The Prophecy
All original characters in this story are copyright to me only.
The story plot itself is also copyright to me only.
Do not re-distribute without my permission.
*Michael Stewart Stephenson*
***
Chapter 1 - Disturbance Of The Peace
Some years later…..
"Dude, I really don't know why you still wear that bloody glove, it's not like we ever get any badniks or anything over here." Bantam Meeses told Charisma Kaynyne as they lounged around the coast of the Spring Yard reservoir.
"Bantam, shut up." Charisma said back, half-asleep, he woke himself up slightly to think of the last time badniks had been to the Spring Yard Zone.
He closed his eyes again as he remembered.
"The last time badniks were around here was eight years ago, I know. But-"
He paused as he lifted his upper body of the grass.
"Just in case."
He stood up.
"I'm gonna be prepared."
He punched the air lightly.
"I'm gonna kick some arse."
He lifted up a nearby rock, about the size of a football, and smashed it with a punch from his gloved right hand to prove his point.
"The glove is cool, the glove stays."
Bantam opened his eyes.
"OK, the glove is cool, the glove stays." He stood up. "I'm bored, let's go get Jess or Becky or somebody."
"Right, hang on." Charisma picked up one of the thinner pieces of the rock he'd just smashed and threw it into the reservoir, making it skim over the surfaces five times. He turned to Bantam.
"Right then. Let's go."
"Yo, Jess!" Jess Sabre poked her head out of her bedroom window and rested her head in her hands casually when she saw who it was.
"Hey guys, what's up?"
"Up, my dear girl, is the opposite of down." Charisma said seriously. "But that's not the point really. Fancy coming out?"
Jess laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. Gimme a sec."
"Alrighty then."
Bantam turned to Charisma. "I still say she needs one."
"One what?"
"You know what."
"Christ, you are such a muppet."
Jess was ready in a minute or two, she opened the door to the sight of Charisma and Bantam rolling around on the grass, playfully trying to kill each other.
It was a good five minutes before they noticed Jess watching them. Charisma waved to her.
"Wanna join in?"
Jess just rolled her eyes again. "Oh, I'm sure."
She pulled her shirt down, tight over her chest. Inadvertently stopping both of them anyway.
Charisma and Bantam were still in a heap on the floor, but neither of them were moving anymore, Jess noticed this.
"Oh, grow up."
"Becky's not home." Jess said as it became apparent that that's where they were going.
"Why?"
"Cos she went to the Emerald Coast with Uncle Phil and Aunt Julie for the weekend." She stopped walking. "They'll be back on Sunday night."
"Great." Charisma said, then stopped walking also.
Bantam stopped, a couple of metres in front of Charisma and Jess.
"Great." He echoed. "Any other ideas?"
"Well, there's always Stiv, in the Hilltop Zone."
"Hilltop Zone. Hmm, too far, methinks." Jess said, then sat down on a nearby large rock.
Charisma sat down on her knee. Jess rested her head on his shoulder from behind.
"Or we could just hang out here, just the three of us."
Bantam sat down on the grass, stretching out his legs and pulling his trainers off.
"Yeah, whatever."
On Charisma's shoulder, Jess closed her eyes. Charisma leaned his head on hers and did likewise.
"Aww, young love." Taunted Bantam as he let his upper body slide to the grass and closed his eyes.
"Yeah, something like that." Charisma replied before inadvertently drifting off.
He woke up, for some reason, twenty minutes or so later, Jess' head was still on his shoulder and Bantam was asleep curled up in the grass, next to a growth of yellow and pink flowers. Charisma lifted his head off Jess' and thought for a moment. He and Jess had always flirted outrageously, even if they never made anything of it. Just one time, it might just be nice to…
"Nah, not today."
He kissed Jess on the top of her head and closed his eyes again.
Jess closed her eyes again too.
"I still don't see why they took Pokémon off the air. There's just no point, they're showing it on sky. Even if it's only once a day at seven in the morning. It's better than Card Captors, and Digimon is just such a bloody rip-off."
Bantam sighed. "If I agree will you stop talking?"
Charisma looked away from Card Captors, to glance at Bantam, sitting on his bed on the other side of the bedroom they shared, his face buried in a book.
He looked back at the TV, a girl was about to impale a playing card with a scythe, which should just not be carried by a kid. Somehow, cutting a hole in the card would release a guardian of the sacred forest or something, which would make the world alright again.
Apparently.
