Chapter Ten: Rise of the Dusk Pokémon
"NO!"
Everyone who didn't know Zaela well nearly jumped out of their seats. At one moment, Zaela seemed to be staring off into oblivion. Then she had suddenly held her head and screamed.
"What's wrong?" Dawn asked, shaken.
"Did something happen to Sage?" Alice asked.
"Yes!" Zaela cried. "They were captured!"
"By what?" Kodi asked.
"What else?" Zaela hissed. "The Dusk Pokémon!"
"'Dusk' Pokémon?" Kaylee asked.
"I can see how you named them," Cynthia said. "These alternately-colored Pokémon seem to have a darkness about them."
"But they were captured?" Ash asked. "All four of them?"
"No," Zaela corrected, "five. There was a Meowth with them."
"A Meowth?" Misty moaned. "Don't tell me Team Rocket followed us all the way here."
"We should have expected they'd show up sooner or later," May told her.
The whole Royal Family looked cross.
"Team Rocket?" Zaela fumed. "In our kingdom? If I ever run into those guys, I'll chase them out of here myself!"
"Be our guest," Brock told her.
"But we need to get our Pokémon back!" Ash cried.
"That's right!" Kodi agreed. "Who knows what's gonna happen to them!"
"I agree!" Zaela said. "As soon as the blizzard ends, which it will soon, we'll head out and get our Pokémon back before those Dusk Pokémon know the wiser!"
"I don't think it'll be that simple," Kaylee told them. "But either way, I'd love to help!"
"Me, too! Me, too!" Ruth cried.
"Why don't we all come?" Cilan asked, almost everyone else agreeing. "A recipe works best if all the ingredients work together!"
"No!" Zaela told them. "The more people we have out there, the greater chance we'll be caught! Ash, Kodi, and I will go. Our Pokémon were taken, and we'll get them back!"
"That isn't a good idea, Zaela," Riley said, "and you know very well why."
"And you know very well why I need to get Sage back!" Zaela replied. "No one needs to worry about me. I take great pride in being prepared for anything."
Alice's eyes strayed to a window on the upper floor of the library. It wasn't closed down for the blizzard anymore and the weather had almost completely cleared. David put an arm around her.
"Mom, Dad," Zaela said, "I'll be fine. I spent two years alone with my Pokémon, and I came home just fine."
"Albeit cursed," Buddy muttered.
Zaela ignored him.
"I promise I'll be safe," she told her parents.
The library was silent for a few seconds. Worried smiles crossed David and Alice's faces.
"We know you will be," David said.
"Just be very careful out there!" Alice told her daughter. "If anyone comes back in a block of ice, we'll defrost you and have each of you grounded for the rest of your lives!"
Zaela hugged her parents.
"Don't worry about us," she said, releasing them. "We'll be back before you know it."
Roxy and Grace appeared in the doorway, Grace holding a backpack and Roxy holding a smaller, shoulder bag. Zaela hurried to them and took her bags.
"Thank you, ladies," she told them. "Return!"
The two Pokémon returned to their Poké Balls. Zaela turned to Ash and Kodi.
"I had them preparing while we were talking," she said.
"I didn't see or hear her talk to them," Kodi whispered to Ash.
"Come on!" Zaela told them, bolting toward the front of the castle. "Let's get going!"
Sage wearily opened her eyes. She was laying on her back in a dark place. Something cold on her wrists and ankles kept her from rising. Confused, she looked around. It didn't take her long to recover from this stupor. She realized that she was constrained to a table in a lab. She struggled to get free, but failed to move an inch.
"Sage, you're finally awake?" came Orion's voice from the left.
Sage turned to see him similarly trapped. She looked to the right to see Meowth there, too. He continued to struggle, achieving just as much as Sage did.
"Were we the only ones caught?" Sage asked.
"No," Orion told her. "Look past me."
Sage did as she was told. Pikachu and Topaz were trapped, each in a spherical glass container on a countertop. Topaz was frantic to escape. Pikachu was trying to calm her down.
"The Dusk Pokémon couldn't be the only ones behind this," Sage said, trying to free one of her paws. "If it were only them, we'd all have been turned by now."
"'Dusk' Pokémon?" Orion asked.
Sage was about to explain that Zaela had already named those Pokémon, but someone else interrupted her.
"Your trainer is a smart girl to have thought that up. Perhaps she even knew what turned them 'Dusk' in the first place."
Sage turned to look at the man in the nearby doorway and immediately grew savage.
"Kage!" she spat. "How dare you return to Kaeta!"
Topaz let out a shriek. She doubled her futile efforts to escape.
"Kage?" Orion thought aloud. "Where have I heard that name before?"
