Welcome to Episode 3, in which the storm picks up… the boat?
Amber had talked Charmander and Squirtle into holding the oar steady so she could carve it down into a more traditional quarterstaff after having been mostly ruined by the blade by the time Bulbasaur spoke up. "I think the storm's coming this way."
Amber frowned, then licked her finger and held it up, which told her the wind was coming from behind the boat. "Hmm… I mean the wind has been picking up, so…"
As if on cue, the wind blew her long blue-black gradient hair into her face, and as Amber looked up, pushing it behind one ear with one hand, she saw a massive thunderhead slowly rolling across the sky as if being called by mother for an inevitable punishment-slowly, yes, but it would arrive eventually and at that time the storm would begin on an unfortunately literal level.
Squirtle squinted at the squalls behind them, then looked back to the others on the boat. "Okay, time to get inside. It's almost hailing back there."
"Hailing? It isn't even September yet!" replied Bulbasaur, frowning. In response to a curious look from Amber, she said, "There was a date and time clock in the boatyard."
Amber nodded, then turned to look at the encroaching storm, frowning, before she winced. "It doesn't feel quite right. The storm, that is. Ach, how do words…" She absently tapped her thumb against her leg as she tried to put what she was feeling into words. "I think… I don't think this is a true storm."
Bulbasaur frowned, reaching out psychically, then recoiled. "I think you're right. It feels like a massive Trick Room, but stronger. I wonder what's causing it..."
The four clones filed into the cabin, then closed the door, with the slowly-crescendoing wind outside muffled by the solid steel slab sealing the cabin.
Amber sat down somewhat gingerly, then took a look around the (somewhat crowded) cabin. At first it was only lit by the flickering spirit-light on Charmander's tail, but after a moment, the part of Bulbasaur's crystal that was peeking out of her bulb started to glow with a soft pink light.
In the illumination provided by the two Pokémon, they were now able to properly see what was present inside the cabin. Beyond windows towards the prow of the boat, there was also a console next to a ship's wheel (that, as they would soon lament, was only secured by two bolts), that after a moment Bulbasaur said was connected to another engine.
"Wait, why would this boat have two engines?" asked Amber, frowning.
Bulbasaur moved forward and laid a paw on the console, closing her eyes a moment, then turned back to her companions. "I think they were retrofitting the boat. I'm reading construction memories on these from a few days ago, and then some testing from yesterday."
Amber nodded, then continued looking around the room. Her eye caught on a mirror above a cot, and she froze, looking at herself, then blinked as if to clear away something stuck in her eye.
"What is it, Amber?" asked Bulbasaur.
"I…" Amber shook herself. "That's… not what I expected." Seeing her companions' curious looks, she elaborated. "I remember looking… well, not like this. My hair was just black, and my eyes weren't blue like this." Even as she said this, she scrunched her eyes closed, two lives' worth of memories warring in her head, the dissonance in her thoughts growing into pain quickly as the odd sensation that Bulbasaur attributed to Trick Room (accompanied by the sound of howling winds and crashing waves) pressed in on the cabin, forcing her two lives to settle out quickly or not at all.
Bulbasaur frowned, feeling psychic pressure from the turmoil in Amber's head. "Amber, what's happening?"
Amber fell back against the wall, hands pressed to her eyes, as her staff clattered to the floor. "I-don't-know!" she ground out through gritted teeth. "My head feels-"
And like a solar eclipse-gradually in retrospect, but in the moment, immediate-the pain in her head vanished, and reality settled out into a stable pattern.
Amber slowly lowered her hands. "Everything's… well, not okay, but better." She frowned, a thought nagging at the back of her mind, then spoke up to not be drowned out by the wind and waves. "I'm still having trouble remembering things, but it doesn't hurt anymore."
Bulbasaur sighed, relieved. "Good. I was starting to feel it there."
"There's something else, though…" Amber trailed off, thinking. "Something I was supposed to know about us. All that's coming up is the Greek alphabet, for some reason."
Bulbasaur cocked her head. "Alpha, beta, gamma? Why would that come up?"
Amber shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, in this case."
"That sounds-" Charmander's words were lost in the roar of the surf as a massive wave slammed the (poorly-secured, in hindsight-they hadn't even locked it) door open and shoved the four of them against the front of the cabin.
As the wave receded out the door, Squirtle was sent slamming into the wheel. It listed forward, groaning, but held more or less intact.
Amber pushed herself up to her hands and knee, then dragged herself up a wall to be more or less upright, then looked around, taking in the state of disarray that the cabin was in. After seeing that the Pokémon were back on their feet, she focused on finding her staff, and a moment later, she called it to her hand.
"Everyone okay?" she asked, pushing herself off the wall and taking notice of how the boat was rocking significantly underneath her all of a sudden.