"Pokémon has potential, that's all I'm saying." He switched off the TV and threw the remote aside.
"And for my next trick, I will make a bag of salt and vinegar crisps appear, as if by magic."
He reached under his bed. "Sock, pen, book, empty coke can… Ha! Crisps." He yanked out the bag and grinned at Bantam, who had put down his book to watch this amazing display of magical talent.
"Want one?" Charisma asked as he opened the bag.
Bantam just stared. "Nah, you're OK." He said, standing up. " I'll get some from downstairs. I'll get us both a can, too."
Charisma nodded. When Bantam had exited the room, he sighed, what was the problem with these crisps? They'd only been under the bed for two weeks, max.
"Of course, you know what you have to do."
"There's only thing you can do."
"You haven't done it yet of course."
"Only the one thing."
"That one thing."
"You have to do it."
"For us…"
"Wake up, you prat!" Charisma's eyes shot open.
"Christ, I was only downstairs for three minutes. Feeling tired are we?"
Charisma nodded blankly, trying to remember just what the hell he'd been dreaming about. But to no avail. It was lost.
"Weird." He said, and opened the can of coke he'd just received from Bantam. He pretty much drained it within a minute. He stared at the can in his hand. "Yeah, I think I am tired. I'm going to bed." With this, he swept the stuff off his bed and onto he floor, then he climbed in and pulled the covers up to his chin.
"Night then." Said Bantam, then picked up his book and started reading from where he'd left off.
***
"So then." Jess began, hanging out of her bedroom window. "The point of getting me out of bed before midday on a Saturday thus risking your own lives was to…?"
Bantam closed his eyes and turned away to stop himself from laughing.
"To ask for your assistance in the re-surfacing of the titanic. Obviously you're not interested…"
Jess extended the claws on her right hand and growled deeply.
"OK, sorry. We are going to the Carnival Night Zone. It's Saturday the 23rd. The tenth anniversary of its opening. There is a big party going on in aid of it all. Would you do us the honour of accompanying us to the Zone this fine morning?" Charisma said and took a purposely prominent deep breath.
"Right. I'd hate to turn that down." She said, with about the same level of enthusiasm as a worm invited to a fishing party. "You'd better come in while I wake myself up. Don't worry, there's nobody else in."
So Charisma and Bantam entered. Charisma had always liked Jess' house. It seemed so cosy. The rooms were small, but fit together so snugly. As soon as you get through the back door, the kitchen is directly beside you. Then onwards to the living room, with the stairs placed at the right side of the room. Jess was upstairs, waking herself up meant she was getting washed and changed. Personally, Charisma was all for going up there and watching, but Bantam sensibly suggested they didn't.
So they sat themselves down on the large couch and Charisma switched on the TV.
Jess had Sky.
Sky had Sky 1.
Sky 1 had a Pokémon marathon today.
Usually Sky 1 was in channel position 7, so Charisma switched the channel to position 7, only to find Sky News. He raised the remote to search for Sky 1, but before he had a chance to press the button, Bantam had snatched the remote from him. Charisma turned to glare at him, but he was pointing at the TV. Charisma turned back to the TV and actually watched what was on the screen.
A female tabby cat, a reporter was stood at the base of a huge foamy waterfall, Charisma recognised it at once by the huge walls on either side of it, walls made of large yellow and orange blocks. It was Emerald Falls, the highest waterfall in the whole of the northern hemisphere.
And there was a dark crimson cloud simply hanging over the whole scene.
"Jess! Get yourself down here!" Charisma yelled up the stairs, as he'd just seen a familiar figure to the edge of the screen, three of them actually. A family of tigers, stood at the rivers edge.
Jess appeared at the foot of the stairs, dressed now. "Becky!"
Becky, Phil and Julie Sabre stood in a crowd of people, watching the extraordinary scene. The reporter was interviewing a family of Walruses further away from the waterfall, but she soon stopped when a blue streak rushed past the camera and up, to stop on the edge of the waterfall. Many people shouted, all putting a blue streak up to one thing, or rather one citizen, Sonic the Hedgehog.
The cameraman hurried past the Walrus family in order to zoom in on Sonic, who looked to be working out how exactly to investigate the cloud. A few seconds passed before he seemed to come to a loss, so he simply picked up a large stone and hurled it through the cloud. The stone passed straight through, and flew another half a mile before hitting the ground, well away from any spectators.
