Chapter Sixty Six: Teenage Bitch
Be patient Alaska… be brave… I am still coming for you… I will find you some day soon… my warning still stands… protect yourself, protect those around you… I cannot promise what will happen if you do not heed my advice…
Latios… what is going to happen to me… what are you trying to warn me about?
I will find you soon… my strength has weakened… the pain of my escape is getting to me… my sister is healing me, I will find you soon… be patient Alaska... be brave… my warning still stands…
Where are you? Why have you been following me all this time? Answer me… why won't anyone just answer my questions… ANSWER ME!
"I believe she is awake."
Alaska's eyes burst open, and all she could see was blue. She could feel a dull pain throughout her body, and she had a feeling as though she had woken from a dream, but the question she had just asked disappeared from the back of her mind and a new one leapt to the front: Am I dead?
"I need towels for the patient, she appears to be sweating," someone said calmly and quietly a few feet away, and Alaska instantly snapped her head towards them. The simple movement though sent streams of pain coursing through her body, namely the lower part of her face, and Alaska groaned softly and collapsed back onto a thin mattress.
"That was not very intelligent of you," the cool voice said. Alaska had her eyes shut to the pain and could not see who the speaker was, though she could tell the voice belonged to a woman and a stranger. Suddenly, something cool and soft began to lightly dab her skin, and Alaska felt waves of relief wash over her: she had not realised how hot she was, and the simple touch of a wet towel against her body made a world of difference.
As the pain faded, Alaska opened her eyes again, looking to her left for her carer. Calling her a woman seemed erroneous, as the person beside her looked only a few years older, but when the stranger met Alaska's gaze, there was something in her eyes that made her seemed older. Blue hair framed her youthful but wise face, and when Alaska glanced down at her bedside guest and saw she was wearing a tight, wine-purple leather shirt and long black trousers.
"Either angels dress a lot more scandalous than I imagined, or I take it I am not dead?" Alaska groaned, and the girl smirked for a brief moment.
"Why would you have died? Do you know many people who have been killed by having their jaw broken?" Alaska realised that this mysterious woman had a point, and gave a simple shrug that sent new shockwaves through her body. "I am sure you would have liked to have died though," the girl continued, raising her arms above Alaska's chest and revealing two large, glowing metallic bracelets on her wrists. "In fact, I can tell you are disappointed you are still alive and that you will have to carry on living through pain and uncertainty." The girl had a knowing look on her face, and Alaska frowned, her pain numbing as doubt flooded her mind.
"Would you mind telling me who you are and where the hell I am before you continuing judging me?" She asked viciously, but the girl seemed unfazed by her sudden hostility.
"My name is Sabrina, and you are currently in my private offices at my gym. One of my assistants was here but I sent her away when you awoke so we may speak privately." Alaska stared at the strange girl in shock for a few moments as her words registered, and then she began to laugh. It hurt; her chest and neck and jaw and everything feeling as though knives were being wedged into her skin, but Alaska just let herself laugh. "Would you mind telling me what is so amusing?" Sabrina asked calmly.
"I'm in a gym!" Alaska snorted in between giggles. "Yesterday I was out on Route 12, expecting to head down to Fuchsia to battle Janine, but here I am… in Saffron… in your gym… and I'm alive!" And Alaska collapsed back into her laughter, ignoring the slightly judgemental look Sabrina was giving her, unable to control her own deranged amusement: what a strange, messed up day this had been, to have begun in the offices of her enemy and end up in the offices of a gym leader. Alaska continued to laugh for several minutes before the humour began to die and reality began to creep its way back in. Looking for a distraction, Alaska turned her attention to the room she had awoken in: the walls, ceiling and floor swirled between purples and blues, making her feel as though she was inside a lava lamp.
"What's with all the lights? It looks like someone's throwing a rave and we're the only people who turned up."
"I have never been to a rave before so I cannot compare, but I understand certain people find joy in them," Sabrina said coolly, her owns eyes flickering around her room as if seeing it for the first time. "They are not lights; it is the Psychic energy that flows through this building. It is part of our defence system so that no one can find us, and the energy is stimulating for the Pokemon that my staff and I train."
"I guess that's fair enough: Misty has a pool, Alexis has a garden, so it makes sense you'd have… psychic energy walls?"
