"Now the challenger from Pallet Town, Ash Ketchum!" there was a roar of applause as he walked into the stadium. Ash had finally made it to the Jhoto league, and it was time to prove himself against his rival, Gary.
"Go for it Ash!" Misty cheered for him from her usual place at the sidelines, and Brock was next to her, clapping loudly.
"Don't worry! I'll win as long as I've got Pikachu, right buddy?" he turned to where the yellow mouse had been walking at his heels. But there was no pikachu there. Where was he? "Pikachu?" he called. No answer.
"Have you seen Pikachu?" Ash turned to the sidelines, but he got no answer. Misty and Brock were gone as well. Where was everyone?
"So looser, think you can beat me without your Pika-pal or your looser coaches?" Gary taunted from the other site of the stadium. Ash noticed the applause had died down. He looked around, and he saw that there was no one on the green side of the stadium. No one rooting for him. The Red side was jam-packed, but nobody on his side.
"What? Where is everyone?" Ash cried in distress and anger.
Gary took his question with a taunting laugh. "They're not here. You weren't responsible enough. You weren't strong enough, not understanding enough, and you didn't care enough. They're gone. Forever. You're alone, and it's all your fault."
Ash felt both scared and angry at once. Gary continued in his taunting laugh, and the crowd in the stadium joined in. He felt surrounded by the heartless voices.
"It's not true..." he manager to say, but he was doubtful. Was Gary right? Was it his fault? Whatever the case...
Ash dropped to his knees. It was the most frightening thing-to be alone. "I'm alone..." he whispered, "I'm alone... my friends are gone forever, I'm a- ouch!!!"
Ash opened his eyes to find Kakumei standing over him. Her hand was raised high, and his cheek hurt. She had slapped him, and was ready to do it again if she had to. "Snap out of it!" she yelled, harshly and forcefully.
"Do you think you'll be of any help to you friends if you take a bad dream THAT seriously? DON'T make me slap you again!"
Ash stared at her. She looked wild, angry, but behind it all-scared. Her eyes reminded him of a child's. In fact, she seemed weaker than she had been before. But there was nothing weak about the way she hit. His cheek hurt.
"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry," Ash replied to her. He looked over at Misty and Brock. They lay where they had collapsed of exhaustion just hours before. They needed him now. If he got sucked in like they had...
"Kakumei...if I start seeing things, you'll still try to help us right? Even if you're the only one left?"
She stared at him with a mildly shocked expression. "Ash..."
"James are you ok? You aren't getting sick are you?" Jessie asked James from the spot on the ground she lay on.
"No, I'm just thinking about some things," he replied, "You just sleep, k?" She didn't answer, and when he turned around, she was standing right there. She looked really tired, but worried too. Plopping down next to him, she continued to stare at him, as if she was carrying out a strange evaluation.
He knew she should be sleeping. She had been so exhausted from her incident on the mountain, but she was restless. He hoped she didn't burn herself out, and when was Kakumei going to get there? He hoped they weren't too far ahead, that she and the twerps couldn't help if he and Jessie needed it.
"Whatcha thinkin' about?" she asked him. That was an easy question.
He was thinking about Jessie, HIS Jessie. What would he do? Her voice kept echoing in his mind, "It's your turn to be the strong one..." Why? He sure didn't feel strong.
"You have regrets?" now THAT had come out of nowhere. It was funny, how children and pokemon had a sort of sense about other's feelings. He didn't want to add to the burden of her frayed emotions, but he couldn't lie to her.
"About what?," he asked her.
"I dunno, you just look like...like you're blaming your self for something. Am I right?"
"Yes." He didn't want to elaborate. He blamed himself for what happened to her, and for other things...
"What do you regret?" In all her innocence, she had stumbled on to the question he always asked himself. At the end of each day, James regretted embarrassing himself, or saying something stupid, but mostly for disappointing Jessie, and he regretted not having the courage to tell her...
"It's not something you should worry about." He decided that was a good reply. It was, but not an acceptable one.
"Tell me, you'll feel better, and," once again she surprised him, she moved in front of him and hugged him tightly around the waist. Her chin was propped up on his chest so she could stare right into his face with those eyes of hers. Despite her height, she DID look like a child.
"...and," she continued, "Everyone's been so sad lately, so I want you to feel better. I don't like it when people are sad." Were all children this perceptive? Now he remembered why he had become friends with Jessie back at pokemon tech. She seemed to be able to see people's hearts. But over the years, she seemed to have lost that. But he loved her anyways.
"I'm just worried about a friend of mine," James told her.
"Is something wrong with her?" another surprise.
