James managed to maneuver himself towards one of the walls, and used some etheral claws to dig in and slow himself down, although it nearly tore his arms off. Keira managed to grab Suikun and send out a mass of branches and vines to slow theirs. They all stopped screaming.
The wooden mat slowed to a crawl, and James slid down to land on it with the others. "Well... This was unexpected..."
"No kidding."
"Shh... You can hear the pokemon up there..."
"I don't remember the Digletts being told to do that." Said a low, raspy voice.
"Di! Nit is!" Replied several voices in unison.
"It wasn't you? Then... Well, let's make sure they're finished off..." Replied the first voice. "Mag... MAR!"
Nothing happened for a moment, then the high point of light that was the top of the pit brightened.
"Watch out!" Jess cried, and unleashed an Icebeam upwards. A thick barrier of ice formed, clear enough for them to see the huge fireball come rolling down the vertical tunnel and slam into it. It exploded powerfully, but didn't damage the barrier that much. They didn't even feel the heat from it.
But what it did do is slide the icy barrier on it's not-so-solid foundations down on top of them.
The wooden floor fell out from under them as the rock-hard ice pushed down from above. But this time they seemed to slide, on a strangely smooth rock wall that grew less steep as they slid.
Still, it was far too fast for comfort, and they were still screaming all the way.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Until, quite suddenly, they realised that they were on flat ground, stationary and unhurt, except for a couple of minor friction burns.
"Wow... that's what I call a Rock Slide..." James mumbled.
The other two groaned. "Bad pun."
"Where are we?" Meowth asked.
"Huh?" Jess looked at the pokemon. "When did you wake up?"
"About the time you screamed loud enough to wake the dead." He answered dryly.
"Well, at least you're up."
They dropped into silence, looking around. There was, amazingly, still enough light to see by from the top of the pit way up above. From here, there only seemed one way to go - a tunnel leading away from the long drop and into the darkness.
"How are we supposed to find our way through that?" Meowth asked. "Not even I could see through... whoa!"
As if in answer to their problem, a hole suddenly crumbled in one of the tunnel's walls, and a Charmeleon tumbled through, growling in suprise and pain.
"Hey, a pokemon!" Jess cried, quickly dropping into battle stance. James readied himself too as the pokemon cried out in dismay as it noticed them, but Keira stayed back because of the elemental advantage it held.
"So? Are you all there is to offer?"
"Enough to take you, fool human..." It growled roughly.
"Why can all the pokemon speak these days?" Meowth wondered quietly as Jess powered up. "Really wrecks the feeling of superiority... Not the only talking pokemon... may as well take care of- huh?" He realised the Charmeleon was soaked and lying moaning on the ground.
"Hmm... I think we might have a solution to our little light problem."
"What are you suggesting?" Keira was still hiding from the pokemon. "We take it with us?" She shuddered slightly.
"What's wrong?"
"I hate fire pokemon..." She eyed the lizard with disgust.
"Don't worry, we just need a torch." Jess said. "So..."
Keira nodded, and she handed a long, solid branch of dry wood. Jess lit it from the moaning pokemon's tail, then froze it completely solid with an Ice Beam, although leaving the weakly burning tail flame out of the ice. Keira gave it a wide berth.
Holding the torch to the tunnel ahead, the four of them went on...
...And as the light from the torch faded into the distance, a bright-eyed shadow slipped in from god-knows-where and followed, taking great care to step on and grind the frozen Charmeleon's tail flame out with one foot...
Something was doing this. And the pokemon who had tumbled down were just as suprised as they were, so it probably wasn't pokemon...
"Here comes another one!" Meowth warned. Sure enough, the wall crumbled and a Magmar rolled to a stop. Upon seeing the trio of humans, the flames around his body flared up for battle.
Jess immediately readied, but Meowth let out another cry of warning and an Electabuzz fell through behind them.
"Ah, at last, something I can deal with!" Keira shot out a couple of quick Razor Leaf attacks, cutting the pokemon.
The Electabuzz blurted out something incomprehisible, and Magmar nodded. James, holding the torch and ready to back up both his friends, muttered quietly.
"That's their boss, I think... why can't he speak?"
"Electabuzz?" Meowth snorted. "All they can do is blabble. They can't even say their own names, let alone english..."
The fighting began in ernest. Jess and Keira both had elemental advantage over their respective opponents, but they couldn't afford to let an attack past them lest it hit their vulnerable partner, while the powerful pokemon could dodge all the attacks they liked. James and Meowth stood back, unable to get close to either fight due to the stray elemental energy.
Magmar managed to knock Jess over, and took advantage of the break to power up and throw a full-powered Fire Blast. Jess was well out of it's range, but Keira wasn't...
