Untitled 12 "Krreeee-ya!" Screeched the Fearow as it dove, trying to put off its opponent. Liam stood firm, unmoved, preparing for the pokémon's strike... at the last moment he reached out his hand and a spear of rock shot forth and embedded itself in the pokémon, going right through. Holding the spear, Liam sidestepped and used the bird's momentum to throw it into the Venusaur currently fighting Jess.
He watched with satisfaction as the Venusaur flinched, allowing Jess an opening for an Icebeam. But he was caught off guard as a Raichu let loose from behind him. He cringed until the thundershock faded, leaving him rather crispy, then charged at the little rat.
It electrified him again as he kicked it, but it was worth it to hear the pathetic, breathless squeak of pain, feel the bones collapsing beneath his foot. He left the crippled Raichu and left to help with the Venusaur again...
And was stopped as a Persian and an Electabuzz got in his way.
He immediately dropped underground as the Electric pokémon unleashed a thunder attack, then came up underneath them. They were both thrown clear, Electabuzz sprawling while the Persian landed perfectly in the manner of cats, and sprung straight back to latch onto Liam's arm with its teeth.
Liam shook, an annoyed look on his face, but the Persian hung on with teeth and forepaws, while the back ones raked anything that came close enough. Finally he grabbed it with his other hand, squeezed its neck until it cracked audibly and hung limp, then booted it away to join the Raichu... just in time to get Thunderpunched in the side by the Electabuzz.
Jess was trying to tangle living whips around frozen ones, or freezing whips together to inconvenience the Venusaur. Indeed, the last time it had used its Razor Leaf the vines hadn't been able to get out of the way in time and had actually fielded most of the attack. With a powerful Aurora beam the huge pokémon was blown back, and she formed a large block of ice above its head to crush the life from it...
A Victreebell hammered her in the side with a Vine Whip, throwing her to the floor. She powered up an Icebeam, but her hand was knocked away by a flying Raticate, deflecting the attack to the ground.
Liam was holding the Electabuzz fully above his head, where it was struggling wildly and unleashing various levels of electric attack, to no avail. Snarling wildly through pain and anger, Liam ran full-on at a nearby small rock wall, tossed the pokémon into it, then spun and slammed his back into the pokémon, cracking the rock, not to mention the Electabuzz.
Panting fairly heavily, Liam pulled away from the battered pokémon... and looked up into the glowing yellow eyes of something much larger than he.
Steel-grey forehead sloping down into a sky-blue, spiky, thick set of whiskers. Two long fangs extended from the mouth, white fur sprayed backwards along the sides and back of the head, followed by a long, thick, curly mane of purple hair. Yellow-furred with jagged black striped, with white on the underside. The feet were a strange design, the claws appearing to emerge from a single gap in the skin, giving an image of streamlining, and a lightning-jagged tail ending in a glowing, crackling spark.
"Hey," Raikou growled, "Why not pick on someone your own size?"
Liam looked on in despair for a moment, before a wiry form flew through the air and latched itself onto the enormous electric dog. "You'd have to get past me first." Carnak hissed.
Raikou flipped, trying to dislodge the wiry Guardian. Liam looked behind him to see the rocky area vanish, and the last traces of Electabuzz fade from Rob as he got up.
Former fight forgotten, they watched Carnak and Raikou battle it out on the nonexistent 'ground' of the Dreamscape. It was a very interesting fight, as Carnak's stick-like body was virtually invulnerable to damage, but it couldn't do much damage either...
"Come on, Raikou! Zap that stick insect!"
"Don't let that little doggy beat you!"
"Bite him, bite him!"
Liam, lacking a comeback, elbowed Rob in the head, and soon they were in a heavy wrestling fight next to their guardians.
Standing aside from the three battles were Sati, Suikun, Florasaur, Patrick, and his guardian. She was quite plainly a fairy.
A uniform pink, she called herself Purity and was tall and graceful with long, slightly darker pink hair and the long, elegant, typical fairy dragonfly-like wings. Her face was kind, somewhat reminiscent of a Nurse Joy - in fact, before receiving the guardianship with her Chansey, she had been one, many, many years ago, which explained her and Patrick's abilities of healing.
Patrick actually seemed rather embarrassed about her, and tried to avoid her. She often looked at him, a look of... almost despair and pity in her eyes. But right now she was looking on at the fights, though she didn't appear to be approving. The other three guardians were right into it, laying bets on who would win. Jess was having trouble with the combined efforts of James and Keira, in Raticate and Venusaur form respectively. The other pairs were fairly well matched.
