Chapter 16: To Bring a City to its Knees
A/N: Not much ado except declare that I'm going with the Mauville City in the original R/S/E games for this story. Eh… I'm not making any excuses for my prolonged absence from the world of fanfiction. I was writing for a fair period of the time. Just not this. But hey! I'm back! Read, review, and above all, enjoy. Alfa19
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Ethan continued his walk down Route 103, checking the remaining distance on his phone. By the estimate it was giving him, it would be more than a few hours till he reached the bridges to Mauville. From where he was standing, five kilometers from where he started, it was another twenty-eight kilometers. At average speed that would take about five hours. He didn't feel a need to take his bike out at the moment. He had after today five weeks and five days. Considering there was only one truly long and difficult stretch of travel, he felt he could take it at a decent pace and use the time to train in different areas rather than in just one place. Besides, from what he gathered he had another four kilometers to bike once he reached the cycling road should he choose to take that path.
He sighed and continued walking down the road as he checked his watch. It was around eight in the morning. Five hours plus the cycling to Mauville city for half an hour and training for maybe two hours ought to get him there by three or four in the afternoon. That would give him time to train, explore, and see the city. Looking up, he determined that the nearest person was still some ways off. He reached for his belt, calling out Lucario to keep him company as he walked for some time.
The blue wolf like Pokemon formed next to him in a flash, head facing forward, and standing on one knee with a paw to the ground.
'What ensues Trainer Ethan?' Lucario intoned, straightening and walking slightly behind Ethan.
"Nothing much. It's going to be a really long walk all the way to the geographical turning point on the way to Mauville and I thought I could do with some company." Ethan shrugged.
'I see. Have you any thoughts on my progress?' it asked, occasionally staying behind then leaping or dashing forward.
"You've adjusted comfortably to your new form, especially with the weight of your new bones, and you're doing fine. Dragon Pulse will definitely take a while, but it'll be worth it in the end. You're as fast as a dragon in the air, and as versatile, which means you can very easily match them, if not for the type disadvantage of the majority of your moves. Which is where Dragon Pulse comes into play." Ethan explained, stretching his arms as he walked.
'Understood. The resident dragon type is proving to be very helpful when it comes to such.' Lucario remarked, watching Ethan walk forward before leaping up to him.
"Knight? Yeah. He is. Once he's a Dragonite he'll be much friendlier, not that he isn't." Ethan agreed, walking on. He checked his watch, moving to the distance tracker. Since he had called Lucario out, he had traversed another two kilometers.
"Let's keep heading forward while I review the plan for the upcoming weeks." Ethan suggested, despite the fact that they had never stopped.
"So assuming we reach Mauville today, we ought to spend the remainder of today and tomorrow training, before we even think of challenging Watson, the electric type gym leader. Possibly even another day. We need the time before our eighth gym battle. From there, it's a very long journey by foot to a place by the name of Fortree City. I'll say it could take two weeks to traverse that one stretch. But it'll be amazing. Two weeks of training, stopping, seeing Fortree city, and then heading out to Mossdeep where we'll take on Tate and Liza, the psychic type gym leaders who fight double battles. Then it's straight to Sootopolis to challenge Wallace, the water master. After that it's training with Steven. So, all in all, assuming we stay in each city three days, including today for Mauville, that's three and a half to four weeks more weeks of our five and a half." Ethan detailed, taking notes himself as they walked on.
'It seems like a solid plan. If we have enough time, I would suggest adding even more training onto that, but that would be debatable.' Lucario suggested, at this point running on top of some trees near Ethan so fast that its weight didn't break the dark green canopy spreading to the East, making ripples in it instead.
"That's a good idea. We'll adjust based off of progress, both in training and in how much land we have left to cover. Why don't you come down and walk by my side again now, we're approaching other people. You might seem a bit odd walking on trees. I mean we stick out anyway. I don't look too much like a Hoennian, and you're a Sinnoh Region Pokemon based off of universal classification." Ethan placed a hand on his water bottle, pulling it out and drinking as Lucario obediently leaped down from the trees and began walking by his side as they passed a chubby man with a bald patch, wearing a pichu sweater to match his kids' pichu costumes.
They passed by him without a challenge being issued making their way forward in the direction of the next trainer as Ethan recalled Lucario, having walked some five kilometers together with him.
He walked along, taking in the scenery and the serene atmosphere for another hour, past various people, trainers and civilians alike, until he was stopped dead in his path by a similar man to the first person he had seen: Short, fat and balding. This one even had his kids with him as well, three little tykes running about his legs, two girls and a boy.
"You there! Will you battle me?" The man called out, pointing at him as his kids tugged at his pant cuffs excitedly.
"Do you have any gym badges?" Ethan replied, nearing the man.
"I have one!" He shouted back, a small green Pokemon with a wide flat head and yellow markings running up to him.
"I'm sorry sir! I'm a seven-badge trainer and the Pokemon I have with me might be a bit much." Ethan apologized, hanging his head low as he continued on his way.
"Three on one! Your weakest Pokemon!" The man called back, looking at him with a strange expression on his face. "I must battle!"
Ethan sighed, looking at Dewott's pokeball on his belt before turning to face the man.
"Fine. Who knows, you may beat me." Ethan reached for Dewott's pokeball and tossed it into the air, calling the water type out onto the route.
