And that was the end of the argument. And the questions.
They evacuated the room quickly under a rain of arrows and while Riley ran off to scramble his possessions together, Jasmine went to waken the others.
Without bothering to knock, she ran straight into Ash's room. She went up to him and shook him awake.
'Wake up Ash!' she shouted. 'We have to get out of here NOW!'
'Huh? What? Where?' Ash murmured sleepily. Then 'Wha-! What's going on?'
'Get out of here NOW. We're under attack!' she screamed as the window shattered.
'AAAHHHHH!' Ash shouted as glass rained on the carpet.
'Wake up as many people as you can. I'll meet you at the entrance.' She said she ran out, Lucario in tow.
Ash then decided that the situation was really serious. He ran out with his things and started banging on doors and generally causing a racket, trying to wake people up so they could evacuate. People were grouchy and disgruntled at first but as soon as they felt the shudders the Pokémon Centre took from various blows outside caused them to run outside screaming.
Meanwhile, Jasmine had run down to the lobby of the Pokémon Centre to find Nurse Joy screaming as plaster from the ceiling started to crash to the floor.
'Nurse Joy, we have to get out NOW!' Jasmine screamed.
'But what about the pokémon?' asked Nurse Joy.
'I'll help you get them out!' she replied.
They rushed through rooms and rooms, carrying out scared pokémon until the rooms were empty and everyone had gotten out. They ran out as the building collapsed from the strain of the endless attacks. It crashed to the ground in a cloud of dust.
Riley, Ash and co. ran up to Jasmine as Nurse Joy ran to check on the crowd of people congregated around the wreck of the Pokémon Centre.
'What happening? What's going on?' asked Dawn, looking scared. Piplup was hugged to her chest, muttering a sad 'Pip-piplup..'
'We have to get out of here before anything else can happen; we can't endanger anyone else.' Was all Jasmine said.
'What do you mean?' asked Ash but she wasn't listening.
She was staring at a group of black clad men and women, standing far away from the crowd and generally trying to pretend they didn't exist. It wasn't working. Jasmine didn't need to see their auras to know that they were the ones after her.
The men wore a full black suit and jacket and had jet black hair shielding their eyes making them look more ominous. The women were pretty much the same, only with skirts and black tights and their and their jet black hair in a high ponytail, making them look business-like. All bore a strange symbol on their jackets, similar to the one Jasmine bore herself, only more warped and pure white.
They seemed to argue with each other in fairly raised voices, sounding like blaming each other for the Pokémon Centre's collapse and how not good it was for their task from the snippets of chatter she caught. Yes, she knew exactly who they were and why they were here.
'Trying to blend in?' she thought, 'Nice try.' A smile catching the corners of her lips at her thought. She would just direct themselves away from the trouble makers while they bickered on like the useless grunts they were.
She motioned for them to be silent while they crept into a field of rocks. Even if one of the 'grunts' (as Jasmine had so thought of them) happened to look up, they would just mistake the group for some oddly shaped rocks. Well, they are grunts after all.
The plan seemed to be working. The rest of the team had picked up that the black clad people were dangerous and the air of urgency and danger and did what they were told. Until…
Tap! Jasmine cringed at the awfully loud sounding sound of a stone clattering among the rocks. She looked back to see Ash standing sheepishly looking at the ground.
Typical.
Of course something had to happen. It always did. She silently hoped the grunts had been to busy arguing to notice the suspicious noise or passed it off for a wild pokémon.
But it just doesn't work that way. It never did.
One of the five arguing grunts looked up. He made his way over in the direction of the noise. The group silently scrambled around a large rock in hopes that the grunt would just walk away and pass off the noise. Instead, he lingered around the area of the noise, moving ever closer to their hiding place. He paused so close to them that they could hear the man breathing.
At this moment, Fate and Destiny decided to be unkind. A passing breeze brought a feather from a bird pokémon with it, most likely a Wingull. It floated past the hiding group and brushed past Ash's nose. Immediately, it started twitching. He was going to sneeze.
There was a silent mass panic behind the rock. Brock and Dawn, along with help from Ash, tried to stop him from sneezing by putting a hand on Ash's nose while Jasmine and Riley continued to watch the grunt in hope that he would go away.
Then three different things happened:
Number one; Ash sneezed. Despite the trio's best efforts to prevent the inevitable, Ash sneezed. It echoed off the landscape and rock, altogether sounding so much louder. They were doomed.
Number two; Unsurprisingly, the grunt looking for them was clever enough to pick this up and know that random sneeze + mysterious sound = target people hiding behind the large rock. He quickly called over his four friends, two male, two female, to come and help him chase the group down. They were doubly doomed.