However, their conversation was abruptly cut off as one of Keira's Solar Beams missed Jess and hit Suikun right on, blowing her back and away, off into infinity. The other two laughed as the light faded, and Suikun was lost from sight... but she soon rematerialised again and jumped into the battle, snarling about revenge. The other two, of course, wasted no time. And soon one scuffle met up with another, and then the third, and everyone forgot who they were fighting, and eventually they all just collapsed into one big exhausted heap, laughing.
"I think that's just about enough training for one night." Rob sighed, his head resting on Suikun's heaving flank and his legs trapped under Jess, who currently had Sati lying across her.
"Yup."
"'Bout time we got going."
They all managed to extract themselves from each other, after much pushing and shoving, and the Guardians and the Dreamscape faded and was replaced by the fields in which they'd met Rob and Pat, still covered in burn marks from the numerable lightning strikes it'd suffered. Meowth, who'd been keeping watch, yawned.
"One of you had better be carrying me. I'm not made for staying awake this long."
"Sure..." James scooped the cat up, sitting him on top of his large backpack. "Are you okay there?"
Meowth stretched, then curled up. "I'll manage. Goodnight..."
They gathered their gear as Meowth began to snore, then set off again to the north. After some time of walking, Rob fiddled with something in his backpack, then pulled out what looked like a small holder file with straps. The others watched curiously as he strapped it on, then flipped it up, revealing a laptop, which he quickly began working on.
"What are you doing?" Liam finally asked, speaking for all of them.
"Checking where we are." He answered, buried in the screen. The others crowded around, as an image of the earth came up.
"Satellite?"
"Nothing less... now, let's see..." Rob pushed a button, and after a couple of seconds a red dot started flashing on the map. A white rectangle flashed up around it, and a zoomed-in picture appeared, revealing a smaller section of the image blow up... then again, then again, until they were looking at themselves walking along.
Jess looked up. "Not bad."
Rob pressed another button, and the four images appeared each in a quarter of the screen. He looked at each, snorted, then pressed a key and the world view came up again. Some more typing, and once again it zoomed in... but this time each zoom changed the picture less. When it finished this time, nine images decorated the screen instead of four.
"That's more like it... now..." He typed a bit more, and the middle left section expanded to fill the screen. He held down the up button, and the image moved downwards to reveal the northern areas.
"Here we go... we're here." Rob fiddled with the computer a little more and the red dot reappeared near the bottom of the screen. "Directly north we have Fuschia city, which is a pretty big one..." A red line, hair-thin, traced its way north to another area, which was outlined in blue by the computer. A zoomed-in image of the city appeared in one corner, but not much could be seen. "The geographics of the area are pretty weird. We've got three main options, if we're going north like your amulet wants us to." He looked at Jess, then continued.
"We could go west. There's a bridge there, but it's a very steep uphill climb, and we don't know whether it's controlled by pokémon or even still there."
"Can't you check on the satellite?"
"No..." Rob looked a little embarrassed. "Since Ash took over there's been a lot of interference in the air. I can't explain it, but the further you zoom in, the fuzzier the picture gets. I can clear it for a small area around me, but otherwise you're not going to get a much better picture than that." He pointed at the image on the screen. "Anyway... to do that we'd also have to pass by Fuschia gym, which is built away from the city, and that area is said to be riddled with traps."
"Oh good... what are our other options?"
"We could go east. That would mean that we can completely avoid Fuschia altogether. But it also means we'd end up in Lavender town. And Lavender hasn't been looking too hot since the takeover."
"More so than usual?"
Rob punched a few keys, taking the map back two zoom levels. He pointed to a spot northeast of where they stood.
It was just a black blotch.
"Even if we could get through Lavender, there's a mountain range directly north of there, which I for one have no intention of crossing. We'd have to go west to Saffron..." He traced his finger across the screen to an area that looked like you were seeing it through translucent glass - even from this distance it was incredibly blurred. "...then north to Cerulean."
"Would we have to pass through Saffron and Cerulean if we went west?"
"Most likely."
"What's the third option?"
"Directly north." He traced his finger straight up. "Go straight through Fuschia city and the Safari Zone. There's a small body of water here we might have to cross..." He tapped his finger on a blue area, "But that shouldn't be too much of a problem. If worst comes to worst we could probably have Liam dig us under."
"And what else would we have to pass?"
"We might be able to get around Vermilion city without a problem, but we'd probably still have to go through Saffron and Cerulean."
