Hello. The new chapter has arrived, and I hope no one has yet died from suspense. After all, we already have too many people dieing here anyway. Anyway, congratulations to Ash Ketchum,Pokémon Master, J.C. the Wabbit, ze cookie, The girl who flamed, Halfling Rogue, Rosemary the Rubix Cube, and of course Sparklewolf, who all got correctly Chapter 6's title line, "...it takes a certain kind of skill...", which is from 2 B A Master from the 2 B A Master CD. Now, without further ado, the story continues...
CHAPTER 7: ...What Happens To Our Souls?...
Ash crinkled his eyebrows over his closed eyes in frustration, as his perplexing thoughts began to slowly come back into focus in the blackness of his sight. His brain was a twist of reverberating sounds, screams and cackles, and echoing visions of swirled colors, deep violet, silver marble pattern, light lavender with gray, soft orange, and black rimmed in an intense vermilion. He felt the need to know what was going on.
He opened his eyes. Something seemed wrong here. The strange thing about his surroundings, it seemed, was not that he was somehow high up in the air. The strange thing was the place in which he was somehow levitated. The walls were rock, and the floor was ice, and there were broken stalactites busted on the floor, which was not where he was supposed to be. The walls should have been ornately carved and painted plaster, and the floor should have been wooden, and there should have been a broken chandelier busted on the floor. What was going on here?
Thoughts, comparing thoughts, began to roll in by the dozen. Kanto... Hoenn... Lavender Town... Route 119... Pokémon Tower... the cavern... The cavern was where he was supposed to be, he realized, not in some other place. For the moment, he didn't know why he had thought he was supposed to be in Kanto and not Hoenn. ...The cavern... of a million colors... just like Misty said. That was right too. Misty was with him at the moment, not Pikachu as he had thought at first. He didn't get a chance to look around for Misty, though, for he suddenly found himself consciously staring at the ground far beneath him.
With a gasp, Ash mentally and physically tried to prepare himself for falling down sixteen feet to the ice, but after a moment, it suddenly dawned on him that falling wasn't going to happen. He was in the air, just standing as natural as you please, which made Ash crinkle his eyebrows again, pensively this time.
Suddenly, far below, collapsed with their backs to the ground, he spotted Misty and... himself. Ash twitched in surprise, though he somehow didn't feel extremely shocked to see himself lying unconscious next to Misty. I mean, that's what it is supposed to be, right? But where is the chandelier that fell on us? Who took it? ...Wait... there isn't a chandelier here, but... I remember... No, that was somewhere else, wasn't it? That was why I thought I was in Kanto, because this happened before, didn't it? I saw myself lying unconscious on the ground in Kanto... Lavender Town... the... the Pokémon Tower. Yes, Pokémon Tower. Wait, but didn't I see myself and Pikachu look kind of dead like this because that Haunter separated our souls from our bodies? Then... Slowly, the image of black and vermilion eyes floated into his mind, and Ash suddenly gasped.
It happened again!
Ash quickly glanced down at his hands, and saw that his hands and his gloves were not the color that they were supposed to be. They were a pale grayish blue, translucent, giving Ash the impression of thick smoke. He glanced down at his shoes. They were the same color. Suddenly, Ash realized that his body didn't feel so heavy. It was almost as if he had the weight reduction he got underwater, yet he felt much lighter even than that. He felt like a cloud high up in the sky, far away from the world's gravity. He blinked. Then I'm just a spirit right now, he thought, as old half-remembered words, his own words, grew in his mind.
"...We're down there! What's going on? ...You're saying we're alike now? ...On no! We've been totally separated from our bodies! ...No way! I don't want to be a ghost yet!"
Ash would always remember Lavender Town, one of the stops in the middle of his Kanto traveling, no matter how many journeys he went on after that and no matter how long ago it had happened. To defeat the gym leader, Sabrina, and her psychic Kadabra from Saffron City, he had tried to catch a Ghost- type Pokémon at Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town, a nearby city. However, when he had gotten there, a Haunter that lived there had actually caught him and Pikachu, instead of the other way around. It had separated their souls from their bodies after an old chandelier had crashed down on top of himself and Pikachu, knocking them out. After a few adventures of flying around in the sky, Haunter and his friends Gastly and Gengar took their ghosts to a room high up in the tower. There were loads of games and toys there, and Ash finally figured out that Haunter had only made them into ghosts because he and his friends were lonely. He eventually convinced the sad Pokémon that he needed to continue his journey, and Haunter sent them back into their bodies, though he came along to Saffron to help Ash get his gym badge. Haunter ended up not being the most reliable Pokémon in the world, but he managed to secure Ash his fourth badge ever, in his own strange way.
Lavender Town's Haunter had separated Ash's spirit from his body because he had wanted a playmate. Somehow, this cavern's Haunter didn't seem like the gentle type of the other, so that could hardly be his reason. Ash glanced behind himself towards the back wall. The smiling Shuppets, the serious Shuppet, Sableye, and Haunter were gone.
All of a sudden, there was a surprised shriek in his ear and a moment later, Ash found a pair of arms wrapped tightly around his neck. He twitched nervously, glancing to his left, and saw the pale blue ghost of Misty hanging onto him for dear life. "WHAT HAPPENED?" She was hysterical in fright. "WHY ARE WE UP HERE? WHY ARE WE ALL... ALL... GHOST-LIKE?" Suddenly, Ash saw her eyes shift to the ice and for the first time, she must have noticed their bodies lying motionless on the ground. She hugged his neck tighter. "WE'RE DOWN THERE! WHAT'S GOING ON?"
"We've... we've been separated from our bodies, for some reason," Ash muttered. Haunter, he knew now, had definitely been trying to kill them, so why had he only separated their souls from their bodies and hadn't done... more? Ash was sure that he and Misty weren't dead, for the other Haunter had sent himself and Pikachu back to their bodies when they asked, but why hadn't the evil Pokémon just gone ahead and killed them with stalactites or something? ...And why on Earth did the Haunter want them to be dead? What had they done to him? What had someone done to him to make him the vicious Pokémon he was? Did he want to kill just anything that was alive? Why?