"Dewott. This should be easy. It's just a courtesy for a man who… needs to battle as he says. Three on one, but he only has one gym badge. You should be able to sweep him easily." Ethan whispered to his Pokemon, crouching to its level before standing up again.
"I've chosen my one Pokemon, the newest member of my team. Please choose your first!" Ethan shouted out, watching as the man called forward the little green Pokemon. "The first move's yours!"
"Electrike, thunder shock!" the man called out, revealing the green Pokemon to be an electric type, as it had seemed.
"Dewott dodge it and use water pulse!" Ethan instructed, watching Dewott easily jump out of the small range of the weak electric shocks and retaliate with water pulse. The circular wave of water slammed into the electric type and sent it reeling backwards, clearly dizzy and hurt.
"Fury Cutter." He nodded, watching Dewott leap forward and knock the Electrike out with one glowing green cutter, highlighting Electrike's weakness.
"Come on out, Plusle!" the man released a very small bipedal Pokemon with a pale-yellow body and red markings, another electric type judging by the name and the sparks on its cheeks.
"Plusle! Thunder wave!" The balding man called.
"Same drill Dewott." Ethan sighed, watching Dewott take Plusle out even more easily than it did Electrike.
"Minum!" This time a blue marked counterpart of the previous Pokemon came out, and once again the same thing ensued.
"Dewott! Return!" Ethan called out after Minum was seen as unconscious. "I'll be on my way."
Ethan walked off leading the man be as he continued on his way down Route 1o3. Time passed quickly as he walked down the quiet route, enjoying the good weather. Route 103 was further south in Hoenn, which meant it was relatively colder compared to the north because Hoenn was in the southern hemisphere. Relatively. It was somewhere around twenty-four degrees outside, and Ethan was loving it. Johto would be freezing at this time of year. He continued his steady pace down the route, noticing people going about their business along the way.
There were some women picking flowers and smelling them before putting them in vases of water carried around in baskets, a few people out on walks, and some other trainers. For the most part, the Hoennian trainers didn't see any need to challenge him. Some he noticed were wary of him as they sized him up. Others simply passed by without noticing him.
Ethan continued his walk until he had somewhere around seven kilometers left, finally stopping to rest and let his Pokemon out of their pokeballs, with but an hour of walking left until he reached the cycling road, where if he pushed himself it would be another half hour to get to Mauville. Hoenn's routes, at least in the south, weren't proving to be too long.
Ethan looked to the left, noticing a clearing behind the trees, recalling that there were multiple where he had seen people venture, and went up to the ledge. Giving himself a running start, he pushed off of the dirt face with one foot and boosted himself high enough to grab ahold of the top. Ethan wrapped his arms around the base of a narrow tree and used it as an anchor to pull himself up, clambering onto higher ground and standing up.
Dusting his pants off with a heavy breath, he walked on into the clearing, finding himself in a large open space with more than a few tree stumps and a pile of sticks at one end with a sign marked 'firewood'. Ethan stared at it for a moment before realizing that either previous travelers or nearby gyms must have made the upper ledge areas into a few camping spots for trainers who were traveling slowly or at night.
Looking around, he decided he could get a decent amount of training in and moved to release his Pokemon, calling Lucario, Knight, Specter, Typhlosion Scizor and Dewott all out at once. Pressing the buttons on all six of his pokeballs, three with each hand, while they were still minimized and tossing them into the air immediately. He deftly snatched them out of the air one by one and clipped them back onto his belt as his Pokemon materialized in front of him, taking in their surroundings.
Ethan sat down on a stump nearby for a moment and took a breath, checking his watch. Half past eleven. He simply sat there for a moment, staring at his Pokemon before he finally spoke up.
"Time to train guys. Typhlosion, I don't want to damage the terrain too much because there's so much greenery, so no practicing eruption. You'll spar with Specter today. Everyone else, same drill as last time. Spread out, and we'll get to work. Specter, Typhlosion, I'll join you soon." Ethan instructed, pulling his water bottle out of the side of his bag and drinking.
After wetting his throat, he walked on over to his trio of practicing Pokemon: Dewott, Knight and Lucario. Knight had garnered what knowledge he needed to from the one-use TM Ethan had bought for thunderbolt and was practicing on a nearby rock, near enough for Lucario and Dewott to ask for help if they needed it. Dewott was simply practicing Aqua Tail and figuring out how to effectively use it with his small tail, going up against a stump. Lucario on the other hand was still figuring out how to get a hold of dragon type special attack force to use Dragon Pulse, which it was somehow attempting to form with its hands instead of its mouth, given that it couldn't open its jaws as much as it would have liked, and forming a dragon attack right outside of the mouth was a skill that seemed limited to actual dragon type Pokemon.
Ethan watched as a few wisps of indigo energy left Lucario's palms and swirled around in the air between them, forming a small sphere about two inches wide. Instead of firing it off, Lucario focused itself on getting more energy out to increase the size of it rather than uselessly fire off such a small charge. Ethan stared at the blue Pokemon as it attempted to further charge up the attack. Five minutes passed before it managed to get another single wisp out to join the small sphere and enlarge it to the size of a tennis ball.
