Pokémon

Hello my darlings. Yes indeed, it is me with a new chapter! Yayyyy! Well, I was impressed at least, even if you aren't. I have three tests this week and I decided to write instead (okay, so maybe it wasn't that hard of a decision). Anywho, I thank you those of you who are still tuned in. I am highly considering revising the first...dozen or so chapters because my writing back then really bothers me, so if you see an update and no new chapter and are like "WTF?" then that might be an explination.

As always, I deeply apologize for any spelling/grammar mistakes. Seriously, they annoy me too and I try to exterminate them as soon as I catch them.

Other than that, enjoy!

Chapter # 37 – Underground Terror

Alex hesitantly opened her eyes, as though she was wincing against harsh sunlight though it was nearly pitch black. She wasn't sure what to think; she wasn't falling anymore, but she was lying on the ground without feeling any impact, even though the hole in which she'd fallen was now a tiny speck towering above her. Taking a deep breath, she hauled her upper body off of the rocks. So far so good, nothing hurt. The girl rolled onto her knees and attempted to gather her bearings.

A short ways away, a cylindrical white beam was spotlighted on the ragged, dark, rocky wall. It was her flashlight, which she must have released at some point during her fall and rolled to where it stood now. Shuffling ahead carefully on her hands and knees to avoid potentially tripping or otherwise injuring herself, the brunette grasped the light like a lifeline and bounced its ray all around.

The girl had fallen into what appeared to be an old cavern. The walls and floor were damp and cold, but the air was fresh. There were a few tunnels leading away from the chamber she was currently in, and she bet that at least one of them led out towards the cliffs and overlooked the sea.

"Oh bother," Alex huffed, spinning around in a circle, "Which way do I go?"

"Whooooooh!"

A shiver ran up the girl's spine. She wasn't usually scared of the whole supernatural business, but with a lack of pokemon to support her she felt rather exposed. The groan sounded from all angles, but she thought it echoed loudest off of the cave to her right, her flashlight illuminating its entrance. With a slight debate, her curiosity won over.

"Okay, Alex. Relax. There's a perfectly good explanation for all of this. You just have to find out what it is," the brunette assured herself as she crept down the wide passage.

"Whooooooh!"

Now caves were never really Alex's thing, for she felt it was like getting sucked into a dark, cold maze that you may never find your way out of and collapse without warning. She also especially didn't like them after what happened at the Soul Salvation and ripped up her hands. So with a new danger found within the dank expanse with no assistance in sight, it was just the apprehensive girl and her trusty old flashlight.

"Alex, you should have gone back and woken up Paul. Getting yelled at would have been considerably better than walking in the creepy, haunted cave alone. Or at least taken one of your pokemon with you. Told somebody where you were going, perhaps," she berated herself, pretty much hugging the wall. Now that she thought about it, hadn't she promised she'd tell Paul before she went off on her own little adventure again?

Well, looks like she would have gotten yelled at either way, depending if she got out of this mess alive or ended up a ghost like her haunting friend down here.

As Alex slowly walked down the seemingly endless channel, she noticed that the walls were gradually getting closer together, as well as the ceiling lowering as she wandered further in. It also was getting colder, so she assumed she was on the decline as well.

"Whoooooh!"

The cry was louder than the last, rumbling off the walls, though it still sounded stifled. Alex soon found out why as her light shone on a pile of boulders blocking the opening, which she had to crouch a bit to inspect.

"Maybe following the creepy noise wasn't the best idea," Alex mumbled. The boulders were packed in tight, leaving no room to squeeze through and making the girl pout. She had walked a long way just to come to a dead end, and she was too tired to try digging her way out. "Now what?" she huffed, plopping onto her behind only to shiver from the chill it gave her.