Apparently, an object passing through the cloud seemed not to be enough for Sonic, so he took a few steps backwards and hurled himself toward the cloud, spinning like a saw blade.
He was less than two metres away from the cloud when an object ploughed through the air from the cloud, and struck Sonic, knocking him unconscious. He fell. Everyone in the area screamed, helplessly watching their hero falling to his death.
Back in Jess' living room, Charisma thought of something that had apparently occurred to no-one else, wherever you find Sonic the Hedgehog, you will usually also find…
An orange blur rushed onto the screen and into Sonic, not hitting him, but catching him. Miles "Tails" Prower hovered gently to the river's edge and placed Sonic down on the grass. Kneeling over him cautiously. The cameraman rushed over to the scene, the camera rocking madly as he ran.
Sonic lay on the grass, eyes fluttering open.
Suddenly, a scream issued from the noise of the observing crowd, most people didn't even turn to see what the problem was, being more interested in what was happening with Sonic.
The cameraman was not one of them. The scene shifted to look over the crowd, to where a large black shape was just visible flying off into the sky, the camera could only follow it for a second before it vanished.
The cameraman returned to where the scream had come from, from the crowd, two tigers stood looking, disbelieving at the sky. At the point where the large black object had just disappeared with their daughter.
The crimson cloud simply vanished.
The phone rang. Jess picked herself up. She took several very deep breaths and answered the phone on the ninth ring.
"Hello?" Charisma and Bantam could hear distraught voices, even from where they sat, at the other end of the room. Charisma switched off the TV, he wasn't really in the mood for Pokémon anymore.
Jess kept to saying very small words, such as; "OK." And "Yeah." And "Right." Finally, she put the phone down, the person on the other end of the phone had obviously been her mother. Charisma and Bantam respectfully allowed Jess as long as she needed to regain herself. This was about four minutes.
She didn't look at them while she was talking, she kept her head down and mumbled in a monotone. "That was my mother. She and Dad are going up to the Emerald Coast to stay with Uncle Phil and Aunt Julie, the police say that it'd be best if they stay in the Emerald Region, so they're not coming back until they've got her. I have to stay here on my own and wait until they get back," She laughed somberly. "They don't waste time, do they."
It was a rhetorical question, so they both stayed quiet.
End of chapter 1…
***
All original characters in this story are copyright to me only.
The story plot itself is also copyright to me only.
Do not re-distribute without my permission.
*Michael Stewart Stephenson*
***
Chapter 1 - Disturbance Of The Peace
Some years later…..
"Dude, I really don't know why you still wear that bloody glove, it's not like we ever get any badniks or anything over here." Bantam Meeses told Charisma Kaynyne as they lounged around the coast of the Spring Yard reservoir.
"Bantam, shut up." Charisma said back, half-asleep, he woke himself up slightly to think of the last time badniks had been to the Spring Yard Zone.
He closed his eyes again as he remembered.
"The last time badniks were around here was eight years ago, I know. But-"
He paused as he lifted his upper body of the grass.
"Just in case."
He stood up.
"I'm gonna be prepared."
He punched the air lightly.
"I'm gonna kick some arse."
He lifted up a nearby rock, about the size of a football, and smashed it with a punch from his gloved right hand to prove his point.
"The glove is cool, the glove stays."
Bantam opened his eyes.
"OK, the glove is cool, the glove stays." He stood up. "I'm bored, let's go get Jess or Becky or somebody."
"Right, hang on." Charisma picked up one of the thinner pieces of the rock he'd just smashed and threw it into the reservoir, making it skim over the surfaces five times. He turned to Bantam.
"Right then. Let's go."
"Yo, Jess!" Jess Sabre poked her head out of her bedroom window and rested her head in her hands casually when she saw who it was.
"Hey guys, what's up?"
"Up, my dear girl, is the opposite of down." Charisma said seriously. "But that's not the point really. Fancy coming out?"
Jess laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. Gimme a sec."
"Alrighty then."
Bantam turned to Charisma. "I still say she needs one."
"One what?"
"You know what."
"Christ, you are such a muppet."
Jess was ready in a minute or two, she opened the door to the sight of Charisma and Bantam rolling around on the grass, playfully trying to kill each other.
It was a good five minutes before they noticed Jess watching them. Charisma waved to her.
"Wanna join in?"
Jess just rolled her eyes again. "Oh, I'm sure."
She pulled her shirt down, tight over her chest. Inadvertently stopping both of them anyway.