"How did you know it was a her?"
"Because when momma went away, daddy looked like you do. He said his heart hurt. Is that how you feel?"
He had a feeling Jessie's heart hurt too. "Yes."
"So you love your friend?"
"Yes, very much."
"So...what's wrong?"
"Someone.........took her away, and I never said..." he didn't think he could finish, but Jessie did it for him.
"Never said you loved her?" James nodded silently. "Were you scared?"
"Huh?"
"Were you too scared to tell her? Is that it? And now you regret it?"
He sighed, "Exactly."
Jessie considered his answer, then lifted her hand, and flicked him in the forehead. "Suck it up! Do you know what my momma told me? I'll tell ya. She said, 'Love is when you care as much about someone as you care about yourself. Love is happiness, and it's pain. When you're in love, pain isn't so bad. But if you hide love behind fear, pain is a hundred times worse.' That's what she said."
"Smart woman." He smirked. Jessie's mother was right. His hidden feeling tore at him, and he didn't know how to fight back.
"Yes, the smartest. So...you have to promise me, PROMISE me, that when she comes back you'll tell her."
"I..." James didn't know how to answer. It was so hard, to leave your heart open. But... "Ok, I will."
She smiled, " and that's a PROMISE. You remember that, k?" He nodded, and with that she gave a yawn and curled up in his lap and went to sleep.
He looked down at her. A promise... was that a promise he could keep?
"How much further?" Ash whined. Togapi was getting restless, and he was getting tired of holding the egg anyway. Why couldn't Misty keep it in a pokeball? (About an hour before, Misty had begun to think Togapi was a bug.)
Kakumei looked up from the small screen, "Just a little more, they're in that cave up there, see?" She shifted the sleeping Meowth fro one hand to the other, and pointed to a ridge above them. It would take them about twenty more minutes to reach it though, because the mountain was so steep and rocky.
"Ok," Ash sighed. He turned to Misty and Brock, "Well, any reason why we just HAVE to climb this mountain?" he questioned of them.
Misty slowly turned to him, "Someone is...calling me." Next to her, Brock nodded in agreement.
Brock spoke, "Can't you hear it Ash? There's a voice, and it will make sure you have everything," he turned, from this height they could see all of the island on this side of the mount, "It's too lonely down there, up here we can all be happy."
Ash was startled. They WANTED to go? It made no sense. They had seemed tortured by visions earlier, and now they were at karma-ville.
Why did they want to go?
"James? JAMES!?! Are you up there?" a high-pitched, female voice dragged James out of his unhappy dreams. Gently putting Jessie on the ground next to the campfire, he walked out of the cave.
He saw the strange procession of children heading up the slope in his direction. "Up here!" he called, waving his arm.
"Everything ok? What happened while I wasn't here?" Kakumei asked, taking a drowsy and confused Jessie's temperature. "She's a little warm, lie down for a bit, ok?" Jessie nodded mechanically and lay down, watching them from the ground, until she drifted off to sleep.
"...so they both yelled out 'Mother!' and ran off. When we caught up with them, they had fainted." Ash was reporting what had happened.
"That's weird," James said, staring at the sleeping woman in the corner of the cave, "Jessie cried out 'Momma!' She said she heard her mother scream, but I could have sworn it was Jessie who was screaming."
Ash suddenly jumped up, "That's it! I knew I recognized the scream I heard, it was my father's."
"But I thought I had heard MY father scream...wait a minute, I get it now! At least I'm starting to." Kakumei exclaimed, leaving James and Ash confused.
"You see," she continued, "It wasn't an actual scream. It was an illusion."
"But," Ash protested, "You heard it. I thought you didn't hallucinate!"
"Well, I expect we all will. We're so close to the source, the psychic waved are stronger on this mountain." Kakumei said with a sigh. But when she saw the forlorn expressions on the boys' faces, she continued hastily. "But now that we know some of what's going on, we have an advantage!"
"I still don't get it!" James whined.
"I'm explaining it. You see, we have a human instinct to protect our family. We are most motivated to protect, the ones who had the greatest influence in our lives. It's human instinct. So, whoever-it-is is using that instinct to drive us up the mountain, by making us think that family member is in danger. Thus, the scream. And why we heard different people.
When we heard the respective family member scream, we were faced with an urge to run to the rescue. Run to the mountain. Misty and Brock were hallucinating on a deeper level-Jessie on a MUCH deeper level-than us three. That's why they felt they HAD to run up the peak, and we didn't. Understand now?"
"Uh...no." Ash replied. James still looked confused.