After settling down to ponder over her predicament, there was a nudging on her back near her neck. Eyes going wide, the brunette stopped breathing momentarily as something hairy rubbed up against her the bare skin just under her collar. Then, with a few hyperventilating gasps, Alex did what any girl would do in her situation and promptly screamed at the top of her lungs, standing and running in any possible direction while flinging her body about to get the offender off.

Coal eyes flew open, staring at the equally dark sky overhead. He wasn't sure why, but the purplette boy felt as though something was very wrong, though the rest of his mind was pulled toward sleep. With a violent shake of the head, he managed to wake up enough to look around in the faint glow of the coals leftover from the fire. His gaze lingered on the black sleeping bag for a couple of seconds before blearily realizing it was tossed open and nobody was there.

As far as he could tell in the dark the group of pokemon were still there, including the missing girl's team. But on another scan of the area, he observed the absence of the girl's backpack as well.

"She wouldn't be stupid enough to go anywhere without her pokemon," he growled, lying back down. He thought about that statement for a good minute, and with a scowl he gathered his backpack and returned half of his pokemon, magmortar, torterra and electabuzz, and laced up his shoes while all the while watching the hazy trees. He noticed the brunette boy moving restlessly in his sleeping bag, almost as if he was trying to wake up and couldn't. With an annoyed grunt, Paul stomped off into the forest.

Walking along for a while after having to dig a flashlight from his pack to navigate, Paul began to hiss the girl's name while searching within every shadow he passed. He had traveled down this same path too many times to believe he could get lost, but his surroundings, he found, began to muddle together. A crease grew along the purplette's brow as he squinted his eyes to clarify his vision, but it didn't help at all. Paul was getting fed up by now, and decided that the brunette might have turned up at the camp in his absence. With that conclusion, he turned and started his trek back.

"Whooooooh!"

Paul halted mid-step, whipping around with ferociousness and half expected to see the brunette smirking at him while peeking out from behind a tree. As such, he barked, "What the hell are you doing?" There was nobody there, however, and seemingly nobody around. There was just empty silence that answered him. He did complete scan of the area and came up with nothing. Guardedly, he walked forward again.

"Whoooooh!"

This time, Paul just kept walking as though it was just a light breeze rolling through. He stepped over a thick batch of the roots, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Why can't she just stay on the same track of mind for two seconds. Randomly wandering off for an evening stroll…idiot." The purplette muttered similar statements as he continued to trudge onward. That is, until a violent wind churned the air around him. He didn't dwell on it and continued on normally. "Why is it that whenever I follow her, something weird always happens?" he muttered. He was only stopped in his step when he turned to identify the source of a strange buzzing that swiftly commenced. The wind became so strong that the purplette was slammed down onto his back. His eyes were forced to shut, but as his body hit the ground it felt like he was being sucked down into quicksand instead of the forest floor sturdily supporting him.

The gust appeared to have blown over, allowing him to open his eyes again. The sky, which was dim before, was completely black now, and the once soft forest bed was solid and freezing cold. The chill that went through him was enough to completely wake him up, and he finally realized he wasn't lying in the woods anymore, but somewhere underground.

"AGGHHHHH! Get off! Get off! Get off! Ge-umph!"

Paul groaned as a weight tumbled on top of him. He recognized the voice the shrieks came from, which picked up again when the girl caught her breath as she sat up and vigorously whipped at her back and her hair.

"Get off," he stated to the girl sitting on his stomach, but she was in too much of a fit to notice. In the pitch dark, he blindly felt around the ground until he found his fallen flashlight and beamed it up at the girl, who promptly stopped and flinched away from the brightness.

"What the…?" Alex gasped, covering her eyes with her now bare arms. "W-who's there?"

"Get off," the un-amused voice under the ray of the flashlight demanded.

"Paul?" the brunette asked, confused. She put her hands down and felt clothe, realized the position she was in. With coloring cheeks, she squeaked and clumsily stood and grabbed the flashlight. She shook and rubbed at her neck with one hand. Her skin crawled with the feeling something was still there. She beamed the light on the discarded sweater. The brunette didn't pay any mind to the boy she had fell on as he slowly stood beside her, giving her the strangest stare he could muster, but when there was a twitch from under the garment she yelped, tossing the flashlight in the air and quickly ducked behind him.

