Hey welcome to chap 26. Anyways things appear to now slightly be calming down as our protagonist's finally get a chance to catch their breath from the chaos around them.

(Please Read)!

I'd like to do a mini survey if possible about my story to help improve certain aspects of the story. I ask that you please try and answer the questions because it will help me know what to improve on and I really want to improve my writing skills as much as possible. Thanks.

1) Who is your favorite character?

2) Why is this pokemon/person your favorite character?

3) Why do you specifically like this story?

4) What do you want to see more of in the story and why?

5) When you read the description of the story what made you interested in it and what do you think I could do to improve the story description?

6) Who is your least favorite character?

7) Why is this character your least favorite?

8) How long do you prefer a chapter to be before it is too long?

9) What is something you think I am doing a good job on in this story so far and what do you think I need to improve on? (Obviously grammar lol and don't be afraid to be honest I won't be offended)

10) What is the meaning of life… lol jk on that one :D

If it's not too much to ask please answer the questions. PM me or just post it in the review section and thanks for those who do help. Even if you don't review often or haven't yet please take a few seconds to answer the survey because it will help me know what to improve on or if I'm doing something bad. Anyways thanks in advance for those who do answer the questions and it will diffidently help me improve on the story since I'm always trying to improve.

Chapter 26: Alive

Point of View Black

"Black" I heard a faint voice call out.

"Black" the voice called out again as I tried to remember who it was.

"Hey come back to us Black" The voice called out to me again. I slowly felt my eyes crack open and the first thing I saw with my blurry vision was a familiar fennekin really close up to my face repeating my name over and over again.

"Black?" the fennekin said once he noticed me coming back to life. I tried to recollect the last thing I remembered. I could slightly remember me being wounded and Flare, Kana and Hesh about to have a face off against that umbreon Stark.

I quickly jerked up as I remembered the dire situation at hand and I felt a sharp pain in my hip. The instant I felt it I quickly decided to lie back down and take it easy until I knew what was going on.

"Black your alive" Flare said in a relieved voice.

I didn't waste a second on my first question "Where is Stark" I asked.

Flare froze and looked away from me with his head down "I honestly have no clue what just happened and I really don't want to know to be honest" Flare said. I would have to imagine something bizarre happened if the nosey fennekin Flare himself didn't even want to know.

"How long was I out" I mumbled.

"About thirty to an hour" I heard Hesh interrupt from a distance away. I shifted my blurry vision to the left of Flare and saw Hesh wrapping a bandage around his leg. The flesh on his leg looked really bad and made me cringe from the little amount of blood I could see dripping off his leg.

"Where's Kana" I asked fearing that something may have happened to her while I was out cold. Flare just pointed down the beach and off in the distance I could see the usually high spirited Jolteon that I hardly even knew sitting on the beach looking off into the distance. I quickly recognized the look in her eyes as shock from a traumatic event. I would know since I went through a lot of crazy stuff in my days.

"What's wrong with her" I whispered quietly so she wouldn't have a chance of hearing me.

Flare just let out a sigh of depression and didn't even bother answering. Hesh was now finished bandaging up his leg and slowly limped his way over to us with his bandaged foot.

"Good to see you breathing. How do you feel" Hesh asked with an expressionless face.

"Like a child eevee after drinking an energy drink" I said sarcastically. Hesh didn't seem amused by my sarcasm and neither did Flare. I hardly knew neither of them but it was odd seeing them so… emotionally dead.

I decided that I wasn't going to pry any further on this discussion since they were all probably shaken up from what ever happened while I was asleep. I still couldn't grasp how the hell they got out of that fight alive. Stark was powerful and well I just couldn't see them winning against someone like him.

"Black" Flare said as if he had a question.

"Yeah" I said in a faint voice.

"What did those people want from you" Flare asked me. The question sent shivers down my spine and I prayed that Flare would have just ignored the obvious question that should have been asked long ago.

"I don't know" I said trying to play dumb.

Flare didn't look too satisfied with my answer "Black…" Flare said in a stern voice and it was obvious he saw through my lie. I only knew partially why they wanted me and I had no clue on what they were going to do with me once they had me.