Ethan moved on to Specter and Typhlosion, watching them spar with a pleasantly surprising ferocity. Typhlosion unleashed a flamethrower to Specter's face, surprising the ghost type and causing it to dissipate from the heat. A few seconds passed and a ticked off Gengar reformed in the shadows a few feet back, its grin slightly less prominent as it faced down the fire type. It stood that way for a moment before lashing out twice with shadow punches, each one dodged by the fire type, who caught Specter off guard with a spur off the moment Flame Charge. Ethan watched as Typhlosion's fur rippled in a wave downwards, from where the fire erupted on its back, the line of navy green fur trailed by flickering flames, and from the top of its head down as flames poured out the side of its mouth and engulfed it, all in the span of a second. Ethan noticed the tensed legs right before Typhlosion fired off like it had been sitting on a compressed spring and slammed into the Gengar, passing through it after a few meters of pushing it and hitting the ground, flames gone.
Ethan frowned as he watched it. This affirmed his thinking that of his Pokemon, Specter was probably the one which he would need to command the most in battle. Typhlosion had just proven its ability to handle itself in a random situation without his input, though he would give it, and he had done so before as well. Specter needed to learn a bit more on that because there would definitely be times when he wouldn't be able to react fast enough to give it instructions.
"Stop!" He called out, drawing the attention of the two Pokemon as the sparring screeched to a halt. Typhlosion quiet literally stopped its charge head on.
"Okay. So what I'm seeing here is that you, Specter, aren't as good at judging what to do or how to react for yourself, because you get too far into it too quickly. Here's the thing, while I am supposed to instruct and guide you, you need to be able to react on your own as well, because there are definitely going to be times when I won't be able to speak in time." Ethan explained, moving towards Typhlosion. "So to make sure it's not just your opposing Pokémon's ingenuity that you're fighting against, what we'll do is that I'll spar with Typhlosion against you, and we'll see how far your own reactions can get you. We'll start doing this with someone different every day."
Specter cautiously nodded, moving back and taking up a fighting stance as it stared warily at Typhlosion and Ethan.
"Typhlosion, I want you to not do anything of your own volition except for dodging and blocking. Specter, you should also be prepared to fight a Pokemon by taking advantage of the gaps in ordering. I'll do my best to not leave any, but undoubtedly there will be some." Ethan finished, crossing his arms and looking at his Pokemon.
"Typhlosion, flamethrower, flame charge through and Solar Beam." Ethan called out, watching Specter duck out of the way of the bright stream of fire, eyes wide as it barely managed to counter Typhlosion with a shadow punch when the fire type barreled out of the side of the flames as they died down, cloaked in flames.
Specter retaliated with a quick dark pulse, to be met by a solar beam, the two attacks colliding head on. The expanding ring of translucent black hit the shining greenish white beam and stopped dead, neither attack moving. Ethan stood and watched it for a second as he contemplated what to do. Specter was funneling energy into the dark pulse to maintain the attack against what was a move which used light, and Typhlosion was simply using the light from the sun and the streaming from its back to keep the onslaught up.
"Typhlosion, flame charge through! As hot as you can get!" Ethan called out, still marveling at the silence that rang throughout the area as a result of the collision of the two attacks.
Typhlosion made to increase its flames and dim solar beam a bit, allowing the dark pulse to inch closer, then all of a sudden enveloped itself in white-hot flames and broke through it, shattering the disc of energy and crashing into Specter.
Specter had no idea how to react and took the brunt of the hit, dissipating and reforming in a minute.
"Typhlosion 1, Specter 0!" Ethan called out with a grin, watching the perpetual grin on the Gengar's face turn into a frown.
"This ought to be a fun session." Ethan murmured to himself, getting back into the battle.
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Ethan walked up to door of the small building with its two doors, one on either side of the fencing that barred off the cycling road. He could smell the sea breeze, and to his right was the cycling road, a massive, modern, six meters wide oversea bridge which made over a dozen random twists and turns and went all the way to the outskirts of Mauville City. He looked off to the north, where he could see the beginning of the path just above water level, crossing through the inlet and making a lake on one side as it went down under the cycling road. Ethan stared at the two paths for a moment, reaffirming his decision and removing his bike from his bag. He set it up and climbed onto it, going through the sensor equipped door into a room which was basically two passages between three counters, one against each wall and one four sided one in the middle. He pedaled over to the one with the green circle on the LED above it and biked onto a metal stretch, facing a bar like those in parking garages.
The man behind the counter on his right, the central one, typed away at the keyboard as some form of camera whirred, examining his bike before raising the bar. Ethan biked hesitantly past the bar and stopped and turned to one of the counters.
"What was that about?" Ethan asked, slightly perplexed. Johto, unlike most regions, didn't have a cycling road.
"New regulations have it that only bikes in good condition with relatively well gripped tires can go on the cycling road because of its modern glass floor and the number of racers who practice on it. If you see large open areas on your way, those are for making turns or stopping by the rail." A man typing away at his computer explained without once looking up from his screen.
"Good to know." Ethan replied, and turned back to the second door, biking out and into the wilderness again. He crossed the grass up until the ramp leading up to the cycling road, pedaling as hard as he could to get up it quickly. He found himself over indeed a glass floor, with some whitish blue material on the edges where people seemed to be going slower than ahead. He was in a wide rectangular area, where a man wearing a full green biking suit made a perilously tight turn and sped back towards Mauville. Ethan tightened the straps around his shoulders holding his pack up and hit the pedals, staying on the glass as he went fast, for the most part without any trouble. He continued his biking, dropping into the slower white lane for a while to look at the scenery. To his right he could see water, stretching out for a good while before the coastline turned inwards slightly and narrowed what he could see in terms of water.
