Chapter 19: Motivation

"Misty, you worry way too much!"

"Ash, those are the worst-looking thunderclouds I've ever seen in my life!"

"It hasn't rained a drop and there's been no wind for hours. Those clouds aren't going to do anything! You know that the weather can be weird like this, sometimes!"

"Listen, I really don't think that we should be out here!" Misty insisted. "It's freezing cold, that ocean is creeping me out---"

"Wait a sec! You're a water pokémon trainer! Now the water is scaring you?"

"Well, there aren't any pokémon in that water, are there? There are enough menace machines in that water to take over the world!"

"Misty, what's with you? Everything has you scared. C'mon. Tell me what's wrong."

There was a short pause. It was as if Misty didn't know, herself.

"Misty, if there's nothing wrong, then---"

"It's that…" Misty sadly looked down. "I don't want to lose you again."

"…Misty…"

"Ash, when you didn't come back form that trading mission, then I…I just couldn't function! I couldn't fight with my pokémon for days, because I was so scared! Then I was convinced you wouldn't come back, after the nuke plant was destroyed… And now, here you are…"

"Misty…you don't need to be so scared."

Misty inhaled through gritted teeth. "Let's just be careful, okay?"

"…Okay," Ash agreed. He held out his hand to help Misty down from the rock she was standing on.

"So…what exactly are we looking for?" Misty asked.

"Anything these 'Linonian Empire' guys are doing. Particularly their new unfairy-rings that Tina found."

"How will we recognize if---"

"Pi KA!!" Pikachu hissed.

"What is it, Pikachu?" Ash asked.

"Pi ka chu!" Pikachu answered, motioning for them to join him behind the cover of a rock and pointing to a metallic shape.

"Awh!" Ash thought aloud. "That looks just like the spaceship we saw before, doesn't it, Misty?"

"It does…but, this time, you're not leaving the cover of this rock!"

"That's right, I'm not. It looks like there are a whole bunch of gremlins down there…" Ash began fishing around in his backpack. He pulled out a video camera.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Tracy lent it to me. It'll help us archive all that we learn. I hope it can pick up what they're saying," Ash thought again, fitting a couple of earphones in his ears.

"Noh nah tre akamnatato!!"

"Rutan noh nah tre atetantato!"

"Ununu. Kamnalatato otote anate ure tre yon tetentato djom nmohir kamnatato."

Misty gaped. "What are they doing with that sand?"

Ash shook his head. "Looks to me like they're rolling in it and playing with it. It's like they're going crazy over the stuff."

"Retan ¿oquere nahe lel?"

"Iflo erriz §oquer nah tre unu§. Oquer aquer lel unuyon §oquer grimn f'iona kamnalatato§."

"Ununu. Oquer tre virti § oquer nmah entridu unuyonrui §."

"Osw'i kiroiona argiatato! ¿Unu oquer nah entridu netl'?"

"Unu flo atat pel."

Ash let out a grunt of disgust. "I wish we knew what they were saying! I hate it when someone's talking some language I can't understand!" he muttered.

"Ash, I think we should get out of here and report this."

"No, Misty. I'm gonna keep filming this. Maybe we can get a clue what they're saying. Just keep quiet enough so they don't hear you and keep your hand on Golduck's pokéball."

"Golduck? Why would he help?"

"He'd be able to shoot that thing down with his hyper beam, and his Hydro pump and confusion attacks wouldn't hurt, either."

"Okay…"

"Man, that is one ugly cockroach that's going aboard their ship!"

The gremlins kept talking in their strange dialect, and, when their ship was full of sand, they boarded it and flew off.

"See, that wasn't so bad," Ash thought out loud as he kept aiming the camera at the ship taking off.

"Ash, you spoke too soon!" Misty shouted.

"Huh…?" Behind them, there was a cougore, poised to attack.

"Garem Dar!" it shouted. A port on its back opened and it made a strange noise. Misty suddenly collapsed to the ground.

"Misty, what happened?" Ash asked.

"Garem Dar!" it shouted again, and Ash immediately felt what Misty was feeling: overwhelming nausea that made him want to throw up.

Ash croaked, "Pikachu, thundershock it!" Pikachu fried the cougore in one shot.

He ran up to Ash and started licking his face furiously. "Pika-Pi! Pika-Pi!"