"WHAT!" Misty's eyes grew wide, staring at him, "HOW?"
"Haunter did it, because," Ash hesitated, but only slightly, "I think he's trying to kill us. ...But we're not dead, so don't worry about that."
Misty's mouth hung open in shock. She glanced down at their bodies on the floor, which actually looked surprisingly dead. "...Kill us? Why on Earth would a Pokémon want to... to kill someone? What is wrong with that Haunter, Ash?"
Her arms were still around his neck, as if either in fear of falling as they floated above the icy floor, or simply in fear itself. Ash instinctively put his left arm around her without him noticing himself. She was shivering, though from nerves and not cold. Ash had noticed a moment ago that he really could feel no temperature, and anything that would normally be hurting from the Haunter's attack on his body right now, was not in pain on his spirit form. He couldn't even feel his starving stomach rage at him anymore. "I... I really don't know why, Misty. It's so, just... wrong."
Misty began to breathe in heavily, but this did her no good, as her spirit didn't use air. After a moment or two, she mumbled, almost as if she was embarrassed, "... I... I... I'm kind of... of scared, Ash."
Ash crinkled his eyebrows once more, this time in distress. Misty hated to admit things that made her look weak, so she was obviously very scared of their situation, or very trusting that Ash wouldn't laugh at her. Ash, trying to figure out what to do, realized that his left arm was around her shoulders, so he cautiously rubbed her back in a reassuring way. She wouldn't look him in the eye, but he felt her arms relax, though not loosen their hold on his neck. Gently, Ash asked, "What exactly are you afraid of, Mist?"
She didn't answer for a moment, but simply stared down at their bodies. Then, "Of... of falling, and... that's all." So that really is what she was afraid of, Ash thought, though for some unknown reason that he simply couldn't understand, he was saddened that fear was her only motivation for holding onto him.
"Don't worry about that," Ash tried to assure her, "You won't fall. I mean, I haven't fallen, so you won't either. ...It's kind of fun to glide around. You can do that, you know. It's just like swimming underwater, except better." Misty suddenly switched from fear to annoyance, giving Ash her famous 'don't-you-dare-dis-water-again-or-I-will-hurt-you-very-badly' look. "I mean, nothing can beat swimming, so this takes second place, but..." Ash trailed off sheepishly. Misty's eyes softened laughingly, and the corners of her mouth twitched upwards.
"Well, if you say so!" Misty slowly released him from her intense grip and hung in the air by herself. After a moment, she straightened herself up and smiled a little bit, proud to have overcome her small fear. Then, in a serious tone, she turned to Ash, looking him in the eye, and asked, "Do you think we're ghosts?"
"Ghosts, spirits, souls... whatever you want to call it," Ash mumbled, but added once more, "but we're not dead. Just separated from our bodies."
Misty became thoughtful. "I like the word 'souls'. 'Spirits' and 'ghosts' are kind of scary sounding, but 'soul' is a nice word."
"Yeah," Ash agreed, "and ghosts ARE scary, huh?"
She snorted in laughter, but nodded sadly. Then, seriously again, she asked, "If we're separated from our bodies, can we just go down there and get back in our bodies?"
Ash gave their motionless forms on the floor another look. He wasn't sure that it worked that way, just being able to go back in, but anything was worth a try. "I don't know, Misty, but we can have a go at it." Ash, remembering how he had moved when he was a spirit in Lavender Town, glided down towards their bodies on the icy floor. Misty was unsure of what to do, and in desperation, actually did the same thing Ash had done and glided down beside him.
Both of their bodies were ghastly pale, Ash's face very flushed and all of Misty's skin colorless. For both of them, it was a strange sensation to see themselves, for all mirrors lie, no matter what. Misty's mind became a bit joyful, seeing Ash's right hand laying on top of her left palm. In her and Ash's case, she found their hands' position rather romantic. Two desperate lovers, unable to continue onwards on the unforgiving journey of their lives, bound together for eternity... She shook her silly, dreaming sentence thoughts away, as they would probably only make her do something drastic, and Misty turned her attention back to Ash. Ash was slowly reaching his hand out to touch his own body. He got his ghostly fingers about an inch away from his body's chest, then stopped. He pulled his hand back and tried again, but only got an inch away before stopping again. He blinked.
"Well?" Misty asked, "Aren't you going to-"
"I can't," Ash said, then continued at Misty's confusion, "I mean, there's like a force field around my body or something. I can't touch myself, so I can't get back in."
Misty was visibly disappointed. "Oh. Well, I guess the only way we can is to get Haunter to send us back, huh? Good luck to us with that," she muttered sarcastically.
"We'll find a way."
"Yeah, I know." Suddenly, Ash saw her glance down at her body on the ice. "Aw, man! Will you look at that? I'm bleeding." She touched the cut on her soul's forehead that matched the one bubbled with blood on her body. It felt as though her cut was damp on her forehead, though she couldn't feel the actual feeling of wetness.
"Gosh!" Ash glided past Misty, and kneeled down gently on the ice on Misty's body's right side. "Whenever we do get back in our bodies, you're head will be hurting like Psyduck if you loose much more blood." Unthinkingly, he reached his fingers out towards her forehead and touched her cut gently. Both Ash and Misty jumped in shock that Ash was able to make contact with Misty's body and not his own. Ash glanced at his ghostly left hand fingers and saw, in surprise, a thin layer of blood on his fingertips, pale blue like the rest of himself. Misty, who was watching Ash's soul from across both of their bodies, glanced down at Ash's body's limp left hand and saw fresh, red blood hanging from his fingertips. She was stunned. Ash hadn't noticed what Misty had, and he rubbed his fingers together, feeling the strange texture of ghostly blood. Misty saw what Ash did and glanced down at his left hand again. His hand hadn't twitched or moved in the slightest, but the red blood was now smeared across his fingertips.
Now that the two parts of themselves were separated, whatever happened to their bodies automatically corresponded with their souls, and whatever happened to their souls automatically corresponded with their bodies, Misty figured. It was strange, and somewhat frightening.