The man named Kage smirked. He stepped closer to the Pokémon. His hair was gray and ragged. His face was wrinkled, with scars that made him look like he'd once stumbled into a Sandslash hole with its inhabitants still inside. He wore a dusty white lab coat, a ragged black shirt, and scuffed up jeans and black shoes. Really, he looked like he'd been in that outfit for several days.
"I dared to return to Kaeta because my work here isn't finished," he said plainly. "People like your trainer and her grandfather don't appreciate true science. But since his Highness expelled me too soon, I decided to test my work on something a little close to home."
He had reached his hand out to Sage, but withdrew it quickly when she nearly bit him.
"You're a fool to think of your work as 'true science'!" Sage shouted. "If you think this is revenge, you're already too late! Silas died last year!"
"I can still get payment," Kage told her. "Family of the deceased will do just fine."
Sage heard a machine nearby warming up. She looked up to see the machine above her preparing to fire a beam at her. Machines over the other four Pokémon were doing the same. Topaz collapsed in fearful tears.
"You will never get away with this!" Sage barked at Kage, who was now at a control panel. "Cruelty always rebounds!"
"Maybe," Kage said. "But will you be alert enough to witness it?"
He pulled a lever. Beams of dark material showered onto the five Pokémon. Sage had flinched and shut her eyes tightly, but opened them and looked up. It was as if none of the dark material was hitting her. She felt no pain. Instead, she felt fear. This fear intensified the longer she heard the screams of the other Pokémon.
"Orion? Topaz?" she called, her heart pounding. "Pikachu? Meowth?"
Her fear took control. She cried out and loosed an energy wave with plenty of fire. She heard things exploding and the world was suddenly darker and full of dusty air.
She sat up. The constraints had not only melted, were charred into a powder. The machines and control panel were completely wrecked. Sage leapt off the table and ran to Topaz and Pikachu. She had to be careful where she put her feet, due to the shattered glass.
Topaz was crying as she tried to wake Pikachu. He was turning black and back to his original color again and again. Sage turned to look at Orion and Meowth. They were both unconscious and doing the same. Then the three turned completely black. Sage and Topaz watched in fright.
Orion turned black where he was normally blue. His black markings turned red. His yellow torso turned purple.
Pikachu's yellow fur turned black. The tips of his ears turned red and his cheeks redder. His brown markings turned purple.
Meowth's pale yellow fur turned black. His ears, feet, and the tip of his tail turned red. His charm turned purple.
"KAAAAAA!" Topaz shrieked.
"Control yourself, Topaz!" Sage told her.
She looked around. Kage was nowhere in sight.
"That snake must have escaped," Sage growled.
"Pii!" Topaz cried. "Pika pika! Pikachu! Pikapikapikapika!"
"We need to get out of here," Sage said.
She tried to think of a way to get all five out of there. Then she saw Orion stir. She ran to him.
"Orion?" she began. "Are you okay?"
He seemed to be trying to regain consciousness, but seemed to make no progress. Sage pulled him off the table and helped him stand. Orion still didn't seem to wake completely, making Sage resort to supporting him while he stood.
Sage wondered if she would have to carry all three boys and how she'd manage to do so. Topaz jumped to Meowth and somehow carried him to Sage.
"Pika! Pikapi!" she said. "Pika Pikachu!"
"You'll carry Pikachu?" Sage asked, picking Meowth up. "Are you sure?"
"Ka! Pikachu!" Topaz told her.
She leapt to Pikachu and pulled him onto her back.
Progress was slow, but the girls trudged through the lab to get out. The door to the first room seemed to have been blown off its hinges and sent into the next room. Sage wasn't sure if she had caused that or if it was the machines' explosions. The entire lab seemed to be as big as a small, one-story house, located in the middle of a forest. The Pokémon stopped in the doorway to look outside.
"Pi?" Topaz asked. "Pikapi?"
"I don't know where we are," Sage told her. "Maybe we're still in the forest path. We'll continue west until we get some idea."
They left the building into the lightly falling snow. Back in the supposedly empty building, Kage rose from behind one of the desks.
"Such power," he said. "Nevermind that it didn't work on you. I will use your power to strengthen my projects further! You will come back to me, Sage!"
"You all right, Zaela?"
Zaela gasped and returned to reality when she heard Ash's question. They had already reached the frozen sea.
"They escaped," she blurted out. "But there's a problem."
"What problem?" Kodi asked.
"Your Pokémon," Zaela told them solemnly, "they were turned into Dusk Pokémon."
"What?!" Ash cried.
"No!" Kodi protested. "Wait, what do you mean 'your' Pokémon? Didn't yours turn, too?"