A few small islands dotted the sparkling blue nearby, and he could see the ground path below the cycling road, where people were walking, either for leisure or to get to Slateport or Mauville.
Ethan kept going, once more on the glass, for another quarter of an hour, until he screeched to a halt in front of a block. Standing in a row were twelve men and women wearing red sweatshirt like uniforms with grey pants and stylized letters M's emblazoned on their front. Pokemon filled in the gaps between them and fully blocked the route. Ethan could recognize some of the Pokemon, including a few Golbat and a Mighteyena or two. There was one he couldn't recognize, a large bulky red quadruped Pokemon with what looked like two volcanoes on its back and three blue circles marking its sides.
The unknown Pokemon stood next to a short woman with purple hair wearing grey shorts instead of pants, her arms crossed. The way she was standing, at the center, made Ethan sure that she was in charge of the others.
Scattered near him were maybe four other cyclists. He pulled to a stop near the Eastern railing and dismounted, one hand on his belt.
"What's the deal here!? You're blocking the road!" Shouted the cyclist in green.
"Can you just let us past?" Called out a girl wearing all pink.
"Bunch of morons." One of the men in red snickered.
"Shut up." The girl with purple hair ordered. Immediately the man's spine straightened and his lips glued themselves together as he stared off into the distance. She was definitely in charge. "Sweetie, we're not here to let you go. In fact, you get to join us as we blow this bridge up."
Ethan's eyes widened in horror as the woman smiled in an unsettling, sickly sweet manner. He turned around to see another line of people in the same uniform trapping them, and not a soul to be seen otherwise.
"See here though. Since I'm so nice. I'll tell you what's going to happen." Her eyes lit up as she ran a hand through the fur on her Pokémon's muzzle.
"I'm one to give you a chance to live, so here are your options. You can do nothing. We'll blow the bridge up. You die. Or one of you can fight me in a Pokemon battle. If you win, then you all go free and we don't blow up the bridge. If you lose you die and we blow up the bridge. If you try and jump into the water, by the time you breach the surface you'll be dead." She continued smiling as though she were talking about dinner plans. "So it's your choice. You can talk amongst yourselves and decide. We're not in any hurry."
Ethan swallowed, slowly stepping closer to the other four people carefully, as though he was stepping on a minefield. Slowly removing his hand from his belt, he spoke to them in a whisper.
"Who here has the most experience?" Ethan asked, waiting for a few minutes for the others to speak.
"We're not trainers." Two twin cyclists in blue and red remarked, putting their hands to their hips.
"I've got a machop and no badges." Declared the girl, adjusting the strap on her bike helmet nervously as she spoke.
"A Magnemite and a single badge." The man in green offered up, crossing his arms.
"Then it's to be me. Seven badges." Ethan sighed, having honestly hoped there was someone here that was stronger than him for reassurance. Then again, he would rather keep his life in his own hands.
"What's she doing?" The girl asked nervously, gesturing carefully towards the purple haired woman as she slid a large bundle of maybe twenty or red cylinders with short wicks sticking out of them.
"That's dynamite…." The man in green blanched, his arms falling to his sides. "To blow up a good chunk of the bridge."
Ethan frowned, trying to ignore his racing heart and looked each person in the eye. "This woman's psychotic. She'll kill us anyway. So… I'm going to have a fire type Pokemon kick the dynamite into her and set it alight, and the only thing we can do is jump. Watch for it."
"Are you crazy?" One of the people in blue asked, his eyes wide with horror.
"It's the only thing that'll have a chance. Kid's right. She's a psycho." The red suited one muttered back.
"Let's do this. One on one!" Ethan called out, stepping forward with a hand on Typhlosion's pokeball.
"Certainly, my dear." The woman snapped her fingers and the Pokemon by her side lumbered forward, its great height showing because of its quadruped stance.
"Typhlosion!" Ethan released his Pokemon and called it up to him, whispering into its ear and stroking its fur affectionately in a quiet attempt to explain what was to happen to it.
The woman pulled a switchblade out of her waistband and began filing away at her nails, speaking quickly.
"Camerupt! Earthquake!" She instructed, jumping into the air as the attack shook the entire bridge, knocking Ethan off of his feet.
"Typhlosion! Now!" he shouted, watching the bundle of dynamite fly into the air.
Regaining its bearings as the bridge swayed with the aftershock of the move, Typhlosion used the momentum to leap into the air and kick the sticks forward, setting them alight.
Ethan ran for the edge of the bridge, recalling Typhlosion and jumping over the railing as the explosion caught him and threw him away from the bridge and created a ten meter break in it, sending the other cyclists flying back onto the other side of the bridge as the group in red took the brunt of the hit on one side. Ethan saw his bike crash into the water and braced himself for impact, landing in the water with a hard splash. He opened his eyes as he felt himself caught in a downwards current, a few chunks of the cycling road following him down. He tried to break out of the path but failed as he was sucked into a hole in the ground and thrown against a hard surface, his pack cushioning the impact somewhat.
His vision became hazy and he slipped out of consciousness as the debris that had been following him in the current slammed into and blocked the meters wide hole. He tried to move, lifting his hand to the back of his head and back. He could make out that it was stained red at one of his fingertips. Then everything went black.