Misty glanced up as Ash reasoned, "Maybe I can stop your cut from bleeding any more." He glanced around, unsure of what to do or use to help her body. Suddenly, she saw his eyes widen. He gave her a nervous glance out of the corner of his eyes, and slowly, took his Pokémon League hat off of his head. For a moment, Misty thought he was going to press his hat to her body's forehead, until he reached inside of his hat and pulled out one of the most secret items he had ever owned. Misty froze.
Her handkerchief.
It was the handkerchief that she had given Ash the day that she had been forced to leave him for the first time since they met. She had given it to him discretely, almost without him knowing, but was sure that he wouldn't keep it. Ash wasn't good with keeping small items like that (after all, it had been a terror trying to keep Quagsire and other things from stealing the GS Ball when he had it). She had wanted, no matter what, to be remembered. She had never wanted to be forgotten. Obviously, she hadn't been.
He had always kept her handkerchief with him. After he had come to Hoenn, Pikachu had gotten sick, and Ash was positive that more bad luck was sure to follow. While waiting for Professor Birch to come pick them up at the docks, he had taken her gift out of his backpack and stuck it inside of the new hat that he wore. It had been a small bit comforting to know that a part of Misty was with him, even if she wasn't. Since then, he had kept her handkerchief with him whatever happened and wherever he went. Brock and Pikachu had seen it before, but they didn't know that Ash had kept it. May and Max hadn't seen it all. It was a... personal thing to Ash, that he didn't want on display to everyone.
Misty watched him in silence. With great ceremony, he folded in half the handkerchief, pale blue like everything that had become a part of his soul with him, and then folded it in half again. Then, Ash tenderly placed the pale square of cloth on the cut and firmly but gently held it down with the palm of his hand. He kept his eyes on his work, and Misty kept her eyes on him. They didn't speak, or make any noise. After a minute or so, he lifted the handkerchief up to check on the stoppage of blood. The cut had clotted sufficiently to not bubble up any more, so Ash placed the ghostly cloth back down and blotted at a crimson stain on her body's wan forehead. He then swiped away any remaining blood and checked the cut once more. It had stopped completely, and simply remained a red line drawn across her brow.
Ash looked at the handkerchief and saw that there was a giant smudge and two smaller ones stained on it. He didn't really care. It was her handkerchief and her blood, so it was okay. In the same slow movements he had been using, he returned the folded handkerchief to the inside of his ghost hat and put it back on his head. Misty touched her own soul forehead and found, not so surprisingly, that the damp-like feeling was gone.
For an unknown reason, Ash found it hard to look back up at her watching spirit again, but he felt that such a thing was required of him after the small act of service. They stared expressionlessly at each other from across their unconscious bodies. Then Misty smiled softly, her eyes narrowing contentedly, and whispered, "Thanks." He nodded, for he didn't feel that it would be prudent to ask which she was thanking him for: stopping her body from bleeding to death, or keeping her handkerchief. Maybe both.
A small clicking sound came from behind Misty and they quickly looked around, half-fearing and half-hoping that it was Haunter. From behind one of the few stalagmites that had remained intact in the ice, a violet paw appeared, followed by a ragged Sableye. He crawled towards them on all fours, low to the ground, his silver eyes dull and downcast. They saw a line of dried blood had formed from his mouth to his chin. His twitching movements suggested that the most terrible aches and pains were affecting him.
"Sableye!" Ash cried out, standing up quickly and gliding in the air towards the frail Pokémon. Misty followed him immediately. Sableye glanced up at Ash's voice. He groaned softly and suddenly, fell over onto his right side with a hard thump. Ash kneeled down in front of the collapsed Pokémon and cautiously petted his smooth violet head. Misty, afraid that the injured Dark- and Ghost- type might die on them, was tentative to sit down to Sableye's left, but she did. The Pokémon managed a weak whine.
"Sableye, can you see and hear us?" Ash asked. Sableye, looking up at him, nodded. Ash wasn't too surprised. The other Ghost- types in Lavender Town, besides the Haunter, had been able to see and hear him and Pikachu, also. He figured it was a ghost thing, being able to see and hear other ghosts.
Misty seemed in the verge of tears. "Sableye," she sniffed, "Are you going to be okay?"
Sableye, through his pain-dimmed eyesight, saw how distressed the ghost girl was over his condition, so he tried a slight smile to comfort her. "Sable," he murmured. Forcing his mind to take his body back under control, he lifted his head up and looked past Ash and Misty's souls at their bodies on the floor. His long slender arm shaking, he pointed at the motionless forms, then at himself and back again.
"Do you want us to take you over there, Sableye?" Ash asked quickly. Sableye let out a small squeak, too high pitched to be normal, which they took to mean a 'yes'. Ash, nodding to Misty to copy him, slipped his pale blue arm under Sableye's right arm, and Misty cautiously slipped her own arm under the Pokémon's left. They both floated up a few feet off the floor (Misty was getting the hang of the whole 'floating' business), and flew Sableye smoothly over to where their bodies lie. They set him down gently on the ice. He slowly sat up, left paw claws sinking into a stalagmite to keep him steady. Gasping as the vertebras in his backbone scraped together, Sableye wondered how long it was going to be this time before he had completely healed. Haunter had been right. It had taken him two weeks to be able to move naturally again after the last time they had battled.
"Sableye," Ash inquired inferiorly, "I know that you're really hurting from your battle with Haunter, but do you think it's possible that you could send us back to our bodies? I mean, you're a Ghost- type, so can you? If you do, we can get out of this cavern, and when we get back on the ground, we can get our backpacks from our friends and bring you some Potions and things to heal you." He saw Sableye give a weak grin at the medicine that he was offering him. He obviously wished that Ash and Misty had the medicine now.
However, Sableye slowly shook his head. "You can't send us back? You're not able to?" Sableye continued to give his negative response, but the wrinkles in his forehead grew deeper as he felt more useless. "... Haunter could send us back though, if he wanted to, couldn't he?" Looking up at the darkest hole in the back wall, then at the spirit Ash, Sableye nodded. "He won't though." Nod. "...He wants to kill us, right?" Nod. "We're not completely dead though." Nod. "Does he... does Haunter want to kill... a lot of people... besides us?" ...Nod. "He does? And... and Pokémon, too?" Nod. "Well, I mean, he obviously can't kill everyone in the world this way, can he?" Sableye gave him a look that read, 'if he possibly could, he would'. Ash began to feel sick. What on earth was wrong with the Gaseous Pokémon?
