Chapter 7 – Frozen
"Hurry! We need to get to it before it wakes." Deep inside the caves of Mt. Coronet, the exploration team were nearing their destination. The expedition leader was at the front, calling commands back down the line. He was being careful not to be too loud, but loud enough for the rest of the team to hear him.
"According to the map the boss gave us, the entrance should be somewhere around here." The team's navigator was observing the map under the dim light of a fading flashlight. "We should go around this next bend off to the left, and we should end up in a small area outside the cave."
There were some tired grunts of agreement from the team leader as he continued to tread warily along the stone cave floor. Each team member was armed with a state-of-the-art flashlight, and they were guiding their feet using the light given out by it.
After making their way around an oncoming bend in the tunnel, they did not need to use their lights anymore. "Right there!" shouted the team leader back towards the rest of the party, forgetting about using a careful volume for his voice. "That must be the opening." He was pointing at a strong light at the end of the straight stretch.
The team sped up, no longer being hindered by the darkness of Mt. Coronet. It only took them about a minute to reach the light, after which they found themselves outside the cave and standing in a small snowy courtyard with another little cave across the other side.
"That's where it is!" the team leader continued on noisily. The rest of the team were far too tired and excited to try to shut their leader up. "Now, lets go in and capture it."
After some groans for not getting a rest, the party of five lined up and entered the small cave in single file. The cave entrance was like nothing any of them had ever seen. The outer edges were coated with a thick layer of ice, but unlike normal ice, it wasn't cold. It was different.
They all walked along, but they didn't need to go very far, as the cave was just a single room. Although the light outside was bright, it didn't light up the area like it should've, so everyone resorted to using their flashlights again. Four of the team stood close by the entrance to the cave, watching without blinking, but the team leader advanced forwards, shining his flashlight around in the hopes of seeing what he was after.
Finally, the light found itself being shone on a large icy-blue figure that was sitting on the ground at the end of the small room. It was perfectly still, not breathing, not doing anything. The leader was incredibly cautious now as he slowly approached, but still nothing happened. He got right up close to it, almost touching it. But still, nothing happened. He turned around to face his team on the opposite side of the mysterious room.
"It's safe, you can come over," he shouted back to the team. But as he did so, he heard a massive roar behind him, and before he could even turn to face what was happening, he was frozen solid in an enormous block of ice. At that moment, every single person on the team stood staring at his or her leader, not breathing. The massive block of ice slowly rose into the air, and was suddenly shot sideways into the darkness. All the team heard was the crashing sound of the ice on the cave wall.
The Pokemon that had caused this was now starting to roar again. The noise grew from a soft growl into a huge painful roar. As the team blocked their ears to stop their eardrums from impacting, the Pokemon began to glow bright blue. Fear struck the face of the navigator, and thinking quick, he extracted an odd-looking gun from his backpack. The ever-growing noise threatened to kill him, but he managed to aim the gun at the Pokemon and pulled the trigger.
What exited the gun was not a bullet, but a small electronic device. The shot was perfect, hitting the Pokemon square in the chest. Immediately, the glow vanished and the roar stopped. The small electrical device then started to injure the Pokemon with huge electrical currents. Despite the severe pain, the Pokemon did not scream, it just went still and fell back onto the ground in its previous position.
The team members slowly removed their hands from their ears, careful that the sound might return to torture them. The navigator took the role of leader and faced the team. "It is stunned, we should have enough time to incapacitate it and capture it. Act fast, we are already breaking schedule."
Wearily following the orders of their new leader, the team stood and slowly headed for the Pokemon on the other side of the cave.
"I'm going to go check on Paul and see if he's alive," the navigator stated. He broke apart from the group and headed over to where he saw the ice boulder fly into the darkness. Needing light, he found his flashlight and started pointing it into the darkness. It wasn't hard to find the wreckage of the ice, but strangely enough, his leader was nowhere to be seen. He continued to search, wondering if he would find him.
As he was about to give up his search, he tripped over a chunk of ice and went face-first into the cold rock surface of the cave. He could instantly feel his nose was broken, as blood was pouring out his nostrils and over his face. He put he hand up to cover his nose, and turned to look at the thing he had tripped over.