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Ethan woke up coughing violently, bolting upright from his position collapsed on the floor. A few coughing spasms raked through his body before it stopped and he was able to pay attention to his surroundings. He seemed to be in some form of an underground bunker. The walls, floor and roof were all discernable in the pale, blue, emergency lighting. He could see openings in the wall towards either end, like doorways up to the roof.
He lifted up his hand and stared at it, looking at the dried blood on his ring finger. He ran his hand through his hair again slowly, coming to a stop where he found blood dried and caked around a patch of hair in near the back of his head. Pulling his arm back, he lifted the other one and looked at his watch. It was made for travelers in the wilderness, and it had lived up to the advertisements and survived. Activating the backlight, he checked the time, and anything else the watch would tell him.
An hour to midnight, fourteenth October. So he had spent some four or five hours unconscious. He flipped through all the displays the watch had, checking everything from the temperature to the height to the compass. The temperature was decent enough, something like thirty degrees, but it was the other things that interested him. Apparently, he was a good forty-six feet below sea level. Mauville was supposed to be at sea level. As for the compass, it was pointing north. Or what he assumed was north.
He raised his arms, stretching them, the watch going close to the wall, and the needle on the screen deflected sharply. Frowning, Ethan moved the watch back, and watched the needle resume its position. Repeating the exercise, he realized the wall had a magnetic field. That meant he couldn't depend on his compass for a sense of direction, because if one plain flat wall had a magnetic field, surely the others would too.
He reached up and ran his hand along it, his fingertips meeting a cold metallic surface with linear grooves in places. He yanked his hand back as a spark ran up it when his finger crossed the groove, shaking it in the air.
"So that's open wiring…." Ethan mused, trying to turn to his right. He swore lightly at the aching in his sides as he pulled his pack around to him and rifled about in the top pocket for his torch, pulling the small cylinder out and switching it on.
A beam of white light cut through the darkness, making the metal plated wall sparkle. Ethan moved it to the floor and the roof, seeing only metal, but without grooves in the floor. One of the walls had a piece of debris jammed into the hole, with more behind it, sealing him in. Pulling the ends of the torch, he turned it into a small lamp and lay back against his pack. He checked his belt, running his hands over the six pokeballs, and released Typhlosion.
"Hey buddy." Ethan shifted, running his hands down the fire type's coat. He was careful to avoid the line of miniature craters near the top from which steam was slowly leaking out.
Typhlosion looked around and then growled quietly, laying down next to him. Reaching for his other pokeballs, he released Dewott and Lucario.
"So… Stuff happened… we're in what I'm assuming is a bunker of some sort, presumably under the ocean. As it is, I may need a bit of help figuring out what condition I'm in because the blast caught and threw us down here. So, Lucario I'm going to ask you to hold my phone once I turn the camera on so I can get some idea of what my back looks like right now, because it hurts like anything and it's burning a bit."
Ethan pulled the device out of his pocket, thankful for the almost everything resistant case it was in, looking at it. The case was cracked and bent, but prying it open, he found the phone to be fine. There was however, no signal of any kind. As expected. He opened the camera and started a recording, standing up slowly as he handed it to Lucario to hold carefully between its paws.
He pulled his still damp and apparently torn t-shirt off and put it down, turning in a circle close enough to the camera to catch what he looked like. Stopping, he took the phone out of Lucario's paws slowly and stopped the recording, looking at it. There were large abrasions across his back, where the tears had been in the t-shirt, except a little larger, and one on his right side, which he had noticed whilst turning. His arms were otherwise fine, if sore, and as far as he could tell, nothing was wrong with his legs from how they felt.
"Okay." Ethan deleted the recording, rifling about in his bag for his first aid kit. Removing it, he looked at Typhlosion and Dewott, and then at the torn t-shirt again, sitting down.
"Typhlosion, could you dry that t-shirt up. We're going to use it as a rag. That's really all it is now." Ethan sighed as Lucario held the plain grey cloth near Typhlosion's flaring back, drying it up.
"Okay, now Dewott, can you soak it?" He turned to the water type, smiling as his Pokemon worked together to get the tasks done quickly.
"Great. Now Typhlosion, I need you to make this hot, but not dry. Not super-hot or anything. I should be able to hold it." Ethan instructed twisting around and watching as Lucario held the cloth near Typhlosion's back, the craters spewing fire out to a short distance.
Lucario brought the cloth over to him a second later and touched it to his hand.
"That'll do. Lucario, could you run this across the wounds. Slowly." Ethan added, sitting still as Lucario ran the steaming rag over his back, cleaning over the wounds.
"Great. We can be done with that now." Ethan remarked, pulling a clean pad of cotton wool out of the kit and dabbing it with disinfectant, handing it to Lucario. "Same drill."
He sat through it with gritted teeth Lucario put the used pad down on the rag and looked at him.
'What next?' it asked, red eyes staring at him.
"I'm going to give you ointment and wraps. Put the ointment on the wounds and wrap them." Ethan pulled out a roll of gauze and gaze it to Lucario, along with a tube.
A few minutes later, once he had a fresh shirt on and had packed away the first aid kit, he stood up again and picked up his torch, keeping it as it was in lamp form. Picking up his pack, he tried to hoist it onto his back and immediately gave up, finding the pressure on the wounds too much at the moment. Sighing, he settled down and pulled his sleeping bag out of it and set it down, climbing in as he was.