"What do we do now?" Misty interjected into Ash's questioning for information. Sableye was thoughtful. What could they do now? He knew that they hadn't been out of their bodies long, but they couldn't waste even a second more, for they didn't have a long time to begin with. He figured they'd been out five minutes, for he had watched their souls wake up from behind a stalagmite, just as Haunter was going into his hole. They had only been unconscious for less than a minute, but they probably thought it was longer. They need more information about... about everything that's... indispensable to know. Suddenly, Sableye pointed up at the ceiling.
"Huh?" Ash frowned. "You want us to go to the ceiling?" Sableye shook his head, slowly to avoid a rising headache, and jabbed his finger towards the top of the cavern again.
"Farther up than the ceiling?" Misty asked. Sableye carefully nodded, then held up two claws. "Two... two..." Misty muttered, trying to decipher his message. "Two... second..." Sableye's eyes lit up the smallest bit. "Second? Second... second what?"
Sableye pointed up at the ceiling once more. Ash thought hard, then it dawned on him. "The second cavern?"
"Sable!" Sableye hoarsely cried.
"We need to go to the second cavern? But why? ...Wait a second," Ash blinked, "The only thing that we really saw was writing on the wall, but it was too high up for us to read." Sableye was nodding as vigorously as he could at the moment. "You... you want us to read the writing?" He nodded again.
"Ash," Misty said, "We'd be able to see it now, because we can float up to it."
"You're right, Misty," Ash agreed, then turned back to Sableye, "We'll go read the writing, okay?" Sableye made a hasty shoo-ing motion with his paw again. "And we'll go fast, too. Be careful, Sableye. We'll come back as soon as we can." Sableye nodded.
Misty glided down to the Darkness Pokémon and petted his head tenderly. "Take care of yourself, okay?" Sableye smiled and nodded slightly. The girl was sweet and Sableye thought the boy lucky to have someone like her with him. He remembered how his own master had wanted a certain girl to travel with him, but wasn't able to have her companionship, though his master had hinted that he liked the girl a little more than a friend. Sableye vaguely wondered if it was the same for these two as it was for his master and his master's friend. They seemed awful close and caring.
"We'll be back, Sableye," Ash called, as he glided towards the exit, Misty following in his wake. Then, they were gone down the passage, back the way they had come, minus one important thing: their bodies. Sableye glanced over at the rapidly chilling bodies he was guarding. Both the boy and the girl (Ash and Misty, right?) now had almost bleached looking skin. Unfortunately, Sableye knew that the cold wasn't the only thing that was making them whiter. He shivered... in apprehension.
Out of the corner of his hexagonal eyes, Sableye spotted a shape. He looked quickly. It was the Shuppet. It had glided a bit towards him from wherever it had hidden after Haunter left, still frowning at him, its face totally impossible to read. Is it going to say something? Or attack? Or... is it guarding the children... and me? The Shuppet continued its stare unblinkingly, even as Sableye quickly glanced warily back at the hole in the wall.
He had thought that he had heard laughter.
Ash and Misty quickly found that flying around, though it was bound to have inconveniences that they hadn't yet discovered, was a far easier way to travel around the caverns than to slide in the ice or struggle through the snow. They flew right over top of the ice slide, seeing how extremely steep it looked from the air, and through the ice floored caves. They began to pass things in a few minutes that had probably taken them half an hour, or maybe a whole hour, to get to. The lighting was normal now. Suddenly, they were back in their favorite cavern, the one with the crystalfall. From their new viewpoint, ten feet up in the air, Ash and Misty could fully appreciate the beauty of its shingled design and explosion of color. They both hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to leave the new panorama.
"We have to keep going," Misty murmured softly, slowly flying towards the next grotto area. Ash, tearing his eyes away, followed. The next cavern's floor turned back into snow and finally, they were back in the third, round cavern. Ahead of them was the high cliff, and the long slide to their right. They glanced down at the floor and saw that the footprints that they had left were still visible in the snow.
Ash took the lead, soaring high up towards the top of the cavern. Misty followed at a slower speed. She had been thinking hard ever since they had left Sableye behind. Something wasn't right, but she wasn't sure what it could be. Misty kept thinking back to the things Ash had told her when she had woken up to frighteningly find that she was near the cavern ceiling. Something, for some reason, didn't seem to add up. He seemed to... know more than she did...
"Ash." Ash paused in mid-flight and turned in the air to face Misty. Her short, ghostly blue hair framed her puzzled face as she stared at him.
"What is it, Mist?" Ash was in the midst of an excitement rush. These caverns were turning out to be quite the adventure, no matter how cold or scary, and adventure always stirred up his blood.
She only hesitated a second. "How did you know? I mean, how did you know that it was Haunter that separated us from our bodies? Sableye agreed with you, so how did you already know? And how did you know how to move as a ghost? I had no idea how to glide around until I copied what you did." Ash knew that if he had been in his body, his cheeks would have been bright red. "I mean, it's almost like you've been a ghost before."
Ash sucked in a breath that wasn't necessary. Misty noticed. "I don't know what you're talking about," he replied, his voice slightly higher than normal. He had never told Misty and Brock what had happened to him and Pikachu, and for all they knew, the two had just been unconscious the whole time.
Misty's eyes immediately narrowed fiercely. "You're lying." When Ash started to protest, she shook her finger at him in reprisal. "Don't give me that, Ash Ketchum! You've been a ghost before, haven't you!" She began to rant, "It was while I was gone, wasn't it! I knew it! Everything happens when I'm not looking! Everything! I-"
"No." Misty stopped yelling at him. He was looking away in embarrassment. "Yeah, Pikachu and I were ghosts once for a little bit, but it wasn't when you were gone."
Misty's eyebrows furrowed. "When was it then?" She couldn't think of a time when Ash could have been a ghost and she and Brock or Tracey wouldn't have known.
