Chapter 35:  Tongueless:  A Ship Without A Rudder

            "So…I can finally go out on seek patrol?" Ghenki asked.

            "Yes.  You can use one of these," Cleaver explained, holding up one of the gremlin's weapons.  "It'll give you another way to fight back if anything goes wrong.  You push the switch forward to fire."

            "Okay.  I've always wanted another long-range attack…"

            "Well, now you've got one."

            "And thanks…I mean, I've been cooped up in here so long, I can't believe it.  I've got such a case of cabin fever that it might spread into an epidemic and kill all the refugees in here."

            "Hmm…well, we'd better get you cured.  Have Yolei assign you to someone's group."

            Yolei set Ghenki up with Ash and Misty.  Ghenki hadn't seen either of them for a while, and when he saw Misty, he noticed that she had on her new pants---pants of a kind he hadn't seen often.  "Misty?" he asked, pointing to her pants.

            "Like them?" she asked.

            "Well…I didn't know that they made pants out of sheet metal."

            Misty frowned.  "It's denim, vinyl, and glitter, not metal!  I figured I should wear long pants if it was going to be cold out like it was on that boat trip.  So…what do you think?  They're very me, aren't they?"

            "With fake armor like that, I think you're asking for an anti-tank missile to the kneecaps!"

            Misty frowned again, then rolled her eyes.

            As they were walking together, Ash asked, "So…I heard that you weren't from this universe, either."

            "Nope.  I wasn't even on my home planet before I got here; this is my second time of getting sucked into another world."

            "Wow.  What happened to pull you out of your home world the first time?" Misty asked.

            "I was just playing a new video game---one I was a champion at---and all of a sudden, the game sucked me in."

            " 'Sucked you in'?"

            "I became part of the game.  I can't explain it; one minute, I saw Holly and Suezo in the game, like it was some kind of opening sequence. The next minute, I get sucked in, and I've been traveling for months with Holly and those other Monsters you met."

            "Wow."

            Ash cut in, "You think you'll ever get back to your home planet?"

            "I don't know.  I hardly even care…I can't explain that either.  It's not that I don't miss my family…my mom was really nice.  But I like adventure better than living in a house all the time, with the same school every day…and, after I'm done with school, the same job every day."

            "Sounds like a regular case of wanderlust," Ash noted.  "I know the feeling---back when I first became a pokémon trainer, I couldn't wait to leave my house and go on a pokémon journey.  I'll admit it might've been so I could get out of school…"

            Ghenki chuckled.  "I'd take facing man-eating, weird creatures over homework any day!"

            Ash laughed.

            Misty hissed, "Will you shush up?  If those things hear us---!"

            The roar of a saberstrike behind them cut Misty off.

            Pikachu jumped off Ash's shoulder to face the saberstrike.  "Pikachu, thunderbolt!"

            "Hin Tarr!"  The saberstrike used its heat rods to reflect the bolt of electricity away from himself.

            "Aw, great…!  Pikachu, try Swift attack!"  Pikachu shot a barrage of yellow stars at the saberstrike, and the saberstrike tried and failed to deflect them all.  He was knocked backwards, but he was still alive.

            The saberstrike let out a loud, bloodcurdling roar, and several more saberstrikes came out to join with their hurt friend.

            "Hoo, boy!" Ash murmured.  "Charizard, Pidgeot, Heracross, I choose you!"

            Misty let out her pokémon, too.  "Horsea, go!  Use smokescreen!"  The street filled with smoke, and, when the smoke cleared, the machines couldn't find Ash, Misty, or Ghenki.  Pidgeot, Charizard, and Heracross had picked them up and flown them up to the roof of a nearby building.  They were twenty stories high, and out of sight of the machines.

            Misty let out a sigh of relief.  "Glad we came up with that escape plan!" she whispered.

            "No kidding.  But---you think we'll ever find a menace machine that has infra-red vision, or something, that will be able to see us through the smoke?"

            "Good question.  But---"

            Again, a loud cry interrupted Misty.  It was the scream of a humbug, and its scream was supposed to alert other machines that there were targets nearby.  Pikachu fried the humbug in a second, but not before the saberstrikes below started combining into spiderstrikes so that they could fly up and attack.