"Guys, keep watch in shifts. We have no clue what's down here. For all we know there may be Pokemon or people down here. Pokemon are more likely." Ethan lay down on his good side, closing his eyes as he tried to let sleep envelope him, and it did, even if it took half an hour.
The image of Dewott curled up sleeping in front of him hazed out of focus, and then rippled, turning into an image of a massive cave with a waterfall and a lake on one side and rock platform jutting out into it. Ethan looked down and found his feet planted firmly on stone.
He could see a massive shadow in the waterfall, and he tried to raise his feet and step backwards but they wouldn't move. He could no longer feel his legs or make them move, yet at the same time he could feel tenfold the pain of crystal tendrils creeping up and tightening around his legs, approaching his waist. He tried to move but the rest of his body was the same way, only his eyes unaffected. He cringed and closed his eyes instinctively as the crystal approached his face, enveloping him. But he felt nothing.
Opening his eyes, he found his face encased in crystal. Clear, flawless crystal. A deep resounding voice, yet a harmonious one, sounded through the crystal, filling his mind.
'A gift child.'
Suddenly the pressure from the crystal disappeared and everything went dark. Ethan stopped shifting in his sleeping bag as his sleep became dreamless, Typhlosion watching their surroundings warily.
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Ethan woke up sitting carefully and checking the time on his watch. He had slept another four hours. Climbing out of his sleeping bag he packed it away, looking at his Pokemon and recalling Typhlosion and Dewott. Picking at his belt, he released Specter to accompany them as well.
"You two work well in closed quarters, and I don't know what lies ahead." Ethan pulled a notebook and a pen out of his bag, drawing a sketch of the room as if it were on a map. "We're exploring. We need to find a way out. If this place has live circuits it's being used for something."
Ethan took another look around the room. By his estimate, it was some thirty feet by twenty feet, with a doorway on each long side. He decided to mark what the compass in his watch was calling north in the center of the room his north on the map go from there. So he headed what was his south.
Walking through the doorway, he found himself in what seemed to be an almost identical room, except three times longer than the one he just left. The dim blue light and the light from his lamp let him see enough to know that the room was empty, with the exception of two protrusions the size of manholes in the floor towards either side of the room. Ethan walked up to them, looking at them carefully with the torch in a single beam. One of them was green, and the other blue, and they seemed like massive switches. The green one was at the moment pressed down.
Making the room on his map, he continued south and found himself in a different room. This room was much larger, some one hundred meters by fifty meters, and had two chairs, a few boxes and a table in the southwest corner, and a large machine in the northwest corner. Looking around, he noticed a wide doorway in the eastern wall of the room, with a blue wall sealing it. Ethan walked up to the machine and looked at it. There were no buttons, no displays, nothing. Only patterns running across the off-white surface which were lit up green. He could hear a low hum coming from it.
Frowning, he returned to the previous room, and looked at the two plates. Deciding to test his luck, he stepped onto the blue one. It sank under his weight as the green one rose, stopping just above the floor. Climbing off of it, Ethan walked to back to where the blue wall had been in the next room. Lo and behold, it was gone.
"Curious. So whoever made this place made it tricky to navigate in case someone broke in. Which means that there's something in here someone doesn't want people getting to." He mused aloud.
He pulled his notebook back out and marked the wall as blue, and marked the two switches on his map and walked over to the boxes and the table in the corner of the room. Stepping carefully, he shone his torch into the slightly open lid of one of the boxes and saw something white. Its eyes opened, small, round and dark. It wasn't exactly happy.
Ethan scrambled backwards, putting the light into lamp mode to illuminate a larger area as he backpedaled into Lucario's side.
"Guys! Pokemon!" Ethan stepped back, slightly calmer if anything as an Electrode burst of the box, bringing two more out of the other boxes. Together, they charged headfirst towards them. Ethan took a deep breath and started speaking. This was his thing. Battling.
"Specter, night shade! Lucario, extreme speed!" He instructed, barely getting the words out in time for them to attack.
Electrode were fast, but Lucario was faster. The aura Pokemon leaped into action, turning into a black and blue blur which gave the Electrode a number of marks in the same colors across its body. It looked like the wild Pokemon was being hit back and forth like a tetherball.
Specter grinned malevolently and stretched its limbs out, a sphere of blackness enveloping the two Electrode near it for a moment.
"Follow up with hypnosis and force palm!" Ethan said, pulling his staff out from its holster quickly and readying himself in case one came too close.
Lucario slammed its assailant into the wall and leapt backwards, which somehow left the metal unmarked. Specter's eyes began to glow and golden rings appeared in the air in a conical beam radiating towards one of the two Electrodes near it, putting it to sleep. Ethan took another step back, and then the sleeping Electrode exploded, sending its companion hurtling towards the wall and causing Specter to disappear.
Ethan himself was unaffected by the blast, watching as Specter slowly reformed with a frown on its face, both its opponents out cold. Lucario slammed a glowing steel bone into the remaining Electrode and threw it into the wall, wrapping up the situation.
"Come on guys, let's keep going." Ethan sighed, walking with his Pokemon through another couple of empty rooms until he found himself face to face with a massive staircase.
Ethan sprinted up it, followed quickly by Lucario and Specter, reaching the top in a little bit. It was a dead end. Just another metal wall. This one was slightly different though.