Ash seemed a bit surprised that she hadn't guessed. "...Lavender Town, of course."
Lavender Town... Misty thought, ...Of course! When we were at that Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town, Ash and Pikachu went in by themselves for a while when Brock and I waited outside. When we finally went inside, they were unconscious under that broken chandelier, and it took them a long time to wake up, even after we dragged them out from under that big old brass chandelier. That's when they must have been ghosts!
Suddenly, Misty recalled a particularly bizarre event, that still to the current day she had never figured out, that had occurred while she and Brock had been waiting outside for Ash and Pikachu. While she was standing around, something invisible had grabbed her around the waist and lifted her high up into the air. She had screamed, sure that it was one of the freaky ghosts that haunted the tower out to get her. Then, the invisible hands had let go and grabbed her under her arms, letting her dangle and giving Brock a chance to catch her when it finally let go. She had just about squished Brock to pieces when she knocked him over, but she didn't even apologize. She was too worried that another one of the ghosts had gotten Ash, so she ran towards the tower in a rush, only to find her worst fears confirmed with the boy and his Pokémon unconscious on the floor inside.
Ash waited tensely for Misty to come to some sort of conclusion from the apparent memory she was recalling. All of a sudden, her eyes became dangerous slits. "It was you, wasn't it! It was you who picked me up!" she yelled at him. This was true. "You were the one who complete scared me out of my wits! I can't believe you! And you never told me or Brock this whole time! I oughta..." She made a livid lunge at him. With a slight cry, Ash flew out of her grasp and glided as fast as he could towards the hole in the ceiling of the cavern that led to their destination, the second cavern. He could sense that Misty was gaining on him, but for some reason, she hadn't raged at him in as tough a manner as he was used to from her. When she had yelled at him, she had seemed awful... playful.
Misty was slightly regretful that Ash hadn't glanced back her as she chased him towards the stalactites. He would have seen that she was smiling, for she had remembered something that made her stomach burn inside happily. She remembered a voice whispering in her ear right before the 'ghost' had picked her up. Now she was excited about who had said it and the words that were said, for she remembered the delight that had been easily detectable in the voice.
"So Misty, you're really worried about me!"
During the few seconds that it took to fall through the tunnel, Jesse was worried about landing on something hard when the hole ran out of tunnel, though she didn't have to be. For one thing, when she sat up after hitting the floor, she found that she had landed in a pile of soft, fluffy snow. For another, she had also landed on James, who was laying face down spread-Pidgey in the snow bank.
Jesse blinked, then smiled gratefully. To James, she said sweetly, "Thanks for breaking my fall." She heard a muffled groan coming from inside the flurries and she quickly stood up, grabbing James under his left arm and heaving him out of the snow. James' head and shoulders were slumped a considerable amount, and he held his right hand to his forehead tightly. Jesse held his left arm securely to keep her dazed partner from falling over as she brushed snowflakes out of his straight blue hair. He groaned again. "Are you okay, James?"
Flinching in pain, James mumbled, "My head's not. I must have hit it on something when we landed," and he added as an afterthought, "...it hurts."
"Well," Jesse said brightly, "be thankful that I wasn't hurt."
James narrowed his emerald eyes, and under his breath, he muttered sarcastically, "Yes, I'm very thankful." Luckily, Jesse didn't hear him, for she was giving their environment a second glance and was awestruck. James, rubbing his throbbing forehead, glanced at their surroundings and was equally impressed.
They were in a cave, a giant underground cavern. It was thirty feet across, and like a hallway, it stretched out a long way before and behind them. The walls were jagged marble-patterned stone, pale gray and white, almost silver, and the settled snow rolled up against the walls in waves. The top of the cavern was rounded like a cathedral, and the long tapering forms of dripping stalactites hung down threateningly. Right above the two, stalactites framed a dark round opening. As if it wanted to explain that it was the hole that Jesse and James had fallen through, a few particles of dust wafted down through the air from the opening.
Suddenly, Jesse gasped in delight and clasped her hands together gleefully. "Oh, James! It's so... just... MAGNIFICENT in here, isn't it!" She was glancing around happily, her eyes wide and joyful, gazing at all of the flurries. "Look at all of the snow, James! SNOW! Isn't it so beautiful and fluffy and white! Oh, I just LOVE the snow, James!" She grasped a handful of snow and went skipping around and around in circles, letting flakes fall from her hand. James stayed where he was, letting the pain in his head subside and adjusting the strap of the backpack he was wearing. He hoped that Jesse hadn't swashed all of the items inside the pack when she had landed on him, but at the moment, he didn't mind. He knew how much Jesse cherished snow, which brought her memories of her mother, and he loved watching her whenever she got excited about the snow. He loved-
WHUMP! James was almost knocked down as a perfectly-round and perfectly-aimed snowball hit him square in the chest. Jesse laughed merrily, calling, "Come on, James! It's snow! SNOW! It's been perfectly forever since we saw snow! Isn't it funny? It's summer up there, but winter down here!" James blinked, then grinned wickedly at her. Immediately, he bent down and grabbed a handful of snow. It was a pointless little race to see who would have their next weapon first. Jesse was soon almost done compacting a new missile, but James was about to throw his. Jesse looked up at him, grinning, but slowly the smile faded away into a slightly fearful look. James realized that she was looking over his shoulder, but he was certain that she was faking it to get the advantage. He didn't consider that something was really wrong until her snowball fell limply out of her hands, the rest of her perfectly still. James froze as he began to sense a presence behind him. James turned gradually around and Jesse slowly tiptoed to his side.
It was Sneasel.
Sneasel looked happy.
Well, not so much 'happy' as 'grinning-broadly-but-nastily-because-it-was-planning-something-most-unpleasant'.
Jesse and James did not look happy. They weren't happy. They were intimidated, shocked, and freaked out. Neither one had heard the Ice- and Dark- type Pokémon sneak up on them. As they did very often, both wondered the same thing at the same time. How did a Sneasel get here?
"Hello Kitty," Jesse murmured cautiously.
