FFnet is doing this really weird thing where in the docs it'll show that i have both of the horizontal line breaks between non story text and story text, but when i check out the chapters when they're posted, one or both of the lines are missing. UGHHHH, FFN, WHYYYYYY.
Look! More shamelessly advertising of LancexMisty fics! Go check these both out, and give them your support! The first fic is called My Dragon, and its by cuteamu with two chapters up, and it looks intense! The second is going to be a collection of shorts by spiritfrog25 and is called Finding Us! Go check them all out, and be sure to leave them your support!
To the following:
japaneserockergirl: I'm actually needing to revise a little on what purpose the journal has. The storyline has changed a little bit from the original intent since I started. But yes, it has its own purpose still, and is still going to have importance to it. But what? :o IT IS A MYSTERYYYYY (where's a good ghost emoji when you need one augh)
guest yoko: yo, don't get me started on little red haired babies, oh my god, i could go on forever about momma misty and daddy lance and their three-children red haired family shenanigans, like I could write pages of this . Agreed that we need more Misty solo arcs. They were doing great on the Pokemon Chronicles sideline episodes with her, but then they dropped it? So disappointed. Anyway, thanks for the encouragement!
Rebein: I knooow, it's so frustrating some days, I've had my own long history of flopfics too. But it helps me to keep trucking onward with everyone's well wishes and enthusiastic reviews, so thank you so much for your encouragement and your compliments! Every one of them means a lot to me.
reeroy: Oh yes, bonding has been had!
Princessdiana516: Same here, though I'm a bit fond of Dawn too. I'm still angry they dropped the Chronicles sideline series, it was so nice and a good break from Ash to show us how Misty and his other friends were doing! There just aren't enough Solo Misty fics out there either, a lot of them just have her constantly revolve around Ash or magically join Ash on his next region adventure and there could be so much better done for her uuuggghhhhh anyway thank you so much for your kind words!
New Readers (I've lost track, sorry if I missed your name! :C ) : B.A.N.D.0.9., firehottie, ZappedofOriginality, dreamwalkerlisa, x-Misao-x, Hollow Life. Welcome aboard C:
They were still chattering back and forth like excitable sentrets when past the last line of trees they met a large clearing. Growlithe sniffed the ground and ducked behind the to trainers as they swept past the trees and stepped into thin grass. A total of six structures and one stone mass in one's center met their eyes, starting with the tall towered structure that had sparked the inspiration for the whole journey. It appeared to be more like a lookout or observational structure, impossibly tall and standing sturdily despite the bends and few broken poles that it stood on thanks to the brick and stone interwoven into the foundation to keep it stable. It had a ragged looking ladder reaching all the way up to the roofed top that appeared small enough for three people.
Of the other structures, only three of the outermost still stood, and all of them had bits of shrubbery growing on them where nature was reclaiming the area. The other two, the most distant, were missing much of their ceilings and upper walls and collapsed inward otherwise, reduced to small and bared brick, stone, and wood foundation that only stood to their hip. It appeared that one of the two actually had even collapsed further downward and dug into the earth, where a large mass of stone stuck out. The other remaining three structures were comprised of brick and stone walls with thick wood joints and formerly wood ceilings that had collapsed into the floors too. One of the three had half of a floor where there might have been a second story to its structure, and it was the only of the three that looked like it might have had more than one ground floor. It was missing its entire ceiling, while a second had most of the ceiling collapsing inward at a diagonal and cutting off access, and the third, the closest to Lance and Misty, had pretty big chunks in the roof gone too. Still, of all the structures, it appeared to be the most stable, so they approached it first.
"How long have these been here, do you think?" Misty asked, laying a finger on the aged wood and brick of the door-less door frame. A layer of dust and brick fell to the ground from her touch, and the wood looked splintered.
"I don't know. " Lance answered honestly as they ducked inside, "I'm no expert. Over a few decades, maybe?" Inside the building, was a large room that had doorways to a collection of other smaller rooms, with an alcove to the left with broken or fallen book shelves. One of the very few standing-yet low shelves also had a sheet of dirtied canvas draped over something large. Books and pages of ruined paper littered the floor with a collection of other debri from the damaged building as well as the small amounts of green weeds and grass patches peaking through cracks in the floor tile. The sunlight pierced through the holes in the ceiling, the light reflecting small particles of dust that floated about. In the other corner there had been some broken and ragged looking rocking chairs with more book shelves and books, more books with broken spines and ripped pages on the floor.