            "Any ideas?" Ash asked.

            Ghenki answered, "As long as they're flying, they can't shoot up at us.  If they fired, then their shots would slice through their own helicopter blades and they'd get grounded.  They'll need to make it up here before they can start to attack.  It's our best move to shoot them down now."  Ghenki began firing at the spiderstrikes with his weapon.

            "Gotcha.  Starmie, Staryu, go!  Use Swift attack on those!"

            "Blastoise, come on out!  Use Bubble beam on those spiderstrikes!  Charizard, use Flamethrower!"

            Before long, the machines were scrap metal.  Misty and Ash called back their pokémon, and Ghenki put his weapon back in his pocket.  "So…now what?" Ghenki asked.

            "We climb down the stairs of this building and get back to seek patrol.  And tell anyone we meet in the building about the nuke plant."

            "Right."

            Their climb down was uneventful, until they hear a small whimper.  Ash turned around.  "Misty, Ghenki…I thought I heard something back there."

            "Is that good or bad?" Misty asked.

            "Good question," Ghenki remarked.  "Do we check it out?"

            "I think checking it out comes with the job description," Ash answered.

            Misty gulped and followed Ash into the room.  Ash slowly opened the door.  "Hello?  Anybody in here?"  The room was dark, so he flipped on the light switch, but no light came on.  He flipped it a few more times, and nothing happened.  "Hmm---!  No power."  He fished a flashlight out of his backpack, and shone it around the room.  It came upon a girl who was curled up in the corner.  Through the dust room, Ash couldn't tell much about her, but he knew that she wasn't wearing much---if anything at all.  She looked like she was about six or seven.

            He heard Misty gasp behind him, and the girl cringed upon being seen.

            "It's okay!" Ash shouted to her.  He pulled a blanket out of his backpack.  Ash moved forward to wrap it around her, he asked, "Where are your parents, anyway?  Who else is living here---ow!  Hey, cut it out!"  As he wrapped the blanket around her, she pounded on his back with balled fists, as if to say, "Get away from me!"  When Ash pulled away, she pulled her head into a fold of the blanket to try to hide form Ash.

            "What's she doing?" Misty asked.

            "Beats me," Ash answered.  "It's like she can't understand what I'm saying."

            Ghenki said to the girl, "You do know we still know you're there, right?"

            There was no answer.  The blanket stood as still as a stone.  For an experiment, Ash tried to come closer to her again, and again she was pounding at his back.  This time, it was apparent that she was in tears and was panicking.  She was terrified of Ash for no good reason.  So Ash kept a distance of about a meter between himself and the girl as he began to ask her some questions.  He coughed dust out of his throat and said, "We're not here to hurt you…uh…whoever you are.  What's your name?"

            There was no answer.

            "You don't need to be afraid to speak to us!  We're not here to eat you!"

            There was still no answer.

            "Look, can you speak or not?"

            The dull gray shape of the combination of girl and blanket didn't move at all.  Ash looked back at Misty and Ghenki.  "I think she's one of those people who can't talk.  You know:  time messed up their memories so much that they don't remember how to speak, or who they are."

            "Not the best situation to be in," Ghenki admitted.  "Do you think her parents are anywhere near here?"

            "Maybe, maybe not," Ash answered.  "One of us should stay here while the other two look for anyone else in this building who can tell us anything about her.  I'll stay with her, if you'd like."

            Misty was a little unnerved by being separated from Ash, and Ghenki sensed that.  As he and Misty looked around, he asked, "How come you're suddenly so jumpy, Misty?"

            "Who?  Jumpy?  Me?"  There was a low scratching noise behind her, and she leaped a meter out of surprise.  It had only been a rat.

            "You see what I mean?" Ghenki asked.  "Now, come on!  Why is it?"

            "I dunno…I guess…isn't being in a big, dusty, dark apartment building like this just a little creepy?"

            "You weren't as nervous before we left Ash with that girl, back there.  What, do you think he'll get killed if we leave him for fifteen minutes?"

            Misty sniffled.

            Ghenki blushed.  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

            "It's not that…the dust is getting to me."

