Chapter 26 - Unknown
While she had the decency not to laugh, Zeannah couldn't help the smile which came to her face. As soon as Mark released his Unown, the Pokémon was off and following some kind of invisible trail. They followed it down the hallway and around a corner.
Only somehow, in the moment between the Pokémon turning the corner and the humans turning the corner, the Unown had vanished. They were facing another dead end.
"Where'd it go?" Lilly asked, taking a few steps forwards.
Mark scratched his head as he looked around.
"No idea," he responded.
Zeannah placed her hand on the wall. It was cold and she could feel inscriptions on it like all the other walls. She dropped to the ground, her eyes scanning along where the wall met the ground.
She was looking for a gap between the two; an indication of a secret passage. All she could see was darkness.
"Maybe it teleported?" Mark was suggesting; Zeannah could almost see his resulting shrug.
"Can you call it back?" Lilly asked.
She could hear Mark sigh and apologise.
Unfortunately, she hadn't had any success either. It was like the trail just ended here.
It was unacceptable.
Horrible.
How was it that two humans and a psychic/dragon Pokémon, who currently looked like a human, couldn't find one person?
Lilly sat cross-legged on the ground as Mark paced past her every few moments. So far, every plan of his had failed.
Zeannah was to trying to find a hidden passageway where the Unown vanished. Lilly already knew she wouldn't find anything. She had already spent most of the day trying to find a secret passage of some kind. She had examined every wall and every crack while following Mark, their guide, and Zeannah around.
"We need to lose him," Zeannah whispered about Mark as she sat down.
Lilly stared at her. Didn't they need all the help they could get?
"He's hiding something," Zeannah continued. "Professors and researchers don't go helping people, especially during the evening. He's only helping us to get something. I don't know what, but it's got to have something to do with either us or the Trainers."
"You helped me," Lilly pointed out. She hadn't forgotten that Zeannah had been after something when she had agreed to travel with her. The guilt that ran across Zeannah's face, while expected, made part of her a little guilty that she had purposely brought it up.
"Yeah, but I was using you, remember?"
Lilly nodded. She sighed and stretched out so that she was lying on her back.
Then she froze.
Hidden in the colour of the roof was the light outline of a trap door; a slight, dark line shaped like a rectangle.
She called to the other two and pointed it out to them.
"That's right!" Mark instantly brightened, "there's rooms above here! I know some of them connect with the other chambers above."
"Other chambers?" Lilly questioned. She had seen other rocky mounds which were similar to the one they entered.
She had thought that there were other rooms inside them, but not that they were connected.
Lilly was about to fly up and try to push the trapdoor open when Zeannah took her arm.
"Ma'be ya could gets a Pokémon's to open it?" she suggested.
Lilly suppressed a sigh and nodded. She didn't like it when Zeannah used her fake accent.
"Cam!" She called, releasing the Pokémon into the air above her.
The ghost Pokémon appeared and did a little twirl higher into the air, passing slightly through the roof.
"I wonder what they see when they do that?" Mark questioned, absently.
"Cam!" Zeannah called to the Pokémon, "can you get the trapdoor open?"
Even though she wasn't Cam's trainer, the Duskull nodded its skull-shaped head and vanished completely into the roof.
Lilly clasped her hands as she waited in silence. Cam had to get the trapdoor open. They were fast running out of leads. Finally, she heard a click. There was a banging sound and the ruins seemed to shake as the panels flopped open, hanging down from the roof. Cam floated through, looking very proud of herself.
Lilly clapped and hugged her Pokémon.
"Yes!" Zeannah cheered.
"Nice," agreed Mark, "but how are we going to get up there?"
Shock jolted through Lilly. She knew that if she transformed she could get up there easily. She could even pull the other two up. But she couldn't expose herself to Mark, not when they knew next to nothing about him.
"Ma'be ya could go gets us a rope?" Zeannah suggested to Mark with a smile.
He shook his head.
"There's no ropes anywhere, I already know that," he informed them. "For stuff like this, well, normally I'd pair myself with a researcher who has a Pokémon that knows moves like string-shot."
"None of us have any Pokémon like that," Zeannah informed him.
Lilly sighed, this was getting them nowhere. She transformed and floated up past the trapdoor into the chamber above. Of course, she made herself invisible first, so neither of those below saw her.
She could hear them though.
"Lilly?" Zeannah called out. She sounded worried, although she couldn't be certain it wasn't an act.
"She was just there!" Mark cried out. He sounded angry and surprised. "Vanished! Just like that, right before our eyes!"