"No," Zaela said, "and don't ask me why. I don't know either."
"But how do you know what happened?" Ash asked. "Now and when we were back at the castle?"
"It's my connection with Sage," Zaela told them. "If we're apart, I can see what she sees, especially if her emotions are getting the better of her. It's the same the other way around, too."
She looked to the sky to see where the sun was.
"Come on," she said. "Daylight won't last long. We need to get as far as we can before night."
Before they had gone much farther, the wind picked up and large snowflakes began to fall.
"Blizzard!" Kodi cried. "There's no shelter around here!"
"We can make one!" Ash told him.
"Exactly!" Zaela agreed.
She took a Luxury Ball from her pocket.
"Noel!" she cried. "Come on out! Use Ice Beam!"
A Froslass emerged from the Ball and began making an ice cave.
"You have a Froslass?" Ash asked. "I thought you were afraid of ghosts!"
"Most ghosts back then," Zaela told him, "some ghosts now! To tell you the truth, I didn't know she was a Ghost-type when she evolved."
The cave was soon finished and the trainers took shelter inside. As soon as they got inside, the weather started to bear down on the shelter. The thick ice held as if there were no storm at all.
"Good job, Noel," Zaela said. "Return."
"We can't find our Pokémon if we're stuck in this cave!" Kodi complained.
"Would you rather we freeze instead?" Zaela asked. "We'll likely have to stay in here all night. We'll set off again in the morning."
Sage was surprised at how far they'd gotten. Topaz would have kept going on her own, had the snow not gotten too high for her to see over. Sage was now carrying everyone, but she didn't feel tired at all. However, she still felt very paranoid at the continual silence.
"So who was Kage?" Orion asked suddenly.
Sage almost dropped him.
"You're awake?!" she cried. "I didn't think you'd be awake any time soon."
"I surprised myself," Orion told her, still sounding exhausted. "But who was Kage and why does his name sound familiar?"
Sage turned her attention to the path ahead. She looked angry.
"Horace Kage," she began. "He was one of the leading scientists in Kaeta a decade or two ago. Had Dr. Rainer dedicated himself to science instead of medicine, the two would have been everlasting rivals. But Kage didn't stay within the law while he was working on his projects. His studies often included using Pokémon in cruel experiments. Many Pokémon died in these experiments. When Kage was jailed a few years ago, most of the Pokémon he had been using for his experiments had to be humanely destroyed."
"That must be why I remember him," Orion said. "Wasn't he all over the news?"
"Yes," Sage told him. "I met him only once. But I will always have a hatred for him, whether he changes or not."
"Chances are he won't change," Orion replied. "People like him will often never change."
"So why didn't you change?" Meowth asked.
Sage was surprised that he was awake, too.
"I don't know," she said. "Topaz didn't turn, either."
"Is it 'cause you're girls?" Meowth asked.
"No," Sage told him. "We encountered a large number of female Dusk Pokémon. The Ariados Pyro and Ember defeated was female, too. So we can rule that out."
A snowflake landed on Topaz's nose. It was almost as big as her cheek.
"Pi! Pika!" she cried.
Sage looked up. A huge snowstorm quickly converged on their position.
"As if things couldn't get worse!" she growled.
She looked around and spotted a place that seemed to have originally evaded her sight. The trees there were very close together, causing no snow to fall through their branches. The ground underneath was completely barren of snow.
"Hurry!" Sage cried.
She struggled to go faster and Orion tried to help, but there was only so much he could do with a lack of strength. They still managed to get under those trees before the weather turned serious.
Sage carefully laid the boys on the ground. Topaz ran to Pikachu and checked to see if he was feeling any better. Orion struggled to get to a comfortable position while sitting with his back to a tree. Sage knelt next to him.
"Are you okay?" she asked quietly.
"Just exhausted," Orion answered, "and I can't see anything to save my life. But I think we'll be better in the morning."
Meowth remained on the ground, shivering.
"We'll need to stay warm tonight," Orion said. "There's no way we'll be able to make it home if we freeze."
Sage realized that everyone had only stayed warm while she was carrying them, while everyone was together. She picked Pikachu, Topaz, and Meowth up and sat next to Orion.
It wasn't long before Sage was the only one awake. Pikachu and Topaz fell asleep in her arms, Meowth across her lap, and Orion leaning on her. Sage was still paranoid about the Dusk Pokémon. Now that they had escaped, would they be after them again?
Somehow, Sage felt herself nodding off. A peaceful feeling settled over her. This could only happen if she were safe. But were they actually safe? She let this peace take over and fell asleep.
Kage's name is pronounced "Kah-geh", not "cage".