The Sneasel was watching them with arms crossed. Suddenly, it sprang into action. With a great battle cry, it swung its right paw at them, both sharp claws extended portentously. Jesse and James cried out in fright and James latched himself onto Jesse's back. After the attack failed to strike, all three stood still. The Sneasel was just considering waving them away and laughing hysterically at their fright, when suddenly, the partners did what Team Rocket did best.
They ran screaming in the opposite direction.
Just as Jesse and James' instincts had sprung into action, so did Sneasel's, and Sneasel's instincts yelled, 'CHASE'! Sneasel took off after them immediately as the two humans struggled to run through the thick snow drifts. They ran and ran and ran. As they ran (screaming at the same time), James looked over his shoulder at the quickly approaching Pokémon, then up at the hole in the ceiling from whence they had come. The further they dashed from the Sneasel, the further away from hole they were going. James knew that if they could shake off the pursuing Sneasel, or go back the other way past it, they could get out of this cavern with the Escape Ropes in his backpack, but the Sneasel seemed to be everywhere behind them at once.
Jesse and James were practiced runners, which gave them an advantage, but the Sneasel was in its element... literally. The snow piles slowed the fleeing people tremendously, but helped the Sneasel, who could run almost on top of the snow. It would get very close to them, give a swipe at them, and give them a few seconds head start again. Sneasel was grinning happily now. Its game was fun.
The hole in the ceiling soon disappeared from sight as they continued running and running and running. Jesse felt like she had been running for at least ten minutes when she felt herself slowing down. James was slowing down, too.
"WE'RE GOING TO DIE! WE'RE GOING TO DIE!" James began to shriek hysterically. He tripped on some unseen rock buried deep in the snow and almost fell right down, but Jesse grabbed his left hand with her right in the nick of time and pulled him out of it. They continued their pace. Sneasel yowled out merrily behind them.
"Don't be so pessimistic, James!" Jesse condemned James' panic, though she felt the same way herself, "We'll get out of this somehow! ...Maybe we can offer it a job at Team Rocket, so it can hurt as many Twerps as it wants, just not us!"
"We already tried asking a Sneasel that before, Jess!" James answered, holding onto her hand tighter, "And it didn't work!"
"Oh." Jesse remembered. "Right."
Sneasel began to slow its pace as it saw its targets slowing down. It wished they would hurry up again. The Sneasel liked its game of Tag, but it wasn't very fun unless the competition was decently competitive. Jesse and James didn't notice the Sneasel slowing. They kept running down the silver-walled passage, even though they were dead tired and lost already. Unknown to them, Sneasel abruptly stopped. It stood still for a moment, watching them run off, then began to laugh. It doubled over in laughter and almost fell down. Still chuckling, it shook its head and waved the retreating pair away with its still-extended claws, then cantered off down the snowy path, the way Jesse and James had come. It was bored, and tired. It wanted a nice long nap. Besides, it didn't want to get near the hole that was in the floor...
...that Jesse and James abruptly found as they fell straight into it. They fell, but only for a few seconds before they hit snow. The two Team Rocket members landed in a jumbled heap. They hadn't even seen the hole until they plummeted down through it. After a second in which the shock of the fall went away, Jesse and James quickly untangled themselves from each other and struggled up to continue running. James fell down again, so Jesse wearily hauled him up, saying, "Come on, James! We have to keep going! That Sneasel will jump through the hole any second now and rip us to shreds!"
"Just leave me here to die!" James moaned pathetically. Jesse rolled her sapphire eyes. He was being his dramatic-theatre-self again.
"COME ON! I will NOT leave you here to die! Let's go!" She dragged him back up onto his feet from where he had slumped over again. Reluctantly, he moved his feet, and they took off down the snowy hallway. James, exhausted and now slightly paranoid, thought he saw the Sneasel over his shoulder. He had actually seen snow that he had kicked up himself, but he didn't realize it, and began screaming hysterically again.
The thought of battling Sneasel with their Pokémon had never once entered either of their minds.
I wish I could battle, Max kept thinking. Even as the search party collapsed, exhausted, on the ground after the long morning of searching, his brain continued to bug him with questions that were inappropriate to the somber situation they were in. Nonetheless, the thought of Pokémon battling continued to plague Max's mind, egged on by the four Pokéballs on the belt he was wearing, and the two Pokémon in his arms and on his shoulder. A whole team, Max thought, sitting on the grass beside his sister. However, the more Max thought, the more he began to feel that his brain wasn't trying to tell him that it wanted to battle, but it was telling him something that had to do with the Pokémon. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what.
Max watched Brock sit down wearily on the ground across from him, then he glanced at his sister. He couldn't believe that she was staring dreamily into space again. They were supposed to be watching for clues as to where Ash and Misty could have disappeared to, as they had completely given up on calling for them. "MAY!" Max yelled sharply in her right ear, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
May immediately whipped her head around to face him, and yelled right back, "WHAT DO YOU THINK? I'M THINKING, FOR HO-OH'S SAKE! DON'T YOU EVER THINK?" The complete irony of the outburst was somehow lost.
Brock was grinning slightly to himself, and Max felt that Brock probably knew something that he didn't about May's dreaming. May promptly went back to staring at nothing, her eyes half-closed and a smile just visible on her face. Max rolled his eyes. His sister was very weird, obviously, but he had known that for ages. She was quite concerned about Ash and Misty, just like the rest of them, but when no one was saying what they should be doing or she didn't have anything to say about it, then she didn't really think about it either.
Poochyena was rolling in the grass a little ways away from the trainers, and Pikachu was standing nearby, watching somewhat quizzically and waiting for the people to give the word that they were continuing on. Though he was trying to look optimistic, there was something very forlorn and desperate about Pikachu's face. He was clearly beyond his worry limit about his master and his friend, and was now ready to just cry in failure.
"Hey, Pikachu," Brock called softly. Pikachu glanced over at him and meandered soberly over to him on all-fours. Brock petted the electric Pokémon's droopy ears and muttered, "It's okay, Pikachu. Don't be so depressed. We'll find them... eventually." Pikachu lied down on the ground, his round black eyes still threatening to produce tears. Brock petted his brown-striped back a bit, which was a bit calming for both of them.