He saw it was a block of ice, but he suddenly became shocked when he realised what it looked like. It was shaped exactly like the head of Paul. It sported a terrified face and unblinking eyes. There was Paul's head, turned to ice. The navigator could only assume that the rest of the body had shattered when it made contact with the cave wall.
He slowly walked back towards the team, which had now successfully wrapped wires around the Pokemon and laid it on a portable rolling tray. "Did you find Paul? What happened to him?" one of the workers asked desperately.
The navigator ignored him and just stared at the Pokemon. He thought to himself, 'What the hell is this thing?'
-- -- --
Oreburgh city was quite unique in that it was built upon a dirt plane. It had a very old-age feel about it, which Zane took no time to recognise. Although a city, it wasn't full of bright lights and massive shopping centres, instead, it was just like an old mining town, only much bigger. All the buildings looked old and worn (all except for the Pokemon Centre), and the majority looked very dull, yet they seemed to entrance Zane somehow. He loved the look of them, but at the same time wished that he could stay right away from them.
Another massive difference that Zane noticed almost immediately was that there weren't many people wandering the streets. There was no constant chatter of a massive crowd like in most cities, instead just the occasional group of three or some hurried businessman. The one thing that there was a lot of though, were industrial workers.
Zane noticed as he slowly wandered down a sidewalk that nine out of ten people he spotted in the eerie city were big, burly men that were covered in dirt and wore yellow hardhats. Most of them flat out ignored Zane's existence in the city, but the odd one or two would take a quick glance at the odd one out. It seemed quite odd to Zane.
His amazement of the oddly desolate and quiet city was extinguished by the returning thought of the Geodude he had just handed over to Nurse Joy, and had decided to care for. A quick recollection of the day's events reminded Zane that he needed to stock up on every day trainer items. With a fresh objective firm in his mind, he set out to find a shopping centre.
Zane wandered along dusty street by dusty street, carefully looking at every person he saw, and watching the very few industrial machinery vehicles that powered past on the dirt roads.
Noting a large sign that showed an arrow, and the text, 'Oreburgh City Mall', he found his direction and headed towards the shopping centre that the sign indicated. It took roughly twenty minutes for Zane to arrive at the large automatic doors of the old-looking building.
Although the outside looked old and dirty and quiet, the inside was exactly the opposite. The view from just inside the entrance showed that the ground floor was the middle floor in a massive, and highly decorated shopping centre. Directly across from the automatic doors, there was a large open area with railings around the edge. Zane approached it and noticed he was looking down at the bottom floor of the massive mall. There were people everywhere. Zane could hardly believe that this place was situated in the same city he had recently arrived.
He was completely awestruck as he gazed around at the numerous shops peppered throughout the complex. He looked up and saw that the top floor was built similar to the middle floor: with a massive viewing area in the centre of the floor. He was almost entirely happy again, until he heard a familiar voice shouting.
"Zane? ZANE?!? Is that you ZANE???" Zane looked around for the source of the voice, and quickly found it. Zack was shouting down at him from the railings on the top floor. The voice was like cockroaches crawling over his skin. He waved weakly back at Zack before he continued. "ZANE! Stay there!! I am coming down!"
He decided to do the exact opposite. As soon as Zack's head vanished back over the railings, Zane bolted for the nearest shop he could find. Desperately trying to avoid a painful encounter with the most annoying person on the planet, he found himself inside a women's clothing store, surrounded by bikinis with pictures of Butterfree and Bellossom all over them.
The smirks of the shop staff didn't stop Zane from crouching down low behind a spinning rack of underwear and peeking through the gap into the walkways of the shopping centre. He waited there until he saw Zack arrive at the spot he was previously standing. Zack looked slightly confused as he looked around for his apparent best friend, and hung his head when he failed to see him anywhere.
Zane felt a large wave of guilt gush through him as he watched Zack slowly walk out of view. Though the guilt was agony for him, he decided to wait a little longer, as he really didn't need any distractions.
He would've waited longer crouched behind the underwear rack if one of the shop staff didn't waltz up to him and say loud enough for everyone to just hear, "Please, either buy something or stop burying your face in the underwear." Needless to say, Zane was very red-faced as he slumped out of the shop and down along a row of others.
