This chapter mainly focuses on the results of Midnight's actions. Sorry, sorry, sorry sorry sorry and sorry. I promise that there will be many action-packed chapters up ahead. And I promise that I will upload the next chapter tomorrow unless something happens.
Midnight opened her eyes. It was near dawn. On the table in front of her, Moon slept peacefully, nearly healed.
She had done it. Moon would live.
Midnight froze. She could sense things, and she could tell that the sun had just started rising. A memory from-from somewhere- told her that Nurse Joy gets up very early, to help the pokemon. She had better get back to Ash!
Staggering from lack of energy, Midnight started to run swiftly back the way she'd come. Her black paws hit the ground silently as she raced back to her trainer.
A piercing scream woke Ash shortly after dawn. He got up and ran toward the sound. It had sounded like Nurse Joy!
Ash ran down the corridors until he came to a mangled door. It was thick, heavy steel, and had been ripped off the hinges and brutally bent. Through the doorway he saw Nurse Joy. She was standing, now silent, staring at the room.
For a second, Ash didn't see the problem. There were many pokemon, and they were hooked up to complex machines. Then he realized that none of the pokemon were breathing, and none of the machines were working. Someone had come in, and disabled every one of them!
"Thank you, Officer, for coming so quickly," said Nurse Joy.
"Well, this is quite serious! Where are the pokemon?" answered Officer Jenny.
"Follow me," said Joy quickly, and walked down the halls until she came to the destroyed door.
"This was done during the night. As you can see, the door is very strong. Whoever did this would have been very, very strong and almost certainly have needed to hit the door many times," said Joy.
"But just hitting it once should have woken everyone up. While there is a chance that you would have stayed sleep, if the person hit this more then once, everyone would have woken up!" replied Jenny.
"So whoever did this knocked the door down in one hit?"
"Yes. Don't the security cameras show who did it?"
"No. It's very strange, but one section of the tape is blanked out on every camera. First the corridors to intensive care, then the intensive care room, then the corridors again, and this time the patch of destroyed tape is in the corridors to the terminal area, then that room. The blank part of that tape lasts until dawn, then disappears to show the dead pokemon, and one, an umbreon, sleeping peacefully when last night it was dying! The blank patch then goes to the camera in the halls again, then disappears. It isn't just one camera, but all of the ones in the corridors and the rooms!"
"That means that someone must have some kind of device that interrupts a camera. If the person was carrying this, then every camera that they passed would have done this."
"And one of the pokemon in the intensive care, a gyarados, who was dying-"
"What do you mean, dying?" interrupted Jenny
"A pokemon trainer named Ash came in with three critically injured pokemon, a sandshrew, a gyarados and a umbreon. The sandshrew was fine, but the gyarados' condition, after initially being stabilized, began to decline, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. See, that's it," said Joy, freezing the picture and pointing to a bloody gyarados.
"And how do you know that it didn't just get better during the night?"
"Well, after the blank spot, which was just a few minutes, we can see it, and look," she said pointing to Tsunami again. "The gyarados is uninjured." In the picture, Tsunami looked completely normal. He didn't even have a scratch on him!"
"That's very odd. Do you have any idea on what happened?"
"No. I checked it out, and the gyarados seems to have completely healed. While it might have started healing, there was no way that much damage could have been healed within a week! And what's happened to Ash's umbreon is even stranger! It is the only still-living pokemon in the terminal ward."
"Why was his umbreon there? Few pokemon fights could have gotten this brutal! If he let this happen to his umbreon, shouldn't you revoke his trainer license?"
"Ash explained that he had battled Falkner, and the Zapdos did this to all of his badly hurt pokemon. Truthfully, I wasn't sure that the umbreon would live five minutes after being released from it's pokeball. It's ribs were broken, organs ruptured and every inch of it's skin had been flash-fried by zapdos' electicity."
"Falkner's pokemon have been aggressive, but never like this! Do you know how he got the zapdos?"
"Ash Ketchem probably loaned it to him. Anyway, the umbreon didn't just give up and die. It had real spirit. In fact, it looked like it would pull through. But just like gyarados, started to decline. It clearly was struggling to stay alive, but was dying all the same. I don't really understand it. It was like it's body was just refusing to heal itself. Yet when I came in this morning, it was fully healed!"
"Strange. I wonder in there is any connection. Do you think that the umbreon could have taken the energy from-"
"Don't say anything about that! We don't know-"
"But still, does it look like that happened?"
"I'm not quite sure. I'd think it did that, but it doesn't explain gyarados. Plus, the machines were off. The pokemon hadn't been killed."
"But can't dark pokemon feed off-"
"None of that has been proven!"
"But it has been proven that the dark type, can reduce the effectiveness of machinery, and at high enough levels, even completely destroy machines."
"Healthy, high level, well trained pokemon. This umbreon is high level, but it would have been too weak, even if it had been trained to do so. Besides, it still doesn't explain gyarados. The door there isn't damaged, and according to the records, it wasn't opened during the night."
"What's wrong with the machines?"
"Nothing. I checked every inch of the circuitry, and nothing is wrong. No lose wires, no brakes, no short circuits, nothing."
"Which is exactly what would happen if a dark-type had done this."
"Could a wild psychic or dark pokemon have done this?"
"Maybe, but it's very unlikely. No motive, especially for the psychic, who would have no reason to heal a dark type."
"Are there any other dark pokemon around here? Ones who aren't hurt and maybe could have done this?"
"Well…" Nurse Joy looked down. "The trainer, Ash, who came in with them, also had a sneasel, but it couldn't have done this because it's just a baby, and at a very low level. And he also had a strange pokemon with him. He called it a midnight and I think it was dark/flying."
"Could it have done this?"
"I don't know anything about it other them how it looks! Besides, we don't have any idea of what did this and we probably never will!"
Officer Jenny sighed. Nurse Joy would never believe that dark pokemon were evil. "I should probably check out the dead ones."
Ash stared down at his pokeballs. He had just looked in on Tsunami. Last night Nurse Joy had told him Tsunami was dying, and that if it lived through the night without change it might pull through, but otherwise…
Yet when he walked in to see Tsunami, after seeing all the pokemon in the terminal wards dead but Moon, the gyarados had seemed…fine. He was slithering around on the ground, in fact. Ash had let him out to see his other pokemon, before returning Tsunami to his pokeball. And Moon was fully healed too. Dark pokemon were said to feed off- no, Moon would never have done something like that, and it couldn't have destroyed the door.
But Midnight could have broken the door off easily. She was far strong enough. And she might have been able to figure out the code to punch in to get to intensive care. But why would she have killed all those pokemon? Unless she had wanted to heal Tsunami and Moon, and had needed energy…No, she wouldn't have done something like that. Besides, why take the almost dead pokemon in the terminal ward, instead of the slightly stronger ones in intensive care?
But what if she had only gone to the terminal ward, and stolen the energy there, then sent some of it to gyarados?
Ash sighed. He would probably never know.
Well, with that out of the way, I wish to ask you, the reader, a question. I'm thinking of skipping the rising badge. I've already done the fog badge, which will be the last badge Ash gets and I can't really think of any real reason to do the rising badge. I can't think of anything important that will happen and so doing the battle would be pointless. Do you want me to type it anyway and try to think of some new thing to happen in the rising badge?
By the way, if anyone is wondering why Ash doesn't know that gyarados was apparently healed before the other pokemon in the terminal ward were killed, it's because no one told him the details.