Paul was somewhat bemused by the quivering girl latched on to the back of his sweatshirt. He managed to snatch up his light and beam it on the shuffling sweater, and decided to go and investigate. Not daring to go over, he noticed Alex hastily release him and take cover behind a medium-sized rock with the top of her head to her eyes barely peeking out. He shook his head, taking the clothing by a sleeve with Alex holding her breath in the corner. In a swift movement, he tossed it into the air, revealing the offending entity.

Alex, who hadn't had the willpower to look, had closed her eyes before she saw a thing. However, after hearing Paul snort and then gradually and bizarrely split into laughter, she peeked out from behind her rock to see the culprit while whispering, "Please don't be a spider."

It wasn't a spider.

It was a small, blue and black pup sitting inoffensively on the ground with wide, bewildered, watery orbs.

It was her riolu.

"Oh my goodness!" the brunette gushed, rushing out of her hiding place. "Aura, what were you doing sleeping in my hood?" Alex scooped the tiny pokemon up into her arms and nuzzled his cheek. "You nearly gave me an heart attack."

Riolu picked up on the happiness radiating from the girl, squealing and hugging the trainer back. "Lu, riolu!"

Paul, who had gotten over the hilarity, gave the brunette a long, cold look that took her several seconds to catch on to. He grabbed the girl's shoulders and stared straight in her eyes as he asked, "What the hell were you thinking?"

Grinning rather sheepishly while hugging her newfound 'protection' of sorts, Alex replied, "Well, uh…well, you see…there was this strange noise coming from the woods and, well, I had to go check it out. Everyone else was sleeping and I didn't want to wake anybody up and I didn't think I'd be able to go very far seeing as we're kind of in a loop but then all on a sudden BAM the ground crumbled out from under me and I ended up down here instead." She breathed. Once her explanation got going it, apparently, just couldn't stop.

"…" The purplette blinked down at her. "What kind of noise?"

"A…ghost noise," Alex flinched, not really wanting to see or hear the boy after she said it. He was, undoubtedly, wearing the expression he would stare down a lunatic with while wondering why somebody hadn't dropped her off in an insane asylum. She was somewhat hoping the haunting call would sound again to convince herself she wasn't crazy.

Paul didn't respond for a few moments, watching the girl who all of a sudden found avid appeal with the shoes on her feet that she couldn't even see in the darkness. "Where was it coming from?"

Brown orbs flickered back up in puzzlement. Was he…kidding? Did he actually believe her? Suddenly, she smirked shrewdly. "You heard it too, didn't you?" When he didn't answer, she knew she was spot on. With a shrug, she answered, "I followed it when I got down here, but the path was blocked off at the end. I'm sure one of the other tunnels will lead us to the cliffs below our camp."

"Whoooooooooh!"

Alex pursed her lips sourly. "Of course, there is that to deal with, also."

"Hn," the purplette beamed his flashlight around the dome-shaped room, revealing the many deep, dark passageways of the maze they had unwillingly been dropped into. With seemingly his 'Paul-senses' tingling, he chose a room at random and confidently followed his ray of light into it.

Alex gave a look to her pup, whispering, "I sure hope he knows what he's doing," before hurriedly following the retreating source of light down one of the frustratingly identical pathways.

Alex couldn't tell whether they were walking down the same chamber she had ventured down, for she followed by sound and wasn't sure how far she ran with her eyes closed. It was rocky and damp and cold and she just wanted out at this point. A frown drew on to her face with brows pushed together and she hugged her riolu closer to her.

"Paul, do you know where you're going?" she wondered aloud, expressing her impatience.

"Do you?" he retorted in the same tone.

