I wouldn't quite say that I'm back, but there's a new chapter here that I've had finished for a while and didn't realize I didn't upload. Life is still rough, getting ready to graduate and transfer onto a new career path is stressful. Add COVID and some other things in the goings on, and I've hardly had time to read, much less write.
Regardless, I hope everyone enjoys the new chapter, sorry it took so long, but no promises about the next one being quicker. As mentioned, graduating and changing jobs, no idea when I'll get to the next one.
The scientist, who introduced himself as Professor Cozmo, had stood over the trio of trainers while they were unconscious. Luke, who had been the first to wake up, made the older man promise not to mention Gojira and Bastion to the other two trainers. While he seemed confused, the scientist did agree to not mention them.
When the others woke up, Cozmo explained that Team Magma, of whom the snob was near the top of the chain of command from what Luke could tell, wanted to use the meteorite to make Mt. Chimney erupt and awaken Groudon.
"Hold on," Luke said as he dragged a hand down his face, "you're telling us they want to go to the top of a volcano, and be right next to its crater when they make the thing erupt? How dumb are they?"
Cozmo looked at him. "You said you're from Unova, correct? Did Team Plasma always make logical sense?"
"They weren't quite as open about being suicidal," Luke muttered under his breath, fingers toying with Dart's pokeball. If the top end of these Aqua and Magma teams were anything like Plasma, the pokemon he smuggled in wouldn't be enough. Team Plasma had almost leveled the pokemon league headquarters while the champion, Elite Four, and the sixteen challengers, one being himself, were all there. If either, or frost forbid both, of these teams had comparable fire power, they were in deep trouble for pissing them off as much as they already had.
"Luke?" Julia's voice cut through his thoughts, "Did you hear what Professor Cozmo asked?" There was a hint of concern in her face and voice, which Luke understood. He'd sort of made a reputation out of getting injured badly enough to need hospitalization.
"Nah, zoned out," he responded, putting the cocky mask back on as he smiled at Julia before turning back to the professor. "Say it again for me?"
"I'd like your help getting the meteorite back. They have it and my machine that pulls the energy out from it, but it'll take them a while to get it set up on top of Chimney."
Luke's face shifted to a frown. "I'm not sure how much help we would be. Isn't this something that the gym leaders and league should take care of?"
"Yes, but the league is dragging its feet in the investigation to find my machine. I doubt they'd respond in time even if I told them exactly where to be at what time."
"We'll help." Julia said, surprising Luke and the professor, "Even if we can't help much, any help we can give to stop a volcano from erupting and killing who knows how many people is important." She stopped for a moment, her hand almost moving like it wanted to grab her pokenav, "Besides, we could tell a couple of the gym leaders we know about it, and they might come and help."
Which seemed like a bit of a long shot to Luke, but who was he to judge someone for long shot ideas?
Keith had decided to go in person to convince Roxanne of the severity, and both Wattson and Brawly ignored their calls as the two trainers and professor neared the summit of the volcano.
Julia had called her father several times, but never got anything more than a voicemail. Which terrified her. Norman Carols was almost always busy with work and away from the house her entire life, but he always did his best to pick up when she or Brendan called him. Or call back when he missed them.
About a half hour from the summit, they started hearing sounds of pokemon battling, and they picked up the pace. Howls, roars, screams, and shouts were waiting for them at the top of the mountain.
Julia wasn't quite prepared for the sight that greeted them at the top. People dressed in red hoods and blue bandanas fighting on the open mountain top. Numel, Mightyena, Camerupt, Golbat, Zubat, Carvanha, Sharpedo, and Gyarados brought their full might against one another.
Coils of flame both crimson and violet coiled around the battlefield, turning jets of water into shimmering mist just as often as water doused flame. There were a few isolated explosions from where a Koffing or Geodude gave their life to try and end their opponent.
And all that the Johtan native could think about was all the pain happening on the mountain top. The pokemon crying out in agony or triumph. The sounds the humans made as they tried to tear each other to pieces. This, this scene in front of her. This is what pain looked like in its raw form.
"Around the edge!" Luke, her friend, had to shout to be heard despite being right next to her, and all she could do was nod and be pulled along behind him, one of his hands wrapped around her wrist so they wouldn't be separated. She idly wondered when he'd grabbed her wrist, and if he would have done it outside of these circumstances.
Then she realized, that no, he probably wouldn't have unless they were in danger, and by the Sea and Sky how was he still so composed with all this hurt happening around him?
That's when a new realization came to her. It wasn't just composure. He was almost comfortable with what was happening around him, like it was where he was supposed to be.
Brendan's fear from months ago that Luke had been a member of Team Plasma and how he came to Hoenn to escape justice suddenly came to the front of her mind. Her past defenses of the foreign trainer came a moment later as he pulled them past a pair of Camerupts filling the air with the scent of charred Gyarados.