"It is a tad more complicated than that, but I shan't burden your mind with the specifics when you already have so much to tend with," Sabrina said, and despite it sounding like a compliment Alaska had a feeling it was meant to be an insult. She gazed at the gym leader as Sabrina waved her bracelets over Alaska's body, and it dawned on Alaska that she could not read this newest leader's personality. With the other four she had faced, it had been easy to work out their moods and intentions, but Sabrina was a blank canvas, showing neither kindness nor hatred towards her, and that was just as unsettling as everything else Alaska had faced today.
"How is the pain?" Sabrina asked, raising her arms and tapping away at the bracelets.
"On a scale of one to ten, I'd say it's about a hundred," Alaska replied.
"That's not on a scale of one to ten," Sabrina replied, and Alaska wasn't sure if she was meant to laugh. "My Pokemon and I have managed to reset your damaged bones and stop your internal bleeding, and with medication you should be fully recovered – physically, at least – within a few days."
"Splendid," Alaska said with a fake smile, and she half heartedly raised her arms in the air in celebration. As Sabrina cast another perplexing look, a sudden thought struck Alaska. "Where is everyone else? Sandy, Looker, my Pokemon, where are they, are they all fine?"
"Yes, in a sense," Sabrina replied. "Alexandra has received stitching for the bite marks she sustained, and Alistair is currently receiving treatment for the gunshot wound to his back. The former should heal fine but I cannot offer anything but pointlessly hopeful guesswork about the latter. The spy is unharmed and all Pokemon escaped without injury either. I have your bag here if you would like that for comfort." For a brief second, Alaska went to say yes, desperate to see her Pokemon and see that they were all fine. However, that temptation only lasted a moment, and then Alaska shook her head, a crushing weight pressing down on her body.
"No thank you, I am alright for the moment – I should probably rest more before I see them."
"Of course, you will need a while to accept your submission to death," Sabrina said. It took several moments for that comment to register, but when Alaska turned back to face the gym leader was sitting calmly watching her, her eyes almost eager.
"What do you mean my submission to death?" Alaska asked incredulously. "What the hell are you on about?" Her tone got sharper and louder with every word, but Sabrina just calmly stared at Alaska as if examining an animal inside a zoo.
"I spoke to Gallade shortly after you arrived here. He passed on your thoughts from the last few minutes inside Silph Co.," she replied calmly, and Alaska had a brief image of Gallade watching her before she had faded to black, remembering how intently he had looked at her in the tunnel, and then again on the battlefield: what had he seen, what had the Psychic type seen inside her mind?. "He told me about how you were willing to embrace death, how you were willing to die so you could avoid facing your foes in open combat. Do not tell me I am lying or that I am incorrect: I find lies only delay the unavoidable, and by being able to psychically converse with others I am able to always see the truth. Gallade knew and now I know exactly what you were thinking as the man who goes by Scar tried to crush your head in." Alaska stared at Sabrina in shock, rage brewing beneath the surface as the gym leader stared calmly back: Alaska wanted to say Sabrina was wrong, wanted to yell at her, to argue with her, to tell her none of it was true. But the more Sabrina watched her, the more the willingness to argue disappeared, and eventually Alaska fell back onto the mattress defeated. She shut her eyes to avoid Sabrina's stare, but that only dredged up those last moments from Silph Co.; the Houndoom attacking her, the hideous man beating her, Buzz laughing, the robots, the endless rows of robots, the robots she had never defeated…
"Your right… I was ready to give up then… I just can't see the point in fighting them anymore. How am I supposed to defeat a massive army of robots when I have never even been able to defeat one of them on my own before?" She felt childish for saying the words aloud, but Alaska could not keep them bottled up any longer: seeing the army, seeing how easily Buzz had captured her and Sandy, how close she had come to dying, how close her Pokemon had come to failure…
"I know I cannot be free of Buzz, that he and Gideon and whoever else are going to follow me until either I defeat them or I die, but I know I cannot win against all the things they can throw at me so what is the point in carrying on with this cursed life?" For the first time since waking up, Alaska thought of the eerie voice that had haunted her dreams, the same one she had heard before, and remembered the warning she had received what seemed like a lifetime ago.
"If I stay alive, then that means Sandy, my family, and, most importantly, my Pokemon are going to be in danger, and what sort of person would I be if I continued to risk their lives like this? When that man – Scar, is that his name? How fitting… Anyway, when he had his hands on my head, when I felt him squeezing my skull, at that moment I wanted to be dead, I wanted to die so that Sandy and Paige and Frances and Shelley and everyone else can live. I can't escape this, no matter how hard I tried: it was so difficult for me to choose gyms over this madness, but I set myself a goal and I knew I had to defeat all the gyms before facing Gideon again, to strengthen myself and my team. Yet I make that decision and I end up learning more about this madness then I ever have before! No matter what I do, no matter how hard or fast I run from it, all these freaks and madmen and killers just follow after me, and I really don't know how long I can stay ahead of them before they finally catch me for good. If you can read minds, then why don't you read mine and find out all the things Buzz said he was going to do to me? I don't want to die… no one wants to die… but what else can I do? I can't carry on suffering, I can't carry on getting hurt and weakened every time I face them, I can't carry on putting everyone else's lives in danger. Death is the easy way out, and I wish that I had died back in that basement and that all of this was over."