            Ghenki thought to himself, Riiiiiiiiight…  He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her.  "I guess I'm lucky not to have any allergies," Ghenki said, making it apparent that he wouldn't violate Misty's coyness.  "I mean, going on adventures all the time and allergies really don't mix, do they?"

            "Makes me wish I'd chosen to be an orphanage volunteer," Misty sniffed.  She dried off her face.  "Thanks."

            "No problem."

            There was a low clattering noise.  "What was that?" Misty asked.

            "Probably not another rat," Ghenki muttered.  He crept up to the door the noise came from.

            "You think it's a menace machine?"

            "A machine probably would've found the girl before we did.  And they have a set protocol for attacking hiding places:  first, attack and destroy the fighters.  Next, they stun any adults left, and then make the adults watch while they eat the kids.  If the menace machines had found her, they would've eaten her.  So this probably isn't a menace machine, unless the machine just came in the building."

            "So…what do you think this is?"

            "Hopefully, her parents."

            "Then if it's a human being we're looking for, why are we being quiet?"

            "Because I might be wrong."  Ghenki flung open the door, and shone his light on the source of the noise.  A multitude of whimpers rose up from the clustered group of Botamon that sat on the floor in the middle of the room.  "Hello!  …Anyone else in here?" he shouted.  There was no answer.  He looked down at the Botamon.  "I…I come in peace," he said, half-expecting a response.

            "I don't think they can see what you are," Misty thought aloud.

            "Oh, right."  Ghenki shone the flashlight on his face and let the Botamon see what he was.  "See?  I'm human."  He began to move the flashlight to shine back on the Botamon again.  "I'm not here to kill any…one…"  As the light moved back towards where the Botamon had been, Ghenki saw that there was no one there; the Botamon had all moved away while the light had shone away from them.  "Hello…?"

            "Aw, great!" Misty muttered.                                                                               

            "Shut the door, we'll get them cornered," Ghenki suggested.  "Is there a camping lantern, or something, in one of our knapsacks?"  He pulled a poncho out of his bag and tied the head and arm holes shut to make a bag out of it.

            "You aren't thinking of grabbing every last one of those poor little things, are you?  And you're not going to put them in there??"

            "How else can we take them?" he asked.

            "They'll suffocate in there!  And what kind of impression are we making, trying to get them like that!"

            "Well, what would you suggest?"

            "Positive reinforcement."

            "Positive what?  …Don't tell me what it is, let me guess what you're talking about…  'Positive' has to do with electricity, so you want to electrocute them out of hiding?"

            "No!  We show them that we aren't here to hurt them!  That we want to be friends…you know…!"

            "How do you think we should do that?"

            "Is that poncho clean?"

            "I would think so."

            "Hand it to me."  Misty spread the poncho out on the floor to keep something between the dust on the floor and the food she was beginning to set out.  She put everything that was in her knapsack on the floor, took a few steps away from the miniature picnic, and said, "Come and get it!  Doesn't that smell nice?"

            One Botamon slowly crept up to the food and began to eat.  Another joined him, and then another, until all of them were in the middle, eating.  Misty giggled.  "See?  All it takes is positive reinforcement."

            Ghenki shrugged.  "If you say so…but how would we get all of them back to base?"

            "Hmm…good question…hey, I know!  I bet Ash's Blastoise is big enough to carry them all!"

            "It's worth a shot.  And if that doesn't work, I bet there are other pokémon you have that can carry them. One of us should watch them while the other goes and tells Ash to get out Blastoise and join us here."

            "I'll go."  Misty circled the Botamon and left the room, and the second she came within a meter and a half of the Botamon, they stopped eating, and their eyes turned on her.  They were afraid that she'd do something to them if she came too close.  "Hey, I'm not going to do anything, I'm just trying to be friends!"

            There was no answer.

            Misty left the room, and she was climbing a flight of stairs up to the floor where she hoped they'd left Ash.  It was difficult to remember what was where in that building, but the stairs looked familiar.  She paused a moment to make sure this was the right way…she looked over her shoulder at the halls behind her, and she thought she remembered them…so she turned around to keep going.  But she let out a gasp when she saw that another saberstrike blocked her way…