Charisma and Bantam were still in a heap on the floor, but neither of them were moving anymore, Jess noticed this.
"Oh, grow up."
"Becky's not home." Jess said as it became apparent that that's where they were going.
"Why?"
"Cos she went to the Emerald Coast with Uncle Phil and Aunt Julie for the weekend." She stopped walking. "They'll be back on Sunday night."
"Great." Charisma said, then stopped walking also.
Bantam stopped, a couple of metres in front of Charisma and Jess.
"Great." He echoed. "Any other ideas?"
"Well, there's always Stiv, in the Hilltop Zone."
"Hilltop Zone. Hmm, too far, methinks." Jess said, then sat down on a nearby large rock.
Charisma sat down on her knee. Jess rested her head on his shoulder from behind.
"Or we could just hang out here, just the three of us."
Bantam sat down on the grass, stretching out his legs and pulling his trainers off.
"Yeah, whatever."
On Charisma's shoulder, Jess closed her eyes. Charisma leaned his head on hers and did likewise.
"Aww, young love." Taunted Bantam as he let his upper body slide to the grass and closed his eyes.
"Yeah, something like that." Charisma replied before inadvertently drifting off.
He woke up, for some reason, twenty minutes or so later, Jess' head was still on his shoulder and Bantam was asleep curled up in the grass, next to a growth of yellow and pink flowers. Charisma lifted his head off Jess' and thought for a moment. He and Jess had always flirted outrageously, even if they never made anything of it. Just one time, it might just be nice to…
"Nah, not today."
He kissed Jess on the top of her head and closed his eyes again.
Jess closed her eyes again too.
"I still don't see why they took Pokémon off the air. There's just no point, they're showing it on sky. Even if it's only once a day at seven in the morning. It's better than Card Captors, and Digimon is just such a bloody rip-off."
Bantam sighed. "If I agree will you stop talking?"
Charisma looked away from Card Captors, to glance at Bantam, sitting on his bed on the other side of the bedroom they shared, his face buried in a book.
He looked back at the TV, a girl was about to impale a playing card with a scythe, which should just not be carried by a kid. Somehow, cutting a hole in the card would release a guardian of the sacred forest or something, which would make the world alright again.
Apparently.
"Pokémon has potential, that's all I'm saying." He switched off the TV and threw the remote aside.
"And for my next trick, I will make a bag of salt and vinegar crisps appear, as if by magic."
He reached under his bed. "Sock, pen, book, empty coke can… Ha! Crisps." He yanked out the bag and grinned at Bantam, who had put down his book to watch this amazing display of magical talent.
"Want one?" Charisma asked as he opened the bag.
Bantam just stared. "Nah, you're OK." He said, standing up. " I'll get some from downstairs. I'll get us both a can, too."
Charisma nodded. When Bantam had exited the room, he sighed, what was the problem with these crisps? They'd only been under the bed for two weeks, max.
"Of course, you know what you have to do."
"There's only thing you can do."
"You haven't done it yet of course."
"Only the one thing."
"That one thing."
"You have to do it."
"For us…"
"Wake up, you prat!" Charisma's eyes shot open.
"Christ, I was only downstairs for three minutes. Feeling tired are we?"
Charisma nodded blankly, trying to remember just what the hell he'd been dreaming about. But to no avail. It was lost.
"Weird." He said, and opened the can of coke he'd just received from Bantam. He pretty much drained it within a minute. He stared at the can in his hand. "Yeah, I think I am tired. I'm going to bed." With this, he swept the stuff off his bed and onto he floor, then he climbed in and pulled the covers up to his chin.
"Night then." Said Bantam, then picked up his book and started reading from where he'd left off.
***
"So then." Jess began, hanging out of her bedroom window. "The point of getting me out of bed before midday on a Saturday thus risking your own lives was to…?"
Bantam closed his eyes and turned away to stop himself from laughing.
"To ask for your assistance in the re-surfacing of the titanic. Obviously you're not interested…"
Jess extended the claws on her right hand and growled deeply.
"OK, sorry. We are going to the Carnival Night Zone. It's Saturday the 23rd. The tenth anniversary of its opening. There is a big party going on in aid of it all. Would you do us the honour of accompanying us to the Zone this fine morning?" Charisma said and took a purposely prominent deep breath.
"Right. I'd hate to turn that down." She said, with about the same level of enthusiasm as a worm invited to a fishing party. "You'd better come in while I wake myself up. Don't worry, there's nobody else in."
