And it's been like 4 months since I last updated. I'm such a terrible author. I'm sorry. I'll get back to this now.

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Chapter 11: Trial: Alone

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The image of Raikou sped up. The heroes saw the pokemon be knocked back by Darkrai and the image become enveloped in darkness.

The birds stopped the assault.

"What just happened?" Julie asked, "Did we…lose?"

We didn't do anything wrong…Suicune said, there was just a…time skip.

"WHAT?" Jo yelled, "You mean we were frozen in time?"

Yes. To them we looked frozen, but to us they're the ones who sped up. The Void and our world have time inconsistencies, remember?

"So now what?" Julie asked, she was responded with a loud CRACK, similar to the one Matt and Parker heard in Chicago.

BRACE YOURSELF! Moltres yelled.

Everyone felt themselves being torn apart as the world around them turned black.

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Julie woke up in a terrifying place. She was lying with her back propped up against a wall, her head looking down to her feet. Her body ached all over. She didn't want to move. All she could see was a strange purple rock-like surface that she was sitting on. She didn't want to look up. She just wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep for the next thousand years and hope that all of the world's problems would solve themselves by the time she woke up.

That wasn't why she was here. With a groan she lifted her head up and looked around. The purple rock was all around her, she was in a cavern-like area. The rock was strangely smooth, as if someone had put sandpaper to it and worked on it for millions of years. The surface of it was so slick it was going to be hard to keep her footing without slipping.

She looked around for a sign of the others. Nothing. She looked down a single tunnel that stretch on into the darkness before her and nothing else. She was alone, in an area she had never seen the likes of before. A lump grew in her stomach; where was she? Where were the others? How was she possibly going to get out of this without their help?

She shook her head; no. This isn't the first time she was alone. She's fought her own battles before. Why was this one any different? In the end she knew she was going to find them and they would continue on their journey together.

Hopefully.

Why were doubts coming into her head now? She did her best to ignore them as she braced herself against the wall before her and shimmied her way back onto her feet. Once she was standing tall on the slippery rock and the aching in her body had started to subside, she took a careful step forward.

To no avail. Immediately she slipped onto the ground, falling on her back only inches away from the wall behind her. She let out a scream of pain; this was the hardest rock she had ever landed on. It almost seemed impossible just how slick this rock was.

She regained her composure and thought for a moment, how to maneuver this surface? If Moltres was here the bird could easily fit in the cavern and fly her forward, but that wasn't an option. If Suicune was here he would create an ice bride with more friction than the floor, but that was out of the question. Jo would just make the floor less smooth and more grainy; making walking over it comparable to walking on sand.

Of course, she had none of this help. For the first time in a while Julie swore,

"FUCK!"

That felt good. Now that her emotions were under control, Julie decided to conjure her staff. Once done, she slowly hoisted herself up on it; making sure not to put too much weight on it so that she didn't slip again. This was worse than walking on ice.

Once standing she decided to shoot a jet of water straight forward and listen for a reaction at the other side of the tunnel. She lifted her staff and fired a powerful jet of water straight ahead of her, but the force was too much for her feet to hold against and she was thrown back into the wall behind her.

"DAMN IT!" She yelled, "I can't believe something as simple as friction is going to be the thing that kills me!"

She relaxed against the wall, placing her staff in her lap, and thought. Was this what her brother was talking about? Was this the way she was to die? She always found herself wondering this in hard situations. She thought she was going to die when she faced Celebi in Chicago. She thought she was going to die when she faced Moltres. She thought she was going to die when she was fighting the Cloud of Darkness. Now she thought she was going to die in this cave.

Julie wondered; why would this time be any different from the other ones? Why was this the day she was designated to die? Why should she be so worried about something inevitable? Her brother said she was going to die if she continued in this war, but in the end all humans die. Why should she give up now?

She wondered if her brother was telling the full truth. Was she going to die in this war? Or was she just going to die afterwards? He was very vague about her death.

She sighed. She didn't know. What she did know was that being scared of death was stupid. Especially when she had the responsibilities she did to her world. Yes. She couldn't give up now. She cleared her mind once more and re-evaluated the situation.

The floor had almost no friction. Okay. That much she knew. The rock was thick and there was no way she could blast through it with her water. She looked at the wall behind her, remembering what it felt like to fly back into it.

Fly back into it…that was it! The blast of the water jet she tried to use pushed her backwards. What if she just continued the jet for a while and slid through the cave? It wouldn't hurt much since the floor was almost perfectly smooth. It was a natural slide.

She nodded. She spun around to face the wall and pointed her staff straight at it; her knees curling up to her chest. She put both hands on the staff, took a deep breath, and fired the most powerful jet of water she could conjure at the wall.

It worked. She shot through the cave like a bullet, going at a speed she could hardly comprehend. The cave stretched on behind her as she focused on maintaining the powerful blast of water before her. Her hair whipped in front of her, obscuring her vision. She didn't care. She was aware that hitting a wall at this speed was sure to be fatal, but she didn't care. She kept going, going, going. Her will the only thing propelling the water before her. If she were to stop now she wouldn't have the strength to keep going.

Without warning she felt the ground beneath her disappear. Immediately she put a stop to the jet, her body screaming at her in exhaustion as she plummeted downwards. She didn't even look to see what was below her as she braced her entire body for a potentially deadly impact.

She slammed into a large basin of water below her. The water surface felt like concrete when she hit it, but it quickly gave way to the pleasures of the free-floating water beneath. She had made it.