"Over their" I heard a deep male voice call out. Every one of us then shifted our gaze towards the distance where the mountain was and we saw about three police officers and a medic running towards us to finally help us now that all the trouble was gone. I then saw something that I was not in the mood for… Gray.

Gray just walked down the beach with his head low and wore a depressed look on his face. After he got a little closer, he then spotted me and I just wanted to turn invisible at that moment.

"You" I heard him growl in a voice that made me nervous. "You're the reason all of this is happening" Gray yelled as he walked towards me in a very hostile attitude. I really didn't know how to react since I was still very weak and I definitely didn't have the energy for an argument. The police officers and the medic all froze at the tension that was coming from Gray's anger.

"Oh shit" I said with the little strength I had as he then began getting ready to pounce on me. Hesh then jumped in front of me and held his arms out in front of me in an attempt to shield me despite his leg injury.

"Whoa pipe down there for a minute buddy" Hesh said with a voice that was on guard.

"Don't tell me to calm down this is his damn fault and his alone" Gray said with a growl in his voice.

"Let's just calm down buddy… Wait where's Connor?" Hesh quickly asked as he looked around everywhere for the missing charmander. Gray then just looked down and tried to avoid eye contact.

"Gray where the hell is Connor" Hesh shouted in a worried voice as he limped towards Gray.

Hesh's eyes then lit up with anger as a vein bulged out of his head "Where the Hell is my friend" Hesh yelled at Gray. Gray still remained quiet and avoided eye contact. "I'm sorry" Gray said quietly without making eye contact.

"Gray… don't tell me…" Hesh said as I saw his pointy ears lower and he fell to his knees and looked down as he gripped the sand on the ground as hard as he could. I could hear the faint noise of him trying to hold in tears. His breathing became hard and I could hear him sniffling. I was clueless on what was going on but judging from the scene nothing good was happening and it involved Connor.

"Dammit" Hesh yelled at the top of his lungs. The police and the medic were now done watching the scene and quickly went back to work. The medic walked up to my body and examined my wound.

"Wound is pretty serious, and a decent stitch job was used on him. The bleeding has stopped but he needs help" The medic said out loud for a police officer to hear. The police officer just wrote down a few notes on a note pad he had handy.

"This is going to hurt a little but stay with my" the doctor said as he wrapped his hands around me and cautiously lifted me up, it did hurt like hell but I didn't resist the medic. If I was in a better position I would have so kicked the medic's ass for touching me but now was not the time and I was to focused on trying to understand what happened to Connor, despite the fact that the answer was self-explanatory.

The medic slowly carried me away from my friends. I looked around the area and I then saw something that made me want to pass out again. I saw the police officer's all inspecting a bunch of mutilated bodies with blood everywhere. Despite the sudden light headed feeling I was experiencing I couldn't help but notice the bodies were the scientist's from the place I was trapped in. The scientist were slaughtered. All I could think of is who was responsible for their death and if Flare, Hesh or Kanna had a hand in it out of self-defense. It was unlikely since they would never do such a thing and even if they did they would not have done it in such a violent way.

The medic carried me up the hill carefully and tried his hardest not to upset my wound. After the medic climbed up the mountain a little we came up on a trail with a truck on the trail. The medic set me gently down on the opened back of the truck and got into the driver seat of the truck. The truck's engine roared to life in an obnoxious manner and the truck gently began moving along the trail. I just looked up and looked at the sky as we drove down the trail. I couldn't believe I was still alive. I had literally given up on life today at one point and now here I was in the back of a truck going to civilization so I could get help and live on. I was actually happy for once to be alive.

Point of View Charmander

I was now dragging myself along the route to Amberette town. I would have been at the town ages ago if I didn't have the habit of literally stopping every thirty minutes to take a break and enjoy procrastinating from my current mission. I was now finally seeing a giant mountain off in the distance and I knew I was close. The real question was whether I wanted to take a break before I made my way to the mountain or not.