With a huff of indignity, the brunette turned her head away from the boy. Only to come face-to-face of what should have been the dank, rugged wall. Only, it was not the wall her eyes met with.

What she was met with was a pair of large, triangular-shaped eyes with creepy, tiny black pupils. The wide mouth with purple teeth-like protrusions extended its malicious grin, and two violet, disembodied claws followed the spiky head through the wall.

"P-p-p…" Alex whimpered softly, attempting to scream the name of her companion. Instead, with the creature coming closer to her face, she let loose a scream and promptly fell on her butt.

Whipping around to see what all of the commotion was about, Paul flashed the beam on the shaking girl now unceremoniously sitting on the ground with her pokemon clinging to her jacket as she gaped at the wall. A bare wall.

The girl slowly craned her head to look at Paul, now staring at her blandly. Of course, as soon as he turned around the ghost had disappeared. But as he watched her, haunter materialized behind his back and soundlessly mocked her. Well, she would have none of that.

"Hey you!" she roared, leaping to her feet and giving chase to the ghost, who by this point had floated away into the shadows with a daunting smirk that made Alex fume. "Get back here and prove I'm not crazy, goddamnit!" she yelled, flinging out her arms as she ran blindly beyond the bounds of the flashlight.

Paul blinked at the now empty path, hearing the echo of the brunette shouts and footsteps pounding off the walls. The little riolu, who was distractedly placed on the ground by his possibly hallucinating trainer, now clung to his pant leg and nervously peeked down the black tunnel. With a sigh, Paul picked up the little pokemon into the curl of his arm while beaming his flashlight in the other and calmly sauntered after the girl.

"Your trainer is a crazy idiot, you know that?" he muttered to the pup.

The big, red orbs turned upward toward the purplette, the tiny black and blue head slowly turning back and forth to say 'no'. Feeling the aura of confusion rolling off the purple-headed trainer, riolu raised one of his front paws and pressed the soft pad on the boy's forehead.

In a flash like a camera taking pictures in rapid succession and him looking though the lens, Paul first saw his own back cast in shadows slightly ahead, then he was twisting to the right and a haunter unexpectedly emerged right in front of "his" face. He jumped, breaking the contact between himself and the pokemon. He frowned down at it.

"She was chasing after that haunter?" Riolu confirmed this with a troubled whine. "Idiot," he growled, ready to start off in pursuit of Alex, who was unarmed and blind against a spiteful ghost.

However, somebody had other intentions.

"Ri?" the black and blue creature said, the long teardrop-shaped protrusions whipping out as he quickly twisted his head as if detecting something. "Lu!" the pokemon shrieked suddenly.

Paul wasn't sure what was happening, but felt the impact of a strong force sending him a few feet back and sprawling to the ground. The flashlight was knocked from his hand and rolled away from him, yet managed to maintain its shining glow. He was momentarily stunned, flat out on his back and unable to move with the wind knocked out of him. He was about to curse at the brunette's seemingly innocent menace until a destructive, violet ball of energy as dark as the shadows hurtled overhead with a shockwave rippling close behind. It roared along its path until its cackling reverberation lingered no more.

The walls rumbled and splintered under the pressure, raining down fragments of sharp pebbles. The entire cave was now alive. The most damage was occurring in the direction in which the shadow ball had originated, cutting off the route Alex had just disappeared down. A barrier of rocks settled in an unsteady pyramid, exactly in the spot Paul had just been standing.

"Riii-luuuu! Riiii-luuuu!" called the small pup as he hopped out of the debris in search of his trainer.

Paul once again took the creature into his arms, giving the blockage a stare down. Or more precisely, what was on the other side. "Honestly, can't stay in the same place for two seconds," he sighed.

Though, riolu didn't pick up a particularly negative aura emanating from the boy.