"Pikachu, stop that! You're gonna make me---!!!" Ash turned away from Pikachu and Misty and lost his lunch. "Boy, that felt wonderful!" Ash muttered.

Misty groaned, "I haven't felt this rotten since I ate my sister's pot roast!"

"Tell me about it! I hate those things!" he groaned, kicking the dead cougore's paw. "You think we should head back?" Ash asked.

"I don't want to be a drag, but I really don't feel up to walking, just yet."

"I don't see why we can't rest up for a minute, anyway."

"Pika," Pikachu warned.

"You see a reason why not, Pikachu?" Ash asked.

"Pika!" Pikachu pointed. There was a wall of rain heading straight for them.

"Aw, gimme a break! Blastoise, I choose you!" Blastoise jumped out of his pokéball.

"What do you plan---*ngh!*---on having Blastoise do?" Misty asked.

"Just stand over us," Ash answered, motioning for Blastoise to put his front paws on the rock and stand there to shelter them.

"Oh…that'll work," Misty sighed, rubbing her belly.

They were both still breathing heavily. "Are you okay, Misty?" Ash asked.

"No."

"I meant emotionally, not physically."

"Me, too," Misty answered.

"Listen, Misty…you look like a nervous wreck. Maybe you need to take some time off."

"That would mean---!---letting you out of my sight. I'm not ready to do that just yet."

"Misty…"

"Ash, when you--- Oh, please don't make me cry! I have enough on my mind just avoiding throwing up!"

"I don't want to see you do either, Misty. But you have to realize in your heart that I'm back, and that I'm not going to die!"

Misty slow stopped groaning about her stomach. "Ash…I'm sorry…you were dead, to me, and you being dead scared me half to death! It was awful, losing you once…I can't let it happen again!"

"Misty, I know that this whole situation scares you. I admit it: I'm scared, too. But I'm not going to leave you all alone on this miserable planet. If that's what you want, then I'd be willing to make sure that you're never alone by fixing my shifts and quarters so that I'm in the same room as you 24/7. If that's what you need to get over this…" Ash sighed. "Listen, I'm not the biggest fan of mush, and I don't want our lives to turn into some kind of demented soap opera, but if you need a friend to help you through this and if you need constant supervision…I'm here for you."

"Oh, Ash…! I can't tell you how---!!!!" Misty covered her mouth, and held her stomach down just long enough to turn away. "Ash!!! I thought I told you not to make me cry!"

"…Sorry…"

Misty sighed. "Thanks, Ash…but…I still can't get my head around the fact that you're not dead…!"

Ash gently slapped Misty's shoulder. "Is it still tough to believe with me right here next to you?"

"You're not going to think this makes sense, but…yes."

Ash looked like he was about to say something, but a dra-gun interrupted him with a shot to Blastoise's shell. The shot bounced off Blastoise's shell and into the air.

"Blastoise, use bubble beam on that thing!" Ash commanded. As the dra-gun exploded, Ash asked, "Are you feeling any better, Misty?"

"Yeah, but I'm not all that comfortable about walking through the rain."

Ash sighed. "Misty, we don't have any idea when it'll clear up. We might as well get our raincoats on and run for home."

"Well…if you say so, Ash…"

In about thirty seconds, they were bent over and ready for a sprint.

"Ready?"

"Set?"

"Go!!" they both shouted. Ash called Blastoise back, and the two of them dashed across the sand. But, before they'd made it off the sand and onto the grass, the rain stopped.

Misty and Ash came to a halt, and, panting, Misty spat, "It's getting easier to believe you're Ash!"

"Oh, shut up, Misty!" Ash shot back, flicking water in her face. "One question---why do you think those guys were getting sand?"

"Researching the Earth's soil?" Misty suggested.

"Probably not. They wouldn't need that much sand for research, would they? And they were filling their ship to the brim with it."

"You know, you're right…it does seem a little bit weird that they'd take that much, doesn't it?"

"Maybe, if we can get what they were saying translated, then we'd be able to find out why they're taking all this worthless sand."

"Hopefully," Misty agreed.

******

"How do we get into these situations?" Suezo asked.

"I'm not sure, chi," Moochi answered, "But I think it might have something to do with your flaky teleport attack!!!!"