The water was rejuvenating her. She figured it must've been because that was her element. It would make sense that she would receive more energy while submerged. She also discovered she had the ability to breathe underwater. Perfect. She opened her eyes and looked around.

Nothing. Again. Nothing. Well, this was better than a frictionless cave. Now she could at least move around the vast blue emptiness and see if it was actually as barren as it made out to be. All she could see around her was crystal-blue water. She smiled as the last bit of her energy came back to her. She felt like a fish. Or a mermaid. Either way, she felt alive down here. She swam around a little bit, forgetting her worries and instead getting used to the feeling of swimming underwater while breathing. She wondered how she ever dived before without being able to breathe under here. It felt incredible.

In the middle of her whimsy she caught something large and white out of the corner of her eye. It moved fast, so she didn't get a good glimpse of it. But it scared her. She froze and conjured her staff, now made of crystal leading up to the dragon's head at the stop, now made of a brilliant sapphire with jade eyes. She must be more powerful under here too.

She felt a jet stream of water hit her back and she spun around, nothing. Something was after her. She knew it. Its speed was incredible, and she really didn't want to see what it was. She needed to find a way out of the basin; if she did that she would be one step closer to reuniting with her friends.

She looked down. More water. But there had to be a bottom. She shot down the basin, kicking as hard as she could to increase the distance between her and the large, white monster. She could feel its presence behind her. It was in pursuit. It was dangerous. She increased her speed, but she could feel it creeping closer and closer by the second.

After a mere minute of swimming Julie could make out the bottom of the chasm. She smiled; she was almost in the clear. In her enjoyment she accidentally slowed down and felt something large and slimy wrap around her ankle and yank her up. She let out a piercing scream that reached no one's ears in the water. She looked behind her to see exactly what had a hold of her.

A kraken. A giant kraken. The thing was almost a translucent white, it's giant head shaped like a squid's with a black stripe running down the middle. It must've had somewhere around 20 tentacles and been around 100 feet across, tentacles unextended.

This was going to be a hard-fought battle.

Julie was pulled forward by the beast, its tentacle attempting to move her under its head and into its giant beak. She let out a yell as she jabbed her staff into a tentacle. The beast let out a shriek as the tentacle loosened its grip on her, allowing her to wriggle out and move a safe distance away from the kraken.

She quickly examined it. There didn't seem to be a weak spot. She knew if it was able to get her under its beak she would be crushed instantly. She needed to stay away from the tentacles, but she needed a way to kill it. The only way to do that, it seemed, would be to get up close.

Before she could come up with a solution a tentacle shot out at her. She dove and screamed as it slammed into purple rock behind her, debris floating up to the surface of the water. She kept diving as more and more tentacles did the same thing in an attempt to pin her against the wall. She reached the bottom and looked around. She could see a small hole she could squeeze through in front of her. That was her exit.

She bolted to it but the Kraken saw her and blocked her exit, its body walling the hole. She looked at the beast and showed waved her staff. A blue dragon appeared at her feet and curled around her, its head appearing at her left shoulder and its tail poking out behind her right leg.

"Fine. We'll play your way." She said. The Kraken roared at her, accepting her challenge.

Another tentacle shot out at her, she dove under it once more and thrust upwards with her staff, it penetrated the Kraken's skin. The dragon shot up into the tentacle through the staff, its head becoming larger as it opened its jaw and ripped the tentacle clean off the beast. Black blood came pouring out of the hole it made. She cheered; this was her first victory over the beast. But it was short lived, in her celebration a tentacle was able to close in around her without her seeing it, crushing the dragon and binding her body. She was unable to wave her staff.

She was quickly being drawn into the beast's mouth, she need a plan, fast. She knew if anyone else was here to help this beast would be no challenge at all. But she's alone. She imagined herself as water, slipping through the beast's tentacles and being able to make her escape. If she could do that, she would be invincible underwater.

She closed her eyes just as she saw the beak, and immediately she felt the grip on her disappear. She opened her eyes to see the beak of the Kracken above her, but as she looked around, she couldn't see herself.

Then it hit her.

She had turned into water.

She smiled. She could just escape right now and forget about the Kraken, but that was too easy. Too good a fate for the monster. She was going to end its life here and now. She called forth her staff and thrust it into the ground. Now she had an idea.

She put her palm on the head of the staff, the jade eyes' of the dragon's head glowing brightly, and focused. She could feel the water whirling around her. She placed her feet on the ground and continued her focus; a vortex spinning around her.

The Kraken let out a scream as it was sucked into the giant whirlpool; it was tossed around in the turbulent waters. It tried to swim away, but its tentacles couldn't keep up. Soon all of its arms were tangled; it had no way to fight back.

Julie stopped the whirlpool and flew up to the giant beast. Its eyes were located on either side of its black stripe about halfway up its skull. She could easily fit into one of them. She re-solidified herself so the beast could see its prey fighting back.

"Die, you oversized shrimp."

Her dragon manifested itself around her and lunged into the eye of the beast, tearing it out and killing the Kraken from the inside. Blood gushed out of its eye socket as the beast writhed and screamed in pain until it stopped moving altogether, its lifeless body floating aimlessly in the chasm.

Julie smirked, "I wasn't dying today."

She swam back to the bottom and found the hole she could fit into. She peered into it and saw a short tunnel with a bright light at the end.

She smiled and squeezed into the hole, swimming towards her next challenge.