Silence filled the room at the end of that. Alaska had only just met Sabrina, but she could not bring herself to look at the mysterious gym leader, unable to meet her eyes after pouring out her heart and soul like that. She could feel the inquisitive and empty stare of the Psychic trainer watching her, but Alaska merely stared at the glowing ceiling, watching the colours swirl and spin, letting her mind slip away, away from all of the pain.
"Death is nothing for you to be afraid of," Sabrina said finally what felt like many minutes later. "I commend you on your bravery of being willing to accept the inevitable like that: it is something I believe few people are capable of, especially not at our age, and I respect you for that. However, I also think you are a much weaker person that I had initially anticipated, and for that I am rather disappointed."
"What do you mean?" Alaska asked, raising an eyebrow and opening her eyes to face the blank faced gym leader again. Sabrina paused for a few moments, staring deeply at Alaska, so deeply in fact the trainer wondered if her mind was being read right at this moment and she could not tell.
"I have been able to read minds since a very young age," the gym leader said at last. "I cannot remember my life before this gift occurred. My father raised me alongside an Abra and a Ralts, treated me as though I was a Pokemon and not his daughter, trained me to utilize the gifts of the creatures that surrounded me so that one day I could replace him as the leader of this gym. It was unfortunate that he died earlier than we expected, but I had brought my powers to a place where I could be an effective trainer, and the Pokemon I was surrounded by proved admirable in supporting me. I believe I am a decent gym leader, but my true gifts lie in my powers.
"I can read everything that you are thinking Alaska, and more than even you have worked out. I see the voices inside your head, I see the cards you were shown in Lavender Town, I see the family you have not spoken to, and I can see every one of your fears, and this is where your problems lie. You are afraid of the inevitable and the unpredictable, of the situations you have no control over. You have made it this far in your journey because of luck: the right moves against trainers with lesser capabilities than yourself, the right explosion at the right time, even the right object in the museum so you could escape a bomb blast without harm. Your fear lies in the fact you know you cannot rely on luck to defeat Buzz and Gideon, that you will not always have someone else to rescue you, and you are not sure if you are strong enough to win." Alaska sat in silence, letting Sabrina tell her these things, unable to bring herself to speak as the onslaught of truths was thrown at her.
"However Alaska, I can also see potential," Sabrina continued. "We humans are cursed with the ability to feel fear, but any fear can be overcome when you put your mind to it. In order for you to win yours, you need to cut yourself loose of the people that are trying to control you, and you must learn to be a normal trainer once again. I can see that you feel the need to solve mysteries and to solve the problems at hand, but you cannot be of any help to anyone until you have defeated Janine, Blaine, Leaf and myself."
"I have already beaten four gym leaders and nothing has changed: what do you expect defeating you is going to achieve?" Alaska asked icily.
"Because you need to learn to battle properly against an intelligent opponent if you hope to overcome your fears," Sabrina replied. "You have beaten Chloe Carmichael a number of times because she is not a wise child, and that has made you unfortunately confident. You have won many of your other battles by destroying the gym or by using tricks. You realized that today down in that basement, when you realized that you have never defeated one of Bolton's robots before. Your readiness to accept death comes because you believe it will be too difficult to defeat the army, but I can tell you that you can defeat them if you put your mind to it.