"It's darker, it's all one piece, it's got rivets near the top, and it's not seamlessly fitted into the walls… so it's either the exit, or it's whatever is being hidden down here… assuming something is being hidden down here. Given that we're likely at sea level, I'd say this is the exit."
Lucario closed its eyes and stared at the wall for a few moments.
'You would be right. This gate is extremely thick, but I can discern trees just beyond it.' Lucario explained, opening its eyes once more.
"Then let's take it down. Force Palm! Let's go!" Ethan instructed, stepping back.
Lucario nodded along and slammed its glowing palm into the gate, causing it to do absolutely nothing.
"…. Let's try an extremespeed from the bottom of the staircase coupled with force palm." Ethan suggested, moving to the side, Specter floating above him all the while.
With a nod, Lucario leaped down the steps in bounds of forty, getting to the bottom and steeling itself. Ethan blinked and Lucario was lying on the steps near him, having crashed into the wall, and once again, done nothing to it…
"We are not giving up here." Ethan gritted his teeth as Lucario got to its feet and dusted itself off. He reached for his pokeballs and took two a hand, releasing his remaining four Pokemon.
"Guys… we're trapped somewhere, and we need to break this wall. Don't hold back. We break this wall, we're out. We don't… Even I can't say what'll happen then. Give this everything you have." He instructed them, stepping out of the way as they took places around the thirty foot by fifteen-foot wall.
All hell broke loose as every one of his Pokemon unleashed their full power onto the wall. Seeing that Lava Plume only slid off the wall, Typhlosion had reverted to flamethrower and Focus Blast, Lucario was taking the wall up with close combat, Knight was freezing it and slamming it with dragon pulse and dragon tail, Dewott was using Razor Shell, Specter was attacking it with shadow ball and Scizor was attacking with bug buzz to try and hit a frequency that would damage it.
Ethan sat down and stared at his watch as the onslaught went on, unable to look at the combination of attacks targeting the one thing in their way.
Half an hour passed and Ethan decided to call it and check if there had been any progress.
"Guys! Stop for now!" Ethan shouted, drawing their attention. The barrage of attacks drew to a rapid stop and as the light from the last flamethrower disappeared, Ethan flicked on his torch, looking at the wall.
His heart sank as he found himself unable to find a single scratch, dent or weakened spot.
"This stuff has to be what they make the League rooms out of." He sighed, recalling all but Typhlosion.
Reaching into his bag he pulled out a granola bar and his bottle of water, accidentally knocking over the pack in the darkness. Picking it up, Ethan closed it properly and propped it up against a wall, noticing something had fallen out. Leaning forward, he picked up a leather-bound book in a deep, rich red, with gold lining.
Ethan picked it up, frowning. He hadn't brought any books with him. Shining the torch on the cover, he found nothing, so he opened the first page, going completely still.
Nicolas James Photon
1972 -
To my son
Ethan James Photon
Ethan found himself unable to process what he was holding. He hadn't known that this existed. This being whatever lay ahead. A few minutes passed before he was able to flip to the second page of intricate, gold writing.
Son, should you be seeing this, you're either one of the Indigo Guard, or I've passed on and you're a trainer on your way to becoming a member of the Indigo Guard. I write this during the war with Kalos, between battles, to leave to you some thoughts of mine.
If you're reading this because I died in battle, then I'll say that if there were a few days when you hated me for dying on you guys, that's completely human. You're a bit too young as I'm writing this to understand that I'm willing to lay down my life for my region. Johto made me who I am. I've loved Lily since 2008. I've loved you since 1997. I've loved Lucy since 1994. I fell in love with your mother in 1992. But I also fell in love with Johto in 1990. I fight for Johto so that one day, you see what I see in it. I do not want you to grow up to be exactly like me, no matter how much you say that these days. I want you to grow up and find out who you are, and become yourself. If that means being like me, then by all means do so. But don't do it because I'm your father. That said, I know you'll most likely become a trainer. Every kid says they will, but you say it with a real fire. I have a feeling you actually will, and you'll find yourself capable of surpassing me if you let yourself journey as yourself, rather than as someone striving to be like me. I've got to leave for another situation, so I'll leave you with these words of wisdom. If you're faced with an impossible task, then find someone for whom it is possible.
Ethan couldn't understand why his cheek was wet before a tear fell onto his leg, and then another. Closing the book, he put his head down and let the tears come slowly as they did, trickling down his face like raindrops on a window. When his eyes dried up, he rubbed them for a second and opened the book again, flipping through the pages. At the end of the book were details for some moves and details about how to teach them to Pokemon, a map of Johto with details about every city that spanned two pages, and on the last page, outlines in gold ink, was a photograph of the entire family taken just before the war started.
Ethan put the book in his bag, locking the compartment it was in and closing the bag as tightly as he could. He hefted it up onto his back and stood up, looking at Typhlosion. Smiling, he scratched the top of Typhlosion's head.
"You'd have loved dad." Ethan looked down the staircase, thinking to himself. "Trying to push the debris out of the hole is a bad idea. It'll either come right back at us, or this place will flood… so we go beyond to whatever was the other way."
"What could this place hold…?" He mused, looking at the grooves in the walls which he now recognized as wires, thinking. "We're near Mauville city, in an underground bunker, where we've run into Electrode and found machinery and electronics... And there's a magnetic field. It could just be the wires in the walls, but I don't know…. There's nothing we can do but see for ourselves."