They passed the large room of abandoned chairs and ruined books into a dim, larger room with only the sunlight peering through the roof cracks for light. There was a minute amount less of papers and books scattered on the floor. Littering the floor were also articles of clothing, a couple shoes, a few moldy socks if the smells could be trusted. There were wood stands, ladders, and support beams for what might have been the infrastructure of bunk beds, except there were no mattresses. Instead, there were hooks and hammocks hanging on them across the beams with support nets underneath them, with small satchels and broken shelves above and below where clothes and personal items spilled out of some. Some of the hammocks were in tact. Some were hanging on solely one hook and rope. Some had torn and fell to the ground in useless heaps. One open closet in the right corner by the first pair of hammocks, with its door barely hanging on its hinges, appeared to have replacements of the hammocks, hooks, and rope.
One of the hammocks even had a satchel full of letters spilling out of it, almost folded into the fabric if it hadn't been haphazardly splayed across. One of the shelves had an opened, tiny heart locket hanging out of it.
Lance counted a total of twenty hammocks. Twenty people had lived here at some point, he supposed. Twenty people that had left behind libraries, books, letters to home, clothes, some small trinkets...
He looked to Growlithe, who was sniffing about, hackles raised and on guard as if the puppy pokemon expected something to jump out. Growlithe had admitted to him that he hadn't been born when the humans had been here. He didn't know what had happened to the humans to make them come here, or to make them leave. Just that something had happened to make them go away, and convince most of the pokemon on the island to avoid the area. It was all strange, very strange.
He turned to Misty who had picked up the little gold locket from one of the hammock shelves, and was turning it over in her hand, a sad frown in her features. He strolled over to glance at it. The picture inside was tiny, and faded, but the happy couple inside were clear enough to see even in the dim light. Misty deflated with a sigh, then replaced it back on the shelf it had hung from.
"Something bad must have happened to all them, for them to leave all this stuff behind." Misty said, "I can't imagine anyone would leave something precious like that behind willingly."
He nodded, "Whatever happened, it happened a long time ago." he suggested.
"...looks like we can use those though." she perked up, pointing to the closet of replacement hammocks and materials. She trudged over and began pulling the supplies out, counting how many navy colored fabric sheets, hooks, and lines of rope fell out. There was enough paired items to fashion at least three usable hammocks, it seemed, and with some more hooks and rope leftover for more repairs and replacements.
"Why am I getting the feeling that I'm going to embarrass myself a few times trying to get into one of those?" he asked after a beat.
"Because you will." she said matter-of-factly, smirking. Finding little else besides old, raggedy clothes and more personal trinkets and journals, the pair decided to vacate the building and head to the next one. At the doorway though, before leaving they shrugged off their own cargo, letting the makeshift satchel fall to the ground while most of the spears were leaned against the frame. Misty kept the dagger hanging in the belt loop of her shorts though, and Lance still kept one of the spears in his hand.
They decided to skip over the building with the roof caved inward, the inside inaccessible and crushed under the entirety of the roof. Instead they stepped toward the third outer building, with the missing roof and exposed infrastructure of a second story. It was evident that by the dirty but standing padded long tables, torn curtains, and shelves of small bottles and containers in varying degrees of damage that the building had once been intended as a small medical center for the group who had lived there. Dirt, weeds, and more illegible papers littered the floor, some with medical jargon barely legible and the rest too smudged and water-damaged to begin to read. Past the curtains and long tables, some of the shelves were knocked down with their contents smashed and shattered and the various medicines long expired. The others were rusted in the bars, and many of the containers broken or cracked.
"Some of this is medicine for pokemon, no just humans." Lance noted, reading the dirt and dust crusted labelling on a bright orange glass bottle of liquid that had caught his attention. The labeling was hand written and the ink smudged badly and riddled with dust and dirt, but it still read relatively clearly, 'Potion, type S, 500 mll". A row of more orange glass bottles came from the same shelf, some broken and dried up and cracked too. Growlithe sniffed at the dried stains of spilled Ether and sneezed loudly, making all three of the jump.
"Stuff for asthma, the flu, allergies, hypothermia, pain... looks like a basic pharmacy." Misty followed up, opening the doors to several closets and finding sterile, untouched bandages, gauze wrapping, gloves, compresses, and a wicked looking set of surgical tools. Azurill bobbled by her feet, looking about with some small amount of interest. Misty frowned, "We could have reeeally used some of this, a few days ago."