Number three; As Jasmine knew they were doubly doomed, she decided to ditch the hope that they wouldn't find the group behind the rock and started shouting orders to her friends.
They picked up the message thankfully quickly and started running into the barren rock field, hopefully losing their pursuers. However, the grunts were not as dumb now as they had found their target and understood the severity of their mission and were somehow able to track them down however far they ran. Though the others were perplexed on how the mysterious people could do that, Jasmine grew more anxious and worried by the second.
'Not as dumb as they look, huh,' she muttered to herself, 'Well, guess I have no choice.'
She turned round to face them.
The grunts slowed down to a halt, glad that their job had become so easy. One by one, they each produced three pokéballs from their belts and launched them into what they hoped would be a quick and easy battle. Unfortunately for them, capture didn't seem like an appealing thought for Jasmine. She brought three pokéballs from her bag and threw them into the battle.
'Everyone, time to battle!' she cried.
The pokéballs burst open and in a flash of white light appeared a female Gardevoir, a female Togekiss and a female Glaceon. In a single leap, Lucario jumped from Jasmine's side to the makeshift battlefield.
Upon seeing the red dressed girl's pokémon, the five grunts wasted no time in issuing commands to the fifteen pokémon in front of them, Pidgeotto.
'Pidgeotto, Air Slash!' they all cried simultaneously.
Each Pidgeotto formed a sphere of white glowing wind on one of their wings and launched all of them forward at the same time.
But Jasmine was prepared for that.
'Togekiss, counter with your Air Slash!' she shouted.
Togekiss formed its own sphere of wind and launched it forward. It made contact with the other Air Slashes, causing a small explosion in mid air and blocking the view of the battle and attacks but some remaining attacks were able to escape the explosion and more forward. But another attack emerged from the smoke to oppose the others.
An Aura Sphere polished off the rest of the Air Slashes, causing another explosion, allowing another to break through and hit some of the Pidgeotto. They took a great amount of damage, even with fighting type move not being at a disadvantage, but still managed to stay in the air and in the battle.
The smoke cleared to and there stood Lucario, paws smoking from the last attack. Togekiss noticed this and cheerfully thanked Lucario for helping her out.
'You're welcome.' Lucario responded.
Ash, Dawn and Brock blinked a few times. Then they shouted 'Your Lucario can talk?' simultaneously.
'Telepathy,' Jasmine replied, 'Tell you later.'
She turned back to her pokémon.
'Everyone,' she commanded, 'I need you to attack the Pidgeotto until they faint. I have something to do.' Her pokémon nodded in response and turned round to attack their opponents. Meanwhile, Jasmine turned back to the group.
'Do you guys have flying type pokémon you can fly on? She asked them.
'Yeah, we do. Why?' replied Ash.
'I need you to get away now. It's too dangerous.' Was her reply.
'But what about you?' asked Dawn.
'I'll catch up later, don't worry.' Replied Jasmine.
She turned back to the battle at hand.
The group turned to look at each other.
'Well, should we do it?' asked Ash.
'We should. We don't want to be endangered any more and that is what Jasmine wanted, right?' Brock answered.
'I guess that makes sense…' Ash trailed off, thinking. He looked up. 'Okay! Let's go!'
In a flurry of white flashes, the group had contributed three flying types big enough to carry them all. In total they had a Staraptor and a Metagross and Salamence (courtesy of Riley). They clambered onto the fliers, Ash on Staraptor, Dawn on Metagross and Riley and Brock on Salamence. One by one they took off.
With a final finishing blow, the last of the Pidgeotto were defeated, the grunts stood staring dumbfoundedly at their defeat at the hands of a teenage girl. But soon their shock turned to rage as they sought revenge for their loss, to win once and for all, for the mission. They rushed at her, fists curled and ready, determined to capture her like their task ordered.
But what they didn't know was that they were no match for her.
She deflected all of their attacks with ease, countering with some of her own. The grunts staggered back, shocked at her skills and power.
She smirked. 'Didn't expect that, did you?'
Then she proceeded to rush at them with her attacks.
She flung out kicks and punches, like a whirling tornado, her attackers not fast enough to stop her. At the end of the barrage of attacks, the grunts lay on the ground, dazed. Which gave her enough time to ensure her and her friends safe getaways.
From her bag, she took a small drawstring pouch. She gently dipped her fingers into the pouch and withdrew a pinch of silver powder. She then walked up to the dazed grunts and scattered the dust over them, covering her nose and mouth as she did so. She stood back and waited for the effects.
After a few breaths, the grunts started to drop off to sleep. A few started snoring. Jasmine smiled, glad that the powder had been successful again. She returned her pokémon except for Togekiss and Lucario. She and Lucario hopped onto Togekiss and took off after the others.