"'Eventually' is right, Brock," Max muttered, "I'm simply clueless about what could have happened to them. It's like they've vanished off the face of the Earth! I mean, I'm sure they're somewhere in these woods here, but... I don't know. ...Hey, Brock, what time is it?"
Brock pulled Max's PokéNav out of his pocket and switched it on. They had been wandering somewhat aimlessly for a while, so he had turned it off a bit ago. Max saw Brock's eyebrows rise in surprise. "I didn't know it was this late." Brock promptly turned the PokéNav around for Max to read the screen. 12:34 PM.
Max was surprised, too. "Wow, it is pretty late; the morning's completely gone. I've thought that time was going slowly when we were searching, so I figured that it would still be early, but I guess it wasn't that slow! So how long have we been looking, Brock?"
It took Brock a second or two to figure it out in his head. "Well, we were searching for about three hours last night. We left the old camp at eight o'clock this morning, and it's about twelve thirty now, so that's... let me think... about four and a half hours today. Together, we've been searching for them about-"
"-seven and a half hours," Max completed. They sat in stunned silence for a while. Pikachu sighed. Togepi, who had been sitting in May's lap pulling grass out of the ground, trilled, though the noise seemed a little sad for once. May continued to stare into space, and though she probably hadn't heard them, her forehead wrinkled unhappily, so at least she had the right emotion if not the right thought. Poochyena crawled morosely over to Max and nudged his hand, wanting to be petted, which Max did absentmindedly.
After a long pause, Brock mumbled, "Well, it's past lunch time, so why don't we get something to eat while we take this break?"
"Rice balls?" Max asked. At this, Pikachu sighed heavily again, got up, and bounded towards some berry trees a few yards away, intending to pick some to eat along with the food infamous as leftovers. Max chuckled at Brock's dejected face. "He loves your food, Brock, but I think Pikachu just doesn't like repeated meals."
"Then why don't I cook something, because I made everyone eat the leftover rice balls this morning?" Max nodded, but Pikachu was out of hearing range, so he continued to pick the blue, black-speckled berries with long, curly leaves that he had found.
Brock gathered a few cooking supplies and food items out of his pack, and promptly began to get a stew together. After Max yelled in her ear for a while, May stumbled off irritably to get some firewood, her eyes still cloudy in thought. Max, who had wanted to sit and think about the Pokémon thoughts troubling his brain, ended up having to keep Togepi out of trouble. When May got back with wood, and they got a cooking fire lit, Togepi kept wandering towards it. Max had to keep scooping her up away from it, because Pikachu was still struggling to carry all of his berries back to their area. He would drop a berry every now and then, and Poochyena would come behind and eat it.
Finally, lunch was ready. Brock checked the PokéNav. 1:00 PM. He handed out bowls and began to ladle stew into each one. Seeing Max's saddened caramel eyes behind his glasses, Brock whispered jokingly to him, "Maybe Ash will smell the food, and the two of them will find their way here."
Max chuckled softly, replying, "Yeah, I can just see Ash walking into camp right now with Misty following him, saying 'Oh, hi guys! Where have you been? Man, Brock, that food smells good! Can I have some?'." Max tried to imitate Ash's voice, but it didn't work out too well, making Pikachu giggle despite his depression.
Though Brock's stew was good, the smell wasn't strong enough to bring Ash and Misty to them as they had halfheartedly hoped. Also, when Pikachu tried to share his berries, no one but Poochyena would eat them after they tasted how hard and extremely bitter they were. The berries ended up being Rawst berries, which grew bitterer the longer and curlier their leaves were. Every time Poochyena ate another Rawst, Max would give him a look, as if saying, 'How the heck can you eat those?' After lunch was over and the stew was packed up, they scattered the some of the Rawsts around to let them grow into trees, and May kept the rest to make PokéBlocks with them, though Poochyena would probably be the only ones to eat those, too.
With everything back in their bags, Togepi back in May's arms, Pikachu on Max's shoulder, and Poochyena in Max's arms, Brock checked the heavily-used PokéNav again, and inquired, "Everyone ready to search some more?"
They nodded, when suddenly Max burst out, "I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING!"
May chuckled a little bit. "Well, good for you, Max. It's about time you started thinking about things," she said sarcastically.
"No, really, May! I've been trying to figure something out, and I just now thought of it! Our Pokémon!"
"What about them?" Brock asked.
"Our Pokémon can help us search for Ash and Misty!" Brock groaned at not realizing this so much sooner, as Ash, Misty, and himself had done this many times before. May looked slightly downcast.
"Why didn't I think about that?" May muttered sadly.
"'Cause I'm wise and you're not," Max explained quickly, and turned to Brock, saying, "Do you know which Pokéballs contain which Pokémon?" He indicated Ash's belt around his waist.
Starting with the one in the front first, Brock counted back, "I think it's Treecko, then Bayleef, then Noctowl, then Corphish."
"What about Misty's?" May asked, holding out the gym leader's four Pokéballs.
Brock inspected the scratches and used look of the Pokéballs, and was able to make a guess based on the order in which Misty had caught her Pokémon. "This oldest looking one has to be Staryu, this other Pokéball with the worn hinges must be Psyduck, the Net Ball is Corsola, and this new Pokéball has to be her new Wingull."
"Go! Treecko! Noctowl!" Max was shouting, throwing out their Pokéballs. When the Pokémon appeared, Max quickly explained their situation and added, "Noctowl, soar high over the trees and see if you can see anything. Treecko, you climb in the trees and look around, okay?" The two Pokémon nodded, and took off to their proper jobs. Pikachu leaped off of Max's shoulder and climbed the tree after Treecko.
"I choose you! Wingull!" When the water bird appeared and landed on her arm, May explained, "Ash and Misty are missing, okay, Wingull? We need you to fly up there with Noctowl and see if you can spot anything." With an affirmative cry, Wingull followed Noctowl very high up into the clear blue sky. May got out a Pokéball from her own group and called out Beautifly. "Beautifly, I need you to help us find Ash and Misty. Just hover right over the treetops, okay?"