He could just as easily have been fighting against Team Plasma as fighting with them back in Unova. Just as easily could have been completely uninvolved or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luke might have gotten the skills in a fight like this from fighting packs of wild pokemon, or having to dodge a fight over territory.
The problem was the uncertainty around his past. He never wanted to talk about it, and changed the topic when someone else did. Even Sydney, the one connection she'd found to Luke's past hadn't really given her any information to work with.
It was frustrating. And scary the more she thought about it.
To be fair though, it wasn't as scary as the conflict Luke was pulling her around and weaving through.
She dropped in and out of focus as the other trainer pulled her through the battle until he suddenly stopped. By the Sky's grace she didn't stumble into him as he stared daggers at the people across from them. One was the man from the cave, Tabitha, glaring right back at Luke.
The other was a woman with purple hair poking out from her hood. Julia was a bit taller than the other woman, but she was intimidating. Something in her eyes seemed crazed, or excited. Luke and the other man seemed comfortable in the middle of the battle. The purple haired woman, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy being in the chaos.
Bastion's pokeball was tempting Luke's hand from its hiding spot in the hip pack, even more than Gojira and Heracles'.
The Unovan's fingers itched. His heart pounded in his ears and the air burned in his lungs as the blood flew through his body. The world narrowed to the threats in front of him. He was still aware of Julia beside him and Cozmo behind, but they were blurry. A shiver of anticipation spread from between his shoulder blades across the rest of his back.
Fingers twitched and tapped. The woman rolled pokeballs in her hands, Tabitha glared at Luke, and Luke was more than happy to return it.
Oliver erupted from his ball, and on reflex Luke called Rebecca and dashed forward as the Magma admins sent out a pair of Mightyena.
The Unovan responded by pitching Dart's dive ball into Tabitha's head while he was still in the motion of throwing his ball. He'd need to make sure he swept by to the right to make sure he got the ball back.
One mental note later and his knee was buried in the other man's gut, the ridiculous hood of his jacket bunched in his right hand. The other man was bigger than the Unovan, but that wasn't his problem. Luke had grown up scrapping and fighting with kids bigger and taller than him, and kept going once he left home.
Luke was sure the other man had plenty of experience fighting, but experience tends to get thrown out the window when someone gets beamed in the head with a metal ball. Tabitha tried to grab at him, but Luke fixed that with another knee into the man's gut and knuckles to his nose.
It might have been a couple seconds, maybe a few minutes, but Tabitha stopped struggling eventually. The Unovan planted another knee in his stomach before dropping the Magma trainer to the ground. He made a satisfying and slightly wet thud when his face hit the dirt, blood streaming from the man's nose and mouth.
First check was the Magma woman, who had her arms spread wide and smile even wider, but she wasn't brawling with either Julia or Cozmo. Even as her pair of pokemon, a Camerupt and Mightyena, were being trounced by Oliver and Rebecca as Dart finished Tabitha's Mightyena. Good.
Second check was Julia. She had stepped closer to the battle, closer to Oliver. She was safe, or at least safe as he could expect her to be in the middle of a pitched fight. At the very least it seemed like she was settled some and grounded in the moment and reality. Good.
Third check, the professor Cozmo. He'd gone ahead of them, towards the volcanic crater where some kind of machine was perched near the edge, right beside which a pair of Crobat and Mightyena, a Camerupt, and a Sharpeedo were fighting between two men. Bad.
Very bad. First priority bad. Thunder and snowfire he was about to be in the deep shit.
Fourth check, a group of Magma trainers were coming towards them. Bad bad bad bad bad.
"Heads up!" the Unovan shouted as he threw released Sain between Julia and the approaching threats and grabbed Dart's capsule from the ground. He didn't have time to check if the message was conveyed to his friend. She had her own team plus three of his stronger team members for support against grunt level trainers. Cozmo had a lava dip in his future if Luke didn't get his butt over there.
It was a bad idea to show his cards to anyone, much less the people who might be the heads of terrorist organizations. Except everyone on the summit could die if the mountain erupted like Cozmo said could happen. Revealing his team from Unova was small potatoes compared to that.
A pokeball who's red had chipped and faded to pink from how much it'd been handled. The dusk and net balls, new by comparison but still slightly chipped and worn. They felt good and comfortable in his hands. Calmed whatever nerves he'd had a moment ago.
He slipped Bastion's ball back to his pocket and threw Gojira's into the air. His titan materialized with a roar. The Tyranitar was terrible in a beautiful way. Over nine feet tall with stony, scaly green skin and spikes erupting from her back.
Within seconds pebbles and dirt picked up from the ground and began to swirl around his pokemon as she roared again, a challenge instead of a statement. Luke put his sunglasses on as he stood next to the monster.
Gojira didn't wait for a response before launching herself into the melee, lashing out with claw, fang, and tail. If Luke had to guess he would have said that Gojira was the strongest pokemon on the mountain top. Was he biased? Of course. That didn't stop mean he couldn't also be correct.