She understood a moment later; he was panicking.
[Sorry,] she whispered. She floated around the room. It looked ordinary, for ruins anyway.
A small square room with the strange inscriptions along all the walls. There were two images made from panels presented like art on a wall in the middle of the room, right before the trapdoor.
She wondered whether it was originally a trap for thieves.
There was also a door, beyond which she could see plain, dirt ground and a few bits of grass. It looked like she had been brought back to above the ruins. To where they had started. She floated out the door and pulled herself up into the sky. Her stomach jumped with the sudden movement, sending nervous tingles through her body.
She searched the ground for anything suspicious. She noticed that she had come out of an entrance a short distance from the main ruins, where they had entered earlier. There was a river separating the two.
Her ears were poised for any kind of strange noise. So far, all she could hear the wind blowing and the sounds of humans, visitors to the ruins, talking in the distance.
She was listening for anything that sounded like nefarious plans, or Alphonse. She was hoping to hear Alphonse because it would mean that he was safe. Plus, she really didn't have much of an idea what nefarious plans would sound like, if they were even spoken loud enough for her to hear. She certainly didn't think she hear anyone saying, 'it's time for some evil, let's go kill us some Pokémon.'
After listening for a few moments, it became obvious that she wasn't going to hear anything besides regular noises such as the wind and the regular cries of Pokémon in the wild. The sun had set, shrouding the area in the last of its golden glow.
She was scared. Suddenly, going to the ruins to face the trainers didn't seem like such a good idea. Alphonse had been gone for almost a day and there was no telling what could have happened to him. The trainers could have used him in some kind of strange experiment or even turned him over to their ideals, however unlikely that seemed.
She floated, letting herself be butted around by the winds; up, down, left and right, riding the wind like a boat at sea, as she thought.
She remembered her brother. He was the brave one, not her. When they were on the run, for one reason or another, he was the one who would infiltrate human cities in search for food. She was the one who waited alone in the forest. If she could just find him, she was certain he could help.
Meanwhile, all she could bring herself to do was wait. It was safe, nerve-raking and frustrating all at the same time. She heard Zeannah and Mark leave the ruins, Mark saying something about calling it a night. She couldn't see Zeannah's expression from her height, but she could tell that she was angry. That she didn't say a thing as she left was evidence enough.
She waited, growing ever uncertain in what she was doing. It got cold as the world turned dark.
...
She thought she heard something.
Both Latios and Tom had never seen anything like it. It seemed like all the unown had appeared in and around their prison. They appeared like a swarm of large, black flies. It had only been a few at first, they had beaten the guards to gain entry, but it quickly turned into more. They clamoured at the bars, all trying to get in at once.
Alphonse had curled up into a ball in the corner. His power flickered around him like a purple ball and, one the first few unowns managed to slip through the bars, it was obvious why.
For some strange reason, the unown were infatuated with him. They were bouncing on his bubble, trying to get to him, all while making their strange, haunting cries.
Latios had his hands on his ears to muffle the sound.
"Alphonse, what's going on?" Tom asked, yelling to be heard above the noise. He was pressed against the wall, determined to stay out of the Pokémon's way.
If he received an answer, he didn't hear it.
Latios cried out, his Pokémon cry splitting through the cries of the unown, as he blasted out of the cage and the room.
"Latios!" Tom cried out, trying to stand. A few unown knocked him back down.
He'd had enough. While the trainers had tried to strip him of all his Pokémon (minus Latios) he always hid one in plain sight. Well, not completely plain sight, but plain enough. He always bought shoes just a little too big so that there was a little bit of space between the edge of the shoe and his toes. Now, he slipped his shoe off and pulled out the small Pokéball and expanded it.
"Feraligatr, Slash!" he ordered, pushing up against the wall as the large, blue, gater-like Pokémon appeared in the small prison.
There was a flash as the Pokémon unleashed its attack, instantly knocking many of the unown out and cutting the prison bars from the floor. The Pokémon surged forward, cutting a path to the door.
Tom looked over at Alphonse as the cloud of unown cleared momentarily in panic.
"Come on you invalid," he said, reaching in and grabbing Alphonse's arm. He internally breathed a sigh of relief as his hand went through the barrier. He pulled Alphonse up and shoved him behind his Pokémon. "Get us out of here!" he ordered as his Pokémon continued forward.
Disclaimer: Pokémon towns and characters property of Pokémon company + Game Freak (I think). At the very least they don't belong to me. Any resemblance to existing people (living or dead) and events is a coincidence.