"Keira! Look out!" Jess and James both cried together. James flattened himself against a wall, and Meowth only just dodged by ducking between the 'legs' of the fire star. Keira saw it coming, jumped, planted a double-footed kick into her opponent's chest and used the momentum to do a huge backflip out of the way of the rapidly approaching fire attack.
It missed the Electabuzz too, unfortunately, and continued on through the tunnel. But everyone turned, suprised, when a cry sounded when the attack.
The explosion of fire illuminated a tall, thin boy, who didn't seem as much pained by the attack than infuriated. He held a hand to the roof of the cave, concentrated a moment, then brought it down. Two columns of rock suddenly seperated from the roof and completely crushed the pokemon.
"Hey, you're the one who's been doing this to us!" James concluded quickly. Jess and Keira were in slight shock from the heavy rock slamming down so near to them.
"Yes, well done." He sneered back. "I've been testing you."
"Who gave you the right whoa!" James was cut off as the earth seemed to slip beneath his feet. The roof above seemed to be shifting ominously. "I understand..."
"Good. I did save you up there, after all..."
"Ah, thought so."
"And you'd better be grateful."
"You would be?" Jess decided to try to be friendly with the guy, at least as long as he held the roof of the cave over their heads, so to speak.
"Liam."
"And the amulet? I'm guessing you have one." She silently chided Suikun for not telling her about another amulet holder in the area. She didn't reply.
"Carnak..." He said simply, offering no further explaination. "Come on, no reason to hang around here..."
He walked off into the dark tunnel, not looking around to see whether they were following. They looked at each other, shrugged and let him lead on...
"So... You live down here?"
"And cause quite a bit of havoc up there."
"How?"
"Do you think those pokemon appeared from nowhere?" He sneered at her. "The pokemon suddenly find a pit appear underneath their feet, and fall down to... your feet."
"Geez, just asking."
"I could probably take out Ash's castle with one well-placed earthquake, but he's got enough psychic and ground-types guarding the place I wouldn't get close. And that, I feel, is where you come in..."
"Well, you're assuming a lot..."
"Do you want to beat Ash or not?" The tunnel suddenly opened up into a huge cavern. Liam plonked down on a throne-like stone chair that sat at one end.
Subtle, ain't he? Suikun noted dryly.
"So what do you intend we do, oh lord and master?" Meowth put in sarcastically.
"Full-on assault from underground." He replied, looking a little suprised they hadn't already figured this From what I've seen, you two girls are water and grass, which means you can take out any ground pokemon with ease. I'm weak to ground assaults, despite being half-ground myself."
"You don't think it'll be that easy, do you?" James said, almost boredly.
"What?"
"There's four of us." He said, then added, "Sorry, five with Meowth. Against every pokemon in the world? Even if we are strong, we're not invincible..."
I might have a solution for that... Suikun said carefully. Jess pulled the amulet up to her face.
"What?"
There's a couple of places where we could do some recruiting... The answer was hesitant, but Jess didn't notice.
"Recruiting? Isn't that what we're doing now?"
"What's it saying?" Questioned Liam, but Jess waved him down.
For one thing, there's the elementals running around, but you'd have a hard time finding enough of them...
"Elementals?"
I'll explain later. However, there is another group, I think...
"You think?"
They should lie outside the power of Ash, but I'm not sure. Houou saw them once, but it was only fleeting...
"You wouldn't be talking about Mews, would you?" Jess queried. The others looked very suprised.
No, they wouldn't directly attack Ash, or any pokemon for that matter. You'd never find them, unless they wanted to find you. I have another group in mind, although Mews may be involved...
"And you're not going to tell us anything?"
No.
"Why not?"
Because Ash has a large compliment of Psychic-types, and I don't want him to know of them... At least not until we get there.
"I guess that makes sense..."
"Are you going to fill us in on what you're talking about?" Liam drummed his fingers impatiently on the stone armrest.
"Suikun says she knows of a group of allies... but refuses to tell us who, what or where they are."
But I'll guide you to them.
"But she'll guide us to them."
"Sounds interesting." Liam conceded. "May as well get going, then."
"But... we're hundreds of feet underground!" Pointed out James. "How do we get up?"
Liam grinned.
The ground under their feet suddenly started shaking wildly, then suddenly and without warning shot straight up. Everyone except Liam crouched, fearing the impact with the roof.
It never came.
They looked up, but it was no use - the torch had gone out when James had dropped it in fear. Then suddenly there was light, and they were all thrown into the air as the land came grinding to a halt. Except Liam, who calmly got up from the stone chair (Which rapidly sank into the ground behind him) and looked around, not bothering to help the others up.
"So where are we going, then?"
Jess picked herself up and glared at him, and pointed north. "That way, apparently."
