Chapter 58: Four Down, Three To Go…
"So…what, do these girls have a hive mind, or something? Collective consciousness?" Davis asked. "Their expressions are the same, and they're both sniffling at exactly the same time!"
"Must be something like that," Ash answered. "They were always singing for Gary in perfect unison, and it seemed like they could make up chants for him on the spot."
"Well, it's too bad they don't know where he is," Brock mused, calling Crobat back into his pokéball. Ash called back his Pidgeot and Noctowl, and they looked at Davis. "So…what's the plan, now?"
"Move to the wreck of the car and try another search party," Davis answered.
Imperialdramon asked as he beamed them into his force field, "Were exactly is this wreck?"
"I think it was eight blocks west and four blocks north of here," Tina answered.
"Here we go, then…" Imperialdramon landed over the car's wreck and let Ash, Brock, and Davis out again. "But…our flying pokémon and Gryllotamon are pretty worn out…how are we supposed to look for them?"
"On foot," Davis answered.
"I was afraid of that," Ash muttered, looking out at the pouring rain.
"Hey, they can't have gone far. I mean, those two told us that it started raining a few seconds after they were separated. If those girls all think the same way like I think they do, then the others will have found shelter fast and stayed there."
"…Okay." Ash pulled up his hood and looked around outside. "Let's see…I'm a cheerleader, running from menace machines that have just wrecked Gary's car…which way do I go…?"
"Hey, Ash. Here's another clue," Brock said, pointing out the smoldering wreckage of a few menace machines.
"Huh? You mean… the machines had to have been coming from over there?"
"Right, so the girls would've run the other way!"
"Hey, I see what you're saying! Let's go."
They tried to be quiet, but that's tricky when a humbug sees you and makes its alert noise.
"Totodile, shoot that thing down!" Ash yelled. Totodile jumped out of Ash's pokéball and spat water at the humbug. It went down. "So…now what?"
"I think we should go into hiding for the next few minutes, Ash!" Brock answered. "We don't want to end up in a battle, ourselves!"
"Right!" The two of them ducked into a convenience store. "Now, where are we least likely to be seen…? How about behind the counter?"
"NO! Not behind the counter!"
"Well, okay, but if you…wait a sec," Ash thought aloud. "Did you just say that, Brock?"
"Uh, no…I thought you did. It sounded like it came from…" Brock looked over the counter, and there were huddled a pair of wet, terrified cheerleaders. The two girls screamed out loud when they saw Brock look at them.
"Having your usual charming effect, Brock?" Ash asked. Brock was too high on hormones to understand what Ash had just said. "Hey, don't you recognize us?"
Both girls immediately stopped and looked. "ASH!" "BROCK!" They jumped out from behind the counter and wrapped their arms around the two trainers.
Brock's entire face was flush, and the cheerleader who hugged him had difficulty escaping the hug.
"Brock, drop her." Ash demanded. Brock's arms came loose and she fell to the floor. "One question: do you know where Gary or the others are?"
Again, both girls burst into tears. Ash looked at Brock with an unsure expression: he didn't know how Brock would respond to this. Ash asked again, "Do you have any idea where?"
"Ga-a-a-a-ary-y-y-y!!!" "We don't know where he i-i-is!" "We can't find him, and we're all alone in this storm, and the car's go-o-o-o-one!"
Ash sighed. He fished a pair of blankets out of his knapsack and tossed them to the two cheerleaders. "Is either one of you hurt? ---physically hurt?"
"No." "No."
"Good. Then you can make it to Imperialdramon."
"To…what?"
"You'll see." Knowing Brock was still chemically comatose, Ash unzipped his friend's backpack and pulled out a poncho for each girl. "C'mon."
Both girls were a little unsure about leaving the relatively comfortable store, but they followed Ash and Brock back to Imperialdramon. When they first saw him and realized he was alive, they hugged each other so tightly that could've vacuum-sealed each other. "It's okay," Ash reassured them. "He doesn't bite. Come on." Ash led them to the other two that Tina and June had found. Those two---along with June and Tina---were warming up from their previous hike through the rain, sipping hot cocoa.
