Wow. 25 chapters. Thank you for your support guys.
Chapter 25
The prairies make up about half of southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They consist of various grasses where natural vegetation remains and fields of wheat and canola where it doesn't. People are few and far between.
As result, it got boring pretty damn fast. Add on Carly and Trevor, and it becomes hell.
"Why does the ground have to be so flat?" Trevor moaned, general laziness getting the better of him yet again.
"Glaciation. Does that answer your question?" I responded, having become fed up with this behavior back in Quebec.
Before Trevor could respond, I saw a large mass of some sort of brown Pokémon running in our direction. As they got closer, I began to make out that they were Tauros.
"Huh, don't see that everyday," I said to myself contentedly, before it clicked in my head.
Tauros. About thirty or forty of them. Stampeding right at us.
Angling myself off the road, I ended up diving into a patch of wheat, the golden brown stalks surrounding me as the Tauros left a cloud of dust in their wake. Coughing, I uprighted myself and looked around.
"Alright, are we still alive? Is somebody dead?" I asked, hoping that they'd both respond. After all, dead bodies don't like good when you're dragging them back home to put in a body bag.
"Anyone get their license plate numbers?" Trevor attempted to joke, limply raising a hand I could barely see. Carly merely dusted herself off and nodded.
Defense Against Feral Foes 101. Wish I'd taken that class too, because she came out far better off than either of us.
"Tauros don't randomly run out of nowhere at people. It means two things. One, we're in Saskatchewan, and I think a new time zone. Two, something provoked them. We're going in that direction anyway, and have fifteen decent Pokémon and one baby between us. Might as well find out what," I stated.
"You sure that's a good idea? We're running low on supplies. There's a town about a kilometer back we could revisit. Might pick up some information there anyway," Carly said, playing the voice of reason.
"Screw that, it's a group of Tauros! How badass is that?" Trevor exclaimed, getting a little ahead of himself and running off to where the Tauros came from.
"There he goes again," I sighed, heading after him. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Carly had turned around and gone back. "Eh, we'll meet up later."
Now, I wished I hadn't been so quick to dismiss her.
"Arceus man, slow down," I panted, having finally caught up with Trevor. Trevor then turned towards me, looked off in another direction and tackled me to the ground.
"What was that for?" I snarled at him, as he pinned my body.
"You didn't see? Those guys standing over there. They're watching something. Like pros would." Trevor discretely gestured. Following his pointer finger, I did see a group of three or four athletic men scanning the area.
"Come to think of it, even as an endangered species, there wasn't enough Tauros for it to be natural. Something's clearly up," I said out loud.
"No shit. Now what?" Trevor asked.
Wish I could answer that question. To stay would be boring and make us sitting ducks. Crawling would produce unnecessary movement of the grass, giving us away. Running would be out of the question, as prairies appear flat to the casual observer. So flat, you could watch your pet Growlithe run away for about three days. They could probably catch up to us, or have Pokémon that could.
Unless, of course, they had no idea what was going on. Reaching for my belt, I grabbed two pokeballs and hoped they would be sufficient.
Doing my best to cover the glow of their releases up, I brought out Stunky and Kricketune, the bug type having made his return while Marshtomp was out of commission.
"Alright guys, here's the plan. Kricketune, make some noise. I don't care what, just confuse them," I said, stopping to point. "Stunky, it's on you to make a big enough Haze to cover our escape. We won't be able to get away without it."
Stunky immediately tensed up, scared stiff. Apparently, my attempts to get her to relax weren't working very well. Kricketune seemed to hold his head in his scythe, and then turned to start the distraction.
A high pitched buzz came out of Kricketune's mouth, causing the men to freak out. Kricketune was just short enough to not be seen from a distance, which was a bit of a blessing right now. I then turned to Stunky.
"Listen girl, it's simple. One Haze. That's it. Just relax. It'll be fine," I tried to tell her in soothing tones.
Stunky gave me a look of 'really?' then quickly obliged. The black smoke gave away our position, but considering we were on the move, it wasn't important. Calling back both of them, I ran, not stopping to look for Trevor, although he wasn't far behind me.
"That was close," I panted, having gotten a safe distance away. Seeing as we weren't followed, I guess our presence wasn't that much of a threat.
"Once again, no shit. Do you think they were scouting the area out for something? Trevor suggested.'
"I don't know; let's just get back to Carly. We'll take the long way around tomorrow, alright? Let's just settle in and relax for the rest of the day. Arceus knows we need it," I groaned.
Relaxation sounded so good right now, because even without constantly camping, warm beds were few and far between.