Gary, Suezo and Moochi found themselves completely surrounded by luftwaffles. When the sun had come out, they hadn't found a place to hide in time to avoid being seen. It gets better: Gary had brought his cheerleaders along, and they never stopped chanting---even while they were dodging laser blasts with back flips.

"So, which one of us takes them?" Suezo asked.

"Might as well be me," Gary answered. "Jolteon, Gyarados, go!" His two pokémon jumped out of their pokéballs. "Gyarados, hyper beam!"

"Not a beam attack!" Moochi shouted---but he was too late. The beam was absorbed into the target luftwaffle's solar panel.

The luftwaffle decided to show its heartfelt thanks for that energy boost: "Yon Yore Dar!" It used the extra energy it absorbed in this attack, and it made Gyarados flinch.

"Aw, nuts! Anything else I should know?"

His cheerleaders answered, "♪♫If our fight comes to a halt, it will be Suezo and Moochi's fault! Gary, Gary, getting greater, he says to these 'I'll smell you later!' ♫" …And the funny thing about this chant was that it was done while the cheerleaders were being fired upon.

Suezo's mouth dropped open. "How can people stand to be around this blowhard?!"

"They might not be able to, chi."

"Jolteon, use thunder!" Jolteon filled the street with bolts of electricity, and the luftwaffles' engines overloaded. They fell to the ground and smashed.

The now ash-covered and incinerated cheerleaders croaked, "♪♫Gary is quite far from lame, but Jolteon has quite poor aim! ♫"

"…Well, they're good at making up songs on the fly," Suezo muttered.

"Chi," Moochi agreed.

"Listen," Suezo said out loud, "Should we get into hiding so that this won't happen again?"

The cheerleaders immediately packed themselves into an alleyway and hid behind a dumpster.

"Yeah, maybe," Gary thought out loud.

The girls let out a loud scream and packed out of the alleyway.

"What is it now?!" Suezo asked.

"There's a rat in there!!" the cheerleaders whimpered.

"Yuck! There are better hiding places than that for us!" Gary muttered.

"If you guys want to get yourselves killed by sticking around out here, I say more power to you!" Suezo muttered, hopping into the alley.

"That's not very nice, Suezo!" Moochi shot back, following him and watching Gary and his cheerleaders go off in another direction to find a hiding place.

After a minute or so, Gary and the cheerleaders ran back into the alley. "We thought it over, and maybe this isn't so bad, after all."

"So, in other words, you just ran into another load of luftwaffles and all your pokémon are exhausted from fighting them?"

"Right."

There was a short pause.

"…Do you realize that you just blew the mission, chi?"

"What?"

"We were supposed to go out and fight those mushroom-things that are making more menace machines, chi! Without your pokémon, we might not be able to fight them!"

"♪♫Since our fight came to a halt, it is Suezo and Moochi's fault! ♪"

Suezo frowned. "Whose idea was it to go into this hiding? And what would've happened if you had come in here in the first place?"

Gary gulped. He felt a sense of guilt, loneliness, and smallness coming up from his stomach.

His cheerleaders shouted louder,

"♪♫Since our fight came to a halt, it is Suezo and Moochi's fault! ♪"

Suezo rolled his eye. "Look, once the sun stops shining, let's just get back to base before something else happens."

Moochi cut in, "And we told you that---"

Suezo cut him off. "Hold your horses, Moochi: arguing with them isn't going to get us anywhere. They're stuck-up, self-worshipping blowhards. They will never stop arguing with you, because they think they're the smartest people on Earth. Believe me; I'm older than you, and I've seen this type. Don't argue with them."

"Chi…" Moochi sighed.

"It's not like we need to justify ourselves to them, or anything. It's Yolei we need to explain this to, and she's a lot more likely to believe the truth about what happened here than they are."

"And they were here and saw what happened, and they still won't believe it was their fault?" Moochi thought aloud.

"Yep. Remind me not to get conceited; it makes you stupid," Suezo muttered as he looked at Gary, who was doing various muscle flexes for his cheerleaders to praise.

******

"They have made a preliminary shipment of silica away from here, sub-major."

"Did they meet any resistance?"

"No, sir."

"Excellent. Then our next plan of attack should prove interesting. Is the machine ready?"

"It is, sub-major. But…if I may be so bold as to inquire why you had the primary controls scaled up to thirty-two times length?"

"Our pilot will not be a Linonian."