After about thirty long minutes of me dragging my feet along the mountain I finally was there and I was slightly proud that I made it all this way with no help and for me I made good time for no transportation. I then followed the route a little more and noticed that the route split off into two directions. One went through the mountain and the other went around. I quickly noticed the caution sign and began wondering what awaited me in the cave. I knew if I went around it would probably extend my trip now by another day at least so I went with the educated answer… I was taking the shortcut like I always did in life.

I entered in the dark cave and the darkness was quickly illuminated by my tail flame. The best part about being a charmander was always having a built in torch that would accidentally light anything nearby on fire. I cautiously made my way through the cave not even slightly fearing the danger that the sign was there to warn me of. I wasn't afraid of anything and MewTwo could be in this cave and I wouldn't give a damn. Hell I'd cuss him out even and be proud of it.

"Heh heh heh…" I heard a creepy and demonic laugh from above me.

"Ahh hell no" I said as I quickly picked up the pace towards the other side of the cave. I wasn't afraid I just didn't want to waste any more time procrastinating…

I continued hearing the creepy laughing as I kept picking up my pace until I was running at max speed.

"Graah" a skull faced entity screamed in my face and caused me to fall back on my butt. I was frozen from the jump scare and I was frozen in shock. And low and behold I saw a duskull laughing his ass off at me.

"Who the hell do you think you are" I said in an intimidating voice. The duskull just continued laughing in my face.

"I'm going to break you if you don't shut it" I said as my tail flame got bigger from my anger and lit up more of the cave. Once more of the cave was illuminated I saw around thirty duskull's looking down at me from the ceiling of the cave and I just awkwardly stared at them for a second as they stared back at me. I then let my tail flame go back down to its normal size.

"Anyways I'll just let that slide buddy" I said with a small chuckle as I inched my way towards the exit.

"Where do you think you are going" the duskull said in a taunting voice.

"Oh sweet mother of Mew I'm out" I said to myself as I ran faster than I moved in probably year's. The horde of duskull's just chased after me with a taunting laugh and I could feel my legs slowly giving out from overuse even though I had only been running for around fifteen seconds at this point. I then looked back and saw that the creepy demonic pokemon were gaining on me and scenes from the exorcist popped into my head and I feared that I was going to have a repeat of that movie in a few minutes.

I then tapped into a hidden energy and began picking up speed at a much higher speed. After another few minutes of running I finally saw the light of the exit and I continued sprinting. I looked back and saw that I had a little space left between the duskull's and me. Then right before I was outside the cave I dived towards the exit. Now when I watched movies with my trainer the hero would always slide away from danger like a total bad ass. Then when I did it I just hit the ground with an unsatisfying thump and my whole ribcage felt like it was broken and I slid like two feet and scraped my entire chest along the rough surface of the cave floor.

I didn't have long to wallow in pain because when I looked back I saw the entire hoard of duskull's about to dog pile on top of me. I quickly got back up and ran out the cave like a normal pokemon like I should have in the first place.

Once I was outside the duskull's seized their attack on me and I took a sigh of relief from Mew knows would have happened to me. After a very long time of walking I was finally right outside of Amberette town and I could see it in the distance.

Now all I had to do was get that umbreon with fifty different name's trust and help those assholes out. Everything was going to be easy from here on out once I figured out where he was.

Chapter End

Well that is the end of the chapter. Anyways sorry I haven't put the charmander in any recent chapters I just wanted to focus on the other character and not overwhelm myself or the reader's with too many different point of views. I do plan on keeping the POV's mostly focused on the main characters since I find it overwhelming with too many POV's. Anyways please answer at least one question off the survey I posted at the beginning of the chapter. (Obviously you don't have to I'd just appreciate it big time) Please be honest if you do fill out the survey because honesty is helpful even if it may not be what I want to here. I'm always looking to improve my skills. Anyways onto something a little funny actually lol. I was looking back at some of my previous chapters and I was actually embarrassed on all the typos I saw and I was actually questioning how a lot of you put up with them, I will probably take some time in the near future to rewrite previous chapters so new readers aren't scared away with my horrible grammar lol. Anyways thanks for reading this far and I'm still enjoying writing this fic a lot and I'm happy to hear what people think and know that they are enjoying this story.