Said relaxation was spoiled by two things.
For starters, the gas station held an extremely familiar SUV with the right set of license plates. Apparently it was a gas guzzler, because why else would it stop so much, but that wasn't overtly relevant.
The other thing was that Chuck was inside the nearby Café's window, talking to an official looking man, who appeared to rather irritated.
Kneeling underneath the window, I judged that Chuck didn't particularly care what the man thought from his own body language. If anything, he seemed bored.
"We're looking for Nicole as of right now, aren't we?" Trevor sighed, pulling up beside me.
"To think, it used to be you who dragged me around a hundred percent of the time," I replied, smirking from the irony.
In the Cafe
"I don't need anyone looking after me. As you may have noticed, I have a very capable group of creatures. Get back to your job. We'll need Moltres," Chuck scoffed.
"I don't see any point in this either. But, you don't disagree with your father. Besides, we might have a small delay. Some of our men were spotted. They didn't see who by however," the man grimly answered.
"I had to cut the girl loose. She was of no use to me, unable to follow the simplest of commands. This is how the bitch thanks me for giving her the chance to train some simple creatures? More trouble than she's worth," Chuck added.
"He's not going to be very happy to hear that."
"So where should we look first?" I asked Trevor.
"This is a pretty small town. Do you have a picture of her? Trevor said, giving me a question to answer my own.
"Um, yeah," I told him, flipping through the camera roll of my iPod. Stopping on one of her from the contest, I showed Trevor.
"This'll do. You had a camera with you that entire time though? And you didn't snap anything of Natalia in that bikini?" Trevor queried.
"Not important. Let me guess- the picture is to show people in hope that they saw her?" I prompted, hoping to get Trevor back on track.
"Yeah. Pokemon centre if this place has one, grocery store, gas station, motel if there isn't a pokemon centre, any other restaurant this place may have. She'll probably have shown up to at least one of them," Trevor confirmed.
We however managed to get lucky on our first attempt, as she sat in the pokemon centre by herself, clearly confused about what to do next. Her four pokeballs sat in her lap, staring back at her.
"Hey. You alright?" I asked, sitting down in front of her. Nicole looked up at me, and seemed to calm down instantly. Nodding, she made a quiet reassurance she was fine.
"So, mind telling me what happened exactly?" I continued. Nicole sighed, a strand of her chocolate hair falling into her face. Her eyes had a serious look to them, as if she'd seen too much in a short period of time.
"Chuck's part of a plot to take over Canada. His dad's running the whole thing. They're going to summon Moltres, Articuno and Zapdos. They need these items to do that though, and one of them is supposed to be nearby," Nicole told me.
"Wow. Not what I was expecting to hear," I honestly stated.
"Well, we can't go to the cops, or actually Mounties here about it. I mean, would you believe a bunch of kids saying they uncovered a plan to summon a legendary pokemon?" Trevor disbelievingly summarized. "And we got our asses handed to us the last time we took Chuck on too. We're screwed."
"Not necessarily. We lost when we fought him head on. What if we were to take him on from where he'd least expect it?" Carly suggested, having walked in on our conversation.
"Alright, is everyone ready to do this now that it's way too late to back out?" Carly pointed asked, seeming to glare at me.
"If I wasn't okay with this, I would have said logically said something by now, right?" I bitterly replied. "So, we take out the guards and enter through a smokescreen, get into the main tent they have up right now and hijack whatever equipment looks important?"
"Pretty much," Carly nodded.
"Eh, not the worst thing we've ever planned out. I say we can pull it off."
Creeping in closer, having a much easier time of it thanks to the dark, the four of us got into position. As a guard began to pass by Trevor, we sprang into action.
Tripping him, the guard made a sort of 'oof' sound and took a dirt nap as one of his friends saw. The other guard quickly called out something large and winged I had never seen before. The glow caught the attention of the other guards, and we were forced into a head on fight against them.
Why is it our plans always had to go wrong?
Long time since I wrote a cliffy. Now, here are the reviewer shout outs!
fanficssuck: I get what you're saying. I try to get my physics semi realistic, which bogged down the battle a little to me. Hope this chapter doesn't make you lose all respect for me.
Terra Clearwater: Yeah, I don't get a lot of time with the gym leaders, so I have to make them distinct fast. The battle style helped with that. Hope I wrote Chuck satisfactorily. (Is that a word...) Yes, I have a girlfriend. And she's on the site under Sapphire's Destiny.
Please check her out guys. She's an amazing writer, and I think it would be nice to surprise her with an activity spike.