"We're fi-" Another wave swept in to interrupt Bulbasaur's response, and this time when Squirtle slammed into the wheel, the bolts couldn't hold up, and it slammed into the floor, then started sliding around on the layer of water.
"I'm beginning to think that leaving today was a bad idea!" called Amber, who had managed to avoid falling this time by bracing her staff against one wall and her back against another.
"I'm starting to agree!" shouted Bulbasaur, who had picked herself up psionically.
Squirtle closed her eyes, concentrating and glowing with an inner blue-green light matching the color of a normal Squirtle, and then with a flowing gesture towards the door sent what water was still on the floor surging out of the cabin, aided by the boat rocking backwards.
She dropped to one knee, exhausted, and Amber clomped over to the door and secured it, then hooked her staff in the wheel and dragged it over to block the door closed with main strength.
Then, she jolted as the boat rocked forwards, tilting far enough to send the wheel slipping on the still-slick floor, dragging the bottom of her staff off the floor and forcing her to brace against the door. As the boat dropped back down, the wheel slid off to the side, and Amber shoved off the wall, intercepting the ersatz projectile and diverting it to the side instead of squishing Bulbasaur against the wall.
As it started to slide away again, Amber grasped it in both hands and wrestled it into a mostly-upright position.
"Someone open the door!" she shouted, struggling to her feet and glowing with a blue aura as she brought her will to bear on the situation.
Charmander, floating and mostly insubstantial, pulled the door open, letting Amber heft the useless chunk of metal and electronics out of the cabin and wedge it under a bench, tied to said bench tightly enough to overcome the surf-slicked surface's lack of friction.
As Amber turned and walked back to the cabin, but something caught her eye, and she looked past the prow for a moment.
"Well then." She continued inside, but didn't close the door yet. "Hey, so there's a landmass getting closer a lot faster than we're moving."
"What?" asked three Pokémon at once. Looking out the window distracted them from the point they were about to raise, but Bulbasaur was more than capable of mental multitasking.
"Amber, you're walking unaided."
"Wait, what?" She looked down just in time to see her bad leg encased in a blue glow, before it winked out and she fell sideways against the door frame, which she would eventually characterize as an impact that "rang her bell".
After that, things got a little fuzzy for Amber.
She remembered bits and pieces of massive waves, then a lurch that probably meant that they had run aground and catching Squirtle as the impact had sent her bouncing around the cabin.
She managed to get out into the light-how had the storm vanished so quickly?-and hear concerned voices before passing out.
Amber blinked her eyes open, then squinted against the light that was almost directly overhead and shining very insistently down into her eyes, almost as if it were trying to illuminate her retina for an invisible optometrist who had decided that yes, after a near-death experience was the perfect time for an eye exam.
She (quite reasonably) raised her hand to cover her eyes and groaned, which would likely have been more coherent (and more vulgar) were she not otherwise occupied trying to remember what, exactly, had happened that she felt so sore.
"Hey, everything's okay. You came out of that wreck okay, and so did those Pokémon," said a man somewhere nearby.
The voice startled her, but after a moment of processing, the words jogged her memory, sending recent events crashing back into her mind while also putting her at ease before she even knew she should be worried. She raised her other hand to rub at her face before a gentle (albeit firm) grip pulled it down, and she became cognizant of an IV in the crook of her elbow.
"Hey, be careful. I don't wanna take that out before Harmony gets back from lunch and checks you out."
"Nngh," she grunted, lowering her arm. She used her other hand to rub at her eyes, and this time when she opened them she was more able to bear the light. "What… happened? Where am I?" she croaked through a dry throat.
"You're in Sonata City Hospital. After that odd fast storm, you washed up on the beach near Nasca Town, and since you and that boat just kind of appeared out of nowhere, they called me in to come take care of things. After Hoopa managed to open a Hyperspace Hole into the cabin, you collapsed out of it, and the Pokémon you had insisted that you be taken care of. In fact, that Bulbasaur insisted that they be let in once you woke up. One moment." The man, who Amber could now see was relatively dark skinned and, oddly enough, blue haired, slipped out a door next to the chair he was sitting in.
The door slammed open suddenly, and Amber started before realizing that it was just Squirtle being overenthusiastic. "Amber! You're okay!"
"That I am, Squirtle. Thanks to our host, I think," said Amber. "Speaking of which, thank you for caring for me. I'm Amber, and you are?"
"Oh, that's my bad." He bowed at the waist. "I am the Gaea Town Gym leader, Adam."
Finally getting to some recognizable Insurgence characters.
I've got in the neighborhood of 1K words of S1E4 ready, this past few weeks have been hectic, what with moving and training. I should be back on track with a chapter in reserve by my next posting.
Still looking for a new beta reader, so if you're interested go ahead and speak up!
Hope y'all enjoyed.