"You will stay in this building and recuperate, and once you healed enough, you will battle me for the Marsh Badge and you will fight your hardest and you will win on your own accord: no tricks, no destroying my facilities, just simple, honest battling. If you battle to a good enough standard, I will pass over the badge and you will be free to leave and do what you want afterwards. I cannot guarantee what will happen when you leave, but I am certain you will be able to face your enemies properly once again and continue your journey." Alaska sat there, taking all of it in; not just what Sabrina had said, but everything that had happened today, everything that had happened in the past week and month and ever since she had left Viridian City. Had blowing things up and outsmarting Chloe altered her more than she thought? She looked down at her fingers, realising for the first time they were wrapped in bandages; Houndoom had nearly killed her, it had only been the brownies that saved her, the brownies Freddie had baked for her…
"I don't need to sit here and listen to this crap," Alaska hissed, and Sabrina's eyes widened. "You have probably just read my blog and read between the lines: I bet you are just some big fucking phony, just another person who thinks they know me and thinks they can control me. Well guess what, you blue haired bitch, I'M MY OWN PERSON AND NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" She tried to sit up, pushing herself up and ignoring the pain that erupted in her chest at the simple movements, simply knowing she did not have to sit here and let herself be deconstructed like this, let her personality and actions be torn apart by a stranger. She had nearly gotten herself up when Sabrina lunged: Alaska didn't see the foot coming, but than it was in her stomach and she was back on the mattress, groaning.
"Crazy bitch!" She yelled, and Sabrina scoffed.
"You are not the first person to ever call me that," she replied, and there was a sudden intensity in her voice that had not been there before. "I have been an outcast my entire life, I have spent most of my days inside the walls of my gym training. I rarely leave here, and you know why? Because when people see me they have the exact same fears you do: they are afraid of the unknown, they are afraid of what they cannot see and what they cannot understand. Humans are fools because we try and fix things so that they become our way: when my father died, teachers took me away and tried to fix me because they thought I was broken, and you tried to train your Pokemon but now see death as the easiest solution. You are just like my teachers, Alaska; uncertain, doubtful but ultimately afraid of what I can do, but the treatments they forced me to have never worked, and your death will do nothing but take away the greatest resource our region currently has in this war. Of course people want to use you, but I am not one of them, Alaska Acevedo: I want to help you, and in order to do that, you have to defeat me on my terms, not yours, and you will not be leaving this building until you have defeated me."
"Excuse me?!" Alaska screamed, clutching her stomach as if it would burst. "You cannot keep me here like some sort of prisoner!"
"Well, actually, I can if I want to: no one leaves this building without my allowance," Sabrina replied coldly, suddenly tapping away at her bracelets. "I am not a fake, Alaska, my powers are very real. I can read your mind and I can alter it if I want, just as I have done for this entire conversation." The gym leader towered powerfully over her, and her eyes did not leave Alaska as she pressed one more button on the bracelet.
"What are talking about?" Alaska screamed, putting hatred into every syllable. For a second, she was convinced she had spoken these words out loud, expected to hear them echo back inside the glowing room. But there was something strange about the way Sabrina was looking at her, and slowly, cautious of what she might discover, Alaska raised her hands gingerly to her face and felt her jaw. For the first time she realised how swollen it was, how much her face hurt where she touched, and Alaska knew there was no way she could be speaking.
I… I haven't actually said anything, have I? She thought, looking up at Sabrina.
"Not aloud you haven't," the gym leader replied, and Alaska's heart nearly skipped a beat. "Your jaw will healer faster here than it will in a proper hospital, but you are not near talking yet." Alaska sunk into her mattress, wishing all of a sudden that it would open up and swallow her whole so she would not have to face the gym leader, not have to face anyone ever again; everything Sabrina said was true…
There was a soft thud beside her, and Alaska turned and saw Sabrina had pushed her bag forwards, the battered black backpack illuminated by the bizarre lights of the gym. She lunged towards it, ignoring the pain, and pulled out her four PokeBalls, suddenly desperate to see her Pokemon again and to have something else to think about.
"I expect we will be battling within a week, if you're healing goes to plan," Sabrina said, and Alaska looked up and saw the gym leader was standing in a corner of the room, tapping away at her bracelets and barely looking at her. "Think about what I said, Alaska; think about what you need to do to defeat me, and what you need to do to overcome your fear. Your death will not solve anything, so you need to find another way to fix this mess." Alaska stared at her, the four capsules cold to touch, and wondered when the two would face each other next.
And what if I can't defeat you, what I can only win on my terms? She called out with her mind. Sabrina paused, a gloved finger hovering over a button, and when she stared up at Alaska the gym leader looked her age for the first time.
"Then you will never be able to defeat them, our Champion will die and Kanto shall fall alongside him," Sabrina whispered, and Alaska could see her eyes were wide and fretful, could hear her voice cold and quiet. Her hovering finger came down on the bracelet, and with a flash she was gone, leaving Alaska alone with her PokeBalls, her thoughts, and the unsettling knowledge that she was not the only person in their conversation who was afraid.
The revelations made here and the ramifications of their discussion will be explored during the next arc - may not all make sense here, but likely will by the time our story reaches Fuchsia!