Alex could only tell were she was going due to the fact that the silhouette of haunter's body seemed to glow. Still, it was unnerving moving so fast with disoriented senses, and as such her hands groped in front of her for something she could potentially run into. Her brown eyes narrowed, as the ghost was slowly getting further away from her.

She didn't know where the ghost was going, or if she really wanted to know (there could have been an army of them waiting for her, for goodness sake!), but the other option was to stop. Right there. In the middle of nowhere, underground. In the dark. All alone.

At least the ghost might have had some sense to where there was fresh air coming in.

So she trailed behind the levitating outline, stumbling and weaving about the many corridors in the cave. The ground was horribly uneven, it was a miracle in itself that she didn't fall flat on her face and lose the ghost by accident. But she was rewarded when a faint blueish glow beckoned her through a smaller opening in the distance. It wasn't natural light, but at the moment she didn't care.

Alex clumsily lurched though the low opening, tripping over the uneven flooring just in time for an electrifying mass to soar inches from her skin, making her hair stand on end. She yelped, ducking and covering as tremors wracked the cavern. It was a couple of minutes until they died down. Now, she was in a sealed-off room with a psycho ghost.

Lovely.

"Miss?" A coffee orb chanced to peek up. Then the second in disbelief. A ruby gem glistened eerily from the levitating body of a small, teal figure with waving hair and tips of lavender. The form of a dress-shaped body floated over her head, tugging at her brown bun before settling on the girl's head.

"Misdreavus?" Alex questioned, her brown orbs rolling up as far as they could in their sockets. A lock of hair was tugged in conformation.

She then scanned the dimly tinted room they were now trapped in, noting the lack of a certain menacing ghost with disembodied parts. "Did you scare off the haunter by using shadow ball?" the brunette whispered to her new companion. Another tug.

Misdreavus ascended off the girl's head and began to float away to the center of the dome-shaped room. It landed on a rather large object, turning to face her. Alex hadn't paid it much attention at first glance. The bit of bluish-purple light seemed to linger along the border on the room, hiding the center in darkness. She mistook the object as a bolder at first, but now could see that what the ghost sat on held more of a square shape. The teal ghost let out a trembling whine at the dazed trainer.

"Whoooooh."

The brown-eyed girl blinked, a shiver running up her spine from the sound. "It was you? You were calling for me? But why?" She crossed the distance to the shadow-encased box with hesitant steps. She watched the ghost closely as she approached. The box, it turned out, was more of a cage with a solid top and base with thick, vertical bars in between. She attempted to look through the gaps and gasped. Inside was the bulky, complex assembling of steel and intricate buttons and switches that had been airlifted and stolen from the Kendrick's gala.

"You…you saved the Adaptability Nucleofuser last night. You teleported it to safety so they wouldn't get it. But you couldn't get it back to the Soul Salvation for some reason…" She then took notice to how tired the small ghost looked and her eyes softened. "Because you were attacked by that haunter, right? But why? It looks like the one I met in the House of Phantoms. It belongs to Grim, doesn't it?"

"Missss," misdreavus hissed, rising up off the box to glare over the girl's head.

"Well, well, well, who do we have here?"

Alex shot around, scared to death as a boy not much older than herself leaned up against the rugged cavern wall. She knew he wasn't there earlier, but the room was also seemingly closed off. The strange glow of light only added to the boy's dark, purple-tinted hair fluffed up in short spikes in the back with three curved strands falling in front of his face that resembled the claw of a haunter. Speaking of the ghost, it surfaced out of the wall beside the boy, both with huge, identical grins.

"W-who are you?" demanded Alex, wincing as she stuttered. You couldn't blame her, really. She just really wanted out of the stupid cave.

Two luminous, lime green eyes flashed open to greet her, thin, pale lips lifting higher on his cheeks until they nearly reached his ears. "I believe I asked you first. However, you wouldn't happen to be Alex, would you?" Yet again, his deranged grin intensified if at all possible, as he observed the brunette take a defensive step back. "Ah, I am correct. How wonderful. Master would be very happy if I brought both the machine and you to him. My name is Gabriel."