Kakumei sighed, "All right. I'll use myself as a scenario. My father was the only member of my family I knew. He was the member of my family that influenced my life the most. So. Whoever-is-in-top-of-this-stupid-mountain made the scream sound like my father from my perspective, so that it would want to run up and help him. Like hallucinated bait. Get it now?"
"Well, that still makes no sense," he turned to Ash, "You heard your father, right?" Ash nodded, "Well, twerp. In the two years that we've been following you around, I never heard you mention your father once. He wasn't at any of your tournaments, and he wasn't in pallet town either time we went there. How could he have been your big influence?"
Ash sat cross-legged, pondering it. Finally a light bulb appeared and he was able to answer. "Because my father was a great pokemon trainer, and he inspired me to become a Pokemon Master!" Ash said smugly, then added. "Jessie isn't even related to you, why did you hear HER scream?"
James took a long pause, "Me and my real family aren't close. Meowth and Jess are my family now." But he would never admit to the twerp that he loved Jessie in a different way you'd love a sister.
"YIEEEEK!!!!"
"Huh? I'm awake, I'm awake. What's going-ACK! Brock! Get away from her!" Ash yelped, jumping out of his sleeping bag. He ran over to Brock-who was hitting on a very frightened thinks-she's-five-years-old-Jessie. Now what is it that Misty does when stuff like this happens? Oh yeah.
"Ouch! Hey! Lemme go, we were hitting it off!" Brock protested as Ash pulled him away by the ear. "I'll call you Officer Jenny!" He called back to poor Jess.
"Brock, you could be arrested for child molestering!" Ash scolded.
"Officer Jenny! Did you hear that?" Jessie backed further away, "I did something wrong, YOU HAVE TO ARREST ME!" even a hallucinatory Brock had bad pick up lines. Ash found that unbelievable.
"What's going on?" a groggy James asked, getting up.
Jessie sprang up from the ground and ran behind him, "That blind guy was hitting on me!" she whimpered, clinging to James.
"What!?!" James would have gotten right up then and there and thrashed the squinty-eyed twerp into next week if Jessie hadn't been clinging to him. He turned to Ash, "If that happens again twerp-"
"Don't worry, I watch him," Ash sighed. Being Misty's replacement pervert detector wasn't too much fun.
Everyone was waking up now. "Oh no! A Beedrill got Togapi!" Misty whiled, just before Ash handed her the egg, and she almost hugged the life out of it. "Pssst." She whispered, motioning for Ash to put his ear down close. She whispered right into his ear, "Look. Were surrounded by bugs. I bet they kidnapped my mom. Now if we are really quiet, we can get out of here to rescue her." She lifted a hand and pointed up the trail, "There's no bugs there, but we gotta be very quiet."
Meanwhile Meowth seemed to have challenged some unseen pokemon to a battle and commenced in fury swiping thin air. "Meow! Meowth, Meow!" he growled. He hadn't spoken a word of human since he started hallucinating.
Ash decided to let the cat be-his claws were sharp. But he was still wishing that James had had Meowth's pokeball. They had tried throwing an empty pokeball at Meowth, but it had just bounced right off, and that meant that Meowth did have a pokeball somewhere. They had managed to keep him with the rest of the group using food as a lure.
Ash looked for Kakumei. Was she outside? Had she gone on ahead? He looked for her, and
"How could you have slept through all this noise?" He demanded to know, screaming in the dozing girl's ear and waking her. Misty cried,
"Shhhhhh!" and clamped her hand over his mouth, and the morning began from there.
"Come on you slowpokes!" Brock urged from about twenty feet ahead of them, "I can't keep this girl waiting! If my mother's up there then who knows what embarrassing storied she's telling!"
Misty and Meowth were also up the trail with Brock, and Jessie was pulling on James's arm to make him walk faster. "You know," Ash said to Kakumei, "Brock's mother's dead, and the two times I went to Cerulean City, I never met Misty's parents."
"My father's dead too," Kakumei informed him, "James told me that Meowth started out as a stray, but he didn't know anything about Jessie's family. However it seems safe to assume that her mother's dead as well. This person up at the top of this mountain, is feeding them false hopes of seeing their family again. And to top it all off, they get anything else they want." She tossed her head to clear the strands of hair from her face.
"What do you mean?" Ash asked. He still wasn't sure how this all worked out.
"Look," she pointed to Brock, "I don't know him real well, but can I assume he's dateless?"
"Yep."
"So if he wants to a date, there's a girl waiting for him. Misty--afraid of bugs. No bugs at the top of the mountain, but everywhere else. Do you see where I'm going? They have been tricked into thinking that the only way to be happy, is to reach the top of this mountain."