"We couldn't have known about this being here," Lance said, "hindsight and all."
His boot kicked a book on the floor, and when it picked it up loose dirt and dust spilled off the cover. He opened it, thumbed through a few yellowed and crinkled pages. The print was faded and portraits almost indistinguishable, but it was definitely a record book of the former inhabitants. It was filled with over fifty people and their pokemon's medical records, little tidbits about so-and-so breaking an arm during construction and being prescribed this and that amount of pain and antibiotic medicine, another about so-and-so catching a cold and kept under a light quarantine to prevent spread. One of them, a dark haired man with dreadlocks pulled into a loose ponytail, had the date still legible. Something was written about scrapes from rock climbing, but he paid little attention.
A quick amount of math in his head had Lance outwardly voicing, "This record is over fifty six years old." with no small amount of awe. Misty hurried over to peak at the ink and print, making an impressed noise from her lips.
"So this place is... old... but not old-old." Misty said. He chuckled at her eloquence. But she was right. They definitely weren't looking the ruins of an ancient civilization thousands of years past. Whatever this place was built for, it had suffered something to make it either condemned or forgotten long before he or Misty could have been born. He set the book down on one of the shelves riddled with potions, and noted a ladder on the wall that looked like it might take them up to the second floor. Deciding against it, they set out for the next piece of the puzzle, one of the two completely collapsed piles of brick and wood.
The first was hardly noteworthy. Plainly and simply, it was a messy pile of mortared bricks and snapped wood and the bits of what could have been metal or more belongings. It was in the process of being overtaken by nature, with weeds and thick vines reaching out to crown the top of the pile like a child playing King of the Mountain. The second however, was interesting in that none of the foliage had touched it. For some reason, there was a barrier of soil that none of the grass or weeds even breached. From there it was beams and ceiling collapsed atop each other, some of it even burying deep into the ground as a veritable a crater of more debri and, strangely enough, actual machinery and computer stations. The tops of something stone seemed suspended in the deepest heart of the crater, underneath the fallen structure and surrounded by a castle of debris.
He and Misty walked to the other side and peered closer. There was definitely something buried underneath the fallen infrastructure, and curioisty prickled at their spines, pushing the two trainers to cross into the debris. They carefully climbed down through the piles and tangled mess of wood and brick and buried old machinery, including a set of giant, old computers shielded from the weather by the debris and a blacked screen at their centers. One of them had an array of extensions and a large antenna.
However, it was not the very old, very bulky super computers that grabbed their attention, but the barely shielded stone mass- no, masses in the heart of the crater.
The first was very large, several times larger than Lance stood, with a long neck and an outstretched jaw split open to render a full blasting roar at an invisible enemy. It had an even longer wingspan that was curled around protectively over a human figure that laid at its feet, the tail not too far away curled near too. The human mass was lying on their side with one arm wrapped to their waist and another half-stretched outward, having reached for something too far only for the arm to fall to the ground. It was almost befitting a memorial stone, but it looked less like the kind remembrance of a noble alliance or great accomplishment and more like the last moments of two desperate, dying beings frozen in time.
Even with her memories of a boy falling to his knees and turning to stone erased by a rightfully paranoid psychic pokemon from years before, she could not hold back the shiver that ran through Misty's spine as she recognized the most definitely permanently petrified forms standing before them of the dreadlock-ed man from the medical book, and a Lugia.
Ooh, what's this? Possible hints at what happened on the island? And everyone's favorite Guardian of the Sea pokemon, you say? Hmm. And before you ask me: yes, they are really and permanently petrified, and it's too late for Super Magical Poke-Tears to work any magic on them like it did Ash on the first movie. lol So during the johto seasons the anime made a counterproductive effort to both deny the second movie's events as canon at the same time as confirming it happened in the canon, meaning you can decide whether or not there are multiple Lugias living at a given time rather than the usual Only One of Its Kind stat legendaries tend to be given in the movies and anime.
As a last note, I've whipped up a community for Kingdrashipping so that it might be easier for you guys to find more LancexMisty fics! It's titled S.S. Kingdra, and, you guessed it, is going to be open to any fic submissions as long as it has LancexMisty in it. PM me for questions, comments, submissions, or if you want to help me staff it! This way it'll be a little easier for everyone to find a fic they want to read, and maybe keep up with them when there's an update.
As always, reviews are very much appreciated. You are also free to hit me up on the PM if you have any questions, or just want to chat!
-KO13