"So we've got to face Saffron and Cerulean no matter what."
"I'm afraid so."
Everyone thought about this for a while as they walked. "We can try to cross the bridge and go through Celadon, face the unknown at Lavender, or brave the Safari Zone..." Jess mused.
"I'd suggest we avoid Lavender." Keira advised. "Ghost pokémon are pretty hard to take out, and that city's got no shortage of them..."
"Right... Celadon or Fuschia then."
They continued walking, then Jess piped up. "Go for Fuschia. I mean, what are we gonna do if we find the bridge out?"
"Fuschia?"
"Yeah... may as well."
"Go for it."
"Right..." Rob zoomed the image in again. "Luckily for us, Fuschia's a very long, wide, city - north to south, it doesn't take up much space. But the Safari Zone behind it... that's another matter. Some of the biggest, rarest, most dangerous pokémon lived in there. Protected. There's no telling what's happened to the place since the pokémon takeover, but what's for sure is that it doesn't see many humans. So that's gonna be rough going."
"And after that?"
Rob typed, and the map shrunk into one corner. Three more pictures showed up - another map, this one not satellite but drawn in, with a circle in the middle and a star near the bottom labeled 'Safari Zone'. The second showed a vast field with a herd of Tauros stampeding across it, the third a farmhouse with a woman standing out the front waving. Writing filled the center of the screen.
"Pokemon ranch. Used to be one of the chief areas for raising pokémon. Who knows what's become of it now. But we'll worry about that when we get there, we've got Fuschia to worry about now."
"How much further do we have to go?"
Rob consulted the computer. "A couple hours' walk. Probably a lot faster if we stopped looking at this thing." He said, switching off the laptop and replacing it in his bag. "Come on, let's get going!"
They set off at a fast walk towards the city in the distance...
~-~-~-~
Through the forest...
Ever so slowly...
But it was still all a blur...
Pain...
Monotony...
Eternity...
Alone...
It crawled through the forest. It had been doing so for as long as it could remember. It could feel nothing but pain. It had had a destination, once... but now there was only one aim.
Keep going... no matter what... don't give up...
Stretch... dig... pull... stretch... dig... pull... Dragging its almost-destroyed body, it kept going. It would never give up.
Can't stop... ever... must... keep... going... must... ke-ep... g-o-i-n-g...
Its mind probably never noticed that the body no longer had the energy to move. This place looked the same as any other. Maybe it thought it was still moving. But the passing Bellsprout didn't, when it found it. It immediately ran off for help.
When the help arrived, they found a sorry creature indeed. It had once been a Sandslash. But both legs were completely useless, crushed and destroyed. One arm was gone, along with a good section of its side and part of its face. What remained of the face was burnt and scarred. Spikes were crushed or missing. By the look of things it had dragged itself along with its one remaining limb, for how long nobody knew.
How this thing could still be alive, let alone conscious, was beyond comprehension. The pokémon did their best to heal the creature, but it was obvious nothing was keeping it alive but its own indomitable willpower.
When they tried to get a response out of it, it only had one thing to say. "Must go to Ash... revenge on humans..."
~-~-~-~
They'd finally gotten close enough to get a good look at Fuschia.
The city... had changed. To say the least.
What once had been a rather quaint, old-fashioned city - no high-rise skyscrapers or ultra-modern buildings, more smaller houses, but a lot of them - was now a hive. Literally.
String Shot webs stretched from tall, almost cylindrical structures. Beedrills buzzed around everywhere, though they were little more than dots at this distance. Jess, James, Liam and Rob all had pairs of electronic binoculars, and they were becoming more shocked at each discovery they made.
"There's Scythers as well... one over to the left, near those two stacks."
"Two more flying way up above the city, watching over."
"See any Butterfree?"
"No... I can't see them being friendly with those webs."
"Too far away to see the ground, but I'm willing to bet it's swarming with Weedle."
"Wait... hold on..." James moaned. "Oh man, this isn't good."
"What's up?"
"Look in around the middle of town. It's difficult to tell from this angle, but there's a group of those spires arranged in a circle with one in the middle."
"Hmm? I... think I see it."
"Right... now, zoom in as far as it'll let you. I think there's a web hanging from those spires."
"Wow... that'd be a big one."
"Yeah... and can you see what's hanging off it?"
There was silence for a moment as they all focused their binoculars on it, trying to see. "Kakuna?"
"Man... look at them all!" Liam said, shocked. "There must be hundreds... thousands..."
"They normally hang off trees, but there's no trees in the city. Or not enough, anyway. So they hang them off that huge web..."