"M-m-master?" Alex squeaked. 'Get a hold of yourself, Alex. Stop whimpering like a little girl,' she scolded herself. The way the boy looked at her as if she were some sort of new, shiny toy unnerved her, to the point it evoked some of her courage. With a stony visage, she stated, "Too bad I'm not going to let either of those things happen. Missy, shadow ball!"

"Miss!" A sparking, violet sphere enlarged in front of misdreavus' form. With a cry, it was shot at the duo, causing them to separate to avoid being hit. The ball dissipated as it struck the wall, leaving a large hole. The cave shuddered along with the impact, but settled once again.

The larger ghost let out a shrill "Ha-ha-haun-ter!" as his trainer's eyes glowed in delight. "Hm, Ty was correct when he said you were a feisty one. Haunter, try not to damage her too much."

Another round of earsplitting guffaws surged from the gaping mouth of haunter. Its unattached claws curled towards each other, forming a dark, oily orb. Pushing its palms out, the orb transformed into a thick torrent of slicing black disks traveling through a stream of purple.

With a yelp, Alex stumbled back and ducked. Instead of a focused strike, haunter moved its hands and rotated its body to follow Alex as she struggled to keep ahead of the force tearing through the wall behind her. She was able to breathe again once the ghost ran out of firepower, the rubble clearing with a cool breeze that the brunette eagerly sniffed in, glad for the fresh air. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the moon and the stars and the silvery water crashing miles below.

"Miiiiis!" the small, girl-like ghost cried.

"Missy!" Alex gasped. Her companion was resisting the unyielding hold of a large claw strangling her tiny frame. Her gaze narrowed on the boy whom the captor levitated by, standing smugly alongside the crate. "Let her go," she ordered firmly.

"Sure," Gabriel shrugged, eyes still smoldering intensely in the dark.

Taken aback, the brunette said, "Really?"

"Hm, sure. If you'll agree to come back with us."

Alex growled. She knew that seemed too easy. Her right hand swiped at the band of her pants to unlatch a shrunken red and white pokeball. "Shit," she cursed, picturing her pokemon sleeping soundly next to a dwindling fire… What possessed her follow the noise again? Her head hung low, defeated.

"Very good," the male whispered, and it finally revealed the tinge of malice entwined in the boy's words. "Haunter, get the machine." His pokemon let its fainted captive fall to the ground, using psychic powers to lift the heavy crate. Meanwhile the boy sauntered soundlessly toward the peeved brunette. "This way." He laid a cold, feathery hand on her back, telling her to move forward.

Brown orbs took a longing glance back at misdreavus still collapsed on the dank ground. The pressure on her back froze through her layers of clothes and raised goosebumps on her skin. The hand pressed her to balance across the crumbled rocks the few steps to the edge of the long drop.

Her attention was soon seized by a slick black aircraft hovering not a meter from the cliffs with tinted windows. It was the size of a small, two-seater car, but apparently strong enough to support the electronic and steel box that soon dangled by 4 broad supports.

"In you go," Gabriel said with sardonic joy, waving to a leather seat that appeared as the entire roof of the vehicle popped open.

It was then Alex realized that the letter the Soul Salvation sent her was a warning. She was in too deep. They know who she is now. That if she were to be seen by these Avengers then she would end up like her parents. Lost, forgotten in an abyss of darkness like the dark capsule of the vehicle. Never to be heard of again.

'You just had to go follow the noise.' The threatening presence of haunter loomed at her side, claws curling and reaching dishearteningly. With a deep breathe, Alex placed one of her battered black sneakers on the ledge of the car.

Woah! Literally a cliffhanger XP

As always, if you wanna drop a note in the review box that would be lovely. Thanks for reading. I'm going to go fail my math test now, so if you'll excuse me I'll be off!

Ciao!