"Come on buddy, let's go." Ethan released Scizor and Lucario to walk with him, two who could see well in the dark, and kept Typhlosion with him. The powerhouse. His anchor.
"Wait. Powerhouse. It might actually be a generator that's down here." Ethan grinned, jogging through the rooms to get back to where he had woken up. He walked through the other doorway, flanked by Scizor and Lucario, to find himself at a staircase. Another corridor branched off to the right. Ethan walked down it, looking to see what was there. He found himself facing an empty space with an elevator shaft below it, for a platform elevator. He peered down into the darkness, not seeing any end to it in near sight. Shining his flashlight over the edge, he caught a glimpse of what he thought was the floor, really, really far down. He tried pressing the call button, but it didn't light up. It didn't press for that matter either.
"It's out of order… Guess we do this the hard way. Guys, I'll switch you out at regular intervals. Our target right now is to get downstairs to the generator, if that's what's down here. I'm assuming there'll be a computer with an uplink there. We can get help. So let's take this as training. From what I can tell there'll be a lot of floors, and probably a lot of wild Pokemon."
He looked each of the three Pokemon in the eye as they approached the staircase and grinned. "Let's do this!"
With that, Ethan shot off down the stairs with his Pokemon, going as far down as he could.
|\/|~^-_-_-^-_-_-^~|\/|
A few floors and countless hours later…
Ethan backpedaled, stepping out of the Magnezone's attack range to stay safe.
"Specter, dark pulse! Typhlosion, flamethrower!" he instructed, stepping back as his Pokemon attacked the electric type, running out of the way of its magnet bombs, which promptly accelerated towards the nearest part of the floor or the walls.
Ethan watched as Typhlosion engulfed the metallic behemoth in flames for the sixth time, finally knocking it out.
"Come on guys. I don't think we have much farther to go." Ethan caught his breath, releasing Lucario and Scizor and recalling Specter and Typhlosion as he walked down the staircase behind him.
This one was considerably longer than all the previous ones, some one hundred steps, which gave him hope that they'd made it to the bottom. He tried to avoid thinking about what would happen if what they needed wasn't down there. He walked into a large room, the only fully lit room in the entire facility. Ethan raised his arms to shield his eyes for a few moments until they adjusted to the light. Ethan looked up and understood why there had been so many stairs.
The chamber was absolutely massive, at least forty feet tall, and a hundred feet on each side. Sitting against the opposite wall was a behemoth of a machine. Its dull red surface was marked by green lines of light, flickering in different patterns consistently. Ethan walked up to, looking around it. He opened his watch and checked the compass. It was going haywire. This was definitely a generator, and by the looks of it, the facility powered all of Mauville.
Ethan looked around, trying to remain optimistic as he saw the hard truth of it. There was no console. Nothing. He sank to his knees, putting his face in his hands and stayed that way for a few minutes.
The hairs on his neck rose and for some reason he found himself unable to hear the sound of the generators hum, instead hearing a quiet crackling. He stood up, turned around and found himself riveted in place by the sight in front of him.
Prowling opposite him was a yellow canine like beast with lightning sparking off its fur and a thundercloud coming off of its neck. Raikou. Ethan stared at it, unmoving, as it moved about the room, coming to a stop near one of the walls and a large red protrusion in the floor. It looked at him, dead in the eye and put a paw on the protrusion, and in a flash of lighting disappeared.
Ethan stared at the spot where it had been, incapable of processing what had just happened. Instead, he found himself mechanically walking towards the red protrusion. It looked like another button. He approached it, immediately recognizing the universal symbol engraved in it.
"Find someone for whom it is possible." Ethan whispered, looking at Lucario.
"Lucario, the minute this thing activates, I need you to carry me as fast as you can back to the exit."
'Understood.' Lucario fixed its red eyes onto his gold for a moment and poised itself as Ethan recalled Scizor, readying himself.
Ethan stepped onto the plate, closing his eyes for a second and then opening them. The tile sank down under his weight and the humming of the generator stopped. Lucario picked him up and everything turned into a blur until they arrived at the gate. The impenetrable, unmoving, metal gate. Ethan sat there, waiting, with Lucario, until he heard something. A clicking noise. He stood up quickly, pack on his shoulders, arms in the air in a gesture of surrender, and Lucario by his side, ready to take on anything or anyone hostile. The gate started to slide down and moonlight entered through the ever-widening gap, until the gate was completely in the floor. Ethan found himself facing a squat old man half a foot shorter than himself with an unruly grey beard and hair framing a round face.
"Wha- How? This place was locked!" the man asked as Ethan stepped into the moonlight, taking a breath of fresh air among the trees.
"I was on the cycling road when it was attacked. The blast threw myself and debris into the ocean. Somehow a wall broke and I got thrown in there." Ethan replied, putting his hands down and recalling Lucario.
"Oh my. You've been down there for over a day, then haven't you?" The man replied, dusting his hands off on his brown sweater and extending his right one to Ethan. "Watson. I'm the Mauville City Gym Leader."
"Ethan." He shook the still dirty, rough hand and looked up at the moon.
"Well I must say Ethan, you must be a very impressive trainer to get that far down. And then, I understand your reasoning, but put the thought into words and it'll hit you much harder. You brought a city to its knees! You turned off the generator!"