So Charisma and Bantam entered. Charisma had always liked Jess' house. It seemed so cosy. The rooms were small, but fit together so snugly. As soon as you get through the back door, the kitchen is directly beside you. Then onwards to the living room, with the stairs placed at the right side of the room. Jess was upstairs, waking herself up meant she was getting washed and changed. Personally, Charisma was all for going up there and watching, but Bantam sensibly suggested they didn't.
So they sat themselves down on the large couch and Charisma switched on the TV.
Jess had Sky.
Sky had Sky 1.
Sky 1 had a Pokémon marathon today.
Usually Sky 1 was in channel position 7, so Charisma switched the channel to position 7, only to find Sky News. He raised the remote to search for Sky 1, but before he had a chance to press the button, Bantam had snatched the remote from him. Charisma turned to glare at him, but he was pointing at the TV. Charisma turned back to the TV and actually watched what was on the screen.
A female tabby cat, a reporter was stood at the base of a huge foamy waterfall, Charisma recognised it at once by the huge walls on either side of it, walls made of large yellow and orange blocks. It was Emerald Falls, the highest waterfall in the whole of the northern hemisphere.
And there was a dark crimson cloud simply hanging over the whole scene.
"Jess! Get yourself down here!" Charisma yelled up the stairs, as he'd just seen a familiar figure to the edge of the screen, three of them actually. A family of tigers, stood at the rivers edge.
Jess appeared at the foot of the stairs, dressed now. "Becky!"
Becky, Phil and Julie Sabre stood in a crowd of people, watching the extraordinary scene. The reporter was interviewing a family of Walruses further away from the waterfall, but she soon stopped when a blue streak rushed past the camera and up, to stop on the edge of the waterfall. Many people shouted, all putting a blue streak up to one thing, or rather one citizen, Sonic the Hedgehog.
The cameraman hurried past the Walrus family in order to zoom in on Sonic, who looked to be working out how exactly to investigate the cloud. A few seconds passed before he seemed to come to a loss, so he simply picked up a large stone and hurled it through the cloud. The stone passed straight through, and flew another half a mile before hitting the ground, well away from any spectators.
Apparently, an object passing through the cloud seemed not to be enough for Sonic, so he took a few steps backwards and hurled himself toward the cloud, spinning like a saw blade.
He was less than two metres away from the cloud when an object ploughed through the air from the cloud, and struck Sonic, knocking him unconscious. He fell. Everyone in the area screamed, helplessly watching their hero falling to his death.
Back in Jess' living room, Charisma thought of something that had apparently occurred to no-one else, wherever you find Sonic the Hedgehog, you will usually also find…
An orange blur rushed onto the screen and into Sonic, not hitting him, but catching him. Miles "Tails" Prower hovered gently to the river's edge and placed Sonic down on the grass. Kneeling over him cautiously. The cameraman rushed over to the scene, the camera rocking madly as he ran.
Sonic lay on the grass, eyes fluttering open.
Suddenly, a scream issued from the noise of the observing crowd, most people didn't even turn to see what the problem was, being more interested in what was happening with Sonic.
The cameraman was not one of them. The scene shifted to look over the crowd, to where a large black shape was just visible flying off into the sky, the camera could only follow it for a second before it vanished.
The cameraman returned to where the scream had come from, from the crowd, two tigers stood looking, disbelieving at the sky. At the point where the large black object had just disappeared with their daughter.
The crimson cloud simply vanished.
The phone rang. Jess picked herself up. She took several very deep breaths and answered the phone on the ninth ring.
"Hello?" Charisma and Bantam could hear distraught voices, even from where they sat, at the other end of the room. Charisma switched off the TV, he wasn't really in the mood for Pokémon anymore.
Jess kept to saying very small words, such as; "OK." And "Yeah." And "Right." Finally, she put the phone down, the person on the other end of the phone had obviously been her mother. Charisma and Bantam respectfully allowed Jess as long as she needed to regain herself. This was about four minutes.
She didn't look at them while she was talking, she kept her head down and mumbled in a monotone. "That was my mother. She and Dad are going up to the Emerald Coast to stay with Uncle Phil and Aunt Julie, the police say that it'd be best if they stay in the Emerald Region, so they're not coming back until they've got her. I have to stay here on my own and wait until they get back," She laughed somberly. "They don't waste time, do they."
It was a rhetorical question, so they both stayed quiet.
End of chapter 1…
***