"Come on, give me a look!" Keira half-wailed, having been growing more agitated as the others talked. Jess reluctantly relinquished her set, and Keira found the site and whistled.
"Beedrills are really protective of the Kakuna. We go that way, we'd be killed before we got close."
"Maybe we should try the bridge?"
"No..." Rob said, thinking. "I've got an idea. If the Kakuna were damaged, the Beedrill would go insane, right?"
"No kidding. And anyway, they usually keep a few of the Kakuna from evolving... just in case the Beedrill aren't there in time. Trust me, there's no way we'd even get close. And even if we did, we'd never get out alive."
"I'm not suggesting we get close." Rob grinned, thinking. "We can cause enough chaos to make sure they never see us pass..."
~-~-~-~
They were now standing quite near the city of hives, and it was even worse.
The continuous drone of Beedrill was enough to drive anyone insane. They circled the air, looking for intruders or diving from one huge hive-building to another, some tending to the Kakuna here and there. And their earlier prediction had been right - the ground was literally swarming with Weedle.
This was Beedrill central.
Keira had managed to spot what was being kept in many of the buildings, too - humans. She'd spotted two Beedrill carting someone, completely wrapped in string shot except for the head, from one building to another. Hmmm...
Rob and Jess weren't interested in the view at this point, but had their eyes closed, concentrating. Liam wasn't in the group either. And the Beedrill were becoming a little concerned by the way the huge storm clouds were gathering above...
Between Jess's water control and Rob's thunder, they'd managed to gather what looked like a hell of a storm. The sky grew darker as more clouds piled up above the insect city, and finally the rain broke in a huge downpour, centralized over the city.
The Beedrill gave a combined shrill cry, but apart from that they didn't seem to be hugely affected by the rain. Jess had by now stopped, her job done, but Rob was gathering energy for...
BOOM! A huge clap of thunder almost flattened the hidden quintet as an incredible bolt of lightning flew down and hit the tall center spire of the web. The soaking web transmitted the electric current to every Kakuna hanging from it, several nearby Beedrill and uncountable Weedles on the ground, before the central spire exploded and the web was aflame.
The squeal of the Kakuna was unmistakable. Many of them lay helpless on the ground, and the ground was a massive elemental battle between the pouring rain and spreading fires.
Rob, without opening his eyes, grinned mercilessly. He tensed for a moment, and another bolt struck another spire nearby, which set it and a good section of nearby web alight, before it toppled over. The web was torn, other sections were set alight, and it's sure that it crushed no small amount of pokémon on its way down. Even more raging blazes.
The Beedrill count in the air was incredible; they were flying so thick through the air that it seemed impossible for them not to get tangled and fall. The humans still watching whistled - they hadn't known there'd been so many Beedrill in the entire world... and they were still coming.
Another bolt struck, oblivious to the small hordes of Beedrill between the sky and the spire. After the strike had finished, they watched, amazed, as all the Beedrill within a few feet of the bolt tumbled out of the sky, smoking, to create a hole in the ranks that was quickly swallowed up by the other 'Drills.
Twice more the lightning struck. The fires had gathered into a raging inferno, the web just wasn't anymore. Beedrills screamed and buzzed, Kakunas squealed helplessly, Weedles crawled around in an effort to get away from the deadly fires.
A hole appeared in front of them. "I've got it. Instant path under Fuschia." He poked his head up, and saw that none of them had even looked at him yet, but were watching with awe at the scene behind him. He turned.
"Wow... Good work, Rob." Liam grinned, which was unusual. "Couldn't have done better myself."
The others managed to tear their gaze away from the awesome burning city of bugs to enter Liam's tunnel. Each of them still paused at the mouth of the tunnel to drink in the sight one more time, before entering the cool blackness of the tunnel. Liam held a burning torch, courtesy of Keira, and Rob gave some small, flickering light as electric sparks surrounded his hand.
They slowly made their way through the tunnel. "Without our help, the rain should soon stop." Rob mused. "If the fire isn't put out by then, and they don't get some water pokémon in here fast, then the city is gonna be razed to the ground. String shot is extremely flammable."
"And that should take up their time while we get through the Safari Zone."
"Right. And then we've only got two or three cities left to go before we find this mysterious ally Suikun keeps insisting will allow us to defeat Ash."
Their conversation spun from topic to topic as they walked through the tunnel, until it started to slope upwards. Liam removed the ceiling and Fuschia city was behind them, still burning merrily, and the Safari Zone was ahead...