's anywhere we should be looking it's inside the mountain. It's warm in there, due to Moltres." Oak said.
"Moltres live there?" Brock asked in awe.
"Yes, though it isn't always there. It is often away, doing whatever it does normally. But if it was there, you would definitely know."
"So how are we going to get up there?" Paul asked, getting straight to the point. Everyone began to think.
Gary was first to get an idea. "I think we should tell the Mountain Rangers, since they patrol around there. They have a group that does this kind of thing. Plus, it would take a good bit of time for all of us to get there. We could try to find shelter there, but it would be extremely difficult. Plus, we could get lost."
"He's right. A number of people have gone missing inside the mountain, and some more people had to be rescued off the mountain. It's that brutal. Ash must have been very lucky to have found shelter to be there this long." Oak concluded.
"So in other words we can't do anything again?" Misty flatly asked.
"Well, not really. We can use this to track his movements, and notify the authorities of any changes in his location. They will have to do the tracking and rescuing." Oak sighed. This upset everyone, but it was true. They could easily get hurt out there.
"So our next step is to contact the Mountain Rangers to alert them about Ash. I know they have already gotten word he is missing, but they need to know he is on the mountain. Then they can hopefully start searching for him, assuming the weather isn't bad." Oak picked up a phone and dialed a number. The phone rang once, then someone on the other end picked it up.
"Kanto Mountain Rangers." A female said.
"Hello, this is Professor Oak calling. I am here with a family member and friends of Ash Ketchum. We have tracked him down and his location is somewhere on or near Mt. Silver. I'm sure you're aware he is missing."
"Okay, can you tell me what side of Mt. Silver?" Upon hearing this Oak checked the map again.
"He is on the North side."
"Okay, we'll take it from here. Thank you." Oak hung up after she finished speaking and looked at everyone.
"So now we wait." He sighed.
At the Mountain Rangers Headquarters, things were going into overdrive. Personnel were called in, gear was inspected and readied, and the weather was analyzed.
"We got a nasty snowstorm all around Mt. Silver right now, and it won't be gone until this afternoon." A man said. He was the chief of operations. Everyone just called Chief.
"So we have to wait until then to fly in?" One of the rescuers asked. They were in a briefing room.
"Sadly, yes. If this kid has been there all this time, he can get through another night. He has shelter after all. Otherwise that watch would be frozen and wouldn't be emitting a signal." Chief concluded.
"Just to clarify, when the storm breaks we make a dash to the mountain in the helicopter, try and find this kid, and get back before that massive blizzard arrives? What if we can't find him?" Someone asked.
"Well, then you guys return to base. Then we have to wait again. We will also send another team to search the inside of the mountain if he isn't found the first time. Okay, any questions?" No one raised a hand, so Chief dismissed everyone. He walked over to a weather tracker to look at the storm.
"This kid got lucky. A storm like that could cause an avalanche. If he gets stuck...Arceus help him." Chief muttered. He decided to get some sleep before the operation began.
-Several hours later. It is now morning for everyone-
Ash woke up feeling cold. For a second, he was worried the fire had gone out. Looking in panic, Ash was relieved to see it hadn't gone out. Which made him wonder why it was so freaking cold. He walked to the door while Pikachu slept and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge. "What the?"
SWISH! The door moved a few inches and snow came piling in. Ash jumped back and felt super cold.
"Jeez did we get a blizzard or something?" Ash muttered. He tried to push some of the snow away and was greeted with a howling wind and even more snow. Ash then decided closing the door was a great idea.
"Great. Guess I got to wait on this stupid thing to go away." Ash decided to just go to sleep. Suddenly a rumble shook the cave and mountain. Now everyone was awake and shouting. The rumbling continued down the mountain and went all the way to the ground below.
"Ah gee could this day get any more crappier!" Ash shouted in annoyance. Ash walked to the door. Where there had previously been a small hole to the world was now covered up with debris. Tree branches, pine needles, and snow was in the away. Tree branches? Oh...that was an avalanche. Holy crap that was scary. How much snow is in the way?
Ash tried to dig some of the snow away but it kept getting replaced by more snow. He decided to get Charizard to blow it away with his wings. He walked to the dragon's room to see him awake.
"Hey buddy, I need you to do me a favor. Can you come blow all this snow away? It's blocking our way out of here." Ash asked. The dragon got up and walked to the door to see a mess. He looked at Ash. After getting a nod, Charizard used his wings to blow the snow away. At first it didn't work, but eventually the snow was replaced with wind. Charizard just walked back to his room like he didn't care.
Ash on the other hand decided to check out the Avalanche. After getting dressed and putting on a hat, he walked outside. Shivering, he looked at how the avalanche had replaced rock with snow and debris. Ash walked back in, but as he did the wind kicked up and blew his hat away. It carried the hat down to the bottom of the mountain, and landed near the avalanche's path. Forget it, I got more hats anyways.
As it sat in the snow, the hat got covered in more snow. Meanwhile, Ash had put the door back in place to keep everyone from freezing. He added some wood to the fire, and crawled back in bed, hugging Pikachu.
An hour later, a helicopter was rapidly approaching the north part of Mt. Silver. What the rescue team saw made their blood go cold. An avalanche had went all the way down the mountain, and there was a ton of debris. They set near the base of the mountain, and the if Arcanines began to sniff for any scent. One of the barked. The team rushed over, and began to dig where the dog was sniffing. One of them pulled it out of the snow, and looked at the others grimly.
It was a red and black hat.