Then there was the man in a red lab coat and red jeans, with boots that came almost up to his knee, his short red hair was pushed back from his face, and a pair of rectangular glasses sat on his nose. It was hard to guess his body type because of the coat that hung from his shoulders, but his neck and shoulders weren't exactly broad, which Luke assumed would keep true for the rest of his body.
The third man's body was not nearly so hard to guess. He wore an open shirt to display his broad, copper chest with a golden anchor necklace resting over his sternum. His black hair tied back in a blue bandana bearing the Aqua insignia, and his blue pants were held up by a utility belt that had a sword on his left side. Luke didn't mind fighting people bigger than himself, which was a lot of people, but this guy had a sword.
He'd better keep Gojira in between them.
A sharp scream from behind tore his attention away from the face off, and back to Julia, who'd just barely not dodged being sprayed by a flamethrower attack, clothes on her left side catching alight. The force of the stream knocked her to the ground, her head slamming into the stony ground. Then a triumphant shout sounded as Cozmo grabbed the meteorite from the machine by the crater's edge.
"Go! The machine!" the Unovan shouted as he ran the handful of yards back to Julia, Dart's dragon fire consuming the Torkoal that shot the attack. "Oliver! Her clothes!" The Marshtomp was quick to obey, lightly spraying his trainer with water before Luke scooped her into his arms then over his shoulders as Gojira threw a rock at the now empty eruption machine.
"Get out of here!" the blue man yelled to Cozmo, his Sharpeedo nailing the Camerupt in the side of its head to prevent it from blasting the professor, "Team Aqua and the world owe you one, now get out of here before Maxie's goons catch up!"
The blue man was encouraging them? Thanking them? Cool, Luke could use that many less people on his back. Exempting Julia, who was literally on his back at the moment, of course.
He started running toward the summit's border with the forest. Once he got there, he'd have a better chance of dodging or losing the grunts in the woods. Carrying an unconscious Julia was still going to be a problem: he was fit, but not so fit to run for however many miles carrying more than a hundred pounds on his shoulders alone, and none of his pokemon were fliers.
A quick check behind showed Oliver or Cozmo trailing behind him, Rebecca and Dart doing their best to follow, and Gojira standing fast near where her trainer had fought Tabitha earlier, swatting down oncoming pokemon with titanic strength.
For perhaps the first time that day, Luke had a good idea. He set Julia down and rummaged in her pockets until he found her Kadabra's ball, and summoned them. "Can you teleport Julia and Cozmo to our bags?" The fox nodded, and Luke returned Oliver and nodded to the fox. "Do it. If you're strong enough get her to a city with a hospital." The fox shook its head before vanishing with the two humans. "Damn."
The Unovan returned Gojira and Dart before dashing into the woods with Rebecca at his tail. Not having another human literally on his shoulders meant running faster, going downhill. For a short bit anyways: he was running east when the bags were to the south-west, he'd need to start looping back towards them once he hit the trees.
Julia had it bad. Luke had done his best to care for her burns at their camp with a crude rawst and oran paste, but he couldn't tell that it helped any significant amount. Which meant she needed to get to the closest city. Lavaridge, just over a day's hike if Luke set the pace and they were both walking.
But Julia needed to be carried. So did her bag. So Luke handed his own bag off to Heracles, Julia's to her Kadabra to levitate, and Luke carried Julia piggyback style. It wasn't comfortable, and it wasn't fast, but it was the best that he had access to.
Dart and Gojira were large enough to carry a person, but weren't trained to do so. Bastion was trained for it but couldn't maintain a good speed on land. Kadabra could teleport her, but only to a nearby place they'd been before. None of the other pokemon were big enough to carry her, and Cozmo couldn't carry her and walk at the same time, at least not at a speed for them to get to Lavaridge within the week.
Which left Luke. It wasn't going to be fun, but he'd tossed fun out the window a while ago.
Julia woke up to the sterile, nauseating scent of a hospital, and to the pressure of bandages wrapped around her middle. The room was far too bright for her eyes, and the beeping machine beside her entirely too loud.
She wasn't quite sure how she got there, last she remembered she'd been on top of Mount Chimney with Luke. Come to think of it, she wasn't even sure where she was beyond 'in a hospital.'
Her bag was nowhere to be seen in the room, and when she tried to stand up to look for it, she immediately fell back to the bed. Her 'nav was similarly nowhere to be seen, same with her pokeballs and dex.
It took a couple minutes of waiting, but eventually Luke came into the room with a nurse. He smiled when he saw her, but like always it didn't stretch up to his eyes. She repressed a shiver. Julia wasn't sure if she'd realized before how intimidating Luke was if you looked for it. It was something more than just his not-smile, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
I hope everyone who read enjoyed, and that everyone stays safe out there.
Wash your hands, wear a mask, and stay safe.