As he walked along, he gazed up at the ceiling through the hole in the top floor. The ceiling was a beautifully patterned glass dome. He was stuck in amazement at the wonderful sight, until he suddenly realised that the sky behind it was getting darker. It was already early dusk.
Deciding he needed to get a hurry on, he started to power walk past the colourful shop fronts, quickly peering inside to see if it housed the supplies he needed. There was so many different shops that he was almost lost in search of the correct one. Then without really noticing, he accidentally walked right into a shop at the end of the walkway.
When he realised that he was no longer in a wide-open space, he noticed that there were massive open boxes of red and white Poke balls, walls of various sprays and bottles. He knew that this was where he needed to be to buy some supplies.
He rounded the different areas of the shop, grabbing supplies that he thought he would need as a trainer. He didn't pay much attention to the price tags, as it was all pretty low-cost.
Placing a bunch of Poke balls and Pokemon health sprays into a basket, he approached the counter to pay. The woman at the counter looked into the basket and began to go through it, stating each object out loud in a droning monotone voice. "Five Poke balls… Three super potions… Five full heal sprays… One sleeping bag…" She entered all the information into the cash register and with the regular 'ting' sound, it slid open and she continued, "That'll be fifty-eight pokedollars please."
Zane suddenly realised he had grabbed more than he realised. He pulled out the leftover change from his dinner the previous night, and counted out the fifty-eight pokedollars. When he finished counting, he realised that he faced a problem. "Oh no… Only two pokedollars left." he thought to himself.
He reluctantly handed over the money and then packed his new items into his backpack. It took him a few minutes to fit it all in there, but making use of side-pockets, he managed to squeeze everything in.
As he walked out of the shop, he noticed the sky through the ceiling was now quite dark. He hurried on at a fast walk, and as he made it out the automatic doors at the other end of the complex, he broke into a run. It wasn't hard for him to find his way back to the Pokemon Centre, as the dim streetlights were lit and he had a fairly accurate memory of where he'd come from. The one thing he noticed on his way back was that Oreburgh City no longer seemed abandoned. The streets were still pretty bare compared to what a city should be, but there were now people in sight everywhere. They were all dirty industrial workers.
As he entered the front doors of the Pokemon Centre, he was puffing and heaving heavier than he had when he had brought a dying Geodude in for care. Nurse Joy was sitting at the front counter, head down and working hard.
Zane walked directly to the counter and started talking. "Excuse me Nurse Joy, but I was in here earlier with a Geodude. How is it?"
"Oh, yes how could I forget? Geodude will survive, but it is best that I keep it for the night to heal. You will be able to take it tomorrow."
Zane had half-forgotten that he now owned the Geodude, and seemed puzzled for a second as he took in Nurse Joy's answer. "Oh… Oh yes. Thankyou very much. Also, I was just wondering if you had any free space to stay the night?"
He realised he looked stupid by asking if there was free space, as the entire building seemed as ghostly as the city looked a few hours before.
Nurse Joy giggled, "Yes, yes of course we do. I will show you to the rest area." She emerged from behind the counter and Zane followed her along. They went through some double swinging doors near a seating area and entered into a large room with many rows of hospital beds.
Zane thanked Nurse Joy and chose a bed close to the window on the right-hand side of the room. He slumped down onto the bed and lay down, sighing the largest sigh he had ever done. He rolled over onto his side facing all the beds down his row, and noticed at once that he was not alone.
He hadn't noticed when he first came in that there was an occupied bed with a sleeping person in it. The person was facing away from him, so he could only see the back of his or her head. He recognised the hair style after a few seconds.
A massive wave of guilt gushed back into Zane as he looked at the back of Zack's head on the hospital bed. He questioned how he could abandon the only other person in the world that considered him a friend and leave him standing in the middle of a large shopping centre. He could see, even though Zack was sleeping, that he had an air of sadness around him. The look of him slumped sideways in bed just looked sad, and Zane rolled over to his other side, not even baring to look.
He lay in silence thinking. His second day of being a trainer wasn't as disastrous as his first, but it still was no picnic. He had already gone through so much. He couldn't bottle up his emotions anymore, so he pulled the blanket up over his eyes and started sobbing quietly.