"Crobat! Go!" Brock called out his Pokémon. "Crobat, go with Beautifly. We're looking for Ash and Misty, okay?" The bat and the butterfly took off to the tops of the trees. After the great moment of excitement in calling on their Pokémon for help, Brock, May and Max took a deep breath and started out walking again. "Okay. Let's look for Ash and Misty."
Ash looked over at Misty. Misty looked over at Ash. Both knew they were thinking the same thing; they could just see it in the other's eyes.
We are in so much trouble.
They glanced back at the twenty-four lines of words that had been deeply scratched into the silvery walls. The lines were in six groups with four lines each. It was a poem, a rhyming poem, but the words chilled both of them in a way that the snow hadn't chilled them when their spirits were in their bodies. As they hovered high above the floor in the second cavern, Ash glanced at the first and second lines of the fourth verse and thought again, we are in so much trouble... or as Team Rocket would say, 'double trouble'. He silently read the whole poem on the wall again.
'From angst, despairing memory,
Comes this warning I must give,
Down this grotto, go no further,
For I'd like to see you live.
Though sights beyond are inspiring,
In awe, take your last breath,
For you draw close to the Evil One,
Whose skill will bring you death.
The ghostly spell is broken,
If returned within the hour,
This hope rests within defeating,
The Evil One with skillful power.
If past three score minutes,
Gone forever, are you, I fear,
Aside from spirits like yourself,
None will see you, or will hear.
Evil say himself all-knowing,
Of strange mystery install,
Only living soul mate hear,
Their ghostly other's call.
So go back, I say, go back,
To the egress you should head,
For the consequence is high,
To awaken, and be dead.'
Misty must have reread the first two lines in the fourth verse as he had, because she suddenly whispered, "How long do you think we've been out of our bodies, Ash?"
Ash could only shake his head. "...I don't know, Misty... I just don't know... I don't think it's been an hour yet, though. So that's really all the time we have? An hour to defeat Haunter, or the 'Evil One' as it says on here, and get back in our bodies? How can we possibly defeat him, Misty?"
"Maybe it means 'defeat' as in a Pokémon battle. That's all I can figure."
"Well, that's bad, since we don't have any of our Pokémon with us. That must be why Sableye was battling Haunter to give us a chance to get away. What are we going to do now?"
"I don't know, Ash!" Ash tore his eyes away from the poem carved in the smooth wall and looked over at Misty. She was standing stiffly in midair, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest hugging herself, her eyes downcast. Her voice hadn't been so crisp as it had been helpless sounding.
Misty didn't understand all of the changes that had come over her. These caverns... they had given her a chance to be alone with Ash, and had made her realize more than ever how much she truly loved him. However, she felt that she was starting to be weaker than she had been before, at least weaker-acting. She, like everyone else, was going through life with a certain uncertainty about certain things, but this was something she had never shown to anyone or let anyone see before. He tough, strong force field was slowly crumbling, which scared Misty, because it was what kept her going.
Ash began to feel that he had been a bit demanding asking her what they should do next. After all, how was she to know if Ash didn't? She didn't know any more than Ash did. She looks so scared, Ash realized, and he hovered a bit closer to her pale blue form.
"Hey, Misty," he said quietly, as she slowly looked up at him, "I'm sorry about what I said. I didn't mean to make you upset or anything."
"I'm not upset," Misty replied, her tone as icy as she could make it at the moment.
Ash, however, could tell that Misty was trying to look strong in front of him. "Hey..." he whispered, not really having anything to say at the moment, but feeling as though he ought to. Impulsively, Ash glided right over to her and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Misty was surprised, to say the least. "It's okay," Ash whispered in her ear, "I'm scared too, and I don't know what we should do either, so we're both the same in that way. You don't have to worry, because I'm here, and I know I don't have to worry, because you're here, so together we can figure out what to do. Okay?"
How can he be such a mind reader and be so dense at the same time? Ash, without knowing it, had just taught Misty something that she had been half-unconsciously longing to know. She knew that she would have to be her true self in order for Ash to ever really love her (if he was even going to), and she had been trying her best by not letting her temper explode at him. Suddenly, though, Misty could read the subtext to Ash's words, even if Ash didn't know that his words had a subtext in the first place. He meant that she was free to be herself around him. When she was around Ash, she didn't need to have the tough force field she had always used. She could simply show the emotions that were real.
Is this what people in love are like? Misty wondered as Ash let go over her and watched her carefully, Being yourself one hundred percent... is that what is required to not only be in love, but to keep being in love forever? If it is... I'm willing to do it.
"Thanks, Ash," Misty said, looking him straight in the eyes and smiling a true smile, "I am scared, but you're right. We can figure this out together."
"Yeah... and even if we can't," Ash grinned, teasing her in a friendly way, "at least I won't be alone without you."
Misty breathed in a rapturous breath. "...Ditto for me."
After a contented pause, Ash turned back to the poem and composed himself into a serious manner. Most of the poem made a half-sort of sense, except the fifth verse, so he just read the rest of it. "We really do need to figure out a way to defeat Haunter, and we don't have a lot of time. Less than an hour, in fact. If we don't, then the poem says..."
"...our bodies will die and we'll be ghosts forever," Misty finished as Ash trailed off. He nodded. "...Ash?"
"What?"
"We might not make it out of here alive."
"...I know." They were in a very brusquely thoughtful silence when a very strange thing happened.
Suddenly, they heard hysterical shouting coming from the end of the cavern tunnel to their left. If Haunter had appeared in front of them and apologized for his actions, it couldn't have surprised them more.
"HELP! THIS THING IS GOING TO HURT US! HELP! WE'RE GOING TO DIE!"
Ash saw that Misty, who of course was just as surprised as he was about hearing human voices growing nearer, was actually unimpressed.
"Oh, yeah?" She muttered darkly, in response to the voices' distress cries, "Even if whoever it is really dies, they'll probably not die before we do..."
TO BE CONTINUED...
NOTE: Every chapter title is a line from a song, and all of the songs are songs from one of the many Pokémon CD's. If you have identified the song that Chapter 6's title is from, review and let me know, and I'll post your name with the correct title on my next chapter.