Tina looked at the two new cheerleaders. "Man! At this rate, we'll have a full set before you can say 'antidisestablishmentarianism'."
"There are a lot of things that could happen before you could say that," Ash answered. "At least we didn't have to fight our way through to them."
As a clutch of saberstrikes ran towards Imperialdramon, Tina muttered, "You had to say that, didn't you?"
"Blastoise, Heracross, Totodile! Go!"
"Forretress, go!"
"Blastoise, use Bubblebeam! Totodile, scary face! Heracross, Mega Horn!"
"Forretress, Spikes attack!"
The saberstrikes mostly ignored Ash's and Brock's pokémon (a big mistake) and began shooting Imperialdramon with their sonic attacks, although the attacks weren't doing much damage. Ash and Brock's pokémon were wasting on the saberstrikes, though.
Imperialdramon had felt enough sonic attacks vibrate through his body; he shot back. "Patriot Marauder!" he shouted, and he spat a barrage of cluster missiles out at the saberstrikes. There wasn't one left standing.
"Whoa! If only pokémon could do that!" Ash thought aloud.
"That would make battles pretty interesting," Brock agreed.
"So…what do we do now?" Ash asked.
"I guess we go back to looking for Gary and the other girls."
"If you say so." Ash turned to the cheerleaders they had already found. "Um…do you know what direction the other two went in?"
"That way," all four answered at once, pointing down the street.
"Away we go, then," Ash thought aloud. "Great work, Blastoise. You, too, Heracross and Totodile. Return."
"Forretress, return."
Ash and Brock again walked away, hoping that they weren't about to face something even worse than the saberstrikes they'd just trashed…
******
"…And then there was the strike of 2014. You weren't born yet, but that was the worst strike these eyes have ever seen. Let me tell you, the price of fruit went soaring because demand was so high, and supply was so low! I was half-ready to go out there and pick myself, but I didn't want to get muck all over my new suit. Anyhow, I was surprised that they'd have any kind of labor union at all, considering that they're migrant workers. But somehow, they managed to get a union, and that almost killed our business! Why, I didn't get a bonus for two years! I had just started building that pool over there, and I didn't have enough money to finish it, so all that was there was this dirty hole in the ground with a few pre-laid pipes. That was ugly, and I had to move the family reunion away from the house to keep it out of the folks' sight! But, then, of course, there were a pair of young boys---I don't know whether it was nephews or second cousins, or whatever---but they got curious and decided to explore the ol' yard. They found that hole, and got their best Sunday clothes covered with dirt! I never heard the end of it from their father. Their mother would've gotten her two cents in if the father hadn't invested his entire life savings in that one pow-wow! All for a strike, and the behavior of a couple of boys. See, your parents should be glad you're a girl. All they need to do to keep your red head out of trouble is to tell you not to do something, and you won't try it. Not so with boys: they need to learn their lessons the hard way. Come to think of it, I should start employing women to work my fields, instead of men! Women wouldn't cuss at me: women can and will take anything you give 'em. You mark my words; you'll grow up to be a better person than your husband, whoever he turns out to be. And if you do marry, make sure you get him kicked out of his labor union! Returning to the strike of 2014, I always knew that they wouldn't be able to last forever. 'Course, neither could I. But I made it, and the union finally caved. I had half a mind to give them a pay cut, but I wasn't that brave. I mean, there's no way they would've been able to say no to that; their union was so weak, I could've killed it with a grain of salt. But I didn't have that kind of gumption to…"
Rika thought to herself, You don't want to know what I have the gumption to do, right now…!
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I admit it: there are probably no migrant workers in Hawaii; that's more of a mainland thing. I mean, there aren't that many places for a big population of workers to migrate to on an archipelago... But that's the punch line. This is sooooo ridiculous. Rika would have said so if she weren't half brain-dead with grouchiness.
And about the foreman's hairstyle? That was just a wide-brimmed straw hat, in case you were wondering. I don't expect that Tai-like hairstyles will be "in" amongst Hawaiian foremen, even in the year 2028.
...Boy, he's really torturing Rika, isn't he? I've got to put a stop to this before she attacks somebody...