"Oh, now I get it." Ash exclaimed happily. He didn't understand such complicated things too often. "So that's why whoever-it-is was making life miserable for them, so they would want to come here?"
"Exactly!" Kakumei said, "Hey! Wait for us!" She called out to Brock, Misty, Meowth, and Jessie who had joined them.
Those points Kakumei had made were ones to consider. Someone was pretending to offer Jessie whatever she wanted at the top of the mount. What did Jessie want anyway? James wasn't really sure anymore.
Most would just say that Jessie wanted money and power, and even though that was all nice, James was sure there was something else to it-he just couldn't figure it out.
"So..." He asked the general party of those who were seeing things, "How are you all planning to rescue your, mothers is it?" Brock and Misty gave him blank looks.
"Rescue? Are they in trouble? Last time I checked, mom was fine at home." Brock stated.
"Yeah, what are you talking about?" Misty asked innocently.
"You were- before you said- didn't you go running off because-?" Ash sputtered out.
James was equally confused, "Didn't they want to rescue their families?"
Kakumei nodded, "Well they are in a hallucination, so I suppose it doesn't matter if the facts line up. They seemed to have forgotten that they originally headed here at full speed to save their parents."
"Yeah!" Ash chirped, "And Brock's mom is dead!" he had said that pretty loud, but Brock had taken no notice. Jessie, however, had paused to listen to the conversation, but she was still confused.
"Jess? You ok?" James asked her worriedly. She had a look of immense confusion mixed with painful concentration on her face.
"I don't get it..." she whispered. She and James were walking behind the group, just back enough that the others couldn't hear. "First...that voice...it said that Momma was dead. Then...I heard mom scream, and the voice said that she was in trouble and I should come save her up here on this mountain." Her eyes were a fogged sapphire, and they glazed with tears. She didn't let herself cry though. "Then the voice told me...told me all nice and sweet like...told me that momma was here, and I was going to have everything I ever wanted. Said there were nice new clothes, and I could go back to school, and I would have lots of new toys..." she took a sharp intake of air, and continued. "But I don't know what to believe."
"Jessie..." James trailed off. What could he tell her? He couldn't just say 'go to the top of the mountain so we can face some psychopath and cure these twerps' and yet, if they didn't face this psychopath, Jessie might never return to normal.
It would be equally as dangerous to try to escape. They were so close to the mountaintop, that the being there had almost complete control over most of the group's minds. Escaping might mean Jessie and the others could go into comas, have amnesia, or go brain dead. James seemed to be between a Golem and a very hard place.
"Hey! Over here!" Ash jumped up and down, waving his arms, "We're here!"
James and Jessie ran up to where he was standing, and Ash pointed a finger at an opening to a cave.
"Brock and Misty saw it, and ran right inside." Ash reported. The kid was eager to go in after Misty-that much was obvious.
"Ok," Kakumei said, though her voice had lost some of its strength and she was sweating a little, "I made him wait until you got here," she explained. She held Ash by the collar- the boy couldn't stand still. "We don't know what or who is in their but," she smirked, "If you two ever want to see your girlfriends in their right state of mind again, we gotta go through with it."
Ash and James simultaneously and mechanically yelled, "She's not my girlfriend!" and Jessie gave Kakumei a blank stare.
The doctor let out a yeah-right sigh, "Now that's you got your priorities straight, are we going in?"
Ash nodded vigorously, "We have to get Misty and Pickachu back! Brock too!" he yelled.
James and Kakumei stared at Jessie. She said softly, "I thought I knew what was in there, but now I'm not so sure...but..." She turned and walked into the entrance. Just before she disappeared into the shadows, she turned around and said softly, "It's important isn't it? I'll go." And she disappeared into the cave.
"Let's Go!" Ash said, running after her, Kakumei at his heels.
James had been too stunned to speak. He knew she had been scared, but she had gone in anyway, to help out. He forced his legs to move, and he broke out into a run.
He rushed into the cave, but could see nothing but blackness in front of his face. Suddenly he heard a familiar scream.
"Jessie!" he yelled, and rushed in the direction of the sound.
He was stopped short, as lights came on all at once. James couldn't see. The change of light blinded him, and these weren't normal illuminations. It wasn't an electric glow, it seemed as if the cave walls were a bright and glimmering crystal-hot blue.
"So now," a voice said. It spoke in a calm, soothing, but somehow creepy voice. Though he couldn't see the speaker, the voice was clear. It came from everywhere all at once. The voice was neither male, nor female. It wasn't human, but it was like no creature he'd ever known. It continued, "My pawns have finally arrived. It's time to play the game."